Friday, December 31, 2010

Oops I did it again...


Oops I did it again….  That’s the first thought that enters my mind a month ago after booking my plane ticket.  At least my journeys and their journals continues I think… and though the space of continually sharing myself makes me feel vulnerable I am pulled to carry on. Just as I am to love, and love, and love. And share, and share, and share. So, yes I’m getting on a plane today, being New Years Eve Day December 31st, 2010.  It’s heading to Los Angeles for a week of fun in the sun, or wait it’s going to be mild and wet, all good!  This trip was inspired by my heart once again, albeit this time it was just more of a gentle push to leave town. 

There are lovers content with longing.

I’m not one of them.

-Rumi


As I walk through the airport, half asleep and exhausted from moving the past two days back into my house on the sunshine coast I remember last year this time. I was excited with the anticipation of my first promise of love at the beginning of last year.  (Note: I continue to not use names and though I’m open to sharing I feel as an “emerging blog writer” I would need to respectfully write… “and the names have been changed to protect the innocent J” so I’ll continue as is.)  Last NYE was the beginning of me being unreasonable, fully self expressed and playing full out and asking for what I wanted… all very NEW to me especially in the world of intimate relationships. I mean I’m slightly nicknamed Wonder Woman for my highly independent lifestyle and accomplishments however I’ve discovered my full self expression (which also means I experience peace when I am) is to give love to another and receive.

So, back to my initial thought “Confetti” haha! for those that get that!

 … As I walk through the airport I think of last year and the man who only 3 days earlier we created spending new years together in Whistler and what was to begin our G2 summit as we “named it.”  Both our last names start with G. This year we were going to celebrate again together with the possibility of our own true loves with us.  He has found his, I have not. As this enters my mind I walk past a departure gate with the name of his current home city on it. I find my immediate following thoughts are of forgiveness and love. And so I’ll share that with him today. We had a lot of fun that weekend and the months that followed and I got my wish of having a loving relationship with a man where we spend weekends and weeks together, met his family and got up to big things too.  And I share with you, as I often have with myself, that I did have a loving relationship this year and though it didn’t end up in “being in love” and “being together” I am now focused and present to what I have had AND not what I have not had. 

There is a quote that says the
“true meaning of happiness is not having what you want
 but wanting what you have”

I continued to open myself up and saw glimpses of what’s out there. I’ve opened myself up to another and I’m learning that vulnerability is to do just that, keep opening yourself up. I discovered that my version of being vulnerable was to open up and then “run away”… which looks like pushing them away, running away, shutting down, stop sharing or booking a ticket and flying somewhere else. So in an inquiry with some friends the resounding definition of vulnerability was to open up, don’t go anywhere, and open up some more.  Ummmmm, okay that feels well, vulnerable? I thought I was because I’d open, hide, open, hide… oohhhh a very different discovery to me. Thanks for Maria for yet again pointing that one out to me as if with a sharp object. Ouch! So, more to come in the New Year on this one J

Until then I’m on another “journey and their journals” adventure. And for the record I don’t want to share, feel content in writing this and not posting on the world wide web and yet, it’s a new exploration to keep well, opening up. Don’t worry I cherish private things held like a jewel for just those that know about it, and those things are under lock and key.

What I do want to share, as it may inspire or be a window for others, is what I’m discovering as I get the travel for me now more too. I was asked a long time ago by a therapist who worked with highly sensitive people and did dream analysis, very cool work… “what activities I enjoyed where I didn’t think?”  I named a few things I enjoyed doing and the one that stood out at the time was cooking. He said, “what do you think about?” I paused. I could think about anything I thought about when I cooked. He said, “good, because you likely don’t think, so do that and be aware that it is a form of therapy for you and take that time to clear your head.” Many people have these activities such as running, or dancing, or composing music.  There are therapeutic activities meant to assist you in processes thoughts and ideas. Others are meant to stop the processing and let you just be, and from there a whole newness emerges. Another way to say this is it can move from thinking with the head to thinking with the heart.

As I sat on the plane watching the landscape pass below, as we landed and the bustle of another city surrounded me, as I settle in … I get that travel is another way I get outside my head and back into the world of “just being.”  That’s newly powerful to me today! My thoughts disappear, my head clears, I’m present to myself, my body and what’s around me. In that space I get connected again. Today is the last day of 2010 and I’m creating a ritual for completion, connection and generous acknowledgement. At midnight I’ll bring in the intention of being light hearted and unleashed for 2011 !! 

Till then… Happy New Year Everyone! xo



Sunday, December 12, 2010

My Invitation to you is to read The Invitation….

My Invitation to you is to read The Invitation….

Recently I was in a conversation with a friend who was working through a past relationship and I shared what I feel is a common phenomenon that many of us deal with when “getting complete or finding closure” with past loves.  It’s the idea that I believe you never stop loving those you loved before.  I shared with her my favorite spiritual author who writes beautifully about this concept and about being full present in the world.

So I invite you to read “The Invitation” and explore the depth of yourself, others and the world.  As I read her words again I hear myself speaking to myself and the same feeling that these words are coming from inside me. That I’m saying this to myself, as if I wrote this too and that they’re not just words on a page.  It’s this feeling that pulls me to read more and share this with you. 

So let Oriah and I both invite you to read the book. If you feel the same way I do that as you read her invitation that it’s an invitation coming from yourself then begin.  In Oriah words from her book ““The Invitation” is a declaration of intent, a map into the longing of the soul, the desire to live passionately, face-to-face with ourselves and skin-to-skin with the world around us, to settle for nothing less than what is real.  This book is a journey in to the territory mapped out by “The Invitation.”  If we are to traverse this territory together, there are some things you should know. Because simply saying “yes” to “The Invitation,” feeling the pull of the heart or the quickening of the blood that urges movement forward, is not the same thing as actually making the journey. I want to live with deep intimacy every day of my life.  I am guided, sometimes driven, by an ache to take the necessary risks that will let me live close to what is within and around me.  And I am sometimes afraid that it will be too much, that I will not have, or be connect to, whatever it takes to be with it all, to bear the exquisite beauty and bone-wreaching sorrow of being fully alive. Knowing how frightening both the beauty and the pain can be, I offer you here, at the beginning of this journey, three promises that are, simultaneously, three warnings.”   (You must get the book to continue reading J)

So here I am packing to move back into my house on the sunshine coast this month, reading this book once again and I flip back to the beginning.  I find an inscription I wrote to myself which reads…

November 25 2000
My Birthday

In a brief moment
I touched the center of myself
And learnt yet again
What it truly meant
To love myself and another
I made an ally with sorrow
Knowing she also had something to teach me

Love Cassandra

Ten years later.
I invite you….



The Invitation by Oriah

It doesn’t interest me what you do for a living.
I want to know what you ache for and if you dare to dream of meeting your heart’s longing.
It doesn’t interest me how old you are. I want to know if you will risk looking like a fool for love for your dream for the adventure of being alive.
It doesn’t interest me what planets are squaring your moon...I want to know if you have touched the centre of your own sorrow if you have been opened by life’s betrayals or have become shriveled and closed from fear of further pain.
I want to know if you can sit with pain mine or your own without moving to hide it or fade it or fix it.
I want to know if you can be with joy mine or your own if you can dance with wildness and let the ecstasy fill you to the tips of your fingers and toes without cautioning us to be careful to be realistic to remember the limitations of being human.
It doesn’t interest me if the story you are telling me is true. I want to know if you can disappoint another to be true to yourself. If you can bear the accusation of betrayal and not betray your own soul. If you can be faithless and therefore trustworthy.
I want to know if you can see Beauty even when it is not pretty every day. And if you can source your own life from its presence.
I want to know if you can live with failure yours and mine and still stand at the edge of the lake and shout to the silver of the full moon,” Yes.”
It doesn’t interest me to know where you live or how much money you have. I want to know if you can get up after the night of grief and despair weary and bruised to the bone and do what needs to be done to feed the children.
It doesn’t interest me who you know or how you came to be here. I want to know if you will stand in the centre of the fire with me and not shrink back.
It doesn’t interest me where or what or with whom you have studied. I want to know what sustains you from the inside when all else falls away.
I want to know if you can be alone with yourself and if you truly like the company you keep in the empty moments.

By Oriah © Mountain Dreamer, from the book The Invitation published by HarperONE, San Francisco, 1999
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