June 2018 - Everyday Integrity

June 25, 2018February 12, 2022

News from Jules | 06.25.2018 | What Are You Protecting?

We know more than we think we know.

Many wise people talk about this. And I believe it too.

Then, how come we so often think we know things that we are actually clueless about? Things we can’t know. Yet.

Perhaps we are too “lost in the energy of the problem”?

As Michael Singer wrote in The Untethered Soul:

No solution can possibly exist while you’re lost in the energy of the problem. And…generally problems are not what they appear to be.

Well, that’s the truth, isn’t it?

Problems need to calm down. They need to breath.

They need space so that one can get to the heart of what’s actually going on. What actually needs to be overcome.

When my bike hydroplaned on the wet rail tracks and my knee slammed into the concrete three Sundays ago, I knew immediately that my knee was a problem.

Week One:

Within the hour it swelled up and I couldn’t bend it to climb even one stair. Uh oh.
On advice from a friend with First Aid experience and my trusty Healthwise Handbook, I waited for the swelling to settle down.

Week Two:

Then, I went in to get x-rays that confirmed no break, fracture or sprain.
But, still I could barely walk. My knee was too swollen for the docs to really know what was going on.

Week Three:

I saw the physical therapist (PT) a few days ago and now we know: it’s a strained MCL (ligament that runs along the inside of the knee) and knee cap contusion (which is a fancy name for bruising, but I like it because it sounds as bad as it hurts).
My PT nodded when I asked: “On a scale of 1 to 5 for knee injuries, this is a 1, huh?”

Not that bad, all things considered.

Still a problem right now.

But, one that she could not have diagnosed this specifically when she had so little information to work with 12 days ago.

“No solution can possibly exist while you’re lost in the energy of the problem.”

When I first read this in April, I wondered: what problems do I need to settle into deeper?

Which might be a question that’s echoing in the back of your mind right now.

I see now that it’s not a matter of me going deeper into a problem—that’s just getting more lost in the energy of the problem.

It’s the energy that needs to settle. The energy is protecting something.

Something pretty important, probably. What are you protecting?

Once the energy dissipates, then we can see what it’s protecting and why it flared up.

We have to move past being consumed in the energy of the problem in order to get back to a place of wholeness, to a calm, creative place of seeing things the way they actually are.

So that we can see the many—specific and useful—ways they could be different.

And that is how we stay whole even, and especially, as we heal.

After all, the whole cannot be whole without all of you.

May this week bring you extra space and discovery,
Jules

I share a lesson learned about integrity every Monday. Sign up for delivery right to your inbox. Want more? There’s lots more lessons learned here on my blog, so have fun exploring and commenting about your own insights!

June 18, 2018February 12, 2022

News from Jules | 06.18.2018 | What If the Storm Never Passes?

You can wait for the storm to pass or you can learn how to bike in the rain.

Okay, the real quote is about dancing in the rain. But, the point sticks.

Life is about living.

And living it to the fullest, I believe.

Not the busiest. Full as in rich and satisfying.

Which life reminds us can equally take the form of being, as well as the doing.

I decided to go car-free in June as part of my ongoing Buy Nothing experiment and this year’s curiosity about my relationship with energy, our natural resources and my own. What are the trade-offs? Consequences? Benefits?

Feeling good about completing 48 miles (biking + running and walking) in the first week, I was all in. Rain all weekend? No problem!

Well, you know how cars can hyrdoplane on oily roads made slick by heavy rains after a dry spell? You guessed it. Bikes can too!

“Oh no” is right.

First week: 48 miles
Second week: 0 miles

Perhaps my life storm has not fully passed after the chaotic, one-thing-after-another month of May?

I was so hoping the shampoo breakthrough meant it had passed.

Laid up with a battered knee, I find myself in a surprisingly familiar state of mind. A living reminder right now, as well as an inspiring poster on my wall:

When one thing flows to another. When choices are obvious. When needs are met. And then some. When time is irrelevant. And the only place to be is here.

The time has been a gift. While recovery is new to me, retreats are not.

I cherish these times of being.

My sense has been that I mostly need to rest up and to focus any work on what’s critical, so that my body can focus on healing as quickly and effectively as possible. I am learning so much about my energy.

This is living life to the fullest right now.

By doing very little, but being very present in this opportunity.

Watching amazing documentaries about the Internet like Lo & Behold, reading excellent writing like Sherman Alexie’s memoir You Don’t have to Say You Love Me and interesting blog posts about bringing spirituality into your work, connecting online with new entrepreneur friends. All from my 40-year-old armchair, with my knee elevated and on ice.

As my needs become simpler, my life feels more effortless. My perspective grows broader and my heart opens wider. I am feeling grounded in what is truly essential as I haven’t felt in awhile.

Greg McKweon wrote in Essentialism about the disciplined pursuit of less:

“To discern what is truly essential we need space to think, time to look and listen, permission to play, wisdom to sleep, and the discipline to apply highly selective criteria to the choices we make. Ironically in [our] culture these things—space, listening, playing, sleeping and selecting—can be seen as trivial distractions.”

I think I finally see the whole vision of how Everyday Integrity will guide people to stay centered in this increasingly distracting world.

As the saying goes, life isn’t about waiting for the storm to pass. Perhaps this bike accident and injury is an eye of the storm?

Either way, I’m learning how to dance (on crutches) in the rain.

May you move safely and simply through the week that you are given,
Jules

June 4, 2018February 12, 2022

News from Jules | 06.04.2018 | What Have You Been Ignoring?

For the last two weeks, I’ve pretty much followed my shower routine: shampoo, face wash, conditioner, teeth brushing, soap, rinse.

But, I kept getting stuck on step one. Wait, what is wrong with this stuff? Why won’t it lather?

I knew there was something funky going on, but I just kept doing the routine.

A few days ago I figured it out. It won’t lather, because it’s conditioner.

Oh geez. No wonder my new Mia Farrow-style hair felt so weird and greasy.

I had been using conditioner followed by conditioner for TWO weeks. 

This is stress.

Creating hazy veils of Maya, the Hindu word for illusion, so subtle that our senses malfunction and wrongly perceive or interpret things the way we want them to be. And, when it goes unchecked this sneaky stress becomes Avidya, generally agreed by Hindus and Buddhists as a state of misconceptions and misunderstandings of the world.

I bought shampoo. Of course, I’m using shampoo, I told myself each day.

Everything looked the way I wanted it to look.

Sure, it was just conditioner.

Just as it was just burning the rice, and just a speeding ticket, and just a dead battery after leaving the lights on and just wet laundry sitting in the dryer for a week.

As present in my life and day-to-day as I thought I was, I wasn’t. I’d pared my life down to the essentials this year: What could be stressful?

No more busy, no more crazy, way less complicated.

And yet, I still had blinders on.

What have you been ignoring? Has your gut been nagging you about something?

After countless “oh geez” moments of late and the mounting chaos, I had started sensing that something more was going on.

Streak of bad luck?
Mercury in retrograde?
Signs from the universe?

Perhaps.

Whatever the cause, my past experience is that chaos precedes breakthrough. Something from deep down needs to come to a head. A problem itself and/or resistance to reality.

Low grade stress was rapidly compounding and leaking into everything, especially the everyday.

The conditioner discovery was the last straw for me.

You know those moments. Mundane but profound. Tiny but significant. The crack where the light gets through.

I had been spinning out from my center, feeling undone, and wondering how to cope better. What to do to regain wholeness, a sense of integrity?

Just as it wasn’t actually shampoo, I realized it wasn’t about what to do, but what I wasn’t doing. What I was ignoring.

It was the moment I had just read about in Wild Creative by Tami Lynn Kent:

“Let go of the urge to flee when intensity and a sense of inner chaos build; the form within is being pressed and changed. Stay with the discomfort as long as you can. The physical, emotional, and/or spiritual compression you feel is your resistance to your expansion. Surrender the tension in your body, the resistance in your mind, and the hesitation in your heart. Surrender, and you will fill with new life.”

Depending on how you react to staggering truths, you stop cold, you breathe deep, you sit down. Or maybe you cry in the shower, like I did.

Hard, grateful tears.

For my deepest knowing. For answered prayers. For the stress.

The stress that has been my blinking “check engine light.”

Just as Kelly McGonigal describes in her TED Talk about how to make stress your friend that my friend, Tiffany, reminded me about:

“When you choose to view stress in this way, you’re not just getting better at stress, you’re actually making a pretty profound statement: you’re saying that you can trust yourself to handle life’s challenges and you’re remembering that you don’t have to face them alone.”

My trusty body had been talking all along—through my gut and my actions.

And I was finally listening. Finally ready to receive the vulnerability, detachment, and decisiveness I’d been praying for.

True to form, since this breakthrough so much has showed up.

Vulnerable, detached and decisive things I wasn’t ready to do a week ago, like debt consolidation through a bank loan.

And some beautiful synchronicity, like the text I just got from a woman in my neighborhood Buy Nothing group. She’s moving and needs to purge her bathroom. She’s got shampoo! Real shampoo.

May your eyes be wide and your gut be loud this week,
Jules

Month: June 2018

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