Master Key Experience: Week 22 – Bankruptcy of “I” – another cut.

I come into this blog with my usual feelings of being late and gratitude for finding this course, no matter HOW I’m doing it.  I didn’t get my blog entered on time.  AGAIN.  So maybe I have not yet released my addiction to the neuropeptides accompanying  THAT conversation – and yet, the conversations I’m having with people, focusing more on what matters in our lives; our communities, our dreams and commitments, our loves, our hurts from unmet (and unspoken!) expectations, these matter more than my personal failures and addictions.   I appreciate the invitation and expectation from this course to have a bigger perspective than my own survival and journey.  It’s another cut at a previous conversation from my Landmark journey,  a chance to see that the preoccupation on my “I” becomes bankrupt when my vision gets big enough to encompass community.   I don’t think it’s coincidence that I took a short course on pain management 2 weeks ago, and learned that the Instructor is a Jungian psychologist, right alongside this course’s exploration into Joseph Campbell’s life-work with the stories that drive our subconscious cultures, and of course, MY subby.  Powerful work that keeps showing up, pointing the way for me.  This exploration, this searching for and finding God within myself, demands pushing past my learned boundaries of fear.  I am such a chicken so often, about what is just ego-protection.  When I do what I am afraid of doing, or don’t think I can do, I feel so proud of myself.   Fear becomes so fulfilling when I embrace it rather than avoid it.  Where I feel scared and avoid talking to people about joining me in business is just like eating too much to avoid feeling anger.   I loved Mark J’s sharing of how, even with his best intentions, wearing the “masks” of roles he had learned for “Husband, father, employee”, etc.  limited his  and more being able to experience his more amazing “true” self in life.  Maybe it’s a normal evolution, learning the roles, by the imprinting of our culture at first, but coming then to learn our true amazing “hero” selves only by going through the “abyss” of our fears, when our Guides have to stand back and let us fail, in order for us to grow into someone unimaginably more powerful and fulfilling.    I’m glad you’re here, too, you Hero, you!

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Master Key Experience Week 21: Worlds Outside the Comfort Zone.

At this point in the course, I see more clearly how I participate in my life through how I am participating in this course.  I do many of the required and invited activities, like the sits and much of the readings, etc.  (the DMP has been remarkable), BUT – I don’t do EVERYTHING the way it’s intended.  While I have come to treasure getting up earlier to do my stretching, Tai-ji, reading and my “sit”, the rest of my day I sink back into my regular work and music schedule.  I have not consistently been blogging, as an example.  And don’t misunderstand, I really love my life just as it is.   Maybe that’s a problem.   What was really good before this course has opened up a LOT MORE, with additional reading and conversations that are enriching me and my communities.  My diet has changed as a result, and I feel better.  I talk with people about our changing culture; butterflies and Monsanto, gut-biomes driving our behaviors, collective consciousness,  the evolutionary singularity implications of AI and becoming a non-human consciousness, noticing kindness and gratitude in others.   I LIKE myself better since starting this course.  And, at the same time, I notice that I’m not proud of the way I’m NOT participating 100%.    And I notice that that’s how I show up in my marketing business;  I limit doing what’s significantly  inconvenient or uncomfortable – even though it’s required for the results I say I want.  I see my Subbie’s being challenged about its “addiction” to the emotions, the thoughts, the neuropeptides associated with hiding out, lying about not playing full-out,  and feeling “not-proud”, when I hold back.  And then I think about the kind of world I am creating for others, too, with this mindset.   What’s the cost to myself?   What’s the cost to the world I say I want?  And what am I willing to do to BE ALL I say I want?  That’s really challenging and really excites me to even consider the possibilities.  What might the world look like and feel like and BE, that far outside my comfort zone?

Master Key Experience Week 18: Brokenness, Authenticity, Legacy.

I decided to share my ever evolving DMP and daily mantras with a friend whose focus is on empowering women to find their purpose.   After reading my initial mantras of  “It is time.  I am ready.  I am well-being, inquiry, purpose, inspiration, resources, collaboration, and legacy.   I am whole, perfect, powerful, strong, loving, harmonious and happy.   I am healthy, in-joy, building my fortune by helping others build theirs.  It is time“, she thoughtfully asked  “What are you ready for?”.   I talked about how my life’s experiences are preparing me to become someone with a bigger vision and purpose than I know myself to be, like the chrysalis before the butterfly.   She said “It sounds wonderful, but too perfect.  I’ve made statements like these before.  But what happens when things don’t work out perfectly?  It’s not a perfect world.  I’d rather talk with someone who can share the broken-ness of where they are, rather than someone acting perfect.”   She talked a minute more about finding grace and gratitude in the broken-ness of our lives, that we, and the world, are NOT perfect.

I’ve been thinking about that conversation.   Whether or not the world and I are indeed perfect, I appreciate what she was pointing to;  I rarely share the pain I feel about procrastinating, not keeping my internal agreements and expectations about my weight, relationships, practicing my guitar,  building my side business, or just feeling isolated.  I don’t know if it’s a guy thing, or if talking about it helps or just deepens the neural loops,  but there is something about sharing my broken-ness, as well as my visions, that  helps me feel like I belong.  And yes, that’s important to me.  During those moments of emotional reclusiveness, if I’ve silently repeated to myself that it doesn’t matter, I hurt inside, as though I’ve also decided that I don’t matter, either.   And that’s one thing I’m tired of; letting that critical internal conversation determine the limits of what I can be and do, and believing that I can’t change that.  I want to be proud of myself when I go.

So far, my take-aways are that whether or not I, and the world, are perfect, I CAN, in the midst of all of this apparent broken-ness, find grace, and in that space a new and better vision somehow always finds me.  And sharing my heart in this big holy mystery always brings me back to gratitude and love.   And seeing that my vision really DOES inspire me to act for a better legacy, of kept agreements, that show up somewhere in the world.   And, that we all matter.   I  AM SO INSPIRED WITH THIS LIFE.

Master Key Experience: Week 17 – Miracles.

What do you think – does the universe send us the things when we’re ready, versus we search and find them when we are ready?   Who cares, right?  The sequence may be irrelevant.  But I don’t think circumstances are haphazard.   After conversations in MKMMA and with my peeps, I now find myself very curiously involved with reading Marianne Williamson’s A Return to Love:  Reflections on the Principles of “A Course in Miracles”.    This comes at a time when I’m re-thinking who I think I am.   And who I want the world to think I am (like I control that, right?).  Changing my perception is part of the miracle.   It doesn’t feel like a mid-life crisis, or any kind of crisis.  It’s more like a chrysalis, a gradual metamorphosing into someone I don’t yet recognize, the developing heart of the I Am,  ready to mature in the future.   But I’m not yet exploding into that future.   I still sometimes act from fear, rather than love,  with reservation rather than exuberance, like I haven’t given myself permission to believe in the inevitability of the future of my new self’s vision.   This is a good exploration.  I can feel myself moving through this.  Looking forward to waking up tomorrow and to next week!

Master Key Experience: Week 16: Kindness

This week’s assignment, to notice kindness, has shifted a relationship in my office from irritable and sometimes adversarial to assistance and appreciation.   I don’t know what caused the shift; certainly the potential has always been there.  I don’t even know if it’s permanent.  I just experience and appreciate the different and assistive way we’re being with each other.   This week’s assignment, like the previous week’s, of noticing gratitude, has me also notice when my internal dialogue is NOT kindness, or gratitude, and to remember that I have choice in the moment, that I can “be who I will to be” in that moment.  There’s a lot of kindness rolling around; I am happier choosing to notice it.

Master Key Experience: Week 14 – Espresso love

My venerable Rancilio Audrey Espresso machine died just before Christmas.  No local repair support.  I decided what I wanted to do to replace her and started searching the internet, to discover that vendors wanted WAY more money than I wanted to spend!  Then, I heard an small internal voice: check my local Craigslist.  I live in a relatively small espresso-drinking city, but I listened.   And, to my amazement, there it was, exactly the brand I was searching for, a used Silvia espresso machine, modded exactly how I wanted it, for half the price of new, used only 10-15 times, only 20 minutes away from me.  Call it a coincidence, call it a miracle, call it the infinite responding to my subconscious.   I’m in love with this course.

Master Key Experience: Week 13 – The Intention governs the Attention.

Two definitions of Intention: 1. a thing intended; an aim or plan.

“she was full of good intentions”

2.   the healing process of a wound.

I started wondering what wound I might be healing by taking this course.  Like, maybe I feel “wounded” by conversations of “I’m not a leader”,  “I’m not important”, “I don’t have a big vision”, “I don’t have time for this”, “I don’t really trust people”.

I call them “my” internal conversations, but they swirl through and around all of us.  And my subby’s programming by them is, really, my intention, whether I’m conscious of it, or like it, or not.   I feel awkward and silly getting “ENTHOOSIASTIC” while reading the MVP, the cards, the Blueprint.  But I notice a slight shift inside, each time I let myself do it.  It’s fun.  Maybe it’s healing.   Imagine that…

Master Key Experience: Week 12. Out of my mind – thank goodness!!!

“Thought is… creative, but make no mistake, Thought will create nothing if not consciously, systematically and constructively directed.”  Love, intention, attention.   Building Community.  Trust.  Faith.  Address the Elephants in the room.  I am Listening inside and Listening outside, knowing that I will hear only what my programing allows.  Words and movements influence my emotions.  I have a shot at re-programming my emotions, my entire belief system, changing the way I filter my life to achieve internal coherence with my old programming, my reasons for everything,  my rational-lies, how I relate to myself, my wife, my job, my friends, my finances, my car keys, the table, my children.  All of this.  Is it crazy?

I am awed at the insane, mysterious and marvelous construction and re-programming of who I can be, that I can barely glimpse.   And I am happy to be in the process, not knowing how to do it right, just feeling my way through it every day.   That feeling is a gift for me.

Master Key Experience: Week 11. My Subbie is Strong and Powerful, too!

Scroll III: “I will persist until I succeed.”   In this MKMMA program, I am doing it MY way, rather than as instructed.   No slight intended to Frank Sinatra; I’m sure many people are having this experience.  My Subby persists and succeeds, just as it’s supposed to.  This week I enjoyed focusing on the many things that I love in my life; so, by the way, I successfully procrastinated writing this blog that I promised to myself that I would do by Thursday.  Regarding doing the program as instructed, I DID NOT persist and succeed.  What there is to learn?  First, don’t beat myself up about it.  Love my life, and myself, even the parts of me that enjoy the drama of procrastination.  So long as I’m accountable for myself, rather than blaming circumstances or others, I guess there’s no fault, – unless, maybe I consider the lost opportunities that result from my old habits.  Failure CAN lead me to transform my self-beliefs, or further support them.  I get to choose.   I love my work as a PT, practicing music, building relationships, contemplating with Tai-chi, reading or listening to wisdom from others – these are nourishing, and good things to me.  What I want to see here is where is my time NOT well-spent, or how can I spend my time better to align and support my Definite Major Purpose with the “Formless Substance”?  And WHY is that important to me?

Second, there’s an impact on the community of people on this journey, reading the blogs – or not, since I didn’t submit mine in time.  It’s a case of incomplete-ness.

And third, there’s another insidious dent in my self-respect when I don’t keep my word to myself, whether it’s about the blog, or not filling in the service card, or doing ALL the readings and affirmations this week,  The Mental Diet is helping me pay attention to the subtle conversations:   “I’m too busy right now, I’ll get around to it.  It’s not that important” ,  are such a small a slippery step away from “I am not that important”.

I return to Scroll II: “I can love my failures, for they can teach me”.

What a ride…

Masterkey Experience: Week 7: Morning Tai chi

Reading MKE and GS has me  observing which emotions I entertain, and considering why I might want to keep some and substitute others.  I’ve resumed Tai-chi in my mornings, along with reading and sitting for 15 minutes.  What used to seem like a long time sitting has become a pleasure for me, even when my mind takes it’s invariable side trips.  The new habit of  substituting pleasant thoughts for negative ones requires MUCH more attention and stillness than I normally practice.   And continuing the habit of not offering my judgement is easier than not HAVING a judgement!