Friday 29 May 2009

What an amazing week....so much time is available....

Last weekend I graduated from my year long training to be effective in team, management and leadership. It was an amazing weekend. The warmth and love I received from everyone and the acknowledgement I was given for how I have taken on my life and done what needed to be done to leave a job I had no integrity with moved me to tears. In that moment I saw the beauty and value in being understood. Here were people who saw what this had cost me in terms of safety and security. It was so lovely to be there to see all the things that were being planned for the next quarter and not to be part of it. There was a great freedom and I found I was able to get more benefit because I was so relaxed. There was also fear and apprehension.

Before I started this training, I had done little with my life. I lived in a safe flat and worked in a safe job. This year started and suddenly what seemed more important than anything was to be in integrity with everything. I knew with a certainty that couldn't be doubted that the foundation for living a powerful life is integrity which is keeping my word and doing work the way that it should be done. The training gave me the courage to take the leap into the uncertainty of the unknown and I was afraid that when I no longer had this after I graduated that the little me who had played so small before this training would re-emerge and I would wake up on Monday in a severe sweat of panic, the reality of leaving a safe job and home hitting me for the very first time.

One thing that emerged from this year is that while it was a year of being in teams, creating teams, managing teams, communicating in teams, I am still an individual and do things alone. In my final feedback session before graduating this was again said to me. I have discovered my point of view which is 'I'm not included, I'm alone' and this is very much how I operate. But am I unhappy with this, not at all. I have so much going on in my head and insights that I get that I can seem to others to be on my own but I never feel alone myself. This is not to say that I shun or avoid the company of others. I don't not at all, but I don't seek it out. When someone comes to speak to me I will give them my full attention and listen and ensure that they see that I understand where they are coming from but then once the conversation is over, I am happy to be alone. This year has been an intense year of being constantly in communication, be it, conference calls, coaching calls, meetings which forced me to be social to be a master in the attributes of a new model of communication. On Sunday night I feared that the sudden ending of this intensity might not have a positive impact.

So it was that I woke up on Tuesday morning and my first thought was 'wow, I don't have to manage this morning to fit in two calls before going to college'. Words can't describe the joy and bliss that suddenly welled up from deep within. It had been my birthday the day before which was the Monday, my first day of no course and I had been upset. I didn't know if it was a combination of making my birthday mean something about the degree to which I was loved (so ironical after everything I have said about liking my own company) or if it was the withdrawal symptoms of the course and the training in general which I have been doing since 2005 but in the morning I was in quite a dark place. The people where I live knew that my birthday was coming up and when I was downstairs having breakfast the lady of the house came down and I told her. She gave me a huge hug and in that moment in the telling of it so that it was no longer running around my mind, I felt something big and dark lift and I was suddenly overwhelmed with the love, peace and ease I felt.

I had been given some beautiful writing books and I went upstairs and named one of them my promises book. Just because I am no longer formally in the training, it doesn't mean that I can't continue to build the foundations for power by writing down everything I am going to do in the day and hold myself lovingly to account for the actions I didn't do and recommit.

As this week has gone on I am amazed at the continued deep ease, peace and calm I feel as well as having the gift of time. I have been so focussed on my work for getting these exams in three weeks done and I have been amazed at how intentional I am now with it all. I have a new depth of concentration, one that I didn't have for the time on the course so far. It's like the training with Landmark took precedence and I entered into it fully doing everything I was committed to until the very end and now that it is over and I graduated powerfully - there is space created for what is now the most important thing for me, getting these exams. The joy and peace I feel I assert are the feelings that come when the spirit is in integrity. I can't think of what else gives this depth of ease and connection. Life flows and is in harmony and me in harmony with it in ways that I never thought possible.

I gave my word to write this blog once a week until the exams are over so this is the entry for this week. I could write lots more especially about events in the world but this would be out of integrity given how much study I have to do. Suffice to say that this first week without the training which I had feared I would go to pieces without has been a week where I have stepped into my power without attributing it to anything but myself and the skillls I have learned. To know that what I had considered was maybe a crutch and realise that it is a tool has been so liberating. I believe 100 percent in this training, not as a crutch but as a powerful training which gives anyone the tools and skills to be powerful in the face of any situation but also not be dependent on it. This is a balance that many training fails to achieve. I will always and ever be grateful for the forces that put me into contact with this training. I know what I and my life was like before I started it and I know what it is like now and the transformation is real, startling and exciting......

Saturday 23 May 2009

When not being present, alert and aware costs

Today was amazing. Being part of a group of people who are lit up by causing love and affinity in communication throughout the world was both inspiring and humbling. And yet, I was aware that I am more than ready to complete this leg of my transformational journey. When the day was finished those of us who are finishing at the end of the weekend went for something to eat and I was so aware of the joy, love and connection there was between us. I also shared with the group about what the year made possible for me and when I declared my intention to be a powerful and effective leader for children and young people I was conscious of loud applause. For the first time this made my stand real. I had declared it in front of almost 100 people, a combination of people from London, Israel and Amsterdam.

After the meal I made my way back to the guest house. On the way I stopped at a cash point machine because I only had a couple of pounds and wanted to get some money. At the next cash point was a man I did not recognise until he said hello to me. When I looked closely he was a guy I recognised from a cafe where I often get a coffee when I am early for an agreement or a team meeting. Instead of paying attention to what I was doing, I began chatting with him about the lovely warm evening. The result.....my dithering meant that the machine swallowed my card so that in an instant I went from the possibility of having money to the reality of not having any. What was amazing for me was how calm I was when it happened. The guy when he realised what had happened was very sorry for interfering with my concentration but I didn't blame him at all. It was my responsibility to mind my own business and to concentrate on what I was doing. I didnt....and I paid the price. The guy beat a hasty retreat after this and I went off to find someone who could do something, knowing deep down that nothing could be done to offset my blatant stupidity.

I found a policewoman who walked out to the machine with me. As we walked and talked my mind was going over the options I had. I knew that I had enough banked up on my train card to take me back to the hotel and to my meeting tomorrow. Once I get to the meeting I know that I can borrow some money, enough to tide me over until I can get into the bank on Tuesday. Once again this training to be powerful in the face of everything that life throws has paid off in that I didn't panic.. In the place of stress and panic was clearheadedness and calm. Before I did this training with Landmark Education this would not have been possible as I would have been so stressed and pannicked. I have just finished speaking with my bank who as I expected can't do anything except issue a replacement card which is going to take seven days at least to reach me.

This reminds me of something I heard about the three kinds of business there are. One kind is my own business, another is someone else's business and the third is God's business. Suffering comes whenever we come out of our own business and go into another's - by either having an opinon, view, judgement on what another should be doing, saying etc. Tonight instead of minding my own business, I went into anothers and paid the price. And yet, out of it I have yet more proof of the power offered by the technology I have spent many years aiming for mastery over. Each event like this and how I handle it convinces me of the power of this training.

But it has taken its toll on me in that I am very tired now so I'm going to sign off....

Friday 22 May 2009

Memories of India......

For this weekend of my last team management and leadership course. I have opted to stay in a budget B&B in London. I have done this because I want to get in a couple of hours of study before my two long days. Yet in spite of all this and my exams looming I felt such bliss, peace, contentment and happiness when I woke this morning. This year where I have been trained in becoming a master in powerful ways to communicate has been just amazing. It has given me a courage and an adventure for life that I never thought was possible. I do not recognise myself as the same person I was when I started this training one year ago. I think if people look back at how I was when I began writing this blog and how I am now, the shift is quite amazing.

I saw the power of this training once again at a recent event where I was asked a question and instead of considering it gave the first answer that came to me...duh....wrong..and the person concerned got apoplectic with rage threatening me with all sorts if I repeated what I said again. Before I did this training and learned how to be steady in the face of any verbal attack I would have dissolved into tears and been a mess. As a result of this training I had the presence not to react and to see her commitment to me and her concern that I wouldn't give the same answer in the future. This would not have been possible before the training as I would not have been able to stay steady. This amazed not only me but also the others who were present. They were more angry than I was about the whole thing. In my non-reaction and calmness was an shakeable power. The training I am completing this weekend has made me like a rock, the waves of life, crash around me, but I remain steady.

This has deepened my resolve to become a Landmark Forum leader for children and young people. I don't want any young person to have to wait until their mid-40s before they have the skills for being powerful in the face of everything that life throws, I want to be in there making a difference when the identity is forming so that it can be one that empowers and doesn't limit. However I am aware that there is the matter of getting this qualification and also a job in order to finance all of these lofty ideas of mine, but I am confident that a way will open and what needs to happen will happen.

As I write this I am sitting in the lobby of the B&B and I can tell from the language being spoken which is Hindi that this is an Indian owned, if not managed guesthouse. The facilities here also remind me of India and Nepal and staying in places that really were not fit for the habitation of animals never mind me as a homo sapiens that I am not phased by this place. It has free internet which to me is brilliant and means I can write this entry before making my way to the centre to begin my weekend which starts with acknowledgement for what all of us have achieved over the year...I am so excited about it all.

I am attaching a link to an article which a man called William Meader has written. Based in Oregon he is over in the UK to give talks and a retreat. When I lived in London I was drawn to going to a workshop he gave on intuition. As I was walking up the escalator to get to the workshop I saw that William was ahead of me on the escalator (I recognised him from his pic on the internet). I focussed intently on watching him and then to my amazement he turned around and looked down as if he had sensed someone watching him. For some reason this impacted. His workshop was quite theoretical and academic and he's not in the same class as Eckardt Tolle for me but there is something in the way he writes and what he writes that resonates. He has published a new article about Awakening which I am giving the link for here. It says similar things to me but he is a much better writer than me. I am mentioning it to give faith to Harry and others like him that we are not lone pioneers on this path. The link is:http://www.meader.org/articles/The_Awakening.html

It's now time for me to go to be a part of the magic of global communication as people from London, Israel and Amsterdam come together to share the magic and miracles that are only possible in communication and by putting ourselves at risk. What I have got from this year which I will take with me is that the only two things that are permanent and I can stake everything on is....my commitment and my word. Everything else in terms of thoughts, feelings, view, opinions are all transient and impermanent. What can be counted on in all situations is commitment and integrity.....

Saturday 16 May 2009

When the outer.....mirrors the inner....

This evening I returned from a weekend in London. Since writing my last post I have been in a very funny space. I've not been able to shrug off a feeling that I had sold out on something, but what.....I don't claim any of what I write to be the truth just ideas to be considered and debated so what was heavy feeling that I couldn't shake off. I felt really low in college this week, kind of restless and shaky. When I wrote that last entry I was thinking about Princess Diana who began off with laudable and inspirational aims but then the identity became stronger than her possibility and Diana the identity with her dramas took over the show and in the process many of the great things she had stood for somehow got lost. Diana the individual became more interesting than Diana the inspiration.


I was determined that I would not sacrifice the process of transformation or spiritual development call it what you will on the altar of personality identification. The moment I felt that this was what the blog had become, it was over. What this blog is trying to get across is a process it is not about Margaret the identity but about the ongoing tension that occurs between the identity which gives us our dramas and crises and that part of us that ultimately recognises that it's all a big play and we are all as Shakespeare said 'merely actors on the stage playing different parts'. I understand the truth of this at the deepest level and what I am attempting to do is to demonstrate how consciousness shifts from the dark to the light.


And yes, I have leaned heavily on the technology offered by Landmark Education to do this but it is not the only system. What is important is to halt the relentless operation of the identity (that we are not aware of) on the human consciousness by becoming self-aware. An object will continue moving in the same direction unless another object comes in its way and stops it. Any self-development or awareness programme acts as that object. The identity meets it, it ain't happy and the battle begins. Whoever flagged this blog up as objectionable might like to consider that action as coming from an identity that feels threatened in some way. The identity has as its raison d'etre, its survival and it doesn't care how it achieves it. Down through the ages, the emphasis has been on developing self-awareness, why? I asssert that it is to have the identity work for the consciousness and not the other way around.


Today when I returned and caught up with my emails I saw I had a comment on my last blog entry which on the one hand I didn't want and on the other hand, has made me re-consider my decision to end this blog. I have a request which I am going to ask of all of the readers and that is when you read entries to look at them as describing a process, not me as a personality. When I write this blog, I am not there, strange as this may seem to write. It is like I am a witness watching it all happen and yet I am incredibly grounded and clear about what is going on. If I can be confident that this blog will be read as describing a process which I believe is the process of consciousness awakening resulting in accelerated spiritual development, then I will continue. As I write this I am thinking in particular of my friend who vocalised my fear that it was turning into a soap drama. To him I say, if he continues to read this, I am writing about a process, it's not about me as an individual, it was never about me as an individual. Ultimately you have the final power in that you or anyone doesn't have to read it.


I have been watching events out in the world with much interest and looking beyond the appearance of what is happening to what might be deeper. I have been particularly intrigued by the issue of MPs expenses and what us as tax payers have funded. I see this as quite a powerful consciousness raising point because it hits every tax payer and has given rise to strong feelings of resentment and anger. Getting in touch with these feelings but not projecting them or expressing them is very important in the process of expanding consciousness. Space has to be created in order for the consciousness to shift. People feel angry and provided they don't act on the anger and, if possible, which would be marvellous, they are able to observe it going on within themselves as an interested observer then the space is created which will enable the consciousness to shift. The old has to be let go to enable the new to emerge, steadiness of consciousness is what is going to determine whether this process is connected or chaotic....my recommendation is for the former!......

As we move closer to the evolutionary shift of consciousness that is coming, other events are going to rock the foundations of what we consider to be stable and enduring. The crisis with MPs expenses strikes at the heart of a constitutional democracy, it has the power to bring everything crashing down like a house of cards. I don't know what's next but I am clear that there will be something. What there is to do is to remain steady, recognise the tendancy to react and in the observation of it, its nature will change. Everything that is happening has to happen in order for the next phase of evolutionary consciousness to begin...... It is already happening with people re-evaluating what is important. Self-empowerment programmes are going to become more popular as people bewildered by events finally turn within for an understanding they haven't been able to get from outside sources......


Everything in life depends not on what happens but on our own reactions to what happens. If we can have power over our reactions we have power over life......

Sunday 10 May 2009

Last post.....everything has a shelf life...

When I started this blog it was to demonstrate a process. I used myself as a guinea pig to demonstrate it. The intention was to inspire others to take risks and show courage in life. My good friend who I have known since childhood and has been a loyal reader since I began it was brutally honest with me and said that it's turned into a kind of soap drama which now has voyeuristic appeal and as this was never the intention, it is time for me to call time.

This is not the only reason. I make my own mind up about everything I do and would not end this blog because one person or two even have told me that it is a good thing for me to do. Since having it flagged with objectionable content I haven't felt the same. If what I wrote was the definite truth then it would be different but I have always asserted that these are just views of mine based on my own observation and experience. I consider that I have now done what I set out to do which was to demonstrate a process, anything else I could write is a matter of degree.

All there is left to do is to thank all of those who have been loyal readers of this blog and to encourage you to go out there and create the life you want for yourself. Thank you so very much, especially to Harry, who I have never met but feel such a closeness to. I wish you all the very best in your own journey.

Please do not post any replies to this post, I will finish by saying a final heartfelt thanks to you all.

Margaret

Tuesday 5 May 2009

Everything's the same....yet it's so totally different

It was the same college and it was the same shorthand class today but it was different. Today I didn't sit through the shorthand lesson in the familiar fog that I usually do. I was as bright as a button, seeing things that I had never seen before and drawing confident outlines instead of the usual 'catch the spider that has run over my page' type. The bank holiday Monday was a strange day as I felt that I slipped back as my mood was once again black to the point that I didn't want to write this blog. It felt like the periods of freedom when the consciousness is out of the box were just too brief and I was once again plunged into the darkness. But yesterday there was none of that. We got the results back from our public affairs exam and I could see how my subconscious belief about myself 'that I won't get it' had impacted on this too in that my answers were brief and superficial and hence I paid the price in terms of the grade I got. Up to now I have just wanted to pass the exams and get the 100 words a minute in shorthand. Now I want to drive myself harder to get a higher mark.

What has been so amazing for me about this process is how with all the work I have done on disappearing words that are said to me that they can still have such an effect. What was hidden from my view was how my identity was using words that a nun had said to me when I was 15 about 'not being able to really get anything'. This came about when she gave me the result of an IQ test I did. The fact that it was an IQ test and not the result of a maths or some other test made the entire thing hugely traumatic for me in that IQ is part of the fabric of our being. When she told me that the results from my IQ test were such that I wasn't normal and the best that I could hope for in life was getting one of those jobs where people took cans of beans of conveyor belts it totally devastated me. Fast forward years later and with the Landmark technology I recreate it and think that it's gone. What I see now from how I have suddenly 'got' shorthand is that my identity used this to give me a life where I didn't 'get' things that were said to me.

What all of this has awoken in me now is a deep desire to be a leader for children and young people to ensure that they have the tools to be powerful in the face of the kind of attack I experienced. My stand is that every child and young person has the tools to enable them not to make things that happen in life mean anything. What I have got present to was how much different would my life have been if I had this technology available to me when I was eight years old and upward. Yet, I am not going down this route. My life path has been like this for a reason. What it has showed me however is that this kind of damage if not picked up early festers and gives the identity fertile ground to keep the person playing small. How was I ever going to play big when below my consciousness my identity was saying to me that everything I did and everything that I said, or someone said to me was 'you're not going to get this'. I see so clearly now why I have struggled when it has come to being coached. The coaching couldn't get past the identity which was saying 'don't even bother, you're not going to get it'. Up to now, it has been so effective in how it has done this. But now.....the rules of the game have changed....

It's so amazing that I had really been convinced that after I finish this year that this is the end for me. I see now that it is only the beginning in terms of realising my burning aspiration to be a Landmark Forum leader for children and young people. Children and young people are the future and I want to be doing my part to make a difference so that the world they build through the tools they will have will be a world of love and affinity and an identity that isn't out to destroy but to empower. I believe that this is possible and this is my dream and has gripped my consciousness with a passion I didn't know was possible. In an earlier blog entry I spoke about the shift that happens when the consciousness is grabbed by something. I have been gotten by this dream and I will do anything to make it happen.

It's not going to be easy becauses the training involved is around seven years. To my knowledge all of the leaders who lead for children and young people are in America. I also have to sustain myself financially but I trust that all of this will come. What all of this has taught me is that yes, as an adult you can work on yourself and get some freedom from stuff that has happened in childhood but without having these tools at an early stage of life then the identity becomes too strong. It feels like to me that efforts made when an adult is like a crack in the rock. You can fill in the crack but it's still there. For young children to have the tools for disappearing the possibility of the crack is a vision that inspires me beyond belief.

Yet I am not so naive as to think that the identity is going to stop the way that it forms. It won't. What will be different will be that the young people will have the awareness of what is happening and in that awareness will be power. The consciousness won't be the sitting duck that it has been in the past. It's also going to be a huge challenge for me and for my tendancy to get attached to something that I nail my colours to the mast for. My mantra for all of this is going to be 'committed but not attached' and I am so trained now that I recognise the difference between the two. There is also no fooling young people in that they know when someone is the real deal with them. I have also declared this to be my life path because of the affinity I feel when I am with children and young people. I am at my most authentic and happy when I am among them. To have this and also the training to enable them to be the most powerful, free and self-expressed people that they can be and to really experience that they have the power to create whatever life they want to have for themselves is truly to have everything while on earth.

I never thought that I would have the passion and commitment to something that if someone said to me 'if you run five miles a day then you will achieve this' that I would then without question set the clock early and do this, even though I really don't like running. From this I realise the importance of having an empowering context when you are going to do anything which the identity is going to resist at all costs. I see the difference that having an empowering context makes in not giving into the resistance put up by the identity which is not personal.

Life at the moment feels like such a rollercoaster and all there is to do on the rollercoaster is.....don't get off until the end....

Sunday 3 May 2009

I woke up this morning still feeling deeply happy and contented. I know that my consciousness has shifted yet again. I'm finding it difficult to find the words to express exactly what is happening. I feel a new level of peace and calm. I have been thinking of Manuel Schoch a lot and realised when I was sitting looking out at the sea yesterday that much of the accleration I have experienced has been since he died. I see his face in my mind so often and can't help a feeling that he is close to me and involved in these shifts in some way.

I showered and dressed and got ready to go to see an Earthship development (Eco-friendly house) and interview one of the Directors who was involved in its development. I arrived there early as is my way and I got chatting to a man who is interested in building an Eco-friendly home on land that he bought in Thailand three years ago. It was a fascinating conversation that flowed until I mentioned about writing some notes and then he became all cagey saying that he didn't want me to say anything that put pressure on him for having to do it. I immediately thought of the years training I am doing which is all about declaring what you are going to do and then others holding you to account for it being done, as a foundation for power. I tried to say this and immediately realised that I was going into the old model of communication which is about controlling and defending instead of accepting and going into the other person's world. I said something about the power of being held to account but when I saw that it didn't land and it was likely to provoke I let it go and went into his world, the world of the pressure he feels when he says to someone that he will do something and it doesn't get done. The result for him is that now he tells nobody what he is going to do and three years on there is still nothing done.

Gradually other people turned up for the tour of this Earthship and we all set off. At various points along the way the guide explained different aspects of how the project had been developed and funded. Once at the development I looked at it with curiousity for what had cost a quarter of a million pounds to build and heard about the materials that were used in its construction i,e old tyres and chalk for the walls and the floor that is constructed of rejects from lime quarries. The electricity is provided by solar panels and a wind turbine. I had a camera and did take pics but am such a ludite when it comes to the tools of my trade i.e uploading images and video files that none are going to go up here. On the tour was a man who kept taking photographs. I asked him if he was a photographer and he explained that he was an Architect who is writing a book on Earthship development. He asked me what I was doing here and I explained that I am writing an article on low carbon initiatives and that this is one I am covering. He gave me his email address and asked me to send him a copy of the article when I had it written.

When the tour was over I asked the guy who had given it some questions and he was very willing to speak to me. I found that the words freelance journalist bring with them a certain authority in that once I explained this people considered what they were saying to me. Interview finished I made my way back to the main car park. I stopped off for a coffee and sat outside. On the way I passed a woman wheeling a man in a wheelchair and she was speaking in a bright and breezy manner and not receiving much response from the wheelchair occupant. They came to the same table as I was and from the conversation I gleaned that he was once fit and healthy and something had caused it that he was now in a wheelchair. She continued to be bright and breezy but it wasn't enough to lift his spirits. He seemed to be stuck in the past and in how good things had been and every so often he tried to bring her back to this. She didn't seem to want to go there and would force the pace back to friendly but the love she had for him was so obvious and my heart went out to both of them. It looked like he used to be fit and active and to now be wheelchair bound was something he was finding difficult to accept. Yet acceptance when things like this happen is the only way to be happy. Resistance causes suffering as what we resists becomes stronger.

I drove back and sat for a while looking out over the sea. I was supposed to go to London to hear my friend speak about a theory of the brain that he has been working on for many years last night but cancelled it because I have been in London three times over the last week. His commitment and dedication to his brain theory is causing a lot of excitement in London, he is developing it as a kind of software programme. If anyone wants to check out his site, here it is http://www.iawwai.com.

It's been a really good day today...freedom, ease and fun.....

Saturday 2 May 2009

After the ecstasy...comes life..

There is a definite process to the way that consciousness shifts. It is not random. It involves periods of deep dark uncertainty and then a realization which brings about a state of joy and bliss for a time and then a falling back. It feels like an never-ending process of purgation that has periods of intense darkness. I understand though that I am simply the vehicle by which a much bigger cosmic game is being played out. I can feel the intense inner battle that goes on within me and I watch it like an interested observer and without any interference except to stay steady. The unbridled, joy, bliss and connection I felt towards everyone and everything following my Eureka moment with shorthand while minor in the scale of things was a major trigger for shifting my consciousness and with it the way me and the world occurred. My reward for staying with this process and connecting with it was the experience of intense, peace, joy and bliss. But then the process has to continue and it is not personal. To progress up a ladder to the top one has to move from rung to rung. So no matter how intensely addictive the state was that I was in yesterday the fact is that my consciousness has to continue to shift. What will stop this shift is for me to be attached to or look for a repeat of the experience of yesterday.



This letting go without having any desire is the greatest challenge of what I suppose I am daring to call a spiritual path. As human beings we live our lives inside of boxes that are constructed by our identity. A sudden shock to the identity sets the consciousness free from that particular box and this is where I am at the moment. I am out of the box that told me 'I wasn't good enough and I couldn't get it' . This gives me the experience of freedom but come tomorrow or even tonight something will happen, I will make it mean something about me and about life and bingo...my consciousness will go back into another box and the process of the darkness and uncertainty will begin over again. As I write this I hear the words of a religious song coming through and they are 'be glad the day you have sorry, be glad for then you live'. Uncomfortable as the dark times are for me at least I know that this process is continuing and for that I am extremely grateful.

At the end of the agreement today I asked a woman what she would like to be acknowledged for. She told me that she would like to be acknowledged for being able to recognise that little voice in the head which is unrelenting in its commentary on what is going on and for now being able to acknowledge it but not listen to it. In other words she asked me to acknowledge her for becoming more self-aware. I was so moved by this and it is my stand for people to be self-aware as the access to living a life which has freedom, ease and fun......

Amazing....and totally unexpected....

I wrote my blog entry yesterday from quite a dark place. I am beginning to be much clearer about these dark places and the importance of staying steady and authentic with myself when I am in them. Yesterday I finished college early as the lecturer was too ill to come in. I have been worrying about the design component of this course, solely because it involves the logistics of making boxes and importing texts and pictures and I have it that I can't do it. When we had no lecture yesterday I took a chance and asked someone on the course who I think such a lot of if she could spend a few minutes just taking me through the basics. Her willingness to do so and the way she went through everything with me was so brilliant and I was so thankful to her. Suddenly me designing a magazine page for one of the features I am writing is not the daunting, complexing and confusing task I had made it out to be. It also showed me again how important communication is and to say what's there and make requests. It is in the space of communication that magic and miracles happen.

I shut off the computer and went home. I had been a bit apprehensive because three out of the five people I live with have been sick with some kind of vomiting stomach bug and in spite of all my words about staying steady could see that my mind was far from steady, with thoughts like 'you can't get sick on this course', but the beauty of being a witness over thoughts is that I know the thoughts are separate from me otherwise I wouldn't be able to distinguish them. The moment that is distinguished the thought loses its power. Our identity uses thoughts to keep us playing small and I recognise that in every moment. What is then there is the choice to give up that disempowering thought and create a possibility that moves and inspires. Identity and possibility cannot live in the same space. At every moment we are operating from one or the other, never both at the same time.

When I got into the house it was all quiet so I went to my room to do some shorthand before getting the train to London because it would be a late night last night with my final classroom and also my agreement later today so I wanted to put in some practice. I did my first speed test and couldn't keep at all and that was only at 60 words per minute and I am committed to 100 words a minute to allow me to apply for a job on a paper as well as a magazine. I rumaged in my bag for my book, pad, ruler and pen and thought I would try a passage I hadn't drilled. I hadn't got far when the familiar feelings of frustration and really not having an idea how the squiggly outlines were arrived at and then the fearful thoughts of not being able to get this. It's ironical I'm not a bad writer and yet teh access to being even better is proving to be such hard work. Pissed off beyond belief I crammed the books into my bag, on some kind of impulse I also put in a shorthand dictionary that I had but have never looked at and left for London to help prepare the room for the classroom that evening.

I got to the station in plenty of time and settled myself on the train which soon took off. I reached into my bag and pulled out the first book which was the shorthand dictionary. I started to look at the construction of the words as they occurred alphabetically and then it hit me like a brick 'Eureka', none of the outlines had any vowels....all of the vowels were missing. Suddenly how to construct these outlines became so clear and all of the fog I had around it disappeared and I could construct words that I knew I hadn't drilled simply by getting that all I had to do was to leave out the vowels. Now I understood the look of puzzlement my colleague had given me when I explained how I struggled to write 'doors' in shorthand. I got myself tied up into knots about where to put the two os' when the bloody outline had no os' and was just drs. I saw just how ludicrous the whole thing was I laughed at loud much to the amusement of the guy who was sitting in the seat opposite. He must have thought it weird me laughing and not looking at anything only a shorthand book.

I couldn't believe what I had just seen and I closed the book to look out of the window and give a hearfelt thanks to the universe for making it possible. I gazed into the sky and to my delight saw that the moon in the sky was half-covered and I really saw that this mirrored the way everything is. Some is exposed but most is hidden to reveal itself when the time is right. I am sure that the teacher said about not including vowels, I think it is written in the book also but I didn't get it until yesterday on a train........how strange and yet how magical and miraculous.

I entered into the classroom last night in such a different frame of mind. I hadn't realised that being so stuck on the shorthand had gone through my whole way of being in that I had told myself that I was stupid that I couldn't get it and this had an impact in the way that I kept myself separate and alone from everyone. Not last night, I was chatting with everyone and ended up staying up until 4am with a couple of other people chatting about the amazing things that are happening in everyone's lives.

So now I must go and do my agreement and inspire graduates to play big games to get the truth of the power to create whatever life he she wants to have.....

Friday 1 May 2009

Surrounded by people....yet so alone..

I'm in such a strange space these days. Coming to the end of my year of the Team Management and Leadership programme is bringing up some deep stuff about how I occur to others and to myself. The way others are to me reflects the way I am to others. I had a call with a coach who said to me that how I occur is 'like butter wouldn't melt in my mouth' and was asked what was the inauthentic way of being that it covers up. Being in -authentic which means pretending something that I'm not, is not bad or wrong it just prevents me being powerful because being authentic is vital to being powerful. As my stand and commitment to myself and to others is to be powerful and effective I have spent much of this week in the enquiry. What has come out is that I feel I am superior to others and in order to feel this I must spend much of my time judging others and being right about my own opinions and views. The irony is that I have always written in this blog that opinions and views are just that, opinions and views. They are not the Truth and yet I have made an experience I had way back in 1999 on a meditation retreat in Southern England mean exactly that. It is extremely difficult when you have an experience that shifts consciousness by virtue of something happening that is totally and completely unexpected to either wipe the memory of the experience from consciousness and not to make it mean anything. To come from nothing would be to operate without the memory of this experience which is something I never do. The memory of that experience is always and ever with me. It is the driver for everything I do or say. And without a teacher who would put the experience into a context for me there are times when I almost drive myself mad trying to figure out the context for myself.

This year that I am almost completing to become a master in the distinctions of a new model of communication, one that touches and inspires others and is powerful in helping people to understand the nature of suffering and gain the tools for relieving that suffering has been extremely confronting. We are often asked why we joined this programme, what is it that we want to get out of it at the end of the year. Most of the replies are about wanting to be a leader, to inspire people to have lives that work. To be able to be fully free and self-expressed. Always what plays at the back of my mind is I'm here because I had an experience that I have made mean that I am a leader. Yet nobody has told me that this is true so maybe this is why I struggle and feel so confronted and alone on this course. Is it that I am not on it for the right reasons. Having said that the training has given me courage beyond what I would have been able to muster up on my own. I don't recognise the person I now am coming to the end of the year from the person who started in Amsterdam in May of last year. When I look back at everything that has happened I have no regrets about doing this year. But in spite of this I still feel like an outsider. This superiority which I can't seem to shake off stalks me. I often wonder what would life have been like if I hadn't had that experience in Devon but I know that this is a useless conversation to have with myself.

What there is for me to do is to create how the future is going to be for me once I leave the Team programme. The part of me that wants to be an individual (identity/ego) is delighted and is counting down the days until the end and there is another part of me that is saying 'alone and separate' how are you going to make a difference to people. And in the midst of all of this there is the college course which is upping in pace and intensity. In spite of my best efforts to do regular and consistent shorthand practice the state of panic that sets in when it comes to shorthanding unseen sentences means that where my mind should be full of the appropriate lines to squiggle it remains frustratingly blank. I have often written about the power there is in uncertainty and I am once again in that familiar space. I am aware that my way of being is to be superior to everyone else and to be right and I see the impact of this way of being on others in that they don't feel comfortable or self-expressed around me but seeing and transforming this are two different things. When I got my insight into how much I had to control life because of a fear of what would happen if I wasn't in control, I hit a wall in that I lost a position of accountability. This forced me to confront what was really going on. Out of that I had a massive breakthrough which enabled the publication of my book. I am hungry for a similar breakthrough into this way of being of mine which results in me feeling alone and separate no matter how many people I am surrounded by. It is like part of my consciousness is always somewhere else and I'm not present. As one person said to me 'people feel that you know something that they don't'. What I know....is that there is an energy at the base of the spine that if allowed can rise through the spine to the crown of the head and descend down into the heart. This awakens certain areas of the brain which were not awakened before and gives rise to insights and intuitions and a way of life which flows and is magical.

I am aware that all of the turbulence is going on in my head. Out there in the universe everything is flowing and in harmony. I am always where I say I will be and always with such freedom and ease. On Wednesday I travelled to London for the final evening of the Power to Create communication course and in spite of spending 40 mins getting lost with my Tom Tom going apoplectic with frustration because I didn't listen to any of the directions I still managed to be there for the time requested. And amazingly wasn't at all stressed. However when I got to the evening and was once again among people the old feelings of feeling separate and alone emerged which in turn gave me the experience of being separate and alone. It will be interesting to follow whether when I finish this programme that I go into the same level and depth of analysis in this blog. Maybe this blog will get incredibily boring as I won't be daily facing the challenges that are intrinsic to transformation.

Who knows...only time will tell...