Episode 48: Humility ✨

DAYS OF SWEAT AND COFFEE!!! CONQUER ME HOME!!! Ship navigation!!! YOUR CHEST IS GOING TO EXPLODE!!! Love, maybe. LOSS!!! WHISKY & CIGARETTES!!! SALSA DANCING!!! SOLAR FLAIRS!!! OCEANS OF LOVE!!! MUSHROOMS!!! To know love is to know loss. NO COINCIDENCES?! Peter Pan in search of Neverland. WELCOMING CONFLICT!!! “A wise man once said… nothing!!!” THE SPIRITUAL RELEVANCE OF LISTENING (while I, ironically, talk through yet another entire episode)!!! I know absolutely nothing and I’m totally terrified!!!! & are you ready to go on an adventure?

Excerpt 1:

“Week before last I needed my show with this: Until I find myself squarely where I am. Here in this moment. With all the possibilities laid out in front of me.

Holding grief and love in both hands.

And so here I stand. Holding grief and love in both hands.

It could not be a truer statement.

All of this ship navigation through stormy waters is overwhelming. I am such a different person than I was a year ago.

And am constantly called, again and again. To surrender to this state. To fall to my knees in humility. To admit that I might not have the answers, as smart as I am, as intellectual as I am, as much as I have learned. There is far more that I don’t know.

How do I explain to you that feeling that your chest is going to explode and you can’t make sense of anything and there’s no up or down anymore only a knot in your chest and a burning desire to be near me, so much so that it’s extremely uncomfortable, how do I tell you that is love? I can’t, only you can come to that on your own. Only you can lay down your armor and wear your heart on your sleeve.

How do I explain the lives that live within me, that are also love but are gone, tear me open sometimes. To know love is to know the profundity of loss.

And so I spent this week holding grief and love in both hands. With my heart on my sleeve walking across a tight wire. The delicacy of it. The precision of it, the surrender in being hundreds of feet off the ground in flight.

And so I lay in my bathtub. Sobbing like a siren call in the night, flickering light across my skin. Drenched in water drenched in water drenched in water.

And it flashed behind my eyes, the lives I have lost, the places I called home, the loves I called home. My house on the side of the mountain next to the train tracks full of sunlight. My hummingbirds in the window. My flowers on the blue island in the kitchen. The canopy over my bed, “M” sitting on the edge of it, for the last time. The flowers in the summer. The grinding of the train wheels against the metal of the tracks. Followed instantly by the flood of scents of whisky and cigarettes of the wood of the barn I lived in with “M,” the feeling of the rough carpet in the bathroom under my feet, lying in our bed on the floor in the eves in the summer sweltering love hot under the wooden beams. Of running through the front door to jump into outstretched arms. Home late in the summer after a long day of work.

It flashed before me our cats cuddled at the foot of our second apartment, the royal purple walls of the bedroom. Painting the bathroom with a day-old pizza and a beer in one hand, taping off the walls. And then I am out at a salsa club in Atlanta, tipsy and surrounded by people simmering in the Georgia heat, drunk on Latin pop music and wine. And I’m spinning into a stranger’s arms, flying across the dance floor, as everyone in the club moved to form a ring of observation around us. Cheering us on. Whooping and calling out, everything alive in a split second of grace as I swung down low across the floor. My orchids on the window sill of my dorm room. All of the orchids I left behind as I ran. Thrown back to Ms parents house a family dinner, salmon and good wine, a hot summer night, and music and love tangible in the thickness of the air, home, and family, everything more perfect than a movie screen, deeper than the bottom of the ocean of love. And lighter than a solar flare.

The moment we found each other again, walking across Baldwin hill in the dark, standing against my truck smoking cigarettes talking about all the years we had missed each other, the parallel lives we had led in each other’s absence, the bite of fall air, your voice. The streetlights. The cicadas still in the distance. The moment I felt the world snap back into rightness again. And then driving away. For the last time, “N’s” mother’s house. Knowing somehow, that it was all over, again, in the dead chill of a winter morning. That I would never sit on that couch again, never walk into the kitchen, never be wrapped in those arms in that place. Never stare out of the kitchen window while they held me like I had for so many years. And then the smell of wet clay drying in the sweltering heat of the summer in the studio. The smack of another wedge of clay onto the wheel. Days of sweat and coffee. Nights when N sauntered in with a bottle of wine and a grin a cigarette hanging from his lips. Dipping mug after mug in glaze late into the night. The trellis we built on the edge of the front porch that we trained vines to climb, sitting out there for hours watching the rain. The night that it stormed so hard I ran out into the road and you followed me, and we danced in the downpour and you said you’d never love another person the way you loved me in that moment.

To know love is to know loss.

To lie on the floor sobbing. To put belongings in separate boxes, to compartmentalize a life that used to be ours.

So know, that when I say I love you, it is a risk. Because to love is to risk loss.

To love is to risk everything.

It is not to be entered into without caution.

And yet should be entered into with abandon or not at all.

And so it is. That I find myself humbled.

Again and again. Because in order to love again, all of that must be surrendered. Must be left. Again. In favor of the possibility of a brighter future.”

Excerpt 2:

“SO, let's talk about humility because it keeps coming up in my life lately in so many different contexts. And I keep feeling like that quote “A wise man once said nothing” cannot for the life of me remember where that’s from. But anyway, let’s get into it. Humility has felt exceptionally poignant lately for many reasons. And I’ll explain why. First, in the contest of conflict, there is a point at which in conflict it becomes important that we remain humble and open, to the idea that there might actually be parts of the burden that rest on us. That maybe our fear, or bias, or armor may be informing what are are perceiving. And be humble enough and willing enough to admit we may be at fault, or that we were trigged, and that it actually has nothing to do with the other person, they were simply a mirror. And not only has this come up in conflict with my partner, and how I watch and see the beautiful ways they are willing to be humble, to acknowledge, to work through. It’s also come up in the context of my work. Sometimes, not often, I will be met by someone who triggers my own insecurity, or questions my abilities, or the work that I do and how it can be useful. And I can feel part of myself get defensive, see in them the ego, the arrogance, the “I’ve done all this work I must have the answers” what could you possibly offer me. And I can feel myself passing judgment, how rude, how close-minded, how egotistical but really it is not about them, they may in fact not have anything to learn from me, my skills and experience may not be useful to them, they truly might have it all figured out. But this is a call, this rise to judgment within myself, to look at what it can teach ME. And that is that it is much easier, lovelier, to connect with someone who is open and curious. Who is searching and willing. I am reminded of what I want to be. Humble, open to learning, even if I have heard it before. I want to approach everything as though it is the first time I have heard it, what is there here that I might learn from?

And this translates to listening, truly listening without formulating a response or a judgment or waiting to speak. Because it is incredibly easy to miss something if you think you already know what you are looking for if you think that you and you alone have the answers. Humility informs our ability to be truly present and connected to what “is” at any given moment. It allows us to pay attention, to the importance of things, to the meaning of them. And in return, we receive the gift of better understanding ourselves. When we learn to listen we learn to observe without judgment, which if you remember is the highest form of spiritual practice. And as I have come to learn thus far, the highest forms, the deepest forms of spiritual practice are those that believe that all things are connected and that your body, your heart hold the keys to unlocking the vast ocean of consciousness inside of you. There may be tools, rituals, practices, but ultimately like I always say, it begins in the body and ends in the body. And your path, your god, your healing will always look different than everyone else. And the highest forms of spiritual practice, in my humble opinion, should lead you there. To the understanding, that the more we are present and listen, the more we find those moments, where fate and luck collide, where something that was seemingly insignificant is transformed into a moment of profound connective beauty. Moments where the universe moves, and you are there as a humble witness to the devastating beauty, humor, joy, connectedness of the tapestry laid out in front of you.

I think of the ways things move in nature. The immaculate construction of leaves, a frog taking shelter under a mushroom that has a web of interconnected mycelium that run underneath the floor of the forest, spreading out in perfect harmony with the ebb and flow of sunlight as it hits the ground. Spreading to find patches of shade, places where the soil is damp where the raindrops and dewdrops fall off the tips of leaves to create an ideal environment for growth. There are still parts of the world where we live in harmony with the earth in this way, though it is becoming rarer and rarer. But that doesn’t mean we can’t learn to move within the constructs of our daily lives in accordance with these forces. But first, it necessitates that we listen, that we clear the mind the heart the body of the clutter, of its conditioning, of its past and trauma. Then we gradually begin to uncover a presence, an ability to see and move within the ebbs and flows of the tides of life. Learning and growing into chance encounters, connections, moments of bliss, and surrender. And all that is asked of us to begin this process is humility, to admit that we might not be in control, to let go, to trust, to open to the possibility around us. And how do we do this? You might ask? That seems like a lot. I know, I’m always asking so much of you. No i’m kidding, but really the only prerequisite is curiosity! Why am I the way I am? What has shaped and informed me? Where is this coming from? What can this teach me? What lesson might be here? Who is this other person? Where am I headed next? What might be in store for me?

And then?

And then?

We. Live the question.

We sit in the uncertainty, knowing that there may not be an answer, or if there is we might not like it even. Or maybe it’s beyond anything we could have imagined. Maybe it is even more beautiful. And we allow we allow ourselves to rest there, in uncertainty. While somehow knowing, that with time everything will be revealed. Because it is only with a perspective that things take form. Think about a drawing, flat on a piece of paper, if you draw it in 2 dimensions it is flat the faces of buildings, but the moment you add lines, pointing towards a point of perspective the buildings take on another dimension, they are long or short, they overlap, they have form. Both are undeniable drawings of buildings, but one with a greater context, a richer story.

And in my sorry. All roads lead back to the heart. Every time. My therapist once said to me in response to some morose declaration that I was finally done with partnership. “But you are a lover”

It is not just a part of who you are, it IS who you are.

All roads lead back to love.

The heart, the control center of the nervous system, the seat of emotion the heart.

My most exercised muscle. From a very young age, I set out on a journey, to understand what love was. I have studied it, I have researched it, I have run experiments, I have read about it, I have listened to the stories told, felt for it everywhere around me. I have made it my life to understand human connection, and why and how we share intimacy. This is my great life work.

Probably because, to me, it is the most complicated thing in the world to understand. And maybe in some way, it is how I am wired. All the roads, all the pathways, lead back to love.

It has been, and I am sure will continue to be, my greatest teacher.

And so I am, humbled, often. Because if love is your greatest teacher how could you not be constantly humbled? Forever changed every time.”