Not So Grounded

Aaron O'Connell

 

This is the coolest 7 minutes & 51 second worth of info.  [And here's the TED link for those of you who don't receive the embedded video.] 

Brene Brown

I'm writing a book (and, thus, trying to stay very disciplined on the long-write instead of the short-post-writes) but came upon this great TED presentation (thanks Janet!), perfect for both today's drafting and New Year's intention.

 

 

San Francisco Writing for Change

My conclusion after the eBooks Symposium, the San Francisco Writing for Change conference and the Literary Death Match, Episode 35?  I'm not having nearly enough fun.  The universe of sharing stories and ideas with others is exploding into as many forms as there are storytellers and participants.  It's time to have some creative fun.

Causal Celebration

Apparently I've been really pissed off on the causal plane. 

Went to see Joanne Williams, my dear powerful energy healer, to clear up a curious fact that my financial shape stagnates despite increased earnings.  John came, too, figuring they're family finances, plus we thought a joint session would be fun.  I laid on the mattress in Joanne's Spartan living room as she pressed a sore spot on the upper left part of my chest. And Voila, she found an image of me, standing alone in the causal plane.  Really pissed.

According to Joanne, the causal plane is where manifestation begins.  Desires, intentions, ideas, passion, purpose ... they all happen elsewhere, but once coalesced, they actually leap into reality from the causal ledge.  

And evidently my leap has been stalled, and I'm none too happy about it.  I'm a Fixer, wildly enthusiastic (and pretty damn competent) at cleaning up the aftermath, helping to envision and fuel a brand new life.  But we're dallying too much, wallowing in our broken existence instead of letting it go to start fresh.  There isn't a shred of credible evidence that says oil, coal, and "natural" gas extraction and use will sustain us ad infinitem.  Yet we stay dependent, in our daily habits, our political choices, and even our anger when inevitable disasters strike.  We haven't had a "productive" war in 65 years, either (or in millenia, depending on the definition of "productive"), yet we continue to invest the majority of our financial, intellectual, cultural, and emotional capital in our war zeitgeist.  Americans have some of the worst health care outcomes and highest costs when compared to our global peers, yet we ignore simple and effective alternatives.  We enjoy less and work & dread financial peril more than almost everyone on the planet, yet collectively we don't walk away from a bankrupt system of credit, finance  "investment," employment and productivity. 

I came here to support wind farm cooperatives and wide-scale solar energy legislation.  I have been waiting eons to help build monument upon monument honoring peace, tranquility and beauty, creating eternal flames of compassion where those war statues once stood.  I was born to facilitate universal systems of universal health, uniting doctors, hospital administrators, patients, therapists, and "althernative" folks in new paradigms of well-being.  And I know with every breath that we are supposed to find joy each and every day, laughing with our kids, roaring at a soccer victory, painting a canvas, hiking a trail, curing a disease, building a home, sharing a meal ...

Instead, I was languishing on the causal plane, awaiting an unrealized reality, and furious with the delay. (We all laughed pretty hard when John suggested my angry impatience might have leaked some into this plane, too.)

So Joanne cleared away the pissed part, said Good never comes from the vibration of anger.  And reminded me that reality and action emanate from our internal selves, not necessarily from external circumstances.  I feel subtly lighter, my surprising new patience oddly blended with self-permission just to go ahead and do what I came here to do. 

Which I've decided starts with a really great party on that causal plane.

Vision Alignment Project

This is cool.  Enough said.

The Most Perfect Day Ever

Awoke early for a glorious long canter (Elise does not walk ...) across More Mesa bluff and then down along the Pacific.  Magnificent gray swells and kelp, seals lounging on jagged rocks, timeless fog against eroded cliffs, warm sweatshirt against the cold.  We met another friend, 5 dogs between us, and glided through wide empty swaths of low-tide beach. 

Returned to prepare for the workday, suddenly stopped heavy by an overdose of global overwhelm,  confusion on top.  Dusted with a little frustration, or maybe that's sadness?  Probably woven with fear.  Not a specific person, thing, circumstance, client, or item in the news  But every organization I work with, everything I observe, so much that I encounter ... folks are burning to a crisp.  Somber and weighty. 

I know I'm supposed to help my clients accomplish measurable business objectives, but, quite honestly, I'd rather wrap them snug in star-kissed silk, serve them warm chocolate chip cookies, and tease out something worth a belly laugh.

I cleared my head with a hot shower, stepped onto the back deck just as the sun appeared in full, and took a deep breath.

What if we all got out in the sun?  Stepped away from the responsibilities, to-do lists, and frustrations that prop up illusions we don't even like?  I know how to shift my vibration - a moment of gratitude for sand between my toes, my closest friend in the next room, the scent of fresh eucalyptus, laughing for no reason ... I'm so there.  

I just want everyone there.  I want everyone to awake every morning knowing this will be the most perfect day ever, the 6+ billion different ways that might be defined. 

Is that too much to ask?

The Alternative Route

We were discussing utilization management when I started feeling wonky.  I was growing a fever and an acute need for a bed.  Or, ideally, a place to send my body into time-out until it was better behaved.  I don't think the topic made me sick, although ironic since UM (we love acronyms) is how healthcare folks decide if symptoms, diagnoses and treatments really jive.  I was still in the symptom phase, and they were getting worse. 

This has been my second Wonk in a month, which worried me, so after Lesa's Herculean nursing and 36-hours staring at HGTV in the hotel, I drove back across North Carolina and straight to Sam Williams, homeopath and functional medicine wizard.  He hooked me up to his frequency machine (which, I swear, sounds like Vegas slots), ran through a battery of tests and permutations, and smiled kindly at the end when he said, "Is there something you know you should be doing with your life, but still hesitating?  Because your body suggests it's time to get on with it."

Damn.  The flu woulda been easier.

Here's what I love (or hate - lol) about "alternative" medicine.  Things aren't parceled up like in Western medicine.  While I worried mono, Sam found existential.  He checked for parasites, bacteria and viruses (even Epstein-Barr), but found my 12th chakra gone awry instead. (Hell, I didn't even know there was a 12th chakra ...)

Fortunately, "alternative" medicine can also treat the existential, or at least ease my angst enough so I can get on with it, as Sam suggests.  Nobody kicks bacterial infections like our family docs, and Western meds and surgery have saved many a loved one's life.  But alternative medicine can treat some things that Western medicine can't.  Heal them, in fact, not just calm the symptoms and pain.

I know that's a leap.  But conventional and alternative are really really different.  Different enough they require radically different questions, assumptions and mind-sets.  Even conversation is tough.  It's akin to translation -- Sanskrit and Swahili are both languages, but it's sure hard to talk when the characters remain foreign.  Oversimplification:  Western sees mechanistic precision, exquisite attention to each detailed part; bacteria invade and must be eradicated for normal functioning to resume. Alternative sees wholeness, a tapestry of unfathomable interconnections; a sentry got distracted, caused by one of a zillion possible reasons (a passing fantasy, partied too late last night, been pissed off at the boss for 16 years ...) allowing the virus to sneak through that gaping hole in the wall.  So let's find the unique thing to close the hole, get rid of the virus and help the sentry heal what ails him (endless possible treatments for endless possible scenarios).

A week into Sam's treatment last fall, Maddy's acute mono ceased; within a month she said she felt better than she had in a year; within 3 months she felt better than she ever remembered.  Bonnie Walker's acupuncture once stopped a full-blown migraine instantly; a few more treatments and they never returned.  My chronically high cortisol and that intense chest-clench I've been ignoring for months?  My weird, sudden muscle spasms and aches and allergies? John's lingering symptoms from 40-year old knock-outs to the head?  All been healed by "alternatives."  (I have a fabulous list of folks -- I'm happy to share.)

So Friday afternoon Sam gave me half a dozen little containers of homeopathics to take 3 times a day.  A few treat predictable things: flu, fever, stomachache.  But the flower essences are my favorites:  filaree to regain a cosmic perspective on mundane worries; golden yarrow to find comfort and protection in an expanded, open life; and mimulus to help my soul find the strength and purpose of my higher self.

I spent Saturday in bed, Sunday finished some chores, today I'm physically back to normal.  Now it's on to "getting on with it," whatever "it" might be.  I keep tracing back to Wednesday's utilization management discussion, those links between symptoms, diagnoses and treatment.  We need to broaden them somehow, expand them, create something that bellows, "Ya know - we need all the types of medicines we can get!"  I suspect there's an "it" in there.

Pretend He's Reasonable

The soft-spoken executive in my recent training seemed reasonable, intelligent and even-tempered.  While role-playing scenarios, he shared a real-life story about wrangling with a top executive that was clearly upsetting him. 

When I was first hired and asked to prepare my department budget, I was told I couldn’t have any data or authority over several line items.  Everyone said off-the-record it was an irrational decision, a power move by a brilliant, yet overly controlling leader.  They said he perceived me as a threat and wanted to “put me in my place.”   They told me just to live with it ... 

This One's For You

I still have all Lee Ann's emails. 

This has come in handy the last month as I prep for the training we did together.  The one where she handled everything.  The one we did annually for almost a decade, a guarantee we'd see each other at least every 12 months, usually in some cool city that we'd love to explore.  I fly to Orlando Wednesday, will check in to Disney's Coronado Springs Resort.  And her absence, I suspect, will be everywhere.

But so will her presence.  I have never before felt sadness so wrapped in joy and gratitude.  Each time I feel the ache of her death I also feel her smile.  And her very staunch warning that sadness is not particularly useful.  

Lee Ann embodied pure alignment between vision, values and action.  And so her essence stands before me almost daily, softly, yet firmly, reminding me that if I choose theoretically to believe we are source energy dancing in and out of physical form, then I have to act that way.  That I have to be mindful about contributing life-giving energies to the world, even when I'd prefer to feel overwhelmed, worried, sad and incredibly whiny that I have to do these 4 days without her.  

She'd say overwhelmed, worried, sad and whiny are not very Abe-like.  I say they're not very Lee Ann-like.  So I'll look for a beautiful sunset, a great slushy margarita, and a glorious loud laugh and think of her.  And I'll take this work that she nurtured and loved so much and illuminate it in her honor.    

Try the Open Door Instead

Technically my friend’s roof didn’t collapse, but water poured through her ceiling anyway.  Her soaked carpet near froze in the frigid temps, and only by some miracle (and a friend’s 4-wheel drive) did she escape hypothermia after five days without heat, electricity, water or warm food.  

Later, blissfully cozy, she suspects it’s an unfortunate metaphor for her personal life of late.  Despite loving care, her personal quests - one way or another (and not in ways entirely bad) -- seem to uproot and crash like the oaks splayed across her driveway.

Her professional life, however, is flourishing.  Powerful.  Clear.  Attracting clients exponentially and generating riveting success.  And making her blissfully happy.  She may be exhausted from yet another personal snowstorm,  but she regains her strength and joy instantly when she returns to work.

So we ponder ... despite her true and worthy desires for personal bliss and her herculean efforts to manifest it, maybe she should just work instead.  Maybe its best to focus where the joy already is --  walk through the door already open and assume those other dreams will naturally appear in the rooms already flooded with light.