The Transformation of Consciousness

Live your life in a spirit of openness, confidence, and determination.

In many of the ancient, indigenous traditions, the fall was understood to be the beginning of the year. As the harvest comes in, and we receive what we have sown, what has flourished and blossomed begins to return to the root, and a whole new cycle of life begins. New beginnings are an exciting time, and they are also full of challenges. In order to begin, we often need to learn how to release, forgive and let go of the past.

The Chinese sages called this part of life, ‘Difficulty at the Beginning,’ and compared it to the energy and vitality that a tender young shoot needs when it first pierces through the seed, or a young chick when it pecks its way out of the egg.

It’s not necessary to do this all by yourself. That’s why autumn is an optimal time for personal coaching sessions and numerology and human design readings.

These sessions can help you focus, inquire, listen to what is calling you right now, and open to the nature of your natural gifts and deepest resources.

These sessions can also help you achieve completion in your life, learn to stop ‘tolerating’ what is no longer working for you, and open to new ways to being and moving in the world. Achieving completion opens a clear space from which to manifest your deepest intentions- to act decisively, from the heart, without ambivalence and doubt.

Please call me if you have questions: 250.352.7908. or 1. 866.795.4968

For more info re Human Design and Numerology Readings and Barefoot Coaching, visit these sections on my website: http://www.barefootjourneys.net

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Let’s Turnaround

One of the themes that keeps appearing in my life and work lately has been the nature of cause and effect. How much freedom do I really have? Am I really the product of my genes, my upbringing, my conditioning and my situation? We certainly tend to think like that in our society. But is it really true?

I have asked hundreds of students and clients this question over the years: Do you really think that circumstances, people and situations determine your experience?
I’ve asked them to sit with that question in silence and wait for the truth to show itself to them. And I’ve never had anyone reply ‘Yes’ to that question. That amazes me. Every single person who took that question into their heart said ‘No, it must be that I am responsible for my own experience. I can’t make anything else the cause, otherwise I am a victim.’

But here’s where it really gets interesting. When I looked at the way I was actually living, I was amazed at how often I was thinking and behaving as if circumstances were much more powerful than I was.  (It was often my coaches that pointed this out to me, God bless them.) And I saw the same thing happening with my students and clients. I really started to wonder, “What’s going on here? Why are we not living according to what we really know to be true?”

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It’s random acts of kindness week in B.C. A small group of children started the week off a few years ago in their neighborhood, and the project took on a life of it’s own, like a stream that could not be contained within its banks.

I’ve asked a lot of people about their experiences with ‘unsolicited kindness.’ Everyone has experienced this mysterious force. There are stories that fall on your heart like sweet rain. Can you imagine if we heard such tales every day on the news?

Here’s mine:
A few years ago I was leaving a week- long meditation retreat. I was with a friend, and we didn’t know the area very well, or how to get to the main highway from where we were. We were still very deep in some meditative state. I was driving, and it wasn’t feeling so easy, even to drive round this quiet neighborhood.  We got thoroughly lost in about 10 minutes.

I stopped at a mall. There were a few cars and people around. I looked way across the parking lot and saw a guy standing beside his blue truck. Somehow I knew that he was the one.

I walked over, told him we were lost, and asked him for directions. He was very kind, and repeated them a few times for me, while I wrote them down. I could see him looking at me, picking right up on the state I was in.

I walked back to my car, and he waved and wished me luck. He was going home, back in the other direction. I got back in the car with my friend and we drove off. This time, due to the totally altered state we were both in, it only took us five minutes to get lost again. But now we were right in the middle of heavy traffic, and it was not going to be easy to stop. I could feel myself starting to panic. I looked out the window, and there was my guy who had given us the directions, right behind us in his blue truck-honking and waving us into the next lane, where we would turn right. I realized that he had turned around and followed me, knowing that I was not really capable of following his directions.

I turned right and started to get my bearings. I leaned out the window and shouted to him, “Thank you, I’m okay now-go back home!”

“No way,” he shouted back at me, “I’m staying with you till you get to the bridge.”

And he did. It was a good ten minute ride, and he stuck with us the whole way, until we turned onto the bridge and waved him goodbye.

Perhaps it was because of the state I was in that day, but I never really got over it. This ordinary looking guy in blue jeans with his pick up truck had a heart as big as the moon. He had absolutely nothing to gain by taking care of us like that. I’ll never see him again, and I don’t know his name. But he lives on, inside me.

Did you know that people are beginning to say that we are living in the age of anxiety? As a coach and teacher, this doesn’t surprise me. I have the opportunity to hear people express daily the level of anxiety they are living with. The speed of change is so intense that people can’t keep up with it. Everything we used to depend on, all our traditional support systems, are falling away.

More people are on medication that we can imagine, because a lot of people don’t talk about it. They feel ashamed, helpless, without power.

The way that I work with people initiates them into a process of deep change, or what is sometimes called ‘second order learning.’ This kind of learning is what we really need in our world right now. Traditional forms of learning just give you more information. But information is not going to do the trick at this point, because the information itself keeps changing and becoming obsolete.

We need to discover a way of learning that connects us with our being, the core of who we are.  When we can access that place, things really start to turn around for us. Then we are no longer taking knowledge and information from the outside, and imposing it on ourselves. Instead, we are actually opening to the genuine wisdom that lives inside us, and engaging in a real process of transformation. In the short run, it’s a lot more challenging. In the long run, it’s the only thing that’s really sustainable.

I give classes, retreats and personal coaching sessions on this kind of learning.
Please call me or email me for a 10 minute chat if you are interested.

Shayla
http://www.barefootjourneys.net
250.352.7908
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My friend David Mackenzie inspired me to offer you this invitation:
Please print this newsletter. It is meant to be held in your hand.

In the Native American shamanic tradition, there’s a way that a teacher chooses the students who come to learn the art of plant medicine. “Here’s your first test,” says the teacher. “Go and find as many sacred plants as you can in the next hour and bring them back to me.”
If the student walks away to look for them, the teacher knows he or she is not ready to begin the apprenticeship. The ones who are chosen do not move. They stand where they are, and look for the plants that live right under their feet.

There is a lot of talk about gratitude these days, a lot of talk about learning to appreciate what is right under our feet. People all over the place are awakening to the power of gratitude, not just as a warm fuzzy feeling, but as a liberating and transforming force in their lives. Who could deny that gratitude is good thing? It’s easy to talk about it, easy to think about it-quite a bit harder to walk the gratitude walk in a genuine and sustained way.

A few years ago I came to a place where I realized how conditional my gratitude was. I could feel gratitude for things that pleased and delighted me- not for the times when I was stuck in between a rock and a hard place.  I could only appreciate those times in retrospect, after I had gleaned the hard- won wisdom out of the pain and struggle.

I found myself becoming more and more curious about how it would be to be grateful for it all, for every single moment of my life-nothing left out.  It was one of those questions that wouldn’t go away. It just kept drilling down into my heart, into the moments when I was deep into resisting what was going on. It drilled into the annoying little moments: “How would it feel to be grateful for this parking ticket?” and the big ones, “How can I be grateful for losing a chunk of my investments?”

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The completeness
is here,
the fulfillment
is not something
I can get,
reach, earn,
grasp,
grab, package,
imagine.
It’s so soft,
so empty
and invisible.

My mother never told me
it would be
like this.
My father must have
suspected it-
that’s why he had to drink
and drink.

Because then,
lying on his back,
at night
in the snow
of our front yard,
out of his mind,
out of his body,

It was then
he could rest,
and get right off
the crazy
merry-go round
of desire
that was eating at him
from inside.

And not even
his own desires,
but my mother’s.
He inhaled them all-
her voracious consuming vision
of the good life.

Deep inside,
he knew better.
After the war,
after all the madness,
he knew

It’s just rest
that calls us,
the alive silence.

We all just
want to stop
right here.

Two kinds of Gratitude

It seems to me that gratitude, real gratitude, is something that springs directly from our true nature, our unconditioned being. It’s not something we can force, or produce, just because it seems like a good idea. But we can cultivate it, call it forth, invite it. And when we do this, gratitude has the power of a transforming force.

A few years ago I was exchanging gratitude emails with a friend. Every day we would send each other an email, expressing gratitude for something. It was fun. One day she told me how grateful she was for her clean sheets. Another day I told her how grateful I was for the chickadees on my bird feeder. I was feeling more and more open to the little things, the ‘ordinary magic’ of my life.

One evening I went out with some friends to a celebration. When I got home I realized I had taken a new purse with me, and that my house keys were in my backpack, inside the house. I was not happy to be locked out of my house. It was late and I was tired. I just wanted to go to bed. I realized I would have to drive 20 minutes out to my partner’s house, wake him up, and get the spare key from him, and then drive 20 minutes back. I went out to my car and just sat there, feeling more and more annoyed. Then a little, very quiet voice inside me asked this question: “Why can’t you be grateful for this?”

I was really surprised. It was clear to me, sitting in my car that night, that all of my gratitude was conditional, limited, based on my desires and preferences. I was only really grateful for what felt good to me, what I liked, what pleased me. All the rest were things I just put up with, barely tolerating them.

Since that evening I started following a new thread of inquiry. What is unconditional gratitude? What would life be like if I just welcomed everything, said yes to it all? What if life is really always bringing me everything I need?

Here’s what I notice. If I go through my day with a willingness to be open to this possibility, that life is bringing me what I need, I experience everything from a very different place. I don’t have to know this, I just have to be willing to entertain the possibility that Mick Jagger was right:

‘You can’t always get what you want
You can’t always get what you want
But if you try sometimes
You just might find
You get what you need.’

There is a lot of talk about presence these days. We come upon this word in all sorts of places. Our collective consciousness seems to be moving in the direction of presence, as if in response to some deep and urgent need.

What does it mean to really embody the meaning of this word, and why is it so important to us at this time?

To be fully present is to rest in the state of being. Right now our whole world has been swept up into a frenzy of doing, getting, and achieving. We are all participating in this global trance. Everyone talks about wanting to slow down, but most of us just keep running, hoping that if we run fast enough, sometime soon we’ll find the time to rest.

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