Sheila Winter Wallace BodyGateways

I have recently changed my business name from A.C.T & Inspire (an external reference) to BodyGateways (my internal reference). It was my clarity of awareness that my previous business name was no longer in alignment – if, indeed, it had ever been – with whom I know mySelf to be, that ignited my choice to change it.

I know whom and what I am. My undeniable knowing is the domain of the body. Like the body is the gateway to awakening and reclaiming the Self, I know that whom and what I AM is a gateway for others to awaken to themSelves, too.

Since knowing and owning whom and what I AM is the RSS feed for anything that I choose to create – including my ‘business’ – the name that I give to that endeavour must align with the truth of my experience. My business is personal and, while I know that I AM not it, paradoxically neither AM I separate from it.

Funny how simple it all becomes, when what I create actually mirrors whom and what I AM and I show up and engage in full claim of that truth. Vibration naturally attracts and Self-selects. Be mySelf and tell my truth… breathe. Nothing to do, except to show up and to engage where it is meaningful for me to do so.

No more beating the bushes for clients and results. Everything Self-selects relative to my intention of being open, clear, honest and direct… decloaked in every breath. It is me recognizing that clearly articulated and congruent definition is what attracts. It’s organic. No competition required. No competition wanted. That is a dance that I AM done stepping to.

No competition means that I mind my own business as the invitation for you to become even more clear about what is important to you in creating a meaningfully sustainable life. I naturally ‘do’ what I love and I AM abundantly reimbursed for sharing my gifts. Now, that is what being entrepreneurial is all about, in my book. It is never about being a ‘business’ owner; it is about creating, leading and being authentically contagious!

Anyone can buy themSelves a job; these days, that is what a lot of ‘business’ is, relative to competitive models. JOB = just over broke… and I am not talking about money, here, I am talking about states of being.

It takes courage to dance to your own moment-to-moment choreography in sync to the rhythms of your own internal drum beats… while inviting and encouraging others to dance, uniquely, to theirs. After more than 30 years of business ownership [I bought mySelf a job... four times {thank goodness that I finally woke up!}!], I know the odiferous bloom of competition is now dying on the vine; it has been in its death throes for a long, long time. It is now time to let it die, naturally, and to stop doing what we have always done in the throwing of fertilizer at the vine, in hopes that it will bounce back. It can’t and it won’t. You can’t stop the stench of the wilting stems of a collective already in decay.

If my life is my business, then I, for one, know that there is only one way to create, so that I live: breathe, be mySelf and tell the truth of my experience. Really, it IS that simple… and it IS that easy…. and it IS organic and green and alive. That IS BodyGateways! That IS me!

I have just arrived home from walking my 2 dogs… one a female Rottweiler at 7 months old… one a male Rottie/Newfoundland mix at 6 years old. No matter the age, instinct rules supreme. Each one always wanting to lead in their unique and separate ways. The younger one quick, curious and agile; the older one slow, steady, plodding and persistent.

In the canine world, I know that the lead is instinctive to both the one and the pack… separate, yet connected. In the human world, I’m not so sure; I could hope for that as a universal truth, yet, I believe that it is, generally, about external comparison and competition. I find it interesting that dogs naturally know and support their packs. Again, I am not so sure about humans. The force of cultural politicking always gets in the way and fear is the leash.

In my holographic universe, I grok that what triggers (even when I do not consciously know what that is) my strategies and behaviours is always, in all ways, about me. However, how often have I not decloaked to the pack that I purport mySelf to fully support (and, because I haven’t, it falls that I have made my life about molding mySelf to fit the story that I have made up about them)…  the pack whose intention it is to model authenticity in the claim of living a meaningful life, so that we continually become the invitation for others to claim that for themSelves, too.

What are the contexts in which I feel free, as in safe, to be mySelf and to speak my truth? Where do  I feel unsafe to own the full expression of my truth? Where do I wait to see from which side of the fountain the water is going to fall, before I throw my pennies into the basin that catches the water? Do I ever stop to consider that those waters get recycled? It is a fountain, after all! So, what exactly is it that I am recycling? Like the fountain spilling the waters, from which side of my mouth do I spill my words. Do I ever consider straight on?

So, tomorrow, I am meeting up with the pack. I know that, as in the past, we’ll greet each other and sniff each other out… a natural state of affairs for dogs. Yet, how often have we humans engaged the notion, Let’s sniff out the competition? That is poison to the pack. Sniffing in support, is elixir to its well being.

This time, I will honour my natural and finely honed instinct – the one that knows that the bark of safety always resounds in the feral resonance of my truth. In that, I can sniff in support. To the degree that I have growled for my own authenticity within the pack, I, in paradox, have not fully owned my roar with the intensity that my breath could sound itself to sharpen the teeth of my integrity.

My sense is that my mates, too,  have not yet fully unleashed their guttural roars…all in the guise of security, crating expression to contain the fullness of Self. In that, their can be no community, no real internal safety. There can be no pack, yet that is what we choose to call ourSelves. What parody! Where did we ever get the idea that safety came in leashing Self-expression? In this pack, as honest as I have been, I have still been dishonest. I know that I am not alone in this.

I was away last week with women of a certain age; we gathered together as tribal elders; we know things… we have lived! I opened my mouth and got honest, once and for all, about my confusion and my internal chaos, because I had felt threatened in the afore-mentioned pack. I figured that it was time to own the ugliness of it all… as well as its beauty of potential. In that, I have found my freedom. I feel safe. And, I am indifferent, now, to having to make my life work; it just does and it just will. I am done with competing, overtly and covertly, consciously and unconsciously. I have chosen to no longer compete. I am choosing to support. In that, I choose to let go… not as some well sounding catch phrase, but as my truth.

That has brought me to now. I do not know where I’ll be at the end of this weekend; however, I do know that I’ll be speaking my truth… spontaneously. I have owned, finally, that the biggest lie of all is the one that I tell to mySelf… and that includes omission. I am done. I invite all to listen for my roar… the bellow of compassion for mySelf and others.

I speak only for mySelf AND I believe that the pack leader is the only one who fiercely and unwaveringly holds to her truth, so that she and we might discover the more that we inherently are. I also know that she has never, ever held herSelf to be leader to anyone else other than herSelf. And, I know that, while I am referring to one woman, specifically, I could be speaking about anyone, who really loves her life. In her words, Be yourSelf, tell the truth, she is the beacon for all to own that in and for themSelves. I believe that her welcoming invitation to the pack is that instinctual roar of just Be. In that, competition can hold no tether.

How easily humans forget whom they are (they sniff to compete and stifle their roars)…  and canines always remember (they sniff to support and roar with volume and amplitude). I do not know where I’ll be standing at the end of this weekend. I care enough to not care. However, I am going to remember Me as I AM that I AM… again, not as some catch phrase that sounds great, yet is weak in its underpinnings. I am choosing to trust mySelf and to remember that the feral bark of the bitch carries the hope for the pack of mankind.

While I have been hearing them, as if screaming, in a pack, occasionally, both winter and summer – especially and mostly late at night – over the last 3 or 4 years, I finally saw a coyote, from the house, this afternoon… moving up the railway track, nearby… then, it returned to the edge of our road…. and, then, it moved down into the densely foliaged ravine, in front of our home. Amazing movement…. so fluid, certain and quick… so silent… like it was floating on air.

I get that coyotes can go long distances without effort. I get that they are so attuned to themSelves and their environments. I get that their vision expands with their movement… the metaphor for living abundantly in the simplicity of Being… free of Self-imposed entrapments. A coyote simply lives… simply; traps are not of its world.

Amazing to see and a reminder to me that I can always, in all ways, look after mySelf by choosing to move forward – resourced in my association with pack buddies who are an awakened species – called to awaken Self and others with ears alert to the simple and sacred call home – and that I am never alone, even as I walk, alone, up any track of my choosing. Since there are innumerable tracks, forests and ravines, I can, by instinct, choose what I want, when I want, as I want.

Instinct. A reminder to me that my instincts are beyond excellent. When did I choose to forget that? The truth is, like coyote, wolf, and dog, I have always had a nose for things; only, this time, I am choosing to own that… without apology.

Instinct. Raw, red, visceral, core, fecund, and feral. The wave that I AM moves and I know my instinct to be that wave.

The last time that I saw a coyote was in the shimmering heat of the afternoon sun in Sedona, Arizona. The kind of heat that is seen sizzling in waves above the pavement. It was May of 1998 and I was returning on a road – that had dead- ended itself in a vortex of natural, red rock obilisques (unique to Sedona) – to the main highway. Finding my way, by getting lost on purpose. The coyote, mesmerizingly, walked in front of the car that I was driving, as if to stop me; it’s focus was instinctual and present and moving… fearless, yet fully engaged. Fluid and quick, so that any illusion of stopping was not that, at all – just a momentary side-step in direction. Since, in that moment, I was unable to find/see what I was looking for, it was my reminder of the trickster… awakening to the, until then, games that I was playing with mySelf; the trick called move, camouflaged as stop. The trick called stop, camouflaged as move.

One more lap down the road, so to speak, and I did find what I was in search of (if nothing else, I am persistent!). Up until that moment, it was like I could not see the light, for the light. It was like I would not see the light that I AM, for the light that I AM. I believe, now, that I can. I choose, now, that I do.

And, unlike I did in 1998, when I awakened, only to fall, yet again, asleep to mySelf in the intellectual second and third guessing of my life, I now choose to finally be done with the old bags of tricks, even as I uncover the more that I have  yet to discover.

I now, willingly, choose to live, by instinct… to be and to own the distinct instinct that I AM – raw, red, visceral, core, fecund and feral – that knows its very expression in the genius of my body.  That is my truth undenied – quick, fluid, potently silent, and moving. In that, I know my inalienable voice.

Instinct undenied. The most powerful expression of my truth as I AM.

My New Drivers License by sheilawinterwallace

I live a very good life.

I recently visited the license bureau to renew my driver’s license, which demanded a new photo being taken. Since the last one was done five years ago, a lot has changed.

Amazingly, I look younger… more full faced… smiling (the joke on me is that I wasn’t even ‘trying’ to smile for the photo… LOL!). That was not the case, five years ago, when I was hoping for death so that I might live… so warying and so wearying was I experiencing my life. A real Catch 22… I couldn’t and wouldn’t take mySelf out, yet I did not want to stay in the game I knew as ‘Sheila’. I did not trust mySelf; I did not know who I was; I did not know What I AM. I was everything to others, yet not mySelf.

I have been though a lot in my life. Yeah, I can tell a good story about me… one that I can choose to believe is true as I choose to perceive it. I can listen to others tell their stories and know that they have been through a lot, too. And, then it gets interesting – as in crazy – ’cause I could, if I wanted to, rationalize that I have nothing to complain about… that their stories are indicative that their lives have been so much ‘harder’ than mine… as if ‘harder’, ironically, meant ‘fuller’… and I should just be thankful.

Then, the other side of that is, perhaps I haven’t suffered enough… as if living life has to be about suffering and persecution. Man, we have modelled that one well… do I have to live like Jesus, stoned and nailed to the cross to measure up?

Is anyone getting the underlying presupposition here? It is the one that says suffering is the way to salvation (that which connects us to source, as if we are not already connected... another presupposition). And, our stories about our lives are just fictions that fuel comparison and competition among people, so as to justify whom we are and our right to BE. The irony is that we never, ever allow ourSelves to BE.

I think that the greatest paradox of all to awakening the truth that we are sacred Beings is that we continue to create our own suffering… and we keep digging the trenches for this deeper and deeper. Enough already!

If I just live my life as I choose and invite you to live yours as you choose, I can love you and leave you. I can delete your name from my email data base in full respect of whom I am and whom you are. I can say ‘no’ to you as a client. I can change my mind about how I choose to move through my world. I can be the invitation for you to change your mind, too. I can demand payment in respect of mySelf… which means in respect of you, too. I can hold mySelf as able, which means I can hold you as able, too. I can choose to stop making mySelf responsible for your outcomes, which means that I no longer make you responsible for mine. I can be your friend forever… and then, I can be done; and, I don’t have to make you ‘wrong’ so that I can be ‘right’ about my choice. And, if you choose to make me ‘wrong’ about it, so that you can feel ‘right’ about yourSelf… well, I don’t have to defend mySelf to mySelf. I can just move on.

Defend mySelf to mySelf… for so many, the ultimate rationale for living… and totally directed by story… the one that I tell mySelf about how my story never measures up. Measures up to what?

Well, my current truth of my experience is that I am naturally smiling in the photo on my driver’s license. I am Self-licensed in and Self-driving of my own life… smiling. Evidence to me… and that is all that counts… that both the story of my past and the fiction of my future are irrelevant…

I have given mySelf a new license to drive.

I live a very good life… right now, ’cause I say so.

This past weekend was potent for me. The level of excitement that I was experiencing last week on the way to the weekend was profoundly palpable, in me. Experiencing both Women of Intensity (WOI) on Saturday (really a Women Gathering [WG]), ’cause I opened it to others who have not yet participated in Decloaking and Living Authentically) and the larger WG (24 women in presence to each other) on Sunday was amazing. As well, four of the women were with me at my home, at various times, over the weekend. So, the conversations started before and continued long after the weekend programs. Wow!
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