From Villainizing to Compassionate Questioning

The Mycelial Nursery Begins

Evil is always committed in the name of something good. Evil believes itself to be good. War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Ignorance is strength. … The world is in great peril and we have to step away from us-versus-them thinking NOW. … The mindset that demonizes one's political opponent is the same one that demonizes a foreign enemy to make war, or that demonizes a population to facilitate ethnic cleansing. Charles Eisenstein (Shades of Many Colors – read it here)

This September finds me on an inward journey much like that of winter when I snuggle in with myself (and, in years past, a canine companion) by a warming fire, hearty soup simmering on the stove. Yet this week while I’m inwardly focused – asking deeply about myself, our world, and myself in that world, I’m drawn out into Nature, to the woods out back, Cottonwood Creek nearby; opening to Her knowing. Her wisdom. For surely, She has medicine to heal the toxicity of our fractured world.

In the wake of last night’s presidential debate and on this 23rd anniversary of the events of 9/11, my attention gravitates to the political realm, to what is in the belly of the whale of our ‘us vs. them’ political discourse. I look within, wondering what choices I may be making that contribute to the toxicity, the villainizing each of the other.

This inward-outward focus is reflected in a project that I began on the September 2nd new moon: constructing a mycelial ‘nursery’, an experiment to support the mycelial network of these woods. And, hopefully, to yield some tasty blue oyster mushrooms just outside my door.

I sense that I/we need this deep work within to support Life thriving above ground to help us come to more deeply know, understand, and live into what I’ve called ‘the truth of our Oneness’, a focal point in my life that’s shared and reflected here in The Pivot.

I believe the knowing of Oneness is in us all, an untapped well waiting to be tapped, so that its nectar can flow into our lives. As the sweet nectar flows, we navigate daily choices through an ever emerging and evolving lens that helps us align those choices with the whole of which we are a part. Choices that invite, nurture, support the more beautiful world we long to live in and leave behind for generations to come.

I’m saddened by the toxicity I encounter – both that within me and in the world. Toxicity that seems to permeate every aspect of life. I think of the toxic chemicals, created after deeming that certain pests are villains that must be eliminated. Chemicals that kill our soil and pollute our water and our air. We are starving with full bellies as we ignore that Nature knows better than we the ecosystems She needs. And, She knows how to create them.

This same villainizing infects our body politic, with each ‘side’ taunting and demonizing the other, choking out thoughtful, reasoned deliberation and civil discourse.

If we are willing to look beyond the surface, we can see that toxicity rises from believing we are separate – from one another, from our planet, from the cosmos. For when we know that we are One, we will, I believe, begin to unwind and set aside our toxic choices.

There is no single right path or solution. We must each begin with where we are, questioning with care, to discover our own personal pivot points and evoke our will to pivot, not for ourselves, but for the greater good of All.

I’ve long decried the degeneration of civil discourse anchored in demonization. Yet this day finds me contributing to that which I decry, observing myself silently cheering for what seems to be a victory of one villain over the other in last night's presidential debate. I challenged myself to watch and to watch with as much non-judgement and open-mindedness as I could muster, desiring to bring forth my lens of Oneness in whatever way I could. And I did so having read Charles Eisenstein’s timely essay, a long, challenging read that invites us to look beneath each side’s demonizing the other, into the very belly of the whale that calls be transformed. Then, having looked and questioned our motivations and our  questioning, to ask compassionate questions that may help us get to the root causes of our multi-crises. He says,

The revolution we are seeking has compassion at its core. Compassion asks earnestly, “What is it like to be you?” “How did you come to be as you are?” “What is your story?” “What are your circumstances?” “What are your hopes?” “What are your fears?” “What do you want?” “What do you need?” And, as Orland Bishop says, “How must I be, so that you may be free?”

Such questions are for me like rich compost for soil and soul, restoring and regenerating healthy ecosystems outside and in. Are we willing to pivot to such deep, personal questions and care – not to change our vote, but to cast our old habits of separation on the compost pile of that which is decaying, and in doing so is growing nourishing new life of possibility? Am I?

Gentle Flow

The Ubiquitous SOULution

Grandmother Spider, The Weaver of Life

Move yourself into the idea of unity in the universe thereby allowing yourself to become fluid to all the experiences of the universe. Gregge Tiffen

The threads of wholeness, oneness, unity wove tightly into my week as I was reminded that the unity I seek in and for our world lies within my own journey to knowing that I am One with all Life. It’s as if every event that life presents points to this truth. Within the discord that I experience internally and witness in the world lies the potential to know.

Among the many threads in the weave was a reminder, sent by a dear advisor and friend, of a transcript from a talk that Gregge Tiffen offered decades ago, ‘United You Stand’. Much that I encountered reading and from varied media echoed the theme.

In a world whose systems are built on the rocky foundation of separation and division it is challenging to move beyond unity being more than just a concept that sounds and feels good but isn’t ‘realistic’. Yet in the words of Anodea Judith, “We can no longer afford the old, tired wars of you and me, us and them, this and that, instead of celebrating the amazement of each other’s differences. We must no longer see Heaven and Earth as separate concepts, as if the cosmic mother and father had filed for divorce and were splitting up the property, instead of being the ultimate lovers of eternity that gave birth to everything we know.”

She continues, “A world chosen for love is evolution’s next enterprise.” Love, it seems, is the path to unity just as recognizing unity is the path to love. Unity and love. Wholeness and Oneness. All is One. One is all. Time to upgrade realistic.

There are countless paths to bring the reality of the truth of unity to fruition here on our planet home. While each is different, the paths begin at the same choice point: Here. Now. Me. You.

As just one way to bring the idea of unity into practice, Tiffen suggests an experiment imagining oneself as the true nature of water. Think ocean. Think drop of water. He says, “It is a matter of saying to yourself, I exist everywhere. I do not only exist here. Then allow yourself to pull apart and become like a drop of water in the ocean.” He concludes, “You are the ubiquitous soul.”

Living in the high desert mountains, sand is a more apt and accessible metaphor for me. I am a grain of sand. I am the sand. Putting my bare feet in a sandy wash deepens this connection. Simply being present to the wonders in the woods that present themselves each day: the wispy gossamer of a spider web strand, nuthatch revealing a tiny hideaway in a tree trunk, a spider with barely visible legs, the twists and turns made by limbs over time. Each an opportunity to remember, ‘I am that. I am.’

Another of my practices is to intentionally seek and tune in to messages and examples of individuals and groups who choose this path. Examples abound, like the intrepid 96-year-old woman who shares the wisdom and awe of her “second childhood” in this short video To Be In Awe. (Watch it here.) As I watched and listened, I felt a sense of awe wash over me. She is living, fully it seems, into the unity, the Oneness that is Life beyond the illusions of division and separation that are all too often labelled ‘reality’.

For me, in her wisdom she knows that she is the ubiquitous soul, demonstrating her SOULution, with each choice she makes and step she takes.  

I am the sand … AND the ubiquitous soul …

Through Dissolution to SOULution

Pinecone dripping …

In the journey to its flowering, human consciousness has a decisive pivot point when it is thrust inwards toward self-revelation. Once this occurs, an individual shifts away from a life direction dependent on external events and opens more and more to a conscious inner life guided by love and wisdom and the passionate quest to be an embodiment of abiding truth. We call this axis of transformation “soul awakening”. James O’Dea – Soul Awakening Practice: Prayer, Contemplation, and Action

In the wake of a week with challenges in how I relate with others and as I prepare to journey more deeply within in the coming weeks, I was drawn to the simple beauty of James O’Dea’s Soul Awakening Prayer.

Soul Awakening

Heart Opening

Light Shining

Love Flowing

Wounds Dissolving

Peace Radiating

Still feeling some hurt from having experienced dissonance and dissolution along with dissatisfaction (with both self and others), I wanted to skip right into wounds dissolving. Patch up my hurt and move on. But as I read the prayer aloud several times, I felt myself begin to soften into myself as I put my attention on Soul Awakening. From somewhere deep within I felt a longing rising from which my heart opens, my light shines, and love flows, dissolving wounds and opening the way to radiating peace with such brilliance that I hold no awareness of ‘other’ and the voice of my critical eye/I pivots from judgement to live in and speak from discernment and compassion. Sharp. Clear. Home.

Taking the prayer with a bundle of gratitude into an early morning walk, I recalled that in the early 1990s when I began my coaching career, or perhaps even before that, I had a sense of divine order in the Universe, that everything held a purpose in manifesting some divine plan.

Like the seeds of all plant life, seeds within the pinecone hold the code to their purpose. To the beauty within, gestating until their time. All Nature seems to operate in this knowing, synergistic way. Despite evidence to the contrary, I sensed that the same is true for each of us humans. ‘If only we could know and live our purpose, our world could experience peace,’ I recall thinking.

While my belief, indeed my dream, hasn’t changed, I’m growing in understanding that what most spiritual traditions call the ‘soul’ is where our true purpose, that seed given us by Source (Creator, the God of our individual understanding) lives. This isn’t a new idea. Throughout time spiritual traditions have guided, even implored, us to look within to where our true essence lives and to follow the unique guidance planted in each of us as our purpose, our role in a divine plan.

But alas, in separation we have turned away from this Truth of our being, resulting in making choices that have created the multiple crises of our time. We, along with our ancestors are each culpable, in the state of our world today.

But our journey, our pivot, is not about blame or guilt. Rather it is knowing that we each have a part in seizing the opportunities that these crises present. To be present with them as gifts, the presents that they are to nurture the evolution of our consciousness. And then to move with heart-felt light and love to dissolve all that which is not in service to Life. ALL Life!

There is no single path, no one formula, no ‘right’ solution. Rather it is our individual responsibility to seize the opportunities of this ‘decisive pivot point’, turning within to discover our own SOULution, trusting that we will harmonize with the music of the cosmos.

Imagine for a moment the beauty of the planetary eco-system THAT will create.

The Naga Shrine on Cottonwood Creek

Gratitude Step by Step

Moonset

Gratitude is not a passive response to something we have been given; gratitude arises from paying attention, from being awake in the presence of everything that lives within and without us. Gratitude is not necessarily something that is shown after the event; it is the deep, a priori state of attention that shows we understand and are equal to the gifted nature of life. David Whyte (Consolations: The Solace, Nourishment and Underlying Meaning of Everyday Words)

Attention must be paid. Arthur Miller (Death of a Salesman)

‘Paying’ attention is an investment that returns joy, peace, satisfaction, and more.

I generally think of myself as grateful, holding gratitude for and in my life, and generous in expressing gratitude to and for others. I was carried into deeper reflection by experiences during Monday’s powerful full moon along with reflections on other experiences which guided me to David Whyte’s essay Gratitude and carried me into deeper reflection.

On the morning of the full moon after witnessing a glorious, pre-dawn moonset, I sauntered along a familiar path gathering wildflower blossoms to create a mandala I’d envisioned a few days before. I felt deep gratitude for the beauty, the flowers, and for the spaciousness in my life to engage in this way. Asking permission before cutting each bloom, I did my best to listen for their replies. Indeed, one sunflower said, “No, not me,” and another piped up, “Me please. I want to go.”

Reflecting later I recalled the time years ago when I was creating the labyrinth in the woods out back. As I walked along roads in the area rock beings caught my attention and seemed to ask if they could come and be a part of the creation. Almost always I honored their request, and I continue to experience rock beings in this way from time to time. Each offering a sense of where it belongs and its purpose.

“In your morning sitting space,” a beautiful, green-tinted Crestone Conglomerate recently said when I saw it on a barefoot walk in the sand. “Hold me to your heart.” I honored the call and continue to hold this being to my heart when I feel drawn to do so. Each time I feel its comfort much like holding a favorite blankie or my stuffed, ‘Hobbes-like’ tiger (you do know Calvin and Hobbes, don’t you?).

Remembering such experiences kindles gratitude, and reading Whyte’s words, gratitude rises from paying attention, reminds me to nourish mindfulness. ‘Paying’ attention is an investment that returns joy, peace, satisfaction, and more. ‘Paying’ attention is free. And it is freeing. Can we ‘afford’ not to ‘pay’ attention? Are we perhaps living in and witnessing the consequences of not paying attention or of investing our attention unwisely? I wonder.

Returning from my full moon morning saunter and walking the labyrinth with a sense of gratitude, the phrase ‘make each step gratitude’ rose in me. I placed my attention there, gently guiding it back as my mind attempted to wander.  I wondered how our world might be if we cultivated the rich soil of gratitude with each and every step we take. What might be possible if we paid greater attention to all the beings on our planet home and, indeed, to Mother Earth, Gaia, herself?

As I feel this clear connection between paying attention and gratitude, I see them both as necessary elements for living in the Truth of Oneness, of knowing our divine connection to ALL Life, and to the very Source of Life itself.

May each step we take in the days and weeks ahead be attentive, intentional steps that nourish mindful gratitude for ourselves and for ALL Life. So Be It! 

Full Moon Mandala

Year 12 Begins!

Soft Grass in the Morning Light

Today, like every other day, we wake up empty

and frightened. Don’t open the door to the study

and begin reading. Take down a musical instrument.

Let the beauty we love be what we do.

There are hundreds of ways to kneel and kiss the ground. Jelaluddin Rumi

Waking not frightened but feeling empty this morning, I recalled this Rumi verse that I’d read a few days back. So, I didn’t grab a pen and open my journal, my version of the morning door opening to the study. The instrument I took down was not musical. I grabbed my walking stick and headed out the front door.

I found the earth soft and moist, and the grasses were glistening from last evening’s rain. Rock beings, shining after the overnight shower, seemed to be singing along with the many active, vocal winged ones.

Steeped in the visual, sensory beauty of early morning in the foothills of the sacred Sangre de Cristo Mountains, the emptiness lifted. I felt full of life and with curiosity about what would emerge in this post, the first of my 12th year of weekly postings. Soft and bright like the verdant grasses at first light. Grateful. One with all that is. I am that, I am!

A bit further along, rounding a corner and seeing an overturned container and garbage strewn about, my near-bliss softness instantly turned as prickly as thorns on the cactus that grows alongside the grasses and wildflowers. ‘Wake up people, this is bear country!,’ was the kindest thought I could muster. I bristled as I snapped a photo to send to the absentee owner of the house that’s rented as an Airbnb. … And then…

… Then I remembered what I know: that I am One with ALL that is. Even those whose choices and judgement I do not align with or understand. How might our world be if we all learned to ‘live with the bears’ whatever their form? How might my life be …?

I find myself invigorated by carrying such questions. There is heart-felt beauty in discovering the pivots necessary so that I may live more fully aligned with this Truth that I am one with All that IS. With my fellow humans – each and every one. With all of Nature’s creatures – including those I experience as pesky and that I may desire to control. With the weather in all its expressions and with Gaia and her diverse forms of expression and communication. With unseen life above and below. With planets, stars, galactic beings – all the elements of the cosmos and beyond.

And that is how this 12th year of The Pivot begins, much as year 11 ended with last week’s post. The message isn’t new. The thread of our interconnectedness with one another, Nature, and cosmos has been woven into many posts since The SuccessZone began, August 15, 2013.

But in this pivotal time, the theme of pivoting from separation to Oneness, is emerging as my personal trajectory as well as the purpose and direction of my writing and presence in the world. It is time that we ReMember. And it is time that we kiss the ground as we embody this remembrance that we are All One. It is time to seek out, play with, and support those who are building this new world. Let’s do this!

Thanks for being with me on the journey!

Prickly Cacti

Beyond Battling, Beating, & Maintaining Separation

Crestone Conglomerate

Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing,

there is a field. I’ll meet you there.

When the soul lies down in that grass,

the world is too full to talk about.

Ideas, language, even the phrase ‘each other’

doesn’t make any sense. Jalal ad-Din Muhammad Rumi

 Beyond our habits and the systems of separation from which they rise and are fed is the truth of our existence: we are One with all that is. We are in the midst of what can, if we cooperate in co-creation, be a seismic shift from the lead weight of separation consciousness to the uplifting reality of Unity. Are we willing to invite our souls to lie down in that grass and move beyond the language, ideas, and actions that feed separation? Am I?

Are we willing to set aside our habits of division and othering and come to a feast that honors All Life and commits to finding ways forward in cooperation and communion with one another, with Mother Earth and all her creatures? Am I?

In this evolutionary time when change is upon us at warp speed and the world we’ve known is crumbling, which path will we choose? Will we set aside our souls to enter the battlefields of competition and survival? Or will we invite our souls to lie down in the grass and listen? To self. To one another. To Gaia. To the cosmos.

At that macro level, the choice seems so clear, so obvious, even easy. But as we’ve all heard, the devil is in the details. It’s in looking at the micro, the choices we make with every step and every breath, that the opportunity exists to call forth and co-create Unity. To gather. Together.

The daily choices of life – what we say and to whom, what we do, how we be, what we consume, where we invest (time, energy, capital) – reflect which path we’ve chosen. The systems of separation have given us templates that define success and give us the steps it requires to ‘be successful’. As I look out at that world its so-called success doesn’t look so good to these eyes.

How is it that all the drops of water flow in the creek? Together. How is that the varied elements in our Crestone Conglomerate rocks came together and live as in beauty as one? What does Nature have to teach us about success?

This wasn’t the track I began writing earlier this morning when I revisited questions from last week’s post that I’d carried forward into my week along with the intention that they inform, show me opportunities for weaving threads of unity into the fabric of life. Indeed, they did so, showing me where I bristle and (over)react and where I’m invited to grow more fully into my BEing as one of the One. Pointing to my misaligned micro choices.

I noticed the prevalence of language that separates – beating, battling, controlling, and so much more: a colleague ‘battling’ grasshoppers in the garden; a friend sharing a book about ‘beating’ cancer (and an angel friend who pointed out the violent language of the title); my own swats at pesky mosquitos and, even worse, a snarky reaction to her well-intentioned communication. No matter how well intentioned, thoughtful, organic, et cetera, each maintains the status quo of separation. Of control. Of dominance. Of winning and losing.

All too often we think (and we’re told) that we must do big things to change the world. I disagree. I think we need a groundswell of little things to wake up to who we BE:  to shift our language; to examine our choices and align them with what the world we want to create; to seek out allies to collaborate with; to listen and respond to all Life with an open heart. To harmonize inside and out.

May we each find our path to the Field that Rumi calls us to and, as my friend, author Rivera Sun suggests in The Dandelion Insurrection: Be kind. Be connected. Be unafraid.

Morning at Cottonwood Creek

From Judgement to Curiosity ... & Beyond

Wispy Morning Clouds

People typically see others through a self-referential lens, and thus are driven by the polarities of gaining and losing, having and lacking, seeking and rejecting, and, ultimately, success and failure. But whether in politics or everyday life, there are no real winners and losers, selfing and othering harms everyone. Guo Gu (Electing Freedom: Overcoming Despair – Lion’s Roar magazine) 

Anger is the deepest form of care, for another, for the world, for the self, for a life, for the body, for a family and for all our ideals, all vulnerable and all, possibly about to be hurt. … But anger truly felt at its centre is the essential living flame of being fully alive and fully here; it is a quality to be followed to its source, to be prized, to be tended, and an invitation to finding a way to bring that source fully into the world through making the mind clearer and more generous, the heart more compassionate, and the body larger and strong enough to hold it. David Whyte (Consolations: The Solace, Nourishment and Underlying Meaning of Everyday Words)

Picking up the pen early this summer morning these words came: We react with harsh, violent words yet we expect the world to be different. Judgement has replaced curiosity. I find it even in myself. I gulped and looked at the morning sky’s wispy clouds. I watched the feeding frenzy of the hummingbirds at the feeder. I sensed something deeper wanted to come forth.

The week past was an active one with more engagement, in person and online, than is my norm, participating in a weekend tour of several farms here in the valley and engaging in an exploration of tones and energetic frequencies via a fascinating online technology. Threads in the weave of my curiosity about health, personal and collective well-being, and, more broadly, the deeper workings of the energy that is Life.

Outside this active flow, but undoubtedly connected, I observed the extreme divides of dissonance in our world. Right here at home there were quick and volatile judgements in the wake of a fatal law enforcement/citizen event. Almost every day I notice harsh comments about something, the latest about the amount of rent being asked by someone willing to share their home. The following day I noticed a snide comment about a friend’s outreach to a particular political campaign.

I observed my own habit of judgement about these posts. My ‘self-referential lens’ bristles at such comments which further separation. I’m humbled to recognize this habit and to observe how it separates me not only from others, but also from knowing and living in the truth of Oneness, a way of being that for me holds the key to forging a new world. A world of compassion. A world of peace. A world of justice, freedom, and sovereignty that is our true nature. How is that we use tools that could bring us together to drive further wedges into our relationships?

I wondered what’s underneath my bristling, my othering, my judgement of others’ judgement and what’s at the root of these outbursts from others. What separates us from walking in the world knowing that we are One?

In asking and opening to possibilities, I was surprised to find anger, more specifically my habitual avoidance of it, as a thread in the fabric of possible answers. How might I pivot my relationship from avoidance to embrace, to dancing with anger as an “essential living flame of being fully alive and fully here”? How might it be to give anger space in the home of my life?  What relationship with anger would have me see that it has a role to play in living the very Oneness of my heart’s longing?

I carry these questions as I look to the days ahead, not as questions to which I must discover the answer, but as threads of curiosity, the weaving of which opens new possibilities for co-creating a world beyond our differences, a world in which we again know and live from our wholeness.

As he so often does, John O’Donohue offers additional threads for the fabric of life in his poem For Citizenship.

For Citizenship

In these times when anger

Is turned into anxiety

And someone has stolen

The horizons and mountains,

Our small emperors on parade

Never expect our indifference

To disturb their nakedness.

They keep their heads down

And their eyes gleam with reflection

From aluminum economic ground,

The media wraps everything

In a cellophane of sound,

And the ghost surface of the virtual

Overlays the breathing earth.

The industry of distraction

Makes us forget

That we live in a universe.

We have become converts

To the religion of stress

And its deity of progress;

That we may have courage

To turn aside from it all

And come to kneel down before the poor,

To discover what we must do,

How to turn anxiety

Back into anger,

How to find our way home.

John O'Donohue (from To Bless the Space Between Us)

Breakfast at the Local Diner

From Meta-crisis to Metamorphosis

Baby cones and every needle belong with the tree …

I love ‘belonging’ coming into beautiful clarity as more than unity expressing as diversity. All and everyone of us, just as every leaf on every tree, every snowflake, every drop of water, belongs to the entire sentience of our living and loving universe. And it is a journey where nothing has been wasted … to bring us to this point and invites us onwards into this great adventure of what awaits if we say ‘yes’ to this invitation. Dr. Jude Currivan (interview with Heather Ensworth – watch it here)

To be human is to belong. Belonging is a circle that embraces everything; if we reject it, we damage our nature. The word ‘belonging’ holds together the two fundamental aspects of life: being and longing, the Longing of our being and the Being of our longing. … True belonging is gracious receptivity. (John O’Donohue – Belonging: the Wisdom of Rhythm in Eternal Echoes: Exploring Our Hunger to Belong – read it here)

Watching this rich interview, I heard Jude Currivan’s words as if they’d been written bold and highlighted on a page. ‘This!’ I thought. To live more deeply into belonging is the truth that I long to live more fully into. To know beyond the construct of mind that I BElong. That WE belong.

This is after all the Truth of Oneness. And living into this, living this is an invitation to the evolutionary party of the age. We are invited to BE what we LONG for. We are invited to know from the inside out that we belong to the ‘entire sentience of our living and loving universe’. How can we be graciously receptive to what is so?

The great adventure in saying ‘yes’ is that of being hospice workers for the old systems of separation, gratefully releasing that which no longer serves and attending to birthing, nurturing, and building systems and structures that are grounded in and honor our belonging with All Life. With one another. With our Mother, Gaia. With the vast cosmos.

In an exercise years ago at a coaching conference, participants were invited into an hour of quiet, slowly walking around indoors and out, stopping at each thing we noticed, and quietly speaking, ‘I am that’. I am that chair. I am that door. I am that tree. I am that beautiful flower, that blade of grass I am that trash in the dumpster. I am That I am.

I revisited the exercise on a short segment of my morning walk, remembering its potency. As I write, I sense this potency as support for our journey to Oneness, to Interbeing, to a deeper knowing and living that we belong with All Life.

The practice is simple. And, sometimes challenging to engage. I can easily accept and speak ‘I am that hummingbird at the feeder’. Or those baby cones on the pine tree. ‘I am you, dear reader,’ I can speak with heart-felt gratitude. Easy. Yet my mind, well trained in separation, is challenged to accept and speak that I am an individual with whom I disagree, with those who do harm, with weapons, with vitriolic words. But, indeed, I am that too. I am each of those as surely as I am each member of the community that I love.

In this gap is our opportunity. The invitation. The path of our evolving to a new level of wholeness. A new reality. All is part of this living, loving universe. All is part of this evolutionary impulse to pivot from crisis to opportunity, or as Currivan suggests, “from meta-crisis to metamorphosis”.

At the crossroads of choice, to what will I/we give our attention and to what will we belong in so doing? Will we listen to the doom and gloom of meta-crisis and follow along with those who continue to try to solve the crises with the consciousness of separation, the very thinking that created them?

Or will we invest our attention, our energy, our lives in the evolutionary impulse of metamorphosis that invites us to break free of the cocoon of separation that has held us for far too long?

Every choice we make matters to the greater whole of life. In those choices let’s be butterflies! Let’s fly!

Every drop of water belongs with the creek … Every sunbeam belongs with the cosmos …

Vulnerability: From Avoidance to Embrace

Morning at the Creek

Vulnerability is not a weakness, a passing indisposition, or something we can arrange to do without. Vulnerability is not a choice. Vulnerability is the underlying, ever-present and abiding undercurrent of our natural state. To run from vulnerability is to run from the essence of our nature… David Whyte (Consolations: The Solace, Nourishment and Underlying Meaning of Everyday Words)

I’ve been sitting with what to write in the wake of violent events for some time. It seems an unavoidable question these days especially after last weekend’s attempted assassination.

Just after 9/11 I wrote an essay shared with colleagues and friends, Most Important Now is What We Think. I shared it in a weekly post some four years ago as we navigated the Covid pandemic.

We feed ourselves and we feed the collective with our thoughts, our words, our deeds. Healthy food in multiple forms surrounds us, reminding us of who and how we need to be in tumultuous times. Yet all too often we grab junk food.

I think of my friend, author, activist Rivera Sun’s words from The Dandelion Insurrection: Be Kind. Be Connected. Be Unafraid. Simple. And not so easy in our reactive world. Choosing this way of being requires us to be mindful. To think before we speak. And perhaps it asks that we be willing to be vulnerable, willing to discover and to speak our deep truth. Willingness to not join the chorus of negativity that pervades media and can so easily reel us in.

A Facebook meme currently making the rounds offers a reminder: “Post wisely over the next months. Contribute to discourse, not division. Check your facts. Resist memes and cheap digs. Create beautiful content. We can transcend the bitterness and be better, even when we disagree.”

Yes, I get that I’m sharing a meme that suggests resisting memes, but this one is near and dear to my heart, a heart visited with pangs of sadness as I saw cruel and crude comments posted after the attempted assassination of Donald Trump. Some of them were posted by friends and revered colleagues whom I know and love, and all prompted in me to wonder yet again ‘what will it take for us collectively to understand that our every thought, word, and deed is contributing to the collective and to what we experience in our world?’

Yes. My thoughts, words, and actions. Your thoughts, words, and actions. You and me, not just those of the talking heads whose words and deeds all too often seem hollow and desperate. Each is a vote either for continuing the discord of separation, polarization, and violence OR for taking a step toward unity consciousness and co-creating that as our reality on Mother Earth. We all matter to the greater whole!

As I often do when settling in to write this weekly post, I’d pulled a book from the nearby shelf, David Whyte’s Consolation: The Solace, Nourishment and Underlying Meaning of Everyday Words (I LOVE this book!). Opening it to the contents page, I’d wondered what word would step forth. Courage? Maybe crisis? Despair? Anger? Honesty? Just as the book had a few moments earlier, ‘vulnerability’ came forward. I sensed it was the needed word. I read the short essay, and then I knew.

Vulnerability is not a weakness, a passing indisposition, or something we can arrange to do without. Vulnerability is not a choice. Vulnerability is the underlying, ever-present and abiding undercurrent of our natural state. To run from vulnerability is to run from the essence of our nature; the attempt to be invulnerable is the vain attempt to become something we are not and, most especially, to close off our understanding of the grief of others. More seriously, in refusing our vulnerability we refuse the help needed at every turn of our existence and immobilise the essential, tidal and conversational foundations of our identity.

To have a temporary, isolated sense of power over all events and circumstances is a lovely, illusionary privilege, and perhaps the prime and most beautifully constructed conceit of being human – and especially of being youthfully human – but it is a privilege that must be surrendered with that same youth, with ill health, with accident, with the loss of loved ones who do not share our untouchable powers, powers eventually and most emphatically given up as we approach our last breath.

The only choice we have as we mature is how we inhabit our vulnerability, how we become larger and more courageous and more compassionate through our intimacy with disappearance; our choice is to inhabit vulnerability as generous citizens of loss, robustly and fully, or conversely as misers and complainers, reluctant and fearful, always at the gates of existence but never bravely and completely attempting to enter, never wanting to risk ourselves, never walking fully through the door.

I read it aloud. I read it again. I listened to Whyte himself read it as part of an interview some years ago (listen here!)

I saw vulnerability as a doorway that I must walk through more fully and more generously on my journey in this chapter of life. I saw unpleasant glimpses of my futile attempts to avoid the natural vulnerability that is life here and now when I forget Source. I see that it’s time for me to pivot from avoiding vulnerability to embracing (or at least befriending) her. I sense vulnerability’s gifts and consider how I can open to receive them.

In the conflicts and violence of our world I see the high cost of collective efforts to avoid vulnerability. We favor guns over guitars, propaganda over truth, prisons over restorative justice, protection from over engagement with others, and so much more.

So, I move into this day, putting my toes in the stream of vulnerability, moving from avoidance to exploration, and then on to befriending and hopefully embrace. Where will opening to vulnerability help heal our fractured world? I wonder …

Toes IN!

BEing and Being In Isles of Coherence

Metaphors for a Rocky, Prickly World

When a system is far from equilibrium small islands of coherence in a sea of chaos have the capacity to lift the entire system to a higher order. Ilya Prigogine – Chemist & Nobel Laureate

On an early walk this morning, rocks and cacti caught my attention. As systems show their dark sides and begin to crumble, the rocks and cacti seem to represent the chaos in our world. Times are rocky and we may find ourselves feeling prickly as we experience the prickliness of others. How far we are from equilibrium. Such is the chaos of creation, the old must fall to make space for the new.

A few paces down the path two blooms on a small, lone plant brought a smile. ‘Yes,’ the flower seemed to say, ‘and I’m here to bloom amidst it all!’

These metaphors walked with me as I continued along, and the phrase ‘isles of coherence’ joined us. I noticed their presence along with the inner peace of ease and comfort as I sauntered along.

Returning to the sacred land I’m blessed to steward as the sun’s first rays reached the woods out back, I realized that, like the little flower on the rocky path, this place is an isle of coherence for me. It is home, the ecosystem where I thrive. It is where I feel grounded and safe while recognizing that ‘it’ is not the source of my security. It is a place of beauty that holds the wisdom of the ages. A place where unseen life thrives as part of a larger ecosystem. A place with much more information than I’m aware of. A place to listen, observe, and learn.

How grateful I am for this place, this life, this expanding and deepening awareness.

My walking companions stayed with me as I settled in to write a bit later. The rocks and cacti, a familiar part of the landscape, took on a new symbolic meaning. The phrase ‘isles of coherence’ felt familiar as well, yet I wasn’t in touch with a specific remembrance of encountering it, so I turned to my friendly search engine to inquire. Prigogine’s quote above emerged in the first entry, a rich article Islands of Coherence by Stephen Posner, PhD. [link: https://www.garrisoninstitute.org/islands-of-coherence/]

A quick read reminded me of the many islands of coherence being co-created in our world as well as right here in my community (and most likely yours!). Emergent systems aligned with Nature and honoring the interconnectedness of all Life. Initiatives that are fair and just to all/for all. Farmers and ranchers who are regenerating soil while growing healthy, nourishing food. And more. All aiming to co-create the more beautiful world our hearts know is possible (thank you Charles Eisenstein), not from calculations of mind and goals of bottom-line profit or winning some competition. Not from maintaining the false security we so often place in the material world, a job or business, but from open hearts listening to and guided by wisdom of ages past. Wisdom that holds the memory of living in the reality of Oneness, that we are each part of a greater whole: wisdom all to uncommon in today’s world.

From the morning journey I was reminded of the importance of choices we each make about how to BE in and with the chaos in the world. Our choices matter as each one contributes something to the greater whole.

Do I put my attention on the chaos and inevitable fear that joins it?  Or do I seek and support the islands of coherence of an emergent, beautiful world?

The choice seems so simple, yet the forces of the old fight to maintain their grip. Commitment and vigilance are required to seek, find, and co-create new, heart-based, coherent systems and practices that will build this new world.

I was reminded as well that in order to strengthen my capacity to make and support creating these frequencies of coherence, I need to be in and connected to supportive ecosystems and islands of coherence, right here at home, in the sacred woods out back and beyond in local community and community around the globe.

Cutting the ties of the old that bind, seeking the uncommon wisdom of the new for prickly, rocky times. Choosing to be part of lifting the entire system to a higher order.

Blooming Right Here!