Who You Are: On Honesty, Process, and Life

Who are you, right now? What is your life like? What do you want, need, and desire?

“Don’t compare your insides with someone else’s outsides,” the saying goes. What this means, of course, is don’t compare your messy process with someone else’s perfect-seaming results. It’s good advice.

Recently, I said to a client, “Don’t compare who you are now with who you once were.” Of course our lives are built on the lessons of who we were. We live with skills we’ve acquired and knowledge we’ve incorporated, but that doesn’t mean we have to be bigger, better, versions of who we were five, ten, or twenty years ago.

It means we need to live as we are, who we are, right now, and that includes assessing our current conditions and our wants, needs, and desires.

The me of ten years ago traveled the world, teaching, speaking at conferences, and seeing places that much younger, working-class-family-kid me never thought I would. I loved those years, but right now? I would find that life exhausting. If I never fly outside my own time zone again, I’ll be happy with that. My body, mind, heart, and soul want something different now.

We can pivot. Change directions. Adjust to circumstances.

We can choose.

Here’s the prescription I gave to my client:

1- Be honest about your current life conditions.

2- Respect your current capacity and desires.

3- Affirm your process.

4- Release attachment to the outcome.

5- Invoke curiosity.

6- Breathe.

What do I mean by “affirm your process”? For some of us, whether we are comparing ourselves to others or our past selves, we can sometimes wallow in what we do not have, how well we are not doing, or the ways in which we feel we fail or fall short. This might be in the realm of creativity, spiritual practice, career, relationships, or health.

This is why numbers one and two of the prescription are so important. What is my life really like right now? What am I thankful for? What would I like to shift? And how do my abilities, capacity, and desire coincide?

Once I’ve spent time answering those questions, I can examine my process. What exactly am I doing to build the life I desire or to live as well as I can with the life and conditions I have?

By affirming our process—and invoking curiosity—we can either find ways to support things we’re already doing, or can decide what the next step in our process might be.

I’ll give you a hint: that next step may even feel like a negative. It may mean saying no to things, practices—or even people—that don’t serve us right now. It may mean retraining early morning thoughts. It may mean realizing when we are telling the truth about our lives and when we’re caught in self-pity or self-flagellation.

I’ll use myself as an example: I work for myself. I have an autoimmune disorder and currently also work with a brain injury. So, what’s my process?

I do neurological and balance exercises every day. I breathe, meditate, and pray. I get basic, simple exercise. I commit to an anti-inflammatory diet with a dash of intuitive eating for the days brain induced nausea means I don’t wanna eat.

And I write. I study. I work on publishing and marketing. I reach out to people. I see clients. Some days, I literally cannot work, so biggest of all for me is that I listen to my capacity and build around that. And trust me, I know that in our society, that last is a luxury.

But we can all do some small version of this. It’s just going to look differently for each of us.

If your day consists of managing severe pain first thing in the morning, or getting kids set up before going to one or two jobs, your process will look and feel quite different from mine. And it doesn’t matter what you were doing five years ago. What matters is what your life is like right now.

I’ll repeat the prescription:

1- Be honest about your current life conditions.

2- Respect your current capacity and desires.

3- Affirm your process.

4- Release attachment to the outcome.

5- Invoke curiosity.

6- Breathe.

I hope you spend some time with this, and offer yourself the best support you can right now.

What is your assessment? How might you need to adjust your process?

What is one thing you can do today?

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This essay was funded by my amazing Patreon supporters. Wishing them as many blessings as their lives can hold.

If you want more support in this work, you may find my book Make Magic of Your Life to be of help. 

Be Here. Now

On Impatience, Injury, and The Practice of Presence

I used to say that the universe conspired to have me in airports constantly because I was impatient. I traveled the world at least twice a month for awhile, praying that the help I offered outweighed the harm of spewing all that jet fuel. As a consequence of work travel, I got to stand with my impatience. Breathe with my impatience. Smile with my impatience. Be with my impatience.

I got to wait in long, endless lines. I got to deal with people who annoyed me. A lot.

Showing up for the practice of being with myself, I took on the teaching, and deepened my relationship with impatience. We even became allies, if not exactly friends.

These past couple of years, I’m doing it again.

I had plans. I always have plans. I’m an opinionated instigator with thousands of ideas and visions. There are thousands of ways I want to show up in this world. Thousands upon thousands of words I want to speak and write. Thousands upon thousands of situations I wish I could help. Thousands upon thousands of injustices to face.

But in late August, 2020, I crashed my bicycle, hard, while going twenty miles an hour. I adjusted my plans. In December, I got worse. My remaining plans were wrenched from my grasping fingers.

Right now, I can barely think. After walking for ten minutes, I stumble, stagger, and sway. My synapses are scrambled. My right ear rings. My brain wipes itself clean between one thought and the next. Standing still, I can feel as if I’ve just been shoved, hard, by unseen hands.

At times, if feels as if I can do nothing. Sometimes, all I can do is lie in bed, eyes closed, and count my breaths. Other times? All I can do is sleep. Meditation—a longtime companion—became difficult because my center of gravity was awry.

For awhile, I railed against this. Then my training kicked in: what did I need to do to shift my relationship to my current condition? Could I speak with and listen to my impatience once again? Could I trust my body in its healing process and learn to better assist it?

Don’t get me wrong, I’d tried this for months before. I’d rested. I’d slowed down. I’d whittled my workload down to what I thought was almost nothing. I’d asked for help. Then, an illness in December made things worse. Finally, after a trip to the emergency room when there was no other recourse, I’ve found—and insisted upon—the help I needed from the start. °

But the thing that has changed, besides finally getting real assistance? I’ve released attachment to my plans. I’ve stopped flailing against my poor, beleaguered, jostled brain and it’s faulty connection to my vestibular nervous system.

And when I still had trouble meditating? I started using the Breathe app on my watch. The haptic tapping at my wrist helps me with timing my breaths, the way my brain used to.

***

I just re-watched the documentary about teacher Ram Dass. Fierce Grace is not only about his life, but about how he dealt with the aftermath of a major stroke. I’d seen it years ago, but realized that watching someone else shift relationship with their body and spiritual practice might help me.

Now, I don’t wholeheartedly agree with all of his philosophy/theology, but what a powerful teacher, nonetheless. What Ram Dass does is remain present to his body. To his emotions. To the people and world around him.

He did this before the stroke debilitated and altered so much of what I assume he used to take for granted. But what is important to me now? He found a way to move into his disability and be in new relationship.

That’s what I want: to be in relationship with myself and the world, not only with how I wish these things to be, but also with how they currently are. I want to live in past, present, and future, all at once. But right now? That’s a bit too much for me. The present must suffice.

Near the end of the documentary, Ram Dass said: “This moment is all right.”

It struck me. What is required to expand into that thought? What is required to open, soften, and feel that this moment—no matter what is occurring—is all right?

That’s the teaching. That’s the breath I need to take. And, after the past few years, and moving into the next, I think that’s a breath we all need to take.

I used to tell my students and clients: Practice your magic from where you are, not from where you think you ought to be. How can we find a place in the present moment—right now—where this moment is all right? And how can we—and I—move and live from there?

So, even as the world seems to churn and crumble around us, even as storms rage and seas rise, as guns and bombs and diseases deal out death, what is all right? What does that even mean?

For me, right now, it means that this moment just is. I can’t fight it. I need to be present with it. In relationship. Yes, I practice toward healing. Yes, I work toward greater justice. Yes, there is a future, and a past.

But there is also right now, and I want to be here for it. Because the more present I am, the more present I am. I had to force myself to write that. What I wanted to write was “The more present I am, the better able I am to work toward a kinder, healthier, more just future.” 

I believe that latter statement with all of my being. But right now? That’s not the teaching I’m taking on.

Right now, I’m breathing, and allowing myself to just be present. As much as I can. I still make plans for the future. I’m just doing it from within the embrace of my current condition.

Thank you, Ram Dass. Thank you, body. Thank you, brain. And thank you, friends.

I hope you, no matter what your current struggles, find space within a moment today in order to simply be.

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° Those of you who’ve read my other essays may recall that I also live with a chronic auto-immune disorder that went undiagnosed for decades, causing catastrophic harm to my body. And yes, I fought for a diagnosis, gave up, and got treatment with alternative and holistic medicine, plus exercise and meditation. That kept me going for years, until it didn’t anymore, and I fought once again and was finally diagnosed.

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This essay was made possible by my amazing Patreon supporters. Thank you all, so much. I couldn’t do my work half so well without you.

#essays #health #SpiritualPractice

On the Bust of York

Or, Why Art Matters

Not all pilgrimages involve ordeals.

Sometimes, all we have to do is decide something is meaningful enough to trek up a cinder cone volcano and bear witness to what is there.

It was a day of intermittent sun and icy rain. We climbed the steps and muddy pathways upward, sheltered by tall Douglas firs that had dropped limbs and branch tips, creating a rich green carpet everywhere.

Rounding the closed off drive, I caught glimpses of distant clouds, and city.

And then I saw it. The thing we had come to see.

It was much larger than I thought it would be. Larger than any photograph had been able to convey.

It was monumental. Meditative. Ponderous.

And beautiful.

Atop a marble plinth at the apex of the dormant volcano, a beautiful, bronze colored head of a young Black man tilted downward, held upon a strong, bronze neck, above a layer of concrete inscribed with a single name.

York.

The man’s eyes are closed, as if he is thinking, or at rest. His cheeks and brow are both soft and powerfully formed.

I stand, breathing in the cold air, tinged with storms and coming spring. Clambering on a concrete bench, I strive to get a different view.

A fresh perspective.

And then, the strident voice cuts through the hush on the sacred mountaintop.

“What do you think of this statue?”

I turn toward the speaker. It’s an older white man, mask worn down around his chin. He is smiling at me, but his voice holds a challenge.

“I love it,” I reply. “It’s beautiful.” Hoping my firm tone will end the conversation, I look back to the statue.

The man is not done. He wanted to argue with me about people pulling down statues. Why was it okay to pull down a statue without going through proper channels?

“Why should we have a statue of an ‘Indian killer’ up here? That’s what Harvey Scott was,” I say. “Besides, the artist probably didn’t pull the other statue down.”*

Well, he agreed with me, you see, and the statue of York was a fine one, indeed, but still, what did I think about people just tearing down statues and putting up what they wanted? What if a Republican had put up a statue?

He spouted.

I parried.

He spouted some more. I would not back down.

“People put up art all the time. One reason I like living in a city is the changing landscape of art always appearing everywhere.”

“Oh, I’m a fan of anarchist art in principle,” he says.

“Just not in practice,” I replied.

Finally, he saw he would get no joy of me, and it was clear I was getting ready to end the conversation in a far more rude and final way.

He wished me good day and loped off.

The “devil’s advocate” as he called himself, had broken the peace in an attempt to tear the monument down with feeble words.

Even a Black man long gone—the first African to cross the North American continent—can find no peace in death.

York’s legacy will always be challenged by the petty and the small. Just as Clark refused to give York his freedom, the white man on the mountain refused to acknowledge his power.

Well, York, I made a simple pilgrimage to you that day. I saw the roses scattered at the base of your tall plinth. I witnessed the beautiful sweep of your head, surrounded by trees that rooted in earth, and reached for sky.

We walked back down the cinder cone in icy rain. I felt grateful that, despite the men who stole you and forced your labor, and would not let you be free, you lived a story worth telling.

You walked through forests and rode down rivers, you scouted, and hunted, and set up camp. You saw places none of your ancestors ever saw.

I don’t know how angry or defeated you must have sometimes felt. I do not know your sorrow, hope, or pain.

What I do know is this: your life is worth honoring, and no petty, small-minded white man can take that away.

And because of this statue, more people will know your story, and your name. The stories of Lewis and Clark, and the likes of Harvey Scott—and everyone their lives impacted—will be thrown under scrutiny, and more of the truth be told.

All art hints at a story.

All art is political.

The artist(s) who made this tribute to York’s life fashioned something fine.

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*I apologize for my use of the term “Indian” here to refer to the Indigenous peoples of the Pacific Northwest. In the moment, I pulled on a historically used phrase I thought this man would comprehend.

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