The Cycles of our lives, our history and our future….Samsara the Wheel of Life….

I've just spent the last two days (+) preparing and facilitating a creative process art play shop…..called "The Samsara Project" - A Creative Shrine Play Shop.  

Samsara being the 'Wheel of Life that we create'…. the patterns of our lives, that are created, that show up, arise and pass, the constant changes, transitions, of joy and suffering.

What do we do with what arises? With the suffering, loss and grief that show up?  How do we react to the pain, as well as the joys, the accomplishments, the gains?

On so may levels of our lives this cycle, this samsara can be seen…not only in our daily lives, as well as over the generations, in the historical, political and social patterns of our world.  This is perhaps where the saying "History has a tendency to repeat itself" comes from.

How do we react and address what shows up?  Can we create meaning in our world about what happens, be it love, loss, death, grief, sadness, loneliness, winnings and fallings, beginnings and endings?

That is what The Samsara Project is for me?  Coming to an awareness about the moments we create? or that are created out of our control?  Ways to find peace in those moments, in our daily lives and in our historical patterns?  Do we learn form it?  Or are we going to come back to it time and time again addressing the same patterns. Instead we could lean into the discomfort…the suffering, the pain, the desire, the wanting, the discontentment.  Perhaps doing so will give rise to the opposite, the ease, the joy, the satiation, contentment, etc.

All the while remembering these will pass, the wisdom of impermanence.

What are the patterns in your own life that are cycling? showing up?  What is the most relevant to your own liberation?  Where can you become unstuck?

The places we are broken and cracked is most definitely where we can find love and light, peace and joy….even as it is temporary ---- The cycle can expand us,  through the ebbs and flow, change is certain.  How are you going to act now?

To quote from Rebecca Solnit  Hope in Dark Times, Resisting the Defeatism of Easy Despair, and What Victory Really Means for Movements of Social Change….

"This is an extraordinary time full of vital, transformative movements that could not be foreseen.  It is also a nightmarish time..Full engagement requires the ability to perceive both …Power comes from the shadows and the margins, that our hope is the dark around the edges..not the limelight centre stage….

Also from Rebecca Solnit, "You row forward looking back, and feeling this history is part of helping people navigate toward the future.  We need a litany, a rosary, a sutra, a mantra, a war chant of our victories.  The past is set in daylight, and it can become a torch we can carry into the night that is the future".  

Thanks again to Brain Pickings for some insightful reading and speaking from the heart that helps other hearts grow and make sense of powerful emotional and transformative times.