Reaching In, Reaching Out

Owl Wisdom in the Woods

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Snowy Morning in Town … First Big Flakes of the Season

The Work of Freedom: Harmonizing With The Universe

Good Morning July!

It has become crucial that we break away from dependency and become independent thinkers, independent teachers, independent people. Doing such is like swimming upstream, but once you find yourself in harmony with the way the Universe is moving, you get tremendous support for what you want to do and the swimming becomes easier. Gregge Tiffen (Finding Freedom: The Meaning of Independence Day -July, 2007)

This past week has presented a variety of experiences and learning opportunities, new information some of it conflicting, new resources, and a roller coaster ride with Zadie Byrd that reflects the tension of our world.  This morning, as I sat quietly to discover where the muse might guide me, Gregge Tiffen’s quote above came on my radar along with numerous other ideas. All faded except his idea of becoming independent.

And that led me to thinking about the work that becoming independent and maintaining it requires. It seems that we have lost our understanding that the gift of free will granted by the Universe requires practice, experimentation, adaptation, and adjustment. For too many it has become far easier to depend on others, on systems, on governments than it is to do the work of thinking and acting for ourselves. Work that is deep and requires knowing yourself intimately from the inside out.

Now, I’m not saying that we are not connected, interdependent, or that we shouldn’t care for one another! To the contrary, each of us is one of the One, just as each cell in our body is one cell of the one that is ‘I’. That is the design. That is the seed of our being. Just as does each cell in our body, we each have an individual and unique role to play in the unfolding of life.

Harmony is a basic element of Universal design. The cells of our body are designed to harmonize. The elements of ecosystems are designed to harmonize.

With every fiber of my being, I believe that WE are designed to harmonize – within and in our expressions and relationships in the world. All too often we have forgotten this truth and given ourselves over to systems and to others rather than doing our individual work: that of harmonizing within. We see the effects in chaotic events, addictions, violence, war … and the list goes on. In a world where dependency has become the norm, we shout demands for freedom without embracing the responsibility and doing the work that true freedom and independence require.

I witness and am appalled by fascist and authoritarian trends here in the U.S. where in a few days we will celebrate ‘Independence Day’. I do so not from the sense of loyalty to country that was drilled into me almost from birth, but from a knowing deep within my cells, cells that hold the wisdom of the Universe, that I (and you, and each and every one of us) have been granted independence, free will, freedom as a divine right. We have a distance to travel to bring this to fruition, individually and collectively.

I ask questions. What is my role in bringing about the harmony that true independence represents? How might my choices be contributing to the disharmony? How do I harmonize within?

I do my best to listen and to respond. Action by action. Step by step. Day by day. For me, that is the work of independence. That is harmonizing with the Universe. Done from a sense of personal choice and with curiosity, love, intention, purpose, and care, it is work that brings me peace, joy, and deep sense of satisfaction. From that place I can authentically celebrate the ‘Independence Day’.    

Reliable Source

Blessed by the Beauty of Fresh Snow on the Peaks and a Colorado Blue Sky Day

With so much information pouring through media of all kinds, we need our minds to belong to us, not to external stimuli. Rev. Dr. Margaret Stortz (Daily Guide for January 26, 2020 in Science of Mind Guide for Spiritual Living)

One might add ‘and disinformation’ to the above quote. From time to time over many years I’ve wondered what sources were accurate and reliable as I sought to keep up with current events and be an informed citizen, voter. It’s troubling and sad how we’ve come to use technology to control rather than to inform. But that’s what those who, fearing the wisdom of the individual and the collective wisdom of the whole, seek: ‘power over’. And, they use whatever means are available.

It's to their (and there are many ‘thems’!) advantage that we stew in this uncertainty, wondering who and what we can trust. ‘Me!’ they each loudly proclaim. That’s the bad news.

The good news? The systems of business, government, etc. that we have built using this approach throughout human history are breaking down and falling apart under the weight of these unstainable ways. Ways that are unstainable because they defy universal law. And that law will prevail.

The even better news? There is a Reliable Source, one available 24/7, weekends and holidays included, without regard to any external conditions or circumstances. We only need to call upon and use it.

The more you feel the love issuing forth from Source, the more you are able to receive in your daily experience. Gregge Tiffen (Fanned Fire and Forced Love Never Did Well – February, 2008)

As I observe the countless breakdowns and crises across the globe, hear the cries for new systems, even make those cries myself, deep inside I know that no new system, no technology, no approach to these very real problems will work unless we have a giant shift in our collective consciousness. It is a shift that occurs one by one, step by step, building until a giant wave propels us forward collectively. Examples abound of individuals and collectives doing this work grounded in the love of Reliable Source.  

Somewhere and sometime along this road of life, it would be wise for each of us to stop and to go off alone for a period of time in order that we may give up beliefs in the power of the coin and the weapons of defense. Let us once again put our dependence on love to sustain us. Gregge Tiffen (The Numerology of Love – February, 2007)

In these times we need the confidence, creativity and conviction that comes with belief in and true love of oneself. Love that is deeply centered in the heart and comes from but one Reliable Source. That is how we make sure our mind belongs to us. That is the foundation for moving forward.

Ever grateful for the beauty that awaits when I step outside.

Begin With a Promise

Snowy Day in the Woods Out Back

Each moment holds the power of promise for you to exert your individuality, to expand in wisdom and to reflect only good. Universal intelligence is always working. Begin with a promise to yourself that you will co-create with it. Gregge Tiffen (The Significance of Beginning – January, 2007)

And so it begins – a new year and a new decade as the calendar of man marches forward. It seems like only yesterday that we were concerned about how our computer operating systems would handle the start of a new millennium. That threshold crossed without the disruption many feared, it seemed we raced through the 21st century’s first decade and found ourselves curious – some even fearful – of what the auspicious year 2012 would bring. Now, in what seems like a flash, the second decade of the century is complete and its third is upon us.

While in our human concept time has speeded up, mother nature on our beloved planet moves at her pace: slow and harmonious even in the dramatic events she uses to rebalance and maintain the order that is her nature. It is ours as well, if we would but claim it.

Nature makes no resolutions that will inevitably be broken. She sets no goals and makes no demands. She simply IS and she simply does what is in the seeds of her design to do. She is a model of co-creating with Universal intelligence 24/7, day in, day out.

We too are always co-creating with the Universe. I was reminded of this by Rev. Dr. Margaret Stortz who wrote in Science of Mind Magazine’s daily guide for this date “… there is nothing that we think, do or create that is separate from divine action.” As I’ve written before, EVERYthing that I think, say and do is magnified by the Universe.  Making choices based with this conscious awareness is what I believe Gregge has in mind when he suggests that we promise to co-create with the Universe.

I’ve come to make this promise as each day begins.  Before I throw off the warm, cozy covers and my feet hit the floor, I put my hand on my heart and speak quietly this prayer: “Thank you for this day that is in front of me. May my every thought, word and deed this day come from my heart and be for my highest good and for the highest good of all concerned.”

In speaking the words aloud, I’m honoring that we live on a planet where sound initiates. I’m setting a clear intention for the context within which I aim to make the myriad of choices that the day will present. I’m declaring how I want to recognize and co-create with the Universal intelligence. It is my beginning again each day in the universal flow of energy, consciously directing the energy that flows to me through me in a positive manner.

Beginning this way supports me to “… reach down and pull out all of the wonder you have in that bag called ‘you’ and that you are using you to the fullest potential.” (Tiffen – The Significance of Beginning. ) It’s a promise to myself worthy of keeping as I navigate the opportunities that present themselves each day. What promise is your beginning each day?

An Icy Start to the Year

Pearls to Ponder

The Quiet of Snow Is Upon Us

We live in the midst of abundance, of universal space, and we receive abundance as a result of conviction in the universal Law of Life. The universal law of life is continuity. … ‘Abundance in the making’ is making new discoveries regarding that which already exists. Gregge Tiffen (Faith is Abundance in the Making – Winter Solstice, 2008)

This week finds me moving in several directions, all forward. I’m preparing to travel and writing this post in advance. I’m engaged in a project with a colleague – keeping it gently moving until we launch an intense focused effort and participating in a community meeting.

In the throes of this activity I’m also moving into the quiet, contemplative darkness of winter and looking ahead to the sacred Winter Solstice. While contemplation has become an important part of my daily life in all seasons, winter offers a magic that seems to deepen the meaning of what I discover. Winter brings a soft curiosity and encourages me to consider manifesting experiences where I will experiment applying those discoveries.

And, winter brings opportunities in the form of challenges. Winter weather can impact the best laid plan. I’m especially aware of that as a winter storm moves in, offering the opportunity to accept what is and relinquish any illusion of control I think I may have. Go with the flow! Allow things turn out as they will and trust that to be in divine perfection.

Doing so is most always easier said than done, especially when travelling.  If I allow them to, reservations and schedules for lodging and transportation become a mother lode of stress and restrict my sense of flexibility and ease. Likewise with plans made for gatherings with family and friends.

Navigating this snowy travel time, I’ve found support in some pearls of wisdom. I offer them for you to ponder as you enter what, for many, can be a hectic, demanding time. As we move deeper into winter, I invite you to give yourself the gift of time and energy for quiet contemplation to consider how you want to be with life.

… Nonetheless, we walk around constantly trying to control and determine what will happen next … No wonder there’s so much tension, anxiety and fear. Each of us actually believes that things should be the way we want them, instead of being the natural result of all the forces of creation. … There is so much evidence that life does quite well on its own. The planets stay in orbit, tiny seeds grow into giant trees … a single fertilized cell grows into a beautiful baby. … they are being done by the incomprehensible perfection of life itself. All these amazing events, and countless more, are being carried out by forces of life that have been around for billions of years – the very same forces that we are consciously pitting our will against on a daily basis. If the natural unfolding of the process of life can create and take care of the entire universe, is it really reasonable for us to assume that nothing good will happen unless we force it to?  Michael A. Singer (The Surrender Experiment – my journey into life’s perfection)

So what if road conditions prevent or delay my travel? So what if I don’t sleep in the hotel before my early morning flight? So what if I miss my flight?  So what if I feel guided to leave early and miss a gathering? Is it possible, dare I probable, that the Universe, wiser than I, has something better in store? How can I live more powerfully from that place?

Faith is conviction that relinquishing control is in your best interest. Trust is the act of conviction that faith will not harm you … that your consciousness is operating by universal direction. Gregge Tiffen (Faith is Abundance in the Making – Winter Solstice, 2008)

Winter Contemplation -Not Just for Humans - Luke December 2015

The Gift of Retrograde Planets

On the trail out back as the sun peeks over the peaks

The need for adjustments within our personal life cycles exists for the same reason that galaxies are kept from bumping into one another; both are a consequence of some extremely intelligent avatars somewhere in space having created and continuing to create planet Earth within the whole scheme of the harmonic flow of energy often heard in the music of the spheres. (Patrece on behalf of P Systems – www.p-systemsinc.com)

The more we are aware of retrograde conditions and their possible influences, the more we are able to navigate through our life experiences with greater control and clarity. (Gregge Tiffen - https://www.g-systems.com/)

First, a disclaimer: I’m no expert in astrology. What I’m sharing comes not from decades of studying the planets and their influence. Rather it comes from considering what Patrece and Gregge Tiffen have shared on this topic and from observing my own life’s conditions and events. It also comes from my conviction that, despite so much evidence to the contrary, we live in a universe that is divinely ordered and anchored in love, a universe in which we are not victims unless we choose not to receive the gifts the universe offers.

What inspires me to share is that the planet Mercury went retrograde earlier this week as it does several times each year. It reminded me of the prevailing attitude when planets go retrograde: life is disrupted, ‘bad’ things happen, and that we just need to suffer through. Such an attitude casts us as victims, putting attention on the disruption and ignoring the opportunities planets in retrograde offer: gifts from a benevolent universe.

Planets do not go retrograde without purpose. Their doing helps maintain order in the cosmos, ensuring the universal “harmonic flow of energy”. Adjustments are required. Planets adjust.

As above, so below. As a part of this intelligent universe, we are given the opportunity to use the cycle of time when a planet is retrograde to do the same: adjust. Taking time to assess and to make changes during these cycles can help us avoid bumping into ourselves, one another, and the events life brings our way. (Imagine a world where we each did that, including our leaders!)

When it went retrograde this week, Mercury joined four other planets that were already in retrograde. Yes, your math is correct: five planets are currently in retrograde. Perhaps you’ve wondered why the world (and maybe your life) seems crazier and disrupted to the extreme.  Rather than looking at the chaos, I’m choosing to look to the opportunities to slow down and consider what adjustments might serve me.

Mercury (Ruler #2*) is the planet that influences decision making and communication, including all of the technology we use in both. In retrograde it presents opportunities (indeed more than one!) to slow down and pay close attention to detail in all communication, that coming in and that we’re sending out. (I’m doing my best to practice this message as I focus on this post.) This is also a time to identify and make adjustments to communication habits or patterns that aren’t working well, to examine how you manage time and energy, to assess projects underway and adjust to get/keep them on track. Notice what puts you on edge as a guide to where adjustments are needed. Mercury’s retrograde is short – ending on July 31 – but it’s potential is powerful.

Saturn (Ruler #7) retrograde invites us to look at how we use our minds. This is a good time to observe and eliminate clutter in our thought processes and to bring forward mental qualities that may be dormant. Exercise your mind and explore what keeps you from manifesting the results you’d like and refine your operating style. This retrograde ends on September 19.

Pluto (Ruler #8) influences money and success. When in retrograde it invites us to review and make sure our financial house is in order. A key question to ask is ‘what needs to be reworked to put myself on a more solid financial footing?’ This opportunity exists until October 4.

Jupiter (Ruler #6) retrograde provides opportunities to look at health and relationships, including your relationship with you, and to explore how your home environment supports you (or doesn’t). Jupiter ends its retrograde cycle on August 10.

Finally, the influence of Neptune (Ruler #9) retrograde is mostly beneath the surface, offering the opportunity to look deep within to what inspires us and what gives life meaning. It’s a time when deep reflection and solitude can serve us well. We have this opportunity until November 27.

How will you unwrap, receive, and put the gifts of these retrogrades to use? Start by slowing down, paying attention, and being curious.

* Gregge used a numbering system rather than the customary planet names in his work, as you’ll see if you visit his website for more detail on these retrogrades. Here’s the link: https://www.g-systems.com/wordpress/?cat=9

Cool Hand Luke pauses for a photo op on an early morning hike to the Zigurat

Harmony Is Our Nature

Listen to the wood …

Nature cannot step up and act upon us, except as it must respond to its basic need to be in balance. We have the power either to create a flourishing cornucopia of life to nurture and support us or to create hurricanes, melting polar ice caps, and swarms of locusts. … Every thought we have has an effect on us and our planet as well. We can be mindful of our thoughts. Gregge Tiffen (Life In The World Hereafter: The Journey Continues)

Listen to the wood.

I ‘heard’ those words one morning recently just after adding logs to my early morning fire, wondering afterwards whether I’d added too many too fast to get a quick hot burn going in the wood stove.  It reminded me that all of nature speaks her gentleness, consistency, stability, strength. In these mountain woods, I’m surrounded these gifts.

Nature also has the quality of harmony. Harmony is central to nature’s existence and she will do what is necessary to reach and maintain her harmonious state. If nature’s harmony is upset, she will respond, violently if necessary, in order to bring harmony back to the planet. Yes, those so-called ‘acts of God’ have a purpose.

Mother Nature will prevail. Our beautiful blue/green planet will exist as long as she has a purpose in the heavens, though we humans may not always be along for the ride. We have plundered too much, exploiting natural resources as commodities to be used up, sold for profit. We dominate and attempt to control rather than practicing the dominion of the planet we were granted: loving and listening to mother earth and considering her needs and her care as part of the equation of an abundant life.

We do so not just with destructive deeds, but with our negativity as well: fearful thoughts that in their angry expression forget the truth of our being, angry thoughts that in their fearful expressions resort to war and violence in both words and deeds.

This is not just ‘the other’, it is us – me and you – for none of us are yet free of anger and fear as sometime motivators and guides. And, that’s another gift, for planet Earth provides us the place to learn, to experiment, and to nurture the seeds of our infinite sojourn through an infinite and energetic universe.

May we do so as reflections of nature’s highest and best qualities!

Gentleness on the road out back.

Using These Times to Benefit YOU!

Gleaming Peaks in the Morning Light

If there is anything you don’t want in life, it is to plateau out. You want life to challenging. You want it to give you all sorts of elements which allow you to use yourself in a variety of ways. … Humans have the opportunities to move within events and gain something from them. Gregge Tiffen Down to Earth as quoted in Open Secrets: Revealing Habits – February, 2011

Over my years of coaching I frequently heard ‘I just want to retire, stop, get out the rat race, do nothing’. I see it today in social media posts and in financial institutions advertising their services to lure people in to get to the so-called ‘good life’.  Like the side effects of drugs that seem, at least to me, to outweigh their benefits, stopping for anything other than a respite to restore is not in our interest. Doing so removes us from the flow of life and the energy of learning, our prime purpose on this sojourn.

In these, shall we say interesting times, we may find it easy to want to retreat from where the flow of life seems to be heading. For many it’s easy to fall into despair, anger, fear, overwhelm, or faithlessness when looking only at the surface of events globally. This is especially true when we forget that we are here to learn and that, indeed, we learn from the experiences provided in the events that engage us. The magnitude of those events matters not. We can learn from them all – from the ginormous life changing ones right down to our daily walks with the dog and taking care of ourselves.

Without a doubt, these are intense times. In the midst of such intensity we may forget that there is no ideal end state that we’re aiming to create (then everything will be hunky-dory) or that ‘if I just do this’ then ‘that’ suddenly everything will be okay (whatever the heck that means). 

This week I began to ask myself:

• How are you using these intense times?

• How do you want to use them?

• What do you want to learn?

• What do you want to contribute?

• What more do you want out of this sojourn?

Questions like these bring me back to my center. That’s my purpose in reflecting on them.  I’m not aiming for enlightenment level ultimate answers, rather for a simple guidepost to my next step or two. Importantly, such questions remind me that I’m not a victim to the extremes at work in all aspects of life.

Remembering that I am an integral part of an infinite, intelligent, kind Universe moves me forward rather than into destructive patterns of thought. Coupled with remembering that I am here, now, on a brief learning journey – just one stop in the infinite journey that is my individual consciousness – puts the world in perspective. That world, crazy and hostile as it may seem, is merely the environment of the campus on this current school called ‘life’. From this place I can choose how and what I want to create and contribute.

Without a doubt, these are intense times. And, they are but a teeny, tiny blip on the infinite timeline of the Universe. Systems are crumbling and we know not what will be created in their place. Whether or not we are front and center on the lines of creating what is to come we are contributing, consciously or not, to their form and their qualities with every thought we think. Ponder on that. What are your contributions?

Icicles

The Blank Page

A Frosty Morning in the Sangres

The blank canvas … has unlimited possibilities.  Stephanie Perkins

Touch lightly that nanosecond of time when your consciousness was released from the astral realm to the planet. Allow yourself to visit that sense of no longer being associated with the astral realm as well as not having anyone or anything identifying you here in the incarnate state yet. … the time and space of our release in consciousness to the planet is all ours and ours alone.  Patrece on behalf of P Systems (www.p-systemsinc.com)

 I feel empty, blank this morning as I attend to my commitment to create a weekly post. I don’t feel my emptiness as a burden as this Thursday morning process is one of my weekly joys. Typically, I’ve experienced or I’m in the midst of an experience that seems relevant to share as part of the process of adding to knowledge and, hopefully, distilling someday into a drop of everlasting wisdom.  A quote from Gregge Tiffen and some internal spark usually merge to guide the words that land on the page.

 This morning is different. In reflecting on events this week and reading from my stack of Gregge’s January booklets, I felt no spark, no inspiration. Blank. Page. Hmmm…

And, so I wondered: what’s had my attention this week?  I immediately knew it is the curiosity that bubbled inside me when I read the quote from Patrece above in the weekly series PS 52 that she’s been writing for over a decade.

But what can I say about this idea that we each have our very own nanosecond of time – ours and ours alone as we make our sojourn on this planet in this body? I barely grasp the concept. I can’t yet get my head around a ‘nanosecond’. And I wonder at what points in this life I’ve touched mine without awareness of doing so.  Yet, the idea seems to want to be shared, so I offer it for you to consider, explore (or even ignore).

In considering that the Universe makes no mistakes, it seems to me that, when I touch the moment of purity and clarity that is uniquely my nanosecond in time with awareness, I have the possibility of bringing my unique expressions of purity and clarity into navigating life on the planet.  And, I wonder, what possibilities would emerge if we each did the same?

 I’m setting my intention to do just that. What about you?

Making Tracks in the Woods Out Back

Bucking the Culture Ain't Easy

Of whims and harmony ... that is our way.

In silence, man and shadow met face to face, and stopped. Aloud and clearly, breaking that old silence, Ged spoke the shadow’s name and in the same moment the shadow spoke without lips or tongue, saying the same word: ‘Ged.’ And, the two voices were one voice. … Light and darkness met, and joined, and were one.  Ursula K. LeGuin, A Wizard of Earthsea

The truth of the matter is self-honesty in all things. Gregge Tiffen, Open Secrets: The Nature of Feminine Truth (March, 2011) 

Practicing oneness requires the self-honesty acknowledge the darkness within.

Slowly the light is returning. Soon the day will be equal in its light and darkness, and the darkness will give way to more hours of light. A cycle: one of many cycles within cycles that is the natural order of the Universe.

We humans though think we know better than the order of the Universe. We create tools of separation and control: calendars, clocks, daylight savings time and build a culture that honors such tools over the wisdom of the Universe.

This week, though I sprang my clocks forward, I chose to ignore them as much as possible. As is generally my habit, I’ve risen upon waking and allowed each day to flow from there. Even with few timed commitments, I found myself noticing the time and correcting thoughts about being ‘late’ as I went about my day. The exercise reminded me how deeply imbedded ‘time’ is in our culture.

Our culture also holds ideas about how we ‘should’ use our time. Since closing the B&B, I’ve felt a strong pull, guidance if you will, to ‘read, write, connect more deeply in nature, and empty’. I’ve followed that guidance less than I’d like to admit. After all there are taxes to prepare, firewood to stack, and – oh, yeah, shouldn’t I be doing something to generate income?

But these little things (yep, in the grand scheme they are but tiny blips despite how I allow them to interfere with my peace) pale in comparison to bucking the violence that pervades our culture. Violence is monetized (and, not just by the ‘war’ machine, but also in medicine, pesticides, and more). It is deeply imbedded in our language and our history.  Sadly, our cells know much about violence.

I’d like to believe that I’m not a part of this violence. But alas, there is a mirror that, in Oneness, reflects right back to me. In that mirror I see the justifications that I claim for my own acts of violence: if I don’t kill the mice, they will …; my blood type is ‘O’ so my body needs meat; my curiosity takes me to violent movies like Black Panther and Star Wars; mosquitos carry disease (and are sooo annoying!). These are only a few of the mindful choices I make. Sometimes I squish a spider before I’ve given it a thought.  And, so it is in our culture.

Creating a new culture requires facing up to my contributions to the culture we have. Practicing oneness requires the self-honesty acknowledge the darkness within.

As I look to the courageous students who walked out of schools yesterday calling for an end to gun violence, I’m filled with encouragement for the world they envision and the world that is theirs to create. I’m proud to march with them whether in spirit or body.  And, yet I wonder if I have the will to buck my own violent habits as a contribution to ending violence on our planet? For if I don’t, how can I expect others to do the same?

This is the challenge of our oneness with all things and with one another. I am all the beauty and the light in this world.  I am also the darkness. I am That, I am.

A Hazy Mountain Morning