Here are a few things I'm noticing.
1. Safety matters. Safety is not only about survival. Shifting from stories of survival to stories of doing what you want and can do doesn't happen overnight. Many people, regardless of where they are materially (physical, financial, etc.) continue to be living from stories of survival. In survival mode, its easy to accept limitations. To keep your head down and your voice quiet. That might have created safety at some point. It might have enabled survival. But let's say (and this is not everyone) that your life is no longer (if it ever was) about 'just' surviving. Safety still matters. Including the safety to say what you need to say. To be your whole self. To be seen. That safety is fostered as much within yourself as outside of yourself (the two are usually connected). It's the safety that comes with truth, not just ego. With strength. With your deeper knowings... which can take you to places that other people see as "not safe" - full of risk and danger and uncertainty. Full of mystery. The inner safety of knowing you can, indeed, go into the mystery. That takes something. To live into a different kind of safety.
2. Spaciousness is key. Spaciousness does not necessarily entail stopping. People tend towards over-committment. So the first step might be simply slowing down... and then staying 'slow'. That means practicing saying no. Usually, a lot of 'nos' are necessary in order to maintain the bigger yes to the the space necessary for something else (including visions, deeper desires, and new conversations and co-created possibilities) to emerge.
3. How do you know what you know? In more religious terms, how do you know how Spirit is speaking/leading you? What are your signs? Is it a voice? A feeling? A tingling? Does it occur through staring at clouds? Watching the team-genius inherent in most professional sports? Star gazing? Speaking with your elders/spiritual director(s)? When I teach the ReMembering Course, this is one of the first questions we engage with the question of knowing our knowings. Plural. Multifaceted. Perhaps for you, like me, these dimensions are multi-dimensional.
4. To an extent, we can choose our problems. Not totally. All of us have to engage with the legacies of colonization: racism, climate change, conflict in the Middle East; the property system; and older institutions inadequate to accomplish their own missions. And life deals us cards we didn't choose: sickness, death, loss. These things shape us. I didn't choose to have a disability/neurological divergence. I know it is part of my gift, and sometimes part of what makes certain things really really hard. How I approach it makes a huge difference. And.... there are also times when we do have a choice; not just how we approach the cards life has dealt us, but actively choosing which problems we want to engage in. Knowing which one is which, and how we are approaching each, is a key part of discernment.
5. Creating/being in a strong container. The kind of reflection that actually leads to shifts, to re-assessment and re-alignment, is a process. Occasionally, people do it overnight. That can happen. But it usually takes time. And a process. And community. And the more than human world. And ritual. All of this entails containers. When we work with circular calendars, great insights can occur fast... and a lot more can occur as you keep working with it. The season (winter/turning of the year) can provide some of that. So can going through this process with someone else/with other people.
