Living Into Sovereignty

Art in the Afternoon Sky

There’s a sense of sovereignty that comes from life on a mountain. Tara Westover

Muse woke me before dawn this morning with this gentle nudging: Sometimes one must get in a box to know just how that box doesn’t fit. For only when one knows the details of how something doesn’t fit can one begin to design and create what does.

Hmmm … I knew almost instantly what Muse was referring to: a box of the legal/medical system I’ve recently experienced.

I’m in the process of attending to some life decisions that I need make, updating wishes and instructions for when my time in this vehicle is complete. For a while I’ve been ‘trying on’ (actually, trying to make fit) the language presented as choices by the legal and medical systems (no, I’m not about to hop on my soapbox about that, so stay with me).

None of their choices felt ‘just right’, so I chose the ones that seemed to fit the best, settling for less than the perfect fit I desired. I did so because I wanted to be done AND because I didn’t see any other possibilities. I was in the system’s box, compromising my sovereignty and my wishes to fit so that I could check the ‘completed’ box on my ‘to do’ list.

Somehow it didn’t occur to my inner rebel to look outside that box for other possibilities.

That prompting came in a conversation with a trusted friend and advisor who with deep conviction challenged me to, “write your own words!”. Gulp. Say what? I can do that?

I was at once embarrassed (Why didn’t I think of that? How could I allow myself to get so trapped in the system’s box?). And I was relieved. With her words, the possibility of ‘having my cake and eating it too’ opened.

I could execute the ‘close but not a perfect fit’ documents as written, thus relieving the pressure that what I had in place didn’t reflect my wishes at all.

And I could declare that executing these documents doesn’t close the door to creating that ‘just right’ fit. I can take time to explore, co-create, and discover how to implement language that’s ‘just right’: language that fits my understanding and beliefs about life and (so-called) end of life, as well as my desires for comfort as I exit this physical body. Then I can work with my attorney to add whatever legalese is necessary.

In choosing to live more fully into my sovereignty, I feel the fresh air of empowerment and freedom. This is how life is intended to be but doing so is not easy in a world that prefers we choose from its boxes, boxes designed not to honor our free will and sovereignty as universal beings, but to control. I’m excited to explore and discover in what other life domains I may have boxed myself in, not remembering that I am the co-creator of this life.

Muse gives a nod and posits a query about the collective: Is it any wonder that there is such anger and angst in your world? No matter how conscious one is, this conflict is ever present in all. It seems that the more conscious we are of the conflicts and constraints imposed by our systems the more at choice and sovereign we can be. Perhaps as we raise our awareness, we’ll be better able to build sustainable, sovereign community systems. And that, suggests Muse is a story for another day.

Cheerful Morning

Pivoting to the Feminine

The Beauty and Softness of a Winter Morning

Western women will save the world. His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama

Several threads woven through my week focus on the idea, the necessity really, of integrating feminine principles and energy fully into our culture. Wikipedia lists the following as traits of the feminine:  nurturance, sensitivity, sweetness, supportiveness, gentleness, warmth, passivity, cooperativeness, expressiveness, modesty, humility, empathy, affection, tenderness, and being emotional, kind, helpful, devoted, and understanding. Who among us would not agree that more expressions of these qualities will make the world a better place?

Women as well as expressions of these principles were, from my perspective, front and center in both the Inauguration of President Biden last week and in the new President’s first week of executive actions and his communication with we the people.  I found that refreshing, inspiring, and hopeful.

His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama is famously quoted for saying that 'Western women would save the world' at the Vancouver Peace Summit in 2009. He went on to say "Some people may call me a feminist...But we need more effort to promote basic human values — human compassion, human affection. And in that respect, females have more sensitivity for others' pain and suffering."

Those words came to mind instantly when Alice Walker’s poem 'Calling All Grand Mothers' published in 2010 landed in my inbox, giving further voice to the urgency of this pivot. 

Calling All Grand Mothers

We have to live
differently
 
or we
will die
in the same
 
old ways.
 
Therefore
I call on all Grand Mothers
everywhere
on the planet
to rise
and take your place
in the leadership
of the world ….

You can read the rest of this timely, poignant poem from Hard Times Require Furious Dancing here:

The feminine is not solely about what we DO, but rather how and who we BE.  It is not about gender or sexual preference. Men, women, LGBT, straight, all of us have access to the energy that is feminine. 

It is about the perspectives we hold in life and the beliefs and actions that follow. A few days ago a Facebook post shared by a friend related a conversation between two men talking over a beer. One got up saying he was going to go 'wash the dishes'. The other seemed surprised and said "I don't help my wife." The man going to wash the dishes replied that he wasn't 'helping his wife', that he lived in the home and had a responsibility to participate in its care. That represents collaboration, cooperation, empathy and so many other feminine principles in action!

A deep knowing that ‘we have to live differently’ has long been a theme running through these weekly muses and my life in general.  I often ask myself ‘what do I need to shift to be a better partner on and to the planet?’.  Powerfully weaving more feminine threads into my expressions of life seems to be an element of the answer. Join me?

Zadie Byrd’s New Friend

Revisiting Living True to Our Roots

Gentle , Nurturing Beauty of Cottonwood Creek

Every celestial body has definitive root characteristics. The root characteristic of this particular planet is that it is a receptive womb. Planet Earth is female and produces a mothering, nurturing base. Gregge Tiffen (Learning Without Experience Is A Bell Without A Clapper – September 2008)

We ARE the Planet. The Planet is US.

As I settled in with the muse this morning, I thought about a response someone shared about last week’s post: Female energy is nurturing and we need more of that right now. It reminded me that the earth is a feminine planet. Her nature is receptive, nurturing. 

I recalled a comment I made in conversation earlier this week that current events are asking us to discover what we think are our limits and move beyond them, understanding our limitlessness. We tend to think of going beyond limits as a masculine thing, pushing beyond limits. That led me back to a post from three years ago. For me it captures the essence of the opportunities before us today. It seems a logical next musing after exploring nature’s extremes last week. And, so today, I share it again …

The visual beauty of the earth here in the southern Rocky Mountains where I’m blessed to live lies in stark contrast to the visual appearance of the devastation we’ve witnessed over the past month. Forest fires, hurricanes, floods, drought have ravaged the earth and seriously impacted millions around the globe.

Here, it’s easy to experience the nurturing touch of the Planet through my senses. Some days the smell of the pines is so strong that I can taste it. To touch a tree is to feel its strength and at the same time its vulnerability. The gentle flow of a mountain stream has been one of my favorite sounds for decades – long before I moved to these mountains. And, the landscape – from the valley floor to the top of the soaring 14,000 foot peaks – is a visual feast every day, every season. Here, even on the coldest, windiest days, I feel the receptivity and nurturing that is the way of Earth.

Likewise that same root – receptivity, mothering, nurturing – is present in the midst and wake of so-called ‘natural’ disasters. Beyond the sense that something old is making way for something new, we witness some of the best in ourselves. Neighbors help neighbors. Strangers help those in need, both up close and personal as well as from afar. These expressions represent the best of our living true to the root characteristics of our planet.

And, that - living true to our roots - is a requirement. It is necessary if we are to ever have a chance at creating lasting peace among all peoples of the planet. It is necessary if we as a species are to continue to inhabit Mother Earth. A sturdy pine does not grow from roots of tender grass. Only grass grows from those roots. Here are the root characteristics that I believe we are meant to live from:

We are meant to have dominion – loving, nurturing, receptive dominion – over the planet. We are not meant to dominate the planet or one another.

We are meant to be fed from the abundance that the earth provides. We are not meant to be gluttonous or to attempt to nourish ourselves with fake food or man’s laws disguised as laws of the Universe.

We are meant to manifest and to understand that everything we think, say and do manifests. From that understanding we can align ourselves with the true nature of the planet. We are not meant to suffer, rather we are meant to learn.

We are meant to adapt, to embrace change as a natural characteristic of the planet. We are meant to evolve. We are not meant to keep things, including ourselves, as they are or to try to return them to something that we or they were in the past.

As you go about your week, consider the roots that Mother Earth gifted you with when you came to the Planet. Are you aligned and living true to your roots?

An American Dipper doing her thing: Dipping in the Creek

Tapping Into Essence

Morning Trail - Heading for Home

Within any amount of knowledge is essence. It is the essence that produces wisdom, and it is wisdom that registers in consciousness. You are worth more than you or I can ever describe in human terms. You are irrepressible and invincible. Gregge Tiffen (Open Secrets: The Nature of Feminine Truth – March, 2011)

Gregge’s quote has been with me since yesterday morning when its wisdom leapt off the page and pulled me into the muse. (Yikes! “It’s only Wednesday”, I thought.)

On each walk with Zadie Byrd (yes, ‘Sadie’ has a new name that seems to perfectly fit her essence!) I looked deeply into the mountains, the trees, the rocks, and the vast valley recognizing the beauty that is nature’s essence. A neighbor called with produce to share, the essence of love.

Later ‘essence’ popped into a conversation with a colleague and friend as she updated me on her book, sharing that she is aiming to share the ‘essence’ of the women she’s profiling in the project, not long details of their stories.

Except perhaps when I was focused on organizing info for my tax return, the ‘essence muse’ was with me throughout the day. Perhaps on some unconscious level it was there as well.

In the evening, as I read several chapters of Rivera Sun’s prescient 2013 novel, The Dandelion Insurrection, with its underlying theme of love and the movement’s motto, “Be kind. Be connected. Be Unafraid.”, I saw more clearly than ever that love is the essence that weaves us together as humans on this planet. Indeed, love weaves the fabric of the Universe.

I surrendered to slumber knowing that ‘love is our essence’.  I woke this morning with a deep sense that love is our core. Not just mine, yours, our friends, family and those who share our views, EVERYone’s.

This isn’t a new idea of course, but the muse invited me to feel it more deeply, to embrace love as the essence that breathes worth and value into each of our lives, to more fully BE the love that makes us irrepressible and invincible. The muse reminded me that love is the essence of the Universe of which we are each part and parcel. What is true of the whole is true for its parts. That’s you, me, everything, and EVERYone.

I began to see love even at the core of fear and of hate, but that’s a musing for another day.

For now, look deeply into what you know. Look until you see the love embedded there. Use what you know with the love at its core, the same love that is your core as well. Love is my experiment for the week. Join me?

Zadie Byrd Marching Home with her Antler Find

Reclaiming Softness

Prickly Labyrinth Path

Your voice was meant to be a lullaby giving comfort to the weary and security to the young. Gregge Tiffen (The Journey Continues: Economical Rates of Progress – August, 2010)

The Eco-Heroine’s Journey … is a path to understanding how deeply enmeshed we are in the web of life on this planet. … it is an antidote to the swashbuckling action-adventure that is the Hero’s Journey: it is a woman’s journey, based on a woman’s way of being in the world. Sharon Blackie (If Women Rose Rooted: The Journey to Authenticity and Belonging)

I just finished reading a book. I didn’t want it to end. And, I wanted it to end so I could begin to discover what it will come to mean in my life.

Sharon Blackie’s If Women Rose Rooted changed me – with my permission, my invitation in fact – in ways that today I only sense. I know few, if any, words that would do justice to how this book touched my soul. Read it!

For a while now my muses (surely I must have more than one!) have guided me to reflect on the nature of the feminine, a part (and only a part) of which is the softness so missing in today’s harsh world.  Blackie’s book arrived right on time to deepen that reflection, shining light on ideas I’d not yet considered and deepening my understanding of familiar themes.  

Having a sense of roots in a (geographic) place is a key point woven throughout the beautiful stories Blackie tells. My love this place from the vastness of the valley to the stunning beauty of the 14,000 foot peaks is no secret to anyone. I feel at home here, consistently nurtured by nature, and sometimes challenged by her harshness. From time to time, I’ve had a hunch there was more to know – really know at the deep soul level. Blackie’s book has inspired me to discover not only more of the stories about people and place, but to listen – really listen – to the land, the trees, the furry and feathered inhabitants. Perhaps, an awareness of the unseen, unheard beings in these woods and waterways will grace my knowing.

“Step out of and more deeply into your habits, your routines. Deepen your awareness.” I feel the subtle nudge of this message. And, I respond.

This morning, Cool Hand Luke and I forged a new route on our morning walk. When we returned home I walked the labyrinth as I often do. Today, though, I walked it barefoot. After dozen or so steps, each slow and gentle my feet seeking any softness they could find on ground made prickly with dried pine needles and broken pine cones, I sank first one foot, then the next under the surface. Softness! I found the softness of sand beneath the brambly surface. Softness! Like the crab soft under its hard shell. In the softness of the sand I experienced the softness of crab, symbol for the zodiac sign of Cancer, and this on a day when the moon is transiting that sign. Softness!

My journey continues, reclaiming softness and bringing my soft side more fully into the world. Not a particularly new or different journey, but the path has new illumination. I carry the beam, fueled with gratitude and joy and curiosity for this moment, the next, and beyond.

Come on Mom. It's not that prickly!