Tag: healing

Tiny

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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33 Days

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

The Force

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Cold

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Happy Path to Wellness!

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.