Optimistic or naive?

Garrick and I were subdued in the car this morning listening to the latest news on 702. What I heard was the crumbling of Zimbabwe, the compromise of our judiciary, public broadcaster and police; and key public figures saying that they would die – and kill -for the president of the ANC. Even for a Pollyanna like me, this is distressing.

Some of the people around me – close friends, family and clients – are seeing Africa (and South Africa is actually a part of Africa even if we do a good job of pretending it isn’t) getting steadily, and inevitably, more difficulty to live in. As a white person. (Though they don’t always add that).

Others – and often I’m the leader of this pack –  talk about the creative and transformative opportunities that exist here, and nowhere else and believe firmly that keeping our minds open, positive and keen will attract what we want. From this perspective, it would make sense NOT to listen to the news, not to stay in the room when friends start to prophesy African doom and not to give any head-space to anything other than my dreams, hopes and visions.

That would actually be easy for me, it’s my natural and deep inclination. Yet, a nagging voice chides me for being naive, prods me about the future of my (white, male) children and casts unwelcome shadows on my optimism.

The last group reading that I did addressed some of these concerns from these two perspectives:

• Global Renovation

Is the world the way you like it? Do the systems, nations, businesses of this planet operate according to your highest values? Most citizens of the earth would say No. We want a simpler, cleaner way of life. We want a world driven by values and not by commercialism. We want to co-exist harmoniously with our planet. And yet, when things start to change (electricity shortages, fuel prices) – even if they may well be changing in that direction – we don’t want that either.

You can compare this to having your home renovated. You are the one that was dissatisfied with how it looked before, and you demonstrated this by calling an architect or contracting a builder. You know that the renovations are going to end up giving you a nicer place to live in, and yet you are still inconvenienced and often severely annoyed by both the process and the cost. Understandable! 

Maybe we are renovating the planet, and maybe we are the ones who called for it.

The only way that I can see to work with this is to accept some chaos and upheaval, to let go of some attachments and to be part of influencing the design of our new home so that it looks the way you want it to look.  You can criticise all you like from the sidelines, or you can be an empowered part of the process, designing the planet you want to live in. If you are expecting ANY country, ANY government, ANY energy supplier, to make your life work for you, then that is a disempowered, albeit common, approach.

• Dominance and Submission

Only when Africa breaks its centuries-long cycle of dominance and submission will we heal the disparity that causes violence, crime, dictatorship, poverty and spiritual hopelessness. What that means in practice is that those who have – legitimately or illegitimately – managed to gain dominance, need to say no thank you to it, to bring others on board and share power and resources. The submissive cannot enable this. Only when the dominant party in any situation is prepared to let go of absolute power in exchange for absolute parity, will dominance and submission cease to be the only roles we know how to play.

The idea of global renovation and a short-circuit in the cycle of dominance does not make me feel that things are getting easier, but it does make me inspired to be part of a new world. If that’s naive, then I’m proud of it

 

Whole-some Living

I’d like to share with you what I did this morning. It took some courage but left me feeling uplifted, inspired and sure of myself. After resisting the experience sharply, I eventually surrendered and took what I think is a big leap towards creating my dream self. Truly, it was nothing less than pure transformation.

 

I went to have my hair done.

 

Hopefully for most of you this is a relatively normal activity. But, for me, committing time, energy and money to having my hair done requires surrender, risk and a leap out my comfort zone to the extent that I can call it a spiritual experience. Not because I got high on the peroxide fumes or braved Sandton City on a Saturday morning, but because my story about who I am has excluded beauty for a long time.

 

For reasons that are too complex to mention beauty is an aspect of divinity that has never seemed to belong to me. I have an uncanny (and certainly not coincidental) knack of being surrounded by beautiful family, friends, and even my own sons, but I’ve never managed to own what was being reflected to me. So for a long time, I reacted to beauty the way many of us react to what we secretly want but think we can’t have. We make it wrong! It was much easier for me to call beautiful people superficial than to face my own sense of lack and much more convenient to label those girls who did embrace their beauty, sluts, rather than begin the sticky, scary journey of embracing my own.

 

So I worked hard to carve an identity that positioned itself as somewhat opposite to beautiful. I developed the serious, intellectual, spiritual side of myself so that beauty in relation would look frivolous and meaningless. But, of course, that lack of wholeness repeatedly comes back to bite me on the bum! In a reading this weekend, it was gently suggested to me that my struggle with marketing myself and my work is a direct reflection of my own firm belief that the content (the inner) is far more important than the packaging (the outer). Ouch! But, in the practical, playful tone that is characteristic of the readings, I was advised not to judge myself for that (mis)belief but instead to do something I’d secretly wanted to do for ages – and without guilt! That’s why I found myself spending the morning with my head under a dryer rather than under a book.

 

There are many ways to look at what aspects of yourself you’re suppressing. An obvious one is to observe the labels you most often put on yourself and consider what the opposite of that might be. Do you think of yourself as clever, middle-aged or spiritual? Perhaps you’re missing out on the benefits of being a little silly, youthful in your thinking, or commercially minded? A friend of mine exemplified this to me when she took some time out from her two-year-old to shop for shoes. She consciously looked for the pair of boots that seemed the most UNmother-like and she feels wild and sexy each time she puts them on.  Just for the sake of feeling that it was a good thing to do, but the value goes even beyond the feeling. Being in touch with that side of herself is going to be extremely useful as she embraces her fledgling career and needs a sense of toughness to draw on, or when she has to muster up the self esteem to speak out.  Most often, it is our repressed selves that hold the key to our next step in business, relationships or personal growth.

 

What small choice can you make this month to express who you think you are not? I guarantee you learning, liberation and a great deal of fun!

 

An angel in a packet of Kudu biltong

 

There were two funny, and humbling, synchronicities around today’s reading. Most of the reading was focused on inviting T to rest and ‘be soothed’, as she was trying to achieve a lot from a low base of energy, thereby exhausting herself. After the reading she told me that she had decided just last week, to rest and take some pressure off herself, as the focus for her month. Clearly she had sensed already what was in her highest interest, before even coming to a reading (it happens so often).

 

Right at the end of the reading, there was a small piece of practical advice to T – it would do you good to eat meat from game at the moment, she was told. It is very different from eating domestic animals, which are born to become produce, and will assist you to ground, but still remain light. Her smile was huge as she told me afterwards that on Friday her mum had given her a big packet of Kudu biltong…she already had what she was being invited to eat!

 

This raises four fascinating points for me:

 

·         Your higher self communicates to you all the time, not just through channels, or teachers or spiritual books. T had just felt like she needed to rest for a while and this was exactly what her higher self confirmed was in her best interests. As the readings always say – your desires are the signature of your divinity – there’s actually no need to look anywhere else (though admittedly the confirmation can be fun!)

·         Often we categorise things (and people for that matter) into what is ‘spiritual’ and ‘not spiritual’. So, for example, vegetarianism and Deepak Chopra fall into the former category and Coca-cola and Robert Mugabe into the latter. But here, in a reading (and it’s not the first time) someone is specifically being encouraged to eat meat. This is not to say that eating meat is therefore spiritual and we should all go out and do it for immediate enlightenment. It’s instead an indication that, inherently, everything has its ability to serve someone in some place at some time. Disregarding anything, or anyone, as unspiritual limits our ability to benefit from them.

·         T hasn’t always had an easy relationship with her mom and would probably not describe her as one of her teachers, yet she was the one who handed T the gift of something she really needs at the moment. Our learning, or gifts, or support can come in ANY package, through any person, even the least likely. Keep your eyes, eyes and heart open for where love is going to show up next….

·         And, lastly, I was reminded that you probably already have what you need right now.