Changing Perspective - A Story of an Ant & the Sky

When I was about 12, in the summertime I liked to bring my Barbie dolls into the large backyard where my family lived in Oklahoma, and play pretend.  One day, after some time, I got tired of the dolls and became fascinated with an ant crawling in the grass.  I put the dolls down and laid down on my belly to get a closer look at the ant.  The ant and the blade of grass the ant was crawling up and down looked very small.  But when I got closer, it was as if a whole other world opened up around me. 

What must the world look like from the ant's perspective, I wondered.

The very same small blade of grass and mound of dirt seemed much bigger.  I imagined what it might feel like to be an ant, to walk like an ant walks vertically up and down a blade of grass, among many other blades of grass, each many times bigger than I was. I could feel the cool blade of grass beneath my feet, and the warm sun on my back. The air around me moving gently.  It all seemed quite natural and secure to the ant, who continued to move steadily in the direction it was going.  The mound of ground which included all those blades of grass seemed huge.  The distance from where we were to the fenceline, to the house, seemed very far away.  If I were an ant, it would be a lot of work to travel that far.  And the sky...

I rolled over to look at the sky.  The sky, and the vista of space all around us -- me, and the ant, and the blade of grass -- seemed incredibly vast.  I lost track of time, and began to wonder what it would be like to be a cloud.  

What a blissful day it was.  What a feeling of belonging and connection in my environment.  

This experience I had imagining I was an ant opened something in me - a felt sense of interconnection with access to feel the ant and the blade of grass and the cloud and the sky as a part of me, and that I am also a part of.  That was a gift - that was grace.  

Opening our perspective to new vistas that we can experience in our bodies can feel that way - like opening to a whole new world.  

These days, one of the ways I work with people is helping them shift their consciousness.  While there can be complexity to creating conscious shifts mentally, emotionally, physically, spiritually, and relationally, there can also be a kind of simplicity to it with attuned presence.  

I'm grateful for the privilege I had to be free from danger, safe, and with a yard just beyond my back door surrounded by a quiet neighborhood where I could imagine and wonder and just be.  I'm aware not everyone grows up with that kind of access.  

And wherever we are, whatever state of consciousness we currently inhabit, and whatever our background, shifts are possible.  Like the ant, we start where we are. 

Responding to Fear is Love & the Most Important Step

The most important step is the one beneath our feet. 

I love growth and evolutionary processes.  I named my business Transformation Playground because I like remembering that there are a multitude of ways to return home to ourselves, restore, discover, transform, create and connect.  I like remembering that transforming can be playful!

And, sometimes I get impatient and want to have a different experience, be further along in my journey, or for other people to be different.  In the moments I am not accepting and inhabiting where and how I am right here, right now, fear is present. 

Fear is a big deal, and must be met, felt, respected, and responded to.  Suppressed fear fragments perception and diminishes possibilities and presence.  Another way to say it is, suppressed fear creates absence, and when we are absent, we turn away from connecting to what is.  

Fear is an emotion which provides an important developmental, evolutionary function -- protection and connection.  In early life, when we've crawled or walked as far from our caregivers as we're ready to, fear calls us to reconnect and return to the lap of our caregiver.

As adults, when we're not aware that we're afraid, we can't respond appropriately as it's hard to respond to something we're not directly aware of.  Also, when we're not aware that we are afraid, our capacity for discernment about what's happening in and around us is reduced -- increasing our vulnerability to manipulation or danger. Depending on how our nervous systems cope with fear, we may shut down, avoid what we need to face, or become reactive and more prone to fighting and violence. 

It's important to acknowledge that fear-related trauma responses such as numbing, avoiding, freezing, and shutting down part of our nervous system are intelligent functions to put aside what we are unable to deal with in the moment.  Our nervous systems have evolved to allow us the capacity to hold unprocessed fear until we have the space and support to allow it to move through.  This is amazing!  Seen through this context, the trauma response is not a problem, it's a gift.  (I want to make clear that I'm not saying that whatever caused the trauma was a gift.  Violence, war, racism, neglect, absence, environmental abuse, genocides, abuses of power, etc. are manifestations of separation which must be attended to and restored individually, collectively and globally.)

Seen in this context, fear is not the opposite of love.  Fear is an emotion which is an expression of love:  an emotion of connection and returning home to ourselves.  

Identity as a Verb

I've long been interested in various systems to explore identity, such as yoga, the enneagram, astrology, archetypes, defensive character structures, Myers & Briggs, personas, and ego / essence.  I've found each of these useful.  And, my experience is that each system can become an obstacle if I fixate on a identify definition which I perceive as 'me' or 'not me.'

The ancient tradition of yoga suggests that we may not be who we think we are.  For example, a quote by Ramana Maharshi is: “The question, ‘who am I?’ is not really meant to get an answer, the question ‘who am I?’ is meant to dissolve the questioner.”

What is particularly interesting to me is shifting identity from a noun to a verb.  Verbing identity is a process of exploring how we organize ourselves in a given moment.  Habitual ways of organizing were originally developed in response to something from the past (our past difficulties, early environments, or even ancestral or cultural difficulties).  Habitual, repetitive ways of organizing identity can unconsciously continue to frame our perceptions and eliminate our conscious choice as long as it is invisible to us.  

Inquiry about how we are verbing identity can be through any system, such as the ones I mentioned above in my first sentence, with the intention to use the system as a gateway to understanding how we are relating.  Inquiry in service of what we want for ourselves, connected with somatic presencing, allows an unfolding self-intimacy resulting in new possibilities we can gently move toward as we become aware of them.

How cool is that?!

Bridging Past to Future: Facing Racism and Reconnecting with our Hearts

One of the callings of our times is to become a bridge between our past and the future we want.  We become a bridge by cultivating an ongoing connection with what is even as we align our actions with what wants to be born through us.    

Photo by Martin Damboldt from Pexels

Facing 'what is' includes facing how 'what was' still radiates through our current experience.  Unfinished, unprocessed experience is sometimes called karma.  Another name for it is trauma.  Trauma exists in individuals, in families, in the collective, and in the systems of our society.  

One collective trauma that I am facing into every day is racism.  

Racism isn't just a word.  It's a code (as all words are) which carries the energetic legacy of trauma which is woven into the very foundations of our systems for hundreds of years.* 

I've been actively learning about whiteness for only about a year, and I'm not an expert.  Writing about my current perception of whiteness and racism (even as I'm still learning) is part of my response to the collective trauma of whiteness, or what the author, Resmaa Menakem calls white body supremacy.  

One of the things that keeps racism going is for people who are systemically in the oppressor role (that's me, with skin known in our world today as white) to not see, feel or take action related to the dehumanizing violence that was perpetrated and became embedded in our systems and the world around us. We told cultural stories that racial violence was over or mostly over, but it isn't.    

I'm turning towards it every day.  

Lifting a veil of unconsciousness and facing systemic oppression and violence is painful. The seduction of continuing to not know, not feel, and not respond to the cultural domination system we were born into is strong.  We are all woven into racist systems and for many of us, our participation and enabling remains unconscious.  Even as we wake up to face, the tendency for us to become overwhelmed, shut down, or otherwise disconnect is powerful.  

My experience is becoming conscious of the water we are swimming in is an ongoing process.  We may see it but not feel it.  Face part of it but not all of it.  Bame others.  Feel but remain unable to respond and take action.  Get overwhelmed.  And so on.      

When abuse of power is occurring, it's healthy to see, feel, and respond to what's actually happening.  Even though facing it is painful and often confusing, the waking up process reconnects us to our natural grounding, to the beauty of our own hearts, and to the natural resources of life.  We re- align with our inner compass, and with the best of our humanity.  We become both the bridge to what is possible, as well as the people who walk over the bridge into an equitable future, one step at a time.  

*"400 Years of Inequality is a diverse coalition of organizations and individuals calling on everyone - families, friends, communities, institutions - to plan their own solemn observance of 1619, learn about their own stories and local places, and organize for a more just and equal future." They are "dedicated to dismantling structural inequality and building strong, healthy communities."  - 400 Years of Inequality website 

  

Today's meditation journey to stillness, and beyond.

Do you know that experience of feeling crowded on the inside?  Too much stuff going on.... inside, around you....  And, at the same time a strong urge to keep going, keep moving, do this, do that, do more. 

Today my choice is to stop.

Sit here.

Connect. 

Breathe. 

Notice my breath, and the feeling of my body sitting on the couch, one foot curled under, and one hanging down toward the floor.  Learning back.  The sun is shining through the windows, My houseplants seem to be drinking it in, and the shrub outside is moving gently in the breeze.  The heater just kicked on.  An airplane is flying by.  Two cars just drove down the street alongside my home.

Breathe. 

I admire the pretty colors of the room around me. 

Breathe. 

Settle.  With a hand over my heart, I feel my heartbeat.  My exhalation is lengthening.  My jaw just relaxed a bit and my shoulders just dropped down and back. 

Turning toward inner movements, I can feel my body sensations.  My emotions seem to be slowing down and spreading out, a gentle tingling, flowing movement throughout my inner body.  Thoughts seem to be relaxing down and in like my body resting in a hammock. 

mmmmmmmmmmmm
And now what?

Still feeling my inner body, and also seeing the room around me.  Eyes sometimes closing, sometimes opening.  Breathing.

I'm becoming aware of spaciousness around and through me. 

And something else. 

A tinge of heaviness in and through the space.  I'm tired.  It's like looking through a heavy blanket.  Clear, but heavy. 

mmmmmmmmmmmmm
Welcome, welcome.

I notice spaciousness again.  The heavy inner blanket thing is dissolving.
mmmmmmmmmm

I feel a light something, which I'll call clarity, and has a kind of a sparkle to it. 
Welcome, welcome. 

Ahhhh, stillness. 

A sense of an anchor, a magnetic sensation, connecting the base of my body down toward the center of the earth.  Simultaneously, an opening, tingly funnel sensation upward, above the crown of my head. 

mmmmmmmmm
I'll rest here a while.

Now a dullness, emerging around and through my lower body.  hmmmmmm
Welcome, welcome.

Eventual dissolution and awareness of that central magnetic channel.

Turning toward vastness, opening into the infinite.
hmmmmmmm, What is calling me?  What wants my attention?

Fire.  I had an image of fire, and the thought of the fires in Australia.
Now grief, a heavy heart.
Welcome, welcome.  I will host this experience too, as best I can, as I do whatever comes into my awareness when I'm meditating...
My jaw is tightening.
Breathing.

I feel angry.
Welcome, welcome.

I'm noticing that central channel, a a sense of spaciousness.

Now, to close, time for gratitude.
Thank you breath.
Thank you body.
Thank you emotions.
Thank you mind. 
Thank you essence.
Thank you spirit.
Thank you awareness.
Thank you understanding.
Thank you compassion.
Thank you what I don't understand.
Thank you mystery.
Thank you now.
Thank you past.
Thank you future.
Thank you life.
Thank you beauty.
Thank you joy.
Thank you reader.

I appreciate you sharing my meditation with me today.

"Scared" is an Invitation to Self-Connect & Align with Your Inner Guidance

"Scared" is a feeling,
as well as a reflection of the current state of our nervous system.
Like all feelings,
fear needs to be included within awareness
and fully responded to
for us to be at home in embodied wholeness.

Fear blocks us from self-connection,
responsibility, and empowered actions
especially when we are numb to it or avoiding it.
What we are actually avoiding is ourselves.

When we are scared or anxious, our fear needs attention,
and connecting with it supports us to recognize
and align with our inner, felt wisdom of “yes” and “no.”

When we choose an  evolutionary path,
continually choosing to open to discovery, connect,
and expand capacity for love, contribution and fulfillment,
we continue to discover pockets of fear within.

 How people discover their inner blocks
- fragments of fear -
may vary from person to person.
For me, interactions with people
tend to show me my inner blocks.

Presencing fear-blocks,
which is another way to say trauma,
especially through connection with someone
who is sensitively attuned to feelings / energy,
allows fear which was fragmenting and blocked
to release into our wholeness
and re-join our greater flow.


Contemplation questions to wonder about:

- How do I notice when I feel stuck, anxious, defensive or afraid?

- When  I notice any of those states, how do I experience that in my body?

- How can I support myself ( or receive support ) to sustain attention with my experience in a friendly way so that I can connect more deeply with myself ?

- How can I appreciate myself for my willingness to engage on my path of discovery?