After the last few weeks of rollercoaster politics, I was thinking about the concept of influence and raising questions in myself about how human beings have learned the trick of influencing each other. I was mulling over both our susceptibility to being influenced and our ability to shape the opinions and spark the action of others. There is a science of influence through which we humans have learned to measure and understand this ability to impact and indeed manipulate others. In circling around the issue of influence, I considered the cultural as well as spiritual ramifications, but the focus of this Sunday post suddenly shifted with an unexpected memory.
Around 8 years ago in Albuquerque, I brought some visiting friends to the Indian Pueblo Cultural Center during the Center's year long 40th Anniversary celebration. The place had undergone renovations and established a new permanent exhibit entitled "We Are of This Place: The Pueblo Story". The intent was to honor Pueblo land and "all living things". It is an interactive exhibit of Pueblo history, resilience and tradition. When we entered the exhibit, there was an immediate sound of a drum beat, followed by intermittent recorded singing/chants. At first, I was focused on the visual display, but the drum beat was unrelenting. It began slow and steady, speeding up at times, the singing fading in and out with the rhythm of the drum. At some point, I had to just close my eyes and let the drum beat, resonating inside me. I suddenly understood: the drum was the beating heart of the community. This revelation was like a lightning bold that left me breathless. At first, I understood it as an unexpected insight into Pueblo life. The atmosphere, the sum effect of the visual gallery, and the drum,--mostly the drum-- sparked insight that decades of Albuquerque life, working with Pueblo people, attending Native American dances, and general study had not revealed. How could I have never understood this? So there is another layer here of realization of how little we grasp of history, of other cultures, of vibrant life all around us for years and years, until something cracks open consciousness. Now the memory of the drumming brings a smile. The heartbeat of the tribe...community is a shared heartbeat.
It may seem that such a concept is only valid for an ancient culture, or for the intimacy of a small, close-knit community or family, or one's closest friends and companions, butt I ask you to reconsider the possibility that human beings, collectively, have a shared heartbeat.
Medically, we measure pulse--centuries of heartbeats have given us a range of normal as well as measures of dangerously fast, or dangerously slow, or arrhythmic heartbeat. We have learned that the heart's electrical system controls the electrical impulses that cause your heartbeat, rhythm and conduction. Science now envisions our hearts and brain as circuitry. We know relationships and emotions impact the circuitry, along with growing evidence that music also effects our blood pressure, heart rate and breath. Our physical hearts obviously do not all beat all at the same rate at the same time. When I write of a collective heart, a Universal heart, it is partly metaphor and partly mystical, mostly undiscovered, this heartbeat of Life, that resonates within. Rather than fretting about being overly influenced or cultivating our personal power to influence others, we could envision, we could discover, One, Communal Heart sustaining and directing us. In speaking of his own shattering realization that there is no [separate] self to be realized, my teacher, U.G. Krishnamurti said, "What you are left with is the pulse, the beat and the throb of life."
This last week of July, consider trusting that we each play a part in a Living Circuitry of Good.
(Susan Nettleton)
Poetry: https://allpoetry.com/.../15695579-Healing-Power-of-the...