Being, knowing, doing (or not doing) and living in the liminal space – sustainable change project month 10

Ah, I’m having one of those obstructive technology hours. There’s no photo on this post because it won’t upload and since a problem with upgrading, there seem to be a few glitches around. Anyway, hopefully the tech wizards will sort me out…

I’m not sure where the last few weeks have gone. I try reflecting on what has happened and it feels like I’ve been in a whirlwind. Whirling seems to be a recurring theme for me. Whirlpools and whirlwinds. I’m still processing a lot in my mind from the courses and reading I’ve been doing. Something which has been vexing me a lot is the separation between what I ‘know’ inside and how I actually live. I say ‘know’ because I mean an intuitive, bodily sensed knowing as opposed to at a cognitive, intellectual level.

There’s various things I’m reading at the moment that suggest we need to think about ‘being’ rather than doing. That if we focus on ‘being’ in a different way, we can let go of actions and goals because the doing will arise in whatever way it needs from the being. I’ve also being reading about how much we have become focused on the pursuit of consciousness, and rational/logical processes, at the expense of intuition and embodied knowing.

That’s where I got to. I felt like I was engaging a lot intellectually with stuff but I didn’t ‘feel’ it. Then I did an urban solo. That’s an hour and a half in an urban environment, crossing a threshold, no gadgets, just sitting and being, sitting and observing. It was a very hot day and I was very tired so I welcomed the opportunity to sit and do nothing. During my time I noticed stuff but I didn’t feel any profound realisations. That was until after. As part of the Natural Change process, when you’ve done a solo the idea is to write up and share your story, which I did. It was during the writing that I realised that I always feel connected to the greater world, part of something bigger, the wider sense of ecological self – prior to the solo I thought I was feeling disconnected. No, the disconnection, I realised, was between that embodied knowing, that huge sense of compassion and appreciation, of being more than this here, and actually how life was/is day-to-day. I felt despair, guilt, shame, even anger.

As I chewed on this, I realised that there is something about how to live in this liminal space, in a kind of in-between state where modern western life makes it a challenge to be the ecological self. I decided that rather than berate myself for all that I’m not doing, one thing I can do is to notice each day the small things I am doing and how I am being – am I being compassionate? am I paying attention to what my inner life is telling me? am I turning off the tap whilst I brush my teeth?

I’m still not clear on how to navigate this space. One thing I have realised I want to do is resurrect my sustainable change project, which for some reason got lost. Whirlwinds, it occured to me, throw stuff outwards. Whirlpools draw stuff down. I keep finding myself drawn into whirlwinds only to be thrown out, shell-shocked. I’m not going to be as structured with the project as I was in the early days, I’m just going to see what comes up.

This month’s theme for the sustainable change project is clothing, which is handy because I realised the other day I needed some new knickers. So I’ve just purchased some Pants to Poverty ones. I did come across how to make pants from your t-shirts but I’m very poor at needlework. Maybe that’s the next step. If you search on the web there’s lot of ideas about how to reuse clothing/material, like this one.

Anyway, that’s it for now. Bobby wants me to play with him. A good excuse to leave the technology and get out on the grass.