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Aloha Friday: an extraordinary life of service

This week we are exploring the 3 Realms we dwell in which I wrote about in my transformational memoir, Moonshot: aim high, dive deep, live an extraordinary life. If you would like to purchase my memoir from an independent seller, my friend Mary has some on the mainland she can mail more easily than I can so please send me your interest and we’ll make arrangements. I also just found a great new link buying books at bookshop.org

whew, I digress, back to the topic: 

These 3 Realms are Resilience, Compassion, and Service.

In essence, we feel the tender heart of sadness in order to heal it. We remember we are connected to others in order to live an extraordinary life of everyday enlightenment and uplift the world. 

As I learned in my professional training in Imago Therapy, we are wounded in relationship, and it is in relationship that we are healed. 

We dwell in the Realm of Service

  • we live and breathe interdependence
  • we practice response-ability
  • we practice generosity: we give to live
  • we choose wisely to uplift our consciousness

Service ordinary definition: the act of helping or doing work for someone

Service extraordinary definition: the way of living that uplifts the world 

Ready to join me in the new extraordinary story of tenderness and uplifting the world vs. the old story of toughen up and suffer? Great, letʻs talk, hit reply now, leave your number and time zone, and we’ll hop on the phone. 

With much Aloha,

Amy Elizabeth Gordon MA 

Relational Health Coach & Compassion Activist  

  • clear your mind
  • open your heart  
  • rekindle your spirit  
  • energize your life 

p.s. Here’s a panel interview I had earlier this year with 3 powerful beings (including my beloved, Marc) to discuss service. 

check it out >>https://vimeo.com/383149750 

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Resilience is about tenderness, not toughness.

Whenever we toughen up to get through difficult experiences, it is as if we prolong the inevitable need to feel it to heal it.   How do we find the courage and the heart space to feel all the feels when it seems like another relentless headache, bellyache, broken-hearted moment after another?   

  • we trust ourselves to no longer abandon ourselves
  • we focus on our own hula hoop and let go of comparing our suffering to others (the only person we can legitimately compare ourselves to is ourself left over from yesterday)
  • we repair our part of whatever nightmare is happening
  • we allow faith to hold us in a web of grace and surrender

We dwell in the Realm of Resilience

  re·sil·ience /rəˈzilyəns/  

Resilience ordinary definition:

the capacity to recover quickly from difficulties; toughness.

Resilience extraordinary definition: 

the capacity to transform hurt into opportunity; tenderness. 

Ready to join me in the new extraordinary story of tenderness vs. the old story of toughen up? Great, letʻs talk, hit reply now, leave your number and time zone, and we’ll hop on the phone. 

With much Aloha,

Amy Elizabeth Gordon MA 

Relational Health Coach & Compassion Activist  

  • clear your mind
  • open your heart  
  • rekindle your spirit  
  • energize your life 

p.s. Hereʻs a panel interview I had with 3 powerful women to discuss resilience and the power of declaring your Moonshot.  

check it out >>https://vimeo.com/371968695

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Compassion for self, skillful means with others

On Monday I wrote about the importance of resilience and relating to the challenges of life with tenderness vs. toughness. Today I’d like to dive a little deeper into how you do this. You can actually keep it quite simple.

  1. When you wake up, smile upon awakening, before feet hit the floor.
  2. Make the bed, closing that chapter of your day.
  3. Adopt an attitude of gratitude. 

Tender connections start with compassion for yourself.

Compassion for self, skillful means with others.

What is compassion? com·pas·sion /kəmˈpaSHən/  

  • Compassion ordinary definition: sympathetic pity or concern for the suffering or misfortunes of others 
  • Compassion extraordinary definition: connecting with the tender heart of sadness buried in the layers of life 

Dwell in the Realm of C.O.R.E. Compassion. 
 

Set your intentions to:

  • clear your mind
  • open your heart  
  • rekindle your spirit  
  • energize your life 

With much Aloha,

Amy Elizabeth Gordon MA 

Relational Health Coach & Compassion Activist  

p.s. Hereʻs a panel interview I had (Dec. 2019) with 3 powerful beings to discuss compassion. Joining energy from California, Hawaii, and Vienna, we declare our Moonshots and invite some Magic. The message holds relevancy today in pandemic times. 

This is the SOS  of our times. Tune in now. 

We do the deep dive into the Realm of Compassion. Explore the concepts of Clarity, Openness, Reactivation, Energy with these powerfully kind souls. 45 minutes of thoughtful consideration to your media diet, we discuss the collective unconscious, and the necessity for compassion of Self, Other, Society.

Please take good care. you matter, your relationships matter.  

And let me know what support looks like. 

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Reverence of Sacred Beings

path, reverence, sacred

Some of you know I was a political scientist prior to becoming a contemplative psychotherapist. In the spirit of all the swirling change:

Join me for a timely, important course about politics in which the teacher, Charles Eisenstein, offers an inspiring vision for how each of us can play a role in bringing about a much deeper political revolution than mere victory.

It’s free August 3 to 12. Sign up at www.onecommune.com/hope

And, if you need more information, here’s his welcome letter:   

Hi everyone, I am looking forward to engaging you in this journey, and feeling a little bit of heightened awareness of the kind one might feel before treading through a minefield 🙂 However, despite the rancor of the political climate today, I am confident that we can engage this topic in a special way.

Instead of patronizing you with guidelines about being respectful, I would like to invoke the principle of reverence. Reverence is the awareness that one is addressing sacred beings. It is not the same as solemnity; it includes humor, playfulness, and ease as well.

To maintain reverence means noticing habits of polarization and judgment that arise when one is challenged by difficult information or difficult emotions. Inevitably our group will mirror the divisions and conflicts of the outside world. The answer is not to avoid them or to plow them over with positivity. Rather, I invite us to help each other…

– Hold anger without diverting it onto hate

– Hold grief without diverting it onto despair

– Hold compassion without diverting it onto pity

– Interpret each other’s words generously

– Let go of being right and seeming smart

Sincerely,

Charles    

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You Reading This, Be Ready

breath

I love this poem by William Stafford. My favorite line, “Are you waiting for time to show you some better thoughts?”

A little over a month ago I shared a vulnerable bit of my traumatic background around random acts of racial violence. I declared my Moonshot: to drop the stones of resentment and experience holistic heart health and be of maximum service to God and my fellows.

Through mindfulness of the moment, addiction recovery, breath awareness, self-compassion and a whole lot of forgiveness, I don’t carry the role of victim or perpetrator; I am free. 

Today, I grant myself space for Grace, to feel the feels, and then carry on with the work of personal transformation. I may cry about the state of affairs, and then I remember my crying isn’t gonna solve anything. I get to declare another Moonshot, another something extraordinary that wouldn’t otherwise happen…

So in doing anti-racist research and study and having the difficult conversations with our two boys about the digestible chunks of world events we digest daily, we aim to be part of solution vs. part of the problem. We read, write, meditate, heart-storm, and live, together. 

The boys are growing up Caucasian, in a dominant culture that is riddled with broken social contracts, where I imagine it is hard to be male and Caucasian, just as I imagine it is hard to be female and Black…

Just as I imagine this moment in history is hard for humanity, period. 

The invitation is to take a moment to pause.

Read.

Listen. 

You Reading This, Be Ready
by William Stafford

Starting here, what do you want to remember?
How sunlight creeps along a shining floor?
What scent of old wood hovers, what softened
sound from outside fills the air?

Will you ever bring a better gift for the world
than the breathing respect that you carry
wherever you go right now? Are you waiting
for time to show you some better thoughts?

When you turn around, starting here, lift this
new glimpse that you found; carry into evening
all that you want from this day. This interval you spent
reading or hearing this, keep it for life —

What can anyone give you greater than now,
starting here, right in this room, when you turn around?

here I am reading it aloud

https://vimeo.com/385919004


 

for a brief while we lived in Lake Oswego, Oregon where this amazing poet died. William Stafford was born in Hutchinson, Kansas, on January 17, 1914. He received a BA and an MA from the University of Kansas at Lawrence and, in 1954, a PhD from the University of Iowa. During the Second World War, Stafford was a conscientious objector and worked in the civilian public service camps—an experience he recorded in the prose memoir Down My Heart (1947). His presence on the planet has enhanced my life. His legacy inspires me. May it be so that my legacy matters. And may yours. You matter. Your relationships matter. 

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shift the drift to what matters most

I live with my in-laws. Yep, you heard right. For five years now. We’ve shared our resources, multiplied our joys and divided our sorrows by living at the same address.

Moonshot: Consciously decide to turn toward that which we’ve been programmed by the popular culture to want to avoid at all costs.

On Monday I celebrate 18 years of conscious monogamy and a growing, thriving, beautiful marriage. Time spent breathing through-the-moments-I-want-to-vaporize-somebody have indeed paid off handsomely.

Moonshot: Avoid the lure to cheat, lie, and suffer through a dreadful marriage — the lie that dominant culture promotes. 

For nearly 3 decades I’ve practiced radical self-care. I’ve done work on my addictive behavior patterns (from Bacardi Rum to Ben-n-Jerry’s Ice Cream), healed my relationships (with myself, Beloved spouse, conception of Spirit), and cultivated a contemplative practice (yoga, meditation, breath-work).

Moonshot: Challenge the myth of the consumeristic culture that tells us we can buy our way out of pain. 

Each of these Moonshots–these declarations of something extra-ordinary that wouldn’t otherwise happen–help form the foundation of the extra-ordinary life I have today.

Basically, I focus on What Matters Most and abide by 12 distinctions of an extraordinary life. Join me Friday in a live new moon Zoom Room to learn more. 

There are hard times, I get it. Hell, I’m a human being on this planet, of course there are. It’s the way I relate to them; it’s the willingness to simultaneously love and accept myself and upgrade my life AT THE SAME TIME, that makes all the difference in the world.

The invitation is for you to focus on What Matters Most and dwell in the Realms of Resilience, Compassion & Service. 

It’s time for you, as a social pioneer, to shift the drift from everyday suffering to everyday enlightenment. Ready to declare that something extraordinary that wouldn’t otherwise happen? Curious what’s next?