You are currently browsing the monthly archive for February 2008.
One way of looking at The Next Step Life Path is to see it as a ‘Meditative Lifestyle’.
This means a dedication to a moment to moment close inspection of experience and coming to understand how things really work.
I like to use the image of sitting in the cockpit of an airplane.
In front of me are several gauges that show me how things are in a variety of important dimensions. Physically, emotionally,
relationships, pattern reactivity, financially, sexually, livelihood,
life vision, creatively, etc.
By becoming aware of where I am at in these dimensions provides a couple of valuable insights.
First, it allows me to position myself in the present and feel my current ‘life-shape’, which means the totality of my current life situation. It allows me to feel my whole life, all at once. The textures, flavors, colors, twists, highs, lows, hopes, fears and fantasies of my whole life shape is held in awareness and felt fully and completely. Then, …
Second, it allows me to open and feel beyond my presently appearing ‘life-shape’.
It makes it very easy to see and feel and know that nothing that has ever happened, nothing I have ever done, nothing I will ever do, makes any real difference to what I am in the deepest way.
I am the open space knowing that it all appears within, shimmers for awhile, then fades away…
When one has this bone deep knowing, everything can relax into its proper place. I can take my hands off the wheel and trust that there is something much more vast and grand that is living me.
With this knowing, Life unfolds unimpeded with an intelligence and beauty that cannot be seen by the eyes that belong to the deluded and misguided pilot who believes that it is they who is ultimately, in control.
Anne Stone, the awesome founder of, Woman In A Home Office, was kind enough to ask me to speak to their Red Deer Chapter.
So a few weeks ago I met with them at the Red Deer Chamber of Commerce, and what an awesome bunch of women/business ladies!
Anne even came from Calgary to connect with us and share her warmth, energy and humor.
Please check out their excellent site here: Women In A Home Office
Also, Kim Berube, the super cool owner of the magazine Real Women On The Run, was kind enough to publish an article I wrote called: Overcoming Emotional Reactivity In
The Dance Of Love and Life.
Please check out what these ladies are doing here: Real Women On The Run
It seems that these days the ladies are more curious about Life’s deeper mysteries, as they make up a large part of the attendance at my workshops too. The next one is here:
The Next Step Life Path
Thank God for the ladies! What a cold and dark place this would be without their beautiful color, light and feminine wisdom.
I think it’s in the nature of men to get over-involved with work and forget about their bigger picture and deeper mission.
Do you have any thoughts as to why the ladies seem to be doing all of the deep inner exploration, while the men plug away at their jobs, finances, hobbies, sports etc?
I ask because here’s the thing:
It will never be what we do in our jobs or business or financial lives that will determine our success.
Here’s a link to an article I wrote called: How Do You Define Success?
Gratefully,
Aaron
AKA The Wake Up Guy
(This is a vastly simplified version of the vision that informs my approach to Life exploration, which is explored fully in The Next Step Life Path Workshop. Please contact me with questions or please comment below)
In our Life journey we will unfold through several well documented stages. The first few stages are unavoidable and almost effortless in the sense that family and society support, nurture and facilitate them.
In these stages we will develop a language, a world view, and a stable identity or ’self’.
These basic acquisitions can sustain us for most of our lives without any real work or effort. We can live and die as the same ’self’ we developed by the age of 20 or so, without really looking closely at who we really are and what is really true.
Many people die with an 80 year old body and an identity and world-view that is the same as it was when they were 20 or 30. They still believe that their essential identity is as a person, and therefore mistakenly believe that Personal Development is their final ground of exploration.
Some people, for a variety of reasons (suffering, luck, socialization, fate…) turn their attention to look more closely at who or what they are, beyond Personal Development.
Some people begin to look closely at what I call The W.O.W. of Identification.
The W.O.W. of Identification is an acronym for how our identity can shift to deeper and more encompassing realities. Where we draw the line to determine what is ‘me’ and ‘not me’ can change throughout our lifetime, but it’s NOT a given.
Sadly, many (most) people cease the exploration of where that line is drawn, prematurely. Many stop when they have finished their schooling. Some continue on by being forced through workplace Professional Development. Some are even called to continue to explore the W.O.W. of Identification on their own or with friends, peers or a community.
The W.ave of Separation
The O.cean of Non-separation
The W.ater of Essence
The Wave of Separation is where we start to look closely at our ’seeming’ separateness and what sets us apart from others.
The Next Step Life Path Workshop
Like a wave on an ocean, we are unique and distinct in that we have a certain size and shape, we are moving in a certain direction for a certain amount of time, with certain relationships with other waves. As a wave, we have a uniqueness that is realized in our journey of unfolding, movement and change. Because we see ourselves as separate waves, we must therefor see others as separate too.
This is the realm of what is typically termed, Personal Development, which can take the better part of the first third of the average Life (20-25 years)
The Ocean of Non-separation is where we start to see and experience life in a way that focus’s less on our distinctness and more on our commonality’s.
We may start to experience life in its unity and totality, maybe even seeing that many distinctions are purely conceptual and not ‘really real’. We may see and experience ourselves as part of a vast ocean, where all waves are simply expressions of ocean-ness. As ocean, we may start to see our boundaries as unreal and our uniqueness as arbitrary. We may begin the extend our vast vision of who/what we are to the rest of humanity.
This is where we begin to move from Personal Development to Trans-Personal Development (Beyond-Personal), often beginning after the midpoint of Life (40 years).
The Water of Essence is where we may start to see and experience life in a way that is at once, both extraordinary and at the same time, nothing special.
The Water of Essence is what the ocean is, in its deepest sense. Every wave is made of nothing but water. Ocean is nothing but water. Wave and ocean are the exact same thing. In fact, wave and ocean do not exist apart from water.
Even beyond that, as water, wave and ocean are simply expressions of the nature of water.
Now, lets extend this metaphor to you and I.
As Life, we are each expressed as a separate person (wave) AND a non-separate being (ocean).
Separation and non-separation are simply two expressions of the Life that we ARE in our deepest sense.
Most efforts at self exploration focus on Personal Development (the first third of life) and like to imagine they are doing something more. That’s like getting through grade school and imagining you’ve studied everything.
When was the last time you had a really good look at who and what you are as a human being? My Next Step Life Path Workshop will provide you with a space to do just that.
Note. I don’t want to make the mistake of suggesting that The W.O.W. of Identification is strictly a linear unfolding, where one step follows the next. All three types of identity are available to us from birth, but much research suggests that we are more likely to stabilize our identity as Ocean or Water in the middle to later stages of Life.
