Author Archives: Susan McNamara

2020

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They say that hindsight is 2020. They also say that what we do not learn from the past, we are doomed to repeat. And as a yoga teacher I love recently said, “We need to wrap things up in order to unwrap their meaning.”

Here we are at the threshold of a New Year. One deeply imprinted by an arduous and demanding past year. How we navigate transitions is always important. But perhaps this year that truism is more relevant than ever? If that’s so, it bears spending some time “wrapping up” what has been, so that we can step forward wisely shaped by what we discover. Not an easy thing to do. Especially as we still find ourselves inside of the ripple effects of something so wide sweeping in its impact.

And yet, step forward we must.

Transitions can be many things. They can be smooth. And they can be perilous. They can be welcome or not. Known or unknown. Isolating or community building. Within our control and beyond our control. How then can we influence how it will go?

By remembering that Life comes and goes, ebbs and flows, and not by our design alone.

One of the things I have come to deeply appreciate and acknowledge in my own life are the ways in which the very worst of my life has built me into the woman I am today. Experiences that viewed now through the perspective of time, maturation, and a steady choice to accept more and more of what Life brings, has brought me to not just accept what I did not want, what I felt hurt me, what I felt should never have happened to me, but to the very powerful recognition of the absolute necessity of it All.

It has been nothing short of Grace to learn how to include it all. Taking me from a refusal, to a begrudging acceptance, to forgiveness, to a place where there is nothing to forgive. Because it was all, always, exactly as it was meant to be. That being, that “All things are equal under creation.” While it might seem utter madness to say that anything that happens is equal to anything else, it is for sure the way out of suffering. Of fighting. Of blaming. Of trying to control Life to show up on your terms.

With that said, if it were years from now, and you were in a place where you no longer felt overwhelmed, afraid, frustrated or anxious by what has been happening this past year, what would you know to be true? What learnings about yourself and how the world works have occurred that only could have happened through an experience this big? And this unwelcome.

And if it were true…If the painful was the same as the pleasurable. The difficult the same as the easy. The unwanted the same as the wanted. What gift could you unwrap for yourself by wrapping up any of the ways that you have refused what this past year has brought? What might you have received that you could not have gotten otherwise?

And what would it require of you to take that knowing into this next year?

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Memory

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We memorize ourselves into existence. And we do this through all that has come before; giving us a sense of solidness and known-ness. A kind of comfort and stability that comes with years and years of thinking and doing our lives in the same way, leaving us in the position to say “This is who I am.”

And as much as we all desire this place, it is ultimately limiting.

For what if there was something more? Something beyond what you were told, and what you now go on to tell yourself? Something that somewhere deep down inside you yearn for? More to the point: You Are. Or could be.

It would mean, of course, learning to know yourself as more than the familiar concepts and constructs. And it would mean taking a chance. A big one. It would mean being curious and open. Brave and alive. It would mean being nothing less than who you truly are.

But given the filled-to-the-brim and fast pace of so many of our lives, this can be all too difficult to tune into, never mind respond to. Luckily though, we are in the season that knows all about this. Winter. The deepest, stillest and most essential of all the seasons is right at our finger tips. And if we can learn to align with this powerful rhythm, we will be naturally drawn into its downward and inward ways.

Try being with this kind of energy for just one minute each day throughout the long winter months ahead. You can do it by intentionally sitting yourself down and allowing yourself to be. As you are. Do not try and do anything to yourself. Do not look to fix. Do not even move. And when you feel a settling all the way down to your bones, wonder gently to yourself about your relationship to nothing-ness, stillness, and quiet.

At first it can feel like a kind of death; some kind of intolerable exercise in the painful. And it is. But if you look deeply enough, what is dying are all of the things that get in the way. What is dying is the noise. What is dying are the ways we have memorized the wrong things about who and what we are.

I think the reason that winter can feel so long to us, is because of all that it asks. Because of the way that it calls for a kind of reckoning. And because it can leave us crawling our way to the end. For sure it is a task master. But it is one that will gift those courageous enough to be with her, with many, many insights and blessings for years to come.

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“Just Because”

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Do you ever do anything just because? We used to. As a matter of fact, many of us used to do it regularly when we were children. As in, just because it felt good. Just because the urge arose. Just because something bubbled straight up out of us in the moment. No reason. No explanation.

Everything does not require a reason. An agenda. A goal. Not everything is an opportunity to get ahead or to spin ourselves in a certain way. Take giving for instance. Do you ever give just because? Not in order to receive anything in return. Not because you have to, or because you think you should. Not because you are expected to or because it makes you a good person in your eyes, or in the eyes of another.

But just because. Like a child who has created something, and was thinking of you in the making.

This is not easy to do. We all have our ideas, hang-ups, and habits around what it means to give. Maybe you do it as a way to keep people close. Or keep others from rejecting you. Maybe it is how you feel good about yourself, or somehow superior to others. Maybe you do it to satisfy what you will not give to yourself. Maybe you do it in the hope that your gesture will be reciprocated. All of it creating an ends to a means where the true spirit of giving gets obscured.

In the season of the often loaded nature of gift-giving, and amidst all of the confusion and unconsciousness that can surround why we give, what would it be like to get more clear on why and how you give? Would it mean spending less? Obsessing less about the price of the gift and what it means about how you feel towards the recipient? Would it mean opting out all together, or partially, or creating a new tradition as a way to choose something more authentic?

It has long been a source of sadness to me to know that the average family will spend to such an extent at this time of year, that they will spend the next year trying to pay off the debt. Only to clear it just in time to start all over again. This does not seem like generosity or love, but instead a kind of insanity based on some very warped ideas around what giving is.

Notice yourself as you make choices around giving. What qualities are present for you? Pay attention to the feeling you are having in the purchase, the anticipation of, and then the moment of giving. The thoughts and feelings you are having are an important piece of information; giving you clues about when you are coming from the “just because” place of a child, and when you are coming from obligation, resentment, conditioning, debt and the like.

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Sense Care

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I am in an Ayurvedic training where I am learning about the the ancient system of Indian health and healing. Right now I am steeped in an area Ayurveda calls “sense care.” This includes a paradigm, practices, and ways of being that recognize the essential role that our five senses play in physical health and psychological well-being. It is an understanding and a deep respect for the powerful impressions that get made on us based on what we take in from our environments through our senses.

Think about it like food for the mind and the body that comes in through the five doorways of hearing, sight, touch, taste and smell. With the information that comes in possessing the power to either nourish or starve. Uplift or degrade. Bring balance or chaos. Calm or unrest. Healing or disease.

With this as a recent and welcomed back drop to how I am experiencing the world, I cannot stop thinking about the children. The ones who are coming up now in The Age of Technology. The ones whose senses, particularly sight and hearing, are literally being assaulted, obliterated, violated and distorted. Innocence stolen. Minds overrun with harmful images and messages. Insidious impressions weaseling their way into our children’s minds and bodies. With all of what they are taking in setting the standard for what it means to be fed.

Maybe you think I am overdoing it?

Well, how about the statistic that recently made its way to me that says that two thirds of our 7 year-olds have already seen porn? Need I say more? Once a child has taken in that level of sense impression, and at such a young and tender age, where does it go? What does it do to them? How does that not foul a once open, curious and pristine mind? How does that one ever get undone?

I’ll tell you how. It doesn’t. It does not get undone.

One has to begin to wonder what this is doing to their vision. And I mean this in the broadest sense; as in what their life and the life of the world looks like to them looking through the images they are receiving across a screen. And what of their precious hearing? What is all of this training them to listen to? And for. Could this be part of the reason that the generations coming up now are so riddled with so much anxiety? For the truth is, the words and images that our children take in matter. A lot. Far more than is currently being recognized and addressed.

And while I am rolling out the big guns here with the porn, there are countless and daily examples of how our children’s senses are being overwhelmed. Examples large and small, seen and unseen, idiotic and damaging. Don’t take my word for it. Just pick up your own head and look around.

When a human being is young, the predominant brain wave states that they are in are highly suggestible. Makes sense, right? We want the young of our species to be moved by, informed by and molded by the environment that they find themselves in. We want them to learn based on what they are ingesting via the experiences of the world around them.

And for a very long time this made sense. It made perfect sense when we were being shaped by a natural world. But now that the predominant experience of our young is coming more and more from something man-made, and by something that is far too often a very disturbed representation of what man can make, our children are in trouble. For they do not yet possess the essential defense mechanisms, cognitive maturity, nor coping skills to sort through and make sense of what is coming in. Instead, it all just goes in.

Can you imagine it? Can you imagine all of the images and the words that our little ones are ingesting now that have absolutely nothing to do with health or beauty or truth or love? Everything, literally everything, that they take in is shaping and forming them. What if we really, really knew this? And what if we acted on their behalf as the gatekeepers who kept  out what is not fit for the innocent eyes and open ears of a child?

Common sense around the senses would dictate that we would never want to expose our children to what is harsh, frightening, overwhelming, or just overall beyond their ability to digest. To come back to our food connection, would we give a steak, alcohol, cocaine or soda to a newborn? We would not because we understand that it is beyond their capacity to handle, and with certain inputs, even dangerous. That any of these things would only harm them, even if they were not inherently problematic to a more mature being. But too often, we are assuming that something is fine for our children based on looking at it through the eyes of an adult with a developed brain. But this has got nothing to do with what children actually need.

Look through their eyes. Listen through their ears. Sense through the heart. Then decide.

 

 

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Strength Beneath The Surface

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I want to talk about winter and why I love it so. I want to talk about it through the walk I took this morning after a two day snow storm, that had dumped upwards of two feet, was finally over. And I can sum it all up in two words: depth and stillness.

As I stepped out onto the road, the hush that came through the snowy cushioning on the trees and on the road was palpable. More than palpable, I could feel it to the depths of me. I felt it in the sound my boots made as they met the un-plowed road, and I felt in the quiet of the forest with animals hunkered down and un-moving. The power of this cushioning came into full relief when I did not even hear the car that had come up behind me. Even with a big, weighty, noisy machine, winter and its ways had dampened and subdued its impact. It is times like this when I almost have the feeling of traveling under water. Of moving at the bottom of a big, white, beautiful ocean of space and stillness.

And then there are the trees, and the way that you can see right through them. The space that opens up once the foliage is gone, offering the opportunity to see right down to the bone. Both inside and out. And the way that the sound then both travels differently, and is lessened; giving rise to a feeling of immense spaciousness both within and without.

At my turnaround point, I laid down in the road. It was so still. And this is why I do it. Why I make it a point to get outside all through the winter. For out of that stillness comes healing, creativity, inspiration and a deep, deep knowing beyond the push-pull of the mind. Beyond the inner and outer expectations. Beyond the noise of the world.

Align. Align with this energy and watch what happens. There is a reason for phrases like “winter wonderland.” A reason for why we have stories that talk of the magic that only comes out of deep and wintery places.

In the room where I do my daily practice, the wall behind where the wood stove will go has not yet been finished with the stone that will eventually cover it. Today, sitting on my mat after my walk, I looked up to read the words, “Strength Beneath The Surface.” And while this is the motto for the drywall company, in that moment I knew it was also the motto for winter. For that is what resides in the roots; beyond the dressing of the foliage and beyond the activity of doing. A kind of deep, still, quiet strength that can only make its way to the surface when we choose to align with the depth and stillness of winter.

What would it be like for you to take a cue from this season and all that it knows?

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A Sacred Act

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We all know we are in a season identified in our culture as a time of giving. But what about receiving? For without this end of the equation, something that has been given cannot find a place to call home. It cannot land and be welcomed in. It cannot be expressed in any kind of a meaningful way.

It is interesting to note then how much emphasis gets placed on the one giving, along with what and how much is given. And then there is the built-in hierarchy where the giver gets the loftier position than that of the receiver. We focus on the generosity of the donor; the one who is doing for others. We even have award ceremonies where we single out, and celebrate the most generous among us. The message being; these are the truly gifted ones.

But there is no giving, no generosity possible without the receiving. Without the magnanimity of the one opening themselves up, often even submitting or surrendering, in order to receive. There is no generosity of the giver possible without the full and equal generosity of the receiver. So where are the award ceremonies for those of us who excel at receiving? No where to be found actually. Instead, those that are on the receiving side of the equation sometimes hold the undesirable position of being seen as “less than;” evoking pity, contempt, suspicion, superiority, and more.

To receive is to permit to enter. It is to take in. It is to welcome, to greet, to accept, and to serve as a receptacle for. When viewed from this perspective, receiving is a holy act. A sacred exchange that requires both sides. And this is true whether we are talking about our relationship with All That Is or what happens between us and other people in interactions large and small, visible and invisible, easy and difficult.

So how about it? What would it take for you to see the precious nature of receiving? More to the point, what could you start doing about that? Does it require a change of heart? Of identity? Of habit? Whatever it calls for, one thing is certain; for many of us, receiving can be far more difficult than giving will ever be.

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Unsubscribing

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In the span of one week, I unsubscribed from two newsletters, and bowed out of an online group. I had signed up for the newsletters because I was interested in learning more from these two people. However, one bombarded me so often with so many tips about living better that it would have made me sick just to keep up with the sheer volume of suggestions. The other newsletter turned out to always be selling me something, hard, and all under the guise of ancient wisdom. It was gross, exhausting and deeply unsatisfying to wade through.

Then there was the online group. In theory, it seemed like a good match. But ultimately, I decided that it fell short of what I actually need and most yearn for when it comes to community. That being, person to person contact in real time; gathering over something meaningful and significant with people I value.

While you would never know it to look around you, this is the season for slowing down, doing less, and perhaps most importantly of all, cutting away what weighs you down. This is the time for turning inward, reflecting, thinking deeper thoughts, and living more simply. It is the time of naked trees, root health and bare essence.

But who could possibly find their way there in the midst of the buying, the shopping, and the keeping up? Always the keeping up.

Which is why, despite my typically clear boundaries around my inbox, I had signed up for the newsletters and online group. I wanted to keep up in the areas I am passionate about and find inspiring. Areas I want to be proficient in for myself and those I work with. Only, these days even the “healthy” stuff, the inspiring words, the worthwhile topics, the must-sees can be a source of overwhelm. A false reflection of how you are not keeping up. A false reminder that you are not enough, not doing enough, and that other people are more together than you are.

Long ago I read something from a famous sage who said that you do not need to know everything. You just need to make use of what you do know. Can you imagine that as your guiding light in the Information Age? In a world enchanted by volume? Can you imagine choosing for what you can actually digest and make use of? To actively and consciously choose to know “less”? As in less is more.

What if, for the next several months, until the first growth, smells and movement of springtime, you just didn’t. Didn’t try and stay up to date. Didn’t try and keep up. Didn’t. Didn’t. Didn’t. But instead, chose to watch Nature and her quiet, inward and simple winter ways.

And if you would like to put this into action, what could you unsubscribe to?

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Fact-Finding

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As part of a training I am in, a group of us shared an experience of looking at a cup and saucer; naming out loud what was factual about what was before us. On the surface, it seems like such an easy, obvious and simple exercise. As in, it was small. But small in relation to what? You would be amazed by how many of the comments made were not actual facts, but instead interpretations. Going even deeper, interpretations based on who was doing the interpreting. It was eye-opening to see the array of projections and perspectives that could be laid onto an inanimate object; one that would ostensibly have very little charge in the life of a human being. It was after all, just a cup and saucer.

It got me to thinking that if that level of “story” could be imposed on something inanimate, what are we doing with and to ourselves and others where the stakes are higher, the emotions run deeper, and where the need for things to be a certain way is a whole lot more intense. Because this so peaked my interest, at the end of the day when we had to choose something to work on for homework, this is what I chose; to fact-find in my relationships with myself and others. And as is so often the case, I had no idea how deep this one would go.

For instance, when I am fact-finding, I see that person’s face has changed expression. I feel a tightness in my gut. I notice the thought that says I have done something wrong. This is different than assuming what that other person is thinking, different than ignoring the sensation in my belly, and definitely different than jumping to “I am wrong” as opposed to I am having a thought that says“I have done something wrong.” Just a thought, and nothing more than that. No, “I am wrong.” No, “That person is awful for making me feel this way.” No needing to be in a bad mood or think less of myself when I am staying with the facts.

Try it for yourself. When something is disturbing you, can you take a step back and label what is there as plainly and directly as you could say that the cup has a chip in it? As in, “I see…I feel…I notice…” whatever is there? And then hardest of all, put a period at the end of that sentence; letting it stand as is, with the facts, versus an assumption, projection, or interpretation coloring what is actually there. Easy to say, yet so much more difficult to do in practice given how many of our interpretations are based on the past, as opposed to what is actually before us.

It has been amazing this past week to stand in front of more than 40 college students, all doing whatever they are doing, showing up however they are showing up, participating however they are participating, and to be ever more aware of the spin I will put on what they are doing. Or not doing. And how often that spin is because I want things to be different. Further yet, where I need things to be different so that I can be OK. What a terrible predicament to put myself in. Basing my life on what others are, or are not doing; based not in fact, but in my need to perceive things a certain way.

When we are established in the Truth of who and what we are, and when we are established in the Truth of the moment, everything else takes care of itself. Not only that, but everything, absolutely everything, gets to be exactly what it is, as is.

And isn’t this precisely what we all most long for? The space to be, and to be seen, for who we are? As we are.

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Tricky Footing

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I am on a run in the woods traveling down a trail covered in leaves. Beneath the leaves are lots of acorns and loose rock. I keep stumbling over and over again in this one particular section, almost falling flat on my face several times, before I recognize that I am actually, not there. Not in my body. Not on the trail. But elsewhere, in my mind. And it takes all the near misses of falling down to recognize that there is a deep agitation inside my mind that is burning me up from the inside, and pulling me out of where I actually am. It is nothing short of pure hell to experience a mind on fire and a body left vacated. No wonder I can barely stay on my feet.

It occurs to me how essential it is that when we are navigating tricky terrain in our lives, (which I am, hence the burning mind), that is exactly the time we least want to go on autopilot. The time we least want to check out and go unaware. And yet, it is often exactly what we do and where we go when we do not want to feel what we are feeling. But the truth is, when the footing gets particularly tricky, difficult, and even “unbearable,” that is exactly when we most need to be where we are. When we most need to be in our body, fully within ourselves; seeing what we are seeing and feeling what we are feeling.

I recently heard a great teacher talk about how our attention is our most precious resource, and that one of the most powerful things we can do is to recognize when we are giving our attention away. How, why and when do you give your attention away? Worrying about the past or the future? What someone thinks of you? Financial fears? Ruminations about the body? Work to discover what it is that takes your attention away, and take it back. Whatever the cost. Whatever it is that you must give up or rework.

Claim your attention as the powerful force that it is to literally choose your happiness or unhappiness. Your health and well-being or your suffering. Your peace of mind or a kind of chaos within. Be where you are. Feel the ground beneath your feet. Your body is here. The Earth is here. This moment is here.The mind, on the other hand, may be anywhere, but here. And when that is so, work to get it back.

You might be thinking sounds good, but how do I do it? I’ll tell you what I did. Once I noticed what was going on, an attention to your thoughts always being the first step, I began to do two things. The first one was I began to feel and listen to the sound of my feet hitting the Earth. I felt the cold on my face. I tuned into my breathing and I began to focus on the sky and the trees. And when that wasn’t enough to cool the mind off, I began to talk to myself saying things like; “You have a choice, what do you want more; to feel like this or to do something else?”

To take your attention back requires a kind of presence on your part; a willingness to notice when your mind has taken off. And then what you need is an absolute, unshakeable accountability on your part for the thoughts you choose to keep and to the places where you give yourself away based on where your attention goes. And while there is no end to what grabs our attention away from us, away from what is real and true, away from the present moment, this is yours, and only yours to do.

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Taking & Leaving

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“Take what works for you, and leave the rest.” I find myself saying this to my college class as we begin to cover some more weighty and challenging topics. Just saying this goes a long way to bringing a sense of relief into the room. And permission. Permission to choose on behalf of what works. Permission to choose differently than what is currently being offered.

Have you noticed that despite all of the choices, and all of the information available to us, we often live as if we do not have the right to opt out? To choose to say “No?” To give ourselves the permission to say this is all that I can do? All that I want. All that I can handle. Leaving us far too often suffering under the weight that we need to be doing it all. Need to know it all. Need to be up to date on it all. And always, and in all ways, needing to be doing more. Ever-more.

In a time where we are consuming more information and content than we can healthfully make use of, can you imagine what your life would be like if you only took what you really needed or wanted, and left the rest? Can you imagine deciding for yourself when you had had enough?

It puts me in mind of an old Saturday Night Live skit where the scene opens invitingly to diners enjoying themselves at an “all you can eat” buffet. People are laughing, chatting and happily eating what they have chosen for food. The opening scene ends as the people naturally and easily let the wait staff know when they have had enough, and would like the check.

The next scene is cast in semi-darkness, where diners are bound to chairs while the wait staff forces enormous and unworkable amounts of food into their mouths. People are screaming, crying and trying to get away from the force feeding. But to no avail. Between the bondage, the screaming, and the mess being created, it presents as a kind of modern day hell made complete by the booming and ominous voice saying, “Not all you want to eat, all you can eat.”

I find parallels in this dark humor to what we are up against in The Age of Technology. That being, a kind of boundary-less imposition of something that in the right quantities, and under the right set of circumstances, would nourish. But that under the current conditions, creates suffering and overwhelm.

What would your life look like to take what you need, and leave the rest when it came to the use of the screen technologies, or anything else for that matter? What if your criteria became, “I will ingest only that which feeds and nourishes my mind, body and soul?” Only that which offers contentment and fulfillment. What then, would change around how you use what these times have to offer, if you actually started with how you felt and what you needed, in any given moment?

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