Tag Archives: foundational work

Be Simple & Be Free

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Things are out of hand when it comes to how complicated our lives have become. Along with how unhappy and anxious these complications are making so many of us. If making things more and more complicated were making us happier, healthier and more connected, I would say, Let’s keep going. But it’s not. The reverse is true, and we’re all feeling it.

The increasing levels of complications in our tech-driven world is leaving many of us feeling worse off; trapped in the mind set of, This is just the way it is now. Or perhaps, There must be something wrong with me that I can’t keep up with it all.

Neither are true. Neither are true. The feelings of overwhelm and the inability to keep up with it all, are not failings on your part. Instead, those difficult feelings are warning signs telling you something is off. Telling you to reassess. Despite what you have been told and despite what you believe around all the messaging that says, This is what “progress” looks and feels like now.

Just because it looks like this is the way it is now, does not mean you have to acquiesce. It does not mean you have to keep letting more and more lines get moved in your life that have nothing to do with what you want or really need. Despite what we have been told and sold, it is always a choice as to how you live. Always a choice as to how you spend your money, what you align with and how you choose to spend your time.

Something has been coming to me of late that I am experiencing as the antidote to the complications of the times, and as a reference point to help me remember, the choice is always mine. It is a Shaker hymn that feels to me like deep instructions for living. Guidance that is tangible, immediate and impactful. The first lines go like this:

I will bow and be simple. I will bow and be free.

To bring this into your life is as simple as the following:

Do Less

Get Out Of The News

Go Outside

Sit And Do Nothing

Spend Time With Those You Love

Eat Real Food

Forgive Everyone Everything

Sleep More

Breathe More Intentionally

Get To Know Your Neighbors

Stop Scrolling

Focus On What Is Beautiful

Move In Ways That Feel Good To You

Listen More

Talk Less

Pray

Look At The Stars

 

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Create An Uplifting Story

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Years ago, my yoga teacher was talking about our attempts to know and understand Reality with a capital “R.” He spoke of how because this is actually more than we can comprehend as human beings with our limited perspectives, we create stories. We create mythologies to know what is not knowable.

Stories are what we make up to explain who we are and why we are here. Stories explain back to us how the world works and how to make sense of things. Stories tell us what to do when we are lost and how to understand “good and evil.”

The problem is not necessarily the stories themselves, but the fact that we mistake the stories we create, for Reality itself. The problem being, that when we forget these are just stories to help us navigate by, we lose track of all that we do not know or comprehend; deluding ourselves into believing we know more than we actually do.

The very mindset, by the way, that stands at the heart of every wrong turn we have ever taken, or will ever take, as a species.

My yoga teacher pointed this all out by encouraging us to do two things: Create the most uplifting stories you can, while remembering that it’s “just” a story. This can be a tremendous paradox to hold. To both go for creating the most amazing and uplifting view of the world and your life and what it’s all about that you possibly can, while at the exact same time, holding that this story is but a mere drop in the ocean of Reality.

No matter how true, vast or inclusive you believe it to be. In other words, that what we can hold as human beings, even at its highest, will only be a tiny piece of the vast puzzle of The Great (and often unknowable) Mystery.

Admitting to this is a huge step and paves the way for understanding Life in a way that is tremendously liberating; despite how challenging it is. The challenge being, getting past our need to know it all, to be right or to try and control it all. The challenge being the way it might make us feel small and insignificant, afraid or like nothing we do matters. As in, “What’s the point if what I’m believing in isn’t actually accurate, true or the total picture?”

But it does matter. It does. Because every uplifting story line we create is a facet of the Total Reality; acting as one side of an eternally-sided diamond. And the more we can claim that understanding, the more we evolve with our story lines; ultimately taking us closer and closer to The Whole Truth.

To be clear, “uplifting” is not the same as illusion. It is not the same as denial or some Pollyannish take on Life. Uplifting does not distort. Instead, it holds what is possible. And every time you hold what is possible you are in the realm of Reality at its highest. This then becomes a map for even the darkest of times because when you run all your stories through what is possible, even the most painful or the hardest to digest, will now stand in service to Something Greater.

Everything that ails you, when seen through the lens of possibility, becomes a stepping stone to greater self-awareness, self-agency and self-care. Every conflict with another, becomes a bridge to creating a collective story of greater harmony. And every single experience of a world gone mad becomes the royal road to creating an inner world of sanity, peace and harmony, which then loops back out into the world.

Our stories matter. How we tell the stories of our lives and of the times we live in, matters. Because in the end, how you tell the story of now, has the power to create heaven or hell.

 

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Make It Simple

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In times of difficulty, make it simple. 

This is the guidance I received recently on a day where my mind was whirring away trying to account for everything that could possibly go wrong. For all of the ways I might be negatively received by another. A time of trying to fit all the puzzle pieces of protection together to create a picture of certainty.

It seems to be the nature of the ordinary mind to over-complicate and over-exaggerate in its desperate need to try and figure everything out. To try and have all the answers where quite likely the need for those answers arises precisely because of what the mind is doing in this regard. It also needs to be said here that this facet of the mind has been at the heart of figuring out complicated and complex problems that we all face. And yet, left unchecked, this very same aspect has also created many, many of our personal and social ills through its need to over-think, over-do and over-complicate.

We can readily see this in conventional medicine where more and more interventions create side effects and complications all their own. And where if a more simple approach and perspective was taken around what creates health, we would see more clearly what is needed, as opposed to coming up with more and more ways to chase symptoms. In so doing, creating harm that wasn’t even there to begin with. Nor even necessary, if we had only been more simple and humble in our approach.

Less certain and arrogant in our assumption that our complicated standards of care were the gold standard of the world.

We can also see complication that harms in the ways that more and more generations of the technologies are being imposed on our lives. Where the time-saving “convenience” we have been promised has turned into a full time job of managing passwords, platforms and apps. And how often it is we are consumed with just trying to deal with all of the intrusions and the demands of keeping up.

More to the point, keeping up with a whole bunch of things we never even asked for, and where the exchange of greater and greater complication for the promise of better living has grown increasingly false.

To complicate is to obfuscate the truth. To complicate is to distract, distort and detract from the beauty of our lives. To complicate is to create the wrong ideas about who we are, what we need and how to live. To complicate is to erode our well-being and the experience of being alive.

For the longest time, I had a button stuck to the back of the visor in my car that read:

“Live simply, that others may simply live.”

While this was a plea to be more conscientious around our resource use, we can, for our purposes here, extend the meaning.

Live simply that you may know ease.

Live simply that you may know peace.

Live simply that you may know what is true.

 

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Becoming Truly Sovereign

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Whenever themes start showing up in my life, I always pay attention. Lately, everything is converging around sovereignty; both mine and other people’s.

Sovereignty for me equates to rulership over oneself, one’s body, one’s own life. It is the god-given right to determine your own way, and is something that no one has a right to other than you. What I mean by this is, no one else has the right to tell you how to live, what to do with your body or what you should think.

In essence, true sovereignty is about owning oneself; where what is inside of you is far more powerful and trustworthy than what is outside of you.

It may be important here to point out that I am not prosposing some crass free for all where we get to act in disrespectful ways to ourselves or to others. As a matter of fact, the truly sovereign would never engage in such things for they are aware that life is sacred and that to take up the full responsibility for your own life is an act of incredible bravery.

As well as being the greatest gift you will ever offer another. Even if, and maybe even especially when, another doesn’t agree with you or understand what you are doing.

Why? Because when you are truly owning your actions, your thoughts and your behaviors, you become a trustworthy source for yourself and for all those around you. This as opposed to being someone who bends according to the prevailing winds. Who disrespects themselves because they are afraid of what others might think, say or do.

I find the exploration of sovereignty to be both extremely challenging, and at the very same time, perhaps one of the greatest contributions we can make in a world gone mad with telling each other how to live. Whether it be in the virtue signaling pressures and cancel culture of the social media world, the one-size-fits-all conventional medical mandates, or the surveillance culture that leaves us more comfortable with being spied on than on determining our own way, so much of “modern” day life is literally stripping our sovereignty away.

And for far too many of us, we are literally giving it away, without so much as a whimper.

But if you are moved by what I’m talking about here, recalling your own sovereignty can begin with one simple, but direct contemplation: Do I know why I do what I do? Do I know what drives me?

If you can to begin to become aware of who’s actually in charge of your life, you are now in a position to challenge whether or not you want to give that authority over to another person, thought form, system or set of circumstances.

 

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What Are You Entraining To?

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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.

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Changing Yourself

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There has been logging going on across the road from us for weeks. The noise is loud. And it’s constant. Often, it serves as an annoying, nervous system jangling back drop for an entire day. So when one morning this week, I’m sitting outside in meditation and it hasn’t yet started, I feel so grateful. At the same time, I feel anxious, wondering when, at any moment, it will start back up and turn this perfectly beautiful quiet morning into what will feel like an unwanted intrusion.

It was right then, that I became aware of something I aspire to: To be in the world as it is. To be accepting of the reality of the moment; blaming no one and nothing for my personal discomfort. I’ve had enough experience with this to know that when I can accept things as they are, everything changes. From this place, I am no longer at war with either myself or the world. And possibilities I didn’t even know existed, open up to me.

When all of this dropped into my mind, a quote I haven’t thought of in a very long time came to me. It’s from Leo Tolstoy and it goes like this: “Everyone thinks of changing the world, but no one thinks of changing himself.”

Why is that?

Because of how hard it is. Because we haven’t been taught this perspective. Because it’s easier to blame someone or something else for your misery. Because that’s how we gather in ways large and small; from friendships to political affiliations. Because accusing someone else is the way that the war machine works. And because this mentality is so entrenched in us culturally, that we take it for truth.

It is the largest personal leap you will ever take to go from believing that the world determines your peace of mind, to knowing that you and you alone carry that sacred responsibility. It is utterly and completely an inside job to make the commitment that no matter what is happening all around you, you will learn to do two things: Say “Yes” to what is happening. Claim radical responsibility for your response.

This doesn’t mean you like or agree with what is happening. Nor does it mean you don’t get to have your reactions. Instead, it means admitting that something is here and then becoming aware of how you feel about it without projecting your feelings onto anyone or anything.

Not easy to do, but oh so worth it when you begin to understand that the way out of everything we are experiencing collectively is to work through all the ways you won’t see honestly what is happening. To work out owning all of your blind posts, triggers, expectations and projections.

And it all begins by saying “yes” to what is happening and then wondering why you feel the way you do about it. This is the royal road to changing yourself, and by extension, the world.

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A Bigger Perspective

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The air is cold and the sun is warm. The sky is clear blue and the birds are calling. I’m sitting outside in the early morning meditating wrapped in a blanket and wearing a hat and gloves. My body is comfortable and my mind is at ease. There’s nowhere else I’d rather be for this is a rare moment in meditation where everything is clicking and I am at peace.

But even when everything is not clicking, these moments sitting in meditation are my medicine. It’s where I go each day to gain the perspective I need to be with myself and the world as it is. It’s where I go to find the courage and the clarity to get clear about what I believe in and why. It’s the time I lean into to take stock of the thoughts I keep, while discovering the impact these thoughts have on how I behave in the world.

It’s not easy to be alive these days. Even if your personal life feels solid, it’s impossible not to feel what’s happening all around us. We are mammals after all; wired to sense and to feel our surroundings. It’s how we survive, fact check, attune, belong and assess our environments.

As mammals, we’re always going to feel each other. We’ll always be attuned to how others are experiencing the world. But how you receive other people’s states of being is always a choice.

This is crucial to know now during this very intense time period we are living through. Otherwise, we are left to play the victim to other people’s moods and to the world’s activities. Left to being dragged along by widespread fears. Some of which are real. Some of which are exaggerated. And some of which will always be out of our control.

Right now there’s so much confusion, insecurity, fear and anger being carried by so many of us, it’s easy, one might say even “natural” to jump on that bandwagon. After all, we are herd creatures and we do like to go with the biggest herd for safety reasons. But when we do that we contribute to the overall experience of things being scary and out of control.

As an example, we can continue to spread like a virus the outlandish things we hear coming out of a screen. We can continue to imagine worse case scenarios. We can continue to buy into the fears and the projections about what is going to happen.

Or… we can put our attention on what it is we most want to have happen in the world and live that to the very best of our ability. I know this might seem naive, but there are many schools of thought to back up the power of how our perception of something has the capacity to shift reality.

For instance, in quantum physics, there is something called “the observer effect.”This effect says that when something is being observed, atoms in this case, Life behaves differently. Just based on being looked at. Just by being the recipient of attention, atoms change from states of pure wave potential to becoming something material.

In other words, going from not existing to existing.

Imagine applying this understanding to our current cultural circumstances. Imagine that where you put your attention will call into existence whatever it is you are expecting to have happen. Imagine that your assessment, combined with others choosing to go beyond fear, has the power to tip things in a new direction.

If you knew this to be true, what would you be talking about and thinking about?  

I know it feels like the stakes are very high right now. I know that most people are perceiving things in a certain way. But what if you hold an important place in how things turn out based on what you see and think? Would it inspire you to work with your mind? To chart your own course when it comes to where you put your attention?

I can’t say for sure that one person’s change of mind can change the world, but I can say for sure it can change your world.

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Living For Today

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Last weekend I ran in a road race with a notoriously steep mile long climb. As I passed one of the volunteers, as a way to assuage the intense experience I was about to partake in, she said to me quite enthusiastically, “It’s not yesterday!” To which I responded as enthusiastically, “No it’s not!”

She was referring to the fact that the day before the weather had been intense. Huge downpours. High winds. Lightening. But as soon as the exchange was over, I realized what was spoken between us was so much more; serving as a profound reminder to get out of living and dwelling in the past as quickly and as often as I can.

To let yesterday be yesterday as I opened to, and lived fully in, today.

It was easy to see this during the race. Easy to recognize I could dwell on the poor night’s sleep I had experienced, or I could be on the road running and recognizing that I was doing quite well actually. I could focus on a couple of people displaying some poor social behavior at the start of the race, or I could be with what was actually occurring in any given moment. Opting to let go of what had already come and gone, and instead choosing to be with what was right now. And what was right now was filled with some truly wonderful, supportive and energetic people.

If you have ever learned to watch your mind and what it is thinking about, you know how often your mind dwells in the past. How often you live today colored by what was said and done “yesterday.” What that person did or didn’t do for you. How you were overlooked or embarrassed. How your heart was broken. How you were called something that hurt. How something was taken from you.

While we could all argue that something harmful or unfair did indeed happen “yesterday,” it is us who is keeping it alive in the “today.” It is us who keeps going over and over it. It is us who has allowed it to limit us now. It is us who can’t stop thinking about it or living by it.

If this makes sense to you, and you want the freedom and the possibility that exists in a “today” less colored by “yesterday,” get in the habit of checking in with yourself throughout the day by asking “Where am I right now?” Use this question to gauge whether you are in “today” or “yesterday.”

And whenever you catch yourself in “yesterday,” say to yourself “It’s not that time anymore.” 

It takes practice to get out of the habit of dwelling in the past. It takes courage to let go of the identity you have created based on that past. But if you stick with it, you will be rewarded with greater ease, clarity and a much more sane and realistic view of yourself and the world. One that is not rooted in “yesterday,” but in “today” with all of its limitless possibilities.

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Catching Up With Yourself

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I have just come through a several week time period of a lot going on, as well as being outside of my regular routine. And while all of it was wanted and wonderful, it was harder than usual to stay connected to myself. Which is why when this week showed up, and my schedule evened back out, the first place I went to (with great anticipation and relief) was my morning practice.

It is the part of my day that brings me in contact with me. A time when I get to answer what I see as one of the most essential questions any of us can ask of ourselves; “How’s it going for me?” It’s the place where I get to show up as is, and where I get to explore feelings and thoughts that are impacting me and that can be hard to get to in the day to day with all of its distractions, noise and expectations.

This is a non-negotiable time for me and I protect it well because of how much I value it. Interestingly enough, as the years have gone by, because of how committed I am to being with myself, nothing ever gets in the way. I attribute this to the knowing that when we really value something and devote ourselves to it, the Universe responds by making it available to us without a struggle.

This is the opposite of what so many of us wrestle with. That being, “finding” time for ourselves. Right there is where the problem starts. There is no finding time for yourself. There is only creating it. This of course, depends on two really important things. One, that you see the value in time on your own. And two, that you see the value in yourself.

These are hard to come by these days. A lot of us are afraid to be on our own. Fearful of what we might find when we are not overly busy or distracted. And then there is the deeper issue of not seeing ourselves as precious enough to give ourselves what we actually need. Something we cannot know, by the way, until we get time on our own away from all of the influences and agendas selling us what we need to be OK. Telling us who we are, that has got absolutely nothing to do with the reality of who we actually are.

There is no magic formula to this. It begins in a yearning. The yearning to feel better. And then it moves to an action. The action of just sitting down regularly. Daily. It does not have to be a formal practice like meditation or journalling. Though it can be.

What matters most is honoring the yearning for things to be different, and then the action of sitting, breathing and asking yourself, “How’s it going for me?” 

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Making The Necessary Adjustments

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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.

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