Category: Community

Dear Being Energy Community,

Our hearts fill with joy when the Being Energy community inspires us through their creative activities and group explorations of awareness. This coming weekend there are two communities of practitioners and friends who will be following a heart centered path to practice Being Energy® movements and meditations. They are cool and inspiring people and they offer life-changing experiences!

One of the groups is hosting a practitioner event in Arvillard, France, while the other group will be joining a sustainability festival called Fala Sampa in Sao Paulo, Brazil. These two groups will be sharing their practices locally, and will also join their intent across continents to acknowledge a deeply shared connection and support for each other and the earth.

The event at Karma Ling Institute, a Buddhist center, situated in a breathtaking forest at an altitude of 800 meters (2,625 feet) in France, near the Swiss border, began as a collaborative endeavor among practitioners of Carlos Castaneda’s teachings. Their co-creative intent has been nurtured every year for the past ten years and has always resulted in a diversity of participants, with up to sixteen different countries represented!

Maurice Meyer and Roseanna Sacco have been Karma Ling organizers, together with Rakel Sosa, Gammadian Freeman, Ena Xena and Stephane Senator. They will focus on celebration, as they honor where they were and where they are today.

There has been an energetic exchange with the Buddhist community of Karma Ling over the years, exploring similarities and sharing practices. They will practice Being Energy movements, as well as pranayama breath and experience a gong bath among other activities.

Fala Sampa, or Speak Sampa will take place at the annual Sao Paulo, Brazil Sustainability Festival. Being Energy® Teachers will connect with others in an intense dialogue around the topic of Sustainable Turnaround, to share expression and movements that are already happening in Sao Paulo and turning the city.

Being Energy Teachers have been teaching and practicing Being Energy® movements in Sao Paulo and they will guide a class for hundreds of people at the festival. We can view Being Energy movements as a form of dialogue with ourselves, with others, with the earth, the universe, the dark sea of awareness, or Intent. We are excited to hear that the movements will be shared and used to connect with the Sao Paulo community in the city festival, as well as the Being Energy community.

The Fala Sampa website (in Portugese) quotes Physicist Alain Aspect to inspire our practice of connecting, “…subatomic particles such as electrons are able to instantaneously communicate with each other, despite the distance separating them, no matter if it is 10 meters … or 10 billion miles!”

Being Energy Teacher, Patricia Aguirre, one of the Fala Sampa organizers, invites the Being Energy community to join with the intent of their Sustainable Turnaround. They will practice on Sunday, August 31st at 1:30 PM Brazil time, which is 9:00 AM Pacific Time.

Take a moment and practice a Being Energy® movement, or sit in silence and connect to Sao Paulo, Karma Ling, and the World on Sunday.

Dear Being Energy Community,

It has been shocking to read some of the stories in the news again after spending five days in our retreat in Hawaii. We have been inhaling pristine pure air, eating organic foods, celebrating mother nature, and connecting deeply into our souls while in different parts of the world hundreds of innocent civilians were killed in an ongoing battle amongst ego-centered identification groups of fixed beliefs.

I couldn’t hold back my tears when reading about the sixteen civilians killed in Gaza while looking for refuge in the one place they presumed would remain safe, a United Nation’s school. The conflict between Israel and Palestine touches me deeply. The grief inflicted on both sides is so deep and long lasting, sometimes it seems it will never end.

I didn’t sleep for days after finding out about the three Israeli teens killed by a Hamas terrorist group. I thought about their families, the unbearable sorrow, and the unfairness of it all. In a second I was transported 30 years back to when I was living in Argentina under a dictatorship. I was also a teenager and had witnessed dead bodies in the streets. The Argentinian army took over the government and killed more than 30,000 innocent people labeled as “different” or “subversive.”  College students and teachers were tortured and killed. For more than a decade I lived under fear.

Other news stories were about the conflicts in Syria and Turkey, the Sunni militants in Iraq, the violence in Honduras, and the Ukraine disaster of the Malaysia plane with 290 passengers. I put down the paper. I wanted to run and scream, how can I reconcile all the suffering and the contradictory feelings within me?

I did what I have been doing for years. I brought a hand to my heart and breathed; I closed my eyes, and stayed with the agitation that the news stirred in me. I kept breathing and connecting with the feelings until it got quiet inside, and somehow I was able to hold it all. I didn’t deny it, and “get busy” doing something else. I woke up to it.

How can waking up help to build a more peaceful world?

In our retreat in Hawaii we reflected on how we identified ourselves with our roles, with our economic and socio-political position in society.  Instead of saying “I practice medicine,” we say, “I am a doctor.”  Instead of saying, “I get to enjoy taking care of you,” we say, “I am YOUR mother.”  We fall asleep in the safety of what a particular status may bring. We stop thinking clearly: we act on autopilot, believing that we are what we think, without questioning it.

On a larger scale, this ego-centered self-identification creates a psyche that contributes to building cults, extreme political parties, unbalanced religious factions and terrorism. When we succumb to self-identification and labels, we become sleepwalkers.  When we stop questioning, we end up hating anyone that is different from us, anything that contradicts our unquestioned belief system. Cult leaders and dictators feel superior and tend to separate themselves and their groups from the rest. They behave in ways that create fear designed to dominate people, limiting individual freedoms of self-expression. These leaders like to intimidate and dominate through fear.

A path with heart, a place within ourselves where we can take a moment to really look at our actions, our self identifications, our fixed ideas and sit with them, is a path to a different state of consciousness.

Every second, every minute we can dedicate to sitting or moving in silence, meditating on our actions, questioning our belief system, is a step towards peace. We find, as we did in Hawaii, that we are much larger than our thoughts, than our self identified roles. We find that there is a web of energy or love that connects us all. And that is not just a catchphrase, it is scientifically proven.

We invite you to join us and practice:

[checklist]

• 3 minutes of silence every day
• Recapitulate your day
• Look at each person you meet in the eyes. When someone is talking, put your cell phone down, and really connect with that person, even if it is for a few seconds.

[/checklist]

We don’t know how much time we have left. The only time we have is NOW. Use all of your energies to awaken and start building a more peaceful and interesting world.

In Being Energy, our prayers this week go to all people suffering to find relief in meditation and in silence,[separator top=”40″]

Aerin & Miles

Dear Being Energy Community:

My name is Beth Hartley and I am currently an Alaska Statewide Mentor, a position funded by the State of Alaska and run by the University of Alaska to support beginning teachers that have moved to teach in rural Alaska.

The vision of the Alaska Statewide Mentor Project (ASMP) is that every student in Alaska has the benefit of a great teacher. The mission is to give new teachers the support they need to succeed. Not only are these young adults new to teaching, they are new to village culture and the unusual exigencies of living in rural Alaska, often partly off the grid (inclusive of “honey buckets” i.e., indoor, rustic, non-flush toilets).

The resiliency the teachers demonstrate as they rise to the, often, unexpected demands of teaching in the bush is truly inspiring, even as I help wipe away tears, shoulder burdens that can’t be shared otherwise, and still praise and push their practice on behalf of the village students that depend on them for academic success.

I have lived 25 years in Alaska – an adventure from the start! I came up as a Bilingual/ESL (English as a second language) specialist and trainer serving villages around the state then settled into the larger community of Anchorage to serve as a bilingual/ESL teacher and specialist, and finally to “retire” to take this new position with the State.

Aside from my primary work, I love to work as a Special Olympics Alpine Ski Coach, and as a driver for the Horse Drawn Carriage Company; both great ways to stay active in the blustery winter months.  James, my partner, and I love to travel the world and experience new places, people and cultures in our “free” time. World travels – along with moving to Alaska – have been dreams manifested.

Which brings me to the practice of Being Energy and the legacy that engendered it. As I have reflected and dreamed in our Path with Heart classes, I have come to realize that my work as a mentor is serving as a recapitulation of my career; that I have accessed intent and intent has accessed me to move me in this direction, cleaning up my path and dusting my link with intent along the way to make me most suitable for service to this unique constellation of students and teachers. Participating in the various classes provided by Being Energy has also provided a network of friends and resources all over the world – one of the best gifts a “warrior traveler adventurer” could ask for!