Archive for the ‘Unique’ Category

Finding the Feminine

Thursday, May 20th, 2010

Last week I wrote about my rekindled relationship with the domains of the faerie. My mother, the wonderful spiritual astrologer, Ashtara, is usually the person I call when the Universe seems to be heckling my spirit.

Friday last week I woke feeling very trapped. For the last 16 years I have allowed myself to fall down the very icky rabbit hole of debt. In the last 4 years I have been cleaning up my relationship to money. I only pay cash, I only spend what I have, I pay my bills when they come in, and I spend very little on anything but the essentials. I keep a record of income, money owed to me, and my debt payments. I keep a relationship with my debtors. As I am self employed, my monthly income is not fixed. When there is little money, I don’t get paid. While I have been reforming my money habits on the exterior, I have also been working to learn the greater money system, which is a very complex subject.

Of late my income has dipped precipitously. Intuitively I feel like I am being pushed (shoved) into my next iteration. However I am in the corridor between the door that is closing and the one that hasn’t yet fully opened. It is at time, quite scary. I wobble between huge bursts of activity, the feeling of being trapped, and a sense that I must STOP. Stop? Stop? How can I stop. I have to work to emerge through emergency. I must do, and do and do some more.

When I called my favourite astrologer last week, I said to her …I feel trapped. I can’t move, I can’t breath.

We talked.  She said it was time for me to do the work on the balancing of my masculine and feminine. I have strong masculine energy. Doing, and action, and driving is my default pattern.

I need to find the feminine. Trouble is, I am not sure how to. A friend said bubble baths. Ughh!!! Or a pedicure. Another ughh!. Aware that taking the time for one of these events is not the long term answer, I am really at a loss. How do I cultivate the feminine as a full time way of being, instead of just a short term exercise?

After years of being on my own, building a career, managing parenting, I am completely out of touch with the feminine side. My idea of luxury is reading a Vogue magazine for 20 minutes in the evening over dinner while watching world news. Or a Sunday on the couch after a long run lost in a good book. Mind you, I do this rarely.

I need help. I need your advise? How do I bring the feminine into my life? Let me know your thoughts.

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That Sweet Moon Language – poetry of Hafiz and our search for love

Sunday, March 7th, 2010

One of my beloved evening practices, just before I fall asleep, includes the reading of some mystical poetry. I have fallen deeply in love with the poetry of Hafiz. I find Daniel Ladinsky’s translations beautiful. (See “The Gift,” or “The Subject Tonight is Love,” or “I Heard God Laughing.”) His ecstatic joy sings from every line and word.

A few weeks ago I was speaking with my good friend, Sarah McIntyre, over a bowl of pasta and some great Argentinean red wine I had brought back with me, and we were talking about my long term single status. My daughter is 19, so for 17 years I have spent the majority of my time single. (Other than several years with Joseph, which was mostly long distance.)

Rarely these days do I think too much about being single. I used to think something was wrong with me. While a part of me would love a partnership with someone to share adventures of mind, body and spirit, my life is rich already, with great friends and beloved teachers. And I am simply not that interested in having a relationship just for being in relationship.

In my many conversations with God, and my journaling, I have sat with the question of my singleness. It is as it is. The perfection is that I have had to learn not just to be a single parent, and a career focused woman, but also to remove dead rats, coach-roaches, and other vermin, and to be a model of a woman able to live a rich life without fitting the more traditional mode. And lets face it, traditional was never on my “to do” list. Hence the Positive Deviant! Fits me like  glove.

Along the way I have also learned to surrender, to ask for help, to be vulnerable, to be at peace (most days) with my life as it is. (The biggest struggle I have inside is not with my single status, but with my achiever status, still trying to really reconcile that my life is incredibly successful, even though it may not be “traditionally” successful. There…I shun traditional in so many ways, yet have held as my marker of life the traditional picture of success. And yes, most of the time now, I know that this traditional picture of success is just someone else’s idea that I brought lock stock and barrel. And most of the time these days I do feel very at peace with my version of success. But, human as I am, some days I am down in the basement, fighting the inner dragon.)

Back to the conversation with Sarah. In reading Hafiz, I am more in desire, want and love with the mystic union with God than some flesh and blood union with a mortal. I could well have been a Nun. Not in the religious way, but in the mystical way. Hafiz and Rumi and St. Teresa of Avila, all of these mystics and others write of this ecstatic union. The joy and love literally entangles me. Better than sex, maybe even better than chocolate. No wonder I have not found a flesh and blood male. I almost pity any male who might try to match this great love I seek.

And…you just never know what the Universe has up its sleeve. When my marriage ended, I made a vow to never say never to anything. To always remain open to the infinite possibilities. At the least I have learned that God is always laughing at our silly little beliefs and superstitions, so it is highly likely that some man will arrive from left field and disarm me completely.

The following poem spoke to me so strongly that I had to write about it, or more particularly, share it with you.

With That Moon Language

Admit something:

Everyone you see, you say to them,

“Love me.”

Of course you do not do this out loud;

Otherwise,

Someone would call the cops.

Still though, think about this,

This great pull in us to connect.

Why not become the one

Who lives with a full moon in each eye

That is always saying,

With that sweet moon

Language,

What every other eye in this world

Is dying to

Hear.

Hafiz (translated by Daniel Ladinsky)

It has been my observation that Hafiz is speaking truth. That our deepest wish, so far down deep inside below the levels of most of our consciousness, is to be loved. By all the people we meet. Our politically correct way of saying this is to say we want to be liked.

We want to be loved. We want connection. Heart to heart. It really is that simple. Everything else, all of it, is just the act of not wanting to expose the core of our need and vulnerability. So we play our games, and develop, over lifetimes, strategies to keep our want and need to be loved a secret.

Imagine a world were people spoke this level of truth? Where we speak that sweet moon language all the time?


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Take Your Time – Challenging the way we see

Thursday, March 4th, 2010

Beauty

On my last trip to Sydney I was given a gift of experience. One of my teachers often said that great gifts come in small brown paper packages. This was one of those small brown package gifts. Meeting up with the awesome Gavin Blake, Graphic Facilitator extraordinaire, he invited me to go to the Sydney Museum of Contemporary Art , and the exhibition of the Olafur Eliasson. (Surely a Positive Deviant)
The world of contemporary art has never been my thing. I like certain art, but I have never grocked contemporary. Give me a Manet, or Renoir. I am a BIG fan of photography. But a huge picture of red paint with a small blue dot placed somewhere has escaped my Virgoan  sensibilities.

I am learning to say yes to more in life, and be open to seeing the world through the eyes of others, suspending my own view completely, if I am able. “If I am able” is the challenge. Can we jettison our own view and take the view of the other? This is what I ask the people I work with to do every day, so teacher, get to work and do the same. (As in, I better walk my talk!)

If I had of wandered, on the off chance, into this exhibition on my own, it would have taken me all of 5 minutes to view and I would have walked out in some form of disgust. Art! That is not art!.

Thank God for Gavin’s eyes, and his leadership and guidance.

As a die hard Buckyphil, I was delighted with some of the very impressive structures, but walking into a blank room bathed in yellow light and nothing else, well, I was feeling conned. Then Gavin so delightfully said, “Great art cause you to ask…what the F??”

Yep, he was reading my mind.

He kept talking me through each room, challenging my thinking, my reactions, my experience. Inadvertently, almost against my better judgement, my rigid Virgoan mind started to crack open, even just a bit.

Then I found myself asking a question that is quite a central question to my passion and curiosity. “What was the intention behind the artist? What was he hoping would happen to the viewer?” “What message, or story, or experience was he seeking to convey?” If any?

I became fascinated by his process. (You can’t take the Virgoan analysis out, even if you do crack open the mind.)

At some point I surrendered that, and just allowed myself to be with the experience. The last two rooms, like a great piece of music, reached a critical crescendo. The final room, entered through a dark brick lined corridor, was breathtaking. Titled ‘Beauty’ a blackened soundproof room with high ceilings had one single fine mist fountain falling from the ceiling with a spotlight directed through it. The rainbow mist changed in appearance with every different position taken in the room, and the sound of the water, very soft, almost inaudible, added to the beauty of the experience. It was Beauty.

As I learned a few months ago working with Remco the photographer on my new site photo’s, we can be looking at exactly the same view and seeing something completely different. I find that fascinating, don’t you? He was looking at a scene and seeing the light and colours through an experienced photographers eyes. I was looking at it through my  all too quick scan eyes. I mean, how perfect is life that no two people look at anything with the same eyes? Sure, it means we have to work harder on being clear with our communication and message delivery, but what an incredible world that we can sit for hours watching a panorama and challenging ourselves each moment to see it with new eyes.

I am not sure I will become a raving fan of contemporary art. However, I am up for the experience of it opening me to new ways of seeing. I am willing to take the plunge into this brave new world. I am certainly willing to challenge my own view, and to have it be challenged. Thanks Gavin.

By the way, the exhibition was titled, “Take Your Time”

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In Gratitude – Reflecting on 2009

Friday, December 18th, 2009

breakygirls

I love this time of year. I love that in my world it is HOT, that swimming in the ocean after a run is like drinking water from a well in the dessert, that people get together and celebrate more. Especially I like the quiet days after Christmas when I get to draw breath and review the year.

From September 2008  and through the early part of 2009 I went through my own very deep dark night, triggered by a very sudden loss in income (I had taken my eye off the ball). Even though at the time it was extremely difficult, a part of my awareness also realised that there was great beauty within the experience, and that I was being reborn, in some way, to a stronger me.

For many years now I have had one enduring prayer. “Please use me as you see fit.” Behind this prayer is the fervent wish to be used to the fullest of my capacity to support the highest good. Of course when you live on the edge of the world of service to the mystical unfolding, the tricky bit is that you really don’t know what being used to your fullest capacity is. Other than when you do what you do, your heart sings in tune and people really like what you do and it seems to help and certainly does no harm.

Having spent years really seeking for my vocation to finally get that it is not a destination but is forever unfolding – in other words my true work has been my true work every day, even back in the days at University when I waited tables – and that every step has been significant in bringing me here to who I am now and what I have to contribute, the prayer of  being used as you see fit has been in action every day. It is only the part of me that wants the action of the day to look and feel different than what it is that has been the issue. Each day I have learned to be present and grateful to the action of the day…in what ever form that is…rather than to want it to be different.

Yet at the same time, I can see a thread that runs through everything I have done.

The Way It Is

There’s a thread you follow. It goes among
things that change.  But it doesn’t change.
People wonder about what you are pursuing.
You have to explain about the thread.
But it is hard for others to see.
While you hold it you can’t get lost.
Tragedies happen; people get hurt
or die; and you suffer and get old.
Nothing you do can stop time’s unfolding.
You don’t ever let go of the thread.

William Stafford ~


So we approach the end of 2009, and I look back at the last 12 months. Given that so much of my work is the inner work I do on self, each year I get to this place and gasp at how far I have come, and yet each year I reach this place and feel like I have reached a good place, where I “Know” so much. And there in lies the beauty. Life is a constant unfolding, and while I have travelled far, there is far to go. And I am always amazed at how far I have come. It is a joy, this journey of life…

2009, it started for me requiring to go deep inside to explore my questions of value…what is value?..who says this is valuable?…why?…what do I feel/think/believe is valuable?…what does money mean?…how to I daily stay connected to source?..Especially how do I stay connected to source when I have fear in my heart and my tendency is to contract and withdraw?

This has been my enquiry for 2009. As I wrote early in the year, in the article on building an emergency tool kit, one of the daily, moment to moment practices I have been focused on is ensuring I have an open heart, and that I resist the urge to contract and shut down when fear looms. Even now, when things on the “outside”, my bank account for example, are in better shape, I find myself contracting from the age old in-built genetically and psychically programmed scarcity principle. That there is not enough. That the flow has stopped.

So this work goes on…daily, opening my heart, feeling my light shine, sending my light out,  knowing that when I do I stay connected. And that when we are connected the flow is ever present. It is only when I contract, when my heart closes, that I become disconnected. The practice for me is giving, giving, giving, my light, my open heart, my energy, my love. Because I know without a shadow of doubt that when I do this, all will be well, in whatever form that is.

This has been my biggest lesson for 2009, and it continues to be learnt and applied…daily..for the pull of self contraction, and scarcity thinking are so strong, and so inbuilt into us that vigilance is necessary.

During 2009, as I allowed my heart to open more, inspiring and wonderful events occurred.  Always for me the precious gifts of life are our relationships and shared moments.

Incredible relationships were forged in 2009.

My relationship with Laurent Labourmene is pivotal to 2009. We have spent hours on skype, working with each other through the storms, moving from storms to seas of possibility, hanging out in Brazil, meeting in Melbourne to share pizza with his partner, co-creating with others “The Constellation”, and finally, working together on Indigenous Prosperity in Adelaide. I am in so much gratitude for all of our time and experiences together, and for the rich future that is unfolding as 1 plus 1 equals 10000. (or more). Laurent is a friend, a buddy, a co-contributer to my work and I am a better person for knowing him.

Precessionally, from my relationship with Laurent, has come the relationships with Richard David Hammes, Lindley Edwards, Dave Martin, Cynthia McEwan. While these friendships  are new, I feel I have known these people all of my life, and forever before that.

laurentcynthia1

I have loved the conversations with Dave covering the worlds money systems, to the mystical and otherwordly, to “all in consequence.” Each conversation stretches me, and simultaneously, leaves me rested in a complete and whole space.

The many conversation with the gentle and wise spirit Cynthia, and her partner John. I feel so much richer with each interaction.

In Brazil I met many others who work so generously and with so much love for the betterment of our world. Morel Forman, Peter Merry, Lawrence Bloom, the incredible elder women, Jean Houston and Nancy Roof. I stepped into the heart of Rio de Janeiro, into the slums, with the elegant Maria …and the exquisite beauty, Giselle.

This year I have continued to work with extraordinary people. People who show up each day and do work that they love. Someone asked me recently who I like to work with and I said I love working with anyone who wants to do the work. I don’t mind if they are CEO’s  or the people at the counter. I have worked with teams of people who have inspired me with their willingness to get off their bag of tricks and roll up their sleeves and do the work that needs to be done right before them. I find myself doing more group coaching, which I adore, and integral leadership development, with leaders who are up for the biggest loudest truth they know.

I lived for three months in a house with just myself and my dog for the first time in 18 years, as my daughter Natalie travelled Europe. My mobile phone was my sleeping partner, as I often got the text in the night, announcing a new adventure, another great experience, or the joys of sleeping on the streets, or in train stations. There was the occasional “Help” text.

I ran another Gold Coast marathon and half of my third “Kokoda Challenge.” I learned newly about my body, and what it does under stress.  I have stayed in great shape all year, with not one shadow of illness, not even a sniffle. I put this down to lots of good sleep, healthy food, fabulous friends, and refusing to let things get to me..to keep that heart open and trusting that all is well.

I forged new friendships in my local community, with my Saturday running girls. Toni and Fiona and Alicia and Donna (and Jess, now based in Sydney). It has been so great to have such lovely people in my life – the girlfriends who all stay very fit, and yet love to enjoy life… Many Saturday mornings have been spent at the coffee shop at the beach, laughing so much passers by have said we shouldn’t be having so much fun so early in the day.

I have built a web site, Positive Deviant, and learned a lot about the interior of the web. It is of course such a huge field, so my knowledge is still quite novice, but certainly I have loved the learning. Thank you to SBI. You are an extraordinary company who genuinely gives far far more than I pay for, and does so with such high integrity every single step of the way. I have loved the experience.

I have found the beautiful piano music of Michael Jones. I listen to him play most every day. He is playing now.

When my daughter returned from her travels we hung out together, our relationship more mature, and even more loving, and every night for months, we would read a chapter from the Twilight saga together. Treasured moments.

As the year comes to a close I feel so incredibly grateful for it all. The hard start took me deep inside to explore the core of my values, I had to also sharpen some of my practices around the management of money, learn to do without, to not spend anything, loving the lightness and freedom of this.

I feel very certain that the new year, and my 50th year, will be quite an exception. What I have been building for years, with love and commitment, and with some seriously skinned knees along the way, is about to transform to a bounty that will see me used so much more than I have felt to this point. It is all so very perfect, and I am very blessed and grateful.

Thank you to you, the readers of this blog. While I do not know many of you, I am grateful for you making precious time to spend with me in this way. I do love connecting with you and hearing if my writing is on track…so please drop me a note…

I wish you grace and blessings as we move into the new decade.

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The Archetype of the Strong Single Woman

Friday, June 26th, 2009

Often I have wondered why I am still single as I approach my half century. I’ll admit that the older I get the less I worry about the why and the more I observe my single state with fascination. I do not have any peculiar habits (other than running long distances quite regularly), I am smart, independent, successful, happy, reasonably attractive.

This morning, driving in the dark to one of those long runs, it hit me. My life has been about learning to trust the masculine principle of God. To surrender myself to this. Ok, for those of you about to hit the delete button, let me try to explain this.

I do believe in the principle of Synergy. That 1 plus 1 in the right conditions equals at least 5, or 10 or 100… Take two people in Synergy and they create a result by their being together that far outweighs how much they could achieve or be as individuals. Synergy is the mystery of alchemy. We never know what we are going to get, and when we get much more than the single identities when taken on their own, we have great Synergy. A partnership without Synergy working would be quite pointless, business or personal. We have to be greater with the addition of the other, or lets not play.

I also understand the male female polarities. Inherent in our intrinsic design is this singularity that comes from the duality of a man and woman together. The Yin and Yang. (In same sex partnership, one partner usually carries the masculine and the other the feminine.)

I experience the creative force of the Universe, the all present intelligence as a more masculine force. I see the expression of this creativity in nature as the feminine. Father God, Mother Earth. Not separate, not one before the other, but both and.

As a female, and a Positive Deviant finding her way in the Brave New World, I, and many women like me, have a job to do. And that is to forge the pathways for a new way to be in relationship in the world. Indeed, we have to forge a pathway about how to be a woman in the Brave New World. Our old models, such as marriage, are no longer viable. Neither is this about being the divine feminine. We are all divine on some stage in the greater scheme of things, and all of us need to embrace that divinity, male and female. On some level, this new pathway transcends the masculine and feminine.

Implied in marriage even today when the statistics are so obviously pointing in the other direction, is a belief in forever. Partners for life! In my recent article, Forever Beta, I raise the possibility of us needing to embrace the model of forever beta in all aspects of our life. That we are constantly unfolding, and the more aware we are, the more open to learning we are, the faster we unfold.

To imagine two people unfolding at the same speed, and in the same direction, for 20-30-40 years is quite the jackpot.

Anyone who thinks we can come together as two people and stay together for a lifetime is struggling with some serious illusions. I am not saying it is impossible, I am saying it is a rare exception. A bit like winning the lottery. Certainly put it on your list of things to do if it means that much to you, and recognise that you may also be wise to surrender your attachment or need to have this kind of relationship, otherwise you may end up spending a lifetime being disappointed. Far better to stay present with daily relationship and give up any forever. Concentrate on navigating today. Enjoy the day, love the moment, be happy with now. It takes serious work to do just this, yet alone create a relationship that lasts forever.

Also implied in marriage is the role dynamic of wife and husband. Again these are old archetypes. The current and future world is challenging the heck out of them. We simply must find new ways to support each other in partnership that has a dynamic element to it.

In regards to raising children, maybe if we considered at the outset, prior to the birth of any children, there is a high possibility that we will not be together for the full time of their childhood, we would have different levels of dialogue before we choose children. We may look at our financial models, our housing and domestic arrangements with a different light. The subject of children makes these new models more tricky, and I am not sure what the solution will look like. I do know that we must consider a transition model that includes exploring the eventualities of the partnership not staying in a marriage or cohabiting form.

So here am I and other mature single women around the world coming to terms with singularity. I know during my time as a solo parent that I have had to learn to trust divine intelligence. To let go. To breath when fear had stopped me from remembering how to breath. This has not been easy. I still work at it. It occurred to me that this surrender and trust has been me learning to relax my feminine into the masculine of God. That my path was not to find a man to do this with as is the norm. My path has been to surrender to the divine. On the very biggest plane, who knows why? I suspect at some point I will look back and say to myself…oh…I get it…and the mystery will be revealed.

I also know that I seek union and connection with ultimate Love. I am clear now that I am not only after the love that comes between a man and a woman, for I have learned through experience of the transience nature of this love. I have hungered, like I believe at a soul level we all hunger, for the union with the divine. The eternal union, the one that the great poets and mystics write about in ecstasy.

As Rumi writes..

There is some kiss
we want
with the whole
of our lives…

I have longed for this union. So of course I stay single because nothing else so far measures. I seek something that no mortal can provide. Yet I also suspect that one pathway to the divine is through human love. I glimpse this in the love I have for my daughter, and for my dog.

Again as Rumi says

The minute I heard my first love story
I started looking for you,
not knowing how blind that was.
Lovers don’t finally meet somewhere
they’re in each other all along…

I wonder if the archetypal pattern of this union between the human and the immortal/divine is why books such as Twilight have so entranced our society..

So I walk the difficult path, and we cut new ground. One of my archetypes is the pioneer, and as Meg Wheatley said, its lonely getting to the future first. That is not to say others have not broken the rules and gone before. Many women over the centuries have indeed gone before. Some of them saints and mystics, others regular women like me.

Our job, while still largely to be revealed, is to lay down tracks for new pathways of relationships. We hold the space that allows the old model to crack. There is nothing wrong with us. We simply cannot fit the old model of marriage and wife.

Most men find us somewhat intimidating because we  do not need them to fulfill the old roles. So in our process we are supporting the creation of a new way for men to be in the world and in partnership. We all get to explore the multiple options and possibilities that are available the moment we take the old sacred cows like marriage off the table.

Would I like my life to be different? Sometimes. It can get lonely, and it is certainly not easy. Neither is being married! Would I like a male partner? Yes. And I do not discount the possibility of this happening. I would suspect that if it does, it will be a wise and mature relationship, where there is a comfort with most of our old stereotypes being abolished or simply not present. And where neither of us doubts that we are together to find greater depth and connection to the divine through the expression of our love. Or even more simply, to share great experiences, laugh a lot, be besties together…without the rigid expectations of our collective relationship history.

I’ll keep you posted..

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