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

What is this for?

Hey Buns,
Congrats on stepping into those risky exposed places in your relationship with The Robert…or in reality, with yourself. As scary as it can be I applaud your commitment to honesty. You too Robert. Can you hear me clapping? It’s a good sound.

I feel like I have been off the radar for a while now. Not hiding out so much as allowing myself an experience that invites all feelings without the need to change them. Not a problem when the feelings are happiness or joy. I can’t recall a time when I said to myself, I feel so flipping fantastic and full of life, wonder how long this will last. It is much harder to allow when the feelings that arise are grrr…and ouch…do you know what I mean?

I recognize my core nature as joyful and passionate. When I am feeling other, more uncomfortable feelings like helplessness or powerlessness it’s much more difficult to not try to get rid of them in order to return to the state I know and love. This is my challenge, to accept ALL feelings with an equal and welcoming reception. So I have been saying yes to grrr…and yes to ouch….and yes to NOT understanding things or trying to shift them.

The one question that keeps recurring throughout all of these growing pains (which is how I am viewing this period) is how long is long enough? And by the very nature of that question I insinuate that I want a shift and therefore perpetuate the experience. So while I know perfectly well how to change my state in terms of getting busy, getting passionate about a project, having a blast with friends, I am choosing to simply be with this particular state trusting that there is a reason for it, that information will arise in direct correlation to my openness, my surrender to not knowing, to being neutral about being uncomfortable and remaining curious about the whole dance. Yes, this too is a dance and one that my ego finds particularity grueling.

I am trusting that my state will shift and transform on its own if I receive myself here with compassion and grace. And I would not be honest if I did not say that every time I get a glimpse of the Me that I recognize as my Core, every time I feel that joyful essence bubbling up in me, I want to do a happy dance and launch into a refrain of She’s baaaack, like Jack Nicholson entering a room with maniacal glee in The Shining.

So how long is long enough? How long does one allow a feeling state that involves uncomfortable stretching and feelings? You know the answer…as long as it takes. Our egos do not like this. Certainly mine does not!
And as I veto the usual distractions knowing that whatever you avoid or try to get rid of returns with a vengeance, I know that the opening for me is in knowing that there is meaning in ALL experiences if you ask the right question…face the right direction.
By right I mean expansive. Asking ‘why’ questions, like ‘Why is this happening to me?’ is victim energy and it narrows your experience into cause and effect…into a little box. Asking ‘What is this for?’

broadens perception and invites you to find meaning even in pain, even in feelings you would rather not be feeling.

What is this feeling for? What is this experience for? Now of course to open to this question you would have to accept the possibility that there are no good feelings or bad feelings, there are simply feelings.
I will forever be indebted to my Buddhist teacher who I studied with many years ago. She responded to me with the same gentle, loving reception whether I brought her my passionate highs or despondent lows. I didn’t understand it, not at all! I actually judged her as unemotional at first since her demeanor did not change with the material I was presenting.
Then it dawned on me I WAS THE ONE JUDGING AND EVALUATING MY EXPERIENCE, not her. I had boxes for what was good and boxes for what was bad. I began to question where I had learned that one feeling is good and another is bad. I looked at my family system and the rules around different feelings. Which were acceptable, which were not….and I changed the lens on the glasses I was looking at my life through. I began to change my relationship to my feelings. I began to say to myself, who knows if this is good or this is bad?

Feelings simply are part of the human experience…all feelings. They offer information in a language that is not necessarily cognitive. Feeling language is like another channel, no less valuable than thought, simply different. Following feelings brings me to depths I cannot experience solely hearing my minds dictates. Following the threads of feelings into myself brings me to my Authentic Core. And yes that is a journey that I still want to control and sped up. And sometimes it just takes it own sweet time.

To hear and understand the language of the unconscious, of feelings, the approach is not complicated. It may be uncomfortable depending on the feeling yet the approach is always the same. YOU ALLOW. You get your interpretations and evaluations out of the way by centering yourself with breath. Breathing past the noise in one’s head and accepting what is in the PRESENT moment. You breathe into your body and own it, feel it without any need to get rid of or change it. That is surrender. That is acceptance. You accept yourself in the present feeling and it will transform.
No feeling will last forever. The avoidance of feeling however can perpetuate a state of depression…where you become hostage to the continual, vigilant and exhaustive act of numbing out or repressing a feeling. THAT takes all your energy and you end up feeling depressed. It is not natural to control feelings. It is an act learned in childhood, based on a fear of being judged unacceptable and it will zap all your energy. It IS natural to learn to contain feelings inside the body, to have freedom around what you express and share, yet open to feeling everything. That is radically different than controlling or eliminating feelings.

When we behave in a way that suggests our feelings are a problem, we are in essence saying we are a problem, there is something wrong with us and we must change. It’s not the feelings that are problematic, its ones relationship to feeling the feeling! It’s your evaluation of what it means about you.

So here I am, loving the choice to enjoy a latte while I write, a simple pleasure that I relish. I open to trusting that the answer to ‘ what is this for?’ will become clear when it becomes clear. I plan to share that with you soon….or sooner rather than later…or WAIT…WHENEVER…big breath…whenever it IS clear….