American Idol is back.

And that means, if we choose, we get to watch thousands of people line up for a slim chance at fame and the likelihood of being rejected, sometimes pretty unkindly.

So what is it that calls them to this crazy exercise?

What makes fame so sought after?

After 20 years of coaching, I’ve come to the conclusion that most longing for fame is really a longing for something deeper.

Something that will fill the hole in us that’s seeking approval, recognition, belonging, power, freedom, etc.

It’s like fame gets imagined by our ego to be the overwhelming final proof that shouts down every possible variation of “I’m not enough”.

And once we’re famous, of course, we’ll never hear those messages again, right?

But fame is HARD

In many traditions, fame is actually seen as a very difficult path to walk, spiritually.

It tends to strengthen the ego – the small self in us that starts to believe it’s own press releases about how great we are.

And this makes detachment, awakening and opening the heart more difficult.

In Sufi circles, it’s said that the great poet we know as Rumi was saved by Divine Love from being famous while he was alive. And instead his poetry was saved up in heaven to rain down when the world needed it most, long after he had passed away.

I’ve come to see fame as a very unique calling. And I believe that the souls who choose it, do so to work with very particular issues and experiences on the way to their fullest selves.

It’s really about significance

I believe that what most of us are really seeking when we go after fame is significance.

We each ache to know that our being here meant something – that we touched others and changed the world around us in some meaningful way.

I know I’ve longed for that over and over. I still do.

But I’ve learned over time that I won’t find my real significance in the numbers.

There’s no such thing as a “scale” of significance

I used to always want to KNOW that I’d made a difference. I wanted to count the actions and multiply by the number of people touched by them and find some “significance equation” that my ego could measure it’s contribution by!

HA!

More often than not, my ego used that kind of calculating to just reinforce its story that I’m NOT enough.

My soul, I’ve discovered, finds significance in an entirely different way.

The harmony of meaning

I believe in the Divine Dance, where where destiny, chaos and free will all intermingle to create our world.

I actually have “seen” the quantum field – just once. At the end of a walking meditation one day, the wall in front of me fell away and I saw the energy moving “behind” the seen world.

I described it at the time as “a river of moving lace” – millions of fine energetic “strings” all flowing together, in perfect harmony, creating the connections, movements and experiences that we call “Life”.

So now, I tend to find meaning in the sense that I’m flowing WITH that Divine river and not against it – making tiny, harmonious connections that affect the entire dance at once.

Tiny moments add up

So you may have no idea that the few words you said to your partner changed his day and that he shared them at work and changed his boss, and she had a better evening with her kids, and then they finished their homework happily and had a better day at school, etc. etc.

This the way we change the whole Dance each moment.

I believe deeply in the fact that one word or act can change a life.

I believe in the the ripple effect that small actions have across the miles and the centuries.

I believe in the quantum field, where everything we touch is tangibly changed in an energetic way, and where we’re equally changed by everything and everyone that touches us.

When the love is there, the fame matters less

It’s not everyone’s life path to be on American Idol, just because they sing well or like to sing.

And we see so many of the applicants crying desperately over their rejection and asserting how wrong the judges were.

But with some contestants…when we see them, we just KNOW they’re really on their true path with music and singing. And when they get rejected, it doesn’t take away one BIT from the love they feel for it.

And whether they ever get on Idol or not,  if they love it enough to keep doing it and learning and improving, THEY will be transformed by that journey!

And they WILL find a way to give their gift to the world, even if their most harmonious and significant way is to simply offer it to their family and children.

So is it fame calling, or significance, or both?

How “big” or how “known” would be right for your path? Or is fame masking a longing for something else?

And what KIND of significance would you really love to see when you look back on your life, and with who?

In truth, our minds and egos will never know all the moments when we made our most significant contributions…

…and I think that’s a good thing!

How about you? What do you think of all these “fame” messages we get in our culture – especially now that social media makes it so possible? And how do you connect with significance in your own life and work?

Share your thoughts and stories with us in the comments below!

Today’s post feels a little risky to me because I’m outing myself on a couple of fronts.

But in light of all the unrest around the world right now, sharing this feels too important to let my personal concerns stop me, so here goes…

I want to talk about our deep levels of connection with our global human family & about the challenge of that, but also about the immense power of it.

My science background and my knowledge of quantum physics have taught me that this stuff isn’t just “woo-woo”, it’s real. And my many years of training  have taught me that being aware of this connection and using it consciously and with positive intention is an incredibly empowering experience.

Especially in times like these, when watching the news can leave us feeling distraught and helpless in the face of events in Egypt and elsewhere.

A bit of the downside

Since January 8th, when the Tunisian protests really started to heat up, I’ve been dealing with a fairly constant case of vertigo  – an inner ear thing that creates disorientation, like the room is moving when it’s not – as well as some “buzzy” energy at the base of my skull, muscle tension, sleeplessness and lots of emotion that builds quickly and needs to be dissipated.

I’ve been “highly sensitive”  for a long time and this isn’t the first time I’ve tapped in deeply to large scale events. I’m also empathic, meaning sensitive to emotion – mine and others – and every once in a while all of humanity’s, it seems!

So I was ready to write this off as “just me”, however I’ve been getting reports from friends, healers and others in my community that they’re noticing high levels of agitation in themselves and their clients, and these are people I respect who know what they’re talking about!

Our safety brain is definitely on edge

Our reptilian brain (I call it the safety brain) or fight or flight brain is only scared of 2 things:

• what it remembers as dangerous
• the unknown, or never experienced before

And for most of us, the images coming from Tunisia and Egypt are triggering on both counts.

First of all, there are hundred of specific triggers being shown, like loud noise, yelling, big crowds,  shots fired, people fleeing, blood, the sight of tanks, army and authority figures, the idea of looters and gangs, people crying, damage and destruction, fire, etc.

All these can trigger previous traumatic memories in our own brains.

Second, our brains are in a state of not knowing, because anything can happen right now in Egypt, Jordan, Algeria, Yemen or Tunisia. One way or another, our world is changing FAST.

This leaves our safety brain completely unable to plan for what’s coming and make sure that we stay safe and unaffected – which is it’s only goal, EVER.

The safety brain uses adrenaline to keep us “ready”

Adrenaline gives us the extra energy we need in a crisis to respond, and it comes in very handy when we’re in the middle of one. (It’s how moms lift cars off their trapped children.)

But what about when it feels like the crisis is in our living room, even when it’s not?

Our brain hasn’t had enough evolutionary time to adjust to the 24 hr news cycle that brings these triggers into our home when they’re thousands of miles away.

So what most of us experience, when there’s an extended period of upheaval like this, is a constant low level of adrenaline that the safety brain keeps ordering “just in case”.

Now, I have to say right here that there’s no right or wrong way to be responding. You might be feeling all peaceful and happy as a clam these days. That’s great! It doesn’t make you less caring, it just means you’re not being extensively triggered.

But if you’ve been feeling this, like I have, here are some of the different things you might find yourself experiencing:

• constant low levels of anxiety, fear or agitation
• a general feeling of “stress” that you keep trying to pin on various “causes”
• more irritability, impatience or annoyance than usual
• a short temper, frequent anger or other reactions
• general sadness, feeling of depression or “the blues”
• a desire to withdraw or hide, avoiding contact with others
• feelings of confusion, feeling helpless or overwhelmed
• eating more than usual (or like in my case, constantly!)
• disrupted sleep or restless sleep

Any of these can be responses to this kind of stress.

So where’s the empowering part?

My favourite astrologer, Eric Francis, who has a way of connecting the personal and the global and putting them in perspective, has said this about our current times:

The astrological mark of the 2012 era is Uranus in Aries square Pluto in Capricorn. This is a cycle that evokes the optimism and revolutionary spirit of the 1960s, only we’re getting it in a time when the world situation is a lot more critical.

Fortunately, one factor is working in our favor: literally hundreds of thousands of us are spiritually trained. The holistic movement has been going strong since the 1950s, invisibly at times, quietly at other times, boldly at some moments. But I have every faith that the grounding and self-awareness that a great many people have cultivated has the power to carry us through anything, and to make the positive developments more meaningful.

That’s the most hopeful thing I’ve read in a while! And I truly believe that each of us is needed to play our part and help “tip the balance” toward the future we really want.

So my desire today is really to say two things:

1. You might be more affected by this stuff than you realize and it helps to notice it and not take it too personally, and
2. we’re all connected powerfully to the changes happening a world away and there are very real things we can each do to contribute to positive outcomes

Martin Luther King Jr. said that “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.”

And, from the reports we’re seeing, it seems that Tunisians and Egyptians and many across the Arab world have been treated very unjustly by their leaders for a long, long time and they’re ready to say “Enough!”

One of the things that’s been reported is that many people in the Arab world don’t think they’re portrayed accurately to the rest of the world by their leaders and their governments!

Wow! Is it possible that they’re just like us and wanting the same freedoms to work and play and love the way they choose and not at all the “western hating masses” that get thrown in our faces on TV?!

And is it possible that they want to connect globally with us and contribute and participate in creating a new world just like we do? And that the only thing in their way is a leadership that says it “knows what’s best” for them?!

What’s clear to me tonight, is that “Liberation Square” in Egypt is filled with human hearts and souls that long for the same things I do. And so I want to do everything I can to help them! From HERE!

And on a quantum level, there is SO much we can do to help.

Here’s my list of stuff we can do right now:

• Be present to our emotions and what we’re really feeling, beyond what’s on the surface. If possible, acknowledge that you might be feeling stuff that’s “in the air” and not all yours.
  .
• Pray in whatever way feels right to you, from a sense of the positive and what you’re hoping for, not from worry and fear.
  .
• Hold compassion for yourself and others and be gentle with any agitation you, or they, may be feeling. Bring a little extra patience and understanding to your interactions.
  .
• Cultivate positive states like joy, love, kindness and take a moment to dedicate them to wherever they are needed, sending them out on your breath.
  .
• Meditate, stop and breathe, do spiritual practice – anything that gives you peace and allows you a bit of perspective on whatever you’re feeling.
  .
• Use any healing work you know to move the energy you’re experiencing and to positively support the places and people that are directly in your care.
  .
• If you can, refrain from judging or condemning one side or another in the conflicts you’re seeing, hold hope and compassion for both.
  .
• Keep your fight or flight brain feeling safe by meeting it’s basic needs like food, water, warmth, shelter, etc. (And you may need to limit your consumption of news broadcasts to help it as well.).
  .
• Be aware that all this stirred up energy and agitation can escalate disagreements and conflicts, so do what you can to mediate calmly.
  .
• Support your body to help it process all this energy and emotion with good food and lots of water (and if this stuff gets you all jangle-y, like me, you may need to cut back on jangle-y stuff like sugar and caffeine)

A powerful way to deepen our connection

In closing, I want to share with you a simple version of a very powerful Buddhist breath practice that’s used to move and transform emotional energy and get us out of our fear brain and into our heart.

The practice is called tonglen – the practice of taking and giving. When we do it, we do it on behalf of all beings who are feeling what we’re feeling, even those who are thousands of miles away.
(If you’re reading this in your email, you’ll want to click HERE to go to the web page for the audio.)

The audio below will walk you through it very simply in about 6 minutes. You’ve probably got time to do it right now!

And you can click the link below to download the mp3 for ongoing use.

Transforming Emotions with Your Breath

Now it’s your turn

I know this post has become freakishly long and I applaud you if you’ve read this far! I hope what I’ve offered here will help you weather this current time with grace.

Now we’d love to hear what you’ve been experiencing, how you’ve been dealing with it and what’s working for you. Please share your thoughts and suggestions for all of us below!

Oppression comes in many forms.

For the past 10 days I’ve been moved and inspired by the (over 150!) blog posts contributed to The Girl Effect Blogging Campaign started by Tara Sophia Mohr.

Zen Peacekeeper, Marianne Elliot, started by sharing about her time in Afghanistan working with a human rights agency, then finished 3 posts later sharing the radical nature of self-kindness and it’s importance for us as change-makers.

Dian Reid, at Authentic Realities, gave us her powerful story about emotional poverty and the galvanizing effect of deep choice.

And Julie Doane Roberts absolutely took my breath away with a story about her realization that even having the tools to write things down is a luxury in many parts of the world!

The Girl Effect is all about giving girls in the developing world a chance to end poverty for themselves and those around them.

It’s about giving them a choice and a voice in their own future before the age of 14, when many of their choices go away as they’re married off and begin having children.

Here’s the very powerful Girl Effect video:

It’s easy to think about these girls and see oppression and their lack of freedom and to feel the deep urge to do something about that.

That’s what I felt this week seeing the videos and reading the statistics and all the moving words that were shared.

But oppression comes in many forms.

And instead of acting on my inspiration and urgency, all week I wrestled with the real and imagined limits to my own voice and my power to contribute.

First, the voice inside said it was just plain too late in the campaign to contribute anything. I had missed the boat.

Next, I had no deep stories of times in developing countries or profound memories of girls there who touched my heart.

And finally, to really drive it home, the inner oppressor said “compared to those others, your post will suck.”

Not exactly the sounds of freedom!

Then, a friend and I watched the documentary “Water on the Table” last night, featuring the deeply passionate and persevering Maude Barlow. She’s made it her life’s mission to have water declared a basic human right by the UN, so it cannot be bought, sold, withheld or controlled as a commodity.

We were talking about how we respond to issues like this that feel so pressing.

And I realized that the over-arching emotion that comes up for me is a strange mix of 1 part total confusion, 1 part utter amazement and 1 part pure rage.

I just can’t believe that so many of us can be aware of the issues and talking about them and trying solutions all over the world and yet it seems that so little about the fundamental ways our world works is changing.

I guess I’m impatient.

And I guess it’s the awareness of the suffering and the pain of my/our perceived powerlessness to change the causes that makes even the shortest wait so hard to bear.

But what if my beliefs about the power structures in the world and my inability to change them are part of the oppression that keeps them in place?

Hmmmm.

Maybe I’m not so different from these girls after all.

Maybe we’re walking this journey together of expanding what we think we can do in this world and what kind of choices we have and who really has the power to decide that.

A coaching client of mine many years ago, who was a coach herself,  said something very profound to me that I’ve never forgotten. She said:

“We learn about power when we have none.”

What she meant by that is that, as children, each of us figures out how power works when we literally don’t have the power to do a lot for ourselves.

So most of our power depends on moving someone ELSE to act on our behalf. And we often continue this belief and this behaviour even after we gain the power to do things for ourselves.

This is often one of the first things we have to face and question in ourselves when we set out to create change, no matter how small. But, I think, when we take on this inner task, we’re sending out a ripple effect that’s much more powerful than we know.

One of my deepest beliefs is that everything I transform in myself changes the world in a very real way.

So I believe that every time I face, transform and release oppression within myself and my own inner world, there’s that much less of it in the world out there.

And maybe I’ve handled that chunk of it so that, somewhere, a girl won’t have to.

And if I can’t change the minds of village elders so that she can go to school, maybe I can still decrease the total volume of oppression in the world from right here – right now.

Maybe I can free MY voice and MY choice by facing and challenging whatever it is in ME that puts all the power somewhere else!

And once I know I have that power, so much more becomes possible.

One of the most inspiring things I read this week came from Marianne Elliot who said:

“One thing I’ve seen over and over again in my work is that new voices at the table can help bring new solutions to age-old problems.”

Now what if there were millions of new voices? Yours, mine, all of us together!

What if we claim our place at the table?

What You Can Do

• Write about The Girl Effect at your blog. (I promise, it’s never too late and your post will NOT suck!)
• Add your link to the Girl Effect blog campaign page
• Spread the word by tweeting about this blogging campaign, and use the hashtag #girleffect.
• Donate to The Girl Effect or to the organization of your choice.
• Share a micro-loan with a woman in business through Kiva.org
• Challenge your inner oppressor and your beliefs about power and who’s really got it and why

Do whatever it takes to bring YOUR voice to the table!

Do you feel it?

Something is definitely in the air right now. I’m seeing and hearing it in people all around me, seeing it in myself.

At first I thought it was just me.

In September a series of aha moments started to slowly change the very foundations of my work and what I want to be doing in the world and who I want to be doing it with.

And then I started hearing the very same thing from many of the people  whose work keeps me inspired.

We’re all being quickened by the same “something”

This became very apparent to me last week when a small tsunami of blog posts and epiphanies began appearing.

First, I read Jen Louden’s wonderful post You Are Called (which is continuing in a theme that she started in September with the post Can You Save the World?)

Then I saw Marisssa Bracke and Pace and Kyeli sharing some major revelations that are changing the course of their work too.

Chris Guillebeau was already asking WHY and moving into the topic of making contribution central to everything we do and not just an afterthought in Part III of The Agenda.

And finally, I took in Meg Wheatley’s wonderful writing on Emergence and Tara Sophia Mohr’s beautiful thoughts on the meeting place of soul care and world care in So That You Can Stand.

I got SO excited…and then…

My excitement turned into a frantic need to comment on everything, put up my own revelation and find some way, ANY way to jump in and participate along with everyone else.

When I stopped to breathe, I discovered a deep fear underneath it all of being left out.

Something in me was sure that the party of all PARTIES was going to happen and I’d be excluded. Everyone ELSE was going to get to play their part and give their gifts, but not me.

I would have to weasel my way in and hope I deserved to be there enough so that nobody would throw me out.

Wow! I had no idea that was hiding in there!

You probably never think those kind of things…

But, just in case, let’s answer that question once and for all, shall we?

Here’s the definitive test to tell you whether you have an important part to play in this transformative time here on Earth…

If you’re here, you DO!

We literally cannot be removed from this Divine Dance – we’re each a thread that’s woven into the pattern and it’s not complete without us.

When I began to remember that, I could slow down and breathe again and trust that things are making themselves known inside me at just the right time and in exactly the right way.

And the frantic fear was actually keeping me from tuning in more deeply and really asking “What’s calling?” and “How do I respond?”

My response is coming soon.

September’s aha’s and puzzle pieces are gradually forming a new picture.

It has to do with the meeting place of self-change and world change and it connects the dots between the resistance we encounter within us and the resistance we meet in the world.

It calls us to embark on this adventure of transformation with our eyes open to the challenges – and yet it shows us all the soul fuel we could possibly need to embrace them joyfully and willingly – even in the crunchy places.

It feels like required reading for us aspiring messengers and change-makers.

And I can’t wait to share it with you!

But for now, I want to leave you with a piece of music and lyrics that have been playing in my head for days.

I heard it for the first time in February 1988 at the Winter Olympic Games.

On that crisp Saturday morning, the world sat down together in a stadium in Calgary, Alberta to sing, cheer, laugh, cry and celebrate… together… in peace.

And it was magnificent. And I knew that it was possible.

Looking back during this past week, I can see that this experience seeded something in me that has been on it’s way to bearing fruit all along. (Maybe there’s a seed  like that somewhere in your past?)

And at the end of the opening ceremonies, all 5,000 performers (including me) re-entered the stadium to lead the crowd of 160,000 in David Foster’s brilliant Winter Games theme.

And the chorus went like this:

Can’t you feel it? The Spirit surrounds you.
Don’t you feel it? And now that it’s found you,
Won’t you feel it? The feeling’s everywhere.
Can’t you feel it here?

How are YOU experiencing this time? There’s no right or wrong way here. Join the party and tell us about your experience in the comments below!

(And if you want to watch the original ABC coverage and hear the song in Olympic Stadium it’s Here – you can fast forward to the one-minute mark where the music starts. And those dancers with the white fur hats and neon pink dresses – I was one of those!)

There’s a pretty good chance, if you’re sitting in a house, with a computer, reading this in an email or on a web browser, that you have all your basic needs of food, clothing and shelter met, with some income left over to pay for internet and pay some attention to things beyond your own backyard.

This “luxury” we have, of having the time, space and money to pay attention to what we want to is not available everywhere in our world. And the gift of our awareness plus the availability of so much global information is showing us things we never even knew we wanted to change.

And if we’re living from our hearts to any degree at all, the plight of others and our world as a whole provokes a response in us – a desire – to help, to console, to soften the pain or address the need in whatever way we can.

But what to do from there?

Andrew Harvey, a modern day mystic, writer, teacher and student of the worlds mystical traditions,  offers a handbook for answering that very question.

I’ve been following Andrew for a long time, ad his book The Son of Man opened my eyes to the mystic essence available within the Christian tradition and helped me shake some of the dogma I was still locked into at the time.

I actually haven’t read Andrew’s new book, The Hope. It only just released on September 15th and I just ordered my copy online, so I hope it gets here soon!

I heard a portion of a talk he gave played on cassette years ago and just a few minutes of listening to him absolutely set my heart on fire!

And I believe it was Andrew who talked about becoming a “radical radioactive nuisance for love”, a term that has stuck with us in The Way of the Heart community.

So if Andrew has written a handbook for what he calls spiritual activists, I have no doubt that it will be passionate gasoline for any fire in us that wants to change the world.

Mercedes Sosa 1973

This past Sunday, October 4th, a great light went out in Latin America and in our world.

Mercedes Sosa had one of the most powerful female voices I have ever heard and she became a voice for the longings of her country and her people in a time when they desperately needed one.

Born in northern Argentina, she began recording, performing and touring in the  mid 1960′s, starting mainly with Argentine folk songs and widening her repetoire to include songs from across Latin America.

She supported Perron in her youth and was a key figure in what was called the “new song” movement in Argentina, a movement that captured the change embodied by the 60′s.

In 1971, she recorded a tribute album to the Chilean poet Violetta Parra, which included a cover of Parra’s song, Gracias A La Vida, or Thank You To Life, which became one of Mercedes Sosa’s signature pieces.

In the 1970′s, as Argentina became more and more oppressive under the military dictatorship, the voice of Mercedes Sosa began to be seen by the authorities as too powerful in it’s heartfelt honesty and in 1976 she and her entire audience were arrested and searched at a concert.

Mercedes was only released through international pressure, and she was then banned from Argentina and would not return until 1982, just months before the military government fell.

I first heard her voice on one of the world’s best radio stations, CKUA, in Alberta, singing Gracias A La Vida from the recording of her homecoming concerts in Beunos Aires. I was captivated by the great power and deep love for humanity I heard in her and I’ve been listening to her ever since.

I wanted to share with you this You Tube video of her singing Gracias A La Vida and I managed to track down a lovely English translation of the lyrics, which I’ve re-printed below, which you might want to read first and then watch the video.

Mercedes Sosa has become my icon for the power of a single female voice and what it can embody in and for the world, and this song has become my favorite gratitude song of all time.

I sincerely hope you enjoy this and as always I would love to hear your comments below.

Thank you to life, which has given me so much.
It gave me two beams of light, that when opened,
Can perfectly distinguish black from white
And in the sky above, her starry backdrop,
And from within the multitude
The one that I love.

Thank you to life, which has given me so much.
It gave me an ear that, in all of its width
Records— night and day—crickets and canaries,
Hammers and turbines and bricks and storms,
And the tender voice of my beloved.

Thank you to life, which has given me so much.
It gave me sound and the alphabet.
With them the words that I think and declare:
“Mother,” “Friend,” “Brother” and the light shining.
The route of the soul from which comes love.

Thank you to life, which has given me so much.
It gave me the ability to walk with my tired feet.
With them I have traversed cities and puddles
Valleys and deserts, mountains and plains.
And your house, your street and your patio.

Thank you to life, which has given me so much.
It gave me a heart, that causes my frame to shudder,
When I see the fruit of the human brain,
When I see good so far from bad,
When I see within the clarity of your eyes…

Thank you to life, which has given me so much.
It gave me laughter and it gave me longing.
With them I distinguish happiness and pain—
The two materials from which my songs are formed,
And your song, as well, which is the same song.
And everyone’s song, which is my very song.