Diving In December 3, 2010
Posted by gerrystarnes in General, Learnings.add a comment
People sometimes say that they have been interested in personal change for many years. They’ve read the books and taken the seminars, but for some reasons or others, they have just not been able to begin the “real work.”
Where do I start?
What do I do first?
When is the best time to get started?
The best answer I have is “Start where you are. Dive right in! and there is no time like Right Now.”
Easier said than done, right? But really, you have no choice. You cannot begin anywhere other than where you are, and you cannot act in any time except the present moment. So wherever you are, whenever you are, is perfect.
Now, diving in is a different matter. It takes fierce courage and determination to cut through old beliefs and patterns to effect change. You can begin in the shallow end, if you want to. Yet real change will not happen until you are deep in it, well over your head, overwhelmed. Your old beliefs, your old way of being in the world changes. In a sense, your old self drowns so you can swim.
Stepping into the shallow end of the pool is generally OK. It is relatively warm and you can wade about freely. A little deeper is fun. You can swim, duck under the surface, and be assured that you can come up at any time. You are still in control, still in your place of mastery.
At a certain point as you go into deeper water you realize that the bottom of the pool is not quite as accessible anymore. You can no longer be certain of your footing, and you cannot stand with your head above the surface. You notice that the deeper water is actually tugging at you, pulling you even deeper!
It is then that many make their way back to shallower, safer water, or leave the pool entirely. Some determined few, however, continue onward, knowing full well what lies ahead. For them it is finally time either to swim or to die.
It is true that personal development work cannot be controlled. The ways in which your life will change are unpredictable. Unless you are ready for change in every aspect of your life, you will undoubtedly encounter the strong desire to give up, to leave the pool entirely.
Perhaps knowing this, others choose a different way: Diving right in. The only way for them is to commit, to dive right into the deep end and all that might entail. It is a fearsome, courageous act, which pits them against everything that has ever stood in their way all at once.
Many times, they are some of those who have tried the slower, “safer” way and decided to leave the pool. Perhaps they read the books and took the workshops, but could never quite find the way to integrate the information into daily experience. Everyday demands and routines are powerful distractions. Or perhaps their lives began to change in very uncomfortable ways that forced them out … temporarily.
The reason you are reading this article is that you feel the pull, the inexorable need for change in your life, for your personal growth and development. The urge is both seductive and demanding, and the time is always now. The place to begin is always right where you are.
The only question is whether to begin in the shallow end, determined to make it into the deep water, or to dive right in. The reality is that it doesn’t matter. There is no right choice, only your choice. And it also doesn’t matter if you have tried before and given up. You will return to the pool one way or another.
Once you begin the journey of self-discovery, you can never really stop, can you?
Healing Self Curses (Cancel/Clear) August 26, 2010
Posted by gerrystarnes in Healing, Society.1 comment so far
Exerpted from the upcoming book,
“Spirit Paths: A Shamanic Pathway to Healing and Changing Your Life”
by Gerry Starnes, M.Ed.
For the most part, belief filters are based on learned behaviors that arise from past experience. You may have had a traumatic or frightening experience with an abusive bully, for example, that set filter for you that muscular men are bullies. However, this is not always the case.
From a shamanic perspective, it is also possible for other people to influence your beliefs directly by cursing you.
“You will never be able to sing.”
“If you keep acting like that, no one will like you anymore.”
“Why can’t you keep your mind on track like everyone else?”
“You are such a screw-up.”
Each one of these statements are curses, and there are millions more that you have heard or even that you might tell other people. They are like darts fired into the person’s energy field, and given the right circumstances, they stick and begin to spread their poison. Every time you throw an angry insult at a driver who cuts you off, every time you think ill of someone you don’t like, you toss a curse at them.
Fortunately, most curses in this culture do not actually affect their targets. It is as though, like viruses, you need to have a receptor in your energy field in order for them to attach. If someone tells you that you are fat and ugly and no one will ever love you, and you have a receptor for that, the curse will attach. If not, the dart bounces harmlessly away.
Where Do Curses Come From?
While many curses come from everyday life experiences, curses may also be brought forward from past lives, particularly if the person was cursed in their last moments or died as the result of a curse. Curses may also be generational, passing down invisibly from parents to their children.
Again though, as adults you are protected from those tossed at you during the course of your day. As long as you do not have a “receptor” belief about yourself, most of them bounce off harmlessly.
However, this is not true for young children who are completely open to whatever they are told is true about themselves by their parents, teachers, pastors, significant friends, and the like. Until they have a fairly intact sense of Self, they are very vulnerable. Even afterward, the disempowering beliefs they have about themselves will continue to allow the curses of others to affect them.
As a result, you have most likely been cursed as a child. Most are not intentional, of course, but their effects are the same. When you think poorly about yourself, you are most likely reflecting a curse that already exists in your life. And when you repeat that curse, you effectively reinforce it – you curse yourself.
Self-Curses
Know, too, that you may curse yourself. Every time you tell yourself something demeaning, perhaps repeating old curses given to you in childhood, you curse yourself. These are often said or thought so often that they go unnoticed.
“I always forget something when I travel.”
“I can never find my keys when I need them.”
“Every time I try to get something done, I get sidetracked.”
There are millions of different kinds of iterations of these self-curses, perhaps dozens of which you repeat to yourself every day. And each one of the have the effect of dimming your spirit and giving away some of your power.
Curse Healing
Curses can be removed by experienced shamanic practitioners, and you may be able to identify and remove some of your own. The exercise below is one way to approach self-healing. However it is the curses that you don’t know about that cause the most damage. You may stalk your curses for a very long time and not be able to identify some of them because they are well hidden, much like missing soul parts.
Curse healing is an energetic, ritual process of locating the curses, extracting them, and the repairing the imprint of the curse in the energy field. Once curses are removed, they no longer can interfere with the natural function of the energy field. As a result, more energy can flow through to be available to you.
This exercise focuses on a pervasive way that you curse yourself on a daily basis with your words. Words have power, and every time you express out loud or in your thoughts a demeaning idea about yourself, you curse yourself by reinforcing your limiting beliefs.
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Stalking Your Self-Curses
Stalk your words. Set an intention to pay strict attention to the messages you are giving yourself, both negative and positive. Most importantly, though, just attend to your words.
People tend not to pay attention to what they say, either to others or to themselves. Some people talk incessantly about nothing at all. Others functionally curse themselves over and over, and then wonder why they feel so badly about themselves.
Your most important first practice should be to identify those curses you put on yourself. You do. Accept it. Pay attention to what you tell yourself and you will quickly see how damaging you can be.
You might take a small notebook with you and write down all of those self-directed thoughts: judgments, put-downs, limiting beliefs. See how many pages you can fill with all those curses. Really work at it. Set your Wolf Mind the task of tracking even the most subtle ones, those you ordinarily would not even consider to be curses – the ones disguised as self compliments or those wrapped in compliments to others.
Let your Wolf Mind gnaw on that bone until it is clean.
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Cancel/Clear!
What do you do with all this information? Remember this phrase: “Cancel – Clear!” Rather than trying to figure out the proper words to use to offset the curse or “rewrite the script,” say the canceling phrase immediately each time you catch yourself in the act. The more quickly you cancel the self-doubt or putdown and clear the energy of it, the better.
Just “Cancel – Clear!” and move on. Do not give the curse one more iota of your energy, one more instant of your time. Starve it to death. Over time you will notice that you tell yourself that curse less and less, and each time you do, you catch it and cancel it. One day you will notice that it is no longer there for you.
Above all, do not beat yourself up when stalking your words traps a curse, either to yourself or anyone else. That is just another way to judge and demean yourself. Instead, congratulate yourself on being diligent!
Healing Deepwater Horizon June 20, 2010
Posted by gerrystarnes in General, Healing, Learnings, Society.3 comments
Following the explosion and collapse of the Deepwater Horizon drilling platform on April 20, 2010, the world watched in helpless horror as an environmental catastrophe unfolded. It was alarming at first to think of the thousands of gallons of oil, gas, and silt spewing unbridled from the ground. And yet, there was a sense that although it would be dreadful for many, it would be contained and ultimately “fixed” once the right technology was applied.
Yet as days now grow into weeks, as all efforts to stem the flow so far fail and the estimates of daily contamination skyrockets, abhorrence and dismay turn to rage. Images of brown tendrils of oil drifting among boats desperately dragging collection booms, apparently uselessly, behind them illustrate the helplessness of the workers who struggle to combat the disaster with outdated equipment. Blackening beaches and birds overwhelmed by oil drive home that this catastrophe cannot be avoided and will not go away.
While it is true that vast amounts of oil leak naturally from fissures all over the planet, nowhere has the amount of oil so quickly flowed into the seas in so localized a deposit. The pollution is spreading throughout the interconnected oceans. Inevitably, it will affect all the sea creatures in one way or another.
This is a global catastrophe with effects well beyond the Gulf and the surrounding countries and populations. There will be financial effects worldwide, and environmental effects also will spread steadily throughout the biosphere. As such, everyone on the planet has a stake in how the disaster is managed.
What Can I Do?
There are many actions that we can take to advance the healing of the effects of Deepwater Horizon. Not all are easily palatable, given the state of our social outrage. Even as we grieve the effects on the Gulf and wildlife that depend upon it, we also must look forward into the possible futures unfolding. How we respond can heal or destroy.
Let Go Of The Outrage
Participation in the torrent of curses projected upon the management and organization continues the darkness. There is enough of that. Legal and political responses are in place to hold accountable those who created the disaster. Let them do their work while we do ours.
It is better to focus light and energy on opening the way to healing and enabling solutions. Powerful studies show that one person holding love for another will offset the ill-will of dozens. Let go of the outrage and instead allow the balancing strength of spirit to pour through you for the good of all.
Part Of The Tribe
Not everyone in the Tribe can act in the same way and be effective. For all of us to descend upon the coast and begin cleaning birds will clearly not be useful. We must remember that, as part of a global Tribe, we all have our roles.
It is the role of the Elders, the Wisdom Chiefs, to hold the vision of a healed Mother Earth, and remind us that She is really not in danger from this event. She survives hurricanes, floods, volcanoes, and all other kinds of natural and unnatural disasters. Everything will return to perfect balance in time. They hold the Eagle vision.
The Medicine Chiefs can pray and hold in sacred safety our brothers and sisters of the sea, as well as our human relations. Not all will survive, and the way ahead is long. The many who practice the medicine way can best serve by daily practices that include the healing of all in the wake of the disaster.
The Warriors and War Chiefs are those who act directly in service and defense of the Tribe. They are the hands-on workers, coordinators, and planners. They are the front line of the action and all those who support them physically, financially, and spiritually. We must also remember them and care for their healing, as well. They are fighting a war for us, and as such, they are in the heart of darkness and need our consistent blessing and assistance.
Hold The BP Workers In Light
It is not productive to send anger and disparaging thoughts to the BP employees and contractors working to contain the rupture. Thoughts are real. We can choose to hold these engineers, divers, and workers in loving hope and trust, or we can blame them for being incompetent. They, too, are affected by the disaster, and they are the ones working diligently night and day to find answers and solutions to the problems.
They are also our Warriors, the most experienced and intelligent workers to deal with this difficult problem and access to the most advanced technologies available. Surrounding these Warriors with the darkness of hate and misplaced blame serves only to make things more difficult. Hold them in love and light instead, and see their way clear to solutions, strength, and perseverance.
Stewardship Of Our Home
We must remember our place in the web of life. Because we rely so heavily on the bounty and resources of the Earth, we must also be the caretakers. Deepwater Horizon reminds us that it is up to us whether we deplete and destroy the very foundation of our existence, and so destroy ourselves. And not only us. We have the power to take with us millions of other animals and plants, and to make our home uninhabitable to humans for thousands of years.
Human dependence on resources like petroleum, natural gas, and coal will likely continue for many more years, regardless of how diligently we work to move to more sustainable energy resource. We must not become complacent about the many dangers hidden in mining and extracting them. As the human tribe, we are compelled by our own use of these resources to be diligent to control and eventually to eliminate our pollution of land, water, and air.
We may be experiencing the effects of Deepwater Horizon for decades, possibly for generations. We must decide how we will respond today and tomorrow, whether with fierce darkness or blazing light. We must learn from this and remember to leave our home in better shape for our children and our children’s children to the seventh generation.
Images and information in this article are from various news sources, particularly Monsters and Critics.
Shapeshifting Class April 18, 2010
Posted by gerrystarnes in General, Learnings.1 comment so far
I do not have any ambition to be a professional actor. However, I truly enjoy and take acting classes whenever I can.
The practice of acting affords me an opportunity to examine myself from a completely different perspective within a safe and mostly anonymous context. In classes, I am provided with unusual scenarios and different personalities to try on for a while. It is a good stretch for me to let go of my usual way of doing things, seeking to submerge myself into a new role and then feel for the personality nuances that bring it alive.
Acting is a form of shapeshifting: changing from my usual way of experiencing and being in the world into someone or something else. It is a deep, experiential exploration of my personality parts, learning to let go of them and to move as fully as I can into a different form, trying on a different skin.
In improvisational acting class, I learn that “Yes and…” is much more powerful than, “Yes but…” or the deadly “No.” “Yes and…” builds energy and excitement, even when — or perhaps especially when — it goes into extraordinary dimensions of absurdity.
Let’s get some ice cream!
Yes and put lots of chocolate and sprinkles!
Yes and ride our bikes with them down the block!
Yes and let go of the handlebars!
Yes and right into that space ship overthere!
Yes and wow! Eating ice cream on the moon!
Yes and with aliens from Planet 9!
Every actor in the scene must play off every other spontaneously, and that leads to a tight interaction among them. There is not much time for daydreaming or planning very far ahead. Flexibility and fluidity are the rule in this form of shapeshifting. Action is in the moment and builds upon the sparks of talent, awareness, and intuitive spontaneity that each actor brings.
From improvisational acting I learn spontaneity, flexibility and fluidity in the moment, and how to play joyously with others.
In acting for camera, I learn something different about shapeshifting. It is about character and about how to be real while playing a role. It is about creatively crafting a scene built around a specific script and delving into nuances of behavior and psychology that bring characters to life.
The way any scene plays out can go in many directions based on the way the character is written, crafted, and enlivened by the actor. How I interpret the character can feed the story or kill it. How I think as the character can either bring it to life or make it dull and flat. How well I shapeshift into the character can make it real or laughable.
Acting encourages observation of real life in greater detail than one ordinarily does. Actors learn much of the craft of shapeshifting by observing how people move, what they do when they talk to each other or when they sit quietly by themselves, and the thousands of other behaviors that go unnoticed most of the time.
Actors are students of life because they must be real while expressing themselves into their roles.
My very first assignment in an acting class was to observe myself from the outside in. What is the first thing I do in the morning? What is the sequence of how I dress – pants before shirt, or shirt first? Left leg first or right? How do I react to how socks feel when I put them on? What is the expression on my face as I shave? How do I swing my arms when I walk? What happens if I change that?
Every day is a laboratory for actors. There is never a moment when there is not something to be learned.
On stage, I get to put on a new skin and use everything I have learned about shapeshifting to make it fit as though it were tailored just for me. Among other actors — certainly more experienced and talented than I — I feel freedom to put myself on the edge and fearlessly dive into something brand new without concern for how people who know me might react.
When I begin feeling the edges of the everyday rut getting too deep, when I’m feeling stuck and dull, I resolve to look for an acting class to attend. Not only are they about trying on new behaviors, acting classes allow me to connect with everyday life in an extraordinary way.
Acting is about being alive.
Clearing Out – Letting Go February 4, 2010
Posted by gerrystarnes in Learnings.add a comment
From the shamanic perspective, everything is alive, which means that everything also “dies.” The subject of “dead things that we keep hanging around” came up in a class some time ago. Imagine all those items being like beloved friends and relatives that have passed on, and see that they are like little boat anchors that you keep dragging around. All that stuckness makes it hard to move, much less move forward. So it is good to periodically release things you no longer use or need to keep the energy flowing.
Many of us have closets and storage units full of these things, and lots of reasons (or excuses) for why we keep them. Who knows? That book may be worth something in 10 more years or that blouse will come back into fashion and I won’t have to buy a new one!
I used to say that these things are now dead, but I’ve come to see that it’s not the things that are dead, but our relationships to them. The object itself is still alive: the book still has something to say, but not necessarily to you; that blouse could be someone else’s treasure, just not yours any more. We had a relationship with each thing that we purchased or was gifted to us at some point, but that relationship is no longer vital or relevant. It is dead for all practical purposes.
So what do you do with dead family and friends? You honor the relationship that you had, perhaps grieve, and you let go. You can do exactly the same with that shirt, that book, that vase your aunt gave you 20 years ago. Honor the memory and let it go: give it away, throw it away, bury it.
If you have a lot of “stuff,” it may be daunting to handle each individual item that way. My suggestion is to put things in piles: things to throw away; things to give away; things to burn, things to keep – making sure that you still have a viable relationship with the things you keep – and so on. The categories are yours to define, and you can have as many as you want. Then honor each pile for the relationships and connections they once had for you. You might even do a kind of funeral ceremony.
This doesn’t mean that you must discard everything. You also can rekindle the relationship. A friend who went through this process for several months renewed her relationship with a beloved relative. As she worked her way through many boxes from storage, she discovered her grandmother’s dressing bench tucked away in storage. It didn’t seem right to give it away or sell it. The memories were dim, yet still very real. So, carefully and mindfully, she stripped away layers of old paint down to the wood, then lovingly refinished it with care. She recently had it reupholstered, and after many months of work she was done. The relationship with the stool and the memories of her grandmother it brought to the present were lovingly restored.
I have known people who have done this process with stuff accumulated over many years. In each case, they realized that the “letting go” was often the hardest part. They didn’t have the proper frame of reference to handle their relationship, dead or alive, with the memories each of the items held for them. But as they went through the honoring process, they learned quite a lot from it about themselves and relationships. Eventually, they became not only clear in their physical space, but clear in their energetic space, as well. And being more clear, could move forward with strength, no longer weighed down by their physical and energetic boat anchors.
This process of clearing out and letting go by mindfully honoring each item and appreciating the relationship puts everything in place for everyone – you and your once-beloved items – to move forward into their fresh and unfettered futures.
