Scratch that. A resolution implies impending failure, doesn’t it? In essence it’s saying “I’m really going to make it happen. Really I am. No matter the odds!” It’s that odds thing at the end that dooms it from the start. It suggests that we don’t really believe that things are going to go the way we would like them to. It implies that we are going to have to fight our every impulse in order to make it happen. It sounds exhausting from the get go. Nevermind.
Intention sounds better. It’s not quite so frantic. There is an openness about it that leaves room for adjustment and creativity. It further allows the Universe to conspire on our behalf. Yet my preferred word is vision. In the words of Conversations With God:
“The purpose of life is to create your Self anew, in the next grandest version of the greatest vision ever you held about Who You Are.” – God
With that in mind, Shannon and I have for years been attending the Burning Bowl Service at Unity of Houston on New Year’s Eve. It’s a two part ceremony. In part one you write down everything that you want to release to close out the year. Then you throw your list into the fire. In part two you set your vision for the new year. For me this is neither a declaration of who I want to be or even who I intend to be. It’s a declaration of who I am. It is the greatest vision that I can muster for myself in the moment.
So since we did not make the trip down to Houston for the holidays, Shannon and I performed the ceremony at home last night. I had a lot more time to think about both lists, so they both got quite long – 18 items each! I notice that each year I get better at my release and more daring in my vision. Watch out 2020!!! Just sayin.
I am not going to share either list with you as they have both been released to the Universe at this point. After I finish my vision, I place it under the altar in our meditation room. Now since we moved this year, I was a little shocked to discover that my 2019 vision had made the move and found itself back under the altar. So what I will do is share that vision with you now. Here goes:
The top of the page that Unity gave us said this, “Dear God, I co-create with you the following intentions for 2019…”
a new beginning and new home in Vermont (check)
a new job which will better support me in playing my role in healing the planet (check… more news forthcoming!)
an expanded, fully creative version of myself (check)
a new, joyous experience of everyday life (progress made!)
light-heartedness (progress made here too)
a free spirit (and here too)
a deep, sacred interbeing, or at least recognition thereof, with everyone who crosses my path (this is definitely escalating)
writing that serves our collective evolution and salvation (check)
Heaven on Earth (well, I never said I wasn’t ambitious!)
At the bottom of the paper it says “This or something better.” This year marked a major life transition for me on so many levels. The Universe is fully supporting me in my becoming, and I am so grateful. The best way that I can express that gratitude is by continuing to release all that no longer serves me while expanding my vision of Who I Really Am. I know that when I sit here next year looking at my 2020 list, I will be checking the extraordinary state of Being in my vision. Won’t you join me?
I love, love, love this photo of me and my brother. It makes me laugh every time I look at it. It now hangs in a corner of our living room that we designated for our favorite kid photos, so I get to laugh a lot! I thank God every day that I have a sense of humor. Well, God and also my dad who passed along the Pottorf sense of humor to me. If I didn’t have one, the complete disgruntledness with life that I have perfectly expressed in this photo might be my predominant experience. But it isn’t. Right below that photo is one that expresses perfectly what I really think about life. Here it is:
This photo makes me laugh out loud too. That’s the patriarch of the Pottorf sense of humor, my grandfather, on the right. While he looks stern in the picture (and often was), I like to think that he is secretly approving of my laughter. That’s my grandmother in the middle. She was always my ally, and you can tell here. The juxtaposition of these two photos completely cracks me up. Anybody who knows me well knows these two sides of me. They also know that I routinely crack myself up. If you catch me laughing for seemingly no particular reason, you can be sure that something like the scene portrayed in these two photos is going down in my head. My sense of humor is just laughing at the false seriousness of it all (and sometimes, yes, quite inappropriately).
That gives you a little background as to why I laughed out loud and felt like I won the jackpot when Vermont issued me my new license plates. Yes, it’s official. I’m a Vermonter! Not. I’ll never be a Vermonter, these people will never let me be. That’s o.k., because truth be told I’ll always be a Texan. Bless their hearts. If you don’t know this yet, that’s Southern code for something like “Don’t mess with Texas.” Which is to say I think Vermonters will find they’ve met their match. At least one did! Oh, but before I go further into this, here is my new license plate:
Ha! “Hmph” is one of my favorite responses to life. That’s the side of me in that first photo. So you can imagine that I laughed very out loud when the nice DMV lady pulled out my new plates. For the first time in my life, I won’t have any trouble remembering my license plate number! The other thing that has made both Shannon and I laugh out loud recently is this realization that while I will never be a Vermonter, I have officially achieved Vermonter-in-Training status. I am a V.I.T.! Trust me, that’s way better than being a masshole. Mind you, for reasons mentioned above, I will never graduate from this status, but still. How did I achieve this momentous feat you ask?
Let me start by saying that when Shannon and I started dating I was civilized. Yes, I’m going to completely blame this all on her. For example, I have always been very shy about my body. I would never change in a car for instance, nor go to the bathroom in the woods. These days we often find ourselves in a situation where we are going for a hike and then to do something else afterward which requires a modicum of civilization (hygiene). A few weeks ago we got back to the car and right there in the parking lot I stripped down and changed in front of God and everyone. Shannon just looked at me like “Who are you????” Then last week when we were on our way to Lake Placid, we stopped to take a hike in the Adirondacks. The hike was next to a stream with a few good swimming holes. Shannon was scoping out which one she was going to dip into on the way down. When we got to it, she’s like “you coming?” Yes, yes, I am. We stripped down, waded in, and dunked. Stark naked. Mountain streams are always freezing in case you were wondering. Yes, there were other hikers on this trail and somebody could have come along at any time. Oh well. Shannon just laughed out loud and noted that she could not believe how different I am from 12 years ago. That’s when she gave me my official V.I.T. designation. I then laughed when I noted that that’s what I could tell people about my goatee- it’s part of my V.I.T. initiation! Not really, but it’s funny anyway.
So quick goatee update. It is still growing strong! I have to say that my discomfort level is too. I’ve been out in public more with it as well, and I am noticing my reaction is to try to shrink myself down and hide it (and myself). That’s what I’ve most always done in life. If I had a super power it would be invisibility. I’m an expert at rendering myself invisible. Case in point. When I was in elementary school the most popular kid in school always had a massive slumber party for her birthday. I couldn’t hang with the all night revelry (such things are absolutely exhausting for an introvert), so I was usually the first person to crash in my sleeping bag. Nobody would notice. They didn’t notice so much that often as the other girls were still running around, they would step right on me… without even noticing. Rather than making myself known, I just kept hiding in my sleeping bag as if nothing had happened… even though it hurt.
Of course life is full of every which kind of experience, so here is a different one. I was also a complete tomboy growing up. I promised in my last post that I would talk about why I align with being a woman at this moment in human history, so let’s go there. In fact, let’s talk sports. Sports is as good a vehicle as any to have this discussion. I was that girl. The only one who the boys on the block would allow to play no matter what they were playing- kickball, baseball, street hockey, basketball, tackle football. When I was in third grade, one day I found myself playing flag football with the guys during recess. We were in the huddle and the quarterback tells me to go long. My best guess is that boy was Brett. Here is a photo of him from our senior year just to give you a visual:
Brett tells me to just run like the dickens. He says nobody will follow me and that he is going to throw it to me for the touchdown. So when the ball was hiked, I did. I ran like the dickens. Brett was right. Nobody paid any attention to me. I felt a little silly running like mad away from everyone, but then true to his word, Brett threw the ball. To me. It was a Hail Mary. It was a perfect throw and I made a perfect catch before breezing into the end zone to dance the funky chicken. Sometimes invisibility is a powerful thing. Sometimes not. Saturday night- stepped on. Monday at recess- end zone hero. Go figure. Here’s another go figure. Brett and I both went on to become cheerleaders together our senior year of high school. I know you won’t get this unless you are a Southerner, but being a cheerleader was actually a macho, popular thing for guys to be back then. At my high school our squad was always half male, half female. What’s more shocking isn’t that Brett was a cheerleader, but that I was!
To recap, I was ever the athlete. Hockey was my first love, but I wasn’t allowed to play growing up because I was a girl. I didn’t like figure skating (my mom’s sport), so she made it her mission to find a suitable sport for me. Gymnastics ended up winning and I spent my childhood as a competitive gymnast (ages 5-16). When my gymnastics career was brought to an end by a knee injury, I took up tennis and played varsity at my high school and then JV my first year in college. But hockey was still my first love, so I finagled my way onto the Princeton women’s varsity team my freshman year, proceeded to become a starting goalie by my sophomore year, won an Ivy League Championship by my senior year, and was invited to national team tryouts the following year. Then there is the coaching. I started coaching gymnastics after my knee injury at age 15 and coached for the next 4 years. I was good at it. Similarly, when I retired from my competitive hockey career to focus on my architecture career, I took up coaching hockey and did so for the next 15 years. I was one of the earliest women to receive a master level coaching certification from USA Hockey. This is all just background information to say that when it comes to sports, I have some experience.
Rewinding back to my senior year of high school, my boyfriend was the class genius. Literally, he is a genius. His name is John. Photo timeout. This is John:
See what I mean? He’s a little nerdy, right? But a cutie, for sure. You might need a little more of a breather before I keep going (that was your warning), so here is another photo for you:
These are all from my high school yearbook incidentally. The caption for this one read “Shelly and John get dressed up to go to the library on their first date.” Hysterical! Now, yes, I was a complete nerd too, but also simultaneously a jock. John and I spent most of our time together deep in conversation. For the most part I can’t remember what we talked about (God only knows). But I do remember this one conversation. It was about sports. And it got heated, just a little. John was not an athlete. His perspective on sports was that by stressing competition and winning, it was essentially training us all to be war mongers. Can you say triggered? I was.
I utterly refuted his position. I’ll come back to that. But first I want to tell you that when I was reading about highly evolved beings in Conversations With God a couple of weeks ago, I was reminded of this conversation with John. I was reminded because, in essence, God says the same thing in CWG. Highly evolved beings, he says, don’t participate in sports or competition, and for all of the reasons that John had pointed out. I am hereby going to say that they make a very good point. Let’s be honest, if it wasn’t a very good point it would not have triggered me all those years ago. Yet I am going to continue to respectfully say that there is another way to look at it. If you are a sports lover, don’t panic. But do get cozy, because we are going to have to cross some terrain to get there.
In fact in order for me to make my case, I am going to have to talk about God, specifically what I mean when I use that name. I am not- I repeat NOT- talking about a white bearded old white guy. I am going to have to back way up to throw this Hail Mary though. So hang on to your hats and start running like the dickens. Did you know that bacteria lives in my gut? Your’s too. We call this our gut flora. These microbiota are living beings in and of their own right. I am, quite literally, the environment that supports these life forms. You may be thinking “yuck.” We don’t tend to think very fondly of bacteria, after all. We might in fact be inclined to want to rid ourselves of such bacteria. We might want to cleanse our gut until it’s squeaky clean. You want to know what would happen then? We would die. That’s because our gut microbiota – the living beings that live in our gut- actually do all of our digestion for us. I don’t digest my food. They do. They are metabolizing on my behalf, and by them doing so they also get to live.
What on earth does this have to do with God? Hang on. One more step. I have spoken quite a lot lately about how in my worldview everything is sentient. This is true across all scales. My gut microbiota are sentient as distinct, if interdependent, beings. I am sentient as a distinct and interdependent being. You know what else is sentient? The environment that plays host to me. And just like my gut microbiota metabolize for me, I am also metabolizing for my environment. I’m going to leap out across a few scales to talk about my host environment as a whole- planet earth. Planet earth, in my worldview (and this is scientifically supported) is sentient. We have even given this sentient being a name.
Her name is Gaia. She is as conscious as I am, even though from our current world paradigm I may have a hard time relating to her as such. As you have seen from previous posts, I am working to build my communication skills on this front. But let’s not stop there. Gaia also exists within an environment. Her environment is the universe. The universe, too, has an environment. At each and every scale, life is conscious, distinct, identifiable, and… interdependent. Life itself is a living being. At the grandest scale possible, when talking about all that exists, I give that living being a name. Her name is God. So now you know who I am talking about when I use that name. I am talking about the All That Is. If you want to take one step further here, realize that just as my gut microbiota are a fully integrated part of me, so it is between me and God.
Now we are ready to go. I want to focus now on two characteristics that we have ascribed to God. God is all-powerful on the one hand and all-loving on the other. In our current collective worldview, we relate the all-powerful side to the masculine, and the all-loving side to the feminine. Now let me just say right here that there are biological (natural) reasons to tend toward these associations. Yet let me also say right here that we do our very best to fit males and females into the appropriate boxes. That is to say that how we show up is both a function of nature and of nurture. It’s not just one or the other. I would say that we need to stop forcing either characteristic onto a male or a female independent of the other. I would instead argue that we need to cultivate both within each and every human at the same time, and regardless of gender. I would say that both characteristics are in fact invariably present in each and every human, regardless of gender.
I would finally argue that our survival as a species is dependent upon our ability to balance these two characteristics of God within each and every human, which will then balance them within our species as a whole. The reason I say this is because we have been way, way, way out of balance for way, way too long. This is to say that we have been fixated on developing the all-powerful side, and intent on suppressing the all-loving side which we consider vulnerable. This is manifest in every attempt that we make to control things. Most fundamentally, we have sought to control nature and each other. This is what we envision power is, and we call the society that has resulted “patriarchal.” Well, guess what folks. God is not a male. God is neither masculine or feminine, but the perfect balance of these two natures.
Now to bring it down to earth via something as American as apple pie- sports. John was right. The way we have been doing sports has also been to emphasize, train, and develop the masculine side of the equation. Competing and winning are about power. And a focus on power in this way is in full alignment with a war mongering mentality. We have applied this equation to males and females alike, so it isn’t even a gender issue. It is no accident that females who participate in sports are much more likely to be successful in the world according to males. Of course they are! They have been trained to compete. They have developed the muscles, so to speak, of their own all-powerful natures. Now please hear me when I say that the rise of women’s sports has been extremely useful and necessary in the process of our evolution, because we can’t even begin to elevate this conversation to the next level until we have women in the room. We just can’t. But it is now time to step it up a notch.
So let me start that process by sharing what I said to John all those years ago. I objected vehemently, because frankly, that wasn’t my primary experience of sports. If it had been all about competing and winning, I would have never survived as a gymnast because frankly I stunk at that part of it. I knew, based on my experience, that there was something inherently missing in this masculine framing of sports. What my experience told me was that the value of my participation in sports wasn’t so much about conquering the world as it was about conquering me. The way I expressed that to John was to say that sports challenged me to overcome my own boundaries. It wasn’t about me besting somebody else, it was about me becoming my best self. I have since come to understand a great deal more about what I intuitively understood then. I was right too. Transcending boundaries is where it is at. That is what we need to be focusing on. Sports, like any other human endeavor, is a vehicle to work on those muscles. At least it is when we use it for its highest purpose.
Want proof? Ask any athlete (or musician, or artist, or mathematician, etc.) when they are at their best and they will describe being in “the zone.” What is being in the zone? It is having transcended our self-defining and self-limiting boundaries to enter into a state of, you guessed it, Interbeing. Being in the zone is becoming one with our environment. In the case of sports, that environment is a game played on a field of some sort. My best moments in sports were not the moments in which I won. My best moments in sports were when I was playing in the zone. The outcome of that in some cases was winning and in some cases not. Yet it didn’t matter either way because the experience of the zone was so much more than the experience of either winning or losing. In fact, there is no winning or losing in the zone. Win against what? Lose to who? There is no winning or losing when there is only one thing present.
It’s time to talk about our all-loving nature. What is love? Connection. That is what it is. To love is to be one with. Yes, I just did. I just made the case for the true feminization of sports. I also just explained to you why I align with being a woman at this point in human history. Admittedly, this work is easier for women than it is for men both because of our naturing and because of our nurturing. Yet we all must engage in it, regardless of gender. That is the only way we are going to stop ourselves from burning down the house, and you all know what I am talking about.
If you are an athlete, I dare you to give up on winning and instead focus on connecting, on being in the zone as much as you can possibly muster. See what happens. If you are a coach, I implore you to change your definition of success from winning to how much time your athletes spend in the zone. See what happens. If you are the parent of an athlete, well, I have way too much to say to you so I am just going to say leave it to the athletes and their coaches for now! Settle down!!
Here’s the thing, everyone. Life is just a game. And this is what the game is all about. It’s about forgetting that we are One so that we may rediscover our own all-powerful natures. Then it is about remembering that we were One all along via our all-loving nature. But you want to know a secret? True power is found not in flexing the muscles of our separate selves. True power is found in Oneness. This is to say that it is found in love, in connection, in being in the zone. The irony of all ironies is that when we play out our all-loving nature to its full extent to enter into Oneness, what we discover there is that we were all-powerful all along. We will never fully achieve our all-powerful nature by focusing solely on being powerful. We will only get there from the other side.
You are probably exhausted, so feel free to stop here. If you can push yourself one step further, this will be a bonus insight. One of my favorite books is The Peaceful Warrior, by Dan Millman. I relate to it, of course, because he is a gymnast. If you have never read it, I won’t spoil it for you. I’ll just say it is based on Dan’s own life and in particular his training by an enlightened master, Socrates. At one point during Dan’s college gymnastics career, Socrates comes to watch him during practice. Dan puts chalk on his hands and then mounts the rings to execute an absolutely perfect ring routine. He was in the zone. If it had been a competition and there had been judges present, he would have scored a perfect 10 and won.
He was quite proud of himself as he walked over to Socrates afterward. But Socrates was shaking his head in disapproval. Dan couldn’t believe it. What???!!!! That was perfect! But Socrates just told Dan that he was completely sloppy when applying the chalk to his hands. Here’s the thing. Learning to be in the zone only becomes truly useful when we learn to do it “off the mats,” as they say in yoga. It’s relatively easy to work on and learn to inhabit the zone during an athletic or creative endeavor. But can you do it when performing the most mundane activities of your life? Can you do it when you are washing the dishes?
I can’t. Not yet. I keep trying to be mindful when washing the dishes, but you know mostly I am still irritated that there are dishes in the first place! Damn dishes. Just go away. Socrates would seriously be shaking his head at me. So there you have it. The ultimate challenge is to inhabit the zone all the time. That is what a state of Interbeing would feel like. Until we are ready for that, any old vehicle to practice being in the zone will do. Sports happens to be a great vehicle for this. I- a woman, mind you- just saved sports (even though I am not supposed to be saving anything these days!). You are welcome, sports fans. Have fun with it and feel free to laugh out loud any ole time.
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.
