Day 26: Carry On Alchemy

100% Chocolate Brownie

The day after the finale of our Alchemy 4 Success intensive.  There is a mind expanding silence in this space of assimilation.  Each of us silently sliding back into the orbits of our lives but not the same as when we left.  I want to be alert and aware, conscious and cognizant; assidiously observing what is coming up for me as I re enter the cacophony of life, to see the flickering shadows of the concepts and definitions I project on to the wall of the world knowing they are not true and then proactively switch the power in my subconscious mind.  The intention is to embody the practise of alchemy and master the art of conscious creation.

When I step beyond the veil I can delight in what captures my innocent eye, often it is the simplest of things like the wrapper of this raw chocolate brownie, drawing me into blue sky and sea salt.  I savour and taste its richness gliding deliciously out of Brighton on its nourishment quietly observing the spirit level of power, and bouncing over the glitches of irritation and annoyance that pick up charge as I get closer to London.  I want the rhythm of the wheels on the track to tattoo their message on my soul ‘carry on alchemy, carry on alchemy, carry on alchemy…..’

100 Days of Awe is a playful project I set up to bring my attention to awe in my daily life. I see awe as wonder, a mixture of amazement and respect.  I expect the experience of awe to be about perception shifting awareness and that demands a reframing of some sort.  I am excited to see what will awe me on this journey.

Anne K. Scott is an imagination technologist, her work to teach, facilitate and deliver innovation for individuals and business.  She is the creator of FindYourMojo a FREE iPHone productivity app. If you are interested in what intuitive coaching can do for you please do contact me.  I support clients all over the world.

Larry Ellison’s little tender Marina Del Rey, Los Angeles*

I feel ill, sick, unwell.  In the space of moments I have established a scenario that reveals a flash of anger and destruction on someone else’s parade.  It comes at me left of field, the situation is innocuous, an inoffensive Facebook photograph, a caption and then an unexpected thought, one that at any other time would have slide down the inner sewage groove and never have been revealed. This time however I am curious about it, as a child would be curious about a worm or a wood lice, a snake or a scorpion. Where did that come from, what does it mean, what does it do?  Can I play with it? The enter button is pressed and there it is out in the world for all to see.

At the beginning of 2014 I consciously chose to change my reality. After 5 decades I am over struggling for survival, being alone and sabotaging my creations. I can feel the hairs lift on the back of my neck as the reality I am creating on Facebook unfolds and I consider that if you cant make an omelette without cracking an egg then perhaps this choice to create a new reality requires me to face up to and own deep seated unconscious patterns that have been keeping my old reality locked in.

Step back with me a moment to 5 years ago.  I had been working for over 30 years in the business of information technology running the gamut of jobs and roles.  I had created the freedom of being a contractor with big bucks, low responsibility, home working.  I sat on the fence of committment; basking in the illusion of my own authority but actually beholden to the behemoths of industry for my survival.  Swinging from intense periods of focused work and filthy lucre to extended fuges of amorphous travel and well heeled shoe string living.  Every now and then I would think there has to be more to life than this. By my mid 40s the soothing murmer was morphing into a demanding thunder and as I am discovering the journey of change pivots on critical moments.  In this case a simple email invitation to come learn about my intuition.

5 years on I have learned that intuition serves the agenda of the heart, a broader and more multi-dimensional agenda than that of the ego and our need for survival.  I have revelled in learning this new language and the paradox of it that no matter how long you have been on the journey, there is always the joy of deeper heart connections married with the anticipation of new learning.

I dont know what I know, but I know what I know is made up and what I make up serves to create the reality I experience.  Now that the anger is no longer hidden and I choose to be curious about it I see I have been avoiding shame, embarrassment, rejection. I see my covert reaction to masculine authority, I see the destruction of my temper, the rage of my powerlessness and my anger at and judgement of my father, the foil against which I made up all that I believe to be true about men and me in relationship to men.  I want to hide, I want to cry to turn back the clock and pretend that it never happened.  I want to smooth over the earth, to hide all of those ugly worms under a nice smooth slab of concrete adding to the paving stones that have smothered this fecund, fertile garden.  I want to put my flowers in neat pots to smile and say that it is all good.  And that is what I do on Facebook as I fiddle with comments but still my focus goes back to the key scratch until I cannot ignore that putting my focus on what I believe it bad and wrong about me and what I do only creates a reality that perpetuates that.

I am caught on the ledge of a slippery slope, a moment to breathe, to acknowledge the pain of this reality that I have created for myself and ask my heart what would it love.  In that space there is no question – I want to reclaim my garden, to grow creations that nourish my heart, body and soul.  I want to step back and allow in the natural forces that rise to support me; to honour the powerhouse composters that enrich and condition the soil as they eat their way through it, marvel at nature’s pollinators as rediscover and seed the richness of my creations.  What is obvious is to allow the worms to wriggle, to be with the discombobulation of bringing this garden back to its natural state and to focus on the work to do that. In this moment I am flooded with gratitude for the strong powerful men who have revealed to me the groove of that old story I have about the masculine; my father and the love he had to bring me into being, Larry Ellison for creating a company that taught me much of what I know about information technology, to Mark Zuckerberg for creating the platform to play this out this scenario, to Darren Eden, an intuitive master who is committed to transforming hearts through the creation of shamanic realms of learning and to William Whitecloud, who posted the picture that drew me into the ring of a psychic master whose wise foil refused to collude with the old me.  It doesnt make sense to my rational mind but intuitively it is obvious that this story keeps me separate from the love and intimacy of a man in my life.

*  Photograph with kind permission of William Whitecloud

** Darren Eden’s Your Call To Greatness workshop, Central London www.academyofgreatness.co.uk

I am conscious of a seething unhappiness which drives me to work out what is wrong with my world.  It has been there for weeks, no – for a lifetime. Like the high pitch static of tinnitus it can be cloaked by the noise of life’s traffic but in the spaces in between it lurks, a superating wound.

As I have chosen to extricate myself from the routine of employment and material stuff over the past three years it has created the freedom to commit to my life; a freedom to explore the world, to rove and write, to create an iPhone app, to dive into my imagination and wield it purposefully, to prioritise connection, community and friendship and to create.  There are moments of exhilaration and contentment but there are times like this when the void opens and I am disorientated, I dont know what matters anymore.  And something has to matter – right?  In my struggle to make something matter I realise that I am resisting the reality that nothing matters.   If nothing matters what is the point?  Why bother?  I am shrinking from the world, disappearing into inertia, as I try to hold back my bile of discontent I become more tense, jagged and brittle.  I dont know what to say only what I should say. I am glad for my friends who everywhere I turn are awesome creative machines; a conveyor belt of babies, manifesting sexy, intimate partners out of the woodwork, new homes in nature, stringing words together to make novels or simply going with the flow of their journies knowing that if nothing matters then anything can matter and what a joy that is.

But I dont feel joy. Like a worm I wriggle on the hook of my dilema; the desire to know truth and feel good at the same time.  A wise man once told me that living intuitively is not about feeling good, the shock of that paradox is a scar that reminds me I cannot hide from the truth of my motivation around the choices I make.  The temptation to seek the salve of a good feeling is there but as I inch my way along this tight rope of life I know that to draw sustenance from the sugar of what is in easy reach is a posion. I can try and persuade myself that any number of things from the glass of wine or a Snickers bar, to making Christmas cards and shopping for Christmas presents are harmless if not really good things to do.  If I do anything purely for the relief of feeling good then I just fuel this sluggish fat grub to dawdle dangerously above the chasm of calamity. Equally it is true that even creating this as a dilema is a strategy to procastinate yet again, to stagnate and purtrify.

I struggle to see the truth of where I am, clouding it with the innate need to compare the facts with failure against the past and the future; my tangible creations are invisible in the womb of my heart, how long is this pregnancy? I am the elephant of creators – with an extra long gestation?  Or am I invisible to my creations just because they are not not manifest in a material vibration?  I am afraid that they will miscarry bleeding my essence into the earth, I am afraid they will manifest and condem me to thankless motherhood. I am just afraid and when I am afraid I get angry and when I get angry I get depressed.

I can only imagine I am like the surfer in post coital pause, as the wave breaks to shore carrying the rider away from the adrenaline rush of the cavorting ocean and the raggle taggle bunch of wave catchers where the action happens.  I can yearn to be back out there and fret about my choice to ride this particular wave or I can just be with the ebb and the flow of being a surfer.  Being in the moment that I am in, dealing with the here and now. I am no less a surfer with my back to the ocean or buffing my board than I am when I am riding the unfurling edge of a monster breaker.

Tramore Bay

I grew up in the space where the earth meets the sea in Tramore, Co. Waterford in Ireland.  I love this space and am drawn to it wherever I travel.  This time last year I was in California in the romantically named Half Moon Bay looking west across the Pacific Ocean, being filled to expansiveness in the space where the earth meets the sea.  This is what I wrote:

Early in 2009 I was introduced to the concept of living my life intuitively and establishing goals created from my imagination. This blew my mind; intuitive choices are not SMART goals. They are often not specific, far from measurable, as to attainable, realistic & timely well I had brain freeze when my imagination advised me that I wanted to be a global warrior of discovery leading the way and connecting people through the warmth of technology. What the bleep!…..! Almost four years on I feel exactly like a global warrior of discovery. I now create choices as New Year resolutions and wait to see them manifest just by gentle consistent action to connect with each choice intuitively.

As of February 2012 I have been on the road, following the breadcrumbs to live and work a life guided by my heart. In the past 5 months I have been sailing in the San Blas Islands in Panama, collecting shells on the freezing shoreline of Satellite beach in Florida, sipping coffee overlooking the chilly surf in Ireland and today I have just walked the Half Moon Bay coastal trail in California. I dont tell you this to impress but rather to illustrate the penny dropping of a choice created intuitively. I love the space where the earth meets the sea. This choice has effortlessly being manifesting in my life almost unbeknownst to me. Lovely lyrical wording that at a logical level sounds like I love the shoreline but putting it like that underestimates my journey and the experiences I have had. I notice that I am drawn to walk along the shifting line where the sea tickles the land; I love the treasures that are found there and tell tale trail of ocean detritus that mark the segue of the tides but there is so much more.

I recollect that one of my favourite distractions in school was my geography homework. I was particularly drawn to maps and to drawing maps using a rainbow selection of coloured markers to artistically mark out where land masses and bodies of water came together. I would get lost in these creations to the detriment of less inspiring subjects such as physics or chemistry. My submissions were works of art. At the time I had no idea why I was so compelled to pour so much love into such a narrow activity. Now I make up that I had a deep knowing that there was something about that space that opens up inspiration and creates energy for me.

When I am tired or overwhelmed being by the ocean calms me, sleeping on the ocean soothes me, sailing the seas expands my mind, distracts me from the rational and steeps me in my imagination. I am always refreshed, energised and thinking expansively after a spell by the sea. I am rushed by the wild chaotic femininity of the sea and the steadfast masculine anchoredness of the land, I love the fusion of these two forces at the shoreline each bringing their own gifts together to create a space that is a child born of the two. Whether looking at a map, hunkering over a magical tide pool, drinking in the San Mateo hills, watching kite surfers dancing around the jagged tooth Maverick rocks, being tricked by warm sun & cold breezes, ear wigging on conferences of gulls or buzzed by macho pelicanos there is magic in this place. I am not alone in my fascination with this space – there is a nebulous yearning that rivets many of us to Coast, the magnificent BBC TV creation now on its eighth series, which exquisitely charts life in the space where land and sea come together.

Today I was filled to overflowing with a knowing that goes beyond understanding that where the earth meets the sea opens up doors for me that are foundational to living the fullness of the life I love. I am ready to sign off on the creation of this choice and embed it as a fundamental underlying structure in my life. No longer is visiting the sea a nice to have in my life it is a basic necessity and I am looking forward now to diving deeper into that space by creating a new choice to lead me to more discovery.