It’s 11:15 p.m. and I am standing at the Eva Airways desk in the San Francisco airport. I have just found out that my valid passport isn’t valid enough. Your passport, my passport, actually expires six months before the expiration date. Go figure.

I’m not getting on that plane; I’m not going to Bali. Is this a disaster or is this perfect? This is what I will decide. If my not going to Bali because my passport is invalid is a disaster, then everything that happens from here on out, in fact, everything that led up to this moment, will also count as a disaster. I will have wasted time and money on a flight to San Francisco, and the $85 it cost me for the shuttle from Corvallis to Portland. I am missing out on at least four days of my trip to Bali, which could end up being many more days if I can get my passport renewed. Eva Airways doesn’t fly to Bali every day. Many of their flights are already full.

One of my main purposes for this trip is to be a part of a planning committee for the Bali Institute for Global Renewal. Marcia Jaffee, the president, organized the conference in 2006 with Desmond Tutu as the featured speaker. It is a great honor and privilege to be part of an incredibly amazing group of people who are trying to unite indigenous wisdom and Western ingenuity and create leaders all over the world. Saying that I want to be there for this planning session is a gross understatement. In some ways everything in my life has been leading to this gathering.

Not that anything is at stake here.

This snafu could be a disaster, or, if I decide that somehow my Angel Committee is playing with me again, then I will start to look for Perfection, and my mistake will be turned into a Discovery.

It is now the early hours of November 19, my daughter’s 31st birthday. I have a ticket to fly back to Portland at 7 AM. I decide there is no point getting a hotel room, so I tried to sleep around the arm rests on the chairs, the armrests that are permanently there I’m assuming to stop people from sleeping. The gentle staff of Eva Airways has been incredibly kind and helpful.

The woman who pushed my luggage cart from the international terminal back to the domestic terminal tells me that she is grateful that I have been so pleasant about it all. “Many people yell and scream at us,” she tells me.

“As if it’s your fault Indonesia won’t let me come, even though my passport is valid,” I say to her.

This reminds me of the time I was a counselor at an elementary school in Corvallis, Oregon and a man got a ticket for speeding in front of the elementary school. He came in and yelled at the playground assistant, and then he yelled at the principle. How he does anything is how he does everything. I’m glad am not married to this man.

I try to sleep, but I am worried about the safety of my luggage, and I can’t get comfortable. The airport is surprisingly deserted. It occurs to me that, if I am to go on my newly booked ticket on November 23 in the wee hours of the morning, I must get my passport fixed tomorrow, November 20. I had better find out what I can find out now, so I will know what to do when I get back to Portland.

There is no free WiFi in the San Francisco airport. To get WiFi I have to fill out a lot of information and pay $7.98. Because I am so tired, because I am so disoriented, and because I am legally blind, filling out this form at 2:30 AM is difficult. My username is incorrect. Start over. My password is too short. Start over. My password doesn’t agree with my confirmation password. Do it again.

Putting in numbers in my computer is challenging for me, so re-entering my credit card data every time is taxing. And then it gets funny. It has to get funny, or I will add to my own suffering.

Just as I get online and find the site that has been recommended to me, a site that will help me expedite getting my passport renewed, a man walks by. I haven’t seen anyone in at least an hour. “Is there Internet in its airport? He asked me. He looks tall and a bit disheveled to tell the truth. But there’s something about his voice I trust, something in his demeanor that seems deeply and profoundly human to me.

“Yes,” I tell him, “there is Internet here.” I don’t tell him the sad story of how many times it took me to get on the Internet. “Would you like to check something?” I asked him.

“Yes,” he says to me, “I would like to check a little something.”

“I am legally blind,” I tell him, “and I could use some help on a website. We could just make this a win-win situation.”

He agrees and sits down beside me, and I start to cry a little. “I’ve been really great up to now,” I tell him. “It’s just that your voice is so kind….”

It turns out he is a man who travels around the world healing people. He tells me his name, which I can’t remember, but it is wonderful and musical. I ask him what his name means. He replies by exhaling a long soulful breath that sounds like wind in a tunnel. Cool.

He gives me a healing session. He puts his long-fingered, wickedly long-fingered, hands around my eyes and seems to pull energy out while he breathes. It is unlike anything I’ve ever experienced.

Here we are, the two of us, alone as far as I can tell in the domestic terminal of the San Francisco airport. I am blind and he is a healer. Is this starting to look like Perfection yet?

All the clothes he is wearing have been given to him, he tells me. “I can count on one hand all the clothing that I’ve purchased in the last five years.” I believe him. He tells about his girlfriends, he tells me about his mom. He tells me he has been on television a few times and that he has written a treatment and has a producer interested in a reality show. I think he will make it happen. I can see him being wildly successful on television. He has a presence that is amazing.

I share with him that I do some energy healing. “Sometimes when I put my hands on people I have visions, I tell him. I don’t say that I am seeing Truth, I just tell people what I see if they want to hear.”

He gives me his hands and asks me to hold his hands and tell me what I see. At first I feel a river flowing through us and then I feel very strongly that he is a tree. His hands are like tree limbs. He is like a character out of Lord of the Rings.

“I see you as a tree. Does that resonate with you?” I asked him.

“Yes,” he says, “I am a tree.”

We part ways shortly thereafter, the terminal fills up, and I catch my seven o’clock plane back to Portland, Oregon. The chances of getting my passport renewed the next day were slim and expensive. “What is, is,” I keep chanting to myself. “Whatever happens, I will deal with it. If I go to Bali on Monday, great. If I can’t go to Bali on Monday, I’ll figure something else out.”

This story is not over. Tomorrow I will finish telling you about my adventure, but I will end today’s post with just two more bits of information.

The first story of Perfection: On the plane back to San Francisco from Portland, the person who sat right next to me was that very same man from the terminal who had spoken so kindly to me. He turned out to be an existential humanistic psychotherapist on his way down to a conference in San Francisco. He is on the board that organizes that conference. His specialty is authenticity and authentic engagement. Let me just say, we have a lot in common.

He suggested that perhaps we could do some work together in Portland. He said he thought I would be great at their conferences, bringing in a whimsical, musical, authentic, on-the-spot songwriting element to the conference. I agreed.

My second story of Perfection: When the woman at the Eva Airways staff told me my passport wasn’t valid long enough to get into Indonesia, I remembered the dream I had told my husband about that morning. I had dreamed that something had gone wrong with some kind of technicality on my trip to Bali. There were lots of people scurrying around trying to solve the problem. When I woke up, I couldn’t figure out what the dream was about, but I had been a little anxious about this trip, which is unusual for me, so I was on alert.

When I learned I wasn’t going to Bali, I realized what my dream had been about. I dreamed that I wouldn’t get to go to Bali because of some technicality, and I didn’t get to go to Bali because of a technicality. Now what is that?

So is my trip cancellation or postponement a disaster or is it perfect? I’m the one who will decide. I’m the one who keeps deciding every moment. How I do anything is how I do everything. How you do anything is how you do everything.

Seeing who you are meant to be involves making choices like this all the time. How are you going to choose to look at your life? How are you going to respond with what your angel committee throws in front of you? Are you going to see Disaster? Or are you going to find Perfection?

More tomorrow on the saga of “Vicki Seeks To Renew Her Passport in One Day.”

Blessings,

Vicki

Getting people up on their feet singing, laughing, and amazing themselves is one of my all time favorite things to do. And I get to do this great, fun thing all over the world. How cool is that?

As I sat watching my fire this morning listening to David Lanz on Pandora radio, I was suddenly filled, completely filled, with the memory of living with my first husband and my children. We are both remarried now, very happily, and our children are grown and doing very well, thank you very much.

As much as I have tried to focus on the love of my first marriage, as deeply as I know that any resentments or bitterness or unforgiveness is a Lie, and prevents healing for the person who nourishes the Lie — as deeply as I know this, I have been unable to completely free myself of the burden of unforgiveness and resentment.

But as I listened to David Lanz this morning, I was completely filled with the loving memory of the richness and truth that was also a part of our marriage, I heard something from my core clearly for the first time: “See them clearly, love them completely. Easy.”

I’ve seen myself and many of my clients try to protect ourselves through perfectionism, judgment, and even self-hate. Our protection is misguided to be sure, but it is oh, so human.

A part of our Stone Age brain, and that is the brain we all have, wants to fight or run in order to keep us safe. Or, especially if we are female, it wants us to be beautiful, attracting those most powerful males who can keep us safe. Our attempts to protect ourselves, our perfectionism, criticism of ourselves and others, gets fed by our hard wiring. The more we practice something, the more cells our brains assign to that task. Even though worrying makes us less safe because it distracts us from the real environment we are living in, many of us worry as a means of trying to prevent the bad thing from happening.

I have come to see that the ways I protect myself often hurt me much more than they make me safe. I am ready now to see clearly those ways I try to protect myself, love them completely, and set myself free. It’s really easier than I ever could’ve imagined.

My visual disability has invited me to see the world differently. I now listen and trust senses that used to be overwritten by the details of daily life. Losing my ability to drive slowed me down. I needed slowing down. I needed to learn to ask for help. I needed to learn that receiving with grace and gratitude and humility is a great gift to the person who receives and the person who gives. It is a sacred completion, this giving and receiving cycle. When we give, give, give, give, give we are like a broken record. We are stuck in a groove that used to be music, but is now only noise.

See them clearly. I grew up in an alcoholic home. As Claudia Black says in her book It Will Never Happen to Me, the three most basic rules in a home full of addiction are: don’t talk, don’t trust, don’t feel. Don’t let yourself know what is really going on and it will be easier to not talk about it. Don’t let yourself see anything clearly. If you do, then you might have to do something about it, and anything you do is dangerous.

Since leaving my childhood home, I have spent my life learning to see clearly. Losing my vision has only helped me see things, life, more clearly. Learning to see things clearly has scared me and almost everyone I know. When I see something clearly, what do I do then?

This led me to unhelpful ways of protecting myself. Trying to be very, very good, trying to not bother people, trying to not hurt anyone ever, trying to guess what everyone needs before they know so I can give it to them so we can all be safe. All these very understandable behaviors did not keep me safe, they kept me separate.

So this morning, this dark November morning, sitting by the fire listening to the familiar, beautiful piano music of David Lanz, I was filled with the truth that dissolved the Lie I’ve been living with my entire life. I can see clearly, and still love completely, without judgment, without any need to protect myself from anything. It’s actually easy. It’s much easier, in fact, than anything else.

I want to remember this.

I now understand that the ways I protect myself often hurt me much more than they make me safe. I am ready now to see clearly those ways I try to protect myself, see them clearly and love them completely, and set myself free. It’s really easier than I ever could’ve imagined.

I am suggesting we learn to love our worrying and our other misguided attempts to protect ourselves. I’m suggesting we see our worrying for what it is, our Stone Age brain’s best attempt to keep us alive. Love this attempt completely, and then let it go. I’m suggesting this can be and needs to be easy.

When we learn to love ourselves this well, we are able to love others this well. We can see our parents, our partners, our children, our coworkers, our bosses as flawed human beings. Instead of being judgmental and angry, we can feel compassion. Compassion clears our brains.

When our brains are clear, meaning and purpose can rise to the surface like a phosphorescent trail we can follow in the sea. When we’re not distracted by our own human foibles, when we can see our flaws clearly and compassionately, we can take effective action to move toward who we are meant to be, and what we are meant to do in the world.

This way of living may seem difficult, almost impossible when we begin. But living this way gets easier the more we do it. Our brain can assign more cells to compassion, humor, and forgiveness than it does to criticism, judgmental as am, perfectionism, and despair.

Loving our imperfections is easier, in fact than any other way to live. How about that?

I want to never forget this simple truth.

Many blessings to you, many, many blessings to you,

Vicki

P.S. I’m still offering my free fifteen minute Play with Possibility Date, which includes a customized Musical Motivator. Contact my business manager, Sandy Parker at sandy@myefficientassistant.com to set up an appointment.

One of the best compliments I have ever received came from a 13-year-old boy. He told me I had taught him he was the author of his life. “Well, how about that?” I thought. “If somehow I helped him know that his story begins and ends with him, then I am doing something right.”

It is easy to talk about owning our own authority, being the author of our own life, taking full responsibility for who we are in the life we’ve created. It is much more difficult in practice. It is messy, confusing, and sometimes very scary.

Recently I had a chance to practice owning my own authority with some dear, dear friends of mine. I love them and they love me. That is a given. But I had a decision to make, a decision I feared would lose their love and respect. And I wasn’t even sure I was right.

Here is what our conversation sounded like:
“Even though I may be making a big mistake, even though I may have wasted a lot of money, even though I was sure when I signed up for this, even though you may think I’m being a coward, even though you may think I’m avoiding doing the emotional work I need to do — even if all this is true, I still need to say no. I am spinning in a vortex I can’t get out of. I can’t hear myself anymore, and if I can’t hear myself I have nothing.”

Fortunately for me, these are compassionate people, full of integrity. Their response was, “How can we support you?”

“Love me no matter what I decide,” I told them.

“That is a given” they said. I cried.

I was risking my friendship with these two beloved friends and I wasn’t sure I was right about anything. The only thing I knew for sure was that the cacophony and distress in my body was so loud and so distracting, I couldn’t hear the deep wisdom inside me, the voice inside me I have learned to trust completely.

I trust this voice, which I call the Muse, implicitly. When it tells me to sing a song to a group that I’ve never sung aloud to myself, I sing it. When it tells me to sing to a classroom full of third graders about my mother’s death, I sing it. When I put my hands on someone doing Reiki healing, and I get a vision, if they have given me permission, I share my vision, even when it makes no sense to me.

“Do rope swings mean anything to you?” I once asked someone I was giving a shoulder rub to on a rafting trip.

“Are you kidding? When I move into a new home, the first thing I do is put in a rope swing,” she said amazed. We were both amazed. Where does this stuff come from? I don’t know; I have just learned to trust.

This inner voice of wisdom is my authority. If I can’t hear this voice I am lost. When I have done everything I know to do, exercise, meditation, singing, when I have done everything I know to do to bring myself back into alignment, and I am still spinning and crazy, then I know I need to take some kind of courageous action.

I will probably have to risk disappointing people. I will have to risk being misunderstood. I will have to risk being wrong. And I do this because there is nothing else for me to do. Clearing the decks, as it were, so I can hear myself again is the most important thing I can do. This looks like whatever it looks like.

I’m thinking of the comedian Dave Chapelle right now. He was at the peak of his career, and he wasn’t having fun anymore. He left everything and went to Africa to find himself. Many people criticized him. Many people depended on him for employment, and yet he left the craziness of television to go find some place where he could hear himself again.

I saw him on “Inside the Actors Studio” telling his story, and I felt such compassion for him. It was difficult for me to own my own authority on a phone call with two beloved friends. He had to do it in public, in an atmosphere where people love misunderstanding because conflict sells papers.

But I digress. Maybe.

Making the decision to own your own authority is perhaps the most important decision you will ever make. You’re saying to the world, “I am the one who decides for me. I am the one who takes responsibility. I am doing the best I can, and my best has to be enough. I will change my mind if I need to do that later on. But for now, this is who I am, this is how I feel, and this is what I’m going to do.”

Gandhi had hundreds of thousands of people gathered to go on the march, and he changed his mind. “I don’t know the big T Truth,” he explained to his devoted followers, “I only know the small T truth and that small T truth changes as I change.”

Outrageous Visions: See Who You Are Meant to Be can help you clarify the connection between your life and this deeper wisdom, the true authority that lives inside you. At this moment, I am still offering a free 15 minute Play Date with Possibility. If you’re interested in setting up an appointment, contact Sandy Parker at sandy@myefficientassistant.com.

May you speak your truth and own your own authority today and forever,

Vicki

Yesterday I wrote about selling, saying that selling is not selling out. If you have something you believe in, something you think will help people be healthier and also make the world a better place, you, I, have a moral obligation to let people know about it.

I am a member of an affiliate networking company called Life Force. Their main product is Body Balance. It is a sea vegetable aloe drink that may be the purest food on the planet. All I know for sure is that since I’ve been drinking body balance, I’ve been much, much healthier. I fly a lot and jet lag is no problem for me anymore. I start to get a cold now, but it never gets a chance to take hold and take me down anymore.

I just started using a new product called True Boost. It is all natural and helps with stress reduction and sleeping. The Life Force company has even created a stress test to help you decide whether you need to drink one or two of these small bottles per day. Here’s the link for True Boost Energy Drink to Relieve Stress
www.rateyourstress.com

This month they are having a special on True Boost. If you decide you want to give it a try, you can order this month and get extra bottles for free. You have 45 days to try True Boost, and if you don’t like it, you get your money back with no hassle.

I love this company. Take health and friendship and love and combine them with a way of making money to support yourself and your family — and you have Life Force.

My mentor in Life Force is Francie O’Shea. If you decide you want to look into ordering True Boost, here is how you can do it:

Life Force Information

From Francie:

Here is the Life Force Customer Service number: 1-800-531-4877.

Give them Vicki Hannah Lein’s number: 20648860.

-They will ask you about becoming a member or just a customer. If you want to help others, choose member, just for yourself, choose customer. The price is the same.

-You have to be a member to receive the affiliate payment. Doesn’t cost ANYTHING to join as a member. They will ask for your SS number to send an earnings statement for taxes.

-Also they will ask you if you want to have an autoship. That means they will ship it next month, unless you tell them otherwise.

-With autoship you get a wholesale price around 10-15% less depending on what you order. Usually this makes the shipping free.

-They are very helpful and easy to deal with.

Confession: I am feeling uneasy right now. I am feeling pushy and nervous that my sharing about True Boost and Life Force will make you not like me. I can feel this uneasiness fluttering in my chest as I dictate this post.

But I’m sharing this with you anyway. I’m posting this for all the world to see anyway. I’m breaking through my own fears, my old body stories, because I believe your health and well-being, financial, emotional, and physical, are worth my taking this risk.

If you have felt any resonance at all with what I have written here, please give True Boost a chance. I hope you get hooked. I hope you then say, “Tell me more about that Body Balance.”

May the Joy be with you,

Vicki