Inner Surfing

Starting with Olympic wave news: The latest New Scientist (my favorite magazine other than People ;-) ) reports that the swimming records broken in Beijing Olympics may be due not so much to US supremacy as to wave patterns! The Beijing pool was 3 meters deep whereas the Athens pool was 2 meters. Apparently, a deeper pool allows the swimmer to put forth wave patterns with her strokes, but “get out of town” before they come back from the depths to hit her and slow her progress. In shallower pools, such as the one used in Athens, the swimmer’s own “back-wave” slows her down.

So how can we swim in a deeper pool, so that we can achieve “escape velocity,” and shift from the experience of moving forward, only to hit our own counter-intentions or resistances or karma and move backwards again, in what sometimes can seem like a never-ending loop? In motherwave days, I coined the phrase “get out of the loop and onto a wave.” How can we do that? I am asking this question, right now, for real.

The answer communicates itself in waves, as is often the case in my experience of inner guidance. Before I translate the wave-answer into words, I want to give a cliché-alert, and repeat a quotation from Wendell-Homes that I believe I used before in this blog: “Words are the outer skin of a living experience.” So what I’m about to say may miss its mark in your present, wavy experience because you already “know” this clever answer. Anyway, here goes:

How we can swim in a bigger pool, so that we live free from an endless karmic loop, is to move from a pool into the ocean. Yeah, yeah, very clever Katie, you are thinking. Who HASN’T heard the teaching stories about the well and the ocean? But bear with me: I’m talking about a real ocean in which we are swimming without realizing it, right now. Literally. The ocean is not only larger than a pool, but it is also living water. A pool is completely stagnant, until someone gets into it and creates waves, whereas the ocean constantly runs waves of every kind, from the moon, sun, tides, whales, ships, currents, winds…

The ocean is alive and constantly reinventing itself, which is why coastlines are always changing, which can be a drag if you have oceanfront property. And yes, this is a metaphor: The pool in which I used to spend my time as a child was like one of those 2-meter pools they used in Athens. It was, relatively, an Olympic-sized pool because my parents were clever academics and also socially conscious to a fault. So I was deeply conditioned by the belief and nervous systems of my parents and the British culture in which I was raised. Swimming in that shallow-yet-Olympic pool, I would continually meet myself coming back, and life felt so constricting.

At the age of 18, I had a few spontaneous spiritual or rather “oceanic” experiences that put me on a search, that led me to live in… a deeper pool! The 3-meter Olympic pool of Beijing, in which new records could be set. Now I was in the alternate reality pool; the groovy, hip, New Age, spiritually correct, pool. Hell, I spoke at the International Conference for Science and Consciousness. That’s a pretty deep pool, but so what? It's a pool.

So what is the ocean? I’m dipping my toes in and it’s nothing like the 2 or 3-meter pools. All I can really say about it is that I can’t go there until it’s the only thing I want. All my previous visits, and my ability to be “salty” from dipping in this ocean of love were just like church on Sunday, sin on Monday. Now, as many of life’s illusions have burst like blood blisters, I have been turned back into the contemplation of my real relationship with the Infinite. And I find that my fear of diving all the way in, and my attachment to the fake medals of those Olympic pools, are creating a lot of noise––some very choppy waves at the shore of that sea. Everything is pulling me through that edge. Everything else is resisting. I am doing my best, one day at a time, to cultivate a life of true surrender.

There is not much more I can say about this right now, so let’s move on to Nadal and those buns of steel!

Why I love Nadal?

Well… what’s not to love? That butt, those biceps. But I swear, that’s not really what I love (even though I have been accused by friends of blindly following beefy biceps into banal bardos!).

In case you’re too spiritual to know, Rafael Nadal is the new World #1 tennis player, having finally beaten longtime #1 Roger Federer at Wimbledon, in what is now widely called The Greatest Tennis Match Of All Time. Barb and Lawrence and I watched TGTMOAT for about 8 hours one Sunday, and it was almost TOO exciting, especially for me because I was rooting for Nadal and he almost didn't win…

Anyway, why do I love Nadal so much? Well, he is an interesting archetype. While he is playing, he is so focused that it’s scary to watch (see pic on left). His face scrunches down in a look of absolute intensity, and nothing can distract him. He shows no signs of a shift in focus when he is losing, when someone in the audience makes a joke, or when the other player throws a fit. It’s as though he is not a human with a personal self. In fact, TV commentator Mary Carillo says of him, “It’s amazing that off-court, he is completely sweet and humble, yet on the court he is a savage beast.” In Paris, where he keeps winning the French Open year after year, they call him the “bete sauvage,” which actually means “wild beast.”

And that’s the thing. These public personas, like Jennifer Aniston and Sarah Palin and Rafael Nadal are archetypes for our age. We no longer have a real King and Queen or the Greek gods on whom to project all our issues and inner selves, so we use celebrities (I wouldn’t even call Palin a politician!). I allow myself free rein to read People magazine (or worse), because (1) I can, and (2) I recognize that parts of me are getting mirrored and acted out by all their shenanigans, and I can access stuff inside myself that needs acknowledgement and release, by noticing my reaction to the celebrity soap opera. I was SO worried, for example, that Jennifer Aniston would get dumped by the serial ladykiller John Mayer, and I was bummed when I was right.

Back to Nadal. Bottom line (pun intended): he represents my inner body that is trying to get out. I am tired and done with using my physical body, which is, after all, an animal, as an interpreter, side-stepper, symbolic map and general mouthpiece for my unresolved deep, dark painbody issues. Enough already. I already said that, a few years ago, in my lightwave body awakening, as chronicled earlier in this blog. The process continues. Inside me, or perhaps a few vibrational inches to the left of me, lives another body. It is youthful, healthy, whole, energetic, and free. It is governed by that part of God which is instinctual and connected to the universe. It knows what to eat, when and how to sleep, play… all of it. I call it my soulbody, and have taught trainings about it, yet I find myself still IN a training.

If you don't quite get what I mean by all this, I'll try to clarify. I'm NOT talking about resisting the natural process of birth, death, and all that. But I've come to see that it isn't always a "natural" process. Much of the time what has been happening in my body has been the playing out of other stuff that doesn't necessarily have to happen through a body. I don't mind dying, but I don't want it to be an expression of my resistance to something I was afraid to feel. Unless that happens, and that would be okay too.

But let's say that the physical body is an expression of a virtual body: Which virtual body do I want to express in physical form? My wounded painbody, or my soulbody?

This is where Rafa is one of my teachers. He somehow seems to have come into this life with a body that easily channels the natural ferocity of wild physical power. He may have mental and emotional stuff that isn’t totally free––his awkwardness in interviews seems to suggest that, along with his racquet bag, he carts around a painbody like the rest of us. Yet his painbody doesn’t use his physical body to distract him from his fear/sadness/anger by illness, addictions or violence, or to express all those feelings by vulnerability, hpersensitivity or, again, illness.

His physical body is almost always in the zone. It doesn’t get zapped by his emotions, except positively, in the exultant leaps and fist pumps that explode through him when he scores a winner. Like some kind of archetypal “body-whisperer” he has somehow cultivated his natural physical wildness into an ever-more-effective expression of skill and power.

And then, off the court, he is impossible to dislike, (see pic on right) even by his tennis rivals who love to mock and imitate his habit of pulling wedgies out of his famous butt before every point. Yet they can’t find anything bad to say about him, because he is so humble that even after winning Wimbledon he said in the interview that Federer was still the best. And he wasn’t kidding. He seems to need no personal ego to excel excellently, and that is the point.

I have experienced great ambition in my life. I seem to have been born with an enormous, unstoppable desire to express something big. And I also have yer typical painbody, full of the usual suspects of not good enough, too much, unlovable, and so on. Sometimes these two––self-expression and compensation for pain––get entangled, so that a passion to express becomes a passion to achieve. In that unholy marriage, I spent many years surfing a wave back-and-forth between agony and ecstasy, while I taught motherwave trainings.

Now the urge to achieve is relaxing into a willingness to express. Recently I’ve been living a quiet life doing various writing projects for myself and others, seeing clients, and also cultivating my soulbody every day. I swim––or should I say I “bob”––every day in a pool, wearing my float belt, and allowing my wavy body to do its spontaneous, spiral water dance. Then, three days a week, come rain or shine or backache or exhaustion, I go to the gym and do an hour of weight-training with Adam, my excellent trainer. I’m experimenting with allowing God-through-my-bod to lift the weights, since they are impossibly, ridiculously heavy for my frame, which feels more like a bird than a Neanderthal.

That’s it for now. Vamos Rafa!

Is he (the one on the right) really that into you?

How about the one on the left?

Welcome to my Inner Surfing Blog (or welcome back!).

I just got a strong impulse to start writing here at least once a week, so if it's helpful to you, please check back in––I won't go away again for 14 or 9 months without blogging, honestly! I seem to be receiving a lot of inspiration every day, and because I'm still on my mysterious hiatus from my former identity as a teacher, I generally share it all with a few close beloveds. But why not you too, if you want?

Talking of Christ (weren't we?) I was looking online for a good headshot of Jesus because I was feeling the urge for a bit more male representation in my house of goddess-images. I found an endless supply of hysterical Jesus pix! They all looked like egoic, seductive hippies to me (how about that one on the right!?) None of them seemed to represent that personal-yet-impersonal, expanded, I am consciousness-love that I was looking for, except perhaps the one on the left.

Meanwhile, in unrelated news: This morning in my mailbox I found the following quote from author Guy Finley:

The Right Way to Help Those
Who Do Us Wrong

Real compassion lies in our ability to remember that any angry, resentful person is usually just someone who can no longer bear the weary weight of his or her own carefully concealed despair.

I went to the pool for my daily soulwaving session and, as usual, along came Mario the maintenance guy for a chat. I've known him now for a couple of years. When he first started working at this apartment complex, he looked very down and depressed. He wouldn't look you in the eyes and I felt a frisson of discomfort whenever he would drag his cleaning cart through the pool building. Then one morning, I engaged him in conversation. Like most Latin people, he was taken aback by my fluent Spanish, but perhaps more so by the fact that I was friendly. The not-so-subtle class system in which Latin-looking people are ignored as our servants is very pervasive.

Someone must have said something good to Mario in our first conversation, because the next time I saw him, he was smiling and walking differently. He told me that what I had told him had caused him to turn his life around and he now saw that it was all about "thinking positively" (did I really say that––that is SO 20th Century!), and that his depression had completely gone away. I remember joking to my friends that he was my shortest and most successful client experience ever!

Back to today: Mario was looking very agitated when he walked in. He told me a story of how the maintenance boss had asked him to make a list of needed cleaning supplies, then torn up his list. Or something like that. He was feeling that all his sincere, hard work was completely unvalued. And he said, "They are always saying bad things about me, even though I try to be friendly, and just keep my head down and do my work well."

I tried to say a few wise things, like: "Good thing you're working for God and not for them," and he liked the ideas, but really just wanted to be heard. I felt a bit irritated because I wanted to "get on " with my meditation and exercise, but then I let go and realized that this was what life was bringing me. "This man is your Beloved right now."

Listening to more of the story I felt some outrage on Mario's behalf. I could identify with the painbody piece he was experiencing. Part of me wanted to go and tell his boss off, but of course this would have made things worse. Finally Mario left, and in the next unfolding scene, his boss walked into the pool to check on something. He talked to me in a very friendly way. I noticed the feeling of wanting to challenge him on his racism, his "bossism," his insensitivity, his unconsciousness of Mario's pain. But of course, as the quotation above reminds me, he has his own pain.

Ouch, ouch, ouch!

And then again, oh well!

Then another scene: Mario comes back into the pool, sits down at the edge and says, "Can I tell you something? I always thought I had bad karma until I began talking to you. Now I have good karma." Wow! Little Katie likes that!

Now, such comments are not uncommon in the kind of work I do, as you probably know if you have ever offered yourself in service to life, or humanity, or God, which I am calling today the "Beloved." People project the Beloved onto you, which feels wonderful, unless/until they project on you their issues with the Beloved (i.e. with their parents), which feels horrible. If my whole brilliant career has taught me anything, it is to expand towards greater detachment from this human drama of projection, which plays out on every level of human relationship. This has been the hardest learning of my life. It's hard not to take someone-seeming-to-adore-you personally; even harder not to personalize someone seeming to hate you.

I came back into my home and found a "Help!" call from a beloved former student who had been traumatized by a death. I called her and was able to listen and love and empathize and by the end of the call she was laying out plans for the next wave of my work, which was fun to listen to.

There is a plan for this next wave. It's in my computer and in my extended brain-field, and I receive constant downloads that refine and complexify the information and deepen my union with the place from which it emanates. I take dictation, and I also receive the Love that wants to express itself through me. The piece I haven't received yet is how this might play out in the world. I have no desire or guidance to make anything happen. Been there, done that. So I'm still leaving that part to God.

Love yourself and watch -
Today, tomorrow, always.
First establish yourself in the way,
Then teach,
And so defeat sorrow.
To straighten the crooked
You must first do a harder thing -
Straighten yourself.
You are your only master.
Who else?

Hi! Yes, I know, you've been following my blog avidly, and have checked every day for 14 months and I haven't blogged. Sorry about that!

Do you know who said the above quotation? I'll give the answer at the end of this post. You may be surprised, as I was, and say, "But I didn't think that teacher spoke of loving oneself!"

Of course, "to love myself" can mean different things according to who or what I think "myself"...er... am! I used to believe that loving myself meant following all impulses, creating so-called realities to satisfy what I thought were my desires. I was widely recognized as a "great manifester."

"Hmm! And how did that work for you, Katie?"

"Not great, actually!"

It's one of those chaos theory /butterfly effect things, like the principle of sensitive dependence on initial conditions, where getting the premise just slightly - ah - wrong can set off an unwanted hurricane in the climate of your own experience. The premise: that you are who you think you are. That the bundle of impressions that you identify with as it bumbles along through time and space is you! Like Morgana, the whinier of my two cats, this alleged self constantly demands junk food and then pukes it up on the Turkish rug.

I know, I know, I sound like some Eastern person giving "satsang" (spiritual discourse) but I'm really talking directly from my now experience here. I will try to do better and communicate more directly: What do I mean by "junk food" for the self?
Well, as far as the cats' diet goes, a cat-loving neighbor is trying to convince me that I should convert them to raw meat. I tried once before, but apparently not in the right way - it takes more than slapping a new plate of sushi down and saying, "You're gonna like it, because it's good for ya!"

They are CATS, and (like your Soul) not easily manipulated. I would have to gradually wean them from dry kibble which they are addicted to day-in-day-out, via healthy wet food from cans, into which I would start sneaking bits of the raw meat. Eventually, but possibly after some digestive problems (ahem - this was why I balked last time - those problems went on my rug from both ends!), the cat becomes a mini-lion, raw meat convert, starts singing Rasta songs and giving true feline transmissions of its real nature. And perhaps won't die of horrible junk food diseases.

It sounds like a lot of trouble, especially since I am away a lot, (and it will soon be more of the time), leaving them in kind hands - but could I teach all this to my cat-sitters? Merlin and Morgana are so attached to their kibble even though it contains veggies and grain which, my friend pointed out, you just don't see lions in the wild eating.

So, bringing this metaphor home: I don't know if I will do this with the cats, because they resist change.

But as for me, I am taking great care with what I put in my consciousness. Raw truth, no more opinions. If you have hung around me, especially when I am (a) sick and (b) in full throttle of creative writing, you know that I am always surrounded by books. Some people even think I read/have too many! I don't know why! Just because they have their own room? What's your problem?

Yet out of thousand of books I have read, only a few seem to be sacred transmissions of raw truth. Every other book in my vast library is basically kibble––a bit of truth cooked up with the carbs of someone's opinions. Some of them seem more "received" than others. Of course some are mysteries or books about science, but I am talking about spiritual/psychological/personal growth books... Most of these feel as though they were written by someone stuck in their mind trying to mentally resolve some issues and convince the reader that he has got it right.

One night a year or so ago, I was in a very deep place after my dad died. The whole situation around his death was a bit challenging, because no one in our family except me felt that he was going anywhere new or that the transition was anything more than an ending. At the same time, I was the only one who cried, because it was important to keep a "stiff, upper lip," and––amazingly––I have since received flak for weeping at his death-bed!

When I came home and wanted some real inspiration, and faced my hundreds of metaphysical books, only 2 or 3 seemed relevant to my journey. ET (Eckhart Tolle) is always right there (right here and now present, that is). Byron Katie tells unusual strong truths towards awakening. But it was my old Joel Goldsmith books from The Infinite Way that suddenly galvanized my attention! I picked up "The THunder of Silence," and read till dawn.

Joel, who died in 1964 before I even became a hippy, really had it going on. He was a true mystic, living and speaking from oneness.

So in addition to watching NBA basketball as I lie here with flu, I am also reading about 20 books from Joel, and falling asleep to his talks.

Obviously I am getting something out of this.

What he says is that there is only one power. No second power can oppose me, because God is in everything. I don't need to pray to heal any "illness," get rid of any "world problems," or resolve any "scarcity," because such things would then be secondary powers that I am asking the One Power to oppose.

And a big piece is that you manifest what you are really supposed to manifest by merging your consciousness in Christ or God consciousness, not by focusing on things you want. Again, that was what got me into trouble, because I was susceptible to appearances––the partner, home, career, etc.––but they were manifestations of my false self, and proved to be... FALSE! Of course, all worldly things must pass, etc. etc., but I now know that there is a RIGHT unfoldment of my destiny that probably includes all these things if they are soul desires. But they unfold in Divine Right Timing rather than my ego's timing.

It's already happening for me. Since I have consciously directed my consciousness towards the direct experience of union with the Divine (and yes, soulwavers/motherwavers, I am using almost exactly the same portals I taught you––that hasn't changed much!), I have been experiencing an unfolding of divine manifestation that feels like being loved and adored by Life. In fact, although I am abundantly taken care of in miraculous ways, I am feeling the Divine Love through everything that happens–– well, almost! I don't like it so much when the Warriors lose their games ;-)

Joel Goldsmith was teaching Christians back then, and uses a lot of good Bible lines, and his favorite is one that has been my favorite since I went to a Christian High School:

Seek Ye first the Kingdom of Heaven, and all else shall be added unto you.

In other words, stop worrying about "your" life, "your" career, "your" finances, "your" health, "your" love-life, and turn your attention again and again into direct connection to source, and Source will take care of the rest.

It works!

It's a path of taking risks and not believing in worldly laws. Check out any book by Joel - if it's your time you will be transformed as I have.

And the answer to the question at the top of this blog is: Buddha - not a new age seminar leader teaching narcissistic self-love, (like I used to be!), but Gautama himself, in the Dhammapada. Apparently many monks seem to skip the line "Love Thyself," preferring to focus on the next line in which you are to WATCH yourself.

But I say, let's love ourselves AND watch everything from that place. And let's place our attention on our divine source, directly, because then we get the real jackpot, rather than trying to use "source" to get other stuff.

I'm finding that seeking divine connection before anything else doesn't leave much time for anything else, as it seems to handle things, or I get very strong inspiration to do something––but not from a place of fear or struggle or trying to control reality. Right now my inner connection is bringing lots of new guidance and creative projects into birth. In case you hadn't noticed, I'm in a hiatus––almost completely disappeared from the planet, in fact, although don't worry, I am being loved up every day, by truly adored and adoring beloved friends––and now I need this less than ever!

My guidance tells me I will be emerging into more public offerings before very long. Of course, what I am working on is not just for me! But my work will be coming forth in a new and––by the looks of it––much more universal way. I remember when I was first getting the Motherwave transmission in 1994, and I was being shown all the people it would affect. Well, what I am seeing now as this new upgrade (Soulwave 2.0) comes through is much bigger, yet much less stressful for me personally.

I am very excited.

xxx

The new SOULBODY training at Mount Shasta was beyond amazing. We'll be putting some reports from students on the website soon and we're assembling a new video. These pics show a waterfall where we did some magic, plus Tai giving me a healing transmission, and a group of people laughing. Why are they laughing? Because David is filming them with his back to the waterfall, and his pants have fallen down, yet he is coolly continuing to pan the scene with a smooth move!

But/and I don't want to talk about Soulbody right here, right now, although it has changed my life. I want to say a bit about freedom.

There are a lot of different strands of information coming to me simultaneously right now. One is about the Soulbody work, and is all about healing the body. Incredibly important for me after 30 years of chronic illness. And I'm getting stuff about the next training in 2 weeks at Harbin (Soulwave Two) which is about guidance and the Meltdown. Yet this is a personal blog, and my personal guidance is all about FREEDOM, right now.

In recent months I've felt my whole motivation for doing things change - in fact it has seemed at times to have disappeared, although I still show up for what I've committed to, and all that. But I've been asked (on the inside) to consider this question:

What would life REALLY be like if I were just living it for and with my real essence (which I generally call God, having been raised atheist, and not having the usual problems with that word). What if I REALLY didn't care what people thought of me, not out of some rebellious or cantankerous or hurt or vengeful inner emotionality, but because I am waking up to the more evolved truth: IT'S NOT PERSONAL!

This non-personal nature of everyone's projections on me (positive and negative) has become clearer and clearer to me on my journey of the past 3 years. In case you don't know, in this period, I have been recovering from the loss of pretty much everything that made up my "life." The experience was so total that I couldn't just put a life back together. The only thing that seemed to be bringing me back to life was a more radical spiritual path than I had ever taken, even when I was a monk in my 20s. At that time, all I wanted was to be free - free to serve my then-guru and travel the world doing what he wanted. I travelled for about 12 years, around Spain and South America and later North America, where I landed. There I married my first nice husband. We travelled all over Europe and North America, setting festivals up for our teacher. We had money after my then father-in-law's death and one year we crossed the Atlantic 36 times - or was it 13?

After I left the guru (and the husband - still a friend), I felt a deep need to settle down and nest. I nested for 17 years with my next two husbands, travelling very little, which was strange for me. But I wanted security and stability so badly after all that bird-like, saddhu-like existence. At least I thought I did. When my security and stability rugs were pulled in 2004, I at first experienced desperate grief and a feeling of having no structure, no center, which was very difficult. I deliberately DIDN'T do the things which traditionally would have built up a structure again. Like getting involved with another man and nesting with him, or promoting my seminar business so I would be busy and prominent again.

My whole paradigm of reality has shifted so profoundly. I've been taken almost forcibly through gates that I would never have had the courage or focus to pass through in this life without such devastating losses and betrayals as I experienced.

A very big fixation for me was what people thought of me. As though it somehow meant something about me. Now I'm coming to just feel that I AM ME, right on track on my guided path, and the path is so hot, so inspiring, so exiciting, that I hardly care what people think any more. At this stage Sarah and Ivy and I have no extra energy to promote the work beyond the very simple e-mails we send to our limited list. People come through miracles, through word of inspired mouths, and by methods that have to be divinely guided.

But although I feel so much new inspiration and am excited to bring it through, I'm not sure how much will even come through the normal seminars of Soulwave Institute. My sense is that new resources are on their way that will pick the whole thing up and land it in a slightly different context or even location. I'm not attached to teaching in Marin (although I love where I live). I trust that I will be called forth when the time is right. The work is SO potent and effective. I have no doubt of its efficacy and value. But I feel helpless to figure out how to expand the message and work to more people without pushing and efforting. Do I even want to be a big business owner ? Should I just finish writing my big book? The proposal is almost written. But I seem to be in no hurry.

Because the main motivation I'm feeling is to be free, almost as though I could gather up my stuff and hit the road, if an inspiring enough opportunity were to call me. And I can feel such opportunities kinda circling my auric airport.The bank has taken back my former house, which is a step towards freedom, after 3 years of complicated hassle.

This is all to say that I am in a mode of packing up my life, going through closets, to make myself as portable as possible while still having this flat as a home base and Soulwave Institute office.

In the last 3 years I have developed the best relationships of my life. Many, if not most, of my former friends turned out to be NOT in with me for the duration of my long and arduous haul into the underworld, hanging on the meathook, losing more than just the outer layers, emerging somewhat resurrected after a long hook-hang. Some old, but mostly extraordinary new souls have turned up to love me. As I love to say, my love life is better than ever in my life, and I don't have a partner. But about 20 intimate beloveds who come to commune with me in my mosh pit.

But these relationships feel very free to me, much as I love them and will keep them in some form. I have this strange sense as though I'm about to be called onto a Freedom Boat that is leaving the dock and I will have to jump. This is strange to write about, because it's invisible, and it's just a metaphor, but what I am trying to describe feels very real to me. Moving through loneliness to oneness, or perhaps onliness.

It's as though I can smell the air of another dimension of awareness. The biggest, meanest guards at the gate of this dimension are my beliefs such as the one that it matters what other people think. And it doesn't. Everyone will think what they want. In the past I have striven to be helpful, brilliant, profound, door-opening, loving, kind, loyal, generous, friendly, whatever, hoping that this would be enough to be liked... but no! It's often enough to be disliked (or envied). I'm still working kindly, but more detachedly. Don't NEED anyone to get it or like me. Of course people are mostly getting the work better than ever because I'm less attached, but being detached is not a trick. My main motivation really is to get free of all these identity traps about trying to control what people think of me, and to go to the place they've been keeping me from.

As far as I can tell, that place is where oneness reigns, where even the leaves understand you and are your friends. You're home. Home free. I never used the word "freedom" much during my whole motherwave career, but it's a main theme of soulwave.

Welcome back to my blog, to me and to you!

Haven't blogged for 7 months. Suddenly got the urge again.

Last night I was schmoozing with my brilliant and true friend Lion. We saw "The Illusionist" which you must see. Don't ask why, just see it! Later, in a typical Marin evening, we sat in my Mosh Pit and he channeled some helpful messages from my (recently-deceased) father and we chatted about surrender and my recent dramatic healing after 30 years of illness.

Those two subjects (surrender and my healing) are intimately entwined, by the way. I don't even know where to start to explain and communicate what has happened to me in recent months. I wish I'd been blogging, because it's been a wondrous journey. The short version is that I am no longer a chronically ill person.

As for the long version - I don't know what to do, how to communicate it. I'm planning a new training called Soulbody, probably this November (see soulwave website), to transmit what I realized, and what healed me. And there is a book about it all which is called something like Soulbody, A Radical Healing Journey. Chunks of it come through at my usual 4 am download hour.

INFO BACKLOG ANXIETY SYNDROME (IBAS)
Yet I sometimes get anxious, because I seem to be wired to make discoveries and pass them on. I could even make up a story that I HAVE to do this, for some karmic reason. It has seemed to work quite well up to now: my greatest sufferings have become my greatest breakthroughs which have become doorways for others to break through with less suffering, via seminars and now, again, private work.

The only problem is that right now I'm way behind in communicating what I am discovering. Although they continue to flourish, I'm not promoting seminars very actively these days. I have the belief that I need to communicate the information through books. Yet, as I may have mentioned somewhere, I have 13 books outlined on my computer, one of which I am quite far along with, and which is, appropriately, the introductory one. Inconveniently, the information that wants to come through is, perhaps, from book 8 or 9. I don't know quite what to do about this. In some ways I could truly say this Info-Backlog-Anxiety-Syndrome is my only "problem." And I'm sure, like all my other so-called problems, offering it up to the Divine will bring the answer in good time, whether it's someone to organize my writing or I'll just let it go and someone else will bring that stuff through, or something I can't imagine right now. I realize I'm not indispensable, but I do feel like a steward to some precious jewels that have been given to me to pass on...

CAFFEINE
Anyway, coming to right here, right now... I am zinging with inspiration and I want to talk about caffeine:

The short version is that in my 30-some years of being hugely health-challenged, plus the previous 7 years of being a health-nazi (my first spiritual trip was macrobiotics; I opened a store and restaurant before I was 18), I have eschewed caffeine. I have also lovingly (I think) harrassed others, in true health evangelist mode, about their caffeine use. I apologize! How wrong could I have been? For one thing, try googling caffeine: good or bad?. But there's more to this story for me.

For the past 3-4 years, I've been seeing a brilliant naturopath who prefers to remain nameless (Talking of life's work, which we will be, he charges cost on supplements and only does what he does because he is driven to do research to undo the ridiculous breakdown of our physical bodies). He unravels deep patterns of illness way below the symptomatic level. Recently he discovered that a major factor, one you cannot get around, in true healing, is what he calls "prenatal dependence."

ADDICTED IN THE WOMB
What's prenatal dependence? Most of us are addicted to some substance or other that our mother ingested when we were in her womb. (By the way, don't use this to guilt-trip your mother, or yourself if you are a mother!). Could be caffeine, alcohol, cigarettes - who knew back then?. In testing me he found (accurately) that my mom's drug of choice was caffeine (after all she was English - you can stand a spoon up in that tea).

To my amazement, he prescribed green tea capsules to counteract this. I was horrified, shocked, disapproving, furious, suspicious... you get the idea. He insisted that my organs had been developed in collusion with caffeine, and the reason they just can't seem to kickstart themselves despite decades of "healing my adrenals" ad nauseam, is that they need caffeine.

"So," I said, crankily, "You're saying that I should just go to Starbucks like everyone else?"

"No," he said. "Drinking caffeinated beverages can just continue the problem. They kickstart your nervous system in a shocking way, which further breaks it down. But if you take capsules the caffeine enters the bloodstream in a slow, time-released fashion which actually supports the organs."

To be accurate, his take is the you also have to heal the basic pattern with homeopathy and other methods. This abbreviated explanation doesn't really do justice to what my anon doc has discovered. Should we then smoke, booze, for health, you might ask? Yet I am amazed at what this has done for me, and it may help you - at least in the critical, guilt-alleviation department. When I started on the green T caps, I had already found my life energy again (yes, I will tell how in good time). But with the addition of this slow-release caffeine, everything started working better. I am now a gym rat with muscles and all, and I have normal days, like everyone else who, I now realize, is addicted to caffeine and has never bothered resisting it. Will they face the consequences later in life, or is this idea just another paranoid alternate health meme that is really an expression of our deep distrust of life?

I have sheepishly admitted my new relationship with caffeine to various friends who are yoga teachers, Buddhist meditators, "just-meet-it" Advaitans, and so on, and they all say, "Oh, I've never stopped drinking my coffee/tea/whatever." Where was I? Why didn't I notice? I feel like one of those soldiers after World War 2 who got stuck in the forest and thought there was still a war on years later. But I've noticed myself feeling the need to say to my friends:

'No, No, You need to take it through caps or it just makes things worse." But look! I am satisfying that proselytizing save-the-world need by this blog!

By the way, since I'm sure you are wondering, coffee enemas also satisfy the slow release requirement. I have a point here. I am fulfilling the title of this blog and you will see how caffeine, chai, life's work come in for a landing together:

HEAVY METAL DHARMA
So I am taking a spiritual retreat day, and I was settling down to read the latest issue of the Buddhist magazine Tricycle. Truly a cut above any other spiritual publication I know of. The latest issue has all kinds of goodies, including a great story about Tibetan Tantric language, one about a woman who has been dumped and follows Ammaji around India, one about how to respond to people who attack you. And, most amazing of all, there is a story about a heavy metal rockstar called Rivers Cuomo from the band Weezer (no, I hadn't heard of them either, but one of their singles was the most-downloaded song on i-Tunes last year!), who is a true, real Buddhist, following the dharma. He talks about how boring it is to be a rockstar, and... well, you should read it here. The Readers Digest version is that he is really, really doing what he's doing as his true life's work, not from ego. And he talks about following the Zen precept of telling the truth, even to the press, rather than putting a spin on things to make him look good. I think that was what inspired me to return to this blog.

CHAIBABA CHAI
I went to the kitchen very inspired about Cuomo and started heating up some Chaibaba Chai decaf. I am truly addicted to the taste of this stuff. I buy it in multiple bottles and my errands tend to center around the various places in Marin that serve it. But it does contain some sugar, albeit the organic kind. I wish they had a sugar-free variety. Then I would really have no problems. On a whim I called the number on the bottle and had an amazing, half-hour conversation with the Baba himself, Richard, who lives and works in Sebastopol and whom some of you know. I told him how much I love his product. He said that he is thinking of making a sugar-free version, but hasn't had time, as he is the boss and also all the employees of his company. He started explaining about the subtle blending of flavors, and how this chai recipe has been around since before time, and how he has a natural talent for cooking, and "knows" in advance how flavors will blend.

I found this fascinating and asked him more. He said (and I wrote this down as he said it):

"Of course, growing up in this society, I want to make a lot of money. But my business has been nothing but a loss - a tax credit. "

"Yeah, I know exactly what you mean," I said (and I do!).

"In fact, the only thing I get out of it is when people like you call me up and tell me that you really like it. This gives me a whole different angle on the meaning of satisfaction, knowing that I'm able to offer this to people, because I really do believe that people deserve to get good chai." chai link

I pointed out to him that although both he and I have made zero profit from our businesses in recent years, we are both somehow alive and well, living in the Western world of luxury. We giggled together about this miracle.

DEATH AND ATHEISM
Oh yes, and death: My dad died recently, aged 89. This has been a very big experience for me. And my mum is having extreme memory problems at the age of 87. I have been to England 5 times since last August, and I came back from my latest trip 4 days ago. I have tried to communicate to mum and my grieving stepmother my conviction that death is not the end of anything. They are, like many English people, deeply faithful atheists. This is a completely true perspective from where they are sitting, just as mine is from where I am sitting. I am just so grateful for mine. I am so grateful for everything: for Cuomo the heavy metal dharma dude, Richard the Chai Baba, my parents, the Love that is breathing through me right now...

and you

xxx

from a poem by Neil Rogen:

"In the beginning you knew,

Then you pretended to forget

Then you pretended to forget you forgot

Then you forgot you pretended

Remember?"

Yesterday I went with darling Sarah (Soulwave Institute supreme chief) to Harbin Hot Springs, to check out the facility we are going to use for our weeklong Meltdown training that starts in a week. The Harbin folk are SO loving and supportive to us these days! We went in the silky warm pool in this pic, then into the very hot, then run into the very-cold, bow to Quan Yin, back into the very-hot, then back, back, back... I had never done this so many times and felt an exhilarating energy. But, driving home, I was so "relaxed" that I had to stop at a Starbucks...

The Soulwave Two training facility is a beautiful place in the woods, which is where I taught the first Meltdown training, about 11 years ago. As I stood in the room looking out at the mountainside and actual SNOW, I remembered the experience of that first training. In fact, standing in a particular corner of the room regressed me directly into the feeling I had when I first sat down with those 15 or so intrepid wavers:

"Hmmm! I don't really know how this is going to come out. I've felt the presence of the meltdown information landing (mixed metaphor alert!) on my informational landing strip like a ball of twine that wants to be unravelled; but I haven't fully unravelled it. These transmissions seem to come through best in the presence of committed beloveds who desire the information. Help! Use me, Goddess! Here goes..."

It worked and the Meltdown technique was birthed, and has since been refined over 11 years. In the past year or so, as motherwave has morphed into soulwave, the Meltdown has been reborn in a simpler and more memorable format.

Why didn't I think of that before? Ah, the endless evolution of consciousness! We never step in the same river twice, said the Greek geek, Heraclitus.

'DEM BALLS"
And talking of those balls of information, as you may remember me saying if you've taken Wave Two, those informational balls of twine were dubbed "rotes" by Robert Monroe, author of Journeys Out Of The Body and other great books. If you haven't read Monroe, you might want to check out his stuff. He was a businessman who spontaneously started leaving his body decades ago, before such things were widely discussed. His out-of-body journeys were so lucid that he could actually watch the neighbors'... (ahem...) private lives. He thought he was crazy (don't we all think we're crazy when we're close to a pioneering breakthrough!) until he started meeting likeminded crazies.

I met Monroe before he died for the last time when I went for several weeks to the Monroe Institute in the 80s. He had established a center in Virgina where you could put on headphones in dark womb-like cubicles and try journeying. I didn't journey. Typically, for me, I ended up thinking, "It must be great for all the others." But in another training I took, I did come across Mother Mary, chatting away to me, tossing me rotes...

Ah yes, rotes!...

Monroe writes about travelling into other dimensions every single night, and meeting various entities with names like Q176 (being an Alpha Male-type Dude, he probably couldn't have handled meeting anyone with a name like Saint Germain or Antara!). They would tell him the secrets of life, telepathically. Sometimes they would tell him so much at once that he would have to save it for later deciphering, and this is what he described thus: "The entity tossed me a ROTE."

INFO DOWNLOAD-OVERLOAD
Many of us receive "rotes" from our higher selves every day. I know I do! Since my initial motherwave awakening in 1994, I have felt a veritable information download-overload. I sometimes cannot adequately file the number of revelations that appear to my consciousness. I have felt great stress at times from feeling like a steward to some fields of information that feel important and precious. At other times, like when I am teaching, I feel gratitude and bliss about this open access. There is a great line in the Upanishads that I just read this morning, in Stephen Mitchell's book, The Enlightened Mind:

"When you see that God acts through you in every moment, in every movement of mind or body, you attain true freedom."

Aha!

The biggest mystery to me has been how to write my book. I started writing about the motherwave soon after meeting it. My book expanded to a 1000-page ramble that tried to cover everything. Then I decided to cut it down to just the information in Wave One, thinking that I would write a book for each Wave of the work (seven Waves!). However, the book about Wave One, by the time I wrote it (and I did!) ran to nearly 600 pages. So I decided to make that into a trilogy. I had nearly completed the first part of that trilogy in 2003, cleverly weaving the story of discovering my ideal relationship into each chapter, in order to illustrate the principles. Then, -- POOF! -- my ideal relationship melted itself down, and not just my love-life went back to the drawing board.

Everything I formerly understood about everything changed radically, as I went through my soul-striptease experiment. As I have been gradually re-dressing myself in more soul-colored garments, most of the basic motherwave technology has reappeared as soulwave. I've found that yer basic wave-tech still works best for me, after taking another extended tour of all the healing approaches out there.

So my new book is about the basics, and it is shorter, sweeter, has an incredibly catchy title and a basic How-To message. I even have interest from a couple of hot publishing sources (btw I have a total of 11 books outlined in my computer today, and as information comes in, I try to drop it into the appropriate outline).

But my current inner guidance has been to continue my journey into myself, and the edges I am exploring are not quite the same as the introductory book's message. I haven't felt much energy in recent weeks to write - even to write the book proposal. I've learned not to push myself. I'm not being lazy. When the timing is right I write day and night and it pours out at an astonishing rate, in whole paragraphs.

I'm still attending my weekly writing group. Some members understand and trust my process, others think I just need to "get down to it." This endless debate between surrender and control is, as you know if you've been a student, a major interest of mine. In the Quadrant Leap process, we learn to journey or "wave" back and forth between these two points on life's spectrum, in the flow of life. That is how this feels. I'm definitely in the Surrender mode most of the time, and every now and then I feel a strong inner wave of energy to Manifest something, and I do. Then I rest back in the arms of the Beloved again. Seems to be working, and it definitely beats the old "pushing" style that I favored most of my life.

Some concerned friends are wondering whether "the book" will ever happen without someone sitting on me. If someone shows up to sit on me, that might be fun! Sarah has proposed that I offer a series of private talks in my home that would be recorded and transcribed, to at least kick-start the book. That sounds like fun. That was how I produced the Body In Love tape series.

A book advance would get me in manifestation mode, too. Yet I'm not pursuing one, at least today.

Bottom line: I feel as though I belong to the Beloved.

I have felt inklings of this my whole adult life, since one of my earliest awakening experiences at the age of about 17. I was walking along a road in the Dutch countryside, a barefoot hippie (no drugs though!) on some kind of journey of discovery. Suddenly I was filled with an absolutely overwhelming Presence of Love. I was an atheist at the time, raised by atheists, 100% whole-grain atheist. The Love guided me into awareness of my breath, and I found myself pulled into this awareness like a vortex of bliss and coming-homeness. "You are loved. You are mine always," the Presence seemed to be telling me, through the wavy language of breath. I went on a train to Amsterdam and met a woman in the street who seemed to be in a similar state. She gave me the address of my then-future guru's ashram. The rest is spiritual hypestory until I emerged 12 years later.

Despite many exciting experiences I didn't really feel that full Presence again until around 1994 when I met the motherwave.

And now, more than 30 years later the endless expanding spiral of the Divine through my inner breath is still where I feel the Real Love. In the last year this feeling of Oneness with Whom-I-Really-Love, and Who-Really-Loves-Me, has become the foreground of my experience more and more --now much-- of the time. Hallelujah!

Since there is now the wondrous phenomenon of Olympic Short Track Skating ("Go Apolo!") on TV, I'll end this entry with the Rumi poem I'm always quoting:

I belong to the Beloved,
have seen the two worlds as one...
Outer, Inner, Only Breath....

-Rumi

Love to Y'All...

Hi! I've blogged twice in recent days. Below this entry is the tale of my recent adventures at Jack Canfield's Transformational Leadership Council in Mexico.

I love these pics of new grads of the Soulwave One: Initiation training from last weekend. The experience they shared at the end was a deepening of love as a palpable reality, and the practical experience that it is safe to completely surrender on the wave of the soul, and everything will be handled, all will manifest. Read what some of them said here: http://www.soulwave.org/testimonials.html

Also in the pic are various old grads from motherwave/soulwave who were there assisting. At the beginning of the training we went round and people said how long they had been in the work. I was amazed to hear "11 years," "8 years," "5 years, and it's changed my life." Someone asked Jeff Wessman in what way it has changed his life. "Just look at me," he said.

As for me, I'm feeling good. Having all kinds of adventures with the high integrity, loving people in my life, including some wonderful new ones.

ADVENTURES IN COMPASSION
One of the things I'm learning ever-more-deeply is how one's values - what might be called ethical/moral development - are an essential factor on the path of awakening. The Dalai Lama expresses this simply: "Kindness is my religion."

I went recently to see Satyong Mipham, son of the late Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche, (one of the most controversial and brilliant Tibetan Buddhist teachers to [literally] "hit" the West). The whole point of his talk was that we need to develop compassionate mind, for real, okay? for real. He said that he was brought up in full-time spiritual practice, and one of his great Tibetan teachers, somebody, somebody Rinpoche, was also one of the Dalai Lama's teachers. Satyong and his buds would ask, Can you initiate us into the secret enlightenment teachings? "Yes I can," responded the teacher, "But it will do you absolutely no good if you haven't developed a completely compassionate mind."

Satyong kept on saying it, repeating himself over and over, then apologizing, then repeating it some more. The friend I went with was snoring gently, but I was saying (inside, as it was a serious Buddhist talk, not a Southern church), "Yes, preach it! Preach it, preacher! I'm with you!"

Compassionate mind resolves everything. It doesn't mean no boundaries. This morning as I woke up, a girlfriend who had stayed the night was dangling my cat's toy in my face. As I batted at it with my paws, a voice said, "Buddha would have loved boundaries." I had left a Pema Chodron talk playing on my i-pod, and that was my awakening line.

Jeff ("Just look at me!") and I had a long conversation yesterday. He was talking about some awakenings he has had through Vipassana, and reflecting on how they interconnect with his soulwave experience of many years. As we chatted I came to realize that I am clearly in a curriculum of love. A loving higher power––whether I think of it as a personal God who carries me through the valley of the shadow of death, which I often do, or as an impersonal void or higher level of organization of consciousness, as in chaos theory––is taking me through Its own training. Since I design trainings to expand consciousness as my life's work, I can only marvel at the one I am in.

CLEANING OUT THE SHADOWY CORNERS
A curriculum of love means that I have to get honest with myself about the corners of my soul with their piles of shadow material - the stuff I don't want to feel that lurks within me. The thing is that if I don't own it and feel it - and melt it down - I will project it outwards. My shadow stuff is my business, your shadow stuff is yours (unless you hire someone compassionately ruthless like me to scour out the corners faster - I go to someone ruthless to help me with this!).

My commitment to not project my own fear/anger/judgment/pain outward is my way of living in love. It's very challenging. I recently had an interaction with a new friend that stimulated all kinds of old material. It would have been easy to dismiss this person - I could easily get my close friends to collude with me if I did. But I knew it was about me, even though it really, really, really seemed to be about them. So I melted down my intense feelings (the Meltdown is a technique you can learn in Soulwave Two and yes, I really do use it all the time).

The air cleared within, and I was soon able to share what had happened. Our friendship (just good friends!) deepened. By doing this, I lost a certain advantage, in terms of the power game of relationships. Owning stuff isn't the prettiest path, and it won't necessarily get you "the prize" within the general system of human interactions, so many of which are based on mechanics of power struggle, projection, love addiction, and so on. If I feel bad about myself at deep levels, then being right, putting you down, judging you, making you wrong, can give me a temporary sense of being okay. As well as using these dubious feel-good techniques, I have been at the receiving end of these kinds of dynamics a lot. For one thing, being projected on is par for the course when you are a seminar leader.

WHICH EGGS DO YOU WANT?
There is a great line at the end of Annie Hall. Woody is saying something like this about his repetitive romantic escapades:

"Relationships are like chickens. Not real. My brother-in-law thought he was a chicken. We never told him it wasn't true, because we needed the eggs."

So which eggs, which "prize" do I want? Do I want to play the fear-based game and get the unreal eggs? Or will I trust in the value of the real eggs, God's eggs, you might say? Slower, quieter, deeper flavor... Sometimes in my life the underlying fear has been so great that even though some part of me knew I was doing this, I wanted the false eggs anyway. I was a bit like that corporate logger guy that we all love to hate and judge, who cuts down the rainforest for a short-term profit, not considering that he is living in the same planet that he is destroying for short-term gain.

My challenging passage over the last two years has really woken me up to the fact that I am on an eternal soul journey. Everything I do has karmic consequences, and the karmic consequences I receive now were created at some point by me. I'm truly committed to living as a conduit of love. Love doesn't always look the way someone else might think it looks, as we all know. Sometimes someone wants us to be a certain way, and it is not in accordance with our highest loving guidance. But there are ways of expressing our boundaries that are loving, and ways that are a dump.

BOUNDARIES OR VIOLENCE?
A bit more about this distinction: in her book "The Hero Within," Carol Anne Pearson explains the Hero's Journey (which Joseph Campbell has described in rather masculine terms as a lone, heroic quest) from a more female, relational perspective. It's a fantastic book which I used to give to everyone a decade or so ago. She describes various stages of a person's life, and one is Martyr, which is followed by Warrior. Many people who are into personal growth, both men and women, are in the middle of a transition from Martyr to Warrior. All of a sudden a person "receives" the realization that she has been exploited, is being used, or is not being recognized as deserving her own choices, power, or freedom. It is clearly someone else's fault and they are going to pay!

Watch out! This is the stage, the author says (I'm giving a vague remembered version here), where a person can become a worse perpetrator than the perp she is protesting against (like the patriarchal system, or her father, or whoever). From one day to the next, her friends and family, or even the mailman, are subjected to her new practice of "boundaries," or "personal power." Ahem! That ain't personal power, ma'am, it's violence! Your empowerment is none of their business. Be careful how you go through this doorway, or you won't really get through, and you can accumulate some quite instant karma. It can be quite hairy to be on the receiving end of someone in this phase, as they use you to work out their new "assertion" muscles. True assertion is loving, kind and peaceful, and always makes everyone around feel better.

The Warrior in Pearson's book evolves into the Magician, who can see and integrate all points of view and levels of self. Who works through love. Who changes everything through changing herself.

We are all in a curriculum of Love. A Course in Miracles says the curriculum is not optional, just when you take it is.

THE GOLDEN RULE
Talking of the curriculum of love, I have a new poster on my bathroom door which has the Golden Rule, as stated in every single religion. It's incredible! Every single spiritual path says the same thing. Many say it is the basis of everything else. For example, from Sikhism, "I am a stranger to no one, and no one is a stranger to me. Indeed, I am a friend to all." From the Bible, we all know this one: "In everything do unto others as you would have them do to you, for this is the law..." Matthew, 7:12.

And check out these accounts from people who died and came back, from my favorite book about Near Death Experiences, "Lessons From The Light," by Kenneth Ring:

"All of a sudden... my life passed before me... What occurred was every emotion I have felt in my life... And my eyes were showing me the basis of how that emotion had affected my life. What my life had done so far to affect other people's lives, using the feeling of pure love that was surounding me as the point of comparison. And I had done a terrible job. God, I mean it!... Looking at yourself from the point of how much love you have spread to other people is devastatin'."

"(During her life review), I remember one particular incident... when, as a child, I yanked my little sister's Easter basket away from her, because there was a toy in it that I wanted. Yet in the review, I felt her feelings of disappointment and loss and rejection. What we do to other people when we act unlovingly!... Everything you have done is there in the review for you to evaluate, and when I was there in that review there was no covering up. I was the very people that I hurt, and I was the very people I helped to feel good..."



I belong to the Beloved,
have seen the two worlds as one...
Outer, Inner, Only Breath....

-Rumi