Opportunity Seized And Opportunity Forfeited

April 30th, 2011 by Kathleen

‘OPPORTUNITY SEIZED is imperative.  This essential practice accesses evidence.  Acknowledging ‘What’s been recognized’, we apply ‘I’m active’ to forward desire.’…CONSTRUCT DevelopmentConversation, QuintessentialYou Design

How do you know opportunity when it shows up?  Recently, I have had a lot of discussions about this question.  As it turns out, many people I have spoken with express a kind of malaise and mediocrity with respect to choices made.  Even more interesting, it appears that the experience of ‘ho hum’ occurs more often with opportunities taken than with those left behind.  This phenomenon raised my curiosity so I hung out with the question: ‘What’s not been recognized?’ with respect to this and of course, an answer that is very satisfying to me arose.  See what you think or better still, what answer arises for you.

Being that we live in a culture in which we have a myriad of choice and access to much of what we want, we find a way to get exactly that.  It seems wonderful until we look a little deeper below the surface.  There we find that this very access has essentially killed off something much more precious.  It has masked our experience of pure desire, that exquisite necessary component that defines our yearning and creates an outline in which right expression is recognized.

I call this the distinction between form and expression.  It is critical in explaining why we so often find ourselves less than excited about an opportunity taken.  It equally has us understand why one opportunity thrills us and another leaves us deflated.  For the most part, we seek out and are influenced by expression – a kind of ‘filled-in’  completion or result.  We think we got what we coveted.  We might be influenced by trends, pressure, prestige, status or our neighbors, friends, and family.  Alternatively, we might be seeking to fix a problem or steer away from a nagging situation.  The bottom line is that we have found something that fits the bill and meets the criteria devised by expectation.  We breathe a sigh of relief assuming we have made the grade until at some future point, when we are in the midst of the circumstance, condition, or thing to which we have said ‘yes’, wondering how the heck we got here.  Sound familiar?  Rest assured, every one of us has had the experience if we are willing to look just that little bit below the surface.  In big things and small ones, this occurs over and over again.  We incessantly pick expressions without considering form.

Think of it this way.  Faced with multiple options we pick from what is in front of us never having distinguished the essential elements that must form what we choose.  Form  gives us an outline and definition, a context and structure for reference.  It is the container for our experience and vision – our expectancy – inside which expression finds its home.

When we have distinguished this outline and definition, we are blessed with clarity and ease, expectancy versus expectation.  We understand and can articulate the elements that are essential.  With Form distinguished, right Expression is recognized.  Herein lies the difference between opportunity taken that could have just as easily been forfeited and Opportunity Seized, actively forwarding pure desire.  Distinguishing Form gives us a blueprint in which fulfillment finds evolving Expression.

What do you have to say?  How do you distinguish Form and Expression?  What’s the blueprint for your perfect Opportunity Seized?

 

The Quiet Luxury Of Attending To Intuition

April 14th, 2011 by Kathleen

‘ATTENDING TO INTUITION is quiet.  This internal practice turns inward to visceral messages.  Attending to ‘What’s being heard’, we engage ‘I’m listening’ and respond accordingly’………CONSTRUCT DevelopmentConversation Journal, QuintessentialYou Design

I have spent the last few hours in solitude and silence.  I feel wrapped in cashmere.  I hear my breathing and I am conscious of the sheer serenity available in my immediate environment.  There is no discussion, no noise, no opinions being offered or evaluated.  I move when I am moved, sip from my water glass when I feel like sipping.  The phone has not rung and only now, as I write this post, is the sound of the computer keys and the background hum of its operation breaking into the space that surrounds me.  I am acutely aware of the love I have for silence.  Simultaneously, I experience the ride of solitude as I float at one with my environment.  It is as if my body has no boundary when I am in this state.

I have colleagues and friends who have questioned my proclivity for time with mySelf.  They wonder how it is that I find the stillness so very compelling.  I wonder how they can survive without it.  Only here in this state am I able to hear mySelf and its messages to me.  Only in this state am I able to decipher the clues that call me forward and lead me along the path that is exquisitely perfect for the expression of this Self – mySelf.

With all the noise of causes and protests, the shouting of trends, and the blazing of trails by others, I have to step out and stand back to remember me, to hear the messages that are intended for me and me alone.  I have to attend to these whisperings and check my experience in light of their calls and invitations.  I have to engage my individual listening to discern what my intelligent body is telling me.  I have to respond from that place and only that place to follow instinct aligned to the design of quintessential me.

How often have you heard someone say they missed the mark or made a mistake in Attending To Intuition?  How many times has someone said to you, ‘I wish I hadn’t listened to my intuition?  my gut?  my instinct?’  I venture to say that it is much more rare than the times we hear ‘I wish I had listened to my instinct, my gut, my intuition’.

We’re so busy having to do and doing to have, we think we haven’t the time for this practice yet truth be told, it gifts us time and space, clarity and integrity with every message it delivers and call it makes.

What is your experience of Attending To Intuition?  How do you recognize its presence?  What are its characteristics?  Do you heed its call?

 


Being Observant For What Could Be Explored

April 13th, 2011 by Kathleen

‘The process of living is a living process’……Me

No matter how we cut it, human beings are creatures of habit.  Mostly, in our routine world, this works for us.  When you really think about it, from the standpoint of daily activity and rituals much of what we do is the same day to day.  Whether we classify existence as boring or exciting, we remain tied to the stuff of life, unconsciously for the most part.  If we’re on automatic pilot, we’re really just along for the ride.  If however, we choose Being Observant, every routine can become a new adventure holding new opportunity.

Being Observant is active.  As a practice, Being Observant makes for a true approach to life-long learning.  This is not necessarily the activity of studying or going to school.  It is street-wise learning found in those very same routines alluded to earlier.  As we attend to what might be considered, we see newly ‘what could be explored’. With our noticing, new opportunity arises and becomes available.

What if we lived this way daily?  What impact would this have on the life we create for ourSelf?  What might be possible if we took on noticing as a way of being?  If the practice of Being Observant was a discipline developed over time, what possibility would no longer be overlooked?  What opportunity would you engage?  What difference would it make for ourSelf, with Other, and in our World?

 

Being At Ease With Not Knowing

April 4th, 2011 by Kathleen

‘Not knowing is the secret of wisdom.  ….But most of us don’t have the courage to not know, because we’re too attached to the ego, and the ego is deeply identified with knowing.  We don’t have enough faith, trust, surrender, and abandon to throw everything we think we know over the cliff, and stand alone on the edge, unsupported and undefended, knowing absolutely nothing in the face of everything.  But that is the truly liberated relationship to the human experience.  Ultimately that would become the surrendered place in which we’re always living, perpetually alone on the edge of that cliff, willing to know nothing before we know anything, over and over and over again.’ …. Andrew Cohen

It is simpler Being At Ease when we ‘know’.  When we know, we have already explored and chosen and we can see the impact of the choice we’ve made.  It’s highly likely that we have engaged our circumstances and made our choice using old or past and familiar tactics to come to our conclusion.  Being At Ease in the face of not knowing calls for something different.

The state of not knowing is as valuable and as necessary as its knowing counterpart, and as useful.  Trouble is for the most part, we are less likely to make full use of the condition of not knowing.  In our rush to get on with it and push forward, we aren’t familiar with leaving a gap in our doing so that something new can surface.  In the context of fulfilling desire, Being At Ease is not our general fallback position.  It’s too bad because it is a very useful for both distinguishing and choosing something new.

As a practice, Being At Ease is relaxed.  It does not frenetically seek solution.  This is a peaceful condition that allows the time and space for something to surface – options that may not have been considered and ideas that are new.  The work of Being At Ease is a job of rest such that what’s not being explored can arise and we can initiate choosing from original revelations.

Why is this so difficult for us?  Is it because we are simply a hurried bunch? Or, is it something else?  Is the real challenge our habitual busy brain working out every potential scenario and response?  What would happen if we took a breath, halted our ‘figuring out’ , relaxed into, and trusted that Being At Ease will provide the place for options we do not know to emerge for our choosing?