Cali Alpert:

Welcome to Dropping In from Omega Institute. I'm Cali Alpert. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, our Rhinebeck, New York campus is temporarily closed, but we're still here for you. Now, instead of dropping in on campus in real time, we're dropping in to our treasure trove of audio archives to offer you talks, teachings, and practices from some of Omega's most memorable workshops and conferences. Today, angel Kyodo Williams offers up a 19-minute conversation about the illusion of separateness, originally recorded at Omega's 2015 Women in Power Conference. Then she'll lead you on a seven-minute meditation practice to help you recenter. So put some time aside for yourself, get comfortable, make sure you're not behind the wheel, and drop in.

angel Kyodo Williams:

Human beings have their inclination. We conflict. We run into each other's spaces and we try to figure it out. But the idea that we are sitting somehow on the top of the planet, separate from nature. That we are self-centered. That we are organized at our very core to be apart from each other, holding on to just what is ours, is really a fairly recent idea, right? That has been handed to us to believe. And it coincides very nicely with war and slavery. It keeps those ideas in place. It keeps us able to allow those things to continue.

angel Kyodo Williams:

Because if it's true that we're self-centered, if it's true that we're not relational, then why would we care about what's happening on the global scene? Why would we care about what's happening with other people? So there's deep investment in holding us to that idea. And for me, what being bold is about, and the opportunity to be here, is to disrupt that. To disrupt it, not with a new idea, but to disrupt it with returning us to what is true for us.

angel Kyodo Williams:

And women, because we haven't been as corrupted by power, have an opportunity, a unique opportunity, to reclaim what is true for human beings and what they know to be empirically true. That in fact, we are wired to cooperate. That we are naturally generous. That it is our deepest truth that we are interconnected. And there are pockets of us all over the world, in many different ways, that are agitating and coming together in the way that networks do. Small at first, unrecognizable. And the drums of war and the noise is sent out to us through the media so that it drowns out the truth of that cooperation and the truth of that interconnectedness.

angel Kyodo Williams:

But when we do something like this, when we come here together in this way, what we're doing is we're affirming that we know that there's a different truth. Because everything about what we are told in our society, everything that we are sold says that this is impossible. That this is not what we would do with our time, that this is not how we would come together. That all of these colors, and hues, and ethnicities, and cultural backgrounds, and ages, and regions would not be here together.

angel Kyodo Williams:

So we're doing the most important thing that there is to counteract this untruth, this fundamental untruth that is given over to us to keep us away from what really matters to us. What we really know to be true. We are practicing, right? Not just believing that there's something different, but we're actually engaging in the action, the activity that is necessary for us to reclaim and our own bodies the truth of what is important. The truth of what we know. What we know at the very core of our being is who we truly are. And that the ... What is it? The diagnostic manual, and the media, and the legislation that is put before us that would have us believe something different. That would have us feel separate from the imagined other. That would have us feel apart from our loved ones and our relations. That all of this only works because we feel a sense of disconnect from our own truth.

angel Kyodo Williams:

And so if we can interrupt that disconnect from our own truth, if we can get in the way of, and begin to practice another path that allows us to reconnect to those rumblings in our belly, to the vibration that we feel when we see, and witness, and hear about injustice. Even as the systems squelch our response, if we begin to practice it. Not so much, as we're often told ... This is a departure by getting all connected to those other people, but by first getting connected to ourselves.

angel Kyodo Williams:

Not this leap into, "How can I suddenly imagine myself as this other?" But, "How can I find what part of myself I've cut off from right here?" Because if you truly believe that there is no other, right? When you truly come to drop into that truth, you know that the path to connect to the whole is not by going out there somewhere, but actually by connecting in here. That make sense?

angel Kyodo Williams:

And I know I'm disrupting all kinds of ideas of how compassion works, and how it is that we're supposed to feel for someone else. But I think that this is one of the major ... I want to say corruptions of a deep and intimate understanding of compassion. That it's not merely an act, and it's not an idea, that it's actually a practice. And it's a practice that is the result of an arising that comes from our own feeling with ourselves. That when we feel with ourselves and we stop cutting off the parts of ourselves that are under-nourished, under-examined, under-cared for, under-rested, not getting enough attention, not getting enough voice, not getting enough air, not getting enough space.

angel Kyodo Williams:

Because we've pushed them down. Because we have these stories of dominance, and separation, and self-centeredness. When we stop, when we pause and we reconnect to just what matters. To what gets us up in the morning. To what makes us stand for 13 hours. That was about what matters. That we don't have to cross a wide ravine of difference. We don't have to propel ourselves into some kind of imagined place that is far from where we are. We discover the other right here. We discover the ways in which we cut off from the global and social, from the relational and the personal. When we cut off from our own hearts.

angel Kyodo Williams:

So, let's do a little practice of centering ourselves around what matters. Will we do that? Great. You want to find your seat, right? So your buttocks firmly connected. Now, we have buttocks and we have ... Actually, I'll say your sits bones, right? So you want to find the bony protrusions and you want to extend them backwards and refine them really connected to the seat beneath you. So you're not kind of sitting on your haunches kind of hovering, but really connected and rooted. And then to the best of your ability, get your feet on the earth beneath you. And this is best accomplished by not leaning back in the chair, right? But actually sitting forward and allowing yourself to be held upright and trusting in the earth beneath you to hold you.

angel Kyodo Williams:

And what we're doing here is we're going to actually extend our crown towards the sky and feel our full length and the dignity that is inherent to each of us. And inherent means we don't have to earn it and it cannot be taken away. It's a choice that we connect to it. It's ours. And as we extend our cells into the earth beneath us, we feel our sense of integrity. So dignity above and integrity below. It's like a taproot, right? Where we fully connect to ourselves first, before we feel ourselves from left to right, and right to left, the full width of our being. Allowing your chest to be open, heart exposed.

angel Kyodo Williams:

In our width we find our sense of relationship. First, the full breadth of our own being, and then the space around us. And as we feel into the space around us, we can extend our field of attention further and feel the person next to us on either side. And if you're feeling spacious, you might extend that even further to the person on the other side of them. And then more and more, just as it feels comfortable to you. Maybe feeling yourself right up to the walls, to the ceiling. Then of course, we do our work on behalf of the generations that are yet to come. And so we are very familiar with a sense of connecting to our front body, our face, our belly, our chest, forehead.

angel Kyodo Williams:

But none of our work would be possible without the generations that have come before us. And so we feel the support of our ancestors, of the women that have come before us, all of that support at our back. Whether that's our blood lineage known to us or the lineage of women, bold women known and unknown, recognized and unrecognized, we can feel the support at our back. All of that is only meaningful if we choose to take up the space in between right here and right now. So we must take our place between the future generations and the past. We feel that in our depth.

angel Kyodo Williams:

And finally the most important thing, and for many of us the most challenging, is to allow our center of gravity to drop down out of our heads, right into our bellies. And to feel, and to allow to rest what matters to us right at our core. Not up in our head, not in some vague sense, somewhere out there, but to really allow what matters to us to be held in the very core of our belly. Energy dropping down, firing the action that we take in the world, keeping us moving. And whenever we forget why we're here, whenever we feel like we're lost, come back to what matters. We come back to what moves us again, and again, and again.

angel Kyodo Williams:

In the interest of time, I will read just my favorite stanza from a poem by David White called "What to Remember When Waking." What you can plan for is too small for you to live. What you can live wholeheartedly, we'll make plans enough for the vitality hidden in your sleep. I'll repeat that. What you can plan for is too small for you to live. What you can live wholeheartedly, in other words boldly, we'll make plans enough for the vitality hidden in your sleep. Let's go connect with the vitality hidden in our sleep.

Cali Alpert:

Thanks for dropping in with us. If you enjoy today's episode, please check out our many online learning opportunities, featuring more of your favorite teachers and thought leaders. Visit the Learn Online section on eOmega.org for more information. Dropping In is made possible in part by the support of Omega members. Help Omega remain a source of hope and healing and receive special content, invitations, and discounts designed to support Omega's engaged community of members. Visit eOmega.org/membership today.