To honor an external commitment or agenda over internal truth is out of integrity.
Out culture is obsessed with having women be controlled and unemotional. Bullshit. We are all emotional beings, some of us are just more expressing of it. We feel we have to keep commitments because we made them. Bullshit. When we know differently we do differently. To stay a course that is clearly no longer aligned with internal truth is the far graver transgression. But, it makes us highly uncontrollable and wild. And free. And that is the threat that comes from within. To choose something, like a job or a marriage, is to honor it. Of all of the opportunities available, I chose this. And then to spend ones time bashing that choice, gossiping about it, abusing it, disrespecting it, is out of integrity. I chose this, and now I dishonor it. That is out of integrity. To maintain an agreement while dishonoring it, places a higher value on an agenda than the truth. The truth is that this thing no longer fits. It no longer fits. And, being more attached to keeping it fitting, even though it goes against the truth of ones body, is to be out of integrity. To be in this position is to a call to take responsibility for something. It is a coping technique to maintain the misalignment, the agenda. The agenda is overriding the truth. That is out of integrity, wholeness. To go against oneself. To go against oneself, for the purpose of an external anything is to be out of integrity. Use and channel that defiance towards self-love. True love starts with self-honor. If it isn't honorable within ones body, it can't be fixed on the outside. Honor self by not going against oneself any more. It goes against oneself. It goes against the body to be out of integrity, out of wholeness. To maintain commitments that go against the body is wasting energy. It takes too much energy to maintain that agreement. The cost, the price, of going against oneself - that is what has to go. That is the properly channeled use of defiance. Yes, there are implications of changing things like marriages and jobs or schools. Sadness. Grief. Loss. But if a choice can't be kept while in honor with oneself, then it is rotten on the inside. Integrity starts on the inside and creates the right choices on the outside. It doesn't start with an agenda on the outside and get filled in on the inside. It starts inside and grows outward.
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A predator is defined as a person or group that ruthlessly exploits another. Using another for one’s own benefit. When we use another, we seek to control them.
I see this most clearly in our political system. We seek to control others, so that we can feel more comfortable in the world. We seek to control their bodies, their sexuality, their lifestyle, their habits, their behavior. When we seek to control another, we seek to dominate them. To assume that we know what is best for them. Controlling another gives us a feeling of safety, of control. But it is actually the opposite of power. It is force, it is not power. When we seek to change another person, for any reason, we have abdicated our well-being to the behavior of another. If they do what makes us feel safe, we feel ok. If they do something we do not agree with, we feel upset. Our well-being is at the hands of how strangers life their lives. Talk about powerless! When we have an agenda, we have forgotten our place in the group. In truth, we are all equal. We, humans, are all equal. But when we seek to control another, we assume a position of being bigger than them. When we are controlled by another, we assume the position of being smaller than them. This is madness. Humans are all always equal. We all have agency, the ability to make decisions for our own lives.But our power only ever resides in our own agency, our ability to effect change in our own lives. Our greatest power comes from being right sized in the group, and doing what is ours to do. Controlling another is never ours to do. That is an abuse of power. True, full, power resides in being right sized and doing what is uniquely ours to do. Nothing more, nothing less. Trusting every other human being to do the same for themselves. Ironically, true power comes from giving up all control over another being. It resides in knowing our true power and agency, and using that right-sized power that is uniquely ours, to serve and honor all those that do not have agency or authority. That is correctly assuming our place and the natural order. It is about what we do for others, Not about what others do for us. And no one can give us the power of our agency, it is ours to claim. We claim it when we cede all control over any other being. We see our agendas and release them. And turn our attention to that which is ours to do for the truly less powerful among us. Power is derived from agency. Assuming our rightful place in the interdependence of life. Acting in service of those which cannot act on their own, rather than this mad scramble to acquire more crap, to consume beyond our needs. The mad desire to accrue more crap takes us farther from our true power. Our true power is emptiness and flow and peace. It is being right-sized in the group. True power comes from being right sized. Not too big, not too little, with honor for all. We are all equals. Seeking to control that which is equal is an abuse of power It is only when we are right sized that our divinity can flow. Giving up control over others opens us up to Devine Bliss. From predator to pray. If I have the power to affect you, or you have the power to affect me, then we have agendas for each other. Agendas are places where we judge other people, want them to behave a certain way, or think we know what is best for them. These places where we judge another, where we hold agendas, we seek to control another person. Where we hold agendas and seek to control another, we are not in our rightful place. It is never our rightful place to control another person.
When this happens we are not right-sized in relationship to the other person. We perceive ourselves to be bigger or smaller than them. That needs to be corrected. All of the infighting among equals is a distraction from accepting our true power. Our true power comes from recognizing that we are all always equal. Any illusion to the contrary needs to be corrected, and balance restored. We need to become a right-sized in relation to each other, and see our place in the greater whole. And use our agency and power to serve that which is truly vulnerable. That which has no agency. The environment, animals, etc. To use our agency to serve that which has no agency is to assume our rightful place in the larger ecosystem. Freedom comes from finding every place we hold an agenda, where we wish to control another, or we judge another, and putting ourselves into right-size, into our rightful place. Being right-sized unleashes the power of the universe. For a long time I have flogged myself to know what I "should do with my life." As if there was a single answer that would make me feel happier, more complete, more whole. Searching for my calling, my place, what I was meant to do.
All this, even as I worked in some of the most meaningful work available - transforming the lives of rural Ethiopians through sustainable education, water, health and food programs. And, it still wasn't enough to calm the pain in my heart. But now, after 2 years in the woods, I have felt the answer in the form of the bliss that I feel when walking through the woods. This is the meaning of life. My purpose as a human being is to embody my humanity. I feel even more on purpose when I am connected deeply in my cells in nature than I do using my mind in the outer world. Even when I was using that mind to improve the lives of other people. Somehow, now, I feel I am in greater service to the world. Living from this place is my purpose. For me, my purpose is internal. It is a feeling of bliss and interconnection with life. Everything else is a detail. Where I live, how I create an income, who I spend my time with, what I wear. Details. For so long I had gotten it reversed, upside down. In truth, it is so very simple, And it cannot be found "out there." Now, the meaning of life is to experience this bliss in the woods, and to share it with the world. There is an age-old question: is the glass half full or half empty? The engineers that I used to work with would answer with a third option: that glass is 50% larger than the water.
I love this answer. It is not a moral judgement between right and wrong, as the first two options are; it is simply a mismatch. There is freedom in admitting a mismatch. From the perspective of the water, what is the right container? When I apply this to my health limitations, what was once perceived as a sense of personal inadequacy, because I didn’t have the resources to do everything, became a simple equation. Because I am the water, not the glass. And there is no shame in finding a new container. There is actually pride in it. A pride in honoring my way. Honoring my way means feeling the holiness that imbues these woods, and bringing that holiness out into my life. That becomes my touchstone. If something is true in the words, it is true. It is not about right or wrong as viewed through the fickle moral compass of the culture, or the other tender, emotional, fickle human beings. It is simply my truth. John the evangelizers said that our truth is holy. And our truth the deepest truth is the holiest part about us, because it is closest to the divine. I feel that divinity, that holiness, as bliss when I walk in the woods. It suffuses all of my cells. It is almost too much to hold. It feels like the meaning of life. Experiencing this counter perspective has changed everything. It offers greater integrity, in the simplest sense of the word, meaning greater wholeness. It has changed how I parent, how I partner with my husband, my friendships, my diet, my consumption, and how I choose to engage with the world. When I feel this good, this whole, this true, in my body, I make completely different decisions in the outside world. It is extraordinary, and it is true. And, it is a practice. In balance, out of balance, in balance, out of balance. My blind spots still blindside me regularly. And that’s OK. It is, after all, still life. It happens. The next lesson. The next opportunity to heal. Ever evolving, breathing, happening. Just like the woods, actually. Every minute, every hour, every day, every season, the woods are different. Changing. Responding. Growing. Why should I be any different? And yet, I am different. I have agency, authority. The woods do not. This is why they need me as much as I need them. Those with agency must serve and protect and honor those without. To not do so is an abuse of power. It is to not honor ones place in the greater whole of life. To not accept responsibility for one’s place in life. To see oneself a small, when in truth, we hold far more power than we allow ourselves to see. It is time to grow up. To stop fighting each other for power, and recognize the power that we have held all along: our own agency. All humans are equal, and when we fight for each other to give us recognition of our power, we are in a losing game. We are killing ourselves by asking others to give to us what we already hold within ourselves. We must find our power, our agency on the inside, and then bring it out into the world. And assume our rightful place. This is perhaps one of the greatest lessons that the woods have given me: my true place in the greater wholeness of life. By putting me in touch with my own divinity, my own holiness deep within my cells, I know my greater place in the larger world. The integrity of the smallest, the cells, creates integrity in the largest, the world. In truth, what her doctor says about my health, a diagnosis, a situation, matters so very little when I am experiencing bliss in the woods. Bliss is healing. Feeling this way is all that matters. And when I know this feeling, I make completely different choices on the outside. I know which healer to see, what treatment or protocol to try. Today, the resources dictate everything. The activities, the schedule, the time, who I listen to and allow to influence me. How I spend my time and who I spend it with. Without judgment, simply basic math. And, the truer the activities, the more I can do. When they flow effortlessly from my heart and my cells, rather than fighting against myself in a civil war. For now, I prioritize letting my life change me, rather than trying to let, make, me change to meet my life. I was first diagnosed with Lyme disease when I was 19 years old. For the past 30 (ok, 29!) years I have lived, and managed, my life around limited health. Seen so many doctors, healers, specialists. Received various health diagnoses, spent thousands of dollars on treatments, protocols, medicine, supplements, and devices. Nearly 30 years of trying to restore myself to some idealized perception of what I think my health should be. And yet, it is what it is. I did all of this while working full-time, raising a family, maintaining a marriage, maintaining a home, exercising. Etc.
My health resources were inadequate for the lifestyle expenditures. I became less and less sustainable, until I reached a breaking point. My health crashed. I quit my job. I gave up friendships. I stopped cleaning the house. I retreated into the smallest cocoon of life. So many years were spent judging the inadequacy, calculating and assessing the health resources and the lifestyle expenditures. Pushing, fighting, pretending. And fighting to restore myself to a level of health level I believed I should have. Trying to heal myself, so that I could continue to do more. I think this is a fallacy: the idea of healing oneself so one can resume doing more in life. A health crisis, a health limitation, is now seen as a call to radically change my life. The way in which I lived my life before required resources of my basic temperament that, at the deepest level within my body, hurt. The soft animal of my body is not meant for an over-reliance on my brain, for rigid schedules that ignore reality, for pushing to an arbitrary goal or deadline. I was quite successful, mind you, but the cost came within the deepest recesses of my body. I leaned into my brain, harder and harder and harder. Calculating, analyzing, thinking. I am blessed with wiring to do this. On the surface, the exterior, my professional life was thriving. My life looked good. But my heart and soul were breaking, and nobody knew it but me. It took a complete health crisis to step away from that path. The first entire year was spent off-gassing from the accumulated stress. The rigid holding that that lifestyle required had to be released from the cells of my body. The "shoulds", the judgments, the fear, the identity all had to be released, and reality simply had to be honored. Experiences had to be processed, not with my brain, but with my body. My brain could only make so much sense of the experiences, the experiences had to be felt and integrated within my body as well, released to flow. The second year was spent listening and exploring. Honoring. Opening to new concepts about the meaning of life. Different ways of being. Seeing life through a different lens. Questioning the dominant values of the culture, versus the truth within my holy body. Spending time in nature, looking at her sustainability, equality, rules. Cross referencing the rules I watched within the culture, and the wholeness, holiness, felt with in my body when I am in nature. This cross referencing has been healing. While I feel whole and complete and beautiful and strong in the woods, I realize how differently I think about myself within the framework of the culture. When I judge myself through the eyes of the culture, I feel in adequate and small. One is a feeling, one is a thinking. Over the years I have come to re-orient myself completely around this life within the woods. To listen to her wisdom, to see how everything belongs and is perfect. To see that when I artificially judge myself through the lens of the culture, I am engaged in a meaningless fight. I have missed the bigger, brighter, more complete picture of my true nature. Now, today, I am a different person. Rebuilt at a cellular level. And I am here to say and report what life is like on the other side. What it feels like when the resources drive the agenda, and not the other way around. When there is greater integrity within my body, and I am no longer in a civil war with myself about how I participate in the world. Right-sizing and re-orienting myself within the greater world, rather than distorting and manipulating myself to fit an external framework. Along the way I have experienced and discovered a connection to the Divine that is all-inspiring. Bliss. Holiness. Truth. Blessings and wholeness beyond my wildest expectations. An embodied truth of my own humanity that is so magnificent, peaceful, complete. Healing. Perhaps I am not the only one that has felt this way, that has given too much to achieve a dream that makes no sense. That needs a more internally-oriented view. There are those for whom the external culture is easy, effortless, does not come at the price of one’s cellular integrity. I am not one of them. This is to share my path with others who feel called, curious, or inspired in this direction. To offer my experience, as a resource or guide post, as you find your own path. Rumi has famously said that, "Your task is not to seek for love, but merely to seek and find all the barriers within yourself that you have built against it."
This is beautiful, wise advice. The problem is exactly how to find the barriers within, and what to do with them once they have been found. It reminds me of the New Age advice to "choose love," or to "raise your vibration." These ideas point in a positive direction, but lack the practical steps of how to do so. I am a literal person, and it feels disempowering to know what should be done, but with no earthly idea of how to do so. So, after years of practicing various energy practices and listening to the deepest whispers of the woods, I have assembled a consistent, practical, grounded process to remove barriers to peace and love. Here we go:
Release. Return. Reclaim. Restore. Rest. Repeat. Blessings. The ability for anyone or anything to pull me out of my balance, out of my peace of mind, directly points to my desire for control. Desire for someone to behave in a particular way, or for a situation or experience to go a particular way, is a desire to control an outcome or experience. It frequently relates to controlling another person. It is to have an agenda.
When I have an agenda, I am judging a person or situation, and thinking that I know more about what is right for them than they do. Or, than all of the other people/factors involved do. (Trying to keep this generic is tough!!) It puts me out of order with the other stakeholders, makes me feel bigger than them. If I were to apply a heat map (ok, perhaps I made this idea up, but it gets the point across of mapping the energetic size of all stakeholders), I would be bigger than the others. In political terms, I want more than 1 vote. I do not want to participate in a process of equals, where everyone gets 1 vote, I want to control an outcome. This is always wrong. It implies that I think I know what is best for other people, or know better than other people. Whenever I have an agenda, I have tunnel vision. I am a predator. It is never my business to have an agenda for another person. I can only have an agenda for myself. When I remember this, my lens widens, my gaze softens, I can hear and see the other person again. And I am back in my place as a member of a group. A short-cut to this process goes like this:
Healing the desire to control, every time I feel it, is freeing, grounding, peaceful, and healing. It releases me to be exactly who I am, without worry for how anyone around me perceives or experiences me. It connects me to the Divine, and releases the hooks from my relationships. Blessing all who cross my path, and blessing all who pass by. All is perfect. My kids have lost their place in our family, in our group. They do not know their place, because we have elevated them above our place (Jeff and I).
Now that I am aware of this, one way that I can help keep them in their place is to always know my own place in the group. I am the adult, the big one. They are the small one. When they are able to pull me out of my center, then they are too powerful. Too big. So. By maintaining my own center, no matter what their choices (and the natural consequences), I protect them and enable them to be small. To make mistakes. To know that they are safe in making mistakes, because their choices and the consequences only affect them. They do not affect me. I just realized this this morning. My younger son has accumulated a lot of homework, which is all due on Monday. Today is Sunday. I am feeling fear rise in my belly, as I count ahead the hours and calculate the work. All while noticing that he doesn't seem to be engaged in this. The outcome of this homework situation matters more to me than it does to him. As soon as I realize this, I know what I need to do. So, I start employing the constructive use of motivation with him - calmly discussing negative consequences to not finishing his homework. I've been so loathe to employ negative consequences, stressfully micromanage him instead. This is out of order. It is unfair to him that I am attached to whether or not he makes a "mistake." With the realization that these are his choices, and his consequences, I am able to relax into my proper place - that of older, wiser elder that tenderly watches him living his life. Sharing with him the consequences of his actions and choices from the sidelines, not as a power play. Whether or not he does it, my peace of mind is not on the table. Neutral...not losing my mind and stomach over his choices. It immediately puts me into my place, and him into his. He is responsible for his choices, not me. And I can't protect him from the consequences of his choices. That is his job, and he is fully capable of doing so. The result is an immediate feeling of empowerment for myself, and of tenderness toward him. I lose sight of who he is when I am trying to control him. But now we are not on opposite sides of anything, we are floating down the river together. I watch his choices with curiosity, not control, because anything he chooses to do or not do will be his own choice as he navigates his own life. His own life. The words have an off-gassing effect on my nervous system, a release. This idea that he can't pull me out of my center is important. He needs to know that he can do anything he pleases and that my peace and balance are not at risk. He needs to know this so he can take risks and explore boundaries accordingly. The safety to do so. He does not have to do or not do anything to gain my favor - that is never up for grabs. There is nothing he can or can't do to change how I feel about him. He doesn't need to change a thing about himself to please me or make me feel comfortable. I am the adult again, out of his sandbox, and back in my own - where I belong. And we are all the better for it. |
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