Develop your awareness
Expand your options
Empower yourself

Opening
Expanding our options is about choice but so is developing our awareness. I only develop my awareness if I choose to open my mind and my heart to the possibility that there are other ways to look at the world and be in the world. My world is as limited as I am afraid and it is as open and full of possibilities as I allow. Hmm. One thing to say it and another to live it.

I have just sent myself back to school. That was a big choice and I knew it was. It’s a choice I make and remake each day when I get out of bed and decide what to do with the opportunity I have given myself. Will I learn something new today or will I reinforce what I already know? Can I do both? Do I choose to do both?

I do. I am.

Letting go
Is it scary? You bet it is! It takes me out of my comfort zone. I don’t feel as competent. One thing I know about myself is that I like to feel competent, especially when I’m changing things. Learning something new is at once exhilarating and frightening. I’m trying to expand into the new and hold on tight to the old at the same time. I can fully appreciate that if I won’t allow myself to let go of the old, I can’t possibly pick up the new. And, let me not forget that much of the old is still useful and there to be built upon.

There is this emotional component to learning which is also there when we make choices.

Investing
It is so interesting to me that choosing not to choose is still a choice. Choosing not to learn something new, or not to practice what I have learned, is choosing to negate my investment in myself. I know it has been said many times but change used to be something that we had to find ways to get used to. It has now become so common as to be the norm. However, every norm will eventually be changed. Even constant change can become ‘normal’. Change is then whatever we choose to do that disturbs the waters of what went before it.

Whole-some learning
My choice to intensify my learning by taking this course has given me the opportunity to revisit how I learn in addition to what I learn. The last time I upgraded my credentials, I chose to learn by fully immersing myself in the experience of it and paying less attention to note-taking than I had at university. My fear: What if I didn’t remember what I needed to? What I discovered was that I retained more by experiencing, instead of just writing about what I saw.

That was 20 years ago. In the meantime, I have been self-taught. I read. I listened. I read some more. I experimented. It was fine for my purposes, as far as it went. Now I am choosing again. This time I have a belief that my cells will remember and I’m experimenting with this idea. My question this time, not so much my fear!: If I enter fully into the experience and use everything I know and feel to try things out, making some errors along the way, will I remember more on a holistic, experiential, cellular level? Will it be like riding a bicycle; you don’t forget how to do it once you have done it?

For example
That begs a bicycle example! After not riding a bicycle for many years, I was at a conference where the hotel provided a rack of bicycles for the guests to borrow. I had some free time one morning and took one for a spin. I knew that I would still be able to ride but what I learned that morning was that I could suddenly ride hands-free. I had not previously been able to do this and I was so inordinately proud of myself that I came back to the conference with a silly grin all over my face! What had happened in the meantime? I certainly had not practiced!

Stretching is good for us
Something happens when we choose to try something that is a stretch, a risk, a different way. Something inside us may have been waiting for the chance to manifest in our lives, in our work. So, as my current course is developing my awareness, I am looking forward to expanding my options and empowering yet more of my ‘self’. Look Mom, no hands!

Bookshelf: Don’t forget to have a look on my bookshelf this week!

I’m not going to give you the definitive list of who is awesome in the world. Good Lord, we would be here forever! And isn’t it interesting that there is that much awesomeness in the world. I just thought I would touch on a few awesome aspects of some of the people I know.

I have a particular admiration for people who think in unusual ways. As a consequence, I have quite a few friends whom I consider to be awesome thinkers. They say things, and make observations, or suggest things, that make me laugh out loud, not because they’re funny but because their originality surprises and delights me.

Similarly, I like it when people do anything that is outside the box of conventional thinking. Eventually, some of these ideas become commonplace but originally they were original, if you get my drift. I remember laughing with delight the first time I saw a lap-top and an iPhone. I think the Internet is an awesome invention. Satellites weren’t a bad idea and the telephone was brilliant.

Some people’s sense of humour is awesome. At least I think it is. I know that we each have our favourites but a few comedians seem to be funny to a lot of people. The fact that humans laugh at all is a pretty awesome trait and gives us such pleasure and relief from pain, boredom and stress. Who gets credit for laughter?

Anyone with great talent is awesome to me, even if they use it in a corner and no one knows about them. I am in awe when I sit and watch them, or listen to them – most expressly when they are doing something for which I don’t have a talent. It might be the gift of oratory, or writing, or gardening. There is no shortage of talent in the world! The funny thing about talent is that we often don’t pay much attention to our own. That is just such a shame! I like to point out what I admire about the people I know, as much as I can. I’m not worried about them getting big-headed; I’m worried that they won’t cherish it and build on it.

Hopefully, I have given you a little prod to honour awesomeness wherever you come across it tomorrow. I know I will be.

Discovering our essence involves: 1) remembering who we are; 2) discovering what we love and; 3) being true to ourselves. If we can ‘just’ do that, it will mean that we will be able to be more present, more committed, more effective and more alive.

My essence turned out to be KNOWING. It reminds me of how many times in my life I have said, “I just know it in my bones!” Knowing isn’t about intellect or even theoretical learning. It goes beyond that into the realm of ‘knowing’ what matters to people and how much potential they bring into their lives by being who they are. Interestingly, now that I’m sure that’s what it is for me, I can’t say that I’m surprised. Nor is anyone who knows me – sorry about the pun!

Ever since early December, I have been living my life with a more conscious awareness of what my essence means to me and what it might mean for me to invite it more to the forefront of my life. In fact, I have invited it to take center stage! This shift in focus has allowed me to BE a gift to other people with whom I come into contact. I am doing this by being more authentically ‘me’ and I’m sure that this will continue to unfold as I explore more and more ways in which I can be mindful of just what I bring to this little blue planet, that involves using my talent and makes my heart sing.

This month, I ‘sang’ myself right into a Coaching Certificate program run by the same organization. Yes, I have been coaching for a long while but I decided that it would serve me well to upgrade my skills and knowledge, create a bigger network and receive some very powerful mentoring. I have just completed the first week of on-site training here in Vancouver and I can feel the power of those foundational pieces and the work that we did together.

But that’s not all. My heart has ‘sung’ some wonderful connections into my life. The group with whom I will complete this program is a powerhouse of talent and dedication with similar values to mine. I am delighted to have met and got to know them. But here’s the additional gift: an old friend and colleague is also enrolled in the program. We have not seen one another since we worked together in Toronto 21+ years ago. Neither of us knew that the other would be in the course and we are delighted to be working together again. What are the chances of that?

And wait, I’m not finished yet! I also reconnected with someone else whom I had met a few years ago at a dinner party at a friend’s house. Accident? I don’t think so! I have said for a long time that there is no such thing as coincidence and I see these as the wonderful events that we attract when we are being our authentic selves and gifting that to the world. Thank God we are not cookie-cutter images of the same essence. I delight in the fact that we are so unique and I encourage us all to express that essence by gifting it to one another in whatever ways feel good and right.

You are a unique, shiny gift to the Universe and I see you. Do you see this too?

PS – Be sure to check out my latest book review on my web site: Taming Your Gremlin

My technique for playing this game is to very gently nudge the rods, from the end, one at a time, until I find one that gives, that moves, just a little. That tells me that it’s loose enough to be removed without making the whole stack fall over.

My theory is that the same tactic can be applied to life’s choices. I don’t throw myself at things. I gently nudge them to see if they move. Deciding which ones to nudge is a matter of intuition more than anything else. I could go at it one at a time from the bottom up but that doesn’t really appeal to me. Having tested by nudging, I then apply more pressure to the ones that give a little. I go through that door and move another of life’s pieces.

What I’m trying to figure out right now is what to do when none of the things I nudge in life are giving – at all. Then what?

I am delighted that I have another channeled message to start the new year, and indeed the new decade. I always learn as much as all of my readers and this one is no exception. Hope you enjoy it and I look forward to your comments. Happy New Year to you all.

Lucca

* * *

Dear Ones,

It is now time to make an opening in the clouds that have stood between you and the future that you have hoped and dreamed about. It takes courage to stand before friends and family and say that you are going to change the way you live your life. It is a scary step to take when you don’t have a guarantee that there is success ahead of you. This is why there are those of you who have gone ahead of the others. While you may not have had wild success, you are still here! As more people join you, although they are not going to do exactly the same things as you, they will swell the ranks and make you feel less alone and more like a community.

It is right and just that some of you lead, although you may not feel you have a right to. In Lucca’s case, she stepped onto this path in a big way in May of 1990 when she left her 9-5 job. She trusted what her intuition was telling her and she has been following it ever since. It has been challenging at times and there have been only a handful of people who understood what she was doing, but there was enough support to keep going.

She has been doing this for twenty years now. What started as a single step has now become a way of life. She has been making choices according to her values. She has been listening to and obeying her inner calling. For all of you who have been doing the same, or even contemplating it, that has felt risky. It is life without a conventional map or conventional safety net. Some would call this irresponsible. Some would say that it is impractical. Many would say that you will reap what you have sown. And so you will. You are reaping exactly what you have sown.

Let us point out what many of you have been learning about as you live your life in this less than mainstream way:

How to hear your inner voice

When your higher self speaks, it is a voice you increasingly recognize. You hear and respond. Have many of you occasionally misinterpreted? Yes. And then you revisit the message. This is trial and error.

Managing energy

Your energy field (and each of you ARE your energy field) is vibrating about 500 times higher than it was 20 years ago. This makes some of you in the order of 20,000 times more sensitive. You don’t notice that it is that much because the whole planet is doing the same – but some of you are more sensitive than the average person. You have been learning how to manage such levels of sensitivity. You sense this physically, telepathically, on the dream level, and in terms of general response times to everything around you. In short, you have had to adapt.

Universal truths about energy

You have been learning about Universal Truths. We use this term loosely because if we use the term ‘Universal Laws it creates some confusion. Society has legal connotations for the word ‘laws’. You have been learning about ‘cause and effect’ and how it goes beyond the merely physical and into the realm of energy. You have been learning about how energy behaves in the living world.

On the most fundamental level, an atom is an atom. An atom’s behaviour is determined by its environment. The environment is molded by vibration. That is what makes the Earth so unique. Sentient beings have distinct thoughts and needs that manifest in vibration. That is because you live in a three-dimensional world. You have collectively created an experience of being ‘separate’, as opposed to being ‘unified’. Separation, or differentiation, or duality, is not good or bad; it is just an experience. What you refer to as your ego, keeps you separate. Otherwise, you would know that you are all the same thing; energy. That would not be useful when you want to experience duality.

Life on Earth is vibrating higher and higher. If your world were to choose to continue on a path of separation, it would eventually eliminate the experience of duality altogether. Everything would become so separate that it would all be the same again. Break anything down far enough and it is all the same.

The dance

Before everything goes back to being ‘unified’, life on Earth has the opportunity to stay a little longer in the dance of the ebb and flow of separation. Your reality as you know it has reached the limits of the containment of lower vibrations, before it would have to begin the return to the ‘everything-is-separate-state’. You have been sitting at a tipping point for a while (several thousands of years in the grand scheme of things) and the reason you have not moved lower still is because of the higher-level intentions of more than half of the Earth’s energy field.

No value judgements

Understand here that we are not talking about high=good and low=bad. There are no value judgments on the state of the planet. There are just the intentions of the majority of the beings on the planet, including plants, animals and insects. It is a measure of the degree of your energy separation that allows humans to believe that they are the only sentient beings on Earth. As you vibrate at higher levels, this illusion will dissolve.

One

Every living creature has the power to stay enlivened, and therefore self-sustaining, when it is vibrating at the highest levels before becoming unified once more. Followed to it’s logical conclusion, the planet would vibrate at such a high level that everyone and every thing would be one again, just as it does at the other end of the continuum.

Those of you reading this want to experience more of the dance of enlivenment; it is why you find yourselves reading this. You are hoping to be on Earth to experience heightened levels of vibration so that you can experience the creative possibilities of living in joy. It is a choice. When you make your choices about what you say and do and think, according to this intention, and stay out of fear as much as you are consciously able to, and you will vibrate higher and create more of this sort of environment. Like energy attracts like energy. Your choices will govern the outcomes you experience in your daily life. Choose to stay in fear and you will choose to live in the lower vibrations. You already have a taste of this.

Free will

Some of you have already chosen to vibrate at a higher level. You are still choosing it. Those who choose the lower vibrations will sustain a world that is as you already know it in its lower-vibrational aspects, and it will continue to become more so. You make this choice using your free will and all choice is viable. Choice is part of the experience of duality. When there is no separation, there is nothing to choose.

Building momentum that shifts the energy balance

Thus we come to the beginning of 2011. Earth’s balance is shifting from a lower vibration to a higher one. Collectively you will have to find a way to negotiate this path. At first it will be somewhat inconsistent, with some ups and downs, as the majority of you are still learning to manage your own energy vibration and therefore, collectively, that of the planet. Overall, the momentum is moving higher.

Continuing to raise the vibration will mean that the historical instruments which have been used to induce individual and mass fear will have to be dismantled and replaced. Societal systems (social, ecological, monetary, spiritual, etc.) will be redesigned but first you will have to envision another way of being – initially, individually, and then as you gather momentum, collectively. If you can imagine it, you can design it and manifest it.

You will use ‘vibrational comparison and matching’ in order to determine whom to support. You will ask yourself whether the dreams/designs/proposals presented to you match the energy that makes you feel alive and well. Sometimes you will support an initiative that turns out to lead to a place that feels lousy, in which case you might have to choose anew. Allow yourself to rechoose because it is how you will learn. You will share your experiences and encourage one another as you build a world that better meets your higher-vibrational needs.

In this coming decade you have the opportunity to manifest what you imagine. When there are enough of you, you will move into a certain amount of chaos but beneath the confusion will be the underpinnings of another system. This system will be more flexible and more responsive to shifts in consciousness because higher vibrations are like a car moving at higher speeds; more sensitive and therefore quicker to respond to corrections. You will be busy learning, healing, creating and teaching. Each of you will take a role according to your passion and talent, creating joyful collaborations, which will result in lifting the vibrations even higher.

It’s your choice! We are delighted that you are experimenting.

Peace