I'm on my way home

This week was nothing like I thought it would be

I wrote to you as I flew from Sydney to Coolangatta sharing my plans of writing and I’m writing here to you on the way home sharing that my plans didn’t go to plan!

Boy was it uncomfortable.

When I said yes to taking a week to write in Coolangatta I imagined feeling free and in the flow of writing, loving my time away with no responsibilities and nowhere I needed to be.

But it was the exact opposite.

It felt like I had ants in my body. I felt unsafe and anxious, that I was delusional being there, that there were more important things to give my time and energy to and I wanted to go home.

I thought that I was coming here to gather all my past writings, to collate them in subject matters and then direct ChatGPT (AI) with an instruction that would give these collections context and order. I didn’t know what would come out the other end but I was excited to see.

I ran a mini experiment back at home and I was impressed! I thus booked my week away to continue giving my focus to this.

I arrived on Sunday evening. On Monday I gathered and ran it through AI. It’s pretty incredible how ChatGPT can re-order and highlight what I have written in 8 swift seconds.

But I wasn’t happy with the outcome. It felt logical, too logical and read more like a manual. It lacked humanity. It wasn’t me.

The experiment didn’t work.

F***!

Now what?

Lost at sea.

That’s exactly how I felt. I wanted to write but to what?

Well, I wrote several Notes to Self instead…..and something unexpectedly unfolded from that.

Here are bitesized morsels of each Note to Self. Perhaps they may resonate with you too.

Notes to Self 1 - Feeling lost at sea is summarised above.

~

Notes to Self 2 - I want to play small, safe

I want to play small, safe.

It feels comfortable here. I can touch the edges. I know my boundaries. I know how to play this game.

In the spaciousness that I’ve given myself this week I don’t know who I am without my daily preoccupations and responsibilities. It feels like there’s too much space. The vastness is too big. The immensity untouchable. I have nothing to hang onto.

I feel scared again. 188 people coming to the meditation program.

They are arriving with ease. I know that’s not just coincidence. I recognise a force of nature when I see one.

But I want to play small, safe.

WTF is going on?

Oh that’s right, I’m living in my body right now the human story of my soul unfolding into itself…..the human machinations of saying yes to something that is bigger than myself with full fervour and knowing and trust in the unknown and then……..in one foul swoop wanting to get back in my box.

I gave ChatGPT the instruction to demonstrate through my writings the human unfolding of the soul growing into itself.

Well, seems that in this moment I AM the living and breathing example of the unfurling of my own humanity as my soul grows into itself!

I say yes to the infinite creative nature of life and then……I want boundaries to feel safe.

I want to experience the infinite creative nature of the unknown and then…….I feel overwhelmed and disoriented, like I am lost at sea.

I’m excited to follow the adventures of the intuitive pull and then…….I want normality, familiarity, safety.

My spirit wants to express itself with the freedom of a wild horse and then…….that freedom feels dangerous and I want to reverse my decisions.

I want to extend my capacity and be all that I am but……I don’t know who this version of me is and I don’t dislike who I am right now.

Push, pull, move, reverse.

Push, pull, move, reverse.

All day.

~

Notes to Self 3 - Man overboard

I woke up this morning with the words ‘man overboard’.

Rattled.  Anxious.  Fearful.

I wanted this feeling to go away.

How could I make it go away?

My friend Troy said maybe it’s time to have some margaritas!  It was 10:30am.

A few hours of breath work and meditation lying on my bed, allowing myself to feel all of it.

Ironically I did have a moment of appreciation that I had total freedom to feel it all in this apartment alone, including the tears, the sadness and grief that came with no story, and the heavy sighs that escaped my mouth.  I had nowhere I had to be, no school pick ups, no needing to cook dinner.  Nobody could hear me.  Just me.  For as long as it took.

I then went for a walk on the beach with my feet in the water and I wrote.  On my phone.  Notes to Self 2.

Man overboard.  Huh.

Did I think that I, Gisele would not be involved in this writing journey?

Did I think that I could remove myself from this process?

Did I think that this would simply be a retrospective journey of what I ‘had’ written, and that my AI friend would be its author?

As I reflect and write I feel sad.

I was missing in action.

Man overboard.

Not necessary.

Superfluous to the process.   Redundant.

Lump in my throat.

I’m sitting in cafe opposite the beach as I write this.

Better go back to my apartment.

~

Notes to Self 4 -I forgot myself

I forgot myself.

I made myself unworthy of participating.

I made myself unworthy of meeting God.

I meet God when I write.  Not that God in the sky who is almighty powerful, untouchable.

It’s more of a place that I touch inside myself.  I can feel it now.  It’s an experience that I am finding hard to put into words.

~ Pause ~

I just found them.

Sacred presence.

The sacred presence to allow what wants to be heard, seen, felt to find its way through me.  I feel like a custodian of sorts, or perhaps a home for the invisible nature of life to appear through the vessel that is me.

Each time I learn something new, or I remember what I have forgotten about the divine nature of who we are, or the parts of humanity that have lay in the shadows surface.

Each time I meet God.

Writing is an act of sacred presence for me.  It has been for 30 years.

How on earth did I forget this?

How on earth did I make myself unworthy of this act of sacred presence?

I’m laughing out loud and shaking my head in disbelief that I though that AI would be my right hand man.

~

Notes to Self 5 - Sacred

Sacred.  What a word.  What a feeling.  What an experience.

That we rarely use.

It feels like a word that is lost amongst the millions of words in the dictionary, asleep and certainly not to be found amidst our daily responsibilities, our work, our parenting, our needing to be here, there and everywhere.

Sacred.

It feels like a word that gets used only for very special occasions like at the birth of a baby or perhaps when a loved one passes or when we get married.

Or a precious heirloom that’s tucked away, unused and taken out only for these extraordinary occasions.

Or that it gets put on the mantle of deity and those once in a lifetime and sometimes for some never moments when we travel to palatial places of this wondrous world that take our breath away.

‘Sacred’ is irrelevant, like it doesn’t belong to our daily human experience.

To think of having a ‘sacred’ experience in the ordinariness of our practical lives of responsibility feels indulgent, selfish, non grounded, off with the fairies white cloth garbed that you might find in a commune in Mullumbimby.  It feels off the grid, musty. ‘Sacred’ sits on the other side of the world to our world of success, achievement, goals, wanting and needing more.  And failure, disappointment, illness, labels, to position the word ‘sacred’ here feels totally delusional. 

But strangely I’ve been hearing the this statement all day.

The sacred nature of being human.

~

Notes to Self 6 - Displaced

I’ve taken myself to the beach again.

I feel itchy again.  I don’t want to be inside my body right now.

I write as I walk…..

Who are we without our roles and responsibilities?  Who am I?

Away from home and work I have no roles here this week in Queensland.  No responsibilities.  It feels incredibly uncomfortable again.  Bloody hell.  I don’t like what I'm feeling!

I feel contraction in the vastness here.  I’m free but I don’t feel free.  There are no walls that I can touch that orientate me, that help me to know where I am.

I want my responsibilities.  Give me a washing machine.  The groceries to do.  Let me do some school pick ups.

The sacred nature of being human.   

Here are those words again that have been flirting with me all day.

What the hell!

I don’t like one little bit being in my human body right now.  It doesn’t feel sacred AT ALL.   It feels fucked.  Take me home.  Give me some laundry to do. Way too much space.

Walking, walking, my feet in the water.  So much space.  Too much space.  I don’t know where I’m going.  Thoughts of being delusional return again that I left my family this week to come to ‘write’.  Write what FFS? 

The sacred nature of being human.

These words just won’t leave me alone.

Feeling lost.  Feeling powerless.   Where the hell am I going?

God, give me those guide rails please.

Show me where to walk and what I am walking into.

Being this ‘surrendered’ doesn’t feel very helpful at all today.

And then I hear the words….

The sacred nature of feeling lost and displaced.

I walk back to my apartment.

Just before I enter I make a connection.

I am currently in the experience of the sacred nature of feeling lost and displaced.

~

Notes to Self 7 - Divine Logic

I get it now.

I had to think that I was coming to Queensland to gather my retrospective writings and run them through AI.

That carrot had to dangle to get me here to see what what was on the menu of my soul.

I shared this with my dear friend Warren today and he said ‘Yes, I’m convinced God sometimes uses a bit of smoke and mirrors to get us to where we need to be.’

Smoke and mirrors alright!

And my friend Annie wrote to me tonight asking ‘if the girl has sung under the moon’. When I shared the story of the carrot she replied ‘Well things are never as they seem. I think beauty really is in the illusion, so dressed up to entice us. And then, revealing it was also ants and bugs and little nippy things.  It has to be right? The contrast.’

Smoke and mirrors, beauty, ants, bug and nippy things, and divine logic.

There is nothing authentic in artificiality.  Aren’t I the girl who coined the premise that ‘authenticity is profitable’?  Hasn’t all of my work been to have people experience the creative ‘intelligence’ of that?  Hasn’t this been fundamental to peoples’ transformation?  Haven’t I consistently and fervently advocated to strip the props away of all the time sapping, energy draining and shiny light mechanical strategies that we’re sold?  Isn’t the mother of the transformation process been our walk back home, together…..to who we truly are?

As Dr Seuss says “Today you are You, that is truer than true. There is no one alive who is Youer than You.”

As I’m writing this, in this exact moment, cue Aaron come to centre stage.

He says ‘I had some of my own epiphanies this week after the questions you asked about marketing spend.  Very shocked at the results as there was little or no return on the dollars spent with others and LOTS of return on investment when they money has been focussed on me and being authentic.’

A week ago Aaron shared that he’d set an intention of eight new clients coming in over the month of July and then with huge enthusiasm celebrated that those eight new clients had arrived.  And what he was in most wonder about was that ‘they came to me’.  He then spoke to it in the context of revenue versus profit as he’d a significant ‘marketing spend’.

I asked him if that marketing spend had yielded results.  No they hadn’t. Aaron in his authenticity is what yielded results.

The sacred nature of being human.

I see this divine web of inter-connectedness.  I am over here doing me.  Aaron is over there doing him. You are where you are doing you.  Yet we’re having a conversation.  It’s an energetic conversation, because we are connected, despite our physical locality.

Whether it’s in a coaching relationship, a parenting relationship, a friend relationship, a boss employee relationship, what is the purpose of relationship?

It’s to know who we really are.  We could not know that without our brothers and sisters.

When we strip the props away of our identities, of the roles we play, of the responsibilities we hold, we are all walking each other home.

We don’t need to be on a spiritual retreat.  We don’t need to do Vipassana.  We don’t need to fast or read personal growth books.  We don’t need to sit in a cave or visit a temple.

I remember writing this about four years ago.

Walls have come down.

What walls?

The temple’s walls.

Because once power was given to the temple, believing that it was that which gave you faith, enabled trust and rendered you as a powerful omnipotent being.

But the temple’s walls have come down.

They have come down.

Because now it is not the temple that has the power.

It is you.

You are the temple.

Telemarketers, sales people and Facebook ad spend.

Artificial sales.

You are the temple.

How could we ever experience our sacred nature without the divine assistance of our humanity?

Our humanity is a portal into our infinite creative nature.

Smoke and mirrors, beauty, ants, bug and nippy things, and divine logic.

The sacred nature of being human.

What an incredibly uncomfortable and wondrous week away in Queensland.

The writing continues……