Tag: transformation

Solstice Wishes to Open to Your Healing and Flow

Wolf Road Prairie

Celebratory greetings on the longest day in the North!
Happy Solstice to you.

I’ve just learned what a powerful portal day it is for opening to our own healing and flow. Both self-reflection and gathering in a circle magnify those energies. This message invites you to do both!

Today’s series of questions for reflection:

* How is it that listening more acutely to yourself can be so healing?

* What practices do you have in your collection?

* How are you doing with actually using the positive practices that you know?

The Backstory

My whole lifetime living in the default position of, “Go Deep First,” combined with a commitment to bringing forth in each moment my best self and highest expression … Ah, this calling to shape and share a life of wholeness while creating what matters most, THIS is the heart of the sacred journey for making life into a work of art, a process-based art of living into wholeness and co-creation. All this keeps things moving forward and deeper.

Yet while continuing to plumb the depths and live life beyond the frontier’s leading edge, I landed in a quandary, thinking, “It’s incomplete.” My challenge has always felt like, “I can’t begin to share this. It’s not whole yet. I’m not cooked, and there’s more to be revealed!”

The Shift

Then something shifted. I was not exactly ready, but the willingness to experiment had shifted inside. The world’s energies were shifting too, inviting these new transformational depth-soundings out into the public sphere. After a three-week trip to India, I found myself dangling over the void one more time. From this deep sweet center of sacred emergence, (AKA chaos) I knew it was time. (Even if I wasn’t really ready.)

Go Deep First

I used the 7 steps of what I call the “Go Deep First” process on myself, to create this process as “what matters most” right now for me. It’s allowed me to get clear on how I’ve been a catalyst for transformation– even when I wasn’t quite sure what I’d “done” for?…to?… with?... my people and clients to support their transforming. Now I’ve turned this implicit and invisible magic into an explicit, clarified process and a sacred circle mini-retreat.

Create What Matters Most

“Go Deep First to Create What Matters Most” taps into people’s essential wholeness. It is a continuing and iterative process, so that those who really use it, including me, the facilitator, can continually take the work — writing, healing, learning, co-creation, collaboration, insights, art of every kind — deeper, following an ongoing learning journey.

Tap Into Your Deep Why — To Get To Your “What”

It’s an inner workout for strengthening your innards for what it takes to give birth to a new vision, whether it’s a personal healing journey that matters right now, or it’s the content and message for a book, talk, workshop, a whole new body of work, web site. Or maybe you find yourself at a crossroads where making a conscious choice about the next path is crucial. The process works in service to deepening anyone’s journey. It meets you wherever you are on your journey’s path to inspire and infuse confidence in creating what matters most to you. Now.

An Invitation

I am so excited to be facilitating a live sacred circle. It’s for co-creating what matters most to you right now. This afternoon mini retreat is in the Chicago area on Sunday July 20, 2:30-5:30. For full details and to register online: http://bit.ly/1iWJmbL

What you get is an inner-power-tool for creating what matters most. It’s a renewable resource for tapping into the well of gifts that all of us are here to bring forth. Use this process to bring them forth with quality and confidence. How you get there is by going deep first. I have done the process with groups, in one-on-one sessions, and for myself. It is a malleable and flexible tool that people can use on their own, repeatedly, with new insights gleaned each time.

If you’re feeling curious and hopeful, longing to bring forth the gifts you are here to give, then please take a look. It’s a potent first step! Details and to pre-register: http://bit.ly/1iWJmbL

Sending you blessings on your path as you magnify your presence and transform your people —- starting with yourself.

Warm solstice blessings,

Bobbye Middendorf

P.S. Remember to use the positive practices that you already know! And if you sense the camaraderie of a sacred circle can help you amplify your process to get the creation juices flowing, then take a look at the description of what we’ll be doing on July 20.

Here’s the EventBrite link with details and to pre-register. http://bit.ly/1iWJmbL And be sure to mark your calendar for July 20!

P.P.S. If you are feeling called to this journey, and getting to Chicago in July isn’t going to work for you, then shoot me an email. We can schedule a brief conversation to see if doing this visioning journey work one-on-one is a good move for you right now.

 

 

 

Your Values: The Key to Living with Power and Purpose

Knowing and living your values is a foundational step if you are a messenger, visionary, thought-leader, and make-a-difference change-maker. Join a community of change agents at The Gathering to tap into the power and purpose of values.

Values work is potent. There’s great richness in going deeply into the foundational building blocks of values as part of the inner shift we are here to usher through in our work and with our clients. Working with values is the first step if you, like me, care deeply about making a significant difference in the lives of your clients, and so, by extension, inviting that big difference to show up in the world.

It’s most effective when values are shared, and so building community around values is one of the great challenges we face in co-creating a new society and the upgraded institutions needed to serve it.

I have been called into a hugely productive partnership and collaboration with The True Purpose Institute. Their “first Wednesday of the month” tele-seminar, called The Gathering, invites change makers in all arenas to come together to learn and strengthen the inner game that will make us more effective in the change we are here to support in the world.

This Wednesday, 5 June, is the call that focuses on Values.

It is part of the True Purpose Institute monthly “Gathering” calls, and is being offered in partnership with the Barrett Values Centre. I invite you to join us if you can. I urge you to sign up to receive the recording, even if you have a conflict with being on the call live.

Here’s a bit about the “inner requirement” for knowing and living your values as change makers.

~=~=~=~=~=~=~=~=~=~=~=~=~=~=~=~=~=~=~=~=~=

When wielding great power, you must be guided by
clear principles that ensure your actions are in
alignment with your purpose. As Mahatma Gandhi
said, “The means are the ends in the making”!
How you go about creating transformation is every
bit as important as the transformation itself.
Moreover, the values you choose must be consistent
with the world you are creating. This ensures that
your actions will continually model and reinforce
the new paradigm (assuming your behavior aligns
with your values, of course!)
~=~=~=~=~=~=~=~=~=~=~=~=~=~=~=~=~=~=~=~=~=

Below is the link to sign up to receive the call-in details about The Gathering calls. There is no charge for the call, though there is a place to “pay it forward” via a True Purpose Institute-affiliated nonprofit.

The Gathering for Change Makers offers a year+ of monthly, high-level change-agent and inner-game strengthening conversations and community calls.

Here’s the link to sign for to get the call details (and also get access to this call recording as well as past and future call recordings):

http://Tinyurl.com/bjmTPIGathering

 

To sharing values in community!

Bobbye

Blueprint for Conscious Creation

 

Words for Transforming You and Your Contribution:
How to Be in the Soup of Chaos and Know You Are in the Right Place —

 

Monarch emerging and 2 remaining chrysalises
Photo courtesy MK Salovaara

 

Welcome to the new Heart of Creation where:
*All is new and forming and malleable.
*All is possible.
*There is nothing wrong with you.

 

“Change is nonlinear; it proceeds by leaps and bounds to strange and unexpected places. If you want creativity, you give up predictability…”
—Margaret Wheatley
Author of Leadership and the New Science
(and most recently, Walk Out Walk On)
From the New Dimensions Perpetual Calendar

The New Heart of Creation

Many are observing and speaking out about the shifts of energies on the planet as we come to the end of the cosmic age. People see things breaking down, deadlocks, impasses in the old models and paradigms, the powers-that-be fighting a vicious fight for survival, deep disappointment in the institutions that purport to serve us and instead are serving only themselves. This is looking at the half empty glass.

Consider…

Meantime on the other side of the matrix, millions of lightworkers, members of the Turquoise Tribe, self-growth experts, are busy creating anew.  We are the ones seeing and building on possibilities and potentialities. WE are the people bringing forth new stories, birthing new ways of working and playing together, renewing and rediscovering the richness of ancient paths of wisdom, community, contribution, and grace.

New paths, many diverse yet congruent paths, are opening their way up and up the mountainside. From the shared “everyday,” we are scaling these peaks together and in new ways, many lamps lit along many pathways. All together, we are illuminating the way — FOR EACH OTHER.

Here from within the heart of creation, ask yourself this question: What if you didn’t have to “attract” anything?   Nothing.  At.  All. Why? Because with your deep and conscious Presence, (and the confidence to stand firmly grounded IN that Presence) the very act of waking up means that it’s all right there at your fingertips.

It’s not about “Attracting” anymore. It’s about waking up and Allowing. Yes, the new, improved LOA is The Law of Allowing.  It’s a matter of unlocking and opening the door, of shining your light of welcome, and inviting in the most perfect relationships for whatever is next for you.  From the place of conscious awakening, you’ll realize that even the door itself is an illusion.

That takes trust. And when you are in the cocoon, perhaps even still liquefying, how can you see clearly?

What is the message of transformation from within the chrysalis?
Deep within, from the heart of the imaginal cells, the seed and blueprint of the butterfly lives in perfection. Even when the caterpillar is breaking down inside its protective chrysalis, the message of the existence of butterfly lives pure and true, even in the soup of seeming chaos.

From this invisible world, inside the butterfly blueprint, what comes forth at the most perfect time IS the butterfly — breaking free, stretching and exercising its wings, as it emerges into the physical, manifest world.

Many of us, and I include myself here, feel like we are in a soup of chaos and transformation — and that is on our good days.  What if that is true? How do we move forward together, trust the unfolding, especially when that seems completely of new cloth, a new paradigm?

For millenia, the Feminine Spirit has been abducted, spirited away from the public conversation. Patriarchy has been running the show. Now She — The Divine Feminine Spirit in Business, Healing, and the Heart of Creation — is back in this planetary eleventh hour.

The Feminine Spirit in Business holds the blueprints for paradigm-changing awakenings in how we structure work, contribution, service, and bringing the divine and gifts to the clear channels for exchange.  It’s resolutely NOT going to look like what came before.

Welcome, Co-creators with the Divine Feminine Spirit in Business. We are in the soup of Transformation, and something new and brilliant is in the process of being born: The birthing of each one of us and all together “Owning Our Greatness.”

It starts with going inside first, going deep first. It starts with listening to the yearning and longing and allowing what is deeply true to emerge onto the page in your own words.

Your first step in practical creation is making a safe space for your young inner parts to speak their truth to you — without your judging-self stopping the flow.  Your emergence is longing for you to be present!

I’ve been called a “vision midwife.” Partnering with the Feminine Spirit in Business means co-creating from a planetary and cosmic space that has never before been accessible. Recently I received a direct message from the Divine Feminine Spirit in Business and asking me to share. “Language is key to manifesting,” she said, “and it’s one of the primary limitations for those bringing their vision into form.” That’s where I support women visionaries and co-create safe spaces for growth and expression inn partnership with the Feminine Spirit in Business.

All our rich contributions and gifts are so needed at this crucial time — especially the hidden and secret messages! So step into the circle and become one of the Conscious Co-Creators. For that, you may indeed want to consciously “Own Your Greatness.”  There’s a proven path to follow to strengthen yourself as you emerge from your cocoon.

For your own personal access to a no-charge “Safe Space” Playbook/workbook for “Owning Your Greatness,” for downloading your yearnings and really listening to your own inner messages, please sign up at the top of the right-hand column!  Just enter your name and email at the top of the sidebar on the right side of the page.

You’ll receive a link to download your personal guide to owning your greatness — in words. You’ll receive uncommon support in emerging from your own chrysalis as the beautiful butterfly that you are!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Chrysalis: Emergence At Hand

Turnarounds 1:

Chrysalis: Emergence At Hand

 

Pre-emergence before the chrysalis
Photo by MK Salovaara

This is the first in a series of life lesson stories that illustrate the powerful and invigorating TURNAROUNDS that we are all capable of creating for ourselves, in the sacred circle of our words, reflection, and inquiry.

 

Your Journey

Have you been on a journey of personal growth, spiritual development, and profound transformation for awhile now? Maybe you feel like something just isn’t happening; it’s incomplete; OR you feel like you should be there already?  Maybe you’re tired because you feel like you have been on this journey your entire life. “There has to be a better and simpler way,” you think to yourself.

Like you, I feel as though I have been journeying long and often alone. It’s been a precious voyage of inner discovery. And it has seemed like things have been “so close.” It’s like the mathematical asymptote: The line approaching the curve and never arriving.

A Puddle of Ineffectiveness

One day, I confided to my coach, Alan Hickman, that I felt exactly like a little puddle of ineffectiveness that wasn’t going anywhere. Thanks to Alan’s deep listening, reflecting, and training in inquiry, he stood with me in the sacred circle to turn it around.

First, I owned that, “Yes. It’s true. I’m right now in a space of being not very effective.”  Deeper inquiry told me a different story from what I’d been judging myself about and beating myself up for.

(You know, the old riff of “I’m stuck. What’s wrong with me and why can’t I move?”  And I’m sure you’re familiar with the “WHY AM I NOT THERE YET????!!!!” conversation.)

The Caterpillar Turnaround

The metaphor that arose in our discussion was the caterpillar. It had felt for so long like I was melting down from the inside, and I didn’t know who I was or what I was about. Everything seemed to be shifting and changing.

Then the Ah-Ha.  Suddenly I realized that I was indeed looking at the inside of the chrysalis.

Here’s what I could now see: By loving and embracing the stuckness, the ineffectiveness, the right-where-I-am-ness, I was able to acknowledge myself for exactly where I am — like the butterfly looking out from inside the chrysalis. Observing myself with love and compassion, I can see that I am right where I am supposed to be.

Butterfly on my Ankle

A few weeks after my conversation with Alan, this chrysalis narrative continued, as I continued to “notice what I notice.” As I practiced Qi Gong meditation in the garden on two separate days, a butterfly landed gently on my ankle. That was my signal to share this narrative. The butterfly wings are flapping to strengthen themselves for emerging from the chrysalis and getting ready to fly.

(Interestingly enough, I also observe that my drops of essences from Jane Bell, called synchronistically enough, “Emergence,” are nearly complete.)

The Message from Ovo

Another message reaffirmed my understanding. A visit to Cirque Du Soleil’s brilliant “Ovo” show, provided the image of the chrysalis in an aerial interlude. Pressing against the sheer fabric, the butterfly finally emerged high in the air, flapping its  (her?) gossamer wings.

Affirming Our Shared Emergence

These words too emerged. “Share this story and this image. For many are in the chrysalis and can use a guide, the powerful validation  that where they are is just where they are meant to be.  Help them to understand they are seeing from inside the chrysalis, and that their time of emergence is at hand.”

And so, for midlife, best-half-of-life creators of all kinds, global transformers of consciousness, messengers, change agents, thought leaders, awakeners, authors, and healers: I send greetings and encouragement from the chrysalis.

I’m with you when I say I know you are longing to step into your potential, to create transformative projects, businesses, creations, books, messages, ventures. I know you’ve been feeling for a long time stuck, stalled, scared, not good enough, or like you should be there already. Maybe you feel like you are trying to push the river to MAKE SOMETHING HAPPEN.

Emergence — Not Emergency

Allow yourself in this moment to relax. Know that you are enough as you are; and you are where you’re meant to be. Allow yourself to just BE in the soup of transformation. Be willing to flap your wings to strengthen them for your own emergence.  (Try practicing in this safe space by bringing your story from your chrysalis into this community of comments.)

Shift the DNA of Your Experience

What has been most surprising for me in this turnaround is that by embracing the stuck, stalled, scared puddle of ineffectiveness, I’ve literally changed my patterns and shifted the cellular experience of myself.

It starts with an honest acceptance of, and even surrender to, exactly where you are right now. Realizing and embracing that you are still taking shape  — you, your project, your creation, all together inside the chrysalis — creates a powerful self-recognition. More powerful still is to embrace your whole seemingly stuck self  — completely free from judgment, and with love, appreciation, and gratitude.

And so you can. It’s the best prayer and meditation ever.

Emergence complete
Photo by MK Salovaara

 

 

 

 

Information Overload Vs. Discernment

The gifts, messages, and sacred stories are flowing with abundance. If you chose, you could listen in and connect with thought leaders in your niche every single day, multiple times a day. You can follow the teleseminars, webinars, tweets, blog posts of Cultural Creatives on many different parts of the same or similar paths. You can try to comment on everyone who resonates, and so many people do. Their messages are potent for you.

For those of us charged over the years as “Living Libraries of Light,” the ocean waves of messages from thought leaders threaten to swamp us. Information overload is very real. We inhale to take it all  in — and choke. We open our arms to embrace all that seems good and true and beautiful — and we are carried into the undertow because we cannot embrace it all.

The great shift and turning is upon us, the turning of an age. You can read about networks, circles, communities, tribes of people dancing at the edge of transformation, opening the doors, windows, and portals, ushering in new ways of being that are freeing and liberating and connecting us with our true selves, our deepest and  Divine Essence. The forward motion and momentum, unfolding us into our future selves, continue unabated.

Even so, others steadfastly yank on chains of the past that hold us fast in old models and paradigms that are breaking down.  The powerful in the world clamp down on anything that empowers greater numbers of us. That is the old story that the powerful are trying desperately to hold onto. And in this time of disparate and desperate polarities, we are tacking, our small ocean-going canoes heaved first one way, then another.

Discernment is key. How do you discern who to follow, who to listen to, who to invite into your own inner sacred space? I’m not saying I have all the answers, but perhaps together we can access and share some useful questions.