Staying sane on a swiftly tilting planet

The Joyful Work of Staying Sane
 
How do we stay sane amidst the catastrophic changes of our times? Will we choose become smaller, harder, and more isolated in our efforts to protect ourselves? Or, instead, will we use the challenges of our times as an invitation to grow ourselves, to soften into the flow of the world, and to reach beyond ourselves into deeper relationship with the world?

These are the most important questions of our time, and they rise up constantly in my work with individuals and groups all over the world, in my family and my close circles of friends. I believe that our answers to these questions determine not only the quality of our own lives, but the lives of the people we love and the lives of the people who come after us, because our answers to these questions shape our very way of being in the world – which is, in the end, our greatest legacy to posterity ...

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Nor do we answer these questions only once! We answer again in each moment, and that moments deepens the riverbed of our lives just a little bit more, helping our lives together in this world to flow a little deeper, a little more easily, and a little clearer.

In my own efforts to answer these questions, I find myself drawing often on the laughter and wisdom of one of my dearest elders, Bill Cohea Jr., a crusty old Irishman who died just last year. Bill was a retired journalist and Presbyterian minister, a lifelong activist and instigator, and most importantly, the founder creator, and caretaker of Columcille Megalith Park, a magnificent sanctuary of rolling green hills and standing stones in Pennsylvania.
Bill was an instrumental figure in facilitating the revolution in Portugal against fascism – a role that led to a very real threat to his life. He fled DC, and sought the most remote place he could possibly find – Iona, a tiny island off the coast of Scotland, and a pilgrimage site for millennia.  It was there he had a vision that shaped the rest of his life, a vision of vast celestial beings who invited him to join them in their work by co-creating a sanctuary in his homeland where people could rest and reconnect with themselves, with each other, with the sacred land, and with the great mystery of our lives. Bill’s vision came to inspire not only his own life, but also the lives of countless people who knew him, and those who continue to visit Columcille.

Because his vision has been so vital to my own sanity, and the answers I give to these questions in my own life, I thought I would share a little bit of what I learned with him, in hopes that it might be helpful to others as well. Here are just a few practical strategies I’ve cultivated from my time with Bill, on how we can live with a bit more sanity amidst the chaos. I’ll call these four strategies Unplug, Unwind, Fall in Love with the World Again, and Get a Whole Life.
 
Unplug
 
At some point, we have to unplug ourselves from the constant stream of chaotic, fragmented, threatening information in our lives – and in our own heads!

First, we need to unplug in our lives. Our modern world is something of a paradox these days; on the one hand, according to the World Health Organization, a greater percentage of humanity is living in actual safety than ever before on our planet; and on the other hand, a greater percentage of humanity is living with a constant barrage of threatening information than ever before. We can’t turn on device without subjecting ourselves to a flood of bad news! As a result, we live every waking moment with our nervous systems in a constant state of threat.
 If we are ever to rediscover the basic safety of this moment, we have to shut off our devices, turn off the alerts, curate our social media, and limit the news to circumstances that we can meaningfully respond to. This isn’t about burying our head in the sand – it is about keeping our heads above water!
Second, we need to unplug in our heads. Even when we do shut off our devices, our minds are filled with the clamor of a million preconceptions, assumptions, and expectations! At some point, we become more aware of this clamor and its terrible cost to our bodies, minds, hearts, and spirits. We bring a little compassionate curiosity and healthy skepticism to judgments and fears, and maybe even (oh my!) assign a little less importance to all of it –and give our attention to something else, like …
 
Unwind
 
Once we’ve unplugged from the stream of chatter in our world and our thoughts, we can begin to reclaim our capacity to slow down, make space, soften the body, and go with the flow. Without these four simple actions, our lives are so hurried, so cramped, so structured, and so controlled, that there is hardly room to breathe, to enjoy, to imagine, and to connect! With these simple, powerful actions, we begin to shift our relationship with time, space, matter and energy, and open up new possibilities for sacred relationship in our lives. 
When we take back creative command of these basic elements of our existence, wonderful things begin to happen! Slowing Down gives us the chance to savor, to digest, and to integrate our lives, to evaluate our decisions, and to make conscious choices about our next step. Making Space in our lives, we begin to experience a new freedom and equanimity about the ups and downs of our lives, softening our attachments and aversions, and enjoying the goodness that is already there. Softening the body, we reawaken our capacity to feel, to adapt, to connect, and to flow with the changing currents of our lives. Going with the flow, we learn how to trust ourselves with our own lives, and to trust the basic goodness of our own existence. As we become more skillful in all of these areas, we even begin to dissolve the illusion of separation in our lives and cultivate a feeling of sacred relationship and deep belonging in our world!
 
Fall in Love With the World Again
 
Once we’ve begun to unplug and unwind, we can begin to cultivate a profound experience of sacred relationship with the world, by developing our relationships with the sacred land, our own inner truth, and the mystery of our own lives – and then bringing those into our relationships with other people.

For most, of us, the best way to begin is to connect with the sacred land, the natural world we already live in – the landscape, the green and growing things, and the animals that already surround us. Whenever I’d go visit Bill at Columcille, he’d take a few minutes to welcome me, and then shove me out the door with a brusque, “Get out there and spend some time with the stones” – only to welcome me back with a gentle smile when the beautiful rolling woodlands had quieted my spirit. There is something in us that dies, or at least goes dormant when we spend to much time away from the living world – and that flourishes with the tiniest moment of wild beauty.
Very quickly, our little moments of relationship with the sacred land begin to connect us with our own inner truth – a wordless understanding of what’s really true for us, what we really feel and want and need in our lives, and a commitment to honor and act on our real priorities. It is a sense of what we really know for sure.  Soon after, we begin to experience the mystery of our lives – everything that we don’t know, everything we don’t understand and maybe never will – and we begin to make peace with that mystery. We discover that the unknown and the unknowable are safe; in fact, that everything truly wonderful in our lives has come out of the unknown, and will one day disappear into that mystery, including ourselves. A sense of real awe and wonder begins to grow in us. As Bill was fond of quoting Saint Oran, “the way we think it is may not be the way it is at all!”

Finally, we are ready to bring the extraordinary richness of our relationships with the land, inner truth, and the mystery into our relationships with other people. But oh, what a difference! We are no longer content to play along with the preconceptions, assumptions and expectations of others. We bring more of ourselves to every relationship that has earned the right to our trust – our vulnerability, our authenticity, our untamed mysterious wildness – and we make space for them to do the same.

These relationships begin to cultivate in us an extraordinary capacity, which is the greatest flower and fruit of a human lifetime – the capacity to love deeply and truly with kindness and compassion and freedom and joy … but that is the subject of another article!
 
Get a Whole Life
 
The fourth strategy has to do with how we balance the different activities of our lives, in order to feed, explore and express all the parts of our own souls – and how we can draw upon the full strength of our souls in our lives.
For many of us, life has become a race to keep up and a constant struggle to survive. “One day,” we tell ourselves, “I won’t have to struggle so hard, and I’ll get to read/enjoy/make a real difference/rest/play/connect.” Our lives become more and more unbalanced, waiting for the day when we have time and space to do what we really want to do. We step up the pace and work harder in a never-ending cycle of struggle. Unfortunately, struggling isn’t an effective way to end the struggle! Only when we make we make the brave choice to make space for all the parts of our own lives NOW, do we reclaim the ease, satisfaction, and fulfillment we long for.

Throughout human history, spiritual aspirants have created a “rule” of life that protects the sense of wholeness and balance in our lives. In this spirit, Bill and talked about a few of the elements of a balanced life, and I have adopted them as a kind of gentle rule for my own life. Every day, I make sure that the day includes a little time Learning, through study and reflection; Celebration, including remembrance, worship, praise and partying; Service that engages the body, mind, heart and spirit; Silence, including contemplation, prayer, rest, and simply gazing in wonder; and brooding and silence; and Creative Play and Re-creation, including singing, dancing, games and giggles. All of these have their solitary aspect of course, and their communal aspect, and both of these are important.
 
In Conclusion
 
            Will these simple strategies solve the climate crisis, defuse fascism, dismantle nationalism, or abolish institutional racism? No. Are they simple or easy? No. But in the end it comes to this: will you do the joyful work of staying sane, or will let you let the insanity of this world work you? If we don’t unplug from the chatter around us and inside us, it will overwhelm us. If we don’t unwind by slowing down, making space, softening, and surrendering to the flow, the hurried chaos of the world will drives us into exhausted collapse or paralysis. If we don’t reclaim our relationships with the sacred land, our own truth, the mystery of our lives, and each other, the desperate loneliness of our culture will isolate and divide us from each other. And if we don’t make time for all the parts of our life now, we will put them off until it’s too late.

            If, on the other hand, we take back creative command of our own lives, practicing these strategies a little bit every day, we won’t just give ourselves the gift of sanity – we will create true refuges of sanity for ourselves and the people we love. These strategies reconnect us with the deepest inspiration, love, and creativity of our own being, and empower us to be our most insightful, compassionate, and powerful selves out in the world. Our presence becomes a refuge and a resource to our world – and an invitation to reconnect with the even greater power of our communities, of the earth itself, and of the mystery in which we live and move and have our being.
 
Curious to learn more? Join me for my webinar on Saturday September 7 at 10 am to learn the nuts and bolts of staying sane on a swiftly tilting planet! Just click on this link to register: https://oran-academy-staying-sane-on-a-tilting-planet.eventbrite.com .And if you’d like the support, feedback, and hard-won insights of someone who’s done the joyful work of staying sane, coaching is a fantastic way of making these strategies your own! You can reach me at 828-450-8800, or just click on the book now link for this web page!