Breaking Habits and Patterns

Blanca Peak in the Sangre de Cristo range

This time calls for us to become more humane toward one another so that we move beyond the paradigm of separation to embrace one another and ALL life as our kin. We are called to BE and to live authentically in alignment with how life truly is.

Rising early this morning I built a fire in the woodstove to break the morning chill. Settling in to my habitual weather check before beginning to write, I discovered the internet down – no local weather, no email, no access to Zoom. Hmmmm… Perfect conditions for experimenting with adjustments to the morning and daily routines, especially since I want to feed Zadie Byrd earlier in the day to increase the time between her meals.

‘Zades’ looks confused as I begin preparing her breakfast before our morning walk and at a time I’m usually quietly journalling by the fire. When breakfast is served this four-legged lover of most all things ‘food’ needs a bit of coaxing to eat.  It feels strange to me as well, but as I go about the tasks of preparation the adjustment feels just right. I notice the easy flow and I begin to think about the weekly post: What wants to be shared today?

I remember an email newsletter that I’d thought about quoting and expanding on its theme, something like ‘sometimes the answer is not finding the answer’. The essence is that there are times when we need to stop, give ourselves time to reflect before we can know how to respond – themes that run through many posts and, indeed, my life (apologies to the great folks at Regenerate Change if I obliterated your focus).

I suspect that the reason the article grabbed my attention is that it reflects my longing for the deep peace and quiet of cold, snowy winter days when the hours of daylight pass quickly and the nights are long and dark.

Perhaps that sort of longing is what inspires people to decorate early for the holidays … but that (declares Muse) is a path not to tread this day.

l sense that my current longing for winter stems from the depth of intensity I feel in all of life, different from intense times in my past. I’m certain that my observations of global and national events is also a factor.

I see the intensity reflected in turmoil, rancor, and violence around the globe. I see it in Earth changes and in the planet speaking her language: earthquakes, fires, floods, volcanic eruptions, along with the beauty of new growth, vibrant health of some ecosystems, and the cycles of birth and death in all species.

This time calls for us to become more humane toward one another so that we move beyond the paradigm of separation to embrace one another and ALL life as our kin. We are called to BE and to live authentically in alignment with how life truly is.

This time asks us to break habits and patterns – from the feeding and care of ourselves and our beloved animal companions to the trigger-happy, warmongering reactions that have become all too frequent.

It requires that we break patterns of abuse – self-abuse and abuse of others in our thoughts, our words, our deeds – and that we live knowing that every human and every living thing has worth, has value, has purpose even in the darkest of times and conditions. Even, perhaps especially, when we ourselves feel unworthy or undeserving.

It requires crystal clear clarity to help us see beyond our old stories and into the creation of new stories that reflect the truth of who we are.

It invites us to BE and embody who we truly are – not who or what we (or the world’s old stories) dictate that we should be – and to embrace that we are each living in this turbulent time at what is the perfect, divine time for our soul’s development on its unique, infinite trajectory.

Humanity is calling, the Earth is calling, the cosmos is calling. How will we answer the call?

Nature’s Beauty in the Woods Out Back

Breaking Out of Habits

Dawn in the Sacred Sangres

The mystery and magic of being an individual is to live life in response to the deep call within, the call to become who we were dreamed to be. … Freedom … is the poise of soul at one with a life which honours and engages its creative possibility. John O’Donohue (Beauty: The Invisible Embrace)

Sitting out on the deck as the day began to dawn and walking before the sun rose over the sacred peaks of the Sangres, I broke free of the habitual winter routine this day. It’s transition time here. Pots of geraniums that spent their winter indoors called to move to their summer homes outdoors. Flannel sheets and blankets give way to cooler crisp organic cotton.

I feel deeply the creative possibility in small things: hands in the dirt, listening to birdsong call the day into being, care of Zadie Byrd, care of self, care of and reverence for this place. Listening for and imagining new stories for how life – mine and ours – can unfold. Allowing life to define itself and its facets rather than fitting life into an old story heard throughout my life as the way things are and the way things should be.

John O’Donohue’s words remind me of the beauty of being in the question, the mystery. Listening for  calls from within. Noticing what has my attention, what resonates, what doesn’t. Breaking habits of knowing and needing to know to allow wonder about how the mystery will unfold. Breaking habits of judgement to allow curiosity to discover a possibility for reverence and care.

After a long day with my hands in the dirt, I settled in last evening for a second listening to a recent Charles Eisenstein talk, Staying Sane in the Next Five Years [click here to watch]. I appreciate his thinking, his way of being, his kindred contrarian spirit, especially in this time when, for me, old stories are giving way, dissolving. New stories are on the rise.

The old stories based on half-truths and lies have become so dissonate in me/for me that I can barely follow them. Eisenstein calls this a time between stories. What we need in times of such transition is rest, care, attention to the call within, to what wants to rise, to mystery. We need time to grieve what seems lost so that we can hear clearly what wants to rise and what our part in that rising is. We need to break habits that tie us to the old. We need to let go. We need to call on grace.

And when we do, what new stories can rise? I envision new stories based on ancient truths of who we are, who we BE as humans in the web of life on this precious planet, a mere dot in the vast cosmos. Stories weaving new threads in existing webs of natural connection. Stories that hold reverence for ALL life. Stories that receive life. Stories that give.

Such stories are by no means a given. Old stories of control over and separation are trying to maintain our attention and will cleverly continue to endeavor to hold us in their grasp. A new coat of paint on an old story is not a new story, despite its fresh look.

So, this time between stories offers choices to each of us, individually and collectively. What habits must be laid to rest so that authentic new stories, new ways will rise? What stories will rise in us? What timelines will we follow? The answer my friends is in embracing the mystery of life unfolding! Are you in?

Dawn Over the San Luis Valley

Inviting Curiosity Amidst Chaos

A New Day Dawns - Curious What It Will Bring

You can apply curiosity to all your experiences in life. … Your own life is the parameter of your experience which is your own world. To begin to accept this provides you with the incentive to take responsibility for the power you have over your own world. Gregge Tiffen (Open Secrets: An Air of Optimism – May, 2011)

I started my morning feeling a touch of sadness and worry. I wondered what wanted my attention other than writing this weekly muse. As quickly as I asked, answers came: a strange dream of someone being humiliated publicly (ugh!), concern about Zadie Byrd, a memory of discovering Luke’s tumor about this time last year, and addressing the issue of mice in the house (more ugh!). Nothing earth-shaking or life threatening, just life. Let them go for now.

As I turned my attention to the muse, my first thought was of the world’s chaos and the battles being waged over power, power that is powerless when our agreement is taken away. Underneath the drama of the news, our individual power often lies wasted (to the glee of those “in” power, I imagine).  As we wake up and understand the world anew, any power over us is surely at risk.

As I gaze into the woods out back, I see beyond where I could just 10 days ago. The same is true out front. With the fire mitigation’s removal of undergrowth, I experience openness, an expansion of what’s now visible.

That goes both ways of course. Passersby on the road out front can see more of the Dragonfly House. Mentioning this to a dear colleague earlier this week, she suggested that it is a metaphor for my becoming more authentic and transparent. Now there is something for the muse to chew on for a bit!

The idea surely deserves consideration as I think about building a visual barrier of some sort out front. If my intention is to become more of my true, authentic, soul self, do I want to screen that off? Do I want to limit my ability to see what’s out in the world? My how a single suggestion invites curiosity!

Besides, ‘who am I?’ anyway? Now there’s a question to be curious over!

Asked through the ages, that question is fundamental to understanding our stories and the structures and institutions that we’ve created from those stories. They are imbedded in us, paradigms comprising the so-called ‘reality’ that we walk through each day.

As I gaze out at the world beyond these woods, that ‘reality’ is in chaos. Much of it is crumbling before our eyes, obsolete in the face of new discoveries about our true nature. Yet fighting to hang on. Known. Familiar. Comfortable, even with its discomforts.

We humans do that in life – hang on to habits and ways that no longer serve us. I smoked cigarettes and stayed in a marriage well beyond the time I knew that each was no longer good for me. Even today as I long for and open to a new, unfolding world, my invitation has conditions: I hold on to old habits and ways that are comfortable on some level, even in knowing that they inhibit the new from coming forth.

THIS is what really invites my curiosity! Even in my hesitancy, I invite the unfolding of a new world by exploring. What IS possible in a universe of infinite possibility? What are the worn out, disproven stories that continue to hang on until, with awareness, we stop using them as frameworks for our choices? How do I live in this world, yet withdraw my energy from systems that no longer work (health care, financial, etc. etc.)? I AM curious! You?

When things fall apart, the hopelessly radical becomes common sense. Charles Eisenstein (The More Beautiful World Our Hearts Know is Possible)

This week, I invite you to be curious and “hopelessly radical” about the deeply imbedded stories, the paradigms, of our world. What is our responsibility – individually and collectively - for using our personal power to lay the old to rest and invite a new world with new realities into being? How can we make radical the new “common sense”? In short, where will we pivot?

I found this episode of Gregg Braden’s Missing Links series a thought-provoking place to engage in this exploration. I hope you will as well!

Onward! Upward! Pivoting Into the New!

Openness and Expanded Visibility in the Woods Out Back

Revealing Habits

It’s a Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood

As we value experiences above things, we get more conscious and more open to more profound and more complex experiences. Nisha J. Manek, M.D. (Bridging Science and Spirit: The Genius of William A. Tiller’s Physics and the Promise of Information Medicine)

Now is the time to take the corrective measures to break out of old habit patterns. Gregge Tiffen (Open Secrets: Revealing Habits – February, 2011)

An experience this week and the awareness that it presented reminded me of just how much our habits are like the water a fish swims in. Like that water, many – perhaps most – of our habits are transparent to us, operating as our navigation system through daily life. Generated over lifetimes of experiences, our habits are hidden drivers on this sojourn.

Without awareness, habits rule. With awareness, we create choice.

Sadly, in our culture today we’ve adopted habits that are anchored in fear. As I discovered for myself this week, we probably don’t need to look beyond our front door, to identify habits generated from fear. Collectively beyond our door, fear drives chaos and divisiveness in the world. Perhaps it’s time to assess our habits, at least some of them. Perhaps it’s time to anchor them in qualities of the Universe, like love, peace, light rather than in the fear that has us seek to control that which is uncontrollable.

This muse emerged from a conversation last week, in which, a friend shared an experience she had while having her vision checked. When she was choosing the ‘better’ of two choices, she realized that while one choice offered clearer vision, the other choice ‘felt’ better. Hmmm…

I loved the awareness that she brought to the ‘exam’ (the doc was blown away too!). As I reflected on her ‘how does it feel’ distinction, I realized that a part of my current self-care/health maintenance simply didn’t feel right. Taking my extensive array of vitamins and supplements, all of which make perfect rational sense given my age, etc. etc., no longer felt good to me. And, it hadn’t for some time.

Upon reflection, I saw that this aspect of self-care had become an unconscious habit of gulping down pills with little awareness, other than perhaps a touch of annoyance that I ‘had to’ take so many. Ouch!

I’d lost the clarity of my intention – to maintain excellent health and vibrant energy. I didn’t prepare/organize or swallow with any intention in my awareness other than to ‘get it done’. Rather, I gulped them down hoping that I won’t become ill. I was acting in a habitual pattern of fear without awareness. Little wonder that taking them didn’t feel right or good!

And so, I stopped. No vitamins. No supplements other than nourishing Chinese herb formulas that have ‘felt’ right since I started using them several years ago and infoceuticals to support my biofield. I’m giving my body a rest. Feeding it clean, nourishing food. Being clear and intentional about and grateful for EVERYthing that crosses my lips. Then, in time, with strong intention grounded in love not fear, and using the intelligence of my body’s wisdom as a guide, I’ll re-evaluate and give this body what it seems to need.

In the meantime, I’m curious to look more deeply at my habits – habits of action (and inaction), habits of thought – to examine how they ‘feel’. Are they ‘right’ for me in each moment? Are they anchored in love, peace, light, power (not force or control), beauty, harmony, abundance? Or are they habits of fear to give the illusion of keeping a dangerous world at bay? Stay tuned. More habits may be revealed. Better yet, take some time to notice and be at choice about your own. 

A Colorado Blue Sky Day!