1/1/2012

Happy New Year

On this revolution of the earth around the sun we humans make up that we have the chance to complete something old and start something new. We have invented a way to measure time that is based on the relationship of the earth to the sun. One revolution of the earth on it’s axis is a day that we have broken down into 24 pieces of time that we call hours, each hour we have again broken down into 60 pieces called minutes, each of which we then decided to break down again into 60, this time calling them seconds. From a second down we go back to base 10 which is our favorite way of counting things and go into micro and milli etc etc. When we go up from that 12 month year we also tend to go back to base 10 and celebrate the 10th and 100th years more then others and a large portion of us get freaked out at 1000 years. The numbers that we assign to years somehow got determined to be before or after the life of Jesus, which is apparently not that scientific. We measure time before Jesus as before his birth and after Jesus as after his death. The time of his life we don’t measure. We also aren’t quite sure when his life actually was so the numbers are all made up anyway.

Anyway we humans took time and put it all together somehow and came up with this way of measuring time that I happen to live in. In this interesting and slightly bizarre way of measuring time I am sitting here on the first day of the year 2012, which according to the Maya is the last year in their calendar. That too is supposed to be somehow terrifying due to some stuff that we made up. I have to tell you that right now sitting at my desk and looking out at the light hitting Tomales point and the surf rolling in with a bright blue sky and the wind towseling the trees it is hard to believe any of that stuff. It is a lot simpler to look out the window and be eternally grateful to be alive in this moment and time, to be able to use these amazing senses to perceive the world around me and to interpret with my astonishing brain that what I behold is beautiful.

Because I am a human being living in this paradigm that measures time the way we do. I sat down with my beloved Karen last night and participated in a ceremony. (now ceremonies and rituals are wonderful consequences of this unusual relationship with time that we humans have created) In this ceremony we first of all made some delicious appetizers and pulled out an excellent bottle of champagne. We went out to the hot tub with the champagne and watched the sunset on 2011 and we had some completion of the year conversations and did some last minute designed alliance around the ceremony that we were already engaged in (don’t you just love this Co-Active Model?) and then when we were fully cooked we put on our robes and grabbed our glasses and sat out on our chairs on the deck and watched the final colors of the sunset fade away. We moved into the living room with our delicious appetizers and another bottle of champagne and began writing down our 2011 lists of “Wins, Breakthroughs, & Successes” and “Failures, Breakdowns & Disappointments”. We read those lists to each other off our ipads, commenting and remembering our year as we went along and then instead of burning them as we used to we did a count down as our fingers headed to the delete key and at the same time created blank ipads on which to create the new year.

Now it was time to create an as fresh as possible new year. Because integrity is such a high value to both of us we started with bringing over our list of incompletions and then we added to that a breakdown of desires and intentions for this next 12 month period of time. Then we began to prioritize and look at which of those desires and intentions were the “big rocks”, the ones we wouldn’t or couldn’t put down and only allowed ourselves a handful of those as we sorted the rest into lower priorities. Then filled with all sorts of swirling possibilities we headed off to sleep through the ball dropping on the “New Year”.

This morning after we initiate some of the intentions that we set we will complete the process and get a pretty good idea of how we will theme and grow this coming year. I know that a lot of it will be growing our ability to look out the window and be grateful for the beauty that is there.

Labor Day

Huh??

This is the day we celebrate workers. We celebrate the workers that we are by not working. The reward for doing a job well done for working my butt off is not working. We work and work and work in order to get “Free Time” where we don’t have to work. Traditionally Labor Day marked the end of summer for kids. The ultimate end to “Free Time” and the return to work in the dreaded institutions of school, where we are taught earlier and earlier, it seems, to put our head down and buckle under and take the test and get A’s and work real hard so that we can get into a good college where we will work even harder so that we can get a good job where we will work even harder, so that we can look forward to not working some day. So that we can dream about not working.

I don’t know about you but this feels all wrong some how. This feels like it was cooked up by some folks who don’t like to work much but like to have lots of money as a way to create a system filled with unhappy people who are always looking for the fleeting moment of happiness that comes with the “free time” of their summer vacations and their occasional 3 day weekends, and people who will do all the work that is necessary to do so that they don’t have to. ….or something like that.

I also notice that those “free time” hours and days seem to get cut back more and more as the system demands more of the same from all of us. Summer vacations get shorter and kids have more homeWORK, so that even the hours of what used to be play after school at home are now filled with work. Adults bring their work home or take a second job so that they can make more money so that they can support their families and have something fun to do in the free time. Because if they don’t work those extra hours and they don’t have fun things to do and stuff to play with, well then they will just have to make due with each other and nobody has learned how to do that in this system. We have gotten so busy with work that we have forgotten how to be in relationship with each other just the way we are.

Now this is not all about hating or disrespecting work. I love to work and I know plenty of people who love to work. I love that feeling of accomplishment after successfully completing a task or a project. I love the feeling after a WORKout at the gym. I even sometimes like the sweat and effort itself. I am not fond at all of the time before work, anticipating it, dreading it, resisting it and “recommitting to it”. I realize that all of those feeling are caused by beliefs that are founded in this system I have grown up in that says “Work is something to get through to accomplish, so that you can enjoy the freedom on the other side.” Well I always wanted that freedom from the very beginning and never have understood why I had to postpone it while I performed some onerous task. And yet the belief still is there that “Work is Bad, but ‘good for you’” and because of that belief I know that I have to work and going in I don’t want to.

Now here we are in a recession with 10% unemployment (what does that mean anyway? That number feels so made up. You go into some towns and it feels like 75% unemployment and you walk into a humming operation and it feels like 0%. You talk to people under 30 and over 50 who are unemployed and you won’t find a lot of hope there.) The talk is now all about Jobs for people. Get them back to work. Let’s not get them back to work because it will make them happy though, lets get them back to work so they can buy stuff. When they buy stuff the economy is happy (Boy when I go to sleep thats what dances in my head, are visions of a happy economy). Something is very wrong here.

I just realized in the hot tub on Saturday with Karen that I am retired. I am retired from this system. I could never understand retirement, because somehow in that old belief system it felt like a time of NO-WORK. It felt like a time of hobbies and golf and mahjong. I could never see myself there. I see myself committed to my purpose and serving it and life until the day I drop. So I have never been able to get my hands around this “permanent free time” that is somehow the reward for a lifetime of work. Bad work is now done, good free time is now here – time to shoot myself or die in some other way. Time to head out to the pasture or the old folks home where I will no longer be a part of the system or the voices that shape the dream of life.

Sorry folks I just can’t see that for mySelf. I am retired NOW. What that means is that I am no longer going to hold work as something a have to do in order to someday be able to retire and live the good life. I am living the good life now and intend to keep living the good life until the day I drop. I am retired NOW and what that means is that I will do the work I want to do when I choose to do it. I will do work that feeds my mind, soul, spirit and body. If I should catch myself doing work that doesn’t feed me then I will stop and make a choice. Either it starts feeding me or I stop doing it. I am going to be both 100% and 0% employed and and Unemployed.

Now how will the economy add in that statistic?

A Caveat. This is also the day we celebrate the Labor Movement. The movement that kept workers from being treated as slaves by the same system that created this bizarre concept of work and consumerism. I want those rights of those workers to be protected and freely bargained for by their representatives. I want whatever is happening now in politics to stop taking away the rights of the people to express themselves and organize in ways that support each other.

Monday

As I was sipping my tea out in the fog on my deck, which has become the first step in my morning ritual every morning for the past 2 weeks, I was listening to the ocean’s roar and hum through the dense fog and contemplating monday. I had a little heart smile as I thought about how different my contemplation of monday is from so many other people’s.

So much of the world, so many songs, and so many advertising and media, would love us to hate monday, to dread it, to want the weekend to go on forever. For so many people monday is all about going back to work and stopping all play. “Monday morning comes without warning” goes the song. It slams up into us and slaps us with that cold wet towel that says “back to the grind” and so many of us trudge back into the trenches, wishing we were someplace else.

There are others of us who sleepwalk into monday as we leave a hectic weekend of wall to wall family and the job and work of making relationships with those we love work better. We have 48 hours of crammed in family attention, fights, play, organized chaos with the whole family, packing all the stuff into cars and going someplace else to do as much as we can together, or running to and fro to events and other relatives. When we get to monday morning we lean back with a moment of relief as we head into the known from the chaos. Those of us that live in this paradigm still might dread the rut and the work that monday brings while at the same time they are breathing a deep relaxing breath on their way into work.

There are others of us humans who can’t wait to get to school or work. We are eager to meet with our friends and engage in the projects that we have made our lives revolve around. We are really enjoying the part of our lives that we get to leave home for and can’t wait to get into it. Some of us in this group may not have much happening at home on weekends and wander around a little lost not knowing what to do until that alarm clock beeps on monday morning and the thoroughbred is released.

Still others of us hold Monday as the sacred day the weekend and the day off. We are often artists or service people who work through the weekends and monday is the non scheduled day the day you have for yourself. Sometimes it’s a lie around day and sometimes it’s a catch up on stuff day, and no matter what gets done on monday it is a day for the self to do what the self needs to do.

Monday has been all those days for me. And as I contemplated this morning on monday I recognized that I love the work I am doing and the relationship I am in with Karen and I love our work time and I love our leisure time. Oh sure there are times that I don’t love so much in the midst of all that, and all things said and done I love who I am, what I am, where I am and why I am. And when I am is on Monday morning. Today on this monday I am looking forward to a week of diverse activities and projects, some reading and some playing. As I start this monday I am actually starting something and feel that engine richly idling ready to zoom forward as I press down on the accelerator.

So mondays are transition days for most of us. Monday is named for the Moon, that essence of the divine feminine and the queen of transitions. I am feeling the pull of that beautiful moon into the transitions I want to feel my way into this week. Gee I wonder what next monday will bring.

Buck

Karen and I went and saw Buck yesterday. A documentary about Buck Branaman, a guy who works with both human beings and horses to encourage to develop respect and evolve.

There are a lot of great points in the movie, however one of the most interesting parts to me was his work on what he called “emotional control” and what I would call emotional stability. In order to work in both the horse realm and the human realm he has to be completely standing in his self respect and have complete access to all his resources, while at the same time not allowing himself to be pulled into emotional reactions. There are several points in the movie where he digs into emotional empathy and comes forward with a fierce assertion and yet there is never a reaction. While others, both horses and humans, are clearly frightened he is not. When there is clearly a time to be reactively angry he is not. Now this “control” of emotions, in my understanding can have deep consequences as you move through life for most of us. It creates a wall of distance between us and other beings and it creates a wall between us knowing ourselves fully. It can also cause all sorts of physical problems when emotions get bottled up inside. I don’t think that Buck is suggesting that we bottle up our emotions or stuff them deep down inside of us. On the contrary he talks freely and openly about his life and the challenges that he has faced that would leave big emotional scars. It is clear that he faced those challenges and worked his way through them as opposed to letting them fester and turn into deadly emotional generators.

I think there is a Stake that he holds that is something like Respect and Truth. He holds that in his body and in his words. When you hold respect and truth with impeccability what happens to an emotion when it comes up is that you would respect it and be able to tell the truth about it and then you would be able to take the energy of that emotion and use it as a resource rather then let it run rough shod over you whenever it feels like it, which is how most of us run around in our emotional reactions. If I respect myself completely and stand firmly in that respect and tell the truth to myself and to who ever else I need to, then that circle of respect and truth expands beyond me to the other beings, in this case horses and humans, and they feel respected and they feel like they are being dealt with in a completely straight forward way. When I stand in that place I can then dip down into that emotional well of energy and bring up that energy and use it to emphasize, motivate, or deepen the experience. That is emotional stability and that is what Buck demonstrated so beautifully in that movie.

There are some remarkable demonstrations of presence and relationship in this movie as well. And I think I’ll stop here on this one.

Happy Birthday Karen

Toasting a happy Karen on the beach.

Karen’s birthday is tomorrow! So if you would be so kind wish her happy birthday on facebook or email or her blog at CTI or all of the above. I think one of the coolest things about social media is the way things like celebrations, crisis’, and revolutions can happen and happen so quickly.

I just told Karen what her birthday present will be, and this is after many hints and outright sit down conversations saying that this is what she wants. I am going to Man-up and make all decisions about what we are doing and where we are going over the weekend AND be completely flexible and open to any changes in directions or the plan that she wants and make her completely right when and if she does that. She was very happy when I set the tone of our weekend together with that context. I then told her what I was planning for Saturday, the out in the world day, and Sunday, the stay at home day. Activities on both days seemed to fit into exactly what she desired for her birthday which pleased me as the Man to no end.

Over the years birthdays have had a great deal of importance for us and we have done many things to make them special. We started out our marriage with a birthday weekend proposal that was a three day treasure hunt extravaganza. From this wonderful and over the top experience we tried to top it in following years based on the philosophy given to me by a smiling elderly couple I met on a plane once who told me that the secret to an ecstatic 40 year marriage was surprise birthday weeks every year. So building on our engagement birthday weekend we attempted to outdo each other every year in the Surprise Birthday Weeks. As you can imagine this led to some things that weren’t so ecstatic, like anxiety about whether or not the other would like what we had planned and competition that looked for ways that we could outdo each other getting completely stressed in the process. Well it took a couple of years and we backed down and regrouped. We still wanted there to be a special weekend put aside every year where one would be honored and cared for deeply by the other in special ways. We wanted to both be involved in the plans for that weekend and we wanted to make sure that there was some room for both ease and surprise. Well that went a long way to clear out the stress and anxiety that we had begun to create around birthday celebrations.

Then we added two additional celebrations into our life. We created a celebration for our anniversary of our marriage, which we both managed to drop off our radar for the first 10 years of our marriage. Well that is now an annual occasion that gets treated with the same special care and attention that birthdays get. We also have created traditional celebrations of New Years and Thanksgiving that occur every year that allow us to spread out our celebrations every couple of months so we are usually always either preparing for a celebration or basking in the celebration that just finished. This has us living our lives aware of some sort of celebration pretty much all of the time. This is, I think, a good thing.

So I raise a glass to my beloved Karen and to any and all celebrations that you may have coming up or just past.

What’s Your Piece? What’s My Piece?

What’s Your Piece of this evolutionary leap we are in the middle of right now? Without it there is a hole in the fabric of life.

What seems like an eon ago Karen and I were in front of a whole bunch of people in Florida and we handed out puzzle pieces and to all 450 or so of them and had them all work together to create a huge jigsaw puzzle that became the backdrop for the whole Summit. Then at the end of the Summit we handed out a second piece from a duplicate puzzle and had each and every one of them look into their lives and into their worlds and look deeply at that promise, that declaration, that dedication that they are to this unfolding story of transformation and evolution that is the Human Journey.

Between the building of the puzzle and the creating of the personal declarations we journeyed through a story that began in the recognition of who we are as human beings and what have we created both in ourselves and in our world. The shadow and the light, the good and the bad, the life affirming and life destroying behaviors that have gotten us to this step, or this leap, of the evolutionary journey that we are all on. Then we began to move up the path and notice who we were walking with and how were we making the journey. We started to get conscious that we were indeed on a journey, we were running down the diving board and getting ready to leap, dive, and fly into this chaotic swirl of mystery that is the unknown. As we prepared for that leap we realized that we needed to open up our consciousness to a larger responsibility for life. We looked into ourselves and each other to see into what we could of that mystery and we formed declarations and intentions. We formed these for ourselves and we did our best to create a collective promise as well. We began to see that we can’t just focus on our own individual survival and fulfillment, we saw that we need to also be able to open up and connect to the greater collective of humanity and indeed all of life and find that shared declaration as well.

As I stood on the stage, in the back of rooms, roamed the beach and the hallways, sat in planning meetings, ran microphones, shared meals, and had many brilliant conversations, I was flying. I was soaring in and out of the mystery and yet my feet were solidly on Mother Earth. I was aware that a transformation was occurring in me as I nibbled on my lettuce and chatted with the person across the table from me. I was conscious of growing my capacity to hold a larger and more complex picture or map of what was occurring around me and within me. I was solid, earth-like, and protective as the bear, I was soaring, air-like, and expansive as the eagle, and I had a little turtle in my pocket to remind me all about taking it slow, letting it in and being patient with the way things were unfolding.

So I arrive, along with everyone else, at the place where we all make our declarations and promises. Where we each name our Piece of this great puzzle of life’s evolution.

So, What’s my piece?

My piece is to live my life on purpose.

My purpose is:

I am spirit awakened.
I fill the universe with limitless light, wonderous love, and enthusiastic life.
I am the way of peace and the cosmic belly laugh of joy and creation.
I wake up humanity to it’s aliveness and creativity.
I point and protect the evolution of human consciousness.

What’s your piece?

Please write it below in the comments field. I say that the more you write and say your piece the more you bring it to the board.

16 Years

The look of love.

On Friday Karen and I celebrated our 16th wedding anniversary. We didn’t used to celebrate our anniversaries, I think we probably just assumed they were going to be there and went on with our lives. How silly of us. An anniversary is a birthday isn’t it? It celebrates the birth of a commitment to each other that is bigger and deeper and richer then just moving in with each other or declaring our love for each other. 16 years ago we vowed to each other that we would be there in the hard times and the good times, the messy times and the sweet times, the times of heartbreak and the times of ecstasy. By the time something human reaches 16 years old you have definitely gone through all of those times and many more and we both are realizing that we need to celebrate and honor that passing of time as much as we need to celebrate and honor the passing of time that marks our individual births.

So we did. We spent the day working together in our office overlooking the ocean. We worked together on caring for our “child”, this business that we have spent the last 20 years of our life raising (that’s right we delivered this CTI baby before we got married along with our co-parent Laura). This “child” has become a young adult with a mind of it’s own and off in directions that are important for it to head off in to grow and mature. And as every parent of a young adult knows, there are still things to pay attention to and that this fabulous young adult still has needs that it seems only a parent can take care of. So with pride, love and joy we worked together to do what we could.

Then we wrapped up our time working together and went down to prepare for our celebration feast. I put on a shirt I love and lo and behold it was almost a little too big and OMG the pants that didn’t fit before actually fit perfectly and the belt had a couple of extra holes in it, the blazer fit and hung perfectly. I was looking good. Karen came out with this sensual velvety number and wafting this musky perfume behind her as we walked out to the car. It was a glorious spring evening and we sat on the deck of Madrona Manor this great old restaurant and B&B up in Healdsburg. We ordered the Chefs Grand Dame menu, which basically meant we put ourselves completely in his hands to send us out a delightful, delectable and delicious series of courses that would each contain about two perfect bites of heaven. Each course was paired with the perfect wine and served with a wonderful ease and attention to what needed attending to. During the intervals between courses and during the drive to the restaurant we imagined what breakthroughs and transformations would occur between this anniversary and the next in our relationship and individually. What would we be acknowledging and appreciating each other about next year on this day? What was great about the conversation and the meal was that you could stop the conversation at any point and have a mini orgasm with what you just put in your mouth, say a few words about it, and then drop right back into the conversation again. We lovingly wandered in and out like that for somewhere between 3 and 4 hours and poured ourselves happily into bed that night for a blissful sleep.

What a great anniversary it was.

Accountability

I received lots of incredible comments in response to my posting of a couple of days ago “Begin Again”. I am grateful for any comments as they either stimulate me or acknowledge me or both. I need to continue opening my capacity to receive acknowledgment and stimulating feedback. For many years I have been a great teacher in receiving and accepting, encouraging and allowing, and vulnerability and openess. Of course as every great teacher functions, I believe, we are learning as much if not more about what we are teaching as the folks we are teaching. So I continue to learn about these wonderful states and qualities. One of the places I get to do that is here in this blog. So thank you for your comments and feedback, I am receiving them with an open and gracious heart.

My friend Doug replied to me in that same post with some feedback and really called me out on the carpet. He said it is time to change it up and kick myself in the butt. He said that I have been harping on this for a couple of years already and it’s time to put up or shut up. He said this in the tough love of a compassionate coach. From the perspective of being a reader of my blog I can really see how the point of view could develop that I am constantly circling around some of the same things over and over again and not making any progress. I don’t often write of my progress and the milestones I am meeting and successes I am having, especially in the area of my body.

So for those that want to hold me accountable to concrete results here are a few:

Since I started weighing myself (which was after I had already lost 15 or 20 pounds) I have lost 27 pounds. YAY

Shirts and pants in my closet that didn’t close before I can now wear comfortably. YAY

I don’t need a seat belt extender on airplanes anymore.

I do something physical daily, pretty much
        This includes working out with a trainer once a week when I am home, going to the gym two or three more times a week when I’m home, and being much more physical around the home.

I have reduced my calorie intake in general and track my food and stay responsible for my calorie intake when I am home.

I have and use some wonderful toys that help me understand the science, weights and measurements that go into calories in and calories out. And I am pretty consistent in using them.

I am committed to shopping at Farmers Markets and eating locally the freshest and most healthfully and sustainably grown food that I can find.

I am in an extremely accountable, conscious and committed partnership with my beloved wife on all of the above and we are no longer feeling fragile or careful about the topic of our bodies around each other so that we can freely and without fear support each other.

Most importantly of all I am growing my consciousness and discovering my relationship with and the complete loving integration of my body with all the parts of mySelf.

In the name of accountability I will also report here where I have been failing and where I have a hard time counting on myself. When I travel and leave the structures that are in and around my home life I continue to struggle. Sometimes I have been able to maintain my practices and disciplines and many times I have not.

With that accountability I also want to recreate some context that is crucial for me in this journey. I AM NOT ON A DIET AND EXERCISE PROGRAM. I AM NOT A BIGGEST LOSSER AND I AM NOT IN THIS TO LOSE WEIGHT AND PRODUCE RESULTS. I am in this to completely transform my relationship with my body, to grow my consciousness, to create an integrated co-active relationship with all parts of mySelf and to walk through this lifetime with complete Self Authority. I don’t care if it takes me 10 months or 10 years to find that integrity and open that consciousness. I do care about being conscious in this moment and committed in this moment and learning all that there is to learn in this moment. I enjoy watching my belly get smaller and my clothes get bigger. I will no longer live in deprivation or lack. By being conscious I will also avoid excess and overloading. I will continue to love life, savor my senses, and enjoy eating good food and drinking good wine. I will continue to deeply explore my limiting beliefs and look for ways to replace them with life affirming beliefs.

Most of all I will do my best to live every moment as if it were my last.
        

Lessons from “Survivor” and Boston Rob

Boston Rob from Survivor

Well Boston Rob won the game of Survivor last night. This is his fourth time playing the game and he played the game masterfully. He led, managed, manipulated, cajoled, created relationships with everyone, made promises that he knew he would have to break in order to win the game, he was completely genuine and real except when he lied and backstabbed in order to win the game. He was vulnerable while at the same time, and this was what was so amazing and this is what I aspire to and I am not quite there yet, he didn’t take anything personally. He was able to keep everything in the perspective of his original focus and remember that he was playing a game. Because he always held to that perspective and never took things personally he completely dominated a game where there were people younger, stronger, fitter, more manipulative and more eccentric then he was yet in some way they all ended up taking things too personally and not keeping the focus where they new it needed to be. In addition to all that something else Rob did in playing this game is he held nothing back, he through his whole heart and being into every moment he was there, into every challenge and into every conversation. I admire Boston Rob and the way he played the game.

I still feel squeamish that people got hurt and that lying, breaking agreements and promises, and misleading and misrepresenting has to happen to win the game. It makes me examine, again, what is integrity? Boston Rob was in complete integrity with his goals, missions, perspectives and purpose, he never wavered from these things. He was completely out of integrity with the agreements he made with others whenever those agreements conflicted with his goals and purpose. What is more important in the expanding consciousness of the world, living on purpose or making and keeping agreements? Ideally of course I would want to pursue both simultaneously and fully. Do I sometimes have to betray my agreements for the sake of my purpose? I would hope that if, in my passion and eagerness, I make agreements, and then I discover that they are moving me away from my purpose that I will absolutely renegotiate or break those agreements. I would hope that I would do that cleanly, courageously, and that I wouldn’t get all wrapped up in co-dependency and taking things all personally. I would also hope that I would be there to the best of my ability to clean up the mess that inevitably occurs when I break my agreements.

Finally there is something that the show Survivor and pretty much all media and even most of my beloved stories want me to do is to divide the world into me or them, good or evil, black or white. I want to recreate stories so that there is more complexity to them. I want them still to represent the hero’s journey where the hero or heroine must find their way through the conflict and challenge to the transformation. I want to stop seeing those conflicts and challenges as “bad” “them” and the hero as “good” “us”. We need to move more to an AND world and away from an OR world.

Boston Rob was a hero AND a villain, a good guy AND a bad guy. He was a complex human being and no matter how the producers of the show or the other cast members tried to twist it or maneuver the viewers to pick sides and want to make him bad OR good, he managed to defy those attempts at depiction. Good on you mano. I only hope to be able to continue to defy those who wish to simplify me and box me into this or that.

Begin Again

My oh my. Time is flying by.

I have begun to start laying into an old destructive habit of avoidance and pretending around this blog and most of the other self generated work and practices of my life. I have been in a creative dip that has turned into a hole that has turned into a bottomless pit into which I have been free falling and not even bothering to reach for the sides and grab on so I can begin the crawl back up and out. Well here I am reaching.

Now this is NOT to say I haven’t been a busy boy. This is not to say I haven’t been fully and completely engaged in amazing and awesome work in many parts of this globe with many wonderful and inspiring souls. Since last I wrote here in this column, at the beginning of my free fall, I have been caring for loved family members, leading some pilots of some amazing new work for coaches at CTI, working with an awesome group of Kestrels as they leap off into space and towards their quests, and I have just returned from an inspiring journey to Dubai where I got to work with an incredibly authentic and open group of completely diverse people on opening up their ability to Trust. I have had loving and wonderful encounters with truly beautiful people from all over this earth of ours and have been richly filled up with love and acknowledgments. My beam of attention has been outward focused and my tractor beam has been pulling in all sorts of cherished attention and love.

The challenge has been on my inward focus and all the work I have done up until now on my body, spirit, mind and emotions seems to be sailing away on the sea in a small boat without me on it. My commitments to mySelf and to growing my consciousness while shrinking my body feel hard to find even though I know very well that they are right there in front of me. I am pulled by the old attractions, you might say addictions, to keeping my attention out on others and the world and deflecting it from myself or mySelf.

Even though I know that I am sailing in new waters, sometimes rough and sometimes calm, it feels like I am sailing in these new waters in my same old boat. At the Summit, something changed in me and my relationship to the world. I got bigger somehow. I became somehow able to hold more and to attend to and be responsible for a larger world. I grew up in my ability to receive, let in, absorb love, acknowledgment and energy and not be overwhelmed or frightened by it. All of this led me to realize that I could truly set tasks, quests and outrageous outcomes up for mySelf that had to do with consciousness and humanity and me living into my life purpose more powerfully and completely. I broke through into a new understanding of mySelf and what I am capable of in this lifetime.

While all this was happening and drawing my attention the very things that led me to this powerful place were atrophying and falling away from me. The practices that I had so carefully shaped for mySelf, like meditating, blogging and spending time outside, that I know work to keep growing me and at the same time keep me honest and present to who I am started to be skipped over and ignored and then disappeared all together. The great practices, tools and toys, like tracking food, working out at the gym or swimming, and buying and cooking excellent local foods, that I had put into place to complete the integration of my body and to shrink it to a healthy size became less important to me and I began to pretend that they weren’t important. All these things were an essential part of preparing me for my transformation and breakthrough and then after the breakthrough happened I kick into some old habits that must have been formed in childhood that are all about coiling myself back up into a little ball and sticking my head in the sand until everything returns to a normal and bearable, safe and recognizable space.

Well this is my declaration and rededication to stopping that habit or pattern and keeping mySelf fully extended into this new and transformed space that I have poked into while at the same time continuing to grow and integrate this wonderful Self that I am. I KNOW what I need to practice and I KNOW I will need to practice that no matter what. No matter how big I get, no matter how successful I get, no matter how much acknowledgment I receive, no matter how much love or admiration or inspiration comes my way, no matter how many more levels of breakthrough there might be in front of me. There will never come a time when I can delegate these things to someone else or buy these services or watch others do them and think that I am getting my job done or practicing what I KNOW needs to be practiced by me and me alone.