Tag Archives: Bridget Pilloud

I Surrender.

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treeshadowicecrackThe ponds at Lee Martinez are singing as they melt–humming, gurgling, snapping and cracking. The places where the ice is softening around the edges form patterns that look like the shadows of trees, their bare branches stretching out over the surface of the water.

Today feels like it could be spring. The sky over Fort Collins is clear and bright blue, the sun is shining and it’s warm. It seems like the population has suddenly doubled because everyone is outside.

aqua

I feel like my color this year is aqua–sea glass, soft turquoise mixed with deep blue. The color of water, the color of the sometimes sky, the color of the typewriter and the water and the arrows on my 2013 vision board, one of the colors in my eyes. Bridget Pilloud wrote about it on The Intuitive Bridge today, saying of the color:

It’s speaking your truth. It’s hearing the truth of others. It’s synthesizing intuitive information with observed information.

Aqua is especially important to speakers and writers, to singers, to teachers, because in an Aqua year, you grow in your ability to speak and listen, to synthesize information, to integrate your energy.

Aqua also gives the gift of the greatest healing and the strongest connection. And when your heart is healed, you learn that life is much simpler than you’ve thought, that you’re a better person than you ever imagined and that you knew the whole story all along.

myeye

I feel inspired by the students in Mondo Beyondo, allowing themselves to want what they want, to dream big, some of them for the first time in a long time, some of them for the first time ever.

I feel inspired, as well as supported and encouraged by the students in Cultivating Courage, who are practicing bravery, making big and small moves every day, who are pushing against their edges, daring greatly, opening their hearts and telling the truth.

I am inspired by my friends who are learning to ask for help when they need it, who are reaching out for support, asking for assistance.

I am inspired by Andrea Scher, who creates safe spaces for her students to connect, to contemplate, to dare, to take chances. I’m also inspired by her own acts of courage, her willingness to ask for help, her willingness to invest in herself.

In the midst of this contemplation, this thawing, softening, this cultivation of courage and inspiration, this practice of bravery and dreaming, I am considering the obstacles to my freedom, and what I need to do to dissolve them.

freedomthanksgivingcrow

Last week, I had to make a big deal doctor’s appointment. There was some shame, guilt, anxiety, panic involved in the multistage process, and after it was all taken care of, scheduled, I ate half a bag of chips (popped and organic, but still), two slices of toast with butter (organic bread, but still), and a whole box of Annie’s Organic mac and cheese for “lunch.” I have told you before that I am a highly functioning food addict, and there was something about this particular incident that brought me to a “I give up, I surrender, I’ve had enough” moment.

I feel afraid or stuck when I see myself falling into old and discursive habits, ways of being and thinking. While I’m better than I used to be, more aware, kinder and gentler, healthier, when I get too stressed or tired, overwhelmed, when I start to go off the rails, when I feel my body getting heavy and my thoughts racing and my heart feeling dull, it’s hard to not freak out, hard to not feel trapped, having never truly been without this “thing,” this monster that lives in my belly, this frozen spot in my mind and my heart.

And you know what, kind and gentle reader? I’ve had it. I am over it, done. I need to be free of this. I surrender, and I’m admitting I need help. Just before I started writing this post, I contacted a therapist (whose practice is a mix of Western and Buddhist theories) and requested a meeting.

crow

I surrender. I surrender to radical self-acceptance, to truth, to reality, to this:

There is no love affair, no perfect best friend, no all-mighty parent, no incredible career, no ideal body, no distant and separate God/dess that can make up for the aching want, the hole, the yearning, that exists beneath the surface and at the center of our lives. It can only be healed by cultivating a dangerously authentic, reciprocal love affair with the bare truth of who we are, and allowing ourselves to become infused with a sacred courage that teaches us how to embody and articulate the essence of a truth that we’ve had since before we were born. Holding that truth so close to ourselves that it cuts into our hearts as a real, deep love and moves through our breath as the sound of our truest voice is all that we have ever looked for in anything or anyone else. It is also the only thing the universe has ever looked for from us. ~Grace Emilie

Clarity

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I’ve been thinking a lot about questions this week. About knowing the right ones to ask, being curious, listening and looking for answers everywhere. One reason is because I have the opportunity to ask a single question of an Intuitive Counselor I met at the World Domination Summit this summer (we talked the whole time about dogs, so I liked her immediately, knew she was some sort of coach, but not the specifics of her work until I looked her up later). I have the chance to get her help in getting clear about something important to me. I am working on the question, trying to carefully craft it, aware that the difference between “how” and “what” in a case like this can be enormous, and not wanting to be like one of those people in those old stories who are granted three wishes and completely screw it up, wasting the whole lot of them because they don’t word them wisely.

I’ve talked before about how I love divination, intuition, auspicious concidence, serendipity: a chance meeting, an unexpected connection, a feather in my path, a heart-shaped rock, picking a random line from a sacred text, tarot readings, throwing I-Ching coins, Hiro Boga’s Deva Cards, dream interpretation, Q-Cards qcasting, or any such oracle through which the universe might send me a message.

As I’ve said before, “Go ahead and think I’m weird, but I believe it’s just one more way to get clear about where I am and what I should be focusing on. I think this is one of the ways the Universe sends me messages, because I open my heart and ask, but even if it’s just a message from my unconscious or random chance that doesn’t really mean anything, I find it a useful tool for gaining some insight on my current situation, whatever that happens to be.”

And this week, Jamie Ridler provided two opportunities for getting clear, for asking the questions. The first was the Full Moon Dreamboard, the Full Frost Moon, which asked “What is clear about your dreams? What further clarity do you seek?” And, on the same day was Wishcasting Wednesday, which asked “What clarity do you wish for?” I didn’t even post about the wishcast, wrote it in my journal instead since I’d already posted that day about my search for clarity and what I’d discovered through my dreamboard practice. I didn’t want to bore you, kind and gentle reader.

But I can’t stop thinking about it, and it keeps coming up. Susan Piver shared with the Open Heart Project Practitioners a collection of questions she’s considering as we move into a new year, I am getting daily Wisdom Notes and prompts from Rachel Cole, and I’m in charge of coming up with a set of questions, contemplations for a collective of courage cultivators I’ll be meeting with in a few weeks. And yesterday I read Kat’s post on I Saw You Dancing, and it was all about seeking clarity, “I’m trying to understand who I am, why I am here, what I am going to do with this one precious life of mine.” What she discovered is

The destination I had reached was, in fact, exactly where I was already standing. And all the stuff that I am meant to do in this life is, in fact, stuff that I am already doing.

I keep bumping up against this idea, that I already am. It was the third truth in my Three Truths and One Wish post this week, “I don’t need to become something else, because I am already.” The comment I left for Kat said how much I loved her post, how she’d described the process,

The rambly abstract brilliant mess of this life we live, where we look and look and search and try and question and run around crazy, only to realize in one moment, in a flash that our feet and our breath are right there, the ground is right there, our heart beats the same rhythm it has from the very beginning.

Kat is hosting Reverb12 during the month of December, and as host she will provide daily prompts that help those of us participating to “reflect on the year that has passed and start to manifest your dreams for the new year.” More specifically, they will be about “celebrating the successes of 2012, honouring the challenges of 2012, and planting the seeds for a rich and rewarding 2013.”

The places I’m currently seeking clarity, where I have questions seem to be all related to obstacles, the things keeping me from living my best, healthiest and most wholehearted life, from fully realizing my dreams. I wish to be clear about working with those who are suffering and confused (both in my personal and work relationships, and with people I don’t even really know), I want to know how I can best help, I would like to understand the specifics of how I might turn my heart’s work into my paid work, I wish to realize how to completely let go of old habits and thought patterns that no longer serve me, I’d like to be clearer about my “thing” (where should I be focusing my time, my attention, my love? do I need further specialization or certification to fully step into my purpose? if so, what?). How to ask all that in the form of a single question is my immediate challenge.

While I understand that I don’t need to change, that I am already worthy and whole just as I am, fundamentally wise and compassionate and awake, and I am already thoroughly in love with my life as it is and full of gratitude for what I have, I’m so curious about what’s going to happen next.