Tag Archives: healing

Accept the muse’s assignment

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2.15.15_Winter woods_620w3“Don’t forget to let it do its work on you.” These words were spoken by a retreat leader in response to my telling him I was eager to get back to work on my novel after the inspiring experiences of the week. It was a beautiful piece of advice, one that I knew immediately to be true on many levels. I was reminded of it again yesterday, reading Steven Pressfield’s blog post on how he healed his self-doubt by working for two years on a book about Alexander the Great, arguably the most confident man in history, one who knew and embraced his destiny even as a child.

Pressfield’s advice on overcoming Resistance in his book The War of Art, fueled me through my novel’s first draft, so I tend to listen to him. His point in yesterday’s post is that the muse gave him the Alexander the Great assignment for his own good, and that all art is a soul contract. What that says to me is: don’t question the inspiration too analytically, just answer the call, put in your best work, and let it do its work on you. Continue reading →

Could psilocybin be a shortcut to new stories?

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I’m by turns curious about and frustrated by the way modern culture insists on scientific proof before an experience or phenomenon can be considered “real.” And while absence of proof is hardly proof of absence, there is considerable resistance to believing the unmeasured. This instrumentalism is one of our civilization’s dominant stories, part of the operating system behind our rationality-soaked worship of science.

And so we are driven to shine light on the unseen, to reduce mystery to chemistry, biology or psychology. Barbara Ehrenreich, author of the 2014 book, Living With a Wild God, is a good champion of the idea that faith is intellectually lazy, and prefers the question, “Why believe when you can know?” And yet, her book and John Geiger’s The Third Man Factor both admit that certain numinous and mystical experiences elude fully rational explanations. Michael Pollan’s recent piece in The New Yorker, “The Trip Treatment,” is another intriguing foray into the science of human spirituality. Continue reading →

You get what you’re available for

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You get what you’re available for.

This advice, given to me by a wise elder years ago, has been echoing in my mind lately. Originally, I understood it in reference to meditative experiences or attempts to enter alternate reality, and it strikes me now that it has a much wider application.

Last night, I had the experience of handling a situation of conflict differently, and with surprising results. During dinner, my husband and son got into a disagreement over something that seemed trivial to me, but felt important to each of them. Neither was willing to come back together, to drop his stance and reconnect. By some miracle, I could see clearly how much they both yearned for connection, yet their pride wouldn’t allow it. Continue reading →

Climate change invites story change

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In twenty years as a self-declared “green” architect, I’ve worked with many clients to focus on their values and priorities. No one project can do everything, because no budget could withstand it, so we have to choose between goods: certified wood or radiant floor heat, composting toilets or bamboo floors or solar panels. These are not apples-to-apples decisions, so prioritizing is done within the context of big-picture values and vision.

One thing I’ve always emphasized is energy efficiency, partly because it’s the easiest sell — when your finished building uses less energy, you save money — but mostly for its direct link to greenhouse gas emissions and climate change. Of course, when I got into this gig two decades ago, there was a very different story about climate change than there is now. Continue reading →

Take two stories and call me in the morning

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Nowhere is the breakdown of the old story of command and control more evident than in the modern “health care” arena, with its ever-increasing cost and complexity, reliance on drugs and technology, and faltering ability to make us healthier or better cared for. When my parents were diagnosed with cancer, the very language used by their doctors was a language of war. In older cultures, by contrast, illness was seen as an indicator of disconnection, disharmony, or imbalance. People, not diseases, were the focus of treatment.

“If you treat disease, you win some, you lose some. But if you treat people, you always win.” ~ Patch Adams

Last week, I attended a noontime lecture at Johns Hopkins University’s School of Public Health. The speaker, Lewis Mehl-Madrona, is a Stanford trained doctor in clinical psychiatry who researches so-called narrative medicine — the healing practices of indigenous elders. His goal is to introduce their healing wisdom into mainstream medicine and to transform medicine and psychology by coupling it with various narrative traditions. He opened his talk with this:

“If you want to change the world, keep talking and tell a story.”

Continue reading →

The divinity of the speck

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This guest post is by Phila Hoopes. You can read a bit about her on the “Denizens” page.

A few months ago, in a storm of grief over the way the world is going, I wrote to author/teacher/medicine woman Deena Metzger, “Knowing what you know, being sensitive to all you perceive, how do you not despair?” She answered: “Because I know that Spirit exists and that some of us are being guided and so we are doing what we are called to do and that has to be sufficient. And because — I don’t want God to despair too.”

I have shied away from those words; their challenge was too devastating. I’ve buried myself in purposeful overwhelm, busybusybusy applying my skills to good causes, and when fatigue forced a halt, burying myself in lesser distractions – conversations with friends, an old movie, a brain-candy novel, surfing the Internet. Checking the stats for this blog, frustrated that no inspirations were coming for new content (surprise!) and bemused that the most popular page, by far, was Quotes on the Dark Night of the Soul. Refusing to admit – despite all indications – that I was (unadmittedly, only borderline-consciously) traversing a similarly shadowed valley. Continue reading →

The awakening of divine light in all of us

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This day, in the Christian world, is a celebration of new life, of the birth of the Christ child. This story invites a re-awakening of the spark of love within each of us, as divine consciousness embodied. All of Christ’s teachings are stored in our very DNA and can be accessed by anyone, regardless of religion.

It’s not random coincidence that miraculous humans emerge at times of struggle, to lead and inspire others to live from that divine light in the face of great hardship and suffering. Examples abound: Gandhi and Indian independence, Martin Luther King and Civil Rights, Nelson Mandela and Apartheid, Aung An Suu Kyi and democracy, Wangaari Matthai and tree planting, Malala Yousufzi and the right to education. All of these, and others, stood up to forces of oppression and darkness that sought to silence them through fear and violence. Continue reading →

Extricating from the progress trap

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It is easier to try
to be better
than you are
than to be
who you are.
~ Marion Woodman

This wisdom reminds me that I’m conditioned to look outward towards improvement, rather than within towards healing. Seeing myself as inherently flawed and in need of betterment, I tend to believe I have to fix those flaws myself, without help. The trouble is, the more I dig, the more imperfections I discover. It becomes an arms race of flaws and fixes.

This is a personal illustration of what author Richard Wright calls the “progress trap.” I’m so caught in it that even the question, “How can I get beyond the story of progress?” carries within it the taint of progress. I want to make progress towards getting beyond the story of progress. Continue reading →

Searching for spirit in the garden

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This guest post is by Duane Marcus. You can read a bit about him on the “Denizens” page.

We are stardust,
We are golden,
And we’ve got to get ourselves
back to the garden
~ Joni Mitchell

I went to college to study science of horticulture. I came to believe that if something cannot be measured empirically then it could not be true. I have spent most of my life working with plants. Through this work, cracks in my belief system began to appear. Mysteries abound in the garden. I came to understand that all things are connected, that all things are energetic beings. Trees, rocks, rivers, the soil, the mountains, the deserts, people, animals all share the same source. We are all parts of one entity made up of the same swirling atoms exchanging energies with one another and with the vast universe. Continue reading →

My child knows when we encounter the Wandering Stranger

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Second of a seasonal series. In which my son sees Santa Claus in the off-season and gives him an applesauce packet.

Something I’ve been playing with in this time between stories is to give my intuition some breathing room. To let my imagination peek beneath the surface of things, which are not necessarily what I assume them to be. The Irish know that magical threads run through the weave of daily life, and that the invitation to notice is always present. This season, I’m going to practice touching into that magic in moments of connection with other people, or even other beings not human.

When we bring our Christmas tree into the house this year, I’m going to imagine it standing in the forest, a quiet home for birds or squirrels or insects. The Yule Tree is an ancient symbol of the season, inviting a deeper attunement with the living world through its spicy smell, the prickles or softness of its needles, its rich green color, and pleasing form. Continue reading →