YES....YES...YES...

YES is such a powerful word. Yes is movement, affirmation, invitation. Yes is a promise to hope and open to possibility….even and especially, when you are stepping into the unknown. Yes is a demonstration of faith that there is inherent good in every choice if you fully embrace its learnings.

I am noticing that as I make space in myself by allowing emotions and revelations to arise, as I, without judgment release them, invitations present themselves in front of me, fluttering like flags. They are not solid opportunities to co-create until I say YES. That is the interesting part to me.


If you allow your mind to dictate what you say yes to, you could get paralyzed in the fear of not knowing all the steps. Ego mind loves to know the steps in advance. If you listen to the heart, say yes based on desire, then you are called to take one step at a time, each appearing only after you have stepped into the next new spot. It’s like the view changes as you move forward and you can only see your next choice of possibility clearly, from that new vantage point.


So here I am with my focus on how to express all my gifts, to ripple them out into the world, to co-create fulfilling possibilities that not only generate excitement but income as well and I can only hear the word YES.
Yes to trusting people, yes to trusting myself, yes to trusting that what I have to give will be received by those who are wanting to receive it and yes even to the fear or feelings that are uncomfortable. I know this all sounds very vague but for me it’s real. I promise to supply more details as what I am saying yes to moves into concrete form. For the moment I wanted to share the awareness around how it makes me feel to be stretching beyond my comfort zone in my professional work.


I have posted a lot about doing this personally and it’s so clear to me that I can no longer separate the personal from the professional. I am called to relate to people that I am to work with in the same vein that I relate to friends or lovers….sharing depth of spirit, values and vision.

Yikes…the plot grows thicker. While to my ego mind it may seem that I am really narrowing my playing field in this attempt at such precise mutuality, to my heart and soul it is a liquid honey.
 Surrounding oneself with a like minded tribe committed to a similar path only makes sense, at least  if I am to feel ‘the whole is greater than the sum of its parts.’ And oh, I so love to feel that. Whether it’s two people in intimacy stretching for a glimpse of divine union or a group of co-workers who agree to live with radical honesty in both professional and personal situations, the desire for this depth of connection and integrity fills my every cell.


Feeling the WE is so exciting to me!


I am currently working with a part in myself I am not so crazy about. I was talking to Buns a few weeks ago about it, tracking my judgment of this energy in me and she asked about my father. The feeling in me is a kind of sharp toned urgency when I am late or feeling responsible for many details, many people, as if the fate of the world is on my shoulders. In those moments my tone can be abrupt and hold an almost military ‘listen up ‘ kind of quality. Now it is great skill when called for. It is what allows me to pull together a crowd and hold space for hundreds of people. And it’s totally fantastic when there is a crisis or state of emergency. I have no problem leading and I can lead big but there are moments when this skill kicks in and I begin to organize people and it’s entirely NOT necessary.

 My dad had a short fuse, a loud booming voice that scared people and often even made them cry. I was always determined to never be like that. I have always said to those closest to me, that one of the most important things for me is that they know I would NEVER hurt them on purpose. And now, here I was in touch with how my version of that same energy that was in my dad was impacting people in my life. It wasn’t pretty and yet I would never understand the energy in me if I didn’t understand it in him!
 Here is the cool thing about revelations, once you connect the dots and the light goes on, it’s like a ton of information floods in. As a deep sadness welled up in me I saw my dad in the war, 16 years old, just a kid really and he was in a state of crisis…panic. His buddies were racing ahead as bullets rained on them. They were to move as a unit, Dad tried to gather up equipment, he lagged behind.
They died, he didn’t.

The psyche is a wonderful thing. It will create a guard, a defense to ensure you never feel the pain of the original wounding. In my dad’s story his feelings would have been helplessness…powerlessness…guilt, all based on a sense of failure and ultimately a belief that he was somehow responsible. He created a guard that sounded like a dictator to keep things and people in check, in order to never feel those feelings again.  My dad died years ago yet the feelings live on…in me!

Those same feelings are wired into my body memory. That’s how it goes. The losses that our family does not feel and grieve and heal are systemically transmitted to future generations. This can go back one generation or several, all the way to ancient ancestors. If you do not grieve fully your losses, they will be passed on.

The value of opening to this knowledge is that when you do, you can feel what they could not and actually stop the defense pattern from being passed on. The defense pattern here was that sharp barking voice telling people what to do. I thought my dad was mean and a rage-aholic. I could feel now what was driving that defensive posture. I felt such compassion for him.  That was huge for me. Understanding and forgiving my dad, loving the helplessness in me and forgiving myself, knowing it was not at all who I was but rather what I was carrying, created such space inside me, I felt serenely emptied. A deep kind of peace.

Allow everything inside to come up, feel everything, forgive it all and let go…YES.


And now all these very cool opportunities are appearing waiting for the word to come in.
My yes comes with an anchor to MY essence and values.

I know as I let go of old wiring, ancestral wiring, I create space for magnificent possibilities. I can choose what to replace the old program with. And I continue to learn to love a part of me that holds this feeling of helplessness. I am not quite finished but I don’t have to hide it from myself any longer.

Helplessness and powerlessness are not a sign of weakness. Feeling those feelings is one of the strongest things I have ever done. I am feeling what my dad could not, and I gratefully let it all go with ease.


YES

Authentically Yours,
Marty

Sealed With A Kiss

Living in downtown Vancouver, mere blocks from the storm of post Stanley Cup violence I have been impacted. I watched with horror as mobs of youth hit the streets unleashing a rage that was an assault to witness let alone be swept up in.  I was worried. I knew my son had gathered with friends at a downtown hotel to watch the game and I didn’t know where he was.  His story, I later learned involved running from tear gas with his shirt over his head and thankfully he was able to duck into an alley. Those in the middle of the stampede were not as lucky. As St Paul’s Hospital set up outdoor areas to wash the victims clean of the noxious spray the rampage in the downtown corridor continued. Police cars burned, looters smashed windows and a crazed mayhem seemed almost other worldly. What city was this? What country were we in?

The next morning armed with brooms and trash bags the shards of glass and litter were swept away by city workers and citizens young and old.  They came from all walks of life united by a common desire to wipe away the stain of shame that had blanketed the city. 

 
The deafening response to the rioters was a call for retribution, punishment, revenge! They must pay!  The desire to find someone or something to blame was blatantly pervasive. It MUST be someone’s fault, the police, the media, hockey, testosterone, the suburbs, criminal gangs…oh heck… let’s throw in mothers who raised boys like that just cause they tend to be easy scapegoats.  If we don’t find the bad guy and make them pay we will never be safe!

Well, I am going to go against the grain.  Rather than look for blame I am looking for meaning. And when one looks for meaning, choice of perception is the critical element that must be brought to awareness. Honestly it is no different here than in intimate relationship. The same principles apply. Do I believe in accountability...absolutely.                                                                                                                            And those who broke the law should be held responsible for their actions. Yet we as a society, as a city, as individuals, miss the mark if we do not look deeply at the root of this eruption. Just as in personal relationship we miss the mark if we do not look deeply inside ourselves to explain the cause of any upset with another person. We miss our own expansion if we stop at attributing blame.

Most of the rioters were young males. Most were drinking and my theory is that the destruction sprang from an inner core of powerlessness and fear.  Look at bullies. Internally they are insecure and frightened and their need to avoid both that knowledge and the accompanying feelings of helplessness that it evokes often leads to brutal actions. What I saw in the crowd of yahoos was inner fear so painful and unthinkable that the drunken bravado of taking over the city streets gave some kind of respite from their internal pain.  Does this excuse their choices, not at all.  It does however invite some evolutionary thinking around how to best to heal this inner toxicity in our youth so that they can become whole, confident, loving and awake human beings who are a contributing force in our society.

‘To hell with that! Punish them,’ yell the masses.
 I say hold them accountable and TEACH them, work with them.

Imagine if along with every sentence for those found responsible for the destruction came a mandated support group where avoiding oneself was no longer an option.  A group, where waking up to their internal pain, the inner demons that prompted Wednesday’s outburst could actually result in growth and amends rather than retribution. Healthy shame would be encouraged for such inappropriate actions yet toxic shame which infiltrates the psyche and only breeds more reactivity would be released.
The difference is that with healthy shame you are saying, ‘what I did was wrong’ and you take action to make amends.  With toxic shame you say, ‘I AM WRONG ‘and you act it out again, needing the cover of blindness to avoid feeling the agony of this belief. 
I know this is not a popular opinion, especially when people feel victimized but one must ask how does healing occur.  And it is never with more vengeance or revenge or fear based reactivity wanting to lay blame.                                                                                                                                                                                     It starts with a soft heart and desire to understand. This is true in all relationships. If your perception is coming from a fear based reactive mind then that is what you will see. You will lay blame outside yourself and the intensity of that urge is in direct correlation to how much unresolved pain has been activated in you. Whenever we feel victim to someone else and their actions and lay blame as if they are doing something to you, we participating in a cycle of distorted thinking.  If we work on changing our own perceptual filter, softening our hearts and staying in charge of the only place we have any power…inside ourselves …then we become contributors to change and transformation. From that place we are called to gentle action that can ripple out and impact others in a positive way. Action must accompany thought yet deciding which thought one will be driven by is ultimately the difference between issueing an invitation to healing and union or discord and upset.

The morning following the riots as broken windows were boarded up and remnants of chaos still scarred the landscape, two police officers responded to a call. When they returned to their parked squad car it was plastered with sticky notes…notes of love and thanks for the bravery, courage and patience that the police demonstrated on Wednesday night. In many languages, with symbols and flowers, they were all an expression of inspired action.
After the game cars burned with pent up hate…today they are touched by words of gratitude and love.

The cruiser was carefully moved to the Cambie Police Station, sticky notes intact, where it now sits in front of the entrance, a white symbol of service and protection with tiny fragments of emotion fluttering about like wings of butterflies. People gently mill about touched by this essence of loving kindness. It is truly miraculous that we as a species are able to make such shifts in a heartbeat. It made me cry.
I was so inspired to add my voice to this spontaneous tribute of appreciation that I went inside the station to ask for supplies. The gal behind the counter was happy to share paper and tape, nothing officious about her as if a bond already existed between us even through the bullet proof partition.
 
I poured my emotions into the sticky and smoothed it onto the car.  People smiled in silent understanding. I was walking away my chest expanding with each satisfying breath. I felt good. I felt touched…and then that darned old impulse took hold.
I sprinted back and reapplied my lipstick with the help of my vintage compact. A 40’s pin up girl lounging on a chaise decorates its antique silver cover.  Alas, I wasn’t wearing red that day so the boys in blue got  Coral Blaze.

My heartfelt thanks…sealed with a kiss.

Authentically Yours
Marty