Gratitude. That is the predominant feeling I have as we come towards our June day of Silence. Our dear friend and fellow traveler in the art and practice of silence, Sarah-Jane Menato, sent a beautiful meditation to share with the global community. Her words capture the dance of living in a world where much seems to be coming apart and yet somehow finding a way to meet this reality with an equally palpable reality of inner stability. Such is the purpose and power of silence as a practice.
Last month Michele Steckler shared her experience. This month it is Sarah-Jane. As this global circle grows, anyone who would like to share their experience either with us privately, on the Facebook page, or with the global community as the monthly meditation - we welcome you.
We are in this together - with gratitude for each one,
Peri, Barbara and Sarah-Jane
Tension In Intensifying Times
Nature or nurture, probably both, I register tension keenly. I also get migraines which may be related to patterns set as a tiny child learning how to “hold” phenomenal levels of tension.
Those of you who know something about systemic work know that, from a systemic approach, “problems” are the system attempting a solution. Change and transformation begin with including and accepting “what is”. Not just the bits I like, but all of it.
“What is”, is that I get migraines. My migraines relate to tension I experience between holding two things that “both are”: 1. The facts of what is all around me 2. The truth that is deepest in me
Facts and Truth aren’t always the same thing. What is around me, and what is in me, both “are”. But they are rarely the same. Yes, there is great beauty in the world. But the world is also an increasingly visibly and experientially an unstable and fractured place of conflict and violence. My deepest truth however is increasingly stable, whole, consistent, steady and pulsingly powerful at the core of everything.
People ask me why I like to be up very early in the morning. It’s because it’s quiet. I can be found, “Listening Below The Noise”, with my journal.
Migraines demand of me that, as chaos and noise in the world around me increase, I root more firmly in the deepest truth I can access. Maybe I can learn to register the tension, but shift the way I hold it.
Can I register tension, but “hold” a deeper space for the slow, steady beat of the heart of our earth, sacred space, below the surface noise. As the story unfolds on a currently divided and fractured surface of our planet, my inner space, with increasing confidence, holds the slow, steady beat, my deepest truth, even while hyper aware of the inhumanity and criminal violence all around.
Will my migraines stop one-day? Maybe, and maybe not, I’m human. And holding the tension between the outer facts of what’s all around, and the inner truth of my own experience when they aren’t the same will continue, and it isn’t straightforward. But it is miraculously beautiful.
Joining you with love and blessings in our work below the noise,
~ Sarah-Jane Menato