Being Open to Outcomes

I packed water, an apple, and an orange, but no extra layers of clothing. This was Christmas Day. A leisure ride, nothing that was going to kill me. I knew the hill on Higgins Canyon Road from having come down it once by car. Winding and barely wide enough for one car and a bike to pass. Spectacular views of Sky Moon Ranch, the sheep and cattle grazing next to large water reservoirs on steep hillsides.

The route we had chosen would not, we decided in advance, include riding up that part of the road. We would turn off and make a loop back to town, way before that steep ascent. After all, this was Christmas Day. No need to kill ourselves.

The turnoff was, according to the map, just after Burleigh Murray Ranch and off to the right. All we passed were private roads with mailboxes and No Trespassing signs on the right. We kept riding because it was a gorgeous day and it was fun.

Next thing I knew, we were headed up the hill.

I was winded, already climbing, when I began to get the words out about checking the GPS. By the time we found a safe area to pull off the road, we had already climbed several hundred feet. I was already in one of the lower gears. The winding road was laid out in front of us, one short section at a time, only revealing the very next turn, not telling us whether this was the last, or second to last, or how many there would be ahead. No tacit reassurance of “one more to go”, like a personal trainer or aerobics class instructors might provide.

Only the half loop spiraling up and disappearing behind the next bend. So in the moment of riding, there is only the decision to make it around the very next bend. Or not. There is no gratification of “knowing” that if you just do one more of these, you’ll be a rock star. Only the decision, between you and your body, whether to take the bike up one more section of the spiral.

It’s the “Do what’s in front of you” part of going toward your vision. Your bike is pointed in the direction of the top of the hill. Your job, in any given moment, is to pedal up this particular section. Your job is not to “get to the top”. Getting to the top is what happens when you make the decision to see what’s around the next bend, over and over again, and then you look up from what you're doing to discover that you’re at the top.

I remember exactly that moment from this Christmas Day ride, actually. I had just powered up about three sections without rest, after a man twice my age wearing blue jeans had passed us. He was sincere and kind when he said, “Merry Christmas! You guys are doin’ ter-RIF-fic!” I thought to myself, “Not as terrific as YOU are!” and kept pedaling because I couldn’t talk. I bore down a little harder, figuring I wasn’t going to rest my way to being in that kind of shape when I am his age (I guessed 80).

But by the end of the third spiral, I had it in my head that this was it. My limit. If the next climb didn’t bring us to the top, I would turn around. It was Christmas. Why was I killing myself?

I stopped and, panting, leaned on the handle bars of my bike, sucking down water from my CamelBak straw between breaths.

“Is this it?” my riding partner Randy asked.

I couldn’t talk just then. I was feeling the simultaneous sensation that my body was being pushed to a limit, and the sense that I wanted to feel more of this. There was a kind of curiosity and delight about seeing what a little bit more right now would feel like. Even though it was pretty uncomfortable.

So I said, “Go!”, motioning for him to start climbing the next portion. To see what was around the next bend.

I didn’t wait for my heartrate to slow down more or my breathing to recover to normal pace. I started climbing, choosing to go deeper into the “zone beyond comfort” and see where it took me. I didn’t care about the top, I just wanted to keep going and feeling this sensation.

The rhythm of my pedal strokes was slow and steady. My lungs were getting accustomed to the slight burning that accompanied each breath. It took focus ot keep the handlebars in line with the edge of the pavement as I climbed like this. I looked only directly ahead of me. Not toward the top.

And around the next bend, we saw the 80-year-old man come coasting toward us, having reached the top and turned around already. I had no focus left to smile, comment, or register this fact but had to keep pedaling. The last piece of road was a bit of straightaway and the top was marked by an old gate at the base of a eucalyptus tree, with an expanse of downward rolling hills stretched out beyond it.

We were there. The top. It wasn’t something we set out to do. In fact, I had strictly planned otherwise. It was something that happened as a result of deciding, one stretch of road at a time, to keep climbing and see what’s around the next bend.

Photo by Nancy Yu, http://yurides.wordpress.com

Learning to Ride

It’s freezing. All I know is it’s 11 miles out and back. The description on the website had said, “Participants must be in good cardiovascular condition. No single track/technical work. Climbing for sure.” I should have known when I saw the fat tires on everyone else’s bikes.

Oh, how we wish that learning would take place in the comfort of our familiar homes! A cozy blanket, a warm cup of tea, our favorite music playing, and the knowing that everything as we have chosen and arranged it now surrounds us.

Learning for me always looked like showing up in a classroom, or privately in front of a teacher, and demonstrating what I knew. I would then get feedback in the form of a critique, the next challenge chosen by the teacher, or a score on a test that told me how much what I thought I learned matched what I was expected to have learned.

What I learned on my first mountain bike ride this weekend is that learning – the fresh, raw experience of aha!wow! that’s new! – can be extremely uncomfortable. It can happen when we are placed (or we find ourselves) in a situation we did not know we chose (but we did) and that every fiber of our being is wanting to fix, alter, escape, or resist. But there we are. In my case, “there” was a guided 11-mile ride on a closed access trail. Turning back was not an option without taking the entire group with me.

There are questions, but none worth asking, because any answer provided verbally in advance would not actually provide helpful information. I could only get answers in the act of experiencing it. How steep are the hills? How will my bike hold up? Am I dressed warmly enough? What gears should I use? Am I in good enough shape for this?

I find out the answers to each of them as I encounter the first climb, and then the first big downhill. The first of many. Each one a little longer, a little steeper. They keep coming. My lungs are burning. My ears are burning from the freezing cold air. I am miserable, I am cursing my bike for not being a “mountain” bike, only a hybrid. I excuse myself from having to keep up with the group because of this. I don’t want anyone to talk to me. I just want to breathe without the burning in my lungs.

At one point I am hurtling down a steep hill. My tires slip a little, causing me to bounce and weave, and instead of trying to take control, I decide to just let the bike do its job. I had no ability – defined as knowledge through experience – to control the bike or determine whether I would even stay on it. Slamming on (or squeezing) the brakes was not going to guarantee any safe outcome. I briefly flash back to skiing, where I’d always tried to slow myself down at the steepest parts, and it wasn’t always the best way – it was resisting the flow down the mountain, and it took a lot of effort to go against gravity.

I see now that I was lucky not to have fallen. But in that moment I had no concept of “luck” or “no luck”. It just wasn’t my day to fall. I let go, and it was my day to witness that miracle.

I keep going only because no one really asks me if I want to stop. I cycle through struggle, resistance, surrender, and then surviving.

I take a rest, at the turnaround point, and just breathe. It feels good to cover my entire face and breathe normally. Now I really have no choice other than to go back along the trail the same way we came.

I become curious, and begin to play. That’s when the true experience of learning begins to happen.

What could I try to do differently to see if it will make my experience any different?

I stop telling myself I have the “wrong” bike and start playing with adjustments. I raise the seat up. That one small move helps a lot.

My mind so wants a binary “how to” on the gears. A set of instructions like, “When going downhill, do this….When going uphill, do that.” But it isn’t that linear. Every hill is slightly different. My ingoing speed determines which gear would match it best when coming out of the hill. I have to play. Constantly engage with what is happening in this very moment, and be open to discovering.

I discover an elaborate, moment-to-moment dance of body, bike, and terrain. Tweaking. Feeling. Being ever present and also facing forward, constantly moving. Listening. Discovering. Adjusting by taking small actions.

During the second half of the ride I am much more friendly with my bike, my body, and the terrain. I am much more involved as a full participant, doing my part of the three-way equation, not trying to resist or control the other elements. I am having (slightly) more fun along the way.

At the end, I feel tired but glad. My body is very grateful for the opportunity to play and be worked. Discovering new possibilities and dancing within the situation, I realized there was only the choice of the moment – to ride it or to stew in a story of misery. I chose to ride.

E-Squared Book Club: Week 6

At this week's E-Squared Book Club we discussed the last two chapters. I was sad to get to the end of the book because it’s been so much fun to do these experiments and share what’s happening each week with the club and on the blog. Once again, the weather at Quarry Park was spectacular – warm and sunshine-filled.

Oneness - We Are All Connected

Experiment #8, the 101 Dalmatians Principle, is about how we really are all connected. That every particle in the universe is in instantaneous communication with every other particle. Wow!

I happened to stumble upon the movie Cloud Atlas this past weekend (coincidence? Or synchronicity?), which addresses this principle in beautiful movie-making splendor.

According to this principle, every thought we have alters the entire universe forever. Imagine that! The other big idea is: Your thoughts about other people change YOU. How you see others is how you will see yourself. This makes forgiveness and kindness and compassion make sense at the level of the universe. It’s not about doing the “right” thing according to a rulebook or moral code. It’s about observing and choosing what you create in your own reality each time you think a thought about someone else.

Shirley had a GREAT story about this experiment from the morning of our meeting. Instead of blurting out her normal string of requests and judgments toward a person in her life, she paused and silently sent a message through the FP to that person. She got quiet and still and asked clearly and kindly that this person take action.

Within minutes, she received a phone call from that person reporting that he was completing the actions she requested.

What I LOVE about this story is that in the moment she stopped herself from “yelling” and connected her thoughts silently to the FP, Shirley was giving to herself what she so desperately wanted from the other person. And then she got it.

Pretty magical…or (as I like to say now)...exactly the way the universe works.

Abundance and Enoughness

Experiment #9, the Fishes and Loaves Principle, was about “enoughness” and finding the goodness and beauty that is already everywhere all the time.

I love Pam’s discussion of how our society's mantra seems to be, “There’s not enough”, and we hold on to this thought because we believe we need it in order to motivate us to do anything at all. If we were completely content with how things are, then what would we do with our lives? Or so the thought goes.

But have we ever really paused to live the experiment? What IF we tried being appreciative of every single thing we already have right now, and kept repeating that moment to moment? What IF we saw our worlds through that lens of everything already being “enough”?

Most of us are too afraid to try.

It reminds me of an article I wrote on the Breema principle of No Extra. On the free Q&A call for that month, I asked people what came up for them around the idea of “No Extra”, and one of my clients said, “I worry that it means there won’t be enough. No Extra means there's not enough.”

Isn’t it fascinating how solidly we are rooted in the concept of “not enough”? So much so that we can’t hear the real meaning of “No Extra” which is actually EXACTLY enough. Not too much, and not too little. I once heard that Mother Teresa’s multimillion dollar charity always operated on enough. No extra, but exactly enough.

Based on everything I’ve learned from these experiments, I see that “enough” is not an amount or quantity. “Enough” is a lens. When we choose to see through the lens of “enough”, that is what we will find in our lives. And when we choose to see through the lens of “not enough”, we will also find that.

It Doesn't Have To Be Hard

Tammy shared a story from this week, that she sees as a result from Experiment #1, started six weeks ago. At that time she felt she had received a sign from the FP that it was time to be recognized at a higher level and submit her portfolio review for a magazine. She had a grumbly feeling about doing the submission, but really wanted to be seen in a respected magazine. She walked away from that first meeting saying, “OK, universe, if you say so, I guess I’ll have to submit my portfolio if I want to get shown. Even though I really don’t want to do the submission.”

Tammy says she recalls me saying, apparently very calmly, “What if you can get the recognition you want from the magazine without having to do the submission?”.

She rolled her eyes inside because she held the thought, “Yeah, right. Nothing ever just happens like that. You’ve got to buy the lottery ticket if you want to win the lottery. Just like I’ve got to do the submission if I want my work to be recognized.”

Fast forward six weeks, and she finds herself being asked to show her work in San Francisco, in a beautiful sacred venue, to an audience who will likely include prospective clients. The more pieces she gives, the more they ask for. And she never had to go through a portfolio review! The opportunity and invitation to show just came to her.

I loved hearing the opening in Tammy’s voice as she described, with a bit of awe and wonder, how maybe – just maybe - this all really did just come to her.

Another update from Experiment #1: Pianos Pianos Everywhere!

Remember Shirley's request from Experiment #1? She wanted a piano to play. She didn't want to own one. She just wanted a place to go and play when she wanted to, and be heard by others if they wanted to.

Two possibilities came immediately into our circle in the form of pianos we knew to be available.

Shirley's big learning was about the need to show up and take actions to meet the blessings that are coming her way. She did that TWICE during the E-Squared Book Club, both related to pianos.

Last Sunday, I happened to be out for breakfast at Cafe Classique, and there she was, sitting at the piano playing ragtime. Dreams do come true. You have to call it in by asking, then be brave and take action to go meet your dream! Yay, Shirley! You inspired me and many others.

The Radiance of Self-Love

Finally, we played with the wands, and captured some video for you. In this clip, watch as I consciously send love to each and every corner of my life as it is right now - not just the parts I 'like" but all parts that I may have hidden, judged, or cast aside as "not good enough right now". My energy field expands and the wands open like butterfly wings.

[youtube=http://youtu.be/i9IS8367aj8]

Here's a quick clip of Tammy silently asking a question of the wands. First you see a "yes" and then a "no" with her second question. Tammy is very connected to the wands and her energy shows up very clearly and immediately.

[youtube=http://youtu.be/Dj-Y5OP9XmY]

Onward and upward! Bringing experiments into daily life

Our project over the next week is to design our own energy experiments for the holidays and end of the year. What one or two experiments would you like to run in your own life? You can base the experiment on one of the nine experiments in the book, or you can come up with your own completely original ones.

I’m looking forward to hearing what we all come up with…and sharing our results right here!

P.S. Here's an update on my sunflower seed sprouts, two weeks after planting: