Emergence and Other Plumbing Problems

***Emergence and Other Plumbing Problems***

May was for molting. Shedding every last scrap of paper, every relationship, every object, every place that didn’t belong to my becoming. I did not like this. I did not want this. When I wanted it to be different, I suffered.

So I kept showing up, like the diligent ass I am. I asked for help, which was gratefully received.

Which brought the inevitable realization (again): “Oh shit, life isn’t against me, it’s just teaching me how to edit (again).”

I listened for the next right action and did it, kind of like me writing this now. I should be pulling weeds, but no, this first, then that. Thanks, rain. There is an order to things, and my preferences are irrelevant to it. Weather talks too. Listen.

As Dogen says in the Genjokoan, when you’re out in the open ocean, it looks like a circle. It’s not really: our senses limit. What we can see holds clues to the vast motion of the whole ocean (even enough to navigate!) but what we see is not all of it. It’s enough to realize we are part of it, we are held by it.

When trust in that wavers, suffering slips in between the ripples. This is usually my first clue that I’ve wandered from trust. I feel paralyzed and can no longer listen for the next right action through the clench. Then the freeze deepens, and a stagnant cycle begins.

There is always a next right action. Sometimes it’s stillness. Non-action is sometimes the cleanest expression of our life force–we realize there is nothing to force and lots to notice. Most obstacles disappear in time. The broader system dissolves blockages if we soften the clench. The holy plumber is always on call, especially when there’s a flood about.

When it’s time to mop, mop. Mopping is very simple and we can all do it when not future-f*cking ourselves into catastrophe. Just mop.

It’s not the outer circumstances, it’s my response to them.

Repeat: It’s not the outer circumstances. It’s my response to them.

At least two of you will bring up the holocaust. Noted. Now you don’t need to.

I love that when I say things like this to clients, that it’s not the outer circumstances, and your response is your becoming, life then serves up a hot dish of, “Oh yeah? How about now?”

And at first I’m like, “I don’t wanna.”

And life is like, “That’s why.”

And the roots of my practice grow deeper.

The less I resist, the more ease comes. That seems obvious, no? I would like to add here, that people will often think you’re batshit crazy as you metabolize their deepest fears with aplomb. A lot of people won’t take it as, “Hey what’s your secret?”

But rather, “Holy shit you must be totally out of touch with reality because that’s a nightmare!”

When you’ve alchemized a lot of trauma to the point where it has flattened into biography, it sometimes disturbs people, what you can report from joy. Meh. Boundaries.

When I teach boundaries, my fundamental point is that we move away from what denies life toward what is more fully alive. NOT JUST WHAT FEELS GOOD BUT WHAT IS MORE FULLY ALIVE. Boundaries aren’t a negation, though “No” can be a very good place to start realizing differentiation. Yes, we’re moving away from something, so sure, that’s a loss. Let grief open the cocoon. Not your twitchy hands, but grief itself.

There’s no need to knock on closed doors. There are open doors a little farther down the hall. Always. Even if the hall looks dark. Get down on all fours if you feel wobbly. You’re fine. You’re needed. Keep going.

This is slippery when the closed doors are in my own mind–When I point my head toward loss instead of turning my whole body toward emergence and adjusting my position to where I am enveloped in love again.

When I feel the clench come on, I ask myself: “Where can I stand in relation to this person, place, thing, sensation and feel love?” Stand there. Are you backed up all the way into a stand of birches? Fine. That’s the spot for this moment. Touch them. They love the feel of your cheek.

Where can I stand in this moment to be enveloped in love? That feels very different from “holding a boundary”. The only relationship it’s seeking to shift is the one between me and my life force.

Where’s the hairball in my pipe keeping me from that free flow? If I say, “But that’s my hair, that’s ME! Those are precious hairs from MY HEAD! You can’t touch that hairball!” Well then, the holy plumber is not going to stop by because it’s hard to work with toddlers around.

If I can humble myself enough to say, “Yep, that came from my head. That was mine once. That hair looked all good and shiny and pretty and went ping in the sunlight, but I don’t need it anymore and now it’s just blocking the flow. I’m ready to release it.” Then the holy plumber will get to work, spit spot and there you are, quenched and flowing. When this is my sincere request, the result is often this immediate.

We have all manner of trauma responses/habits/hairballs in the pipe. They share our DNA, but they are no longer us. Can we withstand being engulfed in not knowing quite who we are or who we’re becoming long enough to emerge in good form, without pushing pulling and putting our energy on that emergence? Are we going to require forceps and vacuums, or do we trust our body already knows how to do this? Can we not slash open the chrysalis and righteously declare, “See, I told you there was nothing in there but goo!” Can we remove all distraction and dishonesty and attend with humility to the task at hand? That’s all we have to do. Just this.

Can we?

Can you?

Can I?

If you’d like support in this process, I’m a pretty handy plumber’s assistant. My Pocket Coaching program (it happens mostly via What’s App) is open again for June. DM for details.

Now to the weeds, give beauty room to grow.

Erotic Ladies of an Uncertain Age

What is a “Karen” but a woman who’s stopped touching her p*ssy? A woman whose stagnant eros erupts as rage?

Cut the thinning hair, cover the jiggly arms, and for God’s sake leave that pussy alone. It’s no longer fully alive, like you! Shame on you for subjecting us to your wrinkly face, soft belly, and arm waddles. Nobody wants to see that. You’re embarrassing yourself. Let him close his eyes the whole time he makes love to you, it’s only fair. Embodying eros in midlife form just isn’t appropriate. What are you–French? Don’t wear that thing that makes you feel like you’re at a party where people might skate. You look like a bag lady who lost her cart. Stake no claim in eros though your heart still beats, your lungs still breathe and your pussy still throbs. Doesn’t it?

Those are the kind of thoughts that birth a “Karen”, purveyor of dry brushfire. Does it come from the culture? Sure. But we decide how intimately we collude with that narrative, how wide it manspreads in our minds.

We can learn to hold boundaries within our own minds. Those are ninja-level boundaries and not without risk. No thank you, culture, I’m not interested in that story. Will we get pushback? Sure. And we can take that bullshit as nourishment like a peony does. So much is optional. Not death tho. That’s the real bit here. That’s what this whole thing is about, underneath. Trying death on. Who wore it best? Can you dance in it? Can you sit? Can you breathe? I like this midlife cut, it has stretch in it.

I’ve been leaning into the phrase “middle-aged lady” lately. I am also “of a certain age”, which is certainly 48. I’ve noticed people go out of their way to avoid being a “middle-aged lady”. Why? The middle way is a great path to walk. In the middle of those twin portals–birth and death–is ripe treasure that I’m not about to squander. I live in the middle of a lit paradoxical field. I have my full permission to be a middle-aged lady, exactly as I am.

I haven’t welcomed menopause yet (Shatavari!). From what I’ve heard, it has a way of clearing the field. I hope my hot flashes will bring with them a blaze that cleanses the stagnant bits of maiden left in me. Behold the crone and her earth magic. Womb writ new in full emptiness.

How much of middle aged lady misery comes from clinging to the maiden bits because there is no valued new identity culturally available? I mean, clinging to any identity just brings suffering, but still…

How do we meet that absence? By craving the facial paralysis of Botox? Does it really muffle the whisper of skull? I can’t think of a more literal refusal or our full expression. I love the lines that reach from my eyes all the way down to the middle of my cheeks when I’m really happy. No harm no foul if you’re into it. I think our bodies should express our essence just as we see fit.

But in our culture it’s go maiden or go home. Be young or stfu.

So how to live that crone life lit?

I find the first sticky bit is needing to be an object of desire. What if desire requires no object? What if we allow desire to just be the force of nature it is?

Can I just feel the wind in my hair, or do I need someone to notice me feeling the wind in my hair and put me in their spank bank for later to recognize eros in all that sensation?

When we’re tangled in the effort of pushing, pulling, and putting our desire on something or somewhere, we lose our own voice and the luminous perfection of an eggshell. They are not separate. Delight in both of those things flows with ease from embodied awareness. When we’re performing instead of experiencing eros, we lose touch with ordinary joy.

When I let go of being an object of desire and allow desire itself to penetrate me freely, I am restored to radiance. I am it and it is me, like moon and moonlight. I see the erotic perfection in an eggshell is not separate from the perfection of my pussy. Life force energy coalesced into perfect form. Each is necessary, just as it is. If it wasn’t, it wouldn’t be here.

My erotic life and my sexual life are related though not the same. They feed each other. Sexual confidence in middle age goes against so much conditioning. I don’t dismiss that, I notice it until it scampers off. I let it draw me deeper into the miracle of my body. Deeper into the mystery of sharing my body with another. The smells, the aches, the new softness of all of it. I could bemoan not “keeping it tight”, or I could revel in my suppleness. I think it’s pretty clear which one leads to orgasm, though that’s not the goal. There is no goal. There is no winning, just more playing.

Just this, just now. Just a middle aged white lady, being the be: wild heart, wet pussy, wind in hair.

You have your permission.

Where Do You Belong?

Right where you are. Don’t feel it yet? Drop deeper out of your head and into your feet. What do you smell? That’s in you now, just by smelling it. Every spore in your every pore. You belong to it. We belong to each other.

I’m often struck by how often people feel like they don’t belong and how this story that people tell themselves really cuts them a lot of nasty slack around how they treat themselves and others.

To feel like I don’t belong means turning away from life and then blaming life itself, the world, my parents, the tree that covered my car in pollen again and, how about Russia too–for how terrible I feel. This becomes most poisonous when that separateness becomes specialness. If you saw what I saw…If you went through what I went through…You have no idea…

We spend so much of our lives protecting, rather than metabolizing, our wounds. We build identity like walls around the holes inside us so we don’t fall in. The fortress of victimhood is not a safe place, it just has thick walls. It’s good to build some doors in there. It sucks to have to scale those walls every time we need food. Fortunately, no matter the builder, the fortress of victimhood is not a closed system.

As long as I’m alive, I belong.

I’m embodied in the dynamic stability of where I am right now, whether I like it or not.

I’m impacted and impacting.

The less responsibility I take for this relationship to all my relations, the more I suffer. The more I suffer, the more I want to put it out of me and throw it at someone “out there”. This means I’m only living from a portion of myself, the rest I am deliberately throwing away, hoping someone will love the parts of me that I can’t. Without those parts I lose structural integrity. This brings not connection, but collapse.

Eventually, people grew weary of being pelted with my orphaned shards. I lost so many people in my life behaving this way (and with such self-righteousness!). Did rough things happen? They sure did. Did I believe that was all that could happen? I sure did. I made sure that what happened aligned with my story of what could happen. Until I didn’t.

Individual relationships can be fragile, but the field of belonging is robust. When I refuse my own integrity, when I keep slinging orphaned shards, I have trouble with boundaries, with nervous system regulation, with intimacy. I am out of my own skin and from that dislocated place I have limited access to my life force. It leaks out all over the place, making a mess. I squander the resources given me to do what I’m here to do. I become paralyzed in my expression, holding back, playing small, living scarce. I am robbing the whole ecosystem of the part I am here to play in it. I am lost to myself and the world is absent me. The ripples of those losses add up quick.

Every noticed breath regains.

Just to breathe is to be in relationship. It’s easy to see that the ground is teeming with life, but so is the air. We have such trouble not believing what we won’t see. We create such trouble not believing what we won’t see. We have an impact with the generosity and consumption of our every breath. One less spore hits the ground, one more whiff of carbon dioxide for that maple leaf. We belong to the whole system and remain specific af.

Our specificity is discovered in relationship. We learn who we are and what is ours to do. Through all our relations we learn how we are the same and how we are different. By metabolizing this friction and allowing it to shape us, we fit perfectly. We begin to see our assignment clearly. Our place in the garden. I learn what kind of flower I am and bloom like that. I don’t need a purpose or goals any more than a peony does. I am just this human. A peony is just a peony. I do what is mine to do as only I can. I nap when needed. I am not lazy. I am at ease. Big difference.

I hope it’s clear how simple this is, and how essential it is to first come out from behind the fortress walls and build a healthy compost pile with every rotting thing so that vital nourishment may be restored. Blame goes into the compost. Resentment goes into the compost. Boundaries emerge easy as heat does out of all that deep and mundane alchemy. The difference between what is dead and what is alive becomes clear. What is dead serves new life. Happy Easter.

Exiting the fortress on your own two miraculous feet is always an option. If you would like support in doing this, DM me. There is a half-day Boundaries and Belonging session next Saturday and new F*ck Suffering Group starting next Tuesday. They’re not free but you can be.

Let’s Talk About Middle-Aged Online Dating

One useful thing I learned over my last two rounds of app dating is this: A man who wears sunglasses in his main pic is avoidant 100% of the time. Give it about 10 messages and it’ll be clear. You can also give it a year–the data comes out the same. I don’t have a giant sample size, but big enough. Do with this data what you will.

I’m 48–a middle-aged woman–and by all accounts I should really hate online dating. It should make me feel terrible about myself, less than human, disenchanted with humans. I would have had to feel pretty terrible about myself already for this to be the case. Like all of our social media tools, feeling victimized by them seems a dishonest position. Yes, they’re manipulating our attention. Exercise discernment.

My mother suggested I leave Maine and move back to Philly where the numbers would be better. I told her I only want one and was far more likely to be resonant with someone who loves Maine as much as I do.

This time, I added in my bio, “What’s your attachment style?” I figured some self-awareness around this icebreaker would be a good way to vet. It was. When they didn’t know I offered a link to this NPR quiz. https://www.npr.org/…/whats-your-attachment-style-quiz

No one said no to taking it and sharing their results. This surprised and delighted me. It led to some interesting conversations about the value of such a metric, how it changes, and how we’ve been and how we’d like to be. It was heartening. There were also jokes. It opened the field to vulnerability from the start. And why not? Nothing squashes pleasure like defense. And why not meet each online dating encounter from a place of pleasure?

Also tho, in the app-based stage of a connection, I don’t give anyone the “benefit of the doubt.” What is that anyway? If I have doubt about someone in the space of ten text messages, there is unlikely to be benefit in continuing. There’s mutual curiosity or there’s not. There’s openness and play or there’s not. By the time we’re 20 messages in, there’s a plan to meet. I have lots of wonderful online friends. I’m looking for irl smells.

This has made the whole enterprise feel like an adult round of duck duck goose. Not everyone was up for play. Some people really see online dating as more of a job interview. Some people feel really resigned about the whole thing. Some people really hate their lives. Some people tell jokes about murdering their wives. That was just one guy, but still…

I had just one full yes right up my midline this time. He was way outside my usual preferences. He is an unvaxxed, gun-owning, libertarian who listens with actual interest to Tucker Carlson and has only the vaguest notion of who Beyoncé is. His love language is, “Underpromise and overdeliver.”

Instead of clutching my delicate liberal pearls, I found this polarity irresistibly hot. When he gave me a hands-on archery lesson, I found it even hotter. Preferences! They really do swap surprise for suffering.

He is those seemingly unaligned things. He is also open, present, comfortable in his skin, has a deep secular spiritual life including being expert in human design (?!), plays guitar and sings, has mad skills, and I feel seen and cherished. I’m received how I receive. I’m available for that.

Will it last?
Does it matter?
What is happening?

I only ever ask that question when I mean “What WILL happen?” When I just can’t abide the uncertainty. What IS actually happening in this moment is usually pretty clear. Clarity is received, not grasped at. And even more than that–it’s fun to be surprised by what emerges. Like really fun, if that’s how you’re turned.

Emotional investment is in this moment. Relationship is in this moment. We can agree to have more moments, but everything else is wide open. I welcome this deep play.

So yeah, I’m basically just writing this today to celebrate all the replenishing pleasure in my glorious middle aged white lady life as I hum along between the portals of birth and death and find this spot drenched. Do the swiping! Do the swiping! It’s just people, just like you.

I’m also letting you know I’m holding a Boundaries and Belonging session on Saturday April 23rd which is a half-day where we pick up a whole lot of litter from your field so you can have a clearer view of what belongs there and what does not. It’s fun to be surprised by what emerges there too, even along the wet cave wall.

There’s also a new 3 month F*ck Suffering group starting on 4/26. DM for more…or email hi@reihance.com

Portals of Potent Surprise

Is it a crisis, or a portal of potent surprise? Loss opens. Let it. When the losses have been lost and your call echoes in the empty cup, something will come to fill it. Nature doesn’t abhor a vacuum. She loves it, she comes to fill it everytime you empty it. She is a very good hostess.

You find the portal of potent surprise too scary? Are you worried there are monsters in there? What comes from avoiding it is much scarier. Ghouls breed in neglected places.

Trust that people will come and go according the homing signal you transmit. Follow resonance. When you follow resonance you won’t have to state a boundary because you’re living it. It has the sillage of good perfume. It lingers after you’ve gone, without ever overwhelming. Like that perfume, you don’t have to say a word.

What does a peony say? It doesn’t scream. It opens. Bees come. Faces come. Ants come at just the time they’re needed. Is the transmission chemical? What is it made of? Who cares. It’s the transmission. Trust your transmission.

What belongs with you stays with you. What doesn’t is a burden. Be who you are, sincerely and responsibly, and whatever doesn’t belong with you will fall from your field. Like Magic. Just like magic, actually. As Mary Poppins said, “Spit spot.”

If it’s stagnant, clinging makes it so. If it’s a crisis, clinging makes it so. A crisis is being in fine moist loam screaming to remain a seed. The cotyledon is lying in wait for causes and conditions to align. The seed is a waiting room, poised to unfurl. A plant can’t be other than it is, but the seed has to open first. Painful things can be welcomed with the generosity their inevitability calls for. Otherwise, it’s violence.

There are still, quiet moments in that emptiness between. The sound of your heartbeat echoing in the cup amid the absence of familiar sounds. The absence also echoes. Our ideas about emptiness are so confused, like it’s something to be avoided, like the empty places within us need to be stuffed with something stat, rather than naturally filled in good time. Addiction is no balm. Neither is taking what isn’t given or any other greedy pull.

Pulling for validation instead of opening to connection is keeping you from embodying your boundaries. It’s keeping you in your head and out of your skin. Do you wonder why you’re in this relationship pattern again? Do you wonder why you have that kind of client again? Do you wonder why you are getting the same response you got the last time? That’s why. You’re available for disrespect. And part of what you’re transmitting is that you’re available for disrespect. No matter your words, the fragrance lingers.

Standing in the portal of potent surprise can bring nausea, of the existential variety. The vertigo tug. Luckily, the portal is groundless. There’s nowhere to go splat. Let yourself be tugged between the poles. Notice how this feels.

Notice everything. Notice everyone. Remain receptive and embodied. Sometimes you’ll step into the portal and sometimes surprise party guests step through. Your next teacher might be the weirdo fondling broccoli with too much mayonnaise in their cart. Treat everyone with reverence. Everyone is your teacher now, especially the more than human world. There is nothing to defend. Nothing to hold on to. There’s so much delight here. So much ordinary joy.

What was constructed has collapsed and the reformation is not yet complete. It’s emerging. Listen for snips. Gather niblets. It’s a treasure hunt and the map is written on your body in an ink you can’t yet see. Patience.

When do you move and when do you wait?

What does life say about it?

Does the floor need to be swept?

Do the plants need to be watered?

Does the dog need to be fed?

Is the light calling you outside?

Are you listening with your skin to every nuance?

If not, what’s muffling the call?

What’s muting your response?

This really cuts down on blame and resentment and opens up a lot more love. Allow alliances to reshuffle at will. Leave the gate open and give everyone ample room to go, including you.

Move when you are moved. Step into the heart of things without fear. Take another breath and then another step. Slow. Get out of the stroller and walk on your own two miraculous feet. You are not a baby. Feel each foot bone meet the floor in slow and perfect order.

Stand at this point of space and time wholeheartedly.

Let every shadow pass from your heart.

Let your little light shine until it’s not so little.

Everything is fresh and new.

Boundaries and Belonging is tomorrow morning at 10am. DM to join.

Belonging is Our Birthright

It’s been a really challenging couple of weeks. Every time I thought I’d opened, I took a deep breath and opened wider. I also learned when to close. I’ve become a better asshole, basically.

It’s been a tender time, where I’ve learned intimately all the places I’m held. I’ve softened into this trust in a way that is new for me. I’m standing in a place I’ve never stood before. It’s scary and it’s not easy, but there is so much ease enveloping it. I hope that makes sense. It’s not for the mind, but a felt sense in my body. There is trust enveloping the fear. And so much love.

I got this message from a client yesterday, that he gave me permission to share with you. It came right on time, as things do.

If you’re looking for this kind of support, DM me for a one-on-one, or the F*ck Suffering group. Or you can go right to my website www.reihance.com The start for the group has been pushed back to March 1 while I give myself some space to grieve.

Working with others really does help me realize in my bones that we’re all in this together. We’re never alone. Belonging is our birthright.

Here’s part of Daniel’s message:

“It’s like a seed was planted and something very beautiful has began to grow. I’m sure you speak with many people and don’t remember every detail of our talk but one of the main points you brought up for me was to listen. I have taken that and ran with it. Lately, I find myself wanting to speak only if it improves the silence. I’ve really began to put into practice listening to my partner, loved ones, my manager etc. without that selfish, bad habit of preparing my responses based on my own feelings.

Since I’ve put my meditation first, I find myself relinquishing all control. Life is fucking messy, complicated, constantly evolving, and it will always remain that way.

I feel one follows the same rules for meditation as one would when experiencing psychedelics. A taboo statement I’m sure but it definitely feels that way. I sit with myself as I am allowing all thoughts to flow through me without any control or judgement. I do not resist. I come innocently to the practice not forcing or “trying” to have an experience.

The only difference of course and most rewarding thing is it is teaching a sober, clear mind. Resistance only brings suffering & my god, it’s like a light has turned on. I feel like Dorothy returning from Oz. We all have the power within us. It just takes one particular journey for each individual to believe in it.

While I’m still learning & by all means am no master of this, it has created a yearning to continue to dive deeper and return home to myself. I feel you’ve really helped me shape a very important focus and for that I thank you immensely.”

–Daniel LA, CA

Even though there’s lots of loss around here over the past week, there is also so much to be grateful for, so much to love.

Blame, Boundaries, and Belonging

When I blame someone, I get curious:

1. Was I asking someone to love a part of me that I don’t?

2. Was I afraid that if I held a boundary and didn’t abandon myself that there would be loss?

3. Am I seeing the situation as “abandon yourself or be abandoned”?

That’s one of the more painful false dichotomies, over time.

If I’m pushing blame around on my plate, I’ve moved out of compassion.

If I’m self-abandoning instead of holding a boundary, I’ve moved out of self-compassion, which is the prerequisite for sincere compassionate action toward others.

If I’m blaming anyone for anything (including in the public sphere—try it!) I’ve left my fundamental trust in all-that-is behind. I’ve forgotten (just for a moment!) that I’m held by life itself, that we all are.

I’ve forgotten that clinging and aversion are the root of suffering. Pain is inevitable and suffering is a choice.

I can return to being held at any time, just like Dorothy only ever had to click her heels.

Eating the blame is not taking the blame. The first metabolizes, it nourishes if I take it all the way in and let it break down into its rich components in my very own belly.

Taking the blame is holding and hoarding and cultivating it, allowing the atonal hum of resentment to reverberate through every part of my field.

That’s not such a great option.

If my field is full of resentment, there’s no place for love to grow. I have to do some weeding. Dandelions too, are nutritious.

Every emptying leads to a filling, even if I can’t see it yet. The tide comes in. The tide goes out. Twice a day. Invisible forces made visible.

The tides teach me to trust what I can’t see. They trust me to metabolize blame, wherever I see it. The less I try to do this, the better. I can stand very still in the sand and listen to what I can’t see, be moved by what I don’t entirely understand.

When the tide goes out, all manner of life is revealed on the shore.

Want to practice this with me? Msg me to join the Fuck Suffering group, next one starts 2/15.

My BF and I Had a Fight Yesterday and Here is that Practice

I can show you this part of me. This part that yearns. This part that yearns to be seen whole. The part that yearns to be love and be just as I am. These things are not mutually exclusive. They amplify each other.

I won’t ask you to love a part of me that I won’t. I can promise this. I won’t require you to extract my courage, but to witness it as an emergent property of my much bigger trust, not just in you, but in everything. In the creaminess of white beans made in the slow cooker and the coming blizzard. Those things are also shaped by so much more than I can see.

We all made those beans together–the whole system. The bird that shit in the soil to feed the beans that feed us. The microbes that coaxed the roots open to nourishment. The farmer who harvested. The truck driver that brought them to the store. The people that built the highway. The person that invented the machine that bagged them and the person who fixed it. The beans come through time and space into this crockpot. We are also this miraculous.

Under my deepest fear is my deepest yearning. My fear is protecting the yearning and keeping the thought in place: this yearning can’t be met. I can’t have it. I can’t hold it. The fear keeps everything my mind believes in place so I can keep being exactly as I am, justified in my fear, entrenched in this identity. When I think I have to win, when I’m afraid that love is scarce, please remind me, all of you.

How can we be better people, for ourselves, for each other and for the world? Is that not somewhere buried in our deepest yearning–that generosity? That intimacy?

We live in a culture that would have us feel separate and like we are competing in a game that has winners and losers and are we clearly indoctrinated into wanting to be on the better side, the “winning” side. That’s Game A. It means we need someone to lose and that won’t be us. No way. No matter what it takes, we’ll achieve those goals and reign triumphant, amirite?

But what if we knew that the only objective of the game was to keep playing? The ordinary joy of that. The love. That’s Game B. How can we shift our lens from Game A to Game B first with our most intimate thoughts? I don’t need my yearning to obtain something. I need to allow it to run free. To allow it to free me. I allow it to blow me open to the world and all that is emerging in it in this moment, right now, just as it is. Embedded in place, encountering people. There is no person, place, or thing that I can hold on to, including my own body. I can only cherish what’s here. I can also cherish the way it ripples out into all the other forces I can’t, from here, perceive. I receive them anyway. I meet them right here. I can make wind with my hands. I am that powerful.

I’m emerging alongside the weather, rather than grabbing and needing to turn the process of life itself into a series of object-anchors so I can remove myself from the intimacy of not-knowing. Can I love this person in front of me as he is? Can I love this aging skin I’m in as it is? Can I love this impending blizzard as it is?

This moment is where I am embedded and embodied. It’s where I belong. How welcoming and permeable can I be to all that is here, regardless of my preferences? Could I be of better use if I emerged like that, from that? Well, duh. Will I always do it? Of course not. You can’t keep playing the game if you keep trying to play it perfectly.  

How much of how we perceive the human condition comes from how we’ve internalized the myth of Game A? What if the human condition were much vaster and softer and more ecological? What if we didn’t privilege our consciousness over that of a bee? What if we de-centered ourselves and listened like whales to the space we’re in rather than the space where we used to be or the place we’d like to be, surrounded by the things we’d like to have?

Would that global intimacy be bearable? Would it be excruciatingly erotic? I find Thich Nhat Hanh’s sense of interbeing fundamentally erotic. Interpenetration is just what it sounds like: the ecology of erotic emergence. Every pore a portal. Every petal, ditto. Devouring and devoured. Can I let the world fuck me open like a peony? Can I be that intimate with everything? Can I welcome the world with that much generosity? Be that fearlessly fragrant?

Game A is embedded in me. I embody it every time I spin out into comparison, control and complaint. Every time I believe I have to take something in order to have it. Every time I believe there isn’t enough.

Every time the part of me that trusts emergence, has total confidence in emergence turns away from that fundamental truth and clenches in jealousy, insecurity, greed.

What’s the benefit of my practice? What’s the benefit of community? Noticing. Having people reflect for me the part of myself that I’m losing to Game A, in myself, in relationship, and as a systemic element in the broader ecology. To remember, as Ram Dass said, “We’re all just walking each other home.”

We all lose Game A. We are all actively losing in Game A. There is something so much more ordinary and miraculous emerging in each of us, for all of us. We can’t play our best until we notice every last Game A routine that we circulate and carry. We all have this option. We all have this responsibility.

Every complication is an invitation to deeper intimacy.

In our own bodies, the bodies we touch, and the whole big body of the world.

I’m clumsy AF and wholeheartedly committed. How about you?

If you’re interested in the F*ck Suffering practice group, DM me. We run the whole range, together.

How to Open When You Want to Close

To open when you want to close is to let things your mind makes hard rest softly in your body. Your body opens when it’s time to open.

You dilate, and if your mind impedes this sweet effacing, you cramp. You harden around a point in space and time the way muscles cling to a stabbing blade. This is how trauma embeds in the body. It takes more conscious effort to pull it out than it took to put it in.

When you soften, fewer things land like a stab—they have a chance to land like a poke in the belly of the Pillsbury dough boy.

To open when you want to close is to crawl into the lap of the world like a grandmother and breathe with all beings through her. The pace and scent of your breath are your signature. You are signing up for the work that is yours to do. What is the thing that no one can do quite like you can? What summons you at 3:33 in the morning? Do you remember? That’s way more helpful than thinking you know.

To open when you want to close, love people as they are, including you. You can’t know compassion until you surrender control. A crow doesn’t do what a fern does. There is no surer poison than comparison. Metabolize it. Find the medicine there. To open when you want to close, listen like whale, with your whole skin enveloped in home. Receive each subtle homing signal with every open pore. Feel who is beside you, humming even in silence.

To open when you want to close: soften, soften, soften.

Safety Kills Intimacy

I asked the question last week, “Do you want safety or intimacy?” Most of you wanted both. Good luck with that.

I think these notions are often confused, much to the diminishment of eros.

We starve for intimacy, even as we push it away in pursuit of safety.

The pursuit of safety is an attempt to make external circumstances “just so” for our comfort. Intimacy requires risk. All true things do, as they’re always changing. We crave the stillpoint, but as soon as it comes, it’s on its way to becoming something else.

A peony in full, glorious bloom soon drops its first petal and begins another cycle of renewal. The peony doesn’t clench and cling. It would only limit the renewal already begun again at the point of ripeness. We tend not to respect this cycle in our relationships. We bring the capitalist ideas of limitless growth and consumption to our most intimate spaces.

We reject the ecology of erotic emergence, but it hasn’t gone anywhere–we ourselves have turned away from it. We ourselves have brought about our own starvation. We only have to turn back toward the whole of ecology of which we are a part and welcome the full energetic range of life without arrogance or self-loathing.

When we realize our role as co-creator and bring self-compassion to every breath, trust and intimacy emerge naturally. So does joy.

Intimacy asks us, “How willing are you to be fully alive?” Turning away from this question, we instead ask people to validate us and demand they behave in all manner of ways to provide certainty, no matter the deadening. Pursuit of safety is asking the world and the beings in it to remain the same. I hope you can see the absurdity of this demand. The peony laughs, her petals scatter.

We demand to be kept from the edges of our fear, so our fear stays in place. When we pursue safety we are asking others to reiterate our fear. This leads to stagnation. Intimacy moves. Intimacy is fully alive. Intimacy trusts and so is fearless. Trust is our capacity to meet the world just as it is, whatever it is in any particular moment. We trust that since we’re still here, we’re held by life. We trust that whatever causes and conditions life is presenting now are ours to meet, intimately, in all their rich flux. The petals open, the petals drop. The fragrance persists.

Our capacity to trust brings stability. Stability is not coming from outside, it comes from within and welcomes the world. Trusting that you can metabolize whatever comes is the only true stability. Trust demonstrates our willingness to be fully alive. Ours. Each of us, together.

There is nothing for anyone else to prove to you about trust. Trust is yours to share, not to demand.This notion that someone must prove they can be trusted before we can open is really limiting. It’s also manipulative. It allows no space for that person to just be who they are. The “prove it” position asks for their every move to be devoted to establishing your comfort. You are asking them to open you, instead of you having the confidence to show up open and welcome the truth. The arms-crossed and tight-lipped “prove it” position doesn’t invite much, it only demands. Where is the bottom of the burden of proof? What would be enough for you? Who wants to take on that burden? Who wants to kiss that tight little mouth? We are received as we receive.

If we are skillful in setting boundaries with people who turn out not to be trustworthy, we don’t have to stop and clench in the “prove it!” position when relating to anything, be it a peony or a person. We can put our face right in and inhale deeply. To demand proof ahead of relationship is to thwart relating from the first instance. I see so much of this on dating apps and the way conversations move on those platforms. And then people blame the apps, like blaming a hammer for hitting your thumb. It’s not the tool, it’s the skill with which you use it.

In my experience, those who are keen to tell you they are trustworthy are those who most often aren’t. Sincerity permeates. It requires no adornment.

I don’t say any of this lightly. I say this as a veteran of two abusive relationships who had to do a lot of letting go of old stories in order to meet the present as it is, without historical overlay. For a long time I thought I had a fear of intimacy. What I actually had was a deep desire for intimacy and a terror of being hurt again. I had to move toward one and away from the other. I had to commit to that choice and take full responsibility for it.

I had to learn how to set boundaries, so I could live in trust and intimacy with all that is. Boundaries allow us to hold ourselves as mature adults rather than foisting off the things we don’t like about ourselves to another in a ragged game of hot potato. Only when I held those hot, sharp shards of me in my own warm hands, could I witness them and the stories they stepped out of, like the fictional characters they were. Once witnessed, they were free to go.

What shifted for me? I stopped asking people to hold the parts of myself that I couldn’t and wouldn’t love. I learned to be with the discomfort of holding them myself, of witnessing what I deemed unlovable about me, the parts of me that I devalued.

When we ask people to hold those parts of ourselves that we can’t and won’t, when we make this a prerequisite for trust, we kill intimacy. When we know how to set a clean, loving boundary, we are able to go deeper at a pace that honors our edges and keeps us growing past them. We are able to titrate our trauma and be witnessed as we do. When we practice boundaries and self-compassion, we invite those in relationship with us to do the same. This opens the field to deepest intimacy.

Safety is avoidance of risk. Intimacy is meeting risk with open arms. Trust is our stability in that flux, the liminal flux of not one, not two. There is always the risk of abandonment and the joy of union available when we are willing to come together and move apart, fearlessly.

Safety is knowing.

Intimacy is not-knowing.

Trust is your becoming.

Balance is Bullshit

By the time you’re feeling in balance, you’re already ripening into something else. Like the tempered bullshit I spread out all over my garden, both balance and bullshit are always already giving way to new growth.

Balance is of the moment. When it arrives, I love it. When it departs, I love it.

Balance emerges from the reversals, like you.

My capacity to welcome and metabolize whatever comes, to absorb what nourishes and shit out the rest, is my lifetime practice.

Emerging Weird

Hello, I’m new here.

I repeat myself a lot lately. I still can’t remember what I’ve said and what I’ve only thought. A year of solitude really showed me just how much my thoughts shape my reality, whether spoken like a spell or not. I could conjure all manner of states, alone in my room. I have developed an enthusiasm for the sound of my own voice which I should probably rein in a bit.

How about you?

What’s your new weirdness?

How’s your foal wobble showing up?

The upside of this messy rebirth is the freshness of even the most fleeting connection; my face in a wild rose, the new, expanded coffee shop around the corner, full of unmasked faces talking, sipping, smiling. So many radiant faces to bask in.

I’m delighted as a puppy who might pee on the floor. Every moment of eye contact runs through me like a thunderbolt. Some people seem put off by this. I’m emerging weird.

I’m meeting myself, as I’m reintroduced to society. I’ve found myself emerging in conjunction with a new relationship, so the newness feels even newer, and even more richly uncertain. I’m meeting him and myself at the same time. We are a little system, each of our selves an emergent property in the ecosystem of ‘together’. I am tender. I am sweet. I feel innocent in a way I don’t ever remember feeling. This is not who I was. She was lost to Covid.

After about 6 months of solo quarantine, running myself through the full human spectrum of feels over and over again, all by myself, I didn’t have it in me to believe my thoughts anymore. Every loop of thought felt like a solo show. The audience was no longer buying it.

When my Vito the Sweeto died last January and there was no touch, no hugs available in my grief, it finished me off.

Around the day Vito died, my sister conceived. This was every spiritual trope I’ve ever heard writ intimate. Birth and death were the same. They feed each other all the time. They nourished me too. What could I possibly still be afraid of?

In February, I went on a night hike in the forest and cried for hours into the biggest white birch I could find. All the losses of the year fell into her and tumbled down into her roots, rose up and out of her branches. I gave her all of it until our quiet winter pulses matched. It was the most intimate touch I’d had in 11 months. I was completely held.

When Vito died, lots of people said, “Stay busy.” Why do we suggest this to grieving people? It’s really the worst advice. I stayed busy like a caterpillar, melting. I kissed all my monsters right on their gooey mouths until they felt loved enough to leave.

I found my bones and found that what I put back on them was entirely optional.

What am I going to carry forward? Nothing but a sense of discovery. I was prepared to be surprised by myself, prepared to emerge from this moment rather than the last one or the next. Just this. Just as it is.

I had conversations with mushrooms. They were like, “Respect the dark, it’s what everything emerges from. Most of life happens where you can’t see. When was the last time you saw your own heart? But you know it’s there, amirite? Trust the dark like that. Don’t over think it.” It was good advice. Mushrooms are wise.

My sense of being an emergent property of the broader ecology rather than a separate self seems irreversible. I can’t sustain the illusion of separation and really, why would I bother? It’s the root of all suffering.

Lately, my foundational belief is Ram Dass’s, “We’re all just walking each other home.” There’s no space for arrogance in that and plenty for confidence. We walk with not just the human each other, but the more than human world. We are all in this together. Every bee, every peony and me. Family.

I can’t measure what the peonies have taught me. They are unabashedly, fragrantly and floridly themselves. They can’t show up otherwise. From the first red shoots that pop from the empty garden in early spring, they grow relentlessly, intimately summoning the ants they need to crawl all over their fat buds in order to open. Then they blossom and get real sloppy. The herbaceous varieties can barely keep their heads up. I have to provide a metal exoskeleton for them of they’ll flop right over into the dirt. They are more than they can handle. Cut some away and they right themselves. They are generous. They are too much and just right. They are definitely my kin.

Now rest. Now sprout. Now leaf. Now bud. Now blossom. Now shed. Now replenish. Now rest. Do this next. Just this. This is how you emerge. Okay. I can do that. Thanks, peonies. The next right thing is always clear, even as the why is uncertain.

When I paddle out, the ocean looks like a circle. The ocean is not really a circle. I trust this without proof. I’ve only ever really seen the whole ocean on a map. I will never see all of it at once. It reveals itself with each stroke, each felt bob of my little plastic boat.

Hello, I’m new here.

I just keep showing up, wet-winged and enthusiastic. Can I stay in beginner’s mind and not try to establish a self again? Can I tolerate innocence? I don’t know. I don’t need to. It’s way easier to love not-knowing, even when it’s uncomfortable, than to flail about grabbing at straws. I’m developing a real kinky love of discomfort. It’s most erotic.

Which is to say, I’m just going to keep emerging weird. You?

No Grabbing

My practice has shifted far away from the NorCal days of, “I’m pretty sure that’s not your spirit on my chin, can you grab me a tissue? Oh no, totally, I’ve been fully illuminated by your wand of light, thanks!”

I’ve been practicing celibacy this year. Why? I wanted to be responsible for my heart. I noticed I’d been handing it off like a relay baton. “Will you please hold this sloppy thing? It’s making a fucking mess.”

I didn’t expect my year of celibacy to be the most erotic of my life.

Taking the craving for another person off the table, I’ve been able to move into deeper intimacy with the world itself. Opening more to shared breath, shared space. Who is in the popcorn aisle in the supermarket? Oh, hi. We are in an intimate relationship. I mean, I don’t say that. That would be creepy. I just quietly open to the resonance.

I can’t help but notice the intimacy of breathing in and breathing out and be lit by the quick tilt of presence and impermanence. There’s already someone else in the popcorn aisle. It’s only ever just like that.

Once I commit to being wider, deeper, softer–more permeable to the daily string of tiny intimacies–I open to a fundamentally erotic orientation with life itself. I’m alive with the interpenetration of all that is.

Coalesce.

Deliquesce.

Repeat.

I experience people differently.

There is a reliable tenderness.

There is a reliable resonance, as if each person were secretly humming and as I enter their field we meet in a chord.

This is totally possible in the popcorn aisle.

It feels very nice.

I highly recommend it.

Then what is there to crave with all this intimacy all the time?

Lol. I’m a person. The soft animal gets hungry.

Like what do you do if you encounter a tone that feels so resonant for some unexplainable reason you think your heart will quite possibly explode like actual popcorn? How do you not crave that? Or run from it? Is there a middle way?

Oh, good question.

Follow up question:

CAN I BE SO WIDE AND SOFT AND STABLE THAT I CAN DISCERN THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN FOLLOWING RESONANCE AND CRAVING?

That’s a REALLY good question.

Following resonance is tough sell, I know. it’s the making love to craving’s fuck.

It takes time and attention. It emerges from presence. It requires mind, heart, pussy to all be on board and in line.

That’s quite a bit of wrangling. There’s more ease in softening.

Following resonance means no grabbing for anything outside myself. When I want to grab, I ground. Like just sit right the fuck down on the actual ground. Not in the supermarket. Later.

This does not, it should be said, make me want to stop grabbing. It just puts my grubby hands in my own damn lap for a minute, so I can notice their twitch. It keeps me still so that I can’t inflict my grabby crave on unsuspecting bystanders. It reminds me that my impulses are my responsibility to metabolize.

I love the twitch. I’m alive. The twitch reminds me. I can let it leave my hands like baby bird. I’m still here.

The thing about following resonance over grabbing is, it requires absolute trust. If it’s resonance, it’s resonance. If it’s grabbing, it’s fiction.

The only way to know is with an open hand.

Boundaries and Belonging

If separation is a lie, what is skin for?

The permeability of my skin shows me that I’m specific but not separate from the ecology I’m emerging from. I’m part of everything around me, the human and more-than-human.

Boundaries allow me to drop down fully into my skin so that I can notice the space I inhabit beyond my skin. I can notice the radiant heat of my skin going out beyond me like a scent. Never lost, always moving, I leave traces.

Do those traces pollute or clarify?

I’m responsible for noticing this.

Who I am is always emerging, not solid. What remains through the emergence is a note that is sung in multiple songs over time. A note I came into the world with. A hum under my skin. A clear essence that is distinctly mine. Not special, but needed.

Boundaries let me keep that note clear. Boundaries acknowledge my conditioned identity and land me back into my essence. I can feel the tone change when I clench. When I’ve gone out of tune, I know I’ve stepped off the path.

When do I clench? Usually when I’m trying to push myself into a sense of belonging. To attach myself to people or situations despite a lack of resonance. To wedge myself in where I don’t belong.

What’s mine never needs to be forced. When there’s resonance, there’s ease. The song is simply sung. Things flow. Boundaries are needed when ease stops. Boundaries perpetuate ease.

When a push is coming from me rather than through me (this nuance is in the body, not the mind) I know it’s time to pause and pivot.

When my nervous system is beyond capacity, I pause. I can’t set a boundary if I’m spinning out in my head. I can’t set a boundary with a dysregulated nervous system.

I can’t state my skin when I’m not in it.

Boundaries bring me back to my body, the instrument that emits the tone. Where I attune from. When I am unboundaried and in fear or anxiety or people-pleasing or some other form of self-abandonment, I go flat or sharp. I’m in depression or anxiety, if you like the psychological model–but if I chant those diagnostic words long enough, loud enough, I no longer hear the native hum of me.

Those labels keep me separate, broken. Believing there’s something wrong with me that requires eternal, external fixing. There’s nothing to fix. There has never been anything to fix, not even the past.

I give primacy to a spiritual, rather than a psychological, point of view. In that view, I have always been perfectly myself. When I go out of tune, it’s because I’m squandering my spark on things that are not mine. I’ve let my preferences push my note out of tune. I’m using my spark for brushfires when I could be using it for a hearth fire.

This is not pathology. I am being summoned to turn toward truth, despite my comfort and my preferences. Ease is not always comfort. Ease doesn’t stagnate.

When I go out of tune (and this is a felt sense, rather than a thought) it is a call to set a boundary within, around my preferences–and without, on those who would insist I keep attending to what’s not mine.

When I discover that what I wanted doesn’t belong with me it can be painful. That’s when self-compassion is so important. If I let self-compassion fill me, it will spill out. I can release with love. I can’t know compassion until I surrender control.

I can realize grief as an almost unbearably potent expression of love. When our hearts are open, they’re woven together in belonging. When we clench, we cut the threads. Grief is inherently wide and soft. It becomes hard when we resist it.

Only when I allow my own shadow to lie across my lap, can I look it in the eye. Poison can be medicine when I temper the dose. Medicine can be poison when I don’t. When I can trust myself to set and hold boundaries, it’s easier to regulate my nervous system. It’s easier to see that everything is medicine.

How can we know when to hold a boundary when we’re conditioned to mistrust ease? When we’re taught that pushing through to exhaustion and beyond is a virtue? What would happen if when we fell out of ease, we set a boundary?

What if we said:

“I have to pause here.”

“I’m not available for that.”

“This doesn’t feel good to me.”

“I need some time and space to listen for what the next right step is.”

“No thank you.”

Would this require us to dissolve bonds? To change jobs? To dance more? To open our throats and sing our note, even when it chokes out as a sob? Would that be unbearable? Or would abandoning our essence be more unbearable?

When I pause, I can titrate. I taste a little of what knocks me off the path and metabolize it before I can know whether I need to taste it again. I take the space to notice if this is my reaction coming from an old story or fear or if what’s presenting itself is just not mine. I can ask myself in the pause, “Is this my old stuff or is it the truth of this situation?”

Boundaries let me see that I have everything I need, even when I can’t seem to get what I want. When I’m surrounded by what belongs with me, there’s ease. There’s clarity. There’s ordinary joy everywhere I look. I’m exactly where I belong. This keeps me open and boundless in my capacity to receive. It keeps me generous with myself and others.

Boundaries deepen embodiment. When I’m at home in my skin, I can really listen. I lose the whirr of my identity turbine and realize how perpetual its background dissonance is. I can hear the harmonies of entangled life and witness them with delight.

When I know how to set boundaries, I also learn how to let them go. I gain the skill to adjust the transparency of the veil between myself and the ecology I am always emerging from. I trust that what’s mine will hear my note in all its native clarity.

I move through life as life moves through me.

Boundaries lead to belonging, belonging leads to boundlessness and again and again and again.