we are the people...

Consider the possibility that this charade of a presidential race may actually be very good news! What else could have pulled back the veil on the hidden inner landscape of America? Could there be a clearer clarion call bringing our attention to the great divide? Were it not for drumpf, no doubt most of us would have continued in our silent schisms unaware of just how polarized we are.

From disgust to disdain to daring, I discovered that by engaging in the “equality practice” outlined below, I can refrain from adding to the harm being proliferated on the planet. I didn’t cause it, I can’t cure it, but if I’m not careful, I sure as hell can add to it and not in a good way.

The practice is like putting on a new pair of glasses. I began by turning my heart towards people who, for whatever reason, have failed to challenge corrosive beliefs, those who are inclined towards “certainty without question” and “contempt prior to investigation.” A new perspective begins to emerge. I felt my heart soften as I pondered the idea that some of us may inherit a DNA of disdain from our ancestors for people that don’t share our worldview. At a  minimum, we all have our biases. I began to weep. Not for anyone in particular but for the magnitude of prayer and practice that stretches out ahead of us.

Because love trumps hate…

• We the people can step into the shoes of women, Muslim, people of color, LGBTQ, or any number of other maligned and marginalized groups.
• We the people can feel into what it would be like to be an American of another persuasion. As a woman, I can feel into what it would be like to be a frightened little boy inside of a big white guy.
• We the people can let go and step out of whatever bubble we find ourselves in and begin to “see” with a wide angle lens.
• We the people can ask ourselves how we can be so vehemently opposed to others simply because they don’t share our particular values, after all America was supposed to be a melting pot.
• We the people can open our hearts and doors wide and allow for a radically diverse conversation.
• We the people can allow others their perspective while honoring our own.

Equality Practice

Equality practice is a way of connecting with others and realizing that you and they are in the same boat. It is a simple human truth that everyone, just like you, wants to be happy and to avoid suffering. Just like you, everyone else wants to have friends, to be accepted and loved, to be respected and valued for their unique qualities, to be healthy and to feel comfortable with themselves. Just like you, no one else wants to be friendless and alone, to be looked down upon by others, to be sick, to feel inadequate and depressed.

The equality practice is simply to remember this fact whenever you meet another person. You think, “Just like me, she wants to be happy; she doesn’t want to suffer.” You might choose to practice this for a whole day, or maybe for just an hour or fifteen minutes. I really appreciate this practice, because it lifts the barrier of indifference to other people’s joy, to their private pain, and to their wonderful uniqueness.

The Equality Practice is from Tonglen: The Path of Transformation, by Pema Chödrön

think on this and love, Susan Rees

easing into comfortable discomfort...

A good friend said to me once, "I have had no choice but to turn toward a path I cannot see and follow it regardless of how it feels. Strangely, it is the way I always wanted, just not at all what I imagined. Much love." To know there are others in the same boat is priceless. I am simply following footprints left in the sand and this is comforting to me.

Discomfort is a symptom, a warning shot over the bow of our lives and meant for us to take notice, not something to run from. Leaning into discomfort is not easy but necessary for progress. In touching the raw, messy places of our lives, we go deeper to feel or see what's driving the discomfort. If fear and trembling arise, we remember to breathe into it and it sometimes dissolves on the spot or morphs into tender shakiness. In most instances, it is bearable, and becomes less and less ferocious over time. With consistent visits it appears to disappear. 

"Discomfort is a symptom, a warning shot over the bow of our lives and meant for us to take notice, not something to run away from."

Putting a stethoscope to our interior, we finally give credence to our inner wisdom and begin to find out what's truly going on inside. Up to this point, our lives have been largely run on imaginings and stories. It is only when we pay close attention that we begin to notice the falsities that betray us and only then that we can dismantle the mindstuff that no longer serves us. The mind may be a dangerous place to hang out, but consulted and worked with tenderly in this way, there's a zoo full of conversations we need to discover and come to grips with. It is in the STILLness we find out what's actually driving our bus.

Deliberate and unceasing in our efforts, over and over, again and again, we return to the storyteller and challenge the authenticity of the yarns being spun. This type of inquiry led me to discover that all my life I looked up & out instead of in & down. Over time all of the outer trappings I'd placed my confidence in, disappeared. Familiar outer cues evaporated like morning dew at noon, not a trace to be found anywhere!

The breath is the compass we use to navigate the interior of our lives.The landscape is unique to each of us. But there are those who will gladly come alongside and shore us up. 

Onward we trudge the road to happy destiny, clearing the blockages to the ever-present flow of Power and Presence that calls us home. 

Love this little gem by Yaakov Astor.

"The breath is the compass we use to navigate 

the interior of our lives."

l8r, Susan Rees

Starting another CHAPter…

In the remaining chapters of my life, I believe I'll be steering clear of fixed, hard, steeled-up, loud, bristly, fundamentalist, opinionated people. You know those folks who believe THEY know and worse, that THEY're right. Porcupines, in other words. The mean people. Yes, I know, hurt people tend to hurt people, but I'm opting instead for a diet of flexible, warm, curious, inviting, still growing after all these years, teddy bears of the human race. The ones that leave a residue of love in their wake. Perhaps I can manage to love the porcupines, but I certainly won't be inviting them near nor will I grant them much of an audience.

For you see, it was they at whose hand I was bullied, kicked, punched, spit on, molested, marginalized, shamed, made fun of, emotionally abused, unwanted, unheard, unloved, unlovable, by-passed, snuffed out, and worse, much of this was done (I am so sorry to report) in church.

By the time I was 8, not-enoughness was so ingrained in me that it was necessary to disassociate from my body in order to survive. It was just too painful to be alive. Thus began the use then the abuse of alcohol. I found in alcohol a friend that granted me such exquisite numbness that I didn't have to feel the denigration in which I was submerged to the point of drowning.

It was then I began handing over piece by precious piece of what today has become my most prized possession, ME. From that moment on, it was not I who lived in this body of flesh and bone but a sack of conditioned reflexes and neural patterns. I took my cues for how to move, feel, and be from what I saw outside. TODAY, I blame no one, no thing, no establishment and especially not God. 

Not so sure why, reading my fav rebel's  blog today Stuff That Needs To Be Said clarity is arising. Tho my perspective of God has changed drastically (thank God), I now understand that it is the Presence of God I yearn for and that somehow, I have had access to this Presence all along. Simple right, just flip a switch, get the Windex out, clean the lens, turn a cheek, new perspective... perhaps, but not likely. Now, the process of uncovering, peeling away all the layers of muck and mire, and dissolving obscurations begins. 

She is waiting for me and SHE is so very WORTHY...

Suzy circa 1963

This is totally new ground, I'm sharing as I go, I haven't got a clue what my life looks like from here, but I'm headed there nonetheless. I'm answering the call I hear in the distant me that beckons me to be transparent, to love what's in front of me, to open to every moment, to be creative and to teach what I know. In that vein, I will practice here to capture the journey reaching towards the Autumn of my life.

l8r, Susan Rees
p.s. It is very important to open to beauty and likewise, not to recoil from that which isn't always comfortable. Borrowing from my friend, Ron, I shall endeavor to "cuddle-up" to whatEVER comes up.

Hi, my name is Susan and I am a PROgressive...

I'll begin at the beginning of the past 7-year cycle...

7 years ago life brought me to my knees and dumped me in a place not unlike Dante's "In the middle of the road of my life I awoke in a dark wood, where the TRUE way was wholly lost."

November 2007 I found myself ALONE for the first time in my life and seriously doubted my ability to exist. I didn't trust life or myself and for a long, long time doubt pulled me under the waves and breakers over and over and over again. It was as Voltaire described, "Doubt is not a pleasant state of mind but certainty is absurd." Doubt sucked, certainly absolutely proved absurd, and nothing made sense.

Alcoholism is a progressive disease from which I have been in recovery for as long as I can remember. It is my experience that a progressive recovery is required to live the life I wish to lean into. I will never be satisfied just sans alcohol. At best, without PROgressive tools, this dis-EASE allows the Mild Misery River to course through my veins; at worst, it makes life unlivable.

I'd recently been stuck cocooning, on the couch, watching every episode of the series du jour and could not, no matter  how much I willed it, get up and DO. And though I knew the answer, my yoga was sparse, meditation was difficult and I was helpless. I couldn't rally, couldn't get my butt in gear. It was as if my "want to" had abandoned me and I was left with vapors of desire and no "oomph".

Earlier this summer, I began to sense that something was incubating, then stirring, and most recently bubbling to the surface. I've put on weight and feel some guilt for my couch-potatoness, but all the while I have practiced self-compassion.  This past weekend proved the "piece de resistance" in the form of Jill Kelly and her book "Sober Play." 

I attended her "Sober Play" retreat which has proved transformational. Something in me has shifted. Had I not been willing to "PROgress" and try something new, I suspect I'd be stuck on the couch and definitely not have started this blog. Since I would not have had a prompt from Jill to, "get the sewing machine out of the box" I would not have an appointment at Tidewater Sew n'Vac Saturday at 1pm for a lesson. Did I mention it's never been out of the box in the 2 years since I purchased it. ::blushing::

I'm sure the women I met and bonded with will be a part of my path for a long time to come. And what a gift I received when during the retreat, cLARity arose and said, "hey, you're a PROgressive.” The thought sort of plagued me, but it's true, I looked it up – synonyms too! I am broad-minded, open-minded, enlightened, tolerant, radical, adaptive… showing continuing action, trying new or unusual ideas, growing, accelerating, increasing, escalating, developing gradually or in stages. Hey, that's me!

It has taken time, willingness and an entire entourage to be sure, but with the love and encouragement, from far too many friends to name for fear of leaving one out, I have not only survived, but am coming out the other end of the darkness transformed. Though we walk the path and do the work ourselves, we do require help.

I have listened to my heart sing, allowed my “sand to settle and my water to clear” and my intention is to write the remaining chapters of my life outRAGEOUS, outLOUD, CURious and COLORful from my HEART...

I expect there will be more of this...

l8r, Susan Rees
p.s. Meaningful resources for me are: AA, Kyczy Hawk @ Yoga Recovery, Carrie Coppola of Mudita Yoga who introduced me to David Whyte, Mary Oliver and Pema Chödrön, leading me to Chögyam Trungpa and Shambhala Durham, and finally, Ron Chapman my teacher in the flesh of Breathwork, Progressive Recovery and SeeingTrue.