Monthly Archives: September 2024

Authenticity

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Where I live, we have all kinds of wild animals; bears, bobcats, porcupines, hawks, foxes, deer and more. When my kids were older, and I would stop the car to get a better look at an animal before it went into the woods, they would always joke about what a big deal I was making of it all. I didn’t care. There was just something so special about getting to see wild creatures in their own home.

It always feels like such an honor and such a blessing to catch even a glimpse of them.

I think one of the reasons I’m so called to these moments is because of the unwavering authenticity of the animals. It feels like something I can trust. Something I can learn from. Something that reminds me of who I am. And what I can be.

An animal in the wild is never anything less than fully who and what it is. No matter what I might want. No matter what the world might be doing. The hawk will always want to pick off one of my chickens. The porcupine will always want to decimate my fruit trees. And though I may want the majestic ones like the moose, bears and the bobcats to pause a little longer so I can just be with them, they do not answer to me. Ever.

They do not adjust themselves to me. They are always, single-mindedly going to be and do whatever they are and whatever they need to do. Therein lies the secret of their integrity, as well as sacred instructions for how to live.

For to fully and authentically inhabit ourselves each and every moment creates a life based in integrity and makes us a trustworthy source for both ourselves and others. On the other hand, when we shift and negotiate ourselves based on our fears, insecurities, conditioning, wounds, what others expect of us, the demands of the modern world, we are not trustworthy. Nor are we happy, fulfilled or fully expressed.

That’s why it’s such a big deal to choose to find your way into your authentic self.

Unfortunately, we have been schooled to not be ourselves. To not feel what we are feeling. To not know what we are knowing. And because this false sense of who we are has become so familiar to us, so deeply embedded in how we think about ourselves and interact with others, it can feel impossible to get away from what has been created in this regard.

Too dangerous to challenge or look at all the ways we are not ourselves.

Then there are all the “rewards” for not being authentic. For not saying what is really on our mind because of how others get to feel more comfortable with what they are doing. There are no awkward moments when we leave something unchallenged. No need to work something out. No strength to be acquired to go against the grain of what the culture demands. No need to develop courage to say “No” to all the life-depleting choices we are being offered.

There are so many ways we are “rewarded” for not rocking the boat, for agreeing with the status quo, for going along to get along.

But the real and arduous road to authenticity means rooting out all the ways you are not your authentic self. And because we are so accustomed to not being fully ourselves, we have lots of opportunities to practice each and every day. It’s in the smile or the laugh you give when you feel otherwise. It’s in your silence when you disagree. It’s in your decision to do something, not because it feels right to you, but because everyone else is doing it.

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Following Your Own Inner Rhythms To Balance

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One of the things we can all see when we look around is a widespread lack of balance. Whether in our own lives or the ways of the world, we live in times of extremes where we flip flop between too much and too little. Where intensity is followed by collapse and where overdoing and underdoing are the name of the game.

This can look like having too intense of a work week followed by a sedentary weekend in front of a screen. It can look like our bodies being burned up by stress, only to have to get sick to balance out the intensity. It can look like depression and anxiety, dieting and binging or starting up a bunch of the latest activities du jour, only to let them fall by the wayside. And it can look like the vitriol expressed on the world stage and the apathy that follows when we feel there is nothing we can do.

Many of us feel trapped in this pendulum swing between too much and too little; believing this is just the way it is now. That we are victim to something beyond our control. So though we may yearn for a sense of balance in our lives, it can feel out of reach. Or like it is some failing on our part that we just can’t seem to get there. Or maybe that it is some one or some things fault that balance cannot be experienced.

But like all things worth having, a sense of balance is an inside job, has nothing ultimately to do with the externals and is actually innate to us.

Best of all, we have a constant reminder every single day of what balance looks like in the form of the natural world. And right now, as we enter the time of The Fall Equinox, where light and dark, for a moment in time, are balanced, we are being offered a visceral reminder of what we already know and possess.

That being, that when we are attuned to our own natural rhythms, balance is the result.

When looked at from this perspective, the externals become secondary to our capacity to tune into ourselves and what it is we are knowing and needing. The ways of the world, life and other people becoming an opportunity to sink more solidly within our own personal rhythms. To that place deep inside that knows how to ride the ups and downs of existence.

This is different than getting bashed around according to the latest crisis or challenge of the moment. But it requires both a shift in your perspective when it comes to what is happening, as well as a running practice to keep you close to your own experience.

To claim your reactions and responses are your responsibility is an enormous undertaking. This perspective shift means your reactions are yours and do not emanate from some external source. Not only is this the work of a lifetime, it will bless you with the greatest empowerment you can imagine when you learn to stop blaming what is outside of you for how you feel.

When it comes to a running practice to help you remember, your breath and your capacity to bring yourself back to the moment you are in, is the directest route to helping you connect with your own natural rhythms. The very same ones that will guide you into the next choice that needs to be made to help you live in a continual flow of inner adjustments; all circling around that often elusive experience of balance.

This all looks like staying very close to yourself, no matter what is going on. You get very intentional about checking in with your experience as you move across your day. So even when there is a difficult conversation or too much on your plate, you own your response to that intensity and you make a conscious choice to feel yourself breathing. Maybe you even ask yourself a question like, What is making this so difficult for me right now?

This is not about fixing yourself, judging yourself, or even trying to create balance. Instead, it is merely a moment in time where you tune into yourself. It is in this turning towards yourself, coupled with an open wondering about your experience, that allows you to tap back into your own innate rhythm. From there, balance is the natural outcome. No matter what is happening on the outside.

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Closing The Door

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I’m back from being away on vacation, so there’s lots to be done this week. The emails that need answering, loads of laundry, phone calls, weeding, harvesting, work-related projects and more.

As I’m setting up for my morning practice on the first day back, though it’s early, I already have a load of laundry going. So as I start to settle into meditation, I can hear the spin cycle on the washer humming away. The sound presses in on me; reminding me of all that needs doing. With this reminder comes a kind of tension to hurry up and “get things done.”

It makes it hard to settle in and to give myself this time. But then something occurs to me. The fix is obvious. All I have to do is to close the door between the spaces so that it’s easier to turn towards myself. Easier to settle into a time I count on to set myself straight. So simple.

But simple is not always easy. Especially in a world that loves to obfuscate and complicate what is most essential to us and to our lives here. Not to mention a mind that loves to list out all the reasons why we cannot possibly carve out time for ourselves and the deeper experiences of Life.

All of this is noise. Pure and simple. Life-depleting, soul-sucking noise. If it weren’t so devastating, it might be funny how absolutely ineffectual we can be when it comes to carving out time for ourselves. But it’s not funny because of how many of us don’t have a clue about what is being lost.

Without time on our own, without the space to have a thought free of what’s coming across a screen, without the room to get clear about whether or not your life is working for you, you will be taken down the wrong road. Every single time. This will leave you with no other option than to agree to and settle for all the wrong things. A kind of saying “Yes” by default to those things in Life without meaning or substance.

Time on your own, free from what the world demands of you is not a luxury. It is foundational and non-negotiable if you have any hope of hearing what your body is telling you, along with the call of your own soul. It is an inner demand if you have any chance of making daily choices that line up with what you value most.

Making time for yourself regularly is the antidote to succumbing to the madness and the falsehoods of a world intent on distracting you from yourself. Ready for something else? Learn to close some door every single day to give yourself the chance to hear how things are going and you just might find yourself spending some of the most satisfying and course-correcting time you will spend all day.

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Warrior Courage

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My yoga teacher would often talk of the spiritual path as a great battle, and how there was a far greater peace to be had on the other side of that battle. What he meant of course, was the value in meeting our challenges head on. That rather then collapsing in defeat, or trying to sidestep whatever was in front of us, we instead go heads up and bravely towards that battle. That we go right through the center of it, until we come out on the other side.

The image of a battle is frightening. It’s bloody. There’s collateral damage. It is unlike the civility of every day life. Though you want a particular outcome, there is no guarantee. And you never know what will be asked of you.

No wonder so many of us could never imagine going straight through anything that intense or unpredictable. More to the point, that potentially deadly. No wonder we would want to fall down. Or slink away. The problem being, if we do that, the battle still rages on. Only now we are at the mercy of something that will have its way with us whether we participate or not.

The battle to which I refer is the call of your own soul and the fight for your own sovereignty and authenticity. This formidable call from within is hard to answer in a world that pushes for the inauthentic where we are taught to people-please, diminish our own light and medicate ourselves into oblivion. The greatness that resides within being kept from the very difficult challenges it requires to emerge intact.

When we refuse the call of meeting our lives head on, we never develop the skills to be with what is difficult. This sets up a domino effect of more avoidance on our part of what is hard, which then means we actually cannot meet the next hardness that comes our way with anything but fear and anxiety. This sets up more exaggerated beliefs that it’s all too difficult, and that we just don’t have it in us; leaving us alienated from the very thing we most yearn for.

The good news is, this is precisely where we begin. Right at that place in our life that feels like a battleground we are not capable of meeting. Only, this time, instead of turning away, we run towards it. We say to ourselves, “I see you and I honor you as the honing I require to emerge fully myself.”

Maybe this means sitting for one minute, or even ten seconds, with an uncomfortable feeling before you distract yourself or project it onto another. And then, you build from there. Before you know it, after many, many moments like this, you have taught yourself how to be brave and how to stand in your place when the going gets tough. Before you know it, what used to feel like more than you could do, is now something that strengthens you.

This is where the courage of the warrior is born. The one who can be with what is frightening. The one who can step out of their comfort zone, by allowing what needs to die to go in order to re-imagine their life outside of the limited view of themselves they have been given. The one who asks for nothing other than to know the truth of who they are and why they are here.

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