Change - and choice

Hello all –

So I thought I’d completely jettisoned my old self…. but there are some things that are just here to stay… And that was rather the point – to see what remained after all the excess fell away.  Part of the Peace Corps journey was to re-calibrate.  You’ve heard this story before, so no repeating.  In short, I chose an opportunity that would allow me the space to live my work – and not sell it.    I’ve dismantled two websites, leaving behind  sixteen years of history.  I’ve stopped formally teaching the Feng Shui, the organization, dispute resolution, the ADHD classes, intuition, hands on healing.   I began teaching these topics at least a decade before they became mainstream and commercial. I’m glad to say that most of it is now part of the vernacular.  When I started, some of these concepts were only spoken of in hushed tones with trusted friends or others who had experiences that were outside the norm.  Now they are the subject of websites, books, webinars and Oprah.

Suffice it to say, that what remains after all that jettisoning of trappings and overhead, is the spiritual practice in daily life and the essence of that is awareness of what kind of emotion – vibration – energy I am offering to the mix.    Am I a source of light or contributing to the darkness?

Energy – sound – light – matter – emotion: it's is about vibration.  Everything vibrates at its own rate and that makes us all transmitters.  It’s not MAGIC – it’s PHYSICS.    This vibration influences everything around us and is cumulative in its impact.  It becomes and defines the collective.  It’s one of the building blocks  of the principle that thought-creates-form. In Africa, I had the remarkable opportunity to observe the immediate results of the concept in daily interactions.  Here there is so much noise, that sometimes it’s hard to rule out the variables.  

So why am I dragging this out now – after years of hiatus?  Because we, as a nation and as a complex culture, are in a mess - a world of woe.  It’s one we created for ourselves - and therefore a situation that we can choose to dismantle and change before our unconscious actions  or knee-jerk re-actions cement what it now just a possibility into a concrete reality. Regardless of political affiliation, our collective energy has created this atmosphere of escalating divisiveness.   Each political candidate represents the out-picturing of the mass energy – representing in different measures: hope, fear, love and hate.      We have – individually and as a society, allowed ourselves to be distracted by the media’s images of hate, violence, divisiveness and inflammatory rhetoric.   We have either not been paying attention, or often paying attention (aka: giving our energy) to things, thoughts, emotions and personalities that do not serve us well.   But we can change this IF WE CHOOSE.  And choose is an active verb…

Each of us has the ability to change our own energy or vibrational signature if we so desire and therefore calibrate (there’s that words again…) the signal we want to be responsible for sending and TO WHICH we want to resonate. Change the signal - change the path. 

We are creatures of choice and we can choose to be the best version of ourselves or drift along and let others do the choosing.  But what does that mean on a moment-to-moment basis?

In part, it means being acutely conscious of what we bring to every moment, every  action and interaction, every decision about what we re-post on FB, about the stories we tell about others and the worth we hold for ourselves.    In the book The Four Agreements (Miguel Ruiz), there is a quote:

“Be impeccable in your word.”

For me, that means not just to tell the truth, be authentic and honor our commitments. Our “WORD” is actually our frequency – the vibrational  signal we emit.  Sound – as an example of frequency – can destroy or create calm.  Is the signal we emit love or hate, worth or devaluing, supportive or discounting?   We are the tuners of our own devices; we are self-calibrating when we choose to be. 

IFF we want a different world, it means active engagement, but not necessarily in the old ways.  If we choose change, we no longer have the luxury of living on auto-pilot and being asleep to our real value, power or capabilities to shape the world and the relationships around us.  Perhaps we have reached this point of chaos and despair precisely to encourage us to be more aware, more conscious of the responsibility we hold for the choices we make, the actions we take and the words we utter.

Not to belabor the point, but again - we create with every breath, every emotion, every belief, every judgement, every blessing or curse – every word, thought, action (and inaction) – and every FB share!   Frankly, acting from conscious choice all of the time can be exhausting! It means breaking habits, operating out of new paradigms, questioning our motivations – being fully present.

One practice I have found helpful is meditation in general, but I really love doing a walking meditation, whether hiking, walking on the beach or to the store or even driving... it's a good way to focus energies and stay out of my monkey-mind.  Sometimes, it’s a challenge to “sit” and still the mind or to re-frame troubling thoughts and feelings, so I’m sharing a meditation I created for myself, in case it resonates with you or you want to create your own:

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   With every step I take, may all beings walk in freedom 

     May every action I take be one of compassion 

     May every thought I have be in awareness of what I bring to the world 

     May every word I utter be spoken in kindness 

     May every emotion be of love and gratitude 

     May every breath offer a blessing 

     May I see all beings as the divine in form.

Namaste,

Nancy

New Year Wrap-up

Yes indeed, the sun has set on yet another year and  2016 blew in with with gusto and freezing temps here on the northern shore.  Some strange atmospheric anomaly brought with it the tease of seeing the northern lights as far south as Cannon Beach, so in search of a little magic, a friend and I put on one each of the collection of jackets-hats-vests-and gloves co-mingling with the family of boots to drive up to one of the lookout points away from the light pollution of the metropolis of Cannon Beach. 

We set off into the inky night, any glow from the moon obliterated by the giant specter-like Spruces guarding one side of  Hwy 101 and the Pacific Ocean- - blackness incarnate -  on the other.  Headlights are all but useless on this road of hairpin curves and the darkness swallows the meager glow fr m our high-beams.  So we threaded our way out of town into the encroaching spookiness  until we came to Nekehanie lookout where we might be able to search out out some light-play on the horizon. The wind howled with a vengeance on this point as it juts out into the Pacific;  Manzanita to the south and Cannon Beach to the north.  My shoe-box  size car does not like this kind of wind, nor does its driver - so we inched up as close to the wall separating parking lot from the sheer drop into the ocean and turned off all the lights hoping for a light show.   As we waited, the car shook, the cold crept in and the spook-factor ratcheted its way up.   The only light we saw were those of few fishing boats tossing at sea and I again thanked the gods that I was not on a boat tossing in the dark.  As we sat, cloaked in the black night, it reminded me of the William Ernest Henley poem:

Daytime view from Nekahanie Lookout

"Out of the night that covers me,

Black as the pit from pole to pole,

I thank whatever gods may be

For my unconquerable soul...

In the fell clutch of circumstance,

I have not winced nor cried aloud;

Under the bludgeonings of chance

My head is bloody but unbowed...

It matters not how straight the gait,

How charged with punishments the scroll,

I am the master of my fate;  I am the captain of my soul."

That same captain saw fit to settle me on this gorgeous coast with the intention of reinventing life and so I am.  The first week of the new year always brings up the urge to avoid New Year's Resolutions, but a review of what's past and what might be ahead always seems to creep in.  While mulling over such things, I began to fall into that abyss of trying to figure out what this time of life is all about.  I've never really understood or identified with the term retirement.  Thank God I was rescued from further ruminations by a phone call from a strange country code: 256...   I answered my dark-ages black flip-phone (yes I admit it...) before the whereabouts of the prefix had been found in my mental Rolodex, for those of you old enough to remember such things.  A resonate voice full of lilting accent blossomed forth....     Identifying the accent, but not the words I knew it was Uganda calling!    A little knee-jerk panic hit as I wondered if  I was going to being able to understand any of this. Historically - the answer would be no:  lousy acoustics of my  phone, poor connection, a vaguely British accent speaking across thousands of miles, old fart hearing and a brain (mine) being out of practice in processing the uniquely Ugandan way of stringing English words together.

• I said: "I'm sorry who is calling ????"    
• The voice:  something unintelligible
• Again, me feeling embarrassed: "Oh I'm sorry! can you say that again?" 
•  The now-laughing voice:  "Your friend!  The former Assistant Rrrrrra D.C. (Regional District Commissioner)!"  
• Me finally: Oh Emily - it's YOU! How wonderful!" I am now choosing words carefully, trying not to "decorate"  language with words that will only confuse.  My English is just as strange to her ears as her's is to mine.

But we prevailed and it was the most delicious, surprising conversation.

She said "It is the New Year and I could not welcome it without calling you!  I have been missing you!  And I love you too much... and I could not start another year without saying thank you for all you have done? We miss you SO much!" 

Oh my, I felt wrapped in love and gratitude for knowing this woman, having lived those years in Uganda,  having  been "enough" to be missed two years later.  Overcome with emotion I couldn't think fast enough to ask her about everyone and when I tried one volley, I could tell there was familiar mis-step in making oneself understood (it goes both ways)  when the crackle of a poor connection took over ... In the next moment,  I think I heard her ending the conversation as it was just beginning. It was a very Ugandan practice - usually without preamble the conversation is simply "finished."  Air-time is a precious commodity and telephone etiquette is just different.  Was that "Goodbye"  I just heard?  Yes - I think so. And I thanked her for calling and told her,  "I miss you and love you 'too much. ' "  And then it was over.   Had it actually happened? 

Wow!  What a gift! What a spectacular way to start a new year!  A with it,  a heartfelt reminder of the impact we have on each other's lives.  Emily - who rescued a toddler literally from the sacrificial alter of a local witch doctor and moved heaven and earth to help me with Peter's horrid school situation had far more impact on my life in Uganda than I perceived  having had while there.  Still, I believe any small act of caring resonates far more deeply that we can imagine.  It was - for me - a clarion call to continue to be mindful of our ability to change the world through small acts of kindness given freely and without attachment to the outcome. And that continues to be one of the repeating gifts from my time there: to simply to the next right thing without expectation of return.  Just do it.

 Three weeks later, life has resumed some form of normality. The elk herd wanders down the street and fat racoons maraud around town at night and the wind blows. 

One big step for me in the ongoing process of re-calibrating and redefining life has been to jettison some of the trapping of a prior life that no longer support me.  The knowledge from and the appreciation of that life remain, as do good friend but other things no so much.  The website I had for 20 years Focus On Space and the email that went with it, along with it the book site are now defunct.  And I will tell you that the conscious dismantling and untangling of a previous identity with so much history was daunting.  It is so much more than I thought and as liberating.  Rather than dragging my history along behind me by default, I decided-to-decide what I would keep.  That said, there is NO aspect of life that that site did not touch:  accounts, online billing, contacts, professional life,  ad infinitum.  As soon as one layer was cleared another took it's place.  But, slipping around in the primordial goo of a new life forming is a distinctly unsettling - if often exhilarating - experience. 

So I am exploring and face it - funds are essential. But  thanks to Peace Corps and  other internal shifts, my relationship with money has changed as has the life-style I choose, allowing a lot of latitude.  But this new life I have here has no real rhythm and that's taking some getting used to.  I've taken on something new for me that stems from the language training in Uganda and my short stint in Mexico, learning how to teach English as a Second Language.   I'm the new coordinator for recruiting students and tutors for a TESL program funded by Clatsop Community College.  It ends in May, when the tourist season starts here and it's been interesting.   It's a bit like herding cats:  finding both tutors and students and then matching them up and finding venues for sessions: different schedules, abilities, transportation limitations, etc. etc.  I'm teaching one class a week that ranges from 5 - 12 students, half at any given time are new... English skills all over the place and great fun.  What a great group of lovely, supportive, funny women.

Cold but beautiful

My role as staff for  Haystack Rock job starts and this year I'm getting paid for what I did for free last year.  That fulfills one of my intentions: to get paid for work I would do (and have done) for free :)  Since that job revolves around low-tide, there's no normality to be found there.  The tide waits for no man, so all other schedules have to dance around this one.  No sense of balance there...   But being paid to be on the beach, talking to people about the wildlife is pretty fine.  However, the first session of beach duty was a little raw: 45 mph winds, cold and rough surf. 

And somehow I've made it onto the front page of the local papers without doing anything illegal or outrageous - yet.  I was interviewed about my Peace Corps experience, so it was fun and lovely to have the chance to the experience.

An that's the news from lake Wobegone...

Wishing you all a belated Happy 2016!   Love and blessings ya'll...