Tag Archives: unity

Finding Your Outrage

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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?

 

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The Great Balancing Act

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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.

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Changing Yourself

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

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

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

Why is that?

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

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

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

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

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

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A Bigger Perspective

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

In other words, going from not existing to existing.

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

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

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

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

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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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Higher Love

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Last weekend I ran in one of my favorite road races. Maybe it’s the season and all the holiday decorations that make it feel so special. Or maybe it’s the funny and festive costumes that people not only wear, but run in. Perhaps it’s the brass band, the women drummers or the dance troup that line the course. Maybe it’s the people that stand on the side of the road with bells and other festive holiday accoutrements cheering you on. Perhaps, it’s a combination of all of the above.

And for sure, personally, this year there was the deep, deep appreciation I felt for my body for being able to run after having not been well enough to run for a couple of weeks.

Whatever it is on any given year, there is such an overwhelming feeling of goodwill that each year as I cross the finish line, I burst out crying. With joy. With a deep appreciation for being alive. With the knowing that this is what I want to feel more of when I am around other people.

This year the words from a Steve Winwood song, “Bring me a higher love” were blasting over the loud speaker as I finished. It felt so perfect and so expressive of what I was feeling. Being out there with people of all types, all shapes and sizes, in a harmonious way, reminds me of what is possible when we are all running our own pace, in the company of others, while we all focus in the same direction.

It doesn’t matter what you look like, what gear you have, how fast or slow you are, how fit or not you are, or even, believe it or not, whether or not you “finish.” Instead, it’s about being together, as is. Side by side. No questions asked. No judgments meted out.

We could do this. We can do this. But it will take each and every one of us making a decision to see the one before you, next to you and behind you, as worthy of your appreciation. Worthy of your admiration of how great they are doing, no matter what it looks like. This is not to excuse bad behavior, but instead to acknowledge that running the race of Life can be arduous and at times, overwhelming, and that no matter what it looks like from the outside, we all really are doing the very best we can in any given moment.

What if we decided to have the wisdom to greet each other with a kind of higher love? As opposed to expecting the worst. Or looking for flaws. Or greedily confirming our inherent judgments and biases in an attempt to feel “right.”

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11.11

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As I write this, today is November 11th. 11.11.  In many places in the world, it is a day of great significance. In the U.S., it is the day we honor our veterans. And in many circles, today is known as a portal day. A day of personal and spiritual significance. A day to pay attention to. A day to set powerful intentions on.

A day to move closer to the Truth of who we are and why we are here.

Funny, how typically I would have been writing yesterday on the 10th. But the writing just wouldn’t come. So I set it aside. Now I know why. I was supposed to be with this day in this way. I was supposed to be willing to do something different.

This small example sums up what a day like today is all about: An opportunity to be different than my usual habits and preconceived ideas. A day to move and choose and talk and be with more intention. More reverence. More awareness that there is Something Greater at play in my Life than how I would have it.

But in order for us to be available to these more sensitive threads in the universal order of things, we must not only pay attention, we must be committed to leaving some room in our minds, our schedules, our wants, for these sacred threads to reveal themselves to us. Not just in specific times like a holiday, a death, a birth or going to a service, but in the moment to moment unfolding of our lives.

We are missing something when we believe we are too busy, or that there are only certain times we can be more available to a holy opportunity.

It is there in how you eat. How you speak to another. How you think about those you fear or disagree with. How you consume things. How you stay when you should go. How you remain silent when you should speak. For it is there. Always. And in All Ways.

What we are talking about here is one moment in time, a momentary portal, to remind us all to be more One, more unified, more whole in all that we are and all that we do. For it’s easy to do it on the “special” days, and much, much harder to keep the commitment going over more of the days of our lives.

So even when the day passes (which it already has as you read this), can you remember to look for 11.11 more often? Can you remember to let it’s significance reveal something to you in any given moment? Can you commit to making more room inside of your life and mind for the unexpected that shows up when you live more as One than 2 or 3 or 10 or 200…?

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Rethinking Harm

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I am these days, as dare I say all of us are, aware of, alert to, and afraid of, lots and lots of what is happening in our world. Lots of what feels out of my hands, and certainly nothing I would ever knowingly create.

And yet, here I am. Here we are. Now what?

Let’s start with the obvious, and then make our way to the not so obvious. There’s a lot of harm going on in the world. That’s obvious. From here on out is where we start to get into the ‘not so obvious.’

While it’s easy, maybe even natural, to believe that someone else is causing the harm and that we are the innocent bystanders caught up in something not of our own making, what if this is not the whole story? What if there is way more to this narrative than meets the eye? What if we have more responsibility in the harms being caused in the world than we would like to admit?

This can be hard to hear. Offensive even. Especially if you have never considered how your state of being contributes to the ways of the world. But hear me out. To be with this in a meaningful way, you have to stretch your lens and be willing to see the underlying connection of all things.

Let’s start with an ancient perspective on how all things are connected. Since the dawn of at least recorded history, all of our wisest and well-known teachers have espoused some version of “As within, so without.” In other words, whatever is going on within you, me, or us, is exactly what we will find going on outside of us in the world.

For instance, maybe you never have or never would murder someone, but have you ever felt a rage so deep within yourself towards another that felt beyond your control? Or perhaps you would never rape someone, but have you ever tried to control another person and get them to do what they didn’t want to do? Maybe you’ve never created a war, but do you ever go to war with other people in your own mind?

If you’re willing, there are lots of ways to play with how your inner life is connected to the outer life. But it takes a kind of openness and compassion on your part to look at what is outside of you that you find deplorable, and to see if you can find it in yourself. To root out the harm in your inner world in the service of transforming that harm into something else for the outer world.

But I will tell you from firsthand experience, it’s not easy to get this honest with yourself. Perhaps the hardest thing we will ever do as human beings is to look at the places in ourselves we hide from. The very same places that we will disown by projecting them onto somebody else. As in, that’s horrible, I would never do that. Only to find upon closer examination, that in your own way, yes you do.

Because this can be so tricky to be with, I offer you something a very wise woman offered to me years ago. It seems that in the port town she lives in, the war ships would come in and out. This greatly disturbed her and left her feeling powerless and angry. So she made up a little prayer and it goes like this: “May no harm come to you, may no harm come from you.”

I have found this prayer to be a beautiful way to defuse the inner fears and hostilities that can arise in me in response to a world bringing harm. In the meantime, it creates the space I need to rethink how I might be, in my own way, bringing harm. If even ‘just’ through my own thoughts and inner reactions.

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Every Single Bit Of It

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“All of it gets to be here,” is a practice I come in and out of using. Right now, I am back in.

I both love and hate this practice. I both resist it, and know it to be true. Beyond true, I know it is the directest route to healing my own body/mind separation, the splits that divide us as people, along with the false personas we mistakenly claim as being who we are because we don’t feel we have a right to be all of who and what we are.

This is what gets to be here in my world. The wasps and the ladybugs that infest my home each year. The people defrauding our government, and the ‘entrepeneurs’ bringing us closer and closer to the brink of extinction with their GMO’s, chemicals, surveillance technologies and fake foods. The policies that deny anyone free will over their own body. The people I feel have hurt me. Any and all of the ways that I believe the ‘wrong’ things are in charge.

The list goes on, and it’s enormous! But all of it, every single bit of it, gets to be here. Day after day. Year after year. It’s maddening to include what I don’t want to be here. And frightening. It can feel depressing and risky to believe, to know, that it all gets to be here. That pain that won’t resolve. The lingering illness. That unresolved conflict. The corporation bringing harm.

All of it gets to be here.

I am in no way suggesting that I want these things, like them, or am giving them a free pass. What I am suggesting is that when I take this attitude my life changes for the better. This sounds hard to do. Impossible even. You might even be wondering, Why bother? What’s in it for me? In a word, PEACE. A literal oasis in a desert of fighting against everything we do not want, but that is here nonetheless.

Think about it. How often are you fighting something within your own mind? All the things you don’t want to be here. All the ways that you resist and try and manage ‘what is.’ The weather you don’t like. The traffic you rage against. The annoying co-worker or boss you wish would just go away. A family member not supporting you. The government or a political party that just makes you want to scream.

On and it goes. All day, every day. Big and little wars within that go on to create our outer wars in the places we inhabit together. For as the old adage goes, “As within, so without.”

If this makes any sense to you, give it a try in low stakes situations. For example, ‘let’ the weather you don’t like be here. ‘Allow’ another person’s bad mood to be here. ‘Accept’ that those you disagree with, even vehemently, get to be here.

Instead of looking around at how the world will fall apart because it’s not going according to your plan, watch what happens inside of you when you can honestly and truly let what is here, be here.

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Across & Between Species

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I am talking with a friend who lives in the Southwest and she is telling me of the powerful encounters she is having with the wild horses who abound there.

With every word she speaks, instructions are being offered for how it is that beings who inhabit very different realities can stand side by side one another with not only a sense of decency but more importantly, Reverence. If even for just a moment, transcending, or at the very least bridging, the “apparent”differences. Communing, if you will, beyond the distinctions.

With these wild and majestic animals, there are no command performances. No demands to be placed upon them to acquiesce. She cannot “get” them to bend to her will or agenda, no matter her intention. Wise woman that she is, she does not even try. Choosing instead, for a far less egocentric way of being with these magnificent creatures by “merely” allowing a side-by-side existence.

She is alert for, present to, and allowing of, their right to take the lead. What a concept given the knee jerk dominance the human mind can slip into. That place where we believe that we are in charge. Of course we are in charge. For we know best. We always know best.

At times the wild ones I speak of are so immersed in their own experience that they have absolutely no interest in her. She lives with that, despite what her own desires of the moment might be. At other times, they intensely seek her out. Literally demanding that she be with them on their terms. No distractions, they seem to say. And absolutely no imposition of her will on the exchange will be allowed.

For it is They, and Some Deeper Intelligence that is in charge here.

It takes a lot, she says, of her and she believes, of them, to be in such open and close proximity to such a vastly different being. Such vastly different experiences, sensibilities and needs present in these encounters. And yet, in these rare and precious moments, there is a leaning into being both open to something more, while simultaneously remaining sovereign.

There is no entering this threshold, this “time out of time” space in the typical ways of the human mind. There is only a kind of being with that makes an opening such as this even possible.

Could we not take a page from this scene in our dealings with one another? Could we not recognize the tremendous effort, respect and awe it requires to be with another person where their unique experiences are honored, while we remain sovereign to ours?

Especially when we believe different things and cannot find our way to understanding.

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