Spiritual Fitness

I am in the midst of a spring cleanup. It started with closets, led to my office where Buns generously shared her handyman skills assembling lacquer shelving while I crumpled paper into mounds of ink scarred snow. Honestly, that project is still in process as I confess to stuffing years of accumulated knowledge that hasn’t made it yet to my computer into piles, now hidden discreetly behind sleek shiny ruby red cupboards. As smooth as the skin of a bright red Ferrari, it gives me enormous pleasure every time I enter the space.

 The computer is still on my list. I need to clear it out, delete the redundant and complete the various projects filed under such headers as Creative and Business Plans. They all seem to carry a familiar thread of putting into form many spiritual concepts to be experienced in the body via workshops and my slow moving book with the working title of How To Turn Finding The One Into Finding Yourself.

And then my body. After our trip to Hawaii in January and Playa del Carmen in February I was in serious need of cleansing. The Mahi Mahi burgers, www.paiafishmarket.com/  are a must to try if ever in Maui.  
And Playa’s variety of designer Tequilla was too good to pass on, so now its bye bye caffeine, (mostly) bye carbs, (mostly) hello power walking, yoga and Isagenix shakes filled with natural nutrients that help release toxins. Amazing whole body cleansing system you have to check out!
www.christiemcphee1.isagenix.com

 I am being filled and nurtured with goodness and care and yet I am also feeling murky uncomfortable feelings often without content. It’s not that I couldn’t find content to explain them it’s that the desire to do so is gone.

So what is left to clear? Oh yes….opening to the next step of spiritual evolution. Perhaps the very reason that my feelings make no sense. I am integrating even more deeply the knowing that nothing ever happens to me but rather happens for me. I think this is always the truth it’s just sometimes more difficult to remember when our human hurts are activated. And those hurts will always be a factor as long as we are in a human body.

That’s why those claiming they are enlightened and never reactive hold very little interest for me. I am far more fascinated with how to translate the spiritual into the human, especially when activated, than I am in breathing past it. Ignoring it does not make it go away, it only increases the energy it takes to keep it at bay until the next external circumstance appears and cooperating with this unfinished human business, gives you a whack.
 So yes I am feeling wacked but I KNOW it’s not personal or content based. This is something that clearly invites me to grow into an even more authentic experience of my essence.

For the first time ever I said the words “I am opening to a teacher appearing in my life.”

 I understand that this request for a teacher is the first step to having one show up but truthfully I have not been drawn to this before. I have an aversion to following. I love learning and absorb and apply from many schools of knowledge but the idea of a human being leading me anywhere is not familiar. I do not resonate with it unless of course they lead me deeper into myself and my own answers.

For me to put this request out into the world I must let go of the form of this person. I open even to the possibility that it is not a person. Perhaps it’s a teacher plant, perhaps it’s a lover or a child or a dog…I don’t know, but the sense that it is time to work out and increase my spiritual fitness is in the air. Actually it’s in my body and it’s not a happy camper kind of feeling. It sucks. It’s a pain in my back…literally and it is as ineffable as the many profound experiences and concepts that seem so essentially incommunicable, like what is the soul, the meaning of life, birth and death.

Still, saying yes is my only option. I Google information on DMT which is called the spirit molecule. DMT is a psychedelic chemical naturally produced in the brain of every human being. It is also found in plants and has been used for centuries by shamans to journey for opening and teaching.


 “Let's think the unthinkable, let's do the undoable. Let us prepare to grapple with the ineffable itself, and see if we may not eff it after all.” said Douglas Adams in Dirk Gently's Hollistic Detective Agency.

We can only try. We can only try.

Still branded by yes,

Authentically Yours,
Marty.

Presence is not a thing of the past.

Have you heard the one about...?

A senior monk and a junior monk were traveling together. At one point, they came to a river with a strong current. As the monks were preparing to cross the river, they saw a very young and beautiful woman also attempting to cross. The young woman asked if they could help her. The senior monk carried this woman on his shoulder, forded the river and let her down on the other bank. The junior monk was very upset, but said nothing. They both continued walking and the senior monk noticed his junior’s silence and asked, “Is something the matter? You seem very upset.” The junior monk replied, “As monks, we are not permitted a woman.  How could you then carry that woman on your shoulders?” The senior monk replied, “I left the woman a long time ago at the bank. However, you seem to be carrying her still.”

My last couple of weeks has given me a lot to carry and the opportunity to put some things down and let them go.

I took some time over Easter to visit family and friends back East.  It was glorious.  I needed a break and I got to indulge in some of my favourite pastimes – spend quality time with my parents, work for a whole day in my sister’s garden, help my brother build a split-cedar-rail fence, eat fabulous home-cooked meals, and perform at a local venue with my musical buddies.

I came back and hit the ground running (with jet lag), and immediately had to make some decisions about next steps for Presence (my beautiful little home away from home – my store in Horseshoe Bay).  My new lease had been drawn up for me to sign and there was a sense of urgency to get it done within a short period of time.  My new landlord is a long-time friend.  What she was asking for rent was more than I was able to commit to (even though I knew it was fair market value) and the prospect of having to close the business became a reality.  To say that I was devastated is an understatement.  And that it was at the hands of a close friend was deeply upsetting. I was in a perfect karmic storm. 

I found myself in the middle of an extremely uncomfortable situation (sleepless nights, a 3-day-long migraine, potential loss of a friendship, business, livelihood, and reputation in my ’hood).  In the depths of my initial despair, my worst-case scenario was that I would lose everything and have to re-create myself.  (insert “f-word” here).

I give my friend some credit here.  I know this has not been easy for her either. She has been able to stick with the process while I continue to describe my experience to her.  While she and I don’t see eye to eye on everything (particularly in the transparency arena), we are able to continue communicating with the intent of healing our relationship.  At the moment it is still in tatters, but as I told her, I am sturdy, resilient, and have the desire to be able to laugh about all of this in the future – for real – not as a way of avoiding the heart of the matter. I want to be able to let go and not carry this with me.  I have already learned from this experience that what my life looks like may change, yet I will still be intact.

At zero hour, another place became available nearby.  (It’s called “Horseshoe” Bay for a reason methinks!) It is affordable and the landlord is open to offers.  I let my friend know right away that she may need to find a new tenant should I choose to relocate.  Regardless of my location, I will still have Presence. And if I move, I know it will not be out of spite but rather from a clean and clear choice for the best course of action.

If I do move it will be over the next two weeks.  I am going to be busier than a one-legged man in an ass-kicking contest. 

Branded by re-creation,

Buns

Circling For Meaning

Carl Jung first wrote about the concept of synchronicity back in 1912. Recently the concept landed for me in a new way, a way that pointed directly at my essential nature.

 Just by the definition of the word itself, “the experience of two or more events that are apparently causally unrelated, that are observed to occur together in a meaningful manner” there is an invitation to step out of the bounds of cause and effect and into the realm of intuition. In fact it could only be the unconscious mind that would undertake the exploration of meaning in random occurrences.

The notion does not make causality wrong it simply maintains that just as events may be grouped by cause, they may also be grouped by meaning. I believe we can make similar meaning of any grouping, including our internal experiences.


 At the moment I am percolating on how connected I am to making meaning out of randomness, in people, in events, in myself and in relationship. Birthed from a childhood with a lack of things making sense, I am now drawn to understanding, leaving no stone unturned in my calling to generate meaning. And while the concept of synchronicity commonly refers to events outside of oneself I feel called to include my internal world and everyone else’s, if truth be told.

 It’s this inclusive state that leads to coining the words, ‘world synchronicity.’ It’s not just what is occurring inside me that is relevant but also how it is being mirrored in the outside world and the inside world of other people. The plot thickens!


So what is ‘world synchronicity’ exactly? Well, here is what it feels like when I am in the flow of this vibration. I am connected to my core, and yet able to rise above my situation or another persons, for that matter…to de-personalize. Even as I stay connected to my feelings, each breath lifts me into a richer perspective, as the layers unfold and information floods in.  I circle like an eagle, soaring, increasing my visual sense of the inner landscape. I sense patterns, I connect the dots, I follow the threads, whether it’s a feeling or sensation or thought.


In other words I am both sensing into and circling around at the same time.  This way of knowing is still present time yet also includes the past and every road that is wired into our psyche, meandering and influencing the current situation. That means the map that leads back home to self (since that is always the point of the process) is revealed as feelings surface. Adding a bird’s eye view and the dynamics of relationship invites further opening and the opportunity for clarity.


When Jung looked at synchronicity he called it intellectual intuition, something more than an intellectual exercise that also has elements of a spiritual awakening or an ‘intervention of grace” He believed that these synchronistic interventions served a role similar to dreams with the purpose of shifting a person’s egocentric conscious thinking to greater wholeness. He saw egocentric thinking on a linear horizontal line and the experience of wholeness, an indestructible energy which I call spiritual essence, on an intersecting vertical line, out of the space/time continuum.

I see my way of intuiting, at the crossroad of these two which includes both feeling everything in the body and still being able to increase perception while looking for that perfect entry point, the landing, that takes you smack into the heart of the matter. This intersection is the centerpoint I call home and it is where illusion falls away and deeper meaning is revealed. This is where we are authentically with ourselves and everyone else.


 I am sure there are many ways home but this is my way. Nothing gives me more pleasure here than company. It’s like recognizing someone who speaks your language when you are in a foreign country. Oh. you speak intellectual intuitive? Let’s invite our feelings, make meaning of synchronistic internal reactions, trace the feelings into the past and relate it to the present to expand. Let’s join in breath, in our connection to source, so we can land into the greater Truth.

We can laugh together here, we can cry, we can be vulnerable and undefended. I call that sexy! Seriously.

Some say the truth is relative. I say our wholeness is absolute. We may forget this truth but that does not make our spiritual essence any less connected and perfect.  Shining a light on the patterns that contribute to the experience of disconnection is my calling. Flying high, diving deep is my nature and sharing the joy of our journey home to self, is what I crave.


The curriculum that I am engaged with is learning to do this with grace.


Branded by self acceptance,


Authentically Yours,
Marty

 

And now a message from Eric Clapton.

I’m trying to see if a pattern is emerging here – as I get ready to head to Ontario to visit my family over Easter, I find myself down to zero hour with tons to do before I go.  Is it that I’m using this deadline as a way to finish off those things that I’ve been putting on the back burner (like taxes, and, oh yes, did I mention taxes?) or do I just see this as such a complete and welcome change from my normally high-energy schedule that I just want to make a clean break with nothing left undone? Not sure, but what I do know is that this pre-trip time is often accompanied by very strange dreams.

Last night I had a visit from Eric Clapton.  He was wearing red nail polish (it was chipped) and playing his guitar while I sang a duet with him. At the end of our song, he whispered to me, “Here, hold my hand while people are clapping for us. You know how people love to see people in love.” Now granted, Freud could have a hay day with this one, but I just woke up with such a sense of knowing that love is around me.  And I believe it will appear not in a way I have imagined.

In the past when I have visualized who it was that I was about to fall in love with (you know, the future ex), I would picture the person in all his physical and mental glory.  I was more interested in what he would look and sound like so I could recognize him when he appeared. What he “felt” like wasn’t even in my lexicon.  Well, not only did I feel a tad superficial, but I also was limiting my options, wasn’t I? 

Well after last night’s little tryst with Slow Hand, I realized that I needed to tweak my envisioning process.  Now, instead of mocking up tall, dark, handsome, smart, honest, talented, strong, alpha, and young at heart, with a sense of adventure, I am imagining what I’ll feel like when “it” happens.  I’m going to get out of my own way and let things unfold as they will.

Now don’t get me wrong.  I’m not holding my breath for Eric Clapton to show up, but the next guy who walks into my life and makes me feel like I did when Eric whispered in my ear, it will be game over.  And I won’t care if his nail polish is chipped.

Gotta run, got a gig, then, got a plane to catch.  Yep.  Busy right up ‘til the last second!

Branded by love-liness.

Buns xo

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vUSzL2leaFM

Going in...Coming Out...

If you want to make an omelette you have to break some eggs.

Well I love cooking and I am willing to break eggs so lets just dive in. Diving headfirst into love is not something I have been timid about.
The question on the table for me is, have I been diving in heart first and undefended?
I have used my head to understand so much about relationship, its dynamic patterns, my part in those patterns, how to get accountable and how keep the focus on myself, speaking only about myself and not the other person. I have a full tool bag of skills to use to ‘make relationships work’. True, I have picked people with far less fascination than myself in implementing these tools but is that really the issue or is it that I have avoided the one simple and yet essential ingredient necessary to anchor the relationship in secure attachment.
What would that be you wonder?
I’ll take NEED for $500 please Alex.

Yes NEED!

In our autonomous, individualistic society, need has become a bad four letter word. We are told that we should grow up and be self sufficient, stop asking for our needs to be met like a child needing attention from a parent. I myself have advocated for this kind of autonomy, feeling that leaning too much on a partner was a burden and somehow unenlightened.

After all as spirit I don’t need anything...right?
As spirit I am called to BE not need.

And yet I am also a human being and I am realizing more and more that I have been leaning away from needing, as evidenced in my default to spiritual wholeness rather than feeling the need itself. Ultimately it felt safer to learn how to return to myself and my own essence then it did to trust that another person would be there for me consistently. Where is the balance in this? Is it possible to return to oneself with the help of a human union?  The time has come to admit I need other people and feel how vulnerable being in that state makes me. I am realizing that I have not admitted to myself what I need because I held a belief that I was meant to rise above my needs for fear of being needy.

Well there is a world of difference between asking for one’s needs to be met in a relationship and being needy. And I am embarking on a curriculum to get really clear about that distinction.

I just did a one day workshop called Hold me Tight facilitated by Dr Sue Johnson whose book by the same name has inspired Emotionally Focused Therapy as an effective way of working with couples in distress.  Watch this experiment called Still Face.


http://youtu.be/apzXGEbZht0

When I look at that baby I see myself. When the baby turns away from its mother because it is too painful to reach and not be met, that makes my insides quiver. It explains to me why spiritual fullness feels safer than needing another person. The baby doesn’t understand what to do to retain contact. And truth be told, neither do I. When it comes to vulnerable interaction with another being I get confused.  Yes, I have become an expert at breathing into myself and spiritual centering as a way of not acting out from fear but true vulnerability with another person would include the need for consistent attachment since that is at the core of our human wiring.

Let me be clear that I am not throwing out my well earned skill set of years of independent centering. I am in fact intending to add to it. And what I am adding is the ability to be humanly vulnerable and let my needs be known in relationship. That means I would have to feel what the needs are and risk asking for them from another. Yikes!

Try on these words if you will.
 I need you.
What happens when you say them?

For me I feel fear, I feel a weight and judgment rise up warning me that this is not a good choice. It’s not a healthy or safe choice and it’s certainly not an attractive choice. And yet this dichotomy of on the one hand knowing I am whole as spirit and on the other wanting to create an interdependent full body relationship cannot be ignored any longer. I want to cultivate a human relationship with its messy inconsistency and sometimes exquisitely painful nuances not sit in Zen mode on a mountaintop (even an urban one in a penthouse.) Breathing away my needs and attachments just won’t cut it anymore.  I want to risk not having my needs met but knowing that I asked and that I didn’t die in the process. Understand that this is not about asking for things, I have no problem with that. That is easy because it is not at the core of my vulnerability. The human desire for connection and safety is.

Need needs to be part of the human equation and that means you would have to know what you need and be able to ask for it in a way that the other person can understand.

On the other side of fear is a need. When I feel this fear or contraction at saying the words ‘I need you’ to someone if I keep breathing into the body, I just might have to FEEL the need for attachment, safety and security. In the past I trained myself to meet this need by myself and that felt like progress. I learned to stop asking to be met, just like the baby would if her mother continued to not respond and instead I soothed myself becoming my own internally referenced safe sanctuary.

I have excelled at the art of giving love, of stretching so I feel my own essence and spiritual wholeness but I have not become an A student yet in REACHING for another. I stopped myself after a series of partners who without words were saying no to meeting me in this dance of vulnerability. For my part, I am sure that the way I was asking back then was clumsy and cloaked in toughness on the outside to mask the softness within. I can see how energetically I contributed to simple cues being missed and how my needs might have been perceived as an impending hammer of doom.

These days, I am hearing from men that they like a woman who needs them, that it is important to them. Ok, I believe you. So I am going to learn to locate, identify and ask...vulnerably.

Ultimately without that reach for a partner it occurs to me that the invitation to dance is rather one sided and not at all conducive to juicy reciprocity between a man and a woman. Or between any 2 human beings for that matter. I don’t ask in my friendships either. I pride myself on the flexibility I offer the friendship rather than what I have considered the weight of including needs.


So there you have it.  Into the next layer of the cake I go.

I wish it felt like a sweet delicious Limoncello Baked Alaska crowned in crisp sugary peaks but alas…it doesn’t. It feels risky and uncomfortable, sticky even, fear that my friendships won’t withstand this new added dimension and my messy learning curve. That’s a clear indicator that I am called to explore it. I am called to break some eggs.

Cover me I am going in! Again!

Here’s to leaving no shell uncracked.

Branded by exploring needs….

Authentically yours,
Marty

Sometimes you're the windshield ...

Sometimes you're the bug
Sometimes it all comes together baby

Sometimes you're a fool in love

Sometimes you're the Louisville slugger

Sometimes you're the ball

Sometimes it all comes together baby

Sometimes you're going to lose it all.

Do you know this Dire Straits song? Well this week I felt like I was in dire straits – certainly emotionally.  It had to do with possibly losing it all.  Or at least thinking that was the case.  I came face to face with potentially losing my business location, my condo tenants’ giving notice, sales being abysmal, and a friend seemingly betraying a confidence, resulting in my losing a shot at a long-standing dream I had nurtured for several years.

As miserable as it all felt – and believe me, I hadn’t been this down for years – there was a spark inside that kept reminding me that everything has in it a grain of truth and a nugget of pure gold.  So I ploughed through the muck and came out the other side with at least a 24k chunk.  The story isn’t as important as my finding out that simply by sticking with the uncomfortableness of the situation, and going for gold as it were, that was enough.  No amount of money, acquisitions, relationships make me enough.  That can only come from me. 

When I finally realized that I would be okay if I lost it all, I felt very liberated.  And once I was able to truly accept that, each of the situations took a decided turn.  My new landlord is keen to work out a win/win situation for the business location, my tenants have decided to stay, sales have made a comeback, and I have reconciled with my friend.

Yes, my life has had its fair share of ups and downs but I wouldn’t have it any other way.  As Diane Ackerman so beautifully wrote:

The great affair, the love affair with life,
is to live as variously as possible,
to groom one's curiosity like a high-spirited thoroughbred,
climb aboard, and gallop over the thick, sun-struck hills every day.

Where there is no risk, the emotional terrain is flat and unyielding,
and, despite all its dimensions, valleys, pinnacles, and detours,
life will seem to have none of its magnificent geography, only a length.

It began in mystery, and it will end in mystery,
but what a savage and beautiful country lies in between.

Branded by gold,

Buns

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JIHMN1rFi9s

Pain Pushes Until Vision Pulls

Pain pushes until vision pulls.   I had scribbled this on a piece of paper ages ago and just found it at the bottom of a closet I was clearing out. Its odd, just when I think I have made this shift to living out of vision, something happens.

 Maybe as long as we are human, pain will present itself as an natural option only now the choice is whether to water it and grow it into an ouch tree with roots and branches and leaves so sensitive to the touch that a perimeter of hardness must be created to guard against contact…or go through it, all the way to the other side. The other choice I am learning to rest in is, in the immortal words of the fab four…let it be. 

And when vision calls now, I answer. Even in the middle of the pain or discomfort I will answer. It can be in a piece of music, a scent, a texture or a light bulb moment of fashion festivity when I realize my motorcycle boots will work perfectly tonight with my short pleated black skirt, and wide metallic hip belt. If this sounds too hard edge don’t worry fashion police, I will wear pearls…long black ones wrapped around my wrist.

Vision can be found lurking, waiting, tempting, whistling for attention... just about anywhere.

This kaleidoscope of creativity, sensuality, pulls me into a feeling state…whenever I allow my imagination to unfold uncensored and reign as if it’s real. I feel a leap of excitement in my heart and then that uncontrollable explosion of smiling, that inhale of pure pleasure and acceptance where every nuance of the experience is taken in fully. The details are always changing but the intention to let the feelings that arise nourish my essence calls for cultivating a state of constant receptivity.


You will not receive if you are not already open to receiving. That state calls for trust, for letting the pull lead you and guide you without analysis and evaluation. Risky? At times, the ‘what if’s’ creep in and they will play havoc with your mind. Yet as long as I stay true to returning to pure acceptance instead of control and strategy, then my heart’s desire can pull me instead of pain pushing me into reactivity. The freedom in all this is quite simply that this is always an option regardless of content.

And for those times when you might forget, there are your mighty companions, your tribe. That’s what we are here for, to give each other a little elbow nudge of “Hey friend, you seem to have forgotten how much you shine, how powerful you are. Frankly, when I hang out with you I need sunglasses.”


Pain pushes until vision pulls.

 I would rather the latter even with its messy, out of the box, swirl of possibility.
I will raise a glass in this direction tonight as I head out for a long overdue visit with my old friend to L’Abattoir Restaurant in Blood Alley.
 www.labattoir.ca

The food here is so good you might find yourself raising a hand for silence so your taste buds can fall into pure pleasure. Try the beet root salad with Tallegio custard, pears and pumpkin seeds.


Tonight, I will order a Vesper, a refreshing burst of lemony goodness in a Martini, inspired by Ian Fleming in Casino Royale

.
Branded by lemons,
Authentically Yours
Marty


Vesper Martini
Ingredients
3 oz. Dry Gin
1 oz Vodka
1/2 oz. Lillet Blanc
Instructions
In a cocktail shaker half filled with cracked ice add the gin and vodka, then the Lillet. Shake then strain into a chilled martini glass rimmed with fresh lemon. Add a lemon twist and take off. Vision doesn’t mind a little mellow lubrication.

James Bond first ordered a drink to be shaken in Fleming's novel Casino Royale (1953) when he requested a drink of his own invention which would later be referred to as a "Vesper", named after the Bond girl, Vesper Lynd. After meeting his CIA contact Felix Leiter for the first time, Bond orders the drink from a barman while at the casino.

'A dry martini,' he said. 'One. In a deep champagne goblet.'
'Oui, monsieur.'
'Just a moment. Three measures of Gordon's, one of vodka, half a measure of Kina Lillet. Shake it very well until it's ice-cold, then add a large thin slice of lemon peel. Got it?'
'Certainly monsieur.' The barman seemed pleased with the idea.
'Gosh, that's certainly a drink,' said Leiter.
Bond laughed. 'When I'm...er...concentrating,' he explained, 'I never have more than one drink before dinner. But I do like that one to be large and very strong and very cold, and very well-made. I hate small portions of anything, particularly when they taste bad. This drink's my own invention. I'm going to patent it when I think of a good name.'
— Casino Royale, Chapter 7: Rouge et Noir[5]