MY PURPOSE AND MISSION

We're in the middle of the Greatest Story Ever Told. Mine is about the role of money. 
Given it's role, specifically in terms of our collective cultural anthropology, money was used as a tool for two very different purposes. When those purposes clashed/crashed around the time of the Renaissance, great light was released, and much suffering ensued and continues to ensue. But the story we've told each other about this potent energy is just a story and it has created a false foundation for our interactions with each other. 

I have no credentials to pontificate about our collective cultural anthropology. Just a purpose and a mssion. May God help us on the road of Purpose and Mission, paved with all those good intentions, to trust that whatever we decide out P&M is, we do the least possible amount of harm to our fellow earthly inhabitants, and the most good.

BACKSTORY:
I wake up after a bad dream. In the dream one of my fellow trainers (one with a bit of local trainer-celebrity-ism) tells me in a neutral tone, in my home, and in my problem child's boycave, that I suck. 'Your training looks pretty good at first" he says with his boyish good lucks, and then everyone sees that actually I suck at it. I tell him "Well, you suck too."  Neither of us is that offended. And I wake up.

Next I remember that I wrote yesterday (and "published" to facebook which really only means that maybe someone in the Phillipines creating false facebook indentiies for sale may have come across it during her lunch hour) that I was just here for the money.

I have to make a living. So I'm here at this conference.

At our welcoming yesterday, at a moment when my enthusiasm was peaking, our host, said his intention for this week was PURPOSE AND MISSION.

AN NOW SOME PREFACE:
What I don't like about how money is used is that the need for it infiltrates everything. Meaning, the threat of not having it. It's always there (unless you have plenty of it -- and actually there is never enough of it no matter how externally rich you are). The threat that your needs will not be taken of. This is first chakra stuff.

But. 

Actually.

My needs in this moment, are being taken care of by something. Some energy that I am tapping into, or that is tapping to me. It is here. I can't deny it anymore than I can deny the warzones. I am being taken care of. Thank you thing that is energy.

The first time I came to a CTI (Certification Training Intensive) it was for me - I needed some serious self-nurturing. I felt as though at the end of a rope. I had thought that I needed to figure out how to control my children; so they would behave better; but after a session of nurtured heart coaching, I knew I had to figure out how to let go of the useless (and damaging) kind of control I was striving for and let a whole new way of being take its place. So I went to Syracuse in 2012 for five days and came out with my first training certificate and many seeds had been planted.

This will be my second CTI. I'm here in Sacramento for the week. It's a big investment of time, energy, and money. Just like the last time, I'm proud of myself for taking the risk. Whatever is in store for me, I intend on learning as much as I can about unconditional love for myself and others, mentoring my children, supporting my friends and their friends who come to my NHA parent support groups and trainings, helping parents who want coaching to build inner wealth in their children (including myself again), and about making my living too.  This world only partially matches the way I think it ought to be but I have to live in it. And for my current lifestyle that requires some money. I hope that whether or not I build a "successful" NHA coaching/training practise, which I plan on doing, I know that this CTI will help me be a better coach for my personal finance clients.  Clarity is beautiful.






To my three best friends from high school daze,

Thank you for your help in my making a liberating decision: To quit all attempts at trying to combine my desire to make enough money to feed, house, clothe, educate and keep healthy my family with an effort to explain my "life’s work".

 (Life's work?! "Oh Gawd", says the self-deprecating self ....fyi, she thinks she is the fun part of my writer's voice...)

This blog is from now on (…as far as one can trust NOW in combination with a pledge of any kind…knowing from experience that oaths, pledges and the like are meant for ETERNITY and not useful in the NOW) will be the place for me to speak from my heartmind and NOT the place to sell my wares.

(...and then there's these know-it-all hippy dippy Left Coast voices too who show up.)

Oh the Liberation is sweet. (See?)

So, these marketing materials I created that I really liked, except for a tiny handful of snaggy issues I could not resolve…. I give them up!  I let them go, I worked so hard and pffffttt thank you, you may go.  Oh sweet surrender. (Uh huh)

A new plan is in its place…one that will not depend on my (that would be “the little my”) ability to express an offering of ideas that will not be boxed in in order to package them for anyone’s consumption.

And so, this letter to you,  (Do I sound a little defensive? So sorry for the sarcasm, I acutally don't do it well, it just sounds hostile when I do it....this why I live in a small town in California, and not in NY anymore...here, where people generally begin to get me once they know I was once from New York)

It was so good to see you and here is one small moment I’d like to go back to and redo. 

Remember when I asked you what you thought of Occupy Wall Street?

And there was some discussion about the ridiculousness of it? 

Well. I stood there and listened, my daughter had her arms around me, hugging me from the side, knowing that I did not agree. I was calm and non-responsive.  And, some defensiveness slowly showing up in the zones of inner armor.

I just want to say now, laying down my shield, calmly (no one's going to get hurt here). “I don’t agree.” 

I could have said it then, but I was listening instead, not thinking of what to say next. Even when I tried, my mind was blank. As it often is.

Now my reply has come:

(BTW, part of my defensiveness was probably because I had rehearsed in my mind our getting together again a few times (not on purpose rehearsing, just a visit from Lady'sGonnaSavetheWorld while I was planning and then packing for my trip), and in it I was very eloquent and persuasvie.) I’m so glad you didn’t ask what I was up to because it would have come out so lamely (and it still might but now I don’t care (Thank Gawd!), so thank you Spirit for holding my tongue for me) and now I can tell you.

I don’t agree that Occupy Wall Street was full of people who just needed a bath and were pathetically ignorant of how the real world works.* Or that markets are the foundation of our entire economy.** 

*I guess that is true actually. Being "full of something" doesn't necessarily that's the only thing there. So - many people most likely need bathing and were "patheticaly ignornant"... an epithet that could be applied to most people I think, given the strange world we find ourselves in. God must think we are pathetically ignorant from time to time, but that's only if God thinks at all. 

**I don't agree with that actually. Reminds me of what Ursula LeGuin said about capitalsim and the rights of kings.  One oughn't be sure that a thing (which is relatively not that old, though its made a giant splash on the world stage (sometime in the 13th-16th century) is so basic that it can't be made obsolete once it is clearly outmoded by something better. (Especially something whose flaws you'd have to be, well, pathetically ignorant not to notice, right?!) (Nothing better has shown up, right? Not yet. Or Maybe it has. Lots of people were alive when the Wright Brothers made the first airplane and they died without ever knowing about it.)

Had I said something, I really think there would have been a short pause and maybe an invitation to speak (ok, Erica, so what do you think?) and there’s every chance there would have been some laughter and even – I’m quite sure of it – some deeply expressed agreements about some of my utopian ideals (copiosis.com), laced with “Good f*ing luck with that, sweetheart!” And no doubt I/we do deserve and need the good f*ing luck. I know you would have embraced me, my ideas, my thinking – maybe not agreed with them – but that you respect me in all the important ways. It was a really fun night for me. (I want to say healing, but I just can't get it out of my mouth.)

I said nothing because I knew that in your seeming oppositeness of what I think I was about to get some real inner clarity, ...and it did come… several hours later, as I doggedly attempted to make my new marketing materials flawless and couldn’t.

So for now, since this venue here is no longer up for sale! -- this blogenue which is foremost for the me, the my, the I who needs to hear the voices from within roll off her tongue into the tips of her fingers – I can speak my mind in freedom.

So again, here is my reply.

I do not agree.

For me, Occupy was a cry, a desperate plea for sanity, the sounding of a great alarm, a stirring of the hearts of men, of women, of all the souls in between all the spaces and all the stories, including the occupieds, the so called 1%ers and their many assistants, who know somewhere inside that won’t shut up, that won’t be still or quiet, that human beings are being called to transformations heretofore unknown. I believe they know, and I defer to the title of the Charles Eisenstein book, that there exists in our minds where everything begins, “The More Beautiful World Our Hearts Know is Possible.”

Thanks to this moment in our reunion, I’ve let go of my desire to create a business which merges all that I do: Nurtured Heart, Bookkeeping, and Copiosis.  I’ve been trying and trying and then some more trying to make it all work together. And somewhere that creation exists, but it’s not in this here or now.

In this here and now and I can say whatever I want about that because this is not the place where I am or ever will (oh Erica be careful with those evers and nevers), attempt to sell you (reader?) anything.

That feels freaking fantastic.

I’m letting my inner spaces of utter confusion, white noise of huh? just be. “Where your inner and outer wealth meet.”  That’s one of my former tag lines, still on my Home page.  “Healthy Families + Healthy Finances = A Stab at Sanity.” That’s another one. And then there’s “Get Your Charlesworth” …. I can just let them all swirl and dance and argue and fuss in my insides, up to the throat, in my hot flashin’ brain …. I can , I do, I welcome all that unknowing.

-----PAUSE----

This week I’m attending my 2nd training for NHA for one week in Sacramento. This is going to take what I do from good enough to much better and then to great. (That's what their marketing material says.)  And I signed up for another training for the MVelopes program which will allow me to learn this AMAZING personal finance software which does what I have been trying to make QuickBooks do for me and others for almost ten years. (In between making three meals a day for Madame and going on walks.)

I’m clear for the first time in my life in a way that is INTEGRATED, WHOLE, and very deeply satisfying.

And so, for the great honor of your presence here, I want to thank you, and the academy, my mother and father, brother and sister, former husbands, my two children, my friends and neighbors, a host of lovers (one in particular) and my dear and treasured friends from high school.

 

A Tiny Mistake

I can’t sleep. I’m faced with stuff that feels big.

Big. Bigger than me. I’m Robert Redford in “All is Lost”

A simple man in a life raft looking up at a container ship.

I’m no match for what is.

And yet. And yet. And yet.

My young niece about to be married is no match for what is.

My own wedding in 1986 brought together two families, created a love story

And 7 years later was no match for what was, or wasn’t

I made my brochure to say what I was up to yesterday morning.

It made for a very happy day.

And it was not match for what is.

I hope it is just vague enough to attract enough others so I can survive.

I fear for my survival, this little me in this little raft next the big container ship

7 Football fields long.

And I fear for all those others I may attract to my ships light.                          

Yes, nurtured hearts, be careful, we get burned by the flames, like moths.

Money is measured and quantified using the tools of the accountant.

The tools are so efficient and exact that you can miss this very small detail if you are not so lucky as I to find yourself quacking on that tiny life raft.

This detail, is this tiny you on the little raft dwarfed by the container ship.

If you miss it, you will misread the accountant’s numbers and take them for the Truth

Because they do sparkle and shimmer in the bright, bright Sun.

It is a tiny mistake, most bookkeepers make it.

So don’t be too hard on yourself.



Niagara Falls

I’m going to Niagara Falls

I expect to be awed

By the smallness of my size

Me, a human being

Living on a planet that is many times larger than those Niagara Falls

A planet that is a pale blue dot within unfathomable beauty

Where deep space meets colorful swirls of living light

The tools we use to make ourselves at home here

Ignores Niagara Falls, his love for us so unrequited.

Aside from the passing of my sweet mother, which occupied a lot of my time since August 2014, I have continued my project for financial alignement which I began February 2014.

What do I mean by that?  For me it is physical. When I am not aligned with what I hold true, I can feel it in my gut, up to my throat, into my brain and beyond to the heavens. It's uncomfortable. So I prefer the experience of alignment. 

When I started my project to align my finances I really looked forward to it.  And I expected to complete the job. Of course, alignment is a continual process, like walking.

Relax though, because this is meant to be the last post in this series, the conclusion!

#1 WOW, it was hard and not successful in the way I expected.
#2 BANK CHANGE - Wells Fargo to Umpqua -  I changed banks and it was such a pain. My new bank doesn't do the stuff my old bank did and so I have spent a lot more time with imperfect data entry instead of the seemless downloading I was used to. BUT, I am comforted by the fact that I did change, I am with a community bank now (they just finished an upgrade to their online system) and all in all I'm glad I switched. I still see the tellers at my old bank and when they ask me won't I please come back?  I smile and say, No, I don't like your politics. And they usually barely look up and say "Oh, ok, well, if you change your mind let us know." as if what I just said held absolutely no meaning to them.  Still they are so nice to me and I do miss them.
#3 CELLPHONE CHANGE - This was kind of big fiasco.  I swtiched from Verizon (no like their politics either) to CREDO....But the service was not good enough...so I switched back and it ended up costing me over $400 despite promises from the 'Verizon - We Want You Back Department' that they would cover my costs.  Also the CREDO credit card didn't flow with my Quickbooks, which is a necessity for me, maybe it would have worked with XERO? I'll have to check.  (If I had been serious about alignment I would be serious about giving up credit cards altogether....and giving up my car and riding a bike....I am serious...but not sure I can face either of those things.)
#4 IMPROVE GARDEN - this I will call a sort of success. First, my sprinklers broke so I conviently let my lawn die (struggling with alignement here as I hate that dead lawn look and the fact that hating it makes me realise how far out of alignment I really am. Because I reseeded and watered the heck out of the lawn, it's back and looks beautiful....and the drought lives on. And yet I feel more aligned. You know? So maybe my whole alignment concept is bullshit. Who feels aligned during a drought watering their lawn?)  I did plant some drought friendly plants that are coming in nicely, and I have way more confidence in myself in general when it comes to the garden project.  I am reducing my lawn. I am reducing my lawn. I am reducing my lawn.
#4 HEALTH - Well, it's mixed, but overall definintely a success.  As I searched for the cause of my hip pain, a cyst was discovered on my ovary, it was removed, and it was hard on my body, took a while to recover, and the fact that my time was so limited (with caregiving responsibilities), I had little opportunities to exercise in addition to recovering.  ANYHOO.  I'm back in the swimming pool, much more in tune with what I eat and drink. It's a process, I am WAY MORE at ease taking care of myself, for me this is success.  And I sleep through the night. And the pain is less every day.
#5 REVISE STOCK PORTFOLIO + SELF -EDUCATION + COPIOSIS
I did change my investments to a "Socially Conscious" investment group. Trouble is, along the way of self-educating, I have come to the conclusion that the whole system we are in is in fact, rotting.  So, I'm still not in alignment there because I am still "invested." Period.  I may have to just agree with myself to not be in alignment until I can maneuver into some greater sense of security as we are all hurling through space at a speed I cannot comprehend.

#6 COPIOSIS - is amazing....and so long as I keep wanting to think about it,  I will continue to organize events and grow communites around it.  To me, the idea of living our lives being in tune with making a living, based on benefitting people and planet, that makes my heart soar.

And I am aligned with that.

This is it for now. I'm so happy I made this plan to find Financial Alignment. It was a wonderful cul-de-sac I am grateful to have discovered it.

Yo? Self? What's Up Next? 

Dunno. But Stay Tuned.

My brother and sister created this wonderful blog about my mom.  Throughout the last six of years of her life, living together along with her slowly detaching mind,  I discovered that above all she was a teacher. A French and Latin teacher to the very end. She loved to teach, this was her passion and her gift. 

A bientot Maman cherie.

Erica

http://simonechabal.blogspot.com/

Interview with Paul Myburgh, author of The Bushmen Winter Has Come.  

Copiosis is a socio-economic innovation. Go ahead and google it. Those of us who participate in it have a lot of leeway to form it as it evolves. One aspect I’m working on is how would it work at the level of a family?  Even though I love thinking of a Copiosis world someday where there is no longer a need for money or government and our system rewards us based on the good we provide others and our planet – yes, even though I love thinking about that – I need to embody it somehow in my day to day.  So here’s how I see Copiosis working at the level of a family, say for a Mom and a couple kids.

Key Copiosis Vocab:

• Net Benefit Reward (not money):  we think of this as quantified social reputation
  
• Producers of Necessities (Food, Clothing, Shelter, Healthcare and Education)
  
• Producers of Luxuries (the more benefit to people and planet, the more NBR one can earn)
  
• A Payer Organization made of volunteers who administrate the Net Benefit Reward
  
• Algorithm - this is complex, open source, math formula which determines all of the positive results of an action minus all of the negative results of an action
  

As a parent, I am, at least initially, the producer of the Necessities. I give myself Net Benefit Reward (recognition) for my hard work providing necessities for my children and for the quality of my effort. I can also ask my children to rate me and my efforts. This mostly would build understanding (in all of us) of how grateful or ungrateful they are ( ha ha good luck with gratitude!)…thus informing me on what capacities for gratitude I may wish to grow with them.  I think keeping a record of the good I do, reminding myself on a daily basis of what this effort means about me as a person, keeps my focus on being the best possible version of me. And helps me want to see that in others, including my children.

As a parent, I am the Payer Organization and keep the Algorithm in my head, at least initially, and so can let my children know how they too can earn NBR.  In a Copiosis world, we need to benefit other people and the planet to earn NBR. That’s perfect for me and my kids too. I can emphasize when I ask them to do their chores and contribute to our family life, that what they are doing matters. It matters to me, to their grandmother, to our community in the long run.  FYI: I do try not to overwhelm with proseltyzing. A little goes the longest way.

As a parent, I am also the Luxury producer, at least initially, and so can let my children know how many NBRs they need to earn before they can have access to my offering.  (For example, a trip to the movies.) I can assign myself NBRs based on how much benefit I know my luxury produces for other people or the planet and then recognize myself for my efforts, just as I do in regards to the Necessities.  And eventually, when I see my kids offer up something, I can recognize them with my appreciation and evidence of the difference their offering has made.

Does this all seem very silly ? 

Why would a parent bother with this in the first place?  Well, unless the parent was also interested in Copiosis, he or she probably won’t. However, I think this model is a lot like the Credit System of The Nurtured Heart Approach (creator of NHA is Howard Glasser), though others may not see connections, I do. And NHA is pretty popular these day.  Parents yearning, as I yearn, to leave a better world behind might take interest as well.  Because, what starts in a family system, can spread to other families, to communities, to cities and town, and well you get the picture.