Emerging Futures

It feels like I’m ready to come up for air and check out the rest of the world.  Between my time in Hawaii, my re-entry into the world of grocery shopping and laundry, engaging in programs and with clients and - let’s not forget! - the riveting moments of ‘Dancing with the Stars’, I’m just now feeling like I’m back in the game and ready to play! 

For some time now, it’s been a challenge for me to find books that hold my interest.  I know… I know… there are lots of wonderful authors, wonderful books/topics, etc. AND after 40 years in the personal evolution/self-development field, I’m finding that much of what’s out there is now on its third pass.  It’s not that I need more - it’s that I need different. 

I was very drawn to Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor’s book - My Stroke of Insight.  Truly a remarkable woman on an equally remarkable journey of self-discovery.  And not just discovery of her ’self’ but discovery of a process of how ’self’ is discovered.  All of her most excellent academic, scientific training had to expand and loosen in order to make room for the magnitude of what she came to know herSelf to be - deeply, profoundly and in her body - as the truth of her own experience.  Well worth the time to read, not just for her inspirational, courageous and heart-warming tale but for the massive challenge that her truth is to the so-called ‘truth’ of the medical sciences.  

And then, as my great luck would have it, Ervin Laszlo’s latest book was published in March of this year  - called Quantum Shift in the Global Brain.  I love the way this man’s mind works.  A philosopher and a scientist, he has a way of standing on the edge of them both so that he can see great distances in either direction.  His message in his last book (The Chaos Point) was a strong one.  In this book, he goes further to lay out what be believes it is going to take to make a difference… fast!  

In all fairness to Dr. Laszlo, I’ve not gone beyond the first three chapters when I say this:  for me, the same piece keeps being overlooked in his work and the work of others.  (Perhaps there’s more at the end?)  With an emphasis on the recognition that we must engage with each other and with our world, differently, it seems to be unrecognized that before we can do either of these, we must first become willing to engage with ourselves, differently.  Without that essential and fundamental shift, all else is not sustainable in challenging environments.  Like using will power and determination to stay on a diet, the minute we’re hungry and food we love presents, our fallback position is to eat.  

Our first requirement is to change how we engage with ourselves. Change how we define what we are. Change our sense of ’self’ and from there, our sense of ‘other’.  In the truest of ways, charity really does begin at home! 

And my last little adventure in magic and mystery has found its launch point in Michio Kaku’s new book Physics of the Impossible, an entertaining and fascinating exploration of the possible science behind the impossible realities of things like phasers, force fields, time travel and teleportation.  Kool!  And not so much because of the things themselves, but because of how in order to make sense of any of it, we have to allow ourselves to let go as we read. My question of such work is always the same:  how does this relate to my life, today; and how do these insights and discoveries invite me to redefine not who I am but what I am? 

Michio Kaku is one of the best theoretical physicists in the world, currently teaching in New York.  When I read what he writes (and he’s written other wonderful books that will stretch your realities and your mind), I allow myself to become lost in the possibility and potential, and be willing to ‘know’ (in my body, where it really counts and not just my intellect) that no truth is an absolute.  From a Logical Levels point of view, what’s true at one logical level can lose ground and fall apart at another.  I love it!  In this strange but effective way of ‘being’, anything becomes possible!  

So, for now, my days and my thoughts are taken up with notions of Emerging Futures and living as a Quantum Biological Human™.  I have these moments of great clarity when I know that a thought or notion that I hold is impossible and I know with equal certainty that it’s true.  My greatest challenge always becomes: can I live with that in my body without it feeling like chaos?  For that to be so, I have to be willing to have many ‘realities’ co-exist and honour each other.  It is not that ‘truth’ wears many masks - it is that truth has many faces.  

So far, I’m doing just fine! 

Breathing is good…..

I love being in the deep end of the pool!  

I love the power of the conversations and the way they change lives.  ”Just talking’ is more than enough to guide us all through ‘invite and allow’ that we might find a new place to stand.  

I love the intensity that accompanies this highly personal, individual and unique journey of discovery.  No two of us are the same - and no two conversations are ever heard the same way.  It is perhaps that immense diversity that is inherent to a holographic universe that has captivated my attention,  fed my curiosity and nurtured my soul for all of these years! 

I love being with women, gathering in a small group, talking about what matters to them. When we get past the (sometimes) initial uncertainty (i.e. what are the rules?  what can I say/not say?  what will they think?  is it ok to be myself?, etc…) there are two things that naturally  flow:  humour and a deep compassion for self and each other.  I believe it is the essential nature of who we are… and of what we are. 

Spending so much time in the deep end of the pool, loving every minute of it… I sometimes find it feels a little strange to ‘return’ to the day-to-day unfoldings of my life.  I have a HUGE capacity for intensity and not every day of my life is intense.  Perhaps that is indeed, the very good news, particularly for the people who love me.    

Returning to my life is often accompanied by a slight sense of disorientation; a sense of not quite knowing what to do with myself without opening to and extending myself into ‘the field’ to sense and perceive, and be sensed and perceived.  It is, after all, a dance… a magnificent flow of energy moving from and through, such that we become unsure of where one ends and another begins.  I think of it sometimes, as not just watching Northern Lights but BEING Northern Lights!  How can anyone tell that it is ever anything but one complete thing?  That there are no moving parts but just the constant flow of the whole?  That in all its movement and flow, it is whole in its every expression.  That is what it feels like to me to be in these intensives.  

Whether it’s ‘Decloaking’ or any of the ‘Emerging Futures’ retreats, it is always electric with the desire to stay open to and be present for ‘the moment’ that will present itself; that will offer the invitation for an ‘emerging future’ experience; and that will either engage and unfold - or not! - based on my willingness to trust, be present and allow myself to be guided by it.  For many, that is where the deepest fear is. 

What will happen if I let go?  What will happen if I choose to engage without knowing?  Who will I become if I allow myself to discover this…. this… power!  Who will I be as ‘mother’… as ‘partner/spouse’… as the daughter that I have always been thought to be?  What will my life become? 

During my adventure last week in ‘Decloaking’, there were moments when I became so aware of my own life.  (After all, in a holographic experience it is never about anyone but me!  Although others present on my holodeck, each is a living expression of some aspect of my own consciousness.  Every other person is my gift of self-discovery, if I choose to accept it.)  Perhaps the most potent for me was to become aware of how profoundly we train our children to ‘be’ who we believe they should be, framed by my definition of what is true and real and right.  They learn well, and they often grow up to be sometimes strident but always faithful defenders of what we’ve taught them to hold as reality.   And then, the moment comes when we discover for ourselves - in the acquired wisdom that can only come from living our lives - that my certainty about my world may be softening at the edges… and I discover my children to be unable and/or unwilling to loosen their grip on ‘truth’ and ‘fact’ and ‘reality’.  In that moment, I may fear losing my children.  Yet in that same moment, I may risk losing myself.

And so, my love for the deep end of the pool… my ease and comfort in my much deeper truth that it is not that I am a good swimmer, it is that I am amphibious and the distinction is irrelevant… allows me to slowly re-awaken to my ability to also move effortlessly across land and thrive on the breezes that stroke its curves and remind me that I am also a physical being in a magnificent  physical world.  That feels so much slower and denser to me, and yet, I know that, too, is me.  

Like rubbing the sleep from my eyes - not because I have dozed off but because I have lived in the Dreamtime - I slowly gain my footing in my ‘real’ world.  Days of grocery shopping, laundry and discussions with the gardner on how to make my grass grow!  And yes, this too is my life and I am so divinely guided in living it.

I am grateful to and for every breath I take.  I know that I am alive, awake and engaged!

Breathing is good…