The Radical Evolutionary Moment....
/One of my favorite ideas to return to in moments of challenge is this: we cannot solve a problem using the same mindset from which the problem arose.
And yet, how often do we wrestle and ruminate, trying to hack our way through the prickly, tangled subterfuge of a moment’s challenge in desperate pursuit of insight, illumination, or freedom? Bless our sweet hearts and good intentions—but when we are mired inside the challenge itself, we most often lack the perspective needed to touch into true solution space.
This is why, as counterintuitive as it may feel, there is real wisdom in pausing—allowing our nervous systems to return to a state of balance, regulation, ease, and safety. With this pause and reset, we create space. We widen the vantage point from which insight can arise. We become open again.
My yoga teacher used to ask, teasingly, How much time do you want to spend examining your navel wax? A reminder of how easily we can circle the same point of pain, mistaking repetition for depth or analysis for healing. There is a way we can get lost in the examination itself.
In the Sweet Medicine Sundance path, human beings are understood as “magnetic, thought-attracting fields.” Thoughts are drawn to us based on the vibration we are generating. When we repeatedly revisit a problem from within the same emotional and physiological state, we remain confined to the same thought-landscape. No new thoughts can enter.
We need a state shift, but how do we do this? How do we drop the bone in actuality and allow ourselves to recenter, when it feels so deeply counterintuitive to let go?
I call this the radical evolutionary moment. Will we continue to circle familiar territory, or will we risk releasing what is known and venture into the unknown?
My brother recently reminded me of the wisdom found in the Twelve Steps, where the shift comes the moment we admit helplessness and turn toward something greater than ourselves. A moment of humility and surrender: I cannot see beyond this right now. Please help me. Please remove this defect.
This is not giving up—far from it—but rather a recognition of the limits of our efforts alone. When we loosen our grip and open to something greater than ourselves, a miracle sometimes occurs. A sweet release that creates space for new information to arrive, for fresh insight, possibility, and awareness.
This morning I came upon a young raccoon trapped in a dumpster. I could hear and feel her circling in agitation and despair. I dragged a large branch over and placed it inside the dumpster, allowing her to discover her sweet release. Whether or not she experienced her own radical evolutionary moment, the truth is that without intervention by forces greater than herself, she would not have been able to get out.
What might it be like to orient more quickly toward the great unknown—to wisdom, love, and the pleasure of being an open vessel in moments of challenge?
Dropping the bone, as tasty and delicious as it may be, might just be the most efficient—and wisest—way back into the fabric of connection and the deeper nourishment available here.
