Here is a recorded class from many years back:
copyright (C) 2007 Lynn Woodland
As we head into the coldest season of the year, the birth of light that happened last week is still a quiet secret held within our hearts. It’s not like summer where light seems to positively show off with its lavish displays of growing things. No, the light to celebrate now isn’t that of the sun; it’s the less obvious, but no less powerful, inner light that becomes all the more beautiful in the contrasting darkness—in much the same way that candles are made for winter nights more than for the light-filled evenings of summer. The dim, but growing, light of winter is conducive to dreaming and letting our imaginations stretch open. Have you ever noticed it’s easier to meditate with the lights turned down, or to dream in the dark, or to be drawn into a different world when the theater goes dark and the stage lights up?
For some of us, though, winter begins a seemingly endless stretch of cold, dark barrenness—a time to get out the SAD lamps and do what we can to keep depression at bay. Perhaps in this season where we can’t rely on the light around us to brighten our world, the best antidote to seasonal depression is to shine our own light outward in some way—to make the world brighter by our presence.
The purely selfish, personal benefits of doing unconditional good are many. It’s well known that the best therapy for just about anything is often stepping out of ourselves to help another. Along these lines, Dean Ornish’s excellent book, Love and Survival, compiles all sorts of research documenting the healing power of love. He makes the point that, “What is also important in a number of studies is not only how much [love] you get but also how much you give.” He goes on to cite a particular study of more than seven hundred elderly adults that showed, “the effects of aging had more to do with what they contributed to their social support network than what they received from it. The more love and support they offered, the more they benefited themselves.”
Not only does offering a bit of light to the world around us keep us younger, it doesn’t need to be a grand gesture to be meaningful. In fact, in this quiet, gestating time of year, perhaps it’s the small acts that are more in keeping with the season—acts that don’t try to save the world, but just simply demonstrate a faith in goodness; acts that help us believe the world is worth saving.
Over the years I’ve encountered many spiritual teachers and leaders of social change. There are a number who stick in my mind as especially powerful. However, along with the movers and shakers who are working in obvious ways to heal the world, there have been people by whom I’ve been just as deeply moved, in spite of their humble activities. One such person is a woman I regularly encountered in my former hometown of Baltimore when I bought gas. She worked in a small glass booth between gas pumps on a busy city street in a neighborhood considered unsavory. Her job certainly wasn’t glamorous, easy, or overtly aimed at world healing. Yet she had an aura about her. Her smile was authentic and heartfelt, whether it was to a polite elderly person or an intoxicated troublesome one. She seemed to create a ripple of peace around her in this chaotic atmosphere. More than once my encounter with her changed my day significantly for the better. It’s hard to know how profoundly she affects her world through these simple emanations of love. My guess is that her impact is considerable.
Then there was a man who held the lowly job of collecting shopping carts outside a big supermarket. He had a smile and a word for everyone who walked in or out, got to know an astonishing number of people by name, and often broke into operatic renditions of popular tunes as he helped people with their bags. His poor reading and writing skills made it hard for him to qualify for the indoor job of bagging that he wanted, but I never saw him any way but cheerful—no, cheerful is too small a word. The man seemed to make it his job to extend kindness unconditionally to everyone. His work on that parking lot was nothing less than a ministry and, decades later, I still remember him profoundly. In a busy urban parking lot plagued with crime, who knows how great an effect he had on his world?
More recently, I heard someone tell a story of being at a restaurant with her mother. When it came time to pay the check, their waitperson told them that someone at another table had paid their bill. Their benefactor had already left by then and they never did find out who did it or why. But I’m sure it’s a gift that will remain fondly in their memory for years to come.
Those of us who celebrate the winter holiday season with an exchange of gifts may now, or will soon, be sitting on a pile of new things, but how many of them will you remember ten years from now? What have you done recently, or ever, to make yourself deeply memorable, in a good way, to people who barely know you?
Whether you’re feeling oppressed by the still-long, dark nights of winter, or rejuvenated by the solstice light returning, could there be a better time to brighten the world a little? Consider these “enlightening” questions:
Questions for Thought
- What are some small acts of kindness that have left a lasting impression on you?
- What small act could you imagine doing that might be remembered for years to come by those affected?
- What small act would take little from you and would give you a lift in the doing? In other words, forget about what you should do or what would look good; forget about heroic efforts and sacrifices meant to impress, and consider what would just plain feel good to do. When you think of something that fits this description, you may well have found the gift that someone will still be remembering decades after the event. How can this not be an important contribution to the world?
Exercise I: Do Something Memorable
Perform some small act of generosity that just might remain memorable to someone for years to come.
Shining Your Light
The meditation this week is a prayer for world healing. It’s well documented that prayer is a powerful thing. Numerous studies offer compelling evidence that prayer has a positive impact on physical health and healing, so it follows that prayer directed toward world healing should have an impact as well, even though it’s harder to document.
The difficulty with praying for the world is that it’s so vast and its troubles are so many. Even for those of us who deeply believe in the power of prayer, how many of us truly have faith that our prayers make a difference? Prayers lose their power when we have no real feeling of what we’re praying for.
How many of us even have a clear vision of what world healing would be? Creatively, humanity has done far more visioning of end-of-the-world scenarios than what its coming together might look like. Who can’t think of at least a handful of novels and movies describing in gory detail the world’s unraveling? Fiction depicting peace on earth and well-being for all is harder to find. Collectively, we haven’t given it nearly as much imaginative attention. Because imagination and mental attention precede manifestation, it’s difficult to create an outcome that we haven’t dreamed of yet and it’s easy to keep replaying what we envision over and over again.
Consequently, our prayer will begin with asking Higher Intelligence for a vision of world healing. This simple act of holding a vision is, in and of itself, healing. This is how new ideas catch on—one mind at a time until a critical mass is reached and a tiny spark catches fire.
The next part of our prayer requires finding what I think of as our “area of power.” When we pray without being able to imagine what we’re praying for, or from a place of hopelessness and powerlessness, our prayers aren’t effective. This is true as well when we pray with such detached impersonality that our prayers lack feeling. Passion is often a way that intuition points us in the direction of our highest purpose, and a passionate desire to help empowers our prayers. Where we feel a whole-hearted pull to a cause is our “area of power” and this is where we can make a contribution to the whole. This is where our efforts will do the most good.
However, this isn’t necessarily where we see the greatest need or where we have the biggest fear of what will happen if we don’t act. It’s not what we think we should do; it’s what we feel called, through love, to do. This could be something as large as starting a service organization, or the heroic work of assisting at a disaster scene. It could equally be something quiet and personal—taking care of a neighbor or rescuing an abandoned animal; or something as humble as folding flyers for a worthy organization or as invisible as praying every day on behalf of others.
The following are some basic elements that make our efforts to help most effective. As I’ve already mentioned, the personal fringe benefits to helping are many. As we increase our power to positively affect the world around us, our power to shape and transform our personal lives grows as well. As we understand how connected we are to all life, we find that our heartfelt effort to support another person’s highest good just naturally furthers our own as well, often in ways we never would have imagined.
Steps for Empowered Helping
- Remember Who You Are.
Know that you are more than your human limitations. Every one of us is a spiritual force with limitless wisdom, power, and love. It’s easy to forget this when we feel ineffective in our lives or overwhelmed by the problems we see in the world around us. While our work in the last season included digging down into the shadowy regions of ourselves to face and transform our self-created demons, in this season of growing light, our work is to reach up and to step out of our selves (small “s”).
As important as it is to face what we fear, to see ourselves honestly, and to heal the wounded parts of our personality, to hold on to this work past its season, metaphorically speaking, creates imbalance as surely as a path of spiritual work that side-steps issues of ego and personality. Giving too little attention to our fears, wounds, and emotional pain locks them in our subconscious where they manifest as forces outside of our control. Too much attention to our human pain and drama can become addictive and equally disempowering.
If this seems a confusing or narrow path easy to slip from, it needn’t be. The path of balance isn’t so much a linear tightrope requiring single-pointed focus not to fall, as it is a circular path that naturally leads us to bend and adjust to its curves. A line takes us straight to a destination and draws our mind back and forth from a starting point (the past) to our imagined ending point (the future). By contrast, a circle takes us around and around without a beginning or ending point, making it much more about the journey—and the present—than the destination. It’s a path that gives everything its season but doesn’t stop anywhere.
And as we follow the curving circle of the seasons now, the path into the literal and metaphorical darkness has given way to a new path of following the light. After much wrestling with demons in the dark, the new lesson is that at any time we can simply step away from the heaviness of human limitation and be one with spirit. It doesn’t mean we stop addressing and healing our human weaknesses. It does, however, mean recognizing that even if we haven’t completely worked through our personal issues, in any moment we can put them aside; we can lift above them instead of going deep in and through, and in that moment we access all the limitlessness of God. This is what it means to remember who we truly are. When we do, even if just for an instant, we become conduits of Divine Love; we become effective in our own lives; we become catalysts for powerful change in the world; and we become available to the gift of Divine Grace.
When we believe we don’t have the power to make this instantaneous shift to lift ourselves or the world around us, it’s the limited vision of our humanness overshadowing our true perception. Ultimately, we’re as limited as we believe ourselves to be, and now is the time to recognize that though we may still be flawed and limited humans, we’re also limitless divine beings.
- Identify Your “Area of Power”
Listen to where you have a passion to help. It could be a person, a cause, or an area of the world. Follow your heart on this rather than your fears and “shoulds.” Let go of all judgments around what cause seems worthier and instead ask yourself where you feel the most heartfelt desire to help. Where could you give service the most joyfully? It may be a world issue, it may be to assist a friend in pain or mentor a young person. Don’t assume the “bigger” cause is the better one. Where you feel the strongest pull is your Area of Power. This is where you will do the most good. If you feel no passion for any area of service, then assume you are your own worthiest cause. You may need to begin your path of service by serving your own well-being.
- Grow Your Faith
Along with passion, it’s important to have faith and trust that your cause isn’t a hopeless one. Faith and passion are a powerful combination. It isn’t necessary to dispel all doubt in order to access the power of faith. As Jesus pointed out, it only takes faith the size of a mustard seed to move a mountain. You can grow your faith bigger by giving more attention to all that has been accomplished and how much can be accomplished than to how much is wrong and how far there is to go. Keep your mind open to miracles and solutions you haven’t yet imagined.
If faith doesn’t come easily to you, imagine how you would feel if you did have total faith. Think of someone you know of whose faith and power to make a difference is greater than yours and imagine what it would feel like to walk in this person’s shoes. As you step out of yourself in this way and see through new eyes, you’ll experience a bigger faith. Even a moment of faith is a powerful force.
- Shine Your Light
Knowing yourself to be a spiritual being with the power to move mountains, imagine shining your light into the area of need you have identified as your Area of Power. Do this in your own way. Say a prayer. Visualize a shining light dispelling all darkness. Open your heart with loving intent that the highest outcome now come to pass. Ritualize it in any way that helps you know the importance and sacredness of what you are doing.
Instead of focusing on fixing the pain and breakdown you perceive, find the core of health in a person or situation and imagine that growing bigger. Let go of what form healing is to take. Don’t tell God what to do. Instead, open your mind to outcomes far better than you are currently able to imagine. Let the hand of Spirit move the mountain.
Trust that your gift is having an effect whether or not you see results. Healing is often like a seed that, once planted, remains invisible and dormant for a time until the growing season arrives. Accept that when growth happens, it may not reflect your agenda.
- Take Action
Do the above spiritual work before deciding on a course of action. Prayer often eliminates steps and helps direct us to the action that will do the most good. Again, in deciding what action to take, follow your heart. Find the action that feels joyful to do and know that even the smallest action, when it has spiritual power behind it, makes a difference.
Prayer for World Healing
Now, we’ll put these steps into practice in the following spiritual work. Before going into the meditation, give some thought to your Area of Power. Identify where you have the strongest desire to help, be it a single living being in need, or a cause involving the whole planet. Make sure you have some uninterrupted time to relax and imagine before you go on to the meditation. Set the atmosphere in whatever way helps make this work feel sacred and powerful. Your talisman may be a useful part of this work, and you also may find this to be an opportunity to offer in service the power you claimed last week.
Exercise II: Meditation
Sit quietly, holding your talisman, if it feels appropriate to include it. Relax your body and quiet your mind with some deep, slow breaths….
Bring to mind the human part of you that can so easily get caught up in the ups and downs of life. Know that all these human experiences are enriching your soul in ways your personality may never comprehend. Give thanks for the richness of your life, including all its messiness and challenges. At the same time, recognize that no matter how immersed you may feel in the dramas of your life, you can always step back from it all and in an instant return home to your true Self.
Do this now by reaching up for help. Know that spiritual assistance is always there when we reach for it and, as you do, you can feel a force gently lifting you out of the limited reality of your earthly life. You’re not taken away, just given a lift, and you instantly feel more at peace as you step back from human emotion. You may literally feel physically lighter as this shift happens. You become infused with the unconditional love that is your natural state and can now look upon your human self and life experience with love, compassion, acceptance and gratitude.
As you awaken to the expanded reality of your Higher Self, your heart wants only to radiate love to the world around you and you find yourself joined by the Higher Selves of other students in this program…. This time we’ve all gathered, beyond the illusionary limits of space and time, to shine our light to the world. First you see those who are currently in this program and then, because in the spiritual realm time is an illusion, you also see the lights of all the souls who have in the past and will in the future gather in this circle created by our intent. Recognize how much more powerful we are together. Together we form an unstoppable force for good. Take a moment to feel the energy of the circle building….
Joining our circle now are many helpful spiritual beings who assist in the evolution of humanity and of our planet. Call upon the power of Spirit and the forces of Light and Love in whatever way is meaningful to you. Feel them adding light to our circle and increasing our power to help.
Ask these beings of Light and Love to show you the world as they see it. Where you see hopelessness and despair, ask to be shown a vision of healing—the world as it could be, as it is becoming; a vision of peace on earth and well-being for all.….
Now, narrow your focus a bit to your own “area of power.” Bring to mind whom or what you most want to light up with healing. From the perspective of your Higher Self, you don’t see what’s broken or missing in this person or cause, you see what’s still whole. Give your full attention to the light that’s already present and grow it stronger with your love. Know that the full power of our circle is with you in this work. Let go of any personal agenda you have for what form healing should take and ask only that Divine Will be done and the highest good unfold. Use your talisman in whatever way your intuition suggests to give added power to your prayer. Infuse yourself with the spiritual power you claimed last week and shine this energy as well.
When the healing feels complete, let the recipient of your prayer fade into light and take a moment to breathe into yourself the rejuvenating energy we have generated…. Then let the energy of the circle dissipate, rippling healing to your surrounding environment. Picture the ripple extending farther and farther, seeing how far you can follow it….
Now, thank all the souls in our circle who’ve empowered your spiritual work and thank the unseen forces of light and love who have been with us. Take some deep breaths to bring yourself back to a normal waking state. Come back feeling refreshed, alert and peaceful.
Exercise III: Share Your Vision
Find some way to share your vision of a healed world with others. Begin by posting it on the forum. Then, in some way, allow it to come up in conversation. You needn’t try to convince anyone. As soon as we start convincing, we’re leading with our ego rather than our wisdom and people stop listening. Just put it out without attachment as to how it will be received. Like throwing seeds on frozen soil, you never know what might take root and sprout at a later time.
Here’s an example of how easily one person’s vision can spread. At a time when the war in Iraq was going badly and George W. Bush appeared to be leading the U.S. on a frightening and dangerous path of alienation from the rest of the world, I led a group meditation to intuit and share with one another what might be a higher meaning to it all. The vision that came to me was that perhaps at this time in history it’s important for the U.S. to lose its position as a leader and superpower so that someday, maybe a long way off yet, the world will unify in a whole new way that couldn’t happen in a world with one mighty power. At the time, I was grateful for this vision because, if nothing else, it brought me peace. Even though I saw only the horrible, divisive mistakes our administration was making, it occurred to me that perhaps some higher intelligence was looking on and seeing everything unfolding in a perfect order leading to peace and goodwill on earth.
Soon after, I was at a holiday gathering with a dear friend from childhood and her family. As the conversation turned toward politics (and became gloomy), much to my surprise, I found myself sharing this vision with them. I surprised myself because I generally keep such “airy fairy” notions to myself around this highly intellectual group—my friend being a pragmatic, politically active environmentalist and her mother a prestigious, high-ranking (and equally pragmatic) professor at Johns Hopkins University. I expected to see a kindly, patronizing “We love you anyway” look cross their faces but instead, everyone seemed to stop and ponder the idea. To my very great surprise, a year later both my friend and her mother mentioned how often they had recalled my unusual perspective and that they had shared it with many others.
Shining…
In this still dark time of year, as you go about your life this week recognize that everyone you encounter has had moments of darkness and could be right now in the midst of a dark night of the soul without your even realizing it. Know that the light of your love could make an important difference in someone finding their way out of darkness. Truly, the way to turn darkness into light is with our love. This week, practice shining it freely.