Why I Want More Freedom and More Discipline

I want more freedom in my life. Freedom to make choices that serve me, freedom to redirect my thoughts, freedom to live from my heart. I also want the freedom to make mistakes and learn from them, the freedom to do it wrong and try again, the freedom to be perfectly imperfect.

Freedom is having choice in each moment. The highest truth is that mo matter what our external situation, we always have choice. While we may not be able to choose what is happening in any particular moment, we always have the choice in how we respond to it. 

One of the most graphic teachings around choice in difficult situations comes from a psychologist and holocaust survivor, Viktor Frankl. In his book Man's Search for Meaning Frankl shares how those living in the Nazi concentration camps who found a sense of meaning or held hope were more likely to survive. He affirmed that even the worst-case human situations cannot take away freedom. Frankl writes:

"We can discover this meaning in life in three different ways: (1) by creating a work or doing a deed; (2) by experiencing something or encountering someone; and (3) by the attitude we take toward unavoidable suffering."  

"Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms – to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances."

We are blessed to live in a time of great external freedom. We may have limitations on our resources - financial, emotional, health - but we are graced with many many freedoms in most places in the world. So let's start there: having gratitude for the freedoms that we do have. Take a moment to look around your life and name the freedoms that you do have, and to honor all the beings that helped create the freedom you are enjoying. We stand on the shoulders of our ancestors and the beings that walked before us that struggled for basic freedoms. Thank you, thank you.

Now from that place of gratitude, let's explore personal choice. While we always have the theoretical ability to make any choice, we may not have the energy or support or skills to make the choice we would want to make, or to make the actual best choice for us.

But we always have the choice to find the energy and support we need to come into more choice.

So to get to choice, we need to befriend discipline.

Discipline is not a punishment, but an ally to help us focus and direct our attention exactly where we want it to go. 

I love this quote from empowered fitness guru Patricia Moreno: "Discipline is freedom. It is you getting yourself to do what you really want to do." 

The truth is I'm not the most disciplined person. I'm more a wait for the inspiration to come and then stay up all night completely excited about the project I am working on sort of person. And while I'm learning to rest into the ebb and furious flow of my creativity, there are some places that more discipline would be well-received in my life.

And here we are, another year starting, another opportunity to join with millions of people around the world to start over, to turn over a new leaf, to become a new me. Yay!

Every day we have the opportunity to make a new choice. And New Year's is a party of people rocking out to new choices. But how to make those New Year's goals last? That takes discipline.

Here's what I'm exploring for 2014:

Focusing more on the why of making change than the how. Why do I want to write regularly, exercise more often, and eat foods that my body likes? When we jump right to the how sometimes we create unrealistic goals that we then judge ourselves about not completing. But when we focus on the why, and really get clear with ourselves about why we want something, we can then guide ourselves to better choices from a place of love and acceptance. Then discipline shifts from being something we push ourselves to do and becomes a gift we give ourselves every day.

I'm also starting with "for today" goals. My intent is to have more energy when I wake up, and so my goal for today is to not eat any sugar and see if that supports my intent. My intent is to finish my book and write regularly; so for today I'll work on chapters 5 and 6. Tomorrow I'll reset my goals and priorities, based in my overall intent, guided by how I want to feel, rather than what my brain thinks is right or wrong. 

Add a pinch or a pound of discipline into each day, and invite your own sacred why and intent to bring you more and more freedom to do what you really want to do in 2014.

Blessed New Year!

Dissolving into Energy, Part 3

This morning as I laid in bed listening to the rain outside I knew it was time to break my blogging log-jam.

I've been talking to Toci's Thirteen Moons circle about the importance of keeping the channel of inspiration clean as we open to manifesting from spirit. When we open up our crown and intuition and listen deeply, guidance comes from the unmanifest source / god / goddess / creator /  life  into manifestation in the form of inspiration or insights. We then have a choice if we want to feed this spark of spirit into a fire that is grounded on earth. When we choose to take action, we are in a co-creative dance with spirit, bringing the invisible into form. 

But if we ignore the messages, or don't take action on something without consciously letting it go, things can start to stagnate in our being. Energy is meant to flow. So when we have an impulse from the divine, a nudge from our highest self, a tap on the shoulder from life, we want to either take action or let it go. For me, joyful creativity is the thread that I want to run through all my actions. We take action by taking steps, which might be gathering more data, talking to others, creating a task list and starting the next baby step, going into meditation to get more insight, getting on the phone or email or a plane to meet with allies -- the list of actions is infinite. But there is also the action of realizing this is not feasible right now, and letting it go. Or the action of: that inspiration that flew by is now gone, stop grasping after it. Or the action of: I don't want to do this, and surrendering it up. Or the action of: not now, later, and setting it aside with awareness. Without this conscious choice to go forward or let inspiration go, we can end up chin deep in unmanifested possibilities and the dried up shells of dreams.

So in the spirit of creating flow again in my blogging world, here is the final blog in a series I started a year ago, on Dissolving a Marriage.

First, thanks to all the folks that have written or shared with me over the past year how much reading my process has helped them. My prayer is that by sharing a part of my intimate process around a big transition in my life, I can help others find a bit more ease and grace in their own transitions.

Synopsis for those who haven't read part 1 Dissolving a Marriage or Part 2 Dissolving Into Light: Last year my beloved, business partner, husband, and friend moved to Colorado and we ended our ten-year partnership, sparking an intense year of healing and transition for me. The journey has been deep into the underground of my being, a shake up of my soul, a shattering of my heart that I chose to step towards, to explore. I wanted to stay with my process, to witness what it takes to heal when it feels like the rug has been pulled out from under your feet and the foundation of what is familiar and loved is gone. I wanted to not abandon myself in the spiritual abuse of: "you shouldn't feel this way. Everything is perfect, why are you suffering?" Instead I embraced my own journey, and my desire to heal from the inside out. I stayed with my broken heart, curious about how we heal as humans, curious about how this being of HeatherAsh would heal her heart.

What I've learned: time does heal the heart when we allow it to. I've watched and felt my emotional body go through the initial stabbing, tearing pain of my loss and grief, to feeling tender and vulnerable and how the pain was only activated by a big event, which would reopen the tears and grief. It has been a process for sure, ups and downs, days where I didn't think about my ex-husband at all, days when suddenly it felt like he and I were energetically continuing a conversation started long ago, weeks when I couldn't stop the cycling of the past, or trying to figure out what I could have done differently.

As I've let go more and more, I've been able to look back with more ease to see my part in the dynamic, where the turning points were, what I might have changed. These are what I call the choice points. It took me a while to find the spaciousness to look back with love and curiosity. 

Early on I made an agreement with myself that served me well: To not scour the past for clues of what went wrong if I was in self-judgment or feeing victimized. When I did this, I only created more pain for myself. I chose to focus on nourishing myself, continually asking myself: "what are you missing/craving/needing right now?" I practiced letting go of what I had lost to focus on what I had now. I listened deeper than the pain, not shoving it aside, but peering beneath the waves of grief, anger, despair, frustration, confusion, letting them roll over and through me as I quested for the calm knowing beneath.  Sometimes I was smashed by a wave, sent tumbling in emotion and story, not knowing what was up or down. Sometimes I found my breath, inhaled deeply, and dove beneath the chaos of mind and emotions into the expansive silence of spirit. 

Many days I face planted in the sticky stagnant swamp of story, caught in the quicksand of "why" and "what if."  And over time I learned to avoid the swamp and instead ride the waves of my emotions more gracefully, to weep when I needed to weep, and then to dry my eyes, smile, and move on. I knew I wasn't weeping just for the loss of my relationship, but for all the losses in my life, for all the little heartbreaks I never let myself feel, for the exquisite pain of being human and loving deeply. I learned to welcome the grief and let it wash me clean. This cleansing happened most when I wasn't blaming myself or others, or wishing things were different. 

As I got stronger I'd go visit my ex-husband's website to see what he was up to. I downloaded photos of him and his new beloved and sat with them, sending love. I walked towards the edge of my discomfort, leaning into it so I could stretch into this new reality, but being careful not to re-traumatize myself. Some days an Facebook post could leave me in a puddle, some days I found myself smiling when a friend mentioned his name. 

I celebrated the day when I received an email from someone saying, "Sorry about Raven ... thought you two were "the match." I smiled, feeling my love and appreciation for Raven and our relationship, and for all the people we touched in our years together teaching and being a couple. Then I smiled bigger, realizing I was happy, and a reminder of the past was no longer a knife of loss but now brought up love in my being. Yay! Happy dance! 

In this past year I've learned so much about attachment and learning how to release, but also about the beautiful strength of intertwined lives, and how long it can take to unweave the energetic threads. I've learned that sometimes no matter how much I might crave reconciliation, talking things out, cleaning the past with someone else, it doesn't always look like I wish it would. And how it seems each place I visit or friend I see for the first time without Raven there is a little healing, a letting go that happens, more space that is opened up in my being. At first it is tender, sometimes the grief comes back again, sometimes I just feel a whisper of "we once loved each other passionately and fully here." Yesterday was the anniversary of our marriage, this week is a ten-year cycle of when we first came to the firewalk training together, and left glowing in love to have a hand fasting celebration with our community in Berkeley. I honor these memories. I honor the immense love we once shared. I honor that I have immense love to share, and that I can let it overflow to everyone I meet. And now I can also honor the closing of our relationship, a new cycle opening. I can honor the choices we both made. I can honor that nothing stays the same, that death brings new life, always, when we let the past go.

Writing this is bringing tears to my eyes, not because I wish our marriage had not ended, but because I miss my friend. And I know that friend lives in my heart, always. Nothing can take that away. 

None of us are immune to loss on this human dance. We humans are so tender, and so resilient. So fragile and vulnerable, and so wicked strong. My prayers is that everyone who is in a time of transition, of life change, or loss, may dive deep to discover the calm waters beneath the turbulence, but also to learn to let life ravish us open, to let the waters of transformation crash through us, to surrender to the river of life. May we find peace and know the beauty of still spirit ocean in our core as we learn to surf the waves of death and rebirth, death and rebirth.