Today is the day in which the 150 people go into a day and a half of silence.  Each time I witness this, I am struck with how difficult it is for most people to still their minds and sit company with themselves.  It brings up panic and fear and an ardent desire to break the silence to discuss gluten allergies and other things which they've had many days to address.

We can run so hard from ourselves.

And I know.... come noon tomorrow, each person here will look ten years younger than they did when they arrived.  The meeting of the self is profound and life affirming.

We yearn for ourselves.  We run from that knowledge.

I have seen this also from time to time in friends of mine.  The more honestly you see that person, the more ardent their efforts to sabotage become.  It is the yearning held hostage to the fear.  The "What if" fear of rejection for the core of who we are.

And it really all comes down to one thing.  All of it.  The running.  The sabotage.  It is all the mighty ego.  Our perception of how we wish to be seen.  The fear that we are not loveable or have not a place of value.  The pride we wrap around ourselves and mistake for dignity.

And so.  Silence.  The act of turning inward and honoring the self that is true rather than seeking outside confirmation of the self we wish to be seen as.  It is a life affirming act.  And the one thing required to touch the core of self is the death of ego.  And that is why I watch the folks today.  The struggle.  They seek other ways to be outside of themselves.

Today I honor communion with myself and the Divine.  I need no definition.  I require no validation for who I am.  I simply love.

We wrapped up the workshop on the mountain top in California and I began my journey home.

Amid the duties of my job, I found some moments on the mountain top to finish a couple more prayer drawings and fully edit my book.  and then I came back and asked of the Divine.... "What would you have me do next?"

And then I got an email I had been hoping for.  I have the next step in front of me and what I am realizing is I am comfortable with it.  It was a huge stretch for me over the summer, and yet I feel the growth I've done since them because putting myself out in the next step of my dreams is a doable step for me.

I find that I believe in myself without question and I believe in my writing and my artwork. 

 

This picture is my artwork.  It is a prayer drawing for Determination.

Just shy of two years ago I was sitting on the couch with my friend, Tom.  He's an amazing man and full of gumption and courage.  He holds his dreams out and the resolutely steps his way toward them.

We were talking about the realization of his musical dreams ( check him out - http://www.tomfullermusic.com/  )  And he said that he'd received some jealous comments about his success.  I'll never forget the following moments.  He said "Jill, you've watched me do this.  It isn't luck.  It isn't magical thinking.  I put one step in front of the other and I don't give up.  People who realize their dreams are just the ones who do not give up.  One step at a time."

I knew that.  But, I was witnessing it, and there is a difference.  I talked to him about my dreams.  My artwork.  My writing.  My astrology.  His enthusiasm was a wonderful spark to me.  I started taking my steps seriously.

I have stepped my way toward completing the writing on my book, finishing one edit and most of the artwork that is needed for the book (fifty pieces - with 42 done).  I am stepping forward on the road to a literary agent.  AND... I am also able to hold this dream out without holding onto it.  But that isn't the coolest part.

In writing my book, I have had to look myself in the eye and continually check my integrity against the message in my book.  I wrote fifty chapters wrapped tight in what I value.  My greatest gift in all of this has been the opportunity to really assess where I am at and where I have room to grow.  I've also been astonished at the sheer amount of growth I have accomplished.  I am a courageous being!

I was sharing something with my boyfriend the other night and he spoke to my ability to be open.  I do not section off portions of my life.  Those that are close to me know what is going on.  It hasn't always been that way.  When I guarded my heart and I lived in a fearful place, I kept things sectioned off.  I didn't want people getting too close - too intimate.  It was a very gifted and wily way of running away without looking like I was doing it.  The other thing I did a lot of was to be the "caring" person that other people told their problems to.  It created the illusion of being a loving and intimate person, when I was still hiding.

I baby stepped my way through that growth and I am finding myself capable of tremendous acts of heart open intimacy.  At one point it took courage that I didn't believe I had.  Now, it is an effortless extension of the spark of Divine that is held inside me.

I am so grateful for the steps my wonderful book have afforded me.  I have grown more in the last year than in a decade combined.  The life I live is so full of joy and wondrous surrender to the greater love.  I trust.  I celebrate.  I radiate the truth of my values.

I've noticed that those people afraid of facing themselves are stepping away from me.  Those who are in bloom, are stepping closer.  My heart is soaring.  My relationships are effortless and joyful.  I laugh.  I sing.  I stretch.  I love.

Only in an open, nonjudgmental space can we acknowledge what we are feeling. Only in an open space where we're not all caught up in our own version of reality can we see and hear and feel who others really are, which allows us to be with them and communicate with them properly. ~ Pema Chodron


The first time I had read this, I was in agreement. The second time I read this I was in disagreement. This time I see a broader picture and I am back in agreement. The first time I read this was shortly before I met someone that was to become my best friend. I was loved by this person and agreed that the space of being accepted allowed me a greater freedom to understand and express my feelings. It allowed me a greater vision.

When this beautiful soul went down a relationship path of sabotage and judgment, I remember re-reading this book. I disagreed with what Pema had said. I still knew what I was feeling and was still stepping up and being who I am. Had nothing to do with my friend.

Months after my friend trashed our friendship, I stumble across this statement once again and I am struck with the obvious. That open, nonjudgmental space comes from me and within me. Staying very open, even in the midst of tremendous pain and loss, offers a greater compassion, love and opportunity for growth. And it extends from me outward.

I found myself coming back time and time again~ that Shenpa that Pema Chodron talks about. Touching the wound. Time and time again. I truly didn’t and don’t understand why or what happened with this friend whom I love. I was hurt. Then I was angry. Then I was grieving. Then I was outraged. I spent a good month with the Shenpa of disbelief that my best friend would have stepped so far out of integrity with what had been said versus what was done.

And in the moment of honoring my feelings without judging myself or my friend, I found peace. I found compassion. I let go.

It is amazing and wonderful when, in relationships, the reverence for each other is present. I have another friend who offers a space of non-judgment and it adorns my space of non-judgment so wonderfully. My boyfriend is exquisite in his ability to be present and expressive and accountable to his emotions, and still my ability to honor the same is dependent on me having that open and non-judgmental space within myself.

I’m finding that a willingness to bare my soul to the honesty of my feelings without a judgment of how that needs to look…… honors all around me. And when there is hurt and grief and discomfort of standing inside a place of not knowing why something happened….. I can stay rooted, content with my life and at peace with how it unfolds for me.

And the longer and more fully I honor my feelings without judgment, the fewer moments I find myself wrestling with shenpa.

I invite the gentle in.

I have definitely filled the shoes of "my own worse enemy" at various points in my life.  I have played task master.  I have invited other people into my heart and space to beat up on me and offer their emotionally abusive best..... and it isn't until there is a surrender inside of me and an offering to the gentle, that I have found the space to crack open and grow.

None of which is to say that I lack accountability.  There is a stark difference between accountability and truth and beating up.  I used to have a friend that would floor me when he said "don't beat up on me".  It took a while for me to understand the projection in that statement.  I would think "He's the one that is angry and hurtful...." and then one day I had this light bulb moment.  He'd not understood the gentle.

I'm not sure a great many folks do.  Gentle is not an invitation to disown personal responsibility.  It is not the turning of the back on obligations.  It is never a blatant "get out of jail free" card for our actions.  The gentle is an invitation to be wrong.  To sit in discomfort.  To honor what truly is without judgment.

The difference between discernment and judgment is emotional health.  When we are honoring and responding from an emotionally healthy place, we have discernment.  When we are reacting from a wounded being, it rapidly becomes judgment.  Self-judgment and judgment on others.

I've found that the people who run away in life (and haven't we all at one time or another) are wholly unwiling to be accountable to how they choose to behave.  It is a misunderstanding of who they are.  Inviting the gentle, requires accountability.  It stills the running feet.  It honors the truth of our being and holds our behavior to inspection through the gentle heart of truth.

The gentle holds discernment.  When I am gentle with myself, I can continue to see the patterns and the behaviors that require some growth and evolution.  It is a reflection of my behavior and not a sum total of my worth.  I unfold change in gentle steps.

When I am tired or sick, the gentle invitation honors my need to care for myself.

When I am having a problem with another human being, the gentle holds me still so that I might honor introspection and see what contribution I hold in the matter.   The need to be "right" can never exist within the gentling of a soul.  There is no right.

I invite the gentle in.  I treat the people in my life with a gentleness.  I honor myself by caring for my needs gently.  I find this precious quality is held in the hand of the Divine and I invite that in hour by hour.

I invite!

 

I think of it in terms of the time before freedom graced my path and the time after my soul had emerged in radiant freedom.  That precise moment....

"And the time came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom." ~Anais Nin

My heart cracked open and I found the redemption needed to free my soul.  I allowed my ego to die and simply unfurled a heart unafraid to love, experience, grow, live and be seen.  In the fullness of that moment of awakening, I slipped into the quiet of my home and I wrote my book.  I birthed the greatest honor I've ever known; a clear reflection of what I value.

My book holds fifty chapters.  As each chapter formed it became the fire that further tempered my being.  It is all well and good to believe something and to hold values, but those are simply words without meaning if you do not live in the integrity of them.  So, I held myself out to measure my integrity with my values.  It is the single most vital gift I could have ever conceived of.  I purified.

I had spent the better part of the year committing to the utter baring of my soul.  To offer the truth of me to the people I stumble across.  I believe it was all to prepare me for the miracle of my task.  And I blossomed.

And then.... I went to the movies.  And I found myself in yearning, tears, laughter and a welling of hope.  For I had seen.... HAPPY FEET.

Best movie I've seen to date.  I love the entreaty to show up, be who you are and simply have that be the most incredible gift.  I loved the idea that there was someone "out there" that  held appreciation for the song I have to share.... (or the happy feet... or the quirkiness).

Truth is.... I have my own way of dancing in the world.  I love how I show up.  I delight in who I am.  I am very comfortable with the integrity I live my life with.  I honor those around me.  I live the fifty chapters that I wrote.  Now, it was time to share them!

I did a little traveling and in the course of my journey, I found a recorded PBS special of Wayne Dyer.  I watched.  I listened.  And then I met Immaculee Ilibagiza.  She is a Rwandan genocide survivor and has written a book called "LEFT TO TELL".  I wanted to read the book.  Desperately!

I got back home and collected the book from my library.  Never have I wept and held hope so strongly as through this book.  If you haven't read it, I highly suggest it.  And in the book, I found the following:

"I didn't want to give God a deadline, but having placed no restrictions on race, nationality or color - and considering that there were more than 5 billion people on the planet - I figured that six months would be a reasonable amounto fo time to wait for the Lord to send me my soulmate"  ~ Immaculee Ilibagiza

She goes on to say that the one condition be that she have someone that shared the foundation of faith she held.  I remember the day that I read this quite clearly.  I was fully willing to surrender all expectations and honor the guidance from source.  Radical, unconditional, total trust.  I prayed.  My one condition be that there be compatibility in spiritual faith and the willingness to grow.  I knew I needed a man capable of being accountable to his life.

I had no doubt that my prayers were going to be answered.  None.  (what a gift from the questing of a year ago!!!)   I went to work and received an email from beliefnet and while I love what they offer I was so tired of endless emails.  So I requested to be off their list and immediately received another one.  I opened it.... Fully prepared to be irked.  It said "Join Eharmony"  It talked about their personality test and matching people with similar values.

I have NO clue what possessed me.  I joined for one month and one month only.  It was my gesture to the Universe that I offered total surrender and a faith that he was out there.  I took their test.  I didn't answer the way I wished to be seen.... I was boldly, utterly, wholly honest.  It mattered that I be matched to ME, not to Jillie Wannabe.

Then the matches started coming.  My goodness.  And then more.  And by day two I was besieged and created my own method for filtering.  At first I would go through each one carefully.  People who are projecting, playing games, or capable of emotionally crippling sabotage talk a good game, but they always give themselves away in the wording. 

So, I initially filtered according to a serious search for statements that made me pause.  Things that were less based on a desire to be open and share a life and more on healing a loneliness or a wounded part of being.  Well, that took too long.  I discovered that I could easily filter out the game players by the people that answered the last question in a certain way.

And that was.... "What does your best friend know about you that others may not?"  Every single twit that said "I don't know WINK WINK become my best friend and find out. NUDGE NUDGE"  I deleted.  Immediately.

I found one that had a nice answer.  I moved to the next question.  "What is the last book that you read and loved".  Naturally, my profile had "LEFT TO TELL" by Immaculee Ilibagiza.  It was that book which spurred the moment for me to listen to the signs and the invitations and join Eharmony in the first place.  It was time to find out if we would read the same books..... This is what he said:

The last book I read was "Left to Tell" which is a true account of one Rwandan woman's story of survival during the massacre of many Rwandans during the mid-1990s; it's an amazing story of resilience and a testament to the power to forgive in the face of such evil...

I KNOW!  Stopped me in my tracks.  I went back to the top of the profile and slowly worked my way down.  I thought, "I'm responding to this one".

There are moments in time when I have an astute sense of the brilliant.  I listen with my heart.  I answer with my soul.  This was such a day.  Such a moment.  And yet..... I was simply trusting.  No expectations.  Just honoring the next step.

And in this mindful walk with a soul so gorgeous he leaves me breathless.... I discovered a greater brilliance in the Divine.  I have found a man that is able to show up and stand with a heart unguarded.  Who is honored in the sharing of who I am and who honors me by fully sharing himself with me.

Yes, there was a moment early on when I giggled at his dedication to William Shatner and the Simpson references that may pepper his offering.  But, when no Trekkie suits were forthcoming, and the endearing expectation I built up over waiting for the Shatner/Simpson connection to appear...... well, I knew I was good and hooked.

I have had more relationships and friendships than I can count where the person I am trying to connect to wants to box their life up and keep things hidden and secret.  In short.... That person does not want to honor the connection.  I was truly tired of the game and the destruction inherehent in choosing to live that way.  It was many years of unfolding and letting go of that type of magnetic draw to someone who would hide, or that I would hide from. 

I have been beckoned to be a vital part of this sweet soul's life.  He shares with me the details that thread through his day.  He honors my presence by being present himself.  Nothing hidden.  He honors me as I am and he blesses me as he is.  I swear we are the two funniest people on the planet!

I celebrate how effortless this all is.  How simple it is to spend hours gazing into each others eyes and delight in not only what we see, but that we are seen.  There is no separation between my connection to the Divine and his connection to source.  The presence of that mighty power is vibrantly alive between us.

I loved my life and I was truly happy before I met him.  I have no desire to have someone fill my life with meaning or let me feel like I am a better person for having known him.  I simply wish to share who I am.  I love myself.  I simply wish to honor who he is.  I love him.

I am at peace and content with our relationship.  I delight in the simple moments between us.  I giggle to myself over the joined laughter that creates it's own music.

I want to honor this blessing.  I want to acknowledge this beautiful man and celebrate how full my heart is.  (I also want to respect his privacy, so I will simply call him my "honey").

He has an incredible heart and does service to others.  He walks his talk.  He has become addicted to Babylon 5 thanks to his girlfriend's personal attachment to the GREATEST SHOW EVER CREATED!!!!!

He has introduced me to the Daily Show, and I've formed a similar attachment!

As we've honored the blossom of our relationship I have found that his views on the fifty topics of my book (fifty values).... He is in line with each and every single one of them.

He knocks my socks off and makes my heart sing.... And I thought I would simply share the awe and beauty of it all with you!