By Naoko and Miriam
Buddhism says there are “two truths” to our experience - we are individuals who are socially located with particular backgrounds and identities, and at the same time there is the nature of all phenomena, called non-self or interdependence.
This is what we are referring to as the paradox of identity: on the relative level, we experience the world through separate identities, while on the ultimate level, we are none of these identities. A paradox is when (at least) two issues that appear opposite, coexist. And these two perspectives - ultimate and relative - definitely co-exist. In fact, they are the same teaching.
For Naoko, as an Asian woman, and Miriam, as a white queer woman, both living in the United States, we have experienced our share of identity-based aggression. Buddhist teachings in the West tend to focus on inner transformation over social transformation, and we have both benefited from that work. However, as Reverend angel Kyodo williams Sensei says, “Without inner change there can be no outer change. Without collective change, no change matters.” This focus on inner transformation can cause two problems: 1. Inadvertently blame individuals for the suffering they experience from oppression and 2. Keep individuals and communities unaware of the power of our potential for social change. Individuals are a mirror, a microcosm of what’s out in the world; we carry systemic belief systems inside of us. We can change that impact inside us, but change must be collective to alter the systemic level.
It is true that the two of us, along with all humans, are equal in the eyes of suffering; suffering is a universal experience. However, it is also true that our individually racialized and gendered experiences have affected us deeply, and impact how we receive and interpret dharma teachings. The detrimental impacts of oppression should not be blamed on those being oppressed; rather, we need to do collective work to change oppressive systems. In Karuna Training, we talk about “intrinsic health,” which applies to individuals and all relationships, including institutions. In other words, we can work together to uncover the intrinsic health of society.
The three poisons of clinging to (passion), pushing away (aggression), and dismissing (ignorance) reality are key to suffering. Acknowledging our experience as a valid aspect of reality isn’t clinging; it’s discriminating awareness wisdom. We can both acknowledge that clinging to any identity at any level can cause suffering and, at the same time, recognize that bypassing identity to try to come to some “truer form of emptiness” also causes suffering.
These are just some of the topics we will dive into together during our live event on August 11. Join us for this two-hour introduction to contemplative psychology, through a discussion and practice around the paradoxical two truths of our identities.
By Melissa Moore
“Vulnerability sounds like truth and feels like courage. Truth and courage aren’t always comfortable, but they’re never weakness.” Brene’ Brown
In Karuna Training, we are interested in cultivating a genuine connection with ourselves and wholeheartedly connecting with others. This kind of heartfelt connection requires taking a risk into the vast internal arena of our vulnerability.
Consider all the times we have fretted about how to let another person know what and how we feel. For example, when entering into a new relationship, we may feel insecure about ourselves for various reasons, like we’ve been out of a relationship for some years, or we feel insecure about sexuality, or we just are scared of getting hurt again. Expressing those vulnerabilities openly and honestly to our love interest will reveal important information. If they respond equally openly, then we are usually relieved and happy to go forward in the relationship- and if not, then we wouldn’t have wanted to enter that relationship anyway.
Or what about with people we love and care about the most, like our parents, children, or partners - when we want them to know how we feel and what is happening with us in the face of their behavior? Sometimes, the people we are closest to are the most difficult people with whom to show our vulnerability. However, having led process groups and communication sessions with multiple people, I’ve come to trust that our open expression of vulnerability is almost always reciprocated or held with deep respect. It takes a lot of bravery to open up when we lack trust in another. And that bravery usually pays off, even though it's counter-intuitive to wade into the murky waters of feeling ill at ease.
Sometimes, we feel vulnerable, and we are not even sure why we feel that queasy, shaky sensation inside, but it's helpful to have tools to explore our emotions, especially when they are undefined. That is precisely what we dedicate ourselves to in Karuna Training. We offer methods to stop trying to think our way through emotions and instead ground ourselves in our bodies to explore emotional energy as it arises somatically. It's not always comfortable, but it's a method that makes us more robust and courageous and breeds strength of heart and clarity of mind.
We begin to discover that our vulnerability is the cauldron of our greatest strength. What we are avoiding is falling apart or making a fool of ourselves. However, when we open up to others with genuine feelings, we take responsibility for ourselves, which breeds respect and resonance. Somewhere along the line, we have internalized a message that showing weakness is not okay. And yet, it is our willingness to display our soft spots that connects us to other human beings. All humans have soft spots, which are the grounds of a compassionate and courageous heart, and these soft spots need to be tapped to activate them.
Showing and admitting vulnerability is most difficult for me when I want to be right or be the one who wins, say, in an argument or in holding a particular point of view. Sometimes, when my husband and I have a flash of anger or a strong disagreement, we solidify our boundaries and become very tight and close to being the right one. At some point, for the energy to flow again, one of us has to soften and enter into that sickening feeling of giving in; we could call it forgiveness. Forgiveness is a very vulnerable arena to enter and accomplish. It takes softening toward ourselves first - enough to admit our part in a conflict. I experience that when I embody my feelings and accept my internal vulnerability inside - it is always reciprocated.
Karuna Training has refined a trauma-informed approach, allowing participants to explore vulnerability in a facilitated space of a familiar community aimed toward the same aspirations. The training operates in a cohort model, where we explore our relationships with one another over two years to discover our particular style of vulnerability and how we solidify our egos when we choose not to feel vulnerable. It is a golden opportunity to learn and experiment trusting our vulnerability within the cohort, rather than in our regular lives, so Karuna provides a practice ground. In doing so, we birth a genuine heart of strength, courage, and the ability to find an authentic expression in our acquaintances, relationships, and families. Please join me on Saturday, July 27th, from 9 AM to 11 AM Mountain time for a live, in-person introduction to Karuna's methods for discovering strength within vulnerability. I hope to see you there.
By Sandra Ladley
I hope you’ll join me for an introduction to Karuna Training on the topic of Uncovering Polarization: Cultivating Compassionate Exchange on Wednesday, July 17th, from 6 – 7:30 pm MT. The session will include remarks and discussion on polarization, an introduction to Karuna Training methods for working with intense views and emotions, meditation, and time to share our longings going forward. The link to the event registration is here.
I recently read that the distinguishing feature of our current global predicament is not so much the polarization we’re experiencing but the pandemic of helplessness that we share. Polarization is a naturally occurring phenomenon, how waves of energy and light move and oscillate. It is also an ongoing part of our social psychology. But our history of bloody wars shows that it’s not easy for us to resolve polarization on a human scale.
Over the years, I’ve tried to stay current with events and different views, but now, with the overwhelm of global war, conflicts in the US, systemic injustice, and climate change I can barely microdose the daily news. I feel an ongoing sense of doom and longing for a resolution to so many things. I recall like a mantra, the title of the old Broadway show Stop the World I Want to Get Off!
In planning our classes for Karuna Training, we’ve observed that, after the pandemic, people don’t seem to want to come together in person - or online. Then where can we meet? I see people needing to care for themselves and to numb and escape. I experience this myself. Unfortunately, our entertainment industrial complex has monetized the need for escape and markets a Mobius strip menu of choices, making it hard to find entertainment as solace. At times like this, I recall the title of Pama Chodron’s most famous book, The Wisdom of No Escape, which sometimes helps me to remember to take a few breaths and stay present with my feelings. Recently, I’ve found myself imagining that I’m playing in the dirt like children do, or cleansing myself in the dirt like birds do, looking for a literal earthly ground underneath it all. Can you relate? What can we do for ourselves and others during this time? How can we act on our helplessness? How can we find a shared ground of sanity for the benefit of all and our planet?
Like many, I first experienced polarization and a sense of helplessness in my family home. In my family, I felt like the outsider, the arty wild child plopped into a conservative environment at birth, I was on one pole while the others were on the other pole, and it remains true to this day. I moved away from east to west at age 20 and, in so doing, found kindred spirits and a family of choice. Yet, despite spending most of my adult years in the liberal SF Bay Area, I found myself re-enacting the experience of feeling like an outsider and polarization in my life choices. I chose to work in a conservative setting and I sought spiritual sustenance in a conformist spiritual community. My outsider experience could be described as one of fear that, at any moment, I would express or do something that would make others uncomfortable and that, as a result, I would be judged or shunned. I’ve likely sought these environments because they are familiar to me, a habitual pattern of seeking crumbs of acceptance and love from those who feel different from me. I’m aware of my privilege as a cisgender white-bodied woman and know that many others experience far worse dangers and powerlessness from their perceived differences in an ongoing way. I am humbled and am continually learning. My childhood experience of the fulcrum of polarization has oriented me toward wanting to understand, empathize, and bridge differences. More than just ‘can’t we all just get along’ I keep seeking ground that is inclusive of our diverse views that will benefit all of us and our planet in the long run. This is not a fantasy, though it may be increasingly hard to see. It has happened before in our history. I’m inspired by, for example, how Abraham Lincoln famously created his “team of rivals,” his cabinet of enemies.
We are so hardened up into our fixed views. On one side, a friend recently told me I should cut ties with my family; they’re “fascists.” On the other side, another friend recently dissed me when I tried to describe the meaning and relevance of the term “woke.” It seems nobody wants to get into another person’s shoes anymore or to listen to, understand, or empathize with the other point of view. I remember how I was trained to do this in high school debates. I learned so much from researching and conveying a point of view that was opposed to mine. I am inspired by and hope to join a dear friend who has recently been canvassing door to door. After an initial greeting, she will ask the person she’s talking to “What is most important to you?” She’s found that this can open the door to a compassionate exchange of listening and learning. So many of our toxic divides now are around issues that are a matter of life and death. We have no time to waste being tangled up and manipulated into rigid stances that prevent us from listening, exchanging hearts, and finding solutions to these urgent matters. Not surprisingly, there is a lot of current research and discussion on polarization. Why do we get into polarization? How do we get out of it? What do you think?
In the 90-minute session on July 17th, I will present themes from this research. I will also introduce Karuna Training methods that have practical applications for navigating these horrible times of polarization. These include meditation, embodiment, compassionate exchange, working with intense emotions, and being held in an open-hearted community. The session will also offer an introduction and Q&A on the next Karuna Training cycle. I hope to see you there.
June is Pride Month in the United States and many places. I recently saw a cartoon by Bless the Messy on Instagram which compared what people think Pride Month is (rainbows and parades) versus what Pride Month *actually* is (many things, including but not limited to celebration, protecting trans youth, surviving hard shit, feeling free, and being valid to stay in the closet to feel safe). It’s true that June *can* be a time filled with parades and parties. Personally, as a middle-aged, chronically ill, introverted queer person, I now know that protests and parades, whether celebrating pride or fighting for our rights, are all things I need to do very mindfully, if at all. Most of the time, my life in June is not so different than it is any other month.
That’s not because I no longer care about queer rights or because I’m not into celebrating. I’ve just gotten to know more about what I need as an individual queer person and more about what I can contribute to the causes and conditions of our liberation. In terms of how the larger world celebrates during Pride Month, June can also bring genuine statements of solidarity and (frequently) meaningless corporate sponsorship.
In the early 00s, at a huge pride event in San Francisco, I noticed a beer advertisement featuring a gay couple for the first time. My initial reaction was – how courageous! Then I felt sort of delighted to see part of my identity reflected to me in the pages of a mainstream magazine. But not long after, because I was developing critical analysis, I recognized that becoming a target market isn’t such good news. Over the last couple of decades, such LGBTQIA+-oriented advertising has become a part of most people’s everyday visual and auditory experience despite resistant pockets where homophobia is front and center.
Having our identity as queer folks contested in politics and media so frequently can do a number on our sense of worthiness. Last June, in a Karuna Live offering, my colleague Emma Bunnell and I contemplated the need for women and queer folks to trust our worth, and our value, internally and externally. In our program, we addressed how can we value who we really are, without further oppressing others since a fair number of media in pitching toward gay communities still center predominantly cisgender and white folks?
These are some of the questions driving the upcoming podcas to be released this month: What is pride? Is it a “good” thing or a bad thing? In addition, what is an identity? Should I be proud of a queer identity? When can “too much pride” mean I oppress other queer folks who are more vulnerable than I am? Should I see identity (in a Buddhist way) as a not-solid thing? Should queer folks be more oriented toward liberation than pride? How has the idea of queer pride gotten co-opted by the media and capitalism? Can we find a liberated form of pride? And how do rights fit into all of this?
My sense of what true liberation is has also changed over the decades. In recent years, I have been practicing and studying spiritual abolitionism with Lama Rod Owens and somatic abolitionism with Resmaa Menakem, slowly finding a unified vision of liberation that is both political and spiritual.
As Lama Rod expresses in his recent book The New Saints, queerness itself is fundamentally disruptive and liberatory. In my June podcast, I will explore how dharma weaves into pride, identity, and liberation when it comes to queerness. All folks are welcome to listen – though I will be addressing these issues through a queer lens, we have and will always continue to learn a lot from queer elders, especially queer elders of color, regardless of our identities.
Look out for the episode later this month on the Karuna Training Podcast.
*I am using the term "queer" as an umbrella term, as many folks in my generation (late GenX) prefer it to LGBTQIA+. If you prefer LGBTQIA+, please know you are a part of this discussion, too.
By Melissa Moore
Last night, I dined with a 92-year-old woman and her 98-year-old husband, both still in good health; although she has severe osteoporosis, she is still gardening, throwing pots on a kiln, and he is golfing twice weekly - and only stopped skiing less than five years ago. It's wild how enamored I was of their energy at their age - they had been married for 71 years. The woman joked and said,’ You mean our denial of aging.’ This made me wonder if aging is as much of a mental process as she makes it sound – and if how we hold our age impacts the aging experience.
Colorado is full of healthy 85+-year-old folks all over the slopes, cross-country skiing in the winter, and running and biking up and down mountains at high altitudes all summer. This is the state with the lowest BMI per capita, and the idolization of being active and fit while elderly is a State obsession. It is a common topic at dinner parties. I see it all as further ageism and ableism – yet I’m guilty of the same infatuation and aspiration as I age. Ageism is the degradation of aging, making a natural process something to hide or be ashamed of. Ableism is thinking that everyone has all the capacities to achieve and succeed, especially physically, with enough willpower, not realizing the impact on people with disabilities.
Undoubtedly, there is a skillful means to the aging process that challenges the impact of ageism and ableism. To grow old is good fortune for most - old age is a precious time to review the choices we’ve made in our life, our regrets and our accomplishments, the decisions we felt forced into, and the lifestyles we crafted – all bearing fruit in old age in an air of ‘looking back.’. Sorting through all of it is deemed a necessary exercise. Much like sorting one’s things, who will mess with all the stuff when we are gone?
It's also true that we have learned some things and accrued wisdom in life, which longs to be shared and witnessed in circles of openness. We only sometimes find those opportunities in families or nursing homes across North America. Although there are many open-hearted people and programs for the elderly, we often encounter a warehouse of the elderly, lonely, confused, and frequently feeling they have inadequate help and nobody to talk to.
What would the world look like if we honored and appreciated our elders—as most indigenous cultures have always done? We would honor the fact that a long-viewed perspective is valuable and can only be attained through old age. We have life experience and a historical perspective that can be necessary to understand where we came from, our ancestors, and the lost generations and stories.
What will the world look like as we are forced to return to intergenerational homes due to economics, where the babies are cared for by elder relatives, and the family is operated as a system for all versus just the individual? Today’s food and housing costs are forcing families to try on the time-tested model of intergenerational households; unfortunately, many youth interpret this as a failure instead of the opportunity before them.
In Karuna Training, the cohorts we gather for our training are often multi-generational in age range, with youth and elders mingling. We’ve found a wholesome example of respect for elders' experience in our circles, and when we don’t make a big deal about age but interact as humans in a circle of equality.
As elders, we bring responsibility into any communal space to take our seats and remember our potential contributions. Sometimes, we need to notice our habits of mind and speech, and together, we support one another in opening up. Here are a few ideas that we could practice:
We need to learn to express gratitude for life's long view. History always swings wild in a lifetime, as do inventions and so-called progress, which always look different from the lens of old age than it does to the youth. We can learn to express our gratitude to have witnessed such history, whether we understand it or not.
We must skillfully work with life’s regrets and acknowledge our lessons learned with humility rather than self-blame. The old’ if we knew then, what we know now’ meme applies here, and we can adapt that meme with humor and humility, looking back with compassion and understanding for our life experiences, painful or joyful, all part of the soup of life.
We should review our narratives with a healthy dose of a ‘not-knowing mind.’ We could review our narratives in life—what is right and wrong, political, cultural, religious, or otherwise influenced—with curiosity and let go of knowing all the answers. Especially if we desire to have a conversation, we can be curious about what and why others think what they do!
To release what was, embrace what is. Old age requires us to release past identities and capacities that separate us from what we know. This loss can bring complaints and suffering, thus reinforcing our cultural conditioning of old habits. We could begin to open our minds to the wonders in front of us now, which may mean procuring a source for the wonder, when possible, strolls in nature or sitting on one’s front stoop as Spring dawns. When we only see doom and gloom, it may be an indication to raise our gaze to the present moment and allow the elements of wind, water, air, and sun to do their magic.
These are not prescriptions by any means, but they support reflection on elegant ways to age gracefully and to aspire to be as open and in awe of the world as possible.
Please tune into our Podcast, to listen to an invigorated conversation with four Karuna-infused wise women who will discuss the details and skillful means of aging elegantly.
By Melissa Moore
This article is related to an event. Click here to learn more.
Mandala is a Sanskrit word meaning ‘circle’ or anything with a center, a periphery, or a fringe. It can include any society, group, or association and often has connotations of a spiritual gathering. In many Eastern traditions, wisdom mandalas are used as meditation practice tools.
In Karuna Training, we engage the wisdom Mandala of the Five Buddha Families (5BF) by practicing space awareness to learn to trust and understand the nonduality of the seen and unseen forces of the world. Through convening with the 5BF Wisdom Mandala, we learn to access and integrate our innate wisdom.
Is this a therapeutic approach? Well, yes and no. It depends on how we define therapeutic. If therapeutic means curing or ‘fixing’ an ailment or addressing a pathology, then no, space awareness practice is not therapeutic. However, in the contemplative definition of healing, when we learn to come home to who we are, unique to each of us, it could be considered healing and certainly relaxing.
Karuna Training offers a deep dive into the practical and imperceivable aspects of the Five Buddha Families through the Mandala's body, speech, mind, quality, and action. These families are experienced in both confused and wisdom manifestations. The spectrum between confusion and wisdom is the ground we tread daily and where most land habitually. Bringing space, kindness, and awareness to the dimensions of the 5BF Mandala as it manifests within us performs the healing properties of space awareness practice.
The outer aspect of the 5BF Mandala is the elements and where we begin in Karuna Training: space, water, earth, fire, and wind—making up the entire universe and all its inhabitants. We study each element's unseen energetic aspects and then how the elements transfer into emotional styles and eventually habituate into conditioned experiences. The confused and wise aspects of the 5BF energies are nondual realities, and we exchange with them daily. We call them families because they’re so familiar; however, bringing contemplative awareness to these energies ignites our wisdom mind.
It's the old adage of ‘it's not what happens to us, but how we hold it that matters’ - a shift of mind can make a difference in our perception and experience. For example, if we plan a picnic and it rains, we may experience disappointment, but if we are farmers amid drought, we experience the rain as a blessing. Our conditioning toward the elemental aspect of the energies matters, and the 5BF also engages deeply with the primary emotions of passion, aggression, ignorance, pride, and envy - all possessing nondual wisdom in their own right. Through space awareness, widening the mind with space and relaxation, we begin to experience the respective wisdom of the 5BFs: discernment, clear seeing, accommodation, equanimity, and skillful action.
In Karuna Training, we learn to trust the world's intrinsic sanity by studying the 5BF Wisdom Mandala, exchanging ourselves with others' energies, and turning our allegiance to their intrinsic sanity. We practice this through Compassionate Exchange, which allows a broader perspective on the 5BF energies. For example, what passion looks like in me will be very different from all others. The same is true for all shades of emotion. Again, we learn to widen our minds and hearts with space and relaxation to open to the wisdom of others.
We are befriending ourselves as we learn to embody and befriend the energies. This is often experienced as healing because internally, we relax, and externally, we expand out of trust and love for the world as it is—not as we wish it to be. So even when emotional energies are uncomfortable, we stay with them and learn to transmute the innate wisdom within the emotion. We make friends with ourselves and become less reactive to the world with its omnipresent impermanence and suffering.
Space awareness is therapeutic, but not in the sense that we change ourselves; it's much more about befriending and becoming more of who we are, which is always sane and reasonable at our core.
By: Sandra Ladley
I’m writing this on Leap Day and reflecting on the often unexpected ways that changes happen in our lives. At this moment, I’m longing for the support we all need to leap forward in alignment with truth and care for ourselves, each other, and our planet. You can’t help but notice that things are heating up in 2024 on several levels. I feel personally constrained by anxiety and avoidance, and overwhelmed by the news cycles of so much hatred, polarization, war, harm, and suffering. How can we step out of this? Where can we find support?
A few times in my life, I felt trapped by a bad situation. I was up at night with dread and continually pondered how things would play out in my mind. More than once, something surprising happened that completely changed the course of events, and in the end, positively. Another example is how my closest friendships of over 40 years came about. I met one dear friend on the first day of college and another on the first day of work at my long-term employer. Who knew these first-day meetings would lead to sharing hundreds of experiences of life’s unfolding?
We name occurrences like these when things come together unexpectedly as happenstance, serendipity, kismet, signs, and fortune, and we also recognize them as phenomena like ‘first sight,’ deja-vu, premonitions, and gut feelings. Sometimes revelatory turning points come in the form of hitting bottom, near catastrophe, or death. People in recovery from addiction or illness will cite that unplanned horrible moment as the thing that saved their lives or opened them up in profound new ways,
Carl Jung used the word synchronicity to describe meaningful coincidences in his life's work. Recognition of these synchronous moments is not just for those who tend toward woo-woo or wishful thinking – researchers in fields including math, economics, physics, psychology, spirituality, and creativity study patterns of events, meaning, and interconnectedness beyond linear thinking or cause, beyond space and time. Some may call this god’s plan a higher power, fate, or destiny. Atheists, skeptics, and those not spiritually inclined can’t help but recognize that moves on the big game board of life extend beyond our control, beyond the individual ways we act or think.
When we feel stuck, lost, or hopeless, how might we attune to the unseen and unexpected, the meaningful coincidences of our lives for help? How might we cultivate increased recognition and appreciation of synchronicity and use it to nourish our well-being? We are moving toward an increasingly artificial reality, further separating us from our human capacities of openness and interconnectedness. How might we reclaim and cultivate our deep and refined skills and, as some say, rewild our human psyche? How might we listen and live as part of our larger ecosystems where we do not ignore or dominate the natural world?
Literature on the topic of strengthening our capacity for synchronicity cites common methods, which I discuss below. These align well with the Karuna Training program.
Develop a Mindfulness Practice
Research consistently cites mindfulness meditation as the baseline for developing attunement and synchronization and opening our minds and hearts. This is where the Karuna Training program in contemplative psychology begins. In meditation, we sit down, bring attention to our breathing, note the habitual patterns of our minds, and discover cracks of openness. Sometimes, our hearts melt as we open to and befriend our emotions.
Call Your Ancestors, Allies, and Descendants
From the vantage point of karma, it’s said that we bear the fruit of seeds our ancestors planted seven generations ago, roughly 150 years ago. I recently watched the film Lincoln again, which caused me to contemplate what seeds my American ancestors planted after the Civil War. We rightly reflect on and feel the harm caused by our forebears, including our painful childhoods, and often miss the epigenetic strands of courage, wisdom, and strength passed on to us. In Karuna Training, students focus on their personal history of wisdom and sanity, the qualities that brought them to the present. In indigenous cultures and embodied disciplines like Social Presencing Theater and Family Constellation work, we call on the human field past, present, and future for guidance: our ancestors in the past, allies in the present, and descendants nudging us forward.
Set an Intention
When I’m preparing to teach or write on a particular topic, I ask the phenomenal world to show me the way, so to speak. I count on the messages that come in conversations, on walks, in study, in the news, and through events. It happens in surprising ways.
Do Nothing - Open Your Senses, Listen, and Wait
Are you trapped in a Moebius strip of rushing? Do you find yourself continually heads down, speedily scrolling on your phone? We’re so anxiously focused on productivity. What happens when you do nothing? Try slowing down and stopping. Relax and open your senses. Be present and wait. See what happens.
Attune to the Natural World
It helps to become a natural world student and learn from the elements, the sky, the sun and moon, and the seasons. Karuna Training is rooted in the experiential study of elemental wisdom. Wandering in nature is an integral part of our retreats. Being in the natural world and cultivating a garden can both ground us and broaden our perspective. Learning from environmental weather patterns can help us understand our psychological weather.
Welcome Dreaminess and Dreams
There are many stories of people being awakened by that Aha! moment, the solution to the problem out of nowhere, that great next phrase of music. Our dreams and our hypnagogic states, when our judgmental mind can be less strong, can open our receptivity to nonconceptual synchronicity.
Learn More about Historical Patterns
Like with nature, we have patterns in human civilization, and, as it said, history repeats itself. Reading historian Heather Cox Richardson’s daily newsletter Letters from an American helps me understand today’s political events in light of the patterns of history. I recently learned that it is thought that Americans first became broadly culturally attuned to synchronicity when former presidents Thomas Jefferson and John Adams both died on July 4th, 1826, the fiftieth anniversary of the adoption of the Declaration of Independence, which they both signed.
Go on Retreats or Quests
For millennia, people have gone into retreat and done vision quests to open their minds and hearts beyond the limits of self-concept, and to receive guidance. Today we do things like spiritual retreats, sweat lodges, and psychedelic-assisted journeys for this purpose. In Karuna Training, we do week-long retreats in a natural setting and have immersive experiences of the five elements through Maitri Space Awareness practice, a centerpiece of the training program.
Be a Tracker and Journal
I admire the work of Tom Brown and others who train in wilderness tracking and survival. We can also learn to notice and follow tracks in life generally, the repeated signs and lessons when something is trying to get through to us. Keeping a journal, noticing, and reflecting on themes can be transformative.
In Closing: Consider Auspicious Coincidence
Karuna Training has its roots in Vajrayana Buddhism which is oriented around the notion of auspicious coincidence (tashi tendrel), which assumes that time and linear reality are not the ultimate way things are organized. Everything that happens, whether we see it as good or bad fortune – nothing is a mistake. All coincidences are meaningful; all are messages that can wake us up and help us. Chogyam Trungpa described this as “when you begin to trust in those messages, the reflections of the phenomenal world, the world begins to seem like a bank, or reservoir, of richness. You feel like you are living in a rich world, one that never runs out of messages.”
Later this month, a two-part podcast on synchronicity and meaningful coincidences will be available on all streaming platforms. Terry Jaworski, another Karuna faculty member, will join me. The first part will include our conversation; the second will include a guided practice session. I hope you’ll take a listen!
Click here to listen to the Karuna Training Podcast
By Sandra Ladley
This post relates to an upcoming event, click here to learn more.
As the New Year approaches, we think of making changes in our lives. Is there something you do that harms you, others, or the planet you wish you could change? Do you feel hopeless or helpless about it? Join me on January 10th, 2024, from 6 -7 MT for Reimagining Resolutions: Embracing Change for the New Year, where we’ll dive into this topic of change-making together.
As I write this, we’re midway through the holiday season. The holidays, initially holy days, can bring enrichment, love, and a grounding in rituals. They can also bring frenzy, disappointments, loneliness, and regression into bad habits. I tend to have a bipolar experience during this time as I swing and sway between moods and foods. As the season unfolds, I crave the peace, quiet, and retreat that winter in the north can offer. I also imagine myself ahead into January, when I’ll have a chance to get back to a sense of balance and the renewal of healthy habits. Around New Year's, there’s a familiar and often irritating buzz around resolutions. I know I’ll roll my eyes and sigh at yet another “New Year, New You” headline, as we all know that resolutions don’t seem to work. Yet, simultaneously, I am haunted by the fact that I want to make changes in my life and hope that this old dog CAN learn new tricks.
Research shows that there is a “fresh start effect” when we approach an important milestone like a New Year that we can leverage to make lasting changes in areas where we may feel stuck or have given up on ourselves. For example, of the people I know, one feels helpless to stop smoking, another wishes they could control their rageful outbursts, and another one hides out in a bubble of avoidance. For me, the issue is overeating, and all that comes with being overweight. I’ve lost 50 pounds at least four times over my life, and yet the weight and the behaviors come back. Being heavy has limited my life choices, and, in addition, I hold at least another 50 pounds of shame and other emotions to match my pounds overweight. It’s not for lack of knowledge - I stay current with research, behavioral strategies, and medical developments like Ozempic. Wouldn’t it be something if I and others could make lasting changes in these perpetually painful areas of our lives? With so much global suffering and rapid change upon us, I see many of us clutching even harder to these familiar habits. It can feel like the world is spinning around us while we’re trapped on an island of stuckness. I keep the following quote from Pema Chodron tacked to my refrigerator. “May you be open and receptive to dynamic, fluid, and impermanent energy of life.” How can we tap into the changing nature of reality as a positive force for personal change?
Making an Aspiration/Resolution: A Clear Intention and Vow that Embraces the Journey
Making a Resolution means having an aspiration and commitment to shifting or changing a pattern. It can be helpful to think of it as a vow, a kind of going ‘on the record’ with ourselves, others, and reality. Like with other vows, it doesn’t mean you won’t have ups and downs - or successes and failures - but that you have a long-range commitment. Research shows that the likelihood of keeping to our aspiration/resolution increases when it is something that we can feel how we want to change and that we practice visualizing and embodying that change. The word resolution is also used in photography; a picture has good resolution when it becomes focused and clear. Taking the time to clarify and state our intention, even making a ritual of this, while also being inclusive of the foibles of the journey, is a great way to start.
Finding and Discerning Safety: Bringing Attention to the Wisdom of our Bodies
Karen Roeper, a mentor of mine and founder of the Essential Motion embodied awareness training, recently stated that most unhealthy tendencies are developed as coping mechanisms when we don’t feel safe. Strangely, my mind popped open; it was like I was hearing this for the first time. These coping mechanisms are often trauma responses that were passed on to us through our ancestral families and our culture. I am finding that bringing attention and discernment to what feels safe and unsafe in the present moment is very helpful when it comes to noticing my desire to overeat. What happens to you when you don’t feel safe? What are your tendencies? Is a lack of safety happening now, or is it an old message being triggered? What does safety feel like? How do you find it?
Our world is heartbreakingly unsafe now for so many people. Becoming attuned to when, how, and where we find safe refuge seems increasingly important.
Continually Learning and Making a Fresh Start
The foundation of the Karuna Training contemplative education program is mindfulness/awareness meditation practice. For millennia, people across cultures and continents have sat down on the earth to settle and discover what’s happening in their bodies, hearts, and minds in the present. An ongoing meditation practice can give us strength and courage as we become familiar with our mind’s habits and learn that these habits can be disrupted. In meditation, we open to the vast reality we belong to that is greater than how we think about ourselves.
As a meditator, I appreciate the emphasis on you can always make a fresh start. We have continual opportunities to learn and start over regardless of where we are. What we perceive as a movement forward has as much information for us as our failures and falling back. We see this continually in nature as things twist and bend in growth, die back, and seeds start to germinate.
Not Willpower
Dr. Kelly McGonigal at Stanford and others have made strides in understanding the neuroscience of willpower. Dr. McGonigal has sometimes referred to willpower as won’t power. Usually, when we make a change, there is a honeymoon phase fueled by some willful self-control. The honeymoon is typically followed by a plummet, then lapses, self-critique, and losing sight of the goal. This is why resolutions don’t work; I have experienced this firsthand many times. Research shows that we are more likely to succeed if we align with feeling what we want - visualizing and embodying it in increments instead of aligning with the grit of our will. Grinning and bearing it won’t work over the long run.
Make Small Steps
Research also shows that making small changes and not making a big deal of them increases success. Linking these changes to already established healthy routines also helps. The more we can keep these small changes under our “I should” voice surveillance, the better. Like many of us, I often feel burdened that “I should” get my several thousand steps in a day. If I start to sneak in micromovements like stretching in bed or moving around while waiting for the water to boil for tea, my natural appetite and pleasure in movement awakens, and the steps start adding up.
Share the Care in Community
In Karuna; we foster a community where people can speak candidly about their struggles and extend natural warmth to each other. Right now, there are many around the world suffering just as you are. Recovery and other groups have shown that belonging and caring in communities is a secret sauce for changing our lives.
In Closing
Why bother with all this? Who cares if we change? As times get more challenging, I aspire to be, as Thich Nhat Hanh says, a person on the boat who can support stability and sanity in stormy seas. I want to be able to show up not only for myself but for others and our world.
This is a significant and complex topic, and I’ve highlighted just a few themes here as a conversation starter. What have I left off this list? Join me for a shared exploration of change-making on Wednesday, January 10th, from 6 – 7 pm MT.
I wish you a good holiday season and positive transformations in 2024.
Sandra Ladley
This article is associated with a course offering. Click here to learn more.
Join us for an immersive program with Luchy Lopez Wisdom From Within: Embodiment of Ancestral Teachings. This program begins January 13, 2024 and meets monthly on the 2nd Saturday of the month for 6 months. To get a taste of what this program will explore Luchy shares a story of Senai, a student of hers who found profound healing through embodiment.
Senai began working with me because she had never paid attention to her body and felt the time had come. She had been through a very painful illness for years. At times, her condition had taken her to the point of imagining throwing herself out of the window. Working 14-17 hours a day, she hardly slept. In the morning, she suffered from intense anxiety and anguish from the very moment she woke up. For years, she had been under psychiatric medication and diagnosed with congenital depression that she was told would never go away.
On top of that, every week, Senai had to visit the physiotherapist to take care of a chronic inflammation in her hip that also "was going to bother her forever." At 45 years old, Senai has had a complicated relationship with her parents. After many years of psychotherapy, she concluded that they never loved her, and she accepted that. Drinking alcohol became her way to alleviate suffering.
We began liberating her channels of bodily expression, working through the six basic emotions. Gradually, Senai's vitality began to return. After each session, Senai discovered new possibilities of experiencing her life outside her constructed narrative.
Despite her progress, her relationship with her mother was still causing her intense suffering. Her most significant change came through a dancing session with her ancestors. In that session, she received information about how women in her family were not allowed to express joy, anger, tenderness, or eroticism. The ancestors showed her they had gone through life, switching from sadness to fear and vice-versa. They showed her how denying some natural basic emotions had limited their lives.
Basic emotions arise naturally inside us at the moment circumstances require them. Even if we deny, suppress, or want to manipulate emotional expression, they´ll be stored somewhere in our bodies. Without the “epigenetic authorization” to feel and express, the ones we accept tend to impersonate these emotions. Without permission to feel each of the basic emotions in a spontaneous moment of exchange with the world, we easily dive into an internal conflict with a high cost.
The wear and tear from this conflict may be so significant that it is hard to endure. Emotional internal conflicts can lead to despondency and create a profound loss of meaning, feeling “dead in life” rather than full of vitality. I think about basic emotions like a kind of “substance” that, on one hand, helps the animal we are to survive and, on another, is an anchor that allows our hearts to develop the virtues treasured in it.
Senai´s meeting with her ancestors continued until she developed a very intense headache, ending her dance session early. She had a significant insight when she surrendered to the fact that she needed to stop. She saw her mother when she was a child, complaining of severe headaches. Senai couldn´t stand her mother's grievance and harshly criticized her. She became convinced that her mother was either making it up or self-provoking it to manipulate everyone in the house.
Senai´s headache, which became impossible to overcome, was a tremendous limitation to continuing to explore her relationship with her ancestors through movement. Feeling the pain changed her perception of her mother. She heard the message from her ancestors: how, over several generations, they continued to deny their feelings and emotions. They told her about the dangers they had suffered. Senai had sensations and intuited scenes that vibrated this truth in her heart and body.
These traumas had created a core of belief in her family concerning what happens to a woman if she is happy, if she expresses anger, if she feels tenderness or if she dares to experience the terrible consequences of eroticism. Two years after we began to unclog the channels of basic emotions, and about five months after her encounter with her ancestors, Senai no longer recognizes herself.
With a doctor's approval, she stopped all the medication. She has started taking care of her diet. She lost weight, gained muscle mass, and can now work more efficiently. She sleeps 8-9 hours a night and no longer works 14 or 17 hours a day. Occasional alcohol consumption, but only for celebrations. She saves quality time for her husband and son.
She has not returned to the physiotherapist after the last check-up months ago, where she was permanently discharged. For the first time in her life, she feels that her mother and father love her underneath the surface even though they have no natural embodied capacity to express it. Their love was bound by unexperienced anger, tenderness, joy, and eroticism. If these emotions had been lived, they would have allowed them to defend Senai in situations of vulnerability and lack of protection.
Senai is now able to imagine a more hopeful future. The love she has felt from her ancestors makes her feel like she belongs to an ancient lineage and is part of something bigger. She feels validated for a broader exchange with the world and is open to contributing her knowledge and expertise for the greater good. Interdependence is still mysterious for her but also full of love and hope.
I share Senai's case, not only with her consent but also with her joy of being helpful. It wouldn't have been possible at the beginning of her journey. The sessions I propose for our online class are an opportunity to expand your vitality and create an exchange with the environment. They may also help you recover and strengthen your sovereignty over your life experience, feeling part of what precedes you and what is to come. This brings us naturally closer to an ecosystem experience and our desire to find cohesion and harmony.
In my approach, psycho-corporal imagination is not treated as fantasy, and space recreation is not just for children. Here, imagination is a substance capable of creating reality and playing with space and free expressive movement, how it dialogues with us.
By Melissa Moore
“May this Winter Solstice season bring peace, love, and relaxation.
We wish you a good book to read, a blanket to keep you warm,
a hot drink in your cup, and friends with whom to weather any storm.”
~ Otherworldly Oracle
This article is related to an event. Click here to learn more.
We need to bring light and insight into the darkest hours of the year, light to turn the page, light to move forward, and heart light to bring cheerfulness into the darkest time of year. Humans have marked this annual transition from dark to light since time immemorial. Nowadays, when we ritually observe and celebrate the Winter Solstice, we connect to what is ancient in us as human beings.
We may tap an embodied memory when we move ritually in tune with the seasonal changes.
Winter and Summer Solstice rituals are cross-culturally known to human beings worldwide. One could imagine they abide in our DNA as a species, consciously or unconsciously; there is an impulse to mark these significant annual dark-to-light and light-to-dark transitions.
Creating Rituals to Acknowledge Transitions
Karuna Training explores how rituals help us embody and acknowledge substantial events and life transitions. Through ritual, we learn to commune directly and energetically with the invisible elemental forces and tune into the world's seasonal significance and greater wisdom.
Through ritual, we bind ourselves to reality through our body, speech, and mind. The Body - is the embodied action, the actual act or rite of the ritual. The speech aspect is the feelings stirred and invoked by the rituals. Rituals allow our voice to be heard, and we speak directly to the invisible forces - taking back our human capacity and power to commune directly with the sacred. The mind holds the intention we set for our rituals; with clarity on what we aspire toward, we are more likely to magnetize whatever we desire.
Both conscious and unconscious rituals are essential to human psychological health and sanity. A ritual here does not necessarily mean following an official rite or a prescribed religious ceremony; we can discover all kinds of rituals. When speaking of ‘sacred ritual, we acknowledge the freedom to create and amalgamate whatever we care to incorporate, as humans have done for eons, in creating a meaningful ritual for oneself. Mundane rituals can be as everyday as making our tea, relating to our phone, greeting our partner or children, calling our mothers weekly, etc. They are meaningful and essential to be intentional in one’s body, speech, and mind.
If we create rituals, we unconsciously enact them, usually through self-destructive or unsatisfying behaviors. In Contemplative Psychology, we understand destructive addictive behaviors, usually ritualized, arise out of separation toward the sacred. Sacred here refers to evoking an experience of the world and its wisdom, which is more significant than us but not separate from us. We are all seeking connection with that which feels more powerful than we are. We aspire to belong to someone, something, and the World. Even if we have renounced belonging and live in solitude- we’re in reaction or evolved away from our need to belong.
Evoking the sacred means learning to enact conscious rituals or create contained experiences that bring forward a sense of belonging to the greater whole. We can remember to mark significant transitions in the year with meaningful rituals that we amalgamate from our history and current values. Creating rituals or combining those familiar to us and those we love is an opportunity to evoke the sacred - to make the holiday season meaningful and personal to feel they belong to us and we to them.
When the sun is far away, we can supplicate the light to return, metaphorically, ‘What shadow areas do we wish to shine light in our lives?’It is courageous to invite light, which in Buddhism is synonymous with luminosity or appearances. We are bringing light into the shadow time of year, a shared collective turning point on the globe's Northern poles.