September 2021

Nature Heals. Don’t forget to stop & listen & feel & remember.

Dear Friends,

I love riding my mountain bike on the trails near my house. These trails are surrounded by some of the most beautiful wilderness I’ve ever seen (thanks to visionary land stewards Dottie Fox, Joy Caudill, Connie Harvey.) As I whiz by on my bike, I marvel at the diverse range of flowers, trees and bushes bursting from the earth and I delight in the squeaks of squirrels and the songs of the birdies overhead. It is simply joy-full.

Riding my bike is one of my most favorite things to do. Since having twin girls in April, finding time to get out on my bike is a rare and wonderful event. Imagine my surprise and dismay then - as I was riding my bike last week in said beautiful, magical wilderness - and I caught my mind rummaging through old grievances instead of marveling at the flowers and the birdies. My mind was spinning faster than my bike tires! I caught myself formulating righteous (and extremely eloquent) lectures to give to the various people who had let me down, disappointed me, did not meet my “expectations” or annoyed me in some fashion. I was no longer in the wilderness, I was lost in thought.

I stopped.

I stopped my beautiful bike right then and there. I put my feet on the earth to encourage myself to “Be Here Now” as our friend Ram Dass liked to say. Ah ha! There are those birds and flowers; I started hearing and seeing them again immediately when I quieted my mind. How interesting, I thought, when I am in judgment, I am not in the moment and I can not hear or see.

“If you want to be free you have to let them be.”

I heard this little nugget of wisdom come down from the treetops or emerge from inside my heart or enter through a portal in my second chakra... I’m not sure where it came from, actually, but it landed. It landed and settled in as a knowing, a Truth. This knowing stopped me in my tracks and it brought me back to my Self (Big S = “Higher Self”, btw). I realized I can go through life being righteous and spending my precious energy letting people know they were wrong (according to me) or that they disappointed me for one reason or another, or... I can be free. When I am free I can commune with magical nature and friends and babies and I can smile and laugh and be joyful. I choose that as much as possible.

At that moment in the woods I remembered something important: It’s not mine. What people do and how they act is their business. How I react is my business. When I mind my own business and work on the areas that are triggered and upset inside of me, then I don’t need to go around judging other people because I have plenty of work to do on myself. When I work on myself and forgive myself and others I go into the quiet, calm place inside of myself to remember who I am. This “work” frees me up to go around loving people because I recognize we are all beautifully flawed and fucked up and opinionated and rude and upset. The question is, do we choose to stay there or not? Do we choose to stay in other people’s business, or not?

I’d rather be free. I’d rather spend my time working on the areas that cause me upset inside of myself, not trying to change other people or circumstances so I can maybe be happy if everything out there lines up to meet my expectations. I know this. And yet I forget I forget I forget.

When I stop hearing the birds sing and I stop seeing the flowers in front of me I know I must stop. Feel my feet on the earth. Check in with my heart, remember who I am and why I am here and let it go, let them go. I need to let go of the grievances. Let go of wanting it to be different or wanting people to act differently and blaming them for my upset if they choose not to change. This doesn’t mean I don’t express my feelings or share if someone hurt me. I do. I own my feelings and if someone wants to respond in a way that acknowledges my feelings and changes their behavior, great. If not, that's ok too. I know what’s mine and what’s theirs and I dont confuse the two. That’s freedom to me.

I wrote about Service Consciousness in my Aspen Times Column earlier this month. To me, being in this state is a state of bliss. It is a state of letting go. It is a state of presence and awareness and remembering. In this state of being, we see other people as ourselves, even the ugliest ones. And there is compassion. How often have I judged another for not showing up for me in one way or another only to learn of a terrible life circumstance they were dealing with and immediately asked myself, “How am I showing up for this person?” My judgement immediately turns to love and empathy and connection and remorse for spending time judging vs spending time loving. In the end, we all yearn to connect, to feel loved, to feel acknowledged, to feel heard. When I find myself pedaling through grievances in my mind I often see it as a call to sit and be with myself, the one who is calling out for attention and wants someone to do or be something different. When I am with “her”, the tender little one within, my mind quiets, the birds tend to sing a little louder, and my heart sings right along with them.

Love, Gina

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Love Letter from Gina : September 2021

Dear Friends,

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