I am going to explore with you an experience I had with Tiffany today.

She and I are grand collaborators and for the most part we know each others' strengths in our work together. What we remembered this morning is that sometimes one partner's strength can trigger the other partner's habit and visa versa. In our case, it has to do with the fact that Tiffany is (in my eyes) a total wizard when it comes to anything on the computer.  She has led the charge in setting up this website, pretty much all of our online advertising, and our online organization as well.

Great, right?! It is her strength, let her be strong in it. The only downfall is the fact that we, as humans, tend to attract a Force to balance out our own. Tiffany tends to be a Doer, I tend to philosophize and ponder and my doing comes in fits and starts. My habit is to take a backseat when there is someone involved who is ready to take lead, leaving myself in a place, I am now realizing, of willful ignorance. Tiffany's habit is to see what needs doing, teach herself how to do it, and stay on it until completion . . . I know she's a badass! Where is gets tricky is when both of our habits take charge, she ends up with all the work and I end up in the dark about what is going on and am completely reliant on her for guidance.

This goes way back for both of us. I can speak to mine and say it has to do with insecurity in my brain speed and function . . . just another negative story born out of unrealistic comparison to others.

What I realize now is that my partner and I must work with our strengths to keep them from tipping into habitual patterns. By this, I mean Tiffany has the opportunity to flex her strength of knowledge and ability to do what needs doing, while also slowing down her process so that I can help share the burden of creating our beautiful Work. All the while, I have the opportunity to step into my strength and behave as though I have all of the Knowledge of the world (because I and all of us do!) instead of being timid and insecure. In advocating for my own learning, my partner is able to clock her habitual tendency and refocus and I am able to pull myself out of the victim zone and get more involved in the Work.

Through partnering, we find our own strength.

~B

I've never thought of myself as a "ceremony" person.

The rituals and ceremonies I experienced in church growing up always seemed over my head...and also over the heads of many of the adults I was standing next to. No one seemed to have much of a personal connection to the goings-on there. There were many rules about what to wear (usually something uncomfortable that you had to be very careful not to stain, rip, tear, or otherwise enjoy yourself in) and how to be (QUIET!) and when to stand up and when to sit down and when to repeat monotonous words back to the person standing on the platform in the front, and I must admit that it never made all that much sense to me. With so many of the things that happened, I wondered "Why?"

Then I went to my first Native American ceremony and everything changed. Everything. Instead of there being a bunch of rules spelled out by someone to the many, there instead was a sharing of ideas and information and the personal journey of each member in the group. Each of the things that happened had a reason and an order and it was all explained and it was all simple, and it was all for the purpose of honoring the Divine in ourselves, the Earth, and others. All of a sudden, it made those days in church make a lot more sense: THIS is what the congregation was gathering for! More personally, it made me realize: how often do I actually take time out to connect to something deeper, to the Divine reality instead of surface human reality? 

From sitting in this ceremony for an entire weekend, I now see "reality" like a great river. I am floating in the current, a single water droplet in the womb of Divinity. It's not that I don't have free will - of course I do. What free will provides me is the option to see how my unique droplet fits in with the Great Flow and choose to allow it to carry me along, into the experiences I am destined to create - or not. I can choose to use my free will as a way to resist the Divine Unfolding as well. I can neglect the bills I get in the mail. I can run red lights. I can ignore the desire I have to stop doing the same habitual thing I've done since I was a child because it's "what I've always wanted." What this ceremony showed me is that when I do choose to resist, that's when I experience suffering. Resistance, in any form to any thing, is the only reason I ever experience negativity within my personal mind-scape. And I'm willing to bet this is true for you, too. 

Try it for a moment: when was the last time you had a negative thought or feeling?

For me, the first thing that pops into my head was driving to a client this morning. I ended up leaving later than I'd planned and the traffic was atrocious, I couldn't get out of my own neighborhood for 15 minutes. I tried to turn around and ended up getting stuck trying to back out of a neighbor's driveway. When I finally decided to go for it, the person driving toward me just laid on their horn for what I believed was a childishly long amount of time. 

Now just from that short description, let's count resistances! Won't that be fun?

1. Resistance to leaving on time (I had a GREAT reason! I always do. :o)
2. Resistance to the traffic.
3. Resistance to how long it was taking to get out of the neighborhood.
4. Resistance to going the original direction, which prompted me to try turning around.
5. Resistance to the reaction of the other driver. 

With all those resistances operating at once, is it any wonder I then spilled tea all over my lap and felt rushed and inconvenienced before the day had even begun?

This is a small (and rather non-major) example of what happens in our lives when we don't take time to slow down, focus on our intentions, recognize the habits we have that don't serve us anymore, and make a conscious choice about the next moment.

I now perform and attend ceremonies as often as possible. I find comfort in the knowledge that I am not on my own here, it is not just up to me how my life unfolds. I am endlessly supported and cradled in the lap of the Divine, my fellow (wo)man, and indeed all sentient Beings. In order to play my role in the Divine Unfolding, it is imperative that I take time away from the hustle of human reality to reflect and assess my actions and choices. Am I going with the flow, or am I resisting and trying to swim upstream? I must set aside an evening or two (or 5) to check in: am I choosing to be the woman I want to be? Or am I relying on default habits or laziness to determine the way for me? 

If you live in LA and are intrigued about the gift of ceremony, I'd love to share mine with you! Please come join my Full and New Moon Circles every other Tuesday at Breath of Life Studios in Santa Monica. Click here to read a full description about our next one on October 3rd!

With Love and Gratitude,

~-=T=-~