The Journey of a Seed

Nature mirrors some extraordinary learning for us. In a reading from a few months ago, the journey of a seed was used to teach four important principles of personal growth:

1. Every seed (human being) is innately designed to grow best at a particular depth and there is no value in trying to make someone ‘go deeper’ than they desire

2. No seed, no matter how perfect and miraculous, can grow on its own. Just as seeds require external factors (sun, water etc) to grow, human beings need each other in order to develop

3. A seed grows even though it cannot see where it is going and does not yet know what it will become

4. The first part of a seed’s journey is growing through the darkness (soil) and the first, unavoidable, part of the human journey is growing through our resistances. Only after growing through our resistance (pain) can we push through and grow in the light (joy).

This is an excerpt from the reading, expanding on points 3 and 4:

A seed still grows in the dark

‘The third element of the seed pushing its way through the soil to produce itself in all its glory is this: the seed cannot see where exactly it is going, and it does not know what it is going to become at the end of the journey. Oh, so many of the modern-day teachers are telling you that you need to see the path clearly before it will manifest and that you need to know precisely what you wish to grow, or grow into, before it is possible to grow. A seed does not see a thing. It is in fact buried underneath the ground. And for the first part of its journey, it is in darkness. It is still fed by the light, but it is in darkness. It cannot see the world that it is going to grow into, and it still grows. That is the faith of a seed. There was a moment, in the teaching of Jesus, when he compared faith to a seed. It was very wise, and here we are expanding on that story, in a way that we have never done before. A seed grows even when it is in the dark

A seed does not know what it is yet. It does not know where it is going. It cannot see anything, it is in the dark. For the first part of a seed’s journey it is in the dark. And so it is with human beings too. There is so much focus, so much pressure, to try to get people to a sense of sureness, or clarity, about who they are and what they are going to grow into. But you cannot bring that knowledge until that journey has naturally got to that point. There is a part of a seed’s life when it grows in the dark. And there is a part of your journeys where you grow in the dark. And that is not wrong, and you do not need to try very hard to know something before it is revealed to you. It is not so that the seed refuses to grow because it doesn’t know what it is growing towards. It has its faith. It still urges itself forward and up, though it has no idea of what is awaiting it, or what it is. That is the faith of a seed.

You are surrounded by such seeds. If you could take some inspiration from their journey, you would be able to put it to enormous use in your own.

The first part of a seed’s journey is growing through resistance

It is also significant for you to see, and this is the fourth learning we will offer today, that through the first part of a seed’s journey it is growing through resistance. When it pushes out of the soil and carries on its journey in the light it is not growing through much resistance anymore but the first part of its journey it is pushing its way, it is growing, through resistance. It has soil all around it, and the way that it grows is through pushing its way through the resistance. Again this is a part of experience that human beings judge and try to avoid, or at the very least try to get over with very quickly. But the first part of your growth occurs, and can only occur, through engaging with what you resist.

The seed gives you the clues to what is the journey of all life on this planet. But human beings have held themselves apart from all life for a long time. Yet nature holds so many clues for you. And one of them is that with a seed, the first part of its journey, necessarily, is through encountering resistance. In other words, the way to grow is to look at what you resist as the first part of the journey. It’s not the only part, the seed pushes through the resistance at some point, and then it grows through light, but it cannot grow through the light, until it has grown first through the resistance of the soil. We have positioned it today in terms of a seed, and of the miraculous journey of a seed. You can just as well think about it in terms of a baby, who also grows in the dark for the first bit of the journey.

We are only talking here about conditions for flourishing, not conditions for living. You can live without encountering some of these growth points, if you don’t want to encounter them you can stop your growth at any point. But we know very clearly your desire for flourishing, and we are giving the cycles for that journey. It is not the whole journey that you will be working through resistance, no. It is only a certain part of it. Why? Because in order for your flourishing to occur, for you to begin to grow in the light, rather than through your own darkness, you first require yourself to look and encounter all the things that you are carrying as resistances.

Your body helps you to identify your resistances. And you also run into your resistances through pain. Physical pain, emotional pain and so on. Pain and resistance are very closely related, and it is well know that where there is no more resistance left, there is also no more pain. That would be the point of breaking, blossoming, emerging, out of the soil, and carrying on the journey in the light. There is no way to rush this process, and there is no way to avoid it either. The seed will not grow if it is not planted at its proper depth.

You may also have put two and two together already and realised that the potential for depth of the seed, the deeper it is planted in other words, the more resistance it has had to work through before its blossoming. There are some human beings who choose very deliberately not to work through all that much of their resistance in one life. Those ones are planted at a relatively shallow level, and that is their choice, and you cannot change that as we have already said [above] just by wishing that they were deeper and by attempting to get them there. But there are those who are prepared to work with all their resistance – all – and it is possible. If it were not possible, and if it were not possible for you, we would not be bringing this. It is possible for you to have released all that which you resist. Again, if you want to know where you are still resisting have a look at where you still feel pain, physically and emotionally. Your pain is a little tick at an area at which you still carry resistance. When you have softened your way, given in, surrendered to all your resistances, then as the seed you emerge. You have grown through the darkness, through the soil. You have grown in the first part of your journey, you have grown via your resistance. It is the only way that your growth can start.

You begin your journey of awareness, and of consciousness, you begin it, everyone, by engaging with your resistances. It’s because you have problems, in other words, that you start your journey. It’s because you have pain, or dissatisfaction that you begin your journey. If you did not, then there would be no way to start. You have to begin by the root of your resistance. What we are inviting you into is to go as consciously and thoroughly as possible into the middle of your resistance. The more you give in to this part of the journey, the easier the soil will just part ways for you and you will emerge. You cannot avoid encountering your resistances, you can try, but you will remain in the soil for as long as it takes, until you have dropped, let go, softened every resistance you have to what is inside you, to what you see in other people, to what you find in the state of the moment.

We have never talked about this before. But it is a very deeply wise way in which to approach your own journey, and also to support the journeys of others. Go into that which you resist. Make it an awareness for you. Move there deliberately. Because that is, like the journey of the seed, that is the first part of your growth.

Emerging into the light

If you are wondering whether the feeling of popping out of the soil into the light is ecstatic for a seed, it is. That is the point where some teachers talk of enlightenment, in the journey of the seed, and the journey of the human being. For some human beings, who have intended it, there is a moment where you have dropped every resistance you have. And without knowing when it is going to happen, you emerge. You get glimpses of your emergence before it happens. The closer you are getting to the light, the more the sunlight filters through that dark soil. You can feel sometimes a ray of sun that has penetrated the soil as the seed, and still you don’t know what you are, remember. The seed still cannot see. You still don’t know what you are becoming, what your purpose is. You don’t know. But, every now and again you catch a bit of light. And it pulls you further along your journey through your resistances. That’s the only way to get to the light, to go through that which you resist. As you get closer and closer to the breaking-through point – and may we remind you that the only reason that we bring this forward today is because this is your journey – you begin to feel different, and so you should because you are different. You are no longer a seed, you are something else. The same genetic material is still a part of you, but you are totally different from a seed. You look nothing the same. It is just so with the human journey. You will be the same source or essence, but you will be totally different. When you run into people that knew you as a seed and that meet you some while later when you are in your emergence phase, they will say that you are so different, and you are.

There is a tremendous feeling of liberation when you emerge. We don’t want to describe it. Words will detract from that feeling. You get already glimpses of it, but it is possible, within this life, to move out of the resistance material, and to carry on your journey in the light. Another way of putting this is to say that if you have gone into your pain so thoroughly, it is possible to emerge from that, and to forever grow in light. That is a possibility. We can’t rush it, and there’s no way of going around it, but it is a possibility to carry on your flourishing in the light.

And do you know one of the first experiences of being in that light? You can see. All the growing and the struggling and the encountering again, and again, and again of resistance, when you are busy in that phase, you can’t see. We don’t take that for granted you know. It is extraordinary faith that lets the seed keep on growing, even though it does not know what it is. You don’t get the comfort, just like a seed, you don’t get the comfort of knowing in advance what is the outcome of this journey to give you some encouragement along the way. You don’t get the sight until you have been thoroughly through the resistance. So one of the glorious experiences of emerging is you start to be able to see. You start to be able to see who you are. Now you can look and notice that you are a mealie! Before, you did not know, and that is the design. To try to know what you are while you are in the dark is very difficult, and a tremendous frustration, and an enormous use of energy. There’s no need to worry about that, it will become apparent to you, and you will laugh at how you did not know all this time that that is what you are. You will laugh because there will be a time when it is not a mystery when you look around and you realise that’s what I am, all this time I’ve been growing into a mealie. But that knowledge is not given to you in advance, because it would change the journey, and that is not useful.

So being able to see is one of the tremendous experiences of emerging into the light, besides the fact that you don’t grow via resistance anymore. You’re not growing through soil after a time, and so your growth is simply through light – through joy is another way of putting it. And one of the first things is that you can see who you are. You will still develop – a mealie doesn’t look like a full grown mealie when it just emerges from the soil, but at least it can see some of what it is. And that knowledge emerges as the growth happens.

There is a lot more for us to say about how to grow in the light. Very few have let themselves do so, and we are honoured to invite you today into that group. It is a very significant giving that we are doing today because the awareness of this can truly enhance and speed up the journey. Knowing now that you cannot be emerged or born into the light until you have encountered all your resistances, gives you more permission to do so. Make that a priority. We cannot think of what would be a bigger priority than going fully into your own resistances, into your own pain, and coming out the other side, because without that your emergence is not possible.’

Vampires and Vultures

This is the second story I am writing about my personal experience in uncovering the shadow (see also ‘From Holy to Wholly’). I have some resistance to confessional writing because it’s just so ‘unprofessional’ and un-academic’ – but then again, those of you who have attended a Shadow Workshop with me will know that intelligence has been one of my masks, so in the interest of wholeness, and because the story contains lots of learning, here goes.

For some reason I arrived back from the DVD store last week with the film Twilight in hand. This is not my kind of movie, nor Garrick’s, so he looked at me a little strangely when the teenage vampire movie started to play. If you’ve watched Twilight then you know that it’s not big on plot, character development or anything actually, except smouldering teenage sexuality, or at least that’s what I saw. I found myself irrationally hooked on the sexy vampires, edgy music and dangerous intimacy. This would simply have been yet another reason for Garrick to spend his life teasing me had I not been doubled over with sobs by the end of the movie. And, no, this was not because it (really) was somewhat of a waste of a rare movie night.

The high school context of Twilight with its typical prejudices, emerging sexuality and youthful beauty managed to open up in me a host of adolescent pains mostly to do with not being pretty or sexy or cool enough. I know this isn’t unique, but it was very real to me at the time of experiencing it and I did not express a bit of it. Though I look back on that time in my life as being fraught with hurt, I never shared, talked about or processed it. My high-achieving and very religious personality simply didn’t allow me to be that vulnerable or ‘not ok’. And so I buried it and have carried it around ever since. The ways in which that repressed hurt have limited and sabotaged me are too numerous and, frankly, too boring to mention. Suffice to say, the story of not being beautiful or sexy has influenced every arena of my life and no amount of awareness, cleverness or peak spiritual experiences could do anything about it.

So why did Twilight magically unlock the door? Have the writers infused the script with cleverly disguised transformative powers? Sadly, no. The fact is that in engaging with shadow work so much over the last few months I have been giving regular permission to bring to the surface what I have stuffed away. To the extent that I am aching for exercise! (Believe me this is new). Why? Exercise, too, is another way to let go of what you have been carrying. Up till recently I haven’t actually wanted to see and feel the pain of what I buried so of course I had no desire to exercise. No amount of willpower or discipline would have dominated that resistance until I internally allowed it (this is what we work with on Embody). Unless there is real, unambiguous and regularly demonstrated permission for something, you will continue to sabotage your efforts in that arena. Everytime I walk now, I re-frame the activity as an opportunity to release more of what I no longer need and to become fully alive. With that, authentic, context I simply love moving.

The main point here is this: if you give permission for something (like I have done by researching and teaching about the shadow, exercising with the intent to uproot the shadow etc) then the mechanism for achieving it is (a) irrelevant and (b) it will find you! Like a silly little vampire movie winking at you from a shelf in a shop.

One way (and there are many) to give permission to see your shadow is to attend the Introductory and Advanced Shadow Workshops that I am running in November (see www.angeladeutschmann.com). Those of you working with the wonderful Bird Cards (I’m getting new stock in next week) can also use The Vulture consciousness to take this further. Here’s to vampires and vultures taking us to the next level of joy!

Tired of Transformation?

‘I’ve done so much work on myself, when does it end?’

‘I’ve done everything right, where are the rewards?’

‘Why is there always more growth to do?’

 You’re not alone if some of these thoughts have been playing on your mind recently. Many of my clients are voicing similar exasperation or exhaustion with their personal growth journey, especially after uncovering some of the very new and perplexing ‘shadow layers’. I see that there are two main underlying belief systems that are leading to these experiences of ‘enough already’:

1. Spirituality has been a system for getting what you want or
2. Spirituality has usurped your joy

Without using a very deep definition of joy, those two beliefs look contradictory. Here’s why they’re not, and why each of them will unquestionably lead you into frustration.

Spirituality is not a system for getting what you want

 I’ve noticed that most spiritual teachers, services and products sell themselves on the basis that ‘following my path will get you the stuff you want’. They don’t put it in those words exactly but they do claim that you will improve your wealth, relationships, health and success as well as attract to yourself all you desire if you train yourself in this way, think these kinds of thoughts, meditate for this number of hours, buy this bracelet etc. Hogwash. To be polite. Spirituality is not a path for getting what you (intellectually) want and avoiding what you don’t. It is an ever-deepening relationship with self / source that meanders and astonishes and challenges and evolves and opens and softens you. If you have been ‘working on yourself’ just to become successful, give up smoking, get thin or make more money then you have been duped. Some of those things may happen, sure, and of course you are welcome to pursue whatever is joyful for you but if you have been thinking that the more you work on yourself the more perfect you become and the more you get what you want then spirituality has, perhaps unwittingly, been more of a system for acquisition than for evolution and it is bound to disappoint.

 There’s more to the Law of Attraction

 What’s more, there is much more complexity to the Law of Attraction than meets the eye. As the September Group reading phrased it, you do not attract things by your ‘cognitive intent’ but by your whole vibration, which includes all levels and layers of self and not simply the small part of you willing or affirming something. That’s because the Law of Attraction, like all natural and spiritual laws, is a powerful feedback mechanism to you about the permissions you have been giving. It is not simply a system that you can use to intellectually control what does and does not happen to you. The drive of the universe is towards expansion, integration and wholeness, not perfection and success as we have been lead to believe.

 The outcome of a truly spiritual existence is Joy

 Don’t believe this if it doesn’t accord with your experiences or observations, but if you are feeling disappointed or tired of spirituality then one of the possibilities is that you have been expecting an outcome from your growth endeavours. An outcome could be a reward, a summit, or a sign that you have been ‘doing well’, like getting a new relationship or becoming successful in some area. The only outcome that I can comfortably promise from personal growth work is an increase in your permission for joy. And remember that joy is not a state of being that arrives when all your circumstances line up to your ego-expectations. Joy is the experience of living uncontained – being free to live without being contained by your past, your pain, your fear, your expectations or any other limited thoughts. Sometimes not getting what we want takes us closer to authentic joy than anything else, at least initially, so it is a huge misunderstanding to equate a spiritual life with getting more of what you want more easily. It will happen, and it won’t and if you can hold that paradox then personal growth won’t tire or disillusion you, it will merely offer up the next open door to wholeness.

 Joy is the outcome – growth is a tool

By precisely the same logic, personal growth should never eclipse your joy! If it is in no way fun, exciting, or wonderful to do a workshop, read a self-help book, meditate (note that this doesn’t mean it isn’t scary or uncomfortable) then don’t do it. I have seen in myself and many clients that spirituality can become an excuse or a crutch or a shelter if it is being used to avoid being fully present in other relationships – with the body, with pain, with feelings. It is sometimes more of a challenge, and more of an opening, to embrace the parts of yourself that don’t seem spiritual (sexuality, humour, irreverence, the body, the shadow) than to develop only the ones that do.

I laughed when I recently came across one of Osho’s essays in the book The Man Who Loved Seagulls. In it Osho speaks of meditation as medicinal. It’s useful for when you are not well, he says, it can make you feel better. But if you are really well, you don’t need medicine and when you are really joyful, you don’t need meditation. That’s because, as the readings have said for years, joy is the motivation and spiritual growth is the tool.

If at any moment walking in nature, watching silent stars, cooking, shouting, lying naked on the grass or anything else makes you feel alive, relieved and open (the 3 characteristics of joy) then go there. It may well be that a personal growth workshop or conversation or book does this for you, but be careful of presuming that it will and getting stuck in an expectation that is not in alignment with an experience. 

If you are feeling tired of personal development, ask yourself if you have been expecting it to ‘deliver stuff’ or if you have been privileging it above your joy. Then, as always, just drop it softly and be still.

From Holy to Wholly

This month I am taking some Growth Clubs through a process called Integrating the Shadow. Like many of you, I have been exposed to Shadow work through the books and films of Debbie Ford who has popularised the notion of the shadow, a concept which was originally named and described by Carl Jung. It is only as I sit down to write this that I realize (of course!) that life has been putting me through exactly the same journey on which I intend to take my Growth Club members. So this week I have been meeting one of my shadows and her name is Prejudice.

Painful as it is, let me share with you two incidents that happened this week that have opened up my prejudice to me. On Monday, after doing some work with an NGO in the city, I had a fit of ‘I’m-not-your-typical-white-South-Africa-I-embrace-diversity’, which resulted me in deciding to do my weekly groceries at a Pick N Pay in Newtown rather than my regular, suburban branch. I felt rather virtuous about my choice to shop in the city and rub shoulders with people who are very different from me. Of course my virtuosity, my sense of being a good citizen, my superiority even, followed me right on into the shop and caused havoc. Everything went wrong from the time I tried to park (Newtown Pick N Pay doesn’t provide parking because its patrons are largely on foot) to the time I tried to pay showing my Vitality card (Yini Vitality?!). I got in everybody’s way, slowed down the lunch-time shoppers with my big trolley and kept people waiting behind me at the till because no less than three different items of mine would not scan. I stuck out like a sore (white) thumb and I cringed inside at what I could so clearly see: in my effort to cross boundaries I had entrenched them even more.

This is always the result of effort, of trying, of going out of your way to be good instead of following your natural path, your authentic desire. Wherever you are trying to be good (at parenting, at spirituality, at eating etc) you will inevitably, in some form or another, either produce or attract the reverse of what you want. This is because, contrary to what most of us would believe, the universe or God is in support of wholeness, not holiness. If you have to try to be or do something, if it is not a natural joy or an authentic desire, then you are repressing something, pushing away a part of you that you wish wasn’t there and that is the shadow. Whatever gets pushed into shadow will be what you unintentionally display or bring towards you so that you can see where you are in denial or being fragmented. In trying so hard not to be a stereotypical, racist white South African I had become just that. My prejudice was in the shadow.

The following evening Garrick and I went out with friends to watch the phenomenal film District 9. Sitting in front of that screen was, for me, like being repeatedly punched in the stomach. I could hardly tolerate the oppression and homegrown prejudice. If the film wasn’t quite so brilliant I would have walked out the cinema from the sheer pain of watching it. In-between my sobs afterwards I sssssaid to Garrick that I was interested in the degree to which District 9 had affected me. Why was I so much more emotional about the content than other people, why had I been enraged when people around us laughed at some of the blatantly oppressive comments? I could see that my buttons had been pushed, or actually bashed, in a big way.

Ken Wilbur in his book Meeting the Shadow suggests a simple and very clear distinction to determine whether what you are experiencing is ‘your stuff’ or not. ‘…if a person or thing in the environment informs us, we probably aren’t projecting; on the other hand, if it affects us, chances are we are a victim of our own prejudices’. I was so deeply affected by that film because my own capacity to be oppressive, deeply buried, was being reflected to me in a most powerful manner. This conclusion is supported by my history. I spent years working in NGOs and other organisations dedicated to undoing oppression and developing the under-privileged. I consulted to corporations on black economic empowerment and corporate social investment, dated more black men than white and was always very outspoken on matters of racial and gender discrimination. I wasn’t simply informed about these things, I was fighting them. I understand this now as the obvious outcome of my own prejudice being dis-owned, being in the shadow.

It has been painful for me to acknowledge this, especially because now I am seeing evidence of my prejudiced thoughts everywhere! They follow me into my relationship with Garrick, with my body and in how I make choices about where to live. But it’s important to note that there is nothing I can, or need to, do about my prejudice other than fully and softly see it. Just the act of observing creates a distance, a gap, between the real me and those thoughts. Over time that gap will grow sufficiently for me to naturally, gracefully, use prejudice consciously rather than unconsciously (it can be done and it can be useful). The shadow does not need to be forcefully eradicated, it needs only to be gently brought into the fullness of the light.

Here’s to each of us bringing our shadow into the light so that the shadow of humanity will follow the same path.

Three Practices for Joy

A recent reading described the ‘Path of Joy’ to be one of the ways to God, or oneness. It compared this to some other paths to God such as religion, suffering or service. In the case of some of these more devotional paths, there is a clear and known set of rituals or practices to observe like prayer, fasting, studying a holy text or worshipping in a particular way. These practices become the steps and markers of the path and help the followers to navigate it. If you choose to experience oneness through the route of joy then many of those traditional rituals lose their meaning and appeal, in fact the very notion of a Path (which implies somewhere to get to) may not sit true anymore. So what are the practices or habits to cultivate if you choose Joy as your way of being?

1. The Practice of Self-Awareness (on the level of personality and beyond)

‘Above all, know thyself’ – Oracle at Delphi

Interest in activities, books, teachers and other promoters of self-awareness is at an all-time high. You need only look at the number and popularity of workshops, therapies and materials that in some way promise to help you get to know yourself to see that self-awareness as a value has become rather common. On one level, developing self-awareness can mean recognising your emotional patterns, coming to terms with your past, identifying your fears and desires, integrating painful experiences, healing your inner child, recognising your gifts or strengths, forgiving your resentments and being able to see what is truly motivating you in any moment. Modalities such as regression and family constellating also belong to this sphere of self awareness. It is vital (in the sense of being both critical and good for your well-being) to know about yourself on this level and any therapy or book or friend that reveals more of you to you is invaluable.

Yet, this is not where self-awareness ends. The work described above is all still done in the realm of personality. Psychology, and other related fields, has given us wonderful insights into personality, and how to identify, grow and even treat it. But personality is but one layer of the Self and, even if typically people presume that it is all they are, any truthful and committed enquiry will show that there is something else beyond the personality. How do we know? Because with observation and stillness you can learn to watch your personality and if that is possible, who is it that is doing the observing? I won’t hazard an existential guess at the name of that part of self that observes (some call it consciousness, others the soul) but practicing awareness, better yet practicing experience, of that part of you is essential to staying on the Path of Joy.

While getting to know your personality usually involves activity, or effort, of some sort, getting to know a deeper layer of self involves non-activity, such as the silence mentioned below but also, simply, the act of listening and observing yourself. Make some space between you and your responses, your choices, your habits and your language. Step aside for just a second to look and listen to your words, your breathing, your body, your actions. The more you train yourself to observe your personality, the more you can distance yourself from your habits and your pain and the more you begin to see that your personality, while a useful and loved element of you, is not who you are. The joy that this recognition, this gap, brings is beyond understanding (and is, by the way, the only true antidote to stress).

2. The Practice of Silence ‘

What is this life if full of care? We have no time to be still and stare’ WB Yeats

Most of us have heard about, or personally experienced, the power of stillness or meditation. Yet it remains an inconsistent practice at best, or a non-existent one at worst because it seems to be truly difficult to integrate silence into modern-day life. We have grown accustomed to high, even perpetual, amounts of noise and activity around us. That seems to be endemic of a modern, successful life. Yet so many of our answers, our peace, our purpose can only be allowed from the practice of silence. Try this practical system for integrating silence into your life the same way you have integrated brushing your teeth or putting on your seatbelt.

The first prerequisite for this practice is that you are not interrupted by anything, so it’s been suggested in the readings to do it in the bathroom, where it is quite socially acceptable to be on your own and uninterrupted for a few minutes even if you’re at work.

The second prerequisite is that you have no agenda for your silence. That means you’re not trying to empty your mind, you’re not trying to get a message, you’re not trying to de-stress or even meditate. You are simply quiet and soft. Just gently looking and listening until even those activities melt away. The moment you have an agenda, or begin trying to do or be anything, there is pressure on your system and you contract instead of what we’re after here, which is expansion.

This is an easy, un-intimidating way to do it:

Week One: 2 minutes of silence once a day (Set an alarm and do not do any more than 2 minutes)

Week Two: 4 minutes of silence twice a day

Week Three: 5 minutes of silence twice a day

It is easy to do this and so delicious that after three weeks you will be dying (so to speak) to have more and more. But start off by only doing these amounts above so that you are not put off by an unattainable, unsustainable practice.

3. The Practice of Honest and Lighthearted Sharing

‘A problem shared is a problem halved’ Unknown, English idiom

One of the observations I make time and time again in my Growth Clubs is how much lighter people are when they leave a session than when they arrive, even though very often we are working with difficult issues and demanding truths in sessions. Just the act of sharing what is going on with you at a particular moment seems to dissolve most of the fear or sadness or worry around it. I’ve seen clients laugh uproariously as they talk about their bankruptcy or their fear of being single for the rest of their lives, because when you tell someone, once again, you are making some space between you and the issue and it is usually within that space that you can see the solution or let something go.

There are two little tricks though: (1) the sharing must be deeply honest and (2) there must be some humour or laughter involved. Merely moaning about your circumstances (which is nearly always blatant or implicit blaming) with someone who will say ‘shame, shame’ or just support your blaming does not count as honest and lighthearted sharing. If you can’t think of any people with whom you can talk about yourself and your life in a raw, but light way there are plenty of groups to join, both virtual and not, which are designed to create that sort of space. As I look at my life through this lens, I realise with amazement and gratitude that these three practices have become my life, they are no longer just daily practices. If you’re committed enough to Joy then after a while it will be so for you too.

The Empty Cup

We welcome, we welcome you here. Maybe you can take a few moments to accept that. We recognise that you desire insight and direction here, and we will bring that. But before we do, allow us first to extend our welcome. And we say allow us, because it is also possible that you do not allow it, that you flip over this part of the conversation quickly in order to get to the more important things. It is possible that you sit where you are and you hear us, but you do not really hold the truth of what we are bringing deeply in you heart. So let us say it again: We welcome you. That means we want you. It means we love you coming. It means that to connect with you like this is wonderful. If you can just accept even a little bit of that, maybe your understanding of who you are will begin to become accurate. We cannot convince you of who you are. We can’t write out an essay telling you the truth about your beauty and your bravery and your ability to make a difference to the world around you. We can’t write an essay and present it to you, and that will mean you accept it. No. We can offer up to you, and we will today, a fuller idea of who you are. But we cannot choose that you accept that. The last decision is always left to the human being. God doesn’t get in the way of your choices, as maybe you have noticed. God can bring you towards people, or places or opportunities. God can also bring to you understandings and insights. But God cannot decide on your behalf what you will take, and what you will reject. So we will offer here to you today, and we have begun already, some ideas about the truth of you. But it will be your choice whether to believe that or not, whether to accept it or not, and whether to begin to live that, step by step, or not.

We are very delighted to be like this with you. It’s so beautiful for us to see your, and we’re going to call it, your unknowingness. Maybe that surprises you. Maybe you think it’s better to be in the world in a state of real knowing and sureness. Maybe you think the ones in the world who are the most blessed and the most productive are the ones who know themselves, and who know the world and the way it works. We want to say something different to you. Let us put it in an analogy for you. Let us say that you are holding a cup, and let us say that it is full of delicious coffee. It’s coffee that you have been drinking for years. You know it, you are in a state of knowingness, you know this coffee, and you are in a state of havingness, because you have this coffee in your cup. Imagine there arrives a waiter near to you, and she is carrying a pot of magnificent Turkish coffee. And she says that it is the best she has ever tasted. You have only had one or two sips of your cup, and she comes along to offer you something better. If you hold out your cup and she pours the brilliant new coffee into it, then very soon your cup is going to spill over, and you will just have a mixture of the old coffee that you know and the new coffee that you don’t. The other option that you have is to say “No, thank you” to the better coffee, because you’ve got what you need. And the third option that you have is to throw out that coffee that you have. You know it’s good, and you’ve got it, but you take the risk of throwing it out and having your cup filled with something that proves to be infinitely better. And you never go back to what you knew.

We are illustrating to you here the benefit of not knowing. Where you are in your life at the moment is that you have an empty cup. You are not full of knowing, and you are not full of having either. And, if we may as bold as to say, that is the most beautiful position from which to reinvent yourself, from which you can begin to re-imagine life. The ones that are too full of knowing and too full of having, are the ones who miss out on the benefit of a new experience, a better experience. That delicious Turkish coffee will not be theirs until they give permission to empty their cup. New experiences, or what some are calling transformation, is only possible when you have been prepared to have an empty cup, when you’ve been prepared to not know, and to not have. It is not the ones who are full of having and full of knowing who regularly experience transformation to much better states of living, it is not those. Ones who are so full of knowing and so full of having want to ensure that they hang onto it, so they are not the ones who give permission for metamorphosis. We know you want metamorphosis, we know. And because you want it, it is yours to have.

Not everyone in the world is programmed with the same desires. Not everyone wants it. You imagine everyone wants metamorphosis, transformation, emergence into their most beautiful life, but not all choose it. We see, we see, from your idealisation and identification with the butterfly, we see that what you are saying is that you want metamorphosis. No less than that. You want what the butterfly does. It changes from one way of being into a completely different lighter, freer way of being. But first, if you notice this with the butterfly, first it has to stop being what it is. There is a period when the butterfly is no longer a caterpillar, and is not yet a butterfly. In that time the butterfly is in the cocoon, and the magic is happening. But before the magic happens, that little caterpillar must be prepared to throw away, to give up, its very identity. If the caterpillar was not prepared to stop being a caterpillar, if he was clinging onto himself as a caterpillar, then it couldn’t go through the cocooning phase, and certainly could not emerge as a butterfly. That’s exactly the same as we were talking about earlier – if you are not prepared to throw out the coffee you know, you have no chance of experiencing something infinitely better. What we’re saying to you is this: before metamorphosis can happen, everybody has to be at a place where they don’t know. Otherwise they will not accept the new. And it takes many people, hard, hard work, and sometimes years of pain, before they will acknowledge that they do not know, and before they have a point where they do not have all the answers, all the awareness, all the plans.

And you are already there. You are an empty cup, you are not full of your own sureness, you are not full of a preset idea of who you are and who you should be. You are not attached to yourself as being this kind of way, you are not attached to a career, you are not attached even to a place, and that is the very best kind of openness there can be. We know it’s frightening to have an empty cup. We know you look at other people, and they have full cups, and you think that that is right, and you think that they are better, and they are more powerful, because they have full cups of coffee and they are drinking what they know, they have a lot of knowledge, and they have a lot of having, they have a lot. And we know you think that it is better to have a full cup of coffee, than an empty. We’re not saying that it’s wonderful to life forever with an empty cup. We know that it’s pleasurable to drink coffee – we’ll continue using our analogy – but what we are saying is that only those who are prepared to sit with an empty cup for some time are those who will have the even better coffee. Which is our way of saying to you that only when you are prepared at a certain set of times in your life, only when you are prepared to not know, and only when you are prepared to not have, can you be wide open enough to allow for your biggest metamorphosis .

The caterpillar first has to go through an intense period of unknowing. For a while, while the caterpillar is in the cocoon, he is neither a caterpillar nor a butterfly. For a while – hear us carefully – for a while the caterpillar has no identity. He’s no longer crawling on the ground and eating as many leaves as he can find. He’s no longer participating in the world at all, have you noticed? There is a period when the caterpillar is not in the world, and is not having an identity, of any kind. He’s not a caterpillar and he’s not something else. He also doesn’t know what he’s turning into, have you noticed that too? The reason that your soul loves butterflies is because the journey of the butterfly is also the journey of you. But, we are talking to you in detail about the journey of the butterfly, because people forget that the butterfly was first something very different. And they forget that for a while the butterfly was nothing at all. They forget that. They just see a beautiful free creature, living as she chooses, but they forget the journey. And they forget what steps that butterfly had to take before emerging in that way. And one of those steps includes where you are now, which is having an empty cup, not knowing their path. Not knowing who you are. Not knowing the answers, not knowing the right way to live, not knowing the path to God, and so on. It’s very few human beings who are brave enough to sit long enough with the not knowing, with the empty cup. It’s very few who are brave enough to sit there, and even fewer who are brave enough to talk about what it is like sitting there.

You think it’s wrong to have an empty cup. And we think it’s part of what is required for full metamorphosis. You think it is wrong not to have a certain and clear identity, and we think it is what many people are missing, and so they are transforming a little bit, but not to the degree that the butterfly metamorphisises. So, even though we can recognise and respect the place that you are in as being fearful and unsure. even though we know that according to the world it’s better that you know and are sure, even though we see you comparing yourself to other people and you think you’re falling short because your cup is empty, even through all that, we feel excitement at the space around you.

So many people are so full that we can’t possibly bring them something new, something better. They are full of their own identity, for example, they are so sure of themselves as a teacher, or as a healer, or as a poet, or as a mother, they are so sure of that identity, that it begins to get very full around them. Others are very full because of all they know: they know exactly what is the way to live, they know exactly how to manifest dreams, they know exactly how love works, they know exactly how to raise children, they know exactly how to run businesses and make money. And they are so full of what they know that there is no space for us to bring something better. They don’t even hear us knocking on the door, they are so full. Others are so full of having all the things that they have around them, all the gadgets, all the entertainment, all the space to live in and take care of, all the friends, all the engagements. They are so full of having, and doing, that they also don’t leave enough room for Divinity to trickle in, let alone for enough Divinity to come in to create a metamorphosis equal to that of the butterfly.

So here you sit, with an empty cup, with space around you. You have space. You have space in your identity, because you don’t know who you are. You have space within your time, because you are not attached to a requirement of a job at this moment. You have space even around where you are going to live, which is unusual. We invite you to do the unthinkable, and that is to sit with your empty cup, and if you can, to start to be thankful. There is no reason for you, and it will not be, to sit with an empty cup for very long. We will move into your path that which can assist you to begin to fill your cup again, to begin to refashion your identity and the other parts of your life. That will come. But if you rush this emptiness, if you are too scared of it, if you are too resistant to your own un-sureness, then you can go and force your cup to be filled, but it won’t be with the very best quality of Turkish coffee available. It will be something less perfect. Many people do that all the time, there are very few who have the courage to sit with emptiness for very long, and lots of them, in resisting the emptiness, go and fill their cup with whatever comes along, just not to sit with the unknowingness. When they do that – and it is okay because one day they too will taste the Turkish coffee, one day they too will fly as a butterfly – they are delaying it. They are going around in the same cycle, over and over, and that’s not required.

So we invite you, and we are going even to close this conversation soon, because at the moment your emptiness, and your unknowing are the most beautiful parts of you. You find them so ugly, you find them so undesirable. You feel a lesser human being because you don’t know. You call yourself lost, we simply say you have an empty cup. And we hope we have made it clear to you that there’s a certain kind of beauty, and of grace in the experience of not being sure, of not knowing. We know that it pulls at the deepest parts of you, and we know it raises resistance, and we know it raises in you self-hatred, we can feel that, but that’s not a reason to run away from the emptiness too soon.

Give yourself the respect you deserve for being in a place of not knowing. Give yourself enough time with an empty cup to allow for that cup to be filled with the very best quality of experience possible, instead of just a substitute. You know what it’s like to make a choice as a substitute, instead of waiting for something better, you just take what’s here now. That’s not wrong, but it does put you into a cycle that you might have avoided. And so this time, this time, we’re asking something even bigger of you, we’re asking you to change the way you think about yourself and about not knowing. We ask you instead of using the word lost, to use the word empty. Yes, you are empty now, we feel that, and that is the only way to allow yourself to be filled with something superior than you used to have. So, for the moment, we invite you just to rest. It’s okay not to move, it’s okay to be unsure. You have a wonderful blank slate, don’t rush the filling of it. There are people living the kind of full and sure life that you think is amazing, and what are they desiring in their innermost hearts? A bit of emptiness, a bit of space, a bit of people not wanting them all the time, so there is beautify in where you are. But as we said earlier, we can bring you that understanding, but it is you who chooses to be. Thank you.

Life as a Dance

Consider being born into life as being placed into a dance studio. Like all studios this one has four walls, providing you with certain space, and also time, limitations. The studio represents duality. You can bemoan these limitations, you can fight against them and you can, indeed, leave the studio anytime you like – although if you bash down a wall to get out it will probably be more painful than waiting for the door to open in its own time. In actual fact the studio door opens more than once in your lifetime, but you will not always notice and will only walk through it when you truly choose so.

Mirrors cover every wall inside the studio and music plays, seemingly on its own, in a loud and powerful way. The mirrors represent the feedback, or reflections, to you from your environment. You can certainly choose to dance your dance – or live your life – with your eyes closed all the time. This will mean you do not see your own reflection, and that can seem as if it assists you to avoid pain. Sometimes it does. Yet you will never dance with full abandon or freedom if your eyes are closed because you will be fearful of getting hurt. So, paradoxically, in trying to avoid the pain of seeing yourself fully, you increase the chances of other kinds of pain, such as accidents, as well as the sharper pain of not dancing in your fullest joy.

You can also choose to dance with your eyes open and see yourself in the mirrors as you go along. This takes bravery, because you will not always see a reflection that you like. If that happens, it allows you the opportunity, simply, to choose again. To dance more and more authentically until you like how you feel when you look in the mirrors. While you are in this phase of your life, it is useful every now and again to close your eyes and give yourself a break from seeing your reflection. These are moments where you look inward, forget the world and its reflections, where you stop learning, stop improving and simply enjoy the blissful recognition that the dancer in the mirror is just a reflection and this dance studio is just a game of your own creation. Resting yourself in this way, every so often, rejuvenates and inspires you to continue creating a beautiful dance. If you become overly focused, or analytical, about the mirrors – in other words trying too hard to find the meaning in every reflection – you will forget to dance!

After you have respected and used the mirrors sufficiently to enhance your dance you will slowly, and naturally, begin to forget about them. At this stage you will be entirely focused on the joy of your own experience and will have become fully trusting of the feelings in your body to give you the feedback you need.

The music that is playing in the studio represents the circumstances in your life – what is happening ‘out there’. Sometimes a sad song plays, sometimes an exciting one, sometimes the song is to your taste, sometimes it is not. Sometimes you stop dancing when a song plays that you think you do not like. ‘Change the song!’ you shout and you stamp your feet or refuse to move until life brings you the exact circumstances (money, job, partner, government, state of health) that you presume will be in your best interests. You get more and more angry, or resigned, when you realize that neither resisting nor waiting succeeds in bringing on a song that you prefer. What can you do? You can dance anyway! You can begin to trust that you can create a beautiful dance (Self) even when it is a sad, or angry, or unsatisfying song playing at the time.

And do you know what the delicious secret is? When you begin to create grace, peace, beauty in your dancing – irrespective of the song that is playing – then you ‘tune yourself in’ to music of that nature and you begin to have an influence on the songs that are going to be played for you in your future! You will never be able to totally control the soundtrack of your life, and it is a waste of your precious energy to try to do so. Simply take note of the music and set yourself free to dance in your own sweet way. Even if your dance is full of grief, even if you are dancing to a song you never thought you could – don’t wait, create.

Just as with the mirrors, eventually you will not be obsessed with what music is playing. You will trust in your ability to dance, irrespective of the song. The music will fade into the background and you will focus your energy exclusively on dancing in the most magical way that you (not your culture, your religion, your family) can imagine. In this paradoxical, divine game, the studio, the mirrors and the music have seemed like your obstacles but have become your creative impetus.

So, dear friends, for now simply take light note of the song that is playing in your life right now, and the reflections that you are getting from the world and people around you – and use them to enhance your dance.

What’s all this about Joy?

It seems like Joy has been a theme in your work recently?

Yes, since about the beginning of 2008, the readings have been raising the concept of Joy more and more. Firstly, to extend an invitation to us to commit to our Joy and secondly, to provide some insight and practical suggestions about what that means and how to do it. And that order is important! Normally, we want to completely understand something before we commit to it, but I’ve learnt that permission for something needs to come before any real kind of understanding and experience of it.

Let’s explore those in order then – what does it mean to ‘commit to my Joy’?

It’s a choice to make the purpose of your existence about Joy, as opposed to making it about success, obligation, relationships, service or even growth. It’s a radical invitation because it profoundly affects how you navigate your way through the big and small choices of your life. Committing to your joy means taking the risk to live only for your joy, and knowing that only you are responsible for the realization of that.

‘Living only for my Joy’ sounds at best frivolous and at worst utterly selfish

I recognize and respect that the notion brings up huge resistance in many people – from those two perspectives and from others. That’s why I dare to call the invitation radical. If you’ll bear with me, allow me to respond to the two concerns you raise. Though I have no need to convince you of anything nor to ‘convert’ you to this way of being. It has never been spoken of as something obligatory (there is no such directive ever from divinity) and I urge you only to consider this if it rings true…and of course if it contributes to your joy!

Imagine a world where every human being took full responsibility for their own joy, never expecting that any other person or system or religion or government would do so for them. Imagine that you were taught to respect and identify your Joy and supported in your quest to bring your joy into being. Do you think there would be more creativity, production, wellness, harmony in that kind of world, or less? Is that frivolous? Do you think the ‘takers’ in our world – the ones who grab, steal and hurt – are full of Joy or empty of it? My realization has been that if you are not committing to your joy then inevitably you will have an expectation – consciously or not – that someone or something must provide you with that, whether it’s your spouse or your children or your leaders or ‘more privileged’ people – and that is selfish. Do you think it was selfish of Van Gogh to commit so passionately to creating what brought him joy, even if that wasn’t welcomed or understood at the time? Was Mozart selfish? Tiger Woods? The reason we afford these people the permission to live solely for their joy is because we can recognize their genius. If we recognized our own genius would we give ourselves the same permission?

I can get my mind around that, but what about helping others, being of service?

Service is not a replacement for Joy, it is a natural and inevitable by-product of Joy. It is impossible for you not to deeply affect the lives of other people when you are living your deepest Joy. It spills over! Firstly, because you will be bringing into the world a creation or a product or a service or a self that is high vibrational (anything created from joy or love is high vibrational) and secondly because you will be radiating energy, wellbeing, passion and playfulness, which quietly invites all whom you touch to choose the same. That is service! We do not serve others by doing for them what they can do for themselves or by trying to take care of their joy – we serve others by inviting them into their fullest selves purely because we make it seem like so much fun 

I used to have a deep intention to serve the world, and as a result spent years working in NGOs and development-oriented organizations where I wasn’t having all that much fun nor being well taken care of nor using all the academic and other talents I have. Of course, it didn’t work and I got continually sick and found many other ways, too, to duck and dive out of full commitment. Not because those organizations are ‘wrong’, but because it wasn’t really, authentically, my Joy. I eventually gave up my (second) Masters degree, as well as my career in social service (of various kinds) and started to involve myself with what I really love. Now I am serving far more people than before, and I am very well rewarded for it, in all ways. That’s the kind of service that really works and is sustainable.

What are the implications of committing to my joy?

The implications are huge! Essentially, you will be navigating through your life using Joy as your compass – not service or habit or success or spiritual growth or approval or social norms. It’s not that these things are not allowed – it’s just that they should follow joy and not eclipse it. When you navigate with Joy, you will naturally be growing, naturally be of service and naturally be living a purposeful life. Not that committing to your Joy means taking the easy road – it doesn’t! Your desires are programmed in such a way as to require you to step up (your courage, your risk-taking, your surrender etc) in order to follow them. It would be worth talking about what Joy is and isn’t in another question.

Ok then – what is Joy?

The specific circumstances of Joy will change moment by moment – for example, in one context it will be joyful for you to speak up, in another it will be joyful for you to remain silent. But the essence of Joy is always the same, though difficult to describe. Joy is how you feel when you are living at the cusp of comfort and discomfort; reward and risk, success and stretch. Too much time in any of those extremities begins to move you out of alignment with Joy. Joy is when you are living in a full-blooded and uncontained way. One of the readings described the opposite of Joy as being ‘containment’.

Not sadness?

Certainly not. Joy can co-exist with sadness, grief, anger or any of the other emotions we call negative. These can exist as the waves on top of the ocean of our experience, while at the same time Joy can be the current driving it forward. For example, standing up for yourself in a relationship can cause conflict or pain, but it is also deeply joyful.

How will you know when you are moving in the direction of Joy?

From recent readings, I know that these are three of the markers, or signs, of choosing Joy: 1. You feel ALIVE 2. You feel RELIEVED 3. You feel more OPEN than before If a decision or a thought or a relationship or an opportunity increases your sense of aliveness, relief and open-ness it is aligned with Joy for you, even if it also requires you to step up your courage or your exposure or your trust. In fact if it requires you to step up these things it is definitely your Joy!

So Joy is almost like a lure into stepping up?

Exactly. By committing to living our Joy we are guaranteed both to expand in the fullest possible way and to be of enormous service at the same time. A lot of people are frustrated and disillusioned at the moment because, despite affirmations and positive visualisations, the universe has not delivered to their doorsteps exactly what they want. But that is not the point at all! Your Joy requires you to step up into a deeper, truer and fuller expression of yourself – which is what you are really doing here. One of the readings described Joy as a magic carpet. A magic carpet, as you may have noticed, never lands flat on the floor but always hovers slightly above the ground next to someone, requiring them to step up if they wish to experience the freedom and exhilaration of riding it.

Finally, if we are ready to commit to our Joy, how do we discover what it is?

This question is most usefully answered on two levels. Firstly, the biggest truth is that Joy is a choice and not a career, lifestyle, vocation or even a passion. You are not at the mercy of a particular partner or job or location or anything whatsoever to give to you Joy. You are the one who gives permission to experience Joy in any moment and it is only the stories you tell that reinforce that this particular circumstance is inherently joyful and this one is inherently not. If you are committed to living your Joy then it is your responsibility to create it in whichever way the moment makes available. For example, if a meeting is becoming nauseatingly boring, then you have a number of ways in which to respond to that. You can withdraw into fantasies of wishing you were somewhere else, you can drown yourself in coffee (or whatever is in your hipflask!) to stimulate you or you can bring into that setting the creativity, truth, fun or humour that you experience is lacking. To en-joy life means to make it joyful, not to wait until something or someone delivers it to you. Of course, when you are committed to bringing Joy into, for example, your current working environment you are likely to either vastly increase your contribution and, thus, reward or to clearly and quickly realise that the environment cannot support you, allowing you to move on far more quickly than you otherwise might have.

Yet, secondly, it is also true that you are deeply programmed with certain desires that are beyond your intellectual control and are part of the blueprint of this particular life. Having the courage (and it takes courage!) to realise, own, express and live out what you truly want is magnificently empowering. It is not as easy as it sounds to find out what you want – many adults I come across in my practice are quite far removed from their desires and it can be a truly heroic act to relocate and express them. My JoyMap process can assist with this, but if you are really committed to knowing your Joy you can simply bring this question into your daily existence as often as you can remember to: what is it that I actually want here? Asking this question in front of a menu, your wardrobe, within a conversation or at a major choice-point will slowly (and it’s ok for it to go slowly) begin to reacquaint you with the voice of your desires and begin to reveal you’re your Joy. Thank you.

©Angela Deutschmann May 2009

Move Over Meditation

Before I get drawn and quartered by devotees of the peaceful practice of meditation (or is that an oxymoron?), allow me to share some observations of myself and my clients, which have lead me to question some of the presumptions and prescriptions surrounding meditation as a spiritual tool.

Empirical research and personal experience certainly seem to indicate that no technique we know of (yet) can beat meditation for combating stress, training the mind and, in some cases, creating the conditions for blissful union with self, or the all that is. I’m not refuting that at all. Meditation may well be the quintessential tool for centre-ing and raising awareness; it’s just not the only one. And that little distinction can be the key to freeing up your spiritual life immeasurably.

Many people I’ve met carry significant guilt or worry about their meditation practice, or the lack thereof. It features on every to-do list they have and yet does not ever seem to become fully integrated into their daily life. The result? They get very heavy about the fact that they’re not getting light. Mmmm…

Of course this guilt feeds their heaviness and makes them feel like meditating the way a hippo might feel like taking a spinning class. He’d rather lie down and eat, which is precisely what many of them do. When we tell ourselves that we just can’t do this meditation thing (today), we tend to abandon a spiritual practice all together instead of exploring other possibilities of connecting with our divinity when meditation isn’t happening.

It’s a bit like me and exercise. In my head, exercise = running for 20 to 30 minutes three to four times a week. When I can’t, or don’t want, to do that then I do nothing at all. Sometimes for months! Some part of me, quite rightly, rebels against such a narrow, externally-taught range of exercise which is seldom very much fun. And because I have an ‘all or nothing’ idea about exercise, this leaves me high and dry. Or fat and flat, as the case may be.

Now that I see this, I teach myself and clients (especially in the Embody and Joymap processes) to recognise lots of different and creative ways in which we might get some exercise / love / international travel or whatever else gives us joy. Exactly the same is true of a spiritual practice. If your idea of speaking and listening to your divinity consists only of meditation, then you are at the mercy of the time, energy, conditions and inclination to meditate and if you don’t do it (and I can guarantee you that sometimes you won’t) then you’ll probably do nothing at all.

Why not expand your range of spiritual tools to give yourself a bigger menu from which to choose? Make sure that at least one of the options does not require money, at least one of the options does not require a long stretch of free time, at least one of the options doesn’t require you to be well / peaceful / high energy so that you don’t cop out of your spiritual practice just because on any given day those things aren’t there.

Of course you can be meditative while washing the dishes, driving to work or watching a Barney video (apparently) so the art of meditation can be practiced at any moment of your day, but that’s not only what I mean. Sometimes, loud or wild activity (which would seem anything other than meditative) also has the effect of bringing you back to your centre, clearing out the stuck emotions you might be carrying and clearing the path for the flow of divinity to move through you, well, loudly and wildly.

Over and above meditation, these are some of the things on my list of spiritual practices:

• Putting my iPod on shuffle and listening deeply to the first three or four songs that come up. Inevitably, these raise a valuable emotion or insight for me, even if they do leave me crying in public places..
• Dancing freely by myself for the pure purpose of expressing how I am feeling (i.e. not for showing my cool moves or getting sexy). For me this is one of the most effective, accessible and easy forms of letting go
• Writing and drawing in my journal
• Making love
• Talking or sending emails to specific friends with whom intimate sharing is the order of the day
• Being on aeroplanes. I’m a little embarrassed to admit this, but in aeroplanes I’m immediately filled with a vast peacefulness and creativity. I step off them as if I’ve ohm-ed for hours. An expensive form of meditation but great for Voyager miles…
• Laughing. It’s irrelevant whether I’m laughing at my (big and strong) son dressed in pantyhose and doing ballet to ‘Hier Kommie Bokke’ (really) or at reruns of the Friends series, something about laughing in itself makes me lighter, less stressed and more open to possibilities. A very good replacement, or precursor, to meditation on the days you feel particularly down or heavy.
• Bringing people to mind with whom I’m having difficulty and forgiving them (which is really forgiving myself and my own projected qualities)
• Doing something I’m not good at. This weekend I played Wii Golf. You might not think that has spiritual benefits, but because this is so far off the list of things that I’m naturally good at, it did wonders for allowing me to laugh at myself and, in doing so, shrink my ego. Which is, after all, the purpose of meditation.

Your list will be different and, in actual fact, it’s not the activities themselves that create the value, it’s the permission behind them. If you can give permission to many more things than just meditation to be part of your spiritual practice, then you will fling open the doors of possibility and find yourself connecting to truth and divinity in the most unlikely situations. I’m sure Meditation would be proud.

The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face

 

On 4 February 2008, our close friends Marilyn and Pieter were shot in their beds at close range. Four months later – through a stubborn belief in their own responsibility, a passion for their visions and an incredibly loving circle of supporters –they were well, and I had the privilege of being with them through the birth of their perfect baby girl, Keana. This is my story of that event and how it birthed me.

 

Two weeks ago Pieter dreamt that I helped them to birth Keana, which is why, on an otherwise ordinary Wednesday, I find myself laughing with Marilyn as she bounces on a birthing ball in a maternity clinic. Light contractions come and go. The room is gentle and full of sunlight. Pieter and my husband, Garrick, keep us amused and I keep us reverent. It may not be conventional for two couples to be doing this together, but it’s all right. We hold Marilyn’s hands and take a walk, stopping regularly when the force of a contraction takes over. The three of us supporters become humble, our egos dissolving into countless repetitions of 1-2-3-4 and the comicality of rubbing your friend’s bum in a public parking lot. It’s easy to be bigger than your personality and your gender when you are in the courageous company of a labouring woman.

 

Back in the birthing room, our words are few. Marilyn plays some music into which she gracefully disappears. Her hips sway, her knees bend, and she dances her breath deep down into her pelvis.  Her sensuality is like fire, but she is oblivious to everything except her body and her baby making its way into the world. When our eponymous wedding song starts to play, I know that she will understand when I stop rubbing her calves and go to kiss Garrick, pressing my body against his with the kind of intimacy we have only expressed in times of deep hurt, the birth of our own children and during that self-same wedding dance.

 

But there are awkward moments for me too. Maybe because I am a channel, or maybe because I am a woman, I always seem to know where the energy is in Marilyn’s body, and what is needed. But I feel very concerned that I’m taking over, dominating Pieter, being a pushy know-it-all. I suddenly see that this is the fear I carry around with me all the time – the fear of being arrogant. In a split-second of realisation, I get that I have cultivated a lifetime’s habit of not being fully present so as to tone down my impact and not be a ‘show-off’ (which I was called as a child). Language junky that I am, it makes linguistic sense to me: I don’t show up, so that I don’t show anyone else up. Over the years I have quietly become less spectacular, and more pleasing, because I fear the loneliness, and criticism, if I were to be full, complete, magnificent. This wonderful insight opens up to me in the midst of my rubbing, supporting, holding and encouraging. The joy of realising it eclipses the pain that it brings, the same way that a baby in arms eclipses the pain of bearing it. 

 

So, on this occasion, I choose not to tone myself down, but to take the risk of being fully there. It’s easy to do because of the magnetism of the birthing couple. I have never seen Marilyn so assertive, beautiful and in touch with every important signal in herself. She is so self-attuned that she can hear the music of the cosmos singing her baby’s name. We who have the pleasure of watching her can see her disappear into bliss every now and again, between contractions. We know that when she smiles like that she is meeting her daughter as a soul, enjoying a tiny, precious moment of full recognition before the exhausting demands of newborn motherhood. I ache for it.

 

As the dilation progresses to 8cm, the pain is overwhelming. Marilyn’s body is colossal in its strength and humbling in its vulnerability. Her face is dazed, panting, illuminated, as wave after wave of contractions pass through her, bringing her baby down. Pieter’s recession is as powerful as Marilyn’s emergence. I’ve never quite seen the grace and compassion he is when quiet and inspired by the awesome being that is his wife. Their dance is harmonious. She is prepared to lead and also to be lead; he is prepared to follow and also to be followed. The two of them have given the room a sensuality, which Garrick and I also feel and express in our eyes. It is only when you are a friend of your body, and of pain, that you can find the sexuality of birth, like a surprising diamond in a gushing river.

 

And that river is certainly gushing now, we can all sense it. Keana is ready to come. Garrick quietly removes himself so that Marilyn can birth in the most secluded way and I don’t know if I have ever felt more proud of his gentle selflessness. The midwife confirms that she is fully dilated and we assist her into the welcoming arms of the warm bath where she drifts between the heaven of rest and the heaven of sharpness. At one stage I am separated from her behind a curtain and I hear her let out an animal roar, as she touches her threshold of pain. Because she can’t see me, I let myself cry. But I am not crying for her, I am crying for me. I have done this too, I have given birth twice and embraced pain and fear to go and meet my babies. For the first time, I actually realise how miraculous that is and my tears roll in recognition of what my body and I did together. I remember channelling that the function of pain in a birth (and possibly elsewhere) is to take us to the edge of our identity so that we will give permission to step beyond it. I watch this in Marilyn as she begins to push. In that moment she is not attached to her personality, her image, her past, her future or all the stories she tells about who she is. She is immersed in a moment that is relentlessly physical and, therefore, wholly spiritual.

 

Watching her push – in fact pushing with her – is incredible, incredulous. We can see Keana’s black, wispy hair in the water already. Marilyn reaches down to touch her daughter’s head as she spends the last few moments inside the body of her mother. We are encouraging her to push, to breathe, but she is oblivious to anything but the command of the contraction that bears her baby down. The room is dramatic. Not one of the people there is thinking of a single thing except what is happening in front of us. We are singular, alive, witnesses to power. Marilyn reaches down inside her to roar an ancient roar and pushes Keana’s head into the water. I grip her hand and watch as the head turns into a neck, turns into shoulders and eventually a complete, perfect body slides out of another and into life. There is no way to get used to that. Yet there they are – Marilyn, Pieter and Keana in each other’s arms, cradling themselves, recognising themselves. Only a moment ago pain was taking Marilyn to the edge of herself, now she is gurgling to her baby girl asking her if she is cold and hungry.

 

I retreat now, spilling my tears carefully so as not to shift focus off of an intimacy so sacred that it can’t bear itself for very long and is soon replaced by scales and stitching and latching and laughter. I take a look at the clock on the wall and I know that I will always remember the baby, and the self, that I birthed at 4.50pm on 11 June 2008.