For the most part, these are changes we have actively chosen — and they are evolutionary in their effects. And yet, some of our inner selves are more comfortable with change than others who might be younger, more vulnerable, more afraid.

This brief video poem is my offering of love to our scared, vulnerable selves — a reminder that our beingness spans both earth and sky…and everything in between.

How do you engage with fear? What do you do to meet it, and yourself, with love?

For another perspective, take the things that scare you over to the Deva Cards page, and see what the Devas have to offer.

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

• The Things That Scare You
• You are a Miracle
• Sunday Poem #7

Free of the Not-Enoughs and Shoulds–the Have-To’s and Maybe’s and But’s–may you discover, celebrate and share the miracle that is you.

Play with me! I’d love it if you’d share, in the comments, one or two or three things about you that are miraculous. Begin by affirming this truth: “I am a miracle!” Then tell us how you express your miraculous self in your world.

Watch this on YouTube and share it with the people you love: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qnUJLrQsuJc

A rainbow shower of thanks to my friends, Solaye Snider and Angie Wheeler, for collaborating with me to create this video. Deep gratitude to Jonathan Fields, who first published this poem on his blog. A bow from my heart to my miraculous family and friends–and to each of you, for inspiring You Are a Miracle.

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

• Tug Power
• The Things That Scare You – a video poem
• Refugees: Remembering 9/11

Some years ago, I spent two weeks at an Ayurvedic resort in the mountains near Pune, in Western India. The resort overlooked a clear blue lake, set like a jewel in a bowl of scrubby hills the color of deer-hide. The nearest town was a couple of hours’ drive away, along a single, bumpy, winding road.

After a fortnight of exquisite, healing silence—no ringing phones, no tv or radio. Just the chirping of crickets at night; the chatter and laughter of the staff near the central building that housed the kitchen and offices—my friend and I went for a walk down the dusty road to a makeshift encampment below, where a ragged road-crew was hard at work rebuilding a portion of the road that had washed away the previous monsoon.

Several families lived by the side of the road in little shanties cobbled together out of sticks and branches; bits of frayed, sun-bleached cloth; sheets of tin hammered out from old oil drums, their colored logos scratched and dented but still visible.

The men did the heavy work—hauling boulders onto the work site in hand-carts, loading and unloading the idling truck that spewed fumes into the mountain air, manning the machine that spread hot tar onto the prepared road bed.

The women carried rocks in shallow metal basins balanced on their heads. Some of them cooked over open fires, yelled at toddlers to get out of the way of heavy machinery, wiped the runny noses of babies slung across their hips.

And then, there were the children, bent over like little elves, smashing rocks into smaller pieces to be loaded onto the idling lorry, which would haul them down the road where the men would spread the crushed rock onto the red laterite mud to make a new road bed.

These kids ranged in age from two or three to eight or ten—it’s hard to tell how old they were because malnutrition keeps them small and and the relentless sun under which they worked all day had wizened their skin to leather.

We stopped to chat with them. My friend, who lives in Pune, translated. The kids gathered around us, chattering excitedly as they bit into the snacks and sweets we’d brought them from the tiny roadside shop a couple of miles away.

We asked them the usual questions. They answered, as kids do–vague about the things that matter more to grownups than to children; clear and forthright about what’s vivid to them.

No, they did not go to school. Their parents moved around the country, going wherever the work was, so they never stayed in one place long enough to go to school. Besides, one of them said proudly, they were needed. Their families depended on their labor, for food and shelter from the rain.

What did they want to be when they grew up, we asked.

There was a moment’s pensive silence. Then, a chorus of high-pitched voices: “To be a stone-breaker!” “I want to be the fastest, bestest stone-breaker”, said one green-eyed beauty, shyly.

“Stone-breaker! Stone breaker!” they called, excited to be asked; delighted to have a calling of their own.

Then a young man in ragged yellow shorts—all of six years old; clearly the leader of the pack—yelled out loud: “I’m not going to be a stone breaker! I’m going to be the man who drives the lorry that carries the broken stones!”

His voice was triumphant; his dusty face glowed. The children fell silent, and looked at him with something like wonder.

Stones.

This young man’s vision for himself was more expansive than anything these children—or anyone in their families—had ever dreamed of.

And, it emerged from the Land of Broken Stones. Its horizon was circumscribed by stones: breaking them; transporting them; building roads with them. That was their world. That was who they believed themselves to be.

We left them with sticky hugs and bottles of cold, orange Fanta. Tears (mine). Happy waves and calls of “Bye-bye!”

The next day, I was taking a train back to Bombay, then a flight home to Canada. My friend promised to connect with an NGO in Pune, who she said would send someone out to get these kids into the village school; would bring along a mobile medic to check and treat them for ringworm and rickets.

This morning, I woke up thinking about those children. And about the ways in which our identity is shaped by the world we know. Until we discover who we truly are, and discover our power to shape our own horizons.

Who do you believe yourself to be? What is your horizon of Broken Stones? What lies beyond it — beyond the limits of your imagination?

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

• What You Know Now
• Grumble Hook Guidance
• Rule Your World Giveaway, Week 4

The story the season tells is written in the clouds that hover high above the bay – reflected in swaths of pewter on a downy sea. It’s scribbled in the dark outlines of cedar trees etched against the sky. It sings and shouts among the bright stars of fallen leaves gleaming on frosty ground.

We don’t know how cold this winter will be. We tell ourselves stories based on our experiences of winters past.

The morning – more than twenty years ago! – I looked out my kitchen window to see my boys hurtle down the snowy slope of the hillside behind our house in their homemade toboggan, shrieking with excitement, their voices shattering the brittle winter air.

They’d built an obstacle course for themselves, out of snow. Mounds of snow formed mini-hillocks that sent their toboggan flying before it landed with a crash and a thud on the other side.

Theirs was an adventure story, epic in its tale of perils overcome, mountains conquered; the sudden thrill of veering off course, spinning off their sled, landing headfirst into the arms of a snow bank.

They learned, through their play, to shape their own obstacles, to sail over them undeterred by the prospect of falling, to fly and to trust their landing.

They’re young men now, married, with families of their own. I see, in the men they’ve become, the ways in which their stories have shaped them.

I see it in their irrepressibly playful, adventurous spirit; in their willingness to climb, to fall, to land on unmapped ground. Their deep knowing that they are loved, safe, creative and powerful.

We tell ourselves stories about the world around us, about our place in it. About who we are, how we live, what we can and cannot be. We tell stories about what we can create, enjoy, experience – and what our experiences mean, how we feel about them.

Those stories shape us. They shape the world around us as surely as if we were grabbing a handful of snow and shaping it into a mound, a hillock, a mountain.

Our stories thrill and delight us, or they scare us into submission, or they grow us into the radiant possibilities of our astonishing selves.

Our stories grow the world around us – an Emerald City or a slum; a world brimming with love and possibility for everyone, or a world in which the treasure is guarded by dragons slavering at the gates of moated castles behind whose walls the chosen few feast on bread stolen from the mouths of children, the elderly — those who are poor, those who are most deeply vulnerable.

The old stories are exhausted. The world they shaped is choking on toxic fumes of fear, emptiness, rage and shame.

As I write this, in a thousand cities around the globe, people are gathering. They’re gathering to sing new songs, to tell new stories. In London and Lima, Cape Town and Kuala Lumpur, New York and New South Wales, stories are rising. From paved roads and cobbled streets, from city squares and dirt maidans – from the heart of the Earth, new stories are being born.

The stories you tell are powerful. The story of your life, the story of your business, shapes the larger story of the world in which we – and our children, and our children’s children – will live.

Have you given away your power to shape your own story?

Take your stories back. Find the stories that belong to you. Sing them into being. Call them out loud, by their true names.

Your stories shape the world in which you live: Today. Tomorrow. Next week. Next year.

Join me and a community of creative story-shapers, for a four-week adventure to craft a new story for your life, for your business, and for your world: Dreaming in the Dark. November 2nd through 23rd.

Free preview call next Monday, October 24th at 5 pm Pacific Time. Early registration discount ends next Tuesday, October 25th.

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

• To Change a Pattern, Create a New Story
• The Nearness of You
• Dreaming in the Dark

She knows her work is valuable. She knows her business makes a tremendous contribution to her clients and customers. She knows this slump is temporary.

And yet, she’s frustrated, and scared.

“What’s going on?” she asks.

As I tune into her energy field, I see the inner stories that are swirling around and through her right now.

Stories of Not-Enough. Stories of Do-This! and Don’t-Do-That! Or Else!

Stories that she is alone. That she can rely on no-one but herself. Not Enough collides head-on with Have To and Must and Should.

I’ve been there. Chances are, so have you.

When business is flowing like a sparkling stream of champagne, and the mouths of the Not Enoughs are so full of scrumptiousness – Cake! Chocolate! Chocolate cake! – that they can’t wail out their warnings of doom, we forget that they’re there.

We forget that they believe their stories. Those stories they hunch over like a sack of stones slung across their painfully bent backs.

Stories of lack and not-enoughness hurt your heart. They swirl a smoke-screen of fear around you, so you can’t see the light of your soul.

And the world sees your fear. It sees your heartache and self-doubt. It feels your urgency, and responds by staying away from you, from your business.

You may think you’re hiding these things, but you cannot hide the truth of your being.

It shows up in your life. It shows up in your business.

So, what do you do?

My client – who is brilliant, and creative – was temporarily hijacked by her Not-Enoughs and Have-To’s. They wailed in frustration.

“I’m doing everything right,” they/she said. “I’m taking care of myself. I finally recognize that taking care of my body comes first. When I do that, my business thrives. Except – it’s not working!”

Of course it’s not working.

Her Not-Enough is afraid that her needs won’t be met. And her fear overrides her love, so her relationship with her body changes from one of love, unity and tenderness to something colder, more transactional.

Not: “I take care of you because I love you. Because I want you to flourish and be your best and happiest self.”

But, rather: “I’ll take care of you so that my business will flourish. I’ll take care of you so that this slump will end. Sales will go up again.”

It’s a bit like being in bed with your beloved, who turns to you with love, passion and delight, and breathes into your ear: “I love you. Let’s make love.”

And you say, with a worried frown: “Yeah, okay. Maybe it’ll help relieve my stress.”

It may indeed relieve your stress; but it will almost certainly cause problems in your relationship.

Your relationship with your body and your inner being is the foundation for all your relationships.

When your relationship with your body is transactional – I’ll give you this so you can get me that – then your relationships with your clients and customers will be transactional too.

Not: “I offer this, knowing it will benefit you and bring you into greater wholeness and coherency within yourself. And – because Wholeness benefits everyone – by serving you with integrity and love, I will also serve myself and my business. The same Wholeness that brings you benefit and blessing will also bring me what I need.”

But: “I offer this because I’m scared that my needs won’t be met. I need you to buy this because if you don’t, I’ll be homeless, or at least, I won’t have enough chocolate cake.”

The difference may appear to be subtle.

When you place the source of your sustenance out there, you hand over your power, and responsibility for your survival, to someone else. Then, you have to manipulate and control them to get them to give you the sustenance you need.

It makes for poor relationships. And it’s not good for business.

Traditional marketing advice invariably goes something like this:

1. Address people’s pain. Where are they hurting?
2. Talk about the benefits. How will your products and services help them?

However: if you’re addressing your clients’ and customers’ pain because you’re afraid you won’t survive if they don’t buy from you, then the message that goes out over the subtle energy airwaves is one of lack and manipulation.

It will draw to you clients and customers who believe in Not Enough, and are manipulated by their fears. You’ll perpetuate the pain you’re in, by extending it out into the world of your business.

If you want to change the pattern, create a new story.

1. Begin by acknowledging – with tenderness and compassion – the story you’ve been living.
2. Feel the pain it causes you; forgive yourself; release the story.
3. Attune to the qualities you want to bring into your life and your world.
4. Shape your new story, with these qualities at its heart.

If you’d like to go through this process in community with others, and with the structured support of a class, please join me for Dreaming in the Dark.

Over the course of four weeks, November 2 through 23rd, we’ll explore the story you and your business have been living this year. And you’ll shape a new story for your business and your life for 2012.

You’ll meet the characters who live in the stories of your past, and develop loving relationships with the inner selves and allies who create and inhabit your future.

You’ll receive two classes as audio downloads with accompanying pdfs, which you can listen to and read at your own pace. And, we’ll have two LIVE calls where you can ask questions, share your discoveries and insights, and integrate the class materials.

Many of you want to work with me privately, and can’t afford to do so. My private session fee is $550 per hour. Private retreats with me begin at $2500 per day.

My intention, with this class, is to offer an affordable way of getting skilled support to release the stories that no longer serve you. And to consciously create the stories you want to live and contribute to your world now.

Which stories are you summoning now? Which ones do you want to release? What stands in your way?

The early registration discount for Dreaming in the Dark ends on October 25th. Join me for a free preview call, Monday, October 24th at 5 pm Pacific Time/8 pm ET. Register here.

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

• Dreaming in the Dark
• The Nearness of You
• Story-Making, World-Making

Dark when I wake up. Dark when I go to bed. Murky, much of the day — autumn clouds, mist and rain muffle the contours of the Pacific Northwest landscape where I live.

Light. The memory of light.

Beneath the closed eyelids of night, the sun shines.

I can’t see it, but I know it’s there.

The sun shines in my belly, in my heart. I can’t see it, but I know it’s there. Its deep, warm hum fills my body — a hive of honeybees.

I love the night; its tender, velvet skin. Intimate, friendly — innocent. Newborn.

A spill of stars glimmering – small footprints across the sky.

A reminder. The floor of home — the earth beneath my feet; its ceiling — the deeply woven thatch of the universe. Its hearth, the sun.

Some days, that’s all I know. Some days, that’s all I need to know.

The to-do lists, the push and pull of clock-time – momentarily dissolved in the great river of stars.

This is the place of dreaming. This is the time when my future sails downriver to meet me. To play.

The silver current of its life mingles with mine – an unfolding miracle of light, emerging.

Making the long journey from There to Here.

Dreaming in the dark.

Come, play with me. Dream your own dreams into being. Join me and a community of creative folks for Dreaming in the Dark: Write the New Story of Your Business for 2012. November 2 through 23.

On Tuesday, October 18th at 9 am Pacific Time, I am presenting a workshop on creating abundance in partnership with the soul of your business at Molly Gordon’s (no-cost) Self-Employment Telesummit. Molly’s mission is to end the cycle of under-earning among self-employed people. Join me, and a host of other speakers for useful, practical ideas on how to grow your business sustainably and in alignment with your values.

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

• To Change a Pattern, Create a New Story
• The Nearness of You
• Desire

My friend, Jonathan Fields, has written a book – aptly titled Uncertainty — about how people handle the risks and challenges of living creatively.

How do we continue to grow, continue to innovate, when each new creation requires us to make the arduous journey through uncertainty, risk and the fear of (sometimes very public) failure?

You know the feeling: Your business is running smoothly; your life is (astonishingly!) frictionless. And, something in your heart urges you to explore – over there!

See that? That Thing that flew by — a blur of light and promise?

Yes, that.

But it’s got nothing to do with my business, you say. It’s a diversion – nice idea, but not for me. Not now. It’s too expensive/outrageous/unheard-of/out of reach.

And yet, it won’t leave you alone. It catches you at odd hours of the day. Late at night — when your vigilantly rational mind has finally entered the cave of sleep – the Thing swoops into your dreams, a blur of light and color. It croons seductively in your ear.

A week or a month or a year later, you and your business are flying through whitewater rapids. Caught between breathless excitement and fear, exhilaration and uncertainty.

You don’t know if you’ve just committed to the greatest thing since quinoa bagels, or if you’re hurtling towards the demise of your reputation, your business, your financial safety and your family’s security.

The good news is: Everyone who leaves the shore enters the rapids sooner or later. If you are committed to living creatively, you learn to make friends with uncertainty. You learn how to navigate the rocks and shoals, the wild whitewater rapids, your own fear and nausea. You learn to ride the waves.

You construct a boat that carries you – safely, reliably – through to the far shore. Even when you can’t see it, and have only a dim sense of what it might look like or where it might be.

You construct a boat out of daily practices, creative and spiritual exercises that help you stay grounded and centered, flexible and present, no matter what.

A boat that embraces both the exhilaration and the fear, using them to help you navigate the river.

Jonathan is a marvelous storyteller. He knows a lot of interesting, creative people who have taken big risks, and emerged into a life more vivid and juicy than any they had imagined. He shares their stories with heart and humor.

His book describes the perils and pitfalls of the journey, the pivotal moments that determine its success or failure.

Uncertainty offers inspiration, guidance, hope, and practical wisdom.

Read it. You’ll be glad you did.

(This is NOT an affiliate link. I just love Jonathan’s book, and want you to know about it.)

I’d love to hear your own stories of times when you’ve risked your known world to create something new. Times when you’ve entered the river and made it to the other side. What supports you? What challenges you? What wisdom do you want to share, about the passage through?

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

• Breathing In…
• Happy Birthday, Havi’s Playground!
• Making Stew: Onions, Om, and The Creative Journey

These past few weeks, change has shaken the foundations of our world, reshaped it like Playdoh.

Thousands of people have had their lives and homes shattered by the earthquake and tsunami in Japan, by violence and revolution in the Middle East.

Outside my window, an old apple tree shudders in the springtime winds. A froth of white blossoms trembles and drifts down from slick, black boughs.

Overhead, a cloud-filled sky moves almost imperceptibly, driven by the wind.

Change, newness, a shredding of old identities, a demolition of old structures-springtime turns all our certainties upside down. It strips us raw.

We are creatures of Nature, and Nature has a way of pruning, sometimes ruthlessly, that which no longer serves.

And yet, through the tattered remnants of the old patterns of our lives, our essential selves glint and glimmer. The sun of our Divinity shines through, as the clouds of habit, the lowering sky of unconsciousness, dissolve in the wind.

We hear the call as an urgent beating of our hearts, a thunder and whoosh in our pulses.

Over and over, I hear my clients and students, friends and colleagues say: “I have to do this now. There’s no more time to waste. I have to serve the world in a bigger, more powerful way. Now.”

Gripped by urgency, which is an exciting, dangerous playmate, they reshape their lives and their businesses. They search intently, scanning the heavens for the path that will lead them to their destiny.

I feel it too, this urge to expand, to reach for the horizons and beyond-to wrap my arms and heart around my tribe, my world; to restore us all to wholeness.

And yet, to truly serve requires grounding–stepping back from urgency, into the arms of Wholeness.

The terrain between vision and grandiosity is often blurred by mists. Desire leads the way. It pulls us by the hand, out of the swamps of stagnation and complacency, into the bracing air of the unknown.

To bring desire into focus, we enter into stillness. Into connection and relationship with the deep heart of the world.

We dream-a spacious dreaming that follows the thread of our desire to the place where it meets the desire of Wholeness. Together, we dream the world that wants to be born. We dream our place in it. We dream its landscapes, its gifts, its qualities, its challenges.

And then we shape a passage-a birth canal-between the dream world, and our three-dimensional reality.

We gather our resources. We call on our allies in all dimensions. We sing our dream out loud. We give it a voice, a body, guts and breath and blood-we invoke its beating heart.

If we’ve been doing this long enough, with faith, dedication and skill, our dream emerges out of the mists to meet us. Allies magically appear. Grace and miracles abound.

Everything in the universe conspires to help us give birth to this dream of service.

And in the birthing, we discover that the dream has its own life, separate from ours. It has its own reason for being, its own allies, its own purposes.

The service we are called to bring into the world may look nothing like the images born of our urgency and desire.

It may require of us something less glamorous-working patiently with our inner selves to unify them, so that every part of us is engaged in this process. Stretching muscles that have grown accustomed to contraction. Or contracting ones that have become ungrounded from reaching for the stars.

There is no one way to serve. Service requires listening to the Life that calls us with its need, its dreams, its vision. It requires faith and courage. Humility, obedience. Tenderness. Craft. Skill. Patience.

Love.

Above all, love.

Love for our own life. Love for the life of the world. Love for the relationship between us.

What dream is calling you now? How are you answering its call?

My friend Jennifer Louden is answering it with her whole, honest and beautiful heart, through her Savor and Serve experiment. Check it out here.

How about you? How do you hear this call in your own life? What do you do with it?

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

• Dreaming in the Dark
• Pulse: Rhythm, timing, sequence
• Rule Your World Giveaway, Week 4

In the distance, the honking of invisible geese echoes through the fog.

And yet, yesterday afternoon, I was out walking by the lake near my house with the fog thick and white all around me. From the inside, a fog isn’t foggy at all. Instead, it’s soft, drizzly, welcoming-like a dog’s tongue, it lapped my face with tenderness.

Sitting here at my desk, the fog returns to mystery. But I remember its touch, and it no longer seems utterly Other. More friendly than forbidding.

I remember the first time I met fog, on a winter morning in a hill station in India. That moment when I stepped out of the front door into its embrace. Its silky caress on my face, my hands. Cool, fine drizzle. Green scent of wet trees, earth, mist.

Magic.

The unknown is like that. Forbidding until you enter it. And then, even though you can’t see its contours, or the landscape it veils, you can feel its friendliness. Feel the welcome it offers. Experience the thrill of the promise it holds.

What fog beckons you into its arms today? Will you go out to meet it?

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

• Give It Away: How to Get Your Heart’s Desire
• Refugees: Remembering 9/11
• Tug Power

In this holiday week between Christmas and New Year’s Day, there’s lightness in the air. Happy hellos and deep belly laughter, kids’ squeals of delight and their parents’ relaxed, warm smiles met me along the trail.

A mother and her teenage daughter skipped by, their arms around each other’s waists. Daughter to mom: “You sound just like a horse!” Mom to daughter: “Skipping is more work than running!” More giggles. Laughter.

I crossed a wooden foot-bridge and leaned on the cedar railing to take a breath, to take in the beauty of the day. It was early afternoon, the sky a clear, cobalt blue with apricot-gold clouds scudding across it on a light breeze.

The breeze ruffled the waters of the lake. Halfway across the water, the mountain’s dark shadow met the reflection of bright blue sky, golden coins of sunlight, flashes of brown and white where wild geese rode the waves.

The line between dark and light rippled and danced as the two blended into each other-a swirl of water, shimmering sunlight, reflected rock.

Such beauty, unbidden, generous, abundant in its profligacy!

We live in a world of breathtaking generosity. It gives itself to us with the eagerness of a child offering a crayoned drawing, offering a daisy, offering a sticky hug– offering her vulnerability, his innocence and genius and need.

As I stand on the bridge between this year and next, I can see clearly, in both directions. The dark. The light. The places where they blend and mingle, a dancing chiaroscuro whose elements depend on each other for their flow and movement, for the pattern they make through their relationship with each other.

I don’t have special intentions for the New Year. Time loops and winds and turns on itself, a ribbon rather than a highway.

My intentions are grounded in everyday prayers.

May we discern the patterns that are seeking to be born. May we celebrate them with praise and delight. May we serve their unfolding with skill, love and devotion. May we weave our threads with theirs to bring Heaven down to Earth.

May each of us be a source of blessing, light and love in our world.

Thank you for dancing the dance, for weaving the patterns that are yours to weave, for sharing the view from the bridge with me.

I’m so grateful for each of you-for your presence, your participation, the blessing that is your life.

So much love to you all, as we dance the new year into being.

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

• The Nearness of You
• Story-Making, World-Making
• To Change a Pattern, Create a New Story