Falling Gently Podcast

In a currency of Crisis

With coins of anxiety and bills of outrage

It’s challenging for a broker of Calm

To assess the exchange rate.

Crisis has become wildly inflated

It is certainly being overprinted

Which one would think would accelerate collapse

But what to do until then?

How to stabilize the market?

Perhaps it’s easiest to cut off trade entirely

But isolation and exclusion have long lines of credit in Crisis

And would only exacerbate the volatility

The whole of the economy needs stabilization

And Calm’s dollars and cents of compassion and care

Can be a flight to safety

If only the market would turn toward it

Smart investors are shoring up the asset

Calm is high-yield, pays compound dividends

It can absorb Crisis, but can also be overwhelmed by it

So it’s important to keep strong reserves

To stabilize the fluctuating market

Lots of people don’t even know the safe haven of Calm exists

Much less how to trade in it

But we can model the economy we want to build

Small, daily investments in Calm

Fortify our personal portfolios

And allow us to bring Calm into circulation

Bolstering market confidence

And offering sound returns on investment

If Crisis is the coin of the realm

Calm is the ethical alternative currency

Letting us make our deposits

In sustainable assets

That honor the long game

We all hope to play

And just like the financial market is built on cents

Energetic equity

Is comprised of sense, born in our senses

Intrinsically linked to the natural world and each other

The exchange is within us all

And we each have a diversified portfolio

But in this market, Calm is a strong buy

Exercise your options.

Thank you for reading! This is one of my favorite entries. I’d love for you to subscribe.

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit fallingtenderly.substack.com

One of the criteria for getting on the constant improvement escalator

Is a commitment to getting a little better every day

Which might seem like a natural process at first glance

But is actually uni-directional and not representative of the cycles of nature

A less popular orientation, but one I’ve come to value

Is the letting-life-shape-me gyroscope

Maybe bobbling, but finding my center and returning to upright

Again and again

I’m not so committed to improving these days

So much as being

Improving always seemed to have a corresponding image of what is better

And an inherent judgment of not quite good enough yet

I find that exhausting.

Perhaps it’s just time of life

But I’m happy for the shift

It helps me appreciate where I am, or at least get to know it better

There’s a settling in my nervous system

The moving target I chased for so long

Is now a coaster on which i set my water glass

The elusive goal of being happy or feeling successful all the time

Has shifted to experiencing the full range of emotion

From a center that can expand to include it

That goal requires an orientation to feeling what is

Over images of what should be

Because feelings bring us together - we all share the same spectrum of feelings

But no two imaginations are ever envisioning the same thing

If we read the same book, it often evokes similar feelings

But how we picture it in our minds will be wildly unique

It’s why beloved book adaptations so often fail as movies

So if we’re ever going to develop a peaceful world

It stands to reason that it will be based on shared feelings

Not on a shared image of what should be that we all agree on

That feels like a fool’s errand

So, today I’d just like to encourage all of us

Maybe we don’t need to improve anything

Just for today, let’s set down images of what should be

And feel the breath in our bodies

And the range of emotions that come up for us

We might wobble, but we are designed to come back to center

And we will

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It is easy to look at the world

And have grievances

At least for me

And because that condition is so consistent

And yet so at odds with the life I want to live

I needed to explore it more

Now, a lot of my writing seems to vilify the thinking mind

And i don’t mean to do that

Where my frustration lies

Is in the thinking mind being primary in our culture

When it is just a portion of our experience

So the thinking mind is only ok with me

When it’s a part of my experience

Not the conductor of it

Because what I’ve noticed

Is there are broad swaths of my experience

Wherein the thinking mind is a diversion, a distraction

And grief is one of those places

I need to feel grief, without story, to integrate it, to let it shape me

And when I get caught in story

Or worse, when my grief gets trapped in my mind

The mind’s incapacity for feeling

Turns grief, which it can’t control, into grievance, which it sure can.

My own inability to encounter or withstand the painful feelings of grief

Redirects it into finding fault in the world

That whole, when you’re pointing one finger at something

Three more fingers are pointing inward toward yourself

Taking that literally has helped me

Asking again and again and again, what is the real source of this grievance

And so far, every time, there’s an interior grief

A value diminished, a potential unrealized, a love lost

Bringing my most mature and resourced aspects

To meet that grief, to let it be felt and known

Typically takes a few minutes at a time

There’s a question, and then a surge, and then a comedown

My experience of the process seems to have a natural titration

Not that it solves it in one encounter - it doesn’t

But it softens it, familiarizes my resourced self with the territory

And makes a commitment to my hurting parts that they will be tended regularly

Because grievances comes up

And using that as a cue to meet the grief

Honestly, has cut my general mental chatter by probably 80%

Here’s an example:

My son missed an important deadline and the results could be very expensive

I get mad at him and my mind’s chatter is busy with blame, frustration, and imagined futures

But when I sit with it a little more deeply

I feel grief

Grief that I can’t protect him

Grief that my parenting had important gaps

Grief that I’m not in a stable place from which I can absorb financial challenges

And when I meet these waves of sadness, confusion, longing

I’m not mad at my son

The chatter dissolves into compassion towards him and towards myself

And curiosity about what will happen, even if rueful

My grievances with the state of government

Turn me again and again

To my grief about this country’s painful history

And lack of accountability toward it

Which feels too big

So I then turn my attention to my personal grief

At the way I treat my own wise vulnerability

That I was raised in a culture that made the thinking mind dominant

At the cost of feeling, nature, sensitivity

And that exercise

Though painful

Is restorative

As I commit again and again

To my body, my feelings, my relationships, my willingness to take responsibility for my lapses and be available for repair

Using grievance as a signal

To tend to my grief

Has me stop running and striving, to simply be with my grief

And I haven’t exhausted the well

But I have found the water clear and flowing

And nourishing the life around it

Because life grows where water flows

As the saying goes ‘tears are the sweat of a heart that’s doing its work’

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I believe social activism is essential to a responsible life

But I’ve had to change how I approach it

I was out with clipboards and signs regularly

Yet, very few of my chosen causes have been ultimately successful

There’s a lot I don’t understand about how and why the world works the way it does

And my part in it

And I still go out and sit or stand with my sign

But my real activism work is now on the inside

During my years of stillness

And the various health protocols I explored

I became very aware that the way I treated my body

Uncomfortably paralleled the way my species treats the planet

I had normalized ingesting pizza and coke, and staying up til 2am

Still expecting top performance the next day

Or exercising as a way of commanding my body into a shape

Impatient with fatigue or a need to rest

Popping up after the flu and immediately getting back to 12 hour days

Or being angry for not being able to.

It was unsustainable and extractive

And for all my organic groceries in cloth bags, and turning off the water while brushing

I was forgetting to tend to the tract of earth fully within my stewardship

My body.

Once my environmental activism

Became recontextualized to start with my own body

I noticed some other external priorities

Had compelling internal expressions

For example, in my commitment to wanting to stand up for human rights

I saw and felt my intolerance for my own vulnerabilities

Parts of my being that wanted to control and be separate from

My tenderness, my fragility, my grief, my specific heart and its idiosyncrasies

Holding myself to expectations of rising above myself

Demonizing my attributes that weren’t up to some mechanical expectation of

Strong, efficient and worthy

Holy smokes can I be intolerant of myself

And that is hypocritical in a world where I want everyone treated fairly.

This transferred pretty quickly to my feelings about economic justice

But of course, the economy of time and energy supplants money in my interior

How often I spend my time and energy on what my thinking mind wants to achieve

Over a deeper sensitivity to what the moment is asking of me

I have far more tolerance for the literal pain and stress of applying to jobs on LinkedIn

(my shoulders start aching by the third application, every time)

Than I do for resting and doing nothing for an afternoon

Which I do, because I now know rest and playfulness are valuable

But I still often feel guilty about it

And so, when I see authoritarianism in the world

I can sense into my internal parallel:

My thinking mind believing it is the most valuable aspect of me

That it should be in charge of everything

With little to no regard for the needs of the body

Denying the mind is entirely dependent on the body

Vilifying any need of the body that doesn’t serve ‘progress’

The left-brain domination that has no regard for the right mind

Would drive my life to the brink of disaster

Expounding on its own superiority.

And after a solid decade of softening, I continue to find insidious examples

Of how entrained I am to exploitive

And that pain

Reminds me to focus on the holiness of the whole of my being

And sensing my breath in my body,

And feeling the world in its wholeness

This feels like the most important activism of my life

Because that inner tyrant arises often

And it’s my job to dethrone the spectacle

Again and again

So that the whole of me has the space and time

To be in this world

Whole, curious and receptive

The ultimate upgrade from the fragmented self

Feeling the possibilities

Instead of swimming in grievances

Because if I’m ever to be effective in the world

It will be because I’ve embodied my principles

Within myself.

Thanks for reading! This post is public so feel free to share it.

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My friend once told me a story

About a time early in her family’s life

When they were constantly just a little behind financially

Scrounging the couches and asking for extra hours to be able to buy diapers and formula

After several years, they’d stabilized, and saved up to buy a house

As they were moving

She noticed the Maxwell House coffee cans they’d used as door stops

To keep the breeze moving through the apartment

Those coffee cans were full of change

That’s what made them heavy

And there were hundreds of dollars between them

More than enough to have provided what they needed during those years of struggle

So, now she knows to ask:

What are the coffee cans?

What are the resources I’m overlooking

Hidden in plain sight

That are in my possession right now?

It’s a helpful inquiry

And gets me thinking outside of the box

I did not find any coffee cans full of money during our move

But I did find my favorite earrings, lost during our last move

That’s a win

And overall, we’re feeling a sense of optimism again

Which might be even more valuable than a can full of quarters

We like our house very much

The dog loves the yard and seems to be getting brighter every day

Which was our priority

And my husband’s gotten some work

Which is a great relief since we’ve had multiple unexpected expenses

But against a backdrop of reducing overall costs

And so it is

Like the inhale and the exhale

Blessings and challenges

So, drawing from the Chinese Farmer’s wisdom

No need to decide what’s good and what’s bad

Just that there’s a mix

And I’m trying to be softer in my experiencing of it

So that I can see my coffee cans for what they are

And know abundance can be quirky

In how it makes itself available

To eyes willing to see things differently

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I have had an especially challenging day

And this time, it’s impacted my ability to write

First time in 70 days

Dang.

It does, however, give me a chance to share a story

One I’m sure you know

But the whole point of this exploration

Is bringing to mind tools we might have forgotten we have

And how we need each other

To remind each other

Today I need the story of the Chinese Farmer

The one whose horse ran away

And all of his neighbors came and said, “oh, what bad luck!”

To which the farmer replied: “Maybe”

And how the next day

the horse returned, bringing wild horses with it.And the neighbors said, “Oh, my! What good fortune!”To which the farmer replied: “Maybe.”

Then, when the farmer’s son tried to ride one of the wild horses,And broke his leg.The neighbors said, “Oh, that’s too bad!”And the farmer said, “Maybe.”

And of course, then, soon after, soldiers came to draft young men for war.They saw the son’s broken leg and left him behind.The neighbors said, “You’re so lucky.”And the farmer said, “Maybe.”

Judging the moment isn’t helpful or true

We know this, but we forget

So, today, may we witness without judging

Feel the sun warm on our faces

And know lots of people care about us

Whether we’re Lucky or unlucky

Today

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This life is not easy

And sometimes it is so hard and confusing as to be unbearable

Big things

All around us

And some days it’s just too much

I’ve been feeling this in my own life

And witnessing it in many others

And for all of the resourcing

And all of the self-regulation I practice

It does not go away

These resources do not ‘solve’ anything

They soothe

Soften

Make me more able to bring a mature, caring heart

To what would otherwise be existential panic

They slow me down

And offer a larger context

But they are no bypass

And the pain is there to be felt

Addressed

Processed

And I trust one day resolved

But I have to meet it as it is

Not in the promise of it becoming something else

Today I went and watched ‘planet earth’ to soothe myself

You know, bask in the majesty of nature

And let me tell you, it did not work

Life is a challenge all up and down the line

And sometimes the mystery, while full of marvels and beauty, feels brutal

We are truly in exhausting times

This week I’ve had several friends experiencing existential hardship

Wonderful, intelligent, caring people

For whom this moment of life includes incredible difficulty

That is real and present and hard to parse

And suddenly it became clear to me

They are, we are

The dot in the yin yang symbol, or the taichi

A point of light, surrounded by its opposite

A seed of one in a sea of the other

Holding an incredibly important role

But feeling so very out of place

Seemingly separate from the wave of its likeness

Sharing in its qualities and integrity

But feeling so lonely

Even though we know we’re together

It shows how much we need each others’ active care

How no one can go it alone

Because no matter how resourced,

Sometimes it feels like we are utterly by ourselves

And that idea itself needs care

Feeling separate from the larger wave is hard

But that larger wave truly is a source of sustenance

And the taichi represents energy in motion

This is a moment, a season

And in this season, our energy may be surrounded by its opposite

It won’t always be that way

But it’s hard to be available

To the breath

To the body

To each other

When we’re swimming in uncertainty

Cruelty

Or an impossible diagnosis

Still, our being expresses our nature

Even in a sea of its opposite

And that is strong

Brave

Holding our own

Even as everything is pressing down around it

If you’re in the wave right now,

Commit that feeling of connectedness to memory

Feel your power and the power around you

And ground in your nature and resources

And if you’re feeling like the dot

Remember

Life is in motion

‘No feeling is final’

and

You are not alone

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“Do I contradict myself

Very well then, I contradict myself

I am large

I contain multitudes”

-Walt WhitmanMy inner compass is powerful

I can generally feel my magnetic north

And when my mind gets involved

And talks me into a different orientation

I almost always deeply regret it.

So I’ve learned not to do that so much

But even as I learn to be steadfast to what calls me

I know that doesn’t mean the other options don’t exist

Or are bad

Just not for me

At this moment

I’m so clear on so many things

And so foggy on so many more

Which has been my achilles heel in this job search

But through Sue Choi’s work

I’m seeing that not only is being foggy OK, and natural

It’s essential.

It’s essential to let some things be blurry

In the periphery

So that our attention focuses

On that which piques our curiosity and sparks our imagination

Making a choice to move towards something specific

Right here right now, what i see in this moment

Not an imagined picture I’m looking to attain, but attention to what’s actually here

Which is profound for me

Because whilst I have been in this looking-for-a-job-confusion

I have been choosing again and again

Self-regulation. Alignment. Attunement.

This form and that form and a combination of both

My focus on this has been a choice

I really hadn’t seen it that way

It felt alternately like a cop-out and a genius priority

When it feels like a cop out, it feels passive

But when it feels genius, i can see the diligent action in it

And while it hasn’t helped me find a way to pay my rent

It has yielded a fertile field in which I can be still and receptive

And ironically, for a woman who eschews goal-setting

That was my desire all along

So the contradictions continue

Sometimes specific enough to make me laugh out loud

And to me that highlights the intense inclusion of life itself

This AND that

All having their place.

When I was in high school

Someone handed me a stack of multicolored 3x5 card stock

Each with a bit of spiritual wisdom

One of my favorites was:

“In part, everywhere

In whole, nowhere”

And I don’t mean to insult you

By spelling out the dual meaning

Of “nowhere” and “Now Here”

But I must

Because both aspects are vital

The wisdom of the world

Isn’t held in one place, position, or philosophy

Everything carries a part of it

No one part contains the whole of the truth

It’s the totality that sanctifies it

And wisdom’s configuration changes

As the dynamic assembly of the parts

Form a new and fresh whole

That sometimes contradicts what came before

But is just as integral as the last

Representing the fluidity of the whole in motion

Moment by moment by moment

Here

and

Now

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I believe something big is happening

Quantum

Probably galactic, but definitely planetary

And I believe humans are a part of it

But just a part

Specifically, I believe that for all of our destructive and extractive behaviors

Humans are not fully responsible for the change we’re undergoing

I believe there’s so much more at play

This soothes my nervous system

Because the Mystery is very life-positive

I picture it as if we’re on an airplane together

Humanity

And we are flying from where we were to where we’re going

The itinerary is set, and we’ve agreed to travel

I truly believe that as a species

We’re embarking on this journey towards deeper connection and care

But we’re not there yet

And the current flight air is turbulent

And we’ve got a ways to go

But how we spend this flight is up to us

And it’s meaningful

It will forge the quality of our experience

Though not our destination

We can spend our time worrying over every bump

Or we can distract ourselves with movies

We can sleep or read or write letters

We can chat with the person next to us

Or air grievances to the stewardess

All of our behavior on this flight

Is up to us, each individually

As we make our way towards someplace none of us has ever been

So, right now, I’m choosing to meditate a lot on this flight

To settle my attention into awareness

Of my body, of the life around me, of this moment

But, I should be honest

I spent the first part of the flight at the bar

Those tiny bottles were just so easy to drink

I might have gotten a little loud

And spent a lot of time and attention sketching out plans

To make the world more like i wanted it to be

My next leg of the journey was in the infirmary

Where there were many caring people

To help deal with my pain and confusion

And dontcha know this plane has a chapel

And I’ve cloistered myself in there, too

It’s been quite a long ride

And it’s nowhere near over

But we do get to choose how we spend this time

And we probably each will have many chapters

All sorts of ways we prepare for our landing

We’re having a simultaneously individual and shared experience

And if we care for ourselves and each other tenderly

Providing emotional dramamine as necessary

We can’t make the plane go faster

But we can improve the quality of our ride

Whether we hear it or not

The vibrations of our individual actions

Are writing our song

By the end, perhaps we’ll be singing in harmony

We are being led, guided, transported and shepherded

To a new landscape and language

We’re in transition, and this time in between is important

Our learning to care for ourselves and relate to each other

Is an amazing way to spend this time

So that as we arrive

We’ll be settled in ourselves

Connected to each other

Having bonded on our shared journey

Ready to step forth into Wonder

Because that’s where we Belong

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One of the most painful and corrosive habits I’ve had

Has been trying to do the right thing

Sounds crazy, right?

Isn’t that what we’re always doing

Using our intelligence and experience

To move towards pleasure and away from pain

To get the right answer

And avoid the wrong one?

I’ve come to realize

It’s an enormous distraction for me

It sets the world as a puzzle I’m trying to solve

Instead of a wonder I’m a part of

Striving to figure out the right answer

Keeps life treacherous

A rocky cliff

Where missteps can cost everything

And some magic formula shoots you right to the top

Never, literally, in my experience

Have those stakes been true

I’ve thought them to be true a hundred times

But the truly dangerous stuff, I’ve had little control over

And luck and timing have helped me far more than perfect planning

So maybe there’s no right answer

There’s just what’s here, and my choices in meeting it

How close I’m willing to get

How I let it inform my next choice

Life gets - well, easier isn’t the right word

But less perilous, for sure

In part because my trust in my own capacity grows

And my fear of doing it wrong diminishes

Our educational system creates unnatural structures

Where life is linear

And while some answers are clearly right and others clearly wrong

Truth be told, often things aren’t that distinct

I remember volunteering in my daughter’s 4th grade class

More than once - maybe four or five times in the one semester she attended-

I would be grading tests

And notice multiple answers were technically correct

The first time, I asked to see the chapter reading so I could assess which the test was truly asking for

And the teacher declined: ‘you don’t need to read it, just do what the key says’

It was so frustrating, and so false

Illusions of straightforwardness

May have made sense to produce an industrial workforce

But that’s not quite what we need anymore

And, institutionally, we’re slow to recognize

That just because something worked before

Doesn’t mean it’s what this moment calls for

I bring all of this up

Because I’m staring down my future

And I keep hearing advice

Either encouraging me to ‘manifest’

Or be careful not to misstep

And both schools of thought come from loving places

But I need to remind myself

Again and again

That attuning to the emergent future

Is where I want my energy focused

Not creating what I want

Or avoiding what I don’t want

I have life requirements I need to tend to

And the mix of fear and longing I’ve approached it with in the past

Just muddied the waters

I want to align to the flow of the waters

With trust in both the process of life

And my own capacity to meet it

Right thing

Wrong thing

Left foot

Right foot

All of it moves us forward

All of it knows our name

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit fallingtenderly.substack.com