Tag Archives: Power

Be Simple & Be Free

Posted on by

 

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

 

Share this article

Create An Uplifting Story

Posted on by

 

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.

 

Share this article

Yearnings

Posted on by

 

All my life, my heart has yearned for a thing I cannot name.

~Andre Breton

This beauty came across my desk recently. It felt as if I could have written it. When I thought about it more, it felt as if any one of us could have written it.

Below all of the to-do lists, the distractions, the hurts, the confusions and the unworthiness lives a place that yearns for Something More. Beyond all of the thoughts that would say, This is just how it is, and there is nothing I can do about it, dwells a knowing that anything is possible when the heart and its most sincere yearnings are involved.

Outside all of the fears that would say, It’s too dangerous, you’ll get hurt, that’s naive, people will make fun of you, this could never exist in the world, is an understanding that despite all the push back you might ever get from the world, this is actually what everyone truly longs for. A chance for the heart to give voice to its yearnings.

A chance to put the heart’s yearnings into form, to offer them as a gift to the world and to see them received by other hearts.

This takes a lot of courage. Especially in a world that has grown so jaded when it comes to matters of the heart. Not to mention all of the ways that each and every one of us has had our deepest yearnings denied, ridiculed, driven from us, and even harmed.

But the time is Now.

The true “fix” to what ails us resides in the heart and what it longs for. This is The Force in The Universe powerful enough to cut through the distortions, the derangements and the deals we have all made with the wrong things. Things that will never be enough because they do not honor what it is the heart is trying to name.

Personally, I yearn for relationships that are authentic and that bring out the best in all of us. I yearn to live in connection with All That Is. I yearn for the most loving energies to be in charge. I yearn to speak my truth and for it to be received. And I yearn for all of us to make way for the differences among us.

What does your heart yearn for? Can you be brave enough to name it?

Share this article

Finding Your Outrage

Posted on by

 

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?

 

Share this article

A Winter Wonderland

Posted on by

 

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.

Share this article

The “Easy Steps” Trap

Posted on by

 

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.

Share this article

The Great Balancing Act

Posted on by

 

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.

Share this article

Changing Yourself

Posted on by

 

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.

Share this article

A Bigger Perspective

Posted on by

 

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.

Share this article

True Self-Care

Posted on by

 

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.

Share this article