Pivot to Global Oneness - Love for ALL Beings

Home Sweet Home

Until there is a sense of solidarity among the peoples of the world, all of our efforts for peace and security will go nowhere. Ambassador Anwarul Chowdhury

I’m always curious to discover where the Muse will begin and where our weekly reflective journey will lead. This morning I remembered a meditation about loving self/loving all beings/embracing oneness that I experienced years back. I don’t recall its source or even the specific language, but I was aware of how valuable it would have been to remember earlier in the week when I found myself unable to feel the feelings of the frequency of love.

I wanted to infuse love into a situation about which I felt gnarly and confused, misunderstood and sad. Yet, for a period of time, I felt blocked from the energy and flow of gratitude, appreciation, love. Looking back, realized that I’d experienced a deep-felt sense of separation – separation from others, from planet, from Source, from self. At the same time, I knew that what I felt wasn’t and isn’t true. Yet I couldn’t access the deep feelings of truth: of unity, connection, wholeness; of gratitude, appreciation, love.

The Muse reminds me that our systems are built on this false story, hence we are steeped in it daily, consciously, or not. Thus, we need the nourishment of antidotes: stories that speak our deep truth. I’m grateful for the growing number and quality of such sources, one of which is front and center this week: Humanity’s Team and the week-long 12th Annual Global Oneness Summit: Opening to Your Universal Self, culminating in Global Oneness Day on Sunday, October 24. (https://www.humanitysteam.org/global-oneness-day). You only need invest your time to watch, listen, and be inspired by a vast array of thought leaders.

I’ve only taken in a few presentations so far. Doing so strengthens my understanding of and conviction about the truth of our being. It helps me remember to be ‘in the world and not of it’ and lifts the heaviness of the separation story. Indeed, it helped me put aside my ‘gnarly’ situation and to attend to daily life-sustaining tasks (you know, the ‘darn dailies’ that all too often seem like burdens) with a lighter heart. Zadie Byrd ‘chimed’ in, retreating to a favorite spot for a nap, reminding me that rest is as important as any other ‘task’ (especially since the body is still in healing mode). I notice that loving attention is easily focused on this canine teacher. The Muse has many voices.

The gnarly situation attempted to get my attention a few times, and even succeeded in getting me spinning for a bit. But each time I set it aside, confident that its time would come and along with it love, care, and clarity. When that time came, I was able to act with greater ease and a softer heart. I settled in with pen and paper to explore with Creation the highest and best course of action for all concerned. As clarity came and my course of action emerged, heaviness and any remaining sense of separation began to lift. As my truth began to reveal itself, access to love, gratitude, unity, wholeness – the truth of our being – returned.

The Muse chuckles, reminding me that the truth of our being is ever present. ‘It’ doesn’t ‘return’ to us. Rather ‘we’ return to love. And, as we do so the truth of our Oneness lifts our spirits and gently reminds us of our capacity to fly, sprinkling seeds of love wherever we go.

Which is just what the meditation exercise* is all about:

• Starting with self, feel love permeate your entire being every cell and into the biofield beyond your skin

• Take a step back to envision your home (or wherever you are) and sprinkle love to all beings therein (don’t forget the plants, the paws, the gills, the wings, even the beings in the web up in the corner)

• Float upward, envision your neighborhood, sprinkle love

• Upward again to envision your community, sprinkle love

• Upward again to your geographic region or watershed, sprinkle love

• And again, and again step by step (region, state, country, whatever areas you see), sprinkling love at each vision along the way until you are floating in space picturing the blue dot that is our beloved home, Mother Earth. Sprinkle love in every corner of this planet that sustains life.

• Go beyond the Earth, as far as you’d like, then return, step by step, vision by vision, to your Self, your Cells, your Love.

*I’ve taken what I remember from the meditation long ago and put my words, hoping to capture its essence and offer us each a platform and process for remembering our Oneness and sprinkling love for all beings.

Halo Moon

Reaching In, Reaching Out

Owl Wisdom in the Woods

Reach – (1) to stretch in order to get or touch something; (2) to arrive at a place, a decision, a goal

The Muse is back (‘Aye’, the Muse says, ‘I never left; I just hid out so you would rest.’). Although the extreme discomfort (okay, pain!) is mostly gone, the body continues to remind me that it is healing and that I need to heed my own message of a few weeks back: look for places where you can do less. The Muse in fact suggests I share that I’m in healing mode because I did just the opposite: pushed through to complete a heavy lifting task solo rather than waiting until I could ask someone to come over and help. Over-reaching. Ouch!

Having limited (and painful) mobility in my shoulder limited my reach and I discovered just how much of daily life involves reaching for things. A mug of tea, a pan and ingredients for soup, a book, the keyboard, a log for the fire, Zadie Byrd’s harness and leash, treats, a jacket, toothbrush … yep, we reach out a lot. Reaching for whatever we need in the moment. Blessed with the abundance of whatever is within our reach.

The more I reached for ‘things’, the more that discomfort reminded me to look for where I could do less (thank you Moshe Feldenkrais and my awesome instructor Jill, a coaching colleague and friend for years before my discovery that she also teaches this method of awareness through movement. Click here to learn more.

When the discomfort became especially intense, my heart opened with deep compassion for those who experience chronic pain. I thought of my cousin who, before her death last year, suffered excruciating back pain. I was experiencing just a small drip of what far too many humans experience every day. I understood how it is in a system that shuns alternative treatments with derisive comments like ‘snake oil’, a system which profits from our disease and pain, that people become opioid dependent.

Indeed, I who shun much of what western medicine offers, would have popped the top had there been pain killers stronger than aspirin within my reach. Alas, acupuncture, Chinese herbs, castor oil packs, PEMF, body work, and most important of all, REST are the tools of my recovery. I wonder: how can these and other alternatives become more acceptable, available, affordable, within reach for all?

In the quiet that rest offers, I felt myself reaching in. Exploring and calling forth what I believe to be true about this physical vessel in which I navigate the planet. It is wise and knowledgeable this body is, understanding, knowing its needs, its limits and communicating that information whether I’m tuned in or not. This body knows how to heal, and it needs my cooperation to act on its knowing. I need only reach in to hear her voice reaching out to guide me.

Inspired by a story I heard during this time of rest, before rising this morning I imagined that I was feeling the warm embrace of the sun before she rose. Reaching inward to imagine the somatosensation of the sun’s rays gently warming my skin and the light bringing visual clarity to my surroundings, I felt embraced by the faith of deep knowing that I live in a friendly universe and, despite appearances and circumstances that seem contrary, all is right with the world.

As I wrote about the experience, I realized how easy it is and how privileged I am to reach in and access such wisdom when I’m warm and cozy under the covers before rising. Will I remember to reach in after my feet hit the chilly floor and when I engage with the world that often seems to want to have its way with me? What direction will I reach at my next challenging moment – in or out?

We have inner wisdom and knowing throughout our cellular structure. What if we reached in to discover the wisdom of the inner planes with as much purpose and intent as we reach out to find answers on Google or stretch our arm to reach for a healthy snack? What if we understood that all the wisdom and knowledge of our dear Gaia and, indeed, the Universe are within our reach? Indeed, what if …?

Snowy Morning in Town … First Big Flakes of the Season

Pivot to Allowing the Body to Heal

Rest! Sleep! Heal! THIS is important NOW!

The Muse refuses to engage this morning, instructing that I follow the guidance above, received loud and clear yesterday morning and again this morning. Thank you, Muse!

What’s your response (reaction??) when your body is experiencing symptoms that need your attention? You know, pain that’s beyond the stiffness or soreness that most of us experience from time to time, an injury, or a disturbance in some internal system function like a cold, digestive upset, etc.

Do you respond by pushing through as part of me very much wanted to do today, taking some form of medication – natural or chemical – so you can keep going with the plans or demands of your day?

Or do you pause, ask your body ‘what’s up?’ and ‘what do you need?’, then do your best to follow that guidance?

My guess is that most of us make choices that span both ends of this spectrum. At times we may even employ the ‘ignore and push through strategy’. Hopefully, we consciously consider the situation and make a clear, conscious choice. Or we hear the body’s ‘voice’ giving us a signal that we ignore at our own peril.

That’s where I find myself today, the body clearly calling on me to rest and allow the source of discomfort in my neck and shoulders to heal.  So, the body and the Muse have this day, and …

… Body willing, Mind, Spirit and Muse will converge right here again next week to explore whatever seems pivotal for our attention. Hopefully, we’ll engage yours as well.

Pivot to A Culture of Care

Storm Clouds In the Sangres

Greed is the absence of care.

Zadie Byrd and I took a short overnight trip to a nearby mountain community earlier this week to meet our trainer and support her in learning to be a calmer canine. It was our first trip away in over a year, and in our short 30 hours away I experienced a wide spectrum of care (and lack thereof) that has me reflecting on how our culture and the economy we support have made greed a part of our unconscious standard operating procedure as we navigate life’s choices.

Before you react with your ‘I’m not greedy!’, as I did when the Muse started me on this exploration, take a breath, open your heart and mind. The Muse didn’t take me on the path of blame, rather invited me to simply consider choices I make around what I purchase and where, where my nest egg is invested, and the like and to look at the bigger picture beyond my individual choices.

Now back to that triggering word: greed (pretty charged, eh?).  Merriam-Webster defines greed as a selfish and excessive desire for more of something (such as money) than is needed (emphasis mine and the Muse’s). I’m guessing that no one reading would define themselves as greedy. Heck, I don’t define myself that way. And yet, I how often do I want more than what I need? How frequently do my purchases and other choices I make? More importantly, what is the impact of my choices on the greater whole of which I am a part? How often do my choices consider only the ‘bottom line’?

Take for example my quest to find the ‘best rate’ at a hotel in the area we visited. Good for my ‘bottom line’, but how does my choice impact the ability of hotel management to pay its service staff a reasonable wage … reasonable enough to afford living in a community where real estate values are soaring?

I share this example from an experience at the hotel which demonstrated to me a lack of care on the part of management in fully cleaning and preparing our rooms for occupancy. I’ll spare you the details, but in part the situation was a result of being understaffed because there isn’t a supply of affordable housing available to service workers in the community.  Although the manager apologized, he also expressed the attitude that ‘if you don’t like, leave and I’ll rent the room for full price’. It was a disheartening experience reflecting, to me, a lack of care.

In looking more deeply, beyond the moment and my disappointment, I thought about my own role as a bargain hunter, looking for a deal on that which I purchase. I thought about how investing in real estate solely for financial gain undermines community. The Muse and I won’t pick on folks who buy a house and convert to overnight lodging because they can make a lot more money than renting longer term to a community member – service workers, educators, others on whom quality of life depends. Yet such choices are squeezing communities throughout these Colorado mountains and beyond. They’re made with care predominately around money and/or our own personal comfort (not that these are not important – they are!) but without care for people or the planet…

Like the other end of the spectrum of care we experienced from our trainer (providing healthy dog treats from companies with sustainable practices and sharing that info so that we too have the resources) and from a small local eatery that sources much of their food locally and did an exceptional job of cleaning each table (and all the chairs!) after each party departed and the next arrived.

This week I invite you to notice where you witness and experience care or a lack thereof. Join me in considering the choices you make. Did your bargain jeans come from a source that exploits labor and disregards its environmental impact? Examining such choices is rich territory for creating a fundamental shift to a culture of care not just for profit, but also for people and our planetary home.

Breaking for a Healthy Treat!

Where Can You Do Less?

Autumnal Sunrise Over the Sangres

Notice where you can do less. Jill Van Note

You don’t have and ‘Aha!’ moment. An ‘Aha!’ moment has you. Woody Tasch

Happy Autumn! After greeting the Autumnal sunrise in the labyrinth, the muse niggles that perhaps a better title this first day of a new season might be ‘Falling Into Doing Less’. Cute. I smile at the idea and decide that I like the title as a question. ‘Where can you do less?’ is one of my favorite elements in the Feldenkrais method. I appreciate that it’s posed frequently in most every lesson.

The question gently calls forth awareness. Last week it did so in a profound, expansive, and most unexpected way, when, calling attention to a limb that wasn’t involved in the movement we were doing, Jill, my Feldenkrais instructor, said the phrase I’ve heard countless times: “notice where you can do less …”.

Suddenly, I was aware of holding tension in the ‘uninvolved’ leg. I hadn’t fully relaxed my leg muscles to allow the floor’s full support. I was doing ‘work’ that was already taken care of. Expending energy that I had no need to expend. Wasting energy. My precious energy.

Aha! The question isn’t just about doing less with the parts that are moving! Aha! It’s about the whole body and the support available to be received. Aha! Wow, it’s about all of life: body, mind, and spirit. Aha! The moment ‘had’ me. It’s had my focus and curiosity since.

Wondering ‘where can I do less?’ became a personal ‘energy audit’, discovering where body, mind, and spirit habitually engage where they need not engage, leaking energy like worn out weatherstripping around a door or window. I’m discovering more deeply my habitual tendency to do more than what’s needed. Yes, Cindy, the floor will support you. Indeed, it does.

I discovered (yet again) mental energy wasted thinking of things that I’m not engaged in at that moment (and may not need to engage in at all, at least in the near term). I noticed the monkey-mind of worry creeping in, thinking about how, for example, to word an email when I was far from the computer and not ready to respond, or whether to participate in an event not occurring for quite some time.

I’m reminded of a metaphysical teacher who has on occasion asked me, “are you giving this more energy than it needs or deserves?” Busted! Gratefully busted! I notice the inefficiency, the waste of taking awareness away from the present moment how doing so not only requires more time and energy to complete the task, but likewise reduces the joy and satisfaction that full presence and attention bring.

I’m reminded too of the support provided by the Universe, requiring only that I have the courage to trust and the willingness to receive.

Aha! No wonder the subtitle/subtext of the Feldenkrais Method (and others) is ‘awareness through movement’.

Labyrinth Bell Greets the Morning Sun

After the Pause: Pivot

Light, Shadow, Grasses in the Morning Sunlight

If you do not change direction, you may end where you are heading. Lao Tzu

You must unlearn what you have learned.  Yoda

The world as we have created it is a process of our thinking. It cannot be changed without changing our thinking. Albert Einstein

A crisp, fall-like morning drew me into the woods and then to the deck to enjoy the rays of morning sun. The Muse was there with me along with the unseen elementals that thrive in these woods. Zadie Byrd rested nearby. No other creatures or critters were about.

Quiet. Deep Quiet in the woods.

In that quiet, mind wandered to several activities, projects, and possibilities asking for attention. Setting them aside, I heard a gentle nudge: the Muse reminding me of stories and how our stories create our reality.

I was drawn back to a couple of posts about just that, one of them when The Zone pivoted to become The Pivot in April 2020 [you can find it here]. Much of that post feels apropos for where we find ourselves today and the fundamental shifts that we need to continue to make, individually and collectively. In our shifts we create the possibility for new stories.

From new stories a new future rises, a future that Charles Eisenstein calls “the more beautiful world our hearts know is possible.”  Perhaps that’s what Albert Einstein had in mind when he said, “The world as we have created it is a process of our thinking. It cannot be changed without changing our thinking.”

It is as sobering and humbling today as it was 18 months ago to consider that ‘we’ created ‘this’. We’ve ‘ended up’ where we have been heading for quite some time living in our world created from the underlying stories of competition, right/wrong, good/bad, win/loose, have/have not. Language that separates and generates fear in humanity. That fear has led us to plunder the planet to a point that she proclaims, “Enough!” It has led we humans to injustice, polarization, and war over points of view different from ours.

As Yoda so wisely suggests, “You must unlearn what you have learned.” I can imagine Yoda observing our world today and advising us from his deep wisdom to create new stories.  Our stories come from our thoughts and our beliefs. Stories strengthen our beliefs, even those that don’t serve us. Then, we wake up to find ourselves mired in difficult challenges, worry, or fear and looking outside for the cause.  But when we have the courage to look within, we create an opportunity to find the real cause and, if we choose, to shift it.

Over the past year of change, personally and globally, I’ve tossed much of what I learned and what so many of the systems of our world continue to perpetuate (or would that be perpetrate?). I’ve shifted my thinking with more attention to how to align what’s good for me with what’s good for all, the human collective AND the planet to which I belong.

Although I hold ownership of the property where my home is, I can create different stories and make new choices when I embrace the true perspective that I belong to the land more than it belongs to me. When I embrace the earth as the source of the food that nourishes my body, I can seek to do business with those whose practices honor mother nature.

From our pivots, new possibilities emerge, and new stories can be crafted. Revisiting my ‘pivot’ to The Pivot this morning has renewed and strengthened my intention to inspire my own personal change and to plant seeds of change beyond.

To that end, I invite you to pause for a moment and ask your heart ‘what pivot do I need to make?’ Yep, it’s the thought that’s been niggling you for a while, perhaps a prickly place you know is ripe for change. What new story is possible?

Get your juices flowing with this song from the amazing singer/songwriter Jenny Bird. Put a joyful tempo in your heart and share it all around!

Gazing into the Woods Out Back

The Woods Out Back

Hazy Morning in the Woods Out Back

When I was younger and you’d get upset with me, what do you do get back to your center?

Found by a Friend - A Gift in the Woods

My stepson, now in his 40s with three beautiful children and an amazing wife, posed this question in a weekend conversation after he’d experienced an upset with his oldest daughter. The question took me back 35 (more or less) years, and I wondered ‘yeah, what did I do?’.

The first thing I thought of wasn’t about my own upset, but rather how I would reassure him of his dad’s love for him after the two of them had clashed. I noted that I didn’t first think of my own upset and honestly could only remember a couple times when I was upset with him. He probably remembers more. But I digress.

I responded that in all honesty I didn’t remember what I did. In those days I didn’t have the life experience and the commitment to personal and spiritual growth that I have today. Then I added, “I’m sure that I removed myself, giving both you and me some space.” Perhaps I took a long walk in our neighborhood or visited a nearby park to create that distance. I’m sure that whatever I did, I did to reconnect to the love I had and still have for him. I hope that after that distance, I returned and told him that. When we talked, he was in the process of doing just that.

Had he asked, ‘what do you do today when you get upset?’, I would have easily responded that I connect with nature as my channel to Source. I look to the woods out back. I may roam the woods, walk the labyrinth, or simply sit and look out at them. These woods are my place of solace and of clarity.

Walking a ‘Wash’ in the Woods

I turn to them for guidance, for comfort, and for inspiration. I take a burden into the woods out back and release it (not always as quickly as I might … sometimes I just stew or fret, unconsciously giving monkey-mind the steering wheel until I come to my senses). These woods are where I put the wheel back in my hands, turning off the chatter and allowing whatever the situation is to unfold. No force. Only flow. They speak, sometimes gently and subtly, other times more direct, and always with love and deep care.

While I’m blessed to live in these woods beneath the sacred peaks of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains, I recognize that wherever I am, I have access to their essence, the love and clarity that comes from Source and holds the answers to anything I need to know. Where are your ‘woods out back’? What do you do to regain your center amidst upset no matter how big or how small?

Find Your Heart and Let It Lead

Pausing ...

Discovering Beauty in the Wood is One Reason I LOVE to Stack!

You are to live here with a sense of the planet and you as a vital unit because, in effect, you are that vitality. Nature will not sit back and allow you to set it aside like a poor relation with you living in isolation from it. Pay Attention! … Your body is nature, and nature is you. Your consciousness is the Universe, and the Universe is you. There is no separation between nature and you. Gregge Tiffen (The Language of a Mystic: Completion – September 2009)

Yesterday evening as my normal ‘Tuesday curiosity’ began to explore and wonder about this week’s focus, the Muse reminded me that last year Zadie Byrd and I were on the road home from our two-month journey to handle my cousin Marty’s affairs. I was also reminded that I simply skipped writing and posting that week.

This week I’m focused on the final details of closing Marty’s estate, organizing my personal affairs, stacking my supply of firewood for the winter, coordinating the final phase of installing the solar system, consulting with my ‘Zadie Care Team’ about some challenges Zadie is presenting, preparing for a visit from a dear friend, and several other projects.

Amidst these activities, I’m deeply aware of and in touch with nature – both through Zadie Byrd as nature’s ‘in-house’ representative and through an ongoing dialog with the ‘woods out back’. As such, I’ve given the Muse the day off and invite you to enjoy these recent photos of the beautiful, sacred place that I’m blessed to call my home.

Then, I invite you to spend as much time outdoors in nature as you can. Be still. Listen to the earth, the trees, the birds. Pay attention to the nature that is you. Invite nature to guide you in navigating life.

Late Blooming Columbine Greets the Day

New Growth on a Small Log Cut Last Summer … Is Our Nature Amazing? Or What?

The Stacking Begins …

… And Another Spiral is Complete!

Calling Forth Unity

Crestone Peak Peeking Through the Treetops

It’s time to pivot: calling forth and practicing unity, oneness, the interconnected nature of life. Time to cooperate and co-create.

This is week three of what has emerged as a theme of the weekly muse, consistent with observations and concerns about our world and with my heart’s deep longing that I live more fully into the reality of unity with each step I take and every choice I make.

Reading some new/old material from Gregge Tiffen, one of my greatest teachers, reminded me that our sojourn on this earth is not an easy ‘school’.  We are tasked with the challenge of working with/working on three levels that are often in conflict: body, mind, spirit. It was an important reminder as I seek to practice unity – inside and out – in a world that seems hell bent on division and separation.

As I sat in the quiet of daybreak this morning, it occurred to me that dark and light are not separate. Opposites, yes; but light and dark coexist, cooperate, and flow from one to the other and back. Whether in the dark of night of a new moon or in the light of a ‘Colorado blue sky’ day, the ‘woods out back’ are ‘the woods out back’. The degree of light or dark simply changes my experience of seeing the woods.

Perhaps we might consider the same of other ‘opposites’: good/evil (every time I write this word, I’m reminded it is simply ‘live’ spelled backwards); we/they; pro/con (vaccine, life, war, and the list goes on).  We are different, yes. We each have our stories that differ, sometimes widely. And we are the same: humans navigating a tough learning school at this seemingly pivotal point in time.

As I further engaged the muse, I wondered what all the aspects of the growing (and troubling to me) ‘vaccine divide’ and a recent movie, A Wrinkle in Time, have in common. Each presents the opportunity to ‘choose the path of love with conviction’. Yet each in their own way perpetuates separation: the movie with its classic ‘good vs. evil’ where one or the other must ‘win’.

The vaccine divide doesn’t look much different. Each side choosing language to vilify the other, claiming they alone are ‘right’ and the other is ‘wrong’. Neither side recognizing the truth in some aspects of the other’s story. The noise from both is deafening and the damage to families and friendships, heart wrenching (AND avoidable!). Much of the ‘information’ from both sides is fraught with assumption (at best) and both are guilty of fear mongering. Each seemingly wants to usurp my free will to choose what is right for me, my body, my mind, my spirit.

Is anyone reminded of the acrimony of the ‘choice’ vs. ‘anti-abortion/right to life’ divide? It’s enough to bring out my inner contrarian rebel and allow her to dance beyond the words of the weekly muse. I’m reminded of a favorite line from Rivera Sun’s awesome novel, The Dandelion Insurrection: When fear is used to control us, love is how we rebel.

Since the beginning of the pandemic, I have consistently expressed the idea that the best path forward is to build our individual immune system in whatever ways best serve the body we inhabit, as well as align with our individual, intelligent understanding of available information, and consistent with our personal spiritual beliefs. This should be front and center of public health policy and media attention. It isn’t.

Where is the love and care that providing such information widely would demonstrate? Why does it seem increasingly more difficult (and sometimes lonely) to follow this path? Where is our humanity in this great divide?

Why is it that those who offer information about this path must be cautious about how they speak about covid, natural health, etc. lest a ‘bot’ label their words ‘misinformation’ or worse yet, prohibit others from seeing it? How is such censorship any different than burning books – indeed entire libraries throughout history – to suppress views that challenge our own?

My aim is to not add to the babble of the divide, what a friend calls part of the ‘debris field’ of these times. Rather it is to shine light in the darkness, to rebel with love, sharing that which I find helpful in navigating the choices of this time with solid information, with love, and with care.

Neither I, nor the muse, nor anyone outside of you knows what choices are best for you. But each can offer information, insight, perhaps even inspiration to take the best care of you that’s possible and to be a part of bridging and healing the divide, not furthering it: to call forth unity from within and promote unity in our world. Toward that end, I found this recent video informative and rebellious in a most loving, caring, and unifying way: Strange Virus …

Whatever your choices, may this and other information in your field support you in unifying body, mind, and spirit and calling forth that unity in our fractured world.

Day Fades in the Sangres as the Sun Sets in the West

Making Choices Without Choosing Sides

Sunflower ‘Volunteer’

So, while I really appreciate your support, I'm asking you not to take sides. Charles Eisenstein

Yesterday’s email with its subject line ‘Peace: Important plea to readers’ marked the second time over three or four days in which individuals whose work and lives typically align with my values used the clear, direct language: “don’t take sides”.

The first, a recorded message mostly addressing earth changes and their impact, inspired me to think about the difference between making choices and choosing sides. Eisenstein’s email confirmed my hunch that the Wednesday muse would explore just that. The topic seems a logical (although logic is rarely my primary aim!) extension to last week’s muse that suggested:

It’s time to pivot: calling forth and practicing unity, oneness, the interconnected nature of life. Time to cooperate and co-create.

As I suggested last week, more and more it seems that the world wants us to choose sides rather than simply making choices that are best for each of us based on what we know, what we have yet to know/learn, and what we sense. Sadly in the collective many have taken the bait.

Sharing a point of view that differs from others is seen by some as divisive rather than collaborative. Or, in Eisenstein’s case, when the point of view he expressed was attacked, many of his supporters took up the banner to defend, attacking the attackers. His email yesterday was an impassioned plea to his readers to “abstain from that pattern… Respectfully disagree with their views if you feel so moved, but don’t make it about the personalities.”

Eisenstein’s plea reminded me of a kinder, gentler time when then presidential candidate John McCain challenged a questioner at a town hall who labelled Barrack Obama an “Arab”. “No he isn’t …” McCain said urging his supporters to stop hurling abuse against his rival for president and saying that he admired and respected Obama. Such a move is a powerful choice. If a side is chosen by such an act, it is the side of love, of harmony, of peace, of something bigger than the campaign for president.

All this combined with a deep concern about the toll our divisions are taking on each of us individually, all of us collectively, and on our home, Gaia, Mother Earth stirred my pot of curiosity to wonder just how I might make choices without contributing to the divisiveness. Or worse, being a part of the source. That led me to begin exploring the distinction ‘choosing sides and making choices’.

Distinguishing choosing sides and making choices is, at least in part, a matter of perception and of intention.  What do I aim to accomplish when I choose sides? What is my intention when I make a particular choice? All too often in our ‘on demand’ culture, we leap over considering our motivation. We need to make our point or join the chorus of the herd (but not heard) and move on to the next thing.

Not only that, it’s also far easier to attack, for example, the fossil fuel industry and blame ‘it’ for environmental crises, than it is to look in the mirror of our own habits and consider our role and what we might change in our individual choices. It seems that for the mainstream media, it’s easier to blame the unvaccinated (or another country, or ….) for the pandemic rather than look at the bigger picture of nature/viruses/the planet and recognize the interconnectedness of ALL things and then to make choices aligned with creating health for all.

Blame is the game of the world of division. Responsibility and respect are the badges of honor in a world moving toward restoring unity and connection to our awareness.

May we take time and make the necessary effort that enables us to make responsible and respectful choices for ourselves, for one another, and for our planet home. May I. If a side must be chosen, let us choose the side of power with not power over.

Old Juniper Greets the Sun