Living is a choice…

… but living fully is a determination… an intention and an accompanying presence that will not be swayed by anything outside itself… and one that requires we be awake, fully present and both willing and able to engage.

Living fully is no small feat in a world of mediocrity and complacency.  That’s not rhetoric but the cold, hard truth of what stands between me and my enlivened existence!  What we’re up against and what it takes to live a life worth living.  Being alive – breathing in and breathing out – is not living. We can be hooked up to a device that can do that for us.  Is that what I want in my life?

Living fully is MY choice!  I choose to engage at full tilt, recognizing that not everyone around me wants the same for themselves.  It is in those moments that I choose wisely who I spend my time with; who I choose to be in conversation with; and the very nature of those conversations.  Am I willing to mindlessly repeat what everyone else is saying?  No!  Am I interested in saying what will appease and ensure a profound lack of discomfort for myself and others?  No!  Am I willing to allow one nano-second of my life to be invested in what I hold to be drivel?  Not on your life – and certainly not on mine.

More than ever, I am clear that I am looking for The Ten – those 10 women whose hunger to awaken and stay awake is greater than their fear of being different… of standing alone… and of the unknown.  Those 10 women for whom living demands living fully – living large and living meaningful and potent lives!  They are willing to be seen and heard for the truth of who they are.  They speak out and stand up for what they believe in.  They live decloaked lives…. no pretense or hiding; no hiding behind pretending to be who or what others think they should be but living the simple truth of who they know themselves to be and more, to be capable of becoming.

These women know what it means to ‘build it and they will come’.  To go first.  To run where others fear to walk.  They know that lies and betrayals are far more damaging than any truth could ever be!  They know that ‘playing it safe’ will only get them more of what they’ve already got – and that does not reflect who they know themselves to be.

They move forward in their lives because that small voice inside says “GO!” – and they do.  Second-guessing themselves and looking to others for agreement or approval is not in their strategy for living. They trust themselves more than they fear the judgement and disapproval of others.  Their own opinion of themselves is more valuable to them than that of anyone else.  And their lives are living proof of the value of trusting themselves!

I know that those 10 women are there – and that I’ll find them before the end of 2008.  I also know that each of them already is profoundly contagious in the authentic expression of who she is; and is already the attractor for the 10 women who will come into her life!  And so it goes….  I find my 10; each of them finds their 10; and so on and so on and so on.  Who says we can’t change the world??  Who says that each of us… the I AM that we are… can’t be the defining presence that profoundly shapes and creates a new world? Who says we’re not enough; that we’re  not up to it or up for it; that we’re too small or insignificant to change the world?  My life is living proof that none of that is true!

Who else is willing to choose living fully?  Who else is willing wake up and stay awake, becoming the attractor for others who are desperate in their restless and agitated sleep to discover how to wake up?  Who else is ready, willing and able to find their 10… who will each then find their 10…. who will shape their world?

 Playmates.  We all need playmates.  I am seeking those who desire to discover themselves to be an awakened presence in a deeply sleeping world; to become the disturbing presence in a world that profoundly needs to be perturbed!

The power of contagion of an awakened collective.  We already know the effect of contagion of a sleeping…no, not strong enough… a comatose collective.  We’re currently living it!  I, for one, deserve more and better.

Breathing is good…

Breathing is good….

Since returning from the Emerging Futures: Entrepreneurial Women retreat, I’m noticing that I can hardly breathe!  From one day to the next, I catch myself holding my breath – time and again – and wonder what that’s all about!  Typically, breathing comes easily and effortlessly, bringing with it a sense of the vast Space that I AM for my own evolution.  But these last few days, not so!  

This new series of moments, strung together like pearls on a string, are separate and yet very much part of the same overall experience.  Perhaps as I wonder about it, I’ll do it out loud and discover what else is there for me. 

Breath, at the level of dense matter and the physical body, is essential to survival.  And yet I also know that breath, itself, is not the Life Force but the pump that allows that Life Force to move freely and immensely through my physical body.  Small, tight, tiny breaths = small, tight, tiny flow of Life Force.  

My Life Force rides on the crest of the wave of my own breath, making it possible for the ‘energy’ that sources me – body, mind and spirit – to touch every aspect of my being.  When I am not ‘in breath’, energy is significantly reduced, as is my sense of being nourished in body, mind and spirit. 

I’m noticing that when I hold my breath, it is on the inhale.  This leaves my body bracing… pressing against something… vibrating rapidly as if I have to hurry and get through something.  Images, thoughts, ideas, sounds wash over me in a tsunami of cascading notions that seem to somehow smash up against all that I know.  Other times, I have noticed that I have held my breath on the exhale, leaving my body static and tethered to my physical world… feeling slow and stuck or caught in space and time. No images or sounds; no notions or ideas other than the desire to be still.  These days, I am not feeling stuck – I am feeling as if I’m moving at mach speed!  Truth be told, maybe I am….   Maybe my body is trying to catch up to the rest of me.

My non-physical ‘being’ is already light years ahead of where my body stands.  In these moments, I can feel the matter associated to who I have been and what has been, crumbling at the edges at all Logical Levels.  All that I have been and all that is associated to it is moving and shifting and falling apart.  Disintegration is already happening.  Bifurcation is in flow… and my body is letting me know it is doing so with me and all that I am connected to/with in a physical world. 

And so I notice… I stop and take 5 long, slow, deep breaths… and allow myself to relax into the disintegration of my own life.  It is no longer who I am but an echo of who I have been – and it’s time for it to morph and transform and become the ‘more’ that I know I already am.  

Breathing is good…. 

And so I inhale more of who I know I am becoming… and exhale more of who I have been.  Inhale tomorrow… and exhale yesterday.  Inhale potential… and exhale history.  Inhale curiosity and exploration and adventure… and exhale yesterday’s successes, outcomes and results.  

I live in a world… my world… where in order to become, I must let go of who I was, recognizing that it all co-exists in the now.  My body becomes the territory within which this dynamic experience is sensed and embraced and lived. 

In this moment, I am reminded of Susan’s comment during EF:EW about the caterpillar to butterfly process:  that in the formless mass that briefly lives between no-longer-caterpillar and not-yet-butterfly, there is a pulse.  This pulse is the call to become… it is the vibration that invites matter to reform… and it is the call to awaken to the next expression of being.  If the caterpillar is unwilling to let go of what it knows, it cannot become what it does not yet know it is.  In this mush of who I am today, breath and the space it brings makes way for me to notice and follow the pulse.  The pulse is always in the mush – and I am never alone. 

Today, I am mush!  Glorious, life-enhancing mush, with the potential to awaken and engage the ‘me’ that I do not yet know can be!  I’m good with that, and I really do know….

Breathing is good!

Emerging Species, Women and Pollination

I spent last week with a small group of women, talking… about many things, all of which were indicative of but a sliver of their own potential… and mine.  (Visit the Women Gathering blog for more about the week.)

I was deeply moved by my time with them.  I witnessed terror and courage; grief, sadness and loss sharing space with determination and hope.  I rode the wave of discovery, followed by the one of crashinging back into what was, trusting that the next one would be uplifting and move us closer to the shores of our intended destination.  

Just exactly where that was, no one was able to describe.  However, we all knew that this journey we were on – together – would be one long remembered and deeply cherished as having been the beginning of something potent and profound. We were awake and chose to engage in ways that would keep us awake.  

For me, this was yet another journey into the vast and accelerated potential of an Emerging Futures conversation.  They are unlike anything else I engage in.  It requires that we be willing to surrender the intellect and trust the body to lead.  In the lives we live, the only thing we can be sure will never lie to us is our own body.  These Emerging Futures conversations demand that I trust the unique signal that I AM in the world; that I be willing to be fully present and visible; and that I engage with the natural intensity that flows through my body.  These combine to bring the full measure of who I AM in the world to become the invitation to those with me to trust, allow and become that for themselves.  In that moment, magic happens!

Much can be said about these Emerging Futures explorations and will be said in other places.  But for now… for me… what will not leave me is yet one more experience that is evidence of two things:  1) women are the key; and 2) only a woman awake can awaken another woman.  

So familiar is our centuries-old commitment to staying in the coma that we have come to believe protects us from the pain of knowing, we will never abandon it unless it can be replaced with a deep and unwavering trust that we are safe in body, mind and spirit.  Only in the presence of a woman awake is another woman able to touch that Sacred Space where safety resides, becoming willing to shake loose the deep sleep that numbs her to her existing reality. Women awakening and awakening other women – shamelessly and without apology! – is the force that will transform our world.    

We know it’s no longer up to the men.  (And here, as in other places, I am feeling the pull to ‘do the thing’ – you know the one : the one about how I have nothing against men, that there are many fine and honorable men in the world, that I have two sons, a brother and a father all of whom are men, blah, blah, blah…. so suffice to say that all that is a given!)  We know that the world we currently live in is already shaped and defined by men; that many men are themselves saying, that it’s up to the women to clean up the mess (some things never change!); that women are the key to a new and life-sustaining way of being in the world, etc…. and that it’s not working.  If Gaia’s recent and terrifying expressions are any indication, we have precious little time to wake up and smell the roses.  

I know women are the key.  I also know that it is not a process of knowledge or information or training.  It is a process of awakening to what is already there and redirecting the force that we already are.  It is a process of calling up the truth that sits just below the surface and allowing it to move and become a force for redesigning and manifesting a new world.  All this demands a connection to the body in ways that allow the intellect to surrender to the body – and let the body lead.  We have no idea how to do that!  Having spent decades in the throes of repetitive and often brutal reinforcement to always have the intellect override the body, this is not an easy task to accomplish. And yet without it, we are destined to keep doing what we’re doing.  Clearly, it’s not working.  

This is a tough place for many women to stand.  And truth be told?  I don’t think a lot of women are up for it.  There will be a (relatively) small and highly contagious few who will become the attractor for those other few who will be drawn to the vibration of what ‘awake’ carries for them, in their lives.  They, then, will become part of this wave of those highly contagious few… and on and on it will go.  One breath at a time… many times over… by many women awake and shameless in their being so. 

My thoughts continue to unfold from my time last week and often seem random and in some way, chaotic. And yet, I know and trust that all is unfolding exactly as it should. Rather than try to surround them with flowing prose and arrange them in some way that does not come naturally, I share them here as the ‘thought farts’ that they are.  :)  Do with as you will. 

* We are pollinating a new and emerging species.  There is no great mystery as to what that is.  For more than 50  years, our science has been slowly unfolding to us a far more powerful version of the truth of ‘what’ we are.  Not ‘who’ – not our characters or our personalities or our ‘humanity’ but the expression of our physical presence and its connection to the unseen.  These are not explorations of consciousness but adventures of expression through engaging the full measure of our physicality, guided by the intense presence of the unique signal that we are in this world.  We are indeed, Quantum Biological Humans.  Knowing that is not what makes the difference – exploring what that means, is.  

* The Quantum Biological Human™ wall chart (Fully Alive book) gives us a place to stand and from which to explore … and also, a place to move to.  We can choose to stay on the allopathic/Newtonian side and be dazzled in amazement by the Quantum side, or we can cross the divide and explore what it means.  Try it on!  Allow ourselves to experience rather than discuss and philosophize about.   It is a choice – and each of us is response-able for what we choose.  Our lives will become the obvious reflection of what we have chosen. 

* It’s up to women.  It’s up to women to wake up, stay awake and awaken other women.  Not against their will (that would just be more of what we already have!), but by our becoming willing to be seen and heard for the full measure of who we are.  Just be ourselves!  Tell the truth of our own experience, that we might be found by those seeking a different and far more powerful vibration of our own potential in our physical world.  Every time we hide; every time we pretend to be less; every time we become silent and withdraw; every time we live as if someone else’s opinion of us is more important than our own; every time we live as a shadow of who we are, we have become a part of the status quo.  We already know that the stutus quo is killing us.   What do we think we have to lose???? 

* Manifestation is a spiral.  Energy (LifeForce) moves through layers and eventually coalesces into dense matter we call ‘reality’.  As a process, it is predictable and accessible to us all. It is never absent and is constantly expressing.  We are never NOT manifesting!  Our individual and collective realities are the evidential trail of our quality of engaging this process.  It also has elements that we have been taught to separate ourselves from, like intensity (“chill out, slow down, ease up, mellow out”, etc.).  It also demands a strong connection to the unique expression of the signal that I AM in a physical world; and the willingness and ability to decloak and be shamelessly present as that unique expression.  The rest just falls into place.  The Quantum Biological Human is designed to have the signal flow through the device of the body and manifest an outcome from this natural flow.  

I know there will be many more Emerging Futures explorations.  I know that each pass will bring me closer to where I am going… wherever that is!  I trust.  I allow.  I follow the impulse and let go.  Some days, it sucks to be me and most of the time – the vast majority of the time – I love waking up to what and who I know I AM.  It only hurts when I forget. The rest of the time, it is what makes my life the Great Adventure! 

Breathing is good…