Falling Gently Podcast

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I am stunned regularly by all the beauty in the world. The natural world, and the world of wisdom. I bow to the many teachers pointing me towards myself, while holding the mirror of eternity My Ministry of Stillness website has a long list of teachers I love And there are four primary teachers whose work weaves together into the hammock I can rest into But today, I’d like to talk about the message...

I had this entirely different post written, and as I went to schedule it, Substack showed it to be the 108th post. Happy Full Mala Day! Thank you, thank you, thank you for being with me, for reading, for caring For holding my wobbles and my light As I learn to do the same For example, I thought 108 was tomorrow, and it unexpectedly showed itself to be today In the scheme of things, this is a misca...

About 500 times in my life, I’ve started a project I thought “would be IT” “IT” was exhausting Many lovely things happened through these efforts But not what I was hoping for: A conduit through which I could contribute my gifts to the world and support myself doing so Something sustainable that laid a foundation I could rely on Something rooted in service and rising in love Something every self-he...

The Buddhist rosary is called a mala It has 109 beads. 108 to count the repetitions of a mantra or prayer The 109th as the “guru bead” or the one where we acknowledge and thank the one who taught us the prayer It also lets you know when you finished the 108 mantra cycle Very handy The number 108 is symbolic, holding both the binary of 1 and 0 and the infinity of the number 8 October 22 will mark 1...

Imagine yourself as the concrete of a pool The walls, floor, edge and stairs That’s you, as a parent The water is the world And children, when they’re little LOVE YOU They mostly stay on the stairs When they venture out, they come immediately back The stairs are where it’s at for little ones They could spend all day there And often do. As kids get older, they get bolder They spend more time in the...

Today I am feeling like a complete and utter failure It is uncomfortable I have a lot of ideas about how I can potentially move forward But I am overwhelmed in this moment In part by all that I have planned and yet not done Like get a job. WTF. How can it be this hard? Anyhow, when we’re overwhelmed like this Working on big projects just isn’t possible But working on something small can be very he...

The Sea of Tranquility and the Sea of Serenity Watch over us every night Often illuminated Sometimes sharing in the darkness of our night sky Of course we know they are not what we consider seas The moon not having water and all But those large dark spots on the left side of the moon Are reliable And I love that noticing them invokes tranquility and serenity in me just by association That’s some h...

I was built for this moment By the specific trials of my childhood Now amplified as our current political landscape A patriarchal system with an unstable individual at the helm… My dad had a diagnosis that included the onset of periodic rage There’s no reasoning with that, no preparing for what might come next Just a need to be ready for anything. The dynamic between my siblings was not a model of...

From time to time I think, “Might I run out of things to write about?” And my next conversation yields 20 delightful sparkles That feels sustainable, and relies on relationship Creation never stops offering us newness And commitment to the felt sense lets me receive it Not just think about it It is in the wholeness of my being The whole of my body, my thoughts, feelings, stillness, breath, inspira...

The thing about anxiety is it thinks it can and should control everything The tyrant of lore, no matter how well-intentioned An inner despot who wants us to think If listened to, will guide us to a knowable future in an unknowable world This is not a benevolent monarch, even if it tries to sway us with “we’ll be peaceful” language Back to Whitman: We are large, we contain multitudes And creating s...

When you’re hypnotized and quacking like a duck You don’t even know it And you come back into regular life feeling fine Then someone says a trigger word and Quack, quack, quack. We like to think we’re in charge of our thoughts and actions But we are influenced in a thousand ways Each of us differently And the effort and intent toward self-actualization or mutual awakening Is still subject to our l...

We actually had two wedding ceremonies. One on the 2nd of October on our porch, and another on the 7th with guests at our friend’s home As with most holidays for our family, our anniversary is more of a season than a day. I was never in a hurry to get married And as I entered my 30’s and people inquired about my intentions I would say “When I really want to get married, I’ll volunteer for Habitat...

You want your rheumatoid factor to be under 15, if you have one at all At 60, you’ve got a severe case of rheumatoid arthritis My factor is 160, so my diagnosis was pretty clear When I told my doctor I wanted my first course of action to be homeopathic He told me he’d only treat me naturally if I was seeing a therapist concurrently That therapist was wonderful And after just a few sessions, she su...

Just as engaging my posture and breath almost immediately soothes my nervous system Looking for a job almost immediately agitates it I can psych myself conceptually about a new industry or tactic But when fingers hit keyboard and resumes are uploaded, i don’t last long Breaths are taken, calm is resumed But eventually i’m back to the application process And the compounding rejection is almost comi...

As we approached the winter of 1999 And the potential unraveling predicted due to the Y2K bug Most of the programmers I worked with had survival kits & bunkers I lived on a lake and had a wood burning stove, so I wasn’t worried But the speculation on technological collapse and societal upheaval continued Right up until it didn’t. Similarly, as December 2012 approached Many of us were curious what...

The day my husband introduced himself to me The final day before GM’s annual 2 week shutdown When he substituted for a team member At a meeting I was convening I distinctly remember thinking “Isn’t that cute, this farm boy coming over to meet me… Why can’t Mr. Wonderful come introduce himself to me like this?” I was 31, he was 24 But he’s an old soul [I was told at 18 I was going to marry someone...

I know a lot of people I do not know anyone who does not have problems I know people who won’t talk about their problems And people who won’t shut up about them I know people who handle their problems gracefully And people who pretend they don’t exist I know people who parlay problems into opportunities But new problems still arise Indeed, there’s a carousel of problems that arise Like the wheel o...

A coach, a headhunter, and a CEO enter a zoom room… Sounds like the start of a joke, right? I mean, they didn’t intend it to be But by the time they were done, i saw that was exactly what it was They were part of a group of high net worth individuals Aiming to solve the problems on earth They believe only entrepreneurship can effectively address I can get their marginalization of government And fo...

On the first day of first grade, I broke into tears.“Why are you crying?” the teacher asked.“I forgot my psychology book!” I sobbed. The first day of first grade. I had a sister in high school. I must have overheard her. What a sign of things to come. I lived under that kind of self-imposed pressure for a long time—chasing impossible expectations,trying to achieve a world instead of participating...

My husband has a story about an unassuming demigod on earth He is humble and kind, unaware of his origins And wherever he goes, people bow to him Mind you, no one knows they are bowing to him Someone sneezes Or picks up a penny One ties his shoes Another pets their dog, who is also at an incline Even the flowers are in on the act With the breeze gently tipping their petals And so it goes And no on...

Any watercolor artist will tell you: Every watercolor painting has an ugly phase You’ll be certain the effort is a bust Keep going. It’s the nature of the medium Working from light to dark Big shapes to small shapes It’s the layers that give the final result texture Persevere. The only way out is through - The details come at the end and bring it all together. I did not know this. I learned it fro...

Possibly the most beneficial thing I ever did as a parent Was to teach my kids “Happy puppy/Sad puppy” as preschoolers Here’s how that went: Imagine we go to the park, and right when we get there You see the cutest puppy you’ve ever seen And she sees you, and her tail starts wagging, and she runs over to you And you know: this is your puppy What does that feel like? Where do you feel that in your...

In one of her books, Martha Beck says, “There are two kinds of people: The ones who need to stop talking and start doing, and The ones who need to stop doing and start talking” As usual, I am charmed by Oprah’s favorite life coach And it rings true I imagine I’m one of the former, given how much I talk But I know a whole lot of workaholics who are the latter And when I watch them moving at 100 mph...

Today is the calendaric yin yang Day and night are of equal length The year was born at the winter solstice It gained its footing at the vernal equinox Before peaking at the summer solstice Since then, the energy of nature In the northern hemisphere, at least Has been Producing, Producing, Producing It’s bounty is all around us Traditionally, all over the world It’s the season for rituals of thank...