Archive for the ‘personal sustainability’ Category

« Older Entries
Newer Entries »

Running trails, high frequency tuneable sets, a body singing

Tuesday, October 25th, 2011

How to explain to non runners the feeling of running when you hit the high note? A natural high, the body, nature, beauty, freedom, and low level flying.

This passed weekend I participated, for the second year in a row, in The Lamington Classic. This event, now 42 years old, is one of the oldest, if not the oldest trail runs in Australia.

Starting in the beautiful Green Mountains of South East Queensland, O’Reillys resort, day one is a half marathon across very technical (as in tree roots, rocks, mud, switchbacks, undergrowth, overhanging vines) trail, the first part of the Great Walk (a 50 km walk from O’Reillys to Springbrook), to arrive at Binna Burra on the Beechmont Ridge. Day 2, is the return run, this time slightly complicated by more uphills, and some already tired, sore legs. And the occasional hang over from too much cheer post race Saturday.

For 17 years I have been a dedicated runner. Rare are the days that I struggle to get out of bed to run. And in summer in Queensland, with the birds awake before 4 am, and full light by 4.30, getting out of bed to the dawning day is the best way to celebrate life.

The most amazing thing about running, as about most sports, is that you are constantly learning. While I certainly qualify for mastery in running at many levels, its beauty is that it can humble you in an instant. Reduce you to a shadow of your usual confident running self. In a heart beat. It can also surprise the heck out of you, and out of nowhere comes the place where you breath heaven.

Few people who do not run understand the reasons why we runners get so much joy from the experience. Pounding the pavement…day in and out. Year in and out. For everyone the reason why is different, but the themes are close.

Multiple reasons for me…the joy of movement, the opportunity to stay fit and in shape, the ability to eat chocolate cake without guilt, the camaraderie from running with others, the constant and ever increasing atunement to the body, to its conversation with you, the ability to see the world and run; that my body feels like singing when we run together (my body and I, when we really run in partnership), stress and anger release, time in nature, outdoors…all of these reasons and more.

I was explaining to a client that the precessional effects I have gained from running have far exceeded the cost of my commitment. Specifically, I get to tune into my body at a high frequency every day. To be clear, not all runners do this. Many don’t. They are the ones that get injured, fall apart, push too hard, break down. The addiction they have to running exceeds their common sense. Or, to be blunt, they simply don’t listen to their body, because it is speaking to them, as it is to all of us, every minute of every hour of every day.

Any masterful athlete knows that their body is an exquisite instrument, irreplicable… to be honoured, respected and above all, listened to. Our bodies speak constantly. But do we listen? And if so, do we act? Once again we find the battle-field of the ego and the voice of wisdom and truth. Most pay homage to the ego. Humility comes when we honour the wisdom of our bodies truth.

This, as well as our energetic system…informing us constantly…it really is quite amazing. The wisdom that resides in our cells, in our atoms, in our energy field. So strange that we even doubt it! Like a high definition tunable radio set, we can pick up signals of ever finer frequency. The older amongst us learn how to do this, as an art, because we had our systems numbed out when we were children, or were born without the skills. Many children today however, are born with all of their channels wide open. And simply no resources on how to block, protect, discern, and manage the signals. And rarely a parent or health care professional who would even consider that we have gone through a physical and energetic metamorphous that has increased our signal receptor ability to off-the-charts. Our children’s systems cannot cope, and they often get drugged, numbed or locked down. Autism, depression…on the rise…no mistaking the change in the humans ability to receive signals at ever higher frequencies.

As a runner, I have learned, am still learning, to tune in at a level most people don’t. This not only helps me stay fit, it allows me to tune into emotional energies. The field, whether it be Rupert Sheldrake’s morphogenetic field, or the akashic field, or the quantum field. Same field. Acute attention required. The signals are all there, all the time, just like radio signals are always present…they just need the tunable set.

Come Saturday, Day 1 of the Lamington Classic. Relaxed, running with two girl friends, plan to run together. I am by far the most experienced trail runner. I lead. First 7 kms is gradual uphill, so just a steady grind. Then it gets very technical, and downhill. My body has not been feeling sparky the last few weeks when I have run. Like that box of chocolates, you never know what you are going to get…so best just to show up and have a go. Not today. I am flying down those trails. I am in love with love, and trails and running and mud, and being deep in a jungle. For a little while I wait for the girls to catch up. But at some point I just go for it. It is too much fun, there is too much rhythm going on. I feel as free as a bird, and happy as a pig in mud. My physical and energetic body showed up today. Yeh baby! And I am in my element. Downhills, trails, technical. Requiring 100% pure focused attention. A single lapse and you are gone. No time to see the view, the trees, or anything but the path in front. This is where it becomes you, your body, your breath, your foot strike, and nothing else…nothing, not a thought, not a thing…no room. I am not good at sitting meditation, but I sure can run. Woohooo…this is life…this is it..right there…hurtling down hills of mud and rocks in the deep jungle.

At some point with about 5 kms to go I get a bit wobbly…low blood sugar…should have had some fuel on board. Have to take it extra carefully. It is the brain that falters before the body, blood sugar to the brain and lapses in concentration. By the time low blood sugar hits the body it is well advanced.

Last few kms and I trip and mildly sprain my ankle. My formula for this, learned over years of running, is to keep running. Have to slow up a bit, but definitely don’t stop. Years of doing this and I never suffer even mild swelling afterwards, when I finally stop. How remarkable is the body?

Home…wonderful feeling…crossing the line…then turn around and go back to meet the girls as they come in.

The afternoon spent with way too much merriment, and then the sleep of someone who has run hard. The kind of sleep people would pay good money for. The sleep of fresh air, outdoors and hard physical exercise.

The next day, just Fiona and I, as Donna went home late in the day of day 1. We grind the hills, pretty much all up hill until the last 7 kms. Then open it up. Yiiipppyyy. Home straight, downhill, the joy of low level flying through the forest. Full focus required, as body is well and truly tired by now. Muscles sore, energy system starting to lag..

Ah the joy. Pushing just a little into the red zone. Not too much. But enough to know you have done a great job.

Cross the line…and we are done.

A hot shower, followed by scones and jam and cream, and a session feeding the magnificent Rosella’s, before we hit the road for home. Birds on my head, my shoulder, my arms, loving their beauty, and that I can be privileged to be so close to such magnificent creatures.

Every ingredient to make a wonderful weekend. Good friends, great running, beautiful country, lots of laughs, excellent sleep, wildlife, mud, nature, beauty, and the joy of downhill trail running.

Share

Tags: , ,
Posted in Guinea Pig C-personal category, Personal Development, personal sustainability, Positive Deviants, Unique | No Comments »

Truth at the Speed of Light

Tuesday, October 18th, 2011

“You can’t handle the truth” yelled Col.Jessup forcefully to Lt. Kaffee in the famous court room scene from the great movie, “A Few Good Men.”

Col. Jessup was right. Almost all of us cannot handle the truth. Not the real truth. The whole truth. And so we carefully craft our lives to avoid facing it.

We drug ourselves, over eat, stay extra busy, sleep too much or too little. Lurch from one addiction to another. Because underneath is a truth that we are desperately trying to ignore. Yet, paradoxically, in this truth is our ultimate emancipation. Our deepest integrity.

Truths like….my life is a lie. My relationship is hollow. Our leaders lie, and we say that is OK. Our governments are corrupt and I am doing nothing about it. My child is taking drugs, my partner is having an affair. I have spent my life working at a heartless job because I sold my soul a long time ago out of fear. I have a house full of stuff I don’t really want, or rarely use. I am so afraid to take the step I most want to take because I might fail. Or, even deeper. I am a liar. I am a cheat. I betray myself. I betray.

We are at the stage of human evolution where everything is speeding up. Like it or not. We have transited from the age of matter to the age of energy. The solar age. The age of light.

Our children have developed the capacity to tune into signals and frequencies that we are unable to access. Their receptors are hyper sensitive. They have all the AD’s and other autism’s that seem to be spreading like wildfire.  We have no historical way of supporting them in this. So we resort to drugging them into somnolence. We do not have the language or the tools to deal with the new wiring of the new human. We have no pathways to navigate. There are no leaders who know how to run businesses and governments in this solar age. And besides they are so buried in a system of lies and complicity that there is no distinction between the true and the beautiful. North is lost to them.

We are trying to apply the old pathways to new roads. And what a mess that creates.

If we really had the courage we would be in a constant dialogue with truth. Truth at the speed of light. Available to us 24/7. Tuning into the highest frequency of truth. Silent long enough to listen and hear. Brave enough to act. Wise enough to listen to the truths of others as ours emerges and so build a coherent whole.

There is no plan to this level of truth. It emerges. Whole and intact, in the moment.

But can we handle it? Take a deep breath…your life is calling. Life is calling all of us. Can you hear it?

Share

Tags: , ,
Posted in Change, Conscious Business, Personal Development, personal sustainability, Positive Deviants | 4 Comments »

Of gifts and dignity, the antithesis of starving in our obesity

Monday, August 8th, 2011

The mythology of a market society reverses the picture of  gift society. In a market society…Getting rather than giving is the mark of a substantiative person, and the hero is the ‘self-possessed’ ‘self-made’. So long as these assumptions rule, a disquieting sense of triviality, of worthlessness even, will nag the man or woman who labors in the service of a gift and whose products are not adequately described as commodities. Where we reckon our substance by our acquisitions, the gifts of the gifted man are powerless to make him substantial. Lewis Hyde, The Gift.

In the opening stages of the Financial Literacy workshop in Berkeley in July 2011, David Martin started with bringing mindfulness to the very ground we stood on. In the very early days of white mans occupation of what is now known as Berkeley, thousands of men were brought from China as cheap labor, to work the gold mines and the building of the railroad. It was slave labor. What they were offered and what they got was vastly different. These men were reduced to mere commodities. We honoured them, and the pain they suffered. We honoured them for the lies they were told.

It was a very profound way to start a journey into the heart and spirit of our current financial system.

I felt their pain. I know well what it is like to be dishonoured in your humanity. To be trivialised. To have your work reduced to a number on a balance sheet. I know what it is like to spend days and years knowing that your unique brand of service does not match the commodification of the market. Of what price is it? How can we charge for this? I know well what it is like to have others dim your light because it does not fit the market model. For many years I thought it was because I lacked intelligence. I was missing the money making gene. Or something like that.

But no. There was no gene missing. I was trying to make my gifts sing in a market that did not have a mechanism to value them. My heart goes out to every person who has a gift, and has spent years nourishing that gift, and years in the struggle of having their gift be seen as worthless. Not because it is worthless, but because a market cannot find a way to put a price tag on it and make it to ’scale’. Or, because something deep in you knows that to commodify everything reduces us, divides us, and keeps us divided.

I know I do not speak to an empty room when I speak of this pain. I do not speak to an empty room when I speak of the distance we find ourselves from the blessing that comes with gifts and gifting. There is a rising human hunger for true exchange. Where I get to know the giver of the gift, and they get to know me. Where the spirit of the gift starts to live beyond itself.

By its own design, the exchange of money for something is devoid of humanity. Once the exchange is done, the deal is complete. No relationship required. Just a transaction. Sometimes this is fine. But if it was all that we did life becomes increasingly barren. We isolate ourselves by our very mechanism of exchange.

And behind all of this is the getting…more…and more…and this, this alone, is the measure of the success of us. More stuff, more money, more fame, more press, more…more…more. Getting. And getting. And not just getting, but keeping. Removing from circulation. Hoarding. Anything contained within a boundary must contain as well its own exhaustion.

What is given away feeds again and again, but what is kept feeds only once an leaves us hungry. We are starving to death. Or starving in our obesity. As many are truly starving, not for lack of food.

I feel the yearning in people from around the world, the deep yearning for connection to our own gift, for honouring of the gifts we have to share, for a way to have our gifts be valued that nourish us on every level.

The noise that is screaming loudly in the current global economic market place is the death screams of a system that is devoid of the very humanness we so long for.

Let us rise from these hollow ashes and engage in a way that honours all of our gifts and releases all people from slavery and hunger, be it of food or soul.

The good news is that we do not have to wait another moment. The path is already there. I invite you to join those who are walking the path.

Share

Tags: , , ,
Posted in Conscious Business, Current Affairs, Financial Literacy, personal sustainability | 1 Comment »

Financial literacy, new friends, abundance as a way of being

Wednesday, August 3rd, 2011

 

In the history of the world it is often the seemingly small events that have the power to make the most significant changes. Rosa Parks refusing to sit at the back of the bus. Mohamed Bouazizi, who’s personal sacrifice sparked an uprising across the Middle East.

In my world, the small but significant event took place July 22 to 24, 2011 in Berkeley California, where a group of about 20 magnificent people gathered to give birth to a project I have been working on for some 25 years. These great people found themselves in a deep exploration of financial literacy. Not the type of financial literacy you will find at business school. Or in the economics department. We stepped into the conversation, guided by the insight of David Martin, looking to bring truth to the very core animating impulse behind our current global financial system. What was the intent of design? How did the intent become manifest? What does this mean to humanity? What can we do to repurpose this system, allowing a different outcome to the one we are currently observing around the world. (Massive personal and sovereign debt, an ever increasing gap between the wealthy and the poor, global hunger and starvation, gut wrenching poverty for the majority of citizens on spaceship earth.)

Through this extraordinary process over three days, our Universe was tilted. Even without being able to fully get the language, as one participant said, “I am able to deeply get that this is truth.”

This journey began for me when I was 26 years old and, as an ambitious young entrepreneur, I wanted to understand how to make money. So off I went to a class called Money and You. Still running to this day, this program, designed by the great Werner Erhard, tipped me completely onto a path of self discovery and development. More than that, it also introduced me to the work of R. Buckminster Fuller, one of my life long beloved teachers.

As I am now approaching my 51st birthday, I have, as the richness of age gives you, the opportunity to look back at life and see the threads, that no matter what, have remained consistent, through every up and down and in and out of my life.

Those threads have been..

*Integrity
*A forensic quest for truth
*As part of this quest for truth, a deep desire to understand the very systems that form the foundations of our current life, and in particular, our economic/value exchange system.

As I have written before, life doesn’t turn out how you expect it. I neither expected to be a mother, and a single one at that, or to have spent the majority of my life single. I also never expected that I would have a personal struggle with finances and money.

But such is as it is. I have half written another article, “If I were God” where I posit that to reach this place in my life right now, where my commitment is to bringing light to the current system in a way that emancipates people worldwide, I needed to go through every single one of the days of my life, exactly as they have been, to this very point. All the fear, the pain, the confusion, the struggle, the effort. All of it.

Indeed, the perfection of the path is as exquisite as it has been painful.

For many years these seeds were growing in me. Then in 2006, during one week in October while traveling in the USA, I had the good fortune (or was it more auspicious than that?) to meet Bernard Lietaer and to hear a talk given by David Martin. Bernard, a world renowned economist, and an expert in complimentary currencies, demonstrated the power of a currency to change the world from short term to long term thinking in a heart beat. David Martin, with precision and an almost detached clarity, walked through the exact events that lead to what we now know as the Global Financial Crisis.

From this week I was seized with a deep truth. I knew nothing about the very system that underpins everything we do. I was deeply unconscious. And as someone who is committed to consciousness and forensic truth, this was no longer viable. So my quest went from vague to 80% committed. The reading began. Economics books. Articles. From mind numbingly boring to deeply riveting.

Two years ago, August 28th, I met David Martin in a skype call, specifically to propose to him that we co-create a financial literacy workshop. In his wisdom, David challenged me to consider the field effects of creating such a workshop. We also started working together as partners in The Constellation. Earlier this year my commitment shifted to 100% and I commenced a deep dialogue with two of David’s staff about the deep energetics of this workshop. This was a critical component. When you are working with such emotional material, material that people are so heavily invested in, the level of clarity around your purpose is crucial. I had to clear away any residue of my own dogma, my own stuckness, my own agenda.

In early July, with a few weeks notice, we decided to put a stake in the sand and invite family and friends to the very early first draft of this workshop.

Several people who showed up on day 1 did not come back. The truth might set you free, but first it can piss people off. Or, when people have so much invested in the current system, the very thought of having to face their collusion with it, and their desire to maintain the status quo, becomes too frightening to contemplate. Or whatever the reason.

While we did cover distinctions around money, debt, credit, public and private equity, the federal reserve banking system, bonds, insurance, productivity, utility, etc, what we really engaged with was the core animating impulse behind all of these. I have know intuitively for most of my life that our system is perverse. That at its core it is a corruption, specifically designed to enslave and dehumanize value for all but the minority.

I have also spent years berating myself on my ‘lack’ of intelligence to ‘work’ the system. In truth, there has been many times when I had opportunities to do just that. To turn left and take the money, when my gut and my own truth said no. I am beginning to see that my ‘lack’ of intelligence was indeed the opposite.

When we started on day one of the workshop with an honouring of all the people who have suffered through enslavement, poverty, death and loss of dignity as a direct manifestation of our current system, I felt their pain. Not as some isolated observer, but as my own pain. I know the feeling of being marginalised. I know the feeling of being made to feel less than. I know what being devalued means. I am that person.

And, the truth of all truths, I am currently enslaved. I am a slave. I have debt.

This statement takes a moment to digest. Most of us are enslaved. Many of us have been dehumanized over and over. And while we might live in extreme wealth compared to many people in the world, our wealth enslaves us. It is designed to do this.

From anchoring in deep truths, those kind of truths that turn a healthy set of brains into scrambled eggs, we did move into an inspired place as a launching pad to move back into full engagement with the world. We explored integral accounting, abundance, and the power of community. How, without changing the existing system, people can re-purpose the current structure to invite a different engagement. Now. Today.

I observed three of the most magnificent women commit their heart, soul, mind and body to this work. I sat in the experience of feeling an unbreakable vow from others. Such a rare phenomenon. Rare, rare, rare. I had people step up to support me totally. Wow. (Breathe Christine. Receiving support has not been easy for me.)

It was an incredible three days. It is only the beginning. During last night, it became clear to me that my immediate next step is to write articles about the key pieces. Money, debt, etc..to this endeavor I will be commencing immediately. Simultaneously, we have a team of magnificent people committed to bringing this work to the world. I know that there are people who are hungering for it.

Please let me know if you are one of them.

(A special and deep bow to every single person on this journey through my entire life. Particularly, David Martin, and the people in the room in Berkeley. And to Dori, Nirvana and Elizabeth, for demonstrating such generosity, grace and commitment.)

Share

Tags: , , , ,
Posted in Change, Conscious Business, Current Affairs, Leadership Development, personal sustainability, Positive Deviants | 5 Comments »

Not Afraid Enough – naming ‘he who cannot be named’

Sunday, July 17th, 2011

“Instead of medicating ourselves on shopping, food, drugs, alcohol, eternal youth, gossip, reality TV, and intense narcissism as a way to avoid facing what we feel in our increasing fear, far better to step deep into the fear, to speak the truth, and name the devil. For ‘he who cannot be named’ does indeed have a name. Dare we speak it?”

It seems we are living in a world of fear. I certainly feel it. Fear of the breakdown of our climate, our economy, of families, of our way of life. At a personal level, fear of how I am going to make it, to survive, financially. And what type of world am I leaving my daughter?

I often think back to other ages in history. Like the great plague. Imagine how terrifying this time would have been? No one family spared. A terrible, gruesome death, no pattern to it for the people to make sense of. Who lived and who died was like a lottery. It seemed so unfair, so irrational.

Or to the recent world wars. Even in our relatively unscathed Australia, most of our young men were gone on ships to the other side of the world, where letters took more than 6 weeks to arrive one way. The enemy of the day was on our door step, invading Darwin, North Queensland, and Papua New Guinea. Food was rationed. The future was uncertain.

It seems that every period in history has had events that have had similar energetics in common.

*Terrifying uncertainty
*Loss on a significant to extreme scale – be it life, or home, or community, or country, or environment
*The need to bring in harsh austerity measures
*The seemingly random arrow of fate, choosing one person, or community, or nation, over another
*The influence of nature that renders man without power – be it a plague, or a tsunami, or fire, drought, flood, or the rage of the microbes
*An elite power structure that had as its bedrock rampant corruption, greed and arrogance

We in our cosy western lifestyles have had it good for quite a while now. At the same time, we have gotten very fat. Obese. Lazy, unbelievably unhealthy, and indulgent to the extreme. We feel incredibly entitled to the life we have become used to. We feel entitled to shop at will, to over spend, over feed, and over consume pretty much everything. We feel entitled to eternal youth.

I watch with great fascination at the unravelling of an empire of propaganda. Murdoch and his insatiable desire for world domination. How timely. What a beautiful example of how life can change in a heart beat. I love that the British people will not let this one pass to the keeper. There is nothing money or the illusion of power can do when people unite and rise up. History has demonstrated this, time and again. And in our very recent history, we watch as the power of people in community say No to greed, corruption and injustice and in so doing discover they were not victims after all. They had chosen their own victim hood.

So here we are, fat, lazy and entitled, with the slow creep of terror seeping through the cracks. Yet at the same time we do all we can to avoid the fear. Our ‘new ageism’ means that fear and anger are bad. We should be skipping down the yellow brick road throwing daffodils all day long, imbued in such positivity. And if we are not doing this, then something is wrong with us.

Yet maybe we are not afraid enough? Maybe in our indulgence, our narcissism and laziness, we have avoided really standing in the fear. Really looking into the dark places. Naming the devil. For surely if we did, then we would be in the streets, up in arms. We would insist on radically changing our ways. We would demand that what a Stanford University report has revealed, that the world can switch to 100% renewable energy in 20 to 40 years, using todays technology, is implemented. We would insist on changing our political system from one where elections are brought for obscene amounts of money, and the politicians are forever pawns of the power of their purchaser. (In another world, this is called prostitution.) We would demand that our economic system returns to a system based on genuine productivity and value. We would find it totally unacceptable that one child dies of starvation while we spend billions on the costs of an obesity epidemic. And we would rage against a machine that allows the wealth to continue to be in the hands of a small few, a result of the multiple asymmetries that we have condoned as acceptable

And maybe, just maybe, if we did these things, we would change the course of the next few years enough to prevent a large scale systems breakdown.

On the other hand, humans have usually required to push themselves to break point before getting off the couch. Collapse can be very motivating once people have moved through the paralysis of fear unaddressed.

And just as each period of history has similar energetics in common, how we respond to serious crisis has common elements.

*A resilience and resourcefulness re-emerges that has been in a stupor from too much shopping and eating
*People come out from behind their walls and engage in community
*Generosity rises, amidst the lack and austerity
*Thoughtfulness and compassion resurrect
*Happiness goes up as life’s true values once again find a seat at the table (family, community, love, health, simplicity)
*Respect for each other and nature is held as sacrosanct
*The greedy, arrogant and corrupt power structures are uprooted and rendered harmless, even if for but a moment
*Genuine human productivity and creativity are valued

History has shown that we resolve, at this point in the cycle, to learn from our lessons, and never do this again. But, like a very slow spreading cancer, drop by drop, nano milimetre by nano milimetre, we fall back under the spell. And the cycle repeats. And again.

When people talk about this current time in history as being the most critical time in human affairs, I am not so sure. We have had many critical times. We suffer deeply from short termism in so many ways.

Instead of medicating ourselves on shopping, food, drugs, alcohol, eternal youth, gossip, reality TV, and intense narcissism as a way to avoid facing what we feel in our increasing fear, far better to step deep into the fear, to speak the truth, and name the devils. For ‘he who cannot be named’ does indeed have a name. Dare we speak it?

The question is, do we have the guts, the tenacity, the passion, the compassion, the love, and the will, to get off the couch and do something?

Share

Tags: , , ,
Posted in Change, Massive Action, personal sustainability, Positive Deviants | No Comments »

On a Sunday morning run

Monday, July 11th, 2011

It was freezing. Well freezing for us from the Sunshine state of Queensland. About 6 C (42F). Our homes are built for the heat, so in winter they are often cold, and we do not use heating. Getting out of bed in winter on a cold dark Sunday is hard. But I knew it would be worth it. I couldn’t not get up. I had a hot date with a cold beautiful day.

By the time I got to Surfers Paradise beach, just 7 minutes drive from home, the really deep reds of dawn were gone and the light was stronger. On days like this, when the air is crisp, the sky is cloudless…there is something about the quality of light that is so much sharper than in summer, when a haziness creates blurred visual boundaries. Everything is sharp, and almost hard from the quality of light. Its the difference between a Picasso and a Monet.

There was a guy in a truck who pulled up just after me, with a coffee and a guitar. I wondered how many times he started his Sundays like this. Alone with his guitar on an almost deserted beach as the sun crested the horizon? I didn’t hear him play. I looked for him when I came back from my run, but couldn’t see him. His truck was still there.

I ran north, up through Narrow Neck, and then Main Beach and onto the trails that go to the top of the spit. It is only about a 6 k run to the very end of the spit from down-town Surfers Paradise, but when you are in the grasses and trees of the spit trails, you could be anywhere in the world. It is part of the reason I love living here. From the artifice of Surfers Paradise to the beauty of the spit, all in the same hour of running.

There was a man and his dog, the man of his bike, the dog on a lead. The dog was towing the man for quite a while. Further up, the man set the dog free to run, and sniff, and run, just as the dog liked. I suspect this is a daily ritual. There was a joy coming from the dog that was palpable.

As I run through the tree’s with the rising sun on my right, I experience my own lazer light show. Full light, then dark, again and again, from tree to tree. I am mostly blinded. I think to myself, I get the disco lights but at dawn, on a run, in a forest. How lucky am I.

At the turn around point I stopped and went to the beach so I could simply breath it all in.  A few people where doing yoga in the dawn sun. There were several walkers. It was too cold and too early for the army of walkers who would arrive in the next 30 or so minutes.

I am thinking to myself..how do I capture these thoughts? For this is no ordinary day, in an ordinary Universe. These are no ordinary moments. These people, who I do not know, are no ordinary people. Somehow, all of us, in our own way, have managed to find a door into heaven. And together, but alone, we have shared the most beautiful of beauties. The dawn of a midwinters day, by the beach, on a day that will never come again. These random strangers, each having made the choice to get up from a warm bed in the dark, are part of me. The immensity of all of this, the beauty, the collision of experiences, breaks open my heart.

Share

Tags: , ,
Posted in Guinea Pig C-personal category, Personal Development, personal sustainability | 2 Comments »

Who’s to Blame? Hmm–let’s start with the man in the mirror.

Thursday, June 30th, 2011

How did we get to this place? The place where the first response to anything we don’t like is to find someone or something to blame? Our complete abdication of any form of responsibility makes me sick to the stomach.

The co-valent pair of blame is victim hood. The moment I blame anyone or anything I immediately reduce myself to becoming a victim. One does not go without the other. (And yes, let me be clear there are very legitimate victims in the world. People who have suffered terrible transgressions because of other people’s greed and stupidity. I am not talking about those people in this article. Interestingly, many of these people do not behave like ‘victims’. They often don’t live in blame.) I am talking about the guy who gets his jaw broken in a drunken bar room brawl and wants to put all the blame on the guy who drunkenly hit him. I guess he could have been standing off to the side in complete innocence, minding his own business and some random guy came up and hit him. That might have happened. But it probably didn’t. I would guess that he was doing some form of provoking. Is he willing to take any measure of responsibility? Or is it all about blaming the other guy? And getting the pay-out? Will money ease his pain? Or is it vengeance he is after? When has vengeance ever healed someone of anything? Oh, I forgot, we have had thousands of years of observing how vengeance begets vengeance and still we think it is a strategy that works. Ahh.well….no…it might ‘feel’ sweet, for a moment of time, but the scorpions tail of vengeance has a vicious bite and the poison lasts a lifetime, or more.

Or the person who dives into a shallow canal and becomes paralysed. Blame goes to the land owner for not having a sign up saying “shallow water” Tragic accident, but really, do we have to have signs everywhere to protect ourselves from being sued? Apparently so. How about the fool who dived into the water in the first place taking responsibility for doing so? No, he had nothing to do with it it. So we now spend millions on protection and insurance. And the circle goes around. And around. The lawyers win, big time by being paid. But everyone loses when we add all the costs together. Our communities, our well-being, our bank accounts…all suffer.

Please don’t complain about rising insurance premiums if you also think it is OK for people to sue for tripping on a pavement and breaking a bone.

We are all in the blame game. Playing small or large. The moment I participate in any form of blame I reduce myself to a victim. In doing so I become disempowered. Sometimes this is a very subtle game. Let me share a personal example. The “I don’t know what to do?”  question. This is a form of the victim/blame game. I want to abdicate my responsibility to someone else so I don’t have to make a decision. (Or I want to abdicate my responsibility to no decision at all, which is equally as disempowering, and often I end up blaming me.) By doing this, I am off the hook, and if all goes pear shaped, I have someone else to blame. We all do this all the time. We abdicate our choices to ‘experts’, and people that we deem have more authority than we do. And then when our ‘experts’ fail to deliver, we go right into blame and complain. And we want vengeance? For what? For not having the backbone to make a choice? Or to be responsible for the choices we have made?

How did we get this way? How did we become so addicted to victim hood? Please show me a single victim of this nature who is also happy, and in their own power? It is not a happy, empowered place to be.

How did we get to a place where abdicating any form of responsibility is normal operations?

Part of the answer to this question is that it is designed into our operating system. We have limited liability companies as the backbone of our industry. Have we stopped to ask, why limit liability? A corporation has the rights of a human without any of the responsibilities. (Indeed I am asking if humans have many responsibilities these days? Our blame epidemic is so out of control.) If you are serious about standing to full account, about being sovereign of your own choices, then you are also willing to take responsibility. This means that by inviting the very energetics of limited liability into your work you are colluding with the very system you might be trying to transcend.

Part of the answer is that we don’t want to take responsibility. This is the realm of the healthy adult. We want to stay in our child and be ‘cared for’ by the government, or the system, or the…? We want to stay helpless and small. We fear our own power. And we like to throw tantrums and demand this and that because we ‘deserve’ it. I ask please that you remove the word deserve from your vocabulary right now. It marries with entitlement, which is an epidemic of our society. I am entitled to…I deserve it? And the other person doesn’t? A more subtle form of vengeance.

It is far easier to point the finger than to look in the mirror. Not much heavy lifting to be done to point the finger. There is a high price, apart from rising insurance premiums. The price is our own vitality, happiness, self-esteem, sovereignty. Looking in the mirror and owning our responsibility is hard. And brave. And it is the only place I know where true freedom lives.

I am responsible for my choices. And yes, I get to choose. Accidents do happen. People make real mistakes. Bad things happen to good and bad people. Always, always, I have a choice in how I respond. No one or no thing can take away that choice as long as I am breathing air on my own. I am sovereign to my choices, to my responses to what life deals me. This is true freedom.

And why do people get away with blame and victim hood in our lives? Because we let them. Because we say that is OK? Funny that, responsibility starts with the man in the mirror. Hmm…that would be me. And you.

Where does blame live in your life? What are you doing to unstick the tentacles of blame from your world? Please share…

Share

Tags: , , ,
Posted in Change, Current Affairs, Leadership Development, Massive Action, Personal Development, personal sustainability, Positive Deviants | 1 Comment »

High Frequency Tunable Sets – When our sensory perception collides with our biology

Monday, June 20th, 2011

Like a very high frequency tunable radio set, our ability to pick up and send energetically, instantaneously, to multiple people, within our Universe is advancing at a rapid pace. Our biology is struggling to keep up with our energetic tunability.

We expect human biology to stay the same. But like everything, our biology, and specifically, our neurology, is undergoing accelerated acceleration.

Kids (and adults) who spend hours a day gaming are increasing their twitch speed. Constant high frequency input of images and output of hand eye co-ordination require a highly specified neurological network. Even without the online gaming world, our entire world has become faster. All of us a juggling competing commitments, multitasking, texting/talking/driving/working online/offline. The demands on our neurology to co-ordinate all of these activities are extreme.

We also seem to have an increase in neurological disorders, such as autism in its various forms. ADD, ADHD…the list goes on. Some of these conditions are legitimate, many children are diagnosed because of laziness. Strangely, we insist that our child be special, but if special is not looking like well behaved and ‘normal’ we medicate at the drop of a hat.

On the subject of medication, we are all over medicated. Even if we do not take medication, if we eat meat we are ingesting very high levels of antibiotics, as well as other spooky substances. Not to mention the ingestion of all the various other nasties in our air (radiation fall-out from Japan, with measures being taken in other parts of the world that are worth being concerned about). The impending superbug is only a matter of time. We have sterilised ourselves off the charts, inviting the always changing world of microbes to adapt to all manner of antibiotics, so that in the future, the very diseases we had conquered will thrive again or in new super resistant forms.

In this constantly changing, constantly ‘stressed’ ecosystem, our sensory perceptual capabilities are developing off the charts. If we pause for a moment, we can tune into frequencies unavailable to most people 50 years ago. Science points to entanglement…that when we have two paired particles and we separate them, if we tickle one, the other will feel the same tickle instantaneously, even if the distance between the two particles is thousands of miles. No speed of light here. Instantaneous. Time and space become irrelevant. The wisdom traditions all say we are all one. Exactly what was meant by this is becoming increasingly undeniable. Chaos theory talks about a butterfly flapping its wings in Brazil causing a storm in Asia. Bucky Fuller would say that all of us are tunable sets. Like a radio receiver, if we adjust the dials, we can pick up signals from around the world. The signals are already present, all that is missing is the tunable set. We are becoming high frequency tunable sets.

Some people are already developing skills in this area that make no sense to our empirical  world. Intuition is becoming a more common place term, but it is still not regarded with any seriousness in traditional leadership programs. It still exists in the ‘new age’ genre. Science is racing to keep up with the unexplainable, unmeasurable world of people with extraordinary tunable sets. Their skills and abilities are viewed as unreasonable, and irrational.

Even with the rapid upgrade of our neurology via over stimulation, our intellect and language, our biology and our awareness is unable to catch up with our ability to pick up all the frequencies we increasingly have access to. In revolt, our biology develops autism, ADD etc. Our energetic systems are colliding with our biology with catastrophic consequences.

Many people will not be able to make it across the chasm. All of us need to develop the physical and spiritual stamina to not only acknowledge the signals we are sensing, but to make sense of them and have the intellect and language to interpret them. And to create a shield when our systems are in overload. To turn off the tunable set at times. An integral life practice is critical.

Are you aware of becoming an increasingly powerful tunable set? How do you manage it? Do you have any thoughts to add to this?

Share

Tags: , , ,
Posted in Change, Current Affairs, Leadership Development, Personal Development, personal sustainability, Positive Deviants, Unique | No Comments »

Silence is the new loud

Sunday, June 5th, 2011

A few weeks ago I wrote about getting back to basics. Part of that was to spend 10 minutes every morning and evening in silence. Not necessarily meditation, although it may be, not always prayer, although that may be there, not even contemplation. Silence was the key.

I find this easy to do in the evening, before sleep, when I am slowing down. Harder to do in the morning when I am fully awake and ready to jump into the day. (I am a morning person, one of those people who bound out of bed with full energy. The secret to this is a good 7 to 8 hours of great sleep. No surprise here.) In the morning my mind is like a room full of superballs, bouncing wildly all over the place.

The most surprising part of this commitment has been the deep recognition of my thirst, my yearning for…

silence.

Stillness, silence. No agenda, nothing to do, nothing to get, nothing to hear, no where to go, to learn, to be. Just silence and stillness. Like falling into the softness of your favourite arm chair, luxury and beauty, all combined. Spaciousness and eternity.

When I go into silence I am present to the low grade hum of Universe. The primordial sound, the source. It is like coming home. There is a peace there that nourishes my soul.

Our lives are filled with noise. Noise of activity, noise of the external world, noise of the endless chatter inside our head. Busy-ness and noise. Our days are like a cork bobbing in a very wild sea, constant motion, constant challenge from our environment. And then we usually numb ourselves out with TV, alcohol, food, facebook just so we can try to get to the ‘off’ switch.

I am never been a good meditator, although I have tried over the years. Let me go for a long run in a forest any day, than sitting still trying to still my mind for hours.

My little 10 minutes in the morning and at night of just being still and silent, without trying to meditate, or calm my mind, or do anything at all, has been the key. There is no striving for, no effort, no process. And it is beautiful. Beautiful. And so desperately missing from the endless busy-ness of life.

It has become a most wonderous, beloved part of my day.

Give it a go, and let me know what happens.

Share

Tags: , , ,
Posted in Guinea Pig C-personal category, Personal Development, personal sustainability | No Comments »

Integrity in marketing

Sunday, May 29th, 2011


Posted on his Facebook page, this comment by Michael Richardson created a very significant and rich dialogue.

Okay, so I just decided to no longer prostitute my email address for “free stuff”. Everyone and her mother in the, cough, “spiritual community”, is putting on “Free Teleseminars or Calls” or some such bs. Well, it’s not free. My email address, a precious part of my “Digital Body”, has value and I’m not going to whore it out anymore. Period.

 

I was sitting into this rich conversation which I have enjoyed seeing unfold (thanks everyone and Michael for raising it to start with) while on my run in the forest this morning. As is my long term habit as a coach and systems thinker, I seek to get to the bedrock impulse behind things.  The underlying context of the current internet marketing game (and our historical advertising game) is based on the fundamentals of the operating system behind everything we do which is built in scarcity. ‘I am not enough, there is not enough, we are not enough. I need more, and more, and more…and then some more. I am not good enough unless I have this and this and this…more money, more time, more love, more success, more stuff, the next ipod, ipad, another car, another x…to be a best seller, or famous….the business needs more market share, more profit, more growth, and did I mention profit?’

For what purpose do we seek more?

We need to be ruthlessly honest with the deeper intention behind our actions? Is it to get email addresses to sell more stuff, make more money…?? Most of us, if we pause for just a few moments and ask this question, know when we are under the ‘spell’ of spin. When the words that are expressed are designed very specifically to catch us in their spell. However, when we measure value through a single lens of money..which translates into number of sales, number of email addresses, and comes from a basis of scarcity, never enough, to win someone has to lose…then our choices are limited to this very game. “Success’ looks like making tons of money and being famous, and the game is to be successful. If we roll the tape back to our most aligned intent, and declare that…for example…if to make a shit load of money and to be famous is your intent…then have the balls to declare it. “I want your email address so I can sell something to you. Help me become rich and famous. I am going to use you as a pawn in the game and funny enough, you are going to say yes to playing.” The paradox is of course, that if we have the depth of integrity to be this honest with ourselves and declare this is our intention, it almost immediately transcends in the self inquiry and we move beyond this. This game of scarcity, dressed in drag to look like success as defined above (so I can feel good enough, smart enough, have enough status) is actually the major game in town. And it stems from the very operating system in which we live and breath. Therefore, whether we be the conductors of the game or the pawns we are all playing in the same game and we need to take responsibility for that. That includes me.

However, if we really hold as our intent to be of deepest service and to invite people to play if it really is something that resonates deeply with them, and we do not use spin, seduction, ‘clever’ marketing, but rather hold as true that we have something of value to offer that may support your life, and our energetics of the invitation matches the energetics of our core intent (syzergy) then the right people will opt in, by conscious, clean, untainted choice. They will be sovereign to their choice. Because we are not driven by a deep instinct based in scarcity, because we truly see that the world is abundant in every dimension, there is no ‘need’ for spin. And that whole deal of making it scarce (deadline for special offer and other ploys and cons), and all the other ‘spins’ designed to make us buy, are all based on scarcity…. this one thing you are selling will give me what I am missing, and then, it will be the next thing, and then the next. As my friend Jerome says, we are like greedy little caterpillars eating up all of the leaves.

How do I know? Because I have been well and truly seduced, more than once. And I suspect that many of you have as well. And that we are truly over it, as a very small game. However, the game’s ground of being is scarcity. It’s time to invite a game built on abundance, gratitude, service and reverence to all and where the measure of value is not to the god money, but to a multitude of values, which may include money and profit and wellbeing, but not at the price of any person or thing including offering ‘consciousness and personal development’ to people through seducing them via covert means that appeals to what is unconscious in them.

I would love to hear your thoughts on this one…lets keep the dialogue open. And please point us to people who use integrity as the core of their invitation and offering. Two that I know of are Hiro Boga and Chris Guillebeau, as well as Michael Richardson,  the initiator of this stream of dialogue.

Share

Tags: , , , , , ,
Posted in Change, Conscious Business, Conscious Communication, Current Affairs, Leadership Development, Personal Development, personal sustainability, Positive Deviants | 4 Comments »

« Older Entries
Newer Entries »