By Amanda Painter
There’s been a lot of talk here at Planet Waves and throughout the media spheres about all kinds of big things: overwhelming man-made environmental disasters, dizzying economic disasters, brazen humanitarian efforts with big, disastrous reactions.
There is formidable astrology afoot and large chunks of the population walking around like zombies. The pace and visibility and directness of actions taken by people to shake things up and grab attention are all increasing. And let’s face it: all lot of us may be feeling a bit left in the dust, a bit paralyzed, a bit in despair that we’ll ever be able to do anything that “really makes a difference.”
Maybe we’re even feeling a bit reluctant to try and a little bit guilty about that.
Then again, we may not all have to feel up to jumping aboard a blockade-bound ship, or chaining ourselves to the White House fence covered in faux crude. Not all of us have fame to give us a leg up in making a statement and many of us do not want fame and its burdens and responsibilities despite the potential it carries. But there are other ways to make a statement, other ways to participate and support those who do act in big ways.
This is where reinventing our relationship to ourselves and then our other personal relationships can have greater meaning. It’s the only real starting point we have; nobody learns to walk without first finding their feet. Surely you’ve seen many babies do this: they literally “discover” their feet, say hello to them, take hold of them, chew on them a little; eventually they start to trust them to hold their weight, and then to move them forward with greater and greater speed and over ever-more-uneven terrain. They begin grasping the concept between desire and volition, and that the relationship is completely internal, completely under their own control.
This is what we have to do now, as adults in this hell-bent world of ours, but in a more accelerated and perhaps less concrete or obvious fashion: we have to find our spiritual feet, say hello to them, trust them to hold our weight, and finally accept that the relationship between desire and volition must be internal first before we go running to save the world or to welcome another in a loving embrace. It’s going to require a fair amount of getting out of our own way to be able to go with the flow of this newfound relationship. Not all of us are well-practiced in that, but that does not make the assignment hopeless.
The recent Tarot spread for the Taurus Audio made mention of the necessity of being a self-contained spiritual seeker in order for relationships to grow and move forward and really flourish. It seems good advice for everyone regardless of sign; the first step to engaging with the world, one relationship at a time. It’s just another way of saying, “find your feet.”
So: find your feet, smile in the mirror, and then smile without fear at the next stranger you see on the sidewalk. Find your feet and ask your neighbor to go in on a CSA share with you at a local farm. Find your feet and let yourself fully feel that crush you have on your coworker without guilt. Find your feet and acknowledge at least one part of your partner’s sexual reality that does not include you. Find your feet and comment on that blog you’ve been lurking at for months, or write your own letter from scratch to a legislator or an editor. Find your feet and the next time you find yourself in a truly meaningful conversation with a stranger on a plane or waiting in line somewhere, exchange contact info and then actually use it to continue the conversation.
Find your feet and show up at that rally/protest/fundraiser even if you don’t know anyone else who’s going. Find your feet and accept that that creative urge you keep having really is yours and really is worth following through on.
Find your feet and who knows: by the time you may be faced with anything truly daring, you may have reached sufficient velocity and agility that as far as you can tell, you’re just taking the next logical step. Very likely you will be in the midst of an entire tribe doing the same.
Just some random thoughts…
When we ponder all these changes that are needing to be made, it’s possible to be overwhelmed. I learned that making one or two changes at a time makes it a bit easier to adjust. I do have a complaint re. critics of sustainable living framing the debate in all-or-nothing terms (in a broader sense). In my view, it’s dishonest, and I’m starting to call people out on that.
I love that thing Eric said a while back (paraphrasing) about experiencing change as a creative process, then you can shape the life you want. Neat.
The history and politics of food is an overwhelming subject, but honestly, when did it become “elitist” to want (and to buy) healthy, minimally processed food? Another point I’m feeling compelled to take a strong stand on with the critics. Another way that I’m finding my own feet.
I’m getting ready to move to an area that has blessedly copious amount of local food available. So grateful for the opportunity to support local farmers… it’s a bit more difficult where I am right now. And after moving, will also have space for my own garden and chickens. An amazing turnaround for this suburban-raised girl. Gonna put in some kohlrabi and cabbage for the fall right away, when I get there.
Rented a DVD, “The Real Dirt on Farmer John,” from Netflix over the weekend. Very interesting.
So much good stuff happening right now. And then, Saturn moves back into my birth sign (Libra) next month, just in time for my new housing situation with three other people. LOL. But right now, I’m really chomping at the bit for change.
well then jeanne, welcome!
as you say, “I see the realization of great joy in opening up to the tremendous opportunity and urgent need of all of our collective genius.”
yes yes yes…
Can the fact that this big event conjunction is happening in Aries have an effect on our… head?
Is anyone experiencing strange symptoms in the head-eyes-vision-top of the head?
I feel my eyes tired and sensitive to light, and yesterday night in bed I saw light with the eyes closed and the room totally dark. Maybe it is an eye problem. Too many computer hours. I stared at orange too long. But it was fun.
Maybe all this energy is downloaded to us through the head?
I know that one can see light behind the closed eyes in meditation, but I was not meditating.
Just wondering if it’s a common experience.
Thank You Amanda, I am one of the lurkers who enjoys all of the interchange.
I found great beauty and very fond memories in your “finding our feet”.
My second son was a very serious baby and hardly smiled much as an infant. Then when he was 9 months old he discovered he could not only walk but run! His whole composure changed to huge smiles with this new “freedom” to express his spirit….
Some of us have not dared yet walk the path our spirits have called us to. I see the realization of great joy in opening up to the tremendous opportunity and urgent need of all of our collective genius.
Many Blessings, Jeanne
and what do you mean, “just?”
eric, i never suggested that you were. i was just saying that i surprised myself.
Amanda: you’re an excellent writer. I’m not just publishing you out of nepotism :-))
Fe – so great! My closest TJs is 30 minute walk….gotta pass Albertson’s and Vons to get there…;) I’ve been staying away from oats too. Not good stuff happening there.
You go on the collards – I’ll have to try growing some too. Thanks for the suggestion.
Ive got two hungry teenagers to feed this summer as well. They’re gonna have to do with a lot of veggies! – and yogurt.
Off to celebrate a friend’s birthday. Being a morning person – I wish Hollywood nights were not so LATE! But no doubt I’ll have some input to Eric’s sexual mission when I’m done….food’n’sex. It’s allll good.
xo
thanks for the compliments!
really what’s most gratifying is that this piece is resonating with people. it began as what were just supposed to be exploratory ideas to help eric expand yesterday’s essay. but the writing took off on its own, and to my surprise, eric decided to publish it.
i guess it’s therefore a good reminder to me that “baby steps” are not only necessary to get anywhere, they also may not seem at all connected to a greater goal or endpoint when i start taking them. the important part is to start. and i say that as one who is still trying to learn how to get out of my own way on many fronts.
good luck, good night, and thank you for meeting me here.
🙂 amanda
Hypnotic, thank you, yes, I agree and have spent a large proportion of my life’s allotment of “pissed offedness” if there is such an allotment on precisely that intersection!
Why is it put on US when in fact we are carrying the burden individually of a COLLECTIVE tangle that is nearly impossible to even imagine how to get from inside of it to any kind of sanity.
Yuppers, I have been known to spend lots of time there.
Honestly I still do not feel I have a solution but I do acknowledge that whatever the solution is, on that scale, it has got to be both individual and collective and it also has got to include both traditional knowing ways and very very creative innovations, and this must somehow all alchemicalize with sufficient harmony as to produce change that can flourish.
Sometimes IMO that means we have to increase persective in some way, or change in some way the grounds of the examination….. it means, to me, always, that there are unknown factors operating and we would do well to inquire of ourselves what those might be.
In a spiritual way of inquiry as well as all the other ways………….
PS – Amanda:
Love the earthy, lyrical sensuousness of your writing. It has a deep music to it. Looking forward to reading more.
My little green garden makes me quite happy these days. Harvested and cooked up a few of the first big collard leaves I’ve got going, and I’m reverting to my mother’s system of survival, which was to try to go to the store as little as possible for food. Cooking and eating food you’ve raised more than makes you virtuous. You are assured that there were no chemicals used in their cultivation.
There are still some things I cannot grow, meat and poultry for one, though the meat I buy is raised, grass-fed, only 25 miles away from my house. Everything is pasture-raised, including the eggs, which are also local.
The new Berkeley Trader Joe’s is a seven minute walk from my house. I am investing in a grocery bag on wheels, which should help me to not use the car or to over-shop. I’m only one person, for Pete’s sake. I don’t need to buy a whole lot of food, nor eat glutens. I’m wary of oats as well as wheat these days. GMO—not.
I dont necessarily think that farmer’s markets are the answer here. Its an alternative band-aid fix. Frankly, they are limited and very expensive for most people its not even an option. In fact, some supermarkets carry locally grown organic produce at much less cost and not just on tuesdays from 8-12 am 12 miles away.
The problem is that supermarkets are full of shit. And we need to go back to privately owned corner markets and sustainable villages where one can pick up locally grown organic or even great imported fresh delicacies.. whatever… what they need or want to cook, preseve and eat every day after work.
Once upon a time I lived in walking distance near a market where I bought my bread, my prouduce and down the street a jamaican restaraunt where I bought meat if I wanted it, fresh fish at the next door down and at Trader Joe’s pick up a bouquet of flowers and some Dr. Bronner’s soap.
Its a bigger problem than just a farmer’s market can address or call a to walk or take public transportation (many locations have NONE or very Limited). So this Is where I get really pissed off, putting it on the shoulders of the personal when they have not the alternatives they should have in the political…. Rant over and out.
hahaha please read “string bag” there, not “sting bag”
not sure where to go with that one, so outa here for now, ciao.
This post evoked such wonderful warm fuzzies because the description of babies discovering their feet, which is very apt, reminded me of my friends’ now 18-month old daughter and I’ve seen this very thing happen! They discover everything, several times over, and always with such giddiness and glee and wonder. I feel so fortunate to witness this first-hand.
The distinction between a baby finding his/her own feet and an adult finding his/her feet is that the baby is still so very much in the instinctual feeling sensing realm… everything is new. I think if we, as adults, can revisit that sense of wonder in the world that we had coming into it, then this finding our spiritual feet, which I like, will have a likelier field from which to emerge from. Good ideas to practice; I like the smile at strangers suggestion, and I have plenty of opportunities here to do that very thing.
Patricia MoonRose
Okay, can’t resist this one, Amanda, brava!
Finding your feet: for a number years, walking was my primary mode of transport. I learned in my body exactly how much energy it took to carry weight A from location B to location C — grocery bag down the street, etc. Once I bought a chair and carried it across the bridge, walk of about a half hour, which I made usually a couple times a day……
came to feel there was something sacred about just walking on the earth, even though I was walking in a town…..
bare feet on a dusty road, one day, I nearly collapsed to my knees with a surge of pleasure, feeling the dusty path under my soles, feeling in my body all the times of many lives I had walked, barefoot, on a dusty road, all distilled into that surge of pleasure, it could all be like this, I thought…..
Growing even a bit of one’s own food is sacred in a similar way IMO, or perhaps holy is a better word for it. There is a continuity of life force energy and a circuit that is completed that way which nourishes in a manner even the highest quality local organic lovingly produced purchased and walked home in a sting bag food cannot include, because, well, it does not include your own feet.
The Chinese saying, the best fertilizer is the footsteps of the gardener.
Finding your feet is also an excellent way to release built up stress from the body/mind/heart. Just breathe into the stress in the body, and then, simply, find your feet. Feel them. Repeat until done.
love you all a whole bunch right now,
Kyla
Eric, another point is that the Amish farmers still use horse power. That in itself lessens the need for oil in numerous ways up and/or down the chain.
Patricia MoonRose
Paola, a suggestion to add to your current orange crush: Flaming June. It’s a painting. Very orange, very beautiful, very soothing.
Patricia MoonRose
I’ve had people orgasm just by my massaging their feet.
Ymmmm.
Paola……while reading this post my kitty was licking my toes! …..I have to
admit….I liked it. 🙂
And while reminiscing – I’d also put bread on to rise before making trip – it’d be ready to bake by the time I was home. The days before I knew I was “wheat-sensitive”! LOL!
A neighbor and I are going to try out soap-making next weekend (thanks Patty!)
With pieces of change from grocery money, I have been gradually changing out the potted plants on my balcony with those that produce edible delights, many herbs and today I’m investing in a tomato plant (time of year for this kind of thing to hit the sales rack).
Considering the level of pesticides in non-organic produce and the cost of organic – well, and the side benefit is teaching my son to actually cook – and appreciate the art of gardening at the same time.
Shopping here is always a choice between healthier choice and not-driving….in LA most walk-to healthier grocery choices tend to involve living in upscale neighborhoods.
BUT I figure any good choice is a good choice (haha) – and using my FEET (thank you Amanda) is generally my best choice.
Eric, you called to mind my “good ol’ days” in A2 MI when on football Saturdays (I lived just next to the UofM stadium) I’d drive my car across town and park it next to the Farmer’s market. Anything that was not too perishable I’d storeo in the car, all else I would walk the several miles back home – meanwhile, renting my parking space there to stadium goers. “Good times” as it were! And a statement/testiment to the opportunity in eco/people- friendly social/environments.
Well, today has been marketing day – with much use of foot and smile power. Cheers!
The internal shift is indeed what’s necessary. Humans have greater individual agency perhaps than any other creature since there’s so many possible connections and therefore so much noise our imaginations can make to drown out the world of sense perception or the soft voice of the wisdom mind.
This guy has been blowing my mind lately-
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jeremy-rifkin/the-empathic-civilization_b_416589.html
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l7AWnfFRc7g&feature=channel
Cognitive science makes breakthroughs that provide evidence for the evolutionary advantage of empathy within our current context of systemic biosphere crisis.
I walked over to the Farmer’s Market today rather than drive — if I have shopping I can leave it in my studio fridge, which is a few paces from the market. I talked to several of the farmers, setting up a future story on local farming and energy efficiency. Local farming saves petroleum many ways, from lower use of fertilizers and pesticides (nearly all petroleum based) to trucking produce many fewer miles than agribusiness finds it necessary to move things around. On one level, we have an issue of how our lack of organization costs us energy, time, money, efficiency — and nutrition. The further you move fruits and vegetables, the more their nutrient value and quality degrade before you get them into your kitchen.
Lately I’ve been getting into plants; not gardening yet, but plants are collecting out on my porch.
Amanda, that is so beautifully put! And I feel encouraged that I can step out of self-flagellation mode and say that some of the things you suggest I have started to do already.
Thank you.
Wow. Thank you Amanda. This was really a missing piece, and it gives some precious orientation in the energy of these days.
‘Feel your feet’ and do little steps feels so much less scary. Easier.
I bought three glasses, a light orange one, a yellow one and a strong orange one. I’m focusing on orange energy, for different reasons, also liver and guts health. And all these days seem so deeply orange. I have many ideas coming, and it keeps evolving. “I bathe any pain in kindness, gentleness and love”.
This is a summary of my day. I felt my feet and wrote it. Now to somebody else if he/she so wishes.