In This Post –

Scroll down to jump to upcoming events.

• A Message From Dr. Larry Ward following George Floyd’s Funeral

• Reclaim Your Inheritance: Music is your birthright, Wednesday June 17th Join us this Wednesday as singer/songwriter Sam Rise, Sister Peace and Peggy help us unravel the mystery and depth of music making as a healing practice

• Half Day Retreat for Frontline Healthcare Workers, Saturday, June 27th

• Other Practice Opportunities

• A note about Patreon

A Message From Larry:

Hello, I’m Dr. Larry Ward, co-founder of The Lotus Institute. My pronouns are he, him, and his. I bow to you, not simply out of politeness. I bow to you, as I learned when I was living and working in the villages of India. I bow to you in recognition of your mystery, depth and greatness. I bow to you in recognition of the awakening heart and mind that flows through your veins.

I have a poem for you:

Mr. George Floyd began his last breath with these words, ringing in the air:

“It’s my face, man.”

I tell you, somebody stole my face.

I can’t seem to stop this river of tears. 

Black face on the ground, black face in the cages. 

I tell you, somebody stole my face. 

When I found it, it was dark like the night in it’s elegant beauty. 

When I found it, it was in a dreadful theater called the White Man’s Burden. 

When I found it, it was already condemned to live in a basket of lies. 

But when I found my hidden face, the window of eternity swung open. 

I tell you, somebody stole my face, my precious face. 

I hold it in my hands catching tears of sorrow and joy. 

I hold it with the kind hands of my ancestors.

I hold it turning into many faces,

appearing across time and space. 

I hold it dancing with the cosmos itself. 

I tell you, somebody stole my face. 

But I have a secret for you, my friend. 

Somebody stole your face, too. 

I know you’ve been searching for it. 

Find your face. 

Find the ground of no coming and no going. 

Embrace yourself. 

Love yourself. 

Lift yourself up so you can lift all the rest of us to higher ground. 

And remember, 

when you touch your face, 

George Floyd can no longer have that joy. 

It’s been quite a two weeks for me. I said to my dear wife, Peggy, “I never knew I had so many tears. I feel like a cloud.”

I’ve felt like this for a long time, but especially in the last two weeks. In my reflections I saw that it took a worldwide pandemic to slow us down enough from the modern “grind” of business and disassociation from our own lives and the lives of others to recognize the value of human life. So many people passing away from the virus, so many of us, either by choice, by accident, or by luck, are able to have time to reflect. Not everyone in the world, in fact, most people in the world do not have that luxury. Those of us who do have the luxury of reflecting and looking deeply at what is happening should not waste our energy, should not waste our life.

There were moments when the questions for me simply became:

• Is it possible for America to have a just society?

• Can we really overcome the utopian flaw at our foundation based on separation, cruelty, profitability, and ignorance?

• Can we create together a society that does not have sustainable, profitable injustice?

• Can we create a society that can live beyond our heritage of the colonial mind and it’s systems which have permeated our very bodies?

• Can we together create a society guided by the truth of justice, by respect for humaneness, with wisdom from the spiritual depths of all traditions, and the imagination to create a very new harmony?

We can, if enough of us work together to make it so. Yes, it’s about Black Lives Matter. Yes, it’s about needless brutality. Yes, it’s about systemic inequity. Yes, and it’s about much, much more. It’s about reckoning, restoring and revisioning the very fabric of our lives in this land and this planet.

Over the last two weeks, I witnessed something I never thought I’d see, and I’m old. I’ve always prayed for it. I saw non-black lives standing up for black lives. Here in America, and around this planet.

I found myself moved to another kind of tears. Refreshment, gratitude, quiet joy, and deep inspiration woke up in me and was nourished. What did I see and what did I realize? I realized that the murderous death of George Floyd pierced the curtain of illusion that we are separate and that we are disconnected. The illusion that we are not all fully human. It pierced this veil that is our fundamental flaw and obstacle to having a meaningful and joyful future together. These responses I saw gave me a glimpse of something that’s emerging. I was thinking about the beast, the rough beast heading toward Bethlehem poem. I was thinking that something is emerging. Many people have been commenting, “Yes, there have been many, many protests, but this is different.” I’ve been reflecting and asking, “How is this different for me?” This is different for me because the murder of George Floyd and all it represents awakened in many of us, across the world, our own human empathy. It awakened our own human capacity to feel, to recognize the suffering, the innocent suffering of others, and to recognize it need not continue. It won’t continue in my heart in my mind, and therefore it cannot continue in the social fabric of our lives.

There’s a word for this, this glimpse I had, this embryo, this emergent reality. It can be called an Anima Mundi. I have a glimpse of a new world soul that’s never been created before, never been possible before, and never been needed before. And by world soul, I mean a vibration, I don’t mean an organization. I mean a feeling of being connected. I mean a vibration of empathy, compassion, understanding and embodiment of our own humanity.

It is emerging, both individually and collectively. The question is how we don’t lose this moment by getting distracted into colonial tricks of politics and non-tricks of politics which we have to watch and be on guard for. Please understand, we cannot fix this with the tools of what we’re trying to change. We have to create new tools, new spaces in ourselves, new healing, new courage, new bravery. First In ourselves so that we can imagine, literally, what it would mean to live in a society and the world with gentleness at its center and with respect at its center. What would it mean to live in a world with caring at its center, with purpose at its center, with joy and its center? This means creating a social ethic we don’t yet have, though we’ve imagined it. Philosophers and religious leaders for years in their own ways have imagined it and talked about it.

We have to ask ourselves, what should we do now, after the fire, after the funeral? What we must do now is create.

At first I thought that the word for what we must do now is work. But then I decided I didn’t want to use commercial language to describe what the task is. It’s so, so far deeper than a commercial enterprise, which is at the heart of our dilemma, at the heart of my comment about the utopian flaw of America: We are a business that tried to become a country!

A social, ethical life for me (and I would invite you to meditate on this) is four things:

1. First, when you recognize there is innocent suffering going on in society, stand up and call it out. However you are able to do that- in word, in deed, in music, in sound, in poetry, in dance, call it out. Hold the mirror up so we can see ourselves. Because unless we deal with our shadows, we cannot be whole persons and therefore cannot have a whole society.

2. Next, take a look at the injustice you see and ask yourself, how are your lifestyle and your daily choices participating in feeding that system, sustaining that way of thinking, and encouraging that way of treating other human beings?

3. Third, withdraw the legitimacy, withdraw your energy, whether that’s economic, political or cultural, from those systems and ways of thinking that will kill us all.

4. And last, lead. Now your leadership may be small, which is wonderful. Your leadership may be tiny, maybe moment by moment, student by student, friend by friend, neighbor by neighbor, business associate by business associate, but lead. Stand up. And maybe leadership is not the right word and I’m ok with having a different word. Probably it is the wrong word, because what we’re talking about has to be cooperative and collaborative. It has to be a dramatic move away from the heirarchical, top-down, white supremacy model of leadership.

I’ve been thinking that part of our dilemma here in the United States (I won’t talk about other places) is we have a constitution but we don’t have a covenant. We do not have an agreement of caring for one another. We do not have an agreement to stand up for each other. I’ve been working on a little note for myself to practice with. It’s my covenant with you, wherever you may be and whoever you may be at this moment:

I stand up for you.

You stand up for me. 

We stand up together. 

And this is how we do it. 

I care for you. 

You care for me. 

We care together. 

This is how we do it.

Thank you.