Good morning!
In my own life and with others, I became aware of patterns and how these patterns, themselves, become the very fabric of our existence; aware that they come to shape our very lives into what we come to call ‘reality’. 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 them to be.
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 deepening 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 in a program room, things would slow, in the recognition of a discomfort, appeased; like feeling stuffed after a big meal, hunger having become a faded memory. In the face of continuing unabated, the deep, undenied and wordless fear would settle in: if we go further, we will cross a threshold… leaving the compound of our familiar realities… and there will be no turning back. No turning back…. no retreating into the safety of what has always been… no referencing what we have always known… and therefore, risking the great discovery that there is no absolute reality – and there is no answer. There is only the one we choose to breathe life into, in the moment. Sequences of moments create a life lived or a life in which living is stifled.
That deep, undenied and wordless fear of our world, becomes visible in ourselves and with others. Such an 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. Safety- as we have come to believe and often, for very good reasons – resides in predictability. In that, we can anticipate and plan accordingly.
What comes to mind is what is known as ’the tower of Babel’ moment. That terrifying instant when we find that we are a strangers in the face of each other. We speak and no one understands. Others speak, and we do not hear meaning. 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 ability to control our changing reality. But in that, we are still moving within the familiar form; moving within the protected eye of the storm.
With all good reason, we have so little stamina for our own evolution; so little endurance for the long haul of perpetual becoming, thinking one course a year is going to transform our lives. It is not the course that transforms – it is our unshakeable and unrelenting commitment to expressing the truth of our own experience, visibly and out loud in the presence of others, that transforms our lives and our world.
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, as it becomes a way of life. The dive, itself, becomes the committed intention, making way for whatever will follow.
Today is Day 7. At some level, I am ready to stop. I could say to each of you that we have done enough; we have come far enough to ensure the constant presence of a faint call; that it has now become evident that there is no answer so, why continue? What value could there be in continuing any further into unsolvable problems and enquiries seemingly without end, 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. We’ve been willing and still, have no solutions… no answers. Every enquiry leads only to another layer of enquiry, as evidenced by a constant stream of memories (the past), insights and observations (the now), and curiosities (the future). Words may not flow so easily from here. We are approaching the narrow point of the hourglass…. and could easily fall through to 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…. and my body knows well….. to go about my habits of environment and behaviour; of strategy; of Beliefs/Values/Attitudes. I have been trained to repeat, trusting that my joy will be found in perfecting that repetition….if I can only, flawlessly, get it right! 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 in a line of enquiry.
Conversations. They shape our reality. In my world, conversations ARE the birth canal for the 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 and unfurl into a living possibility!
Everything meaningful in our world revolves around conversations. And yet, we have found so many, many ways to ensure that the big ones – the scary ones that have impact – never leave the inner silence of our own self-denial.
Television. Turns us inside 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 rathe 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. And then what…..
It is difficult to put words to a new experience. When words come easily, we can be sure the 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 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. Embracing he truth of an internal cue dismantles the illusion.
In this moment, on Day 7, for me the question becomes: What is the end game? The underlying presupposition in that line of enquiry is that there is some designed, cohesive framework in place that will allow for some pre-determined, desired/desirable outcome. Far better to hold that thought than to consider the alternative of random chaos. I can learn a game and its rules, and can become proficient at its execution. How can I become proficient at random chaos… in the ultimate game that has neither framework nor rules?
In a world of chaos, my intellect does not have the processing power to grok the complexity of constantly moving and interconnected parts. I know my body, does.
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. 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.
Louise
The following paragraph from Sylvia really impacted me deeply last night:
“We are all psychopaths: how else can we stand all this around us? How else can we wake up in a world with wars, hunger, poverty and ecological devastation and still continue with our lives? How else can we walk the aisles of the grocery stores and bear the sight of meat coming from the lives of millions of innocent animals, animals whose lives are miserable? How else can we stand eight hours at closed offices plus the long hours of commuting? How else can we stand the invasion of our bodies by doctors and nurses in the name of “health”? How do we survive the endless news of corruption, neglect, destruction, pollution, depletion, abuse, oppression and the like if we don’t learn to hide and lie to ourselves?”
I think about this all the time. I have to shut part of myself down when I go to the grocery store. I feel my body shudder when I look at the things that other people’s place on the checkout conveyor belt. Very rarely do I see an order that does not have a cling wrapped carcass. When I see those beautiful beings, dead and chopped up I feel shock, every single time. I cannot get used to it, I refuse to get used to it. I don’t say anything, I keep my shock to myself and I eventually let it go. But do I let it go? These repeated shocks – carts full of Charmin toilet paper coming out of the store because it was on sale, the sound of explosives in the mountain behind us as she is mined for gravel destined for China, the sound of power washers and leaf blowers, the tug boats hauling Gaia away. These are just a sampling of my every day experience.
I had a fairly intense “straight jacket” moment a few months ago. It all got to be too much one day when we stopped to witness two Orca’s in a nearby bay and at the same time saw a large ship heading to dock and take away the gravel from the mountain. It was too much for me to see both. The beauty of Gaia and the destruction framed in the same scene. When I got home I went into a deep grief state, deeper than I ever have and whaled and cried in my bed for over an hour begging to be taken away from this place. I had had enough, I could take no more, I wanted out. It was a dark night for me, and it was a place of deep shifting. Since that night I have moved into acceptance – acceptance that I live in a fucked up world, acceptance that although I am part of this place I am not of this place. This helps. Now I can be in the grocery store and know that the actions of others are not my own. I am not pleased by any means that the world is full of psychopaths, now I know I am not one of them. I believe my ability to look at the dominant culture and say “NO” means I am amoung the very few who are not insane.
I know it takes a tremendous amount of my energy to stay engaged in my life without being swept into absolute despair. I am willing to spend my energy this way. Doing so give me the space and freedom to teach vegan cooking classes, create a vegan cooking show, play, share and enjoy with people who are willing to even step even one toe into the world of peaceful eating. I find great joy in all of this, without it I could not be here. This is what saves me, my desire to go against the grain and shine is my absolute saving grace.
I have another trick in my back pocket that helps keep me sane. I don’t forget that I was not always like this, there was a time when I purchased the virgin toilet paper and I put the dead bodies in my shopping cart without a thought. I know if I can wake up anyone can, I hold onto that belief, without it I crumble.
Deb
I woke up with a knot in my stomach once again. What is it today? One of our elderly cats is not long for this world. As intimate as I am with departure, the final weeks, days, hours, minutes still impact me. My love, compassion and attention is more pronounced. I’m on high alert…listening, attentive, caring…hospice. Our home has always been a sacred space for love, compassion, joy, play, grief, anger, frustration, dance, laughter…the entire spectrum of the human experience. We’ve been in this hospice situation more times than I can count. Each time is different, yet the sacred tenderness remains a constant. Bearing witness to the frailty of life reminds me of its magic…beauty…sacredness. It was the ugly death of my mother in 2010 that forever altered my world and sent me on a life path that was once unknown. It implored me to live fully NOW! There is no time. There is always an urgency to life, but not a frantic, chaotic urgency. Instead, a passionate urgency to own all of ME. To be the change. To live out loud. To serve the world. To speak my truth. To do what I came here to do.
I am not a psychopath. Our culture is insane and I refuse it. Those who know me, know me. They also know my work. I need not say any more than that.
In response to Silvia’s powerful offering yesterday I wrote, “Is it hope? To me, it is love. Love doesn’t need hope. Love needs presence and presence alone. In our presence, we are no longer psychopaths.”
Not only are we no longer psychopaths owned by a toxic, dysfunctional culture, we are authentic: rebels, mavericks, trailblazers, warriors for the soul.
Fuck this world. I am not of it. I know that. My ties to this world are tenuous at best. I’ve searched for holes all of my life and there are many. It is possible to crush the status quo and live a life guided by essence. It’s a life that is constantly challenged by the status quo, but when you no longer give a damn about the status quo or care what others think, it’s much, much easier.
My life was once immersed in the status quo and it ate me alive from the inside out. I was bulimic for 10 fucking years. It was hell. I drank too much. I distrusted men (I too was violated by an uncle, a high school teacher, and a neighbour). I had J-O-B’s that I hated. I thought I was going insane every time the alarm prompted me to wake up so that I could sit in a cubicle under unnatural lighting to do design work for corporations that meant nothing to me. NOTHING. I sold out on my soul. My body was screaming at me to get the fuck out. My mind kept me chained to a paycheque. I was a psychopath then. I felt imprisoned by it all and yet I held the key all along. It was always about choice. I chose fear…until I no longer chose fear anymore.
I ended my sickening relationship with bulimia in 1992. I quit drinking in 2006. My last job was in 2007. I listened to my body and my life transformed. I felt aligned with my soul.
I still don’t trust men, but I’m more open…cautiously.
As I said in a talk I gave last year, “Status quo is a ruthless predator that feeds on our souls and separates us from truth. Author David Stevens once said that, “A lie is a lie, even if everyone believes it. The truth is the truth, even if nobody believes it.” Collectively, we’ve blindly accepted an epic lie.”
This is insanity. This is the path of the psychopath.
I REFUSE to ever sell out on my soul again. I would rather die. Status quo is comprised of the walking dead, yet when I allow myself to shine, there’s a remembrance…a resonance. There is nothing more beautiful than witnessing the light go on in others. In that, my light gets brighter. It’s a beautiful feedback loop.
I end today’s whisper with a quote by wise guru, Ellen Degeneres, “If we’re destroying our trees and destroying our environment and hurting animals and hurting one another and all that stuff, there’s got to be a very powerful energy to fight that. I think we need more love in the world. We need more kindness, more compassion, more joy, more laughter. I definitely want to contribute to that.”
Ditto.
Love, Deb
Day 7
Good morning beautiful, brave souls. It is a rather bleak Sunday morning
here on the Coast. I have just finished my morning routine of journaling
and reading. It seems to naturally flow into the Whispers From Within
challenge. For that I am grateful. I feel like it helps me stick with
this; because writing is already a habit of mine. This is good, because
today I know that whatever direction the wind of resistance is blowing
from, that is the direction I need to go in, in order to grow. I feel more
committed to writing and sharing than ever.
My usual course of action is to show you too much of myself, and then want
to run away and hide (self-sabotage?). I don’t feel like that this time.
There is this inner strength within that says, “You get up there, and
claim your spot. You have something to offer this challenge (or even more,
the world).” I believe that we all have our unique perspective to
contribute towards the Greater Healing of our souls on this planet.
I feel honoured to be a part of the honest, brave, intelligent,
conversations from within. Louise’s description of conversations moved me:
“They shape our reality. In my world, conversations ARE the birth canal
for the 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 and unfurl into a living possibility!”
It inspires me to break free of the confines of what is ‘safe’
predictable, and ‘acceptable,’ in order to get to talk about what’s ‘real’
and/or honest. I like the idea that my inspirations will not die inside of
me. Because, I believe that the possibilities that lay beyond the
boundaries of playing it safe, are infinite. That is where we will find
our answers, I am sure of it.
The quote, “With knowledge comes responsibility,’ rings in my ears.
“Ignorance is Bliss!” It is true. If only I could get back to complete
ignorance. I yearn for simplicity, innocence and ignorance. I know it’s
risky to admit this. I want to appear strong. But, Emmet Fox, in his
spiritual analysis of the Bible, Sermon on the Mount, that to Know
something, and act against that Knowing, is the most dangerous act we can
commit against our soul.
We are quite the species. I think of my sweet furry friends (pups) lying
patiently beside me, soaking up the warmth from the wood burner (truth).
They live in the ‘now,’ quite naturally. I find myself envious of their
seeming inability to worry about their imminent demise…not having a clue
that its coming, until it is upon them. And then, without drama, they pass
peacefully into the unknown (maybe they know?). They seem to ‘dive,’
willingly, into the abyss.
On some level, everything seems to come down to accountability. Perhaps it
doesn’t serve us to argue and defend any ‘position’ that we may presently
be holding as ‘true’ (story)? We can’t grow when we think that we know
anything. Being open seems to be the key to our spiritual growth, and
perhaps that openness is the key to all healing?
Mother Teresa said she would not march ‘against’ anything, rather, she
would march ‘for’ a solution. Reminding me that we are either part of the
solution, or part of the problem. Everything is energy. Fear, anger,
sorrow, doubt, etc., are lower energies. Doesn’t it make sense to activate
the higher frequency energies of Love, harmony, compassion, and faith (I
will leave the word ‘hope’ alone for now) then? If energy cannot be
destroyed or created, but can only be changed, wouldn’t it make sense to
change the existing negative energy, on the planet, by collectively
holding the higher frequency thoughts of Love, within our hearts? I know
some of us are trying to do this.
I wrote this morning: “I am good at being honest – nothing else is
worthwhile. But, ‘what is honest for me’ is forever changing. Being honest
used to mean dumping all my unintegrated stuff at someone’s feet. I would
argue that I MUST speak my ‘truth.’ But, being honest now means being
accountable for my experience…all of them…as they show up. No one is
to blame for any of them. They are all the result of the choices that I
have made.
But, I am a natural born manipulator. I think I am being accountable, when
my ego is back stage using my delusions of being accountable as a puppet,
to get its selfish needs met (while looking like the humble one). It is
like I was born with two entities within my one human form. One entity
wants to Love, grow and expand; the other is insatiable, and wants to fill
its belly with more, more, and more stuff, and it doesn’t care about
anyone else…separation. It is ‘Mental illness’, as Tom Shadyac calls this
spade a spade, in his wonderful movie, I Am. It is subtle; until you blow
the lid off Oscar’s garbage can, and find that there is a HUGE, ugly
monster in there, under what seems, at a superficial glance, to just be a
benign stuffed toy! It is a bit unnerving when we realize that that
monster has been calling all the shots, all along.
I think it was Louise who said something to the effect that the only way
to navigate our Life path is by feeling our way, using our hearts? There
is a deeper Knowing within, that wants to Inform us, if only we can open
our hearts up to hear it. This is, I believe, our True calling.
Love,
Jeanette
Deep gratitude for each of you,
So much echoes within me as I read each of your words. I was at the point you speak of Louise – last night – I knew there was more, and yet no words flowed as I sat saturated with exhaustion to my bones -breath to breath engaging Quantum TLC.
I knew exactly where I was in the process … knowing my familiar words had run its course – the story I’ve been telling myself about evolution, the state of the world, the state of my life, my conscious creating habits, even if it has been a short story of a couple of months. It has run its course.
I’ve heard it, honed it, it knows the predictable patterns through which it will evoke the more to rock through my neuropatterns and press the edges with just enough uncomfortably – to appear I am engaging deeply. And yet I know the old predictable pattern was not calling near enough to the the magnitude of the dive I am hungry for. What was different was I did not force myself to find the next layer, I allowed myself to soften and turn to sleep – and that was my deep dive to the bottom of the ocean last night.
For me in this journey and way of being – the hunger never subsides. If quiet for a time this thing I am calling hunger – it comes back with more intensity, more precision, with more of the Force of Nature that I am. Beaconing me to RISE, RISE in my truth, to invite and allow that divine sacred WHOLE expression be voiced and lived with passion about what matters most deeply to me.
I do not pretend to know the potency of my willingness to act – and yet I know it has impact without a doubt, not only on my own life yet for my family, community locally/globally and the planet. I know I’m too far down this path to not act. Whether this expression is in the written word, the spoken word, dance, drumming, or deep connected moments to the inner core of me – my Soul – in the place of stillness at one with the cosmos. All of it requires stamina, unwavering commitment to my own evolution first, and a deep sense of self compassion and love for myself. Love with a spine for the record. It is the biggest challenge for me to soften into this magnitude of expression and the Force of Nature that I am. I am far more comfortable and patient being the midwife to another Soul reclaiming their birthright – than I am with myself. This tide is shifting though.
I do not go quietly into the night, I do not hold back in collectives of women or men – I choose wisely mindfully – I give to much of a damn – to remain silent, to not speak or not show up.
Your words “If we go further, we will cross a threshold… leaving the compound of our familiar realities” This I know … its feels like my daily life… Today in circle with 11 women, the topic Sacred Relating – in partnership was one of those thresholds of magnitude. When I owned my truth, it was a magnificent creation, In the those moments when I took the space to be fully vulnerable and visible in the process of quantum TLC, that there was a shift in the room. My expression was not only palpable to myself, you could have heard a pin drop, individuals holding their breath and time stood still. Tonight I realized how far I have come… 2 years ago in a circle of 20 women, when I was the only one then…I did not have the capacity nor safety to Rise and own the wave that I am – in a room full women awakening yet (as an assumption) not willing to descend into the body below the neck line.
Here is where the distinction lies across the pathways to truth and evolution of consciousness. I see and hear others sharing their truth and authentic way of being – yet the living process of the WEL-Systems context® – I rarely hear anywhere else.
I know this context has offered me a platform of owning deep safety within and a recognition that capacity expands in the leap – not waiting for the appropriate time to make it happen. Not waiting for the intellect to catch up, not waiting for the right women to be in the room to speak.
Acceleration happens when I am wiling to own a process, be in my body and know that all that moves inside me, all my thoughts, fears, apprehensions, fire, passion is mine to own. My truth is my truth, and the body is a gateway, a portal for evolution of consciousness to descend shifting and permeating all that is. The body is key to by pass this key element – is an illusion that you are doing ‘the work’. It is the instrument of perception through which I created my ‘life’ here on earth. I have come to a place in my journey that I wiling, capable and on a daily basis activate the deep seeded cellular memory and intelligence of Who and What I AM – it is HOW I BREATHE!
Here are the words that came after my body stabilized this afternoon:
All you need to do… is BE
You show up in collectives expecting to see what has already been created.
My child, it no longer exists.
My dear it lives so deeply within you.
It is the tapestry you have woven with your authenticity and presence and it is done.
The fight is over, lay your sword down, trust in the process that has already unfolded.
The New Dawn has awakened with new possibilities and life.
Stay with yourself, persist with loving kindness for yourself as you would offer to another.
Be your own midwife.
Lay down your well worn coated armour.
Walk in your vulnerability in the here and now.
Love, Dance, Rant, Rage, Laugh ~ Birth the world you have come here to co-create.
Walk loudly upon the earth, Drum with the thunder from inside you. Let your primal cries touch the ends of the universe and descend to the core of you.
Mahalo
With that I’m done for now.