Patricia Pearce

Helping You Be the Change

Are You Still Passing On Your Light?

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Are you ready to accept the luminous Self you actually are?

The other day, when I was coming out of meditation, I heard the phrase “passing on your light.” At first I heard it as an instruction: don’t keep my light to myself. Pass it on.

But instantly I realized it was actually a commentary on what I suspect many of us do: pass on our light. As in “Oh, I think I’ll pass.”

I notice this tendency in myself. I experience many insights and spiritual ahas, so many that I couldn’t begin to share them all, but always the first thing that springs to my mind when they come is, “How can I share this with others?”

One might think this is an admirable quality. But actually it can be a form of deflection, a way of avoiding owning the insight and accepting it as an emanation of my own light.

I remember as a child playing the game of hot potato, when I and my friends would circle around tossing an imaginary hot potato to each other.

It’s like that. When we give away our light without first accepting it as ours, we are passing on it. We’re playing spiritual hot potato.

I suppose we play this game because we’re afraid of the potency of our divine nature, afraid of the intensity of our light. Maybe we know if we accept it we’ll have to come to terms with the fact that we are something very different from what we have always believed. But we have to ask ourselves if being loyal to a false identity is more valuable to us than being true to what we actually are.

I’m aware that right now we are in the sign of Leo, which is all about discovering our luminous Self and allowing it to shine. The sign of Leo is also associated with the Sun, and one reason life here on Earth can flourish is because the Sun is simply being what it is: a body of light.

So let me ask you this, are you ready to stop passing on your Light? Are you willing to accept that even the Sun can’t hold a candle to the luminous Self you truly are?

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De-Inventing Yourself

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The essential Self is not something you invent. It is something you are.

Lately the phrase “de-inventing myself” has been rolling around in my mind. It’s a potent phrase for me because I feel as though that’s exactly what I’m doing at this stage in my life.

Over the last many years I have become acutely aware of the identity that I inherited, an invented identity that conformed to societal and familial expectations, but which wasn’t really me.

We all inherit an identity, handed down to us by our ancestors and societies that reflect the beliefs they developed. This inherited, invented identity isn’t ever truly us. It is a sort of pseudo-self we are given and from which we unconsciously live—until we don’t.

There comes a time when the impulse within us to be true to ourselves, to be truly our Self, becomes too insistent. It is like a shoot pushing up through compacted soil that will not be deterred. It will express itself. And in order to do that it must break through the crust of the invented self.

We can try to keep it down. We can try to hold onto who we have thought ourselves to be out of fear. But deep down we know that’s not what we are here for.Continue Reading

The Counterintuitive Path of Transformation

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Are you ready to explore the path of transformation?
Are you ready to explore the path of transformation?

Imagine you woke up tomorrow to a life that was reflecting the fullness of the potential that you always knew was in you. What does your life look like? What sort of person have you become? Let yourself inhabit that vision for a moment.

You no doubt know that there is far more inside you than you have ever brought forth—more creativity, more contribution, more joy, more love, more life. You probably also understand that you have the capacity—as all human beings do—to consciously choose who you will become and to actively participate in how your life unfolds. The question is: How can you let go of the limiting beliefs and behaviors that prevent that potential from coming forth?

Why Personal Transformation Can Be Challenging

There are a couple of reasons why personal transformation can be challenging: we misunderstand what is real, and we misunderstand the nature of power. First, let’s consider our misunderstanding of what is real.

What Is Real?

Until you have achieved a certain level of self-awareness, you accept as true ideas about who and what you are that you have inherited or been socialized into. Even though these ideas are arbitrary, you take them to be reality: accurate and unchangeable.

You live as someone others believe you to be, and more important, you perceive yourself to be who others believe you are. These ideas and beliefs comprise your mental operating system, and it never even occurs to you to question them.

At the root of this operating system lies a fundamental error that almost all of us have inherited: the idea that we exist as solitary entities separate from one another and the rest of Life. This notion of being separate gives rise to a false self, often referred to as the ego, which we mistake for our true self.

And that brings me to our misunderstanding of power.

What Is Power?

As long as we are living from this ego perspective, we see ourselves as lonely strivers who must prevail over all obstacles through our own effort, and we see power as the ability to force things to happen—the ability to dominate, dictate and control.

This egoic understanding of power is what we see playing out on the national and global stage, and if we pay close attention we will see it within ourselves in our approach to personal transformation: once we realize that the beliefs we have inherited about ourselves are false, we try to overcome them through judgment and resistance and we try to become the person we wish to become through the energy of striving and grasping.

Ironically, this ego approach of force, with its judgment, resistance, striving, and grasping, is the very thing that assures that the old patterns stay locked in place. The ego approach to change keeps transformation at bay.

Transformation Arises from Acceptance

Despite our misperceptions, domination, force, and control are not power. Power is what has brought forth Life itself—it is an attribute of Love. Nor can transformation ever be achieved by the ego. It is a natural process which occurs in the presence of acceptance, appreciation, and blessing.

If you think about your own experience, you will probably recall times when being in the presence of judgment had the effect of shutting you down and inhibiting you from expressing your potential.

You will probably also remember times when being in the presence of love, acceptance, and appreciation allowed you to thrive. This loving energy is precisely the power we can bring to bear to support our own personal evolution.

Three Ways to Cooperate with Transformation

So how can you cooperate with the natural process of transformation? Here are three things you can do:

Lay Claim to Your Intention

You begin by affirming your intention to open to transformation, recognizing that it is not something you personally bring about. You move beyond your limited ego perspective and call upon the power of Love to assist you.

Setting an intention is very much like setting coordinates in your GPS. You use a GPS precisely because you don’t know how to get where you want to go.

What sort of person do you want to be? What sort of life do you want to live? What sort of contribution do you want to make in the world? These things make up your GPS setting.

You don’t dictate how your journey unfolds (which is what the ego would like to do). Rather, you lay claim to the person you want to be and the life you want to live, accepting that there is a greater Wisdom that is supporting you.

Accept and Bless

After laying claim to your intention, you practice something that seems counterintuitive and paradoxical, but which is extremely potent: accepting and blessing what is while simultaneously accepting and blessing what can be.

It sounds quite simple, and in a way it is. But it is also quite challenging because in order to do this you have to surrender resistance and disbelief. You begin to discover that you can yield to what wants to come forth, rather than strive to make it happen. You also begin to discover that you really aren’t in this life alone.

Become an Improv Partner with Life

Having assumed a stance of acceptance and blessing you enter into an improvisational partnership with Life, employing the improv maxim of yes. . . and. . .

You say yes to what Life has given you, and you offer up your own creative response to it without any attachment to specific outcomes.

Entering the Dance of Becoming

Through laying claim to your intention, accepting and blessing what is and what can be, and engaging in the improvisational practice of yes, and you open the way for transformation to occur.

Partnering with the power of Love, you enter into the dance of becoming. You allow your life to unfold in surprising ways that you neither dictate nor control, but in which you play a vital creative role.

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Your Radiant Nature Can Never Be Diminished

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Your worth can never be diminished

 

Do you accept the idea that Love is all there is, yet see yourself as the Lone Cosmic Exception (i.e. special)—the only being in the entire cosmos who is excluded from the circle of Love because, unlike everybody else, you are too unworthy or simply too irrelevant to be included?Continue Reading

Are You Making Your Best Contribution to the World?

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be your pixel 1
Are you being your pixel?

I’ve been thinking a lot about pixels lately. It might seem like a strange thing to think about, but it will make sense once I tell you the backstory.

I’ve been taking a couple of online classes to help me build a more robust author platform in preparation for some book launches down the road. One of the classes talks about finding your niche and positioning yourself against the competition.

Needless to say, I’ve been doing a lot of translating—trying to straddle the worlds of marketing and spirituality.

They emerge out of two very different worldviews. Conventional marketing focuses on competition and setting yourself apart. Spirituality, where my interest lies, is rooted in the realization of our oneness.

The way I see it, each of us is like a pixel in a larger picture. We each have our own authentic, unique attributes which the big picture needs. This is why I don’t need to think of my compatriot pixels (those who are offering similar teachings) as competitors, because we’re all doing our part to bring forth the big, beautiful picture. After all, an image of a dahlia needs more than one yellow pixel.

I was talking to a friend about all of this recently and she reminded me of that old Hassidic tale of the rabbi Zusya who died and went to stand before the judgment seat of God. As he waited for God to appear, he grew nervous thinking about his life and how little he had done.

He began to imagine that God was going to ask him, “Why weren’t you Moses?” or “Why weren’t you Solomon?” or “Why weren’t you David?”

But when God appeared, God simply asked, “Why weren’t you Zusya?”

We’re each here to be our authentic, unique pixel. Nothing else.

Despite what you may have been taught, it isn’t self-centered or arrogant to simply to be who you are and offer the world what you have to offer. In fact, if enough of us withhold our true hue and try to shine as a different sort of pixel, the big picture becomes nothing but a chaotic, indecipherable jumble.

So here’s my bumper sticker advice: Be your pixel. Go down deep into your essence, beneath all the beliefs that you’re supposed to be like somebody else or act like somebody else. Search for your authentic Self and let it shine—because the world needs you.

 

A Deity Within

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I rolled my eyes when I learned that the conference cocktail reception would be facilitated by a get-to-know-you game. I was ready to decompress with a glass of wine in hand – but as one of the conference organizers I felt obliged to participate. The task was to randomly draw a card with an image that represented a time of major cultural transition in your life. You could trade with others until you had a card that really spoke to you – and share with each other why.

I reluctantly participated. The first card I drew was that of a strong runner facing forward in her starting position, waiting for the signal to launch her race. I scanned my brain for the most significant cross-cultural transition I had completed – my family’s move from northern Germany to Vienna, Austria, when I was twelve years old. Thinking back to that time in my life, I did not feel powerful like an athlete, nor that I was running my own race, so I set out to trade cards.

I noticed that many attendees of the conference (aptly titled Families In Global Transition) chose cards with strong or romantic images to reflect their first overseas experience, presumably when they were adults. My childhood relocation has shaped me in beautiful ways, but it did not feel romantic, and I did not feel in control of my destiny. It had been my mother’s decision to move, not mine.

A fellow attendee walked past me holding a card with the image of an ancient, uninhabited desert building with openings for doors and windows leading into darkness. I was immediately drawn to it.

 

 

 

 

Photo: Courtesy of Anne P. Copeland, The Interchange Institute

My colleague seemed all too relieved to get rid of the card, as if thinking that she’d drawn from the figurative bottom of the pile. I started to feel a bit self-conscious about choosing an unwanted image. Would it reveal my inner demons? I decided to run with it.

We broke into groups and introduced the picture we chose. I explained that as a teenager in Vienna, I felt I’d landed in an ancient culture that I couldn’t figure out how to access. Every time I would open my mouth and reveal my high-pitched German accent, I felt treated like an outsider. In response, I created my own world, at first in the solitude of my room, and eventually with friends who were also “different.”

Someone asked me whether I imagined myself on the outside of the building – and yes, that’s exactly how it felt! I was free to roam around, unenclosed, not bound to one place; yet terrified, in fact, to enter the building whose interior I could not see. I’d gotten so used to being home-less, I feared I’d be trapped inside.

I took a sip of my wine. The afternoon sun illuminated the glass-and-steel conference center. That’s when it hit me: I still felt this way today! Even after years of building strong friendships and investing in the places I inhabited, a part of me remained on the outside looking in.

I was free to roam the world, dabble in any profession, endlessly follow my curiosity, dip in and out of communities – but at the same time I’d been terrified that choosing a “home” would consume me, restrict me, hold me captive. Since graduating high school and leaving Vienna, I had moved house more than twenty times in five different countries. I easily maintained long-distance ties to friends, teachers and employers, but felt reluctant to commit to a romantic relationship or a “permanent” job. Entering that building was not an option for me.

Despite my incessant craving for freedom and non-attachment, subconsciously I looked to other people, institutions, cities or countries to provide me with a sense of identity. I became unable to articulate my personal needs and viewpoints, felt easily misunderstood, and quick to leave when I was trapped between my conscious drive to keep all options open and my subconscious desire to belong.

The metaphor of this game became all too obvious to me: I was still unwilling to pack up my tent in the desert to reside inside the building. That building was not mine.

I put my wine glass down and left.

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On the Metro ride home, I felt perturbed by my discovery. I kept looking at the image of the deserted building, wondering what I had missed all my life by not going inside. Love, belonging, self-worthiness? If I was being really honest with myself, I didn’t even want to enter that dark, lifeless structure – I’d prefer the nomadic life out in the wild.

The doors opened at the next station and people got on. I briefly emerged from my introspection to become a passenger on the train. I imagined myself as a coach asking his client what would have to change about this building that would make him want to go inside?

Immediately, the image of the Parthenon came to me: the ancient Greek column structure that lets you enter and exit with ease, see through to the other side. A place where gossip, food and ideas are exchanged. A place where life bustles. A place that attracts life, transforms it, and allows it to move on naturally. An open-air home.

This new image gave me a sense of relief. I started thinking of other column structures, like in The Neverending Story, where the mystical Uyulála gives the young hero Atréju a riddle to solve. Uyulála exists only as a voice within her forest of columns, a place of divine mystery.

I pulled out my phone and looked up images for the Parthenon. One of the first was a reconstruction of the ancient Greek site, with this golden deity at its center:

In a flash I knew that the deity at the center of my house is me. “Home” is not just a place common to a bunch of people I know, but an ancient site that anchors me wherever I am. Home is not a trap, but an invitation. Home is where I am inside and outside at once. There resides a power at its center – my center – that is both still and eternal.

I decided that evening to move back to Vienna after fifteen years abroad. I had tried returning before, but now I knew that no person, no city, no culture can provide me with a deep sense of belonging. In the past, I kept wanting the deserted building to invite me in! Now I started to realize that this building had been my own projection, and that only I can change the structure of this house.

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kilian head shotKilian Kröll, Certified Executive Coach, dancer, published writer and President of Third Culture Coach, earned a B.A. in English from Haverford College and an M.A. in Cultural Studies from the University of East London. Kilian grew up in a bilingual family of classical musicians in Germany, Austria and the U.S. He just signed an indefinite lease in Vienna, Austria.

The Beauty Inside You

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Imagine if we were all taught to see the beauty within.
Imagine if we were all taught to see the beauty within.

This past Sunday I attended worship at a Quaker meeting. Quakers, who believe that the divine light is inside each of us and can be accessed by each of us without need of a mediator, usually don’t have a structured worship service, nor a clergy person who delivers a sermon. Instead, the community gathers and settles into a prolonged period of silence, and then, out of that silence, anyone who feels prompted by the Spirit will rise and speak what is on their heart.

Although it was a chilly morning outside, the meeting house was warm and made warmer by the crackling fire that was lit in the fireplace as worship began.

After a prolonged period of deep silence a few people began to rise and speak, and one of them delivered a message that moved me to tears.

She described how, when her son was three years old, they had a bedtime routine that included her reminding him, just as he was preparing to go to bed, to look for the beauty inside himself.

One night, unexpectedly, he changed the routine. Wide-eyed, he pressed his forehead against hers and reported the beauty he saw in her.  “It’s like diamonds, mama!”

I was overcome by the beauty of the whole scenario: by the beauty of such wise parenting that trains a child to see his inner beauty — and consequently nurtures his capacity to see beauty in others — and by the thought of what the world would be like if each of us had been taught to look for the beauty within.Continue Reading

Shedding Light on Our Limiting Beliefs

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Salt can’t lose its essence, and neither can you.

The other day, while I was salting my eggs at breakfast, I had an insight about one of Jesus’ teachings that had always eluded me. In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus is quoted as saying: “You are the salt of the earth; but if salt has lost its taste, how can its saltiness be restored? It is no longer good for anything, but is thrown out and trampled under foot.”

Even though in our day we take salt for granted, in ancient times it was precious for many reasons. It had purifying qualities, was frequently used in religious rituals and sacrifices, and it was used to preserve food, which in the days before refrigeration and canning could mean the difference between survival and starvation. Salt was so highly prized, in fact, that Roman soldiers were paid in part with salt, which is how we ended up with the word salary.

Jesus was speaking to uneducated Jewish peasants who struggled to survive under the brutality of Roman imperial rule. By saying, “You are the salt of the earth,” he was telling them they were precious, sacred, valuable beyond measure, which was probably not the message they got from the elite of their homeland and certainly not from their Roman occupiers.

Okay. That makes sense, but it’s the next part that’s puzzling. “But if salt has lost its taste, how can its saltiness be restored? It is no longer good for anything, but is thrown out and trampled under foot.”

That’s the part I never understood. How could salt ever lose its taste? Salt is a stable mineral, and it just doesn’t go bad. If you’re like me, you’ve had to toss out plenty of seasonings in your day, jars of herbs and powders that have been sitting in the spice rack for years, but never have I had to toss out salt because it wasn’t salty anymore.

As the salt tumbled from the salt grinder onto my eggs, though, it started to make sense.Continue Reading