What's in the gallery?
We dissolve stuck and rewrite patterns. We apply radical playfulness to life (when we feel like it!), embarking on internal adventures (credo of Safety First). We have a fake band called Solved By Cake. We build invisible sanctuaries, invent words and worlds, breathe awe and wonder.
We are not impressed by monsters. Except when we are. We explore the connections between internal territories and surrounding environment to learn what marvelously supportive delicious space feels like, and how to take exquisite care of ourselves. We transform things.* We glow wild.**
* For example: Desire, fear, worry, pain-and-trauma, boundaries, that problematic word which rhymes with flaweductivity.
** Fair warning: Self-fluency has been known to lead to extremely subversive behavior, including treasuring yourself unconditionally, unapologetically taking up space, experiencing outrageously improbable levels of self-acceptance, and general rejoicing in aliveness.
What's in the gallery?
We dissolve stuck and rewrite patterns. We apply radical playfulness to life (when we feel like it!), embarking on internal adventures (credo of Safety First). We have a fake band called Solved By Cake. We build invisible sanctuaries, invent words and worlds, breathe awe and wonder.
We are not impressed by monsters. Except when we are. We explore the connections between internal territories and surrounding environment to learn what marvelously supportive delicious space feels like, and how to take exquisite care of ourselves. We transform things.* We glow wild.**
* For example: Desire, fear, worry, pain-and-trauma, boundaries, that problematic word which rhymes with flaweductivity.
** Fair warning: Self-fluency has been known to lead to extremely subversive behavior, including treasuring yourself unconditionally, unapologetically taking up space, experiencing outrageously improbable levels of self-acceptance, and general rejoicing in aliveness.
empress
eyes open
I think a lot about how culture changes or how it can change, and what we can do to more actively initiate/expand/support/quicken the process of the good kinds of change, how we can be conscious participants in bringing about these cultural shifts, how we change the air we breathe.
Sometimes, often, I think about this with the eyes and mind of a historian, because that is my training, looking at external culture, what does the historiography reveal, delving into the how and why of [once people thought or did X but slowly over time everyone gets on board with Y!], this process is endlessly fascinating to me.
inward
And of course I spend most of my time focusing on internal culture, because this is my actual job, playing with fellow secret agents and gathering here, with you, so that we can explore our internal landscapes, get to know who-and-how we are, and lovingly shift habit-patterns of mind and body and heart, that we can feel more at home in ourselves…
We explore the world (worlds) inside us, with love and curiosity, with intention and with light, for we are the Illustrious Travelers, and through this work-and-play (mostly play, around here), we learn more about how we interact with both internal and external, the relationship between internal and external, we come closer to ourselves.
This internal investigation and this conscious loving approach is (for me) the essence of yoga, or at least the yoga I have been living by, living with, for the past twenty two years.
in relationship
For me this work is not separate.
We change our internal state, draw closer to truth-love, and we are more grounded and centered, clearer channels, more able to act in accordance with what we think is right. We advocate for external change because we are clear on what we believe in, and we take better care of ourselves, so that we can keep showing up for that work.
Self-fluency and the art-and-science of pattern-changing is not separate from tikun, the work of social justice and healing for the world. A bringing-back-together of fragments of our broken pieces, a reflecting of our light.
We heal inward, we spark healing outward, repeat, repeat.
We are of service and this heals something in us too, repeat, repeat.
I also see everything we do to a) learn more about how we function, and b) take exquisite care of ourselves as part of this work, not taking away from this work.
A moment of self-treasuring or compassion-directed-inward is a tiny revolution, it changes something in us and around us, echoing out into the world, and imbuing us with more strength for doing what is needed.
stones
These are the questions I ask, the stones I skip, throughout the month of December, these are the solstice stones:
What needs to be eliminated? What needs to be illuminated?
I ask and turn inward, letting the act of asking reverberate through me, into the internal, revealing what it is time to let go of, where to bring more light.
And, because internal and external are in relationship, I also glow these questions outward, what is asking for attention, what needs eliminating/illuminating in the world, this reminds me of another favorite question, loosely inspired by a line from a Wallace Stevens poem, what would I do if I were the Empress of Ice Cream…
In other words, if I get to design culture, where do I begin, how do I approach, what do I know (historian mind) about how other changes have come to pass?
[Haha wait we need more explanatory notes!]
This is messy territory for me, I am noticing my Fear of Being Miusnderstood.
I made an intentional choice while writing to steer clear of the big topics — oh, you know, the ongoing PTSD of this presidency, how do we get police to stop killing black people, end the muslim ban, what if the world wasn’t full of sexual predators, what if there were real-time consequences for this like oh, I don’t know, not getting to be in the senate or the actual President of the United States, and oh good lord what will change with mass shootings?
My stepping-around these should not be read to mean that they are not of vital importance, either to me or in general. Just the opposite. It’s this: the most basic precept of self-fluency is Safety First, and in this moment there is no way I can delve into these themes here without whooshing off into intense anxiety/fury, which will not help me stay clear and grounded, and is not where the solutions will emerge.
Safety first means that to engage with those topics when I am ready, I will probably need a compass and a cover story proxy to investigate the things I feel so intensely about, maybe some negotiators. Safety First means I’ll do what needs to be done to ease my way in from Clarity and Steady Heart, or when the words ask to be said.
fractal!
Luckily though, I believe hard in the power of fractal flowers, the idea that everything is interconnected, working together under the surface, all the work we do investigating one mystery will shed light on the others and yield solutions or idea-sparks.
Anyway, this section is my Fear of Being Misunderstood wanting to make clear that when I play with What Needs To Be Eliminated/Illuminated in the world outside, the topics I’m engaging with are not even close to a comprehensive list of current pressing social justice themes, these are some (maybe safer, slightly less wobbly to work with) themes sparking for me in this moment, which means they’re probably related to the service that I need to be engaged in, these are the explorations that are mine right now.
Ahhhh. Exhale. I see you, well-meaning monsters, and appreciate how you want to keep me safe from bad things.
what comes up today for eliminated and illuminated
Let’s listen and write and see.
eliminated!
Single-use plastic anything both as a thing, and as an idea of something that is acceptable.
Does this happen through incentivizing (e.g. coffee costs less if you drink it in a mug)?
Does this happen in language? We adjusted to the question “paper or plastic?”, in California and Oregon we got used to plastic not being available at all, we could also live in a world where the question at a cafe is, “Did you bring a mug or are you drinking this here?”
Maybe plastic is only available as an added-cost option: sure, people can ask for a straw if they didn’t bring their own, however they will pay a symbolic sum for landfill rent.
Does this happen within culture in the way that public opinion shifts over time about littering or smoking or hemline length?
Does this happen through spreading information (hey, airlines dispose of a million plastic cups every six hours just in the United States) leading to changing habits (of course we bring an empty bottle and fill it at the water fountain, of course we remember our collapsible metal cup with on a long flight), or does it change at the top (airlines don’t offer plastic cups, you can buy a metal cup if you didn’t bring one?), or do we all say “ENOUGH WITH PLASTIC!” (or “ENOUGH WITH AIRLINES!”, for that matter), or do we need a new line of questioning.
illuminated!
Solutions and idea-sparks, better than the ones I named above.
And, to be clear, I am not offering solutions in this post, nor am I am casting my vote towards any of the above, everything I named is potentially problematic in its own way. I am just trying to consider the avenues through which change generally happens, and wondering what it might look like with this particular situation.
eliminated!
The word PROCRASTINATION, and the way people use this word/concept to finger-wag and make themselves or others feel terrible about themselves either for Not Doing A Thing, or for Doing Other Things That Are Not The Thing We Think Is The Important Thing.
illuminated!
Self-fluency, and what we already know about this:
- Procrastination is not a useful word for not-doing-a-thing, it is an unhelpful judgment about not doing the thing or not doing the thing right now.
- Not Doing in and of itself has value, postponing has value. It is percolating, a vital part of creative process. Let us trust in right timing, let us learn how to make space for things to form and re-form.
- Whatever we might be doing instead of the thing is also a fractal flower, it is assisting the percolating. Cleaning the refrigerator instead of writing the email is a form of symbolically clearing space, internal and external, it is a form of Entry and Readying, and should be applauded.
- The word Procrastination is a tool of capitalism, it is puritan nonsense that needs to urgently die in a fire, and we can neutralize the guilt-shame patterns of culture that live in this word by choosing to a) not use it, and b) lovingly investigate our relationship with both doing and being (!)
- When we remove guilt, shame and judgment from Not-Doing (or Doing-Something-Else), we get to CLARITY!
what do I mean by CLARITY?
Clarity means:
Possibly we genuinely don’t want to do the thing and it turns out it doesn’t have to be done, or now now, or not by us, or not in the form we thought was the form.
Possibly we don’t want to do the thing but we come to the conclusion that we going to have to (choose to) do it anyway. Good intel. We can now give ourselves permission to Not Want to do it, aka Acknowledgment & Legitimacy. And then we can find a new and more playful approach, from a mindset of Safety First.
Possibly we do want to do the thing, except we feel so passionately and intensely about it that we are afraid to begin. Very reasonable. Passion is vulnerable! Creative process is vulnerable! Pursuing a yes is vulnerable! We can apply Acknowledgment & Legitimacy, combined with playful approach to shift this, we can channel our wise selves who know how do the thing.
Possibly we want to do the thing and maybe we don’t know how yet, but doing these other things first helps fill a different need and lets us clear some physical/mental/emotional space to approach the thing. Good work!
here’s the most important thing about this though:
None of these situations require guilt or shame.
so let’s eliminate those too
Guilt or shame are not generally effective motivating techniques, certainly not sustainable ones.
They make everything sticky, and then we definitely can’t do the thing, or even think about doing the thing, because we just feel awful about ourselves.
I have written about this here and here, and feel so strongly about this.
What does the empress know?
I feel so passionately about so many things.
Sometimes I feel so passionately about them that I can’t talk about them, or not yet, or I can’t find the words, or my monster crew worries that if I talk about them, I will be misunderstood and then [Resulting Doom Forever!].
Sometimes I want to make the rules and sometimes I want to undo the rules, and mostly I just want people to question the words we use, the things we take for granted (yes, straws, that too), to bring attention to the unnoticed, to let things move and unwind.
And to do this with curiosity and love.
what do I want to say today?
I knew this post might be messy, my thoughts are unstructured, I feel so strongly.
I don’t need you to passionately care about the exact things I care about — ie no more straws, no more with the words that rhyme with crofrastination or flaweductivity, they only inflict self-recrimination and mire us in more guilt/pain!
Instead I hope that you also want to join me in being someone who meets the world (and your world) with love and curiosity, to investigate the things you want to eliminate and illuminate, both inside of you and around you.
I hope you are also thinking about the relationship between internal and external, how we can approach or influence one through changing something in the other.
I hope you will take sixteen breaths with me as a way of shifting internal space, and maybe that will bring us to more loving clarity about possible next steps with all the rest.
I hope we can keep talking about cultural change, in our cultures internal and out in the world around us.
These are my wishes, wished with great love, and vulnerability and intensity.
And with so much appreciation for you, for being in my world.
Invitation: Communal wish space! Come play with me…
You are invited to share this post and to share many !!!!!! about what is here,
Or share appreciation or anything sparked for you while reading, or play with eliminate/illuminate, or wish wishes.
Safe space for creative exploration asks us to let go of care-taking and advice-giving.
Everyone belongs. We let people have their own experience. We’re supportive and welcoming. We lovingly refrain from giving advice.
And of course it’s always okay to comment under a made-up name, whether for play and delight, or in the interest of Safety First.
We remember that people vary and my process doesn’t have to be yours, and this is a good thing.
Here’s how we meet each other: with great kindness and appreciation and awe, whispering (and sometimes shouting) oh, wow what beautiful wishes!
To The Illustrious Travelers
[A breath before beginning]
Our culture places an obscene amount of value on facing fears, confronting what is terrifying.
In fact, we often act as though the only breakthroughs of understanding and healing that are meaningful (hello, month of meaning) are the ones that come from these hard, painful, deeply uncomfortable moments of LOOKING THE SCARY THING IN THE FACE.
I have a lot to say about how this is nonsense, extremely dangerous nonsense.
And I am going to talk about this by intentionally not-talking about it, or at least not directly, and riffing on an 18th century toast instead. Toast!
To ease and play.
We are doing this because it will bring ease and allow us to be playful, we can explore potentially difficult moments with light hearts, and I am a big believer in doing things in whatever way is easier and more fun.
This is because I have witnessed and experienced the powerful healing that comes from applying [Ease + Play] to the scary, or, even better, around the Scary.
Or — even better than that! — we can maintain a very reasonable and comfortable distance from the Scary, playing at the margins, instead of either forcing ourselves to march right into it, or feeling terrible about ourselves when we can’t bear to go near it.
A few quick explanations first
- To be clear, I am not saying do not ever face fears. That would be silly. Of course there is tremendous value in looking at what is, making room for it to be as it is. We talked about this last week.
- No, I am saying this: Sure, that’s one possible way to deal with a scary thing but not necessarily the best one, at least not for a lot of us a lot of the time.
- And I am saying that our culture puts unnecessary weight on the value of fear-facing as THE ONE RIGHT WAY when in fact it is at best one possible way, but really not a particularly fun one, and guess what, we have other approaches available to us that are not only more fun but also safer, which is important, and we might even be more likely to use them because they aren’t so terrifying!
A TOAST!
During the week leading up to American Thanksgiving, I read a wonderful thread on Twitter by someone who had the excellent idea of bringing 18th century toasts to a dinner party so everyone could toast old-timey but extremely relevant and appropriate toasts, like “The United States of America, may they never be subject to foreign influence!”
My favorite toast on the list was TO THE ILLUSTRIOUS TRAVELERS, and I decided to make this my [mantra/theme/filter] for the week, a container to hold everything else I’m working on.
I like to use a phrase, image, story or clue as a theme, investigating that instead of the Scary Things.
Not only do I receive all the intel I need from the stand-in, it invariably applies beautifully to everything in my life, not just the particular Scary Thing I didn’t want to deal with.
A toast to this, the magic of play and proxies!
Want to play?
Here is the form my glorious toast-investigation took last week, yes, I am a Toast Investigator and an Illustrious Traveler…
To The Illustrious Travelers
Setting a stone-path for today, what do I know about being one of the Illustrious Travelers, what do I know about being someone who toasts TO THE ILLUSTRIOUS TRAVELERS?
Illustrious contains [lustre] which shines, like a star, and my current secret identity is Stella who Stars.
Question: Am I starring in the video game illusion (maya) of the Illustrious Travelers? Or is Illustrious Traveler the truth of what it means to be, as they say, a spiritual being having a human experience. In other words, is illustrious travel or shining while traveling, is this the work of soul?
If I am someone who a) SHINES and b) TRAVELS, how can I bring more shining to my travels? Or what happens if we reverse the question to ask how I can bring more travel (trajectory, power, circulation, movement) to my glow?
Clues via the dictionary
Illustrious:
+ notably or brilliantly outstanding because of dignity or achievements or actions,
+ shining brightly with light
+ clearly evident
Traveler:
+ one that goes on a trip or journey
+ an iron ring sliding along a rope, bar, or rod of a ship (!!!)
+ any of various devices for handling something that is being transported laterally –> WAIT, WHAT ARE THE SUPERPOWERS OF TRANSPORTED LATERALLY / AM I BEING TRANSPORTED LATERALLY AND IF SO WHEN AND WHAT ARE MY DEVICES!
Giving it time.
I took a break to have some yoga, and received so many clues about Illustrious Travel and Illustrious Travelers and what this might mean!
- ILLUSTRATE / BE LUSTROUS / ILLUSTRATE WITH LIGHT / BRING INTO LIGHT
(in Hebrew to bring something into light is the word for publish, so just this is like ten different clues…) - my body said I NEED YOU TO BE LIGHTER, and this one hundred percent was not about size/weight bullshit, this was light like lighthearted + agile + glowing + flexible, moving with instead of against, portable, have way less stuff — in the physical but also oh wow a lot to drain out and let go of in terms of emotional/energy stuff as well
- communication and connection are about LISTENING + TOUCH, which are about taking time for presence!
This is also basically a summary of my breakup heartbreak situation and why it is so painful, to have loved someone who would not make time to talk with me about what broke or how, because they never have time for life, I perceive this as disrespectful to me and to the love we loved, which I know is a misunderstanding but is also still painful.
And! I want to prioritize taking time for love! And I want to expect that from the people I am in connection with, new Illustrious Travelers, may we find each other in right timing.
Listening.
I took time to wait for a delicious meal, and time to listen to C’s stories from his recent visit home, and time for a real conversation with the guy working at the co-op, and time to smile a lot with someone else’s baby, because I am an Illustrious Traveler, illustriously traveling through this day.
I brought leftovers to Jenny and practiced feeling like an Illustrious Traveler, perching on her couch and drinking wine while she got ready to go to a party.
Can I be an Illustrious Traveler by being someone who brings light but is also headed towards a point of light (a beacon?) and doesn’t really need anything, someone who is here for this moment of Companionship but doesn’t necessarily need to be involved in the future plans?
Jenny and I are both currently in the illustrious travels of healing broken hearts and taking care of our bodies and undoing culture, which means she is my fellow (illustrious) traveler and I am not alone, in this or in anything.
Receiving/Hearing Decisions.
I was walking down the alley and met a group of people listening to music, one was the barista at my cafe, he just moved into the basement of my former neighbor, the life of an Illustrious Traveler is full of coincidences just like this, I am sure of it, and he invited me to their thanksgiving festivities.
It is interesting that I am being invited to festivities even though I am not a festive person, this seems like something that might happen to an actual Illustrious Traveler!
So maybe I really am one, maybe I am Stella who stars.
But also I want to introvert and hide.
Illustrious Traveler, tell me what is next please!
Illustrious Traveler me says:
Clear out the extraneous
for new beginnings (all beginnings begin new)
say yes to full yes
know what is important (purpose and intent, why are you here, how are you here)
be okay with being temporary
breathe peaceful breaths
trust in this wild life
everything has both more and less meaning than you think it does
so go easy but also pay attention!
(We talk it out some more!)
Me: I am having some fear of missing out etc
Illustrious Traveler: Whatever we do is the most awesome thing obviously, we don’t ever miss out because we are LIVING LIFE
Me: okay but [noticing that I want someone to solve this for me, etc]
Illustrious Traveler: What do you want?
Me: Someone who thinks snuggling with me is THE BEST THING IN THE ENTIRE WORLD, hmmm I maybe know people in this category but none of them are in the same state, haha, literally and otherwise! Why are my snuggling companions far away? Where are Illustrious Travelers who are also in close proximity?
Illustrious Traveler: Truly an excellent wish. What are the qualities you crave in this? What is the essence?
Me: WARM & WANTED
Illustrious Traveler: Can you get some of those things from a slightly different experience?
Me: I worry that no matter what I choose, I will either feel Bored & Overwhelmed, or I will Do Nothing & Be Sad.
Illustrious Traveler: What if these are not the only options?
Me: Tell me more?!
Illustrious Traveler: Do you want to experience things? Can we summon an adventurous mindset of Maybe One Beautiful Thing Leads To Another Beautiful Thing and if it does not we get to triumphantly retire back to cozy bed with all the points for having explored a spark of tiny adventure? Really, whatever you do is filled with Lustre, because you are me.
Reflecting.
I did crash the neighbor’s thanksgiving deal briefly and they were warm and welcoming but it was not the right source of Warm & Wanted, more like a reminder of Warm & Wanted, but then I was able to give myself a different form of those feelings under the stars.
And I received some more clues about [Illustrious + Travel] as well as letting light move, so I am going to take that to yoga and breathe it and see what comes.
Let it.
Oh, and here is another clue from my friend Jenny, my fellow Illustrious Traveler in the lands of heart-healing after betrayal:
What if LET IT GO can morph into LET IT COME?
Even more clues!
Ohmygod yoga was nothing but clues about Illustrious plus Travel and letting light move.
The teacher was a substitute and she is anatomy-obsessed. We spent the entire hour feeling for our actual heart and noticing when/where it travels because apparently the heart travels a lot more than you’d think. Are you with me?
THE HEART ITSELF IS AN ILLUSTRIOUS TRAVELER! MY HEART IS A TRAVELING LIGHT SOURCE!
And then in shavasana cocoon she asked us to talk to our hearts and ask what the heart craves, what its burdens are, and what would fill it with joy about life.
My heart told me that it craves more writing time (this was surprising), it’s burdens are all my burdens but mainly its burden is worrying about me, and what fills it with joy is when I DANCE AND AM MY ANIMAL SELF.
I can do this. I can give myself time for writing and righting, I can be my animal self, I can release worry. Thank you, beautiful heart. You are the most illustrious of all the travelers I have known, you are my light as I travel.
You are my traveling companion, heart.
You are my traveling companion, heart.
So how can I be heart-broken when my heart is always with me?
Answer: I am not, it is an illusion. My lustre is real. The pain will pass, my glow will stay.
What are (some of) the superpowers of being an Illustrious Traveler?
- Glowing Fire Boundaries aka edges`that act as gatekeepers, receptive to what is yes and not even visible to anything no, if it’s not yes it gets burned as it approaches
- My Glow Is A Beacon / My Glow Lights My Way / My Glow Is Blinding When It Needs To Be Because Sometimes I Need To Not Be Seen / My Glow Just Is / My Glow Travels As Does My Heart But I Am Always Held In Love
- I respect my space and so does everyone else
- I fill my space (internal and external) with love, while staying rooted and agile in my steady grounded power
- Follow What Is Inspiring
- Change Your Place Change Your Luck
- Blank Space Has Power!
And that was my thanksgiving of being an Illustrious Traveler,
It all came from a toast that was not a toast, and I learned about my broken heart and my healing heart without spending the day working through the breakup, because I was playing with light and travel and toasting instead.
Yes? Can we feel how and why this is powerful, valuable, and a more loving, compassionate non-violent approach to working through our stuff (our pain/fear/anxiety/hurt/distress) than direct confrontation?
Okay back to talking about the thing.
I could have been dealing directly with all the big scary life things, the heartbreak and loss, the fear of being alone and the fear of fear. But I had more fun learning about what it means to be an Illustrious Traveler.
The work was still being done UNDER THE SURFACE, and in a way that is curious and receptive, loving and intentional.
And, this is important, I was able to receive all this cool intel without tightening up at the thought of approaching the pain because it was just play. I was just playing with a toast, looking up the origins of words, trying on the identity of a traveler who is illustrious and possibly also light-filled.
This kind of play is powerful and meaningful, but also it is a much safer way to learn about ourselves, and I feel so strongly about Safety First when it comes to self-inquiry, because we all carry trauma, and being able to tread gently with or around our pain is a very loving way to be human.
Okay, I am going to try not to get too ranty here, I have some strong feelings about our cultural obsession with Facing The Fear, here we go.
Here is the problem with our cultural obsession with facing the fear.
I think about the secret agents I play with*, these wise, thoughtful, creative, loving-hearted people, and my heart hurts because they get so stuck so fast each time they force themselves face something that did not need to be directly faced.
I see these people I love and admire trying to dive into the fear to come out on the other side because they have been told that this is how it works, that this is supposedly the only way it works, and guess what, they are not having fun, and all this fear-facing just ends up being traumatic and generating more fear, more pain in need of healing.
For example.
Maybe they saw a video with an author who thinks vulnerability is the best thing in the world, and they’re like YEAH I AM GOING TO BE VULNERABLE AND LOOK RIGHT AT ALL MY SHAME RIGHT NOW, which lasts maybe a minute before they are, quite reasonably, overcome by hordes of monsters, then depression paralysis for months.
Or they had a massive epiphany in therapy but thinking about it scares them so much that they’re panicking about exploring it.
Maybe they read a book by some dude who thinks the best metaphor for making art is war, so they fight their resistance and internal criticism every day, which (surprise!) is super exhausting, because when we fight with something, there is always a possibility that it might win, and also resistance is strengthened by resistance, that is the nature of resisting, what you fight gets stronger.
[Side note: PEOPLE VARY! So if war metaphors work well for you, rock on, or if putting your shame under a lens is a good and non-traumatizing technique for you, I am happy for you and happy that you know this about yourself!]
Clarity.
I am not saying we have to set these techniques on fire or stop going to therapy.
Vulnerability is a beautiful spiritual quality. Warrior mode can be transformational. I am only pointing out that there are less violent/confrontational/terrifying ways available to us that let us work on our stuff without being in our stuff.
I have seen too many people I love go into complete shutdown from fear-confronting techniques. And yet this approach is consistently rewarded in culture/media, even though it mostly dredges up more fear and pain.
This is so painful and so unnecessary and I am tired of it.
There are other ways and there are better ways.
This is what self-fluency is about.
Look how much I learned about my heart and what it needs from me, what if fears and what it desires, all through exploring an 18th century toast.
Can we bring more kindness into our healing process, can we make it a refuge instead of a place to confront demons? Can we turn self-study and self-work into play?
Some brief final points to end this!
Point! Self-fluency is a creative, compassionate, curious exploration of who we are, what we need and how to best take care of ourselves. We solve mysteries and challenges through this loving approach of exploration, without trying to force the solutions. And yes, we play.
Point! People Vary, and some people (and I am willing to bet that the art-is-war dude and examine-your-shame lady fall into this category) get a thrill or a high from doing things that scare them, which means that some part of the methodology they sell is joyful for them. Facing the fear at some level gives them pleasure.
But then they tell everyone else to push through fear and face the scary things, except maybe it is not joyful for you, there is no high in it, just more fear. And that’s where we get this nonsense culture of forcing and pushing. Not everyone is high sensation seeking!
And even those of us who are (hi, I’m high sensation seeking and highly sensitive!) can still benefit from more metaphor, more play, more dancing at the edges.
Point! Play Is Magic. And yes, definitely tell your therapist or other allies about proxies! You can do all the same work investigating a story or a metaphor (even and maybe even especially) without knowing what it is a stand-in for, and without the intensity of being in anxiety and pain while exploring whatever needs to be explored.
Point! The expectation that we have to face our fear in order to heal it is violent and also not true.
Point! We can train ourselves to be way less impressed by the Scary Things. but there are lots of ways to do this and diving into the scary is not actually required.
Point! Safety First. Let’s take care of ourselves.
Come play with me, here.
With a toast, with a story, with a superpower, with a new identity you’d like to try on. We are here. Safe space.
Also, welcome to the month of Ease. Everything we did in the month of Meaning just seeded more Ease. So let’s play with Ease.
Yes, ha, let’s play with ease. Let’s play, with Ease.
Let’s add [Ease + Play] to everything because this is how we subvert culture and rewrite our patterns, finding better air to breathe.
I have so much love for you.
Invitation for companionship and play, come be an Illustrious Traveler with me.
You are invited to share !!!!!! about what is here, or anything sparked for you while reading.
You are welcome to explore any exploration (a toast, or something else), to travel illustriously with me, to play with these concepts or techniques as you like.
Safe space for creative exploration asks us to let go of care-taking and advice-giving. We meet each other with kindness and appreciation and awe.
And of course it’s always okay to comment under a made-up name, whether for play and delight, or in the interest of Safety First.
I hope you can feel all the love here, because there is a lot of it.
p.s. If you want me to write more on this and related topics, I do too! Come join Operation Follow The Clues and I will write all the things that are asking to be written. You also get to drop in suggestions and I’m extending the November bonus which is the amazing Book of Salves which I am currently editing and it is so good and I want everyone to have it. All the details here!
The rebel alliance of sixteen breaths / how to be your own compass / come breathe sixteen breaths with me
Hi friend, do you want to breathe sixteen breaths together?
I am here for this right now, to breathe sixteen breaths together, a tiny but meaningful mission, just right for the month of meaning.
Yes, I can already sense how much better I will feel when we devote sixteen breaths to the experience of [sixteen breaths].
Yes, my ribs and back feel more expansive just thinking about this.
I stretch my arms overhead with no agenda other than feeling how it feels. I brush away imaginary dust from between my ribs using my fingertips, I wiggle a bit because I am alive.
Come breathe with me these sixteen breaths, knowing-trusting-remembering that this practice of presence with our sixteen breaths is itself a living-out and reclaiming of the qualities and superpowers of self-treasuring:
Curiosity. Exploration. Play. Wonder.
Trust. Embodiment. Loving-Kindness. Glow.
A question.
What does it mean (hello again, month of meaning) to take this time?
Especially when we don’t have the time to take time? Or when we perceive that there is no time for taking time?
A response.
Sometimes, often, the monster collective whispers that there is no time for sixteen breaths, so let’s talk about that for a paragraph, and maybe someday I will expand on this, because I feel so strongly about this:
Taking this time for sixteen breaths is a small but vital act of Resistance, because it interrupts the external and internalized culture of go-go-go and do-do-do.
Interrupting patterns is how we subvert them, interrupting culture is how we subvert culture.
Taking sixteen breaths (or any time at all) to reconnect to ourselves is how we train our awareness and strengthen our light to illuminate all the patterns that need us to interrupt them and rewrite them.
Not only is there time for sixteen breaths, everything that happens after these sixteen breaths will be different and new because of how we have reconfigured our internal state, altering how we both perceive and react to everything we encounter.
The Rebel Alliance of sixteen breaths.
The act of observing a pattern changes the pattern, interrupting the pattern forces the pattern to reconfigure, and we are the rebel alliance of pattern-changers, we rewrite our patterns, sometimes lovingly and playfully, and sometimes with powerful intensity and sometimes with whatever we have in that moment.
Let’s breathe for this. And let’s begin.
Where are we?
If we are able to orient ourselves in space, we do this first.
I am turning myself to face north. Hello, north.
I am making myself comfortable,
asking my body if it wants any adjustments,
how could this feel better?
Then I settle in to be here now in these sixteen breaths, here I am, a body oriented towards north, ready.
If I don’t happen to know where north is in this moment or that is not a good direction for me right now, no big deal, a symbolic north works just as well, directly in front of me can be my north for the purpose of this experiment.
North is just another way to say I am here.
There are plenty of ways to say I am here, we can find one that feels supportive, everything we try is an experiment.
A breath for being here. I am here.
I am now the center of my compass,
my magnet-arrow center pulses with steady power,
center is home, I know where I am,
I can explore my edges, feel into circumference, return to center,
glow outwards, return to center,
breathe and feel how breath comes/fills deep inside of me,
return to center.
A beginning.
Let’s breathe these sixteen breaths,
moving our attention around us in space,
circling an imaginary compass rose,
breathing clockwise and then counter-clockwise,
always returning north,
start point and star point.
Ready?
Ready.
A breath of awareness of the space right in front of me: NORTH!
Remaining in my steady center while moving my attention a few degrees to my right,
I feel northeast and breathe there, inhaling NORTHEAST and exhaling NORTHEAST.
My head and body stay centered and grounded, awareness cycles to the space to my right,
a breath in and a breath out for this space of EAST.
Attention moves behind my right hand, as if illuminating a blind spot,
I feel you SOUTHEAST and breathe in your direction.
And here breathing to the SOUTH, the space behind me, the sun sweet at my back.
Bringing awareness slowly to the back left-hand side, a breath for this space of SOUTHWEST.
Feeling the glow immediately to my left side, I breathe to you WEST.
Shifting attention again around the compass-face, breathing NORTHWEST.
Returning to north.
We return to north,
we settle into the center of this circle,
steady and clear,
this place of stillness and reverberating,
heart-home,
and we feel what is here,
inside the compass.
Spaciousness & Containment.
Compass breaths are powerful and reassuring to me,
but what I like best is not only to orient myself in space,
but to fill my space with breath/presence,
and infuse my space with what I want,
and feel-perceive a protective layer or boundary glowing around me.
This is where I feel held in my space,
this is where I feel myself in space,
this is where I am in conscious relationship with space,
claiming a circle of it for just me.
What do I mean when I refer to my space? Two things.
My internal space, body-mind, from organs to circulating breath to imagination,
all of my internal worlds and territories,
the vastness of who I am and what I contain.
And my immediately external space, this circle that holds me,
a vibrant force field whose glowing boundaries are both
called into being and maintained
through taking time to feel this compass
noticing what changes as it takes shape around me,
nestling inside it,
this round nest of contained spaciousness
that exists just for me.
Next we can add qualities to our compass!
I call in a compass for whatever I am currently working on,
and I name the qualities of my goal-wishes.
The [draw a circle on paper] method.
Sometimes I just draw a compass on paper,
and then let its qualities come to me.
Ah, here is what I want most right now: {TRUST}
Where does it want to go? EAST. Got it.
This method feels more like a cross between a puzzle,
and being a clear channel:
I feel into what qualities want to go where,
and then if they don’t tell me where they want to go,
I put them in different directions until something clicks.
(example)
This morning I needed a compass for a secret op,
and then it just came to me, each piece landing in order:
STRENGTH
BALANCE
EASE
GRACE
POWER
ADAPTABILITY
FLOW
TRIUMPH
This compass didn’t require any adjustments, but sometimes I play with placing words at different compass points, feeling for the strongest resonance. Often I name the cardinal directions first and then fill in the ordinals.
The [make a giant list] method.
This is the form I generally use to craft a compass when working with a group at a rally or retreat. We come up with everything we want to call in to support the mission, and just add it all to the pot:
Play! FORTITUDE! Spontaneity! Laughter! Mayhem! Wonder! Effervescence! Pleasure! Serendipity! Exuberance! Insight! Messiness! Order! Conviviality! Clarity! Discernment! Solace!
Good Surprises!
Once you’ve gathered as many as appeal, you can run your finger over the list and wait for certain qualities to sort of sparkle at you.
Or maybe you’d prefer to circle the ones that seem more yes, or cross out those less mission-critical, whatever works best to help you arrive at your top eight. Then assign one to each direction and see how it feels.
If you can’t choose because they are all so good (I know, right?), you might like combining qualities into double compass, for example, north can be Glowing Clarity and south Grounded Vision.
And of course we can always decide that each quality secretly holds eight others, we can trust the fractal flowers, and remember that all qualities are related to each other, all qualities contain everything we could need.
Why do we compass / what is a compass used for?
Demarcating our space.
Awareness: let us name what is meaningful to us and then fill up on it.
For a more palpable sense of our boundaries.
For play and inventiveness, establishing and maintaining a state of receptivity.
To get more grounded in an unsteady world, an unsteady moment. Naming the compass qualities, breathing each one in and glowing it outward, this helps me stay centered, unshaken by the storm.
To change the feel in our internal space and the space around us.
For navigation. A compass helps me find my way. I may not know where I am headed, but I AM NOT LOST.
For resonance, a way to experience being a bell in the belltower, a compass is round like the sound of om, this is my bell-home, this is where I reverberate.
And this is how I reverberate: these are the qualities.
Yes, these are the qualities I wish to reverberate
My compass reminds me of what is most important to me right now,
it shows me what I wish to embody more fully
Here are the qualities that are most yes to me in this moment,
the qualities that will help me in the seas I’m currently navigating.
I name them, breathe them, feel them, call them in, learn to inhabit them,
let them surround me as I go about my day,
let them bring me back to intention and presence.
Center and periphery, and a note about People Vary!
Sometimes, for some people, it can feel easier to find center and expand sensation outward.
Sometimes, for some people, it can feel easier to find a sense of periphery and then draw/gather attention inward back to center.
Some people find the sensation/perception of encompassed by qualities to be soothing and grounding, other people do not want any sensation even close to [surrounded], that’s fine. Know yourself and choose what works for you.
Someone recently told me how they like to imagine qualities radiating/rippling/reverberating outwards into a force field while staying in the center. Layer qualities by radiating/rippling/reverberating multiples of them. I do this too.
Someone else I know has trouble feeling into center and can only get there from building a safe structure or boundary of breath qualities around them. Yup, that works too!
When and where do we compass?
Whenever we remember, as often as possible.
I like to breathe into my compass when I wake up.
On the bus or while driving, I will think “ah, turning towards EASE”, or “yep, now we are heading in the direction of SIMPLICITY, how lovely.”
When I had a retreat center, we labeled the walls with the compass directions. People would sit by the direction or compass quality they felt most drawn to explore.
Turning with the compass.
Sometimes I like to stand (or sit or kneel) and face each direction in turn, breathing in the new quality and breathing it out, turning myself in a full slow circle, first one direction and then back.
You can also do sun salutations in each compass direction, if that is a thing you like, breathing the quality of that direction. If you want extra brain scrambling, you can assign a compass quality to each movement within the sun salutation and cycle through your compass that way too!
You can walk figure eights inside of your compass, naming each direction as you move through space. This feels amazing in a body of water…
Endless possibilities for movement and play, these are just idea sparks, expand on these if that is joyful for you, or maybe stillness and restoring are indicated, a compass is good for this too.
Establishing a default compass.
I like having a go-to compass for when I don’t want to (or can’t) do the work of coming up with a new one, for me this comes most in handy when I get PTSD-triggered. In that moment, I need something comforting and familiar, and I have zero bandwidth to figure out what qualities I might need while I’m disassociating and hyperventilating.
Another benefit to a compass you use regularly is that it’s all charged up with remembered sensation, the good feelings already anchored in your body and nervous system.
Compass poetry (this is my favorite technique!)
We will use my default compass for this
— TRUST RELEASE LOVE RECEIVE ANCHOR CROWN GLOW WILD —
but of course you are welcome to substitute
whatever qualities you like if any of those don’t work for you.
Here we go.
Compassing and encompassing from north, clockwise, then counter clockwise,
then crossing the compass to combine opposite directions,
cardinals and ordinals, and so on, in whatever combinations arise,
the qualities connect and reconnect in endless new combinations of flow and form,
letting them wash over us while we remain in calm still center:
Trust the releasing, love the receiving, anchor and be crowned, glow wild.
Wildly glowing, crowned and anchored, receiving love, releasing into trust.
Trusting the love, releasing and receiving, anchoring the glow, my crown of wildness.
Wild is the crown, my glow is now anchored, I receive to release, love and trust.
Trust in the anchor, release to be crowned, love is my glow, I receive my wildness.
Wildness received, glowing love, crown of releasing, anchored trust.
You can channel endless healing poetry of combined qualities for days, and all you need is a compass.
3-D compass (wait, no, this is my favorite technique!)
It might even be my favorite technique that I have ever invented.
DO YOU WANT TO TRY IT!!!! OH GOOD. I wish we could do this in person because it is amazing, and maybe we will some day.
Breathe in and breathe out to center.
Round 1: Feel into your circle of space. Let north be in front of you (or decide that the space in front of you is north. Sixteen breaths to cycle the qualities to your right and behind you and all the way back around, and reverse.
Round 2: Now north is above your head. Cycle the qualities in front of your space and behind you back to north and reverse. Sixteen breaths.
Round 3: North is above your head. Cycle the qualities to your right, and then below you and all the way back around, and reverse.
Breathe in and breathe out to center.
Reverberate.
What else can we want to say about compassing!
So much. You can compass-tarot! You can compass with superpowers.
You can turn a labyrinth into a compass or a compass into a labyrinth.
You can take any situation in your life and put it inside of a compass, and then see what happens.
Part of the play of self-fluency is that any technique is a door, not the answer, just the beginning of a new adventure. This is a favorite door for me, let’s play and see where we go.
Sixteen breaths, in companionship.
Around the compass.
A breath of TRUST.
A breath to RELEASE.
A breath for LOVE.
A breath for RECEIVING.
A breath for ANCHORING.
A breath to my CROWN.
A breath for GLOWING.
A breath to the place where I remember that I am WILD.
{reversing direction}
A breath for my WILD self.
A breath that GLOWS.
A breath that CROWNS me.
A breath that ANCHORS me.
A breath that helps me RECEIVE.
A breath that helps me LOVE and receive love.
A breath that helps me RELEASE.
A breath that helps me TRUST.
May it be so.
Invitation for companionship and play
You are invited to share !!!!!! about what is here, or anything sparked for you while reading.
Safe space for creative exploration asks us to let go of care-taking and advice-giving. We meet each other: with kindness and appreciation and awe
And a REQUEST!
If you’ve been at a Rally or retreat with me and we made a compass (haha of course we made a compass!) and you have a story or recollection related to that, please share!
Or if you’ve played with me in an online group space like the secret star society (come join us for 2018!) and you’ve had some good compass results, that is welcome too.
Glowing love and warmth your way, may we all find comfort and [whatever we need most right now] inside of a compass or these sixteen breaths.
to the point and not to the point
clues, steadiness, seeking
Thinking about PT aka physical therapy,
currently mostly taking the form of morning rituals —
connecting to my body through
touch-sensation-strength-stretch-balance-breath
PT is a huge component of my current mission aka
Operation Get To The Pt!
Some days PT just solves things for me,
it gets me out of bed and out of low-level anxiety,
it focuses me because if I don’t focus then I fall on my face,
at the very least my efforts to not-fall make me focus on
what is truly important:
feeling the ground
steadiness
PT is steadying, even when I fall,
it is steadying, maybe even especially when I fall
A breath for steadiness,
a breath for falling,
a breath for the steadiness of it is safe to try
falling
I have this rule that I get an extra ten thousand sparklepoints every time I fall on my face, because falling means I tried something, and trying is brave: I took myself off-balance to find my edges and re-acquaint myself with center, I am brave and wild, good job for falling, good job being human and falling, this is how we learn to not fear the fall…
magic
Anyway, PT is magic, quite often it is,
but some days I expect PT to do this magic for me and then it doesn’t,
and I feel sad, but this is because I am forgetting something important
And this is true for all things that are magic,
for example yoga + writing + wishing wishes,
it is also true for love:
yes to intention, yes to anticipation
no to expectation and obligation
(because part of the mystery of mystery
is welcoming the mystery)
not my job
Anything can be transformative, we can bring anything to a practice,
receptive, ready to breathe
ready to let what needs to be transformed transform,
we just can’t expect the practice/place/person to do the work for us
because sometimes it will and sometimes it won’t
but that’s not its job
(because that is not a fair thing to ask
and because expectations kill spark)
(and yes, I just said that the job of a magical thing is not to do the magic,
I know, it’s a paradox, the magic will happen when we agree to be surprised)
feelings that feel too big
The other morning I woke up in rage-panic which is
a very specific emotional sensation/experience and one
I did not even know about before this heartbreak devastation situation
It is so overwhelming,
not only the feelings that crash through me in huge waves, but also
this unsettling encounter with an entirely new feeling to feel
like discovering a new color that was not there before,
simultaneous awe for the newness, along with distress
because this form of new is so unpleasant
Ah yes, welcome to this huge spectrum of feeling,
welcome to being human, I definitely feel
more human than I have ever felt before,
and I can understand (in my mind) that this is beautiful and important,
and at the same time, it does not feel good
I don’t even know if rage-panic can be described
Oh maybe something about the disorienting terror of slow-motion shattering,
combining with aching loneliness and an immediacy of reactiveness,
an overwhelming intensity-of-desire to lash out,
to set everything on fire
And yes, I feel vulnerable and wild in this whirling unwinding,
in the devastation, yes, this is the fear of my own storm,
my own destructive nature,
what it might do
furnishings
Like Rumi, I invite this big feeling in to destroy my house and I do this for many reasons including:
a) hey guess what it will cause more destruction outside than in
b) it has more power when I fear it than when I make space for it
c) hello, temporary aspect of the human experience
d) these furnishings needed to go anyway
e) to drain something of its power, you go inside of it
f) nothing can destroy me / nothing can destroy me, I danced with the destroyer
g) the job of this house is to reconfigure a thousand times a day anyway, everything is temporary, yet sanctuary and shelter and refuge are mine always, it is easier to remember this when I don’t give any emotion the power of having power by fighting with it, I have the power and so I invite it in
I throw a party for rage-panic and give it a decoy house to dismantle, and I join in the disruption and destruction, yes, let us dance up a storm and smash everything, scream-wail our heart-pain, I do this and I use PT to feel the ground and to practice losing my balance but finding my steadiness
back to the pt
Sometimes PT helps a lot and sometimes a bit less
And, also
MY HEART HURTS
This is just a thing that is mostly true right now
and this is not something PT can help with
I mean, of course it can help,
by giving me a form and structure for loving myself,
just like yoga or skipping stones,
really that’s what yoga is —
a form or a collection/experimentation of forms for being conscious about
the space we inhabit so we can take care of ourselves with love (!)
getting to the pt does help
It is just not enough to think, okay I will do PT and ta da all will be fine
Sometimes it will be fine, sometimes it will be not-fine
And, either way, we are slowly steadily healing
there you go, the distilled yoga of life, right here
{Sometimes it will be fine, sometimes it will be not-fine.}
{p.s. And then later it will be fine again
but trusting this is the hard part
so a thousand points to me for practicing trust}
whispered
These are things I whisper to myself in the morning
the yoga of getting through november etc
I danced with the destroyer
and I am okay
memory
yesterday, while in shavasana at the yoga studio I almost never go to,
I heard/received a something, a transmission of clarity,
in the form of words resonating in my body, ….
YOU DANCED WITH THE DESTROYER AND NOW YOU ARE SURPRISED WHEN EVERYTHING IS BEING DESTROYED, YOU INVITED IN THIS BEAUTIFUL DESTRUCTION FOR NEW BUILDING SO THANK IT AND ADMIRE IT AND APPRECIATE ALL THAT YOU INVITED IN
I mean, it is true, I danced with shiva himself,
dancing the dance of anger and the dance of joy,
we danced the wild edges of destruction,
we were the storm and the eye of the storm, how many people can say that,
really how can anything surprise me anymore
(and now we train)
the next day
Training is 97% trust in the next day, holding the faith that whatever it will bring or hold will be useful in the greater trajectory, that what we seeded today counts
the next day, again
The next day I went back, that is,
back to the same yoga studio I supposedly don’t go to,
and discovered a huge painting on the wall behind me which I’d never noticed:
Shiva, dancing
Train, trust, breathe, rest, receptive heart, look for clues
what do I know about strength training?
The paradox that is not a paradox:
Repetition is everything but changing it up is everything
and haha guess what, time off is transformational,
oh and by the way,
what got you here won’t get you there but also
practicing one thing with steadiness and trust
[wax on wax off]
will get you somewhere
that will amaze you (!)
but if you try to get there instead of being with the One Thing,
it gets harder
A heart-sigh for all this,
for practice and trust,
and the superpower of What Am I Wrong About….
what do I know about my heart
A home for me
refuge and sanctuary
always whole even when [perceptions of shattering]
powerful
resilient
self-renewing
echoing & reverberating
home of wishes and self-generating superpowers
hearth
warmth
joy-and-sorrow, anything can be a door,
my heart is always heart-shaped because
love-source is mine always
and love-source takes the shape of me
I breathe love and am filled
filling up
I breathe to my blindspot
heart, show me more heart
a heart-shaped x
I went to the cafe where she always hands me a plain white mug to fill,
but she gave me a heart-shaped mug covered in tiny hearts,
she said “it works like normal”
I must look like someone who can’t stop crying
because things like this keep happening
And yet
That was a week ago but today I felt peaceful
and I surprised myself by asking for the heart-mug
and she said of course of course always
yesterday
Yesterday I asked [what do I know about my heart]
Yesterday I lifted my glass To The Illustrious Travelers, and then
decided to investigate more what it means to live in this category,
who am I when I see myself as an Illustrious Traveler
Yesterday I stopped hating someone who hurt me,
or maybe that is not true,
I wouldn’t say that I am all the way to not-hating,
but maybe now it is less about hating,
and something is new
something is opening
something is clear(er)
something is letting in more light
under the stars
today
Today I went to yoga and the theme was
LET US PAY ATTENTION TO OUR ACTUAL PHYSICAL HEARTS
which is kind of incredible,
an entire hour focused on my yesterday-question of
[what do I know about my heart]
aka dedicated time for the pursuit of
following up on what we seeded
I learned from the teacher, who is also
my personal hero in the category of let’s geek out hard on anatomy,
that the heart actually moves around quite a bit,
and we can FEEL IT AS IT TRAVELS
yes it travels
my heart, it turns out,
is also an Illustrious Traveler
more
More to explore here, always,
this is the nature of exploration
I am noticing a welling up of
[Appreciation & Thankfulness]
for how clues lead me to clues
and questions lead to questioning
and receptivity to feeling heart space opens heart space,
we seed with our words
illustrious / lustre / listening / love
Today my heart does not hurt
this is new
I am listening
maybe tomorrow it will hurt again,
and I will keep listening,
this is part of my itinerary in my illustrious travels
of being someone who loves
and who glows
Breathing for this now
Invitation for companionship and play
This post does not have an ending,
haha I never got to the point, but that is part of the point
my PT joke is still hilarious to me,
anyway usual comment zen applies
You are invited to share !!!!!! about what is here,
or anything sparked for you while reading
Safe space for creative exploration asks us to let go of care-taking and advice-giving
It’s always okay to comment under a made-up name, for play or Safety First
Here’s how we meet each other: with kindness and appreciation and awe
join me for thanksgiving let’s rewrite (and re-right) this day, also another post about elephants
this thursday
ah this thursday is american thanksgiving and really there is no shortage of ways that this day can be hard and challenging, ohmygod so many ways and so many reasons
[whispered aside! if you love american thanksgiving and are looking forward to thursday, then I am very happy for you and wish you great joy, pleasure and delicious pie, you probably do not need either this post or the secret hideaway that I am setting up for us, but of course you are welcome and invited too, there is space for you too, and now back to naming the hard things! same goes for friends in canada, mexico, europe, japan, new zealand, australia and wherever else you might be reading, hi!]
the hard things let us name them
hard things not limited to but including,
ohmygod the list might be too long, we need two lists, if not more
let’s start with mine,
on the personal level
on the personal, for me
(1) okay so for me this day is so lonely and painful, I never want to spend it alone
(2) but I also can’t join people in their holiday celebrations, gatherings of people do not work for me, extremely high sensory processing sensitivity means it’s too much energy to navigate, even the best group of people is overwhelming and exhausting and will take all my spoons and I will get a migraine
(3) haha seriously though sharing a meal with more than two people (maybe three if I really really like them all) is the worst, why do people like doing this, it is a mystery to me, why is the whole damn culture set up to privilege extroverts and brains that don’t get overwhelmed by sensation, I feel frustration about this
(4) many painful memories and grief around this time of year means I might spend a lot of the day in tears, and when I say “might”, I mean 98% chance of loud public crying, which is awkward enough alone and really not something I want to bring to someone else’s festivities
(5) last year I had the perfect thanksgiving: sweetness + solitude + magnificence + love, out with the beautiful boy in the stunning mojave desert, delicious leftovers from the mexican place in town, walking in the desert at sunset, holding hands and laughing, snuggling on the couch, in love with love and life, and now he is with someone else, and I am in a dark cold loud city, and I want to experience that thanksgiving again, that form of love-and-closeness, but it does not exist anymore
on the political, for me
the history of this holiday is so painful and awful, the erasure of native people and their history/experience/trauma is already day-to-day reality, but on this holiday it is amplified, how do we even begin to acknowledge, make amends, be present with a day of [public expressions of gratitude] that overlaps with terrible injustice
I also think a lot about the alone-and-lonely, the people who miss family or never had or crave it or those who do not want it at all and don’t wish to be around it, this is yet another holiday that celebrates and centers those-who-have and the experience-of-having, and neglects all the people in a state of lack, loss, pain
I don’t know how this can change, how do we change culture, this is painful too, this is something I want to write about more here, because self-fluency is not only rewriting our own habits and patterns but glowing change into the world around us
back to the personal, for you, maybe
when I think about other people I know here, the hard parts of this day are different but equally hard:
from obligations and expectations real-and-perceived, personal and cultural to family stress and travel stress and wanting everything to be not-terrible, and then setting boundaries, and the frustration of having to set them, worries about unwanted questions — and how to answer them, or how not-to-answer them…
for those of on the highly-sensitive/witchy spectrum or whatever you like to call that spectrum, we pick up on all the ambient anxiety anyway but it really picks up intensity this week, and we have to clear that out of our headspace!
some of us are bracing for encounters with people who hold opinions that are genuinely dangerous and awful, I am so sorry if you are in this position
and while gratitude is genuinely a luscious glowing beautiful spiritual quality that transforms hearts and so much more, it also gets distorted so fast through culture into shoulds/expectation/bullshit, into forced and contrived, the unsovereign energy of that is exhausting too
in short, it is a lot, this day, even for people who mostly look forward to it
elephants
everyone this week is justifiably upset about elephants (I mean, we are upset about everything), but these are actually not the elephants I wanted to write about today
I have written about twenty minutes on elephants and also symbolic elephants (gender) and writing notes to an elephant, but today a new kind of elephant
in the air
lately have been playing with the proxy mission of I Am An Aerialist And Everything Is Solved In The Air, which comes with the superpowers of Turn It Around, Turn It Upside Down, and Rest Into Silk
my favorite thing about the aerial silks I got to test in vegas is how they are rigged to hold so much more than me, a built-in state of extreme over-preparedness, the superpower of not only All The Safety but also So Much More Safety Than Could Ever Possibly Be Needed
no matter how scary it is to go upside down and trust the silk (and for the record aerial yoga is not even three feet above the floor, it’s supposed to be therapeutic and calming but I have to talk myself into it), I can remember that this apparatus is set up to hold exponentially more stress than I could possibly give it
oh right this thing is RIGGED FOR CIRCUS IT CAN HOLD TWO THOUSAND POUNDS STRONG ENOUGH TO HOLD A BABY ELEPHANT, so when I give it all of me, I cannot tear it or even stress it, no matter how awkward and graceless I feel, none of that matters, this contraption is set up to handle more damage than I could ever do, the very definition of abundance and plenty, safety and protection
can we use this to solve thanksgiving
what is a container with [COULD HOLD AN ELEPHANT] levels of Safety, Protection, Purpose, Intent, Magic, Candles
not that we want to hold elephants obviously, I just mean the intention of that much power, that much held
what do we know about Rigging — the good kind, in the form of boundaries, containers, structures?
what are the foundational elements (and elephants) of safe transformative space, how do we create a hide-out blanket fort space to shelter us from the hard parts of thanksgiving, while making space to rest into the good parts of finding a thank-you heart
TIME
SPACE
INTENTION
QUALITIES (and superpowers)
BREATH
BODY
MYSTERY (solve for x, exploration)
TREASURE (SELF TREASURING)
mmm it is a compass of eight points
what does this remind me of
does anyone here remember hermitsgiving?
hermitsgiving was this amazing thing we used to do when I had the retreat center, a five day quiet retreat that took place over american thanksgiving, with a giant delicious picnic feast on the floor — yes it turns out I do enjoy communal meals when there is a shared sovereign culture of no-advice no-caretaking, and no obligation to talk or interact, and quiet music and warm loving people, hermitsgiving was the best and I miss it
offering: a private communal thanksgiving space
the what: a combination of safe space / mini-rally / a revisiting of hermitsgiving
more specifically: I have put together a space (private hidden page on the site) for people who want to hang out online this thursday, november 23rd, and find ways to get through this day together or make it more meaningful (MONTH OF MEANING!) and joyful, regardless of our plans for the day, I will be there all day writing and processing, you are invited to join me and share companionship and silliness, possibly even things related to elephants
in this space I am sharing TWELVE (12) capers, this is my code word for “exercises” since exercises do not sound fun to me, these capers are self-fluency techniques or approaches we can play with to help us transform this day or get through it or make it better, or for whatever is needed
I will be playing with these throughout the day and checking in on how it goes, you are invited to play too!
cost: we are doing this donation-yoga-style, asking for $12 but choose your sum, here is where to sign up:
who this is for: anyone who wants company or companionship on this day, for whatever reason, or a way/place to process, whether you are spending the day alone or with family or whatever is going on for you, we are turning this day into a mini-rally where we can
a) practice extreme self-care and wild self-treasuring
b) give ourselves what we need
c) lovingly invite/initiate small shifts in awareness, mood, body, internal and external space
d) give ourselves the gift of what we need — maybe that is making it through the day in one piece, or maybe that is designated time and space to investigate a mysterious project, or who knows, maybe making it through the day is the project, it all counts
invitation
you may share this with anyone who might need it
you can seed superpowers and wishes for the week (and for thursday especially if you like)
you can share !!!!!! about what is here or joy-and-hope, or anything sparked for you while reading
here’s how we meet each other here: with great kindness and appreciation and love