Forget your perfect offering
oh, oh oh, oh oh
Ring the bells that still can ring
oh, oh oh, oh oh
There is a crack in everything
oh, oh oh, oh oh
That’s how
the light
gets in.
These are lines from Leonard Cohen’s “Anthem”, reshaped by Jeffrey Alphonsus Mooney into chant form. I learned them from my friend Jessie and she learned them in the Reclaiming witchcraft tradition. I’ve been singing them at my altar for a couple of years now.
Recently, Jessie was part of a conversation online. Helen Anne Peterson, in her Culture Study patreon group, asked, “What do you intentionally half-ass?” and in reply, Jessie shared that her meditation teacher – that’s me – encourages folks to half-ass practice in order to make it more accessible. That led a few people to sign up for this newsletter. If you’re one of them: Hello! Welcome! Today I'm going to muse on half-assing in your honor.
I remember vividly the mixture in my heart the first time I suggested to someone that they lower the bar of their expectations for practice: I felt euphoria, certainty, and a little part of me was in the corner clutching her pearls. Someone in one of my meditation workshops was expressing disappointment in themselves about their meditation practice. They’d done this a good bit. I’d tried encouragement, egging folks on, education; all the things that were taught to me. And this time, this day, I said, “What if you lowered the bar to let what you can do be good enough?”
That’s howwww the liiiiiiight gets innnnnnnn.
A year or two ago Amelia joined to our weekly Gathering from a family holiday. They were on vacation and that morning they were visiting an aquarium but she really wanted to come to the Gathering, too. So she put an earbud in one ear and did her best. She apologized for this form of presence, referring to it as half-assed, and I roundly disagreed: clearly badassed! She was working so hard to be present!
It was a seminal moment. Wendy began to join our Tuesday morning meditations (these are free, 8-8:55am Pacific, all welcome) from the car while driving her daughter home from school. Partway through each session she arrives home, goes inside, and sits on the couch. Somewhere in there her connection drops and I let her back into the Zoom. Badassed, right? Trying so hard to make it work! Allowing what she can swing to be good enough. Ash joined one day from a freaking bus while en route to surprise her parents in another city. Wahoo!
Even more dear to me was the fact that the number of apologies that were offered for how people were showing up dropped tremendously. We got it, collectively: if you’re struggling to show up and doing so doesn’t feel great, you are probably working through challenge, and that is a freaking triumph. This is how “If you think you’re doing it half-assed, you’re actually badassing it” became community lore.
Another day, a ways onward from this, Sarah showed up for the Saturday Gathering, camera off, and explained that she was struggling in her physical and mental health that day. The only way she’d been able to get herself to show up was by having a little weed and planting herself in a sunbeam on the back porch before logging in. “I think I’m quarter-assing it today,” she said. And that is how quarter-assing joined our lore.
I used to teach yoga at an ashram in San Francisco. It took me a long time to understand why there were paper cups tucked into the bushes on the staircase up to the front door because I wasn't a coffee drinker. Eventually I realized that folks were drinking their coffee on the way to morning practice, then stashing their empty cups in the bushes rather than bringing them inside to discard because the ashram didn't allow coffee. My beloved students were hiding their empty cups in order to be good enough to come to practice, as if just carrying an empty coffee cup inside would make them unworthy in some way.
Oh dear.
This is why sometimes I cuss while teaching and make a point of showing up to meditation in my pajamas here and there. What I’m saying when I do this is: you are good enough to come to practice just as you are, beloved one. You do not have to wear a false self to be good enough to come here. You are welcome in your wholeness, just as you are.
Worth is inherent: if life is precious and you are life, you are worthy. Everything is. I'm showing you that with my sleep-rumpled hair and my fucks.
All of this is the life of the universe, dancing.
A couple of days ago I tumbled out of bed at 4am because, as I mused on this topic in anticipation of writing to you, I’d had a dreamy breakthrough. I stumbled down to my desk to jot down: HALF ASSING = GOOD ENOUGH = CONTENTMENT
By which I mean: when we say half-assing, often what we mean is something like, “There is a gap between my either the standard I have been taught and my personal standard, or my personal ideal and what I'm capable of with a reasonable investment of effort right now – and I’m going to go ahead and let that be enough.”
Half-assing therefore means choosing to let something be enough the way that it is. Choosing to let something be enough is contentment. Contentment is one of the classic yogic virtues: santosha. Therefore, half-assing is a virtue of sorts. Not half-assing in the letting ourselves or others truly down way, of course, but half-assing in the, "Eh, ya know, this is good enough," way. Contentment helps us relax into the inherent worthiness of all things.
Last weekend I leaned down in the kitchen to pick up something I’d dropped on the floor. I noticed a particularly large, fuzzy dust bunny under one of the chairs. From there I had a lovely meditator’s moment in which I noticed myself reflexively thinking that "I should vacuum that," followed by remembering that I was trying to focus on finishing my bookkeeping so we can file our taxes. In that moment, hanging upside down beside the kitchen table, I saw how in the past I would either have vacuumed the dust bunny – and then probably the whole downstairs, which is overdue for that, even though I was supposedly giving myself the freedom to focus on an important task – or else I would have not done that but felt badly about myself for not doing it; I would have judged me: not good enough. Furthermore, no matter which of those paths I chose, once upon a time I would have White Rabbited the whole way, rushing and fretting.
That wasn’t what happened, though. I noticed the dust bunny, watched those thoughts flash through in a fleeting portion of a second, and then thought, “I see why we call them dust bunnies. It really is adorable.” I felt a genuine warmth in my heart for that little bit of fluff.
It’s probably still there.
That’s how
the light
gets in.
Spring Workshop for Living
Registration is now open for my spring Workshop for Living: Cosmic Grounding. Full details here; I'd love to share this with you. Please feel welcome to reach out to discuss!
A participant in the winter workshop says:
"This workshop should be a requirement for living in the present moment. Dahlia threads the realities of navigating the world in this moment with love, compassion and a greater connection to peace. Her teaching is both aspirational and highly grounded in realistic and practical skills. I recommend her work to anyone looking for solace, community and a way to make sense of things. Her flexibility in the offering allows anyone to attend regardless of how little or much time you have to dedicate. Do yourself a kindness and sign up!"
Resources
How the Air Gets In
Have you heard of the lüften fad? Lüften is German for "air out" or "ventilate", and simply refers to opening the windows of a home for a few minutes to let fresh air wash in. We love to sleep with our bedroom door open, and since it's only hit freezing once this year, we've been able to do it most of the winter, but that's upstairs. I've been trying a nice airing of the downstairs in the mornings lately and it's wonderfully refreshing.
How the Love Gets In
Last week I shared a NY Times article about the new book, “How to Feel Loved: The Five Mindsets That Get You More of What Matters Most.” I have not, to be clear, read the book, but I've loved the press so much that today I'm sharing the Washington Post's interview with the authors, too. Gift link. Sonja Lyubomirsky is a professor of psychology at the University of California at Riverside and Harry Reis is a psychologist at the University of Rochester. In this interview, Lyubomirsky says:
We think that to be loved, to feel loved, we need to make ourselves more lovable: “I just need to show them how wonderful I am and hide my shortcomings.” And that’s actually not what works. To feel love, you need to be known and also know the other. And so if I’m only showing the tips of my whole self, just the positive part, I’m not going to be known. And if you don’t really know me, I’ll never really feel loved by you, because I’ll always wonder, “If you really knew me, would you still love me?”
Wholeness. Enoughness. This refrain. Thanks to Kirsten.
How the Gunk Gets Out
Dr. Jon Kaiser is a functional medicine specialist in the San Francisco Bay Area who finally diagnosed a friend of mine who felt intermittently hellish with a long viral syndrome, long mononucleosis, and helped her clear it from her system at last. I signed up for his newsletter to see what I could learn and have been quite enjoying his frothy lemon-ginger liver support recipe lately.
Dr. Jon Kaiser
How the Joy Gets In – Safely
"In the know" is a fantastic website for teens about sex. It addresses the hard topics raised in modern times: porn, nudes, AI, and the prevalence of rough sex and choking in online depictions of sexuality. As a kinky adult, I am over the moon about this resource, which gives sound, age-appropriate, non-shaming, pleasure-positive education. Thanks to Amelia
Resistance: Love in Action
"Taking action can feel frightening or overwhelming at first, but once you've started you'll find it easy. In fact, it's self-powering. The more we do, in other words, the better we feel, and the more are capable of doing. Love, after all, is like renewable energy – it's free, abundant, and immensely powerful. Once we start taking actions grounded in love – of country, community , and planet – the wind is always at our backs."
Jess Craven
The next No Kings protests are on March 28. Now is a great time to make a plan with friends to help you follow through on showing up! Vote Forward has two new Get Out the Vote etter-writing campaigns you could join. And I had a great conversation this week with a friend who said,
"I’m so glad you mentioned that we can email our congress people! It’s so easy I’m making time for it. Voice mailing is just ick but email is fantastic."
My simple trick for calling is that I've got an alarm set for 2:30 so that I can call my reps after their DC offices close to leave a message. Easy peasy.
Supporting Me So I Can Support You
This is entirely human work. My work, done by hand, with my own mind and heart; I do not use AI in the creation of what I offer you. I don't have one. I invest at least half a day every week in the creation of this newsletter. It's a labor of love; I currently earn about $15/hr. I do this because it is important to me, because I hear that it's important to you, and in hopes that it will grow.
If you enjoy my work, you can give me a raise! You could make a one-time donation of thanks of any size. You could upgrade to a paid subscription for as little as $5/month.
If you purchase books from indie Bookshop.org starting at my bookshop, I will receive a commission of 10%, even if those particular books aren't in my shop. I see what was purchased; I do not see who bought it.
Sharing my newsletter is also a gift! Hopefully it enriches the friends you share with and in expanding my reach may expand the compensation I receive for my time. If you're reading this today because you read my sweet friend and student Jessie talking about my warm enthusiasm for half-assing meditation, welcome! I'm hoping to speak to that topic next week in your honor.
If you are a supporter, thank you; I am honored and humbled by your willingness to support my work in the world, and you have put food on my table.
