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: : Independently together on the 4th of July ~

On this day of celebration across the land- a land that is divided and confused and unsure how we got here, I can feel a rumble like summer afternoon thunder come from something deep inside my chest. We in the US are a people beautiful and diverse. A place where spontaneity of consciousness has allowed for entrepreneurship and invention, the sorts of which the world has never seen. But there is an echo, a thread, a place attached to history that will lead us off the cliff if we aren’t careful, and that’s the fact that we don’t really know how to be together- in culture, in relationship, and with and on the land. 

None of this is something we need to feel ashamed or guilty about because (part of) it is certainly the shoulders we rode in on of colonialism and capture- especially those of us with white skin, and the unconscious patterning of that is far deeper than we are aware of most of the time. But now we are beginning to know… so if there aren’t actions aligned with reparation, then yes, guilt and regret are common and less than helpful results at best. At worst we perpetuate the problem and at the same time go against the sprouting of something pure- we have begun to see the internal divide and that can lead to mass psychosis with devastating results.

While I will always advocate for moving on and building and focusing on nature and beauty, I think it behooves us all to have a sobering moment with some of the lesser loved parts of ourselves and our world. To humble our assumptions and melt our inner defenses. So on this day of historical independence and building out of new worlds, let’s pause for a moment and take a look at all of it- where we’ve been and what that might mean, and how we- yes all of us, contribute to the problem we are so eager to point to outside of ourselves. Because if we think that the small ways we conduct ourselves and the micro-moments of lost communication, aren’t an extension of what we came from and aren’t contributing to the whole of the dysfunction we see above and on a greater scale, then I urge us to really look a little closer.

There are so many ways that we might have inadvertently contributed to division in the ways we’ve built our lives. The values of the boomer generation had us all siloed off with homes at the end of the cul-de-sac and everything perfectly placed, but without the threads that connect us. Which makes perfect sense after years of war and an inner desire to really nest and nest well- again none of this with an ounce of judgement.. until we overstay your welcome in the comfort bubble. We see the downstream effects of all this in cookie cutter developments and building materials that are toxic to the land but can be erected in a jiffy and at low cost. Families are separate. Transportation systems lack vision and sustainability and everything with the bottom-line and time-frame as compass.

We have made comfort paramount, to the extent that we haven’t challenged ourselves to grow capacity when it matters most. The result of which is a lot of little isolated microcosms that either cluster or drift but without systemic weaving. Fast forward (or back) and you have stark division, demonization of groups of people, and the threat of all freedoms lost.

So what does that mean exactly? Well, because we’ve drifted a little far down the path of separation, it becomes instantly complicated. But we have the brains and resources to cross this bridge, I really do believe. Should we choose. And it certainly outweighs the alternative which might be greater and greater states of chaos. 

So yes, we need to ensure our safety- that is non-negotiable. And being in better relationship doesn’t mean that we have to be all up in another’s business all the time- or ever for that matter, but we can live with softer and respectful edges. So taking a deep and honest inventory (12 step has had this so right). 

Where have we walled off, slammed metaphorical doors, or erected insurmountable boundaries when the threat was perhaps not as severe as our nervous systems thought it was? Where have we extracted and erased and what does that actually mean? Well let’s double down on both.

With extraction- where have we failed to acknowledge the teachers that have passed along wisdom that has become a part of what we give or who we are. Do we lack a practice or ritualized remembrance of these gifts- even if only a moment of giving thanks? Where have we not acknowledged how the presence of certain people along our winding biographies has been such a gift to our souls and hearts, and neglected to tell them, thereby missing a moment for honoring the life-force and its blessed visitations? Where have we shoved our elderly aside instead of keeping them as the centerpiece of the true hearth. How do we unconsciously consume without tracing it back to know carbon footprints and how its trajectory may have been violent to the earth, or tracing forward to see what remains will drip into water or soil? And certainly not all of us have the extra money to buy organic and ensure that the runoff from our detergent is kind to our planet- but many do, and an example of being with the complication of it all- where can we educate generativity and generously because so many do not know? How can smarter systems be built that allow for that awareness and reciprocity with a planet that gives us so much? How can we learn the skills of communication that are attuned and don’t assume we know it all?

Where do we take without acknowledging even in the smallest of ways?

For those very deep divers (y’all know I can't help myself), I’ll say a tiny bit more… where can you start to see and feel into the assumptions that THE Mother, all giving beauty and abundance, is something we can take for granted and just take ad infinitum? ..because maybe you haven’t reckoned with a sliver (sometimes mountains) of unconscious internalized patriarchy and colonized mind? Made even more complicated by the experience of an earth mother who had her own dose of inevitably internalized patriarchy as well. But you don’t even have to know the ins and out of subconscious patterning. Just know that we all have this to some extent. And that is what it is to come back into right relationship (as the Buddhists call it) after a history of domination and oppression. And to stop taking without understanding that we are a result of a confluence of rivers- genetic, energetic, molecular… start dust to amoeba to the great ape family. Another inroad to the anti-extraction mindset is to fully grok the diversity that we actually are (which makes it a lot less threatening for those scared of a tainted race- and in fact the delineations as we see them today will be so blurred in even 100 years, so I think we can hopefully let that one go. But do, feel. If that is one for you- sit with it in your body. Don’t assume it isnt there). 

Where have we cherry picked from indigenous cultures- sitting and doing ayahuasca but misremembering the context, or failing to see the whole of the ethos from which these practices spring which is one that is fully connected to the land, and one another.

And as for erasure, this is a big one. It has become very hip to build brick wall boundaries and call things ‘toxic’ in this day and age. And certainly there are many instances where that holds some truth. But let’s unpack that a little bit. Is there an instance where you have shied away from something or someone out of your personal comfort and resistance to change? Do you have the resources to call in community or third-party assistance to help have hard conversations and hold difficult space? Is your nervous system so averse to your own pain that you will throw everyone under the bus to maintain equilibrium? Again, self-care is not only good, but essential and this pop culture wave is on the brink of taking these things too far. Not all but many. There is a lot of nuance here. Just know that erasure is a soul fracture that you are placing on another. We do not look at how we continue to wipe out and discard just as the first settlers did and pretend nothing happened. Or with populations that were enslaved. And especially if there is a power differential. But what we really must see is that the tiny choice that we make in a moment to erect a fortress rather than building buoyant fabrics of mutual respect becomes a burden that the other must carry to the grave. And all in the name of your comfort. We see how difficult this has been for native populations to hold as they turn to alcohol and other coping mechanisms, because we have not fully seen the role that we play and the parts we have ignored. 

And we haven’t seen that we perpetuate this aggression in the micro-moments of our lives and the ways we relate. Even in our relationships day to day. Where is there a nephew or niece in the family system that has fallen to the wayside? Where does someone struggle with illness that could use a handhold? Where do we prioritize linear productivity over the gifts in the system of creativity and an ability to love well? Again this one becomes complicated with growing populations of mental illness and homelessness, but what are the small ways that we could pledge to ourselves a moment of outreach, a phone call once a month, a regularity in relationship, a difficult conversation, a class we could take to help us understand. Or even the way we choose to part ways from a loved one. 

Those that bear this wound are often additionally gaslit in many spiritual communities as we are told it is there for our growth, for us to deal with on our own. Well, friends, it is too much. We are at the dawn of an age of togetherness (Aquarius) and have an opportunity to heed that invitation, should we decide. Yes alone, but together too.

In fact we extract and erase from our own bodies all the time. Where do you override intuition to the extent that you don’t even feel it anymore and operate purely from prefrontal cortex? Where have you pushed past what the body feels in the way of sensation and interoception? The good news is, with practice, this can all come back. All of it. And some of us are so beautifully gifted with prefrontal vision, others of us bottom-up root and collective understanding- know your gifts, know how to balance, and know and appreciate where and who can fill the gaps. Make a place for artists, farmers, and healers next to CEO’s and lawyers in the realm of importance. 

If there’s one thing I believe in as much as listening and learning from the body, it’s words. I think all of us can reach in to find a place where we could have spoken better (or at all), and thereby built a bridge. With the understanding that sometimes we need space, but that can be conveyed without ripped-out rupture. And not necessarily bridges to be crossed with major traffic- a bridge is a connective structure of majesty in its own right (the body’s equivalent is fascia, and y’all know we could wax poetic about that until the cows come home, but alas, another time…;).  It can be a thoroughfare of respect. This is an example of how a tiny moment can differentiate us from our past of domination/ villain-victim, to building out a future of care. 

The problems are huge but maybe the solutions, done en masse, can be simple. But one or a few of us carrying it all does not a balanced, harmonious culture make, nor does it contain enough momentum to right this ship. 

And listen loves, we need not spend oodles of time beating ourselves up for what has been, or how we didn’t see. Because everything is an evolution and so give yourself some grace. The age of psychology is only in the last decades as approved of and widespread. We were all raised by people that were more and more connected to survival at all cost somewhere down the line and some of us closer than others. We are all healing from war mind, on some level and in some distant (or not so distant) corner of our past. Even shadow excavation in the container of a conscious partnership is on the edge of the real growth revolution. Heretofore, that was a container to keep the farm going, for economic stability, and to raise children. Then came comradely and real friendship and now, we can, should we choose, have it all- deep growth, an ally for life, and creations of every sort.  

This is where the artistry comes in. We cannot solve, in one fell swoop, some of the issues that are years in the making (although I will never say never :)). But if we start close in, with our inner circles, our community and our family systems. Those of us that are inclined and skilled toward larger systems, by all means go! Otherwise, our people, our yards and rivers and our trees. If we zoom out when ready we can evaluate our past and see if there are places we can make amends or address some ripple in the pond. And here is the art of it- all the while toggling back into breath and body awareness. Taking the time to coregulate, autoregulate, and snuggle :) Be with the animals and the wind. To go to trauma and interoceptively aware yoga classes. Feel the simultaneous singularity, duality AND multiplicity of a single breath! And then jump back into outreach and do it again. Bite size itty bitty bits and all together is the way we might create the collective momentum that we need. It does seem we are on some kind of precipice. What and how we choose to meet this moment has everything to do with whether or not we spin further out into entropy or we drop in to self and root and one another and let the wild energy of life swarm here among hearts as opposed to spinning us out further away. It is up to us.

Because here’s the thing. Much like civil rights or women’s rights or any of these huge movements across time, it is all an evolution. And spirituality itself is an evolution. Women needed to be a little man-like in order to find even ground (although still not completely even) and before they could realize that their own femininity is of equal but different value. Perhaps on some very perverse level of consciousness our othering based on skin tone or ways of being in the world took us to a deeper understanding of the beauty of uniqueness inside the family of humanity (also a work in progress, this one).  

We needed to sail away and sit on cushions to find ecstasy and transcendence.

And retreating and deep diving in practice will continue to be informative and good. 

But without the equally sought after family and/or community aspect of it all, we will continue the values of empire and division as those states remain available only to a select few. 

So now is the time. It is truly a convergence of rivers flowing in from all directions. Instead of jumping out to fix or blame or shed or numb, can we sit with that convergence and let its discomfort rattle our bones and move so far down in us that we drop the running narratives and find another way and then move from THERE. None of us is exempt from pockets of blindness. Lord knows I have many. But can we be willing to withstand some discomfort for the benefit of a world we are head over heels in love with each and every one? That loves us back in ways we could have never imagined? The one that holds the planet, animals, babies, children, women and men with such reverence, kindness and care WITHOUT EXCEPTION? Can we? (the separation from THE Mother resolved). 

I think it might start here. Challenge our edges (all of them numerous and unique to who we are). Have the conversation. Love on that child. Volunteer for that gig. Learn to really- no, really, listen. And take care of you. A tall order? Yes. Possible? I believe, yes. Do I want to take a stand in that direction? You better believe it. Is it going to be messy and awkward and full of many many many moments of missing the mark?- hell yes it will. But to build out wild wondrous systems of care…. now there…. There is an aim worth fighting for. 

On this day of independence, can we appreciate the luxuries we’ve been afforded (if that is in fact the case), often independently in silo’s or separate from the whole, and start to bridge.. not in a codependent / needy / deprived continuation of more-of-the-same way, but built with intelligence, and in a balance with humility and dignity and respect. Because at the end of the day, bridges are cool. They connect two pieces of land even without being traversed. And when our nervous systems know- truly deeply know that there is a lifeline should we need it, and not one of us but many and then all have that bridge, that lifeline, that connection, then- and only then- is when everything changes. And life and love can truly bloom. Let’s build that sort of infrastructure. Whatdoyasay? 

For as it is said:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal,
that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights,
that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

 All men, all women, all children. ALL.

Have a beautiful day, dear ones.

Love,

Julia

Julia Horn