Our Abundant Universe - Celebrating Gifts of the Year
The end of the year is a great time to reflect on the abundant riches we are privileged to experience: food, shelter, relationships, children, work, opportunity, and so much more …
Experiences of scarcity loom in stark relief against this backdrop of ever present riches: not enough time, money, energy, love, hope …
In our December issue of Playing in the Gap! we invite you to pay attention
to when you feel abundance and when you feel scarcity. What you believe and
focus on is the basis of your experience!
Table of Contents
Risk vulnerability in situations of conflict to receive the gifts of healing.
Calling Passion - What Worked Well in 2007
It is possible to be in discomfort and yet honor the value of the experience - and it is courageous to do so!
Leading Edges - A Tale of Two Nuts
To affect change you must plant the seeds of change in a healthy growth environment and with adequate preparation and nurturing in order to realize the harvest of your efforts.
Feeling Color - Lighting the Way
Lighting the colors of the season might just possibly cause us to feel awash with abundance and thankfulness for the gifts most dear and generally unseen.
Seizing Joy - Re-turning to the Divine Self
At this time of year how do we ‘take stock’ of what weighs us down spiritually, emotionally, and physically? How do we release it so that we can enter the New Year with a lighter spirit and more access to our joy?
Being Messy
Opportunities for the Gift
of Healing - by Karen Tax
Diane and I were talking this week about the funny way people avoid difficult conversation and conflict, ourselves included.
“Why don’t people just go for it and talk?” we mused.
We recounted conversations we’d had that became heated, tense or even harmful and resulted in further conflict and separation. We acknowledged that sometimes it’s easier to blame the other person or deem the situation as ‘not safe’ when you feel hurt or have your ‘button’s pushed.’
What was the common behavior we identified in healing dialogue?
We shifted our focus away from the other person or situation, and looked honestly at ourselves. Invariably, positive results occurred when we risked being vulnerable about how we were feeling and had enough confidence to ask for what we needed or wanted. Tricky when you’re managing feelings of hurt!
When we blame a person or situation, need to be right, claim our position, hold on to our attachments – we miss an incredible opportunity to look inside, feel and heal our pain, and come to others with love and grace.
What keeps people looking to others and external circumstances as the source of their problems?
We look to others to avoid the pain that is within us. Yet we heal what we feel.
The gifts of healing are profound: we become more confident, clear and clean communicators. We are better listeners and better articulators. We connect with others in supportive ways. We unleash our energy for productive endeavors.
So the next time you face conflict or a defensive response, instead of
blaming or moving away, we invite you to risk being vulnerable with yourself –
and then bring that openness and curiosity to conversation with others. You’ll
have a different kind of conversation. Abundant energy and possibility are the
gifts waiting for you!
Calling Passion
What Worked Well in 2007 -
by Diane Craver
The year is coming to a close and perhaps now is a good time to reflect on our work in 2007. Most of us spend 40+ hours at work, yet we spend less time planning and strategizing our careers than we do planning our family vacations.
I recently searched Amazon.com’s website for books on careers. Book titles such as I Don’t Know What I Want, But I Know It’s Not This, and Life’s a *itch and Then You Change Careers, to Career Warfare, while helpful, can be a bit intimidating.
So many times we focus on what’s not working and forget to focus on what is working. Take a few minutes and think about what worked for you in 2007.
- What Did You Do Well This Year? Did you land that big client; become a better speaker; give more; watch less tv?
- Where Did You Grow as a Person? Are you better at handling conflict; setting boundaries; telling the truth; receiving feedback?
- How Were You Able to Do These Things Above? Did you read a helpful book; seek out a mentor; outsource that cleaning; stay focused on your goals?
Now, you have a list of what is working and how you did it. Take that list and move forward into 2008 with a sense of gratitude for the many gifts that you gave yourself in 2007! Make a commitment to add more to your 2007 list at the end of 2008.
Finding Courage
Mining for the Gold - by
Lorraine Cohen
A very dear friend of mine has had a helluva year. Over the past 12 months she has said goodbye to many relatives and close friends who have died and has been a support to others who have been diagnosed with serious illnesses. In a recent conversation as she was sobbing, she said, “This year has been so difficult and painful. I’m so tired and would love to have a break. At the same time, I am so grateful for all of the gifts that have come from each experience”.
She inspires me.
It takes courage to be in the discomfort and honor the value of the experience. The tendency is to want to get rid of it, repress it, or run away
She knows that within life’s challenges, there are blessings that can be found in each experience, if you are willing to look for AND own the gift. Regardless of whatever is happening in your world, the one power you retain is your viewpoint; how you choose to see the situation. That’s the difference between being a victim of your circumstances or the hero of your life story.
Each night she writes 50 things she’s grateful for including the painful, messy stuff. This year has helped her to become more authentically aligned with who she is and her life purpose. And the Universe had responded by bringing her several lucrative business opportunities, the completion of a new book and so much more. Despite the pain, she says she has never felt more alive and vital.
Ain’t that cool? Imagine being about to feel pain and power at the same time!
Consider a situation in your life that you are avoiding. If you felt
courageous to show up and face that experience head on, what are some of the
gifts and blessings you might receive? Be willing to be surprised by
your answer!
Leading Edge
A Tale of Two
Nuts - by John Berkley
I have been thinking about change for decades now. How to help myself and others to affect the change we want to see. The teams I work with see each other as zinc plated ½” machined nuts; when they view someone as “weak”, they think about going to Lowe’s and just replacing the hardware and expecting an instant fix.
But while I do think, in some humorous way, that we are all nuts, I believe that we are more like the organic variety similar to the pecan, walnut, or beech. To get the variety of nut you want, you must pick the right seeds, find a healthy environment to plant them in, prep the soil, plant the seed, water and tend it, and wait and see. To expect instant harvest, or change, with organic systems is fruitless.
Teams need to be patient with change as well as developing their own process to continually fertilize their “nuts”. A lot of people are uncomfortable with “wait and see”. It is necessary to test a lot of things in order to become successful. Thomas Edison failed thousands of times in his quest to invent the “simple” light bulb. We are far more complex. We are where we are because we have walked along our individual or team paths for many years. If we want change, we must get off our path and onto a new one. As the poet Gary Snyder said, “…the trail is not the way, no path will get you there, we’re off the trail.”
So we have a choice to slow down and raise our awareness, playing with our off trail bushwhack, with no guaranteed map in hand and with no set arrival time, or to remain hovering the aisles of Lowes, going back and back and back for more nuts.
I advise letting go, enjoying being an organic “farmer”, laughing at all the nuts along the way (including yourself), and being very thankful for the adventure of it all!
Feeling Color
Lighting the
Way - by Tassey Russo
As I end the Thanksgiving holiday each year and turn the calendar page to December, my thoughts usually are overwhelmingly filled with all that I have to do to prepare for Christmas and New Year. Yes, each year I tell myself that I will “get a jump” on hauling up the decorations from the basement, stringing the lights outside the house, writing the cards, buying and wrapping gifts, baking cookies, etc. But it is daunting, all that must be done in less than a month – and to go to work as well! Frankly, it’s just the right combination of tasks to amp up the stress levels to record off the meter and cause system breakdown. Does this sound familiar?
Imagine, then, my astonishment when my 11-year old son asked to start decorating the day after Thanksgiving. Or was that feeling I had one of dismay? What was a simple and logical request of my son’s was, for me, the beginning of the seemingly endless and impossible list of tasks I had to do to reach Christmas and, frankly, I just didn’t “want to go there” quite yet. Too much, too soon!
The decision point was at-hand though that morning after Thanksgiving. Either driven by parental guilt at disappointing my son or the fact that it was a nice, balmy November day to be outside, I opened the basement door and trekked to the storage room to get the outside lights and decorations. In short order, I was stringing lights, strategically placing extension cords so they wouldn’t show as much, and finding just the right place for the lighted sleigh, snowman and duck family.
Hours passed and the sun set. With the anticipation that we feel every year, my son and I turned on the lights and stood in the street to look at the fruits of our labor. In the darkness of the night, the house and trees were aglow with the colors of the holiday season – red, green, gold, blue, orange and white. Some lights even twinkled on and off. It was that moment that I realized just how much abundance and how many gifts I held in my heart as I saw my family’s home and looked to my son standing at my side, thankful of his gift to me.
Seizing Joy
Magnificance is Only a
Perception Away - by Robin Renteria
During year end I love to look back over the year and celebrate with gratitude all that I have accomplished, weathered, experienced, and loved. I take a few quiet moments to thank Life and the divine for my being alive to begin a new year; and notice where I am out of connection with Life and those I love.
The Jewish practice of teshuva, for ten days which starts with Rosh Hashana (Jewish New Year) through Yom Kippur (The Day of Atonement), helps me. It is meant to help us resolve or re-solve what weighs us down spiritually. Teshuva means ‘return,’ a return to ourselves, to God, or to our deepest Source, and hence to joy. It has four steps, each to be done with humility and sincerity: 1. Admit our regrets (a private matter, not a public admission.) 2. Stop doing what is causing harm. 3. Ask forgiveness. 4. Make a commitment to change by fulfilling a mitzvah, or act of human kindness.
Religious traditions arise from our deep human yearning to be in community, in shared connection, with our hearts and with each other. The process of teshuva returns us to connection with the abundant fullness of life. This is atonement, at-one-ment, during which we recreate our alignment between body and soul.
I enter my own form of teshuva with a simple ritual. I begin with a prayer asking the compassionate powers of the universe to be with me and guide me. At times I’ve sat by a pond which has received by regrets and re-commitments as pebbles thrown into the water. At other times I’ve used a lighted candle to burn papers on which I’ve written my intentions for deeper loving. In this process I recommit to my steps in our dance of the eternal, and in them my joy. May it serve you.