More Wave Less Particle

More Wave Less Particle explores ways we can each gather, direct and apply divine or vital energy to promote self-development, help and heal, optimize opportunities for ourselves and others, increase the number and quality of our choices, and bring greater fulfillment, peace and true freedom to our lives.

We will reference a broad and diverse range of resources to help guide our way from spirituality, science, mathematics, art, philosophy and other appropriate and useful disciplines.

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More Wave Less Particle

Transforming Holiday Energy

December 22, 2023 • Joe Kornowski • Episode 5

It’s winter solstice — the astronomical event celebrated by many indigenous cultures since ancient times and also the natural event most aligned with modern cultural holidays.

Traditions this time of year include family gatherings, fellowship, prayer, song, gift exchanges and celebration. But the hard truth is year-end holidays are a challenging time for so many of us. So, is it possible to take our fears and insecurities, our grief over recent losses, and our weariness of wars and rumors of war, and transform that energy into something more uplifting that can support our hopes and visions for the New Year? The answer is definitely yes!

One of ways we can do that, as we’ve talked about previously, is by going to Earth School and learning Byron Katie’s excellent practice, The Work, to truly see and understand how things that on the surface seem to “just happen TO us” actually can be understood as happening FOR us. They teach us, guide us, point the way forward. What feels like disappointment or bad luck can be a cosmic gift that saved us from being in the wrong place at the wrong time.

We recognize an illness or injury or major life change as a time to stop, reflect, heal, integrate the changes, hit reset, and then “listen” to our inner wisdom for guidance. This process reboots our internal energy system.

One of the most amazing tools that can help you achieve this energetic reboot and actually transform your suffering to well-being and loving-kindness is called Tonglen.

It’s winter solstice — the astronomical event celebrated by many indigenous cultures since ancient times and also the natural event most aligned with modern cultural holidays.

Without question, this past year has been tough — tragic and discouraging on so many levels for so many people. And we’re tempted this holiday season to forego any pretense of holiday cheer, and just withdraw, recover from our ordeals, and hunker down for more to come in the new year.

The good news is that we CAN make a different choice. We start by accepting our reality, whatever it is — the truth, of just right where we are today. Everything we are and everything we do starts with the present moment, the here-now. It’s all we ever really have. We’re alive! It’s okay if we feel like crap, if our eyes are puffy from crying or we feel overwhelmed. We’re here! We can appreciate the simple basic fact that we survived.

Once we fully accept this moment right where we are, we can disentangle ourselves and begin to see new possibilities. Our most powerful tool as a human is our consciousness: a higher state of awareness. And we can harness and direct the power of our consciousness to see different realities that otherwise are not visible to us.

One of ways we can do that, as we’ve talked about previously, is by going to Earth School and learning Byron Katie’s excellent practice, The Work, to truly see and understand how things that on the surface seem to “just happen TO us” actually can be understood as happening FOR us. They teach us, guide us, point the way forward. What feels like disappointment or bad luck can be a cosmic gift that saved us from being in the wrong place at the wrong time.

One of the most amazing tools that can help you achieve this energetic reboot and actually transform your suffering to well-being and loving-kindness is called Tonglen. A very old practice dating back to the 11th Century, Tonglen was brought from India to Tibet to help those suffering from leprosy heal themselves and others.

Essentially, Tonglen is a specific form of meditation practice that invites us to breathe in the pain of others and breathe out compassion, enhancing empathy and re-connecting us with humanity on a different level.

The primary teacher of Tonglen in the west is Pema Chodron, an American Tibetan Buddhist nun who is the disciple of the founder of Shambala Buddhism. In one of her instructional guided meditations that you can find on YouTube she describes Tonglen as “an exercise of opening the heart to what we usually want to push away.” The Tonglen practitioner uses the in-breath to visualize bringing in hot, heavy, clostrophobic energy to his or her own expanding heart or the whole body, and then on the out-breath radiating out clear, light, refreshing energy through all the pores of the body — making sure to give the in-breath and out-breath equal time.

After doing that until it’s synchronized comfortably, you then move to the next stage and find a particular person as the focus of your visualization — someone who you care about who has experienced distress (whether currently alive or not). And you use your in-breath to take away from that person anything that caused that person distress in the past or currently. You take that fully into your heart or whole body and then on the out-breath, you send to that person anything that may bring them relief. It can even be the word compassion, happiness or peace or strength. But the idea is that it needs to mean something to them – an emotional meaning. But if a word feels too abstract, then you can just visualize sending that person something that would uplift them — a beautiful day, flowers or even something as simple as a good cup of coffee. Anything that you feel would help that person experience well-being, happiness or relaxation — whatever would relieve their suffering.

Pema tells us that the in-breath is really the compassion breath to relieve that person of suffering while the out-breath is the loving-kindness breath.

The whole idea in this part of the meditation is to make it as real and personal as possible. Now, if the person you select brings up emotions that block you or confuses or triggers feelings or irritation or dislike, then you turn the focus of Tonglen to whatever the feeling is that blocks the sending and receiving — like fear or anger or resentment, then you begin to breathe in that feeling itself as completely and fully as you can – into your heart or your whole body. And then you send out whatever relief is needed.

In the important next stage of this meditation, the expansion stage, you expand out from this single person who was the focus of your sending and receiving — or the feeling that is blocking you. So, let’s say you’re sending out relief to some resentment or anger that’s blocking your ability to receive and send visualized relief to your mother or father, and so you focus your Tonglen on that blocking emotion. Well, now, you expand to take in that same emotion blocking all others like you experiencing being blocked by that same emotion, and sending out relief to them.

So, instead of your personal negative feelings being perhaps a source of shame and an obstacle to sending relief to the person you intended, your Tonglen focus becomes the basis for loving-kindness and genuine care for yourself, as well as compassion for all others similarly suffering and needing relief.

But if your Tonglen for another person comes easily and feels rewarding, then you quickly shift to receiving and sending to all others experiencing THAT person’s situation — those feeling the same or similar distress — maybe suffering from a particular illness or depression or resentment. And you continue until you feel that you have completed your expanded Tonglen exchange.

If you are wondering about the effectiveness of the meditation visualization practice, we can find the answer back in the Pathwork Lectures that we’ve talked about previously. In Pathwork Guide Lecture number 210, the Guide tells us that visualization is quite essential to the creating and recreating work that we do in meditation, and that unless we can visualize the state we want to grow into, it is not possible to reach it.

The Guide further tells us that “there is always a way out of every darkness and therefore never a reason to despair. You will know that nothing happens without good cause and that you are always capable of using whatever you experience to heighten your blissful life. Our dark times become opportunities for further light which we no longer need to avoid, whether that’s pain or fear or guilt or any other form of suffering.

As we can see, the whole purpose of Tonglen really is to lose our fear of pain, anger and hate. We lose that fear of pain because we can fully allow ourselves to experience it, and then it ceases to exist. Similarly, we lose our fear of anger, loneliness and hate because we have demonstrated in our Tonglen meditation that we can accept our own anger, loneliness and hate as we have taken into our hearts through Tonglen the anger, loneliness and hate of others, and transformed them into relief. As the Guide explains, “The energy is now free for other, better expressions.”

You can find Pema Chodron’s guided Tonglen meditations on YouTube. May you, too, free your energy to find better expressions throughout these holidays.