Month: August 2019

Woman

I love, love, love this photo of me and my brother. It makes me laugh every time I look at it. It now hangs in a corner of our living room that we designated for our favorite kid photos, so I get to laugh a lot! I thank God every day that I have a sense of humor. Well, God and also my dad who passed along the Pottorf sense of humor to me. If I didn’t have one, the complete disgruntledness with life that I have perfectly expressed in this photo might be my predominant experience. But it isn’t. Right below that photo is one that expresses perfectly what I really think about life. Here it is:

This photo makes me laugh out loud too. That’s the patriarch of the Pottorf sense of humor, my grandfather, on the right. While he looks stern in the picture (and often was), I like to think that he is secretly approving of my laughter. That’s my grandmother in the middle. She was always my ally, and you can tell here. The juxtaposition of these two photos completely cracks me up. Anybody who knows me well knows these two sides of me. They also know that I routinely crack myself up. If you catch me laughing for seemingly no particular reason, you can be sure that something like the scene portrayed in these two photos is going down in my head. My sense of humor is just laughing at the false seriousness of it all (and sometimes, yes, quite inappropriately).

That gives you a little background as to why I laughed out loud and felt like I won the jackpot when Vermont issued me my new license plates. Yes, it’s official. I’m a Vermonter! Not. I’ll never be a Vermonter, these people will never let me be. That’s o.k., because truth be told I’ll always be a Texan. Bless their hearts. If you don’t know this yet, that’s Southern code for something like “Don’t mess with Texas.” Which is to say I think Vermonters will find they’ve met their match. At least one did! Oh, but before I go further into this, here is my new license plate:

Ha! “Hmph” is one of my favorite responses to life. That’s the side of me in that first photo. So you can imagine that I laughed very out loud when the nice DMV lady pulled out my new plates. For the first time in my life, I won’t have any trouble remembering my license plate number! The other thing that has made both Shannon and I laugh out loud recently is this realization that while I will never be a Vermonter, I have officially achieved Vermonter-in-Training status. I am a V.I.T.! Trust me, that’s way better than being a masshole. Mind you, for reasons mentioned above, I will never graduate from this status, but still. How did I achieve this momentous feat you ask?

Let me start by saying that when Shannon and I started dating I was civilized. Yes, I’m going to completely blame this all on her. For example, I have always been very shy about my body. I would never change in a car for instance, nor go to the bathroom in the woods. These days we often find ourselves in a situation where we are going for a hike and then to do something else afterward which requires a modicum of civilization (hygiene). A few weeks ago we got back to the car and right there in the parking lot I stripped down and changed in front of God and everyone. Shannon just looked at me like “Who are you????” Then last week when we were on our way to Lake Placid, we stopped to take a hike in the Adirondacks. The hike was next to a stream with a few good swimming holes. Shannon was scoping out which one she was going to dip into on the way down. When we got to it, she’s like “you coming?” Yes, yes, I am. We stripped down, waded in, and dunked. Stark naked. Mountain streams are always freezing in case you were wondering. Yes, there were other hikers on this trail and somebody could have come along at any time. Oh well. Shannon just laughed out loud and noted that she could not believe how different I am from 12 years ago. That’s when she gave me my official V.I.T. designation. I then laughed when I noted that that’s what I could tell people about my goatee- it’s part of my V.I.T. initiation! Not really, but it’s funny anyway.

So quick goatee update. It is still growing strong! I have to say that my discomfort level is too. I’ve been out in public more with it as well, and I am noticing my reaction is to try to shrink myself down and hide it (and myself). That’s what I’ve most always done in life. If I had a super power it would be invisibility. I’m an expert at rendering myself invisible. Case in point. When I was in elementary school the most popular kid in school always had a massive slumber party for her birthday. I couldn’t hang with the all night revelry (such things are absolutely exhausting for an introvert), so I was usually the first person to crash in my sleeping bag. Nobody would notice. They didn’t notice so much that often as the other girls were still running around, they would step right on me… without even noticing. Rather than making myself known, I just kept hiding in my sleeping bag as if nothing had happened… even though it hurt.

Of course life is full of every which kind of experience, so here is a different one. I was also a complete tomboy growing up. I promised in my last post that I would talk about why I align with being a woman at this moment in human history, so let’s go there. In fact, let’s talk sports. Sports is as good a vehicle as any to have this discussion. I was that girl. The only one who the boys on the block would allow to play no matter what they were playing- kickball, baseball, street hockey, basketball, tackle football. When I was in third grade, one day I found myself playing flag football with the guys during recess. We were in the huddle and the quarterback tells me to go long. My best guess is that boy was Brett. Here is a photo of him from our senior year just to give you a visual:

Brett tells me to just run like the dickens. He says nobody will follow me and that he is going to throw it to me for the touchdown. So when the ball was hiked, I did. I ran like the dickens. Brett was right. Nobody paid any attention to me. I felt a little silly running like mad away from everyone, but then true to his word, Brett threw the ball. To me. It was a Hail Mary. It was a perfect throw and I made a perfect catch before breezing into the end zone to dance the funky chicken. Sometimes invisibility is a powerful thing. Sometimes not. Saturday night- stepped on. Monday at recess- end zone hero. Go figure. Here’s another go figure. Brett and I both went on to become cheerleaders together our senior year of high school. I know you won’t get this unless you are a Southerner, but being a cheerleader was actually a macho, popular thing for guys to be back then. At my high school our squad was always half male, half female. What’s more shocking isn’t that Brett was a cheerleader, but that I was!

To recap, I was ever the athlete. Hockey was my first love, but I wasn’t allowed to play growing up because I was a girl. I didn’t like figure skating (my mom’s sport), so she made it her mission to find a suitable sport for me. Gymnastics ended up winning and I spent my childhood as a competitive gymnast (ages 5-16). When my gymnastics career was brought to an end by a knee injury, I took up tennis and played varsity at my high school and then JV my first year in college. But hockey was still my first love, so I finagled my way onto the Princeton women’s varsity team my freshman year, proceeded to become a starting goalie by my sophomore year, won an Ivy League Championship by my senior year, and was invited to national team tryouts the following year. Then there is the coaching. I started coaching gymnastics after my knee injury at age 15 and coached for the next 4 years. I was good at it. Similarly, when I retired from my competitive hockey career to focus on my architecture career, I took up coaching hockey and did so for the next 15 years. I was one of the earliest women to receive a master level coaching certification from USA Hockey. This is all just background information to say that when it comes to sports, I have some experience.

Rewinding back to my senior year of high school, my boyfriend was the class genius. Literally, he is a genius. His name is John. Photo timeout. This is John:

See what I mean? He’s a little nerdy, right? But a cutie, for sure. You might need a little more of a breather before I keep going (that was your warning), so here is another photo for you:

These are all from my high school yearbook incidentally. The caption for this one read “Shelly and John get dressed up to go to the library on their first date.” Hysterical! Now, yes, I was a complete nerd too, but also simultaneously a jock. John and I spent most of our time together deep in conversation. For the most part I can’t remember what we talked about (God only knows). But I do remember this one conversation. It was about sports. And it got heated, just a little. John was not an athlete. His perspective on sports was that by stressing competition and winning, it was essentially training us all to be war mongers. Can you say triggered? I was.

I utterly refuted his position. I’ll come back to that. But first I want to tell you that when I was reading about highly evolved beings in Conversations With God a couple of weeks ago, I was reminded of this conversation with John. I was reminded because, in essence, God says the same thing in CWG. Highly evolved beings, he says, don’t participate in sports or competition, and for all of the reasons that John had pointed out. I am hereby going to say that they make a very good point. Let’s be honest, if it wasn’t a very good point it would not have triggered me all those years ago. Yet I am going to continue to respectfully say that there is another way to look at it. If you are a sports lover, don’t panic. But do get cozy, because we are going to have to cross some terrain to get there.

In fact in order for me to make my case, I am going to have to talk about God, specifically what I mean when I use that name. I am not- I repeat NOT- talking about a white bearded old white guy. I am going to have to back way up to throw this Hail Mary though. So hang on to your hats and start running like the dickens. Did you know that bacteria lives in my gut? Your’s too. We call this our gut flora. These microbiota are living beings in and of their own right. I am, quite literally, the environment that supports these life forms. You may be thinking “yuck.” We don’t tend to think very fondly of bacteria, after all. We might in fact be inclined to want to rid ourselves of such bacteria. We might want to cleanse our gut until it’s squeaky clean. You want to know what would happen then? We would die. That’s because our gut microbiota – the living beings that live in our gut- actually do all of our digestion for us. I don’t digest my food. They do. They are metabolizing on my behalf, and by them doing so they also get to live.

What on earth does this have to do with God? Hang on. One more step. I have spoken quite a lot lately about how in my worldview everything is sentient. This is true across all scales. My gut microbiota are sentient as distinct, if interdependent, beings. I am sentient as a distinct and interdependent being. You know what else is sentient? The environment that plays host to me. And just like my gut microbiota metabolize for me, I am also metabolizing for my environment. I’m going to leap out across a few scales to talk about my host environment as a whole- planet earth. Planet earth, in my worldview (and this is scientifically supported) is sentient. We have even given this sentient being a name.

Her name is Gaia. She is as conscious as I am, even though from our current world paradigm I may have a hard time relating to her as such. As you have seen from previous posts, I am working to build my communication skills on this front. But let’s not stop there. Gaia also exists within an environment. Her environment is the universe. The universe, too, has an environment. At each and every scale, life is conscious, distinct, identifiable, and… interdependent. Life itself is a living being. At the grandest scale possible, when talking about all that exists, I give that living being a name. Her name is God. So now you know who I am talking about when I use that name. I am talking about the All That Is. If you want to take one step further here, realize that just as my gut microbiota are a fully integrated part of me, so it is between me and God.

Now we are ready to go. I want to focus now on two characteristics that we have ascribed to God. God is all-powerful on the one hand and all-loving on the other. In our current collective worldview, we relate the all-powerful side to the masculine, and the all-loving side to the feminine. Now let me just say right here that there are biological (natural) reasons to tend toward these associations. Yet let me also say right here that we do our very best to fit males and females into the appropriate boxes. That is to say that how we show up is both a function of nature and of nurture. It’s not just one or the other. I would say that we need to stop forcing either characteristic onto a male or a female independent of the other. I would instead argue that we need to cultivate both within each and every human at the same time, and regardless of gender. I would say that both characteristics are in fact invariably present in each and every human, regardless of gender.

I would finally argue that our survival as a species is dependent upon our ability to balance these two characteristics of God within each and every human, which will then balance them within our species as a whole. The reason I say this is because we have been way, way, way out of balance for way, way too long. This is to say that we have been fixated on developing the all-powerful side, and intent on suppressing the all-loving side which we consider vulnerable. This is manifest in every attempt that we make to control things. Most fundamentally, we have sought to control nature and each other. This is what we envision power is, and we call the society that has resulted “patriarchal.” Well, guess what folks. God is not a male. God is neither masculine or feminine, but the perfect balance of these two natures.

Now to bring it down to earth via something as American as apple pie- sports. John was right. The way we have been doing sports has also been to emphasize, train, and develop the masculine side of the equation. Competing and winning are about power. And a focus on power in this way is in full alignment with a war mongering mentality. We have applied this equation to males and females alike, so it isn’t even a gender issue. It is no accident that females who participate in sports are much more likely to be successful in the world according to males. Of course they are! They have been trained to compete. They have developed the muscles, so to speak, of their own all-powerful natures. Now please hear me when I say that the rise of women’s sports has been extremely useful and necessary in the process of our evolution, because we can’t even begin to elevate this conversation to the next level until we have women in the room. We just can’t. But it is now time to step it up a notch.

So let me start that process by sharing what I said to John all those years ago. I objected vehemently, because frankly, that wasn’t my primary experience of sports. If it had been all about competing and winning, I would have never survived as a gymnast because frankly I stunk at that part of it. I knew, based on my experience, that there was something inherently missing in this masculine framing of sports. What my experience told me was that the value of my participation in sports wasn’t so much about conquering the world as it was about conquering me. The way I expressed that to John was to say that sports challenged me to overcome my own boundaries. It wasn’t about me besting somebody else, it was about me becoming my best self. I have since come to understand a great deal more about what I intuitively understood then. I was right too. Transcending boundaries is where it is at. That is what we need to be focusing on. Sports, like any other human endeavor, is a vehicle to work on those muscles. At least it is when we use it for its highest purpose.

Want proof? Ask any athlete (or musician, or artist, or mathematician, etc.) when they are at their best and they will describe being in “the zone.” What is being in the zone? It is having transcended our self-defining and self-limiting boundaries to enter into a state of, you guessed it, Interbeing. Being in the zone is becoming one with our environment. In the case of sports, that environment is a game played on a field of some sort. My best moments in sports were not the moments in which I won. My best moments in sports were when I was playing in the zone. The outcome of that in some cases was winning and in some cases not. Yet it didn’t matter either way because the experience of the zone was so much more than the experience of either winning or losing. In fact, there is no winning or losing in the zone. Win against what? Lose to who? There is no winning or losing when there is only one thing present.

It’s time to talk about our all-loving nature. What is love? Connection. That is what it is. To love is to be one with. Yes, I just did. I just made the case for the true feminization of sports. I also just explained to you why I align with being a woman at this point in human history. Admittedly, this work is easier for women than it is for men both because of our naturing and because of our nurturing. Yet we all must engage in it, regardless of gender. That is the only way we are going to stop ourselves from burning down the house, and you all know what I am talking about.

If you are an athlete, I dare you to give up on winning and instead focus on connecting, on being in the zone as much as you can possibly muster. See what happens. If you are a coach, I implore you to change your definition of success from winning to how much time your athletes spend in the zone. See what happens. If you are the parent of an athlete, well, I have way too much to say to you so I am just going to say leave it to the athletes and their coaches for now! Settle down!!

Here’s the thing, everyone. Life is just a game. And this is what the game is all about. It’s about forgetting that we are One so that we may rediscover our own all-powerful natures. Then it is about remembering that we were One all along via our all-loving nature. But you want to know a secret? True power is found not in flexing the muscles of our separate selves. True power is found in Oneness. This is to say that it is found in love, in connection, in being in the zone. The irony of all ironies is that when we play out our all-loving nature to its full extent to enter into Oneness, what we discover there is that we were all-powerful all along. We will never fully achieve our all-powerful nature by focusing solely on being powerful. We will only get there from the other side.

You are probably exhausted, so feel free to stop here. If you can push yourself one step further, this will be a bonus insight. One of my favorite books is The Peaceful Warrior, by Dan Millman. I relate to it, of course, because he is a gymnast. If you have never read it, I won’t spoil it for you. I’ll just say it is based on Dan’s own life and in particular his training by an enlightened master, Socrates. At one point during Dan’s college gymnastics career, Socrates comes to watch him during practice. Dan puts chalk on his hands and then mounts the rings to execute an absolutely perfect ring routine. He was in the zone. If it had been a competition and there had been judges present, he would have scored a perfect 10 and won.

He was quite proud of himself as he walked over to Socrates afterward. But Socrates was shaking his head in disapproval. Dan couldn’t believe it. What???!!!! That was perfect! But Socrates just told Dan that he was completely sloppy when applying the chalk to his hands. Here’s the thing. Learning to be in the zone only becomes truly useful when we learn to do it “off the mats,” as they say in yoga. It’s relatively easy to work on and learn to inhabit the zone during an athletic or creative endeavor. But can you do it when performing the most mundane activities of your life? Can you do it when you are washing the dishes?

I can’t. Not yet. I keep trying to be mindful when washing the dishes, but you know mostly I am still irritated that there are dishes in the first place! Damn dishes. Just go away. Socrates would seriously be shaking his head at me. So there you have it. The ultimate challenge is to inhabit the zone all the time. That is what a state of Interbeing would feel like. Until we are ready for that, any old vehicle to practice being in the zone will do. Sports happens to be a great vehicle for this. I- a woman, mind you- just saved sports (even though I am not supposed to be saving anything these days!). You are welcome, sports fans. Have fun with it and feel free to laugh out loud any ole time.

Hairy

O.K., look people, let’s just cut right to the chase- I’m hairy. I just am. Always have been, always will be. And I won’t keep you in suspense for one second. Yes, that is a photo of me above. That is how I look right this very second. So, so much to say about this, so here we go!

First things first, because this is the first thing that enters my mind when I wonder what people are going to think when they see me: no, I am not transitioning. I love, love, love being a woman. If God came to me today and said it is time for you to transition to another embodiment, what’s it going to be male or female?… I wouldn’t hesitate for one second before emphatically choosing the latter. That’s how much I align with being a woman at this stage of human history. More on this some other time. But with that out of the way, let’s get to the bottom of this hair thing.

A little background is in order. Nobody who knows me has ever seen me like this. What’s more, I have never seen myself like this. Yet that isn’t because facial hair is a new thing for me. It’s not a result of changing hormones as I age. Nope. I’ve been like this since, well, puberty… which frankly didn’t go so well for me. Abnormalities with my period landed me in a gynecologist’s office, who quickly deferred me to an endocrinologist. A lot of blood over multiple tests revealed that my testosterone levels are higher than what is considered normal for a woman. Yup, I was diagnosed “abnormal” as just a teenager. Abnormal, of course, isn’t o.k. in our culture, so something had to be done. I was started on hormone therapy via pharmaceuticals right away. I stayed on those for several years, before finally one day in college I had had enough. I didn’t like how my body was responding. I didn’t like how I felt. I didn’t feel suddenly “right,” but quite the opposite. Nor is there any curing this abnormality. There is only overriding it with drugs. So I just stopped, and I’ve never gone back on that decision.

Now I need to take a quick time out here to say a little something more about this condition and my decision. Back in 1935 this hormone condition was labelled Polycystic Ovary Syndrome, or PCOS, which is an absolutely horrible name for it because it incorrectly labels the condition for one possible symptom (cysts on the ovaries) rather than the cause (higher than normal androgen levels). So now you can read more about it if you are curious. While day in and day out I stand by my decision to not treat it, that decision is in fact risky. It puts me at a higher risk for endometrial cancer for one. So I am not advocating here what anybody else’s decision should be should they discover that they have PCOS. My decision was based on listening to my own body. I decided to let it do what it naturally wants to do, while doing whatever I can to help it to be happy and healthy. Primarily that means closely watching my weight and exercising regularly.

Now to get back to the hair. My non-traditional hair growth started in my teen years. Yes, I tried all the things that women do to deal with pesky, unwanted hair. I waxed, although that didn’t last long- OUCH! I plucked, and still do, but that became the equivalent of trying to mow the lawn with scissors, so other utensils had to be added. I gave in and began shaving my chin sometime during college. A personal trimmer was added later to keep the blonde hairs above my jaw line short. I tried laser treatments in my thirties (and had to due to a skin tag that developed on my chin), but frankly that only briefly minimized all the other things that I do to deal with it. It didn’t eliminate the hair and it certainly never will. That’s because as long as my hormones remain as they are, I will remain hairy. It is what it is. So here’s the routine: pluck dark hairs above my jaw line at bedtime, shave below my jaw line and trim above my jaw line in the morning. This. Takes. Time. Ugh.

In the meantime, I’ve always been curious. Would I actually have a beard if I let it all go? Well, maybe not a beard, but perhaps a goatee?? I happen to like goatees! When Shannon and I picked out our dogs, she picked Greta because she has an affinity for Rottweilers and we thought she was a Rottweiler mix. Greta turned out to look more like a German Shepherd, but we love her nonetheless! I picked out Finnegan, because I wanted a scruffy scruff with… a goatee! Look at our two cuties:

Isn’t that a great goatee on Finny?! O.K., granted, it’s a bit exaggerated in this photo, but I digress. I wonder, if people actually do start to look like their dogs, maybe I might look like Finny! Well, there is only one way to find out. I have at most only gone a few days without shaving. But three weeks ago, I started a game of chicken with myself. I stopped plucking, trimming and shaving to see how long I could stand it. I didn’t really know how this was going to go or what I might get out of it, other than satisfied curiosity. It turned out to be much, much bigger than that.

It’s one thing to be rough around the edges in the confines of your own home. But the second you have to step out into the world, the whole show changes. In this case, I wasn’t at home alone with Shannon in the first place. My sister-in-law and nephew were here with us all summer. So I instantly had to confront my self-consciousness. That turned out to be a good little warmup for next steps. Other nearby family members and friends were then invariably added into the mix. Uncomfortable! But doable, and I did it. Then the first real test of my resolve- we went out to eat. I had to go out in public. And we went to the Wheel where everyone who works there knows me, no less. Yikes. Plus we had more friends from out of town meeting us there and coming to stay with us afterward. Really, really uncomfortable!! By this point I was a week and a half in and the hair on my chin was easily visible. I was so uncomfortable that I made sure that we sat at a table in the corner so that I could face the wall!!! Yet I survived. The next night we all went out AGAIN. Good grief. This time we sat outside and there was no corner to hide in. I just had to be with it. I made it though, and nobody seemed to look at me funny. Not yet anyway.

That emboldened me a bit and so after all of our visitors left, I suggested that Shannon and I go on an outing. We drove around visiting various general stores throughout Vermont. By this point my hair was unavoidable, and I did get some double takes. Nobody said anything rude. They just looked at me with curiosity. Each time, I just stood into it, doing my best not to shy away. By this point in my adventure, the meaning of it became much clearer to me. It reminded me of a similar adventure that Shannon took ten years ago when she went through a major life transition in which she changed careers and moved down to Texas. She utilized the transitional space to attend yoga teacher training at Kripalu. Before she went, she decided to shave her head. That decision, like mine, was in part just curiosity. What was it like to be bald? But it was really about so much more than that. It was a direct confrontation to her very identity. It was a direct confrontation to her ego. It begged the question, who am I without my hair? Who am I when I don’t look the way people expect me to look? Who am I when people look at me funny? Who am I when I step entirely out of my comfort zone?

For Shannon, it was shaving off all of her hair. For me, it’s growing it all out. There’s no way to anticipate what stepping into these questions brings. Shannon did so knowing exactly what she was doing. I didn’t. All I knew is that I felt compelled, finally, to do it. I have had to build the resolve to stick with it each and every step along the way. With each heightened challenge I think, “Oh there is no way I can do that.” And then I do it anyway. Yesterday Shannon and I went to watch the U.S. and Canadian U-18 and U-22 teams face off in Lake Placid. I knew that I would run into people that I knew. This is the world that Shannon and I come from. It was our whole world at one time. I am now three weeks in and the goatee is way more than just peach fuzz. What doesn’t show up in the photo so well is my mustache and above the chin line hair because it is mostly blonde, or grey as the case may be, horror of all horrors!

Time for a funny story time out. It took me about two weeks to realize it, but once my mustache hairs were long enough, I did in fact realize that some of them were grey, not blonde. I immediately went to Shannon and said, “Shannon.” She said, “What?” Me: “These hairs.” Shannon: “Uh-huh. What about them, Shelly?” Me: “They’re not blonde!” Shannon: “What color are they, Shelly?” Me: “Grey!!!!!!!” Shannon: dying of laughter. It’s not that I mind grey hairs. It’s just that I have a head full of blonde hair still with only a grey hair or two sneaking in there. So it was just a bit, shocking.

And the age thing is part of it. As noted, I will be turning 50 this year. As I settled into this little adventure, I came up with three reasons for it. First, I think it would be nice to actually know what I really look like before I turn 50. Second, I hear we are supposed to stop giving a shit what people think when we turn 50, so I thought I better really get on that. Third, and most importantly, I wanted to face whatever hurt, fear, reservations, shame, vulnerabilities, etc. that have been hiding in this place where I hide my facial hair.

So now back to yesterday’s hockey outing. This one was a huge road block in my head leading up to it. Right up until the day before, I couldn’t imagine going without shaving. But by this point I understood what I was up to and how important it was that I face my fear. I spent the night before giving myself and my inner 5 year old a pep talk. I sat with that 5 year old and told her emphatically, “You are stunning in every way. It doesn’t matter if anyone else can see that or not. I see it.” And then the whole way to the rink I just keep repeating this mantra, “you are stunning, gentle, kind, and loving.” Of course the other thought that crossed my mind is that the Lake Placid 1980 Rink is large enough that we could potentially hide in the corner where nobody would see us. That turned out to be a ridiculous thought. We were spotted in about two seconds flat, but at least that was by somebody who knew Shannon more so than me.

I wasn’t there to hide though, so I made sure to reach out to one person who I knew would be there ahead of time in order to force myself to face her. That person was Cara Gardner Morey, the current Head Coach of Princeton Women’s Ice Hockey, who is serving as an Assistant Coach on the Canadian U-22 team. She got back to me right away and told me to be sure to say hi if I saw her. Well played, Cara. Well played.. even if you were an unsuspecting hero in this story. I thought, well, that doesn’t mean that I am going to see her. She is going to be busy coaching after all. No dice. One period into the U-18 game I saw her talking to her players in the stands just to the left of us. Then I thought, well, I am not going to go disturb her. She’s working. But then her players left and she went and sat a little higher up in the stands- by herself. Dang it! That’s it. I’m going. I turned to Shannon and told her I was going to go just quickly say hi. She smiled, knowingly, and encouraged me along, “O.K., go ahead.”

I was surprisingly calm as I approached. There is something about surrender that frees us. This thing was happening and there was nothing that I was going to do to stop it now. No point fighting anymore. And when that moment came the interesting thing is that I returned to me. I was no longer conscious of what I looked like. I was just me the way that I am when I am around people that I am deeply comfortable with. I sat down beside Cara and told her I came to say hi. She turned to look at me and with the biggest smile said “hi, it’s so good to see you!” and then gave me a big hug. Rather than just that quick hi that I had planned, we sat there chatting, sharing, and laughing for the entire third period. It was amazing. It was fun. It was connecting. It was comforting. Whatever Cara may have noticed or thought about my facial hair (she was literally inches away from my face), she didn’t skip a beat. And I thank you for that, Cara.

So I sit here still with goatee. I don’t know where the adventure will end, as I intend to just keep putting one foot in front of the other. There are, of course, a thousand more “I could never do that’s” in front of me. We’ll see. No matter what I decide to do in the future, I will have in a very real, scary, and tangible way faced this place in me that has been kept under lock and key. The thing about locking a part of us away is that it is impossible to do it. That is to say that it is impossible to only lock a part of us away while letting the rest run free. Life is more of an all or nothing affair. To truly be free, to truly be ourselves, we have to let the parts of ourselves that we have locked up out of jail. Sometimes we have done so to protect ourselves, sometimes to disown ourselves, sometimes both. Whatever the case, it’s a no go. Eventually, we each have to come back to ourselves and choose differently. It doesn’t mean that I have to wear a goatee for the rest of my life. It’s about making it o.k. either way. Who knows, I might end up loving it when it’s fully grown out, and so might you! In the meantime, it’s still scary. Case in point: posting the picture above in a public way scares the shit out of me. But guess what- I just did it!

Guns

Since I am still news-fasting, I didn’t hear about El Paso until later Saturday evening after I posted my last blog. Somehow that news snuck through my social media, in spite of my best efforts to weed news out of it. It’s interesting how news comes to you when you’ve cut off all of your usual sources. I didn’t hear about Dayton until late Sunday afternoon. That news was delivered to me by my friend and colleague, Mary, who I had scheduled a phone call with because we had a few things to go over in addition to just getting caught up. When I asked her how she was doing, she said, “Well, I’m o.k…. it’s been a bit crazy with all of the events of the day.” I had to think for a second, but then said, “oh, you mean El Paso?” Then she realized that I hadn’t heard and broke the news to me. Mary lives in Ohio. She used to live in Dayton, and still lives not far from there. I could hear the despair in her voice followed by the bittersweet relief that nobody she knew was among the victims. Incidentally, when I coached hockey our team included players from El Paso. So I too went through that fear of waiting for the list. I would say thankfully none of my former players or their parents were on the list, but that seems like an empty sentiment when people have needlessly and brutally lost their lives.

This isn’t a political blog, at least not in the way that we find ourselves in a political standoff these days. One of the inherent things about shifting from the Story of Separation to the Story of Interbeing is that we have to stop “othering” each other. Because guns are such a loaded issue in this country, I even hesitate to write about it. Yet at the same time I am here to share my experience of how this attempted shift is going for me. And this week that experience happens to have been inundated by this issue, as it has for all of us- again. In order to not “other” each other, we have to be willing to not hold on so tightly to what we think we know. As I worked to process the events- including both how I felt and what I thought- I was cognizant to not just react with what my political position has been on guns. I decided to take a deeper dive into the issue to see where it might lead me.

It ultimately led me to wondering what highly evolved beings would do. What would our position be on guns from within the Story of Interbeing? Fortunately, I knew just where to go to find insight on this question: Conversations With God by Neale Donald Walsch. Book 3 describes the principles that highly evolved beings live by and the choices that they make based on those principles. By the way, I can’t believe that I haven’t mentioned this before, but I am once again reminded that CWG is my all time go-to book. I’ve read the complete volume three times in the last fifteen years. I’ve looked things up countless other times. This was one of those times. Last night I flipped to the index and looked up “guns.” Nothing. Then I looked up “murder.” It listed one page, but said to see “killing.” Killing had quite a few pages listed throughout Books 1-3. So I started reading.

But before I get to what it said, I want to ground this post in my experience. I believe that it is important that we each do this deep internal inquiry, because at the beginning of the day it all starts with our own internal landscape. Each and every last one of us. So I’m going to start by sharing my experience of guns, not my political opinion. I’ll ultimately get to the latter, because we all do ultimately have to choose. We all have to take a position on the matter, because guess what, that’s life. And every choice we make effects every other human (and the rest) on the planet, which means that it is political. Nobody gets to not choose, and therefore nobody gets to be apolitical. Let’s not humor ourselves into thinking otherwise. Yet I think you’ll find in my experience and the inquiry that I describe below a case for your own choice and opinion, wherever you happen to stand on the issue. That said, I humbly request that you continue reading with an open mind.

Now as for my relationship with guns. Quite simply, I choose not to have one to the degree possible. I have never killed anything with a gun. I have never fired a gun. I have never held a gun. I have never so much as touched a gun, nor do I anticipate that I ever will. I don’t want to be anywhere near guns. The reason? Guns create a negative disturbance in my energy field. I’m sensitive. Please do not write me off as a “snowflake.” Sensitivity is something that we are desperately in need of more of, I would say. I am sensitive to things that people who are not so sensitive may not pick up on. Things that we might want to be aware of. I pick up on things that may be floating around in the Field. That is why I learned to hold my energy field so tight to my body. But you know one thing that the mere presence of disturbs me nonetheless? Guns. No thank you.

Mind you, I’m not judging anybody who has a different relationship to guns than I do. I’m simply sharing my experience with you. Some would suggest that if I were a single female living by myself in an urban environment, I would want a gun to protect myself. Well I have been there, done that. And I never opted to have a gun. Others would suggest that if I lived in a remote spot in the country, I would absolutely need a gun to protect myself. Have I mentioned that we own a tiny house on 40 acres in the Green Mountains? The place is completely off-grid with no connection to the outside world- not even cell phone service. We share this place with bears, moose, deer and every other creature that lives in the Green Mountain ecology. You want to know what I don’t share the place with? A gun. I simply will not. I will not, knowing full well that it leaves my life at risk. We therefore walk the forest carefully, but we do it. You know what I am more afraid of than wildlife? Humans. Humans with guns specifically. Some may not be well-meaning and others may be the most responsible gun owners/hunters on the planet. But accidents happen even to the best of us. So to all my hunting friends, please don’t take it personally when I tell you that you are not welcome to hunt on the land that we are stewarding. I don’t want that kind of energy there.

This is not to say that I judge people who hunt. I actually don’t, especially if they only take what they can use/need. I also don’t judge people who choose to own a gun for whatever reason. The reason that I don’t judge is because I understand that the issue is complex. It’s hard. It’s hard because when you delve down to the bottom of the issue you have to face our ideas about the very nature of life itself. So before you go thinking that I think I am better than gun owners, let me clear that up. I kill. As much as I hate to admit that, I do. I’ll forgive myself, though, because I also understand that I am in process. I forgive you too, wherever you stand on this. I, like you, am still living from the Story of Separation, even though I am trying to shift out of it. So while I could never, ever pull the trigger of a gun to kill an animal, you know what I do kill with zero hesitation? Roaches. Yep, I’m not gonna lie. I hate those things. And it shows. WHACK! That’s the sound of my shoe coming down. Actually, it’s usually 3-4 whacks because they are so damn agile that it is difficult to get them on the first try.. if you even do! It’s very un-evolved and unloving of me, I know. But I can’t help it, yet. I really despise them. I’m just not that evolved, yet. See?

But let’s not stop there. We are not having a real conversation about any of this unless we talk about our relationship to food. You may be surprised, based on what I said above, to learn that I am neither vegetarian or vegan. Not yet anyway. I don’t rule it out. But to date that has not been my choice. Let me explain why. In my worldview, everything is sentient. And I do mean everything. That means that plants are every bit as sentient (conscious) as animals. Now what am I to do? If I wanted to eat without killing a sentient being, as far as I can tell I would be limited to dairy products. And of course that would have to come from one happy, free-ranging, organic grass-eating cow who was treated with complete loving kindness and who therefore decided to meet that loving kindness by sharing some of her milk with me. I suppose I could convince myself that fruits and nuts are o.k. too. After all, they are not yet “alive.” They are just seeds. Of course my eating them would prevent them from ever becoming a tree, but not all seeds get to become trees anyway, so maybe I could live with myself. But veggies? Nope. Off limits. Pulling a carrot out of the ground is definitely killing it. I could maybe argue that if I left enough of a plant that it could regenerate itself that that would be o.k. But it’s still an amputation, and that just doesn’t seem loving. Eating meat is obviously also off the list. The only other thing I could do is to just wait for something to die of natural causes before I took it for food.

While this may seem like an exacting exercise to you, I think it is a critical one to go through. If you haven’t had an existential crisis bringing a bite of food (any food) to your mouth, you haven’t really come to terms with your own existence. For me, the bottom line is that we have to eat. That means that no matter what I choose, I have to participate in the killing of a sentient being in order to sustain my life. Death begets life. At least that is the way that it looks from inside the Story of Separation. Incidentally, my choice so far in regard to food is to eat organic, preferably non-GMO, food that has been raised in a conscientious, loving way. I prefer to know the farmers involved. I prefer to know how the animals are treated and how they live. While my meat intake varies, I try to keep it to a minimum and to be honest I am pretty sure my body could live without it. That’s why I don’t rule out giving it up some day. Yet no matter what I choose to eat, I absolutely know that my eating it is the product of myself or somebody else having killed it. That is not something to take lightly, and I don’t.

But what would it look like from inside the Story of Interbeing? In Interbeing there are no separate selves. What that means, quite literally, is that there is nothing that is not me. We are One. So when I kill something to eat it, what I am actually doing is killing myself to sustain myself. Strange, right? By the way, the same would be true if I killed anything for any reason, including those damn roaches- I would only be killing myself. Delving a bit deeper, Interbeing says that consciousness (life) is eternal. That means that sentience (life) cannot actually be killed. It can be removed from whatever form it happens to be inhabiting, but it’s consciousness continues as it is and can elect to inhabit a different form at any time. As far as food is concerned, our understanding shifts from death begets life to life begets life. We are constantly and continuously shape shifting- together. This is a radically different view of reality. Incidentally, if you are trying to rid yourself of something about yourself (as expressed through an “other”) that you really hate, absolutely detest, by killing it…. what this means is that you are plumb out of luck. Read that last sentence again. We are stuck with the level of consciousness that we are at. Not even killing ourselves will get us out of it. Not even rendering ourselves extinct will get us out of it. There is only one way out- evolve.

So this brings me finally to what CWG says highly evolved beings would do in regards to killing:

“No evolved being would attack anyone. The only reason a species under attack would kill another would be that the attacked forgot Who It Really Is. If the first being thought it was its corporeal body- its physical form- then it might kill its attacker, for it would fear the “end of its own life.” If, on the other hand, the first being understood full well that it was not its body, it would never end the corporeal existence of another- for it would never have a reason to. It would simply lay down its own corporeal body and move into the experience of its noncorporeal self.

So what I have said here is that the highly evolve beings of the universe would never “kill” another sentient being in anger. First they would not experience anger. Second, they would not end the corporeal experience of any other being without that being’s permission. And third- to answer specifically your specific inquiry- they would never feel “attacked,” even from outside their own society or species, because to feel “attacked” you have to feel that someone is taking something from you- your life, your loved ones, your freedom, your property, or possessions- something. And a highly evolved being would never experience that, because a highly evolved being would simply give you whatever you thought you needed so badly that you were prepared to take it by force- even if it cost the evolved being its corporeal life- because the evolved being knows she can create everything all over again. She would quite naturally give it all away to a lesser being who did not know this. The highly evolved being understands that she and her attackers are One. She sees the attackers as a wounded part of her Self. Her function in that circumstance is to heal all wounds, so that the All in One can again know itself as it really is. Giving away all that she has would be like giving yourself an aspirin.”

And in regards to food:

“This must be why, even in our own cultures, there are those who would not kill any animal for food or hides without asking the spirit of that being for permission.

Yes. This is the way of your Native Americans, who would not even pick a flower, an herb, or a plant without having this communication. All of your indigenous cultures do the same.”

Before I digest this, let me please encourage you to read CWG in its entirety. You really have to read the whole thing to understand what is being said above and how a Story of Interbeing could ever work. One of the most important concepts is that since life is eternal and death doesn’t really exist, the only thing that really matters about our choices is that they create the reality we experience. That means that if I want to choose the Story of Separation, I am free to do so. It doesn’t matter in the grand scheme of things. The only valid questions are, “Am I enjoying it?” and “Does it serve what I am wanting to be?” Indeed, I am not overly enjoying reality as we have created it. I think that I would much prefer a more evolved experience of life. What about you? That is why I am working to make choices that would lead to a different experience, whichever one might emerge out of the Story of Interbeing specifically.

As for guns, while CWG doesn’t directly say so, I am pretty sure that highly evolved beings would not have any, or any other weapons invented for killing. Why would they have something that they would never use? And that, my friends, is why I do not own a gun. I would never use it. I would let you have my life. I would let you have my life, because I don’t want to take further part in the creation of a world that I have grown tired of living in. I would much rather demonstrate to you, if I could, your own eternal nature. Of course as mentioned above, I still have a long way to go on this front, but I am in motion.

Now one more thing. We have to get political about this, because the truth is that we are creating our world collectively. So let’s talk gun laws. No, let’s take it deeper and talk laws in general. CWG further says this in response to how highly evolved beings govern themselves:

“When there is only one of You, how do you govern yourself? When you are the only one there is, how do you govern your behavior? Who governs your behavior? Who, outside of yourself?”

What is being said here is that, in fact, highly evolved beings have no government. You read that right. To all of you out there against gun control laws, I am hereby acknowledging what I believe is at the root of your understanding about life. It is true, we should manage ourselves. We should not need a government to do it for us. But here’s the thing- God also makes it clear that only highly evolved beings are able to do this. We, on the other hand, are primitive. Those are God’s words, not mine (although I fully agree). So until we have reached that state of being, what God indicates we should do is to collectively govern ourselves in such a way that enables us to survive long enough that we might evolve to this higher state of consciousness. Again, please read the book for a full clarification. It informs us that we are very much in danger of rendering ourselves extinct, be it by violence, by war, by social unrest, by ecological destruction, by virus mutation, etc. We are on the brink in all cases. That being the case, we need laws that reflect the highest collective wisdom we can muster to keep us alive. We need laws because we are not yet evolved enough to survive ourselves. We need laws, and will continue to need laws, for as long as we continue to operate from the Story of Separation. Non-governance will only work from the Story of Interbeing.

So. Here is what I propose. If you want to get to a state of non-governance (and I am with you), please, please, please take this journey toward Interbeing with me. Take the deep internal dive that it will require to first shift yourself out of Separation. Your doing so will shift the people around you. Second, please join me in the following practice surrounding food. I hereby commit myself to asking prior to every meal and on behalf of all of us: “To all of the sentient beings represented here, may we have your permission to take your life for the sustenance of our collective life.” If you happen to be a hunter, I would ask you to do the same before you pull the trigger. If you happen to be somebody who feels the need to kill another human being, I would ask that you do the same before you pull the trigger as well. We are all in this together. Let’s hope we live long enough to evolve to the full experience of Who We Really Are.

Roots

I come by it naturally, this wanting to save the world business. Well I say that, but then again it is curious. I could have just as easily become focused only on my own survival right out of the gate. I didn’t, because I think I have never imagined that my survival in the womb and through birth was my own doing. I clearly had a desire to be here, but there is no such thing as “self made.” No, I needed forces much greater than myself to complete my transition into relativity. I don’t talk about this often, but while I don’t have a direct memory of my birth, what I have always had is a sense of the field that came to my rescue. Always. I feel like people have always tended to tilt their heads ever so slightly (or not so slightly) sideways when trying to perceive me. And this I believe is the reason why. It’s because there is a part of me that never quite settled into relativity. There is a part of me that remains in the field.

Now I don’t think I am special by any means. I actually think this is true of all people. When I refer to the self, I am referring to the part of us that is embodied in, situated in, and perceiving through relative (embodied) reality. When I refer to the Self I am referring to the part of us that remains in the field (aka The Absolute… which many people like to call God). We all spend most of our time situated in our selves, but we also all have experiences of our Selves. How much we are in touch with the latter depends on how aware we are of the field. Let’s go ahead and capitalize that: The Field. For really my whole life my inner world has tended toward the latter while I have struggled with the former. I think my best friend Micki says it the best when she points out that my struggle is to be human. Of course I am human. Very. It’s the living into it that has been challenging. Another way of saying this is that I have tended to keep the world at arms distance. And that makes my spiritual journey interesting, because rather than it being about any attempt to transcend relativity (being human), it is actually about dropping down into it. The Absolute makes perfect sense to me. The Relative, well, not always so much.

But I am fully committed to this path. Go humanity! Actually, I do feel that way about humanity. That too is curious. As much as I have always tended to hold it at bay, I actually love humanity very much. I think that being here in the relative world is the most beautiful thing ever. And that’s why I have always (and I do mean always) wanted to save the world so badly. I also have a sense that this is not a new profession for my soul. When I was young, let’s say in the 5-10 age range, I had this recurring dream. You know the kind that when you wake up from it, you feel like you just woke up into some twilight zone. In other words, it feels like you just woke up into a dream rather than out of one. It’s super disorienting.

In this dream I was a young child. I recognized myself to be myself, even if not quite the same physical self. I am in a war torn city. Let’s say it was somewhere in Europe. The city is in complete ruins. I don’t have any parents or a family, nor do I seem to need any. I seem to be functioning as a grown adult, even though I am very much a child. I am part of an underground network that rescues people. Because I am small and a child, I am able to navigate the ruins largely undetected to get to people. I, by myself, go find them and then guide them to safety. The dream is so real I could touch it. And that is all that ever happened in it. I would go rescue people. Then I would wake up startled and confused about where I was.

Now trust me, I know that a therapist would have a heyday with this. And that’s fine. It’s all interconnected- one life to the next, each building on every one before it. Some dreams are strictly metaphorical, some are Self-journeying, some are memories, and some are all of the above. Whatever the case here, the effect that the dream had on me was to develop a very strong sense of life purpose at a very young age. My father used to say to me that if I was insistent on saving the world (more often expressed as changing the world), I would be miserable. Did I mention that I am hard-headed?? Yeah. That didn’t deter me, it just spurred me on. But, Dad, I am about to say something that I have rarely ever said to you (if ever!). You best sit down for this. You sitting? Oh, good. You were right. I’m only admitting to this one thing, so don’t go getting a big head or anything! 😉

Now that is not to say that I have been miserable in my life. I would never characterize my life that way. However, railing against what is is painful. It is. Yet, rail we must. Right? If we don’t, all will be lost. Seemingly. Doing the work that I do to address our socio-ecological challenges has taken me into some dark inner places. It’s easy to feel defeated. It’s easy to feel overwhelmed. It’s easy to feel hopeless. Squaring ourselves with the suffering and loss that is occurring at an ever-increasing rate is painful. It just is. There is no avoiding that, nor do I believe that we should ignore it. It’s taken me a long time to get this, but the best way to deal with our emotions is to acknowledge them and feel them. Completely. The fear is that when the pain is so incredibly intense that it will pull us under and wipe us out. I’ve had to face that.

My saving grace on this front has been the same thing that has always saved me- The Field. When I revisit my dream, by all accounts I should be scared shitless. I have no parents. I have no family. I am by myself most of the time. I am navigating ruins and ongoing war. I’m just a kid! I mean, come on, I should at least feel a little anxious! But I don’t. I’m actually completely calm and peaceful. That’s because I know that I’m not actually alone, nor am I really handling any of it. This is to say that I am just a concentration of The Field. I am just the Infinite in play.

But let me bring this down to Earth in my life at this moment. There are a few layers to unpack here. I have been called to unpack it at this moment due to my participation in Charles Eisenstein’s course “Unlearning for Change Agents,” which I’ve mentioned before. The course consists of fasts from four habits: 1) watching the news, 2) judging others, 3) judging yourself, and 4) yep, you guessed it, saving the world! Just for the record, I smiled when I first read the prompt for this last one. Actually, I might have laughed out loud, just a little. And, I think Eisenstein is dead on correct on this one. So let’s start unpacking.

The first layer that just really must be brought to light is that there is an ugly underbelly to wanting to save the world. The very concept of saving the world is based on the judgement that it isn’t perfectly o.k. just as it is. “Judgement bad,” in case you missed it. When we judge the world to not be o.k., then we extend that same judgement to everyone and everything in it. We particularly extend it to people. And guess how our wanting to save the world manifests the most- in trying to “fix” other people. Just yuck. And, yes, I am guilty as charged. In all fairness I have been conscious of this one and working on it for some time now. Old habits die hard, of course, so it requires constant vigilance on my part. And I fail. I do. Life has given me ample opportunities to practice though, and I appreciate that. It used to be that I really believed that people needed fixing, just like the world does. And I thought that I could do it! Without going into details, I nearly annihilated myself trying to fix another person. I failed miserably, of course. I had to go down that path, though, to learn that lesson. I am grateful for that life experience. I have known for sometime now that I cannot actually fix another person.

However, that was like, kindergarten, in the school of saving the world. Jump forward and we learn that people don’t actually need fixing in the first place. They don’t. And while it is easy to say that, it is extraordinarily difficult to watch somebody that you love in pain while also seeing how his/her choices contribute to keeping him/her in that painful place. Ouch. It hurts, actually. So truly this is rocket science, in my opinion. The truth is that we all suffer as part of our path, and that suffering is necessary for whatever it is that a self/Self is here to do. So to interfere with that process is, in essence, counterproductive in the first place and unnecessary in the second. Yet that doesn’t mean that we should be indifferent to the suffering of others! Ah, rocket science. You gotta to love it. Actually, it’s more art than science. And I’m no artist on this front! The art is that there are no clear cut rules in how to properly be present for another human’s suffering. It depends. Be that the case, presence is the guiding principle, as I’m learning. Just be present.

Now for the next level of unpacking. How does it sit with you when I say that the world doesn’t need saving? If you are anything like me the response will sound something like this… “Uh… what??!! Are you kidding me??” And actually, if you identify as a change agent this suggestion probably really pisses you off. So let’s look at it. Let’s look at the planet just as we looked at a person above. Let’s call her Gaia. Gaia, just like any human, has suffering as part of her path. To interfere with that suffering would be equally counterproductive. I can hear your objections. You say, “But it isn’t Gaia who is causing all of the suffering, we are!” Well, I happen to agree with that assessment. We, humans, are destroying the planet. It is therefore our job to save it. I agree. Really, I do. AND, there is more to this story.

There are two ways to tell this story. One is through the lens of separation. This is the lens that we, let’s call it post-indigenous culture, have been abiding in since we were, well, indigenous. The Story of Separation, as Eisenstein calls it, assumes that there is an objective world out there from which there is a separate self. From this story, we very much need to save the world, but we are going to fail miserably. Yes, that is my prediction. I am so sorry. It hurts to face that. There is, however, another story that we could tell.

This is, as Thich Nhat Hahn calls it, the Story of Interbeing. This blog is all about my (clumsy) attempt to shift into this new story. Let me give a few concrete differences between the two stories. Separation assumes that there is an objective world that existed a priori consciousness, with consciousness being equated with us (humans). That is to say that consciousness emerged out of the objective world. Interbeing says that consciousness exists a priori the relative world, which is no longer understood to be an objective reality at all but is rather an inherently subjective reality. The separatist worldview gives rise to a belief in the separate self. In the interbeing worldview no such separation is even possible. There is no line that can be drawn that truly indicates where I end and everything else begins. The separatist worldview says that nothing in the objective world is sentient besides humans (although we have had to relinquish sentience to other life forms over the years, but rest assured it was believed at the beginning of this story that only we had it). The interbeing worldview says that everything is sentient. In other words, everything is conscious. It goes a step further to say that, in fact, consciousness is all there is.

O.K., I know that’s a whole lot of theory-schmeory. Time to get real about it. In my last post you may have noticed that I talked to the forest, meadow and mountains as if they are sentient. Incidentally, I am not making all of this stuff up- there are no original ideas here. I am simply synthesizing what a whole lot of other people have said throughout time. When we are indigenous, we know that everything is sentient and we treat it that way. We don’t pretend like everything is sentient. We believe it and we behave accordingly. That is to say that we act as if everything has consciousness. When I asked the forest, meadow and mountains for their wisdom, it was a serious inquiry. And they answered. No, I don’t hear voices, nor do I see dead people (which isn’t to say that some people don’t). Communication comes through The Field. When we are indigenous, we are able to pick up on these signals. We don’t rely solely on our five senses, which emerged to pick up on signals from the relative world rather than from The Field. (The distinction between relative/embodied and Absolute/Field is a simplification for the sake of understanding. It’s a way to meet us where we are at. At the end of the day I would argue that there is nothing but Field.)

So now we are ready to get back to why we don’t need to save the world. This isn’t about ignoring the fact that we are destroying the planet. We are. It’s simply recognizing that nothing short of a plot twist into a new story is going to do the trick. In the first place, to be “saved” is to abide in a state of interbeing. We don’t actually have to do anything to abide in this state. In other words, it has nothing to do with what we are doing and everything to do with what or how we are being. Shift the being and the doing will follow suit in the direction of our saving. For as long as I choose to understand myself as a separate self, I will be part of the destruction of the planet- in spite of my best intentions. So the second part of this is that once in a state of interbeing, there is nothing to be done. Mission accomplished. Wait a minute, hold the phone! How can we be sure?? All I can say in response is that nothing less than a deep inquiry along with a deep practice will reveal why. What we find there is The Field. The Field is the great Fixer- not us. In order to tap into It’s healing power, we have to abide there, in The Field. Whether we do that or not, in fact The Field is using us in ways that we will most always be completely unaware. We actually have no idea what out of all that we do will have the greatest impact. I suspect that most of the time, it’s the little things- the things that we are the least aware of- that are the most important.

O.K., all the way down to earth now. When I run in the morning, as mentioned I run through Forest and Meadow in the Mountains. Thich Nhat Hanh would advise us to speak to these beings as they are – sentient. That is a great step forward, but it’s still, say, high school. I say this because the implication is that they are still separate beings from me/us. Another trick that Thich Nhat Hanh gives is to shift our understanding from beings doing something to simply being something. For example, as I run rather than thinking I am Shelly running, the shift is to think that I simply am running. In other words I am being running rather than doing running. Again, this is very helpful and in and of itself takes a ton of practice to truly abide in that shift. In my practice of running, one day my inner dialogue naturally shifted from noting that I am “Running in the Forest” to I am “Forest Running.” Which of course made me laugh out loud because Forest Gump was the very next thing that came to mind!

But I digress. In this last shift, I am no longer a separate being running through the forest. I am Forest, and I am furthermore the vehicle through which Forest expresses running. If I zoomed this line of thinking out I would actually be Gaia Running. But it’s good to start small. Now when I run I meditate on the observation that I am “Forest Running.” And you know the very next thing that came to mind after this shift happened? My very next thought was, “Don’t step on your roots.” So I as carefully and as lightly as I can run-tip toe along so as not to tread on any roots. After all, I don’t want anybody stepping on my toes. It hurts.

Public Service Announcement: There is a whole lot that goes into what I am saying here- complexity theory, metaphysics, quantum theory, morphic resonance, and on and on. It’s a lot and I know that it can be overwhelming. I’ve been studying these things for many, many years. If you want to know more on any of these topics, you can always email me with your most burning questions and I can give you reading/viewing suggestions. Just please note that I am not here to be any kind of expert. I am here to share and connect. For now, one good upcoming source is a new course by Eisenstein called Metaphysics & Mystery that I believe will be a good dive into these topics. All of his courses are pay what you can if anything. You can find his courses and a trailer for the new course here: https://charleseisenstein.org. Happy trails, and don’t step on your roots!