Tag: energy

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.

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.” 

Human Things

Rated T (for theory)

There are heavy things and there are light things in life. My last two posts demonstrate that. How we experience anything, however, is related to one common thing. That common thing is our worldview. Our worldview, in turn, is supported by a “sponsoring thought” about the world. That sponsoring thought is what enables us to believe whatever we believe in the first place. I teach a class at PVAMU called Ecology and Man. The purpose of it is to walk students back through their worldview and the sponsoring thoughts beneath it in order to reconsider our entire notion of “self,” where it comes from and what it could be. Let me just go ahead and say it now for the light hearted among us, this is going to be a heavy lifting post. The work that I am doing via this blog is the same work that I ask of my students. It is the collective work of humanity at the moment. That said, I am doing my best to treat this as a marathon, not a sprint, even though the moment feels urgent. I’ll walk us through the theoretical stuff as gently (which may not feel so gentle) and as slowly as I can, one step at a time, with plenty of breaks in between for experiential life stories. If a post like this proves too much, just put it aside for now and come back to it later when you feel ready. If you have questions, just ask. Dialogue is good.

What led me to wanting to address this notion of humans and things was Micki’s comment to my “Umbrella” post. Micki, incidentally, is that crazy extrovert from hell best friend of mine that I described in my “Friendship Guide” post. She also happens to be a gifted Jungian psychotherapist. Here is what she said:

I heard a teacher say one time “The greatest spiritual lesson is to accept the humanity that we all are. You can’t be so busy being spiritual that you forget your humanity- That is the highest lesson.” 

Just hold that thought for now. I have something to tell you. If you are a Westerner, your worldview is supported by the same sponsoring thought as every other Westerner. That is to say that the same sponsoring thought has given rise to Western religious, spiritual, agnostic, and atheist worldviews. Easterners are not immune either, although it may be less complete in its domination due to Eastern wisdom traditions. This sponsoring thought came to us courtesy of René Descartes, the French philosopher/mathematician/scientist, in the early 17th century. Um… that is to say that we are operating on a 400 years old understanding of what is what! Please let that sink in. He didn’t necessarily pull this idea out of the blue- there were precedents- but he did solidify it with the phrase “I think, therefore I am.” The phrase has become so ubiquitous that it needs explaining.

What Descartes did was to definitively separate the material world (matter) from the mental/spiritual world (mind). Henceforth these became two entirely separate realms. The world was reduced to a place of mere objects, that were inherently only mechanical (dead) in nature. Mind, as he defined it, included only what we today call “higher consciousness.” Higher consciousness, the ability to remember the past and project into the future, was afforded only to humans. Frankly, the science of the time couldn’t explain where consciousness came from, so it relegated it to some other non-material realm, the realm of God. That is to say that because science couldn’t explain it, it was simply removed from the scientific equations that sought to understand the world.

The sponsoring thought is this: being is a mental/spiritual state that comes from a divine realm that is completely separate from the material world which is itself nothing more than a mechanical/dead universe. If you are of the religious/spiritual persuasion, this is already starting to resonate with you. Just wait atheists and agnostics, your turn is coming. It is important to note that neither animals nor plants were considered to be sentient at the time, which is to say that they were as dead as doornails although they had acquired some ability to appear otherwise. Due to their lack of being, it was perfectly o.k. (virtuous even) to reduce them to resources that existed only for the benefit of humans. Matter became the realm of science/technology, consciousness the realm of religion/spirituality, and the two were expected to stay within their newly defined boundaries.

And these were newly defined boundaries. The original human spirituality was animism. Animism held no such separation. In animism, every single material thing (even a doornail) is spiritual, is sentient. To be clear, matter doesn’t have spirit, it is spirit. Matter and spirit (consciousness) were not separate things, they were the same thing. God wasn’t in some other place watching us with disgust or perhaps chuckling at our clumsiness, God/spirit was right here in us and as us through and through- in physicality. The Cartesian split was a radically different sponsoring thought. As it played out, people took sides. You kind of had/have to. The religious/spiritual identified their “self” with mind/spirit. Want proof? “I am a spiritual being having a human experience.” The implication here is that the human side of the experience, the part of the experience rooted in matter, is not really being at all- at least not in the divine sense. It says that our divine nature is not of this world. It is a temporary state of confusion at best. The material world, in this sense, is imaginary. I’m pushing buttons, I know. Breathe. It’s o.k. You are divine beyond your wildest imagination. There is much more to say about this which I won’t cover in this post.

The atheists (many of whom are of the scientific persuasion, although not all scientists fit this bill- such as Einstein) identified their “self” with matter. As science gained more and more confidence in its ability to explain the material world, mind was pulled back into the material realm, albeit this time as a phenomenon that is itself nothing more than mechanical in nature. From this point of view it was spirit that was imaginary- an illusion rising out of material processes for reasons we don’t quite understand. In short, God was dead. Therefore, when your physical self goes, you’re gone too. Incidentally, science has to date proven no such thing, it’s just that some scientists (positivists) are confident that they ultimately will be able to prove what they believe to be true. On the other hand, science has made a great deal of progress such that the boundaries between the two realms of matter and mind/spirit are colliding in on each other. Actually, they have been for over 100 years. I’ll leave that for another time. To get back to my main point, no matter what side you fall on these days, you are doing so under the assumption that there are two separate realms in the first place. Pick your side, and there you will find your definition of “self.” Oh, and as for you agnostics, lest you think that you have avoided this debate… you refuse to take sides, but you continue to believe that the sides exist.

Of course I am speaking in generalities. Our worldview is now shifting, so you may find yours in some in-between state. My point is that the Cartesian sponsoring thought is still dominant, and therefore we are all responding to it in some way. Now let’s return to Micki’s observation above. Even that observation, although getting closer to what I believe to be the truth, is still based on the Cartesian split. It says that you have to at least balance your spiritual seeking with your human seeking and that somehow the two are related. It is pointing out that the downfall of seeking only spirit (enlightenment) is that it is attempting to escape our embodied nature, our humanity. It is trying to escape being here, as a material thing. Yet maybe now you can see that this is only true if you are operating with the Cartesian sponsoring thought that matter and spirit are separate realms. If you were seeking spirit with an animist sponsoring thought, then your spirit-seeking would actually take you deeper into your material being. And, incidentally, your physical body would not be just a human thing, because nothing is just an objective thing. Everything is both matter and spirit. Everything is both/and. The separation of the two was a bogus assertion in the first place, in the opinion of many people working on the outer edges of consciousness. And yet, that bogus assertion is still ruling our worldview today… even as science and spirituality inch closer and closer together in their observations about the world. What I would say is that healing this split is the crux of every challenge that we are currently facing. To do that, we have to reconsider the validity of our sponsoring thoughts.

This was a lot for one sitting. So I’m going to leave it at that for the moment. Just know two things. 1) There is much more that needs to be said to understand where our worldview is today, how we got here, and where we are going. 2) You are all correct from the perspective from which you are looking at it. If you want to discover more on your own, there are three books that I would recommend. Each of these books will walk you through the history of our sponsoring thoughts and associated worldviews:

The Ascent of Humanity, Charles Eisenstein

The Systems View of Life: A Unifying Vision, Fritjof Capra and Pier Luigi Luisi

You are the Universe, Deepak Chopra and Menas Kafatos

That’s enough for now. Just sit with it. Or, feel free to ask any burning questions you may have. Lastly, you matter (pun intended).