Author Archives: Susan McNamara

Reality Testing

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Reality Check: Something that clarifies or serves as a reminder of reality; often by correcting a misconception

Does worrying about others keep them safe?

Does worrying about getting sick keep you healthy?

Does fearing what you or another might be harboring keep us all safer?

Does fear and worry equal how much love and caring exists between us, or serve as proof that we are doing the right thing?

It really is as simple as that.

What’s difficult is letting go of the misconceptions that we individually and collectively harbor that distort Truth. What’s difficult is becoming aware of where we use the wrong things to keep us safe. What’s difficult is letting go of the fallacies that justify the wrong choices. What’s difficult is realizing what is within our control, and what is not.

What’s difficult is recognizing that when the worry and the obsessive fears arrive, it is never the time to give in to that “reality,” and always the time to ask a more penetrating question of the reality that begins with a capital “R.”

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Everything

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Everything. Absolutely everything is included. The stuff we want. The stuff we don’t want. What’s easy. What’s difficult. What’s known. What’s unknown. All of it.

Can you imagine it? Can you imagine claiming all of it? Giving space and recognition, voice and comfort to it all. That “All” being, everything that you experience in Life. Nothing omitted. Nothing to get past. Instead, a big, wild, effervescent, sometimes stinky, tapestry that you can call your own. Every single moment of every single day. All of what it is that makes up your Life.

Right from this moment on, right down to, and including, the last moment.

What if that actually was the choice (by the way, it is) that was before us at any given moment? The knowing that, as Tara Brach would say, “This too belongs.” This too belongs. As in, it all belongs. All of it. Every single bit of it. Nothing too ugly, shameful, painful, unwanted, difficult or disgusting to be here. And nothing too outrageous, wild, unkempt, fanciful or impossibly brilliant to be here.

But of course, this would take a commitment, and a kind of determination to no longer play the victim to your Life circumstances. To no longer believe and act as if you have no choice. To no longer leave your Life in the hands of something or someone else. To no longer abandon yourself because you do not like how you are feeling. Or what it is that is showing up.

Can you do it? Of course you can. Interestingly enough though, that is not the question. The question is, will you do it? Will you claim the totality of your Life? Beginning with, will you take ownership of, and responsibility for, what you are experiencing?

This is a tall order. This is something most of us have not been schooled in. Something most of us have not been given the skills to be with. Therefore, where to begin?

Begin at the beginning. Begin with one simple statement: “I commit to seeing everything I experience today as a necessary, loving and legitimate part of my life.” Knowing this then, the only sane response is to say “Yes” to what is here. Not to say I like it or want it, but instead to say out loud that I recognize this is, in fact, here. It is to say there must be a reason for whatever is here to be here, and I am open to knowing that reason.

Getting even more up close and personal: Instead of pushing you away, I am open to knowing why you are here for me. And I am committed to not succumbing to the belief that Life is against me, and you are opposed to me. That I am open to discovering what gifts you bring for my Life that I might not recognize as such unless I am willing to look differently. Gifts that I will never recognize when I am committed to being victimized by you. Gifts that I open to because that is what is here, and because there is a valid and good reason for it. Gifts I open to with no guarantees offered or expected.

Can we do it? Yes. Will we do it? Only you can say.

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Adaptation

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I am not sure who is credited with the “boiling frog” analogy, but it goes like this: It seems that if you take a beaker of water, bring it to a boil, and try to submerge a frog into it, the frog will fight with all of its might to get away. On the other hand, if you take a frog and place it in a beaker of water of comfortable temperature, and then ever so slowly increase the heat, the frog will make no attempt to escape.

It will remain where it is, without struggle, unto its very demise.

I have at times heard teachers refer to us humans as boiling frogs. The point being that because we are so very, very adaptable, we can and we will, literally adapt to anything. Even if it hurts. Even if it harms. Even if it is insane. Even if it falls short of filling real human needs. Even if it means distorting our experience to such an extent that we no longer even resemble a human being, and what it is that we actually need to live. Even if it is based in fear.

How are we capable of this? More to the point, why? Why would we let ourselves get to the point of boiling our lives away?

To understand this one is to recognize that there are as many answers to these questions as there are reasons to avoid reality. As there are reasons to deny truth. As there are reasons to continue on with what has been passed down to us. As many reasons as there are to maintain the habits and addictions we cling to. As many reasons as there are to belong at any cost. And as many reasons as there are to forgo personal responsibility and choice in the face of great upheaval.

Did you know that nothing in Nature intentionally harms or distorts itself? That nothing in Nature brings about its own demise due to alienation from its truest Nature? That nothing in Nature abdicates the edicts of its own Life, while bending to the demands of what is unnatural?

Be very, very careful around what you allow yourself to be boiled in regarding “The New Normal.” Be very, very careful around confusing what is normal, that which is “naturally occurring,” with what has become a norm, that which is “an authoritative standard.”

Instead of opting for yet another “New Abnormal,” could we use this time to get clear on what actually makes sense to each and every one of us? What it is that goes beyond fears, norms, external standards, and the need to belong at any cost.

If this makes any sense to you, try this: Get outside. Breathe the air in deeply. Connect to something in the Natural world. And then, check in with yourself asking: “If I were not so afraid right now, what would I know to be true? Listen way down deep for the answer. Then, “What would I need to act on this?”

Give this to yourself as often as you can.

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Power

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How much of what happens is because we are expecting it to happen?

 

Our minds are so very, very powerful. Powerful enough to heal our bodies with sugar pills and medically “faked” procedures. A mere suggestion from a doctor can take us to new health heights, or find us dead in exactly the amount of time we were “given” to live. And while this and more falls under the term “placebo effect,” it is so much more than that limited phrase suggests.

Likely you have heard of the placebo effect; described as being an experience where the brain convinces the body that a treatment not known to cure what is ailing you, somehow has the capacity to do so. Taking it further, maybe you have even had the experience where you were thinking something or feeling something in your mind so strongly that something happened in your body. Negative or positive. An experience where you created health or disease; “just” by a thought, “just” by an emotion.

The first time this ever happened to me I was in my mid 20’s and I was coming down with some kind of womping respiratory illness that I knew was going to leave me very sick. I knew it because the symptoms that were arising were the indicators of how I would typically get sick; having already gone through multiple bouts of bronchitis that would lay me up for weeks, and sometimes even months. At the time I had been going through an enormous amount of stress, and was very unhappy.

Somehow I convinced myself that what I needed most was a night of some hard core partying to blow out the deadly stress and difficult emotions that had been building up inside. I believed fully, absolutely and completely that a night of smoking and drinking was what I needed to set myself straight.

It worked.

To be clear, I am not suggesting that health depleting practices like getting drunk and filling the lungs with smoke is a remedy for respiratory health. What I am suggesting is that I so fully believed it that my body responded in kind. With my expectations somehow internally producing the exact combination of chemistry and more to render me well.

Expectations have an enormous impact and effect on bodily functions and systems. Our minds make a prediction about what is possible with our health, and then make it come true through our own internal pharmacies and healing processes.

This then begs the question: If we have something so powerful built right into us, why is this not the leading approach in all that we do around health and well-being? A timely corollary being: Do we continue to experience what we are experiencing now because the “expert” predictions, the very same ones that so many of our minds have taken to be true, are creating expectations in our minds that our bodies go on to fulfill?

Think about it.

What if all around us, we were bathing in messages that made use of this power instead of ingesting messages that predict, plan and expect for ill health? Can you imagine it? Can you imagine charting your own health in this way? Not easy. Not at all.

But so very, very possible.

(I highly recommend Joe Dispenza’s book, “You Are The Placebo”)

 

 

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Evolving

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A few years ago, I did a vision quest in the desert of New Mexico. The experience continues to reverberate; having sunk its beautiful fangs into me in such a way that I have been unable to deny the power of such an arduous and difficult experience. And while the acuteness of the difficulties I encountered there have subsided, the teachings have not. If anything, they have gotten stronger through the process of integrating them into my life. So that now, they no longer stick out as something I went through, something that happened to me, something that I survived. And are instead, a part of who I am and how I move though the world now.

The things that challenge. The things that bite. The things that hurt. The things that sting. Not necessarily any of the things any one of us wants. As a matter of fact, the unwanted and the unpleasant are all things we strive, often at whatever cost, to avoid.

Yet, they remain a part of Life nonetheless.

I once read that it is easy to appreciate the pleasing stuff, but that it is the biting stuff that forces us to think differently. That the things that sting are the very things that are the most profound in the lessons they impart.

I know this so well around wasps. I hate them. I fear them. I fight with them even when they are not actually around. I am outraged that they wind up in my home. I am indignant whenever they show up in unexpected places. Meaning places I believe they have no right to be; as in, on my porch when I am trying to read or relax.

In the midst of one of my all-time, all-out wars with them, I read that in some African cultures, wasps are a symbol of evolution and control over life’s circumstances. My first reaction was “What? Are you out of your mind?” And then… “Yes, of course.”

What a perfect reminder to me that there are things in Life that I can control. And things that I cannot. Thank God for that. Thank God that I cannot control the wasps. Thank God I cannot obliterate all the things that make me uncomfortable. Thank God I do not get to decide such things as what gets to be here and what does not. This one understanding alone is truly revolutionary.

And evolutionary.

Which takes us to one of the most necessary evolutions of humankind needing to happen. That being, to understand that we are not in charge of it all. To understand that everything that is here, belongs. Whether we like it or not. Whether we understand it or not. Whether we get our way or not.

The evolution at hand being to ultimately understand that we do not always get a say on what stays, and what goes.

To work with this is to stop fighting. It is to learn to know the difference between what is in our power and what is not. It is in a word, to say, “Yes.” And to recognize that to evolve requires integrating all of the experiences of Life into a narrative uplifting and meaningful enough to change you and how you move through the world.

To that end, can you find Truth and Power and Beauty in whatever is stinging you right now?

 

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Masks

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My husband and I are discussing the latest CDC recommendation to wear masks when out in public. It prompts a philosophical conversation around individual choice and belonging. In the end, my husband determines, that while personally he does not feel called to wear a mask, he would do it to “blend in.” 

Blending in.

Is this not the catch phrase for all of the things we as human beings do to not stick out, disturb or generate the “wrong” optics? Might this be precisely the most difficult of all dilemmas anyone of us will ever face who chooses to know themselves unto themselves?

To be clear, this is not a debate on the rightness or the wrongness of masks. Instead, it is an exploration around the nature of being an individual, a true and authentic individual, and what it means to belong from that place. As opposed to all of the shaving and distorting and acquiescing we do out of deep-seated fears around being shunned, shamed or left out. It is a hard look at all of the things each and every one of us does, every single day, to fit in. To avoid rocking the boat; garnering the disapproval of those around us.

To question your place in the scheme of things. To wonder what it means to be true to yourself. And then, to go on to do it all while remaining desirous of belonging is the making of not only a genuine and satisfying life, but it is absolutely the most essential stuff required for the making of a healthy, vibrant and flourishing community. For the truth is, there must be a challenge to the status quo. Otherwise our institutions, families, groups and communities wind up stale to fresh ideas, suffocating of individual expression and tyrannical and narrow-minded in structure and expectation.

Think for a moment. Who are your heroes? Your thought leaders? What would our world be like had even one of them not allowed their ideas and sensibilities to see the light of day? What would have been lost had any one of these true and unique individuals allowed the prevailing attitudes and customs of the times to squash what was unpopular, heretical or unfamiliar?

The challenging part here is that this is not a one-time choice. And there is no definitive response or line to be drawn that will hold true for all times and for all situations. This can leave it looking like there are no rules, and that therefore, the ways of the individual are undermining of the public good. This could not be further from the truth. For although the journey of the individual choosing authenticity may not always be recognizable to the group, or will not always look the same for everyone, there is one irrefutable truth you can count on.That being, that when an individual is truly choosing for their highest and best good, it will always, always, be in the highest and best good of all.

But for the group mind, the mind based on fear, consensus thinking and safety in numbers mentality, this can feel feel too unknown, too uncertain, too chaotic, too uncontrollable, and therefore too dangerous to consider. 

Why? Because we are talking about nothing less than people deciding their own minds. Nothing less than being unable to control or distort what is new, different, unfamiliar or downright opposed to how things are currently being done. Nothing less than getting comfortable with other people doing things differently than us and seeing it as a value. Nothing less than trusting our own process, along with the processes of those around us. Nothing less than full on faith and the recognition that when we support ourselves in our highest expression, while doing the same for those around us, ultimately, ultimately, we will get to the very best of who we are both individually and collectively.

But this will take time. And effort. And faith. And courage. And support. And it can only actually begin within and around us when we come to value our unique expressions right alongside our deep yearning and need to belong from that place, and that place only.

To wear a mask or not. On some deeply personal and communal level, is this not the question we are all faced with? And is this not an answer that each and every one of us must come to on our own?

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Meeting Up

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When my kids were younger, and then especially during the teen years, there would be times when they would offer up some hair brain scheme with great enthusiasm. With great justification around why it was such a good idea. With great hope, excitement  and even specific “well thought-out” plans around the soundness of what they were proposing.

Along with great denial around what my response would actually be.

At those times, I would sweetly respond to them by saying “Excuse me, have we met?” This was my comical, appropriate and parentally responsible way of saying, NO FUCKING WAY! Are you out of your mind? You surely must be to even think I would consider something like that. To which they would skulk off, knowing the conversation, and any further debate, was off the table. With the message being that what they were wanting was so absurd as to not even be worthy of further debate.

I loved it. It worked. It kept the relationship intact. It kept my sanity. And it kept the hierarchy of the relationship status in full view. As in who it was that was actually in charge of keeping things real. Supportive. Protective. And in line with what makes for a healthy response to Reality.

Which brings us to the point here. That being the challenge around meeting up with Reality with a capital “R” all on our own. The one we do not want to see. The one we do not want to be with. The very one we feel we cannot be with. The one we deny, distort and demand that it be other than it is. And the very same one that only by the Grace of Something More than us, Something Bigger than us, can we get back on track. That we can feel contained enough, guided enough and supported enough to turn and meet up with What Is. Despite our fears, denials and perhaps most of all, our lack of capacity and maturity.

Do you have this in your life? Some structure, some connection, some Presence that you recognize and honor as being more in the know than you are? As holding a far Greater Wisdom than your hair brained thoughts are capable of? Something Big enough to hold the feelings and the denials that you cannot be with? A Reflection that allows you to meet up with yourself as is, while holding you accountable to something more real?

If you have this, lean into it. If you don’t, open to it. There is no greater time than in the midst of widespread uncertainty than to find your way back into Something more mature than you. Something more knowing. Something with your best and long-term interests in mind. Something that would never, ever, allow you to go on, going in the wrong direction, unchecked.

To turn towards ourselves with some version of “Excuse me, have we met” when deranged thoughts and unhelpful feelings are running the show, is exactly the place to start. It is a choice that admits that our minds can so easily be deceived by the wrong ideas, and that what we most need to do is to submit to something bigger. Giving over, surrendering to, the healthiest of all developmental progressions that takes us from immaturity to maturity.

What if it is not about accessing more of your own crazy mind, or the crazy mind of those around you? And instead, everything to do with coming under the protective wing of Something that is not swayed by your lack of maturity and all of the immature demands and denials that emanate from that.

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Receiving Risk

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Not long ago, a practitioner asked me, “Could you receive what it is that you do not want to receive?” What? No! Are you out of your mind? What are you talking about? Why would you even say that to me? Why would I want to receive something I did not want? What a weird and disturbing thing to say to someone!

And yet, what a deeply, profound and truthful question to ask. I know now why she asked it. She was wondering how close to reality I could get without balking. Without denying what is there. Without trying to reconfigure the Truth of what stands before me. And she asked it because it is so. Because it is here. Because a willingness to receive what we do not want, and to find a way to be with it, maybe even make good use of it, is a big part of being alive in a healthy and satisfying way.

What we are talking about here are the risks and the conditions of being alive. Of the fact that there are no guarantees. No definites when it comes to how our lives will go. And even though, way down deep, each and every one of us knows this, we fight tooth and nail for it not to be so. In fact, we create lives, individually and collectively, based on the denial of the realities that stand before us.

The question I am asking myself now is, “Can I surrender and become the one who embraces it all?” Not because I want it. Not because I like it. Not because I hope what I do not want sticks around. Not because I am a masochist feeling the need to be punished. But because I have come to see that until I can fully and completely say “Yes” to what is before me, I cannot choose from a clear and balanced place. A place by the way, that because it includes it all, is the most reality-based, true to form, comprehensive assessment of what is actually happening. Warts and all. Including the unwanted.

This as opposed to choosing from fear and resistance. From a refusal to receive what is before you. From a place of trying to control what is not yours to control. For the Truth is, whenever we choose from denial, scarcity, fear, avoidance, control, resistance etc. we will always, always create unintended consequences, along with a whole set of  problems we never intended. Or saw coming.

It puts me in mind of a book I once read by a medical doctor called Less Medicine, More Health: 7 Assumptions That Drive Too Much Medical Care. The first assumption being that all risk cannot be eliminated, and that trying creates risks of its own. Which brings us to what is happening now. That being, the current obsession with sterility and how it is creating a world of unintended consequences in the form of increased devastation to the planet through the excessive and fear-driven use of resources. We see this in the forms of paper towels, disposable gloves, masks, cleaning supplies and more being consumed at volumes the earth will not be able to tolerate without repercussion.

As we attempt to control one risk and to quell our fears, we over-use anti-microbial products; imbalancing our personal, collective and earthly microbiomes. Those luscious, rich and delicately balanced universes of micro-organsims that cover our bodies and the body of the earth; serving as a protective layer and health-giving resource. Particularly for the immune system. And so, while we think we are doing one thing to protect ourselves, are we in fact potentially creating a “cure” far worse than the disease we are attempting to eradicate?

What of the increased use of water, disposable containers, and overall resource depletion as we wage a war on trying to eliminate one terrifying risk only to trade it for a host of other equally, or perhaps more terrifying sets of consequences? In our attempts to reduce one form of toxicity, we increase other toxicity levels on the planet through the use of bleach and other harsh and life-depleting chemicals. And now, after decades of lobbying and finally succeeding in getting plastic disposable bags out of the waste stream, they are back now because it has been determined that reusable bags pose a threat.

So even though the CDC states that while “it may be possible” for the virus to be spread through contact with objects or surfaces, “this is not thought to be the main way the virus spreads,” we can’t hear that. We can’t make that adjustment.

Back and forth, back and forth we yo-yo as a people. Trading one harm for another.

Where can we turn in times like this? How about to the hard core truths of existence? Those truths that lie at the heart of, and serve as the root of all else. Truths like the importance of each and every one of us learning how to manage our fears so that we do not create more harm through reactive and fear-based choices. Truths like we cannot control everything despite what we have to come to believe.

Biggest of all, could we learn to come to grips with the barest, harshest, truest and most precious of all realities? That being, that life has risks. That being alive is a delicate and risky business. And that facing our own mortality, while choosing to live as fully as we can is the greatest, sanest, safest, most honest and life-giving form of risk management that is available here on the planet.

 

 

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In Vogue

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Recently, I spoke with a man who told me, “I have been practicing “social distancing” forever. Finally, it’s in vogue.”

Where to begin with this one? Where to begin on where we, as social creatures, now find ourselves. Where to begin around what is accurate and necessary here given the times, and when it is that what we are choosing is serving to justify and solidify exactly the wrong perspectives and practices. Ones that in the end will leave us diminished in health and happiness and even, interestingly enough, less safe.

We mean so much to one another. So much, in fact, that it is what can hurt us the most. It is what can render us suspicious of intimacy in our relationships, and generate fears around strangers and those different from us; leaving us to believe that it is far easier, and safer, to opt out of being in social connection.

Our underlying and unrecognized fears around being hurt and unsafe, and of hurting one another are surfacing now with great intensity through the accelerated experience we are all going through with the virus. It can be so difficult to sort fact from fiction. To sort healthy precautions from choices that emanate from old wounds and distorted childhood survival programming, along with culturally condoned and made-up fears.

It is interesting, disturbing and ironic that out of all the words that we could have chosen to describe an approach to slow the spread of the virus between us, that we have somehow chosen “social distancing” to describe something we already do quite well now. It is as if it was just there waiting to be named. Waiting to justify the social disconnections increasing at an alarming rate through the distancing ways we use the screen technologies and our overly busy and distracted lives.

Only now, we have safety reasons to bring this into vogue. For who could possibly argue with keeping our distance now? Who could possibly argue with the sentiments that are sure to continue on long after this is over that is is far safer to “connect” via a screen, at a “safe” distance, than in person, because after all, who knows what will happen between us?

Whatever it is that we believe here or feel called to do at this time, let us never forget that caring touch heals. Let us never forget that close proximity, where we literally sense the breath and heart rate resonance of another, regulates our nervous system; insulating us against stress while supporting our immune functioning. Let us never forget that the research on social connections reveals that social isolation and alienation are as dangerous to our health as high blood pressure, high cholesterol and smoking. Let us never forget that those with the closest and most satisfying social bonds stay the healthiest, live the longest, and recover the fastest when ill.

Fears of being harmed. Fears of harming another. This is the dance we are all engaged in with one another, and at this moment in time, as our safety fears around others are being brought to the surface, we all have a choice. The virus has simply highlighted some things that have always been there. But the Truth is, we cannot afford to create any more distance between ourselves and others. We cannot afford more fear, mistrust or alienation. And we certainly cannot afford turning our relationships over to the machines, believing that that is what will keep us safe now.

What we do here matters. And not just over the spread of a virus. But over what it is that we will allow to take hold between us. What it is that we will allow to infect our minds about being in the presence of others. How we talk about this, the words we give it, all matter. A lot. Likely more than we know. Or maybe, are able to recognize given the fears we carry within.

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The Herd

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The herd has been spooked, and we are becoming ever-more afraid by the moment. More distrustful of others and what they may bring. More wary of contact. More suspicious of the benign.

As mammals, our herding behavior is built to insulate us against the dangers and stresses of Life. We are built by and for one another. To hold, nurture and protect each other during times of distress. It is our relationships with one another that heals the traumas of the past, bridges the terrors of the moment, and gives hope for the future.

Be very, very careful of where you let your mind go in these times for it can be felt and known by all of us. And like a barrel filled to the brink, it takes only one more drop to tip the barrel to overflowing. Therefore, choose the barrel you are filling carefully and wisely. For you may very well be the deciding drop to a world awash in fear. Or you may very well be the deciding drop for a world born anew with hope,Truth and possibility.

Never discount the role you play when it comes to the larger issues of the world. Just as one drop of ocean water contains, and is, the ocean itself, each and every one of us is the greater body of the world. Of the collective us. Of the direction our world will tip towards. Know the power of the part you play and choose your words, actions, thoughts and emotions accordingly. Nothing you do is insignificant. Nothing you do is separate from what is happening all around you.

Choose for hope, and then choose again. Choose for sanity, and then choose again. Choose for faith, and then choose again. Choose and choose and choose. Again and again. Ever-mindful of what you are choosing, and in all of the ways that your choices are rippling out, shaping and filling the mind of the one-bodied herd, and therefore our shared and collective reality.

What if just one thought by one of us could be the deciding vote? And what if that vote was yours, and yours alone?

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