Falling Gently Podcast

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”

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

We unschooled our kids

Unschooling means no curriculum, no worksheets, no tests

What did we do? Lived life. Explored their questions.

About 5 years in, they wanted to try school

My son had to take a placement test. He scored squarely in his grade level.

Without having completed a single elementary lesson or scratch of homework

I had not stressed for a moment about him learning his times tables

His natural becoming carried him right where he needed to be

Had I been micromanaging his learning by a prescribed set of rolling dictates

Did you do your homework? Are you ready for your spelling test?

I imagine I would’ve been very involved in regular interventions to support his performance

And I think we both benefitted that that was not the case

To some degree, this is how I’m feeling about healing

Outside of physical procedures that usually have a start and end date

Followed by perhaps shifts in behavior to support ongoing wellness

Many of us seem to have ourselves on a healing treadmill

Diligently trying to achieve our 10,000 steps toward the self we hope to earn

We forget that wholeness isn’t an achievement

It’s the ground we start from

What if our healing is a natural process within our becoming that simply takes time and space to unfold

And what we really need to do is live life and explore our questions

Move towards what lights us up and away from that which constricts us

That discernment is our job

Which requires sensitivity to this body in this moment in this space

Like every other bit of life, we’re constantly becoming something new

Even when that becoming looks like aging

We bring the resources of what we’ve been in the past to encounter what’s happening now

And let that update us instead of defending the old position

Healing occurs

Because life, as Gibran says, cares for our growth as well as our pruning

I say this as someone who has experienced a lot of physical pain and a lot of healing

And significant emotional pain and healing

And for all my efforts and devotion

I’m not so sure that most of my healing didn’t happen naturally or at least in nature’s timing

That my machinations towards it were just that

In any case, it has all informed my orientation

That we are whole, just as we are

We are becoming, because that’s what life does

And when I can soften into that knowing

Life is interesting and surprising right here in my body and through my relationships

Not a constant march of me trying to fix myself

That’s what I really needed healing from

Maybe letting go of concepts of healing is where healing truly happens.

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

We’re hard on ourselves, as humans

Because we can almost always imagine a ‘better’ option

It can be very hard to just be where we are

To acknowledge and appreciate our quirks

And their contributions to the color of the world

As we imagine embodying ideals

But I’m not completely convinced our ideas about ideals

Are at all accurate

I’m more of a believer that our quirkiness is more precisely tuned to the majesty of creation

Than our best behavior.

I have examples.

My daughter is delightful and charming and talented

When she is sad or depressed or frightened, she is a bubbling cauldron of anger

Over the years something became evident

When I try to empathize with her or soothe her or calm her

She just gets angrier. Digs in. Goes deeper.

Of course my deep desire to ‘help’ generally has me forget this for a half an hour or more

To actually shift the situation, I have to mirror her anger

Lose my temper at her spiraling

Shout “Basta, basta! E abastanza!” Enough! Stop it!

I don’t really yell in Italian, but it is my inner Sicilian that comes out

And then I need to give us both a minute.

That’s when things shift.

This tracks with homeopathy, which encourages us to allow a fever to run its course

The theory is that the heat moving through the body is performing a system upgrade

Aborting the mission means the immune system misses the update

Don’t be afraid of the fire, but don’t let it take over the system, either

Now, my inner perfectionist would like me to find exactly the right soothing words and calm delivery to give my daughter what she needs to find herself within her anger and move through it

I don’t think the utopian version really exists, or if it did that it would have the right impact

When I was a young adult living at home

I was in a toxic romance and one evening was sobbing into the phone at 2am

My mother, annoyed AF, got out of bed, came into my room, slammed the phone down and slapped me across the face

It’s actually one of my favorite memories

It was exactly what I needed

It literally slapped me back to reality, reestablished myself within myself, let me see and choose against the spiral

She didn’t slap me because she knew it was exactly what I needed

She slapped me because, come on! It’s 2am! Enough already!

But, her authentic response brought me back to myself more than any honed wisdom ever could’ve

Jefferson Fisher, that adorable attorney who talks about how to engage in difficult conversations

Admits that sometimes, calm is inappropriate

Sometimes, life is fiery and our agitation is normal and healthy

The cauldron of alchemy in those moments is grounded connection

Grounded connection is going to look different every time

Sometimes it’s a mirroring, sometimes a shoulder to cry on

Sometimes a slap across the face, freely given and without regret

A scripted response could never meet the moment authentically

AI cannot soothe the savage beast

It’s our special cocktail of crazy meeting their special cocktail of crazy

In heartfelt, honest relationship

And like my mother before me, I know

Sometimes losing your temper is the medicine

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

For many years in my youth I was the friendly backstage gate guard at Meadow Brook Music Festival

The summer home of the Detroit Symphony Orchestra

It was a lot of fun. I’ve got many stories.

There were a few times when I was recruited to pick up a soloist from the airport

And once the soloist, a violinist whose name I do not remember, wanted to stop for food

We went to a modest family restaurant, and there were lots of people in

That evening, maybe 5,000 people would watch him play

But not a person in that restaurant had any idea who he was

I remember thinking, “Wow. We never know if there’s a world-renowned talent at the next table

One of these people may have already paid for their ticket tonight

And can’t wait to see this guy, and have no idea he’s sitting right next to them.”

Mass market celebrity is easy to notice - actors, musicians, athletes

But there’s a whole world of top-level talent we can’t necessarily identify

Writers, painters, musicians outside your favorite genre

Scientists, doctors who invented life-saving procedures, people who will be named saints

So many individuals who maybe even changed your own life

Sitting next to you in a diner

Just being human

The opposite of the “do you know who I am?” trope.

Jewish philosopher Martin Buber believed God lives in the world

And we know the divine through dialogue and relationship, embrace

This paradigm evaporates objectification, meeting what’s outside of us as “it”

And prepares us to treat all we encounter as “Thou”

With reverence, honor, care

And thereby know God and be in relationship with God through and as each other

What a powerful orientation

It lets us meet everyone as the unidentified superstar they are.

So the next time you’re in a restaurant

Give a knowing smile to the person beside you

They might be Banksy

They’re definitely an expression of the divine

Even if they may be chewing very, very loudly.

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

I spent the day researching job opportunities for my daughter

Ohmygoodness, it is SO much easier to do this for someone else

Especially someone you love

I identified a dozen people to reach out to, a dozen more jobs posted today

Wrote a dozen cover letters and rewrote a resume to include requirements from all 12

It’s been absolutely fascinating

My shoulder didn’t get sore at all, even though I spent most of the day on LinkedIn

I got more done for her today than I’ve been able to do for myself for weeks

This reminds me of the spoons in heaven -

It’s lovely to feed each other

Feeding ourselves isn’t nearly as fulfilling, even when it is possible or necessary

The Dalai Lama tells us the fastest way out of depression is to help someone else

Given the prevalence of depression these days

Wouldn’t systems to help each other be super handy right about now?

I imagine they’re there, but there sure are barriers to entry

It took over a month before I could begin volunteering at the local homeless shelter

Today I worked with a woman who is taking a community college math class

The structure of the assignment was distributed over 4 different sheets of an excel file

Whoever wrote it worked on it for a long time, but it was virtually impossible to understand.

And I love math

I feel for the teacher. Community college instructors aren’t making the big bucks

But this was profoundly poor instructional design

It’s a catch 22

Ivy league schools have the luxury of and mandate for elegant, straightforward educational tools

Community college gets whatever that instructor can come up with on the fly

Profound learning inequities persist

How, in this digital age, we haven’t made best practices available across channels is beyond me

And it’s frustrating

But the answer is right here

In sharing

In serving each other

In pooling our resources and being invested in each other

You’re doing it for me right now

And I’m grateful

And I’m doing it for you

With these reminders

We need each other, and we have each other

Feeding each other is how we create a heaven from the hell of feeling alone

Feeling that we have to do everything ourselves is a trauma response

And entirely not true

We just have to get past those barriers

And remember:

We’re part of an ecosystem

When we allow ourselves to be fed

We nourish our roots

And strong roots bear fruits

And those fruits make feeding others easy

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