Sunday Contemplation # 33 The Heart Of Our Actions

The Ground Of Our Being Is Love

Image by Sydney Michalski. Sydney writes the Nature Moments newsletter here on Substack. Her work is stunning…I hope you will take a moment to also check out her website.

• This Week’s Quote

• A G’day

• This Sunday’s Contemplation

• A Guided Meditation

• Grateful For

• This Week’s Community Chat

• Upcoming Activities

This Week’s Quote

What keeps us alive, what draws us forward,
is not the sense that we have accomplished something
but the sense that there is much more to be done in love.
The eye with which I see God is the same eye with which God sees me.
Love is the root of all that is, the highest we can attain.

Meister Eckhart (1260–1328)

A G’day

Good Morning Friends:

I hope that you are doing well this week.

Just a word on “blessings” before I dive into the this week’s contemplation.

I recently heard the poet, author and mystic David Whyte speak in person. It was wonderful. Many things he said struck me, but I came away from that talk with a new insight into blessings. In the Irish culture in particular, giving a blessing to others is held in the highest regard. It is a gift, a hope, a prayer and an opening for the person you give the blessing to. Consequently I decided to put a series of blessings up on Substack notes. I wish I had the Irish brogue to go with the blessings, but as I research it, it is clear that so many cultures have honoured the similar tradition of sharing a blessing. As I post each blessing I close my eyes for a moment in the hope that the energy love and care that went into creating the blessings, sometimes many centuries ago, can land in the hearts of those who read it. Paradoxically…it has been a touching blessing for me to take a few moments to share a blessing with others. Lots of Aussies will say…”cheers mate” to their friends. The translation is “thank you mate”…which is not quite a blessing in the traditional sense, but feels like one.

The second note is that we here on the north east coast of Australia are about to receive the blessing of a cyclone landing. It seems it will have weakened a bit before it makes landfall, but we are in for a week of lots and lots of wind and rain. The bridge at the end our our dirt road will be underwater for a few days I am sure. Just a reminder to we humans that Mother Nature is the one who supports us and loves us, and sometimes reminds us of that with some authority.

Cheers to you all this week.

Now to the contemplation.

This Sunday’s Contemplation

The Heart Of Our Actions - The Ground Of Our Being Is Love

One of the challenges I face is the distance between the depth of my experience that love is fundamental to who I am as a human, and the pattern of emotions I sometimes feel when I see something I abhor, or someone whose actions disgust me.

You have seen me write here more than once about what seems to me a critical balance in our lives. The need for both stillness, inner reflection and quiet, and movement, acting in the world in a way that reflects the discoveries and commitments made in stillness.

I have become much better at stillness in my life. I have extracted time, space and energy from misguided and poorly considered movement and gifted it to more stillness. A note for those of you impressed with my achievement…it only took me about five decades.😜

So the challenge for me is not so much in stillness, but in how to express my experience in stillness in the way I move, communicate, interact, in and with, the world.

I know from my own experience that Meister Eckhart is right…”The eye with which I see God is the same eye with which God sees me. Love is the root of all that is, the highest we can attain”. Then the challenge of movement is straight forward. How do I express this quality, this love, in everything I do?

There’s the rub.

I remember my hippie 70’s. That’s 1970’s for those of you not old enough to have seen them. Peace, love and opt out was my inner mantra. The translation; don’t go near anything that didn’t look like peace, or love, and avoid all conflict. I learnt a lot in those times, but almost nothing about facing my reactions of anger, frustration and yes hatred when faced with a far from peaceful world. I read all the right books, wore the right sandals and just knew, with certainty, all about the military industrial complex. Who was that guy?

Since then I learnt some things about this “rub” I would like to share for your consideration:

It is impossible to avoid seeing the suffering we cause each other through our ignorance. Even if we create a cave-like existence, when you close your eyes and open your heart, you will “see” the suffering. The rest of us see it in the news. Don’t avoid it. Be informed, but be careful not to get sucked into the abyss. It will leave you without the energy to recognise the love that powers our very breath. Closing our eyes and ears to the suffering leaves us almost as blind as those that inflict their ignorance on others.

Notice, without fear, that a likely first reaction to seeing violence, injustice and hatred, will be anger, defeat, disillusionment, disgust and possibly hatred. The love is in the next set of responses. First love yourself, and forgive and surrender those first reactions. They are often the first responders of survival. Then, pause, pause again, and when in doubt, pause again. Ask…”if I were love, what would I do, what might I feel”? Listen for the silent response of your heart. There is a silent holy of holies within that heart, where your deepest wisdom, and love, reside. Go there before acting.

Love is not passive. It is true that the divine love that moves in our lives, often reveals itself in silence, in relationship with our children, our family or a stunning flower. But love reveals itself in countless other ways. The outward expression is not the metric. Have I dug deep enough for the gold of sacred existence? There is the metric, probably known only to you and God. From there act. We only need look to the overturned tables of Jesus’s outrage, or Krishna’s advice to Arjuna, or Gandhi’s resistance, or the courage of Congressman John Lewis, to know that love holds firm against the stench of injustice as much as it sheds a tear at the sight of a butterfly.

When you want to resist injustice and stand together with others…first find the reason that arises from love. There are so many reasons to be pissed off. There are so many who want to lash out in anger because they are afraid. It is so easy to find someone to hate. The greatest resistance to hatred and injustice is communities bound together by love. Love is the most abundant resource in the universe, but it will sometimes, no, often, require digging. First we dig inside ourselves and then we dig together with our neighbours. From there communities are built.

We have very little idea of the impact our actions of love may have. Sometimes we just don’t know what to do to help make the world a better place. Start close in. How did I treat the mailman? Was there an opportunity to see the sacred at work today? If we treat these most simple and precious moments as a “practice”, then, should we need to know what love looks like in bigger and more challenging moments, we will have practiced.

Let me end here with a blessing from William Blake to each of you:

“May your hands be busy with kindness, and your thoughts be full of peace”.

Thank you for reading this. See you next week I hope.

I wish you peace. Bless you.

A Guided Meditation

I have received quite a bit of feedback that a guided meditation connected to the topic of these contemplations has been appreciated. When appropriate I will provide one each week. This week’s guided meditation coming in a few days is…Opening To The Blessings.

Grateful For

I include this section because I found that when I read or hear about what others are grateful for, I tend to think more about what I am grateful for. Feel free to share what you are grateful for in the comments. I think it is a beautiful service to others.

Today I am grateful for the meteorological technology that helps us know when dangerous storms are arriving and where they will impact us. At this very moment millions of people on our east coast are getting prepared for a cyclone. This readiness will save many lives. I am grateful for that.

This Week’s Community Chat

The theme in the chat this week is:

What works best for you in being able to return to the love within, that helps you connect to the world with love?

Thank you.

Upcoming Activities

Stay tuned for upcoming activities. I am still working on the best ways to help build our growing community here on Substack.

Should you want to message me directly, please feel free to do so.