One of my clients spoke to me this week of a longing that emerged in her, out of nowhere, to say a big ‘yes’ to everything. And it wouldn’t disappear. She couldn’t put the genie back in the bottle.

This impulse to let go of the struggle, the ongoing ‘no,’ has nothing to do with falling into passivity. This ‘yes’ is the totally natural way of presence, the freedom of our open awareness.

This longing often comes when we finally begin to see how high the cost has been of our ‘no’, our resistance to life, to the people around us, and to ourselves.

We may read a lot of wisdom, and listen to a lot of teachings, but it’s not so easy to wake up from this belief that we need to control, to manipulate, and to struggle. It seems to be part of what we all inherit as we grow up. A belief that an adult is in control of life. We are all swimming around in the big ocean of this idea, floundering around together, grappling with this wild, uncontrollable thing called our life.

And then something happens, like the small child in the story of ‘The Emperor’s New Clothes’, who sees what no-one else is willing to see. Perhaps a small and innocent voice within us begins to whisper, “This is not working. There must be some other way to live.” From out of nowhere comes this invitation-- to consider the futility of all the ways we have been trying to control and manipulate our life.

This is the gateway that appears for each one of us, when real transformation is at hand. We allow ourselves, finally, to feel the price we have paid for our fierce grip on the steering wheel. Just before major shifts happen, many people dream of careening down a highway in a car that’s out of control. They are gripping the wheel and trying to steer the car with all their might, but to no effect.

Bit by bit, the possibility of another way of being starts to emerge. Perhaps for the first time.
Like a lifesaver for the one who is drowning in this wild ocean. A glimpse of reality, an inkling that life is never going to be the way I thought it would be. It’s not going to align with my preferences and demands, my needs to avoid, to hold on, to know what is happening. 

I may have many fantasies about how things should be. Now I realize, often with a shock, that life doesn’t come with a guarantee, with a refund policy, if things don’t work out. I begin to taste the medicine of disillusionment. It’s a strong medicine and a good one, if I really want to be free, if I want to love life as it is, if I want to be fully alive.

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This Free Intro Call happens on June 7 at 7pm pacific time, 8pm mountain time, 10pm eastern time.

To register :‘Living Inquiry, Endless Surrender’

We already have people from Europe and North America registering for this course. This is an opportunity for you to become part of a global community committed to awakening and evolution.

We’ll be exploring the basic foundations of awakening to natural presence or awareness, and then learning how we can actually stabilize this awakening in each other. Finding out how to support the evolution that is just waiting to happen in our lives.

We all feeling this so clearly right now, hundreds and thousands of us. Knowing that the traditional spiritual teachings and the psychological work has not been enough.

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A coach is someone who sees you, who hears you, and who offers you an unconditional space in which to explore, discover, ask, express and create.
There is no way of knowing what this will look like.
Sometimes it is weeping, sometimes it is dialogue, sometimes it is just sitting in stillness, sometimes it’s celebration, sometimes it is the hard work of bringing things to completion.

Sometimes

..you come
to a place
whose only task

is to trouble you
with tiny
but frightening requests

..questions
that can make
or unmake
a life,

questions
that have patiently
waited for you,

questions
that have no right
to go away.  (David Whyte)

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I am writing these blogs to clarify the foundation, and the core principles of this 12 month online course. To find out more about it, click here:‘Living Inquiry, Endless Surrender’ The 12 month online course

I’ll be writing about ‘Living Inquiry, Endless Surrender,’ and also about my upcoming 5 day retreat, ‘Mutual Evolution, Waking Up Together’ Mutual Evolution, Waking Up Together

One of the main questions or inquiries we will be engaging in during this course is, “How do I move beyond self-preoccupation?”

This movement is very much like growing up, evolving from a confined and rigid sense of our identity, to a much more vital and expanded sense of who we are..

To engage in this kind of evolution can be quite challenging, because most of us have been trained to think that we should focus on ourselves, our needs, and our own happiness. We might hear about someone like Nelson Mandela, or the Dalai Lama, who seem to have very different values and motivations. But we don’t believe that we could really live like that.

Why not? Because we haven’t taken a good look at what our self-preoccupation actually costs us. Living this way puts us in the service of our survival brain, the part of us that is only interested in safety, control and approval.

A client of mine spoke to me the other day about his longing to be spontaneous and uncontrived.  We spoke about the other side of him, his conditioned self, as the one that needs to plan everything, that is terribly afraid of failure, of taking risks, of being exposed.

These are universal experiences. Everyone can feel and recognize these parts of themselves. We have been trained to go along with our survival personality, instead of recognizing another part of who we are, the part that wants to be real, authentic, intimate, and creative.

The good news is this: Once we have recognized these two parts of who we are, we can begin to align ourselves with our authentic self, our spontaneous self, our evolutionary self. Whatever your name for it is, that’s fine. And we can recognize these aspects or dimensions in others as well, and learn to support each other in this evolutionary journey.

This doesn’t mean we are going to throw all of our common sense away and stop paying the bills, or stop planning for our future.

Our evolutionary self is our grown up self. It is grounded in reality, and it knows how to deal with life as it is. It can respond to what actually needs to be done, instead of waiting for when we feel like it.

And this part of us can create structures in our lives to support us, guide us and nourish us.

How would you live if you called your authentic self to the foreground of your life? If you allowed yourself to be fully alive, intimate, and connected to the whole field of life?

If you appreciated your own unique being, without feeling separate or cut off?

We can’t answer these questions with our minds, and we certainly can’t answer them alone. We need to live with these questions, and allow a new way of being to emerge.

And we need to do this in community, to learn to support each other in awakening and evolving beyond our current level of consciousness.

Well here she is
at last,
laughing as she comes.

Laughing wildly
as her beauty
penetrates the frozen places,
inside and out.

The North welcomes her
as no other place.

This is no subtle rendezvous.
This is not the time
for shyness,
for holding back,
for downward glances.

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These are notes from a coaching session last week, that touch directly on what seems to be one of the next steps in our evolution. I am calling the client I was working with Sam.

Shayla: Love, what is love? To explore this question is to open ourselves to something that is profoundly and deeply alive, a llving being, that cannot be trapped in words or concepts. It’s being so intimate with what is here now, with who is here now, that I am dying to the past, to all my memories of what has been.

Sam: Yes, I feel this, I really feel it, and then when I try to hold onto it, it slips like water through my hands. It’s like talking into the wind.

Shayla: Yes, that’s it, and I feel the energy, the consciousness of the heart alive in you. It just has not been fully recognized, and called forth, called deep into your own being-this tenderness for yourself, for your own experience of despair, and confusion.

Sam: I want to tell my friend about this, how he could really begin to care for himself, to feel himself, to be fully present to himself, to listen to himself.

Shayla: But it doesn’t really work, does it, when we tell each other things? It’s like a parent, pointing the wagging finger at us, so we don’t want to listen.

Sam: Yes, that’s right. And there must be something here for me too, not just for him, or I would not be feeling such despair.

Shayla: I think we can find another way, instead of telling-- learning to call forth this heart-wisdom in the ones we love, not telling them anything, but trusting that this wisdom actually lives in them, no matter how long it has been denied.

Sam: So how does this relate to me and my despair?

Shayla: It feels like an invitation to open to this dark emptiness that you speak of, that comes when you are just sitting. Instead of reaching for something else, for something better, for what you have heard some other teacher speak about. To lay down this movement away from where you are, and to really open to this darkness, this emptiness.

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What Do We Know

Look, it’s spring.
And last year’s loose dust
has turned into this soft willingness.
The wind-flowers have come up trembling;
slowly the brackens are uplifting their curvaceous and pale bodies.
The thrushes have come home,
none less than filled
with mystery, sorrow, happiness, music, ambition.

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Dear friends
A dear friend just replied to my ‘Fierce Clarity’ Lifeletter with an amazing poem. I’m passing it on-it’s worth reading.

Thank you Regis.

love
Shayla

When the flood comes, it leaves something

when the landslide comes, it leaves something

when the fire comes, it leaves nothing--

and when the fire goes

that which remains

is Everything

Regis ( in Belgium )