Life's Sacred Remnants

Connecting in Sweetness: Why I love singing sacred chants with others

2014-07-11T13:12:00.005-07:00

"All deep things are song.

It seems somehow the very central essence of us, song;

as if all the rest were but wrappages and hulls! "

~ Thomas Carlyle (1795 - 1881)

One of my greatest joys and most profound pleasures in life is singing — especially sacred chanting — especially with others.

For me, there’s nothing quite like gathering together in a safe group and diving deep into these ancient wisdom tones. As I feel the chants resonate in my body and mind, I watch my crusty, creaky, cranky parts gently break up and release. Without thinking about it much, I find myself more and more in each present moment — until, there I am, standing peaceful and joyful in my natural center, delighted to see my sweet and happy inner self. What a nurturing blessing for me and my journey!

I think that this simple practice can also offer us something even more precious — a way to enjoy happy merged energy connection with others, and, through that, help heal the larger energetic body of our communities.

All that, just because we decide to sing.

• • •

I first experienced this type of chanting years ago at a Hindu ashram. I was invited to an evening event by a friend, and really didn’t know what to expect. But I was curious and so I went.

After meeting in a pleasant urban neighborhood, my friend and I entered the ashram’s simple clean-lined building, walked into an open modest room, and joined others sitting on chairs and the floor.

Once everyone settled in, the group started chanting unfamiliar but soothingly repetitive Sanskrit chants, simple syllables in a call-and-response format so that it was easy for me to follow along. As I figured out what to do, I felt increasingly at ease — and was delighted with the shared singing vibration field we were increasingly creating together. How interesting!

And then we meditated in silence, and I felt that vibration turn into a silent connected resonance, like all our bodies were all quietly humming together at the same time. How sweet and deeply satisfying.

As we emerged from that, the leader then gave a gentle talk at the front of the room, including linking this experience with the religious word G-d. (Aside: If you're curious about my spelling, see this link.)

And I remember thinking to myself — “That’s G-d? Why didn’t anyone ever say so?”

It’s not as if I'd had no experience with that popular deity. After all, I was raised as a Christian and went to church each Sunday, sang hymns amidst the sermons, and read Bible stories to my brothers. Also, at times growing up I felt subtle invisible energies that I now know were mystical and intuitive experiences (though I never told anyone about them at the time, because I figured they’d consider me crazy).

But, sitting in that resonating ashram, hearing him use that word, I suddenly saw that these two experiences were deeply connected. I realized that, underneath the formal protocols and defined worldviews of each religion, there must be energetic aligned mystical experiences just like this — at least at some point in their history, at least in some versions of their paths.

In that moment, I felt like I was connected to some key experiential root of being alive as an energetic/material human being. And I was fascinated that the people there didn't have to agree on any religious concepts to get there!

• • •

As I’ve explored this and other spirit/body practices over the years, my awe and appreciation of these tools has only deepened.

And I’ve come to feel that experiencing this type of internal/external energy connection within ourselves and with others isn't weird or odd. On the contrary, I think that it's actually quite natural for humans. I think it's built into our equipment, was once a normal precious dimension of our lives — and is one of the real joys of being alive.

I also think that the easy access to this state with singing is probably one of the reasons that singing together has been the norm in a wide range of cultures over countless generations, in both religious and cultural domains. It’s something simple that people can do to create deep beauty in our lives, while also helping to harmonize and maintain the energetic health of both ourselves and our communities.

Seeing how many cultures used to regularly sing together, I've realized just how different our modern culture is. Here, instead of us all singing together in a circle, we're much more likely to be sitting in rows of chairs (or standing in steaming undulating darkness) as we watch the singing experts in front and above us on the stage.

While going to a concert like that can certainly have its own pleasures, it also means that singing has moved away from its role as a way to connect us to the communal "we," where each of us can participate, express ourselves as equals, see each other eye-to-eye, and be immersed inside and out by the sacred vibrations.

Instead, this stage-oriented approach reflects our culture’s too-common hierarchical orientation, where only those at the top of the pyramid get attention and praise. Meanwhile, the rest of us are relegated to singing in bathrooms and cars, or maybe the chaotic madness of a concert — or maybe not at all, concluding that we don’t sing well enough because we don’t sing like the stars.

Thus this amazing innate joyful gift of singing becomes focused on the external-viewing performance, not the shared internally-connected experience. And something is lost, for each person and the culture.

• • •

I know that I miss the beauty of such shared connections as the basis of our shared journeys. That's why it's been such a pleasure to weave it back into my life.

And I think that others miss this type of connection as well, even if we don't know how to put it in words — or even know that better is possible. It can be so easy for us to just go along when our culture tells us in so many ways that we’re just separate beings having individual experiences, all on our own. We might not even realize that we're missing the chance of experiencing the vitalizing gifts of a healthy shared merged existence. This I think easily leads people to feel lonely, isolated, and overburdened — trying to do so much all by ourselves or in tiny circles, perhaps even with an undercurrent of despair.

And, as this type of disconnection has too often become the norm, it can also easily lead to another troubling outcome — a shared heartlessness, where it becomes acceptable for people to take from others without caring or taking responsibility for the harm that they cause. Instead of treating others as sacred beings, they're viewed as disposable objects to use and discard. Why should we care after all — if each of us really are just separate things — if we can't see how our lives are already fundamentally supported by others and community? It can seem reasonable to just take what we want and not care about anything else!

This callousness easily extends to how we view and treat other cultures, creatures, and ecosystems. And so, in the face of regular vast harm being done in the world (including that tied to our own actions) people too often just shrug with indifference — or, even worse, behave with an active “contempt for the common good” (a phrase offered by the current Pope).

But I think it's not just those on the receiving end of this mindset who are harmed. All of us can feel sad and lonely from the disconnection it generates.

• • •

Thankfully there are also so many people who are nurturing positive connections in this world, and I am so grateful for that. And there are so many wonderful approaches for healing this disconnection. I’ve worked to contribute to that in various ways over the years.

But what I love about sacred singing as a healing balm for this modern malaise is that it's so easy and fun to do (when it's done well), and nurtures us both personally and collectively. It's a joyful path to healing!

Plus it fits well in our religiously pluralistic society, with so many of us following a wide variety of religious and life paths.

How beautiful that we don’t need to all join the same religious path to just come together, sing, and feel our shared sweetness (at least when a chanting experience is designed to be inclusive). How wonderful that we can all participate without being required to agree on beliefs, use the same words to explain our experience, or swear allegiance to a particular guru or priest. We can just come and sing.

And, through this, a wide range of people can meet in a shared sacred space, cultivating our own hearts, cleansing our own bodies, meeting others in the sweet bliss of divine resonance, weaving the web of healthy community, and feeling the vibration of Life. Ahhhh....

Well, that's how I experience it anyway. And it's a real blessing in my life.

And it's fun for me to finally put it into words and share it with you today.

• • •

So I invite you to share your experience with me. Have you tried sacred chanting? What kind? What did you like best about it? Do you experience some of what I share here?

And, if you haven’t explored it much, I hope that these ideas inspire you, stoke your curiosity, or perhaps lead you to see it in a different way.

I have more that I could share on this topic, if folks are interested, including my thoughts about how one might start to explore sacred chanting and some of my favorite options. Let me know what you might find interesting!

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Blog content (c) Copyright Patricia Dines, 2014. All rights reserved.
Links are encouraged! My content is also available for reprint. Please contact me for permission first. Thanks!

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I hope you enjoyed this piece and I welcome your thoughts. Tell me what you like about it, or any other constructive thoughts you want to share. Thanks!

I OFFER TWO FORMATS FOR YOUR COMMENTS!
1) The first one uses the Facebook interface (and connects with it). It also has easy access for folks with Yahoo and other email accounts. You can un-check the Facebook link; it'll still post here.
2) The second one offers additional access options.

Please feel free to use the format that best meets your needs!

And if you want to read more of my posts, you can see them grouped by topic on the right. Enjoy!

The Daily Creative: Inspiring Myself to Get Started

2014-06-04T16:02:00.000-07:00

One of the notable challenges that I can experience in being creatively self-employed is just getting started in taking action — in a day, on a task, with a project. Once I get started, I can usually go a long distance. It’s often just the initial spark that’s missing.

So why does this happen and what can I do about it?

Over the years, it’s been helpful for me to see that one reason is that I don't have many of the external structures and prompts that folks can have in official office settings. Yes, sometimes my day will be structured by client meetings, phone calls, article deadlines, and public events.

But must of time it's up to me to initiate, organize, prioritize, and go final on my projects and tasks.

I think that this self-management is especially challenging in creative work, because we face an amorphous blank page with literally infinite ways that we can express ourselves in final form. There are a ridiculous number of choices we need to make as we seek to find approaches that will both fulfill our urges and meet the needs of our audiences and clients.

For me, the difficulty rating becomes even further amplified because of the scale of my goals, as I seek to deeply serve people and our culture in overcoming our current crises and emerging as even more the beautiful essences that we are.

Yeah, being a writer/artist, seeking to save the world — what was I thinking?

Of course, I’m absolutely inspired and excited that I get to act for my dreams. I’ve worked hard to get here and am grateful for the opportunity to do this. I’m also proud of being part of many successful projects and outcomes. So I know that I’m a dreamer with a track record.

I also certainly appreciate how my schedule’s flexibility lets me honor my feelings and natural rhythms, and from that create an effective pace for myself.

But this path can also be quite daunting and intimidating, especially since it’s so different from what this culture values and how most people orient their lives.

So I've learned that it’s reasonable that I sometimes feel weary, discouraged, overwhelmed, and not in the mood. I understand why I can doubt myself, and wonder why I keep doing this work.

That’s why, over the years, I’ve developed various healthy techniques for getting myself going and taking action on the projects I’ve chosen.

One thing I’ve wanted to do along those lines for a while is give myself easy access to some of my very favorite inspiring quotes by other people — those that strike a true chord in me and spark my particular fire. Too often, these riffs are scattered in various paper and computer files, not easily found.

So, in creating this blog, I realized that it'd be a handy place for me to start pulling some of these together, so they’d be ready when I needed them most.

And I thought you might find them useful too!

Please let me know your favorites in the comments below.

Also feel free to share your experience of lighting your own spark on a self-employed creative path, including any quotes that really do it for you.

And a big thank you to everyone who said, wrote, and forwarded these goodies so that I could find them and offer them to you!

• • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •

• • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •

"There is a vitality, a life force, an energy, a quickening,

that is translated through you into action.

And because there is only one of you in all time,

this expression is unique.

If you block it, it will never exist

through any other medium

and will be lost."

~ Martha Graham, Dancer/Choreographer

• • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •

"Oh my God, what if you wake up some day, and you're 65, or 75, and you never got your memoir or novel written; or you didn't go swimming in warm pools and oceans all those years because your thighs were jiggly and you had a nice big comfortable tummy; or you were just so strung out on perfectionism and people-pleasing that you forgot to have a big juicy creative life, of imagination and radical silliness and staring off into space like when you were a kid? It's going to break your heart. Don't let this happen. Repent just means to change direction — and NOT to be said by someone who is waggling their forefinger at you. Repentance is a blessing. Pick a new direction, one you wouldn't mind ending up at, and aim for that. Shoot the moon."

~ Anne Lamott, May 12 2014, Writer (she just turned 60 on April 10)

You can read the full riff here - www.facebook.com/AnneLamott/posts/485327514930230

• • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •

Lessons of Immortality and Mortality From My Father, Carl Sagan (Excerpt)

By Sasha Sagan
http://nymag.com/thecut/2014/04/my-dad-and-the-cosmos.html

"As far as I can remember, this is the first time I began to understand the permanence of death. As I veered into a kind of mini existential crisis, my parents comforted me without deviating from their scientific worldview.

'You are alive right this second. That is an amazing thing,' they told me. When you consider the nearly infinite number of forks in the road that lead to any single person being born, they said, you must be grateful that you’re you at this very second. Think of the enormous number of potential alternate universes where, for example, your great-great-grandparents never meet and you never come to be. Moreover, you have the pleasure of living on a planet where you have evolved to breathe the air, drink the water, and love the warmth of the closest star. You’re connected to the generations through DNA — and, even farther back, to the universe, because every cell in your body was cooked in the hearts of stars. We are star stuff, my dad famously said, and he made me feel that way."

• • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •

"You can spend your life hoping that
when only you get rid of the fear,
when you are a little bit more enlightened,
when you have built up your self esteem,
then...
then you will show up and give it all.

Or ... you can get out of your own way,
make yourself available,
and bow down to the One who plays you.
Now."

~ Chameli Ardagh

www.awakeningwomen.com

• • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •

"Set your life on fire. Seek those who fan your flames!"

~ Rumi (via Michelle Marie Shem)

• • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •

"Do not go gentle into that good night,

Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light."
~ Dylan Thomas, Poet

• • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •

“All the possibilities of your human destiny are asleep in your soul.

You are here to realize and honor these possibilities….
Possibility is the secret heart of time.”

~ John O'Donohue, Anam Cara: A Book of Celtic Wisdom

• • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •

“I would love to live like a river flows,
carried by the surprise of its own unfolding.”

~ John O'Donohue

• • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •

"The biggest adventure you can take is to live the life of your dreams."

~ Oprah Winfrey

• • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •

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Blog content (c) Copyright Patricia Dines, 2014. All rights reserved.
Links are encouraged! My content is also available for reprint. Please contact me for permission first. Thanks!

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

And, if you want to read my next post, here's the link!
Connecting in Sweetness: Why I love singing sacred chants with others

Littered Bones Along the Way

2014-06-02T14:35:00.000-07:00

I’ve written poetry since I was a child, and it literally has helped to save my life, by giving me a place that I could speak intuitive truth with myself.

Over the years, I've shared some of these poems with other people, every once in a while, when it felt safe. A few have been published. But mostly they've been something private for me, written first to support my journey.

However, I’ve been thinking that perhaps some pieces might be of interest to others. So I’ll start with this one. Please let me know if you like it!

• • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •

Littered bones

along the way

Things gone wrong

Errors, embarrassments, confusion,

pain

Become so heavy

Block my self-light

and I don’t even see.

I hear a sweet voice speak

soothingly to me

“We all make mistakes,”

she says,

“But you are still 100% beautiful,

100% Spirit.

Yes, feel the loss,

Learn from your past.

"But when you tell your story

to yourself

Tell the whole story —

Your patient compassion,

Your ever-learning towards competence,

The heroic journeys taken,

Dragons faced,

Spirit deeply served,

Rainbows delighted in.

That is all you too.

Some people will fail

to see that in you

But that is their loss

don’t let it be yours’.

"Put down the load,

my love,

Unhook the burden

of your unworthiness

Know your child’s

wholeness and delight

It always was your

birthright

Live the clarity

of your heart

Dance free

And feel your beauty

shine.”

The voice goes quiet

I slowly look down

And see my hands

Pressed together in prayer.

Patricia Dines

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Links are encouraged! My content is also available for reprint. Please contact me for permission first. Thanks!

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I hope you enjoyed this piece and I welcome your thoughts. Tell me what you like about it, or any other constructive thoughts you want to share. Thanks!

I OFFER TWO FORMATS FOR YOUR COMMENTS!

1) The first one uses the Facebook interface (and connects with it). It also has easy access for folks with Yahoo and other email accounts. You can un-check the Facebook link; it'll still post here.

2) The second one offers additional access options.

Please feel free to use the format that best meets your needs!

And, if you want to read my next post -- here's the link!
The Daily Creative: Inspiring Myself to Get Started

Threads of Sorrow & Joy: Giving Birth to This Blog

2014-05-15T14:13:00.000-07:00

“When you are sorrowful, look again in your heart,

and you shall see that in truth you are weeping

for that which has been your delight.”

- Kahlil Gibran, The Prophet

I’m so happy to be starting this blog. It’s been in its birth
process for a while, taking shape, but stopped by one small but serious stumbling block: What to name it.

Now, that step might seem simple. But the name is the one thing you can’t change later, and it’s so key to presenting a clear and enticing invitation that can be heard amidst all the online chatter.

Plus there’s a chicken/egg thing here, where I was trying to name something that hadn’t been born yet. But so much will only be known in its unfolding, in the many micro-choices I make, how others respond, and how I respond to that. I know that I’m not the first to wrangle with this.

So that’s how I found myself stalled in the “what to name it” iterative-loop limbo, unresolved by the brainstorming and clarifying. I sighed and accepted that this blog’s creation just hadn’t crystallized yet, and put the idea once again on my back burner, that dark and overflowing place in me where so many ideas rest and ruminate and sometimes find their way out into the material world. And hopefully won’t die with me.

• • •

And then I had a loss. At the private retreat center where I go for healing and nurturing, the gracious historic century-old building was largely destroyed by fire. I was horrified, crushed, thrown off balance. Watching a guest’s footage of the building in flames was heartbreaking and surreal — even more so because I’d just been there two weeks before, staying in one of the rooms now aflame in its rafters. I knew the experience was much worse for the folks on the front lines, so I looked to honor their experience first. (Thankfully, everyone got out safely.) But still I was feeling spacey and distracted. Why was this news impacting me so much? Hadn’t I had much bigger and more personal losses? Wasn’t it just a building, after all?

But then I saw that, no, this wasn’t just a building to me, but a foundational piece in my life’s structure, a sacred gateway, a secret place where I knew that I could go to connect with nature’s wisdom, and, through that, access the profound eternal that so deeply nourishes and guides my life. No wonder I was feeling unmoored by its disruption.

As I sat with this truth, my process came to another turn, and I realized that, through this event, I was being shown that impermanence wasn’t just about the people in my life, our aging and death, or even the ordinary structures of our culture. No, even this sacred spot was impermanent, merely a portal to the infinite ephemeral that remains.

Now, I’ve noticed that seeing the transient reality of our lives can lead some people to disconnect from caring about people and places on the material plane, and I understand how that might seem safer. But I think it causes us to miss out on so much of what’s amazing in this life experience. Plus it can result in people treating others as merely disposable pawns, and shrugging at the harm and destruction they’re causing.

So, I think the event’s message to me wasn’t to care less, but to see both edges of life’s double-edged sword, where we are both infinite and finite, and cherishing anything is always intertwined with the risk of loss.

But how exactly are we supposed to really hold the tension of both truths? Certainly, learning how to do this is one of life’s more advanced challenges.

And in that moment I knew, in that deep way of knowing, what I wanted to explore in this blog: the dark/light edges that underlie all of our lives, the essential dynamic conflicts and tensions of life, the core experiential truths, and how we can authentically and effectively be with them in our everyday lives. Certainly, it’s not like I have the definitive answers to these questions, but I’m fascinated by this vital exploration.

As I sat with that, my blog title suddenly clicked into place — Life’s Sacred Remnants. Ooo, I love that sweet tingly feeling when something from my heart precipitates out into manifestation.

Then a piece that I’d read recently came to my mind. It had really struck me as authentic truth. Where had I put it? Ah, here it is. I hope that you also find it of value.

• • •

A Prayer from the Dark Side of the Year
By Jeff Foster

You will lose everything. Your money, your power, your fame, your success, perhaps even your memories. Your looks will go. Loved ones will die. Your body will fall apart. Everything that seems permanent is impermanent and will be smashed. Experience will gradually, or not so gradually, strip away everything that it can strip away. Waking up means facing this reality with open eyes and no longer turning away.

But right now, we stand on sacred and holy ground, for that which will be lost has not yet been lost, and realising this is the key to unspeakable joy. Whoever or whatever is in your life right now has not yet been taken away from you. This may sound trivial, obvious, like nothing, but really it is the key to everything, the why and how and wherefore of existence.

Impermanence has already rendered everything and everyone around you so deeply holy and significant and worthy of your heartbreaking gratitude.

Loss has already transfigured your life into an altar.

• • •

Ah, how achingly brutal and beautiful is that? I hope that that you savor its truth-telling resonance as much as I do. I thank Lauren Darges for posting it.

And I thank you for visiting here, and for holding a space for what I’ve shared. Please let me know if you found it of interest! :-)

Many blessings - Patricia

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Blog content (c) Copyright Patricia Dines, 2014. All rights reserved.
Links are encouraged! My content is also available for reprint. Please contact me for permission first. Thanks!

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Welcome to My Blog

2014-05-07T01:03:00.000-07:00

Welcome to my blog. My name is Patricia Dines and I’m a professional writer, speaker, graphic artist, and photographer. For the past 30 years or so, I’ve been delighted to serve my readers, clients, and community through articles, newsletters, books, projects, and more.

But along the way I’ve also been doing more personal writing, primarily for myself, to help me connect with my feelings, sort through my experiences, refine my understanding, develop new skills, and decide next steps. A few of these pieces have made their way into periodicals, but most have just been accumulating in the ever-growing back burner of my mind.

However, recently I’ve been feeling an increasing urge to share more of these distilled remnants of my life process. I’ve decided to start offering them in this blog format, because I like the freedom it’ll give me to explore, experiment, and hone my ideas, in ways that are still connected with the experiential inspiration that created them. I’m taking the risk to be vulnerable with these, and I hope that you will receive them in sweet safety, and through that encourage me to offer more and deeper.

So what will you find here? First, I’ll share some of my favorite useful and resonant insights into life’s journey, what I’ve discovered and developed after trying out so many theories and techniques — and banging my shins not just a few times. I’ll also map out some key life skills that I wish I’d been taught early and systematically, thus saving me so much time and energy thrashing about and figuring them out from scratch.

I do warn you, though, that I expect to push the edges of what we often hear on this topic — looking past the easy aphorisms, challenging the contradictions, and weaving knowledge from seemingly disparate arenas. For me, the off-the-shelf domain-constrained answers often didn’t give me the guidance I needed — or, worse, produced negative outcomes that drastically differed from their claims. So I’ve had to look deeper.

I’ll also seek to steer clear of the too-common dogmatism in this arena, where beliefs are fixed, conclusions dictated, and agreement required. I think that this often keeps us from connecting directly to life’s wellspring and shaping a path that fits our own unique divine design. Instead, I’ll simply offer my experiential reports from the front lines of my journey.

But mostly I see this blog as a chance for me to listen to life’s deeper resonances, to tune into the nourishing wisdom of the inner compass that too often gets brushed aside in our busy lives and disconnected culture.

Because I very much treasure those moments when we can sit in our flawed-beautiful selves, searching through the fog in this strange-confusing-amazing time on earth — and touch something deeper, something more raw and less certain, the aching divine infinity in each moment. How thrilling it is to feel life’s dark/light edge and glimpse into life’s vast hologram — even if it’s just through a hole in the fence, as we blindly describe the part of the elephant that we see.

So, I look forward to seeing what emerges here, and hope that it’ll interest and enrich you as well. Please share your responses in the comment sections, especially what you find of value. Perhaps if my jottings resonate with you and others, I’ll decide to shape some of them into versions that I offer to other outlets. Your participation and encouragement are vital to how this plays out!

To start exploring, you might want to read my next post, "Threads of Sorrow & Joy: Giving Birth to This Blog." It talks more about my vision and instigation for this blog. Or explore "Blog posts by topic" (see that option on the right). And perhaps even sign up to get alerts when I have new posts. (Just enter your email under "Follow by email" to the right.) Thanks for your interest!

With sacred blessings -

Patricia Dines

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Blog content (c) Copyright Patricia Dines, 2014. All rights reserved.
Links are encouraged! My content is also available for reprint. Please contact me for permission first. Thanks!

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