Practice:
Each time you find yourself worrying or complaining, try adding on that little phrase. Even if it seems false at first, let yourself play with it and see what happens. You might find it helpful to enroll an ally to keep you on track-- your partner, child, or Joy Buddy.

We are all connected, each to another, and no one person or no one thing is ultimately greater than another.

Grounding
Reintroduction – I am familiar yet entirely different. Transformed.
I step in and my light shines bright.
What I am, feels right—inherent as opposed to influenced
I am an experience. I am 1 of 1.
UNIQUE

We can learn much from trees in our present climate. Namely, the importance of community. Evidence exists that trees share nutrients between themselves, thus making sure they and their posterity can survive.

Take a moment to imagine a yard, perhaps your own. What is your yard filled with? Flowers, playsets, beautiful green grass, pets roaming freely, perhaps even an entryway to your home? Now imagine a fence surrounding the yard.

So as I took my walk in the woods, I thought about Wilber’s words, and what it means to be “not-two.” My dog and I passed a corn field, now cut down, with dry spent cobs littered about. What popped into my mind was: “This field is my body too.”

Trauma comes to all of us, and its consequences can be terrible. That’s the truth and the bad news. The good news is that all of us can use tools of self-awareness and self-care to heal our trauma and, indeed, to become healthier and more whole than we’ve ever been.

“Oneness is not just a spiritual platitude. It is a belief, a core principle and life-defining orientation that we are all interconnected. This ‘we’ is not restricted to just humanity. The ‘we’ includes all living things.” Understand that we are all each other’s consequences. Each of us, individually, impacts the whole. Choose kindness.

In February, the month most associated with love, now more than ever with Covid numbers rising daily, I invite you to lean into radical, live out loud love. Not the “significant other” love, I trust you to your own devices and/or preferences there. I speak specifically of love of self, welcoming compassion, and a do no harm approach to yourself.

Can you take a moment to recall the memorable remnants that live on in your heart from the precious time spent with your loved ones who are no longer with you - your ancestors? How can you honor and keep those remnants alive today?

The political climate, pandemic, and endless assaults against people of color made it imperative that I learn more about health equity, social justice, and anti-racism. But what good is reading if it doesn’t encourage action?

RAIN is a mindfulness tool that creates space between situations, either fantasy or real, allowing relief from obsessive thinking and attachment to outcomes.

I am just beginning to climb out of a state of unrelenting hopelessness. Every day COVID numbers escalating, climate change now a global crisis, the fires out west destroying acres and acres of precious trees and wildlife, floods destroying homes and whole towns….not to mention all the serious social and political issues that are present…heaping more and more powerlessness and hopelessness on my heavy heart.

We all have dreams, hopes, aspirations, preferences. They help sustain life and motivate us to thrive despite “the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune” as Shakespeare observed. I have noticed, however, that when I consciously or unconsciously transform these desires into concrete expectations, suffering often arises - especially when those expectations prove to be unrealistic.