Category Archives: Essential Journey

Beyond purpose, what are you here to give?

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The question slipped through the cracks of my mind, deepening into the silence of my meditation. “Beyond purpose, what are you here to give?”

“Your whole heart,” soul whispered. “Give whole-heartedly and you will be living into your purpose.”

It is not a thing, this giving whole-heartedly. It is a way of being.

Purpose is not something to be on, or off. It is something to live and breathe into. To live within.

And my heart breathed deeply into the elegant simplicity of knowing. I am living my purpose when I engage whole-heartedly with life, fearlessly shining my light for all the world to see, there is light beyond darkness, hope beyond despair, love beyond fear.

heart mind

Source: Sojourners Path talesfromtheconspiratum

In the third segment of the Choices program that I coach in, trainees spend the Sunday delving into their Purpose, crafting the words for their own personal statement of what they do in the world, naturally, intuitively, effortlessly.

Sometimes, people ask, “What if I don’t have a purpose?” or, “How do I know what my purpose is?” or some other question that speaks to our learned-fear of not being here on earth for a reason beyond, we’re here taking up space; and then we’re gone.

I love the purpose process at Choices. It is an engaging, loving, and whole-hearted exploration of the small, and large, significances each person creates in their life, every single day, often without thinking. Diving into the purpose process, trainees are often surprised to discover, they have been living the expression of their purpose all their life. It isn’t necessarily something grand like ‘make world peace’ or ‘find a cure for (name the disease or social cause or issue). It is in fact, every small thing they do that expands their heart-felt living into the mystery and wonder of feeling alive and passionately engaged with living life through their own unique expression.

Purpose is about all areas of our life, even though people sometimes want to limit their purpose statement to just one group, like children, or just one area of their life, like music. Once they explore all the ways they express themselves through living their purpose, they inevitably discover

How you do one thing is how you do all things. What you do for one, you do for all.

Each of us will have passions, areas where we completely, totally engage our entire beings in the fulfillment of some idea or dream of what the world would look like if…. we ended poverty, had world peace, treated every creature, big and small, with kindness and respect…

Purpose isn’t about proselytizing ‘the mission’. It’s about our way of being in the world. Aligned and integrated with the deepest expression of our heart’s desire to live beyond the comfort zone of playing small or quietly. It’s about shining our own, individual and unique light, as brightly as we can.

And in our brilliance, inspiring everyone around us to shine theirs, so that everyone they meet will shine theirs and so on and so on until all around the world, we are shining so brightly not war, not hatred, not anger nor fear can overshadow our light.

Mind asked, “Beyond purpose, what are you here to give?”

Soul answered, “Your whole heart.”

 

Mystery: I am who I am because of who we all are. The ultimate un-guide to surrender.

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In my dream, the pedestrian light turns green, I step off the curb and the car waiting to turn right moves into the crosswalk and hits me. I fall down.

I see me get out of the car and race to my side.

I see me looking up at the driver,(me) who hit me.

I see me refusing help, insisting I am okay.

I see me wanting to help and doing nothing.

In my dream, I am the victim and the perpetrator.

In life, I am also both.

I am the one who discriminates. I am the one discriminated against.

I am the bully. I am the victim.

I am the abuser. I am the abused.

I am the peace-keeper, the war-maker.

When I allow, accept, condone, permit; abuse, discrimination, war, and any host of social ills that cause another pain, that allow injustice to exist, when I do nothing, when I stay silent, I am my part of the problem.

u·bun·tu

ˌo͝oˈbo͝on(t)o͞o/

noun  – a quality that includes the essential human virtues; compassion and humanity.

“I am what I am because of who we all are.”

There is no mystery in why war exists. Why discrimination impacts the lives of so many. Why abuse harms lives every day.

Human history is filled with evidence of the what, how,  when and where of our unjust practices, our desire to dominate another, our need to make ourselves right. It is filled with volumes of the laws and social norms we have written and invested in that allow injustice to exist.

The mystery lies in why we choose to stay blind. Why we choose to stay silent, to do nothing, to hide our eyes from the pain of others.

The mystery lies in our willingness to suspend our belief that it is happening and convince ourselves we cannot change ‘it’.

We are the ‘it’ we tell ourselves we cannot change.

We are the perpetrators of our injustices, the creators of our laws, the ones who vote into power, or choose not to vote into power, the leaders who refuse to take action on the things that would create justice and equity for all.

The lack of action in our leaders is a result of our lack of standing up for justice and against discrimination.

It is a result of our staying silent in the face of corporate greed, in the evidence of political malfeasance.

It is a result of our turning a blind eye to the woes of our neighbours, the poverty on our streets, the despair in our communities, the waning away of the vibrancy and health of our planet Earth.

It is a result of our saying, “Someone needs to do something about…” and then waiting or expecting someone else to do the things we know we can to contribute in positive ways to stopping the tearing apart of the ozone layer, the depletion of our forests, the poisoning of our rivers.

It is a result of our not turning up for ourselves, no matter our condition, and saying, I deserve to live without discrimination, fear, hunger, inequality. And so do you.

What happens to me happens to you.

I am what I am because of who we all are.

If I have my wealth because you work for me at wages you cannot afford to live on, then my wealth is founded on your poverty.

I am what I am because of who we all are.

I dreamt I was hit by a car. It was me driving.

The creative impulse is not a mystery when I take time to express it.

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“The mystery of life isn’t a problem to solve, but a reality to experience.”  Frank Herbert, Dune

Where do ideas, vision, openings to creativity begin? Is there an end? Where does the creative impulse come from?

Not really a mystery but definitely a source of wonder and awe, the impulse to create drives me every day to write here, to journal, to draw and paint. It calls me to express myself in artful ways that often surprise me with their capacity to reflect the mystery of my dreams, the yearnings of my heart, the wonderings of my thoughts.

And then, there are those periods of time when I stop. Stop painting. Stop art journalling. Stop going down into my studio in the evening to give expression to my creative urges.

I have been in such a space since May. At first, I thought it was just that I was tired out from all the wedding prep and the hours upon hours I spent creating for it. I’d enter the studio in the evening or on weekends only to return upstairs to do some meaningless thing like watch a show on Netflix or the TV.

The avoidance of creating created the habit of not spending time in my studio and while it’s not particularly fear based, I know, avoidance strengthens fear.

My avoidance created a fear of creating. Of seeing the possibility in a blank canvas and letting the muse guide me in expressing my dreams upon its surface.

Yesterday, my team at work and I entered into what we have agreed will be a bi-weekly session on goal setting and visioning. Guided by a team member who worked for several years for a company that made regular conversations about goal-setting and vision a part of their culture, we started with a guided visioning session of what our work day will look like and how we will feel when we enter the workspace in six months, a year.

We shared what brings joy to our day. What creates satisfaction. We explored what we want more of in our work-life balance. What we need less of.

We talked about the things we’re doing we want to keep doing, the things we want to start doing to create greater value in our lives and the things we need to stop doing that undermine our sense of joy and satisfaction.

What things do you do every day that bring you joy?

For me, art-making every day creates joy in my life. It lifts me up. It fills me with a sense of peace, wonder and awe.

And I have been avoiding it.

Getting lost in the why of my avoidance will only keep me stuck in questioning the why of why I’m not doing it.

Not creating is not a mystery that needs to be solved.

 

The answer is simple.

I must make a decision to do it, to engage in it, to create the more in my every day that brings me more joy. I know creating in my studio lifts me up. I must decide to take action and then, make a commitment to do it and follow through on my commitment.

I commit to spending an hour in the studio every night. I don’t need to know the ‘why’ of my not creating. I need to take action now that I’ve identified the impact of my avoidance. It’s a pretty simple equation:

No studio time every day = an absence of joy every day.

Just as habits can be broken, habits can be built. Habits can be kept.

Up until our wedding in April, I had a daily habit of spending time in the studio every day.

It was good for my soul. Good for my being present in my life.

I’ve broken the habit. I can fix it. I have that power. I choose to step into my power and create the more of what I want in my life every day.

Joy. Harmony. Love. Peace and the mystery of creativity expressing itself in every way I am in the world.

 

 

The mystery of peace: the ultimate un-guide to surrender.

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I went to the river yesterday. I went to visit the place where the 2 heart rocks we laid last summer for Ellie The Wonder Pooch are tucked into the trees.

I wanted to tell her about Beaumont. About his arrival next week into our home and how he has already taken up residence in my heart.

I wanted to let her know it was okay. That my heart has room for only love and she is always a loving presence in my heart.

Ellie. Life. The Universe. Maybe just summer and its tangled overgrowth, had a different idea.

I could not find her rocks. I’d found them just last month on a walk along the river. I knew they were there. But I could not find them.

I laughed.

Oh that trickster Ellie. That wonderful, loving, caring girl. As always, she wanted to make it easy for me. She wanted to let me know, “It’s okay.”  She’s not worried about Beaumont’s presence in our home and hearts. She knows there’s always room for Love.

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When I was at the river, I hadn’t really thought about the date. Hadn’t noticed that tomorrow, June 23rd, is the day she left us last year.

The serendipity and the mystery of it all is astounding to me.

In my post last year about Ellie’s passing, Jodi Aman wrote, “Thank you Ellie! You were a guide in this life, but now it’s time for you to guide from the other side. Still connected, but even more powerfully!”

Is this part of the mystery of life? That when we leave this place we have the capacity to guide, even more powerfully, from the other side?

Life is a powerful and mysterious journey.

Yesterday, walking by the river, through the woods, sitting listening to the gurgling of the water as it flowed past, I was immersed in the awe and the beauty of that moment in time, that place on earth.

I felt the spirit of Ellie splashing in the water. Felt her warm, wet body leaning into mine.

I felt a part of something bigger, more grand, more spectacular than anything I could ever imagine.

I felt part of life.

Flowing.

Moving.

Evolving.

Being all around me and within and part of me.

I felt in the flow. In the moment. In the place where I sat.

I felt at peace.

At ease.

At One with the mystery and beauty and wonder of life flowing all around.

The mystery of life is not that we live and then we die. It is that we are born.

That from one natural act, one sperm survives its journey to unite with one egg to become the uniqueness, and the sameness of each and every one of us. That from that one act, we are created and emerge into this world through the gift and mystery of life becoming matter.

It is that a seed falls into the ground and a flower grows. A sapling becomes a tree. A blade of grass becomes a field of grasses waving in the sun. That a bird flies, a cow moos, a rooster crows.

It is that a river flows past until it reaches the sea. That nature abounds with bounty. That life creates itself again and again and again.

There is so much I do not know, do not understand, do not comprehend in this world. There is war and death and dying and man hurting one another, killing one another, destroying one another, and still, life keeps creating. Re-inventing itself, again and again and again.

And in that creation is the hope, the faith, the knowing that to create is to give birth to the possibility of Love overcoming hatred, fear, discrimination, self-loathing.

In life creating itself again and again is the knowing that until we find ourselves at peace, sitting by a river, or just sitting beside one another where ever we are at and loving one another exactly how we are, life will keep creating itself again and again and again.

That’s the true mystery. We keep creating life even in the midst of all the turmoil, angst, war and hatred that abounds on this place called earth.

And in the midst of it all, that a wonder pooch knows better than me when it’s time to let go, time to move on, time to create again a place in my heart and hearth where a four legged friend can roam and show me the way to be at peace in a world that sometimes feels like it’s gone mad, and still, always has room for Love.

In the presence of Love, the wonder pooch once again teaches me to be at peace no matter where I am in the world, no matter how fierce the winds or hot the sun. To be at peace and know it is only when I am at peace I create peace all around me.

Namaste.

 

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Elizabeth at Almost Spring invited me to take up the challenge of posting a photo a day and writing a story/article about a word related to the photo.

I took the photo above on the ridge above the river yesterday. I was enchanted by the wisps of the seed pods, the delicate tendrils of its feathering strands protecting the bud.

This post is also my first exploration into the word ‘mystery’. A month ago, I made a decision to explore what I don’t know about  surrender, hope, faith, mystery, loss, God, and the power of love. To seek the unknown is to journey into what I know and allow space for ‘what else’ to appear. It is to live within the question, not knowing or needing the answer.

This is the first post of five on ‘mystery’.  I’m curious to see what will emerge.

 

 

 

 

Being a mother is a journey of faith: The ultimate un-guide to surrender.

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Happy Birthday Alexis!

Happy Birthday Alexis!

On May 21st, I made a commitment to myself to explore the unknown of all I think I know about surrender, hope, faith, mystery, loss, God, and the power of love. 

Today, I begin the journey into ‘mystery’.

But first, a few final thoughts on faith.

Twenty-nine years ago, on this date, I became a mother for the first time.

I hadn’t planned on being a mother. My then husband and I didn’t really think children fit into our lifestyle and, given I’d had two previous ectopic pregnancies, the doctors didn’t really think it would happen anyway.

Alexis had other ideas.

When evidence of her presence within me was made known, the doctors thought it was another ectopic. They operated only to inform me, I wasn’t pregnant. I had an ovarian cyst.

I was adamant.

I am pregnant.

I insisted they do another pregnancy test. My body didn’t lie. I was pregnant.

Given I’d had major abdominal surgery and my history, the risk of miscarriage was high.

“You need to stay in bed for the first three months,” my doctor told me. He had been away when the drama of the ‘non-pregnancy’ surgery took place and was livid it had happened at all. He was not about to let anything happen to this child.

Neither was I. I willingly went to bed for three months and chose to make it an exploration of the mystery and awe of motherhood, holding firmly to the life growing within my body.

There was one thing that carried me through those months of uncertainty. I hadn’t realized it before until I spent the past few days musing on ‘faith’. To carry my child to full term, I had to have faith. In my doctor. The medical system. They mystery of life and the capacity of my body to nurture and nourish this tiny embryo growing and evolving within me, and the desire of my unborn child to come into the world.

Faith carried us through.

Alexis turns 29 today. It has been faith that has brought us through the ebbs and flows of life in all its mystical and magical intricacies.

Faith that Love truly is the answer.

Faith that Love is all we need to hold onto, to support us, to surround us.

Love is the all of everything we’ve imagined possible. Everything we’ve desired. Everything we’ve known.

Since becoming a mother 29 years ago today, (longer if I count the pregnancy!), I have learned a great deal about surrender, hope, faith, mystery, loss, God, and the power of love. 

My daughters have been my greatest teachers.

Being a mother has been my greatest journey.

For it is in being a mother I have had to learn to surrender, to keep hope alive, to have faith in life itself and to delve fearlessly into its mysteries. Being a mother has taught me and challenged me to surrender to loss, make room for the Divine and to give into the power of love.

There is so much in this world I do not know. So much about life and living and loving fearlessly I have yet to explore.

Before I became a mother, I thought I knew it all. I thought I had life figured out and that once I did become a mother, it would be a pretty clearcut, straight forward journey of raising them and setting them on their path with the prerequisite education, tools and hope chest filled with all they needed to live adult lives in an adult world.

Being a mother has taught me how little I knew then about Love, and how much I don’t need to know about anything else now because, in Love’s light, everything else pales.

My eldest daughter turns 29 today. For 29 years she has taught me the true meaning of surrender, hope, faith, mystery, loss, God, and above all, the power of love.

I am grateful. I am blessed.

Thank you Alexis for being my teacher, my guide, my gift upon this journey.

Much love and Happy Birthday!

Faith is a matter of grace: The ultimate un-guide to surrender.

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Life is the practice of turning up every day however it presents itself. In each step we take, we find the grace of being present to what the day presents within another moment of practice.

When I was a young girl I learned to play the accordion. I didn’t want to play the accordion. I wanted to play the piano. But my father loved the accordion and insisted that is what my sister and I take.

“You can’t take a piano to a party,” he’d say and under my breath I’d mutter, “I wouldn’t be caught dead taking an accordion to a party.” Hyper conscious of what my friends would think, I held my secret of accordion mastery close.

My sister and I had to practice daily. She dutifully put her fingers to the keys, squeezing the bellows in and out, carefully following the notes on the sheet of music laid out on the music stand before her.

I would practice more haphazardly. I’d fidget and stall. Chatter about how the notes danced on the page without my having to play them and squeeze out notes just for fun. I’d play tunes I’d heard on the radio, believing I intuitively knew the notes that needed to follow each note without needing the music in front of me. With each piece I played, I had faith the next would follow. I had faith my body would know which note belonged.

I was good at playing by ear. Not so good at following the notes. Though, when I had to, I could, follow the notes that is. It’s just they were not want interested me most. I wanted to experiment. To chart my own path. Create my own sounds. Test the limits of my faith in my body to know which note came next just by the sound of the last one that I played.

When it came to exam time, my sister always beat me by one or two marks. I didn’t have her patience, nor commitment to practice. I al.so didn’t have her faith in the value of practicing studiously every day.

I no longer play accordion. Yet, when given the chance, I will sit down at a piano keyboard and attempt to play the notes of a popular song. In my mind, I play beautifully. On the keyboard, it’s another matter.

I have lost the art of knowing the music. Of feeling each note before it appears and having faith my body will know which one to play without needing to read it on a sheet of music in front of me.

Faith is like that. It takes daily practice and a deep commitment to living it, whatever it is for me, every single day. It takes trusting the unseen note will appear because it is the one that fits next to the last one just played.

In the art of living faith on a daily basis, daily, moment by moment, practice is an essential ingredient to finding the path where I belong.

It doesn’t always come naturally to me, but with practice, it does come with grace.

 

 

 

 

 

Have faith: the ultimate un-quide to surrender.

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Let your heart take flight

Faith is the bird that feels the light when the dawn is still dark.

                                                                                                                                            Rabindranath Tagore

I am talking with a friend about this word ‘faith’. About how I struggle to understand. To let go of my resistance. To move beyond the struggle.

 

He tells me about a conversation he had with a friend about Christianity. About his friend’s concern for his soul because my friend has told him he is not ‘a Christian’. That his faith is not based on a religious belief but on something less defined, less structured.

“I believe God is big enough to understand my faith is not expressed through doctrine,” he tells me.

Or at least, that’s what I remember him saying though I think I may have the exact words wrong.

Even knowing I may not be quoting him correctly, I have faith he will understand his words meant a lot to me.

I struggle with the leap into the unknown without a label.

It is the biggest leap I’ve ever taken.

To simply surrender my need for the label, to free fall as I am without having to define myself with words to explain who I am or where I am in my faith.

I believe the Universe holds me safe in its embrace, no matter what words I use to define my position.

Shunryu Suzuki Roshi says to “Believe in nothing.”

 “I discovered that it is necessary, absolutely necessary, to believe in nothing. That is, we have to believe in something which has no form and no color—something which exists before all forms and colors appear… No matter what god or doctrine you believe in, if you become attached to it, your belief will be based more or less on a self-centered idea. 

~ Shunryu Suzuki Roshi — with Vishnu Dhakarge.

Believe in nothing. Know that all is exactly as all is.

Have faith in the all of everything and the nothing that exists without words, without labels, without form.

It is the challenge of the leap. I want to belong. To be part of, to fit in yet I know that for me, deep within my soul is the desire to be free of the forms I want to fit into, to leap beyond the idea of who I am as defined by the labels I wear to fit in.

I leap.

And breathe.

To have faith, I must surrender my need to be attached to the knowing of where I belong. I must trust the road will rise up to meet me. I must have faith my wings will appear as I freefall into the unknown of the nothing that is beyond my belief.

 

A Pup Named Beau

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He is small and cute and soft and cuddly. He curled up in my arms and in one instance, captured my heart.

Not one of the three of us who went to meet him could resist his charm. Not one of us had any doubt — he belongs in our home. He is the one!

He weighs all of 5 – 8 lbs right now and full grown will be about 50.

He is joy and love and wonder and awe and he will be coming home in two weeks and we are all excited.

After visiting with him on Saturday in the home where he was born, just south of Edmonton near a town called Beaumont, we drove back towards Calgary and talked about names.

Oskar. Finnegan. Mulligan (C.C. is a golfer) Fitzgerald (Ellie was named after Ella Fitzgerald and Alexis is a singer). We rode in silence for awhile with one of the three of us occasionally throwing out a suggestion.

Herbert. Max. Snoopy. Digby.

And then, C.C. suggested Beaumont.

Alexis and I both loved it. He was born just outside the town of Beaumont. It can easily be shortened to Beau. It suits him.

Beaumont it is and in two weeks Beaumont will take over our house just as he’s already taken up residence in our hearts.

He is a Sheepadoodle. We met both his parents and they are lovely. Ara is a black and white spotted poodle (she gave the pups their colouring) and Max, the dad, is a big, lovable, happy sheepdog.

We are all so very excited and eager to bring him home and have him become part of our family.

And when we got home that evening, I walked out into the backyard and stood beneath the crabapple tree where a jeweled container of Ellie’s ashes is buried beneath the Buddha statue and told her of our new baby boy’s arrival.

I think she’s happy too. As Alexis said as we drove home, “Ellie would like him mom. She’d want you  to be happy.”

She’s right. And I am.

Happy and excited. Bathed in the joy and anticipation, filled with hope and faith and love.

Beau is in my heart.

FAITH is a quiet voice within: the ultimate un-guide to surrender

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On May 21st, I made a commitment to myself to explore the unknown of all I think I know about surrender, hope, faith, mystery, loss, God, and the power of love. I felt these words were all inclusive of my seeker’s journey and declared that I would dive deeper into clarity by exploring each word without expectation of an outcome, recognizing that staying unattached to my need for an outcome is a challenge for me.

I began on the Friday with five days of meditation and musing on the word surrender, moved on to hope the following Friday and because of coaching at Choices, carried my exploration of hope into this week.

Today, I begin the journey into faith.

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Five letters and still, it is a word of deep meaning, conflict, confusion.

To have complete trust or confidence in someone or something.

Does it not begin with me? Does having faith in myself not mean trusting myself implicitly?

I trust myself to turn up. How I turn up is another matter. There are times I can trust myself to completely turn up, pay attention, speak my truth and stay unattached to the outcome.

And then there are those times when my ego overrides self-trust, self-knowing, eagerly clawing back what it perceives to be the lost ground of my ignoring its entreaties to listen up and take heed of its advice.

 

Leaning into the unknown, leaning beyond what I know to be true, I find this shimmering along the edge of reason:

I can’t trust my ego.

I can trust my heart.

The ego. It would pummel and push, prod and probe to get me to submit to its will, to give into its cries of “I know best what is right for you. Trust me. Don’t let go of all that I am because I am all that matters to you.”

Faith is to not submit to ego. Faith is to trust my heart.

It is to allow, to accept, to trust in the still, quiet voice deep within that rises up as softly and mystically as mist in the early morning rising from the valley bottom. It is the cool, damp softness of dew lying on a leaf. The gentle flutter of butterfly wings caressing the air.

There is much about faith I do not know. I must trust in the process of discernment and allow what is not known to appear. I must trust in the still, quiet voice within to rise up and open my heart to its teachings. I must trust in my heart to show me the path to have faith in its teachings.

HOPE: The ultimate un-guide. There is always hope for common ground.

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Between the two sides of any disagreement is the hope of finding common ground. When we courageously allow space for both positions to co-exist, we create room for possibility of something different to arise.

Yesterday, while preparing for a meeting with someone who is deeply upset by circumstances in their life, one of my co-workers suggested that what we needed to do was find a way to honour both positions. A and B. Our job, my co-worker said, is not to judge who’s right or wrong, but to accept their  truth exists in both their perspectives. Now let’s find a way to support them so they can move beyond the pain of where they’re at.

Imagine if every disagreement had space for both sides to co-exist without needing to make one right, the other wrong.

Imagine if we stopped defending against differing opinions, and made room for both to breathe into the possibility of common ground.

So often, when faced with another opinion, a differing view, we become locked in holding onto our position for fear letting go will make us wrong, stupid, something other than right.

Would you rather be right than happy?

I felt it last night when C.C. and I were discussing a fairly banal subject only to get locked in opposite sides. Neither of us wanted to let go of our position. Neither of us wanted to admit defeat.

It wasn’t so much I wanted to be right, I just didn’t want to be wrong. 🙂

We easily dissolved the discord but sometimes, it’s not so easy to resolve opposing views when two people become locked in taking sides, hoping the other will cross-over or admit defeat or at least give up their position so the other doesn’t have to give up theirs.

What if we could hold both points of view in harmony? What if we could make space for both truths to co-exist without one being right, the other wrong?

The desire to be right destroys all hope of finding harmony.

 

With every aspect of life, when we allow all perspectives to co-exist within the same space, without judgement, condemnation or complaint, we create room for hope to also co-exist within conflict. Love to co-exist within fear. Peace within war.

When we find the courage to  let go of holding onto our differences and fall with grace into celebrating the differing points of view that make each of us unique, magnificent human beings, we create the possibility for common ground amidst the turmoil of living every day.

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