interbeing – Risking Interbeing

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.

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?

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Guns

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

And in regards to food:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Roots

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Independence

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

Independence enslaves us.

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

What we resist persists.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Spring Break!

Gone camping! We are off to Big Bend for a week in the wilderness. In my absence, I’ll give you the words of some wise people: Mark Nepo, Susan David, and Charles Eisenstein. Enjoy! I will be back next week with adventures from Big Bend!

First up, a poem by Mark Nepo. This beautifully captures what interbeing is all about.

Beneath All Trouble, Oneness

When I saw the wheelchair man
with spindly limbs twist his neck to the sun,
I wanted to take the newborn from the blanket
and put her in his hands.
 
And when the blind woman knelt at the stoplight
to hug her dog, I wanted to embrace everyone
who ever showed me an inch of truth.
 
There is less and less between heart and world.
In the morning, I am sure
this is a deep blessing.
By night, it seems a curse.
 
In time, our pains in being here
crack open into a soft wonder
that on one owns.
 
I notice everything now, and more,
I am everything I notice.
 
Like one who suddenly sees while staring,
I now know love, though I have been loving.
 
To watch the sun rim your face,
your head in my lap, while small birds sing-
I could have died there on that bench,
but want so much to live.

Next up, a TED Talk by Susan David that is a great follow up to last week’s post “The Zone.”

Last, but not least, an interview with Charles Eisenstein which explains what the new story of interbeing is all about.

Tag: interbeing

Tiny

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Roots

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Spring Break!

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