journey – Jenn Sheridan

How did I get here?

I have a confession to make. The truth is, I have spent far too much of my life trying to be something I’m not. Nothing reminds me of this more than watching my march-to-the-beat-of-a-different-drummer 5-year-old son enter the socialized world of school. He loves it, he’s totally happy there, he likes everybody. But kids can do things that can be hurtful sometimes, whether it’s on purpose or not, and it pains me every time he says somebody doesn’t like him for whatever reason. Yes, this is in large part because I want him to be happy, and because I love him and want everybody to be able to see just how special he is, but I know it also has a lot to do with my own childhood desire to have everybody like me, and all of the decisions I’ve made in my life because I wanted people to like me that have lead me down paths that didn’t make me happy. One of the clearest (and most relevant) examples of this is with my spirituality. I’ve spent a lot of time trying to balance out the intellectual practical side of me with a strongly intuitive and spiritual self. I’ve been attracted to many things that were (and probably still are) just plain weird to many of my friends and family members. When I was in college I would go down into Chicago to go to a Religious Science church on the occasional Sunday mornings, torn between my love of the philosophy and the inspiration I received, and my discomfort with doing something that others perceived as strange. I didn’t end up talking about it very often because when I did try to talk about spirituality or philosophy people would be like, oh, you mean religion. They could relate it back to the churches of their childhood, but they just weren’t at spiritually “seeking” parts of their lives. I felt myself fragment into the Jenn who meditated and was learning to be a healer and the Jenn who went out partying and loved Nine Inch Nails and the Jenn who managed the Subject Pool in the Psychology Department and the Jenn who religiously went to football games even during a seasons-long losing streak and the Jenn who, oh yeah, went to class from time to time and loved to program and learn how the mind works and studied the meaning behind the meaning of language. It was a rare few who knew that all of those Jenns were one and the same.

So fast forward 20 some-odd years later and as much as I have worked to reintegrate myself, I know that I still startle people from time to time, even myself. If you had told me back in the day that I would be doing tarot readings for people I most definitely would have scoffed (and that’s far from the weirdest thing that I work with these days). There were a lot of things that happened along the way to bring me to this place–I’ve been truly blessed to have encountered some incredibly powerful processes like shamanic soul retrieval and the Hoffman Process, and some phenomenal teachers that helped me reconnect to my intuition, providing tools to help quiet that always-on analytical mind and to allow my natural intuitive abilities to flourish. Probably the most influential part of that process was getting to know Caroline Reynolds. She had a special gift with chakra readings where she would read your chakras, letting you know how open (or closed off) each of your chakras was, but she would also relate the messages that came up along the way. She quickly became my mentor, and I spent a lot of time talking to her about what I wanted from life and my struggles with how to get there. At the time I thought I wanted to be a life coach, and believed that having these two aspects of myself be so strong meant that I should be a bridge between the practical and the intuitive, but it only flowed in fits and starts. I kept feeling like I was missing something, so she started to teach me to do chakra readings and to be a Spiritual Fitness advisor, but at the same time her message to me was: “You know, Jenn, you don’t need me. You are your own person with your own gifts and skills. What I see in you is that your intuitive side is actually worlds larger than your intellectual side, but it’s like a muscle that has atrophied and the more you hold on to that intellect the harder it’s going to be for you to find what’s going to make you happy. You’re a natural healer, and it doesn’t matter what work you do for a living, that healing will come through. But if you want to fully realize your potential, you’ve got to let go and really embrace that intuition. You will find your own way to do things–you don’t need to ride on someone else’s coattails, and preaching someone else’s truth just isn’t gonna cut it. You want to teach others to learn to fly? Lead by example and make your own path.” Whoa Nellie, did I ever need that!

How I have interpreted Caroline’s message over the years has shifted a bit, but my current version goes something like this: There are many things I could be doing, and many of them would leave me feeling fairly equally fulfilled since at the end of the day what I love more than anything else is helping people to grow–it’s the growth that is fulfilling, not the “how” of the help. But continuing to seek isn’t furthering me at this point. What I need to be doing is to take my own advice and share my gifts, in whatever form works for me today. Today, the intuitive tarot readings just plain work. Every now and then the question of “why” floats into my brain, but I’ve learned to just let it go and roll with it because at the end of the day, the messages just flow. Sometimes it feels like I’m in the active position, actually reading the cards, which are simply beautiful and have much to offer in and of themselves, but more often it feels like I’m in a receptive position, listening to and sharing the messages that are being offered up. I’ve done readings for a wide variety of people, from those who never would have thought to ask for a tarot reading in a million years to those who love receiving readings in all forms, and the thing I’ve found to be consistently true no matter the client is that if I can just get out of my own way long enough for my intuition to take over, the result will be powerful.

I am looking forward to seeing how the work I do evolves from here–I wouldn’t be me if I weren’t always growing and changing and pushing myself to the next level. But at the same time, I’m really enjoying getting to do the work that’s right in front of me–the insight from the readings brings a fresh perspective to my coaching toolbox and breathes new life into my work helping people to realize their vision. Every email I open from a client thanking me for the insight their work with me is giving them makes my heart sing–I literally do a happy dance each and every time! Caroline made her transition in 2010. She was incredibly dear to me, and I still miss her terribly. In some small way, I feel like doing this work honors her and the role she played in my life. I am blessed to have known her, to have called her my teacher and my friend, and to have had her push me out of my comfortable nest so I could stretch my wings and fly. Namaste.

Photo: Journey by Kasia

Ostrich-ization

I have a confession to make, something that has been weighing on me for quite some time. I am a bit of a . . . well, no, more than a bit. I am a full-blown, head-in-the-sand OSTRICH. Phew, I said it. What a load off! Wait, what’s that? What does it mean to be an ostrich? Well, it means that when I start to feel overwhelmed with life, I tend to hole up, putting my head in the proverbial sand and allowing myself to look at only what I must to get through the day, the week, or even, I’m embarrassed to admit, the year. Well, that’s not so bad, you might think. Focus is a good survival skill. And yes, in small amounts, it is a truly necessary skill, especially when you have a lot of balls in the air in this busy, busy life. But escapism and avoidance? They cut you off from your source, from love and joy and laughter, and ultimately from living.

The irony here is that ostriching is just about as opposite to my life philosophy as you can get and still be me. See, I am a big believer in self-awareness, consciously looking at myself and where I am and seeing what is keeping me from accomplishing my goals and attaining my dreams. I have invested a lot of time and energy (and I mean A LOT) in personal growth exercises, classes, retreats, etc. over the years, and, as a result, I have, well, grown a lot over the years because of it. I’ve weeded my mental and emotional gardens, exposing and excising all those hidden roots for the dandelion-like issues that always seem to find fertile soil to grow in. I believe in doing a little spring cleaning several times a year, not just in my physical space, but mentally and emotionally to keep exposing any missed roots that might be clogging up my flow. I believe in looking directly at what scares me, looking that fear directly in the face and calling it out for what it is. I believe in feeling the fear and doing it anyway, especially because I know that whatever I feel fear about is life’s way of nudging me towards my next area of self-growth.

So when I pulled my head out of the sand last week, I was astonished to discover that in many respects, I’d been hiding in that fear-based sand for over a year and a half. I’d gotten overwhelmed when my second baby was born (oh yes, that baby who is now 20 months old) and I’d managed to compartmentalize my brain so that things I couldn’t deal with went into a segment that was pretty much a black box, taking stuff in but not allowing things out, so I had fewer things to look at and deal with at any given moment. It is a very effective short-term strategy, but an absolutely abysmal long-term one that can cause mental, emotional, spiritual, and even physical anguish.

I received an email from a friend recently with a story that eloquently describes what happened to me during this time of ostriching:

“A young lady confidently walked around the room while leading and explaining stress management to an audience with a raised glass of water. Everyone knew she was going to ask the ultimate question, ‘half empty or half full?’ She fooled them all: ‘How heavy is this glass of water?’ she inquired with a smile. Answers called out ranged from 8 oz to 20 oz.

She replied, ‘The absolute weight doesn’t matter. It depends on how long I hold it. If I hold it for a minute, that’s not a problem. If I hold it for an hour, I’ll have an ache in my right arm. If I hold it for a day, you’ll have to call an ambulance. In each case it’s the same weight, but the longer I hold it, the heavier it becomes.'”

Those “weights” that I stashed away for another day may have started out light as a feather, but by the time I realized I could not carry them anymore, each one weighed a thousand pounds. The longer I carried such heavy weights, the more I ostracized myself from my source. At different times throughout that year and a half I was filled with anxiety, struggled with depression, experienced physical pain throughout my body (migraines; back and knee pain), struggled with finances, and lived in a mental fog that I couldn’t seem to clear myself of. Every time I found myself in such anguish, I would be baffled by it. I was working hard at creating the life I had been wanting to live, enabling many of my life’s dreams to begin to be fulfilled, but at the end of the day I still felt somewhat numb, only halfway able to experience the joy that came along with it.

And so last week I gave myself the great gift of de-ostrich-izing myself. I lifted my head from the sand and shined a light on what was hiding inside that black box inside my head. I put down all of those thousand-pound weights and restored them to their feathery lightness. I took care of some long overdue tasks, and crossed about a gazillion things off of my to-do list in a flurry of clarity and lightness and energy that I hadn’t felt in a long, long time. The result? In addition to all of the little tangible benefits of “getting stuff done,” I’ve had a return of my ME-ness. I feel more authentic, more at peace, more capable of taking on the world when I need to, and more capable of asking for help when I need to. I am returning to my practice, rewarding myself with my meditation time in the mornings, and sleeping better at night. The creative juices are flowing again and I have ideas bubbling up all over the places, just begging to be birthed out into the world. The numbness is fading, and my deep gratitude for this life I am creating and living is present without my having to work at it.

As I write this, I feel once again the deep sense of relief I experienced last week, along with a renewed sense of awe that I allowed it to go for so long. But I’ve found that’s what happens when you ostracize (or ostrich-ize!) yourself from life — you can no longer hear the messages that life is trying so hard to send you. And so, here I go again, doing my internal spring cleaning, clearing out the weeds in my internal garden, planting new seeds that I hope will shine light when the dark places try to re-emerge, grateful for this opportunity to continue to grow, and grateful for this awareness that has once again pushed me out of my comfort zone and back out into the world to share my stories along this crazy journey called life, my own personal journey of learning to fly. Namaste.

Step 7: Follow Your Bliss

From the Steps to Learning How to Fly series.

BILL MOYERS: Do you ever have the sense of . . . being helped by hidden hands?

JOSEPH CAMPBELL: All the time. It is miraculous. I even have a superstition that has grown on me as a result of invisible hands coming all the time—namely, that if you do follow your bliss you put yourself on a kind of track that has been there all the while, waiting for you, and the life that you ought to be living is the one you are living. When you can see that, you begin to meet people who are in your field of bliss, and they open doors to you. I say, follow your bliss and don’t be afraid, and doors will open where you didn’t know they were going to be.

Have you ever had a feeling of complete self-awareness where you recognize that what is happening right now could only be happening to you, and the events of the past hours, days, months, even years have all come together to produce this very moment? August Gold talks about the work that we alone can do, that we were born to do, and the feeling of resonance that happens when we stand in that place that only we can stand in. In The Alchemist, Paolo Coehlo explores the idea of the universe conspiring to help bring your dreams to fruition. Joseph Campbell discusses how when you follow your bliss, invisible hands come out to help you along your path.

This concept of “following your bliss” is the culmination of the ideas we have been discussing over the course of this series. It is about what happens when we begin to shift, to get clear, to take time to be still and listen, to follow our intuitive guidance, to allow our real selves to come out into the world, and to take steps, however small, in the direction of our dreams. It is about how doors begin to open for us, how people begin to show up seemingly accidentally with access to different pieces of the puzzle, how things we were led to do years ago suddenly begin to make sense within this new framework, and how our dreams begin to take shape.

There is a lot of misconception surrounding this topic. Critics talk about how if we all followed our bliss, there would be tons of starving artists in the world and no janitors. Or people will say, what I’d really like to do is not to work, so I’m going to pursue that goal and the money will still follow, right? This isn’t about imagining a life that sounds glamorous or exciting and doing that. And it definitely isn’t some spiritually couched permission to be lazy. It is about finding your place in the world, your passion, your divine birthright, and throwing yourself into it, taking the leap of faith with full knowledge that the universe will provide you solid ground to step on, or at the very least a soft place to fall.

Finding your place in the world is neither as difficult nor as easy as it sounds. As we’ve touched on previously, life is always giving us messages, showing us the next step we need to take. We don’t go out for our first run today and finish a marathon tomorrow–we take steps that enable us to reach that ultimate goal. It isn’t a matter of instant gratification, it’s about laying a solid foundation and creating the building blocks you need in order to get there. And the best part? You aren’t doing this alone, you do not need to have the full blueprint in your head in order to have it all come together beautifully. Your job is to be aware, to notice what resonates and what doesn’t, to trust in yourself and the universe, to listen to the messages you receive and follow their guidance.

One of the reasons I love Wonderfalls, the short-lived TV series starring Caroline Dhavernas, is that it explores this concept in a more obvious and direct way. The main character, Jaye, literally receives messages from the universe–normally inanimate objects begin to speak to her. Their somewhat enigmatic messages lead her to do things that set whole courses of events in motion with often humorous and always miraculous results. The show explores how seemingly small circumstances become snowballs that nudge (or knock) us into living our destiny. One of my favorite episodes (spoiler alert) includes the phrase “Bring Her Back To Him.” Jaye interprets this to mean that she should try to reconcile the nun hiding out at the local bar with the priest who has come to town looking for her. At one point she and the nun have an argument in a parking lot–Jaye gets upset and drives away, backing into a car and breaking its taillight in the process. It turns out to be the priest’s car; when the police pull him over for the broken taillight, they discover a warrant out for his arrest. His last girlfriend before he had entered the priesthood had been looking for him for almost ten years, and he gets to meet the daughter he never knew he had for the first time. By the end of the episode many “hers” have been brought back to many “hims,” including, and resulting in, the nun’s faith in God being restored.

While our messages are not usually so literal, nor the steps to get from taillight to reunion so clearly painted, they are always happening for us too. Once you really get this, you come to understand that coincidences are really incidences of synchronicity, showing us the way. Start saying “Yes!” to the universe, stepping through the doors that open up for you along the way. Pay attention to the messages you receive each day and follow where they lead. Uncover your passion and immerse yourself in it. My guess is that you will be following your bliss before you know, benefiting from the invisible hands helping you along the way, spreading your wings and soaring to new heights, loving the feeling of resonance that comes with standing in your right place in the world. Namaste.

Step 1: Start Where You Are

From the Steps to Learning How to Fly series.

I like to live my life by what I call wisdom according to Aerosmith: Life is a journey, not a destination. It isn’t about where you’re headed, it’s about the places you go to along the way. I personally want that journey to be full and rich, about learning new things and appreciating the beauty around me, about living mindfully and discovering my passions and expressing who I really am.

I haven’t always lived that way–even as I was learning the tools necessary to spread my wings, I spent a substantial amount of time living my life the way other people expected me to. I was a good girl, usually doing the “right” things, even as I was exploring realms that I didn’t think most of my friends and family would understand. My life took on a splintered quality as different pieces of me showed up depending on who I was with. I often felt like I was a shadow of myself, flimsy and insubstantial, and I yearned for the day when I could be one coherent me. But that was where I was, and the first thing I needed to learn was to let go of those expectations, to give myself a break, to stop being so hard on myself before I could begin the shift from living my life externally towards exploring the me on the inside and letting her light shine.

Starting where you are is about being loving and compassionate towards yourself. You may dream of what you want your life to look like, who you want to be, and often that leads to beating yourself up, judging yourself and finding yourself lacking. This is counterproductive, placing the emphasis on what you don’t want instead of on what you do want. The first thing to do is to recognize that you are where you are, and while you are capable of realizing your dreams, you have to be gentle with yourself as you take the steps necessary to get there. I like to think of it as building your muscles. If you had a dream of running a marathon, you wouldn’t try to run 26.2 miles tomorrow. You would put a training program in motion and build your muscles and your endurance to enable success. Each step in the training program is a stretch and while you get close to your objective during training, the day of the event is the day you actually achieve your goal.

This is how realizing life goals works, too. While we don’t always have a full training program laid out in front of us so we know in advance the steps we’ll take to reach our goals, life is always feeding us opportunities to stretch ourselves, to grow in the direction we want to be moving in. When a challenge comes up for you today, instead of handling it the way you might have in the past, ask yourself how you can react differently this time. The answer might feel a little outside of your comfort zone, but do it anyway. You know where the old road leads–explore a new road and see if it lands you in a place you haven’t been before. Play with it, experiment a bit. You might not land exactly where you want to be, but keep experimenting with it as situations come up until you find a new way of handling it that feels more authentic to who you are and where you want to go in life. If you’re shy, a public speaking engagement might be too big of a stretch, but talking to a stranger in a bar might be just the right size. Strengthen that extroverted muscle, that faith muscle, that love muscle–whatever it is that you’ve been seeking, that’s been missing in your life.

There is always something right in front of us, right where we are today that is a gift for the growth we have been asking for. It might feel small, it might be a just baby step, but each step is a movement, and each step opens up new opportunities for expansion. As T. Harv Ecker reminds us:

Success is a learnable skill. You can learn to succeed at anything . . . If you want to be a great piano player, you can learn how to do it. If you want to be truly happy, you can learn how to do it. If you want to be rich, you can learn how to do it. It doesn’t matter where you are right now. It doesn’t matter where you’re starting from. What matters is that you are willing to learn.

Start where you are right now, in this moment, and take a step, begin the process of learning how to spread those wings, to move in the direction that you’ve always dreamed of.

Steps to learning how to fly

So I have this burning question that I hope you share with me — How does one really learn how to fly? As with many things in life, I have great philosophical and intellectual answers to this question, and what I am working on now is the experiential piece. But I’d like to share with you what I’ve learned so far.

Perhaps the key here is to first believe that you really do deserve to fly, that life isn’t meant to be endless suffering and struggle, that there really is the opportunity rise up above the relativity of the world and experience the Absolute, the inherent love and good and peace that is always available for the taking. I love this quote from Robert Cooper:

It’s easy to act as if you are a weathervane, always changing your beliefs and words, trying to please everyone around you. But we were born to be lighthouses, not weathervanes. Imagine a vertical axis running through the center of your heart, from your deepest roots to your highest aspirations. That’s your lighthouse. It anchors you in the world and frees you from having to change directions every time the weather shifts. Inside this lighthouse there is a lens and a light. The light represents who you are when nobody else is looking. That light was meant to keep shining, no matter how dark or stormy it gets outside . . . when you find that light inside you, you will know it. Don’t let anyone else dim it . . . and one more thing: remember to look for the light inside others. If at first you can’t see it, look deeper. It’s there.

This is what I believe, or even more than that, I know it to be true. All of the great teachers have talked about letting your let shine, not hiding your light under a bushel, seeing the divinity in everyone — sound familiar? These aren’t just pretty words to make you feel better — really, they’re a call to action, a call to that deep place within you that really feels, that wants to thrive, that understands why you are here. When you get quiet and listen, can you hear it? Can you feel it? What do you hear that voice within you saying?

Perhaps you cannot feel this with any definiteness, you just hope that it is true. That’s more than enough to start down the path of learning how to fly. I’d like to take some time over this next week to explore what I see as the steps along this path.

1. Start Where You Are
2. Clear the Slate
3. Shift Your Perspective
4. Connect Consciously
5. Trust Your Intuition
6. Come Out of Hiding
7. Follow Your Bliss

They aren’t necessarily linear, some of them are most certainly circular, making your journey look more like you’re dancing a little jig as you go. But each step is important, necessary even, as you learn how to spread your wings and begin to fly. The more steps I take myself, the more I understand the ones I’ve already taken, and the more trust I have when the light shines on my next step. I think this will be fun to explore together and I look forward to learning more with you as we continue along this journey together. Namaste.

Originally posted on Jenn’s Two Cents/Learning to Fly

Tag: journey

How did I get here?

Ostrich-ization

Step 7: Follow Your Bliss

From the Steps to Learning How to Fly series.

Recommended Reading

Photo: “follow your bliss,” by irene suchocki

Step 1: Start Where You Are

From the Steps to Learning How to Fly series.

Recommended Reading

Photo: Views of Bratislava, by Lukas Ondrousek

Steps to learning how to fly