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Turbulance

Friday, September 3rd, 2010

When I catch up with people I havent seen in a while they inevitably end up asking a few of the same questions;

How are you feeling?
Is it [the morning sickness] as bad as last time?
When do you find out what sex the baby is? (Everybody knows I hate surprises!)
How was Cairns?
How did Cooper go on the plane?

The first 4 answers are stock standard. Crap. No. About 21 weeks. Great! The last one makes me smile every time.

Cooper was great, terrible, trying and adorable on the plane. He was polite to the air hostesses. He was as quiet as a 2 year old can be for 3 hours at a time. He was as still as a 2 year old can be for 3 hours at a time. Which is to say he talked and moved more that I’d like. He listened to classical music through his headphones with the concentration that a teenage ‘emo’ listens to their ipod. (But without the raincloud hovering over him.) He had the seat belt worked out before the seat belt sign came on on the tarmac, so he was far more free in the cabin than was entirely safe. But he also had the brace position down to a ‘T’, so he knew how to be safe if was actually in his seat when the turbulence struck.

Thankfully, he was in his seat when the turbulence struck. We had a very turbulent landing. Not in the ‘Gee that was rough’ kinda way. The passengers closest to us were actually in the brace position as we came in to land. I was nauseas (when am I not these days?) and slightly green but sitting upright. I didn’t want to frighten Cooper. I had nothing to worry about. He was pointing out the window at all the cool things he was seeing. Clouds, little tiny cars on teeny tiny roads, minuscule buildings and beaches. His smile was as bright as the setting sun. His muscles were relaxed and he was totally at ease.

The thought of that landing always brings a smile to my face. Yes, in part because I didn’t throw up on the man beside me. Also because we were coming home to my darling husband. But mostly because it showed me innocence in action. Cooper was totally free of judgement, absolutely fearless, joyful, in the moment and only seeing the magic of the moment. I know one day he will see the risks, the inconveniences, the fear like most adults. I can only hope he doesn’t completely loose his joy.

Posted in Inspiration, Motherhood, Personal Development, Spirituality | No Comments »

The person I let down the most is…

Wednesday, August 11th, 2010

… me

I am pretty good at following through on what I say I’m going to do. If I stuff up, if I forget, if something gets in the way I apologise. I beat away the guilt resolving to do better. For the most part I can be described as ‘reliable’. Actually, I am pretty sure I have primary school report cards tucked away in the garage (yes, I am that sentimental) that say exactly that ‘contentious, reliable and a pleasure to teach’. Yep, I was a teacher’s pet. Until high school. Then I got thrown out of religion class, like, a LOT. But that is a story for another day.

I find it painful, physically and emotionally, to let someone down. Except for me. I seem to be pretty damn good at letting myself down and not feeling a thing. Well, I don’t know that is exactly true. I do feel the faintest hint of betrayal, eroding self-trust and shame BUT I have been systematically numbing myself to those feelings. Obviously, because on some level I think its peachy to keep letting myself down.

Well no more numbing. It isn’t peachy. It sucks.

I tried thinking of the little promises I had made to myself, you know the ones; you say it mentally to yourself and you get a quietly gently excited. Looking forward to doing something for me. Then life gets busy, we get busy, we get distracted, priorities shift, fires need putting out and we just let it go. I don’t acknowledge it most of the time, I don’t apologise, re-schedule, resolve to do better. I just pretend the promise didn’t matter or that it wasn’t a promise at all. I don’t even treat my enemies that way.

So from now on, as much as humanly possible (I am pregnant and have a shocking case of baby brain), I will honour myself & my relationship with myself by honouring my promises to me the way I would honour a promise to you.

PS having said that the new layout and schedule is coming…

Posted in Coaching, Grace, Inspiration, Personal Development | No Comments »

Calm presence

Wednesday, August 4th, 2010

Calm and centered is my home. Not my actual home, I live with a toddler. And even before the bundle of joy invaded blessed our home our place was rarely calm. I regularly cooked breakfast for a hoard of hung over youths on a Saturday or Sunday morning. My sister was well-known for saying ‘Rae won’t mind’. And I never did. Back then we were really the only couple in our local group of friends with a place of our own. It was clean, stocked with food and plenty of seating. So we often had people around for dinner, drinks or parties. (I seemed to collect bachelors who preferred our place to their Mum’s). Some friends even used our spare room as a cave to study in when they lived with their folks.

Despite the chaos I have lived amongst for as long as I can remember, I still feel most comfortable in a calm tranquil place. Internal dichotomies anybody? I know my parents reading that line (yes they are regular readers now) will be shooting tea out their noses. Calm wasn’t always my home. I had a penchant for rebellion, drama and general voice raising growing up. Until the drama chewed me up and spat me out. Then I had no choice but to find another way. My coaches/therapists during that time spent a lot of time re-framing that to I chose to find another way. Since then I have chosen to hold space instead of raging.

These days I am volatile – because I am human – but the place I keep returning to, in the moments between, is calm.

I am beginning to realise the biggest gift I can give to my son is my calm presence. I know that a clam presence is one of the biggest actions I can take to help create a peaceful world too. I know from experience that my calm presence makes for smoother relationships, fewer misunderstandings and happier days. These truths will be easy to remember when I am lounging (as you read this) in sunny Cairns on a holiday with my parents (read: 2 more sets of toddler wrangling hands).

It won’t be so easy to maintain my calm or remember how important it is when I am on a 3 hour flight with a 2 year old who just wants to run and scream and jump and explore and introduce himself to each and every passenger. One. By One. “Hello my name is Cooper. What’s your name?’, “Hello my name is Cooper. What’s your name?’, “Hello my name is Cooper. What’s your name?’, “Hello my name is Cooper. What’s your name?’……

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Crowdsourcing the universe

Monday, July 12th, 2010

There is a critical difference, and quite a gulf, between identifying something and processing something. The former is utterly useless unless followed up by the latter.

Identification is something we all do, to varying degrees, in every single little aspect of our lives. One of the first things we learn to do as a child is to identify people, objects, places, actions. As we grow, our understanding deepens and we learn to identify the unseen; emotions, the intangible, types of objects, sequences of actions, relationships between people. Personal development takes it further; we learn to identify our ego, our shadow, our embodied archetypes, our chakras, our blockages, our issues, our personality types, our agreements. We immerse ourselves in information; ways to identify what is happening in us, around us.

Information on what to do with our vast knowledge of the plethora of information available? That is a little thin. Infuriatingly, what little information exists around processing our information and taking meaningful action is invariably vague. (Can you hear that little frustrated growl in the back of my throat?) My pet hate, my most detested state, is the overwhelm of finding myself in the middle of a veritable pile of information and lables with nothing to go on other than my heart, my instinct, or my gut. Don’t get me wrong – my intuition is invaluable – but ladies, please tell me you don’t live on intuition alone?

I need mentors, processes, experts, a nudge in the right direction, suggestions (even if I immediately disregard them). I don’t need the answer, because I will invariably buck the trend and go my own way anyhow. What I need to know is how others experience it, what they did (and do now) and how it went. I need to know what the research said, what the sages propose, what history shows. My intuition will tell me, which path is the best one for me. I just need to create her a map of sorts, to crowdsource the universal consciousness and give her some options. What a waste of human potential if we recreate the wheel every single time. My intuition is a pilot, she flies this damn thing, she isn’t the engineer that builds it.

So a call out to all the philosophers, practitioners, experts, researchers; we know the experience is different for everybody and we promise not to ‘hang you’ if your method doesn’t suit us. But please, please, please have the balls to publish the process as well as the label. The world will be a better place for it, if only because I will rant less.

Posted in Coaching, Grace, Life, Personal Development | No Comments »

Writing mojo

Tuesday, July 6th, 2010

I am finding it really difficult to write at the moment. Interesting that my writing mojo seems to evaporate directly after 21 days of the Bindu Wiles 21.5.800 challenge.

Part of my difficulty writing is because recently I have been afraid to write. Terrified of noting down that was knocking around inside, words are power you know. Part of it is that it’s not appropriate to share what is in my mind and heart at the moment. Part of it is that my creative energies are being funneled off in a different direction. I already know what happens when my creativity finds a muse.

It happened a few years ago. I thought there was something very wrong with me. I was young, in a blissfully happy partnership, loving my work. My creative juices were flowing in my work. I had just begin teaching meditation and leading a spiritual development group. Spiritually and vocationally I was alive; on fire. Sexually, I was dry as a bone.

I couldn’t work it out. I knew this happened sometimes to women. But older women, right? Not me. Not at 23 for fucks sake! Yeah I have some crappy sexual history, but it wasn’t the cause. Though my body betraying my mind and refusing to become juicy, that sure and hell bought it up. To this day I find it ironic that being unable to be sexual bought up sexual shame. (But that is another post for another day; how women seem to take responsibility for, and find shame in, our sexuality regardless of whether we are over or under sexual.)

I was lucky at the time to have a sage on my team. A wonderful woman who has decades of learning (and teaching) on me and is all too generous in sharing her wisdom. I had her to go to. She taught me to heal my sexual shame, with my partner, by tapping into our collective shame embodying it completely. A truly harrowing and healing experience. She also explained to me the nature of my creative feminine power.

I learned then that my creativity can do more than one thing at a time, but it [I] can’t serve two masters at once. Instead I do one well and feel stifled in the other. Then it was grow into my new role and vocation I did well and sex that was stifled. Now, my creativity is busy and writing has become the other.

Posted in Blogging, Inspiration, Personal Development, Spirituality, Womanhood | 2 Comments »

Final thoughts

Wednesday, June 30th, 2010

A few weeks back I was searching. I had written in my journal that I was looking for something. In the past when I needed a guide they appeared before I realised how important they were. Now, I am acutely aware of my need for a guide AND the absence of one. So, either my guide is dragging their feet or they aren’t coming. My money is on the fact that I am on my own this time.

*Sigh*

Doing the work has never bothered me. Facing uncomfortable truths, making friends with what terrifies me, learning to love what I judge, this I can do. But do it alone? Do it without a mentor or a process? Help!

I know why I am on my own this time too, part of this leg of my journey is about trusting myself, my inner compass and the resources I have within. Knowing this wouldn’t stop me clinging to a teacher if there was one near by. So the universe stepped in and helped me out; no guides, only guidelines. Guidelines in the most unexpected way.

As I was wrestling with the realisation that my journey henceforth was guided by my heart alone I discovered Bindu Wiles and her stroke of inspiration 21.5.800. At the time I didn’t recognise it for what it was, I made the commitment on the spot thinking it would fill in the gap until I figured out my next step. What I discovered was a direct line to my heart (my guide), a structure and a huge community of like-minded souls to act as inspiration and cheer leaders. I found, in large part, what I had been looking for.

My thoughts on the journey are in their infancy, probably too misty and unformed yet to be coherent. But I have another 10 days to go, so I’ll work on clarifying them. I do know I feel different. I feel clearer. I feel less lost. I feel hopeful. I feel inspired. I feel like something is coming. I feel like the cogs of the universe have begun to turn. I feel relieved. I feel excited. I feel blessed. I feel centered.

Posted in Inspiration, Life, Personal Development, Spirituality | 4 Comments »

The gold is spoiling my grass

Wednesday, June 23rd, 2010

I was once told the story of an old man. I have no idea where this story comes from, so if you know let me know so I can attribute it here.

This old man is negative, grumpy, set in his ways. He wants more money; everything is expensive, prices are rising and he longs for the days when he was a boy and prices were reasonable. One morning he wakes to a pile of gold bullion stacked in his front yard. His response ‘Oh gosh darn it! That gold is ruining my grass!’

I realised a moment ago that I am that man! I was reading the honest and inspired blog of Ronna Detrick Renegade Conversations. Ronna wrote the following:

I don’t want to stay dry in my relationships. I want them wild and messy and juicy. By that admission, this means they will be hard, confusing, potentially disappointing, and require much vulnerability and risk. At this point in my life I don’t want safety or surety. I want passion, abandon, fiery integrity, brutal truth, and raw beauty. I want to get wet.

First let me say Wow! Fearless honesty should always be applauded! My relationship is wild, definitely messy and juicy (in the personal growth sense) right now. It is hard, really hard, deep, slow work. And to do the work we have had to face paralysing fears, speak searingly painful truths and embrace a vulnerability I have never known before.

What a powerful re-frame. ‘Wet’ is a magic new paradigm. I am not ‘going through stuff’, ‘in a rough patch’, ‘falling apart’. I am jumping into the depths of my marriage, our love, with both feet. I am getting wet.

Posted in Femininity, Grace, Inspiration, Marriage, Personal Development, Relationships, The unspoken | No Comments »

Willingness

Monday, June 21st, 2010

A question I am faced with a lot more in adulthood than I anticipated is am I willing to do what I must?

Am I willing to forgive? Am I willing to take a risk? Am I willing to trust? Am I willing to get hurt? Am I willing to make sacrifices? Am I willing to get past the pettiness? Am I willing let go? Am I willing to Love? Am I willing to really be open? Am I willing to be soft when the world conspires to make me tough? Am I willing to do the work? Am I willing to take responsibility? Am I willing to tune in? Am I willing to show up? Am I willing to just be? Am I willing to find stillness? Am I willing to face the truth? Am I willing to grow? Am I willing to push through my resistance?

Sometimes willingness is half the battle. Sometimes being willing is enough. I hope it is enough, because I don’t know how to be open and soft right now.

Posted in Femininity, Grace, Inspiration, Personal Development | 4 Comments »

The Mat

Thursday, June 17th, 2010

My long time mentor and friend once explained the role of discipline to me in growth. For the longest time I believed discipline was something that I sorely lacked. I was never a sporty person so sports practice was never a part of my schedule. I didn’t play an instrument, so I missed out on scales and drills. I was a singer (once upon a time) but I never considered my rehearsals a discipline because I loved to sing. I was a study geek in high school, I was genuinely disappointed if I didn’t get an A. But I felt compelled (for the most part) to study, because giving less than 100% felt like letting everybody down.

I was a strict vegetarian for many years and I avoided all caffeine, alcohol and drugs (prescription and elicit) for 3 years. This was what I considered my only discipline. I felt that my moods and fluxes made me flighty and inconsistent and that I was too rebellious to toe the line. I believed that military discipline in all its unyielding precision was the only real discipline and hoped against hope that by hanging out with military men (3 of my best friends at this stage were serving in the army) I would learn to respect discipline though osmosis.

As wonderful as military men are (and they are, I married one of them, though he is no longer in the Army) they did teach me one thing; military discipline is something that cannot be sustained constantly. The stricter the discipline in their day the harder they ‘let loose’ in their down time. I am still in awe of the air of discipline and order that permeates their world, but I now know that discipline need not be nailed down and policed. Discipline is essentially commitment in action.

My mentor, a wonderfully wise woman who has been a yoga teacher (amongst other things) for more years than I have lived, described discipline to me as ‘returning to the [yoga] mat’. Her definition of discipline (which I have happily appropriated) is continuing to return to your practice, whatever that may be, time and time again. Endlessly and reliably returning to the mat rain, hail or shine, with your exhaustion, grief or joy. It doesn’t matter how you show up, so long as you do.

My practice is varied. My commitment is to my highest self. I return daily to compassion, to honouring my desires and giving of myself in loving service [Bakti] every single day without fail. Sometimes I show up whining, others joyfully, sometimes I show up in pain. Every day without fail I say ‘yes’ to my son when I want to say ‘no’, every day without fail I honour my desires with a relaxed cup of tea, chocolate or a candle-lit shower. Every day without fail I seek to learn more of who I am and to show love to the world. It took me more than a decade of practice to realise that this, this is my discipline and it requires I toe no line but that of my own heart.

I would love to hear about your discipline.

*Image credit

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On Fear

Wednesday, June 16th, 2010

Fear is too often misunderstood. Fear is an emotion; A signal to ourselves that we have insufficient information or resources to keep us safe and sane. Fear asks us to take action.

The irony I find with fear is that, when it comes to the Big questions, we fear both options:

We fear our worthlessness & we fear our worth
We fear our powerlessness & we fear our true capacity
We fear our failure & we fear our success
We fear not getting what we most want & we are utterly terrified of getting it (or is that just me?)
We fear never truly being loved & we fear what it takes to be in that loving relationship
We fear never finding ourselves & fear we won’t like what we find when we do

At the moment I tend to relax into my fear, to get to know it. I sit with it and try to understand what action the fear wants me to take. The anatomy of fear, has always been the path to my best decisions in the past. Sometimes fear only needs you to acknowledge that you don’t have control over the outcome and to remind you that you are going to be o.k. regardless of if the shit hits the fan or if it all turns out golden.

My mantras at the moment fluctuate between “I can hold space for whatever comes” and “I am the love that holds it all“. Fear is just another natural part of myself that I am growing to love. Until then I will just make space for it at my table.

*image credit

Posted in Life, Personal Development | No Comments »