Despair, Distract, Distance, Deepen, Deliverance

I apparently have a new cycle during COVID19 that I’m working through, despite my desire to be calm and accepting of all that occurs.

Despair wakes me up at 4 am thinking of a new password and counting its characters with my fingers, as if I were practicing scales without a keyboard.

Despair keeps me scrolling through my phone during a zoom meeting, favoring a stranger's meme over the nuggets or nuances from someone’s sharing.

Despair gets me out the door, fitbit rebooted, obsessively meeting a 10,000 Step goal.

Distract becomes my new coping mechanism. See above during online meetings for an example.

Distract helps me read a novel every couple days, watch a new series, and perhaps motivates my new napping habit. (See the 4 am waking reference.)

Distance keeps conversation superficial, tears private and quickly squelched, hands busy tidying up.

Distance occurs on every vector: with myself, with others, and with my higher power.

Deepen is my new desire, but too often distraction inhibits the meditation practice that forms a bridge or perhaps acts as shovel.

In order to deepen, I need to journal beyond the tally of tasks accomplished, into the murky, shadowy landscape of today’s setting of pandemic.

Deepening inevitably means letting something go, sharing something raw, trusting someone, almost anyone, with my current state of being even before I can articulate it.

To deepen is to acknowledge this world—green, anxious, hopeful, corrupt.

To deepen is to settle into this body—fit, healthy, sober, achey.

To deepen is to accept this mind—busy, sharp, creative, restless.

To deepen is to welcome this spirit—expansive, settled, awake, curious.

And if I can acknowledge, settle, accept, and welcome, then I am delivered into what’s next. The ultimate unknown.

Which may well lead to despair, and the cycle begins anew.

The Great Pause

The United States has had a Great Depression, a Great Recession, and now we’re in The Great Pause. A friend of mine named it yesterday, and I’ve been thinking about the power of pausing. The suspension of normality is an invitation to notice at least two areas of life:

What did I take for granted that I no longer will?

What has been removed that I won’t pick up again?

Taking Things for Granted

I’m learning how much I value the in-person meetings I attend 3-4 times a week. While we meet online now, and it’s wonderful to see familiar faces and hear about their experiences, this virtual community cannot replicate the random connections I made when I sat down next to someone different in the room and chatted before we began. 

When/if we no longer need to physically distance ourselves, I intend to arrive earlier than I used to, hug more people, and linger afterwards to soak up the warmth of this community. Now that I’ve lost it, I know this particular community fills me like no other.

What Will I let Go?

Conversely, as I shelter in place and no longer run errands daily, I see how I used grocery stores to give me the dopamine hit shopping provides.  While I’ve always been aware I buy too many clothes, etc., I now see that I justified spending money if it was for food. Money is a drug like any other, and I could rationalize a little spree because I was out of jicama, for example.  Today when I notice a specific veggie’s gone, I remind myself that celery and radishes will do.

I’m not striving to be an ascetic, but I do want to occupy an inner landscape of enough rather than always wanting more. I’d like to use my creative energies to produce something useful rather than fine-tune what brings me comfort.  

How is the Great Pause helping you notice what you want to savor and what you want to release?

Are You Resisting, Complying, Accepting, or Embracing COVID19?

In the midst of the coronavirus calamity, chaos, and crisis, I read a post by someone I respect who said that those of us writing about silver linings, blessings, or lessons were gaslighting those experiencing anxiety, fear, and depression. She pleaded for us to let people be exactly where they are.

I agree that it’s important not to spiritually bypass the challenges inherent in this situation.  My perspective has roots in the privilege of a home, an income, more than enough food and exquisitely good health. Yet might it not be useful to imagine what could shift if we embraced the situation?

Because I’m a big fan of embracing, I’ve thought a lot about how we get there. Because it doesn’t happen with a decision or even a desire. I offer my thoughts on these stages and invite you to notice where you might be.

Ignore: There are video clips of elected officials in this stage.  We may all have ignored the first murmurs about this virus, and if you’re ignoring it today you’re not likely reading this.  Ignorance requires distraction, diffusion, and an insularity that most of us can’t maintain for long.

Resist: Once information, facts , and testimonials about the situation seep in, there is often resistance, active acting against. You might reject information, question sources, or imagine evil motives for any messenger of scary news.  Much of the energy required to live in resistance is spent arguing.

Comply: At this time in the USA, most recommendations for self-quarantine are not mandated or enforced by martial law. Those complying may look for a loophole, a way to game the system, or  follow the rules without being too invested.  “Another trip to the store for crackers” may justify being out and about as usual. Restlessness often accompanies compliance.

Accept: Acceptance comes from a deeper place than compliance, but not as soulful as surrender. When I accept what is happening and what my role in containing the pandemic is, I make necessary preparations for being in place and begin to settle into the possibilities available. Curiosity may accompany acceptance and you might find yourself reading everything that crosses your screen to stay informed. Panic and anxiety diminish with acceptance.

Surrender: With surrender comes an inner tranquility that can’t be manufactured.  The anger of resistance, restlessness of compliance, and ennui of acceptance dissipate. Clarity emerges as you glimpse benefits or lessons for the world and especially growing edges for yourself.   There may be a sense of being “idle and blessed” as the poet Mary Oliver puts it.

Embrace: This full-hearted approach to the situation can be hard-earned.  What seemed to be boundaries, restrictions, or deprivations are perceived with a sense of adventure and even play.  What gets embraced is not just knowledge and information, not just material circumstances, but a deep awareness of the interconnectedness of all beings. When you embrace this situation, the days are meaningful, conversations feel timely and grace-filled, observations are keener, creativity flows and epiphanies flood awareness. 

Embracing brings us into Kairos, the Greek concept of sacred timing, in which we tap into the powers that create worlds.

Wherever you are in your journey through these challenging, awakening times, please be gentle with yourself and others, for we are all being invited to notice, adjust, and grow.

Getting into the Vortex

This week, I drove from Scottsdale to Sedona to experience the energy vortices those red rocks are known for. I left in the dark and had an easy drive in countryside very different from Minnesota in February. 

I found a parking spot at the first available trailhead, laced up my boots and started out on a dusty, wide trail.  I wound around Bell Rock and up an incline until I was away from other hikers, took off my backpack,  sat down on the warm rocks, and spent a few minutes soaking up the beauty, creating memories for the cold, grey days ahead.

When I was ready to leave, I did. And on my way, I called to two people I know; one of my dearest friends from Minneapolis whom I don’t see often enough and her husband were walking the trail.  She was astonished, I not so much. She had crossed my mind on the drive up. She was in my vortex.

The parking lot attendant at the next trail told me to pay attention to the energy, for this too was a vortex. I gathered my walking sticks, which haven’t been used since Spain, and took off eager for a magical encounter. 

I did not experience any surges of energy, had no animal messengers appear, and at one point realized that on every long hike, there’s a moment I wish it were over but I have to keep going to get home. Hiking shows me I can do hard things.

I’m not an energy worker, healer, or shaman. I may never “feel” a vortex or be sensitive to other planes of consciousness, and yet, from time to time, when I heed my body’s need for rest or movement, when I listen to someone tell me which trail they enjoyed and I take it because it’s right here, then I experience the synchronicity that suggests there’s nothing random going on.

I have a teacher who says get into the vortex and then act. I make time each day for stillness and beauty, I pause and ask “what next?”, without knowing who or what may answer, and sometimes I allow for emptiness rather than shop, eat, distract, or worry.  

Call that what you will, a vortex, home base, serenity or love. From that place I can be useful, seek the best in others, smile at strangers, and stay open to surprise.

Moving Too Fast for My Soul

I’m in an intense season at work. The course I coach runs for 66 days, and with over 2500 participants, the online activity, coaching calls, and individual connections never let up.  I love the work, the participants, the team on staff, yet I haven’t let go of any previous responsibilities. 

Last week I forgot an appointment. That same day my phone slipped out of my bag into a parking lot, and I didn’t discover that until several hours later when Brian and I came hunting and found it covered in a half inch of new snow, miraculously untouched by tire tracks. (Despite two nights in a bowl of rice, it’s not back to peak performance, however.)

Two taps from the universe in one day alert me that it’s time to make an adjustment. My  pace has crept up and I see I’ve been moving too fast, packing too much in, for weeks.  (I've even found myself postponing using the bathroom until I absolutely had to, though I work at home.) 

Nothing is crazily out of whack, but when I move too quickly, life isn’t as fun as it could be. 

What happens when I push too hard was reflected in a swinging door we have in our 1928 house. This beautiful wooden door hangs between the kitchen and dining room, propped open for the last four years because it catches on the kitchen tile floor. I closed it this week in a fit of pique and cracked the top so the pin wouldn’t hold. It was broken. 

The same day I missed an appointment and dropped my phone,  I ran into a carpenter friend and asked if he could repair it. Within hours I had men at my house figuring out this old puzzle.

The bottom needed to be planed, the upper cracks in the wood glued and held in vises overnight, and the bottom piece of wood shimmed up so there wasn’t pressure on that top pin.  

Each of these adjustments was minor, but together they restored the door and it now swings and catches because of the hinge, as it should.

But I’m an addict and an intensity junkie, so when I have a snafu my first response is to find a drastic solution—cancel all appointments this month, take a retreat in the woods, swear off all electronics --and caffeine while I’m at it!

My life adjustments can be smaller, strategic, and daily so that my life moves smoothly: add an evening meditation, call a buddy every morning, schedule one day a week without appointments.

 I receive a steady stream of information about the pace of my life when I notice my interest and pleasure in each interaction, time of rest, or item I read.  I can return to Christina Baldwin’s advice to “move at the pace of guidance.” 

The small lessons can be the most do-able.

Aligning Inspiration and Action

With every inspiration comes the energy to act. This fact has taken me years to realize. How often have I gotten an idea and tucked it away for later because it just wasn’t the right time—to eat better, stop smoking, call that old friend, write down the idea, etc.?

However, when I don’t act on inspiration it becomes a subtle drain on my energy. I try to hold the good idea for later, or I actively push it away because the action seems too hard or too scary, which drains energy away from everything else that I’m doing.

What I’m learning is acting on the inspiration as soon as possible, which turns out to be so much easier! Riding that wave of momentum is a joy in itself and leads to the next action. When I act on an intuitive thought, often the person is available when I call and we don’t play phone tag, or the perfect person is there to receive my idea, or a book I’ve read and want to pass along lands in the right hands.

These micro moments when I listen, acknowledge, then act keep me in alignment with the source of wisdom within myself and the world.

And because I have so much experience hearing that wisdom and guidance but NOT heeding it, I know the cost of the gap between what I want to do and what I’m actually doing. That gap is where addiction, distraction, and old characteristics that no longer serve me get a toehold and take root. Acting on inspiration caulks those cracks and helps me move forward.

It’s not mine to determine the pace of movement or even the outcome. It’s my joy to receive inspiration and to take a step in that direction, over and over again.

Wishing you all the best for a bright, aligned New Year.

Wise Self Warnings

Dear JoAnn,

I know you’re having food thoughts, but before you act on them, I’d like you to read this letter all the way through. It’s from your wiser, experienced self.

You are a food addict, so it’s quite natural you want to eat. That’s what you do when things are even a little bit out of the ordinary or uncomfortable. Without going into your history, or even the science, let me say why it’s better to make no exceptions, just for now.

Even one bite beyond what you’ve committed and weighed is dangerous, and I don’t use that word lightly. Any substitution or addition has always led to sugar and flour, sometimes in a few days, sometimes the same day. But the exception never serves your body or your highest self.

And when you get on the sugar train, there’s no predicting when you’ll get off.  So as long as you’re within your Bright Lines, I urge you to do whatever it takes to stay there, just for today. Otherwise, you’ll eat junk that might taste good at first but becomes like sawdust you mechanically chew and swallow, which is a far cry from the delight you wanted.

As you continue to eat sugar, you’re like a robot seeking more, spending too much money and time looking for the perfect item to meet a need or desire you haven’t taken the time to get clear about.

Trouble is, no food can meet that need because the desire is deeper than food will ever address. Those intangible needs for love, acceptance, joy and connection cannot be met by material items. Ever. The problem is, because you’re a sugar addict, there is never and will never be satiation in your body after eating sugar or flour. There will only be more fat stored, more sluggish energy, more foggy thinking, a dampening of your spirit, and insatiable appetite.

Here's what I wish for you: detach and observe these food thoughts and replace them with fond memories of beauty, connections, or contentment.  Take them as information that you DO have a need, and then spend a moment figuring out what it truly is.

Laugh at the indulger who always has a clever argument but never tells the truth.

And make contact with someone—through the phone, on a walk, or online. Be open to all the ways the hard work of recovery can support your happiness and freedom, and watch thin happen on its own.

With much love and care, 

your Highest Self.