The Season of Transform

Have you felt it?

This year, the influx of energy that accompanies the onset of Spring seems to be super-charged. There is a quality of density and richness, which can at times feel like trying to drink from an open fire hydrant. The art of being able to navigate, integrate, and harness the abundance of this energy is having a strategy and a practice. 

Within the paradigm of Reorganizational Healing, the “Four Seasons of Wellbeing” reflect an individual’s level of readiness for change at a particular moment in time. Stepping into the Season of Transform means changing the relationship to the body, to how energy is utilized, how attention is focused, and how movement flows in both thought and action. It describes a state in which energy is readily available and strategies are in place that allow for the constructive channeling of this energy.  

The strategy is the plan of action. What are some things that you have identified or that are asking/demanding you to re-evaluate how you are living? For me, this looks like changing my exercise routine, adding to and improving my diet, incorporating more self-care, claiming which areas of study and which opportunities to concentrate on and which to politely decline. There was never a more accurate tea tag than the one I recently read: “Energy flows where attention goes.” The strategy is the container that you create to channel where this Transform energy goes. It allows you to consciously have a say in directing the engine of change. The practice is simply employing the strategy. It won’t be perfectly executed. That’s why it’s called practice.   

And so, in the spirit of the season, I’ve crafted a Spring “To-Do” List. May it be as useful to you as the tea tag was for me.

• Harness the abundant energy of the season to consciously drive change. 
• Plant intention. 
• Water it with congruent action.  
• Tend it with refinement as it grows into form.
• Remember: the Field is fertile.

You Make the Meaning

What is the purpose of pain? In a very broad, but direct sense, it serves as an opportunity to stop what we’re doing, re-evaluate the situation, and make changes to what or how we’ve been living. The rational mind craves an explanation for the how and the why this is happening. This can be a helpful exercise, as long as we don’t get caught up in identifying who we are with the process of pain or spiral into negative thought cycles about it. 

I was recently stung by a yellow jacket while hiking near the Oregon coast. It did not feel particularly pleasant, but I felt fine and continued my trek back to the car. Over the next two days, what began as some mild redness at my ankle turned into moderate swelling and the cardinal signs of infection started to present and travel up my leg. There is a time and a place to seek medical attention, and this was one of them. Owing to the swelling in my foot and ankle, it became difficult to stand and walk. This presented a major challenge for many reasons, not the least of which being the requirements of my work. I was forced to slow down, and as frustrating as it was to not be able to do, especially at the pace I was operating, it gave me a chance to evaluate how I was doing.

I was going too fast. The ratio of doing to being was heavily skewed. There is a time to push, but there is also a way to push that won’t lead to burnout. I can’t say whether there was a cosmic conspiracy that organized to have that one wasp sting me where it did, when it did. I do believe that the notions of entropy and randomness reflect a limitation in the perspective of the observer. The patterns of life are always weaving. Depending on the scope and scale of what you’re trying to look at, it will appear infinitely complex - but that doesn’t mean it’s chaotic. This could lead to an epistemological regress - ultimate uncertainty about what can be known. From a practical point of view, what I believe is that we have the ability to ascribe the myth and the meaning to the experiences we have. I am choosing to see the wasp as a reminder to be mindful, to move and think at a natural pace, and to trust and continue to be in awe of the brilliant intelligence of the human body’s ability to heal. 
 

A Conscious Imperative

"Collective human consciousness and life on our planet are intrinsically connected...as the old consciousness dissolves, there are bound to be synchronistic geographic and climatic natural upheavals in many parts of the planet, some of which we are witnessing now." --Eckhart Tolle
 

It has been snowing ash in Portland. For the past few days, stepping outside to afternoon temperatures near 100 degrees, into a haze thick and grey has been akin to stepping into a sauna that is burning campfire wood with the flue closed. Instead of the cloudless blue of summer, or the cool grey overcast of the rest of the year, the sky has taken on a white density. Folks walk around with bandannas and face masks, there are minimal bikers on the road, and few people are outside. It feels more like fallout than school season. As the West burns, the Gulf of Mexico floods, and the eastern seaboard braces for increasingly strong hurricanes. 

We are now in the Anthropocene, the time when humans are aware of and can objectively measure the extent to which their activities have an impact on the planet. The brilliant human intelligence that has led to the technology and development of modernity has also served to amplify the destructive capability that unconsciousness has on life. On an individual level, allowing the ego to drive thought and action leads to fear, greed, and the desire for power. The ego is fueled by attachment to form - because it cannot feel, it must have. At the root of this is the false premise that humans are somehow separate from or even superior to Nature. Humans, like all of the other life on this planet are of Nature. Viewed from this perspective, the health and sanity of our individual thoughts and actions contributes to the health and sanity of our collective thoughts and actions. 

The intrinsic connection Mr. Tolle refers to is how the state of collective human consciousness is being reflected in the material world it inhabits. As the quantitative impact of humanity continues to increase, it is more important than ever to look at the quality of this impact. What are our thoughts and actions doing to ourselves, each other, and the environment?

One of my yoga teachers recently shared that the current darkness and perceived chaos happening in the world is not necessarily the darkness of the tomb; that instead it could be the darkness of the womb. An opportunity - and at this stage an imperative -  for humanity to birth itself out of the darkness it has created from living unconsciously.