Talking Stick.
I'm sitting amidst a pile of receipts getting ready for our tax appointment on Friday. I filed an extension this year because I'm basically running months behind schedule on administrative work- and coming to this reality is leaving me weary. It's testing my trust in myself to take care of business on time. Which has never been my strong suit. Enter anxiety. Not just of the present moment, but a hit I've put out on mySelf as a result of disappointment.
Creativity and making meaning of my life became a priority for me when I left working for others thirteen years ago to soujourn out into the wide, scary world and make my way on my own. Trusting that I can "make" has kept me going. I was filled with fear of financial instability, the concept of living/working sustainably would not occur me until I began looking at the world as a whole from a perspective of longevity. Still, as an unschooling mama and one who is making her way on her own, I find it at times difficult to see the big picture.
As children, we cannot declare our challenges in words and concepts that our parents really understand. Even with a very understanding parent or two, anxiety builds about living in an unsafe world as we are desensitized in order to grow. For most generations, ours and behind us, desensitization was the only way to go. Growth was not so much a nurtured choice as it was a harsh reality. Today we can balance walking with our fears, failures, anxieties and general angst about living in an uncertain existence, by tweaking our view on reality. What if we could condition ourselves (and our children) for trust? Would anything else matter if we possessed a deep understanding that we are safe?
To choose a religion ("the bond between man and the gods", or "to bind back", in Latin) is to attempt to relocate our connection to the cosmos and the Big Picture. It would seem that we search for this connection from the moment we emerge from the safety of the womb.
Do you think of the world as unsafe?
What sleepy patterns emerge in childhood that we continue to reenact until we awaken to trust?
What are your current remedies for anxiety, and how do they support you for the long road? Are they sustainable?
When I observe the concepts I embrace around Earth Medicine, (which seem to be the natural tendencies of my children) to see the Earth and the creatures as mirrors for our lives and experiences, I feel comfort, safety and acceptance of All That Is. I believe it would be called "animistic thinking" by professionals of psychology- to bring in what is "out there" and to project what is in us back out. If a culture sees soul in every living thing and in matter, then it would follow that we are composed of soul. Only through the desensitization/shutting down process (as a result of traumatic events, etc) and modern thinking would we fragment that connection and have to deepen the search to circle back later in life. To read the environment from a young age, or even now, as adults, we can observe the life cycles of the Earth, the plants and the creatures to see that there is a rhythm to life that does not carry the anxiety we do. An animal that is not in a cage (and is not being too interfered with by humans) does not seem to express these qualities. A plant that is not in a too-small container behaves in a different way than it's wild counterpart.
What would happen if we built a foundation with our own thinking that supported our own life cycle?
What could shift if we focused a good portion of our energy into increasing our capacity (as well as our children's) to trust?
What would that look like for you?
