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

#520! - A Milestone

The sun sets on a decade of blog posts — The Zone and The Pivot …

Speak what you think today in hard words, and tomorrow speak what tomorrow thinks in hard words again, though it contradict every thing you said today.  Ralph Waldo Emerson

Welcome to The Success Zone, an eclectic place for your personal success!  I’m glad you’re here where each week…

With Emerson’s quote and my words of welcome this blog journey began 520 weeks ago, August 15, 2013. A decade of blog posts! A bit of celebration and reflection seems apropos for this milestone.

Little did I know that I would maintain the practice for a decade, keeping a weekly commitment to my, as a friend says, “date with creation”. A time each week to listen not to the mainstream but rather to the mainstays of Life: Nature, Spirit, My Heart. A time to ask, ‘what wants to be shared this day?’

 A decade, 520 weeks, of The Zone and our pivot to The Pivot in 2020 because as I said then, ‘a new story requires us to change’. Life has been a ride these 10 years for each of us!

Looking back, I’m grateful for rarely needing to push myself. Most weeks I’m excited to discover where the journey will lead. Some weeks I have a rough idea of the focus either because of an event in my life that I’m musing about, or something that has grabbed my attention seems worthy of sharing.

Days when I’m empty, clueless about the focus, yield surprises as I’m guided to open just the right book or Muse taps me on the shoulder, gently suggesting ‘This!’. Posts that come slowly or require more effort put me face to face with uncertainty and doubt. It’s often those posts that garner the most responses from you, dear readers, suggesting that we are often grappling with similar challenges each uniquely designed to our life path. I am grateful to each of you for allowing me to pop into your life each week and for reading and sharing your thoughts!

I feel a deep sense of gratitude for and satisfaction with reaching this milestone, although it was never a goal. Early on my purpose was to share ideas and strategies for personal success and to support building my coaching business. I enrolled in courses promising to teach me how to write the ‘great blog’ and to ‘grow my list’. Rarely, if ever, did the content or ideas resonate with me. ‘Emerson didn’t need a marketing expert to share his wisdom,’ I would sometimes grumble.

 Spirit seemed to have another purpose. The goal, if any, became to simply show up with curiosity and care, listen, write, and share. That intention holds today.

We’ve all been through a lot since August, 2013. I’ll spare you the history and share just a few highlights in my life.

Just as I began to prepare to launch The Zone, my computer crashed, and my landlord informed me that he was going to sell the house I’d been happily renting for several years. Somehow those potential setbacks didn’t delay the launch. And I kept my weekly date through some tumultuous time on the local water board, buying a home, and operating a bed and breakfast along with my coaching practice.

Shortly after posting #311 on August 1, 2019, Cool Hand Luke let me know that it was his time to cross the rainbow bridge. Post #335 was done on Zadie Byrd’s first full day here in her new, ‘furever’ home. Covid came on the scene a month or so later, and The Zone became The Pivot with issue #349. As I was completing post #360 on July 8, 2020, I received the call that my dear cousin had attempted suicide and was, at that time, ‘unresponsive’. After a three-day journey across five states during ‘lockdown’, Zadie Byrd’s first road trip, posts for the next six weeks were written in Washington state where I was handling her estate.

 I share these events not to brag, but rather to deepen my own understanding and acceptance of the satisfaction that grows from consistency and commitment. And from the willingness to follow my path, my heart. I’m a bit awestruck by its depth. And I’m most grateful!

Each of us has been committed to something (multiple somethings for most!). We are committed to something today. Let’s each be sure that our commitments are to that which is life generating, life enhancing. To mainstays, not the mainstream.  To coherence and peace, not tumult and chaos. To courage and love, not fear. To the truth of our Oneness, not the divisiveness of separation.

This felt sense of satisfaction does not mean that my weekly commitment is complete. The weekly journey continues with a renewed commitment to speak from my heart as I question the status quo, travel my own journey to life more fully aligned with Mother Earth, and live in the wonder that is this life in crazy, tumultuous times of uncertainty and change.

For how long, I cannot say. I’m clear that I will know when ‘I’m done.’ For now, eclectic musing, sometimes contradictory, will continue. The words will by MY words, not words from someone’s artificial intelligence program. And that’s a story for another day…

Although the sun is setting on a decade of posts, this morning’s encounter with bunny in the grass, points to fertile ground for future explorations.

Today’s morning encounter with bunny suggests fertile ground for future explorations. Onward!

To Witness the Beauty of Earth

Beautiful Morning On the Trail

The beauty of the earth is the first beauty. Millions of years before us the earth lived in wild elegance. Landscape is the first-born of creation. Sculpted with huge patience over millennia, landscape has enormous diversity of shape, presence and memory. There is poignancy in beholding the beauty of landscape: often it feels as though it has been waiting for centuries for the recognition and witness of the human eye. John O’Donohue (Beauty: The Invisible Embrace)

 I’ve been on a bit of a retreat for much of the last week. New awareness rising. Love of the land I occupy deepening. Something (perhaps, some ‘things’) stirring, bubbling, shifting. Not good or bad; simply a sense that change is afoot.

 Change in me amidst. Change in our structured world. Change on (and in) Mother Earth. And beyond.

In this emerging awareness few words rise to be shared. Reading ( O’Donohue’s essay (The Affection of the Earth for Us) and reading again feeds the stirring, tapping my shoulder with a call to see beauty, acknowledge beauty EVERYwhere. Especially in the beauty of my place on the planet.

With Muse concurrence I simply leave you with O’Donohue’s closing words, along with the beauty of this sacred place I’m blessed to call home, and with an invitation to open to and embrace the beauty of your place on our marvelous blue marble.

We were once enwombed in the earth and the silence of the body remembers that dark, inner longing. Fashioned from clay, we carry the memory of the earth. Ancient, forgotten things stir within our hearts, memories from the time before the mind was born. Within us are depths that keep watch. These are the depths that no words can trawl or light unriddle. Our neon times have neglected and evaded the depth-kingdoms of interiority in favour of the ghost realms of cyberspace. Our world becomes reduced to intense but transient foreground. We have unlearned the patience and attention of lingering at the thresholds where the unknown awaits us. We have become haunted pilgrims addicted to distraction and driven by the speed and colour of images.

Sacred Mountains, Sacred Place

The Fabric of Nonviolence

Nature’s Art: The Beauty of Fresh Snow

To bring about peace in the world, to stop all wars, there must be a revolution in the individual, in you and me. What will bring peace is inward transformation which will lead to outward action. There can be right action only when there is right thinking and there is no right thinking when there is no self-knowledge. Without knowing yourself, there is no peace. Jiddu Krishnamurti (Daily Inspiration for February 2, 2021 from Pace e Bene - Campaign Nonviolence)

Perhaps this is what is so difficult about creating a culture of nonviolence: ultimately it is up to each of us, to our personal commitment to create peace within so that the threads we weave in our lives are threads of nonviolence. That concept is what drew me into my commitment to explore nonviolence each day during the 64 days of the Season for Nonviolence, honoring the legacies of Mohandas Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr. https://gandhiinstitute.org/season-for-nonviolence/

While the themes for some days inspire me more than others, I recognize each as an important thread in the fabric of a nonviolent culture. This past week, I made the decision to watch much of the impeachment trial live. I revisited the shock, disbelief, and sadness I felt when violence broke out that fateful Wednesday just as I finished my weekly post. I wanted to witness the proceedings rather than rely on some reporter’s summary. I was curious and I felt a sense of civic duty to engage in that way.

In the wake of the trial, I began to question our system of justice and how it may discourage, even act as a block, to nonviolence. What threads might that system, indeed each of our public systems and structures, contribute to building a culture of nonviolence? What threads need to be dropped? These bigger, systemic question provided a backdrop for my personal musing on each day’s theme.

Today (day 19) the theme, acceptance, offers the opportunity to reflect on that which we find difficult to accept both in ourselves and others. I wonder how I might go beyond my judgements and resistance to fully accept the true essence of others, especially those whose words and deeds I experience as offensive or wrong.

I consider this as I look at the decisions and actions of political leaders and activists on all ‘sides’ as well as when I encounter a disheartening post on social media, especially those written by people I know. How do I/we accept ‘what is’ while holding the possibility for change as well as advocating and participating in bringing change about? Isn’t this what a commitment to nonviolence asks of us?

Other threads likewise offered points of reflection, questions to explore within. Reverence (day 15) brought me to a question that I’ve mused before: how can I deepen my reverence for ALL life? What do I most deeply revere? What is sacred? I began to imagine a world where we speak and act from this place.

Creativity (day 13) reminded to be aware of my ways of being, my thoughts, words, and deeds. What am I creating with them? Humility (day 14) and Gratitude (day 16) offered opportunities to reflect on my willingness to acknowledge when I err, to be humble in the face of life’s opportunities (often disguised as problems and challenges) AND to be grateful for those circumstances and people who offer up such opportunities.

Freedom (day 18) had me continuing a long-held question about the true source and nature of freedom. On day 17, integrity offered up the opportunity to explore how to live more fully aligned with my heart, what it knows to be true and its desires for the future I want to contribute to.

These seven threads, the 12 before and the 45 that remain are points of exploration and possibility for imagining a world where I/we speak and act to weave a culture of peace. May our weaving continue!

Nature Highlights Art

A New Day

A Sunny Inauguration Morning in the Rockies

… The most dangerous words are ‘us and them’ … Madeleine Albright, former United States Secretary of State

These were among the first words I heard this morning as I turned on the TV upon rising to take in what I hoped would be the majesty of this Inauguration Day transferring power from the 45th President to the 46th.

The majesty was without a doubt present. Yet it was muted by the absence of a large, celebratory crowd and the presence of concertina wire and National Guard troops made necessary by an almost year-long pandemic and the attempted coup at the Capitol two short weeks ago. A day to celebrate – yes.

It is also a day to go within – to reflect on what democracy truly means and our responsibility, individually and collectively, to participate in creating “… a more perfect Union …” “…with liberty and justice for all.”

How will we respond to the new President’s call to unity? How will we talk with those whose views differ from ours? How will we “open our souls instead of hardening our hearts”?

The work of the soul is a deeply personal journey, work that then reflects the thoughts we think, the words we speak and the actions we take. I believe we have a President who has done the work of the soul. President Biden committed to put his soul fully into healing the divide.  What might our world look like if we all do the same?

These are the pivots. This is our souls’ work. This is our time.

Early Morning in the San Luis Valley

Adios 2020!

Even Cottonwood Creek is smiling as the promise of a new year edges closer.

As I begin to update what has become my annual ‘Auld Lang Syne’ final post of the year, the online countdown clock indicated that it’s 1 day, 10 hours, 14 minutes, 37 seconds until the new year is rung in here in the Colorado Rockies. But, hey, who’s counting?

Almost everyone is waiting with bated breath to bid adieu to the tumultuous year 2020 will be remembered for around the globe. We want to turn the page. We long to dive deeply into the fresh start that began with the Solstice promise of our personal newness and culminates as we replace our 2020 calendars with new pages of promise and possibility that the coming year has the potential to bring forth.

It is, as always, up to us – individually and collectively – to bring potential to fruition. As sure as the light is returning day by day, we will have opportunities to do just that in the days, weeks, and months ahead.

While the first year of this second decade of the 21st century held much tragedy and darkness, it also shined lights of love and in dark corners needing our attention and care.  May we each be a part of shining the light of love in all the days ahead.

As I reflect on saying ‘Goodbye’ and refrain from saying ‘good riddance’, my year end reflections first written at the end of 2016 seem as apropos today as they did four years ago.

 “Give up the last year. Get rid of all those things of the mundane world. Make room for the awareness of a whole new spiritual understanding that will carry you throughout the next year.” Gregge Tiffen (The Winter Solstice: Giving To Yourself, December 2007)

“… and when you have the willingness to accept who you are, you become aware of an internal flame that burns with a fire that is unquenchable. It’s your acceptance that dispels fears and inadequacies.”  Gregge Tiffen (Open Secrets: Sacred Passageways, December 2011)

As the calendar year winds to a close, we tend to look back on its joys, its sorrows, what we accomplished, where we may have fallen short. Hopefully our review list includes acknowledging all that we discovered about ourselves and learned from the opportunities and events that life presented.

As 2020 ends, many will breathe a sigh of relief that it is finally over along with a breath of hope for better days in the year ahead.  The world we live in is chaotic and uncertain. It is. Those who put attention on the world forgetting that it is the world we live IN, NOT the world we are OF may look ahead with dread.

That need not be. Within each of us is a seed of understanding who we truly are. Nurturing that seed grows our faith in our capacity to be resilient in the face of the world’s chaos.

This seed of faith is within us all. It is not faith in anything outside of us. Rather it is faith in who we are, each as an individual, integral part of an intelligent Universe. It is a reminder that life is so much more than we experience and observe in our daily routines.

As you ring in 2021,  I invite you to join me in nourishing your seed of faith in each of the 365  days ahead and to remember how important your presence is at this moment on the planet.

Perhaps this prayer, one of my favorites of Gregge Tiffen’s writing, will support you to deepen your faith in you and in understanding just how important you are in the Universal scheme of things. 

Let me never forget how important I am to the Universal Picture. Without me there would be a blank space where there should be color.

 Let me understand that the challenges of life are just that and not battles. I am not out there to win or to loose, only to develop my skills as an on-going student in an omnipotent school.

Let me understand that the difference between people is one of the wondrous realities of an infinite Universe. Giving those differences space to be is far more important than comparing them to my set of beliefs.

Let me be proud of what I do. To whatever my hand touches, let me remind myself that it was my effort that added to the result. Perfection is not my goal. Creativity is.

 Let me remind myself that most of what I take seriously about myself also qualifies for a good laugh. Let me remember to be kind to myself. Loving companions are one of life’s treats, but they are not responsible for my care. Self-kindness can heal almost any hurt.

 Let me take responsibility as a gift and not a burden. Within that effort is the grandest sense of accomplishment I could achieve.

 Let me be patient with life. Nature does not produce the flower before the roots have taken hold. If I recognize that the place I am in is the right place at the right time, it will always be the right place at the right time. Gregge Tiffen (The Significance of Beginning, January 2007)

A Colorado Blue Sky Day with Snowy Peaks - How Winter is meant to be!

Digging Deep

Morning Fog Over Blanca Peak

In the midst of every crisis, lies great opportunity. Albert Einstein

The sun will come up tomorrow … This song from Annie popped into my head this morning immediately following the fortunately fleeting and rather silly thought: Stop the World, I Want to Get Off. (Perhaps there’s something about movies I need to pay attention to …)

I don’t, of course, want to ‘stop the world’ and ‘get off’ despite this time of turmoil and angst. For that angst and turmoil is ripe with opportunities to learn and to grow, to dig deep inside, into your core to discover more of who you are and who you are uniquely designed to be.

Being ripe with opportunity is the nature of crisis. Our task is to choose to feast on the ripe fruit of what is at hand and discover points of learning, points of pivot. Crisis demands adaptability: a willingness to change. Do what you must to navigate, to survive, to thrive. In no way does embracing opportunity minimize or, as some might suggest, deny hardship or despair: the very issues of survival that are faced each day across the globe. Opportunity invites us to embrace challenges as our teachers. As surely as those who stand before us to share what they know, life’s events have within them the potential for learning knowledge that becomes wisdom. That wisdom we carry forward in our BEing FOREVER.

The knowledge that becomes wisdom does not cease to exist when this physical body takes its last breath. That wisdom lives on in consciousness, that part of our BEing that is infinite.

As surely as this is true, then we must have within us and available to us, the knowledge and wisdom of our past. Pause, let that sink in. Each of us know more than we are aware that we know.

We, you and me and all who are walking this earth, were made for this time. Perhaps we have faced crises, turmoil, or upheaval akin to today’s life conditions.

As I reflected on this idea, I began to wonder and ask: what about today’s world feels familiar? What do I KNOW that will support me in navigating this time? What pivots do I need to make to honor and align with my wisdom?

What about you? In the deep quiet of introspection, meditation, dreamtime, or walking in nature I invite you to join me in beginning to ask and discover:

·        What inklings of familiarity do I have about this time?

·        What does my heart KNOW that will guide me?

·        What hunches have I ignored that I need to pay attention to?

·        What pivots do I need to make for the sake of my learning, growing, and Being all of who I came here to be?

Notice what arises as you simply take the bold step into curiosity. Let’s see what this wild and crazy life has to offer as we wind down the current cycle and prepare to usher in a new one that will dawn very soon.

The Sun is definitely shining on the Ziggurat this beautiful morn!

Fertile Ground

Past their peak, but there is still much beauty in this aspen grove.

What we need is not another doctrine, but an awakening that can restore our spiritual strength. What made Mahatma Gandhi's struggle a great success was not a doctrine—not even the doctrine of nonviolence—but Gandhi himself, his way of being. A lot is written today about the doctrine of nonviolence and people everywhere are trying to apply it. But they cannot rediscover the vitality that Gandhi had, because the ‘Gandhians’ do not possess Gandhi's spiritual strength. They have faith in his doctrine but cannot set into motion a movement of great solidarity because none of them possess the spiritual force of a Gandhi and therefore cannot produce sufficient compassion and sacrifice. Thich Nhat Hahn

In the midst of the muse reflecting on the insights and inspirations which have crossed my path this week I was looking to discover if there is a common thread or theme. Then, life popped in unexpectedly.

It has been my practice for most of the 370+ weeks to ignore all incoming calls, emails, etc. Wednesday mornings are devoted exclusively to musing and discovering what wants to be shared in this week’s post. Today I needed to break from that pattern to handle a time sensitive issue regarding my cousin’s estate.

The issue addressed (at least for a bit), I gently returned to the muse and the message.  Noticing the broad scope of ideas and events that sprouted to take root in my attention this week, the phrase ‘fertile ground’ came to mind. I was aware of all that screamed for attention that I mostly gently (and sometimes not) turned away. What about my fertile ground guides me to make those choices?

I’m aware of and embrace the idea that deep change is underway individually and collectively for humanity and throughout all of nature and our precious home, Mother Earth. (Beyond this earth, I suspect that the same is true – but that is perhaps a muse for another day … As Above, So Below … As Below, So Above …). What about my fertile ground has me see life in this way and to be curious about the thresholds that are before me/us in the days, weeks, years ahead?

From what fertile ground does my conviction that how we choose to BE as we walk through this change is, moment to moment, determining how that change will be? What cultivated my deep knowing that ‘by our thoughts, our feelings, our beliefs and our actions we are co-creating our life, our future – individually and collectively’?

I think that somewhere along this 70-year path of my life, I embraced building my spiritual strength (you wondered, didn’t you, what the heck the quote had to do with this muse?).  Decades ago, weary after years of political activism and hard driving in my profession, I was exhausted and fearful that I couldn’t keep up (whatever the heck that meant at the time). A seed of metaphysical curiosity sprouted as I took time off to figure out what to do with my life.

I’ve nurtured that ground (not always consistently) since it sprouted. I’d like to think that I have some measure of spiritual strength as a result. As I choose how to navigate and BE in the changes upon us, I aim to make choices from a place of spiritual knowing rather than from some prescribed doctrine (religious, political, etc.). That is the fertile ground on which I stand from which the seeds of my expression flow. That is the ground I choose to nurture and grow.

What about you? What is your fertile ground? What is your state of being in the world? What attention is needed so that you can meet the thresholds before you with strength, conviction and with love?

A Quiet Hike in Nature’s Beauty

Paradox, Discernment & Wisdom

Hints of Fall on a Beautiful Morning in the Sanges

We are being asked to discover what we think are our limits and to move beyond them, understanding our limitlessness.

One of the limits I experience in myself and I observe is rampant in our culture is the need to know, to be certain. We want guarantees that things are (or will be) this way or that before we allow those things (events, situations, people, products, etc.) to emerge and evolve. Although we might discount, even laugh, at the idea of seeing the future in a crystal ball, we would sure like to peek and to know.

We would like someone to tell us the ‘facts’, the ‘truth’ (the whole truth and nothing but …) about important matters in our daily lives. Take Covid-19 as one example among many. We want the facts, without contradictions and politicizing. Then we could easily choose what actions to take to maintain our health.

What we have instead in this era of competition is controversy, conflict, confusion, and chaos mixed with finger-pointing, blame, and (most destructive of all) fear mongering.

We are asked to choose sides as our health becomes a political football with elections to be won as more important than lives to be saved or personal freedom to be restored (yes, I said restored, not protected – but that’s a topic for another day).

We are told what someone ‘out there’ thinks we want to hear. Never mind that the message was totally different to another audience yesterday. And, that it will change yet again tomorrow. But, hey, who cares? Babel is the name of this frenzied game.

But Covid-19 and, indeed, most of the important matters in our lives are not so simple. There is no one size fits all approach to any of these concerns. There is no one set of cast in stone facts that are ‘THE facts’. We are being asked to discover what we think are our limits and to move beyond them, understanding our limitlessness.

Thus, it is up to us, individually and collectively, to examine the often paradoxical and contradictory information – both facts and opinions – and discern the best answer for us. To do so requires a commitment and vigilant practice to strengthen our discernment muscle (yes, you have one, even if it is a bit atrophied!).

We do so by turning off/tuning out the noise of the world.  We take time to sit and bask in the peace and quiet of the absence of that noise. Finally, we tune in to the quiet of our mind, our heart, our body, our nature. We invite the quiet to break its silence and speak gently to the core of our being. We allow its gentle nudging to stir up what we already know and to blend that with the new. We discern.

In the quiet, as we release our addiction to knowing, we come to know ourselves. We discover what is true for us. As we follow our truth, we honor that our knowing, our truth may not hold true for others. In the quiet, we come to understand that the source of deep knowing is not ‘out there’.

In the quiet, we build our capacity to accept the paradoxes and contractions of the world’s ways. We begin to discern from the inside out rather than relying on others to discern for us. Our wisdom builds. And, from that wisdom, we glimpse our limitless nature.  

Indeed! It IS a Beautiful Morning!

Spring! Awaken, Think Deeply, Pivot

Yield and step into the flow of nature.

Life seems to fail us because we do not make new space for ourselves. … life is a continuum of things being ‘broke’. Unless you are willing to take a new stance, walk a new path, find a new answer, develop a new character, build a new body, express in new terms, and see through new eyes, everything will remain the same. … Nature moves down two pathways. One assures equal balance on the planet. The other leads to a natural development and advancement of all living things.  Gregge Tiffen (It’s Springtime! Flow with the Power of Nature – March, 2007)

Spring! The earth spins and the season of new growth begins here in the northern hemisphere. Half of the globe is springing into newness and light. The other half ‘falling’ into the season of harvest with the darkness of winter just beyond.

But no matter the season, life has changed drastically for all of us. We have the power to decide how that change will emerge. As nature moves down her two pathways, balance and advancement, will we step into her flow, listen deeply to her voice, reflect on her cries, and pivot to create new ways to live on our precious planet?  Or, will we simply pause, rest, entertain ourselves in the hope that life will soon return to ‘normal’? Which will I choose?

Do we have the courage to challenge the thinking of scientific materialism that has taken us further and further from nature, our mother? Do I?

Are we willing to be honest with ourselves about the destruction we each cause in our daily participation in a culture that values science and the material world over spirit, not understanding that the two are not separate? Am I?

Might we examine the life we call ‘normal’ knowing (even complaining about) the stresses that it creates in our bodies, our relationships, and all of life? Might I?

Our children who haven’t yet lost their connection to nature are asking and, rightfully, demanding. From Greta Thunberg, to the Sunrise Movement (www.sunrisemovement.org), to your own children and grandchildren as voiced by this young person’s question to ‘mom’ over breakfast posted by a colleague yesterday on Facebook:

Mom, we’re doing our part and staying home from school, not seeing our friends, not going outside. We are doing this even though Coronavirus won’t kill us. We’re doing this to help the adults and the older people to live longer and healthier lives. So, when this is all over, will they repay us by making changes to save the environment? So that we will be able to live longer, healthier lives when we are their age?
Because, you know, that seems fair to me.

How will we respond? How will I?

Will we simply hit the ‘play’ button when this pause is over and scramble to return to life as it was or as close to that as we can make it? Or will we use this time to think deeply and pivot to creating a culture and systems that recognize and use both spirit and science/material things, that honor the ways of nature and acknowledges that we will not control her?  Will we boldly demand a culture and systems that respect ALL life?

As I watch the snow fall in the woods out my window my heart knows that these are questions. And, as history has shown us time after time, a ‘war’ on the problem is not the answer.

Use this time wisely. Rest. Take extraordinary care of yourself and those you love. Hold those whose choices you loath in light and love for they too are on a journey of learning just as each of us. Muster the courage and willingness to think deeply and honestly about your life. Build upon that courage to pivot to walk through life anew.    

The calendar says ‘Spring’. Mother Nature says ‘not yet’.