Respect the Material

This talk was presented at The Interfaith Center for Spiritual Growth in Ann Arbor, Michigan by Dr. Katie Lynne on Sunday May 18th, 2025.

My dad is a mechanical engineer.

He's always got the right tool, he's a great guy to know for any kind of general handyman situation. Light plumbing, some electrical, structural, or even cosmetic, he's very creative! And his work is beautiful!

I remember, for our family dog's bed, the dog slept in the mud room where we kept our boots and we did laundry, the dog slept under the countertop, next to the boots, across from the old washing machine, and my dad - to give the dog more privacy, and a more beautiful sense of home- created this wooden screen, built right into the wall, this doggie gazebo of brilliant, excessive craftsmanship!

Not only is he a hands-on, technical skill guy, not only is he a beautiful craftsman and artist, he's also the project management type. A strategic thinking kind of guy. Efficiency, you know?

And I take his advice on project strategy very seriously. And he told me something once, that i'll never forget. These are his words:

You've got the respect the material.

In the interest of project efficiency, you've got to be aware of the properties of the material you're working with. Steel melts at a certain temperature, different woods splinter under different kinds of pressure. You can try to make it work, with whatever tools and skills you've got to compensate for your ignorance or lack of respect for the properties of the material, but, you'll be a lot more successful, and efficiently so, if you start with understanding, and respectig the material.

Now I am not an engineer. But I am a Doctor of Occupational Therapy! I have a private practice, and I think about this concept, "respect the material" when i'm working with my clients. All of us, me, you, my clients, we're here doing the project of living. And the material that we're working with, is whatever it means to be a human being.

This material has certain properties, a certain weave and weft. Like our need to love, and be loved. We need each other. We're highly social beings! We are individuated aspects of a continuous creative expression. We are all interconnected with all things, and with our source, as creation IS continuous, there is individuation, but not actual separation. We are aspects of creation AND creator. Creation creates through us. This is a mind-blowing reality, WOW! How do we take those properties of this material seriously, and understand how to strategically work with what we've got, to apply it towards the project of living, of co-creating our reality in peace, and unity, and bliss?

Well I've been thinking about it. And I'm trying to get my head around it, and I'm writing up all of my bullet points and diagrams in my visual aids, I'm like Delyth! I'm gonna need a laser pointer and they're gonna need to take notes! My full analysis of what it means to be a human being, and all of that is wonderful, and maybe that's the place I feel most comfortable talking from, but that's actually not what I'm here to share.

Our whole society is steeped in that left brain, analytical thinking style. This linear, logical, masculine, style of thought. We build our structures and systems out of that left brain fabric, but that's not the whole of what we are. We've got a whole other side of our brain. Respect the material. Humans have this whole other aspect of them. If we're thinking strategically about how to best set about the project of living, we would be wise to consider that other 50%!

And it's tough to consider that other 50%, for a few reasons. We are so steeped in this left brained WAY of thinking, that we don't have much of a model of HOW to think or self-reflect from a right-brained perspective. Moreover, language is a left-brained thing. So we're trying to get closer to something, that, when we try to put it into language, it becomes left brained stuff. And, because this right-brained stuff, is also feminine energy stuff. And that right-brained feminine stuff has been vilified over the eons, and that intergenerational trauma, misogyny, patriarchy, and internalized misogyny and internalized and self-perpetuated inhibition of this feminine aspect, that is present in every one, and everything... makes it tough to access this right-brained half of the material that we are.

But, things are shifting these days. Right? Feeling a bit of an awakening of that feminine energy. And to be clear, I'm talking about feminine and masculine energies that are inherent in all things, and all people, regardless of sex or gender. There's been a rising of consciousness in recent times, and part of that is the reawakening in many of us, of that feminine energy. Thanks to this rising of consciousness that we're all a part of, I am even able to access this knowing that feminine energy is a critical aspect of our strategy in being humans doing the project of living.

Because we are co-creators of our reality. And right now, it's a wild time to be alive. These are destabilizing times. It would be very wise to get clear on what the material of humanity is, and how it co-creates because the times we are in are calling for that level of responsibility.

And what does it mean to be responsible, efficient, and strategic? Respecting the material means opening our minds to the possibility that the process itself might be radically different! Light is both a particle and a wave! And we've been so focused into, so tuned into, the left-brained masculine, particle perspective of what our strategy for living. I don't think that the right-brained component of our strategy is just a particle with a pink bow on it. Wave nature, is entirely different from particle nature.

I'm here today to share wave technology for responsible co-creatorship.

And I'm here in vulnerability and open-hearted discovery, of what exactly that might be.

Let me ask you this, how many of you, by a show of hands, believe that we are all one. Good! and how many of you think that the universe is an abundant place? Yes! Me too. Who thinks that we are intimately connected with our source? I think so too. Who here thinks that it's a benevolent universe!? Yes! Me too!

Now here's the devastating news. I don't think that thinking these things really matters. Here me out, now we know that we co-create our reality based on our beliefs right? It's the energy that we are, and that we emit, that creates reality. But here's the kicker. Deciding that we think that we intellectually agree with a concept, is pretty much all a left brained action. And we definitely need both in order for creation to happen. As far as we can tell, it takes two. And as far as we understand, creation happens via the feminine. There's a mantra that's relevant her, I study and teach Kundalini Yoga and Tantra, and this mantra Adi Shakti Adi Shakti namo namo, Pritham bagvati pritham bagvati pritham bagvati namo namo, that line is about the primal feminine energy, through which God, or the creative source has apparently that creation happens through. Birth happens via the feminine. Creation happens from the feminine. Respect the material.

And i suspect that it's not really our best strategy to intellectually concur with these things that we all just agreed on, I believe we need the feminine technology of feeling it, and being it, in order to create it in our world.

This past week was my birthday. And in a few moments, here and there, I just gave myself permission to be the pretty pretty princess birthday girl, and feel that all the flowers are blooming for me, and the sun and breeze caresses my skin because it loves me! And as I was feeling this, I felt my heart bloom with the flowers. Not only did I intellectually think that the universe is abundant and that I, as an aspect of creation, are inherently worthy, I FELT the abundance of the universe. The extent to which I felt it, and the vast chasm between what I usually actually feel, despite THINKING that the universe is abundant, revealed to me that thinking is not enough. I didn't FEEL, which means I didn't really believe, in the abundance of the universe, until i was actively in interaction with it, by leaning into my receptivity.

Receptivity is a feminine technology, and what I was activating in feeling so worthy to receive, is the embodied experience of faith in what I intellectually think is accurate! BEING an experience of faith in what is true. RECEIVING limitless abundance. FEELING the bliss of that faith, that being state, and that reception. I believe it would be wise to lean into employing these feminine, wave-based technologies to co-create our world. I believe it's good strategy, by respecting the whole material that we are, how the material that we are works, and is made for the project of living.

But, this much worthiness, and receiving all of this abundance, is taboo in some ways. It bumps up against some notions of, lets not take more than our share. Some people take more than their share, and that means there's less for the rest of us. Some people have received more than they've earned and that's not fair! There's an unjust distribution of limited resources. And this is tough because I see the wealth disparity! Things in our world need to change! And I'm deathly serious about finding an efficient strategy to make real, lasting change, right at the roots.

Because when we are focusing on the injustice, and the grief and rage that can easily be found there, what we are believing in is not the abundance of the universe. In those moments, which is all we ever have, we are believing in scarcity. It would be wise strategy to actually get honest with what we are actually believing on a moment by moment basis. It doesn't matter what thoughts we conceptually agree with. It matters how we feel. How we feel, is actually what we believe. That's how we create.

And when we feel that the threats of inequitable distribution of limited resources and greed are more believable than our resources of infinite abundance and connection with our source, we are living in a trauma state. When the threats outweigh the resources, that is textbook trauma right there.

And this is not a condemnation of our traumatized state. I'm not saying that we're doing it wrong. We are traumatized in the situation that we find ourselves in, and we are trying to survive. This is appropriate and necessary. I feel deep compassion for our traumatized selves. But to the extent that we think it's a wise strategy to focus our awareness into the injustice and greed because if we don't watch it in ourselves or others it will run amok unchecked, that's the actual strategy that I'm calling into question.

Because the opposite of trauma is creativity and play. And all of these things in the world that we are understandably upset about, these inhumane prisons of oppression, they have a way of using any tool to perpetuate and reinforce themselves. And don't you think that seeding a populace with the notion that our focus is noble would benefit those systems when our focus holds us captive in a traumatized state? There's no need for a jailer when we hold ourselves in this cage of perpetuating trauma by believing MORE in scarcity, and the injustice of hoarding limited resources, feeling that scarcity, more than we believe in and feel the abundance.

Exactly whom is this strategy efficient for?

The opposite of trauma, is creativity and play.

Creation happens via the feminine, right-brained, wave-like aspect of the material that we are.

At this point, it seems to me, that we ought to get serious about creativity and play.

Take a moment and think about how creativity and play show up in your world. I'm sure it looks different for everyone. I am suggesting that maybe that's your most important work. And again, this terrain of the right-brain, wave-tech is new to me, and I would love to learn what you know about it and what works for you, and for me, that experience of opening into receptivity blooms my heart and I can actually feel what I think I believe.

And I'm inviting us, now that we've talked through it, and maybe we understand the rationale for this necessarily wild and right brained, un-tameably un-rational strategy of feeling like a special birthday girl, can we give it a try?

Stand up if you're willing and able, and reach up for the sky, looking up at the sky give it a great big smile! You are the special one, the prize princess, the goddess who can and will receive it all! Who is magic itself, you are! The whole universe rains down radiance and resource and absolute adoration upon you! Open up your heart and your face and your arms to receive it, there is more where that came from , infinitely more, can you receive more? Yes you can! Start to bounce a little bit like a baby who wants to be picked up! Will you laugh with me? And pull in that infinite abundance, it's all for you birthday girl! the universe is in love with you! You ARE worthy to receive it ALL. And there's more and more, and it is all for you. Give yourself a hug. There is so much more, and It is right to receive it, it is for you, Beloved

You are worthy to receive it all. This bliss, this worthiness, this openness... This, perhaps, is wise strategy.

This magnetic receptivity, is simply respecting the material for the project at hand.