CONTRARY TO YOUR OWN NATURE?
Good morning all and a happy Sunday where I am in bed with endless Ghee coffee, my cats and the hint of spring sun shining through the windows and I am coming on to have a chat about something particularly philosophical and considerable today. The start of one of our chats as we lead into our PORTAL NUMBER 3 which is all about THE SELF.
Yes, launching next month is the start of our “HELLO, IT’S ME IDENTITY SPECIAL“, where we’re going to be opening up aaaaaaalllllll kinds of uncomfortable perspectives and abstract possibilities, theories and opinions about WHO YOU ARE!
So I figured, given the last few weeks and what has transpired throughout our HR platform (will discuss below), there is a definite theme of THE AGES across various realms. Our human ages, work place ages, earthly spiritual ages, changing of the ages, expiration’s and new beginnings…..But in order to figure most of this out in a way that doesn’t overwhelm us or make us tremble in fear we have to question……
WHO ARE WE?
It’s a deep one. It’s not even got a concluding base layer or capped firmament it is literally endless, eternal and ongoing but, to start off simply, we’re going to look at a couple of complexities that get us to challenge the box we’ve put ourselves in and open up the conversation of LIFE AND DEATH for a moment and in a way that isn’t morbid but can hopefully get you to see the
Imagine you’re you, but you’re somehow put into a domain that you’re not necessarily comfortable with. You’re out of your exalted comfort zone and forced into something that is challenging and you’re not sure you like it and because you’re you, knowing how you usually chose to express yourself, you know your limits, boundaries, capabilities etc but somehow, now you’re in this phase domain where you have to pull rank and you aren’t sure how or you feel incompetent / impotent / weakened – It throws you off guard because as humans, we expect everything to always be on the up. Rising into a state of success. That is the only way, right? Wrong!
Because we as humans put limits and expiration’s on everything, we often don’t view them as cyclical normal parts of life. We don’t see that once we die or something dies, it transitions into something else thus considering the META version of ourselves as a totally normal part of life, our mortal bodies absolutely fear death and change because we have been so programmed to never question anything outside of the mundane box of mere 9-5 existence that we end up having a tremendous fear of living because we constantly walk around saying ‘life is short YOLO, you’ve only got one shot’ etc and while this puts an emphasis on the NOW and gets us to see the purpose of living to the best of our ability it also takes away the power of realizing where we all are in the now because a 20 somethings version of NOW, seizing the moment will look very different to a 60 somethings version where they might just want to sit still and be reflective of their NOW – You see, apparently it’s only applicable when we’re young and exuberant in our exalted dimension and domain not when we’re in a fall, aging and introspective
We have become terrified of ageing, of growing old and losing our power. We don’t like entropy because we cannot predict the results. We don’t like decay because it doesn’t smell good. Lets just pause for a moment and reflect. As earthlings, human beings, we have spent thousands of years learning how to cultivate and work the land. Let’s not focus right now on how it only took 2 generations to destroy all of that but, in that learning we found that creating compost (the process of decomposing organic material into nutrient dense soil) is exactly this. We have to use waste / dead material matter to transform it through a method of decay in order for it to become the nutrient rich soil we so require. Do you see how nature is telling us that everything is cyclical and that from death comes enriched fertile soil for us to use over and over
Why do the Gods covet mortal life? Because:
EVERYTHING IN LIFE TASTES SWEETER WHEN DEATH IS IN THE EQUATION
You are probably reading this thinking ‘you morbid weirdo’ – No, Im just getting you to think and feel outside of the box. It helps!
WHY ARE WE SAYING THIS? WHAT’S THE PURPOSE OF THIS?
These concepts of life and death, exaltation’s and falls are with us every day and throughout every domain that often, we don’t get to chose or that just creep up and we have to play the game according to what circumstances we’ve been delivered into
Perhaps you’ve always been a CEO of a thriving company but all of a sudden, your business has a moral crisis and your staff decide to quit so your men down, left wondering WTF has gone wrong and you have to go deep into the dark to figure out why and learn how to reinvent yourself and your Business
Perhaps your a Mum and all of a sudden your sweet, precious, can do no wrong child walks out of her bedroom and instead of pink ribbons and pulled up lace socks she’s rocking striped knee-length rainbow socks and pair a cut up emo shorts. This is her transformation but it also affects you too because you have to learn how you feel about this, how you’re going to react and respond to this so………
UNCOMFORTABLE DOMAINS EVERYWHERE BUT………..
How they teach us to grow!
Crossing over thresholds – We do this ALL DAY LONG, each and every day of the year. There are so many moments where life throws us opportunities to grow and learn but often as humans, if they’re filled with pain and suffering, we don’t want to know about it. It’s too hard!
Let me share something with you that’s a little personal. Ok, so my eldest is 15. Shes a sweet girl. Quite shy and introvert until shes in the right crowd and then she comes alive. She’s yet to have a romance that does the same and I feel she wants to. She wants someone to have an incredible experience with. The feels and vibes of young love in all its throws, right.
But I said, you’ve also gotta take the pain with the pleasure and she didn’t understand. I said, young love is bittersweet. You have all the fun and wildness but, this is also when you learn about trust, acceptance rejection, connection, boundaries, play, offside, foul, sharing and caring.
The coupledom is great when its great but when there’s a red card and one hurts another, which is often the case in young love (and older love but by then we hope we’re more experienced) but in young love, when the pain creeps in, it can be mortifying. Literally earth shattering and blisteringly painful. I remember it well. Thinking and feeling like life would never be the same again but, through that pain comes incredible transformation because you realize that actually, you didn’t die, you survived and throughout that agony of what you’ve experienced, the next time around you become far more conscious and vigilant about repeating the same mistakes or making sure you don’t let the same mistakes happen to you.
I’ve explained it before about my first big love, Anthony and the connection to Romeo and Juliet, but if you’ve not yet heard the love story, here’s the low down:
Here’s an extract from my book “Mighty Aphrodite” where I concluded the chapter on Romeo and Juliet with this final little love memoir:
“Now, before I move on to the next LOVE DUO, I want to spend a moment having a bit of a retrograde back to my first ever serious love, Anthony. We were 17 /18 I believe? It was 1997 and I was living in Chichester studying art. He was studying Business. 2 very different people yet how I loved him though I suppose I was so young I wasn’t really sure what that meant. Yet, it was the year that Baz Luhrman’s ROMEO AND JULIET was coming out and I was beyond excited about this and let everybody know!
Romeo and Juliet has always held such magic to me for as long as I can remember and this boy, WOW, he made serious efforts to bring the romance here. For my 18th birthday, he went into blockbuster video rentals and PURCHASED their ONLY rental copy of the movie. He paid a pretty penny for their only copy so that I could have this tale of LOVE
Do 18 year old boys still do this? I was blown away and still to this day as a middle aged woman I tell this story to people because it was an act of TRUE LOVE from someone so young and impressionable.
We didn’t last but we’re still friends. Time and distance got in the way yet he once gifted me a teddy bear, FATTY it was called, to hug and hold in his absence. I still have that teddy bear today and my youngest looks after it for me
A love I remember fondly and only hope my own daughters get to experience something similar! Anthony, you were an absolute sweetheart, my first true love!”
AN ODE TO YOUNG LOVE
Aw, I was from the North and Anthony was from the South so our love didn’t last and when it ended, oh my word the pain! The tears, the nights reading the same letter over and over – Reminds me of the Diana Krall song LOVE LETTERS, memorising every line, analysing every comma, exclamation mark, counting kisses…….But I wouldn’t have changed a thing! I remember it all with so much love and fondness. I felt into it all!
IT WAS THE BEST OF TIMES IT WAS THE WORST OF TIMES!
So, I said to my eldest, teenage love or young love is incredibly bittersweet. It’s like the song BITTERSWEET SYMPHONY, a song that reminds me of my 1st love so much from a much simpler yet brutal time
No change, I can’t change
I can’t change, I can’t change
But I’m here in my mold
I am here in my mold
But I’m a million different people
From one day to the next
I can’t change my mold
No, no, no, no, no
I CAN’T CHANGE MY MOLD – We’re all here playing our roles with all our attached beliefs and conditions. Trying to change but cant? SO:
Well I never pray
But tonight I’m on my knees yeah
I need to hear some sounds that recognize the pain in me, yeah
I let the melody shine, let it cleanse my mind, I feel free now
But the airways are clean and there’s nobody singing to me now
The purification of life is in the realisation that life is death and vice versa. There is nothing to fear but that the fear of the uncertain inevitable is what prevents you from growing and only when we grow can we BREAK THE MOLD
So I want my kids to feel the bitter sweet pain of love and life. It is what makes your soul come alive. My husband really isn’t this kind of person. Anything that’s deep, complex or painful he absolutely avoids and wants nothing to do with and I keep saying over and over, but that’s life.
I’m like his worst nightmare of a mirror. I’m often sure he wonders why on earth he ended up with me because I am relentless in not letting people get away with facing the consequences or owning their mishaps, taking accountability. Yeah, when things need seeing, I dive down deep and drag it all out from the murky bottom and often he’s like ‘Was that necessary’ and I’m like ‘Yeah absolutely cos its our only way out’
This is life guys! It’s all a big lesson and test to see if we’ve learned the lessons but you can’t always just have easy questions that require easy answers, Sometimes the questions are complex. Sometimes you can’t even read or see the question, you just have to feel your way around it and hope you get it right. Sometimes you keep getting in WRONG, WRONG, WRONG AGAIN but then in old age you have the reckoning and you’re like WOW YES, I finally get it because the older and wiser we become, the more able we are to see the bigger picture
If you can connect through the dualities of life and death, pain and pleasure, happy and sad, exalted and fallen then you are bringing balance. You cannot have just one without the other for they are eternally bound and inextricably linked
So, We’ve been doing a lot of work in the realms of HR WORK LIFE BALANCE where a big focus point has been on age demographics and attempting to seek equality and fairness across the age demographic. Its tough because within the standard framework of mundane employment, everyone’s expected to pull rank and perform in the same capacity with the same resources but, a 20 something will have bags more energy and exuberance than that of a 50 something that’s been there, done that and is now frankly exhausted.
It’s this message of potency V impotence. It’s not necessarily a bad thing it just is what it is but we’re never allowed to consider that any of it is normal. It becomes frowned upon or shamed when someone falls impotent (I’m not just referring to sexually though that too) but all too often we see and hear the younger ones go
‘Oh look at Barbara, she hasn’t quite got it like we do. Come on Barbara pull your socks up slacker’ but poor Barbara’s 59. Shes raised 3 kids, come home nightly to cook, clean and raise her family. Shes now menopausal which naturally slows her down. She’s put on weight because of this which again, naturally slows her down……Does the framework acknowledge this or honor her exaltation’s and falls? NO
WE MUST ALWAYS BE EXHALTED – EXHALT OR DIE!
It is awful to not feel vital. To feel like you’re expiring but, rather than looking at it like that, can we not start to challenge the framework and find ways to make use of the older gens maturity, experience and wisdom for what its worth?
Can we not open up new structures to allow for everyone to fit in where they can energetically and vitally fit in?
We had this really fun conversation a few weeks ago where one of the guys in one of our HR round tables said something along the lines of this. He had been listening to a podcast about how our energy levels as humans are at their peak from 10am to 12pm and then again at 3pm to 5pm (something like that my timings may be off) but he basically went on to say that he has observed this to be true in his work place but, that the older ones don’t rise again in the afternoon. They have the morning peak but then they’re done. So he suggested that the older ones only work the mornings and that everyone gets an afternoon siesta to recharge with the younger ones coming back in the afternoon to carry on.
Someone asked him about pensions and salaries. How then would it work for the older ones cos they only get paid for the hours that they do so he went on to say
‘Well isn’t that the fault of the framework? why punish someone because of their age abilities. That’s discrimination. We should be looking at ways to slowly reduce hours and phase people out of the working field rather than hard hill climb and a continual high flatline until the day they retire. Stop looking at it like that. They’re still useful, highly valuable but not if you exhaust them and then blame them for it.”
He went on to say that the younger gen should pick up the slack and take on most of the hard end labor whatever that looks like – It has to have value and purpose but let them carry the weight. They’re younger and stronger. Then when they get older, they will have more wisdom and knowledge for having been the ones earlier on to figure out the complexities, challenges, exaltation’s and falls, potencies V impotencies etc
THE HEROES JOURNEY!
It’s our to create but, we can’t create it alone. It’s a co-creation where everyones input is valuable whether old or young, dead or alive.
Most people I have learned my most valuable life lessons from are not from my timeline. They are historic figures, philosophical leaders, Gods, mythological egregores, ghosts, spirits, past versions of myself, future versions of who I hope to become. They are you, me, us, them all combined into one timeline available to us to learn and grow
There’s poetry in the order. It’s mostly boring, black and white marching structure never out of sync but every now and then there’s utter bliss in the climbing of the military order to the top of the pinnacle where you can see Jerusalem spanning the green and pleasant land and in our hearts we know….. just like there is poetry in chaos. The wheel of order has kept us all safe and comfortable but when it breaks, and it is, the madness provides us with nothing but endless opportunity, potential, a life that after it has spiraled so far out of control, crashing into everything and everyone around it it might have collected some fractured soldiers along the way, some corpses to bury, some broken hearts and souls to mend but my God we mend them, we heal them, we stand strong we move on…..
Don’t be afraid of change. Don’t be afraid of yourself. Don’t be afraid to fight for what you believe in or don’t believe in. Don’t be afraid to change your mind, challenge your beliefs, ditch it all and start again!
DON’T BE AFRAID
I will leave it here for now. I’m hungry and my 45 year old body and brain can only cope with a few hours of morning writing before I need to creak the bones down the stairs and slowly make everyones breakfast. I’m trying to train my kids to make it for me but they’re not quite there yet and my critical older self while I love that they try because PRACTICE MAKES PERFECT and all that, isn’t ok with soggy cereal or dry toast so…….
WE PICK OUR BATTLES
My goodness how I love the differences of us all. Our ages, our races, our backgrounds, beliefs etc. Wouldn’t it be just so boring if we were all the same!
But we must challenge ourselves….Check out the PORTAL 3 this coming April and join in with us as we figure out WHO WE ARE! NOW is the time for learning this…..And we grow, together! Always x
THIS IS HOW SPECIAL YOU ARE
HUMANOLOGY 