Oh, That Old Thing

Threads come together; form a braid, form a pattern; form a new awareness.

Last night an amazing woman shrugged off her brilliance like it was a scratchy sweater.  A few hours later, I turned a page in Dawna Markova's insightful book,  I will not die an unlived life and read:

What are your inner gifts and talents?  Most of us are reasonably articulate about our deficits and weaknesses--how many we got wrong on our spelling tests, how many things we have failed to accomplish during any given day.  We become fluent at explaining our incompetencies, but look straight at our gifts and talents and then mutter, "Oh, that old thing?"  This leaves us awkward and confused about how to bring our assets and resources to the rest of the community.  Too many of us believe we don't matter, and that what we do doesn't really make a difference."

The truth of that stunned me.  That is what we do.  It may be a stereotype but it seems that women do it more often than men.  We go back to school and get one more degree to prove that we have the right to say what we know to be true.  We hide our brilliance because it might be perceived as "showing off."  We call it "that old thing" because it hasn't earned the golden coin that validates it in the eyes of the world.

What treasures we leave moldering in a "maybe someday" chest, afraid to take them out and show them to the world.  What will it take for us to realize that life is a giant jig saw puzzle that needs our piece to be complete ... the authentic, whole, brilliant self each of us is?  Perhaps that's the only real purpose in life ... to live each of our gifts and share them back with the whole.  

Otherwise, we may never know what the glorious picture is on the cover of the box we call life.

Levitating through StumbleUpon

There is so much ingenuity in the world ... it just bubbles up and creates the most amazing things.  StumbleUpon sent me this image and story about Natsumi Hayashi, a young Japanese girl who loves to levitate.


Don't miss all the great shots of her ... my favorite is a street scene where no one is paying any attention to the beautiful young woman levitating right in front of them.


How fun!

One Day You Finally Knew

The combination of Mary Oliver's poem "The Journey" read by David Whyte to his dog Ginger is a charming and powerful version of this poem.

Dear Dad

I've been thinking a lot about gratitude ... more specifically about saying "thank you."  What I'm realizing is that it's easy to give thanks to the Universe for the great blessings in my life.   It's far harder to say "thank you," especially in person, and especially to people I have conflicted relationships with.  I've tried to find an easy way to be more grateful without facing the truly difficult task of saying "thank you" to my father.

My Dad will turn 90 next month and I am going to visit him.  I know this is the time to say what needs to be said but everything in me is screaming in protest.  I don't want to visit him.  I don't want to say what needs to be said.  I am afraid of him.  I am afraid of myself.    A friend who is counseling me on this suggests that I write out what I want to say so this is it.

Dear Dad,

Thank you for coming along when you did and falling in love with my mother.  At 19, she was still a child and a difficult child, all prickly and hard on the outside and soft in the center.  Uneducated, unskilled and still undivorced, she was working as a waitress and we were living in a tiny house with her sister's family when you swept her off her feet.

I don't remember that time since I was still an infant but I know now that without your steadying influence and ability to love my mother even when her temper ran wild, my life would have been very different.  Thank you for your generosity even when we had very little.  When I wanted a chemistry set, I know it was you who made sure it was under the Christmas tree and I loved it even though I never really used it.  When I wanted to play basketball, you built a basketball setup in the backyard.  When I wanted a car, you rebuilt a Nash Rambler for me and years later, when money was a little freer,  bought me a 1966 Mustang that was my pride and joy.  When I wanted to go to college, you helped as much as you could when Mom just thought I should get married.

We moved a lot and you and mom fought a lot.  I know money was tight and stress must have been great.  But you stayed and because of that, my life was relatively stable.  I've had a good life and, while you may not have given me life, you gave me a foundation for living my own life.  So thank you and I love you.

Passion Clarity?

"The most renewable energy we have 

is our potential and our own passion."

  -- Bertran Piccard (first solo balloon flight around the world)

Passion comes easily to some. "I just knew" rings sweet and clear.  Some kids hate school ... except for science where they excel.  You can almost see a path stretching out before them, heading for the halls of science, medicine or engineering.  

Some people tell stories about seeing their “first” -- quilt, mountain, airplane, concert, poetry reading, ballet, baseball game, homeless person or microscope -- saying, “I suddenly knew that’s what I wanted to do with my life.”  For the rest of us it’s more like C.W. McCall’s description of Wolf Creek Pass:  “it was hairpin county and switchback city. One of 'em looked like a can full'a worms; another one looked like malaria germs.”  

Translation:  for us, finding our passion is not a straight and logical path.  For those of us on this path, the advice to “follow our passion” or “follow our bliss,” is a hollow, magical wand that we don’t know how to use.  We see it’s magic in someone else’s hand but, in ours, it just lies there taunting us and we begin to ignore it, thinking the message is not for us.  It’s for them, those people who have been called, who actually have a passion, and, perhaps even, a purpose.

***********

The above is the opening to the chapter in Dragon Country that deals with finding our passion.  I would love to hear from you about the clarity of your passion.  Are you one of the "I've always known" or one of the rest of us who've had to discover our passion slowly over the years?  If you are a passion "discoverer," how have you gained clarity ... and do you now feel that you are completely clear?

My Valentine to Myself

While yesterday was the official day for valentines, I think there are many ways to say I love you that do not involve red hearts and chocolates.  Last year I wrote my first "real" intention statement and later realized that it was a gift to myself ... a way of saying "I love you and you deserve to live the life you want ... so go for it."  As the year progressed, the intention statement almost miraculously started to become reality and I decided that it deserved to become an annual tradition.  

It has taken awhile for this year's statement to solidify itself, but here it is:

It’s December 31, 2011, and I’m delighted about how easy and effortless it was to get the Dragon Country book written and published ... and how well it is selling.  What an amazing thrill it is to hear from people who say it has changed their lives. What truly excites me though is the reaction to the Dragon Country experiment where thousands of people around the world are learning how to create joy and turn their dreams into reality by igniting their own creativity.  

They are working together in small groups to develop new possibilities and opportunities for their communities, their families and themselves.  The media has been enchanted by this rapidly spreading wave of positive action and it has been written about around the world.   And today I just learned that the experiment will be featured on a major television show.  What fun!

So many new doors have opened this year, bringing me new abundance, new friends, new experiences, and new invitations to participate in exciting projects that serve the world.  It has been a year of growth and joy and I am truly grateful to the creative Universe that makes all things possible.

Please feel free to post your intention statements in the comments section.  I would love to support you on your journey.

A Valentine for You

Life is an interesting adventure.  Many wags tell us we're "human beings not human doings" and yet, life requires that we "do."  Some mystics have been able to take themselves out of the world to sit in a cave fasting and praying but that wouldn't work for most of us who have bills to pay and families to care for.  


For us, life is a dance of doing and being.  Doing done with awareness gives us insight into who we are in our deepest corners; being done with awareness gives us clarity into our relationship and connection to our selves, each other and the world around us ... and what needs to be done next to more clearly understand who we are.  Being and doing creating a mystic circle.

One of the most powerfully poetic statements of this dance was written by Dawna Markova, as she says, "on the night my father died with a shrug."  In her book I will not die an unlived life, she explains, "His heart was hollow and vacant of dreams.  He was convinced he didn't matter."  Dawna's book is a bright song reminding us that each one of us matter.  It truly is a valentine to all of us.  Below is the poem that sparked the book.

And on this celebration day of love, please remember that each one of you truly matters.

I will not die an unlived life.

by Dawna Markova

I will not die an unlived life.

I will not live in fear

of falling or catching fire.

I choose to inhabit my days,

to allow my living to open me,

to make me less afraid,

more accessible,

to loosen my heart

until it becomes a wing,

a torch, a promise.

I choose to risk my significance,

to live so that which came to me as seed

goes to the next as blossom,

and that which came to me as blossom,

goes on as fruit.