The satisfaction....of being authentic

This is going to be a short entry because I had no Internet last night and was up this morning early to do my shorthand. Yesterday I wrote my first assessed feature piece. It was on first impression of city life. At one point I was stuck for a word and looked out of the window and then the perfect word came to me. So different to how it was when I was at work. I could be searching and often was for ages for the correct figure to come to me or how to write a report professionally. Yesterday it all came so easy to me. I finished my feature to word count and within the time deadline the tutor gave to us. I left college yesterday and in spite of the pouring rain was so happy at finally being authentic in how I am going to make a living in the future.

Lectures finished late yesterday and the result was that for the first time this quarter I had to give my apologies for a conference call for Team management programme I am on. This felt strange and I was aware that I missed the sharing of who we have been being this week, that there has been nobody interested in registering to do the communication curriculum. I recognise that it is not about registrations but about having transformed communication in the world. Communication that is based on responsibility, integrity and generosity and not on fixing or surviving. Communication for the vast majority of people is based on surviving and fixing but there is something else available. I know that my ability to deal with everything that is going on right now is down to the skills I am being trained to develop on this programme. I know what I was before I started this training and I know what I am now and one is not recognisable to the other. People say to me 'you would have got there without this training' and I can't doubt that this could be true. However the fact is that I will never know this. So while I can't say this for certain I will give credit to the training I am currently doing for transforming me to be the best that I can be in every area of life and in the process my stand is for everyone to have it all with freedom, ease and fun. This is what is showing up for me at the moment and I am creating it to be the clearing I am so that those who are with me for any length of time experience this.

So this morning I have 2 hours of shorthand. I am working hard at it because I know that I am a good writer and by having 100wpm in shorthand I will be a phenomenal journalist. I am also learning the skills for sub-editing and proof reading which I also enjoy so I am confident that at the end of this course that I will be able to land work as a freelance journalist in the mind of body, mind and spirit.

When I returned to London I called the man who has promised to review my book. I hadn't received the copy when he had promised it to me so I called him up. This is my new assertiveness as a journalist to ask him how it was going. He was friendly and explained that because of the snow that he was behind deadline but that he was still writing it and going to recommend the book as the book of the month. He said that he was reading it for the 2nd time. My publisher is talking about doing a 2nd print run which is a surprise to me because the sales haven't been great which is to be expected given the current economic climate.

There is one girl on the course who is into meditation and things alternative. I have often found that it is people like this who are most of a challenge to me. The people I have met who consider themselves to be experts in this field have had what I call a superiority complex and tend to speak down to me. Yesterday at coffee we got speaking about the Kundalini energy which is the eastern name given to the dormant energy that lies at the base of the spine. It is used a lot in Tantra yoga. This woman is a Reiki healer and so I was interested in her experiences of working with this energy. Her attitude to it was so dismissive 'yes, she has done Kundalini yoga, but it's not that powerful'. I couldn't believe what I was hearing 'not powerful, the most transformative energy that the human body houses, not powerful, it is the energy that shifts consciousness from the human to the spiritual. Life is never the same when this energy chooses to move from the base of the spine, up through the spinal cord, directly up, not through any of the side nerves, to the brain and then descends to rest in the heart. The result is a total and complete spiritual awakening where everything that the sages and mystics have written and spoken about through the ages becomes not only known but also experienced.

I was amazed at how well I was able to respond to this comment about the lack of power of Kundalini. I kept very calm and explained about the movement of the energy through the 7 chakras as it makes it way to the crown of the head. I explained that the 3 lower chakras comprise the human and it is energy blockages in these that prevent the Kundalini from rising. But even as I was speaking I saw her eyes glaze over and it was obvious that anything I had to say was above her and her knowledge. And yet, with all of her experience of being a Reiki and Karuna healing and burning sage and candles she has not the zest and enthusiasm for life. It's like her resignation comes from a place of being jaded and tired and not excited and renewed like I appear to the world every morning. This contrast from many I know that purport to be spiritual and follow a spiritual world is why I don't associate myself with spiritual people. I'm not claiming to be any better but just that it requires so much vigilance when the consciousness experiences the first awakening. Most people I would assert who claim themselves spiritual or are working in alternative therapies have had an experience that has urged them into the field.

From that first experience it takes something to acknowledge it, love it, but then let it go and realise that it was an awakening, an expansion of consciousness that doesn't make the person better or more special than anyone else. This is something the man who is doing the review said to me. He said 'It is amazing that you are as grounded as you are given everything that has happened to you'. I thank the Buddhist idea of the witness that I can be this way today. The witness watches everything that is happening like it is happening to someone else and doesn't get involved. Gradually the experiences become integrated into the raised level of consciousness and life returns to normal yet never the same way again.......

Now...I'm off to do some grounded shorthand....