Yours, Mine & Ours

 I love collaborating with groups of women. There is nothing "juicier" than having a pool of creativity to draw upon, especially when working on a large project.


So why do we sometimes get derailed when working collaboratively with other women? One of things that can pull us off track is when we start to feel possessive about our work, our ideas and our creations. We see them as belonging to us. "If I put all of this thought and effort into this project, then I should get the credit for creating it." Now, there's nothing wrong with identifying our creations as unique expressions of who we are, but problems can arise when our egos get attached to ownership and when we lose sight of the bigger picture.

Do we ultimately "own" our thoughts, ideas and creations? If we are connected to Creation itself, here to do our part in the expansion of Creation here on earth, then it seems that what we create doesn't really belong to us individually, but rather is part of  ALL of us as a creative force made up of individual creative beings. When we understand this broader concept, then it becomes easier to work alongside our sisters and remember that each woman has something valuable to contribute to the whole.

We all have our preferences. We may not feel like our ideas are aligned with someone else's, and then it's up to us to decide whether or not we want to "dance" with that person or group. But if we do decide to collaborate with others, we can make it a joyful, effortless experience, by letting go and remembering that Creation is expressing itself through all of us.

Love your uniqueness AND love that you get to dance with all of creation!

Heading into the Storm!

This afternoon I was driving from one side of the valley to my home on the other side of the valley. As I got into my car, the sun was shining and the sky was sparkling blue. As I headed North, I saw  dark, ominous rain clouds in the distance and knew that I would be driving straight into the storm. What a great metaphor for life on the planet right now!

We are being called "home" to our Divine selves, but often, when we look ahead, we see that the road may not be all sunshine and fluffy white clouds. We see the storm brewing and we're not sure that we will make it through. We may feel the urge to run for shelter until the storm is over. We are tempted to find a different route in hopes that we won't get blown around or get wet.

The thing is, if we are willing to drive straight into the storm, we will be washed with the cleansing rains and ignited by the electricity that charges the air around us. When we finally arrive, we will have an appreciation of our "home" that is so much deeper. We will feel our connection to all of the earth and it's elements. We will discover that the Universe was totally taking care of us. We were never really in any danger. Because we braved the storm that we perceived as "dangerous", we now have a tale to tell of our journey. We can offer comfort to our fellow travelers, who may be fearful of life's storms.

Women Leading the Way Together... REALLY together! - How to leave the old paradigm behind.

How far have we REALLY come as women towards working together collaboratively in a spirit of generosity and cooperation? I've been asking this question of myself over the past few weeks.

I've noticed that I still compare myself to other women, that I worry that there isn't enough to go around, that somehow I will be left in the dust while others are living the life of their dreams. Feelings of jealousy emerge when another woman is doing something that I wish I were doing or that I judge is "better" or "beyond" where I am. My intellect knows that this is ridiculous. My heart knows that I am unique and have gifts to offer the world that are unlike anyone elses. My ego still wants to be the center of attention and have people praise me for being brilliant, wise, innovative, creative and "better than" someone else. After all the "work" I've done on myself, these feelings make no logical sense and yet they energetically creep into conversations and sneakily weave their way into what otherwise would be a purely giving and loving acts. As I have revealed this to friends, most of them say that they experience these same feelings, especially when engaging with other women.

So how do we TRULY transcend this so that we can live fully in this new paradigm of women working together?

For me, the first step has been to admit that I have these feelings. My old tendency would have been to go into some deep analysis of the whys, spending hours scanning my past to find where I had felt unloved or insecure. Our world is shifting too rapidly now for us to spend much time in deep self-analysis. Knowing the cause doesn't even guarantee that our feelings and behaviors will change. If we can acknowledge our feelings without being attached to them, then we can move on. As long as we live in a human body, we will have an ego, so we might as well just let it have it's say, "thank you for sharing", perhaps even laugh at it's little games.

For women to trust each other again, I think it's also important for us to acknowledge how we have hurt each other in the past. I don't think there is a woman out there who hasn't felt betrayed or hurt by another woman. Again, there is no need to dwell in feeling bad or be overly apologetic about our history. There is something so freeing about admitting that we forgot who we are and forgot that our sisters are walking beside us and are not against us. When we take responsibility for the part we have played, without beating ourselves up for it, then our sisters hear us and feel safe to take responsibility for their own part.

This does not need to be a long, drawn out process. The world is changing so rapidly and we are being called to lead the way in the great shift that is occurring. Ultimately it is not even about women or men. We are emerging as an integrated, human species and leaving behind our limited definition of what it means to be in a male or female body. If we each ask ourselves, "what do I need to do today to leave the past behind and move forward?", then we can more gracefully expand into our newly emerging world side by side.

What are those feelings of isolation really about?

I live in Phoenix, the 6th largest city in the U.S., and I have felt isolated living here! The feelings of isolation run deep in us. We come to this earth looking for connection, desiring to belong, and in our effort to create a feeling of oneness, we have actually done the opposite. Our societal structures...man-made geographical borders, religion, political systems, schools, clubs, etc., are structures that have separated us from each other. If I belong to "this" group and you belong to "that" group, then we are separate.

Two things are happening right now. The old structures are crumbling but, as they are falling apart, there are even more people trying to hold on, which means that the dualistic way of thinking is actually on the rise as well. This is only a temporary state of confusion. As more people wake up to our divine connection, a tipping point will be reached, and the falling away of old structures will happen more rapidly.

For me, those feelings of isolation come from my attachment to the state of confusion and fear that is in the world right now. The call to awaken to something greater can feel overwhelming and have us believing that  we have to handle it alone. We are being called to oneness and the only way to live it, is to truly understand that we are not separated geographically or in any other way. We are never alone. We are part of something so much greater than our individual selves, and it is from this place that we will move forward together with LOVE!

PLANETARY UPHEAVAL- What is our role here?

Dear Hearts,

As we have opened ourselves in this time of Awakening, we have also opened to feeling the world in an energetically deeper way. This can result in being tuned in to the pain and suffering and feelings of overwhelm and helplessness. Whether or not you are being directly affected by these natural disasters and political upheavals, it is natural to feel the magnitude of what is happening.


It is important now, more than ever, to remember what our role is in this planetary shift. We are not alone. We cannot individually "save" the world. A pole shift is not a "gentle" process. As the planet is going through major changes, so are we.

Keep breathing and tune in to YOU as a being of light among many shining lights. Your only job is to keep shining YOUR unique light. Believe it or not, when you hold the door for the elderly gentlemen at the grocery store or send a card to a friend who is struggling, you are contributing to the uplifting of the entire planet just as much as the relief worker who is pulling people out of the rubble in Japan.

We are in this together. Our strength lies in remembering and nurturing our connection to each other.

With so much love,

Sherryl

CHOOSING STONES ALONG THE PATH

One of my favorite things to do is to pick up stones that I find along the path when I walk in nature.  I’ve done this since I was a little girl, sometimes substituting seashells when the walk was by the ocean or pine cones when the walk was through a pine forest.

Today, I was noticing that I had unconsciously come up with a system of deciding which stones I would pick up to look at, and which ones would either come home with me or get tossed back to the ground. The ones that have come home with me over the year had to have at least one of the following qualities: smooth, unusual shape, familiar shape (heart, egg, rectangle, triangle), unexpected “defect”, or interesting color.

As I was standing between two small mountains on my desert walk this morning, I was reminded that, just like these mountains, each boulder, rock and small stone, was a piece of the whole of creation, and that it was only my mind and my judgments that separated one from another.  With this in mind, I began to pick up stones that I normally would not have bothered to pick up. Jagged, irregular, ordinary, dull… feeling the energy of each one. I realized that there was not much difference between the smooth, “pretty” ones that I had been choosing and any of these other stones. They each had their own unique set of characteristics, but essentially they were made of the same light and energy.

So which ones did I take home with me? I almost took home a few of the plain Jane’s just to prove to myself that I wasn’t attached to how things looked, but then I realized that as long as I am in this human body, I will always have preferences and it was okay for me to delight in the things that I found beautiful or interesting.

We have the entire Universe available to us, but we get to choose in each moment what we want to surround ourselves with and how we want to perceive those surroundings.

YOU are here to light up the Universe!

Why is it that we often feel a sense of separateness from each other and from the rest of the Universe? Generation after generation of human beings have tried to ease this pain and suffering by creating group structures that we imagine will help us to feel connected. Unfortunately, when we say we “belong” to a group, then we are also saying that we do not “belong” to another group.  The creation of these structures have had the opposite effect and have caused us to feel even more separate and disconnected.

In order to shift out of this old paradigm we need to understand the true nature of our being and our part in the grand scheme of things.

Remember that old toy from the 60’s/70’s, Lite Brite? Imagine that we are each part of that Lite Brite board. Our job is to fill just one hole on the board with our unique, vibrantly, colored light. I may be a fuchsia peg and my only job is to be the best fuchsia peg that I can be. You may be a yellow colored peg with the task of shining your gorgeous sunny yellow self from your hole on the board.  Together we create a beautiful picture of millions and millions of tiny lights. Each individual peg is an important part of the whole that we are together, but we also stand in our own light. We are one AND we are all of creation.

Shine on beautiful, radiant beings. We are in this together!