Hi Everyone,
In the spirit of the times, I want to spend this week thanking all of you who read what I have written. And to all of you who pass it along to another.
Thank you for allowing me to give voice to what is in my mind, and on my heart. For allowing me a place where I can voice what is not always easy to say or to be with.
May I be as much of a support to you, as you have been to me.
Take care.
Susan
The single most important missing question in our current mainstream healthcare approach is: What is Health? When we start to break this down, several questions become obvious areas of exploration. As in, Where does Health come from? What supports it? What undermines it?
This type of inquiry has not been the domain of the average person (if there is even such a thing). Instead, we have outsourced this role to the “experts.” But this has come at a cost. For when we give over such a central aspect of our humanness, without our deep involvement, we forgo personal responsibility, and the wisdom of direct experience.
Without personal responsibility we become as children in the doctor-patient relationship; doing what we are told without question. Without the connection to our own personal experience (as opposed to being a statistic), we become severed from the wisdom contained within our own bodies, minds, feelings, sensations and even, symptoms.
Our current “health” care system is broken. This is evidenced in the 3.8 trillion dollars we spend as a nation; twice as much as any other nation. Spending this amount of money would be well-served if we had health outcomes reflecting a healthy nation. This is not the case.
For while we spend more than any other nation, we do not have the best outcomes. In some cases, we are closer to the worst. More than 60% of us have at least one chronic condition. And everything from asthma to ADHD to depression, anxiety, obesity and more, are on the rise. But you don’t need me to tell you this. This is something you can see with your own eyes. If you so choose.
It is time to take back your own health. It is time to claim full status when it comes to taking care of yourself.
This is a big ask. The biggest ever. And yet, it is what is before us now. We are being asked to know ourselves beyond the outdated. Beyond what is broken. And yes, beyond what is harmful.
This requires learning to discover the preciousness of who and what you are as you begin a journey into discovering what health means to you. So, What Does Health Mean To You?
My husband and I are walking through a section of woods that has been logged over the past year. Where once I could have followed the trail blindfolded, I have no idea where I am. Or how to get from where I am, to where I want to be. It’s disconcerting.
I find myself saying, “If only I had known this was going to happen, I would have paid attention in a different way.” The magnitude of that statement stops me cold. For how often have we all said, across all times and spaces, some version of, “If only I had known…”
In hindsight, with the evidence already clearly laid out before us, it seems a no-brainer. As in, How could I have missed this? How could I have not seen or known?
Herein lies the great dilemma around what is within our power of observation, and what is beyond it. I think much of the time, we have no idea. Instead, we muck around in places we have no control over, while simultaneously abdicating the power we do have. We dump all of our precious attention into worries, distractions, obsessions and fears; getting so outside of ourselves and what is actually there, that we, in effect, become blind.
We do not want to see things as they are. We want other people to be other than what they are. We want the world to be other than what it is. And we want our bodies, our lives and our relationships to be other than what they are. In the meantime, we miss the Truth of the landscape that we are currently occupying, and moving through. In so doing, we become disoriented, losing our way.
The Truth is, you will never know what to do next, or how to get to where you most want to go without first knowing where you are. Whether that is in the woods, in the world, or in the forest of your own mind, body and soul. We cannot be trying to get somewhere without first knowing exactly where we are. But that requires courage, and a willingness to admit when we have no idea where we are, what we are doing, or where we are even going.
It is hard work to be with where you are in any given moment. Harder still though is to live with the unintended consequences and the lost opportunities of waiting for hindsight to give you 20/20 vision.
I know things are hard for many of us right now. I know the world feels like it is burning. And I know that many of us wish it was not so.
But it is.
I realize that sounds harsh, and maybe even heartless, but if we can see that there is meaning, or at least the possibility of meaning in all of this, than we can choose to make it so. What am I talking about? I am talking about that when everything is in ruin, when it feels like there is no way out, something is waiting to be born. Something that has never been allowed before is trying to get in.
Something is painfully wanting and seeking our attention.
I keep having an image of myself as the one giving birth to something, as well as the one being born, as well as the one in attendance. I am the birther. I am the midwife. And I am what is being born. It is all so very, very trippy. And all so very, very timely. For who could deny that the time is here. The time is NOW for everything that stands before us. There is no other time than now to address what needs our attention.
But only if we can see it as so. Only if we can understand that the excruciating pain we are all experiencing are birthing pains; the necessary signaling to us to stop, pay attention, and get ready.
I don’t know about you, but I am done. I am done squandering my life force and my happiness in my attempts to live according to some standard that does not include me. I am done pretending that what the world is doing is okay by me. I am done being part of a system that does not value Life.
And I am not the only one who is done. The Earth herself is done. She has had it. And rightly so.
I do not say this with doomsday reports. I say this in a “Way-To-Go-Mother Earth” kind of way. I say this from the perspective that she will be just fine without us. That she does not need our saving. Nor will she wait for us. Instead, we need to catch up to Her Reality, for she will most assuredly go on with, or without us.
Do you know what it is that really needs saving though? Us.
Harder than managing a climate crisis, or any other global event for that matter, is the recognition that everything that stands before us that needs doing, is an inside job. How could it be anything but? Our thoughts, behaviors and choices are what have gotten us here. So it will only be the awareness of this, and the changing of what we are doing, that will shift anything.
Quelling the onslaught of pollution or climate change, or any global issue, pales in difficulty, as great as it is, to what it takes to turn one human mind from unconsciousness to Grace.
In the end, saving the Earth is a natural outgrowth of saving ourselves. We have it all backwards whenever we begin outside of who we are and what we do. I think we flip things as a distraction, and because we have been conditioned so. For as intense as the suffering can be around all of the world’s ills, it is far easier to be with that, than changing old and outdated mindsets.