Falling Gently Podcast

I have a dear friend with whom I occasionally make pilgrimages

One of our favorite destinations is to visit the traveling female Indian mystics

Widely acknowledged as avatars, or living incarnations of the Divine

Called “Amma” or “Mother”, they travel around the world offering blessings

Which, quite frankly, is no small task

These women are not young. They sometimes spend 18 hours greeting people.

The devotion runs both ways:

Hence our pilgrimages.

So, one day, we went to go see Amma Karunamayi

She’s lovely and sits in front of a room full of people.

While you wait, you can fill out an index card with your petition to the Divine

When it’s your turn, she reads it, she looks at you, she blesses you, maybe talks a little

And sends you back to your day with some Hershey’s kisses

She is not speedy in her blessings and once or twice we’ve been there all day

Like, all day.

But this time, we get there and it looks a lot like we are going to be in and out

Then just before they call our group, they change the pattern on group calling

We might be there all day again.

The woman next to us waits maybe 3 hours, getting increasingly agitated every 15 minutes or so

My inquiry during our waiting became,

“If we are here because we believe this person is an avatar of the divine

Wouldn’t being in her presence longer be a boon? Wouldn’t it be an added blessing?”

And, I mean, I’ll admit I was excited when I thought it was going to be quick

But we are here literally to be in the presence of God, and we are

So, maybe, let it in?

After some time, the woman next to us cannot take it anymore

She gets up and leaves

But she couldn’t have gotten to her car before they called our group

It was the weirdest thing.

I’ve thought about that a lot lately

I’ve been so impatient for God to intervene in my life

I neglected recognizing that all of this is the Presence of the Divine

And what a privilege it is to be here

Even when I’m feeling edgy about it.

Remembrance really is a boon

As are the effusive blessings

Sometimes disguised as hardships.

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My two favorite book titles are so good

You don’t even need to read the books.

The books are great, too, don’t get me wrong

But the titles are transmissions

They let you know everything you need to know

The insides are just examples to get the ball rolling.

My first favorite book title is:

“Behaving as if the God in All Life Mattered”

By Machaelle Small Wright

Let’s hear it again:

Behaving as if the God in All Life Mattered

That, right there, is the solution to all of it

It sets the stage for a pause. Humility. Reverence. Connection.

The book itself is a trip.

It’s about cocreative partnership with nature, and it is, shall we say, multidimensional

She offers an approach that is informed by human intention but clearly reliant on nature’s intelligence

One of my favorite lines in it is:

Humans think gardens are expressions of nature. Nature thinks gardens are expressions of humans.

It’s not the only idea she offers a fresh perspective on.

The other absolutely stunning book title is by Charles Eisenstein:

“The More Beautiful World Our Hearts Know Is Possible”

Sit with that one for a moment

The More Beautiful World Our Hearts Know Is Possible

What I love about this is that there is a common sense —

We each may have entirely individual and specific imaginings of what it might look like

But we share an underlying common sense of a nourishing, healthy ecosystem

Thriving with respect and creativity

This book is all about the stories we’ve accepted as true. As “history”, as “culture”

It’s written in vignettes, each spotlighting an area of human endeavor

Inviting us to drop the stories that are literally killing us and the planet

And Imagine into new stories, richer stories

Stories that are more true

More inclusive, more expansive, more full of possibility and wonder

The title says it all and invites us to more, and I hope we collectively accept the invitation

Recently, I heard Bayo Akomolafe talk about an upcoming book

“The Times Are Urgent. Let Us Slow Down”

Once published, it will definitely place in my favorite titles award ceremony.

To me, it is a common denominator of the first two

If we are to create The More Beautiful World Our Hearts Know Is Possible

It will be through Behaving As If The God In All Life Mattered

To do this, we must slow down, be reverent

Release the old stories demanding our allegiance and attention

And be present

As we make the world anew

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

Aren’t you just the sweetest being

Bearing with me as I reflect and contemplate

Exploring how the mystical wisdom lives and moves

Within fractured and often unsatisfying circumstances

Thank you ❤️

I’m switching gears today

You see, I’ve been so careful trying not to bypass

I’ve perhaps overindulged my inquiry

And underutilized my orientation of curiosity

There’s a difference, at least how I’m feeling it

Inquiry is wanting to know why and get to an answer

Curiosity is wanting to explore, discover and perhaps create

So, I’m not sure if my biorhythms have shifted

Or my true devotion to life as it emerges is finally willing to accept how it is emerging

I’m switching gears.

My situation was impossible 5 months ago

And is almost the same amount of impossible today

Makes me realize I need to shift my definition of impossible

I’ve read dozens of articles about exactly my predicament happening all over the country and the world

So, rather than inquire and philosophize and lament

I think I’m going to start to look at the advantages

I’ve talked about the difficulties quite enough

And while they still may come up, they’re not the context

The context is discovery, re-creation and possibility

I want to appreciate what this moment offers me

Tara Brach: Happiness lies not in finding what is missing, but in finding what is present

Right now, I’m appreciating that I didn’t have to take a day off work to get my tooth fixed

And that I’m available to help offer my full self to help my daughter find a job

And that stupid expensive job search program can maybe offer some value for her

I am available to care for my aging dog, who is out of sorts when I’m not home

I’ve had time to be there for friends

These are not small things

I want to do more of them, and maybe let that lead me to my next step

Instead of the idea of where I should be that I’m not, and an inquiry about how to get there

My current optimism may ebb and flow

But this context of becoming has been there all along

I just want to lift the veil of my circumstances’ impropriety

And get back to the serious business of accepting life as it is

With curiosity and trust

And the truly meaningful support of friends, family and community

Because we need each other, there’s no question about it

And we have each other

And that is no small thing.

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

True intelligence has no thought…It is an attunement of the body to the world…”

I know this

I have not been living it

I have been thinking waaaaay too much

It just seemed so important to think

As if I could counter the uncertainty I’m experiencing with copious thinking

You’ve had a front row seat to how that’s gone for me.

The quote is from Philip Shepherd

Although Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi describes ‘flow’ similarly

Philip has an exercise I’ve often loved

The idea is this:

Take a simple idea, like ‘the sky is blue’

And feel what ‘knowing’ that idea feels like in your mind

Then move the idea down into the heart, and feel what ‘knowing’ feels like there

Finally, move the idea into the pelvic bowl, and sense what ‘knowing’ feels like there

It’s simple. It takes a moment. Try it! Each intelligence center feels a little different.

The realignment this quote offered today invited me to the exercise again

Bringing thought through the whole body to discern a deeper, sensory experience of truth

Sometimes, with a less simple idea, you have to modify the phrasing to get it to move to the lower energy center

The example he gave is when the head thinks, “I want to marry this person I just met”

You might need to shift it to “I’d love to have a cup of coffee and a conversation with this person”

To be able to have it be true in the heart or pelvic floor. They’re not prone to hyperbole.

So, as my mind has been thinking

“I cannot find a job”

My heart’s truth is “I have not found a job”

And my pelvic floor’s truth is more like “I am doing my work”

Similarly, as my mind has been repeating

“I am running out of money”

My heart feels “my immediate needs continue to be met”

And my pelvic floor takes it further:

“I am a vital part of an economy of care”

Just this little exercise proves to me I’ve been spending all my time in my thinking mind

As much as I have learned of its fallibility

Old habits have had me resorting to it in crisis

This series of reframes has me operating more as my whole self

Thinking less, more being

Closer to truth, closer to presence

There, waiting for me to return. To listen instead of think. To know.

I’m so glad I saw that post

I’m so glad for the experience of the shift in orientation

For this exercise and remembrance

We need each other to remind each other

Thank you, Philip

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

Prayer has many benefits

We all have our go-to

There is something very soothing about the repetition of prayers

Some traditions believe the deity lives in the prayer

And I can say I’ve felt that to be true.

I have a number of go-to prayers and mantras

I wonder if there should be just one

But they fit situations like favorite songs

Sometimes they make me feel better

Sometimes they are just refuge

One that has been prominent, especially these last few months

Comes from A Course in Miracles

and it goes like this (although I swap gender, which ACIM doesn’t):

I am only here to be truly helpful

I am only here to represent He who sent me

I don’t have to worry about what to say or what to do

She who sent me will direct me

I am content to be wherever She wishes

Knowing He goes there with me

I will be healed as I let Her teach me to heal.

This tests my faith

Am I really content to be wherever She wishes?

Lately, that’s been a hard ask

It’s a lot like the Footprints in the Sand poem

God is with us always

Even when it might not feel like it

It cannot be any other way

I keep having to remember

Life is unfolding as it can

Regardless of my opinion of the progression

Pain is inevitable

Suffering is optional, and based on resistance

My prayer is to see the divine in all

To know it. To be in it. Willingly.

And so I pray

Repetition helps.

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

Have you ever solved a problem

And then come up against it again and forgotten that you’d solved it?

At the moment of recognition, there’s a downregulation that is such a relief

Oh! This isn’t a big hairy monster anymore. Phew!

But also intense curiosity on why it had you flummoxed again.

I’ve experienced this in lots of ways over the years

My daughter is allergic to Neosporin and needs first aid cream instead

But it took me nearly a dozen times to consistently remember (and I recently forgot again)

I can’t even tell you how many homeopathic remedies I’ve forgotten work well for me until I’m cured by other means

But then, there are also times when tried and true methods just don’t work

This week, for example, as I’ve been trying to soothe persistent inner angst

My go-to “spend time in nature” ritual backfired

Instead of feeling the intimate majesty of the natural world

I cried for 45 minutes about what colonization and capitalism have done to the land around me

Not what I was hoping for

True, nonetheless

Authenticity of emotion took precedence over nervous system regulation

And no amount of effort, no tool, no remedy could turn things around

So I just had to go with it

Succumb to the misery

Ironically, that’s helping

But I had nearly a week of anxiety consuming probably 70% of my day

Not something I’m used to

Not something I liked

But has begun to lighten

Honestly, writing yesterday, “I wonder how God is going to take care of this”

Kindof slapped me back into remembering I’m not in this alone

As soon as that happened

All of the kindness I’ve received in these last weeks came flooding in

My orientation during the height of my emotional turmoil couldn’t let the kindness sink in

It kept dragging me back to what wasn’t working

Today, the ethers feel alive with shared care and intention

On a variety of issues, most of them, not mine

And my myopic view of my own impotence can rest in a context of a world in painful transition

Thinking I have to “fix things” in and by myself pits me against the world

Accepting that hard times are happening, and no one is immune, creates a wave of compassion for everyone

And sensitizes the space between us as crucial to our individual well-being

I am not the tender of this field, I am a blade of grass within it

What a relief, even when I’m getting ruthlessly blown around

I didn’t like that lonely vortex I was in

And I know I’ve solved that loneliness before, but I was grasping in the dark trying to find a solution

When the solution was feeling it

Letting it have its way with me

Before revealing the currents of care

That were there all along

(Gosh, I hope tomorrow’s post is a little more light-hearted)

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

My inner landscape goes from lush seaside forest to fiery desert canyon surprisingly quickly

The part of me that trusts life, that encounters hardship with curiosity and care, and that is at rest

Can quickly be usurped by the one who finds darn near everything unacceptable

All of my spiritual practices, all of my physical practices, all of my time in nature

Are intended to increase my time in the forest

And they work

Except when they don’t

Lately, I’m feeling I might rethink my approach

I keep having to remind myself that I wasn’t put on this planet to prove myself

But old habits die hard

The more plausible reason I was put on this planet

Really why any being is here

Is to bring light to density, possibility to rigidity

To contribute to the ongoing creation in cooperation with all of life

Always evolving towards greater love, freedom, and complexity

Totally different frame, yes?

And if we’re going to bring light to dark places

We have to be willing to go to dark places

Get to know the texture there, not to fix it but to cocreate with it

The idea of just tiptoeing through the tulips of the well-lit areas is not the goal

Being able to encounter any of it, and know the light can suffuse this place, too

That seems more reasonable to me

Although I may just be rationalizing

I’m quite good at that

But, I want to frame my current struggles within my development and contribution

Not deign to see them as personal or relational failures that I must overcome to be ok

Occasionally, I can know that my devotion is surrendered to the current of life

More frequently lately, I’ve been trying to solve myself, my situation

So as to be more acceptable to myself

This is a labyrinth in that canyon side of my inner landscape

And I get lost in it from time to time

But today, that doesn’t feel like a failure so much as a part of a process

I would like to be fully awake, enlightened, aware of the divine currents always

And I can mentally place myself within the larger unfolding of Life

But when the sensations of unacceptability overwhelm me

When another $1,500 unexpected expense piles on top of an already thin resource pool

That reaction feels very human

Even if I aspire to laugh and say, “Hmm, I wonder how God’s going to take care of this?!”

The relationship between my resourced, trusting self and my underresourced, panicked self

Is the ground I’ve been walking

Perhaps lately stumbling along

But I know, when I sit in the trees of my inner forest

That the smell of the sea can lead me back from the desert canyon

As I remember I am part of this place

Not lost in it.

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

Ganesha, the elephant-headed Hindu deity

Has a brother, Kartikeya, the god of war

And as children, they both craved a magical mango that could not be shared

So their parents, Lord Shiva and the goddess Parvati, proposed a race

Three times around the world.

Both boys agreed.

Kartikeya rides on a peacock. Ganesha rides on a mouse.

Kartikeya set off quickly, prodding his peacock over hills and seas

Ganesha slowly walked in a circle around his parents, three times

When they looked at him quizzically

He just smiled and said, “You are my world”

He won the mango.I’ve been trying to circle the world

And it’s diverted me from my own center

Thereby dissipating my groundedness

Honestly, I thought I was more practiced than that

But this constant rejection is hard to bear

Confusion. Fear. Anxiety. Anger. Depression. Sadness. Grief. Uncertainty. Hopelessness.

It’s been beastly

And because I mean so little to the world at large, who pays me no attention no matter how much i dance

I haven’t been able to appreciate how much I mean to those to whom I mean something

And how much they mean to me

The fact of my financial precarity keeps wanting to sit on the throne of my identity

I am more than that

The grotesque mockery of governmental responsibility keeps wanting to sit on the throne of my attention

My care is more valuable than my grievance toward their cruelty

Remembering the truth is much more subtle

We are right here

Our world is made up of infinite smaller worlds

Each revolving around centers of love exchanged

Remembering that

Wins us the juicy, sweet delicacy of life in this present moment

It doesn’t mean there isn’t a large, tart pit –

But that’s not all there is —

This truth is sweet.

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

You might be surprised that hell

is full of banquet tables, each overflowing with fresh foods

Every delicacy imaginable, bright and tempting

The problem is:

No one can eat

Arms in hell are three feet long and end in a spoon

And because they can’t bend, you can’t feed yourself.

Thus, hell is full of starving people looking at delicious food.

So, what of heaven, you ask?

Heaven is exactly the same

Same tables of food

Same long spoons for arms

The difference?

Residents of heaven feed each other.

Heaven & Hell aren’t different places

They’re different ways of being

And during this time of disruption, cruelty, confusion and chaos

We need each other more than ever

May we all find someone to feed today

And gratefully accept their kind offerings .

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

When my kids would encounter a bully on the playground

I encouraged them to receive the jerkiness as an indication

Something more interesting was happening elsewhere

I’d challenge them to look in 360 degrees, a full circle

And if nothing else caught their attention, then they could engage with the bully

Defend themselves, whathaveyou…

It never happened

There was always something more interesting happening somewhere

This little creep’s attitude was just the alarm bell letting them know something else was waiting.

Now that they’re big, I wonder if teaching them to walk away was wise

I am the kind of person that does not shy away from conflict

Someone needs to stand up to bullies

I’ve often been that person

So it’s weird I didn’t teach my children to

Especially in this time of belligerent, institutionalized cruelty

I gave my kids many meaningful gifts

But there are a whole lot of gifts I neglected

We can’t all do everything

We spent a lot of time discussing costs and benefits of growing up in our household

And make no mistake, there were both

These days I worry about my inability to find a job

Rubbing off on my daughter who is struggling to find a role using her design skills

It’s an awful thing when you see the worst of yourself moving forward

While the best of yourself sits at the bottom of a silver bowl

Waiting for purchase or a rope

As the heat turns up beneath

Things have been hard for me the last few days

Not the least reason for which is the very specific depression I get after smoking cigarettes

It furloughs my generally optimistic outlook

And the worst part is the aspect of me that thinks this is more real

The truth is, everything is real, and nothing is

And we do our best and make mistakes and if we’re lucky have the opportunity for repair

None of us know what tomorrow brings, no matter how informed we might be

Life and mystery are synonymous

And when bullies, even within ourselves, get too close

Turn around and look for something to love

And go to it

What else can we do?

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