Teachings from Nature

JOY

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I am making my rounds on our Farm; opening up the chickens, weeding the medicine garden, picking berries, noticing what is happening, and in general, just poking around. On this morning, despite what my have-to list would say I need to accomplish and in what order, I am allowing myself to be led.

This willingness takes me right to a magical moment with a hummingbird who lands on the fence before me. This alone feels incredible as it is rare that I do not see them in motion. Her stillness gives me a chance to really appreciate her little green iridescent body sparkling and shimmering in the light.

When she alights, she goes to all of the sunflowers, black-eyed susan’s and honeysuckle that is spread out before me. Given her momentary interest in yellow, I secretly hope she will mistake my sunflower tattoo for a real flower and come close enough for me to feel the beating of her wings.

In this moment, I am reminded that from an animal teacher wisdom perspective, the Hummingbird is all about Joy. As I watch in utter stillness so as to not spook her, I hear that while we all want to experience joy, it cannot be chased, grabbed, tricked, or lured in. Nor can it be bought, forced, scheduled, ordered or mandated.

It can only be allowed. Opened to. Aligned with. Invited in. 

There are no short cuts, and no one else can give it to you. Partly this is so because it is already in you, and partly because Joy is a mistress who knows her own mind and cannot be coerced to show up. Ever. Instead, she must be courted with great reverence and respect. With no agenda or expectation of her arrival, for she does not take kindly to false and showy displays, or to greedy demands.

Instead, only when the conditions are worthy of her gifts does she burst upon the scene from within. Creating an explosion in the chest that can set you to weeping over the magnitude of Joy herself. An experience like none other, that simply arises unbidden out of the most “simple” of moments.

All of this leads me to mourn the chasing we all do, based in a confusion we have succumbed to around the Nature of Joy; that innate and God-given revelation that answers not to the ego, but to the very living of Life itself. On Life’s terms.

Want more joy in your life? Court her. Slow down enough to notice. Take interest in the simplest of things; those moments in life that reflect Life, as opposed to another man-made demand. Allow yourself, for even one moment, to be without an agenda. This is not easy to do. But if you can do it for even one instant, you will have created an opening big enough for a hummingbird to fit through.

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Pecking Order

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We have chickens. Every year or so, we add to the flock. Despite the conversations I have with the old guard before the newcomers arrive, there is alway an adjustment period we just have to go through. It’s not comfortable. Not for them. And certainly not for me as I listen to their calls of alarm and indignation over being put together with a group they don’t know.

This week it occurred to me how like them we are as humans. We get used to who we are with and how things are. We establish our pecking orders, and we insist upon knowing who is on the top and who is on the bottom. And we can get so territorial, even violent, when that order gets disrupted. So defensive, afraid and combative of the ‘other.’ So willing to make the ‘other’ wrong, even evil and dangerous.

So even though I remind the chickens who are here now that they were once the newcomers, once the ones who were being pushed out and maybe even attacked, they don’t remember. It always surprises me that they do not remember what it felt like to be low man on the totem pole. To feel like you’re not welcome. To know that a group would rather see you go than stay. To know that others might feel justified in harming you to stake their claim.

Or maybe they do remember, but they are not willing to give up their position of power.

Either way, is this not what is happening to us more and more now? All of the ways that the various groups that were trodden upon and disrespected, and who are now gaining power of their own, are themselves going on to demonize and ‘other’ the dominant group. Maybe you would say the oppressor groups deserve it, or that it is only natural to do what was done to you when you get to be the one on top.

Maybe.

But I say, there has got to be a way for all of us to live with full status while we iron out the wrongs of the past, without going on to repeat them to someone else. Without rearranging the pecking order of who is now oppressor and who is now oppressed.

P.S. After less than a week, the two flocks have already begun their steady course towards blending; going from separation and attack to unity and harmony. And we think we’re the intelligent ones.

(And if you’d like a practice that moves you closer to unity with All…Every morning I burn a bit of sage before practice and say…May whatever keeps me from being in harmony with the life within and the life without, be cleared from me.)

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True Power

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I am running at the ocean’s edge on the last day of my time away, and I am struck by the immense power of the ocean as waves smash against the shore; followed by visible rip currents. I am stopped by the enormous power doing its thing right beside me. And yet, as vast and powerful as the ocean is, it is pulled and directed by Something Far Greater. Yes, the moon. But even beyond that.

And it occurs to me, “Just like us.”

The big difference being, of course, that the ocean does not draw back from its raw and wild strength. Nor does it believe itself to be more powerful than it actually is. That level of ignorance and hubris belongs solely to human beings. The only species to both negate and inflate our true powers here on Earth.

We see this in the ways we try and control every facet of the world from the weather we wish we could manage, to the weeds we try and destroy, to the bugs we don’t like, to trying to manage and control other people and other countries. We see it in all the ways that we do not know our proper place here on Earth, as we believe we are the dominators and the controllers of how the waters flow, while we engineer fake foods, genetically modify organisms and now, even our very own bodies through all of the technological ‘innovations’ we are so proud of.

The very same ones that leave us believing we are the most powerful force in the world. Even as we sicken and suffer, while spreading dis-ease everywhere we go now, we continue on course because we are after all, in charge of it all.

Simultaneous to the misplaced power we ascribe to ourselves, we fear the power that is ours, and only ours, to rightfully claim. We deny our creativity, our instincts and intuitions, our voice and what it is that makes us unique in the ‘service’ of fitting in. We sidestep speaking our truths because we imagine dangerous societal repercussions. And we do our very, very best, to make sure we never, ever, stick out too much. Never draw outside of the lines or make a wave.

And even when we do go ‘against the grain,’ how often is our behavior more of a rebellious reaction, as opposed to a true expression of our authentic power? Behavior that arises purely and organically, and that has nothing to do with anything other than an expression of our own true Nature.

Do you think that the ocean cares that it is too rough for us? Do you think it worries that we are afraid of, or inconvenienced by, its deepest and most feral contents? Do you think for even one second it stops being what it is to fit in with our beliefs about what it should be?

We would all be well-served to dig a little deeper into our truest Nature. That which is undeniably beyond opinions and reactions (ours or another’s), while coming to the realization that who we are is not between us and other people, it is between us and that which created us.

Inspired by the ocean and by Mother Teresa’s poem “Do it Anyway.” And if you would like to reclaim the healing power that resides within you, consider joining me for The Healer Within.

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Natural Rhythms

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There is a vast difference between how I am “supposed” to be and how I actually am.

This can get lost, obliterated even, in the day to day expectations and demands of a world that no longer honors, never mind knows, what it takes to be a human being. Which is why I take to the natural world daily. And then on select occasions, why I take deeper forays into what is wild and untouched by the abuses of man.

Last weekend, one of these deeper experiences took the form of going into the mountains. Alone. Some people understand the solitude-seeking, and others are frightened by it. Yes, anytime we are alone, there will always be a mix of it feeling so right while simultaneously including fears of all sorts. But beyond either is the possibility of resetting my own internal clock. Of returning to what is most natural in me.

Like eating, moving, sleeping and relating on my own timetable. Something that can get ignored or distorted in modern life. Basic needs that call to be met according to their own internal clock, as opposed to the clocks that tell time and help us keep appointments, while being on someone else’s schedule.

While I was away, whether I was eating or hiking or sitting and staring into the wilderness, I kept asking the question, “What would it mean to live at the speed and need of my own natural rhythms?”

It went like this:

Since I have no where to be and am not on anyone else’s time frame, do I really need to be driving this fast?

Can I respond to the need to pee instead of gutting it out for the next hour?

I know I had one hike in mind, but can I change my mind mid-hike? Can I go longer? Or shorter?

And on a beautiful sunny afternoon in the mountains, can I crawl back into bed?

The mind has its own ideas about all of this. But I am not asking my mind. I am asking my body. 

Despite how many of us have become separated from this way of being, the capacity to tune into our own natural rhythms are encoded right into us and wait only for us to give it space and recognition. To honor it for what it is and what it can teach us. Like how to live well in the world we were born into. This was something we knew all about when we were little. We lived at the speed of the body. We didn’t just follow the rhythms of the body, we were the very rhythms of the body itself.

Now to you. “What would it mean for you today to live according to the speed and the need of your own natural rhythms?”

 

 

 

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Do No Harm (As Best As You Can)

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I am teaching a yoga class at my house this week, when out of the blue comes a “thud.” I know immediately a bird has just flown head first into one of our windows. There is nothing I can do in the moment, so I continue teaching; hoping against all hope that it is not dead, while equally knowing that based on the force of the thud, it likely is dead.

After class, I look out the window to see a beautiful robin, the very harbinger of Spring itself, lying dead on the ground. I decide to let it be where it is, thinking (hoping) that an animal will come by in the night to take it away so I don’t have to be the one to do it. As fate would have it, the robin is still there in the morning.

This is mine to do.

As I carry it towards the woods looking for a place to lay it down, I am connected to two things. The first being the childhood memories that start popping into my mind. How when I was a kid, I would find dead birds, mice, the desiccated turtles that had escaped our aquarium only to be found months later, along with the kitten that died on my birthday and more, that I would bury under the giant pine tree in our backyard.

In honor of that “random” memory arising right at the moment I have this dead bird in my hand, I look for a pine tree.

The second thing that comes up for me is that even when we as humans are trying not to do harm, we do. Like building a house in the middle of a huge open space that serves as the flight path for many eager birds building their nests at this time of year. We did not do it with the intention to harm. But it brought harm nonetheless. As evidenced by the robin in my hands, and all of the other consequences to the natural world through our choice to build something.

I do not say this to beat myself up, or even to say that we should not have built the house. That would be a waste of time, and an exercise in a guilty indulgence that takes us nowhere. As in, if I feel bad enough about this, it somehow balances what I did. It does not.

I say it as a point of fact. Everything we do has consequences to everything else around us.

There is no getting around this reality. And yet, we try. We pretend what we’re doing doesn’t matter. We ignore the consequences of our ways. We deny we have anything to do with the devastations going on all around us. We kick lots of cans down the road despite the impact it will have for the generations to come.

Or, as happens in so many segments of the culture (like the area I live in), we endlessly beat ourselves up, ever-guilty about every single choice we make. Frozen in our ability to feel good about being alive because we cannot choose anything without feeling remorse. We then we go on to judge and accuse others of not doing enough to save the planet. Of not caring enough. Of not feeling ashamed enough of our very presence.

It’s all exhausting, and it all misses the point. Everything we do has consequences to everything around us. Now what? Without hiding behind guilt, fear, or denial, now what? It is an absolute fact that we bring an impact to bear upon the world by the very nature of our existence here.

What if we started with that knowing, and lived from there? But this does not fit neatly into a definitive answer, and therefore does not sit well with us.

Do no harm, as best as you can is what I say. What might that even look like? In my view it is far less about the specific actions we take (although they matter a lot), and more about your level of awareness. A kind of consciousness that says I know I walk heavy here, how can I see that and still live in relationship with everything around me?

How can I honor all Life while living here as fully, responsibly, and joyfully as I can?

This is far more difficult to do and be with than guilt, or manmade rules. Which is why we likely opt for those approaches rather than a deep exploration around how we are here. If we were deeply contemplating our existence here, it would mean looking into the closed eyes of all the dead robins we have ever had a hand in.

Without turning away. Without beating ourselves up. Without blaming someone else, or feeling like we were entitled to something. What if we just saw that to be human in modern times is so very, very complicated, and that the very best that we can do, is to do the best that we can do.

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What Will You Resource?

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I am in practice this morning setting an intention for the month to come. Here in this moment, everything seems so doable. So clear. So full of possibility. And yet, I also know that when I meet up with the ways of the world, along with my own personal habits and limitations, I will have a choice to make. A choice that will feel far more difficult out there, than it does in here on my yoga mat.

That choice being: Do I do what I always do? Or do I do something else?

It is never easy “to do something else.” Our brains have a proclivity to default to the past to decide what to do. So whether it is your own personal past, or the evolutionary past of your reptilian brain, when challenged, you will always go to what you did in the past, as your first go-to. This makes good sense. Of course our brains would reference a past challenge to see what we did, and then go from there.

The problem being, that as long as we are still alive, our primal, default system believes that what we did in the past must have been successful because we’re still here. This part of our brain does not take into account the emotional and spiritual suffering we are experiencing by doing the same unsuccessful things over and over again.

There is no fighting with the most primitive parts of us. They need what they need. However, we can appeal to Something Else. For me, that always comes in the form of the Natural World.

I see this today as I make my intention, and then feel the uncertainty of being able to hold to this intention when challenged. At that very moment, the most poignant of questions arises: “When I am challenged, what will I resource?”

Instantaneously, a bird flies across my line of vision. As big as a crow, but not flying like a crow. I lose it as it lands in the trees. I find it again as it begins to beat out its rhythm. The telltale sound of the Woodpecker. I burst into tears as I realize I always have a choice as to what I will reference. Whether that be the same old unsatisfying ways or, though experienced as risky by my “past,” new ways that are more in alignment with the rhythms of my soul.

So, here’s the question: As you step forward in this day, will you resource a past that has kept you alive, or will you resource what allows you to thrive? 

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The Dark and The Light

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My husband and I have been walking at night in the dark. It started for me because I wanted to be out under a vast and full moon night sky. We say that we are strengthening our night vision, and that it is a great way to talk and move after dinner.

But that’s not why I do it.

I do it because it puts me in touch with the rhythm of the season and of the light and dark cycles. I do it because I always feel more alive. And because every time we go, something wonderful happens.

Last week, it was cold. My husband, having just come in from being out all day, was reluctant as we were at the eve of the coldest day to date. But when I went out to close the chickens up, the sky was so clear and the air so clean and crisp, I  knew I just needed more.

I sometimes have to make deals to entice my husband. Mostly, that we will only go so far. Because I usually want to keep going, I don’t say anything when we get to the designated and previously agreed upon turn-around place. This night was no different. This is our dance: We go past the agreed upon spot without either of us saying anything. I’m silent because I’m angling for more. He’s silent because he does not want to be the one to call “uncle.”

But on this night, he let me know that he had made a deal with himself that when we got to the place down the road where it was darkest, he would signal the time to turn around. Only, each time we got to the darkest place, the light was still on us. So no matter how far we travelled, we never got to the darkest place.

What a metaphor, huh?

That’s why I love it out there. The natural world is filled to brimming with guidance, inspiration and support. It’s always there. Always waiting wordlessly for us to come and be with Her. More to the point, be with ourselves; in all of our light and darkness.

We are running a great risk these days that we allow ourselves to be seduced by the light coming off the screen devices with its messages of darkness. Only, the darkness of the technologies in no way reflects the darkness of a night sky. And the dogged and un-evolved light of the screen devices in no way reflects our most powerful and infinite light. Not even close.

How many of our woes, fears and anxieties would just naturally evaporate were we to learn to break loose from artificial sources of light and dark. But don’t take my word for it. Try it for yourself.

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Across & Between Species

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I am talking with a friend who lives in the Southwest and she is telling me of the powerful encounters she is having with the wild horses who abound there.

With every word she speaks, instructions are being offered for how it is that beings who inhabit very different realities can stand side by side one another with not only a sense of decency but more importantly, Reverence. If even for just a moment, transcending, or at the very least bridging, the “apparent”differences. Communing, if you will, beyond the distinctions.

With these wild and majestic animals, there are no command performances. No demands to be placed upon them to acquiesce. She cannot “get” them to bend to her will or agenda, no matter her intention. Wise woman that she is, she does not even try. Choosing instead, for a far less egocentric way of being with these magnificent creatures by “merely” allowing a side-by-side existence.

She is alert for, present to, and allowing of, their right to take the lead. What a concept given the knee jerk dominance the human mind can slip into. That place where we believe that we are in charge. Of course we are in charge. For we know best. We always know best.

At times the wild ones I speak of are so immersed in their own experience that they have absolutely no interest in her. She lives with that, despite what her own desires of the moment might be. At other times, they intensely seek her out. Literally demanding that she be with them on their terms. No distractions, they seem to say. And absolutely no imposition of her will on the exchange will be allowed.

For it is They, and Some Deeper Intelligence that is in charge here.

It takes a lot, she says, of her and she believes, of them, to be in such open and close proximity to such a vastly different being. Such vastly different experiences, sensibilities and needs present in these encounters. And yet, in these rare and precious moments, there is a leaning into being both open to something more, while simultaneously remaining sovereign.

There is no entering this threshold, this “time out of time” space in the typical ways of the human mind. There is only a kind of being with that makes an opening such as this even possible.

Could we not take a page from this scene in our dealings with one another? Could we not recognize the tremendous effort, respect and awe it requires to be with another person where their unique experiences are honored, while we remain sovereign to ours?

Especially when we believe different things and cannot find our way to understanding.

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If Only I Had Known

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My husband and I are walking through a section of woods that has been logged over the past year. Where once I could have followed the trail blindfolded, I have no idea where I am. Or how to get from where I am, to where I want to be. It’s disconcerting.

I find myself saying, “If only I had known this was going to happen, I would have paid attention in a different way.” The magnitude of that statement stops me cold. For how often have we all said, across all times and spaces, some version of, “If only I had known…” 

In hindsight, with the evidence already clearly laid out before us, it seems a no-brainer. As in, How could I have missed this? How could I have not seen or known?

Herein lies the great dilemma around what is within our power of observation, and what is beyond it. I think much of the time, we have no idea. Instead, we muck around in places we have no control over, while simultaneously abdicating the power we do have. We dump all of our precious attention into worries, distractions, obsessions and fears; getting so outside of ourselves and what is actually there, that we, in effect, become blind.

We do not want to see things as they are. We want other people to be other than what they are. We want the world to be other than what it is. And we want our bodies, our lives and our relationships to be other than what they are. In the meantime, we miss the Truth of the landscape that we are currently occupying, and moving through. In so doing, we become disoriented, losing our way.

The Truth is, you will never know what to do next, or how to get to where you most want to go without first knowing where you are. Whether that is in the woods, in the world, or in the forest of your own mind, body and soul. We cannot be trying to get somewhere without first knowing exactly where we are. But that requires courage, and a willingness to admit when we have no idea where we are, what we are doing, or where we are even going.

It is hard work to be with where you are in any given moment. Harder still though is to live with the unintended consequences and the lost opportunities of waiting for hindsight to give you 20/20 vision.

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Waiting To Be Born

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I know things are hard for many of us right now. I know the world feels like it is burning. And I know that many of us wish it was not so.

But it is.

I realize that sounds harsh, and maybe even heartless, but if we can see that there is meaning, or at least the possibility of meaning in all of this, than we can choose to make it so. What am I talking about? I am talking about that when everything is in ruin, when it feels like there is no way out, something is waiting to be born. Something that has never been allowed before is trying to get in.

Something is painfully wanting and seeking our attention.

I keep having an image of myself as the one giving birth to something, as well as the one being born, as well as the one in attendance. I am the birther. I am the midwife. And I am what is being born. It is all so very, very trippy. And all so very, very timely. For who could deny that the time is here. The time is NOW for everything that stands before us. There is no other time than now to address what needs our attention.

But only if we can see it as so. Only if we can understand that the excruciating pain we are all experiencing are birthing pains; the necessary signaling to us to stop, pay attention, and get ready.

I don’t know about you, but I am done. I am done squandering my life force and my happiness in my attempts to live according to some standard that does not include me. I am done pretending that what the world is doing is okay by me. I am done being part of a system that does not value Life.

And I am not the only one who is done. The Earth herself is done. She has had it. And rightly so.

I do not say this with doomsday reports. I say this in a “Way-To-Go-Mother Earth” kind of way. I say this from the perspective that she will be just fine without us. That she does not need our saving. Nor will she wait for us. Instead, we need to catch up to Her Reality, for she will most assuredly go on with, or without us.

Do you know what it is that really needs saving though? Us.

Harder than managing a climate crisis, or any other global event for that matter, is the recognition that everything that stands before us that needs doing, is an inside job. How could it be anything but? Our thoughts, behaviors and choices are what have gotten us here. So it will only be the awareness of this, and the changing of what we are doing, that will shift anything.

Quelling the onslaught of pollution or climate change, or any global issue, pales in difficulty, as great as it is, to what it takes to turn one human mind from unconsciousness to Grace.

In the end, saving the Earth is a natural outgrowth of saving ourselves. We have it all backwards whenever we begin outside of who we are and what we do. I think we flip things as a distraction, and because we have been conditioned so. For as intense as the suffering can be around all of the world’s ills, it is far easier to be with that, than changing old and outdated mindsets.

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