‘Rules to what?’, you may ask. The rules to the new game of life I am playing out in the world. I am not the only one playing but there are not many romping at the level I have jumped into. As such, I have a lot of space and freedom to create the details. Unknowingly, I’ve been in training for this for 3 decades. My life has been educating me for 30 years, complete with some of the greatest teachers, coaches, guides, and inspirations. My experiences have prepared me well – VERY well and I am ready now to share my variation of the new, greatest game on Earth.
It is time to bring this all together. It is time to demonstrate all the knowledge I’ve gained. It is time to teach the game to others. No one has to play. But anyone can play. Anyone. Anywhere. Anytime. I invite you to be a spectator of this new game for awhile – learn the rules and get the hang of it by reading, listening to, and soon, watching the stories. You will know when it is time for you too to come play – trust me, you will just know. For now, I can guarantee…this is a game you are gonna want to watch.
Stay tuned…much is going to be unveiled as we end this 2012 calendar year. However, you are required to first learn the rules of the game. I must give credit to the authors of the book from which I take this list (talked about in a different, but related context in their writings) – Sri Ram Kaa and Kira Raa. They authored 2012 Awakening – Choosing Spiritual Enlightenment over Armageddon. I will have much more to say about this book and its pivotal role in my spiritual journey in the near future. For the time being, know how grateful I am to have found this book and these four guidelines. They truly have been my inspiration every day for 2 years and I do believe they are the foundational key to being able to play this new game well.
Here they are – the four things that I have identified through my own journey to be the belief patterns that are integral and essential to creating the life of your dreams. How well you can master these foundational “skills”, the better player you will be in this new game of life. MUCH more will be written about these four themes. Today is intended to be only an introduction to them.
The rules are: 1) Be in Union; 2) No Judgement; 3) Unconditional Love; and 4) Surrender – Belief/Trust/Faith.
1) Be in Union – this is about being in union with yourself. Being aligned with that within you that is greater than you thus, connecting you to all. I know this is a mouthful and much more will be written in coming posts/books. Know, though, that this is absolutely the biggest missing link in our world at present. VERY few individuals are dialed into themselves. Even fewer realize how this is related to the interconnectedness of all living things on our planet. You need to take time to reconnect, to listen, to hear, to feel. It doesn’t need to necessarily be the 10-12 months I took in my life, but it needs to be more than a vacation that never really is a vacation. The most important relationship out there is the one you have with you – the greater part of you within. I call this “Divine Selfishness”. You must learn that you are infinitely more powerful to everyone and everything in your world when you take “proper” care of yourself first. You will soon see very real, undeniable examples of how this works.
2) No Judgement – this begins with yourself. You mustn’t judge yourself for anything. Not ANYTHING! In case, you are saying, ‘I don’t really judge myself that much’ perhaps it helps to realize that often, if not all the time, when you judge others it is a reflection of how you feel about something within yourself. There is a great deal of judging going on out in our world by people who are not naturally cruel, indicating to me the massive levels of pain we are feeling inside. Judging does nothing to help anyone – it hurts all involved as it is highly negative energy. It isn’t for us to judge. And this doesn’t mean I agree with everything out there. I most certainly have opinions but I do not judge anything or anyone – not anymore. I will most certainly have chapters and perhaps entire books that I will write regarding this topic.
3) Unconditional Love – simple, yet not at all simple. Phew. This one is no joke. Again, it must begin with yourself. You must have love for yourself that is not tied to any conditions. No mental messages of ‘I will love my body once I lose this weight’ or ‘I will love myself when I have the perfect significant other in my life’ or ‘I will accept myself as successful when I reach this level at work.’ I think we can agree that many folks cannot yet make the claim of having unconditional self-love let alone having this for others in our lives. Self-acceptance and self-love in the here and now is one of the most powerful skills one can possess in this new game. It’s the ultimate weapon of change-for-the-positive.
Using this skill as your springboard, you will then be ready for the obtaining of the next level – figuring out how to not have expectations for others that they must meet in order for you to love them. To truly have NO CONDITIONS for your love for others in your life. To not need anyone to act, think, or say anything specific but to just love others for exactly who they are today! Whoa! Without any doubt, the lessons I’ve learned associated with achieving this belief pattern have been the most challenging. Many, MANY stories I have to share will center around this world-changing emotion of love.
4) Surrender – Trust/Faith/Believe. I am going to save the explanation for this one for my upcoming post on “Religion & Spirituality”. This is a big one. This one requires such strength of connection that you don’t need anything on the outside to prove it to yourself or to anyone else. I know…believe me, I know how much pain you go through if you happen to believe something – know something – that you can’t seem to explain or show to anyone else. And when you try, others you admire, respect, and love call you delusional, crazy, insane, and accuse you of living in your own fantasy world. I don’t think I’ve known worse hurt than that in the past 18 months. But that is the ultimate test. If you feel/know/believe something that strongly from a place of love – not a place of fear – you must trust it, have faith, and believe. You must surrender to the power that is out there greater than us all and whatever “proof” you require, you will most certainly receive when the time is ready. “The universe will reward you for taking risks on its behalf.” Shakti Gawain
26 months ago I had zero awareness of this game and as such, my mastery level of the above-listed skills/rules was atrocious! It is unlikely that anyone reading is any “lower” than I was in any of these areas. So…no worries. If you have the desire to grow and change, you absolutely can do so!! If you believe you are capable of creating a new, better life for yourself you will do it!!
And one final, concluding fact I must share about this new game – there is no competition. Only cooperation. Only win-win. This isn’t about coming up with the best game plan to destroy your competition. This is about sharing and supporting because everyone playing this new game knows that there is an abundance of everything in our world. We are not out there competing for limited resources in anything. Again, it is about the underlying belief patterns – the underlying assumptions. If those change, EVERYTHING changes! Sound too good to be true? Have you ever asked yourself why too good can’t be true?
Get ready – the Games begin in less than 10 days!
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I know what it feels like to be emotionally abandoned as a child due to circumstances beyond control. I know what it feels like to not feel safe and secure in your own home as a child (due to outside city environment of, in this case, Detroit). I know what it feels like to have worry, anxiety, guilt, and fear as the most prevalent emotions in one’s life for the better part of 30 years. I know what it feels like to be a kid that never got to be a kid. I know what divorce of my parents feels like as a child. I know what the remarriage of parents (to one another) feels like as a child. I know what divorce between your same parents feels like for the second time, as an adult. I know what it feels like to be a star student and a star athlete. I know what it feels like to be super popular. I know what it feels like when you then are less popular. I know what it feels like to contemplate suicide.
I know what it feels like when all of your girlfriends begin to get boyfriends but you find you are not in the least bit attracted to boys your own age. I know what it feels like to fall in love for the first time with someone I couldn’t have and to never have had the chance to fully experience that love. I know what it feels like to be a college athlete. I know what it feels like to be an abused college athlete. I know what it feels like to have eating disorders and to hate one’s body for the better part of two decades. I know what it feels like to be married – and to be married when I had no flippin’ idea who I was. I know what it feels like to go through my own divorce.
I know what an overseas living experience, traveling alone and with a friend, feels like. I know what it feels like to accomplish a lot of physical feats – half marathons, half-ironmans, and training that pushed my body to limits I never knew it could go. I know what it feels like to be alone – physically and emotionally. I know what working on a farm entails. I know what it feels like to completely rewire one’s brain – going from underlying, dominant belief patterns of 95% hatred of one’s self to creating new beliefs of 100% love & acceptance of one’s self.
If you have gone through any of the above (and this list is far from exhaustive) I know those feelings! I know those emotions and associated thoughts that you repeat over and over again in your mind. I get it at a level that you only get as a result of going through it. And as someone who has been searching for decades for others outside of me to get it I can tell you the freedom lies in not needing that. However, to get to that point will definitely entail work. I know, from experience, that it is so much easier if you find someone – anyone – to validate the most painful, damaging experiences of your past. You can and will eventually get to the point of validating it for yourself but it can take so much longer. And I think we are here in no small part right now to help one another save a lot of pain by sharing our stories. I know that by sharing my stories I will be providing to others this solace I’ve spent so much of my life seeking. I was reminded on the evening of the 17th yet again how amazing it would feel to get that relief. If I only help one person with each story it is worth it.
I am highly empathetic to others but there are certain experiences I will never know. I will never know what it feels like to be adopted. I will never know what it feels like to lose a parent to death while still a child. I will never know what it feels like to struggle in school academically. I will never know what it is like to have a sister for a sibling instead of brothers. I will most likely never know what it feels like to birth a baby and consequently, that primal connection between a mother and her child. I will never know the depths of darkness associated with particular addictions. And the list can go on forever and ever. But I have had very close relationships with folks that have had many of these experiences, which took my level of understanding up many notches. It isn’t the same as experiencing it and I will never claim to be able to fully understand experiences I’ve never myself had.
Make no mistake about it. I think the desire to be understood perhaps trumps even the desire of love. One is a subset of the other but for many, finding just understanding alone could drastically alter their lives. And the power of reversing that energy from negative to positive is unlike anything you can probably yet imagine. Honestly…the power & energy that results from living out of love vs. fear is the power that creates new worlds. Let’s create a New Earth!
Thanks for reading!
Dedicated to all my past experiences for providing me the vast, range of emotional life experiences. If not for all of it, I would not be so perfectly qualified for the job at hand. I am nothing but grateful for every single experience. Appreciation & gratitude – the keys to freeing yourself from the prisons of the pain.
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Premise 1: I believe in the universal Law of Attraction – what you put out in the world is what you attract back.
Premise 2: I have an unprecedented understanding of ALL the different energies I’ve been putting out in the world my entire life.
Premise 3: I do not believe in accidents or coincidences. Every path – much more specifically with friends than with family – is crossing for higher purposes.
Logical Conclusion: I am drawing to my life experience at present some very, very powerful souls. The opportunities for inspiration and cooperation to indeed change this world surround me (us) – EVERY DAY!!! What has come together in the past 7 weeks (the realization already of some of my wildest dreams) will pale in comparison to what is achieved in the next 6 months!!
A significant part of my vision has been to own my own company that would allow me the opportunity to work with all the friends with whom I particularly connected to & loved over the years. As a young person in a home with so much pain and sadness, I was constantly looking to relationships outside of the family to fill my many emotional voids. As such, I genuinely connected to people of all ages – often, at very deep levels within only days or weeks. Neighbors for whom I baby/pet/house sat often remarked that they couldn’t believe I was only 12 years old with the way that I spoke and carried myself. Not surprisingly, this ability to connect with others, driven by my deep, emotional needs, resulted in many, many close friendships. It hit me very hard as a young teenager when I first began to experience the reality of friends coming & going in one’s life. The families for whom I babysat would move; the young couples I befriended on our street would outgrow their starter homes; the college kids on our block would go back to school and/or leave home for good. And every time…my heart would break. THAT is when this portion of my vision was born.
This desire grew tremendously as a result of my athletic endeavors. Two programs, in particular, represented the epitome of what a dedicated, focused, group with great leadership could achieve – the Plymouth Lightening soccer program and the Plymouth-Canton high school basketball program. While soccer was my foundational love athletically, my world changed forever playing the sport of basketball for my Michigan Hall of Fame coach at Canton. We were absolutely a family. The genuine love we had for one another brought buy-in on such a powerful, subconscious level that it allowed us to achieve well beyond what our pure athleticism alone would have. I began at this time, albeit not yet consciously, to wonder what a work world would look like with such “teams”.
After college, I discovered that my inability to find any sort of niche in the mainstream work world was directly related to this growing desire. I knew, at some level, what amazing things could be accomplished without all the ass-kissing, inefficient, bureaucratic bull shit that seemed to plague every work environment in which I found myself. I didn’t want to settle for anything less than my desire to have my work directly influence the world. I wanted to see & feel it! I refused to accept this notion of putting in time in any system or job just for the sake of doing so. I wanted to do what I was capable of doing NOW! I wanted to bring change to parts of society that I personally experienced & observed but learned that our economic equations do not take into consideration so many necessary things to accomplish this. Things I felt were absolutely essential yet not given any real economic value – happiness, generosity, friendships, and most importantly, love. These things make a difference. In fact, I would argue an infinite difference in whatever goal is being pursued. On November 19, 1993, the Canton girls proved this phenomenon in a win unlike any other. And now, I am creating a for-profit company that will demonstrate it unlike any other.
Here’s the situation…I’ve never stayed anywhere in my adult work life for longer than 2 years and people tend to remember me – in one way or another. I’ve crossed a LOT of paths and now everything and everyone is coming together perfectly. Childhood friends, USF b-ball women & men, USF AKPsi guys & gals, USF Kosove Society, USF Alumni Association, PricewaterhouseCoopers colleagues, Museum of Science & Industry folks, the kids I taught at Marshall Middle School, all of the extremely powerful Sarasota crowd, and most recently, Microsoft.
Last year, my first year out in the world after my “transformation”, was the most incredible working year of my life (until now, of course). This was due first and foremost to the changes within myself. For the first time (while not playing sports) I was living in the present & not blindly chasing another achievement. I discovered that truly being in the present with the understanding & immense appreciation for the power of NOW changed my entire world – practically overnight. My relationships to and with everything have never, ever been richer. And I got to experience this first at a company like Microsoft. It was by far, the most challenging year while simultaneously providing me with episodes of overwhelming beauty & love! The growth and maturity that took place was immeasurable. More profound, however, were the number of ideas the experience launched within me as I bridged two, very different worlds. This adventure absolutely had much higher purposes.
Months before my physical arrival in Seattle this job literally fell into my lap. It took about 20 hours for the shock to settle and for me to know that this was way more than a lucky break. This gut intuition was reinforced all year long. I worked with some of the most amazing individuals I’ve met thus far in my life. Incredibly bright, very witty, huge hearts, and immense work ethics. And I grew quite close to quite a few of them. For now, suffice to say, I definitely did NOT end up at Microsoft accidentally. If my vision is to change the world does it not make perfect sense I would land at one of the largest, most powerful companies out there? Coincidental? Delusional? Nope! Not at all!
In this life, I am a bridge. I am a connector. I am a teacher. And I am most definitely a leader. I have always had energy but never fueled with these exceptional levels of positivity, hope, dreams, and aspirations. It is all coming together now! I am established on the east coast AND the west coast. I am utilizing ALL of my life experiences, which span the gamut from corporate world to organic farm to entrepreneurial pursuits. I am connecting to friends located all over the country and globally. I have the absolute perfect resume for my job now – employing myself to change the world.
Phase 1 is all that is known at present – my personal speaking, blogging, and authoring. Everything beyond that will be created with others. It too has already begun. The specifics will continue to unfold project by project. In general, however, I can tell you what they ALL will entail- extraordinary efforts to create more peace, love, and happiness out in the world. Go ahead and call me a hippie. I’ll be all the hippie you want me to be because who in hell doesn’t want as much of these things as humanly possible. And I believe we are capable in this world of creating MUCH, MUCH, MUCH more of all 3!!!
Just wait!
Super Noon
Dedicated to my youngest brother, Andrew. Today is his 32nd birthday. We are almost exactly 5 years apart and the similarity of our spirits is truly uncanny. The guiding light that brought me to the city that changed me 4 1/2 years ago. I am so very excited to see what the months ahead have in store for us and our shared lives in FL. I KNOW it includes music and I can only dream that someday soon I will be playing the drums with a fraction of the emotion, passion, and talent with which he plays! Time to sing, play, and dance, Drew!! Happy birthday!
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