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Jennie Marlow

Coaching for intelligent, aware people who want to live deeply fulfilling lives

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One Simple Thing You Can Do Right Now

September 27, 2014 By Jennie Marlow Leave a Comment

In a conversation with a prospective client, I was asked this question: “What is one simple thing I can do right now to feel more on track?” My answer was, “Stop fixating on the goal, and start focusing on the essence you want from achieving that objective.”

“By essence, you mean, the emotion I want to feel, right?” she asked. Well, not exactly.

The word feeling has some interesting definitions. According to the Oxford Dictionary, there are three applicable definitions:  an emotional reaction; a strong emotion; a belief, especially a vague or irrational one. (Yes, this last one definitely got my attention!) Essence is none of these things, because none of these things is inextricably tied to our fulfillment.

Spotted Eagle describes essence this way: “Essence is a feeling state that comes about naturally when we feel deeply fulfilled by something present in our lives.”

The key difference is that essence is the feeling we long for in our hearts when our desire for something is truly authentic. Essence can be universal, such as the desire for joy, creativity and ease. Or it can be linked to a circumstance, such as serenity, freedom, fun or unconditional love.

The point is, essence determines whether or not an outcome we are pursuing results in the the fulfillment we want to receive from having that outcome occur. If the essence is there, we feel successful, peaceful and deeply satisfied. If essence is not there, the outcome can work out exactly as we planned, but it disappoints and frustrates us because it doesn’t give us what we want at a heart level. This can leave us wondering, “Is that all there is?” Or worse, a lack of essence can turn the outcome into an unsupportable burden.

The one simple thing I told this individual to do right now is to start identifying the essence of her desire before she launches into the full-on pursuit of an outcome. Once she identifies the essence, she might see that her desired outcome is actually skewed by fear, neediness or ego, and then be able to make a more essence-rich choice. In any case, by focusing on essence, she offers herself an unparalleled opportunity to explore other outcomes that might deliver the experience of essence she really wants in her heart of hearts.

The one thing she can do right now is to seek essence in small ways every day and discover an immediate increase her level of fulfillment. As a daily practice, essence can then guide her efforts toward all of her goals and help to ensure that what results actually fills the fulfillment bill.

Essence Words

Filed Under: Life Tagged With: Authenticity, Joy, Spotted Eagle

What a Vulture Can Teach Us About Bliss

August 24, 2014 By Jennie Marlow Leave a Comment

It’s always fascinating to see what immature birds are up to this time of year. So, when a young vulture took an interest in an old tarp that covers our pile of kindling, I couldn’t help but notice.

This juvenile, fresh out of the nest, has clearly acquired some knowledge about how his kind feed themselves, but he is still rather ignorant of key truths about food. This has encouraged him to go where food isn’t, namely a tarp.

Clearly, he has watched his parents scavenge his meals from dead animal carcasses. As you watch him, you might notice that our tarp bears some resemblance, in form, to an animal hide. And he is making an admirable effort to peck his way through it.

https://jenniemarlow.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/vultureclip.mp4

Ignorance is like that. It’s that familiar condition of partial understanding which leads to misplaced energy and effort. The mind declares, “Eureka! I have found it!” (Whatever “it” happens to be at the time.) And so we excitedly pour energy into the endeavor, misdirected by our excitement and bliss to a disappointing conclusion.

The truth is, ignorance is bliss only while we are projecting that our efforts will lead us to what we think we want. And here’s the irony: rather than growing and learning from our disappointing results, we tend to keep chasing bliss instead.

Now, eventually this not-so-little fellow moved on, presumably driven by hunger. However, I suspect he did not engage in what a human might do, and that is to beat himself up when his efforts did not come to fruition. He very likely learned a thing or two instead.

Filed Under: Life Tagged With: Authenticity, Joy, Spotted Eagle

What a Coyote Taught Me About Growth and Evolution

June 1, 2014 By Jennie Marlow Leave a Comment

It’s been quite a while since my last post. I had intended to keep up a rhythm with posting, but the past few weeks have been incredibly busy ones, and before I knew it, the month had evaporated.

I’ve been working on From Solo to Soulmate, a program I’m launching soon, and wrapping up my book on the subject has been all-consuming.

The amount of work needed to get a project like this one up and running is always surprising, and like all of our labors to build something new, there are no guarantees that it will be successful. For some reason, I haven’t fretted much about failing this time. I guess you could say I’ve grown up a bit during the maelstrom of the last couple of years.

Last night, my husband spotted a coyote very close to our cabin, and we were able to watch him for quite a while as he explored the field behind us. Such encounters are rare here, although we do hear coyotes at night from time to time, especially in summer.

At one point, the coyote stopped and looked me right in the eye for almost half a minute. It was startling enough that I asked one of my guides, Spotted Eagle, about it.

He told me that Coyote represents both the creator and the jokester.

He said the thing to keep in mind about Coyote “medicine” is that it often fails to produce the result we expected. However, in failing, it always serves a much greater purpose. Coyote offers wisdom that is hidden from us, unless we fully accept what didn’t work out the way we expected. Only through acceptance are we granted access to the wisdom available from the apparent failure. He said the keys to coyote medicine are adaptability, simplicity and trust. It is Coyote who reminds us that wisdom and failure are inextricably linked in the sacred paradox that is our fulfillment.

This encounter and the teaching that followed it gave me pause to reconsider how I view all of the so-called failures that punctuate my past.

I was reminded of something Spotted Eagle loves to say: that a good education is expensive, and failure is usually the engine that drives our evolution in the direction of our eventual success.

It’s only human to resist the pain of failure. Perhaps Coyote can teach us to resist a little less so we can mine the wisdom present in all of the many things that did not turn out the way we expected or wanted.

Filed Under: Life Tagged With: Acceptance, Awareness, Painful emotions, Spotted Eagle, Trust

Word Games with Hamlet

February 22, 2014 By Jennie Marlow Leave a Comment

HamletRelax into your being. The first time I heard this, my immediate response was incredulity. Relax? What’s that? As a work-a-holic doer, I must admit that being was something I tended to approach the way I might an arcane subject like the derivatives market or string theory.

Now that I am older and (presumably) wiser, it seems such a basic thing just to rest, rejuvenate and be in the now.

When I get stuck, Spotted Eagle loves to harangue me with this admonition: “It’s not about doing. It’s about being!” Sounds great! Now for the way I experience it, which sounds more like a grammar lesson than an existential moment: Being in a body. Being in my body. Being embodied. Being. Being authentic. Being honest. Being true to myself.

You’ll notice we don’t say, doing authentic or doing honest or doing true to oneself. However, we can truthfully speak about doing, as in doing our work or doing our taxes. And while I know we are capable of being our work, it is not something I would recommend, having been there and done that!

Life breaks into new territory. We don’t say doing life or being life. We do say being alive, or simply that we live. We live feels true. We die, doesn’t feel quite true, but regardless, we don’t say, her body died. We say, she died. Funny that.

Hamlet played with it. To be, or not to be. That really is the question, and after fiddling around with it, I finally came to the conclusion that, when we approach it from the perspective of inner work, to be or not be has nothing to do with living or dying. It has everything to do with being present to my now moment, or dying to my now moment. No more. No less.

And you’ll notice that we don’t say, be relax or do relax. We say simply, Relax! Now, there’s word to live by.

Filed Under: Life Tagged With: Spotted Eagle

Vision & Intention

July 6, 2013 By Jennie Marlow Leave a Comment

In Part One of this series, Spotted Eagle discusses the Principle of Vision, describing how “vision” is different from a goal and how great visionaries see their world.

In Part Two, he discusses how limitation and uncertainty serve our creative vision.

In this post, he describes how limitation, uncertainty, purpose and essence are vital to any intention that has the potential to deliver a fulfilling outcome.

Vision-IntentionIn any now-moment, the universe lays before us only certain potentials and not others, and it also gives every actualizable potential a set of natural limitations. An experienced potter understands this. She realizes that potential outcomes which can fulfill her intention to create something out of clay are not unlimited. The clay is what it is, nothing more or less. Clay, like any material, has certain characteristics that limit what can be actualized from it. This is not a problem for the artisan potter because her imagination does not resist the clay’s natural limitations. She takes these limitations and her own level of skill into account as she cultivates her vision for the finished piece.

The artisan potter also knows, before she begins her work, what purpose she intends the finished piece to serve. While she may have a very clear goal for the finished piece, she also understands that uncertainty will make its own unique and valuable contribution to what results. She won’t know until the door of the kiln opens after firing whether or not the pot is even still intact.

Unlike the artisan potter, a person who is fixed upon his goal for the future will see uncertainty as his enemy and struggle against it in fear that his desire for the outcome will not materialize the way he had imagined. He may invest a great deal of energy and become rigid, striving to achieve his goal. He may eventually achieve it, but very often he arrives at his destination exhausted, only to find the joyfulness he had hoped to receive is not only absent from the process of achieving his goal; it is also absent from the result.

Intention is integral to vision, and if it is to serve our creativity even in creating our lives, it must necessarily take into account purpose, essence, natural limitations and uncertainty: the unforeseen, unanticipated and unimagined. Only vision honors these mysteries. Only vision can dance with the uncertainty through which the evolution of any creation takes shape.

Intention that is flexible enough to respond to real-world challenges has a realistic potential to succeed and result in a fulfilling outcome. When we hold a vision for our lives, like the artisan potter, we know the purpose we intend our vision to fulfill. We know the essences we want to experience. We have made a realistic accounting of our available resources and whatever natural limitations are actually present in the now moment. When our intention is set in this way, vision serves to free the investment of our energy so that it can deliver into our lives an outcome that is in alignment with our purpose and which carries the potential to deliver an experience of the essence qualities that give the result meaning and make it fulfilling.

Filed Under: Creativity Tagged With: Attachment, Essence, Intention, Present moment, Purpose, Spotted Eagle, Uncertainty, Vision

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