Written by Gail Peekeekoot RN, DMin, a living example a woman who cultivates community~

Nothing I say will be new to you… and it comes after years of consideration, longing, and lots of reading. The book that pulled it together most recently for me is by a writer called Charles Eisenstein.  It’s called “The More Beautiful World Our Hearts Know is Possible”. Just hearing that title gives me relief.

I want to start by inviting you to imagine the faces of the people in your life… We all belong.

Some of us trust this or believe it more than others. And yet, here we all are.

We each found our way to this journey because we knew there just had to be a better way for us to live and work in a world in which we can express our most authentic being.

Truth be told… just being more comfortable in our skin and happier is a good starting place. I’ll take it.

Before we get to talking more about community, I want to touch into story. “Finally!” you might think.

It’s strange and sometimes uncomfortable to be in this Roots to Thrive community where we really don’t know much about each other!  And yes…our stories brought each of us to this place, but it’s not the details of those stories that matter here.

What matters is how we come back into relationship with our body and our Inner Being when jumped from behind by our painful stories or the chaos of the world.

Since we are going to finally talk about story on our way to talking about community, I’m going to tell you just the beginning words of three possible Creation stories.

As you hear each of them…think about where the story would go from there and how that would shape the lives of the people who hear them.

Close your eyes after you read each one.

Here’s the first one. The fires of Creation are burning.  Out of the fire steps First Man….

Here’s another. The fires of Creation are burning.  Out of the fire steps First Woman…

Here’s another. The fires of Creation are burning.  Out of the fire steps First Wolf…

All of our stories are rooted in the rich soil of the Creation Story into which we each were born.  And, until we learn differently, we think ours is the only Story that’s true for everyone.

How we live our personal stories is very much shaped by the story we inherited and were taught and absorbed in every act and word and the very energy field that surrounds us and moves through us… containing the history of our ancestors and so much more…until we see other possibilities for living our lives.

And then things start to change for us and our communities and our world.

Before there were sky scrapers and oil tankers and traffic jams…way before…we all lived in small communities in balanced relationship with the Cosmos, the Earth, ourselves, each other, our culture, our history, the Sacred and on and on. This is not a myth.  It is our heritage.

It wasn’t always easy.  People struggled and went to war for resources. We also coped with greed and cruelty and all the things that take people out of relationship.

The point is, we needed each other and the quirks and work and gifts and creativity of every person in our community. With intention, we lived in interconnectedness with All.

When Indigenous people say “All my Relations”, I hear these words as a graceful reminder of the intention to respect and sustain interconnectedness…and deep gratitude for the gift and blessing of interconnectedness.

At the human level it doesn’t happen by itself it happens by intention. At the cosmic level it comes as a gift of infinite and unfathomable, creative, unfolding design. Both.

Living in the story of interconnectedness, we knew ourselves to be part of a benevolent Universe in which we were loved and seen, and our needs would be met.

Human relationships tended to be equal not hierarchical. Power came from within and was shared for the benefit of all. People were held as worthy simply because they were alive. 

Individuals had direct personal relationship and experience of the Sacred through their Inner Being.

At some point, a new story was superimposed forcefully over the story of interconnection.  This story is one of separation.

You will recognize it. In this story, we are seen as being alone in a hostile Universe in which we have to fight to have our needs met. We must earn our worthiness and even our love.

This is how we become Human Doings. If we fail or step out of line, if we age, or get ill we can lose that hard won worth.

Power is held by those at the top of a hierarchy of wealth and influence and education who wield power over the rest of the population and the world’s resources.

Depending where you landed at birth on the hierarchy, you must work even harder to be deemed worthy and be granted resources for survival.

Perhaps the most painful part of the story of separation is that we are taught that we can only access the Sacred through one of God’s representatives on Earth who is – no surprise – at or near the top of the hierarchy.

Charles Eisenstein proposes that the increasing number of people who are experiencing anxiety and depression today is because we know in the depths of our being that we are between stories.  The one we grew up in, the story of hierarchy and separation is unsustainable and is falling apart and quickly coming down, taking the Earth with it. The story of separation contains our jobs and pensions and mortgages and our sense of who we have been in the world. 

The ancient story of interconnectedness is calling to us.  We know there is a better way of relating to ourselves, each other, and the Earth but we aren’t sure how to get there.

We may have a foot in both stories or jump back and forth.  We may not be sure about anything anymore.

Against high odds, many Indigenous peoples have served over the millennia as firekeepers of this way of interconnectedness and there have been many non-Indigenous people who have stepped away from the story of separation and created a path to the ancient story that is not yet.

So, we find ourselves in liminal space between stories as a culture and as individuals. And, because it has been painful to be in our changing world, we came together in Roots to Thrive where our snow globe has been shaken even more.

We long for community – real community where we see and are seen, where we hear and are heard. When we aren’t sure our wish for this is even possible, it is so hard to trust and stay in community and so hard to over-ride the patterns that seemed to keep us safe before.

We all want and deserve to be in healthy and balanced relationships with ourselves and each other and sometimes we just get scared. 

I was once told that there are two ways people handle fear: by being skunks or by being turtles.  When skunks get scared, they make a big stink and when the air clears…they wonder where everyone else went.  When turtles get scared, they tuck their heads in and when things settle down and they stick their heads out…they wonder where everyone else went. 

It’s good to know that going to centre is a viable third option when fear comes up.

In the past, we could have found ourselves alone having “turtled up” or after making a big stink.

Now, even if no one is there with us, we are held in a particular energy field that is growing as each person brings their unique beingness and humanness into Roots to Thrive.

We all sense the growing strength and beauty of this field as we heal together. This will continue with each cohort who join us. How does this happen?

In the story of separation, we all begin and end where our physical bodies begin and end.  In the story of interconnectedness, there is no beginning or end to any of us or anything – we are all energy beings vibrating at different frequencies in different overlapping and nested energy fields.

These fields carry our histories and stories and hopes and dreams. They carry and communicate our way of being in the world.

We have the fields of our ancestors, our families, our professions, our interests and on and on. I am shaped and am shaped by the fields of woman, mother, grandmother, wife, sister, aunt, nurse, midwife, singer, celebrant, minister, lover of trees and moons and stars, and psychedelics and on and on and on.

And now we can add being part of the energy field of the Roots to Thrive community. The healing and growth that happens in this field ripples out to the rest of our lives and the world.

In the story of separation, we are told that we need to go it alone. In the story of interconnectedness, there is no “alone”.  We are walking each other home to authenticity and the sweet rewards of living inspired and inspiring lives.

This is our intention and our joy.  We grow in community no matter how tricky it can be – maybe especially because of how tricky it can be.

The point is, we need each other and the quirks and work and gifts and creativity of every person in our community. As we grow and heal, the World grows and heals ~

Written by Dr. Crosbie Watler

What is our highest purpose? Is it our work? Our family? Or some other role, relationship, achievement in this waking dream of “my life”?

Muscling through our lives, our choices are often programmed and unconscious. We choose on the basis fear, insecurity, greed. We reflect on “What do I want?” when what we want might not be what we need.

Let’s begin our journey this evening by reflecting on the following questions:

Who am I?
What do I want—no, what do l need?
What is my purpose?

These are the so-called “soul questions.” Whether we are aware of them or not, our answer to these questions will determine whether we stumble through life in a state of fear and reactivity, or with clear purpose and calm intention.

Almost invariably, these questions provoke discomfort. We struggle with these questions, even when they are not in our awareness. They create angst, despair. We busy ourselves as a distraction, seeking just one more checkmark in doing mode to “make us happy.”
This new job will make me happy. This new partner will make me happy. Losing 10 pounds will make me happy. This move will make me happy— the geographic cure. How’s this working for you? For me? We’ve boiled the ocean in doing mode, yet here we are, with a pandemic of anxiety, depression and existential despair.

We have simply forgotten who we are and looking in the wrong place to recover it. We are human BEings, not human DOings. If there is any satisfaction in doing mode, enjoy it. It won’t last for long. The endless quest for something out there to “make” me happy. Trying to fill our bucket, but it’s never enough. There’s a hole in the bucket…

The journey is not in seeking new landscapes, but in seeing with new eyes.

What exactly do we need to see with new eyes? Ourselves. Self awareness. Everything that’s righteous flows from there. This is the foundation of the whole enterprise, without which we will never awaken to our highest purpose. We are simply blowing in the wind, at the whim of ego, conditioned mind.

We need to see ourselves—experience ourselves—as we did on the day of our birth. Awareness without boundaries. Free and clear space. The stillness of no mind. Simply “I am.” No condition. Before we drank the Kool-Aid and started telling ourselves stories about who we are:

I am a failure.
I am unlovable.
I am—or will be—alone. I am lost.
Sound familiar?

The shift begins by looking beyond the veil of form. The external “reality” that we construct at the level of the conditioned mind and the illusion of our senses. At this level of consciousness—waking consciousness—we have the subject-object split. Here I am with finite boundaries and there you are. Fertile ground for me versus you, or us versus them. The territory of Donald J Trump.

This is the waking dream and it is a primary cause of suffering. The ancient sages called it Maya—the illusion of the senses. At this level of consciousness, our senses lie to us. We see just 4% of the visible universe. We see finite boundaries—disconnection—when in fact, there is a continuous field of energy and matter where we merge with everything around us. This is the healing field where the magic happens. Connection. Within and without. Ahum Brahmasmi…I am the Universe.

Ultimate truth—there are two of you—of me—in the game of life. The doing and the being. On the day of your birth, you were totally immersed in being. The silent witness. They say we “grow up”. At the level of form we grow, we develop a cortex. Intelligence perhaps, but not much wisdom.

We confuse achievement with worth—net worth. By the time we are out of diapers, we have already steeped in doing mode. We hear “hurry up” from a parent. “Put your thinking cap on” from a teacher. Well intentioned, but unconscious.

Who we really are is hidden behind the veil of sensations, images, feelings and thoughts. The turning of the conditioned mind. The monkey mind. Like clouds blocking the sun. We succumb to the collective delusion: “I think, therefore, I am.” But, we were born into the sun. Clear, blue sky is our birthright. It was all we knew. Before we lost our way.

We might not know who we are, but we know it when we see it. We see it—feel it—when we look into a baby’s eyes. Or when a beloved pet walks into room. We love them, because we see in them the essence of who we are. Babies and small furry animals don’t say a thing, yet we feel their gravitational pull. Their healing field. Like medicine. Washing over us. Simply holding…space.

We often worry what’s the right thing to say. In truth, our

words alone carry little weight—less than 10% of human communication is the content of speech—it is where we show up from when we speak them. Or where we listen from. Are we listening deeply?

How do we hang out there more often—holding space for others? For ourselves? Our parents might not have done it for us. That ship has sailed. They did the best with the tools they had—their own awareness—or lack thereof. Forgive them—they know not what they do—they were/or are unconscious.

Time to do it for yourself. This is too important to outsource…looking for someone or something to “make” you happy. Make you whole. The time is now. Time to drop the stories. In doing mode you never were and never will be perfect. Get over it. At the level of being, you are already perfect.

Anchor in that awareness, with an intention to do better. But the outcomes, the roles does not define you. They will come and go, like the weather. You are not the weather. You are the witness of the weather.

Whether in the medicine, or in this waking dream, shift your attention, with intention to inner space. The pause between the in breath and the out breath. Light switch….down. Are you there now? In the healing field of spacious awareness. Catch yourself when you lose it— Why am I thinking? Is it serving any purpose, or simply filling up, space?

“It’s time. You can feel it knocking. It’s time to sit in front of the mirror where you can’t lie to yourself anymore about who you are…” Duncan Grady.

Mirroring. I see you. Now see yourself. No one else might have done it for you. Maybe they did and you lost it. The stillness of being. It is all that is truly yours—everything else is on loan to you. This role, that relationship, my body. Enjoy it, but don’t identify with it. Whether you succeed or fail at any enterprise, you are not elevated…or diminished.
This is the domain of “I don’t mind what happens.” Non attachment. Whatever the challenge, anchor in non- judgement. Spacious awareness. We can churn at the level of the mind and create a problem out of thin air, or we can do inward and access the wisdom of our being selves. The wisdom of the gut brain…the silent brain, where we feel into our bodies and make effortless, wise choices.

Coming to know, coming to trust our authentic selves. Below the neck and in the felt sense.



The challenges will come—life is not meant to be easy.

Without the challenges there is no evolution. It is not the challenge of the day that makes a “good” day, or a “bad” day. It is where we show up from when the weather gets stormy.

This will determine whether we are in flow, or in a place of judgement and resistance. In flow, we are connected with the silent witness and with everything around us. We are in the healing field of space and formlessness. A space where powerful, unseen allies will conspire to blow wind in our sails. Not in the efforting, but in the letting go. Where there is wisdom beyond our wildest dreams. In the space between our thoughts.

So full circle:
Who am I?
What do I need?
What is my purpose?

Ask any guru worth his or her salt and the answer will be the same: meditate on it. The answer to each question is the same—thoughtless, spacious awareness. Your highest purpose is to anchor there…and when you lose it, come back.

When you feel the stress response, the aching heart, the fear, the insecurity… the story. You’ve lost it. Come back. Whatever the challenge, whatever the question. It might seem “complex.” The solution is not. Get out of your head

and into your breath. Forget trying to resist the turnings of the mind, simply step out of the ring and into the healing field. The stillness of being. Your inner divinity.

This is the domain of spontaneous right choice, spontaneous right action. Where you will feel into the correct path forward. You are in yoga. Yoga—ancient Sanskrit for union. Union of body, mind and spirit. What is our most important pose in yoga? Savasana. Corpse pose. In truth, no pose. Nowhere to go. Noting to do. Just be. Attachment to nothing and full of everything. No one else and nothing else is necessary. There are things I might want, but nothing I need. I am already whole. No condition.

The sole purpose of a human life is to advance as far as possible along the path of consciousness—Eckhart Tolle. The more challenging life becomes, the more we need to walk the path and anchor in who we really are. Challenges then become rocket fuel for the evolution of consciousness.

Time to wake up. You are here not by chance. I see you. Your ancestors see you. They muse collectively—we got a live one. A rare one. A human being, self-aware and conscious, while in embodied form. They will blow wind in your sails—calling in all their benevolent allies.

And all you need to do, is get out of the way.

THIS is “signal” music. The awareness of our signal through the hallways of time. In the cracks between thought. Listen to these with light switch down…

Written by Dr. Crosbie Watler

The question is, “which self are we coming to know?”  The DOing or the BEing?  Awareness of this duality of self is the most important awareness.  Bar none.

The BEing self is our essential quality.  It was there at our birth:  The Silent Witness.  Presence…awareness consciousness…simply, “I AM.”  No condition.  Before we lost connection with source and learned to tell a story about who we are.  Stories and judgements of ourselves, others and of the world around us.  And the stories are rarely good.

The DOing self is like shifting sand.  The roles, relationships, achievements, failures, appearance, possessions…and on and on.  The doing self is the weather of your life.

If everything is going perfectly at that level, enjoy it.  It won’t last for long.  Identifying with the DOing self is the primary source of suffering.  Like outsourcing our well BEing to the weather.

We were born steeped in awareness of BEing, before we lost ourselves to the monkey mind: “I think, therefore, I am.”Before we drank the Kool Aid and succumbed to the cult of disconnected materialism.

As we “grow up,” we begin to see ourselves as split off from others and from the world around us.  The illusion of separation.  Maya—the illusion of the senses.  Our culture reinforces this illusion of disconnection. Disconnect from source.  BEing.

It is always the perfect time to come back home to rediscover our essential nature.  BEing.  Grounding in witnessing awareness, without thought, judgment, or story.  It is our birthright and our highest calling.

THIS is the healing field of the the psychedelic medicines.  With the mind off line, we sit in front of the mirror, where we cannot lie to ourselves anymore about who we are.  Credit to Duncan Grady, a Blackfoot elder, for that pearl.

Outside of these medicine-assisted shifts in awareness, we can learn to step out of thought with intention—as in meditation. In the space between our thoughts, we experience the stillness of being.  Well being.  It reminds us who we are.

There is a crack, a crack in everything.  That’s how the light gets in—Leonard Cohen.  Our authentic self resides in the crack, the space between our thoughts.  That’s how the light gets in.

Whether we succeed or fail at any enterprise, the BEing self remains the dispassionate, silent witness.  The liberating transition to detachment:  I don’t mind what happens.  Non attachment.

When you are in that place and I’m in that place, we are one.  An  individual wave, aware of the connection with the ocean.

Be the change.

Written by Dr. Crosbie Watler. A true story by an inspired man.

The wee hours.  Wide awake with no distractions.  No escape in restful slumber.  Free and clear space.  I can feel the energy in my body.  It’s stuck and I’ve been carrying it all day, maybe longer.  I sense some of it is not mine—passed down.  My body wants to tell me something.  I can stuff it, numb it, or tell myself a story about it.  Been there, done that, time to shut up and listen. 

It started early this morning after doing an urgent video psychiatry consult.  Another story of a broken spirit, filled with fear and all stuffed in the body.  I felt that in my heart, like a weighted blanket.  All through the interview and with each breath, I held an awareness of space around my heart.  Allowing me to hear the story, to empathize, but not have it stick to me.   In my work, I strive to listen and respond from clear space.  The wisdom and intuition of the felt sense.  The signal comes through the ears, but the body must feel into the meaning and context.

This is the flow state of the interview…and everything else.  I wonder how many practice it, or are even aware of it?  We are in flow when we interact with the world around us from a place of self awareness.  Authentic self—the silent witness.  Shifting attention briefly to inner space, the pause between the in breath and the out breath.  Listen from there and speak from there. This brings the being to the doing, creating a healing field that is unseen, but felt.

Park the mind and use it only when necessary.  Thinking is highly overrated.  Intellect is there, but not much wisdom.  Wisdom and intuition reside in the gut brain.  The silent brain.  Ultimate truth—trust your gut, listen to your gut.  It will not speak to you, but you feel into the right choice, what to do and what to say.  You will learn to trust it.  It won’t lie to you and what flows from you will be righteous.  Sometimes it will surprise you.  You might sense that some of what you’re saying isn’t yours as it flows out effortlessly.  At those moments of peak experience, one becomes a channel.  Park the mind and allow it to flow through. 

All was smooth sailing until the patient transitioned to describing his frustration with our system of mental health “care.”   He detailed the medicalizing of his despair, with a series of treatments doomed to fail, as if by design.  I felt his creeping sense of desperation and helplessness.  That hit me in the gut.  I managed to keep a lid on things and completed the interview with a plan that gave him hope.  Then I signed off. 

That’s when I lost it.

What I lost was awareness of inner space.  The domain of the dispassionate witness.  I was no longer self aware, but in reactivity mode.  All the wisdom and intuition?  Summarily tossed under the bus.  The maestro has become a puppet.          

I don’t do freeze or flight.  I scorch earth.  I now know much of it is not mine.  I’ve lead a privileged life, mirrored and supported as a child.  Blessed with the love of a good woman, authentic relationships and a sense of purpose.  We think we know ourselves, but we are influenced by  unseen forces outside our usual states of awareness.  So much of what we carry is handed down to us.  The epigenetics of our ancestral experience.  Given our collective history, much of this is trauma.  In states of deep meditation—or otherwise altered states of consciousness—we feel our ancestors knocking.  Mine are part slave warrior and it explains everything.

I know in my bones that my ancestors were fierce.  They had to be, or perish.  Many did.  And here I am.  Last man standing.  They hand me the torch and ask, “What are you going to do with it?”  This uncomfortable gift of an easy life does not sit well with me.  I will make it hard.  I need the struggle.  Now I know why.  My ancestors have been pushing boulders uphill forever, in the face of impossible odds.  And here I am.  Last man standing.  Righteous struggle is in my DNA.  I seek it out in ways that leave many—me at times—gobsmacked.  In truth, I sense some of my ancestors might not have been so righteous, but I’m selective about whose torch I choose to carry.

All of this at 8:15 on a Saturday morning in the present day…at the mercy of unseen influences and swirling emotions.  On seeing the harm that comes from the medicalizing of psychiatry, the heaviness in my heart had given way to rage in my gut.  Yet another victim of the medical-pharmaceutical complex.  Patients have become commodities—their distress labelled as disease, or worse, disorder.  Failed medical treatments for wounds of the heart.  And it pisses me off.  Slave warrior gene is on.  Like right now. 

Can I please have something to vanquish?  A wild beast threatening my family, perhaps? Or enemy warriors sneaking into the village.  How about a serving of slave owner for dessert?  No such luck.  It’s 2021 and I’m living a life of privilege in the tranquility of Maple Bay, British Columbia.  I feel paralyzed by the heaviness in my heart and the rage in my belly—swirling, building, with no clear outlet.  That’s when it get’s messy.  Listening from space?  Yeah, right.

I should have done the work sooner.  It’s 3:30 on Sunday morning.  The karmic debt of procrastination.  There is no free lunch.  Do the work, or pay the price.  What the mind won’t acknowledge, the body knows.  You can stuff it for a while—maybe the righteous rage felt good.  It’s in my bloodline and it had purpose.  It was adaptive, but it no longer serves me.  It depletes me and everyone around me.  That awareness is enough.  There was no space for it earlier in the day, or maybe I did not want to make space. 

Making space is hard sometimes.  Keeping the monkey mind at bay is hard work.  I do it all day at my day job and sometimes I just want to let my guard down, to rest.  That’s when it sneaks up on me, the alpha predator.  The present day enemy is no person or beast, it’s the conditioned mind and its unconscious patterns of reactivity.  This stuff will consume you from the inside out, play you like a fiddle and dance on your grave.

So, here I sit in spacious awareness.  The wee hours when quiet contemplation is best.  It’s easier now—nothing to do, nowhere to go, just be. Presence, awareness, silence within and without.  Space within and without.  Where everything that was stuck in my body is washed away.  The radiant light of presence has cleared the skeletons out of the closet.  Presence slays dragons.  It is our super power.

Cultivate the healing field of presence, knowing you will lose it.  When you lose it, have compassion for yourself.  There are so many seen and unseen influences wanting to play you like a puppet.  In truth, presence can never be truly lost.  Presence is our birthright.  Sometimes we just get distracted.