Today our theme is show up.
Show up.
What does it mean to show up right now in this election,
In our democracy,
In our lives,
To ourselves,
To our feelings?
How can we show up to all these different facets of our lives,
Especially the parts that cause us tension,
That cause us pain?
We need to figure out how to show up and how to take the time to listen.
It's so,
So important.
It's easy at this time to want to run away from everything that's going on.
That's what I like to do.
Election or not.
Yeah,
Nathan likes to run away.
But this stuff matters.
We are part of a body politic that makes up a community and politics is this coming together of so many different people to make a community,
To make agreements about how we can live well together.
And so it does matter even if it bugs us and drives us nuts and it feels like we have no control.
We really,
Really do.
And it doesn't mean that we need to have the news on constant blast in this firehose stream of information.
For us,
We really believe we can make a difference with our awareness,
With our presence,
And with our ability to show up fully and witness what is going on,
What is being felt,
What is being said by our fellow citizens.
And then to reflect what that sparks in us and to witness that.
So showing up is so intimately tied to listening for us inside and out,
Listening inside and out.
And so that's what we are hoping to show up to today is in that spirit of listening,
In that spirit of presence to the election,
Which you know,
Strains our sanity.
There's that question,
How do we show up to this election and stay sane?
How do we show up to the real personal challenges we might be facing with our work,
With our health,
With our family,
And still stay sane?
These are the things that we're holding and meditating on and what we want to focus on today.
Yeah,
Yeah,
It's so important to have a practice where we develop our capacity for staying with what is,
For being present with what is.
Because like Ada is saying,
There is such a tendency when we come up against the hard stuff in life,
To want to contract and to pull away and to shut down rather than showing up and really receiving what's there.
And,
You know,
I think regardless of how you feel about politics,
If you're showing up,
You probably care a little bit because that's the theme of what we're talking about.
I think the practice of listening to things that are hard to hear,
The practice of being aware of what's going on inside of us,
And those hard things can be reflected in and worked on in the external as well.
And it's just as important to see what's going on in the microclimate of our internal worlds,
As it is to see what's going on in the world around us.
There's so much to learn.
There's so much to understand about what people are going through so that we can reach more compassionately out into the lives of others so that we can share our gifts more relevantly with the people around us.
And so that awareness of what is going on is so crucial.
But yeah,
Like I was saying,
How do we how do we do this and keep our sanity?
We want to work on breaking open instead of breaking apart.
And I think what's key there,
And I want to bring from that into our conversation today is the notion of opening.
Because when we choose to close down,
When we choose to say,
Oh,
This is too much,
I don't really want to hear this.
We are closing ourselves off from bearing witness to what's happening.
I think inherent in that is that foundation that life includes suffering,
That life has hardship,
That tension and conflict is a part of life.
And we can't,
We need to find ways and tools to be able to deal with that truth.
And to be with that truth.
And that's why showing up is so important.
And that's why figuring out our own practices to bear witness to the suffering that we feel inside and to the suffering that we see out in the world is so important.
And politics,
For better or worse,
Is a place that we try to collectively deal with the suffering of the world that we see in our society that we see in our communities.
And so that I feel like is just such a key part.
It's like we can't avoid our heartbreaking.
We can't stop that from happening.
But we can break open,
The heart can break open to hold more,
As opposed to apart and where we hurt each other.
And that is happening right now.
That is happening right now very deeply.
Yeah,
And I think at the core of this conversation,
When we're talking about politics,
And we're kind of playing with what is our own healing process,
In context of how we engage with the world,
And how do we keep our sanity in the midst of the chaos around us?
And one question that often comes up for me is,
It's so easy to feel impotent.
Like,
What am I here for?
Why am I learning all of this negativity?
Why am I bringing it into my life?
And from the news?
Why am I exposing myself to this?
And I think the answer for me,
And I think the answer for all of us should be,
Because I want to show up,
I want to like,
I want to use the love and the power that I have within me,
To make a difference in the lives of those around me and in the life of myself.
And so when we start showing up to,
To bear witness to what is around us,
We have,
We have these two different options.
Basically,
We can either,
We can either open up and choose to receive what's going on,
Or we can close down and,
And try to avoid like we were talking about at the beginning.
And really what's happening is that we aren't.
.
.
Or close and reject.
Close and reject.
Exactly.
Yeah.
Avoid or be more active,
Pushing away.
Yeah.
And what's happening here is,
Is what's uncomfortable is not so much what's,
What we're witnessing,
But the knots and the beliefs and the uncomfortable feelings,
The feelings of frustration and anger,
Resentment,
Sadness,
And so many other negative feelings,
What we deem as negative feelings,
That,
That are,
That are tied up and tangled up inside of us.
And those are the knots.
Those are the things that,
That are blocking us from showing up fully.
Those are the things that cause a fear response inside of us.
And when we feel afraid,
We want to close.
We don't want to receive.
We want to avoid.
And all of these tendencies,
All of these kind of like negative responses of closing are all pulling us further away from actually making a difference,
From actually feeling love within ourselves,
From actually sharing love with others,
From,
From feeling gratified and happy and joyful in our lives.
Instead,
We feel afraid and we want to run away and we want to avoid.
And so really what we're trying to get to the core of is what is causing the discomfort.
What is causing the discomfort is not the world problem.
What's causing the discomfort is my resistance to that world problem.
And that's where we can start to take responsibility for our practice,
For our,
For our own feelings inside of us.
The,
Because,
And the reason we want to do that is because when we stop showing up,
When we close down,
We are becoming stagnant.
And stagnancy is not the healing that we seek.
Why are we all showing up here?
Why are you coming to this conversation to practice a meditation technique?
It's because you want to heal from the things that are holding you back.
And when we can't bear witness,
When we can't come to the present moment,
We are setting ourselves up for,
For failure when it comes to actually meeting the goals that we have in our lives,
Because we will,
We will rest in stagnancy rather than growing into our fullness.
And so what is it to bear witness to,
To,
To witness it is to come to the present moment.
It is to center ourselves within what is happening right now.
And it is to stay with what is happening right now and not running away.
The witnessing,
The witness space is a nonjudgmental space.
I think there is definitely like a place for judgment,
But this is that taking a step back from our thoughts,
From our feelings and just noticing and allowing it to be what it is.
So you might be simultaneously feeling anger while you're noticing anger or feeling frustration or sadness or anything else.
While also noticing it,
It's the same for when we're taking in the news,
You know,
We might be simultaneously having a judgment about it versus just accepting that this is what's happening right now.
We can't deny what the world is offering us.
We often want to,
We almost every day,
Every moment of every day,
There's something that we don't want to be happening because it's not what we expected.
It's not what we wanted.
But there's no use.
It's happening and it has happened,
You know,
At that point it's already done.
So let's open to it.
Let's receive it.
Let's say,
What is there to learn here?
Let's show up.
Yep.
And what that takes is practice.
Yep.
It takes really intentional practice.
It takes taking moments out of our day.
This is where meditation,
This is where mindfulness practices are so important.
It takes sitting down and getting out of the planning and the preparing and the rehashing and the reminiscing that we spend so much of our time doing to just be present with where we are at.
And the reason this is such an important practice is because if we don't practice that on our own,
Then when life does come and meet us in a big way,
We're not going to be able to show up and receive it.
We're going to have that knee jerk reaction that so many of us have,
Which is to just want to reject it and shut down and go stagnant.
And when we do that,
Like we said,
We will have stopped our potential for healing.
Stopping that flow.
And stopping the flow of love and of creativity into life.
And our ability to solve the problems that we're facing,
Which again,
I feel really applies to the election because so many of us shut down in the face of it and we see these things that we feel so uncomfortable with and we don't like and this side and that side.
But how can we learn how to bear witness to that and hold it so that we can be creative in response to that and we can find solutions.
That's the possibility that's inherent when we do find comfort in the practice of being with discomfort.
So this is the foundation of all mindfulness practices and of any healing work that you want to do.
It is to flex our muscles of showing up,
Of bearing witness,
Of staying with what is.
And it does move.
It does change.
You know,
Like that's part of the process when we shut down.
Whatever negativity we had around it,
That's what we lock in.
That's what we remember.
That's what we're going to stay with when we shut down.
But if we can stay and bear witness long enough for that to evolve into something else,
For those knots within us to loosen up for the sadness,
For the anger,
For the frustration,
If we can just sit with it long enough,
There is always an opportunity for love to come in,
For peace to come in,
To loosen those knots.
