My self-esteem has taken a beating this week and it’s all been self-inflicted. I’m comparing myself to other people and coming up short. And look, I know someone out there envies me (and you too), that comparison is the thief of joy, etc., but that doesn’t help me in the moment when my chest burns and my cheeks get hot with envy. It doesn’t help when I’m looking over at so-and-so, marveling at their achievements and wishing I had the same but don’t. My rational brain might as well not exist for all the good it does me when I’m emotionally activated.
The emotional self needs soothing and one way I’m doing that is coming back again, and again, and again to a quote from Richard Tarnas‘ book Cosmos and Psyche. He says there are two ways of grappling with the universe and uses the analogy of two suitors to explain them. In the first approach, the suitor treats the universe as if it has no intelligence and is something to be exploited for his own gain. In the second, the suitor seeks to know you (the universe):
“[N]ot that he might better exploit you, but rather to unite with you and thereby bring forth something new, a creative synthesis emerging from both of your depths. He desires to liberate that which has been hidden by the separation between knower and known. His ultimate goal of knowledge is not increased mastery, prediction, and control, but rather a more richly responsive and empowered participation in a co-creative unfolding of new realities.”
In other words, we are all bringing forth something new and unique as we co-create with the universe. Yes, there are billions of people on the planet and many of them might be doing similar things to me but no person has my unique set of circumstances, experiences, beliefs, and talents. And I’m here to give form to something that would otherwise not exist in the 3D world.
We all have a role to play in co-creation. Photo by Steven Weeks on Unsplash
Posted on my bathroom mirror is the question, “What does my higher power want to work through me? And what part of self needs to step aside in order for that to happen?” It’s a good question. When I’m looking over at so-and-so doing such-and-such, I’m not asking that question. Instead, I’m asking why I can’t be like that person. Doing so robs me and the universe of a gift that could otherwise come into being.
I know it’s cliché to say everyone is unique and special but … everyone is unique and special. There is something only you can birth as you’re participating in a co-creative process with the universe. A quick story for you from Elizabeth Gilbert’s Big Magic: Liz had an idea to write a novel about Brazil in the 1960s that she summarized as such: “It’s about this middle-aged spinster from Minnesota who’s been quietly in love with her married boss for many years. He gets involved in a harebrained business scheme down in the Amazon jungle. A bunch of money and a person go missing, and my character gets sent down there to solve things, at which point her quiet life is completely turned into chaos. Also, it’s a love story.”
Liz researched this story, even sold the idea to a publisher, but got sidetracked by life things. When she came back to the idea two years later, it didn’t have any juice anymore. She couldn’t write it. During this time, she met Ann Patchett and they developed a friendship. They exchanged long, handwritten letters and Ann casually mentioned she was writing a story about the Amazon jungle which could be summarized in exactly the same way as Liz’s.
The finer details of the novel were different but the idea was essentially the same. There’s a lot I could say about this story but the relevant part for this post is that coming from Ann, the story was slightly different — it was a contemporary story, not set in the 1960s. Ann’s was about the pharmaceutical industry and not the highway construction business. She put her spin on it in a way that Liz could not. She made it special because it came from her, not Liz.
There are a ton of similar ideas floating around in the ether but the way I make them concrete, the way you make them concrete, matters. Focusing on what someone else is doing misses the point. All of us are special and all of us have something of value to bring forth into the world. The more we recognize that, the better.
I dream of a world where we realize we’re in a co-creative dance with the universe. A world where we understand every person is bringing forth something that couldn’t have existed without them. A world where we realize there may be a million similar ideas that people are working on but the way we work on them matters. A world where we remember that all of us are special.
Another world is not only possible, it’s probable.
It’s the Jewish New Year, and I’m wondering what the new year will bring. Will some of my dreams come true? Or will this year be a nightmare? I want to know because I derive comfort when I know what’s ahead. But is that really true? When journaling about this topic I wrote, “You do better left in the dark.” Um, excuse me?
As I pondered it, I realized the statement is true. If I knew the future, I might not live it. There have been many instances in my life where if you told me what was before me, I would have laughed in your face and said, “Yeah, right,” or, “Nope. Not doing that.” If I knew what was in store ahead of time, it would feel too daunting. I only accomplish things when I do the next right action, and then the next, and then the next. When I have the full picture, I’m paralyzed.
You don’t always needs to know in advance. Photo by Javier Allegue Barros on Unsplash
As if to underscore this point about only focusing on what’s next, I pulled a goddess card and the message was, “Allowing the self to evolve as you go and discovering new things today sets the path for destiny to unfold. The power of the present and how you respond to life’s potential is the potent fertile seed of the future. In order to claim the future, you must attend to the now.”
I’m claiming the future by living in the now. This tracks with what my spiritual teacher says about destiny: “The stars do not control you; your original actions control you. And where the original action is not known to you, but the result is known to you, the result is experienced by you, you say it is fate.”
In other words, for every action, even one from a previous life, there is a reaction, and that reaction is often called fate. My teacher also said we think things are predestined but “destiny cannot be the absolute factor, for if you do not exist, if you do not act, destiny cannot exist either.”
Destiny requires action and actions change our destiny. About 10 years ago when my life was completely chaotic and I kept moving all over creation, I consulted psychic after psychic because I wanted comfort. I wanted to know when the drama would end and where I’d settle down. Not one of them was able to accurately predict what would happen more than six weeks out.
One psychic told me I’d move to Vancouver but then I visited Vancouver and discovered, no, I didn’t want to live there. Another psychic told me I’d be married with two elementary-age children by the time I was 35. That didn’t happen either. I kept putting my faith in psychics only to be let down over and over again.
Instead of focusing on the future, I’m better off attending to the present. Living in the present, taking the next right action, I live into the future, which is constantly changing anyway! For this Jewish New Year, I’m affirming I do better left in the dark, that the future will take care of itself, and life can be surprising in a good way.
I dream of a world where we understand destiny isn’t set in stone. A world where we recognize our actions create our destiny. A world where we remember if we knew everything in advance, we’d likely become overwhelmed. A world where we remember sometimes, we’re better off left in the dark.
Another world is not only possible, it’s probable.
Lately, I’m on a genealogy kick trying to suss out who I’m related to and how. It’s endlessly fascinating because it’s a puzzle but also a web. As you know, there are many offshoots of a family tree — aunts, uncles, cousins — who all have their own direct family lines. But what’s even more interesting is that we’re all related, literally.
If you go back far enough, you reach a date when family trees share not just one ancestor in common but every ancestor in common, which is called the genetic isopoint. In other words, the family trees of any two people on the earth now, no matter how distantly related they seem, trace back to the same set of individuals. Geneticist Adam Rutherford told Scientific American, “If you were alive at the genetic isopoint, then you are the ancestor of either everyone alive today or no one alive today.” The genetic isopoint occurred somewhere between 5300 and 2200 B.C., according to statistical calculations.
“In relation to race, it absolutely, categorically demolishes the idea of lineage purity,” Rutherford added. That’s because no person has forebears from just one ethnic background or region of the world. Instead, we are all related. The poet Satyendra Dutta expresses this beautifully when he says, “There is only one race in the entire world, and the name of that race is the human race. We are bound together with the same breast milk of Mother Earth, and the same sun and moon are our common companions.”
Exactly! The same sun, moon, and stars are our common companions and we are all living on the same planet Earth. Yet somehow we forget that. We get caught up in dividing ourselves into this group or that. We say, “I’m not like you,” but is that really true? Don’t we all have the same feelings and needs? Aren’t we more alike than we are different? What do we get by focusing on differences, anyway?
My spiritual teacher said, “The opportunists tried in the past, are trying at present, and will try even in the future to fulfill their narrow desires by keeping the human race disunited. By severely reproaching this opportunistic craftiness through your noble deeds, you draw nigh the unknown strangers living far away and build a healthy world-based human family. Ignoring the brute forces, the sky-kissing arrogance, hypocrisy, immorality, and glib outbursts of the conceited people, go ahead towards your cherished goal.”
The cherished goal isn’t to become a billionaire, by the way. As you likely guessed, it’s to feel the sweet union between yourself and something greater than yourself. This is a quote from my spiritual teacher, after all.
Learning about genealogy reminds me we’re a universal family, quite literally. We are like a garden filled with numerous flowers, but ultimately all a part of the same garden. Like flowers, on the surface, we have different petals, different leaves. Some of us require more water and some of us require less, but we are all flowers. In other words, we’re all humans a part of the same race.
I dream of a world where we treat each other like family. A world where we extend care and appreciation to strangers because we recognize, they, too, are our siblings. A world where we understand there’s only one race, the human race. A world where we embrace the idea of a literal universal family.
Another world is not only possible, it’s probable.
Right now I’m migrating old pictures from my phone to my computer. In part, it’s to create more space but it’s also because I’m in the mood to clean and clear. In other words, I’m acting very much in line with Mercury retrograde, which is the time to reflect, reassess, and remove. Anything that begins with “re” is an appropriate Mercury retrograde activity.
What’s interesting is that instead of looking at the photos with wistfulness and nostalgia like I usually do, I’m struck with the parallels between then and now. My pictures from 2015 and 2016 show me with friends, visiting beautiful places in nature, flying to different states to attend weddings, and smiling with my meditation community. You might say, “That’s always what your pictures show. That’s nothing new,” and while there is consistency, 2015 and 2016 also held an excitement, a verve to my life that I haven’t felt in many years.
In the ensuing eight years, the community I built broke apart, people moved away, relationships changed, and I didn’t have excitement or verve anymore. I was in a different cycle of life. But here I am, with a resurgence of verve and excitement. I’m meeting new people left and right, I’m building community, and there’s more energy. It’s as if the wheel of life turned once more and I’m re-experiencing a similar pattern.
As if to underscore my point, while writing this, an enormous dragonfly whizzed by my window. I haven’t seen a dragonfly where I live for years and I regularly stare out the window. According to animal shamanism, “Dragonfly reminds you that change is the only constant in life. When dragonflies surround you, change is on the horizon …. Dragonfly can also be a positive omen indicating you are ready for a change to take shape in your life. Be flexible and adapt to evolving circumstances and you can progress in ways you haven’t imagined.”
So often when I think of change, I think of linear progress, of transporting me somewhere I’ve never been before. But today I’m realizing change is cyclical, just like everything in nature. We have day becoming night, spring becoming summer, and the moon waxing and waning. Human beings are embedded in nature, we are not separate from it so it makes sense that our changes would also be cyclical.
Change is the only constant in life, which is why my spiritual teacher says, “Here in the universe, nothing is stationary, nothing is fixed. Everything moves; that’s why this universe is called jagat. Movement is its dharma; movement is its innate characteristic.”
We are also moving and sometimes that movement is a spiral. It seems like we’re in the same place, but as with a spiral staircase, we aren’t exactly. We’re approaching the situation with a new perspective from a similar place. And it wasn’t until today that I realized the spiral is also a part of a bigger cycle. In fact, it could be said that we change in cycles.
I dream of a world where we recognize we are always moving and changing. A world where we understand just as nature has its cycles, we do too. A world where we realize change isn’t linear, progressing in a straight line, but more like a spiral shifting us to a similar, but slightly different place every time. A world we understand that we change in cycles.
Another world is not only possible, it’s probable.