One Woman's Journey Home

Having recently completed the Manifesting a Meaningful Life experiential intensive, I have been invited to write about my discoveries.  Keenly devoted to my own evolution, I’ve engaged many different ways, with many different teachers, over a long period of time, to find a path back to myself.  I consider myself a well-educated and credentialed woman and believe that there are many other women just like me who are also looking for something.  They may well be interested in my experience of finally ‘catching the wave’ to my own illusive and missing meaning

These women may not know, specifically, what they are looking for, perhaps cannot even articulate that, but they know that something is missing in the quality of their lives. I consider this invitation an honour because, for the first time, I have an infinite context in which to live my life in all of its aspects; the WEL-Systems® approach to everything, as I deem it to be, in my experience of the models that the approach contains.

A little bit of history first, the content of which is not important  and is included here only to make a point to come.

I was born and raised in Toronto to parents who were self-employed and, for the most part, self-educated. I pretty much figure that each one had dreams, especially in relationship to education, that were not expressed because of cultural conditioning and what was expected and happening at the time - depression followed by war. Their lives were not bad, they just wanted more for themselves and for me and my two  sisters. I think that they searched.

My mother literally ‘escaped’ through books... all kinds of books... and anything that could hold her linguistically: scrabble with dictionaries and encyclopedia, cross-words and cryptograms; a master and prize winner of limericks in print media. When my mother died, she had become a master of the English language, sought out my others who were credentialed, where she was not, as their expert.

My father, in the creativity of machinery moving - vault doors to banks, near room-size, heavy lathes moved out through second story windows onto truck beds - was always looking to keep up with what he already and intuitively knew best: teaching and helping, only he didn’t know that he already knew. A paradox and a model that I adapted.

My father, I believe, wanted us to be educated for the sake of education and his own pride. He, whether he would admit to this or not, had to be around ‘smart’ women... his daughters being educated would make that relationship ‘OK’. It also meant that I placed a never-ending expectation on myself to perform. My mother, I believe, wanted us to be educated for the sake of education and because she wanted to know that, as women, we could each make it on our own without the facility of marriage. It did not have to be university but it did have to be something that we could support ourselves with. What she said to me was this: ‘Sheila, if you want to get married, that’s OK; I just need to know that you can make it on your own if that does not happen’. I interpreted that as one more expectation by me to perform.

That was more than forty-five years ago. Most of my class mates married right out of Grade 12. That was pretty much expected of them. I was one of the very few of my friends who went on to higher education. And that was nursing.

I nursed for a number of years before I decided to stay home with my children, mostly out of what was considered convenient and sensible for the family.  With two people working shift work and never the same shift; and my husband making more income than me, it just ‘made sense’ to stay home. Nothing inherently right or wrong with any of  it.  I just wonder how much I automatically and mindlessly capitulated to cultural conditioning at the time that, as the female in the equation, I would be the one to stay home. After all, as a female and a nurse with high responsibility, I had less income, no working benefits, no pension plans, and shift work. My husband, on the other hand, as the male, had better income, working benefits, pension plans, and shift work.

Several years later, I was approached by a woman about going into business as partners. I went back to school to become certified as a Cosmetician with the idea of opening a business related to colour and image consulting (more performance!). Eventually, my business partner (also certified as a Cosmetician) and I opened a cosmetics franchise and, then, a women’s clothing studio. We were in partnership for 15 years, until I purchased her part of the business.  There were lots of changes in the interim, both in our personal and business lives.  There were also lots of expectations by, for and of each other, as well as by, for and of our husbands who had supported us financially. Even as recently as 1984, when we started, the banks were hard pressed to consider the financial requests and demands of women based on well thought-out business plans and the merit of life experience including what they had learned in family systems, without the male presence in the negotiation.  The way that I see it is this:  when a woman can move through the machinations of family and she does so every day of her life, then she can move through anything. However, without the presence of a man and his signature on a bank document, to support his female partner’s dream, her self-realization of that dream was only faintly possible due to the forced address to an external reference - another example of cultural conditioning - and another example of externally forced performance.

Everything that I have spoken to is based on history. Was there ever room for the consideration of what can and does move out into the future based upon just knowing what one wants... just that alone and taking the first steps to actualize it... even when there is no knowing (and how can there be?) of just where and when it is going to show up, what form it is going to take, how it is going to show up, which direction it is going to take and who else it is going to engage? If one has become so externally referenced that she actually does not know and, therefore, cannot articulate what she wants, it is likely that she’ll just keep on looking (which, in my opinion, means ‘doing’ instead of ‘being’) for that illusive something that will cause her to become one with herself - the missing piece and the missing peace. The thing is... she’ll never find it, because she already has what she is looking for... and, yet, she does not know.

So, guess what? I kept on looking to make my life better. My parents were not my only models. There were teachers, associates, ‘gurus’, and friends whom I put on the pedestals of my own illusory choosing - generally because I believed that their titles and/or expertise must have meant that they were better than me or had more in their repertoires than I did.

What more was out there? Apparently a lot... and I kept up my search. In my proclivity to fit myself, as a square peg into a round hole, I kept on studying with either a short or long term view to achieving the title that came with whatever endeavour I was pursuing at the time. Think about it; how many titles must one have to make it ‘right’? I was already a Registered Nurse and a Cosmetician and a Business Owner (in two countries, to boot!) I had become a Reiki Master Trainer and a Full Initiator in ancient Hawaiian Huna, as well as a Trainer of Neuro Linguistic Programming and Hypnosis. And there was more, all in the mandate of proving that my life meant something.

Now, let me get to the point of the foregoing treatise about my past history: How many things would I have to ‘do’ before I could just get honest with myself and just ‘be’? A fair, good, and honest question, don’t you think?

You know, all of my searching has been for my own self-discovery and for congruency. All I ever wanted to do was to ‘just help people’; maybe then, I could help myself. I now know that I got it all ‘wrong’ (for lack of a better distinction). I simply, quite simply, did not have a context large enough in which to position who I really am. One of my really close friends has been wont to remind me: ‘Sheila, you are way bigger than that’ (whatever ‘that’ was relative to what I would plan to ‘do’ with my life in that moment). Since she is a living expression of who I am and since, in a holographic universe, she is me, my guess is that her words to me were the ones that she would apply to herself. Two questions, then; 1. Did she believe it for herself? 2. Did I believe if for me? Only she can answer question 1 for herself. I can answer question 2 with a definitive ‘No’. It wasn’t that I didn’t want to believe it; I just could not believe it. So I just kept up the search, the ‘doing’, to make sure that I would be all right.

If I had fully accepted that ‘Sheila, you are way bigger than that’, then I would have had nothing to ‘do’, I would have had to stop and just ‘be’. It would all have been too simple. So, I had built a life of unbelievable complexity in order that I would have things to ‘do’. The more that I had to ‘do’, the more that I could prove... then my ‘being’, as illusive as it was to me, would have meaning. Absolute craziness spinning its wheels, yet staying captive to the illusion of my own cultural expectation. And as educated as I was to the notions of ‘being’, ‘doing’ and ‘having’ from an esoteric perspective, that education was only an intellectual exercise. I had no experience of it in my body where massive intelligence resides.

Albert Einstein was right. He said that the problems of the world cannot be resolved at the level of thinking at which they are created. If I had only been willing to engage my certain intellect as the linguistic lever to the genius of my body, I would surely have assisted myself in embracing the undeniable mastery of my just ‘being’. After more than 20 years of business ownership, building and operation and after more than 20 years of studies in methods complementary to the allopathic remedies that I know, and, party to the cultural beliefs, values, and attitudes, I have relied upon, I actually understand, finally, that there is really nothing to fix.

‘Fixing’ is a very Newtonian construct. It relies on an external reference to make things right according to an external objective. Now that we are becoming more and more engaged in the study of a Quantum Scientific approach to our lives, ‘would be’ and  ‘professional’ ______ists (you can fill in the blank) are still much inclined, in my opinion, to default to the habits of thought and action that continually demand results based upon external referencing. When the results do not ‘stay’, _____ists and clients alike know that something is missing. So we go out and learn yet another technique with, ultimately, the same results. We do this in our relationships, our businesses and all areas of our lives. The content may change, but the context does not. There remains, always, something to prove. And we just keep on ‘doing’, even when the truth be known that we are tired, fed up, and done with hanging on to the responsibility for the ‘fixing’ of others, not just ourselves. We mindlessly engage in the insult to ourselves. We keep on going until our bodies, by way of our health and well-being, are screaming at us to STOP. That was the story of my life... until now.

This year, I have made significant life changes because I DARED to change my mind about some things. These notions in which I had invested much had, previously, been of great importance to me; yet, year after year, I told myself that I was doing well, only to be disappointed one more time when, again, I was denied what I wanted. I would tell myself that it wasn’t my time and continued the contradiction of what I knew to be true - that what I wanted no longer held enough meaning for me.

It was when I started to face the truth of what I had been avoiding most of my life - that I was infinitely ‘bigger’ than everything that I had been ‘doing’ - that Louise suggested that I step into her programs Igniting The Self and Resourcefulness In Action. These WEL-Systems® programs are intensely rigorous conversations well perched on the platform of The CODE Model™ to activate a ‘wave’ of transformation at mach speed in the body. That ‘wave’ of information is fully engaged in the body for digestion and metabolism, much in the same way that the body processes food, by actively embracing  conscious breathing with intention so that the attention is directed to the body and the impulses moving through it and NOT to the content of the story at hand. This process of breathing into the body for transformation is much faster than that produced by thought alone. This process is called Quantum TLC™.  There is incredible safety in this sacred space to stay in the tough conversation with one’s self and to embrace what has been habitually denied and avoided as unsafe and unwanted. It is in the safety and the sacredness of that rigour that miracles happen.

The WEL-Systems® Programs are supported by the science of Quantum Physics (The Holographic Universe - Michael Talbot and others) and Neuro Biology (The Biology of Belief - Dr. Bruce Lipton). An accomplished author, facilitator and educator, Louise has beautifully documented the WEL-Systems® material in her many books including Fully Alive and Phoenix Rising. I continued my WEL-Systems® experience over the summer by participating in advancements of Louise’s programs - Influencing with Intention and Manifesting a Meaningful Life. How I now engage and experience myself is radically changed from what I used to know. Life IS good!

The Newtonian perspective told us that we are our bodies; Quantum perspective knows that we are not. Our essence is so much greater than our bodies, yet we express ourselves through the sheer genius of it.

This is what I can say about my rich experience of the WEL-Systems® approach: I now know, at a cellular level in my body, that even though there are people and things external to me, in terms of my experience of these people and things, there is absolutely nothing outside of me. While that was an intellectual notion for the ten years that I have been a trainer of Neuro Linguistic Programming and Hypnosis, I now know the experience of that in my body where all the sensory cues live for easy and accurate navigation through life. This means that I have stopped denying the information that my body has always brought to my awareness in a bid to keep my life simple and to stop the complexity that I habitually created for myself. I now fully experience ‘being one’ with myself. I catch myself when I start to go for complexity and consciously interrupt the pattern by breathing first.

Because I remember, now, that I am not my body but something much greater than that ( you know, ‘way bigger’ than that, as my friend was wont to say), I now allow for that full expression of me as mana (the Hawaiian word for energy) in and throughout the faculty of my body. One more thing: my body comes with its own brilliance, so as essence and flesh, I am doubly blessed. Remembering who I am is the infinite context for living my life. Now that I am inviting the settling of that into the core of my physiology, I can simply ‘be’. It doesn’t get any better than this and yet, it does. There is always more! And, as Louise reminds us, ‘Breathing is Good!’

If you are weary of performing, fed-up with living the lie, out of dreams and out of hope, hurting, anxious or just bone-tired, you can choose to ‘go big or go home’. I was looking for meaning; I was looking for me; I wanted to just ‘be’. I decided to ‘go big’ so that I could get home to me. WEL-Systems® provided the infinite context of essence (energy/spirit) and matter (body genius/physiology) for me to remember who I am and that I am not my body. I can consciously choose to act on my own behalf as I create who I am becoming, every step of the way and in every moment. My history is irrelevant to this moment. Everything that I consider now, I consider through the WEL-Systems® models; my relationships, my business practice, all of it. It keeps me ‘bigger’ and keeps me ‘being’. My living, now, is simple, easy, fun and joyful. My living is more of a surprise to me, now, because I have consciously decided that I do not need to know how my dreams are going to manifest. I just know that they are.

I wish the same for you.

Aloha!

Copyright © 2007, Sheila Winter Wallace- used with permission.

Sheila Winter Wallace - Sheila has owned retail and service business for over 23 years. A Registered Nurse, Certified Trainer of Neuro Linguistic Programming (NLP) and Hypnosis, and WEL-Systems® Master Facilitator, Sheila is a Past President of the Ottawa Women’s Business Network, the Sparks Street Mall Management Board, and The Association For Integrative Psychology. 

For more on Sheila, visit www.actandinspire.com

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