Tag: presence

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News from Jules | 07.16.2018 | I Have a Gift for You.

one lesson about integrity every week

Receiving is one of the deepest forms of presence.

This is the real gift.

Not what is received.

But the stillness of that moment beholding that what is given is exactly what is needed.

This takes an open heart and open hands.

And a little bit of sneakiness on the part of the universe, I think.

This happened to me today. Maybe it’s happening to you right now!

It’s becoming a familiar feeling. A gentle sense of delight that feels like washing your hands in perfectly warm water.

It’s been happening to me a lot lately.

More than usual?

Well, that’s a bit of a trick question, isn’t it?

One of my big takeaways from reading To Sell is Human by Daniel Pink earlier this year was:

We are always making offers. Not because we’re in constant exchange (though we are) and not because we’re transacting (what we commonly think of as “selling”) which we might be. Exchange comes with the expectation of receipt, whereas offering is part of relating: showing up in the world and seeing others, feeling connected, thus offering something you have that they need.

Offerings are constant, they’re happening all the time. A hello, a text message asking “What’s up?,” space to change lanes in heavy traffic, the last chipful of guacamole, a door being opened, undivided attention, getting treated to ice cream, an invitation to hang out, words of wisdom, or a hand-me-down dress.

That’s what happened to me today.

When I stopped by to help out with a couple things at my friends’ house, there was a note and a dress on the counter.

“Oh wow, I was just thinking this weekend how I needed more than one casual summer dress,” I beamed to myself.  

Since starting my Buy Nothing experiment in 2016 (initially a year, now going on three) I have been given many clothes.

All offered—no expectation of anything in return—though some still with expectations attached. Mostly about unburdening themselves. And usually stuff I hadn’t needed either.

Other times, like today, the offer is exactly what I need and thus delightfully received.

This is the presence.

The offer comes from a place of presence, some sensing, some whispering to make the offer.

And then the presence to receive.

But, offering can become a compulsive habit of giving, an irresistible urge, and thus an unconscious act.

These offerings are constant, they’re happening all the time.

Giving, giving, giving. These are the ones with strings attached. 

All different kinds of strings were behind my own constant giving in the past. From the sense of comfort found in leading and thus controlling to the joy of being seen for my thoughtfulness.

Leading and being thoughtful come naturally to me. That’s a gift. 

If they are used to serve, not to be served.

And, they are only part of the equation.

Following and receiving attention are the balance. Those do not come as naturally to me.

My community and especially my “pit crew” have offered so much recently. Opportunities to follow their lead.

Even before my knee injury several weeks ago, I sensed the shift this year. A season of following and receiving, of opening and connecting more deeply, embracing wholeness.

Necessary learning journeys, I’m certain. Far from comfortable.

The universe constantly offers disruption that keeps us alert and so far this summer season has been especially “helpful.” Things keep changing. Each day new information shows up. Lots of new beginnings.

So yes, I believe I have been receiving more than usual lately. And it usually feels great!

Summer is a season of connection. A time to speak from the heart.

​Say what you mean, mean what you say.

And a time to receive what ever it is you most need right now. The things you can name and say out loud and the things others are seeing and offering.

May your heart and hands lay wide open this week.

Love,
Jules

I share a lesson learned about integrity every Monday. Sign up for delivery right to your inbox. Want more? There’s lots more lessons learned here on my blog, so have fun exploring and commenting about your own insights! 
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News from Jules | 07.02.2018 | Are We Living What Matters Most?

one lesson about integrity every week

There will be no parades, no Statue of Liberty crowns, no plastic flags, no strawberry, whip cream and blueberry decorated pound cakes for me this Wednesday.

My resistance?

No, actually just lack of plans and still limited on mobility.

Besides, that is not what this day—this declaration of independence—is actually about.

With everything going on, one could easily justify going “on strike” this Fourth of July.

And by “everything going on,” I mean this sense of one-thing-after-another-can’t-catch-a-break inertia.

This is what I’m hearing from folks in my life.

And, so much of what I’ve been feeling personally for the last few weeks.

But, wait. The other day, I stopped and wondered:Is it really one thing after another?

  • Or am I just looking for the things to add to this list now?
  • This list of how my life, my reality and the world is unraveling?
  • Maybe things are unraveling and/or maybe we’re choosing to focus on the parts that are falling apart.

Brene Brown reframed the midlife crisis as a “midlife unraveling” in her recent blog post:

The truth is that the midlife unraveling is a series of painful nudges strung together by low-grade anxiety and depression, quiet desperation, and an insidious loss of control.

Ugh. That sounds awful.

And honest.

And useful.

Why? Sounds like an opportunity to me.

To assess what is. And of that: what matters most?

And then the hard question: Are we actually living what matters most?

Because this is our legacy.

And this is what the next generation (heck, everyone, but especially kids) is taking in.

Not what we say, what we do.

Show, don’t tell, we’re told as writers.

So, what is this showy, plasticy, red-white-and-blue day about? Especially if this place we claim as our home is having a “midlife unraveling”?

It’s about living what matters most.

Not just “Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” No, that’s the “tell.”

Independence, self-sufficiency, innovation, self-expression, transformation, adventure, and faith.

These are the values this country was founded from.

This is what we’re celebrating.

And all of the people who lived these self-evident values into colonies, into a country, into a society.

I believe that what matters most we often take for granted.

It’s good to have a nudge to pause and name what we know.

This Wednesday is a great time as you’re mesmerized by fireworks overhead or those cool, zinger bees that buzz around the ground, to reflect on these deepest values so that we may live them more intentionally.

Live them into the possibilities that always lie within.

May your week sparkle with meaning.

Love,
Jules

I share a lesson learned about integrity every Monday. Sign up for delivery right to your inbox. Want more? There’s lots more lessons learned here on my blog, so have fun exploring and commenting about your own insights! 
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News from Jules | 06.18.2018 | What If the Storm Never Passes?

one lesson about integrity every week

You can wait for the storm to pass or you can learn how to bike in the rain.

Okay, the real quote is about dancing in the rain. But, the point sticks.

Life is about living.

And living it to the fullest, I believe.

Not the busiest. Full as in rich and satisfying.

Which life reminds us can equally take the form of being, as well as the doing.

I decided to go car-free in June as part of my ongoing Buy Nothing experiment and this year’s curiosity about my relationship with energy, our natural resources and my own. What are the trade-offs? Consequences? Benefits?

Feeling good about completing 48 miles (biking + running and walking) in the first week, I was all in. Rain all weekend? No problem!

Well, you know how cars can hyrdoplane on oily roads made slick by heavy rains after a dry spell? You guessed it. Bikes can too!

“Oh no” is right.

First week: 48 miles
Second week: 0 miles

Perhaps my life storm has not fully passed after the chaotic, one-thing-after-another month of May?

I was so hoping the shampoo breakthrough meant it had passed.

Laid up with a battered knee, I find myself in a surprisingly familiar state of mind. A living reminder right now, as well as an inspiring poster on my wall:

When one thing flows to another. When choices are obvious. When needs are met. And then some. When time is irrelevant. And the only place to be is here. ​

The time has been a gift. While recovery is new to me, retreats are not.

I cherish these times of being.

My sense has been that I mostly need to rest up and to focus any work on what’s critical, so that my body can focus on healing as quickly and effectively as possible. I am learning so much about my energy.

This is living life to the fullest right now.

By doing very little, but being very present in this opportunity.

Watching amazing documentaries about the Internet like Lo & Behold, reading excellent writing like Sherman Alexie’s memoir You Don’t have to Say You Love Me and interesting blog posts about bringing spirituality into your work, connecting online with new entrepreneur friends. All from my 40-year-old armchair, with my knee elevated and on ice.

As my needs become simpler, my life feels more effortless. My perspective grows broader and my heart opens wider. I am feeling grounded in what is truly essential as I haven’t felt in awhile.

Greg McKweon wrote in Essentialism about the disciplined pursuit of less:

“To discern what is truly essential we need space to think, time to look and listen, permission to play, wisdom to sleep, and the discipline to apply highly selective criteria to the choices we make. Ironically in [our] culture these things—space, listening, playing, sleeping and selecting—can be seen as trivial distractions.”

I think I finally see the whole vision of how Everyday Integrity will guide people to stay centered in this increasingly distracting world.

As the saying goes, life isn’t about waiting for the storm to pass. Perhaps this bike accident and injury is an eye of the storm?

Either way, I’m learning how to dance (on crutches) in the rain.

May you move safely and simply through the week that you are given,
Jules

I share a lesson learned about integrity every Monday. Sign up for delivery right to your inbox. Want more? There’s lots more lessons learned here on my blog, so have fun exploring and commenting about your own insights! 
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News from Jules | 06.04.2018 | What Have You Been Ignoring?

one lesson about integrity every week

For the last two weeks, I’ve pretty much followed my shower routine: shampoo, face wash, conditioner, teeth brushing, soap, rinse.

But, I kept getting stuck on step one. Wait, what is wrong with this stuff? Why won’t it lather?

I knew there was something funky going on, but I just kept doing the routine.

A few days ago I figured it out. It won’t lather, because it’s conditioner.

Oh geez. No wonder my new Mia Farrow-style hair felt so weird and greasy.

I had been using conditioner followed by conditioner for TWO weeks. ​

This is stress.

Creating hazy veils of Maya, the Hindu word for illusion, so subtle that our senses malfunction and wrongly perceive or interpret things the way we want them to be. And, when it goes unchecked this sneaky stress becomes Avidya, generally agreed by Hindus and Buddhists as a state of misconceptions and misunderstandings of the world.

I bought shampoo. Of course, I’m using shampoo, I told myself each day.

Everything looked the way I wanted it to look.

Sure, it was just conditioner.

Just as it was just burning the rice, and just a speeding ticket, and just a dead battery after leaving the lights on and just wet laundry sitting in the dryer for a week.

As present in my life and day-to-day as I thought I was, I wasn’t. I’d pared my life down to the essentials this year: What could be stressful?

No more busy, no more crazy, way less complicated.

And yet, I still had blinders on.

What have you been ignoring? Has your gut been nagging you about something?

After countless “oh geez” moments of late and the mounting chaos, I had started sensing that something more was going on.

  • Streak of bad luck?
  • Mercury in retrograde?
  • Signs from the universe?

Perhaps.

Whatever the cause, my past experience is that chaos precedes breakthrough. Something from deep down needs to come to a head. A problem itself and/or resistance to reality.

Low grade stress was rapidly compounding and leaking into everything, especially the everyday.

The conditioner discovery was the last straw for me.

You know those moments. Mundane but profound. Tiny but significant. The crack where the light gets through.

I had been spinning out from my center, feeling undone, and wondering how to cope better. What to do to regain wholeness, a sense of integrity?

Just as it wasn’t actually shampoo, I realized it wasn’t about what to do, but what I wasn’t doing. What I was ignoring.

It was the moment I had just read about in Wild Creative by Tami Lynn Kent:

“Let go of the urge to flee when intensity and a sense of inner chaos build; the form within is being pressed and changed. Stay with the discomfort as long as you can. The physical, emotional, and/or spiritual compression you feel is your resistance to your expansion. Surrender the tension in your body, the resistance in your mind, and the hesitation in your heart. Surrender, and you will fill with new life.”

Depending on how you react to staggering truths, you stop cold, you breathe deep, you sit down. Or maybe you cry in the shower, like I did.

Hard, grateful tears.

For my deepest knowing. For answered prayers. For the stress.

The stress that has been my blinking “check engine light.”

Just as Kelly McGonigal describes in her TED Talk about how to make stress your friend that my friend, Tiffany, reminded me about:

“When you choose to view stress in this way, you’re not just getting better at stress, you’re actually making a pretty profound statement: you’re saying that you can trust yourself to handle life’s challenges and you’re remembering that you don’t have to face them alone.”

My trusty body had been talking all along—through my gut and my actions.

And I was finally listening. Finally ready to receive the vulnerability, detachment, and decisiveness I’d been praying for.

True to form, since this breakthrough so much has showed up.

Vulnerable, detached and decisive things I wasn’t ready to do a week ago, like debt consolidation through a bank loan.

And some beautiful synchronicity, like the text I just got from a woman in my neighborhood Buy Nothing group. She’s moving and needs to purge her bathroom. She’s got shampoo! Real shampoo.

May your eyes be wide and your gut be loud this week,
Jules

I share a lesson learned about integrity every Monday. Sign up for delivery right to your inbox. Want more? There’s lots more lessons learned here on my blog, so have fun exploring and commenting about your own insights! 
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News from Jules | 05.21.2018 | My Guilty Pleasure

one lesson about integrity every week

Last week when Monday felt so “off,” I was stressed about details like cashflow, yes, but more so whether I was off course overall.

I woke up Tuesday and I got out the post-its. And markers. And whiteboard.

I came up with what seemed like an awesome two-week sprint of business projects (like this except for 2 weeks).

That’s my guilty pleasure: planning.

Wait a second, that’s your guilty pleasure?

Maybe planning isn’t “unusual or weird,” but I’m growing more and more convinced that it’s a bit unnatural.

At least in the way, I do it. And the way a lot of people do it.

Here’s what I’ve been noticing:

Entering this second week, I felt good about having an action plan. But then, when my body wanted to work on bookkeeping and clearing out my inbox instead of creating the practice guides I started last week, which are actually all about presence, connection and balance. Oh, the irony.

There was so much tension.

Throw out the action plan??

As much as I’ve adapted to this new creative lifestyle, I’m having a hard time releasing modes of measurement, control, schedule, planning. It’s so uncomfortable. And, I’m not just thinking about big project planning, but the day-to-day stuff—the infinite ways we micromanage our lives.

This felt like a lot given I was already coming off of another “vulnerability hangover” as Alison Faulkner described in a recent podcast. Sure, they’re avoidable, but as Alison asked:

“Do you love your comfort more than your goal?”

No, I don’t. I love the goal of living from a place of wholeness into a space of sufficiency and empowering more people to live this way—wholly and soulfully.

This guilty pleasure of planning is overshadowing my natural intuition to notice and adapt to what’s going on right now. But without a plan, how do I know where I’m going and how to get there?

I can use my attention to guide my intentions.

After a gut check, I was pretty sure it was intuition and not procrastination. So, I’m going with it. Bookkeeping doesn’t generate cashflow, but maybe it will realign the energy. I’m trying to see the forest for the trees, though still unsure these are the trees that need tending right now.

Perhaps this is what Tami Lynn Kent is talking about in Wild Creative:

How living from our creative core, our wholeness, our essence, requires balancing the feminine (being, visionary) and masculine (doing, action) energy cycles so that we can really go with the flow, naturally intuiting the next right thing and then doing it.

Or as Phil Powers says about finding rest in every step, not only as I’ve been doing every week during Sabbath:

“Concentrating on how I move through the world is important. It’s why I reach mountain summits and life goals with energy to spare.”

May you follow your gut and enjoy energy to spare this week,
Jules

P.S. Did you know that libraries can order books that they don’t have? So cool! I put in requests recently and am happy to report that my local library, Multnomah County, now has Rhythms of Rest and the recently published Subversive Sabbath: The Surprising Power of Rest in a Nonstop World (hardcopy and Ebook) available. If you’re curious about more resources to learn about Sabbath, I made a handy list here. And, FYI, I’ll be opening registration for the Sabbath Circle running this summer soon. Yay!

I share a lesson learned about integrity every Monday. Sign up for delivery right to your inbox. Want more? There’s lots more lessons learned here on my blog, so have fun exploring and commenting about your own insights! 
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Guest Post: Practicing “The Sabbath”

By Lee Ngo

Ever since January 2016, I practice “The Sabbath.”

My work is great. It’s flexible, applicable, and thoroughly engaging for my personality type (in case you’re wondering, I’m an ENFP. Also, a Cancer.).

However, I have to switch work off eventually, even when it’s fun.

A while back, a good friend of mine and educational community-building colleague Julie Williams of Everyday Integrity (our feet leisurely pictured above) taught me about her practice of “the sabbath”  during one of our breakout sessions at the 4.0 Schools Community Summit in January 2016. It changed my life.

Traditionally a religious practice re-conceptualized to be about personal wellness and fulfillment.

We did an exercise where I listed all the things I do, and then I listed all the things I really want to do. Here’s what I wrote for the latter:

  • Be with my wife (laugh, love, embrace, etc.)
  • Eat somewhere I haven’t tried before
  • Draw something
  • Learn something new
  • Spend more time with family and friends

For the second list, she decreed, “take a day to do just those things and nothing else. See what happens.”

The results were instantaneous. My attitude heading back into work improved. I felt a closer relationship with my wife, who perhaps works even harder than I do as an academic. I stopped feeling guilty about being happy and in the moment.

The amazing part — when I went back to work, everything was fine. Nobody got hurt because they had to wait until Monday for a response. The world kept spinning since, to my surprise, it didn’t revolve around me.

For this post, I’d like to go into more detail about my philosophy, my practice, and some of my struggles.

Philosophy — Why do I do this?

The Old Testament features multiple mentions of The Sabbath, but most people quote what Moses overheard and paraphrased after coming down from an epic conversation with God on Mount Sinai:

“Remember the sabbath day, to keep it holy.” (Exodus 20:8)

I’m not interested in getting into the debates over how God wants to us to interpret that line — that feels counter-intuitive. Instead, I’ve been trained and heavily influenced by sociology, so I look at The Sabbath in purely structural functionalist terms.

We need a day out of the week to not do things that stress us out. That includes anything resembling work, even if you’re passionate about it.

That, to me, is the function of The Sabbath — a day of release, mindfulness, exhaust, cleansing — a treat to yourself and vicariously to the world around you.

So remember it, and treat it like it’s a gift from a higher power.

Practice — How do I do it?

Choose a day out of the week when you consistently don’t work. For me, it’s either a Saturday or a Sunday. For others, depending on their schedules, it could be any day of the week, as long as it’s one day.

During this day, do the things you really want to do and/or have wanted to do for quite some time but feel held back for some reason.

Things that don’t qualify for The Sabbath
  • Anything directly related to work. Responding to an email, finishing that one report, prepping for an easier Monday are all examples of over-extending yourself for the sake of feeling fulfilled.
  • Anything indirectly related to work. Corporate training, meeting with friends from work who talk about it constantly, even volunteering with organizations that are associated with work. No matter what you do, there will be this underlying compulsion to gravitate towards what you actually need to avoid.
  • Chores. The word alone invokes stress. Some people find therapy in doing choices, and some are just necessary when you get the window to do so. The same logic applies, and I ask that you find a way to let go.
  • Long-term priorities. Taxes. Doctor appointments. Trips to the DMV. Cleaning out the rain gutters. These are all things you can do on the “other” day you have free. Put them off for just one day.
Things that might qualify for The Sabbath
  • Going on a trip to a place unknown. Don’t let the news fool you — the world is a beautiful place, and it’s worthy of exploration. I try to plan an international trip every year — I work hard just for that opportunity.
  • Visiting that restaurant you always wanted to try. Even if the experience ends up being sub-par, I’ve never met a person who regretted the exploration. There are many who share their passion through food — indulge them.
  • Sleep. Don’t overdo it, but wow, sleep is awesome and important for resting your mind. Try shutting off the alarm clock on The Sabbath and optimizing your sleep environment for comfort and sensory deprivation. See what time you really need to wake up.
  • Making love. Usually requires at least one other person, but hey, no judgment here. This could be sexual, but sometimes just a long cuddle session with a platonic friend does wonders for your self-esteem. Or do this exercise.
  • Exercise. I don’t particularly enjoy exercise because I frame it as the high-impact, steroid-raging versions you see in the media. Exercise could be a long walk, a hike up a hill, some light yoga, etc. The important thing is to force your brain to focus on other areas and give the nerves a break.
  • Picking up a hobby. This Medium blog is my hobby. It started on The Sabbath, and it’s transformed into my 1–2 hours per day of pure, unbridled, mindful self-expression. I haven’t drawn consistently in years, and now I can say that I have in 2017. That makes me feel awesome.
  • Watching a movie — in a theater. We tend to watch a lot of media while distracted by other gadgets — phones, tablets, and laptops in particular. Go somewhere where you’re forced to be completely immersed.

There are plenty of other possibilities. Offer yours below in the comments!

Struggles — What’s still holding me back?

I do want to acknowledge that it’s not so simple to adjust 1/7th of your life in such a way, and that there are internal and external factors holding everyone back, including myself.

Costs. Leisure time is privileged time, and there are many of us who have to work every day just to stay afloat.

I’m able to do a lot of these things now that my wife and I have steady incomes, but two years ago our breaks consisted of staying in, watching TV, and eating Top Ramen.

That was long before we re-conceptualized our behavior for the better.

Addiction. As I’ve mentioned before, this prompt was in response to my addiction to work, which started to contribute to some serious health problems, even requiring surgery at times.

Since making those adjustments, I’ve learned to switch off, enjoy the moment, and appreciate the things that matter the most.

The short version: work is ephemeral. Friends and family last longer, and they do more for your survival than you realize.

Fear. I remain fearful or anxious about some things that inhibit my practicing a true Sabbath.

Maybe I want to ice skate or try roller skating again, but after my last attempt, I’m terrified of the possibility. I could go bungee jumping or skydiving, but I have a perfectly rational acrophobia.

Some other fears are financial. Shouldn’t I save for a rainy day, especially in Seattle where there are so many of them?

I know what it’s like to live on the edge of poverty, even applying for Medicaid at one point. How can I rationalize a day of enjoyment when confronted with real struggles?

Practicing The Sabbath is not easy, but nothing worth the trouble ever is.

I’ve been making small but deliberate changes to the way I live my life because, frankly, I’m always interested in hacking it for the better.

On the Virtue of the Weekend

Now, I’m not sure if I’m getting older, wiser, or both, but I’m pretty adamant about keeping my weekends to myself.

I’ll occasionally pick up a side project that’s creative or socially-conscious, applying my unique set of skills. Other than that, I’m out having fun with friends and family.

I know I’ve written a lot on The Sabbath here and here, much inspired by my friend and colleague Jules (who launched The Sabbath Course, a 7-week program designed to help you rest and realize a sense of everyday integrity). Yet I still return to this issue because I still feel overworked.

In truth, I could blame the multitude of stress variables in my world, but that would be incorrect.

I am making the active choice to be busy and even bite off more than I can chew, and I’m starting to see things suffer as a result.

Even as I write this post, (and yes, I wrote this post on The Sabbath) I do so with the assertion that it is actually what I want to do today rather than what I’m obligated to do. There needs to be a designated time for that, and hence — the weekend.

This guest post is a compilation of three previous posts by Lee on Medium.

Lee Ngo is a global community builder using his extroversion for good as a champion of education, tech and startups based in Seattle, Wash. Lee spends his weekdays doing operational strategy to support a mission and programs that engage young people in historically underrepresented communities with careers in technology, leadership, and entrepreneurship. He uses his creativity to relax by writing and illustrating his blog on Medium. You can find him on Twitter and on Instagram.

Previous to his current role as Chief Operating Officer at The Greater Foundation, Lee has built passionate communities on- and off-line, for instance as host and facilitator of Demystifying Data Science, a 12-hour online conference that had over 10,000 signups and 3,000 live viewers from over 100 countries, as a MeetUp founder with an aggregate membership reach of over 15,000 and as lead organizer, as well as facilitator, for too many Startup Weekends to count.

Lee completed his Bachelor’s of Arts in Sociology at Yale University in 2005 and then received his Master’s of Arts Degree in Cultural Anthropology at the University of California, Irvine in 2008, during which he spent two summers in Vietnam to further study in the language and conduct fieldwork on the film industry.

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My Spiritual Path: Part 1 | Discovering Wholeness

discovering wholeness

What was my path to get here—to a place of wholeness—today?

What a loaded question, right?

Beautifully so, I’d say.

A co-facilitator and I posed this question at the opening of our intergenerational, interfaith women’s group when we were facilitating a session about “Spirituality and You” last fall.

We meant to stir up a conversation of breadth and depth. And the answers about paths to get here ranged from the commute to the pub to one’s religious upbringing.

I went with the easy out, a brief summary about how my bandwidth had shifted in the previous few months allowing the opportunity to step up and lead the session. In truth, I wasn’t sure how long it would take to truly answer that question.

Definitely not a minute. Perhaps I can sum it up in five blog posts?

In this blog series, “Discovering Wholeness,” I’ll attempt to distill 15 years of searching, growing, becoming into five posts, including this one, about my spiritual path to get here today.

What was my spiritual path to get here today?

Here:

  • Where I deeply know my inherent dignity and worth.
  • Where I forgive and embrace my imperfections.
  • Where I eagerly spend time with myself and with what (not who) I know as God.
  • Where I also deeply know it’s not about me.
  • Where my purpose is first and foremost our purpose: to live in harmony with nature.
  • Where living each day to the fullest means being as true as possible, not doing as much as possible.
  • Where I bring loving attention to everything I do.
  • Where I can’t imagine going another day not living this way.

Do I have it all figured out? Oh heck no. Far from it.

Turning Inside Out

But I have it figured out. I have peeled back every layer of the onion until I got to the kernel of my core where my deepest fears and deepest desires reside. And I stayed there, getting to know them.

I turned myself inside out as I had the sense I needed to do. And then I started anew.

Technically the same person—the same fears, the same desires, the same weaknesses, the same strengths. But, with a totally different relationship to the world.

A relationship grounded in the sense of a personal spirituality “cultivated, nourished, and harvested” along the way.

Most simply, spirituality refers to direct experience of the sacred, said Dr. Roger Walsh, a longtime practitioner and professor of philosophy, anthropology and psychiatry who wrote Essential Spirituality in 1999 about seven common practices of the world’s great spiritual traditions for recognizing the sacred and divine that exist both within and around us.

He describes spiritual practices as those that help us experience the sacred —that which is most central and essential to our lives — for ourselves.

Another scientist, and renown atheist, Dr. Carl Sagan said, “Science is not only compatible with spirituality; it is a profound source of spirituality. When we recognize our place in an immensity of light years and in the passage of ages, when we grasp the intricacy, beauty and subtlety of life, then that soaring feeling, that sense of elation and humility combined is surely spiritual.”

And as Michael Singer, author and devoted buddhist practitioner, says in The Untethered Soul:

“When you contemplate the nature of self [and soul], you are meditating…It is a return to the root of your being, the simple awareness of being aware…You woke up. That is spirituality. That is the nature of self. That is who you are.”

And so, personal spirituality, or “a religion of one’s own” as former monk Thomas Moore calls it, forms “the fundamental precepts by which we guide our life are cultivated, nourished, and harvested in time,” as poet Wendell Berry says.

Understanding, Accepting, Releasing

A year ago there was a series of events starting around the Spring Equinox, including a fateful retreat, moving to a new cottage home, and a blessing hosted by my spiritual communities around Beltane (a mid-spring celebration of abundance on May 1).

It was the beginning of the end. In the very best way possible.

I sensed that my journey over a decade plus years of active searching, growing, becoming was coming to a close.

Perhaps it culminated due to the position of Jupiter in transit?

As my astrologer friend tells me, that’s a rare element on a chart that represents a process of rebirth within one’s lifetime.

Perhaps the journey was part of my soul’s mission in order to get to the life’s work I’m really here to do?

For me, the path to get here today is a braid of spiritual, entrepreneurial and personal experiences. Intertwined, not separate.

The details and results of the experiences are extensive and unique to me. Tales for the next posts in this series.

While I do believe many lessons must be learned alongside others — partners, children, communities, students, teachers — ultimately our learning journeys are our own.

From our intuition and wisdom to deeper places within.

Perhaps that’s why sometimes it takes us many times to finally grasp a certain lesson?

Even as others provide sound guidance. Even as our inner teacher provides sound guidance.

Until it’s heard, understood, accepted and released, it remains unlearned. At least that’s been my experience.

Universal Lessons, Unique Path

The practices and tools I’ve discovered and absorbed into my “spiritual portfolio” as I like to call it are also extensive, so I’ll also save specifics on those for later posts.

But the process—the process of using these practices and tools throughout all these learning journeys along my spiritual path—isn’t that unique to me?

Me and the other millions of seekers and students and teachers in the world?

Well, I’ll leave that as a rhetorical question.

So, here’s the story of my journey to get here. Here’s my story of my journey. Which may or may not be the truth.

It’s the truth as I sense it, now, in my head, my heart and my gut, based on the information I currently have.

This is the first in a five-part series about my spiritual path and how I came to live from a place of wholeness into a space of sufficiency. Raised with New Age roots and inspired by world religions and native cultures alike, I have built a portfolio of interfaith spiritual practices that sustain me. I currently worship in nature and at a Unitarian Universalist church, find fellowship with the Sacred Fire Community and Bras, Bibles & Brews, and have active personal practices including Sabbath, yoga, prayer and seasonal retreats.

[To be continued]

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The Shape of The Soul

shape of the soul

All of my learning journeys, growing in and growing out, carry me along my spiritual path.

Along this path, I have studied many traditions, practices and rituals to help me discern what aligns with my personal spirituality, my current understanding of the universe and my presence in it.

So far this has been a never-ending process of continual growth and ceaseless seeking. At least in this lifetime.

There is one constant everybody seems to agree exists.

I have collected notes and quotes from countless others describing this thing we call the soul.

And, they seem to agree that just as the divine source, the something greater that many call God, is perfect, complete, and I’d add incomprehensible, so is a soul.

The soul is indescribable and when I try, I fall into paradoxes, truths that seem unable to coexist and yet they do:

  • it is not a thing and yet it is everything.
  • it is without self, feelings, personality and yet uniquely me.
  • it makes me weep while filling me with love.

My soul connects me to the universe, to everything, to all beings, to life — this deep community.

While I’ve only sensed that mystical connection of “touching my soul,” once or twice, the truths I received have remained.

My soul is, and thus requires no growth. My soul is always with me, thus requires no seeking.

“As time goes on, we are subject to powers of deformation, from within us as well as without, that twist us into shapes alien to the shape of the soul,” wrote Parker Palmer in A Hidden Wholeness. (italics in quote added for emphasis)

“But the soul never loses its original form and never stops calling us back to our birthright integrity…we are invited to conform our lives to the shape of our own souls.”

Growing in and growing out helps reveal the shape of our own soul.

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Growing In and Growing Out, Not Up

growing in, growing out

When you hear someone say, “that person needs to grow up,” it doesn’t usually sound like a compliment or even an objective observation.

No, it sounds like a judgement.

They are not mature.

They have not grown up.

They are not a so-called grown up.

Growing up is the term we use in American culture to describe the process of maturing.

This is typically coupled with the aging process. One gets older year by year, and theoretically wiser.

There are so many examples and metaphors of how we equate up with better.

And better with superior.

It creates a sense of better than/less than.

But, if life is a process of maturing, then when is one ever grown up?

Don’t Grow Up

In some aboriginal cultures, one does not age just because there’s been a full rotation of the sun from their birth date.

One ages and celebrates a birthday party of sorts as a rite of passage or once they feel they’ve developed as a person or increased their mastery. Often specifically related to their vocation and role in the tribe.

This sounds more like how Buddhist’s ascend levels of enlightenment over the course of many lives. The ultimate level, where they have finished maturing, is liberation from the cycle of rebirth and death, what we commonly refer to as nirvana.

How do they grow up, er, ascend?

By following the Noble Eight-fold Path each lifetime.

How do they follow the path?

My guess: by growing in and growing out, not by growing up.

Growing In

Growing in, we come into integrity with ourselves.

We gain knowledge and wisdom about who we are, who we have been and who we will become.

In Essential Spirituality, Dr. Roger Walsh describes the three parts of knowing oneself.

I imagine it as concentric circles:

  • The center circle, what’s deep within us, is our truest “self,” our soul.
  • The next circle is our inner self where our secrets, hopes and fears lie, as well as our beliefs and self-image.
  • The outside circle is our outer self, our surface emotions, habits and personality.

Through discernment, the process of obtaining spiritual direction and understanding, we regain a sense of knowing.

In seeking answers or clarity, we often look within through meditation and prayer. And we look without through discussion and study.

According to Walsh, we seek wisdom:

  • in nature
  • in silence and solitude
  • from the wise
  • in ourselves
  • from reflecting on the nature of life and of death

Discernment reminds me of research and experimentation. Testing a hypothesis, a current idea, to grow new understanding.

My discernment has presented itself in this way: as a learning journey, similar to the “personal legend” in Paulo Cohelo’s fable, The Alchemist, toward the next thing I need to learn about being.

Each journey may last a few months or a few years, yet has a cycle beginning and ending at the next learning journey.

Sometimes it directly relates to big life decisions, but often it’s the daily choices related to being in the world as it actually is.

As former First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt said, we decide “to accept the fact that [a person] must be what they are, life must be lived as it is and you cannot live at all if you do not learn to adapt yourself to your life as it happens to be.”

The end of Mary Oliver’s poem “To Begin With, the Sweet Grass” speaks to these journeys of growing in:

I have become older and, cherishing what I have learned, I have become younger.

And what do I risk to tell you this, which is all I know? Love yourself.  Then forget it.  Then, love the world.

Growing Out

Growing out, we come into integrity with the world.

As Oliver says, we love the world.

“I want to see myself at once at the center of the universe—influencing its course with every word, thought, and deed—and at the same time a minute instrument of the cosmos acting in harmony with others,” wrote Robert Greenleaf in his essay about “The Requirements of Responsibility.”

We can exist in this cohesive state of opposites that Robert Greenleaf describes.

Often, my learning journeys have required some amount of both growing in and growing out at the same time.

And yet, there seem to be cycles to growth that do require one lesson before another.

Or some self-awareness prior to participating in a greater collective state.

For instance, many believe in astrological periods of a Saturn Return, the ~28 years for Saturn to complete its orbit around the Sun coinciding with the time of our birth, relating to cycles of learning journeys.

Some native cultures believe that the first seven years of the cycle are about mother, the next seven about father, the next seven about self, the next seven about community.

Just as growing in connects closely to self, growing out connects closely to community.

We discern, we test and learn, how to love the world through the way we live our life and our choices, as well as the way we show up in it, the energy we are bringing forth through these choices and actions.

Only recently have my learning journeys shifted from having a deep focus on growing in toward an emerging focus on growing out.

With fewer experiences and far less study, I know less about this process.

I sense that just as growing in is more introverted and reflective, growing out is more outgoing and active.

As such, we can seek wisdom:

  • in nature through interacting, not observing
  • in exchange and engagement
  • from the wise
  • from fully living with others

We love the world through our full presence and through engagement in deep community, “a special sense of community that embraces not only every other human but other species and things, as well,” according to Thomas Moore in A Religion of One’s Own.

Photo Credit: Evan Cohan

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Guest Post: Listening to The Whole

listening to the whole

By Emily Light

While I was living in an ashram in Southern India, I spent much of my time sitting cross-legged: practicing pranayama, in meditation, listening to lectures on Indian Philosophy and to Swamiji’s talks, and eating meals.

When I wasn’t sitting I was practicing asana, hiking the mountains of upper Kodaikanal, or foraging for fruit, though the monkeys always seemed to get there before I did.

One day while coming down the mountain, I lowered my left foot to meet the earth and with no apparent misstep, twist, or torque, I felt an excruciating pain in my left knee.

I couldn’t bend it and was forced to hobble down the rest of the way with what felt like a pegleg.

I had to walk like that for days afterward.

Eventually the severity of the pain began to dissolve, but it never completely went away.

Living With Pain

When I returned to the states, I didn’t have health insurance, and when it became mandatory to get insurance, I had the catastrophic kind. Definitely not one with benefits to see a physical therapist.

I haven’t been able to hike with any amount of elevation gain because on the descent it was always trouble, and I’d be laid up not being able to walk properly for a couple of days or more.

Over the last few years, I’ve seen a handful of different types of practitioners: a chiropractor, a physical therapist, and an acupuncturist who specialized in sports medicine. I did all of my homework, trying this, trouble shooting that:

  • Was it my vastus medialis (one of the quadriceps muscles) not firing properly?
  • Was it weakness in my gluteus medius?
  • Tight tensor fascia latae?

At the end of an intense year, finally my physical therapist (whom I adore) recommended I get an MRI.

There I was a couple weeks later, laying as still as possible, getting my knee scanned.

If you’ve never gotten imaging like that, let me tell you, it’s really challenging to lay still, even for someone with a lot of mindfulness practice like myself!

When the results came back, everyone was surprised to see that I had fluid in my anterior tibia marrow. This can happen when there’s injury to the bone, but typically the body reabsorbs this fluid over the course of several months.

Why hadn’t mine?

Well, we weren’t sure.

The following months were spent doing lymph massage, elevation, castor oil and essential oils, with alternating hot and cold applications.

Every night, including almost every night while I was traveling and teaching in Thailand, I would spend a half hour or more with these therapies.

I also did fascia massages one to two times a day while my students were practicing savasana. Now you know what I was up to at the end of class!

After a couple of months, my knee had recovered.

I sat cross-legged for much of three days while I was in a yoga therapy training without pain.

While I need to condition my body to do big hikes, I’m now able to go down stairs and down hill without discomfort.

I’m over the moon!

Our Body Knows

The reason I’m writing isn’t to detail the history of my left knee, though I wanted you to know the significance of this injury in my life.

I’m writing because of something my physical therapist and I talked about, that helped me to shift my relationship with chronic injuries.

She told me that we all have our “spots” that flare up when there’s some sort of imbalance in the physical body, mentally or emotionally, and often these spots have been injured in the past.

But when they flare up, it doesn’t always equate with being re-injured.

It could be that when there’s emotional stress or upset, we’ll experience pain in that all too familiar area.

And what’s going on during these times is communication.

Our body is saying:

  • “Hey, there’s something important to pay attention to!”, or
  • “Something’s not quite right, it’s time to slow down and feel.”, or
  • “We’re doing all we can, but we got a cold, and sensation is more present right now.”

Rather than viewing the discomfort as an annoyance, we can learn to listen with appreciation for what our body’s trying to say to us.

I seem to learn this lesson over and over again.

Listening More

The inner voice that tells me to check in on a friend, only to learn that they’ve just gotten dumped.

That gut feeling to slow down as I’m approaching an intersection, right before a racing truck blows his stop sign, nearly hitting me.

The way that my heart feels when I just had a disagreement with my partner, which, I failed to navigate gracefully.

I know that my body and my heart are communicating with me all the time. And yours is as well.

I’m learning to listen more and more, and to allow myself to be guided by the wisdom that’s coursing throughout me.

The more I listen, the more clearly I can hear.

Emily Light is an active yogi and nutritionist in Portland, Ore., leading wellness retreats and workshops around the world and teaching classes at many local studios including Yoga Refuge, Yoga Bhoga and Yoga Space (that’s how Jules knows her). You can find her on Facebook and on Instagram.

Emily completed her first teacher training in 2008 and after a few years of teaching, was called to the motherland of yoga. It was there that she met one of her teachers, Swami Tureyananda. Emily spent a couple months immersed in deep practice, living at an ashram in Southern India, and studying yoga therapy with Swamiji. In May of 2015 she graduated from a two year yoga therapy training under Sarahjoy Marsh, completing her 500-hour certification through Yoga Alliance (E-RYT 500), and is certified through the International Association of Yoga Therapists (C-IAYT). Complementing her guidance in the art of yoga, Emily is a practicing Holistic Nutritionist, offering full spectrum support in finding a life of balance and harmony on all levels. She received her Bachelor’s of Science in Holistic Nutrition with a concentration in Herbal Medicine in 2006 and spent a growing season apprenticing with the herbalist, author and teacher, Matthew Wood.

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