Step on it!

Is everyone's life as surreal as mine seems?  Most wondrous, all constructive.  Zooming over the past four years into utter wowness, on the edge of "You have got to be kidding me!" with all sorts of awakenings & awareness, lights dawning & totally pinged soul. 

The past few weeks - as someone who was all excited about working with me, who looked to be an ideal professional fit, dropped off the face of the earth - have found me doing all sorts of astonishing time travel.  Past selves, future, current.  Confused & clarified, with star bursts of awakened awareness paired with a really strong urge to go back to bed, pull the covers over my head.  

Then I read Jen Sincero's 05/02/18 (today!) calendar page - - If you made the decision that you were going to reach your goals, you would do whatever it took.  If you merely wanted to, but hadn't made the firm decision to, you'd roll over and begin convincing yourself that your life is fine just the way it is.

Has the decision had been made or batted around?

What was yesterday's page?  When our subconscious beliefs are out of alignment with the things and experiences we want in our conscious minds (and hearts), it creates confusing conflicts between what we're trying to create and what we are actually creating.  It's like we're driving with one foot on the gas and one foot on the brake.  

Get my foot off the brake & gas it!

Margot Potter - life force extraordinare!

Chomping at the bit, waiting for tomorrow's launch of Margot's book, Fifty & other F-Words!  Love this FB post she wrote last week that SO captures this paradigm-shifting, world-tipping femme!

When I opened my book and saw the endpapers, I’m not going to lie, I cried. So many years of being the odd girl out, feeling like the world could never embrace my sharp edges. Never quite fitting in, no matter how hard I tried.

That freckle faced, frizzy haired, translucent skinned little girl, bursting at the seams with enthusiasm. Aching to feel like she belonged. Too loud, too weird, too much! That little girl who spent hours and hours reading wonder filled books where she could escape the sad stuff and ignite her imagination. There she is, from toddler to teen to wild young woman, smiling at me from the past saying, “Finally!”

Finally, I stopped making myself smaller to make other people happy. I stopped trying to meet their expectations and rose to my own occasion. After losing everything, I had nothing left to lose. So, I set myself free.

I am three notches too loud, five notches too sparkly, and aging DISgracefully. And I am just getting started.

No matter what the world may tell you, there is nobody else like you. Embrace your sharp edges and your weird thoughts and your wonderful awkwardness, because that’s where your magic is.

And yes, you are magic.

The empty place

My thanks to Perri Klass for her wonderful article in today's NY Times on being an adult orphan.  Have been giving a lot of thought to the fact that I've been one for over seventeen years.  

Seventeen years since Mom was gone - still doesn't seem possible. Just a few hours before spotting Dr. Klass' tribute to her parents, both gone over thirteen years, had talked with John about the impact of Mom's death at ninety-one.  It was a engaged death - she was sharp as a tack up to the end, answering e-mails from a local college's Psych 101 students. 

That was September 16, 2001.  Part of me still hasn't fully recovered.  The part that always had someone around ready to shoot the breeze, to keep me company as I made dinner, to remember long ago moments & memories. I am still a recovering people person plunged into an isolation that still continues.  

The article brought to mind so many thoughts of Mom, of her always being her, a magnet for family & friends.  The mailbox that's now empty day after day always seemed to hold a card, note or letter for her.  The grandchildren - who barely speak to me now - stopped by every Christmas & usually whenever they were in town.  Mike & Kerry wouldn't have dreamed of being in Bryn Athyn without long, lingering visits to Squirrel Haven.  Peter was a staple.  

It hit me that what I've been trying to do is restore a balance that never existed in the first place.  That the BEST thing is to let those days be those days & let these days be what they are.  That the best way to hunker myself down with friends is simply to be one.  That as long as I live in isolation, the longer I'll be in isolation.  No brainer!

Interesting - started out writing about an empty place, discovered it filled with every sort of wonder.  Gotta love journaling!

The importance of finishing the painting

Reading - devouring - Playing Big sent me back to Point Zero.  The book, not a place.  And to a line (p. 12) that hit me first reading it 12 years ago, smacked me even harder now.

"I expounded on the key importance of always finishing the painting."

At the same time, Michele Cassou "cautioned them again & again to let go of product & embrace process."

Wasn't that contradictory?  If she told her art students to always finish the painting, isn't that focusing on product over process?

Did I even notice that question on my first reading, at fifty-three?

The answer to me does go to the heart of process.  A finished painting is the outcome of a completed - for the moment - process, not the other way around.  It is the doing that matters, not the thing that is created or the action that is done.  

If I had embraced the process of putting together A CREATIVITY JAM for Age Justice, everything that needs to be done would be, all the performers confirmed & locked in, all the artists working like crazy on their artist's statements & waiting for me to pick up their pieces on May 12 or 13. 

BufBut give credit where credit is due - I did focus enough on the process to get the art pieces lined up, several performers on board (that's been way harder than I expected), the sound equipment is good to go & I've figured how to display the artwork without having to hang anything from the ceiling or set on easels.  Yay, me!

So why am I still up 4:54 a.m. after awakening at 4:06, wondering if the place will be packed with guests for the 7:30-9:00 p.m. event or will be virtually empty?  Because even on this project, I've found myself focused too often focused on the thing instead of the flow of making it happen.  Am still prone to delay distraction derailment. 

Breathe deep.  Let go of thinking of the end, focus on fulfilling the means.  Process over product.  On following flow, immersed within it, braving the rapids, contemplating tranquil stretches, paddling like crazy or consciously drifting, staying with it from start to finish.

Always finish the painting, let go of product & embrace process.  

.  

Finding Mom & Mim in the pages of books

Daedalus Books had an amazing deal on Mary Stewart books that swiftly sold out.  So many cherished titles - The Ivy Tree, Airs Above the Ground, Madam Will You Talk?  & - above all - This Rough Magic.  Strangely, no copy of My Brother, Michael, the favorite of all three Lockhart ladies.

Long afternoons replenishing hot cups of tea, devouring Pepperidge Farm sugar cookies & the wondrous adventure of Mary Stewart's adventurous (typically unintentionally) female & male characters, dashing around the British countryside, capitals of Europe & exotic spots along the Mediterranean.

Thinking of Mary Stewart led me to remembering Victoria Holt.  How Mim & I loved those novels!  Mistress of Mellyn, Bride of Pendorric, Menfreya in the Morning.  I haven't thought about them or her many other titles for decades.  We'd wear the paperbacks out with reading & rereading.  Perhaps not great literature, but they captured our imagination.

Mom was never as fond of Victoria Holt as Mim & I.  She loved Rosamunde Pilcher & R.F.Delderfield.  Both Mom & Mim were big fans of Helen MacInnes - Decision at Delphi, The Venetian Affair, Assignment in Brittany.  She didn't appeal to me, although I did learn from her that the 2nd dining room footman or the chauffeur were more likely to be spies than big wig diplomats or government figures.  All it took for Mom to slip over to cozy England was to open up a James Herriott novel - she loved sending them to Jim Peddicord, her veterinarian nephew, when he was just starting out in his practice.

I can always find Mom & Mim in the pages of books.  We loved reading & discussing plot lines.  It felt like there were figures in books who had more reality for us than actual people.  

Going to head downstairs to brew a pot of tea, grab a plate of ginger cookies & settle in for a read.  Now, where did I put Mom's copy of Rebecca?

   

Pachad, Yirah

Tara Mohr talks about two types of fear:  pachad & yirah. 

Pachad is the "over-reactive, irrational fear that stems from worries about what could happen, about the worst-case scenarios we imagine."

On the other hand, yirah is the feeling that sweeps over us when we find ourselves in an more expanded mental/emotional/spiritual place than is our norm.  It's what we experience when we feel a whoosh of unexpected, empowering energies.  It is how we feel finding ourselves in the face of the Divine.

Oh my gosh.  Yes.  

I've identified yirah as negative fear.  It stopped me instead of kicking my butt, it shifted my gears down instead of up.  It did feel scary discovering something divine in ME. 

And, for me, it also felt WRONG.  Although it never made sense to me, I was taught that the Divine is found OUTSIDE of me, that anything that seems to emanate from within is from the hells.  seems divinely inspired & fueled.  Trusting my intuition was similarly demonized.  Literally.  

I offer up thanks for Tara's insights in Playing Big:   "Experiences of sharing one's true voice, honoring one's soulful longings, speaking up for yourself, exposing one's creative self all brings yirah... When we label what we feel in those moments mere 'fear,' we can scare ourselves further, retreat, or go into a patterned reaction to fear (flight or flight).  We can think we have to get away from the uncomfortable, heightened sensation of yirah.  But if in those moments we can say, 'This is yirah,' then we can welcome the gift as what it is:  a sacred gift.  We don't have to do anything about it.  We can appreciate it, feel it.  Most important, we can know it means we are connecting to the divine within and stepping into playing bigger."

I love Erin Geesaman Rabke's comment:  It's so helpful to have that distinction between life-giving awe-fear and lizard-brain fear. I deeply relate to the quaking sort of energy that comes with inhabiting a larger space.  I like renaming it yirah rather than fear - and now I know to follow that thread.  Now, I soothe myself when the pachad is up, to step on it when it's yirah."

Again, from Tara:  "We feel pachad when the ego perceives something it feels will wound the ego's fragile self-concept in some way.  We feel yirah when the ego perceives that something has the potential to bring us into transcendence of the ego."

That's as far as I've gotten - page 71, sixteen pages from chapter's end - yet I had to share this morning's reading.  Two types of fear - pachad protects, yirah expands.  Am blessed ith a new-found power to attach clarifying enlightening empowering language to feelings that well up every day.  To be filled with holy fear that transcends, enlightens & to fear not.

Mohr on my Inner Mentor

Four years ago, a visualization exercise resulted in an unexpected & forever powerful experience.  It was the last day, the last workshop of a my first visit to Omega.  The setting lived up to expectations, the food exceeded them, the people were beyond the beyond. 

Being at Omega was uplifting, but the Friday & Saturday workshops were a let down - nothing life transforming.  I held no great hopes for the Sunday morning closer, something on intuiting.  Dear reader, it shifted everything, made sense of the senseless, is as powerful now as then.

When Tara Mohr mentioned in Playing Big an exercise she offers her readers, I was open to WOW.  It did not disappoint.  The first experience with the exercise was a very modest success, nothing what she'd described as the ideal end.  Wasn't discouraged.  Repeated the visualization in the evening, this time clearing my mind of more distractions & focusing more on the process.  The results responded in kind - clearer details, better sense of location & the other presence.  

It's what's come after - immediately after - that leaves me slack-jawed in wonder.  

After the second visualization exercise, I tucked away my computer & headed up to bed.  The next day, after greeting the world & saying my Namastes, opened up the laptop for a third.  The screen picture has changed from the tranquil seascape of the night before – it was a beautiful picture of the Great Smokies, the very location in my visualization.  Just sat there, stunned.  Over the day, I came to have a deeper & deeper sense of the place, that there was no visible body of water, but that mountain streams burbled throughout the area, gathering in pools of water rather than ponds or lakes.  Yesterday morning, I opened my laptop & the screen had already changed from the mountains to a mountain stream gently cascading down layers of rocks. 

It’s the sort of thing that would seem overly fantastical if I saw it in a movie, but there it was.  And then there was this weekend’s quote from Jen Sincero’s You are a Badass page-a-day calendar.

“If you’re broke as a joke, it’s not about working until you’re half dead to make ends meet and whining about your pathetic situation.  It’s about showing up every day with an excellent attitude, doing your best, leaning back, celebrating what, and steadily working with the grateful expectation and belief that The Universe is sending you a new, more lucrative opportunity.”

Shock & awe – that was an excellent paraphrase of the visualization’s core message!  A reminder that there are more things in heaven & earth than are dreamt of in our philosophy. 

When I trust & let go of whatever keeps me earthbound, astonishing doors open. 

My thanks to Omega for my first intro to this phenom, to Tara for taking it as far forward as Omega did backward, to my Inner Mentor for helping me see that I am alreadly star-filled, awake, whole.