Surrender and fall in love

Sunday, March 25

Sunday morning. I wake and wonder, what to write. It’s the same old, same old. Believing the process must be known before I begin, rather than just being in the process and letting it unfold. Wanting to direct the action from without, rather than being directed from within.

I’m in Vancouver. It’s raining. But, it’s green. This is such a beautiful city. Flowers bloom. Trees are in blossom. The air is sweet.

Perhaps one of the things I like most about this city is I do not have memories of the journey into hell with Conrad attached to every place. My memories here are of healing. Of reclamation. Of restoration. It was here that I first awoke from the nightmare of that relationship. It was here that I first faced the truth without fear, without believing that the lie was safer. It was here I let go of the lie and began the process of turning up for me.

It was here I came alive.

Memories are such tricky fellows. They can hurt or they can restore. When I let go of the need to hurt myself with memory, I become focused on forgiveness, not anger. And forgiveness is so much lighter than anger.

Recently A. was angry about the situation with her father. Do you want to love him or hate him I asked. Love him she replied. Then forgive him. Forgiveness will move you into love. Anger will keep you stuck.

When I said that to her I turned those words into myself. Am I an angry or a forgiving person? How do I want to live my life? In love or anger? Love. Then the answer is simple. Step into forgiveness. Let anger go.

But….

Ahhh, the eternal but. What about what he did. What about what she said. What about how he lied to me, hurt me, betrayed me.

What about it?

Can I change it? Alter it? Affect him or the past?

There is nothing I can do about it, other than to hold it in place with anger and let it fester or forgive so that I can surrender and fall in love.

My friend N. always says, Anger, like acid will corrode the vessel containing it.

Anger, like acid, will corrode the heart. Anger will harden arteries, stiffen spines and break bones.

Forgiveness will open a broken heart to love. Forgiveness will open arms to loving. Forgiveness will set me free.

My gift for myself today is to walk in love, through every moment, every step. My gift for myself is to treat the world with the loving kindness I deserve.

Time passes and I flow with it

I was in Vancouver for the weekend and did not have web access. But, I did keep my commitment to write every morning. I couldn't post what I wrote and am catching up and posting now!

Saturday, March 24

Funny how every morning begins with, I’m so tired. I flew to Vancouver last night. My plane was an hour late. An hour to kill. An hour to fill. To waste. To get through. To put up with. To enjoy.

Late plane. Airport bar. I sit by the window. I order a glass of wine. Why not? Time’s flying and I’m grounded for an hour. An hour filled with no expectations other than to wait for time to pass by. I watch the world outside the warm enclosure of the restaurant. Jets come and go. Land. Take off. Taxi in. Taxi out. Baggage trucks pull up to their silver hulls. Empty bellies. Fill bellies. Baggage handlers scurry to and fro loading suitcases for other travelers going places unknown to me. Expected by them. On time. They move out of the periphery of my world. Everything bustles with energy, activity, purpose.

I sit and wait. And watch.

An hour with nothing to do. Unscheduled. Unplanned. Unaccounted for.

Is the world passing me by while I waste an hour or is the world simply passing by while I indulge in the joy of doing nothing but sit and watch it pass by for an hour?

Time is a continuum. There is never more, nor less time. An unscheduled hour does not need filling. It will pass. I can be frustrated. I can pass it with my peace of mind intact. An unscheduled hour fills me with the possibilities of doing nothing. It is an unexpected gift filled with the possibilities of reveling in the joy of one hour to sit and relax, to drift, to breathe.

Does the world pass by, or, pass me by?

The latter is the victim’s voice. The world is busy while I am inactive, inanimate, ineffective. In both cases I’m watching. Yet when I state, pass me by, the voice is passive, yearning, mournful.

I watch the world pass by with me in the flow of time. An hour to enjoy the panoply of life played out before me. I am the centre of my universe as the world revolves around those who are the centre of their own universes. I am in a world of personal universes touching briefly, moving on, in and out constantly moving in the flow of time.

I sit and watch and breathe and enjoy the moment to not have any demands, no responsibilities, no emergencies. The world passes by as I pass an enjoyable hour in its thrall. As I release the switches holding my mind in check, I begin to feel ideas floating into the periphery of my thinking. I pull out my notebook, begin to write. Ideas flow as I surrender into the moment. The outline for The Dandelion Garden: Cultivating Joy In Every Day Occurrences begins to take shape.

I am in the flow, connected to the collective whole from which inspiration flows through me. It ignites my imagination. My fingers fly and I feel the angst of time passing without me getting caught in the anxiety of having to track each passing moment. I ease into the joy of being in the moment. Alive, I surrender, and fall, in love with the moment where right now is all I have, all I need, all I want.

Goals and other heady places

Day two. The alarm ruptures my sleep. I stumble out of bed.

I've made a commitment. I must keep it.

And I know, after 11 days, this will begin to feel like a habit. Eventually, perhaps it will become like an addiction where I must do it to feel like my day is setting off on the right foot.

This morning I stumble from bed. I try not to think about what I will write. Will I be able to write. Will the words appear.

I fall into faith. Trust. Belief the words will appear.

But the theme? Where is the theme? Where is the import of my words. Perhaps that is the importance of this exercise. Sometimes, I need to let myself write 'bad'. Sometimes, I need to let words appear without forcing poetic constructs. Without looking for deeper meaning.

It isn't the meaning behind the words, it's the act of writing every day that is important. It's the process of keeping my commitment to myself.

Last night I worked with Ram at Project Forward. I'd put together a course outline for my section of the workshop. I was to talk about setting goals and what's important to attain them. One of the exercises I used was from an amazing course at www.simpleology.com. Each participant in the workshop had a glass of water in front of them. The instruction was to take a sip of water using two different methods. Method one was verbal only. Each participant was to talk to the water and ask it to give him a sip. They could yell, plead, pray, cajole, seduce -- whatever they wanted to get that sip, but at no time were they to touch the glass. After 2 minutes we all agreed -- there was no way that sip of water was going to happen. The second method required picking up the glass and taking a sip. It took 2 seconds.

It was a powerful example of INTENT turned into ACTION.

So often I set a goal in my head and then blithely carry on with my day. Like writing here. If I had simply made the commitment and then never gotten out of bed, these words would not have appeared. My goal is different then my intention of writing here every morning. My goal is to write another book. These pages are one tool, one step leading me to the achievement of my goal. Starting every day with this writing puts my mind into my creative space, it moves me from the rote, the mundane into my inspired self.

The point of the water glass experiment was to demonstrate the need for ACTION.

Goals are awesome. Necessary. Imperative. Goals are signposts on the road. Markers keeping me continually moving forward, growing, achieving.

Without ACTION they are simply a smoke screen preventing me from facing my truth, my reality. When I set a goal and do not take ACTION, I am lying to myself.

Last night at the workshop, I walked in with a clearly defined goal that I asked the group to accept on faith. The goal was, "By October 1, 2007 I will be successfully living independently outside the Drop-In."

I asked each person if they could 'see' the goal. Feel it. Smell it. Taste it. "Can you, just for this session, claim it as your own?" I asked.

Yes, they agreed.

At the end of the evening, I gave each member of the group a binder in which they were to write their goals.

Each person, except one, wrote as their first goal. To be out of the Drop-In and living independently by October 1, 2007.

They had claimed the goal as their own. For the man who declined, fear of letting go of the past held him fast. He looked at me and asked, can I come back even if I don't have that goal? Of course I replied. This is about your goals, you define them, you set them, you walk towards them.

Their task this week was to set a weekly goal that moved them closer to achieving their major goal of October 1. And to track their progress on a daily basis.

The energy when they left the room was envigorating.

I came home and thought about my goal for October 1, or April 1 for that matter.

I didn't have one.

Living without a goal is like getting in the car to drive... somewhere. Every time I get in my car I have a destination. I have a route which sometimes I adjust depending upon the weather. Too often, I live my life without a destination, without a goal!

Recently, my friend G was booked into a personal development program called, Super Choices. It was being held in Chase, BC. He got in his car, drove to Lake Louise and discovered that the highway was closed due to an avalanche. G didn't give up. He spent a night in a hotel and in the morning, upon discovering the highway was still closed, called and asked me to book him a flight to Kamloops. All the flights were booked. He waited in Lake Louise, hoping the highway would open but it didn't. He kept exploring ideas and finally, found an alternative route. He called me from the airport in Calgary to let me know he was enroute to Kelowna. Almost 24 hours after being stopped in Lake Louise, G arrived at the conference centre and walked into the training room. He had reached his destination. He was only 2 hours late for the opening session -- some people never made it.

G never gave up. He did not give in. He did not lose sight of his goal.

Setting a goal is the first step to living a life of integrity. Without goals, I float aimlessly doing the things I have to do to get my day done, but never challenging myself to step further, grow bigger, explore my gifts and talents completely.

Once my goals are established, taking ACTION, keeping the goal in sight, never wavering from my commitment to attain it, staying focused on my intent and exploring alternatives when roadblocks appear -- these are the characteristics of a successful person. These are the attributes of a person of integrity.

There have been moments in my life when I have had a clearly defined goal and 'done what it took' to achieve it. There have been times when I've put the Be. Do. Have. principle to work. -- Be committed to do what it takes to have what I want.

It's time to put those principles to work today.

My goal for October 1, 2007 is to have the first draft of my new book, The Dandelion Garden, A non-gardeners guide to creating the life of your dreams. completed.

My goal for April 1, 2007 is to have the outline completed.

What's your goal?

Where does your Be. Do. Have. inspire you to be the most astounding you that you are meant to be?

Scooping up the shadows

Awhile ago, a friend said after I'd inadvertently messed up in a situation, “When we know better, we do better.” I was thinking about that today as I cleaned up dog-poop in my back yard. Spring is in the air and with it, the inevitable evidence of winter’s passing has laid bare unsightly signs of dog’s presence emerging from beneath the melting snow.

With rake and shovel and a heavy duty garbage bag lining a plastic garbage can, I scooped up the debris that had been hidden beneath the snow’s pristine blanket. As I scooped I thought about how I know better than to leave the backyard for more than a day or two without getting out there to pick up after Ellie. She’s a big dog. A big dog has big movements. Usually twice a day. Added to which, her best buddy, Mollie, a small white Bichon Friese, has now taken up residence in our home after her owner went away to College. Mollie contributes twice a day too.

The math is simple. Twice a day times two is four deposits a day, times seven is twenty-eight a week, times four weeks, is one hundred and twelve a month.

Taking care of business

So there I was on this beautiful day scooping at least a month’s worth of poop because over the past few weeks I’ve had a lot of excuses to not do it on a regular basis. No matter how much I knew I needed to keep on top of the yard, I had a whole pile of reasons why I couldn't.

It kept snowing. The snow hid the mess. It was too cold. The deposits were frozen solid into the ice and snow. It was dark in the morning when I left for my office and dark at night when I came home. I was too busy, too tired, too lazy to get it done when it needed to be done.

I knew better, but I didn’t do better.

The question is, why not?

And that was my realization as I scooped another pile of dead grass and dog poop into the garbage can.

Scott Peck writes in, People of the Lie, about the importance of acknowledging the shadow. He equates it with taking out the garbage. You can’t just ignore it. It won’t go away by itself. If you don’t take it out, you are at risk of disease, unwanted pests and other calamities -- all because you refused to acknowledge the garbage needed dealing with.

The shadow’s like that. It often contains those aspects of ourselves we don’t want to look at, or love, or acknowledge we possess. When we avoid the shadow, or refuse to acknowledge its presence, we are at risk of the shadow taking over our lives.

When the shadow lurks, the poop piles up

In ignoring what needed to be done, picking up the natural byproducts of owning a dog, I had created a bigger mess than I would have had to deal with had I simply done it in the moment. In refusing to face the shadow side of owning a dog, I willingly put my dog at risk of disease and infection, not because I don’t love my dog, but simply because it was easier to give into my excuses than to be responsible.

Sort of like life.

When I don’t take care of the details of everyday life, I risk my peace of mind and create messes that will need to be dealt with at some future date. For example, if I ignore paying bills on time, exercising regularly and eating well, I create stress in my life not to mention aches and pains and excess weight that I will need to deal with in the future.

Avoidance strenghtens fear

Cleaning up my back yard today I felt good. I was doing better. When I deny or ignore my knowledge, I am avoiding the shadow side of my life. In that avoidance my fear of having to deal with reality inhibits me from truly enjoying the moment because lurking in the back of mind, shadowing my every thought, is the knowledge that eventually, I will have to clean up after myself. And it will probably hurt more than if I’d chosen to do it at the appropriate time.

When I know better, I do better -- as long as I bring my knowing into the light of day and take appropriate, timely, caring action.

Under the sun, my shadow shortens

I cleaned up my back yard today and felt the warmth of spring tickle my imagination. It was a messy job, but I was taking care of business. I was caring for an animal who depends on me and who loves me unconditionally. I was preparing my yard for spring's awakening. I was cleaning up the mess.

As I scooped I felt my shadow shortening under the light of the mid day sun. I know I need to clean up regularly. I know the garbage needs emptying. I know a lot of things but I don't always do them. When I stand in my light, when I acknowledge the pull of the shadows, yet allow my courage to pull into the light of knowing what is the right thing to do -- I do better.