Get off my holodeck!

Wow… two in one day!  I really do have to stop listening to the radio….. 

I was driving to pick up my son and was listening to CBC’s ‘AphCanada’ – which I found very disturbing today since this same son intends to enlist and join Canada’s military.  I find myself wondering… maybe I should have let them play with guns, all those years ago.  But I digress….

As I listened to the radio, hearing the sound of my son’s voice coming over the airwaves as if he were in that environment, I was overwhelmed by the degree to which this was not my holodeck.   The thought of creating the world we desire rather than struggling with the world we have; or, in other words, manifesting what we want rather than struggling with ‘reality’, flooded my awareness.  This is not my world.  How could it become my son’s? 

That thought was followed by another that said : ‘We don’t belong there.  It is not our holodeck to shape.  Who are we to say how others determine their lives… what gods they embrace… what clothes they wear… what rules they do or do not follow?  How can we believe, for a moment, that it is either desired or possible for us to overlay our collective holodeck on theirs, with any hope that it will not immediately fall to the ground, the nanosecond that we are not holding it down with brute force? “

There was a time when my children were small and fit easily onto the holodeck of my experience.  Now, they are men – creating their own holodecks, at times and in ways that I do not always recognize or understand.  And yet, it is nonetheless their holodeck…their life…their reality… and not mine.  If I am willing to acknowledge this with them, why would I not do so with those of a foreign land? 

We don’t belong there – not just because of politics and alliances… but because it is not our world.  More than worlds apart geographically, we are worlds apart energetically.  

For the first time in my life, I know what it means to declare : “Not my son!”

Breathing is good…

Invitations to greatness

There are always bumps in the road.  Just how dull would it be if the road were always smooth, without any twists or turns to test our attention and our skill…. to test our willingness and ability… to own both the destination and the journey?  

I’m one of the lucky ones.  In my life, I cross paths with more genius women than likely my fair share.  Amazing women!  Women who are choosing mindfully to shape their lives and in doing so, recognize that they are shaping their world.  Women who are not afraid to own their fear and engage it directly.  Women who are mindful that it is the magnificence of their imperfection that fuels their personal journey of discovery, growth and accelerated evolution. 

Acceleration brings with it a degree of intensity that is not accessible any other way.  Like driving down that road at 180 mph rather than 60 mph.  You have to stay awake! The notion of  ’paying attention’  takes on a whole new meaning – when NOT paying attention could cost you your life.  However, in the journey of personal evolution for its own sake, the life I’m referring to is not your physical body – that could go on for decades and linger in habit and drama for what will feel like eons.  The life I”m talking about is the one that is about desire to engage; being willing to allow Self and other to be present and to be HUGE!  The life I’m talking about is the one that (in my books) really counts:  it’s not the life that allows you to be useful to society, it’s the one that allows you to be true to yourSelf.  

A long, long time ago, I wrote a short piece called The Level of the Game.  It was written at a time when someone I loved had become ill.  At the time, I thought he had lost his desire to engage because he became ill.  Now I know that he became ill because he lost his desire to engage!  More than great courage, it takes much greater curiosity to continue to engage in those moments when we’re feeling the bumps along the way.  It’s just so much easier to slow down or pull off the road.  

It was written to honor, inside myself, the part of me that was him… and the desire to live large and play full tilt – even when I was unsure of both my willingness and ability to do that.  It was written to remind me of who I am capable of becoming, in those moments when it is just so easy for me to forget.  And it was written to give myself permission to know that if/when I choose to pull off the road, I can do so with my head held high, recognizing the genius of that choice and owning it, in its full measure.  What matters most is that I continue to remember who I AM.  In a holographic universe, it will be simply because I choose it and say so.  

Bumps…. twists… turns…. internal and external weather…. they are all, without exception, invitations to my own greatness.  It is when I forget, in those deep and dark places that forgetting guides me too, that I must remember I have created it all! 

Breathing is good….

The forces that shape culture

I really must stop listening to the radio when I’m in the car.  Will I ever not have something to say???? 

Today’s topic was young offenders and the impact (or lack thereof) of longer sentences.  An interview with a criminologist spoke to the degree to which more and longer incarceration periods were not achieving the outcome of reducing crime rates (frequency) and levels (intensity of harm) amongst young offenders. 

I listened…. and I felt a heavy sigh move through my body.  It really isn’t rocket science : 

* Androgynous Baby™ and Nested Living Systems™ are the forces that shape culture.  As forces, they are not good or bad, right or wrong…. they are just forces.  Powerful, extensive, insidious, pervasive, deeply entrenched forces… but forces nonetheless.  It is not the force itself that is causing the problem – it’s what we put into these forces that leaves us twisted and crippled.  

* The essential ingredient that makes it possible for these forces to continue in their crippling effect is that of external referencing.  The fundamental, underpinning of external referencing in our global culture (yes, we are one large, living, organic collective) is that there is a ‘god’ and we are not it.  The ‘god’ that we are taught never to question, shapes our lives – our past, our present and our future.  There are only two things that we know for sure about this god:  that there is one; and that we’re not it!  An externally referenced all-knowing, all-powerful being demands that we allow ourselves to know ourselves as ‘less than’, as a way of being; and in constant need of something from the outside ( a person, a job, $$$, stuff, things, etc.) to guide us and shape our lives.  

* This externally referenced way of moving through the world has a hierarchy :  god; god’s right hand in the church and its representatives; authorities (including parents, teachers, professionals, etc.) – all operating with the view that we must be shaped and molded or be lost to the internal structures that will destroy us.  Eureka!  There’s that terrible, terrifying internal state – not to be trusted or ventured into.  

* Networks of culturally conditioned, reinforced structures of beliefs and values that operate to hold in check the essential commitment to external referencing.  Lose that… lose our blind commitment to external referencing…. and we become a threat.  No wonder that it is enforced with such rigor (on all fronts) and often, brutality. 

Our family systems are the front line in this process of shaping culture.  Passed down from one generation to the next; unquestioned; enforced with violence of body, mind and spirit, we become replicas of what we have lived.  Our children do not do what we tell them to do – they become who we are.  

If we want to create change… if we want to reshape culture differently… we must move away from the content of that culture and redirect our attention to the forces that shape that culture.  Into the process of culture shaping… into the forces that shape and mold and structure reality… we must inject what is required to move from external referencing to becoming internally referenced.  

The Declaration of Evolution by Intention offers an internally referenced framework of beliefs and values from which to engage the world.  

We must rediscover and reclaim the godforce that we are, in expression in a physical universe.  And we must ask:  how does the godforce that I AM choose to live?  In that moment, culture reshapes itself.  

When I know that I AM the godforce, I know that I create it all…shape it all… manifest it all.  I know that I am responsible for it all – in my life and in the lives of all that I call on to my holodeck.  

In that moment, it is no longer about fixing the world I’ve got – it’s about creating the world I desire.  

So… young offenders?  Their roots are in the Androgynous Baby, Nested Living Systems forces of their lives.  In that, we’ll also find the roots of both the problem and the solution.   

It’s not easy to do – and it’s not tough to figure out.  The solution begins with me.  

—————-

You’ll find information about the Androgynous Baby and Nested Living Systems in Fully Alive (book), Pathways to Personal Power (CD”S) and the new multi-CD set on Decloaking and Living Authentically; and you’ll find the Declaration of Evolution by Intention on the Home page of www.WEL-Systems.com in the column on the left (printable version)

Another day…

I sit here, coffee in hand, ready for my day to start.  Another full day of editing the recorded material from my last ‘Decloaking’ experience in the program room.  I expect to complete the editing and move on to track and production details by the end of this week.  But then, I said that last week – and life took a few turns of its own, redirecting and redesigning my outcomes.  I’m ok with that – it really does all unfold as it should. 

So, that’s what’s in the front of my mind.  In the back of my mind, there is this strange soup swirling and bubbling about; bits and pieces of a dozen things bumping into and up against each other; strange, unrecognizable chunks forming as they coagulate into new offerings for me to ponder about : shall I taste them or not?????  

These days, I draw upon ‘the old days’ when I spent much of my time entertaining and creating elegant meals to be shared with friends and family.  I am quite adept at following a recipe (even if I do allow myself a few creative moments!) and producing an excellent outcome to be enjoyed by so many.  However, my sense in this moment is one of being the concoctor (is that a word?) of some unidentified delight, fully confident of the ingredients and my ability to work with them, and yet completely unaware of what the final product will be.  I just keep tossing and stirring…. 

I know that the coming months will be filled with bringing some things to closure, making room for new things in 2009.  I also know that doing this leaves me with a sense of preparing in some way…. like pulling back on an elastic to build the required tension to launch and propel forward when the time is right.  This is the time of crossing the ‘T’s and dotting the ‘I’s.  Letting things go.  Disconnecting in some way to what has been that there might be momentum for what is to come.  

I’m noticing things… like the increasing intensity in Gaia’s expressions (duh…. you’d have to be in a coma to miss that one!); like the frequency with which airplanes are experiencing problems; like this perpetually broadening chasm between who we are as human beings and the caricatures of being human.  It feels like a frenzy of activity without any clear sense of intention or direction.  Movement for its own sake, without any direction to shape its outcome. 

And so, it’s time.  Time to get back to editing.  Time to identify all that will be complete by the end of 2008. Time to let go and marvel at Sheila and Amy and others as they decloak and choose to move forward.  Time to honor the old and let go of the old, and welcome and embrace what moves toward me.  

Who knows what my future holds?  My body knows… and all I need to do is engage as it presents.  

Breathing is good…