To Guide Human Emergence by Laughing Often and Much

I ask "why" a lot. It's in my nature. I was made aware of this again recently when I was with a friend that doesn't enquire so consistently into the meaning of everything. It got me thinking...maybe I set the bar too high. I desire a deeply meaningful relationship, a deeply meaningful career, deeply meaningful friendships...deeply meaningful books, poems, diet...Maybe it's a bit snobbish? To want a deeply meaningful existence? I suppose it could be viewed like this if I used my lens on the world to judge others but I try not to. It is not my place to judge any one else's life, but I think it's OK to have one's own aspirations for one's own life. I can't judge if someone else is in a dead-end career or Mcjob or in a relationship that I think doesn't serve them. How would I know what's best for anyone's personal evolutionary journey? Hell, I can't even figure out my own!

There are those from the school of "just get on with it" and those from the school of "your playing small doesn't serve the world" and I just happen to fall more squarely in the latter camp. I can't seem to help but wonder why I'm here and what I'm meant to be doing in this incarnation. That's why it was pretty cool to find myself listening to a webcast along with 30 000 people all over the world on The Key to Evolving Beyond Ego.

The organisation behind the event is the Academy for Evolutionaries - which I stumbled across via Integral Enlightenment, the brainchild of an American philosopher called Ken Wilber. The point of this Academy for Evolutionaries is, as explained in their words:

"empowering evolutionaries." To us, that means providing you with the tools, training and support you need to be able to reach your highest potential and fulfill on your highest calling.

If you're like most evolutionaries, chances are you feel a bit overwhelmed by the task facing you. You sense that there is a much bigger life calling for your participation.Yet, you know that to really participate in a way that will make a difference, you're going to need to evolve in a way that few human beings ever have.

You've realized that evolution doesn't just need more fans and cheerleaders. It needs awake, conscious, wise participants who have evolved themselves to the point that they're capable of serving and guiding the process of human emergence."

I loved the webcast. It was about 90 mins I think, of listening to someone discuss the stuff that I endlessly wonder about. And you can download it for free here if it sounds at all interesting to you.

I'm excited that there are at least 30 000 people out there thinking along similar lines! Yay! I'm not a freak! But I'm mindful that not everyone thinks like I do. I'm learning that wanting to educate the poor, save humanity and assist people with personal transformation journeys is stuff I want to do, it's not everyone's cup of tea. I have to be mindful that there may be some payoff for my ego in these goals. I am not a selfless being. I am so far from enlightenment. Most days I zig zag back and forth trying to be the best I can be and getting it wrong. A lot. There are days I lie on the sofa watching Grey's Anatomy not achieving much of anything. I'm learning to sit with the tension. To sit with things as they are, and how I'd like them to be. Between profound aspirations and the banality of earning rent money. Between guiding the process of human emergence and a more modest aspiration:

‎"To laugh often and much; To win the respect of intelligent people and the affection of children; To earn the appreciation of honest critics and endure the betrayal of false friends; To appreciate beauty, To find the best in others, To leave the world a bit better, whether by a healthy child, a garden patch or a redeemed social condition; To know even one life has breathed easier because you have lived. This is to have succeeded." - Ralph Waldo Emerson

So on I go, zigging and zagging.

Quest for Authenticity

Authenticity is understanding one’s own nature and making choices consistent with that nature. You can’t be authentic unless you understand your own nature.

I found this on a website when I was looking up Socratic Dialogue, which is a fascinating method I might like to work with, but not right now. I want to focus on authenticity.

When I read this quote I thought “Yes! That’s what’s happening for me right now! A major all-consuming quest for authenticity!”

I don’t know when I started the quest, but it has definitely intensified over the last 5 months or so. I’m searching and searching and I have moments of being exhausted by the journey. Moments of wondering why I couldn’t just have been a party planner, with 2 kids and a Labrador and a husband who plays golf and pays most of the bills. A picket fence. And a mortgage. And a nice glass or three of Chardonnay at the end of the day. But that was never meant to be, for me.

I’ve spent almost a decade understanding my own nature, with the assistance of some wonderful guides. It wasn’t really a conscious choice to start this exploration, I just reached a point where my lifestyle was completely unsustainable and unless I stopped to figure myself out I was going to self-destruct pretty soon.

But I think I only started truly establishing a clearer picture of my own nature in the last year. Of course it’s a lifelong process. Having a clearer sense of who I am is allowing me to work on making choices consistent with that nature.

Sometimes I look at other people’s lives and feel so unsorted. I mean the facts are: I have no home of my own, no job, no husband, no kids. And I’m 34 years old which is practically middle-aged. Some might view this as bleak!

But today, with radical clarity I can see a new way of looking at these facts: I have had so much time, space and such incredible resources in the last decade to grow and develop into the person I want to be. I have 2 degrees and speak 4 languages. I live in a beautiful apartment overlooking the sea. I have a wonderful boyfriend I get to figure all this stuff out with. (Who thinks golf sucks and prefers to throw himself down mountains with only 2 wheels and a bit of lycra between him and serious injury.) I have mountains to run on and sea to swim in - in fact I have a really strong body that I can use for any sport I choose. I have no boss to bitch about, instead I am meeting the most interesting conscious people that I would still want to work with if I won the lottery tomorrow. I have deep and meaningful relationships with a wide variety of people that enrich my life.

This is so far from bleak!

Having no mortgage, no husband and no kids means I have absolute freedom to make choices around:

• What type of work or career aligns with my true nature?
• What organisation or colleagues can I work with that will allow me to be authentic?
• How would I like to divide up my time between work and play and recreation?
• How do I want my primary relationship to look? Short term, long term, who’s washing the dishes tonight term?
• What sort of living space do I want to live in that feels authentic?
• What spiritual practices feel like they reflect who I really am and will help me find what I am looking for?
• Socially, who do I want to hang out with in order to feel I am able to be myself?
• How do I work around family dynamics, bearing in mind that no matter how I show up today, they may still see the “me” of 10 years ago?

I’m not saying people with husbands and kids and jobs and houses have no choices. Just that they have already made some of those choices. (My dad always said the choice to have children is the only one you can’t undo.) So please be clear, I’m not knocking anyone else.

I’m just celebrating my new lens on my own life. Acceptance of where I’m at right now.

I wonder why is it so difficult for me to hold onto feeling satisfied? Why do I forget how wonderful it is to have choices?

I don’t know what I’ll be thinking tomorrow. Or tonight. But right now, I’m blessed to be where I am, in the middle of my quest for authenticity. Universe, please help me remember how this feels. Help me remember I always have a choice around how I view things.

10 Life Lessons from Mountain Biking

I am scared I will fall every time I go mountain biking. This is ironic. Why? Because it is the fear itself that makes me fall. When I get scared going over a drop off, I start to brake, and the reality is, if I brake while the bike is trying to go downhill, I fall off. A bike in mid-air does not like to be stopped. This is not complicated physics. If I can recognise the fear, acknowledge it, and convince myself that no matter what I will NOT BRAKE until my bike has landed on the other side of this obstacle, I get down courses I never thought possible. It doesn’t seem I can stop being scared but it seems I can stop my instinctive reaction to fear – pulling the brakes.

Last weekend I rode with a friend who’s never gone mountain biking before. She was terrified at first and quite ready to give up in the first 15 minutes out of fear and frustration. But it ended up being a 2.5 hour ride. She rode up some impressive tracks but more amazingly – came down some impressively scary single track. She even trusted me enough to ride down a bridge. (One that took me several months of biking to be brave enough to try.) Afterwards when we said goodbye she thanked me for believing in her. I know that during our ride I had absolute faith that she could do what I was asking of her and moreover, that she could enjoy it and not just be terrified. She knew it too.

Sometimes we just need someone to believe in us when we’re struggling to believe in ourselves. Someone who holds a conviction in our ability to succeed even when we’re wobbling.

Today I rode with another friend who’s much braver and a better rider than me. It was an enjoyable reversal of roles from last weekend – reminding me how important it is to keep our roles fluid, in every area of our lives. My friend coached me over some tough bits that I was too scared to ride. I had my heart in my mouth a few times but I conquered some rocky rooted downhill sections that I’ve only walked my bike over before. It was fun.

As I rode the final section I thought, as I have before, how much mountain biking is a metaphor for life.

Here are my life lessons from today!

• · Your role is only to gently steer around obstacles and pick the smoothest line, not carve a new course.

  · Do not attempt to control everything. Momentum will carry you down – you will go forward no matter what.

  · Stop fighting gravity. Stop pulling the brakes. Touch them only when necessary to correct course.

  · Don’t stare immediately in front of you – keep an eye on what’s up ahead.

  · You will get better at it only if you keep going.

  · Fear is your biggest obstacle. It might not go away but if you’re wise you will recognise the fear and know to avoid the default reaction to fear that makes you fall..

  · Eat and drink at regular intervals to keep your energy up.

  · Try new things, it’s the only way to have fun.

  · Some bits are hellish no matter how you look at them. But others are exhilarating and awesome and make it all worthwhile.

  · Find friends to ride with who believe in you, help you laugh at yourself, and will pick you up if you fall.

Day 7 Find Extraordinary in the Ordinary

I was intrigued by this photo, even more so when I read the caption: "An extraordinary display of spring frost covering everything in sight. This particular image is of a frosted fence with a backdrop of a blue metal dumpster taken from a construction site." It was taken by Sara Worsham and it's part of a National Geographic Competition. They are all very cool, take a look.

A fence in front of a dumpster, on a construction site. And she saw this. I love it.

I'm going to try and spend the weekend on the lookout for the extraordinary in the ordinary. Not only physically, as in seeing the extraordinary beauty in the frost on an ordinary fence, but also intellectually, emotionally and spiritually.

My thinking kind of follows on from my post on Internal Crossroads, because I believe that in ordinary moments, if we are able to change our habitual responses, there is an opportunity to experience something that is emotionally extraordinary. If someone crashes into your car, you can get out and start screaming they're a moron or find a tiny voice of inner calm and say "This is a very tough situation for both of us, are you OK?". (For the record, I've never actually done this!)

You can go to a likely-to-be-ordinary business meeting with a mindset "I might be meeting a soulmate today and our working relationship may change the trajectory of my entire career". Opening up to extraordinary possibilities. (This one I have done.)

An argument with someone close to you might be ordinary. Yet, if in processing that argument you have a flash of insight into your behaviour or new understanding of a dynamic that has kept you stuck for years - you can allow it to be an extraordinary opportunity for your own growth.(Yip, this I've done too.)

Physically, intellectually, emotionally and spiritually, this is my extraordinary mission for the next few days.

Day 6. Crossroads

There are many crossroads in our lives. Moments when we have to choose one direction over another. Some of them are “external” in nature such as which job to take (or which apartment to rent). For these there are wonderful books like Po Bronson’s What Should I do with My Life? And The Work We are Born to Do (I have SHELVES full of these books!).

I am at one of those career crossroads now. Actually I have taken some steps, so I guess I’m not at the crossroad anymore. But it’s a new road and it’s unfamiliar. Sometimes terrifyingly unfamiliar for Calamity Jane. The good news is that I have already encountered many wondrous women who will walk down this road with me. They are smart and conscious and intuitive and have wisdom and patience in quantities that I don’t possess yet!

But there are other sorts of crossroads that are more "internal". They are paths in my mind that represent different ways of reacting to situations. These are internal because these paths are actually my beliefs or way of looking at events. My mindset will determine my behaviour so the choice I make at the internal crossroads will determine my external path. And there a million books on how to change how you think about things! Power vs Force, A New Earth, You Can Heal Your Life, Man’s Search for Meaning to name just four. I believe there is an endless market for such books because it is human nature to search for meaning in life’s events.

The internal crossroads I’m talking about look like this:

Something has happened, I have been hurt, life hasn’t gone as I wished it to and now I must choose a reaction.

There is the path of the child – which involves various methods of self-defence, blaming, hurting back, anger, shouting and sulking and silent withdrawal. It’s about ego really. Then there is the higher path of the enlightened person – which is a path of acceptance, of letting go, of turning the other cheek, being the bigger person, taking nothing personally, acknowledging that everything unfolds for our highest good and that we have the ability to meet fear with love and meet anger with calm.

Yikes! I don’t want to behave like a child, as tempting as it can be, because that will only end up hurting me again and I’m trying quite hard to grow out of hurting myself. But gosh, I’m pretty far from enlightenment.

And so I gaze upon these crossroads. I think about the situations in which I have been deeply wounded. How am I going to act? How can I act rather than react?

And I think about the daily moments when someone “treads” on your toes, pushes a button, triggers an old wound. At every moment, I have a choice. Child or Saint?

I move slowly forward, trying to find my path. The path of a woman, who’s neither child nor saint. A woman who’s aware enough to see that there are different paths, but often moving too fast to choose the right one. Instead, she plunges off the edge of the beaten track and ends up alone, full of thorns and miles off course.

Dear Universe, help me slow down enough to SEE THE CROSSROADS, read all signposts and choose an easier path.

When it comes to the very big crossroads, may I take the time to sit under a tree, seek the counsel of locals that have been that way before and only when I am ready, let them guide my way on. I'll get there in the end, I know I will and I'll be a helluva lot less bruised and exhausted if I avoid all the potholes and deadends.