What is our brightest, deepest truth?
This question is big for me. It has some heft, like a blender you pick up that you assumed was going to be lightweight plastic made in China and turns out to be metal and glass made somewhere in Scandinavia. It's robust and durable. I can kick it around and it holds up. I can try to rotate it and come at it from another angle, and it still inspires simple yet powerful reflection.
I come at this question after reading an essay by Derrick Jensen last week entitled "To Give Our Brightest Deepest Truth." He writes about the importance of admitting to ourselves how we are free or not free, how we are connected to the systems that support us, how he feels inspired to speak the truth about what we're doing to the world, and how he feels that speaking this truth is of utmost importance right now. I like what he has to say, and his courage inspires me. As I wake these days, or find myself in a few idle moments transitioning between tasks in life, I find myself often feeling this question throughout my body and mind. What is my brightest, deepest truth?
My brightest, deepest truth is unfolding. Part one is to do my best to acknowledge where I am at and where I think the world is at. I'm doing what I do - traveling to San Diego (where I'm currently writing this entry) to see my friend Sam, feeling bad about burning the fuel and feeling bad that my feeling bad doesn't seem to change the physical reality of climate change. I'm biking a lot and trying to have fun as a role model without getting too attached my righteous sense of identity. I'm helping teach Stanford students that they can inquire deeply and broadly in their lives about what they want and how they think they're going to get it, and loving the process of struggle and discovery between us. I look at our society and ecosystems and feel clearly like we are not doing enough, and aren't going to survive in any form that comes close to resembling the resource flows and power dynamics that we currently cling to. I feel some sadness in this, but also lots of desire for movement to come (even if through collapse) as a way of at least taking a shot at ending some of the inequity, violence, and fear that seems to permeate most aspects of our world order. Will we peacefully deconstruct our physical world and our stories about how things need to be, in time to create a future utopia where we get to keep our cars through a magical fuel source while also eliminating racism, disease, and war? I don't see it coming, but I suppose I'm a little open to that. It's a warm target to aim for and a dream worth remembering.
Admitting this somewhat grim ecological pessimism in my blog is an important part of my brightest, deepest truth. I feel sometimes that I hold back from disclosing my pessimism about the state of the world, for fear of turning off some readers who give me feedback about how they like my general trend towards uplift and inspiration. To all of you: please know that my truth encompasses all these things. When I focus too much on the world outside me, beyond the beautiful faces I see each day, I know that I run a high risk of getting lost in arguments about whether our technology will 'save' us, depression over seemingly intractable trends of some people wanting to kill others, or fearful attempts at predicting particular scenarios that may come to pass as a way of somehow buffering myself against that future. All of these are rooted in fear, which is difficult for me to process sometimes because (I think) fear is a natural reaction to have when we read the latest news.
Part two is to find the antidote to this inner struggle by asking what it is I have to offer. What can I give that the world needs? This blog is one thing. I find much joy, peace, some pride, and a small sense of accomplishment in channeling my thoughts into this more useful container.
Another is doing my best to live my life in accord with my ecological understanding of our planet. I get much joy from talking with people and hearing from that I've inspired them. So many people have inspired me, and others have inspired them before that. This chain feels amazing when I think of it stretching across space and time. When I think of myself as part of this infinite group of people, I can draw courage from my roots and feel some peace thinking of where my ripples might go next. This is good - for me, it is a fundamental part of being human.
In the past few months, I've also been discovering that I really love helping people work through the knots in which we tie ourselves, and I feel that this is also an important task to help heal the world around me. I've done two Gestalt workshops this fall, and I've come to see that process as a powerful tool for myself and others to better understand ourselves. I have noted that when we begin to look deeper within ourselves to understand how we operate, we seem to (inevitably?) create at least a tiny space to wiggle and explore different ways of being. We can at least minutely begin to imagine that the story we tell ourselves about any given aspect of our lives is just that - a story. Over time, we selectively latch on to perceptions of the world around us in order to shore up and reinforce our existing stories. If we are attached to our stories as if they were True (and we almost always live like this), we get stuck in a way of operating in the world that is really self-limiting. Gestalt, and other processes like it, resonate with me as good places to begin to view ourselves and the world differently, and in doing so find more feelings of freedom and an ability to lead the lives we imagine.
For now, this feels like my brightest and deepest truth - share this process that speaks to me, develop my skill in facilitating it, keep talking about how I perceive things to be, and draw on the energy I feel when I'm on a good path. What is your brightest, deepest truth? Yoga, medicine, writing? What is the story you want to share with the world? How do you feel when you are on a good path for yourself and the future of the world around you?
Thanks for reading. I feel a sense of community with you, wherever you are and whatever you may be doing. May you get a glimpse of the good stuff around you and run with it.
Friday, November 20, 2009
Tuesday, October 27, 2009
Reaching Back to Look Forward
I just looked at my photo on this blog, and I saw my dad. He's there in the details for sure - old jeans, cotton shirt that was probably a little beat up, the posture with my arms akimbo, my smile that is faint and unsure of myself while sure of the world, the sunny day surrounded by beautiful people. My father's usual style involved either highly-predictable outfits for the office that involved gray or black slacks and one of a dozen identical pale blue dress shirts, or at home on the weekends it was anyone's guess as to whether it would be a checkered flannel shirt or solid color scratchy wool sweater to go with the old jeans that bordered on embarrassing family members who were with him. The best paternity test you could do for me is look into my closet right now.
My location is also where my father was too. I've listed myself as being from the United States: Minor Outlying Islands because that is often my emotional interface with the world, and my clever monkey brain loves metaphor and being rewarded for cleverness. My father was an outlier. He spent a lot of his life being slightly anomalous to the rest of the medical community in which he practiced surgery. He was often giving his life away, to too many people in too many ways without knowing what he was looking for. It's bold of me to claim this level of insight, but there's my assessment and I stand by it for now. Our house was awash in Christmas cards each year from patients of his from years or decades earlier, who still felt indebted to him for the care he gave them (often at a discount or a long series of affordable installments). Occasionally there were even in-kind payments of fruitcakes, breads, kiffles perhaps, baked goods that hearkened back to the slightly old world roots of Bethlehem, PA where I grew up. These are the odd and touching rewards of being a doctor with a smaller-town approach in an area that was actually growing and booming.
He gave his love away too, and I think his marriages and relationships suffered for it. I think he may have been very insecure his whole life, wanting to be loved but not really feeling able to accept it from others at a deep, meaningful level. It's a tough row to hoe if you can only give it away but not feel that you really deserve it yourself. (I know, cry me a river.) I think this kind of imbalance does lead to infidelity, stretching yourself too thin, thinking that the next person you meet will finally be The One to make you complete, feeling like you're stuck in a pattern that you can't get out of. I know this from my experience, and I'm working on being different and trying to feel more whole in my own right.
Whence this sudden reflection on my father? It just struck me as I opened my computer this morning in the slanting sunlight. I have also been thinking about revolutions, and as I rounded the corner heading over to my favorite local coffee shop, I had been thinking about what revolution meant when my father was a young man and what it means now.
I remember my father talking of things in history with a turn of phrase that seemed funny at the time. He would say things like, "Back at that time, there were many of us who were upset with the dictatorship in Spain," and he would have a slight sadness in his voice, like some grand vision hadn't panned out the way he imagined. He spoke of himself being included in a set of people who were undefined and without number, but I always had the feeling that he was speaking for humanity at large (maybe we all do this with our parents, and hence our worldviews end up the way they do). He was always mum on the U.S. party line about who was Right and Wrong in the world. He didn't go in much for speaking against specific countries, leaders, or the other side of the Cold War. He listened to public radio, and stayed on top of the news as best he could for someone who worked a lot. He had a bit of an academic removal from current events, in that he often spoke of them with regard to their historical contexts and roots.
But I feel that, at the end of the day, he had big hopes for humans at large that he couldn't let go of and he turned these into his motivation to be a healer. He supported the ephemeral dream of a socialized, single-payer healthcare system in the United States. He spoke with a warm wistfulness of some day working for Doctors Without Borders. In the Vietnam War, he spent much of his leave time working at an orphanage for Vietnamese children. I think that throughout his life he grew away from the hope for a top-down revolution to 'fix' our problems, and instead found satisfaction in working with individuals in his circles to be an example for how we might live our lives to create a different world.
I feel that I run the risk of waxing nostalgic here as well as simply mapping my own worldview on top of my memories of him. I know I am afforded this possibility partly because he is dead and is not going to call me up tomorrow to tell me that I've got him all wrong. I know that I'm skewed by attempts to find order and pattern in the bits that make up the past. So be it. If my memories are a bag of wool freshly shorn from the walking lambchop, then my coherent worldview is what I card, dye, spin, and knit to keep the narrative of my life intact.
After all this musing, then, what are my thoughts on revolution and my place in it? I think we need a revolution at the fractal level. What we need to do for ourselves we also need to do for society and the biosphere. We need some serious ownership. We need to cop to the fact that we're tearing through our resources and polluting the planet in myriad ways, all the while arguing what language we can use to describe it, obfuscate it, relieve ourselves of guilt about it, etc. We need to admit that we're making ourselves crazy by working harder and losing ground, even as we're motivated in large part by fear of falling behind. We don't know how to trust each other on a big enough scale to co-operate. We in the States have internalized the Official Party Lines inside our craniums through telling ourselves that we deserve our place in the pecking order, that our capitalist-socialist-fascist hybrid government is the best and we just need to tinker with it, that we can purchase and off-set our way to a brighter future, etc.
We need to revolt by owning the implications of society as it currently is and what we're doing to perpetuate it. Owning it is the first step, and when we do that and band together with others who want to smile and talk lovingly about how to be different, we can muster the courage to take further steps to change the world. We need to spread the revolution by setting our minds on fire, fueling our own personal growth by tossing our illusions in the blast furnace. We need to plant gardens, actual and metaphorical, and tend them as best we can to harvest good things. We need to place ourselves in an intellectually robust, meaningful context at all levels while doing our best to avoid religious dogma, empty rationalizations, struggle for illusions of control, and other fear-based ways of living.
When I think of revolution, I think of always swinging back and forth between our personal growth edge in the nooks and crannies of our soul, and refining our big picture understanding of the world at large. How do I want to be? How can I come from love instead of fear? How can I do better tomorrow than today? How can I find peace with this whole process, in success and failure? Much of my work these days is focused on moving more and more easily between and amongst these types of questions. How can I navigate more smoothly, so as to get stuck less often in a corner feeling like I can't imagine an easy way out?
These are my thoughts, laid bare in the disinfecting yet swaddling sunshine. I wish you much success on your journey today and everyday. While writing, I was reminded of a poem I love and want to share with you. Thanks to those who have kept poetry in my life. In spite of resisting it as best I can, and even identifying as a person who writes it much more than reads it, I find good treasures there.
To Lead or Follow?
My location is also where my father was too. I've listed myself as being from the United States: Minor Outlying Islands because that is often my emotional interface with the world, and my clever monkey brain loves metaphor and being rewarded for cleverness. My father was an outlier. He spent a lot of his life being slightly anomalous to the rest of the medical community in which he practiced surgery. He was often giving his life away, to too many people in too many ways without knowing what he was looking for. It's bold of me to claim this level of insight, but there's my assessment and I stand by it for now. Our house was awash in Christmas cards each year from patients of his from years or decades earlier, who still felt indebted to him for the care he gave them (often at a discount or a long series of affordable installments). Occasionally there were even in-kind payments of fruitcakes, breads, kiffles perhaps, baked goods that hearkened back to the slightly old world roots of Bethlehem, PA where I grew up. These are the odd and touching rewards of being a doctor with a smaller-town approach in an area that was actually growing and booming.
He gave his love away too, and I think his marriages and relationships suffered for it. I think he may have been very insecure his whole life, wanting to be loved but not really feeling able to accept it from others at a deep, meaningful level. It's a tough row to hoe if you can only give it away but not feel that you really deserve it yourself. (I know, cry me a river.) I think this kind of imbalance does lead to infidelity, stretching yourself too thin, thinking that the next person you meet will finally be The One to make you complete, feeling like you're stuck in a pattern that you can't get out of. I know this from my experience, and I'm working on being different and trying to feel more whole in my own right.
Whence this sudden reflection on my father? It just struck me as I opened my computer this morning in the slanting sunlight. I have also been thinking about revolutions, and as I rounded the corner heading over to my favorite local coffee shop, I had been thinking about what revolution meant when my father was a young man and what it means now.
I remember my father talking of things in history with a turn of phrase that seemed funny at the time. He would say things like, "Back at that time, there were many of us who were upset with the dictatorship in Spain," and he would have a slight sadness in his voice, like some grand vision hadn't panned out the way he imagined. He spoke of himself being included in a set of people who were undefined and without number, but I always had the feeling that he was speaking for humanity at large (maybe we all do this with our parents, and hence our worldviews end up the way they do). He was always mum on the U.S. party line about who was Right and Wrong in the world. He didn't go in much for speaking against specific countries, leaders, or the other side of the Cold War. He listened to public radio, and stayed on top of the news as best he could for someone who worked a lot. He had a bit of an academic removal from current events, in that he often spoke of them with regard to their historical contexts and roots.
But I feel that, at the end of the day, he had big hopes for humans at large that he couldn't let go of and he turned these into his motivation to be a healer. He supported the ephemeral dream of a socialized, single-payer healthcare system in the United States. He spoke with a warm wistfulness of some day working for Doctors Without Borders. In the Vietnam War, he spent much of his leave time working at an orphanage for Vietnamese children. I think that throughout his life he grew away from the hope for a top-down revolution to 'fix' our problems, and instead found satisfaction in working with individuals in his circles to be an example for how we might live our lives to create a different world.
I feel that I run the risk of waxing nostalgic here as well as simply mapping my own worldview on top of my memories of him. I know I am afforded this possibility partly because he is dead and is not going to call me up tomorrow to tell me that I've got him all wrong. I know that I'm skewed by attempts to find order and pattern in the bits that make up the past. So be it. If my memories are a bag of wool freshly shorn from the walking lambchop, then my coherent worldview is what I card, dye, spin, and knit to keep the narrative of my life intact.
After all this musing, then, what are my thoughts on revolution and my place in it? I think we need a revolution at the fractal level. What we need to do for ourselves we also need to do for society and the biosphere. We need some serious ownership. We need to cop to the fact that we're tearing through our resources and polluting the planet in myriad ways, all the while arguing what language we can use to describe it, obfuscate it, relieve ourselves of guilt about it, etc. We need to admit that we're making ourselves crazy by working harder and losing ground, even as we're motivated in large part by fear of falling behind. We don't know how to trust each other on a big enough scale to co-operate. We in the States have internalized the Official Party Lines inside our craniums through telling ourselves that we deserve our place in the pecking order, that our capitalist-socialist-fascist hybrid government is the best and we just need to tinker with it, that we can purchase and off-set our way to a brighter future, etc.
We need to revolt by owning the implications of society as it currently is and what we're doing to perpetuate it. Owning it is the first step, and when we do that and band together with others who want to smile and talk lovingly about how to be different, we can muster the courage to take further steps to change the world. We need to spread the revolution by setting our minds on fire, fueling our own personal growth by tossing our illusions in the blast furnace. We need to plant gardens, actual and metaphorical, and tend them as best we can to harvest good things. We need to place ourselves in an intellectually robust, meaningful context at all levels while doing our best to avoid religious dogma, empty rationalizations, struggle for illusions of control, and other fear-based ways of living.
When I think of revolution, I think of always swinging back and forth between our personal growth edge in the nooks and crannies of our soul, and refining our big picture understanding of the world at large. How do I want to be? How can I come from love instead of fear? How can I do better tomorrow than today? How can I find peace with this whole process, in success and failure? Much of my work these days is focused on moving more and more easily between and amongst these types of questions. How can I navigate more smoothly, so as to get stuck less often in a corner feeling like I can't imagine an easy way out?
These are my thoughts, laid bare in the disinfecting yet swaddling sunshine. I wish you much success on your journey today and everyday. While writing, I was reminded of a poem I love and want to share with you. Thanks to those who have kept poetry in my life. In spite of resisting it as best I can, and even identifying as a person who writes it much more than reads it, I find good treasures there.
To Lead or Follow?
The cup of my mind was filled with light,
But the darkness on their faces
Made me put out my light and follow them...
It was only afterward
When we were wandering in the dark together
That they told me
They had come looking for light.
~Harper Brown
Friday, October 16, 2009
the path disappears over the next rise
Turn Over Your Hand
Those lines on your palm, they can be read
for a hidden part of your life that only
those links can say - nobody's voice
can find so tiny a message as comes
across your hand. Forbidden to complain,
you have tried to be like somebody else,
and only this fine record you examine
sometimes like this can remember where
you were going before that long
silent evasion that your life became.
- William Stafford
How's that for an opener?
So where have I been and what have I done? What are the tea leaves holding for my future? What's it all about?
Answers: I've been out to the wilderness and back. After a beautiful week in Yosemite, I did another beautiful week in Desolation Wilderness just southwest of Lake Tahoe. More mountains, more granite, more Jeffrey pines that smell like butterscotch when you get within a few inches of their bark. Some swims in cold lakes above 7,000 feet, some fearless jumping off of rocks into cold water with fish where I couldn't always see the bottom. Go fearless me :-)
A few days after my return to the grid, I departed with some friends for a work week at the Tassajara Zen center in the Ventana Wilderness down by Big Sur. Yet again, so beautiful! We worked with good people, took tea breaks, plunged in their cold creek (more jumping off of big rocks, which has historically been a little challenging for me), sat zazen with the monks and lay practitioners, and sat in the hot baths while looking at the stars. So beautiful... The picture above is from a hike we did one day. Most of it was charred forest (picturesque in its own way) but this meadow of invasive wild oats had sprung back to beauty in the past year since the burn. Thanks David Saxton for urging me to go do that week. So worth it!
The morning after our return, I launched into the fall quarter at Stanford where I and the folks I live with are teaching a course about valuescience - the scientific inquiry into our ideas about value. I helped teach it in the spring, and am really glad for this opportunity to do it again. It is beautiful to help and watch the students wrestle with placing themselves in an honest, rigorous ecological context and then accept the implications for what that means about our lives. What are we up to as individuals? How about as a species? Where are we and where do we think we want to go? Can we get there? Are our ideas about self and world accurate? Big questions, beautiful discussions and activities, lots of growth for myself and others. You can't beat it.
In all this swirling activity, some of you have asked how my Summer of Doing went. I'm flattered that you have been paying attention. If you look a few postings back in this blog ("juicing the long days for every drop of goodness"), you'll find my public testament of the things I intended to do. The amazing news is that I actually did almost everything on the list. I got Rolfed. I did Gestalt work. I spent some time in the wilderness. I have been studying more tai chi with an eye towards teaching. I kept the meditation and pancakes sessions alive each Saturday morning. It's all been wonderful and good. Too much to describe right now, except that sometimes it's okay to kick the doors open in our comfortable lives and let the brisk, clear morning air of challenge come sweeping in.
Some astute friend and readers have asked about one detail I haven't done yet. Seems like folks want to know about surfing. "Have you surfed yet?" they ask. "You said you wanted to do that." Well, thank you for the push. A few days ago I booked my ticket to San Diego for a long weekend in November with my friend Sam. I think that there is no better way for the Old White Guy in the Sky to tell you it's time to surf like having a friend who lives two blocks of the beach in southern California, who is the same size as you and has two surfboards and two wetsuits. There is definitely some divine planning up in there somewhere, and I'm rolling with it. I'll let you know how my capstone experience of getting ground into the sand goes next month. Thank you for keeping me honest and on track.
A few folks have asked what I've learned in all this doing. What's the take home message? What's the take home feeling? I think my main lesson is that I'm learning more and more each day to love myself, as a way to begin to build a life. I think often this concept is somewhat of a dirty idea in our culture. I think many of us (myself included for a long time) feel that loving ourselves is some combination of ridiculously obvious, self-indulgent, narcissistic, New Age, Californian, and a few other things. More and more, I'm instead finding it essential as a way to begin loving others and engaging with the world around me in a deep and meaningful way.
First, I think it's not at all obvious and it is dangerous to take it for granted. Sure, we all take care of ourselves by eating, sleeping, and gathering the resources we need to sustain ourselves from day to day. But so often, we can do these while still not believing in our capacity to have a decent life. Or we can be in a relationship for a long time and still deem ourselves unworthy of love, which in my personal experience almost completely limits my ability to love others fully.
I think sometimes we also worry about being too self-indulgent. I think this is a legitimate worry, but I also feel that we check with our internal touchstones to see how we're doing. Is it indulgent to treat yourself to relaxing weekends of just chilling out? Of course not. Is it indulgent to express our self-love by enjoying activities that come at the expense of others' quality of life, like buying diamonds from an exploitative industry or traveling great distances on carbon-fueled adventures while the climate is continuing to change? Harder question to answer. We all do a broad spectrum of things in our lives, and I think we need to look seriously at how we've defined our ideas of what is good for us, what is necessary for us, what we think we're entitled to, etc.
I think of my friend Sarah (go you!) who is taking the life to do a yoga teacher training course as a way of slowing down and getting back in touch with herself. I think that's wonderful and right on track. I think of friends starting men's groups so that guys can get back in touch with that side of being human. Awesome! These are great things, I think. There are so many ways to love and take care of ourselves that don't involve being indulgent to the point of our own detriment.
One thing I've noticed about this as I practice it (and it takes real practice to love ourselves if we're not used to it) is that the more I'm able to love myself, the more equipped I am to love others. I think it's just a simple extension of the idea that we need to take care of our own basic needs before being able to provide for others. Like on the plane where you do your own oxygen mask first before helping the kids or other people around you.
Does this translate into advice? Well.... sure, okay. I recommend doing something really kind for yourself today. Cup of tea, putting the feet up, reading that book, whatever turns your crank from the infinite number of choices. I also recommend an awareness exercise that I've found to be a great litmus test for things we rarely explore in ourselves. For all my life up until a few months ago, I found it impossible (not that I thought much about trying) to look at myself in the mirror and just tell myself that I'm a decent person and that I love myself. When I say this, I know that some of you, mainly on the east coast perhaps :-), will bristle/scorn/laugh and distance yourself from even thinking about this. I used to do that too. Then I thought about it a bit, and felt sad that I couldn't do this simple activity. I resisted by rationalizing - "Why does it matter whether I can do it and really feel okay with it? I 'know' that I love myself." I resisted by labeling it strange and self-indulgent - "Normal people don't do this." Both of these are perhaps true, but I have also noticed that once I tried it a few times, felt the discomfort, and began to revisit it in light of some personal growth work, I learned a few things.
One - I didn't become some deranged narcissist. Two - I didn't become any softer in the head than I perhaps already am. Three - I learned a lot by asking myself why it seems so hard at first. Four - I gained some more self-esteem. Five - it's not a slippery slope down to a Stuart Smiley level of meaningless drivel. Six - wow, I'm better able to empathize with others and connect in meaningful ways. Seven - life is pretty good.
So this is my story and I'm sticking to it. I'll let you know how it continues to unfold. Know that if you read this, I'm thinking of you and sending you good vibes. (I've started to feel okay with this 'cause it's my own little version of praying for your soul, but feels much better and less invasive.) Be well, my friends, and don't let the cool weather keep your own life from being hot.
Those lines on your palm, they can be read
for a hidden part of your life that only
those links can say - nobody's voice
can find so tiny a message as comes
across your hand. Forbidden to complain,
you have tried to be like somebody else,
and only this fine record you examine
sometimes like this can remember where
you were going before that long
silent evasion that your life became.
- William Stafford
How's that for an opener?
So where have I been and what have I done? What are the tea leaves holding for my future? What's it all about?
Answers: I've been out to the wilderness and back. After a beautiful week in Yosemite, I did another beautiful week in Desolation Wilderness just southwest of Lake Tahoe. More mountains, more granite, more Jeffrey pines that smell like butterscotch when you get within a few inches of their bark. Some swims in cold lakes above 7,000 feet, some fearless jumping off of rocks into cold water with fish where I couldn't always see the bottom. Go fearless me :-)
A few days after my return to the grid, I departed with some friends for a work week at the Tassajara Zen center in the Ventana Wilderness down by Big Sur. Yet again, so beautiful! We worked with good people, took tea breaks, plunged in their cold creek (more jumping off of big rocks, which has historically been a little challenging for me), sat zazen with the monks and lay practitioners, and sat in the hot baths while looking at the stars. So beautiful... The picture above is from a hike we did one day. Most of it was charred forest (picturesque in its own way) but this meadow of invasive wild oats had sprung back to beauty in the past year since the burn. Thanks David Saxton for urging me to go do that week. So worth it!
The morning after our return, I launched into the fall quarter at Stanford where I and the folks I live with are teaching a course about valuescience - the scientific inquiry into our ideas about value. I helped teach it in the spring, and am really glad for this opportunity to do it again. It is beautiful to help and watch the students wrestle with placing themselves in an honest, rigorous ecological context and then accept the implications for what that means about our lives. What are we up to as individuals? How about as a species? Where are we and where do we think we want to go? Can we get there? Are our ideas about self and world accurate? Big questions, beautiful discussions and activities, lots of growth for myself and others. You can't beat it.
In all this swirling activity, some of you have asked how my Summer of Doing went. I'm flattered that you have been paying attention. If you look a few postings back in this blog ("juicing the long days for every drop of goodness"), you'll find my public testament of the things I intended to do. The amazing news is that I actually did almost everything on the list. I got Rolfed. I did Gestalt work. I spent some time in the wilderness. I have been studying more tai chi with an eye towards teaching. I kept the meditation and pancakes sessions alive each Saturday morning. It's all been wonderful and good. Too much to describe right now, except that sometimes it's okay to kick the doors open in our comfortable lives and let the brisk, clear morning air of challenge come sweeping in.
Some astute friend and readers have asked about one detail I haven't done yet. Seems like folks want to know about surfing. "Have you surfed yet?" they ask. "You said you wanted to do that." Well, thank you for the push. A few days ago I booked my ticket to San Diego for a long weekend in November with my friend Sam. I think that there is no better way for the Old White Guy in the Sky to tell you it's time to surf like having a friend who lives two blocks of the beach in southern California, who is the same size as you and has two surfboards and two wetsuits. There is definitely some divine planning up in there somewhere, and I'm rolling with it. I'll let you know how my capstone experience of getting ground into the sand goes next month. Thank you for keeping me honest and on track.
A few folks have asked what I've learned in all this doing. What's the take home message? What's the take home feeling? I think my main lesson is that I'm learning more and more each day to love myself, as a way to begin to build a life. I think often this concept is somewhat of a dirty idea in our culture. I think many of us (myself included for a long time) feel that loving ourselves is some combination of ridiculously obvious, self-indulgent, narcissistic, New Age, Californian, and a few other things. More and more, I'm instead finding it essential as a way to begin loving others and engaging with the world around me in a deep and meaningful way.
First, I think it's not at all obvious and it is dangerous to take it for granted. Sure, we all take care of ourselves by eating, sleeping, and gathering the resources we need to sustain ourselves from day to day. But so often, we can do these while still not believing in our capacity to have a decent life. Or we can be in a relationship for a long time and still deem ourselves unworthy of love, which in my personal experience almost completely limits my ability to love others fully.
I think sometimes we also worry about being too self-indulgent. I think this is a legitimate worry, but I also feel that we check with our internal touchstones to see how we're doing. Is it indulgent to treat yourself to relaxing weekends of just chilling out? Of course not. Is it indulgent to express our self-love by enjoying activities that come at the expense of others' quality of life, like buying diamonds from an exploitative industry or traveling great distances on carbon-fueled adventures while the climate is continuing to change? Harder question to answer. We all do a broad spectrum of things in our lives, and I think we need to look seriously at how we've defined our ideas of what is good for us, what is necessary for us, what we think we're entitled to, etc.
I think of my friend Sarah (go you!) who is taking the life to do a yoga teacher training course as a way of slowing down and getting back in touch with herself. I think that's wonderful and right on track. I think of friends starting men's groups so that guys can get back in touch with that side of being human. Awesome! These are great things, I think. There are so many ways to love and take care of ourselves that don't involve being indulgent to the point of our own detriment.
One thing I've noticed about this as I practice it (and it takes real practice to love ourselves if we're not used to it) is that the more I'm able to love myself, the more equipped I am to love others. I think it's just a simple extension of the idea that we need to take care of our own basic needs before being able to provide for others. Like on the plane where you do your own oxygen mask first before helping the kids or other people around you.
Does this translate into advice? Well.... sure, okay. I recommend doing something really kind for yourself today. Cup of tea, putting the feet up, reading that book, whatever turns your crank from the infinite number of choices. I also recommend an awareness exercise that I've found to be a great litmus test for things we rarely explore in ourselves. For all my life up until a few months ago, I found it impossible (not that I thought much about trying) to look at myself in the mirror and just tell myself that I'm a decent person and that I love myself. When I say this, I know that some of you, mainly on the east coast perhaps :-), will bristle/scorn/laugh and distance yourself from even thinking about this. I used to do that too. Then I thought about it a bit, and felt sad that I couldn't do this simple activity. I resisted by rationalizing - "Why does it matter whether I can do it and really feel okay with it? I 'know' that I love myself." I resisted by labeling it strange and self-indulgent - "Normal people don't do this." Both of these are perhaps true, but I have also noticed that once I tried it a few times, felt the discomfort, and began to revisit it in light of some personal growth work, I learned a few things.
One - I didn't become some deranged narcissist. Two - I didn't become any softer in the head than I perhaps already am. Three - I learned a lot by asking myself why it seems so hard at first. Four - I gained some more self-esteem. Five - it's not a slippery slope down to a Stuart Smiley level of meaningless drivel. Six - wow, I'm better able to empathize with others and connect in meaningful ways. Seven - life is pretty good.
So this is my story and I'm sticking to it. I'll let you know how it continues to unfold. Know that if you read this, I'm thinking of you and sending you good vibes. (I've started to feel okay with this 'cause it's my own little version of praying for your soul, but feels much better and less invasive.) Be well, my friends, and don't let the cool weather keep your own life from being hot.
Saturday, September 05, 2009
my healthcare rant and love
PS - I have this note here next to my computer about things I want to blog about, and one is about owning realities especially in reference to healthcare reform. I know it's non-sequiter from the last entry, but I've got to put this out there. We won't get healthcare reform without PAYING MORE TAXES. We keep building really dumb-ass illusions that we're going to 'fix' things and make everyone happy and healthy without paying more and investing lots of effort to OVERHAUL a BROKEN system. We can't pay fewer taxes and get more out of the system. Not possible. Not even a little bit. Socialism works because people pay MORE and get MORE. We pay LESS and get... well, you know what we get. If you think everything's fine, ask someone who is self-employed about health insurance or ask yourself if you or a loved one loses their job for a few months. I read an interesting article yesterday that claims that all those townhall meetings where people were irate were actually much more civil and engaging, and the few freak Libertarian whackos who want the government out of EVERYTHING were actually the ones making the noise and getting press coverage, even though they represent what amounts to a tiny fraction of the population.
You can tell by the number of words in all capitals that I'm passionate about this. Why? Because it's a chance to move towards a more humane society. We're the laughing stock of the planet in terms of people who claim to be living at the top of the global pyramid (we certainly are in terms of consumption and trash generation) but who actually have no comprehensive way to take care of ourselves. We aren't stemming coming epidemics like obesity and diabetes, we leave tens of millions of people out of the loop for care, and tens or a hundred million more have the terrible experience of having to fight through mountains of paperwork and manage their own cases in order to get the big-business health insurance companies to pay for health care costs. We aren't talking about what the demographics look like for the U.S., with fewer young working people paying into a pot to take care of an increasing number of elderly people, who use up a disproportionately high amount of healthcare funds. We aren't talking about preventive care in any serious way. We aren't talking about taking the profit motive out of healthcare, which seems like a real no-brainer to me. (Yes, in some hypothetical world that doesn't exist, free-market competition could possibly lead to the most efficient delivery of a particular service like healthcare, but so far in human history no one's managed to do big business without screwing lots of people down the line, including the end recipients of the good or service.) So I say, let's get real about the challenges we're facing and talk about ways to do better.
I'm not aiming to be a Euro-trash sentimental socialist who loves all things Scandinavian (though they do make some high-quality stuff, and who doesn't love things made in Norway or Sweden?) and puts on blinders about the problems inherent in all big networks made up of fallible humans. What I'm saying is I feel better at the end of day when I'm living in a world where I at least trust the government a bit more to take care of me and my fellow citizens, even if there is waste and inefficiency along the way. I think (and do this test for yourself inside your own ribcage) that it feels better than the system we have now where private companies are the ones profiting at exorbitant rates from our imperfect system.
A more humane, socialist culture is GOOD. I promise you'll feel GOOD if your tax dollars go to helping other human beings, rather than keeping a few more for yourself while the poor people get f**ked and the rest goes to a war machine. It's not any one of us that's a bad person. We do live in an incredibly complex bureaucracy with vested interests that are slow to change because (in my opinion) we are afraid. We're afraid that others will take advantage of any kind of welfare state while we toil away to contribute to it. We have yet to feel like we're all in it together. We maintain the illusion of competition as a virtue, while altruism of any kind is lauded and held up as a rare example of how we "should" be that is so hard to achieve. It's not actually hard to achieve an altruistic mindset. If we give a little and take that course where it leads us, we'll get to good places of more love and less fear. There are many institutional hurdles to come down, but that didn't stop us from ending the Vietnam War, getting women the right to vote, achieving civil rights for all at least in theory, and other big causes. We can do it, one by one and then two by two, three by three. It's a small planet and getting smaller all the time. We can make it more hospitable and loving if we talk realistically about what we want and how we can get it. We need to start with owning our present reality and blazing a path with heart from there.
Good morning, and good luck.
You can tell by the number of words in all capitals that I'm passionate about this. Why? Because it's a chance to move towards a more humane society. We're the laughing stock of the planet in terms of people who claim to be living at the top of the global pyramid (we certainly are in terms of consumption and trash generation) but who actually have no comprehensive way to take care of ourselves. We aren't stemming coming epidemics like obesity and diabetes, we leave tens of millions of people out of the loop for care, and tens or a hundred million more have the terrible experience of having to fight through mountains of paperwork and manage their own cases in order to get the big-business health insurance companies to pay for health care costs. We aren't talking about what the demographics look like for the U.S., with fewer young working people paying into a pot to take care of an increasing number of elderly people, who use up a disproportionately high amount of healthcare funds. We aren't talking about preventive care in any serious way. We aren't talking about taking the profit motive out of healthcare, which seems like a real no-brainer to me. (Yes, in some hypothetical world that doesn't exist, free-market competition could possibly lead to the most efficient delivery of a particular service like healthcare, but so far in human history no one's managed to do big business without screwing lots of people down the line, including the end recipients of the good or service.) So I say, let's get real about the challenges we're facing and talk about ways to do better.
I'm not aiming to be a Euro-trash sentimental socialist who loves all things Scandinavian (though they do make some high-quality stuff, and who doesn't love things made in Norway or Sweden?) and puts on blinders about the problems inherent in all big networks made up of fallible humans. What I'm saying is I feel better at the end of day when I'm living in a world where I at least trust the government a bit more to take care of me and my fellow citizens, even if there is waste and inefficiency along the way. I think (and do this test for yourself inside your own ribcage) that it feels better than the system we have now where private companies are the ones profiting at exorbitant rates from our imperfect system.
A more humane, socialist culture is GOOD. I promise you'll feel GOOD if your tax dollars go to helping other human beings, rather than keeping a few more for yourself while the poor people get f**ked and the rest goes to a war machine. It's not any one of us that's a bad person. We do live in an incredibly complex bureaucracy with vested interests that are slow to change because (in my opinion) we are afraid. We're afraid that others will take advantage of any kind of welfare state while we toil away to contribute to it. We have yet to feel like we're all in it together. We maintain the illusion of competition as a virtue, while altruism of any kind is lauded and held up as a rare example of how we "should" be that is so hard to achieve. It's not actually hard to achieve an altruistic mindset. If we give a little and take that course where it leads us, we'll get to good places of more love and less fear. There are many institutional hurdles to come down, but that didn't stop us from ending the Vietnam War, getting women the right to vote, achieving civil rights for all at least in theory, and other big causes. We can do it, one by one and then two by two, three by three. It's a small planet and getting smaller all the time. We can make it more hospitable and loving if we talk realistically about what we want and how we can get it. We need to start with owning our present reality and blazing a path with heart from there.
Good morning, and good luck.
Living Integration, or Small Axe Break Up Big Pavement
What am I up to these days?
Yeah, that's about it.
Yeah, that's about it.
I'm living large, swallowing the mountains and sniffing the streams, thinking about places that feel like home and how to get in touch with my primal self. I just got back from a seven day, six night wilderness hiking trip in Yosemite with some friends. It was so beautiful, I can't really describe it.
Some highlights:
- close encounter with a bear, in a friendly way
- watching baby deer nursing and playing
- swimming in glacier-fed pools at 11,000 ft.
- watching the stars
- seeing very few people
- carrying everything I needed on my back
- no cell phone, email, or electricity
- not showering
- watching the sunrise every morning
- basically everything about the experience...
I'm convinced that we would all be foaming-at-the-chakra conservationists if we each spent some time each year in wilderness places. Just being there, in a landscape that is so immense and vast, you feel some humility that I think is lost in our rectilinear, paved world of wireless everything and Twitter De Dee and Twitter De Dum. You feel not so much vulnerable as integrated and enveloped. I feel like my biological roots come alive when I'm able to be away for at least several days in the wilderness. Not that I'm chasing down deer and gnawing on them raw, but I am appreciating the silence, feeling much less need for control, and getting a sense that I'm part of a bigger creation that has evolved for billions of years. We swam in frigid waters and loved it. We played with abandon on the big rocks and boulders. We drank the water right from the streams, no iodine or filters, and it tasted like the Tao. We lived a tiny slice of life without a higher goal or petty fears, and it was spiritual and religious (religion comes from the Latin re-ligare or "to reconnect").
So what? Exactly! I'm back here in Palo Alto, sipping my occasional morning decaf and reading a book while the sun rises over a quiet bar and office building across the street. But I'm different, and it feels so fundamental and great. I think the more time we spend in wilderness the better equipped we are to take ourselves less seriously. Because we need to face the fact that we take ourselves WAY too seriously as a culture, to the detriment of our own well-being and that of the entire planet. We talk of balancing economy and the environment. Bad news for the economists but there is no balance. Economics is a wholly-owned subsidiary of the planet's ecosystem. Nature always bats last, despite any of our species' efforts to retain control. As we destroy biodiversity and throw long-standing cycles and patterns out of whack, we jeopardize our own future, even if we think we're getting what we want by creating thousands of jobs. We're selling out our long-term future for very short term illusions of gain, and questionable ones at that.
Am I now an (even more) wild and wide-eyed 'environmentalist'? I guess so. Perhaps it was always there, waiting just beneath the skin. For years I've considered myself an ecologist, but this trip ratcheted up both my angst and my appreciation for wilderness and preserving it. I think you are too. We all think we love the illusion of control - air-conditioning, cars, moving from polluted areas to "less" polluted areas, living in quiet suburbs but still having easy access to city life, the CDC watching out for swine flu, stores to sell us things and trash companies to take it from our sight, and countless other things. But what is our deep ecology? How much energy and matter goes into our stuff? What are the long-term consequences for OUR CHILDREN of the products we use? What is our footprint and how are the footprints of others tied to us? How much China do we breathe and drink? How much of Ecuador's sweat and humanity went into our smoothie? How much injustice in 24K gold? What do we do when we think about all these things and start to go crazy feeling a mixture of guilt and paralysis?
Here's what I do. First, I try to avoid thinking of everything consciously at once. Recipe for bad times. I work instead to establish patterns that I feel okay with, and then make them habits so I can run on autopilot there while I put my conscious attention to whatever feels like the most low-hanging fruit. Once I've got the fair-trade coffee thing down, I just operate at that level rather than worry about how I can do more. I go on to cutting out an automobile trip or two each month, which takes some brain power and life energy. Once I've nailed that, I go on to low-VOC paints in my house, or perhaps making do with the old color scheme for a while longer. Then perhaps take that personal-growth workshop you've been putting off. Your inner compass is SO good at telling you what is the most important work right now. If you're not sure, just ask around inside your heart (literally, just feel out different veins of your life like work, money, family, health, whatever) and your heart will tell you where to do the work. It's easy, and we need to keep it simple and easy in order to not feel overwhelmed in this world with so many billboards and loud voices telling us what to think about. Shut 'em out, get back to basics.
Also, these days, I'm going primal.
My friend Matt tipped me off to a website about living primal, which I have really enjoyed. It's something I've thought about for a few years now. Here's the gist of it and many other sites like it. Many people think (and I concur) that the best place to find information about how to live well is to look to our biological ancestors. Why? Because we evolved to be certain ways (movement, exercise, diet, perhaps psychology) and those patterns/needs run deep in our structures. We don't get to decide that sitting behind a computer screen for 35 hours a week is fine with us. It may or may not be. Most people find it's not. What the primal folks are up to is trying to discover through various methods (observing our close genetic ancestors like chimps, anecdotal self-experimentation, dietetic studies, etc.) what are the patterns we may want to harmonize with. The blog that Matt pointed me too, as well as a book about ancient running cultures and modern running science, has a few suggestions that I've taken to heart and have been enjoying.
I run barefoot one to two times a week. The gist is that we run differently when we go barefoot. We're more careful with our foot placement. We may pronate a little a bit and that's okay. Our feet get tougher and more flexible too. If you're a runner, you've got to try it. There is an emerging body of evidence that running barefoot is really good for you, and, believe it or not, that our own evolution did a better job building us to run over millions of years than Nike's shoes have done in the past 30. I know - hard to believe. I mean, I really wanted to trust a company, that has a profit motive as its bottom line, to do the right thing. But life goes on. So I run at a moderate pace (9 minute miles?) with occasional sprints. It feels so good. Main point - avoid injury by starting slowly and carefully. Build up gradually, as it is a DIFFERENT experience than running in shoes on pavement. Some people run barefoot on pavement. I haven't gotten there yet, but if it works for you, keep rockin' it. If you take up barefoot running even occasionally, please write to me and let me know what you think. I'm gathering anecdotal evidence myself because it is such a new thing.
More primal: get lots of sleep. If you're depriving yourself, for whatever cultural reason, you've got to get back to biological roots and SLEEP. I promise you'll feel way better, like a different person.
Eat lots of fresh fruit and vegetables. Avoid the processed stuff as much as possible. People looking at longevity and incidence of disease are continuing to tell us that fresh foods is the way to go to prevent inflammation (the basic root of so many ailments, including eventual organ failure). Smoothies, seasonal local foods, organic stuff, stir-fries, things with Omega-3 fatty acids like flax and walnuts, salads, all are sooooooo good. These days, I'm eating mainly fruits, vegetables, some meats, nuts, seeds, and occasional dairy in the form of yogurt or lower-fat cheese. Good stuff...
Move alot. The idea is that our biological ancestors moved at slow speeds most of the time, and occasionally very fast (evading or chasing other animals). Try to walk around the office if you're at work. Definitely walk at lunch. Do small tasks that require coordination. Take up tai chi or yoga if you're inspired. Swimming is great (I'm up to 2 days a week after years at only 1 or less, and loving it!).
These are my main threads and principles right now. I feel pretty good about them and the balance of my life. I just finished my 10 week series of structural integration bodywork (done TO me, not by me) and I feel like my posture and movement are significantly different. He even straightened my nose a little bit in one session.
If you're looking for inspiration this fall, write to me and I'll be glad to talk more about it. I love this stuff. I continue to feel like my work in this life is to help free myself and other from old ways of living that don't serve us and instead re-pattern ourselves to live lives more as we imagine they can be. It feels really great.
Some highlights:
- close encounter with a bear, in a friendly way
- watching baby deer nursing and playing
- swimming in glacier-fed pools at 11,000 ft.
- watching the stars
- seeing very few people
- carrying everything I needed on my back
- no cell phone, email, or electricity
- not showering
- watching the sunrise every morning
- basically everything about the experience...
I'm convinced that we would all be foaming-at-the-chakra conservationists if we each spent some time each year in wilderness places. Just being there, in a landscape that is so immense and vast, you feel some humility that I think is lost in our rectilinear, paved world of wireless everything and Twitter De Dee and Twitter De Dum. You feel not so much vulnerable as integrated and enveloped. I feel like my biological roots come alive when I'm able to be away for at least several days in the wilderness. Not that I'm chasing down deer and gnawing on them raw, but I am appreciating the silence, feeling much less need for control, and getting a sense that I'm part of a bigger creation that has evolved for billions of years. We swam in frigid waters and loved it. We played with abandon on the big rocks and boulders. We drank the water right from the streams, no iodine or filters, and it tasted like the Tao. We lived a tiny slice of life without a higher goal or petty fears, and it was spiritual and religious (religion comes from the Latin re-ligare or "to reconnect").
So what? Exactly! I'm back here in Palo Alto, sipping my occasional morning decaf and reading a book while the sun rises over a quiet bar and office building across the street. But I'm different, and it feels so fundamental and great. I think the more time we spend in wilderness the better equipped we are to take ourselves less seriously. Because we need to face the fact that we take ourselves WAY too seriously as a culture, to the detriment of our own well-being and that of the entire planet. We talk of balancing economy and the environment. Bad news for the economists but there is no balance. Economics is a wholly-owned subsidiary of the planet's ecosystem. Nature always bats last, despite any of our species' efforts to retain control. As we destroy biodiversity and throw long-standing cycles and patterns out of whack, we jeopardize our own future, even if we think we're getting what we want by creating thousands of jobs. We're selling out our long-term future for very short term illusions of gain, and questionable ones at that.
Am I now an (even more) wild and wide-eyed 'environmentalist'? I guess so. Perhaps it was always there, waiting just beneath the skin. For years I've considered myself an ecologist, but this trip ratcheted up both my angst and my appreciation for wilderness and preserving it. I think you are too. We all think we love the illusion of control - air-conditioning, cars, moving from polluted areas to "less" polluted areas, living in quiet suburbs but still having easy access to city life, the CDC watching out for swine flu, stores to sell us things and trash companies to take it from our sight, and countless other things. But what is our deep ecology? How much energy and matter goes into our stuff? What are the long-term consequences for OUR CHILDREN of the products we use? What is our footprint and how are the footprints of others tied to us? How much China do we breathe and drink? How much of Ecuador's sweat and humanity went into our smoothie? How much injustice in 24K gold? What do we do when we think about all these things and start to go crazy feeling a mixture of guilt and paralysis?
Here's what I do. First, I try to avoid thinking of everything consciously at once. Recipe for bad times. I work instead to establish patterns that I feel okay with, and then make them habits so I can run on autopilot there while I put my conscious attention to whatever feels like the most low-hanging fruit. Once I've got the fair-trade coffee thing down, I just operate at that level rather than worry about how I can do more. I go on to cutting out an automobile trip or two each month, which takes some brain power and life energy. Once I've nailed that, I go on to low-VOC paints in my house, or perhaps making do with the old color scheme for a while longer. Then perhaps take that personal-growth workshop you've been putting off. Your inner compass is SO good at telling you what is the most important work right now. If you're not sure, just ask around inside your heart (literally, just feel out different veins of your life like work, money, family, health, whatever) and your heart will tell you where to do the work. It's easy, and we need to keep it simple and easy in order to not feel overwhelmed in this world with so many billboards and loud voices telling us what to think about. Shut 'em out, get back to basics.
Also, these days, I'm going primal.
My friend Matt tipped me off to a website about living primal, which I have really enjoyed. It's something I've thought about for a few years now. Here's the gist of it and many other sites like it. Many people think (and I concur) that the best place to find information about how to live well is to look to our biological ancestors. Why? Because we evolved to be certain ways (movement, exercise, diet, perhaps psychology) and those patterns/needs run deep in our structures. We don't get to decide that sitting behind a computer screen for 35 hours a week is fine with us. It may or may not be. Most people find it's not. What the primal folks are up to is trying to discover through various methods (observing our close genetic ancestors like chimps, anecdotal self-experimentation, dietetic studies, etc.) what are the patterns we may want to harmonize with. The blog that Matt pointed me too, as well as a book about ancient running cultures and modern running science, has a few suggestions that I've taken to heart and have been enjoying.
I run barefoot one to two times a week. The gist is that we run differently when we go barefoot. We're more careful with our foot placement. We may pronate a little a bit and that's okay. Our feet get tougher and more flexible too. If you're a runner, you've got to try it. There is an emerging body of evidence that running barefoot is really good for you, and, believe it or not, that our own evolution did a better job building us to run over millions of years than Nike's shoes have done in the past 30. I know - hard to believe. I mean, I really wanted to trust a company, that has a profit motive as its bottom line, to do the right thing. But life goes on. So I run at a moderate pace (9 minute miles?) with occasional sprints. It feels so good. Main point - avoid injury by starting slowly and carefully. Build up gradually, as it is a DIFFERENT experience than running in shoes on pavement. Some people run barefoot on pavement. I haven't gotten there yet, but if it works for you, keep rockin' it. If you take up barefoot running even occasionally, please write to me and let me know what you think. I'm gathering anecdotal evidence myself because it is such a new thing.
More primal: get lots of sleep. If you're depriving yourself, for whatever cultural reason, you've got to get back to biological roots and SLEEP. I promise you'll feel way better, like a different person.
Eat lots of fresh fruit and vegetables. Avoid the processed stuff as much as possible. People looking at longevity and incidence of disease are continuing to tell us that fresh foods is the way to go to prevent inflammation (the basic root of so many ailments, including eventual organ failure). Smoothies, seasonal local foods, organic stuff, stir-fries, things with Omega-3 fatty acids like flax and walnuts, salads, all are sooooooo good. These days, I'm eating mainly fruits, vegetables, some meats, nuts, seeds, and occasional dairy in the form of yogurt or lower-fat cheese. Good stuff...
Move alot. The idea is that our biological ancestors moved at slow speeds most of the time, and occasionally very fast (evading or chasing other animals). Try to walk around the office if you're at work. Definitely walk at lunch. Do small tasks that require coordination. Take up tai chi or yoga if you're inspired. Swimming is great (I'm up to 2 days a week after years at only 1 or less, and loving it!).
These are my main threads and principles right now. I feel pretty good about them and the balance of my life. I just finished my 10 week series of structural integration bodywork (done TO me, not by me) and I feel like my posture and movement are significantly different. He even straightened my nose a little bit in one session.
If you're looking for inspiration this fall, write to me and I'll be glad to talk more about it. I love this stuff. I continue to feel like my work in this life is to help free myself and other from old ways of living that don't serve us and instead re-pattern ourselves to live lives more as we imagine they can be. It feels really great.
Thursday, August 06, 2009
Metaphor! or, Busting Old Patterns Like White Collar Criminals
That's what my summer is about, in a nutty shell. Friend and others have been writing, wondering how my big Summer of My Life is coming along, looking for details of the glory or the carwreck. Here it is, straight from the equine mandible.
Rolfing! I'm seven weeks in with my 10-week series of deep tissue massage sessions. Each Wednesday I go to an office decorated with Buddhas and dream catchers to get constructively mauled by a short, stout 75 year old man in a Hawaiian shirt who looks me up and down while I'm standing in my underwear. Have I been taking bad acid in a Guantanamo Bay detention cell? Heck no, I'm paying for this stuff. He's worked my body all over with heavy duty massage, in order to loosen up my myo-facial system (muscles and the collagen that sheathes them). He's basically creating in me the potential for a great freedom of movement and possibility to realign my body in a stack that is harmonious with my anatomical structure and gravity. It's been really amazing to FEEL the difference between my usual somatic habits and what good posture can be. One incredible thing is that after having my feet and legs worked on, he suggested I go barefoot or just in sandals to let my arches stretch out. Historically, I've had really high arches and custom orthodics to support them. In the past I've been unable to go without orthodics for more than a few days before my arches begin to hurt. I'm now gone 6 weeks without them and haven't looked back, all after just my second session. Miracle cure? I don't know, but it feels good and liberating. If you want to know more, drop me a line.
Gestalt! I just did my weekend workshop this past Saturday up in Marin County. It's called the Empty Chair, and it involves getting in the middle of the circle of people and talking to an empty chair (in our case a cushion) where you put something or someone with whom you have unfinished business. I loved it. I talked about fears revolving around money and security, and my dreams of finding/creating a place that feels like a settled home that is safe and secure. Maybe everyone who's done more therapy than I already knew this, but talking about my issues and really OWNING all sides of my human experience is really liberating. That's one of the main thrusts of Gestalt work - acknowledging that we have polarities. We've got hate that goes with the love, greed that goes with the generosity, cruelty with the kindness, etc. They are all there, and that's fine. What a concept! It doesn't mean anything about what I need to go out and act on in my life, but owning all my feelings as opposed to cutting them off and resisting them is pretty freakin' sweet.
Wilderness! I'm headed in a few weeks up to the Sierra Nevada mountains to do some camping with friends, and a few solo nights as well. Yikes! I'm only afraid of the bears, and the deep darkness that feels like Nietzsche's abyss staring back at me. Wish me luck and mental stability.
Meditation! I've been facilitating a gathering of meditators here at my place (still at Magic in Palo Alto) each Saturday morning for a few months now. I say facilitating because I always feel strange when I say that I "lead" a meditation group. It's such a personal thing, I'm not leading squat. Often I'm barely able to hold on to my cushion for dear life and keep it together for that 30 minutes. But it feels so good to do it, and we've developed a small but determined community of sitters, pushing onward and always going Further. Afterwards we eat pancakes and talk about life, which is a great balance for the stillness in our sitting practice. If you're in the area, cornmeal buttermilk is the flapjack du jour these days.
Shifting gears...
I haven't been looking out at the world so much, which probably explains why I haven't blogged so much either. I assume business as usual is still going on. I saw a few days ago that drug companies lobbied heavily to get out their share of healthcare reform, complaining about taking too much of a hit or something like that. We are still a pretty sick culture, spending so much on guns and resisting a national healthcare system. When are we going to admit that private healthcare companies DON'T WORK? They certainly make huge amounts of money for people high up in their ranks. They certainly get good at boxing people out who might actually need healthcare, and therefore they save some money. But these for-profit companies (yes, I know technically they are non-profit, but that's the biggest pile of horse shit I can imagine. That's like Stanford University being a non-profit because it's an educational institution. When you've got $7 billion in your endowment, own thousands of acres, and partner with corporations and governments at the highest levels, you are basically just functioning like any other really large corporation. With that much money and politics involved, you may perhaps still be a non-profit in the letter of the law, but the spirit of it is completely gone.) Whoa, I got lost in my parentheses... Oh yes, medical Big Business. When the insurance companies are under pressure to perform and measure against the bottom line while paying tens or hundreds of millions in salaries, and when new drugs are multi-million dollar enterprises, we've got a system that is fundamentally BROKEN.
OK, so I guess I have been thinking about the outside world a bit. While I'm at it, when are we going to admit that capitalism in general has failed? When can we wake up and smell the viable socialist alternatives? Yes, there is all that reified (reified means ascribing human agency to an abstract idea, like "The company's quarterly report scared investors away.") crap about free markets "driving innovation" and competition "promoting" healthy survival of the fittest. I just don't like the feel of a system where 40 million people are without health insurance and we're barely going beyond twiddling our thumbs about it. How about the working poor and the homeless who have fallen off the bottom of the social ladder? Having been to a few countries with a functional government that actually tries to take care of all the people, it just seems like the more humane way to go.
I think many people in our country are motived by their fear of falling off that ladder. There's no parachute or trampoline there, just a scary future if you don't out-compete someone else. I don't like the idea of needing to compete. Doesn't anyone else feel like they'll sleep better knowing that they will be taken care of by a functioning welfare state (as in "your and my welfare", less about the mythical, lazy exploiters of welfare that we're supposed to fear from the Reagan years) when they get old or sick, or when their kids want to go to college? Does it seem so crazy to just hard cap everyone's personal income at $3,000,000 dollars and everything beyond that goes to taxes? Oh yeah, I'm totally sure that would instantly kill all motivation to work hard or innovate. I'm sure we'd all suddenly be living in a Maoist nightmare where we all have to rotate jobs and live in ugly concrete apartment blocks. I would just be crushed if I could ONLY earn $3,000,000 dollars a year while I had to grind my teeth knowing all my tax money went to take care of my elderly neighbors and folks in the neighborhood who came down with cancer. That would be a tragedy.
Hello sarcasm. Where'd that come from? Must be the Gestalt therapy helping me let it out...
Yes, I'm a dreamer, and possibly one who should go live in a socialist country. But I'm not the only one. Maybe the big theme on my mind these days is: Be Kind, to ourselves and others. We know that what goes around comes around. We know that most of our privilege in life is an accident of our birth (race, gender, how many Benjamins our parents have racked up in the bank). When can we let go of the fear and struggle and learn to share ourselves a little more with those around us? If we all turned the rat race down a notch, what might happen? I don't know, but I love the sound of that experiment. It's the only way I can imagine to move towards more love, peace, and taking care of each other. It's way too big a fish to fry in any quick fix, even for a country with a charismatic young President who has big hopes and a decent portion of the population behind him. It's going to take all of us resisting old fears and dysfunctional patterns. We need to re-invent how we live. We've got to slow down, eat well, listen to each other, get back into our bodies, stop these Wars Without End, own our fears about climate change, and spend time in a park with loved ones on the weekend.
My gray cells are firing and I'm thinking of you all, wishing you peace in your corner of the world. Big love going out to those who have just returned from the canoe trip up north to the Arctic. You are super stars and tough cookies! And a peace sign, thumbs up, California Right On to everyone who has written to tell me of what they've taken on this summer. Philadelphia, San Diego, Bethlehem, Guelph, New York, D.C., and others I don't even know of yet. You are my raison d'ecriver and owners of those beautiful gems known as Your Lives....
Sunday, July 12, 2009
whisked away to stillness
Can we find lasting peace in our lives if we don't continually do the inner work of learning to accept and love ourselves right we're at in this moment? I ponder this, as I chew on some tall stalks of grass out at the farm at the edge of Guelph. I'm here for a few days to see friends and pack up some things, and I felt an urgent need to visit the farm, where I have helped my friend harvest grains and also raised two summers' worth of gardens. Today is impeccable - soft blue skies, fluffy clouds sliding across the sky on a steady breeze, trees in full splendor of summer foliage. It's probably 23 degrees and the air is light. I look out over the barn to a hundred acres of soy, gardens, some blooming mustard, and fallow greenery. I can't help but feel some peace and a desire to reflect on where I'm at, where I've been, and where I may go.
Sometimes in my blogs, I feel a bit like Cheri Huber. Cheri is a Zen monk who writes Buddhist-inspired books that you might call self-help. The one I love most is There Is Nothing Wrong with You, where the title tells it all but it is still a worthwhile read. She has many other books, such as Be the Person You Want to Find and How to Get from Where You Are to Where You Want to Be. Why do I feel like Cheri? Her books touch on many themes in life, but after you read a few it becomes clear that the message is the same throughout. It basically comes down to practicing being calm and centered in the moment, and letting go of the stories we tell ourselves in our own heads about how we're not good enough, how we might fail at our undertakings, how we just need to wait a little longer to begin living, etc. It comes right from Buddhism, though she packages the messages in a broadly approachable way for a modern audience.
Love yourself. It's going to be okay. Everyone has fears and doubts about themselves. Acknowledge the fears, see them for what they are (insubstantial), but pay them no attention. Get back to loving yourself. A good way to do this is to sit and practice calming the mind. Carry this practice into your life. Interact with others, be a light in the world.
These are my own take-home themes from Buddhist writers as well as my own spiritual practice.
So when it comes down to it, my blog is me recycling old themes in new packaging. (Perhaps all writing is this - different people at different times working with variable degrees of success to tap into the themes that speak to their audience.) When I write, I like to focus on specific topics, from global politics to resource scarcity to personal growth. However, I really like to get back to basics as often as I can to convey the message that we are empowered to live beautiful lives. I know from my own experience that lots of information about the world is often not useful if I don't also have a context for seeing how it relates to my life and more importantly what I will do with this information. In the end, this feeling of empowerment is the thing that I want to convey to everyone who reads these posts.
What does all this have to do with me strolling down the tan earth lane in the slanting sunshine? I've been getting a lot of wonderful life this spring from sharing honestly about where I'm at inside. I try to do it more, even when people I don't know make a casual inquiry. While aiming to not overshare, I do try to accurately describe what I'm feeling and what I'm working on. For me this is a big step forward in owning and treasuring my life while learning to love myself. It really seems to begin with accepting that where I'm at is where I'm at. I want to "be here now" as much as possible, instead of thinking about how I might "be there then" and losing sight of my experience right at this moment.
I think I've just figured out why I'm writing this now (which is good, since I'm hundreds of words in and taking up your life :-) I just want to share that it feels like a long road, but that I'm on it in a good way. After my last few posts, and talking with many friends about my inner work, I have been deeply humbled and heartened to hear that lots of folks have taken my work as inspiration to go deeper, further, and in new directions in their own journeys. When I hear these things, I feel a clear sense of camaraderie and companionship with all of you as our paths unfold. And this in turn makes the long journey seem feasible and worthwhile all over again. Because I have to admit that in spite of tackling so much good stuff in my life recently, I do have plenty of moments of darkness and doubt where I get wrapped up in old stories that aren't serving me, and I can flounder there for sure. In spite of working to help others feel empowered and enlightened, I still need some help myself a fair bit of the time, and you my friends are wonderful at helping me out.
So this is a thank you card, an update, and a slice of my life. The feeling I want to convey is walking under the walnut trees with the tall grass brushing under my palms. The sun is perfect, the gardens smell rich and earthy, and it feels like the safest place in the world to walk and ask deep questions of the heart.
Thursday, July 02, 2009
Rolling out a New Project
The time is now. Can you feel it?
I can.
I can.
So, as promised in my last blog, we (my friend Nick and I) are rolling out the alpha version of our project, Shake Up Your Life, and we're pretty excited. You'll find all the details at
When you first arrive, definitely check out the link that tells you about the background of the project.
If you're reading this post, I also ask a favor of you. After you see what we're putting out there in the world, please try one of the experiments, or your own version of one, and put your experiences up there. If you're not familiar with actually adding content to a Wiki format, it's one click away at the little "edit" button on the right side of each entry. Take it from there and run with it :-) I know that as this project grows, it will take on it's own life. This is our dream for it. If you do just one, even with a small entry, this whole thing will take a huge leap forward, all due to you.
We know it's rough and bare bones, but we're excited to simultaneously use it while also evolving and enhancing it with feedback from you. We're already thinking of appearance (color schemes and formatting) as well as content (enhancing the entries with background info). We're thinking about the language of the entries, how to help you feel invited to participate, how to grow it, and more.
If I write more, it will only be clutter. This is all for now. Visit it, use it, let me know how it handles. Thank you!
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