A morning … such feelings … feelings of change and a continuing journey …

I remain part of some journey … some journey far larger than me.  Patience is still required because the journey’s destination is still unclear.  I only see (more like feel) where the next step might be.  Recently gaining my power was a huge moment.  It thrust me into a place never stood in before, feeling like I’ve never felt before.  It strengthened my stride and left me feeling more equipped to continue walking this unknown path before me.  It is a wonderfully exciting yet confusing feeling.

I am overwhelmed by the sense of pending change.  My heart is growing … that place is now more capable of holding even more love … more capable of sharing more love and kindness.  My heart fills my world and feels like it is expanding beyond its limits each moment of my living.  I seek opportunities to move away from my old ways … move to interact with my world with more love and kindness … leaving a trail of peaceful and joyful feelings behind as I travel … leaving people feeling valued and respected … leaving those small segments of the planet I touch better in some way.  It all is richly overwhelming … but not frightening … simply filled with this sense of great peace.

Each time I open my eyes I see differently … each moment I’m changing … my world no longer has permanence.  I am liquid … flowing now through life like water flowing in a mountain stream and taking on constantly evolving forms.  I am liquid … I am fluid … I am constantly changing towards somewhere still unknown but felt and loved so deeply.  Yes … felt … feelings of great sensitivity … feelings of a new awakening.  These are moments filled with new sensations … offering me a growing sense of movement and change … offering me a sense of enormous growth and enrichment.  It all swells around and through me.  What a morning …

Seeking the message ….

I move though my journey today … feeling like many fragments of messages and signs lay all around me but in a confused state.  I feel like there are many signs, but that they are scattered and need relating and connecting.  But I feel like I am working too hard … that my “wanting to know” is blocking the natural revealing of the message.  I need to let go … allow the breeze of the universe to scatter and rearrange the evidence so that I will see the patterns … allow the universe to tell me the story rather than me work to pull it out.  I must trust … trust that the right time is known and at that time answers will be revealed, and that my role is to watch, listen, and act when the time comes and opportunity occurs. 

A question I ask of myself each day now …

“Instead of demanding what we want and wanting it now, can we ask The Universe for what we want, and then let go? Can we rest in the peace of the moment knowing we are provided for and that the perfect thing, which is probably better than what we asked for in the first place, will show up?” – Mastin TDL; 3/15/2014

Patience … patience … I am learning patience while listening for messages and looking for signals of what is to come.

“Frozen in fear, you avoid responsibility because you think your experience is beyond your control. This stance keeps you from making decisions, solving problems, or going after what you want in life.” – David Emerald

Gaining back my power ….

These past 2 weeks have been incredibly challenging.  As a new, uncomfortable work environment was just beginning to evolve I became seriously ill.  All the changing … ongoing changes in my life … prepared me to accept that these new conditions had some unknown purpose … but embracing it required much reflection, acceptance, letting go, help from my friend and spiritual partner, and courage. So much discomfort and fear was swelling around me.  At this time in my life it appears I am meant to be pushed aggressively forward into more change, self-challenges, and lessons to be learned about myself … that appears to be my current reality because that is what I am facing and feel.

Of all I face, my workplace situation presents the most painful hurtles.  Assigned to a new place in the organization, a new director quickly and strongly executed a style of motivating that created fear instead of commitment for my team and me.  The behaviors rapidly evolving triggered many fears within me and those in my team.  The feelings were intense and deeply felt.  Feelings of powerlessness and self-criticism easily surfaced from the old scripts lived for so many years, and those feelings were given even more strength by overvaluing organizational power and seeing it stronger than personal power … personal power in terms of having choices, moving through and away from fear, and having the ability to act from intentions based upon integrity and kindness. 

Organizations have established power differentials … people who have power over others based upon where they sit in the organizational chart.  Such power can be executed with strength, sensitivity, and kindness, or it can be executed in ways that create feelings of fear and hurt.  I and my team felt we faced the later.

We succumbed to the differential … reacting from fear rather than responding with grace and kind intentions.  We also failed to recognize that those things external to us do not harm us, but it is how we perceive them and allow them to affect us that creates the sense of being hurt.  The old scripts drove that reaction.  They delayed us (me) from being able to more quickly see that what was occurring was us giving our power away and choosing to remain in fear rather than set positive intentions and make choices to move towards creating something positive … positive for us as people and positive for the organization.  It took me time to see this … time to quiet the internal feelings … time to reflect, discuss, and understand my feelings with help from my spiritual partner. 

The discord reached a point where threats and their packaging could be tolerated no longer … so a choice was made … a choice to set intentions to heal the working relationship, and begin taking measured action through various means.  The action was taken … taken with good intentions … and regardless of the final outcomes the feelings of powerlessness disappeared upon taking those actions.  It was a truly “ahh-ha” moment.  The inner sense of peace coming from moving away from fear, taking back my personal power, and acting with the intention of healing the working relationships felt incredibly good … deeply healing … and resonated with those genuine core qualities that I’ve referred to in earlier postings.  It was a defining moment … a moment that offered me such a powerful lesson about personal power.

Day-by-day the working relationship has changed.  Each day is taken as itself with no expectation … simply listening for the feelings sensed and felt.  But there is a shift … a shift in a loving direction … and my team and I will nurture that shift with intentions of sustaining a more joyful working environment.

But for me there is more.  There is the change … the ahh-ha moment … the huge shift that came from stepping into and regaining my personal power.  It has changed me … shifted me to a new place on my journey through life.  The lesson learned and the feelings felt are enormous.  And it serves now as a tool for me to recall, relive, and use on every step going forward.

“Just imagine becoming the way you used to be as a very young child, before you understood the meaning of any word, before opinions took over your mind. The real you is loving, joyful, and free. The real you is just like a flower, just like the wind, just like the ocean, just like the sun.” – Miguel Angel Ruiz

Rebuilding from the ruin …

The past several weeks have been traumatic.  Severe sickness, sudden and severe changes and challenges at work, changes and challenges in my life all have converged upon me.  It all overwhelmed my senses … creating this torrent of feelings showing the many, many lessons needing to be learned … red flags of fears causing me to react rather than respond, causing me to see external events as causes rather than more clearly seeing it is really how I was processing and perceiving events, and causing me to feed their intensity from old fragments of my past issues and scripts.  Regardless, I became simply overwhelmed by the avalanche covering and seemly smothering me.

Feelings of helplessness are very painful for me.  My father was taken away from me one night by a sudden heart attack, and I could only “peek” at unfolding events through a crack in the door.  I was 5, and the scars run deep to this day as do the memories of the pain. 

Though now on the road to recovery from my current illness, this recent health event has taken me down … very far down … torn me open and exposed my core to so many frightening and challenging images and messages …  caused confusion … and my mental awareness and ability to process was severely compromised, a very strange feeling and a challenge to address.  Fever-caused nightmares added to the mix of fears that recovery wasn’t coming fast enough.  I felt like I had been beaten to my knees and forced to submit what is left of me … submit to some new direction, new way of moving through life.  What was me is gone … I must rebuild … and rebuilding is currently underway now that I am stable and healing. 

I will speak more of the rebuilding later.  However, it must happen quickly because the challenges do not wait and many still burn all around me.  But my rebuilding will be done knowing of these challenges which I hope will be reflected in the architecture of what results.  There must be a greater reason for all that has and is happening … I am being given messages to change, change now, and change in ways that will make me more resilient to conditions like those I’m now facing with life, love, and self.  Yes … rebuilding is underway and I am working along, not against the higher forces that seem to be directing events beyond my control.  “Remain open” … so hard at times yet so vital to changing and taking the chances necessary to make significant change occur so that my life can move forward in new, fresh, and loving ways.  All new dance steps of the life unfolding before me … but steps I must learn quickly so that I can keep pace with the life rhythms I now face.

A prayer for this unique day …

I have been away … illness and the struggling to overcome it have taken my focus.  I will share more of that journey soon.  My freedom from illness offers new opportunity to blog … at least that is my intention.

For now … Live this day like no other … for it is indeed unique and will never visit again.

I shared this prayer with a deeply loved one earlier today, someone for which I hope angels watch over.  It is taken from a song.  I now share it with you for use in your travels through this day and all days …

May there always be angels

To watch over you

To guide you each step of the way

To guard you and keep you

“… I have looked in the mirror every morning and asked myself: ‘If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?’ And whenever the answer has been ‘No’ for too many days in a row, I know I need to change something.” – Steve Jobs

 Understanding the pain of adapting … 

A new dance recently began at work … a new dance created by a new conductor for the orchestra.  I and my fellow dancers were caught off guard … knowing there would be change but surprised at the degree of instant change … its intensity … at the increased and jagged beat of the music being played.  We must dance before even learning the steps … and I must lead … and I have to quickly design dance steps for myself and my team to move gracefully with this new music with its new rhythms.  Change … more change splashing around me and needing peaceful integration with the new me. So much change … so fast … I feel like I’m swimming nearer the rough water close to shore … I feel like I need to find a way to swim out to calmer waters … I need to catch my breath … I feel like my strength isn’t enough to sustain myself and those with me in the roughness.  Uncertain and unstable times … but the times being given me.

The new music from this orchestra triggers things inside me … things that are not comfortable.  Old stories that were placed there long ago and are now revealed by the negative emotions being evoked.  My task is to hold each painful instance felt since the start of this new dance.  Hold it, see it as it is, refused to give my power over to it and simply remove it like a stone from a wall blocking my joy … blocking the sun and its warmth.  Lovingly remove it so that I and others can see the light … see and feel the warmth of the sun shining through.

It is a challenging voyage that has already travelled through anger, frustration, sadness, and now greater understanding which brings more peacefulness along with it.  But I am still in transition and those earlier felt negative and painful feelings arise quickly.  But I even more quickly move to hold them and remove them from the wall blocking my joy.  It is a work underway at work … a work meant to integrate my true self with the work environment presented me in this moment.  It is a work in progress …and we will see if I can successfully remove enough stones to remain whole and true to myself. 

 My intention is to continue moving though this new world of changes with grace and love.  My intention is to continue removing old stones blocking my joy … blocking the warm sun from me and others traveling alongside of me.  Though I am feeling more confident today, we will see what unfolds … for the pace of my adapting may not be fast enough … and I will face choices… choices key to sustaining my personal joy and core integrity. 

“The most glorious moments in your life are not the so-called days of success, but rather those days when out of dejection and despair you feel rise in you a challenge to life, and the promise of future accomplishments.” – Gustave Flaubert

I stand in a haze … at times feeling like it might be lifting … at times feeling like it is becoming more opaque.  I continue to try to understand but I must admit that I move in the confusion of what I “feel” and how life’s circumstances seem to challenge the very conditions that bring me a richer life.  Yes … what is, is … but I still wish to know so that I can at least come to peace with how life seems to be a series of contradictions and contrasts.

Each day I read a blog called The Daily Love (http://thedailylove.com/?inf_contact_key=8f001c8202f370de5dcacfe3713822cb09b060a2a80040216dff9a22d84501e2).  Today Mastin, the blogger, wrote … 

“EVERYTHING your heart truly desires, yes EVERYTHING that is meant to be yours will come when you are finally willing to become the person it takes to manifest it.”

If true, then I must be moving towards an unknown and poorly understood definition of me, the person.  Is it that what my heart’s desire is not meant to be mine?  Is it that what I feel deep within my heart is not meant to be desired?  Is it that I have not yet become the person worthy of the desires I feel?  Is it that the truth of the universe is totally different than what Mastin and others think it is, and that the truth has yet to be discover by me or others?  Or is it all something else?  I do not know … nor will I likely ever know … and maybe that is the real truth … that I am on this journey filled with random possibilities which may or may not intersect with my life.  And if this is the truth, then seeking understanding of any kind will simply create tension and discomfort.  An interesting question … and interesting complexity.