Parenting Children in Their Twenties is Harder

August 29, 2015Leave a comment

Parenting children in their twenties is harder than parenting them when they’re younger – at least that has been my experience. It requires responsiveness, resilience, adaptability and great unattached, unconditional love – which is easier to say than live at times. And the transition of the parenting role can be unexpected and different than the empty nest syndrome.

If you have children in their twenties (or have been through that stage) and just did that wide-eyed look of dawning comprehension because some of your experience just got named for you, that is the look I’ve been getting from friends when I say this out loud to them. They know. They understand. Like me, it hasn’t been a conversation they’ve had in exactly this way and naming it brings relief.

When I mentioned to my older boys’ father that parenting the kids in their twenties is harder, he laughed. “That’s because we thought we’d be done by now,” he said. There is some truth to that. And it is more than that at the same time.

When your children are born, people will warn you about the terrible two’s and the rebellious teen years. Never once did I have someone say to me, wait until they are in their twenties! Not once. Yet, this age offers interesting and unexpected challenges from a parenting perspective.

These young adults are ready to be independent and launch their lives while at the same time still needing support, although they, and consequently you, are not exactly sure what that looks like. And the journey to independence is not straightforward or a straight line. It is fraught with missteps along the way. This journey needs to be acknowledged and not over dramatized. It is just the journey of life unfolding as it does.

These young adults, our children, may ask for support and balk at it at the same time. They may want to be close to extended family and want to be left alone to live their lives – and who can blame them. As a parent, feeling the sometimes contradictory energy and tuning into how best to hold that space can be a challenge – because we love our kids, we only want the best for them and we want our family connections to stay (or grow) strong. Understanding how to hold family close and lightly at the same time, as a parent, is new learning. Hold it too tight and you risk pushing loved ones away. Hold it too lightly and you don’t end up honouring values that are important to you. Lean in too close and it is suffocating. Lean out too far and there is less substance and connection.

My twenty-something sons and their partners.

As we navigate a new stage of relationship it is important to hold that space with love, to extend love, to not take the quest for independence personally or be offended or hurt at times. Keep inviting – true invitation, not insistence. Celebrate the next stages of life – yours and theirs. Both my twenty-something year old sons are in long term relationships, living with their partners, launching the next phases of their lives. I’m proud of them and cherish the relationships I have with all four of them. As a bit of an independent leaning individual myself, I value their own journeys and want only the best for them. I want them each to be and continue to grow into their own uniqueness as individuals. I suppose there is also some grief from time to time mingled in with the celebration, which surprises me a little although maybe it shouldn’t. It is the need to let go of previous stages of attachment and relationship to be open to what will serve best now, in recognition of new stages of maturity – of all of us as individuals and in our relationships with each other.

Everything moves in cycles. It is important to remember the ebb and flow of things as you hold intention for your family connections. One thing I learned when the kids were younger was to not project current (unwanted) behaviours or patterns onto the future as if the future would simply be more of the now. Life offers us the opportunity for our relationships to grow and mature. What that looks like with our kids in their twenties is different than what it looked like when they were younger and is likely different than what it will look like when they are in their thirties and forties (I don’t know for absolute sure because I haven’t gotten there yet).

I know I have a new appreciation and respect for my own parents and I have a new appreciation for my twenty something kids as they continue to be my teachers in this openhearted journey of life.

Human Tragedy Story Often Obscures Soul Journey Perspective

August 24, 20156 Comments

For a long time, I have believed we are soul journeyers having a human experience. The beauty and challenge of life is that our assumptions and beliefs get tested along the way. In 2012, for me, one way has been through my mother’s journey.

Painting by Adimir Kush

When the symptoms of my mother’s dementia were becoming more obvious in the years before she went into long term care, I knew it as a soul journey and experienced it as a human tragedy story. This became more pronounced when she went into long term care. Instead of being the only person in a household living out a bizarre new set of behaviours, losing her capacity to communicate and do simple things like change the channel on the TV, she became one of many old and dying people no longer able to care for themselves, most living in their own little diminishing physical worlds.

The human tragedy story is amplified in these circumstances and places. It is hard to see past the story of tragedy when it stares you in the face as you walk down hallways that evoke very visceral reactions in what you see, smell, hear or otherwise encounter – even in a place as loving and caring as the place my mother experienced as home in the last four years of her life.

How many people came up to me, my brother or my father after mom’s funeral to share amazing stories about her that captured the essence of who she was and then proceeded to talk about how they just couldn’t visit her at Harbourview Haven. How hard it was if she didn’t seem to recognize them. How hard it is to be in that building when, as a culture, we have become disconnected from the death chapter of the life cycle. We no longer experience it as part of the natural flow of life but as something to be feared. Walking in a place where death is imminent generates fear and discomfort for many of us. It did for me when I first began visiting my mother but, through my mother, the shape of my experience shifted.

For the few who were able to manage a visit or two, they expressed how amazing it was when there was a flicker of recognition in something she said. I learned how many people besides me she called “little one” (really mom?!) and that was a point of reference for them.

There are others who saw enough through the human tragedy story to visit often. My mother had a few of those regular visitors although we often didn’t even know it since she couldn’t remember who visited or when they did. Deeply grateful for those dear friends.

The length of mom’s journey with dementia and her stay in long term care, invited me more deeply into this paradox of understanding the human tragedy dressing of soul journey. The phrase “oh, that poor soul” makes me chuckle now. We use that phrase to describe the human tragedy perspective. It is the physical experience that appears poor, not the soul journey perspective if you believe, like I do, that we make some choices before we manifest into physical form about what it is we want to experience for our soul journey this time around.

As my mother become more disembodied, I embodied the soul journey perspective from a deeper, more encompassing place of understanding. Towards the end, her human tragedy story didn’t register for me anymore, only the soul journey perspective. This gave me a high degree of peace during her long transition process, allowing me to live my life fully even while being present to my mother’s journey and our family care around it.

For the gifted people who work at Harbour View Haven, it seems to me they also see past the human tragedy perspective, treating each individual with full dignity and respect. Treating them as if they are, what we consider, fully functioning, fully present human beings. It was a gift to observe this most keenly in my mother’s final hours. It made me wonder what would happen if we all treated others all the time with this kind of dignity and respect – whether we thought they deserved it, whether we thought they were fully human or not.

Living simultaneously with my mother’s journey, my journey and the rest of life, I’ve been thinking about how to express this all so it does not fuel the human tragedy story. I now speak about “the many streams of life”. We are all in many streams of life all at the same time. Stuff happens. Stuff comes up. There is a life giving invitation to be well in all of it, although a more typical response is to be stressed by all the things that come our way that we have to take care.

I’m leaning into this invitation to flow with the many streams of life as though that is what they are, rather than challenges. Greater spaciousness beautifully shows up.

And then there are the lessons of embodiment that have been present for me in a big way already in and since 2012. As I embody my experiences and my learning I understand more deeply my life’s events, my relationships and my soul’s calling.

I’m not saying the human tragedy story isn’t real. But the soul journey perspective is also just as real although harder for many to see, obscured by the human tragedy story. The soul journey perspective allows me to live into joy and delight and allows me to fall in loveover and over again in a way living into the human tragedy story does not.

For my mother, I continue to experience a dance of joy, delight and lightness as her spirit soars free from the human tragedy unfolding of her physical body. She continues to be my teacher and my friend and very, very real in my human experience.

(Originally published at Shape Shift Strategies Inc. on March 1, 2012)

Death and Dying – Lessons I Learned From My Mother

August 22, 2015August 22, 20154 Comments

Originally Posted on February 16, 2012 over at Shape Shift Strategies Inc.

Never having been present at a death before, I didn’t know what to expect; and, it wasn’t what I expected. My brother, father and I held vigil, practically holding our collective breath, as my mother, Mary Patricia Ann Ritcey Jourdain, drew her last, peaceful breaths on Wednesday, February 8, 2012, falling quiet at 12:30 pm.

Then there was silence. Her silence. No more rattling breaths drawn with some effort through her lungs into her ravaged body; ravaged from dementia for many years and the refusal to eat for many months.

Our silence. In reverence for my mother, her journey and the honour of witnessing the final stages of her transition from physical form into spirit. I already believed much of her consciousness was active in the subtle realms even as her physical presence diminished. With her last breaths I imagined her spirit gently tugging until the last wisps of it were finally released into a delightful little dance of joy and freedom.

My mother with the beauty of youth.

My mother’s journey with dementia was a long one. My journey through hers was an inspired one. Her greatest teachings for me may have been in these last few years when she could no longer string coherent sentences together, during the contrast of those times when she seemed to have no awareness of my presence to when I knew she was aware I was there.

I had one of those moments of her awareness the night before she died. We had moved her to a special room where I could stay with her overnight. One of her medication times was missed. I was aware of that but she didn’t seem to be in distress. So, I sat on the arm of the couch, eye level with my mom. I looked into her blue eyes and she held my gaze.

Me and my mom just after she went into long term care. We posted all kinds of family pictures on the wall behind her in hopes of, I’m not sure what.

When I say she held my gaze, I really mean she held my gaze. She was just as present as I was. In fact, I was mesmerized. I couldn’t take my gaze away.

So, I talked to her. I told her about some things in my life. I told her how beautiful she is – not was, is. I told her how gifted she is and how loved. I thanked her for being in my life, for being my mom. Mostly, I held her gaze with love. Until she began to exhibit signs of distress and I went for the nurse. And then she was gone again until the moment of her final breath.

Four of us still in the room but now the shape of our lives fundamentally shifted. As long as we stayed sitting in the room, it was like she was still there in her emaciated form. But, of course, now she was free of form. Eventually we had to move and leave her next steps in the capable hands of the Harbourview Haven staff who would transfer her into the equally capable hands of the Dana L. Sweeny Funeral Home.

The staff at Harbourview Haven taught me about human dignity and respect through how they related to my mother. Even up to the last moment, they treated my mother as if she was fully present and aware. They called her by her name. In the middle of the night they would come into our room. “Mary,” they’d say, “We’re going to turn you over now.” “Mary, we are going to give you your meds now. It might sting a little.”

On the morning of her death, a care worker came in to wash her face and freshen her up, providing a depth of love and care, dignity and respect to a woman in her last moments on this physical plane. I can’t say enough for Harbourview Haven and the care they provided, not just in those last few hours but in the three years and eight months (plus a few days) that my mother lived there. And not just care for her. Care for my dad too. For our family. They understand about death and dying. That it is a process and a transition.

My nine year old (at the time) understands about death and dying. Enough to ask to visit his grandmother with me when I told him I was going to see her. He hadn’t been there much lately. I told him what his grandmother looked like and how she was. He still wanted to come, even when the call came to say it might be her last day. And his older brother and his girlfriend came too. We all sat vigil the day before she died, for hours. Watching my mother with sidelong looks every time her breathing stopped – for the eternity that shows up in a moment.

I am now aware that dying and death requires the same kind of loving care and attention as birth does. It is birth. Birth back to spirit.

When my older boys were young children their grandfather on their father’s side died. Their dad and I had already separated. They went to the funeral and afterwards I asked them how it was. We began to talk about death. They said to me, “We think it’s kind of like this. You know when you go to sleep and dream and when you are in the middle of a dream it seems real? But then you wake up and you know it was just a dream. We think life is like that. It’s really just a dream but it seems real. Then you die, but really it’s like waking up and realizing it was just a dream.” Such wisdom out of the mouths of babes. Closer to source.

I wonder how my mother might be reflecting on the 79 year dream that was her life as Mary Patricia Ann Ritcey Jourdain this time around?

Emotions Are Your Guidance System

August 5, 201513 Comments

When on the openhearted life journey, we each have experiences that can take us to some deep places. Depth invites exploration – if we want it to, of course. In a conversation awhile back, a good friend who is near and dear to my heart asked me how I was. In that moment, I said, “I’m discombobulated and my emotions are near the surface.”

“My emotions are near the surface.” What an interesting turn of phrase. What I meant was that sadness, sorrow, angst, tears were all near the surface and tears would spill easily and effortlessly with the slightest provocation – sorrow or joy.

I dug a little deeper to discover what was stirring in my soul that caused these emotions to be so near the surface. In that exploration, I identified and released things that had been swirling around and in me about decisions and choices I have no idea if I will even need to make. I began to settle into a place of not knowing and not needing to know in this moment, trusting clarity will arise in due course. No need for decisions or choices today.

I surrendered back into peace, joy and delight as I had a little realization, an aha moment. My emotions were near the surface again. They were just different emotions than previously. Which got me to wondering. Do I even think of joy, delight, peace as emotions? Seems I do. But not in the same way as I think of sorrow, sadness, anger and grief as emotions. Without being conscious of it, I’ve been making value judgments about my emotional experiences – just like I tell people we do in the coaching and teaching work I do.

Yup. There I was, doing it too. Sorrow, sadness, anger, frustration, anxiety – bad. To have those emotions near the surface is bad. Like they need to be contained. We don’t really know what to do with them but many of us have learned that trying to contain them, while it might work in the short term, just doesn’t work in the longer term.

How many times people apologize for their tears, one on one, in circle, in some meeting or gathering, and how many times I say, “I look forward to the time we no longer feel the need to apologize for our tears.” I have, for the most part, stopped apologizing for mine. So it is always delicious to discover what all is still alive in me when I explore my own emotional state.

Today, when my emotions are near the surface, instead of a tear sliding down the side of my face, a smile might break out for no reason in particular, when I’m by myself, with my son, with my partner or directed at a stranger.

The strange thing is, just like we don’t necessarily know what to do with the emotions we judge as bad or negative, many of us also don’t know what to do with joy, love, peace, delight. We can be pretty good if it’s episodic. If there is a reason – like we have to have a reason. We’re not so good at knowing what to do with prolonged bouts of happiness, joy or delight – but what a beautiful challenge to embrace.

If we are used to chaos and negativity in our lives, it just feels different to shift into a new normal – of peacefulness. A new pattern. A new way of being in the world. Shifting the shape of our experience. Quite delightful to cultivate actually. And this state of being does grow on a person. Thankfully.

What I’ve been learning in the course of my life’s journey is that our emotions – the full range of them – offer us guidance. I used to think they made me weak – at least the ones I judged as bad. I use to think being vulnerable was the opportunity for someone to attack me. Now I know differently. There is strength and power in vulnerability when it comes from authentic open hearted space. And it takes courage to step into vulnerability.

My emotions are my guidance system. They tell me how close or far away I am from my centre, from my soul essence. They are a clue to what I’m thinking, whether I am present or living in the past or future. If I inquire into my emotional state I can find myself. And I can change my state of well being by paying attention to my thoughts, discovering what I’m holding onto that doesn’t serve me.

I like finding myself in a place of peace and joy but it’s okay if I find myself somewhere else too. My preference now, through the journey of life, is to find my way, continuously, through daily practice, back to a steady state of feeling good.

Expanding Awareness: A Few Suggestions For Growing Your Consciousness

July 30, 2015July 30, 20155 Comments

Lake Park, MN

Have you ever walked in the woods and felt yourself enveloped by the silence? Laid in the sun and lost awareness of everything around you except the warmth of the sun on your body? Or sat by the ocean and experienced the timelessness of the sand and waves, understanding your own life as a grain of sand on an ever changing beach? Or entered a cathedral and felt the history of the ages whisper in your soul? Have you encountered experiences and stories that raised every hair on the back of your neck?

All of this is information. All of this is expanded awareness, expanded consciousness. How do you go about intentionally expanding your awareness, growing your consciousness? Here are a few simple suggestions.

Pay attention to naturally occurring situations – any or all of the ones mentioned above and more – let your attention rest there and slowly expand your “gaze” to “see” or sense more. This is not necessarily seeing with your physical eyes, although it can be that too. This is seeing with your second sight, or your third eye, or your imagination – whatever you want to call it. Let a story unfold – or make one up. Your mind doesn’t know the difference between what is real and what is imagined. And when you know that your body is around 65% water, you begin to understand how much of what we think is real might actually be illusion.

Soften your gaze anytime, anywhere – including in your own living room, back yard, in a place with people – airports, malls. You can allow the energy that is in the space you are in float around you as if it has its own movement, its own story, its own being – because it does.

You can tap into your imagination, letting it run away in its own directions. Where does the inspiration for imagination come from anyway? Do we know it doesn’t come from some metaphysical influences?

When you are in the woods and you soften your gaze, can you see the wood nymphs, the faeries, the elves and other entities that wander there, that call it home? (If you are wondering if it is real or if you are making it up, see the previous post – it doesn’t matter.) If you could interact with them or talk to them, what would that interaction look like or sound like? Every time I expand my conscious to invite interaction with what I cannot see with my eyes but can sense with my being, the very first feeling is one of gratitude and appreciation for the acknowledgement. “Thank you for seeing me.” And very often there is light heartedness, joy and delight. A sense of playfulness. Hmmm, yes. Playfulness and light heartedness. True story.

It seems particularly important to see and acknowledge these beings / non-beings in city parks and green areas because so much more of the city’s energy is weighted down with concrete, asphalt and other man-made building materials. Every time these beings are seen and acknowledged it fuels them, gives them additional sparks of life.

Beach photo courtesy of Peter Moorhouse

When you are on the beach, let your imagination wander into the water and see what comes into your awareness. The sea creatures – physical, non-physical, mythical. You can see them dancing on the waves, in drops of water, in the way the rays of the sun touch the surface and penetrate the depths.

In cathedrals built eons ago, feel the blood, sweat and tears of the men and women who built these structures. Feel awe at the feat as well as the grief and sorrow of those that lost their lives, the harshness of the times and circumstances. Imagine what it was like in the day they were built and what vision and perseverance it would take to bring it into being. And all the sacred ceremony that has filled the cavernous spaces inside, still alive in the density of the air.

Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris

The ways to expand your awareness, expand your consciousness are not even limited to your imagination, although they are limited by doubt, by questioning, by not believing. Allow – no, invite – yourself to play, to dream, to imagine. And learn to trust your own experiences.

Is This Real or Am I Making It Up?

July 29, 2015July 29, 20154 Comments

One of my favourite passages in the Harry Potter books is when Harry is in the in-between space – in between going back for a battle with Voldermort or moving on to another realm. He meets Dumbledore – who has passed on – in a very antiseptic looking, empty train station where Dumbledore tells him he has a choice about what to do next, it is his decision. He does not have to go back. As Dumbledore is walking away, Harry calls out, “Professor, is this real or is it all in my head?” Dumbledore pauses and replies, “Of course it’s all in your head, Harry, but that doesn’t make it any less real.”

I am often asked about this image – which is tattooed on my back – emblematic of my journey with that which cannot be seen but is, nonetheless, real.

And this is where we get caught – in the wondering of whether our experience is real or are we making it up? Not trusting our senses. I know the messages in my own mind as I began to experience an expanded consciousness were, “This is not real. I’m making it up.” I think this is the message many of us received as children. “It’s not real. You’re making it up. You have a lively imagination.”

Well, what if that imaginary friend was a non-physical guardian or a guide appearing to you? What if that vivid story you told was from a past life? What if your sense that a grandparent or other loved one, sometimes even someone you did not meet in this lifetime, what if that is also real? Faeries? Elves? Wood nympths? Magical beings? Why not? When you are told it is all in your imagination, it dismisses and diminishes your experience, causing you to lose trust in your own intuitive knowing.

The mind doesn’t know the difference between what is real and what is imagined. Napolean Hill, in Think and Grow Rich, said, “Thoughts are things. Everything is created twice – once in the imagination and once in physical form.” This is why visualization for athletes and other top performers is so important. It is why a fear response can be elicited in our bodies just by thinking about or remembering something that frightens us. Or a joy response by thinking about or remembering something that delights us. If I can imagine a world that frightens me, where I have imagined harm I cannot see and might not have experienced, then why couldn’t I imagine a world that delights me? Why can’t that be just as real as imagined evils in the world? And if it makes me feel better, more vibrant and alive, then does it matter if I’m making it up?

Being raised in a logical, rational world that depends on facts has numbed us to other experiences. When my youngest son talked about “the last time, you know, when I was a woman and grew really old”, I didn’t tell him he was making it up. When my older boys were young and their grandfather died, I asked them what that was like for them. When they told me they thought “death was like waking up, like when you are asleep and dreaming and it feels real, but then you wake up and realize it was just a dream. Maybe life – and death – is like that. You wake up and realize that “life” was just a dream.” I didn’t tell them they were wrong. Because maybe they are right. Because why couldn’t that be true?

The first awareness I had of a spirit guide came when someone else told me about one – a priest from my father’s family is what she told me. I asked my father if there was a priest from his side of the family who had passed on and he told me about Bishop LeBrie, a friend of the family whose lap I used to sit on while playing with his cross when I was a toddler. Then another person told me about another guide – a fierce wizard who grew larger when he was protecting me. Knowing they were there, I let myself sense into them and could then be aware of them – although I had no idea what to do with the information. And then there were more, arriving in all kinds of different ways for all kinds of different reasons. Because I became willing to “believe” and to trust in what was coming to me. Although language fails me still because I “see” but it is not physicality that I see. Not everyone can “see” what I see, although I have become aware that more and more people can experience the same thing as me in the same timing. There are things I become aware of that I could not possibly know – “proof” that my experiences are real. This is why I wrote Embracing the Stranger in Me: A Journey to Openheartedenss – because I am an ordinary person with what I have come to believe are ordinary experiences that everyone has to one degree or another and we need the validation that comes when we know someone else has had similar experiences – that it is real, we are not making it up.

When I stood on the mountain at Gold Lake and saw flashes and images of lifetimes long ago, I was not making it up. It was real. Even if it was “all in my head”, or in my imagination, or in my heart. When I came home and the “ancestors” came with me, other people could sense them, feel them and experience them too. The quality of my life and experience changed.

The days I walk in expanded consciousness and awareness are rich. I don’t do it all the time because I get wrapped up in the physical experience of living – of making a living, of worrying about finances, worrying about my kids and their unfolding lives. But I do it more and more and more. I learn to trust the nudges more. Reach out to a friend. Take your reiki training. Get a massage. Do energy work. Talk to your favourite psychic. Meditate. By yourself or with a friend. The less I get lost in the daily grind, the more life flows – not always as I expect it to but always it flows.

For Who’s Benefit Are You Telling Your Story?

July 27, 2015July 27, 20152 Comments

When I first came back from Gold Lake, Colorado, after spending a day and a half on the land, in a mystical experience that took place outside of my normal understanding of time, I had to integrate this spiritual experience with the regular, ongoing experiences of my physical existence, of my life journey.

My sanctuary site at Gold Lake, 2009

One of the ways of doing this was through sharing the story of my experience with others. There were a few people who knew I was embarking on that sojourn. Some, not all, also knew that prior to going I already had experiences with non-physical guardians and guides. I had been learning to connect with my guides in healing work. And I could, when asked, help other people connect with their own guides, learn to access them and to work with them in their own journeys. I was not, am not, the messenger as much as the connector.

When I arrived home, I began to share the story of what happened at Gold Lake with people, tuning into what they wanted to hear. For some, to hear I went to Gold Lake and came home again was enough. For others, to hear the high level overview was enough. And for some, they wanted full details of as many moments as I could offer. And it was surprising at times who wanted what. It was discernible by the questions they asked and the attentiveness of their listening.

It was important for me to discern why I might be telling the story to any given individual. Was I telling the story because of my own need to share it, to understand it, to integrate it? Or was I telling the story because for some reason, the other person needed to hear it? If it was just about me, I would have babbled on to anyone in hearing distance all the time. But I had enough people willing to hear and witness my story, I did not need to visit it on people unwilling or unable to hear. And it is a sacred story to be shared in the right moments. Stories hold “medicine” and healing for others when they are ready to hear them so it is a gift to also share experiences, which is what I am relearning now as I have hesitated to share more of the mystical/spiritual stories in my blog. One friend, who wanted to hear the whole story, at the end shook his head and said, “Well, whatever happened, it is clear it was real to you.” It was real to me, although I cannot tell you how many times I have asked myself the question, “Is this real or am I making it up?”

This realization was part of why I wrote my memoir: Embracing the Stranger in Me: A Journey to Openheartedness – not just to share the spiritual journey but to share my own ambivalence with my spiritual journey and the on again off again nature of my relationship with it. And it is also the story of grief, resilience, perseverance and joy – of embracing all the strangeness of who I thought I was (or think I am) and the vulnerability that comes from openheartedness. The stories of being fired from a job, marrying and divorcing, not once but twice, finding out later in life I was adopted, becoming the health care advocate for both my parents and my mother’s journey with dementia, in long term care and her eventual death in 2012.

Life is full of the bitter-sweetness of discovery – sometimes bitter, sometimes sweet and more often both at the same time. We are not in bliss the whole time, neither are we in grief or sorrow the whole time, if we choose. When we meet life with the expansiveness of the soul journey lens, our stories become healing for us and others who are inspired by how we meet the path that rises up to greet us.

Intuitive Knowings

July 23, 20154 Comments

A pathway in Gold Lake Colorado

In 2009, I found myself standing on the side of a mountain at Gold Lake Colorado, drawn inexplicably to this place as if by a magnet. I was there to meet myself. And, I was there to meet the ancestors. Ancestors I had an inkling of but did not yet know intimately. I was there to walk on a land that resonated with every single footstep I took, taking me back to a vision in a drumming circle nine years beforehand. A vision where I “flew” over a land on the back of a lion, arriving at a huge bonfire, to join the ancestors who were dancing, chanting and singing around the fire in wild celebration, permeating joy through every cell of my being.

Nine years later, walking the pathways of Gold Lake, the lion reappears instantly and every footstep reverberates in the beat of the drum only I can hear, growing louder in my soul with each passing day, on a land I had seen in a vision that I did not know existed until I was there.

I was called there through an invitation to an Art of Hosting training, hosted by good friends. I had no role and no need to be a participant in a training having become a skilled practitioner in my own right. And yet, time after time, I could not resist opening that invitation and staring at it longingly. The appeal made no logical sense. Eventually I understood I just needed to go. In making the commitment, one of my friends on the hosting team invited me to stay longer to do a vision quest on the land with her. That was how I ended up on the side of the mountain, in time out of time, visiting with ancestors and other guides not visible to physical sight, being told how much love I am capable of, embracing parts of me I did not know – the stranger in me – with the journey to openheartedness becoming more apparent, conscious and intentional.

This is a dramatic story and example of intuitive knowing. More of that story is shared in Embracing the Stranger in Me: A Journey to Openheartedness. Not every intuitive knowing is so dramatic. They happen in everyday occurrences and in subtle ways. Recently my twelve year old son and I were crossing the street on a cross walk at an intersection. A vehicle pulled up on the inside lane to make a right hand turn on a red light just as we were reaching the vehicle. I had my hand out to hold back my son even before the car started moving. Involuntarily, I said, “Whoa.” The driver’s window was open, the driver was startled to see us there. But I knew, I sensed, this driver was going to make the turn without seeing us.

How many times are you driving in traffic that you can sense the intention of a driver near you – that they want to change lanes or make a turn, even before they indicate their intention, if they do so? Or you need to pay a bill, have forgotten the due date and just before or on the due date, it is so on your mind you know you have to check? Or, if you didn’t, later you wish you had?

How about when you sense what is going on with someone even if you haven’t been in touch with them in awhile? Those times when you just know you need to pick up the phone, reach out in an email or go visit? Or maybe you have received messages from a loved one who has passed on? Some people know this with certainty and others hold it with caution, as if afraid to hope it could be true.

We have been trained out of trusting our intuitive knowing in favour of rational, logical ways of knowing. Yet when we open ourselves to what we intuitively know, we also open ourselves up to a more expansive experience and tap into the subtle realms – to see what cannot be seen with physical sight, to feel the energies all around us, to converse with beings and entities that are readily available, wanting to support us but limited in the ways they can do so when we do not see them or acknowledge their existence.

This is not something that is restricted to special, gifted people, which was a belief I carried for a very long time. This is a part of the natural continuum of life that is available to each and every one of us. We need to stop questioning ourselves, allow ourselves to believe what we experience is also real, suspend logic and judgment, bring curiosity and compassion and be in co-discovery with others willing to be in the exploration because it amplifies the experience and gives us someone else who can “verify” our own experience.

Trusting your intuitive knowing offers beautiful expansiveness and access to far greater wisdom and knowledge than is available simply in the physical realm.

Extending Love – A Powerful Game Changer

July 10, 2015July 10, 201515 Comments

A long time ago now, I was studying A Course In Miracles. The most striking thing I learned, that has stayed with me for more than a decade, is that everything is either an extension of love or a request for love.

I reflect on it often. It seemed improbable when I first heard it, but in my own journey to openheartedness, embracing all that shows up on my path, the meaning of it has seeped into my being. The implications are profound. It is top of mind for me as I see posts on social media reminding us that “hurt people hurt people”, an adaptation of Thich Naht Hahn’s quote, and as I see quotes about forgiveness.

When someone issues a request for love it does not come in a question. It comes in behaviour that looks like anything but a request for love. Actually asking for what we need puts us in a place of vulnerability and for many of us this is a fate almost worse than death.

A request for love often looks and feels like an attack. The default is to respond with your own request for love. Attack meets attack. Defence meets defence. And the game is on. Not only is it on, it is hard to break the pattern. It is a vortex we get sucked into. Until we don’t. Until we become conscious of the pattern, our own contribution to it and set an intention to step out of the pattern, dance a new dance.

An extension of love does not come at the sacrifice of you and who you are. It cannot truly come at the subjugation of yourself because then you are still acting from the place of requesting love. You can only extend love to another once you have extended it to yourself. The more you extend love to yourself, the more capacity you have to extend it to another person, the more likely you are to break the patterns.

A beautiful side benefit is that you fuel your own boundaries. It is much harder for someone to “request love” through an attack when your boundaries are clear – first to yourself, then to others.

When you understand that when someone is behaving inappropriately, it is a reflection of their own internal state of being – it really is more about them than you – it can change how you respond. When you change the way you respond, you can change the nature of the relationship. If it is an intimate relationship where you are at risk, it does not mean you stay. But you exit differently. When you extend love to yourself, you will not put yourself at risk or stay in a situation of risk.

When you can forgive someone for their behaviours or actions, it does not condone or excuse their behaviour but it releases their grasp on you. As long as you hold onto the pain, they continue to have power over you – essentially you give your power away. Forgiveness is a means of reclaiming your power. Refusing to forgive is like drinking poison and expecting the other person to die.

It is easier to forgive if you can see past the behaviours of the other person, to the child within, see their soul essence, see the request for love as what it is – an expression of their own pain, their own desire for connection – with an inability to articulate it, possibly even to themselves. It becomes easier to extend love to the person and bring the whole situation to a higher vibration. This does not mean you do not act in ways that are appropriate to the situation, but the range of options you can draw on expand, sometimes exponentially, when you are in the place of extending love to the person or situation.

Reclaim your power. Step into it fully. Extend love every chance you get.

Limiting Beliefs – Dichotomies: Happy or Rich, But Not Both?

June 29, 2015June 29, 201511 Comments

How much is enough? Do we need to make trade-offs to receive some of what we want but not all of what we want, so we do not appear to be greedy? Do we need to make choices to accept one thing at the expense of another?

We are bombarded by messages that pitch limiting beliefs, unconsciously strengthening so many of the dichotomies many of us grow up with. You can be happy or rich but somehow not both. “You can’t have your cake and eat it too.”

“Teach your kids to be happy, not rich, so they’ll know the value of people and not things.” This is a typical message in so many posts on social media, in articles and in some books. Does this mean that if you are rich you cannot know the value of people?

These kinds of messages lead or contribute to a belief system inherent in so many of us – that life is about trade offs. If the relationships in my life are abundant and loving then it is okay that I have not attracted resources to myself – because if I had more money then I might lose the relationships or the love I have. And that is more important so it is okay to be poor or struggle financially.

Being happy is good. Being rich is bad. If you are rich you are not happy. It is okay to be “rich” in love. “Money doesn’t buy happiness.” But sufficient money sure does make life more bearable and even more enjoyable. It offers more choice. Is this not a place most of us would like to be in – a place of more choice? Choice can be intentional with a little or a lot of resources at our disposal.

Instead of focusing attention on what is on our path, what we can do to enrich the totality of our lives, we look to people who have more than we do – more money, more power, more choice. We make a few assumptions about them – how they misuse their power or their money or their choices. Have you ever heard or used the expression, “they have more money than brains”?

It is easy to look at high profile people or situations – the banking systems, Walmart, Donald Trump and more – to point to greed we do not want to participate in. How can they live with themselves, we wonder. Then, we decide we don’t want to be like them anyway. Better to be poor, without power, without choice. Really? Most of us do not think about it so starkly. It becomes an unconscious, un-articulated justification for staying put, for perpetuating the familiar zone, for rationalizing the irrational choices or non-choices we make.

Better to be the way I am, to continue the situation I’m in, then to become like the image of greed and irresponsibility I have created in my mind and assigned to real people I see or know who I believe have taken advantage of others, misused their power or their money. Better to be spiritual and pious than rich and corrupt. One or the other, not both. It is insanity, this belief system.

As Abraham-Hicks says, “Your life is meant to be joyful.” Is your life joyful when you perpetuate struggle in your life? Is it joyful when you judge others by your impressions of their failings? It is joyful when you regret a past you cannot change at the expense of a future you can? Is it joyful when you desperately wish for things to be different but don’t act to make them different?

What is the inquiry you need to be in to surface your own limiting beliefs and begin the process of releasing them? Where do you need to turn your attention and your thoughts to access appreciation and gratitude to make your daily life more joyful? What steps do you need to focus on to bring more abundance into your life – not just in one aspect, but holistically? How can your release the either-or dichotomies we are so often invited into to embrace both/and?

Do not suffer fools gladly (especially yourself) and Go Get ‘Em!