Sacred

I received the premier issue of a new local magazine in my grocery box last week called Granville - sustainable city living. There's that new buzz-word; sustainability. It is their stated intention to use every article to bring the sustainability of Vancouver to the foreground. I found this issue to be what they purported it would be; informative without being preachy, light, lively and intelligent, and practical. So far, so good. It's going to be coming out quarterly and you can subscribe by going to their web site.

It got me to thinking about a talk that Ben and I gave when we were on a trip to Sweden in 1995. We were invited there by a group who were trying to do business in a completely different way than they ever had. The fellow who originated the idea placed a very tiny ad in the classified section of a Goteborg newspaper saying that he was looking for individuals who might be interested in starting a values-based business from the ground up. It really didn't say too much more than that. He wanted to see what expertise came out of the group and explore ideas from the values instead of laying the values on top of the business idea. He was stunned at the overwhelming response he received - over 300 people. Whittling the group down to a manageable number and interviewing them was much more difficult than he had anticipated and he hired a consultant to help him - who was our contact.

I was asked to sit with the group he had chosen, and who had chosen one another, in a big warehouse loft near the harbour, on a windy October day. They wanted me to do a group reading for them. Not everyone was there that day but most of them were. It was quite exciting, although I don't remember now what exactly I said to them. That's often the case when I do readings. No worries about confidentiality if you can't remember!

Anyway, they could only start this business with a very small percentage of the people who had expressed an interest, so they formed an informal group with the rest. The idea was that they had a common value system and maybe they could do something together, even if it was to get together and talk. Many of them had an ecological/sustainability sort of bent. Ben and I came in to talk to them about emotional/inner ecology as an extension of their values in the business and community sphere.

The idea behind this was that a lot of people who believe in peace can be quite militant about how they go about convincing the rest of the world. And if you take that a step further, they can be less than peaceful, or ecological, with regard to their bodies and psyches. I have witnessed this many times in my therapy practice where some of my clients were little dictators of sorts; not in the outside world but within themselves. They wouldn't stop for lunch, would work seven day weeks, not take holidays and would beat themselves up and criticize themselves viciously. Briefly, our job that evening was to get them to think about practicing what they preached for the outside world, on themselves.

The reason I've been thinking about this Swedish talk is that I was wondering if there might be room for that sort of concept in this new magazine. An article might refer to being able to sustain ourselves emotionally, spiritually and physically, just as they are suggesting we do for the city. I wondered when I was driving across the city the other day, just how polluting our city affects our psyches, and whether we pay as much attention to polluting our energy fields and our relationships as we do to polluting our air and water.

I had occasion, when I first moved to Vancouver, to go to a Strata meeting for a friend who was going to be out of town. For those of you who live outside Canada, Strata Councils are groups of condominium owners who get together to discuss and vote on the issues to do with their shared building and building services. There was an agenda for the meeting that night which was loosely followed but certainly didn't stick to the times listed. I witnessed obstruction, petty squabbling, people hogging the microphone, and a chair with few facilitation skills. In short, it was boring and frustrating. To put it simply, people's interpersonal skills were extremely limited.

I was practicing yoga today, part of my commitment to treat my body with respect, and I was considering this issue as I tried to stretch my ham strings. I had to keep yanking my thoughts back to focus on what I was doing. That lead me to thoughts of my body as my temple. Not being a religious sort, I don't hang out in sacred buildings of worship very often, although I like them a lot when I get the opportunity. It doesn't matter much to me what the religion is. If the building is designed to reach 'up' to some 'spiritual' place, I usually find it peaceful and positive.

I have wondered if we miss spaces like that in our modern lives. Maybe it's less important to go to church or synagogue or to the mosque or whatever, at designated times, than it is to remember to build sacred rituals or moments or spaces into our everyday lives. I remember trying to convince my architect brother once that the houses he designs ought to have some sacred component to them. That, in fact, every home should have a sacred component. I feel this is particularly true for those of us who do our 'sacred' work, or work that is sacred to us, from home.

I was in a home in West Vancouver once, when a friend of mine was house-sitting. It had a meditation space that you reached through a hidden panel in the stair wall. It was carpeted and had a small window that looked out over a beautiful garden and a view of the Burrard Inlet. You could hardly stand in it because it was designed for the owner to sit and think or meditate or read. She had incorporated her sacred, spiritual space into her house.

Hospitals and airports have nondenominational chapels in them and I wonder if we shouldn't have something along the same lines in schools, shopping malls or community centres. Not because we're ramming any religion down anyone's throat but so that there's an 'away' space, to borrow the term of an American architect who wrote The Not So Big House. I think we need spaces where we can remember who we are and what we're doing on this little blue planet, third from the sun.

To bring the sacred space concept back to my body, or anyone's body, maybe our bodies are our ultimate sacred spaces. I was daydreaming this evening about what would happen if someone were to say to be that I could only have a job that I really wanted if I would agree to eat a diet that had pesticides in it and/or work ten-hour days and six-day weeks, and/or work in an office where there was no natural light and no fresh ventilation. The idea isn't completely realistic but I was playing out a 'what-if' in my mind. Come to think of it, I know someone who is doing consulting work and that is exactly what she is being asked to do. And thinking back to my days in the corporate world, I was asked to do this. My office was a concrete box that had originally been designed as a storage closet. It had impersonal, mass-produced hotel artwork, no plants, no fresh air, and no natural light. I felt like a mole.

What if this was my option and I refused to take the job saying, "Sorry, my body is my sacred place, my sacred responsibility, and I have a commitment to keeping it strong and clear. I must give it regular rest, fresh air, stimulating views and balanced nutrition, including food, education, and spiritual space, in order that it continue to operate at peak capacity for a long time."? Just imagine! Come to think of it, without explaining it in those terms, I did just that in 1990 and I never went back.

But if we don't make such a stand, how can we treat our cities better than we treat ourselves? If I put poor quality food, air, thoughts into my body and mind, then I am likely to put poor quality water into the sea. If I accept not having anything inspiring to look at at work, then why wouldn't I settle for the garbage that is on television?

There is one definition of sacred in my Webster's dictionary that speaks to this thought:

sacred: secured as by a religious feeling or sense of justice against any defamation, violation or intrusion; inviolate

It strikes me that just as we have to look after nature's temple that is this beautiful and bountiful place in which we live, and look after our sacred spaces which are the homes where we need to withdraw to renew ourselves each day, and look after our relationships which are the emotional sacred spaces in our lives, we must also look after our most intimate temples; our bodies which house our hearts, minds and souls.

This gave me pause to wonder how I'm doing on that score. Yoga is a start for me but I'd like to walk more. How I allow others to treat me is another angle. Most of the time I think I'm all right on this one - but there are a few exceptions. What I eat is yet another. Where I spend time and who I spend it with is yet another. I could do better I'm sure but overall I think I'm doing all right, but it's worth thinking about.

Open mouth and insert foot

I think I put my foot in my mouth this evening. I was talking to Fleur and I was supportive of her and not as supportive of Geoff. What I said was true but it was the end of the day and I think that my timing was off. It was one of those things where I saw the reaction and thought, "Oh shit". It will probably blow over and I know that everyone is sensitive right now because they're tired and frazzled, including me. Actually, I'm surprised that I haven't got into hot water before this considering that it has been going on for more than a year already. Maybe my batting average isn't so bad.

It's left me thinking about what we choose to see and what we choose not to. Don't we all do it? Even if we may be able to see a 'truth' at a later date, we may not be able to see it, or hear it, the first time it's pointed out. Hell, it may never be pointed out. Especially in hind sight, the 'truth' may have been so obvious that we can't imagine how we didn't see it all on our own. When your mother says to you, 'Time will tell', well it it really does!

There have been a few times in my life when I wished the floor would just open up and swallow me. In one of my jobs, the company decided that they were going to lay off one of the management staff. They were trying to decide when they would do it and eventually told me the date. I had his assistant in one of my ongoing workshops and I had to talk to her for some reason. I walked into her office a day after it was supposed to have been done and said something commiserating to her. She looked at me strangely and asked what I meant, and I knew something was wrong.

It turned out that they had decided to offer him early retirement instead and they had only done it that morning. I couldn't say that they had originally meant to lay him off but had changed their minds so I had to do a fancy two-step and try to extricate my foot from my mouth. It turned out that senior management had forgotten to tell me what was going on. I had egg all over my face that day and looked like a complete idiot.

Something that plagues me more frequently is the 'frog jumping out of my mouth and landing, splat, in the middle of the butter dish on the table' scenario. I used to do it quite often when I was a child, before I knew I was picking anything up psychically. I would open my mouth, with no intention of saying anything significant, and make a comment or ask an 'innocent' question and bam, the unexpected reaction would come and I'd be left scratching my head. Most of you will know this about me.

You'd think that with age and experience I'd be able to control this but it isn't always the case. It's in the nature of this sort of comment that it comes without warning and without intent. In such instances I suppose I'm just the pipe through which the water flows. I'm slightly hesitant to say it but this hasn't happened to me for a while. Perhaps it's tempting fate to mention it!

Ah well, suffice to say that it happens to the best of us and be forgiving of myself. Perspective is all Lucca, perspective is all.

Listen for the whoosh

Can you feel the world speeding up? Einstein tells us that speed and time are connected and that speed is relative. I believe this to be true. He was specifically referring to where you are and how fast or slowly you might be moving relative to the speed of what you are measuring.

But I agree with Neale Donald Walsh that time is directly related to how fast you are moving and that events just 'are'. How we see things, or our perception, is what makes the difference in our experience of what we look at. Imagine a huge landscape on the wall in a museum. If you stroll past it, the landscape, like what you would see out of a train window, seems to be 'moving' slowly. Actually, it is you who are moving past it slowly. And if it were three-dimensional, or even four dimensional (now there's a mind-bender!), you would be moving through it slowly.

I think that these days we are moving through our perceived world at a greater speed than we were even as recently as this 'time' last year. If I had to take a guess, I would say that it's because we are 'quickening'. By that I mean that we are learning more about our souls and who we are, resulting in our energy field, or our aura, vibrating at a higher frequency. It is my understanding that pure love has the highest vibration of all energy. It stands to reason that the more we understand and love ourselves, and others, the faster we vibrate.

To take yet another slant on things, physicists talk about 'field theory'. To be extremely simplistic about it, field theory says that any one thing that changes in a field of energy affects the whole of that field. Nothing in it can remain unchanged as long as one thing changes. It's a bit like ripples going out in a pond. Because people are energy too, imagine how this affects a family.

For example, imagine I have a eureka and realise that I have been codependent for years, that it's making my life miserable. Further imagine that I resolve to change my behaviour and stop being codependent. Even if no one else in my family agrees with me, even if they in fact think I'm out of my mind, they will still be affected because my change in behaviour will affect theirs. They will still have to react to me, even if it's to take me off their Christmas list.

So, take another jump here and imagine that there are loads of people around the world who are working on their self-awareness - have been, some of them, for the last 30 years. They've been reading books, going to seminars, getting coaching or therapy or healings, talking to one another, and they are beginning to see things differently than they ever have before. Perhaps this means that they are treating the environment with more care, or they are voting against war, or they meditate every morning, or they believe that the way they treat people determines in large measure how others treat them, and these are the ripples they have been sending out into the world.

Up until now, they may have been feeling that they are failing to make a difference with their lone little voices, or actions, in the great wilderness of the planet's messes. They may have thought, 'what difference does it make that I am more aware when no one else seems to take me seriously and corporatins are still setting the agendas?' But I think that this year, 2007, is the year of critical mass. I believe that there are finally enough of us doing these seemingly little things that we are finally making a difference. There comes a moment when we reach the tipping point and the balance shifts. When it does ... whoosh! It will feel like everything is going at a millions miles an hour. That will be because there is so much happening, there is so much to pay attention to, that it will feel like time is speeding up.

It's somewhat like being on a ship. It could be going very quickly but without any point of reference, without anything to look at except ocean and more ocean, it may look like you're sitting still. But you wouldn't be. If you were on a train and the city were speeding by, you might even be going more slowly than the ship, but it would appear as if everything were moving faster.

Granted, my physics is a little rusty here and very simplistic to boot. I hope you get the gist of what I'm saying about time and being confident that we are making a difference after all, because I don't think it's erroneous even if my specific ability to explain Einstein is a bit off. I'm just blogging here and I may not have read up on my Einstein sufficiently. Maybe my scientist friends can clarify for me!

What I'm really trying to say is, don't give up. Change is coming and you might even be able to feel it already. Sometimes we don't know that a bird is singing an exquisite song until someone tells us to listen carefully. I'm suggesting that you listen for the sound of the tipping point - for the whoosh.