Happy & Peaceful Holy Days to One & All
Our is office closed until Jan 6th 2025
.........hopefully, after a long and fulfilling life for one and all. But yes, as the Winter and the end of another year approaches, and perhaps more particularly this year than any other, I can see that ultimate gateway to the mystery appearing coming a little closer. My mother, who all being well, will turn 85 next year, tells me it's my age. But goodness me, the amount of people we are close to now who are either dying or facing major challenges to their health means that mortality seems even closer than it usually does.
I've always been fascinated and horrified by endings in equal measure. I remember watching the epic film Dr. Zhivago, starring Omar Sharif, when I was very young. There's a famous scene at the end of the movie when after years of not seeing each other due to the tragedies of war and life's happenings, one of the lovers sees their long-lost partner on a bus. In the Hollywood version of life, there's a happy re-union. But this is Russia and in a heart-wrenching moment, the bus is moving too quickly and the chance of re-union is lost forever. I remember the awful grief of witnessing that scene and the shattering of the illusion that life always has a happy ending.
Those deeply emotional moments in life that turn certainties to dust are everywhere to be seen. We recently ran our Forging Understanding, Communication and Kinship in the Space Between Us workshop for couples online. It was a very powerful gathering and as always, when I am confronted by the reality that love and loss are permanently entwined, I am amazed at the courage it takes to love. Whether that love is for another human being, for a pet, for a place or simply for life itself, the feelings that arise in me and that I witness arising in others are so strong.
By the way, we were so bowled over by the efficacy of the online format for this work and the powerful results that people experienced that we are planning the next online couples workshop for May 2025. Watch this space.
The most positive thing for me about being close to the reality of endings and mortality is that it brings into focus the simple fact that this life and everything in it is finite. Even our sun will die eventually. Apparently, that great big papa in the sky will go on supporting life on earth for somewhere between 700 million 1.5 billion years from now. Phew! Zooming out into the mystery of life has been a refuge for me since long before Dr. Zhivago broke my young heart.
Death comes with life. Endings are twinned with beginnings. And the end of a cycle, or the end of a year, as part of keeping two feet on the ground and my head like the mist in mystery, rituals that mark those passages matter more and more.
This time of year has always been a time for reflecting and digesting what I and we have lived during the past 12 months. Turning 60 this year, as well as bringing the distant echo of Benevolent Death's laughter just a little bit closer, has brought this process to a new level. It's not just the year I am reviewing, but my life. I'm enjoying the feeling (most of the time 😉) of recognising my own insignificance more and more.
And the result of that humbling is that the medicine that's coming through me is both stronger and more detached. I remember that when I was a child, I was really excited about getting old. Perhaps that's got something to do with the fact that I knew this life was going to be busy. But from where I am now, perhaps it was more of an innocent intuition about this feeling of being in my place, delightfully insignificant and simply a channel for the work I've spent my life crafting?
I once saw a book on Amazon called What You Think of Me Is None of My Business. I didn't read it but the title was the message I needed. I liked the idea of that kind of detachment, not from the people that really matter to me. I do really care what my wife and family think about me. My close friends too. But as that circle of closeness widens, by the time we reach social media, that sense of detachment is quite complete.
I was recently teaching in Canada. On the Saturday afternoon, we were deep in a process of witnessing and enquiry. A couple of people were talking and playing around. They didn't seem that engaged. I was basically fine with that until the volume level reached the place where ignoring the demand for attention was impossible. I sensed the resistance. Resistance, futile as it is, is normal and I have no problem with it. But when it's disturbing to the field, it's down to me as the one responsible for the space, to speak up.
So I said to the group: "I'm noticing some of you expressing what I sense to be resistance to what we're doing. The loud talking is also disturbing for those who are engaged. Resistance is fine. But please be aware of it. Own it! Dance it. It's your life force and it's strong. Do something creative with it. You're wasting it on me."
I wasn't in the least bit angry. I didn't put anyone down. It was simple and it did the trick. The level of concentration in the room deepened immeasurably. Ah, the simple pleasures of getting older! This is the kind of incident in the past which may have caused me much more trouble. I was much more likely to take it personally. Like the email that arrived recently which definitely went straight in at number 1 of 'the rudest emails I have ever received.' It genuinely made me laugh. I appreciated how angry the person was but that old place of feeling the need to defend my dignity at every turn has turned to smoke.
So much of what happens in life is out of our hands. Like the turning of the seasons, and the passing of time. And no matter how many beautiful face creams my beloved gives me to soften the ageing process, I can see the signs of age appearing in numerous ways. And yet, the things we do actually have choice about make such a different to our experience of life. Like noticing when we are in an ego reaction to something someone's saying, or recognising the ways we talk to ourselves. Our perception is created by that blend of posture, feeling and story. And it is not carved in stone. We are at liberty to question our fixed perceptions of how we are, what we see in others and in the world around us.
With attention and practice, that quiet voice inside us becomes more and more audible. We start to notice that what we perceive has so much to do with our mindset. So much of how we interact is governed by a nervous system that doesn't know the difference between the past and the present. For example, when I arrived home from Canada, Susannah and I had the evening together to catch up and share our news.
Susannah was telling me about her time at home and I was enjoying massaging her legs as she spoke. After a little while, I went to have a shower and when I was there, enjoying the warm water and washing off the dust of long travel, I became aware that I had slipped in to an old, predictable story rooted in self-pity. Self-pity is different than empathy. It tends to magnify personal suffering from a place of isolation and powerlessness. Empathy, towards self and others fosters connection. It requires emotional openness and an ability to balance one's own feelings while genuinely engaging with another's experience. We often mistake the emotion that comes with self-pity for genuine pain when it is, in fact, what is called a secondary emotion. It masks our anger. And we don;t notice how aggressive we are when in a state of self-pity.
Anyways, there I was in the shower, telling myself that outdated and frankly, absurd story, that I care for Susannah more than she cares for me and why didn't she offer to massage my foot which was sore from travelling........and I've been away working, and, and and.........
And then there it was, that consciousness that I've spent decades curating and god knows how many S.E.E.R. processes and Phoenix Processes developing. That quiet voice that whispers: 'Are you sure Ya'Acov? Is that really true?' I started laughing out loud. There I'd gone again. I took the necessary moment to soothe that little one inside me who will always feel like that. And then I recognised that all I needed to do was ask Susannah for some healing for my foot. Simple as that. And I did and she did and it was so simple and good. I understand that not all conflicts are quite so simple to resolve. But the principle is sound.
That little story has caused me and others way too much pain over the years. And in this instance, it was so easy to unilaterally disarm. Our certainties are so dangerous. They add to the polarisation in a world in which different sides of a conflict refuse to listen to one another. There is very real suffering and bloodshed that comes from the rigidity of our human ego stories, our deeply rationalised, fixed ideas about who we are, who 'the other' is, and what is happening in our world. We call some of these ego fixations 'the truth.' And in that place, there can only be one truth. And all other truths must be pushed away or attacked and utterly discredited.
One of the fundamental ideas that underpins Movement Medicine is that movement is medicine. It is genuinely harder to only see one side of a story when one is moving all the way around it. And conversely, if you stay in your shape, posture and story and are not willing to move, it is equally easy to be convinced that your perception is the one and only truth.
And as we come to a new year, which on the one hand, is simply the end of 12-month, 365-day cycle, but on the other, offers a liminal, threshold moment, why not use the opportunity to recapitulate the year and take stock? Not just at 5 to Midnight on New Year's eve, but for some days if you possibly can. We are offering two formats for this enquiry. One is through the Movement Medicine Study Hub, where each year, we take this theme of remembering as the focus for our practice and enquiry.
And the other is through our annual Returning Home Intensive in Switzerland, which this year has the added spice of Reuben Darling Khan's Fundamentals of Wellbeing work and Hae In Cho's yoga and cacao offering.
So dear people, the end is nigh and as ever, when endings are in sight and when Benevolent Death enters the room, it is time to get real about what matters most. For myself and Susannah, this means an in-depth enquiry into what our focus needs to be over the next decade of our working lives. And we both know for certain that we cannot be sure we even have ten years. Endings bring that focus. Endings and death in particular strip away what is no longer necessary and in the presence of mystery, a deeper truth is so often revealed. A truth which doesn't take sides but commits to finding peace and building bridges between apparently fixed opposites. This is our work and our commitment. And if life continues to give us the breath to breathe, then we will give our all to that purpose for as long as we live.
Peace. Salam. Shalom. YDK 💚🐆🦋🌎🦋🐆💚 December 2024.
