WISDOM

My story begins with my very first memory, when I was just a baby. I remember being coddled in peoples’ arms, being passed around and I noticed that each time this happened, a new set of eyes were upon me and I could feel it in my belly. I remember realizing that each had their different smell, different feel and different sound. I remember the feeling of safety with some and with others, a feeling that welled up from my belly and resulted in me crying out, getting passed to another and either being comfortable again, or not. I also remember being acutely aware that each person had a unique pattern that I now recognize as knitting. I see now that I had been looking at a close up view of the fabric on their arms.

Fig 1 - (left) Superman’s shirt fiber

Fig 2 - (right) Denim / blue jeans

So what does any of this have to do with how I became an entrepreneur? 

It all began with my child-like sense of wonder and a fascination with the wisdom of my thoughts. Even as a baby as described above, I knew that I was thinking complicated thoughts and had an exquisite awareness of things that I could not fathom. I remember knowing that one day I would understand the words. I remember my inner self-soothing “talk” which eased me when I was stressed. I remember catching complex dialogue and having moments of lucidity and understanding. AS that baby, I knew at the time that I was thinking things that I did not understand. I also remember feeling moments of utter confinement and cognitive ignorance and knowing that this would be temporary. As I grew older, I always knew that I would teach but I never knew what. I knew that I would paint although I couldn't draw and I would catch visions of myself as an adult, speaking to audiences of doctors and scientists who were experiencing “aha” moments right before my eyes. Whenever I tried to focus on the words I was speaking, the vision faded. I became an entrepreneur because I have been called to it, by my inner self and my purpose in life.

It has not been easy, following my heart's desire. For years I felt like I came from a different world. My community was not set-up to nurture and develop my inner voice, and if it wasn't for my Uncle I might have lost the intuition all together. He was the one who taught me when I was 6, that I should not be afraid but I should keep my innermost feelings and thoughts, to myself. He encouraged me to recognize that what I was experiencing was unique, special and highly unusual and that nobody else would understand. While this scared me, I trusted him and to this day give him credit for my sense of openness. 

So, while there is much more to this, the bottom line is that I am an entrepreneur because I am following my inner guidance. All my life, I have without “forcing” become an artist, an adult educator, a public speaker, a writer and poet and am very involved with the study of neuroplasticity and the science of wisdom. I was inspired to begin a disciplined study of meditation and energy healing when I was 19 (that was 1980) which continues to present time. While the rest of my family and friends grappled with the external world and academia, I was focused on the inner, developing a relationship with what I now know to be the spirit of who I am.

My passion is driven to inspire others to embrace the whole of who they are.

~Barbara

FORGIVENESS

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~ as written by Linda Kavelin Popov
Virtues Project Reflection Cards

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MY TWO SENSE:

This virtue hit me like a WHACK upside the head. I have spent the last 30 years thinking that the choice I made to surround myself with people who bring out the best in me was the healthiest one. In reality that choice may have left me quite un-finished. I have truly believed that I had no hidden resentments; no unresolved issues. I believed that my choice to protect myself was enough to equal the karma that forgiving can create. I believed I had nothing to hide from, nothing to deal with and nothing to mend. A few days ago when I picked this card, I discerned how wrong I was. I went into some deep, dark places with the light of forgiveness and I recognized that I have buried some pretty important nuggets. These nuggets are long forgotten and seemingly disregarded but when I reflect on the "climate" of my present life, this light clearly shows me that I have only managed to hide. 

What am I hiding from and how has it compromised my progress? These are the questions I have been focused on over the last 4 days. I have some answers and I still am open to the questions. I believe I have been unknowingly hiding in my belief that if I am not twisted up about an issue, then I must be okay. Wrong! It's called denial folks and it comes as a double edged sword. The immediate result is peaceful but deep down inside, it clouds my eyes, my capacity to believe. I have realized that denial can easily leave me in a false state of calm and regardless of how I rationalize it in my mind, my body is the one who has to manage the stress of the silent emotional hijacking. 

Now 30 years later, I see the problem with burying issues rather than practicing true forgiveness. You see: It is my silence, enveloped by untrue beliefs that manifest what lay in the very depth of my being and where that burden of denial manifests. I at 50, am experiencing a new phase of who I really am. Is this a midlife crisis, like menopause predicts? Today, I wonder if it is more about the need to practice forgiveness in some very specific areas that will allow me to release myself to choose a new path. Time will tell.

RESILIENCE

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~ as written by Linda Kavelin Popov
Virtues Project Reflection Cards

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MY TWO SENSE:

As I travel through the experiences of my life I see the lessons in everything. What jumps right off the page at me when I read the resilience card is "I find comfort in community." I feel truly blessed to have that comfort in The Virtues Project. What a gift it is to be part of a community that respects, loves and is compassionately focused on growth and healing. What freedom this brings to my heart and mind. It enables me to grow and explore the vastness of who I am. In contrast, the alternative creates a way of living in varying degrees of fear and denial. I live on both sides of this spectrum and I wish to encourage the world to consider adopting the family of virtues. 

As an example: awhile back, I mistakenly goofed something up I was responsible for. I held on tightly to worrying (fear based) and brewed about how I could possibly move beyond the mistake, how I could make amends. When fear began to really grip me, I decided to address my mistake and reap the consequences. As I prepared for the disclosure, I was met with giant butterflies, overwhelming anxiety that felt more like a desire to jump off a bridge, and the well-known all consuming dreaded unknown. What happened next was an amazing gift. As I confessed, I was greeted with compassion and curiosity. I was offered olive branches with each loving question that allowed me to delve deeper into the bigger truth. I was encouraged to find the gifts from the experience, embrace the wisdom within myself and allow OUR forgiveness' to make amends. The difference being, I entered the conversation in an exhausted state of self-inflicted anxiety preparing to flee and I left in a state of grace, resilience and openness. 

Every moment from the time I began my confession, I was loved. I was encouraged. I was honoured. I was gently and carefully taken (by my beautiful community) to the edge of reality and allowed to look beyond the entrapment of guilt, remorse and blame. I am encouraged to accept the gifts from the experience and set a course for the future. This awareness however comes as a double edged sword. Now I am increasingly aware of the actions of others in my life who do not subscribe to this "way of being." Today I am calling on courage to embrace resilience and the faith I need to face the experiences that appear, in contrast, like attacks.

LOVE

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~ as written by Linda Kavelin Popov
Virtues Project Reflection Cards

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MY TWO SENSE:

When John Lennon sang, "All we need is love." did he know how close to the truth he was? Or was he simply singing lyrics that were true to his heart at the time? Well my friends, Love is really what we truly need. Love is within us and love is around us. We can reject it, we can embrace it, we can grow in its presence and we can shrink from the lack of it. Love is perfect in it's design. It can be pregnant and empty. It's ethereal, in that it is not something you can touch or hold, it is subtle and intangible. It is pure and Heavenly but yet it can be Hell. We can hunger for it and consequently, be broken by it. We can move in and through love like miners, carefully inspecting, cracking open and pushing our way through the substance in order to determine it's purity, it's rarity, it's worth. Even then, we move from place to place not really knowing what we are searching for. Our hearts know though, don't they? Our heart knows when true love is present, or not. The heart knows. Pierre Teilhard de Chardin said, "You are not a human being in search of a spiritual experience. You are a spiritual being immersed in a human experience." I believe that if we pare a human down to the very essence, love will be all there is to measure. 

What is life for but to collect and distribute love through the maze that we call living? I believe that nothing else matters. We humans have created a whole system of distractions that can keep us so focused on the day to day dealings that we have little time to focus on love. Even though our hearts can become stressed through the haste & noisy confusion of just living - don't lose hope. We live in very exciting times and man is on the frontier of understanding how & why stress can rob us of our life, our health, our happiness. We're on the cutting edge of awareness & the theory that stress is caused when our heart goes against what LOVE wants us to do, or when we are faced with situations that are not (from love). Medical science knows that stress compromises our autonomic and central nervous systems, which powers our immune system, which can manifest imbalances in our body, and that means different problems for different people. 

At my job in a long term care facility, I have many conversations with residents about the measure of a man and what is really important. At the end of their days this question may be all that they want to reflect upon, or it may be what haunts them. It is a true & rare gift of the heart to realize the value of this message early. To die knowing the depth of our love and the positive effect of touching others love is a lesson I choose to carry with me every minute of every day. How I love is all that matters. The relationships I choose provide a stage for the lessons which I must love through. The issues in life that challenge and empower, serve me to acquire the ultimate lesson - which is about the whole process of loving each other and myself through the peaks and valleys of everyday living. A wise old man once told me, "When you get to the end of your life, it's not your social status, your job or what you acquired that matters -- it's how you moved through pain." When we trust, share and openly express the love we have for ourselves and one-another, we can face and move through anything. 

It's all about the love!

CHEERFULNESS

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~ as written by Linda Kavelin Popov
Virtues Project Reflection Cards

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MY TWO SENSE:

Recently I spent time with some wonderful women from the First Nations community and I heard that "women hold the emotional centre" in the family. I have considered this concept in relation to my own family and wonder, how long can I be the emotional barometer? How do I reflect the conditions of this dynamic? If I am the only one who sees a problem, where does that leave me? Well, it's not cheerfulness that I am reflecting that much I know, and I feel like I've been in a holding pattern. So, when this card picked me this morning, I even felt cheerful.

"What a great way to start my day", I thought. I relate and respond well to cheerfulness. Through-out my adult life I was chronically optimistic and cheerful which became a character trait that people admired in me. Now, at the turn of the half-century, I feel I am more at the opposite end of the spectrum. And now facing this page and the virtue of cheerfulness, I am truly haunted by the shadows and all of the barriers to cheerfulness that life has thrown my way. So, in considering the wisdom of the card, I ask myself, "What is on the bright side of my life?", "what does cheerfulness look like from my vantage point?" Reading what Cheerfulness means generates a mindfulness: to call upon the strength I need to look beyond the shadows; and it calls me to trust the process. 

This is a perfect pick for me today because as you may sense I am wrestling with my past, present and future. So what happened to switch my optimistic cheerfulness off? And more importantly, how do I turn it back on? The question, "How can I just get on with being cheerful?" makes me suddenly aware of how difficult it is to 'put on a brave face' in the company of cheerful people. I am truly grateful for this understanding as it serves as a mirror that reflects to me how un-cheerful I can be. That's a tough nugget to swallow in a modern world where the majority of folks face "unhappiness" issues with a prescription that perhaps helps them deal with the symptoms. For me, that solution is not an option. I just want to shine the light on what's lurking in the shadows and then either clear-up the path or create a new one. I look forward to expressing more cheerfulness in my life and in this blog. So for today, I begin a promise to bring cheerfulness into my life by doing something just for me; I will mindfully move around those shadows and honour my commitments; I will give service to do a simple task to make life easier for someone else and I will pray for joy!

STEADFASTNESS

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~ as written by Linda Kavelin Popov
Virtues Project Reflection Cards

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MY TWO SENSE:

In considering the list above I realize that I am doing a lot to support Steadfastness in my life. I'm not saying I am perfect or there isn't room for improvement, I'm saying it wasn't until I saw "I don't allow doubts or tests to blow me off course" that I recognized a place to really grow. The rest of the points I feel for the most part, I have a handle on. I am mindful about what I say yes to and I often say no when the task is not on my path; I remain true to my purpose which is at this point figuring out exactly what my purpose is, then making a plan and going for it; I pace myself with time to work, garden, rest, play, time for myself and time with family and friends. I am faithful to my relationships by being actively involved in cultivating the best for all; I take what comes and I persevere. Where I see a need for growth is in not allowing tests and doubts to blow me off course. This has been a recent challenge for me that I am aware of and working on. 

I have been reviewing my life-history in order to uncover any harmful beliefs I may have taken-on in my life and I found a couple of doozies. Let me talk about one in particular and make it clear that I hold no fault in my mother who was party to what may be the root of them all. I have a distinct recollection of being 2 or 3 years old, standing at my bedroom window, watching my mom driving away and crying my eyes out. My frame of mind was in panic and despair, my heart was breaking and my imagination was feeding me completely wrong information. You see in those moments, night after night I cried my eyes out watching my mother leave for work, believing she was leaving me. Over and over I knew in my heart that I would NEVER see her again. Through the rationale of my impressionable mind, I believed it and nothing, not even seeing her in the morning, would convince me otherwise. Day after day I would repeat this experience and although I don't know how long I carried on, it was long enough to leave a lasting impression. I recall being absolutely amazed that the depth of my love and my pain was not enough to turn her car around. I remember imagining that if she could see me and hear the pain in my cries, that I could bring her back to me. I saw her look up at me standing in the window... I thought she must have heard me, her window was down. She smiled and waved and drove away. This sealed the deal and I remember my knees going week and dropping in a heap on the floor -- I implanted the idea within myself that I was not important enough. 

The science of neuroplasticity is showing us that the "beliefs" we acquire (consciously and unconsciously) can lay claim in our hearts and act as the under-tone of what we consciously believe. Up until recently I had forgotten this experience and what is simply amazing to me is that my 2 year old irrational logic got trapped in the trauma and wrapped with all the sights, sounds and smells, reinforcing my beliefs of the experience. Our body remembers too.

So our beliefs are steadfast in nature too and designed to trigger our survival instincts. Whether true or untrue, they serve as the underpinning of who we really are. So, I have journeyed into the shadow here and discovered this untrue belief about myself and through steadfastness, I trust I will also find my way out of this place.

HONESTY

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~ as written by Linda Kavelin Popov
Virtues Project Reflection Cards

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MY TWO SENSE:

In light of my renewed commitment to blog every day, this card could not be more relevant. What purpose would it serve to be anything but honest at this time in my life? The reason I want to blog is two-fold: I want to condition myself to really see what's true and right in my world through the lens of virtues in action, and to hone in on what's not right; and I also want to explore how healing can happen from the inside, out. If I really admit it to myself, honestly, I am searching for the truth about who I really am. Discerning myself through the lens of this virtue helps me to see what the root of truth is... it begins with honesty. Truth to me is all about being honest with myself so that I can see through "unclouded eyes". I love that description... it feels so true. In thinking about times I have told a lie or embellished a story I can identify how difficult it is to actually look someone in the eye. It's harder still to pretend to be something or someone I'm not, without that mis-truth cloaking the true me. It's like having an invisible wet blanket thrown on, it clouds my eyes.

We begin life with our honesty muscles fully intact and we all know that children can be brutally honest. As we grow, we learn how and why to twist the truth to serve us. We see it happening all around us; we hear it from those we trust the most and it makes the 'little white lies' okay to tell. It is even used to describe some roles of authority. Did you believe the message, "if it doesn't hurt anyone..."? I grew up knowing that a lack of honesty, hurts me and everyone around me... but I am not going to delve into that. What I want to focus on is the upside of honesty. Being honest with myself is the first and most important step in my healing journey. It is also the trickiest because I have this other side of me that continuously lurks in the shadows waiting for opportunities to tell me it's okay to bend THAT truth, or it's better NOT to tell the whole story in this situation. Right? Right!

It is like the little red-guy sits on my shoulder throwing out the baited lines which can easily get camouflaged within all the other thoughts that flood in at any given moment. I have been hooked before but I am learning to tell the difference and that trickster may not know that I am on a mission of truth and honesty. My trickster lives in all the past lies that remain in the recesses of my heart and while I won't be displaying them for all the world to see, I must go on a truth fast in order to purify my eyes. Being honest will facilitate that process. I hear: "the truth will set you free." and I know it is time for me to "gently let them go." I finally GET that I am worth it. I really lost me over the years of lying to myself about my weight, my happiness, my health, my purpose here on earth. Now let me be clear and honest, I have a great life it's just my love for myself has been compromised as a result and the UN-true messages that I have told myself for the past half-century and I have fortified that suffering. So, with you as my witness, I am on a mission to bring my truest self back home to me -- honestly.


QVE4DCTAS93G

UNITY

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~ as written by Linda Kavelin Popov
Virtues Project Reflection Cards

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MY TWO SENSE:

 In a world so out of balance with this virtue it is really difficult to gain a clear perspective -- let alone get a grip. I watch people around me get torn apart by a loyalty to their sense of unity, which seems to vary from person to person. I find it incredibly painful to witness this with my family, with my children and those I deeply care for. How does our sense of unity become so different and what purpose does it serve the soul? How can the witnesses be helpful without creating isolation and breathing-in doubt? I witness all too often the entanglement these two virtues can create in the human heart. One can often pay a high price for unity, in the name of love. We can compromise our own beliefs; we can turn our back on what we know is right; we can loose our support system as we dance through the cycle; we can also loose trust in ourselves and others; we can loose our hope and we can loose our joy. So much emotion is placed on the loyalty we tie to unity and even when logic and everyone around us can see clearly, advise appears to only serve to tighten the grip and deepen the trench. Hanging on to unity in an abusive relationship does not serve anyone. It is painful to experience and I argue that it may be more painful to watch.

Today, this pick makes me wonder: what is it about the human condition that trusts that it is better to clutch the robe of unity, regardless of the pain it inflicts upon us? Perhaps I have it all wrong thinking that freeing our selves from unhealthy relationships is loyalty to the unity of my spirit. When I am unhappy with something, I believe it is because my soul wants something better for me - to bring peace and joy to my heart. But, perhaps those who remain loyal to unity beyond the rational boundaries of love are doing the right thing. After all, Jesus didn't abandon anyone, did he? All I know is that I pray for detachment on a daily basis for my own peace of mind so that my noble expectation of unity doesn't drive a judgement wedge into my relationships.

And so I dance...

SELF-DISCIPLINE

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~ as written by Linda Kavelin Popov
Virtues Project Reflection Cards

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MY TWO SENSE:

What a perfect pick on the first day back to blog. Dr. Dan Popov says that Grace picks the card through our hand to show us what we need to know. Whether the lesson comes as a confirmation or a calling is ours to discern by asking, "What is the lesson?" When I consider that question, it only takes a second for the list of lessons to line up. Not only am I requiring an obvious boost in Self Discipline here in blog writing as evidenced by the last entry date, but also in life in general. I know in health I am not at my best and the activities I choose for myself that do not facilitate my excellence are completely in my control, yet I too lack the self-discipline to do what I know is right. I have issues that I keep buried deep inside that force me to live my life in a sideways manner. Does this mean I live in a slanted house like the Joker? No. It means I do things I know I shouldn't do and sometimes turn a blind eye to things I shouldn't be.

I walk an emotional tightrope between what my heart wants and what my head wants, for me. The kicker is, that my self discipline is not the only one that is in play here. The self discipline of everyone around me has a direct influence on whether I am doing the right thing or not. Until I can practice self-discipline in the company of those who don't (practice) then waters will be muddy. I can only control me.

Truthfully, I sense that when the reflection of the life I want does not match the life I have, then there is a pretty toxic reaction that, on the surface, appears as inner conflict. When I go deeper, it ties into the beliefs I have acquired over my 50+ years, both right and wrong. What's right is, I believe that inner conflict is Graces way of trying to gently guide me in another direction. I just have to listen and discern which steps I'll take today.

What is helpful?: Knowing that every day is a new day, a clean slate to begin again. Today I embrace the strength to call on self-discipline to steer my life up-right.