Vulnerability vs Transparency

I have been having another ponder today: what is the difference between Vulnerability and Transparency? The first word is on a lot of our lips just now following the awesome talks and writings of Brene Brown. The latter seems a humble, rather old-fashioned cousin to the more fashionable 'v' word. So, I wondered how does the dictionary define these two words? This is what I found:

Vulnerable - capable of or susceptible to being wounded, as by a weapon: a vulnerable part of the body. Open to attack, criticism, temptation. 

Transparent - having the property of transmitting rays of light through its substance so that bodies beyond or behind can be distinctly seen. Easily seen through, recognised, or detected. Open, frank, candid.  

Quite different, aren't they? One, vulnerable, seems to describe being wide-open-to-be-seen-without-any-protection, and the other, transparent, seems to describe being seen-but-protected. The latter, when it comes to transparency in a human being, seems to me to be about allowing ourself to be seen in a protected way, which, by definition, isn't vulnerability. And being vulnerable means allowing ourselves to be seen in a totally open, nothing-between-viewer-and-person way, which by definition isn't transparent; there's nothing to be 'seen through'. 

My ponderings rambled on into, 'can one decide which to be?' Can I choose to live, or write something, from my vulnerable self or my transparent self at will? Or am I and my writing whichever they are simply because I am either vulnerable or transparent? Meaning that each piece I write comes over in vulnerability or transparency depending on how I am with the subject matter at that time.

I came up with the likelihood that if I am writing about something I understand, have worked on, can describe in fine detail on a psychological level, but haven't truly healed deeply within me, I am likely being transparent. If I write about something I have worked right through, understood, but also healed and released from the cells of my body, I am likely being vulnerable. Vulnerability comes from the fact that I have nothing to hide about it any more, nothing to shield, to protect and the subject matter has simply become part of my story. I can talk or write about it without any old emotional triggers being fired within me, and without any need for the reader to 'get it', or believe me, or be moved by me. If I am being transparent about it, I can write it, tell it, have intellectually understood it, but I am likely to use it to tell others what to do in their (only ever vaguely similar) situation, but still have to quash the rumblings of emotion still firing off in my body. I can even be transparent about these emotions and tell people what they are - in speech or writing - but I am still only being transparent, not vulnerable. I sense that, for me, the bookshop tables of misty-imaged 'misery books' of the last ten years were left there by me as they felt way too indigestible; they were written from transparency, not vulnerability. 

When I read a piece about a difficult time in someone's life, different sensations arise within me; sometimes, when the author is being transparent, I feel it unpleasantly in my own body (yet without being offered space to heal it in me), sometimes I feel the weight of an 'I should suffer with you' about it, and sometimes, when the author is being vulnerable, I gain a valuably simple sense of unconditional companionship with my own 'stuff'. I can see the difference between the author being transparent or vulnerable; the former has an expectation of me, the latter doesn't. Transparency is heavy, and even embarrassing. Vulnerability is, perhaps unexpectedly, light and helpful. 

Being truly vulnerable is the result of not having to put up any shields - see-through or not - and being able to touch and be touched. Being transparent is about letting another see me, but not touching them or having them touch me, because of the deceptively invisible barrier of protection. These two are often confused, from both sides, and getting stuck at the transparency stage a common situation.

My answer to my pondering then? That whilst becoming transparent is a great step forward on the road home to self, there's actually more to do on the journey onwards as I continue to move from transparency to vulnerability. 

I've not read Brene's book for a while - it's time for another read to see what she says about this!

Success Often Comes in a Locked Box

You know theses posts and blogs, books and articles, on ‘How to Become Successful’? Are you aware of the myriad of reactions and feelings they trigger inside you as soon as you see even the title? Have a look and listen inside your body next time, because there are important hints as to why you’re even attracted to such titles, and why you have to keep reading them instead of writing them. 

I remember reading the words below many years ago and feeling them resonate powerfully within me, but I had no idea why, or what to do about it…until later when I transformed those parts of me which believed deeply that I couldn't, and didn't deserve to be, successful. 

Here are the words:

"My heart wasn't in it, you see, so I could only allow myself a limited amount of success. Every time it threatened to go beyond that, I'd turn down a great part or run away or get sick - I'd do something to wreck it. There was never a clear choice to really succeed." From 'One' by Richard Bach.

I had, from many viewpoint moments in my life, clearly made a bizarre choice to not succeed. But why? And how was this so, when my mind kept telling me I could be successful if I just kept seeing myself as thus and doing everything required to manifest it? My mind knew what to do, but something was stopping success from happening…

Well, this is how it was for me; I grew up being told two things, often simultaneously. “You are useless”, and “You must be very successful, for me”. I was confused. Like all human beings I had a goodly amount of the natural desire to achieve, to live, to discover and experience - my early school reports described me as being highly inquisitive and having loads of curiosity. But I was told way more often that I was ‘stupid’ and ‘useless’, and this I was gradually, not believing, but embodying. 

What was happening inside me, deep in the very cells of me, were endless experiences of 'can't', and even 'mustn't. A stifling of the positive and a feeding of the negative. It was as if my cells were inadvertently being programmed for failure. This resulted in my body expecting, and even courting, failure each and every time I became curious or inquisitive about improving at anything. Trying to go out there into the field called success became ever more horrible due to the guaranteed discomfort of failure and subsequent familiar shame. They hurt, and they screw up life's dreams.

So, I did what many of us do; I had years and years of counseling. And I read every book on the subject of blame, shame, depression, anger, angst, and success which had ever been written. (By the way, see that? How can 'success' ever succeed in a sentence with such uneasy bedfellows?!) And then I went to workshops, trainings, and later surfed the web-waves about success on the internet. But, despite moments of surging excitement, or brief ‘successes’, nothing really changed.

You see, you can’t change your mind with your own mind. It just doesn’t work that way. In the same way, you can tell yourself you are not afraid of spiders, but if your body has a negative memory around spiders, your fear is embodied. And you can't tell yourself to be successful when every cell in your body tells you you won't be. Why? Because it’s not your mind which is afraid of spiders, it’s your body.  It's not your mind which isn't strong enough to manifest success, it's your body's strong memories of all the times you were told you weren't good enough, or of when you failed, often spectacularly. We all fail at times, but failure is rarely held compassionately; instead with damaging ridicule. 

Your body holds the memory of each and every experience you have ever had, including those with spiders or with failure. Your mind simply translates the triggered memory of those feelings into words with which to inform both you (thought) and the world (speech). Your mind can’t ‘feel grief’, but your body does. Try this? Next time you have an uncomfortable moment around an event, hear how your mind describes it - sadness, fear, anger - and then immediately go to your body and see where in it you feel it. Then ask yourself this, could you have known how you were feeling without your body’s signals? This is your body's re-feeling of the sensation it had at the time the discomfort was sown - maybe with a mocking by your class in junior school when you answered a question wrongly - which is informing you now of your mood or emotion to a similar event in adulthood. 

Each time I wanted ‘success', stimulated by the very word, my body ‘told’ me I was useless through its re-expression of the old shame set up in childhood. My mind wasn’t able to tell my body things were different now, because it was my body which needed to experience it differently in order to have and express new sensory information. In Alexander work, teachers give students new experiences of movement in order for them to be able to change old and unhelpful movement patterns from within, because the same thing stands: we can’t change ourself with ourself; we are always going to do the familiar, the well-grooved, and our body just does what it’s always done until that way is transformed into a space where a new, more appropriate-for-now, way can begin.

But no one can give me the experience of ‘being successful’ - that is so personal, so subjective, so illusive, and the journey there an important part of my life. Even winning the lottery wouldn’t give me the bodily experience of my taking my own road to my own sense of success. So, how can this be done? How can I get to experience me as a success?

For me it happened thus: Twelve years ago I was introduced to a way of working in which, deeply and compassionately, I was able to witness my body - even the very cells of my body. Instead of the ‘just think differently’, I was allowed to acknowledge how the message ‘You’re useless’ had embedded itself within me. Instead of using my mind to tell myself that thought was stupid (!) for still thinking that and to think the opposite, as in affirmations, I was simply and safely companioned as I deeply acknowledged the pain of that early message. My companion (facilitator) often didn’t know what I was releasing, but release it I did. And I learned to ask my well-meaning mind to stay out of the process as I set my intention to shift whatever it was hidden in my body which was blocking the way to my being successful. 

Oftentimes I might know where it was likely to come from and I would set the intention for the ‘inner button’ to dissolve. But mostly I never knew - or know, for the work is part of my life now - as I just asked that whatever needed to go, to leave me. I have been amazed at times at the flash of memory of an event long forgotten, and to which my witnessing mind says, “Wow! No wonder..!!”. But, importantly, in the space of no judgement, no interpretation of the memory, I sense a higher part of me touching that terror/shame/anger deep within my body, whereupon it simply transforms - like popping bubble-wrap. After the process it is likely that an event will happen which would have previously ‘pushed my button’, but instead there doesn’t seem to be a button any more and I experience responding quite differently to the stimulus, or even not responding at all. 

As I go on transforming those buttons within my body which tell me I can never be successful, things are changing. My mind still loves to tell me I need the ‘success writings’, for I guess that makes  the mind feel ‘important and clever’, but my body feels gentle, kind, and encouraging, reminding me that, yes, I can be more successful, but only when I have assisted it to release all the ‘stuff’ which is getting in the way of my natural gift, the one we all have: our human potential for success, whatever that is for each individual. 

Successful people begin to be successful through the absence of all that which gets in the way of succeeding, and then they work hard at gaining mastery with their chosen subject. Unsuccessful people work incredibly hard all the time, yet the hard work is the stumbling and struggling ‘against the odds’ - the odds being all the old, cellular memories that can be roughly translated into ‘You can’t’ or ‘You wont’. Reading the success books just tells us to rail against those beliefs ever harder, but 'What we resist, persists', and success remains in the shadows. The Transformational Process, in which I qualified as a facilitator in 2009, smooths the path ahead towards success. And it paves my road to my success. Not the road suggested by another, down which so many of us struggle for years until we wake up to our own. For me, these JFDI ('just * do it') reasons are why so many highly successful people aren’t very happy; they are always waiting for the shoe to drop, to be found out to be the ‘less-than’ belief which their body still holds. Or because they can’t bear to stop and find they’re on the wrong horse heading for someone else’s success. This is a tough way to live.

Personally I go on working through my blocks, my unconscious agreements made when too young to know any other way - the agreements which have set up something like these: ‘I can’t, I wont, they can, not me. Not good enough. Not clever enough. Not qualified enough. Not nice enough. Not bold enough. Not clear enough. Lazy. Selfish. Just plain wrong through and through.’ Each time a layer of these clears, something happens which sees me move ever closer to that elusive thing called ‘success’.

And the funny thing? Success is becoming less 'out there' than an in ‘inside job’ - one which has less care and more joy. Less worry and more peace. It’s my success and not tied up with proving anything. It’s my sense of my self-worth in my beloved subject, not another’s. I can still wish to be the best I can be, but it’s the best Annie I can be, not me having to be better than everyone else.... And each time I sense care and worry, I take them to my self, to my quietly loving higher-self and let them express themselves itself until heard unconditionally. Then they leave my path and I can step forward with more ease. As this happens I sense I am re-writing the story of my life without my mind’s old rod-and-stick, punishment-type method, and instead with my heart’s self-kindness and self-belief version. I know which I prefer, and which method I desire to share with my clients and my students.

So, success is an inside job, a body job, not a mind job. Shift the blockages in the cells and things truly change. Oh! And when you do have moments of joyful success and achievement, please tell your mind to leave the room in order for your beautiful body to bathe in and embody the new sensation and all this success means to you, now. This delight in success isn't a mind job, it's an important body job! Let it feel it! 

Change - the smooth way.

I was reminded today of the days back when we changed gears in our cars without the blessing of a gear-box that was ‘synchromeshed’. The result of changing gear in these vehicles meant one had to be prepared for a great deal of grinding and graunching (*) sounds during gear changes as metal plates found their way into re-emeshing correctly for the next gear - from first to second in acceleration, or for ‘changing down’ in slowing for a junction. The skill was to wait for the moment in which the all the cog-wheels flew into equal revolutions - float shifting - before engaging the next gear. Then the noise and graunching was minimalised. It took a skillful driver to sense and hear the engine, feel the impulsion, 'double clutch' well enough, read the incline up or slope down, in order to manage this successfully. Now we have modern clutches and well synchronised gear-boxes and have to do very little in the way of being present to the changing of gears as we drive. On we go, stereo blaring, car practically driving itself, mind elsewhere….

This is so like life nowadays; when we come to an inevitable (we are alive) point of change, we expect to ‘just change’ - to depress the clutch and have everything change smoothly and without any graunching. And if we find change sticky or uncomfortable, we assume there is a problem, and that we have clearly ‘got it wrong’... Yet, we haven’t; we just feel this because we aren’t 'sychnronised'. We haven’t been mechanised and homogenised like our modern vehicles. Life offers us change - over, and over, and over, and as FM Alexander once said, “Change is the one thing about which we can be sure in our life. It’s how we manage it which counts.” This is the thing: how we manage it is to not rush it. To not ‘graunch’ in an effort to get through it as soon as we can. No, we have to let the gear-box wheels fly - the metal plates spin - until they find a moment when they all co-ordinate and settle together in a new gear with which to move us forward. The spinning doesn’t really take long in the grand scheme of things, but if we push it, try to engage them too soon, there will likely be little bits of metal all over the road, passers-by leaping into the bushes in alarm, and a compromised, slowed-up vehicle to contend with. Yet if we lose focus and go beyond the point of co-ordination, we lose momentum and still hear graunching. There is a moment on the flying cogs, and life; a magic moment when it just happens, but only if we are both patient-and-present-in-the-pause. It's the pausing which is the magic trick.

So, during a life-change, and during forward movement into a plan, let your gear-box cog-wheels fly until they naturally fall into their new relationship for your next move ahead. Which basically means, listen, sense, and honour the space between, the pause, the zero, the neutral point; for it is here that change can happen most effectively and un-alarmingly.

(* graunching - my engineering father's onomatopoeic word for, well, the sound of metal parts graunching together!)

Being Heard and Hearing Others.

I looked up ‘being heard’ on the internet. I could find one solitary poem about it, and a heap of business venture type ‘should-listen-in-order-to-make-the-sale' posts... Nothing more? Nothing about the most tiny-yet-valuable moment we can give another, or receive from another? Nope, nothing. And I am not surprised in fact; hearing, or being heard, is so darned rare it’s tragic. 

What do I even mean? I mean those times when you aren’t feeling that brilliant, you’ve no idea what to do about something, and you know no one is likely to know, yet also that it will work out in the end, but you wish it were soon.... You don't even want to say much about, you just let someone else know it's happening to you. You want to experience a little of the 'a problem shared about is a problem halved'. So you tell someone what’s going on for you and, if they don't plain ignore you, they either shrug and say 'Oh, it’ll be fine', or they can’t help (which wasn't what you asked for), or even that you’re imagining it... All ways of saying, “I don’t give a purple sh*t; I’ve my own problems, and I don’t want to catch yours.”  That old 'I don't want to get involved' cruelty. Worth remembering here the poet John Donne's important words, 'No man is an island…', which finishes with the reminder, 'because I am involved in mankind'.

Of course, you may you get the other arrogant ‘rescue service’, the ‘Why don’t you…?' Oh great, three words which basically say, ‘I know what you should have done to stop this, why didn’t you, you idiot? I would have done it, but you...well... tch!’ This one might be called the red-rag-to-a-bull sh*t. And with neither versions have you been heard, acknowledged, re-cognised, witnessed, and thus you feel utterly alone and having to handle it all on your own. 

Yes, sometimes people seem to be ‘dumping’, but this has become a tidy label to give someone who is asking for an ear about something which really pushes your own buttons. Something which you are trying desperately to pretend isn’t in your mood-repertoire. Something you wish to God you could sort out in your own life, if you even acknowledged its presence that is; buried so far down in your awareness under your “I’m fine’ cloak. The funny thing I have found is, as I go on sorting out the cr*p under my own cloaks, people don't seem to 'dump on me any more...

Here on planet earth something very simple happens each day. We humans just share how it is to be human. In all sorts of ways, from speaking, writing, posting on social media. And being human IS pretty darned humanly messy. Plans don’t work out in time - or ever. Dreams dribble dust from their lofty shelves. Ideals are smashed to smithereens all over the floor. And God-forbid anyone come along in a 'mess', and let you see from the outside what your own sadness, disappointment, confusion, anger, hurt, or, worst of all, fear might look like, because you’re trying so darned hard to pretend you’ve got it all sussed and the mood-crew left your building years ago....

But ‘bad moods’ are NOT catching. Low moods in another do NOT drag you down, unless you let them; a low mood in another might alert you to one in yourself which you are denying, but if low mood isn’t in you, it isn’t in you. And if high mood is in you, you’re quite ‘safe’. But don’t put that high on your low-mood friend either; rub salt in their wound, would you? 

Just Hear Them. 

Just stay in your own space and witness them.

See them.

Hear them.

Acknowledge them.

Agree with them quietly that it looks and sounds like it sucks.

Smile kindly - yes, kindly. Not mockingly, or jovially, or dismissively, just kindly. Which you can do the more you discover and allow your own messy human-ness and your own self-compassion for it. And, through your heart being open to their human-ness, and to your own, you'll be letting them know you know they’ll come through ok, and not alone, because you heard them.

And while you’re at it, do this for yourself, too, when you are low, because then you’ll be better at it for the next person who comes along, and they for you.

We can change the world this way.

Too simple? Well, simple works. Simple isn't easy, but simple is beauty-full.

My daughter taught me this years ago… When reassuring her, 'helping' her out of her low mood by 'helping' her understand her irritating teacher’s possible point of view, and all that it ‘might’ have been about, she stopped me and said, “Stop it! I know all this. I just want you to agree with me first, and then you can say all that stuff which will help. But not yet! Just hear me!”

She was, and is, so right. And I am still learning.

Just hear people. Read their words. See them. And ask this of others for your self. Because to be witnessed as we are at any moment is the greatest gift we can receive from another, and also to give another.

Wiggle room...

After yesterday's blog ( Please Just Be You ) I was asked to say more on the '7 billion people needing to shift a bit for my growth' ... For me, it's like this: I see my whole self as a big, jute sack of rice - when a little bit of me releases or contracts, every other little grain of rice inside me has to move around a tiny bit to accommodate this. If I compress my sack too tightly, there is no wiggle room, and things get awkward and often painful. If I allow movement within the fabric of my sack, the wee grains of rice can manoeuvre about more easily. 

Then I see the my world - the characters and players on stage with me at any period of time, and I on theirs - as grains of rice in an even bigger 'life sack'. When I change my mind on something - the place I live, my work methods, my intentions, the size of my dreams, my choices and actions - everyone else in 'my world' has to manoeuvre about a bit to accommodate this. The same goes when those around me do something 'different', needing me to wiggle a bit for their change to happen. And then this goes for the even bigger world - changes in our bodies, our worlds, our villages and towns, counties, countries, the whole world, and probably even our planet within the universe, and beyond...

There are grains of rice in me which may, having wiggled a bit to accommodate change in me or another, go back to where they were; they just had to wiggle to allow the other to change. Or things may change dramatically with not a grain of rice anywhere near where it was.

But wiggle room is needed, as is patience; wiggling takes time. It takes the time it takes, too; some wiggles are delicate and slow, requiring subtle changes a long way away from my particular grain of rice, and some are localised, smooth, swift, barely noticeable in the ease in which they occur.

But one thing I do know is wiggles happen. Change within or without requires much wiggle room, which benefits from a 'permissionary sack' which undulates to allow movement within, and both soft elastic grains and hard fulcrum-like grains in order to facilitate the shifts.

Isn't that just like life?! I have met those rice grains on my journey - within and without - which are soft and pliant, and then been brought up short by those which feel like rocks on my path. But like with the combustion engine - where the solidly immobile engine 'block' has to exist as a fulcrum, in order for everything else to move smoothly in sequence, in order to produce propulsion - these solid grains are in my worlds to assist my own movement. I, in turn, will often be a fulcrum-grain in another's sack. (And when I think about something like the world of politics - there's lots of fulcrum-grains out there just now!)

So, within a world of 7 billion beautiful grains of rice in the sack called planet earth, there is endless wiggling going on all the time. So, if the changes you are searching for aren't revealing themselves yet, maybe they are just still needing to wiggle. In that case, give them room, be flexible, soft, be ok with having to wiggle out of place in order to wiggle back into where you most need to be right now. And happy wiggling!

Be Anything You Want? No, Please Just Be You.

You know when those posts about ‘You can be anything you want to be; it only takes a decision’ come up? The ones which, on some days, give you a real boost? But on other days.... I’m talking about those days when you could happily crumple posts like this up into fire-lighting stuff and add a lit match, because they plain old hurt… 

Oh, that life were as simple as a decision. Yes, we can and do make them, but life is about a lot of other people than just us, and when we change out minds about something as big as Being Greater Than I Am Now, the others around us have to shift a bit too. And with 7 billion people on planet earth, that takes some patience and requires quite a lot of wiggle-room. 

So, I’m just saying here, I hear you when/if it’s one of those days for you, because I have them too. When it’s one of those days in which to be told your life is a little less than you would like it to be - you know, more bills in tomorrow, diary too full / too empty, book still not written, name not yet in lights, golf handicap still in the thousands, washing not done - because you clearly haven’t made a strong enough decision to be super-person (and obviously they have, or they wouldn’t be writing such posts... yet have they?), yes, one of those days when what you want to have happen is for someone to see you and say, ‘Tough sometimes, innit?  Hang in there right where you are now, and rest up a tiny moment. I think you’re awesome for being you. For having dreams and hopes. For wanting a good life. For wanting to shine, and share, and grow, and make a difference. Whether you make your dream today, tomorrow, or next decade, I still like you, and I thank you for being here, right now, as you. Make decisions all you like, and I will support you where you are and where you’ll be, and I will walk with you towards your dreams, but I wont ever tell you you ought to be there already.’

Keeping Watch….

Keeping Watch 

Frustration - rushing - impatience - even the dog wary....
What is this? 
This oh-so-familiar feeling? 
It’s that I want to be doing something other than that which I am doing now.
What?
I don’t know.
Stop then....
Can’t....
Can; it’s what you teach!
Yea, I should....
And then, 
Yes, 
I stop….
And not the suppression-like stop of 
“Count to ten! You naughty girl!”,
But the gentle pause of attention -
Compassionate attention, to me.
Compassionate, because it’s empty of judgement;
I left the plug open for all that to flow out before looking,
Because judgement is futile stuff; 
The stuff of old - 
Other’s stuff - 
Stuff of what isn’t,
And I need to discover what is.
So, what is...?
Is, is that I feel held up - 
Halted -
Stuck - 
Interrupted.
By?
By wilting flowers.
Hungry rabbits.
Noisy storms wreaking time-taking damage -
Rattling and rumbling - sleep interruptions.
Recalcitrant iPlayer
Messing me about.
Slow drivers and
Ornery traffic lights...
Getting in the way of
Me, getting there.
Where's there?
Over there - not here:
Not where I am now.
(Even if I, of course, am.)
What’s there?
Clarity.
Understanding.
Knowing.
Certainty.
New direction.
Progress.
Happening.
How do you know this?
From my shallow breath,
My scattered thinking,
My tightness and holdings,
The inner fight....
So, what to do...?
Nothing.
Just nothing.
Not stopping, 
Not pushing,
Not fixing,
Not holding,
Not repressing,
And not, not judging,
De-finite-ly not that....
Just non-doing no-thing.

Wait.
And wait waiting.
And waiting wait.
And notice....
Notice the whys and whens,
And shouldn’ts and oughtn’ts...
Notice how they physicalise within me....
And wait; wait with them.

Remember the light touch when I was an Alexander student - 
The quiet hands waiting with me,
Showing me how to embody the quiet pause,
How to release my mind’s net on my body.
Companioning me in the lonely, 
Rather scary no thing place - 
The neutral between gears - 
Where births my potential,
And where most wont stay long enough.
Reassuring hands saying, “This is ok’.
Not preventing me,
Not pushing me,
Just waiting with me.
Waiting until I heard,
And saw,
And felt myself
Witnessed
And understood
By me.

I am rushing because
I want more,
I want it now,
I want what I haven’t gone for
For far too long.
For ever.
And I want it now.
I want to step up,
To shine as me - 
Seen or unseen,
Shine nonetheless.
I want to drop
The veil of ‘mustn’t’.
Oughtn’t, shouldn’t.
My ball and chain of ‘What if?’
‘And, but, why, who, you…?’
Rolling, grindingly, away.

The hare and the tortoise; 
Is a good story,
But the hare is catching me up - 
The hares are about to win!
The story ending’s about to alter…
So, wake up and run!
Run, tortoise! Run!
You are worth it!
You are good enough!
You can, you can, you can!
Wake up!
Oh! Run!

Oh my! Oh yes!
Out of my way plants,
Rabbits,  storms and drivers!
Out of my way old beliefs,
Agreements, and habits!
I have places to go and people to reach!
Yet, also include 
The Immaculate Pause...
The waiting....
Wait for the tide,
Wait for the wind.
Pushing the river never worked for anyone.
The tide will turn each day - 
Watch:
Ride it then,
But don’t miss it.
The wind will back and veer;
Watch:
Be ready to respond as it does...

Move within waiting,
Wait within moving - 
Remember those gentle hands 
Teaching you how to pause in faith.
Remember how you teach that too,
Because you know it works so well.

Trust.
Be.
Wait.
Watch.
Then flow.......
Flow....
And happen!