When the inner joy Mother Teresa spoke of, the joy of compassionate service, is married to a practical and pragmatic drive to transform all existing economic, social, and political institutions, a radical and potentially all-transforming holy force is born. This radical holy force I call Sacred Activism.

A Sacred Activist is someone who is starting to experience the inner joy and outer effectiveness of this force, who knows that the profound crisis the world is in is challenging everyone to act from our deepest compassion and wisdom, and who is committed to being, in the face of growing chaos, suffering and violence, what Robert Kennedy called “a tiny ripple of hope” and a “center of energy and daring.”

– Andrew Harvey, The Hope

On a long-ago recommendation by Amy Oscar, (author of the soon-to-be-published Sea of Miracles) I downloaded Andrew Harvey’s book to my iPad. Today I read the forward and the introduction while nearby, Ada painted family portraits in orange, green and blue. I can’t wait to pick it back up. This is what I am being called to – what many of us are being called to. There is much in the news that hurts me. At times I am paralyzed by shock and dismay.

Let us step into our Sacred Activism as fully as possible. Let us stand in the light and shine where there is darkness. Let us know, in the core of our beings, that we are those tiny ripples of hope. The world is changing before our eyes, in unprecedented ways. Let us open our hearts and minds to change with it.

*** sidenote – one of my favorite antidotes to the news is Ode Magazine. I highly recommend it for a monthly dose of optimism.

Have you ever had a thought that isn’t about you? – Byron Katie

There are times when all I can do is laugh at the perfection of life.

Thursday morning an innocently sent text had me reeling backward through a lifetime of anger and hurt. Nothing happened and yet my body was shaking, the tears welled in my eyes, the anger threatened to engulf me. That text grabbed hold of a fish hook and pulled as hard as it could and the pain…oh the pain. As my mind whirled, frantically hanging on to old, worn out justifications of right and wrong, I knew that I was being offered an opportunity to shift, but I couldn’t see past the moment to figure out how.

I happened to have an appointment with the magician and I knew he would offer at least partial relief. I left his office feeling calmer. The spinning thoughts hadn’t stopped but they were causing less pain. I spent the next day and a half feeling grief, wondering what to do, what to say, how to break the pattern I set myself up in many years ago.

Saturday morning I walked into a one day workshop with Byron Katie, creator of The Work, and I understood.

I like or don’t like what I believe about you, but you have nothing to do with it.

– Byron Katie

If you haven’t heard of her – and I hadn’t until recently – Byron Katie has been helping people drop their stories for over 20 years with her four questions and “turnarounds”. Like Eckhart Tolle, (the two of them have recently published a book together), she was in unbearable mental and emotional pain when she woke up one day filled with joy, awakened, transformed. She is headquartered in Ojai, a 20 minute drive away, and every time I’ve passed by, I’ve wondered. I am a believer and a skeptic. Anytime someone claims to be an expert, or an awakened being, or to have the answers to some of life’s big questions, my heart wants to believe and my head says, Uh hunh, really? Prove it.

Katie is the real deal. At least as far as I could tell from the back row of the Ventura Center for Spiritual Living. Throughout the day as she answered questions, she would smile at the person who had spoken and tears would well in my eyes. The unconditional love and acceptance beaming from her touched the darkest recesses of my heart. We laughed – a lot. As she coached three individuals through the process, we witnessed the power of what she has to offer. I loved watching her work with sidestepping and denial, showmanship and softening, tears of love and pain. Oh the stories we tell ourselves.

You can pay between $10 and $30 for her books, CD’s and DVD’s. You can spend $90 on a day, like I did. You can pull $4500 out of your bank account to attend her 9 day School for the Work or you can get everything you need to do The Work on her website and by calling her 1-800 number, at no cost. If it didn’t mean leaving my daughter for over a week, I would be in LA this March, dropping my story faster than South Dakota shelved that “justifiable homicide” bill. But Katie said, You don’t need it. Everything you need to do The Work is available to you for free.

Yes it is. And I know the power of working in relationship, in community. It’s why coaches and therapists and support groups and 12 step programs are valuable. It’s why we get married and go to church and risk having our hearts ripped from our chests by having children. It’s harder to slog through the shit alone.

The conversation I will have with the above-mentioned texter, who I love dearly, will be completely different than the one I would have had. My life will be different, if I choose to do The Work on a regular basis.  It’s a welcomed addition to my growing toolbox.

That’s why anger comes. It shows you what to work with. – Byron Katie

I believe there are many paths to peace in this world. I believe we can use all the help we can get. I invite you to take a look at The Work and see if it resonates. Take your time with it. Don’t rush through the questions. Drop into yourself and let the answers come. If you need help, ask for it. Risk letting go of your story. Risk peace. Risk love.

You are about to meet the love of your life. And that’s you. – Byron Katie

One of the most important things Ben’s death has done for me is allow me to peel away layers of old habits and thought patterns, and feel as though I’ve been given another chance to step into myself. I realize we can make the choice to change on any given day, at any moment, but there’s nothing like life and death to shake things up.

Since I stopped acting professionally, I have been seeking work that satisfies the deepest, most honest, most brilliant pieces of my soul. Becoming a Pilates instructor didn’t do it, though it saved me from my acting career. While I loved – loved – going back to school, the actual work of being a therapist was too isolating for me. I had a business that taught me much about myself and clarified where my values lie. I learned that even though it was about the money, it was so not about the money. The potential for earning was there but it was never a perfect fit and I couldn’t bring myself to be who I needed to be to earn the big bucks. Coming from a family of artists and scholars, starting a business changed my perception of what I am capable of and even though I gave up, I caught the entrepreneurial bug.

I’ve been sensing the next idea hovering for a while, just out of my line of vision. Wanting to get specific, to get an answer, I would turn to look and it would vanish. Then I got the email from Pace and Kyeli at Connection Revolution announcing Profitable Idealism and my interest was piqued. I know that whatever I do, it must be of benefit to others in some way and that I have to be 100% aligned with it or it won’t work. I also know that I need support to turn any dream into reality. I joined their Twitter party to find out more (and won the KEZA necklace – thank you Pace and Johnny!). Yesterday as I wandered through the day, I started to get flashes of intuition. Last night I sat down with a glass of red wine and some organic corn chips – some habits die hard – and mind-mapped as the excitement built.

Today I crashed. I swung between sadness, anger, fear and despair. My heart hurt as I sat on the floor and painted with Ada. Steve called from work and I couldn’t hold the tears back. I watched my thoughts. I understood what was happening. I felt it in my body. Those ancient thought patterns were surfacing and I could either hand them my power or pull out the Mag light and toolbox. I might have been more graceful about it if I’d been on my own. I have yet to master the “deal with personal crisis while parenting young child” situation. We both survived. And every time I do this successfully, every time I stumble into the past and stay grounded in the present, I am one step closer to shining brightly. I am one step closer to wholeness.

*****

On a related note, I was asked today by someone in our neighborhood if I’d had the baby. It’s not as horrifying a moment as it used to be. For that, I am grateful.

My word for 2011 is ease.

Not easy, as in I want life to be simple, trouble-free, all bubble gum and champagne.

Ease.

Where I stand firmly in the center of who I am and it feels right, it feels good, it feels yesss.

Since the year has begun, I have felt many things. Ease was not often one of them. Today, on the drive from Orange County to Ventura County, on one of the busiest roads in the country, I watched myself closely. In my twenties, I loved driving. Loved the freedom of the open road, the chance to go somewhere new and different, or to go to the same place a new way. I drove a lot. From Toronto to Vancouver to Dawson City, Yukon, to Nova Scotia, back to Dawson. Across Canada several times. Across the US, stopping for gas station cappuccinos and Marlboro cigarettes.

After more than a decade in Los Angeles, I no longer enjoy driving. Today it felt like me, a sleeping child, some raindrops and a whole bunch of crazies on the road. My hands clenched, my chest contracted, my body pulled into itself. I said my silent prayer of protection and still found fear floating through my brain. Then I began to notice. If I drive 70 mph here, my body relaxes, my chest opens, I think positive thoughts. There is ease. If I drive 75 on this narrow stretch, around this curve, feeling pushed from behind, I tense up and ease is nowhere to be found. But then here, where the road widens and there are fewer cars, 75 is fine.

So why do I push myself out of that place? That place of ease, of flow, of good feeling? Without fail, it is pressure from the outside. It’s that truck beside me that speeds up when I do while another car is bearing down on my tail. It’s the nervous thought that if I drive 70 mph, I will force someone else to hit the brakes. I watch ease come and go in my body, in my mind. I enter and exit the flow.

When I say no to one of my daughter’s requests, if it comes from the fear of a bad outcome based on another person’s opinion, my head and heart conflicted, there is no ease. If I say no because it feels right, I stand in my power and she responds completely differently. If I feel I should be earning more money than I am, and I get frustrated because I don’t know what I want to do with my life, there is no flow. When I remember to trust that standing in that good feeling as often as possible and acting from that place will bring all the answers I need, my body relaxes. Answers – and gifts – come. When I turn toward connection and love, for my husband, my friends, for myself, ease is there. When I close up, clench off, hold a grudge, it not only feels awful, it becomes a self-fulfilling prophesy of doom.

I vowed today to act from a place of ease as much as I could. I want to practice standing in the center of myself instead of being buffeted by the gale force winds of my mind. I want to wake up every day more grounded in my connection to Source, to God, to the Divine. Choosing the word was a start. Now the hard – or the ease-y? – work is mine.