turning up for ourselves

I often think of how privileged we are when we start to notice ourselves growing older. For many of us, our wishes for a happy and fulfilling life include growing our wisdom and remaining as healthy as possible so that we can continue to make a difference to our world.

For us to achieve wisdom and longevity, we embrace what I like to call our ‘rituals of practice’ each day. All of us will have different rituals of practice, depending on our needs, culture, community, age, health, and beliefs.  We engage with these rituals to ground and centre ourselves, to practice mindfulness, to embrace deep listening (both to our inner wisdom and perception, and to the insight and wisdom of others).

For me, my morning ritual begins with a yoga practice, (with an emphasis on pranayama and meditation). I also like to embrace the rituals of daily slow walking, slow cooking, and slow gardening. Once I have organised my environment, I am ready for my creative work, either being with artists, conducting workshops, writing, or dreaming up new projects. As a younger artist, I did not embrace such rituals, I was ‘far too busy doing important things’, or so it seemed, looking back. The hard work of actor training kept me in shape for decades, but did it significantly enrich my spiritual path? I don’t think so, I think it contributed to a competitive and fast playing field: ‘if I work harder, I will succeed better’, etc. Nowadays, it is the slow and deliberate rigour of my yoga practice that moves me deeply into the profound, the spiritual and hopefully (fingers crossed) my inner wisdom. Slowing down, one step at a time. That is what I have learned. And that doesn’t mean slow to a crawl and not achieving what needs to be done. Since the pandemic so many things can be accessed online.  I guess I have gained up to four hours a day not having to travel so much, and bringing my creative world to me in my home studio and garden.

When we turn up for ourselves each day in whatever way we need to, (and of course that changes depending on what stage of life you are in),  and invest in and value our relationships with others, either face to face meet ups or online chats, we begin to learn, understand and appreciate our own lives and others, and how we are part of Indra’s Net (you know the one, where we are all interconnected in wondrous ways).  As a part of Indra’s Net, we understand the importance of relationships and the need to care for each other. Which means we acknowledge when others need to be cared for. And right now, we need to care deeply about each other. Our world is dying in so many ways, and Mother Nature is mad. WE CARE needs to be tattooed on every building, every billboard, every streetlight…we need to awaken once again to caring for each other in ways that perhaps will sometimes be less than comfortable. I’ve always believed that comfort is dangerous. It turns the extraordinary into the ordinary. Don’t we want it the other way round?

Staying with the premise that we need to return to a more caring way of being in our world, let’s look at how we are going as a community. First, many research scientists regard COVID 19 as the most dangerous disease in modern history, yet in most countries rather than seeing it as one of the most impactful events of history, it is  ‘business as usual’ and ‘nothing to see here’. ‘Let’s get on with our lives’ yet at the same time as we are getting on with our lives, thousands of people continue to die or develop long COVID and experience chronic illness.  

Things have changed substantially since Pandemic was “invited to the party”. Whereas many of us still love our social life, being enriched by the energy, the art, the social contact, there are others who are more discriminatory when it comes to gathering in groups. Personally, I weigh up the odds: is this meeting or entertainment worth getting very sick for? Sometimes the answer will be yes if it is family and those who are very close, sometimes no. Always considered.

For me, face to face connection is important.  Time spent together with friends and colleagues is enriching, and by that, I mean the discussions brew ideas and feelings of gratitude, hope, and joy. For the last three years I have left it for others to ‘shoot the breeze’, a favourite Aussie saying. I now need far more than that. I have for the longest time wanted to contribute to changing the world into a more compassionate, loving and less judgemental world.  And that means, growing into what I want to call “world wisdom”. Many of us believe that this wisdom is more easily ‘brewed’ in small groups (remember Margaret Mead’s message about the power of small groups…you know the one:

Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it's the only thing that ever has.

How do we become thoughtful, committed, and wise?  Is it by deepening our knowledge about the world and what is needed?  Ensuring that we have time to experience transformative adventures with others?  Developing a greater understanding of our spiritual selves?  Spending time in Nature to appreciate the extraordinary beauty of the world around us? To understand that we are not apart from Nature, we are Nature.  This list of questions is endless, but you get the gist of where I am heading. Remember that well-known quote by Henry David Thoreau in his famous “Walden”?  He writes “The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation”. How do we ensure that we as a community live an enriched and transformative life at the same time as looking after each other and our world at this time of enormous challenge?

Reading a Committee Member’s Letter of the C.G. Jung Society of Queensland written May 2018, a couple of years before the pandemic, I find a quote from Jung that challenged me:

The great events of world history are, at the bottom, profoundly unimportant, In the last analysis, the essential thing is the life of the individual…in our most private and most subjective lives we are not only the passive witnesses of our age, and its sufferers, but also its makers. We make our own epic” (Jung (C.W. 10. Para. 315)

We make our own epic. We are responsible for what has happened in our world. WE are the danger to the world.

And how do we fix this, even if we feel we have no power to create change at all? Keeping in mind Jung’s offer that ‘We make our own epic’, do we need to refine our skills of critical reflection, so that we can interrogate our actions, not just think about what we have done?  

Critical thinking is one of the tools we need to re-awaken to clean up this mess we find ourselves in. In the article The Importance of Critical Thinking Skills in Disaster Management by Joseph Albanese and James Paturas, suggest that

Critical thinking skills include the ability to identify and define a problem, recognise assumptions, evaluate arguments, and apply inductive and deductive reasoning to draw conclusions from the available information.        (Bus Contin Emer Plan 2018 Jan 1;11(4):326-34).

We can find like-minded people who are interested in continuing to grow their critical thinking and moving into wisdom, redefining themselves, and  remaining curious about everything and everybody. And getting to know and love the power and beauty of Nature.

We can develop a spiritual practice that helps us understand that the world does not revolve around us. Not at all. We are not the centre of the universe, we are but a very tiny dot, and the more we remind ourselves of that, the happier and more content we become.

I want to finish with this: Tara Brach offered this little gem, and I think it is something to strive for. When some asks you “Why are you happy?” Your reply will be “I am so happy, for no reason”.