A New Year, A New Vision.

For the past couple of years, I have been orienting my year around a theme. A couple of years ago it was my Donkey Yote (not to be confused with Don Quixote) HeHaW (Health & Harmonic Wealth) tour with me and my ass in search of the answer to life, the universe and everything (in honour of turning 42).

And this year, my theme has been Truth or Dare: 2009 Edition - Game On! It's been a ton of fun thinking about my week ahead and choosing - Truth or Dare? More often than not this year, I have chosen Dare, if only because that is what I used to do in my tween days of playing Truth or Dare.

Admittedly, my dares have not been large. I didn't end up taking up pole dancing or the circus arts or really risking boldly. Sometimes just daring myself to stay in the game or mingle with others, or go yet one more intrepid mile each week felt audacious enough.

But I did take a couple of risks. Holy Hub and I renewed our wedding vows in Hawaii, in celebration of 25 years together. And I travelled back home to Alberta road-trip style, something I was not wont to do. While there, I went to see a renowned forensic psychic - in order to get at the hidden truth behind my niece's suicide this spring. And on the way home, I dared go zipline'ing with the kids and do a 10 am scary roller coaster after a big breakfast. Terrifying and stomach-lurching experiences, both - but fun, nonetheless. And I dared myself to step up and write a business plan for a wilderness education company - an industry sector I previously knew next to nothing about. I did this in exchange for sending my 13-year old son on their Coming of Age rite of passage expedition for boys next summer.

Choosing truth, on the other hand, has meant telling myself the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth about things I'd quite frankly rather not. It's meant being honest in my beingness instead of living the myriad little lies that can tend to add up to big ones if I'm not careful.

Sometimes those truths have meant saying no, giving up on things and bringing myself back to a place of integrity. At other times, it's meant being willing to really stand alone with myself in front of a bathroom mirror behind a locked door, and allow myself to ask my silent question and nod my head in affirmation or shake my head in disagreement. I have tried, above all this year to channel to the good bard in living the mantra - This above all, to thine own self be true.

And it hasn't always been easy. I had occasion to stumble, once again, upon a poem a month or so ago. I read it with new eyes and this time, it really resonated with me. Perhaps because I am not always so especially good at living at that most authentically honest level where things are raw and real.

"We live a lie when we misrepresent the reality of our experience or the truth of our being. I am living a lie when I pretend a love I do not feel; when I pretend an indifference I do not feel; when I present myself as more than I am; when I say I am angry, and the truth is I am afraid; when I pretend to be helpless, and the truth is I am manipulative; when I deny or conceal my excitement about life; when I affect a blindness that denies my awareness; when I affect a knowledge I do not possess; when I laugh when I need to cry; when I spend unnecessary time with people I dislike; when I present myself as the embodiment of values I do not feel or hold; when I am kind to everyone except thos I profess to love; when I fake beliefs to win acceptance; when I fake modesty; when I fake arrogance; when I allow my silence to imply agreement with convinctions I do not share." Nathaniel Branden

Packed into this mumbo-jumbo of words is some powerful truth of what it means to be human and at times, arguably, inhuman. I suspect it didn't resonate with me the first two times I took those words in, perhaps because I chose NOT to take the words in and hear many of them as my truth.

So it's been an interesting year, to say the least. I approached 2009 thinking Dares would be where it was at, when in fact, Truth is what has really seemed to define it.

And I'm OK with that. On my painted and decorated garden stake, which served as my anchor and office talisman for my theme this year, I had decoupaged a number of quotes about the notions of both Truth and Dare. One, in particular, stands out to me now.

"The Truth will set you free. But first, it will piss you off."

It makes me chuckle but also smile at a deep and cheerful level, because the truth of my being HAS really pissed me off. And to borrow from one of the year's most redundant quotes, it is what it is...

Which leads me to next year's theme. I have decided I need to back up and really sit with my beingness and embrace the present, all the while, planning for the future. So I've come up with Plan Be! as my 2010 theme. It is a reminder for me to stay grounded in the present whilst remaining methodical in strategic planning mode.

The Be also allows the word nerd in me to bring all those other juicy Be words into the realm. You know....like begin and become and bequeath and bestow and believe and behoove and beacon and beauty and beckon and bedazzle and befriend and behold and bejewel and belay and better and bestseller and bevvy and bewitch.

And as would befit the Plan part of the Be, I've decided to attach some further BEatitudinal theming to the months, in order to assign some kind of virtuous purpose and character building to my year.  As such, my months translate to Begin, Believe, Beyond, Belong, Befriend, Beauty, Beacon, Benevolent, Beatnik, Bestseller, Beget and Bestow.

It is, in essence, a year of being and doing bundled into one rhetorical package.  To be or not to be - that will remain the question. Perhaps at the end I will discover, as the ancient philosophers did, that "to be is to do".  I may well discover instead that, in fact, it's reversed and that "to do is to be." 

And my 2010 theme song? You guessed it: Let it Be. :) It speaks words of wisdom.

Blessed be. Shalom. Amen.

To Be or Not To Be

As some of you know, I was away on a spiritual retreat this month. It was only a few miles from my home but quite honestly, it felt as though I was a world apart in terms of where my headspace was at.

The retreat center was located on the water overlooking a particularly lovely setting in the Puget Sound. Our vista was the westward, Olympic Mountains view and the weather was hot with crisp blue skies each day.

The nature of the retreat was about getting some clarity around who I am, what makes me tick and then, celebrating that essence, that spirit. Sounds hokey, right? I thought so, too. My initial thought was, "Yeah great, but so what? I don't care about my Being-ness....I care about knowing my Doing-ness."

But what I realized, in retrospect (and it took me five days to 'get' this) - was that cutting to the doing-ness part is a little like putting the cart before the horse. I needed to get at the animal of my Spirit. And incidentally, as I think about that - the animal of my spirit - the animal that comes to mind for me is raven. But that's neither here nor there.

I can't lie and say the retreat was all fun and games. We were a group of 17 in communitas away from our larger communities, and as is the case with throwing any 17 people together into a relatively controlled environment, we were all vastly different in our worldviews, demeanors and energies. And yet what connected us was Love, arguably the only true Real thing that exists. And therein lies the magic and beauty of connection.

The retreat was also about finally stepping into my own shoes. Think Cinderella and the glass slipper minus the fairy prince and imagined fantasy life thereafter. I can't tell you how massively powerful that ownership and affirmation of Beingness is. All I can say is wow. It's huge, huge, priceless stuff. Finally daring to look deep enough to examine who I am, how I show up in the world, what I value most, and what my role in the larger tribe of life is. It was hard, freakin' work, let me tell you and for awhile I doubted if I had dug deep enough.

But finally, finally, self-acknowledgement came. It came to me late on the last night of the program. It spoke to me in code, actually. I went to bed that final evening with an incredibly sore and constricted throat. And it wasn't until I was able to process this in retrospect the next day, that I finally got it. The essence of who I am, since time immemorial, is about voice.

Prior to that, I had spent much of the weekend focused on what I perceived others might think of or define me to be. Was I too this or that? Was I maybe not enough that or the other thing? It was driving me crazy - most especially when coupled with my rejection filter. And more importantly, it was inhibiting me from doing the real excavation work. Once I stopped doing that and acknowledged and fully embodied that it is none of my business what others think of me, then and only then did I finally get to the real work. I got alone with me and I got real.

Who I am is Inukshuk Speaks, which is esoteric-speak for a wealth of things. I chose to be visual and spiritually totemic in identifying my essence because well duh....I'm a visual and spiritual kinda gal.

An Inukshuk, for the non-Canadians in the audience, is an Inuit stone figure, akin to a mountain cairn, that looks eerily human in shape. It is a sacred show and teller, of sorts. It serves to mark and commemorate the site of key tribal events and it also acts as a silent navigator, guide and way-shower for those lost upon the roads less travelled in Canada's netherland Arctic.

It's no accident I should choose this. I've always been hugely attracted to all things northern and Eskimo. My maiden name is Quinn and my favourite song growing up was The Mighty Quinn (when Quinn the Eskimo gets here, everybody's gonna jump for joy). I used to sing it whenever we played Eskimo on the playground as kids (what else was there to do on a minus forty day in northern Alberta, I ask of you?). One of the things I miss most about living in Alberta is being able to see and be dazzled by the Northern Lights.

But the affinity doesn't stop there. I am, if nothing else, the voice of truth and justice in the dark, the epitome of the road less travelled, and I am the commemorator in my family of all things sacred and profane. Being a guide or navigator is what I've always done in life ~ it has just taken many forms, is all.

I was one of two college class valedictorians honoured with being able to commemorate our time by cracking a joke or two. I have always worked in tourism ~ doing destination tour guiding, hotel show 'n tell site inspections and business consulting on next-step kinds of directions. My business name - how's this for a little northern altitude/attitude syncronicity? - is Summitup. And my current role, a la this particular era of my life, is as Speed Demon Driver and Satellite Radio Controller of the Honda Pilot, as well as Chief Cheerleader and Guidance Counsellor to the small Schmidts.

Anyways, I share this long diabribe - not because it's profound but because it's affirming. I have been running from affirmation all my life. Affirmations scare the living hell out of me, I guess because there's so much power in affirmation and because I've heard through the grapevine that they work. It's like being the ventriloquist's puppet who after a long time lying crumpled and lifeless on the shelf, comes to life when the breath of the great Animator breathes sound through the pipes. Scary stuff. Amazing schmidt happens (my nose no longer grows and I stop punishing myself and running off with the burlesque crowd), when I finally speak my truth and claim Who I am.

I finally owned a week or two back that I am here to Speak and give voice to my essence as Still navigator and way-shower.

After trying on so many odd pairs of shoes, I finally found the One(s) that fit and I feel like I've finally found that missing piece of me that got lost with my placental matter at birth.My wise-sage daughter, who is all of 8, asked me when I got back Sunday night ~ after having lived on much laughter, many tears, and very little sleep during the course of five days that felt more like a year and the journey of a thousand miles ~ "what was it like, Mommy?"

And I said, "Well...it was a little like being thrown into an old-fashioned wringer-style washing machine and then chucked into a dryer on gentle cycle with a bunch of warm, fuzzy towels." I'm not sure she got it and that's OK. I did. Finally!

Which brings me to my final thought. This spring, during a similar but more profoundly cathartic retreat, I wrote these words to myself: "I live happily ever after on a moment-by-moment basis, and die erect like the trees to the same ~ death will kill me standing up."

Those words meant several things to me - that happiness lies in the Now, that all life is rebirth, and that my actions will pen my epitaph. But now, in light of my new self-vision, I can honestly attest that "death will kill me standing up" has renewed meaning and vitality for me.

I now see the ground upon which I stand ~ where I have lived and upon where I shall die. It is where I have always stood. My legs no longer feel shakey when I stand there.

I now understand the notion of be-longing. It's that primordial place I've longed to Be. It's my solid ground and my stake in the world and I am eternally grateful that I got to do this soul-search before I died, instead of croaking and then getting called in for death detention into the office of The Maker, who would have sternly asked me, "It's a little late now, Missy, but do you have any idea or inkling of Who you were supposed to Be?" and then having to mumble in shame, "no friggin' clue, oh Hallowed Universe ~ please, do tell!"

The End but to be continued...as always.