Author: heather

Found a connection today between guilt and longing, as if the voice of judgment was a weir or floodgate. I realized a tidal wave of longing underneath the sense of not doing enough. A healing wave, as if the guilt and judgment were washed aside – a broken gate left swinging – as the stronger flood of desire was freed. I long for many changes in my life and our world, and it is liberating to claim these longings without the constricting gatekeepers of judgment and resistance.

I long to be more healthy, energetic, strong and radiant. I long to eat healthy food, with ingredients I can take pleasure in rather than fear. I long to enhance my relationships, become more celebratory and engaged in my interactions with husband, sons, family and friends. I long for a community where fear is acknowledged and tamed in order to make room for justice and kindness. I long for more time and more personal commitment to my crafting of this life, more excellence or Quality in my experience of the moments through which I move. I long to live in full awareness of the passionate sadness and tranquil joy that traverses the web of embodied divinity we call life.

Eventually, I suppose, I may even move to a state of being where the longing is honoured without attachment, where there is no entanglement of craving and grasping in the rich experience of desire. But today there is an inexpressible surge of liberation in the transformation from guilt to longing. Instead of feeling badly about all the ways my longings are not met and my vision falls short of my experience, I can deeply immerse in this flood of conjoined despair and hope, this river of joy.

Just wanted to say thanks to the folks at What’s Up Yukon for inviting me to write some time thoughts at the changing of the year. See below for the link.

Not sure why but the formatting needed spaces to display properly. After all that, here’s the link.

I know that we are to clear the mind, allow for experiences of awareness without thought. But there is also an understanding that learning to “unleash” the mind – to let thought and imagination and vision practice running hard, just as we run the body despite our love of stillness – this is part of integration.

Different people are more oriented to certain kinds of awareness. If an attentive, grounded baker imagines baking a cake, she puts lots of care into collecting the right ingredients, mixing them with lovely precision, and baking a reliably delicious gift. A “thinker” or head-oriented person might start instead with a recipe and question “what if” and consider a whole range of other possibilities for inclusion or changing the recipe. We all know that thinkers may not be very good cooks! But there is a kind of creative baker who can integrate both aspects. She can give permission for the unfettered thinking that does not reject ideas just because they float through – is willing to consider putting lime juice in, or prunes, or skipping the eggs, or adding ketchup or any number of seemingly ridiculous ideas. She knows that the ideas themselves do not threaten her intention to make a cake, that they are not solid profound instructions that she is obliged to manifest, but they are interesting, curious bubbles of possibility. They are illusion. And the baker laughs in recognition that the flour and eggs and hands she brings together are also illusion, just less so. And from her grounded experience, her sensation and wisdom and past success and failure, she can choose to manifest a new bubble and see what that contributes to her cake. Or not. But she has a level of freedom and creativity that allows her to live in a liberating relationship with “maybe” and a receptive confidence that is open to embodied change.

This understanding is linked to Joanna Macy’s understanding of the kinds of visioning and creative manifesting we need for making the shift to a sustainable economy. We need safe, supportive ways to play with collective thinking – to generate what ifs and maybes – and yet not get caught up in certainty or rigid belief that these visions are solid or yet another way to distract us from being present. The “maybe” mind – the one that says a creative yes, like a theatresports actor – can fuel our embodiment and contribute to the sustainable personal and collective of how we live.

We do need to rein in our minds, to learn the habits that allow for it to hush and take a back seat to presence. But the very concept of “reining in” acknowledges that we have powerful stallions to exercise, feed and nurture. And there are many reasons why we need trained stallions to run wild in the field of the mind. To go the distance together, we need visions and possibilities and theoretical models and creative marketing and art that contributes to change and legally rejuvenated contracts and complex systems in order to survive together.

We can’t rely on this illusory hope that there are smarter people out there – better, wiser experts who will save us. There are many other minds that will contribute to the saving, but we each have a responsibility to free our own visions, to exercise our possibility generator, the stallion that wants to run. Not to live in a state of illusion, or have the stallion running all day, but to allow it regular practices that keep it healthy and vigorous.

I have been wrestling with the demon of responsibility lately, learning to live in a new kind of trust that seems “irresponsible” but is really a radical act of accountability.. trusting that the survival needs will be met, that we can lose and gain and lose without living in fear.
After journalling one morning, I sat with Andrew on the couch in front of a fire and spoke lots about this sense that I was caught in a paradox between “responsible” and “irresponsible” – knowing I was stuck in it but not sure how to rise above the black and white opposites to see the zebra. Then while I was thinking out loud, I had an understanding that being in Now blows that paradox apart, makes it irrelevant. I have been trying to “forecast” into the future and connect to the past with this sense of responsibility or control. It is an illusion. I can only “be responsible” or alert in the now – the outcomes or results are not under my control, and no amount of “being responsible” will guarantee outcomes. Too much sense of responsibility will make me feel restricted, unspontaneous. So it is not about letting go of personal accountability, but it is about letting go of control, which is an illusion anyway.
I said it was like no longer trying to be a navigator on a ship but rather like being a log tossed on the ocean. Andrew rightly pointed out that it was more like being a log on the bottom of the ocean – the waves still toss around but there is stillness.