trusting yourself - silver lining #11

How is your trust in your body and yourself?  This novel virus will likely be around for the next few years and may present us all with a unique opportunity in regard to that question.  

The Western healing model has become somewhat dogmatic, stale, and authoritative.  Meanwhile, complementary and alternative therapies have made vast inroads among those who appreciate a broader healing conversation.  With the advent of so much free information on the internet, for those who trust their judgement, intuition, and body, healing is becoming more of a cooperative effort between them and their healthcare provider.  That requires engagement, research, and trust, trust in your ability to discern what’s relevant to you, and your body and mind’s needs.

When things open back up, this exceptional situation will present us with the option to remain fearful about contact with others for the next few years until a vaccine is available, something many believe is the only way to protect them, or to approach this situation more holistically, by also strengthening your mind and body, and supporting them in doing what they’ve been made for – living in coexistence and mutual exchange with the natural world.  After all, we are part of nature, as is the virus, not apart from nature.  

I am neither belittling that this virus can be nasty, nor that we should rely on nothing but prayers, or forego handwashing and face masks to protect us from it.  Moreover, we are collectively paying with weakened immune system for the toxins and pollution we have dumped into our environment.  But cancer, for example, while not transmittable in the same way, is also a really terrible disease, and with over 600,000 cancer deaths in this country every year against the 50,000 US Covid-19 deaths, it seems that we have come to accept cancer’s prevalence in our culture. On a related point, I have been criticized for suggesting the potential merits of the Swedish approach to creating Coronavirus immunity.

Your ability to vet information, something that can be learned, and discerning rubbish from a valid piece of information even when the majority seems to veer elsewhere, takes confidence and trust.   Deciding how best to protect your body, and understanding how your body heals, takes trust.  Read an interesting and much lengthier interpretation on that in Planet Waves.  Soon enough your body will encounter this virus. Will you live in constant fear, which weakens your immune system, and makes your mind vulnerable to manipulation?  The alternative is building trust in You, your body, and your ability to navigate this new reality. 

real simple - silver lining #10

There is a magazine with that name, and now it applies to many of our lives.  Life has not only slowed, it’s also become very basic.

For those not on the frontlines, life revolves around the house – eat, drink, work, cook, kids, sleep, repeat. Everything has become simplified down to personal grooming.  No dressing up for work, make-up optional for women unless you need to get on a Zoom call (and even then you can stay in your pajama pants as long as your top looks decent).  Expenses have been stripped down to basics, income may have taken a hit.  

Celebrities, luxury goods, travel, events, and anything else that might be considered frivolous or gratuitous, have no relevance in our current pandemic world.  My eyes glide right past pictures of sunshiny exotic travel destinations on my Instagram feed.  Not relevant. Even though food, water,  electricity and internet all function normally, we’re still somehow in survival mode because our lives are anything but normal, and may not be for a while yet.   

Is back to basics such a bad thing?  Did that new pocketbook, those new shoes you had to have, that trip to Disneyland with the kids, the groomed nails that took an hour every week, the salon hair color, all those mindlessly placed Amazon orders for stuff, really make your life happy and relevant?  Will you go back to your pre-pandemic consumption patterns when it’s all over?  Will you hustle and rush as you did before?  Stuff your and your kids calendar again until you fall into bed at night exhausted?

Or will something have shifted?

we are One - silver lining #8

When pollution levels sink drastically in Beijing, Delhi, Detroit and Los Angeles as a consequence of the worldwide shutdown of human activity, we know we are One.

When our federal government hordes ventilators instead of distributing them to those states that need them the most, where you or I might need one, we know we are One.

When fear of a virus shuts down economic life on the entire planet in an effort to prevent it from spreading and overwhelming the hospitals where you or I might need to get treated, we know we are One.

When we experience that the virus cannot be prevented by a wall, but is invisible and can lurk in you and me, infect you and me, we know we are One.

When money can’t buy restaurant visits or travel because everything is shut down, when money can’t buy cleaning or nanny or hair or nail services for fear of contagion, the affluent may understand that we are One.

When the recession hits everyone, we know we’re One.

When toilet paper is unavailable to everyone, we know we are One.

When the virus makes the rich and famous as sick as everyone else, we know we’re One. 

When we see how fast nature can heal if given the chance, and how fast we can act when we must, we know we’re capable of healing our planet and our broken profit-over-people culture if we want.

we are soooo connected

The interesting thing about nationalism, borders, walls and NIMBY thinking (not in my backyard) is that their resurgence is happening at the same time as worldwide events shake us up to the realization that in the end we’re all connected across national borders as inhabitants of one shared planet.

Heavy petroleum use for energy production, transportation and industrial agricultural practices, ongoing deforestation, industrialized meat production, and single-use plastic consumption all contribute to pollution and climate change in a major way, not just where they originate, but worldwide.  

While the coronavirus is for the time being mainly a health concern in its country of origin, Chinese manufacturing is slowing down because Chinese workers are staying home under quarantine, and that affects economies worldwide.  

The Ethiopian Nile Dam that is supposed to bring one of the poorest countries in the world some much needed economic relief, is at the same time threatening water supply, farming viability and livelihood for the one hundred million Egyptians living downstream.

Borders and walls are physical representations of a limiting belief system.   Until we expand our consciousness, we will build walls, transport our garbage and recyclables to other countries, exit climate agreements, and send refugees back.  Change begins with you and me.

untethered

Without interrupting her tasks, my mother-in-law used to walk around her kitchen while calling people, tethered to the wall phone by a very very long cord.  As a teenager I used to sit on a stool in our hallway, trying to have a private conversation with my friends from the one central house phone that was plugged in around the corner in the living room.

Wireless and Bluetooth technology free us of those kinds of physical hardwired constraints, free us to take our cellphone and private (or public) conversation anywhere – in the closet, the garden, the street, the car, the subway.  The connecting is invisible.

Are we perhaps evolving away from such physical connections because our in-the-past-so-physical interpretation of the world is beginning to shift?  That thought intrigues me.    Telepathy and distant healing, reiki and other energy modalities, intent and the powers of creative visualization, all happen in the non-physical realm.  Are they any less real than our wireless cellphone connections or Bluetooth speaker transmissions? Does wireless technology perhaps signal the acceptance that the invisible is as real as the visible?

filling the emptiness anew

Taking down the Christmas tree ends the mystical magic and sparkly festiveness of early winter.  It’s back to day-to-day perfunctoriness, practicality, and normality.  The tree spot is empty.  When I posted a last picture of the tree on social media, accompanied by a melancholic,  “Ohhhh, soon the magic will have to go….,” a friend replied, “You will just have to make some new magic.” That’s it!

In an attempt to keep the magic going some leave their tree up until February.  But it’s just not the same.  It’s procrastination to let go of the old, clean the slate, and start afresh.  “When one door closes another one opens,” is a common saying.  It’s time to let the new year in and embrace the emptiness of the Christmas tree spot. It’s also an opportunity to fill it with brand new magic.  After all, we had to move some things around to make space for the tree in the first place.  

It’s an exciting thought to think of all the wonderful experiences, events, goals, achievements and new magic we can fill not only this new year with, but also a whole new decade.   Emptiness is so full of potential.

last post of the year

How was 2019 for you?  Was it an annus mirabilis, or rather an annus horribilis?  Or perhaps neither?  Either way, it’s almost over and in our thoughts we are making room for the new.  As we eat our last breakfast of the year, go to bed one or two more times, wind down our work year, and pause on New Year’s Day, we turn to the future, a year full of potential.  

What do you envision?   What would you like to experience?  What are your dreams?  I updated my vision board, which I see every morning when I come up to the office.  Vision boarding is a powerful tool to clarify your thoughts and wishes, and help manifest change – here an earlier post on it.  

Without dreams and wishes the universe doesn’t know what you want, hence can’t help you manifest it.  We are entering a new decade, may as well dream up some cool wishes for 2020 and the coming decade.

On a global level I strongly wish for a greater momentum on working with and facing the reality of climate change.  On a community level I wish for greater communication and understanding across the many divides we have created.  On a personal level I wish for greater kindness and gratitude.

What wishes have you whipped up for 2020?

merry merry

We don’t celebrate Thanksgiving where I come from.  Yet, it has become one of my favorite holidays, and I have wholeheartedly incorporated it into our family traditions, and wish of course all people around me a very happy Thanksgiving. When we lived in Hong Kong in the late 1980s everyone wished us a happy lunar new year, and we reciprocated the wish, even though it’s not one of our holidays.   

Christmastime is very joyful in America, filled with parties, opulent decorations, twinkle lights everywhere, and cheerful Christmas music. Offices and organizations have staff and member parties to celebrate the season, friends get together for feast and fun, it’s convivial and inclusive even if you don’t celebrate the underlying religious reason, or don’t celebrate Christmas at all.  For us Christmas has always been more a cultural than a religious celebration, and I just love getting carried away in this sparkly, red and green tide, and all the togetherness.  

In recent years we have all tried so hard to be politically correct by wishing everyone happy holidays, afraid to offend or exclude those who don’t celebrate Christmas.  It’s impossible to please everyone, and every wish comes from the heart and is well meant.  Hence, I wish all of you, whatever you believe, whatever your cultural background, a very merry Christmas, because it’s a joyful time of year, full of light and laughter and sparkle and togetherness, and that’s what I wish you. 

P.S. Please check the website for the latest workshop and talk dates.

your own madeleine

Before my daughter went back to college after Thanksgiving, she made the spice Christmas cookies from her German great-grandmother, my grandmother, to take with her.  Yesterday, my son, away at grad school, asked for that same recipe.  Those particular cookies, like no others, evokes the taste of Christmas for us.  They conjure up visions of sugar plums so to speak, or rather the flavors of German Christmas.

 Cocoa powder makes the cookies deep dark brown, they are covered with white powdered sugar glazing, and they combine the chocolaty aroma of the cocoa with the intense spice tastes of cloves, cinnamon, and nutmeg.

my grandmother’s German spice cookies

In his famous madeleine episode Proust describes how eating the cake spontaneously resurrects childhood memories from somewhere deep down in his subconscious. 

For me my grandma’s spice cookies evoke not only the taste of Christmas but also memories of her; for my children, who did not get to know her, these cookies have become the most evocative of all Christmas tastes.  Now that they are older, they both make the cookies themselves to travel back memory lane to their younger selves and earlier Christmases.

What is your madeleine?  What memories does it bring back in you?

the bigger connection

We’re coming to a time of year that more than any other time is about connecting, not only with family, friends, or community, but also on a bigger level to culture and Nature.  Thanksgiving is less about eating turkey and lots of pie, or watching football, or all the prep work and cleaning up after a crowd, although it’s an important cultural aspect and expression.  

Instead, it’s about being together and feeling connected to something bigger. Thanksgiving, as any harvest festival, is about our deep connection to the Earth because it provides us with everything we need to live.  Without good soil and a good harvest, we perish.  If we tend the soil sustainably, we thrive. Everything else is icing on the cake.

Hence, Thanksgiving is about thanking the Earth, our first and foremost nurturer, Mother of all Mothers.  It is about being grateful, not only for the people we celebrate with, but for our existence, for spirit, for that which made us and put us here.  Let’s keep this bigger picture in mind this coming week with the help from the Haudenosaunee Thanksgiving Address: Greetings to the Natural World, which thanks all of Nature for making us possible.  

Thank you.