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.

(re)Framing Causation

Some time ago, a Scottish philosopher inquired into the nature of human understanding. He saw that perceptions of sense and memory, as they present to the mind, do so in space or in time, but most importantly, in a necessary connection with each other. He reasoned that space, time, and causation are ideas. They do not actually represent the perceptions themselves. Rather, they reflect the manner in which the mind takes perceptions in, processes them, and “understands” them.

Consider the notion that what we perceive as matter - you know, “the hard stuff” of reality - is ultimately a quantum entanglement of light. All of the flavor and the scent, the gift of sound and vision, and the felt sense of perception comes from your body swimming in a sea of electromagnetic radiation.

From and within this sea of light, the mind uses the information from perception to generate ideas and does so in language. How we frame perception and how we (choose to) use language is a creative act.

Each moment in life is a creative unfolding of how we interact with this light. Tuning and turning the mind with intention and attention is a conscious choice that transforms the lens through which we perceive. We can perceive because we are embodied and this embodiment allows us to sense the relationships within and between space, time, and motion.

What if we (re)framed how we think about causation? That instead of being subject to, powerless against, or separate from the process of causation - we are the sequence of time. That essentially causation is thought and action creatively interwoven through the fabric of our reality causing, effecting, and affecting our experience in this life.

Kosmos i jego kontrasty

In With the New

I have spent much of the past two months preparing the space for my new office home. Toward the end of last year, I learned that I would have to relocate owing to the irresistible drive of Portland landlords to create more residential space for the growing city. I didn't want to move, but as Mick Jagger has eloquently reminded us - you can't always get what you want. 

I have observed that when one door closes, another opens. Sometimes it might be a window, or a crawl space, or an airplane hangar, but in any event, there is always a Way for movement to translate forward. All paths lead exactly here, and now, and the choice we have - especially during the time of year when Resolutions are in fashion - is how to proceed. The trials and tribulations, the stresses and strains, the joys and ecstasy of living in this modern and irrational world all afford us a constant opportunity to create an experience. For me, I want to and will create a space in which voices are heard, healing is deep, and the Hygge is strong. 

As we step into this New Year, what if the resolute question could be reframed to something utterly simple, and yet truly profound: what kind of experience you are allowing yourself to create in this life?