Surrounded by people....yet so alone..

I'm in such a strange space these days. Coming to the end of my year of the Team Management and Leadership programme is bringing up some deep stuff about how I occur to others and to myself. The way others are to me reflects the way I am to others. I had a call with a coach who said to me that how I occur is 'like butter wouldn't melt in my mouth' and was asked what was the inauthentic way of being that it covers up. Being in -authentic which means pretending something that I'm not, is not bad or wrong it just prevents me being powerful because being authentic is vital to being powerful. As my stand and commitment to myself and to others is to be powerful and effective I have spent much of this week in the enquiry. What has come out is that I feel I am superior to others and in order to feel this I must spend much of my time judging others and being right about my own opinions and views. The irony is that I have always written in this blog that opinions and views are just that, opinions and views. They are not the Truth and yet I have made an experience I had way back in 1999 on a meditation retreat in Southern England mean exactly that. It is extremely difficult when you have an experience that shifts consciousness by virtue of something happening that is totally and completely unexpected to either wipe the memory of the experience from consciousness and not to make it mean anything. To come from nothing would be to operate without the memory of this experience which is something I never do. The memory of that experience is always and ever with me. It is the driver for everything I do or say. And without a teacher who would put the experience into a context for me there are times when I almost drive myself mad trying to figure out the context for myself.

This year that I am almost completing to become a master in the distinctions of a new model of communication, one that touches and inspires others and is powerful in helping people to understand the nature of suffering and gain the tools for relieving that suffering has been extremely confronting. We are often asked why we joined this programme, what is it that we want to get out of it at the end of the year. Most of the replies are about wanting to be a leader, to inspire people to have lives that work. To be able to be fully free and self-expressed. Always what plays at the back of my mind is I'm here because I had an experience that I have made mean that I am a leader. Yet nobody has told me that this is true so maybe this is why I struggle and feel so confronted and alone on this course. Is it that I am not on it for the right reasons. Having said that the training has given me courage beyond what I would have been able to muster up on my own. I don't recognise the person I now am coming to the end of the year from the person who started in Amsterdam in May of last year. When I look back at everything that has happened I have no regrets about doing this year. But in spite of this I still feel like an outsider. This superiority which I can't seem to shake off stalks me. I often wonder what would life have been like if I hadn't had that experience in Devon but I know that this is a useless conversation to have with myself.

What there is for me to do is to create how the future is going to be for me once I leave the Team programme. The part of me that wants to be an individual (identity/ego) is delighted and is counting down the days until the end and there is another part of me that is saying 'alone and separate' how are you going to make a difference to people. And in the midst of all of this there is the college course which is upping in pace and intensity. In spite of my best efforts to do regular and consistent shorthand practice the state of panic that sets in when it comes to shorthanding unseen sentences means that where my mind should be full of the appropriate lines to squiggle it remains frustratingly blank. I have often written about the power there is in uncertainty and I am once again in that familiar space. I am aware that my way of being is to be superior to everyone else and to be right and I see the impact of this way of being on others in that they don't feel comfortable or self-expressed around me but seeing and transforming this are two different things. When I got my insight into how much I had to control life because of a fear of what would happen if I wasn't in control, I hit a wall in that I lost a position of accountability. This forced me to confront what was really going on. Out of that I had a massive breakthrough which enabled the publication of my book. I am hungry for a similar breakthrough into this way of being of mine which results in me feeling alone and separate no matter how many people I am surrounded by. It is like part of my consciousness is always somewhere else and I'm not present. As one person said to me 'people feel that you know something that they don't'. What I know....is that there is an energy at the base of the spine that if allowed can rise through the spine to the crown of the head and descend down into the heart. This awakens certain areas of the brain which were not awakened before and gives rise to insights and intuitions and a way of life which flows and is magical.

I am aware that all of the turbulence is going on in my head. Out there in the universe everything is flowing and in harmony. I am always where I say I will be and always with such freedom and ease. On Wednesday I travelled to London for the final evening of the Power to Create communication course and in spite of spending 40 mins getting lost with my Tom Tom going apoplectic with frustration because I didn't listen to any of the directions I still managed to be there for the time requested. And amazingly wasn't at all stressed. However when I got to the evening and was once again among people the old feelings of feeling separate and alone emerged which in turn gave me the experience of being separate and alone. It will be interesting to follow whether when I finish this programme that I go into the same level and depth of analysis in this blog. Maybe this blog will get incredibily boring as I won't be daily facing the challenges that are intrinsic to transformation.

Who knows...only time will tell...