It’s the second half of May — a month I’m dedicating to the heart-centered practice of wholeness.
I have spent the first half of this month trying to be more aware of wherever my thoughts and actions and beliefs felt less than whole and holistic. I also looked at how the words whole, holy, holistic, holy, health and healthiness are all connected — since they come from the same root word.
All of this relates to my overall word and intention for 2020: Presence.
Wow! What a word for this year. . .to really be present to everything that is happening is, well, intense to say the least. And this month feels like the most intense of these practices. But it is also the most rewarding. It has really helped me see the areas of my life where I am in avoidance and denial and therefore the least present.
During the second half of this month, I want to take on this heart-centered practice in a different way.
My whole adult life, one of my favorite metaphors has been the circles that ripple out when something touches water. Right where the wind or a leaf or a stone or a toe touches water, concentric circles begin to ripple out. I have loved that metaphor because it has helped me see how each action has an effect that I can never really see..
Over the years that metaphor has adapted and morphed to include many other kinds of ripples. And so for the second half of this month, I want to use that metaphor to create another kind of practice of wholeness.
I want to really look at how two different reactions can create two different effects and to see my place (our place) in the whole ripple effect. As well as to see how circles beget circles beget circles.
Yesterday my car battery died. So I called AAA to have it jumped. Turns out it needed to be replaced — which didn’t come as much of a surprise. It was four years old and corroded and I didn’t understand why Subaru hadn’t replaced it the last time it was in for service.
On the phone, AAA asked me a whole string of questions about my health and then ran me through the protocol for safety for myself and their employees. So when my service tech came, I was prepared with gloves and a mask. But he wasn’t wearing anything and didn’t seem very aware or concerned about anything except the well being of my car. And since that’s what he was there for, I was thrilled. He did a great job and I had a brand new, much better battery in no time.
But initially, when I saw that he was not wearing what I was wearing, I had a choice of how to respond.
That choice became easy for me when he told me that he was a veteran and couldn’t hear well because of issues resulting from Desert Storm.
I immediately had to take off my mask. At first I kept putting it back on, thinking that’s what had been asked of me by AAA. But we couldn’t communicate at all. It was fruitless. So eventually I took it off and we stayed socially distanced.
Once my car was repaired and he had done all the paperwork and I had signed for everything, we ended up having a conversation about the masks and gloves and safety. He was gracious and very solicitous of my wellbeing.
Earlier that day I had received an email from someone in New York City sharing some major issues and concerns arising there over safety and the wearing of masks. So this whole mask/no mask issue was on my mind. My own experience helped me clarify how to respond to the email I received.
Here’s what came through to me as it relates to a heart-centered practice of wholeness:
We cannot go through this period of time being control freaks. That’s impossible, exhausting and ultimately unhealthy.
We cannot assume that we are right and someone else is wrong. That’s just not holistic.
We cannot judge others if their behaviors and actions don’t seem to jive with our own.
But we can honor both our own and others choices in ways that feel holistic and holy and healthy and whole.
Far more importantly, we need to recognize that every single choice has an effect which creates a response.
Yesterday I had a choice in how I behaved, what I said, how I reacted, how we interacted, and how I felt about the whole thing.
When he first got there, he told me he was in a hurry and had three other calls.
But when I chose to be fully present there with him as he was, he never brought that up again.
At the end of our time together, we had connected about so many things in so much joy, that he turned to me and said, “I really love your energy.”
And I said to him, “I feel the same way about you.”
The 45 minutes we spent getting my car back on the road were thoroughly enjoyable and incredibly productive. I didn’t have to go research the best price on a battery and sit in a car mechanic for hours. I got a new battery, had a lovely exchange with a lovely human being about many things that mattered — a few deep topics and few local places of interest, a little bit about both our lives — and we both left feeling connected in kindness.
Looking back, I see that when we first met, we both had a choice. He couldn’t hear what I was saying and was in a big hurry. I was overly focused on was being asked of us both by the AAA instructions. We could have stayed stuck there. Or we both could do what we both did Accepted the current situation with common sense and prudence as well as kindness, compassion and presence to what was at that moment.
We both chose the latter and not only did our interaction prove fruitful and connected, but actually my whole day shifted. The whole rest of my day and evening felt more heart-centered and holistic than the beginning.
Acceptance doesn’t mean laying down in the middle of the highway and letting ourselves be run over by oncoming traffic. It means assessing a situation and showing up to it as it is, while keeping our own heart-centered values intact and in operation.
Resistance, on the other hand, immediately shifts us out of wholeness into us/them. And once that happens, we have invited fear to the party, where it proceeds to convince us that we are not all in this together.
Wholeness is heart-centered, because it sees everything as connected. So in each situation, we need to choose the nearest right, the most heart-centered choice we can make in each moment.
Remember: Whole = health = holy. They are all connected. And not just as words. The same way we are all connected — and not just on paper.
So today, let’s look at how we can be more accepting in more holistic ways and recognize that resistance is always just fear trying to take the wheel.
Love heals. Let’s choose Love and #LoveViral together.
Here’s today’s video: