Monthly Archives: April 2021

Engineering The Nature Out Of Humanity

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As the technologies continue to make their way into more and more aspects of our lives, our biggest challenge becomes, how do we continue to recognize and honor real human needs? How do we stay human? Such a strange thing to say, or even think about. Of course we’re human. What else could we be? Well we could, we actually are, becoming lesser and lesser versions of who and what a human being can be. Sadly, the examples continue to mount.

Our basic needs for sleep, downtime, sharing a meal, time spent in nature and more have all been hijacked by the endless parade of shows, Youtube videos, social media, and gaming.

Our children’s truest developmental needs for face to face contact, exploration of the environment, movement, and creative time have been commandeered by the digital babysitters.

We exist physically in the same house with our loved ones while we spend increasing amounts of time separate from one another; preferring to hunch over our screen companions instead.

And our Western physicians are losing their diagnostic skills; choosing to use the technologies as the modern day diagnostician rather than to observe, listen to, and collaborate with the person who sits before them as a way to come to an educated medical opinion. Believing machines superior over human-to-human contact and healing.

Basic human needs, the ones that keep us alive and keep us healthy, the very ones that define the human experience, are being engineered out of us at great cost. Many of us no longer have any idea what those needs are, or how to satisfy them. No longer connecting to what feels good, right, natural in our own bodies, leaves us opting instead for what distorts, undermines, and confuses. And then, at a great loss for what to do, we look outside of ourselves.

With all of the technological insertions into our lives, how will we know not only who and what we are, but as importantly, what we need? This is such an enormous question to even ask. Maybe that is why so many of us don’t. Maybe that is why it feels easier to hand ourselves over to the technologies. God knows the screens will never demand an answer to that question. Nor will they provide us with a healthy answer. Despite what we have been conditioned to believe, the technologies are not the great white savior.

This is nowhere more evident than with our very own bodies. The very thing that makes us human. The only way we can be here, be in relationship, and know how to care for not only ourselves and others, but for the very body of the earth Herself. It is the ground out of which we exist. The only place we can inhabit to discern what is real and true, and what is not. Without an authentic and present connection to the body based on basic, directly experienced biological Truths and needs of the body, we are lost.

To be in a body is to experience Life. It is to know our wholeness. And our brokenness. It is a doorway into Self-discovery. A portal that takes us from the mundane to the lofty. To be in a body is to know yourself intimately. It is to be confused and scared, gain clarity, and do it all over again. It is to endure and to remain committed. It is to be sovereign and to surrender to Something More in a world mesmerized with the material accomplishments of man.

It is to walk a unique path that Graces you with compassion, patience, wisdom, and tolerance. And it is to find your courage while claiming personal responsibility for your own health. This is the gesture we need from you right now. An agreement with yourself to do some growing up. To know that you cannot outsource your health to another. Nor to the technology du jour. And it is to know that no one, or no thing, can lay claim to your sovereignty in this regard.

This is a big task. And a necessary one. Every single issue we face in the world has its origins in each one of us and how it is that we are showing up. Every single way we are hurting as a species can be found within the fears, imbalances, and abdications of personal responsibility living within each of us. This is the good news. This is the fix for all that you see around you. This is where you can weigh in and help change what must be changed.

So, begin within. Begin with one simple question and observation: “Beyond anything outside of me, what am I feeling in this moment?” This is not a thought. It is not based on outer expectations. It is you, being in you, while feeling and sensing what is there. It is a lifetime practice, and it is your way into the direct experience of the Truth of being alive. Something that can only happen by being in your body while claiming full and total responsibility for what you do with it.

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Who Will You Be?

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There is nothing I love more than when I am working on something, wondering about something, or making changes in my life, and then, the world reflects that back to me. It happened this morning while I was taking a yoga class, coming in the form of a question posed by the teacher.

“Who am I in this?”

She was referring to the choices that we are presented with personally and collectively each and every day. The decisions, small and large, around what we will do with, how we will be with, what we are faced with. This matters. Perhaps more than at any other time in history. It is showing up on every single level of existence. And it is born out in the astrology of our times which is asking, will we choose control or will we choose freedom? Will we choose the old or will we choose the new?

This coming year is a year of choices; with the decisions we make being really big. What’s happening now has literally been marked in the heavens. And it is calling each one of us forward in our own way.

This takes a lot of courage, and I know this one personally. Other than the experience of having children, I have never been as challenged on some level as I have this past year when it comes to who I will choose to be through all of this. I find so many similarities between now and when I was a young mother. The steep learning curve. The lack of control. The challenges in deciding outside of the mainstream. The search for the like-minded. The judgment; mine and others. But most of all, the deep call from within to choose from within. As it was with raising kids, it has been a messy, glorious, confusing and strengthening journey.

In my best moments, I would not change any of it. To decide who and what you will be, separate from what the external pulls for, I think, is the very point of being here.

To know yourself, sovereign unto yourself, is what every living being, except human beings, do and do quite well. I know I have written about this before, but it’s worth repeating. Nothing, not a single thing in nature changes its Nature because of external demands. No animal stops doing what it does because we do not like it, or agree with it.

The wasps on my porch, the porcupine that eats my fruit trees, and the anonymous animal that has burrowed into the barn and pooped all over the place, will never, ever, stop doing what it is doing because I don’t like it. Not one of those creatures will change its Nature to fit in with my expectations of them. We humans, on the other hand, regularly do this.

This is a hard one. We all want to belong, and so we all do things against our very nature. Fearful that without the adjustments and the distortions we will be left out. Ostracized. Harmed. But there is a big difference between belonging and fitting in. So, where do you decide how to be in this based on the need to fit in? Based on the stories you tell yourself about what a good person is? Based on what you watch coming across a screen? Based on your fears of being who you actually are?

Here’s something to try. The next time you are in an interaction with someone, and the conversation is creating some kind of pressure in you, pause and feel. Is there a fear, an anxiety, or a stifling of what you really want to say or be? Are you pretending to feel one way, when you actually feel another? Instead of leaving yourself, becoming what you believe the other person expects you to be, stay with what is happening for you. Feel it. Be it. Let it reveal its Nature to you. Staying with yourself is the essential ingredient.

Then ask yourself, “If I had all the courage, integrity and authenticity I needed, who would I be in this right now?” 

 

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The Brilliance of a Body Supported

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Last night, after teaching a class, I awoke to a “small” miracle. The tension and pain that had been in my neck for months and months, was gone! “All” I had led the night before was attention in the body, breathing, and some simple movements focused on the neck and head. Can you imagine if this kind of an approach was the messaging we got around health and the body? I can.

But it takes an enormous shift of perspective. As big as going from the earth is flat to the earth is round.

It is not a movement of the mind as much as it is a return to embodiment.

It does not come from the outside-in, but the inside-out.

It is not in the hands of another, but found within the deeply lived experience of being in a body.

It is not dogma, but instead a kind of original faith and knowing in what the body is capable of.

It is not determined by the times nor the technologies available, but by an enduring and timeless understanding.

In essence, it is a return to the Natural Truths of our fully inhabited biologic sovereignty. Wow! What does that even mean? Beyond anything I have ever done, one of the greatest sources of personal freedom and empowerment has been to cultivate an honest, loving and respectful relationship with my own body.

Not based on a number.

Not based on a reflection in the mirror.

Not based on perfection or another’s expectation of me.

Not based on an expert opinion.

Not based on any system that would deny any part of me.

In the beginning, it was a lot of unravelling from what it “was not” in order to get to “what it is.”

The unmasking effort though is so worth it, for there is a profound solace, safety and sacredness waiting for each and every one of us to claim this inherent experience and healing potential. Is it hard? It is. In the beginning it was perhaps the most terrifying and difficult thing I have ever done; for both my own body and for the bodies of my children. There have been confusing times, painful times, and ugly times. But every single time that I could stand in the fear or the discomfort, something real and true grew inside of me. A kind of intimacy and courage that has gone on to serve as the ground on which I stand.

One that cannot be duped. Or coerced. Or bargained with.

Beyond even that, is the knowing that this body serves as a doorway to the Truth of who and what I am. Given that, why would I ever put that in the hands of another? And therein lies perhaps the most difficult of all paradigm shifts to be made. That being, personal responsibility. The arduous journey of shifting out of the mindset of the child who says, “Tell me what to do. Fix this. Make this go away,” to the exquisite status of a fully realized human being.

But it takes time, and your effort. It takes beginning where you are. So, where are you when it comes to your body? What might it be like to begin to ask questions like, “Into whose hands have I placed the Intelligence of my own body?” “What fears drive my choices?” Let the answers, as uncomfortable as they might be, guide you into your own unravelling process.

For a little support, check out: Reclaiming Your Body by Suzanne Scurlock-Durana or Heal Your Body by Louise Hay.

 

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Transitions

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Like all of us, this past year plus has been a daily and even moment to moment exercise in trying to catch up to the reality that stands before me. Sometimes I am graceful, accepting, and even grateful. At other times I am tense, striving, angry and frustrated. In those times, the Buddha would tell me I am suffering because I am unwilling/unable to be with what stands before me without wishing or needing it to be different. Without grabbing, pushing away, or trying to manage what is most decidedly beyond my sphere of influence.

But in this day and age, what exactly would that reality be? The old, broken down dying systems crumbling (thank god) before my very eyes? Or would it be the gathering voices and movements saying there is another way? It is both, and it is neither. And that is maddening. We are not where we once were. But neither are we where we most want to be. Instead, we are in a place unto itself. A place that is neither here nor there. A place that does not feel like a place as much as it feels like something to get away from.

The place we are in, is Transition with a capital “T.” The territory of where the old still stakes its claim while meeting up with what is yet to be born. Where hardest of all, the old must die to give way for what is coming. A space I remember well when I was delivering my first baby. For when I got to the moment I am describing, I experienced a felt sense of annihilation of what had been, without knowing what would come. In that moment, I left my body. It felt easier to leave then to be with such a Great Unknown. It’s funny to think back on that moment, and how I uttered “I am out of here” inside my own mind. Thankfully, my midwife felt the leaving and called me back, saying “Susan, we need you here.”

Yes. We need all of us here now. Every day. In every way that we can muster. Every one of us choosing to be here as fully and authentically as we can. Feeling all that we are feeling, while being open to being broken open in preparation for some possibility we cannot even name, yet somehow yearn for. A time way past due. A time not tied to our limitations, fears or habits. Instead, a place of pure potential and possibility. Not yet here, but arriving.

This is not easy to do. It would be so much easier to leave. So much easier to choose “I am out of here.” This is exactly where we need our midwives; those people and perspectives to remind us of both the reality that stands before us, and the one to come. To remind us that we are needed. Here. Now. To remind us that yes, we can do this. That in reality, there is no other choice.

While we continue to labor, not yet with what is wanting to be born, who and what are your midwives? What keeps you here, and open to what is coming?

 

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The New Look of Discrimination & Oppression

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Over the past several weeks, I have run into some things I believe important to point out. All of them related to what we think we must do now in order to be allowed to be here, and all of which relate to the plight of the minority.

The first red flag came during a conversation with a couple who told me that the only reason they were getting vaccinated was because otherwise, their friends would not associate with them. Then, I was with a woman who told me of her concerns around the experimental shots, and how she had made up her mind to not do it. Until she heard that the kids could not go back to school until a certain percentage of us had been vaccinated. At which point she said, “Well, if I grow an extra limb, at least I helped the kids.” And then there is the health care professional of a friend of mine who is getting the vaccine not because she wants to, but because her work requires it. She did it, while begging her husband to not get his. Why? Because she feels that if both she and her husband take the shot, there will not be a healthy parent left for her children.

And now, pilot programs all over the world are rolling out digital vaccine passports that will either give you entry into the world. Or not. All depending on whether you have taken an experimental shot. (One, by the way, that is not approved by our own FDA, or ever been used on human beings.)

In essence creating a caste system. A world of have’s and have nots. All based on some arbitrary standard of the times around who is clean and who is dirty. Who is deserving, and who is not. Sound familiar? It should. We have already seen this kind of discriminatory policy in the form of “red lining.” The practice of drawing a line around communities of color; refusing them basic rights and access to things like mortgages and insurance. Groups deemed “high risk” by the very nature of one maligned criteria.

No matter what your personal beliefs are, we have got some enormous questions to ask of ourselves that far exceed whether or not to take an experimental drug. Questions like, is it in the best interest of our lives together to shame, coerce, and even force another person to do something they do not feel is good or right for them? Is it humane to discriminate against people, while getting them to agree to a system that does not recognize or include them? Is this the kind of world we want to be creating? One where we oppress others based on their individual beliefs? Have we not already had enough of this as a species? Enough persecution because someone believes or acts differently than you do, or are comfortable with?

We have seen this played out on every level of human life. With race, religion, gender, sexual orientation and more. Now we are doing it again. Only it is more insidious because now we have hired public relations firms to drive a single message to the exclusion of all other viewpoints. But when you strip it all down, we have also been here before. We have also created messaging across history that certain ones of us were dangerous, contaminated, and not to be trusted because we looked, or acted different than the status quo.

And then there is the tried and true hegemony where we convince people to such a degree of their inferiority that they claim the role of the oppressed who can only expect the dregs of life. It is a most dangerous precedent to set to condition a populace to violate themselves all while believing they are doing it because they deserve nothing better, or because it is all part of playing their role for the “common good.” What goodness is there to be had for the community when we are convincing people to deny their own naturally endowed God-given rights to the sovereignty over their own bodies?

It is most interesting to observe that the very same among us who would take to the streets to protest discrimination for marginalized people are the very same ones who would stand behind discriminatory digital passports. The very people who would rise up if a disenfranchised group was silenced, being the same ones who would censor anything that questions the safety and efficacy of Operation Warp Speed. The very ones who would rail at anything less than full consent in a sexual encounter, being the same ones to deny informed voluntary medical consent for others. And the very same who would put their life on the line for a woman’s right to choose what happens in her own body, would now take that right away from others.

I know. Some would say this moment in time is different. But isn’t that exactly what others across history have said when it was believed that a gay teacher would corrupt children, that a member of a lower caste would foul something they touched, or that a woman was the property of her husband and therefore subject to harsh demands that had nothing to do with her?

History aside, let’s follow the argument that this is different because personal choice impacts us all. Are we ready to say then that there is no more smoking, drugging, alcohol, and yes, even caffeine? Will we go so far as to take away Netflix because of the way it interferes with a good night’s sleep? Will we remove sugar from the stores because of its impact on the immune system? In short, will we take away every health-depleting substance and activity because of the way it compromise individual health, and therefore impacts the health of the rest of us?

Let us never forget that ALL of our individual choices impact every one around us. All the time. While the effects may not be immediate or always easy to see, the detrimental impact is there nonetheless. Therefore, will you find it in you to put aside your personal beliefs, fears and conditioning in favor of health freedom for all? Or will you use this time as another opportunity to continue a long and devastating tradition of the human psyche to diminish and demonize what is not in agreement with your limited, biased and temporal world view?

Most of all, will you look deep inside of yourself and flush out the ways where you will stand behind concepts of liberty, fairness, freedom and human justice just as long as it does not get too personal for you?

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