Y is for YES

How do we know when we get to YES? People often say, "I just know when it's right." But what tells us this is so? As always, the body is our ally here. What we're looking for is a felt sense in the body - an image, phrase, movement, gesture, sounds, texture, sensation, emotion, any and all of these.

I once experienced that internal YES as one of those wooden ball-on-a-string toys, as if I had one inside my belly. You let the ball drop, swing it upward a little, and try to catch it with the cup in the handle you're holding. The trick is not to try too hard. When the ball lands, when it's caught itself, there's a satisfying CLICK. I experienced that sensation of things falling into their right place at the right time. That YES clicked deep in my belly. I could feel it, even almost hear it. So satisfying, content, fully present. And trusting in something beyond my trying to control the pace of things.

The shift from NO to YES is palpable. I'm paraphrasing my dear friend Howard DePorte*, a gifted mediator who says this about his clients getting to YES:

People know they've gotten to YES when they no longer feel the energy in their brain. Many people come to mediation intent on outsmarting someone, getting the advantage, winning. They sit pitched forward, ready to
do battle.

Through transformational mediation, a shift happens. People become more receptive and drop down into the heart. They often find empathy and connection with their former opponents and identify with them as fellow humans. You can actually see their shoulders relax as they sit back. Internally, they may feel more liquid and experience relief rather than resistance. With greater fluidity things move, like smiles, laughter, even tears. They tend to think better then, more creatively, because they are now thinking with the heart. Ultimately that awareness can drop even lower, from heart to belly, that other place of knowing.

*If you'd like to experience that transformation in a dispute or conflict you are having with others in your life, please contact Howard through www.pointmediation.com

So consider what felt sense let's you know it's a YES. Deciding what to eat for dinner, choosing how to spend your day off, discerning what you need to say to your colleague, making love, making art. The body will speak in different ways at different times, but it surely does speak. How do YOU know when you're at a YES?

Subject to Change

This grand show is eternal. It is always sunrise somewhere; the dew is never all dried at once; a shower is forever falling; vapor ever rising. Eternal sunrise, eternal sunset, eternal dawn and gloaming, on seas and continents and islands, each in its turn, as the round earth rolls.

John Muir, that great friend of the wilds, knew that Nature is constantly in motion. Each being follows its own rhythm and cycle of change.

Those creative people who are naturalists of the human condition, experience metamorphosis in themselves and others all the time. Those with longevity, like Bob Dylan, have many lives and modes of creation as they chase their ever restless curiosity. Ever willing to be transformed, they transform others. Fans who get attached to one period or epoch may not fully appreciate that art and music and all things alive never stand still.

Even if you do not consider yourself creative, you are nonstop creative process. With each inhalation, you take on new form. On the exhale, you dissolve. We have an idea, try it out, retune it, and launch it out in the world. The response we get and our urge to create again leads to another branching idea and project. Living, breathing humans are transformation embodied.

We may shy away from this notion, for it returns us again and again to the dreaded Not Knowing. We get attached to what we know and are fearful about losing that certainty. We get stuck. We forget to wonder at the new beginning that this ending brings. If only we could trust the flow of life, we'd be carried on by the creative process and our soul evolution.

As always, to be continued...