LOTS of things have happened since my last post.  Shifts that require a book to share, but suffice it to say, “I’m growing!”

I’m embarking on a 30 day journey in which I have committed to listening to my inner wisdom each day AND taking the action that wisdom requests.  I’ve been hit and miss with this stuff in the past because the action that often seems to come out of such meditation didn’t make sense or seem to be leading to what I really wanted.

The 30 day challenge my coach put before me is to let go of listening to Spirit for the sake of getting what I want.  The exercise, ultimately, will show me the way to actively seeking Spirit for no other reason than “I want to–above all else.”

Well, I want God to do what I want.  If most religious people were honest with themselves, they “follow” God out of fear.   Not all, mind you, but at least the majority of people I know.

If you took away the fear of hell, fire and damnation, the fear that you won’t be “blessed” or your family won’t be “protected”,  would you still choose to “follow”?

The answer for me was NO.

It’s been an arduous 10 year journey in reconstructing my belief system and seeing the Divine in a new light.  Indeed, if this Higher Power existed, I wanted to know and experience IT, without fear of what would happen if I chose otherwise.

Just 7 days into this 30 day “experiment”, I am learning something different..about myself and Spirit.   What I’ve known intellectually for 10 years is now, very slowly, becoming my experience.

And that is..we are One.

Words cannot do justice to the feelings I have experienced in the moments where this becomes my “reality”.  A joy, peace, BLISSFULNESS, comes over me.  I “see” everything with love and appreciation.  Nothing is “wrong.”  When I look thru Spirit’s eyes, I see perfection in people and circumstances.  It’s mind-blowing.

My heart is so open.  I feel like I could hug everyone I meet.  I “know” that everything is happening as it should be and the outcome is assured.

Heaven IS in those moments.

I wish I could say that those moments last.  They don’t.  My humanness kicks in and I get cranky about something and start complaining.   I go into fear and wonder how I am going to make another week with my husband so far away…etc.

But now, I have “Heaven” to go to.  To remember.  To recreate.  And I am choosing to do so, more and more, and more.

YESSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS!

I AM Growing.

Friday I got fired.

After a year and a half of doing work I absolutely hated (with a client I adored), I made a mistake and it cost me 90% of my income.

Her decision did not come as a shock.  In fact, not 2 hours before it happened, I told my mastermind group that it would.  And the night before, when the incident happened, I said, “I’m done.”

Of course, that didn’t make it any easier to hear.  Yet I know, the pain I have been processing is my ego acting out in fear.  “What now?”

The truth is…it’s the best thing that could I happened.

Today, for the first time in a very long time, I felt compelled to blog. I mean, I just had to share. Writing gives me a peace that is hard to describe.  Yet I had stopped doing it because I was too busy.

Today, I woke up with a sense of possibility. Not dread.  Not overwhelm.  P-O-S-S-I-B-I-L-I-T-Y.

Today, I gave thanks (genuine, feel-it-in-my-bones, thanks) for my life and everything in it.

In other words, I realized that I am happy the shit is over.

The work I was doing was not inspiring.  I did not jump out of bed every day with anticipation to do it.  It was over my head, way beyond my capabilities and just plain, frustrating.

I never pretended to excel at administrative work.  Yet, when people actually started paying for it, I just went with it.  I was honest…I told them my background.  Invariably, I would always make a mistake or miss a deadline and yet they would stay and keep paying.

So, I just kept trying harder.  Taking more classes.  If I knew more, I’d get better, right?

Sound familiar?

I, like many people who still work in Corporate America, was pouring time, energy and money into my WEAKNESSES,  instead of my STRENGTHS.

I am a COACH.  And a damn good one.

I can help you move from where you are, to where you want to be in POWERFUL ways.

I see YOUR greatness even when you can’t.  I am your biggest fan, until you become your own.

THAT’S what I am good at.  THAT’S who I “be”–without effort or struggle.  It’s my natural state.  And Friday, I was given the gift of time and space to reconnect with that gift and decide how I want to be of service in the world.

Getting fired was…The BEST THING EVER.

Many of  you know of my previous work as an internal diversity consultant in a conservative Fortune 50 company.   Few concepts moved me as deeply during my training as the concept of “white privilege”.   Having grown up in a predominately white environment in NW Ohio, I was all too aware as a child of how it plays out, but  I never was able to put it into words.

Tim Wise, a self-described “angry white male”,  was recently introduced to me by a dear friend.  Over the next few posts, I will be sharing some of his views.

It’s time for us all to THINK.  Not react, not be led, but to THINK for ourselves.  Inside, we know the truth.  Own it.  Face it.  Then be the change you wish to see.

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A BUZZFLASH GUEST CONTRIBUTION
by Tim Wise, www.TimWise.org

For those who still can’t grasp the concept of white privilege, or who are constantly looking for some easy-to-understand examples of it, perhaps this list will help.

White privilege is when you can get pregnant at seventeen like Bristol Palin and everyone is quick to insist that your life and that of your family is a personal matter, and that no one has a right to judge you or your parents, because “every family has challenges,” even as black and Latino families with similar “challenges” are regularly typified as irresponsible, pathological and arbiters of social decay.

White privilege is when you can call yourself a “fuckin’ redneck,” like Bristol Palin’s boyfriend does, and talk about how if anyone messes with you, you’ll “kick their fuckin’ ass,” and talk about how you like to “shoot shit” for fun, and still be viewed as a responsible, all-American boy (and a great son-in-law to be) rather than a thug.

White privilege is when you can attend four different colleges in six years like Sarah Palin did (one of which you basically failed out of, then returned to after making up some coursework at a community college), and no one questions your intelligence or commitment to achievement, whereas a person of color who did this would be viewed as unfit for college, and probably someone who only got in in the first place because of affirmative action.

White privilege is when you can claim that being mayor of a town smaller than most medium-sized colleges, and then Governor of a state with about the same number of people as the lower fifth of the island of Manhattan, makes you ready to potentially be president, and people don’t all piss on themselves with laughter, while being a black U.S. Senator, two-term state Senator, and constitutional law scholar, means you’re “untested.”

White privilege is being able to say that you support the words “under God” in the pledge of allegiance because “if it was good enough for the founding fathers, it’s good enough for me,” and not be immediately disqualified from holding office–since, after all, the pledge was written in the late 1800s and the “under God” part wasn’t added until the 1950s–while believing that reading accused criminals and terrorists their rights (because, ya know, the Constitution, which you used to teach at a prestigious law school requires it), is a dangerous and silly idea only supported by mushy liberals.

White privilege is being able to be a gun enthusiast and not make people immediately scared of you. White privilege is being able to have a husband who was a member of an extremist political party that wants your state to secede from the Union, and whose motto was “Alaska first,” and no one questions your patriotism or that of your family, while if you’re black and your spouse merely fails to come to a 9/11 memorial so she can be home with her kids on the first day of school, people immediately think she’s being disrespectful.

White privilege is being able to make fun of community organizers and the work they do–like, among other things, fight for the right of women to vote, or for civil rights, or the 8-hour workday, or an end to child labor–and people think you’re being pithy and tough, but if you merely question the experience of a small town mayor and 18-month governor with no foreign policy expertise beyond a class she took in college–you’re somehow being mean, or even sexist.

White privilege is being able to convince white women who don’t even agree with you on any substantive issue to vote for you and your running mate anyway, because all of a sudden your presence on the ticket has inspired confidence in these same white women, and made them give your party a “second look.”

White privilege is being able to fire people who didn’t support your political campaigns and not be accused of abusing your power or being a typical politician who engages in favoritism, while being black and merely knowing some folks from the old-line political machines in Chicago means you must be corrupt.

White privilege is being able to attend churches over the years whose pastors say that people who voted for John Kerry or merely criticize George W. Bush are going to hell, and that the U.S. is an explicitly Christian nation and the job of Christians is to bring Christian theological principles into government, and who bring in speakers who say the conflict in the Middle East is God’s punishment on Jews for rejecting Jesus, and everyone can still think you’re just a good church-going Christian, but if you’re black and friends with a black pastor who has noted (as have Colin Powell and the U.S. Department of Defense) that terrorist attacks are often the result of U.S. foreign policy and who talks about the history of racism and its effect on black people, you’re an extremist who probably hates America.

White privilege is not knowing what the Bush Doctrine is when asked by a reporter, and then people get angry at the reporter for asking you such a “trick question,” while being black and merely refusing to give one-word answers to the queries of Bill O’Reilly means you’re dodging the question, or trying to seem overly intellectual and nuanced.

White privilege is being able to claim your experience as a POW has anything at all to do with your fitness for president, while being black and experiencing racism is, as Sarah Palin has referred to it, a “light” burden.

And finally, white privilege is the only thing that could possibly allow someone to become president when he has voted with George W. Bush 90 percent of the time, even as unemployment is skyrocketing, people are losing their homes, inflation is rising, and the U.S. is increasingly isolated from world opinion, just because white voters aren’t sure about that whole “change” thing. Ya know, it’s just too vague and ill-defined, unlike, say, four more years of the same, which is very concrete and certain.

White privilege is, in short, the problem.

Tonight, I watched with tears in my eyes as Barack Obama accepted his party’s nomination for president.  

I cried for a lot of reasons.  But mostly because on the 45th anniversary of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. ’s famous “I have a dream” speech, a man of color, a bi-racial man at that, has a real chance at occupying our nation’s highest office.

There was a time in his lifetime, that people who looked like him were denied the right to vote.  That children who look like his daughters were educated in segregated schools.  That people who looked like him had to ride in the back of the bus.  

Tonight I watched the dreams of my grandmother, who marched with Dr. King in Alabama, come to fruition.  I saw the dream that my mother, a politician in her own right, come to pass.  I saw the hope my daddy held in his heart, for a country that still doesn’t live up to it’s ideals, pay off.

With Senator Obama’s nomination, I realized that the fears my parents and grandparents had living as black people in this country, never put their dreams to sleep.

As I sat and watched Stevie Wonder sing, I could feel my mother, father and grandmother’s spirits.  Their strength, their love, their hope, surrounded me.  Not only because of this historic moment, but as a reminder that although I may be afraid, so afraid that I cannot access my dreams today, that the dreams I had for my life cannot be put to sleep by that fear.  And to help me decide that tonight was the night for me to start dreaming again.

Tonight was a reminder to us all, that dreams, especially the unlikely ones, can come true.

Dream BIG and Live More BOLDLY!

Lisa

“Which would you rather have, Lisa?  To be right or have peace?”

I remember the 1st time a coach asked me that question.  I laughed aloud. 

DUH.

To be right, stupid.  Of course.

As my corporate job continued it’s life-sucking drain,  I remember standing on the curb many evenings waiting for my husband and thinking, “I just want peace.”

Back then, I believed the only way I was going to have it was to quit or die.  And trust me, I was much closer to choosing death than walking out the door on my own.

Long before my career turned into a nightmare, I was fascinated by the concept of “peace.”  World peace.  Divine peace. Inner peace.   It all sounded good.   But if you are anything like me, you may secretly believe that it’s not really attainable…at least not in our lifetime.

But, in my quest to be “right”, I refused to accept that I could not find peace for myself.   I kept looking, ’cause by God, I was going to prove that at least I could have it.  I have been amazed, however, by the way I have found it.

For “fun”,  I watch Christian televison with my daughter.  I don’t mean to mock anyone here, but I left organized religion behind some years ago.  Since I live in Republican/conservative Christian territory, I am constantly around people who have a deep belief in Jesus and Christianity as the only path to God.

So I watch Christian TV to “train” myself to be open-minded and tolerant of beliefs that run counter to my own.

This experiment has had mixed results..at best.  Until today.  Ironically during a show called, “Breakthrough.”  (You have to love the Universe’s sense of humor.)

At the beginning of the show, the pastor was ranting and raving about a bill in Congress that may require networks to show differing points of view.  He asked, “How would you feel if I had to share the stage with a Muslim cleric or someone from Planned Parenthood?..”  As he spoke, you could see his absolute, ferverent belief that such a thing would lead to our destruction..blah, blah, blah.   He was trying to convince viewers that if they were given access to an alternative point of view, America as we know it, would fall into ruin.

I just sat there.  And laughed.  

And then I got up and offered a silent blessing.  And actually meant it.

You see, that’s what he believes.  And he would die for that belief.  And today, I realized that I could get myself all in a tizzy about what I see as his fear, intolerance or just plain stupidity or..hmm..I could choose to honor his belief and choose to be a peace.

It was eye-opening and HA! and major “breakthrough.”

Everyday we encounter people who don’t see the world as we do.  Because they see thru different filters, they have developed different beliefs.  And those beliefs, even the ones others may deem as “destructive” or “evil” some how, in some way, are serving that person.

And they serve you and me, too.

Because each time we are confronted with an opposing point of view, we get the opportunity to choose.  Do I want to be right?  Or do I want to feel peace?

Arguing and trying to convince the other person doesn’t make you feel good.  Self-righteous.  Yes.   But really, do you feel good in your spirit after “winning” an argument?

I learned today that I could honor his belief and choose to honor myself by making the choice to smile, bless him, and find my peaceful place.   There really is no “right” or “wrong,” my friends.  It’s all in your perception.  I get that now.

So today, I invite you to join with me in choosing peace.  Instead of vehemently defending your position with someone, say, “Hmm…I see your point.  Thank you for giving me a different perspective.”  And really mean it.

Practiced enough, I guarantee that you’ll experience something that feels so good, your arguing days will become a thing of the past. 

It begins with one step.  A commitment to choose PEACE above all else.

Are you with me?

Let’s choose PEACE.