Paying it forward

I was reminded the other day by a friend of mine that service is where we start when we don't know how to get to where we want to be. If you don't know how to get there, help someone else to get to where they want to be and watch it snowball (as we say in Canada). Somehow it shifts you into a higher vibration of energy, a more optimistic place. You'll end up getting the help you need as well.

My childhood was the learning ground for what I know about service. I learned it from my mother and a few key people in my community. I didn't think about service as 'service' when I was a kid. It was just what I did. Helping other people do things made me feel good and gave me an opportunity to get to know them better.

It wasn't a 'cool' thing to do when I was young. I was called 'little-miss-goody-two-shoes' at school. I didn't like the teasing but I guess it didn't bother me enough to make me stop doing what I was doing. I was sensitive but I was stubborn. In one of my early jobs I was even told by a head-hunter that I was too altruistic. I thought I knew what the term meant but he was using it as though it were an insult. I had to go home and look it up to be sure I hadn't misunderstood.

My trusty Webster's dictionary says that it means:

1. unselfish concern for the welfare of others; selflessness
2. Ethics the doctrine that the general welfare of society is the proper goal of an individual's actions: opposed to egoism

I wouldn't call myself selfless. I have as much interest in things turning out well for myself as anyone else. However I do believe that if we look after society as a whole, it will be a better place for each member of a community. I don't remember having to learn that concept as much as I remember learning what it was called after the fact.

I find that helping other people just plain feels good. Perhaps we live in a society where people don't help one another as much as we could, perhaps because we are living at such a fast pace and feel we don't have time. One of my friends says that we are all one on the cosmic level anyway, and we have to treat one another that way. She's serious about this; she doesn't just pay lip service to it. She's in a wheelchair and she still finds ways to help people.

Themes come up in my life sometimes and there have been several reminders about service lately, and not just from the friend I mentioned earlier. The other day I met a young immigrant couple when I was out for coffee. Their history was interesting. The man escaped from Iran many years ago and declared himself to the United Nations as a political refugee. He had to leave his family and the life he knew behind, starting over in Canada with no English. He wasn't looking for sympathy - far from it - he was just responding to our questions about how he came to be here. But his is not the first story of escape I've heard in the last little while.

Each story I hear tells of complete strangers who came to the aid of the escapee at some key point in their journey. Granted, there were also plenty of people ready to take advantage of them, but there were also people who made considerable sacrifices out of the goodness of their hearts. Those acts of kindness can make the difference between surviving or being caught and shot.

His wife has only recently arrived in Canada from Turkey. She's a surgical nurse and is getting her English up to scratch and converting her qualifications, both of which are taking much longer than she had hoped. Her being a new immigrant reminded me of what it felt like for me to arrive in Scotland and only know one person. Admittedly I spoke the language and that made things considerably easier but I had to start from the beginning with networking and making a community for myself. I will always remember the people who made the transition easier for me, just like the people here in Vancouver who gave me a place to stay when I first arrived here seventeen years ago. They were very kind to me and I will be forever grateful.

This evening I was at a friend's house helping her to pack her life into a van. She has just found herself a job in a new town and is moving this weekend. I had said I would come over and lend her a hand but she was surprised when I actually followed through. The other people she had asked had not. I've been in her shoes many times. I know what it feels like to be left in the lurch as well as have generous help and I'm putting back into the pot what I took out many years ago. As I have heard so many times: we don't always get to help the people who helped us, but we can help someone else instead.

A wonderful film I watched recently coined the term 'paying it forward'. An eleven year old boy was given a social studies project to come up with an idea that he thought would change the world and make it a better place. This boy decided that he would find three people who really, really needed help but who hadn't asked for it. They had to need something that he could do for them and that would be a stretch for him to do. It couldn't be something that would be easy. It had to involve some personal sacrifice. It had to really matter. Then he had to help them out. The only request he would make of them would be that they do the same for another three people. He thought that if people would take his idea seriously and would do it, it would spread around the world.

The idea gave me goosebumps. If we could all do that, I believe it really would change the world. We could all be personal angels. It's so intimate, so real, so personal, and makes us feel so alive. Doing something because you feel you have to isn't the right energy. Doing something because it's the right thing to do and it feels right, that's what makes a difference in this world.

I've been on the receiving end of such generosity and it makes me spontaneously cry, because it touches my heart. We don't have to do it all the time, or for everyone - just when the spirit moves us. The fringe benefit is that we get back what we put out. But watch out because you never know what form it could take!

Outer experience matching inner truth

I've just received an astrological update from a guy who lives and works in Australia. I've been reading his full moon and new moon updates for a couple of years now and find them very insightful. They are not astrological charts in the sense of having a 'birth chart' done but rather they are discussions of the general circumstances in which we all find ourselves at the moment.

I admit to not being very astrologically savvy. At best I can say that I understand some of the underlying principles. However, I do appreciate some astrological guidance in the form of his weather reports. Several of my friends also read these letters and I'm always amused by the fact that we get different things from them. I guess we hear what we need to. Isn't that so with life in general?

This month's letter was informative for my personal process which I won't go into here but I will note one thought that has stayed with me. I believe we have come to a time when we have the opportunity to make our outer experience match our inner truth. Let me explain what I mean by this.

I'll begin by going back more than twenty-five years to an example from my own experience. I started my career in the business world although at the time I was a bit surprised. I wasn't a kid who grew up knowing that I wanted to be a business woman. In fact my dreams were never about any ordinary profession on the check-list of what to be when you grow up. However, from the time I was old enough to know what the paranormal was, I wanted to have something to do with it. I didn't know how but that was what interested me.

Through a set of seeming co-incidences I ended up in business school and then working in the hotel industry. The only thing about it that made sense was that I was in the Human Resources department and so was essentially dealing with psychology. About two years before I left the business world, I enrolled in a six-month course designed to help me explore my psychic abilities. It opened a door that I went through and never looked back. I was still in the business world but I never said a word about what I was exploring. I believed I had to split myself in two because it was not acceptable to reveal that side of myself in my work environment and maintain any sort of professional credibility.

I stayed in that split state, living a conventional life during business hours and an esoteric life in my private life, for about three years. When I changed careers and studied psychotherapy, I took the opportunity to step out and acknowledge what I was doing and learning psychically. Although it felt like a huge risk at the time, it was an enormous relief not to have to hide parts of myself and I noticed that openly incorporating my intuition into my work made me better able to help my clients.

Since then the 'long-bony-finger-of-the-Universe' has continually challenged me to deepen the synthesis between my inner and outer world. I don't think I was incorrect in my assessment of what would be acceptable in the business world all those years ago; I just think that what I had deemed unacceptable in the 80s and 90s has been changing over the last few years. Not only is it changing but I believe that using our intuition is going to become a survival tool.

It's becoming ever clearer to me that we are not here on this planet to play it safe. That doesn't enliven us or help us grow. I've noticed something interesting; whenever I learn something in my personal life, I am almost instantly called upon to turn around and teach it to whoever is standing close behind me on the ladder of life - lest I be deluded or insecure enough to believe I am all alone in my experience! It's like passing a bucket in an old-fashioned fire line, from the lake to the burning building. So let's assume that one or other of you might be behind me in the line... here's the bucket I'm passing along.

I am learning that I am being called to be the most 'me' I can possibly be. I am not here to be just like everyone else. I am not here to conform, or look pretty, or be reasonable, or make more money, or be famous. I'm here to be uniquely me and by doing so, to encourage others to do the same. When we don't embrace all of who we know we are, there is a very real and persistent angst gnawing away inside us. I believe the angst comes as a result of the dissonance we feel when we try to keep some essential part of ourselves under cover, or under the radar. I'm coming to the conclusion that it just takes too much energy to pretend we are not something that we are. Compare that expenditure of energy to what is released when we let our 'me-ness' out into the light of day and revel in it.

To be sure, it is at first a bit scary, but I am recognizing that I need my outer experience to match my inner truth. It's a journey that I take every day, one step at a time. I'm gradually finding out what my inner truth is. It's a process. It reveals itself a little more each time I think I've figured it out. It's not a destination; it's a journey. I can always tell there's another level to explore by what it feels like inside me. If I am denying some aspect of my inner truth, I feel uncomfortable. You could even say it's an adventure in getting to know myself and then introducing that better integrated self to the world.

I leave you with these questions:

• In what way are you being invited to match your outer experience with your inner truth?
• What aspect of who you are do you suppose is calling to you?
• Where is the edge over which you are frightened to step but which is strangely compelling?
• How might embracing it enliven you and broaden your horizons?

You don't have to leap right away! Awareness is always the first step so invite your 'opportunity' out for coffee and get to know it a little better.

Stand up and be counted

Reading the book that's currently on my bookshelf, Shake Hands with the Devil by Romeo Dallaire, I have been thinking about all the little things that we do, or don't do, and how those choices shape the world. At first I was feeling quite despondent, probably as a result of how hard the author had to fight to get anyone to pay attention to the genocide taking place in Rwanda. I can read the book now but all those people died in the interim and we can't bring them back. I've been noticing how helpless many of us are feeling just now, about everything from local traffic flow to global warming, and wondering what the solution is.

In my typical fashion, I am reading several books at once and one of them, already mentioned here, is It's the Thought that Counts by David R. Hamilton PhD. He and many others suggest that we actually create our reality through what we think. If I were to apply that concept to empowering myself as well as to the daunting things like global change, then I imagine that the big changes in the world can only come about through increased individual empowerment. Waiting for an existing 'powerful' organization to do something about these changes doesn't seem to be doing it.

You and I feel more empowered when we think differently about ourselves and our impact on our world - when we believe we make a difference. I think that self esteem is really at the root of self empowerment. If I don't think I'm worth anything, then I certainly won't believe that I can have any impact on my fellow human beings, never mind on the planet. If, as I also believe, we are all connected in a giant and elegant web of energy, including thoughts, and if I feel better about myself and as a result I believe that what I think matters, I am more likely to call my local member of parliament and express my views.

I could even start with something smaller than that: I could start by acting as though I matter. That would mean that by riding my bicycle to the park instead of taking the car, I do make a difference. Maybe I won't make that much of an impact all by myself but a million of us making one choice like that a month - that makes a difference. And it's only ONE choice.

I don't mean my blog today to be about ecology, although it's a worthy topic. I'm really trying to say that we need to get out of the 'who, little ol' me?' syndrome. If I matter, then one person's life lost in Rwanda matters too. If I have the right to speak up and voice my opinion at a dinner party, then I also have the right to speak up at a local community meeting. Voices in chorus are easier to hear but we can't have a chorus if everyone is afraid they can't sing.

I watched an interesting documentary on television the other night about a micro-lending scheme run by an enterprising young couple in San Francisco, www.kiva.org. They have made contacts in a community in an African nation. With a representative there, they were able to set up a system whereby people in the vilage who need money to start or grow their business, can present their need/proposal to a committee of their peers sitting in the shade under a tree.

The whole business community of the village gather to vote on whose proposals are deserving of funding. The details of the successful requests are then posted on a web site administered from San Francisco. The next stage involves interested lenders in the so-called first world who have a few dollars they would like to use to finance one of the African community members. They can browse all the proposals and then make one or more contributions to projects they deem to be worthwhile. When one lender, or in some cases several lenders, have fully funded a project, the borrower is informed and the money is forwarded to the rep who puts the cash into the hands of the borrower.

The lenders see an on-line photograph of the borrower and their project. They can follow the borrower's progress and are eventually paid back according to their repayment agreement. So far, at the time of the documentary going to air, there had been 100% repayment. There are many advantages to their system but I was captivated by the personal connection and immediacy of it.

You don't need to be a multi-millionaire to help someone on the other side of the world and you get a sense of personal satisfaction, of empowerment, when you can make a real difference in the life of another human being. There is no middle person to take a cut. The full amount goes exactly where you thought it would and then multiplies around the community.

I don't really know why we have to go halfway around the world to do this, except that less money goes further there. But I'm sure there are plenty of opportunities for this sort of enterprising aid right in our own backyard. Helping someone who needs it opens the heart and makes us feel needed. We matter. We are in touch with our own humanity.

Tom Friedman who writes for the New York Times said in his new book that he believes that Americans won't begin to make progress in their challenge to become more ecologically proactive until the government legislates a tax/cost for carbon emissions. He believes that Americans will only act in their own self-interest, which is measured by the impact on their wallets. The micro-lending project would suggest otherwise.

I was once 'accused' of being too altruistic but I have always felt that there are some things we should be do just because they are right. I don't believe that the whole world operates on nothing but the profit motive, as much as some would like us to believe this to be so. Some people, many more than we might think, have been sitting at home and quietly wondering why we keep doing what we have always done, even when we can see that we're heading for a train wreck. Perhaps they feel so disempowered that they don't believe that their voice would be heard if they spoke up.

If I matter, I have to sing my own song and hope there are others who will join in. What makes you feel strongly enough to stand up and be counted?

Re-finding centre

Today I would like to remind us (you and me) that we are divine creatures (did you ever doubt it?) each with our own divine purpose - even if we don't always know how to describe what that may be. If, as I believe, we create in this world from what we think, then we had better get with the program and think positively. It's hard to be divine when we're buried under fear and negativity.

I've noticed quite a few people lately who seem to have been knocked off their centers, and I can include myself among them. Always alert to 'signs' from my 'higher self', I sat down and read an article that a friend had just sent me. It comes from SOLARA's surf reports which discuss the energies they say we are currently experiencing in our lives. Interestingly, it started out by describing something very similar to what I had described to someone in a conversation the day before, so I'll quote a little piece of it:

"During the final days of July and the first few days of August, everything came to a seeming halt. It felt as if the track we had been riding upon for a long time was suddenly dismantled. We could travel no further on the old track and had to wait until the new titanium express track was ready for us. ..."

Among other things, the article reminds us go inside ourselves and find our center/core once again. Not bad advice. Not that it means we don't need to do anything else of course, but it's a good place to start when we wobble off-centre.

I thought I'd experiment so I conjured up my childhood freedom of expression and sat down with crayons and paper to draw what I think my core being looks like. This wasn't the me who walks the street in shoes and a hat. This was the me that I come back to when I have to choose a direction in life. I've noticed that either/or sorts of decisions are not so difficult for me. The ones I find more troublesome are the ones where the road seems to have evaporated before my very eyes and I have to decide whether to stay put or set off in some direction across what looks like a desert - not a palm tree or water hole in sight.

Next I drew a graphic representation of what I'd like to have in my life. Pictures force me to get away from words and therefore to focus on the grander scale of things and not the minutia. I'm at a point where I would like to generate some new clients so I drew a picture of me working. I called it 'be-doing' because I think it should combine being and doing - since I'm a human being and not a human doing AND I like to be doing something that gives me satisfaction.

It was successful because I have to say that I felt more centered once I was finished. As a result of this process I decided that it was also a good time for me to remind myself of some of my life-long guiding principles. They might not be exciting because many of them are tried and true but here they are:

• do unto others because what goes around comes around and because you can't ask to be treated better than you treat others
  
• leave things as you find them, or better
• always do the best you can with what you have
• share
• do no harm
• express gratitude for the blessings that come your way
• graciously accept help when it is offered
• speak the truth as you know it
• be open to learning
• respect yourself and others
• there is no such thing as coincidence so be curious about it when it seems to appear
  
• you never know what good things are around the corner
• we never encounter anything in life without being given the resources to deal with it as well
• we have everything we need to know within our grasp - we just forget that we do
  
• we are all connected to one another so we are truly our brother's/sister's keeper
• we are much more than will fit into our tiny earth bodies
• at the end of our time here, we can't take things with us
  
• we are never alone
• helping others is a great privilege
• we are what we believe
• the world is full of opportunities
• energy cannot be destroyed
• linear time is an illusion
• love heals
• we attract more of what we put out - often multiplied
• everything is perfect, given the right perspective

I don't mean any of these to be schmaltzy. To me they're very practical. I see everything on this list as its energy equivalent (physics &/or Universal laws). You might think of more to add to the list but this is good for starters. Well, I feel better already.

Endings and beginnings

A friend of mine died on July 21st. He was in the prime of his life and there doesn't seem to be any rhyme or reason to his being plucked from our lives so early. In my parlance, I would say that he had work to do elsewhere and we were lucky to have had him for as long as we did, however I recognise that that doesn't necessarily provide much solace for his friends and family who are struggling with the loss.

This is the first time in my life that I have witnessed the gradual letting go of life and while it was emotional, it was also a privilege. I forget sometimes what a taboo there is about talking about death in our culture. I never learned to speak of it in a hushed voice and indirect references, in large part because my mother didn't. I have to keep reminding myself to walk gently when around those who are more sensitive. In my own strange way, I have always felt close to the people I've known who have died. I summon them up when I feel in need of their input. I suppose you could say that I have an active meta-life that includes the dearly departed. In that respect I am somewhat unusual.

When it was getting close to the end, my friend's wife said to him that births and deaths are miracles and should be treated that way, or words to that effect. I agree with her sentiments. To witness either one is a wondrous event. I've always thought that where we go when we die must be the same place as where we come from when we are born. When a babe is born, we don't imagine that he or she is coming from a horrible place, so I've always thought that we should be comforted to know that those who die go back there again when they leave our company.

I hear over and over that death is frightening because it is a journey into the unknown. We say that no one ever comes back and tells us what it's like on the other side. As far as a physical body is concerned, that's true. But I'm not so sure it's true of other means of communicating. This is perhaps where we cannot survive on science alone, which doesn't know how to prove where a 'non-scientifically-verifiable' message comes from and therefore won't give it credence. Myths, folklore and religious traditions are full of messages from beyond the grave but they can't be scientifically proven.

I have often been the intermediary for some of these messages from 'the other side' and I have to admit that I'm not particularly interested in proving their veracity. I'm satisfied that they are authentic and so I focus instead on what the message does for the recipient and leave the rest to the scientists among us. It appears to me that quite often there is unfinished business when someone dies and there is some urgency to the messages from people's departed friends and family.

When clients come to me asking to speak to someone who is dead, I usually find that I can make contact just by asking for it. The nature of the contact is as unique as the people were themselves. One woman's mother sang a line to a song - quite humorous if you know my singing voice! Sometimes the departed give advice, sometimes they answer a question and sometimes they just reassure the the client that they are safe and happy where they are and not to worry. Interestingly, many of the departed ask for forgiveness. It would seem that they can see things from their new vantage point that they couldn't when they were alive.

Participating in this process is emotional and exciting if you don't believe that anything exists beyond the physical plane. However, if like me you believe that the earth plane is just one of many options, then what I do is still a privilege but quite matter-of-fact. Even people's pets have been known to come through, and not just good old Aunt Maisie. I think that people have been seeking reassurance about their loved ones' departures, animal or human, for as long as we have been around on this planet. I see it as quite natural to be concerned and to miss the one who is gone.

I have a friend who lost her husband to a heart attack about twenty-five years ago. She is herself a healer and so at least familiar with realms of 'otherness' but to this day she is annoyed with her husband for not communicating with her once he was dead. I hear this a lot from clients in both therapy sessions and readings.

I often wonder if the dead aren't communicating with us in such a 'usual' way that we just dismiss it as too 'ordinary', as if the contact should come with a clap of thunder to make it extraordinary enough to be from the other side. Perhaps when the dead person comes into our thoughts, that's a form of contact. I suspect that the dead would not want to frighten those they leave on this side and so would keep the contact withing the realm of the expected. It may be a fine line for them to walk: too ordinary and it risks being dismissed as 'just my own thoughts', and too extraordinary and you frighten the person into thinking they are losing their marbles.

My job, when I am involved as the intermediary, is often just to hold the container that keeps the contact between realms safe. I can tell the client that this experience isn't crazy. I have to say that often there is some sort of confirmation of who is on the other side so that the client knows that I'm not just making it up. Conversely however, sometimes there is no message from the other side, or no new message from the other side.

I worked with a family a few years ago who needed to be told the same thing over and over because they didn't want to accept it. The deceased wanted them to know that his death had been part of his plan and was on schedule, and that he had other commitments waiting for him. He said he was fine where he was and that it was his time. The family were afraid that he had rejected them and left them behind. They wanted to know why, if this was part of a plan, he hadn't told them that it was going to happen. He kept trying to explain to them that he hadn't known in that earthly way but that it was scheduled in the bigger, spiritual plan. That may be more of a consolation when time has healed the immediate wounds a little more and not fully appreciable in the grieving moment we were in. It appeared that the message needed to be delivered at that particular time because I was available then and they trusted me not to mislead them.

Considerations of births and deaths and grand plans leads me once again to the concept of time and what it really means. If we lead many lives, are they concurrent as I believe or consecutive, the way history records them? If they are concurrent, then do the choices we make in this life affect history, and how? On the comical side of things, I have a picture in my head of a bevy of monks running around with their parchment and quills, rewriting history every time someone makes a choice that influences another lifetime. It's mind-boggling and I will leave that topic for another time.

I just hope that my friend's family and friends are able to find peace with his passing and that, wherever he is, he is enthusiastic about the next stage of his soul's existence. Go in peace my friend.