I am calling this month’s heart-centered practice the heart-centered practice of “we”.
But when I went to choose the URL for this month’s blog, it wouldn’t let me pick we.
Invalid it kept saying. Invalid.
I love it when the messages I need to hear come through loud and clear. The message was: Set your intention more clearly.
So I did. The URL for this month’s heart-centered practice of presence and joy blog is now LIVE WE.
Now I just have to learn how to do it!
In 2015, I began writing this blog to chronicle my lifesaving journey back to joy by writing about the daily practice of joy I was learning how to create.
Over the years, this blog has had many different incarnations — because if practice become rote or automatic, we are not tuning in to what we need to learn. Practice is about doing something instead of talking about doing it. And it is about doing it consciously, in a committed and deliberate way, every single day.
This daily practice of joy led me to understand the healing power of heart-centered practice that shifts us out of fear-based problem-focused thought into listening to, leaning on, and living in Love. I came to think of this daily heart-centered practice as living Love.
At the beginning of this year — a year I thought of as the celebration of a new decade and the publication of my new book, Living Love — I chose the word presence to guide this year’s daily practice of joy.
Presence to me meant really committing to showing up fully each and every day to Love. Fully. Wholeheartedly. Not distractedly. Not when it was convenient. Not if I wasn’t too busy with other things.
That’s where I began.
I also began with the idea of blogging every morning because my daily practice of spiritual journaling had fallen away. I had no idea where any of this would lead.
This year I have written over 150 blogs — one a day. Some shorter. Some longer. But always something.
And each month has led me deeper and deeper into presence.
During the first month I realized that my practice of presence was never really going to deepen if I didn’t learn how to pause more and more each day. That led me to the next month’s heart-centered practice which I called Pause.
That month I realized that I missed another of my core practices of presence: photography. Looking Deeply at the World around me. So the next month I committed to taking one photograph a day of something I looked at deeply through the eyes of Love and then writing about that. I called that month See. As we moved toward lockdown, the only thing I saw each day was something on my walks. And how I treasured my deep connection to each flower or bird or tree! Talk about living Love!
The lockdown led me to see that all of these practices were very focused on doing — and that now that the whole world was on lockdown, I needed to acknowledge that I have always been very good at doing, but not so good at being. The whole month of April, I practiced just being. I called that month Be. It kept me focused on deep heart-centered prayer for the world.
Just being present to the state of the world in isolation from other people and out of my busy travel routine led me to last month’s practice of presence: Wholeness. In learning how to be, I realized how much of my life I had spent in avoidance and denial of things I just didn’t want to deal with and kept busy enough to avoid. Last month’s practice was intense as i looked at old habits I had wanted to pretend didn’t exist. It also led me to understand the ripple effect of all of our actions. It really showed me the imperative of choosing Love in everything we do.
As the month wound to an end and the unrest in the world ratcheted up and up and up, I listened for what this month’s heart-centered of practice needed to be. A few ideas surfaced, but something kept telling me to wait until the end of the month. So I did. And that’s when it came through loud and clear.
This month’s heart-centered practice is to release the illusion that I am some separate me. Separate from Love. Separate from others. Separate from our world. Separate from our planet.
This month’s practice is to live we.
I have no idea what that will look like. Or what this blog will hold. That’s the beauty of heart-centered practice. Heart-centered practice isn’t like learning the piano or hitting a thousand tennis balls. It is about learning to listen to Love, learning to lean into Love, learning to live Love. By practicing listening, leaning into and living Love. In everything we do. Every single day.
All I know today to guide this heart-centered practice of “we” is what I learned from last month’s heart-centered practice of wholeness. We cannot heal unless we are whole. Which means that there is no whole, healthy, holistic, holy me unless we are whole, healthy, holistic and holy.
I am also guided by an incredible experience I wrote about in both of my recent books (The Way of Being Lost and Living Love) when during an anxious transatlantic flight I heard the words, “There is no me.” And I felt the me I had spent my entire life trying to “be” just float out the airplane window into the starry night sky. The relief of letting that me go and the joy that followed has been a touchstone of my spiritual practice ever since. Whenever I feel really anxious or stuck or afraid or unclear, I remind myself, “There is no me. There is only we.”
And by we I mean that we are all One in Love.
I love these monthly practices, and I love sitting each morning with the fingers on the computer keyboard waiting to hear what needs to come through, because I know that it keeps me listening to Love. And I also know that what I am hearing right now is what the world needs to hear. We are all being asked to become daily and deliberate, conscious and committed heart-centered practitioners of Living Love.
I can’t wait to see how I am going to be lead to release more and more of the me-first, me-centered mindset that has gotten our whole world to right where we are. I hope you’ll join me. So, if you’re in, as you go through your day today — witness (without judgment or shame) the ways that your autopilot is programmed to me instead of we.
And then think about this little idea that came to me this morning as I was lying in bed praying:
WE = World Equality
In other words, we means that every single person, nation, race, ethnicity, species, religion is equal in the eyes of Love. No. Exceptions.
And then please join me as we spend today taking baby steps “living we”.
Because this is how we #LoveViral.
And here’s a video to kick off this month’s heart-centered practice inspired by something my dad taught me to say on the first day of every month: