Awakening the Collective Heart
The Sacred Council with Anna Douglas will start today, October 9, promptly at 10am PT. Click on the button below to enter the Meditation Hall (Zoom link).
If you have challenges logging onto Zoom with the button above CLICK HERE.
This event is FREE for the IMT sangha, and dana is welcome.
Awakening the Collective Heart
Sunday, Oct 9, 10am-12:30pm
by Zoom Open to All Invite friends
Free for the IMT Sangha and Dana is welcome
We are living in perilous times with no easy solutions in sight. The accumulation of so many crises threatens our ability to respond effectively. What does the Dharma have to offer us as we navigate the chaotic existential threats crashing all around us? As a Sangha of like minded people, what role can we play in the evolving drama? What does it take to create and empower a collective wisdom? What is our capacity for finding new ways to respond? Native peoples traditionally hold that meeting together in council is the basis for finding collective wisdom. They say, “Everyone has a piece of the medicine.” When we all contribute we find what is needed. It is imperative that we try.
This evocative poem by Parker Palmer will guide us in our conversation and inquiry:
Everything Falls Away
Sooner or later, everything falls away.
You, the work you’ve done, your successes,
large and small, your failures, too. Those
moments when you were light, alongside
the times you became one with the night.
The friends, the people you loved
who loved you, those who might have wished
you ill, none of this is forever. All of it is
soon to go, or going, or long gone.
Everything falls away, except the thread
you’ve followed, unknowing, all along.
The thread that strings together all you’ve
been and done, the thread you didn’t know
you were tracking until, toward the end,
you see that the tread is what stays
as everything else falls away.
Follow that thread as far as you can and
you’ll find that it does not end, but weaves
into the unimaginable vastness of life. Your
life never was the solo turn it seemed to be.
It was always part of the great weave of
nature and humanity, an immensity we
come to know only as we follow our own
small threads to the place where they
merge with the boundless whole.
Each of our threads runs its course, then
joins in life together. This magnificent tapestry –
this masterpiece in which we live forever.
What is the thread you follow?
This will be our inquiry.
We will sit in a Zoom circle and go into a Sacred Council of speaking and listening from the heart. We will use Inquiry to take us deeper still. We hope to take heart from listening deeply and sensing our collective good will.
