So much happened in the last two weeks that clouded my heart in grief. "The News" remains a dismal place to visit for any amount of time, important as it is to tend, at least somewhat, to broader media transmissions to stay informed in an aligned and accountable way. Until quite recently, I was a breaking news junkie. NPR was always on in my car, a scan of the headlines a daily morning practice, particularly fixated on stories of injustice here and abroad. For many years I would immediately turn to Instagram when something erupted to use it as an activism platform the way many use Twitter, rapidly responding to the barrage of national and global calamities. Fortunately, I wasn't sharing inflammatory hot takes. I was playing a self-assigned role to digest and weave threads to broader systemic patterns. My Instagram "content" was well-received and appreciated, engagement with my efforts accelerated. But I was completely over-burdened with my own obsession and slipping into martyrdom.
When I started this Substack, I made a commitment to myself that I wouldn't perpetuate that behavior, no matter how easy (maybe addictive) it is for me. At one point in my life I was an aspiring journalist, and that aspect of self still simmers at a low temperature in my ecosystem. I promised myself I wouldn't use this space to fuel that fire, creating another pressurized situation where I felt I had to constantly speak to unfolding tragedies. From Jordan Neely's murder in Brooklyn, to the refugee crisis escalating in my hometown of El Paso, to the horror show that is the retraction of abortion rights... this week I felt pulled to use this post for all of those disasters, and it left me paralyzed and mildly distressed every day. I also tried to write about mothers and mothering to align with this day we all rally around the idea of motherhood, and that also stifled me. Another commitment I hold here is that I am not bound to Hallmark calendars, and every post is somehow about all of those themes already, whether it's overt or imperceptible, because they live at the center of my heart.
I felt moved to externalize this process with you today. If I had an editor, they might slash those last two paragraphs and say these ramblings are just getting my fingers typing and don't need to be made public. But I don't have one (I wish! One day!), so for now I get to do whatever I want. This intro felt a little like inviting you into my kitchen to watch me make a dish for you. To see behind the scenes of what gets attempted and discarded, how much gets pulled out of drawers and cupboards, how something arrives on your plate in the end and hopefully it nourishes you though I can't be sure, but is it sweeter to companion someone through the journey than to show up to a plate already served with no witnessing of how it got there?
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Well, all that said, here's a piece unrelated to anything mentioned above -- something my heart wanted to share -- the truest thing I know.
Also, a little bit of housekeeping: I am adjusting my flow here and will be posting bi-weekly for the next few months. I do promise to be consistent about that as I know I've been a little sporadic recently. I'm excited to share as well that I'm picking my book again!! I have 41,000 words down so far, and I'm feeling ready to revisit and bring this effort to a complete first draft by the end of 2023. So, I'm going to meet y'all here a little less frequently so I can meet that there.
I'm one of those people that reads into anything that even hints at a wink from the universe. I like living this way. I find it to be a deliciously reinforcing endeavor. The more I pay attention, the more I remember I am in constant relationship with a reality unfolding into itself in complete mystery. When I lose this perspective, I begin to think I know how everything is going to happen. It starts with tiny tendrils seeping in through the cracks of my life as I attempt to control my reality. As I water them in a self-sabotaging stress pattern, their vines swell and weave themselves thick. Days feel routine, predictable, strained -- a pervasive sense of "stuckness" grows claustrophobic.
Then, the unexpected happens, and I am curled up on my living room floor heaving with sobs or backed into a corner and dissociating through god-knows-what distraction (just kidding, it's definitely always Instagram) until obscene hours of the early morning when I'm desperate for sleep. I don't like living this way – vacillating between a kind of malaise that escalates into a personal crisis to shake me out of my self. So I try to stay close to how I do like living. To tug myself back there when I stray. To hold tender those relationships that remind me how to return. This a soft and sense-itive way of moving through the world, enchanted by mystery, open-hearted with curiosity.
In a book club that creates sanctuary in my life every two weeks, we are steeping in the rather obscure/niche work of Gershon Winkler called "Magic of the Ordinary: Recovering the Shamanic in Judaism". He describes approaching shamanism and magic this way:
“…it occurred to me that there are indeed two ways to go about it: mind altering herbs and ceremonies [or] being so present in the known world that the unknown becomes second nature. … In this way of being in the world [the second option] I can sense the mystery as much in the conspicuous as in the hidden.”
This could be as simple as noticing. Or it could be as complex as manifesting - though we've become so allergic to that word societally. Most precisely, it is to intimately court the animate unseen forces co-creating consciousness with us, as us, through us and to trust in ourselves as powerful partners. It is to form secure attachments to our ability to shape and build worlds. ((In fact, it can be naive and even dangerous to neglect that, because right now, many of us are living in the narrow imaginations of very few people -- like Trump, like Musk, like Bezos, like Putin...)) On a personal, more mundane level, it is to recognize that I am actually in communication with something(s) much vaster than the collapsing mental machinations that trap me in a need for certainty and a fear of scarcity.
Noticing the tenderest breach of photosynthetic emergence from the tip of a seemingly brittle branch suddenly flush into a verdant crown – greeting that aliveness, breathing with it – it is not hyperbolic to say I am transformed. It is beautiful to fling ourselves to new landscapes in search of something to captivate us, it is necessary to revive ourselves from repetition at times and refresh our own sight and other senses, and it is also potent to pause and sense into the miracle that everything is breathing all around us.
This is an essential ingredient to what we call synchronicity or serendipity, which is actually not so strange or so rare. It feels that way at first, but it is the primary language spoken by the universe and it is being spoken at all times. All we are asked to do is listen.
On Monday one of those moments arrived when I clicked on a post from a fellow writer here who I subscribed to long ago. I have only read one post of hers and subscribed right away to her publication, but I haven't opened a single email since.
“Love is friendship on hard mode." The subject line intrigued me. I didn't even read the post, I simply clicked "play" at the top and within minutes I wanted to turn it off. ...But I didn't. I let it play, and in under an hour I realized my approach to dating has been wildly off for the last ten years since I somehow lost the plot of what it even is we're doing when we're seeking a partner. It was a revolution, and one of the most important pursuits of my life was forever changed this week. I feel like a different person re-entering the world of dating with clarified perspective - more realistic and more excited. I realize I was falling into the trap Karlsson describes in his essay Looking for Alice: thinking categorically and essentially dating the same man over and over in different bodies instead of, as he writes, "freely pattern-match[ing] for the particular type of individual I resonate with." I feel liberated with this information. I am able to clear the old established category from my hard drive and reflect on those past relationships with greater insight into why they were ultimately so troubling, how the individuals actually didn't resonate with me and I was relying on a lot of cognitive bias to take small bits of evidence and amplify them, then rationalize the vast majority of information to fit my determination. I have completely redirected myself in a matter of days, and the results are already revealing themselves in subtle ways that I know will be reinforced profoundly as I massage this pattern of being into my actions.
On Wednesday I had my first visit with a new practitioner to finally treat chronic neck and back pain I've been suffering through for nearly 14 years since I fractured my skull in a fall. I didn't want to go but my body compelled me. I entered with a surprising amount of resistance. Within a few minutes of sharing my story she said: "there is a doctor in Ruidoso who can work with you on a neurological level to rewire your brain to release you from this pain at the source. I can facilitate you in feeling much better today, but the pain will always come back if the issue is stemming from your brain. I just want to be honest with you that after a traumatic brain injury, you could spend the rest of your life pouring thousands of dollars into body work and always be in survival mode."
Once again, I was completely transformed within minutes. This resonated on a cellular level. No body worker had ever connected neurology and physiology for me in such a targeted way.
I see this exact pattern in my class too. To be honest, most people enter into the course or individual sessions with high levels of resistance. Last week we confronted some of the deepest work of the series and half the participants said they considered skipping entirely... but on the other side, every single person felt seismically shifted and abundantly grateful that they listened to the aliveness pulling them intuitively toward revolution as they have throughout the journey, which is a 9-week immersion into everything I am describing in this post.
These may have been rather insignificant experiences – a podcast episode, a relatively standard body work appointment – but with the invitation to myself to claim my agency and intentionally collaborate with the world unfolding around me, they became life-altering experiences. And I share about the resistance that arose in both instances because relating differently to the world than our conditions demand feels uncomfortable because it's vulnerable. It is much easier to move linearly, rationally, and strategically with an effort to control our realities instead of to listen, receive, respond and integrate what arrives to teach us.
This is an example of practicing the world we seek. To choose this way again and again. To watch how it changes us into more empowered co-creators more and more free from karmic cycles and more and more conscious of moving both deeply engaged and sublimely transcendent: holding our embodied humanity and our infinite divinity simultaneously. And it can happen in your inbox or the coffee shop or your morning walk or your next doctor's appointment. Maybe, not always, but enough to put a glimmer in your eye and a spark in your heart about this being human.
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I loved the metaphor of being invited into the kitchen to watch you make a dish. There’s something so cosy about that and I enjoyed taking my time being with this piece as it unfolded
So insightful. Thank you ♥️