How do we hold compassion for people, events, or ideas that we’ve never experience ourselves?
The nature within California is under attack once again. This time it’s much closer to home. Lightning strikes decimated and sparked terrible flames that have been spreading for over a week.
It was just in February that I attended a weekend retreat nearby Ben Lomond at the https://www.sequoiaretreatcenter.com/.
Today, I received a message that this beautiful place was under siege and was under fire.
In Friday’s meditation, it was this very simple framework that I learned that has allowed me to hold compassion for these acts of nature despite not physically being in the bay area right now.
- Set aside judgement of nature. Honor it, and respect what has happened.
- Hold compassion for what is, and will be.
- From this place, begin to restructure your relationship with the events, people, and acts. Get creative.
- Take action.
To all of the families that have been impacted, and homes that have been destroyed…
— From Mukund and Toni:
Today is a festival in India where we honor Ganesha and deeply begin a renewal process. It is a very auspicious and blessed time called Ganapathi Chathurthi. We summon his energy to create change and overcome obstacles.
For all of us, this is an unprecedented time for renewal. We must change and heal in so many ways now: to heal from the pandemic, from toxic governance, from the fires and all the effects of climate change, and from the violence and trauma along the borders that mark differences among us as people.
Ganesha engages intimately and offers wisdom while being very human with his emotions. With an elephant head and his “humorously aware” sort of temperament, he embodies possibility. He understands the weight of our karma and offers us the possibility of envisioning freedom. Certainly, with four hands and a trunk, the tusk and ears of an elephant, with a human body, he multitasks at many levels. One hand holding the lotus flower symbolizing wisdom and enlightenment, and another with a hatchet symbolizing the possibility ( for each of us ) of cutting free of the weight of karma. In the third hand he holds yummy sweets symbolizing the fruits of a wise life, and with the fourth hand he blesses people. There are variations and his significance and conception myths are many.
One could say that Ganesha is actually holding the possibility of a state beyond time and space, while at the same time holding the essence of freedom in our lives, the space of acknowledgement and joy in the present, and the space of energy and healing that emerge through ritual offerings. You can converse with him. He embodies possibility in multiple ways while being the son of Shiva and Devi.