Sharing My Gifts
Montara Beach, California
I can do many things, but I am not sure which of my gifts speak the most to people.
I want to know what inspires you about my work. Which aspects of my work most interest you?
That’s why I’m asking for your opinions. And there’s a little something in it for you if you share them with me.
I’ve cooked up a quick, three-question survey. When you fill it out, you’ll be entered to win a dreamwork or energy healing session with me (your choice).
Getting your feedback will help me immensely.
CLICK HERE TO TAKE THE SURVEY.
And feel free to share this survey with others; the more responses the better.
Thank you!
Miraculous Moments
Cliffs at the Marin Headlands
Sometimes all it takes to regain perspective is slowing down and remembering all the small, miraculous, and beautiful moments in life.
Answering yes to your friend’s offer to join her at the beach (thanks Ann!).
Drinking hot chocolate with cinnamon sprinkled in.
Pulling the covers up around you after climbing into bed.
Having a friend who hugs you even when your tears dampen his shirt.
Hearing a child sing her own made-up song while walking with her parents.
Hiking on a sunny path and hearing hawks’ cries overhead.
Laughing at the adorableness of your huge, jolly cat lying on the floor.
What are your recent miraculous moments?
Freeconomy
Me and Grace woofing in Norway. Photo by Per-Arne Ytterman.
The other day a friend emailed me to tell me about Mark Boyle. His big message is that we need to reconnect…with each other, with the Earth, with ourselves.
He comes at this message from the perspective of money and he’s become known as the Moneyless Man…he even wrote a book about his year-long experiment of living without money.
He coined the term freeconomy, meaning giving away things for free for the love of it. He started a web site, Just for the Love of It, which is the center of the freeconomy community. There people list the skills, tools, and offerings they’re willing to share for free and search for things they’re looking for.
For instance, do you need a skill saw for that home improvement project you started weeks ago? Log on, search for a skill saw, and find someone in your neighborhood with a saw to lend. Or maybe you’ve wanted a massage for months and haven’t had the cash to pay for one? Search for a masseuse.
So does this really work? It did for Boyle…that’s how he lived without money for a year. But even within that experiment, he didn’t have everything given to him. He traded his skills for accommodation, for one thing. However, money didn’t change hands
I lurked in the forums to see what the community is saying. Some argue that trading or bartering for things counts as an exchange and that means it isn’t really free. Others say if it doesn’t involve exchanging money, it counts. It’s an interesting debate.
I’ve dabbled in this world a bit…on my trip to Europe I stayed for free for all but two weeks of my trip. At several places I traded skills like cooking, painting, and gardening for my accommodation. At a few places I stayed without any kind of trade.
Now that I’m back, I’ve traded intuitive readings for haircuts and a house-sit for accommodation. People have gifted me items I need. It’s great when it’s a win-win situation and I think moving in this direction is part of reconceiving the dream.
Boyle is onto something by encouraging us to move away from money. How that will work in the grand sceme, I’m not so sure; but capitalism certainly isn’t going to get us there.
Boyle says, “Money is a symptom and a perpetrator of the illusion of separation.” I agree.
We don’t know the farmer who grew our food. Even if we shop at farmer’s markets, it’s often not the actual farmer who sells us our produce (although I did have the pleasure of establishing relationships with farmers like Penny of Rose Lane Farm and Erica of Nunez Farm when I lived in Concord). When we shop at a grocery store, we don’t know the person who pulled our carrots out of the ground or baked our bread.
Taking it a step further, think about buying shoes, computers, or appliances. Hundreds of people worked to bring our iPhones, Doc Martens, and Maytags to us. Factory workers, truck drivers, stockers, salespeople, vice presidents, administrative assistants, and managers of all kinds were involved. We’re so far removed from contact with these people we have no idea how our purchases affect their lives. And that means we don’t really know how these purchases affect our lives.
I found a lot to like in Boyle’s recent talk at the Bank of Idea in London.
Here you can see part two and three, the ones I found most interesting. See what you think of Boyle’s ideas.
And answer me this: have you ever tried living without money? Do you do regular trades or bartering? Do you think this could work as a new economy?
Care of She Tele-Class
We’re moving into a new time. You sense it, don’t you?
Outmoded structures are collapsing around us; just look at the Arab Spring. Systems that do not support life and love are being challenged; just look at the Occupy movement.
But there’s something even deeper happening. I like to think of it as the return of the Divine Feminine (and I didn’t come up with that; there are many others in this camp).
Many of us can see and feel that our patriarchal, hyper-masculine, capitalistic society doesn’t nurture us. We sense that something is off, that something needs to change. And the great news is, it is changing.
What do I mean by “the return of the Divine Feminine”?
A return to the honoring of Earth, the ancestors, women, children, and animals; living in the flow; believing dreams hold valuable information; and deeply understanding how intimately connected we are. Moving through the world more gently, getting out of Ego and into Self, listening to inner wisdom, intuition, and synchronicity.
I don’t sense that this is a radical rejection of the Masculine, however. I believe that this movement will bring back an honoring of the Feminine and then we will enter a time of balance between the Divine Masculine and the Divine Feminine.
We’re all steeped in this shift and it has many of us feeling unmoored. How do we navigate this time of change? How do we resist the rampant messages of fear and move toward our authentic, creative way of being in the world?
I know many people, especially women, who’ve felt called to move toward this new way.
And as a result, many of them are on what we might call the Heroine’s Journey. It’s similar to the Hero’s Journey, a term coined by mythologist Joseph Campbell and made manifest by men like George Lucas with Star Wars and JRR Tolkein with The Lord of the Rings. We all know the Hero’s Journey well because it shapes so much of our entertainment industry.
But what is the Heroine’s Journey and how is it different from the Hero’s Journey? And where can women who are on this journey find support?
I’ve been pondering this deeply for a long time and more recently I started a dialouge about it with Jamie Walters of Ivy Sea. We’ve created something to help women in the thick of the Heroine’s Journey traverse its tricky terrain.
It’s called Care of She. Our first offering is a four-week tele-class called Reconceiving the Dream.
In the class, we’re helping women reclaim their power, take ownership of their authentic, heart-felt stories, and use their Feminine gifts to navigate this new path.
You’ll learn how to recognize your unique journey and your role in it, you’ll develop a different relationship with fear and other triggers, and you’ll discover the power within Feminine archetypes and myths and learn to work with them on your journey. We’ll also provide you with a number of practices to integrate into your daily life that will help you navigate this new path of change and uncertainty.
The class begins Thursday, February 16, and we’re hosting a preview call on Thursday, February 9 on the Feminine Mojo show so you can learn more about the class.
The class is significantly discounted to those who sign up before February 3, so visit the event page today and claim your spot.
By registering early, you’ll also have the chance to win a session with Jamie, and a healing or dreamwork session with me. We’ll select five winners at random.
Dream Guidance: Let Go of Your Old Life
Recently, I’ve gone through waves of panic as a result of big bills: my cat, Jack, got sick and had to go to the vet, and in the same week I needed a new logic board for my new-to-me Macbook.
As soon as these mini-crises hit, I went into fear. How was I going to make it now? I watched my bank account dwindle. Then the voices started in. “Who the hell do you think you are to go with the flow, live from your heart, trust that something is coming? That’s all total nonsense. How do you expect to feed yourself? It’s irresponsible.”
When these voices show up, it’s hard for me to ignore them because they’re mean, loud, and obnoxious. They purposefully obscure my inner guidance. It was rough there for a while. I thought I’d probably reached the end, that the ride was over and I was going to give up.
That’s my old pattern: a crisis hits, I go into panic mode, I look for and apply for jobs I don’t want, and then end up working for two years at a job I don’t like.
This time I stepped right into that pattern again. I immediately trolled Craigslist for crappy jobs I didn’t want. I made a list of them and told myself I’d apply for them the next day. But when I actually sat down to edit my resume, an intense stomach pain showed up. The longer I worked, the worse it got. Then the pain in my left ovary, my true indicator of doing the wrong thing, showed up. I knew I needed to quit working on my resume.
I turned off the computer and took a shower. When I was done, I realized the stomach pain and the ovary pain were completely gone. I spent the rest of the day growing my business and writing and I felt immensely better. I haven’t returned to the resume since and the pain hasn’t returned either.
During all this I asked my dreams for clues about how to proceed. I needed guidance: should I keep working to grow my business and work on the book or should I look for a job?
For weeks I got no answers. Just when I felt especially down about my guides and dreams staying silent, this dream came:
I park my car and go in to shop. I come out and think I know where my car is parked. I walk to the spot, but my car isn’t there. I decide if I feel for it, I can find it because it’s just invisible. I’ll be able to sense it’s energy. I stand there and put out my hands, trying to sense the energy of the car. I think if I can find the keyhole, I can put my key into it and the car will reappear. Eventually I realize this is silly. The car isn’t there. I remember my car is parked up by the building on the right side.
I walk into the back of a grocery store into a room that looks like an employee lounge. I sit at a desk and try to work on something on my laptop. Two very serious-looking people come in, a man and a woman. I can’t see them because the light is shining in my eyes so their faces are in shadow. I have sunglasses on. I look up to see them better. They’ve come to tell me my elementary teaching license was a waste because there are no jobs. I already know this and laugh it off and say I don’t regret going to JFKU.
So many things are happening in this dream! The most relevant ones to my question are these:
- I’ve just come from shopping
- I can’t find my car
- I try to sense into the car and give up
- I go to an employee lounge to work
- Two people, a man and a woman, tell me my old education was a waste and it won’t get me a job
First, in the dream I’ve just come from spending money and then I try to find the car. Just like my waking life pattern: I spend money and I go looking for a vehicle to get work and money.
Then there’s the car. In the dream the car is my old Pontiac, a car I drove several years ago and then gave to Lance, my ex. Since I sold my Prius during my trip, I’m now driving that Pontiac when Lance isn’t using it. So I’m driving around in a vehicle from my old life.
This is highly significant. Vehicles in dreams often represent what is moving us forward. In the dream and in waking, I’m getting around in a car that represents a very old life. In the dream, I can no longer see it, find it, or get into it. Trying to sense it, find it, or put the key into it doesn’t work. The dream is saying that old life just isn’t going to work anymore.
Even though in the dream I realize where the car is parked, I don’t go to find it. Instead I end up in an employee lounge. This isn’t my ideal workplace…it is bare with a few folding tables, white walls, and drab décor. But at least I’m in the lounge, and it’s not a stressful place. And, I’m working on my own thing on my new laptop. It’s a step forward.
Then the man and woman come in, with serious faces, to tell me my old education was a waste. It’s not going to work for me in finding a job. And I laugh, saying I already know that and I don’t regret it. The funny thing is, I didn’t get my elementary teaching license at JFKU, but that’s the school I defend in the dream. At first I thought this was a message not to pursue teaching children, but my DreamTribe colleague Amy pointed out that the dream might be saying my old education was “elementary,” implying I am moving on, going further.
So I’ve got two signs in the dream that the old way isn’t going to work: my car is gone and unusable, and my old education isn’t going to get me a job. I can’t rely on any of those old ways anymore. Seems like a pretty obvious message.
A few days later, I dreamed about a shaman I’m training with. In the dream, she is paying to have three different cars fixed up for me. They’re at the shop and we’re standing outside while she negotiates the price and the repairs. Looks like I’m getting not just one, but three new possible directions. Positive steps forward indeed.
