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    Found Exhortation (Temporary)

    ByElizabeth

    Is this to protect the line or the person who might step on or over the line? When do boundaries and rules protect and enhance life and when do they arbitrarily, inequitably, or rigidly curtail it?

    Peace and light, E — Posted with WordPress for BlackBerry.

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    What Difference Does Lobbying Make (and Svatantriya)

    ByElizabeth

    The tantric yoga philosophy ascribes the characteristic of svatantriya or ultimate freedom to the energy that infuses all of us.  We all want to be free, but when we get stuck in our embodiment, forgetting that we ourselves are manifestations of spirit, then we lose sight of our true freedom.  To find our own freedom of spirit, we need to be disciplined, to practice, to study, to live in a way that brings us into better alignment with ourselves and world with which we are inextricably interconnected.

    In this country, one of our principle ideals and buzz words in dialogue about how we should live is freedom.  What can so often be forgotten in this dialogue, though, is that freedom is a contract.  To be in a society where all have the opportunity to experience freedom, we need to agree, with discrimination (viveka) to certain limitations (for example, we agree to stop for red lights so that we can be free to drive and walk without a constant risk of being hit in crowded city).

    Granted, I am grossly oversimplifying here, but part of the great losses of freedom we are currently experiencing is the abdication by individuals of the responsibility to shape the agreement to maximize our collective freedoms.  Like the agreement with ourselves to practice steadily to experience inner freedom, we need to stay engaged, even when it seems impossible or deeply frustrating, in order not to lose sight of the ideal entirely.  Here’s some information from FCNL on why it is important to lobby despite how fruitless an act it may appear to be.

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    Carbon-Free Website

    ByElizabeth

    For those of us living fully in our modern material world, as I am, it is important to think not so much about denying ourselves things or giving them up, but rather, seeing how we can make shifts to living more lightly.  One of my heavy impacts on the environment is computer usage.  Right now, I have on my work computer, my home laptop, and my Blackberry.

    All of you who are reading this blog are doing so via computer or by a personal device with web access that requires battery charging.  I’d hazard a guess that most of these portable computers are not being powered by sun and wind.  I am still waiting for Pepco to come and change the meter to hook up my newly installed rooftop solar panels to the grid, and I don’t have a solar charger for the Blackberry.

    One thing I thought I could do to help make enjoying this way of connecting have less impact on the environment would be to go carbon-neutral.  In the world of plastic, the ideal is don’t use, reuse, repurpose, recycle.  In the world of electricity, it is don’t use, use from better sources, off-set.  With respect to my blog, I am choosing to use the necessary electricity, but go solar with my house, buy electricity from a source that uses offsets (Clean Currents) for that electricity that is in excess of what the solar panels will provide, and I’m choosing to offset this blog’s impact based on readership through the Carbon Fund.

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    Creating Healing Energy (and communal knitting)

    ByElizabeth

    A friend of mine who is an avid and wonderful knitter decided to make a shawl for a friend who is about to have surgery.  Instead of whipping out a shawl herself in a few days, she invited other friends to knit squares and bring them to her.  She is going to piece together the squares to create, in essence, a physical manifestation of a gentle, loving, communal embrace.

    I loved this idea.  Though I could not put name to face for the friend who is suffering (I think I would likely recognize her), to support my friend who is setting such a strong intention of sending healing, I am knitting a square or two with some beautiful handspun yarn leftover from a sweater several years ago.

    As I knit, I am setting an intention to infuse the cloth with healing energy.  In having been invited to participate in this project, I have been given the gift of a potent reminder of how strongly our attitude and intention in whatever we create and offer can shift how it goes forth into the world — whether it be gifts, practice, speech, food, work.

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