Tag Archives: Power

The Sacred Thread Of Our Lives

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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.

 

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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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Becoming More Intentional

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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?

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Beyond Groupthink

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“Courage is fear that has said its prayers” is a powerful statement I came across many years ago at a time when I was first confronting a lot of fears that had long gone unrecognized. Ones I was working my hardest to not see or deal with. Ones that were driving me to be and live in ways that were hurting me.

So it was nothing short of miraculous to hear I could find a way to be with what I thought I could not be with.

I turned to this sentiment as a touchstone to get a handle on the fears that were driving me. Getting into it, I saw the fears that were the scariest were mostly centered around (and still do) what would happen to me if I really stepped into the full expression of who I am.

Stepped into being the one beyond what others believed she should be. Stepped into being the one who used her own unique voice; even when that rattled the status quo. Stepped into being the one who did things differently because she had gotten clear on her values; even when those around her hadn’t and where that clarity might be perceived as a threat.

The fears I am referencing are deep and primal, and are the ones we all carry. They include the fear of being rejected. Of being retaliated against. Of being kicked out, not loved, gossiped about, ridiculed. I think you get the picture. As a matter of fact, I know you get the picture because these are the fears that keep all of us from being who we are.

Whether these fears are intentionally disseminated or are just being passed onto us, they are the ones that cut the deepest because they are the ones we learned about in childhood. The ones that came in when we didn’t have the cognitive capacity to discern whether to take them on as valid or not. The ones that came in at a time when it was impossible to go out on our own.

The ones that showed up at a time when we had to negotiate who we were, in order to stay within the safety and belonging of the group. And now, because we live in a world ever more infused with a kind of growing comfort around being surveilled, where our very actions, and soon to be our thoughts, are known and can be used against us, our belief that being ourselves is dangerous, is being amplified.

If you believe I am overstating something here, or have gone off the deep end, just think about the cancel culture that has been birthed out of our unhealthy attachments to social media where if you say something unpopular, you can be de-platformed and publicly humiliated; serving, in effect, as a kind of modern day stockade in the public square where you are held up as an example of what not to do as your community jeers at you.

Or how about the current practice of the social credit system in effect in China now (as well as being considered by other countries), where if one does something outside of the officially sanctioned government narrative, you lose access to things you need to live as a functioning member of society.

All of this to say: Never has it been more difficult to be who you truly are, and never has it been more important for the future of a world leaning more and more into a kind of enforced groupthink.

It is a very big ask of each of us to explore who we are beyond what “they” expect or demand of us because it requires us to be with our fears. To seek them out and to challenge them. To feel the fears we all experience around being ourselves and to step forward anyway. Not as a way to re-traumatize ourselves, but as an act of sovereignty and bravery that says “My life is far too precious for us all for me allow it to be silenced by out-of-date and culturally-induced fears.

 

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The Journeys We Take

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I am just back from a walking pilgrimage I did with a friend in Scotland. As you might imagine, I started out with ideas about what this time away would be like; how things would go and what it was I wanted to happen. Immediately, as in on my first flight out, I was “gifted” with a wrench in the works in the form of a missed connection to Scotland where I was to be meeting my friend in the airport the next day, and then going on to our first leg of the journey.

I put “gifted” in quotes because we typically don’t associate our plans being interrupted as a gift. But that’s exactly what it was for me. Why? Because I got the chance to see what thirty years of practicing mindfulness, of being present to the moment instead of fighting with it, can do for a person. Especially under less than desirable circumstances. Especially when we feel like something hangs in the balance.

We all want things to go the way we want them to go. We all create scenarios in our minds around what will happen if we don’t get what we want. We all do our best to manage the experience of being alive with all of its uncertainties by believing we have far more control than we actually do.

But that’s precisely where the suffering comes from: Our ideas about how things need to go, or else… Or else we won’t be ok. Or else we won’t be happy, safe, loved, you name it. That things will be ruined. That we won’t be able to handle what life throws our way. That we won’t get what we need.

But none of that is true. What is true is that when we can be with things as they are, even when we don’t like them, we give ourselves the gift of peace of mind. Of sanity. Of being aligned with reality in such a way that not only can we be ok, but miracles can actually occur.

This was my experience while being stranded in an airport as I was missing my connection. Missing my meeting time with my friend in Edinburgh. Missing our first night to get acclimated. Missing our first day out on the trail. Just hearing about all of this missing out could leave many of us feeling frustrated, resentful, angry, or despondent.

But in this situation and on this day, I was none of those things. Without even trying. Without putting on a happy face or trying to think positively. I was plainly and simply, ok to be exactly where I was.

It would be easy here to focus on what a bummer it was or how the trip was ruined. But I’m here to say it was none of that. In fact, it was the exact opposite. I got to discover how many wonderful strangers are out there as I spent time talking with anyone who would talk to me. I got the chance to see how at home I am in my own skin. And I got to be the recipient of so many miracles and kindnesses, small and large, that happen in a busy airport when you are not fighting the ten hours you will be spending there.

Because I allowed myself to surrender so peacefully and so fully to what was happening, I spent a wonderful day in the airport eating, reading, meditating, reflecting, doing yoga and walking. Somewhere in the midst of it all, I realized I hadn’t missed a single thing. That I was in fact, already on my pilgrimage. That what I had been intending for my time away was already happening quite beautifully. That nothing was wrong. Nor was I missing anything.

I don’t tell you this to brag about myself. I tell you this to say, life is going to do what life is going to do, so why not surrender up your ideas about how things need to go? Why not admit when you have no control over a situation? Why not let yourself settle into “what is?”

Of course this requires practice. Lots of it because of how conditioned we are to believe that we are the epicenter of how the world should and must operate. This is as simple as getting into the habit of saying “yes.” Yes to the weather that is here. Yes to the politics of the day. Yes to what the people around you are doing. Yes to what your body is feeling.

Not because you like it or want it to stick around, but purely as the sanest gesture to yourself to admit that, yes, in fact, this is here. Whatever it is. Now you are in a position to be with Life on Life’s terms. Meaning that whatever you do or don’t do will be coming from an alignment with the reality of the situation at hand, as opposed to some fantasy or denial about how you need things to be.

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Waiting To Be OK

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“I am done waiting to be okay.” 

I spontaneously write these words down in my journal one morning. The entry follows on the heels of a particularly difficult night of sleep. One of those times when you wonder if you have even slept at all. All of this follows a week of an achy, cranky hip and a lot of anticipation around an upcoming event.

Watching my mind through the hours of no sleep, one theme emerges over and over again: If things were different I would be better. If I was sleeping, if my hip didn’t hurt and if I wasn’t worried about something, then, then, I would be OK. How everything would be right with the world and I could finally be at peace. If only all these things just weren’t happening right now.

How often are we all waiting to be OK? For something outside of us to make everything all better. The test result. The package to arrive. Another person changing. For the weather, the boss, our partner, anything and everything, to be somehow different as the prerequisite for our OK-ness.

The problem with the waiting game being, we wish our lives away. Always waiting for some other time for things to be better. Different. Never realizing that Life does not revolve around our terms and requirements for what we need to be OK. That the weather will do what the weather will do. As will our friends, families, bosses, co-workers, and at times, even our own bodies.

Because the truth is, even if we get what we believe we need to be OK, there will always be something else that will show up and upend our precarious sense of OK-ness that has been built on outside circumstances needing to line up just so.

It literally never ends. Until, of course, our lives do.

Knowing this, what if we just agreed to take Life at face value? Accepted that being here is not about us trying to make everything OK by our own standards, but is instead, about learning to be OK through it all. Through thick or thin. Through both the wanted and the unwanted. The expected and the unexpected.

But of course this takes practice. Lots of it. So best to begin before the really big things arrive. Maybe with the low stakes moments across your day. For instance, being OK if you don’t get the weather you want, the parking space or the yoga spot you covet. Or being alright with someone making a choice you don’t agree with. Or perhaps, the next time you can’t sleep, letting that be okay. Not making it mean anything other than, right now, you’re not asleep, and that even if you don’t get the rest you need, you will most certainly be OK.

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Beginning Where You Are

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Beginning where you are when it comes to what is happening in your body is the ultimate homecoming and an absolute necessity if you are to know what it is your body needs. To get there though requires accepting what your body is experiencing in any given moment. Even when you don’t like what is there.

This is not easy to do as it is only natural that we want our bodies to feel a certain way. But the truth is, as hard as this can be, there’s just no way around this one. For if you hope to live in a body you feel good in and can trust, you must be willing to actually be in it.

I know this might seem ludicrous, as in, where else would you be? But that’s the trouble with being human. We can be anywhere but in the body when the mind takes us into the past or the future. Thoughts of the past keep us locked in old fears, traumas and beliefs while thoughts of the future create an anticipation of all the things we don’t want to happen to the body.

Either way we have left our bodies. We have left them without a clear, present mind that knows how to see the realities of the body for what they are. Not what we have been told they are or fear them to be. For instance, if our family of origin had a lot of fears around something like cancer, we can find ourselves ruminating about whether or not that will happen to us. In effect, priming ourselves for something we definitely do not want. Or if you were raised in such a way that the body’s most basic needs for things like touch, sleep and food were met in unhealthy ways, you will automatically believe deprivation is the norm.

To begin where you are is to accept your body exactly as you find it. I mean this literally. You must be willing to acknowledge whatever is happening. Not because you want it to stay, but because that is what is so. This includes the thoughts, the emotions, the pains, the sensations, the urges, the instincts and all of the intuitions contained within you.

This is the equivalent of mapping out a road trip. If you don’t know where you’re starting from, if you aren’t in the vehicle to begin with, how can you possibly reach your destination? How will you know what you need to make the trip? How will you know if you’ve taken a wrong turn? How will you know when you need a tune-up?

Perhaps more than anything else, if you are not fully and all the way in your own body, how will you be able to enjoy all the sights to be seen while knowing the roads to avoid?

 

Excerpted from my book Trusting Your Body: The Embodied Journey of Claiming Sacred Responsibility for Your Health & Well-Being

 

 

 

 



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What Are You Following?

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I was taking a yoga class this week when the teacher posed the question: “Are you following your thoughts or are you following your breath?” In other words, are you chasing the thought patterns you have been ruminating on for literally years? Or are you here now, in this moment, breath by precious breath?

Where we put our attention holds the very key to life on earth being a kind of heaven or living hell. And while many of us believe and live as if what is going on outside of us, what others are doing, an epidemic, what other countries or the politicians are up to, is what creates either heaven or hell for us, it’s just not true.

What is true is that what you are habitually putting your attention on, especially when it comes to what you are thinking about, has the power to bring you everything you never wanted. Or everything you ever wanted.

How could it be any other way?

Your thoughts are what create the words that come out of your mouth. They create which actions you will take on any given day. They stand behind the energy and momentum of how you do and live and believe and love and hope and fear and eat and negotiate and relate and…

For instance, if you believe that your medical system, religion or political party has the lock on the truth, you will use your words to condemn those who don’t line top with your narrative. If you believe that the body is a machine that breaks down easily and requires a mechanic to keep it in line, you will never be open to how your thoughts and your health are one and the same.

To decide for heaven, in other words all those things you most yearn for, is to become intimately aware of, and responsible for, every single thought you think. This is a big job. Especially in the beginning when it can feel like a circus on crack inside your own mind.

That’s why it can be so instructively sane to break down the thousands and thousands of thoughts you have each and every day into a binary choice; allowing you to step out of the oblivion or the tug-of-war relationship you have with your own mind and all of its unchecked thoughts.

Try this. Get in the habit of catching yourself throughout the day by asking, What am I thinking about right now? Once you are aware of the specific content, make a down and dirty assessment by wondering whether this thought creates a sense of safety or danger within you. Drop all the content and tune into the way this thought make you feel about yourself, others and the world.

And then make a choice.

If this is not a thought you want to harbor, put your attention on something else. Follow your own breath, look at the sky, smell something delicious. To choose where to put your own attention is to make the decision to stop following a thought that brings dis-ease, and to instead choose for a little heaven here on Earth.

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What The World Is Really Here To Give You

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“The world is not here to make you happy. It’s here to make you conscious.” I heard these words spoken last week by Eckhart Tolle, renowned teacher of Presence. It came at exactly the right moment for me as the words broke through the haze of being lost in a deep well of grief.

I am no stranger to grief and sorrow. They have been traveling companions of mine for my whole life. Grief over the ways of the world. Sorrow over missed and lost connections in personal relationships. Sadness over how we treat ourselves and others.

At times, I have felt broken and victimized by how grief-stricken I have been over the ways our children’s innocence is being violated via the screens. I have been filled with sorrow over how we allow our lives to be gobbled up by distractions. And I have been heart-broken over how often the wrong things are in charge; despite the obvious destruction they bring.

This and more is what I have been revisiting of late, being “stuck in a grief loop,” as one of my practitioners so aptly put it.

But when I heard Eckhart’s words, something in me snapped to attention. Something in me knew immediately the Truth of those words. And all at once, I could see that the lifelong suffering around the grief and sorrow I have always felt has been not just because of how devastatingly sad all these things are, but because I have been expecting the world to take this sadness away from me by being other than it is.

Now, I know that our minds might go immediately to Well, what sane person wouldn’t want the madness of the world to end? What sane person wouldn’t want more respect for life? 

This is not to negate that healthy yearning. But it is to point out that when we refuse to acknowledge how things are, not how we want them to be, we suffer; fighting in vain like a fish on a line.

To see that there is something greater at play than even your most heartfelt and noble expectations of the world is to step into an entirely new game. It is to open to your spiritual nature and the real reason you are here. Which is to grow in consciousness. Which is to walk the path of remembering who you really are, and why you are here.

When I look at my life through this lens, I can say with certainty that this is so. For each time the world has not made me happy, and I have chosen to let it grow me, I have changed. And always for the better. Every unfairness and disappointment that the world has ever delivered to me, a blessing.

I guess it’s time for me to step out of the grief loop I’ve been in.

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Tapping Into The Hermit Within

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I write this blog on the day of the Winter Solstice. A time of year many of us dread because of the increased darkness with all of the scarier feelings of loneliness, low mood and more that can go with it. But there’s another way we can look at this time of year as we head into the winter season. A way of being with the much needed and seasonal rhythm of slowing down and going within as we send our energies into the roots that hold what most sustains us.

For a deeper exploration of the natural capacity to focus inward in this way, I turn to the archetype of The Hermit: The one who intentionally withdraws as a sacred act of devotion to the exploration of what lies within. The one who chooses consciously to retreat in the service of accessing and becoming more acquainted with the deep self. The one who decides to strip their existence down to the bare essentials in order to truly know themselves.

Sounds like an incredible recipe for a meaningful life. And it just might be the very antidote some of us are looking for in a world that is increasingly bent on selling us the meaningless and the superficial. A world organized around giving us the shadow side of The Hermit. That being, all of the ways that we can withdraw and check out in extraordinarily disconnected and destructive ways.

The “dark side” of The Hermit looks like socially isolating yourself; numbing out with substances, withdrawing from meaningful endeavors and connections, getting lost in the fantasy world of the screens. This is so easy to do because of all that we are bombarded with on a daily basis and because it is practically demanded of us that we “retreat” through the use of all the medications that have become the acceptable way now to withdraw in modern times. But when you truly understand the role and the power of The Hermit’s choice to withdraw, you’re more inclined to find your way back to the light-filled side of this archetype that withdraws, ultimately and always, in search of Truth.

That’s why The Hermit is never about checking out, but instead is a map for going below the surface of the conditioning, the societal pressures, the lies, the false realities, the obfuscations and the latest binge experiences being offered to us. This archetype is a direct route to reality with a capital “R.” A conscious and conscientiously chosen retreating as a way of respecting the complications and confusions of the realities of life in a body by giving yourself time out of time to align with true and life-giving versions of what this life is really all about.

This can be done formally by going away on a retreat. But it can also be something as immediate as your very own breathing, where you intentionally pause between one breath and the next in an effort to give yourself a moment’s withdrawal from the onslaught of the daily fray. You can carve out an hour for a walk, create a moment to step outside and look at the night sky, draw a bath, drive in silence or take a night off from the hypnotic and externalizing barrage of what comes out of the screens.

In so doing, your reward is great for The Hermit is the sage, the wise-one, the one who welcomes solitude and silence as the path for knowing how to be with all the seasons of Life. Even the darkest and scariest of them all.

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