My life story begins much like yours. If you 'swap your details' with mine, we may discover that we're on a very similar human journey :-)
I was born in West Vancouver, Canada – one of the most beautiful places on planet Earth. Ocean, mountains and, at that time, a very ‘yin’ / flow / feminine city.
Six months later my mother, father, sister and I moved east – to the Canadian Prairies. Four years later my brother was born.
I grew up on the grounds of a Mental Hospital, as my father is a psychiatrist (soon thereafter he left prescription psychiatry and began exploring alternative routes to actual healing), and my mother is a social worker and a masterful coordinator. Growing up on ‘the grounds’ was my first exposure to the brutal caste-like ways humans can treat other humans. When the patients were let out to walk, which was rare, they seemed like vegetables.
I loved school. (It amazes me how rare this.) So much to learn! In fact, at any early age I thought to myself, ‘Life may not be long enough for me to explore all the things I’m going to discover’. Time already was precious to me.
I was a highly insightful child. I remember asking, silently inside, ‘Why?’ Not the incessant ‘Why’ of so many children. This was an existential ‘Why?’ I also knew, deep down inside myself, ‘It doesn’t have to be this way!’ I wasn’t yet conscious of precisely what I was referring to. I just knew this was ‘truth’.
I began to get a sense that some people – our society in general – thought of me as an ‘idealist’ – wishing and dreaming for things that just can’t be. I knew there was a different explanation. I felt like I was from ‘somewhere else’, somewhere where there was harmony and there was respect and there was cooperation. One of the things I remember recognizing with absolute dismay was our ‘economy’. Why was it that some people earn so much, and others so little, for the same commitment of hours and caring? I ‘knew’ inside a place where everyone contributes – and everyone’s needs are met – food, clothing, shelter, community, and a respectful, deep sense of contribution and personal purpose. I longed for this place.
Heaven comes close to this at our summer cottage. In 1897 my great-grandfather 'purchased' an island in the near wilderness. And so I grew up with nature - no telephone, no television, wood fires and starlight. A bliss haven for 'tuning in'.
As a child I began to ‘scribe’ – to receive ‘poetry’ *. It was very precise, my sense of how I was to write it. When I completed each ‘dictation’, I noticed two fascinating things: I had no idea what it meant, and … who wrote it? It didn’t sound like ‘me’.
I began dancing when I was seven. Tap, baton, and ballet. By eight I was traveling an hour each way, once a week, to more professional classes. Each year my quotient grew – to include summer schools, more classes per week, and ultimately acceptance by audition into the Professional Division of the Royal Winnipeg Ballet.
Whew. This was my first direct exposure to the effects of psychologically unhealthy humans. The training was superb. The emotional minefield I walked through for it was immense.
Summers in these years were spent by at the Banff Centre, School of Fine Arts (what a life opening experience!) and Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival. It was here that my world grew from ‘prairie peony’ to potent flower. I had no idea I had a gift.
My fellow classmates eagerly urged me to go out on ‘tour’ to audition for the classical companies throughout the US. I did. This was my first experience of spirit leading me, coordinating every detail of my journey. Amazing …
Phenomenal responses and no contract, I was swiftly hired to tour internationally with a classically based modern dance company – world-renowned Anna Wyman Dance Theatre – based in Vancouver! And so I moved ‘home’.
These were some of the richest years of my life. Dance encompasses the entire human. Spirit, mind, emotion, and body are all present – together – in every moment. Many people strive for years through meditative practices to get a glimpse of this. I lived it, every day.
From Anna’s company and even more learning of the unhealthy nature of human psychology, I toured nationally with Judith Marcuse Dance Company – and had my first rich experience of a ‘repertory’ company – one which performs the creative work of many choreographers. What diversity! Each piece tapped a new aspect of me.
Then my knee broke. An ‘accident’. And the turning point of my life.
Until this, I had been a highly gregarious person. Dance colleagues teased that, when we traveled, if there was as little as twenty minutes’ layover in an airport, I was off the plane, on the phone, calling someone I’d met somewhere, sometime. My address book was full. I loved people.
The breaking of my knee coincided with a bubbling up to the surface of sexual and ritual abuse memories. I committed to healing these, to clearing them out, to understanding humanity through them, and to learning how to live more fully present in the Now.
This was the beginning of my in-depth ‘training’ in How Healing Works, the central topic of my book H.O.P.E. = Healing Ourselves and Planet Earth. This also became the foundation of the simple-to-read, life-changing revelations in The Power of Anger – Blasting Through Your Limitations and Transforming The World. And the potent ‘download’ explanations of why-things-are-the-way-they-are and how-to-co-create-to-change-them in Awakening Instinct * Running the Gauntlet * Windows Through Time.
As my body fell to the pavement in the ‘accident’, I heard my first ‘voice’. “This is a Blessing. And it will show itself – like the spokes of a wheel, and throughout time.” My spiritual life had begun.
Over the next nine months, I defied medical science. Six days after my knee breaking, I walked again. Nine months later, I toured – solo – the greatest physical and psychological / emotional challenge in the profession. Imagine walking through your own fear – with no place to hide.
How did I do it? Visions. And voices. I was being led.
My first solo tour came to completion – with sell-out houses and “must see” raves. The voices in me spoke again. ‘Let … go … dance.’ As non-linear and non-sensical as it seemed, I knew it was true. It was right. Then came, ‘You are needed for something else … now. Something only you can do.’
Within months I was in ‘seclusion’.
I’d had a vision of ‘seclusion’ when I was ten. I told no one about it. We didn’t talk about visions in the culture in which I grew up. And so I simply ‘saw it’ when it played in my inner vision and feeling sensations, as if I was being given a private viewing of a movie that was about to begin.
Seclusion was the most awe-inspiring experience of my life to date. I describe it simply in my book Birds’ Eye View – A Travel Guide to the Universe – and yet I’ve not yet had an opportunity to truly tell the story of seclusion, to anyone.
Imagine being unplugged from human culture – responsibilities, expectations, rules, ideas, conventions – for seven and a half months. And being rewired and plugged in – lifted up to a vantage where you are personally tutored in the realm of ‘the big questions’. Who are we? Where do we come from? Why have we come? Where are we in the map of what we came to do / effect?
I had tutors – non-physical, invisible guides. They introduced themselves. And shared with me the majesty of the universe, the probable arc / trajectory of humanity’s mass awakening, details of what my role is in this, and more. This was the most real thing I had ever encountered.
Seven and a half months later, the real work began. I was to transition into human culture again, a ‘runner’, a ‘seer’, a ‘scout’ bearing riches from far distant worlds. And I had no physical, human mentors.
I have learned the strength of the human spirit, and the incredible truth of the existence of Source. Every day I learn how to map this journey, staying in the body, and reaching out to my higher reality.
Since seclusion my life has become very non-linear. I am given a vision of what I am to do next, and enough faith in myself to begin it. I am ‘apprenticed’ by unseen beings who have vantage that I do not. Every time I learn and grow in awe-inspiring ways.
After seclusion I participated in the United Nations Earth Summit’s Global Forum in June 1992 in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. This was a twelve-day intensive in global politics, the presence or absence of global vision, and more. The flight home to Vancouver was a veritable download of insights.
Immediately I convened a Post Earth Summit Conference in Vancouver, the first time I facilitated a community process since seclusion. Half the participants left at lunch, unfamiliar with this new ‘map’. The other half stayed with bated breath and passionate appetites, saying, “I’ve been waiting my whole life for this.”
A core group of participants founded ViA Vision Into Action Society and we began ‘initiatives’ – community gatherings that propelled people over their perception that they’re not creative and into their active, enthusiastic engagement in visioning and conceptualizing inclusive solutions to intricate societal challenges.
Within a year I was asked if I would host a teleconference in which I would share the visions I was receiving of global transformation with a select audience. International from the start, these rapidly grew and expanded within a short phase of several months.
In spring 1994 I ‘moved’ to the UK and convened a Conclave – a gathering – of highly creative thinkers / visioneers. Within months of this I was in India with a small group of colleagues, meeting personally with His Holiness the Dalai Lama, conversing about the visions I was receiving.
A few months later, two Tibetan Rinpoches – dressed in burgundy and saffron robes – accompanied me from northern India to rural England to meet with several other high profile leaders to discuss these visions.
For the second time – seclusion being the first, this acceleration of global meetings being the second – I experienced a rare phenomenon. Clearly now in the co-creative realm of ‘dancing with the cosmos’, ‘I’ – my own free will – was not in charge. Not even simply limited by the synergy with other humans, I was now engaged with powers and consciousnesses that most people couldn’t see. From the inclusive and infinitely expansive vantage of these guides (listen to “The Power of Intuition – Tapping In to Flow, Efficiency, And Ease” Tele Classes to understand how this is), they mapped the steps – the steps which evidently were becoming my life.
And so, as it became evident that these recent leader meetings would now ‘gestate’ for a while, I was led to the next stage of my activity. I began to lead workshops, then trainings, then retreats – in London and in Wales. The essence of these was to share the ‘how’ in what I was learning, and to mentor others to follow my lead.
All this moves swiftly, as if the green light from above knows when the path is absolutely clear. And so within months a new core group had coalesced, this time self-named the ‘AT Group’, around these ‘teachings’ that I was sharing.
The ‘AT Group’ pierced the veil of conventional consciousness. Together, we successfully entered a realm of collective consciousness in which we simultaneously perceived visions, and co-created with them to map change.
Swift and intense as this work is, the ‘AT Group’ completed its ‘mission’ within approximately two years – and it was time for me to return to Canada.
I met my beloved husband, and within months I was shown to launch a corporate consulting practice. You begin to see the eclectic nature of these stages! As if different facets of me were being awakened and attuned, each time.
ViA Vision Into Action Consultants offered custom-designed wellness programs, and vision / mission / core values facilitation on the executive level of numerous companies. I was ‘bringing spirit into the concrete world’ – in a way that respected and assisted it to find its way towards balance.
Within three years I found myself following my husband’s lead and training officially as a coach. It was in this training – literally – that I knew it was time to dance again! At the age of forty I returned to the stage, touring solo for three years. Ahhh …
Then came the books. Self-publishing allowed us both (my husband and I) to ‘clear our pipes’ of the books that were within us, and make room for the next. We birthed our first four books simultaneously (ow!), followed swiftly by their next three siblings. More have flowed since. More are on their way.
Tele Classes followed next – the opportunity for people to learn from the comfort of their own homes, drawn together from international locations to a ‘hub’ class. I loved these! Each one was recorded, and the Free Intro sessions and entire Series are now available for you in my Audio Library.
Then "The H.O.P.E. Retreats” began. And it was clear that the next phase of rapid acceleration in my life was underway. Beginning with the first Retreat in June 2008, six Retreats escalated – picking up where the last completed – in six short months. The learning, growth, and transformation in all involved was monumental.
Again a hover period for integration began. And my next cue was to begin an Executive Life and Leadership Coaching practice – to share my gifts with a new audience, and to assist me to ground and integrate my experiences.
Nine months into this, the deep and pure energy of visions began to shimmer again. Visions I’d been shown dating back to 1991 began to come alive, as if stretching and yawning awake from a deep hibernation. (See “A Global Gathering of Minds”, “A New Model of Exemplary Global Leadership”, “Lifting the Lid”.)
What’s different this time is the pace. There is a slow, peaceful, confident, unrushed timing at present – as if patiently awaiting the appropriate players to come on board. I sense that ‘free will’ in those who are now being called is being given an especially wide berth this time – as, in order for collective consciousness to truly awaken to its ‘Light’, we must integrate our ‘free wills’ with our ‘divine wills’. Without this, quantum evolution – quantum awakening – has no alignment. It has no birth canal. These two aspects of our selves must now a-lign.
My ‘new’ calling is to share my insights, visions, learning, and offerings with a global community – to engage you in deeper contemplation with me, and to support you as you integrate your own experiences – your own version of my awakening story.
I am here to serve you. To assist you to remember yourself – your true nature as the Light.
This is why I came.
‘Ariole’
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