Month: August 2010

Retreat, Assimilate & then…Advance

Jeaneen on log strewn beach

Assimilate.  Sounds like a word from a science fiction movie doesn’t it?  As in…YOU WILL BE ASSIMILATED!   It actually means to absorb into the system or to take into the mind and thoroughly comprehend. 

In order to live Consciously (i.e. avoid overwhelm) it’s important to include assimilation time in our schedules.  Especially after we have taken in something new and transformative.  Without assimilation we risk having all our attainments scattered around like the logs on the beach in the photo above. 

If you are attending the Sept 25, Retreat to Advance Day,  notice that I have added an overnight option at the conclusion of the day.  Why, you might ask?  To assimilate.  To take into the mind and thoroughly comprehend the retreat experience for the sake of sustaining its impact. 

Assimilation can look like quiet meditation, a walk or journaling.  In this retreat,  I’ve labeled it ” Music, Stories & Laughter“…time to spend with other participants unpacking  learning’s and celebrating new patterns. 

This week,  try scheduling bits of  assimilation time as you transition from one activity to the next and simply notice the wisdom it brings to your journey. 

www.jrscoaching.com

Retreating into Protection & Advancing with Passion

JRS, Jacque & Mary in Mary’s hot car

Lately I’ve been supporting clients in becoming conscious of the uniquely different energies of:

  • Protection: Avoiding the Worst Fear
  • Passion: Reaching toward the High Hope

Both energies are essential.  To balance both, it’s good to get conscious of which one we are operating from so that we are not subconsciously, driven by one or the other.  For example, the image above is clearly a high hope photo.  Here I am with my friends in Mary’s beautiful red mustang convertible.  Everything about this car exudes, passionate energy.  The color, sound, sexiness and sheer FUN of it.  I love this car AND, here’s the thing,  I am on the waiting list to buy an electric car, the Nissan LEAF.   I am buying my Nissan LEAF from the energy of avoiding my Worst Fear, doing what I can to protect our beautiful earth from continuing to be compromised. 

AND, I also must have the High Hope, sexy mustang energy too!    I want to have that oozing forth all over the place in my life.  I watched the Nissan LEAF Lance Armstrong video. That helped.   Perhaps it’s not my car that serves my passionate high hope?  Maybe it can be created in other parts of my life?  Perhaps it’s my flourishing business or the passionate way I show up in each moment?   I still want a red mustang convertible just like Mary’s.  Sigh…

What energy are you operating from?  True success includes BOTH Protection & Passion.  How can you have both?

Advancing Gracefully-Start Close in

Sails full of Grace

I turn to the words of poets again and again for inspiration and strength.  The great ones have left a trail of breadcrumbs that we can decode.  David Whyte is one of my all time favorites.  In the poem below he speaks to deciphering “What’s next”?

Start Close In

Start close in,
don’t take the second step
or the third,
start with the first thing
close in,
the step you don’t want to take.

Start with
the ground
you know,
the pale ground
beneath your feet,
your own way of starting  the conversation.

Start with your own question,
give up on other people’s questions,
don’t let them smother something simple.

To find another’s voice,
follow your own voice,
wait until that voice
becomes a  private ear listening to another.

Start right now take a small step
you can call your own
don’t follow someone else’s heroics,

be humble and focused,
start close in,
don’t mistake that other for your own.

-David Whyte
http://www.davidwhyte.com

What’s the small step, close in that I choose to take right now?     Take a deep breath, take the support of your full being and step forward, my friend.

Advancing with Patience and Faith

S'Marie and Jeaneen at Vasjeshwari

For many years I have gone on Spiritual Retreat during the month of August.   The photo above, taken at a sacred pilgrimage site in India with my roommate, coach and poet S’Marie Young, captures the radiant inner light that being on retreat unfailingly brings.  This year, August is quite different.  It’s a time of vigorous business advance and fierce (yes, I used the word fierce) commitment to stepping up to offer the wisdom I have nurtured.  August is filled with timelines and action items. 

How do we bring the energy and lessons of retreat into a time of advance?  One answer is cultivating the virtue of Patience.  Patience with ourselves as we engage full out.   Patience with outcomes and goals.  Patience with emergence of creative insight.  Patience as we allow things to unfold in a more magnificent way than we are able to foresee and faith that this will indeed happen.  Deep faith that there is enough time.  The physical embodiment of Patience requires breathing deeply and allowing  time to become comfortable before proceeding with any action. 

That is the essence of the Retreat to Advance stamp imagery below.  Performing the actions that make us available for the sunrise, patiently waiting with full faith and then, when it does rise, drinking in its beauty.