In the last 10 months, my life has been a whirlwind process of simply getting clear – and then some – about what is meaningful for me in sustaining my life AND coming to trust mySelf and my right to choose and my choices in ways that I have not yet known. I have known some serious disappointment AND I have known some serious joy. All of it has awakened me to my truth that I AM the only one who can deem, for mySelf, that I have arrived. I have spent too much of my life waiting for THE external sign that I have finally measured up, I have met the grade requirement. At 66 years of age, I know that I am in the process of leaving… leaving lots of things behind… letting things go… and allowing that my life is undeniably unfolding, exactly as it should.

Today is Mother’s Day. My offspring are adults now – one, a woman of 36 years and one, a man, soon to be 34. As I consider their individual and unique presences in my life, I know that I have become more, because they chose to arrive… and continue to be the arrival. Was my being a parent to them easy? No. Was it fun? Not aways; parenting seemed to be, for me, a continuum between the extremes of awful and wonderful, where – paradoxically – I forgot to consider everything in between. These days, I know that the space between the extremes is where the genius of living resides; there is no room for the experience of the continuum in polarizing opposites.

For a woman, steeped since childhood, in the life-long, entrenched perception of needing to comply, to perform and to measure up to some unspoken and powerful, social pre-fix of ‘Good Mothers do this (you name it)‘ – which, unawakened, I allowed to generalize to all areas of my life – ‘fun’ was alien terminology. I thought that I knew what it meant; however, I had no consistently sustaining experience of it as a continuum for living. Too bad for my kids in their distinctly unique processes of growing up, when the very idea of ‘measuring up’ was what drove my life in all of its many aspects from soup to nuts, from family to enterprise. Measuring up was what that they got to model… and it often, I have no doubt, must have felt like pretty heavy stuff to them.

So, now, I know things differently. I know that, as I choose to continue to lighten up, in my own experience of mySelf, I get to see that ‘lightening up’ outside of me in my adult offspring. Both my daughter and my son have respectively chosen to take their lives into their own hands, to choose for themSelves – and are discovering the serious fun in the seriousness of their individual and unique lives. And I can bear witness to that now, ’cause, at at my age, I am finally allowing mySelf to own the ‘shits and giggles’ of it all.

I spent yesterday with my daughter as she engaged with new and repeat clients wanting to learn more about her art form, to become educated and to purchase her work. She authentically makes it so easy for them and so much fun, ’cause she chooses that for herSelf. She is the one who has brought to my awareness, the idiom of ‘shits and giggles’.

Today, my son called me… with, of course, ‘Happy Mother’s Day, Mom’… regaling me with the stories of his recent, serious experiences… which, as I listened, became mammoth moments of laughter for me… out loud, with him. 3.5 hours of shits and giggles, in potent conversation with my son. Neither of us will ever be the same, moving forward.

What I know is that parenting is not for everyone. Knowing what I know now, I might have allowed mySelf to choose differently, back then. AND, I chose, as I did, back then. What I also know is that I continue to realize more of mySelf in whom I am choosing to become, now, at age 66, because these 2 phenomenal, quantum biological human beings chose to arrive when they did – on my holodeck – and continue to choose to arrive… for themSelves.

Happy Mother’s Day? Sure! Happy Human Being’s Day? You bet! Shits and Giggles? No question! These are the criteria that sustain my choosing to leave, so that I can continue to choose to arrive!

For me, my life holds the potential to be fully hydrated in the GodForce that I AM. If, however, I fall asleep to whom  and what I AM, I’ll realize a finite and constipated existence… holding on, only to survive… instead of surrendering to the infinity of space, movement and flow, the natural feed for living a full and meaningful life.

Constipation shows up in the body, metaphoric to a life that knows struggle, resistance, bloating, discomfort, starts and stops, die-to-be-right AND no momentum…. metaphoric to a life that knows, as a mind set, hanging on, for dear life, to control what is out of our control. The paradox to this is that ‘control’ manifests as flow, in all areas of our lives, in the unprejudiced choice to surrender… to walk away from being a victim… to move toward being fully at cause for creating our lives and the structure of our current, personal realities. This means choosing to stop fault & blame of ourSelves and of others.

Constipation is a by-product of living a dehydrated life – physically, emotionally, mentally, spiritually. It shows up in the body, as the final frontier, indicative of a life that has known unquenched thirst as it’s truth. BSI, BodySpirit Integration, is the feed for satisfying that thirst, so that we come to know the flow in life that is one’s organic birth right and the by-product of being completely hydrated and sourced as GodForce.

The Ancient Mariner- one of my favourite poems – called ‘it’ in the words, ‘Water, water everywhere, yet ne’re a drop to drink.’ Flow is propelled in drinking in ourSelves, as GodForce, first & always.

When will we, as a species, drink the truth of our own sacred genius? That intelligence is the water of the soul that is everywhere – free to any woman who would fill her own cup. Yet, we continue to insist that we have ‘ne’re a drop to drink’… and in that, we continue to hold ourSelves as victims. It continues to be the mindless, self-perpetuating strategy that we run. In that, we continue to dehydrate and to constipate our lives. When did we choose to resist the water, the natural and magnetic flow of our lives, our birth right? When did we choose to close ourSelves down and to shut ourSelves up? When will we awaken to choose otherwise?

We already know ‘parched’, as a mindless and unnatural mindset made manifest, dare I say, ‘normal’, as the current truth of our lives (consider what is happening the world over, as we look at climate change, economic upheaval, political dishonesty, greed, famine, rape, murder and war). In contrast to that, we can know the undeniable joy of tissue saturated in GodForce, if only we would stop denying the truth of whom and what we are as Quntum Biological Human Beings. That truth is the drink, the communion of our lives in tissue. In that full surrender to the communion of Self, there is no start-stop, no struggle, no pain… and no need to die-to-be-right. There is, instead, the joyous momentum and the momentous joy that is worthy of the Godforce that each one of us is.

I had seen Deepak Chopra more than 20 years ago in Ottawa on a Sunday afternoon; it was a much smaller venue than Kingston. The night before this most recent presentation, a friend in California had asked me about my experience of mySelf in his presence, more than 20 years ago. I answered that my experience of mySelf was of the intensity of his gaze, like he was looking right into me…his eyes a portal to something unseen and unknowable. He was younger man, then; it was as if I could see into the depths of his soul… and I experienced what I called a sense of the humble in him, a profound humility in his presence.

So, here I was, the other evening and almost 25 years later, wondering if I would get to have such an experience of mySelf, again, of his eyes, as the portal to something.. the unknowable. So long ago, in a much smaller venue, I had created the opportunity for mySelf to stand right in front of his eyes, to say thanks to the essence of him, for what he was willing to share that was so meaningful to me. I was not to get that close, this time.

It didn’t matter. Even from a distance, I could see the light of him in his eyes… and, beyond that, I could see into the depths of his soul. The humility remains and it seems, to me, to have grown.

So is this really about Deepak Chopra? No. It is all about me. It is all about all of us.

Am I willing to look into my own eyes, beyond the quantum biological processor that is my body and that holds my eyes, to really see who I AM? When I do, am I willing to own my own sense of the humble, as the force of awe and great divinity that I AM? Am I willing to be fully present to the essence of the I AM that I AM, which invites my very tissue to re-create and to morph in the blink of an eye, in full support of my life?

Am I willing to become even more reverent of my spirit and of my body as the conduit for the expression of Me, the unknowable? AM I willing to see mySelf emerging, as whom I am becoming? Am I willing to have it all be a constant truth in my experience of mySelf, breath to breath to breath? Am I willing to be mesmerized by the genius of whom I AM and of whom we all are? And, as Deepak Chopra, expressed, so simply and so eloquently, when he arrived to the stage the other night – so authentically himSelf – that healing and holy mean one and the same thing, am I willing to know and to own mySelf as holy, as whole, as the ONE in my own life?

Am I willing to live with undeniable RIG {respect, integrity and generosity of spirit} for mySelf and for you?

Am I willing to know that I AM extraordinary? AM I willing to see and to know, in my very cells, that you are, too? Am I willing to know mySelf and to live as a GodForce and to hold you as one, too… fully honouring that you and I may never, ever agree? Am I willing to hold mySelf and you, not as reflections of some external god, but as uniquely and internally, God, ourSelves? Am I willing to really grok that?

Am I willing?

I AM.

I am choosing to be done with the Big Search. No more searching for mySelf… and when Self shows up, disengaging from it, so that I have, yet again, something to search for… as if the search is my reason for being. That continued and mindless strategy will only get me more of what I say that I don’t want.

How many times have I come home to mySelf, such that each and every cell in my body reverberates to the call of me as the bell home? And how many times, have I conveniently forgotten mySelf, in the search for whom and what I am…. as if the search, itSelf, was my purpose… as if that could/would keep me alive?

It is a choice. I have always been here; I just did not know it; I could not and would not claim and own that as the rite/right of my own passage to live. I was always looking for the next best thing… just in case I would miss out and be caught without the goods.

The paradox is that I already AM the goods. I am all of it. I choose to end the search and to simply live. I choose to know that I AM all of it. I choose to know that I create all of my life. I choose to mindfully own what I have known, yet put aside for so long, that whom I AM is Ancient Space… that whom I AM is Awakened and continually Awakens the Sacred in me… and ignites, provokes and evokes that reverberation in others.

I have known this about mySelf for so long, yet I have continued in the search for what  I knew was already there. Crazy making stuff! I called it evolution; it was my searching for mySelf… and, yet, I was already here, had revisited mySelf many times, then flipped mySelf and vacated, so that I could engage the search for Self, yet again. That strategy has almost cost me my life. When it got so exhausting, what did I manifest? Another search to find mySelf, so that I could exhaust mySelf again. I called THAT evolution.

I choose differently now. I AM here; I always have been. So I choose to stop the search.

Ok! So what’s that going to mean for my own evolution? Because, if evolution is no longer about the search, what is it for?

Good Question. Evolving is about remembering mySelf as already being both master and student in creating my life; I have been master and student all of my life; however, I had only honoured the student, not the master. Now, it is about fully allowing mySelf the richness of full expression and expansion in and of the light that I AM in every cell of my body, as the quantum device that vibrates to my choice to live at higher orders of thinking – connection to mySelf, vision and choice.

Search is futile. Evolution is bliss… owning the field that I AM in this present incarnation on planet earth. Nothing to do… just choose, choose, choose in my own breath of life.

Trust, declare and Discover! That is what the process of evolution is for me. My word is my law in my universe. There is nothing to search for anymore; in fact, there never was, if I had only allowed mySelf to fully notice and to own that. There is simply. in the Ancient Space that I AM, more and more to discover in my willingness to call it into presentation and to engage it. In that, I awaken the Sacred in me. In that I am the invitation for others to awaken to themSelves.

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!

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.

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.

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.

Much moved for me over the weekend… not the least of which was me coming to know and to own, that, as I consider the path that my life has taken in my own evolution of Self, thus far, I have been/AM the ’prep’ for others to be able to step into their accelerating experiences with Selves and with others. The ‘prep’ cook in the kitchen is the one who quietly, expertly, tenaciously and respectfully tends to detailed precision… especially with the knife  in her hand… to the impact and size of each cleanly-edged cut… so that ultimate creation surfaces naturally and flows – and, in the hands of the consummate chef of the Self, delights and nourishes all of the senses.

While I have always imagined mySelf proclaiming who I AM from the Temple roof-top, as the place of significance and meaning to be seen by others, much less by mySelf, I now know that my intrinsic power resides in being the unshakeable, first  and essential rung of the ladder to the peak of the temple roof. That first rung is my place of strength. Without me, that ultimate reach cannot happen. It has taken one who, somehow, has always known, inherently, the pitch of the roof, to really rig and value the first rung of the ladder as essential to reaching its summit. Me.

The word, ‘bridge’, made itself present a few times in my most recent facilitation of Decloaking, a couple of weeks ago; yet, I never noticed the importance of ‘bridge’. The word showed up, again, in
another conversation, today. I finally get it… I know that I am the viaduct (latin for via = road and ducere = to lead), the road that leads… one to one’s unique choice; me to my unique choice.

Today, I finally grok how insidious the process of polarization is to undermining the creation of a meaningful life. It certainly is not the first time that I have contemplated this, yet the dig and over-turning of the soil is much deeper, now. Somehow, as awake as I AM becoming, I still remained in my own Self-denial of any claim to my path as the unshakeable, first and essential rung to the heights of my own greatness. I was constantly and consistently moving away from my own gift because I chose to equate it as unable to be seen, puny, small and unimportant; I could not, therefore would not, see that what is my very presence, my fire, my air, my water, my earth, my field is, in fact, the very truth of whom I AM. My life has always been about working internally and behind the scenes/seen as I propelled mySelf forward… to what I did not know… in the hope of some recognition, to simply count. Today, I finally recognized my own gift as the essential count in, to, and for me; my Self-rig (Self-respect, integrity, and generosity of spirit) of my gift is all that matters. In tears, today, I realized that my very genius lies in claiming, owning and being the precision prep cook, the first  and essential rung of the ladder… that first span to the next span to the next span, etc., of the viaduct to Self.

I have served as viaduct to my own contributions to my own humanity - in so many applications in physical space and time – yet, when, I, as unshakeable, first and essential rung went unrecognized, it was only because I could and would not rig that for me, in me, mySelf. Now I choose that I can; Now I choose that I do.

I have so longed to know my own humility… to BE so satisfied with the greatness in others as my own sacred mirrors. I choose to BE that, now. I know that I AM that, now.

I am sitting here, answering email, making phone calls, reaching voice mail, contemplating the joy of sleep… which, as I am in the process of writing,  I am not engaged in right now. Today, I actually do not know what the heck l I am doing or am supposed to be doing, etc. Who cares, anyway? I have followed up on all of the calls and emails for my next experience of Decloaking and Living Authentically… and now, I wait, wondering who else is out there, who is looking for me as both guide and guided. Not a clue. Truth be told, I get tired of waiting, wondering why my messages go so long unanswered, if answered at all – and why I can’t simply know, right now, in my own way and time, who is even thinking about showing up. And, in that same truth, I know that ‘it’ is a go, that women are coming from a distance to claim the more that each one already is…

So what is my restlessness really about? I want to connect with women. I want to freely ask for what I want. As a 7th level expression, I ask, ‘Who else’, and images and names come to mind – and I proceed to make the call. Some answer and some do not. My frustration invites a new knowing about mySelf. I am being answered all of the time. Kahea. I am My Call.

Even though I was in the retail arena, as an owner, for aeons, presumably knowing what it takes to ‘put myself out’ (are you picking up my resistance to such a notion?) to market products and associated services, I know that ‘it’ still, always and formost, gets down to my rapport. Unlike strategized and seasonal marketing initiatives based on promoting a ‘thing’ that will fulfill some presupposed need, I can no longer forget who I AM, in the face of the product/service making what I offer about the ‘thing’ itself. In truth, I AM the connection… in fact, I have always been. So now, it is no longer about hiding behind the guise of the ‘product’, be it tangible or intangible; it is about me believing in me and showing up to mySelf, as mySelf, for mySelf and, ultimately to/for others, as the most authentic ‘sale’ of all. And the joke is – I am not for sale; I AM mySelf. My value to others resides in genuinely Being Me.

Like a long-time client, now become a friend, has said about her experience of herSelf in my past cosmetic retail life, ‘It was never about the make-up’. Obviously, she got it… interesting that I would get so caught up, from time to time, in the details of marketing, that I did not. I would forget that I was the the medium, the whom, who was being searched out. My own authentic presence in bearing witness to each woman who walked through my door was the unique vibration that was really being searched for – not the product. That product, as an external ‘fix’,was simply a key to a deep and internal ignition… one that, most often, I bet, went unrecognized… even by the client herSelf.

I remember the story, told by a franchise owner, about a woman who walked into her store one day, seemingly depressed, looking for something, anything, not sure about what. The owner invited her to sit down to a ‘make-over’, no charge. The woman accepted the invitation. The ‘make-over’ completed, she said her thanks and left, looking a bit brighter. One week later, the owner received a letter of gratitude from the woman. In her letter, the woman expressed that, just prior to her ‘make-over’, she had decided to end her own life… it had not seemed worth living anymore. After her ‘make-over’, she changed her mind… it seemed that someone had given a ‘damn’… had cared with no strings attached. It seemed that her life mattered. She had started to re-think her life.

In my heart, I know that it was never about the product or the cosmetic ‘make-over’ for that woman; it was about the search for the more that she could become; her ‘make-over’ lay in that search. I think that is true for all of us. And this was not a one-way street, where one woman came to own her own importance in the grander scheme of things. In owning the truth of her experience in writing to the franchise owner, the owner also came to own and claim her own importance in her own world. Her intention for  creating business became awakened to something more…in remembering to simply show up, as Self, for Self. Bearing witness to each other, two lives opened up and then some…

Old school marketing has always focused on the product, spying on other and similar markets to ‘keep ahead’, protecting your client list (which, often means denying your client the ease of finding what she wants, where and when she wants it), creating complex and expensive advertising milieus, often with little result, other than accelerating resentment, dashed expectation and despair. What we want to ‘work‘ is not ‘working’. The marketing is all about the product… the ‘thing’ that is supposed to ‘work’… yet the associated feelings are not the domain of the product… they are the domain of the person who pays, in time, money, and hope, to get the ‘word’ out there. Maybe, it is the ‘wrong’ word. Maybe, there is no word other than ‘I’, other than ‘Me’.

Do we ever trust that? Can we allow ourSelves to trust that?

The old marketing paradigm does not work for me… actually, never has. Maybe, that is why I experienced such ‘trouble’, personal incongruency, with it, as a retailer. Truly, I did. Things had to be ‘done’ to ‘get’ clients into the store. What is a store, anyway? A cache of inventory. Marketing demands moving inventory, often alienating connection that builds trust. Gifts with Purchase, Purchase with Purchase… carrots focused on ‘selling’ the product as the the ‘thing’ to buy, not on ‘being’ the personal connection as the invitation to engage. As a retailer, if I was not meeting quota, then I was not ‘performing’, not ‘doing’ my job…. so many dollars per hour, per person; so many persons per hour ‘off their feet and on their seats’. (Yes, that was the adage, as I knew it in the cosmetic industry!) Continued and mounting disrespect in a low level game where retailer and client both become pawns in a ‘fight’ for dollars.

Marketing the ‘old’ way demands an external reference. The new marketing is not marketing; it is internal. It is Being Present to mySelf and bearing witness to all that I AM creating – the good, the bad, and the ugly – and drawing my own line in the sand for what is and what is not important to me in my life. I have always hated quota… and I am realizing, now, that I have continued to live in the resistance to it, which I have never owned for what it is and is not… to me.  Quota has become so entrenched as a mechanism by which we keep score – right down to getting those marks in school to make the grade. Meeting quota starts early. And, here, I find mySelf still putting mySelf under my own ‘quota’ gun – a pistol of my own design – and it is totally irrelevant. Wake-up call! I am done!

Meeting and exceeding quota is a cultural imperative in traditional markets/marketing. When I truly trust me, quota is irrelevant. I have decided to claim and to own the genius of my ‘resistance’ to the notion of quota. No wonder that I could never stand it… Quota, as a nominalization, to me, means expected, fixed share within minimums and maximums, performance… pre-supposed by the idiom of ‘enough’ as in ‘too much’, ‘right on’ and ‘not enough’. Talk about marketing to a ‘boxed set’. Not for me! No longer music to my ears! No longer a rhythm that I choose to dance to!

Furthermore, selling inventory for the sake of moving product, per sé, that, for me, is no more than a numbers game, will not light me up as representative of whom I AM. As such, it is never about inventory first, me second. It is always about Me, First, manifesting the inventory of my experience in remembrance of my truth. Inventory, as such, can be vibratory to our own awakening. Wanting to disseminate product as key to awakening the GodForce in Self and others is one thing… to do it, simply for the dollars that it can accrue, will yield a different result. While I consider it not good, bad, right, or wrong, I own that, for me, any satisfaction experienced in the immediacy of meeting quota for dollars, alone, has always been short-lived. It could not be otherwise, as there was, for me, in truth, a fear of ‘not making it’ that drove my results. Exhausting to say the least. Again, I am done.

Instead of marketing, how about this?

You be You… and I be Me. Connecting, trusting and co-creating… our manifestations, both tangible an intangible, authentically vibrating to the truth of whom we are.