Monthly Archives: September 2023

How Are You Creating The World?

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There is an old expression that I believe comes from the Talmud. It goes like this, “We don’t see things as they are. We see things as we are.” Take a moment to really, really let that sink in.

If this is so, how committed are you to spending the time to recognize that who you are, impacts your perceptions of life?

We live in a very, very sick society. I know that on some level, we all know this. How could we not? It’s everywhere. But because it’s everywhere, it begins to take on a kind of background hum and a sense of fait accompli. But if you’re willing to see how things are, you can see it in the poisons sprayed on our foods that we give to our children. You can see it in the collective worship at the alter of the screens, and the ways we refuse to keep ourselves from what is devaluing our lives. You can see it in the ways that we have begun to mandate which medicine people must use in order to be part of society. And you can see it in all the ways that we have never been more ill in body, mind and soul.

There is more. Much more. More that we have come to accept as normal. Even as it visibly sickens us.

But it’s not true. This isn’t normal. And somewhere deep inside we all know this. I believe it comes down then to what someone recently said to me about “calling the ghost by name.” A willingness on our part to name what is messed up and broken.

Because here’s the truth, who you are is not separate from the sickness of the world. You are merely one aspect of the way things are. Because when you add it all up, what’s out there is based on the sum total of each and every one of us. Of all the messed up and broken aspects of ourselves that we will not be with.

This is not a New Age cliche. It is Truth. For as we change our inner perceptions, and change what it is that we ourselves are being, the world reflects that. How could it be otherwise?

For instance, how do you contribute to the harmful food supply out there in terms of what you consider food and feed yourself with? Where do you place a screen above all else and even engage in that which is less than what you actually need and deserve? Where do you hold that others should do as you do when it comes to how people live and take care of themselves? And where have you been less than willing to address what ails you?

When you recognize that you are out of alignment with your values, you shift the ethics that run the world. When you change the way you feed yourself, you shift what nurturance is available to all of us. When you decide to stop all the scrolling and make the people in your life a priority, the world begins to prioritize people over machines. And when you decide to finally commit to something you need to do for your own health, the world begins to heal.

Today I read something that feels like the antidote to all the sickness. An author was making the point that in certain traditions, beauty was less about the physical appearance of a person, and everything about how well you knew yourself. That’s the guide. How well you know yourself. How well you know the “are” of you.

I know it seems like a lot, and maybe you are even wondering how what’s out there is connected to what’s in here. But if you see this as a lifelong exploration of getting to know yourself and what it is that makes you tick, you are halfway there. And then, if you’re willing to simply consider that what you’re seeing out there, is in here, you will be all the way there.

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The Broken Unicorns In All Of Us

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When I was a kid and had accumulated a little pocket change of my own, I would walk down to a place called Cushing Square to visit a tiny store that sold glass figurines. I can’t remember the name of the store, but I can still recall the display window that faced out to the sidewalk and what it felt like for me to go inside.

It was absolutely magical to be in this space and to be in the company of all those glass animals. They felt so mysterious and powerful to me. I wanted them all. But because the figurines weren’t cheap for a kid, I would have to save up for what I wanted. In the meantime, I would go into the store to visit with all those little creatures I felt such a connection to.

At some point, I acquired a three-level tiered stand where I could arrange these little friends of mine into different scenarios and configurations. No matter what I did in this regard, there was always one that stood out for me: The Unicorn. I felt moved by her golden horn and the clear see-through nature of her body. I looked at her every day and every night. She was the one I loved most of all.

So you might imagine how I felt when I came home one day to find her horn broken off. It was devastating. But worse than the devastation of something so important to me being broken, was that no one would admit to doing it. And no one saw that justice prevailed.

That day, something precious and innocent broke in me. I stopped going to the store and I don’t remember what happened to all the other glass animals.

Heartbreak and innocence lost is something every one of us will pass through. Not one of us will come to the Earth and leave unscathed in this regard. We all have had our “broken Unicorn” experiences and for many of us it will follow us around for the rest of our lives. It will color how we see the world. What we believe is possible. How safe or dangerous the world feels to us. What we believe will happen to us if we love open-heartedly.

As that old song goes, “the first cut is the deepest.” Very understandable then to go through life making damn sure it doesn’t ever happen again.

This is one way to live and it makes sense given how devastating it can be to learn as children what a cruel place the world can be at times. Unfortunately, when we hold onto this through life, not only do you lose out, so does everyone around you.

There is another way. But it’s a big ask to the child inside of us who got so hurt when we didn’t even know that kind of pain or disillusionment was possible. What is that “big ask?” To reclaim your innocence. To take back your wonder and sense of possibility. The road to get there is certainly long and arduous. And it will require that you feel what you never wanted to feel again. Ever.

But in the feeling you get to heal, and then you get to decide how armored up you want to be. And when. Because to live for our entire lives waiting to be hurt again is to live as a victim. And to live as a victim is to live shut down to the magic, wonder and possibility that lives in the world.

Want to give it a try? Think back into the past. Do you have a sense of where the mentality of the broken Unicorn began for you? That place where you felt wronged, betrayed or violated. Then observe with great kindness how that plays out now for you. Where and when it shows up. You don’t have to do anything for a very long time other than to just begin to make that connection.

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Holding a Vision for Your Life

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“Hold the vision. Trust the process.” These words are inside a frame that sits on top of the table that I come to each morning to start my practice. Some days I don’t notice the message. Other days, like this one, I do. And it’s always exactly what I need to hear when my mind is teetering on the brink of believing in the wrong things. It’s always the antidote for me in a world that stands for so very little worth calling a vision. A real balm for my soul in a time where there is so little faith in trusting a process to unfold as too many of us opt for the quick and convenient fixes offered up to us like candy we can’t say no to.

Without a vision, we are subject to the whims and the noise of a world bent on selling us the wrong things. Agendas that care not for our truest human needs or the call of our own soul. Without vision, we are fated to live someone else’s life as we allow ourselves to be hemmed in by the rules and regulations of a culture too sick to know how it is limiting and hurting us.

Without a sense of trust in the process of our own lives unfolding as they do, we run the risk of comparing ourselves to the wrong things. Sub-standard versions of what our lives should look and feel like. Erroneous ideas about what it takes to really thrive and to actually and truly know ourselves from the inside out. All of this leaves us at odds with the fluctuations of our own inner rhythms and disconnects us from the Great Mystery as it is meant to move through us.

A yoga teacher I know recently summed up perfectly a life-giving alternative to this disconnection when she said, “Out of the space you create for yourself comes the clarity, and out of the clarity comes skillful action.” For me, this is the process you must learn to engage with to be able to hold a vision for your life that is actually yours. A course correction, if you will, that takes you from a less than or non-existent vision to the one your soul would have you know.

So stop. Sit down. Breathe. And wait. Wait until all the noise and the fears and the scattered thinking begins to clear out. And then teach yourself to trust the unfolding and the unwinding process you must go through in order to be able to fully claim that vision inside of you that is just waiting to be born.

 

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What Is Possible When It Comes To Healing?

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Years ago I read a funky little book called Mutant Message from Down Under where an Aboriginal tribe called The Real People took a white woman on a walkabout for several months. In one of the most compelling scenes for me, and believe me there were many, one of the tribe members intentionally leapt off a cliff suffering a compound fracture of his leg. If you don’t know what this is, his leg bone was broken and it was sticking out through the skin.

It left me flabbergasted as to why someone would voluntarily put themselves at such risk. Why would someone intentionally jump off a cliff and suffer such a serious injury? Because… he knew how quickly it could be healed, and because the tribe wanted to demonstrate to this woman the true nature of healing; which looked like two healers working on this man’s leg, basically reminding it of its inherent wholeness. Sounds kooky, but within a very short span of time (I think it may have been an hour or two), his leg was healed. There was no cast. No steel rod implanted. No crutches. No stitches. No long rehab.

Impossible, utterly impossible is what most of us would think. But what if, just for the sake of argument, it were possible? What then?

This kind of “miraculous” outcome fascinates me and serves as a measuring stick, a North Star if you will, for what is available to us. Possibilities like this keep alive in me the knowing there is far more to healing than we have ever been told. If only we could get out of our own way by opening up our minds and leaving behind all the outdated and corporate-driven ideologies that drive our current healthcare system.

But this is a big leap. A giant step into the Great Mystery we call the body. A journey that can only be undertaken by learning how to let go of all the fears and preconceived ideas we have, while teaching ourselves to be absolutely present to the moment as the body reveals it to be so, without trying to control a single thing. And in its place, to see ourselves as part of something much vaster and far more Intelligent than we could ever come to on our own.

This is where true healing resides. But it can be so hard to get to given all the noise around fixing and medicating and controlling these bodies of ours. All of the unwillingness on our parts to step into the unknown with the greatest of humility and allow ourselves be taught, as opposed to trying to make the body come in line with our limited understandings and approaches.

 

P.S. If any of this resonates and you want to explore what is possible when it comes to your health and healing, check out my latest offer, The Healer Within: A Life-Affirming Movement Putting Your Health, Your Healing & Your Life Back Into Your Own Hands

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The Creepy Places

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Out in the woods recently, the most amazing thought dropped into my mind: The less afraid I am of my own nature, the less afraid I am of Nature herself. I did not intend this thought to occur, nor was I even thinking about anything related to this statement. Nonetheless, when that knowing dropped in, I felt gifted by an enormous understanding of myself, as well as being the fortunate recipient of a map for how to think about what I see reflected in myself and in the natural world.

And that is why I love being in the woods. Or at the ocean. Or in the mountains. I never know what pearl might just drop into my mind. Solutions to big issues and ways of knowing the world in a more honest way find me without effort, and reveal to me what is possible with these minds of ours when we are not filling them with fear, excessive screen time, addictive substances, incessant distractions or insipid conversations laced with gossip.

Nature has its own undeniable and uncommodify-able Intelligence. A bounty that cannot be forced to offer itself, but that is available to us when we make ourselves available to it. My experience has been there is a kind of wisdom just waiting to express itself to us. If only we would just get out there and listen. If only we would just get out there and see that how we feel about the natural world is actually how we feel about ourselves.

Which is why I have noticed over the years that the less I make myself wrong, the less I need to make things like ticks, bees, slugs, and other “creepy” and “gross” things wrong. The less afraid I have become of my own dark and murky places, the less I need to demonize the shadowy woods and other locals or creatures that I don’t fully understand.

My time in nature has taught me that the more I accept and understand myself, the easier it is for me to include that the world is full of creepy, stingy, gross and slimy things that I just don’t get why they’re here. But whether or not I understand their existence is not the point. The point is, they belong, therefore we all belong.

With this said, it leaves me thinking maybe all of the chasing and the yelling and the legislating we are doing around Mother Earth and how to “save Her,” is actually another one of our human diversions that covers up what truly needs doing. Maybe what really needs to happen is for us to double down on getting to know the truth and the totality of our own human nature. Because I can guarantee you one thing: When we know the Truth of who and what we are, we will not harm, squander, demonize or try and control any of the Earth’s beauty or bounty.

No legislation required.

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