In a session with a client a while ago, I described the chakras of her business, and how they related to some problems she was experiencing.

If you’re wondering how chakras and business ended up in the same sentence, bear with me—All Will Be Revealed, I promise!

Chakra is a Sanskrit word that means “wheel”. Essentially, chakras are energy vortexes (like bio-computers) that process information from the world around us, as well as from our inner worlds–including our history and biology. They extend from our physical bodies into the subtle-energetic space around us, and link us to our larger, multidimensional selves.

They are the interface between subtle energy and physical matter.

Yet, they’re no more exotic than the mysteries of how blood flows through our veins, or how our marvelous bodies digest food and transform air into fuel for our cells–or any of the other astonishing capacities we have that are more familiar to us only because science has focused its attention and resources on understanding them.

Whether chakras are metaphors or vibrational realities matters little to the empiricist in me. What interests me is effectiveness—if working with them extends my creative capacities, I’ll happily play with them.

So I approach the chakra system as one way of mapping, organizing and working with information to transform and create my life–and my business–in precise, efficient ways. There are sophisticated systems from other spiritual traditions that offer similar technologies of transformation, but this is the one I’m most familiar with. And, after three decades of working with it, I continue to be enchanted by its beauty, flexibility and power.

It’s an efficient, elegant mapping system through which we can explore our reality, and change it.

The implications of this for business are as practical as they are profound.

For one thing, developing skill and precision in working with chakras helps you, as a creative entrepreneur, handle day-to-day situations in your business with an ease that can seem miraculous. (Although the real miracle is that we have these enormous, untapped capacities which we so seldom use.)

An example: You have a big presentation coming up first thing tomorrow. You’ve researched and prepared for it; rehearsed your presentation until its cadences feel natural, easy; and you’ve laid out the clothes you’ll wear in the morning. You’ve gone to bed early so you’ll be rested and ready.

Now, it’s 2 am and your mind is racing. Should you really have used “Oscar the Grouch meets Shrek at the 42nd Street Starbucks” as your central metaphor? What if that funny rattling sound your car made when you were heading home today turns out to be something monumental and the steering wheel falls off just as you’re about to drive to your meeting? Or the car’s okay but you’re halfway there before you realize you forgot your laptop at home and have to go back for it and then you get caught in traffic and then you get pulled over for speeding and then . . . What If?

Sound familiar?

If you knew something about chakras, you would probably realize that the disaster scenarios running through your head while the clock ticks over to 2:30 a.m. are driven by adrenalin pounding through your body. And that by closing down your first chakra (the energy center in charge of keeping you safe from dinosaurs and roving marauders) to a manageable ten percent of its capacity, you can slow down the production of adrenalin in your body almost instantly.

If you were reasonably skilled in working with chakras, you would then clear the debris of the day from the cord that connects your third chakra (which controls your power and energy distribution) to your subtle body; release any energy that isn’t yours; and disconnect from all the other folks who are going to be at tomorrow’s meeting. Many of whom are lying awake, worrying about their presentations too. You’d do this because you’d know that all that worry ends up in your own subtle energy field, unless you consciously disconnect from it.

Because you’re working with subtle energy, which moves much faster than physical energy, you can do all of this work in less than three minutes, without ever leaving your warm bed. Add some simple belly-breathing, fill your chakras with support and safety, and et voila! Before you know it, you’ll be asleep.

In the morning, you’ll be rested and ready for your presentation.

This is just one very simple example of how working with chakras can help you in your business.

But there’s another reason why chakras matter to the health of your business.

Your business has its own presence, its own soul, and its own life. As it grows, it develops a subtle body of its own. Complete (ta-dah!) with chakras.

By exploring the chakras of your business, you can get a clear map of its terrain. You can see the hills and valleys–which areas of your business are strong and can bear heavy loads, which ones are fragile and need care and nourishment.

You can see where your business is leaking energy—this can take the form of money flowing out as fast as it comes in. Or maybe too many clients who aren’t right for you. Which makes you cranky, tired and overwhelmed–not the best way to make decisions.

The good news is, you can change these trends by working with the chakras of your business.

When you remove stagnation and restore subtle-energy flow in a chakra, your business will respond with concrete, positive changes. More of your right clients “miraculously” show up, while those who aren’t right for you leave. Income begins to flow in a steady stream. Miscommunication and missed connections become a thing of the past.

It seems miraculous. Yet these changes are simply a result of using capacities you already have. You may not have developed them yet, but they are there, and they are yours.

Learning to work skillfully with chakras makes you more effective in your business.

If this interests you and you want to know more, take a look at the Become Your Own Business Adviser program, which starts on September 15th. We will work with the chakras of your business to help it grow into its vibrant potential.

How about you? I’d love to hear how you use your extended capacities–your intuition, creativity, genius and multidimensional skills–to help you create and grow your business.

If this post spoke to you, you might like these as well:

• Barefoot Business
• Pass the ketchup, and hand me my crown…
• Pattern Makers and Playpens

We’ve learned energy technologies to help us craft our lives.

As I get ready to teach Become Your Own Business Adviser in a couple of weeks, I’ve been thinking about sovereignty—how essential it is to living an authentic, creative, free, exuberant life.

We come into this world filled with the joy and radiance of our souls. We are overflowing with love, brimming with excitement at our own miraculous capacities, thrilled about all that we intend to create, to give and to receive.

We offer ourselves to the world without fear, shame or inhibition. We expand with delight to meet what’s in front of us.

If we’re lucky, our parents or caregivers see us for who we really are—powerful spiritual beings incarnated as babies. They see our physical vulnerability and our spiritual wisdom. They know we have our own purpose, creative vision and gifts.

If we’re lucky, the people who love us help us grow more fully into ourselves. They take care of our physical needs, and keep us safe, warm and nourished. They give us space and freedom to feel our feelings and think our thoughts.

They don’t impose their agendas, their fears or their beliefs on us.

They encourage us to explore the world, to develop our own relationship with it, to follow our natural rhythms and our curiosity wherever it leads us.

If we’re lucky, the grownups in our lives support us in experiencing ourselves and our world directly, unmediated by expectations about how things should be. They show us their love and appreciation openly and often. They encourage us to trust in our own judgment and choices, to learn from our mistakes, and to celebrate both our successes and our failures as milestones of learning and growth.

If we’re lucky, we grow up trusting ourselves, knowing our limits and our powers, and having faith in our ability to shape our lives by following our inner guidance.

If you haven’t been so lucky, you may find yourself with what my friend Mariko calls a wonky GPS system. You may have trouble making decisions about aspects of your business or your life.

Decisions like: Should you lease that extra office space now, while it’s available, or is it simply going to add to your overhead without increasing your sales.

Should you spend a chunk of your budget to hire that marketing consultant, copywriter or VA? Will they be a good fit for your business, or will hiring them be a costly mistake?

When’s the best time to launch your new product, and how much should you charge for it?

These day-to-day decisions shape your business and can make the difference between a successful year and one that’s less than great.

Since you’re a responsible, intelligent person, you gather information, research your market, and make your decisions based on the variables you know about.

But there are often hidden factors that affect the success or failure of any course of action.

Intuition and clear seeing are two of the capacities of your soul. We’re all born with them. They are practical, useful qualities that can help us navigate our lives and our businesses with skill and wisdom.

These capacities can be developed, just as you develop a natural talent for language, or sports, or making art. Practice makes us more skilled at using intuition and the ability to see things as they are, and as they can be.

Inner guidance—knowing what you want and what’s right for you—is a useful and practical way to make good decisions for yourself and your business.

But energy technologies and sacred skills have more profound, equally practical applications in every aspect of your business and your life.

For example: You may be a person who has many creative ideas, but they never quite seem to get off the ground. Maybe you begin new projects with great enthusiasm, only to see them fizzle away when the gremlins of resistance, anxiety or self-doubt rear their heads.

Your projects fail to gain momentum, not because you’re lazy or incompetent or lack willpower, but because you don’t have the skills and tools to work with the fears, beliefs and issues that inevitably arise when you set a creative intention and begin to act on it.

Intuitive skills are powerful. And because they are already within you, using them reconnects you to your own power.

Instead of driving yourself crazy making pro-and-con lists, asking all your friends for advice, or hiring costly professionals, you can turn to your intuition for guidance.

As you practice applying your intuition to concrete situations in your life, you regain trust and confidence in your choices. You begin to use energy skills and processes to help you work through fears and resistance. You make friends with your emotions, and with your inner selves. And you learn to work with non-physical allies to help you create your business and your life in seemingly effortless, miraculous ways.

If you’re ready to regain your power and sovereignty, learn intuitive skills and practice sacred technologies to help you craft a sustainable business and life, please join us for Become Your Own Business Adviser.

This 14-week program starts on September 15th. And you’ll save nearly $300 if you register before midnight on Wednesday, September 1st.

How about you? How do you experience sovereignty and intuition in your life and in your business? What challenges do you face? What do you wish you’d known, or learned, about these skills and capacities that are so much a part of you?

If this post spoke to you, you might like these as well:

• Shining Up That Crown
• This business of chakras…
• There’s Wholeness in Holes

We are all creative. It’s in our spiritual DNA. So why do so many of us feel creatively anorexic? Why do we deny ourselves that which truly fills us?

When we feel empty–less-than, depleted, not-enough–our true selves go underground. We bury our light deep in a shanty-town of denial, contraction and fear. We barter our sacred creativity for things we hope will make us feel safe, loved, and full, but which never do.

Things like relationships in which we wear false faces. Or jobs which require us to leave our souls outside the door.

We adorn our bodies and ignore the pain they are in. We muffle the cries of our hearts with iPhones and busyness.

We do our best to serve, to love, to create, to give, because this is our true nature, and it won’t be denied.

But we can only give what’s within us. If we’re empty, our giving will be empty too. Or it will be transactional—I will give you x if you will give me y–because our own needs have not been met first.

It takes spiritual maturity to ask for what we need, and to receive it with humility and gratitude. Yet unconditional service always begins with receiving.

When we fill our emptiness with those qualities that support our creative hearts, we enter life’s natural flow of receiving and giving.

The pain of feeling isolated–separate from the world–dissolves as we fill our first chakras from the infinite flow of abundance that circulates throughout the universe.

And once our own first chakras are full, we naturally overflow with generosity. We offer the gift of ourselves–our power, radiance, love, wisdom, support, and yes, creativity—to a hungry, thirsty world.

We become living springs of sweet nourishment. The creative spirit in all of life supports our own creative being, and we in turn nurture life with the flow of our creative hearts.

Every creation exists first in the spiritual and subtle energy realms, which hold the pattern for its perfect unfolding. As we partner with the creative forces of the universe, we become pattern makers.

We help mold and shape the patterns that become visible as the landscapes, cities and homes in which we live; the economies and political systems we are part of; the education and health care we provide; the ways in which we treat our most vulnerable and precious citizens—our elders, our children, our wise and holy fools.

As pattern makers, we are the Sacred at play in the world. Pattern making is an activity as absorbing as the play of a child, who learns about herself and her world through free play.

So much of what I do—in the classes and programs I teach, in private sessions, in writing and thinking about our relationship with the Sacred and with the world around us—is help people create playpens for themselves. To establish boundaries and containers within which it’s safe to play.

Playpens are safe places to explore. To follow your curiosity, wherever it may lead you. To find out what’s on the other side of that horizon. Make messes, have fun, splash around without fear of breaking something, banging into sharp corners or choking on tiny objects.

Playpens can be as big as your heart or your business. They can be as small as the miraculous tip of your little finger.

Playpens house pattern makers. All the most creative pattern-makers I know also create playpens for their clients and students.

My brilliant friend Havi, who teaches Dance of Shiva, the yoga of pattern-making, in her Pirate Playground.

Pam, who helps people escape the cubicles that confine them and weave new patterns for their work and livelihood.

Jen, who offers comfort and creative shelter in her retreats, workshops, books and Comfort Café.

Danielle, whose Fire Starter Sessions are a playpen disguised as a rocket ship.

Jonathan and Mark, Michele and so many other powerful, playful, heartful men and women who serve as agents of love, truth and transformation.

We are all pattern makers. And we each play our part in weaving the larger pattern of freedom and creativity, wholeness and truth, play and prosperity.

Next Tuesday, August 24th, I’m offering a no-cost teleclass about Sovereignty, as a preview of my Become Your Own Business Adviser program, which starts on September 15th.

You can register for the call here and listen to the audio even if you aren’t able to make it to the teleclass.

We’ll talk about the relationship between Sovereignty and fullness, Sovereignty as the foundation for creative freedom in your life and in your business.

I’ll also answer questions about the Fall session of Become Your Own Business Adviser.

Please join us. Together, we’ll create a playpen in which we can explore, create, and be part of the evolving pattern of sovereignty and freedom that is changing the shape of life and business, and opening new possibilities for everyone.

If this post spoke to you, you might like these as well:

• This business of chakras…
• Happy Birthday, Havi’s Playground!
• Laps, Sailboats, Surfboards and Tides…

This post was first published on my blog on August 6, 2009, and is re-published today in honor of the citizens of Hiroshima.

I was born in Bombay in 1949; four years after the world’s first atomic bomb devastated Hiroshima. My mother was getting dressed to go for a walk with her sister, my aunt Amy. Before she had finished putting on her sari, I arrived.

My aunt, who was a physician, delivered me into the world on my parents’ four-poster bed. Afterward, she said with a laugh: “This baby came out like an atom bomb. Let’s name her Hiroshima!”

She was joking, of course. My aunt was a happy, sunny, woman who loved to laugh. My father had a sense of humor too—he named me Hiroshima. Years later, when I asked him why, he said: “So what happened there will be remembered.”

For most of my childhood, my name was a boulder in my small belly. Nobody knew how to pronounce it. And no-one else had a name that carried such a weight of death and destruction.

More than eighty thousand people died in Hiroshima that morning of August 6th, 1945. Many thousands more died of radiation poisoning in the years that followed.

I carried this knowledge inside me like a secret.

When I was ten years old, I won an international essay contest co-sponsored by UNESCO, the Japan-India Friendship Foundation, and the Japanese newspaper, Yomiuri Shimbun. In my essay, I wrote about my name—for the first time, I wrote about what it meant to me.

That October, accompanied by an escort, I flew to Tokyo for a month-long tour of Japan, as the UN’s child ambassador.

We spent the first two weeks in Tokyo, and made brief visits to Nikko, Osaka, and Kyoto. Because this was an “official” trip, there were banquets and television cameras, media interviews, ribbon cuttings and visits to schools every day.

And there were many awkward, tender, painful moments.

Everywhere we went, people heard my name and broke down in tears. Most people we met had lost someone they loved in the holocaust that was Hiroshima.

In the third week of our stay, we finally flew to Hiroshima. As the plane began its descent, I peered through the small window, expecting to see a moonscape, bleak and sere. Shockingly, I saw a city like any other—as modern and faceless as Tokyo.

The skyline bristled with tall, boxy buildings. The streets were laid out in a neat grid and teemed with traffic. The only intimation that this was a landscape destroyed by the world’s first atomic bomb fifteen years earlier was a tangle of blackened steel girders which, from the air, looked like a giant sculptured rose.

This was ground zero—the exact spot above which the atom bomb had exploded.

Everything else seemed to have been cleaned up and rebuilt so completely, it was hard to believe there had ever been a nuclear conflagration here.

We landed at a modern airport and were driven through busy streets to a beautiful, Japanese-style hotel.

A hundred thousand people died here, I reminded myself, as we walked through the elegant lobby. But the face of Hiroshima I saw that morning was the face of a porcelain doll, smooth and flawless.

Later that day, we were taken to visit the A-bomb hospital. There, I met a young girl who looked about my age. Our interpreter told me she was much older. Her body, covered in purplish-red keloids, had stayed as small as she’d been in 1945, when the radiation seared her and left her with the cancerous growths that made it impossible for her to lie in a bed. She slept, ate and lived in a woven hammock in her hospital room.

And she made paper cranes, for peace.

The cranes hung from the ceiling of her room, beautiful birds in rainbow colors, poised at the brink of flight.

I no longer remember that girl’s name, but I remember her eyes, their bright darkness. I remember her hands, small and gnarled, which created such beauty, the illusion of space and air and freedom.

When we returned to our hotel that afternoon, I went straight to bed. And slept, dreamlessly, until my escort woke me hours later for dinner with the mayor.

On our last day in Hiroshima, we were driven out to the Peace Memorial Cenotaph, where I was to give a speech to several hundred school children.

The memorial is a graceful concrete arch. It shelters a black stone cenotaph on which are inscribed the names of those who died in the bombing. On the face of the cenotaph is an inscription in Japanese. Our interpreter translated: “Let all the souls here rest in peace. We shall repeat this evil no more.”

A little while later, he led me up a flight of small wooden stairs to a podium. A microphone was lowered in front of me. Solemn, moon-faced Japanese kids stood in tidy rows, their dark eyes fixed on mine.

I said moshi-moshi, and the children bowed and smiled—beautiful gap-toothed smiles. Shining eyes. Shining black hair. There was clapping.

Until that moment, I hadn’t known what I would say. But as I looked at those bright faces, a crane opened its wings in my heart.

I spoke of what it meant to me to be in the place that was my namesake. How I had imagined it for so many years, growing up thousands of miles away in Bombay. How, in my dreams, I had heard people dying. People screaming and begging for mercy, for water. For an end to their pain.

Until I came to Hiroshima, I hadn’t understood those childhood dreams. I’d woken up many nights with my heart pounding, feeling a desperate need to help somehow. Not knowing who those people were.

Now, here they were–the very people who had survived those nightmares. My heart was full. These were the people who had lost everything they loved. Who had forged a monument to peace in the crucible of the fire.

The Japanese translator faltered, a few times, as I spoke. His translation seemed to get briefer, his voice became a slender thread that stretched out behind mine, and then broke. I turned to him, shaken out of my trance. Tears glimmered on his cheeks.

My own face was wet too.

There was a long silence.

Then the adults whispered to the kids. The children sang Sakura in clear, high voices. The Cherry Blossom Song.

Two solemn-faced kindergarteners walked up the steps to the podium with their teacher. All three of them bowed, and presented me with an exquisite Japanese doll in a glass-fronted wooden box. The doll’s porcelain face was delicately tinted, smooth as ivory. She wore a brilliant red kimono, with a black and gold obi and wood-soled sandals. The box was so heavy, I had to brace it against the podium to hold onto it.

I bowed too, and thanked them, and then waved goodbye. My interpreter took the doll from my arms and helped me down the podium steps.

The adults were waiting in an orderly line. Each one in turn bowed low, then spoke. The interpreter translated. Their faces were naked, grieving, as they told me their stories.

“My wife was pregnant with our third child. When the black rain came, she ran with the children to the sea. I went to work early that day, I didn’t say goodbye. One of my neighbors told me later how it was–they boiled in the water. The skin and flesh boiled off their bones. Nothing remained.”

“My son’s shadow was burnt onto the wall of our house. That is all that was left of him, a piece of wall; his shadow.”

“My niece is still alive, in the A-Bomb Hospital. She was a child when the bomb fell. Her body is covered in keloids. For fifteen years she has slept in a sling in that hospital room. You must come and see her.

All day, she makes paper cranes. For peace. To bring peace to the world.”

If this post spoke to you, you might like these as well:

• Remembering Hiroshima
• Grace Descending

This Sovereign Self Space celebrates their gifts and talents, their quirks and foibles, their accomplishments, heart and love.

Then, they are to spend some time with this space each day, developing and growing it, if they wish, or just hanging out in it and taking in the fullness of who they are.

Lindsay sent me photos of a giant collage she’d made for her Sovereign Self Space. Her accompanying email was so insightful and filled with realizations about her patterns, that I asked her if she would be willing to share it with you. She very graciously agreed. So here is her lovely email, along with my response to her.

You may relate to many of the things she talks about here.

I did my homework! But I’m shy about showing it to everyone so I’m just sending it to you. 
   
It was interesting because in the beginning there was a lot of resistance but then I just hit this flow. And I liked it. I liked the feeling about not thinking about how it had to be and just making/creating/writing without a voice editing it. 
   
And it ended up being a circle. Which was not the plan. 
   
It started very literally, then became more abstract, then ended very poetically.
   
I made note of various monsters that came up, like my “there’s no time monster” and my “seriously, you think you can solve your problems by sitting around doing arts and crafts” monster, and my “you aren’t doing it right! Go review EXACTLY what Hiro said so you FOLLOW THE RULES” monster, and my “what is the point” monster. 

But now I like it. Although part of me wants to go back and ‘fix’ parts of it. Which I’m trying not to do. 

Which makes me realize how careful I am to edit myself before I go into public (by public I mean be in front of anyone who is not a close friend – and that group is small). How cautious I am of what I say and how I say it. 

So that being in public can be really stressful for me if I’m not on a stage (like at the front of the classroom), or in charge (as in the head of the group), because then I’m not in a position to craft the image of myself as I want people to see me. And I don’t think that constant desire to present only a portion of myself is very sovereign . . . 

Of course, I’m willing to have you look at it because I know you’re here to help. I thought maybe in looking it over you might be able to observe some things about me that I can’t see through the haze of all my need to construct a narrative about who I am, even to myself. 

Lindsay, this is wonderful–an intriguing mix of inner and outer qualities and accomplishments, and the underlying patterns that they reveal.
 
Thank you for taking the risk to explore all of the feelings that this exercise stirred up in you. It’s great that you met those parts of yourself that want to be right, follow the rules, feel not-good-enough and need to have their story straight before showing it to the world.
 
We all have these selves within our ego-structure. And, since everything including the ego is made of the same soul-essence, each of these parts of your self holds, in its heart, a spiritual truth.

The need to please or to be seen in a certain light is, in its essence, the need to belong, to be loved, to take your place in the circle of life, and to contribute to your world.

The expression of these needs becomes distorted through fear and misunderstanding about your own nature and your place in the world, but the needs themselves are universal, and fundamentally human.
 
We’re not here to do away with the urge to present a certain image of ourselves or construct a narrative about ourselves for the world. Rather, we are here to meet that urge with love and curiosity, and to discover the jewel hidden within it.

That willingness to explore, to be curious and open to whatever you find in yourself, brings you into your sovereignty.
 
The voices within you that say: Who do you think you are? What makes you think any of this is interesting? You didn’t do it right!  and so on, are fragments of your wholeness. So they have the memory of wholeness within them.

As their sovereign leader, you can help them feel safe and heard–first, by inviting them to tell you their stories and listening for the underlying fears in which those narratives are embedded; and then by holding up a mirror so they can see their own essence.

When you help these fragments of your selves reconnect with their wholeness, they lend the power of their gifts to the shaping of your life.
 
This is one of the main tasks of sovereignty–bringing the inner selves that live in your kingdom into harmonious relationship with each other, and making your kingdom a place where all of your selves are liberated to grow into their full potentials.
 
These feelings are so universal, yet we’re shy about talking about them, because that exposes the most vulnerable parts of our selves. We feel ashamed, tender, afraid of judgment or criticism, so we all walk around hiding our feelings under masks that stifle our power and creativity.

You’re brave for having done the homework with such clarity and determination to seek out the truth about your self and your patterns.

Your willingness to share this publicly is both an act of courage and of great generosity. We learn from each other. And in sharing our most vulnerable selves, we make the world safer and kinder for everyone. Thank you so much!

If you feel like playing kindergarten with us, go ahead and create your own Sovereign Self Space. A sacred space that celebrates you. Come back and share photos and stories, if you feel moved to.

I’d love to hear what comes up for you when you share your self more fully and honestly with your world.

Each time we risk being ourselves, we open up a channel for greater intimacy, closeness and connection. Our world needs you–your particular, unique, quirky, wonderful self.

If this post spoke to you, you might like these as well:

• Can you wear your crown when you’re ill or in pain?
• Who or what calls your name?
• Who’s wearing your crown?

GOING AWAY

Strolling on the beach with my son
yesterday, sun licking our faces, a sparkling sea
washed over our feet. I breathed a prayer:
Thank you. Thank you for this day.

Fronds of seaweed licked the tidal sands, flickered,
receded–
returned twirling on the next wave.

A little boy, maybe ten years old–freckles,
sandy hair, nose
buried in a melting ice-cream cone–wailed:
My ice-cream is going away! It’s
going away! His mother looked bemused.

Vanilla ice-cream dripped, a bone-white froth
down his fingers. His mouth a jagged sob, face
flushed, furious with refusal.

All month, since I moved from my beloved
home, a ten-year-old in me has wailed:
My home is going away! It’s going away!

Next month, my son, my beautiful baby
boy—six feet tall now, and married to his love—
is going away. A new city will hold him
in its lap. A new home. He’s going

away. No no no no no. They’re all
going away.

This little poem about home is part of a collaborative writing project with Jen Louden, Susan Piver and Mahala Mazerov. My three friends posted their wonderful riffs on Home on their blogs on Friday. I’ve been busy wailing: My home is going away! instead.

Here’s my belated offering.

And, since it’s also Poetry Sunday, please join me by sharing your poems in Comments. Let’s celebrate poetry together.

If this post spoke to you, you might like these as well:

• Tsunamis In the House of Wholeness
• No. Yes.
• Flight to Freedom

This is a time when we are being called upon to become more fully our selves, to bring our genius and power to the task of creating a world that works for all of us.

So where does sovereignty fit into this task of self-making and world-making?

Spiritually, sovereignty is one of the capacities and qualities of your soul. So it is inherent within you—it’s an aspect of your being.

Each of us is a spiritual being. We exist not as a point in space and time, but along a continuum that includes space and time at one end, and the subtle realms of formlessness—no-space, no-time—at the other. At one end of this continuum is your incarnation—your particular, unique self—that which makes you who you are, as unique as your own fingerprint.

At the other end of the continuum of your being, you are a fractal of all that is—you live within the whole, you are not separate from anything that exists, either in form or in formlessness. This is the realm of oneness and unity.

The quality of Sovereignty is yours along the whole of the continuum of your being, but it looks different depending on where you’re standing in that continuum.

In terms of your incarnation, your own unique and particular selfhood, you have sovereignty over your own life. This means that everything within your own energy field is your kingdom, and you are the queen or the king of it. You have responsibility for your own life, and you have the freedom to choose how you will live.

This doesn’t mean that you can have anything you want. We live in the world of form, and form necessarily implies limits. We also live in nested ecologies. There’s the ecology of your personal life, which includes your relationships, your work, your health, your environment, your neighborhood, your country.

There’s the ecology of the world, which affects every being that lives on this earth. There are subtle ecologies in which our extended soul is embedded.

Each of these affects you in different ways, just as you affect all of these ecologies as well.

So sovereignty is not an Alice In Wonderland world in which you can say “Off with their heads!” anytime something doesn’t go your way. It’s a quality of being, it emerges from your relationship to wholeness, and it carries with it both the responsibility to govern your inner kingdom wisely, and to contribute your gifts and talents to the creation of the world in which you want to live.

So if you want to live in a world filled with kindness, love, safety, respect, creativity and compassion, then cultivate those qualities in your inner kingdom first. As you embody them in your own life, you change your personal ecology, which then changes the world around you.

Sovereignty isn’t some magical kingdom in which we are enthroned forever. Cultivating this quality requires a continual engagement with the day-to-day stuff that shows up in our lives. Sovereignty brings a stronger, clearer vibration into that stuff, so that when you’re sitting in the middle of your own particular crises, small or large, you can still be sovereign.

You can have a day when everything goes wrong, and still be sovereign. You can create the kind of energy and experience you want to have—not by changing what’s happening out there, because you have no control over external events—but by resting in the qualities you want inside yourself. You can meet outer circumstances with equanimity, humor, peacefulness, delight.

…………………………………….

There’s still time to join us for six weeks of Sovereignty Kindergarten, starting July 14. Learn what sovereignty is–and isn’t–why you need it, and how it can transform your life.

If this post spoke to you, you might like these as well:

• Happy Thanksgiving, Baby
• Elegy
• In the Center of My Ribs…

NO. YES.

What gives you the right to grab what is not yours
to take? You have grown large on piracy,
swollen like a balloon on breath stolen
from children who no longer sleep or fill
their lungs because you have convinced them the
air belongs to you; their breath, their dreams
belong to you. You have taken the tender
bamboo of their hearts and boiled it into
broth to nourish you, appetite.
You have sucked the marrow from their bones and
grinned with relish at the brine of blood on your
tongue. Your table d’hote is not unique. Genghis
Khan fed at it, made menus of the lives
of those who loved him; cast around for more–
always more–to fill a hole as cavernous
as you.

No

Every no bears in its belly the sibilant
yes: a pomegranate seed white in its
sheath of translucent red

As always, I’d love to hear your poems in Comments. This Sunday ritual of sharing our poems and our hearts nourishes our sovereign selves. It brings us into creative community. Thank you for playing poetry with me!

If this post spoke to you, you might like these as well:

• Sunday Poem #8
• Going Away
• Flight to Freedom

FLIGHT TO FREEDOM

My ancestors launched into the Arabian Sea
in tiny coracles fragile as leaves
to escape the jihad.

Their country
torched by Arab invaders, their people
slaughtered in the name of Allah,

they entrusted their bodies to the tides,
sailed east to India; fled
for their lives and for freedom to worship

Ahura Mazda, the god
of their ancestors. The year
was 760 AD.

Thirteen hundred years later, I took flight
westward across that churning sea.
Seeds of their spirit

in me. Those ancestors,
with their wandering blood, keep me questing,
peregrine.

I do not own the comforts
of their religion, seek instead a god

who lives in me; am impelled
not by raiders but
by this spirit’s urgent embarkation

to be free.

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As always, I’d love to hear your own poems in Comments. Let’s share the freedom of making poetry together on this Fourth of July Sunday.

If this post spoke to you, you might like these as well:

• Tenaramente
• Elegy
• A Capella

I am not someone who has a career (I’m a full time mom and wife). It’s always been my dream to have a creative way of helping support my family…. something that’s in spiritual alignment with myself and the greater good of the earth and humanity.

From the time I was a child I’ve wanted to know my calling, so I could know which direction to proceed. I know I have a gift to share with the world in there somewhere. Do you think you could help me find it? I just don’t even know where to begin….

Stephanie, your calling arises from the whole of yourself…from your gifts and talents, your love, your sense of rightness, from that which brings you joy.

Start with a spirit of exploration and curiosity, and look at your life as it is right now. What brings you into that feeling of rightness, of flow and love and joy? When do you feel most fully alive? What challenges you? What returns you to yourself?

You may want to make a list of the things you loved to do when you were a child, and build on that. Often, in childhood, we’re in closer touch with our inner beings, our genius. As grownups, we may find ourselves drifting away from center and then it’s more difficult to know whether what you do arises from love or responsibility or something else altogether.

Next, consider how your gifts and talents, your love and joy, intersect with the needs of the world. What do people need, that links you to them, and that lets you serve in a joyful, heart-full way? What can you offer, that you love to do, that would meet the needs in your world?

These are places to begin to explore what calls to you.

Consider, too, what matters most to you right now, what fits into the flow of your life. If you’ve always wanted to sing opera, and you have young children at home, you may not want to choose a career as an opera singer just yet. But you may choose to pursue that passion in other ways, until the timing is right for a fuller engagement with it.

Set a clear intention, and ask for what you want. Ask the Universe, or the Sacred, or whatever you call that spirit that holds all creation in wholeness, for insight and guidance about your calling. Then pay attention to whatever crosses your path, and consider all of it to be a response to your prayer.

Find ways to step into the flow of your creative genius each day. Through writing, art, dance, song, cooking, gardening, washing the dishes–whatever brings you to a state of presence, love, joy and grace.

Your calling lives in the same realm as these qualities, so invoking and cultivating them will take you to the heart of what you’re here to do.

If you’d like to learn more about sovereignty–what it is, and how to practice it–please join us for Sovereignty Kindergarten. Starting July 14th, we’ll spend six weeks together learning skills to help you discover your inner sovereignty and apply it in your daily life. Early bird discount of $100 until July 7th.

If this post spoke to you, you might like these as well:

• There’s Wholeness in Holes
• Who’s wearing your crown?
• Can you wear your crown when you’re ill or in pain?