Anyway, yesterday morning I woke up and saw (ok confession time..I do sometimes…um…check my email from bed) that I had been nominated for a Versatile Blogger award and I was like Yay! Finally an excuse to be really excited first thing in the morning (Note to Universe: This should happen every day)! So huge, heartfelt thanks to Jay of Defusing Chaos - you are officially my Prince (NB: this is a temporary status, which however by no means undermines the dignity of the position).

So this honour comes with some rules, one of which is that I must share 7 random facts about myself.

Here goes…

1. I once got hit by a London bus. With my bestie. People stared. It was pretty funny
2. I can build madly awesome camps
3. I was a pagan in high school
4. I have a tattoo that says ‘gratitude’ on my left forearm. I get a little mad when people ask why
5. I once capsized a catamaran far from shore in the Mediterranean
6. My favourite book is “My Family and Other Animals” by Gerald Durrell. Don’t judge me
7. I’ve had an eyebrow piercing, a lip piercing, two nose piercings (one at a time..took it out, missed it and did it again), and a bar on the upper left side of my chest

And the nominees are….

1. A Spiritual Journey
2. Optimistic Wellness
3. Disrupting The Rabblement
4. The Connectivist
5. A Fulfilling Life
6. Choices of Life
7. The Hawk’s Tail
8. Ridcuryder
9. Life Awakened
10. On Page 28
11. Enjoy Life For Once
12. The Journey
13. The Verdant Home
14. Alejandra Arroyo
15. Fibrofaery

So again, huge thanks to Jay of Defusing Chaos and an extra dose of love to all my nominees ♥

Update: I forgot to mention the rules. Oops. So the rules are:

1. Thank your most wonderful nominator :)
2. List 7 random things about yourself
3. Nominate 15 bloggers for the award
4. Let the lovely nominees know that they’ve been nominated
5. CELEBRATE ALL DAY

It all started at about 4am on an otherwise innocuous night three weeks ago. I woke up and thought “I need a Rite of Passage”. And the whole plan started downloading into my brain. Faster than you would think given the hour, I grabbed a pen and notebook (always just an arms-reach away) and took it all down.

A weekend alone, isolated…lots of meditation, some fasting, creativity, and shitloads of visionning and letting go of old stories. A fire ritual, a cleansing ritual, pictures and poems and clarity. Lots of clarity. So the first available weekend (the first one in May), I set off to a reclusive spot in the countryside for my wonderful, life-changing endeavour.

And it was wonderful; rich, intense, surprising, interesting, creative, cleansing, and ultimately uplifting. Until I got back to reality.

Discomfort + Growth

I accepted a long time ago that if I wanted to grow it was going to be uncomfortable. It was going to make me squirm, have moments of regret where I’d wish I could just live a life of bland work-tv-sleep, and probably cause me to go prematurely grey. Nonetheless I really didn’t expect the aftermath of my weekend.

The first delight was depression; not feeling a little blue but real old-school nothing-makes-sense/lost-numb-desperation/dead-people-have-more-energy style depression.

Then bingeing came back; hello nausea and self-loathing.

Then loss of faith; “What the hell am I doing here anyway? I have no idea what I’m doing.”

Then the brain-demons; “You’ll never make it out of the dreaded conventional world, you just don’t have what it takes.”

What do these guys have in common? They’re all old stories, stories I let go of quite a while back and thought were gone for good. And yet, here they were, back in all their convincingly real glory.

Except this time I didn’t listen. Didn’t take them seriously. Sat back and watched as my neurotransmitters and endocrine system and energy system went mad and thought “What the hell is this?”

The Test of the Passage?

Turns out after speaking to a few friends about what’s been going on that this kind of thing often happens after fasts/cleansings; old crap resurfaces to say hi, even really old stuff you barely remember anymore.

One friend suggested that this gives you a chance to encounter it from the consciousness that you’re at now, and to meet it with a different reaction.

I feel (felt? Not sure if it’s over yet..) like it was a test. Like the Universe was saying “So you wanna be all cool and awesome and shit? Well here, take that old enemy; can you deal with him? What about this one? Think you got what it takes? PROVE IT lady!”

Which, I feel, is a little unfair.

But I don’t think you can argue with the Universe so I guess I have to just suck it up.

Also, I’m pretty sure that in hindsight this will all seem really funny.

The Lesson

It’s also made me think that maybe (just maybe) it’s a good idea to do a little research (me? None. Zero. Nada) on these big old ancient ritual thingys before launching into them (alone) and assuming it’ll all just be sweet and dandy.

Oops.

So I’ll be sitting tight the next while and hoping things calm down….and that I passed the test. That would be really awesome, Universe.

Photo credit: wildlovephotog.tumblr.com via Pinterest

I’ve called it ‘An Evening of Applied Spirituality’ – for me this means living spiritual principles through the way in which we engage with other people. In this space we can be all of who we are, accepted with all our corners and rough edges, and learn to move deeper into our core and deeper into relation with others, whilst practicing core spiritual principles.

To me this aspect of ‘connectedness’ is crucial to living in joy; it is the essential component in transcendent experiences, and the lack of it leads invariably to mental illness. I believe it is something as necessary to humans as food and water, and yet we are only just beginning to develop higher competency in it.

We can feel connected on different levels; on an intrapersonal level with our own lives, on an interpersonal level with the people in our lives, on a collective level with all of humanity, and on a spiritual level with God/Gaia/the Universe. I believe that we need connectedness on each of these levels to be able to live truly joyful and self-actualised lives, and that working on one level leads to shifts in the other levels.

By deepening our understanding of and compassion towards ourselves, we open our hearts more to other people, and to the mystery of life. Our existential questions can be gently explored, rather than leading to stress and the feeling that something is missing…

And we move into flow..and magic happens. Connection happens. And as we bear witness, a state of deep joy permeates our entire existence.

We are here to learn – about ourselves, about the nature of humanity, about our role in the bigger picture.

And we learn so much faster when we join forces and explore together.

*     *     *     *     *

The Real Reason I’m so excited about this

The Real Reason is that the people who are motivated to do this work are members of my tribe; the tribe I searched for for so long. You might not know it yet, but if you are called to explore this way of being together you are one of my tribe.

And I say, the more the merrier.

If it speaks to you, come and join us…we’d love to have you

♥

(More info on the events page The New WE)

Photo credit: thefreedomexperiment.com via Pinterest

I want to write about Andrew Cohen’s work today because it really ties into what I realised about my tribe this week. It builds on the emerging “evolutionary worldview”, which combines the insights of integral philosophy, evolutionary science, developmental psychology, the social sciences, and evolutionary spirituality.

Andrew Cohen makes a bold claim: that Enlightenment itself is evolving. Enlightenment as it has been taught the past 2000 odd years was a quest for “freedom from” (the mind, the body, the world, time, with an all-important transcendence bias); as such it was to some extent life-negating.

What Andrew proposes is that we are now in need of a spiritual approach which empowers us to be in the world, rather than escaping it.

We are living in a time when we absolutely need people to be spiritual but also good at manifesting; for which they must be deeply rooted in the world. Positive change will not occur through all of us going and sitting in caves and meditating all day long, no matter how lovely that prospect may seem.

“Andrew Cohen has arrived at an insight that is crucial for our historical situation. Enlightenment is not a movement out of the everyday world but is instead a profound entrance into deep participation in the evolution of the universe” - Brian Swimme Ph.D.

What he teaches is a new kind of enlightenment, one rooted in the timeless transcendent Ground of Being, yet also embracing the unique challenges of our time and the empirical understanding of evolution. He calls his approach “Evolutionary Enlightenment” and says, ”We’re interested in making the deepest rational sense out of life while remaining true to the most transcendent mystical insights.”

His 5 principal teachings are:

1. Place evolutionary enlightenment at the center of your life
2. Unconditional acceptance of responsibility for your karma
3. Face everything, avoid nothing
4. Understand that everything that happens is part of one cosmic process
5. Motivational shift of enlightenment as a selfish goal to enlightenment in service to the evolutionary impulse

“All of us are on a cosmic evolutionary journey that began with a big bang fourteen billion years ago and has led us, through the myriad byways of evolutionary time, to our present condition as conscious, self-reflective human beings – with our future developmental destiny now literally in our hands” - A. Cohen

Photo credit: favim.com via Pinterest

It feels like a miracle.

With them I don’t need words – not to explain, not to be seen, not to show that I see. I can just be. Me. Accepted, heard, understood, and whole, perfect just as I am. Often they see deeper inside me than I do, and they hold pieces of me out, offering them to me with unconditional love. It is impossible to reject anything which is offered in this way, and so I grow, gently, under their compassionate gaze.

And I too, see them, and marvel at their courage, their insight, their depth, their complexity, the strength of their vulnerability and am so deeply grateful for their existence.

* * * * *

All those years I was searching I didn’t really know what I was searching for. I knew it when I stumbled across it, but found it impossible to pinpoint what ‘it’ was – what did those few extraordinary people have in common? ‘Spiritual’ didn’t cover it, and in fact many people considering themselves spiritual I couldn’t connect to at all; ‘environmentalist’ didn’t seem to be it either, psychologists and philosophers didn’t necessarily capture what I sought either…

Today I realised what that thing is: the understanding that we are all one being, all of life, and the desperate urge to move collective evolution forwards towards a sustainable, compassionate, conscious culture.

It’s this big-picture, future-oriented consciousness, this striving towards awakening not as a selfish goal but in order to play a part in the effort to move humanity towards an awakened, conscious, balanced existence, and into our full potential as a species.

And in finally being able to describe my tribe, I sink deeper into my understanding of myself; my priorities, my role, my reason for being.

It feels like grace. 

Those of you who resonate with these words, come find me. I’m waiting for you.

Photo credit: faust-pages.com via Pinterest

She looked at me as if to say Well? Have you done what we planned? Have you lived those dreams, played those games, danced those dances?

I felt smaller, a little defensive, as though I had been caught doing something not entirely acceptable; something not quite worthy of me. I stammered wordlessly that I had lived some of them, played some, danced some. Not many though. And not with my whole heart. Not lived, played, danced completely free, the way we dreamed I would.

I had let her down. And now she was looking at me (still) and her question was short, sweet, simple; and so inescapably obvious – What are you waiting for?

* * * * *

Photo credit: favim.com via Pinterest

It’s finally spring, after an unusually harsh and energy-sapping winter. I feel like a daisy, turning to the sun whenever there is some. The air smells different. The birds twitter excitedly, and the trees are budding. There is a promise in the air, a promise that says the trial is over, and you survived – your reward is coming.

Spring always has the effect of turning me into a complete romantic; everything appears through rosy lenses, the perfection of each fresh new flower delights me, the smell after it has rained a light spring rain intoxicates me, and the world is full of possibility. It’s like I fall in love with life all over again, every year.

This is spring. A time of new beginnings, of renewal, of hope, of letting go the old, and making space for the new. The ritual of spring cleaning is laden with symbolism, and I like to do it not only in my physical environment but for my inside home as well. A few months of the year have already passed; what progress have I made with my aspirations for this year; what’s working and what is not? Are there old stories from the long winter or from last year that are no longer serving me?

Each new season invites us to assume a different perspective; of our lives, and of life. To permit the cycle of life to flow through us as it does through nature. In spring we can look for what is waiting to be born in us, to see if there is an area of our lives that wants to develop, perhaps discover a new sense of purpose or direction. We can remember our youthfulness and reconnect with the lighthearted, the playful in ourselves.

Abundance, a current favourite theme for me, is also associated with spring – hence the whole rabbits and eggs thing – everywhere you look you see little buds, green shoots; so much energy bursting forth, as though the world is shouting I’m alive!. Another quality that surges strongly throughout spring is gratitude; gratitude for the end of winter, for the world that looked dead coming back to life, for the sun’s energy..

I wish you all a beautiful spring ♥

Do you love your work? Does it provide you with a deep sense of satisfaction? Do you have peace of mind knowing that you are giving the world all of your own unique amazingness? Do you wake up with a YES? If the answer to any of these is No (as it is for me), what you spend most of your time doing is probably depleting you rather than nourishing you. And as we all know, undernourishment leads to health issues, soul suffering and deathbed doom.

I want to know why so many of us are in this position. Why do we do things we dislike (or even loathe), that we know aren’t good for us, that don’t fit? There are of course the limiting ideas many of us grew up with about how to live and work (9-5, blue-collar/white-collar, something that requires a degree (or several), something that is validated by mainstream society etc.), and then there are all the messages we are surrounded by via the media and the folks who believe what the media tells them about how you’re lucky to have any kind of work at all, times are tough and all that.

It’s like this one, fixed version of reality that I am trying so hard to escape from, and yet I keep putting myself neatly back into the box of this reality, this life programme that is so alien to me that it sometimes makes me feel like I’m walking through a parallel dimension, looking around myself with wonder (and sadness) and asking myself how all these guys don’t see that they’ve put themselves in the box, that they’ve chosen the damn box, and that another reality is possible (yes, very Matrix, I know).

I think it’s to do with:

• Value
• Abundance
• Authenticity

Big Question: If I continually put myself in situations that are not in alignment with who I am (and therefore unhealthy), how much do I really value myself? This question came to me yesterday and gave my heart a little wrench – I thought I was doing pretty good with the self-love and yet here was this huge question that brought a whispered Not very much in its wake, leaving me feeling immeasurably sad at the realisation that I am still not standing up for who I am in this very important area of my life. I am who I am. And whatever that is, it deserves to be loved and valued, first by me.

Another big reason for many of us is the big old dollar demon – we worry about not having enough money, that there isn’t enough generally, that scarcity prevails. This is delusional. There are heaps, tons, crazy amounts of money in the world; in fact crazy amounts of everything (except maybe oil) – the abundance of wealth is not the problem; the problem is our limiting beliefs.

When we look at where the money is right now, most of us get pretty upset. We feel that public funds are not being utilised in ways that serve us (or anyone apart from the guy spending it), and see the ethical vacuum within which most (all?!) big corporations operate, see the unbelievable inequalities in all countries that are taken as normal. It’s impossible to not be angry and upset about this big money because of the way it’s being used – but as long as we play the game (stay cogs in the machine, buy the GM foods and the fertilisers and the pills, remain silent and cowed and defeated) nothing will change. We have a responsibility to the earth, to our children, to ourselves to start playing by new rules, to change the way money is used in the world – to change the way we are in the world.

We do not have to “earn a living” – we deserve our life by the mere fact that we are. I know that sounds all woo-woo and newagey idealist but think about it this way: a lion deserves to live according to its lion nature because it was born a lion – it hunts, it sleeps, it plays, it procreates. It doesn’t need to “earn” the right to be a lion, it just is a lion. Why is it that we feel we have to “earn” the right to be who we are? Each of us has so much to contribute, so much value to offer to the world and to our communities; yet a lot of the time we never get to offer it because we’re so taken up with “earning” a living*.

This is where authenticity comes into play. We may feel that we are authentic in our engagement with other people – but how authentic are we in our actions? How often do we do something we don’t really want to do because we feel we “should”? I’m not trying to suggest that we should only ever do things we really want to do (although really, why shouldn’t that be possible?), but that another way to live exists. Everything that you dislike, someone else out there enjoys. There is enough diversity of interest and talent in the world to take care of everything – we’re just not made to fit into one limited box.

How often do you listen to that inner voice that tells you what you really need right now? A nap, a hug, some exercise, a book, a bath, a midnight snack? How often do you honour your needs? Many of us live in this perpetually rushed state where we feel like we just don’t have time right now, I’ll get to it later. But later never arrives. Life is short, and as such, urgent. It is urgent that we begin to live in line with who we really are. The abundance of chronic and auto-immune disease in the world right now is terrifying – we are so out of balance with life and ourselves that our systems refuse to live; they give us a big fat No, sometimes an acute No, where we have to come into alignment asap or die.

We don’t prioritise our own wellbeing enough. It shouldn’t have to take the diagnosis of a terminal illness for us to begin honouring ourselves. We deserve to be happy. We deserve to shine our light in the world. We deserve to listen to our souls, to love ourselves, to heal ourselves. The original meaning of the word deserve is “to devote oneself to” (from the latin deservire). What would a world look like in which we all devoted ourselves to our souls, to our deepest selves?

“What the world needs is people who have come alive” - Howard Thurman

Danielle LaPorte asks us “What is your medicine to the world that also heals you?”. This is what each of us needs to be doing, to heal the ourselves and the world, and to bring humanity into its full potential. Right now we are so far away from being what we could be, what all of us know in a tiny corner of our hearts is possible, a way of living together that we yearn for. All it takes is for each of us to find our way back to our light, and to fully dedicate ourselves to being who we are, in the world.

After all, that’s what life is, isn’t it? – A spark of magic that lights up a body for a little while and then moves on.

Let’s live in that magic flame while we’re here.

♥

* For the Europeans among you, have a look at the Unconditional Basic Income (UBI) initiative – I don’t think it’s the answer to all our problems but I think it would be a great start

Photo Credit: favim.com via Pinterest

I began the training with AIS for my personal practice rather than with the idea of actually founding a group, but after the first module I was so in love with the work that I realised I want a group for myself here in Brussels anyway (stay tuned!). The Domino Effect was oriented towards sharing competencies between agents of change, rigorously defining our new projects with a view to funding applications, and acquiring tools of Non-Formal Education; a training week for leaders and aspiring leaders. And I was there, and delighted to be there – exactly where I was meant to be.

What emerged from this week was the sure knowledge that I want to work with groups, that I feel competent to do so (although I know my learning curve will be very steep), and that I feel particularly called to work with women. Perhaps the biggest lesson I gained from this experience was when it feels right, just jump, and trust that the How will be resolved along the way. I was low on energy before the training course, deeply sad about having just lost one of my darling cats, and not really managing to get much of anything done. Three days before I left I questioned whether the workshop was something I felt I really needed to do and there was a resounding YES, so I sat down, did some research, brainstormed and planned.

And just like that, it was done.

If I had worried about how I was going to come up with it or what I would do in it when I registered for the course and had to commit to either taking the opportunity or not, I wouldn’t have taken it. Instead I chose to listen only to the voice that said “Do it, do it”, and trusted that ideas would come later. This whole leap of faith thing is not entirely new to me, but in the context of facing what used to be pretty much my biggest fear (public speaking) it was quite a leap. One of the (many) fantastic women on the training course noted that usually right after you think YES! I want to do this! your mind goes into overdrive producing a million reasons why you shouldn’t do it – at which point you need to ignore it completely and just jump.

In the week that has passed since the end of the course I’ve allowed this motto of just jumping when it feels juicy and worrying about what Mike Dooley calls the “cursed hows” later to begin to seep into other areas of my life. It’s early days but it feels magic.

Photo Credit: www.richmonddentalclinic.ca via Pinterest