they are our teachers

As a child I only had guppies and hamsters as pets and couldn’t find a connection to them.  Much later in life, when our kids were young, my husband found a tiny cat by the house by the road by a tree trunk.  He brought it to the garden, and after much lengthy negotiation – I was very reluctant – I agreed that we could keep him.  Well, lo and behold, that little cat taught me so much, and eventually we even got a companion for him, and when our first cat died prematurely, I was the one who agreed to fill the void and get our third cat.  Now I’m hooked - and changed.

I’m sure the universe sent our first cat to us.   He opened my heart to all animals, not just him, to how intelligent, communicative, loving, perceptive, even wise, and endlessly patient with us two-leggeds they are.  

You know how an animal looks you in the eyes with such faithfulness and trust?  How it looks at you deep and long, with so much adoration?  Any animal, not just your dog or cat.  The look is authentic, transparent and loving.  No strings attached, no return gift expected. Animals don’t judge, talk back, withhold love, or pull off any of the other emotional manipulative shenanigans people do all the time. 

That’s why we love them so much. They stir in us what we’d like to see in each other.  They model what we strive for, show us that ideal of unconditional love, which we have difficulty achieving but know in our hearts is the way.  When you return that gaze a bit longer, you’ll go a little deeper in your connection, and see a little more of its soul.  Its’s there. Animals have souls. Now I know.

our foibles

I don’t compost! I know, composting is a thing.  It’s what woke people do with their kitchen scraps, especially if they have a garden, as we do.  But we have tried it several times over the years and have not found the right formula.  We began with a black composting drum which just produced slime.  Then we did a compost pile in the backyard we threw our produce remnants on.  That produced some errant gourds, lots of weeds, and the occasional animal interested in cantaloupe peels, but no compost either.  The pile always looked like a pile of leftover vegetables, not too attractive.  Then we contemplated a worm bin. But – no. It’s just too much work.  So now we don’t compost.  

It can feel mildly irritating watching those “perfect” lifestyle pictures passing through your social media feed because it gives the false impression that the authors lead perfect, flawless, sustainable, holistic, beautiful, magical, fantastical and accomplished lives.  But nobody is perfect.  Nobody.

Here’s another one.  Cauliflower steaks.  The idea is cool, but the pictures lie.  You can only cut two perfect steaks out of one cauliflower because the slices hang together by the center core, the rest crumbles inevitably.  

So when your cauliflower steaks falls apart, when your Halloween pumpkin doesn’t look like Martha Stewart’s, when you feel bad about not composting, when your hair doesn’t have that perfect blow-out look every day or the polish on your toe nails is starting to chip, it’s ok. It is ok!  Sometimes we are beautiful, our home is beautiful, all is perfect and well, and sometimes it’s just not. That’s life.

no bad experience

A negative experience triggers in us one of the negative emotions like anger, frustration, or fear.  We identify such an experience as “bad” or “wrong,” as in “That was a bad move,” “You did it all wrong,” “She didn’t do the right thing,” or “I hated that.” We call that judging or condemning.  Pleasant experiences only trigger positive emotions, which we obviously don’t condemn or judge.  

Recently I was musing about the medical experiences I had when I was pregnant with my daughter.  I found the doctor visits invasive and symptom oriented, always looking for a problem or issue to prescribe yet another test or procedure.  The whole experience soured my relationship with the reactive Western medical model, and the emotional effects are lingering to this day.  I avoid going to doctors if I can help it.  On the other hand, the experience prompted my deep inquiry into the definition of health and trying to understand the healing process. 

It is so interesting to realize that every bad experience can be seen from two sides,  the “negative” side and the “positive” side.  It’s like accounting where every debit has to have an equivalent credit to balance the two sides, or both sides of an equation. 

Say you taste a new food and dislike it.  On the one side of the ledger you found out that you disliked that particular food and didn’t enjoy tasting it, on the other side you learned about a new food and had a novel experience which broadened your mind.   My “bad” medical experiences left me with a fear of doctors, but on the “positive” side initiated my interest in a more comprehensive and holistic approach to healing based on a deeper understanding of how the body heals or becomes ill.  Getting a bad grade, for example, could trigger a renewed interest in the subject matter, or getting your act together and applying yourself.  Fear of flying could inspire you to overcome that fear and become more courageous.

The same realization is helpful in relationships.  As a matter of fact, Byron Katie’s work, or The Work as she calls it, is all about that realization.  My husband, for example talks a lot about work, even when he is not working, which can frustrate me.  On the flipside, he is very passionate about his work, and without that passion he wouldn’t be so driven, experienced, successful and respected in his industry.  Now that I think about it, I realize that I can talk for hours about subjects that I’m deeply passionate about, which could really bore people who are not into the same issues.  

So there, the two sides of the coin, but habitually we only acknowledge one of them, the “bad” side.  One more insight is that it can take some time to realize the “positive” aspect of a “negative” experience.   The chapter on Health and Healing in my book for example couldn’t have come about had it not been for my “negative” medical experiences first. Yet, there was a lag of about 15 years between the experiences and the turnaround.    

color blindness and rainbows

Arrogance is when you don’t know what you don’t know but think you know.  While that needs to be met with compassion, it has big consequences if you’re in a position of power or authority.  Charles Eisenstein wrote a brilliant new essay, The Banquet of Whiteness, in which he considers racism and other cultural beliefs under the broader umbrella of arrogant whiteism.  He unpeels our hubristic blind spot of perceived superiority and rightness we are literally not aware of because we come from a place of majority consensus and relative power (the term echo chamber has been used).  Hence the perpetuation of racism.  Hence the hunkering down on outmoded ways of looking at certain cultural patterns.  Hence our narrow way to think and do science. Hence the worldwide monoculturalization of Western beliefs with which we are suffocating the rest of the world (see an older related post - pizza every night?).

When diversity is still a calculated numbers game of including a specific minimum percentage of non-white students or employees in an organization, when we still belittle other cultures’ worldviews and how those inform the people who live with them, when we still favor the one Western medical model over alternative, traditional or indigenous therapies regardless of effectiveness, we are still ideologically blind and biased.

Before the recent anti-racism movement hit me in the face, I believed that if all lives mattered it was inclusive enough to mean that black lives mattered under that larger all lives umbrella.  But looking at racism that way belittles and denies the need for people of color to be heard, to be emotionally supported in their slight and plight, and for us white people to shift our attitude and do something about it.  I just saw a very helpful post on social media that illustrates the point.  If you share with me that your mother just died, and I reply that all our parents die, I pass right over your feelings of sadness and make them irrelevant. 

When we truly become more accepting and integrative in our thinking, when we truly become more tolerant and broad minded, when we truly use the scientific method of asking a query and neutrally exploring all potential answers (instead of working towards those results we foresee within our own belief paradigm), when we truly look at our culture and actually admit what works and what doesn’t (without primary regard for profit), if we truly look at people’s merits, talents and capabilities regardless of skin color or other attributes we might judge somehow, we may find that the earth is not flat but round, or that we revolve around the sun, and not the other way round.  Then, our world would be a rainbow of diversity and creative human expression, a joyfully imaginative jumble of humanness in all its wonderful and potential expressions.   

That will be a great leap forward for humanity. 

on creating your beingness

Every time I reread Neale Donald Walsch’s book Conversations with God  I find new treasures.  Despite the simple and easy dialogue, the content is very profound and chockful of amazing thought provoking quotes – all yellow and orange underlined in my copy from the many read throughs.  One in particular spoke to me last night which has to do with the body-mind-spirit connection and how it plays out in your life.

The book’s premise is that you are not here on earth to “learn lessons” or “work through karma” but to create your beingness.  In other words, you get to create and explore who you are through what you think and do, which shows up in what you experience in life and the circumstances you manifest.  And since one lifetime is not enough to explore the multiple facets you wish to explore, you get to do it over and over like in Groundhog Day or reincarnation.

Looping back to the quote, you can choose to explore life in your physical body in three ways, each more complex than the previous one - a single-faceted body way, dual-faceted mind-body way, or triple-faceted mind-body-spirit way.  Take a look at the photo of the quote above to read how each of them manifests in your life and you’ll be able to tell in which way you are exploring your current life.  How cool is that?

the case for perfection

Why do we so relentlessly question nature’s perfection?  In general, we seem to want to improve nature because we don’t think it’s perfect.  We see the bugs on the lettuce as a pest to be eradicated rather than asking why.  When the climate goes haywire or a virus affects the entire planet many see it as an aberration of nature instead of asking how it happened. Who is the culprit, we ask.

Nature is perfect - resilient, beautiful, abundant, grand, powerful, adaptable, magical, and a mirror of our beliefs and actions. When we can’t see that because we’re disconnected from it and interfere with it in order to bend it to our own distorted interpretation of what should be, that’s when the trouble starts. The trouble can manifest as climate change, Covid-19, Japanese beetle infestation, bee colony collapse syndrome, drought, and so many other environmental issues.  It also manifests in ourselves as disease or psychological issues.  As a species, we live in a permanent state of discontent and want to improve everything around us, yet have lost the key to seeing where to start.  

When we reconnect with the spiritual nature of nature, and that of our own imbeddedness in it, when we begin to search for that potentially bigger picture we just can’t see as yet, when we learn to trust that there’s rhyme and reason behind life instead of uncontrollable randomness, it all becomes more reassuring.  The key is actually inside each one of us, not out there.  This is an invitation to go inward and reconnect with ourselves and the bigger picture, that we are one with nature, not apart from it, and that when we’re out of balance, nature as a consequence suffers that imbalance and shows it to us like a mirror.  

Each one of us, hence, has the tremendous and awesome task to reconnect,  inward and outward, with our own true nature from which everything springs.  When you shift, it shifts.  When I shift, it shifts.  

pandemic gardening

Out in meadows and fields, woods and swamps, plants just grow however they do. Dead wood decays and contributes to new humus, flowers bloom and wilt, color combinations are not planned, instead self-seeding nilly willy, and nobody cleans up to make it all look “pretty” to our human eye.  Nature is wild and unkempt, which has its own beauty, but it lacks a human sense of order.  

During these out-of-the-ordinary times many, including us, have resorted to gardening, a small attempt at controlling something in our lives when so much in the world is out of our control.  I feel in charge when I deadhead roses, prune, compose vignettes with different plants that bloom sequentially or follow a color scheme, in order to make our garden beautiful.

There is indeed something controlling about the sense of order and beauty we impose on our gardens.  French Gardens may be the most controlled of all landscapes with their geometrically shaped hedges, linear beds, fountains, and pebbled walkways and expanses, although Japanese Gardens are highly stylized as well.  An English Garden, on the other hand, is much more free flowing and natural looking.  

Loss of control, or even just the perception of it, promotes depression, while control over our life  promotes longevity.  Control over something, even just our garden, can thus give us a sense of balance and purpose. Have you found activities during this pandemic that give you a sense of control?

zooming....in and out

Enough posts about social change, at least for today.  Let’s change focus a bit.  

When I keep reading, thinking, pondering, and staying in general within my own echo chamber, my thoughts end up going ‘round and ‘round and my beliefs become stuck – just like when I lie awake at 3am and can’t shake that to-do list.  I hone in on the small stuff, lose perspective, and with it the ability to judge and discern.

Whether sitting at my desk for a long time and staring intently at the screen while lasering in on a particular task, or perhaps thinking intently about the current pandemic to the exclusion of other news, I find it really important to adjust my perspective – a small reboot of sorts.  For that I need juxtaposition – zooming out, the way we zoom in and out on a map or document.  Zooming in provides details but lacks perspective (we see the leaves but not the forest), zooming out provides perspective but lacks the fine grit (we see the forest but not the intricacies of what grows on the ground).   We need both views to gain a complete picture of a situation, issue or problem.  

A good way to refocus is to do something completely different for a bit, by shifting away.  Just now, after staring at my screen for a long time, I took a brief walk through my garden, watching how the new seedlings we planted at the beginning of May are doing, being amazed at how fast the soil dries out  after this morning’s watering session, and just looking at the bees and listening to the birds.  Not only do my eyes have a chance to refocus their vision from near to far, but my mind gets a rest as well.

Another way to refocus is to seek out a different perspective.  When it comes to the news, I check in with news organizations from other countries to see what their take is.  Regarding politics, diet, religion or anything else, it’s helps to have a conversation with someone of a differing opinion to realize that mine is not the only way to look at something.  Check out a previous related post “pizza every night?”  Travel is of course the ultimate reset and reboot.  But besides taking more time and costing more money, it’s for beyond-corona-times.  So maybe some camping for a bigger reboot while we’re all staying close to home? What are your tricks for adjusting your perspective?

patience needed - silver lining #14

Many things take longer during the current Corona crisis.  With the bank closed, I wait in line for the drive-up.  Since the supermarket only lets in so many people at a time, I wait in line, six feet apart, to get in, and I wait in line to check out, six feet apart, to be assigned to a cash register.  Socializing on Zoom, when everyone talks over each other and the conversation becomes dysfunctional, I have no choice but to be patient with this less-than-perfect medium.  My basement is full of empty egg cartons, empty bottles, and plastic bags that all need to be returned for reuse or recycling.  Sooner or later I will be able to clear this backlog out – patience.  Even Amazon doesn’t currently deliver as fast as it used to during normal times.

We need patience to wait for the governor’s Go to reopen our businesses, to wait for the economy to creep back, to wait for this virus to pass through the population and do its thing.  We need patience during this pregnant pause to see how we will come out the other end.  If you’re looking for a vaccine against the virus, you’ll need to be patient. If you’re looking to go back to school or college, or to return to restaurants and gyms, and to a new normal, you’ll need patience.

We have been used to “instantaneously,” but that just doesn’t work right now. We have been stopped in our tracks. What are you doing with this?

inner beauty

A turkey vulture is not exactly a pretty animal.  Not all animals are, although each has a distinct purpose in nature’s processes, which is beautiful in itself.

Last weekend I noticed a turkey vulture sitting outside our kitchen window in the grass, a most unusual sight.  Big and impressive, dark and a bit ominous, somewhat threating and ugly, and so close.  It stayed there for a while, then it was gone. A bit later I found it elsewhere in the garden, seemingly at rest, then hopping to an adjacent rock, never flying.   Then it was gone again, but it had simply leapt out of sight, to a stone ledge below where I couldn’t see it.  Maybe it wanted to be at peace, left alone.

I became concerned that it had broken its wing and called the Audubon Society to find a wildlife rehabilitator.  I felt sorry for the large bird.  Its ugliness was no longer relevant, its beingness touched a soft spot in my heart.

Just before calling the raptor rehabilitator I looked around to see where it was, but the vulture had disappeared.  I looked all over the place.  Had I been mistaken? Was it ok after all?  Later that afternoon, I saw a vulture at the end of the property flying high up into a tree, and I thought, “Is this my vulture, is it ok?”  

Two days after the incident we were planting new seedlings in the woods and, lo and behold, we found a dead turkey vulture on the ground, under that tree.  I felt sad that I hadn’t been able to save him - once I connected, it became he.  I had felt a connection to this ugly bird.  I didn’t want him to suffer.  Beauty and the Beast, an old theme, inner beauty hidden under an ugly shell.  Repugnance had given way to compassion, and I no longer associated this raptor with carrion, just a being in need of empathy.  A shift (see a previous post on shifting).