More on Authenticism….

We’re taught to honor our mother and our father.

We’re taught to honor ‘God’ – however that is defined to us and for us.

We’re taught to honor our teachers, elders, coaches, priests/ministers/etc., often regardless of their behaviour and only for the position they occupy.

We’re taught to honor our work ethic.

We’re taught to honor our nation’s flag, agendas, missions, etc.

We’re taught to believe that in honoring all else, we will have become honorable in how we live. And yet, who have we become?

Where in all of this are we taught to honor ourselves? Where in all of this are we ever encouraged to even wonder who that is?

In all of this, where does the truth of what is meaningful to each of us, go?

Perhaps we do not lose that which is authentic to us – it is never discovered to be lost!

Imagine a world where we teach our children how to discover that which is unique and authentic to them. We cannot do this when we are still lost to ourselves.

Breathing is good….

Authenticism – the new ‘ism’ for the 21st Century

Having just spent almost two weeks at Oceanstone, I am filled with the mixed feelings of leaving there and being here. As much as I am soothed by being welcomed into this village of consideration and support; by the beauty of days at the edge of the Atlantic… sun gleaming off the water, winds blowing through the trees…. I am also soothed by being home with my family. I am noticing that my desire to be away is now more readily gratified by frequent and shorter trips.

My time at Oceanstone was first with a group of (yet again) incredible women in the ‘Whispers from Within: Women’s Writing Retreat’, as well as a couple of days in conversation with a small, corporate community. As different as these two frameworks were, the content is always the same: it’s about being authentic and present to the truth of our own experience.

During this time, someone asked me what I thought were the most important things for a powerful life. What came to mind for me was: tell the truth (not as an absolute but the truth of your experience), say ‘no’ when that’s what feels right and ask for what you want. How difficult can that be? Plenty! Such simple things and yet such huge turmoil around living them!

Throughout our days of conversation that included just those things (tell the truth, etc), I noticed that I would frequently hear the comment of how ‘intense’ this process was… of how much ‘intensity’ there was in this five-day retreat. After repeated expressions of this notion, I took the opportunity to step directly into the ‘intensity’ conversation and take a look at what was really going on.

In fact, it was not complicated or complex. What we were doing was having conversations that were NOT the usual habituated drivel that fills our day… the kind of conversations that are about the weather, about last night’s sports scores, about a new restaurant, etc. Our days were filled with conversations that required that we show up for our own lives; that we stay awake and that we engage. They demanded that we pay attention to what was being said, not only outside of us but inside of us. And there were constant invitations for us to check in with what was real for us, true for us and meaningful for us.

We encouraged and were encouraged to take all the time and space that we needed to say what was on our minds and in our hearts. We sat quietly until someone finished what they had to say. We gave neither advice nor did we take responsibility for someone else’s problem, challenge or uncertainty. We had few answers and many enormous questions! We told the truth, as it existed for each of us; we said ‘no’ to what we were unwilling to engage and we asked for what we wanted. And when the tears flowed, we sat and were present as that wave of new life moved through and envlivened us all.

Every day became an invitation to discover more about ourselves through our connection with each other – right then and there, in the moment that we were in – and not put off or put aside the things that pressed up against us inside ourselves for the easier and more convenient story about someone else. We left out stories behind and in their place, became open to who else we might discover ourselves to be.

Through it all, what kept coming to mind for me is that this was about ‘authenticism’. It was not about ‘feminism’ or ‘not masculine-ism’ – but was about being willing to be seen and heard for the truth of who we are/were in that moment. One breath to the next.

Perhaps we live in a world that is starved for AUTHENTICISM! Women and men – being authentic in their thoughts, conversations, expressions; being present and whole; being willing to engage without having to know where it will all end up. We are all too familiar with the culture of pretense, external referencing and approved expectations. It is the culture that has given us what we have today. It may well be that the time has come for the wave of ‘authenticism’ – the Authenticism Movement! – to come into our awareness.

Prepare for intense! Prepare for what it feels like to be alive, present and engaged in the living of our own lives! That is what ‘authenticism’ brings into our lives. The alternative to all of this – to this ‘intensity’ – is a life of habituation, repetition and nibbles at the edges of our own potential.

I, for one, am ready for the full meal deal!

Breathing is good…..

Men as wounded – women as balm

I wonder how many men will die today because they can’t be real…authentic….present, to themselves or anyone else…vulnerable…fragile. How many men will die because they are unwilling or unable to cry…ask for help…let go…surrender to themselves…break free of their history…live their life in a meaningful way?

Having spent the last week awash in compelling conversations, I am mindful of my commitment to work primarily with women through to the end of 2009. It is not that men are unwelcome – it is more that they choose not to show up. It is not that I do not find them worthy – it is that they do not find themselves worthy. Fear often stops them from discovering who they are: fear that they are not what they try to pretend to be and equally fearful that they are. It is not an easy place for them to stand.

When I read Ray’s blog entry of March 22nd, I felt great hope. I thought of a world filled with men who were willing to ‘go deep’ into themselves…into their own lives…and do so without hiding. I imagined a world where these men become the fathers who guide their young sons to do the same, teaching not by telling but by becoming it themselves. I thought of a world filled with men and women willing to see and be seen, hear and be heard, invite and be welcomed.

I wondered about the world we’ve created and what else we might create. Just how many generations thick IS the way of the so-called dominant male? For how many decades have men been teaching their sons not to cry, not to feel, not to let go, using whatever form of physical and/or emotional aggression that got the job done? For how long have men brutalized their sons in the name of discipline and ‘teaching him to be a man’ without once stopping to consider: what am I creating here? What have I become from these same things in my own life from so long ago? Do I even like who I am? To know these things, we must all ‘go deep’ and remember….even when we don’t want to.

As I write, these thoughts rumble through:
* We can’t give what we haven’t got. I cannot teach my children to be who I myself am not. It all begins with me.

* We can’t change the world unless and until we change ourselves. As I change myself, and you change yourself, etc. our global community becomes a reflection of all those changes. That’s the order in which it occurs. So, to think that I can will or wish the world to change while I insist on being the same, is a fools’ game.

* The link between the generation that I am and the next one to come (or between the NOW and the FUTURE) is called parenting. How I ‘parent’ (meaning influence the world view of) the children in my presence (mine or anyone else’s) will determine who they become. And who they become will determine MY future.

The world is in desperate need of being changed. Not the world we live ON (the planet) but the world we live FROM (the inventions of our own making) which have deeply wounded the planet. We cannot change the planet, we can only change how we live on the planet. We do not own this space – we are just camping out. Gaia has already demonstrated that she will take care of herself, even if it means that many of us will die as she does so. She has been here far longer than any of us can even imagine – and she will be here long after we have disappeared as a species.

If we want to change the world, the one we are responsible for is the one we live FROM that profoundly damages the one we live ON. To change the world, we must become the change we seek. Then, in so doing, we have something different from how it has been to offer the next generation that they might shape that world differently.

Thank you, Ray. In your words, I see hope. I see the pathway for men to awaken to themselves and cease mindlessly forming lives that do not feed the soul. I see the invitation for men not just to teach their young sons but to learn from their young sons how to remember the young son they once were – and free themselves.

Women can neither free nor save men from themselves. Nor can they devote their lives to being the soothing balm that is spread on their festering wounds. That is something that men must do for themselves.

Women can only awaken to their own potential, and move on.

Breathing is good…..

Leadership as a result

Today is Day 5 of the ‘Whispers from Within’ women’s writing retreat, and we’re done. Given that I do not hold myself as separate from the experience, I am mindful that I am not who I was when I arrived on Monday, and I’m wondering how I’m different. In this moment, even when the details escape me (it’s been a very intense week!), I am clear that I am more than I was five days ago.

I live a magical life! I get paid to engage in vibrant, creative, soul-sourcing, life expanding conversations with others that are designed to be invitations to our own evolution. I get to be open, honest, clear, simple and direct in being present with others and in turn, witness the powerful results when we all discover how to engage in this way. In the blink of an eye, we collectively create in moments that it would take months to create in our usual fashion of hinting, hedging, negotiating, mediating and trying to manipulate what we want. This week, we all discovered what the results can look like from those 60-seconds of authentic presence.

Part of this five-day process included watching Al Gore’s “An Inconvenient Truth’. This time what popped out for me was the Al Gore enquiry (AGE) of ‘How should I spend my time on this earth?’ following the near-death of his son. Intensity has a way of helping us focus.

This week has been intense – and the clarity of focus that comes with it is life-changing. In that intensity, when I ponder the AGE, I am clear that what fills my soul is engaging with others in conversations that awaken us all to a more potent way to live. And in that exploration, I am drawn to the courage and sense of irreverence that women bring to it.

As I listened to these women engage and interact over the last five days, the notion of ‘leadership’ flashed into my awareness at several different times. It was so clear to me and so simple: leadership is not a verb… it’s not a behaviour but a result that unfolds naturally from our willingness to engage! The alternative is to sit on the sidelines of life and tell stories about how it could have or should have been – and these women tired of their stories and moved on to something else that profoundly changed their lives in five short days.

Breathing is good…..

Water in the cracks….

A new world-view is like water seeping into the cracks. It may not look like much and yet, the implications can be profoundly transformative!

Many who have come through a WEL-Systems stream of experiences have also discovered how to bring their awakening into their existing world. They become the long-overdue bright light shining into dark corners. Their depth of knowledge of and experience in their system of choice, combined with a potent new perspective, allows them not only to speak of what they see differently but to also take their colleagues and clients far beyond just the ‘rant’ of how it could/should be. They can actually show them how to see differently, experience differently and engage differently. The result? Hope and possibility begin to replace a sense of resignation to an entrenched ‘system’, untouched and untouchable.

Whether it’s professional sports coaching, physiotherapy, mediation, education, addiction recovery or corporate leadership; whether it’s about the individual or a collective that presents as family, friends or colleagues/community, etc, more and more people who have allowed their WEL-Systems experiences to transform their perspectives and their lives are stepping back into what has been familiar to them and bringing new potential into what they might just as easily have left behind.

I remember long ago, in my WEL-Systems:NLP days, having lunch with a wonderful woman from Montreal. Sitting in the sun by the Rideau Canal on a bright and breezy May day, we talked about growing and discovering; about expanding and becoming and about how differently we might live our lives. Her questions of me seemed to revolve around her interest in leaving her field of business and passion for more than 20 years (Real Estate development) and becoming an NLP Trainer. As I listened, I wondered: seems to me that there are lots of folks in the field of real estate development who would greatly benefit from getting their lives back! And yet, it had not occurred to her to bring her new knowledge into a community that she knew well, that she (at least at one time) greatly valued and had been her passion, and with which she was intimately familiar, greatly knowledgeable and densely interwoven. Who better to offer new hope in what had become a closed-loop system?

It takes courage to take a new perspective and enter an existing collective that is deeply committed to its own world view and often hardened for its own self-preservation. It takes particular courage to do so in a system like healthcare/medicine, education or – the big one! – family systems that have big teeth and bite back! To become one of the growing number of small voices in the wilderness that proffer a different perspective is an act of personal integrity. Doing so holds the potential to change the world.

It’s not always easy to move through the world choosing to be authentic in what we say and do. And yet, to do otherwise is a betrayal of who we know ourselves to be capable of becoming. In that moment of betrayal, all that is left is what we already have – and our drive to create results in getting more of what we’ve already got. Maybe we’re the one who’ll break that cycle.

Breathing is good…..

The complexity is in the undoing

I was recently in conversation with a consultant who is creating a new Media Center for the WEL-Systems Institute/Louise LeBrun websites. As we worked together to determine what would be meaningful in helping those who are seeking to find the information they require, in a way that is easy for them to access.

After a couple of weeks of email exchanges as well as phone calls, I was struck by one conversation on a Friday afternoon. Her comment to me was: ‘Before we begin (our meeting), I want you to know that I am astounded by the depth and scope of the body of knowledge that you’ve created; by the extensive presence on the internet and by the diversity and quality of material that you’ve written. However, this material is highly complex and will be a challenge to help people understand.”

As I listened, I found myself feeling good about all that has unfolded over the last 20 years and also feeling ‘off’ somehow by her comment about the complexity of the work because, in my experience of it, the complexity does not lie in the WEL-Systems material/models/body of knowledge/articles.

After a moment of pondering, I said to her: “I think that’s an interesting observation. And, in my experience of it, the complexity does not lie in what constitutes a WEL-Systems approach to living. That cannot be more simple and consists of:

* Breathe
* Follow the impulse
* Let yourself know the truth of your own experience
* Stay in the tough conversations
* Be willing to stand alone
* Shape or be shaped by your world

However, there is complexity in all that it takes to penetrate and break through the decades of cultural conditioning and intergenerational insistence that we NOT DO those very things. Complexity exists in what is required for us to UNLEARN what has been pounded into our very being for decades; and to find the willingness and the ability to move beyond the fear of ‘straying too far’ and allowing ourselves to live differently.”

For me, it’s simple, it’s easy and it’s profoundly life-altering. We are all born with the natural, instinctive ability and willingness to live large, live openly and honestly, and live meaningfully. All we have to do is remember who we are…..

Breathing is good…..

Women with women

I’m at Oceanstone (www.oceanstone.ns.ca) for another 10 days. Today is Day 1 of the 2nd ‘Whispers from Within’ women’s writing retreat
(http://www.wel-systems.com/programs/WR.htm) and already it’s clear that it will be another powerhouse experience for us all.

Smart women. Courageous women. Funny women. Women waking up! Not exactly a burden to spend five days in whatever conversations prove to be meaningful for us to engage. And that is how it will unfold – without agenda, without predetermined result, without work or effort or struggle – as we each become willing to just show up, be ourselves and engage.

Already, from just three hours of conversation, we’ve discovered that to be inspiring to others we must first – ourselves! – be inspired! To attempt the second without the first is short-lived and has a hollow ring. More like getting people to do things that inviting people to become something authentic to themselves.

And joy! Already we’re aware that it is not that joy is absent from our lives, it is that we’ve learned to ration it out so as not to overdo it! Are we saving for the lean years?

And doing nothing. We are about to discover that our greatest contributions come not from doing but from being. As we become, so do our lives unfold.

There’s that thought again: 60 seconds of authentic presence will undo decades of habituated thinking. I know that this week will be a succession of 60-second’s that will change us all.

Breathing is good….

Trusting their genius is sometimes painful

So as not to lose myself, there was a time when I had to become willing to lose the people I love.

There was a time when I walked away from my mother…and my brother….and my father….knowing that if I did not, I would die. Not just a death of the spirit but a death of the body. Self-destructive. Self-abusive. Filled with rage and vengence. Slowly rotting from the inside out. Having become toxic to myself.

I wept….I pleaded….I shared…and then I walked away. And I did not look back.

In those moments, without my even knowing, I had found inside the genius of who I am, the place to stand to trust the genius of who each of them was and is.

Things happened…..I grew…..they pulled and tugged and I held fast to that place inside myself…to stand tall and not apologize for who I was becoming.

And through it all, my mother found herself. And then my brother found himself. And my father, as I knew him to be inside himself, was lost to me.

Some find their way and that is their genius. Some continue to appear lost to us and yet in the genius of who they are, have found the way for them.

Who said that my life was destined to be without pain? The question I now ponder….what else might this pain help me to discover about myself? And what else lies ahead?

Breathing is good…..

Creating a meaningful life worth living

My thoughts continue to wander back to the March 8th event in Halifax for International Women’s Day. That idea of celebration – not of what we do/have done, not of who we are but of who we are capable of becoming.

Just who is that, anyway? I know for sure that we’ll never find out if we keep waiting for someone to show us the way. Waiting for an expert/mentor/guide/guru to turn the lights up and with sweeping gesture point the way. That’s like Columbus staying tied up at the docks, waiting for someone to hand him a map to the New World. What we need is one foot in front of the other, moving us forward. Whatever we find, it will be because we discovered it – not because it was found for us.

The pieces float around in my awareness: global warming; war; violence against women and children; poverty; starvation; ignorance; over population…and the list goes on. I am noticing that all of these represent as a growth industry. Growth in the sense that all of these are indeed, growing in both density and intensity. (No doubt, those who hold stocks in the industry of war are getting rich, indeed!) And growth in the sense that all of it exists as an invitation for us to discover the selves that we already are that are most capable of creating other than all of this! However, like we found our way to this plethora of devastation, so must we equally find our way to that of evolution by intention.

I can feel Gaia’s struggle to breathe in my own chest. Are we really separate? ‘As above, so below’. Are we, truly, each a microcosm of the whole? If so, then what we do to her, and to each other, we do to ourselves.

Wave by wave, shifting plates moving at increasing speeds, winds raging across oceans and wreaking havoc on the land that it meets…..these are evidence of Gaia taking it back. An organic presence engaging to return herself to her natural state of being – whatever it takes.

Perhaps it’s time for us to do the same. Perhaps it’s time for all of us (women and men) to take back our natural state of being – whatever it takes. Perhaps now, more than at any other point in history, we stand at the edge of our own potential. How many times have we been here?!?!?! How many times have we stood at the precipice and rather than take that leap into a greater expression of our selves; rather than launch ourselves forward into that potential, we have succumbed to our fear and pulled back….only to be swallowed up once again by our own mediocrity. When we are immense and we repeatedly refuse to claim it as so, our rage our at our own cowardice wreaks havoc on everything around us. As Pogo has said:”We have met the enemy and he is us.”

Taking it back. All of it. All of it! Taking back my right to breathe. Taking back my voice and my right to use it. Taking back my destiny and my capacity to shape it by myself, for myself.

Taking back my ability to tell rather than ask; to declare rather than negotiate. Taking back my willingness and ability to challenge rather than please, appease, placate and soothe.Taking it back. Being the one who decides whether I will or won’t; and when I do, what it is that it will be. No longer waiting for someone else to do it for me, or show me the way, or tell me how long, how far and how fast. No longer willing to bow to a smarter one, or older one, or one that has more credentials. No longer willing to hold on to what has long been dead, even when we all pretend that it still has life.Moving on! No longer willing to stand still when my feet are itching to move; my legs are screaming for the long run; and my heart is pounding in my chest in the anticipation and excitement of that run! Not a race against anything or anyone, just a run for the joy of discovering how far and how fast I can!

Women, particularly, have waited a long time – patiently, politely – for the space to open up for them to be invited into. Maybe it’s time to create space rather than wait for the invitation; time to simply move ahead rather than wait for the traffic lights of our life to turn green; time for us to put one foot forward, notice where it lands, and move the next. No master plan – just the willingness to engage. Emerging future….

What women need most in our lives is ourselves. To show up for our own lives. To cease being the wallpaper in the lives of others… being that barely noticed, never intrusive backdrop on which the people in our lives play out their dreams and intentions. Maybe it’s time for our own dreams and intentions and, along with that, all that it entails.

In order for anything to change, we have to do it ourselves. We have to do it our own way. Not ‘the way’ that anyone comes up with but our own, unique, individual way. The way that comes to mind and lights each of us up. There is no master plan; no ideal way; no preferred approach. All that we have is that 60-seconds of authentic presence. And we already know how powerful that can be in our lives and in the lives of others.

Paradox presents as my good life, sitting in the midst of so many lives that are not so good. If I am a microcosm of the whole, can any of us be whole when so many of us are not? That is a strange thought for someone who does not hold herself as altruistic. I am far too practical for that and yet, those pieces won’t go away. Is there something instinctual… something tied to our survival as a species… that presses us into paying attention to such things? In this moment, I am reminded of yesterday’s blog of the continuum of individual to collective experience and how, in truth, it is all the same. The more important question becomes: does the individual experience awaken the collective or does the collective experience continue to inflict coma on the individual?

It may well be that women ARE the key to taking back a world that we are both willing and able to be a part of. As much as I wish someone else would do it; and as much as you may wish that for yourself, too, the bad news is that there is no collective without you and me. And that’s where it has to start.

Breathing is good…..

The answer: living a meaningful life

How bold! How brazen! To dare to say that the answer to our collective woes is as simple as choosing to lead a meaningful life.

At one end of a continuum we have the individual and the individual experience. At the other end of the continuum we have the collective and the collective experience. These are not separate but flow into and from each other. There is no beginning and there is no end, and to think it so is an illusion.

If we take both ends of the continuum and curve them around so that they meet, we have what we call ‘reality’.

How do we define what’s ‘meaningful’ at the individual end of the continuum? Whatever we create there will become our collective ‘reality’. To date, our experience of ‘meaningful’ has been defined by that collective experience; has been defined by and imposed by the ‘collective good’ on the individual’s expression – and so, we have what we have today. I am suggesting that when we make room for ‘meaningful’ to be defined by the individual – rather than have the collective imprint of ‘meaningful’ on the individual long before we are able to choose for ourselves – the world changes. And not a nanosecond sooner.

Not to choose when we’re small and nestled (legitimately) into the power of those much larger who surround us, is an intelligent reponse. To continue to live like that long after our chains can no longer hold us, is to be a victim by choice. Do we even notice? Has it become so habituated that we think it’s ‘reality’? To best way to keep someone silent is to teach them to detest the sound of their own voice.

Over the years, I’ve learned that there are very obvious and specific clues to let us know that we are NOT living a meaningful life as an individual.

Disease – of body, mind and spirit – is a clue. How many bodies and minds are ravaged by the dogma of intergenerational ‘because I say so’ and are sacrificed on the alter of habit and socialization? Just how much chronic, debilitating dis-ease do we need to have before we begin to notice that there is a patter unfolding?

Rage/aggression/violence is a clue. How much rage/aggression/violence is perpetrated to appease the unchallenged, mindless demands of some dogma or other? Dogma of religion. Dogma of the gang. Dogma of parenting. Dogma insists that it not be looked at, considered or thought through. To do so would be its demise.

Poverty…ignorance…and all that comes with it. A world view of scarcity comes from the individual (i.e. person, family, state, country, etc.) believing that the larger collective intends it harm or will in some way cause it to be diminished. And yet, how many individuals are not willing to share some of what they have/are/experience with another individual? Where does that sense of Self go?

What brings meaning to my life is living a meaningful life. I can tell I’m doing that when I wake up in the morning and am thrilled to be me! I wake up and am eager to step into my life – warts and all. I welcome and look forward to the tough conversations – with myself and others – that I know will allow me to discover more of who I am. And I trust that from one breath to the next, from one word to the next, my body will tell me exactly what I need to know. When I pay attention, my life means something to me other than just another day in the salt mines.

Living a meaningful life. Most of us don’t even know how to explore what that might be! We’re not encouraged to think about it, ponder it, wonder about it, explore it, challenge ourselves about it. That would be the antithesis to the desired outcome of: just do what you’re told.

Living a meaningful life. Being healthy and well. Trusting the power of the innocence of trusting! Rolling around in today like a dog in a dead fish (sorry about that one! I just can’t get that happy dog experience out of my head!), embracing all that it brings, and looking forward to tomorrow as the explosion of potential that it brings.

Living a meaningful life. Saying what’s true for me, just because it is. Asking for what I want. Saying no because I don’t want to. Letting go even when someone else tells me I should hang on because inside, I know that’s the right thing to do…the right thing to do FOR ME.

Living a meaningful life. Being excited about something! Taking a risk! Stepping into it not knowing where it will go but trusting my desire to engage.

When I choose to pay attention to what moves inside me; when I become willing to BE my own compass; and when I become more willing and able to engage from one moment to the next, my individual life expands. When you do it, and the next person does it, and the next, and the next….the world we share expands.

There is no other way.

Breathing is good….