Forgiveness heals

Carrie Ure

I got hit hard with the flu a few weeks ago. It came on suddenly after a series of intense emotional experiences which included landing a nine to five job after nearly a year of underemployment, making a deeper commitment with my lover, hosting my beloved spiritual teacher in my home, and embarking on a year-long Fate and Destiny project with my cherished Sacred Contracts Crew. Perhaps at some point the system must shut down to integrate so many monumental events.

During the past few weeks as these various events coincided, I have  attempted to read Caroline Myss’ new book Defy Gravity. I say “attempted to read” because I have literally been arrested at the beginning of the second chapter. Illustrating the power of this book and these ideas, I been unable to move beyond the first major truth. It’s about forgiveness.

Myss makes the point that all healing begins with letting go of the need to know why things happen as they do. And that is forgiveness in its essence. It’s common in the new age to throw the term forgiveness around quite a bit, yet the concept begs a deeper look. I believe Myss gets it and I have examples in my own life as evidence.

I remember the precise moment her teachings reached me. In my early 30’s I had been struggling with the “why me” syndrome. Here I was, talented, beautiful, healthy, educated, even lucky,  but I couldn’t seem to get my life together. Week after week I moaned and complained to my therapist about what an awful upbringing I’d had. Nobody loved me enough, nobody cared for me when I was a child, blah, blah, blah. I spent a fortune on one therapist, then another and finally a third, a Jungian dance therapist, very well known. Although she had come highly recommended, she refused to take me at first. Perhaps she’d been warned about my propensity to whine. I badgered her until she finally relented.

About nine months into our sessions I walked into her office, a curious, haunted, place. There on a shelf near the door was a huge book with the heavy title, “The Victim in Holocaust Germany.” I will never know whether she placed the book in my path or whether it was simply one of the major synchronicities of my life. Although I did not even open its cover, I may as well have been hit over the head with it. In that moment I saw perfectly clearly that my own attitudes of entitlement and victimhood were keeping me stuck. My pattern of blaming my alcoholic parents and chaotic upbringing for my problems kept me searching for the answers to my miserable existence.

My deeper path in my spiritual life began that day, a long quest to discover how I could forgive my family and myself and set us all free. I left therapy shortly thereafter and never returned.

They say that the teacher always arrives when the student is ready. I discovered Myss’ wonderful first book, “Why people don’t heal and how they can,” shortly after leaving therapy.  In the book she explains that it is impossible to heal while one identifies as ill. This basic premise has remained consistent in all of Myss’ writing and it comes to full fruition in her latest book.

To stop identifying myself as the victim of bad relationships and events has changed my life profoundly. And to stop identifying myself as angry and hurt has healed my relationships.

In 1997 in the midst of continuing spiritual work, I picked up “Anatomy of the Spirit.” Using the exercises in the book I began working on forgiving others, including members of my family. I had been carrying one particular regret, a relationship that ended 10 years before, in another part of the country. At that time, I had befriended two women, Evelyn and Jenny. The three of us spent lots of time together, and during the summer Evelyn and I both got married within a month of one another. Jenny attended both and played a crucial role in my wedding, signing the marriage contract as a witness. Shortly afterward during a reunion of the three of us in Evelyn’s newlywed apartment, there was a terrible misunderstanding that left me angry at Jenny. Evelyn and I both severed contact with her.

I later moved to a new city, started a new life and a family, all the while remaining friends with Evelyn. Yet I regretted that I had cut off our friend Jenny. With my new found awareness about victimhood I realized that I had hurt myself and her over a perceived offense and now I wanted to know in my heart that I could return to a place of purity and love. I didn’t even know how to do it, and I figured I would never see her again. I was looking for peace in my own heart, a return to the innocent state before the regretted incident. I began to see my anger and resentment as a choice, and I was ready to choose peace.

I decided to journal about it. It was a lovely fall day and we went downtown on a family outing. My husband dropped me off at a pub near the art museum and left me to my journaling while he took our toddler to the park to play for an hour. I poured my heart into the journal, forgiving myself for cutting Jenny out of my life 10 years before. I recognized the choices I had made, the resentments I had held and I let go of trying to understand the situation or justify my part in it. I wrote until I felt complete and, at last, peaceful about the situation. My husband and son soon returned and we crossed the park to the art museum.

We entered the featured exhibit in the hushed building. My toddler, unable to keep his voice quiet, cried out, disturbing a group of art patrons. Distracted by our noise, a woman in a group of three turned to look at us and my jaw dropped in amazement. It was Jenny, the very friend I had been writing about. She approached me in complete shock. We embraced and I learned that she had been living in my city for several years. We chatted for a few minutes and parted ways, but we ran into her and her friends again twice that very day. I guess Spirit knows my willful character and orchestrated a message I would never forget! Not only that, the following month Jenny showed up in the same yoga class that I attended and we remained there together for the next several years. Although we never picked up our close friendship, we healed enough to be together every week.

Forgiveness has been my constant companion since that time. It is the most powerful force I know. What I now understand is that I have only to sincerely intend it and the task is complete. Anyone and anything, no matter how small or how large, how trivial or important, can be forgiven. The smallest resentments, when forgiven can yield the most leverage.

As I lie on my sick bed, Facebook and my cats for company, I’m weak and tired but I have the luxury of time. Someone comments on my post, an ex-boyfriend I haven’t seen in a while and I feel familiar unresolved resentments welling up. I’m not even aware that I’ve been carrying them around, but I drift in and out of sleep, praying to be released from my negative thoughts about how we parted. My prayer is simply this: may I be willing to let go of any anger I bear toward Richard. May I choose to let go of anger.

Richard calls the next evening for the first time in many months. He hears I’ve been sick. We converse like old friends. I hear caring in his words, I express love in my voice. Would I like him to bring homemade soup, he asks? Thanks so much for the kind offer, I say, but I believe I’ve got all the remedies I need.

Step into your destiny and smack it out of the park

My thirteen-year old son called me just as I got to O’Hare airport for my flight home from Chicago. I had attended the final installment of a year-long Sacred Contracts training with Caroline Myss, and I was giddy with insights about my life and my future. I interrupted my own mental processing to listen to my son.

“Mom, have you been on Facebook? I posted a video of my hit!”

He was referring to his weekend baseball game in which he’d gotten the best hit of his career, a solid drive over the second baseman’s head into right field. A strategic and smart ball player, Asher struggles with the limits of his physical capacities. Having started out with a good deal of hesitation at the plate, he’s faced and overcome his fears in the four years he’s played on Little League teams. Through hard work and plenty of time at the batting cages, he has gotten better at protecting the plate and connecting the bat with the ball. Still he sometimes gets frustrated about hovering near the bottom of the batting order.

Showing the true colors of the Athlete, Asher always keeps the good of the team in mind and yet he strives for his personal best. I could tell by his voice that this hit was different. He felt it. He knew. And, miraculously, the whole thing was captured on video.

“Mom, I watched the video and I can see. If I had just stepped into it, the ball would have sailed over the fence! Even the coach said it’s true.”

I realized the relevance his story has to the Fate and Destiny charts that I and my Sacred Contracts classmates and crew had just cast over the weekend in Chicago.

If I had just stepped into it! How many times do we look back on life and realize with hindsight that our fear and hesitation holds us back? Indeed, the difference between accepting our fate and co-creating our destiny is to step into life, take a firm stance and take one step toward the universal possibilities for our life. Often that willingness, represented by the act of stepping forward, is enough to smack our dreams over the wall with the increased force of our own will, the momentum of the crowd cheering, and the wind carrying our effort.

Like Asher, this weekend I vowed to keep my eye on the ball, even though on some days it seems to be coming at me at 100 miles an hour. What I now understand about the difference between Fate and Destiny, is that I can stand in hesitation about my life and get mixed results. Unsure about my own commitment, I flinch when difficult stuff comes my way. In just such a defensive position, sometimes I’ll walk to first base and sometimes I’ll strike out. It’s all dependent on who’s pitching. But when I step into my swing and risk the humiliation of missing entirely, that’s when I seize the chance to set my dreams in motion.

It’s getting clearer to me now. I can shy away and accept my fate or step into my destiny. The choice is mine to make.

Humility and six other virtues to grow a new career

Fall Heart by Carrie Ure

It’s time to revise the old adage, “The teacher appears when the student is ready,” to include the concept of willingness. As a ready student I feel lucky to have attracted wonderful teachers and educational opportunities all my life. Yet it is when I am both ready and willing to make change that the clearest teachings arrive.

Never has this been more true than with my current mentor, teacher and coach, Writer Mama, Christina Katz. I found her in 2008 shortly after saying the words “I want to be a writer” out loud for the first time. Within weeks I heard through the writer’s grapevine about Christina’s books, classes and websites.

A year later, two Writer Mama courses under my belt, a few humble publications and a good start made at blogging, an unexpected exercise gives me pause to reflect on what it will take to make it in my chosen career.

On a lark I joined The Writer Mama Back-to-School Giveaway, an annual month long virtual coffee klatsch for professional and wannabe writer mamas and an occasional intrepid guy. Fighting my own demons of distractibility, boredom and lack of follow-through, I vowed to post every day throughout the month long contest. Only two-thirds of the way to my goal, I could never have predicted how much I would learn in the process.

The questions posed each day catalyze deep thoughts about what motivates me, inspires me and keeps me going against pretty high odds. Paired way down to the basics, my musings identify seven basic virtues that might apply to any new career. To make it as a freelance writer I believe I will need humility, self-love, diligence, trustworthiness, stamina, faith and compassion.

I’ll start with humility, because right out of the gate, there is no greater daily lesson for me. In the process of discovering which area of expertise qualifies me as one of those individuals getting paid for what they say and how they say it, I have had to delve deeply into the question of what I don’t know.  Like the sculptor removing large chunks of marble, I’ve had to let go of whole areas of human knowledge that I will never have the time or inclination to explore. I am left with a richly veined core of ideas just waiting for my unique mark.

Humility grounds me rather than debases me and keeps my feet on the floor, my butt in the chair. Humility requires me to make an honest living and wills me to do what I can and let the rest go. Humility trains my head to serve my heart. Humility lets me sleep at night and gives me permission to make mistakes.

I revel each day in learning something new, thanks to humility. With my new found focus, I wake up energized by concrete possibilities rather than defeated and overwhelmed by endless ethereal potentialities. By letting go of what I don’t know, I am free to delve into truly understanding my chosen subject matter.

Reinventing myself in mid-age has indeed been a humbling project. But so has parenting a teenager, going through divorce and dealing with gray hair and corrective lenses. The difference today, thanks to my writing, is a greater willingness to take each day as it comes and do the next actionable step. The student is willing and ready!

Guest Post:Feminism, the feminine, the artist and the mystic

The following post is by painter Kerrie Wrye, my guest for Networked Blogs’ September Blog Swap. Please check out her gorgeous site, Timeless Rhythms.

Kerrie B. Wrye, Study after T.H. Benton, Prismacolor, 21"x13.5

Quite soon after becoming acquainted with each other, online and having been paired through the blog swap project, Carrie Ure and I decided to write about feminism, the feminine, the artist and the mystic!

In arriving at the moment to swap blogs, I am still trying to comprehend the pairing of two women who were briefly strangers prior to this event, and yet who have quickly discovered how close we are to one another geographically, culturally and personally–a pairing made, amazingly by another woman whose life is half-way across the globe in Pakistan. On top of which, Sarah Rahman opted out by default, when there were not enough writing partners to match everyone together for this worldwide, social experiment known as blog swapping!

On my part, having struggled for a week past the deadline to post my writing swap, resignation after obligations have left me physically exhausted, has given way to approaching this project from the personal voice. Right now, life feels very vulnerable as I transition from what was to what is becoming. I feel all that I can legitimately offer is the habit of following the intuitive within; it is one of my greatest assets as well as greatest disadvantages.

Carrie Ure is a writer and single mother, seeking work while living in Portland, OR_ just north of where I live, as artist, dancer com yogini and single-mother, looking for work out in this recession-locked world! One of our first contacts seemed to light instantly on the common connection to Séraphine de Senlis. Six years earlier in my undergrad research, I had discovered that Séraphine was a French woman artist, described briefly and only as a “nameless foundling.” Not much other information of note was available on her life or work as an artist to include any depth about her in my paper, just six years ago! That Carrie had seen a film about Séraphine de Senlis this summer was surprising to discover!

During my academic studies, I found individual sanctuary in the Womens Studies Program, as it was here I began developing the research on French Women Artists that would become the focus for my Liberal Studies degree. Indeed, I credit the current director of the program as being a champion for my research, one who supportively recognized me as a scholar and consequently became the reason I graduated. Since its inception at a university in Texas, the pedagogical development of Womens Studies has advanced steadily to be found in many college curriculum offerings throughout North America. Simultaneously during this era, I have needed to live out a lot of life free form, developing my own sense of self through the healing expression of art.

Along this path, I have invested many years, in traditional talk therapy or Cognizant Psychology, which for me also required an intuitive balance of yoga, in order for the nature of highly charged emotional-psychological work to simultaneously make sense in my physical frame. The years of my early youth growing up in France, were ones of profound somatic connection that have also guided development in this defining lifelong intuitive intelligence.

For twenty-one years, I was mother to one precocious child living as we did in relative social isolation, so I could manage the largeness of this personal work for which my entire life prior to that time had been intuitively heading. One after another childhood realizations that ranged from varying needs for freedom of expression, to flat out independence, marked a significant developmental period in chaos that I now realize much, much later after all is said-and-done, how much my intuition has effectively, intelligently, creatively guided my abilities to navigate out of the web of impact, from mental illness in a parent, still in denial.

For many of these adult years, I have readily defined developing intimate spirituality in the creative context of the sacred feminine. Recently, upon the approach of my fiftieth and after having read the book some years before, At the Root of This Longing: Reconciling a Spiritual Hunger and a Feminist Thirst, by Carol Lee Flinders, I created my first, Return to Community Ritual, in the description and guidance of yes, the seminal work: Emotional Genius, by Karla McLaren (who is now in rebuke of this major intuitive emotional manifesto, as an academic sociologist)!

In the years of post-graduate meetings with a feminist mentor, I often heard the term “mystic artist” pointed in my direction. My own under-developed academic research, a reflection of full-time, single parenthood, etc., was privately lauded as, “illustrating how women who happen to be artists also struggle as women to find our own voice and survive the chaos of producing work that is not valued and who are in need of environments where what we do is valued, exchanging mutual feedback in possibility-centered ways, to successfully move women’s voices forward!”

In the timing of returning to the academic setting to earn my degree, in my Womens Studies advisors, as well as in my post-graduation female mentors, I have criticized the male-tradition, competitiveness surrounding my female predecessors’ career success and in the ways this ethos has dominated the lack of informational access for women throughout all parts of the larger society. We have all gone wanting for an accessible lexicon to become better educated to all of the good information locked up in the academic study of women’s lives, abilities, and accomplishments. Not to be discounted, there have many battles my predecessors have indeed fought firsthand to break down this but one, bastion of historical male dominance. Like-wise after graduation, I did not find the feminist networks I logically expected would exist in the marketplace for job search, in politics for productive acceptance, and in the world of money for a new female patronage. As a consequence, my life has endured many years of needless yet very basic post-graduation struggle.

Right now, I feel as though the Doonesbury cartoon of a few years back, best articulates the lack of voice in a new feminism; a new generation of women coming of age particularly now, in the broad and long-range impact of this recession, as well as the “Yes! We Can!” social and political recovery from the Reagan-Bush era of full-scale reactionism, materialism and bold greed. A new language unique to the next wave of feminists is forming, and I expect it to be more inclusive. The issues they will confront are on a different scale dealing with global warming, sustainable food production and religious, spiritual and political acceptance, to name a few. I did however, graduate recognizing that I can continue as a creatively intelligent ally to the next generation! Most recently, in making acquaintance with a feminine-mystic writer, has given me a gift of inner renewal than I have not felt connected to in many years! I am inspired to have discovered such an ally so close by! Thank-you Séraphine de Senlis and thank-you, Sarah Rahman!

A call to prayer

Morning in Udaipur

Let yourself be silently drawn by the stronger pull of what you truly love. ~ Rumi

Today I awaken to the muezzin’s call shortly before sunrise. I can hear it quite clearly this crisp morning, thrilling time of day when the sun promises to rise above the trees, lifting one’s hopes after the long night. It’s late summer. The birds have gone for the season, leaving a profound stillness. The cat purrs quietly by my side, chirping as I shift to raise my ear off the pillow.

It starts naturally, one long lament. The clear rich warble bellows the call to prayer, amplified in the direction of the Almighty’s ear, Mecca. Oh how I get lost in the sound, mournful and full of such sweet longing, as if waiting many days for my Beloved to caress me with the softest croon. “Come. Pray,”  He calls to me, “Prayer is better than sleep!”

Yes, yes, I open my eyes to pink walls, gold rose-colored silk and the softest yellow cotton sheets. Rich burgundy patterns beckon from the floor as if to lure me from my bed toward the fragrant air outside. It’s a full minute before I realize where I am. It’s my own room, in a mundane suburb in the western United States, the rich silks and cottons dressing my bed, the ones I carried back from India; the bright wool carpet, a hand-me-down from a friend’s sojourn in Turkey; the heat-loving honeysuckle blooming where I planted it not long ago to attract the butterflies.

My heart stirs just the same.

I remember the first time I heard the Call, just a few years ago. I spent the night with a new lover in his flat overlooking the industrial end of the Willamette River. He carried me into his bed, the lights on the dry docks flickering on the water. We made sweet love for the first time and I felt emerald green inside, for no reason.

I heard it clearly when I awoke a few hours later, the long melodious wailing amid the ships’ whistles and heavy equipment moving on the railway tracks below us. The song beckoned me awake and I knew that I would follow someday.

Five years later I am in a foreign place that feels more like home than not. It’s my first trip to the East. I have taken a car ride from sprawling Mumbai, India through the quaint smaller city of Pune, with its universities and motor bikes, deep into rural Maharashtra. I arrive at my destination, a stucco and wood cottage outside the gates of the ancient holy caves at Ellora.

Exhausted, I fall onto the bed, travel and jet lag taking their toll. I awaken several hours later to the most glorious sound, the Call from my dreams! I jump out of bed and fly through the door to my little terrace. The scene is amazing, an expanse of scrubby landscape over the bougainvillea entwined stucco wall. I glimpse the caves in the distance and the sun about to crest the small hills. There is nothing but the songbirds to distract me from the rich voice amplified from a nearby mosque. I feel so at home at last.

I am haunted by the memory–or premonition–of the Call that repeats often in my heart.

In my travels through India I have marveled at the way an entire huge city–Muslims, Hindus, Christians, Jains, Sikhs, Buddhists–rouse themselves to this morning call. From a recent entry in my travelog:

“Udaipur, Rajasthan, Jan 1, 2009

This morning I arise before dawn and creep out of my hotel room in the early darkness, hoping to watch India in her deep morning slumber and then to catch her first waking moments. I tiptoe carefully down the narrow and twisted marble stairways to the courtyard lobby, the only lights the small votives set in the tiny Shiva, Ganesh and Hanuman shrines amid the stucco and tile. At the front desk I see a dark hand resting on the gleaming wooden counter, its arm draped below, the rest of the body fast asleep beneath the British-era hotel ledger. Across from the front desk another figure snores peacefully under a thick quilt. I notice other shapes sleeping on makeshift cots as I make my way quietly up the steps to the rooftop dining room. Choosing a prime alcove,  I savor the extraordinary experience. this morning. of arriving in time to hear the morning call to prayer. It is the best time of day, when mother India opens her arms, caresses her children awake to the new day. I am blessed to be a witness to the holy event.

In Udaipur, ancient Rajasthani city surrounded closely by small rural hill villages, the call to prayer starts out quietly, a few indistinct croons in the distance. Within a few minutes the intensity and volume increases as many voices join the holy cacophony. Amid the morning stars, a few lights begin to twinkle in the distance, the Lake Palace still lit up purple and green from the New Years Eve revelry.

At the height of its intensity, the beautiful plaintive wailing seems to completely envelope me and the ancient city. Indeed, all begin to join in; the street dogs yap and howl, the water fowl start their squawking and the pigeons begin their gentle cooing. A man comes out of a house at the water’s edge and leans over a wall to perform his morning nose cleaning with great honking sounds. Then he lights his first cigarette of the day. I can see the glow of his ash glistening against the water. Slowly the voices of hundreds of muezzins begin to crescendo as the sun ignites the hills from behind. All manner of city noises begin. The small boats on the water sputter and start. Just as soon as the last voice dies down from its distant minaret, a car honks loudly in the courtyard below.”

I hope to always hear the Call. I pray to ever heed it.

Ask a modern mystic: cosmic job hunting skills

Looking for work during a recession can be a daunting and exhausting endeavor. Some days I feel defeated before I even start, especially when my favorite morning radio program spews dismal economic statistics. Although such news reports have little relevance to my geographical location, lifestyle, or unique individual skills and experience, I can’t help being swayed by the national media’s insistence that I am only a dot on the bell curve.

How does the job-hunting Mystic curtail the sinking feeling that she is just another victim of an economy gone bad? She pounds the pavement of her inner path before ever venturing outside the house.

I counter the negative psychic effects of the collective’s fixation on bad news by spending time on self-inventory and self-care: lots of rest; a conscious cultivation of positive thoughts such as gratitude, faith and generosity; regular healthy meals; and plenty of down-time to dream and support my own inner vision.

Indeed, the following dream I had the other morning yielded an important clue about maintaining a sane and enjoyable job hunt even during hard times:

I am with my mother and my brother when there is a knock at the door. I open the door to find three masked children outside. They each throw a dime into my house and when I stoop to pick them up off the floor, I also find another coin, a heart-shaped quarter.

My dear friend and Tarot master, Hector Cerbon, intreprets my dream as a spontaneous nocturnal Tarot reading. The dimes represent the three coins, disks or pentacles of the traditional European decks. The Three of Pentacles reminds us that every endeavor, including the successful job hunt, involves community. It is the card of Teamwork.

Just as the two Lovers come together in creative union to produce the third, their child, when we initiate any new endeavor we must acknowledge that it takes others to help us manifest our vision. The card represents the practical skills needed to plan and execute a vision. Working with others is the beginning, not the end of your job search.

That’s why Tip #3 from the Mystic Job Hunter is rally your team.

We all have a team or crew, those individuals who are there for us, whether as confidants and supporters, or because they have practical know-how to share. Some of us have large teams and others small. Some of us rely on the professional perspectives of our team members while others just need a little cheering-on. What do you most need that you cannot provide for yourself?

In addition to being a Mystic and a job hunter, I have long been a Networker. In my years networking I have assembled what my friend, Portland artist Jennifer Doheny, calls “My Team.”

Last night I visited Jennifer’s latest art opening at the Milepost 5’s huge 10-day event, “Manor of Art.” As I wait patiently for my turn to shake her hand and congratulate her on her latest work, I salivate over her series of gorgeous paper “batiks,” back-lit and glowing vibrant greens and indigos. She sees me in the crowd and grabs my arm.

“Carrie, I’d like you to meet Sarah, my graphic designer. Sarah, this is Carrie, another member of my team.”

There is instant recognition and connection, for although we have never met, Sarah and I know of one another’s work as part of the team that supports our artist friend. Of course we had each already heard of the other’s contributions.

Jennifer is not only an early adopter of the team concept–an idea that will become increasingly important as we reevaluate work and career in the new economy–she thoroughly embodies the principle. Her blog, entitled “The World is on Your Side,” states her message loud and clear. Jennifer has long made a living as an artist because she understands her role in the community. She relies on others  to help her plan and execute her mission to provide a positive and uplifting message through her art.

Another teamwork example comes to mind. During the second installment of a year-long course in which I’m enrolled, renowned teacher Caroline Myss discusses the concept of the Crew. At the beginning of the workshop she announces that hard times being upon us, we have to realize we’re all in the same boat navigating the same waters.

We’ve got to row with our crew if we hope to make it, she explains to a ballroom packed with spiritual seekers. The rest of the weekend entails finding a crew and processing some high level spiritual data together.

My crew and I are still together, months later. We navigate four different time zones to participate in bi-monthly conference calls. We also use more informal methods to “check-in” and support one another in our spiritual growth. Not surprisingly, four out of six of us are dealing with the issue of work and career.

Another of my teams is my “family.” My sweetheart, also in the midst of a career change, tells me how much he loves me on a regular basis, not because I’m insecure, but because I have told him that I particularly enjoy positive verbal affirmations. He is also there when I need a hug and he listens without comment when I get discouraged and just need to vent.

Likewise, I pick up the phone when he calls during the day because I know that he likes to share a triumph or disappointment. I edit his cover letters and help him relax when his focused activity turns tense. Our children support us both by helping us laugh, play and enjoy the process!  They remind us that family time is one of the most relaxing and nurturing ways to unwind after a day on the job search.

Finally, don’t underestimate the creative ways in which your team can help out. I recently met with my financial advisor, a savvy business woman who spent the entire hour not evaluating my IRA mutual funds, but brainstorming ideas for getting my freelance career off the ground. A true crew member will support you in the way you need to be met, rather than with a pat one-answer-fits-all approach.

While I am lucky enough to count healers, teachers, financial wizards, neighbors, computer specialists, marketing and sales experts and artists among my crew members, any one of them can be counted on to provide the extra service of acknowledging and affirming my unique contribution to the greater community.

As a Mystic job hunter, I am learning important skills that aren’t taught by career coachs and the popular job market press. I’m learning to assemble a team of experts who know me, believe in me and support me in the precise ways I need to be loved. I’m learning that one of the first practical steps toward getting the job I want is to ask others for help and support from a place of self-awareness and mutual respect.

And building your personal team is good practice for team-building at work. Try it before you get hired!

Mystic job hunting: yes is the new no

Sky's the limit, photo by Carrie Ure

On Monday morning I hit the ground running. DAY ONE of serious job hunting. I make a short list of networking calls, read Internet articles about how to get a job in the current economy and research how to be a master job-hunter on craigslist, all before 9:00 AM.  I polish my resume and write a punchy tagline for my cover letter: “Can-do attitude meets your communications and customer relations needs.”

I am reacting to a pep talk from a friend the morning before. He had told me that it was time to get a job, think practically, put my writing career on hold while I focus on making an income from a “high probability source.”

“You have simply taken a wrong tun on the path and it’s time to retrace your steps to find a more practical direction,” he quipped.

“You mean Starbucks?” I ‘d sobbed, reaching for a box of tissues.

“Yes, if you must. It’s time for the Mystic to experience a reverse transformation.”

The next morning I sit with my iPhone and a cup of tea, to start virtually pounding the pavement. I grab for the low-hanging fruit: capable, successful people I have worked with in the past, people with whom I have stayed in touch, people who like me and who’ve been supportive.

The first person flat-out tells me that she can’t help me because she is busy making a living herself and the rest of the time is devoted to her spiritual practice. Okay.

The second tells me that Starbucks is really not that bad and that hard times demand drastic action. NO!!!!

The third, a friend of 15 years, has worked with me in two different industries.  A well respected and highly motivated entrepreneur and normally ebullient person, he launches into a whine about how our former employer professionally slighted him several years before. YIKES!

Not one of these informational networking calls is the slightest bit helpful.

Discouraged, I call my dear friend Holly, psychologist, astrologer and wise woman extraordinaire. She reminds me that no plan without a good intention is worth pursuing. Acknowledging that times on the material plane are tough, without faith and self-love, nothing is possible, she says. I think about my path. Is there anything to do but keep trudging forward with dogged determination and steely strength?

Then I remember Yes Man.

The 2008 film, directed by Peyton Reed, tells the story of Carl, played by Jim Carrey. He’s a depressed loser. Divorced and in a dead-end job, he spends his time alone in his apartment, shunning the daylight and the good intentions of his best friend. When he accidentally runs into an old acquaintance and is dragged to a New Age spiritual revival meeting, Carl agrees to a magical contract to say yes to everyting. Hilarious situations then ensue involving homeless people in his car, dates with mysterious women in berkas and well, you’ll have to see it. The film ends with a wiser and more compassionate Carl transported to the life of his dreams.

Impressed by Holly’s unshakable faith in a new future and my intuitive compass pointing to Yes Man, I decide to forgive the movers and shakers I know who are shaking in their boots right now. I relax and stop resisting my experience. I decide to just say yes to the rest of the day.

The phone rings immediately. My ex-husband. Yes. Could I interrupt my job-hunting to do an errand for our son that we’d been putting off? Yes. He picks me up five minutes later and while we wait in line at the bank, Hal tells me that he googled my name and found my blog. His wife was so enthralled reading it that they were late for an appointment. Wow!

“We didn’t realize how well you write,” he says. “We’re sure that you’re going to do well in your new career.” Yes.

I get home just as another friend calls. She had suggested a few weeks before that we prune an unruly pine on my back patio. Was today (prime job hunting time) a good time? Yes! Is it okay if she has a sandwich first? Yes! (You diehard TO DO list job hunters out there, stick with me!)

A half hour passes, just long enough to find me preoccupied about craigslist and all the job hunting opportunities missed while I field a call from my sweetheart, who also happens to be looking for work. Could I spare a few hours from my computer to meet some of his friends at an outdoor concert this evening? Yes!

An hour later, Geri hands me the chain saw and hops down from the tree. I can’t believe how many branches have been removed, what a chore it will be to haul them away and how far off my path I have wandered today. Not only that, it’s almost time to shower and get ready for my evening out.

“Should we take off that one big limb?” Geri interrupts my self-obssessed reverie. Yes!

She scrambles up the fence and takes one last whack. I step back to take in the view and there from my living room and patio, is a beautiful view spread before me, a park-like setting with nothing but huge trees. And in the center, a gorgeous red Japanese Maple sits beside an illuminated path leading up a hill. I had never noticed the path until now. Yes!

Suddenly I know that I am on the right track and that I should keep my faith in myself and keep moving forward.

Brian and I arrive a few hours later at a beautiful sunny park. Yes! Cha cha music blasts, children scamper on the lawn amidst overflowing picnic baskets. Would I like some pink wine? Yes!  I sit among new friends spread out on blankets and survey the scene. Yes!

Within a few hours I have met three new friends, exchanged contact information and one of them gives me an idea for marketing my writing to a new audience, in an industry that is thriving despite the economic downtown. She even offers to take the time to give me research leads and to meet me to discuss my options. I promise to follow up the next day. Yes!

I get home to find my first ever paycheck for my writing. Yes!

Job hunting? Stay true to your path and just say YES! Let the universe take care of the pavement-pounding.

Early Sunday morning riff

The Poet

I’ve gotten to the place I’ve heard many artists describe and there’s no return. Once the terror of trying to express oneself is met and overcome, the compulsion to live takes over. Is there any difference between the addict and the artist? How many artists have gone mad trying to express the inexpressible?

I crave being alone to create my art, which apparently is my life. I may express myself in words on a page. Or perhaps through the lens of my inexpensive camera. Sometimes it is by putting two friends together who really hit it off. Again and again I find myself having a moment, being right here, awake to something new arriving.

When did I quit being passive, waiting for life to enter me? Why do I choose to wake with the birds most days, stalk my life like a cat it’s prey?  How did I come to understand that it’s all play?

Like arriving on the deserted island, blue skies, warm sand, luscious fruit for the picking and nothing to distract except the fragrant salt breeze. And even here, a sense of being trapped. A longed-for freedom, barely savored, when suddenly I realize that they’re not coming to rescue me! I will never see a ship on that horizon.

And the panic returns. Temporary insanity! Here I sit, alone on my beautiful island.

The Coward confronts Father Time

“Fear is a symptom of loss of authority; when we give away our authority, we should be afraid.”  Caroline. W. Casey, Making the Gods Work for You

This month's full moon is in the sign of Capricorn

I celebrated yesterday’s Super Full Moon in Capricorn with a full-on, no holds barred Saturnalia. If you’re visualizing party favors, drinking games, sumptuous feasting and orgiastic pleasures, uh hum, get a grip on yourself. Saturn gives us what we need, not what we prefer. Mine was a more serious celebration.

I started the day by reading Holly Alexander’s fine Examiner.com article on the subject, praising myself for really tuning in to the vibe of the day. After all, I have been feeling a renewed interest in setting career goals and working hard to tick things off my TO DO list, a very Saturnian mind-set. Of course I should have known better than to get smug, for that is exactly the thing Saturn least tolerates. After working all morning I swaggered to the mailbox around midday to find a large envelope from the IRS and a jury summons. My solo Saturnalia was officially under way.

The other thing Saturn despises is a cry-baby. What to do?

Risking everything, I ranted to my cat Loki, named, ironically, for the Norse God of mischief, no doubt another Capricorn trickster at my side!  I raved about the injustice and insensitivity of large government agencies while Loki napped, secure in his zero-income tax bracket. I left a voice mail for my accountant, emailed my astrologer and had myself a little pity party. That’s when I looked up to see the pile of books a friend had recently returned to me. At the top was the fine book, Making the Gods Work for You, by renowned astrologer Caroline. W. Casey.

Mid-sniffle I opened to the chapter on Saturn.

One thing I love about Casey’s work is her understanding of how difficult it is for the modern urbanite to swallow astrology whole. She insists that astrology is not a belief system, but rather a language that “provides the vocabulary with which we can begin a detailed investigative exploration of the psyche.”

Casey goes on to say that all acts of belief, even in science (gasp!), are superstition. This idea conforms nicely with Buddhist thought. And Saturn would agree. As Casey puts it, “even if, owing to some fluke, we happened to believe in the ‘truth’–it would still be a booby prize, because the act of belief is an abdication of autonomy.” Didn’t the Buddha say the very same thing we he stated, “Believe nothing, no matter where you read it, or who said it, no matter if I have said it, unless it agrees with your own common sense”?

Here’s the point about Saturn as the ultimate mascot for achieving mastery and authority over one’s life: sooner or later we all have to deal with the boundaries of form, structure, time, laws, discipline, and responsibility, and this is a solitary endeavor. We can choose to tackle Saturnian realities head-on or we can let their shadows loom over us in the form of depression, inertia and fear. Via one method or the other, whether conscious self-inquiry or shadow-boxing with demons perceived to be outside ourselves, Saturn will have his way with us.

I know this first hand. With Saturn in Capricorn, in the first house, directly on my Ascendant, my most pressing life project has been to face my fears. On my path to complete authority over my own life, I have repeatedly encountered bullies. I am finally beginning to understand that it is only in facing my own fears that the bullies will retreat.

There is certainly no bully feared more than the IRS. If I understand the teachings of many spiritual traditions, the closer we get to resolving an issue, the harder it seems to bash us on the head. Perhaps this means I am finally ready to let go of the big fears about setting my own rules, being worthy of earning a right livelihood and becoming the true author of my own life.

Yes, I celebrated in true Chronos (another traditional name for Saturn) style yesterday. I quit crying and got to work. I filled out the Jury Summons Deferment form, citing my need as a sole proprietor to focus on my small business. I then called the IRS and spoke to the supervisor of the auditor “handling” my case. He apologized profusely for bungling the paperwork during my recent audit and assured me that it was unlikely that I would hear from them again. Hmm.

Scratching my head, I got back to work, one more fear checked off my list.

The Apollo Archetype

self portrait by Asher Daniel

Archetypally speaking,  if we’re going to move from the Fossil-fuel Age to the Solar Age, we’re going to need a mascot, and the Greek god Apollo is the likely choice.

My recent fixation with Apollo started several months ago when I took the diagnostic self-test in Peter Lemesurier’s fine book, “The Gods Within.”  Who knew that I was a prissy, controlling, self-centered, overly rational and eternally boyish adolescent trapped in the body of a middle-aged woman? The truth is that I am not alone.  No matter one’s gender or station in life, our western culture prizes staying in our heads. Orderliness, youthfulness, and the fascination with science and technology rule the day.

I sat with a client the other day to use her Sacred Contracts chart to access higher wisdom about a thorny life issue.  As we settled in, she opened her spiral-bound pad to a drawing that stunned me because the day before I had made the same sketch. In her version, a circle filled with third-eyes radiated six paths and six negative spaces, twelve rays in all. Each ray pointed to an idea or course of action, like a solar-powered TO DO list. We had both taken our personal mundane issues and applied symbolic sight using the image of the sun.

I saw the Sacred Contracts sun-dial illuminating our way, and I felt connected to the wisdom of the ages. After all, mystics have always sought their answers in the larger perspective, and in doing so have “discovered” every human science from astrology and astronomy to physics and meta-physics. Apollo shows us that our discoveries in the world are fueled by the search for the self.

Just as a magnifying glass can concentrate the vast solar rays to burn a pin-hole into a blade of grass, we can use the powerful Apollo Archetype to harness overwhelming universal themes and bring them to bear on our own earthly issues.

For me, it’s easy to conjure the Apollo Archetype because I live with an adolescent boy. My son (pun intended), stands right on the precipice of puberty. He is poised at the perfection of childhood energy, innocence, purity, and light-hearted joy. Not afraid to play, he is in love with discovering his own mind;  he is giddy with appreciation for technology; and he is innocently enthralled by competitive team sports. He has left sloppiness behind and arrived at gracefulness.  At the end of his 12th year, not yet sullied by the messy chaos of falling in love or the trauma of making life-altering decisions, Asher is the very embodiment of the Greek god Apollo.

Everyday I am inspired by Asher’s energy and enthusiasm. I am amazed by his ability to stay in the batter’s box, feet planted, a fast-ball racing toward him at 60 mph. He knows going up that even the best batter has only a 30 percent chance at hitting the ball, and a much slimmer chance of making it to first base. Yet he stands in the box and faces doubt, fear and distraction. I challenge myself to do that same dance at my desk each day.

It is no wonder that the first step in healing and integrating Apollo energy is to bring everything into the light of day, where shadows lose their power. Thus, cities pass “sunshine laws” to expose lawmakers’ actions and redress corrupt back room deal-making.  Daily, all over the world, hidden banking practices come to light during these trying economic times. There is a new level of transparency of human endeavor as scientists discover the most detailed mechanisms of the mind and body. Spiritual bookstore shelves burst with modern stories of enlightenment, examples of the harnessing of Power (the sun simply radiates energy), rather than the exploitation of Force (fossil fuels must be extracted by mechanical means).

As Lemesurier points out about Apollo Therapy, “We need to let his heavenly light back in to dispel our self-imposed darkness. And not only on the psychological level,  but on the bodily level too.”

Clearly, it is time to lighten up, to see ourselves in a new light, and to shine our lights. I would encourage anyone in the grips of depression, despair or hopelessness over personal or global issues to study Apollo and become intimate with his true nature. Consider being a spiritual solar-panel. Harness the power of symbolic solar sight to generate and radiate your own individual contribution to the world.

Like it or not, we must expose ourselves to illumination while integrating the deep shadows cast by this important archetype if we are to redeem ourselves and our world in the Solar Age.