The Bowing Project

I am passing on this note written by a colleague.- Be Well, Juliette Aiyana Dear Friends, As some of you might know, on September 11th, 2007, I initiated The Bowing Project, making a commitment to bow in a public place on the 11th of each month. Below is a link to a video showing some of my bowing adventures of the last two years. The Bowing Project Video The enclosed letter to our President and Mayor Bloomberg is the next stage of that project, the declaration of 9/11 as the Day of Bowing to Compassion. If the letter makes sense to you, and you would like to add your name to this petition, please send it back to me with your name, and the city and country you live in. I would also appreciate it if you then passed it on to anyone else who might want to join us. One thing I learned through my fertility work is that we gather strength, ideas, and faith through every small action we take on our own behalf. Those of us who wait for someone more qualified or more powerful to provide the answers often wait in vain. In the last several weeks, two people in our community here in Woodstock have taken their own lives. And headlines around the world continue to trumpet news of bloodshed in Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan, Somalia, Congo. How do we intensify the global consciousness of compassion? How can we console 16 year old boys before they head for the bridge? How do we hear a father’s call for help before he reaches for a gun? How do we cultivate a more humane way of being with each other? I’d love to hear your thoughts on all this and connect with those among you who might like to help. If you know of art teachers in and around New York City who would like to get involved, please forward this to them. This coming September 11, 2009 I will be in front of Brown Brother’s Harriman and Co. at 140 Broadway at 8:46 AM leading a Bowing Circle of Compassion. In the evening of the same day, I’ll be teaching a free workshop in Manhattan titled, Birth Your Next Creation, Birth Peace. On Tuesday, August 11th, at 9:00PM EST I'll be leading a 9/11 Bowing Project: Birth Peace Teleconference. Julia Indichova July 7, 2009 Woodstock, New York _____________________________________________________ Dear Mr. President and Mayor Bloomberg, I’m a mother, a wife, a former Manhattan resident of twenty-nine years, and a founder of an international community of parents and parents-to-be. On September 11, 2007, I initiated The 9/11 Bowing Project, to widen the public debate about the roots of violence, and to transform the sorrowful events of that Tuesday morning eight years ago into a source of healing. This letter hopes to enlist your support with the next stage of this project: declaring 9/11 the Day of Bowing to Compassion. The idea that sparked this peace effort arrived shortly after the attacks. After each devastating headline or anthrax scare I wished I could be brave enough to go to a public place and bow. I wanted to bow to a power wiser than my daily mind, a power wise enough to guide us out of the living nightmare of those days. I wanted to acknowledge that the impulse toward revenge continued to course through my own heart in spite of years of mental detox and shelves full of self-help books. The act of bowing was for me the most accurate expression of what was needed in order to stop the unleashing of hatred. As a healthcare activist I’ve had the privilege of working with hundreds of people. I've met revered healers, lifelong meditators and gurus of all ilks and I have yet to find a person who doesn’t have a frightened, angry orphan crouching in some corner of their heart. The Bowing Project hopes to initiate a deeper public conversation about this desire-to-destroy within ourselves, so that we understand it more clearly, and choose not to act on it. In identifying the roots of violence, one difficulty is the confusion perpetuated by a “positive thinking” approach to crisis: the idea that feeling resentful or angry or jealous or sad or greedy is bad. From observation and the teachings of wise women and men throughout the centuries, we know that it’s behavior set off by the denial of such feelings that is harmful. It’s when we don’t have a safe way to engage with the orphaned voices within us that we get into trouble. We in fact enable cruelty in the world by denying aspects of our own humanity. On September 11, 2007, I finally gathered enough courage to bow at Ground Zero, and I made a commitment to bow in a public place on the 11th of each month from then on, with a sign that read: I Bow to the Power of Good in Me and in You. I have honored that commitment for the last two years, and have recently begun to engage others in this project. We, a growing community of parents, aspiring parents, and peacemakers around the world, are now declaring 9/11 the Day of Bowing to Compassion. My hope is that with your help this may become an official declaration and a significant step toward reducing suffering within the human family. Thank you, Julia Indichova Woodstock, New York, July 7, 2009