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Five Changes

Manipulated image of Matisse's painting of five dancing figures

Heuristics. Tools for Intuitive Competence.

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Manipulated image of Matisse's painting of five dancing figuresHeuristics. Tools for Intuitive Competence

Heuristics is discovering the solution to a problem by looking for it in places you never imagined you could find it.

Open a book, put your finger randomly on a word, then use that word to guide you as you write your speech, or start the awkward conversation you’ve been avoiding,  or begin that difficult project.

‘Trusting your gut’
‘First thought, best thought’
‘Forget everything you think you know about this situation’
– are also forms of heuristics.

If you have a problem which is abstract, or if your understanding is unclear, look for another problem that is more specific and use it as a clue on how to proceed.

Draw a picture, or a map, to represent a situation you don’t fully understand yet.

If you have a problem that can be represented by two individuals, choose two people in a crowd, at a shopping center perhaps, or in a bar. Watch how they move and stand, how they interact with each other.

Heuristics can be a Constellation. Constellations are heuristic.

We imagine that the world is more linear, more coherent, more bounded by fixed rules, less interconnected than it is.

We assume that our problems are unique and specific to us. Imagine that we spend our lives representing different elements within countless constellations, for countless others. Imagine that the parts we play, while unknown to us, may be as essential to those in whose systems we serve as the air they breathe. While we, unbeknownst to ourselves, help them navigate their way through the mystery of their lives?

Abstract human portrait with illuminated head.

How We Make Meanings

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Semiotics. How we make meanings.

Late one night a bat flew into the large hall where a group of us were meeting before a night-long ceremony with our South American curandero friends. It flew once around the room in a wide circle then flew back into the night. The shaman asked me, “What does it mean?”

Perhaps, for the shaman, the bat was a portent, perhaps he was testing me, to discover what meaning the bat might have for me. I suggested that the bat was a beautiful creature of the night – the spirit of the night – paying respects to the people who had travelled so far to join us for this ceremony.

Semiotics recognizes that all the images, symbols, and forms that make up our every-day experience are as specific and meaningful as words and language. Our world is infused with the meanings and nuance of a myriad images. Some of them have been with us for millennia, while others enter our collective consciousness through art, through the forms of nature, through commercial branding, or simply through repetition in the media.

A bat of course, is just a bat, but through continuous human contact with them, bats, like countless other animals, plants, landscapes, objects, and events, have taken on a wealth of meanings and associations.

The scientific fundamentalism that has pervaded our thinking for the past several centuries and which has come to be accepted in the dominant culture as the de facto ‘truth’ would declare that a bat is simply a winged rodent, driven by basic instincts.

But a tension exists between our mechanistic explanation of the world and the reality of our associative consciousness that has absorbed the richness of mythological and semiotic meaning.

An indigenous shaman divining whether it is auspicious to conduct a ceremony might have very specific associations for a bat, or a snake, or a tree growing in a certain way, or a pattern in the clouds. That’s how divination works. It’s also how semiotics works. We make meanings, and from those meanings we derive a context-specific reality, a truth.

“We are meaning-making machines,” says Richard Bandler, the co-creator of NLP. We are continually extrapolating meanings from our experience. We have to, in order to make sense of it all. If we didn’t, the world would be an incomprehensible soup of random pieces of unrelated information.

Neurologically speaking, we’re wired to make patterns. It’s how our brains make intelligible images from the fragmented bits of information it receives from our eyes and our visual cortex. It’s how we organize memories, thoughts, sounds, tastes, smells, and the wealth of somatic occurrences, all within the dynamic neural network that we construct and experience as our senses, our bodies, our life.

We experience the world as a vast neural network that is continually prompting us to make patterns, stories, and meanings.

No wonder then, that we sometimes get our wires crossed, or compromise ourselves with outdated or inadequate information. No wonder, given our propensity for seeking what is familiar and safe, that most of us resist change of any sort, and avoid disturbing the patterns by which we have comfortably interpreted the world, and our experience of it, for a lifetime.

This tension between the mechanistic-rationalist worldview, and our ability to transform what appears before us into archetypal representations, is exactly why constellations are effective. It opens a door to a part of our psyche which has laid dormant for generations.  It’s as if we hunger for a pretext to open to the realm where we can make fresh meanings about our life, where we can see with fresh eyes, where we can understand something about what ‘we know but don’t yet know that we know’, where we can trust our intuition.

The new meanings may be as fragile and unverifiable as a cloud in the sky foretelling the future, or as the diviner’s cards thrown down on the table, but that doesn’t make them any less true or useful. Perhaps their fleeting evanescence makes them all the more real, by reflecting the chimera-like nature of the world.

 

Five Tarot Cards

Tarot de Marseilles

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Tarot de Marseilles

Typically, a Tarot card reader will ascribe specific meanings to each card, and give fixed meanings to each position in any given spread, then read the cards as if they were a parrot or a robot.

Originally, the Tarot was a game, le jeu de Tarot. It was a game of free association, improvised meanings, lots of puns. In parts of Europe where the old ways persist, or among a few of us who learned and hold to those ways, the cards are used like words in a sentence. The cards are placed one at a time on the table and the reading continues for as long as the cards are put down – un tirage en ligne.

I’ve heard that some of the old Romany readers will sometimes use all 78 cards in the deck, and weave an entire story, though I’ve found that five or six cards can be enough for a useful reading.

It begins with a question from the client, the more specific the better. Then the cards are put down, and the interpretation is given, often as a single sentence. The meaning of the cards is derived from where they land in the sequence, how they relate to each other, the semiotics of medieval symbolism, the patterns they form together, the transitions that occur (three cups turn into four swords, the Hapsburg bird on the Empress’s shield flies into the tree under a star-filled sky), and also with any associations that pop into mind – first thought best thought.

I have been using the Tarot as a form of constellation for many years. After laying down the cards in response to a client’s question, I will speak my sentence, explain a little at how I arrived at it. I explain that the reading describes the situation as it is. Then I ask the client to rearrange the cards as they would like them, describing to them the new implications of this new ordering of the cards. Then, as with a constellation, I will return the cards to their original order and ask the client if there is one card they would like to move, or remove, from the spread – thus they make their first step towards the resolution or transformation of the system that the reading has shown to them.

My teacher asked me to lay down some cards with the question: What am I good at?

Five Tarot Cards

   

My response:  XX – the call (Miles Davis often comes to mind here), XII – biding my time, XIII – then getting moving, getting through this stuff, 0 – gathering momentum, XVIII – (re)emerging

My line: I’m good at reinventing myself.

My teacher’s response:  For your trip down the Ancient Highway, the Journey starts with the call (and Miles called from a different galaxy that most), continues with meditation, past lives in other bodies now dead, tomfoolery with the Familiar, and ends under the Moonlight where there is no human voice to be heard. A perfect place to reinvent a self, if you still need one.

 

Four curanderos

Sacred Medicine. La Medicina Sagrada

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Four curanderos
Putumayo, Colombian Amazon

It began with a walking constellation. We saw them coming through the gate of our center – the curanderos and shamans from Colombia. Then there was a phone call. Then they arrived. They were here! And our lives changed forever. The world I had constructed from the fragments of our collective fundamentalist-mechanical worldview unraveled, and something else took shape from things I had missed, ignored or rejected as too fantastic. All the meditation, constellation work, hypnosis, psychology, NLP, and Psychomagic came to fruition in those dark nights of ceremony. Much of what I thought I understood well, I realized I had known only in the most superficial way.

  • The mind-body is not our own, nor is it bounded in any of the ways we assume.
  • It is possible to create a reality from any thought.
  • Anything is accessible through thought and imagination.
  • Tend to your thoughts wisely.
  • Everyone you meet has something to teach you about the system you are part of.
  • Treat them all with tenderness and love.

Sometimes, in ceremony, so many intangible beings appear that I have to keep my eyes closed. I prefer to feel them rather than to see them. I recognize that many of them have nothing to do with me. They are part of the constellated elements of others’ lives, assembled there: spirits, demons, ancestors, guardian angels.

Once in the forests of the Amazon, within minutes of drinking the medicine, they streamed in. They leaned over our hammocks, ancient spirit-healers, from the trees, from the river, deeply curious, attending to us carefully, tenderly, studying the strangers from the north.

Once, sitting in a room in the city, oblivious to the noise of the police sirens and revelers on the street outside, SHE came. She came, In a dress made of intricate beadwork like the jewelry of indigenous people in the northern Amazon. Seven feet tall, she sat in front of me all night long. She said, “I will never leave you.” Waves of joy, regret, delight, gratitude, sadness and love washed over me, all the emotions it is possible to feel. For the first time I felt myself to be part of this strange universe where I lived. I felt included, for the first time. I realized that until that moment I had never felt such a profound sense of inclusion.

“Remember, I’ll never leave you,” she said as she stood up at the end of the night to go. She smiled, “I’ll never leave you,” and ever since, wherever I am, I can call on her and she will be there, and I will know that I am included, in this world, in this universe, in any universe, in whatever situation or system I am part of at that moment.

Matisse. Dancing figures

Family Constellation

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Suddenly, we experience that it is possible that we are united in a way which goes far beyond our usual experience. This greater soul encompasses not only the living, but also the dead. And this is something quite extraordinary to experience: that we are part of a greater realm which unites the living and the dead, and that we have to meet the dead as we meet the living. 
Bert Hellinger. Originator of Family Systems Constellation work.

Family Constellation Workshop October 26, at Manzanita Village 

How Family Constellation works

So, here’s how it works: First, let’s assume that almost all the issues we face have their roots in our family of origin.

Even for problems that emerged more recently, the seeds were already sown.

A group of people come together under the supervision of a facilitator to help a client to transform an unresolved issue; emotional, inter-personal, professional, spiritual, even a health issue.

Often it’s something that conventional modalities have not helped resolve.

The other participants do not need to know any details. In fact, the less they know the better.

Members of the group are then asked to represent specific members of the client’s family and are directed to stand in the agreed workspace, which is usually a designated area in the center of the room.

Sometimes only two or three participants are involved, sometimes ten or more.

The facilitator and client observe how the ‘representatives’ interact with each other — choreography, gesture, expression, reaction.

The facilitator will question the ‘representatives’ and ask for their response to the situation as it unfolds.

The ‘representatives’ will interact with each other, observe their own feelings and reactions, respond when inspired to do so, and if called on by the facilitator will speak, either to relate their experience, or to address other participants directly.

Something extraordinary begins to happen. The simulated family system takes on a life of its own.

It’s always mind-blowing how easily representatives can let go of second-guessing, role-playing, acting, or imposing their own ideas on this family simulation.

We’ve seen this time and again, even with people entirely new to the work.

It’s as if permission had been given for each person to step into a collective field of energy and unconscious information, to trust the vast resources that, as it turns out, we all have access to.

Call it intuition, or the collective unconscious. In Family Constellation Work we call it ‘the field’.

It doesn’t need to be explained. The act of the client witnessing the movements, interactions, and the words of the people who represent their family system invariably creates new perspectives, new appreciation, new possibilities and choices, and not infrequently will shift the habits of a lifetime.

However many times we witness, participate in, or facilitate this work it’s still a mystery and a miracle, beautiful and sublime, a testament to the unfathomable nature of ‘mind’ itself.

Family Constellation Workshop October 26, at Manzanita Village 

Through Family Constellations, we are able to watch family entanglements unravel, by observing representatives who stand for members of the family system, with the support of an experienced facilitator….In Family Constellations those who are present in the circle, despite often having no former connection with other participants, are willing to stand as representatives of a family system, which may have suffered loss or conflicted relationships. Facilitator, client, representatives, and all who are present, gain access to a wider field, a larger, deeper way of ‘knowing’ and healing. The generosity of this work and what strangers are willing to do for each other IS phenomenal. — Francesca Mason Boring

Five portraits of participants in World We Long For Podcast

The World We Long For PODCASTS

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Join us for this Podcast series of intimate encounters that illuminate what is hidden, and celebrate some remarkable lives lived on purpose, and some of the stories that shape them. We begin each conversation with a simple question, “Who Are You?”

Look for Caitriona Reed on iTunes and subscribe

Feet walking on flagstones

The World Is Made of Stories

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The World is Made of Stories

by Caitrìona Reed

I am driving south through a green landscape, sun soaked after days of torrential rain. The air is so fresh and clear. I feel that I could reach out and touch the distant mountains. I am coming home from the mastermind meeting that I’ve been attending every month for the past year-and-a-half. Each time I go it feels like another kind of home-coming. I meet with a dozen women; successful business owners, all of them deliciously down-to-earth in their wisdom, openness, and strength. I am in awe at my good fortune in finding a place for myself among them, my new family. I celebrate what it tells me about the person I have now become.

When I first requested to join the group I didn’t hear back for a while. The director later told me that she had to do some soul-searching about whether it would be appropriate for me to be part of this group, because, as I say these days when I introduce myself publicly, “My name is Caitrìona, and I am a woman of transgendered experience.”

Going about my everyday life, I can easily forget that a statement like that, a story like that, can challenge others to reflect on what it means to be a woman or a man. Transgender visibility may have increased exponentially in the last few years. But it seems that many people are still uneasy when they come face-to-face with someone who has actually made that journey. They are challenged to examine some of their deepest assumptions. “Is she a real woman? Is he a real man” What is a real woman?” “Am I a real woman, or man, or business person, or artist, or parent etc.” or whatever identity happens to be up for question. The question might even arise, “If someone can change their sex, what else is it possible to change?

I grew up as a boy child. Despite years of hesitation, and a couple of false starts, now and for the past twenty years I have moved through the world as a woman. I do not flinch. I have let go of the shame and doubt that haunted me for so long. I no longer ask myself whether I am a real woman.

My public introduction usually continues, “I am a woman of transgendered experience, and I’ve learned a whole lot about big scary changes, and committed decisions.”

The leader of the mastermind has become a good friend, and even told me that she has learned something from me about what it means to be a woman. It’s the bit about scary changes and committed decisions. After all, don’t we all have to make those at some time in our lives, no matter who we are?

Sad as it may sound, my own big question was, not whether I was a real woman or a man, but whether I was a real human-being?” My bewildered sense of gender-identity forced me to wonder if I even qualified as a person. Other people seemed so self assured, so certain of their boyhood or girlhood. I longed to put an end to the turmoil of my endless questioning, and the shame that fed it. “Why couldn’t I be like my grandmother, or my mother, or my friend Carolyn?” The little boy inside me had to find another question. He needed to find a place to rest.

If life is made up of stories, I had to find a new story to tell myself, and to tell the world. If life is made of stories, then we owe it to ourselves to make it a really good story, one that serves us well, and that might even help the people around us too.

Most people have made up stories that feed old regrets, or their guilt, or excuses for why their life has gone a certain way. All such stories, in fact, are true, because we make them into self-fulfilling prophecies. And all stories serve a purpose, although that purpose may be to just keep us locked into a familiar place, because familiarity is safe. William James suggested that, “truth is what is useful.” What if we committed to a story whose usefulness was that it declared, with full voice, that we can be strong enough, joyful enough, and creative enough, to show the world, and everyone in it, how magical and beautiful and powerful we are?

Twenty years ago, feeling not in the least bit, magical, or powerful, or beautiful, I made my public announcement to the world and came out of the proverbial closet. Actually, I had already had my foot half way out the door for some time, but I still couldn’t make sense of it. On the one hand it felt like a non-issue. What’s a little gender-bending after all? What’s so scary about a bit of androgynous self-expression? On the other hand, I feared, with good reason, that changing your sex can make a big dent in your life, financially, professionally, socially, and in lots of other ways. It can alienate the people you love. It also demands that you become seriously self-obsessed, at least for a while. So, I had an operation to become a middle-aged virgin. In the process, my psyche had to perform a series of fast-forwards and rapid rewinds to reinvent itself. I had to re-vision my childhood, puberty, and coming of age in my new gender role. I had to make a new story. It was not a deception, not a rewriting of history. It involved creating a new internal landscape that demanded, above all, that I just accept myself as I was, as I had always been.

You’ve probably heard the metaphor about a woman being trapped in a man’s body. It is a convenient story to explain the transsexual experience, but it’s way too small. I felt that my whole spirit, the essence of who I was, was being stifled. Something inside me was clawing at the walls for release. I was ready to burst open.  It didn’t even feel that it was to be about gender at all. It was about something much more fundamental to who I was.

So I took a leap of faith, a leap of necessity. In large part it was my partner, Michele, who pushed me. We were Buddhist teachers. We were leading meditation retreats around the U.S., in Europe and at our center in Southern California. For years we had been teaching the art of being present, the joyful skill of bearing witness to the exquisite fabric of living in this very moment, integrating the world of activism and social responsibility with spiritual practice. Around that time, I had been changing the emphasis of my teaching, and talking about the importance of being authentic, of being truly embodied. Also, much of the work I was doing with my clients at that time had the same focus. People were coming to me less with symptoms, and more with deep existential questions, trying to get a handle on the central meaning and purpose of their life. It’s astonishing how accurately the world reflects back to us the lessons we most need to learn ourselves!

Then Michele gave me the ultimatum. “You’ve got to make a change one way or the other. You can’t go on like this. I can’t stay any more. If you’re going to change your sex you better just do it.” So now I can say, “My partner made me do it!” But the reality was, and remains, that as artists, and as teachers, we made a transition together, and the transition continues. Stories never end.

Our work as a human being is never done. The priority is to be true to what calls you to show up in the world as you are. Unless you are true to your story, and find ways to keep it resounding with meanings that are real for you, then you are on the slippery slope to becoming a robot, and living by someone else’s story.

Some of the stories that infuse our collective consciousness are so insidious. “You are broken and need to be fixed.” “Nothing you do can makes a difference.” “Someone or something outside of you exists that will save you.” What if we changed that? What if you committed to a new story? A story that lets you bloom and shine, here and now, right where you are? You are a living system, co-creating yourself in every moment. You are interconnected to a larger living-system we call life, the universe, creation, or by any other name. The universe is fundamentally safe. You are not broken. Everything you can imagine is possible.

Your story is your own. Mine is my own. My story demands that I remain true to myself, that I am visible, that I accept all of who I am, that I affirm my humanity, that I continue to transform fear and uncertainty, shame, and regret. I’ve learned to shine not as someone who happens to have changed my sex, but as an artist of change. I embody the entirety of who I am, so that the work I do, to help others change and bloom and shine, is free of any expectation of what that’s supposed to look like. Your story is yours to tend to, like a flower coming into bloom. Know that the very things you thought were keeping you from blooming may turn out to be the source of your greatest power and strength. Let your new story evolve and grow as a shining reflection of who you are.

A home-play exercise to support you:

There’s an exercise we learned many years ago that we still use in our workshops and with our clients. It works well if you are at a point in your life where you feel stuck, or at a time when you need to make a big change, in your work, relationship, lifestyle, your relationship to money, to your own health, to anything. It involves writing and journaling, and most importantly, it involves finding forty minutes to an hour when you won’t be disturbed.

Begin by sitting quietly, and taking a few breaths. Tune in to whatever it is that is causing you to want to make a change. Tune in to wherever in your body you sense disquiet, uncertainty, fear, or regret. Allow yourself to feel it. It doesn’t have to be a strong feeling. If you feel dullness or numbness, then tune in to that. Being aware of the feeling is just a way to set the scene.

Now begin to write a list of some of the elements in your life where you have felt victimized, discredited, blocked, overlooked, unseen, or helpless. Write without self-censoring. Just write. You don’t need to write out the full story. Just jot down a word or phrase that conveys the memory and feeling of that time. Write it all. Assume that it all matters. Take your time.

When you have finished, sit for a moment and tune into your body and your feelings again. Maybe you’ll discover that there’s more to write. Keep going.

Then when you feel you’re finished, take a break. Stand up. Shake out the tension.

Next you’re going to re-write the story of your life as a Hero’s Journey, or a Heroine’s journey, or as a journey of yourself as a superhero. You’ll start at the beginning. You can begin with, “Once upon a time,” or, “A long time ago, in a galaxy far away.” Think of the fairy stories you heard as a child, or of the mythical journeys that are at the center of all people of all times. Think of the resources and strengths that you developed through all the challenges and setbacks. Remember that you are a survivor, you made it. Here you are. Create a new story that places you on the brink of brilliant exploits and adventures.

Keep writing. Take the story into the future. Imagine all you can achieve. Imagine the positive impact you can continue to have. Expand it exponentially. What would you take on if you knew you couldn’t fail? Dream it! Write it as large as you like.

When I opened to the truth of who I am, I was afraid that my life, my career, even my credibility as a human being in society, was in doubt. Now life continually reminds me that I am whole. The work I do with my clients continually affirms that I am living my true story, and that its truth can touch the lives of others in ways more powerful than I could have ever imagined. I encourage you to create your heroic journey showing you thriving!   May you bloom and shine your beautiful light fully into the world.

 

originally published in Bloom Where You Are Planted and Shine  Edited by Rebecca Hall Gruyter 2016

 

Ithaca House

Ithaca. The metaphor of the journey of life.

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The flags surrounding the Ithaca House, one of the buildings at Manzanita Village, are not in Tibetan or Sanskrit as is usually the case at most retreat centers.

Some of them are in ancient Greek. Most of them are English translations of Homer, Hesiod, and Constantine Cavafy. They echo aspects of longing and celebration …  to return home, to celebrate the miracle and beauty of life, to truly see. We made the flags because they reflect something of our work at Manzanita Village, and also because they are expressions of Western culture. They feel like home.

A century ago someone said that the western culture is merely a footnote to Homer. I wonder if that’s still true. Maybe. The flags help keep that question alive. Who still reads Homer today anyway? But yet we’re all still on that metaphorical journey, returning home to Ithaca. We’re still faced with challenges that parallel those that faced Odysseus and

Here are the texts from the flags.

Hesiod – Song to the Moon

Sing, muses sing!
Sing the fair-faced Moon, wide-winged Selene,
heavenly gleam, immortal head.

Circling earth, all beauty rises under her glowing light,
lampless air-beams from her golden crown.
The rays dwell, lingering where she bathes in the ocean stream,
dressed in radiance – divine Selene!

Harnessing strong-necked, glittering horses,
racing forward she rides.
She swells and wanes,
a message and an assurance to all.
Once joined in love to Zeus,
She is mother of Pandia, most beautiful.
Queen, white-armed Goddess, divine Selene
gentle heart, kind heart, illuminated hair, tumbling across the sky.
All songs, all life begins with you.

Cavafy – Ithaca

As you set sail for Ithaca, hope the voyage is long,
full of adventure, full of discovery.
Cannibals of Lamos, monstrous Cyclops, wild Poseidon’s fury
– don’t be afraid of them.

You’ll never even see them if you hold your thoughts high,
and allow the sweet excitement of spirit and body guide you.

You’ll never meet cannibals, monsters, Poseidon’s storms
unless you bring them along inside your soul,
unless your set them up yourself in front of you.

Hope the voyage is long.
Summer mornings will carry you
into sparkling new harbors of ecstasy.
Places seen for the first time – upside-down islands,
waterfalls tumbling into the sky

Sail there!
Trade with the Phoenicians, for mother of pearl and coral,
amber and ebony, agate and jade, attar of roses, and frankincense,
every perfume you can find

Lay anchor in Alexandria, trade stories with the wise ones
And always, always guard Ithaca in your mind.
But don’t hurry. You are destined to arrive.

Don’t hurry the journey, don’t hurry at all.
It’s better that it lasts for years.
You will be old when you reach the island,
rich with all that you have become,
not expecting anything of Ithaca.

Ithaca gave you the ocean.
Without her you would not have set out.
She’ll have nothing more to give you
And if you find her poor, do not blame her.

Wise as you will have become,
so full of experience,
you will have understood by then
what these Ithacas mean.

Hesiod – Song to Demeter

I sing Demeter, awesome goddess,
with her golden harvest sword, and her daughter Persephone,
who was swallowed into the ground with a cry as brief as truth on the empty air.
No one heard.

With grief and anguish Demeter pursues her.
Then with terrible rage she disowns the gods
and threatens to destroy everything living on earth
unless her beautiful daughter is given back.

Now the land cannot take seed,
the cattle pull the plough in vain.

Zeus asks all the Gods to summon her.
Sends Hermes to Hades to find Persephone
who sits beside the dark king.

Then Persephone burst back into the light.
Demeter greets her in a world of joy.
The world grows rich with leaves and fruit again.

But Persephone was made to taste the seeds of Hades
and must return to the misty darkness
four months out of every twelve, while the world waits.

I sing Demeter! Her golden hair!
Majestic goddess Demeter, and her daughter Persephone.
Greetings Goddess!
Preserve this place and carry this song.

From Homer’s Odyssey

εἴµ’ Ὀδυσεὺς Λαερτιάδης, ὃς
πᾶσι δόλοισιν ἀνθρώποισι µέλω,
καί µευ κλέος οὐρανὸν ἵκει.
ναιετάω δ’ Ἰθάκην ἐυδείελον
ἐν δ’ ὄρος αὐτῇ Νήριτον εἰνοσίφυλλον
ἀριπρεπές ἀµφὶ δὲ νῆσοι
πολλαὶ ναιετάουσι µάλα σχεδὸν ἀλλήλῃσι,
∆ουλίχιόν τε Σάµη τε καὶ ὑλήεσσα Ζάκυνθος
αὐτὴ δὲ χθαµαλὴ πανυπερτάτη εἰν ἁλὶ κεῖται
πρὸς ζόφον αἱ δέ τ’ ἄνευθε
πρὸς ἠῶ τ’ ἠέλιόν τε

I am Odysseus, Laertes’ son
world-famed for stratagems
My name has reached the heavens.
Bright Ithaca is my home
It has a mountain, leaf-quivering Neriton, far visible.
Around are many islands, close to each other,
Doulichion, and Samé, and wooded Zacynthos.
Ithaca lies low, furthest to sea, towards dusk.
The rest, apart, face dawn and sun.

the magical journey to Ithaca

Basic Awareness: What everyone must do first

Basic Awareness: What everyone must do first

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Basic Awareness: The lesson every business owner, artist, leader, visionary, .. anyone who values their life or their work in the world, anyone to whom others look to for support .. the lessons we must all remember.

  • Take care of yourself first. Pay attention be aware.
  • Ask for help.
  • Stay in tune with what’s going on for you .. on the deepest levels.
  • Don’t try to tough it through. Don’t pretend you’re okay when you’re not.Acknowledge your grief, fatigue, fear, anxiety, uncertainty.

Sure, there’s time to bust right through. But stop pretending you’re invincible! Please!

Take better care of yourself

When the oxygen mask drops down in the cabin, whose mask do you take care of first? Yours or the person/child/parent/partner sitting next to you?

Posted by Manzanita Village and Five Changes on Thursday, November 9, 2017

Pay attention, be aware of your needs and habits.

In an earlier video on Facebook at facebook.com/FiveChanges we gave a basic hint
that will help you stay focused, specifically to keep your gaze directed upwards.

Make it a habit.

Stay in touch with your body, emotions, and anything else that comes into your awareness.

You probably know this already .. so think of this as a serendipitous reminder.

Relationships

Resilient Relationships PODCAST

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Upcoming workshop Amazing Relationships www.fivechanges.com/calendar/

Why Relationships Flounder and Fail and how they can Thrive and Inspire the World.

We project so much onto our lives, onto the world. and onto other people. Nowhere is this more true than in our relationships. Perhaps you thought that another person could save you, validate you, guide you, or give meaning to the disappointments and victories, to the anxieties and celebrations of living. We’re told that more than half of all marriages and partnerships end in divorce or separation. You’ve probably experienced at least one big breakup in your life, along with all the self-doubt, resentment, and regret that goes with it. Why not? It’s part of living.

Flip that!

We’re wired to RELATE. We’re social beings. Romantic love as a social construct may only be a few centuries old, but deep in our being we’re programmed for affection, empathy, and sustained connection with another, with others. Why then do so many people struggle wondering who they are, how they should go through the world  relating to other people, family, lovers, and friends? The question is whether you grow from this journey of living and loving , or whether you let it close you down.

It’s what you project onto relationships and expect from them that causes the problem.

Are you an idealist or a cynic? Do you consider yourself a realist,. We come to our own perspectives and conclusions based on our hopes and disappointments, watching our parents, watching the world around us. We experience betrayal, ecstasy, embarrassment, fulfillment, frustration — all that goes along with being a human being. The task, the trick, the assignment .. for all of us, in relationships, as in everything else in our lives, is to peel away the layers of expectation so that we can meet another, others, the world, as they are. Not on terms we made up in advance, based on our own predetermined conclusions, but on the terms that evolve in the process of our meeting and being with others.

In other words, the work that’s assigned you is to:

1. To learn to look at things as they are and put aside all past experience, and

2. To love anyway, despite the cost. Because our journey is to love, to see another person in all the glory of their imperfections and uniqueness, and to celebrate them, to celebrate yourself and to celebrate the miraculous journey.

The Relationship Bowl

Imagine your relationship as a large bowl. You know that if you drop it, it will shatter. If you forget about it, or take it for granted, it may slip from your hands and shatter into pieces. If you hold on too tight it could crack, perhaps without you even noticing at first. This bowl is empty, and even as you begin to fill it with your dreams and shared aspirations you are making a commitment. You are shaping the destiny of the relationship. What will you put there? How much space will keep free in this bowl? The choice is yours, and what the bowl becomes will be continually shaped and reshaped by who you become. Treasure the bowl. How you do so is as open as the bowl itself, a work of art, a work of continual creation.

Assume one hundred percent responsibility in every relationship, and even in every communication or interaction that you have.

When it goes well, celebrate. When it doesn’t, ask yourself what you are not seeing, what you have to learn, how you can change? It always worth the effort to know that nothing is set in stone, and there’s always room to let other people in, even if you had thought you had closed the door.

Upcoming: www.fivechanges.com/calendar/

Carl Jung on Relationships: www.ronlafleurcounsellingservices.com/

amazing relationships

Amazing Relationships PODCAST

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Love does not consist of gazing at each other,  but in looking outward together in the same direction.” ― Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

Your relationships will mirror your life, just as your life mirrors your relationships. If you are afraid, or curious, or joyful in life, it’s natural that this will play out and be magnified in the relationships you have.

Carl Jung said that we ‘marry our unconscious.’ Everything unresolved in us will play out in our relationships. Jung meant that we marry our unconscious desires and anxieties, all the blind spots, everything we dislike about ourselves. And to extend it a step further, everything that shows up in your primary relationship with your spouse, or your partner, also applies to every other sort of interaction you have, with other people, or with the world as a whole. How you DO one relationship is going to be how you do all your relationships.

People often ask us if we would teach a retreat or workshop on relationships. We’ve been reluctant to. It was enough to do our own. And aren’t there enough people talking about relationships already? Well perhaps .. though it turns out that there are a few things we’d like to add — from the mechanics of clear communication to the altogether mind-blowing proposition of the illuminated sacred dance of living into a relationship that keeps on evolving for 10, 20, 30 years and more.

Some of the questions: are:

How to do the inner work so that you can express respect and love and friendship for your partner — and for everyone else in your life for that matter?

How to be present when your buttons are pushed (because if we ‘marry our unconscious’ there will be plenty of them)?

How to change the repeating patterns that have determined the people you choose to have relationships with time after time?

For workshops and retreats visit Calendar Page

Or go to Facebook Events

Man overlooking mountains

The Game Changer: Mindfulness in Business

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For many years I practiced and taught meditation and Mindfulness as a part of a wider program of Buddhism and Buddhist psychology. Some years ago I began to distance myself from a system that I was starting to feel was too narrowly sectarian to be widely beneficial. It was not that there was anything fundamentally wrong with this amazing body of thinking and practice that had evolved over twenty-five hundred years. But I increasingly felt that it was being introduced into western culture in a way that missed or obscured many of its most valuable benefits.

So I began to develop a non-sectarian approach to training entrepreneurs, coaches, psychotherapist, and artists in a way that was free from the religious tone, and the philosophical and cultural presuppositions of Buddhism. People now work with us individually, or attend our programs, not because they have any interest in adopting a new set of beliefs, or a Buddhist ‘lifestyle’, but because they recognise their own rich capacity to develop their creative and entrepreneurial mind set. As a team, we draw on our range of backgrounds as artists, hypnotherapists, neuroscientists, and NLP trainers, to develop an evolving curriculum to meet the needs of those we serve. Buddhism is seldom mentioned.

After distancing myself from my own background as a Buddhist teacher I had to ask myself what were the most valuable lessons that we can learn from Buddhist practice? What are the skills that are most widely applicable in society, and in the worldwide business environment, especially at a time of so much uncertainty and change? The answer, without any doubt, is mindfulness.

What is Mindfulness?

Mindfulness is awareness and focus. It is a basic human skill that we all possess. It is also a skill that we can learn to develop and refine on an ongoing basis. Research shows that the benefits of mindfulness include a greater capacity for sustained attention, greater emotional stability, and an increased level of energy. The experience of the hundreds of thousands of people who have undertaken even small amounts of mindfulness and meditation training confirms that this is generally true.

Leadership and Presence 

An effective leader leads by their presence. They infuse their organization, and the space around them, not with the bluster of authority, but with the quiet confidence of their focus and presence. Presence is another word for awareness. It entails a sensitivity to the needs of others, and to the situation at hand, as well as to all the various options for finding a way forward through creative problem-solving. By its very nature, this kind of leadership is contagious. It is free from anxiety. And it is unhurried, even when speed is called for.

A good leader leads by the example of their presence. Mindfulness is the foundation for developing this kind of presence. Think of examples of great leadership in business, or politics, or history. Consider the contagious quality of presence that great leaders embody, and which has inspired the people around them. Think of Martin Luther King, Nelson Mandela, Mahatma Gandhi. If you read the biographies of any great leader you will learn that they all practiced some form of mindfulness, some kind of discipline to cultivate and sustain focus and presence. As an entrepreneur you may not see yourself as a world leader, but the principle is the same. Mindfulness helps you to develop presence and to embody your capacity as a leader.

Productivity, Time, and Energy

Time moves at its usual rate of minutes and hours. But the act of mindful attention, of being fully present here and now, helps to dispel distractions, and allows for greater productivity. Mindfulness clears away much of the inner chatter that clutters up the hours of our life.

We have all experienced a shift in our experience of time when doing something that gives us pleasure. An hour can seem to pass in a matter of minutes, and a minute can feel like an hour. When you are focused and mindful, time flows in an entirely counter-intuitive way. As you begin a task, mindfulness allows you to sustain your focus until the task is completed, or until you choose to move your focus elsewhere. Mindfulness allows for greater deliberation in your use of time, and saves you from exhaustion and distraction by helping you to become attuned to your capacity.

Communication and Rapport

Just as mindfulness allows for greater productivity because it seems to slow down the passage of time, it also gives you the ability to listen to other people in a deeper way. It’s as if you learn to hear between the words.

We often miss what others are telling us because we are anticipating what we think they are about to say. Or our attention wanders, so that we can rehearse our response. Or we project meanings that were never intended. Or we respond to what we thought we heard rather than to what was actually said. This may sound like a dire scenario, but without mindfulness, this is how a lot of communication plays out.

In any conversation or meeting, when you are mindful both of what is said and of your own reaction to it, you are more likely to speak from a place of empathy and understanding.  If there was something you didn’t understand, you are more likely to ask for clarification, rather than jumping to hasty conclusions. This is another contagious aspect of mindfulness and leadership. The more you listen before reacting, the more others will follow your example, and learn to be more fully present and mindful in their communications with each other.

Distinguishing the Inner from the Outer. Emotional I.Q.

As humans we are equipped with a brain and nervous system that has a capacity to continually learn and adapt. We learn from our external environment, by the habits it instils in us, and by our own internal process. Sometimes those disparate elements are in direct opposition to each other. We get overwhelmed by circumstance, or by our own habits and emotions. We become confused by the tension between our aspirations and our disappointment.

As an entrepreneur you may have a compelling vision. But the shadow of old anxieties and negative expectations can creep in when you most need to hold onto your vision. Mindfulness is an essential tool to help you navigate that tension between your compelling vision and the old shadows. Mindfulness teaches you to distinguish present realities that may require your attention, from purely imaginary fears that do not. It teaches you to respond to what is in front of you, rather than to react to what is merely imagined. 

When you are present to your own subjective experience of the world, to your emotions and reactions, you become more accountable to yourself. If someone acts in a way that triggers an old negative reaction in you, you always have a choice. You can react in a way that reflects the pain or discomfort that was triggered in you. Or with mindfulness you can pause, so that when you do respond, you do so by choice rather than by habit. You can exacerbate the situation, or you can mediate it. Such choice is at the heart of what has come to be known as Emotional Intelligence, or EQ.

Ethical Business Practice

Mindfulness helps you to stay in touch with your highest values. It teaches you that you are most effective when you consistently operate by ethical principles. It helps you to stay in touch with your vision for what is possible, rather than resorting to old habits based on fear or scarcity. Because mindfulness leads you towards being more empathetic, it helps you to develop an affinity for, and appreciation of, solution-based thinking that has long-term benefit for all. It prompts you to look for solutions that benefit the greatest number of people. You no longer see your competitors as adversaries, but as catalysts, propelling you towards greater competency. You begin to see possibilities for collaboration where before you could only see rivalry. As it helps you to distinguish your vision for what is possible from your fears, mindfulness profoundly deepens your capacity for integrity and ethical practice, in business as in life.

Corners are cut, and ethical principles are breached, not because an individual or an organization have flawed principles, but because long and short-term goals and priorities get confused. Big picture thinkers are asked to attend to details, and detailed oriented people are asked to guide the bigger vision. The mindful flexibility of good leadership embraces both.

Intuition and Imagination

 Just as mindfulness allows you to choose between reacting to old impulses, or responding by choice, in a similar way mindfulness allows you to explore the landscape of your own imagination and to distinguish the whimsical from the rich veins of your deepest creativity.

A friend asked Richard Branson what his favourite pastime was. “Daydreaming,” was his answer. And you know where that has led!

Daydreaming may not usually be associated with mindfulness because people sometimes assume that mindfulness takes a lot of effort. But with practice, as mindfulness becomes effortless, it is a hair’s breadth away from daydreaming.

Mindfulness and Pleasure

One of my teachers used to say that mindfulness is “just an intelligent way to enjoy your life.” We sometime suggest to our clients that the first thing they could ask themselves when they get up in the morning, or when they sit down at their desk, is “How much pleasure can I allow myself to experience today?”

Your awareness is a pleasure and a gift, for yourself, and for whoever you are with. Awareness is its own reward. Your life, and your experience at any given moment, is yours to choose.  This is the gift of mindfulness. It is much bigger than a business tool for entrepreneurs, but there are few other places where it is more dramatically and immediately applicable. And there are few tools that can have as profound and positive influence on you do business .

Below I have suggested a few simple tools for developing a mindful workplace. These are tools that we REGULARLY use in our own business.

 

Ways to bring mindfulness into your workplace

Whether you work alone or with others, take a few minutes to start the day with a couple of minutes of simply being, rather than doing. You can sit in silence, or acknowledge the presence of each other in a way that feels appropriate. If you are alone just be still, and bring awareness to where you are, your workspace, your breath, your body.

Bring someone in to teach your team the basics of mindful meditation, or find a recording on-line. Make time once or twice during the course of each workday to meditate together for a few minutes.

Create a place of silence and meditation where people can go during the workday, even for a short few minutes. By association, the presence of that special place will have an effect on the workplace as a whole.

Take regular breaks. Perhaps, for five minutes every hour. Stop whatever you are doing. Stand if you have been sitting, walk if you have been standing. Take a short walk, make it like a meditation, focusing only on the experience of walking, step by step, breath by breath.

Take time to deliberate with others, or alone, on your intention, for the day, for the task at hand, or for the bigger vision of your business. Enjoy the process. Make no judgements. See what emerges.

Learn to meditate with your eyes open, using your peripheral vision to bring in all of your sensory experience. Practice for a few seconds whenever you remember, or whenever you feel fatigue or a need for change. If you need you can download a short recording of this particular exercise at fivechanges.com/yoursoulmasterpiece

Develop the skill of listening to others without reaction or judgment. You can practice in a public space, a coffee shop or a restaurant, discreetly listening in. Then bring that same skill to your workplace. Notice if your sensitivity to hearing what others are really saying changes.

When engaged in a meeting or a conversation develop the habit of focusing on the effects your words are having. Notice your impulse to speak in reaction to the way others’ words make you feel. See what happens if you pause for a moment before speaking. Can you notice a difference between words you feel you want to say, and words that you know will have the greatest positive effect of others? These deliberations may feel awkward and unnatural at first. Play along with it, and see what you can learn.

Develop the habit of preceding and ending any complaints, or criticism you may have of others, with words of appreciation and praise.

 

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