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The Ripple Effect THE CLASSROOM WAS QUIET as I helped Jim, a fellow prisoner, with his math. He has had a long, difficult struggle with drugs and is trying to rehabilitate himself. Jim left the table during a break and while he was gone, I grabbed his paper and drew a cartoon character who was smiling with his arms outstretched. Under it, I wrote - "HURRAH FOR JIM!" When he returned, he looked at the drawing and his eyes filled with tears. He said, "That's a message from God! Earlier I was offered drugs and I said 'No!' This is God speaking through you to encourage me!" I thought I was cheering him on with his math, but he experienced it from an entirely different level. This reminded me that there is so much to be learned from a moment like this. It is sometimes hard to see how our actions - drops in the proverbial bucket - matter. Instead, we feel our tiny drops evaporate before they touch the ground. If only we could see the bucket filling!
The call to help others is a yearning from the heart to live and move beyond ourselves. This call is the heart of our humanity - being here, open and giving to others. When we restrict the natural compassion of the heart, a tension develops between the head and the heart that often leaves us tentative and confused. As we reach out, then pull back, love and fear are pitted against one another. As hard as this is for us, what must it be like for those who need our help? However, when we perform caring acts for one another, we glimpse and essential quality of our being. A little comfort has been shared, and we feel a little more at home with ourselves. We're reminded of who we are and what we have to offer to others. Though we are not able to fully see the ripple effect of our actions, we can be lights for each other, and through each other's illumination, we will see the way. Each of us is a seed, a silent promise, and it is always spring.
Remembering To Bounce With the weight of the world on our shoulders, getting off the ground becomes problematic. Our minds have trouble soaring aloft because they are heavy laden with cares, anxieties, worries and deadlines of one sort or another. These things have a psychological weight that smothers our capacity to imagine and to play. Burdened so, we forget to lighten up, to let our hair down and go lightly through the days and nights. We forget about our wings so our wings forget about us. However, we can easily arouse the miraculous, the awe inside. One of our finest capacities as human beings is to wonder at ourselves and the world; to bring curiosity, vitality, and bounce to our lives. Here is an exercise for your "awe muscle," which is the muscle that makes your jaw drop open in amazement. Often a little reflection on something like the simple fact of your beating heart - a muscle that automatically flexes a few billion times in an average human lifespan and pumps blood through a circulatory system that if laid end to end would stretch all the way around the earth - can completely change your mood. Being willing to bounce means being willing to be stretched, to expand and take in the enormity of it all - ourselves, the world, the mystery. We belong to the stars in the night sky and to the silence of the wilderness in the darkness. We are made to express ourselves in singing, dancing, studying, learning, working, and playing. We belong to all of this and much more. This is our awe. And it is awesome. Several years ago, the Dalai Lama was scheduled to speak in Madison Square Garden. After the crowd of thousands was seated, the Dalai Lama entered, walked down the carpet and climbed the steps to take a seat at the top of the throne. To make the seat comfortable, the organizers had placed mattresses at the top, covered by carpet and silk. When the Dalai Lama sat down on the throne, it bounced. A smile lit his face. He bounced again and smiled some more. Then, in front of thousands of students, he bounced up and down as happily as a child. In the midst of it all, may you also
remember to bounce.
Healing Our Hurt The news today is filled with accounts of terror and violence. Nothing gets our attention quite like loss and tragedy. Hurt stretches us, pushes us to grow, to develop new levels of ourselves. We have many lessons to learn in life, and each one is generally punctuated with an experience of pain. What we find, however, as we look deeper within, is that our rage, our fears, do not stay forever. Rage turns into sorrow, sorrow turns into tears; tears may fall for a long time, but then the sun comes out. The armoring around our pain gradually softens, and in the midst of our grieving, the pain finally finds release. It is at this point that we discover that our hearts can grow strong in the broken places. We find a way in which sorrow can heal, allowing us to grow into our fullest, most compassionate identity, our greatness of heart. In our issue-oriented world, we think the enemy is outside, and we must struggle against those who are outside our group, our party. When we seek to strike back and blame, we distract ourselves from an exquisite opportunity to pay attention, to see, even in the pain, a place of grace, a moment of spiritual promise and healing. Finally, there is the realization that the warfare is inside, not just inside the "others," but inside me. Warfare is also in me, and I am called to seek wholeness inside myself and be an agent for peace. If I am growing toward wholeness, I will be a source of life for the world around me. May each of us remember this: God's
understanding, forgiveness, compassion, love, and purpose are large
enough to include the most heinous terrorists and their acts. Perhaps
a deeper understanding of this is what we came here to discover. © 2005, Tom Brown
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| ABOUT THE AUTHOR
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Copyright:
New Earth Publications, 1999-2009. PlanetLightworker.com is published
by New Earth Publications, | |||||||||
As we go about our daily activities, it is important
to remember that we are part of something bigger in ways we never know.
Each time we embrace possibility instead of despair, it is like a pebble
cast in a pond. Good deeds create ripples that spread in all directions.
Charles "Tom"
Brown
was a successful investor who did very well in real estate, oil, and
the stock market. Friends began asking him to invest for them, too.
And he did. Things went well, and more people heard about his abilities
and wanted to be included in the investment strategies he had devised.
All went well until there was a dramatic change in the market. All
that went up turned down, and Tom wanted everyone to still have a
profit - his big mistake - as he wanted to be well thought of. Tom
was accused of defrauding investors. Although it was shown that he
had never diverted any money for himself other than a modest commission,
through unbelievable mishandling by an incompetent or dishonest attorney,
what should have been a one-year sentence became a 17-year sentence. At
the time of judgment, Tom was 62 years of age. 