I have been stymied the last year or more on marketing. Assailed by one marketing program or another, I have run myself ragged in circles of discontent trying to figure out what feels right for me. And none of it has felt right. I have 'tried' to do what others do or what others recommend, but none of it, none of it has felt right to me. All that to-ing and fro-ing kept me up nights, worrying, judging myself.
Then, I talked to a mentor of mine and I hashed it out with God.
And then suddenly, one day, it dawned on me:
GOD is my marketing guru! and GRACE is my affiliate program!!
Ever since that dawned on me, I have been breathing a sigh of relief! Ah, freedom!
And I have renewed energy and desire for my work. I am back in alignment with why I started doing this in the first place.
My desire to serve, my love for life, my love for giving, sharing, and supporting people, myself, and of course, ~~ GOD.
Monday, January 18, 2010
Saturday, July 4, 2009
CULTIVATE AN EVOLUTIONARY PROSPERITY CONSCIOUSNESS: FLOW, GROW, CREATE FROM THE HEART!
Circumstances in the world and in our lives are calling to us: Evolve!
We are being urged forward, propelled by an evolutionary impulse that is expansive and transformational in its intent. Open! Share! Let Go! Forgive! Flow! Grow! Create! Participate! Receive! We cannot hold onto the status quo, shut down our hearts and our dreams and cleave to fear. Have you noticed, that isn’t working?
Look at the word ‘Evolve’ – inside it are the letters L o v e spelled backwards! What else but love could push us to do this fierce work – and throw us backward like a rag doll over old territory only to be tossed over the rainbow before we feel ready?
Flow, Grow, Create …we are learning how to move with the moment, to expand our flexibility, our trust, our delight, our ability to create our lives in partnership with the Divine…to take all the principles we know to be true and give them extra elasticity, less rigidity.
We are living in evolutionary times – and they are not for sissies! There are growing pains on this journey! It is not easy. It can be scary. But it is necessary and like a cosmic bulldozer parked on our lawn, its engines are revving.
I ask you: What in you is being called to grow? To change? To release, let go and surrender? What do you long for and desire? What quality of being are you being called to develop, to strengthen in order to receive your desires? What in you is being awakened? What feelings are asking to be healed? Where are you holding back, where might you give? How are you not trusting, where could you trust more? How could you demonstrate your faith in the abundance of the universe? How could you participate with more joy? Whom have you not forgiven? How could you love yourself more?
It takes courage and boldness to stay open, to remain attuned to your desires and dreams and to have faith in the ultimate wisdom of the Divine and in your own Divine destiny. One thing is certain, you are here by Divine Appointment – and all the answers you seek will be found in the adventures of your own journey and in the revelations of your own heart. Persist. Trust. Believe. Ask. Forgive. Receive!” Christiane Schull
The Prosperity Circle Summer/Fall Series is designed to support you to expand your trust, your love, your faith on your journey.... Please visit www.christianeschull.com/events
We are being urged forward, propelled by an evolutionary impulse that is expansive and transformational in its intent. Open! Share! Let Go! Forgive! Flow! Grow! Create! Participate! Receive! We cannot hold onto the status quo, shut down our hearts and our dreams and cleave to fear. Have you noticed, that isn’t working?
Look at the word ‘Evolve’ – inside it are the letters L o v e spelled backwards! What else but love could push us to do this fierce work – and throw us backward like a rag doll over old territory only to be tossed over the rainbow before we feel ready?
Flow, Grow, Create …we are learning how to move with the moment, to expand our flexibility, our trust, our delight, our ability to create our lives in partnership with the Divine…to take all the principles we know to be true and give them extra elasticity, less rigidity.
We are living in evolutionary times – and they are not for sissies! There are growing pains on this journey! It is not easy. It can be scary. But it is necessary and like a cosmic bulldozer parked on our lawn, its engines are revving.
I ask you: What in you is being called to grow? To change? To release, let go and surrender? What do you long for and desire? What quality of being are you being called to develop, to strengthen in order to receive your desires? What in you is being awakened? What feelings are asking to be healed? Where are you holding back, where might you give? How are you not trusting, where could you trust more? How could you demonstrate your faith in the abundance of the universe? How could you participate with more joy? Whom have you not forgiven? How could you love yourself more?
It takes courage and boldness to stay open, to remain attuned to your desires and dreams and to have faith in the ultimate wisdom of the Divine and in your own Divine destiny. One thing is certain, you are here by Divine Appointment – and all the answers you seek will be found in the adventures of your own journey and in the revelations of your own heart. Persist. Trust. Believe. Ask. Forgive. Receive!” Christiane Schull
The Prosperity Circle Summer/Fall Series is designed to support you to expand your trust, your love, your faith on your journey.... Please visit www.christianeschull.com/events
Thursday, May 28, 2009
"BREATHE AND RECEIVE!" Christiane Schull
“Everything is energy, breath, feeling, Love and Light. The entire universe is a feeling universe. What you feel, you manifest. Breathwork supports you to feel fully alive, connected to all that is, and in your power, safe, loved, wanted and supported. When you have access to the vast universe of Divine creative energy, Love, Light, Intelligence within you, everything becomes possible. Your breath mirrors life — if you are feeling open, receptive, willing, giving, expansive, the universe responds in kind. If you are feeling the opposite, life will bring you the same. If you want more love for yourself and others, joy, peace, trust, certainty, connection to all that is, health, abundance, and freedom from old ways, breathwork is for you. Breathwork is designed to help you unravell the past, expand into your new present, and create your abundant future. Breathe and receive!” Christiane Schull
Please visit www.christianeschull.com for more information about breathwork or private breathwork sessions and The Prosperity Breath Circle or contact christiane@christianeschull.com.
Please visit www.christianeschull.com for more information about breathwork or private breathwork sessions and The Prosperity Breath Circle or contact christiane@christianeschull.com.
Wednesday, May 27, 2009
"You are Brilliant, And The Earth Is Hiring!" Paul Hawken
Paul Hawken is a friend of CharityFocus.org, renowned entrepreneur, visionary environmental activist, founder of Wiser Earth and author of many books -- most recently ‘Blessed Unrest’.
Last week, he was presented with an honorary doctorate of humane letters by University of Portland, when he delivered this superb commencement address.
Paul Hawken’s Commencement Address to the Class of 2009, University of Portland,
May 3rd, 2009:
“When I was invited to give this speech, I was asked if I could give a simple short talk that was "direct, naked, taut, honest, passionate, lean, shivering, startling, and graceful." No pressure there.
Let's begin with the startling part. Class of 2009: you are going to have to figure out what it means to be a human being on earth at a time when every living system is declining, and the rate of decline is accelerating. Kind of a mind-boggling situation... but not one peer-reviewed paper published in the last thirty years can refute that statement. Basically, civilization needs a new operating system, you are the programmers, and we need it within a few decades.
This planet came with a set of instructions, but we seem to have misplaced them. Important rules like don't poison the water, soil, or air, don't let the earth get overcrowded, and don't touch the thermostat have been broken. Buckminster Fuller said that spaceship earth was so ingeniously designed that no one has a clue that we are on one, flying through the universe at a million miles per hour, with no need for seatbelts, lots of room in coach, and really good food—but all that is changing.
There is invisible writing on the back of the diploma you will receive, and in case you didn't bring lemon juice to decode it, I can tell you what it says: You are Brilliant, and the Earth is Hiring. The earth couldn't afford to send recruiters or limos to your school. It sent you rain, sunsets, ripe cherries, night blooming jasmine, and that unbelievably cute person you are dating. Take the hint. And here's the deal: Forget that this task of planet-saving is not possible in the time required. Don't be put off by people who know what is not possible. Do what needs to be done, and check to see if it was impossible only after you are done.
When asked if I am pessimistic or optimistic about the future, my answer is always the same: If you look at the science about what is happening on earth and aren't pessimistic, you don't understand the data. But if you meet the people who are working to restore this earth and the lives of the poor, and you aren't optimistic, you haven't got a pulse. What I see everywhere in the world are ordinary people willing to confront despair, power, and incalculable odds in order to restore some semblance of grace, justice, and beauty to this world. The poet Adrienne Rich wrote, "So much has been destroyed I have cast my lot with those who, age after age, perversely, with no extraordinary power, reconstitute the world." There could be no better description. Humanity is coalescing. It is reconstituting the world, and the action is taking place in schoolrooms, farms, jungles, villages, campuses, companies, refuge camps, deserts, fisheries, and slums.
You join a multitude of caring people. No one knows how many groups and organizations are working on the most salient issues of our day: climate change, poverty, deforestation, peace, water, hunger, conservation, human rights, and more. This is the largest movement the world has ever seen. Rather than control, it seeks connection. Rather than dominance, it strives to disperse concentrations of power. Like Mercy Corps, it works behind the scenes and gets the job done. Large as it is, no one knows the true size of this movement. It provides hope, support, and meaning to billions of people in the world. Its clout resides in idea, not in force. It is made up of teachers, children, peasants, businesspeople, rappers, organic farmers, nuns, artists, government workers, fisherfolk, engineers, students, incorrigible writers, weeping Muslims, concerned mothers, poets, doctors without borders, grieving Christians, street musicians, the President of the United States of America, and as the writer David James Duncan would say, the Creator, the One who loves us all in such a huge way.
There is a rabbinical teaching that says if the world is ending and the Messiah arrives, first plant a tree, and then see if the story is true. Inspiration is not garnered from the litanies of what may befall us; it resides in humanity's willingness to restore, redress, reform, rebuild, recover, reimagine, and reconsider. "One day you finally knew what you had to do, and began, though the voices around you kept shouting their bad advice," is Mary Oliver's description of moving away from the profane toward a deep sense of connectedness to the living world.
Millions of people are working on behalf of strangers, even if the evening news is usually about the death of strangers. This kindness of strangers has religious, even mythic origins, and very specific eighteenth-century roots. Abolitionists were the first people to create a national and global movement to defend the rights of those they did not know. Until that time, no group had filed a grievance except on behalf of itself. The founders of this movement were largely unknown -- Granville Clark, Thomas Clarkson, Josiah Wedgwood — and their goal was ridiculous on the face of it: at that time three out of four people in the world were enslaved. Enslaving each other was what human beings had done for ages. And the abolitionist movement was greeted with incredulity. Conservative spokesmen ridiculed the abolitionists as liberals, progressives, do-gooders, meddlers, and activists. They were told they would ruin the economy and drive England into poverty. But for the first time in history a group of people organized themselves to help people they would never know, from whom they would never receive direct or indirect benefit. And today tens of millions ofpeople do this every day. It is called the world of non-profits, civil society, schools, social entrepreneurship, non-governmental organizations, and companies who place social and environmental justice at the top of their strategic goals. The scope and scale of this effort is unparalleled in history.
The living world is not "out there" somewhere, but in your heart. What do we know about life? In the words of biologist Janine Benyus, life creates the conditions that are conducive to life. I can think of no better motto for a future economy. We have tens of thousands of abandoned homes without people and tens of thousands of abandoned people without homes. We have failed bankers advising failed regulators on how to save failed assets. We are the only species on the planet without full employment. Brilliant. We have an economy that tells us that it is cheaper to destroy earth in real time rather than renew, restore, and sustain it. You can print money to bail out a bank but you can't print life to bail out a planet. At present we are stealing the future, selling it in the present, and calling it gross domestic product. We can just as easily have an economy that is based on healing the future instead of stealing it. We can either create assets for the future or take the assets of the future. One is called restoration and the other exploitation. And whenever we exploit the earth we exploit people and cause untold suffering. Working for the earth is not a way to get rich, it is a way to be rich.
The first living cell came into being nearly 40 million centuries ago, and its direct descendants are in all of our bloodstreams. Literally you are breathing molecules this very second that were inhaled by Moses, Mother Teresa, and Bono. We are vastly interconnected. Our fates are inseparable. We are here because the dream of every cell is to become two cells. And dreams come true. In each of you are one quadrillion cells, 90 percent of which are not human cells. Your body is a community, and without those other microorganisms you would perish in hours. Each human cell has 400 billion molecules conducting millions of processes between trillions of atoms. The total cellular activity in one human body is staggering: one septillion actions at any one moment, a one with twenty-four zeros after it. In a millisecond, our body has undergone ten times more processes than there are stars in the universe, which is exactly what Charles Darwin foretold when he said science would discover that each living creature was a "little universe, formed of a host of self-propagating organisms, inconceivably minute and as numerous as the stars of heaven."
So I have two questions for you all: First, can you feel your body? Stop for a moment. Feel your body. One septillion activities going on simultaneously, and your body does this so well you are free to ignore it, and wonder instead when this speech will end. You can feel it. It is called life. This is who you are. Second question: who is in charge of your body? Who is managing those molecules? Hopefully not a political party. Life is creating the conditions that are conducive to life inside you, just as in all of nature. Our innate nature is to create the conditions that are conducive to life. What I want you to imagine is that collectively humanity is evincing a deep innate wisdom in coming together to heal the wounds and insults of the past.
Ralph Waldo Emerson once asked what we would do if the stars only came out once every thousand years. No one would sleep that night, of course. The world would create new religions overnight. We would be ecstatic, delirious, made rapturous by the glory of God. Instead, the stars come out every night and we watch television.
This extraordinary time when we are globally aware of each other and the multiple dangers that threaten civilization has never happened, not in a thousand years, not in ten thousand years. Each of us is as complex and beautiful as all the stars in the universe. We have done great things and we have gone way off course in terms of honoring creation. You are graduating to the most amazing, stupefying challenge ever bequested to any generation. The generations before you failed. They didn't stay up all night. They got distracted and lost sight of the fact that life is a miracle every moment of your existence. Nature beckons you to be on her side. You couldn't ask for a better boss. The most unrealistic person in the world is the cynic, not the dreamer. Hope only makes sense when it doesn't make sense to be hopeful. This is your century. Take it and run as if your life depends on it.” Paul Hawken.
Last week, he was presented with an honorary doctorate of humane letters by University of Portland, when he delivered this superb commencement address.
Paul Hawken’s Commencement Address to the Class of 2009, University of Portland,
May 3rd, 2009:
“When I was invited to give this speech, I was asked if I could give a simple short talk that was "direct, naked, taut, honest, passionate, lean, shivering, startling, and graceful." No pressure there.
Let's begin with the startling part. Class of 2009: you are going to have to figure out what it means to be a human being on earth at a time when every living system is declining, and the rate of decline is accelerating. Kind of a mind-boggling situation... but not one peer-reviewed paper published in the last thirty years can refute that statement. Basically, civilization needs a new operating system, you are the programmers, and we need it within a few decades.
This planet came with a set of instructions, but we seem to have misplaced them. Important rules like don't poison the water, soil, or air, don't let the earth get overcrowded, and don't touch the thermostat have been broken. Buckminster Fuller said that spaceship earth was so ingeniously designed that no one has a clue that we are on one, flying through the universe at a million miles per hour, with no need for seatbelts, lots of room in coach, and really good food—but all that is changing.
There is invisible writing on the back of the diploma you will receive, and in case you didn't bring lemon juice to decode it, I can tell you what it says: You are Brilliant, and the Earth is Hiring. The earth couldn't afford to send recruiters or limos to your school. It sent you rain, sunsets, ripe cherries, night blooming jasmine, and that unbelievably cute person you are dating. Take the hint. And here's the deal: Forget that this task of planet-saving is not possible in the time required. Don't be put off by people who know what is not possible. Do what needs to be done, and check to see if it was impossible only after you are done.
When asked if I am pessimistic or optimistic about the future, my answer is always the same: If you look at the science about what is happening on earth and aren't pessimistic, you don't understand the data. But if you meet the people who are working to restore this earth and the lives of the poor, and you aren't optimistic, you haven't got a pulse. What I see everywhere in the world are ordinary people willing to confront despair, power, and incalculable odds in order to restore some semblance of grace, justice, and beauty to this world. The poet Adrienne Rich wrote, "So much has been destroyed I have cast my lot with those who, age after age, perversely, with no extraordinary power, reconstitute the world." There could be no better description. Humanity is coalescing. It is reconstituting the world, and the action is taking place in schoolrooms, farms, jungles, villages, campuses, companies, refuge camps, deserts, fisheries, and slums.
You join a multitude of caring people. No one knows how many groups and organizations are working on the most salient issues of our day: climate change, poverty, deforestation, peace, water, hunger, conservation, human rights, and more. This is the largest movement the world has ever seen. Rather than control, it seeks connection. Rather than dominance, it strives to disperse concentrations of power. Like Mercy Corps, it works behind the scenes and gets the job done. Large as it is, no one knows the true size of this movement. It provides hope, support, and meaning to billions of people in the world. Its clout resides in idea, not in force. It is made up of teachers, children, peasants, businesspeople, rappers, organic farmers, nuns, artists, government workers, fisherfolk, engineers, students, incorrigible writers, weeping Muslims, concerned mothers, poets, doctors without borders, grieving Christians, street musicians, the President of the United States of America, and as the writer David James Duncan would say, the Creator, the One who loves us all in such a huge way.
There is a rabbinical teaching that says if the world is ending and the Messiah arrives, first plant a tree, and then see if the story is true. Inspiration is not garnered from the litanies of what may befall us; it resides in humanity's willingness to restore, redress, reform, rebuild, recover, reimagine, and reconsider. "One day you finally knew what you had to do, and began, though the voices around you kept shouting their bad advice," is Mary Oliver's description of moving away from the profane toward a deep sense of connectedness to the living world.
Millions of people are working on behalf of strangers, even if the evening news is usually about the death of strangers. This kindness of strangers has religious, even mythic origins, and very specific eighteenth-century roots. Abolitionists were the first people to create a national and global movement to defend the rights of those they did not know. Until that time, no group had filed a grievance except on behalf of itself. The founders of this movement were largely unknown -- Granville Clark, Thomas Clarkson, Josiah Wedgwood — and their goal was ridiculous on the face of it: at that time three out of four people in the world were enslaved. Enslaving each other was what human beings had done for ages. And the abolitionist movement was greeted with incredulity. Conservative spokesmen ridiculed the abolitionists as liberals, progressives, do-gooders, meddlers, and activists. They were told they would ruin the economy and drive England into poverty. But for the first time in history a group of people organized themselves to help people they would never know, from whom they would never receive direct or indirect benefit. And today tens of millions ofpeople do this every day. It is called the world of non-profits, civil society, schools, social entrepreneurship, non-governmental organizations, and companies who place social and environmental justice at the top of their strategic goals. The scope and scale of this effort is unparalleled in history.
The living world is not "out there" somewhere, but in your heart. What do we know about life? In the words of biologist Janine Benyus, life creates the conditions that are conducive to life. I can think of no better motto for a future economy. We have tens of thousands of abandoned homes without people and tens of thousands of abandoned people without homes. We have failed bankers advising failed regulators on how to save failed assets. We are the only species on the planet without full employment. Brilliant. We have an economy that tells us that it is cheaper to destroy earth in real time rather than renew, restore, and sustain it. You can print money to bail out a bank but you can't print life to bail out a planet. At present we are stealing the future, selling it in the present, and calling it gross domestic product. We can just as easily have an economy that is based on healing the future instead of stealing it. We can either create assets for the future or take the assets of the future. One is called restoration and the other exploitation. And whenever we exploit the earth we exploit people and cause untold suffering. Working for the earth is not a way to get rich, it is a way to be rich.
The first living cell came into being nearly 40 million centuries ago, and its direct descendants are in all of our bloodstreams. Literally you are breathing molecules this very second that were inhaled by Moses, Mother Teresa, and Bono. We are vastly interconnected. Our fates are inseparable. We are here because the dream of every cell is to become two cells. And dreams come true. In each of you are one quadrillion cells, 90 percent of which are not human cells. Your body is a community, and without those other microorganisms you would perish in hours. Each human cell has 400 billion molecules conducting millions of processes between trillions of atoms. The total cellular activity in one human body is staggering: one septillion actions at any one moment, a one with twenty-four zeros after it. In a millisecond, our body has undergone ten times more processes than there are stars in the universe, which is exactly what Charles Darwin foretold when he said science would discover that each living creature was a "little universe, formed of a host of self-propagating organisms, inconceivably minute and as numerous as the stars of heaven."
So I have two questions for you all: First, can you feel your body? Stop for a moment. Feel your body. One septillion activities going on simultaneously, and your body does this so well you are free to ignore it, and wonder instead when this speech will end. You can feel it. It is called life. This is who you are. Second question: who is in charge of your body? Who is managing those molecules? Hopefully not a political party. Life is creating the conditions that are conducive to life inside you, just as in all of nature. Our innate nature is to create the conditions that are conducive to life. What I want you to imagine is that collectively humanity is evincing a deep innate wisdom in coming together to heal the wounds and insults of the past.
Ralph Waldo Emerson once asked what we would do if the stars only came out once every thousand years. No one would sleep that night, of course. The world would create new religions overnight. We would be ecstatic, delirious, made rapturous by the glory of God. Instead, the stars come out every night and we watch television.
This extraordinary time when we are globally aware of each other and the multiple dangers that threaten civilization has never happened, not in a thousand years, not in ten thousand years. Each of us is as complex and beautiful as all the stars in the universe. We have done great things and we have gone way off course in terms of honoring creation. You are graduating to the most amazing, stupefying challenge ever bequested to any generation. The generations before you failed. They didn't stay up all night. They got distracted and lost sight of the fact that life is a miracle every moment of your existence. Nature beckons you to be on her side. You couldn't ask for a better boss. The most unrealistic person in the world is the cynic, not the dreamer. Hope only makes sense when it doesn't make sense to be hopeful. This is your century. Take it and run as if your life depends on it.” Paul Hawken.
Saturday, May 2, 2009
"Wealth is not a static state. It is not something you get and have and hoard. It is a living experience, something alive, meant to be felt and experienced with joy through the act of giving, circulating, sharing who and what you are in the world. The only way to really have a lasting experience of wealth is to give. If you sit on your wealth - and that includes your creative human potential - you will eventually feel poor, lacking, or without meaning or purpose. If wealthy, worthy, and inspired, appreciated and fulfilled is how you want to feel -- give. Give who you are, what you do, your gifts and talents, your time, resources, effort, passion to something bigger than you, something that activates your life force, something that says, 'I am here to experience the fullness of life and participate with my whole self for the benefit of all mankind.' Yes!"
Christiane Schull, 2009
Christiane Schull, 2009
Wednesday, April 22, 2009
Do All The Good You Can....
"Bread for myself is a material question.
Bread for my neighbor is a spiritual one."
--Nicholas Berdyaev
Quotation thanks to Care2 newsletter
Bread for my neighbor is a spiritual one."
--Nicholas Berdyaev
Quotation thanks to Care2 newsletter
Friday, April 17, 2009
There is an inevitability to mercy...of that I am sure....
About two years ago I walked into the underground parking garage of my West Hollywood apartment building and noticed a well-dressed elderly woman lifting the lid on one of the two large metal garbage containers located just behind my car. She caught my eye because she was dressed in a soft pink two piece outfit, her hair was immaculate, she was wearing pearls and she was staring down the maw of the open trash container. Seeing people picking through these containers wasn't unusual but seeing a well-dressed woman in pearls took me by surprise. Homeless people pushing shopping carts piled high with empty bottles or bags of personal items was a common part of the landscape in Los Angeles. My underground parking garage wasn't gated and so all kinds of people wandered through. Some even stayed awhile. Like the man who popped his head out of the large garbage container one day as a friend and I walked to my car.
"Hello!" crowed the bare chested man as he lifted the lid and stood up inside the container to greet us. I jumped back, surprised, but instantly delighted with this human Jack-in-the-box who was offering me an experience I had never had. My friend was so freaked out by the sight of the shirtless man in the container that he rushed to the passenger side of my car, jiggled the door nervously and croaked 'Get in the car! He could have a gun!'
I knew this man was harmless, I could feel his energy. I felt safe and even a bit intrigued. Why had he shown up in my life on this day? What had called him in? Anyone who knows me knows that I look upon everything as meaningful, as a 'sign' or a gift sent from the universe to delight us or bring information, illumination, or guidance or give us an opportunity to practice more love, appreciation and gratitude in our lives. My electronic door opener clicked the door open for my friend and he flew inside the car. I turned back to continue my conversation with the man in the container. 'What are you doing in there?' I asked. "I live here,' he told me, 'this has been my home for 31 years." I smiled. ' Really? Well, I have lived in this apartment building for several years and I have never seen you before.' His eyes flashed with pleasure and he said, 'Well, I haven't moved. Would you like me to show you my driver's license?' He was quite lucid even though the entire situation was quite obviously preposterous. I just laughed, bid him a good day, and got into my car.
My friend looked at me in stunned disbelief. 'Why would you talk to him?'
'Why wouldn't I talk to him?' I asked.
'Because he's dirty and crazy! And he might have done something to you!'
'Well, he didn't do anything and anyway, I thought he was utterly charming. I learned a lot from him.' My friend harrumphed and then clammed up and refused to speak to me for the entire rest of our ride together. I didn't know what I had learned from the garbage container man but I knew something had occurred in me during our exchange and that it would reveal itself to me later. How much later I didn't know.
The elderly woman in pearls was a different story. I was in a hurry the day I found her there and didn't want to talk. I opened my car door to get in but something kept drawing me back to her. She looked at me a few times and then turned back to the trash container. Finally, I opened my car door, dropped my packages inside, and walked over to her. 'Excuse me, I said,'can I help you?' She looked at me not understanding and gestured with her hands. She didn't speak English. She started to speak in a foreign language - Armenian, I think.
I was going to walk away again but something compelled me to stay. For a few seconds we stared at each other. I am 6 ft tall and she was much smaller, maybe 5'4". She looked up at me and I could see her eyes filling with tears. 'I am sorry,' I said to her, touching my heart. 'I am sorry'. The words 'I am sorry' just kept falling out of my mouth. She surprised me completely by taking my hands in hers and lifting them to her face. Then she stepped closer to me and wrapped her arms around my waist and placed her head gently on my stomach. I was so amazed by this little exchange that I didn't know what to do. My arms hung like cooked lasagna noodles, useless by my side. I was afraid to hold this woman, afraid to show tenderness to a stranger. My mind chattered on and on with reasons why-not. Finally, my heart stepped in and my arms folded themselves around her. She stayed there for a few seconds, pressed like a flower against me, then stepped back. As she looked up at me, I was crying. She took my hands in hers and kissed them.
It wasn't until I arrived in Toronto, Canada to visit family several years later that I ever thought of this woman again. It was a babysitter at my brother's home who spoke in broken English who brought it all back to me. I found her sitting on the couch having put the children to bed when I walked in from a late evening Starbucks run. I was tired and the only thing I really I wanted to do was to duck downstairs, take a hot bath and go to bed. But when I walked in, I could feel the energy of sadness in the space and it was leading me straight to the kitchen where the babysitter sat. My mind urged me to observe boundaries... but my heart was drawn and I heard it say... the inevitability of mercy.
'How are you?' I asked her as I stood by the kitchen counter. Big, floppy, gelatinous tears fell down her face. They were the kind of tears I've seen in people who never let themselves cry, who push on through life's traumas and tragedies thinking that tears are a waste of time or that if they let themselves cry they'll never stop. I sat with her on the couch and listened. It was soon clear that there was a torrent of emotion behind her words and that talking was just going to recycle the pain.
As a breathwork practitioner, it was natural for me to assist someone to feel better. And in unexpected or unusual situations, I always let my heart be the barometer of when to say 'no' or 'yes'. In this case, my heart was like a gong: Yes Yes Yes.
I looked at her, and said, 'Can I support you?'. She was so grateful, so relieved to be able to share what was so heavy on her heart. Tears poured out and she shared a little of the darkness of her childhood and her belief that nothing good would ever come to her. I had her lie down on my brother's couch and breathe. She breathed and breathed and breathed in connected breaths, as if she had done this before. She breathed like a trooper, willingly releasing her sadness and anger and frustration, as ripe to shed the past as anyone I have ever worked with. When the natural course of the breathing cycle ended, she lay still on the couch. Her makeup was half-way down her face, but there was a calm in her eyes and she looked up at me and smiled. 'I have never felt this way before...I feel full in myself not empty like before...and peace....peace...peace.' She looked to me like a new person. The heavy shield of sadness that had covered her face before and the habit of using busy humor to deflect her from feeling was gone. She was quiet, quiet, quiet.
We sat together for a few moments then I stood up preparing to say goodnight. She jumped to her feet and took my hands in hers and kissed them, then wrapped her arms around me and held me. The memory of the elderly woman came back to me in an instant. And in a second I remembered why that woman had come to me that day in my underground garage and why she had hugged me. It was the same reason the babysitter had hugged me there in my brother's kitchen. It was a gift I had forgotten I had even called for.
The man in the trash container, the woman in pearls in my underground garage, and the babysitter too were messengers sent to me to remind me to stay awake to the moment and to keep my heart open. Like a train barreling down the tracks to its inevitable destination, there is an inevitability to love and mercy that cannot be denied.
Is it possible that just as we think we are being the benevolent 'giver', the universe is gently coaxing us to become the gracious receiver? Is it possible that in extending mercy to another, we are actually being given the gift we've called for in the only way the universe knows to deliver it to us? In the only way it can--by catching us off guard enough to soften our heart so we will feel the love we have called for? Is that why the ancients teach that in the giving is the receiving and in the receiving, the giving?
I realize now that the homeless man who jumped out of the garbage container at my old apartment complex on that day years ago came because I called. I had been judging where I lived as 'not good enough' even though I knew I was there to learn that material possessions are not the measure of a woman or a man. And he was there perfectly poised inside that large garbage container to give me the gift of perspective, and laughter and the wisdom of not taking life so seriously. And the elderly woman in pearls who wrapped her arms around me and made me cry, came to me on the very day I had been missing my late mother's love and judging myself for not spending more time with her just before she died.
And the babysitter. I like to think my mother was present inside the babysitter's hug in my brother's kitchen in the city my mother and I had called 'home' for many years. I like to think that because just that morning I had wished that my mother could be there during the holidays with all of us, and that she could have seen me so happy, feeling successful, and doing work I love, love, love.
There is an inevitability to mercy, of that I am sure. When you least expect it, just when you think it has passed you by or abandoned you or forgotten you, it will come. It will take you by surprise. It is better that way, somehow. If you knew it was coming, you might not let it come.
It doesn't matter at which end of the giving or receiving spectrum you sit. It only matters that you allow yourself to participate - to stay in the moment, keep your heart open and say Yes to the person who happens across your path.You never know what gifts they are bringing you or what gifts you are meant to give them. But it is inevitable that if you keep your heart open you will find out.
@copyright Christiane Schull 2007. All rights reserved.
"Hello!" crowed the bare chested man as he lifted the lid and stood up inside the container to greet us. I jumped back, surprised, but instantly delighted with this human Jack-in-the-box who was offering me an experience I had never had. My friend was so freaked out by the sight of the shirtless man in the container that he rushed to the passenger side of my car, jiggled the door nervously and croaked 'Get in the car! He could have a gun!'
I knew this man was harmless, I could feel his energy. I felt safe and even a bit intrigued. Why had he shown up in my life on this day? What had called him in? Anyone who knows me knows that I look upon everything as meaningful, as a 'sign' or a gift sent from the universe to delight us or bring information, illumination, or guidance or give us an opportunity to practice more love, appreciation and gratitude in our lives. My electronic door opener clicked the door open for my friend and he flew inside the car. I turned back to continue my conversation with the man in the container. 'What are you doing in there?' I asked. "I live here,' he told me, 'this has been my home for 31 years." I smiled. ' Really? Well, I have lived in this apartment building for several years and I have never seen you before.' His eyes flashed with pleasure and he said, 'Well, I haven't moved. Would you like me to show you my driver's license?' He was quite lucid even though the entire situation was quite obviously preposterous. I just laughed, bid him a good day, and got into my car.
My friend looked at me in stunned disbelief. 'Why would you talk to him?'
'Why wouldn't I talk to him?' I asked.
'Because he's dirty and crazy! And he might have done something to you!'
'Well, he didn't do anything and anyway, I thought he was utterly charming. I learned a lot from him.' My friend harrumphed and then clammed up and refused to speak to me for the entire rest of our ride together. I didn't know what I had learned from the garbage container man but I knew something had occurred in me during our exchange and that it would reveal itself to me later. How much later I didn't know.
The elderly woman in pearls was a different story. I was in a hurry the day I found her there and didn't want to talk. I opened my car door to get in but something kept drawing me back to her. She looked at me a few times and then turned back to the trash container. Finally, I opened my car door, dropped my packages inside, and walked over to her. 'Excuse me, I said,'can I help you?' She looked at me not understanding and gestured with her hands. She didn't speak English. She started to speak in a foreign language - Armenian, I think.
I was going to walk away again but something compelled me to stay. For a few seconds we stared at each other. I am 6 ft tall and she was much smaller, maybe 5'4". She looked up at me and I could see her eyes filling with tears. 'I am sorry,' I said to her, touching my heart. 'I am sorry'. The words 'I am sorry' just kept falling out of my mouth. She surprised me completely by taking my hands in hers and lifting them to her face. Then she stepped closer to me and wrapped her arms around my waist and placed her head gently on my stomach. I was so amazed by this little exchange that I didn't know what to do. My arms hung like cooked lasagna noodles, useless by my side. I was afraid to hold this woman, afraid to show tenderness to a stranger. My mind chattered on and on with reasons why-not. Finally, my heart stepped in and my arms folded themselves around her. She stayed there for a few seconds, pressed like a flower against me, then stepped back. As she looked up at me, I was crying. She took my hands in hers and kissed them.
It wasn't until I arrived in Toronto, Canada to visit family several years later that I ever thought of this woman again. It was a babysitter at my brother's home who spoke in broken English who brought it all back to me. I found her sitting on the couch having put the children to bed when I walked in from a late evening Starbucks run. I was tired and the only thing I really I wanted to do was to duck downstairs, take a hot bath and go to bed. But when I walked in, I could feel the energy of sadness in the space and it was leading me straight to the kitchen where the babysitter sat. My mind urged me to observe boundaries... but my heart was drawn and I heard it say... the inevitability of mercy.
'How are you?' I asked her as I stood by the kitchen counter. Big, floppy, gelatinous tears fell down her face. They were the kind of tears I've seen in people who never let themselves cry, who push on through life's traumas and tragedies thinking that tears are a waste of time or that if they let themselves cry they'll never stop. I sat with her on the couch and listened. It was soon clear that there was a torrent of emotion behind her words and that talking was just going to recycle the pain.
As a breathwork practitioner, it was natural for me to assist someone to feel better. And in unexpected or unusual situations, I always let my heart be the barometer of when to say 'no' or 'yes'. In this case, my heart was like a gong: Yes Yes Yes.
I looked at her, and said, 'Can I support you?'. She was so grateful, so relieved to be able to share what was so heavy on her heart. Tears poured out and she shared a little of the darkness of her childhood and her belief that nothing good would ever come to her. I had her lie down on my brother's couch and breathe. She breathed and breathed and breathed in connected breaths, as if she had done this before. She breathed like a trooper, willingly releasing her sadness and anger and frustration, as ripe to shed the past as anyone I have ever worked with. When the natural course of the breathing cycle ended, she lay still on the couch. Her makeup was half-way down her face, but there was a calm in her eyes and she looked up at me and smiled. 'I have never felt this way before...I feel full in myself not empty like before...and peace....peace...peace.' She looked to me like a new person. The heavy shield of sadness that had covered her face before and the habit of using busy humor to deflect her from feeling was gone. She was quiet, quiet, quiet.
We sat together for a few moments then I stood up preparing to say goodnight. She jumped to her feet and took my hands in hers and kissed them, then wrapped her arms around me and held me. The memory of the elderly woman came back to me in an instant. And in a second I remembered why that woman had come to me that day in my underground garage and why she had hugged me. It was the same reason the babysitter had hugged me there in my brother's kitchen. It was a gift I had forgotten I had even called for.
The man in the trash container, the woman in pearls in my underground garage, and the babysitter too were messengers sent to me to remind me to stay awake to the moment and to keep my heart open. Like a train barreling down the tracks to its inevitable destination, there is an inevitability to love and mercy that cannot be denied.
Is it possible that just as we think we are being the benevolent 'giver', the universe is gently coaxing us to become the gracious receiver? Is it possible that in extending mercy to another, we are actually being given the gift we've called for in the only way the universe knows to deliver it to us? In the only way it can--by catching us off guard enough to soften our heart so we will feel the love we have called for? Is that why the ancients teach that in the giving is the receiving and in the receiving, the giving?
I realize now that the homeless man who jumped out of the garbage container at my old apartment complex on that day years ago came because I called. I had been judging where I lived as 'not good enough' even though I knew I was there to learn that material possessions are not the measure of a woman or a man. And he was there perfectly poised inside that large garbage container to give me the gift of perspective, and laughter and the wisdom of not taking life so seriously. And the elderly woman in pearls who wrapped her arms around me and made me cry, came to me on the very day I had been missing my late mother's love and judging myself for not spending more time with her just before she died.
And the babysitter. I like to think my mother was present inside the babysitter's hug in my brother's kitchen in the city my mother and I had called 'home' for many years. I like to think that because just that morning I had wished that my mother could be there during the holidays with all of us, and that she could have seen me so happy, feeling successful, and doing work I love, love, love.
There is an inevitability to mercy, of that I am sure. When you least expect it, just when you think it has passed you by or abandoned you or forgotten you, it will come. It will take you by surprise. It is better that way, somehow. If you knew it was coming, you might not let it come.
It doesn't matter at which end of the giving or receiving spectrum you sit. It only matters that you allow yourself to participate - to stay in the moment, keep your heart open and say Yes to the person who happens across your path.You never know what gifts they are bringing you or what gifts you are meant to give them. But it is inevitable that if you keep your heart open you will find out.
@copyright Christiane Schull 2007. All rights reserved.
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