Just like healing, retreat is a process. Unlike healing, retreat often feels too nourishing to conclude. But, the power of retreat is in the promise of return.
The promise of building, of becoming what we want to be. Better yet, what we truly are.
Not just bringing back the truth and the insights, like perfectly whole sand dollar souvenirs, but actually applying them in life. Moving forward into a new life.
Away from the constant heartbeat of the waves crashing onto the Oregon coast and living in our human-made world of buildings, streets, cars, nonnative plants, out-of-season food. Only two weeks of being back in the city since my last retreat and yet, it’s always so easy to forget.
Our true nature. Especially our inherent adaptability—the ability to adjust to new conditions—due to a little-known process. We learned homeostasis is our internal process toward maintaining balance. A steady state. Like at the playground, standing in the middle of the Teeter Tooter until that miraculous, temporary moment when it’s even and flat. The rest of the time it wobbles up and down, is a different—maybe even more miraculous—process:
Allostasis is the process of constantly adapting by proactively “anticipating needs and preparing to satisfy them before they arise,” according to Wikipedia.
In other words, remaining stable by being variable. And maintaining stability through change, is a fundamental process through which organisms actively adjust to both predictable and unpredictable events.
This is the way our body works. This is the way an ecosystem works. This is the way the planet works. This is the way the universe works.
Throughout the past year, I’ve written about my own revelations from when the pandemic began, when Election results finally came in, when I felt the injustice at my front door, when we started to feel hope on Inauguration Day. It’s been a huge year of growth. I will remember and carry these lessons forth especially about balance. But, will humanity?
Will we let this past year be just another newsworthy year? Going down in history:
A brief “unprecedented” interruption of what we thought was normal life. Instead of an inevitable crisis at worst, a disruptive catalyst at best.
Was last week the anniversary of “the week our reality broke” as the New York Times wrote?
Or was it the moment, the day, the week, the year our delusion broke? From the abnormal state marked by beliefs and practices of extraction, consumption, corruption, oppression—all that is untrue.
When we awoke from our unreality. Coming back to what is true.
Healing reimagined.
This is our opportunity, right now. As we carefully emerge this spring, we carry forth these powerful lessons from our year-long retreat and hold in our hands the promise of return.
May you commit to your truth this week.
Love,
Jules
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