Let’s Start in Child’s Pose… again

Happy New Year.  I’m not a big fan of resolutions, as they seem to set us up for rigidity, perfectionism and, all too often, what feels like failure.

Instead, perhaps we might set intentions for ourselves.  In that spirit I invite you to think about (and share if you care to) what sorts of intentions you might like to embrace for 2011.

An intention can be whatever we choose dedicate our striving, loving, learning and giving to.  It can be as simple, even seemingly corny, as:  I dedicate the folding of clothes, the driving of children, the earning and spending, the helping, the exercising, the writing and creating, and/or the playing and laughing to… (our collective spirit, our children, our world… all of the above).

This sort of deliberate intention makes life into “yoga” (even if you don’t call it that)—the binding of body, mind and spirit to a common focus.

My intention, at least as of today as we crest a new year, is to harness body, mind and spirit toward the healing, and ameliorating, of fear.  This I place in the service of greater consciousness, which is what I feel I can contribute, in my own small way, to the group.

I believe that this is an epoch where we can all do a little bit for a few others we really care about, and that this is an alternative way from top-down thinking where a few elite idea-shapers set the tone for a culture.  A more interconnected, but authentically so, culture will be more robust in the face of messages of fear-mongering that are meant to part us from our money, our autonomy and our individuality.

At a social level, I encourage those of us who cross each other’s path in this corner of the blogging world to consider the importance, for our global culture, of beginning of life issues.  Committing resources (by which I mean attention and intention, as much as money) toward pregnant and new parents.  This, combined with empathic support so that they can accurately understand and attune with their children, potentially changes our world.

Too many of us remain terrified in our core, secret, lonely selves (later this shows up as narcissism, cruelty, violence, greed and even sociopathy; as human beings living in homeless or in prisons, living in poverty or on drugs meant to keep the demons at bay, endlessly searching for a love that will transform them, yet never realizing that they are as afraid of such a love as they desire it).

We can certainly come to understand, and heal, the fear we have been carrying without true consciousness about it, and I’m very excited about that (and wishing to assist).  But the enlightened thing to do must also include addressing the problem of pervasive, and insidious, fear at its root:  and that is in the first couple of years of life, in the pre-verbal and primitive dungeon of the brain before it is a mind.

Parents need to become conscious of their wounds and losses (for then they will not negatively impact their children); and parents need to be supported to accurately understand, and respond to, their children (as this creates secure kids who are positioned to grow into their best Selves).  Getting this right frees us to be happy; getting this right makes our world a better, more compassionate and enlightened One.

The Buddhists speak of relinquishing fear and desire, and I have come to see fear as even more central and deeply rooted than desire, emanating from the lizard brain—the lizard brain that often got freaked out early and never learned to trust, to be able to stop fighting and flighting in terrified an unconscious isolation.  This, I believe, is the fountain of human angst and alienation.

I shall have more to say about healing fear (as this allows greater love, creativity and presence to the moment) as weeks progress, but a second intention I set for myself is toward greater clarity, simplicity and brevity.  Still it’s an intention and not a resolution, so if I go on a bit… just skim, or come again on a more concise day.

In the spirit of relative brevity (yet still in the service of our collective children, and the secret scared children within us grown-ups), I’ll leave it at that.

Namaste, BD