Summer Solstice: Ego or Egg?

"Aren't we all just fragile eggs hiding behind bubble wrap and bravado?"

~ Manny on Modern Family

 

Ever balanced an egg on its end? On Summer Solstice, when day and night are of equal length, it's possible to do so, if we're very patient and careful. But we can only attain this exquisite balance twice a year.

It's a humbling thought. Can we learn from something better known as breakfast how to create balance in our hectic lives? Can we become as poised as an egg?

Time for another subtle shift: from ego to egg, poison to poise. Here in Caffeine Nation, it might be more challenging to transmute hubris to humus, and take an earth-centered approach to life. The lightest day of the year is an ideal time to contemplate our dark side. To dive deep. Roam the loam. We're still in Mercury retrograde, a pristine moment to dwell in the Aretha Franklin lyric and "re-re-re-re" our lives: respect (literally, to look again), reimagine, remember, reboot…

Whether we're cognizant of it or not, we're all renewable energy beings: living on Earth for a time, becoming cosmic compost, being recycled back into the collective. This midsummer moment can help us create an eggstraordinary state of renewal and joy.

In her book, Living In Gratitude, a 12-month plan for making gratitude the foundation stone of our daily life, cross-cultural anthropologist, teacher and author Angeles Arrien says, of June, "We experience equanimity, or a state of balance, when we are content with the way things are. We are neither striving nor holding back. There is nothing lacking or in excess. This balance, or sense of acceptance, is at the heart of equanimity. It opens us to the experience of gratitude and the sustainable experience of renewal that comes from being in balance."

So compost the coffee and let it be grounds for eggceptional openheartedness, and the fulfillment of your dearest dreams. Step out of the bubble wrap and shine your magnificence on those who seek the light. When you live with wonder and humility, your ego transforms into a good egg — and that makes a satisfying meal for anyone, in every season.

Remembering Angeles Arrien 1940-2014

Yesterday I picked up the May/June issue of Common Ground, an alternative magazine I sometimes read here in northern California, and turned to the final page, Last Words. I found a quote by one of my great teachers, Angeles Arrien, and below her name, two dates with a dash between them. It took my mind several seconds to process what this meant. NO! Angeles can't be gone; she was only 74. She was in the midst of a teaching schedule for her newest book, Living In Gratitude. She's a pillar of wisdom. And now, she is an ancestor.

While so many have transitioned already this year, including my own mother, Angeles' death hits me hard, because it's out of the blue. Judging by the events planned for later in 2014, I imagine it must have been sudden. But though I've scoured the web, so far I've only discovered the date, (April 24^th) not cause. Not that it matters. She was obviously complete here.

What a gift this woman was, and what a gift she had: the extraordinary ability to meld anthropology, psychology and comparative religions to help those of us privileged to study with her learn how to live a practical spirituality, or as she referred to it, to "walk the mystical path with practical feet."

I took her Four-Fold Way Foundational Training at Esalen, on the ruggedly beautiful California coast, in January 1994. I'd read her book, The Four-Fold Way: Walking the Paths of the Warrior, Teacher, Healer and Visionary the previous summer, and the talk I attended then convinced me she had much wisdom to share. I enrolled in the weeklong training, though by the following winter I was deep into my awakening odyssey (disguised as serious illness), and could barely function on the physical plane. Nevertheless I made the 5-hour journey, and my emerging state of unreality probably enhanced my absorption of her teachings.

What I learned is how deeply Angeles embodied what she taught. The tenets of the Four-Fold Way are:

Warrior: Show up and choose to be present

Healer
: Pay attention to what has heart and meaning

Visionary
: Tell the truth without blame or judgment

Teacher: 
Be open to outcome, not attached to outcome.

I internalized these truths into a little sing-song: "Show up, pay attention, tell the truth and let it go!" It's a credo for living that serves us well throughout our lives.

What Angeles brilliantly modeled transcended the personal growth community. Her books and practices have found a place in corporate, academic and medical milieux, as well as the non-profit sector. When I think of her, some of the words that come to mind include authenticity, generosity of spirit, wholeheartedness. And joy.

Heaven has gained another angel, so aptly named. Thank you for shining your Light in my life, dear one. In boundless gratitude, blessings.

Woo-Woo in a Wow-Now World:Living As a Practical Mystic

"Only those within whose own consciousness the sun rises and sets, the leaves burgeon and wither, can be said to be aware of what living is."

~ Joseph Wood Krutch, US naturalist and writer

What does being "conscious" actually mean? My online dictionary defines it as, "awake, aware, supraliminal…". Now there's a word to roll trippingly on the tongue. Supraliminal. It's the exact opposite of the subliminal media messages we're bombarded with daily.

Supraliminal means above the threshold of normal sensation. So, instead of being anesthetized by the jackhammer rhythm of life in the third millennium, a supraliminal person moves to a different cadence. You live an aesthetic life — in tune with the beauty all around you — rather than an anesthetic one, numbed out on sensory overload and emotional angst. This is being conscious, and we get to choose whether to walk this path, every day.

It doesn't mean we have to live "woo-woo" in a wow-now world, however. There's a way to "walk the mystical path with practical feet," as one of my own great teachers, Angeles Arrien, often says. Her lucid book, The Four-Fold Way: Walking the Paths of the Warrior, Teacher, Healer and Visionary draws upon her vast experience as a cross-cultural anthropologist and educator to show us how indigenous wisdom can help us live richer, more joy-filled lives, both personally and professionally. The approaching winter season corresponds to the way of the Warrior, or leader, whose challenge is the right use of power. Angeles reminds us that Native peoples use the words "power" and "medicine" synonymously. If we fully express who we are, we are "in our medicine."

Earth herself offers us a bountiful opportunity to grow, by planting ourselves in presence. Louise Hay, in many ways the founding mother of the personal growth/self help movement, says being in nature, nurturing the soil, and growing her own food is a kind of meditation for her. She lived in New York City for forty years, so she knows what it's like in the asphalt jungle, and feels especially blessed to be able to garden on her acre of land in California now.

Louise says, "My garden sustains me a lot. It is nature at its most abundant and beautiful. And what I do primarily in the garden is build soil. I do everything that I can to make the soil better. I have a big chipper shredder, and not a lettuce leaf or a leaf from a tree leaves my property. It's all ground up, nature makes it into wonderful rich soil, and I put that back into the soil. And it's the same thing with the people, with their own lives. You know if you enrich yourself, if you pull the weeds out, if you get the rocks out of the way in your consciousness and enrich yourself with good reading, good study, good meditating, understanding — then life takes care of the rest."

As the Northern Hemisphere turns inward now, it's a good time to compost any aspects of ourselves that no longer support who we're becoming. And perhaps, as we continue to build our inner soil, enrich our soul, and live a more conscious life, we'll also lose our fear of the next threshold.

Awareness Into Action:

What practical steps can you take this week to build your own soil, to live your medicine? Choose a specific action and put it into practice with everyone you meet, all week long.