“Your capacity expands in small increments each time you consciously let yourself enjoy the money you have, the love you feel, and the creativity you are expressing in the world. As that capacity for enjoyment expands, so does your financial abundance, the love you feel, and the creativity you express.”

Gay Hendricks, The Big Leap

Here is a passage from my 2005 Bestseller, “The Translucent Revolution.”

As with every other area of our lives, there is a symbiotic relationship between the depth of our translucence and the way we view otherness. Translucence naturally shifts our habits of relating, without our doing anything about it. We have less to defend as we come to know ourselves as bigger than our own story, and our relating naturally becomes less strategic. As we see the other as myself, even if only in snapshots, we find that compassion occurs effortlessly. We develop more humor about the idiosyncrasies of our personality. We have less investment in laboriously working things out, and a greater willingness to breathe a sigh and return to innocence. The need to change others relaxes, since we are less tied to them as a source of our well-being. All these things can happen more or less spontaneously as by-products of waking up. At the same time, the attention we bring to our habits of relating can deepen and stabilize our expression of translucence. We can always bring more skillful means, more as an art form than as self-improvement, to our relating. We can become more aware of, and tell the truth about, the old habits that have created separation. These old habits run deep, and they will not necessarily die on their own. Our social environment reinforces them. When we are willing to put awakening into the fire of relationship, it will reveal all old habits and allow them to be released. Says Gay Hendricks:

“I think therein lies the difficulty, as well as the awesome beauty, of relationships. The universe is attempting to meet itself in play. When one person meets another, as that space links up with that space again, it pushes to the surface all the little places where we’ve withdrawn from space. Whether it’s being physically beaten, or starved to death, or criticized, or in beating others, those are the places where we’ve withdrawn and crystallized into mass, and then that has to come to the surface.”

The many translucents I interviewed about relating are deeply committed to bringing more awareness, more humor, more practice to every meeting, every day. But this practice is not in the service of making the relationship better; it is in the service of deepening translucence itself. Relationship becomes the most effective tool, better than yoga and meditation and every self-help seminar rolled into one, to free us of all that is not love. Jett Psaris elaborates:

“One can use relationship to develop one’s full humanity. At some point, our seed begins to vibrate, our essence wants to unfold, and if our defenses don’t give way, then our potential remains unrealized and untuned. The motivation begins to shift. There is nothing else that I know of that can as reliably, as methodically, bring us to the places where we are unfolding, and the places where we are trapped in our defense system. So it becomes a path, an awakening to our humanity, to what it is to be fully human: not just spacious but also contracted. To embrace that humanity wholeheartedly, we become vehicles for love and consciousness and for evolution itself.”

This willingness to recognize old habits is no longer merely in the service of improving a specific relationship; it becomes a spiritual discipline that affects our whole life. The old addiction to needing something from another, or needing the other to change, is no longer the primary force driving us. Rather, we can use our relationships, all of them, from those with our parents and children to those with lovers and co-workers, as a practice to deepen the actualization of latent love. Relationship is not an end in itself. If it were, the limits of our vision would cause us to suffer. By noticing the way we answer a question from our young child, or the way we greet our beloved when we first open our eyes in the morning, we are paying attention to the way we relate to all of existence, at the level where it is most tangible and real. We can use relationship as a skillful means to awaken the Current, to allow the Current to flow through the old habits, and in this way to allow more love to ooze into this parched world. If love is not given away, if relationship is not a discipline radically affecting our meetings with everyone, it has all been wasted. The unequivocal commitment to meeting in shared translucence will naturally lead us into a cycle of alternating rapid expansion, as we embrace greater space and contraction, as we feel and release habits of nonlove. Kathlyn Hendricks calls this “carving space”:

“When these barriers would come, it was really carving more space. We would
see over and over again in our relationship, and in thousands of other people’s
lives, that the capacity for having the blood and neurology run that much energy
was limited. We top out the thermostat, then have some very typical personal
themes that look like they are real, but are simply expressions of our own limited
capacity. Now we put a lot of our attention on what will allow us to
increase our capacity so that we can experience more co-creation in space and
less time in the gunk. We put most of our emphasis on that, and only now
and then on the story. We’re not very interested in the story, and do our best
to get other people unfascinated with the story. We’re more interested in what
is happening at the edge of our own spaciousness, especially when coming into
contact with someone we really love. What happens to the energy between us is
very interesting.”

When we enter into relating with the commitment to continuously deepen translucence, we need to know how to be with these periods exposing the story, without getting lost in them. Below we will discuss four potent means of bringing more translucence to our relating.  Making Agreements Translucent relating begins with clear and unequivocal agreements about why we are meeting and how we might dedicate our relating to the deepening of translucence. We may enter into such agreements as friends, as lovers, or even as a community.  We need to make sure that we are all on the same page before we enter into relating as a translucent practice.

When meeting with both couples and individuals in retreats Chameli and I lead to amplify translucent relating, we suggest that agreement can be made in four stages:

1.  Take some time alone, if possible, a few days. Stay with the question, “Why am I alive?” Discover what is most important to you, what you most deeply value. For example, you might discover that you are alive to express and share love, to remain open, no matter what.

2.  Find out where you are naturally committed. For example, you might discover in stage one that intimacy is important to you, and now in stage two, you realize that you are committed to honesty or to listening. We discover where we need to “take a stand,” in order to have a fighting chance to live what we most value.

3.  Discover how you sabotage your commitment. These are the old habits, which a translucent relationship will uncover and eventually dissolve. For example, you might be committed to honesty but find you easily sabotage your commitment by censoring, because you are afraid people will not like you. When you have explored these three questions alone, you can bring them to your beloved, to your family, or even to a group of friends. Take your time to share everything you discovered, and to listen to others’ discoveries too.

4.  Now it is possible to make clear agreements in any relationship, agreements that serve what you most deeply value, that allow you to honor where you are naturally committed, and that can liberate the ways we all sabotage ourselves.

To read more about translucent relationships and translucent living in general, pick up your very own copy of Translucent Revolution today.

Learning something new is the bestest thing in the world.
- Andrew Harper, age seven

A Conscious Living Practice for Today: As you go through your activities today, return often to the question “What do I most need to learn right now?” Realize that your journey is not about being right or achieving anything; it is always about learning what most needs to be learned.

Excerpt from A Year of Living Consciously by Gay Hendricks

Find the book at: Amazon.com or at Amazon.ca

“Relationship is the ultimate spiritual path, because it constantly presents us with the challenge to love and embrace in the very situations in which we’re most prone to shun and reject. For that reason, above all, relationship is the place where our spirituality most visibly comes to light.” ~ Gay Hendricks, The Big Leap

Isn’t that so true? I love it… J

I was struck by something as I read Dr. Hendricks’ great book, though. It is one thing to consider our relationships with our partners and other adults as “spiritual paths”, but what about our relationships with our kids. Have you ever considered parenting to be a spiritual practice?  (This is not a trick question! Please don`t feel `bad` if you haven`t!)

For all the mountains of expert parenting advice out there, this isn’t something that many people talk about it. (Although a couple lovely books do spring to mind ~ Motherhood as a Spiritual Practice by Patti Sinclair and Everyday Blessings by Jon and Myla Kabat-Zinn.) Intuitively, I feel that this is something in need of change. The time has come…  

I know I`ve said it before, but becoming a mom and making the commitment to approach my role in an intentional and open way really kick-started my spiritual evolution. From the first moment I held my wee daughter, I have felt, deep within my heart, that motherhood is a sacred profession. 

As mamas, we have the awesome ability to shape the future through the way we relate to our children. I don`t mean this in terms of simply bestowing knowledge or values upon our children. Rather, parenting can become a co-creative process where both parents and children are engaged in learning and evolving in love. When we can admit that we haven`t got all the answers and commit to working on our own stuff (healing the past, addressing limiting beliefs, not repeating unhealthy patterns etc…), we take the first step.

Kids give us the opportunity to embody the spiritual teachings of all wisdom traditions. Regardless of personal spiritual beliefs, as mamas we have the chance to practice: patience, forgiveness, unconditional love, trust, compassion, faith, charity, beginner mind, creativity, right speech etc…etc… 24/7.  When you really let that sink in, it is pretty darn cool. 

So, the next time your 2 year old is melting down in the grocery line rather than shunning the experience, embrace it as a spiritual `gift`.  Or whenever you are tempted to blurt out a less than compassionate phrase breathe and think, “right speech“. And, whenever you are not being your `best parent` be gentle to yourself and consider the art of self-love and compassion…. It is all spiritual practice.

Namaste.

Shannon

Fabulous Christiane Northrup just got a new radio show with wonderful Hay House Radio. I listened to the first show yesterday where she interviewed Gay Hendricks about his book “The Big Leap”. They spoke about the importance of embracing your full potential and stepping into your genius. Great show. Can’t wait for the next one.

As a coach, one of the hardest things I ask my clients to do is to be in the moment, to notice and observe without judgment the feelings in their body at this very moment. Learning to listen to our bodies gives us the information we need to “trust our gut” instead of relying on information outside of us to make decisions.

Many successful business leaders have learned to trust their gut.  As Donald Trump said, “Leaders are people who can discern the inevitable and act accordingly. When people talk about business acumen, discernment is a big part of it. It’s a bit like gut instinct, but a little more developed.”  Gay Hendricks in his book The Corporate Mystic talks about the importance of leaders learning to trust their gut.

Most of us have been taught to disregard what our bodies tell us. Some of us have even been taught the opposite. That we should never listen to what our bodies tell us but only make decisions based on hard core evidence. Would you like to be more comfortable making decisions? Learning to trust you gut is one of the best tools you have for making reliable decisions.

Just try it for a moment. Start with the more obvious. Do you have a headache? Is you stomach growling because lunch is long overdue? Now, what else are you noticing? Are you holding tension anywhere? Does any part of you feel heavy of constricted or open or expansive? Many of us hold tension in our upper back and neck for instance.

Once we learn to listen to our bodies we can gain all sorts of information. Our bodies receive information even before our brains receive the information. Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor, a neurosurgeon, wrote My Stroke of Insight. In her book, she describes how our bodies actually produce chemical reactions which allow us to feel different emotions such as anger, sadness and fear in different parts of our bodies.
Learning to Trust My Gut

Your next question may be so if I listen to my body what do I do with that information.  Great question.   We’ll talk about that another day.

Until next time,

Amy Barnes, Life Coach

For many years now Chameli and I have enjoyed a special moment in our month, when an envelope arrives containing a single DVD. It generally contains a feature film, a documentary, and occasionally a few shorts, chosen not for their popularity or celebrity status, but for their ability to transform and awaken us. The Spiritual Cinema Circle was founded in 2004 by Gay and Kathlyn Hendricks, Arielle Ford and Stephen Simon. It is something like Netflix meets Esalen.

I have had some interesting talks over the last years with Gay and Kathlyn, and more recently also with Stephen Simon about what it is that makes a movie “spiritual.” I am delighted to tell you, there are no absolute conclusions. As you may know from the Translucent Revolution (which of course you have read cover to cover, right?!) my favorite all time translucent movie was Alan Ball’s American Beauty, which won five Oscars in 2000. You can read (or re-read) my critique of that film in the blog below this one.

American Beauty is not a feel-good, love and peace, happily ever after film. The protagonist, played by Kevin Spacey, is murdered at the end of the film by a semi-psychotic ex-marine. This is a film portraying dysfunction, alienation, and a pervasive degree of hopelessness. Yet…there is something about this film, and many like it, that transforms not the content of our experience, but our relationship to our experience. It does not change our experience from feeling bad to feeling good, but instead manages to shift us to a deeper dimension of ourselves, and of reality. The sub title of the film is “look closer.” Other examples of this kind of art, different in content, but widely appreciated as translucent in vision, are Shakespeare’s Hamlet, Roberto Benigni’s “Life is Beautiful” and Mike Leigh’s Secrets and Lies.

Of course my view is not the only view on what makes cinema “spiritual.” Another view, equally valid, is that we are all already too steeped in darkness, and what we need is more light, more healing and more “good vibes.”

I want to hear from you on this topic. Post me a comment below.

What is your list on the five most “spiritual” or “translucent” films you have ever seen?

Then please join me for a free tele-seminar this Thursday with myself and Stephen Simon, the founder of the Spiritual Cinema Circle, the producer of 20 movies, and the director of “Indigo” and “Conversations with God.” On this call you will hear Stephen and myself each share our list of the five most “spiritual films,” ( our lists are totally different, by the way!). There will also be lots of opportunity to ask questions and share your insights. Register here.

If you’d like to try out the Spiritual Cinema Circle, they have offered my friends  ( that’s you!) a free trial membership.  To check it out please look to the right of this post under my “blog roll” where you will see a link to SCC.

I made this video to share about the core concept from Gay Hendrick’s book, “The Big Leap”

WOW what impact it is making on my life and I want to share it with YOU.

Please go to this youtube link to see it:

And share YOUR thoughts,
With love,

Lynn

Maybe you heard about the trouble Ollie and I stirred up a while back. If you didn’t, no problem—I’ve taken up the task of telling you all about it. Even if you’ve already heard about the thrilling exploits of Max and Oliver, I guarantee you didn’t get the whole story. And if you live in the town where it all took place, that hotbed of sin and drama known as Santa Barbara, I can tell you that you really don’t know the story. That’s because you probably read about it in the series of articles by ace journalist, Martin Frobisher.

I’m here to set the story straight, and I’m the only one besides Ollie who was there from the beginning. If you want the story in written form, you’re pretty much stuck with me. If you ever saw Ollie try to write a coherent English sentence, you’d understand why you’re not likely to be reading any books by him. His skills lie more in the area of the spoken word. To be specific, he can tell outrageous lies with such a solemn, straight face that even the most suspicious adult believes him. (By the way, I’ve never seen him lie about anything hurtful to other human beings, so don’t put him in the same league with O.J. or Dick Cheney or any of those kind of guys. His lies are almost always designed to accomplish the one noble purpose sacred to all teenagers: to get adults off your back.)

Oliver, besides being my best friend since 4th grade, makes up for his deficits in the writing area by other positive qualities. Among them:
He’s a wizard on skates, skis, skateboards or any other mode of human-powered transportation.
He can make great food. That’s partly because his mom is a chef at a famous local restaurant and always has good ingredients around. Ollie has got us through many an afternoon with his grilled cheese sandwich. (Hint: the secret is to use twice as much cheese and a good spongy white bread. Do not use healthy bread for a grilled cheese sandwich—it is evil and very likely un-American.)

I forgot to introduce myself. I’m Max Gold, one of the two “lovable misfits” the story is about. Ace journalist Martin Frobisher kept referring to me and Ollie as “lovable misfits” in his articles on our dastardly deeds. In spite of his use of this nauseatingly corny phrase, Martin Frobisher is the greatest of all reporters and the purest expression of journalistic excellence. I say this despite his inability to get any of the facts remotely right. In spite of his uncertain grasp of reality, Martin Frobisher is the greatest journalist of my lifetime and probably of all time. Why, you wonder, do I award him this distinction, in spite of the fact that he is a clueless idiot and, rumor has it, a vegan? Here’s why: Martin made me and Ollie famous and even kind of rich. For this he gets a free lifetime pass, in spite of his awesome deficiencies. Thank you, Martin Frobisher!

The Official Beginning Of The Story
I think I’m going to start our tale with the day we won the “Wendy.” The Wendy is a prize you get for journalistic excellence. It’s named after a local lady who owns a bunch of newspapers and TV stations around California. I’ve met her, and despite having a face like an angry rat terrier, she seems pretty decent. Every spring they award Wendys to reporters, TV anchor-people and others who have done something noteworthy in the area of journalism. At this point you might be wondering: How did a couple of 17-year-old lovable misfits win such a distinguished prize? Read on and I’ll tell you how it happened:
We’re bored out of our wits on a rainy Thursday afternoon in the winter of our senior year. We’re flipping through the channels when we come across the local public access channel. “Hey, stop,” Ollie says. I pause in my flipping. “Check that out,” he says.

On the channel is a woman in a gauzy, lavender New Age dress talking about astrology. She’s like a 55-year-old refugee from the hippie era, with a couple of pieces of clunky turquoise jewelry hanging off her in various places. She is talking in that goofy, breathy voice ancient hippie-women use, and she’s telling us about how great Scorpios are.

“What about it?” Ollie chuckles. (I should mention that we have dipped into my mom’s secret stash of weed, in an attempt to ease the pain of adolescent anguish. Recommendation to all angst-ridden teenagers: get a mom who has a medical marijuana prescription. I will say more at a future time about my totally remarkable mom, but for now, let me simply tell you one fact that establishes her coolness for all time: she was conceived at Woodstock!)
“We could do that,” he says.
I still don’t get it. “Do what?”
“Have a show on the public access channel.”
In a blinding flash of dope-assisted inspiration I see all the possibilities unfold. About five minutes later when I stopped laughing, I say “Let’s do it.”

©2009 Gay Hendricks

Hi, Gay Hendricks here. I just finished my first novel, Hot Prowl, and I had an absolutely wonderful time writing it. After publishing 33 non-fiction books on relationship transformation and bodymind vibrance over the past 34 years, I decided to give my imagination a stretch and write a comic novel, mainly to amuse myself. I was looking for a summertime book to read and couldn’t find one that appealed to me, so I decided to write my own. It’s a comic mystery on the surface, but I believe the conscious reader will find many metaphysical and useful cosmic notions peeking through from time to time.

I’m a big fan of mysteries that have some humor in them, such as anything by Elmore Leonard or Donald Westlake. One day I came across a term I’d never heard before, Hot Prowl. It’s a term burglars use to describe the act of burglarizing a house while the occupants are in the house, usually asleep. Something about the phrase “Hot Prowl” just tickled me enormously. As I was turning the phrase over and over in my mind, just savoring the sound of “Hot Prowl,” a plot suddenly hatched. The main characters: a couple of teenagers who create a reality show about teenage burglars videotaping themselves in the act of committing crimes. The twist is that the burglars don’t really steal anything. However, fame strikes and things quickly lurch out of control. Soon, we have a cascading series of events including police, the Mafia, a major network, a ton of money, a couple of hot girls and a steamy sex scene with a mobster’s wife.

My writing technique for the last 35 years is to do my best to turn out one good page a day. 300 days of that and I have a book. With this book, though, everything changed. I got so immersed in it that I could hardly wait to see what the characters were going to do next. I ended up sometimes writing all day and half the night on it, never getting tired or feeling a strain. Instead of writing one good page a day, I developed a new criterion: did every page have something on it that made Katie laugh when I read it aloud to her?

What I’m thinking of doing with this blog is to post the first few chapters here over the next couple of weeks, and find out if my readers get interested enough in it to post more.
Stay tuned for the first chapter!

Have you considered that the reason your relationships crash and burn might be your fear of your own greatness?

Have you ever been on the verge of a breakthrough in relationship, an opportunity for even greater levels of shared love, abundance and creativity,  when suddenly, out of the blue, you found yourself engaged in a senseless squabble, shattering the newly emerged space of possibility with shrieks of righteous indignant demands, blame and criticism?

One minute you are flying free, nothing but blue sky and open space, and the next, you crash landed yourself in an argument over who was the bigger victim!

Seems insane, doesn’t it, but apparently eighty per cent of successful people have unsuccessful relationships!

Allan Hunkin, in his book, “Finding the Elegant Solution in any Situation,”  www.http://ElegantSolution.net,  calls this hitting the  limit  called, “How Good You can Stand It?”

Hendricks refers to it as an Upper Limit Problem. In his book, The Big Leap, Gay Hendricks outlines the reasons why he believes EVERY problem is an Upper Limit Problem. Hendricks calls this   ULP.  (Yes, it sounds like GULP!)

Every breakdown, he contends, comes from being confronted by a limiting belief from your past.

He outlines the four main ones:

1. “I’m fundamentally flawed, there is something wrong with me, with my brain, with my body, with me, as I am, and I must mess this opportunity up, because good things can’t happen to bad people.”

2. “If I succeed, I will be leaving people behind from the past that I should  be loyal to.”

3. “I am a burden in the world, and I must sabotage this success so I won’t be a bigger burden.”

4. “I must dim my brilliance, so I won’t outshine someone from my past.”

Hendricks says that whenever we are confronted by the possibility of our true greatness, we sabotage ourselves. We start an argument, have an accident, or start worrying. This, he calls an Upper Limit Problem.

He looks at how we sabotage ourselves in all areas of our lives, financial, emotional, creative, to avoid our true genius, and invites us into a conspiracy to defeat this upper limit within ourselves and those we love.

And therein lies the rub.

Those we love seem to be in a conspiracy not to break through the Upper Limit, as Allan Hunkin points out in his book, “Finding the Elegant Solution in any Situation,

” We seem hell bent on discovering not, “How good we can stand it,” but “How low can we go?”

Hunkin refers to the Upper Limit as the Worthiness Set Point.

He says we spiral up and down, between these two limiting beliefs, “How good can we stand it and “How low can you go,” trying to find stability.

Each time we hit bottom, we try to raise our sense of self worth and allow more abundance, creativity, and success in.

The trick, of course, is to avoid heading downward, and creating the self sabotage in the first place, by recognizing the symptoms that you have hit the top, Hendrick’s  Upper Limit Problem.

Hendricks says  we are on a constant spiral upwards, achieving excellence, until we reach our invisible Upper Limit,  which we use to sabotage ourselves from moving into our Zone of Genius, rather than staying in the safe, predictable, comfortable  Zone of Excellence which most successful people know.

He says that the more successful you are in danger of becoming, the more predictable it is that you will create one of the following breakdowns to prevent a breakthrough:

Worrying

Blame and criticism

Squabbling

Accidents

Illness

Hiding significant feelings

Not keeping agreements

Not speaking significant truths to the relevant people.

Deflecting compliments

All of these show up significantly, in the area of relationship in our lives.

“No matter how brilliant we may be at making money or making music, or making soup,” states Hendricks,  we are all amateurs when it comes to feeling and expressing love.”

He says that relationship is the ultimate spiritual path because it constantly presents us with the challenge to love and embrace in the very situations in which we’re most prone to shun and reject. Hendricks says that the Universe will teach us our lessons with the tickle of a feather, or the whomp of a sledgehammer, depending on how open we are to learning that particular lesson.

To prevent such “humiliating collisions with the universe,”  he suggests we all adopt an attitude of learning in every moment of our relationships.

Here is the poem he translated, by the fourteenth century mystic, Hafiz

“Your Divine Invitation

You’re invited to meet the Divine.
Nobody can resist an invitation like that!

Now your choices narrow to two:
You can come to the Divine ready to dance.
Or
Be carried on a stretcher to the Divine Emergency Room.”

He offers a mantra to solves the Upper Limit Problem or ULP (sounds like Gulp!) and he invites us into an ULP conspiracy. Conspiracy: meaning to breathe with. I invite you to join me in this conspiracy.

Here is the mantra:

“I expand in abundance, success and love every day, as I inspire those around me to do the same.”

I have recently experienced the problem of resistance to the possibility of unbounded love and creativity in relationship.

Both of us, instead of embracing the expansion of opportunity that confronted us, isntead started a squabble about who was responsible for whom, and we both ended up dragged into the Divine Emergency Room, kicking and screaming!

Surely there is a better way to fly, and I believe it lies in discovering your true greatness, and being willing to step into it, removing any limiting beliefs we might hold that stop us from achieving the bliss of living in the “Zone of Genius” rather than settling for the Zone of Excellence.

And how do we make that magical, elegant solution practical?

I would appreciate any thoughts, comments, feedback or experiences you wish to share about reaching the upper limit of possibility of love, peace, and creative harmony in relationship.

Does any of this resonate for you?

How have you stopped yourself?

How have you broken through your limits and raised your Worthiness Set Point?

How has this impacted your sense of abundance, creativity and success in the world?

What miracles have you experienced by realizing every problem is an Upper Limit Problem?

I invite you to share your stories here.

Read my latest blog entry and see what you think.

AConversationforTransformation.com

span.jajahWrapper { font-size:1em; color:#B11196; text-decoration:underline; } a.jajahLink { color:#000000; text-decoration:none; } span.jajahInLink:hover { background-color:#B11196; }

“When you refuse to take  take things personally, you avoid many upsets in your life. Your feelings of anger, jealousy, and even your sadness, will simply disappear if you don’t take things personally.” Don Miguel Ruiz

Now that is a deceptively simple little idea. When I drew that thought from a stack of cards yesterday, it got me thinking seriously about all the upsets in my life, and what was at the core of them.

Recently, after a year of spiraling erratically out of control, upwards into ecstasy, downwards dramatically into hell,  never stabilizing for more than a few days at a time,  I ended a very compelling relationship.

It was a relationship that had ignited my sense of passion, beauty and given me access to the possibility of my own greatness. I felt finally I might able to fulfill  my vision of a sacred partnership, a holy relationship, that I had held since the breakdown of my marriage. I saw myself becoming part of a dynamite duo, a partnership  in which we would both travel, speak, write, and broadcast. I would be engaged in a powerful conversation for transformation with a man who was my equal, a conversation so  uplifting and inspiring that it would make a difference to the quality of relationships everywhere on the planet.

Our relationship, at its highest, would light up the world.

In this relationship, I found myself growing, becoming more generous,  more creative, more loving, but at the same time, I was becoming equally more erratic, more angry, more stingy, less productive. Along with my partner, I swung wildly from one extreme to the other, trying desperately to find solid ground.

When it came to the point of choosing powerfully to move forward, when he asked me to marry him, I retreated, afraid, telling myself, “If it’s not an absolute YES, then it is NO.”

I asked myself repeatedly what was stopping us from building a foundation of trust, moving forward,, completing the past, and fulfilling the possibility of this relationship, taking it to higher ground.

Although I had spent countless hours in workshops, read countless self-help books on relationship, I could find no reasonable explanation for why two such bright and talented human beings, such great souls, so full of love and desire for the well being of each other and humankind, were failing to achieve the potential of our mutual greatness together.

I consulted A Course in Miracles, and was told, “The children of God are entitled to the perfect comfort that comes from perfect trust. Until they achieve this, they waste themselves and their true creative powers on useless attempts to make themselves more comfortable by inappropriate means.” T, 19

Exactly what we were both doing.

Instead of  entrusting our relationship to God, we trying to find a way to be secure and comfortable, without the commitment, the surrender, the dedication to service to God that underlies any true Greatness.

I felt helpless to save our relationship.

As I watched us spiraling downwards, while reaching for the stars I was appalled at the waste of two such fine and gifted minds.

It put everything in question.

Meanwhile, I lost ground in my own life, losing my job, my income, my tenants,  and very nearly my home. In an attempt to forestall my losses, I increased my debt, and decreased my ability to service it.

I lost my sense of peace and harmony, my connection to spirit, as I tried in vain to save myself. And at the same time, I kept deluding myself into thinking that I could save him from himself.

What arrogance, trying to point out the error of his thinking!

Trying to “help” him was just another form of subtle superiority that was robbing him of his liberty to succeed in his own right.

As you can imagine, this implicit  superiority on my part resulted in a great deal of bickering and downright arguing and shouting.

Somehow, I mistakenly thought if I could , show him the way to right-mindedness, and right livelihood, he would see the error of his thinking, and change his direction.  If I could encourage him to surrender his will to the will of God, it might put an end to the hellbent downward spiral into poverty. He kept saying I didn’t know what partnership was,  and insisting that I owed it to him to prove my faith in him by borrowing even more in order to support him financially and invest in our future together.

I thought if I could help him salvage his life after the economic crash robbed him of ninety per cent of his income, perhaps by joining forces,  we could pull ourselves out of financial disaster, and create something of value in these desperate times, something  that would uplift both ourselves and those who looked to us for inspiration and leadership.

I persisted, mistakenly thinking that it was my responsibility to sacrifice myself, to invest my time, my energy, and my money in the service of his dysfunctional ego, his pain and suffering, and that somehow, if my love was good enough, and I paid him for his services, it would save him from certain self destruction.

Clearly it was a false premise.

Despite my best efforts to shore him up, I could see the boat was sinking.

It was happening in slow motion, and I was helpless to prevent it.

*           *           *          *           *

Now the irony of this whole scenario is that in the midst of all this turmoil, I had received four words that I believed were the source of an elegant solution to this, and all the problems in any situation.

It had come to me that the Four C’s of Productivity were:

1. Clean

2. Clear

3.Complete

4. Create.

Following this inspiration, I knew the first thing we had to do to help him overcome his depression and consequent inability to produce, was to clean his apartment.

Together, we cleaned, scrubbed, organized closets. We even cleaned the grout in the bathroom! It was delightful to be working together in this way, a team.

What a joy to see the apartment restored to beauty and integrity, after the months he had spent sleeping on an air mattress, having given up his room to a room-mate, in order to “save money.”

Once the apartment was clean, he invited me to spend a few hours writing, to use the space to create in.

It seemed like a wonderful opportunity. I had my laptop with me. He offered to make breakfast, while I worked on my novel.

This was what I had dreamed of forever, a creative partnership with a man who loved me. We were unstoppable!

We made a lovely breakfast together.  We seemed to have cleared away whatever  we needed to in order to get down to business. The dishes were cleared, and clean, the counters were clear, the table was clear. We were complete, and I could create in the clear space we had made together.

I was thrilled.

The Four C’s of Productivity that I had received were working.

A  shining gateway to the future, an expansive  pathway to greatness, the fulfillment of our purpose to be the best we could be, lay open before us.

Filled with joy, I sat down to write.

But there was a fatal flaw law in my theory that was lurking, just out of our awareness, ready and eager to drag us back into drama and chaos.

Unfortunately, in that moment of peace, harmony and creativity, we had reached the upper limit of what we believed our true worth. We didn’t deserve such happiness.

And sur eenough, the Universe cooperated in confirming that limiting belief.

In his latest book,  “The Big Leap,” Gay Hendricks explains that one of the quickest ways to bring yourself down from what he calls your “Upper Limit” is to commit “a breach of integrity.”

He says that the most popular integrity breaches are lies, broken agreements and withheld truths.

“Integrity,” he says, “far from being a moral issue, is an issue of physics, of being whole and complete. To be out of integrity meant a breach in your wholeness had occurred; there was  gap in your completelness. “Morality,” he explains, ” is about right and wrong, good and bad – all of which are highly arguable. Physics, on the other hand, is about did and didn’t, not is and isn’t.”

At Landmark Education they have a saying, “Without integrity nothing works.”

So to be complete, integrity must be restored.

All the lies, broken agreements and withheld truths have to be cleared out, cleaned up, completed, and restored to integrity, or nothing will work.

Just as we were sitting down at the table, there was a gentle knock at the door.

My friend got up to answer; there were some hushed words spoken in a woman’s quiet, Asian accented voice. It was the middle of the month, and his  landlady was there to collect the unpaid rent.

I heard him say,

“I will get it for you today,” I promise.

He came back into the room, slowly, shamefaced.

“Was that your landlady?”

“Yes.”

“Were you promising her to pay the rent?”

A sheepish “Yes.”

“It’s the middle of the month and you haven’t paid your rent?”

Ashamed, his eyes downcast, ” My roommate paid his half before he left. I have not paid mine.”

“How much do you owe?”

He told me.

“How were you planning on paying the rent?”

“I don’t know. Plan A failed, and I had no Plan B.”

In a misguided attempt to protect me, or perhaps himself, he had withheld the full truth of his situation from me.

Now this withheld information was out in the open.

The breach in integrity was blatant.

I had watched, dismayed, as he played smaller and smaller, hiding the truth from himself that he could not even pay his rent any longer. I had watched him becoming  more and more out of integrity, more and more incomplete, and understandably more depressed and immobilized, and less and less productive.

In the face of this slow motion slide into oblivion, he had a huge vision, but the gap between the vision and the present moment was growing immense.

In the face of this gap, he refused to chase after clients,  saying that he could not work at what he knew how to do, internet podcasting, because he was depressed, and his brain was not working properly. And he wanted to leave the slate clear for his big project. It was a classic “Catch 22.” Damned if you do. Damned if you don’t.

It was painful to watch. I had tried to deny it. I did what I could, but to protect myself, I  held myself apart from his pain, watching his suffering from a distance, struggling to stay afloat in the face of  my own insolvency, while trying to prop him up the best I could with my waning resources.

He never asked me for money, only to be paid for his services, helping me to move and such.

Despite my better judgment, I had borowe money to  pay him, so he would at least have money for bus fare and food.

Now, faced with the situation,  he exploded into creativity. He sat down and, on a napkin, outlined a proposal for me, a proposal that saw him driving an audience for my work towards me, using his considerable clout as administrator of a large Facebook community, to create a presence with this blog, “A Conversation for Transformation,” and a to co-host a radio show by the same name, using his years of experience as an internet radio interviewer. He would show me the ropes, make me famous.  He assured me that  he could bring me thousands of clients, due to his enormous clout in social networking.  Within a couple of months, I would be earning money from my talents as a broadcaster, writer and speaker, and we would be in the clear, creating our dream.

All I needed to do was borrow a couple of thousand more a month and pay him to cover his expenses.

And then I would be a success. Just like him.With a huge reputation, and…..no clients.

The fly in the ointment was obvious.

If he could do this for me, why wasn’t he doing it for himself?

But I couldn’t bring myself to say that. Instead of beign straight, we fought. The battle escalated, and the peaceful environment we had created was shattered once again by blame and criticism and judgment on both our parts.We defaulted to our comfort zone. Familiar pain.

If we were really this smart, what was driving us to break down this relationship and create hell instead of Heaven, the ultimat elegant Solution?

Why couldn’t we embrace each other and BE the solution, bring Heaven to Earth and complete from a clear space?

Why had we both driven ourselves into survival mode, and then proceeded to attack each other for it?

“Being a teambuilder is seeing the HEAVEN called SOLUTIONS when others are hung up on blame.” We both knew that, intellectually.

Yet, despite years of training, neither of us seemed able to stop it.  Something was in our blind spot, driving us apart, instead of closer together.

What was causing us to break down,  just as we were approaching our true greatness>

It wasn’t always like this.

When I met this man, he was fully functional. He was an accomplished and inspiring writer and broadcaster, with a huge vision to transform the world.In th e4 paast few months, he had written his book, and was moving towards getting funding for an enormous project that would see him set for the rest of his life.

I too was a visionary with writing, speaking, and healing skills, with a passion for saving the world.

In fact we were the dream team. We had a shared values, shared dreams, and we even had a plan. We would travel North America in a portable broadcasting studio, leading workshops, giving inspirational speeches, sharing our vision and transforming the world with this conversation with the world’s thought leaders.

So what happened?

What had happened to the creative genius, the man I thought I knew and loved? What had happened to the beautiful, talented, loving woman I was.?

Why couldn’t we even pay our rent?

I held my tongue, but my thoughts were, “If you can do that for me, why can’t you do it for yourself?”

I would love to co-create this radio show together, but I needed him  to be self supporting, so that I was not the sole source of his income for the two months, or however long it took.

He was furious at this request. He argued that what he was offering would completely consume him, that he needed and deserved to be paid for his time, and that I should do this because he knew that I had acess to borrow more money, and he would do it for far less than it would cost me otherwise, and I had not invested in myself.  Therefore I should invest in us. It would be the solution we were both seeking.

Of course, he would not, and could not guarantee results, but surely, if I believed in him, I would invest in him as an act of faith.

All my reluctance to trust shot up in my face. He had told me that he had often over-promised and under-delivered. He had told me of the countless businesses he had had that had failed, all due to some circumstance that had nothing to do with him.

When I asked him why he was not charging others for their time, he had no answer except that he did not want to, so he would be free to dedicate his time to his own work.

The contradiction was obvious. So was the choice.

Either he would be consumed by promoting me at his expenese, or he would be able to do his own work, and become independent.

Which was it?

That question set off yet another volley of insane argument.

He refused indignantly, to “chase after clients, ” saying he would be consumed by his efforts on my behalf, that he would not be able to do anything else, and why should he have to support himself if he was working for me?

Thus began a mad dash the bottom, a battle to see who was the greater victim, and  would have to take the default position of the greater persecutor.

Suddenly, in the midst of the torrent of angry words that were pouring out of my , I stopped myself in mid-sentence.

I asked him straightforwardly,

“What is your love worth to you?”

His answer, “Not what you pay for it.”

A stunned silence gripped the room as he realized what he had said. It had escaped his mouth.  It could not be taken back, no matter how he spluttered and tried to back pedal.

The words hung heavy in the room,  filled with a lifetime of painful and unfulfilled desire for love and acceptance.

It was horrible.

But irrefutable.

In his opinion, his love was worth more than I had paid for it. And, by extension love was something that should be paid for, by me!

This was such a huge and blatant breach of integrity that both of us were shocked by it.

For a moment, we both stopped our rush to destruction.

This was a huge opportunity, a challenge. I could  take this story about my worth or lack of it personally and run with it, using it to further brutalize our relationship, or stop, recognize it as untrue, and return to peace.

The question hung in the air…..”Do I take this personally?”

I wish I could say I had the presence of mind to ask myself that. But I didn’t.

At that moment, the wisest thing for me to have done would have been to say, “Thank you for making that clear for me.”

And quietly leave.

But I could not. I was hooked.  I could not stop the runaway train wreck I had created with my angry words.

I had to prove him wrong.

I took a deep breath and dove in for more, attempting to prove his judgment about me wrong. Foolishly, I was trying to assign responsibility, as if I could control that.

I could not let go. I had to be right.

I screamed at him, “I am not the source of your well-being!”

He yelled back  “I refuse that premise.”

In reaction to his judgment on my value I flew into a fight for my worth as a person, as a partner. He dragged in all my past confidences, all my past failures, exaggerating, painting a picture of me as an insane, stingy person who was withholding his rightful due. He said, once again, that I did not know what partnership was, that I should be grateful that he was offering to do this for me, that he was the only guy who could, etc.

I fought back. I attacked his definition of partnership as something you invest in, prove, buy, a deal, an exchange of value: I give you this much love, and you give me this much money.

He said it was fair. I said “If a fair  exchange of value was what you want, then I offer you my skills as a writer and editor of his book in exchange for your skills in creating an audience for me.You shouldn’t have to make your living off of me. Why me?  because I am convenient? Because I can borrow the money?”

Yes. Because you are there.

“Because you believe in me?”

“No.” He did not, finally, believe in me, in fact, though he was offering to promote me.

There it was, again.  Fraudulent intent. A lie. A lack of integrity so fundamental that it was no wonder he was confused and tired and disoriented.

He didn’t know what was true any longer.

And  now he was throwing me out, saying that his association with me had cost him, his health, his well-being and his livelihood. Not thta he blamed me, or anything!

Despite my best efforts to the contrary, apparently I was the cause of all his pain and suffering.

This was clearly not a relationship.

It was a business deal, a business deal gone sour.

What’s more, it was a deal my intuition said was doomed to failure.  It was supposed to be a leap of faith on my part, used as a stop gap measure to ensure his survival on his part.

I would never be able to measure the results, so it was a deal impossible to quantify. And of course, he would want to be paid in advance, not based on results.

Not good business, even for a non-businesswoman like myself.

Certainly there was a certain skewed logic to this, although I would have preferred the luxury of being able to pay him for results instead of promises.

I would have preferred that he was coming from a place of abundance, and well-being, so that I was not responsible for being his salvation, keeping the wolf from the door.

If this was an equal relationship, then why did I suddenly feel so demeaned, so worthless?

Why did he feel it necessary to drag in every relationship I had ever had, and demolish them with his words?

There must be something fatally wrong with me that I had, yet again, created such a disaster.

How could he do that to me? I was the victim here, not him!

In short, I took it personally.

And, in doing that,  I separated myself from an elegant, simple  solution.

Both myself and my partner had separated ourselves from our path to greatness, and in so doing, we both had been so incredibly hard on each other.

I returned home, and, awaiting for peace to restore itself, I began reading Hendricks book, The Big Leap.

Hendricks says, “Communication between two people is a flow of energy, and when it is blocked, there is a gap in the completeness of the communication.”

As I read, I began to recognize that the breakdown in communication between us had all the symptoms of what Hendricks calls an “Upper Limit Problem” or an ULP (as in GULP!) “Whoops! I had an ULP today!” he suggests we tell ourselves, lightheartedly with an attitude of playfulness and wonder.

The symptoms of an ULP include everything I have been mistakenly doing in the belief that they would solve the problem:

“Worrying, Blaming and criticising, getting sick or hurt, squabbling, hiding significant feelings, not keeping agreements, not speaking significant truths to relevant people, deflecting compliments.”

All of this, Hendricks says, covers over the real issue: “expanding your capacity for abundance, love and success.”

The only thing I know to do is question my own integrity, and take one hundred per cent responsibility for what happened. What separated me so quickly and completely from the wholeness of myself and my partner? What had me attacking his integrity so brutally? Where do I feel out of integrity with myself? Where am I not telling myself the truth? Where in my life have I not kept my promises? Where have I abandoned myself, and betrayed my own authentic genius? Where have I sold out on myself? Where have I played helpless and hopeless?

I am currently engaged in writing a novel about my father’s life, my family’s life. It is a process of investigation that is revealing layers and layers of the narrative of squelched genius, and its impact on the creative life of a family surrounded by, descended from and destined for greatness. What happened?

“What was the story about creative genius that I was born into in my family?” I ask myself.  What happened to my father’s creative genius? My mother’s? My sister’s? My brother’s? My cousin’s? my Uncle’s?

The story in my family is that you shouldn’t access your creative genius, because then the mortgage won’t get paid, the roof will crack and fall in on the dining room table, the house will have to be sold because the property taxes are too high, a landslide will destroy your home, kill your father, some disaster will happen, you will die with your song still in you, you will associate with fame, but never become famous yourself……fascinating stuff, but all the stuff of drama, the tragic, beautiful drama of failed genius, the F.Scott Fitzgerald’s and Ernest Hemmingway’s of this world who drink themselves to death or kill themselves off.

I have been exploring replacing the words “I hope” with  “I wonder.” The thing is to become more curious about and wonder about how this new fascination with creative genius will replace the old story of the romance of failed dreams.

I read the poetry of Rumi.

“If you know how to be patient, He’ll offer you the seat of honour; He’ll show you a hidden way that no one will know.”

So  I wait, and I wonder. I am trusting that I will be shown an elegant solution that will allow a solid foundation to be built for my creaqtive genius to blossom.

I realize it is myself who has been playing small, fearing that if I made a commitment to my creativity, and focused on that as my top priority, I might risk being a failure, and experience the ultimate in rejection, rejection by God. Which, of course is impossible. And there is the question of outshining my sister, which has been running in the background all my life. The squabbles between my partner and i bear an eerie resemblance to the competition between my sister and I for our parents approval. I realize that for a long time I limited myself to avoid making her jealous. Well, at this point, I think it is a better idea to go ahead and make her jealous. Perhaps it will inspire her to continue with her own writing, which I believe she has thwarted in herself.

In the meantime, I have the counsel of A Course in Miracles:

“Every loving thought is true.

Everything else is an appeal for healing and help, regardless of the form it takes.”

T, 200

I am requesting a miracle from the Source of all Elegant Solutions: The Divine Beloved.

Please join me in a prayer for healing, both for myself and my partner, and  for all those who are suffering in their relationships due to a perceived lack of resources in this difficult time on the planet.  Help us with your prayers to climb to higher ground.

span.jajahWrapper { font-size:1em; color:#B11196; text-decoration:underline; } a.jajahLink { color:#000000; text-decoration:none; } span.jajahInLink:hover { background-color:#B11196; }

span.jajahWrapper { font-size:1em; color:#B11196; text-decoration:underline; } a.jajahLink { color:#000000; text-decoration:none; } span.jajahInLink:hover { background-color:#B11196; }

In the movie Examined Life philosopher Avital Ronell states that an uneasy conscience is the only appropriate response to modern life. Basically, the world needs so much improvement, you should feel a little anxious at all times: Are you helping? Are you helping enough?

My Inner Critic, General Zod, would love love love to run with this and flog me with his virtuous flag of self-importance.

But Gay Hendricks makes a useful distinction in his book The Big Leap: If you start to worry about something and it’s something you can take action on right now, that’s a helpful anxiety. So go do that action and put out the anxiety fire. On the other hand, if you’re worrying about something you have no control over, that’s Inner Critic territory. Drop it cold and go find a fun distraction.

As for the state of the world… if you’re worrying about global warming, for example, there are 100 small steps you can take right now. Go buy surge protectors for your house so that you’re not just turning off the lights, you’re cutting the power. But if you’re worrying about the ecological footprint of electronic books (I do); not your problem! Cuz there’s going to be a lot more of them in the future, will ye nill ye. I think I’ll think about something else instead, maybe blogging…

Ok, so if you happen to read this blog occasionally, or if we’re connected on Twitter or Facebook, you probably know that I talk about procrastination a lot.  Here’s a technique I use when I need to center and focus my thoughts:

Alternate Nostril Breathing

Sounds complicated right? In reality, it’s an easy way to become more focused and alert, also to relieve stress or anxiety.

I first learned about alternate nostril breathing from a Conscious Breathing course I took. A year or so later, I came across it again in my yoga practice, this time called Nadi Shodhana.

Gay Hendricks, author of the book Conscious Breathing, points out that “the left side of the nose is connected to the right side of the brain, and vice versa. Breathing alternately through each nostril causes a shift from one hemisphere of the brain to the other.” This can create balance and quickly change your state of consciousness.

Alternate nostril breathing is performed by closing off one nostril at a time. You’ll want to begin on the out-breath. Close off one nostril, say the left, and breathe out, then back in through the right. Then close the right nostril and breath out and back in on the left, switching nostrils after each inhalation.

Hendricks suggests using your thumb and middle finger to close off each nostril while resting your index finger on your forehead. In Nadi Shodhana, a variation on the same concept, you curl your index and middle fingers toward your palm and use your thumb and ring finger to alternately close off each nostril.

Try it for two to five minutes and notice how you feel.

From the October 25th entry of A Year of Living Consciously: 365 Daily Inspirations for Creating a Life of Passion and Purpose (Gay Hendricks, 1998, ISBN 0-06-251588-8)

“God respects me when I work, but he loves me when I sing.”

- Rabindranath Tagore

Busy-Ness and Struggle

Many people use being overly busy to avoid looking at key issues in their lives that need to be addressed directly. The same is often true for struggle. Many of you turn life into an unnecessary struggle, trying to prove to yourself and others how hard you’re trying, when in reality all you’re doing is burning up energy to avoid facing reality. The person on the path of conscious living treats busy-ness and struggle as addictions.

If you give up the addiction, you’ll finally get to address the issue that started you out on the addiction. If you let go of struggle and quit over-committing yourself, you may find you’ve been burning excess energy to keep your attention off truly important issues.

Avoiding big issues such as expressing your creativity and handling painful relationship conflicts often provides the fuel for much unnescessary struggle and busy-ness.

A Conscious Living Practice For Today

Pause for a moment to tune into your body/mind. Check in and notice any sense of struggle in yourself. Notice the energy of busy-ness. Consciously let go of those for a moment and ask yourself a broad question: Do I use struggle and busy-ness to avoid handling aspects of my life that I ought to slow down and take a look at?

- – end of citation from A Year of Conscious Living – -

Although I make no claim to being a political pundit, this is my second post focusing on Sen. Barack Obama — from a non-policy, non-strategy, be whole now point of view. If you missed my earlier post, “can i talk about barack obama without you thinking it’s political?” click here to see my take on Sen. Obama as a reflection of the evolving new paradigm.

Michelle & Barack Obama

Here, I’m linking to a recent piece in The Huffington Post, in which authors and relationship experts Kathlyn and Gay Hendricks talk about the enormous value of the loving, stable relationship model that Michelle and Barack Obama present to the world.

“It’s high time we got to see an honest, loving, real relationship in the White House,” say the Hendricks, who know what they’re talking about. The couple (together for 28 years so far!) are the authors of numerous books, including Conscious Loving, Attracting Genuine Love, Five Wishes and The Corporate Mystic, and they teach seminars in conscious relationships and bodymind vibrance. Learn more about them at their website, www.hendricks.com, right here.

Their endorsement for Sen. Obama comes from their hearts to the heart of America. With the Obama family at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, we would collectively receive “…the gift of seeing two people having an easeful friendship with each other” and a role model of “… two people who communicate with each other as equals and stand beside each other as true partners.”

You don’t have to be a graduate of The Electoral College to appreciate that!