Month: April 2020

Dreams

Dreaming much lately? I sure am. So is Shannon. So is Shannon’s mother. In fact, a few days ago I heard a promo for an upcoming segment on NPR indicating that a whole lot of us are. I am not usually a lucid dreamer, or at least I don’t usually wake up knowing that I have been dreaming much less remembering what I might have been dreaming about. There are exceptions, of course, but this is generally true. Not these days. I wake up so tired from dreaming that I wonder if I would have been better off staying awake!! While I don’t necessarily remember, or perhaps want to remember, what I was dreaming about, I am quite aware when I wake up that I have been lost in it. And “it” was weird.

Before I get into that, here is a quick update on our stay-at-home tiny house experience. As mentioned previously, we have no internet or cell service up here. That means none of our usual forms of entertainment, which largely consists of Netflix, are available to us. We also like board games, but we don’t really have room for boards! We do, however, have one game that we are quite fond of that takes up next to zero space in storage: Bananagrams (thanks, Sara, for the intro even if getting our butts repeatedly kicked by you was extremely frustrating!). So that’s what we do. We play Bananagrams. If you aren’t familiar, the game basically consists of utilizing a Scrabble-like letter set to race each other to make a Scrabble-like crossword puzzle. It’s fun, but I have to say that you can only near-tie each other so many times before hitting a bit of a wall. That’s when the creativity breaks out. 

Shannon and I some time ago had become tired of playing and just randomly started putting words and then phrases together. They almost always ended up being weird, funny, poetic, etc.  A few nights ago we reverted into that mode when Shannon had the idea of starting a phrase with “Jedi Sayz,…” That was all it took to set us off on a whole new obsession with playing Jedi Sayz. We are up to nearly 40 or so phrases at this point and are aiming for 108 good ones to share. The photo above is a sampling. For starters, we’ll share them one by one on our FB and Instagram pages. They are providing us with a whole lot of insight about where our psyches are. We hope you enjoy! 

Back to the dreaming, who in the heck knows what we are all dreaming about, but I find it fascinating that so many of us are. Even as we practice social distancing it indicates how inextricably interconnected we are. It points to a reality beyond the one that we comprehend through our usual frameworks. Those frameworks tell us that this is all terribly real, whereas what happens in dreams is some sort of residue from our conscious lives. It is our subconscious expressing itself. Maybe so, but I don’t think the “sub” gives dreams their full due. Let me explain.

In the framework that I do my best to live by, my soul (aka Self) abides (lives) in the Absolute realm (the non-embodied realm or field which I call God/Oneness/Consciousness). As such, it isn’t subject to my subjective experience in the relative world. It’s not that I am a separate entity from my Self, it’s just that the latter has a 360 view on What Is (aka reality) whereas the former only sees what it can see from the perspective of the life I am currently inhabiting. From this framework, it would be more correct to say that my self is a dream of my Self than the other way around. In other words, this is the dream (the world as we have created it), not the realms that we travel to when we manage to break free from what we perceive to be real. So to call the non-embodied realm sub to this one, in my view, is an incorrect framing. It’s the exact opposite. 

O.K., o.k., that may be a lot. So why stop now?? There is an indigenous tribe in South America called the Achuar. Their culture is centered around their dreams. When they wake up in the morning, the first thing that they do is gather to share and discuss their dreams. What they discover in their dreams then determines the course of their day. They let their dreams guide them. Now this may sound like crazy talk from the framework that we operate in, but it is not the least bit crazy from the framework that I described above. In fact, it is quite possibly the only sane way to proceed if we understand that our “dreams” are one of the best ways that our Self has to communicate with us.

In the early 1990’s, Achuar shaman and elders began having disturbing dreams about the health of the Earth and in particular the devastating impact that humans were having on it and themselves. So, in true form, they began wondering what to do with this information. The guidance that they received was that they needed to reach out to Westerners and to start co-creating a new dream for the earth and humanity’s role in it. At the same time, a group of Westerners including Bill and Lynne Twist got the same call from the other end. They heeded that call and sought out the Achuar. Together they initiated the Pachamama Alliance. The network that they have built, while still invisible to our society at large, is extensive. I am part of it having first completed their “Awakening the Dreamer” course and then having gone through the training to lead that course. These days all of this coursework can be found online, with multiple more programs to choose from. If you find yourself with disturbing dreams these days, perhaps the best thing that I can recommend is to put that energy into taking one of the courses. You can check it out here:

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To take this one step further (you knew I would!), I would make the case that if we are to chart a new course for humanity and for Gaia, then that guidance is going to have to come from the level of our soul/Self. As my good friend Chausey Leebron Jameson says, we simply don’t have the altitude from where we sit to know how to navigate ourselves out of this maze. When we work and push and fight for change, those efforts are more likely to lock us into the reality that we have created rather than catapulting us out of it. That is because when we do these things we are often operating from within the same frawework/worldview that was utilized to create this world, all while expecting a different outcome. It’s not going to happen that way. Sure, there may be a power transfer from one group to another, but the resulting dynamics will be the same. In order to create a reality that does not resemble the one we are trying to evolve out of, we need to reach beyond the frameworks with which it was constructed. We have to reach into the realm of pure potential, where our souls live.

That doesn’t mean that you will or should stop showing up in whatever way that you do. Maybe you are an activist. Maybe you do amazing, transformative work in the world. Maybe you do your best to take care of your family, friends, and community. I’m not suggesting that any of that stop. I am saying that all of our actions will be better serving if they are sourced from the non-embodied realm: from the field of pure potential, from Consciousness, from Oneness, from dreams, from God, from Self. To tap into that requires not a concentrated effort, but a letting go. Mind you, one of the best ways that we have of reaching a state of letting go is to exhaust ourselves in the concentrated effort, so in that sense… fire away on all pistons! Just pay attention and watch for that moment when you have reached your wit’s end and honor what is conveyed to you in your surrender. That is where the answers will come from.

Jedi Sayz, “Happy dreaming!”

Tiny

If you want to get a good taste of interbeing, try living in a tiny  house… with another person and two not so small dogs. Our Tiny Drop is a whopping 160 square feet, and that is including the sleeping loft. The ground floor footprint is only 106 square feet. It is truly tiny. Fortunately, because we did a hell of a job design-building it, it doesn’t feel that small. But the reality of its smallness sets in when two people can’t pass by each other when one is trying to do the dishes and the other needs to go pee and there is a dog in the way to boot. Let’s just call it snug.

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Let’s just say that everyone is always in each other’s space. It’s more workable when the weather conditions are nice. Under those circumstances we spend a considerable amount of time outside on the deck, in the hammock, working outside, or exploring the 40 acre ecological sanctuary that is our backyard. But that’s not right now most of the time. More often than not, it’s snowing (yes, even in mid-April), raining, or just plain cloudy and cold. And that means we spend most of our time inside in our intricate daily dance with and around one another. And did I mention two crazy dogs?

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We realize that this isn’t for everyone and one of the things that Shannon and I appreciate about one another is that it is for us. Of course at this point in our 13 year relationship, we understand well how such experiences serve to constantly push us deeper into our stuff. And we embrace that. It has helped both of us to take charge of our own healing for the sake of stepping into more of who we truly are in the world. The tendency that we both have to put ourselves in extreme situations is all just part of it. 

I’m not going to lie, though. It isn’t easy. For starters, Tiny Drop is not yet fully functional. Primarily, while it is plumbed with a kitchen sink and full bathroom, that plumbing is not yet connected to an outside water source. That is due to the fact that we have needed power in order to make that happen. Our property is completely off-grid. It took us some time to get the 2.5 kW solar system installed to feed electricity into the house. We do have that now, although there are still some glitches to work out. Our last hurdle is to get water from our spring connected to a large rain tank from where it has to be pumped into a pressure tank and then into the house. At least that is what we think has to happen. Then we need to finish the connections between the hot water heater and a propane tank. 

Until then, water has to be manually hauled into the house and dispensed via glass jugs at the sinks and this crazy contraption that Shannon rigged up for us to shower in our very nice shower enclosure. If we want that water to be hot for showers and dishwashing, that has to be accomplished on our propane turkey cooker outside. Oh and we use gallon jugs to pour water into our composting toilet for flushing to an outside dry well. That has enabled us to pee inside of Tiny Drop instead of having to go to the Shittin Shanty, which we greatly appreciate in the middle of the night. But until we are able to hook up the exterior compositing unit (work in progress), no pooping inside. For that we still have to go to the Shittin Shanty, which has an internal composting toilet. 

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That sounds like a lot, right? It is. If you really want to deal with your shit, there is perhaps no better way than to actually deal with your shit. Know what I mean? That internal composting toilet has to have its bucket replaced when it gets full. That’s what I mean. When we take away all of the conveniences that we take for granted on a daily basis, it adds up fast. I’m barely even scratching the surface here. Again, I’m not going to lie. I’m tired. I know, however, that there is a gem to be found in the tiredness, in being worn down to your bones. Such endeavors have a way of washing away all of the illusions that entrap us in a certain way of being. Our modern lives have us believing that the only way to get water is by turning on a faucet. Yet if we had to, if our spring stopped running, we could walk down our driveway and across the street to collect water in the river… for free. No plumbing required. And, yes, we can poop in the woods just like everyone else. 

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I’m not saying that we should give up all of our modern amenities and technologies. I am saying that it is a worthwhile endeavor to strip yourself of them from time to time to see what effect they are actually having on your life. Are they really making life better, or are they caging you in some way that you have become desensitized to? It’s worth asking, lest we end up in a world that we did not really intend. 

All that said, my friend Amanda asked for an example of “that’s on you” from my last post. I happen to have a good one from a few days ago. Shannon and I were on a walk up to the sanctuary on the mountain. The sanctuary is in a clearing about half way up the mountain where the previous owners had started to build a rustic cabin on a huge rock outcropping. They didn’t get any further than setting a stone foundation and a timber-framed floor that has since rotted. Yet the place is indeed special, and we have therefore designated it as the location of the future sanctuary to our ecological sanctuary. Moving up from the sanctuary is “Meditation Mountain,” a surreal place with multiple stone outcroppings spaced out in such a way that provides the perfect opportunity to choose your spot to sit in stillness. Turning to the right before Meditation Mountain is the forthcoming path that we are calling the “Middle Way” as it runs between a split in the mountain stream and then proceeds up through Split Rock to a lookout over the adjacent mountains. 

This place is magical. We are getting in the habit of walking up to the sanctuary every day as a way of becoming more intimate with the mountain while blazing trails at the same time. On this particular day, we were poking around the sanctuary trying to determine where exactly we wanted the trail to approach it. I was pointing with my hiking poles to two trees where I thought the path should pass through. Shannon couldn’t make out what I was pointing to, but I couldn’t think of another way to explain it to her other than pointing. In an attempt to understand me she said, “use your words.” That was all it took. I was triggered. 

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Triggered means that I was instantly in a world of hurt. My survival tactic to that hurt is to shut down and shut out. I retreat and cut you off at every path. Not that you won’t know that you’ve made a grave mistake, because I have my ways of making you feel it too. You’ll get my cold shoulder, my silence that can cut through just about anything and you in particular. Shannon knows this space well by now. In earlier versions of our relationship, this silence would have ensued for weeks or longer, ultimately escalating into the end of the world. Now I know what you are thinking… all of that just because of three little words?! Yup. All of that. Why? Because the button she had just inadvertently pushed was the activation button for my speech impediment wound. In other words, every pain and all the shame that I had ever felt from not being able to speak properly or to communicate when I was little was just brought to the surface in full force. Ah, now it makes sense. Right? 

These sorts of experiences get exaggerated when the triggering person is one of our most beloved. “How dare you? How could you? I thought you loved me?“ These are all of the thoughts that accompany a triggered state of being. Fortunately with enough years of these types of experiences, I have learned to recognize in fairly short order what is actually happening.  In this case, I immediately was able to push out “I don’t like it when you tell me to use my words. It makes me feel like a 5 year old.” Shannon also has enough years of this type of experience to recognize what is going on as well. For her part, she immediately said, “Oh, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to make you feel that way.” And she meant it. In previous versions of our relationship she might have said to me (as I would have to her if roles had been reversed) something to the effect of, “That’s on you.” 

“That’s on you” because that wasn’t her intention and it is therefore on me that I took it that way. And, frankly, that is a correct assessment. It’s just not helpful. It’s not helpful because what “that’s on you” communicates is “I have no desire to help you with that and I don’t care that you are having that experience.” Another way of saying it is, “That’s not my problem.” It therefore exacerbates the problem, because it contributes to the triggered person’s story of “You don’t love me.” Yet here is where it gets tricky to grow out of and move beyond these dynamics. In our case, we have both done a ton of personal work aimed at healing our wounds. That is to say that we have both taken responsibility for our own healing and have put a significant amount of work into it. That is what enabled me to first of all speak my truth rather than defaulting to a shutdown. It enabled me to stand into it and stand up for my inner wounded 5 year old. Shannon’s sincere apology then made it safe for me to say moments later, “It’s because it triggers my speech impediment wounds.” Ah-ha. Of course. That makes perfect sense now. 

We had each done our part perfectly. Shannon had zero other responsibility in this situation beyond apologizing for what she didn’t intend with complete sincerity. That is all I needed from her. The rest was entirely up to me. It was up to me to recognize that I was triggered and why. It was then up to me to acknowledge, protect, and nurture that part of myself. That all truly was on me. But it would not have been nearly so easy if Shannon hadn’t held the space for me to do my work. That is what the apology did, it gave me space. I didn’t exit the triggered space immediately, because these wounds run deep and they need some extra attention. But an hour or so later I was completely out of it and we went about our day in peace. 

Yet to get to this point in a relationship requires trust and willingness. We first have to trust that the other person really does care for us and has no intention of hurting us. The triggered person has to be willing to take responsibility for his/her/their own wounds and to do the shadow work required to heal them. It is true that the triggering person doesn’t have to show up to any of this… unless of course he/she/they wants to foster a healthy relationship (a healthy YouMe) with the triggered person. In that case, it might behoove us to reconsider our knee-jerk “that’s on you” response and instead search for ways to hold space for, without taking on or over, the triggered person’s healing process.

Now if you can hang with me just a bit longer, I would like to also extend this to our relationship with the world at large. I’ll use our mountain ecological sanctuary as the example. We are calling it an “ecological sanctuary” because that is what we intend for this place and our relationship with it. It gives little indication of the actual state of this place at this given moment. The reality is that this mountain was “lightly logged” decades ago, and that assault left its wounds. Most of the remaining trees are not mature and, as happens in a young forest, too many adolescent and baby trees are fighting for their survival. When you are a tree living on a mountain you have to cling to the soil for life. Otherwise the massive amounts of water that move through here, as it is right now, take it away and leave you with no ground to stand on. As a result, way too many trees are falling down well before they reach maturity as they give way to the pressures of snow, ice, and wind from above followed by rushing ground water from below. The loss of trees results in further loss of the soil and roots needed to slow down the water. The water rushes even faster and exacerbates the whole cycle. 

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Shannon and I didn’t cause these wounds to the mountain. They occurred long before we became stewards of the mountain six years ago. We could easily say to her, “That’s on you.” After all, we don’t have the insights to understand what is going on with her, much less what to do about it. That being the case, the forest has to figure herself out. She has to find her own balance in time. And, honestly, that is a fair assessment. She knows herself much better than we do. Far be it for us to tell her what she needs to do to heal. But we are choosing not to say “that’s on you.” We are instead choosing to be present to her wounds, to acknowledge what we can see, to do our best to listen to whatever she might be able to communicate to us, to listen for any guidance that she may be able to give us about how we might help support her, and most of all to hold space for her healing process. We choose this, because at the end of the day, her healing and our healing are not two separate processes. They are one. We are one. If we can figure out how to heal together, this mountain and us, then it will be no tiny thing.

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Relationships

It’s not like this interbeing thing is easy for me. I did a pretty good job of isolating myself in separation early in life, so frankly it’s a long road home. Of course it is for all of us. The point is to just start walking. Those first steps look a lot more like watching than they do moving though. It’s enough to start by noticing what might be off about how we are processing and doing life. 

This past week I have been reading The More Beautiful World Our Hearts Know is Possible by Charles Eisenstein. Again, I highly recommend this book for this particular moment in time. It is helping me to think through relationships in particular. This has very much been a process for me, and one that has been unfolding over a long time with input from various sources as well as direct life experiences and experimentation. What I know for sure at this point is that I have a long way to go yet. So deeply ingrained is our Story of Separation. 

My current point of contemplation is surrounding a certain response that seems to have become common in our relationships these days. I have personally gotten this one more than once from more than one person in recent years. The words are almost always exactly the same: “That’s on you.” This has become a typical response to feedback from somebody that indicates that something that we did or said resulted in that person feeling this way or that way (notice that I said resulted, not caused, just in case your dukes are already up to start defending the comment). I have to admit here that I am usually at the receiving end of this response rather than the giving, but truth be told I have been on both ends of it. Being at the giving end of the comment, I understand completely where it is coming from and the impulse to set healthy boundaries that it originates from. I get it. On the receiving end of it, however, what always crosses my mind is, “yes and no.” And I think that response gets a little more at the complexity of relationship than the hardline border of “that’s on you” does. So let’s dig in. 

First, yes, we have learned a lot from the vaults of codependency. We have learned that it isn’t actually healthy to take responsibility for others. We have learned that it is not only unhealthy for us, but it is in fact disempowering to another person to try to “fix” or “heal” him/her/they. I agree wholeheartedly with this assessment. I also believe that codependency comes from an incorrect understanding of what is what, in other words from a faulty worldview. And, yes, I have been more than guilty of this one in my life. So by all means, we should not try to take over anyone else’s life process or self-realization. In this sense, whatever anyone is experiencing at any given moment in time is first and foremost “on them.”

Only it’s not quite that simple. Let’s deepen the discussion by bringing Don Miguel Ruiz’s The Five Agreements or Byron Katie’s The Work into the equation. They provide deep insights into what messes up our relationships. And that is largely that we take things personally that are not actually personal. I don’t know about you, but I am guilty as charged on this one too. Take it from a sensitive, I quite naturally take just about everything personally! And I also tend to take personal responsibility for just about everything, which is at the root of the aforementioned codependency. All of this leads to a painful experience. So maybe it is no surprise to hear that I also wholeheartedly agree with the insights that both of them have afforded us, as the wisdom they have brought forth helps to relax our triggers and get over our inflated sense of self.

Ah, our triggers. That is what this all boils down to in the end, isn’t it? In a nutshell, our triggers are the buttons that activate our childhood wounds. Touch one and the whole wound relives itself in real time (which almost always is an exaggerated response to whatever actually just happened). Anytime we are upset about something, we are triggered. We are remembering the original wound, the original moment when the experience of the harshness of separation shocked and hurt us. It is nobody’s fault. It is not the triggering person’s fault (the person who put his/her/they finger on the button) any more than it is the triggered person’s fault. It’s just a reality of our experience from within the Story of Separation. It can’t be helped. But it can be understood, and that understanding is what will start to shift us out of that story and into one in which such things don’t occur. Hard to imagine, right? 

As I said in the beginning, we have a ways to go yet. So let’s just try to keep working on the understanding. So far, nothing that I have said contradicts the assertion “that’s on you.” So why is it that I sense that it doesn’t tell the full story? At issue is the true nature, the reality or lack thereof, of the separate self. To cut to the chase, the separate self doesn’t really exist. That is to say that the truth of the matter is that there is nowhere that we can draw a clear line of distinction between where you end and where I begin. Now what? Now who is it on? See what I mean?

Delving further into this separate self business, I often take my students through a thought experiment to help them to lift the veil on the self. It goes something like this. Think about the food that you eat. When it comes into your body and is digested, some of it gets metabolized into the energy that fuels you, some of it gets discarded as waste back out into your environment, and some of it actually becomes you… which is to say that it is utilized to replace dying cells in your body which are also then discarded back out into the environment as waste. The question is, when does the matter that starts out as food start being you (or your actions) and when does it end being you? Can you draw that line? 

For those of you who may still be operating under the belief that you are not one with your body, the same line of questioning can also be applied to all of the non-material inputs that you are metabolizing and which constitute who you are. Those ideas in your head did not originate in your head. They were given to you by someone or something outside of yourself. For example, we weren’t born with our worldview. It was given to us by our culture. When, then, does an idea start being yours and once you put it back out into the world, when does it stop being yours? Can you draw that line?

What I am getting at is that we are not actually separate selves in an objective world. Our very being is relational. That is to say that who we are is defined by our relationships with everything and everyone in our environment. Eisenstein refers to the well-proven theory from social psychology called “situationism” to explain this phenomenon. Situationism indicates that who we are is actually the sum total of all of our experiences (aka relationships). Not only are we the sum total of our relationships, but we actually don’t and can’t exist absent them. 

So back to my question… who is it on? Who is responsible for who we are and how we are responding? It isn’t quite so clear now, is it? Maybe the sensitive in me is right. Maybe the sensitive in me understands that interbeing is the truth. Maybe. I won’t take it quite that far as I think that the truth is paradoxical. It always is. That is to say it is a case of both/and. In this case, there are some deep truths to be integrated from learning to say “that’s on you.” There are. I would like to suggest, however, that it would be a mistake to simply leave it at that. That would be to miss the whole other side of the coin.

So here is my evolving theory on this front. In the above diagram, the “you” and “me” bubbles represent the illusion of our separate selves. Incidentally, I do not mean to malign these illusions or our sense of self. We have to have one in order to be here. There is nothing whatsoever wrong with perceiving a self. Nor is there anything whatsoever wrong with drawing a boundary around this self. In fact we have to. It is absolutely necessary that we do so in order to exist in the relative realm. Good boundaries are part of maintaining a healthy, functioning, value-adding self that can participate in the larger whole of which it is a part.

That said, if we understand the self to be a truly separate, independently originated, and fixed self, then we reduce the possibility of our interactions with one another down to simple transactions. That is to say that the interaction between you and me is nothing more than a value exchange, where we give this for that, and the this for that had better be equal if balance is to be maintained. Otherwise one of us, either you or I, will end up depleted. We all have experienced this one, haven’t we? This is another inescapable experience of the Story of Separation. 

When we understand ourselves to be relational beings, a completely different picture emerges. Rather than separate you and separate me merely transacting with one another, when we truly relate with one another we begin to experience not just our interdependency, but our interbeing. In essence, a third energetic being is born. In my diagram above her name is YouMe. I would argue this is what always happens when we enter into relationship (any relationship of any kind) with somebody, but since we don’t conceptualize it this way we tend to make a complete and utter mess of it. From this perspective, “that’s on you” completely misses the mark. It becomes like saying to a hungry five year old “that’s on you, the kitchen is over there.” Who is responsible for the five year old? 

Well, in the end, if we want that five year old to grow into her full potential and contribute her own unique perspective and gifts to the world, then our best bet is find a way to hold space for her in her own self-realization. This is tricky business as any parent knows. It requires constantly navigating thin lines between nurture vs. smothering, interdependence vs. dependence, and so on. Sometimes we do have to say “that’s on you.” Yet at the same time we have to know that this thought is only one small slip away from gaslighting another person. Isn’t it? I don’t think it is any small coincidence that “that’s on you” has emerged at the same time that gaslighting has become a thing. Again, this is in no way meant to negate setting healthy boundaries and learning to properly allow others their own process of self-realization. Those are critical. 

The truth is much more complex than any simple prescription for how to show up to a relationship. That’s all I’m saying. For me, I am contemplating what is required of me to foster a healthy YouMe while also fostering a healthy Me. I can’t promise anyone that I am going to master it any time soon. All I can say is that I am committed to getting better and better at it. I imagine that if we were all working from such a framework, our relationships would become a whole lot healthier, more loving, and more joyful. If that isn’t motivation enough, then how about the realization that YouMe is a whole lot more powerful than either You or Me alone. Not just twice as powerful, but exponentially more powerful in imagining and creating the world which we inhabit. Add a third person to the energetic mix and we discover the truth of what God meant by “when three or more gather in my name.” We discover the infinite power of interbeing. I don’t know about you, but I’m game.

Foundations

A funny thing happened on the way to fixing our foundation… a pandemic brought our project to a screeching halt. If I had a different life experience to date, I might be inclined to deem it incredibly bad timing. We hit the green light on the project in early February and then spent the rest of the month prepping. This involved packing and shifting our contents, demolishing the front porch, clearing the site, finalizing our construction loan, and moving ourselves out along with a few possessions that we would need over the coming months. All of that had to be done by the end of February for the March 1 start date. Over the next two weeks our site team lifted the house ten feet into the air. Then the word came down. Vermont ordered all non-essential businesses to shut down. Besides that, our crew couldn’t get concrete to pour the foundation. We were at a standstill. Our partially demolished house has now been lowered back down to a reasonable height as we wait. There is no telling when the project will resume, much less when construction will be far enough along for us to move back in. 

In the meantime, we had just moved in to the basement of our friend Jean’s house when COVID-19 took the U.S. by storm. And here we thought that the hardest thing we would face would be keeping our dogs separated. The dogs were indeed challenging with two dogfights and multiple injuries to show for it, but honestly the high anxiety of our human situation was worse. Imagine being quarantined at home, only you are not at home. Therefore even the slightest bit of remaining control that any of us might have- control over our own domain inclusive of our response to the situation- was also lost to us. While we are truly grateful to Jean for opening up her home to us, we knew we needed to find our own space and give hers back to her for the wellbeing of us all. 

I cannot say how fortunate we truly are. We happened to have a backup. We have Tiny Drop, our tiny house located on our off-grid mountain retreat. The only complication was that there is still two feet of snow on the ground. We can’t even drive up our steep driveway yet. Our water supply is fed by a spring that runs down the mountain. As soon as we realized we needed to make our move up here sooner rather than later, our first order of business was to find out if the spring was running and if we could get it flowing through the pipe down the mountain. The spring was running, but the pipe was still frozen. Fortunately, again, we had enough extra pipe sitting around that we were able to divert water from the existing inlet to get it down the mountain far enough that we didn’t have to hike all the way up to the spring every day to fetch water. Good enough. We made our move.

We relocated a week ago. Certainly this life isn’t for everyone. In some ways, life here is the equivalent of “glamping.” But it is perfect for us and for our dogs. It is perfect, especially, for riding out a pandemic. Our place here is completely off-grid with no cell phone connection or internet connection. (This post is coming to you from my car via the free internet out of the Free Library in Brandon.) We literally have no connection to the outside world other than the cars that we hear go by down below. That alone has been a huge relief from the constant flow of collective anxiety jamming up every artery of our hyper-superficial-connectivity. Then there is the social distancing, which frankly can’t get any better than this. We have no neighbors. But the very best thing about it is that it puts us right into connection with the very thing that we need more than anything right now- nature. 

Mother Earth. You’ve got to love her. Snow, rain, cold… bring it on. When the sun comes out it is nothing short of glorious. We feel so incredibly grateful that we are going to be here to watch the season change in this place that we fell head over heals in love with over six years ago. If I haven’t made this clear already, spring hasn’t arrived on this side of the mountain yet. It’s beautiful in all seasons nonetheless. Although I have been warned about mud season, so perhaps I should hold off on such a bold declaration until I have fully experienced that. It will be here just as soon as the snow melts. In the meantime, I have a long standing tradition of posting photos of my Vermont “office” to irritate all of my Houston friends. Not to disappoint, here ya go!

Foundationsoffice

Now that you have the picture and the update, let’s talk. Nobody knows how this thing is going to go. Yet I think it is safe to say that whatever we considered “normal” will likely never fully return. We will come out if this profoundly different than we were when we went in. It is possible that this moment will catalyze a full on paradigm shift. Then again it might only be a significant pre-tremor to the full on quake to come. If we are being honest with ourselves, however, we must realize that a paradigm shift is imminent. We simply cannot continue to inhabit the earth in the way that we have since the dawn of Western civilization. That game (of separation) is over, whether we are ready to admit it or not. 

And that is downright scary. It’s terrifying to not know what comes next. It is disorienting when our foundations crumble beneath us and our sense of home becomes completely compromised. Trust me. I get it. Many of us, most of us, will fight to rebuild what was in order to get back to normal. Yet I will remind us, as many others are, that our “normal” has been extraordinarily out of balance for a very long time. When we live in an unhealthy situation, it is very difficult to see that from within it, particularly when it is all that we have ever known. Our best chance of gaining perspective is to get outside of it for a bit. This is that chance. It might be the only chance that we get before full on collapse, if that collapse doesn’t come quickly. 

While paradigm shifts seem to come out of nowhere, they actually don’t. They are the result of a slow build up of pent-up energy that knows a better way. When that storehouse reaches a tipping point, the system literally gives way to the better understanding. The change seems sudden and certainly catastrophic to life as we know it. Yet it has been coming for a long time. I think the critical thing to understand at this moment is that we are not alone in this. That is to say that the “better understanding” is not something that has to or has been coming from us alone. Gaia will have her say. If we continue to insist on “othering” her, we can be sure that we will not like what she has to say. She has the power to vote us off the island. How silly would our conception of this being the era of the Anthropocene seem then? 

On the other hand, if we move to heal our relationship with Gaia, if we move into an awareness of interbeing, then we will have a very good shot at being a healthy part of the new paradigm. That paradigm will be more joyful, more loving, more harmonious, and safer than the one we have been inhabiting. That paradigm will support the evolution of the system as a whole. It must. That is the way of life. We can only dodge the way of life for so long. Again, time is up for that charade. This new paradigm will look nothing like anything that we are used to. It is time to open ourselves to welcome this new reality, as frightening as it may be to leap into the unknown.

Fundamental to fostering a state of interbeing with Gaia and all of her constituent parts is to once again acknowledge her and every aspect of her as sentient. We must meet her as an actual living being. Not metaphorically, but literally. As I mentioned in my last post, this is extremely hard to do from within the confines of Western civilization. I am imploring each and every one of us to find a way to break out of those confines. I offer this reading list to support us in getting there:

The Dream of the Earth, Thomas Berry

The More Beautiful World Our Hearts Know is Possible, Charles Eisenstein

Earth Acupuncture, Gail Reichstein Rex

Please, please take this opportunity to read at least one of these. They all very clearly describe where we are, how we got here, and where we might go from here. In short, they point to the underlying worldview, the foundation, upon which we have built the world as we know it. This worldview has put us on an unviable path. Nothing short of examining and reconstructing our worldview is going to get us onto a viable one. 

If you are able to get out into nature, perhaps start by greeting her as you would a person. In fact, practice greeting anything that you never would have spoken to before as if it is a living being. You may feel crazy, but that’s only because our existing world paradigm has taught you otherwise. If you had grown up in an indigenous culture, developing such relationships with all aspects of Gaia would be a very natural and essential part of your existence and wellbeing. At this point in the game, I would argue that you have nothing to lose and the world to gain. 

Last things last. I have to say that in this moment I could easily feel like the world is out to get me. I don’t. On the contrary I feel incredibly and perfectly guided, supported, and protected. I sense that I am exactly where I need to be at this very moment in time. I hear humanity awakening to and asking for the higher understanding that we are needing to face this moment. I hope that in your quiet moments you feel the same. Godspeed.