Field of Care I — Access

When I first started working with the benefactor practice, the first benefactors that came up for me were my grandparents. As a child I spent many days with them; all the school vacations and most of my summer vacations. There were more children my age to play with in their neighborhood, so it seemed much better for me to spend time at their house.

My family situation at home was not the most nurturing and my grandparents offered a wonderful refuge of support and acceptance. My grandfather let me tag along with him as he did work around the house and taught me so much about how things work and how to fix everything that broke. As I got older, I even was allowed to be his ‘helper’ as he traveled on the road as an on-call mechanic. How much ‘help’ I was I will never really know.

When not with my grandfather, I was inside with my grandmother, usually in the kitchen and often baking; bread, cookies, muffins, and pies. She also taught me how to knit and play card games. She was really very smart, had an amazing vocabulary, and channeled her knowledge into word games, crossword puzzles, and Scrabble. Which, of course, I learned to love as well.

You get the picture; I loved being with my grandparents and felt totally accepted there.

I have had many benefactors come up for me over the years I have been doing these practices, but my grandparents don’t come up that often for me anymore. So, it was a surprise for me when they came up for me while another teacher was leading practice a couple of weeks ago. And the specific caring moment I recalled was in the kitchen, baking with my grandmother. Then my visualization moved through the other rooms of their house and I found some sense of being cared for by my grandparents, in some way, in each and every room of the house. At that point, I realized their whole house was a place of refuge and safety for me. There was a sense of being loved and cared for in every room I visited. I was able to just rest in the feeling of being held in their house and that was my field of care for that practice session.

A lot of us have difficulty, from time to time, connecting with an access point, a moment of caring connection, that allows us to experience those qualities that generate and infuse our field of love, care, compassion, acceptance. When we can make that connection, we see that the field of care has always been present. We are just allowing ourselves to open to it and rest in the qualities that were always there. These qualities are already present in the nature of each of our minds.

So, perhaps you have a ‘place’ of refuge and safety, more easily accessed for you than a person or a pet. Maybe, like me, you have a grandparent’s home, or a favorite aunt or uncle’s home you loved to visit, or a camp you attended where you felt totally accepted. Or, there may be a place in nature that speaks to you in the same way. A special place in the woods you loved to visit, a beach by the ocean where you can feel vast openness of nature, or a special walk or hike in the woods or up a mountain that connects you with our mother earth that supports us all.

Take some time now to see if any place comes up for you as a place of refuge and care.