Monthly Archives: October 2024

A Bigger Perspective

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The air is cold and the sun is warm. The sky is clear blue and the birds are calling. I’m sitting outside in the early morning meditating wrapped in a blanket and wearing a hat and gloves. My body is comfortable and my mind is at ease. There’s nowhere else I’d rather be for this is a rare moment in meditation where everything is clicking and I am at peace.

But even when everything is not clicking, these moments sitting in meditation are my medicine. It’s where I go each day to gain the perspective I need to be with myself and the world as it is. It’s where I go to find the courage and the clarity to get clear about what I believe in and why. It’s the time I lean into to take stock of the thoughts I keep, while discovering the impact these thoughts have on how I behave in the world.

It’s not easy to be alive these days. Even if your personal life feels solid, it’s impossible not to feel what’s happening all around us. We are mammals after all; wired to sense and to feel our surroundings. It’s how we survive, fact check, attune, belong and assess our environments.

As mammals, we’re always going to feel each other. We’ll always be attuned to how others are experiencing the world. But how you receive other people’s states of being is always a choice.

This is crucial to know now during this very intense time period we are living through. Otherwise, we are left to play the victim to other people’s moods and to the world’s activities. Left to being dragged along by widespread fears. Some of which are real. Some of which are exaggerated. And some of which will always be out of our control.

Right now there’s so much confusion, insecurity, fear and anger being carried by so many of us, it’s easy, one might say even “natural” to jump on that bandwagon. After all, we are herd creatures and we do like to go with the biggest herd for safety reasons. But when we do that we contribute to the overall experience of things being scary and out of control.

As an example, we can continue to spread like a virus the outlandish things we hear coming out of a screen. We can continue to imagine worse case scenarios. We can continue to buy into the fears and the projections about what is going to happen.

Or… we can put our attention on what it is we most want to have happen in the world and live that to the very best of our ability. I know this might seem naive, but there are many schools of thought to back up the power of how our perception of something has the capacity to shift reality.

For instance, in quantum physics, there is something called “the observer effect.”This effect says that when something is being observed, atoms in this case, Life behaves differently. Just based on being looked at. Just by being the recipient of attention, atoms change from states of pure wave potential to becoming something material.

In other words, going from not existing to existing.

Imagine applying this understanding to our current cultural circumstances. Imagine that where you put your attention will call into existence whatever it is you are expecting to have happen. Imagine that your assessment, combined with others choosing to go beyond fear, has the power to tip things in a new direction.

If you knew this to be true, what would you be talking about and thinking about?  

I know it feels like the stakes are very high right now. I know that most people are perceiving things in a certain way. But what if you hold an important place in how things turn out based on what you see and think? Would it inspire you to work with your mind? To chart your own course when it comes to where you put your attention?

I can’t say for sure that one person’s change of mind can change the world, but I can say for sure it can change your world.

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True Self-Care

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Last weekend I co-facilitated a restorative retreat at my farm where the focus was on self-care. While I had prepared a lot around what would be the obvious candidates for caring for ourselves, as the afternoon went on, it was amazing to hear how much nuance showed up around what self-care truly is.

We live in interesting and often confusing times. On the one hand, we are encouraged by a multi-billion dollar wellness industry to take better care of ourselves. To buy more things, get more services, do more around our self-care. On the other hand, we have a machine-driven culture that not only does not make time for what we actually need, it doesn’t even recognize it. We see this demonstrated in the unremitting schedules we are attempting to keep and in the rewards bestowed upon those who seem to be able to work without pausing or attending to their needs.

Both are terribly out of whack. False. Misleading. Destructive. And ultimately, very, very harmful to actually caring for ourselves in a way that is real and true.

Self-care is not something to be bought, acquired or negotiated over. Instead, it is built right into you. As a mammal, it is part of your survival response and is your relational glue. It serves as the foundation for your self-worth and is the gas that runs your life. And it is the homage you pay to the Creator for the gift of Life.

It shows up in your natural capacity to set a boundary and to use the word “No.” It is present in your ability to know when you are hungry, tired and need to move, and then to go on to actually satisfy what is being called for. As a matter of fact, self-care, the capacity to know how to take care of ourselves, is inborn and natural. Otherwise, how as a species would we be able to exist?

The trouble is, of course, we have allowed ourselves to be pulled away from what is natural and so when it comes to what we need. We have allowed ourselves to be bought, misled and medicated. I realize this sounds harsh, but without owning up to the part we play in the care that we need, we will never get out of the mess we find ourselves in; the one characterized by more illness, dis-ease, unrest and dissatisfaction than likely our species has ever experienced.

Self-care is not complicated. But it does require some things. Like paying better attention to yourself and to the messages you’re getting around when and where your life is out of balance. It requires being in your body and developing a respectful relationship to it (no matter what your mind or the culture demands). It means turning away from the habits and screen messaging that confuses your capacity to start inside your own self to determine what you need.

Your self-care is a reflection of how you feel about yourself and what it means to be alive. What would it be like to begin today to care for yourself as if you actually mattered? As if you actually knew what to do? No gadgets, apps, programs, books, advice required.

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Remembering & Forgetting

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I was away last weekend co-facilitating a retreat in the mountains for women. There is just something so gratifying about being with people who have chosen to step out of their lives in the service of caring for themselves. So inspiring to watch what a small amount of time with ourselves can do for our perspective. So life-changing when we give ourselves the time to see ourselves in a different light.

And that’s why retreating from the day to day matters so much. With the space we need, we’re able to tap into what it is we never want to forget, but do. Given just a little time on our own though, free from the demands and the constant noise of it all, we can realign to who we are and to who we most want to be.

For me, it always boils down to forgetting or remembering. Forgetting or remembering what we need, why we’re here, what we value and what matters most in Life.

Which is why we need lots and lots of reminders every single day. Otherwise, it’s too easy to get pulled off course. Too easy to believe that the wrong things are the right things. Too easy to believe that someone else has the answer. Too easy to believe that what we feel doesn’t matter. Too easy to get lulled into the comfort and the distractions of all our modern day “conveniences.”

So like a true North Star, when we allow ourselves some time for ourselves, we create the opportunity to see things as they really are. From this reality-based place, the little course corrections we need to make each and every day to stay on track become more obvious. And doable. It’s so much more difficult (and scary) to make your way back to remembering when you have strayed a long distance from yourself and what it is you most need.

So why not make a point of spending time with yourself each day to help you remember what you never want to forget? It’s not difficult. It’s truly as easy as pausing in your day to notice if things are working for you or not. As easy as going to your breath to create a little more space within to know what to say or decide. As easy as saying the heartfelt prayer, Help me this day to remember, before you get out of bed in the morning.

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A Vision For Your Life

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In a training I’m taking, the teacher talked about how when we create any kind of a vision, we must include both what we can influence, as well as what we cannot. That it is a sacred and courageous endeavor to include the whole picture whenever you are imagining what you would like to have or to create. Otherwise, the vision will be too timid. It will be too removed from the realities of what it actually takes to dream something into existence.

For to carry a vision is to carry both sides of the equation; without allowing yourself to be deluded as to what is yours to do and what is not.

I haven’t been able to stop thinking about this. Especially the part about including what I have absolutely no influence over. I’ve been avoiding this part of the equation. And I certainly haven’t been paying homage to the importance of including what I have no control over. Instead, I often skip right over the scary reality that there is so much I cannot influence.

Especially when it comes to other people. What it is they will do. Or won’t do. What it is they will say. Most unsettling of all, what their response might be to something I would love to do or express, but that might be unfamiliar to them. Or more to the point, contrary to what they believe is possible.

I’ve been realizing this is why so many of us let go of our childhood dreams. Why so many of us feel something inside of us that wants to be born, but that we thwart because of “what they will say.” With “what they will say” mostly amounting to thinking that what we would dare to dream is stupid. Naive. Not possible.

Not one of us wants to be on the receiving end of such dismissal and diminishment. That’s why it can feel far too risky to go for something when you are imagining it will not be received with the support you could use.

To dream something into existence is not for the faint of heart. And yet, I believe it is one of the things we all most yearn for. It doesn’t have to be grand and on the world stage. It can be as simple as trying your hand at the creative arts just because it brings you pleasure. It can be deciding that your vision of peace for the world is something you will maintain in your own home. It can be be dancing, writing and creating where what is visioned into existence stays within the walls of your own home.

It can also be something on a larger scale as well. But the point is, the size, and even the outcome, matters not. What matters most is giving attention to something you envision for yourself or the world. What matters most is to look at what it is you can influence and then bring everything you’ve got to that knowing.

Perhaps what matters most here is you look squarely in the eye at everything you have no control over, and you do it anyway. Despite your fears. Despite “what they will say.” Despite your own uncertainties. For to bring a vision into the world is to allow the will of the gods to come through you.

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