Elka's Blog — Rock Your Mojo

10 Ways I Use the Arts in My Work as a Transformative Coach

2012-01-16T16:35:00.000-08:00

The arts figure prominently in my work as a transformative coach and workshop facilitator.

I utilize a range of creative processes sourced from a variety of arts disciplines to help individuals digest experience, express difficult emotions, articulate complex ideas, access inner wisdom, deepen awareness, and unlock potentials.

Here are 10 examples of how I might guide you in a private coaching session or workshop, using arts integration techniques:

After a trance or guided visualization, “summarize” your inner experience in images.

Upon waking each morning or prior to a dreamwork session, write your dream in words, then draw your dream in images.

Recount your spiritual autobiography — historical influences and current expressions — as the “roots and shoots” of a tree.

Articulate your core “issue” (or chronic feeling-state) using only images.

Stage an important memory (peak experience, pivotal moment or low point) as a theatre scene using other workshop participants (or objects in the room) as props and/or characters. Direct the scene as it actually happened. Invite other participants to change the scene to observe another possible experience and/or outcome.

Articulate a difficult or complex experience using only non-verbal vocalization and gesture.

Express your awareness of yourself through visual metaphors, including biological, mythological, historical and fantastical archetypes. Examples: What kind of flower are you most like and why? Draw yourself as that flower. Which Roman goddess are you most like and why? Make a collage of yourself as that archetype. What historical era are you most resonant with and why? Create a costume for yourself in that style. What kind fantastical creature are you most like and why? Construct that creature using only found objects.

Set a goal or intention. Craft an object or collage a pocket-size image that symbolizes you reaching this goal or achieving your intention. Write a song that emphasizes this intention and sing it while holding your object.

Using simple materials like paper bags or socks, craft rudimentary puppets of two characters. One character possesses all your great qualities; the other, all your “disowned” or “shadow” qualities. Script a theatrical interaction between the two puppets with a story arc that overcomes a conflict and arrives at a positive resolution. Alternately, improvise a dialog between the two puppets while a partner observes and afterwards feeds back to you her observations.

Prior to or during an important life transition, create an altar that represents where you’ve been, where you’re going and the threshold space you currently occupy between the two. Choose objects, colors, materials and spatial arrangements that symbolize the physical, mental and/or emotional dimensions of your experience; the personal, familial and/or social contexts your transition affects; and qualities you desire to experience during your transition.

End of Year Ritual to Release the Past and Welcome the New

2011-12-31T11:12:00.000-08:00

This ritual appears in my new Ritual Journal eBook.

***

Reflection brings us to closure. Closure allows the subconscious to allocate energy for the new. Let your December ritual be the opportunity your psyche needs to close out this year in preparation for the next. It’s best if you perform this ritual near the end of the month. (Like today!)

Prepare a sacred space at your desk or kitchen table, wherever you’ll be most comfortable for writing. Light a candle and set out some objects that feel special and/or inspiring. Have at the ready your journal, two strips of paper and a fire-safe container.

Begin by letting your mind wander over the past year. January... February... March... April... May... June... July... August... September... October... November... December...

What stands out in your memory? Achievements. Failures. Beginnings. Endings. Things you created. Experiences you’ve had. Feelings you’ve felt. People you’ve connected with. Relationships that have changed. Skills you’ve mastered. Lessons you’ve learned.

In your journal, jot down these memories in whatever order they come to you.

See if there are any themes connecting these memories. If there were an overarching “soul-theme” for this past year, what would it be? It could be... “Adventure”... “Cataclysmic Change”... “Amazing Grace”... “Slow and Steady Wins the Race”... “Taking Care of Myself”... “Love Conquers All”... “Freedom”... anything at all.

Once you’ve identified an overarching theme for your year, write it down on one of the strips of paper. Hold the paper in your hands with a mindfulness that this year is coming to a close.

Now burn the paper in the fire-safe container while saying or chanting:

Rhythms of earth, cycles of sun —
bless this year and all that’s done.
Wax and wane, ebb and flow —
I release what’s past and let it go.
I am free, open, clear —
Ready to welcome my new year.

After the last wisp of smoke from your burning paper has dispersed, pause with the full awareness of your closure. Have a deep breath and release it completely.

In the silence of completion, discover what emerges in your heart as a blessing for your coming year. This blessing could be a single word, an image, or a tumble of thoughts. If your heart-response is complex, use your journal to record the fullness of it, then choose just a few words to represent that complexity.

Write this new year blessing on the remaining strip of paper. Say it aloud, followed by these words:

Universe, hear my heart’s request.
Bring it in the way that’s best.

Blow out the candle you lit at the start of this ritual. Place the paper on your altar, in your day-planner or on your desk — some place you’ll see it when you do your new year planning.

***

Blessings to you as you prepare for 2012.

If you are inspired by this ritual, you can purchase the Ritual Journal eBook at http://www.elkavera.com/ritualjournal.html.

December Full Moon Greetings

2011-12-10T14:02:00.000-08:00

Did you see the eclipse this morning? What meaning do you make of it in your life?

Imagine how our distant ancestors must have experienced a full lunar eclipse. The moon, slowing darkening, until it's extinguished from the sky! But then, ah, it is restored again. A miracle!

Miracles are the hallmark of the winter season's religious holidays. Pagans celebrate the miracle of the sun's return on Solstice. On Hanukkah, Jews celebrate the miracle of long-lasting light that occurred during the re-consecration of the Holy Temple in Jerusalem. Christians celebrate the miracle of Mary's virgin birth to Christ on Christmas.

Today -- to honor the full moon, the energy of the eclipse and our season of miracles -- light a candle and tell the story of some miracle from your own life. Your miracle could be huge and life-altering. Or it could be simple and small -- easily missed.

Call a friend on the phone and tell your miracle tale, or write it down in your journal.

When you tune your consciousness to the presence of miracles, you polish the treasure of faith. Life itself becomes a miraculous event.

Here's to celebrating the gifts, the magic, and the miracles of the season!

Shrink the Shoulds in Time for the Holidays

2011-11-23T13:45:00.000-08:00

Here's a timely waning moon practice to immunize yourself against the "shoulds" of the season. The new moon (and eclipse) is on Friday, so take some time tonight or tomorrow to un-shoulder some shoulds.

***

The time of "shoulds" is upon us. I should do this before the year ends. I should do this over the holidays. I should call my mother. I should take better care of my body. I should start planning my new year's resolutions so I can carry a weight of shoulds for the whole next year!

Shoulds take up an incredible amount of mental and emotional space. They are the noises that crop up during moments of rest. They hang out on the psychic to-do list, preventing us from enjoying the present moment.

Shoulds are ambivalent little buggers, too. On the one hand, they represent our aspirations and inner wisdom. "I should take out the trash" means the trash needs to be taken out and I'm the one to do it. On the other hand, shoulds are internalized expectations often handed to us from other people. "I should go to this party" can signify a burdensome social contract that does not reflect our true needs or desires.

On this waning moon evening, examine your lists of shoulds. Take out a piece of paper and write at the top "I SHOULD." Now free-write for 5 minutes on all the shoulds that come to mind.

Whew. It feels good to just get it out on paper. Less clutter for the noggin.

These shoulds shouldn't (forgive the joke) surprise you. The question remains: now that they're here in front of your very eyes, what do you want to do about them?

Pick one should from your list. Just one. Ask yourself: Do I want to do this? Do I have to do this? Will I do this? If the answer to all three of these questions is yes, then either do it right away, or write it in your planner and commit to handling this with the passion I know you're capable of! If, however, you answered no to any of these questions, take a pause...

If your desire and your will are aligned, it doesn't matter if you have to do something. The action will find its way through you. The only question is when. Give yourself the gift of handling the should right now or scheduling it in your planner.

Problems arise when you feel you have to do something, but your will and/or your desire are not aligned with it. You may recognize this sense of obligation as a clenching in your stomach, a weight in your heart, or some other unpleasant physical sensation.

Dig into this should which you feel you must do, but which you won't or don't want to do. Do you really have to do it? What will happen if you don't do it? Who will benefit if you do it? Who will benefit if you don't do it? And finally ask this question: what is the truth inside your heart?

It may be that this should is not something you really need to do at all and the wise soul inside knows it. In this case, use the power of the waning moon to let it go.

Repeat after me:

Shrinking moon, shrink this should.
I shed this weight for the greatest good.

Now take a deep breath... and let it go.

November Full(ish) Moon Greetings

2011-11-11T06:30:00.000-08:00

November Full(ish) Moon Greetings...

This month's full moon greeting comes to you deliberately delayed a day so it could accompany an 11:11:11 missive.

What's the 11:11 hoo-ha all about? For me, it's about symbolism of noteworthiness and the human drive for meaning-making. Say what? Let me explain.

To me, 11:11:11 is intriguing because of its relative uniqueness as a once-in-a-century date and for its visual symmetry.

About its symmetry: The repetition of the same number multiple times is an interesting design motif. It also reads like a code. The notions of both design and code suggest thoughtfulness at work. The idea of thoughtfulness at work in (or behind) the world evokes the Mystery we call God, Goddess, the Tao, Great Spirit and many other names.

About its uniqueness: Special days are special because they're... special. They don't happen every day. A birthday happens only once a year. That's special. 11:11:11 happens once every hundred years. That's extra special.

A date that's both special and mysterious is ripe with opportunities for making meaning. And that is exactly what human beings excel at. Making meaning.

Forget what you found on Google about it. What meaning do you make of this noteworthy number?

11:11:11 is like the four-leaf clover of the Gregorian calendar. It is rare and evocative of magical possibility.

To some, a four-leaf clover is simply an unusual member of the Trifolium genus of plant. To others, the four-leaf clover is a lucky talisman, a symbol, a portal to another world where there's a leprechaun with a pot of gold waiting for you to make a wish.

You probably make a wish on your birthday. Go ahead. Make an even bigger one today.

Spiritual Practices for Time Mastery

2011-10-24T15:18:00.000-07:00

Time is not a product. It is not a commodity. Time is not a thing at all. It can’t be bought or sold.

Time is a construct, a container, an agreement. Time is one of the gifts we receive when we incarnate. It’s a blessing of the dance of Earth, Moon, Sun and Stars. Time is the s p a c e that allows life to be experienced in seeming sequence. Time is the rhythm behind the melody of your soul-song.

Time is given in the macro-rhythms of Earth’s twirl around the Sun (we call this a Year) and the Moon’s swoop around the Earth each Month. The Earth’s reliable daily spin (She is a whirling dervish in Her devotion) gives us the markers of Day and Night.

Time is counted out in micro by your body. Your heart sounds out a steady backbeat or a sudden electric drum roll. And your breath — your glorious breath — is the conscious choice to align with the Great Conductor that is You.

You have all you need — without paper planner or digital calendar — to become a master with time.

Here’s how:

Become friends with your body and its rhythms. The mind can transcend time — it can pop forward into fantasy, past into memory, or into the shamanic realms beyond time. But the body — the body knows time. The body is embedded in time. Do what you already know to do to cultivate a compassionate listening for this body of yours.

Develop a practice for becoming present. Call it meditation. Or don’t. Only create a habit of becoming increasingly aware of this moment now… and now… and now. Your breath will be your greatest teacher in this endeavor. Your breath is the homing beacon when mental chatter lures you out of time.

Honor your days, weeks, months and years with rituals — sacred or secular — that mark experiences that have unfolded within time’s passage. Then you do not lose time. Instead, you deeply digest what has transpired within time’s container. Time is the pot. Your life is the tasty soup. Time-based rituals empower you to consciously cook-up and savor that soup. Here are some examples of using rituals to mark time:

Daily. Each morning, set intentions for the day. And before you bed down for the night, reflect on what you did (or did not) experience or accomplish. Bring an element of physicality — like lighting a candle, writing down your reflections, or saying them out loud — to your rituals and you naturally involve the great timekeeper that is your body.

Weekly. Use your faith tradition’s Sabbath-day to review your week and release it so that you are fresh for the coming week. If you do not have a specific weekly holy day, then choose a day that feels like the end or beginning of your week. Easy ways to ritualize your weekly renewal: Light a candle while you review your week, then take a bath to release it and prepare yourself for the week to come.

Monthly. Mark your menstrual cycle in a special way each month. Or, if you do not menstruate, do something significant on the new or full moon. Here’s an idea: Create a collage of last month’s accomplishments.

Yearly. Gather a circle of friends before you head off to your NYE party. Take turns sharing highlights (or even lowlights) from the year. Write your highs and/or lows on little strips of paper. Then burn them in your fireplace.

Time mastery is not about dominating time. It’s about partnering with time. Together, you and time will make beautiful music.

October Full Moon Greetings

2011-10-11T19:06:00.000-07:00

A fiery full moon in Aries takes place tonight. As an archetype, fire is life force, self-esteem, courage, transformative power. And the full moon is a time for gratitude, for honoring the fullness of life. How has fire been an ally to you? In what ways are you expressing your fire?

Here's a simple spiritual practice you can do tonight to honor the fire within:

***

Center yourself in front of a mirror. Light a candle. A red one would be perfect, but any color will do. Recall all the ways you have been courageous, stood up for yourself, made positive change or expressed your life force this past month. Now make eye contact with yourself in the mirror. Say aloud: "By the power of this fire's light, I honor my own inner power tonight. I see the power in me. I am the power I see." Gaze at your own glorious reflection until you feel complete. Bring your hands together in prayer position. Then blow out the candle.

***

There were many ways that I had the opportunity to express my fiery life force this month, not the least of which was launching my Seeds of Wisdom Oracle iPhone App! It was a real labor of love that came to fruition through the efforts of many people. And now it's been downloaded around the world!

To my surprise, only 50% of the downloads of the app so far have been in the U.S. The oracle has gone global, with downloads across Europe, in Ghana, Jordan, Bahrain and other countries. (I confess I had to look at a map to locate Bahrain.)

Since the moment I began fundraising to gather resources to build this app, I had the Life Force card on my altar with a special yellow-orange crystal right on the sunflower's center. And tonight, I shall remove that stone, say another round of gratitude prayers, and honor the Great Creator whose power moves through us all.

September Full Moon Greetings

2011-09-12T08:54:00.000-07:00

You are irreplaceable. Nobody can do what you do. While it's true that we all come from the same Source, your body and your soul are unique. You-nique.

I was telling a friend last night how I experience human uniqueness. I imagine we are all flutes being played by the same Universal Source energy. Each flute is made of the same material. (All material things on Earth are made up of the same elemental constituents organized into distinct forms.) But each flute is shaped differently -- by our life experiences, genetic patterns, thoughts, and choices -- and so makes a unique sound. Same materials, same breath of the Divine. Different sounds. In the symphony of life, your sound is special. Un-duplicatable.

Branding is the art of recognizing and sharing your soul's sound. It's not just for entrepreneurs, either. If your success swings on how you present yourself, branding matters to you. Is it time to celebrate your soul -- and secure your success -- through personal branding? Explore the possibilities.

Speaking of possibilities... what are the life choices you've been dreaming on? Let the light of the full moon shine down on your dreamtime tonight.

On the topic of light... guess what the soon-to-launch Seeds of Wisdom mobile oracle just turned up when I asked for a reading for my community:

Every "thing" is really light dancing in the prism of perception. Time to release the labels and focus on our shared Source.

Let your light shine.

August New Moon Greetings

2011-08-28T08:36:00.000-07:00

Some of you are familiar with the astrological concept of "Mercury Retrograde." For those who are not, this is an astrological cycle that happens about three times a year, during which communications, technologies, and travels often go awry.

I personally think of the Mercury Retrograde cycle as a positive thing -- a time to revisit, reconsider, re-evaluate, revise. And rarely are my communications and resources troubled during this period. But this Mercury Retrograde, which began on August 2 and ended on August 26 -- well, it was a traffic jam of miscommunication and technology mishaps in my world.

One thing you might have noticed is that I normally send my e-newsletter on the full moon. My mid-month misadventures, smack in the middle of Mercury retrograde, advised me to lay low and restart my monthly missives on today's post-retrograde new moon.

The new moon is a time for fresh starts, new beginnings. To honor this energy, I'd like to share one of the cards from my soon-to-be-released Wisdom Oracle mobile app.

The "Rebirth" card sums it up. Now is the time to let go of the old to welcome the new. But through it all you will still be you. The waves of life rise and fall. Go ahead: ride them all.

What lessons did you learn, plans did you re-evaluate, or obstacles did you overcome during this month? Take a moment to appreciate your own growth and transformation.

A Leo Ritual for Self-Appreciation

2011-08-22T09:23:00.000-07:00

Leo has her last roar today before the sun moves into Virgo tomorrow. The zodiac's great lioness craves attention, thrives on praise. Whether or not your astrological make-up includes planets in this sign of fire, creativity, performance and leadership, you can pay homage to the archetype with a ritual of passionate self-appreciation.

You'll need an orange candle, a fire-safe bowl, a tiger's eye stone, some paper and something to write with.

The consummate rock star, Leo knows how to stand on stage and receive an audience's applause. Not everyone can handle that. How often do you duck away from praise and attention? Let Leo show you how it's done tonight!

Light the orange candle to invoke the spirit of the fiery Lion. You may even wish to let out a few growls or roars!

Lions live in groups called "prides." Pride is a characteristic often attributed to Leos. Use the paper and pen to write a letter of praise to yourself.

Start the letter, like so...

Dear [your name],
I am so proud of you for ________________.

Then write with a lion's pride. List everything -- and I mean everything -- you can think of that you're proud of yourself for. Go back as far as you like in your personal history. There may be accomplishments from the third grade that still want to be recognized. For some of us, just surviving early childhood trauma is an accomplishment! If that's that the case for you, then include it: "I'm so proud of you for making it through!"

Close your letter with some final words of praise. My inner lion wants to hear "You're awesome!" What does yours want to hear?

Place the tiger's eye into the fire-safe bowl. Say aloud:

I ask you to receive this praise.
As you receive this praise, so do I

Roll up your letter and light it with the flame from the orange candle. Hold it for as long as you can without burning your fingers. Let the ash fall onto the stone. While the paper burns you may want to roar or growl or chant.

When you can no longer safely hold the paper, drop it into the bowl. After the flame consumes the entire letter, swirl the tiger's eye around in the ash. Be sure to get it thoroughly coated. As you do, say aloud

With Leo's power and Leo's pride
I take these words deep inside
I turn them into my loving guide.
I say it is so, and so it is done.

Blow out the candle in one great powerful breath. Your tiger's eye stone now carries the power of this ritual. Wipe off the ash and add to your wallet, purse or mojo bag. Carry it with you to be reminded of what a rock star you are.

T-error is human. To forgive is human, too.

2011-08-18T13:59:00.000-07:00

Terror. It's "error" with a "t" up front.

Think of the letter "t" as the crossroads. Are you standing at the crossroads of some choice, terrified of choosing "wrong"?

The prospect of making a mistake can make many of us quake with fear. It can feel as if our very survival is at stake. There is an idea at work that says: If I get it wrong, I will be punished; if I get it right, I will be rewarded.

This idea has deep roots. Remember all the times you were punished for making a mistake as a child? And then in school? And then in your job? And then in your relationships? And now in your own head?

If you treat yourself the way your punishing parents, educators, lovers or bosses treated you then, then you are well justified in your terror at making mistakes. It is smart to stall at the crossroads if there's an inner oppressor ready to attack at the slightest mis-step.

Guess what -- you have the power to depose the despot within. When the punisher pokes at you, you don't poke back. You say: I forgive you. When the perfectionist picks at you, you don't pick back. You say: I forgive you.

You don't justify, explain, complain, or beg for mercy. You forgive. And eventually, that forgiveness melts the armor around the wounded part of you who made the mistake of trying to protect the whole of you by punishing you into "correct" behavior before anyone else could have a chance to hurt you for your mistakes again.

And once the armor is gone, you can go to that wounded little part and say: I love you. I will never leave you. You are safe.

And then you can both have a good cry -- you and this old wounded part of you -- and start to discover a new kind of relationship. One where curiosity replaces fear.

And when you're at the crossroads again, you'll be able to see the "t" of intersecting choices and the potential for "error." And you'll acknowledge the "t-error" with the awareness that, indeed, you might make a mistake.

You don't know what the future holds. You can only make the best choices with the information and resources you have available, and then respond to the outcomes of your choices.

Learn to love yourself regardless of outcomes. Depose the despot with forgiveness. It does not matter if no one ever taught you how to do that. You can teach yourself now.

Visions and Manifestations

2011-06-26T17:41:00.000-07:00

Once upon a time, I had a vision of a modern-day Abbey — a service-based, urban, residential priestess training facility.

I wrote a business plan for The Abbey. But as I began cultivating allies and building energy for The Abbey, I realized that it was not my path at the time. What wanted to emerge instead was a Goddess boutique and art gallery. So that is what I manifested.

Plans for The Abbey incubate in a thick binder in my office. Perhaps a priestess training facility will manifest one day through my efforts... or perhaps through yours.

Since the world could benefit from such an Abbey, regardless of who builds it, I'd like to seed the possibility by sharing the Energy In / Energy Out diagram from the plan.

If this seed finds fertile soil in your imagination — and sprouts through your labors — drop me a line and let me know when I can come for a visit.

Mainstream Wisdom for the Magical Entrepreneur

2011-06-20T07:58:00.000-07:00

This article is from the Harvard Business Review:
http://blogs.hbr.org/cs/2011/06/making_your_strategy_more_rele.html

I love how the concerns of megacorp CEOs around business strategy are the same as those of creative and spiritual micro-entrepreneurs.

Focus your energy on the overlap between these three circles: what you're interested in, what you're good at, what the market will pay for. This overlap could also be called "where your differentiation meets your value creation".

Happy near-Solstice!

Leaning into Yes

2011-06-07T13:06:00.000-07:00

Being clear about who you are and what’s important to you — and saying yes to that over and over — delivers a de facto no to those things that distract you from your purpose.

If you’re having a hard time saying no to others’ demands and desires that are incongruent with your own, the muscles to develop are not your no muscles. The muscles to develop are your values-centered yes muscles.

Turn your attention within. Keep saying yes to your inner awareness, your desires, your goals and your heart. When you’re a firm yes to the guidance that’s inside you, everything else falls in line.

May Full Moon Greetings

2011-05-17T11:38:00.000-07:00

This month, I'd like to tell you a story about resistance.

Once upon a time, I had the good fortune of being met with a challenge in my local community. The challenge was to communicate the implications of our biospheric interconnectedness at a grass roots level — literally, right in my own driveway.

At the time, I lived in a cookie-cutter suburban town-home community in San Jose. My neighbor liked to wash his car in front of his garage, which was on a paved driveway shared by all the condos in our development. A recent visit to the Monterey Bay Aquarium had re-awakened my awareness of how runoff pollution from residential car washing impacts our world's water bodies. When I observed my neighbor washing his car and saw the soapy runoff coursing into the nearest storm drain, I couldn't remain silent.

With compassion in my heart and a sense that he must not be aware of the impact of his behavior or he would not persist in it, I walked up to him and informed him that car wash water running into storm drains is not treated the same as waste water from our homes. Storm drain run-off goes straight into the nearest waterway, which would eventually make its way into the ocean. I did not ask him to stop washing his car in the driveway. I said simply that I wanted him to be aware of its impact.

Rather than thank me for sharing the news, he became flustered, defending himself. Later, he came to my home, knocked on my door, and demanded proof of my environmental allegations from "a legitimate government agency" not from - and here he just waved his arms vaguely about him. This gesture I took to mean "general, assumed knowledge."

Ironically, when I later spoke with a water expert at the EPA, this legitimate government agency representative told me he could not provide a single, simple, succinct resource that depicts the impact of runoff from car washing on the environment. He said, "It's just generally known." When I pressed the issue, saying that general knowledge was insufficient to sway my neighbor, he excerpted three opaque paragraphs from a complex legal code, and then summarized it for me: "Car wash runoff is an illicit discharge."

My efforts to find the right bit of information to communicate with my neighbor put me in touch with environmental agencies at both the national and local levels. When I attempted to deliver my package of findings to my neighbor - which, incidentally, he refused to take, with a hand up and an "I trust you" - I thanked him for the opportunity to enlighten myself. I would not have made the effort if I had not been met by his initial resistance. Resistance had proven itself an ally to my evolution.

And, no, my neighbor never did stop washing his car in the driveway. He would just drive to another spot out of my view. The moral of my story is not "education is the answer to our environmental crises." Education is one part of the equation, but how many of us know what's healthy and still choose other behavior?

No. The lesson learned was this: Resistance gives us something to grapple with, and in the grappling we grow.

In physical fitness, resistance is the heart of strength training; it builds muscle. And in certain religious traditions, grappling with God is integral to spiritual development.

If there's a resistance you've been avoiding, consider engaging it instead. Perhaps your soul is calling you to grow.

Musings on Business, Money, Failure and Flight

2011-04-26T21:08:00.000-07:00

This one goes out to all the Spiritual and Creative Entrepreneurs in my recent Success Groups.

***

Your business is a creation of yours. It is not you. When you are over-identified with your business, its financial success becomes a marker of your human worth. Money is energy, not a symbol of your value.

Money flows into a business that performs its function well through proper design and market placement. Placement here refers to your business’ engagement with the market it seeks to serve. Design includes its intention and the systems which support that intention.

If your business is not generating enough money, it is not a reflection on you as a good or bad person. It simply says that there is some failure in the business’ design or placement. It’s not personal. Simply identify the failure and adjust. Failure is feedback.

***

Speaking of failure, here’s a practice for you:

Identify your first recognition of failure. Who taught you its meaning? Who bequeathed its judgment to you? File that now in a mental filing cabinet labeled “Failure v1.0.” Close the cabinet door, slide it securely until it's firmly shut. Done. Now pull out a fresh file folder. Label it “Failure v2.0” and fill this blank slate with a new definition. Try “failure = learning” or “failure = growth.”

***

A fledgling bird’s first attempts at flight are rocky, messy, shaky. In order to fly, it must risk failure. Be like the bird: Spread your wings and express your true nature.

March Full Moon Greetings

2011-03-19T11:10:00.000-07:00

When I sat down to write my full moon greeting last month my attention turned to the rain. And again, this month, my ears catch the sound of heavy drops pounding my windows... only this time, they are new windows. Yes, I've moved. I'm still in Rockridge, just a few blocks from my old location, now at the crossroads of College and Claremont in Oakland.

I am at home at the crossroads. It is the substance of my lifework. As a transformative coach, I greet people at their personal and professional crossroads and companion them in their choice-making. Turn left? Turn right? Pause? Carry forward? Run? Turn back?

Many of the people I work with carry fear about making the wrong choice, which often shows up as obsession about making the right choice. I have observed that most people, somewhere deep inside, have already made the choice they are going to make. There's just a delay in awareness about it or a resistance to the outcomes the choice entails. Together, we look at what's really there in that inside place and discover if the hidden choice can be accepted. It takes the pressure off to remember that you can choose again. And again.

If you've been procrastinating on a decision, take note that refusing to make a choice is still a choice. You can sit at the crossroads as long as you like. But that won't make the traffic stop. The world carries on.

And as the world carries on, what is your intention for it at this time of global crossroads? Is there some small (or large) choice you can make, action you can take to bring about the world you dream of? Would that be a prayer for the people of Japan? A donation? Could it be a letter to your local politician about your stand on nuclear power? Or informing yourself of what's happening in Libya right now?

You've read the bumper sticker: "Think globally. Act locally." Our daily choices, our little actions - they do add up. The choices you make have impact. You — and what you do — matter.

May the Full Moon on this Spring Equinox inspire you in your choice-making. Choose YOU!

Choose Your Good... Not Your Should

2011-03-16T12:39:00.000-07:00

There are plenty of books on the market about getting things done, getting into action, organizing your resources, clearing your clutter and checking things off your lists. My approach to coaching is, in large part, about clearing the inner clutter so the things that land on your list are naturally things you feel aligned with. When you’re naturally aligned with yourself and what’s on your to-do list, energy moves through you more efficiently. Less time is spent in resistance, procrastination and confusion.

If someone isn’t taking action according to their stated priorities, the place to coach is not, as you might think, in the realm of action. When a client sets a goal with its subordinate actions, then fails to complete those actions and, thus, fails to reach their goal, my response is not to attempt to empower their will — which is the gung-ho, “you can do it” coach-as-cheerleader approach — but rather to activate their awareness. I ask them to look at the goal they set in light of their heart-centered values, what I call their “Inner Star”. I invite them to say yes to the goal as an expression of their Inner Star. In the process, if they discover a goal or task is not aligned with their heart-centered values, then it usually drops of the list.

Lots of things land on our lists motivated by “should.” There’s a difference between should and good. Prioritizing our good means prioritizing our motives (our values) over the means (the specific tasks that help us express them). When we keep saying yes to our Inner Star, the universe contrives to deliver circumstances in which we can live its light. Spiritual coaching holds that there is something much bigger and better at work than the mechanisms of our intellect, no matter how sophisticated they may be.

To unlock the wisdom of your Inner Star, check my events page for a ViA Systems or Follow Your Inner Star workshop.

Befriending Fear

2011-03-15T17:50:00.000-07:00

Fear is useful. It warns us of danger. It asks us to be scrupulous, awake and vigilant. It does not say, “Do not act.” In fact, it may demand action. At its core, what fear really says is, “Be mindful and take right action.”

When my coaching clients assert they need to eliminate or overcome their fear before they can attempt the thing they dream of, I assert that what they need is courage, not the absence of fear. A good plan helps, too.

If you’re holding yourself back from your dream because of fear, there may be good reasons for that. Find out what those reasons are. And respond to those reasons, point by point. That’s the foundation of your dream-realizing action plan. Thank your fear for giving you the information needed to draft your plan.

While you’re working on your plan, begin to stoke the fire in your heart. The French word for heart, coeur, is the etymological root of the word courage. Cultivate your courage. Breathe passion into your dream and let that burn bright. Let it be like a lantern in your heart. Use it to light the path toward your dream, following the plan that was informed by your fear.

I bow to the value of all of our emotions.

Multi-Dimensional Coaching

2011-02-18T19:51:00.000-08:00

I've got one of those "slash" careers. That is, I'm a coach slash consultant slash hypnotherapist slash artist slash writer slash reiki healer. "Coach" is just easier to say.

Here are five ways you might not have realized my multi-dimensional coaching can help you:

Resume review. Bring your CV to a session and we can call out what's hot and drop what's not.
Message development. When you're flummoxed on what to call your services, we can entice the Muses to gift us with just the right words.
Decisions on-demand. When you're at a crossroads and the clock is ticking, a session can help choose the right adventure.
Radical re-orientation. Using hypnotherapeutic deep awareness practices, we can do some paradigm-shifting perspective adjustments.
Energy boost. Even though it's not explicit and there's no direct hands-on healing, reiki is always flowing in my sessions. You just feel better.

Call (650) 575-3799 or email elka (at) elkavera.com to set up your free initial consultation.

February Full Moon Greetings

2011-02-18T00:36:00.000-08:00

Here in the San Francisco Bay Area, we are deluged with rain. This kind of wet weather is an opportunity. It's a reminder that the abundance of life sometimes appears in ways that make us uncomfortable.

The rain is the soil's nourishment, the body's hydration. It is a precious substance that falls freely from the skies. Rain replenishes our reservoirs and causes the Earth's bounty to flourish. It's fantastic!

And yet rain makes many of us grumpy. Soaked clothes and soggy toes are just no fun. But fresh fruit is made possible by the same downpour. Ah, the paradox of Life on Earth.

The parallel paradox for personal abundance is this: When the abundance we crave flows into our lives it can feel overwhelming, even downright messy.

If, for example, your business has been parched from the drought of under-activity, when the calls start coming in, or you find yourself with a ton of tasks to handle, things can get a little muddy.

Just remember, the same outpouring that makes you yearn for a cozy, warm bed is exactly what your ecosystem has been thirsting for. So put on your metaphoric galoshes and get out the rain barrel. Chances are you've slept enough already.

There's a saying: "There's no such thing as bad weather. Just the wrong clothes." If there's an outpouring of personal abundance in your life right now that just makes you feel cold and damp, take a moment to appreciate what it will do for your metaphoric crops. It's going to be a bumper year!

Constant Communication of Your Brand

2011-02-07T16:42:00.000-08:00

Everything sends a signal. You cannot not communicate.

How do you communicate your message?

Your Personal Appearance
• Clothes & Accessories
• Hair & Grooming
• Posture & Body Language

Your Materials
• Tools of Your Trade
• Business Cards
• Brochures
• Website
• Printed Collateral
• Merchandise

Your Words
Spoken
• Your phone presence
• While delivering service to clients
• While collaborating with your team
• Speaking to groups
• Your outgoing voicemail message
• The voicemails you leave
Written
• All your materials (see above)
• Your email communications

Your Environment
• Location
• Colors & Furnishings
• Maintenance
• Smell

Other Ways…
What are some other ways that you communicate your message?

Inquiry:
What are the signals you are sending? Are they congruent with your intended message?

Remember:
Your brand is not just expressed by externals. It’s expressed by your presence, your tone of voice, the way your body reveals the truth about what you think.

Women's Spiritual Vocation

2011-01-25T16:54:00.000-08:00

This is the vision I'm actively working toward...

A vocational landscape that embraces women's spirituality and leadership to such a degree that when a little girl is asked what she wants to be when she grows up, she not only responds "President of the United States" or "Lawyer" or "Doctor", she also says "Priestess".

If this has resonance for you, consider coming to the next "Priestess for Hire" networking event on February 2 in Oakland. Click here for details.

New Year Full Moon Greetings

2011-01-19T13:21:00.000-08:00

Our Earth's natural rhythms provide us with an abundance of opportunities for reflection to support right action. The new year is Western culture's annual fresh start. The full moon is a monthly call to celebrate the good that's already manifest in our lives. Today -- the first full moon of the year -- blesses us with both of these powers.

Pause and ask yourself: How is my life (or business) off to a great start? Name five things you are grateful for, and share your list with a friend.

I am grateful for 1) my health; 2) the healing talent that abounds in the Bay Area; 3) all the wonderful clients I've had the privilege of serving; 4) the way creativity weaves through my professional and social circles; and 5) the launch of my re-designed website: http://www.elkavera.com

Practical Magic E-Zine Year in Review

2011-01-01T11:11:00.000-08:00

Last year I piloted a monthly e-zine called Practical Magic, presenting bite-sized servings of spiritual insight to help you do your own thing... better. You can still gather up all that mojo at http://elkavera.com/PracticalMagic/.

Your Healing Arts Business Needs Your Healing Mojo

2010-12-10T14:28:00.000-08:00

When coaching entrepreneurs in the healing arts, I often call on my clients to use their crafts to "heal" their businesses.

Chiropractors, could your business use a structural adjustment?
Acupuncturists, could your business benefit from better chi flow?
Energy workers, would your business thrive if its chakras were aligned?
Psychics, what are your business' angels, guides and allies advising?

What actions can you take in business-space to actualize the metaphors contained in your healing craft?

What can you say, do, or think that will give your business the healing it needs to thrive?

Healing the Mental Hoo-Ha

2010-11-12T10:06:00.000-08:00

Non-supportive self-talk is the gold of the self-help guru. You read about it everywhere. Well, there is a reason for that. Try this:

Close your eyes and sit quietly for five minutes.

OK. Good. Did you enjoy the inner silence?

Unless you’re an experienced meditator, you probably didn’t experience any silence at all! Our minds are awhirl with noise. Sadly, much of this noise is made up of judgments, attacks, comparisons and criticisms — the instruments of a war we wage upon our very selves.

We all have our own personal libraries of hoo-ha. Stories we tell ourselves that inhibit our possibilities and constrain our inner vibrancy. And we wonder why we feel depressed. We depress ourselves, dutifully acting out the spoken or unspoken instructions we received to not do this, not say that, not even think that. One of the rules of the mind is that an idea implanted in consciousness stays there — and proliferates — unless it’s acted upon or replaced by a different idea. Unfortunately, as children, we haven’t developed the critical factor that allows us to filter out the hoo-ha. Hence, our mental gardens are seeded for self-destruction.

Any feeling or thought you have that suggests that you’re not OK as you are right now is residue from someone else’s attempt to control you. Advertisements, your parents, your colleagues, your lovers — just about everybody seems to want you to behave in the way they like.

(Don’t go all victim in this. The flip side of others’ attempts to control you is all the ways you try to control other people — by withholding your love, dominating conversations, enforcing strict rules of behavior, demanding your way and throwing tantrums when you don’t get it.)

As an adult, you have the critical factors in place to not allow someone else’s judgments to dominate your decisions. It may not feel that way when you’re still running tapes from childhood. Here's a technique for clearing out the mental hoo-ha.

Do this exercise whenever you have 3 minutes of real privacy.

Start by growling. Open your mouth wide and make whatever sounds you can in the back of your throat. Increase the volume and try new sounds. Absolutely do not attempt to be musical. If you feel your throat trying to close down to control the volume, loosen the back of your tongue and wag your head from side to side while you continue to make noise.

These noises will probably make you uncomfortable, and cause you to feel embarrassed or stupid. Since there’s no one here to judge you, what does it matter? This is exactly the point of the exercise. Most people tend to lock down their throats on the sounds, words and sentiments they fear they will be judged for. Vocalizing through the discomfort communicates to self: "I will not allow my fear of judgment to control me."

Continue to make these non-musical, chaotic, uncomfortable sounds. Augment the effectiveness of the exercise by visualizing sonic waves coming from the sounds you’re making. See the waves vibrating away old, schmutzy flecks of judgment and criticism. The old debris gets loosened by your sounds. Now take a deep breath and blow it all away from you. Send that old gunk to the molten core of the Earth or to Sun, where it can be incinerated, primordially transformed.

This vibrational healing exercise literally helps clear energetic stagnation from your body-mind system. By clearing the old programming that has you either attacking yourself on the inside or criticizing others on the outside, you have greater access to inner peace and outer influence.

Heart in Hand

2010-10-21T12:35:00.000-07:00

From a bio-energetic perspective, hands are extensions of the heart. When a heart senses a need, it sends its impulse of caring down the arms and into the hands, our emissaries of action. It is our hands that accomplish the physical work of the attentive heart.

Before any endeavor, then, it is good to practice opening the heart. As the chakra (energy center) that co-mingles the stuff of heaven from above and the stuff of earth from below, the heart center has two important functions: it houses divine awareness and empowers right action.

Right action, while a Buddhist precept, is a trans-religious spiritual imperative. We see it echoed in Judeo-Christian scripture. This excerpt from Deuteronomy makes the connection between the heart, the hands, and right responsiveness to need:

You shall not harden your heart or shut your hand against your poor brother, but you shall open your hand to him, and lend him sufficient for his need, whatever it may be. (Deuteronomy 15:7-8, italics mine)

For spiritual entrepreneurs, it is important to maintain the practice of opening the heart as a foundation for service. It is our work to listen with the heart and allow its natural response to flow down our arms and out our hands, into the world, in the form called for by the needs around us.

By tuning into the heart, right action flows of its own accord.

Prayer for the Injured

2010-10-14T19:58:00.000-07:00

Injury is part of life. One of our greatest blessings is the body’s ability to repair itself. This elegant healing system is a marvel of divine engineering, tooled over billions of years of experiments since life appeared on Earth. To our ancient ancestors, and to the intelligence that guided their evolution, let us say thank you for this amazing gift.

May the billions of years of wisdom that is our healing inheritance guide the swift and thorough repair of every injured body on Earth.

Perfection-In-Process

2010-10-11T11:50:00.000-07:00

A technique I use periodically to maintain the wellness of my energy system is the retrieval of my own psychic energy (which we may simply name “attention”) through a “golden sun” meditation. (See Karla McLaren’s Your Aura & Your Chakras.) I call my attention — all the sprawling bits of awareness that track so many different topics “out there” — back to myself in present time by envisioning a golden ball of light a foot or so above my crown chakra. This ball has the qualities of a small personal sun, luminous and life giving. It has magnetic properties that attract only my own energy to it. As my own energy returns to my personal sun, it is clarified and purified. When the sun is full and bright, I call its radiance down into me.

The golden sun meditation is a profoundly nourishing and replenishing energy-management practice. Because it is just one of the resources in my self-care toolkit, it’s not a daily habit. It’s more of an on-call tool.

Recently, I was guided to use this tool. As my golden sun began to re-call my energy from the gravitational fields of all the people I know, love, and/or interact with regularly, I began to notice how much of my energy was bound up in worry for them.

The impetus to worry is genuine concern and simple human caring. However, as one of my teachers likes to say: “Worry is a misuse of your visionary capacity.”

How many of you express your caring through the language of worry? “I’m worried about you,” you say to your friend who’s going through a crisis. Though it may come from a seed urge for wellness, worrying for the welfare of our beloveds takes our life force energy and puts it to use imaging outcomes contrary to the caring impulse.

My golden sun meditation was revealing the degree to which I had invested my energy in worry, and it surprised me. It served as a wake-up call for me to reclaim and corral my power to create the world in the image of go(o)d. For me, this means holding a detached compassion for all beings and radiating love. It means not being insistent on an outcome, but offering my thoughts, words and actions toward an outcome I desire. It means maintaining the practices that benefit my wellness.

We each have the power to live from and toward our greatest good. In a balanced, healthy human energy system with a means for self-renewal (like the golden sun technique), this power burns with a steady light. Sometimes, it takes the light’s dimming or a glitch in the system to reignite the awareness of our own power.

Doing this meditation was like performing a psychic systems-check and discovering that an out-dated program was running. I could respond to that discovery by running some other old programs, like self-criticism and perfectionism. But, thankfully, there’s a new program that takes precedence in my system. It’s summed up in these words from a Leonard Cohen song:

Ring the bells that still can ring

Forget your perfect offering

There is a crack in everything

That's how the light gets in.

The cracks in our perfection — the places where we recognize we need to grow or transform or recommit to what keeps us well — actually reveal our perfection-in-process. Just as the thermostat of a healthy body is set at a temperature a few degrees shy of the 101º needed for optimal enzyme functioning, we may be a few degrees (or more!) short of enlightenment. The gap between our understanding and our actualization may be exactly the room God needs to maneuver.

Pray To Be Unfurled

2010-10-04T16:30:00.000-07:00

It is said that we cannot create what we cannot imagine. I disagree.

We can set our intention that whatever is best for us shall come to pass. We don’t need to "image" it. We don't need to know with the rational mind what "best" means. Indeed, according to physician and author Dr. Larry Dossey, non-directional prayer has been shown to be more effective for healing than prayers oriented toward specific outcomes.

Often, we don’t have the capacity to imagine healthy outcomes — we’re too burdened by our own patterns. Surrendering to a Higher Power allows that Power to work best outcomes for us. This is not a mindless act, like saying with a shrug: "Whatever. God will handle it."

Rather it is a conscious, meditative surrendering. It is saying: "I surrender this situation to you, dear Creator, who is wider than the universe. Your intelligence is beyond my own."

This is not pawning off responsibility or power to some bearded old man, what I call "god, the dude". This is putting your evolution into Evolution’s own trajectory. It is saying: "The force that created the universe, or became the universe, I trust your glorious unfolding as evidenced by the beauty I behold all around. Please, unfurl me with your beauty."

The Heart(h) of Community

2010-10-02T15:23:00.000-07:00

The sacred chamber of the heart — the fourth chakra — is the inner hearth of community. As the center point between the upper three and lower three chakras — and the Heaven and Earth to which they respectively extend — the heart center welcomes the interior community of one’s own mind, body and spirit (and the cast of characters that comprise personal identity) and the wider community of beings that comprise nature and the cosmos. It is the gathering place where all the aspects of the self (the intellectual self, the emotional self, the embodied self, the self-who-is-partner/daughter/friend, etc.) can unite as an integrated Self.

The Self, united within the heart, can invite to its hearth and commune with other Selves — be they other humans, other animals, plants, planets or stars. These “others” are in fact aspects of One Self, one body of the cosmos, birthed 13.7 billion years ago in the great moment of primordial Creation.

An open heart chakra can breathe into itself the love of the Universe, given by the life force power of Light, which is the fuel and food of the created world. This Light feeds a spiritual fire in the hearth; it is the fire of awareness of our collective cosmic kinship. I envision an archetypal Self, warming its hands against these flames. These hands are the very same channels of reciprocating cosmic love. An open heart chakra naturally extends life force energy down the arms and out the energy centers that spiral in each palm. (Beyond the seven primary energy centers that map to the endocrine system, there are minor chakras that map to the hands and feet. The hand chakras are considered extensions of the heart.) In an energetically balanced individual, the hands do the heart’s work. In other terms, God relies on us to do compassion’s work.

This work naturally takes place within the context of community. Even a monk sequestered on the highest mountain peak is embedded in what theologian Thomas Berry often refers to as the “Earth community”. It is inescapable. And for the post-modern mystic, community is also woven through the fine fibers of etheric communication across the Internet!

An open heart chakra constantly takes in and puts out life force energy. Our hearts flex and then our hands tingle with anticipation to create in community. In this Light, I see that fingers flying across computer keyboards for dutiful email exchanges are actually coding love with every keystroke. Every bit of work we do can be an expression of interconnection.

Art Leasing Opportunity

2010-09-23T22:47:00.000-07:00

An original work of art carries the mojo of its creator. The aesthetic of a piece may please you, but it’s often the energy of the work that moves you. When you bring an original work of art into your space it does more than beautify… it transforms.

If you’ve desired to bring original artwork into your home or office but have hesitated due to the scope of the investment, you’ll be pleased to know about a special opportunity.

For a limited time, I will be making my medium and large format paintings available to lease.

A lease gives you the opportunity to enjoy the energy and aesthetic of a piece for an extended period at a fraction of the painting’s value.

Leases are available for 1 year at 25% of the gallery price. At the end of your lease term, you return the work. You also have the option to purchase it and apply 50% of your lease payment against its full gallery price.

Here’s an example:

Let’s say you have been admiring “Two Peas in a Pod,” a 30” x 40” canvas marked at $700. You could hang “Two Peas” in your home or office for a full year for $175. At the end of the year, you’d return the work. Or -- if you’ve become very attached to the piece and simply can’t bear to part with it -- you may own the work permanently for just over $600 (plus sales tax).

Enhancing your space with original art doesn’t have to involve an intimidating investment.

Here’s a bonus for you business owners: your art lease may be tax deductible. (Check with your tax consultant, of course!) For healing arts professionals, an original work of art can have the added benefit of shifting the vibration in your healing space and augmenting the transformation you bring to your clients.

While I’m always willing to consider an offer to lease, this very particular opportunity will last only through October 31, 2010.

Let’s get you connected with that painting you’ve had your eye on since my show in May. Email me to set up a viewing.

Many, but not all, available works are viewable at http://ElkaVeraFineArt.com/

For Spiritual Entrepreneurs: Law of AttrACTION

2010-09-16T18:53:00.000-07:00

Stand up. Rub your hands together briskly. What is it that you feel between your hands? Heat? A tingling? You know that it’s energy!

Energy is the current of juice that flows through your business. If you’re a hands-on healer, you know all about it. What if you could “lay hands on” your business? As a spiritual entrepreneur, you can! You can create a magical talisman with your business card or other symbol and channel energy to it. You can physically touch the walls of your office. You can send energy to your phone or front door, psychically inviting new clients to come. These kinds of energy practices work!

What’s one energy practice you can do this week to boost the juice to your business? What are some other practices, spells, or healing techniques you can do to generate energy for, with, or in your business? These practices are the bones for your own “business booster” handbook. Write them down. Use these techniques. You will be delighted. You will be amazed.

But don’t leave it at that.

Do not stay strictly in the etheric realm when it comes to your very real, down-to-earth business practicalities… like your rent, and your paperwork, and your marketing. Instead, bring the etheric into the mundane.

Repeat after me: The mundane is magical. The physical is mystical.

Too many spiritual entrepreneurs operate solely from the Law of Attraction, which says where attention goes, energy flows. Don’t get me wrong; this is a potent alchemical law. As a spiritual entrepreneur you should be practicing with this law. However, remember that the work of the gods is done with our hands. The will of the universe is effectuated through our actions.

You are having a three dimensional experience. Your business’ wellness deserves the practical actions of the three-dimensional realm.

Often we resist the impulse to practical action because we have beliefs about those actions. Those beliefs often sound like this: It’s too hard. I don’t like that. It’s boring. I’ll be overwhelmed. People will judge me. I will look stupid. I don’t know how. And back to: it’s too hard.

Those beliefs are saboteurs. Do not put them in charge of your spiritual enterprise. Get the help you need to restore your soul to the position of CEO. Hire a coach or use your own transformational tools to empower your choice to entertain different beliefs.

When you blend your spiritual acuity with your power to act in three-dimensional reality you are truly allied with the universal flow that seeks to flow through you. Then paperwork becomes a prayer. Marketing becomes a magical act. And your business thrives.

Repeat after me: I put the Action into the Law of AttrACTION.

Choose Now. And Now. And…

2010-09-14T19:20:00.000-07:00

This moment is a Wheel. It moves forward, clockwise, rolling toward the Future. It pauses — or rather, I slow my consciousness so that it appears to pause. I stand at the Center, the crossroads of the World. A million or more spokes radiate from this instance of time/space, which I call Now.

At the Center of the Wheel — within my own heart — burns Source energy. It is a substance that traces its ancestral lineage to the Big Bang, what theologian Thomas Berry names the “primordial flaring forth.” It is Light.

From the Center of this Great Wheel, I scry in multiple directions all at ones. In the casting forth of Vision, the Light illuminates the uncountable spokes that radiate from the Center. Each spoke is a possible Future. My consciousness follows the Light, and I attempt to live each path, all possibilities, simultaneously. I schism; the Light prisms. I breathe. I ground. I return, wholly, to the Center, to Now.

I choose the One Path, which leads me out of Now into the Unknown, into Mystery, into the Future. In the moment of my choosing, I die to all the possibilities that were not chosen, will not be lived. In the moment of my choosing, I am reborn. There is a new Now. And it, too, is a Great Wheel, with its million or more offspring. The Now is fecund, fertile with the Future.

The Future is but a phantasm of Vision. It can never be lived. It is not its design. The Future is meant to beckon, to call, to entice a choosing. There is only Now. And Now. And Now. Each moment is perennially pregnant. Each moment is a crossroads of choice, ever unfolding the Infinite.

This moment is a Wheel…

Love Your Resistance... and Let It Go

2010-09-14T10:06:00.000-07:00

Think of a time this past week when you felt an impulse to do something — make a phone call, write a thank you note, exercise, meditate, whatever — but you did not take that action. What was the action that wanted to flow through you?

What was your resistance to the action? How did the resistance show itself? Was it “ I don’t have time?” Or “This won’t work?” What was it that kept you from acting on your impulse?

You have now identified what coaches call a “gremlin” — a charming saboteur. Give that saboteur a nice big kiss or hug. Love it. Don’t resist it. (Resisting resistance creates… you guessed it: resistance!) That’s not the way out. Try lovingkindness. Say “Thank you, saboteur. I am so glad to recognize you.” Then take a deep breath, and let that saboteur go. Assign it a new task, so you can get on with yours.

Spiritual Author-ity

2010-09-13T10:36:00.000-07:00

Feminist theologian Rosemary Radford Ruether contends that a culture’s creation story reveals that culture’s worldview. The worldview, in turn, yields mandates for how people should relate to each other, how heaven relates to earth, and how gods relate to humans. These mandates become holy Law.

Here is my creation story and the Law it sanctifies.

***

In the beginning there was Nothing and Something, which I call God and Goddess. Nothing and Something made Love, and, in a primordial Orgasm, combined their essential natures into an ever-expanding matrix of form and void. Form and void helixed into the atoms of Hydrogen and Helium, who later begat all the galaxies, including our own Milky Way. The substance of Sun and the essence of Earth coalesced, as did the bodies of their planetary companions. Surrendering to their mutual forces of gravity, our Father Sun and Mother Earth, along with their extended celestial family, settled into an orbiting dance. Father Sun and Mother Earth made Love and brought forth all manner of Life through Earth’s fertile womb. Together they have created all generations of Life. They created us — you and me: humans — as well as our brothers and sisters: the trees, the oceans, the fish, the four-leggeds, and the winged ones, all manner of beings. We are all of the same family, sourced from the same cosmic courtship. Ours is a legacy of Love.

Love, then, is the Law. As such, it shall be the guiding light for all action unfolding in the Great Work of midwifing our World into the next era of evolution, wherein all aspects of the Universe are seen as divine and interconnected. I possess no script for this Love. I have only an ongoing, daily prayer to let Love flow through me. Though the specific words change, the heart of the prayer is this:

“Dear God and Goddess, Creators of All that Is, please allow me to be a clear channel for Divine Love. May I release all obstructions to Love flowing through me. May I use my voice to speak for Love. May I use my gifts in service of Love. May all people everywhere know the beauty of True Love.”

***

This is one story. There are as many stories as there are people to tell them. As makers of meaning, human beings weave and reweave the Web of the Universe through their stories.

What is your creation story? How does it empower the Law at work in your world? More importantly, who writes your story and its Law? Being your own spiritual author-ity means you do.

Most of us inherit stories (from our culture, our family, our religion) and unthinkingly act out their Laws. Dive deep into your inherited story to consciously claim it. You may find it needs revision to endorse the World you wish to live in.

How Do You Handle Failure?

2010-09-08T18:51:00.000-07:00

There you are, rocked into pain by the smash of failure. You’re a wreck. You know that metaphor? By whatever circumstances, you have careened off track and your fender is bent around an obstacle you knew you somehow could’ve avoided if only you’d… been paying attention, seen it coming, were a better [whatever], had a better resources, weren’t distracted, fill in the blank.

Blame is the face of the frowning internal priest, the robed boss of your conscience who recounts all the ways you have sinned. Sin really means to miss the mark. Or in the case of our car-crash metaphor, you hit a mark you shouldn’t have.

Blame all you want. It won’t fix the dents in your ego — it’ll make them worse.

Turn away from the frowning inner priest toward the peaceful inner guru who smiles at you benignly, offering no quick fixes out of your mess, but — blessedly — no reproach either. This guru is the breath of ease around failure. She’s the one who says, “Failure is feedback.”

This inner guru knows that failure itself is neutral. It is a word that signifies not achieving what you set out to achieve. Any additional attachment to the word is something to work out in your healing spaces.

With kindness, recollect the steps that brought you to this state. See if you can locate the mis-step. Correct it if you can. If you can’t, forgive yourself, learn from the mistake, and move on.

Commitment & the Spiritual Entrepreneur - Part 2

2010-09-04T11:02:00.000-07:00

So, you’re a spiritual entrepreneur. By that I mean you’re self-employed, working in the “spiritual” arts. Perhaps you’re a healer or a psychic. You may work in a more conventional field, but have a spiritual “bent” to your approach.

As someone who’s self-employed, you are in charge of your business… and your Self. You call the shots. You’re the one with the power to make commitments. Your clients expect you to. Your livelihood expects you to. With power comes responsibility.

If you tend to feel responsibility as a burden, consider what “responsibility” really means. Response-Ability. Ability to respond. If you’re a soul-worker — a psychic, a shaman, a priestess, a massage therapist, a Reiki practitioner, a counselor — you’re in the business of enhancing others’ abilities to respond to life. In the fine work of body-mind-spirit transformation, where your presence works as effectively as your technique, your clients will respond to your own ability to respond. Commitment reflects the depth of your response-ability.

What are the true and heartfelt commitments you have for your business, your clients, your Self?

Don’t make up commitments because they sound good. Your truth is your truth. You are either committed to something, or you’re not. If you say you’re committed to something and you’re not, your business feedback loop will reveal where your words are out of sync with your truth.

Start by examining the commitments that are already present in your relationship with your business. As creative as you naturally are, don’t make anything up. Just ask yourself this question: What commitments are present in my relationship with my business?

Then see, sense, feel or know what is already there... and put it all down on a piece of paper. Give yourself permission to draw, write, scribble, show or tell. Go for at least 15 minutes. If you come to a stopping point before then, pause. Reconnect with your Self, and continue to observe

Circle the marks you made on the page that have particular resonance for you. (I say marks because you probably didn’t just write words.) What feels really true for you? Not a little bit true. A lotta bit true. Circle those. Use color – crayons are great, if you have some handy.

These commitments are the foundation of your consistent, resilient relationship with your business. If your resonant marks were more pictorial or symbolic, then translate their essence into simple words. Don’t get fancy with your words. If you started off with words, then simplify or refine them until you have a bullet list of your commitments.

Now that you’ve articulated the existing commitment within your business, here’s a chance to do something ceremonious.

How would you like to mark your commitment to your business? Remember, these aren’t new commitments or “stretch” commitments. These are what are already present and functioning in your business. In fact, you may have already ritualized this. Even if you have, you may want to do it again, now with greater self-awareness. Long-married couples often reaffirm their vows.

Would you like to just restate your commitments aloud with enthusiasm? Or would you like to craft a ceremony?

When I transitioned to a new level of commitment in my business, I actually had my logo — a beautiful flaming heart, an artwork of my own creation — tattooed onto the back of my neck. I chose the Summer Solstice of 1999 as the ripe ritual date, and the marking took place inside a sacred circle with a priestess as my witness. A marking ritual won’t eliminate challenges in a business, any more than a wedding protects against marital tension. But commitment ceremonies have the power to contain big energy. And for me, having a living, breathing talisman literally written on my body is an enduring invocation of the essential energies in my enterprise.

I’m not advocating you do this. However, I am encouraging you to embrace the power of your ability to respond to your business —all it entails — through the potent tool called commitment.

How would you like to commemorate or ritualize your commitments?

Commitment is not the same thing as love. In the best of relationships, love and commitment twine together to weave a fabric of fulfillment and endurance. Your resonant commitments, the ones that are already at work in your business, probably stem from love. For most spiritual entrepreneurs, the impulse to launch their ventures is motivated from the heart. Love is the starting place. Commitment is the follow through. So it’s usually not hard to see the love in these foundational commitments.

However, when we use the tool of commitment to stretch ourselves — to become more effective, more profitable, more visible — we can sometimes lose sight of the love. Our focus is on the growth, the sometimes painful push beyond our comfort zones. We’re not thinking about love and the beauty of living an autonomous life committed to our spiritual ideals. We’re thinking: I need to make 10 cold calls to local healing centers this week to introduce them to my work; and I need to write a business plan by Friday to impress the bank so I get financing for my own healing center; and I need to write that letter informing my clients that I’m raising my rates this month.

As you begin to grow your practice — and yourself within your practice — you will begin to make greater commitments. You will begin to stand for a greater vision of yourself and your offerings and this larger stand will require bolstering through new commitments. In this growth phase, it is imperative that you remain connected with your love for your work.

When you love your business, you are expressing Source’s love for all of creation. When you love your business — and you anchor yourself firmly in that love — the cold calls come more easily, the business plan breezily, the letter more smoothly. When you are centered it your heart-motive, the “selling” so many spiritual entrepreneurs balk at ceases to be selling and suddenly becomes sharing. Yes, you do need to make the calls, create the plan or write the letter. But when your heart is full of the love you have for your craft, your clients and your choice to be in business, these actions are natural expressions of your heart-felt devotion. And people respond to that. They yearn for it. And you know this. Which is at least part of why you have chosen this path instead of some other.

So, let’s take a look at your love.

First, ground yourself in a good heart feeling — a pleasurable memory of feeling fulfilled, feeling like a “yes,” feeling loved. Got it? OK.

What are the physical sensations you are experiencing while you’re in this emotional space? Don’t focus on the content of your memories or even the story you make up about the feeling. Stay with the physical. What is happening in your body right now as you feel this lovely feeling? Is your breathing long and slow? Your shoulders down and back? Your belly soft and relaxed? Your legs uncrossed? Your eyes soft?

This is important. These body sensations can be recreated. When you consciously choose to produce these physical sensations, your psyche will offer the mental/emotional experience they’re associated with, namely, a pleasurable heart-feeling. You can access this frame of mind whenever you like, by creating these sensations in the body. This is handy — it’s a way to prime yourself for situations where you’d like to be feeling this feeling.

OK. So go ahead and connect with that good heart feeling.

Now take a look at why you went into this line of work. What do you love about your work? What aspects of your business do you actually enjoy, adore even? These may be work tasks, or the smile on your client’s face after a great session. Love knows no limits! Give yourself some time to brainstorm, and write it down!

Copy out these discoveries onto a fresh piece of paper and post it some place where you’ll be sure to see it every day. Write in big letters across the top: “What I Love About My Business.” This is a helpful touch-point for keeping the good vibes flowing on a bad day.

Knowing what gives you juice about your business provides the soul-stuff you’ll need as you stretch into greater professional commitments. When you love, you care. When you care, you act.

What are three actions you can take this week to express your love for your business?

Go ahead and commit to them!

Commitment & the Spiritual Entrepreneur - Part 1

2010-09-03T14:39:00.000-07:00

At some point in your history with your business, you made a commitment to it. You may have made a conscious ritual out of it. Or perhaps the commitment just sneaked by you… first you’re just dating, then all of a sudden you’re sharing a joint bank account!

However it came to pass, take a look at your “relationship status” with your business. Since you’re asking it to produce revenue for you while you help people with the important concerns of their souls, I’d say your business is quite a “significant other.”

What’s the relationship status between you and your spiritual business?

[ ] Flirting

[ ] Dating

[ ] Gone all the way

[ ] Living together

[ ] Engaged

[ ] Married

[ ] Married with a mortgage

[ ] Married with children

[ ] Estranged

Is this a monogamous relationship you’re in, or are you, to carry the metaphor, “seeing other people?” Other “people” may be a day-job, other part-time businesses, or projects that consume so much of your time they detract from your business. There’s nothing wrong with poly-fidelity, as long as you’re open and honest about it.

Check in with yourself right now:

[ ] My business and I are happily monogamous.

[ ] We are in an open relationship. I’m also seeing: _____________________

[ ] I’m cheating on my business with: _____________________ (I promise not to tell.)

[ ] Other. Please describe:

Every relationship has its rules and expectations. Usually, rules get noticed when they’re broken, and expectations are revealed through the emotional feedback of disappointment.

What was your latest disappointment with your business? When was that? What kind of expectation did you have that revealed itself through your feeling of disappointment?

Expectations get a bad rap in the New Age and other spiritual communities. It is fine to have expectations, especially as it relates to this business of yours, one of the aims of which is to provide a consistently high-quality service to others. (That alone is an expectation.) An expectation reflects a set of beliefs at work to create a certain kind of reality. We tend to “realize what we theorize,” so positive expectation can be a great asset in business. You expect that a prospective client will want an appointment with you. They sense that you’re resonating as a “yes” with them, and lo and behold they set up an appointment.

An expectation is not the same thing as an attachment to a result. You can discern the difference by the magnitude of your emotional response and your refractory period, the time it takes you to get over it. Disappointment is one thing, a downward spiral into a full day of depression shows that you are thoroughly “hooked.” It’s time to use your own transformative tools and investigate the source of your attachment. Your off-the-charts emotional response probably has a lot more to do with something that happened in your childhood than with what actually just happened in the context of your business.

Expectations abound in business. It’s good to know what they are!

Here are some of my expectations: I expect that my clients will show up for their appointments on time. I expect myself to return clients’ phone calls within 24 hours. I expect myself to deliver the very best of my abilities in my sessions and classes. I expect to honor my word. I expect others to honor their words.

What are some of your business-related expectations?

Rules and expectations are the fibers that weave the fabric of commitment. Commitments are informed by our rules and expectations, but they come from a place of personal empowerment and strength. To stand in a place of “I commit” implies that you have the power to do so.

Try a little exercise. What was one of the expectations you just noted, one that relates to your own actions, not others? Write that down:

I expect:

Now, change the wording to make it a commitment.

I commit to:

Notice the difference of how those two statements feel when you say them out loud.

Here’s an example:

I expect myself to return clients’ phone calls within 24 hours.

I commit to returning clients’ phone calls within 24 hours.

When I say the first statement, I feel a little like an inner school marm is waiting to smack my hands with a ruler if I mess up. When I say the second statement, I feel firm, like a warrior. I can tell I’m taking a stand for something. My energy collects inward to a point of focus and strength.

How do you feel when you say the “I expect” versus “I commit to”?

Writing your commitments and speaking them aloud calls energy to you, puts you in a place of power as it relates to your business. Big businesses often publish their commitments to their clients. Jaded spiritual folk might dismiss this as so much corporate hype. While you may not want to walk in your corporate cousins’ footsteps, you may find they have some useful models for success. Can you imagine how your clients would feel if they saw some of your business commitments in a framed poster on your office wall or on your website?

Ten years ago, I re-envisioned myself professionally. I stopped thinking of myself as a self-employed service provider. I started to think of myself as the leader of a company. One of my aligning actions around this was to share my company’s values and commitments with prospective clients, vendors, partners and staff. This marked an important threshold in my own sense of entrepreneurship. I began to hold myself with more esteem and regard myself as someone with substantially more power than I had previously. My world responded accordingly.

This is what I posted on my company’s website at the time:

***

We hold these truths to be self-evident:

* That all life is sacred and interconnected;

* That spirit is as important in work as mind and body;

* That prosperity seeks to be shared by all;

* That all individuals and groups thrive on commitment;

* That beauty is critical to the healthy organization of commerce, societies and relationships;

* That joy and labor are natural companions.

For our clients' well-being and our own, we commit to

* Honor the core value of our clients, partners and selves;

* Communicate clearly from a place of respect and with a spirit of collaboration;

* Welcome challenges that strengthen our business and personal practices;

* Apply our arts toward the co-creation of a beautiful, sustainable and harmonious world.

***

Your commitments reveal your essence. Your essence is what attracts the right clients to you. Making your commitments clear signals an alignment between who you are and what you do. It expresses courage and power.

Not much happens without commitment. Without commitment, we back off from difficulty. A relationship without commitment easily ends after the first or second argument. Commitment brings us back to what’s important. Commitment reminds us of our intentions. As a spiritual entrepreneur, you know all about intention.

Living your commitments — to your business, to your clients, to yourself — is the daily practice of strengthening your soul connection with the divine, of bringing effectiveness to your intentionality. Living your commitments — not just honoring them out of a begrudging sense of duty, but living them — with your full breath as a channel for spiritual power, life force energy and grace is like saying to the Divine, “Yes, in this moment, I recall that I was guided to do this work. I remember that I embraced this call to service. I acknowledge the challenges before me. I pray for the courage to meet them. My commitment is the power behind my prayer. Amen. Aché. Blessed be.”

In The Absence of Clarity: Gravity

2010-08-27T22:21:00.000-07:00

Several new coaching clients have come to me recently for a hand as they stand at the crossroads of choice with confusion in their hearts. Moved by their yearning for clarity, I share a memory from my own life several years ago:

***

Mother Earth embraces me on the mountain. Soul-weary, I surrender my mind’s turmoil to simple stimulation. Birds ruffle in the oak tree 20 feet from where I stretch out on the land. Weather-whipped grasses crunch against my back as I settle into comfort underneath the un-seasonal heat of the November sun. The hills undulate across the horizon. I can feel the aliveness of the Earth undulate into my heart and begin to smooth the erratic energy there.

My heart has become a fire-ravaged terrain, torn apart by the Molotov impact of change. Feelings of regret, grief and guilt are the alcohol that creeps up a ragged wick of disappointment and frustration. Choices I made which, at the time of my choosing, felt divinely directed now simply feel overwhelming. That combustible concoction of Spirit’s call and my own free will, lobbed into my heart’s longing, has bombed out my clarity.

When in doubt, sit. Mother Earth schools me with this wisdom whenever confusion trumps courage at the crossroads of choice.

When you feel scared, return to Me. Come home to Me, and I will embrace you with My gravity.

Mother Earth is home, is nurturing, is the Mother of all mothers. I agree with physicist-turned-spiritual activist Will Keepin, when he says that undefined force we call gravity is actually Love. The Mother’s pull toward her Earthly breast is an expression of her Love for us. I am nurtured by it now, on this mountain. I open my anxious heart to the heartbeat of the planet, and I reconnect with a larger order. It puts my comparatively small dramas into perspective.

The workings of this Great Mother are a mystery to me. Her gravity is one example. There are equations to describe the properties and effects of gravity. But no one knows what it really is — no scientist can say what causes it. We experience the force of gravity. We can observe that a body exerts a force on another body relative to the distance between them. But we don’t understand this phenomenon. We can’t say why matter is attracted to matter. This is a mystery.

Gravity, in this sense, is like God — a Great Mystery. And God, to mystics, is Love.

God. Love. Gravity. Experiences without explanations. Mysteries.

Unlike the scientist who seeks to explicate the unexplained, my response to mystery is to celebrate it. Feeling the effects of gravity on my burdened soul, I sing out a song of gratitude. Thank you, Mother, for all of this. Thank you for this healing. Thank you for your expansive embrace. Thank you for accepting me, just as I am, grief and guilt and all.

I appreciate the validation science brings to what I discern intuitively. It gives me a vocabulary for communicating with those for whom simple celebration is not enough. But it is not the Source I turn to when I need nurturing. I turn instead to praising the mystery in a gesture of accepting what is.

Gratitude opens my heart. It is the platform for all of my contributions to the Earth and her people… when I am in the practice of it. And when I am not, the messes and challenges in my life seem overwhelming. Reconnecting with the Earth, her Love, her God-nature inspires in me the gratitude I need to regroup around the difficulties my chosen path entails. I am reminded that “divinely directed” does not necessarily mean “easy.” And that clarity can be restored through an hour of meditation on a mountain.

But nature’s restoration of the soul’s weariness is not given once and forever by a single meditation. Healing — meaning returning to wholeness — is an ongoing process. A regular relationship with Nature’s sacred mysteries — a walk in the woods, a meditation on a mountain, a deep inhalation of a flower’s fragrance — gives me the sustenance I need to keep moving forward on my path. When my soul is frayed, I open my heart in gratitude, and I am replenished.

With the grounding power of God-Love-Gravity, I am empowered to return over and over again to my home-of-homes, terra firma, this Earth. Confusion melts away as I center in my heart, the balance point between Heaven and Earth.

Confusion is an invitation to be with mystery, to not race beyond the now. There is a teaching here at the crossroads, and it is conveyed through the comforts of gravity. Grounding gives rise to gratitude. And gratitude… well, that gives us everything.

Time Management Meets the Goddess — Part 2

2010-08-24T07:00:00.000-07:00

If the Saturnian style of FranklinCovey is the “father” of my approach to enhancing personal effectiveness, the Goddess is certainly its mother!

My entrepreneurial inclinations and spiritual practice took root simultaneously in 1996. It was then that I I began to walk the path of the Goddess.

I delved deeply into the arts of ritual and intuition, exploring wisdom traditions that honor the sacred feminine. Earth-centered spiritual practices attuned me to the natural rhythms of time. From Solstice to Solstice, my scope of awareness expanded to embrace the entire globe, not just my tiny self on it. The Sun rises and sets for all of us. Regardless of which nation plants its flag in it, soil needs moisture to bear fruit. The land provides food for people with no judgment on their faith. We all must nourish our bodies and quench our thirst. We all have a hunger in our souls, regardless of how we call spirit to feed it.

Community service converged with personal development in the eco-feminist microcosm of my spiritual milieu. I learned that all Earth-based beings — that includes you and me — abide by the same pulse of life whether we are conscious of it or not. Time is kept by the beat of day and night, growth and decline. Seasons affect us, though the shifts may be subtle or stunning depending on our latitude.

As a woman, I learned to attend to the Moon’s influence on my energy, my creativity, and my procreativity. Lunar waxing and waning made me mindful of gain and loss, come and go. I found that by aligning myself with the dance of Earth, Moon and Sun, I could collaborate with the larger forces already at work.

As a business-oriented individual, I practiced techniques for manifestation based more on the Laws of Attraction than on muscle. What I could accomplish in harmony with Universal forces was greater than what I could accomplish with my will alone.

Embracing the Goddess empowered me with a deep sense of self-worth as a woman. I came to value women’s ways of knowing — trusting my intuition and my body’s innate wisdom. My previous institutional learning urged me to intellectualism, practicality and measuring worth by outer accomplishment. My spiritual unfoldment in the arms of the Great Mother revealed that my presence could be as powerful as my product.

I developed my ability to “hold space.” I practiced listening. I found that I knew things without knowing how I knew them — and discovered that this knowing was just as reliable in the empirical sense as the fruits of logic.

Over the past 30 years, our Western culture has experienced a resurgence of interest in the sacred feminine. Born of the feminist movement, books like Starhawk’s The Spiral Dance and Z Budapest’s Holy Book of Women’s Mysteries celebrated the rebirth of the Goddess religions. Now the Goddess movement itself is entering its own Saturn Return. With the Hollywood release of The Da Vinci Code in 2006, the Goddess has even made waves in the mainstream.

Women are discovering they don’t need to disguise themselves as men to be effective in the office. “Slow food” is inching up on the fast food lifestyle, and voluntary simplicity is edging in from the social periphery. A global economy requires we recognize diversity amongst people. We are collectively beginning to ride a wave of respect for different ways of knowing, different ways of being.

A strictly top-down approach to time-management is no longer sustainable. The mind that dictates what should be is no match for the body that reveals what actually is. You may think you know what your values are based on fifteen minutes of scratching notes in the back of your planner. And you may be right. But your body knows for certain. Your heart knows.

And as I evolved spiritually, so I began to explore new approaches to values-centered time management. For years, my friend Kat Lilith and I dreamed of a “Magical FranklinCovey Planner.” We yearned for day pages that incorporated moon phases and astrology. We wanted discovery exercises and effectiveness coaching that embraced our intuitive styles of working and the feminine face of the divine. All of which would fit beautifully into our sleek leather binders and matching purses.

What germinated in Kat’s and my collaboration was ViA, or Values in Action, a system for mapping a person’s core values into a unique constellation — an inner star. The manner of ViA’s manifestation was entirely feminine… and magical. It literally just popped into existence during a mutual coaching session between Kat and me in 2004.

I was delighted to finally have a tangible system I could share with my clients that delves deep into self-discovery, inviting the soul, not just the mind, to tell what is true. Since the ViA system conceives of time as cyclical and relative rather than linear and fixed, it satisfied my craving for that Magical Planner. But more than that, it rounded out my coaching tool kit so that I could help creative, intuitive types do their own thing better… without pushing them into an uncomfortably logical mode toward effectiveness.

One of my aims is to marry the feminine talent for being to the masculine paradigm of doing. In my work coaching self-employed creative souls who resist being chained to their agendas and constrained by their appointment books, I have found that when people know what’s important to them in a way that feels true in their bodies, action unfolds naturally. Action becomes less a function of pushing and will and more the result of alignment and allowing. When you are connected with your inner star — your spirit’s own DNA — right action reveals itself. To live in integrity means listening and following where your inner light shines.

Sometimes following that light takes courage… that’s when coaching really come in handy!

Time Management Meets the Goddess — Part 1

2010-08-23T12:43:00.000-07:00

I began using the FranklinCovey planner ten years ago — when I was nearing 28. I was a young entrepreneur just entering the intensity of my Saturn Return. In astrological lingo, Saturn Return is the completion of a heavenly cycle that puts the planet Saturn, with its 29.42-year orbit around the Sun, in the same position relative to the Earth as it was at the time of your birth. The astrologer sees the Saturn Return as the marker of a period of tension and change about duty, purpose and time.

This manifests as the I’m-almost-thirty-better-get-cracking panic that attacks young adults and as the well-known mid-life crisis, when people approaching 60 wonder what’s the point of it all. Since Saturn is such a slow moving planet, the Saturn Return lasts several years. These years call our attention to how we’re using our time, what we’re manifesting, how we are walking the individual paths of our lives.

In mythology and astrology, Saturn is known as “Father Time” and as “The Taskmaster.” Under his tutelage, we discover how closely we are aligned with our own destiny. Destiny is not, in this sense, a predetermined outcome, but rather the natural expression of our souls’ own unique make-up, it’s philosophical DNA, similar to what James Hillman describes in his best-seller The Soul’s Code. I would call that code a matrix of our values, our inner star.

The FranklinCovey system puts, as Stephen Covey likes to say, “first things first.” It encourages us to live by our values, to do with our time “what matters most.” The planetary influence of Saturn asks us to do the same.

Whether you ascribe to the wisdom of astrology or prefer to frame the almost-thirty and near-sixty thresholds of re-evaluation as the result of social pressures on our personal timelines, we can all agree that as we turn the clocks toward the cusp of a fresh decade, we become more aware of how time impacts our lives and how our lives impact the world.

What is the legacy you will leave? How would you like to be remembered? These are the kinds of questions we find in the FranklinCovey values-discovery exercises that come with their kits. These questions are inroads to self-discovery. Self-discovery is the foundation of worldly awareness. When we know ourselves, we have a place to stand — a perspective from which to better understand the world.

My FranklinCovey planner was more than a depository of to-dos and an appointment tracker. It was a system that asked me to consider my values! The ultimate benefit I received from that was self-esteem.

The system asked me first to know myself, then to respect myself enough to follow through with actions that reflected and expressed this self-knowledge. My FranklinCovey planner was not a check-things-off-and-breathe-a-sigh-of-relief dayminder. It was a talisman for my inner truth. It was a tool for getting all of me in one place, so I could be more effective about what was important to me. It was a magical tool of personal empowerment!

When I am passionate about something, I want to share it with everybody. My enthusiasm to share FranklinCovey’s time management system with my peers had me creating spontaneous-demos at parties. When a group of friends gathered and our chatting brought us to what’s new in our lives, I would whip out my planner and guide people in a mini process of their own values discovery. These instant-instruction interludes resulted in a sizable contingent of my almost-thirty gal pals purchasing their own planners. I wish I had been earning commissions.

I loved my FranklinCovey planner. The system was thorough, and I was (and continue to be) astounded by the array of accessories in their retail outlets! I set goals. I examined my roles. I revisited my values. I prioritized. I acted.

I was an entrepreneurial arrow of fire and power. And that is exactly the kind of living the FranklinCovey system supports. It represents a masculine paradigm of achievement through action. It is glorious in its encouragement to aim true to your values. But, ultimately, that taking aim is the expression of the “hunter” impulse. Point. Shoot.

I bow to Stephen Covey’s wisdom and to the creative impulse of Hyrum Smith, the architect of the original Franklin Planner. They represent my paternal lineage in time management. Like Saturn’s lesson to stay on target, their insights and methods have given me an excellent foundation for understanding agency and personal responsibility.

Next post...

If the Saturnian style of FranklinCovey is the “father” of my approach to enhancing personal effectiveness, the Goddess is certainly its mother!

Stay tuned...

Coaching the Entrepreneurial Creatrix

2010-08-22T08:49:00.000-07:00

“OK, stand up.” Fruitful coaching often comes when a client is on her feet.

“Take a deep breath.” I can hear Susan* deepen her breathing. Her energy, which had been contracted into her neck and head — the talking parts — expands to fill her entire body. “Good. Now, turn your attention inward to some place in your body.”

My clients know that coaching does not rely exclusively on intellect, that the body provides a wealth of insight and information.

“What part of your body is speaking to you?”

Susan and I are on our weekly phone call. Our coaching relationship is focused on Susan’s “creative empire,” her sprawling world of talent expressed through her own coaching practice, her visual art and her interest in acting. With all of her passions, plus the 30-hours-a-week “day job” that provides for stable income, it’s easy for Susan to become overwhelmed by the volume of choices she has about where to put her attention. For any entrepreneur, finding direction can be a challenge. For Susan, it’s imperative if she’s to use her precious time to fulfill her creative visions.

“My heart. My heart is speaking to me.” This is great! The heart never lies. I encourage Susan to go into her heart and ask it to show her what is needed right now.

“My heart is showing me a star.” She laughs, “It’s like that little red star on a pair of Converse shoes.”

“OK, focus on that star. What’s happening now?”

Susan’s sophisticated enough in her visualizing skills that it’s best for me to just follow along and be prepared for wherever we “land” in a session. My job is to prompt her to get back into her body when she gets stuck in her head.

“Well, it’s just kind of floating.”

“Ask it what it wants to do.”

“Oh, OK, now it’s in the sky.”

“How perfect is that, Susan! Your heart has given you a star, and now it’s in the sky.” I follow an intuitive hunch, “Reminds me of the old sea-faring captains who navigated by the stars.”

The image hits home, and Susan picks it up instantly. “Yeah, I feel kind of like a ship in the ocean, needing direction, I’m just kind of rocking back and forth on the waves. I don’t just want to get carried by the waves if I’m not sure where to go.”

“Go ahead and drop an anchor, then.”

“OK. So now I’m just rocking, not sure which way to go.” This is exactly the theme she brought to today’s call. We’re right on target for her, approaching the theme with her whole self now, not just her mind.

“Your heart gave you a star. Connect with that star. Captains know how to find their direction from the stars. They keep coming back to the North Star to find their bearings. They travel a little, then do a little course-correction.”

Susan breathes a sigh that has a smile in it. “That takes the pressure off! I don’t have to have it all mapped out right now. I can just move forward a little bit. Ooo. That’s a much better feeling.”

“Great, now connect deeply with that star. Let it guide you. What direction does it point you this week?”

“Well…” There’s a pause as Susan receives insight from deep inside herself. Within Susan, as within all of us, there is a wonderful wellspring of internal wisdom. Our coaching sessions give Susan time and space to dip into her well. “It’s the art. The art wants to be the focus. I have a show this weekend and I really want it to be great.”

Susan’s energy has completely shifted from stuck and uncertain to clear and enthusiastic. I can feel her eagerness.

I fan the flames of that little fire. “Really let that star shine bright. It’s guiding you to your art this week. Feel its light. It’s magnetic, pulling you, guiding you. Set your course for art, and whenever you feel ready, pull up your anchor and go!”

She inhales, then exhales sharply. “Whoo. I’m off! Feels good.”

“Alright! Now that you’re traveling toward art, what are some of the things that need to happen this week?” With Susan clearly focused on what’s important for her empire this week, our coaching turns to the practicalities of Susan’s upcoming art event.

When Susan and I first began coaching together, she was relieved to know that I wasn’t going to “make her choose” a single strand of her creative trinity as the essence of her business and the scope of our coaching. In a sample session with a conventional business coach, Susan had been asked straight off the bat to define her focus. “So, what is your business about, really? Is it coaching? Is it art? Is it acting?” For some people, that kind of approach works. Unfortunately, it was not the right approach for Susan. In fact, that single question had her stymied — she wasn’t moving forward with her business while she stewed on which aspect of her creativity was going to eclipse all the others for the sake of being focused and practical.

For a holistic spiritual soul like Susan, time becomes an ally to focus. In our initial interview, I laid out my approach for her. Your insights come from within, I told her. I bring tools, techniques and business experience, but ultimately you are your own best guide. Rather than have you kill off an aspect of your creative enterprise before it has a chance to show its potential, let’s learn what your inner guidance has to say. We can go week by week.

Going week by week is like living each day at a time. We don’t get ahead of ourselves. We cease trying to craft a master plan with a rigid timeline, and start living from the truth that is present right now. This approach allows for authenticity. Its motto is “unite and honor,” rather than “divide and conquer.” It’s surprisingly efficient, because more of our energy is available for us to use right here, right now, not three months or 30 years into the future.

Efficiency is not the sole domain of corporate powerhouses. It is certainly not the exclusive result of a strictly linear way of thinking and sequential way of doing. Women tend to think, and act, holistically. We loop and spiral and circle through activity. Studies have shown that women are more natural multi-taskers than men. Perhaps it’s an inheritance from our gatherer foremothers who tended the babies while foraging for food.

I believe it is within every woman (every man, too) to move forward on her lifepath as a whole, multifaceted being. We each possess a brilliant radiance — an inner star like Susan’s, that can guide us as we navigate through change, challenge, sweetness and success — the stuff of life!

Finding and following that inner star is what my work all about. It is dedicated to your wholeness, your fulfillment and your brilliance.

***

* This client’s name and identifying details have been changed to preserve confidentiality.

Time (Management) Is Relative

2010-08-21T07:00:00.000-07:00

In our corporeal world, our individual human experiences are circumscribed by time. We have our bodies — dust called to life by spirit — for a number of years. Because we can count our years — and the months, weeks, hours, moments that comprise them — time has become a resource to be managed.

Coaching is often geared toward helping people manage this precious resource. Time management and productivity are typical areas of focus for professional coaches. Effectiveness is the buzzword of the day. But effective toward what end? Productive for what purpose? We each need access to our inner wisdom to ensure our aim is true before we kick into action. The corporate highway is littered with corpses of burned-out visionaries who used more muscle than leverage in their pursuit of productivity.

Our world moves fast. “Fast” is a measure of distance and time. Time drives us. Time surrounds us. Tick tock. Can you feel it?

Yet time is flexible. Have you noticed when you’re engrossed in your favorite pastime that time just zips by? And when you’re dragged into something you dislike the second hand moves like molasses. Being a clinical hypnotherapist as well as a coach, I hear clients exclaim that forty minutes in hypnosis feels like five. Time is relative. Our beloved Einstein staked his theory on it.

My point is this: Time is not fixed, nor should be our relationships to it.

When I help someone with time management. I take one of two tracks, based on the dominance of the left or right brain in the client’s way of relating to the world. For the left-brainers, who possess a primarily analytic nature, I recommend working with a structured planning system like FranklinCovey’s or a semi-structured system like my own Can Do Kit. Conversely, I encourage clients with a right-brain, or creative/gestalt, tendency to begin by tuning into their bodies. Using an expanded awareness of the present moment, coupled with a basic calendar and some of my Can Do Kit’s tracking tools, allows the right-brainer to stay “in the flow.” To the left-brainer such an approach is just way too loosey goosey. And the structure of conventional linear systems seems too oppressive to their right-brain counterpart.

While the experience of time is not one-size-fits-all, clocks and calendars are still powerful tools for effectiveness in consensual reality. When we make clear agreements about time — and honor them — we create strong containers in which magic can happen! For those of you who fear time management is a constraint on your flow, I wager that the more connected you are with your body (which reads time more firmly than the mind), the more you will be able to sense the difference between 1pm and 1:02. Clarity is not rigidity — it is awareness.

Right-brainers, remember that your body’s clock and the Earth’s calendar are the most relevant reference points for managing your time resources. Left-brainers… invest in a Swiss watch. The accuracy of its mechanism will delight you!

The Divine Spark Within

2010-08-20T16:06:00.001-07:00

In my work as a business and life coach, I have come to recognize that inside each of our hearts is a motive — a divine impulse to discover and express our unique gifts and talents. The form of that expression may change over time, as we gain new skills and seek to put them to work in the world. But that internal impulse — that divine spark —remains consistent. It is essential, not circumstantial.

When we are connected to this inner impulse, it acts as an internal compass, guiding us through a felt-sense of rightness or wrongness. It illuminates the murkiness of the big life questions: What is my purpose? How can I experience fulfillment? To answer these successfully, we must turn our inquiry inward. And when we do so with care, consciousness and respect, we are rewarded with an empowering discovery. We meet our “inner star,” a personal constellation of values that describes what’s of core importance to each of us.

Your inner star shines or slumbers based on how diligently you’ve pursued the ancient edict to “know thyself.”

Living — deep, juicy, real living — necessitates more than knowledge, though. It also requires desire and action, love and sharing, wisdom and acceptance. These are innate capacities. You were born with them. By following your inner star, your soul will demand that you cultivate your capacities to live a fulfilling life.

Working with a coach can give you the help you need along the way.

***

The graphic used with this blog post is my own inner star.

The Creative Impulse

2010-08-19T15:00:00.000-07:00

I create to companion the Creator in the never-ending dance of Creation.

The experience of our manifested universe, generally speaking, adheres to certain laws. One of them, the first law of thermodynamics states, that energy can be neither created nor destroyed, it can only be converted from one form to another. This law is an intrinsic component of my experience as a “creator.”

Creativity is not, as contemporary profit-driven, techno-industrial thought would have, a personal luxury nor a means to add “value” to a business’ product or service. It may be used as such, but it is not its nature. Creativity is a universal imperative. It is the originating impulse of the primordial flaring forth of all Creation 13.7 billion years ago. It is an ancient impulse, as embedded in the human experience as anything could be.

As a creator — one who courts creativity as a force and one who consciously engages in the creative process — I take comfort in the implications of thermodynamics’ first law. If energy can’t be created, my work as a “creator” is really the work of allowing and shaping. I’m really not creating anything new at all. I am channeling energy that has been in existence since existence began.

The channel-that-I-am has been shaped by a complex of social and biological forces that are not and cannot be exactly duplicated anywhere. Thus, energy will be shaped through me in certain intrinsically unique ways. I don’t need to “try” for a unique creative voice. It is impossible not to have one.

Gratitude and Healing

2010-08-17T16:21:00.000-07:00

Gratitude is a universal panacea in New Age spirituality. “Be grateful,” say all manner of spiritual masters. But inauthentic gratitude is really a lie. Heartfelt gratitude, on the other hand, truly is the balm that heals.

Moving from a vibration of ingratitude to one of gratitude can require a quantum leap in consciousness. I have found that for many people who use affirmations, there must be a willingness to tell a “noble” lie in hopes that through repetition it will one day come true.

From a hypnotherapist’s perspective, this technique does work, given time and diligent practice. However, a more immediate approach involves an inventory of truth. It requires an answer to the question: What are you truly grateful for, right now?

The question is not: What do you think you should be grateful for? Or: What do you wish you were grateful for because you know if you were in a state of gratitude you might escape this misery? No, the question is simple: What are you truly grateful for, right now? And the answer can be as small as it needs to be in order to be true.

For example: If you wish to experience the kind of deep gratitude that truly transforms suffering, but you can’t access a shred of gratitude for the experience that has called forth your suffering — not even for the learning it has provided you — then shift your attention to whatever can stimulate the vibration of gratitude within you.

What are you truly grateful for right now? The answer may be gratitude for the knowledge that one day you will be healed; gratitude for the time you have to investigate the question; gratitude for your cat; gratitude for your cup of coffee; gratitude for that one time several years ago when someone paid your fare on the bus when you left your wallet at home. Whatever it takes to stimulate the attitude of gratitude. Once stimulated, this sensation can expand and become the power that transmutes the poisons of the psyche and those of the world.

Smeared atop a bitter belief, however, aspirational gratitude is a haphazardly applied affirmation that prevents access to the psychic wound. To access the wound and to heal it require the same ingredient: space.

Space is a sense of wide embrace. It is saying yes to what is present, even if what is present is something saying no. The more space we can cultivate for ourselves and for others, the greater the possibility of healing our personal and collective wounds. Often people will turn to counselors and healers for exactly the space they are unable to provide for themselves. When we are unable to say yes to all of ourselves, we seek others who have — through their own healing processes, spiritual evolution, or native compassion — the capacity to do so.

Doctoring the soul requires tolerance for the putrid... and a simultaneous understanding that our natural condition is divinely guided wellness. When we can accept that there is a wound, and allow the wound to reveal itself, we can determine appropriate treatment. In most cases, the treatment is encouragement of the body, mind or soul’'s natural healing process.

The Chaos that Renews

2010-08-15T11:14:00.000-07:00

Have you witnessed the force of chaos breaking down old structures in your life to make room for the new? The powers that wreak havoc in your life may be the very same powers that give rise to the destructive/creative forces of earthquakes, hurricanes and volcanoes. The earth, as a living system, self-regulates by stimulating these so-called chaotic forms. I believe that personal chaos is the soul’s effort to renew its ecosystem.

It might begin with a great upswelling of emotion, rolling tsunamis of desire for change. The waters of some deep need may rise up and crash on the shore of your well-ordered life, smashing edifices you've outgrown or which no longer serve a healthful purpose. Theologian Diarmuid O'Murchu affirms that “disintegration undergirds reintegration.” Remember this when you're clinging to the old structures, and have faith that the intelligence of your self-as-living-system will continue to express its will-to-life and eventually self-organize an organism-wide renewal.

Like the volcano that calls forth needed resources from the depths of the earth to her surface, may the devastating events of your life — all of them, fresh or old — be seen not as disasters but as some great intelligence at work providing for the enduring wellness of your self-as-system by enriching the soil of your soul. Perhaps there is something buried deep within you that needs surfacing, something you will need to continue this next stretch of your life journey. If this is so, ask that the wisdom-within reveal it to you using language and symbols you can easily understand. Then open your heart to receive the message.

There is a promised land
A holy land
Gated and well-guised
In each of our hearts

Stumble upon it
And the gates fling open
Seek it and the garden
Guards itself

We have learned
Too well to hunt
And not enough
To gather

Instead of calling
Be called
Go about your business
Heart open to hear

Beyond Polarity: Integration

2010-08-14T12:27:00.000-07:00

Linear. Nonlinear. Left-brain. Right-brain. Yin. Yang. Polarity gives rise to paradox, which invites the mind (and heart) to hold more than it thought it could. If the polarities are in competition, then the paradox creates stress in the psyche. If the polarities are in companionship, as in the T’ai Chi (Yin/Yang) symbol and as in the natural formation of the brain, then the paradox results in an expansion of consciousness. When “this or that” thinking which vies for the laurels of truth is replaced by the “both and” of interdependent success, then we construct a world (or a self) that accepts its own nature. When the world (or self) accepts its own nature, there is harmony, there is healing, which is etymologically, physiologically and psychologically rooted in whole-ness.

Envision the T’ai Chi symbol — Yin swirling into Yang, each polarity possessing a spot of its opposite within its own self. Compare this symbol to the brain with its left and right hemispheres and their respective functions and domains of awareness. Think of how a person requires both sides of her brain to be in communication across the corpus callosum. Both hemispheres collaborate to give rise to a full range of perception — of the world within and the world without — and a full range of expression — through words and images, speech and motion.

A proclivity toward a certain pole has become the mark of a person’s value within her culture. In our Western culture, we descendants of Descartes have historically preferred (and rewarded) a tilt to the Yang and to the left-brain. Analysis, rationality, assertiveness, linearity — these are the qualities that pay better. The old story was: the more you earn, the more valuable a person you are. When persons can be rated in terms of economics — or any other measure, for that matter — there is implicit permission to treat certain people as disposable. We see this value system evidenced in our wars, where rank-and-file soldiers are the casualties at the front line — pawns sacrificed to protect the more powerful, the more valuable, players. We see this value system evidenced in ecological devastations, where impoverished neighborhoods and nations suffer greater environmental injustices than the wealthier communities and countries that have the resource to outsource their garbage.

When I was a high school student, I wrote in my journal: “There is no mutual existence. Only domination and subservience.” At the time, this was an accurate description of my military upbringing with its ranking system and my experience with economic stratification. I simply did not have any other information to contradict this. Besides breeding in me a fierce competition against other people, it also cultivated an internal combat between my rational and intuitive sides, what I name metaphorically my inner Sun and Moon. Everything around me seemed to validate my Sun at the expense of my Moon. One of the outcomes of this competition was a disenfranchisement from my own body. My work with Goddess traditions, and a great heap of healing, has restored the Moon to power within me. But there is still struggle. I see in women’s communities a criticism of the Yang, a critique and abandonment of the left-brain. This is understandable, since great harm has been committed under the flag of the rational. Yet, to be whole, we must integrate our polarities.

As I sit in meditation, I observe within me the rise of two distinct energies from my sharp mind (whom I love) and my wise body (whom I love). I move my awareness into the center of my heart and bring both hands together into prayer position — a physical articulation of integration. I breathe, and I relax into self-acceptance.

Do you, left brain, take right
For a lifetime of solar-powered
Paradox and seeking
Yes, neverending seeking,
That is itself its own answer?
I do.

Musings on "I"-dentity

2010-08-09T16:58:00.000-07:00

Who am I? A quintessential spiritual insight question designed to differentiate between self and Self.

I take the question into my heart. My heart responds: I am that.

I can’t say quite what I mean by this; it is simply the answer I received to the question. So I decide to look up the word “that” in the dictionary. The second definition fits: “2. adj pron used to refer to somebody or something not described, but familiar to the speaker and hearer and not requiring identification.” Yes, this works. I am not anchoring myself to a description. I am both the speaker and the hearer in this case. I am familiar to myself, and I require no identification to understand to whom I am referring.

I am more than any element of my identity. In fact, I hold identity to be a useful mirror for healing work, but little more. For example, being identified as a woman allows me to claim the fact of it and address the cultural context that suggests the behaviors, emotions, thoughts and roles appropriate to my sex (in other words, the social construct of gender). I get to examine — and deliberately heal from — past and current gender inequities in family, school, and the workplace; privileges afforded men but denied women; privileges afforded women but denied men; the pressures and responsibilities connected with the biological possibility of pregnancy and motherhood; and any other theme that arises around the identity of “woman.” After healing wounded aspects of any identity — releasing the emotional charge around it — the identity itself becomes a neutral description of “I” not the equivalent to it. “I” ceases to be defined by the descriptor, and instead merely is described by it.

It may seem cognitively simple to un-identify with a descriptor. However, insight alone is insufficient to diminish the attachment (or resistance) one may have to a specific descriptor of the self. Such descriptors may include one’s age, gender, place in the family or community constellation, marital status, educational or work accomplishments, even one’s own name. To neutralize the positive or negative charge — occurring as attachment or resistance, respectively — surrounding an identity, one must first claim the identity. After acknowledging the charge and power the identity actually has in one’s life, healing can occur through emotional release, reflection, ritual or any number of integration therapies. Once the wounds of the identity have been healed and/or the blessings of the identity thoroughly integrated, the identity becomes just a descriptor.

In addition to being more than any element of my identity, I am also more than any combination of descriptors. No single descriptor is individually sufficient — nor are they all collectively sufficient — to explain or demonstrate my full being. There is the essence of life in me that comes from Source, the Force that enlivens all beings. I am this — see my hand waving to include all of this physical form and the space around me. And I am that — no gesture.

I often think of myself as one of God’s points of view.

Dancing with Gravity and Levity

2010-08-08T20:47:00.000-07:00

Consider this sacred symbol: the six-pointed star. Comprised of two interlocking triangles, this symbol is known as the Star of David or as the center of the Anahata, or Heart Chakra.

I’ve come to experience this star as a revelation of the gravity and levity within me. The upward triangle represents the force of levity; its desire is to transcend the limits of the physical universe. The downward triangle represents the force of gravity; its aim is to manifest through the constraints of the physical universe.

Through gravity’s downward tug, we may experience the intimate embrace of Gaia, the spirit-consciousness of planet Earth. Gravity’s coalescing force gives us a biosphere in which to live, bodies to inhabit and utilize toward the experience of our Selves in form. Without gravity, there would be no physical domain in which to explore the nature of form. Gravity’s limitations also foster creativity. We must learn to move through the dense matter of air and to work with the even denser forms of soil. Everything — everything — on Earth is made of Earth. And all of Earth is really comprised of the Cosmos. When we create — with paints or pens or simply by speaking — we are expanding our capacity to dance with limitation.

In my own estimation, limitation breeds creativity. The great beauty of a dancer’s body extending through space, seeming to defy limitation, is given by the dancer’s practice with limitation. Resistance training builds muscular strength. Stretching loosens and lengthens the limbs. These efforts are the dancer’s use of limitation. In a sense, the dancer resonates with limitation to effect what we perceive as a defiance of it. A dancer may have to exert force to build muscle and loosen limbs, but our experience of an accomplished dancer is one where body and gravity are partners, not opponents.

Levity also plays its role in the literal dance and the Cosmic dance of life. Levity is the power within that urges us toward the edges of what is possible. It is lightness. It is the force that lifts the spine upright in sitting meditation. It is the invisible hand of God that lifts the golden thread from the crown chakra and literally lifts the mind, body and spirit. It is the feeling of hope that expands the chest and inspires us to work with its polar twin, gravity, in our acts of creation.

In symbolic language, levity is the lifted Lingam, the upward thrust of Life. Gravity is the womb or Yoni, which gives birth to Life.

My intuition tells me that we have chosen the intersecting worlds of Gravity and Levity — Transcendence and Manifestation — to more fully experience the Universal point of view we each uniquely occupy.

Art is in my HeART

2010-05-13T15:23:00.000-07:00

The tags are hung by the paintings with care,

in sweet expectation of the guests who will share

an evening of art on tomorrow's new moon.

If you'd like to come... then RSVP soon!

Details at

http://elkavera.com/events.html#art

Waking Up to Yes

2010-05-07T10:40:00.001-07:00

Years ago, during my hypnotherapy training, one of my teachers recommended setting two morning alarms on your clock — one for you to wake up to you, the other for you to wake up to the world.

The thinking here is to nurture yourself with your own awareness, before you turn your attention to all the to-do's and demands of the day. Morning meditators know the value of rolling out of bed into a mindfulness sit. Artist's Way fans take advantage of this time through the uncensored writing of "morning pages." At different times in my life, I've attempted both practices. (I've discovered that I am a nighttime meditator, but I do maintain a morning writing practice.)

The hypnotherapy perspective is subtly different. It advises you to use your morning time to imprint your suggestible "morning mind" with intentions and affirmations. Every day you awake with an opportunity to tell yourself — through words and images — what you most want yourself to hear.

Each morning, I wake up to the sun streaming through my East-facing window. (Depending on the weather, it's more of a straining than a streaming, but this season it's definitely streaming.) I open my eyes and see vibrant color on the altar at the foot of my bed. Amidst the sacred objets d'art and occasional fresh flowers sits this collage I created at a friend's "vision board birthday party" in January. I wake-up to the bright orange of the central sunflower and the talismanic butterfly. (Butterfly is a spirit ally to me.) What captures my attention this morning is the word "Yes" — all bold and seductive with its curly type.

I am reminded of this book title: The Answer to How Is Yes. In business, as in life, we are regularly challenged with questions as to how we are going to accomplish our BHAGs. (BHAGs, you know, Big Hairy Audacious Goals.) If the answer to how is yes, then we can meet our aspirations with a resounding affirmation.

Your body-mind system comes with a built-in mechanism for internalizing, embodying and externalizing new ideas. It's called repetition. Your body-mind system is intimately and ultimately linked to the Earth's systems, including its daily repetition of sunrise. Use these gifts — the repetition of waking up every day and the suggestibility of your morning mind — to give yourself the gentle, empowering, encouraging, dynamic, daring, audacious, simple or whateveryourheartdesires affirmation and intentions you most want to hear. Wake up to you.

The Right Conditions for Healing

2009-03-29T11:31:00.000-07:00

I was a fat kid. Kind friends and adults would say I was chubby. The other kids at school called it like it was: fat.

I didn't start out fat, but moving to a new city or neighborhood every three years or less took its toll on my psyche. By my count I attended twelve different schools between kindergarten and twelfth grade — not one every year, but sometimes two in a year. Such was the life of a girl with a career-military father. Instead of going outside to play and meet new friends (again) or having to integrate into a new social group (again), I'd stay inside, read, and eat bread. Shadowy family stuff also prompted me to unconsciously pad myself with pudgy protection. It's crude, but it works.

For a few years, after I noticed my body had changed its proportions in ways my peers' bodies hadn't, I tried to lose weight. Half-heartedly, I would try to change my eating habits. It was a dreary, impotent effort. Inside (and outside) I was whining: Nobody loves me. I have no friends. And the reason is because I'm fat.

My child-self had the reasoning backward. It was not the case that I had no friends because I was fat. It was that I was fat because I had no friends. My internal dialog perpetuated the problem. I would look in the mirror and like myself less and less. I would look in the mirror and think that if only I were thin I would be loved.

When I was fourteen, something shifted. Perhaps it was the fire of natural teenage rebellion or the rising force of hormones that gave me power to break free of fatty inertia. Reflection tells me it had more to do with my new environment. I lived in a neighborhood with kids my own age. I had attended the same school for two full years and was certain to be there for at least one more. My PE teacher had taken a shine to me because I had soccer skills, and now I was on the team. Because my social network extended beyond my nuclear family, the family's dysfunctions exerted less pressure on me.

Losing weight was not the result of reducing caloric intake. In fact, my mother noticed my eating habits didn't change at all. Observing my weight loss and discerning no hint of a diet, mom approached me with worried questions: "Are you bulimic? Are you making yourself throw up after you eat?" In her mind, fat and food were on opposite sides of a simple equation. If I was losing weight without eating less, then obviously I was discharging the food somehow.

But, no, I was not barfing off the excess. My equation was more complex than food equals fat. It included other variables, like fitness and friends and a sense of place.

Losing weight was not an effort of will, but an effect of restoring balance to my life's ecosystem. I was living in an environment in which I could experience more love for myself. My attention moved away from the symptom of being fat toward the experience of being engaged with my world, connected, valued. I dropped the pounds of protection, because I could, not because I forced myself to.

To use the language of today's economic obsession, my body performed a "market correction." It responded to a host of interconnected variables and right-sized itself to match the desires and demands of my new reality. It expressed a soul-adjustment.

The memory of my teenage transformation popped into my mind this morning as I sipped my coffee and watched my partner's cats stalk insects in our garden full of hip-high dandelion weeds. I was ruminating on what it was that finally caused the misery of childhood chubbiness to give way.

The theme of misery has been on my mind. Clients come to me seeking relief from all sorts of sufferings. And I have had my own heaping helping of personal miseries over the past year and a half — divorce, miscarriage, debilitating illness and incapacitating injury. After what feels like eons under the thumb of some great shadowy oppression, I am finally beginning to feel free. Perhaps it's the burst of spring energy, the hope inspired by our new president, or a shift in my soul's ecosystem.

I pause as I type this and take a few drops of a flower essence formula I started taking a few days ago. It's automatic, a reflex. I'm not making a conscious connection between my reflection and my flower remedy. Then I realize what's in my hand. I laugh! The drops I've been taking are a vibrational healing blend called "Karma Clear." The label spells it out clearly: "releasing emotional pain and suffering."

A smile spreads across my face in appreciation for the subtle insistence of the subconscious. My soul is unraveling some knots. I imagine yours is, too, in your own life. This is my offering to you today: Look past the symptoms. Don't look for a "cure" to whatever ails you. Look at your ailment as a natural expression of the combination of factors in your life. Experience your predicament as an illustration of the condition of your ecosystem. And recognize that your ecosystem extends beyond your small personal world.

The conditions that gave rise to my overweight as a child extended beyond my own or even my family's personal pains. My family's circumstances were driven by my parents' career choices, which were guided by ancestral urges, social conventions of their generation and economic imperatives.

As a youngster, I couldn't fix or change any of those things. As a teenager, I experienced a moment of grace in our change of circumstances — I had no direct control over the changes, but I had influence. And as I matured, I took with me the self-awareness that enjoying my body weight comes with regular exercise, close connections and a sense of autonomy.

Resting on the other side of my much more recent personal difficulties, I have the space to reflect on what pulled me through these traumas. I count grief counseling, bodywork, intensive transformational practices, process art, time spent in nature and the listening of good friends as my remedies. I didn't reach for Karma Clear months ago in the middle of suffering. I reached for it when I was ready to release suffering. And the memories it brought me to reached much further back into my history than I'd imagined.

Suffering, it turns out, is the label on one drawer of my psychic filing cabinet in which many memories are stored. Releasing suffering doesn't mean the filing cabinet disappears. It means two things: 1) I'm not chained to the filing cabinet. 2) I have the power to open and close the drawer at will with a sense of neutrality. I can pull out the memory of my fat childhood and the memory of last year's miscarriage, for instance, and say, "Yes." And then I can put them back in the drawer. I can even put them in another drawer labeled with the word "Body" or any other theme in common between them.

Practices and remedies can facilitate the process of releasing suffering. But they can't force it or rush it. When the conditions are right, the ailment releases on its own. This is what is meant by the idea that all healing is self-healing. A practitioner may use a skill to facilitate the self in its natural healing process. But it is the self that heals.

Light-hearted Ritual for Letting Go on Labor Day

2007-09-03T11:50:00.000-07:00

Labor Day is a federal holiday in the U.S. This means that most of us don't work this day. I've often found it ironic that the day honoring working people is a day we don't work. I suppose that gives us time to reflect on the importance of labor. I personally think every day that we work should be honored as important.

It seems that the cultural equation has been work=bad, leisure=good. Is this because many people check their values at the door when they step into the office?

In today's economy, however, rising unemployment rates have shifted that equation somewhat. Sadly, it still seems that it's not joy that drives the desire for work, but desperation.

Whether you have a job or not, take this Labor Day to reflect on work. But do it with a light touch -- with a bottle of children's blow bubbles handy.

Why did you choose your line of work? What were the cultural, social, economic factors that guided you into your current career? What does your work contribute to your life and to society? What do you like about your work? What do you dislike? What would your experience of work be like if you held it as an expression of your divinity, as a magical act?

Chew on the questions. You can write your thoughts in your journal or you can just hang out with them.

Pull out your bottle of bubbles. Use the bubbles to playfully envision releasing any heaviness you have about work.

The moon's waning cycle -- and your bubbles -- will send your worries, concerns and fears soaring. What would you like to let go of as it relates to your work (or lack of it)? Blow that thought through the bubble wand -- your magic wand. See the thought get captured in these little translucent containers. Watch as the air lifts them away. And then -- pop! -- the bubble releases the energy of your thought. Gone. Bye bye. "I bless you and release you."

Mother Mary Inner Peace Ritual

2007-07-09T11:56:00.000-07:00

Recently reclaimed as the Goddess in disguise, the Virgin Mary has long been esteemed as the feminine face of Christianity. Catholics and Pagans alike have worshiped at her loving feet for generations, celebrating her gentleness and her generosity for bringing a peaceful healer to birth. The month of July hosts the memorial feast day of the Blessed Mary in her aspect as Our Lady of Peace.

Prepare yourself for this ritual with a simple purification -- a holy footbath. People in Mary's lifetime would wash their feet when coming inside from outdoors. A dusty landscape anoints a traveler's feet with earthy evidence of her journey. Though your feet are unlikely to be so visibly marked from your day's efforts, you carry the energetic residue of where you've been and what you've been through. This purification lets you release that and come to present time.

A bowl of warm water and a few drops of a soothing essential oil are the elixir of renewal for your soul and your soles. Swirl your toes around and dissolve the remnants of your day. Towel off your tootsies and bless them your appreciation -- your feet do a lot for you, offer them a kind word or two.

Where kindness begins, peace ensues. Peace is not something to fight for. Peace is known by the absence of fighting.

How do you fight yourself? How do you attack yourself for little things? Are you attacking yourself now for all the ways you've attacked yourself in the past? You can't get to inner peace from a place of inner criticism.

Let Our Lady of Peace helps transform criticism into kindness. This is not fluffy-puffy nonsense. It is a practice for cultivating world peace. Everything within your power starts exactly where you are, right here, right now. If you desire world peace, then start with this moment and the way you treat yourself.

Mary is the essence of a holy mother whose love extends to all. Create in your imagination the motherly ideal -- a perfect love. Drop into a meditative state and envision this ideal, generous, loving, peaceful mother archetype centered in your heart. Hear her words of kindness to you, her precious child. Touch your heart to anchor this feeling. An anchor allows you to call back an inner experience in a heartbeat -- simply by repeating the gesture of the anchor. Whenever you have need of Mary's kindness, touch your heart just as you did now.

Close your peace contemplation by humming, singing, or saying aloud the immortal words of The Beatles:

When I find myself in times of trouble
Mother Mary comes to me
Speaking words of wisdom, let it be

And so it is.

Empowerment Ritual for a Waning Moon in June

2007-06-11T11:58:00.000-07:00

At this point in the season, the sky remains suffused with the remnants of the sun late into the evening. The increase of summer's light communicates a sense of expansive energy that invites possibility. Possibility asks you to follow inspiration's lead, to stay out later than you should, to talk louder than you should, to do a whole lot of things "er" than you should.

Tonight's magic liberates personal possibility from the chains of so-called propriety. The waning moon cycle helps you release the energetic shackles that come in the guise of modesty. How often do you respond, "I couldn't possibly" when a juicy notion crosses your mind. Your mission, if you choose to accept it, is to make "I certainly can!" your resounding refrain.

It will take passion and will... and you'll need some scissors and string.

Begin by centering yourself comfortably in your own skin.

Think of something you've really wanted to do but haven't allowed yourself. Circle yourself in string and tie a knot. This is the symbolic chain you have created for yourself.

What else have you wanted to do but you've held yourself back with an "I can't"? Ask for a raise? Buy a new dress? Tell your friend a secret? Go on a vacation? Ask that cutie on a date? Make a piece of art?

For everything you've truly deeply wanted to express or experience or create that you've said "I can't" or "I couldn't", bind yourself in string.

Hang out for a bit, all bound up. Try to move. Not a lot of room, huh?

Now, take a deep fiery belly breath and use the scissors to snip your way to freedom.

If you're inclined, you can chant:

Waning moon witness me
By my own will, I am free
I can I can I certainly can

"I can't" holds an entirely different energy from "I can and I choose not to." Now that you have ritually freed yourself, you have choice in your actions. You know in your body when something's a choice and when it's a chain. Dare to put your new freedom into practice. Take a risk.

Ritual for Beltaine

2007-04-30T12:05:00.000-07:00

It's Beltaine! May 1 opens the door to the Celtic holiday marking Spring's transition to Summer. The simplest way to celebrate this day is to fill your home with flowers. Be sure to put extra in the bedroom, because that's where the Beltaine action is at!

Beltaine is the time of fertility and passion, when European tribal people coupled just for the night or partnered for a "trial period" of a year and a day. You may have heard of the Maypole. Now just imagine what this erect pole symbolizes and you're on your way to recognizing the ritual of this day. If ever you needed a reason to make love, Beltaine is it. With your date, your mate, or your self, celebrate your sexuality and sensuality surrounded by flowers. Make up your own Maypole dance — you don't need any further details from me!

However, if you'd like some ritual preparation before you settle into your bed of flowers, try this variation on an old farmers' rite. On Beltaine, villagers would drive their cattle between two bonfires to purge them of fleas and ticks. To purify yourself of any metaphorical beasties, put two candles on the floor a few feet apart and walk between them. Say a little prayer that the fire cleanse your spirit and ignite your passion.

A parting note: Be sure to take appropriate precautions against symbolic fertility becoming actual fertility. Enjoy!

Ritual for a Waning Moon in April

2007-04-16T12:09:00.000-07:00

April is all about growth — the sudden burst of green from the earth, buds opening into blossoms. The name of the month "April" is thought to come from the Latin word "aperire" which means "to open."

You may have felt your energy beginning to open or expand as the days have lengthened and the Earth has awakened from cold slumber. What are you opening to? What newness is about to spring forth in your life?

Prepare for your own Spring awakening by taking a waning moon April shower. As the adage goes, "April showers bring May flowers." A shower on any waning moon is a symbol of cleansing. Add April to the mix and you create a sense of preparation, as if you were cleansing yourself in anticipation of the beauty that will flower in the garden of your soul when Spring later ripens into Summer.

In the month of April, ancient Romans celebrated ludi, or sacred games, in honor of Magna Mater (aka Great Mother). The Roman poet Ovid also associated April with Aphrodite. The Romans sure loved their goddesses! Take a cue from them and make your shower a ritual that honors yourself as the embodiment of Mother Earth or the beloved Aphrodite — whichever feels more "you."

Run a warm shower. Before you step under the stream, say a prayer of gratitude for your plumbing. What a miracle to have running water at your fingertips. And you didn't have to lay the pipes!

Take time to enjoy the feeling of the water on your flesh. This ritual is very much about flesh. It is the flesh of the Earth that brings flowers and fruit. It is the flesh of your body that holds presence and pleasure. Mother Earth is round and generous. Aphrodite is soft and sweet. Hold only generous or sweet thoughts for your curves or planes. No body bashing allowed in this shower!

With the power of your intention, imagination and words, the water washes away remnants of whatever is old or outdated, preparing you for the new. You visualize-ers can see it wash down the drain. You sense-ers can feel it cascade off of you. Use this little incantation, if you like:

I prepare myself with this sacred shower
and open to magic that's about to flower.

Towel off, and tuck into your jammies. Go to bed early tonight, and awake fresh for the bright new day that greets you tomorrow.

Simple Samhain Ritual

2006-10-30T12:11:00.000-08:00

Samhain (say "sah-win" or "sow-in") is the Celtic season of Winter. Most Witches and Celtic shamans use the name Samhain to refer specifically to the season's threshold or festival day, October 31. You know this day as Halloween. It's tomorrow.

The veil between this world and the otherworld is at its thinnest on Samhain and also at its seasonal opposite, the threshold day for Beltane (say "be-ehl-te-na" or "bell-tane"), which is May 1. Where Beltane holds bright blossoms and warmth, Samhain holds dark mysteries and cold.

Dark mysteries. Before you get hooked by your earliest internalized anti-Witch propaganda, take a look at the night sky -- such a beautiful dark mystery. Take a look at the unexamined parts of yourself -- such beauty hidden in the depths of your personal mystery.

What does it mean that the veil between worlds is thin? The short answer is that one can commune more easily with spirits at this time. Traditionally, it is a time to recognize those who have passed from this Earthly plane to... whatever mystery lives beyond.

I offer you a simple ritual to show your appreciation and respect for those whom you have loved who have walked this Earth before you and are now gone in form.

Prepare a meal with foods that your beloved dead would have enjoyed.

Lay out a white cloth and set onto it a plate of this food as an offering to your beloveds. You may wish to say their names aloud. Simple is always good: "This is for you, Uncle Joe."

Serve yourself some of this food, too, and enjoy a meal reflecting on all the good things you experienced with your beloveds when they still had bodies.

Raise a toast now and then and offer up a memory about them that makes you smile.

The Reclaiming community uses this phrase to mark the act of remembering our beloved dead: "What is remembered lives." Through your remembrance, your beloveds live on in spirit.

Spatial Energetics

2006-10-25T11:42:00.000-07:00

Spatial energetics is what I call the art and practice of shaping the energy flow patterns and/or affecting the overall energetic signature of an environment or three-dimensional space.

As similar as it sounds, this is not Feng Shui, which follows an ancient set of laws and uses complex astrological calculations. It's not the increasingly popular "intuitive" Feng Shui, which uses the premises and name of this Eastern art without any of the rigorous training. It's grounded in the power of direct perception, enhanced by a ritual practitioner's or psychic's toolkit of energy sensing and shaping, and rounded out by an artist's sensitivity to color, form and space.

Envision a room, a cubicle, an apartment, a building. Each of these environments is defined by clear boundaries. They each are contained by walls and accessed by doors and windows or other defined openings. They each represent a finite three-dimensional space with energy flowing in, circulating through and flowing out. This energy is physical -- sunlight, air, sometimes water. Then, of course, there are the people and animals that enter, inhabit and exit the space.

Each physical energy that enters a space also carries with it "subtle" energies. In other words, the sunlight and air may have certain qualities we may perceive consciously or unconsciously. We recognize the air as crisp or fetid. We feel the sun as cheery, overbearing or eerily diffuse. Each person moving in and out of the space also carries a mood and intention. These subtle energies affect the overall quality of experience within a space.

We may find that in some environments we feel uplifted, alert and inspired. In others we feel nurtured and soothed. In still other spaces we may feel sluggish, stuck or awkward. These experiences are the net result of interactions between the

Placement of objects within the space (furniture, fixtures, art)
Sensory stimulus in the room (sound, color, form, scent, texture)
Physical or subtle energy in the space from its previous and current uses
Physical or subtle energy we ourselves bring into the space

As we stand within, outside or at the threshold of a space, it is simple to understand its distinctness. We can indicate easily: "this room," "that cubicle," "this shop," or "that apartment." Spatial energetics embraces the distinctness of a space and offers an approach for transforming or enhancing its qualities, as its own experience and within the context of the larger space it inhabits. For example, we may treat an office suite in a building or the building as a whole, a room in an apartment or the entire apartment, a shop on a street or the street as an experience itself.

The boundary of a space offers the human mind a wonderful gift called finitude. Within a finite space we use objects and other physical cues to structure and organize our experience. When experience is organized, we feel at ease, we can relax with a sense that one of our core human needs has been met. Even a person who loves the wild open space of uncultivated land pitches camp to more fully enjoy exploring the self-organized biological environment. There is divine design in the spatial relationships of all living things in our biosphere. Humans can exercise their divine power of creativity by designing inhabitable spaces, optimized for specific intentions.

Spatial energetics is an approach to influencing, improving and creating spaces that support specific intentions. As such, it is both a practical and spiritual pursuit. Above all, the art and practice of spatial energetics helps us enhance environments to support our well-being, our performance in the world, our achievement of personal goals, our enjoyment of desired experiences, and our connection with the sacred.

Spatial energetics considers energy flows from an experiential perspective, inviting inhabitants to answer questions. What does it feel like to walk through the front door? How would you like it to feel? How is the experience changed when we introduce this color, this element, move this object?

Within the practice of spatial energetics, it is the inhabitant who directs the modifications to a space. A consultant would bring experience, sensitivity, and suggestions for helping a client enjoy their space, as they desire it. If a client does not know what they desire, a consultant would help them formulate a clear intention through inquiry, reframing and synthesis. A good consultant can pick up on subtle cues from the environment's current state that may reveal a client's unconscious desires. By clearly articulating the present energy dynamic, often the desired change reveals itself.

Begin with an assessment of a space from its "mouth," the primary portal through which energy enters. Follow the energy through the space, tracking where the eye is drawn by colors, artworks, furniture, built-in fixtures, other structures. Notice the obvious energetic pathways -- where the body is allowed, prevented or encouraged to move. Activate a deep awareness of the senses as you move through the space. What is the temperature, the odor, the "texture" of the air? What is the emergent theme of the space? What "story" is the environment telling? What needs to change so that the environment tells the story you want it to tell?

As it relates to "story", the practice of spatial energetics is very much like that of business branding. Brand consultants help a business discover what "story" their company, product or service is telling. As a brand consultant, I use metaphor to describe a company's essence. When I work with an individual to transform the energy in their home or office, I use metaphor to describe who they are and how their space enhances or diminishes, expresses or conflicts with their essence. In this sense, the practice is quite subjective. Yet, the results are concrete. People notice when a space has been harmonized with its inhabitant's essence. They comment: "It feels good in here."

Improved enjoyment of a space is a natural outcome of attending to it with love and care. Spatial energetics can help you transform your home, office, cubicle or bedroom to improve your quality of life.

What Is Magic?

2006-10-22T11:44:00.000-07:00

Magic has been defined as the "art of changing consciousness at will." This is a useful phrase, expressing one facet of that mysterious chemistry that makes things happen, brings thought to form, calls spirit to life. It's a definition particularly true for those practiced in the skill of aligning their thoughts with their words and actions. Indeed, the art of transforming awareness to harmonize with intention is magic.

Magic also lives beyond the scope of conscious awareness or will. For those who have ever been affected by the scent of a flower, uplifted by a certain color, transformed by a work of art or moved by a piece of music, you know this to be true.

Your senses reveal to you the rightness (or wrongness) of energy in a room. Your senses cue you to both internal dialog and external influence. Through direct perception, you sense the electricity of life, the kinetic connection between beings, the field of energy and flow popularized in Hollywood mythology as the "Force." Here, magic lives in the gut, heart and fingertips more than in the head.

Practice this little energy game to inspire your inner Yoda:

Rub your hands together briskly to activate a tingly or hot sensation.

Hold your hands close enough together that you feel "something" between them but not so close that they physically touch.

Play with the sensation of something-ness between the hands -- pull your hands away, then draw them back in again. Notice where the sensation increases and where it diminishes.

Add your imagination to the sensation. Imagine that the "something" between your hands is a ball of energy that has a color. See it vividly.

Assign a meaning to that color. Let your instinct guide you. Maybe you "saw" red. What is red to you? Passion? Power? If you saw yellow, ask yourself what yellow means. Sunlight? Courage? If you're stuck on this, make something up. First thought. That, right there. That's perfect.

Continue to "hold" that ball of colored meaningful energy.

Now, go ahead and release it. Send it to the sun overhead or down into the center of the earth below. Just let it go and allow the energy to be recycled.

A more advanced practice would involve using that ball of energy to achieve an intention. But unless you're versed in the law of three-fold returns, just let the game complete itself.

Oh, and may the Force be with you. ;-)

Time to Honor the Ancestors

2006-10-20T12:15:00.000-07:00

I believe in the power of dreams. They reveal truths, provide space for the subconscious to solve problems, allow us to travel astrally, and generally offer a significant chunk of time we can use for healing, rejuvenation and sacred pursuits.

The dream language is often symbolic. My dreaming self also communicates with me in quite literal terms. I had one of those literal dreams last night.

A group of powerful women approached me and said it is time to honor the ancestors.

My spiritual practice acknowledges the ancestors, but I don't actively work with them as some of my soul sisters do. One of my teachers once said "no ancestors, no descendants" as a way to remind people to stay in present time. This philosophy has had a lot of resonance for me. I take it to mean for myself that I am not defined by my family's patterns and I do not rely on my possible future children to live out my dreams for me. I experience it as an empowering notion.

Just as empowering, though, is the notion that I do have my ancestors' blessings. I was talking with a friend a few days ago, and she said I must have the "teaching gene" since it comes so naturally to me. I chewed on that a bit and was reminded of a ritual from several years ago when I clearly and distinctly received a message from my ancestors that they give their blessing to my career as a magical teacher. They said, "If you choose to make your living teaching magic, we will support you." Knowing that the ancestors have "got my back" is a relief. It makes it a little easier to hold out the possibility of real magic -- without being aggressive about it -- as I make my way through different walks of life.

I value this blessing, just as I ask for my ancestors' blessings on important events in my life. However, I do not make a regular practice of feeding the ancestors, and I don't have a permanent ancestor altar. I call on them during important life transitions, and I invite them to participate in my rituals. I also honor them every year... right around this time.

The Day of the Dead and Samhain are both less than two weeks away. My dream guides want to be sure that I mark this seasonal passage. And so I have built a simple altar with a crystal bowl of salt water and a candle that I have dressed with

salt for purification of intent
rose oil for unconditional love and grace
abundance oil for all the ways my ancestors have provided for me
"invisible friend" flower essence for the unseen presence of those who dwell on the other side of the veil
nicotiana flower essence as a stand-in for actual tobacco to honor those who have walked the earth before me
scots pine flower essence to honor all the wisdom of those who have lived long and short lives contributing to the vast pool of collective wisdom that is available to guide us

I offer up my thanks and praises for all who have come before me and to all who will go after me. In so doing, I recognize my place within the constant flow and evolution of humanity. I modify my teacher's words and say: "all ancestors, all descendents." I touch my forehead to the ground and say "blessed be."

Aural Stimulation

2006-06-13T12:19:00.000-07:00

Thanks to the miracles of digital recordings and micro-technology, I enjoy the walk to and from my office each day with the wisdom of accomplished thinkers whispering in my ears. Here's what my pretty pink iPod (named Princess) has been playing...

Your Body Is Your Subconscious Mind by Candace Pert, Ph.D.
You may know Candace Pert as one of the experts featured in the science-meets-spirituality film, What the #$%& Do We Know!?. Endorphin researcher, discoverer of the opiate receptor and rebel who bucked the science system made a name for herself in healing communities by sharing the "science behind mind-body medicine" in her book Molecules of Emotion. Her follow-up work, Your Body Is Your Subconscious Mind, presents her thinking about the body-mind as a field of information flowing through, in and around the physical body. This 3 CD set offers alternative healers validation for what they already know intuitively and empowerment for people who want to develop a better relationship with their own well-being. I devoured this one in a day.

The Language of Archetypes by Caroline Myss
Caroline Myss, the name in intuitive energy medicine, is a sharp, savvy speaker. She has the ability to go off on a wild tangent and loop back to her pause-point with grace. Grace, in fact, is one of her keywords, one you'll hear her say again and again (and again since there are a lot of hours of listening in this 11 CD set). I love Myss' courage to bunk the New Age ethos, but I also sense a kind of bitterness in her voice. I have to make a conscious choice to set aside my reaction to her sometimes-stringent lecturing and experience the value of her opus on living life from a symbolic perspective. I just finished the last disc, and whew! I do appreciate her dedication to developing a core idea into a comprehensive system of understanding. If you work with Tarot, you may enjoy the looking at the Major Arcana through Myss' archetypal lens.

Radical Prayer by Matthew Fox
I've known Matthew Fox's name as the force behind the Techno Cosmic Mass and as the founder of the University of Creation Spirituality (now Wisdom University). Radical Prayer, a 6 CD set, is my first encounter with this self-described radical Christian's humor and intellect. Fox calls prayer a "radical response to life," sourcing the word "radical" from its etymology, meaning "roots". Prayer is, therefore, a way of being rooted in life, is a call to return to one's roots. His speaking is lyrical, evocative and inspiring. I'm savoring his scholarship and passion.

Radical Self-acceptance by Tara Brach
Psychologist and Buddhist teacher Tara Brach has a soft, compassionate presence you can feel radiating through her voice. I'm just getting started on this CD set. So far, I find her guidance clear and useful. There are spaces for silent meditations (ironic on an audio presentation, but it works) to practice the art of self-acceptance.

The Healing Breath by Neal Douglas-Klotz
I love toning and chanting, and this 6 CD set gives me plenty of opportunity to do so... in Aramaic, Jesus' native tongue. Neal Douglas-Klotz translates the Beatitudes -- those "blessed are the" sayings -- from ancient Aramaic directly into English, giving them a very different meaning from the King James versions which rendered Jesus' teachings into English by way of Latin from Greek. The words once-removed from source (as translated by Douglas-Klotz) have a Sufi flavor reminiscent of Rumi, a passionate contrast to the Biblical language we are accustomed to. If you've wanted to access the wisdom of one of history's great mystics and teachers, but couldn't get pass the religious implications of its common text, try wrapping your tongue and breath around the old Aramaic. Amen.

Check them out on Amazon

Breath and Grounding

2006-05-25T12:21:00.000-07:00

Breath

It all starts (and ends) with the breath. It is the gift of life that sustains us more than water or food, rest or exercise. It is marvelous that the subconscious handles it for us entirely!

To grow in consciousness we can take partnership, actively, with all parts of the self, by breathing consciously. When the yoga teacher, guru or ritual guide invites you to breathe deeply, she is calling you to awareness of the ultimate power of life.

You can control your breath. But to begin with, just feel your breath! We are too swept up with controlling things. Don't control it now -- don't even observe it, as the yogis say. Instead, play with it. Breathe out the back of your neck. Breathe from your heart. Breathe through the soles of your feet. This will lead you naturally into grounding.

Grounding

Grounding is the loving act of remembering your body is the true home of your soul on earth. We are all One in the eyes of the universe (the "one" "verse") but we each have our own instrument to play in the harmony and rhythm of our collective song. Song is breath vibrating the body!

Grounding is an energetic phenomenon, not a mental fabrication. It is not itself a visualization, though you may be led to ground through visualizing. Especially for the mentally over-stimulated, grounding may best be done by whatever physical means call you completely in your body. For most of us this is breathing.

Vibrating the breath through the body by toning (resonating a sound like an "om") reminds us of all the dimensions of our bodies from inside to outside, and all around. Many people express embarrassment about making non-singing sounds. Get over it! Feel embarrassed if you must, but do explore the pleasure of sound rippling through your body.

You may want to move during your grounding, even touch your forehead to the floor. If you're compelled, inclined or even just intrigued to move a certain way, do! Your body is your home, your temple. Listen to it! Feed it! Exercise it! Stroke it! All of these things will help ground it.

Lift Me Up

2006-05-24T12:24:00.000-07:00

I want to be in the presence of enlightenment. I want to bask in the light of someone's radiant evolution. I want my vibration to be raised by my surroundings. I want to be transformed through my environment. It is entirely possible.

John Diamond, MD discusses what I call "evolution through entrainment" in his seminal text on kinesiology, Your Body Doesn't Lie. Being in the presence of someone with more "life energy" than you will raise your own quotient of life energy. Together, you create homeostasis. Your energies entrain. You are lifted up.

However, if the other person lacks sufficient life energy reserves, as you are lifted up, the balancing effect is also achieved -- you pull the other down. But if the other has an over-abundance of life energy, then she is not drained. Or if she does become drained, she knows how to replenish herself through daily practices of spiritual and physical renewal, excellent nutrition, and self-care. This is what you'd look for in your healer, your therapist or guru -- an abundance of life energy and the ability to renew themselves. Better still, find someone who can teach you how to renew yourself and increase your own life energy.

Here is a simple way to increase your life energy working with the guru of all gurus, the healer of all healers: Mother Earth.

Go outside. Stand near a healthy, vibrant tree. Let your eyes soak in the green leaves, the blue sky. Let your ears absorb the chatter of birds. Breathe deeply. Just be there for 5 minutes and receive. It's effortless. And it works.

As individuals we have the capacity to affect healing all around us -- without even trying -- through the exchange of life energy. Remember this and begin to think of your commitment to your own health, radiance and wholeness as an act of healing for the world.

Three Good Reasons to Honor the Seasons

2006-04-08T12:26:00.000-07:00

1. You eat food that comes from the earth. The earth's seasons govern the growing cycles all around the world. Whether you recognize the earth spiritually or not, these growing seasons affect you. When a seasonal storm decimates crops in Florida, the cost of oranges goes up. Honoring the seasons demonstrates your understanding of basic material -- and economic -- principles.

2. Moods and sleep patterns are linked to the amount of sunshine you're exposed to. Simply put, you receive more sunlight in summer than during the shorter days of winter. Honoring the turn of the seasons empowers you to place your mental/emotional health in context. Understanding contextual influences gives you the choice to work with the seasonal changes rather than against them.

3. Seasonal markers bring meaning and structure to our lives. As meaning-making machines, we can find elegance and relief in the rhythms given by the earth's orbit, tilt and rotation. These are the natural ingredients for flow and meter. Honoring the seasons is like making music with God.

Participation

2006-02-28T12:34:00.000-08:00

Author and psychic Sonia Choquette warns in her book Your Heart's Desire that the "greatest obstacle to creating your Heart's Desire may be isolation." The antidote, she says, "is the love and community of people who want you to succeed."

As many influential spiritual thinkers do, Sonia turns to the Bible for inspiration. The Book of Matthew attributes this oft-quoted saying to Jesus:

"Wherever there are three or more gathered in my name, I will be there also."

I love this sentiment. It is why I find groups to be so powerful. It is the underlying premise of my current Goal Group for Women. And it is my offering to you now: Gather together with your allies. Set an intention. Pool your energy. Invoke the divine. Share your ideas.

The Osho Zen tarot illustrates this concept in its "4 of Fire" card. Called "Participation," the card shows four figures gathered around a central mandala. Their hands -- the left palm up to receive, the right palm down to send -- channel energy around their small circle. It is the card of give and take, engagement.

Would more engagement help to fulfill your heart's desire? Write down the names of two people you know who love and support you. Set a date to convene with them. Come together with the intention of sharing energy to support your mutual dreams and goals. Structure your gathering like so:

Read aloud a piece of poetry, scripture or nonsectarian prayer. Each person shares something in her life that is new and good. Each person receives 10-20 minutes of the trio's attention focused on her dream. Have everyone in the trio spend 2 minutes visualizing each person's success. Close your gathering with a round of appreciations for each person in the trio and for the spirit of the group itself.

It's really quite simple. You can do it over wine or dinner. All you need to do is pick up the phone and call those two people.

Living fulfillment, achieving your heart's desire -- this is made possible through a series of small actions. Make one small action today.

Ritual for Imbolc

2006-02-02T12:35:00.000-08:00

Today is the Celtic holy-day of Imbolc, the festival of the waxing light and feast day of the goddess Brigid. If you are in the San Francisco Bay Area you may enjoy participating in Reclaiming's public ritual on Friday, February 3 (details at Reclaiming.org). Those who are inclined to more private celebration can perform a variation of this simple ritual alone or in small groups:

Light a candle and place it in a bowl of water. Call on Brigid, goddess of the Holy Well and Sacred Flame.

Meditate on the flame -- the presence of warmth and fire in your life. Consider how the light of the sun has increased since Winter Solstice. Think of the buds that are beginning to form on tree branches, and bulbs that have already bloomed! Life energy returns as Winter begins its turn toward Spring.

Dip your hand in the water -- the essence of healing and compassion. Consider how you blend heart and wisdom in your world.

Let yourself think of the time from now until August, harvest-time. What commitments are you making now to ensure a healthy harvest of your efforts come Autumn? What creative seeds are you planting? What is growing inside of you?

Write down a pledge you can make for yourself to support your growth, your creative endeavors or something you have already set in motion.

Speak your pledge aloud, then strike a piece of metal against metal to confirm your commitment.

Let the candle burn as long as you like. If you pinch out the flame, you can re-light the candle whenever you want to be reminded of your pledge.

Eat Your Phood

2006-01-23T11:45:00.000-08:00

"Phood." It's real. It's here. It's a phenomenon. Or should I say a "fenomenon"?

What is "phood"? It's the moniker for "nutritionally enhanced products that cross food and pharmaceuticals." (Kotler/Keller, Marketing Management)

I must admit I am suspicious of pharmaceuticals mingling with my meals. Perhaps this is an unfounded left-wing bias. But since I'm not opposed to allopathic medicine and I'll cop to having subsituted a PowerBar for dinner when pressed for time, I think it's my philosophical objection to the state of edible affairs in the U.S.

The prevalence of processed, packaged food (and the lack of life force energy in it) has spawned a need for nutritional enhancement and this need has translated into big business. So big, in fact, that marketers have given it a name.

Unfortunately, the folks defining the "phood" market have adroitly lumped nutritionally enhanced food products together with foods that are "inherently healthy". (See article on the "Phood" Market) This, I'm sure, was done to give credibility to the notion that "phood" is good for you.

The phrase "inherently healthy" certainly does raise some issues in my mind. If it's not inherently healthy why eat it? For "phun"? I guess Oreos and their "natural" counterparts Newman-Os don't count as inherently healthy. But since they're not pharma-enhanced, they're not "phood", either.

Once my initial guffaws over this wily word subsided, I began some research. What does "pharmaceutical" really mean after all? It conjures images of inhumane practices and sterile laboratories, two images I don't want sullying my ideas of the magic that's possible in a homey kitchen.

I Googled (now there's a verb for you) "define pharmaceuticals" and it turned up a page that sources "pharmaceuticals" from "pharmacy" and from there the root "pharmacon", meaning magic charm, poison or drug. By this defiinition, the page explains, our medicine cabinets possess (are possessed by?) the works of the devil! Pharmaceuticals, to that author, are Witchcraft -- evil -- and to be avoided.

Whew! Who knew "phood" would take me there?!

Needless to say, I don't agree with that conclusion, but it does present some "phood" for thought.

Trust Your Instinct

2006-01-16T12:38:00.000-08:00

Instinct lives beneath conscious thought. Instinct cues you with body signals — a twinge in the belly, a quickening of the pulse, a certain tingle, a tightening of the throat, an expansion or contraction of the chest area. Listen for your "yes" and your "no" signals. Practice it right now:

Recall a time in your life when you felt like a "yes." Perhaps there was a feeling of alignment or wholeness. It may have been just a moment. It may have been a period of days, weeks, or even months. Allow a range of "yes" memories to surface, then choose one. Yes, that one will do. Savor the details of the memory — sights, sounds, textures, smells. Tune your senses to the experience of "yes." What does it feel like in your body? Write that down now.

Now, recall a time in your life when you felt the presence of "no." Perhaps there was a feeling of disconnect or dis-ease. Let yourself choose one memory to explore briefly. Again, tune your sense to the experience of "no," and notice what that feels like in your body. Write down those cues. And, now, stand up and shake a bit to return to neutral.

Refer to these notes the next time your body talks to you. These cues are how you differentiate yes from no, in the blink of an eye.

The ability to "think without thinking" — as Malcom Gladwell says in Blink

, his book on gut-reaction and decision-making — is one of the gifts of being human. We are blessed with an amazing sensing instrument (the body) and a sense-making instrument (the mind). Those who yearn to learn more about intuition would do well to simply listen to the myriad cues the body offers all the time.

You're probably familiar with the aphorism "we hear what we want to hear." If this holds true for you, as it does for many people, then you'll benefit from any practice of non-attachment as you develop the power to trust your instinct.

For myself, I don't always listen to "no," because I prefer living life from "yes." For this reason, my daily practice is crucial. Through meditation and attunement with my higher self, I create space and neutrality for truthful listening. When I shed resistance to "no" and desire for "yes," I can hear what my instinct is really telling me.

Whenever I honor my instinct, regardless of its message, I am rewarded with a deep sense of inner appreciation. It isn't always easy. If you're like most people, it can be quite difficult to act on inner guidance. However, the value in doing what is right for you, regardless of difficulty, is enormous. Your inner wisdom will steer you in the right direction... when you trust your instinct.

Monday Visitation

2006-01-01T12:40:00.000-08:00

A breath... it's the new year. The sky releases torrents of rain over San Francisco. Monday and the City still rests. It's a bank holiday, after all.

I venture that every Monday should be a holy-day, in honor of the moon. Let the garden be your temple. If you brave the wet, today, the rain can be your holy water. The rain gives the land its drink that fertile earth may bear fruit come summer. Is this not a sacred act?

New year turns on the heel of the new moon. A fresh start. The cleanest of clean slates.

If the night is clear, you may see a crescent in the sky. A sliver of moon, the angle of the Huntress' bow. Did you know... there's a real-life Goddess shrine right here in San Francisco?

Go. Go today, through the gush of holy water. A Mo(o)nday visitation to the statue of Diana. You can take the 38 Geary to the end of the line. You'll find Her, drawing Her bow, and by Her side, a deer (whose statue-body has seen better days).

In Sutro Heights Park, She stands, a miracle for those who risk muddy shoes to behold. People tend this statue. There are offerings (today red roses).

Bring Her a flower or fruit, and enjoy one of the sweet mysteries of this fog-ringed City.

Desire. Intention. Goals. Action.

2005-12-29T12:42:00.000-08:00

What is something you would like to experience in 2006? This is a desire. Are you willing and planning to experience this desire? Desire becomes an intention. What will you do to manifest this intention? This is a goal. How will you accomplish your goal? These are actions.

Goals and actions should be SMART -- Specific Measurable Attainable Realistic Timelined.

Specific: "More clients" isn't specific. "Five new clients" IS specific. "More fun" isn't specific. "A day at the beach" IS specific.

Measurable: You must be able to answer a clear yes or no when asking if the goal has been achieved or the action accomplished.

Attainable: You must consider whether it is physically possible to achieve the goal or take the action.

Realistic: You must consider whether it is likely that YOU can achieve the goal or take the action, given your constraints and resources.

Timelined: Your goal must have an end-date by which you can ask that measurable question.

Let's say you desire to experience "community" in 2006, so you set an intention: "In 2006, I intend to experience community." Then you make SMART goals for ways you might experience community: "I share my birthday on June 6 with 20 friends." Now, you set SMART actions that help you achieve the goals:

"I participate in three social events each month until June." This helps you maintain strong ties with your existing friends and helps you make new ones.

"By January 20, I send letters to my three closest friends letting them know how much they mean to me." This helps you deepen in your experience of intimacy.

"By May 20, I invite 30 people to my birthday party." This gives people plenty of notice and allows for the possibility that not everyone can attend your party.

"One week before the party, I call the 10 people I most want to be there and let them know how important their presence is to me." This helps ensure that a strong core of people are present at your party.

And so on with the actions for each goal.

When we commit to our intention and back it up with goals and actions, we invite the subconscious to participate. The subconscious is always at work trying to give us what we want. When it's convinced we really want the thing we say we want, it works full-force on our behalf. Going through the goal and action planning process commits life energy to our stated desire. When we actually take those actions, we demonstrate our sincerity, the subconscious is convinced, and miracles start appearing all around.

Make your 2006 a marvel of manifestation. Desire. Intend. Plan. Act.

Unconditional Love

2005-12-26T12:44:00.000-08:00

How do you limit your love with conditions? Do you exchange love for desired behavior? Within the framework of conditional love, affection and attention are the currency to trade for your mate's help around the house, your children's performance in school or their social manners. The subtext is "give me what I want and I will give you what you want." The context is expectation.

Any sacred day provides an opportunity for mindfulness. Use your seasonal holiday of choice as the grounds for a different context. Replace expectation with acceptance. Generate a framework of UNconditional love, where the subtext is "you are allowed to be exactly as you are." Holiday perfectionism drops away, revealing the true perfection that you are.

Visualize this: You are breathing deeply. Your clothes are comfortable. You are with people you care about and who care about you. The environment is stimulating and evocative of your tradition. You feel a blessing of gratitude well up in your heart. You extend this blessing from your heart to everyone with you... without words and without needing anything in return.

All that is needed is a moment of remembering: nothing is expected of you... or anyone else.

What freedom do you discover in unconditional love?

Magic, Inertia and Good Housekeeping

2005-12-12T12:46:00.000-08:00

Take a look around your life right now. Are there things happening in present time that you wished for ten years ago? Inventory your experiences, community, home, relationships, and work. Would these have been perfect for you in the past... but somehow don't fit right now?

Magic has its own time. Perhaps, at some point in the past, you cast a spell, made a wish, set an intention, or exerted some effort for a condition or experience that would have been ideal at that moment. Alas, the condition did not come to be, and you considered it a failed spell, a frivolous wish, an unproductive effort. You moved on. But your intention did not. It just took a while to catch up with you in physical reality. And when it did, it was possibly no longer appropriate for your current circumstances or state of soul evolution.

A wish, an intention, an effort, a spell -- these are energetic forces that imbue a body with inertia. Intertia is the resistance to a change in velocity. As Newton's first law of motion states, "an object at rest tends to stay at rest and an object in motion tends to stay in motion with the same speed and in the same direction unless acted upon by an unbalanced force." Magical effort tips the balance and adjusts trajectory or speed. With your magical effort, you set something in motion or changed its direction or its pace. This condition, with its inertia, now remains until acted on by another unbalancing force.

Since there are many forces that converge in our lives, the net effect of your magical effort can be a long manifestation cycle, where magic has been slowed by a contradictory force of your own or of others’ making. It can also result in continued manifestation long after it is desirable.

Manifestation must be recognized as such to call an adjustment to its magical motion. Taking stock is an excellent way to notice manifestation, honor it, and create another intention that completes it.

Perhaps you're an intentional sort of person. You may have initiated thousands of intentions over the years. They're still in motion, unless you have intended otherwise. If you’re someone who likes to cast spells, check your altar for outdated bundles and candles. It may be time to release them.

Here are some ways to call completion to your magical spells. If you're more of a "wisher" than a "speller", write your old wishes onto paper and treat as spells.

Burn them. The Reclaiming community holds a public ritual on the beach at Solstice with a bonfire that plays host to many a spell's end. You can also burn them in a cauldron or fireplace at home anytime.

Bury them. Surrender them to the earth with words declaring them to be complete.

Use your voice and will. State aloud that your efforts are complete, neutralized or released. Back that with the power of your will and it is so.

The holiday season and the upcoming new year are well-timed for giving the subconscious, that internal dynamo that generates energy according to our desire, the loving attention of good housekeeping.

P R O T O C O L

2005-10-03T12:57:00.000-07:00

P -- Please
R -- Respect
O -- Others
T -- To
O -- Outline
C -- Clearly
O -- Our
L -- Language

Protocol is the articulation of a way of doing something. Your manner of doing possesses its own language, like body language. When your protocol is clearly stated and consistent, it creates an environment of safety that invites participation. Even more than that, it conveys power.

In a business setting — let's say a private practice of any kind — claiming your protocol differentiates your service from that of others in the same field. Since it means that you’ve attended to your way of doing things enough to know and express it in articulate fashion, you demonstrate self-awareness and self-respect. You also have the benefit of raw materials for your operations manual (should you ever expand your business) and for your marketing.

As you consider your protocol, refrain from asking yourself: "How do I do this?" The "how" question frequently begets defensiveness or mental blank-out. Instead ask yourself, "What are the ingredients that ensure my clients receive the best from my abilities." Or "What do I do as I prepare to offer my service? And what follows that? And what follows that?" It may be that certain parts of your process happen so near to simultaneously as to be interchangeable in their order; that's fine, protocol doesn't assume linearity — unless linearity is intrinsic to your protocol.

If you are starting out in a practice of some kind, you may not have a protocol. You may be gritting your teeth and hoping no one discovers that you don't know what you're doing — even though your clients are walking away happy and satisfied. In this case you have room to play. Make up a protocol you think would be effective. Try it out. Discover where it fails, then make modifications. See if having a protocol allows you to relax more. You may find that your protocol emerges naturally after you've had time to attend to what works in your practice and what doesn't.

Protocol is not a rigid rope by which to hang your creative spirit! No. It is a demonstration of profound consideration for self and others to define the parameters of exchange. These are the rules of the game. Perhaps in your game, the rules change constantly. Then this, too, is part of the protocol. Make it clear.

By owning your way of doing things as your way of doing things, everyone feels respected. That is the essence of P-R-O-T-O-C-O-L.

Movement Magic

2005-10-03T12:50:00.000-07:00

Expressing an experience through motion is a "non-interpretive approach [that] helps minimize the projection of our own symbolic meanings and/or imposed beliefs in exchange for becoming receptive to the inherent meaning of the [experience] itself." So says Antero Alli in his book on ritual technology for self-initiation, All Rites Reversed.

Motion expresses the Self in a way that bypasses the overworked, often tangled intellectual self. Through authentic motion, the intention, direction and/or requests of the Self can be made known. There is no second guessing when there is no analysis. There is simply what is. Just as you are as you are.

Motion allows you to shed the masks of the mind and reveal the soul. When you are stuck in layers of "what if" and "what does that mean" and "what does this mean about me," stop. Stand. Allow the body to do anything, whatever it wants for one full minute. Then return to your task at hand. Don't ask the body what it meant by its motion. Just allow it to be.

BASIC Sacred Space

2005-10-03T12:48:00.000-07:00

Boundaries
Alignment
Support
Intention
Containment

Whereas spiritual traditions bring their cultural flavor, texture and structure to the practice of creating sacred space, these BASIC ingredients are the functional elements I observe across traditions.

Boundaries — You are a unique, whole individual with your own energy field, your own connection to spirit. As an autonomous individuated soul, you bring a unique energy signature, you fill a singular role in the act of co-creation with the divine. When you respect your own boundaries, you effectively respect the boundaries of others as well. When boundaries are honored, creating sacred space is an expression of empowerment — we come together as healthy, whole individuals to share in communion — union with community and with the divine. Purification and grounding help clarify and distinguish boundaries.

Alignment — Above/below, father sky/mother earth — different cultures choose different words to describe divine Sources. When you draw energy from Source below, you call in nourishment for your physical form. Energy from Source above nourishes the subtle, etheric body. When we are energetically aligned between these poles, we support our boundaries by drawing energy from Source not from other people. Since Source is infinite, we may never exhaust our resources. Alignment gives us access to clean energy for the work we do in sacred space. Alignment begins with grounding and is sustained through upright practices like meditation.

Support — You are not alone. Spirit is all around you. The elements are all around you. Your guides and allies are all around you. You can call on the support of your Faith's divine companions. As an Earthly being you can call on the support of the biosphere's elements — earth, air fire, and water. Some traditions always call on the support of their ancestors. Calling on spiritual support lends strength and power to any sacred endeavor. Calling on support is sometimes called prayer, sometimes called invocation. Calling the right kind of support clarifies and focuses intention. Calling on Spirit invites the sacred.

Intention — By our intention we may make all acts sacred. Knowing and stating your intention allows the support of support to work on you behalf. A clear intention allows others to participate in your sacred acts. When we know what we're getting into, we are more likely to join in and participate fully. Intention is a direction for Source energy channeled through your alignment. You are more likely to see the fruits of your labor when you articulate your intention. Intention is like the executive summary of a sermon. It is the reason for creating sacred space. Being accountable to a ritual's intention is the primary role of the priest/priestess.

Containment — Containment is a boundary for the entire sacred space, not just the individuals participating in it. When an experience is contained, we know the perimeter of our intention. When you go to your office, you are in a container for work. A circle, church, temple, ashram or synagogue is a container for sacred work. Time creates containment as well. When we know the "field", the time/space for action, we have more permission to show up fully. Our attention doesn't wander to other things. We become focused. We participate. Containment is the discernment of sacred space. A group can create a collective container by holding hands, by visualizing a circle around them, by verbally acknowledging the start and finish of an experience. How do you create containment in small and large ways? By holding hands at the dinner table? By declaring that you will work on a project for an hour? By going to the gym to work out?

These BASIC ingredients empower you to create sacred space at a moment's notice.

The New Gals in Town

2005-10-03T11:47:00.000-07:00

You've seen them around. They're the new Dove models. They're real. They're curvy. They wear coordinated plain white cotton panties and bras. They're sexy. I love them.

They appear on giant billboards. I look up and there they are. Larger than life. Much larger. And that's what I love about them.

They are otherworldly amazons way up there, with me having to crank my neck to really take them in.

In magazines, on the sides of buses, at bus shelters -- they are circulating through my city. In fact, one of them actually spends time in San Francisco. Sigrid. Yes, she has a name, and so do all the other poster gals. I learned this when I read their bios at CampaignForRealBeauty.com. I went immediately to the site when I saw these lovely ladies posing in a two-page spread in Lucky magazine. Yes, I read Lucky.

I'd like to run into Sigrid at the SFMOMA where her bio says she likes to visit. We have a lot in common -- we both really love coffee, even so far as to eat the beans straight up. We are both real women. We are both contributing in our own ways to women's empowerment.

Sigrid and her campaign cohorts Shanel, Julie, Lindsey, Gina, and Stacey are daring to bare it for the world to expand its vocabulary about beauty. You and I knew already that beauty comes in all shapes and sizes. But we didn't know that the advertisers knew that we knew.

One thing is certain: top-name advertising agencies (Olgivy's the creative genius behind this campaign) do their market research. We are to be commended as a culture that the surveys and interviews of marketeers could glean our collective appreciation for authentic beauty. We have been following a trajectory of transformation that shows itself in the increase of women's self-esteem... or an acknowledgment around its absence. My mother's generation did not have even the language to discuss low self-esteem until they became parents (or activists) and began attending to the symptoms of their children (or themselves through their consciousness-raising groups). Thank you, mom and Gloria Steinem and Starhawk and Oprah for allowing us to be so conversant about it that we're willing to whisper or shout into the ears of beauty industry executives whose minions assemble focus groups to discover that we really want to see images of "real women with real curves."

My desire to see "real women with real curves" is one of the reasons I'll see pretty much any movie with Queen Latifah in it. That and the fact that she's fantastically talented.

I've been very excited since I first saw the gals about town, but I haven't bothered to comment on them to my women friends. To my mind, it was a safe bet that any woman would agree that it's better to see "real women" in advertising. In any case, it's the bet the advertisers made, and it looks like it's paying off. But what about the men? What do they think about the Dove message?

One of the brilliant benefits of being married to a man is on-the-spot access to another gender's perspective. "They're gorgeous," said my beloved. He meant it. Not that my man speaks for all men. But perhaps this thought is more prevalent than not.

I was curious: how much do women project that men want Barbies? After all, generally speaking, boys don't play with Barbies.

My theory is that men respond to the Goddess that dwells in all women. They may be conscious of it as such or completely unaware. Nevertheless, I witness a yearning in men to be seen by the Goddess in women. They sense the divine spark in our eyes, the power in our bodies, the love in our hearts... and then they get confused why we don't act like the powerful, divine, lovely and loving Goddesses we are. Instead, we twist and contort and collude with an outdated legacy of lies. Call it internalized oppression. When we defend our right to be human and whole by advocating for and being advocated for by "real women with real curves" are we speaking to men or to women? Or are we speaking to the collective unconscious?

I find it clever of our collective unconscious to contrive an outward and global method for communicating with itself. Mass media, the internet, advertising -- we are constantly showing ourselves pictures of how the world is. These new Dove models, they are communicating a truth of our transformation. We are shedding the pretenses of beauty and revealing more of our true beauty.

I'm so glad to see the new gals in town. I won't buy their product, but I am sold on their message.