Fearlessly Feral Living!
Fearlessly Feral Living!
Dealing with Mess without Becoming the Mess
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This episode is a bit different: more off the cuff and spontaneous then most of my other episodes. It's about successfully dealing with the mess that is happening around us and remaining at peace and being effecive. I hope you enjoy it.
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Well, hello everybody. I hope you're doing as well as can be expected in this time of what I'm calling and what a lot of other people are calling a crisis in our democracy in this country. So for this episode, I'm doing something a little bit different. I've just basically logged on with very few little notes, no script, no outline, and I'm just going to jump on in here. So, and I don't even have my normal um welcome up here for me to recite from, but I will say that welcome, welcome, welcome to Fearlessly Feral Living. And this is Reverend Karen, and I am broadcasting to you from the Woogie Ranch out here in the back 40 of northwestern Nevada, where I'm a half an hour away from virtually everything. The nearest gas station, the nearest grocery store, you name it, it takes a half an hour to get there. So the purpose of the Fearlessly Feral podcast is to facilitate successful living. No, I don't believe we can live totally without fear, but I believe we can live successfully in spite of fear. And actually, this is what I want to touch on here because I've been I've had a lot of fear these last few weeks, a lot of fear. And um I don't know how fear affects you, but fear affects me in a few different ways. And this is why I advocate, like I rant and rave about this spiritual practice. If you've listened to any of my podcasts, you've heard me rant and rave, suggest it, demand it. Okay, please do this spiritual practice, personal self-awareness. Because fear is unavoidable, it really is. We're all gonna feel it. We're human beings. Yes, we are spiritual beings, but we're having a human human experience, and so we are gonna experience fear, but the the tools that I teach here will allow us to be in a place of equanimity with that, and so the first step to that is personal self-awareness. Because I've been doing a personal self-awareness practice for so many years, I know how fear affects me, and it affects me in one of two different ways flight or fight. And my default setting is flight, and how flight looks for me is I shut down completely, I don't feel any emotions, I don't, I can't feel anything, and sometimes I don't even know that I'm shut down. These days it's a lot better than it used to be because I went years, years in shutdown mode. Never knew until I until I got into recovery, and then I started feeling like, ooh, okay, this is different. So know yourself, know what happens when you go into fear. Are you ready to fight? Are you ready to put up your dukes and fight and cause an argument with someone? Or are you just gonna go away and hide under the covers in some way? So for me, what flight looks like is I shut down and then I go to work. And I've learned to be very effective when I'm in shutdown mode, and like I said, it's better than it was, and and I don't do it as often as I used to. But the other thing that happens when I get into fear is I will fall back on another default, which is depression, like clinical depression. And many, many, many years ago, because I didn't, I wanted to explore alternative ways to deal with this depression that had come up in my life. I found a, I believe he's a psychiatrist, but don't quote me on that. I can't remember what his what his official doctorate was in, but he did his thesis on treating depression with amino acids and meditation. And so I adopted that and I started taking amino acids and started meditating in the way that he recommended for me. And he actually prescribed these amino acids in the dosages and um amounts and the frequency. And um I haven't been depressed since that day, except when I forget to take the amino acids, which I do sometimes. So life, as we know it, starts to fall apart. There's a mess happening, there's a disaster happening in the country, and I go into fear and I shut down. And then I go into more fear and I get angry, and then I go into more fear and I get sad, and I go into more fear and I'm full of despair, and I'm and I'm pretty soon I'm like, oh, I'm so depressed, and I'm still not quite aware of this because I'm in shutdown mode. Personal self-awareness practice, be damned. I was not doing my spiritual practices, I was not doing anything, I was so involved and obsessed with this thing. Come to find out, that's part of their plan is to put us in that in that place. So I finally snapped out of it one day and I went, wait a minute, Karen, what are you doing here? What are you doing? And so out come the amino acids. I started taking them. I also made a few other changes um in my daily routine. I went back to some things. So this is what I want to share with you. Now remember, the strategy of the current regime is to throw so much disaster and stuff at us that we we don't even, we literally do not know which way to turn. So it is important for us to remain grounded during this time. It's important for us to take advantage of any support system that we have. And if you don't have a support system, get one. Get a mentor. If you're in a program, a recovery program, get a sponsor. If you've got a sponsor, use that sponsor. Um get a support group. I have a huge support group that consists of, oh my god, I guess I need more than others. I've got three prayer partners and a sponsor and a mentor and friends that I can all talk to about this. So I have a lot of support. Life is really wonderful with all that support. So I have some good, solid, practical recommendations. Now, when I talk about spiritual practices, I'm talking about things like not just spiritual awareness, uh self-personal self-awareness, but I'm also talking about affirmative prayer or treatment. I'm also talking about meditation, I'm also talking about journaling, and I'm also talking about reading daily literature that makes you feel better. I don't care what it is. I have a series of daily meditation books that I read. In fact, I can I can read you some titles here. Let me look them up here. I can read you some titles. So today I read The Book of Awakening by Mark Nepo. I read And So It Is, a Book of Uncommon Prayer by Angelica Taggart. I read A Year Without Fear by Tamma Keeves. And I read 365 Days of Richard Living by Ernest Holmes. Now, what happens when you read that many meditation books in the morning is some really kind of interesting and fun stuff. For example, this morning, almost without exception, every single one of those books discussed being true to yourself in some way, shape, or form. And I I thought that was awesome. And it it allowed me to rest after finishing my reading and sit there and ask myself, was I being true to myself? Was I being true to myself? And um, you know, yesterday I had an experience where I wasn't so much. I shut myself down, and that woke me up in the middle of the night, and I was thinking to myself, Karen, why didn't you say something? I didn't say anything. Just a little thing, not a big deal, but I didn't say anything. And so I made a promise to myself not to do that again. So that's spiritual practices, meditation, affirmative prayer. If you're a member of a religion that has other kinds of prayer, fine, go for it. Whatever, whatever works for you. Read spiritual literature, whatever makes you feel better. Um, that's what I do every single day. Now, here's a couple other things, real practical things. For God's sake, don't watch television news. I actually know people who keep their TV on, tuned to the news all day long. Now, if you're one of those people, is it any wonder that you're going crazy? Really? There's a difference between being aware and binging on this stuff. Yes, we have a responsibility to be aware, but don't binge on it. Turn the TV off. Or do what I do. If I do, you know, if I I've had a long-standing rule for years, I never turned my TV on during the day. I it was one of the tools I used to treat to deal with my depression. I forced myself because I knew if I turned the TV on and started watching a movie or whatever it was, that I would sink even deeper. So I made a promise to myself I'd never turn my TV on during the day, and I don't. The exception to that is when I turn it to the Pandora Music Channel and I listen to music, and I listen to all different kinds of music. You know, there's there's there's new new age music that is kind of smooth and flowy and relaxing, and there's and then there's me with rhythm and blues that gets me dancing and going, and I drive the critters crazy because I dance and sing with them, and they're like, what's she doing? So that's the only time I turn the TV on. So turn your TV off during the day if it's on, and never ever ever watch TV news. Because here's the deal about TV news. So TV news is meant to be a form of entertainment, it's meant to keep you engaged, it's meant to throw a whole bunch of little blips of things at you in a very short period of time so that they can keep you there. Now, there's a couple of news stations that are so biased that they are not giving us the whole picture. And if you listen to one of those, stop. Fox News is one of them. In fact, it's propaganda at this point. Total, complete propaganda. Don't don't even go there. Um CNN is kind of propagandish in the other direction, although it's getting a little bit better. But I don't watch TV news at all. And you might want to try this. I get all of my news from online print news sources, and my favorite two at the moment are NPR News and Associated Press. So that's that's my tidbit for watching the news. And then, or for getting your news, for staying in balance with your news, for not binging on it. Don't watch it, read it, read it, and read it at the time you choose, not when it's blasting stuff at you. Read it when you choose it. Spend less time on social media and don't do scroll. These days I'm getting on Facebook once, maybe twice during the day. I get on once in the morning, honestly, to do the happy birthday greetings. Everybody is celebrating birthday that day. I love doing that. I check my memories feed because there's stuff in there that reminds me of where I've come from and where I'm going. And you know, it's just a valuable practice for me. If I've got some posts on there, I check the responses to my posts, and I might make one quick pass-through on my feed just to see what's there. So that's and then I leave and then I'm out of there. I've been spending a lot more time on Substack these days, and much of what I'm giving you in this podcast episode is coming from a Substack article that I wrote. So if you're on Substack, I hope you will come find me and subscribe. And um the other part of this is to just pay attention to your consciousness. I just, you know. The other day I did something I haven't done in a really long time. My Christmas clack cactus was blooming, and it was beautiful, and I noticed it blooming, but I wasn't really appreciative of it. I wasn't in mindfulness with the beauty of it. And the other day I um walked by it and the light was coming through. It was late afternoon, and hit it, the sun was hitting it in a beautiful way, and I I finally noticed it for real. And I stopped and I took a cell phone photo of one of the blossoms that was particularly beautiful. Now I haven't done that in I don't know how long. That kind of stuff brings me joy. I love stop, I call it stopping to smell the roses. I love stopping and noticing, and even if it's just with my cell phone, taking a picture of something beautiful that has drawn me to it by its sheer beauty. And so this is another daily thing I can recommend to you. Stop and smell the roses. And if you have to seek out one good, beautiful thing every single day, I don't care what it is, just seek it out. And if it does move you to take a cell phone picture of it, share it. Post it. There's something good I saw today. And if you find my posts, I've got it on both Substack and Facebook about the post I put I put on there with the flower. Share it there because I'd love to see it. Now there's a couple other little things, little tidbits here and there that I've picked up with along the way with dealing with this mess we find ourselves in. So I attended my very first protest march the other day. I had a ball. It was beautiful. Was I wary and frightened approaching it? Yeah, you betcha, because where I live, it can get rather dicey here with the conservatism. So I did a drive-by before I parked my car and joined. And I as I drove by, I saw smiling, happy people, people that were empowered to be there. They were doing something. And I went, oh my goodness, yes, this is the place I want to be. So I went and parked the car and came and joined them. Ended up staying there for about two hours. It was packed. It was packed. It was the biggest protest march in Carson City, Nevada, because it was at the Capitol building that um friends of mine who've been there for years and attend a lot of protest marches, the biggest one they'd ever seen there. It was certainly the biggest one I've ever seen there. So it was huge. Now, I'm told that these protest marches are going to happen every month on the fifth of the month at the Capitol buildings across the country. So wherever you live, if you can get to your state capitol on the fifth of the month at noon, go and attend the protest. But there's other things we can do. Now, here's the deal about these spiritual practices. You know, in New Thought, in this in this teaching called Science of Mind, we have historically advocated going within and doing our inner work to change our life. You know, change your thinking, change your life. That's our model. Well, we kind of ignored for many, many years the yes and part of that. We stopped right there. But there's a yes and to that piece. If you are spiritually fit, you are much more effective at going out into the world and effecting change. And there's so many different ways to do that. So make sure you do your spiritual practices, make sure you don't get all caught up in binge watching TV news, stay aware, but stay in balance with it. And then do what is yours to do to combat this mess, whether it's attend a protest or call your congresspeople or your senators, or whether it's uh donate some money to the causes you care about, or whether it's being of service to people who are less fortunate than you, there's so many different ways to go out there and affect change in the world. So do some of that. The other thing you can do is stop buying so much stuff, learn to be happy with what you have. And I I've been sort of doing this without even thinking about it lately. Um, and here's another thing I've been doing. There's a list of businesses who have kept their diversity, equity, and inclusion policies in spite of being asked to get rid of them by the current regime. I am patronizing those businesses, and whenever I can, I am not patronizing the businesses who canceled their DEI policies. So Amazon is one of them who canceled their DEI policy, and so I have not been doing as much shopping on Amazon as I used to. So you can do that too. There's all sorts of ways that we can participate here, all sorts of ways. Um another ad advantage of staying spiritually fit and doing those spiritual practices in the morning is that when you do go out into the world, people notice it. People notice it. So I've been feeling pretty good these last few days, better than I have in months after spending a good week taking my amino acids and doing my spiritual practices religiously every single morning and in an evening too. I mean, I'm I'm talking about binging. I'm binging on spiritual practices over here. Sometimes it's necessary. I'm binging on spiritual practices. Well, how that affects our consciousness, which is all of who and what we are, our thoughts, our words, our deeds, our state of mind, uh physically it affects us. How that comes out in is a sort of openness and friendliness that people notice. So I'm out and about yesterday, and I pull into the jack in the box to get a soda. And the guy in the pull-up in the drive-up window was so friendly and talkative, and he just he shared with me how life was so good, and he had a big smile on his face, and I thought, I wonder if that guy's flirting with me, because I don't know how to flirt, I just don't know how to do that. Um, but that kind of stuff doesn't happen to me. I go into the grocery store, and people are smiling at me, and that hasn't happened in a long time either. Where else did I go yesterday? I went um, I went a couple places. The experience was the same, the same everywhere I went. It was like because I had done my spiritual practices, it felt like maybe I was this beacon of light walking into these places and shining that light on people and helping them to feel better as well. So when you're spiritually fit, you can go out into the world and spread all of that good, yummy stuff around into the world. It's really a wonderful way to live. So that's what I have for you today in a nutshell. I have no idea how long I've talked. Um like I said, I just wanted to get on here and share with you what was going on with me, and in the hopes that it helps and it facilitates within you a willingness to make some changes so that you feel better, so that you're better able to deal with this mess that's happening right now in our country. And um in closing, I just want to say I am so happy and honored and grateful that you are listening, and I am knowing Fearlessly Feral Living for me and for you, and all the usual donation stuff is there. Plus, you can now subscribe to me on Substack, and I'm publishing articles there fairly regularly. And um I look forward to hearing from you, to seeing your posts on Facebook about the good things that you have discovered because you sought them out. I look forward to hearing from you regarding, you know, what kind of changes did you make in your spiritual practices and how did that affect your consciousness? I look forward to hearing from you about what your experience was when you stopped watching the TV news. So let me know what's going on with you in your world. And until then, yes, indeed, I am knowing fearlessly feral for me and for you. Thank you very much.