Rule No. 1: I don't have to keep gifts

December 21 has come and gone. Somewhere about the 15th I knew that I wasn't going to have time to go through every single thing in my house to assess what is part of the future during the busyness of the holidays.  In lieu of actually doing the manual sort, I made clear commitments to my intentions: what would and would not be part of my future.  Among the commitments I made was to include beliefs, attitudes, and habits.

My day start with an email exchange with an old friend about refusing gifts to avoid the commercialization of Christmas.  I started about 25 years ago by asking friends to give to charity in lieu of giving me gifts.  That didn't fly at all.  Now two and a half decades later, I continue to tell people that I don't need or want "stuff." I would be delighted, I tell them, with the gift of time: a walk, a cup of coffee, cooking together, or a movie and popcorn on the couch after the holidays have passed...or anything else that they'd like to do.  I don't see nearly enough of my friends: spending time with them would be a gift I'd really like to receive...and it doesn't clutter my tiny apartment.

The paper today shared a practice of giving something to charity for everything that we receive.  The example was that if you got a new pair of shoes, you had to give a pair away.  Or, if a child got two toys, he/she had to give two toys away.  If I do keep gifts, I think I will discipline myself to give away in replacement.

Perhaps it is because I've had the accumulation of gifts on my mind that this evening I had an aha! moment when I opened my medicine cabinet which is bulging at the seams.  I surveyed all the stuff in it and realized that I hadn't bought most of it.  Often when I buy cosmetics, I am gifted with a package of generous-sized samples of fairly expensive products.  Some of them I do use, and I am grateful for travel-sized versions of products that I usually purchase for my travel bag.  However, most of the products are not ones I will use.

As I assessed the contents of my cabinet this evening, I started pulling off all the stuff that I know I won't use, didn't want in the first place, and don't want.  Just because someone gives me something doesn't mean I have to keep it.  I haven't taken the time to do so on this eve of Christmas Eve to go through other cabinets and drawers, but I am certain that just following the rule that I don't have to keep gifts will liberate me from a heap of stuff.

Now, I realize that it will be much easier to throw away gifts from Estee Lauder or Clinique than gifts that were given to me by friends, but it isn't like I don't tell them every year that I don't want stuff.  I already spotted homemade food gifts that don't particularly appeal to me.  They will be a good place to start cleaning.

What joy this discovery has made me!  Perhaps this is the gift that I really wanted for Christmas this year: spiritual housecleaning -- freedom to be relieved of the burden of unwanted stuff.

No! Not that!!

Sometime in 1993, I think it was, that I loaded the trunk of my car with five or six (maybe more) bankers boxes and drove two hours from Eugene to Portland, Oregon.  I was delivering a professional treasure trove to a friend from graduate school.

Before going to graduate school I'd been a human resource (HR) director and employment manager. Actually, since I started working on my 16th birthday, I'd been working in HR.  I developed skills and experience as a teenager that many of my peers wouldn't have for a decade.  Because I had the experience, I ended up working my way through college in HR jobs.  Then, that was where I got jobs afterward.  I never even considered if I enjoyed these jobs, they were pretty good jobs in a small city that didn't have many good jobs. So, I did them.

Although I had the distinct intention when I returned to grad school that I would work in organization development (OD) when I finished, when I actually did finish and started my business, what I knew how to market was HR.  So, not surprisingly, people hired me to do HR. Within a week of starting my business, I was booked three months in advance--what every new business owner hopes to happen. However, 18 months into the business, I realized that most of my projects had been the work I'd done before grad school and that I'd hoped to leave behind, rather than OD work that I had hoped to do.

I recall a crystallizing moment when I sat at my desk and knew I just couldn't/wouldn't do that work anymore.

In typical fashion, the Universe very shortly sent me two tests.  I got two opportunities for work that were HR opportunities that I had just pledged not to do, and one of the projects was with a company I'd been trying to get work from since I'd hung out my shingle.  I nicely declined, and I put each in touch with someone I knew who would do a good job for them.

Gulp!  I hadn't turned work away before.  Then, crickets....for about two weeks.  I stood my ground and waited.

Finally, the calls started.  Two nice OD jobs landed in the same week, and each would be four- to six-month assignments.  I had turned the corner.  During that quiet two weeks the temptation to go out and market had been great, but I stayed true to what my heart was telling me.

All that is the background for my trip to Portland.  My friend did want to do HR consulting, but had only been working in the field since we graduated.  I called her and said I wasn't going to take anymore HR projects.  I had a lot of books, articles, and other resources.  Did she want them?  She was delighted. In that two-hour road trip, I separated from my HR umbilical cord.

Last Sunday afternoon I sat on the floor of my bedroom closet, trying to figure out what did and what did not feel like it was part of my future.  I was able to throw away about a box and half of stuff that I would never have packed up if I'd had taken time to sort before packing.  (See Endings/ Beginnings, 11/25/16.)  There were things that left me stone cold, like the four-inch thick federal procurement manual. Definitely not feeling it in my future.  And, there were a very few items, like the book Awakening the Heroes Within by Carol Pearson, that I would have loved to sit and devour in the moment.  Definite save those.

In the zone somewhere between "definitely go" and "definitely stay," was a box into which I put the gray zone items. I just didn't know...or at least I didn't think I knew.

As gently as the moment 23 years ago, when I knew in an instant that I could no longer take HR projects, I knew "No! Not that!! None of it...." None of what was in the gray zone is part of my future. I will continue to go through boxes to make sure there are no "definitely stay" items, but I expect that almost none of it will stay.

I don't like to throw things away...especially books, but this time I have no one that I can pass my resources on to like I did my grad school friend.  To just throw things away will really be an exercise for me, but I know there is no turning back.  I have less clarity about what will be in my life after December 21 than I do what won't, but 23 years ago, I had to sit and wait for two weeks...and then I did know what I wanted my future would be.

For at least a year I've been saying that I felt pregnant.  Now I've never been pregnant, so I am not sure how I know what the feels like, but it does feel like something is gestating deep inside me, and it wants to be born. I just don't know what.

I've written that our hearts are the compass to our lives and written on the backs for each of us is what is our true north--what is exactly right for us.  The only thing I have clarity about right now is that I need to clear out the static which keeps me from hearing what is next.

Earlier this week I was doing an exercise in the workplace setting where a colleague and I were supposed to interview each other.  The first question she asked was, "What are you hungry for?" I didn't think even a split second before saying, "Time, sleep, exercise, meditation..."  Those were not thoughts; that was truth, completely skipping my brain and spewing forth without thought.  I just knew.  Like I just know what isn't in my future.

Every item on my "hungry" list was an activity that help me hear where the compass on the back side of my heart is pointing me--helping me connect with whatever is gestating.

I will continue cleaning out, even knowing that I will throw good stuff out to just remove it from my energy field.  When December 21 arrives, I want to send a very clear message to my heart that I am getting rid of static.  Then, I will bring in the static-clearing activities that I shared with my interview partner.  That is my future.

Always Be Ready

If you've been reading this blog for any time at all, you know that I watch for "spiritual trends" that are sending me a message.  Over the last five hours, I've been bombarded with the message "Always be ready."

The Old Testament reading in church this morning was from Isaiah, and the prophet was saying to the Jewish people to be ready because they never knew when the "savior" would appear.

A few minutes later The New Testament lesson was to early Christians to always be ready because they never knew when their savior would return. A further admonition from the passage was that you couldn't wait until you thought the time was imminent to change behavior because there wouldn't be that opportunity. We had to always be ready.

I awakened this morning with a raspy throat.  I've been fighting a cold for several days, and my initial instinct was to curl up in bed and get some extra rest before leaving on a business trip.  Almost as quickly as I had the thought, I remembered what I'd written in my last post about consulting my inner compass before making decisions.  When I did, I clearly knew I was to go to church.  If I hadn't, I would have missed those lessons.

As I returned from church and started to make lunch, I thought my mind darted to habit.  Since I was out with friends last evening, I was going to flip on the replay of the "Hallmark Hall of Fame" presentation that I'd missed.  In my last post I wrote that I planned to spend my Sunday afternoon in a meditation on the floor of my bedroom closet, consciously choosing what would be part of my future and what I need to leave behind by December 21.  I thought I was hedging on my commitment to watch a television program that I know will be replayed a number of times in December.

One thing that became very clear to me when writing Choice Point, my as-yet-unpublished book about life as a meditation, was that everything, every thing, is connected.  There truly are no accidents or coincidences if we are listening: we will be led.

The gathering last night was a somewhat impromptu one, or I would have watched the program on its first broadcast.  That is important because, without the scripture lessons this morning, I might have missed that the theme of this television play was also "always be ready" or more precisely to "live your life like there's no tomorrow." Could I have guessed that the gathering was contrived by the Universe to help me "get it"?

Fortunately, when I checked in, it became clear to me that I was to watch the Hallmark program.  I thought to myself that I could bring some of the boxes into the living room and sort while viewing, but again a very clear message: the sorting was to be a meditation, and I couldn't watch TV and meditate.  So I ate and watched, and then I just watched.

The protagonist in the movie was a woman who worked too much.  (Anyone I know fill that bill?) As a consequence to a happy accident, she learns that she has been neglecting what is really important while giving every aspect of her life away to work, which we might say is pretty much what I've been doing over the last 16 years....maybe longer.  Of course, since there are no original story lines in Hallmark movies, I won't be giving anything away when I stay she does get a second chance, and this time she remembers what is important to her and to those around her.

So it is that in five short hours, the Universe has bombarded me to remember what is important in my life, an important lesson any time, but especially as I've been looking at my overly busy December over several days and struggling to find a time to put up my Christmas tree.

I got a headache about two-thirds of the way through the movie.  What is important?  I have known for a long time that I've squandered my relationships, and I've struggled to know how to intentionally choose to build a different life. I am sure that quandary is what gave me the headache, which lingers even as I write.

I truly do not know the answer, but as I wrote in Choice Point, I don't need to know.  I just need to consciously choose my path, and I will be led.  That is all I need to know, and I will "always be ready."

Endings...Beginnings...

While I am by no means an authority, for a long time I've been interested in the Jewish mystical study of numbers.  I apologize for anyone out there, who may actually be an expert in this field if I in any way misrepresent the study of numerology, but I will do my best to share what I have taken from my limited exposure that applies to what has been on my heart lately. I do so completely from memory because, as often happens, I apparently loaned my book to someone who hasn't returned it...and I don't remember who that was.

Numerology looks at the Jewish Tree Of Life, a set of spiritual lessons, which each person works through in cycles of nine years.  Each lesson has a feminine aspect and a masculine dimension. Throughout our lives, we repeat each of the nine lessons, one per year, and then we start the cycle over again. Some years the focus is the masculine side of the lesson; other years it is the feminine. Similar to the hero's journey about which I've written previously, although the basic lesson is the same each time, we go through more advanced versions of the lesson. We go through the cycles individually, and planetarily.

The cycle has been on my heart because the energy of the planet is now transitioning from the end of the cycle to the beginning of a new one.  The transition began at the Jewish New Year (October 2-4 this year.)  It will end at the Winter Solstice (December 21.)  During that three and a half months, it is our spiritual work to "clean house."  2016 has been a "9" year, which is about endings.  People often leave jobs, even careers, end relationships, sell houses, and let go other significant parts of our lives that have served their purpose, but with which we are finished.

By December 21, we should have cleaned out anything that is not part of a new beginning for us. What we carry into the 21st will be with us for another nine years.  I've had this on my mind, but all of the sudden this week I realized that I just have a month left, and I haven't done much cleaning out. Frequent reader of this blog and my friend Amy Frost told me in the Super Moon, which occurred a couple weeks ago, that we should write down anything we wanted to let go of and then set the paper on fire, letting the smoke release the energy of the past into the atmosphere.  That was a busy day, but I did some general letting go into smoke that day.

But I know I have way too much baggage to carry with me into the future.  Let me count the ways.

Besides the energy of spiritual baggage, there is some literal baggage I am dealing with.  Almost a year ago, construction in my apartment building's storage area required me to bring up everything from my storage unit.  It has been sitting in my bedroom closet since then.  I knew I needed to clean out, but I haven't made doing so a priority.

When I left my last job in August, I hastily packed up anything that was mine personally and brought five boxes home with me...also in my bedroom closet.  (Fortunately, I have a bedroom closet big enough to party in.)  I know there is a lot to be left behind there as well, but sorting through my office boxes has not been a priority either.

I thought I was going to have the time to just sit in my closet this weekend and sort, but I have allowed the approaching holidays and associated activities encroach on my time. I am not sure whether that is avoidance or choosing my future to be with friends...or a little of both. While I make an effort to keep my Sabbath sacred, I have decided that this spiritual sorting exercise is an appropriate Sabbath activity, and I will sit in my closet on Sunday afternoon.

I also have a desk at home that I have been sorting through for two weeks, and I am close to seeing the surface of at least a third of it now.  There is more, for sure, but great progress.  What remains are my time-consuming projects, and I am not sure when I will find the time, but doing so is a priority for me now.

There are bookshelves that are bulging as my appetite for new books always exceeds the time I have to read them.  My folder of clipped recipes was so full at the beginning of last week that it wouldn't close.  I am grateful for Thanksgiving and Christmas menu planning for nudging me to begin to go through it two evenings earlier in the week.  There is more, but I have found that some of the recipes just don't look good any more, and pitching them has been easy.

When I think about what I want to take into the next nine years, though, more important than cleaning out "stuff" is being conscious of what habits I am ready to let go of and what new ones I want to choose for my future.  As I reflect back over the last nine years, I think that this cycle has been about the time period during which I've forfeited the intentional life I had built and allowed myself to be overtaken by work, in every variety.

For decades, I ate healthfully, exercised daily, meditated at least once a day, did extended meditation retreats, danced several times a week, practiced gratitude daily, spent time with friends and laughed a lot.  Morsel by morsel, most of that has slipped out of my life since 2007, and I want to reclaim "my" life and let go of whatever has consumed me.

New habits are formed in 30 days. I could be overwhelmed as I look at all the new habits I want to form.  However, at least for me, I respond well to any positive change in my life.  Intuitively, I know that if I change one thing, changing others seems much easier.  I feel it is almost like flipping a switch back to the "real Kay," rather than changing eight different habits.

In my as-yet-unpublished book Choice Point, which I thought was "finished" in 1997, I wrote that life should be a meditation, and in each moment we should consciously ask, "Is this a 'yes' or is this a 'no?'"  When I think about reclaiming my life, the question I need to ask isn't will I exercise or not today, it is "Will I be who Kay's soul intended her to be today?"  A single question, applied to every situation, asked consciously.  Life as a moment-by-moment meditation.

What I know in my heart is that all I want to carry into the next nine years is the consciousness to ask that question a 1,000 times every day...and the courage to act on what I know.

Falling back

Today is that delicious day we each get once a year when we set our clocks back and get an extra hour of either sleep or daytime activity. I got a little of each.

I expectedly awakened a little earlier than I normally would on a Sunday, and I indulged myself in an extended period of prayer, something I'd been yearning for since mid-summer when I began the chaotic wind down of my old job and transition into what is seeming to be an equally busy new job.

For me, prayer satisfies me most when I do it regularly.  I think of it as being a bit like exercise. When I am doing either every day, I slide into it easily and often get into "the zone"--that enchanting place where time and space cease to exist, and I am mindfully in the present.  However, not unlike being off exercise for a while, when I come back to prayer after time away, I struggle.

Now it isn't as if I haven't prayed for months.  I have.  Yet instead of deep, solace-inducing communion, my prayers have been less two-way communication and deep listening and more pleas for aid, like "Help me know what to do right now," "Show me the way," or "Help me get through this day." More often than not, I heard no answer.  I am sure that the answers were there, but I was either not present enough to receive the answer or overly intellectualizing to figure the answer out myself. Most likely, both.

This morning the need to develop my prayer muscles was clearly apparent.

With that said, I did hear that I should write a blog post, so here I am.  I do often feel that writing becomes a prayer for me, and my listening becomes richer when I allow myself to not know what it is I am going to write but rather just allow it to flow through me.  As I write this post, I understand some of what was missing from my prayers this morning that I couldn't seem to know when I was in them.

Back in the day when I prayed with clients, I used the term "let your prayers pray you."

"God," I said, "would let us know what we should be praying for."  Then we would sit and pray together.  Often what would come up would be things about which my mind would never have thought to pray.  "Thank you for the birds that sing outside my window every morning," or "Thank you for the sun and its warmth on my skin when I walk."  Occasionally, I expressed gratitude for just being still.

The most interesting thing about letting my prayers pray me is that much, maybe most, of my prayers uttered from that space expressed gratitude and, more often than not, they acknowledged the little things in life of which I so often don't even make notice.  I believe that focusing attention on the exquisite order of the world around me diminished whatever might have been on my heart and mind that day to an appropriate proportion.

The practice also reminds me of the non-linear nature of the Universe. For instance, my struggle to pray this morning did send me to computer to write about prayer.  Now I remember what I had forgotten about praying and can go back to prayer again with an open heart and mind.

Soon, I will do that.

As I ponder doing so, however, the thought that nags at me is how I got so far from my prayer practice to have forgotten how to connect.  The answer may go back to the metaphor of exercise.  My actions haven't made either priorities when in my heart I know that I ache for both. Articulated priorities, which aren't acted upon as such, are clearly not the focus of our intention.

In the busyness of a life that seems to be driven by urgencies, like finding a new refrigerator before all my food thaws on a gorgeous fall day when I would prefer to go for a long walk in the woods. Always there seems to be something urgent that cuts into my time. Yet if I want my life to reflect the focus of my intentions, I must act accordingly.

I truly don't have an answer for the refrigerator-versus-the-fall-walk dilemma but somehow I know in my heart that if I spend more time in prayer and exercise, how to bring life to my intentions will become clear to me.  Right now, I am savoring the extra hour to focus on prayer and exercise and feeling comfortable pushing back the urgent for just a little longer.

Unencumbered Love

I've been learning a lot about love this week.  My journey to the Midwest carried me first to visit 87- and 89-year-old aunts, one of which I hadn't seen for over 20 years and the other for much longer.  When the "younger" one and I left the older, we paused for a "group hug." The moment was so precious.  I felt like my heart would explode, and I could hardly hold back tears.  It had been wonderful catching up on the passing years with these two women, who had been such an important part of my youth.  However, the moment of our parting opened me in a way that I haven't allowed myself for a very long time.  Pure love flowed between us.

Forty-eight hours and a couple hundred miles later, I found myself joining my college roommate and her husband as they prepared for the rehearsal dinner preceding the marriage of their son.  We each had our roles, awesomely orchestrated by the roommate.  I experienced such joy in joining in the preparations for this young man, now 31 but whom I'd known since shortly after his birth.  When everything was in order, the three of us also paused for a "group hug," and once again, I felt such amazing love that I was certain my heart would break wide open.

I was reminded of a moment at least 25 years earlier when the groom-to-be was a youngster of four or five.  At that time, we had quite a love affair as one can only have with a four-year-old. The night before I left town after a visit, he crept into my room and asked if I would move to their city.  Similar to the two flows of love this week, I recall so vividly being overwhelmed with love and joy with this little boy that all these years later the feeling is as fresh as it was all those years ago.  

Yesterday, I took time from the busyness of pre-wedding events to pray, and the image that came to me at that time was of my heart in shackles, swelling so that it bulged beyond and between the constraints.  I immediately felt that my heart has been shackled by the pain of many heartbreaks, and this week it is bursting forth.  The term that came to me was unencumbered love.  In an instant that felt right, but I did look up the term "unencumbered" to clarify the meaning.  According to Google, to be "unencumbered" is "not having any burden or impediment." I suspect that unencumbered love is so free that it cannot be burdened.

The shackles that have protected my heart have been an impediment to a full experience of love.  In fact, until this week, I would say that "love" has been a concept or intellectual construct that I thought I understood but have rarely allowed myself to feel.  The realization also registered that, although I never articulated it or probably even thought about it that way before, I believe in the back of my mind, I've thought about love as a commodity.  I think I've seen it as something I give or something I receive.  In the instances this week I question whether we can give and receive love.  It seems to me that unencumbered love is just there to experience--to wash over us and take our breath away, forever changing us from the soul out.

As I am coming to know, "unencumbered love" requires complete and total surrender to the feeling, and in my case, I think the surrender means that I must let go of the protection that the shackles have provided and to risk the potential of pain in order to be vulnerable to the joy promised.

I am not sure I would have understood this on a spiritual level a week ago before the experiences on my journey. Having glimpsed the wonderful experience of love once again after so long, I ponder how to remove the restraints that I've allowed to remain in place for so long that removing them seems a formidable task. Yet, having glimpsed the wonder of unencumbered love, how can I not persist freedom from impediments to love?

I just really wonder, what if the more we allow ourselves to surrender and be engulfed in the vastness that is love that love itself is what can melt away all impediments, leaving us swimming in a sea of love.

The Wanderer

Friday evening I invited a younger work colleague for dinner at my apartment.  Her own spiritual journey has been intensifying recently. She has frequently asked me questions about my journey.  Not that any of us are ever an expert on the journey, I do have a few more years in my spiritual journey experience bank.  Since we aren't working together any more, dinner seemed to be a more appropriate solution than attempting to text about the journey, as we have since I changed jobs.

After dinner, we pulled our chairs over to the bookshelf--the one with spiritual titles, not the one with books related to work.  I've been feeling spiritually fidgety for most of the year, but especially since changing jobs. As I shared with her some of my favorite titles, I was learning again for myself. When I pulled out Carol Pearson's The Hero Within, a book explicitly about the spiritual journey described through Jungian archetypes, a diagram fell out.  What immediately jumped to my eye as I glanced at "Three Turns Around the Hero's Wheel," (p. 14) was the archetype of "The Wanderer," whose purpose is to provide clarity to the next stage of life.

The diagram is like a pie with each of five pieces devoted to one of five archetypes.  The inner wedge of each piece/archetype describes the lessons for the first journey around the wheel.  Pearson explains that we go through the journey several times each life and with each we have a different lessons to learn on each archetype.  (I attempted to find a reproduction of the diagram online, but most are much more complicated than the simple-yet-clear version on yellowed pages that I have.  Markings on my own render it useless to others.)

The progression of archetypes that we go through starts with "orphan," where we learn "trust."  You might think about this as disappointment that things aren't as you might have thought they were but learning trust in an emerging, but not at all yet clear, world view. "Orphan" is followed by "Wanderer" where the lesson is "clarity."  This is how the "not at all yet clear world view" gets clarity--we listen and learn about the next evolution of how things really are.  You might also think about this as the time in the desert, demonstrated in many spiritual stories, including Abraham, Moses and Jesus, involve time spent alone in reflection.

After we have clarity, we move to the "Warrior," where we might have to fight for what we've received spiritual clarity about. Embarking on the lessons in order is critical; otherwise, we might be fighting for the wrong things.  The warrior is about learning and claiming "power."  The lesson after "Warrior" is that of "Martyr," where we learn about "love" and giving our lives to the Universe. The last of the five archetypes is the "Magician."  The lesson of the "Magician" is "joy."  Then we are ready to be "Orphans" again.

So what does this have to do with me...now?

I've spent a lot of time stuck in "Orphan."  Instead of learning the lesson of "trust," the long stall there exposed me to repeated examples where I couldn't/didn't let go of the expectations I had and move on to wander and figure things out.  My experience with this transition is that it requires a leap of faith, but each time I've had the courage to take it, everything has worked out perfectly.  For example, when I chose to leave Oregon, buy a house in North Carolina as I'd been guided to do, and drive across the country without a job or even knowing anyone, I was taken care of.  Work fell into may path within a week, but I had to wander first.

I've also spent way too much time in "Warrior" in recent years where I was fighting to survive rather than fighting for the spiritual truth I should have learned in "Wanderer."  When I've made the journey successfully before, I have found my inner power, the power that comes from connection with the divine and knowing if I do what is right and true, I will be OK.  When I've fought to survive, I've tried to control or manipulate things to assure I'd be taken care of rather than taking the leap of faith knowing I would be OK.

While the move to North Carolina worked out splendidly, there have been times when I have been "invited" into the desert, and I didn't follow, and it hasn't worked out so well.  On February 4, 2004, I received a clear message that I should move to Washington, D.C.  Depleted of resources from the dot.com bust and without a job in D.C., my reply was "I will do it when I have a job." I looked but didn't find one. Of course, that is not how this is supposed to work.  Leap of faith occurs first and then it works out.

One of the scripture readings in church today was about Jacob wrestling with the angel or God.  Our pastor said he always thought this passage was about our internal struggles.  Do I do what I want or do I do what God wants?  For the 28 months between my message to move to Washington and when I actually did move, almost everything of value was taken from me.  Yet, I struggled to control the transition by insisting on having a job first.  I should have wandered.

Last March when I told my old boss that I would leave my job at the end of the summer, I think what the Universe heard was that finally I had relented to go into the desert and find the next manifestation of me and my spiritual truth.  As the end of the summer approached, I was totally at peace.  I had accumulated vacation pay, and my financial planner and I had figured out how I could get by for several months after that.  Then, the job offers started coming--three of them, and they were good ones.  So I took the bait.  I could leave my job, go to a new one, and I wouldn't have to take the leap of faith, I thought to myself.  And, I also wouldn't learn the lesson of wandering.

When the diagram fell onto the floor Friday evening, in a flash I realized I had robbed myself of my season in the desert.  While it isn't exactly the bold leap of faith that leaving my old job without a new one would have been, I leave on Tuesday for a meandering trip to the Midwest, reconnecting with old friends and one of my few remaining relatives.  The wedding of the son of a dear friend lies at the end of the journey, but in the stillness of my road trip, I expect that I will find passages into my truth.

$25,000 or 2,000 chocolate bars

In my last post, I wrote about attending a workshop on somatic (physical) aspects of personality.  In that post I focused on the deliterous effects of the gut-punched posture. Today I'd like to visit another dimension of somatics: the smile.  

Our instructor reported that on scans of the brain, the simple act of changing from a neutral face to a smile produces the equivalent brain response as receiving $25,000 or 2,000 chocolate bars.  All that we need to do is smile.  If you will allow a pun, this is a no-brained. 

I've been traveling for work this week, and while we had some serious laugh-out-loud moments at the destination meeting, in transit I saw very few smiles.  Now imagine that if even half the people at a boarding gate smiled, it would be like raining money...or chocolate (but that could be a messier visual.) But they don't.

I did observe though that I could create a little proverbial money magic by giving away smiles.  Without stopping or making other contact, about half of the strangers with whom I made eye contact as I smiled actually smiled back at me.

An old saying about hugs suggests, "You can't give one without getting one." While it would seem that not everyone to whom I smile also smiles back, a lot do. When I give my brain a shot of cash or chocolate with my smile, I am simultaneously able to give the same to a total stranger as they smile back. And, I get one back as well.  The possibilities are almost limitless.

Over the years that I've been writing this blog, I've encouraged readers to generate positive energy around the world by multiplying some spiritual quality, such as gratitude by saying "thank you." Today I am encouraging readers to smile.  Give smiles and get smiles.  I am certain you will feel richer at the end of your day.

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Discovering Heaven

A couple weeks ago my pastor shared a Thomas Hobbs quote upon which I've been pondering.  "Hell is truth seen too late."

A few days after the pondering began I had the breakthrough I shared in my last post.  In that post I shared my focus on the negatives of my new position, and when I was able to see that was in my perception rather than objective reality, everything shifted.  

In the days since, however, I have continued to notice my posture going reflexively to one of being "gut-punched."  The truth is no one in my present world is gut-punching me, either literally or figuratively.  The "puncher" exists totally in my imagination and memory. 

Which brings me back to emotional intelligence about which I've written several times in recent years.  The first key to being emotionally intelligent is self-awareness.  Because I have been able to notice the gut-punched posture, I am at least moving toward self-awareness.  The second key is to self-manage or to choose a different behavior or response.  When I take that split second for a deep belly breath and adjust to an open, relaxed posture, I am demonstrating self-management.

...at least to a degree I am self-aware and self-management.  It seems to me that I am at the stage of needing to intentionally tell my body to shift my posture.  I look forward to the point when a natural, open, and relaxed posture will occur automatically, but I am clearly not there yet.

Over twenty years ago when I was struggling with the worst of my chronic pain, resulting from an accident, a doctor recommended a book to me.  Tom Hanna, the author of Somatics, described neuromotor amnesia.  The condition results when some part of the body forgets how it is supposed to work.  Back then, it was my hip and neck.  Now, it would seem it is my abdomen and the low back that supports it in pulling back to gut-punched. 

Yesterday I had the opportunity to attend a workshop on somatic dimensions of various aspects of our personalities. During the lecture portion, the workshop leader projected an X-ray of a person in a posture similar to the gut-punch.  He related that just being in that particular posture produces the hormone cortisol, which has been nicknamed "the stress hormone."  It causes progressive shutdown of the immune system.  (Small wonder that after 20 years without one, I had a cold, including one debilitating one, each of the last three winters at my old job.)

The particularly remarkable twist is that, changing nothing else, a person can induce stress by simply going into that posture.  Conversely, I can elicit confidence and relaxation by moving out of the posture.  That's all that is necessary.

So it should also not be a shock that the morning that I noticed the gut-punch posture the first time that as soon as I changed how I held myself physically, everything else seemed to change as if flipping a switch, and in a way that is just what happened.  By opening myself to expectation of positive outcomes, I switched off the cortisol and turned on oxytocin, the hormone associated with giving birth and trust, among other functions.

Harvard professor Amy Cuddy detailed in her recent book "Presence" that body language is not necessarily a reflection of what we are feeling, but instead the reverse is true: our body determines what we feel.  (If you haven't seen her TED talk, it is the second most viewed of those popular lectures.)

There are two other aspects of emotional intelligence.  The third is our awareness of others, and the fourth is how we manage our relationships different because of that awareness. When I walked into the room the morning I made the shift, I noticed openness and hopefulness.  Because of my heightened awareness of both myself and participants in the event, I managed the relationship that I had as the facilitator with my participants differently.  I recalled earlier days before my last job when I listened deeply to my inner knowing and didn't do what I planned.  At the end of the day, the leader said I had been "masterful."

As the evolution of pondering the Hobbes quote, I've come to understand that I don't have to wait until it is too late to see my truth. I can avoid that hell by choosing to hold myself in the place of trust, openness to my inner knowing, and birthing things instead of stress.  That is discovering heaven in every magical moment.

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Free at Last

I just finished my third week in my new job.  The journey (and it has been a journey) has been a defining one. 

While I fully understand that I am within a legitimate honeymoon period, there is almost nothing that isn't almost perfect.  That means my continuous improvement eye is just out of luck. The pay is at the top end of what I'd hoped for, the benefits are better, and the physical environment is quite pleasant.  I truly like my new team, which really seems to function as a team. So far, my clients have been pleasant, which, given that my clients are what held me at my old job long after it was healthy for me, is a delight.

All that given, I have been in something of a spiritual crisis these three weeks.  First, because I had worked exceptionally long hours I a job with normally long hours in order to meet client commitments, and I was just plain exhausted physically.  No amount of sleep would seem to relieve my fatigue during the first 2 to 3 weeks.

An overlay to the fatigue was an uneasiness, like waiting for the other shoe to drop. 

Then, I noticed a reticence as I started into my work.  That really shocked me: having started semi-professional work at 16 and worked my way through college, I've always been quite confident in my work, even when doing something for the first time. And, the tasks I was assigned initially weren't at all challenging. That feeling continued for at least a week.

In parallel, or perhaps as a function of the reticence, I felt constrained, when I was fully aware nothing was constraining me.  I could intellectualize that part though.

In the late 1990s there was a study widely reported that often came to mind in the first days.  The study reported on fish in an aquarium. After swimming freely for a significant period of time, a clear glass plate was placed in the middle of the tank, blocking the fish from swimming beyond the midpoint.

For a while, the fish kept swimming, smashing repeatedly into the glass barrier.  After some period, the fish became conditioned to swim up to the plate and stop.

Eventually, the scientists removed the impediment.  The fish, who had been conditioned, continued to swim up to where the offending plate had been and would go no further. 

That's how I felt.  I had become so constrained in my last job, that I'd become uneasy doing activities that I'd done almost without thought for years previous to that job. 

I was angry.  How could I have allowed myself to tolerate such treatment, when I must have known what it was doing to me? I must have known, I told myself in the first few days of my new job. Yet, if I did, I had no recollection.  While some constraints had been  brutally blunt, the magnitude of hundreds of small limitations is what nearly destroyed me.

Now I was free; the proverbial glass plate had been removed.  And, I spent a few days frozen.  Then, one morning I was in my groove again on a design project.  A happy little introvert, I sat at my desk, cranking out work. 

Over the next 48 hours, I started to feel as if I was able to exhale for the first time in years.

Last week was my first facilitation in my new job.  For two of the three days, I was clearly not hitting on all the cylinders.  I didn't have energy or creativity.  I never hit the groove where I felt the group and I were one. 

I blamed it on lack of sleep, because I'd been awakening two hours early, able to go back to sleep.  Then, I questioned whether I'd burned out the small amount of extraversion the good Lord had given me. I was leading strategic planning, one of my favorite things, and it felt like crashing.  Finally I went to fear: what if I'd found this perfect place to work, and I was going to fail?

At last on Wednesday night, I slept all night and awakened full of energy.  I felt good.  I had some reflective time.  Over the three hours after awakening, I had several little epiphanies.  I was walking down the hall to my new office and realized I was carrying myself as if I'd been gut-punched.  Without losing stride, I opened my middle and breathed deeply into my belly...and smiled. 

When I arrived at my office, I was aware that mentality I'd gone back to the "running scared" mindset which resulted from years of way too much work and not nearly enough time to do it.  I took another deep breath. I had 90 minutes before the session started.  I told myself I could enjoy this.

Joy in my work.  I'd written about it extensively.  I'd lived it for many years, but temporary amnesia had possessed me in recent years as work had slowly slipped into a drudgery that I had to do do to buy groceries.  As I sat down at my desk Thursday morning, I smiled and gave myself permission to enjoy my work.

I remembered that the last time I'd facilitated strategic planning in June, one if the participants came up to me halfway through the day and said, "You really love this stuff don't you?"  I agreed.  He continued that I "radiated passion for the work."  Thursday morning I gave myself permission to radiate passion again.  Every few minutes that morning delivered an Aha!

When I hit the meeting room an hour later, I was energized.  I'd hit my stride.  I am certain that the team noticed: the difference was certainly palpable to me.

I have had what I think are a couple legitimate concerns about the work, but I am fully cognizant of my tendency to bolt when things are feeling too good, more conditioning but from a very young age. Right now, I am allowing myself to enjoy my new little piece of heaven.

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Making Meaning

I finished Cameron Diaz's Longevity Book a few weeks ago.  It is a fascinating study of all of the human systems and how we age--not necessarily getting old; it describes how our bodies age, pretty much from birth.  As the book is drawing to a close, Diaz relates that when she turned 40, she was interested in understanding what it meant physically to pass this milestone.

This natural curiosity propelled her into an intriguing scientific investigation, which she generously shares with readers.  She continues to say that in this process, she came to understand that it was her job to create meaning in her life, which she did in researching and writing the book.  Then, she challenges the reader to create meaning in their own lives.

I've heard this message countless times. I've even written it a few dozen times...or more.  But this time, as I read her words, they took me in a different direction.  As someone who had little formal education in science until a few years ago, Diaz followed her natural curiosity like a string she was following to see where it led.  The reader can feel her excitement throughout the book.  There is a breathless quality to it.

I recall that over 20 years ago now when I was in one of many edits for Leading from the Heart, one of the leaders I'd asked to read the manuscript criticized it saying that there was a breathless quality to it, just like I was discovering something new.  While there was nothing I wrote that was new to me, following my own inspiration was an exciting journey.  I recall going many hours without food, water, or other biological relief because I was so excited about what was unfolding on the computer screen in front of me.

Last week I began briefings at the conclusion of a five-month organization assessment.  This one was particularly intriguing because of the interrelatedness and complexity of the organizational dynamics.  I said more than once over the last month as I was pulling my data together that it was like pulling apart a knotted ball of yarn.

Reading Diaz's charge, I realized that, while I enjoy making change in organizations, what really flips my switches is figuring out the puzzle and developing a hypothesis about what will address the challenges that people in that situation face.  I love getting things started.  Grinding it out over several years, not so much.

That is important to me, especially as I move to a new job.  As I define who I am in my profession, I will do so more intentionally with what brings meaning to me as the focus of my work.  I've used the "What brings life to me, what brings me to life" guideline in this blog before.  Too much of what I've done in recent years has sucked the life right out of me...and I let it.

Over the years, I've coached a number of people who were bent upon discovering what their life's purpose is, and I've always encouraged them to think about purpose as more of a process than a destination.  If we think of purpose as an endpoint, we have no room to grow as the world changes and as we grow and develop.  If, by contrast, we think about making meaning in this moment, we are able to continue to evolve for the rest of our lives.

As I think about Diaz's book which gracefully describes what happens in every one of our physical systems, I see great parallel.  Our cells don't leap frog from birth to death in an instant, they go through many stages of life.  Similarly, our respiration, our hearts, and other systems are vastly different as a newborn, a toddler, a teen, a young adult and a senior citizen.

Our purpose should evolve similarly.  Tomorrow, I start my last week in a job that has borne frustrations and accomplishments.  I will be very mindful about how my spiritual development is transition as I end this job and move next week to another.

Self-trust

Those who have been reading this blog for a while will recall that I've felt like I was in a transition for at least a year, maybe 18 months.  I have talked about "feeling pregnant," sure that I was going to "deliver" a new and fuller me without really knowing what that meant.

All of a sudden, it feels like I am in the final moments of giving birth.  I still don't really know where it is going, but I do know that I've learned a huge amount about myself and life over the last few months.  Whatever is coming feels like I've taken a quantum leap in the cycle of spirit growth.

In the process of doing some "cleaning up of the past" so that I can really move forward, I stumbled onto "self-trust" as an issue. It ends up that the whole self-trust thing has come up before.  20-plus years ago, I had a cranial-sacral session in which the practitioner said, "You have self-trust issues."  I was indignant.

My integrity is critical to me.  I wouldn't/couldn't lie, cheat or steal.  I am the girl who argued about the integrity of exceeding the speed limit by 5 miles an hour even if everyone else was doing it. How could I have self-trust issues?  But self-trust...even trust...is more than that. In fact, integrity is much more than not lying, cheating, or stealing. As soon as I was able to break through my self-righteousness after each of these messages about self-trust, everywhere I turned I was able to see lack of self-trust.

Integrity derives from the same Greek root as "integer"--a whole number.  Being in integrity is being true to who you know you are in your heart.  Self-trust is acting in accord with that "soul's intention" for your life.  Sometimes I've been very good at acting in alignment with my truth, but I admit that in recent years more often than not I've more reliably acting in accord with what the world around me has expected of me.

The world around me tells me that financial success, a well-founded retirement, and increasingly higher status jobs is "success," but I've really know that wasn't my definition of success. Why have I tolerated a job and superiors who treat me so disrespectfully for years? Do I not trust myself to do the things that I know are right for me? For that matter, why is it that I can't keep my intentions to avoid sugar, or to write this blog, or to meditate everyday? Those are the intentions that I know to be true to my heart.

Several months ago I mustered the courage to tell my boss I was quitting at the end of the summer...without another job in hand. That was integrity and self-trust. I gave a long notice because I needed that time to make sure current projects were either complete or at the stage of development at which they could be handed off to someone else. Taking good care of clients I love was integrity.  I couldn't have trusted myself if I'd done less.

As the weeks passed I found myself dragging my feet.  I kept saying the words but inside me I was afraid I couldn't do it.

In June I began to feel a real physical exhaustion.  Why, I asked myself, had I not planned to leave sooner?  Two things occurred about the same time that reinforced my decision to leave, and they were the final straws.  Suddenly I was like the proverbial horse headed for the barn.  I may not know what was at the end of the tunnel, but I was sure it would be better.  Almost overnight, I felt a super-charged sense of self-efficacy.  In retrospect, I had recognized my ability to come out on top... whatever life presented me.  I finally trusted myself.  Whoo-hoo!

The Universe was very affirming.  Almost as soon as I got really clear that I was going to come out better however I came out, things started popping.  I had two interviews in a week for a job I'd applied for in February.  The founder of a new consulting firm called and began salary negotiation for an executive position.  I attended a conference and a professional meeting and walked away from both with several leads on contract work if I decided to go independent.  All of this is 10 days time. Within another week, I had an offer for a job I've agreed to take that will allow me to do work that is better aligned with my strengths and is significantly more money and benefits.

I have wondered to myself a number of times  what would have happened if I'd quit this job years ago.  Did I just need to trust myself enough to know I would land on my feet for the Universe to support me?  Although we will never know, I am guessing that is true.

After a dry spell, my date life is picking up again, too.  No great loves on the horizon. What I've started noticing that if a man doesn't treat me the way I expect to be treated, I trust myself enough to just walk away (once in the middle of dinner) rather than politely tolerating unacceptable behavior.

One of my favorite rom-com movies is "The Holiday."  In it, Iris, played by Kate Winslet, has been a doormat for her "former" boyfriend.  Although he is in a relationship with another woman, he uses Iris when it is convenient for him. Iris encounters an octogenarian screenwriter, who "assigns" her movie watching of classic films with strong female leads.

Soon her boyfriend is once again asking her to do something for him again.  This time she indignantly refuses.  "What's gotten into you, Iris?" he asks.  Stopped in her tracks for a split second, Iris hesitates before saying, "I think it is something resembling gumption."

"Gumption" isn't a word I hear often these days.  Yet that is what I am finding seems to come in the wake of self-trust.  When I know what is right for me in my heart, and when I act on what I know is true, the gumption part seems to come easily.  Gumption isn't arrogant: it feels to me like a deep, peaceful truth that wells up inside of me, offering a sense of strength and focus that I haven't been conscious of for a while.

Trust, you see, is a lot like a hug: you have to give it to get it.  Once I started trusting myself with the truth of my heart, the Universe has trusted me enough to support me in my truth.  Can there be much more?

Play...woohoo!

Sunday afternoon I found a table poolside and sat and colored for an hour or so.  I didn't check the time, so that is just a guess.  I just got lost in the endeavor.  When I did need to look at the clock to go pack a bag for business travel, I felt amazingly relaxed.  And no small amount of pride in my evolving work.

The three- and six-year olds in my life about whom I've written previously sent me a set of 24 (yes!) placemats to color.  The mats were collages of scenes from 24 different cities. Sunday I lost myself in London and daydreamed about a visit there over 20 years ago.  I just drifted along in timelessness.

My reverie, which continued long after I stopped coloring, reminded me of a time in my adult life when I was truly playful.  I loved coming up with playful schemes.  I just let my inner kid spontaneously let me and those around me laugh...mostly.  I remember someone who once questioned, "Aren't you ever going to grow up?"  At the time, I was in my early mid-40s.  I pondered for only a second before responding, "I hope not!"

So what exactly is play?  Stuart Brown, head of the non-profit National Institute for Play, said in a 2014 interview for NPR** "Play is something that is done for its own sake....It's voluntary, it's pleasurable, it offers a sense of engagement, it takes you out of time. And the act itself is more important than the outcome."

As I read this definition, I connected the dots with one of the places I am really able to play--the dance floor.  I am a good dancer, as are most of the people I dance with.  What I really enjoy most is dancing with someone who is good but isn't dancing to prove something.  A partner who brings an element of reckless abandonment...with good technique...flips my switches.  I love it when I walk off the dance floor with both of us laughing.

I recall being in Seattle with a friend years ago.  Pre-GPS, we got lost.  The more we tried to find our way to the right freeway, the more lost we seemed to become.  Somehow, we got started giggling, and within a few minutes, we were laughing so hard that we had to pull over and stop.  A nice man offered help, but we were laughing so hard we could hardly get the words out about what road we were attempting to find. Our playfulness about getting lost took us out of time, and the fun we were having certainly was more important than finding I5.

It also seems to me that play brings to us that most spiritual of qualities--being present.  I am not sure it is possible to really truly play and not be in the present.  If the mind is wandering or we get too caught up in the win and lose, whatever we are doing ceases to be play and becomes some other sort of endeavor.  Many years ago during a personal growth seminar, my former partner and I discovered that all the things that we said we did for fun had really become work.  While it was great exercise, I cannot imagine any definition of play that includes climbing 18 miles up a mountain on a 100-degree.

One internet source* explains there are five key benefits for adult play:

• Relieve stress
• Improve brain function
• Stimulate the mind and boost creativity
• Improve relationships and connection to others  (Apparently, there is a lot of play in durable marriages.)
• Keep you feeling young and energetic

I once had a client who, in presenting the problems his office faced, said, "The administrative support professionals laugh a lot."  I queried, "And, that would be a problem how?" I have several games that I facilitate with adult teams at work.  Always, the relaxation and laughter break down walls and open communication.  Laughter and humor, in and of themselves, have been demonstrated to generate creativity and increase innovation.  

Play is apparently also effective at healing emotional wounds.  That may be why I so used to love to play. Notice I said, "...used to love to play?" I used to have a fun kit.  Among other things it included bubble to blow, three kites to choose from to fly, a full set of 64 crayons and a coloring book. I usually still have a bottle of bubbles and blower on my balcony, just in case I feel the need to blow bubbles, but somewhere along the way journey of surviving two gigantic financial crises and a business failure, the kit disappeared.

Like so many pleasures of life, play seems to have slipped away from me.  Brown says that "Adults without play are not much fun to be around."  I have found that...about myself.  I am delighted to say that the little ones are coming to visit in just over two weeks, and I am sure that I will play with reckless abandon.  I hope they will help me rediscover my funny bone and bring play back into my life.

*http://www.helpguide.org/articles/emotional-health/benefits-of-play-for-adults.htm

*http://www.npr.org/sections/ed/2014/08/06/336360521/play-doesnt-end-with-childhood-why-adults-need-recess-too

Boundaries

Washington is in the middle of a week of brutally hot weather, exceeding 100 degrees and shattering long-standing records.  With the humidity, our heat indices have been even more relentless. Yet this morning I've been quite comfortably luxuriating on my north-facing balcony with a slight breeze. I breakfasted outdoors, a guilty pleasure I've enjoyed most of my adult life.  As I did so, I found my mind drifting back to several patios, decks, and balconies on which I had breakfasted and to the friends with whom I had  shared stories and laughed as we ate.

Before eating, I had finished a novel that I started a month ago on my staycation. In it the main characters started the book as boys, and by the end, they had become old men with failing eyesight. The book left me in a reflective space, which may have spawned my breakfast reverie.  I've been thinking about this post for some time. For once I am not going to use the excuse of no time to write. If you had asked I wouldn't have known why I hadn't written, but this morning I know that I just hadn't had enough perspective.

I believe the expression "When the student is ready, the teacher will appear" came from the I Ching, but I also believe that a number of Eastern philosophies hold something similar to be true. During my outdoor breakfast contemplation this morning, the pieces began to fall into place for me.  I, as the student, must be ready because lots of opportunities to learn a similar lesson have appeared.

During my four-month detail last fall and early winter, I became keenly aware that my life had spun totally out of control in recent years--to the extent that my physical and mental health were being compromised and my relationships were back-burnered, awaiting that precious "time" for nurturing. Certainly, time for writing, which really nourishes my soul, had become a low priority. I fell asleep from exhaustion when I tried to meditate. I had to be away from my long-standing, abusive work environment to get the perspective to recognize that.

In those treasured four months, I was able to see what had evaded me for so long. In my situation I had lost either the self-respect or the self-confidence to set and stick to my boundaries.  When I returned to my permanent job, I wrote in big block letters with a box around them on the whiteboard behind my desk, where I looked at it every time I entered my office, "boundary clarity."

In a matter of days, I was tested.  An unsustainable level of dark work again began flowing at me from very high places. Encouraged by my "boundary clarity" reminder, I began telling my clients that I would work with them, but it would be three months, four months, and even five months later.  I brought in a contractor to do work with one client organization, which had needs that wouldn't wait. Still, the darkness and the volume of the work were too much.

Within a month I knew something had to change.  After several conversations with my new boss, it became clear that the organization was more concerned about keeping my very senior customers happy than in keeping me healthy and happy. No relief would be coming, but I was assured that I was very good at this work.  After an unusually frightening dream about the same time, I knew I had to leave.  I began the process of planning for an end-of-the-summer departure.  I was quite transparent with my boss and his boss about planning for an August separation.

I had no other job from which to make money, and I really need serious income for several years yet I knew I needed to take care of myself. My friends worried a bit more than I did about how I would live, but as soon as I got very clear about needing to move on, I had faith that something would work out.  My big focus was on getting my clients, most of whom I'd worked with for years, to a good transition point. I learned about a month ago that the boss didn't really think I'd go, but he obviously doesn't know my courage when my spiritual path has become clear to me, and it had become very clear to me.

As soon as I had become very clear, out of the blue I received a call from a potential employer.  Job announcements began falling into my email inbox with regularity.  Even USAJobs, which has seldom had appropriate jobs, sent me a promising vacancy announcement. I am now just five weeks from my departure date, and I have two very strong prospects, each of which allows me to work in my "sweet spot," and each of which will be a significant increase in income.  Perhaps as encouraging is that along the way as I networked with former bosses and colleagues, I found great sources for independent contract work.

In parallel, I realized how my work situation has made me unavailable for time with friends and even to pursue a primary relationship.  In fact, for the first time in a long time, I added up how many years it had been since I'd had more than a date or two with someone.  It wasn't an acceptable number.  I began focusing my intention on at least meeting some men.  I had first dates with people I would have just checked off my list a year ago.  Most of them weren't serious prospects, but I was at least getting out and sending the Universe a message that I was serious.

Along the way, something else happened.  While I just didn't have much in common with most of these men, there was another category.  The only way I can describe them is "Really?!"  The one who pronounced that he had two other women in his life but would like to add others. "Really?!" There was one who was married but said his wife was OK with him dating others. "Really?!"  Last week, there was one who seriously treated me like a child. "Really?!"  I wanted to add, "What do I look like?" but the truth is, I probably looked like a doormat, both at work and in my personal life.

I like to be nice to people.  If I have ever been rude, it was either because I was tired or didn't realize what I was doing.  In each of these cases, I just walked out.  The last one in the middle of dinner at a famous-chef restaurant that I really love. As a serious foodie, that should have been hard, but it wasn't. Following each of these, someone more interesting followed.  I'm still not there yet, but...progress.

In the 2006 movie "The Holiday," one of two female leads, Iris, played by Kate Winslet, has also been down on her confidence and has allowed her former boyfriend to walk all over her.  In the movie, she meets an octogenarian, who is former screenwriter.  He begins "assigning" her movie viewing of classic films, all of which have strong women leads.  After said boyfriend crosses the line yet one more time, she kicks him out of her life.  He is incredulous.  "What's gotten into you, Iris?" he asks.

After a pause, she replies, "I think it is something resembling gumption." And, away she sends him.

As I've been contemplating this post over the last few weeks, that scene and those words have played over and again in my mind.  Where did my gumption go, and more importantly, how did I let it go. I have been a strong woman most of my adult life.  Anyone who has known me before this century would certainly have laughed at the thought that I didn't have confidence.  A former dance partner once remarked (paraphrased for the general audience) "You have more moxie than any man I know."

"Where did it go?" is still a question I ponder, but mostly, I don't care. What I am passionate about is sustaining it into what feels to me like the next phase of my life--one that promises to be the best ever.

While both personally and professionally my life has been about helping others, I now know that I can't sustain my help for others if I don't take care of my first.  How many coaching clients have I reminded that the airlines always warn us to put the oxygen mask over our own faces before attempting to help children around us. On this turn of the hero's journey, I've gotten this lesson differently than I had before.  Saying "Sorry, I can't help me, I need to take care of myself," really is uncomfortable to even consider, but, whatever comes next, that is a clear boundary that I must enforce.

Digital Detox

There is an expression, maybe from the I Ching, "when the student is ready the teacher will appear." My last post on "Digital Addiction" was hardly stalled in my iPhone, when it seemed that everywhere I turned, I was encountering something about the deleterious effects of digital addiction.  I hadn't even realized that there even was such a thing as digital addiction until about six weeks ago.  Now I am bumping into it everywhere.

First, though, I owe a report about how well I did, or more precisely didn't do, during my effort to walk away from my devices for one day.  I found that every few minutes I would start to do something that involved one or another device. I would catch myself at least half the time, but that suggests that half of the time I mindlessly turned to the radio, iPhone, notebook, or television.  Most of the time, I noticed within seconds, but at 5 p.m., I abandoned the experiment and decided that I would wait until my staycation.  My little experiment has been a good lesson in not being present.

I am now six days into my annual vacation at home, and I realized two things going into my leave. First, I really needed to be off devices more. Second, going cold turkey was not going to work for me since I did want to arrange lunches, coffee, or drinks and other outings with friends, and doing so would require one or more of my devices. So, rather than shutting down all devices for 10 days, I took an approach we might call mini-withdrawals.

With my mini-withdrawals, I have brought more conscious to my use of electronics. That allowed me to actually choose when I wanted/needed to use by devices and be aware of how much of the time I was turning to them out of pure habit...and addiction.  It has also allowed me to choose more consciously what I will watch or listen to.  I quickly discovered that I often had something mindless on in the background just to fill space rather than because I really wanted to watch or listen.

How has this actually worked? When I was cooking for a dinner party Friday night and Saturday, I normally have had NPR, a podcast, Spanish lesson, or audiobook in the background.  I made the decision to cook in silence.  My cooking became a meditation.  I was able to really be present. My guests arrived and I was relaxed and present to them.

This evening I walked about 20 minutes to the hardware store to pick up some things, and again normally, I would have been listening to something.  I made the conscious decision to just leave the iPhone in the charger.  I ended up having a leisurely shopping trip during which I was able to just enjoy looking...and a little buying.

I took a book to read on my commute to a lunchtime concert at the Library of Congress rather than my usual practice of catching up with email and reading The Washington Post on my phone, while listening to podcasts or TuneIn Radio.  I was enjoying the book so much that I just left my phone in my purse until I got home, and when I was present, I decided to have a lingering lunch rather than putting myself on autopilot and jumping on the Metro to return home.

When sitting by the pool yesterday, I didn't check anything on my iPhone, but I do confess to loving the "Ocean Waves" soundtrack in the background while I read.  I was able to actually get into the book I was reading and with which I had been struggling for two weeks while reading a couple paragraphs before checking some device.

While I do find the level of my descension into this addiction distressing, given the number of places I've been bumping into media coverage of the problem, I am not alone.  Last night on the shuttle from the Metro to the Kennedy Center, where we can safely assume everyone is going to enjoy a live performance, a woman was totally freaking out that she'd forgotten her iPhone.  I was glad that I'd decided to turn mine off until I was headed home.  It ended up that I was so relaxed from not looking all evening, that I didn't even look at the phone until I was home.

In the last two weeks, I've discovered a Digital Detox Boot Camp in the jungles of Costa Rica, where they take people's devices and lock them up for a week, while providing lots of physical activity to distract participants during withdrawal.  In the coverage about the event, I learned that the average American looks as his/her smartphone every 4 minutes!  Given that I do often go hours without looking at mine, I felt some righteous relief with that data point.

During a conference that I attended last week, I learned that there is actually a name for what happens to people who spend too much time on their devices: Cognitive Capacity Overload.  The symptoms are the same as ADHD--Attention Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder, including inability to focus and really be present to what one is doing.

Just this evening on a Freakonomics Podcast--yes, I am still listening, but I have been much more judicious and have deleted about 3/4 of the podcasts to which I would normally have listened. Anyway, the podcast was exploring the health concerns related to lack of sleep, and you guessed, it all of our screens contribute to difficulty falling asleep and the quality of sleep once we do.

I love my iPhone, and it does provide me with efficiencies and effectiveness that I otherwise couldn't enjoy.  (Thank you, Google Maps.) I am sure even those who will sojourn to Costa Rica for serious cold turkey withdrawal will pick their devices up again when they return. However, I have learned enough from my little experiment into mini-withdrawals to know that I will do them more frequently. The quality of my relaxation and the relaxation in my work is dramatically improved.  And, I am able to embrace that most difficult of spiritual lessons: being present...in the present.

Digital Addiction

(Note: This was written about two weeks ago and has, by an interesting twist of fate, been trapped in my iPhone.)

Recently several articles in the Washington Post have explored various aspects of digital addiction, even reporting on residential treatment programs where people can go for withdrawal from their devices. 

While I am certain that I am not nearly as badly hooked as many around, I have wondered several times in the last month if I might not be falling victim to this disease.  I have already decided that I want to go cold turkey during part of my staycation in early July.  But, even at that I have wondered what exactly does "cold turkey" mean? 

Since I get lost in my closet, I've been quite grateful for having Google Maps facilitate my arrival when and where I attend. If I go on an excursion during my staycation, must I really go back to reading maps, which I really don't do very well? 

If I totally give up electronics, that means I can't do my Spanish lessons which require daily practice to be effective.  Can I do my Spanish lesson once a day?

Can I sync my step- and sleep-tracker each day?  What really are the consequences of not knowing these things, which I cared little about until recently but which now seem indispensable?

Usually during vacations, I really enjoy writing for this blog.  Would it be OK to write a blogpost on one of several devices that I own?

You see the slippery slope upon which I am perched.

Back in the days during which the closest approximation we had to smartphones was a Blackberry, they were jokingly referred to as "crack berries" because even they were as addictive as crack cocaine.  Just the sampling of uses to which I put my iPhone, described above, make it really easy to see how it is easy to slip into this addiction. In and of itself, each use is benign; it is the accumulation of all those helpful apps that threaten addiction. Even as I write this, I am on my way to a Washington Nationals baseball game. Back in the day, like 2010, I would have taken a book or a magazine to read on the commute, and maybe I'd talk to people. Not today.  I love that I can finally have a chance to write, but relent the consequences.

While I've been thinking about this issue for several weeks, it is particularly heavy on me today.  I've been riveted to news coverage about the horrible tragedy in Orlando all afternoon. Wearing my ear buds plugged to NPR as I ran errands and did chores, I've hung on every word. Just before I started writing this post, I'd found myself looking at my phone offering the temptation that a bag of heroine might to a drug addict. 

The line in the sand came when I realized that I'd learned almost nothing...all afternoon. 

(Note: Since starting this post earlier, I've now been to a very exciting baseball game during which my phone remained happily in my purse.)

As I was saying, I came to the realization that while there had been 4 or 5 reporters covering the event, almost nothing new was reported.  So what was the point of hanging on every word, except for serving my addiction.  I do remember a time in the late 90s, though, when I was so disconnected that my editor at Butterworth-Heinemann shared with me a breaking event about Osama bin Laden, and I said, "Who?"  Clearly there is a happy medium between these extremes.

I do know that despite of, or maybe because of, that exciting two-run 9th inning for the Nats, I feel way more relaxed after this three hours than I did after three hours of the continuous news cycle. I take that as good data.  Now I just need to turn that information into wisdom. 

Because of a strange work week, my weekend is Sunday and Monday this week, and while I won't give up my laptop, I plan to abandon my iPhone except for what a phone is supposed to be used for--talking to friends.

Spiritual Amnesia

In her popular book The Hero Within Jungian psychologist and writer Carol Pearson wrote about a lifelong journey through several archetypes--the innocent, the orphan, the magician, the wanderer, the martyr, and the warrior.  Each archetype teaches us a lesson.  For instance, the Warrior archetype teaches us the spiritual lesson of power, and the Wanderer shows us clarity.

Pearson describes our journey as a wheel, and life takes us through each of these life lessons several times.  During each successive turn of the wheel, we are to master a more spiritually evolved degree of the lesson.  For instance, I believe (I hope!) that I am now ending a turn at the Wanderer archetype. During the first pass through the Wanderer archetype we feel isolation, even alienation.  In the second turn of the Hero's Wheel, we embark on a quest, flee captivity, and find treasure within ourselves. When we traverse Wanderer territory the third time, we discover to be one's Self and to have love and community.

Since these turns of the wheel may be decades apart, at first the archetypical spiritual lesson may feel new and foreign, but my experience has been to fairly quickly recall the lessons that we have already learned as we struggle to master the next level assignment. Passage through each archetype may take months or even years, but I have felt a blinding moment of Truth in which I finally "get it," and then I am free to move on to the next lesson.  And, yes, if we are conscious, there is always "the next lesson" in yet another archetype.

I have certainly experienced what Pearson describes. I can look back at periods in my life and recall which archetypical spiritual lessons I was working on at different times. However, I have also experienced a similar or parallel process.  For lack of something better to call it, let's just describe them as lapses into and out of spiritual amnesia.  I suddenly think that I have had an epiphany: I see some aspect of the world in a different way.  I am awash with spiritual liberation, as if I have just broken free of the bonds of some aspect of ignorance.  In that moment I feel like God has pulled back the veil of the Universe and allowed me to peek at how it all works.

Yesterday I wrote about using Sister Joan Chittister's description of contemplation as seeing the world as God does.  In my meditation I placed myself in the position of looking at me as if from God's perspective where I was able to see my struggle as a device to gain strength for whatever is next.

This morning I took Chittister's wisdom more literally.  As my contemplation continued, as each thought or person bubbled into my awareness, I stilled my mind of its normal chatter and tried to see the person as God would.  Suddenly, I thought: that is the point--to see each person as a child of God. Almost as quickly, it occurred to me that to see each person as a child of God will require continuous contemplation.  My meditation cannot be 20 minutes set aside once or twice a day, but instead it must become a constant exercise of looking at the person in front of me at any time as if from God's eyes.

What a breakthrough, you may think.  Sadly, it is not.  Only a reemergence from spiritual amnesia for the umpteenth time.  Probably the favorite speech I ever gave was about just this practice.  Although I composed the speech in the early 2000s right after finishing The Game Called Life, "The Walk of Faith--Living a Prayer in the Real World" felt to me at the time as an outline for yet another book. "Living a prayer" described the continuous contemplation required to live in complete consciousness.
A few years earlier I had a related epiphany that the only way we as human beings have to know God is through other humans who so reflect the presence of Love that we can feel the Universe through them. During that period I would look for opportunities to visualize myself allowing God to use me as a human vessel for allowing those around me to know that complete feeling of Love that is God. I believe that is one of the most important lessons that the spiritual teacher Jesus was attempting to share with us as he allowed us to know God through him.

These are three distinctly different periods during which I clearly knew different aspects of the lesson that I seemed to discover anew today.  Why, then, can I not seem to remember it? Maybe more accurately, what causes me to forget? Most importantly, how can I assure that I do remember for more than days or months but for the rest of my life?  Sometimes my spiritual learning feels like the movie "Groundhog Day," in which every day was just the same with no forward movement. I am ready to move on from spiritual stuckness.

I ended the "Living a Prayer" speech by saying there is a ribbon of love that connects all of us, heart to heart, around the world.  The ribbon of love can be activated by each of us, but if any of us fails to do our part, a short circuit occurs which stops the flow of love. Whenever someone crosses my path, it is my responsibility to activate the flow of love. For years I've talked about being response-able, which implies being conscious of choosing the response I want to send into the world.  I want to choose love.  I want to have the force of love that is God reflected from me to everyone I meet.