Heat Wave

It is ironic how I leave the Arizona summers to get out of the intense heat and this year, in the Northwest, there are record breaking all time highs.  So in this past week I had to brave 113 degree temperatures that came right after I sprained my foot.  I had double the reason to stay in the camper with the air on and my foot elevated

I found myself riding my bike early in the morning and late at night just to prevent myself from going stir crazy.  Even with the foot issues, I’ve been able to ride, which is great. The loop I have been taking along the back country roads is exactly eleven miles and takes me approximately an hour to complete.  It is a blissful hour with fields, meadows, pine forests, streams and ponds along the way.  The smells are delightful.  I just take it all in, all the while, letting it all go.

The interesting part of this chapter of my journey is how life just sort of came to a halt.  Everything became focuses inward.  With the last years of the Covid Craze, we’ve had a lot of inside retreating going on.  But this time, I was in such a small space that there wasn’t much activity to be had, unless I was writing or working.  So there was ample time for reflecting and allowing the demons to emerge from the closet.

I suppose the demons I talk of are really the things we distract ourselves from on a daily basis through our busy-ness, our projects, our addictions and all that keeps us looking outward, rather than inward.  Sometimes there are things we don’t want to look at, or see.  As a therapist who helps people to examine deeply, their inner landscapes, I have made it a practice to examine mine on a regular basis.

Dr. Gabor Mate, a Hungarian-Canadian physician and expert in addictions, tells us that some 95 percent of our population are addicted.  We are a society of addicts.  But our addictions aren’t what we might think they are.  It isn’t just about drugs and alcohol, gambling and sex.  It is anything that distracts us from our inner world, which can be work, food, television, obsessions, relationships, projects and just about anything else.  Not only do our addictions distract us from our inner worlds, but they distract us from our connection with self, with God (as we know him/her) and with each other.  Mate tells us that lack of true human connection drives most of our addictions.  Although we are more connected than ever with the Internet, we are also more isolated than ever, because our lives have gone Online.

There was a point where I thought all this empty space I had been given was a sign that it was time to write my next book, but then I realized this was just another preoccupation.  It wasn’t yet time for that endeavor.  It was time to be in the stillness and know myself on deeper and deeper levels, face the loneliness, the isolation and the disconnection within myself.

Things are cooling down a bit here in Eastern Washington.  Next week I will be heading over the North Cascades Pass, now a National Park, to Western Washington, the land of my birth.  It is much cooler over there and so I will emerge from the camper and be out in the world much more.  I look forward to it, but for now, I will enjoy the sabbatical and hopefully emerge having slayed the dragons of the past and embracing a more authentic and renewed SELF.