Risking Interbeing

Guns

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

And in regards to food:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Roots

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Done.

I like to be done. My whole life it seems I have been seeking a state of doneness. It took me a long time to figure out that no such state exists. At least not anywhere in the realm of relativity. Really I have to admit to being a bit slow in this department. Not that the realization has immediately stopped me from seeking it. Old habits die hard. So it’s an almost daily practice to remind myself not to seek for something that I can never have. We all get that to do so is a painful experience. But stopping ourselves from hopeless seeking is one of the great challenges of being human, so a little forgiveness of our stubbornness is in order as well.

Let me give you an example to make this real. An easy one is, say, how I (and most architects) practice architecture. As an architect my job is to create buildings and places. I have to conceive it, develop it, work out every detail (or at least try to), manage a whole lot of other people who have to design parts and pieces to make the building work, and then see it through to completion as it was intended to be. Completion is the operative word in all of that. The whole object is to be done. Doneness in this case means that a building has been manifested into reality. My job requires me to be done. I don’t get paid if I don’t get done. Then there’s that. In today’s world we have to move much faster than we should. The pressure to deliver in ungodly timeframes is high. Based on all of this I am quite forgiving of myself for being so done-oriented.

But the sucky thing about all of it is that, you know what, minus all of that pressure I actually really love the process. The pressure, however, tends to cloud my joy. It’s a mind-blowing thing to manifest something as big as a building. I’m not going to lie. It’s a complete head trip. But standing there in awe looking at a completed building that started as nothing more than a tiny little seed in your head only lasts for all of five seconds. O.K. that might be a slight exaggeration, but it truly is a minuscule amount of time relative to the amount of time that was put into it. We are talking a day, a week, a month maybe relative to years. Years of your life that you can’t get back. Trust me, there are a lot of days in there that you just really want to be done. It’s tedious work. If we aren’t careful, these days can easily overshadow the joyful ones. Ah, you are with me now. We can all relate. We all just want to be done. Done with the dishes. Done with cooking dinner. Done with the laundry. Done with the cleaning. Done with paying the bills. Done with each and every chore. Done, done, DONE! Just let me be done!

Another way of saying that I am done-oriented is to say that I am goal-oriented. Sorry. That’s completely counter-achiever, I know. Again, I’m so sorry to have to break that to you. Our whole lives we have been trained to set goals- particularly if you are an athlete. I mean what in the hell are we supposed to do if we don’t have goals??? We would all be lost and directionless. Right? I’ve had some big goals throughout my life and I’ve accomplished a whole lot of them. Who would I be if I hadn’t??? Yikes. And that’s the thing. Setting and chasing goals can very easily be a fear-based strategy concocted to minimize uncertainty and shield us from nothingness. As I’ve said before, it has been my security blanket. As I’ve also said, I am finally secure enough in my being to let go of that blanket. And you know what, it doesn’t feel that scary after all.

But just because I am taking this step doesn’t mean that all of those old habits are just going to drop off the face of the earth. No simple snap of the fingers is going to do this trick. This is going to take some practice with a whole lot of attention and mindfulness. With it has to be the recognition that it is related to every other survival strategy that I have employed over the course of my life. And all of them originate in one single place- in my inner wounded child. I’ve made mention of her quite a bit, but today I’d like to give you a bit of an inner look at my internal work surrounding this. I hope that it proves helpful to you.

Let me start by saying that there are endless modalities to assist us with acknowledging and healing our inner wounded child. Um, yes, you have one. We all do. It’s inescapable. If you aren’t aware of this as of yet, I would like to as gently as I can say something that might not be comfortable news to hear: she/he is running your life. Wait. Forget gentleness. I’m talking to your adult, you can handle this. A child is running your life! A child!!! And you know what really stinks, she does not want to be running your life. She’s just a kid! She is in no way equipped to handle your adult responsibilities. Yet it is 100% guaranteed that if you haven’t taken the time and energy to heal her, that is exactly what is happening. And this is exactly why our culture is so immature. Now before you go off feeling shamed…. stop. This is a cultural problem. It’s not your fault. We are all in this together. I’ve placed my attention squarely on it, and I’m calling our attention to it, because I believe that it is absolutely critical to our survival as a species. That is to say that I believe that at this moment in time the most important thing that we each need to do is to heal our inner child. No matter what else is on your to do list to save the world, if this one isn’t at the top of your list we are highly likely to miss our mark.

So if you are game, there are a million and one ways to do this work: psychotherapy, wisdom traditions, spiritual practice, self help, Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR), twelve step programs, shamanistic soul retrieval, sound therapy, reiki… there are way too many to list with multiple varieties within each. Try any or all of them if necessary. Just please remember that whatever you do, it’s your job to heal your inner child. It’s nobody else’s- not your therapist, not your spiritual guru, not your self help expert, not your shaman, not any master, not your friends, not your family, and certainly not your life partner if you have one. Nope. It’s up to you.

I personally was introduced to this work first through psychotherapy. That is where it was first brought to my attention that I have an inner wounded child. That was about seven years ago. It’s not that I wasn’t aware of my own story, it’s more that I wasn’t aware of the fact that there was a breaking point at which my inner child shut and locked everyone out of her room. This is to say that there was a moment of separation between my innocent self and the one who was presented to the world thereafter. And guess who was deciding who this person was who interacted with the world at large. Yes, that hurt child was commanding the whole show from the safety of her bedroom. A regular old armchair warrior!

And war is the correct framing here. Survival is inherently a war-based mentality. To think that we need to survive is to think that the world is out to destroy us. Now I can hardly blame myself for believing that this was the case. I was conceived into a “war” between my blood and my mother’s blood. That means that for me I will ultimately have to go all the way back into the womb to heal my wounded child. I’m not quite there yet, but what I notice is that over the course of my adult life I have been slowly walking myself back there, dealing with wounds from adulthood, then early adulthood, back to high school, then early teens, then late childhood, etc. Healing of some life stages have taken longer than others. And of course they are all also interconnected, such that the process is inherently iterative (repetitive). Patience is key. We must be gentle with ourselves and trust the process.

These days I am utilizing a combination of healing practices that come from an overlap of wisdom, spiritual, and self-help realms. Specifically, Thich Nhat Hanh’s book Reconciliation, Healing the Inner Child is helpful including the mindfulness practices that he offers. I am also working through a course on DailyOM called “Re-Parent Your Inner Child.” The photo above is my journal where I do this work through that course, where I bridge between my adult self and my five year old self. Just to give a sample of the work, on a daily basis I visit with my wounded inner five year old. On one day I’ll ask, “What do you love?” The next I’ll ask, “What are you afraid of?” I’m just there to listen. On the things that bring her joy, I can relate and we smile and bask in it together. On the things that she is afraid of, I let her know that she is safe now because I’ve got it. To repeat, the adult in the room has got it. The adult in the room no longer leaves it up to that child to handle life’s challenges.

Let me end by giving you a clear example. Yesterday Shannon and I had a full day planned that included going to the Department of Motor Vehicles to get our Vermont licenses and register our car. Having to go to the DMV is enough to give any of us nightmares, right??? This has been on our to do list since we arrived in Vermont. Yes, I just said “to do list”. Now you might imagine that I don’t like things lingering on my to do list for very long. I don’t! Just get done already!!! But we hadn’t managed to get this one done yet. We were both tired, so we didn’t wake up when our alarm went off. We have been starting our day by going running. Two hours later we decided to go running anyway. In that decision I wasn’t really thinking about the timing of the rest of the day. Then, right as we were about to walk out the door Shannon says, “You do realize that we are choosing to go running and that may mean that we might not be able to check the DMV off of our list?” Screeeeeeeeeeeeeech! WHAT???? This realization stopped me dead in my tracks. Deer. In. Headlights. This is what we call being “triggered.” And boy was I! What it means is that our inner wounded child has just taken the wheel. She’s scared, and she is not about to let you go put her in any kind of danger.

Now because I have been working on this, I recognized that I was being presented with an opportunity to really do this work in the present moment. That doesn’t relieve the uncomfortableness of it, but it does open the door. And I knew if I didn’t walk through that door my child was about to usurp my whole day from me. I was therefore able to reluctantly walk out the door to go running anyway, recognizing that that was the healthy choice for me. That doesn’t mean that I wasn’t panicking the entire ride over to the park where we run. I was. How can I be o.k. with not getting this item done?! There was no easy answer.

Yet by the time we got to the park, I had done a few important things. First of all, I acknowledged the presence of my inner child. “Good morning, Love. How are you doing? Ah, not well I see. Well that’s o.k. It’s o.k. for you to feel that way.” The next thing that I did was acknowledge the presence of the emotion. “Good morning, Anxiety. You are welcome here.” And then I invited one more person into the room. I invited my Self (witness consciousness, mindfulness, soul, not to be confused with the relative self who was doing all of the inviting). “Good morning, Self. We would like you to come sit with us. Scratch that. Let’s all go running together.” They all agreed.

As I ran through the forest, the meadow, and looked to the mountains beyond, we all said good morning to them, presented ourselves, and asked for their insights. Forest’s insight was “we are all in this together.” Meadow’s insight was “I just give in to whatever is. Some days it’s rain, some shine, some snow. Whatever needs to get done always seems to get done in its own good time.” Mountain’s insight was “I’ve been here for a very, very, very long time. I came to realize a long time ago that I’ll never be done. You can’t perceive my movement, but in fact I am in a constant state of change that will never finish.” I just listened and held space for all of them. It was a lovely and loving conversation.

As we were heading home after the run I asked my five year old, “Is there something in your experience that you felt had to get done or you wouldn’t survive?” There is no easy answer because I am now reaching back into a time in which our self consciousness is very weak. This is to say it’s hard to remember. It will therefore be an ongoing conversation that will require modes of communication other than language. My child was able to tell me immediately that she was concerned about not being able to speak correctly. If learning to speak correctly didn’t get “done,” then survival was questionable. I acknowledged her fear, assured her that it all worked out, and that I am quite capable of speaking up for us. There is more there, I know. But this is where the patience comes in. Relationships take time to build the trust that enables us to be vulnerable with one another. This immediately led me to realize that if I can’t do this with myself, if I can’t embrace these wounded parts of myself and tough emotions without judgement, then there is no way in heck that I can do that for another human being. Hence, I do the work.

By the way, we did manage to make it to the DMV. We filled out the forms and waited our turn. Then in five seconds flat the DMV lady- you know the one, the one who always seems to have the bad news- tells us that we are missing documents that we need to do any of the things that we needed to do. That’s right… it didn’t get done! But you know what? It didn’t ruin my day. That isn’t to say that Shannon and I both weren’t irritated…o.k., angry… as all get out for a good hour or so. But we were able to acknowledge it, express it, embrace it, and then.. let it go.

49 1/2

My birthday has traditionally been a bit of a doggy downer for me. Maybe it’s because in some unconscious way it reminds me of the trauma of my birth (for a recount read my post “The Gift”), the origin of the deep feeling of having been banned to a hopeless state of separation. What I can say for sure is that my birthday has most always felt like a disappointment. I’m serious about the unconscious connection to the original event. I mean, honestly, imagine being in a fight for survival just wishing for it to end only to be birthed into another fight for survival equally as intense as the one before. Oh, you get it. We all get it.

I’m not sure when my chest collapsed in to protect my heart, but I’m going to guess I was born this way. My shoulders roll deeply forward, creating this hollow wall in front of my heart. It’s been called to my attention in various ways throughout my life. I don’t have flexibility in my shoulders and that was always a struggle in gymnastics. It is point of contention in yoga, this effort to roll my shoulders back to give my heart space. When my Reiki master first worked on me she said the vision that she got was that I have a picket fence around my heart. And then there is my tai chi master who would give me hugging lessons to try relax this physical wall that is encoded into my body. Yes, our traumas get encoded into our bodies.

Then there is breathing. Just ugh. I have a love-hate but mostly hate relationship with breathing. Honestly, do I have to? You want me to actually breathe as I move?? Why??? My breath runs shallow. I used to near pass out at the end of a floor routine because I hardly took a breath the whole time I was doing it. When I am sleeping you might not think that I am breathing at all. Seriously, people have checked to see if I am. When it comes to energy, I don’t connect in the yogic sense, through prana. That requires breathing. Just like heat flows through convection, conduction and radiation, I would say that it is the same with our own energy flows. You can move energy in and out through breathing (convection), through your chakras and energy meridians (conduction), or through your general aura (radiation). These are just metaphorical equivalencies. I tend toward conduction. In the meantime, I keep my aura pretty tight to my body and as for breathing- just no. I don’t get it.

Aerobic stuff, especially running (and partly because of a bum knee), are not fun. But these days I am doing it. Running that is. I decided last summer to figure this whole thing out, so I started trail running to see if my knee could handle it (pavement is out of the question). So far, so good on the knee front. Then there is the breathing. Of course running forces me to breathe deeply. Because my shoulders cave in so much, my arms have always pumped side to side across my body rather than front to back. I decided last week to experiment with that by forcing the issue (making my arms swing front to back) the entire time I was running. A funny thing happened. It opened up my chest. And guest what? I could breathe. I am almost fifty years old with a lifetime full of athletics and nobody has ever made that connection for me. I could breathe. And you know what else? I felt my heart chakra open up. As it did, these words immediately entered my head: “Lead with your heart.” You see it really is all just one thing- body, mind, heart, spirit. Just one thing. Adjust any one of them and the others change. They have to.

So five years ago I decided to start taking this birthday matter into my own hands. Rather than just sit around dreading the disappointment that was sure to come (unconsciously, that is), I decided to start planning fun things to do for my birthday. One year it was a trip to New York City including a party with my NYC peeps. The next year it was LA, the following Mexico City, and then Stockholm. That has worked beautifully! One of the things that has been so great about it is that it has given my wife a framework to plug into rather than having to approach it through a minefield that she didn’t even know was there until she stepped on one. And trust me, she has stepped on a few!

So this is a big year for me. I will be turning the big 5-0 in December. First things first, I don’t mind. It’s not the age that bothers me. It’s the separation. So I’ve been thinking about how to celebrate this one with varying thoughts, but no concrete plans as of yet. We are still in the midst of getting ourselves settled in Vermont, so it’s not at the forefront of my mind even. It especially wasn’t at the forefront of my mind last Saturday.

There is no polite way to say it, last Saturday was a shit show! Literally. All I wanted to do was sleep in, relax, unwind, etc. after my trip to DC. I was exhausted, having left at 3:30 AM one day only to return at 3:30 AM 48 hours later. The next thing I knew Shannon had come up to report that we can’t use the toilet- again. It’s not flushing. It had been acting up for a couple of weeks. And did I mention it was Saturday? Overtime plumber fees will kill your weekend for sure. Of course it also kills their weekend too. So our friend Jean came over from across the lake to crawl under the house with Shannon to see if they could tell if there was anything wrong with the pipe, as has been the case before. No dice. Mind you, I still haven’t gotten out of bed because I am cranky, tired as all get out, and I have to pee like a racehorse. I would not have been any help in that state of being.

I heard Shannon and Jean back in the house working on the toilet to see what parts might not be working. They came upstairs to borrow some parts off of the upstairs toilet, which hasn’t been working for awhile either. That’s right, we had no working toilet. Not a one. I have to hand it to those two- they were determined! Of course one is a native Vermonter and the other is the first female to have reached full retirement from the carpenter’s union in Boston (and both hockey players, of course). They were not about to get beaten by a stupid toilet. Finally, they figured out that there was no fixing the toilet. We needed a new one. Worse yet, there was no guarantee that the toilet was the root of the problem. Shannon came upstairs to give me the report.

Now, let me just say here that when I am in the aforementioned state of being, I’m not the kindest person in the world. There. I said it. In fact, I can be downright ornery (verbally speaking). Shannon, who had gently and mindfully let me continue to sleep while trying to deal with this ordeal, was prepared to go to the store to buy a new toilet and Jean was going to go with her. She knew, however, that her architect wife was going to have an opinion about the toilet. This wasn’t a short term purchase. It’s one we knew we would be making anyway, and it’s hopefully going to be our toilet for life. So, yes, I knew I had to have an opinion. I had to get up and accompany Shannon to the store. I knew I had to because Shannon is frugal (which is often a good thing), and what we were needing was going to cost way more than she was going to be comfortable with. Now it would have been nice if I had communicated that all to her in a loving, appreciative, and kind way. I did not. Let’s just leave it at that.

While I got up and put some clothes on, Shannon told Jean to run for her life! She’d call her when we got back. Then, rather than going defensive and then offensive on me, she so gently just stayed quiet and calm (on the outside anyway) on our drive into town, giving me a nonjudgemental space to calm down in. And I did. The toilet shopping was tense, but she trusted my judgment. It cost twice as much as she was anticipating, but she didn’t fight me. She trusted me.

I am telling you this in part to give testament to the amount of personal work that Shannon has done in the twelve years that we have been together. It is truly inspiring. I’m not sure I would have been as graceful if the roles had been reversed. As fierce competitors, our MO has been to get into standoffs that could last for days, weeks, months. But instead of going there, Shannon pulled the perfect tai chi master move. She didn’t resist. It allowed all of my negative energy and the underlying fears to dissipate. With the tension of purchasing the toilet behind us, I was able to say and truly mean those magic words, “I am sorry.” It needed a little more punch than that, so I added “I was a complete asshole.”

We went to lunch to give ourselves a breather before heading home to continue with the shit show. That’s when she broke it to me:

“So, I had this great idea. I’ve been working on it for two months now. Turning 50 is a big deal so I wanted to surprise you by throwing you a surprise 49 1/2 birthday party. I got in touch with some of your closest friends to see if they could fly into Vermont for a long weekend.”

Micki was of course first and then she rattled off all of the friends she had contacted, at least one of whom she had never even met or talked to before. A ton of planning had gone into it and the long birthday bash weekend was supposed to be starting on the coming Wednesday (now this past Wednesday) night. She went on:

“Everyone was so excited and trying to figure out how to swing it, but one by one something got in the way and the list kept shrinking. I kept telling myself it would still be great as each person regretfully declined. Then it was down to just Micki. I still thought it would be great. Then, this morning, about an hour into the toilet debacle, she called and left a message. She can’t make it because her daughter, Haley (also one of my former players), looks like she is going to give birth earlier than anticipated and she can’t risk it.”

I was stunned. I had zero inkling of an idea that she had been working on all of this behind the scenes. I could see the sheer defeat in her face. I was stunned. Did I say that? Hearing her tell this story literally took my breath away. In that moment, I felt so incredibly connected. I felt connected to her, for sure. But I also felt connected to every friend that she had contacted as she told me how excited each one was and how hard each one had tried to make it happen. She has done some super-sweet things for me in our time together, but this one might be the topper. And it’s because she knows me. So much knowingness went into this whole thing. To all of the friends who tried so hard to make it happen, thank you, thank you, thank you! Please know that I feel your love. As for you, Shannon, thank you for knowing me. That’s really the best thing that you can ever give me. Oh, and, did I mention that I’m sorry about the whole toilet thing??? By the way, we have a rocketship of a toilet now and the shit has been cleaned out of our (septic) system, so feel free to visit! All puns intended.

Presence

I just returned from a speaking gig at the US Department of Energy’s Better Buildings Summit in Washington DC. I was invited to speak on diversifying the energy efficiency workforce based on my experience in developing and implementing relative curriculum at Prairie View A&M University, an HBCU (historically black university). Let me just start off by saying that this work has been absolutely sacred to me. It has been an honor, a privilege, and a life altering experience to get to know and to work with all of the students that I have over the last five years. It has broadened my perspective. It has changed me.

Now for a bit of truth telling. When the DOE asked me to speak at this conference a couple of months ago my gut reaction was “no.” I thought that I probably had important insights to share, but the truth is that I’ve been feeling burn out and I just had no energy surrounding it. But “no” is not what came out of my mouth. Nope. I tend to be a bit too much of a yes person, so the word that came out was “sure.” Saying no to the DOE just didn’t seem like a very good idea even though that is very much what I wanted to say. I should also mention here that I have developed many great connections and friends at the DOE over the past five years. I value all that they are doing in the world, and I certainly didn’t want to let them down. So I signed on.

Flash forward to three days ago. It’s Tuesday, the day before the start of the conference. My presentation was already done the week before and had been easy enough to put together. It had been informative for me, and I knew it would be for others as well. So I wasn’t stressed about the presentation. Monday and Tuesday were a busy two days for me as I had two separate architectural assignments that I had to get done before I left. This is to say that I had to be a little more focused than I have been since arriving in Vermont.

I finished working around 6PM and still needed to pack and think through all of my travel logistics. I had a very early flight the next morning in order to arrive for the start of the conference. My family, in the meantime, had made plans to go to The Wheel for dinner as it was our nephew’s best friend’s last night visiting us. I knew in my gut that I shouldn’t go with them. I needed to pack and get to bed. Inside my being was saying “no.” But that’s not what I said out loud. I said “yes.” So off to dinner we went. We had a great conversation, so no regrets… except for maybe the loaded fries or perhaps the mac & cheese.

But two hours later stress had collapsed in on me as my body was crying to get to bed and I still had to pack. Packing did not go well. Instead of a seasoned, nearly fifty year old traveler packing, imagine a petulant five year old who was up way past her bedtime trying to pack while throwing a temper tantrum. Yup, that was me. As each second ticked by I knew it meant one less second of precious sleep and my decision making faculties just tanked more and more. I was packing for two days. It should not have been that hard. I finally got my head to the pillow by 10:30 PM. My alarm was set for 2:30 AM.

I had planned out each step I needed to take when I got up so as to get out of the door on schedule. I had to do this because I knew I would be so tired that I wouldn’t be functioning well. Anyone who knows me knows that I am not a morning person, and that is a slight understatement. I followed my steps like a champ, though, and as I was ready to walk out the door I made sure to kiss my half awake wife goodbye. I turned to go and was halfway to the steps when Shannon gently called out “Shelly.” I turned around. She simply said, “you are getting on a plane and will be away for two days.” This immediately pulled me into the moment. I had been running on autopilot, right up to kissing my wife goodbye. I walked back over and kissed her like I meant it.

There are things that happen in our lives that plant seeds deep within us. We may be aware of the planting when it occurs, or we may not. Either way, we have no idea when it will blossom or what it will look like. About seven years ago as Shannon and I were beginning to think about how we would next fulfill our purpose in and vision for life, we discovered this amazing place in Vermont called the Metta Earth Institute in Lincoln. When I say discovered, I mean we found it online. On a visit to Vermont, we decided one day to go check it out. We just figured somehow that it would be o.k. to just drop in, or maybe we had actually reached out to the founders Gillian and Russel and they had invited us to just stop by whenever. So we did. Unannounced. It wasn’t exactly what we were expecting. I mean we knew it had a farm as an integral part of being a “center for contemplative ecology”, but I mean it was like a farm.

Do you know how hard it is to keep up with a farm on a daily basis??? They had veggies, chickens, and a cow across over a hundred acres. When we arrived we were lucky to find Russel. He was the only one there and was in the middle of his daily chores, which basically take from sunrise until past sunset. And here these strangers just showed up on his doorstep wanting to know the meaning of life, essentially. Russel is a tall man with long dreads. His being is rough and gentle at the same time, worn by nature in a beautiful way because he is fully surrendered to it. When we introduced ourselves there was a split second of “what is this???” in his eyes immediately followed by the aforementioned surrender. He could have easily said, “um, I really don’t have time for this today. Maybe you could come back some other time?” In other words, he could have said “no.” But without hesitation, he shifted his entire day with an open hearted, no regrets, no question about it: “YES!” Then he proceeded to take us on a long, slow tour of their place while telling us the entire journey of how it came into being. And, yes, all while contemplating the ways of Life. It was exactly what we needed to hear in that moment as we wondered about creating our own place to do this work in the world. Incidentally, this place is worth checking out:

https://www.mettaearth.org

But there was something more important that Russel shared with us that day. Shannon and I both felt it palpably and even noted it to each other out loud after the fact and have many times since. It felt profound, but in ways that we knew we couldn’t fully comprehend or inhabit in that moment. The gift that Russel truly gave us that day was presence. We of course quickly understood that we were disrupting his entire day and that it would have repercussions. It’s not like the chores could remain undone. We apologized for this profusely, but Russel stopped us dead in our tracks, looked us both in the eye, and made it perfectly clear that, “there is nothing more important than this right now.” And he meant it.

The years that have ensued got busy. Things have happened for us in much the way that they had happened for Russel and Gillian- by divine intervention. Or if that makes you uncomfortable, let’s say with the help of the Consciousness that is the connective tissue between us, that knows All, and therefore knows much better than each of us individually the best route forward. The place in the world that we were looking for came to us a mere two years later. It is forty acres of forest in the Green Mountains two gaps down from Metta Earth. We could get to them by hiking the Long Trail. No way should we have been able to afford forty acres. In so many ways it was more of a pipe dream, but one we were hell bent on. We have since added the Shittin’ Shanty, the Tiny Drop (our tiny house), a tent platform, a meditation platform, a solar array, a spring-fed water system, and of course the moon gate to the clearing. It is a completely off-grid haven surrounded by national forest. We love it. We will be expressing our love for it for the rest of our lives as we tend this place into a healthy ecosystem inclusive of human visitors who desperately need to relearn that we are meant to be here, that we belong here, and that we have value to add to the very nature that supports us.

In the meantime, I got another assignment. Perhaps it was my dues for my dream having come true. Yet I have never thought of it that way. I think more so that teaching at PVAMU has been part of my continued preparation in how to help realize the greater dream of inhabiting a healthy social-ecological system, which is what our mountain property is all about. What I know for sure is that it was another divine intervention, and certainly not a detour even though it did delay our move to Vermont. But, man, it got busy. So busy. I am at the end of a five year whirlwind of activity and accomplishments that should have taken twenty. I guess we didn’t have time for that. The learning has to come quickly now.

This brings me back to 3:45 AM on Wednesday, July 10, 2019. I am not quite as tired as I had anticipated. Shannon just called me to presence as I walked out the door. I am driving up Route 30 with not another car in sight. The view is absolutely gorgeous on this route with the Green Mountains to the right, the Adirondacks to the left, and quintessential rolling Vermont farms in the foreground. Only not now, because it is pitch black. I am watching for deer and other critters and sinking into the moment as I do so. Then it hits me. That seed that Russel planted so long ago comes bursting forth from the darkness. It comes as a thought. “I have nothing else to do today.” All of the tension that I felt the night before, pent up from the moment that I said “yes” to this whole thing, melted right out of me. “I have nothing better to do today.” This is exactly where I am supposed to be and I don’t have to do anything but show up and be present to the moment.

I proceeded with that sense of calm and everything went so incredibly smoothly in my travels. I arrived at the hotel, was able to check in early, drop my stuff, and walk down to the opening keynote right on time. It was magical. And then something else hit me… like a ton of bricks. The opening keynote speaker was Rick Perry. I literally felt like I had just arrived in the Twilight Zone! I hadn’t really paid a lot of attention to the details of this conference. What I knew for sure was that it was going to be a bit of a different crowd than I am used to running in. It is more geared toward the owners of big building stocks- the Hiltons and L’Oreals of the world- rather than architects and engineers. I found his speech to be utterly disturbing. I desperately searched the room to see if others were as disturbed as I was (hard to tell) or to see if I could spot any familiar faces from the DOE. No relief in sight. So I drew from my earlier realization with the thought, “there is nowhere else I am supposed to be.”

To cut to the chase, I eventually found my friends. Some of them I knew and some were new to me. My session was well-received, sparked a meaningful discussion, and created new connections. I am certain that every connection that I made throughout the conference was significant in ways that I may never know. Life works like that. That is worth repeating- life works. Life is brilliant, in fact. There is nothing more important at this very moment than to just be present to it all. Sometimes that means saying yes and sometimes that means saying no. I think the secret is to trust whichever choice you make and to be present with whatever it brings. Life will figure you out.

Independence

Have I mentioned that life is a paradox? That is to say that both this and its polar opposite that are true at one and the same time. I generally refer to this as the both/and of life. It’s one of the things about life that drives us all nuts. Here’s an example:

Independence enslaves us.

Oh now you want me to explain myself. O.K. Here is another way of saying it:

What we resist persists.

Or how about this- it’s like studying martial arts your entire life only to finally realize that what the masters have mastered is not the art of fighting, but the art of non-fighting.

In honor of the birth of the United States of America, let’s talk independence. Now if you are an American worth your salt, when you hear independence you automatically think “freedom.” And when we hear freedom we generally think freedom from oppression, or in other words the freedom to do as we damn well please. Sounds nice, if not a bit juvenile (sorry, that was judgy and I’m working on that). I think at a deeper level what we are all (and by all I do mean all humans) seeking is the space, the ability, and the opportunity to self-actualize- to become who we truly are, to live into our full being and potential. I want that. I absolutely want that. And I want that for you too.

Now let’s get real about it. Let me just say upfront that I am an independence expert. I have pointed this out before, but let me reiterate. I learned to be independent at a very young age. Want to know my secret? Fine. All I had to do was isolate myself. If you can’t touch me, you can’t tell me what to do much less hurt me. That makes me free to be me. I don’t need any of you! I mean what on earth could be more free than that??!!

You’re not buying it, are you? Well what if I told you that my stark independence allowed me to, say, go to the college of my choosing (against my father’s wishes), change my degree track from a Bachelor of Science in Engineering to a Bachelor of Arts (without my parents’ knowledge), and switch my varsity sport (again in spite of the fact that my father thought I was a nut job)? Are you impressed now? Yes, I am also hard headed to boot. My parents didn’t have much of a choice other than to put their hands up in the air lest they be run over. I was going to do what I was going to do. Three cheers for independence!

Now you are probably savvy enough to realize that, well, I didn’t actually do all of that and then some entirely by myself. Not even close. If my parents didn’t necessarily agree with all of my choices, they didn’t rip the rug out from under me either. That’s to say nothing of all of the pomp and circumstance into which I was born and which has provided the context for my life. Time to double down on the real. I was born into an upper middle class white family in the United States of America. And it is largely because of THAT, that I have been able to live out this sense (or illusion as the case may be) of independence. Change any one of those variables, and you get an entirely different story. Granted, I am female and I am gay and those two variables come with obstacles, but still… I’m privileged.

Irony of all ironies, there is a tradition here in Vermont (one of the whitest states in the country) to read Frederick Douglass’s “What to the Slave is the Fourth of July” the week of the 4th. As it turns out, Vermont’s whiteness is not an innocent circumstance. The state discouraged blacks from moving here through curfew laws and sterilization programs. Sorry to throw you under the bus, Vermont, but the truth shall set you free. Which, to your credit, is why in just about every Vermont town, small and large, folks get together to reconsider what exactly we are celebrating on Independence Day. We kicked off our July 4th weekend by attending the reading in nearby Castleton on the 3rd. As people from the town began to arrive the hosts asked each person if he/she would like to read. Silly me thought I was showing up to a passive listening event.

Um, heck no, I will not be reading! I apparently forgot to wear my introvert button. Shannon too. Not that that is a valid excuse really because I speak publicly A LOT. Part of my defense, if I do have one, is that when I speak publicly I never actually read. That doesn’t work well for me because, more truth be told, I have a speech impediment and one of the surest ways to find that out is to ask me to read aloud. So I don’t read aloud. I just speak. That works better. But I digress. The bigger reason I was not about to read at this event was because even though I embarrassingly had never read the speech before, I knew there was no way in heck that I would be able to do so without getting choked up if not outright cry. And I was right about that. There was a collective oration of the end of the speech and I couldn’t even get through four words of that before I simply had to stop. Do yourself a favor and read it for yourself:

https://www.vermonthumanities.org/programs/public-programs/reading-frederick-douglass/before-your-event/speech-transcripts/

But let me get to my big thing these days. Independence, by any means, doesn’t necessarily lead to freedom. That was a sacrilegious statement, I know. But if we equate freedom with the ability to fully self-actualize, then the writing is on the wall. Why? Because we are our relationships, yet independence inherently seeks to make us free from that pesky little reality. I thought/ we think that being free from our outside conditions (relations) is the key to freedom. It simply isn’t so. Where we find ourselves is not in isolation from “others,” but by delving into them so deeply that we can no longer differentiate me from you and them from us. To arrive in that place is to realize that in fact I am ALL OF IT. To get to that place, I am learning, requires primarily that we relinquish judgement of both ourselves and of others. Shannon and I are taking Charles Eisenstein’s mini-course called “Unlearning for Change Agents” at the moment. You can find it on his website:

https://charleseisenstein.org/programs/#courses

The course involves a series of fasts. We are on the third fast, which is a fast from self-judgement. It’s tricky. What is clear to me at this point is that even to judge myself as good (I do believe that I am a good person) only keeps me locked in separation. But we want to be good, right???? As it turns out, no, no we don’t. It hurts your head, doesn’t it? Yet the message is being reiterated loud and clear, shouted if you will, in my ear these days. I just finished the year long A Course in Miracles. Same thing. In short, it is through the relinquishment of all judgement that we are healed (self-actualized) into our full divine nature. In Zen Buddhism this is the principle of equanimity, which is simply that you can’t see all people as equal as long as judgement is a part of your M.O. Rumi said it like this:

“Beyond the rightness or wrongness of things there is a field, I’ll meet you there.”

Notice he didn’t just call out the wrong stuff. Oh, and I thought the object was to be good. Nope. Apparently the object is to just plain be. So much unlearning to do, so little time!

So what to finally make of independence? How about we just start with a triple dose of reality: we’re not. The end. And it will be the end if we don’t realize that we are not independent very, very soon. We all want to be free from oppression. We all want to self-actualize. That simply cannot happen as long as we continue to pretend that I can get there without each and every one of you also getting there alongside of me. Screw independence. I think that what we will ultimately find is that we will never achieve freedom (non-oppression) by resisting oppression. The only way to get there is to not participate in oppression in the first place. As Rumi pointed out, there is something beyond judgement, beyond oppression, that is much more than the negation of those things. What I want is out there in Rumi’s field. What I want is all of me. To get there requires nothing short of joining a collective interbeing. How is that for a paradox? And of course, paradoxes being paradoxes, the reverse is also true- I can’t achieve interbeing without being fully me any more than I can achieve me without fully interbeing. Have fun with that!

Speaking of fun, I had a truly amazing 4th of July weekend. Following our initiation on the 3rd, we spent our traditional long, slow day with family and friends on the 4th. There is something nice about the tradition of it. It reminds us of our collective belonging. For us that tradition starts early with a drive over the Green Mountains to Sandy’s Bakery in Rochester for breakfast and coffee. The people who work there know us and we are always happy to see each other. On this day the woman who made my coffee is an artist who I bought a painting from last year. She knows my patterns so well that she knew to track me down on my way to the bathroom to break the news to me that they were out of peanut butter for my bagel. So sweet.

Then we headed up the spectacularly scenic Route 100 to the parade in Warren. Besides the sheer whackiness of it, one of the things I love most about the Warren parade is the buddy system. Everyone purchases stickers with numbers on it with the object of finding your match, your buddy, in the crowd. People search feverishly before the parade to try to find their buddies. It’s great fun and a great way to orchestrate a huge collective sense of belonging amongst a crowd of seemingly not quite strangers anymore… even if, as it often does, your buddies remain hidden to you. You know they are out there somewhere nonetheless.

From there it is a hop back over the mountain to Carol’s family & friends picnic on their farm. Great friends, good conversations, wonderful food, a refreshing dip in the river, and the not to be missed fresh strawberry shortcake! Finally, it’s back to Lake Hortonia for our fireworks. Mind you, there aren’t any official fireworks on Lake Hortonia. Rather, there are a whole lot of pyrotechnician-wanna-be’s who get better and better every year. As the various “shows” go off around the lake it’s like watching fireworks with 3D glasses on. There isn’t a bad seat in the house, although the view was pretty spectacular this year from Jean’s place as they stepped up their game (watch out overachievers across the lake… your competition is already scheming for next year!). So having said all of that, maybe you have gathered that what made my day so special wasn’t so much independence, but community.

Friday Shannon and I started with breakfast at The Wheel Inn, which, let’s be honest, is practically like eating at home for us these days! Much tender loving care from our waitress, as usual. Then we napped before driving over the mountain again to try out The Wild Fern pizza joint in Stockbridge. We were immediately met with warmth by the owner, Heather. As we sat and slowly got around to ordering, we basically got to hear her life story, the story of her place (she’s a musician and essentially the pizza joint gives her a place to play), and just generally connect. Again, community. Connection. When you go to listen to music at a knockabout joint on the side of the road in the middle of the mountains in Vermont, I guarantee what you will witness and experience is community (love) in action.

Saturday was a lazy day at home watching a massive rainstorm come through, but wouldn’t you know, Jean and Carol coerced us into going to dinner with them at, you guessed it, The Wheel. Yes, they had to twist our arms. Not. It wasn’t until we met them there that we realized that Jean really, really needed the break and just some down time with friends. She has been building her house for the last year, had worked like mad to get it to a point that she could host her family for the 4th, only to come home yesterday from running errands to a thoroughly soaked house because not only had she left the windows open, but her front doors swung open too. Ugh. Bummer. But you know what makes it all better? Friends. And, yes, of course The Wheel!

That brings us to today. This morning Shannon and I went over to watch the reenactment of the Hubbardton Battle in the Revolutionary War. We watched from the adjacent Taconic Mountains Ramble State Park, one of our favorites. This is where we go to run every morning. Well, o.k., most every morning. I mean if you could go running here, wouldn’t you run (almost) every day???:

One of the great things about this park is the Zen garden that the previous owners created. So think of us passing through a Zen garden on a trail to the top of the cliffs to watch the battle from a distance. Surreal. From our perch we watched as the citizen-soldiers in homespun uniforms fought valiantly against the Redcoats, ultimately losing the battle while helping to win the war. Honestly, I didn’t know what my experience of this whole affair was going to be. First off, it did make this whole independence thing a little more real for me. I watched in reverence. Yet as I looked out over the beautiful mountains that surround this one time, memorialized for all time battlefield, all I could wonder is, “What do the mountains think?” I could almost hear them whispering, “They are at it again. Will they ever learn?”

Now it is very tempting to leave it there, but I have to say one last thing. After watching that battle, we went to watch a real live battle only this time on a TV, at a bar. You guessed it: USA Women’s Soccer vs. the Netherlands. Well, what else can I say, except… Go USA!

LYON, FRANCE – JULY 07: Megan Rapinoe and USA players celebrate as they lift the trophy during the 2019 FIFA Women’s World Cup France Final match between The United States of America and The Netherlands at Stade de Lyon on July 7, 2019 in Lyon, France. (Photo by Marc Atkins/Getty Images)

Blankie

Confession time. I slept with my blankie all the way up until, hmmm… sometime in middle school I think. Although by the time I was forced to part ways with it (as I recall I was still not exactly keen on parting ways with it), it was hardly a blanket anymore. It was more a shred of cotton maybe that had perhaps been a blanket in its former life. It was barely enough to even hold onto anymore. What more could one expect of something that I had held onto every single night for my entire life up until that point? I could not imagine parting ways with it. Yet after years of my mom’s reasoning, cajoling, begging, pleading, finally one day- with my permission- it disappeared from my life for good- when I wasn’t looking because I just couldn’t.

That blanket was my comfort. It was my security. It was the hug that I needed. It helped me feel at home and safe in the world. What would I do without it? Well now I know. I replaced that blanket with success. Achievement. Accomplishments. Awards. Accolades. Credentials. Degrees. Feats. Titles. Knowledge even. What could be more secure than to know? And there was a point in my life when I was pretty sure that I knew. I had it all figured out, or at least the gist of it, which was enough. I was settled. The entire road ahead of me was clear. Life was settled. All that was left to do was to just play it out.

Only, of course it wasn’t settled at all. Nor would it ever be. I found that out the way most of us eventually do, when the blanket that I had wrapped myself in was ripped from me by forces much greater than myself (thankfully), leaving me standing in nothing but a sea of uncertainty when I was in my mid thirties. But I am stubborn as all get out, so rather than simply give in I just pushed harder and bigger, uncertainty and all. The past fifteen years of my life are a testament to that. I am not going to lie, it’s impressive what I (inclusive of my we with Shannon) have done in that time. That is, if you are impressed by the doing.

Now don’t get me wrong. I am not dissing the path I have travelled. There have been a ton of worthwhile endeavors along it. All I am saying is that it’s time to truly let go of my blankie. I don’t need it anymore. As I find myself once more standing before the abyss of uncertainty, I suddenly don’t have a care in the world. By all accounts I should. I should be very worried about my future right about now. But somehow I’m not. Not at all. I feel peaceful. I feel grateful even for the void in front of and all around me. I am more than o.k. with it. It’s not that I think it’s all going to be easy or that everything is going to go down without a hitch. There are bills to pay, a house to sell, a house to overhaul, jobs (or something like that) to find, and on and on. No news there.

My former version of myself would be racing to do all of the above, to fill the void as thoroughly and grandly as possible. But now… I just find myself sitting here. Waiting. Waiting to see what is going to happen next. It’s a curious thing, this turn of events. All I can really say is that the Universe has my attention. And I am vigilant this time to not fill it with knowing, or needing to know even. I think I’ll just patiently sit here. Hang out with my inner 5 year old child. Let her know that she doesn’t need that blankie anymore because I’ve got her. She’s safe. I’m safe. Life is safe. No matter what happens, it’s all o.k.

Yesterday I had a meeting over hiking with a professor at UVM who is working on the same sort of things I have been working on in the world. First off, yes, we actually met over hiking, not coffee. Thank you Universe for sending me such a beautiful soul to reinforce my peace in so many ways. Just now Shannon and I returned from a Dharma Talk at the Bread Loaf Mountain Zen Community, which we are trying out. Thank you Universe for supporting the founding of this community in our backyard just a year ago. I feel a resonance there. Thank you also for sending me yet another beautiful soul to reinforce my peace through his sharing and the reminder of Jiddu Krishnamurti’s secret to maintaining peace and joy in life:

“I do not mind what happens.”

That sums up this moment for me perfectly. I do not mind what is happening nor what is going to happen, or even not happen for that matter. It’s all o.k. All of it. I’m open. I see the blank slate before me, and I don’t need my blankie.

Houston, …

We all know how this story goes. Yes, we have a problem. Our problem is appearing in a million different ways, making it seem like a million different problems- environmental, social, economic, political, relational, personal, physical, emotional, psychological, and on and on and on. But it’s just one problem. And it’s my problem every bit as much as it is yours. It’s the root of all of our problems. We have forgotten who we are. At least that’s one of the easiest ways to say it.

Now maybe you are thinking you know exactly who you are. I myself have a pretty good sense of who I am. Of course there are all of the activities that have defined my sense of self: student, gymnast, hockey player, coach, architect, professor, etc. and so on. Then there’s the resume stuff: accomplishments, degrees, awards, positions, affiliations, credentials, etc. and so on. Then there are my relationships: child, sister, parent, friend, mentor, colleague, partner, soul mate. Let’s not forget my possessions: lake house, tiny house, mountain (well, halfish a one anyway), car, phone, computer, clothes, etc. and so on. Put all of these things together and my identity looks pretty darn solid. You might look at me and think that’s one sturdy self you got there. Sure. Of course it is. I’ve spent almost 50 years building it. Have I mentioned that I am an overachiever?

Yet none of what I just mentioned really tells you anything about me. I am actually none of the above. And that’s just the first thing. The only way to get any sense for who I am is to be in relationship with me. There you will begin to find the real stuff of me: my passions, my feelings, my thoughts, my patterns, my energy, my wounds, my joys, my triumphs, my presence, etc. and so on. In other words, being in relationship with me gives you insight into my actual experience of life. My experience is unique, just as is yours. Is this, then, the realm of our true selves? Am I my experience? I think that for most of us, our identity does tend to get stuck in the realm of experience. This is to say that how we experience life tends to define who we think we are. More about this some other time.

Whatever the case, we have a dying need to know who we are. For certain. Where do I end and everything else begin? This isn’t simply an individual phenomenon, it’s also a collective one. So you could say that a family, an organization, a company, a team, a city also form identities in all of the ways mentioned above. Houston has many identities: Space City, Bayou City, Clutch City, H-Town, Screwston, etc. And then there’s the branding. This is what we promote in an effort to control how others perceive us. My branding would hopefully lead you to perceive me as somebody who cares deeply about environmental and social justice issues. Houston’s current branding is “The Energy Capital of the World.” Mind you, this was a deliberate replacement of the previous brand name “The Oil Capital of the World.” Well, nobody needs to explain why the change. Identity is important. It’s how we navigate the world, currently anyway. My question is, how much stock should we really put in it?

Ah, Houston, you are such an easy target. That is to say, I’m not buying it. And mind you, I am a native Houstonian. In fact, in so many ways I am Houston. But now I am getting ahead of myself. Just understand that I am in a very real sense calling myself out in saying what needs to be said in this moment- “Energy Capital of the World” my ass. No. Not. Not even close. Houston, you are still very much the Oil Capital of the World. You do not get to transition from oil to energy until you actually do the work to do so. Sorry. When the Exxon Mobiles of the world start taking this transition seriously, then I’ll bite.

For now, I think that it is critical that we all work to see ourselves clearly. This is as true for each of us individually as it is for us collectively. Who am I? Well, if we are talking about my little self- the embodied, relative, human version of me- then the best way to tell who I am is to look for my patterns. For example, I have a tendency toward overachievement. To get to who I really am, just follow the overachievement to the root of it. There you will find a vulnerable, unconfident, insecure, shy, hurt little girl who figured the only way to survive was to succeed. So I did. But if you want to really know me, you have to get to know that little girl. Who is she and what is she really after? You know the answer. We all know the answer. Love. That is both the who and the what of it. The irony, of course, is that who we are is what we are after not realizing that we are already it.

But back to Houston. Houston, in looking at your patterns what I see is flooding. You know why? Houston is a swamp. Let’s be real. I see unbridled exploitation of resources. You know why? The city was founded on speculation… in the spirit of the wild west. Now before you all join me in throwing stones at Houston, stop. Stop because not only am I Houston (and stones hurt!), but we are all Houston. Houston is, unequivocally, the epicenter of our current world paradigm. Don’t think so? Just follow your own wealth, or the lack thereof, and you will find it is rooted in the discovery of none other than black gold. Oil. Oil was discovered just a stones throw away from Houston. Now these two patterns that I have mentioned are entirely related. Houston is a swamp because it used to be ocean. It was built up over time by the layering of dead organic matter from the sea under the erosion of mountains delivered via rivers. Layer upon layer. Throw some salt in there too. Add a ton of time and pressure and walla! The energy of the sun, having been collected by organic matter, is turned into the most dense storage of energy the world has ever known. And it made us all rich (generally speaking).

Well, we all know how this story goes. Houston, we have a problem. Some of the most extraordinary minds in the world are working on what to do about it. Some are still not, in large part because their wealth is rooted in the oil economy and they have yet to realize that their pensions are about as real as Enron’s were. Listen, I get it. This is hard stuff. Do you want to know how Houston I really am? My family moved to Houston when I was six months old to chase the dream of black gold. My father is a geophysicist. He was quite good at finding the stuff. I am a pure product of the “Oil Capital of the World.” I know the place like the back of my hand. Not only did it shape my every experience, and therefore me, but I have studied it’s patterns for 30 years now.

This all leads me to what I need to say in this moment. Houston, after 50 years, I have left. I have left you for higher ground. I am in so many ways a privileged climate refugee. It’s embarrassing to even say that. I had the means and the vision to move out of harm’s way. So I did. I am gone. Yet I have not abandoned you. Not at all. I am Houston. I always will be. I will always keep one hand reaching back for you. So here is what that hand looks like. The most important thing to know is that we have to shift the story. We can no longer focus on the problem. For as long as we focus on the problem, we stay stuck in the very way of thinking that produced the problem. This isn’t news!

We must instead look for the potential. The key to finding the potential is to follow the patterns. Follow the patterns all the way back to the very thing that was being sought in the first place. What was it? What were we after? What was this place after? What is it really about? What is its essence? What is it really wanting to be? What would it be if it achieved its full glory (potential)? Maybe it is the energy capital of the world, maybe it isn’t. What does that mean anyway? I mean really mean…at the deepest level that we can think about it. If it is wealth we are after, then what is true wealth? Houston, the world is looking upon you now more than ever to solve the problem. I am telling you not to offer a solution. Rise above the problem instead. Move into a new potential like only you can. Just make sure that this new potential creates real wealth (for everyone and everything), rather than the slippery black slope that we have been down. Henceforth let us say, “Houston, we have potential.”

Mamma Mia!

Definition: title of an ABBA song and a musical featuring ABBA music in which my nephew just played Bill Austin (one of the dads). Direct translation from Italian: “my mother.” Meaning: expression of surprise, fear, pain, joy, exasperation, etc. Now Italians would insist that they aren’t actually thinking about their mother when they use the phrase, but still… huh. Actually, I think the bigger wonder isn’t that all of those emotions are expressed by saying “my mother,” but the seeming disconnect that the phrase quite appropriately arose out of the complex state of motherhood. So I actually started this blog on Mother’s Day. I wasn’t sure when I started it if I would actually finish it much less share it. I got about half way through on Sunday and walked away from it. It’s now Tuesday and I’m back to try again. In large part I’m back because the whole point of this blog is to share moments exactly like this one, hard as it may be. So let’s see if I can push this out.

But before I get to all of that, Shannon and I are (were as I wrote this part on Sunday) presently in an airport coming home from watching our nephew Jackson play his part in his high school’s production of Mamma Mia! He, and the entire production, were phenomenal. Seriously. Jackson has been in theater most of his life. He loves, loves, loves it. I feel like these days it isn’t often enough that we get to see somebody so thoroughly passionate about what they do. Spend five seconds with Jackson and there is no mistaking how much he loves theater. All of it. For this production, he designed the set, choreographed the entire thing with a couple of his friends, and of course played one of the leading roles. Yes, I am boasting a bit here, but more than that what I want to say is that I respect Jackson deeply for how incredibly committed he is to what he loves. It shows in everything he tirelessly does with what appears to be an unlimited energy for it. It feeds his soul, and it shows. Yesterday morning we just sat with him for an hour over coffee listening to all of his hopes, dreams, excitement, and dogged determination for his future, which he will no doubt fight tooth and nail for. It was all I could do to hold it in while he spoke, but after he got up to leave the tears came streaming down. There. I said it. Yes, I cry when nobody is looking. Except in this case Shannon, who knows this about me.

Mamma Mia, it’s Mother’s Day! (Again written on Sunday.) I mean that in its full expression, because if we are being honest… motherhood embodies the full complexity of life. It’s easy enough, a no-brainer, to pause to honor our mothers as our life givers and nurturers. But let’s be real about it, shall we? Motherhood is hard. Anyone who has ever been a mother or had a mother knows this, although the former know more than the latter. Let’s take me and mine for instance. Incidentally, that is a photo of my mom above. Warning: what I am about to share is authentic and real. To my family, I know this is going to make you uncomfortable and would have you know that you are safe. We are all profoundly safe.

My mother is an enigma. She floats beneath the surface. She taught me to float there with her. My mom views the world through x-ray vision that incises right through you. Not that she will tell you what she sees… unless, of course, you are in her training circle or she has decided that it is time that you get a little training whether you are in her circle or not. She taught me to view the world in this way, always looking for the unseen, for the story underneath. She has shaped how I do life. I am who I am because of it. I wouldn’t trade it for anything. Yet now midway through my life, I have learned that living underground is a protective mechanism that no longer serves my self-actualization. I have learned that this protective mechanism has origins in family wounds passed from generation to generation.

My mother’s mother was, well, difficult. In this day and age my grandmother Irene would probably be diagnosed as bipolar. But she didn’t grow up in anything remotely like this day and age, and neither did my mother. This is, incidentally, my grandmother who thankfully and annoyingly repeated my birth story to me ad nauseam when I was a child. She also used to cover her face from the nose down and say to me, “you have my eyes.” My eyes are slightly slanty in a remotely Swedish sort of way, Sweden being half her heritage. My mom’s dad, Sox, was- as I have gathered from my mom- a deeply empathetic and generous man. I only ever knew him as a shadowy figure asleep on the couch. He died when I was very young. It is clear to me that my mom worshipped him. He was also an alcoholic.

Already if you have done any amount of personal work you can begin to put two and two together. Everything that I told you above about my mom originates in the childhood conditions in which she was raised. For my mom, the world and in particular people were not to be trusted. Better to stay low and protect yourself. Add to that the fact that she is of the Silent Generation in which kids were to be seen and not heard, growing up in the shadows of the Great Depression, only to arrive into an adulthood in which women were fighting for their self-actualization to not be tied to a state of motherhood. Having watched her own parents, it is no surprise that she came to the conclusion that the only safe route for me was to not become dependent on anyone else for my self-actualization. She would say these days that I took that lesson a little too far. What can I say? I am a hopeless overachiever! I became fiercely independent at a very young age. I learned not to rely on anyone for anything.

As you hopefully can tell from this blog, I know better now. That doesn’t mean that I have healed it. I simply know better. Specifically I think it is important for all of us to realize that family trauma is passed along from generation to generation, untouched and festering, until somebody- anybody!– decides to face it and heal it. I am in the midst of that work now. The cool thing is that when we do heal it, we heal it for everyone past, present and future. Every single one of us is that powerful. Every single one of us is called to this work. It is, in my mind, the most important work that we have to do in life. This is because it is exactly what we signed up for when we chose our parents. Yes, I said chose. I believe that we choose our parents and they agree to take us on. Who we choose is done in full consciousness, in full vision, of who they are, what their challenges have been, and what lessons they will set up for us. We choose them because they are the perfect people to set the context for what we came to learn, to do, to heal. Yes, I am admitting it. I chose my crazy parents and quirky family. And they have delivered- perfectly. I have a ton of work to do to heal what I came to heal, but my path has been perfectly set. I have both of my parents to thank for that. Mom, what I would have you know is that my taking your lessons to the extreme was part of the process. It’s all good. Wholeness is near. Oh, and… I love you.

Living Future

So I just returned from the Living Future unConference ’19 where I was a speaker. But let’s back up, because you may not know what Living Future is. It is the conference of the International Living Future Institute (ILFI), the organization which was founded to oversee the Living Building Challenge (LBC) in 2009. The LBC was itself created and implemented by the Cascadia (Pacific Northwest) Green Building Council in 2005. It represented the major leap that the building industry must take in order to truly achieve a viable future for humanity in the time with which we have to do it. It brings to light, in essence, that half measures just won’t cut it. But rather than ranting off into a technical explanation of what the various certification programs of ILFI do, I’ll just share their mission and vision in their own words:

“The International Living Future Institute’s mission is to lead the transformation toward a civilization that is socially just, culturally rich, and ecologically restorative. We are premised on the belief that providing a compelling vision for the future is a fundamental requirement for reconciling humanity’s relationship with the natural world.”

For those of you familiar with my work as an architect and Shannon’s work as a builder, you know that we designed-built the first project in Texas to seek LBC certification, the Living Building Challenge Studio at the Monarch School in Houston. That project is still on track to be certified and we believe will eventually get there. It is not an easy thing to do. There are currently only twenty buildings in the world that have achieved full certification. In this case, additional funds are needed for the rainwater harvesting and urban farming components of the project. Fundraising is difficult when you are also having to fundraise to provide a very expensive education for students with neurological differences such as autism. And yet they persist, because they know that the challenges that they are addressing are not just simply sociological, they are fundamentally ecological. Thank God for people who are able to see that we have to treat the root of our problems rather than just the symptoms. By the way, here are a few photos of the LBC Studio, which serves as the hub for environmental education at The Monarch School:

It was actually the Living Future unConference that introduced me to the Regenesis Institute. I subsequently went through their Regenerative Practitioners training. I have been working with them ever since not only to implement regenerative practice in, well, practice, but also to pilot this training at the university level. So it was only fitting that I return to the Living Future unConference to present the culmination of five years of work at Prairie View A&M University to do just that. Along the way I have picked up colleagues at other universities who I have mentioned before- Jonathan Bean and Mary Rogero- who I come to adore even more every time I get to spend time with them. I first presented both the regenerative frameworks with Jonathan and Mary in an effort to start a dialogue about how we need to reframe architectural education and practice. I then presented The Fly Flat project along with my PVAMU students. I don’t know why this always surprises me, but the work resonated with our fellow conference attendees so much that they expressed deep gratitude for the work that we are doing, which at least one person expressed in tears. Ah, and if I haven’t shared images of The Fly Flat, our affordable, net-zero, resilient infill housing solution for low-income minority neighborhoods in Houston, here are a few:

Now for the conference takeaways. Keynote speakers Bill McKibben (should need no introduction) and Mary Robinson (also should need no introduction, but is the former President of Ireland and has led many initiatives on human rights and climate change via the UN and her own foundations) both reminded that we are down to only 11 years to change course, while noting that events of the last few weeks finally feel like we are headed toward a breakthrough. For example, New York City just passed its Green New Deal. Mark Chambers, the NYC Chief Sustainability Officer, spoke about the fact that their ability to move forward with such a bold policy- which includes 100% renewable power for all city buildings and requires all new construction to have either a green roof or rooftop solar- was only possible because they understood that they first had to implement social equity policies such as free daycare, a more realistic paid maternity leave, and a $15 minimum wage. In other words, they understood that they had to make it possible for people to care about climate change by first addressing their fundamental survival issues. More importantly, we have to understand that social issues and environmental issues are the same issue. Sociological and environmental challenges will only be overcome simultaneously. Incidentally, that is also what is so powerful about our LBC Studio and Fly Flat projects. They address the entire social-ecological system at once.

Eleven years isn’t much time to work with. The thought of it is overwhelming. When people ask me what my prognosis is, my honest response is always an honest “ugh.” There is no guarantee how this thing is going to go. We are in need of a paradigm shift. Yet, what I know about paradigm shifts is that they are sudden, instantaneous even. One moment the world is one way, and the next it is completely different. This is hard for us to imagine. It helps to realize that the transition is not actually sudden, it’s just that it is invisible until its not. The signs of the paradigm shift that we are in need of are everywhere if you happen to be looking for them. Even better is to participate in any and every little thing that is shifting the field in the direction of supporting our new reality. Bill McKibben would ask that you volunteer your time to protest. Charles Eisenstein would ask that you become conscientious of how every minute action in your daily life might support and celebrate your inherent connection to nature. Greta Thunberg would ask that adults would, well, adult. Whatever you choose to do, Mary Robinson would ask that you remember the words of Nelson Mandela:

“It always seems impossible until it’s done.”

And in response to someone who once asked him how he remained an optimist:

“I’m not an optimist, I’m a prisoner of hope.”

Guns

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Roots

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Done.

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49 1/2

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Presence

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Independence

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Blankie

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Mamma Mia!

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