Author: Shelly

Generations

So this is what we’ve come to? Generational warfare? All I should really need to say is seven generations. Seven generations, people. But with everything flying around this past week, I’m going to have to clarify lest you think that I side with Texas Lt. Governor Dan Patrick. If you aren’t familiar with his comments, he said on Monday that our elders should be “willing to take a chance on (their) survival, in exchange for keeping the America that all America loves for your children and grandchildren.” The America that he is arguing for has nothing whatsoever to do with a healthy socio-ecological system or the wellbeing of his grandchildren. In fact it is quite the opposite, which makes the hypocrisy of his comments readily apparent (I hope). More on this in a minute.

I in no way agree with Mr. Patrick as will become clear. But if warfare isn’t what we are after, then we need to start by elevating the conversation. Let’s start by reading, or rereading, these insightful words by Kristin Flyntz:

“An Imagined Letter From COVID-19 to Humans”

She has beautifully expressed the gist of the message that I received in the midst of COVID-19, which I opted not to share as I explained in my last post. She also said it a hell of a lot nicer than the words that came to me! The message, however, is the same. Here’s the thing in a nutshell. Nothing short of realizing a state of interbeing is going to work. The problem, all of our problems- pandemic, social unrest, economic failure, ecological meltdown, climate crisis- are based on one and the same thing. Our worldview is off.

We have to get this through our heads. Now. The world is a conscious being. Her name is Gaia. Gaia is part of an even larger being that many of us call God, or the Universe, or Consciousness, or the All That Is, etc. In the same way that Gaia is an aspect of God, we are an aspect of Gaia. That is easy enough to conceptualize, right? But this can’t remain a concept in our heads. It has to become our reality. That means that we have to start treating Gaia just like a person. Oh, and while we are at it, we should start treating every other thing that makes up Gaia as “people” too- animals, plants, even rocks. Too much? Fine. At least start with the animals closest to you and start to work your way outward from there. Please.

Believe me I understand that this is a hard leap for a culture that has at least since Descartes (370 years) thought the world to be a machine that is essentially as dead as a doornail… which is in itself an outmoded expression because in our forthcoming worldview not even doornails (not even doornails!!!) are dead. Descartes was wrong. Deadly wrong. The death that we now face is how deadly wrong he was.

The world in its entirety is alive. I will offer a simple definition of life, that otherwise easily veers off into arguments in the weeds while missing the point entirely. To be alive is to be conscious. To be conscious is to be aware, responsive, thinking, decision-making. Every single aspect of reality is conscious. That’s not what we were taught, is it? Hard to imagine a rock as thinking, right? With our current worldview it is nearly impossible.

Our separation of consciousness into “higher consciousness” (the thinking human brain) and “lower consciousness” (our typical threshold to be considered alive), is a primitive misunderstanding of what is what. I know I am cutting right to the chase here, and I’m sorry if this is jarring, but we are at that point. Every single being/entity, cell, atom, particle/wave, etc. THINKS. Another way of saying it is that there is nothing that is not thought into being, moment by moment. Everything that exists is a materialized thought. A thought in action. A thought manifest. A thought in motion. A thought thinking about itself. Do you see?

You might naturally ask who is doing the thinking. Good question. We are. We, as in, God at every level of being: Universe, Gaia, Ecosystem, Human/Animal/Plant/Rock, Organ, Cell, Atom, Particle/Wave. All of us. Us in our entirety, as the One That We Are. You might reread Kristin Flyntz’s words one more time now and take them literally rather than figuratively. Gaia is speaking. She is speaking to us in the same way that we might speak to our heart, or lungs, or liver, etc. Are we listening?

Now back to our little generational tiff. At this moment the majority of humanity is made up of 7 generations: The Silent Generation, Baby Boomers, Gen X, Gen Y (Millennials), Gen Z, and Gen Alpha. The first three encompass those of us who are 40 and above, while the latter four are forty and below. I’m a Gen X’er. What can I say, we tend to tell it like it is. So here’s the deal. If I were in any of the younger generations, I would honestly have a hard as hell time with anyone in the older three generations lecturing me about being responsible right about now. Seriously. If you are in one of the older three generations you need to take a good, long, hard look in the mirror before saying a word to anyone in the younger generations who might not be taking this virus as seriously as you think they should… for your sake.

Why? Do I honestly have to answer that? O.K., I will. But you should already know. We have been utterly irresponsible to the survival of the younger generations in our complete failure to deal with the climate crisis, in our complete failure to live according to the seven generations rule. In case you are not familiar with this indigenous piece of wisdom, what it says is that every decision that is made should consider the wellbeing of the seventh generation out. It furthermore says that if we don’t do that, we jeopardize our own wellbeing. In other words, we must consider how every single decision we make will effect our grandchildren if we want to be well ourselves.

Do we do that? Not by any stretch. We never pay the true cost of things. Let me give you a clear example. I was talking to the plumber who will be working on our house last week and he was trying to make the case to me that we will never see the payback on some of the decisions that we are making, like a more efficient hot water system, more insulation, or the solar system that will live on our roof. You know what? He could be right (although when considering the true cost of things he is absolutely wrong). Still, on the surface it depends highly on what happens with the cost of fossil fuels in the coming years. That is to say that if the only cost we are considering is the cost that Shannon and I will bear then we are potentially making foolish decisions. But what we have to ask ourselves is, what price should we put on the survival of our species? What is human life worth to you? What is the life of other species worth to you? And most importantly, are you willing to pay that price?

I personally think that life in all of its forms is invaluable. I am therefore willing to pay any price, and so is Shannon. So we make hard decisions in all areas of our lives that cost us more money than business as usual would. In the end, we will pay whatever price we can muster. That is the true “sacrifice” that every generation should be making for each other and for future generations. It’s not about laying down our lives. If you are here, you are meant to be here. You are meant to be making your own unique contribution for the sake of your own as well as our collective evolution (which aren’t in competition with one another). It’s about facing our shadows and making the hard changes required to support that evolution. Are you willing? If so, use this precious time to examine your unexamined assumptions about the nature of reality. What you assume to be true is what comes true, or at least seems to until we get tired of that reality and make a different choice. If you want something different, then have the gumption to imagine it and the guts to realize it into existence.

As for the partying young folk on the beach, they aren’t going to listen to us elders about how they should care about our wellbeing until we demonstrate that we care about theirs. And, no, Mr. Patrick, continuing with an out of control consumer culture that is devastating the earth will not bring wellbeing to anyone, especially not your grandkids. If you truly care, then think the whole thing through without leaving anything or anyone out of the equation. Only then will we rise to the occasion. Only then will we chart a path toward wellbeing. Wellbeing will come in Oneness if it is to come at all.

Epi(demi)c

Last time I wrote I was en route to give a guest lecture at the University of Arizona. That was a month ago, so I suppose we have a lot of catching up to do.  I think my last post talked to some degree about what I was going to present, so I won’t repeat that here. I’ll just report out that it was well received. Hopefully the ideas that I shared helped everyone present to better digest our current situation with the intent of elevating our individual and collective responses. The feedback indicated to me that I achieved that end. For instance, Robert Miller, Director of the School of Architecture, reported to me afterward that it was “mind-blowing” before wishing me “Godspeed.” He followed up with a hand written note thanking me for an “inspired” and “moving” presentation and concluded that “it makes me feel better knowing you’re out there.” I think that is the most amazing thing that anyone could say to me in response to what I am working so hard to share. I want us all to feel better- about ourselves, about our species, about life.

Feeling better is a big deal right about now, and on every front. So this strange thing happened to me in Arizona. In spite of all of the great interactions that I had, I started to be overwhelmed by this sinking feeling of I didn’t know what. It just hit me out of the blue and I couldn’t tell where it was coming from or what was at the root of it. I reported it out to Shannon when I got home, but this looming feeling remained disconcerting. I knew at least that it was in part because I had opened the flood gates through all of the work that I have been doing over the last couple of years to meet and heal my wounded inner child. But still, this seemed bigger than that. I felt something coming, and my usual means of protection were down.

You see I am a sensitive. I am a sensitive who built up significant walls over the course of my life to protect myself. I had done such a good job of it that I had forgotten that I was a sensitive long before I even knew what one was. So for most of my life I have shown up not as a sensitive, but as a stoic. You would have never even guessed that I actually have feelings. Well I do. Even more so, I am intensely affected by what’s going on around me. I pick up on shit. Now I am in the process of unlearning all of those survival tactics that I have used to protect myself, and refiguring how and what to do with the sensitivity. All I can say for now is that I no longer try to run or hide from it. I just sit with it and wonder.

In this case, I wondered what my wounded child might be trying to communicate. I wondered if I was just bracing myself for the impending disarray of the gut rehab of our house (which is in full process at this point incidentally). I wondered if my concerns about how we are or aren’t forming our collective response to our social-ecological challenges was secretly eating away at me. None of those answers seemed to fully resonate, so I just kept sitting with it. And now I know. What I began feeling a month ago is exactly what we are all feeling right about now. When our collective fear over COVID-19 fully kicked in, the feeling of it matched the intensity of what I had been feeling. Mystery solved.

So here is another confession for you. Often times my blog posts come to me in a sort of flash. The entire post essentially downloads into my head, word for word, sentence for sentence. I might wake up in the middle of the night or it might randomly take over my mind right in the middle of something else during the day. This isn’t always the case. Sometimes I might have a general concept or idea and let it build as I go. Sometimes I just start writing having no idea what I might say and whatever comes out comes out.  But often enough, it comes in this complete download. I remember the download word for word and simply type it out when I get the chance.

I haven’t written this past month in large part because we were in a whirlwind of moving out of our house and in with our friend Jean all while starting the demo of our house and generally preparing it for the big lift. You’ll hear much more about this in the coming months, but as I mentioned once before, we are gutting and rebuilding our house from the foundation up. The house will be lifted into the air this week. Fixing a house with faulty foundations is not an easy thing to do. It is complicated. It takes know-how. It takes a huge commitment. I say this, because this is exactly what we need to do as a species right now… fix our foundations from the ground up.

But that isn’t what I want to talk about today. Not because I didn’t have a complete post download in response to COVID-19 that spoke to just that. I got that download about a week ago. I elected to overrule. My reason? Well, I felt it was too harsh for the moment. This is something that I have had to learn the hard way throughout my life. Sometimes the stark reflection is just not helpful in the moment. So I am not going to hold up that mirror today. Instead, I am going to share a story. It’s one I believe I have shared before, but it’s a good one and good stories always bear repeating… particularly in times like this.

But before we get to that, I want to return to Arizona for just a moment. The day I was leaving I went on a walk through Catalina State Park, a beautiful desert paradise, with my friend, colleague, and host Jonathan (who has been mentioned in this blog before). Imagine me in the midst of this deep sense of impending doom while walking through the full glory of nature rising up through the aridness. It was like the calm before the storm, and I felt that. I took it in so that it might stay with me when the storm hit. The photo above is from that walk. We could all use a little zen right now, so here is another little dose:

epic1

Speaking of storms, if you have never been through a hurricane, what we are all going through right now is exactly what it feels like. If you have, you know what I mean. There is the impending fear, the frantic preparations, the anxious waiting, the sense of helplessness, the onslaught that hurls us around, and then the dismount which we hope beyond hope doesn’t knock us on our asses too badly. Loss of some sort is inevitable. Sound about right? The only difference is the noise. Hurricanes are very loud affairs. So loud. This virus, on the other hand, is silent. It’s so quiet we don’t even know if or when it is present. That deserves another zen timeout:

epic4

And now for story time. The year is 1979. I am 9 years old. As you know, I was a gymnast. So was my brother. We led very busy lives that involved training every single day. In fact by that time I was already training 3+ hours a day. My mom is a nurse. She worked the early shift at the hospital. When I say early, what I mean to say is that I have no earthly idea what time she got up and left the house. She was long gone by the time I awoke to get ready for school. Now to be honest, even having been a parent myself, I cannot for the life of me fathom how in the hell she did what I am about to explain to you.

My mom would get home from work in the late afternoon an hour or two after we got home from school. Then, because my brother and I had different workout times (at the same gym mind you), she would load my brother into the car and take him to practice leaving me at home. Our gym was at least a good half hour plus drive away. Then she would turn around, come pick me up, and drive back there. This. Was. Insane. But you know why she did it? She did it so that I would have some semblance of normalcy in my day. She did it so that I could get my homework done. She did it to give me just an ounce of downtime, to make space for me that might have felt something like this:

epic3

It didn’t go unnoticed. I understood the sacrifice that she made for me every single day. Retrospectively speaking, I just don’t understand how in the hell she did it. Yet she did. So on this one particular day, September 18, 1979, I had a plan. The only thing more dangerous than a kid with a plan is me with a plan! I had been working on this plan for weeks and now the day had come. My mom arrived home and I anxiously awaited for her to depart with my brother. I had a plan! Only the weather wasn’t exactly cooperating. There was a torrential rain falling outside. The streets were starting to flood, as they do in Houston. My mom was hedging, but in true form she determined that the show must go on. A little rain wasn’t going to stop her! She and my brother dashed for the car and off they went. I watched as the car disappeared down the street and then I dashed for it myself.

I darted across the street to my neighbors, the Hackmeier’s. The Hackmeiers are a family of three sisters and a brother (who was at that time yet to come, I believe). The oldest sister, Missy, is my age so we hung out quite a bit. Just let me start by saying, I love the Hackmeiers. They are beautiful people and a beautiful family. Missy and I got back in touch a few years ago when I was with my PVAMU Race to Zero Competition team in Golden, Colorado where she now lives. She met up with us for dinner and the first thing she said when she sat down was, “Have you told them (my students) the story??!!” This is THAT story. It’s one of those epic ones, kind of like this:

epic6

So as I was saying, I ran for it as soon as my mom and brother were out of sight. I got drenched, but that didn’t matter because I had a plan! Mrs. Hackmeier welcomed me in and dried me off. She was expecting me. She was the co-conspirator in my plan. You see, it was my mother’s birthday. My dad was and had been out of town for a stretch on a consulting job. He was somewhere out in west Texas. So I wasn’t about to let my mom’s birthday just go by unnoticed. I had therefore arranged for Mrs. Hackmeier to help me bake my mother a birthday cake during this small window of opportunity. I wasn’t about to let a little rain get in the way!

Mrs. Hackmeier and I got started on the cake right away, with Missy in on the fun. We didn’t have much time to work with. We hadn’t gotten very far into it when suddenly… it got loud. It got very, very loud. The wind that is, and the objects that it began tossing around. A loud thud stopped us all in our tracks. And then, then… Mrs. Hackmeier pulled out her super power. Mrs. Hackmeier’s super power is: calm. In the calmest voice I think I had ever heard she said something to the effect of “come with me” as she took us by the hands. She walked us into her bedroom and back into the bathroom where her closet was, gathering up the other sisters along the way. Then we all sat dow, huddling in the dark closet together. It was loud outside, but the calm that remained in Mrs. Hackmeier’s voice overrode all of that. It was calm there inside the closet with her. Something like this:

epic5

I don’t think we were in there more than 15 minutes or so, although it seemed like an eternity. Finally the noise died down and Mrs. Hackmeier bade us to wait there in the closet while she went to see if it was safe to come out. Her absence seemed even longer. When she finally did return she reached for my hand and said, “Shelly, come with me. I have to show you something.” Something in me knew that whatever it was that she was about to show me was going to be the single most important thing in the whole wide world. Mrs. Calm guided me gently back into the kitchen and then toward the breakfast nook that looked directly across the street to my house.

My family home is a two story house with four tall pillars that support the double height front entry. The pillars had all toppled to the ground. To the right of those on the second floor was my brother’s bedroom. The roof over his room was gone. My room was directly behind it. When I was home, that is almost always where you would have found me. I stared in awe, as the weight of what she was showing me fully sank in. Let that sink in:

epic7

I can’t imagine what must have been going through my mother’s head as she pulled back up the street just moments later. But Mrs. Hackmeier was quick to run out and inform her that I was safe. As it turned out, they had only made it around the block before they had to pull the car over and take shelter on the floor boards. A tornado had- without warning- just ripped through our neighborhood. My father drove about 120 miles per hour to arrive home to the wreckage just hours later to begin the long process of securing the house, talking to the insurance company, moving out all of our possessions, and finding another place to live as the house got rebuilt. Tornados are completely disorienting events, and so is the aftermath.

Yet Mrs. Hackmeier was the chosen steward to show me the most important thing in the world that day. It wasn’t exactly the first time that I had experienced it in my life. As you may recall, I barely made it into this world in the first place having nearly died at birth. What Mrs. Hackmeier showed me that day had been with me from the very beginning and no doubt constantly to that point. But this was the first time that I actually consciously experienced being protected. It wasn’t the last time for sure in a life that has since included three hurricanes, a handful of serious crashes in gymnastics, two full speed car collisions plus a handful of several other near misses, and god only knows what else.

But I was given a gift that day. Mrs. Hackmeier gave me the gift of calm. Calm is the knowing that no matter what happens, everything is perfectly alright. Calm is knowing that we are all profoundly safe. Calm is knowing that even death is safe, and therefore life is safe. Calm is knowing how incredibly precise the Universe/God is. I mean just look at the facts. That tornado didn’t touch any of our immediate neighbors. It only hit our house before skipping off down the block. And it did so on my mother’s birthday, while my father was out of town, which prompted me to solicit help from the neighbors to bake her a cake. Tweak any one little detail and you get a potentially much different outcome.

Life is pure genius. It is. Just look at this water moving through the desert:

epic8

My gift to you all today is one that I am paying forward thanks to Mrs. Hackmeier. I give you all the gift of calm. Calm is letting go in the midst of the storm. It’s that moment when you realize that you just can’t hold on or fight for your life any longer. The wind is too powerful. So you let go. As my tai chi master would remind me ad nauseam, “Give up.” In that surrender what we find isn’t weakness or hopelessness. What we find is the ultimate protection- becoming one with what is. That is where true power lies. That is where we find safety. That is where we inhabit the profound peacefulness that is calm. I wish this for you all now and throughout all that we have yet to face together.

That doesn’t mean be reckless. Do all that you can. Social distancing is most important. Just please proceed with a sense of oneness and a deep respect for this adventure we call life. I’ll leave you with one more zen photo. This one is not from Arizona, it is from our mountain property where I took this photo earlier today. This moon gate, the icon image for this blog, represents a gateway to a new world. Let us move calmly through it so that we might take the “demi” out of “epidemic” and write an epic story instead. Godspeed.

epic9

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

En Route

I am writing to you from Atlanta, en route to Tucson, Arizona. I am headed there to do my work in the world. In this case I will be giving a guest lecture at the University of Arizona College of Architecture, while also working with their Solar Decathlon Student Competition team for a few days. I am feeling centered and clear about what I have to share…even as I know that my news is disruptive. Somebody’s got to do deliver it.

The main gist of the message is the same one that I have for any and everyone- we have built our version of the world on faulty foundations. This is tough news to swallow, as the implication is that everything has to change. And we don’t like change. Yet the fact of the matter is that in the game of life, that which refuses to change… dies. Life just doesn’t stand still. Living beings are either evolving or devolving. Period. It might be wise to stop and reflect on which direction we are headed. It would further be wise to not mistake technological advancement with evolution. They are not the same thing. In fact technological advancement without evolution is one of the surest ways to wind up extinct.

That is why I am shouting from every mountaintop I can find. I will be delivering this same message as the keynote speaker for the Vermont Green Building Network Annual Celebration in a couple of months. So what am I talking about? By now, if you have been reading this blog for any amount of time, you get the idea. The problem that we have on our hands is a worldview issue. Our story is off. We can, and should, be forgiving with ourselves, others, and those from whom we inherited this worldview. But enough already. The foundations upon which we built Western civilization as we know it disintegrated almost 100 years ago. We just couldn’t be bothered to notice.

What I am talking about is the Cartesian worldview which postulates that the world we see and experience is objective, made up of matter that cares not one iota about our presence. It’s simply not true. Quantum physics proved that way back in 1925. I have been over this before, so I won’t get into the specifics again here. What’s curious is that 100 years later we keep teaching the same old model. We keep telling the same old story. It’s just too difficult to face that the foundations upon which we have built this whole dang building have rotted out. So we pretend that isn’t the case and keep working harder and harder, throwing more and more technological fixes at it, in an attempt to keep the building from falling down. It never occurs to us to build a new foundation that is rooted in the way nature actually works.

Speaking of nature, the other part of our worldview that has been off from the day it was asserted is our “survival of the fittest” story about evolution. I have covered this one already before too, but will cover it again now. It was not Darwin who uttered “survival of the fittest.” That was Hebert Spencer. He was a social scientist who among others was keen on proving that unchecked capitalism operates in accordance with natural law. You can understand what was at stake. If capitalism was in accordance with natural law, then it too was law. To make his argument, Spencer extracted Darwin’s findings, took them out of context, and changed their meaning entirely. Specifically, Spencer asserted that competition drives evolution. Darwin was disturbed by this conclusion and objected. It didn’t matter. He was ignored, because the story had to fit the emerging capitalist narrative.

So here we now stand in our neoliberal world, competing each other to death. Again, I know this isn’t pleasant news and if me saying these things doesn’t push a button somewhere in you then I might guess that you are not an American. Hang in there with me for a second, or perhaps just a bit longer. Our survival is in fact dependent upon being in alignment with natural law. We just didn’t get that law correct those many years ago. What Darwin knew, and what ecologists have since proven again and again, is that it isn’t competition that drives evolution. Cooperation does. I’m not saying that competition doesn’t play a role, it just isn’t the primary driver. Cooperation is.

Let’s return to the case of the trees. What seems obvious is that the straightest, fastest, tallest growing tree will win the race. And it does. It is rewarded with the longest life. Competition, right? Yes. It wasn’t until we were able to start deciphering what is going on beneath the ground that we got the full picture. Down in the soil, forests have a network made up of roots and fungus that rivals our internet. Through that network trees share information, say about impending threats or current conditions. That helps the trees survive. But here is the real kicker. You know what the tree that grows the straightest, tallest, fastest gets for winning? It gets the responsibility of feeding all of the trees around it who didn’t win the competition. Congratulations! Welcome to elderhood!!

Let that sink in. Then think about how we do it. Some would argue that the reason they don’t want wealth distribution is because the winners will naturally take care of the losers. Is that your experience? If you look around and are really honest with yourself, is that what you see happening in this country, without fail? I’m not saying that people aren’t charitable. Yet that charity is withheld as a right rather than a responsibility, and the truth of the matter is that we have taken the exaltation of self-interest too far. Which is to say we have extracted self-interest outside the bounds of natural law. You know why the elder trees feed the losers? Because they realize that they are stronger together. They realize that their own survival is dependent upon living in a forest, with friends and family. It isn’t an act of charity.

If Darwin could take back his narrative, what he would say is that the “fittest” is the one who best serves the system in which it lives. That is what he discovered and that is what he meant. In short, it is cooperation that drives evolution. Do you see how radically different that interpretation is than the one we have been taught? It is critically important that you do, that we all do. Otherwise, we will continue to build out our societal systems on faulty- or completely rotted as the case may be- foundations. As any architect or builder knows, you have to get the foundation right to have a healthy building. In the case of our social-ecological systems, the foundation is our worldview. If you want to know what to do from here, I’m about to give you the best architectural advice that I can give: take a good hard look at your foundation before you make one more move.

Speaking of foundations, our house- I am now speaking of Shannon and my literal house- is in fact sitting on a rotting foundation. So you know what we are going to do? Starting in just a couple of short weeks, we are having the whole darn house lifted ten plus feet into the air so that we can replace the foundation with a sound one. It’s shocking that we can do such things, right? But we can. And if we can lift a literal house, we can do the same with our virtual house. The only question is, will we?

 

Visions

Somewhere in the midst of this past week… which was otherwise great… I had one of what I’ll call my inner mental temper tantrums. They don’t happen that often, but boy when they do there is no stopping how quickly it devolves into the complete rejection of this thing called life. I believe it was in no small part caused by my work to open up the wounded parts of myself via the 33 day process. The deepest wounded part in me, the part that is truly not so certain about this life gig- and for good reason- latched onto all of the happenings in the world this past week and just went for an all out rant.

It wasn’t even like it happened at the end of the day. It started in on me the moment that I woke up. The general gist of it was, well, we are all screwed. Of course the rundown of every reason why we are screwed was presented to me in full color: we can’t get along, we can’t even have an open-minded, authentic conversation about the world that we hope for, we don’t even have a vision for the world that we hope for anymore because we are too busy clinging to ideas that somebody else is selling us for reasons that have nothing to do with our own wellbeing, we have therefore sold out our values to the most persuasive bidder to offer us a sense of safety, ultimately resulting in a fear-based vomiting of our shadows and wounds all over the floor. The situation is grim. Are you getting that?

That’s how that particular day started for me. Fortunately, I was able to recognize it for what it was… a fear-based vomiting of my wounds all over the floor. It’s not that I didn’t still carry all of that with me into the day, it’s just that I knew not to let it dominate me. I knew that my day/week would present me with the exact opposite… how incredibly wonderful humanity is. And it delivered. It delivered through my Middlebury students (and my PVAMU students before them) who I have all of the faith in the world in. It delivered through the (women) community organizers of Homes First, who are working on affordable housing solutions for Middlebury not because they need it for themselves, but because they recognize that we are all in this together. It delivered through the youth who travelled cross country last summer to study affordable housing solutions, producing and directing a documentary along the way, and succeeding at delivering a very powerful message to the Middlebury community. It delivered in the community members that showed up to hear that message. And this is just a small sampling.

Today during my 33 day process I went through the list of where I have still been holding on to judgement. The list was long. Yet it all boils down to one underlying judgement: that humanity is less than ideal. I most often express this one as a questioning of God. Is this the best that you could come up with? Really???! I think I’ve shared that before. These days, however, I turn that question inward. Is this the best we can come up with? Because let’s be honest- we are making this all up. We are. So in order to let go of judgement, I fundamentally have to accept that in fact this is the best we can do, at least in this very moment. O.K. I accept. Life is complex, after all. Sorting it out is by no means an easy task. We, myself included, can only move as fast as we are.

Of course life is an eternal paradox. On the one hand our salvation rests in the realization that we, and everything else, is a divine manifestation. On the other hand, we have to reach for our full potential. Complacency will get us nowhere. In fact the status quo is going to land us in extinction. We cannot just accept that this is the way it is. It bears repeating… we are making this all up. We are. That means that we can make something else up. We can make up a world in which we better acknowledge and experience the divine nature of all things, ourselves included, for example. This is within our power. The most important thing any one of us can do is to not give up our power to somebody or something else. We have to dare to vision the world that we want to live in, and work to manifest it day in and day out.

That takes guts in this day and age when it certainly feels like it is all well beyond our control. Some call this radical hope. While I, clearly, can devolve into a radical hopelessness, I continue to choose radical hope. That is to say that I choose to make a promise beyond my current capabilities. That promise can be distilled down to a promise to evolve into a higher state of being, one which will support the world that I crave to live in. That state is one of interbeing. So here’s the rub… to get to that state I have to give up on judgement. This is a tall order for me, as it is for any human who is being honest. In order to get there, I have to start by not judging myself for my own judgement! So I forgive myself for my human proclivity to judge. In doing so, I extend that same forgiveness to others for anything that I have judged them for. That doesn’t mean I won’t continue to slip up, but it does mean that I am committed to getting better.

Now as for us collectively, I would like to extend an invitation. As we are already in the midst of an extremely divisive political climate, I invite everyone to first and foremost stop long enough to vision. Envision the world that you want to live in. Really think about it deeply. See it in your mind’s eye. Work it out in detail. What does it look like? How does it feel? What is life like for everyone and everything? Don’t just resort to some vision that somebody else has given you, no matter who gave it to you- parents, mentor, school, church, Fox News, MSNBC, (yes I just went there), etc. Find your own vision. You have one. It’s in there. Come face to face with it. In the process of doing so, let go of everything that you judge to be wrong with humanity in this moment. It doesn’t matter. We are aiming for a different reality. Let go of all of the reasons why it can never happen. Just allow yourself to rest in your vision. What is it?

Once you find your vision, I invite you to consider this. I would bet my life.. no I am betting my life… that each and every one of our visions- as long as it comes from a place beyond judgement and fear and doubt- will be remarkably similar. That is to say that if you have succeeded in coming up with the grandest vision that you can muster as a human being, there is nobody who would not want that same vision for themselves. Nobody. At the beginning and end of the day, we all want the same things- if we are being honest with ourselves (which admittedly is half the trick). So my invitation is to approach everyone who you encounter, especially those with whom your political views are diametrically opposed, with the knowledge that they are after the same vision.

But don’t take my word for it. If you want to confirm that this is the case, then ask them. Enter into a meaningful, deep, open-minded, open-hearted conversation to find out what that person’s vision for humanity is. Find out for yourself. The only reason that it seems we are diametrically opposed is because we are more focused on the obstacles than we are on the vision. We each see the obstacles based our own path and approach. Therefore we naturally see a different way forward. So it’s not that your view is right and the other’s is wrong or vice versa, it’s that you each hold a different key to achieving the vision. We need both keys. We need all keys. To know this and abide in this is the most radical hope for humanity that we can muster. I dare you to go there with me.

 

 

33 Days

As promised… a week late… today I’ll give some insights into my 33 Day Process. As I mentioned in my last post, my childhood friend Chausey Leebron is offering this new online course. Chausey has shown up in a few of my previous posts, so maybe I could start by telling you a little more about her and our relationship. Chausey and I lived in the same neighborhood growing up… literally around the block so to speak. We’ve known each other since we were five. Not only did we go to school together from elementary school through high school, but we were on the same gymnastics team early on, again when we were five. We went on to be cheerleaders- yes, I said cheerleaders- together in both middle school and high school. Oh and we were on the yearbook staff together in high school as well. This is all just to say that we go WAY back.

Some of my earliest and fondest memories are of us playing at each other’s houses or at the neighborhood playground or pool, being at massive slumber parties together in elementary school, and going to gymnastics camps together. As time went on we each fell into our own paths and, well, I wouldn’t say drifted apart because we were like these fixed datums in each other’s lives. We were both just kind of always there, even if we were no longer really interacting on an authentic plane. I remember thinking in the midst of one of my last conversations with Chausey at the end of high school that I didn’t even know who she was anymore. It would be more accurate to say that I noticed she was simply checked out. Then again who isn’t at the end of high school… myself included. At any rate, I was heading east for college and she was heading west. Our lives were taking us to opposite coasts and I assumed that we would never see or hear from each other again.

To be honest, I didn’t give it a whole hell of a lot of thought after that either. I had moved on to the rest of my life. That was, until social media caught up with us about five or so years ago. Turns out Chausey had met my best friend Micki at a therapist shindig and they had become FB friends. Our paths crossed once again. Life moves in mysterious ways. I was shocked, actually, at the person who had emerged out of my childhood friend. Chausey had gone to LA to become an actress and had come back this deeply wise, spiritually connected, authentically loving, and super gifted therapist. Who would have guessed? Not me. But I am here to tell you, she’s got an impressive handle on this life gig. Truly, she does. In fact I find myself completely fascinated by the fact that anything that I might be able to share about moving into interbeing, she could speak to equally as well if not better. What’s even more fascinating is how our lives have been woven together at critical moments that we have had next to zero idea about at the time. Yet here we are. There are no coincidences in life.

All of that is to give my resounding endorsement of her new online course, 33 Day Process: Loving Your Beautiful & Miraculous Body. Here is the link again:

33 Day Process

While the entry point of the course is to open up communication channels with your own body, this simply serves as the portal to exploring the territory that I am covering in this blog- interbeing. If you are interested in this work, then I do highly recommend taking the course. I am on day 22 and have found it extraordinarily helpful. But before I speak a little about my own process, I’d like to put the territory covered into the context of what I speak about here.

I’m going to do that by taking you back to your middle school science class. Let’s talk atoms. Most likely your image of an atom involves something that looks like our planetary system in which electrons move in fixed orbits through a whole lot of space around a nucleus. Right? This model of the atom originates from the “Bohr model,” not to bore you, as proposed by Niels Bohr in 1913. In this model, the space that the electrons orbit through accounts for about 99.99% of the atom. That is to say that all material things- yourself included- are barely more than nothingness. Forget the fact that the human body is about 60% water. How about the fact that it is 99.99% nothing! Well hold on just a second. That was 1913. Unfortunately, that is the model of the atom still floating around in your head, isn’t it? Incidentally, I asked my Middlebury students if that was what they were taught and every single person confirmed that it was.

So what gives? Well, if you just take a second to check trusty ole Wikipedia, you’ll discover the words, “This model is obsolete.” Indeed it is. It has been for almost 100 years now. It was replaced in 1926 thanks to quantum physicists Erwin Schrödinger and Werner Heisenberg. Let me just cut to the chase. What quantum physicists discovered is that subatomic particles (such as electrons, protons and neutrons) are not quite as solid as we once thought. That is to say that they sometimes show up as particles (physical matter), but more often than not they show up as waves (energy). The thing to understand here about waves (energy) is that they are essentially everywhere at once. Think about the cell phone waves that your phone can magically pick up anywhere… actually, if you live in Vermont then scratch that. But seriously, just try to imagine for a second the infinite volume of waves inhabiting the space you are sitting in at this very moment: light waves, sound waves, cell phone waves, wifi waves, heat waves, etc and so on. Are these waves in some discreet part of the room? No. They are everywhere at once.

Cut back to the atom. It turns out that electrons are not so much particles orbiting in empty space so much as they are waves that inhabit the entire electron cloud around the nucleus… and just happen to show up as particles in orbits of probability. Which is why it is just easier to just continue to teach the old model… we can’t handle the uncertainty (principle)! I won’t even get into the observer effect here, but suffice it to say that the two together upend our entire objectified worldview. For the sake of this post, it’s enough to simply understand that you are not 99.99% space. You and every material thing you encounter is 99.99% energy… as in NOT material.

Context set, I am now ready to talk about these 33 days. Should you decide to delve into the course, I recommend taking with you just a little uncertainty about the worldview we were all given. You know, the one that says that your body is your body and your mind is your mind and that the former is just a host to the latter. Or perhaps you are of the mindset that it’s all just a matter of matter and when the body dies, so goes the mind. Either way, what Schrödinger and Heisenberg discovered ought to give us pause. We know even more now than then, and from multiple realms of inquiry. But I’m going to keep this simple. The bottom line is that there is no separation between mind and body, or energy and matter. The one is the other, and vice versa. There is only one thing. In order to heal ourselves and the planet, we must come to grips with this at last.

But now to bring it down to earth. As I have talked about many times in this blog, I have been working intensely for well over a year to heal my inner childhood wounds. I have been doing this by stepping myself back in time, one step at a time. However, my wounds extend all the way back into the womb. I have no conscious memory of that time through the first few years of my existence. But you know who does? My body. Yup. She sure does. So all I need to do to figure out what needs to be healed is to talk to her. She knows. After all, she is the one who has been carrying the brunt of it all this time. Rest assured, she knows!

One thing that Chausey does is to help us to identify the various aspects of our body/being so that we can get to the specifics. This also helps us to recognize and support each aspect of our body/being in the role that it is playing to keep us alive. I say “keep us alive” intentionally as for the most part this is what the various primordial aspects of our being think they are doing… fighting for our survival. The issue with being stuck in survival mode is that it precludes us from stepping into our full potential, or thrival. That is why our healing must involve revisiting our old patterns and way of being. These patterns are so deeply ingrained that we are hardly aware of them. We function largely on autopilot. In order to get to thrival we have to reprogram, shifting to patterns that better serve us.

I’ll give you one personal example of the many things that are coming up for me. My Solar Plexus has been functioning in overdrive to protect me since my inception. This is due to the fact that I started life in a blood battle, my red blood cells being attacked by my mother’s immune system while in the womb. I was truly in a fight for my life and my Solar Plexus was given the job of doing the behind the scenes work to get me the intel and energy that I needed to survive. As a result, nothing and no one was to be trusted, leading to an intense guardedness carried out via my power center (Solar Plexus). The role that my Solar Plexus has been playing is to be my very own highly trained Secret Service. Good luck getting past that!

Well, these days you do have more than a snow balls chance in hell! But if I want to truly move into a state of interbeing, to evolve into a state that will support the world that I want to live in, then I need a new modus operandi. That new M.O. involves a new role for my Solar Plexus. It is going to take some time to implement with a whole lot of practice and reinforcement necessary, but my Solar Plexus has been promoted to Sensei. No longer is her job to keep me safe via separation. Her job is to keep me safe via connection. She can now be who she always wanted to be…a tai chi master. Instead of shutting out all of that energy- 99.99% of everything surrounding me and moving through me!- her new role is to learn how to move with all of that abundant, beautiful energy in such a way that helps both me and everything around me to live into our true potential.

So that’s the work. Establishing new roles and new patterns takes time and dedication. That is why this particular process takes 33 consecutive days. It’s worth it. We are worth it. Huge thank you to Chausey for sharing her gifts with the world so that we all might live into our true potential. You go, Girl!

 

The Bridge Home

Today we took a hike in one of our favorite stomping grounds, the Taconic Mountains Ramble zen garden. It’s unseasonably warm here, but not warm enough for this little guy in the photo above. My heart stopped a little when I saw him perched on high, overlooking his beautiful home, where it is difficult to tell if he had taken his last breath or if he is just hibernating. This is one of the bullfrogs who I talked to during my morning runs over the summer. So that’s the first thing. If he is indeed dead, then I have lost a friend. If he is not dead, then he is in a precarious situation to be in a state of hibernation. On top of those concerns, you might recall the cover of my inner child work journal (see “Done” post). Here it is again:

Yes, that’s a bridge from my adult self to my inner child, here represented as a frog. I drew frogs like that in elementary school, in part because my first nickname was “Froggy.” So all sorts of things come up for me. Mainly, I get the sense that this little guy, or gal as the case may be, has gone Home, leaving this home in a state of peace.

Then there is the question of what in the hell she was doing up there in the first place. Was she confused by the unusual warmth and then got caught as the temperature dropped overnight? Is she just another casualty of climate change? Or is she just surrendered to what Is, without a concern in the world? Who knows? Whatever the case, my sense is that we all need to find this bridge home, this bridge to peace, sooner rather than later, alive rather than dead.

So with that in mind, I was fortunate this week to have had conversations to help me move in that direction. One set of conversations was with my new students. That new job that I mentioned in my last post is as a professor in the Architectural Studies program at Middlebury College. It’s a dream job at a place that has spearheaded our consciousness surrounding climate change through the efforts of people like Bill McKibben. Middlebury has a joint degree between Architectural and Environmental Studies, which is where I will find my home.

For starters, I get to help students set off on the right foot from day one, reframing what role architecture has to play in healing our relationship to nature and to each other. Within a liberal arts context, I get to address the broader issues. That means that I get to dig down deep into the primary issue, a worldview that pits us both against nature and against each other. That is to say, I get to talk interbeing. One week into Winter Term, I have already addressed how self-actualization must be hitched to system-actualization if it is to be successful. This is the key to evolution. If we learn nothing else, that understanding alone will guide us home.

The good news is that the students are responding at Middlebury just as they did at Prairie View A&M. Let’s face it, these institutions represent two radically different demographics. One is for the academically elite and the other is for the academically underserved. One is overwhelmingly white and the other is overwhelmingly black. We need both fully engaged in forging our way home to each other. We need both sides of the equation to understand that, in fact, they are both panthers. Literally… that is the mascot of both schools. And they are ready to embrace our sociological-ecological challenges. This generation is eager to step up to the plate. It’s heartening.

Already this week I have had students, some of whom will major in architecture and some of whom will not, convey back to me that they are excited about my class and that already they are seeing things in new ways. And I’m teaching an introductory design studio! The vehicle hardly matters. Their chosen majors or professions hardly matter. No matter who you are or what you do, the question is quite simply: how is the actualization of your own unique potential meant to actualize the potential of the system at large?

For me, part of the answer to that question is to help others in discovering their own unique potential through teaching. To do that, I have to actually learn what each student has to offer. I have to be their student. I have three Chinese students in my studio. Two are here just for college and the other moved here with her family when she was fifteen. It occurred to me, as I was discussing the relationship between self and system-actualization in relationship to political systems- capitalism, socialism, and communism- that I really don’t know the first thing about China. I have zero first hand experience. I only have the stories that we here in the United States are told. So when I had the opportunity to sit down with the latter student, I asked!

In the context of the Hong Kong protests and trade wars, China is not high on our list at the moment. Not that it ever has been. We have routinely called the country out for “crimes against humanity” that we believe are inevitable with any communist system. In fact, Congress just issued a report on China again calling them out for such crimes, in particular in regard to a lack of religious freedom… for Muslims specifically. You can read about it in Reuters (which ranks high as being a non-biased media source):

“U.S. congressional study urges sanctions on China over ‘crimes against humanity'”

Incidentally, my measure of any political system is the same as my measure of anything else: how well does it tie self-actualization to system-actualization? The Soviet version of communism severely oppressed self-actualization. That is why it no longer exists. So I was curious how my student felt about the opportunities for self-actualization in China. Perhaps surprisingly, she reported not feeling all that repressed. In her account, the government doesn’t really get in your way. You might argue that she has been brainwashed, but let me remind you that she went to high school in Brooklyn and is in the midst of a liberal arts education that asks us to question everything.

She acknowledges that not everyone gets to vote and that there is only one party, which is why we call it communism. But to her, the government feels more like what we call socialism. Nonetheless, in order to “earn” the right to vote, you must gain admittance to the one and only party- the Communist Party- which is as difficult as gaining admission to an Ivy League university and encompasses only approximately 6.5% of the population. Virtually everyone who has the right to vote in China does vote as opposed to only about 60% here in the U.S., but still. China is not a democracy, although they are slowly moving in that direction.

To me, the larger questions tie back to the self + system-actualization framework. If crimes against humanity are occurring, there is a serious breakdown of self-actualization. The problem with us throwing stones at China, however, is that we are also guilty of such crimes here in the U.S. Sorry. I know the truth hurts. If you are struggling with this assertion, just think about what is happening at our southern border, not to mention the mass incarceration of our black population. Again, sorry, but our truth isn’t as pretty as we would like it to be. Hence, if you read the above article, it should come as no surprise that China threw it right back at us. And we deserve it.

Now back to my student. Her question is this: who is anyone to tell another country what is in their own best self-interest? Who are we to tell other countries what is the best form of government for their particular situation at any particular moment in time? China has a hell of a lot more people than we do. In her observation, China has “too many people” and they have “too many people” problems. We know nothing about that situation, although it is easy enough to observe that when those of us who have been dominant in this country start to feel outnumbered, we tend to want to restrict the “other’s” right to vote, and we do.

If you want my honest opinion, I don’t think any of us have it figured out just yet. Although if I gauge which countries are doing the best at self-actualization, I would have to give it to those practicing a version of democratic socialism. If you feel inclined to dismiss my observation, I invite you to check out for yourself how we rank in any of the metrics that we have to measure self-actualization: upward mobility, education, freedom, happiness, etc. Check the numbers before you decide how we are doing. The UN 2019 Human Development Index ranked the U.S. as 15th in the world. Fifteenth. Not first:

http://hdr.undp.org

I’m not saying that we can’t get there from here. In fact, I would argue that it is the mandate of the United States of America to get there. It is our founding vision. I am saying that we are not there yet, nor have we ever at any moment in our history been there. I am also saying that it is not guaranteed that we will get there. That will depend on how well we remember our vision, update our vision as we learn new information, and take the steps to move toward that vision. Most pointedly, we will not achieve the conditions that support self-actualization if we do not hitch it to system-actualization. That’s a Law of Nature that is as real as gravity.

Abiding by that Law of Nature is what will lead us home. And if all of this sounds overwhelming, the main thing to remember is that it all starts at home- with you, with me. This leads me to the other conversation that I have been having this week- the one that I am having with myself. I have been working intensely this year to heal my inner child. At the moment I am doing that through conversation with my body through the guidance of my childhood friend, Chausey Leebron. Chausey is a Psychotherapist who practices Spiritual Psychology. As the new year approached she asked her friends if anyone would be interested in a course on healing our relationship with our body. She got an overwhelming “yes” which led her to launching an online course, which you can find here:

http://33dayprocess.com

As the name indicates, this is a 33 day process, which I will leave to Chausey to describe in the introductory video. I am 8 days in and what I can tell you is that I have been deeply dialoguing with the parts of my body that have been holding my wounds, stresses, challenges, worry, judgements, etc. You see the thing is, if we want to heal our relationship to Nature, we have to, have to, have to start by healing our relationship to our own nature- to our body, our emotions, our thoughts, our energy… which of course are all interdependent and interrelated. This post is long already, so I will leave more about my experience of this for next week. For now, let me just express my desire for the highest self-actualization possible for me, for my students, for you, and for every single human being on the planet. If this sounds like too much to ask for, I would like to counter-offer than anything less is too little to ask for.

Resolution

Scratch that. A resolution implies impending failure, doesn’t it? In essence it’s saying “I’m really going to make it happen. Really I am. No matter the odds!” It’s that odds thing at the end that dooms it from the start. It suggests that we don’t really believe that things are going to go the way we would like them to. It implies that we are going to have to fight our every impulse in order to make it happen. It sounds exhausting from the get go. Nevermind.

Intention sounds better. It’s not quite so frantic. There is an openness about it that leaves room for adjustment and creativity. It further allows the Universe to conspire on our behalf. Yet my preferred word is vision. In the words of Conversations With God:

“The purpose of life is to create your Self anew, in the next grandest version of the greatest vision ever you held about Who You Are.” – God

With that in mind, Shannon and I have for years been attending the Burning Bowl Service at Unity of Houston on New Year’s Eve. It’s a two part ceremony. In part one you write down everything that you want to release to close out the year. Then you throw your list into the fire. In part two you set your vision for the new year. For me this is neither a declaration of who I want to be or even who I intend to be. It’s a declaration of who I am. It is the greatest vision that I can muster for myself in the moment.

So since we did not make the trip down to Houston for the holidays, Shannon and I performed the ceremony at home last night. I had a lot more time to think about both lists, so they both got quite long – 18 items each! I notice that each year I get better at my release and more daring in my vision. Watch out 2020!!! Just sayin.

I am not going to share either list with you as they have both been released to the Universe at this point. After I finish my vision, I place it under the altar in our meditation room. Now since we moved this year, I was a little shocked to discover that my 2019 vision had made the move and found itself back under the altar. So what I will do is share that vision with you now. Here goes:

The top of the page that Unity gave us said this, “Dear God, I co-create with you the following intentions for 2019…”

  • a new beginning and new home in Vermont (check)
  • a new job which will better support me in playing my role in healing the planet (check… more news forthcoming!)
  • an expanded, fully creative version of myself (check)
  • a new, joyous experience of everyday life (progress made!)
  • light-heartedness (progress made here too)
  • a free spirit (and here too)
  • a deep, sacred interbeing, or at least recognition thereof, with everyone who crosses my path (this is definitely escalating)
  • writing that serves our collective evolution and salvation (check)
  • Heaven on Earth (well, I never said I wasn’t ambitious!)

At the bottom of the paper it says “This or something better.” This year marked a major life transition for me on so many levels. The Universe is fully supporting me in my becoming, and I am so grateful. The best way that I can express that gratitude is by continuing to release all that no longer serves me while expanding my vision of Who I Really Am. I know that when I sit here next year looking at my 2020 list, I will be checking the extraordinary state of Being in my vision. Won’t you join me?

The Force

I was seven when the first Star Wars movie came out. I saw it in the theater. Yesterday, I saw the last one in the theater at age fifty. Let’s just get this out of the way- I love Star Wars. It’s not so much with a geeky obsession (although I certainly understand where that impetus comes from), but more out of reverence. I remember the first one clearly opening up my sense of what was what not only in our Universe at large, but within me. I felt validated and seen somehow. It’s that sense that we all have when we are younger that something magical is going on here, before we manage to reduce it and ourselves to something less than. The Force, from our more primordial state, is somehow not quite so fictional, or remote and unreachable as the case may be. I think Star Wars is so beloved because it reminds us of what we inherently know when we are not busy covering ourselves up. Regardless of how old we are when we see a Star Wars movie, we exit with a greater sense of who we are and what is possible.

As you might imagine if you have read enough of this blog, the Force is not only a real thing for me, it is The Thing. Star Wars explains it as the universal energy that connects all living beings. I often simply refer to it as God. George Lucas would, I believe, say the same. He brilliantly took the concept out of all religious and contextual language referring to God so that we might see it anew… without defaulting to argument. He succeeded beyond anyone’s wildest imagination at showing us that we all, regardless of culture or religion, believe in the same, well… Force… even if we describe it differently. When we strip away the layers of dogma that we are all buried in, we intuitively and naturally just know. The proof is in the stories that we tell. Be they fiction or non-fiction, they are based in reality as we understand it. I might argue that fiction generally does a better job at revealing that reality because it doesn’t get hung up by the rational mind. I think in the case of Star Wars, it has over the course of its unfolding reached into a depth of understanding that we hardly knew was there when it started.

So, yes, the Force is the field of energy that supports all of life. It is just another name for Prana, Chi, Ki, or Universal Energy. Yet I take it a step further to say that it is life itself, that there is no differentiation between matter and energy. Our science now supports that assertion. Even if Star Wars doesn’t take it that far, it is a great entry point nonetheless. By the way I just have to say this. Yoda is my favorite! That artwork above is hanging on our wall. And, yes, I did in fact wear my Yoda t-shirt to the movie yesterday. O.K., maybe I’m a little geeky. I’ll admit it! My brother and I also played religiously with our Star Wars action figures when we were kids. When we were kids, people! We were kids!!

Speaking of kids, I took my daughters to see their first Star Wars movie when they were kids. I remember wanting to share that same sense of opening and possibility with them as I had experienced when I was a kid. My eldest daughter Madison also went to see the Rise of Skywalker this week. She texted me to say “I think I love Star Wars so much because of you taking us to Tinseltown a long time ago to see either Phantom Menace or Attack of the Clones, can’t remember which episode exactly.” You see, it’s a family thing this Star Wars business. It’s about mothers and daughters and fathers and sons. I have watched as both of my daughters have fiercely wielded the Force in their own lives, both of them overcoming great odds not so much to become some heroic figure, but simply to heal.

I would like to therefore use this opportunity to make the case that healing is, in fact, the most powerful thing that any one of us can ever do. To go there we are going to have to talk about the Dark Side. What is it, exactly? I think this is one of the most brilliant aspects of Star Wars, as we discover over and over again that the Dark Side isn’t the external force of evil that we think it is- it’s a part of us. To be more specific, it is our shadow as posited by Carl Jung. It is the part of us that we hide in shadow because we cannot face it or accept it about ourselves. It is our pain that we have swept under the rug, hid in the attic, and locked in the basement…. leaving it alone to fester in darkness. Of course it makes its presence known nonetheless. It does so through projection into the outer world, into the people and events that we attract into our lives so that it, our Dark Side, can be seen and heard. Our shadow doesn’t do this to torture us. It does so because it actually wants to be healed. The Dark Side is always seeking the Light of Day.

The Force is collective in nature, whether we are talking Light or Dark. Therefore when one individual activates the Light, she does so for everyone and everything. When one individual activates the Dark (most often by ignoring it rather than intentionally doing so), she does so for everyone and everything. In this sense, the human story of good versus evil is really about how much of the one we are activating as opposed to the other. But make no mistake- we are in complete control of the narrative.

Families are the most powerful vehicles that we have for this collective narrative. When a family hides away its Shadow, the whole family gets locked into it… for generations. That is to say that the Shadow is passed from parent to child endlessly until somebody decides to heal it. Fortunately, when that one person decides to face and heal the Shadow, she does so for everyone who came before her as well as everyone who will come after her. If that isn’t powerful, then I don’t know what is.

The Star Wars saga portrays this perfectly. I sincerely hope that it inspires each of us to go within, face our Shadow, and carry it to the Light. The hero that we are in need of right now lies within each of us, and it has to do with healing our own story. I am in no way suggesting that this is easy work. In fact, it may be much harder than destroying the Death Star seems to have been. It takes true courage, persistence, dedication, will-power, undying love, and this one thing that we resist most of all- vulnerability. To be vulnerable is to admit that we need help. We truly cannot do it alone. The Shadow is collective in nature and requires a collective response. Hell, we can’t even see it without the reflection offered by those who are closest to us. How can we get to something that we can’t even see? If Darth Vader wasn’t Luke’s father, Luke never would have been able to see it in and as himself. He most likely then would have fallen to the Dark Side himself. What we can’t see consumes us.

Now to offer something tangible in this quest. One of the most powerful realizations for me came out of my Regenerative Practitioners training. It is a simple way of understanding how we are framing life. In this framework there is an internal and external world on the one hand and a locus of control and a considering on the other. The question is which is being paired with which, and it makes all the difference.

In our adolescent culture we frame the world with an external locus of control and an internal considering. Let me explain. An external locus of control says “the world is happening to me” and I have no control over it. I therefore react to what life is throwing at me through internal considering. In short, I consider what I need to do for my own survival in response to whatever hostilities life is throwing my way. What else could we possibly do in this scenario after all? We have to survive! Yet this framework traps us in victimhood. It prevents us from seeing how our own choices guide our life’s unfolding. It prevents us from taking responsibility for the world we are creating. Instead, we hustle to survive at any cost. This framing of life will never lead to healing, evolution, or thriving. In fact, it will be the death of us if we continue along this path.

A mature culture- one that has truly achieved adulthood- frames the world with the opposite pairing: an internal locus of control with an external considering. In this view, we take responsibility for our world. We assume our true role as creator. Let me be clear. I am not suggesting that anyone is responsible for how somebody else is showing up. That could only be perceived to be the case if the locus of control of that other person were framed as external. Just because other people may perceive the locus of control of their lives to be external to themselves does not mean that we have to or should corroborate that story. The most powerful thing that we could do would be to help restore that person’s power, by gently guiding her to an internal locus of control.

With an internal locus of control, we return to a place of safety wherein we can shift our considering to be inclusive of external factors. In other words, since we are no longer consumed by our own survival in a hostile world, we are able to reconnect with the broader world in such a way that our decision making shifts to considering what is in our collective best interest. That is external considering. It recognizes that our personal wellbeing is interdependent with collective wellbeing, that our self-actualization is dependent upon system-actualization. Yet this is where we tend to get tripped up, so let me explain a little more here.

Our Shadow is individual in the sense that we contracted it through our individual experience and are continuing to host it through our individual choices. That much is true. However, we can’t forget in this that the Shadow is collective in nature. That is to say that we each have to do our part to heal it, but just because one person heals it doesn’t mean that it automatically disappears from the human condition, or even from our own lives. As long as anybody is hosting it, it will still be there (albeit weakened, most notably in those closest to you.) It is wise, however, to remember that most likely millions if not billions of people are still hosting any one given aspect of our Shadow at any given time.

It is critical that we understand this because, for example, just because one person may overcome the belief in scarcity does not mean that scarcity isn’t deeply embedded in our culture to the degree that it is extremely difficult for individuals who grow up in poverty to escape it. Let’s be clear about that. We ultimately have to transcend scarcity together. That means that we have to face the Shadow “scarcity” together- as a culture, as a community, as a country, as a species. It should be obvious, but I’m afraid it’s not. One person’s way of holding scarcity may be to hoard all manor of wealth, while another’s is to be devoid of any such wealth. The one is dependent upon the other and until we face that reality we will continue to support systems in which some have way too much and others don’t even have enough to survive.

Maintaining a clear awareness of our interdependence (external considering), we must still realize that our true power is within us (internal locus of control). It is through each of us individually that creativity meets the grounds. Creativity can only come through us. There is no way to get to collective wellbeing without going through individuals (including individuals of other species, incidentally). System-actualization cannot occur by any means other than self-actualization (and vice versa). I’ve said this before and I’ll repeat it ad nauseam, either we all make it together or nobody makes it. That is, incidentally, one of the central themes of this last Star Wars episode. Yet if we want to heal the planet, whether we are talking the health of Gaia herself (ecology) or we are talking simply our relationship to one another as a species (sociology), the fact remains that the only way to get there is through… you.

Yes, you. You have to heal the parts of the Shadow that you are carrying. That is the only way that we are going to make it. It is the single most important thing that we must do. Yes, changing our personal habits to be in alignment with our ecological systems is absolutely necessary. So by all means, reduce, reuse, recycle, and so on. Yet we will fall short if that is the crux of our focus. That is aiming too low. We have to go deeper. What we have to aim for is regeneration. To achieve that, we will have to assume our responsibility as creators.

Let’s help each other. It’s delicate work, of course, and we will trip all over ourselves in the process no doubt. I sure do!!! So be it. We have no other choice. Here is a guide good enough on its own to help us to find our way: internal locus of control + external considering. Aim for that and self correct as necessary. Each of us will have to face really scary, painful things along the way. For that, we need the help. Here is just a short list of resources that I have found helpful: psychotherapy, reiki, meditation, reading (self help, spirituality, ecology, sociology, sustainability, etc.), online personal development courses (DailyOm, Charles Eisenstein, Pachamama Alliance, to name just a few), tai chi, yoga, workshops and retreats (Kripalu, Omega Center, Esalen, Metta Earth, Mystica, to name just a few), drumming circles, training (permaculture, Regenerative Practitioners), homeopathy, sound therapy, acupuncture, and I could go on and on and on. There is no shortage of resources out there!

But you want to know what my number one resource is? The reflection that my relationships, particularly my most intimate ones, offer me. Those are critical, as they provide me with the eyes that I need to see what I need to heal. They also provide me with the support that I need to heal. From there, I can “use the Force.” To use the Force is to center into an internal locus of control while simultaneously tapping into the realization that we are One with all that seems external to us. When we master that, we abide in the All That Is. That is to say, we achieve enlightenment, or Heaven on Earth. I won’t give away how the Star Wars saga ends, but let’s hope it is a vision that we will live into. May the Force be with us!

The Message

Merry Christmas, from this little elf on the shelf! (I hope you are laughing.) Sometimes I do feel somewhat like this, like this mythical creature who has landed here to watch over humans. It isn’t for the sake of judging naughty or nice though, it is more to gauge the degree to which we are getting “The Message.” And I do mean we, because while I do feel alien at times, something always comes along to whack me right back into the reality of my own humanity. In my moments of observation, I often find myself looking out at humanity thinking, “What in the hell are you doing???” Then the whack comes and I have to turn the question inward to, “What in the hell am I doing???” So it goes. As I look into that question I remember, it is always the being underneath the doing that is in need of attention.

In honor of Christmas, I’d like to have a heart to heart about who we are being. That is my signal to slow down and get centered before we move on. Get comfortable. Take a few deep breaths. Do whatever you need to do to know deep within yourself that you are safe. We are going to get uncomfortable. Yet at a time when we so often hear people complaining that we need to “put the Christ back in Christmas,” I think it is time we have an open, raw, real discussion about the elf in the room. (That was your comic relief!)

To begin, I have to again confess that I am not a Christian. In part this is to say that I was not raised a Christian. I am not a Christian by default. My parents insisted, in my Mom’s own words, that my brother and I “come to our own conclusions about God.” So I wasn’t raised in any religious tradition, and I have never adopted one. Furthermore, we didn’t discuss God in our household one way or the other. This is to say I wasn’t raised an atheist either. I truly was given free reign over my own beliefs. I will forever be grateful to my parents for that decision. The result was that I have always enjoyed a natural and direct relationship with God.

It helped, of course, that I had a direct encounter with the Divine right out of the gate. That established a relationship that continued onward such that I have never not known God. Nor have I ever questioned the existence of God. That doesn’t mean that I have not questioned God, because believe you me I have! Let me describe a little more about how our relationship functions. First off, I have never envisioned God to be an old, white, bearded male. I have never envisioned God in any form of embodiment. When I visualize God, what I see is pure white light. That’s it. God does, however, have a voice. So my communication with God has always been primarily in the form of a conversation. That conversation happens through my own internal voice. I don’t hear dead people, or deities for that matter. Yet it is a distinct voice.

Not that God always answers to my whining and bitching and questioning. When I get into that mode, I know God is listening and that the response is going to be to just let me play myself out. For example, I have given God considerable grief over my lifetime about whether or not humanity was the best design They could come up with. What can I say, I am an architect! I know the answers to such questioning at this point, but that will have to wait for a future post. What I want you to hear now is that my relationship with God is nothing special. Not at all. This is the relationship we are all meant to have. God also speaks to me through the world. They might speak to me through a series of events. They might speak to me through you. No matter what the mode of communication, I hear when I have the ears to hear… which is not always.

That is my relationship with God in a nutshell. Now for my relationship with Jesus Christ. I don’t really have one. I know that probably makes a whole lot of Christians sad right out of the gate. I’ll ask you not to be, for reasons that I am about to explain. The deeper reason I am not a Christian is that I am not by choice. I have never been in need of a mediary between me and God. That is why I have never adopted any religion or guru. Please understand that this is in no way an act of disrespect or a prescription. As a case in point, it might make you feel better to know that I wholeheartedly believe in Jesus Christ. Although I am sure I have now confused a great many of you, so more explanation is in order.

I believe that Jesus Christ was exactly who he said he was. I believe that Christ was God. No question. Of course I believe that there is nothing but God, so how could I not? Yet I also do consider Jesus to be an enlightened master, in the same way that I consider Krishna, Buddha, Moses and Muhammed to be enlightened masters (among others). Now some Christians are going to be mad at me again, because that seems like I am demoting him. I am not. I am simply promoting everyone else. Hang in there. Breathe. Let’s talk about what an enlightened master is. In the way that I use the designation, an enlightened master is somebody who has completely and utterly removed all boundaries of self to realize that he/she/they is in actuality The All That Is. In short, enlightened masters have truly realized that they are God, and they furthermore abide in that knowingness. This is Christ Consciousness.

So I can buy into all aspects of Jesus’s life story. When one lives beyond the veil of separation, one is not bound by the rules of separation. Yet not adopting Jesus as my Savior and my Way disqualifies me from being a Christian as Christianity has defined it. I do not accept that Christianity is the only way to “reunite” with God. I do, however, accept it as one way. I further do not accept Christianity’s adoption of the story that humans are inherently sinners and that only Jesus sacrificing his life for us would save us from ourselves. I don’t buy that. Take a lot of really deep breaths now. Maybe get up and stretch. Pour yourself something warm. Calm your heart. We are all gonna be o.k.

The reason that I don’t buy the story that Jesus had to sacrifice his life for us and that the only way to God is through that sacrifice is because I don’t believe that is what Jesus actually intended. To be more direct, I believe that interpretation of the story to be antithetical to The Message that Jesus came to deliver. And let’s make no mistake about it. Jesus’s mission was one of the most, if not the most, daring, ambitious, moonshot attempts ever made to deliver The Message to humanity. It was also, for sure, the most excruciating, exacting, sacrificial, and ultimately brutal in the attempt. It wasn’t these latter things by necessity. It was that way by our own choosing. We chose to do to Jesus what we have done to each and every one who has ever attempted to deliver The Message. We crucified him (literally, in this case).

Now of course Jesus was warned that this would be his fate. That doesn’t mean that he just accepted it. He questioned God in the exact same way that any human who is being honest has, “Why have you forsaken me?” That is to say that Jesus was every bit as human as the rest of us. He wouldn’t dispute this. Why? Because Jesus ultimately came to know beyond the shadow of a doubt (although it took some strife) that there is nothing but God. Therefore he would never, and did never, place himself above anything else. To do so would be to place himself (God) above God. It doesn’t work. That we have placed him above us is the result of us not yet having the ears to hear the very Message that he came to deliver.

This is not what he wanted for us, I would say. To be more specific, the world we have henceforth created is not what he wanted for us. Here’s the thing. When Jesus said I am the beggar at your door, He. Was. Not. Speaking. Metaphorically. He was simply stating the literal truth: there is nothing but God. We are all that. Yes, Christ = God. Christ knew that. He also knew that as God he was all of it. Literally. I can’t stress that enough. The irony here is that we have managed to turn things meant to be taken literally into metaphors and things meant to be metaphors into things to be taken literally. We got it all backwards. Why? Because we haven’t yet had the ears to hear.

To accept The Message is deeply terrifying. It is terrifying for us individually on multiple levels. On the surface level, to make such a declaration means facing the crucifixion by our fellow humans that is sure to follow. No thanks. On a deeper level, to accept that we are God means that we have to accept responsibility. Ugh. You mean I have to take responsibility for this disaster of an area that we have made? Yes. On a collective level, the powers that be can’t have us all going around believing that we are God. How on earth would they maintain power and control if we knew that? All hell would surely break loose. We honestly believe that. The irony here is that the exact opposite is true. When we all realize that we are God, all heaven will break loose. This, my friends, is what Jesus intended for us. Heaven on Earth.

When I think about Jesus, I can only imagine him in a facepalm. Of course I can only imagine him from my own perspective. I would be pissed as all get out if my name had been used to wage wars, kill, oppress, enslave, hoard, other, separate, withhold, hate, etc. I would be wondering to myself, “What did I do wrong??? Didn’t I tell them and show them and demonstrate to them that there is nothing but God?! Didn’t I prove to them that death is an illusion? Didn’t I lift the veil so that they would understand that they too are God? And what is God, if not Love? How are they not getting it????” That would be me as Jesus right about now. Then again, I am not looking at it from the perspective of an enlightened master, because I am not one. The enlightened master knows that it is just a matter of time, and we have all of the time in the Universe.

And then we don’t. Not in this world. Really, folks, we don’t. Not this go around anyway. We will have infinite chances for sure. But this one is almost up. In the short 2,000 plus years since Jesus’s great attempt to deliver The Message, we can now only view it as a great Hail Mary pass. Will we catch it? Or will we drop it? It truly was a moonshot given where we now stand. It is with this in mind that I will now make my grownup Christmas wish. Here it is:

If anybody- I mean anyone– should walk up to you and ask the question, “Who am I?,” I wish every human to be able to wholeheartedly respond beyond the shadow of a doubt, “You are Christ.” No matter the circumstance! We will know we have it when we do so without hesitation, or judgement, or disbelief. I further wish that every human be able to look themselves in the mirror, look directly into their own eyes, and be able to say, “I am Christ” without flinching or shrinking for fear that a lightening bolt might strike us down. When we are able to do that, we will know that we have gotten The Message. Finally. Then we can actually get to the work of turning this thing around.

For those of you who are not Christian, simply replace “Christ” with the enlightened master of your own choosing. For those of you who are spiritual/not religious, simply replace “Christ” with “God” or “The All That Is.” For those of you who are atheist, simply replace “Christ” with “Everything.” It really matters not which direction you come from, as there is only one destination- and it is Oneness. We will arrive when we realize that is what we are. This, fellow humans that I love so much, is The Message. It is time for us to have the ears to hear. We cannot wait any longer. Our survival depends upon us getting it.

As I always do, I honor Christ on this celebration of his birth, for his daring attempt to deliver to us the most important Message of all time, whereby, yes, we will be delivered if only we can hear it. For those of you who celebrate the deliverance of The Message by one of the many others who have also attempted to deliver it, Happy Hanukkah, Joyous Kwanzaa, Happy Holidays, and Seasons Greetings. Let’s celebrate the season together by doing our best to recognize and abide in who we truly are. What we need to do will become clear from there. Much Love to you all and Godspeed.

Cold

So I managed to pick up an upper respiratory infection while in NYC. I started getting horse while we were there and by Monday it had gone all phlegmy on me to the degree that it was clear I wasn’t going to skirt the issue. In spite of my best efforts to keep it at bay naturally (without drugs, unless of course you count the one hot toddy), by Friday it was clear that I was losing that battle. Of course it probably didn’t help that I decided to try to drown it at Shannon’s company Christmas Party on Thursday night- which I should probably not have been at in the first place- but I really, really, really wanted to go!

I somehow managed to conceal my cough while at the party, which must have given me just a wee bit too much confidence because that is when the experiment began. I had just finished a glass of wine when I spotted a bottle of what I thought to be whisky appear on the self-serve table. Keep in mind that I don’t drink all that much, and when I do it’s a lot for me to finish just one drink. Yet there I was thinking to myself, that’s exactly what I need! Even if it’s not hot, surely it will do the trick!! So I merrily made my way over and poured myself a shot (to sip). I didn’t bother to read what it actually was, nor am I versed enough in hard alcohol to know the difference between one thing and another.

So I happily sipped on that for the remainder of the party. It was when Shannon went to pour herself a shot that she noticed it was actually tequila! Who knew?! Clearly not me. Just for the record, it was actually brown, not clear. So, I am sure you are all wondering if tequila is a good replacement for a hot toddy. If my little unintentional experiment is any indication, I’ll have to report out that no, no it is not. Not that it gave me a hangover or anything, but let’s just say that on Friday I only got out of bed long enough to check to see where the closest walk-in clinic is in our area.

There is nothing like being sick to remind us of how dependent we are on the world, and in every way. For starters, our bodies carry us miraculously through this life. It is only when it breaks down in some way that we tend to notice. By Friday, my body had my full attention. I had worked through it the four previous days, but that was simply not an option by Friday. I’ve basically been in bed the last three days and am writing from bed now. I hear you body. I can’t do this without you. You need some rest. O.K.

Then there are the people who support us. Sure, I could have made the freshly squeezed orange juice myself, but I doubt I would have. Sure, I might have slept in a bit every day of my own accord, but I might not have without the reminder to take care of myself. Sure, I could have looked up the recipe for homemade cough syrup made of honey and essential oils and it would have been easy enough to mix it up, but I doubt that I would have. Sure, I could have changed the sheets on the bed, put eucalyptus in the diffuser, and trapped the dogs downstairs so that I could take a nap, but it is highly unlikely that I would have. Yes, I would have had to drive myself to the clinic and gone in to the drugstore to pick up my prescription, but I was super thankful that I didn’t have to. So huge thank you to Shannon for being such a nurturing, patient caretaker. She hasn’t gotten much sleep either.

Then there is medicine, be it natural or pharmaceutical, be it homeopathic or Western. I steer hard away from the latter, and could have rode this one out without it, but I didn’t quite have it in me. By Friday night I succumbed and took over the counter drugs. By Saturday I asked the nurse at the clinic for antibiotics. The interesting thing is that I had to ask for them. She indicated to me that “they” (the powers that be) are trying to limit the use of antibiotics. The new rule is that your phlegm has to have been every color of the rainbow for at least ten days in order for them to prescribe it. I didn’t qualify based on the fact that it had only been five days and it had just barely started to turn yellow. While I greatly value this newfound discretion, I knew that this thing was continuing to head south and I wasn’t willing to wait another five days to come back for the prescription, which she ultimately did prescribe.

This is one simple case in point of how rough our world transition is likely to be. On the one hand, I feel that we need to get better at homeopathic or natural solutions. I made the mistake of not drinking near enough water and didn’t get near enough rest. Yet that aside, the truth is that we have to be more patient. We have to be willing to ride it out longer to let our bodies do their thing. I, and we, mostly don’t have the time and the patience for that. Some shifting is going to need to occur on that front. It isn’t that I don’t think that there is a place for Western medicine and technology in general, but I am saying that we have gotten a bit too dependent and a bit too lazy on this front. I, clearly, am as guilty as the next. So it is important to keep experimenting and trying more natural ways of handling ourselves and our lives. Tequila, apparently, isn’t the answer.

Sickness aside, there are a couple of things that crossed my path during my time out that are more than worth sharing and which may shed some light on the larger context to which I am always referring. The first is a movie called “The Twelve” by the LeCiel Foundation, in which twelve indigenous Elders directly address the disconnect between our Western knowledge/technology/culture and what indigenous cultures know about the human connection to nature and what is needed to heal that connection. The movie is an hour and fifteen minutes. you can watch it at this link (scroll down to either download or stream): The Twelve.

The second is an article called “Embracing the Immaterial Universe” by Bruce Lipton, which in a fairly short read explains the disconnect between what science knows now versus the science that we continue to cling to. This, to me, is critical understanding to the shift in worldview that we are currently in need of. This article is a great primer.

Happy Path to Wellness!