Melting

My alarm goes off. It's 8:15. I have to be at work by 9:30. Still. I can't seem to get myself to leave the warmth of the arms I'm nestled in. I'm lying on my back, and he's curled around me, cheek pressed against the top of my head, one leg tossed casually over my thighs, it's weight heavy and reassuring. I can't move. Not that I want to. I liberate one arm, and hit snooze.

I sigh, and settle back into the cocoon. We're sticky with the sweat of sleep, but I don't care. The alarm beeps again. 8:40. Now I've really pushed it. I untangle myself limb by limb, and head reluctantly for the fastest shower in the history of the world.

I turn on some music and blowdry my hair, while the Prince sleeps on steadily, ensnarled in a mess of sheets and covers. How he manages to create this web in the 10 minutes I am gone is beyond me. I jump on top of him and kiss him 20 times, "goodbye, my love." His eyes are heavy with sleep, he's only half awake. He mumbles softly, "I miss you already."

I smile, my heart full, but he's already drifted back to his dreams. I hope they are sweet.

Vanished

Sorry I vanished for a while there. I just didn't have the motivation, drive or inclination to do any writing at all. Big stuff going down in my life, energetically speaking.

I'm working on a post about it now. Hope you are all well.

Facebook

Sorry about the lack of posting, but I have been completely immersed in Facebook. It is ridiculously entertaining, and an excellent time-killer at work. It's like a combination of MySpace and Friendster, except totally fun and easy to use. I'm not sure if it's the Mini-Feed, or connecting with people I haven't seen or heard from for a long time, but I admit it. I'm totally addicted.

It's especially interesting, because it's taken that whole 6 degrees of separation thing, and manifested it into an online format. I'm already seeing connections between people that I didn't know existed. It's very cool.

If you wanna come visit me, come see me here.

Half

Two months ago, I thought it a brilliant idea to sign up for a half-marathon. I'd come off a particularly sluggish couple of weeks, athletically speaking, and my body was in a state of utter lassitude. Watching snowflakes pile on top of slush, on top of dirt, on top of freezing rain, on top of more slush, was not particularly motivating. But for my own health, the inertia had to end. A few clicks of the mouse and $50 later, I was registered for the Mississauga half-marathon on May 13th. It was deceptively easy.

I am definitely NOT a natural runner. I mean I can pull off 5 km with relative ease, but this...this, I will not survive without a bunch of training. Being in extreme pain and agony for 2+ hours, while desperately counting down kilometres and downing powergels is just not my idea of a good time. What else could pull me out of my torpor faster than the thought of having to run 22 or so kilometres without stopping?

Yeah, right.

Training for this thing has been a bitch. Between the crappy weather, my lack of sleep and a million other things I'm trying to accomplish and manifest, running has found itself at the very bottom of the laundry pile. And now the half is less than 2 months away. The slightest layer of panic is starting to creep into my consciousness.

I had to do something to kickstart this whole situation. A shopping trip was definitely in order! So on Saturday, I ended up at the Running Room, buying new shoes, a running jacket, water belt, new sports bra and power gels. After negotiating a 20% discount (actually, I just asked him for it, and he gave it to me - thank god!) - I was out the door and ready to hit the road with all my new gear. I was committed to running 10-12 km, or approximately 1 hour at my runnning speed.

Damn, it was windy and cold on Saturday. It took 2 hours to defrost after all that running, but I am happy and proud to say that I DID IT! and it wasn't even that hard. My motivation's back!!!!

Avalanche

I feel like a giant boulder sitting on the razor's edge of a majestic mountain. I'm teetering back and forth, rocking ever so gently in the mild breeze. There's a feeling of anticipation in the crisp, spring air. Innocent buds struggle to break through the hardness of long-dead branches, signalling the dawning of a new cycle of activity. Birds float lightly atop currents of sky, trilling merrily, bestowing it with the colourful melody of their song.

The air is ripe with potential. So many seeds have been planted, and I am full. The slightest shift sends me flying down the side of the mountain, slowly at first, bruised by rocks, bushes and trees along the way. But momentum gathers and soon I am sailing gleefully into the great unknown, propelled forward by mysterious celestial forces.

It's happening.

Am I ready?

Messages

This morning, I opened my email and found this message:

From: Barbara Whitlock
Date: Fri, 9 Mar 2007 05:53:26 -0500
Subject: Your Helium article is featured on today's homepage!

Congratulations Shelley!

If you check out today's homepage at www.helium.com, you'll see your article featured prominently. See yourself in the limelight! Tell family and friends. Announce this in your blog, on your website, or through other internet venues where you hold a presence. Watch the interest and earnings on your article today.

Your hysterical article about your hot yoga class experience shares valuable insights and reflects the highest standards of writing at Helium. Thank you for sharing your time and talents at Helium.com!

Continue to enjoy your participation in the Helium Community! We look forward to watching for more of your exceptional articles over the years.

All the best,

Barbara Whitlock
Content & Community team
Helium.com

Sometimes it's nice to receive objective, outside validation, especially when you've recently decided to quit your stable, pension and benefit providing government job, for the wild blue yonder of freelance writing and video editing. (yeah, this is all part of the energetic pathways story, which I have yet to finish! I promise I'll get there...there's just so much going on right now!)

Perfect timing too, as I was feeling the slightest pit of fear in my stomach, looking at the calendar yesterday and seeing my quit date coming closer and closer....

If you want to check out the article, it's posted on www.helium.com on the front page, under Exercise.

Have a great weekend everybody!

In Transit

I've been spending far too much cash on cab fares lately. I'm not complaining or anything - far from it! : ) - but leaving the cocoon of warmth created by the embrace of the human furnace lying next to you is beyond torturous. Especially since Toronto is in the midst of a terrible cold snap, the kind that, as my friend Charwina so delicately put it today at lunch, "feels like 2 dogs are biting on your face at the same time."

Today, for the first time in about a week, I stood and waited for public transit. And even though I was late yet again, I had decided it was time for me to nip my growing addiction to the comfort and convenience of taking a taxi to work in the bud. Well....at least I thought I had decided.

But here's the interesting part. As I stood waiting impatiently in the freezing cold, I started to monitor my thoughts. And discovered that I hadn't really decided at all. My brain was whipping back and forth, spinning to and fro - doing anything, it seems, but actually making a decision.

My thoughts went something like this:
Is the damn streetcar coming? It's freezing cold. I'm gonna be late for work. Maybe I should just take a cab? Oh, there's one. Should I hail it? No, I've spent too much money on cabs. The streetcar's coming right now. I know it is. But what if it doesn't. Then I'll really be late. Ok, I'll hail the next cab that comes along. No, I shouldn't. Oh, just missed one. That's okay. Cuz the streetcar is coming right now. Well, I hope it is. It's really cold. Maybe I should catch a cab. No, I can't. I'll just be late.....and so on and so forth.

Honestly, the streetcar didn't appear until I realized how chaotic my thoughts were. It was only when I was able to shut down the back and forth in my brain, and focus on ONE outcome, that my desired result manifested. It made me appreciate how challenging it is to really and truly create change in your own life. If being clear about my mode of transit is trying, how am I to be clear about the big things. The things that matter....

For Whom the Bell Tolls

There's a tiny ray of light desperately trying to break through the never-ending drab of Toronto's winter sky. I see a touch of beautiful blue, the smallest hint of it peeking out cautiously from behind a blanket of opaque grey.

I'm on the streetcar on my way to work, trying to ignore the sound of the woman on her cell phone behind me. Cantonese. Consonants.

Church Street. The streetcar grinds to a halt, the doors pop open, and I hear the ringing of the bells from majestic St. James Cathedral.

"For whom the bell tolls. It tolls for thee. Ernest Hemingway," the driver intones over the streetcar's PA system. I smile.

We pass Victoria Street, screech to a stop at Yonge Street, "Yonge Street, home of the King subway." I watch as a new stream of passengers tiptoes through slush and mud, and up into the warm car.

Chug Chug Chug. Continuing. Cantonese. Consonants.

I ring the bell signalling my stop, "Bay Street, home of financial wizards and money moguls, streets paved with gold, known as Wall Street in New York..." the driver continues.

I get up, stand by the door, lean in as he whispers to me, "what are you? money mogul or financial wizard?"

I pause.

"Frustrated writer?" I say, with a question in my voice.

He laughs, a nice, big belly laugh, "take care and have a wonderful day!" The sky clears, and fills with bright sun, its splendid azure lifting my spirits instantly. I'm smiling all the way to work.

Now did I mean him or me?

Energetic Pathways: Part 2

Read Part 1 here.

Tabula Rasa: Latin for scraped tablet or clean slate, refers to the epistemological thesis that individual human beings are born with no innate or built-in mental content, in a word, "blank", and that their entire resource of knowledge is built up gradually from their experiences and sensory perceptions of the outside world.

If you believe, like I do, that life is images of the mind expressed, you can imagine how powerful this meeting with Josep was. It was as though my brain was turned inside out, fractured into a million pieces and totally reconfigured. The principles I'd been studying, the patterns of behaviour I'd been releasing, the new thoughts I'd been processing; well, they boiled over in my brain and crystallized into a single, brilliant point of focus.

My life could be whatever I desired it to be - unfettered, unhindered, unburdened - inhibited only by the limits of my own imagination, faith and certainty.

Tabula Rasa.

I was finally freed of the constraints I had placed upon myself all my life. The voices of my parents, societal expectations, the fears of well-meaning friends, cultural conditioning - all of these were wiped clean. The particular beauty of this moment laid in it's complete absence of fear. For the first time, I was totally unimpeded by any fear of failure. How could I be when there were no limits, no constraints and no expectations? I decided that I would be kind to myself. I would forgive myself. I would not expect "perfection." No. Instead, I chose to see my life as a grand experiment. Every event would be viewed as a valiant, imperfect, sublime attempt at creating the life of my dreams. One that could be continuously tweaked and refined. With Josep's help, I had shifted the lens. With profound implications.

And so, in this delightful vacuum of silence, I began to consciously create my life. What did I truly want? What had I not allowed myself to consider out of the fear that it wasn't possible? What had I avoided because I could not see "how it would be done?"

To be continued...

Valentine

Saint Valentine was beaten with clubs and beheaded in ancient Rome. Emperor Claudius II believed that soldiers did not want to leave their loves or families to join the military, and so he cancelled all marriages and engagements. Saint Valentine secretly married couples and for this, he was martyred on February 14th.

Happy Valentine's Day everybody! I hope your life is abundantly full of joy, gratitude and bliss, and may your belief in beautiful, perfect-just-as-it-is love not cause your beheading!

Energetic Pathways: Part 1

I've been trying to write this post for a very long time. It's been saved as a draft for countless weeks, while I try to figure out exactly how to tell this story. I guess I'm afraid that I won't be able to imbue it with all the weight and feeling of grace and completion that it deserves. Still, it's something I want to share with all of you, so here goes...

Everything happens for a reason. This little phrase is running constantly in the background of my life. Events happen. People come into my life. Some things are good. Some things are bad. But it doesn't matter. Because everything happens for a reason.

I always believed this to be true on some superficial level, or perhaps I convinced myself of this to soothe in troubled times. Who knows? I can say this though. The events of the last year have proven to me that everything does happen for a reason. Without a doubt.

This particular energetic pathway stretches way back to December of 2005, when I had a psychic reading at a restaurant. You can read about it here. It was just for fun, and honestly, I don't put too much stock in psychic readings. At best, they give you a snapshot of the future at a moment in time, but since we are constantly creating, evolving and growing, the reading is only valid for those particular circumstances and conditions. In the next moment, your life has shifted somehow, and thus, your future. So when the psychic told me I would meet someone named Joseph, who would be significant to my life, I locked it away in my brain and then forgot about it.

That is until I went to Miami in October of 2006, and met Josep from Tarragona, Spain. A bunch of things happened between December 2005 and October 2006 that laid the foundation for me to even notice these energetic connections, but that's a whole other story. The point is that there was a sequence to all of these events. One could not have happened without the other, and when you're able to observe an overarching energetic pattern that stretches across years, it's a true moment of grace.

Everything happens for a reason.

Yes, Josep and I had a lovely time together. Yes, we are still in touch. And yes, he was significant, but not for the typical vacation fling reasons. Josep was important because he helped me shift my thinking in a very profound way. Through him, I realized that I had a whole slew of limiting beliefs around money - how to earn it, career - how to create it, life - what was possible. Essentially, Josep functioned like an atom bomb in my brain. One that detonated and set off a whole sequence of serendipitous events one by one by one...

To be continued....

Open Your Heart

Relax your calves, relax your calves, relax your...
Thighs...relax your thighs, relax your thighs, relax your...
Hips...relax your hips, relax your hips, relax your...
Chest...relax your chest, relax your chest, relax your...
Neck...relax your neck, relax your neck, relax your...
Face...relax your face, relax your face...

The Bikram yoga instructor's voice lulls me into a meditative state. I'm half awake, out of my head and fully present. My brain waves slow down. Alpha. Beta. Theta. Delta.

OPEN YOUR HEART he commands.

Tears spring instantly into my eyes. This is a surprise. An unexpected gift.

Let go.

I lie in Savasana for another 10 minutes as tears roll down my cheeks. I can't stop it. Nor do I want to. I am filled with emotion and flooded with a feeling of peace and gratitude.

As I leave the class, the bells from the big, old cathedral on the corner are ringing. It's Sunday after all, and service is over. My eyes fill with tears again. The sound is so beautiful. I am overflowing.

My heart chakra is awakening, and I am overcome with a profound sense of well-being and ease. I feel blessed, awed by the innocence and interconnectedness of the world, the perfect way in which all things flow harmoniously together.

El Collie writes about The Open Heart, and explains it much better than I can. Here's an excerpt:

In many spiritual traditions, it's considered the greatest blessing when the heart chakra awakens. Many regard this the most important energy center of the human psyche. The heart -- or fourth -- chakra is located at the center of the chest. When this chakra begins to awaken, a variety of sensations and physical symptoms can arise...Often there is heat focused in this area when the chakra is awakening. This may feel like a warm, glowing sensation or a feeling of incandescence, with the chest blazing hot as a furnace. After my heart chakra awakened, I discovered that whenever I was in the presence of anyone who felt sad, I would feel a dark weight on my chest. And when I was with anyone who was directing love toward me, my chest would become very warm...As the heart awakens, profound emotional changes frequently occur. The heart seems to both literally and figuratively break, releasing torrents of sadness and grief...During this same period, I was often overcome with intense compassion for people. I would be easily moved to tears upon hearing of any adversity in my friends' lives. This was not maudlin pity, but a deep sadness at the spiritual opaqueness of the world. Everyone evoked sweet-sad, deeply affectionate and reverent feelings in me; I felt such innocence and beauty in them all. There are many transcendent states that can accompany the heart awakening. Numinous beings of love and light may appear. Deep feelings of gratitude, joy and bliss may arise. A sense of the incredible beauty of all creation can be staggering. Tears of rapture can flow as easily and uncontrollably as tears of sorrow. Realization of unity with the divine and/or with all existing beings is dramatic at this time. Tremendous feelings of appreciation and compassion arise. Every sentient being is felt as precious...