Offering a helping heart to Japan!

As the world reels from what has happened in Japan and the fragility of our survival on mother earth is brought right into our faces yet again, I’ve been concentrating on not adding my own garbage to the morphological field (as Rupert Sheldrake calls it) that has undoubtedly been formed over Japan from the world’s focus there. As mass consciousness focuses its fear on the disaster area and our hearts go out to those suffering there we may be unintentionally adding a heavy load in the form of our thought projections to those in the disaster area. Personally I’d prefer to take away from the load they already have rather than inadvertently adding to it.

I’d like to share with you this practice called Tonglen……it’s a form of meditation practice which is incredibly powerful and healing and works on the basis that we are all one. It just requires us to simply open our compassionate hearts to the suffering of others (those in Japan, or mother nature, mass fear whatever your focus is) and to breathe into our heart the suffering of others in the form of grey/black smoke…visualize this happening to whatever capacity you feel able to take this on…if fear arises just welcome the fear and open to the fear, if sadness arises open to this. This practice is formed from the basis that there is no suffering in another that we haven’t also felt at some point to some degree within ourselves…….sadness is sadness, grief is grief, loss is loss, anger is anger, fear is fear….we’ve all felt these feelings personally at some point in our lives, so by opening to another’s pain instead of contracting away from it through fear we can actually be of great service to others. By offering our own compassionate heart we allow tremendous transmutation and healing to take place. By just being willing to ‘be’ with another’s pain and being willing to feel it fully we can effortlessly transmute it through our own compassionate heart into love…..and this is what we imagine breathing out…..love…out into the universe. Not with any directed intention just allowing it to be breathed out, letting go of any intention to fix, make right, or better……

Most of us sensitive caring beings are most probably doing this already without even knowing it…..you may have noticed your energy is low right now, or there’s an extra heaviness, and sadness that isn’t usually there….that’s a sure sign you have already offered your compassionate heart up to be used to transmute suffering for the world ~ you are already ‘being’ tonglen. Keep up the good work….and remember to take some extra time out as you need to rest and replenish as this is huge work of service we are all doing for the world. Practicing Tonglen is something we can do to help lighten the load and if you ask me it sure feels better to find a way to be useful at times like these!

I invite you to share with me your thoughts or experiences with giving this meditation practice a go.