You know how the best ideas show up when we're relaxed?

When you're in the shower, or just as you wake up, or while you're walking the dog or playing with the kids... that's when the solutions to our problems often present themselves, as if out of no-where.

I believe that's because in those relaxed, unguarded moments we allow our hearts to open a little, which makes it possible for some kind of connection to open up between our individual selves and the World around us. 

For me, the experience of receiving needed inspiration in this way illustrates an important truth -- that when I manage to relax and reconnect, I find that the World has my back.

This post explores a related idea: that it's our responsibility to stay connected to the World (or to Source, whatever that means for you) and that when we take care of staying connected, Everything else takes care of itself.

Not that it necessarily takes care of itself the way we think it should... But I find that even (sometimes especially) when I feel HUGE resistance to the way things are turning out, I'm likely to look back with the benefit of hindsight and see why the way it turned out was ok after all. 

An Intelligent World

In giving World a capital w and Everything a capital E, I'm borrowing from Menstruality educator Alexandra Pope: 

The idea of an intelligent World, of Earth as relational, and of our sacred responsibility for maintaining our relationship with it, is as old as humanity. It's an idea I find deeply, reliably, comforting.

The emphasis in the quote above is mine. The only thing the World leaves up to us is our connection to it.

I'm not saying it's easy -- I know from painful personal experience that it's not. But the concept is simple, and I'll repeat it again: when we take responsibility for staying connected and open, Everything else takes care of itself.

When we forget and allow our hearts to close, when we break off the connection, everything falls apart, nothing works -- and that's when we find ourselves grappling with difficult emotional states like anxiety, overwhelm, frustration -- which are really just trying to prompt us to reconnect.

In my case, what happens when I lose the connection is that--like so, so many other midlife women and plenty of men too--I can't sleep.  

What happens when we lose the connection

Insomnia is a thing in my life. I know it so intimately, I can feel as I'm heading for bed whether my brain and nervous system are expressing "I feel afraid," or, "I feel safe" -- and that dictates how much sleep I'll get.

For me, fear expresses as insomnia. But insomnia (or insert your particular variation of fear-driven, dis-regulated, disconnected, emotional or psycho-spiritual discomfort) is only a symptom of a deeper malady.

We modern people are--as Stephen Jenkins¹ puts it--like orphans. We've lost our connections, forgotten how to stay connected, and come un-moored in the World. 

We've been displaced--and have displaced others--so often that we've lost touch with the earth, each other, our ancestors, where we came from, and how the World and the web of Life can (must) be renewed and restored with every act of giving and receiving.

Everything is fraying and coming undone, including--especially--our own inner worlds, which are mirrored by the outer world. 

Disconnection, fragmentation, and isolation are the fruits of a culture that values "me" over "we," economic growth over relationships. 

Two worldviews - a hostile vs a friendly Universe

In the trailer for the film The Eternal Song, activist and ceremonial leader Pat McCabe says,

What I understand her to be saying there is that the darker-skinned First Peoples² of the World know themselves to be a part of, and in relationship to, the beauty that surrounds them. They understand themselves to be part of a friendly Universe. 

In contrast, the waves of lighter-skinned people who displaced the First Peoples (who were ourselves displaced earlier in a domino game of displacement that goes WAY back), understood themselves to be isolated, disconnected individuals, alone in a hostile Universe. 

According to Albert Einstein, that's an important distinction to understand... 

In my family of origin, the Universe was most definitely viewed as hostile. There are tightly held and very limiting beliefs coded into my operating system that developed in a matrix of hostility, fear, and apathy.

Hence the insomnia (I'm obviously simplifying and abbreviating, but that's basically the gist of it). 

Luckily, we don't have to accept the operating systems we were given by our families or circumstances of origin. We can examine them and re-write them. I'm working on re-writing mine with my new belief that we live in a friendly Universe. 

I say "working on" because the idea that I'm an insignificant, fundamentally broken, isolated fragment adrift in a hostile environment is obviously still in place as far as the parts of me that govern sleep are concerned. It's a work in progress.

Here's Albert Einstein again, basically saying the same thing Pat McCabe said above...

All is well

Along with having come to the conclusion that ours is a friendly Universe, I also believe that the Intelligence that Orchestrates it does not make mistakes. 

Which can only mean that the experience I'm having is serving some purpose other than for me to be well-rested.

My reflections so far lead me to believe that I'm being invited, night after night, to pay attention, to turn inward, to look unflinchingly at what I see. To open my heart and practice compassion and courage -- towards and for myself.

Which in turn, progressively as I practice, allows me to move towards a little more openness and connection with the World around me. 

When I can stay open and honest, I feel safe and I sleep well.

When I'm unable to stay open or I continue to live a lie, I feel afraid and alone and...

Well, you know how that goes. Because you too know what it's like to lie awake while your mind runs around disconnected and unable to come home, unable to land in your body and sink into the ocean of peace that is openness and connection.

But every time I give those limiting, fear-based beliefs another re-run, I watch what's happening. I still can't stop myself from re-running that obsolete program (yet), but I can bring awareness to it.

Awareness -- the witnessing presence -- is the portal out of the prison that Einstein mentioned above, into the peace and freedom of relationship with the World. (That is, in my current understanding -- which is always up for review and further iteration.)

So. No matter how dark the night, sooner or later dawn comes and I look back with the power of hindsight and am reminded that the World has my back, that I am more than I was told I was, and that so long as I maintain a sincere intention to be open to what the World requires of me, Everything else will take care of itself in its own good time.