Newsletter
May 2009
Hi everyone
I had the privilege of facilitating two Jump workshops in the past month so I am infused with excitement at what happens when people give permission to risk, tell the truth, step out of well-known roles and let go of limiting stories. On the Jump workshop, which is offered to Spiritual Growth Club members after the completion of their year of growth, I simply create a series of customised processes, designed to steadily increase the opportunity to choose real freedom right there and then. If you have embodied a new action or feeling (as opposed to simply thinking or talking about it) then you have made real and unforgettable shifts. On Jump, I have watched participants choose power over weakness, individuality over co-dependence and trust over control – all in active, real ways. What is important, however, is not so much the workshop or the teacher but the power of your permission. I repeatedly remind participants that they can use anything in their daily lives to give the same permission for truth, freedom and uncontained joy that they give on Jump. So this month I invite you to realize that it is not the books or workshops or techniques or teachers that create your growth but anything to which you give enough permission.
Please note that Sunday’s 4pm group reading (full details below) will not be at our usual spot but instead at Sue Fuller-Good’s practice in Bryanston. We are soon going to change the format of the group readings and how they get distributed so watch this space! There will be a Joymap in both Johannesburg and Cape Town in the next month and a Mid-Year Vision Board Evening in Jo’burg. I am starting another Spiritual Growth Club in June for those Gautengers who would love a monthly session of inspiration, learning and honest sharing of their life. Please contact Garrick or refer to our website for information and an application form. Both the Embody and Separate Togetherness workshops are nearly full, please book soon if you are inspired to make enormous leaps in relationship to your body or to your intimate partner. The final portion of my interview about Joy is also included below.
Much love
Angela
Please visit my Blog
here.
Upcoming Events
Personal Readings and Spiritual Coaching Sessions
A personal, or couple’s, reading is a session where I channel insight from your higher self about what is most dominant in your ‘field’ at that time. This can include patterns you are holding, some of your life themes, blockages in your body, the particular cycle you are in at the time or what thought patterns may be holding you back from feeling free. Usually there is an opportunity to ask specific questions if you wish to, but the reading will take on a particular direction or set of themes right from the start. The energy of these conversations is gentle, incredibly loving yet also full of humour and practical suggestions.
Time required: 1 to 1.5 hours
Cost: R550.00 in office hours
A baby blessing, which can be done at a baby shower or as a regular reading, is a conversation with an unborn child. They are normally shorter than an hour, though this depends very much on the chattiness of the child! Best time to have one is between 20 and 35 weeks pregnant.
A spiritual coaching session does not involve direct channelling. It is an opportunity for you to bring specific issues to the session, perhaps those that came up in a previous reading but not necessarily, and to work with my questions and ideas on these. I don’t follow a specific coaching methodology and will work with what comes up in the moment using discussion or physical movement or conscious dreaming or anything else that can move you forward. A warning: I’ve been heard to say ‘I couldn’t give a damn about your success…I’m only interested in your Joy’!
Time required: 50 minutes
Cost: R350.00
Contact Garrick on +27844608667 or via email if you are interested in booking a distance reading or a one-on-one session in Johannesburg, Cape Town, Bloemfontein or White River. A waiting period of 4 to 6 weeks can be expected. Cape Town readings available from Thursday 11 June – Monday 15 June 2009.
Group Reading
You can download the latest group readings from our website to hear the kind of insight that is available in that environment. The April group reading was a really majestic one. It addressed one issue only: who we think we are in relation to divinity. This is a huge – fundamental – notion that underlies everything we do and the reading opens up some wonderful metaphors in this regard as well as a grand invitation.
Group readings usually convey a tremendous amount of information in a short space of time – I like to think of them as the espresso of my work – and are mostly attuned to what the particular members of the group or broader humanity are experiencing at the time. They are affordable and a good way to introduce newcomers to the beauty and value of channelling. There is often an opportunity to ask a personal question. The cost of attending a group reading will remain unchanged at R100.00 for the third year running so that these events are as accessible as possible. Please note, however, that this is an attendance fee and the right to sell or distribute the information remains with Travelling Light.
Next Group Reading in Johannesburg
Date: Sunday 17 May 2009
Time: 4pm to 5.30pm
Venue: 11 East River Road West, Bryanston
Cost: R100.00 pp
Date: Sunday 7 June 2009
Time: 4pm to 5.30pm
Venue: Northside Lodge, 31 Knox Street, Waverley
Cost: R100.00 pp
To book contact Garrick +2784 460 8667 or via email.
JoyMap Workshop
In my experience, most New Year’s resolutions or any kind of goal-setting exercises, are likely to fail for two reasons: Firstly, they are usually based on what you think you should do, rather than what you deeply want to do. In other words, the goals are set only from your head. Failure to sustain these resolutions breeds a sense of self-recrimination, your esteem drops and a cycle of subtle disappointment begins. Secondly, even when your goals are truly aligned with your joy, they may be unrealistic and difficult to integrate into your life as it is now. Why not do it differently and begin to sculpt your life – practically - from joy?
I have designed a number of unusual, innovative processes to assist you to see what you really want (which is notoriously difficult to do) and to find real, creative and achievable ways to integrate this into your current life with nothing needing to change.
Two participants’ experiences:
‘Being the OCD personality type, I am constantly making lists and
working towards “goals” and setting new year’s resolutions throughout
the year, because how else can a person exist…. Ha ha – I found a
delicious way yesterday…I spent the day with Angela, a friend and wise
woman, and started learning about me and what I am passionate about as
opposed to what I think or believe I have to be passionate about…
The word goal didn’t even enter my mind and yet I have these BIG dreams
that I announced yesterday and have started towards them…not because I
have to, but because I cannot wait any longer …
I would love for you all to experience this joy and excitement…Go on,
give it a bash – the way you look at your life for the next year will
astound you!’
‘I am still taking in the incredible gift of the JoyMap workshop. I found the insights I gained profound and far reaching in terms of how I want to see my life unfolding. It certainly has a) given me permission to focus on my joy without feeling guilty and b) made joy so much more of a focus in my day to day life’
Johannesburg
Date: Saturday 23 May 2009
Time: 9am to 4pm
Venue; Northside Lodge, 31 Knox Street, Waverley
Cost: R650.00 per person (includes all materials and teas, please bring
a light lunch)
Minimum 6 Maximum 10
To book contact Garrick +2784 460 8667 or via email.
Cape Town – First time!
Date: Saturday 13 June 2009
Time: 9am to 4pm
Venue; TBA
Cost: R650.00 per person (includes all materials and teas, please bring
a light lunch)
Minimum 6 Maximum 10
To book contact Garrick +2784 460 8667 or via email.
Mid-Year Vision Board Experience
Most of you know by now that the way I approach vision boarding is much less about ‘cut out and stick the stuff you want to get’ and much more about what certain patterns, colours and images reveal to you about your pure desires at any point in time.
I invite you to a special, mid-year Vision Board experience that will offer you the blissful chance to spend a few hours immersed ONLY in your joys, and then to receive a personal reading of your board by me. In this particular experience, for the first time, I will be using music very deliberately and specifically to open up new pathways of attraction.
Date: Thursday 18 June 2009
Time: 7.30pm
Venue; Northside Lodge, 31 Knox Street, Waverley
Cost: R200.00 per person (includes materials and refreshments)
Minimum 6 Maximum 8
To book contact Garrick +2784 460 8667 or via email.
Separate Togetherness
I work with a number of couples in my practice and friendship circles that are looking for new ways of having intimate partnerships - ones which are based on ‘wild love’ and real (not token) freedom rather than the more typical model of co-dependency and ‘blaming, shaming or taming’ (Gill Edwards). But there are few role models of such partnerships and most of us default to what we learned in our own childhood homes, especially when we are tired, overwhelmed or scared.
My Separate Togetherness workshop is for 10 people (5 couples) who are committed to their own joy and to creating a relationship which truly supports that.
I am not taking a purely theoretical approach but will instead build what I have learnt about healthy partnerships into processes focussed on the real-life gifts and challenges of the relationships in the room. Garrick and I will also share our own experiences of partnership and what we are discovering about being separately together.
This workshop will require honesty, courage and commitment, and will therefore deliver life-changing results. It is not specifically intended for relationships in trouble, but rather for couples who value their partnership enough to want to work on and deepen it.
Follow-up support after the workshop will be available.
Separate Togetherness Workshop
Date: Next workshop: Friday 2 October – Sunday 4 October 2009
Venue: Boondocks Mountain Lodge, between Nelspruit and Barberton
Cost: R 8 500.00 per couple includes workshop, full accommodation,
delicious meals and exclusive use of this magnificent lodge and
labyrinth.
Maximum 5 and minimum 3 couples. Please book soon.
To book contact Garrick at +27844608667 or email.
Embody
A workshop for those whose hearts are big enough to fall in love with their bodies.
The previous Embody Workshops yielded some miraculous and dramatic shifts in participants’ relationships to self-esteem, eating, exercise, sexuality, pain, relationships and awareness of life purpose. To read more about this pioneering process, including more stories from graduates, please click here.
If you are brave enough to fully see and listen to your own body, compassionate enough to accept the bodies of others and wild enough to fall unconditionally in love with your physicality – forever - then I invite you to Embody.
Date: Friday 21 – Sunday 23 August 2009
Venue: Boondocks Mountain Lodge, between Nelspruit and Barberton
Cost: R 5 800.00 includes full accommodation, delicious meals, 30 hours
of personalised input from two expert facilitators and exclusive use of
this magnificent lodge and labyrinth
To book contact Garrick at +27844608667 or via email.
Half of the places on this workshop have been booked as of April 2009 so please reserve your spot soon.
At the same time as Embody, Sue Fuller-Good and Ellis Levin are offering a workshop in the bush at Boondocks called Brilliant Freedom.
Brilliant Freedom is a workshop that works on the physical side of you to bring harmony in your body, soul and mind. It takes place on a glorious game farm, Boondocks and uses connection with nature, wild animals and being one with the earth to assist facilitator and healer Sue Fuller-Good to help you to break through any physical or mental limitations to a place of total confidence and trust in yourself and your body. Sue Fuller-Good is a physiotherapist and has a deep understanding of the body and of the energy system. She will coach you and coax you as you break through the prison bars of your self held beliefs about your body and what you can do with it.
This workshop will enable you to have a wilderness adventure (sleeping under the stars on the land and eating food prepared by your own hands far from the comfort of a kitchen) with facilitation and support. It is a spiritual journey which involves a lot of one on one coaching as well as healing. It takes advantage of the power of group learning as well and because it is experiential it will create cellular shifting and not intellectual learning. In addition to the physical challenges and excitement and Sue’s constant coaching, you will have assistance and input from Angela Deutschmann, who offers insight and teaching obtained from her channelled readings and coaching. Sue and Angela have worked together before with awesome results, each coming from their own very different perspective to create a fusion of understanding. On top of this, flying instructor, stunt pilot and extreme sports man Ellis Levin will be there to encourage you and share his expertise with you. He will draw on his life experience in walking through his own fears as he gently guides you to walk through yours. This team and this setting will provide the ideal space for you to break through and find joy in your physicality. Don’t hesitate to book your place on this life changing journey.
To Book contact Lila on +2711 463 0229 or email. The workshop is restricted to 12 people and already has some attendants so please book soon. 25% deposit secures your booking.
Bull's Eye
13 May 2009
What’s all this about Joy? Part One and Two
It seems like Joy has been a theme in your work recently?
Yes, since about the beginning of 2008, the readings have been raising the concept of Joy more and more. Firstly, to extend an invitation to us to commit to our Joy and secondly, to provide some insight and practical suggestions about what that means and how to do it. And that order is important! Normally, we want to completely understand something before we commit to it, but I’ve learnt that permission for something needs to come before any real kind of understanding and experience of it.
Let’s explore those in order then – what does it mean to ‘commit to my Joy’?
It’s a choice to make the purpose of your existence about Joy, as
opposed to making it about success, obligation, relationships, service
or even growth.
It’s a radical invitation because it profoundly affects how you navigate
your way through the big and small choices of your life. Committing to
your joy means taking the risk to live only for your joy, and knowing
that only you are responsible for the realization of that.
‘Living only for my Joy’ sounds at best frivolous and at worst utterly selfish
I recognize and respect that the notion brings up huge resistance in many people – from those two perspectives and from others. That’s why I dare to call the invitation radical. If you’ll bear with me, allow me to respond to the two concerns you raise. Though I have no need to convince you of anything nor to ‘convert’ you to this way of being. It has never been spoken of as something obligatory (there is no such directive ever from divinity) and I urge you only to consider this if it rings true…and of course if it contributes to your joy!
Imagine a world where every human being took full responsibility for their own joy, never expecting that any other person or system or religion or government would do so for them. Imagine that you were taught to respect and identify your Joy and supported in your quest to bring your joy into being. Do you think there would be more creativity, production, wellness, harmony in that kind of world, or less? Is that frivolous? Do you think the ‘takers’ in our world - the ones who grab, steal and hurt - are full of Joy or empty of it? My realization has been that if you are not committing to your joy then inevitably you will have an expectation – consciously or not – that someone or something must provide you with that, whether it’s your spouse or your children or your leaders or ‘more privileged’ people - and that is selfish.
Do you think it was selfish of Van Gogh to commit so passionately to creating what brought him joy, even if that wasn’t welcomed or understood at the time? Was Mozart selfish? Tiger Woods? The reason we afford these people the permission to live solely for their joy is because we can recognize their genius. If we recognized our own genius would we give ourselves the same permission?
I can get my mind around that, but what about helping others, being of service?
Service is not a replacement for Joy, it is a natural and inevitable by-product of Joy. It is impossible for you not to deeply affect the lives of other people when you are living your deepest Joy. It spills over! Firstly, because you will be bringing into the world a creation or a product or a service or a self that is high vibrational (anything created from joy or love is high vibrational) and secondly because you will be radiating energy, wellbeing, passion and playfulness, which quietly invites all whom you touch to choose the same. That is service! We do not serve others by doing for them what they can do for themselves or by trying to take care of their joy – we serve others by inviting them into their fullest selves purely because we make it seem like so much fun.
I used to have a deep intention to serve the world, and as a result spent years working in NGOs and development-oriented organizations where I wasn’t having all that much fun nor being well taken care of nor using all the academic and other talents I have. Of course, it didn’t work and I got continually sick and found many other ways, too, to duck and dive out of full commitment. Not because those organizations are ‘wrong’, but because it wasn’t really, authentically, my Joy. I eventually gave up my (second) Masters degree, as well as my career in social service (of various kinds) and started to involve myself with what I really love. Now I am serving far more people than before, and I am very well rewarded for it, in all ways. That’s the kind of service that really works and is sustainable.
What are the implications of committing to my Joy?
The implications are huge! Essentially, you will be navigating through your life using Joy as your compass – not service or habit or success or spiritual growth or approval or social norms. It’s not that these things are not allowed – it’s just that they should follow joy and not eclipse it. When you navigate with Joy, you will naturally be growing, naturally be of service and naturally be living a purposeful life.
Not that committing to your Joy means taking the easy road – it doesn’t! Your desires are programmed in such a way as to require you to step up (your courage, your risk-taking, your surrender etc) in order to follow them. It would be worth talking about what Joy is and isn’t in another question.
Ok then – what is Joy?
The specific circumstances of Joy will change moment by moment – for example, in one context it will be joyful for you to speak up, in another it will be joyful for you to remain silent. But the essence of Joy is always the same, though difficult to describe. Joy is how you feel when you are living at the cusp of comfort and discomfort; reward and risk, success and stretch. Too much time in any of those extremities begins to move you out of alignment with Joy. Joy is when you are living in a full-blooded and uncontained way. One of the readings described the opposite of Joy as being ‘containment’.
Not sadness?
Certainly not. Joy can co-exist with sadness, grief, anger or any of the other emotions we call negative. These can exist as the waves on top of the ocean of our experience, while at the same time Joy can be the current driving it forward. For example, standing up for yourself in a relationship can cause conflict or pain, but it is also deeply joyful.
How will you know when you are moving in the direction of Joy?
From recent readings, I know that these are three of the markers, or signs, of choosing Joy:
1. You feel ALIVE
2. You feel RELIEVED
3. You feel more OPEN than before
If a decision or a thought or a relationship or an opportunity increases your sense of aliveness, relief and open-ness it is aligned with Joy for you, even if it also requires you to step up your courage or your exposure or your trust. In fact if it requires you to step up these things it is definitely your Joy!
So Joy is almost like a lure into stepping up?
Exactly. By committing to living our Joy we are guaranteed both to expand in the fullest possible way and to be of enormous service at the same time. A lot of people are frustrated and disillusioned at the moment because, despite affirmations and positive visualisations, the universe has not delivered to their doorsteps exactly what they want. But that is not the point at all! Your Joy requires you to step up into a deeper, truer and fuller expression of yourself – which is what you are really doing here. One of the readings described Joy as a magic carpet. A magic carpet, as you may have noticed, never lands flat on the floor but always hovers slightly above the ground next to someone, requiring them to step up if they wish to experience the freedom and exhilaration of riding it.
Finally, if we are ready to commit to our Joy, how do we discover what it is?
This question is most usefully answered on two levels.
Firstly, the biggest truth is that Joy is a choice and not a career, lifestyle, vocation or even a passion. You are not at the mercy of a particular partner or job or location or anything whatsoever to give to you Joy. You are the one who gives permission to experience Joy in any moment and it is only the stories you tell that reinforce that this particular circumstance is inherently joyful and this one is inherently not. If you are committed to living your Joy then it is your responsibility to create it in whichever way the moment makes available. For example, if a meeting is becoming nauseatingly boring, then you have a number of ways in which to respond to that. You can withdraw into fantasies of wishing you were somewhere else, you can drown yourself in coffee (or whatever is in your hipflask!) to stimulate you or you can bring into that setting the creativity, truth, fun or humour that you experience is lacking. To en-joy life means to make it joyful, not to wait until something or someone delivers it to you. Of course, when you are committed to bringing Joy into, for example, your current working environment you are likely to either vastly increase your contribution and, thus, reward or to clearly and quickly realise that the environment cannot support you, allowing you to move on far more quickly than you otherwise might have.
Yet, secondly, it is also true that you are deeply programmed with certain desires that are beyond your intellectual control and are part of the blueprint of this particular life. Having the courage (and it takes courage!) to realise, own, express and live out what you truly want is magnificently empowering. It is not as easy as it sounds to find out what you want – many adults I come across in my practice are quite far removed from their desires and it can be a truly heroic act to relocate and express them. My JoyMap process can assist with this, but if you are really committed to knowing your Joy you can simply bring this question into your daily existence as often as you can remember to: what is it that I actually want here? Asking this question in front of a menu, your wardrobe, within a conversation or at a major choice-point will slowly (and it’s ok for it to go slowly) begin to reacquaint you with the voice of your desires and begin to reveal you’re your Joy.
Thank you.
©Angela Deutschmann May 2009
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