Via Lama Rod Owens

 

 

Dear Friends, 

As we move deeper into the spring, we are experiencing an awakening of the natural world into the vibrancy of summer. 

We are also experiencing an awakening to the struggle of so many folks around us to be well, safe, and cared for.

We are still deep in the apocalypse, and while I am confident that we are moving in a direction of profound rebirth into a more compassionate and loving world, we still must do the work of meeting the intensity of the violence around us with an open heart that allows us to do the essential work of grieving and dreaming the world we most need to see. 

I offer the following prayer that I have shared often on my platform to you for your practice. Prayer is an essential practice for me. I begin and end my day with prayer. May this prayer nourish and tend to your brokenheartedness.

Here is what my prayer sounds like right now: 

I evoke all those beings and sources of refuge who have ever loved me to come sit with me because it is now that I feel most alone. 

I evoke the Blessed Mother, the Sacred Father, Spirits of Light, the essence of wisdom, my teachers and elders, the communities who have always caught me when I have fallen, the ancestors who have never stopped holding me, all the elements, including the sacred earth, who help me to stand, silence which wraps me in the space to be with my heart. I call upon my own innate compassion.

To all those I have evoked, I offer my grief and what seems like my perpetual mourning in this body. I offer my fear, my numbness, and I offer my inability to dream beyond my shutting down. Most of all, I offer my fatigue. I am tired. Today precious earth, let me lie upon you and remind me of my body and my heart.

I want many things, but I need only one thing now- to give up what I cannot hold to you. I pray that I evolve past my belief that my pain is mine alone to carry.

To my sources of refuge who have been evoked, you have taught me over and over again that this is not the truth. You have taught me over and over again that it is not my pain but our pain. You remind me that my worship of isolation is not conducive to my liberation.

I want to be free, and so I offer what I struggle to hold to you right now, knowing that you are only here to share this heaviness with and to love me. I am afraid of the world. I am afraid of people. I am afraid of what I must do to survive in the world. Even these fears, I offer to my sources of refuge.

Today my precious sources of refuge, in your love, offer me rest. In your love, never abandon me. In your love, haunt all others who feel lonely and tired.

Please continue to haunt me in this life, in death, and into all my lives to come until one day I become a source of refuge for other beings.

Yet it is also my prayer to become a source of refuge for beings right now in this life. May I and all others in this realm and beyond be blessed forever.

I dedicate this labor to my descendants, who will one day lead me into my ancestorhood. 

These are my prayers right now.

With love, Lama Rod

Video: Going to the Edge - Exploring Death and Radical Resiliency During the Apocalypse In this 49 minute video, Lama Rod Owens explores the radical practices of skillful mourning, self-care, and refuge practice to support resiliency in the face of death and uncertainty.

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