Finding Solid Ground

We just need to get down under the surface of things and find a way to fuse these two plates together.

My beloved Karen and I had a tough weekend this past weekend. An emotional roller coaster ride as each of us took our turns to do a swan dive into the pits of complex and difficult emotions while the other did an amazing job of tending the one that was alternating between swimming and drowning in this pit. As the tender slowly coaxed the swimmer/drowner back to the edge and eventually out of the pit and the emotional swirls in the belly and heart began to calm and the feet started to feel solidly on the ground, the conversation would then get rich as to some of the underlying reasons for the conflict that kicked of the dive. From that conversation would emerge of connected good times together and then without warning the other would get knocked down into the pit and the whole thing would start all over again, only the roles would now be reversed. Often there would be a righteous struggle on the lip of this pit and each would fall their own ways into their own pits, swimming and drowning for awhile in their simultaneous pits, one would eventually find the edge and climb out and feebly crawl back to the lip to help the other out. While the other was desperately trying to crawl out they would say something that would knock their saviour back into their pit again and this would go on for far to long for either of us.

Then it happened, we were in the parking lot outside REI sitting in the car with one of us helping the other step out of the pit and on to dry firm land when the conversation dove under the surface of the pits and the mountains and the valleys and into some of the core issues that are the magma that create all those pits and mountains in the first place. Man oh man if we can keep our eyes on that prize as we fall into those pits and scramble up those mountains we can begin to fall and scramble less and start to enjoy what we create together much much more. It is such a relief to realize that there is something, some tectonic plate shifting that has always gone on under the surface and that all we need to do is be able to go down together to those plates and do some magic on them so that they fuse into one plate that is stable and solid and able to support a world of all sorts of differences and creative disagreements. We can stand on that solid earth and have complete confidence in our own world view and complete openness and ability to receive the others point of view without needing to protect, defend, judge, make wrong or right, or to nag, manipulate, guilt trip, dictate, dominate or act in a passive aggressive way to get “our way”. With that solid ground we can passionately disagree and not take it personally, we can find exciting and synergistic new solutions and directions to problems and issues that in the past would send us scrambling or falling.

This is exciting. Now let’s keep at it. The pits and the mountains will be there for a bit as we dive beneath them, our habit will be to fall or scramble and we have to keep digging down underneath NO MATTER WHAT. The magic is down there.

I Don’t Wanna Part 2

It all comes back to just choosing.

“I don’t wanna” is a core passive aggressive statement my young self learned at the knee of my father. It is a statement used to manipulate attention and to get control over a situation or action by proposing nothing. It is a whine of attention that is designed to put all the attention on the whiner with the question “ok, what do you wanna do?” and the answer is always either “I don’t know” or “nothing”. Sometimes the answer is sulking and when the whiner doesn’t get the necessary attention a temper tantrum of sorts will usually work, complete with door slamming and sitting in room wondering whether or not the message was delivered strongly enough and whether or not everyone below was directing their attention to me, the whiner, in the bedroom. “I don’t wanna” was also an excellent passive aggressive way to manipulate my younger siblings to do either what I wanted to do or to do nothing. The beauty of this terrible manipulation is that it usually makes the other person look bad because they are the one then forced to convince, nag, bitch, yell or some other more aggressive act in order to do the thing that they want to do. This was the parental relationship that I grew up with and thought was normal. I modeled this part of the relationship from my Dad and he was able to use it very effectively to get all sorts of alone time and not have to deal with any of us very much at all. So being the oldest of 5 that was sometimes an appealing prospect, when some alone time was wanted and I was asked to join in some thing or other just say “I don’t wanna”, even if a part of me thought it would be fun or a good idea, I could guarantee that I would either get attention and power or I would be left alone. Win-win.

So I can have a great deal of compassion and understanding for the boy that was me adopting this mechanism as way to preserve a sense of authority and get some attention in an increasingly chaotic and distracted world, from the eyes of the child that I was. I can also see how choosing this way of operating was a whole lot less confronting then what seemed to be my other options at the time. It must have felt a whole lot safer, easier, and more comfortable to NOT do something then it did to do it. Wow, I can really see how this decision to create this default mechanism up has run so much of my life and “choices”. I have trained myself to be an auto-reaction to anybody suggesting an action to me or asking me to join them in an action, my immediate, automatic, and instantaneous reaction is “I don’t wanna”. Then I have to work my way from there forward. A lot of the time I don’t work my way forward because it’s just too hard or too much work. A lot of the time I work my way forward because the other person stays with me patiently waiting for me to go through my initial “resistance” and move on with things. I also realize that not all the effects of this mechanism are negative. There is a creativity that emerges from this resistance that often creates remarkable opportunities and openings. There is a healthy resistance that is the necessary friction and tension that is often needed to make something good into something great. I am not interested in throwing out that baby with the bath water of “I don’t wanna”.

I am also not interested in a reactive world that I could create in installing a mechanism called “I wanna” which would actually be, bare with me here, “NOT I don’t wanna”. It actually creates a wimpy, weak and passive voice of “going along with” and “toleration” that is unacceptable. No I think it is quite simple actually. After the excavation of this mechanism, what is left in the hole is consciousness and choice. The idea is to take a breath and choose from a place of consciousness. It all goes back to Turtle Medicine, notice, breathe, notice some more, choose, notice some more, act, notice some more.

Now it’s time to create some ceremony around all of this and look to what is needed to move on.

I Don’t Wanna Part 1

I forgot to add this to yesterdays poll until this morning so some of you might not have seen it and I am curious so I add this to the beginning of this post.

One of my favorite books as a kid, along with Harold and the Purple Crayon.

This morning feels like a morning to dig around in the basement a bit. I am wondering about the nature of my curiosity. I know I am very curious in general, that it doesn’t take much to tickle my interest and I am off like a dog chasing a new scent. Actually that isn’t completely accurate, I should say that when my interest is tickled it is really tickled and the dog takes off. Sometimes though it feels like nothing on earth could tickle that curiosity.

A quick story about my curiosity and enthusiasm: A while back my Mom was planning a trip to the game parks of Kenya and she wanted to take along one of her 5 children. As she imagined herself with all 5 of us, and we are all spectacular children each in our own way, she wanted to travel with the one who’s eyes would light up with the childlike curiosity and enthusiasm and wouldn’t stop pointing and saying “oooo look it’s a lion” or “shhh we have to be quiet so it won’t move” and the like even if they were adults in their late 20’s to late 30’s. The child she picked was, of course, me. I’m still good at that wide eyed enthusiastic curiosity and I love that about me. I never want to lose it. And…. I am noticing that it sometimes takes a lot to initially tickle it. Once tickled and moving it is insatiable, but getting it tickled and moving can sometimes be a herculean task.

An example, I love hot tubs and I love swimming. I love the feeling of the water on my body and the feeling of my body after it gets out of the water. It tickles all sorts of curiosity and interest in me about my body, skin, and the sensation in my muscles after having been moving through water. I never cease to notice, be interested in, and be curious about it during and after the fact. Yet I suffer and struggle my way to these opportunities time after time. Karen has to practically drag me to the hot tub on most nights and getting mySelf to the pool for a swim feels like I have to climb Mt. Everest just to get there. There is some sort of habit or idea in me of “I don’t wanna” that is so strong even for things that I love doing.

It also shows up in learning. I love learning and I love nothing more then the creativity and curiosity that is stimulated in either receiving a great idea or having one. Whether I am in a conversation, relationship, or reading the excitement that I feel when I start to riff on a wonderful idea or concept is almost orgasmic sometimes. And yet I have this large stack of unread books and sometimes plenty of time to dive into them, and it feels like this heavy and sticky burden to lift one up and begin reading it. I know that once into it 80-90% of the time I will begin that wonderful riff and the other 10-20% I won’t and have no problem putting the book down. The habit “I don’t wanna” has me not pick it up.

I have discovered some compensations for this habit. This blog for instance, every morning I come up here and sit in front of my computer and open my journaling program and stare at the screen and the ocean and “I don’t wanna” shows up. I breathe and sit with it and then I remember that I committed to mySelf to do this as a way to brighten my consciousness, and I start to write whatever is there and it begins to pull on that curiosity and enthusiasm and off I go. Sometimes the “I don’t wanna” wins and I let myself get pulled into something else, usually something more habitual like emails. I can sometimes compensate for swimming or walking in the morning by psyching myself up and laying out my clothes the night before and then with out thinking GO upon waking up. That’s all well and good, and the real work is to dig out that habit or underlying limiting belief and understand it’s roots and then plant a new belief or habit.

So I am going to title this entry “I Don’t Wanna Part 1” and go off and do some stalking of limiting beliefs around this and I am coming back tomorrow to this blog and going to write “I Don’t Wanna Part 2” and hopefully have something to report to mySelf along the lines of excavated beliefs and new ones planted.

Getting Present to MySelf

Sometimes that hand on my shoulder is a bear's paw.

Karen’s home, for the first time in almost 3 weeks we are in our house together. We have met up and crossed paths once or twice and this is the first time we are both home in awhile. It feels good and right. As she sits over at her desk working on her own writing I feel both more complete and at rest while at the same time I feel a bit pulled to wanting to be with her rather then sinking mySelf into this writing. So I am aware of both a wonderful ease as my cells settle into the place that is so well known and completely safe while at the same time there is a vigilance going on to stay strong and grounded in my own Self and what is important to me in this moment and that vigilance means breathing into the “No, I will not make a comment, joke, smile or coo in her direction that will cause me to shift my attention away from what I am up to right now.” I know those activities are also there in another half hour and at that time I can choose to put my attention fully on her and let that kind of connection flow from a clean place as opposed to a co-dependent place. Right now I can sit in the bliss of my cells being complete and put my attention on what I am doing here and feel even a deeper and more connected love.

This is, believe it or not, still a new practice for me. This holding the core of me and not getting pulled to sacrificing it for the relationship or getting all wrapped up in figuring out what is needed over there of me, and then making sure I get it right and don’t screw it up. This old, and oh so familiar pattern, is right there like the devil on my left shoulder whispering in my ear and trying to distract me, while my higher consciousness, the I Am consciousness, is standing tall beside me with a firm hand on my right shoulder, silent, strong and patient, with a sense of deep knowing who I am and who I am becoming and both reassuring me that I am oh so capable of staying true to mySelf and my commitments while still feeling full of love and connection. There is no convincing necessary as this presence just stands there in a knowing certainty. As I feel the energy from his touch fill my body with that same knowing certainty I can feel my back straighten and my body wake up to it’s true nature, I can feel my heart open and fill itself with the love of Karen and continue to open to feel the love and connection with so many others. As I feel into my left shoulder for that little devil I notice he has vanished, I guess it is just too solid a place for him to hang out in.

Well I just took a little journey, noticing one of the many ways that I can get present to mySelf. A sip of tea, a deep breath, and a bit of contemplation as to what else I want to do right now. What I see is that this is complete for me this morning. I am going to post a poll though and see how you get present to yourSelf.

Hope And Prayer

All sorts of things to hope for with a sky like this.

This morning is a morning filled with hope. The sky which has been either rainy or foggy since I got home is banded with the silver-grey-backlit white-occasional fluffy-occasional blue of a sky that is filled with hope for a whole slew of possible days. There are so many ways a day like today could go. If I just look at the surface of the water and where it meets the horizon it looks like more rain or fog. If I look up a bit from the horizon I begin to get that big band of intriguing back lit white with dashes of grey in the midst, this day hopes to be like heaven with beautiful clouds both back lit and front lit filling a blue sky in long tendrils. If I go up a bit from that I see fluffy white clouds which show me the possibility of a lovely day filled with blue, light and some relieving shade, a well balanced day. And if I go all the way to the top of my window I see a big blue patch, which gives me hope that the rain that has been pelting us here for the last couple weeks may indeed be drawing down. So as the sky does it’s dance and the clouds and the blue keep working it out I see hope in all possibilities.

My beloved Karen is headed, right now as I write this, to a new ropes course with a new course facilitator, a new co-leader and a new group of leadership participants. I am hoping and praying that she and all those she is with have a grand and transformative time, a time of flow and ease, a time of laughter and tears, a time of shattering and opening of hearts, a time of discovery and recognition of personal power, and a time of deep love and blossoming consciousness.

5 delightful and deeply conscious women from my Black Lodge are headed to my house for a sleep over and some great spiritual grounding conversations and ritual. I hope and pray that my house will be the perfect place for this gathering and that wonderful deepening and brightening will happen. I hope that we find the laughter and the joy in the work we do together as well as the sincerity and depth. I hope for a great time of ease, flow and transformation in our gathering of seekers.

Hope and Prayer. I realize that these are two words I don’t use very often and when I do I sometimes have little pangs of resistance or disbelief in my mind. I can track these pangs back to a spiritual rebel that I was in my youth that still doesn’t like to use “mushy spiritual words”. I am grateful to that rebel as he has been responsible for a lot of honing and shaping of my language so that I have gotten pretty good at bringing “acceptable secular” language to spiritual contexts and concepts, often so that the people I am working with don’t even realize that they are waking up their spiritual selves at first and do not get caught in all of their own old spiritual traps. However I realize now that some of these words that the rebel has banned from my lexicon are actually quite useful and effective at communicating some energies that I don’t express well with other words. I like to use the word “sourcing” sometimes for prayer and “open to and excited for the possibilities” for hope, and I will still use these words and concepts. I am bringing back to my vocabulary, though, hope and prayer.

Hope is a state of intention combined with openess in my way of seeing it and prayer is a conversation with the universe, a dance with the beloved, that begins with every thought I have and ends with spirit manifesting into form.

At least that is the way I am seeing these wonderful words this morning as I sip my tea and look at the changing sky that represents all the hope I have in my heart.

The Fog and The Fire

Not quite foggy enough for the picture in my mind, and you get the idea.

This foggy morning wants to call me into introspection and even a bit of melancholy. The fire burning in my heart is calling me towards the thrill of aliveness and connection. The fog is gentle and easy and soothing and wants me to just move through my morning with thoughtfulness and attention to mySelf, missing Karen, the touches of sadness that go with being out of touch with family members and friends for too long. The fire is filled with desire to keep agreements with mySelf and others, to get this writing done impeccably well so I can move on to other responsibilities that I will do with impeccability and clarity. Responsibilities like writing my book, Black Lodge homework and connection, meditation and contemplation on brightening the diamond of consciousness. Both parts call me into action that is good for mySelf. Both fog and fire are wanted in this Self as I start my day. Let me bring some fog to the actions of fire, and some fire to the actions of fog.

Yes, I long to bring some of that ease and slowly growing sense of calm and patience of fog to slowly move in and surround something passionate, to feel it completely as it obscures everything else and just lets it be there whole and complete in itself. What would it be like if I let the fog surround me when I work on the book and let it just begin to shut out all of the details and destractions that are always there shouting at me and leave just me and the writing? What would it be like if I just easily slipped into a meditation or a contemplation where I, like fog, surrounded some of my other responsibilities one by one and simply wrapped them in fog so that for that bit of timeless time this or that responsibility was all there was in the fog and thus it was easily distinguishable and could be calmly looked at and completed?

In the same way I could bring the fire to my connections and relationships. I could stop putting off conversations that I need to have with family and friends and just pick up the phone. I could light a fire under my fog like melancholy and write a poem or create some art of some sort that has melancholy in it. I could breathe my fire breath of passion into any emotion and let it burn brightly for a bit so that I can develop more consciousness around it and know that this emotion is part of me and has a right to exist, it has information in it and healing energy in it and it isn’t any more powerful or less powerful then any other part of me, this wonderful emotion works with all parts of me to create clarity of who I am in any given moment. If I make too big a deal of it, it will take over. If I ignore it, I am stepping away from the integration and learning that I am so committed to. So I light the fire of it and see how it burns in me while all other parts of me take notes.

Ahh the fire and the fog can work together, I don’t have to choose between them. What a great morning with the fog out my window and the fire in my heart.

On a different note, I want to thank all of you readers that leave comments on my blog. Many mornings they are the first thing I read and on days when I am here at the computer, I do love taking a “comment” break and seeing what someone is noticing on the blog. So thanks so much for taking the time to leave a note.

At Home

At Home in all three states.

This morning I am aware of three states of awareness that I call “at home”. The first is this wonderful sense of place that I feel in a few places on the planet earth. These places I can walk into and the cells in my body respond by instantly settling down and recognizing themselves in relationship to every chair, bed, view, shower, teapot, cup, and silverware drawer. They can feel their way, like water feels it’s way down a mountain, to quickly and effortlessly settle into what they know and love. There is no sense of “thinking” about “where is this thing or that thing” or “what is this for?” Everything is known and familiar and if it isn’t it is a curiosity not a stress causer. This first state of “at home” is caused by my relationship with a place and my establishment of that place as “MY HOME”. Whether I own it or not, whether I have any rights to call it “mine” or not doesn’t matter, because the cells know and have that relationship. My house in Dillon Beach is one of those places, my family’s cottage in Georgian Bay is another, The Mother Tree retreat center was another, and my Grandfather’s house in Columbus, while he was still alive was another. These places wake something up in my cells while at the same time allowing them to relax and feel at home.

One of my cousins moved into my Grandfather’s house after he died and did a lot of renovations to the house and over the years that house has become her home and the house itself has felt less and less like home to my cells the creek and the woods and the pond still call to my cells and it is a weaker call then it was in my childhood. I would no longer feel at home there. If I were to sell this place that is home here in Dillon Beach and someone else moved in to make it there home it would not feel the same and after time, again, only the land would call me, only the view, and only the rocks that I have spent time on meditating and taking it all in would hold that sense of home for me. So this “at home” feeling that calls to my cells and is place based is temporary and fragile as much as it is beautiful and oh so satisfying.

The second state of “at home” is what I have been working on for these last 5 years or so. That sense of being at home in mySelf. I have been creating that same sense of my cells being so filled up with satisfaction and breath with this moment where ever I am and with who ever I am with, so that every moment is filled with a sense of being “at home”. As I develop this ability to be “at home” in my skin, in my spirit, in my mind, in my heart, in my emotions, in this universe, in this moment and with this breath the possibility exists for me to create the same sense of no-stress, relaxed and yet alive and aware state of being that my cells experience when I land in a place that is “at home”. This integration of my selves and finding love and compassion for all parts of mySelf, this deepening of consciousness of where ever my feet or butt is planted IS HOME is growing in me. I am aware that as I grow this and step more and more into this place I can no longer tolerate the complaints and collusions that I have with myself and my loved ones about being away from home, about how “painful” or “exhausting” it is to be away from home. I need to be more impeccable with my words and notice the pain of missing my beloved or being tired from being well used and not create the reality in my speaking of missing home, when I AM home where ever I am.

The third state of being “at home” is in the arms of my beloved. In this place of breathing in and breathing out with this person that I have scrambled to the top of mountains with and slid down into hell with. This woman who has soothed my confused brow and yelled at me and who I have calmed down of many a ledge and have lost my voice in both joy and anger with. This being of light and wonder, who her self is not “at home” and is off transforming the lives of a tribe of Geese. This place of being “at home” with Karen is also a place of wonder and learning and expanding consciousness on all levels of my being.

Now when I walk in the doorway of this home I love so much, this place where my cells just exhale and the smile of recognition slips onto my face I will be doubly at home. My already at home Self will now enter a sanctuary of support of that sense of being at home. And when on Monday Karen comes home the final penny will drop in the at home meter and all that was already well and good will be complete.

I Get To Do This!

I am filled with uncontainable gratitude and want to let the world know.

Wow! I do love my work. The work I get to do in this period of my life lets me stay in beautiful places and beautiful faces and watch, cajole, prod, poke, demand, invite, whisper, hug, cry, laugh, shake up, yell, express mySelf fully and completely, so that those faces shine and glow in ways that perhaps they never have before. To contribute to something that is already beautiful and to have it shine even more beautifully when all is said and done, and to have a certainty that what it is that creates the new shine is NOT temporary but loaded into the cellular memory, (big sigh) now that is good work indeed.

Bless you Chickadees you are flying out in between the worlds of Retreat 2 and Retreat 3 with a newfound sense of intimacy and connection, I know you will, and I am going to URGE you anyway to TRAIN YOUR WORLD in the possibilities of connection, intimacy and interdependence. Train your world patiently and yet with an insistence and a STAY like your lives and futures depend upon it, because they do.

Bless you Water Dragons, I will be seeing you in a few weeks and you have walked the path of intimacy and the path of awareness of your impact, (another sigh with a smile) I know you are taking on a deeper responsibility for your world and looking at ways to brighten this universe with a deeper consciousness and are stepping into modeling and being the kind of leaders that Life is hungry for. It is time to get on this horse and ride it.

These two groups that I am working with are filled with powerful people that are on this earth at this time to make a profound difference. They are here to bring us humans back to our hearts and our spirits. They are here to open up the full expression of all the humans and to remind them of their range and capacity to Love. They are peacemakers who are not afraid of conflict. They are leaders that know how to empower other leaders to be bigger and better selves and to Stay with the responsibility of what they create. They are compassionate and passionate people who know how to open their hearts and let people in and when they forget they know how to ask for help. They know how to keep the ripples of love and leadership that they stand for rippling out to the edges of their worlds and touch all the inhabitants in those worlds. Watch out world here they come, unfasten your seatbelts and get ready to fly.

Of course I am proud and privileged to have been able to touch, train, love, inspire, wake up, and most important learn and create from all the tribes and the leaders I have been able to sit in front of. I am thrilled to have played in this sandbox and to have been able to have heard the stories of castles being built and hearts being won and lives being changed and most importantly of all consciousness being brightened all over the world. What an amazing life I get to live and what an honor it is to stand on this earth at this time with the people I have been honored to stand with. I am profoundly grateful to have chosen this life to live and this time to live in.

Boy oh boy I can’t wait to see what happens today. Today I am headed off to a new retreat center to meet with my Beloved Karen and my brother Pat, who are about to start with a brand new group in a brand new beautiful place to begin the symphony that I am in the middle of playing. I get to walk around the grounds with them as we begin to dream the dream of our work in this place. Where will we do this activity and that ritual? When will we use this place and who will sleep where? We will begin to touch and add our energy to an already beautiful space and brighten it up and make it even more beautiful for these leader/travelers who are arriving today and tomorrow to begin a journey that will take them to the stars.

Cool.

I’m behind on my homework :-(

There is an energy I am feeling this morning that is not particularly spiritually mature. It is a familiar energy and I don’t like it much. It is an energy born in failing and falling behind in my commitments. It is an anxious energy that yearns to please people that I know that I have disappointed, especially teachers or ones in authority, and yet it is also an energy that wants to rebel and just say “screw it”. It comes from napping for a couple of months and playing my games and ignoring some of my commitments, especially me Black Lodge agreements to stay engaged in conversation and learning. Out of that space of being absent and not “doing my homework”, my little i gets caught up in a swirl of shame and guilt and other nonsense that will be mighty familiar to anyone who got behind in school a bit or took too long to write those thank-you letters, that building loop of “I didn’t do it (bad), I should do it (good), it’s too late to do it (victim), I won’t be loved or respected anymore (pathetic loser), back to I didn’t do it (bad)” and on and on, finishing with some sort of mollifying half-hearted attempt to please without really getting the job done. It is ether that energy or one of the many close cousins to that energy that is gurgling around in my belly looking for a place to land. As I write it I am aware of how much stronger I am then that old energy and that I don’t really have to let that energy or habit overrun me. I truly have the skill and ability to dig into my cellar and pull up the roots of that sucker and not get caught by it again.

When I do that I see that there are consequences to anything and everything that I do. There are consequences to taking a nap and playing Castle Age for a couple of months. When I let mySelf do something like that I will have to face up to and deal with the consequences. I broke agreements that I made with others. In the breaking of those agreements I am not a bad person or will not stop being loved or rejected by anybody. I did break agreements however and it is up to me to clean up the ground around those broken agreements and to make new ones. I need to take responsibility for the choices I made and for the choices I need to make moving forward. The only person that I really ever fear or feel I need to hide from for “being bad” and not “doing what I was supposed to” is really just myself and I find it is actually impossible to hide from myself anymore. The truth is it was always impossible, which is why that anxious energy was ever there in the first place. It was really that feeling of trying to hide and not being able to. Finally I realize that the saddest thing of all is that the Self I was frantically running away from and trying desperately to hide from is actually a benevolent and patient self who has no anger or malice for me in any way whatsoever. This Self is strongly desirous of my development and growth and completely understanding of the necessity of making mistakes and learning from these mistakes as I continue to grow and learn. There is nothing or no-one that I need to hide from or fear.

Cool.

Begin Again

OK, so I haven’t blogged for a few days, dang I really am getting my shit together here. I am in Asheville North Carolina getting ready to start Retreat 2 with the Chickadees an amazing group of leaders chomping at the bit and chirping up a storm, as they get ready to connect powerfully in a way that can only be done at R2. I have been traveling for a couple of days with bags being left in cities and trying to get them here and all sorts of other lamo excuses. The truth is I am not yet back in the pattern that is set by my intentions and my commitments. Even though I am very clear that there is no place that I will “lock” in a new habit of writing or meditating, I will always need to remember to do these things and choose to do them and sometimes I will need to kick mySelf in the butt to do them, do them I must. However there is a place that I get to where the commitment is strong and the intention is clear and the pattern of doing it is well established so that I remember more easily to do it and I don’t find nearly as many lamo excuses not to do it.

I know that writing in the morning is a remarkable way for me to get mySelf pointed in a powerful direction and meditation is an amazing way for me to clear mySelf out of all the mental and spiritual baggage I am carrying and repack more lightly. So here I am at 7:20 on Tuesday morning getting mySelf pointed. Yay me.

One other thing is happening concurrently with R2 and me getting my shit together with my practices is that I am really getting some writing done on my book on Leadership that I am writing with David Skibbens. Interesting enough we are currently working on R2 related materials in the book and my mind is really tuned into what is behind intimacy and connection and creating from other. I am wrapped up in the work we do with assumptions and alignment, waxing poetical on sourcing and wondering about co-leadership. I am also aware of a lot of my writing needs being channeled into that work and a lot of my brain space being occupied by those thoughts.

On the other hand I have opened up a lot of space in my brain as I have let go of my obsessive game play on facebook and deleted my various games and cleaned up my behavioral habits of finding every spare moment I could to kill orcs, sea serpents and dragons, build armies and visit the oracles and demi powers of the game. There is a bit of a hole that is getting filled with other things like reading and remembering practices and getting back in touch with some of the communities and connections that I dropped out as my obsession took over. It is an interesting phenomena though that what I thought was dropped nobody else really missed a beat and hardly noticed I wasn’t there. Except of course my incredible beloved who had been on me for a month or so to cut it out all ready, I mean enough is enough

So here I am with out much to say really and at the same time whole worlds of things to explore in my consciousness that I don’t really know where to start. So I’ll start yet again by just starting. As we say in Leadership over and over again “Begin Again”.