I appreciate and resonate with all that has been expressed. Breathing is good. Breathing is essential. Breathing IS the gift that keeps on giving. And, it is with huge gratitude that I actually remember now, more likely and more often than not, to breathe consciously; that my body is a quantum biological processor of energy and information… and that I can actually trust it all the time. And, that every last bit of my living and my life is either a choice toward (for) the godForce that I AM OR away from (against) the godForce that I AM. The former choice is a choice for Self-rapport and Self-connection; the latter is a choice for self-resistance and self-betrayal. Every breath I take is a choice to trust the gravitas of my own experience, expressed. That is where I’ll always find my joy.

I have spent more than 50 years of my life helping others to heal their wounds. Sometimes, the changes have been incremental and sometimes, they have been quantum leaps. The quality of my results with others has been completely interdependent on me authentically living the power of a paradigm shift in thinking about who and what we human beings are: we are quantum… or we are not. It really is a choice… a choice that the forces of/for cultural conditioning claim we do not have. Do I have to be of this world in order in order to live in it? Voila! For most of us, this conjures up instant dilemma! Who would cognitively choose dilemma for her Self? And, yet, unaware, we keep on choosing it, just the same. We keep making the choice to join in, to fit in. THAT IS the familiar story that runs our lives. Even when we are aware, the entrainment to drop into the familiar, hoping for a different result, is pernicious.

My friend knows that I declared bankruptcy 10 years ago at age 62. She also knows that I am writing a book about my experience of that and about what I now know differently to be an authentic and more expanding truth, inside, where I live.

I know this is an important conversation. No matter hold you are when it is declared - whether you are a senior citizen, a younger adult, or a child catapulted into the deep and heavy spray of it, it is devastating. Huge shame and feelings of stupidity, insufficiency and insecurity come with it. A lot or fault and blame and a lot of rationalizing it all, so that we can, at the very least... and maybe at most... attempt to feel good about ourselves.

My mind is not always my friend. In the moments of feeling visceral triggers of fear and terror that let me know that, 'Shit, I've fucked up again', anger follows not far behind. In these moments, I hear the voices of my 'young-me' teachers, echoing forward through decades of history to where I stand now, 'Sheila, you are your own worst critic'. 

Funny, now, I realize that, in that context, I always heard 'worst' as 'best', yet never quite believed either. I felt mortified to own 'worst' yet couldn't allow myself to own 'best', so scary was the feeling of being vulnerable. 

I wore this chagrin as a badge of honour. Can any of you relate? The harder I was on myself served to fuel my hope that I'd become better. My punishment would be my reward. Congers up pictures of self-flagellation, doesn't it? Do enough penance and you'll be good enough, don't you know? Hope ultimately became the never-to-be-surrendered driver for my life, fed by and camouflaged in my own deep despair that I'd never, ever get my life 'right'.

I am in the process of writing a book about bankruptcy... and  what it really means as a state of being, a state of mind. I have well concluded over the years I have lived on this planet that bankruptcy, as we have come to think about it in both environmental and financial terms, is the evidential trail of personal dissolution, insolvency, overdraft and the absence of flow in our lives, at much higher orders of thinking. We would not ever consciously intend to live bankrupt lives, yet that is how most of us, the world over, are living. We choose to turn away from the evidence of our choices, so indoctrinated have we become to not that... anything but that. Shame and the fear of shame will keep us in denial, in avoidance, in hiding and feeling inauthentic. We are the frauds we loath. Truth is, by the time a bankrupt person chooses to declare and own the lie she has been living ad nauseam, that she might save her sanity and finally own the clarity of her own thinking, the truth of the lie has been present for a very long time. Modelling is our greatest teacher. I learned by example to turn away from the obvious; self-distraction was key.