A Radical Metanoia

Entering the Fire with Heart

A nondual embodiment wisdom teacher, I share these heartfelt thoughts in response to current societal and global challenges, including systemic racial injustice, economic inequities, climate change, threats of nuclear war, and our global pandemic:

  • We who grieve the great injustices on Earth are called not to just to change our views – but to transform at the deepest levels of our being.
  • We are challenged to awake to the plurality of reality.
  • Only a metanoia – a radical change of heart, mind, and spirit – will enable us to live on an Earth where all human beings flourish.

Stage One: Preparing your heart, body, and mind for radical self-transformation

  • Find allies and wise, compassionate guides to support you in cultivating the capacity to be personally “touched” by the impact of our current societal and global challenges on others and on this Earth – e.g., systemic racial injustice, economic inequities, climate change, and our global pandemic.
  • Cultivate “sacred heart space”  – an internal attitude of spacious tenderness so that you can actually experience whatever you’re experiencing – including challenging sensations, difficult emotions, forbidden thoughts..
  • Practice effective breathing and skillful self-soothing strategies to relax your belly, reassure your heart, quiet your nervous system, and calm your mind. 
  • Learn subtle, nondual body-centered meditations to support your heart, body, and mind in growing toward wholeness – and in “seeing through” distorted perceptions and unconscious beliefs, disentangling from habituated thoughts, emotional reactivity, and painful sensations, and releasing limiting somatic, mental, emotional, perceptual, and energetic patterns..
  • Recognize that what’s going on is larger than you. It’s as if the schisms in our psyches that separate us from ourselves reflect schisms that divide us from others and from this Earth..

One Breath

My tender heart trembles, Reacting, the mind spins this way and that… Looking for escape. I cannot accept this. Feeling powerless Separate Broken

I can’t breathe….

This is the legacy of suffering

The wisdom, as always, is about turning towards this pain. A deep, deep wound. Admit it’s there Feel the feelings in this heart Listen Open Don’t look away Heal

Breathe…

This is compassion for oneself.

And then, with the steadiness that comes from unflinching, Loving awareness, Speak and act from the heart. Let it be known Protect and Serve Don’t look away Ever

Live…

This is compassion for the world.

True solidarity. A radical acceptance. That sacred space between the out breath and the in breath… Death and Rebirth No separation Them Us One.

Love…

This is a prayer for all beings

~ Mark Arthur, Black Buddhist author and meditator from the UK

Years ago, my dear friend Cleo, a young dark-skinned man of African descent, leaned towards me, a middle-aged White woman. Near tears, Cleo talked of the emotional and psychic stress he felt, as a Black man in this society. Quietly, he asked: “What does the term White supremacy mean to you? What is your relationship to it?” My heart leapt into my throat. I gasped for air. In that moment of reckoning, my Whiteness became visible to me. My body tensed. My thoughts fragmented. I took a deep breath, seeking courage. His questions challenged the world as I then knew it. My self-identity, moral character, and personal capacity for engaging in dialogue felt called into question.

We who grieve the great injustices on Earth are called not only to change our views – but to transform at the deepest levels of our being. We are challenged to awake to the plurality of Reality. Only a metanoia – a radical change of heart, mind, and spirit – will enable us to co-create a world where all human beings flourish.

Sitting in the Fire

Reality challenges us to make a strong commitment to support diversity. To co-create a more just, more sustainable world, let us form alliances