Author Archives: Susan McNamara

Pick Your Hard

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I fast once a month. It’s hard. Even though I’ve been doing it for years, I start dreading my fast day the night before; fretting about how I’m going to be able to pass through the discomfort. And where I’m typically not hungry until around 11am, on a fasting day, I wake up hungry. Then, I stumble through what I need to get done as best as I can given how I’m feeling. Even though I know what to expect, it never seems to get easier.

This week, I heard someone say that whether you choose to take care of yourself or not, both are hard. So pick your hard. This flies in the face of the world we inhabit where we are constantly being steered towards doing what’s easy, what’s fast and what’s convenient. More to the point, we’ve been educated to believe that nothing has to be hard. We’re all supposed to feel good all the time. We’re all supposed to be winners.

Everyone gets a medal. Everyone finds a four leaf clover at Disney World. Everyone’s everything gets a pass these days because we don’t want anyone to feel excluded.

But here’s the thing, experiences in life that are difficult and that we find a way to meet and be strengthened by, give us something to be proud of. Give us a sense of who we are and what we are capable of. Give us an inner strength and grit to cleave to our values and what matters most in a world at a loss for both.

And that’s why I fast. Because it strengthens my resolve and my determination to remember and honor the preciousness of food. Because it serves as a counterbalance to all the excesses we are constantly being force-fed to indulge in. Because it reminds me of what I will do to keep myself in health.

It’s hard to have a long overdue conversation, and it’s hard to carry what is unresolved.

It’s hard to make changes in your life, and it’s hard to not feel good. 

It’s hard to take the time to discover what your offer to the world is, and it’s hard to work at a job you hate.

It’s hard to admit to the limitations of what you can and cannot influence, and it’s hard to try and control what you cannot control.

It’s hard to learn about who you are and what makes you tick, and it’s hard to live believing the wrong things about yourself. 

Pick your hard.

 

 

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Getting Stung In Life

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We got two new hives of bees this year. It’s been a nightmare. Since the very first day, they have been “overly” aggressive. I put that in quotes because I am quite sure that from their perspective, they are doing what they need to do. Nothing more, nothing less. But as someone trying to be in her garden, communing with nature and the bounty of the Earth, without being hounded or stung, it has felt over the top for me.

At times I have been outraged by this situation; threatening to others that I was going to set fire to them in the night and murder them all. I have rerouted my morning routines in an effort to placate them. I have avoided the garden and sent my husband, fully suited up in his bee suit, in my place. I have covered up, prayed, appealed to them in my mind and sent them love. All to no avail. They continue to do what they do, which sometimes means, stinging me.

All of this has left me with a hint of PTSD and a good dose of paranoia whenever I hear their telltale buzzing sound. It has even transferred over to my experience with the bumble bees who I get along with quite well; having no concern to be face to face with them when my head is poking around inside the flowers they are on while I am weeding.

Today, one of our bees landed on my basket of flowers while I was harvesting some fruit. I watched as the anticipation and fear of getting stung, again, welled up inside me. I looked around to see if there was more than one, having created of late in my mind, horror movie scenarios where hundred of them are attacking me.

There was only one. That gave me pause, and allowed me to see that with all of the stories I had in my mind each time they were around, or not, I was trapped inside a self-made hellish narrative where I was conjuring up fear before anything even happened.

We do this all the time. We anticipate all kinds of things we don’t want to happen; believing that our fears and worries will somehow prepare us. Will leave us in control. It’s all an illusion. Worse yet, our conjured fears rob us of the enjoyment of life and leave us with the impression that the world is an awful and dangerous place, and the best we can do is to clamp down on everything we are afraid of. Control it. Get rid of it. Make rules about it.

But to live a good life is to get stung sometimes. It is to face the fears of the moment that are born of the ghosts of the past. It is to recognize that it all gets to be here; the things we hate, the things we are afraid of, the things that offend us.

And so, when I add it all up, the getting stung against all of the angst I have created around this, getting stung is not such a big deal after all.

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Karma

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Recently, I heard a teacher say that to try and convince someone else of what you want for them, no matter how true or noble, is to take on their karma. Those words stopped me in my tracks, and left me feeling like I had stepped on a garden rake and gotten whacked in the face.

I began to think about all the times I had tried to get a person in my life to see something, or to want something. All the times I had tried to convince someone of something. Anything. All the times I had thought about how this person or that person, or the world in general, should do things differently. Do things the way I thought they should be done. And it didn’t matter one bit that I could justify to you that I only wanted what was best for them, when the truth is, I couldn’t bear what another was doing, for one reason or another.

Frankly, it was overwhelming to imagine taking on the karma of dozens, hundreds, even thousands or millions. Imagining myself weighing in on what all these people should or should not do. Want or not want. Believe or not believe. Sometimes having said it outright, while at other times thinking it.

This is something we all do. All the time. If you doubt this, watch how often you try and get someone to see things as you do, or try and get them to take your suggestion about how they should live their life. And it doesn’t even have to be about the big moments. It can be as “small” as what they “should” do about a difficult co-worker or whether or not they should buy something.

Watch how often you listen to the news or look out into the world and believe that you know better about what another person or group should or should not be doing.

And then, imagine taking on all of that karma. All the baggage, known and unknown to you and them, that goes with why and how they act as they do. All the karma around how they got to where they are now. All of their hurts, disappointments and dysfunctions. All of their projections, anger, blindspots and expectations. All of their insanity, fears and sadness. Even all of their past lives. Everything they need to account for, now becomes yours. Whoa.

It is so incredibly tricky when it comes to how we relate to others. So challenging to be in relationship without making what others do or do not do be about us. About our need to have them act a certain way so we can feel safe, connected and valued.

If this resonates and you want to join me, start by watching yourself in conversation with others. Catch yourself trying to convince someone of something, anything. For this to work though, you will have to be very, very good to yourself; as in not judging or shaming yourself when you see what it is that you are up to.

And when you do notice what’s happening, ask yourself, Do I want to take on this person’s karma? Do I really want to be responsible for how things turn out for them? And when you find yourself in a dynamic where another gladly hands over their choices to you about what they should do, run.

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Exactly What Or Who Is It That Needs Saving?

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I know we are all well aware of lots and lots of concerns, and even potential dangers, when it comes to what it happening to the Earth. I also know there are many ideas about how to proceed from doing not much at all, to regenerative approaches, to very intrusive and aggressive “solutions,” in our attempts to save the planet.

Personally, I would say we need to rethink the whole idea of saving the planet.

This is something I’ve been feeling for a long time now and it got touched off recently when I read the research our government is doing around solar engineering technology. In a nutshell, through the use of various technologies, the sun’s “harmful” rays are reflected back into the stratosphere.

My blood ran cold reading this as I began to wonder about the chain of events this could set in motion. Does it not occur to those in charge that directing the energy of one of the most powerful forces in the Universe back against itself and the rest of the solar system, might create something cataclysmic?

And as for the so-called “harmful” rays of the sun, how is this idea even in play given the life-giving influence the sun has on our planet? Without whose rays, we we would not be able to be here. Digging down further, does it make any sense whatsoever to interfere with something that is actually not even the problem?

But maybe that’s the point. Maybe this is another set of actions, strategies, initiatives and monetary outlays that keeps us from having to tangle with the most essential question of all. Is the sun our problem, or is it how we are living?

You would think given our illustrious history of disrupting the planet through DDT, glyphosate, GMO’s, deforestation and more, we might have learned something along the way about the consequences of our interventions. That we might have humbly learned to be the tiniest bit more cautious when it comes to our ideas about what can and cannot be controlled here on planet Earth.

Deepest of all questions, Are we once again refusing to address the root cause of what is happening? Of how it is that we have gotten to where we currently find ourselves? I think we refuse this question, because if we didn’t, there is only one conclusion we could possibly come to; the problem is us. It is us that needs the intervention. The planet does not need saving. We do.

I think the reason we are so overwrought with saving the planet is because it allows us to live in denial of our own actions. So like the family overly-focused on the behaviors of the addict, each person’s need to change goes unrecognized, and therefore undone.

But if you step back from all the denial, the fears, the arguments, the blame and the legislations, one thing is for sure: The planet will be just fine without us. She will go on. The real question is whether or not we will.

“Save the planet by saving yourself” is my motto.

In my experience, those of us who have learned how to “save” ourselves are those of us who have found greater balance within. People who know how to value and care for their own life, know how to value and care for the Life all around them. From this way of being there is no interfering with or trying to control anything. There is only a deep appreciation for Life in all its forms which goes on to serve as the basis for all decisions and actions taken in the world.

But here’s the catch: It’s way harder to save yourself than to save the planet. Far more difficult to roll up your sleeves and do the life-saving work on your own life. Way more strenuous to root out all the self-loathing, the disconnections and the misunderstandings and misuses of your own power that result in our current collective circumstances.

Maybe that’s why we don’t do it.

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Where Body & Mind Meet

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I was out on a run this morning with my husband, and I was struggling physically. Something has been off in my right ankle and it leaves my gait a little uncomfortable and a little wonky. Interestingly enough, the physical experience pales in comparison to the disruptions I was encountering in my mind.

I watched as my thoughts initially went to worst case scenarios. How I wouldn’t be able to run in an upcoming road race, or how I wouldn’t be able to hike next weekend. When that settled, it landed on a tsunami of explanations and justifications, all the things I was going to say to my husband after the run, about why I was running so slow.

Believe it or not, this is one of the main reasons that I love to be physical: Because of the opportunities it gives me to see just what my mind is up to under duress. What it does when things are not easy, comfortable or working out the way I need them to. So while we all know the benefits of moving the body, I think one of the unsung heroes here is the chance to get to know yourself at a very deep level.

What it is that you fear. Where you limit yourself. How often you compare yourself and what is happening to you against the expectations of others. I could go on and on about all the discoveries I have made over the years, but suffice to say, to move your body is to know yourself; in ways you will never access if you don’t challenge yourself, if you don’t get out of your own comfort zone, if you don’t discover that edge where body and mind meet.

I think we do everyone a disservice when we make moving our bodies a “have-to” based on avoiding some terrible outcome of disease and illness. In fact, look around. This approach is not working. Despite all of the information, and all of the admonitions around exercising more, we have never been more out of shape. Perhaps that is because, like so many things when it comes to how we are living, we are starting in the wrong place.

Instead of tapping into the depths of who we are and what we actually need, we get offered bubble gum versions of our lives and what is possible when what we need is a deeply nourishing perspective that includes the totality of who we are. One that goes beyond someone trying to sell us something. Or legislate something. Or scare us into something. Such small-minded approaches diminish the magnificence of who we are and what we deserve.

To be in your own body, and therefore with your own experience, and to move it according to your own inner urges, is to lay claim to your own sovereignty. It is to create a life based on assuming responsibility for your thoughts, your actions, and what it takes to live all of that into existence. It is a committed self-determination that says, “I will know my own mind and what it is that makes me tick.”

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Meaning & Purpose

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I’m reading a book where the author has just finished describing a study where more than half of us feel the work we do has no meaning. No purpose. That many of us believe what we do has no real use. With this comes all kinds of things from depression to disease to a sense of despair and worthlessness. And with all of this comes greater levels of unhappiness, addiction and vulnerability to looking for meaning in all the wrong places. To being prey for ways of coming together with others that offer purpose through harm. Like the KKK and other hate groups, getting into dangerous social media challenges, or being part of social trends based on peer pressure and the narrative du jour.

Right down the road we have a neighbor who when we first moved out here knocked on our door and asked if it would be okay to pick up the apples on the side of the road by our home. He went on to tell us that the tree the apples came from, a Baldwin, was an heirloom and likely over 100 years old. He waxed poetic about this being the best tasting and cooking apple there was.

At the time, I had no appreciation for any of this. Not only was I in over my head due to the big move we had just made, it didn’t feel natural to me to consider eating food off the land I was living on. I indulged him in the moment, and forgot about it all pretty quickly after he left.

Cut to twenty years later when that same tree died, leaving me grief-stricken over the loss. Over the years, I had come to anticipate and cherish its bloom that only came every other year. It was the apple of my children’s childhood, and a precious offering we shared with others.

For many years my neighbor tried grafting so he could propagate offspring from this ancient tree. It never took. Then I didn’t hear from him for a handful of years until the day I got a letter in the mail. He wrote that he had found other Baldwins and had successfully grafted them onto root stock, and was wondering if my husband and I would be willing to plant some of these tress on our land.

Besides our answer being a resounding yes, when he came up to bring the trees, it almost felt like we were adopting a baby from him. Not only did he have very clear conditions and instructions for the trees, he was very concerned about where they would go to insure they had a chance to survive the modernization of our world. At one point in the conversation, he told my husband he believed this was his purpose in life: To protect and continue the survival of this great tree.

This man is an exemplar of what it means to live with meaning and purpose. His actions were never based on what he was going to get out of all his efforts. His only drive being to answer a deep call from within. He is a wonderful living demonstration of how unique the expression of meaning and purpose can be in a person’s life. And my relationship to him and what I gained points to the unknowable and uncontrivable ripple effects our actions have on others when we find what we truly care about and live it all the way through.

None of this looks like, or “measures up to,” the criteria of our modern world where we have come to believe that for your life to have meaning and purpose, it must be about you and what you get. That you must have a million followers, that your efforts must be splashy, and that you must be ridiculously paid for what you offer to the world.

(The book I referenced is called The Psychology of Totalitarianism by Mattias Desmet)

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The Way Of The Visionary

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I am getting close to finishing an Energy Medicine training with The Four Winds Society, and while there has been so much I have learned, there have been a couple of teachings that have really stood out for me. One of which I would like to share here with you. That being, the power behind cultivating an orientation to Life that understands that we dream our world into being with what we think about, the quality of our emotions, and what it is that we repeat over and over again in our lives through what we say and do.

From the perspective of this tradition, dreaming the world into being is the way of the Visionary: The one who understands that the world is always showing us, always a reflection of, the quality and integrity of our internal states. Always mirroring to us the condition of our love and of our deepest intentions. As you can see, this has got nothing to do with what is “out there,” and everything to do with what is “in here.”

This is the opposite of the prevailing cultural attitudes and mandates that would say we have to go out there to make the changes we believe are necessary. The current paradigm would say we have to manage and control the behavior of others for us to feel safe. That we have to interfere with the ways of the natural world and other sovereign nations to make them come in line with our needs and ideologies. We can see this in the technologies being created to block the sun to avert climate disaster, the ways that we now believe we have a right to know other people’s health and medical choices so that we feel safe, along with all the ways that we interfere with other countries under the auspices of humanitarian involvement masking our less than agenda-free interests.

And while we would say that we must go outside of ourselves to fix, correct and change what we do not want, are afraid of, are not in line with our politics or are challenged by, is this the wisest course of action? Is it actually true that if we don’t do something “out there” that it will all fall into disarray? Or is this a mere projection out onto the world keeping us from dealing with what really needs to be dealt with? In other words, us, and the state of our own being.

With our focus on what needs to change “out there,” do we even know whether or not our actions are good and necessary ones? How could we even know the answer to this question if we are out of touch with our own inner workings around why we want what we want, or are afraid of what we are afraid of?

To have vision when it comes to what the world needs and would benefit from, is to first and foremost know yourself. What it is that makes you tick. What it is that you fear and fall victim to, and then project out onto the world at large. Basically, why it is that you do what you do, and want what you want. Why it is that you must have the world be a certain way.

If this make sense to you, try this: The next time you find yourself demanding that others, or the world at large, be a certain way, ask yourself, “Why do I need this to be so?” Repeat this question to yourself three times, giving yourself lots of space between each asking to feel into the answer. Let this question work on you in a deep way and watch how your first answer may be very different then your last one.

The world is in great need of visionaries at this time. Those of us clear enough and brave enough to recognize that everything we want in the world begins with a close and committed intimacy with our own thoughts, emotions, actions and beliefs. A dedicated and devoted practice to changing the one thing in life you actually have dominion over. Yourself.

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Effortless Effort

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While away on retreat, I was reminded of one of my favorite concepts: Effortless effort. At first glance, it can seem like these two ways of being could never go together. When you look to the ways of the natural world though, you see that it is the only way that it goes together. But in order to see this you must be willing to strip away the striving, the scarcity, the worries and the comparisons of the fear-based human mind that drive so much of the unnecessary efforting in our lives.

All the stories that we create and buy into that would say life must be difficult. That in order to get what we most desire, we have to work really, really hard to get it. That we can only get there on our own, and that there will always be forces opposing us. Screwing with us. Against us.

To understand ourselves at this level takes time, and it takes our willingness to pay attention to the words we use and the thoughts we think around how hard we believe we need to work, and perhaps most importantly, why. In other words, What do we believe, down deep, about what we deserve and what we need to do to get it?

Nothing in the natural world feels undeserving. Nothing in the natural world worries that it will be in trouble if it outshines something around it. Nothing in the natural world believes that any other part of Nature is screwing with it. Nothing in the natural world feels as though it needs to prove itself, outdo another or justify its existence by working harder than anything else around it.

There is nothing wrong with effort. It helps us to accomplish what it is that we need and desire. The problem comes in when our efforts are driven, scattered, destructive. It’s easy to spot. Are your efforts filling you, or do they leave you depleted? Do your actions lift you and those around you up, or do they pick away at your sense of self and the quality of your relationships?

Be on the lookout for a lot of energy expended without a proportionate return on your investment. Be alert to how often you are busy to be busy, because anything less feels too hard to be with. Pay attention to the end of your day and the exhaustion that leaves you empty and wired. Tune into the sensations of being on a treadmill that never ends; no matter how much effort you put in.

To be effortless in our efforts is to flow with the river as opposed to trying to push it. It is to know yourself and why it is that you do what you do. It is to be plugged into Something Greater than yourself, and to trust that you are being carried along. No matter how much effort you put in.

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Retreat

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I am heading out for retreat on the day I am writing this, and it has got me thinking about a quote from Joseph Campbell. Years ago his words gave me permission to retreat; well before I could articulate what I was doing and why. The quote goes like this:

“This is an absolute necessity for anybody today. You must have a room, or a certain hour or so a day, where you don’t know what was in the newspapers that morning, you don’t know who your friends are, you don’t know what you owe anybody, you don’t know what anybody owes to you. This is a place where you can simply experience and bring forth what you are and what you might be. This is the place of creative incubation. At first you may find that nothing happens there. But if you have a sacred place and use it, something eventually will happen.”

This is why I go away, and this is why I maintain a daily practice. Exactly because of what he wrote. The experience is not something you can read about, watch on Netflix or hear about from another. It is not always easy. It is not always popular. You run the risk of being labelled selfish or indulgent.

Most of all, you run the risk of discovering aspects of yourself that you may not want to know about. Qualities, thoughts and emotions that you have kept hidden from the world. Interestingly enough, at first it will seem like there are only dark things you keep hidden, but if you stick with it long enough, you come to see how you also hide your light, your gifts, your superpowers.

True retreat is not about distracting or indulging yourself. It is about one thing, and one thing only: Being with yourself through it all. Discovering the Truth of who and what you are. From this place, you are in a position to truly live. From this place, you are in a position to truly contribute.

Anything less is just a continuation of the same old, same old conditioning that has created the endless loop of suffering and misery we all struggle with. So why not take the chance of going off by yourself to see what there is to be discovered?

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A Dicey Love Affair

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This past weekend I was traveling by plane; putting me in airports and in contact with a lot more people than I usually am. I always take these opportunities to get a handle on the pulse of our world. To get a sense of how we are doing and what we are making important.

At my first airport, when I walked up to the gate and looked around, every single person (except for an older gentleman reading a book) was face down in their phone. This included the young and the old, people eating, people traveling solo, friends and families.

It is sometimes all I can do to not start screaming or sobbing. Maybe even both at the same time. I just want to yell out, “Stop it! Look up. You’re missing it. You’re missing other people. You’re missing yourself.”

Our love affair with all things screens is destroying us. Curled around our phones as we would a lover, our constant need to bond to something non-human is eroding our connection to Life. To what it feels like to be alive. To what is required, offered and given in relationship. It is poisoning what we believe we need and falsely conditioning us to put our attention, constantly, on the wrong things. As we pay homage to these shiny objects of ours, something non-living by the way, we too, become less than the living.

Perhaps, worst of all the atrocities when it comes to our cell phone use, is how our fascination/obsession/addiction has annihilated what it means to love. What it takes to create a bond with another being; whether for a momentary exchange with a stranger or a lifetime of living together with someone you love.

Our love used to be reserved for things that are alive. People and animals that we were in direct relationship to, and that gave to us as we gave to them. Bonds that were forged through all the moments of life; times you wanted to be there and times you didn’t. Times when it was hard and times when it was glorious. Times when it was boring, awkward and inconvenient.

And while we will shake our heads when we hear of the statistics around what is happening to our children in this regard, of the mental illness and the all around despair linked to their cell phone use, still, we do nothing but give lip service to what is happening. Unwilling as we are to take a bold and definitive stance that says our children and their capacity to relate is precious enough that we will take a stand. That we will fight for what it is they come to see as worthy of their love and attention.

It has struck me many times over the years how we really do not fully comprehend the way that we are crippling ourselves and our children by making something non-human the center of our lives. And while most of us would say it’s not my phone that I am most committed to, when you look around, that is not at all the message that is being conveyed to the rest of us.

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