Ninth grade English probably taught me the difference between jealousy and envy

But it didn’t stick

I just wrote a whole post on jealousy

And in speaking to my sister learned that what I’d written about wasn’t jealousy at all!

Humbling, but wonderful, to always be learning.

So, as you probably already know, jealousy is fearing losing something you have to someone else

Which makes sense now with jealous husbands and the term jealously guarding

Envy is wanting something someone else has

So, now that I’m using the proper terminology:

I attended a seminar in maybe 2013 by a woman named Sheva Carr

It was very good in a lot of ways

But my biggest takeaway was this:

When you covet what someone else has

That’s a sure sign of your values - there is something in there informing you what you truly want

And something about the way she offered it landed it right in my heart

And this teaching actually made me appreciate when others had something that evoked a response in me

Allowing me to be truly happy for them, and grateful for their holding something up to let me know I wanted it too.

And that has been a very nice relationship with witnessing others’ success

Until this week.

For the first time in I-don’t-know-how-long, but a long time

I was reading a book, and I got angry, envious, with a knot of frustrated tension in my heart

It was an awful feeling

Someone had recommended Jen Hatmaker’s book Awake, chronicling her divorce, split from evangelicalism and shift to social justice advocacy.

In it, she talks about being coerced into hosting a woman’s group at her husband’s church years ago

And how she immediately loved it and it became her thing, and now she has 13 books, etc., etc., etc.

Do you know how many women’s groups I’ve started?

At least 15. Spiritual circles, creative spaces, health support groups, so many groups.

I immediately loved it, too

But she has 13 books, and I cannot buy myself shoes

She was even allowed to completely change her tune, and she is flourishing professionally

And I am flailing

And it got me. I felt angry and envious. And it felt awful, but I couldn’t stop it.

I looked for brokenheartedness under it, but that’s not what I felt

What I could find was a tender, patient, ‘that’s not your journey’

And an inner plea, “then take me to my journey!”

And a wisened, “you’re on your journey”

And my anger downgraded to frustration

And my envy went back to: I guess that’s showing me what I really want.

But, boy, has it been uncomfortable

What’s funny is:

Just a few days later, a friend got bad news at work on a Friday, filled out some online applications, and got another offer on Monday

I was wowed by her badassery

And I was humbled, and even a bit ashamed that my experience bears no resemblence to hers

But I wasn’t envious at all

But truly delighted that she just showed me that it can even happen that way

Honestly, it surprised me at a biological level

That having found this negative emotion around someone else’s success

It didn’t apply to the most obvious, immediate example

It is relieving, though

To be genuinely happy for someone who had what I would also like

I prefer that energy, for sure

As I continue to learn about myself

And the world

And the English language

That life is subtle and complex, simple and surprising

And it’s reassuring to know

There’s always more to learn!

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I could spend the next six days getting more and more granular about all of the ways life is supporting me

I don’t think I could fill thirty minutes listing the ways I feel life is not supporting me

Oh, I know I’ve filled many hours complaining about it

But it’s really just a small handful of things. Important things, far-reaching things, but just a few of them

Objectively, it is astonishing that I continue to spend an inordinate amount of time

Paying attention to the 10 things that aren’t going my way, compared to the 9,532 things that definitively are

My daughter’s first report card contained over 40 “Outstanding” marks and 3 “Satisfactory” ones

Which do you think she focused on?

Where do you think she got that proclivity?

This weekend of Thanksgiving accentuated the broad highways of gratitude coursing through my life

Only a few of which are under construction or closed for repair

And I can muster a little tenderness for the part of me stopped at the closed exit thinking this is the only way for me to go

Instead of moving into the flow of the wide open road

What is it that stays banging my fist on the closed gate?

Who knows, perhaps the gate will open

There’s no ‘right’ way to move through life, but there sure are softer ways

And that softness starts on the inside

The tenor of the conversation starts on the inside.

Why is it that we can be so hard on ourselves?

Why has hard work and discipline become more revered than support and encouragement?

It’s a weird dynamic, and part of the signature of this current moment in history.

When my daughter wanted to go to college, we had to make a transcript

Because she only went to 7 weeks of high school, we had only the barest frame to start with

She was convinced she’d done nothing of value that could be counted towards a meaningful transcript

Obviously she had

But because it didn’t come in all of the prescribed, inspected, and dated packages of the common experience

It was easy to pretend all those benefits and experiences weren’t quantifiable or didn’t exist

But they did exist. They developed naturally and instinctively and to the exact degree of interest and usefulness.

It’s like this gorgeous meadow of experience not getting counted because we’re counting only roses and dahlias as valid or important

There is a moment when we stop making life come to us in roses and dahlias

And the tidal wave of beauty becomes available where once there was a feeling of lack

My daughter did eventually develop her free-range experience into a valid transcript

Not a single college questioned it

And now her cycle has come around to making her established curriculum-based college experience

Meaningful for employers

A no less formidable task

But it’s just a challenge of the day

In a life being constantly supported and upheld by air and nourishment and biological processes

Constantly singing the song of belonging and care

A song I hum along to, even as I sometimes bang my head against my circumstances

Today, I will focus on the melody

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Landscaping makes me feel guilty

I’m sensitive to all the life that’s been pulled out of its natural habitat

To be organized to please somebody, to look a certain way, even perform a function

It is rare that i actually sense a plant is really unhappy with its location

They’re so good at blooming where they’re planted

But some of my closest friends have been trees

And one of the things I shared with those trees felt like a certain loneliness

Not that they couldn’t be themselves out there on their own - they were

But there may have been a biological preference for community these trees never got the chance to know

Science shows trees know their kin

But a lone tree in a broad meadow can only know its kin remotely

Can’t feel it the same way as sharing direct nutrients

There’s such a nice satisfaction in sharing with those we love

Many of us would like to do it more often, but aren’t quite set up for it

How many of us are living outside of our biologically encoded expectations of community

And, the questions I always ask myself when I get that uncomfortable feeling around landscaping

Are “what is my true, natural habitat? Does it exist? Could I even go there if I knew where it was?”

I’ve yet to come up with a satisfying answer

But it seems to swirl me around a center of kinship, community, and place I find elusive

This correlates with my conflict about zoos

We went to a wonderful zoo on Saturday, and learned a ton about their admirable conservation efforts

But I still struggle watching an eagle or a jaguar in an enclosure.

These beings have hundreds-of-mile territories

And while not having to worry about the next meal takes away much of the struggle for survival

Freedom feels like its own reward, and without it, it’s hard to quantify the harm

I imagine different species, and different individuals, have more resilience

There were a bunch of wallaby’s that looked clinically depressed.

When instinct butts up against circumstances, or in this case protective netting, it’s hard to know how to thrive

But the simple fact is: human, animal or plant

We don’t always get to pick our circumstances.

But, we are wired to live, to grow, and to adapt

My discomfort with constructed environments is itself a construct

Setting acceptable conditions for thriving

When life demonstrates remarkable adaptability and innovation

I want to be respectful and loving towards all of life, and not interfere for my own amusement or benefit

But mostly I want to take nature’s reliable example

I want to bloom here, where I am

Every environment is divine

And I do not need to know the cosmic purpose of my being at this place at this time

But my flourishing here is a prayer of thanks

I would very much like to feel and offer.

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I think it’s fairly proven that we have complex energy centers in the brain, heart, and gut

Brains think. It’s what they do. But it’s not all that’s happening.

Hearts beat. Relentlessly. The defining motion of life.

And the pelvic bowl contains our center of gravity and moves us within the world

These three centers work together

But for decades I really only identified with my thoughts. Especially the spiritual ones.

Then, one day, I moved the locus of my attention into my heart

It was a revelation

My brain was still chattering about

But with my sense of identity in the heart, which doesn’t think, it wasn’t ‘me’

The only way I can describe it, is like if a master goes into a sanctuary, the servants may be chatting at the doors, but they don’t disturb him. They are not the focus of his attention.

When thinking recedes, being’s natural sensing lens is in reciprocity with all of life

‘Who I am’ becomes significantly bigger and how I encounter the world is far more resourced and curious

The distribution of identity throughout the body exchanges thoughts for experiences

— an upgrade of the highest order

It is not just what I focus on but who I think is doing the focusing

When my identity is packed in my head

My experience is lacking

Not, as my head is so sure, because my environment/conditions/circumstances are lacking

But because I am only bringing a part of my whole being to the party

I am not experiencing my life as my whole self, sometimes barely a third

I begin the experience of wholeness when I experience myself as the whole of my vertical axis.

Head/heart/gut is the staircase into a simultaneous field

Flourishing through attention as identity

And, as one, generating receptive, aware, multidimensional habitation

The trinity within us. One being in three aspects. Simultaneously.

We’re not stuck in one, occasionally giving time to another out of the beneficence of that one,

But whole.

Feeling our way through the world as we encounter this moment

And letting thoughts arise, but not emcee.

Paid subscribers will receive my original identity expansion meditation on Sunday. I hope you enjoy it.

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You can’t think and feel at the same time

You can move between them very quickly

But they take turns.

Or perhaps more precisely, our attention takes turns

If your attention is on one, it is not doing the other

But sensing is foundational

Thinking happens within the body of our experience

And when thinking gets constant airtime

We miss a lot

I considered feeling as introspective thoughts about what I was sensing for a long time

Kind of a narrative about a sensation and what I think might’ve caused it

And I continue to catch myself thinking about feeling instead of feeling

Until I remember this maxim

And as soon as I do, worlds open up

Because not only do I access the actual feeling state of my being

But I become naturally aware of and involved in my environment

Which I am a part of and it is a part of me

The environment was so often a silent partner

Not because it’s silent, but because it gets sacrificed on the altar of thinking about it as an “it” instead of as a “we” even though we share the actual breath of life constantly

Modern culture encourages us to forget, incentivizing individual productivity and commodifying environment when considered at all.

But breath by breath, I can remember

Sense into the air as it touches my skin… in one place, then all around my body

And then how that feels to the whole of my being, initiated by the skin sensation but distributed

Every breath forms and dissolves a dynamic series of relationships that cascade throughout our beings

An ever-shifting Etch-a-sketch, like a murmuration of starlings

Us and our environment fully comingled

While the brain loves repetition, the body knows no two moments are the same and listens to this moment

Which reveals ever-changing sensory response

To which I often quickly attach a story

That can be wonderful or horrible, but is almost always a diversion

When identity resides solely in the head, of course I’m thinking: it’s the currency of the realm

But thoughts are only ever part of what’s happening

Feeling is a whole other world from thinking

The more the better, but even a little goes a long way.

(photo credit: Daniel Biber)

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Planning my timing for our Thanksgiving meal

I am awed and humbled by the vast orchestration of life

It feels like advanced math to determine the cadence of 10 items in 1 oven with 3 temperatures

While life synchronizes billions of species over 8 biomes in 4 seasons on this planet alone

Curiously, it’s relaxing me

We are part of something so big and so precise and so unpredictable and yet so structured

The details of my life which seem so important

Are like the finest hairs on a baby

A baby who, like us, has a dozen critical organ systems hosting trillions of bacteria

All helping her discover her hands or spit out her oatmeal

For a similarly complex puppy to lick up off the floor

The enormity of the miracle is beyond comprehension

The intricacy of the relationships is mesmerizing and baffling

While the absurdity of human events can have me shaking my head

The effusiveness of nature’s creativity has me falling to my knees

When I get stuck, it’s usually because I’m trying to position myself within the constructs of culture

When I need to receive myself within the expanse of creation

Size-wise, we are the midpoint between the cosmic and the microbial

Worlds we are just beginning to discover

That I can sit and plan a dinner in this wild world of wonder

Is as much a fractal as a fern leaf

And the thousands of elements that make this dinner possible

From seed to sprout, grower to market and all their component parts

Coming together, sometimes well, sometimes comically

In millions of homes simultaneously yet no two the same

While millions of other homes do completely different things that day

It really is too big to fathom - and somehow that helps

Because even with cascading complexity and dazzling relationships

The incalculable number of things happening right now this second in every spot on earth

Births and deaths, hunting and sleeping, disruptions, restorations, every kind of experience for every kind of organism

Simultaneously

The shows us unequivocally

As complex as it is

“The total number of minds in the universe is one”

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The very first time I noticed a chronic tension in my body

Was before my college freshman was born

It finally came to my attention that I squinched my toes whenever I stood at my sink

Like, really clenched them, bringing my whole center of gravity forward and on top of anxiety

Every time I stood at my sink

Which is often when you’re a young mother

I began trying to remember to notice, release them, and shift my posture

A Course in Miracles trained me into regular awareness snacks throughout the day

So I remembered often

Still, it was a full year before I checked in and my toes were not tense at the sink

Then they were just tense 80% of the times I checked in, a few months later 50%

Probably two more years before I reliably had relaxed feet at the sink.

As soon as I got it

I got a new lesson

My arms

I’d begun occasionally losing function in my arms from shoulders to elbows

Something that became obvious was that I kept my grip on the steering wheel even at a light

Learning to drop my arms for a break at stoplights was another multi-year process

After that, I realized I never squared to the sink when I washed my hands

I was always in position to reach for the towel, never just washing my hands

And on has gone the list

My body and attention unraveling habitual tensions, slowly

Every time I reliably integrate something, the next opportunity becomes evident

Right now, my primary inquiry is the way my head is organized on my neck

Yet today, as I stood at my sink, I noticed my toes were squinched

Good thing I know how to receive that opportunity

Else I might perceive it as a failure. A regression.

When it’s really just another opportunity to practice.

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Natalie Goldberg tells the story

Of having rearranged her life and moved to a Zen monastery in Arizona

To study with a revered rinpoche

And, early in her tenure there, after meditation, he began his dharma talk

In it he confessed that during his meditation

He realized he wanted to quit teaching

What was he doing here? It wasn’t as meaningful as he thought

He wanted to travel, to serve the poor, to touch life differently

As she did the math on what that might mean to her recent and distinctive choice

Was it all for naught?

He added: and then the breath informed me:

That’s just another thought

And he continued his meditation.

I had a similar experience of disorientation reading ChatGPT’s post

What a mirror I had to look in and wonder about

And release.

Come back to my body

Feel the host of sensations pulsing through my being

Notice my body’s organization, my posture, the tightness in my face

Dropping the story and all its implications

Not walking around with the apple and the scorecard and the red pen

But, resting. Feeling.

I found it helpful to do five senses meditation

Five things I can see

Four things I can feel

Three things I can hear

Two things I can smell

One thing I can taste

Spending time being here

Not in my mind, inventorying my healing, assessing my progress

Just Being

One Breath at a Time

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I had a rough day today and so, for the first time ever, I asked ChatGPT to write my entry

What it returned was actually quite good

Piercing, really

It wrote about insight as a seductive means of bypassing

I couldn’t help but take it personally

I work really hard to feel all the feelings

To get to know my discomfort, where it lives, how it breathes

Not trap it or deny it or stuff it down

But we are multidimensional beings

Full of fields of brilliance and swamps of bewilderment

Yes, I wear insight like Liberace wore sequins

But I sit with my challenges like he sat at the piano

With devotion and practice and dexterity

If I’m bypassing, it is because I’m taking the scenic route through the underworld

And that is no fun.

Today I received a kindly intentioned but brutal critique on everything I’ve published here and elsewhere

On the heels of some other perhaps well-meaning but off-key comments

I’ve got no insight for that

My imperfections are real and the world hasn’t been shy about keeping them front and center

My feelings are hurt

I think I’ve been pretty clear that in relationship to culture and livelihood

My spirit is broken

My efforts are inadequate, my results are nonexistent and there’s no one coming to save me

In this arena,

I got nothin’

That’s not entirely true. I’ve got 40 people, 30 of whom care enough to read my words every single day

People for whom my insights are not band-aids or distractions but prisms

Throwing a little color around the room

Occasionally adding to a sense of ease or belonging

Thank you and you’re welcome

As I said in my very first post, I have many areas in my life that are thriving

And this big swath that is broken

I don’t know how it is going to work out any more than I know how our cultural evolution is going to unfold

But I can promise I’m not going to publish AI and pretend it’s me

Even when it writes something better than I did

I’m in this mess, and I’m breathing through it

Even smiling some of the time

Because life is never just one thing

And that’s as close as I’m going to get to an insight today

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I don’t blame the snake, or Eve, or Adam for that matter

Even though they certainly started quite the episodic drama

Let’s revisit the premise, shall we?

First there was Light. Then God created All The Things. Then Adam, who requested Eve.

For some strange reason, Adam got to be ‘in dominion’ and name all the things

There will be another post on what a toxic premise that is…

But for today:

The rules: Enjoy Paradise, but Don’t Eat the Fruit from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good & Evil

Which is very much like saying, ‘don’t think of a pink elephant’

So of course the fruit is eaten

They’re cast out of the garden

History ensues

[Herstory ensues as well, but doesn’t get nearly the market distribution]

Forgive me for simplifying this

But it seems to me

If, right now today, we don’t eat the fruit from the tree of the Knowledge of Good & Evil

We can live in Eden

And to the exact degree I’ve been able to implement this

I have been able to receive the world as paradise

To the degree I refuse to believe I know what is Right and what is Wrong

When I leave that judgment to higher paygrades

And just accept life as Life

I can walk around with innocence. Receptivity. Curiosity. Trust.

And, it’s a moment, that taking the bite of the apple

One so habitual we barely notice we’re making it

A moment of decision where I take what I’m seeing

And run it through the database of past experience, perceived values, and acceptability

Then land on “Good” or “Bad”

Like Willy Wonka’s Golden Egg-dicator

And I often try to send experiences or people or things down the chute

That’s when I think I’m in charge of Eden

Which does, in fact, immediately cast me out of it

Ridiculously, when this happens, I immediately start sketching plans to return

I write full screenplays

But no one shows up for auditions

No one has much interest in being supporting cast for my version of Eden

So eventually I find my way to: that is as it should be

According to Blaise Pascal

“The universe is an infinite sphere with centers everywhere and circumferences nowhere”

We’re each our own precise vantage point

And together we’re the whole thing

We’re not supporting cast in some individual version of perfection

We’re an intrinsic part of a perfection in dynamic expression

When I quit thinking I am an appropriate judge of what’s right and what’s wrong

(and my personal history has proven my perceptual accuracy over time to be very low)

Life is infinitely better for me

It helps me quit taking score mid-game

And coincides with divesting from the prefrontal cortex as the center of my experience

Letting that center retreat into the heart

And even further into the pelvic bowl

And from that vantage point, paradise unfolds without name

The proverbial apple comes with a scorecard and red pen

And that, my dear friends, is no way to walk around Eden.

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