An Abundant Challenge

I often ponder the troubles we humans have and how we keep ourselves in a stew of problems. Getting to the root of a problem and discovering truth, if it is to be had, is one of my directives in life.

Closely examining any problem inevitably leads to an examination of our beliefs. Why?

What we believe filters how we perceive. How we perceive defines how we experience. Our experience reinforces our belief…and around we go.

I’ve learned from yoga practice (and verified this by doing things like riding my bicycle for 4,500 miles through record heat) that although there are obviously material limitations, these are not the ultimate factors determining what is possible. James “Iron Cowboy” Lawrence, an athlete who completed 50 full-distance Iron Mans in all 50 US States, in 50 days, said his achievement was 80% mental. The barriers invariably dwell within the mind.

In order to find new solutions to old problems, we need to see things differently. This means we need to examine the beliefs and assumptions that frame our options and actions. When we seek to make real and lasting change, we will inevitably come face to face with obsolete beliefs and the fears that guard them.

Here’s one belief I’d like to challenge that pervades our culture: we associate value with scarcity.

BELIEF: the more scarce something is, the more valuable it is.

CONSEQUENCES:

• “creating value” becomes about restricting or withholding resources

• value = exclusivity

• value is special and uncommon

• want what you don’t have

• compete with other life forms to “get” what you need

When I want to understand suffering, I ponder the man-made and mind-made world.

When I want to understand how life works, I look to Nature. Here’s what I see:

NATURE’S TRUTH: That which is most essential to life is abundantly available wherever life thrives.

CONSEQUENCES:

• Life is fed from the roots. As the mycelium and roots thrive, so does the whole forest. The biggest life forms feed back into the whole.

• When the river is allowed to flow freely, all life flourishes. When the water is dammed, a host of problems that need to be “managed” immediately appear.

• Every form of life provides a unique and precious contribution to the whole, whether we humans are aware of it or not.

In yoga, there is a practice called pratipaksha bhavana. It basically means “to cultivate the opposite.” This is a powerful tool we can use to disentangle ourselves from particularly sticky habitual patterns. So what would it be like if we reversed our concept of value = scarcity?

What if we built an economy based on the assumption that value = abundance?

What if we dedicated our efforts to ensuring that the things that are most valuable remain widely available and accessible—not only to humans, but to all life?

In yoga we learn that approaching our edge - the limit of what we know/believe/have experienced as possible - reveals fears we have held unconsciously. These fears have defined the way our world works. They have prevented us from exploring further by acting as boundaries for our experience. They are assumptions, not truths. Once they are revealed, we can challenge them with persistent, gentle, conscious experimentation. More often than not, I’ve discovered that these fears don’t hold up to the experiential test.

What comes up when we consider shifting our economy towards a model of abundance rather than scarcity?

“Doesn’t lack drive exchange? Doesn’t lack motivate people to better themselves? The idea that everyone could be provided for is ‘just unrealistic.’ The free flow of resources limits my personal freedom! How can we prosper without profit?”

My experience shows me with 100% consistency that energy and consciousness innately flow toward subtler, more complex, and higher levels of evolutionary function.

My hypothesis is that if we were to embrace an economy based on symbiosis, collaboration, interdependence, abundance, and reverence for life, we would not only begin the real work of healing our planet, we’d also see humanity access new levels of innovation, creation, harmony, and new realms of conscious experience.

What is the first step towards exploring this shift?

I’m offering it here. It’s to consider the possibility that we are operating under inaccurate assumptions, and that we have the response-ability to change it, using the choices that are available to use on a daily basis, starting now.

The bottom line (pun intended) is that we do not have to perpetuate limiting paradigms that cause suffering, whether personally or collectively. We can encounter our fears, courageously embrace new ways of being in and seeing the world, and take one step into the unknown. Then another step.

What is one way you could celebrate and elevate the value of something abundant in your life today?

What is one way you could ensure that something of value is accessible to everyone you meet today?

What is one tyrannical belief representing “the way things are” that you could challenge for yourself?

Where the Trouble Starts

Ayurveda describes life as a flow of energy and information through form.

When the flow stops, life stops. This flow is characterized by change. Life is constantly transforming from one form into another, breaking down from complex into simpler substances and growing from basic elements into more intricate expressions.

To be alive is to be growing, changing, and dying.

Creation, sustenance, and transformation/destruction are happening simultaneously, everywhere, all the time. In yogic terms, life is the dance of Shiva and Shakti, Consciousness (information) and Energy/Matter (Energy is matter; check with Einstein: E=mc2).

In Ayurveda, the principle of transformation within the bodies of all living things, including Earth herself, is known as agni. Agni is fire, light, and heat. It is the capacity to break down and release energy, and it is the energy itself in the form of radiance. Agni is cause of photosynthesis in plants and metabolism in animals and humans.

In our body, agni governs the processes of digestion. A major part of digestion is breaking down inputs into building blocks that can be used by the cells to generate new tissues. Agni works intimately with our life force energy, prana, to separate nutrients from toxins and wastes, assimilate and absorb nutrients into tissues, and expel/eliminate waste. Agni performs this same function at the mental and emotional levels. When agni is healthy, we are able to take in and digest information, think and perceive clearly, and make decisions. We feel light, energetic, and hungry to experience life in a good way.

You can see how agni is essential to life and to health. In fact, disease cannot develop on any level, physical or mental, without an imbalance, disturbance, or dysfunction in agni.

When digestion, metabolism, and elimination are working perfectly we are all systems go. Our immune system is resilient and fully functional, we are in symbiosis with our environment, we are producing healthy body tissues, and we are able to eliminate wastes and toxins from our system. Weakness develops when some aspect of this flow is disrupted.

This means that our digestive processes are THE key to health. Period.

There is not a single disease which does not include some type of disturbance to digestion or metabolism. Disease begins as a subtle imbalance, develops into niggling concerns, and if left unaddressed, eventually progresses until it alters body tissues and real symptoms start to manifest.

Western medicine rarely recognizes the connection between a change in our digestive capacity and the development of a problem until we are in the latest stages of disease. By contrast, Ayurveda is about disease prevention. It teaches us about the workings of our bodies and minds in detail and teaches us how to observe, assess, and correct, and optimize as necessary.

If you are only going to learn one thing from Ayurveda, learn how to assess and tend to your agni.

Some of the core work we do together with Ayurvedic Health Counseling is centered on this.

Want to learn more? Keep reading! And schedule an Ayurvedic Health Consultation with me.

Two Things to Trust

Life can be a dizzying affair. Sometimes I have to really boil things down for myself.

There are two things I can always trust:

1. This moment is exactly the way it is, right now.

2. This moment is bound to change.

When I get disoriented, I can bring my mind back to these points. The first point is a way of getting my bearings: “Here I am. Ah, yes. Everything is exactly as it is. How could it be any other way?”

This is relieving and calming. Even if the moment is showing up in a way I don’t like (or if I’m showing up in the moment in a way I don’t like), I can still completely rely on the fact that everything is as it is. And, it will change. If I focus for even a few moments, I can observe and experience that change for myself.

The second point is a way of tempering my mind. Knowing that “this too shall pass” helps me stabilize the mental pendulum. There’s no point in freaking out too badly, because if I don’t want what is happening now, it will soon change. If I really like what’s happening now and I’m afraid of the change, I can remind myself to chill out by enjoying this moment fully and surrendering to the knowledge that it’s all going to keep changing. This helps me relax back into the flow of life.

If I’m resisting change, I can focus on what’s here, now. And if I’m resisting what’s here now, I can focus on change. Sweet, right?

Yes, there’s a lot going on. And, life is also simple.

It is as it is.

It is changing.

I highly recommend regular practice of observing these two truths. It’s a way that I engage with life to reduce struggle and inhabit presence. It has guided me through the most difficult and uncomfortable moments of my life, and opens my heart to appreciate the beauty of this passing moment.

What is something that you can absolutely, always trust?

Soul Fire

Consider that you are a genius,

that you were born with a precious spark of perception, motivation, expression unlike any other.

Through the natural course of life, this spark was overcast by deep shadows of collectively held beliefs, coated by opaque lacquer of unspoken assumptions, muffled and buried under insulating layers of what you should do and how you should be. The most well-intentioned and trusted people in your life piled it on in the name of protecting you and preparing you to deal with life. Because that is what we were taught to do.

Being the good human that you are, you soldiered on. You’ve done the best you could to fulfill your duty.

Somehow that spark has stayed alive, and for years it was a constant source of slight irritation for you, because it rarely seemed to help you do what you “had” to do or what you “should” do, but instead has always whispered alluringly for you to explore experiences and do things that seem utterly irrational, unproductive, inefficient, and otherwise against your obligations as a “responsible adult.” And you’ve kept it at bay by answering its requests to explore and play with, “Later….later,” all the while dedicating your vitality to the To-Do list.

Yet the deeper desire in you to live true and live fully expands beyond what is expected of you. The seed of consciousness which is the evolutionary imperative within you will not stop calling you toward yourself, toward your soul.

Gradually through the tempering of life’s projects—beginnings and endings, dreams and failures—you have begun to recognize that achievement of the standards you’ve learned and upheld doesn’t bring zest for life. This grind to show up the way you are supposed to actually drains your energy, and it doesn’t even bring a guarantee of security!

And the persistence of that tiny voice, that impulse to keep searching, has prompted you to ever-so-slightly turn towards the spark, to listen with tentative curiosity. Maybe you started running. Maybe you took a yoga class, started journaling, or spent a day planting trees.

Whatever you did to crack the door to this tiny spark, the moment it received even a breath of air, it sprung to life and started to dance inside you.

Your courage grows.

You start to meditate regularly. You begin to explore dietary changes. You take a day off from work to be with your kids—or with yourself. You decide not to buy the thing that you know has such a horrible environmental impact. You trade your $5/day latte for a superfood meal. And you see what happens.

You’ve begun to understand that the part of you that seemed so unruly, so difficult to discipline and impossible to channel - this part of you feeds directly from the vibrant fountain of Life itself. This is your connection to vigor, inspiration, and happiness. It is the genius of your essence, outside all learned notions and conditioned responses around how you should be.

And this spark within you, this atom of Nature, is you as a part of the whole of life. It carries the intelligence of the whole, and it carries the desire for healing of the whole, and it carries the strength to really live into your deepest questions, to courageously pursue your deepest wishes, and to face your deepest fears with compassion. It stands for the fulfillment of your divine (beyond human) potential.

It continuously serves your highest growth.

Now that you’ve glimpsed your Self, you are beginning to admit the truth: your REAL job is to tend this fire within you, to dis-cover this genius, to build a hearth within your body and your life where it can burn brightly and bring warmth to the world.

It’s not easy - because most of the world is asleep, trained to pay for electricity instead of connecting to the sustainable power source within. When the world sees a real fire burning, it panics and comes running, yelling, “Put it out!”

That’s why you need to build a moat of calm resilience around your soul-fire. To protect yourself and contain your vibrancy so that you can channel it for the benefit of all.

The world will not validate your efforts. You will have to use what you’ve learned to penetrate illusions, feel into your own heart, and find your way into the unknown, again and again.

Good thing you’re a genius.

You’ll figure it out.

Meditation

There is no one else.

There is nothing else.

There is not even me.

Alone is impossible:

it’s all one no-thing-ness.

Yet

here I am,

sensing a shift,

from me to nothingness.

Silence,

as if a rain drop

were suddenly to know itself

as water and cloud.

No;

even beyond the form of all

I emerge,

silent.

Nothing to say.

Nothing to do.

I notice

I am once again

alone.