This is it! The New Earth is here now! May all of us turn around and step into the Light and set the world ablaze with love. ww.shelora.com

The world is joined today in a global intention to create a balanced, peaceful world. It is Firethegrid.com at 19:19 Rio de Janeiro time.

My heart is filled with so much love, I can barely contain it. We are the World. Look at the One in the mirror, and change the way we treat each other, indeed. I love you all. www.shelora.com

Obama Joins the Conversation for Transformation

The Obama Administration Reached out to Evolutionary Leaders to Communicate About What is Transpiring on the Planet. Below is Their Response:

The human family is in the midst of the most significant transformation of consciousness since its emergence in Africa over one hundred thousand years ago. Consciousness has been evolving for billions of years from the first cell to us. We are becoming aware that through our own consciousness ness the Universe can know itself. This awareness reveals incredible potential for our individual and collective humanity.

Simultaneously we are the first species on this Earth aware that we can destroy ourselves by our own action. This may be the greatest wake up call to the evolution of consciousness since the origin of Homo Sapiens.

We now realize that we are affecting our own evolution by everything we do. This knowledge awakens in us the aspiration to become more conscious through subjective practices including meditation, reflection, prayer, intuition, creativity, and conscious choice making that accelerate our evolution in the direction of unity consciousness and inspire us to deeply align our collective vision.

THE CHALLENGE

At this juncture in human history, urgent global crises challenge us to learn to live sustainably, in harmony and in gratitude with one another and with the living universe. The changes required of humanity are broad, deep and far reaching. Only by acting swiftly and creatively can we birth a planetary culture that will bring well-being to every form of life in the Earth community.

The good news is that a compelling new story of our potential as a whole human species is emerging – a story of collaboration, citizen action, dialogue and new understandings propelled by unprecedented levels of democratic freedom, multicultural exchange, and access to communication technologies. It is nothing less than the story of our collective evolution.

OPPORTUNITIES FOR ACTION

We recognize that the inner and outer aspects of life evolve together. A dramatic awakening in consciousness will involve an equally dramatic shift in outward aspects of our lives. In particular we see the following as vital opportunities for our conscious evolution, both personally and collectively.

Cultivating a Paradigm of Aliveness
We regard the Universe as deeply alive and conscious by nature. In a living Universe, our sense of subtle connection and participation with life around us is the basis for a compassionate and cooperative approach to living.

Education for an Evolving Consciousness
Awakening consciousness is the foundation for all the change we seek to see in the world. We can work to elevate our capacity for conscious reflection and creative action in our personal lives as well as our collective lives in communities. We must support research and education strategies that optimize human capacities and explore the nature of consciousness.

Restoring Ecological Balance
The balance of planetary ecosystems is fundamental to our survival. We must reverse the pollution of our global commons – the water, air and soil that nourish all life. We must encourage the proliferation of clean, renewable energy sources and expend all necessary resources toward mitigating the effects of climate change.

Encouraging Conscious Media
We must find innovative ways to use the new electronic media as the mirror of our positive evolutionary story, investing in their capacity to reach across differences of generation, culture, religion, wealth and gender to build a working consensus about our collective future.

Engaging in Social and Political Transformation
More sustainable ways of living will require the support of a more conscious democracy and vibrant civil society from which more enlightened leaders will emerge. All individuals should be encouraged to use their gifts to create participatory, responsible and compassionate models of governance.

Working for Integrity in Commerce
Conscious businesses that are aware of the scope, depth and long- range impacts of their actions are key to achieving sustainability. Business must become an ethical steward of the Earth’s ecology and consciously establish an economic basis for a future of equitably shared abundance.

Promoting Health and Healing
The science of mind-body-spirit health has demonstrated the profound connection between the health of a whole person and the health of the system in which he or she lives. Whole systems healing, respecting both traditional knowledge and modern sciences, must be supported in physical, social, and spiritual domains.

Building Global Community
The new story is about all of us who share this planet. Together, we can create a culture of peace that eliminates the need for armed conflict, respecting and appreciating the glorious diversity of our human family.

YOUR PARTICIPATION IS VITAL

Our group has done its best to articulate possibilities for the evolution of consciousness at this crucial moment in time.

Please reflect on this document, feel what resonates in your being and calls forth a response on your part. We invite you to discuss it with others, continuing this global conversation by adding to it the wisdom that is uniquely your own.

Together let us create a  new narrative of conscious evolution that is a call to individual and collective action, birthing the most significant transformation of consciousness in history. Join in the Call to Conscious Evolution by signing the pledge now.

FOUNDING SIGNATORIES
Chopra Centre, Carlsbad, California, July 26th, 2008
Michael Beckwith, Joan Borysenko, Gregg Braden, Rinaldo Brutoco, Thomas Callahan, Deepak Chopra, Mallika Chopra, Dale Colton, Gordon Dveirin, Duane Elgin, Leslie Elkus, Barbara Fields, Debbie Ford, Ashok Gangadean, Kathleen Gardarian, Tom Gegaz, Charles Gibbs, Kathy Hearn, Jean Houston, Barbara Marx Hubbard, Bruce Lipton, Judy Martin, Rod McGrew, Steve McIntosh, Lynne McTaggart, Deborah Moldow, James, O’Dea, Carter Phipps, Wendy  Craig-Purcell, Carolyn Rangel, Rustrum Roy, Peter Russell, Gerard Senehi, Emily Squires, Brian Swimme, Diane Williams, Marianne Williamson, Tom Zender.

See that others are saying, sign the petition, and write your comments:
www.thepetitionsite.com/takeaction/248704259

Global Coherence Initiative
14700 West Park Ave. Boulder Creek, California, USA

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So beautiful a soul could not contain this world in his heart, so he exploded out of it into eternity. So beautiful a soul could not contain this world in his heart, so he exploded out of it into eternity. http://ping.fm/pDs9l

Relationship Breakthroughs: Transcending the “Upper Limit Problem”

Have you considered that the reason your relationships crash and burn might be your fear of your own greatness?

Have you ever been on the verge of a breakthrough in relationship, an opportunity for even greater levels of shared love, abundance and creativity,  when suddenly, out of the blue, you found yourself engaged in a senseless squabble, shattering the newly emerged space of possibility with shrieks of righteous indignant demands, blame and criticism?

One minute you are flying free, nothing but blue sky and open space, and the next, you crash landed yourself in an argument over who was the bigger victim!

Seems insane, doesn’t it, but apparently eighty per cent of successful people have unsuccessful relationships!

Allan Hunkin, in his book, “Finding the Elegant Solution in any Situation,”  www.http://ElegantSolution.net,  calls this hitting the  limit  called, “How Good You can Stand It?”

Hendricks refers to it as an Upper Limit Problem. In his book, The Big Leap, Gay Hendricks outlines the reasons why he believes EVERY problem is an Upper Limit Problem. Hendricks calls this   ULP.  (Yes, it sounds like GULP!)

Every breakdown, he contends, comes from being confronted by a limiting belief from your past.

He outlines the four main ones:

1. “I’m fundamentally flawed, there is something wrong with me, with my brain, with my body, with me, as I am, and I must mess this opportunity up, because good things can’t happen to bad people.”

2. “If I succeed, I will be leaving people behind from the past that I should  be loyal to.”

3. “I am a burden in the world, and I must sabotage this success so I won’t be a bigger burden.”

4. “I must dim my brilliance, so I won’t outshine someone from my past.”

Hendricks says that whenever we are confronted by the possibility of our true greatness, we sabotage ourselves. We start an argument, have an accident, or start worrying. This, he calls an Upper Limit Problem.

He looks at how we sabotage ourselves in all areas of our lives, financial, emotional, creative, to avoid our true genius, and invites us into a conspiracy to defeat this upper limit within ourselves and those we love.

And therein lies the rub.

Those we love seem to be in a conspiracy not to break through the Upper Limit, as Allan Hunkin points out in his book, “Finding the Elegant Solution in any Situation,

” We seem hell bent on discovering not, “How good we can stand it,” but “How low can we go?”

Hunkin refers to the Upper Limit as the Worthiness Set Point.

He says we spiral up and down, between these two limiting beliefs, “How good can we stand it and “How low can you go,” trying to find stability.

Each time we hit bottom, we try to raise our sense of self worth and allow more abundance, creativity, and success in.

The trick, of course, is to avoid heading downward, and creating the self sabotage in the first place, by recognizing the symptoms that you have hit the top, Hendrick’s  Upper Limit Problem.

Hendricks says  we are on a constant spiral upwards, achieving excellence, until we reach our invisible Upper Limit,  which we use to sabotage ourselves from moving into our Zone of Genius, rather than staying in the safe, predictable, comfortable  Zone of Excellence which most successful people know.

He says that the more successful you are in danger of becoming, the more predictable it is that you will create one of the following breakdowns to prevent a breakthrough:

Worrying

Blame and criticism

Squabbling

Accidents

Illness

Hiding significant feelings

Not keeping agreements

Not speaking significant truths to the relevant people.

Deflecting compliments

All of these show up significantly, in the area of relationship in our lives.

“No matter how brilliant we may be at making money or making music, or making soup,” states Hendricks,  we are all amateurs when it comes to feeling and expressing love.”

He says that relationship is the ultimate spiritual path because it constantly presents us with the challenge to love and embrace in the very situations in which we’re most prone to shun and reject. Hendricks says that the Universe will teach us our lessons with the tickle of a feather, or the whomp of a sledgehammer, depending on how open we are to learning that particular lesson.

To prevent such “humiliating collisions with the universe,”  he suggests we all adopt an attitude of learning in every moment of our relationships.

Here is the poem he translated, by the fourteenth century mystic, Hafiz

“Your Divine Invitation

You’re invited to meet the Divine.
Nobody can resist an invitation like that!

Now your choices narrow to two:
You can come to the Divine ready to dance.
Or
Be carried on a stretcher to the Divine Emergency Room.”

He offers a mantra to solves the Upper Limit Problem or ULP (sounds like Gulp!) and he invites us into an ULP conspiracy. Conspiracy: meaning to breathe with. I invite you to join me in this conspiracy.

Here is the mantra:

“I expand in abundance, success and love every day, as I inspire those around me to do the same.”

I have recently experienced the problem of resistance to the possibility of unbounded love and creativity in relationship.

Both of us, instead of embracing the expansion of opportunity that confronted us, isntead started a squabble about who was responsible for whom, and we both ended up dragged into the Divine Emergency Room, kicking and screaming!

Surely there is a better way to fly, and I believe it lies in discovering your true greatness, and being willing to step into it, removing any limiting beliefs we might hold that stop us from achieving the bliss of living in the “Zone of Genius” rather than settling for the Zone of Excellence.

And how do we make that magical, elegant solution practical?

I would appreciate any thoughts, comments, feedback or experiences you wish to share about reaching the upper limit of possibility of love, peace, and creative harmony in relationship.

Does any of this resonate for you?

How have you stopped yourself?

How have you broken through your limits and raised your Worthiness Set Point?

How has this impacted your sense of abundance, creativity and success in the world?

What miracles have you experienced by realizing every problem is an Upper Limit Problem?

I invite you to share your stories here.

Read my latest blog entry and see what you think.

AConversationforTransformation.com

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Pathways to Greatness

“When you refuse to take  take things personally, you avoid many upsets in your life. Your feelings of anger, jealousy, and even your sadness, will simply disappear if you don’t take things personally.” Don Miguel Ruiz

Now that is a deceptively simple little idea. When I drew that thought from a stack of cards yesterday, it got me thinking seriously about all the upsets in my life, and what was at the core of them.

Recently, after a year of spiraling erratically out of control, upwards into ecstasy, downwards dramatically into hell,  never stabilizing for more than a few days at a time,  I ended a very compelling relationship.

It was a relationship that had ignited my sense of passion, beauty and given me access to the possibility of my own greatness. I felt finally I might able to fulfill  my vision of a sacred partnership, a holy relationship, that I had held since the breakdown of my marriage. I saw myself becoming part of a dynamite duo, a partnership  in which we would both travel, speak, write, and broadcast. I would be engaged in a powerful conversation for transformation with a man who was my equal, a conversation so  uplifting and inspiring that it would make a difference to the quality of relationships everywhere on the planet.

Our relationship, at its highest, would light up the world.

In this relationship, I found myself growing, becoming more generous,  more creative, more loving, but at the same time, I was becoming equally more erratic, more angry, more stingy, less productive. Along with my partner, I swung wildly from one extreme to the other, trying desperately to find solid ground.

When it came to the point of choosing powerfully to move forward, when he asked me to marry him, I retreated, afraid, telling myself, “If it’s not an absolute YES, then it is NO.”

I asked myself repeatedly what was stopping us from building a foundation of trust, moving forward,, completing the past, and fulfilling the possibility of this relationship, taking it to higher ground.

Although I had spent countless hours in workshops, read countless self-help books on relationship, I could find no reasonable explanation for why two such bright and talented human beings, such great souls, so full of love and desire for the well being of each other and humankind, were failing to achieve the potential of our mutual greatness together.

I consulted A Course in Miracles, and was told, “The children of God are entitled to the perfect comfort that comes from perfect trust. Until they achieve this, they waste themselves and their true creative powers on useless attempts to make themselves more comfortable by inappropriate means.” T, 19

Exactly what we were both doing.

Instead of  entrusting our relationship to God, we trying to find a way to be secure and comfortable, without the commitment, the surrender, the dedication to service to God that underlies any true Greatness.

I felt helpless to save our relationship.

As I watched us spiraling downwards, while reaching for the stars I was appalled at the waste of two such fine and gifted minds.

It put everything in question.

Meanwhile, I lost ground in my own life, losing my job, my income, my tenants,  and very nearly my home. In an attempt to forestall my losses, I increased my debt, and decreased my ability to service it.

I lost my sense of peace and harmony, my connection to spirit, as I tried in vain to save myself. And at the same time, I kept deluding myself into thinking that I could save him from himself.

What arrogance, trying to point out the error of his thinking!

Trying to “help” him was just another form of subtle superiority that was robbing him of his liberty to succeed in his own right.

As you can imagine, this implicit  superiority on my part resulted in a great deal of bickering and downright arguing and shouting.

Somehow, I mistakenly thought if I could , show him the way to right-mindedness, and right livelihood, he would see the error of his thinking, and change his direction.  If I could encourage him to surrender his will to the will of God, it might put an end to the hellbent downward spiral into poverty. He kept saying I didn’t know what partnership was,  and insisting that I owed it to him to prove my faith in him by borrowing even more in order to support him financially and invest in our future together.

I thought if I could help him salvage his life after the economic crash robbed him of ninety per cent of his income, perhaps by joining forces,  we could pull ourselves out of financial disaster, and create something of value in these desperate times, something  that would uplift both ourselves and those who looked to us for inspiration and leadership.

I persisted, mistakenly thinking that it was my responsibility to sacrifice myself, to invest my time, my energy, and my money in the service of his dysfunctional ego, his pain and suffering, and that somehow, if my love was good enough, and I paid him for his services, it would save him from certain self destruction.

Clearly it was a false premise.

Despite my best efforts to shore him up, I could see the boat was sinking.

It was happening in slow motion, and I was helpless to prevent it.

*           *           *          *           *

Now the irony of this whole scenario is that in the midst of all this turmoil, I had received four words that I believed were the source of an elegant solution to this, and all the problems in any situation.

It had come to me that the Four C’s of Productivity were:

1. Clean

2. Clear

3.Complete

4. Create.

Following this inspiration, I knew the first thing we had to do to help him overcome his depression and consequent inability to produce, was to clean his apartment.

Together, we cleaned, scrubbed, organized closets. We even cleaned the grout in the bathroom! It was delightful to be working together in this way, a team.

What a joy to see the apartment restored to beauty and integrity, after the months he had spent sleeping on an air mattress, having given up his room to a room-mate, in order to “save money.”

Once the apartment was clean, he invited me to spend a few hours writing, to use the space to create in.

It seemed like a wonderful opportunity. I had my laptop with me. He offered to make breakfast, while I worked on my novel.

This was what I had dreamed of forever, a creative partnership with a man who loved me. We were unstoppable!

We made a lovely breakfast together.  We seemed to have cleared away whatever  we needed to in order to get down to business. The dishes were cleared, and clean, the counters were clear, the table was clear. We were complete, and I could create in the clear space we had made together.

I was thrilled.

The Four C’s of Productivity that I had received were working.

A  shining gateway to the future, an expansive  pathway to greatness, the fulfillment of our purpose to be the best we could be, lay open before us.

Filled with joy, I sat down to write.

But there was a fatal flaw law in my theory that was lurking, just out of our awareness, ready and eager to drag us back into drama and chaos.

Unfortunately, in that moment of peace, harmony and creativity, we had reached the upper limit of what we believed our true worth. We didn’t deserve such happiness.

And sur eenough, the Universe cooperated in confirming that limiting belief.

In his latest book,  “The Big Leap,” Gay Hendricks explains that one of the quickest ways to bring yourself down from what he calls your “Upper Limit” is to commit “a breach of integrity.”

He says that the most popular integrity breaches are lies, broken agreements and withheld truths.

“Integrity,” he says, “far from being a moral issue, is an issue of physics, of being whole and complete. To be out of integrity meant a breach in your wholeness had occurred; there was  gap in your completelness. “Morality,” he explains, ” is about right and wrong, good and bad – all of which are highly arguable. Physics, on the other hand, is about did and didn’t, not is and isn’t.”

At Landmark Education they have a saying, “Without integrity nothing works.”

So to be complete, integrity must be restored.

All the lies, broken agreements and withheld truths have to be cleared out, cleaned up, completed, and restored to integrity, or nothing will work.

Just as we were sitting down at the table, there was a gentle knock at the door.

My friend got up to answer; there were some hushed words spoken in a woman’s quiet, Asian accented voice. It was the middle of the month, and his  landlady was there to collect the unpaid rent.

I heard him say,

“I will get it for you today,” I promise.

He came back into the room, slowly, shamefaced.

“Was that your landlady?”

“Yes.”

“Were you promising her to pay the rent?”

A sheepish “Yes.”

“It’s the middle of the month and you haven’t paid your rent?”

Ashamed, his eyes downcast, ” My roommate paid his half before he left. I have not paid mine.”

“How much do you owe?”

He told me.

“How were you planning on paying the rent?”

“I don’t know. Plan A failed, and I had no Plan B.”

In a misguided attempt to protect me, or perhaps himself, he had withheld the full truth of his situation from me.

Now this withheld information was out in the open.

The breach in integrity was blatant.

I had watched, dismayed, as he played smaller and smaller, hiding the truth from himself that he could not even pay his rent any longer. I had watched him becoming  more and more out of integrity, more and more incomplete, and understandably more depressed and immobilized, and less and less productive.

In the face of this slow motion slide into oblivion, he had a huge vision, but the gap between the vision and the present moment was growing immense.

In the face of this gap, he refused to chase after clients,  saying that he could not work at what he knew how to do, internet podcasting, because he was depressed, and his brain was not working properly. And he wanted to leave the slate clear for his big project. It was a classic “Catch 22.” Damned if you do. Damned if you don’t.

It was painful to watch. I had tried to deny it. I did what I could, but to protect myself, I  held myself apart from his pain, watching his suffering from a distance, struggling to stay afloat in the face of  my own insolvency, while trying to prop him up the best I could with my waning resources.

He never asked me for money, only to be paid for his services, helping me to move and such.

Despite my better judgment, I had borowe money to  pay him, so he would at least have money for bus fare and food.

Now, faced with the situation,  he exploded into creativity. He sat down and, on a napkin, outlined a proposal for me, a proposal that saw him driving an audience for my work towards me, using his considerable clout as administrator of a large Facebook community, to create a presence with this blog, “A Conversation for Transformation,” and a to co-host a radio show by the same name, using his years of experience as an internet radio interviewer. He would show me the ropes, make me famous.  He assured me that  he could bring me thousands of clients, due to his enormous clout in social networking.  Within a couple of months, I would be earning money from my talents as a broadcaster, writer and speaker, and we would be in the clear, creating our dream.

All I needed to do was borrow a couple of thousand more a month and pay him to cover his expenses.

And then I would be a success. Just like him.With a huge reputation, and…..no clients.

The fly in the ointment was obvious.

If he could do this for me, why wasn’t he doing it for himself?

But I couldn’t bring myself to say that. Instead of beign straight, we fought. The battle escalated, and the peaceful environment we had created was shattered once again by blame and criticism and judgment on both our parts.We defaulted to our comfort zone. Familiar pain.

If we were really this smart, what was driving us to break down this relationship and create hell instead of Heaven, the ultimat elegant Solution?

Why couldn’t we embrace each other and BE the solution, bring Heaven to Earth and complete from a clear space?

Why had we both driven ourselves into survival mode, and then proceeded to attack each other for it?

“Being a teambuilder is seeing the HEAVEN called SOLUTIONS when others are hung up on blame.” We both knew that, intellectually.

Yet, despite years of training, neither of us seemed able to stop it.  Something was in our blind spot, driving us apart, instead of closer together.

What was causing us to break down,  just as we were approaching our true greatness>

It wasn’t always like this.

When I met this man, he was fully functional. He was an accomplished and inspiring writer and broadcaster, with a huge vision to transform the world.In th e4 paast few months, he had written his book, and was moving towards getting funding for an enormous project that would see him set for the rest of his life.

I too was a visionary with writing, speaking, and healing skills, with a passion for saving the world.

In fact we were the dream team. We had a shared values, shared dreams, and we even had a plan. We would travel North America in a portable broadcasting studio, leading workshops, giving inspirational speeches, sharing our vision and transforming the world with this conversation with the world’s thought leaders.

So what happened?

What had happened to the creative genius, the man I thought I knew and loved? What had happened to the beautiful, talented, loving woman I was.?

Why couldn’t we even pay our rent?

I held my tongue, but my thoughts were, “If you can do that for me, why can’t you do it for yourself?”

I would love to co-create this radio show together, but I needed him  to be self supporting, so that I was not the sole source of his income for the two months, or however long it took.

He was furious at this request. He argued that what he was offering would completely consume him, that he needed and deserved to be paid for his time, and that I should do this because he knew that I had acess to borrow more money, and he would do it for far less than it would cost me otherwise, and I had not invested in myself.  Therefore I should invest in us. It would be the solution we were both seeking.

Of course, he would not, and could not guarantee results, but surely, if I believed in him, I would invest in him as an act of faith.

All my reluctance to trust shot up in my face. He had told me that he had often over-promised and under-delivered. He had told me of the countless businesses he had had that had failed, all due to some circumstance that had nothing to do with him.

When I asked him why he was not charging others for their time, he had no answer except that he did not want to, so he would be free to dedicate his time to his own work.

The contradiction was obvious. So was the choice.

Either he would be consumed by promoting me at his expenese, or he would be able to do his own work, and become independent.

Which was it?

That question set off yet another volley of insane argument.

He refused indignantly, to “chase after clients, ” saying he would be consumed by his efforts on my behalf, that he would not be able to do anything else, and why should he have to support himself if he was working for me?

Thus began a mad dash the bottom, a battle to see who was the greater victim, and  would have to take the default position of the greater persecutor.

Suddenly, in the midst of the torrent of angry words that were pouring out of my , I stopped myself in mid-sentence.

I asked him straightforwardly,

“What is your love worth to you?”

His answer, “Not what you pay for it.”

A stunned silence gripped the room as he realized what he had said. It had escaped his mouth.  It could not be taken back, no matter how he spluttered and tried to back pedal.

The words hung heavy in the room,  filled with a lifetime of painful and unfulfilled desire for love and acceptance.

It was horrible.

But irrefutable.

In his opinion, his love was worth more than I had paid for it. And, by extension love was something that should be paid for, by me!

This was such a huge and blatant breach of integrity that both of us were shocked by it.

For a moment, we both stopped our rush to destruction.

This was a huge opportunity, a challenge. I could  take this story about my worth or lack of it personally and run with it, using it to further brutalize our relationship, or stop, recognize it as untrue, and return to peace.

The question hung in the air…..”Do I take this personally?”

I wish I could say I had the presence of mind to ask myself that. But I didn’t.

At that moment, the wisest thing for me to have done would have been to say, “Thank you for making that clear for me.”

And quietly leave.

But I could not. I was hooked.  I could not stop the runaway train wreck I had created with my angry words.

I had to prove him wrong.

I took a deep breath and dove in for more, attempting to prove his judgment about me wrong. Foolishly, I was trying to assign responsibility, as if I could control that.

I could not let go. I had to be right.

I screamed at him, “I am not the source of your well-being!”

He yelled back  “I refuse that premise.”

In reaction to his judgment on my value I flew into a fight for my worth as a person, as a partner. He dragged in all my past confidences, all my past failures, exaggerating, painting a picture of me as an insane, stingy person who was withholding his rightful due. He said, once again, that I did not know what partnership was, that I should be grateful that he was offering to do this for me, that he was the only guy who could, etc.

I fought back. I attacked his definition of partnership as something you invest in, prove, buy, a deal, an exchange of value: I give you this much love, and you give me this much money.

He said it was fair. I said “If a fair  exchange of value was what you want, then I offer you my skills as a writer and editor of his book in exchange for your skills in creating an audience for me.You shouldn’t have to make your living off of me. Why me?  because I am convenient? Because I can borrow the money?”

Yes. Because you are there.

“Because you believe in me?”

“No.” He did not, finally, believe in me, in fact, though he was offering to promote me.

There it was, again.  Fraudulent intent. A lie. A lack of integrity so fundamental that it was no wonder he was confused and tired and disoriented.

He didn’t know what was true any longer.

And  now he was throwing me out, saying that his association with me had cost him, his health, his well-being and his livelihood. Not thta he blamed me, or anything!

Despite my best efforts to the contrary, apparently I was the cause of all his pain and suffering.

This was clearly not a relationship.

It was a business deal, a business deal gone sour.

What’s more, it was a deal my intuition said was doomed to failure.  It was supposed to be a leap of faith on my part, used as a stop gap measure to ensure his survival on his part.

I would never be able to measure the results, so it was a deal impossible to quantify. And of course, he would want to be paid in advance, not based on results.

Not good business, even for a non-businesswoman like myself.

Certainly there was a certain skewed logic to this, although I would have preferred the luxury of being able to pay him for results instead of promises.

I would have preferred that he was coming from a place of abundance, and well-being, so that I was not responsible for being his salvation, keeping the wolf from the door.

If this was an equal relationship, then why did I suddenly feel so demeaned, so worthless?

Why did he feel it necessary to drag in every relationship I had ever had, and demolish them with his words?

There must be something fatally wrong with me that I had, yet again, created such a disaster.

How could he do that to me? I was the victim here, not him!

In short, I took it personally.

And, in doing that,  I separated myself from an elegant, simple  solution.

Both myself and my partner had separated ourselves from our path to greatness, and in so doing, we both had been so incredibly hard on each other.

I returned home, and, awaiting for peace to restore itself, I began reading Hendricks book, The Big Leap.

Hendricks says, “Communication between two people is a flow of energy, and when it is blocked, there is a gap in the completeness of the communication.”

As I read, I began to recognize that the breakdown in communication between us had all the symptoms of what Hendricks calls an “Upper Limit Problem” or an ULP (as in GULP!) “Whoops! I had an ULP today!” he suggests we tell ourselves, lightheartedly with an attitude of playfulness and wonder.

The symptoms of an ULP include everything I have been mistakenly doing in the belief that they would solve the problem:

“Worrying, Blaming and criticising, getting sick or hurt, squabbling, hiding significant feelings, not keeping agreements, not speaking significant truths to relevant people, deflecting compliments.”

All of this, Hendricks says, covers over the real issue: “expanding your capacity for abundance, love and success.”

The only thing I know to do is question my own integrity, and take one hundred per cent responsibility for what happened. What separated me so quickly and completely from the wholeness of myself and my partner? What had me attacking his integrity so brutally? Where do I feel out of integrity with myself? Where am I not telling myself the truth? Where in my life have I not kept my promises? Where have I abandoned myself, and betrayed my own authentic genius? Where have I sold out on myself? Where have I played helpless and hopeless?

I am currently engaged in writing a novel about my father’s life, my family’s life. It is a process of investigation that is revealing layers and layers of the narrative of squelched genius, and its impact on the creative life of a family surrounded by, descended from and destined for greatness. What happened?

“What was the story about creative genius that I was born into in my family?” I ask myself.  What happened to my father’s creative genius? My mother’s? My sister’s? My brother’s? My cousin’s? my Uncle’s?

The story in my family is that you shouldn’t access your creative genius, because then the mortgage won’t get paid, the roof will crack and fall in on the dining room table, the house will have to be sold because the property taxes are too high, a landslide will destroy your home, kill your father, some disaster will happen, you will die with your song still in you, you will associate with fame, but never become famous yourself……fascinating stuff, but all the stuff of drama, the tragic, beautiful drama of failed genius, the F.Scott Fitzgerald’s and Ernest Hemmingway’s of this world who drink themselves to death or kill themselves off.

I have been exploring replacing the words “I hope” with  “I wonder.” The thing is to become more curious about and wonder about how this new fascination with creative genius will replace the old story of the romance of failed dreams.

I read the poetry of Rumi.

“If you know how to be patient, He’ll offer you the seat of honour; He’ll show you a hidden way that no one will know.”

So  I wait, and I wonder. I am trusting that I will be shown an elegant solution that will allow a solid foundation to be built for my creaqtive genius to blossom.

I realize it is myself who has been playing small, fearing that if I made a commitment to my creativity, and focused on that as my top priority, I might risk being a failure, and experience the ultimate in rejection, rejection by God. Which, of course is impossible. And there is the question of outshining my sister, which has been running in the background all my life. The squabbles between my partner and i bear an eerie resemblance to the competition between my sister and I for our parents approval. I realize that for a long time I limited myself to avoid making her jealous. Well, at this point, I think it is a better idea to go ahead and make her jealous. Perhaps it will inspire her to continue with her own writing, which I believe she has thwarted in herself.

In the meantime, I have the counsel of A Course in Miracles:

“Every loving thought is true.

Everything else is an appeal for healing and help, regardless of the form it takes.”

T, 200

I am requesting a miracle from the Source of all Elegant Solutions: The Divine Beloved.

Please join me in a prayer for healing, both for myself and my partner, and  for all those who are suffering in their relationships due to a perceived lack of resources in this difficult time on the planet.  Help us with your prayers to climb to higher ground.

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The Torch of Liberty: Eulogy for Emma Goldman

“Anyone who asks to be illuminated now will be made a torch to light up the world.”

Rumi

“I want freedom, the right to self expression, everybody’s right to beautiful, radiant things.”

Emma Goldman, Anarchist

I am writing a novel based on my father’s life. My father, the grandson of the first governor of New Zealand, had come to Canada by way of London England. By trade he was an accountant. He had been involved s a business manage in the theatre in New Zealand and Australia. He came through the Suez Canal in 1930, participated in the early silent movies in London, where he talked about his utopian vision of the future on a soapbox in Hyde Park.  Then he came to Canada where he worked as a farmhand north of Toronto, and became involved in the labour movement. My parents met at a meeting of Italian Anarchists where my mother was playing the part of a young Italian woman in a play put on by the group, entirely in Italian. She only had one line, but her long black hair and her beautiful brown eyes captured my father, and they married. They lived together on Jersey Street, near Kensington Market.

Emma Goldman, the subject of Warren Beatty’s movie “Reds” stood for liberty in the face of despostism and tyranny, and found herself banned from every country but my own, Canada. In the nineteen thirties, having been thrown out of the United States of America for speaking out against opression by the government, she came to Toronto where she found a haven with the Italian Anarchists who hung out around what is now Kensington Market.  She was taken in by my father and his friens, and he was the one who did her taxes.

As I combed through my father’s library recently, I came upon a book gifted to my  father by “Emma” Goldman; “My Disillusionment with Russia,” “Emma.” There was also pamphlets, “The Nature of the Individual in Society,” showing her picture, serious, studious, deeply intelligent. And then, inside the cover of her biography, I found tucked a tiny brown pamphlet titled simply: EMMA GOLDMAN. It was the Eulogy delivered at her funeral in Chicago where her body was returned after she died in Toronto.   I researched on Wikipedia but I could not find this speech there or anywhere else. My father was at her funeral, and I believe that he would want me to publish these beautiful words, written as World War two was in full swing. These words touched and moved me deeply. They speak  to me of the passionate stand that she and my father and mother’s generation were for a life lived in full freedom of self expression.

“Anyone who asks to be illuminated now will be made a torch to light up the world.”

Rumi

Her eulogy speaks deeply to these troubled times, when fifteen year old children are dying for freedom in the streets of Tehran. Now, more than ever, the choice is clear: Either we light the torch of liberty,  freedom from fear and tyranny, and embrace a loving, bright and radiant world, or we die suffocating in the flames of hell.

EMMA GOLDMAN
By Harry Weinberger
A Speech Delivered at her Funeral
Chicago, May 17th, 1940

PUBLISHED PRIVATELY BY THE ORIOLE PRESS/BERKELEY JEIGHTS, N.J. 1940

For more than thirty years I have known Emma Goldman, as her lawyer & her friend. Never in all those thirty years have I known her except as a battler for freedom and justice. She was tireless; she was fearless; she never compromised. Liberty was always her theme; liberty was always her dream; liberty was always her goal.
In a machine age, Emma Goldman always seemed to me the glorification of individuality. She was symbolical of the greatness of mental freedom in an age of regimentation.
Fear is in the hearts of mankind, and some man and women, in a hurry to save the world, would dispense with all liberty to fight dictatorship. In a world of marching feet and tremendous battles, on marcher is missing, one warrior for freedom will struggle no more. The plea for liberty has been made a thousand times, aye, ten thousand times, but always needs repeating. There is one tongue less to make that plea today.

Emma Goldman is gone, gone to a dreamless sleep, gone to join that army of men and women of the past to who liberty was more important than life itself.
Emma Goldman in her lifetime had been ostracized, jailed, mobbed, & deported from these shores for advocating that which all the world now admits should be brought about – a world without war, a world without poverty, a world with hope and the brotherhood of man.

Courage is the greatest force in individuals and nations. Courage in Emma Goldman was as natural to her as it was for her to breathe. She spoke out to this country against war and conscription, and went to jail. She spoke out for political prisoners, & was deported from the United States on the very day we celebrated the sailing of the Mayflower in Colonial days. She spoke out in Russia against the despotism of Communism, and again became a fugitive on the face of the earth. She spoke out against the combination of Nazism and Communism and there was hardly a place she could live.

Emma Goldman, we welcome you back to America, where you wanted to end your days with friends and comrades. We had hoped to welcome you back in life – but we welcome you back in death. You will live forever in the hearts of your friends and the story of your life will live as long as the stories are told of women and men of courage and idealism.

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“Inspire” meaning “to breath in”

If one were to look at my life at the present moment from a strictly material point of view, I have nothing to offer.

I have no visible means of support, except a small pension.

For a year now, I have been borrowing on a credit line in order to live and restore my house in the mountains to rentable condition.

I am deeper in debt than I have ever been.

Yet, this morning, reading Gloria Wendroff’s “Heaven Letter,” (http://www.heavenletters.org/when-you-stand-on-a-mountaintop.html)

I realized how rich I truly am, how much I have to share, and what an amazing opportunity for generous, expansive growth this situation truly is.

I take a deep breath, shut my eyes, and listen to the sounds of the day shaping itself outside my window.

I am moved by her words beyond my selfish fear for my survival into a place of true inspiration.

“In-spire.” From the Latin, meaning “to breath in”

With each breath I breathe, I am presented with a choice.

Do I listen to the voice of fear, which tells me that I am in serious danger of not surviving, and I must take drastic measures immediately to stave off certain death?

No.

Is disaster imminent in this lovely moment?

Of course not.

Or do I listen to the Voice that speaks of God’s Love, the Voice which comforts me and assures me that there is enough for everyone, that I am safe and cherished by the arms of Love?

Of course.

I can choose to expand, to “inspire, ” filling my lungs deeply with the breath of life.

Or do I choose to “expire,” to breath out, to die a little death?

I choose life.

I breathe in the fresh Spring air and give thanks for my small downtown oasis, my apartment in the city. I give thanks my house in the country that has sat empty for months. Once it is repaired and restored it can be rented out.

I breathe out, exhaling all the fear of death, all the worry and panic.

I realize I have resources, options, choices.

I have survived much worse than this.

But beyond mere survival, I have so many opportunities to expand into new beginnings.

By embracing the seemingly disempowering circumstances of my life, and flowing into them, I shift from a place of constricting panic, into a spacious place of overflowing love, happiness and possibility.

A sense of joy and peace swells in my heart, as I realize how truly blessed I am.

This is the place of receiving generously, of being fully alive and awake.

I have been given so much to be grateful for.

I am grateful for the sunshine outside my window, the branches of the willow tree moving gently in the breeze.

I am grateful for the toast and tea my partner just presented to me with love.

I am deeply, lavishly loved……by friends, family, lovers, each of them a shining mirror of the the Face of God, incarnate.

I am blessed with intelligence, creativity, and the ability to express myself.

I can speak well.

I can write.

I can uplift, inspire, move others with my words.

I am have vision.

I am able to see the blindingly beautiful Light of Heaven break into shimmering, iridescent colours on a snowbank or in the intense light glinting off the ocean.

I can listen deeply.

I can hear the Voice of God in the wind.

I am a gifted intuitive healer. Healing energy passes through my hands, my actions, and my words.

Because I have been through hell myself, I have faith that I know the way out.

I have the ability to guide others on their journey through the dark out into the light, Home to who they really are.

I am deeply grateful for all these gifts from God.

Because I have been gifted so much, I have so much to share.

There is nothing to fear.

I breathe in deeply again, and, with a huge sigh of relief, I exhale all the fear .

I remember.

I am alive. I am here. I am present. It is safe. I am blessed. I am home.

I feel the gift of life flowing through my being, returning the gift in the giving of it.

There is more than enough fresh air and sunshine for everyone. We are all blessed.

In the spirit of generosity, I have a choice.

I can to continue to be stingy with myself, cutting off the flow of life, refusing what is offered so generously, or I can share my gifts freely, allowing God’s love to breathe through me and inspire others.

Such a simple, yet essential gift, the breath of life.

I feel so fortunate that I am alive and have so much to share.

Thanks, once again, Gloria, for allowing me to remember who I really am, and where I am standing: in the light, on the mountaintop.

Don’t forget to breathe!

A Miraculous Life

So, let me tell you about this magical journey I have been on.

For many years I have been attempting to write the story of my life, in particular, share the miracle that transformed my life November 23rd, 1991. It was, incidentally, the night that George Bush, Sr. took the decision to attack Iraq in the first Gulf War.

On that glorious day, I saw the face of God.

It came in the form of a magnificent, truly awesome vision of Jesus Christ, in full colour, on a cloud in the sky over Maui.

He was dressed in white, with a red mantle over his shoulder, his long auburn hair flowing over his shoulders, his hands in an attitude of prayer. He was praying for us.

I was in a car with four other people. We all watched in stunned silence as the cloud on which his image was painted in full colour passed majestically across the ocean.

This lovely image had been preceded by an image of an angel, its tiny wings resting on the edge of a cloud, looking upwards.

I thought I was hallucinating, so I stayed silent. But after a long period of silence, I finally asked my friend if she saw what I saw. “Yes, Shelora, I see the angel,” she answered.

I was not crazy. Four people were in the car. They all saw it.

And so, after the image of the angel on the cloud passed away, and, a few minutes later, the image of Jesus appeared, we said nothing. What could be said? The beauty and the reverence of it was beyond words.

Afterwards, in answer to my question of why I had been chosen to see this wonder, I discovered A Course in Miracles, the Voice of the Holy Spirit, the Voice for God, speaking through Christ, which has become my constant companion over the past eighteen years.

I want the world to know about the joy that knowing Jesus in such an intimate, gentle, yet majestic way has brought to my life.

Yet something stopped me.

Every time I came close to speaking my truth in public, I retreated. I felt afraid that you would reject me as a liar, a scam, a fraud; I would be scorned and humiliated, scoffed at and mocked. Nobody would believe me.

I would, in essence, be crucified for speaking my truth, just like Jesus.

After years of healing work, I finally traced it back to an incident in my Kindergarten, when, entranced with my ability to draw, to make stories and pictures, and longing for the art materials to do so at home, I took a package of crayons from the stock room at school, and was told I was a thief, and spanked for it.

In that humiliating moment I decided I was a bad girl and deserved to be punished.
I have been royally punishing myself in one form or another, creating attack and injustice ever since.

But you would never have known it.

My parents never knew what had happened that day in Kindergarten. As far as they were concerned, I was a friendly, happy, trusting little girl, the teacher’s pet, a straight “A” student. They never knew that the other children waited for me after school, held me down, washed my face with snow, tied me up and left me in garages or under bridges, called me names, blamed for breaking windows, and anything else that they did not want to take responsibility for. I did not realize that I was being bullied, or that there was anything I could do about it. My fate had already been decided. I was a “fairy.” And I was a bad girl who deserved to be punished.

But I was determined that no one would ever know. I would never be humiliated like that again. I would show them!

From the age of three I had been on stage, surrounded in my home by famous artists, actors, dancers and musicians, a glamourous life, indeed. I learned to live in the world of fantasy. I became the best pretender in the world, a consummate actress. As I got older, it appeared I had talent, and I loved the theatre.

So I hid out in the spotlight.

I became an actress and a dancer.

When I was sixteen, I auditioned for and was accepted by the National Theatre School of Canada in Montreal, one of only seven girls and seven boys chosen from across Canada. That year, at sisteen, I appeared with the Toronto Symphony Orchestra, playing Titania in a Midsummer Night’s Dream.

While I was suceeding at creating an acting career, I was failing miserably in Grade Eleven Math. Facing the need to repeat a year, instead, I dropped out of school and went off to Europe for four months, before returning to Montreal to attend the National Theatre School.

After graduating, I moved to Vancouver and acquired four university degrees, including a teaching degree.

However, that conviction that I was bad and guilty and deserved to be punished was still running in the background of my life, sabotaging every shot I had at success.

Believe me,  there was no shortage of evidence in the events in my world to confirm that that was so. From the age of five onwards, circumstances transpired that proved to me that there was no God. There could be no God. Otherwise how could these horrible attacks and abuses have been allowed to happen to me?

Of course, I took no responsibility for what a five year old child had decided all those years ago. I was not even aware that my decision was there, running my life, colouring everything that happened to me, creating seemingly undeserved, unjustified attack, out of the blue, again and again.

As a child of nine, I was stalked in the woods, and a young man attempted to rape me. After that I was molested from age ten to eleven, by a 27 year old former Nazi movie actor who was a tenant in my Jewish mother’s home.

As I matured into a lovely young woman, I became adept at giving men what I thought they wanted: my beauty, my innocence, and my sexuality. By the time I was fifteen, I was having affairs with fifty year old famous men. Since I had grown up surrounded by such people, I thought this was what was normal if I was to become like the beautiful divas that graced my home as a child.

But the dream of fame turned sour as I grew older.

By the time I was in my thirties, despite all the talent I possessed,  between rehearsals, I was being beaten and tortured by an alcoholic artist who subsequently sank the houseboat I was living on.

So, from a tiny incident as a child, a decision made by a five year old, I had created a life in which been molested, robbed, cheated, rejected, judged, betrayed and abandoned. I had created all the drama you could ever want to prove that I was alone in the Universe, and there was no God.

And I certainly was not responsible for any of it! If there was a God, I blamed HIM!

In fact, after my houseboat was sunk, and the man who had sunk it came and found me and beat me again, causing me to be thrown out into the night of an apartment I had just rented, trying to get away from him, I found myself literally SCREAMING at God,

“WHY! WHY! WHY!! What did I do to deserve THIS!”

The answer came in the Voice.

A few weeks later. I had taken refuge with a friend of mine, and she took me to a Sufi meeting. There the Master said these words to me: “When you go to sleep at night, let there be someone who looks after you.”

I did. That night I slept deep and dreamed of a handsome man in a black Riverboat Captain’s hat and black, silver-trimmed shirt, smiling at me, knowingly.

The next day, in the waking dream, I heard the Voice of God for the first time, as I beheld the man of my dreams standing in front of me, dressed identically to the dream I had had the night before. As I stared, the Voice spoke as clearly as if someone was in the room, saying, “This is the man who will be the father of your children.”

Astonished, I told this handsome man what I had heard. He replied, “That’s all right. I like children.”

And so it was. He became the father of my two beautiful girls.

Many such miraculous things, both terrible and wonderful, have happened since, but the pattern of magical bliss followed by unexpected, seemingly  unjustified attack persisted, along with the sense of being chosen for some special purpose which I have been afraid to fulfill.

Yesterday, In A Course in Miracles, I read, as if for the first time:

“Say only this, but mean it with no reservations, for here the power of salvation lies:

“I am responsible for what I see.
I choose the feelings I experience, and I decide upn th egoal I would achieve.
And everything that seems to happen to me
I ask for, and receive as I have asked.”

“Deceive yourself no longer that you are helpless in the face of what is done to you. Acknowledge but that you have been mistaken, and all effects of your mistakes will disappear.”

And then, this morning, as I read Gloria’sWendroff’s  invitation to return to the Heaven Letters community, and I read the God’s Child Heaven Letter, I realized that I had been holding myself superior and apart, somehow special because of all my suffering.

As I read the words, “Whatever marks the world has put on you or you have put on yourself, you can rise higher now. All that anyone can be, you can be,” I came home to the Truth of who I am and have always been, God’s Holy Child, forever innocent, unmarred by anything that has ever happened to me, or anything I made it mean about myself.

I realized that I have done this to myself. Out of a mistake in perception, that I was guilty, bad and wrong, and deserved God’s wrath, I created all that attac, judgment, guilt and blame.

But at the core of me, no matter what happened outside myself, what labels or judgements have been put on me, by myself or those who loved me, or those who feared my passionate intensity, no matter what words have been said, judgments passed, or deeds done, nevertheless, I remain an innocent Child of God.

One that is worthy of miracles on a daily basis. And has received many, many miracles in her life, not the least of which is the privilege and honour of being a teacher and therapist of A Course in Miracles.

As God said this morning through Gloria Wendroff, “If you are to teach others, it is by your example and not your instruction.”

I am deeply, deeply grateful for all the lessons of love that have brought me to this point in my life where I am finally claiming my power to teach by demonstration.  I am unstoppable, a miracle in motion, a blessing to the world.

“By my healing, legions are healed.”

ACIM

By my example, I am committed to teaching the gentle, generous way of peace and forgiveness, starting with myself.

Thank you, Gloria, for your Heaven Letters, and for reaching out to me, and inviting me back into your community.

I love you.

Stay tuned.

Shelora