What Are You Entraining To?

 

I love the word “entrain.” It always feels to me like a way of becoming absorbed by something. A kind of joining up with a rhythm of some sort. One of the definitions of entrain is “to draw in or to draw along.”

That’s exactly how it felt to me one early morning this week as I sat by the river. Most of the water had turned to ice, though some was still moving beneath the frozen layer.  As I sat with the water and with the trees, feeling an enormous sense of calm come over me, I was reminded of why it is I am called to the woods.

It’s always far more than just a walk for me, or some form of exercise. Instead, it feels like an opportunity to get closer to who I am and to who I most want to be. It’s so much easier for me to remember what I want to remember and what it is that I want to emulate in Life when I am embedded in the natural world. There, the cadence and the flow of everything around me is something my body not only wants and needs, but is.

This is often a far cry from how I feel in the man-made world where the pace, the energies, the expectations, the visual landscape, the smells and more can leave me ragged, overwhelmed and out of touch. I think therein lies the rub for all of us.

What I mean by this is that what we expose ourselves to is what will determine how we feel. What we entrain to by way of what we surround ourselves with creates our experience of being alive. What we allow ourselves to be “drawn into or along by” tells us who we are and how to live. It tells us what is real and what is important. It tells us what is worth looking at and what is worthy of our precious life.

For a moment, just imagine yourself sitting by a river. How does that experience play in your body and mind? What possibilities and mind sets come pre-installed into this kind of entrainment with something outside of you? Then, imagine being glued to your screen day after day watching horrific images of suffering that you have no control over. What happens here?

Every day we have a choice about what we will be drawn into. What it is we will go along with. And while many would say there is nothing we can do. That this is just the way it is now. That’s just not true.

Unless we decide that it is.

The Clarity Project

 

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

We need this right now.

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

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

That’s where the Light comes in.

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

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

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

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

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

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

A Winter Wonderland

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

But it doesn’t end there.

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

A New Day

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

Authenticity

 

Where I live, we have all kinds of wild animals; bears, bobcats, porcupines, hawks, foxes, deer and more. When my kids were older, and I would stop the car to get a better look at an animal before it went into the woods, they would always joke about what a big deal I was making of it all. I didn’t care. There was just something so special about getting to see wild creatures in their own home.

It always feels like such an honor and such a blessing to catch even a glimpse of them.

I think one of the reasons I’m so called to these moments is because of the unwavering authenticity of the animals. It feels like something I can trust. Something I can learn from. Something that reminds me of who I am. And what I can be.

An animal in the wild is never anything less than fully who and what it is. No matter what I might want. No matter what the world might be doing. The hawk will always want to pick off one of my chickens. The porcupine will always want to decimate my fruit trees. And though I may want the majestic ones like the moose, bears and the bobcats to pause a little longer so I can just be with them, they do not answer to me. Ever.

They do not adjust themselves to me. They are always, single-mindedly going to be and do whatever they are and whatever they need to do. Therein lies the secret of their integrity, as well as sacred instructions for how to live.

For to fully and authentically inhabit ourselves each and every moment creates a life based in integrity and makes us a trustworthy source for both ourselves and others. On the other hand, when we shift and negotiate ourselves based on our fears, insecurities, conditioning, wounds, what others expect of us, the demands of the modern world, we are not trustworthy. Nor are we happy, fulfilled or fully expressed.

That’s why it’s such a big deal to choose to find your way into your authentic self.

Unfortunately, we have been schooled to not be ourselves. To not feel what we are feeling. To not know what we are knowing. And because this false sense of who we are has become so familiar to us, so deeply embedded in how we think about ourselves and interact with others, it can feel impossible to get away from what has been created in this regard.

Too dangerous to challenge or look at all the ways we are not ourselves.

Then there are all the “rewards” for not being authentic. For not saying what is really on our mind because of how others get to feel more comfortable with what they are doing. There are no awkward moments when we leave something unchallenged. No need to work something out. No strength to be acquired to go against the grain of what the culture demands. No need to develop courage to say “No” to all the life-depleting choices we are being offered.

There are so many ways we are “rewarded” for not rocking the boat, for agreeing with the status quo, for going along to get along.

But the real and arduous road to authenticity means rooting out all the ways you are not your authentic self. And because we are so accustomed to not being fully ourselves, we have lots of opportunities to practice each and every day. It’s in the smile or the laugh you give when you feel otherwise. It’s in your silence when you disagree. It’s in your decision to do something, not because it feels right to you, but because everyone else is doing it.

Following Your Own Inner Rhythms To Balance

 

One of the things we can all see when we look around is a widespread lack of balance. Whether in our own lives or the ways of the world, we live in times of extremes where we flip flop between too much and too little. Where intensity is followed by collapse and where overdoing and underdoing are the name of the game.

This can look like having too intense of a work week followed by a sedentary weekend in front of a screen. It can look like our bodies being burned up by stress, only to have to get sick to balance out the intensity. It can look like depression and anxiety, dieting and binging or starting up a bunch of the latest activities du jour, only to let them fall by the wayside. And it can look like the vitriol expressed on the world stage and the apathy that follows when we feel there is nothing we can do.

Many of us feel trapped in this pendulum swing between too much and too little; believing this is just the way it is now. That we are victim to something beyond our control. So though we may yearn for a sense of balance in our lives, it can feel out of reach. Or like it is some failing on our part that we just can’t seem to get there. Or maybe that it is some one or some things fault that balance cannot be experienced.

But like all things worth having, a sense of balance is an inside job, has nothing ultimately to do with the externals and is actually innate to us.

Best of all, we have a constant reminder every single day of what balance looks like in the form of the natural world. And right now, as we enter the time of The Fall Equinox, where light and dark, for a moment in time, are balanced, we are being offered a visceral reminder of what we already know and possess.

That being, that when we are attuned to our own natural rhythms, balance is the result.

When looked at from this perspective, the externals become secondary to our capacity to tune into ourselves and what it is we are knowing and needing. The ways of the world, life and other people becoming an opportunity to sink more solidly within our own personal rhythms. To that place deep inside that knows how to ride the ups and downs of existence.

This is different than getting bashed around according to the latest crisis or challenge of the moment. But it requires both a shift in your perspective when it comes to what is happening, as well as a running practice to keep you close to your own experience.

To claim your reactions and responses are your responsibility is an enormous undertaking. This perspective shift means your reactions are yours and do not emanate from some external source. Not only is this the work of a lifetime, it will bless you with the greatest empowerment you can imagine when you learn to stop blaming what is outside of you for how you feel.

When it comes to a running practice to help you remember, your breath and your capacity to bring yourself back to the moment you are in, is the directest route to helping you connect with your own natural rhythms. The very same ones that will guide you into the next choice that needs to be made to help you live in a continual flow of inner adjustments; all circling around that often elusive experience of balance.

This all looks like staying very close to yourself, no matter what is going on. You get very intentional about checking in with your experience as you move across your day. So even when there is a difficult conversation or too much on your plate, you own your response to that intensity and you make a conscious choice to feel yourself breathing. Maybe you even ask yourself a question like, What is making this so difficult for me right now?

This is not about fixing yourself, judging yourself, or even trying to create balance. Instead, it is merely a moment in time where you tune into yourself. It is in this turning towards yourself, coupled with an open wondering about your experience, that allows you to tap back into your own innate rhythm. From there, balance is the natural outcome. No matter what is happening on the outside.

The Trouble With Needing So Much Stimulation

 

It’s raspberry season. Today as I’m picking, it occurs to me that many people would find this dull. Boring. Tedious even. It’s particularly slow going on this morning because the porcupine has been getting into the patch; bending branches down and smooshing everything together. This means I have to painstakingly pick up branch by branch to get all the berries hiding underneath without breaking anything.

As I’m doing this, I’m thinking about us as a people and how extremely stimulating things have become in our world over the past decades. How once we would have found pleasure in something like picking berries. But that now, it would feel too slow. Not worth the effort. How an endeavor like this wouldn’t be exciting or engaging enough for many of us now. Where once it would have been the highlight of the season and a deeply coveted activity. Would even have been seen as an important function for helping to bring in the bounty of the summer, while feeding the family something special.

We are way off course when we allow our lives to be gobbled up by the pace of the machines we are so attached to. In jeopardy of forgetting who we are and what is most important when we live so busy and so over-stimulated day after day after day. With all that we believe we have now with our speed and convenience and ease of access, we are disconnected from the preciousness of Life, and oblivious to what is being lost.

That being, a true sense of ourselves, what matters most in Life and perhaps most missing of all these day, how to live in harmony and in accordance with our truest Nature. If we are rarely outside, if we do not pick our heads up out of the screens, if we are never quiet, we will not have access to our deepest selves and to our real place in the scheme of things.

I am content on this morning to be with the raspberries, despite the slowness of the task, because of two things: I have meditated this morning and because I have made moments like this a priority in my life.

And there it is. If you are looking, yearning even, to feel a greater sense of ease and connection, it requires putting your money (or the raspberries in this case) where your mouth is. Meaning, it is up to you to decide what is most important to you and live accordingly. This despite all the distractions and the pull to keep doing more. This means intentionally choosing to slow down regularly. Daily. Maybe it’s meditation. Maybe it’s looking out the window. Maybe it’s saying no. But certainly it is about getting a hold of your own schedule.

Slowing down and getting quiet serving as the non-negotiable prerequisite for figuring out, and then living, what matters most to you.

The world will not do this for you. The world will continue to encourage, demand even, that you keep over-stimulating yourself. But to choose this is to run right past the truest and the most important and most truly sustaining moments of Life.

 

 

A Curated Life

 

I’m in the midst, on one particular morning, of tending to the new plants, making sauce and creating medicine when it strikes me that if I was on Instagram, if I was a so-called influencer, I would be having a very different experience.

I would have changed out of my comfy clothes and chosen a perfectly curated outfit to go with the homestead/farm feel of the moment. I would be staging my morning and positioning it all just so to give you the impression of just how perfect it all was. I would do this by taking multiple pictures from different angles with multiple filters to give you the impression of a spontaneous and unplanned moment.

In the process, I would have sacrificed all of the naturally arising peace, contentment, presence and gratitude that organically arises whenever I am in alignment with what I love best. Without the pressure to post and perform, I am connected to the abundance of the natural world and to a morning where I have the precious space I need to be with what matters most to me.

This is what is being lost in our ever so carefully curated lives: A chance to be with ourselves in a way that nourishes us. So much so that even when we choose not to take that picture, to refrain from posting, is it not what we are often thinking about even if we are not acting on it? Curated lives as a performance vehicle is so insidious now that it’s with us even when we are choosing otherwise.

What strikes me as the most disastrous, the saddest, the most dangerous even, is that we haven’t considered what we are losing each and every day as we orient ourselves ever-more to allowing the screens to mediate every moment of our existence. Desperate as we are to show others something about ourselves and willing to do so at any cost.

But only after it has all been carefully, carefully curated.

In the meantime, we don’t notice that our self-esteem is in the toilet, satisfaction in our relationships plummeting, our stress accelerating, the chase for perfection never ending, with our very existence reduced down to some glam shot.

Making The Necessary Adjustments

 

No matter what guidance I am asking for these days, I keep getting the message that this is a time for pausing and being open to making adjustments in how I do things based in reflection. As opposed to reaction.

While I feel the wisdom in this, following this sage advice can also feel at odds with the pushing out of the Spring energies that I am not only sensing all around me, but also feeling inside of me in terms of what I am called to offer into the world.

And therein lies the rub.

Is it possible to find that sweet combination of doing and being? Is it possible to stand in the presence of a world on fire and not join in? Is it possible to feel all I have to give and to to stay deeply rooted in a place beyond the demands of society?

Not only do I believe it’s possible, I know it’s necessary. A have-to in a world so star struck by the latest gimmick, hashtag, magic bullet, apocalyptic video or sensational story. We have become such a thoughtless people reacting out of our own fears and allegiance to all the wrong things. Like what the influencers, billionaires, celebrities and villains are doing. In our blindness, we have lost a connection to the necessity of pausing and reflecting; leaving us reactive, and therefore dangerous.

Dangerous because we are colluding with narratives that are at odds with our very nature and with the Nature all around us. The very same energies that tell us, There is a balance and a timing to everything. To live believing we are outside of, more to the point, above that wisdom, is to create chaos and harm through the violation of basic and non-negotiable Life principles.

All of this is happening when what we need most is wisdom born of a kind of steady, slow, thoughtful, decent and time-honored way of knowing and relating to the world. But this kind of approach doesn’t play well in a culture based in ever-increasing speed, volume and the incessant push for more and more, right now. Always right now with the insecure fear that if it doesn’t happen immediately, it’s not worth waiting for.

Or that it just won’t happen at all.

This is an illusion based in our separation from our own truest Nature and the the rules that govern the ways of the natural world. An illusion we have so easily bought into because we’ve been schooled to believe that progress looks like we should always being pushing for more. That we should let the people at the top take care of things. That we should let what comes across a screen tell us want to want. That we should just keep going along with things because this is just how it is now.

But like the Spring energies making all their adjustments to ensure the best growth possible, so can we. We can decide to take up our own lives by creating the space we need to slow down. To do less. To listen more. We can decide to question more what it is and who it is we are looking to to tell us what a good life looks and feels like.

We can do the difficult work of being honest with ourselves around what is not working in our lives as reflected by how sick, stressed and unhappy we are; using all those “bad” experiences to help us course correct into greater balance.

And it all begins by being wise enough and willing enough to pause in order to make the necessary adjustments.

Just This Moment

 

I am having one of those days where my thoughts are leaning towards anticipating negative scenarios and engaging in the “what if’s” the mind is so compelled to do. And while at this point I know enough of the machinations of the mind to not go down those rabbit holes, it still can nag away at me as it was doing on this particular day.

While I have many techniques I use to bring my mind back into balance, something happened quite naturally on this day that really struck me. After a walk with my husband where I had laid out my potential “what if’s,” we made our way over to gather eggs and look at what was happening with the starts and seeds we had recently planted.

It took no time at all for my anticipating mind to tune into something life-giving; shifting me out of a chaotic mind to one quite naturally and easily at peace. A mind at ease as it found itself immersed in the bigger picture of Life. All of this with no effort on my part, other than to be in relationship with Something Greater than myself, while spontaneously repeating over and over “Just This,” as I moved through the garden.

The “Just This” was my way of focusing only on what was right before me; whether that was the lettuce I was picking, the conversation I was having or the observations I was making of the seedlings. In effect, immersing my mind in the right now versus the “what if” future.

We so take whatever we think to be truth. As something to believe in and act on. Even when all signs point to the fact that our minds have gone off the rails with fear, anxiety and judgment. And while in this day and age there is no end to solutions for an imbalanced mind from medication to meditation, we can skip right over the most accessible and effortless of approaches to healing our minds.

Here I am referring to the natural world. To the elements and conditions and living beings that we have co-evolved with since we first appeared on the planet; our very home and the clearest reflection of who we are, where we come from and what we need.

Why would we go anywhere else to gain perspective and to ground ourselves in Truth?

Because we have been conditioned to believe that our well-being resides in a screen, a pill, more stuff, more prestige, more “likes,” etc. We have come to experience ourselves as separate from, and therefore not needing the support and the tutelage of what The Earth has to offer us. Unfortunately, many of us have strayed so far and for so long, we have come to see the natural world as foreign, dark and scary. An enemy as opposed to an ally.

But here’s the thing. We are Nature herself. We are created and maintained by the same force. To know this is to tap into the good news that even if we have forgotten, even if we never learned to begin with, all we have to do is to put ourselves in the Presence of the natural world for her to do her work on us.

So find a reason every single day to linger, even for one minute, somewhere outside. Go without agenda. Go and be a listener. Go and allow yourself to get lost in the breeze, a bird singing, some fragrance, a starry night, the feel of rain on your skin. And say to yourself, “Just This.”