Author Archives: Susan McNamara

The Clarity Project

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There is something about the light at this time of year. Something about the crystal clear blue skies. Something about being able to see the bare form of the deciduous trees and straight through into the heart of the forest.

We need this right now.

A way to see through all of the noise, the hype, the confusion and the fears. A way to see down to the bones of things. The courage to bear up under the clear reflection of the “realities” that are darkening our world by choosing to look for the Light.

This is not easy to do in a world that loves to churn out the doom and gloom. Not easy to do in bodies whose nervous systems have been frayed by all of the overwhelm, the drama and the trauma. Not easy to do when it seems like everyone around you is feeling the same way, and that to believe differently is to somehow put yourself at risk.

That’s where the Light comes in.

As a reminder of What Is. As well as, What Could Be. As a way of orienting to the eternal and enduring flame in times when it appears that the darkness is overtaking. You don’t have to go far. All you need to do is to step out your door and breathe in. All you need to do is to make a conscious commitment to align with the Light all around you.

This is more than just not going over to the dark side. For most of us, this is not where we live. Instead, for most of us, it’s about not feeding the fears around the dark narratives of the world. Not falling prey to the fear porn. Not talking about it. Not thinking about it. Not organizing your life around it.

And instead, to intentionally choose what it is you want. What it is you most want to see in the world. Who it is you most want to be. And then organizing your life around that.

Personally, I am making a commitment in the upcoming year to watch and challenge my thoughts like never before. To not allow a single belief I do not want to see in my life or the world to hang out in my mind without checking myself. Without refuting it. Without refusing to allow something dark to take hold within me without a fight.

So while we cannot change the darkness out there, we can change the darkness in here. We can refuse to be the carrier of anything less than Light. We can make it a point each day to check in and notice the quality of the thoughts we are harboring. We can question their validity. We can watch how they play out in our life.

And we can learn to connect the dots between what we’re thinking and what is happening all around us.

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What Do You Answer To?

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I was in the midst of watching my mind recently during a meditation. On this particular day, it was filled with an age-old, negative and scary storyline. As I watched what was being played out, I heard a profound question being posed to me: Do you know what you answer to?

And then, on the heels of that question I heard, Remember what you answer to. 

As you can imagine, this question and the statement of pure guidance that followed, pulled me out of the thought loop I had been caught in; sending me into a place of contemplation around what this all meant for me. How framing the thoughts I was having, through the lens of being aware of what I most want to answer to, feels immediate and profoundly life-changing. A direct way into choosing what it is I will give my attention to. A strong question and statement to help me remember some things I never want to forget.

A kind of True North in a world always pulling us away from what it is we most want to line up with when it comes to how we are choosing to live. When it comes to what we answer to, as demonstrated by what we believe in and act on.

In truth, harboring negative, unreal and untrue thoughts can only leave me forgetting what it is I answer to. Can only leave me answering to all the wrong things. Ever. Like other people’s opinions. Scary and inflated news headlines. Past conditioning. Destructive agendas. Old hurts. Stories passed down the line that were never mine to begin with.

It’s so easy to believe you are your thoughts. So easy to stay with what you have been given. So easy to fall into herd mentality. And so very, very much harder to fight it. To refuse to pick up what is not yours. To reject what it is that hurts you just by thinking about it.

This is not easy to do. There is so much momentum behind thinking the very thoughts that get us answering to the wrong things. There is a social pull that drags us into believing certain things, going along with the crowd if you will, even when it is not good for us. Then there is all the information we are being fire hosed with that we are not challenging the validity of, that frightens us and gets us believing things that are not true. There is also our own survival system that clings to what we have always done as a safety feature, making it difficult to release the so-called “tried and true” ways.

And finally, there is the “benefit” of letting something or someone else decide what you answer to; a kind of abdication of personal responsibility for being the decider of what you will allow to go on in your own mind.

In the Yogic tradition, there is a practice known as Neti, Neti. It translates to Not this. Not that. A powerful orientation of rejecting what is false. A practice of the mind to sort through all of life’s experiences through the process of elimination. Running every thought and behavior through the grist mill of, Nope it’s not that. That’s not it. Whatever the”it” means to you.

“It” could mean being out of alignment with your values. Or maybe your spiritual beliefs. It could be the kind person you most want to be. Or how it is you want to talk to others. Using this practice helps you so that even when you are not exactly sure how to get to what you answer to, there certainly are things you know you do not want to answer to.

If you want to begin, you must have a way of noticing what you are thinking about, and therefore, answering to. Learn to catch yourself thinking whenever you can. And when you find yourself in a loop that does not feel like something you want to answer to, say to yourself, No, not this. This is not what I answer to.

What I answer to is…

 

 

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Finding Your Outrage

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In the Yogic system, it is said we are living in The Kali Yuga. The Dark Age. It was predicted thousands of years ago that these would be difficult, selfish and desperate times. Times characterized by great upheaval. Times rife with apathy in relationship to what is occurring.

How interesting that the complacency we can observe in ourselves now was predicted.

This feels important somehow that this age, and our response to it, was already known. That a kind of forewarning was sent to us from another time. The question being, what will we do with that information? Will we use it as guidance? Or will we succumb to it all?

Yes, we are busy. And perhaps we believe someone else will take care of the strife. Yes, we are overwhelmed. And so we tend to stick our heads in the sand when it comes to doing something about what we are seeing. Yes, we are perpetually distracted and medicated. And so we do not feel the full impact of what is happening to our humanity. Yes, it is intense. And we can feel like we would never make a dent anyway, so why bother trying.

Therein lies the allure and the entrapment of apathy. That place where we don’t even try because it all feels like nothing we do will make a difference anyway. But aren’t there still some things worth fighting for? Things that matter enough to us that we will no longer tolerate the wrong things? Some set of values and beliefs that we will not negotiate?

I recently came upon a quote by James Hillman that I believe offers guidance here.

“Outrage is a sure sign of a soul awake.”

What brings up outrage in you? Could you imagine being brave enough to forego all the social niceties you have agreed to in order to harness the power of outrage? Would you be willing to let the voice of your very own soul speak up as a way to combat the apathy that leaves you agreeing to the downfall of humanity?

 

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A Winter Wonderland

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It’s the first real snowfall of the year, and I’m out in the woods. There is nowhere else I’d rather be. Nowhere else that holds me like winter woods and fresh fallen snow. I can feel the silence, and it is deep. I can feel the stillness, and it is vast. And while I would love to get this all down on paper, my pen won’t work; despite how much I try to get it going. When I finally stop trying, sensing I’m not meant to put this into words just yet, that’s when I hear, “This cannot be captured or owned. But it can be known.”

As I walk on, I contemplate traditions like Ayurveda, where the understanding is that the wisdom teachings of this discipline and science are eternal. That a kind of primordial and powerful knowledge of “how things work” has always been here. And that that knowledge was “downloaded” into the hearts and minds of ancient seers and sages. To the Western mind, this seems absurd. Crazy even. And yet, even quantum physics would tell us that there is a field where all possibility (including knowledge) exits in potential form.

If this is so, wouldn’t it make sense that some of us could be so attuned as to be able to receive the infinite wisdom and knowledge that is available to us through that very same field?

What I’m talking about is different from information. Different from memorizing something. Different from being told something and believing it. What I’m talking about here is as different as reading about how to play the game of tennis, as opposed to being a master player. One is a bunch of thoughts and detached from experience. One is fully embodied and experienced on all levels. One is a surface approach. One is known at the cellular level.

There is a kind of deeper knowing that is available to all of us. This includes, but is far vaster then, what our intellect is capable of. But because of the strong hold that the intellect has on us, because of a culture that prizes the rational mind above all else, we have boxed ourselves out of the vastness of who we are. We have excluded ourselves from the possibilities available to us when we avail ourselves of Something More than what the rational mind thinks it knows. All that we are so sure of. All that seems so solid and true to us, is but a speck of dust as compared to what is available.

This is where Nature comes in. She can help us unlearn the limitations and blindspots of the rational, and often closed off mind that we have imposed upon ourselves. With a more open mind, there is no way you can be standing in the magic and mystery of a snow covered forest and not sense there is Something More. No way you can see everything around you and not know that you are but a speck in some vast Universe.

But it doesn’t end there.

When you can feel the speck that you are, you open to the Truth: Every speck is also the Universe itself, and therefore, has access to Everything that the Universe has to offer.

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Find Your Center

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It’s hard to know what to write about at this time of year that doesn’t sound like a platitude. That doesn’t ring hollow. Or that doesn’t inflict some burden on us that we should be experiencing things in a certain way, when maybe we’re not. But as it goes whenever I’m in short supply of what to write about, a real gem dropped into my lap. A yoga teacher I love said something this week that feels like an enduring approach to a life well-lived. No matter the times. What she said was this:

“Locate your center. Move from there.”

At the time she was offering an instruction for a particular posture we were in; guiding us to go into the core of the body as a starting place before reaching out through the limbs. But as all great guidance goes, this sentiment can be applied to all the areas of our lives; helping us navigate through times that may feel confusing, triggering or overwhelming.

In life, locating your center, is all about starting with yourself exactly as you are. There is no reminder here to be grateful or to see things in any particular way. No instruction to rise above anything. Instead, it’s about knowing where you are, and anchoring yourself into the core of yourself before you reach out into the world.

This is different from believing you need to show up in a certain way. Different from expecting yourself to feel a certain way. Different from needing to measure up to some internal or external standard around how you must meet the times.

Instead, this is a moment to moment call to return to yourself over and over again, and to step forward from there. To speak from there. To act from there. To go in before you go out. No external instructions to tell you how to be or feel or act because when you go in before you go out, you connect to wisdom that is eternal, along with a clarity that transcends party lines, political correctness and social niceties.

And it is as simple as asking yourself, “”What is here for me at this moment, and can I be with it?” Whatever it is. Not as a way to indulge anything. Or to judge anything. Or to feel guilty about anything. But instead, a kind of going into yourself that allows for an honest recognition of what it is you find at the center of yourself. It is from there you are able to authentically, powerfully and respectfully step forward.

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The “Easy Steps” Trap

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I was listening to a podcast recently around Wholistic Health and Healing. An orientation which I find to be a real and true inclusion of, and alignment with, who we are and what we need in order to be well. A way of considering everything that needs to be considered in the service of greater wellness and well-being. An “all of us gets to be tended to” kind of mentality.

I’m all in.

But at one point, the author began to outline his steps for how to get there, and I was once again struck by the dilemma we all face. That being, how to engage with the particulars of what needs doing for health and healing, without reducing it down to a formula. A kind of one-size-fits-all approach that pervades so much of how we think about what it takes to care for ourselves.

As I listened, I felt a desperate part of me want to subscribe to the steps being offered. The ones I was being told would insure my health and well-being. A kind of guarantee and well laid out plan that if I just followed it, all would be well. But then right beside this grasping desperation, I felt a deep rumbling around something else.

Around what it is I know to be true.

I began to think back on some of the most influential moments of my life when it came to caring for myself. They never came neatly packaged. As a matter of fact, every single authentic and lasting shift I have ever experienced in regard to self-care, health and healing (or really anything else for that matter), always started by admitting how awful things were.

Always began with me feeling how deeply I was suffering, and how fed up with business as usual I was. Done with the way I was treating myself. A change that was always initiated by some part of me having gotten so sick and tired of what I was doing, that I was ready to open myself up to what I had been previously closed off to. Maybe it was a knowing I had been ignoring. Maybe it was a fear I couldn’t address. Maybe it was a worn out habit I hadn’t been able to put aside.

Whatever it was that I was ready to open to, it ultimately carried me out of being separate from myself and the choices I was making, and right into the Truth of whatever I was experiencing. This is what took me to the “answer” or to the “formula” I had been seeking. Only now, instead of it being a hollow version of what someone else said I needed to do, it came from the deepest of wisdoms. A place born out of the suffering being felt, recognized, honored, and ultimately, transmuted.

Answers not delivered by another in some neat little package, but ones that emerged out of the messiness of giving birth to the Truth of my experience.

But of course, this requires being with what hurts. What is uncomfortable. What is messy, embarassing, scary and more. All things we typically choose to avoid. But all things that also carry with them the catalytic power of going from illness to well-being. No matter the specific outcome.

Which is why instead of going down the road of the promise of the quick and easy formula, we would be well served instead to pause for just a moment to notice that part of ourselves that wants the neatly laid out package, while learning to be more committed to the messages the suffering is sending.

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A New Day

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Since the time change, I’ve been up well before dawn. It’s not my usual routine. But I’ve felt such a draw to being up to watch the day come in, that I’ve just been going with it. Every morning something unexpected happens; from deep insights about Life, to amazing encounters with Nature.

One morning, as I watched the sky turn into the most amazing gold and rose tones, all streaking across my view, it occurred to me that this was A New Day. Not in the obvious sense, as in, not yesterday, but in the largest sense of all. A brand new opportunity to be alive. A chance to do my life anew. An offer to experience what I have never experienced before.

A blank slate where anything and everything, could happen. A moment in time where I knew that that “anything and everything” possible was all up to me. And it felt good. 

But of course, the reason we don’t experience A New Day is because we think, speak and do in the same ways over and over and over again. Every single day. Our reactions to what Life brings us? The same. The words we use to talk to ourselves? The same. The habits we engage in? The same.

The enemy of A New Day will always be the refusal to let go of what we’ve been doing. In effect, the unwillingness to reconsider ourselves and our beliefs. And it will always be our fear of the unknown. Of not knowing what is going to happen. Which is why we so often double-down on what we have always done. Especially when things in our life or in the outer world get shaky, chaotic or frightening.

But as we find ourselves in such accelerated times of change, something more than just doing what we have always done, is being called for. That something more is surrender. A yielding to the Reality of the moment that has nothing to do with anything other than moving with What Is.

Just as the leaves are doing now as they release effortlessly to the season in their complete and total alignment with What Is.

We will move through many, many seasons in the years to come. Shall we act as if there is only one season? Or will we open ourselves to meeting what comes without resistance? And while many of our minds might go to a kind of “grinning and bearing it” mentality, a kind of hunkering down or sucking it up, this state of mind will never suffice. It will never be big enough to hold the possibility of A New Day. Nothing about “hanging on for the ride” will ever be magnificent enough to take our lives into a New Dawn.

If this lands, each morning as you start your day, offer up as a sacrifice your old self and your old ways. Speak to the dawn a prayer for What Might Be.

 

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The Great Balancing Act

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There is a principle in Ayurveda, the 5000 year old tradition of health and healing in India that says: Opposites Balance.

Personally, I can think of no greater medicine for the times we’re living in where polarization with its black and white thinking leaves many of us stuck on one side or the other. So like a seesaw weighted down on one end with a boulder, the natural flow back and forth between the two sides grinds to a halt.

If you ever had that experience as a kid, being the one stuck up at the top of the seesaw with the other kid taunting you and wielding their power to keep you from moving, you know it doesn’t feel good. You might remember the frustration and the sense of disempowerment. More to the point, it never felt natural because there was no opportunity for balance. No chance to weigh in from your side.

No chance for that one brief incredible moment where the two sides come into perfect balance with absolute joy being the outcome.The ultimate and perfect expression of opposites balancing.

For despite all of the ways we might have wanted to be the one controlling the seesaw, maybe keeping the other kid stuck at one end, you just couldn’t deny what it felt like to be in perfect balanced harmony with another. That feeling of flow back and forth between the two sides. If you remember the experience, you remember there was always a choice at some moment. To go for the imbalance and the lording over, or to go for the balance.

And so we find ourselves at that same tipping point now as grown-ups. Will we go for what brings in greater balance? Or will we add our voice to further the imbalance? This choice point is where our power lies and where we have the capacity to move the world into a place where the opposites bring in harmony instead of entrenchment. This is a moment in time to decide who you will be in this process. The one who includes the opposites in the service of balance? Or the one who puts a boulder down on your side?

It does require great courage to not get mired down in your side of things. It does call for immense tolerance to set aside your personal thrill and adrenaline rush of pushing something to its extreme at the expense of another. Great foresight to do what you can do to create that moment where the two sides come into natural and joyful balance.

All of this is as close to you as your next decision. Your next comment. Your next post. Your next characterization. Your next expression of emotion. Make no mistake about it, you are not separate from what you see out there. You are contributing to it, or not. When we allow ourselves to know this, we get up close and personal with ourselves and our choices, as opposed to believing it’s all happening “out there” beyond our control. For when we can come to admit that what hangs in the balance is how it feels to be alive and how it feels to be living in our world with those on “the other side” of the seesaw, there is only one conclusion we can ever come to:

The choice is always ours to make.

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Changing Yourself

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There has been logging going on across the road from us for weeks. The noise is loud. And it’s constant. Often, it serves as an annoying, nervous system jangling back drop for an entire day. So when one morning this week, I’m sitting outside in meditation and it hasn’t yet started, I feel so grateful. At the same time, I feel anxious, wondering when, at any moment, it will start back up and turn this perfectly beautiful quiet morning into what will feel like an unwanted intrusion.

It was right then, that I became aware of something I aspire to: To be in the world as it is. To be accepting of the reality of the moment; blaming no one and nothing for my personal discomfort. I’ve had enough experience with this to know that when I can accept things as they are, everything changes. From this place, I am no longer at war with either myself or the world. And possibilities I didn’t even know existed, open up to me.

When all of this dropped into my mind, a quote I haven’t thought of in a very long time came to me. It’s from Leo Tolstoy and it goes like this: “Everyone thinks of changing the world, but no one thinks of changing himself.”

Why is that?

Because of how hard it is. Because we haven’t been taught this perspective. Because it’s easier to blame someone or something else for your misery. Because that’s how we gather in ways large and small; from friendships to political affiliations. Because accusing someone else is the way that the war machine works. And because this mentality is so entrenched in us culturally, that we take it for truth.

It is the largest personal leap you will ever take to go from believing that the world determines your peace of mind, to knowing that you and you alone carry that sacred responsibility. It is utterly and completely an inside job to make the commitment that no matter what is happening all around you, you will learn to do two things: Say “Yes” to what is happening. Claim radical responsibility for your response.

This doesn’t mean you like or agree with what is happening. Nor does it mean you don’t get to have your reactions. Instead, it means admitting that something is here and then becoming aware of how you feel about it without projecting your feelings onto anyone or anything.

Not easy to do, but oh so worth it when you begin to understand that the way out of everything we are experiencing collectively is to work through all the ways you won’t see honestly what is happening. To work out owning all of your blind posts, triggers, expectations and projections.

And it all begins by saying “yes” to what is happening and then wondering why you feel the way you do about it. This is the royal road to changing yourself, and by extension, the world.

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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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