The life of a creative is a lonely life. It is also an outdated model. For hand-in-hand with the emerging business trend to work remotely is the trend, . . . → Read More: Partnership]]> This is going to be my last post for awhile. As the year draws to a close and rethinking reshapes itself into resolutions, I too have reached some conclusions.

The life of a creative is a lonely life. It is also an outdated model. For hand-in-hand with the emerging business trend to work remotely is the trend, too, for shared spaces. Different flavors are surfacing everywhere, labeled “co-working,” “hives,” “incubators,” and an assortment of other brands. Coffee shops are filled with lone rangers working within the community of others. “Strategic partnerships” have become the new buzz phrase and business strategy.

All are variations on a theme. A new model is rising up organically on the social web. It is showing us how to live and work and form the relationships and community necessary to our survival. And although I cling to the old model because it is familiar, it is not sustainable; it does not serve me on multiple levels.

Life is a process of waking up to who you are and what it is you came here to do. But part of that process also involves learning to let go of the shape that contribution takes. It’s the old story of dismantling the ego and its agenda so the soul can direct the course. Deep in my bones, I know this. But when the nights are long and the days are desperate, I forget. That’s when I look to the past and my own story to remind me.

When I entered graduate school 10 years ago, the only thing I was sure about was my work and the form it needed to take. Over the course of three years, however, I was asked to let that form go. It wasn’t easy. The path was filled with grief and sadness. I was a failure. I would never contribute anything of value to the world. This, at least, is the story my ego wanted me to believe. 

My soul whispered another story though. It came sweetly and gently as it is doing now. And as I opened myself up to the possibilities embedded in its mystery, I found my way in the darkness. I also found my work and my Self, this time richer and more dynamic than my ego ever could have envisioned.

This is the dream, the promise, the soul’s call of partnership I sit with on the eve of this New Year.

Your Story: Are you holding too tightly to a form, a pattern, a way of being that no longer serves you? How can you loosen your hold and allow the soul’s mystery to unfold and offer its magic?

I was reminded of this recently when I ran across a book review in U.S. World and . . . → Read More: Quantum Luck]]> Quantum physics scrambles labels. Indeed, underlying all life is a rich “scientific” field of “spiritual” mystery that holds our intentions, our dreams and our darkness. Whatever we throw out into the neural network, we get back a thousandfold. Intention-setters, beware!

I was reminded of this recently when I ran across a book review in U.S. World and News Report for The Luck Factor by Richard Wiseman. Wiseman, a British psychologist, notes that a person who is lucky views her past in terms of successes rather than failures. As a result, she scans the world—the quantum field of her future—for similar opportunities for success.

Visualization also plays into this quantum field, notes Wiseman. If you can imagine yourself in the ideal scenario you desire—from finding a partner to unearthing the perfect job—down to the details of what you’ll say and where you’ll say it, you can visualize your way into it. A relaxed approach to life, trusting intuitive nudges, and practicing appreciation also lay the groundwork for luck.

Ernest Holmes, the creator of the Science of Mind religious philosophy, discovered this back in 1920. Since out of the “nothingness,” we arrived full-bodied, Holmes concluded, it stands to reason that our thought patterns will, in fact, create more of the same. You are what you believe, what you envision, what you intention and what you call to you through action.

Wiseman would call it luck. Scientists would call it quantum physics. Holmes would call it religion. I would call it the urge of the feminine, creative nature in each of us to create the lives we imagine.

Your Story: Pick one area of your life you’d like to “re-create” and record the scenario that would call that recreation to you.

A long conversation with a good friend and therapist helped me sort through this . . . → Read More: Acknowledgement]]> I had a Tarot reading on Saturday night. The reader referred to my fifth chakra. There were tears in her eyes. “You heart is closed,” she said, holding her hands over her heart, “and to have what you desire, you must open it.”

A long conversation with a good friend and therapist helped me sort through this message and showed me how I led with my intellect and humor so I didn’t have to reveal my feelings. I cried myself to sleep, feeling like such a fraud about my life and the relationships in them.

Today, I had more gentleness with myself. I also confronted someone who hurt me. This, my wise friend told me, is the way of the heart and of self-acknowledgement. Acknowledge what you feel, defend your right to feel it, name it to yourself and others, and let go of expectations around reactions.

I did as my friend suggested. All was fine except that it hurt to say what I felt and then have no salve from the other person to put on the open wound. I could feel my own heart breaking, sat on the bed I was making, and cried and cried.

I know this person did not mean to hurt me. I know, too, that there have been times when I have been the one to hurt another. Both roles sadden me. Both roles, I suspect, are part of the path to acknowledging, and opening, one’s heart. 

Your Story: Place your hands over your heart. Does it feel closed or open? What one act can you take to open your heart just a little more, be it by naming a feeling, confronting someone who hurt you, etc.?

When I read stories like this, the . . . → Read More: Right Work]]> An article in the New York Times a few weeks ago broke my heart and angered my soul. It was about the rapes that are occurring in the African Congo. This particular news story told of repeated rapes on an 80-year-old woman. Of her experience, she says she was “demolished.”

When I read stories like this, the ache in my heart reshapes itself into anger and then determination. My creative work is a result of my inner life’s path. The tools and processes I developed allowed me to re-member the feminine in my own life and to understand how that emotional energy drives my life from the inside out. Now, I want to show others the secrets I discovered, and the path that is possible out of the darkness and the ravages against the feminine, in form and function.

Some would say the wisdom I gained from my inner path, and the tools developed as part of that, is mine alone to savor and use. I disagree. Wisdom carries with it a responsibility to share that wisdom with others. It is the last chapter of the hero’s journey and the final step in the creative process. It is, too, the role of the wise elder. It is also the path to “right work.”

Patricia Aburdene, a writer and colleague, said it succinctly: it is only through a personal spiritual journey that you discover your mission and purpose and from that discovery and the wisdom that results, find your place in the world. This is how the wounded become healers, warriors become statesmen, victims become advocates, and CEOs and executives and managers become corporate change agents.

It is also how the world changes, one hero, one path to wisdom, one new story at a time

Your Story: What wisdom have you gained as a result of your personal spiritual path? How does that wisdom inform your “right work” in the world? How can you leverage it even more?

Over coffee, I read three news stories: about the brutal gang assault on a gay man in . . . → Read More: Dark Nights]]> Last night, unable to sleep, a million thoughts floated forward about my life and what it means and how it does or does not have an impact on the world. But in the light of day, I see things differently.

Over coffee, I read three news stories: about the brutal gang assault on a gay man in the Bronx, about ethnic violence in a country I’ve never heard of, about a divorcee building an Islamic hate campaign. In my mind, I juxtapose these stories and my heart grows heavy. 

I know my life will not have the big pen stroke of meaning that the life of the civil rights worker killed after captivity will have. I know my name will never be splashed across the page of the New York Times or attached to a Nobel Prize. What I do know is that I have to work with what I’ve got, within my circle of influence, beginning with my own dark feelings.

I must unearth them, look at them, feel them and in that act, transform them and the collective darkness. Indeed, if I cannot feel and transform my own pain, how can I ever feel the pain of others and use that compassion to arouse action?

This is the power and the potential we all have to transform our small part of the world, and our unique places on the story web. This is the gift of dark nights of the soul, and the morning light that follows.

Your Story: What dark night of the soul have you faced recently? What one act can you take to work through the feelings that came forward? How can you add light to that darkness?

I woke from the dream . . . → Read More: Your Heart’s Desire]]> This morning, I dreamed of my ex. He showed me a piece of land he’d bought, on the side of a mountain in Hawaii, with a view of a cove and sparkling water. It was a place he loved for the diving and its ability to take him deep into another world.

I woke from the dream with such a longing, and lay in bed wondering at the mystical feeling of the dream, the wanting, the ache for something I could not describe. I named it the longing for my heart’s desire. In the dream, my ex had articulated his. What is mine?

My heart’s desire is, in some respects, the life I have. It is to do creative work, to have adventures, to fill my life with relationships that are deep and joyous, to dance and laugh, to have, as George Strait croons, moments “that take my breath away.” It is also, as the dream tells me, to dive deep into the feminine waters of my own nature and mine the stories embedded at the bottom of the sparkly cove.

Friends would say I have my heart’s desire. But there is a difference between time alone to pursue intellectual or creative work and time alone to dive deep into the waters of one’s being, without an agenda or outcome. That is what I’ve missed and what I long for. This is the deeper journey of the heart.

This is the reminder my dream presents: to pay attention to the water beckoning and take my own personal “vacation.”

Your Story: When was the last time you dived deep into the waters of your own soul? If it’s been awhile, make a date with yourself to do just that.

Then I talked with a girlfriend, put myself on the South Beach diet, . . . → Read More: Fat as Messenger]]> For the last year, I have been facing the “battle of the bulge” around my middle. For awhile, I accepted this next phase of life, sad I would no longer where the form-fitting clothes of 40 or 50. Alas, I was finally feeling—and looking—old.

Then I talked with a girlfriend, put myself on the South Beach diet, and lost 10 pounds. Once again svelte, I feel young and full of possibilities. From this vantage point, I am also able to decode the deeper message of my body and its bulge.

Last year was full of stress. I faced a vertical learning curve to boost my online skills. I replenished and emptied my bank account repeatedly given the nature of contract creative work. I moved three times. I had to be resourceful about income. And I drank beer.

I told myself the liquor, and related munching, helped. I deserved to escape my life for a time. In hindsight, I realize the result—a layer of fat around my middle—was a protective mechanism. It defended my third chakra of personal power from the direct hits to my esteem. Now, having found the language to articulate my unique place on the “story web” and the confidence to claim it, I no longer need that protection.

In an article in The Sydney Morning Herald as reported by The Week, Ross Gittins links obesity in developed countries to “the way we organize society.” That bulge around our middle, he notes, is telling us something is wrong. The same holds true for our personal lives.

Bulges and ill-health are the body’s way of telling us something is wrong. And every time I get such a signal, I know I must pay attention, decode the message and heed its warning sign, not only to identify course corrections for my own story, but also for that of the larger story.

Your Story: What body messages have you received lately? Can you decode them to transform your life and, indirectly, the story web?