Wow! Helloooo y’all! It’s been a while. I didn’t expect to be gone so long, but August has been a whirlwind. Today I have a brief dispatch from a place of supreme presence with what is here, now, which includes a slightly covid-recovery fuzzy brain.
I’m so excited to be back in the flow. I’ve missed this and y’all.
I hope the sun is gracing your skin sweetly today.
With love, til next week,
Rach
The last few weeks in my world have been infused with a dizzying degree of high-velocity cosmic rearrangement. The outer world's accelerated transformation mirrors my own paradigm-shifting (r)evolutions. As within, so without. I know I'm not alone in this. I hear it echoed around me everywhere, from nearly everyone I know. In fact, I'm sure many of you reading this right now feel this way, too: that this kairos moment has been working in/on/through you, dis/re-orienting you, metamorphosing you with breathtaking speed. Even the Earth itself is spinning at a faster rate. I'm amazed watching the worlds around me disintegrate and rebuild themselves on unbelievable timelines. I'm observing myself and those around me identify areas of acute "wrongness" or "stuckness", watching as the waves of breakdown/through sweep and swell, celebrating as exquisite clarity surfaces. Ushered over and over again into our continual unfolding, sometimes gracefully coasting, sometimes clinging for dear life — this time is asking the most of us.
Eight days ago, I left the Bay Area to relocate to the high deserts of Northern New Mexico – a long-awaited return to lands that have held vast, wild, inspiring, humbling, exhilarating, even daunting dreams for years. Dreams that needed me to grow in very specific ways to ready myself for them. Here, my heart is bathed in a wash of adobe, in wide bluebird skies, in lush greens freshly soaked by prolific late-summer monsoons. Everything is singing, dancing, vibrating.
There is a bounty of joy and ease to be found in living life with a mindset of "next right step", particularly amidst this level of global/personal/collective volatility. Migrating to New Mexico is the next right step in continuing to shape my life in deep alignment with my values, to channel all the streams of my existence into one coherent flow of resonance, to expand my capacity to receive and give in even greater abundance by rooting into more attuned rhythms. Over the last year, I've been in a devoted practice of listening more to the ineffable gravitational pull of "yes" that pulses in the tenderest places in our conscious awareness, that hums quietly until we cultivate greater intimacy with it and allow it to sing. As I allow "yes" to guide me with an ever-opening heart, I am delighted, enchanted, surprised by how all of it – everything – is happening, right now, in the most unexpected ways.
"This Time" has chiseled away at every last hard edge of my being, and I have never felt more soft, more supple, more surrendered. This proves itself to me repeatedly lately, including just a few days ago when, after nearly 2.5 years of evading covid, I succumbed to it the day I drove into Santa Fe. I haven't left this little casita that is my temporary refuge here since.
In truth, I don't remember ever feeling this sick in my entire life. All I could do the first day was sob through shivers and aches, but somehow despite it all a pervasive sense of trust permeated the entire experience. I was not nearly as scared as I thought I'd be. In some ways, I felt relieved to witness my body actually face this thing that has haunted us so relentlessly, that has changed us so completely. These days, crisis no longer collapses me, it confronts me with questions: what lesson does this teach, what purpose does this serve, what does this show me that wants to be acknowledged, healed, cleared, and transformed in order to get closer to my unique soul's expression, to more fully embody radiant aliveness, to come home to more distilled truths? It is a gift to increasingly meet challenge with ease and grace, to meet obstacles with curiosity and patience, to dismantle my ego even further. I am asking myself, how can I be embraced by life, to be held by it, to meet life itself as one of my greatest Partners, which takes quite a lot of de-conditioning and de-programming to arrive at this place, at least in my journey. Put another way, it is a commitment to closing the gap between imagination and experience. I yearned for a certain kind of life in my mind for years, I grieved how out of reach it felt, until one day I decided to start practicing in the smallest of ways making it real. Every single one of those baby seeds is blooming now into a life that leaves me filled with awe and reverence. Moving to New Mexico is continuing to show up with full faith in my ability to materialize what lived for so long in the imaginal.
Today, on day four of covid, I have hit a turning point. My system feels different, changed, renewed. I am typing this in the warm sun as a faint breeze rustles the leaves all around and above me, my 3 month old puppy Bennie is napping beside me, and children are playing and cheering somewhere in my neighborhood I hope to see soon. I am relieved and immeasurably grateful for all the resources and tools shared generously with me to be here. I pray each of us finds the modalities, practices, enabling conditions, affirmations, relationships, places and spaces that support us in living the ways that sing our aliveness back to us, that hold us in infinite love, that conjure our flourishing, yours, mine, and all beings everywhere.
I am so grateful for your warm, generous presence here. If you value what you find here and would like to support this space, consider leaving a heart and/or comment. It truly means so much, and I always love to hear from you.
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Welcome home, love! It sounds like you’re greeting the whole experience with all your characteristic courage and grace. Wishing you easy and safe passage to the other side of your illness, and a gentle settling in.
I am trying to feel compassion for the author, especially since he is now or was battling covid, perhaps when writing this piece. But he is clearly, like about 99% of other Americans not aware that OUR HOUSE IS ON FIRE!!! And not being in front of me, and me realizing my time is better used now to put the fire out than to empathize, i only have time to say this: He is clearly now aware, in denial like almost everyone (or in despair perhaps) that we are in an emergency situatoin, and that not only must we work our buns off to now , not a week from now, to make sure most the 8 neck and neck US senate races produce Dem winners, but be willing to at least spend a few hours or a night in jail doing nonviolent resistance (happy to send list of opportunities depending on your location, if we have any realistic hope at all of averting the otherwise inevitable mass suffering and death that is rapidly approaching according to virtually every climate Scientist. Instead we hear more new-age self-centered claptrap that has zero to do with what actually, scientifically, historically is the sine qua non for social change, for putting out this fire about to end most of human civilization and kill likely at least 2B innocent kids, mothers, and fathers, this fire now causing 20-50 species to become extinct weekly, and is now dangerously close to killing the ocean the source of most of our O2, that sine qua for real social change being: ORGANIZING and MOBILIZING!, not pontificating or agonizing, and entering the mysteries of the universe. By new age self-centered BS, I refer to stuff like his opening: "The last few weeks in my world have been infused with a dizzying degree of high-velocity cosmic rearrangement. The outer world's accelerated transformation mirrors my own paradigm-shifting (r)evolutions. As within, so without. " Give ME A BREAK!
And as for that "As within, so without," I am reminded of another oft bandied New age BS justification fo not having the courage to do nonviolent resistance, to spend a fricking night in jail (with a cell mate who likely will be one of the best future friends you'll ever have!), namely that mantra, "Be the Change We want to See in the world."
This saying has probably been used now by millions to justify their not having the ability to summon even the one ounce of courage it takes to commit to nonviolent resistance (eg ExtinctionRebellion, or any of the countless pipeline struggles now happening, often indigenous-led, in the nation. So here is the TRUTH: this saying was what Gandhi shouted to thousands about to engage in nonviolent resistance!! To 1000s about to risk being badly beaten and maybe even shot by the imperialistic racist Brits, to make sure they would not follow their natural impulse to become violent in response!! IT F***ckn was never used for privileged white new age people to justify sitting on their asses, and feeling they had done their part to save the world by becoming vegetarian and putting solar on their roofs! Yes we absolutely have to donate till it hurts and volunteer as canvassers to win the US senate races in the 8 key states. But winning elections, though essential, has always been absolutely insufficient without a robust and growing nonviolent resistance movement.That is VIRTUALLY ABSENT in AMERICA. Our house is on fire with a few psychopathic CEOs throwing more gas onto the house, and almost nobody is willing to put their bodies in front of these guys to stop them!! 500-1000 people per week willing to spend a frickin life changing integrity super boosting night in jail, for 10-11 wks could and would stop any and every pipeline from being constructed, and ever old growth forest from being cut down! If you need help finding the campaigns to join, write me ag Gary@GetCourageNow.org