Tomorrow I’m going to participate in a native sweat lodge up on Crystal Mountain, here in Nelson B.C. The first thing we do in the lodge is ‘gather our allies.’ This is an ancient tradition with aboriginal people all over the world. They perceive the world to be a living web of sacred energy, full of allies. I have had experiences on shamanic journeys and in meditation where I felt very strongly the presence of these amazing beings.

What is an ally? An ally is a being whose nature calls forth the deepest and truest part of your being. An ally supports you, cares for you, loves you and teaches you.

There are many different kinds and levels of allies. On the deepest level, our true nature, our unconditioned being, is our most powerful ally. An animal or plant can be an ally, or a tree. A place can be an ally-a cave, or a meadow. The mountain Arunachala in southern India was the sage Ramama Maharshi’s ally. He received incredible strength and inspiration from his beloved mountain. A book can be an ally, a rock, or a poem. A friend, a child, a teacher can be an ally. The most important thing is to recognize them, call on them, and be grateful. No one on earth is without allies. Allies can appear from nowhere, at a moment’s notice.

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We hear a lot of talk about evolution these days. My experience is that it is not an abstract, scientific concept, but an actual force that expresses itself in all of our lives. Your evolutionary impulse does not come from your mind. The mind wants status, security, approval and control. It resists change, transformation and evolution. I’m sure you have noticed this! Many of us are dragged through an evolutionary process kicking and screaming, surrendering to it only when we have no more options.

I have been exploring ways and means of facilitating the process of evolution, personally and collectively, with my students and clients, over the last 20 years. (See the newsletters on my website for more on this topic.) It seems very clear at this point that we all need to evolve, that conscious evolution is a process that never ends. We don’t reach a point and think, “Great, now I’m done!” On a deep core level, our true self is whole and complete, right in this moment. On the level of discovering how to live as a human being, the learning is endless.

On one level, evolution is essential because we keep bumping up against the things that aren’t working. On another level, evolution is just what is happening, whether we like it or not. It just seems to be what the universe does. When Barbara Marx Hubbard speaks of evolution, she talks about the caterpillar and the butterfly. When the caterpillar is at the very beginning of turning into a butterfly, something happens which is invisible to the eye, and essential to the ongoing transformation. The caterpillar grows ‘imaginal cells.’ These are a new kind of cell, capable of imagining the possibility of actually being a butterfly. These tiny imaginal cells are what support and initiate this whole radical process for the caterpillar.

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For the past twenty years I’ve been teaching and coaching people in ‘speaking from the heart’; intimacy, connection, and public speaking-all levels of communication.
Something that continues to amaze me is the power of the word. We live in a sea of language- spoken and written words, all day long; but we don’t always realize their power to affect us. The truth is, words have far more power to hurt us than sticks and stones do, and far more power to lift us up as well.

Take some time in the next few days and just check it out. Notice the words that people use, and how they affect you. Notice that others are not affected by the same words in the same way. Which words can you think of that empower you, free you, inspire you, tickle you? Which words seem dead, dull, meaningless. Which words shut you down?

Try speaking in your next few conversations with more awareness. Be clear about your intention, and chose the words that you use to line up with your intention.

What if you knew that your words had the power to impact the mind of each being you meet, for better or for worse? How would you speak then?

Can you remember a conversation you had with someone that really helped or encouraged you? How did that happen?

I remember one day in Grade 5, when I came home and told my mother what I had learned in science class. I was on fire with it.  This was in the 50’s, long before we all heard about quantum physics

‘Mum,” I said, “When you look at that chair and think it’s solid, that’s not really how it is!”

“What do you mean?” she asked me.

“It’s just how it looks,” I told her. “ But really, that chair, and everything else, is made of tiny little particles called molecules and atoms, that are zooming around all the time.”

My mother looked quite stunned. “Are you sure that’s what your teacher said?” she asked me. “And what are these little zooming things made of?”

“Well,” I said, saving the best for the last, “molecules and atoms are really nothing but space.” After that my mother was very quiet. She just walked around, touching things and shaking her head, for the rest of the day, in a state of wonder, curiosity and deep bewilderment.

I have always remembered the feeling of that afternoon. It was as if my mother and I reached a precipice, over which our minds could not carry us; and we stood there together, peering into the mystery of Being.

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How can we wake up and take full responsibility for our lives?  How do we live when we know that outer events do not determine our inner experience? I have been contemplating these questions deeply during the last while.  In one of my newsletters lately I wrote about the Dalai Lama as being a living example of someone who has found an unshakeable sense of well being, undiminished by the horror of what has happened to his country.

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Over the last twenty-five years I’ve spent teaching and coaching, I’ve become very interested in the nature of real change. It seems to be such a rare phenomenon; and yet there have been these moments, in myself and others, when something opened, and nothing was quite the same after that. I’ve spent hundreds of hours talking to people about this mysterious process called transformation. How does it happen? What leads up to it? What’s it all about? Shakespeare had a phrase for it: ‘Ripeness is all.’ What brings about that ripeness in us? It seems an important question to ask at this time in our world. I think a lot of us are experiencing a kind of ‘evolutionary pressure’, not just as individuals, but collectively, as a species that needs to transform in some radical ways.

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