Bad Parents of the World, Unite!

I want to dissolve the taboo we all have about interrupting each other’s toxic parenting in public or when we’re with our friends and family. It’s a taboo only because it is so shameful how we treat our kids sometimes that being pulled out of it in the moment, the sudden raw exposure feels violating. But we NEED now at this point in our evolution as a species to empathically and constructively flag each other’s irresponsible, dumpy, coercive, domineering treatment of our children. This silent contract must end now.

I was in a queue recently at a festival and a woman behind me was holding her 4 year old boy. The kid saw a lolly on the counter and instinctively said “I want that!” He didn’t even have a whiny tinge in his tone like my kids sometimes open with. Unbelievably, the woman, like a hypnotic snaky shadow replied, “…don’t say that, that’s greedy, you don’t want to be a greedy boy…” really getting into his head – or like Jimmi Hendrix said “too many fingerprints on his brain” – and she didn’t stop there – “‘What a greedy boy’ they’ll say, and no one will want to play with you, we don’t want to play with him they’ll say’” – really hypnotic and suppressing – I felt claustrophobia course through my veins and wanted to stop her. I thought, ‘my God, imagine being that kid day after day in their home. You’d end up a murderer.’

I also get stirred up when I see parents not stepping up to give their kids boundaries because they appear to be so in need of their kids approval that they’d rather be liked than be a parent. In some realms of psychology they say that the baby learns that it is loveable because it sees itself mirrored in its mother’s loving eyes. The infant draws it’s identity as a loveable being from the mirror of the Mother’s adoring gaze, but now so many Mothers and Fathers have switched the contract on their kids and are looking into their kids’ eyes to be reassured that they themselves are loved! Avoiding giving kids boundaries and letting them rule the roost as ‘pack leaders’ breeds domineering bullies. We need to step up and up our game.

It’s time to drop the taboo on discussing irresponsible parenting and get it together. TOGETHER.

My partner Raisa busted me brilliantly recently with my girls. They were playing up in the car and after repeated semi-empty threats I finally came down with a consequence boundary and cancelled the movie that we’d all planned to watch later. It temporarily had the desired effect of shutting them up in sulky shock that a real line had been drawn. But of course, a few hours later, when we had got home, eaten, cuddled, and it was 7.30pm, there wasn’t even a wisp of the earlier drama present so I dissolved the earlier punishment and got up to put on the film. This is where having a partner as ON IT and articulate as Raisa is such a gift. She takes me aside and says “If you keep drawing boundaries like earlier and then changing your mind later, these girls won’t trust you, and they won’t trust men.” And I knew every syllable was true. I felt something shift in me and a deeper resolve to get us all as parents upping our game and making the collective decision to lift this regressive taboo on feeding back what we’re witnessing in each other’s parenting.

We’re going to have to cultivate a new relationship with our SHAME – the shame of being seen in reactive bad-parenting mode and the shame we are instilling in our kids in all the moments we can’t hold onto our own emotionally reactive beans and we leak out our dumpy, irresponsible, shaming manipulations on our kids. When we shout at our kids with a closed heart, it is toxic for them. When we rebuke in a sing-song voice through gritted teeth, it is toxic for the kids. When we vent our frustration at them for their non-compliance with our rules and instructions, or when we try and coerce them either with rewards or punishments we are confusing their minds and hearts.

This is going to require some radical rethinking of the habitual ways we control the children. Even the phrase ‘good boy’ or ‘good girl’ is an approval manipulation, meant in the best possible way, but instills a need in the kid to be good not bad, for Your love. Not because their values are in harmony but because they fear your ‘love-withhold’. As kids, when we are trained by our carers to eat and poo and walk and speak, we are rewarded with kisses and prizes when we ‘get it right’ and we don’t get the same warm gusts of approval when we ‘don’t get it right’ – so we become Approval Addicts and the moment this happens, as Anthony de Mello says ‘society can control you’. We are slaves to approval, we are all conforming to some sector of approval, to be good earners, good workers, good home-makers, good looking – the core of Facebook is LIKING things, how many approval points did you get on that post, that picture, that insight? So just as a start, if we want to cultivate Freedom, it’s more useful to call the kids’ behaviour Good and Naughty but not the kid themself good or naughty. There’s a big mental and emotional difference between “Jamie, you’re a naughty boy!” and “Jamie, that is a very naughty thing to do!” Yes, obvious to some.

There are grey areas in all this but let’s dissolve the taboo.

We parents are also the most doting, careful, clued-up generation of parents this planet has EVER seen. These are the luckiest kids that have ever been born. That’s why, this is the time, we’ve reached a point where we care enough to get Active with this stuff. We agonise over our anger, our over-indulgence, our feelings of being sometimes overwhelmed. We care about the GMO foods that we want to protect our kids from, we care about the refined sugar that has been toxifying so much of the kids digestive and immune systems to make profits for rich crooks. We care about the country’s resources and hard earned taxes not being spent on wonderful palatial schools for our kids where their Creativity is devotionally cherished and all kinds of education, NOT just Academic, but visual, sonic, movement, imagination, even spiritual – All sides of kids are valued.

If we want to build this reality for our kids we need to raise our presence with how we as parents are treating our kids. When we dissolve this taboo together within our families and within our hearts, just watch the external factors in than list above transform all by themselves. Those toxic worldly issues are perfect mirrors of our own issues with our treatment of our kids.

They had to make a law to say we can’t beat them to teach with pain?

Parents of 2013 – Stand up for your kids. Let’s gift the future generations with massively more conscious and present mental and emotional wellbeing.

Being Disruptive from Heart Mountain

I am a provoker and a disruptor, a wind-up merchant and a tail puller, a prodder and a poker. When I meet someone’s ‘appropriate’ mask my first impulse is to want to dance with them to the edge of their ‘appropriate’ version of themselves and see what illuminating fun can be had when the mask slips. Suddenly, then, there’s a chance of intimacy and often some well-needed oxygen.

When I was a child I soon learned, as did the other children, that when I got things right and obeyed my carers I was awarded the kisses, prizes and approval of ‘basic human training’. Most kids worked it out pretty quickly. Get it right and the computer goes <ping!>. Pass the test <ping!> Tie the shoelace <ping!> sit down nicely <ping!> add up the numbers <ping!> be a good boy <ping!> <ping!> <ping!>. But the problem with being intelligent and curious is that before very long the <ping!> noise becomes predictable and boring – even claustrophobic at times.

And then soon one discovers that when you get it ‘wrong’ the computer does something much more interesting – it goes <dn%fkj*erbfk!> or <nd$eg£rfnjh!> and always in a uniquely insightful way! As the wonderful word-artist Jenny Holzer once wrote:

‘Spit a mouthful of milk over someone if you want to learn something about their personality fast.’

So my natural fascination led me to become labelled a problem child – always in trouble and always puzzled by the injustice of it.

Since that time I’ve never lost my excitement to explore the edges where ‘normal’ repetitive, robotic and safe codes of behaviour can be disrupted and dissolve into laughter, creativity, foolishness and numerous epiphanies. I want to question and challenge the dishonest, violently self-edited ‘brochure’ of ourselves that we each present to the World. We’ve become so used to being fake and hiding who we really are inside. I no longer wish to feed that sleepy, unconscious agreement we seem to have all made to not trigger each other, not challenge each other and not say what we see or how we really feel.

There can be a few sticky transitions as disrupting limiting or unnecessary rules isn’t for everyone at first.

But there’s one rule that even amongst the culture of being a rule-free shaker-upper of things must be observed, and that is that no matter who’s tail I’m pulling, who’s ego I’m challenging, who’s mask I’m slipping, if I am IN ANY WAY coming from even a shred of superiority, elitism, point-scoring or self-aggrandisement then my offering is toxic as hell.

I have to be fully open-hearted at all times – what I now call ‘Heart Mountain’, and then with any gift I give, any two-penny-worth I throw into the soup, I can be fully responsible and loving and hold the space with confidence and fascination for whatever might arise. But if I am trying to prove something to the person I am challenging, if I’m feeding back to them without full empathy and knowledge of my own fallibility and foolishness, then I’m likely going to start a fight, shut someone down or even, as has happened to me upon occasion, be physically assaulted.

Heart Mountain is the key to all communication, especially the tender stuff. Heart Mountain is connected to the Earth over a large area. Heart Mountain is still and always listening and observing without judgement. When I know I am centred in Heart Mountain I can dare to express my edgiest, most risky offerings with confidence. From Heart Mountain I can be steadfast in the face of all criticism and complaint and never need to defend or argue.

Please tell me about any times where the difference between coming from Heart Mountain and not has been illuminating for you. Please share your thoughts about not holding back. Let’s express our truths and observances from Heart Mountain and be always inclusive of our own fallibility while we co-create new, emotionally safe domains to play and learn together.

All Creativity and Intimacy Workshops and Coaching at www.jamiecatto.com

The Vulnerability of Penetration

It stands to reason that in love-making, on the surface at least, it is the woman, ‘the penetrated one’, who holds the vulnerability. After all, having a man push himself into your most sacred and sensitive opening is about the most surrendered and yielding experience one can imagine. So it’s understandable that while women are in the ‘receiving’ role sexually, and are also usually less physically strong than their male partners, the vulnerability is held by the women. I’d like to connect with you deeper in this vulnerability and share something I haven’t spoken about before.

It is extremely vulnerable for us men to be the ‘penetrator’ too. As much as we work on raising our sensitivities and empathy to women, unless we enjoy our own anal penetration, we don’t know what it’s like to be ‘pushed into’. Today, the social climate around men’s sexuality includes a lot of past trauma from abusive and violent sex or just insensitive or immature men of previous generations who had no clue what they were doing to their women. Today’s women bear the scars of past, male-dominated, unfeeling sexual experiences and it has only been very recently that the law and society’s moral compass has even acknowledged a woman’s right so say “No” even in the middle of sex and even if she’s married to the man she’s having sex with. Unbelievably, still, in most countries there is no law against a man raping his wife. She has no legal right to refuse him and no legal protection if he rapes her. Even in USA and UK the law has only been passed to protect married women in the last 50 years or so, and across Asia and Africa they think I’m crazy to even bring the subject up.

So the idea that men could be the vulnerable ones in love-making may sound puzzling at first. But I want to express that as a man, carrying the burden of women’s often negative expectations and the ever-felt sexual wounds of all mistreated women of the past, creates a very unique and sensitive vulnerability of it’s own – for the men. Perhaps it could be likened to German grandchildren of the Nazis who themselves played no part in the abuses of WW2 but in the post war decades couldn’t help being tarred by the same brush and unjustly carrying some of the guilt and rejection.

Men carry the shame of our abusive, sexually incontinent forefathers and we don’t want to bring that trauma into the bedroom any more. It’s in the way of us having incredible, heart-bursting sex with you.

Today, if you are man with any degree of sensitivity, it is a vulnerable thing to penetrate a woman. I don’t want to abuse you, trigger you into past trauma or in any way mistranslate your wants or needs. I would hate to accidentally touch you in a way that jarred you or misread your passion. So, if you notice my hesitancy or any held-back-ness, please do not translate this as any lack of desire on my part. I may be waiting for a clearer invitation.

Women, please invite us clearly and unmistakably to make love with you. Only when we are certain that your invitation is wholehearted and clear can we melt into devotional service to your pleasure. We need to be total, unbridled by doubt, to allow the strength of our male physicality to take you. We want to explode you into light and usher you to the door where you can dissolve into pure sex with the Big Spirit – in the field that is beyond us both, but until we are certain that Your invitation is total, we can’t surrender to giving you our gifts fully.

Your vulnerability is my vulnerability. Let’s melt deeper into it together and heal the past traumas with our love-making.

All Intimacy and Creativity Workshops at www.jamiecatto.com

http://twitter.com/#!/JamieCatto

Cheeky Dissolving

Whenever I have to stop and wait somewhere, sitting in the car waiting for someone, or in waiting rooms, even long traffic lights, I’ve been recently taking the opportunity to really stop. Like the day has set out for me this series of enforced mini meditations. I’ve never been one for ritualised meditation. I love folks who have a shrine and incense and lovely things and sit at their special place. Maybe it’s because I’m so much on the move (being such an international diamond smuggling outlaw of creative juiciness) – it’s NOT because I’m lazy or immature or any other unevolved things <ahem>

…so I welcome each of these opportunities to stop as a rest from anything external that needs my attention and scan myself, say hi to myself, (optional hand on my chest), smile through my body and into any tensions or blocks, as if they’re patches of ice that need to be dissolved.

The genius Taoists constantly give their full presence to scanning their whole body, locating any blocked or hard-to-describe discomforts, whereupon they say ‘Ice to Water, Water to Steam’ and literally use their imagination to SEE that place dissolve and the steam leave their body.

I reckon if we practice this as a cultivated habit all day, whenever we stop, get in a bit of cheeky dissolving – smile some mischief into any tensions – watch them turn to steam and blow away, it would (will) be a massive illness preventer. Let’s make this a habit from Now and share it with others.

As we get more into this habit it’s also really enriching to do some of these practices with friends and lovers. The places this practice goes to are truly magical and sensual as far as widening the spectrum of your rich human experience goes…more on that as we go….but for now, notice when you dissolve these sensations in the body how many external problems and challenges in your life melt of their own accord as if by magic.

Please let me know, write below, when a drama in your life vanishes seemingly by itself!

This is PRACTICAL MAGIC

All creative and intimacy workshops at www.jamiecatto.com

twitter: http://twitter.com/#!/JamieCatto

What About My Xmas Presence?

This year Christmas is going to be different. My old pal Servan says that the Taoists don’t wait for their problems to become a crisis, but they do something called ‘picking the dragon’s teeth while it sleeps’. This means getting tooled-up ahead of time to be strong, awake and present with life’s approaching challenges, and exploring their potential wisdom and illumination before they become too overwhelming. You can’t draw the wisdom from a challenge when it’s triggered you into a melt-down or a big reaction, the trigger is too intense, so it’s very self-loving and sensible to look into upcoming stumbling blocks and vexations ahead of time.

Which brings me to this Christmas.

This year I’m treating all the challenges, triggers, and crazy head-trips of the whole Xmas season as the benevolent, illuminating mirrors and invitations to self-awareness that they really are. I’m going to harvest all the potential breakthroughs on offer – the real Christmas gifts to birth myself ten levels more liberated into 2013, because I believe that every challenge in my life, when framed correctly, is a way that Life with a big ‘L’ is trying to show me something – usually myself. Even at Christmas.

I have become fragmented as a man and, with all the parts of myself I’ve edited and suppressed to maintain approval from the World, I’ve made myself less than whole. I’ve learned which bits of me get good responses and which might get rejection and in my pursuit of endless approval and inclusion I’ve snipped myself down. Until now, every time someone I valued didn’t like an aspect of me I hid that part away from then on, and gradually, violently edited myself down to this crippled brochure of myself – just the perceived ‘good bits’ to get you to love me.

I now believe that the intimate life I want to live is all about un-editing myself from this little ‘appropriate’ version I present to people and to playfully journey back towards the juicy, inspired, unapologetic, unafraid Jamie – light and dark, angelic and diabolic, present and whole.

Wholeness is the word.

So now, when I encounter a challenging person or situation, it is my business to have the balls to see the trigger as a benevolent mirror of a part of me that I’m usually denying or escaping, an opportunity to face myself unflinchingly. And the longer I deny and escape aspects of myself that I don’t like and won’t face, the more I manifest people and situations externally that get right in my face and freak me out. The human body/mind/heart is looking for wholeness. It’s looking for personal Unity with itself. It can’t walk around incomplete with bits of itself cut off without getting ill. So my mission is to dare to see all the challenges as opportunities to question where I’m not being whole – to examine what part of me I’m in denial or exclusion of that I need it rubbed in my face by the ‘outside world’.

And I don’t believe the World is ‘outside’. I am in the Universe. The Universe is in me. I have the potential to be an abuser, but if I can’t handle that truth I am going to judge and condemn abusers wherever I see them. And as long as I am proclaiming ‘that’s not me! that’s not me!’ I will manifest more and more of them in my life. I have the potential to be an idiot, but if I can’t handle that truth I am going to judge and condemn idiots wherever I see them. And as long as I am proclaiming ‘that’s not me! that’s not me!’ I will manifest more and more of them all around. The World around me is here to deliver versions of everything I am in rejection of until I am can say ‘I am an abuser, I am an idiot…’ and feel no aversion.

Because we are all potentially everything.

So now, feeling that familiar dread of seeing my family members, of the Xmas challenges and all the personal twilight zones that this season has to offer me, I’m trying something new.

I’m getting together with a bunch of friends, outlaws and misfits on December 22nd in London to try out some new processes, games and discussions to dissolve and welcome the approaching Christmas challenges and harvest them for all the illuminating gifts they are bringing. This is the real spirit of Christmas – a period of self discovery and liberation from old traps and self-harming habits. When we address them ahead of time they will no longer knock us off balance and catapult us into age-old painful patterns. Instead they will give us revelation after hilarious revelation, because by tying bells to the ankles of these insidious triggers, when it comes to the actual challenges on the day, we easily see the sucker-punches coming and are able to lighten-up and free ourselves from the ancient, predictable reactions.

If you’d like to join us or find out more then the details are all on my website or here:

http://www.jamiecatto.com/xmas_presence.html

Instead of intensely striving just to get through, I invite you to transform this Christmas into the liberating illumination it’s meant to be – and give us all the real Christmas presence on offer: Self-Awareness and Lightening-Up.

All Jamie’s Workshops and Talks at www.jamiecatto.com

When you are next Pleasuring yourself…

When you are next Pleasuring yourself, and you feel those first ripples of warmth and arousal begin to rise between your legs, try allowing those waves to slowly expand and spread beyond your usual pleasure zones. Feel the warm energy of pleasure radiate out from between your legs and spread through your belly, and consciously inhale all that rich turned-on-ness deep into your body. Let it fill you entirely with each deepening breath. The arousal can build rapidly and deeply. Direct the pleasure with your breath and really allow the tilt of your hips to pull the horniness through your whole body. Feel how powerfully healing and energising this pleasure force can be, filling you.

As you are touching yourself, with every rising wave of desire, breathe that wave further through your whole body, inhaling it deep to your core. Let it reach to the ends of your fingertips and toes. Your whole body and mind becomes one pleasure centre. Staying with the breath, as the arousal builds, allow yourself to open even more to the waves, consciously surrendering, as that exquisite turned-on-ness saturates you.

Now feel the crown of your head mirror the deep seated pleasure below and open your whole body for an even stronger current to move through you. Let each growing wave energise and heal and light up every cell of your body in health and power. Feel every pore drink in the pleasure and fill you with limitless creativity.

If you want to take it even further you can beam the pleasure out of you from all directions to connect to anyone or anywhere at all. Send the super-powered force of it to dissolve any limitations, disease or suffering anywhere on the planet. As you send it, actually see the energy do it’s transformational work with your mind, watch the place you send it to transform and heal in your imagination.

We have the power to do this Now. Pleasure is transformative and is available to be directed to creative, healing and passionate uses at any time.

Tune in and transform your World with your pleasure…

…and do please share your experiences below.

All Intimacy and Creative workshops and Talks at www.jamiecatto.com

When splitting up is SO painful – a letter to a friend

Dear old Friend,

waking up at my sister’s in Golders Green, thinking of you especially on Sundays which can be brutal. I want to share with you a couple of things you already know such as – don’t forget that this is but a painful TRANSITION, not a painful entry into a painful new life. When you were working on me last year I was having an agonising time ‘being left’ by my ex-wife and battling with abandonment, jealousy, lostness, loneliness. While I was still trying to keep my old reality intact and not surrendering to what was really going on I did a lot of emotional violence to myself. What I didn’t know then was how brilliantly abundantly treated I was gong to be, how as soon as I placed my focus on the next chapter, not the last one with all its alluring hooks and safe, known comforts, I was met with limitless support and exciting, nourishing new gifts. I’m not suggesting that you deny any pain or force yourself to ‘move on’ too quickly, but I do want to remind us both that once your deeper choice and vision is directed to the next chapter, your innate genius adapts and creates and attracts wonderful new circumstances, people and surprises – and that creative genius takes it’s lead from where you direct your attention.

You once reminded me to edit the tape in my head. This is a great time to raise one’s awareness on the ‘version of events’ we are playing back in our heads. I don’t know in how much resistance you are right now, or how you are faring as regards clinging, turning scenarios over and over in your mind, looking back not forward, injustice and loneliness – but I want to remind you, just in case, that there is a slither of choice here to look through a more optimistic lens, a lens which trusts that even though I have very limited vision here and it looks dark, perhaps the All That Is has a wonderful array of scenery and characters and positive unfoldings, uplifting and healing revelations in store for me.

When I was at my most disempowered and terrified state during my divorce, I had a formative experience on the London Underground train. I was sitting there listening to my music on headphones and my ipod was on shuffle. A piece of really sad film music was playing, and as I sat there listening, my own despondent predicament engulfed me. I looked around the carriage and everyone looked so isolated and lonely. I sank deeper, feeling all the tragedy of my situation, how much of a victim I felt in it and that depressing reality became more and more true. It was painful. Then the next track came on and it was something really triumphant and rocking by The Clash. Immediately my chest swelled a little and my posture became fractionally more erect. The tube doors opened and I strode down the platform, strong and upright. The music pumped along jubilantly in my ears and I walked all the taller. ‘Look at this hero’ I thought as I strode down the train platform, ‘surviving and thriving amidst all these challenges, unstoppable. Come on then!’ I felt, ‘Gimme what you got!’ It was only the soundtrack in my ears that had changed but it really showed me how malleable ‘the truth of what’s gong on’ can be.

The tape in our head is the soundtrack. Our beliefs and attitudes to what’s gong on. The ‘version’ of events on which we choose to place our attention is the truth we energise. We will empower what we focus on, positive or negative. So, as Gabrielle Roth says, it takes immense discipline to be a free spirit. To choose the positive, ‘open to miracles and trust’ lens over the usual attractive ‘doom and gloom’ one. It takes discipline. But there is a slither of choice, much aided by kicking music.

And the reward is, a year or two down the line, I now know that what happened when Jessica and I split up was a wonderful life-change for me. I resisted it with all my might when I couldn’t see the future, but I am now with a heavenly, intelligent, funny, soulful girlfriend who really gets the Me ‘now’. Our sex life is glorious and fresh and deeply intimate. Our soul life is so much more ‘equal’ that any relationship I’ve had before. In numerous other ways I am growing into my real wholeness, my less limited shapes, my fullest potential. I have experienced my courage, endurance and self-compassion and awakened a deeper sense of personal responsibility and self-parenting. The list of gifts is long.

I don’t want to in any way suggest you rush the grieving, but whenever you have a fraction more energy, allow the next chapter vision to creep in. It’s like the motion is the lotion exercises you taught me. Allowing some gentle movement in this let’s your innate genius begin to lay the foundations for your next incredibly fulfilling chapter. I believe your higher mind and even the Universe itself is conspiring to set up the perfect, fulfilling, abundant circumstances for your pleasure and growth.

Beyond all that, I am sending love and trust and an extra bank of pumping electric guitars to spur you onward.

You are a Warrior. Allow your posture to reflect this and the mind will follow.

huge hug

Jamie

All workshops at www.jamiecatto.com