Receive the gifts of this season

 
May there be moments
that touch you 
deeply in these
days ahead

within this
whatever culture 
or beliefs you 
rest in or
are surrounded by

Whatever pain
whatever bliss
pay attention to 
the fullness of
the one heart
and the timelessness
that continues

 

Possibility from the Pressure

Today, I have been so acutely aware of several places where people I know are experiencing painful situations. In much of society there are echoes of this, and this time of year of Celebration, with joy focus, also carries with it such shadow.

Such beauty and such poignancy........ Feeling all this and being willing to include feeling both the song of the joy and the song of the pain, carries with it a gift, a potentiality. 

Meeting such reality in the places of pressure, calls and invites me to notice too, the cracks where the light starts to pour in. 

This requests me to take care where I place my attention. . . . .

Welcoming reality how do I influence ?

More and more I am interested in meeting closer and closer the direct experience of life in my day to day and all that is happening in the world around.  

More and more I notice the need to do this sustainably deeply, heartfully, as I meet life, in its raw, unveiled, 'as it is'ness, in the wideness depth and fullness of how I respond.  

Here it is, that I notice so so many different kinds of exquisite resonances and responses that happen in me and in the atmosphere of the spaces I am in.

This video, by a high school student, has somehow manged to reveal so much. Seeing this inspires and deepens the question in me of how to wake up more fully to what is happening around me amidst the wave after wave of interactions and shifting constellations of personal, societal and global events and interactions.

 

I am left with the question of how, even more, I can, be with myself so that when I ask questions and have interactions and reflections, that there will be such an unveiling and welcoming as happened in this video.

#loveintheordinaryworld #welcomereality

 

Something IS

Bombing Syria am I able and willing to feel this?

And so the wheel turns again. And the compassionate heartful response to life has been ignored. Fight, and the sense of fight has been thick in the air today, and the last days.

This land, this government has chosen to drop bombs on Syria. Massive explosions, and huge amounts of force and resources, poured once again into a fight. A killing fight. What was once in the school playground, is once again being played out on the world stage.

In this brief moment in time, in these tiny lives that we have, here it is, in this day and age,  the force of killing , so strongly being put forth.

This is not the w a y it should be, this is not my way. I am ashamed and horrified. And not only that, that this is happening, once again and more and visibly, but that there is such an unheartful resonance with which it is being done. And, how, shockingly, I feel in me, the resonant reflection of the excitement that a part of me has, addicted to war, pain ,  oppression and inflicting suffering. How so very much I am immune to this. Immune to the very real depths of it.

I look for and request a way to be able to feel more fully, a ful filled feeling, of this life. This aliveness of being alive in life.

I hold an image of a flower, a bright yellow multi petalled flower, with a few green leaves. Fresh bright and new. Somewhere, in the midst of this, there is hope.

One-to-One Sessions in Devon in December

In my monthly vists to Devon  I'm offering One-to-One sessions (#Lifecoaching #Businesscoaching #Enquiry) a few places left for this December visit.
 

In these kind of sessions, I  work with people who are interested in going more deeply into something, to welcome the reality and possibilities of life more directly and to meet themselves and life more fully.

 

More information at:
http://www.lifecoach-directory.org.uk/lifecoaches/christoffer-de-graal

and https://uk.linkedin.com/in/christoffer-de-graal-04340b

 

SUFFRAGETTE and challenges and opportunites

I was So so SO deeply moved by seeing this film. How so very different than the impression we were given at school. ..... So much to think about in the responses I had. what a roll on effect has happened since those amazing woman took the stand they did....and what lengths they had to go to. 

This took place,1.5 miles from where I now live. When I first saw this photo, before seeing the film, I though it was a bit shocking; now I understand what they had to go to, and  the lengths they went to just to get their voice heard thru the layering's of inertia in society then.

http://www.bristolpost.co.uk/Bristol-Suffragettes-fought/story-19804806-detail/story.html 

How unjust society was to women then... What it took to start to change that societal discrimination, and extraordinary how that ripples through until today (at the end of the film, the list of countries and dates of when women got the vote was a moment of revelation....)

I am sitting now in understanding more, how so much that discrimination is still inbuilt and the injustice of that. And deeper gratitude and respect for the amazing men and women that are courageously speaking and doing so much.

I am inspired and grateful for the light of awareness that is increasing, and wondering where the institutional, societal and cultural discrimination's are so large that we, and I, have yet to wake up, or wake up more to take action that will be powerful and effective.

What, I wonder, are those actions that are in line with the next evolutionary step of this my life

Seeing this film has depend this ongoing question in me.

This View of Life

As I look out of my window this morning,  the light catching the face of the clock on the tower, the trees, standing tall and strong in their winter revealed shapes, I feel such gratitude for life; looking and seeing.  Something resting deeply in me as I feel open to these old buildings,  these large trees,  and the life vibrancy in the light and air. 

Someone killed my sister #RestorativeJustice #Suicide #EvolutionaryPotential

Someone killed my sister.  Grateful for #restorativejustice Ohhh.... could there be an equivalent? '#suicide

some notes from this mornings journal 10 years on.

Looking forward to meeting my sisters killer and to reconciliation......

so... that means... meeting her,

and

she is not here to email, txt or call... to meet and start that process...

10 years on - "Bex Took Her Life"

Bex would have appreciated that May 13th, the day she chose to take her life was in the midst of Mental Health Awareness week, (if it had been around in 2005) as well as Friday 13th, of which I am sure she was well aware.

This year, 10 years on, the grief I feel has a different flavour today. The tenderness and tears, is held in the field of and my awareness that it is MHA week, and also touched by reading this morning of someone who chose to take their life because (the trigger was) that they could not afford the Bedroom Tax ..... 

I do not know what the trigger was for Bex to decide to take her life (though the 1st two weeks of May 2005 gave me many many insights) Nothing in all the wonderful tools I have been blessed with over the years could hold the ripping thru and meeting the raw direct experience of that pain.

Today as I created this offering of my love for sister, and the tears streamed wet down my cheeks, I feel .... sad, and ... grateful. Sad that Bex felt that the only way out was to take her life, and grateful that I am still so touched by being able to feel how this was then, and how it touches me still and , possibly, that in all this a gift of her death, was to teach me to be just a bit more compassionate.

Dropping Closer

Sitting here, --- this moment, seeking, sensing, noticing....  close to me; dropping closer... Even in, and after the turmoil of such fearful feelings anh Painful thoughts, here l am resting in the trembling of the aliveness of this moment.

Sense of belonging and gratitude and being held safely by this life. In the emptiness and the form of this life and the fullness which I am and which all things are: such an extraordinary thing

Meeting and Creating future Potential

I've been thinking a lot recently about goal setting, visioning, and planning.

What is there to see when there is no eyesight, (or we don't look in the 'ordinary' way).  What are the ways to create, imagine and take steps to the future when some, or even many of the thoughts say "this is impossible", "this is not the way". 

How can we accept and meet our shadows with curiosity and enquiry, and follow the evolutionary potential that is arriving, that is coming towards us to meet us from the future.

I am inspired and touched watching this http://youtu.be/x9vHwCIaSwM
 

For me this video is not so much that this artist is blind and paints and is succeeding in what he is doing,  but what is touching me is the imperative which he is following, and how his life is lining up for him.

What would happen, if we did that more in our lives, and were to 'see' life in that way?