Awakening through quietening the mind and tapping into the body

“One’s life has value so long as one attributes value to the life of others, by means of love, friendship, and compassion” Simone de Beauvoir

There are many people I feel gratitude for their presence in the world and for the impact of their work in today’s world. In today’s brief and hurried post I will refer to Dan J. Siegel’s huge work, which literally created a route for me to walk back to the more authentic parts of myself. In particular his Wheel of Awareness is a tool I have returned to almost everyday for the last four years or so. As I have mentioned before I came across his work during an online CONFER course, with many other great teachers, most of whose work I have referred to in things that I have written and posted on this site. For the last four years I have engaged with various mindfulness practices and meditations, but this tool or technique is something I keep returning to. More recently I came across an audio by Pema Chödrön of a guided meditation of tonglen, which I found most appropriate to do for my mother, who died about nine months ago and whom I was prevented access to, despite my thirty month or so struggle to reach her. This last inhumane deprivation of rights allowed for a long string of assaults on identity to become clear and visible, whether that was the right to have: an identity card and the right to vote in my youth, access to personal early records and documents more recently, the right to express ideas within a safe context, respect to dignity and privacy or the right to earn a ‘well earned’ degree, etc, etc. What also became apparent was the connection between the private and the public realm and the underlying belief systems that have held all this injustice in place. Anyway, as I understand it, tonglen is a meditation practice for connecting with suffering, ours and that of others and for dissolving the tightness of our hearts. It can be done for those who have died, those who are ill, or for those who are in pain of any kind. I suppose it is a practice for awakening compassion within us both for ourselves and others. Then at some point I found myself incorporating the tonglen practice into the Wheel of Awareness, replacing the connectedness part with this deeper, more powerful and more demanding practice. To sum up, I’d like to send a big thank you to all the people whose courageous work and words are healing the world a little at a time and filling our bowls with light and hope.