When this 10-day ‘Whispers from Within’ process first emerged, oh-so-long-ago, it did so not in pieces but as one, congruent whole. It only followed that once the 7 layers of discovery piece was written, there would naturally emerge a process to coax out its expression in a way that could be generalized and shared. From that came this 10-day writing process.
Not a 3-day…. and not a 12-day…. but a 10-day.
In my time in my own life and with others, I was aware of patterns and how these patterns, themselves, become the very fabric of our existence; aware that they come to shape our entire lives into what we come to call ‘reality’. Over time, these patterns come to be relied upon as not only the right thing and the appropriate thing but the essential thing for our wellbeing or, even, survival. And in truth, they are ’no thing’ other than our own habits of mind/thought. They are only as real and as potent as we deem to flow the lifeblood of our choices into them.
In my time in engaging with others, I had noticed that once past the initial hesitation and agitation, many could not resist The Call from within to discover. After a couple of days of new information, coupled with the increasing safety that would come with increasing rapport, they were eager to explore… to a point.
We would trundle merrily along, daring and venturing; courage and curiosity in the lead… and then, we would hit a wall. Around the 5th or 6th day, things would slow and the deep, undenied and wordless fear would settle in: if we go further, there will be no turning back. No turning back…. no retreat into the safety of what has always been… no referencing what we have always known… and therefore, the great discovery that there is no absolute reality. There is only the one we choose to breathe life into.
The deep, undenied and wordless fear of our world, with others. Awareness would mean we would no longer be willing or able. It would mean that we would no longer be willing to pretend; to be silent; to make small the enormous issues in our lives. To continue would mean to lose all shape and form, as we knew it to exist for ourselves… and we would once again be without the benefit of history and the wisdom of our experience. No maps. No charted territories. No reference points. If we continue, structure will fall away.
No form. No familiar vessel relied upon and into which we have poured our Essence, to be contained. Containment is essential for our very survival – or so it is that we have come to believe. Containment. Familiar. Predictable – of us to others and of others, to us. Appropriate. Acceptable. Sequential and incremental, so that others may recognize us when they see us, ensuring we speak the same code and can be understood; and perhaps more, that we are no threat to them.
What comes to mind is what is known as ’the tower of Babel’ moment. That terrifying instant when we find that we are strangers in the face of each other. We speak and no one understands. Others speak, and we do not understand. We stand alone. Totally, completely and fundamentally alone.
And so, we seem willing to go so far – and then, no further.
We are willing to evolve – but need to stop so that we can slide back a little and recognize ourselves. We even say things, like “Let’s not get ahead of ourselves.” Very telling….
We ensure that we find ways to stop….. become still…. and allow the world to progress so that we might once again feel the need to catch up. Catching up becomes our motivation; and it also becomes our bind. We cannot allow ourselves to get ahead of our changing reality. But in that, we are still moving within the familiar form; moving within the protected eye of the storm.
I often found myself wondering: what would happen if we were to NOT stop. If we were to just keep going…. inhale and dive again… and again… and again.
Today is Day 7. At some level, I am ready to stop. I could say to each of you that given the combined depth of our commitment and experience, we can make the exception and stop here. There is no need to continue through Day 7…. and Day 8…. and Day 9…. and Day 10…..
…. and were I to do so, I would betray us all.
Day 7 awakens me…. awakens us, with each of you as an aspect of my consciousness…. to the observed discomfort of continuing. We have exhausted the familiar. Words may not flow so easily from here. We are approaching the narrow point of the hourglass…. and could easily fall through to the Great Unknown that is the next part of the vessel. Then what?????
I know that despite my decades of focused attention on my own evolution, I have been trained…. my body knows well….. to go about my habits of environment and behaviour; of strategy; of BVA’s. I have been trained to repeat, trusting that my joy will be found in that repetition. I have been trained to invite others into my habits and find ways to insert myself into the habits of others. Familiar. Safe. I can see the edges, the boundaries, the horizons of my own potential… and I dare not go beyond. What if the earth is flat?
Those habits shape what time I get up; the sequence of events when I start my day, how I spend that day.
They shape – and put boundaries around – what I allow myself to say/do and what I embrace only as the conversation held tightly within myself.
But perhaps more than anything, they shape my conversations. What I talk about. With whom. How often and for how long, before I am dissuaded from pressing forward into a more expansive line of enquiry.
Conversations. They shape our reality. In my world, conversations ARE the birth passage of a new thought… a new idea… a new intention. Without conversations, all that I know is stillborn… never leaving this vessel, to find its own life in my world.
Everything meaningful in our world revolves around conversations. And yet, we have found so many, many ways to ensure that they are no longer had.
Television. Pulls us outside ourselves and locks us into the directed conversation of another.
Facebook. Twitter. We have allowed our conversations to be reduced to sound bytes….phrases….. and a stream of images that invite us to spit out an opinion when in truth, we have not lived any of it.
Every now and then, I stop… dive deeply into my Self….and vibrate with the discoveries that await. I am thrilled! I delight! I LIVE whole-heartedly and am filled with gratitude that I dared.
Within a few days (or hours or weeks, etc.), what I chose to live has become a story. A story that I tell, to remind myself of how magical it has been and that magic – even if now but a memory – also still exists. And I slide back into my habits… into the expectations and the familiar…. wondering when the next deep dive will present. And I wait for something/someone outside myself to provoke that dive, rather than simply claim my love of and commitment to diving as easily as I breathe.
Reset……
I imagine a world where I live in the deep dive into mySelf. When I come up for air, I notice habits….. recognizing them as they present… and inhale deeply and dive again.
The dive IS the norm… it is the primary focus of my life…. and all else interconnects from that context for living. The dive IS my reason for being here.
The treasures will always be found at the bottom of the ocean, not floating along the surface.
That I am alive, in this reality in this body with this Self, IS the evidence that I have chosen to dive. It is when I forget and stop diving that I must turn to my stories to give my life meaning. Without the dive, there is nothing new to be found.
We have become creatures of the story. The story drives us and every now and then, we step out of the story and into discovery when in truth, I believe we are designed for/intended for the dive. We have become trapped in the cycle of our own betrayal as the ‘right’ thing to do.
I know there is something significant that awaits. And, I also believe that we are pulled to its discovery and terrified that it will be found. At some level, it is as if we already know: if we simply move forward… if we stay in the dive rather than the story…. something will fall away and we will not be able to go back. Like the sand through the hourglass: once it falls through, all must be turned upside-down in order for the sand to ever return.
Turning our lives upside down. Our relationships. Our intentions. Our meanings and purposes.
Perhaps at some point, what we fear is that we will walk through the mirror and disappear from this world…..
It is difficult to put words to a new experience. When words come easily, we can be sure that we have been there before. The story, repeats.
However, when there are no words – and given the degree to which we rely on words to lead the way – we pull back from the edge; we hesitate and look over our shoulder as if to remind us that what we already have is good! Do we want to risk losing it? Maybe we can dabble and that will be enough. It will take the edge off my hunger without my needing to do other than nibble.
I know there is something there. In some ways, I know it because I have been there. In other ways, I know it because my body pulls me toward it. And I have no knowledge of any of it in my intellect. Like a Quantum TLC™ experience, we have the evidence of discovering what we had no idea we knew. And yet, there it was all along – in the body, waiting for us to dive in. What else is waiting?
I will never know until I do…. and yet, I am unwilling to do until I know. Such is the lament that comes from our need for incremental change and safety.
And for me, this takes me back to the exploration of ‘death’ and what that is. I sometimes wonder if we have been conditioned into the notion of ‘death’ as something terrible to be feared so that we would have in place a mechanism to Self-police; to ensure that we do not ‘leave’ when we are still useful to some ’system’ or ‘intention’ that lives outside our awareness. Perhaps I need to return to the ‘death’ conversation…. and after all, that’s all it is: a conversation. Yet I learned long ago that a conversation is a powerful weapon to dismantle the status quo. With a conversation, we can be compelled into silence (threats); droned into a coma (television); provoked into awakening… or any other number of outcomes. And we all know: 10 seconds of authenticity can undo decades of cultural conditioning. The truth of an internal cue dismantles the illusion.
In our current reality, the one thing that every human being has is a body. That tells me how critical the body is, to the context within which we live. Another thing we all have is language. Bodies and words. Processors and cues.
Perhaps the question becomes: what cues do we process?
In this moment, on Day 7, the question becomes: how do we capture, define, describe and share that for which there are no words? How do engage by email in a wordless experience? I know the life-altering power of that ripple through my body that takes me to another space/time layer. I know it has happened many times. I know that Quantum TLC is a gateway for that; that before that wave and after, my worlds are changed forever.
And so, here we are. Day 7. I don’t know what is next and I know that where I am is perfect!
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