Do This, Don’t Do That

Do This, Don’t Do That

by Michelle Katz

I am a full follower of the Dalai Lama’s advice on learning the rules to know how to break them properly.

This week has been a real hardship for me in regards to “the rules”.  I have begun to ask myself if some rules are just made for rule-making sake? Or because some person’s indiscretion or exploitation, one bad seed creating an unjust system for everyone else? Or some practice of authority that is unchecked? 

Often times it seems like rules block progression, is keeps us caught in a system that doesn’t work and doesn’t benefit the majority.  Hoops to jump through that are actually not in service to the greater whole, leave me baffled.  This week, working my day job, has revealed to me how rules can be overly absurd and actually lead to people not seeing a greater purpose or keeping people from being of service to those who they are meant to be of service to.  It was as if rules were made to keep people down and powerless.  Then it occurred to me, that is what our systems have been doing for a long time to those who are disenfranchised.  My anger grew with the awareness of how the microcosm of my experience mirrored the larger injustices of the world due to rules created and imposed upon us. The world is trying its best to change, to struggle its way out of this restrictive cocoon we have found ourselves in: activists hitting the streets or bending the rule in back rooms hoping to not be discovered, young people with fresh ideas (the ideals of our country’s founding) fighting to be involved in politics which is over occupied by the older generation not wanting change.  Change is the purpose of the younger generation, listening to those who are younger helps our world move forward exponentially.  People have known and lived “the rules” for too long, it is time to speak about how they just don’t make sense anymore!

I come from a lineage of holocaust survivors.  All my grandparents lived though that traumatic act of injustice and genocide, rules that didn’t make sense to disempower people. One of the major teachings for the generations that followed: question.  We were taught to question what doesn’t make sense, what subjugates people, question, before it is too late to say something. Question, because silence and blind obedience can often lead to great loss.

I wanted so wholeheartedly to believe that in a post-covid world; a world full of loss, a world that’s practices have been challenged, had us stifled in our homes, had us hyper conscious about our health and wellbeing for the better of two years – we would prioritize a world of health and possibilities.  I wanted to wholeheartedly believe that in a world with racial upheaval; a world that watched George Floyd take his last breath in front of our very eyes, by the people we should entrust our safety to, the people who should hold all its citizen’s wellbeing as the soul purpose of their work in the world –that  we would take a good look at our systems and spring into action about changing them.  I wanted to wholeheartedly believe that in a world that is witness to an unnecessary war based on one man’s desire for power, we would question what leadership really means and how the heart of people is much more powerful than their might.  But unfortunately, all I seem to see is more injustice, more big brothering, less freedoms, less emphasis on caring for human beings over the systems we live in, more requirements and restrictions, and expectations gone rampant.  Less listening to each other and less actual change.  I am disheartened by the rules that keep us stuck, and for those of us brave enough to step out and question or find a way to break them, I applaud you, I implore you, keep going! Even though you face the hardships of the repercussions, I know you are doing it for all of us, for the better collective. Question.

With such great aggravation, I take a walk.

I walk the land behind my house, up and down the hills, navigating to now avoid newly (just in the last year) built fences of newly bought plots of land, fenced in.  “No trespassing” signs that once were never part of the neighborhood are now peppered throughout.  Rules, boundaries we are forced to move with when the space was once open and shared among the community.  I can’t help but wonder, rather than what are they keeping out, what are they hiding?  I’ll admit, we put up a “no trespassing “sign at one point to stop the construction workers building new properties from coming into our area to defecate, leading our dogs to eat it and get sick, we put a sign to explain our request, next to our “no trespassing” sign. A month later, when we realized our request was clearly understood, we took the sign down.  The others have not, and new signs are posted regularly.  “Signs, Signs everywhere a Sign, marking up the scenery, breaking my mind, do this, don’t do that, can’t you read the sign.”  How did a broken world leave us pushing away humanity?

Passed the hills and boundaries of new fences there is an opening.  My favorite part of this daily walk.  The opening to a large field that the monsoons have left bright green and covered with yellow coreopsis, towering over the dogs, leaving pollen on our tickled hands.  It is hard to not smile when reaching this bright and beautiful open scene.  Even in the winter, it is my favorite part of the walk, covered with a blanket of untouched snow that glistens in the late afternoon sunlight.  And when there is neither flowers and bright green grasses nor angelic snow, there is still an expanse and feeling of openness, a view of mountains or hills in every direction, an place that ask us to take perspective, and take in what is real and true.  A place that thrives with life: from owls and crows overhead, the coyote chasing the mice scurrying across the earth, vibrant juniper, blue grama grasses, and coreopsis and asters.  Life lives in this wild place surrounded by the starkness of a sandy arroyo and rocky hills.  It is soft here, things are flourishing in every direction of growth, unbound by hard edges that stifle development.  Even when standing on those rocky hills overlooking this part of the land, I say to yourself, “that’s where it’s at, where the beauty is, where I want to be.”

I sit here a while. Taking in this landscape that speaks to me of what is so needed in today’s world.  The hard edges all around this place, they are not thriving.  But, these special few acers, somehow, it knew how to break the rules of the surrounding landscape, it knew to make something different happen.  I look to this place, again and again for inspiration, for how to break the rules and thrive.

Defining Cerros

Defining Cerros

 by Michelle Katz

Over the years, many people have asked me why I named Cerros Consulting, “Cerros”.  As a storyteller, I feel this is an important one to tell.

I began this company just shy of a decade ago at a very pivotal rite of passage for myself.  At the time, the name of this business was “Oaks Counsel” named after the Oak tree I would visit frequently in adolescence, when home was Cleveland, Ohio.  Martin Shaw said, “All a tree wants is our fidelity.” And in the naming of the business, my fidelity to this oak seemed important. I remembered how that tree always had my back and I would turn to it for counsel as I watched a swift river flow below, teaching me of life being every changing, tumultuous at times, and still life giving.  The Oak gave me counsel and also consistency and trust.  There were oak trees around where I lived when Oaks Counsel came to be, in a sweet small California town, so the name seemed appropriate and related to the landscape of the practice.  Though a part of me always knew that I would return to Santa Fe at some point and the name would not be so relevant, Oaks Counsel remained the name of the business from its infancy into its adolescent stage. 

I returned to Santa Fe in 2016; but it took years after my return, in the first few months of the global pandemic, for me to seriously begin to contemplate what would bring this organization into full maturity.  I asked myself what was needed to reflect this notable time.  A rebranding/renaming was being called into actuality.  A connection to its new home and the natural landscape that surrounds this work. A step into adulthood and a clarity of purpose and gift to the world. Adulthood is about perspective taking, is includes being prepared and seeing the bigger picture. Santa Fe offers this in the most literal way through its mountain views and its desert lessons. 

Cerros whispered into my ear as I sat on the earth pondering this transformation. Cerros is the Spanish word for hills and peaks. Spanish being a largely spoken language of this city, thus more deeply connected the name to its landscape and people, the landscape, and people I know to be home. There are many places in the region with Cerro embedded in the place name, Cerro streets, Cerro trails and Cerro parks, Cerro often followed by a descriptor word or surname.  But Cerro truly can stand alone, strong and grounded at its foundation and base. Each Cerro is uniquely created of various ecosystems evolving off each other as the ground grows upward to its peak.

In reflection and contemplation of a name for what I wish to bring to the world, Cerros spoke to me of the life I have had and the lessons it has taught me.  Life’s turns and edges brought me to various trials and trails, the uphill battles, and the tumbles downhill, the landscapes of pause sometimes forced upon me and sometime self-created, unexpected experiences and long-awaited harmonious experiences, transformative and all contributing to who I am/am becoming.  Experiences that take us out of the comfort zone and reveal ourselves to ourselves are largely unpredictable and never straightforward in their lessons. Experiences can be ugly, though we must be able to see they are also encircled by beautiful ones.  I have had challenges beyond measure, bringing up questions of self and the world that I have wrestled with along my way. I’d find myself in a meadow of wildflowers with a trickling creek alongside me one moment only to turn a number of zigzags into a scene of rocky grounding, dry, windy and desolate.  I think we all know what the very top of the mountain looks like, and we all decide that the view is worth every bit of the uncertain footing along the way.

We all know the journey to the top is never a clear or carved to be a straight upward path.  It is full of switchbacks, different terrain, ducking down into the ravens, climbing up crevasses, pattering down paths, trudging up cliffs, meandering around boulders or trickling slippery streams, hopping across rock fields to avoid the cracks, screeing shale, and taking long breathers every now and again all before we stretch our arms victoriously to take in the peak.  And you know once we are up there for a while, the cold sets in, the sandwich and snacks get eaten, the storm clouds look to be rolling in or the sun ducks behind the western ridge and we must turn our backs to the glorious view and begin the journey down.  We cannot stay up there for too long.

The fact of the matter is that the peaks don’t exist without all that surround it.  Cerros gets its name from this deeper truth.  Hills don’t exist without their base and valleys between them, without their rounded and gaged and jagged edges, their changes in elevation and the different sceneries that are part of its makeup. It is important that we learn to wander and amble all the terrains to and from the top.

It is often overlooked that Cerro is also translated to mean backbone.  An important part of our physiology. The structure of our being, our standing in the world, our central support that is connected to our entire musculoskeletal system, the part of us that empowers us to move in the world: sit, stand, walk, twist and bend.  Our strength and foundation are in this essential part of our body. It is easy to note that our backbone is also made up of bones with valleys and peaks, curves, and bends in all directions, hard and flexible all at once.  It is also easy to connect the word backbone to the long-used idiom of “have a backbone” meaning to have strength in character.  To commit and live into your knowing and hold strong to your own decisions and feelings.  This knowing of self is the core value of the organization.

Cerros is named such for these two very essential reasons: 1.) It is a reminder that peaks and valleys exist together, and all inform/make up the fullness of a life, the perspective from the top is important in revealing this truth. And 2.) Cerros teaches us about the backbone, the base, the foundation of who we are. Remembering, connecting, and returning to this again and again, no matter where you may be on the journey, is what the organization aims to evoke in every person that steps in and enrolls into the services and offerings of Cerros Consulting. If we strengthen our knowing of ourselves it allows for us to find our home all along the way.  And if you care for a bonus reason, it is the story of my transition into true adulthood, the movement toward seeing a great perspective and knowing even in this great big world, connecting to my base self, day in and day out, is the practice of living into my best self.

Grief to Gift

Grief To Gift

by Michelle Katz

After my first break up with a serious boyfriend, in my grief and heartache, confusion and scrambling to make sense of it, my dad said to me, “when the groom leaves the bride at the altar, no one knowns who is the lucky one.”  I remember it stopping me in my tracks.  This statement, that I gave tribute to as some Ukrainian adage I imagine he heard somewhere along the way in his growing up, created true pause in my experience of loss.  Like a Zen Koan landing in my lap through the wisdom of a man I would never expect such a turn of a phrase be expressed.  Years and years later, I still remember that moment, that saying, and have applied it to the many loses throughout my life: relationship losses, career losses, losses that contributed to major paradigm shifts, the most brutal experience of friendship losses, even the losses and battles with my own ideas. 

This simple and profound saying offers me the greatest contemplation about loss: ”What if it was meant to be?” “What if this terrible unbearable feeling of grief, is actually for the best?”  Holy wow!  As the Dalai Lama wrote “Not getting what you want is sometimes a wonderful stroke of luck.”

We all have had losses in our lives.  Many of which have defined us, taught us a lesson about how to be in the world, taught us about great love and surrendering to what is.  In hindsight, all those losses can be seen as circumstances that were meant to be.  Grief for something that was once so wonderful can later be understood as necessary loss for the becoming who we are meant to be.

Loss happens in nature every day, from predator hunting prey to the extinction of a species due to the climate crisis.  There is even the line of thought that the global pandemic and it’s enormous impact on the loss of life can be contributed to nature running its course for the creation of a world that is more sustainable, conscious, community oriented.  It is a hard heart wrenching thought to bare, but, what if it’s true?  Could we bare it? There is much we grieve these days that is hard to bare. We are meaning-making-machines and it is often more about how we feel about how we feel than the feeling alone. What is the work of seeing the crack as also being the place that the light comes in (as Leonard Cohen wrote)? Are we able to see that a light is in both the broken glass and the diamond (Mark Nepo)?

Byron Katie, a great psychological thinker/author, among many others of her kind, teachers us to look at what is.  To ask the questions of what is really true? How we know it’s true? What is our reaction to our thoughts? Who would we be if we didn’t have that thought?  And what if we flipped that thought around and discovered ways that new thoughts might be true.  What an incredible, interesting, and unbearably challenging practice to take on!

Another great explored or grief, Francis Weller, teaches us the wildness of our sorrow and how the other side of it is gratitude.  Greif can be transformed into fertile ground for use to embrace the realness of life.

Vulnerably, I tell a story of the loss of a career I had been dreaming of for as long as I could remember.  My identity, who I defined myself to be, was wrapped up in this career. The loss of it left me utterly bewildered.  I failed, I wasn’t worthy of anything good, I felt depressed, hopeless, I could not see my life ahead of me.  Who was I?  How was I going to move forward?  Joseph Campbell offers, “We must be willing to let go of the life we’ve planned so as to have the life that is waiting for us.”  The freedom of this terrifyingly challenging action is inexplicable.  It feels like sometimes this action of letting go could kill us, it is that threatening to our existence.  But I have to tell you, every time I have been able to practice this letting go, it has been liberating. Acceptance of what is the greatest way to lead a peaceful life. 

I watch the trees move through the seasons, loosing their leaves in the autumn without resistance.  I watch the long days become shorter.  The fruit fall from the carefully planned and tended to garden.  I watched the winter come and cover the sands and soils that are marked by footprints that hold memories of walks with a lover or friend, the small plants that took root but may not make it to another spring, the tree trunks that once invited us to sit awhile.  I watch the once pristine glistening heavenly snow turn brown and dirty, patchy and slushy on its way to melt. I watch the buds of tress become leaves and flowers in the spring, the grass growing back the best it can in the face of drought remembering what it once was in the rainy year; the wind blowing the pollen of a juniper to it’s mate like a soul leaving a living being. I watch beautiful full forests become on fire and then turn into flood grounds and then become the landscapes the elk come to know and love as their greatest buffet. I see the bunny picked up by the raptor, the snake eat the mouse, the coyote on the side of the road and it’s mate howling in the loss. I see the fallen and decaying tree, becoming a home for burrowing animals and then on its way to become soil and new plants. The world is full of loss. The loss is an energy that creates something new, something equally or even more beautiful.  If we are able to do the important work we are meant to do with the experience of loss.

My losses created resistance, morphed into grief that spoke to an enormous love, initiated a creative process and revealed some beautiful gifts that would otherwise have been unseen.  So, if the groom leaves the bride at the altar, yes, no one knows who is the lucky one, but my bet is on both of them eventually grow lucky enough to live happily ever after.