What's in the gallery?
We dissolve stuck and rewrite patterns. We apply radical playfulness to life (when we feel like it!), embarking on internal adventures (credo of Safety First). We have a fake band called Solved By Cake. We build invisible sanctuaries, invent words and worlds, breathe awe and wonder.
We are not impressed by monsters. Except when we are. We explore the connections between internal territories and surrounding environment to learn what marvelously supportive delicious space feels like, and how to take exquisite care of ourselves. We transform things.* We glow wild.**
* For example: Desire, fear, worry, pain-and-trauma, boundaries, that problematic word which rhymes with flaweductivity.
** Fair warning: Self-fluency has been known to lead to extremely subversive behavior, including treasuring yourself unconditionally, unapologetically taking up space, experiencing outrageously improbable levels of self-acceptance, and general rejoicing in aliveness.
What's in the gallery?
We dissolve stuck and rewrite patterns. We apply radical playfulness to life (when we feel like it!), embarking on internal adventures (credo of Safety First). We have a fake band called Solved By Cake. We build invisible sanctuaries, invent words and worlds, breathe awe and wonder.
We are not impressed by monsters. Except when we are. We explore the connections between internal territories and surrounding environment to learn what marvelously supportive delicious space feels like, and how to take exquisite care of ourselves. We transform things.* We glow wild.**
* For example: Desire, fear, worry, pain-and-trauma, boundaries, that problematic word which rhymes with flaweductivity.
** Fair warning: Self-fluency has been known to lead to extremely subversive behavior, including treasuring yourself unconditionally, unapologetically taking up space, experiencing outrageously improbable levels of self-acceptance, and general rejoicing in aliveness.
Very Personal Ads #138: I can celebratorily abscond with the best of them!
Personal ads. They’re … personal! Very.
Each week I write these VPAs to practice asking for what I want. And to get clarity on what that really is, even when asking feels conflicted.
I always get useful information about my relationship with various aspects of the ask. Join in if you like!
Thing 1: birthday chrysalis
Here’s what I want:
I want to Abscond for my birthday and go into a chrysalis. Yes, I still find that word to be cheesy. And the last one worked so well that it was kind of scary.
I want to disappear into the best nest ever.
But I also want to do things that are CELEBRATORY and communal.
Ways this could work:
I could do an OOD.
I could investigate why I am resisting this so much.
Oh, wait. Is it guilt that everyone in my company is working their asses off to get our new space open while I run away? Is it terror that the Millions Of Things That Need Doing will not get done? Is it the fear that something at the Floop will break? Is it confusing now with then even though Now Is Not Then?
Yes, yes it is. It is all of those things and more.
So I could play with that and find out more about what the resistance needs.
I’ll play with…
Coloring with some monsters, using the monster coloring book. And of course using the manual to talk things out.
Talking to the Director about why this is important.
Thing 2: Marking things that need to be marked.
Here’s what I want:
In addition to my birthday, and The Fluent Self turning six (but kind of sort of seven!), this week also marks ten years since the day I got divorced.
I want turning inward, reflecting, gwishing, time for cheshbon nefesh.
Literal translation: soul accounting.
I want to mark these things by being beautifully present for them.
I want spaciousness and yoga and mostly just time to let everything show itself.
And I want to take time to be appreciative of things like FREEDOM. And how my divorce experience changed everything in my life for the better, even though it really and truly sucked at the time.
Ways this could work:
Inside the chrysalis.
Time being magic. Pockets and slots.
But I also think I want some kind of public celebration for some of this. I have to figure that part out too.
I’ll play with…
Skipping the stones in a garland, so that I end with the question I began with.
Thing 3: More cloth for the new Playground, please!
Here’s what I want:
We’re doing ceiling treatments for two of the new rooms, and we need cloth.
Specifically: all shades of greens, blues and purples.
Ideally about a square foot in size. Or a foot in length and then half that in width. But whatever, bigger, smaller, anything you have. Cutting up old t-shirts could work too.
Ways this could work:
I’ll play with…
Asking you guys.
Here’s our mailing address:
The Fluent Self, Inc
1526 NE Alberta #218
Portland, OR 97211
United States
And also THANK YOU, everyone who has already donated cloth to this project — Casey, Audrey, Susan, Barbara, Laura, Foxy Jess, anyone else that I might be forgetting!
Thing 4: Courage.
Here’s what I want:
To connect to courage and trust and internal strength.
Ways this could work:
I can use some of the boards at the Floop for this.
I’ll play with…
Talking to the monsters and finding out what I’m trying to protect myself from. Because maybe there’s a better way to accomplish that.
Thing 5: To answer a question without answering it.
Here’s what I want:
Actually there are about three questions that I need help with.
Ways this could work:
Connecting to the qualities. Remembering that not everything requires a response. Caring for myself first.
I’ll play with…
Doing some Shiva Nata on this situation, and seeing what it reveals.
Progress report on past Very Personal Ads.
Just to update you on what’s happened since last time.
I wanted things to be easy, fun and magical. And they mostly were. Which I find astonishing. Need to ask that one more often, apparently.
Then I wanted the embarking of the Floating Playground (the Floop!) to go smoothly, and thank god it did.
I wanted to do something for Now We Are Six, so I wrote about it. Still sitting with this one. Maybe some sort of small virtual celebration?
Also I wanted directives from the Director, and that happened some but not as much as I’d like. Re-asking, and committing to getting quiet enough to listen.
I planted something for the Secret Escape, and now I’m working on that.
There was an ask for the first Painting Party at the new Playground and it’s happening. See: the Frolicsome Bar.
And I wanted everyone happily not-being-me. I suspect that a number of people at the Floop are working on that as a secret project of sorts, so that’s good too.
Play-filled comment zen. Here’s what I’d love today.
- Wanted: Your own personal ads, small or large. Updates on past ones if you like.
- You can also do these on your own or in your head. You can always call silent retreat!
- Leave your gwishes! Throw things in the pot!
- Things we try to keep away from: the word “manifest”, telling people how they should be asking for things, unsolicited advice.
- VPA amnesty applies, of course. Leave yours any time between now and next Sunday (or whenever, really) — it’s all fine by us!
xox
Friday Chicken #187: Floop floop floop floop!
In which I cover the good stuff and the hard stuff in my week, trying for the non-preachy, non-annoying side of ritual and self-reflection.
And you get to join in if you feel like it.
This week had about a hundred weeks inside of it.
Hi, Friday.
I’m a little dazed, but glad we’re here.
The hard stuff
I have never worked so hard.
Seriously.
Sunday, Monday and Toozday of this week were unbelievably intense.
I have never had so many gigantic things going on at the same time.
Getting ready for the Great Embarking of the Floating Playground on the Day of Leap (Wednesday). Which is the culmination of more than six months of non-stop work.
Getting ready to open the band new Destuckification Playground and the Treatment Room and The Napping Room and the new Shiva Nata studio. Ditto.
Doing that physically in the space, and energetically and emotionally. And creating the systems for it.
And trying to do it all in a way that’s harmonious and congruent with the bigger culture of my company.
Wishing for patience.
While all this is going on, there are a variety of people waiting on answers related to all these systems things we’re figuring out.
And everyone wants an answer at the same time.
Also for containers.
I would like peaceful stations for arriving at my own answers, and for other people to have peaceful stations to arrive at their own answers. And some sort of no-poking zone would be good too.
Wanting appreciation and recognition.
The thing with doing seventy billion important things behind the scenes is that when you’re doing your best work, it’s completely invisible. Seamless.
As it should be.
But I am noticing how much I want the world to say: GOOD JOB, THAT WAS CRAZY HARD AND YOU ARE AMAZING FOR PULLING IT OFF.
That’s my stuff. Luckily, I have the Director to talk to about it.
Having an epiphany and not wanting to act on it.
Thanks to some particularly bad-ass Shiva Nata this week, I had about ten thousand amazing epiphanies.
One in particular really deeply showed me what needs to happen next.
And I don’t feel ready to do anything about that just yet. More to investigate on that front. Especially about what I think “ready” entails.
Envelopes of doom.
Lots of unknown entities this week that presented themselves as Possibly Scary.
I had to open metaphorical envelopes that I didn’t want to open. And call AT&T because of an ominous-sounding message from them.
Most of my week was processing and getting ready for that.
I chose to do a thing I didn’t want to do.
And now I know more about that.
Some concepts that I teach take longer to sink into the culture than others.
This is hard for me to remember.
Aaaaaaaaaaaaaagh.
And now I know more about that too.
The good stuff
Using my superpowers.
That’s all I want to say about that. Silent retreat!
The Floop! It is here!
I have been working on the Floating Playground since August-September.
It is the culmination of so many different things.
It is a way to make Rally (Rally!) happen all the time, online. Fun, playful exploration. What I have been wishing for. With everyone excitedly exploring all the rooms and finding out what patterns they want to play with.
It is the result of everything I have learned the hard way over the past several years.
And it is the thing I wish for the most: to play in community, with creative and loving people, while still getting to have spaciousness, and to go into powerful seclusion for internal process.
Everything came together right on time, as it needed to.
Getting to open on the Day of Leap was an incredible experience.
The Day of Leap.
Four years ago on the day of leap, I took a gigantic personal leap.
And this week I got to enjoy a different kind of transition.
Now is not then.
And thank goodness for that.
When you set the container right, everything is good.
There was a lot of setting up that happened this week.
The alignment exercise is magic.
I did alignment with AT&T and the person I’d be speaking to, and it was INCREDIBLE.
The person I spoke to was absolutely delightful. I have never had that much fun talking to someone at a call center. We laughed and played and enjoyed each other’s company. Everything that I wanted to get done happened smoothly and easily.
This exercise *always* astounds me, but this time it really was spectacular.
I don’t ever have to do the thing that I don’t want to do again.
That’s a wonderful thing to know.
Gigantic shivanautical epiphanies.
It just keeps getting better.
The fun part of the Chickening happens here.
Tabstravaganza! Or: what’s Havi been up to with all those open Firefox tabs?
Take a look at Bent Tuba from @verdissage.
Claire wrote a post about making changes on the day of leap.
From the archives.
Some old, weirdly pertinent posts that I don’t remember having written, encountered while looking for something else:
The one about Beacons, and also: The Cover Story.
Playing live at the meme beach house — it’s the Fake Band of the Week!
Background? Ez and I make up bands. Stu (retired Bolshevik-fearing voice-to-text software) once translated “people will hate me and be jealous” to “they’ll hang out at my Meme Beach House“. It’s just one guy.
This week’s band:
Permanent Grace Period.
Though, of course, it’s really just one guy.
Hallo Hallo! I am saying Hallo Hallo. Announcement time.
Picture me wearing that crazy hat…
I’m about to redo our shop page and take some things down. Will update when I have details.
In the meantime, you’re on the list, right?
That’s it for me …
Join my Friday ritual in the comments if you feel like it. Or call silent retreat!
We let people have their own experience. We’re supportive and welcoming. And we don’t give advice (unless people specifically ask for it).
Wishing you a glorrrrrrrrrrrrious day, a restful weekend and a happy week to come.
Shabbat shalom.
p.s. It’s fine if it’s not Friday anymore. There’s complete chicken amnesty — join in whenever (or not) and it’s no big deal.
Now We Are Six. And: Hello, March.
We’re here. It’s March.
On March 7th, my company turns SIX. Six!
Six years since I marched into City Hall in San Francisco and declared this a business.
Six and a half years since we launched this website. Seven years since the idea and the first vision.
And nearly two years since we opened the Destuckification Playground, our fabulously crazy not-like-anything-else-in-the-world center in Portland, Oregon.
It’s a lot to celebrate. Also, my business and I share our birthday, so it’s a pretty big day of Reflecting for me personally as well.
Hello, March. What I want from this experience.
Oh, March. If I am going to enter as I wish to be in it, then I want to take this moment to connect to how I want to feel.
The qualities that I want to spend time with this month.
Presence. Sweetness. Ground. Grace. Possibility. Belonging.
The superpowers of MARCH.
Transition. Forward movement. Expansiveness. Shelter. Passage. Springtime. Entry.
Turning the page. Naming the moon.
This morning I turned the page to March on the gorgeous Playground calendar.
There’s a space to write in the name of the moon, and I thought I didn’t know what it should be, but then I knew:
The Moon of ARRIVAL.
March, I am looking forward to these things about you:
Expanding into the MUCH larger Playground space. Yay! Excitement!
Painting the new Playground. Preparing to move into my new offices.
Enthusing gleefully!
Gearing up to open the new Shiva Nata studio.
My birthday. The Director told me that all sorts of important things happen through the passage of this particular birthday. It’s about sevens, again.
Walking in the park.
Feeling strong.
Flowers EVERYWHERE.
The air smelling like dirt and freshness and new openings.
The March Rally (Rally!), of course.
Playing happily at the Floating Playground, which just opened YESTERDAY and is already an astoundingly magical place.
What will help me this month?
Paying attention to internal architecture: tubes and arches.
Talking to my spine.
Getting low.
Rolling around on the floor doing old Turkish lady yoga.
Being outside.
Dreaming my dreams and writing about them. The writing part is important.
PLAY!
What does the Director have to say?
She says:
“Your genius is culture. You know better than anyone how to establish culture that is safe, playful, unique, creative and joyful. You know how to make environments where people can get to know their internal wise and fascinating selves. When you recognize the importance of living in that world yourself, everything else can happen really easily.
This is so much bigger than you think. And it will be so much more fun than you think. But the only thing that matters now is making sure that every day you are dedicating time and energy to making space for yourself.
Make space for yourself so that you can do your work through humming your happy hum.
You think you don’t know how to do this but you do! I’ve even seen you do it.
I am with you every step of the way. Keep asking me and I will remind you.”
March, I hope you feel welcome.
I’m really glad you’re here. I’m glad that we’re here.
I am going to try to remember that Now Is Not Then. That my relationship with you-now is different than my relationship with any other March of years past.
Show me what you know. I’m up for the adventure.
Play with me? And comment zen for today.
You are welcome to write your own Hello, March.
You can write March a letter, drop off some gwishes, or give it a new name.
(If you like, peek at other months — July and August and September and October and November and December and January and February.)
We all have our stuff. We’re all working on our stuff. We take responsibility for our stuff. Because without sovereignty and spaciousness, this whole thing falls apart.
And we make this a safe space by not telling each other what to do, how to be or how to feel. We make room for each other.
Wishing you a beautiful and welcoming March.
The Day of Leap.
So. We’ve been given an extra day.
Bonus!
Or maybe it’s more like this:
You can, if you feel drawn to try this, imagine or pretend or choose to believe that you’ve been given an extra day.
Why not? You could try that on. As an experiment. An internal investigation.
What could you do with an extra day?
Especially if this day was secretly a door.
Or an opening.
You could have a tiny adventure.
Possibly by proxy.
You could discover something new about how you approach the world.
You could give a small chunk of time to getting to know more about a mysterious project or the germ of a tiny sweet thing.
You could rewrite a pattern or an internal belief.
Just a little. Just to find out what it’s like.
And you wouldn’t have to change very much.
One word. One piece. Maybe two.
What if this is the day when you find out what you are like when your system is running a new string of internal programming?
Like this.
A word that’s been coming up a lot in the comments and at Rally recently is “achievable”. As in:
Thing X, that I desire, is not achievable.
That sentence may be true in this moment. And it also serves to both reflect and reinforce an internal rule.
So what if we altered — just for a day — one piece of that rule?
If we decide that we’re not going to do away with the rule altogether but just play with it a little, how about one of these?
Stop at the one that has the least resistance for you but still gives you pause.
That’s usually a good place to enter any practice.
- “This thing I desire is not achievable yet.”
- “This thing I desire does not appear to be achievable yet.”
- “I am not yet clear on how this thing I desire could come into my life.”
- “I am allowed to desire this thing I desire, and there is probably something important in this for me. The essence of that desire could be achievable, and I can find out how.”
- “Even though I haven’t figured out yet how this thing I desire can become achievable, there could still be a way that I don’t know about yet.”
- “Even though it appears that I have lots of internal rules about how things can happen, I am learning about the sense of safety and security that my rules give me, and I am getting curious about other ways that I can give myself safety and security.”
- “I do not know what is achievable, but I can still plant wishes and learn about the part of me who sees possibility as well as the part of me who is invested in not having this.”
And then find out what happens.
Who is the version of you who doesn’t have that hard and fast rule about what is achievable. How do you even define [+achievable]?
What happens to you when you interact with internal structures and forms, and make space for you to learn about what’s possible?
In my experience, even tiny shifts in approach can lead to astonishing things. And that’s as good an experiment as any for an extra day.
It doesn’t matter what you try. The point is that we play.
We’re making room to find out.
This is the work of self-fluency. This is interior interior design. Very, very interior.
It’s a day of leaps.
Of course you don’t ever have to take a leap, because there are always less scary ways to create change. No leaping required.
But if we think about the leap as a gap or an entry, the leap becomes a portal. A chance. Maybe even a fairy door.
I will see you on the other side.
Play with me! The commenting blanket fort.
Let’s plant some gwishes for the Day of Leap. You can also silent retreat if you like.
I’m going to try to think of one thing I might do/think/try differently. And you’re welcome to do the same, or make fun experimental plans for leap-worthy things.
Usual comment zen applies. We all have our stuff. We’re all working on our stuff. It’s a process. We play. We make room for each other. We are patient and present.
Love, as always, to the commenter mice, the Beloved Lurkers and everyone who reads.
Very Personal Ads #137: everything is great everything is grand
Personal ads. They’re … personal! Very.
Each week I write these VPAs to practice asking for what I want. And to get clarity on what that really is, even when asking feels conflicted.
I always get useful information about my relationship with various aspects of the ask. Join in if you like!
So many wishes this week!
Thing 1: I need things to be easy, fun and magical.
Here’s what I want:
I would like to remember what it’s like when things can be easy, fun and magical.
Because sometimes they can.
This coming week has a HUGE number of wonderful but potentially challenging things.
I’d like to meet them all with grace and presence.
And not just to be able to handle it but to skip down the street in technicolor, singing Life’s a Happy Song like I’m in the muppets movie.
BECAUSE I AM.
Ways this could work:
Taking care of myself first so that I can connect to my internal hum.
Planting the qualities.
Pretending I’m at Rally (Rally!), even though I’m not.
I’ll play with…
Doing some stone skippings.
Investigating the internal rules I have that say big serious things absolutely absolutely always have to be a giant headache. Using Shiva Nata to rewrite these rules in sneaky ways.
Starting the day with the most fun thing I can think of.
Thing 2: Floop!
Here’s what I want:
The Floating Playground sets sail this week! On the DAY OF LEAP!
Which kind of solves my first thing because being onboard the Floop will be like being on Rally every single day. The Floop is basically all-Rally all-the-time. Except online!
My whole crew has been working non-stop for the past six months to get the new ship ready, and the past few weeks we’ve been hauling ass like you would not believe.
These next few days are hugely important.
I want everything to fall into place smoothly. I need the flappers or flippers or whatever the people coming aboard are calling themselves to do SO MUCH conscious entry and really prepare for the voyage.
I need everyone out of my headspace.
Ways this could work:
Now is not then. Now is not then. Now is not then.
I will use what I know now.
I’ll play with…
Being here now.
Wanting what I want.
Asking for what I want.
Strong, clear, loving, flexible, beautiful healthy boundaries.
Thing 3: Now We Are Six!
Here’s what I want:
I’m gearing up for a big month of internal and external anniversaries and celebrations.
And also trying to figure out how to include my community in this as well.
Ways this could work:
I don’t know.
I’m going to have to meditate on it.
I’ll play with…
Being receptive to a variety of ways that this could work.
I can set it up in a way that will be fun for me, instead of worrying about what everyone else likes, wants, thinks is acceptable.
I can find out what I’d do if money and time weren’t issues, and maybe that will give me some clues to follow.
Thing 4: Getting Directives.
Here’s what I want:
The Director and I were talking all the time, and then I got busy with things and we didn’t get to hang out yesterday.
I want to be with her all the time.
Ways this could work:
Connecting to her first.
Interviewing her.
Taking her out to lunch.
I’ll play with…
Remembering that she likes to hold my hand. Asking her to hold my hand.
Thing 5: Next week’s Secret Escape!
Here’s what I want:
I wish to Joyfully Abscond for my birthday week.
Ways this could work:
Oh I have absolutely no idea. In fact, I’m feeling really anxious that it won’t happen.
I’ll play with…
Asking the Director to tell me what and how and when. Now? Now!
Thing 6: Let’s get the first painting party going!
Here’s what I want:
We’re almost ready to paint the new Playground space. I would like to throw the first painting party this coming weekend, but it’s going to require lots of set-up.
Ways this could work:
We could get some information about when the cleaners are coming. The First Mate could give me a YES. We could set up a Frolicsome Bar (facebook) event and invite people.
I’ll play with…
Doing an OOD. Committing to this being a delight-filled experience.
Thing 7: Mission-related. Let’s have EVERYONE happily not being me!
Here’s what I want:
I want to introduce you to two sweet, wonderful, thoughtful and creative people, both of whom are a) named Amy, and b) do not want to be me.
There’s Amy Goetz in Seattle who knows she doesn’t want to be me, and Amy Gutman in Massachusetts who also does not want to be me.
They both came to this important conclusion independently of each other, and yay!
And, thank god, there are lots of other people out in the world who have realized the same thing.
Hurrah! No one should ever want to be me. Or to be Amy. Or the other Amy. Or anyone else for that matter. Trying to channel another person’s genius keeps you from being the conduit for your wisdom/power/qualities.
And it also goes against the mission.
The mission, of course, is to interact with yourself and your stuff in order to get to know how you function and who you are and what you need. So that you can meet yourself and your stuff with sweetness and understanding. And maybe even with LOVE.
We can be inspired by other people and they can be beacons for us. Their light helps us see our light. But our focus is still internal.
I want people to get the mission. Everyone. All the time.
I want everyone to know that THIS is what I care about. That trying-to-be-like-X is painful and tragic and to be avoided at all costs.
You can actually have more of what that person has when you’re in your flow and not trying to access their flow. Does that make sense?
I want people to remember that of course I am always going to support their them-ness. Their endeavors into learning what that is and how that works. I want this to be a given.
And then let’s go beyond defining ourselves in relation to things but just shining our beautiful shining and humming our beautiful hum. Unapologetically. In our own way, without having to know what that is. Just getting quiet and finding out.
Ways this could work:
Planting the seed.
Releasing attachment. Working on my stuff.
I’ll play with…
Progress report on past Very Personal Ads.
Just to update you on what’s happened since last time.
I wanted more yoga during Rally and it happened. I did a long practice before the Orientation, and on Toozday and Wednesday nights after the Evening Chicken.
Then we asked for support with grant proposals and two people wrote in with ideas, thank you!
I wanted changes to pirate queen HQ, and have been making steady progress there.
And I silent-retreated the last ask, but there’s movement on that as well.
A good week, all in all. It always helps to ask.
Play-filled comment zen. Here’s what I’d love today.
- Wanted: Your own personal ads, small or large. Updates on past ones if you like.
- You can also do these on your own or in your head. You can always call silent retreat!
- Leave your gwishes! Throw things in the pot!
- Things we try to keep away from: the word “manifest”, telling people how they should be asking for things, unsolicited advice.
- VPA amnesty applies, of course. Leave yours any time between now and next Sunday (or whenever, really) — it’s all fine by us!
xox