Tag Archives: transformation

Authenticity

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Where I live, we have all kinds of wild animals; bears, bobcats, porcupines, hawks, foxes, deer and more. When my kids were older, and I would stop the car to get a better look at an animal before it went into the woods, they would always joke about what a big deal I was making of it all. I didn’t care. There was just something so special about getting to see wild creatures in their own home.

It always feels like such an honor and such a blessing to catch even a glimpse of them.

I think one of the reasons I’m so called to these moments is because of the unwavering authenticity of the animals. It feels like something I can trust. Something I can learn from. Something that reminds me of who I am. And what I can be.

An animal in the wild is never anything less than fully who and what it is. No matter what I might want. No matter what the world might be doing. The hawk will always want to pick off one of my chickens. The porcupine will always want to decimate my fruit trees. And though I may want the majestic ones like the moose, bears and the bobcats to pause a little longer so I can just be with them, they do not answer to me. Ever.

They do not adjust themselves to me. They are always, single-mindedly going to be and do whatever they are and whatever they need to do. Therein lies the secret of their integrity, as well as sacred instructions for how to live.

For to fully and authentically inhabit ourselves each and every moment creates a life based in integrity and makes us a trustworthy source for both ourselves and others. On the other hand, when we shift and negotiate ourselves based on our fears, insecurities, conditioning, wounds, what others expect of us, the demands of the modern world, we are not trustworthy. Nor are we happy, fulfilled or fully expressed.

That’s why it’s such a big deal to choose to find your way into your authentic self.

Unfortunately, we have been schooled to not be ourselves. To not feel what we are feeling. To not know what we are knowing. And because this false sense of who we are has become so familiar to us, so deeply embedded in how we think about ourselves and interact with others, it can feel impossible to get away from what has been created in this regard.

Too dangerous to challenge or look at all the ways we are not ourselves.

Then there are all the “rewards” for not being authentic. For not saying what is really on our mind because of how others get to feel more comfortable with what they are doing. There are no awkward moments when we leave something unchallenged. No need to work something out. No strength to be acquired to go against the grain of what the culture demands. No need to develop courage to say “No” to all the life-depleting choices we are being offered.

There are so many ways we are “rewarded” for not rocking the boat, for agreeing with the status quo, for going along to get along.

But the real and arduous road to authenticity means rooting out all the ways you are not your authentic self. And because we are so accustomed to not being fully ourselves, we have lots of opportunities to practice each and every day. It’s in the smile or the laugh you give when you feel otherwise. It’s in your silence when you disagree. It’s in your decision to do something, not because it feels right to you, but because everyone else is doing it.

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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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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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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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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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The Things In Life That Are Too Big For Us

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This week, I heard someone use the phrase, “Too big to address and too big to walk away from,” in reference to one of the big issues we as a people are facing. I had never heard that expression before, but boy did it land for me; so aptly describing an experience many of us are having when we look out into the destruction and chaos of a world gone mad.

Too big to address and too big to walk away from.

At first glance, it may feel like being between a rock and a hard place. Nowhere to go. Nothing you can do. I think this is where many of us live these days. Stuck in limbo. Recognizing that a lot needs to be addressed, challenged and changed, but feeling like it is far too big for us to have an impact.

So we fall into despair. Apathy. Frustration. Cynicism.

Or maybe we throw all of ourselves at an issue. Working overtime. Dedicating ourselves to some external cause that we pour our heart and soul into. Doing more than our share and sometimes feeling resentful that others don’t care as much. Or are not pulling their weight.

In the face of the world’s “issues” it can be so easy to fall into “this is just the way things are now” or to kick into high gear and start trying to fix everything. But what if the issues that are too big to address and too big to walk away from are actually a visioning opportunity, a call from our very own soul? One that requires we go into our very own lives and handle our big issues, before we turn our attention to the world.

This inner anchoring in the face of world overwhelm grounds us and give us access to deeper ways of knowing beyond the knee-jerk reactions so typical of us when we confront big, scary issues. We need some kind of inner referencing because the truth is, neither apathy nor overwork are the path of wisdom. The way of thoughtful action. The way of understanding that always, and in all ways, anything out there big enough to be a problem, needs to be known in here, inside each one of us, first.

Otherwise, we add to the chaos and the confusion as we bring our own blind spots, fears and agendas to the situation at hand. To go into the bigness of your very own issues is to understand, in seed form, the big issues the world currently faces.

If this is so, it begs the question, “What in your life feels too big to ignore, and simultaneously too big to handle? We’ve all got one. That core issue that just won’t go away. The one that seems to be at the root of everything else. The one we work really hard to cover up.

Do you know what yours is?

I guarantee you something: Figure out what yours is, along with all of its ins and outs, and you will have a gold standard template for addressing the biggest and most intractable world issues. The ones we can’t seem to solve. The ones that overwhelm and frighten us the most.

Try it. Look to your own life. What are you pretending not to know?

Use this question whenever you meet up with your big life issues and watch how not only your life begins to change, but you start to have a much clearer sense of how to be with what is too big to address and too big to walk away from when it comes to the world at large.

 

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Your Right To Your Own Health & Healing

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Years ago, I was in a Holistic Health Counseling Training. It was one of the most profound and generous trainings I have ever been involved with. And I have done many. What made it so profound and generous was that we were offered every approach under the sun when it came to perspectives on health and healing. A smorgasbord of ways to approach things like diet, healthcare, spirituality, lifestyle issues and more. It was left up to us to sift through all that we were given; choosing for ourselves what worked for us, and what didn’t. 

Looking back, I can see that the founder of the school, beyond his desire to convey content, understood something vital, life-affirming and humane. An approach far too often missing in our conventional healthcare systems. The approach being, a basic trust in each other of our ability to choose for ourselves when it comes to what makes the most sense to our lives, along with what it is we personally need in order to be well. 

This is something I aspire to embody in the health and healing approaches I offer to the world. I am not being falsely self-deprecating here. Instead, I fully understand how difficult it is to not try and influence another when you believe you have the fix for them. When you believe you know better than they do about what is going on for them, and what they should do. Even must do, from certain “modern” public health perspectives.

But I want something more than to persuade or coerce another into my belief system. The “something more” is not just for me, but for all of us. I want a world where we trust each other at the level of recognizing that each of us truly does know what we are doing. Even if it cannot be understood by those around us. Even if we ourselves do not fully understand it. 

But why take that chance with one another? Because this way of being creates a world where we pay homage to the journey each of us is on. No matter what we might make of it. Because when you trust deep down inside that another has within them the capacity of inner wisdom to know their life, their body and what it is they need, you give them the great humanitarian gift of empowerment, agency and personal responsibility. 

The sacred act of you having faith in them, including your willingness to set aside your opinions and dogmas, carries the capacity to inspire and to help another move mountains in their own life. For when a person can trust themselves, what it is they are knowing and sensing from the inside out, you support them in becoming their very best. When you can stand in with another who is lost and confused without trying to get them to do what you think they should do, giving them the space to come to something on their own, they will exceed all expectations you, and even they themselves, might have of what they are capable of.

This is what changes lives on the personal level and what then goes on to change the life of the world.

Each person’s health and healing is unique to them and it is a deep, deep disrespect and a fundamental undermining of another’s humanity to try and take this from them. To ever try and co-opt the journey they have chosen for one of your own making. Each person’s journey of health and healing far exceeds a moment in time merely focused on a cure at the physical, mental or emotional level. Instead, the journey each of us is on is our soul’s deepest expression in physical form. 

To interfere with that expression by trying to manage, control, legislate, or mandate what another does in this regard, is a sin against humanity. 

(If this resonates, consider taking a look at the upcoming program I’m offering called The Healer Within.)

 

 

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