In the process of coming to agreements for the weekend celebration-the location, the activities, the menus-even when we would have the conference call for these discussions!-ghosts of childhood past mixed with the differences in lives chosen as adults.  We not only learned where we still nursed hurts from our childhoods past, we also learned where what we thought of a sibling could be happily updated.  And most importantly of all, we learned that “family” was being maintained and honored no longer by the patriarch of the family as much as by us 7 children through our active  commitment to working together, even with ghosts and differences real.

It brought home once again, the power-and need-for rituals, perhaps even more so now in our world of speed and information.  All 7 of us have lives full and rich with to-do lists large enough to fill years of time let alone a weekend. And yet, in wrestling with the issues of and compromising for, the commitment and details needed to gather in the mid(middle)west for honoring our parents, we chose again as adults to share time and space together again for creating and honoring our family.

Cultures have long understood the need for ritual gathering for the pleasures of the celebrations as well as our need as humans to gather in community for the guidance and support it offers as well. While we may no longer need to gather in order to see who among us needs supplies to make it through the winter, we certainly have not lost the need as humans to gather for offering-or receiving-food for our heart and soul.

So off we go to gather as family, honoring parents we are grateful to still be able to hug and kiss, and to take up the mantle of  ”family” from ones who have carried it so long and so well for us children. And by doing so, we are offering our children this gift of ritual of gathering we call family, imperfections and ghosts less important for now than the reminder that love and community are matters worth more of our time and less of our differences.

We made preparations and went to bed early  figuring that taking off by 6 am would ensure a place to park in Provincetown. Of course, plans do not make reality and I awoke at 3 am, not able to relax enough to get back to sleep and by 5 am, I was convinced that the plan that the gods seemed to have blessed the day before would now evaporate due to my sleep-deprivation. Not wanting to disappoint my daughter nor wanting to forfeit my opportunity to play, I got up tired and went into the motions of getting ready for our day of adventures.

We took off for our 2 1/2 road trip and 1 hour into the trip, I realized I had left the whale watching tickets back in the wallet I chose not to take….sigh.  I would simply have to buy duplicate tickets…”this is not an auspicious beginning’…. began the whispering within ……”you are too tired, you have made a mistake to think you can pull off the plans for the day” continued the whispering….and my personal favorite…..”maybe this is a sign you ought not to doing this”….

We all have a version of this voice within us, the voice initiated when a parent or an important grownup told us not to trust life (so much) for staying safe,  for being loved, to be good or nice.  A voice born from loved ones in childhood and continuing way past it’s time into our adulthood.  It is the voice that at one time meant well, but now-when listened to without updating-keeps us more afraid of ourselves, others, and life than it’s original intention. A voice when listened to limits what we can experience, learn, and become from our life and living.

I have learned to listen to this voice within as I listen to those in my life who love me, want me to be safe, or want to pass on their hard-earned wisdom from life….with love, although not always with agreement. As an adult, I examine and renovate my beliefs so that the basis of my decisions is current with what I call my “signature values”-a value consciously chosen by myself as fundamental to living my life. As I was driving to the Cape, hearing my critical voice within tell me how tired I was and how I had already begun the day badly, I instead choose to listen to the voice of my signature value of faith in “leaning into life”….to trust that the day was conspiring for my success, as much as my mind might be telling me otherwise.

So while I could hear the whispers of the past whisper their form of care and messages of safety, I listened instead to my voice within for the actions I would commit to….  ”people are good, the whale watching folks will work with you on this ticket matter”……”you can rest on the boat and simply take breaks during the day”….”trust your life wants you to play today”.

So what was the day like on 3 hours of sleep, steamy heat and humidity, with crowds galore? Awesome and blessed….all day parking for a$10, great seats for the 4th of July parade (an education of all kinds for my daughter), a wonderful sushi lunch on a cushioned bench right under the blasting AC….ahhh….with a waiter who delighted my daughter with his attention and way, whale watching ship owner who not only gave us free replacement tickets but placed us on the boat scheduled to be in the harbor for the fireworks, whale families galore seen right next to the boat on the tour,  a stunning sunset that the Cape is known for,  amazing fireworks viewed from the boat, and a policeman who gave us cuts into the traffic heading back to Boston that most likely saved us an hour or so!!

Not only was a wonderful time had by all, another notch in the belt was made for choosing to lean into the trust that life conspires on my behalf.  We are here on Earth not out of punishment, nor rejection by the divine, nor out of a sadistic choice to watch us fail, although at times we do make less than exalted choices.  We are here through the sacred gift of a human lifetime, for sharing the radiance of our souls, real-izing the illumination of our infinite wisdoms, and for inspiring those we journey our human destination with….all made more possible through leaning into the trust and faith of our sacred partner….our life.

So when something’s time is up-be it a relationship, habit, job, or place to live-it is important to consciously honor how what is leaving-whether it be our choice or not-has blessed our life.  Doing so allows us to continue to receive the blessings of what is moving out of our life and to be in ease with the changes.  Ceremony, with it’s calling upon elements of our being other than our minds, offers a sense of understanding and completion otherwise not possible using only our mind.

My ceremony for ease and gratitude with change is below.  You may have other ways of ceremony; my invitation is simply to make conscious your gratitude…

1. Sitting down in a quiet place, close your eyes and take some deep breaths in and out, relaxing   yourself into your body until you can feel yourself calm and focused within.

2. Write down what is leaving/changing, focusing on realizing clarity and positivity in how it served your life. (Even things we did not like/are happy are moving out have something to be grateful for, even if it is that it is leaving!)

3. Closing your eyes, bring what is leaving/changing into your heart, imaging beautiful light and joy surrounding what is leaving. Invite those who surround and guide you in the unseen world to help you understand how what is leaving has served your life.  When you can feel the warmth of gratitude in your body for what is leaving you , offer your well wishes for it’s journey forward.

4. Opening your eyes, take the piece of paper with what you wrote and with a prayer, burn the paper.  (Sage or cedar are great to burn as well if you have them) This releases what you wrote and the fire element offers release and transformation.

Ceremony offers us the opportunity to remember we are not simply the doings of our life; that our living has nobility, courage, and destiny.  And so when you are feeling yourself down about what is changing in your life or world, take some time to remember with your body and your conscious choice with ceremony,  what is good and noble in what is happening within the changes and the challenges.

As women, we are ambassadors for humanity and divinity through our innate powers of creativity, sacredness, and sensitivity. As women, the realms of magic, mystery, and miracles are ours simply through the grace of being born a woman. Many of these elemental aspects of ourselves as women have been previously denigrated, deemed dangerous by those in our culture who feared the unknown, As women, we have not been encouraged to develope our awareness or trust of our wisdom, creative power, or the strength within us. As a woman, we have amazing power and deep impact, simply through being a woman……are you in conscious relationship with your sacred powers?

We are women first and secondly our roles of daughter, mother, wife, sister, which are wonderful workshops for learning, remembering, and then offering as our wisdom. All humans are born through a woman, learn first from a women, and seek to be loved by a woman. We are the creative force of the universe-we simply need to become aware of what we are teaching those around us about what we value and what we believe is the gift of a human lifetime. Trusting our knowing and speaking of what we know ignites the vital healing of ourselves, our times, and our world.

Simply, the divine is inviting us to become the teachers, healers, warriors, and leaders the world dearly needs us now to be. Live the radical notion that within us is all that we need and that in bringing forth what is within yourselves, not only are our own lives transformed for the better but our families and communities as well. Choose to make love with your life……choose to receive in trust and faith your divinity …choose the bliss and bounty and beauty that is yours through birth as a woman.

To be Mother is to be the first teacher, leader, warrior and healer that a soul in the human journey encounters, her impact-beginning in the womb-deep and wide. A mother first informs the young what is and is not true, what can and cannot be done, and what is to be and not to be…the first map of the human world for the next generation as it were. We mothers also benefit from investing in the mothering role for life truly is mutual. While mothering, we stumble upon places within ourselves still un-mothered… the sacred invitation to heal a wounding of our past instead of simply passing the wound onto the future. And in traditions ancient, the prayer of a mother is said to be the one prayer the gods must answer.

In working with women in transition-and who is not these days!- what I have come to understand is that often before we can relax into more of our unique selves as women, our daughter-selves need to allow our mothers to have been both good and bad, right and wrong, big and small, individuals and accumulated lineage. When we cannot allow our mothers to have been human with her own needs and desires as a woman and limited by the times she lived in, we put ourselves at risk for not allowing our needs as women and dissolving the limitations we may feel from the times and roles we ourselves are in. Where we still act as daughter, while otherwise claiming the full rights and privileges of being a grown-up, is an invitation to not so much make our human mother wrong as much as a reminder to call upon our Divine Mother and Earth Mother to nurture us as their children.

Honoring the sacredness of the role of Mother invites us to become more conscious of the lineage of the women before us in our family, for truthfully, this is who is present-known and unknown, liked or disliked- in ourselves as women. We all know where we swore we would be different from our mothers; are we also willing to also give gratitude and acknowledgment to their wisdom and ways that we are passing on? Mothering is a role with tremendous power and impact, a role sacred in a world often profane.

And so, my prayer for all mothers this Mother’s Day, is that we honor the role of Mother, taken up in sacred trust with the souls we call children, on behalf of All. And I pray that we truly and actively support mothers in not only the attending responsibilities of this sacred trust, we truly and actively support her engaging the power of this sacred trust as well. For all reality begins with a dream and is it not the dream of all mothers that her children realize a life long of health, happiness, and the holy from the gift of a human life? All of us are children of Mother Earth and I know this to be Her prayer for all Her children…simply we are asked to honor our sacred relationship as such….mother Small, mother big..

My daughter and I recently went to “Avatar” the 3D movie released in December 2009 and I came out of the movie theater again reminded of the power of seminal movies. The themes within “Avatar” are an invitation to become more aware of how our current beliefs and choices effect our life and our world. Without giving away the movie, here are some of the themes within both “Avatar” and people’s lives today and how this may present in your life

1. “Sh*t happens that challenges our life in often big ways; we choose to engage our powers to transform it or claim being victim of it.” Greet challenges as simply requests for more of your heart-based wisdom, love, and strength already present through your powerful gift of being born a human being

2.Beliefs and habits from tribes you pledged allegiance to at one time now may not be beliefs and habits that serve you. What serves at one age and stage of your life often needs to transform to be of service in your next age and stage of life. Your own experience will edit what is true and not true for you and your life.

3. Without the presence of others, your challenges will not become transformed; sovereignty of soul is not the same as solitary in being. We are sovereign souls here to serve the sacred gift of our human lifetime and journey and we count upon others-as others count upon us-to provide mirrors for what we cannot see ourselves. We all need people in our life who kindly mirror where we lack clarity and awareness, the result is greater ease and joy in our living.

4. Our hubris as human beings is ignorant and immature; not only do we share this planet with other life forms, these life forms are considered by many cultures as nations themselves….the green nation, the animal kingdom, etc. We humans are simply one aspect of the Earth’s eco-system, dependant on other forms of life for our living while other life forms are not dependant on our living. If for no reason than our own self-interest, we are being called to respectfully relate to the Earth and her other life forms who truly can benefit us if we but alter our relationship with them.

5. Women is the first teacher as Mother and the vessel through which all humans existence enters through. An active, strong feminine acts as guardian for the sacredness of all life, even for life we ourselves do not create and life we seemingly do not benefit from. Women in many traditional and ancient cultures are considered the heart and guardians of the culture and it’s well-being and the divine feminine honored as the creative aspect in life. Where women are not respected and honored as the embodiment of the divine feminine, the culture considers that place at risk or in decline. When we honor the feminine as the grace of the divine, the divine will grace us in return.

6. Events in life will demand we choose; not choosing is a choice and all choices have an impact. If you are there, you are part of what is being created, the invitation is increased re-spondabilty. Even the carefully constructed scientific standards for experiments concede that who/what is present to the experiment influences and impacts the results: ie. there is no such thing as an impartial result. Whatever event, situation, relationship you find yourself in, you are being called to become conscious of your impact and power through your response-ability to the situation.

7. Courage is necessary in life and engaging what does not seem possible in trust and faith does result in miracles. When we call upon the courage of our convictions-what is true for us within our hearts-divine grace answers our call and serves what we call a miracle. What has been previously thought to be impossible become possible through our engaging in acts of faith and courage with others.

8. Calling upon those who lived before us- our ancestors-is calling upon the strength, wisdom, and light from those who came before us. The light and wisdom we contain does not die with our bodies; never doubt that what you transform within yourself continues as light and wisdom for the benefit of all who follow you.

Part of my winter interior work has been contemplating ways to expand my connection and service with our community of women from all over the world. To that end, I am very excited to be working on a series of teleseminars which will begin later in March~ more information soon! It promises to be a wonderful and powerful way of engaging the transformational energy of Spring, offering guidance, tools, and community in service to being a woman matters.

In closing, please accept my gratitude for your gift of presence in my life~it is my honor and privilege to be in your life. My guests on my Blogtalkradio show continue to inspire and inform me and I invite you to download a show or two to hear what people in service to others have to share about the world these days.

love and blessings…

JaiKaur

For the past few summers, I have longed to make pilgrimage to northern Michigan, more my home while growing up than the many towns and houses we lived in. Both my parents were born and raised in this little town of Cheboygan, land of birch forests and crystal clear lakes. Once our family stopped moving to a new town every year, we rented a cottage for the summer on the large inland lake next to Cheboygan. My teenage summers were spent in imitation of a mermaid’s life, my hours spent in the lake offering me retreat and respite from my duties as the oldest of 7 children.

Life lately has taught me the fallacy of putting off through logic what time will bring back as regret. I began to plan for my longed-for road trip to northern Michigan where I could say hello and goodbye to my elderly relatives, make some peace with ghosts of times past, and swim once again in the embrace of my beloved lake. And while my tween dutifully made her objections to being tortured by the hours of being in the car with her mother, I knew the life-wisdom of bringing her to her larger family and history at this teen-age and stage of her life. Grace brought to my computer search a lakeside cottage on my beloved lake, offering my childhood bliss of being in the water for hours and hours at a time. Even the weather, which had been not so summer-like, was turning sunny and hot, the perfect weather in which to swim in water cold from the ice which does not leave the lake until May…. grace was greasing the wheels of my pilgrimage.

And yet, I realized I was hedging on fully committing to my pilgrimage “up north”. Gently inquiring within, I understood that this road trip was a commitment to re-claiming my trust in my life, trust that had become rather tattered after the betrayal of a husband of many years along with the betrayal by the spiritual community I had loved and and helped grow. …trust that my car with many miles would not break down, trust that the money I was spending on renting a cottage would be replenished in the fall, and trust that the lake of my childhood would still as magical as it was in my memories. There was realization that my reasons for not embarking on this journey of my soul’s longing-dressed up as logical-were simply excuses to live a little less, feel a little less, and reach for a little less. OK as long as I was willing to tell myself the truth of my choice to live a smaller life due to dented trust in life, not the pseudo-reasons of work, finances, and time….often used as excuses for not leaning into life with trust and faith.

And so, not wanting to surrender to living “less than” my glorious precious life, I chose to embrace my life scars not as damage, but rather, as victories in fully engaging with life. The result? One of the best experiences of my life with my tween even offering that she would like to do this trip again next summer! The lake’s embrace was as magical and nurturing as I have remembered it, the relatives grateful and generous in their love and sharing of family history, and the break from all things electronic-even my computer, oh my!-simply priceless beyond words. The cottage was perfect in it’s cottage-ness of knotty pine walls and birch tree vista of lake and vast sky. My morning meditations and journaling on the deck just 10 feet from the shoreline, were shared by multitudes of hummingbirds and the sparkling of the rising sun upon the water. My daughter made good friends with a baby duck family of 7 plus mom, exchanging leftover corn chips for the stroking of their downy backs. It was as good as it gets for each of us…

Lying in the waves, watching the sunshine sparkle, I remembered again how embracing the sensual feeds my soul, nurturing a strength and clarity that logic alone simply does not grant me. My body and it’s wisdom about the soul it contains and has partnered with, knew what treasures lay in a pilgramage to my lake most holy….simply I needed to choose again my trust in both the soft knowing of my body and in the strength of my life’s grace.

For those who listened to my May 28th BlogTalkRadio show, you may know where I am going with this. My moment of truth came when my guest questioned me for throwing an herb into my compost pile, scolding me as wrong and insensitive to do so. This was one of many in a series of questions that had a cat and mouse dynamic to them…and I did not like being the mouse especially on a live show! By the time we got to the nettle question, I could feel my excitement about hosting my special guest morphing into irritation, and then into my body getting it’s armor up and ready for battle.

Now don’t get me wrong, I am an advocate of lively dialogue, knowing the avoidance of healthy conflict not only misses a creative opportunity, it often-times leads to an escalation of conflict and polarization between the parties. However, this cat and mouse game was not only irritating to me, it was not respectful to the listeners who had come to learn from our show and so I began to claim the righteousness of my anger.

Ahhh, the beauty of a daily meditation practice…As soon as I realized my body was girding up for battle based on my right to indignation, I smiled, took some deep breaths in and out, and asked myself “what is really going on here?” (versus my current thought of “off with her head!”). My soft inner voice whispered back “learning” and my body began to relax, my mind shifting from being surprised, then defensive into curious. Not much to my surprise, my guest then changed gears and away we went with the show that had been intended….grace exercised.

Instead of engaging in either the active conflict of whose is right/whose is wrong or the passive war of “she’s a piece of work!”, choosing instead to pause and breath graced me with wonderful learning and how I have grown. I was neither negating nor diminishing myself in the experience I was having, which I would have 15 years ago, especially given the dynamics of this guest playing her cosmic role so well. By making room for grace through the choice to drop back into my body through breathing, self-awareness became present, transforming my irritation at another into an opportunity to choose grace.

Grace for me is less about being passive and more an active choice to let go and trust in what is being delivered is for my best. Before the show, I had placed myself as the novice and my guest the expert; afterwards, I could appreciate my grace and my guest’s mastery. Through exercising grace, more of my guest’s brilliance could be shared with the listeners and I received understanding of the important of grace in how I live……less reluctance to live as a queen. But that’s a writing for my next blog.

You can hear me talk more about the matters in this blog by going to the June 5th BlogTalkRadio show.

The question awaiting an answer was how to craft a business that delivers my passion for women’s impact -our grace, grit, and gratitude-while being….. a woman, a mother, a friend, and a daughter, an artist…. As my peeps know, I am all about the “how” in deciphering the world, for in the “how” is the integrity, something our world is learning the need for these days. I first learned the importance of integrity-the congruence between the “what “and the “how”-while volunteering for a series of non-profits in my early 20′s. It was in these years of working with people committed to bettering the world and yet, so often angry at those perceived as not caring the same, that I learned of the importance of integrity in my life… ….that going to war for peace does not create peace.

I learned integrity’s wisdom while learning to parent, for while children may not come with a written instruction manual, they do come with their own directions. And when we are willing to acknowledge the difference between their needs and our history, make our parenting choices accordingly, we honor the sacred trust of being the child’s first god/dess and teacher, growing up both the child and the parent in the process. Another wisdom learned through integrity….life is mutual, set up to teach and benefit all involved.

Raking and listening to my ipod, I heard Howard Schultz, the founder of Starbucks, talk of the four principles that guide him, number 4 being “everything matters” or as I say, the small builds the big. As women, we know this well…the many small acts needed to grow a human being from a baby into maturity, the many small acts that transform a building into a cozy home, or the many small acts over time which actualize our faith and trust in each other. Another JaiKaur life truism…we grow wisdom, a quality different from knowledge, through the experiences that the street life of daily living graces us with.

And so, through the repetitive act of raking, it came to me, my answer so soft and yet so certain in it’s knowing…my business needed to embrace the same integrity that had served so well my parenting, my crafting of a house into a home, my work as an architect and mediator. Simply, I needed to pay attention to the needs voiced by my business, listen well to the unspoken but clearly said within me, and surrender my impatience to trusting the divine’s way. And in surrendering more to receiving and releasing more my need to control, my business could become more than I could have figured out through my knowledge, control, and will alone.

Question asked, answer received….thank you grace!

As women, we are very familiar with mystery-what man has not exclaimed of this of us-yet we are often challenged to embrace the ecstacy of our mystery in our lives as women. We may revel in the magic and miracle of a body that can turn blood into milk and create from the union of two cells the complexity of a human being. But what to do about the power in our mystery that in times past has made us feared, even thought to be dangerous? Students of history may remember that to be a healer, midwife, or powerful woman in the middle ages could be dangerous, with communities where women were killed simply for using their powers of transformation. Even though generations have come and gone since, patterns of energy carry on through the generations until consciously transformed. Sometimes, the emotions that we feel within us are from a time not our own, and are simply presenting themselves not in the truth of what is so now, but in request of our transforming them for now.

We live in times most exciting, where what we do not know is calling to be embraced by not only scientists as the good news, but by all of us as well. No matter our level of current mastery, we are being asked to embrace even more of who we are, especially the magical mystery of our infinity and divinity. When we embrace our unknown and mystery as the good news, expand through an active relationship with our spirit and soul, and share our experiences with others, we illuminate magic and miracles not yet known. As the scientists pointed out, what we don’t know yet may be what saves us from what we know now. Today, consider meeting what you do not know, understand, or have confusion around, as your invitation to greet it instead with awe, curiosity, and excitement, to make love with the mystery of your being and let your ecstacy change the world!