Becoming Truly Sovereign

 

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.

 

Finding Your Outrage

 

In the Yogic system, it is said we are living in The Kali Yuga. The Dark Age. It was predicted thousands of years ago that these would be difficult, selfish and desperate times. Times characterized by great upheaval. Times rife with apathy in relationship to what is occurring.

How interesting that the complacency we can observe in ourselves now was predicted.

This feels important somehow that this age, and our response to it, was already known. That a kind of forewarning was sent to us from another time. The question being, what will we do with that information? Will we use it as guidance? Or will we succumb to it all?

Yes, we are busy. And perhaps we believe someone else will take care of the strife. Yes, we are overwhelmed. And so we tend to stick our heads in the sand when it comes to doing something about what we are seeing. Yes, we are perpetually distracted and medicated. And so we do not feel the full impact of what is happening to our humanity. Yes, it is intense. And we can feel like we would never make a dent anyway, so why bother trying.

Therein lies the allure and the entrapment of apathy. That place where we don’t even try because it all feels like nothing we do will make a difference anyway. But aren’t there still some things worth fighting for? Things that matter enough to us that we will no longer tolerate the wrong things? Some set of values and beliefs that we will not negotiate?

I recently came upon a quote by James Hillman that I believe offers guidance here.

“Outrage is a sure sign of a soul awake.”

What brings up outrage in you? Could you imagine being brave enough to forego all the social niceties you have agreed to in order to harness the power of outrage? Would you be willing to let the voice of your very own soul speak up as a way to combat the apathy that leaves you agreeing to the downfall of humanity?

 

The “Easy Steps” Trap

 

I was listening to a podcast recently around Wholistic Health and Healing. An orientation which I find to be a real and true inclusion of, and alignment with, who we are and what we need in order to be well. A way of considering everything that needs to be considered in the service of greater wellness and well-being. An “all of us gets to be tended to” kind of mentality.

I’m all in.

But at one point, the author began to outline his steps for how to get there, and I was once again struck by the dilemma we all face. That being, how to engage with the particulars of what needs doing for health and healing, without reducing it down to a formula. A kind of one-size-fits-all approach that pervades so much of how we think about what it takes to care for ourselves.

As I listened, I felt a desperate part of me want to subscribe to the steps being offered. The ones I was being told would insure my health and well-being. A kind of guarantee and well laid out plan that if I just followed it, all would be well. But then right beside this grasping desperation, I felt a deep rumbling around something else.

Around what it is I know to be true.

I began to think back on some of the most influential moments of my life when it came to caring for myself. They never came neatly packaged. As a matter of fact, every single authentic and lasting shift I have ever experienced in regard to self-care, health and healing (or really anything else for that matter), always started by admitting how awful things were.

Always began with me feeling how deeply I was suffering, and how fed up with business as usual I was. Done with the way I was treating myself. A change that was always initiated by some part of me having gotten so sick and tired of what I was doing, that I was ready to open myself up to what I had been previously closed off to. Maybe it was a knowing I had been ignoring. Maybe it was a fear I couldn’t address. Maybe it was a worn out habit I hadn’t been able to put aside.

Whatever it was that I was ready to open to, it ultimately carried me out of being separate from myself and the choices I was making, and right into the Truth of whatever I was experiencing. This is what took me to the “answer” or to the “formula” I had been seeking. Only now, instead of it being a hollow version of what someone else said I needed to do, it came from the deepest of wisdoms. A place born out of the suffering being felt, recognized, honored, and ultimately, transmuted.

Answers not delivered by another in some neat little package, but ones that emerged out of the messiness of giving birth to the Truth of my experience.

But of course, this requires being with what hurts. What is uncomfortable. What is messy, embarassing, scary and more. All things we typically choose to avoid. But all things that also carry with them the catalytic power of going from illness to well-being. No matter the specific outcome.

Which is why instead of going down the road of the promise of the quick and easy formula, we would be well served instead to pause for just a moment to notice that part of ourselves that wants the neatly laid out package, while learning to be more committed to the messages the suffering is sending.

The Great Balancing Act

 

There is a principle in Ayurveda, the 5000 year old tradition of health and healing in India that says: Opposites Balance.

Personally, I can think of no greater medicine for the times we’re living in where polarization with its black and white thinking leaves many of us stuck on one side or the other. So like a seesaw weighted down on one end with a boulder, the natural flow back and forth between the two sides grinds to a halt.

If you ever had that experience as a kid, being the one stuck up at the top of the seesaw with the other kid taunting you and wielding their power to keep you from moving, you know it doesn’t feel good. You might remember the frustration and the sense of disempowerment. More to the point, it never felt natural because there was no opportunity for balance. No chance to weigh in from your side.

No chance for that one brief incredible moment where the two sides come into perfect balance with absolute joy being the outcome.The ultimate and perfect expression of opposites balancing.

For despite all of the ways we might have wanted to be the one controlling the seesaw, maybe keeping the other kid stuck at one end, you just couldn’t deny what it felt like to be in perfect balanced harmony with another. That feeling of flow back and forth between the two sides. If you remember the experience, you remember there was always a choice at some moment. To go for the imbalance and the lording over, or to go for the balance.

And so we find ourselves at that same tipping point now as grown-ups. Will we go for what brings in greater balance? Or will we add our voice to further the imbalance? This choice point is where our power lies and where we have the capacity to move the world into a place where the opposites bring in harmony instead of entrenchment. This is a moment in time to decide who you will be in this process. The one who includes the opposites in the service of balance? Or the one who puts a boulder down on your side?

It does require great courage to not get mired down in your side of things. It does call for immense tolerance to set aside your personal thrill and adrenaline rush of pushing something to its extreme at the expense of another. Great foresight to do what you can do to create that moment where the two sides come into natural and joyful balance.

All of this is as close to you as your next decision. Your next comment. Your next post. Your next characterization. Your next expression of emotion. Make no mistake about it, you are not separate from what you see out there. You are contributing to it, or not. When we allow ourselves to know this, we get up close and personal with ourselves and our choices, as opposed to believing it’s all happening “out there” beyond our control. For when we can come to admit that what hangs in the balance is how it feels to be alive and how it feels to be living in our world with those on “the other side” of the seesaw, there is only one conclusion we can ever come to:

The choice is always ours to make.

Changing Yourself

 

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.

A Bigger Perspective

 

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.

True Self-Care

 

Last weekend I co-facilitated a restorative retreat at my farm where the focus was on self-care. While I had prepared a lot around what would be the obvious candidates for caring for ourselves, as the afternoon went on, it was amazing to hear how much nuance showed up around what self-care truly is.

We live in interesting and often confusing times. On the one hand, we are encouraged by a multi-billion dollar wellness industry to take better care of ourselves. To buy more things, get more services, do more around our self-care. On the other hand, we have a machine-driven culture that not only does not make time for what we actually need, it doesn’t even recognize it. We see this demonstrated in the unremitting schedules we are attempting to keep and in the rewards bestowed upon those who seem to be able to work without pausing or attending to their needs.

Both are terribly out of whack. False. Misleading. Destructive. And ultimately, very, very harmful to actually caring for ourselves in a way that is real and true.

Self-care is not something to be bought, acquired or negotiated over. Instead, it is built right into you. As a mammal, it is part of your survival response and is your relational glue. It serves as the foundation for your self-worth and is the gas that runs your life. And it is the homage you pay to the Creator for the gift of Life.

It shows up in your natural capacity to set a boundary and to use the word “No.” It is present in your ability to know when you are hungry, tired and need to move, and then to go on to actually satisfy what is being called for. As a matter of fact, self-care, the capacity to know how to take care of ourselves, is inborn and natural. Otherwise, how as a species would we be able to exist?

The trouble is, of course, we have allowed ourselves to be pulled away from what is natural and so when it comes to what we need. We have allowed ourselves to be bought, misled and medicated. I realize this sounds harsh, but without owning up to the part we play in the care that we need, we will never get out of the mess we find ourselves in; the one characterized by more illness, dis-ease, unrest and dissatisfaction than likely our species has ever experienced.

Self-care is not complicated. But it does require some things. Like paying better attention to yourself and to the messages you’re getting around when and where your life is out of balance. It requires being in your body and developing a respectful relationship to it (no matter what your mind or the culture demands). It means turning away from the habits and screen messaging that confuses your capacity to start inside your own self to determine what you need.

Your self-care is a reflection of how you feel about yourself and what it means to be alive. What would it be like to begin today to care for yourself as if you actually mattered? As if you actually knew what to do? No gadgets, apps, programs, books, advice required.

The Sacred Thread Of Our Lives

 

I was in a yoga class this week and we were talking about the full moon. It seems in the Vedic tradition, this moon symbolizes a recommitment to that which you hold dear. The teacher spoke of this time as a “Re-tying of the sacred thread.” The thread referring to what is tied around the waist of young initiates with the re-tying referring to a reconsecration of your vows.

I couldn’t stop thinking about the phrase re-tying the sacred thread all throughout class. Even though I didn’t have a lot of words for it in the moment, it felt powerful and sacred. It felt necessary, honest and true. Truly, it felt to me like the greatest thing any one of us could ever choose to do.

That being, to visit over and over and over again what it is we are committing our lives to.

What a True North this would be in a world increasingly less sacred, honest and true. In a world that encourages us to not have a compass by which to navigate, but instead, to be like a leaf in the wind, getting blown all over the place by whatever the prevailing winds are.

But to engage instead with the sacred thread is to choose what it is you stand for, and who and what you will be in the world. No matter what. Can you imagine it? What it would be like if more of us made a commitment to what is most important to us, and then lived by that?

This is not about party politics or forcing your views on another. Instead, this is about a deeply personal vow you make to the sacredness of your own life. One where you begin to walk the path of courage and discernment that says I will pay attention to what pulls my life out of balance. I will get a handle on what my mind is doing and how it is taking me in the wrong directions. I will become accountable for every single action I take with others; foregoing the victim and the need to blame another.

Our lives are like a great tapestry composed of so many threads. So many of which we have left ignored and untended though they be the most essential.

To even be in the position of re-tying your sacred thread is first and foremost to know what it is you have bound yourself to in this lifetime. For this, you need look no further than how you spend your time, money and energy while you wonder to yourself if your daily choices line up with the preciousness of your most sacred threads.

 

Living For Today

 

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.

Becoming More Intentional

 

For more than twenty-five years, on every retreat I have ever been on, or any training I have ever participated in, I have always created an intention for my time away.

It was no different when I recently did a walking pilgrimage in Scotland. In fact, I had several intentions I was working with while I was away. One for my body. One for my time on the land. One for my traveling companion. And one for the expression of my life’s work.

Each day as we set out on the trail, I would say my intentions, and each night as I was falling asleep, I would repeat them again. And whenever I would hit a difficult patch on the trail, whether mentally or physically, I would repeat my intentions over and over again as a way to keep my mind focused on what I wanted.

Doing this helped me from falling into old patterns I no longer want to engage in, and as a way to bring me back to the present moment. This daily practice left me with a deep sense of clarity and peace, that served as an anchor and as an abiding focus; even when things got challenging.

Every day we have countless choices around how to think about, and be with, what is happening to us. Unfortunately, it’s too easy these days to miss out on that knowing because of the endless stream of distractions and all the ways we have to numb ourselves out. But ultimately, and unfortunately, this allows us to sidestep the necessity for taking responsibility for how we are living. In the process, we miss out on the enormous sovereignty and empowerment gained that comes with knowing we, and only we, get to choose how to live.

The sidestepping we do creates a weak mind. One that lacks the capacity to focus on what we want and who we most want to be. The result? The world we’re living in where so many of us think and behave in ways that are both personally and collectively destructive.

The way forward becomes then our determination to get clear on what it is we want. What it is that matters most to us. And then to choose for that over and over and over again; refusing to allow ourselves to be lulled into a Life we do not like or want.

It takes guts. And perseverance. But firstly it takes spending time with yourself to get clear on where you want to direct your energies. Once you have even a glimmer of that, create a statement. Keep it positive, present tense and direct. For example, My body is healthy, happy, strong and growing in endurance (one of mine from the trip).

Then, every time your mind wanders into anything but that, affirm your direction by stating your intention to yourself over and over again while you watch, and address, every naysaying, negative thought to the contrary.

Yes, it takes time. And lots of hard won determination. But truly, why not? Why be satisfied with a life of negativity, distraction and self-medication? Why not go for what you actually want?