There are those moments in life that feel extraordinary. Life changing. When they come upon us, they can feel overwhelming and too big. In truth, they have been preceded by countless smaller changes, choices, experiences. Private changes. This means that these big moments are actually not isolated or all that important - rather, they are a reflection of all of those smaller choices and changes. Showing us we’re on the right path. Change on the inside always precedes a change on the outside.
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Our culture has values, attributes it prioritizes and awards. Some of us have more of those attributes, and some of us have less. But they are all only part of us, a facet in the greater totality of our true selves.
Other cultures have other values. There is nothing inherently right or universal about the cultural values, they are simply unexamined remnants from people that lived long ago. Or they are created by the institutions that have the greatest resources through advertising. Regardless, they harm me when they are accepted without examination. (And they rarely survive the act of examination!) Our culture values facets of us. But we are diamonds. A model that I find helpful is to remember that I can identify as a diamond, or as a facet. When I remember that I am a diamond, I feel connected to the Divine, to myself, to nature, committed to my creative expression, and listen wholeheartedly to Jeff, myself, and my kids. I feel whole, complete. I am my most conscious self, with no agenda for life or other people. It's a sense of the no-self that the mystics and sages talk about. And I feel bliss. When I am identifying with a facet, I am hiding part of myself. Over-identifying with one facet or another, a partial dimension of myself, but no my whole self. Interestingly, I frequently feel like I have an agenda - whether it is hidden or overt. My greatest humanity and power is in returning, over and over, to the sense of myself as a diamond. Anything that distances me from my sense of being a diamond is, by nature, not mine. Inherited from my lineage, or learned in my family or culture. As such, it's not mine to carry. My goal in life is to only carry that which is mine to carry, and return and restore anything else to it's rightful place. (It's an incredibly empowering practice.) To do so, it's helpful to have tools to point myself back into my sense of self. One way that I can examine if a value is mine or inherited through the culture is to ask myself about the attribute or person in question. - Do I admire that facet? If the answer is yes, then I can put it into a statement: "I admire that facet." If not, "I do not admire that facet." The answer is always felt in my belly. And, one way or another, I am restored to a sense of my own wholeness, but also the wholeness of the other person. Because I have been reducing and minimizing them to one of their multitudes of facets also. Living as my diamond, as my whole, complete, connected sense of self, feels like the point of life. It creates bliss and joy and peace and perspective. Heaven on earth. May it bring comfort to you as well. Foundational beliefs: Your truth is holy. Your deepest truth is the holiest thing about you. If it is true in the woods, it is true. The purpose of life is to feel good. Bliss within your body. That is it. Feeling good requires disentangling from the deck which is not ours. Giving it back. That includes cultural values and inherited and learned emotional patterns, among other things.Releasing these things allows more space to carry that which is mine. Giving back that which is not mine to carry, So that I may fully in body and carry that which is mine.
Energy under lies everything. I believe in self healing. I believe we are all capable.What exactly can you not live without? Perhaps self healing requires that you do so. (Putting yourself first.??) It is not about right or wrong, it is about true and untrue.Following the feeling of truth within my body allows me to sleep at night, it is my Northstar, my compass, my way.Right and wrong feel like other people’s values. Bliss. Belonging. Peace. These are fickle finds in the world, in the culture. But they are regular, reliable, every day experiences in the woods.
These feelings of bliss and flow and belonging within my body, at a cellular level, confirm that this is the most deeply healing thing I could be doing with my life. In the woods I am part of something so much greater than myself, than my life. I am part of the woods, interconnected, inter-dependent. And, never more so than when I do my part. Giving and receiving. The agreement, right now, is that I clean up trash while I am here. That is it. So I bring a plastic shopping bag with me, filling it with anything I see that doesn't belong. It's not a grand gesture, but it's right-sized, it's the only job that is mine to do. And. The results have been amazing. The more I do my part out here, simply picking up the trash around me, the more I feel interwoven into this fabric of life. The more interwoven I am, the more I know my place. The more I know my place, the more blessed I feel in my body. It’s pretty straightforward: do good, feel good. The result is bliss. The woods have given me far more bliss and wholeness that the culture ever has. And so, this is a pilgrimage within my own life. A pilgrimage back to wholeness. Was scrolling through FB recently and realized 2 things:
1. I was completely sucked into the moment while I was in FB, and then when I left the computer I realized that I felt icky. There was nothing specifically icky that happened, or that I saw, but I felt icky. Like a smaller, less complete version of myself. 2. I have a smattering of FB friends that I knew years ago, decades ago even. While I am generally pleased to know that they are alive and (generally) well in life, it feels...private, personal...to be looking at photos of them with their children on the beach, on a vacation. Living their lives. These are things that we formerly only saw in scrapbooks of people that we knew well. The photos feel personal. I don't even know their kids names, and I'm looking at photos of them. That feels weird. And it occurs to me that we are not current in each others lives, so to look at photos of them feels like I have been relegated to be their audience. Interesting. And...then the thoughts continue to unspool. I realize that there are other relationships in my life for which I am more audience than peer. Relationships in which I feel talked at, instead of talked with. I feel like an audience. I'm sick of it. And, I have no one to blame but myself. I, and I alone, control access to me; to my time, my attention, my engagement. And so, my power is in paying attention to the dynamics of my engagements, of how things feel with the various people and groups in my life. If it feels icky to look at facebook, I can stop doing so. I can stop engaging with people which whom I do not feel a reciprocity of peer-ness, I feel talked at. I can control how much I engage with passersby on the street. You are not entitled to my attention, interaction, engagement, time. And I can become aware of people I talk at also. Because yes, I do it too. I can think of at least 1 person in my life for whom I talk at them, too much. I wonder why I do so? I think it's usually 2 reasons: 1. I like them, and I want a closer connection with them. 2. I feel entitled to them in some way. I have blown past relationship gates, permissions, dignities. Hmmmm.... Manifesting is all the rage, and being good at manifesting is seen as being spiritually strong, enlightened even. Books about manifesting fill the New Age section of the bookstore, and many of the popular spiritual teachers talk about it, share how to do it. It is seen as being closely connected to the Divine. Maybe it is, but in truth, I have a conflicted feelings about manifesting.
Manifesting is the act of calling something into being that is not currently present in a life. Maybe it's more money, a bigger audience, a new job, a new car or house. I think it's important to be clear what is working in our lives and what is not, what feels good and what does not. But my conflict is this: in my experience, there is a pain at the root of wanting - at a deeper level it can be about wanting something to be different. For me, any desire I have for something to be different is rooted in an underlying pain. There is an underlying pain that we think that thing or that experience is going to fix. For me, I find more power in looking at the pain beyond the desire. To look directly at it, getting really honest with myself about the desire and what I think it represents. It frequently represents something, it is not about the thing. So, I get still and quiet, look beyond the desire, see the pain or fear directly, name it, claim it, and get comfortable with the root pain. When I do this, I can't help but know myself better, and see myself with more compassion. And when I feel compassion for myself, thing I want no manifest longer satisfies me, no longer holds the spark it once held. It is no longer needed. Somehow, this awareness, this attention, this compassion all helps me to know myself better. And then, somehow, nothing has to change as much on the outside. As I was walking in the woods, I was contemplating this phase of life. How WEIRD this phase is, how confusing, how miraculous, how blissful, how unusual. I'm a pretty straight-arrow person, so to find myself immersed in the woods and listening to the energy is ... uncomfortable. When I think about where this all leads, how it opens me up to ridicule, or judge it for being frivolous, it makes me shrink in vulnerability. And then these words came to me:
Do not look for others to validate what you are doing. They are not doing it, so how could they possibly give validation? It's like asking yellow to validate blue. They are both true, and wildly perfect for their places. Simply, and faithfully, relay the messages. A reporter from the woods. A further thought from Julia Cameron, author of The Artists Way: You are responsible for the quantity. Great Creator is responsible for the quality. Amen. And then, I saw the heart. Hearts in nature is my jam. And a perfect punctuation to a plaguing fear. Literally a message of love. Wow... thank you! This was one of the first messages I heard, when we first started roaming the woods together. We were new to each other, and I had no idea if she would stay with me in the woods, or if she would be gone forever. And then, I heard the words, and let her off the leash.
Life has never been the same since. Her need for exercise led to miles and hours in the woods, and sparked a need in me unlike any I had ever known. A need for self-healing. A need for nature, for energy, for peace, for bliss. I found all of this, and even more, with her in the woods. All from that simple first message: Trust the nature of life. Amen. |
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