Desiring isolated beaches requires letting go of fear of rocks and surf.
The world as it stands is not geared to make desires the vocal point of our lives, is it?
Desires are different beasts and differ hugely from everything we have learned about success and goals.
Desires are delicious anticipations of great things to come.
Many of us experienced the feelings of desire when we were children looking forward to Christmas, birthdays and holidays.
As an adult many of us have remained at that ‘childish’ level of desire, looking forward to ‘things’ , but the difference is that once we got what we desired we still were left with feeling unfulfilled.
But once we allow desires to mature from that initial child level they become more like a ‘calling’.
I now prefer the word ‘calling’ over desire as it better describes how adult desire works, it calls us forward.
Saying that I have a ‘calling’ for my return to nature feels more accurate.
‘Calling’ also makes more sense when I look at how my ‘calling’ is taking shape. It is not always fun and I never really associated letting go and having faith and being scared stiff with the word desire from my childhood and for some time that had me confused.
John and I working towards our desire to be warm.
On the Monday’s post; ‘She has no desires only goals‘ I described how my daughter is typical of so many of us; she has been taught to be goal focused, is achieving goals and yet lives an unfulfilling life where her unique personal desire and passion are missing. I too was once doing just the same, appearing successful but failing to love my life, until now that is.
Why might we choose ’safe’ goals over ‘unknown’ desires? Jenn shared her own experience of how her desires did not go to plan;
I stopped desiring things after an incident in my past where I made plans (full-out passionate plans) and then it got turned on me… I didn’t want to believe, and hope and desire again to that fullness… because I assumed it would be taken away again, and that was a lot of wasted good quality energy.
We all have seen our desires come to grief and leave us thinking we won’t do that again; lets play small instead. Little Voice then has the chance to come up with all kinds of justifications such as Jenn went on to share;
Learning to be a captain can be tiring.
On this Monday’s post; Allow yourself to be lovable and shine I argued the case for us to become strong basecamps and how important it is that we captain our own Life first and then we can become a leader for our family. Being captain is no longer the prerogative of men, times are changing and with that the need for everyone, women and men alike to accept the responsibility of being our own captains on our own life voyage. We need to start learning to think and act from our own inner indigenous power.
This is easy to say, but as Dorothy shared very challenging to embrace in daily life. Dorothy’s experience was one of;
Hanging out with inhabitants of 'Heaven on Earth', an Oyster Catcher family.
Currently we live in ‘Ego-land’ where ego culture shapes our lives and dictates our behavior. Behavior that attacks, competes, has us being inauthentic and creates a world of lack, defensiveness and fear. Some of us are paying enough attention to notice the destructive culture we live in, a culture that leaves us feeling fearful and oppressed; some of us notice enough to long for a more attractive ‘country’ to live in.
Some of us notice that there is an enticing new ‘country’ appearing. Eckhart Tolle calls it ‘A New Earth‘, I like the name ‘Heaven on Earth‘, a land where ego-type thoughts have no place.
The natives of ‘Heaven on Earth’ have banished their ego and instead they come from love while co-creating dreams based on win/win for all as their life’s purpose.
On the road to an unknown future.
This Monday’s post; ‘We are looking for our new home the WomenLikeMe way’ was a little different from usual. I took the opportunity to report on how John and I are getting on with living our daily life differently.
It seems like a straight forward exercise, reporting; I’ve written lots of reports on people’s lives in my former work as a Careers Consultant.
But I notice that it is not easy at all to report what is going on for me behind the scenes, about the bumps and hurdles I experience along the way, especially as I have not yet safely reached the harbor yet and I have certainly not reached all the wisdom of hindsight yet either. I am still in the middle of the storm so to speak, oscillating between feeling confident and being totally freaked out. I did notice while writing the post that fortunately my confidence is becoming stronger by the day.
However it is still so delightful to have your comments support me in this as you too are honestly addressing your ‘behind the scene’ dilemmas and hurdles.
Joy opened up the inquiry with;
My question of the day to God/the Universe is: where is the love?…
Traffic in Vietnam makes you pay attention.
There was a wide range of comments to this Monday’s post; Do you Pay Attention?
My simple example of dragging the kayaks through the mud when the tide was out was to demonstrate that failing to pay attention has consequences and one of them is that we fail to see what there is to prepare for to have life work out. There are many more consequences when we fail to pay attention and although some comments touched on preparation only, it was not preparation I wanted to draw your attention to, the point of this post was about ‘pay attention to paying attention’.
Aysel could certainly see the issues when she explained how it is for her;
I don’t pay enough attention to what’s happening around me because I am too preoccupied with all the thoughts and ideas inside my head, all the ‘why?’ and “how?’ and ‘what it means?’ questions… Sometimes I get annoyed when I am distracted from this thinking process, even if it’s by son who is asking for some attention. But I switch my mind and dive into the daily routine; before I know it all those very “important” questions shed their significance, they fade away. Maybe instead of thinking too hard, I could live “harder”? I fear that a lot of precious moments are lost because I was too absorbed in my own thinking.
John paying attention to the tide.
Paying attention, being alert and performing at our best only happens when something is at stake, like in a crisis or getting safely home from a sailing trip. You too probably know the feeling, eyes see, ears hear, you are on full alert; you are awake and performing brilliantly, you are alive!
Does that mean that somehow in our daily life we do not pay attention, be alert and fully alive?
Yes, that is exactly what I mean! Marianne Williamson agrees as she keeps reminding us over and over again that we are not paying attention to the fact that we all have the ability to always perform like the brilliant, gorgeous, talented basecamps we all in principle are.
She often exasperates at how we are not taking ourselves seriously enough, how we are not working hard enough to be who we truly are, amazing capable beings who live brilliant wonderful lives and have glorious relationships.
Ouch, the halo seems to escape us . . . again!
I think she has a point and a big one at that.
When I met John I thought he was too serious. He did a lot of interesting things but everything he did, he did with intent. He paid attention to me, to what was going on around him and he always prepared whatever he did. My ego had a lot to say about that. I found him pedantic and anal and I thought I was actually more flexible and relaxed? Was I?
When egos are quiet we can live happily ever after.
The comments flowed abundantly this week on Monday’s post; ‘Your ego can’t collaborate’ with Megan sharing a fine example of what many of us could identify with, the ego in action;
My ego got the better of me this weekend – yesterday and today, actually. You’re right that it definitely does NOT want to collaborate! Ego wants what it wants, and I noticed it was willing to invent stories (otherwise known as projection) to suit its flimsy desires today. I actually had to say aloud a bit earlier, “Please help me be clear! Please help me know the real truth!” Ego was clouding everything up and I decided I wanted to reverse that trend. Like an unwanted house guest…
Yes I agree, the ego sure is like an unwanted house guest.
Then on the subject of collaboration, Lisa exposed that there was more to collaboration than what we generally think;
… so much more important than I used to give it credit for. I really used to think of collaboration as more of a strategic skill, a way of combining strengths, learning to compromise etc. But it is so much more than that, and I hadn’t really clicked into realizing that until reading your post. It IS about ego, and whether or not two people can get beyond relating at the level of ego and connect and interact at a deeper level.
In Vietnam I did see collaboration, the ego had no choice.
Full of expectations, we marry, we work in teams, we build partnership and yet we fail in most of them.
Oh it might not look like we failed; most of us present well and sure know how to look good.
But underneath the surface we are either; martyrs, manipulators, whiners, complainers or passive aggressors, in short we are often unhappy people feeling lonely, because we never learned to collaborate.
Over ten years ago, I looked fine too.
But when you lifted the veil of my charming successful veneer, you could see a different Wilma.
I was a complainer, working in a job I learned to hate.
I had chosen to be rather stuck with the devil I knew, than leave a marriage we were both very unhappy in.
In the end I could have died as stupid as I had become.
I paint a totally different picture of my current life since I have learned to collaborate with people who matter.
And belief you me, collaboration is a totally new ball game you and I have very seldom played.
I am not kidding; this is what the ‘urban dictionary’ has to say about collaboration;
An unnatural act practiced by nonconsenting adults. Worker A: We have no common interests, we don’t like each other, and it irritates us to work together. But we were told by management to engage in collaboration.
Worker B: What a waste of time.
Hmm, does this not resemble marriage and most families as well?
- Are we playing heart centered team in all our relationships?
This week’s post ‘What is so’ in relationships talked about looking deep into what is going on with our relationships and no matter how confronting, it is required to get to the wholesome ‘what is so’.
And without this level of ‘what is so’, we don’t get access to acceptance and we miss the opportunity to bypass our ego to get to our heart centered self and be the change we want to see.
Lance highlighted the point with this comment about his marriage
there were moments where accepting “what was so” was not easy at all. I suppose I came into the relationship with preconceived notions, based upon all of my past experiences. There was definitely a period of time where I didn’t want to see beyond my own limited horizon. And while things were never terrible, there were times where our relationship suffered.”
And Wilma’s response gave us lots to think about . . .
We all kind of know we have an opinion and a conditioning that can skew how we perceive life. BUT how are we going to really see how that affects our daily life where it counts?
Who is there to point out that what we see is usually NOT SO as we seldom come from wholeness . . . AND then are we open to really see the ‘what is so’, because normally when you do, you are open for a shock, a big BIG shock . . . as I discovered.
This week’s post Only acceptance has you do things differently questioned acceptance and our perception of it.
And by using an example that is familiar to most people it brought home how our acceptance of a given situation can lead us to doing things differently by creating solutions that work for us.
Joy’s take on this was; “sometimes our thoughts around certain issues have become so automated we don’t even realize it, and always *always* when you start from scratch an insight pops in. Far different from your original thought.”
Now that’s what we’re on about Joy, coming up with a creative and conscious way to proceed instead of the usual reactive default way.
How our thinking about Molly tripped us up.
Ann-Marie and I loved reading how you have taken doing things differently on board. And the results that have been created thrilled us to no end, to use Angelia’s words!
However despite all that, Ann-Marie and I still got stuck this week while we were talking about doing things differently.
It all started when Ann-Marie began talking about Molly, her 2 year old daughter.
For some months now Ann-Marie has had an issue with Molly refusing to have an afternoon sleep on Mondays even though she obviously needs it.
Monday mornings are spent at Playcenter where Molly loves to be with other children. She gets so excited by the whole experience; totally wired and come the afternoon she will not sleep although she is clearly exhausted after her morning’s adventures.
With no sleep, by the end of the day Molly, of course has become very cranky and doesn’t know whether she is coming or going.
Ann-Marie also is no longer at her best having dealt with her over-stimulated and then overtired child for most of the day.
Thus Ann-Marie feels she has a problem.
She would so like Molly to have an afternoon sleep to avoid her wee girl becoming over tired, frustrated and upset. Despite this and trying every method to get her to sleep, nothing seems to work on Mondays.
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