BEST OF: SUBSTACK ARCHIVES - 2021
2021 SELECT TUESDAY LETTERS
Last Saturday afternoon I went to a celebration of the life of the mountain lion P-22. If you’ve never heard of him, he was the mountain lion that lived for ten years in Griffith Park. Through a extraordinary photo of him walking beneath the Hollywood sign, he became the most famous mountain lion in the world.
As a juvenile he miraculously was able to cross both the 101 and 405 freeways, crossing from the Santa Monica Mountains into Griffith Park where he became a legend.
His new home was an island of wilderness surrounded by cities in all directions. Griffith Park, 6.5 miles square, was not truly enough room for his habitat. And he was a bachelor his whole life. He never got to mate, for there are no female (or any other) mountain lions living there.
But because he lived in this municipal park largely without causing harm or bothering people (early in his life he is rumored to have eaten a Koala from the LA Zoo and at the end of his life after consuming rat poison, becoming disoriented and being hit by a car he ate a chihuahua) – he showed us that we could live side by side with apex predators, that there was room for both species and that it added to all our lives to share the second largest city in America (Los Angeles) with this majestic wild creature.
I live near Griffith Park and hike there often. I can see the park as I drive around my town. There are so many moments over the last ten years that I’ve privately thrilled at the thought of P-22. We even have a framed picture of him in our living room.
Like many, I was surprisingly devastated when he passed. As I sat with my sadness, weeping for hours at his celebration of life I realized that for me, he represented more than himself.
Yes, he was the wild lion king of Los Angeles, but he was also all the nature in Griffith Park, he was all the other apex predators – the wolves, the grizzly bears, etc. - man has decimated. To me, he was all the wild things in the world and the earth itself. To me, he was also every immigrant, every refugee, every native person, every black or brown person the system has ever harmed.
I share this story not to make us sad - 10 years is a good, long life for a mountain lion and P-22 did a lot for planet earth with his time (the Wallis Annenberg wildlife crossing was inspired by him and will ideally be the first of many wildlife bridges connecting habitats not only for mountain lions but many other wild creatures) – but to alert us to a magical power that only works if we intend to use it.
That magical power is open-hearted, unconditional presence with anyone or anything even and especially in hard times.
Let’s use my sadness over P-22 as an example. I went to the celebration of life with my son and husband. My son, 13 (and not crying lol), sat next to me the whole time I cried. He and my husband were aware of my tears, but not actively comforting me, not trying to help the tears end, but just there; by my side as the hurt flowed through me.
As we walked out I said, “I just cried for two hours.”
“I know.” they said.
I realized what a gift this presence was, even though they didn’t (and couldn’t) overtly take away the pain I felt. They also didn’t make me explain why I was so upset at what was for most people more of an uplifting event. They also didn’t put their own ideas about my tears on me. They were just there, by my side, letting my process happen; and then yes, they were extra nice to me for the rest of the day.
This open-hearted presence is what we can offer each other now as so many aspects of the world burn before our eyes. It is what we can give to each other and all life on earth.
I once heard the great Joanna Macy interviewed on OnBeing with Krista Tippet. (You can listen to that episode here.)
Joanna was asked how she coped with the grief around the degradation of the natural world. She responded with an analogy… she said if your grandmother, who took such good care of you and was always there for you, was sick and ailing, you wouldn’t abandon her, you’d stay with her. You would subject yourself to all the hard feelings about her un-well state, by staying in the room, caring for her in the ways you could. Even though she was sick, because you loved her, you’d stay by her side.
I love this planet so much. I love being alive so much. I think this whole place is an absolute miracle. And there is so much to care about here.
In kind, I feel the pain of it all. I mourn a lot, I grieve. I’ve learned to feel it and then let it roll through me and into the great beyond. My small sense of self would be destroyed if I tried to handle my rage and sadness from my ordinary self. I have to hand it over to the larger part of me, the one who is awakened and connected to the web of life.
We are just little humans, and we can’t hold all the pain we are confronted with. Fortunately, we don’t have to hold it, we just have to witness it and find our own ways to keep the heart open as we offer presence to all.
This open-hearted presence is the most holy kind of love and it is what heals.
In shamanism there is the idea that we can talk to our emotional self, that we can ask, “Emotions, what is this about?” Or “Emotions, show me what ______ feels like in my body?” Or “Emotions, how can I support you?” From there we can dialog with our emotions and this can get quite specific and surprising.
Not only that, but we can invite emotions in, we can self-generate or originate emotions we desire to feel. We do this by powerfully saying, “Spirit, increase ______ emotion in my experience.” Or “Spirit, send me love so I can feel it.” Or “Happiness, come merge with me.”
This seems unbelievable, but again, in my experience, it works.
And it is worth noting at this point – because now we are really far-out – there are many reasons why our over-culture is not comfortable with certain levels of emotion. And rather than list those reasons, in the interest of not depressing us all, instead let’s just give each other permission to feel all the feels.
One thing I believe is that our emotions, like our body, do not lie. Every feeling holds a potential kernel of insight.
I realized we are surrounded by rectangles. Our sidewalks are made of rectangles, we’re living and working and shopping in buildings shaped like rectangles on rectangular plots of land, we are driving on long rectangles in the form of streets and freeways, we are sleeping on rectangular beds, keeping our food in rectangular refrigerators, and looking at the world through rectangular screens of every size.
I also have realized that I really love the non-rectangular. I love organic shapes, I love a crooked path up a mountain, I love the liquid ocean, the riotous flower, the round little bird, the spherical moon, the amorphous cloud; I love faces and hands and hearts, I love the shape of a raindrop, a flame, a leaf, a star.
Some contemplations to explore about this rectangle life we’ve been living:
What do we lose when everything is contained within a rectangle?
How well do rectangles fit with the natural world?
What happens when we perceive the whole world and our whole lives through rectangular screens?
Since my rectangle epiphany, I’ve been playing around with opting out of “rectangle time”. (And yes, I get the irony of talking about less time in rectangles as I am writing this on a rectangle and you are reading this on a rectangle. It’s just that I don’t know any other way - my telepathy isn’t that good yet. ;)
At first this “opting out of rectangle time” took the shape of putting down my phone and heading into nature. But then it got even easier because I noticed my inner realms boast very few rectangles. Even the “buildings” in my inner spaces – the temple, the castle, the house, the library – aren’t as rectangular as the spaces I inhabit in daily life. They are circles, pyramids, towers, labyrinths, caves, clearings, galaxies...
This is not to say that we shouldn’t have rectangular structures - they are efficient in some ways, mostly in that they “fit in” well with the existing rectangles – but more to ask us to explore how we feel when we give ourselves some time in non-rectangular surroundings.
Recently, I was talking with a friend I trust deeply.
Generally, we were talking about life, the world, and this chaotic era we are living in.
Specifically, we were sharing our separate, but similar, observations about how frantically judgmental we are; even though we don’t want to be. We are judging others to an outlandish degree and we are also very judgmental of ourselves. And out of nowhere the following words spilled out of me…
“I feel like everyone – every one of us humans – is like a tired toddler right now. We are all toddlers that are so tired, and yet when someone suggests a nap (which would be to our great benefit) we scream ‘no!!! I’m not tired!!!’ and then we start to cry.
I would like to be able to wrap us all up in a warm blanket, give us all a few sips of clean, clear water, and settle us all down for a sweet nap in a room with a little bit of sunshine flowing in. And I also want to be there when we wake up from that nap - somewhat healed, rested and open-hearted.”
That little burst of words, that just spilled out, holds deep wisdom.
If we look carefully, we will see:
1. The truth of what is
2. An elevated way to respond
As we look at the truth of what is, the first thing that we must introduce (or re-introduce) ourselves to is compassion. We come by everything we are feeling honestly and all feelings (even for tired toddlers) are welcome.
The truth is, this has been a very hard time for a long time. The truth is, even the most powerful among us have been shaken to their core. The truth is, the hardest parts of these years have been playing on repeat on our screens. Suffering writ large and on a loop. And those of us who can, are being called to help others and dismantle old, entrenched, systems.
And we are just little human beings, on a small water planet, orbiting a relatively old star in a vast, mysterious Universe.
There is only so much our nervous systems can handle. And it is hard to show up in the ways the world needs us to when we are tired toddlers.
At the very beginning of the pandemic, I heard a shaman casually say, “Energetic hygiene is going to be the premier skill of our age.”
At that point, I thought I knew what energetic hygiene meant. And partially I did. I knew about alchemy baths (baths with baking soda and magnesium). I knew about aura maintenance (I do most of this in meditation). I knew how to keep my home space energetically fresh (with sound and salt and smoke and sprays). I knew time in Nature is deeply restorative. I knew a few more tricks too.
But now I am seeing new processes are necessary and the one I want to highlight for us today is the feeling of ‘resting in safety’. Resting in safety is consciously resting while making ourselves feel as safe as possible. This is the antidote to the tired toddler inside us all.
One important aspect (in my experience) of resting in safety is that we have to actively set ourselves up to rest and feel safe at the same time. We begin the process by being our own caretaker. We finish it by allowing ourselves to receive that care.
For me to rest in safety I love to lay down, wrap myself in a blanket and put a crystal on my high heart. I love to have a glass of water nearby to refresh myself when I am done.
These ‘cues’ work for me, I encourage you to find your own cues that create an environment where you can actively rest in safety.
Today, let’s begin by asking ourselves if we are indeed magical.
When I ask myself that question, both my gut and my mind answer, “yes”.
My gut answers yes viscerally.
My mind goes and finds many instances from my life experience and then affirms, yes.
If you are reading this relatively niche Substack, I imagine at least one – your gut or your mind – has answered yes.
Maybe they both did.
Among the many strange things that have happened in the past few unprecedented years, there is one thing that I feel I can help with; and that is reminding us that we are magical to the extent that we believe we are magical.
The first step is to find out where we are, to take an honest account of what we truly believe is our magical status.
The second step is to set ourselves up to increase our magic; which we do by enjoying and practicing our magical abilities.
To be clear, to know we are magic is not to say everything in the world is within our control. Nor is it to deny the systemically unfair hierarchy we all live within. To declare ourselves as magical does not mean we “opt out” of reality. Nor is it to berate ourselves for the areas of life where we have not been able to use our magic to the fullest extent.
Instead, to understand ourselves as magical is to know that whatever life brings, we can put our hands in that clay; we can engage and co-create.
Even now, after all we have been through, we still have the inner potential to guide our reality.
I cannot prove to you that you are magic. But you can prove it to yourself.
And we do that – prove our magical ability to ourselves – by practicing our way into that belief.