Don't Believe Yourself!

I felt hurt today after someone said something to me I didn't like. I didn't like what they said. I didn't like the way they said it. And I didn't like when they said it either! And I felt hurt. I withdrew for a bit as the extremely uncomfortable and sudden feeling of contraction and eruption in my solar plexus surged. It felt very painful. It felt like anger, despair, sorrow and injustice, with a dash of persecution thrown in for good measure. As I sat there, still in the vicinity of this person who had just said the thing that I didn't like, I noticed my mind building a 'case for the prosecution' in my inner ear, listing all the things I could say that would back up the idea that I was a victim here and the other person had been, in some way(s), responsible for this painful feeling now raging in me.

So the voice of prosecution set off down a few roads to argue it's case, to back up this 'Jamie has been unarguably wronged here' version of events, in which I was an innocent victim of this other person's wrongness.

Does this sound familiar?

Do you, like me, often have a whole courtroom scene going on in your head? At times when I feel I have to state my case, defend myself, or especially justifiably prosecute another for 'wronging me', an imaginary courtroom opens up in my mind where the whole world can hear the obvious truth of my innocence and the other person's (often outrageous) wrongness.

Today, I watched my inner prosecutor attempt to blame and shame this person for what, how and when they had 'been so insensitive'. But this time, in the light of my curious attention, and therefore without the fuel of my need to avoid this pain in me at all costs by blaming the other, the whole victim-centric 'version of events' that would usually be so delicious and compelling to me just dissolved, and in it's place, a fascination with the sad, despairing, contracting, watery sensations that were still pulsing in my chest and guts and eyes, took over.

My attention left the argument in my head and focused instead on the sensations in me and the astonishment at how skillful my inner victim-addicted prosecutor is! How often in the past I'd be deep in arguing by now instead of feeling what was going on in my body.

Once I breathed gently into the places where the hurt was throbbing and moving it began to morph and shift and dissolve - as the Taoists say 'Ice to Water, Water to Steam'.

I was so glad I had, for once, noticed this before I attacked this other person. And above all, I made a personal note to get wise to the usual, deliciously compelling, "i'm a victim' version of events I try and sell even to myself when I feel hurt. Anything to escape the pain that erupts in me.

From now on I am reminding myself to stay uber-vigilant about the seemingly-so-just complaints and blaming strategies I habitually weave to back up my victimhood, and how I tend to avoid feeling deeply and with fascination the extreme sensory reactions I have in my body…

…whenever someone says something I don't like.

Please tell me how you blamed someone else instead of feeling your feelings this week and what you do to bring yourself back.

Workshops, Music and Films at www.jamiecatto.com

Leave Your Job Today

I've been slowing down recently. Something about living with Raisa Breslava who's rhythm is uber-presence and slow sensitivity, or perhaps it's all this focus on 'full-body-listening' and exploring all the creative genius that 'emptying and listening' can deliver that has made me realise: a life fully lived at the correct pace simply leaves no time for a job.

I've been slowing down and I notice that the amount of time it takes to chop and peel the fruit in the morning, to eat or drink it consciously, appreciating every mouthful and every taste as if it's the first time I've ever tasted it - to be present with my whole body, not just the sensations in my mouth but my whole body, as my genius system of tubes and chambers delivers and harvests the nutrition - then washing myself slowly and gently, unhurried, limb by limb, stroke by stroke - to love and care for every inch of myself as I clean and enliven the whole surface of my skin-body, and then to dry each area equally lovingly with the same presence and care I'd give a baby - and to then cream or oil my limbs, connecting deeply to muscles and sinews, thumbs seeking out any lines of stiffness or resistance, unknotting and relieving, combing the energy through - to stretch myself out and attend to my hamstrings and tendons and breathe through my joints, my spine, my stillness - to breathe deeply with myself, waking up my organs with a smile for each one, guiding an inner smile through my liver, heart, spleen, lungs and kidneys, and so wake up my body's innate self-mending power and even take a little longer to send some of that magic healing juice out into the world, to all living beings, 'May they all be free of suffering' - and watch the good juice I'm sending have it's transformational effect in my minds eye, to see it do it's good - and to then light herbs of sage and sweet incense, step by step making my way through the house, room by room, step by conscious step allowing the smudging, clearing qualities of the smoke to reach every corner…how could there be time for a job?

Please, unless you're working somewhere where you're really inspired and you're contributing to something that feels meaningful for you and where you are touched and nourished by having your gifts received - Leave Your Job today.

The radical shift that will occur in your life just by you luxuriating in having ALL your waking hours now to yourself to be creative, to be passionate, to be restful, to be still - to do ANYTHING YOU PLEASE - to have the space for a crazy new idea to pop into your head, or the scent of an old memory to suddenly launch you into a creative blur - to have time for tea and a chat and a moment of explosive inspiration and then space to ruminate, or get straight to it. To have time on Tuesday to meet or Wednesday to stay in bed all day making love - to cook and cook and experiment and fail and laugh and make love some more…

Leave You Job, today. Don't look back. Dare for a year or even a half-a-year to GIVE YOURSELF YOUR LIFE BACK. Your precious time on Earth is for YOU. Don't sell it. You came here to live every hour of that forty hour week. Imagine if you had less weeks left than you thought...

...Don't wait.

Leave your job, today.

and please tell me what you would REALLY like to do after breakfast instead.

all workshops and talks at www.jamiecatto.com

A quick question if I may……….?

If there was a mass corporate and political amnesty, collectively agreed by all of us humans, whereby all oil companies, and the dodgiest bankers and all their affiliated poison-peddling companies, alcohol, sugar, tobacco, chemical-medicines, all the arms dealers and political fog-spinners and dealers of death-for-profit would be given a clean sheet, tabla rasa, no questions asked ever again or any blame or culpability for anything they'd done before this day.… IF

…tell me this people; if there was the sole condition that in return for this total amnesty for all and any past atrocities these companies would have to start and lead the immediate clean-up Earth process and design and build the architecture of a sustainable, respectful, people-loving system in place of the unsustainable one...

I want to know

Would you be satisfied with this immediate, drastically positive change on the planet if it came with the price of you never getting to blame, hold to account, shame, prosecute or condemn a single company for anything from the past from that day forward - would you go for it?

Could you live with the change we all want if it came with a clean sheet, wiping away all accountability from the past for everyone, no exceptions?

www.jamiecatto.com

I am Crazy Cop

I recently gave a talk at the Royal National Geographic Society to celebrate Cumbria University's progressive Leadership and Sustainability department. I had 11 minutes to share my passion and mission. Sustainability was the theme of the evening so it gave me the perfect window to express how I feel about the violent self-editing we have each been doing to ourselves since childhood to present what we think is a loveable or at least approval-centric version of ourselves to the public - how we live to avoid negative feedback, and how we've shrunk ourselves down to a 20% sized crippled brochure of our 'nice parts'.

This is central to the manifesto of Creativity we experiment with on my workshops and in all the films and music too - that we have been trained into approval addicts…

…when our parents or carers were teaching us as infants how to use our hands and eat and poo and function in this human body, their method of training us involved giving us kisses and prizes when we 'got it right' and when we didn't perform correctly we'd receive, if not rebukes, certainly not the kisses and prizes of our successes. The problem with this training method is that while it succeeds in the functional training of the child it also turns the kid into an approval addict - constantly hanging out for the positive feedback, more love, more approval.

Ask a kid 'why do I love you?' and sadly most will answer something about being good.

What's harder is that as children, every time one of these carers gave us a blast of negative feedback such as 'naughty girl!' or 'that's disgusting!' or even the gentler 'good boys don't do that' - we often decided to hide that quality away from everyone from now on incase it risked further rejection. In this way, as we grow up, we snip away and suppress living parts of ourselves. With each 'bad boy!' <snip> 'naughty girl' <suppress> violently editing ourselves bit by bit until we end up as adults, 20% sized, presenting a crippled brochure of our perceived 'good' bits or 'safe' bits to the world, all to be appropriate.

No Masterpiece ever came out of that place.

We've edited ourselves down to these 20% sized little versions of ourselves and are wasting a huge amount of our daily energy maintaining an appearance of confidence and fine-ness in public - especially at work where being 'a winner' and 'on top of things' is paramount. We exhaust ourselves keeping these masks in place while operating from this 'squashed into 20%' sized capacity…

…and that ladies and gentleman is not sustainable.

To me this is the most common sense, obvious and meet-able energy crisis on the planet so I was delighted to say it loud and proud with this room full of Environmentally sound people. What I said to them is simple maths to me, with no need for eastern philosophy or crystals, and yet I had some curious conversations with the Sustainability folks and Corporate responsibility folks from the audience after the talk and what left me the most puzzled and yet determined was one conversation with a potential collaborator who shakes things up in companies. He said that sometimes, in his work, they need to almost run a good cop bad cop thing with teams inside Companies to get past entrenched patterns, but working with me, he said, "I could bring you in and you're like Crazy Cop, coming in and blowing everyone's minds!"

After I had drunk his flattery deep, I was outraged that common sense has now become the new crazy! What times are these? This silent contract we all have to present an appropriate, confident version of ourselves and hide anything edgy or trigger or needy or…or….

This is the real energy crisis on the planet. If we can collectively drop this fake, self-prostituting, way of meeting each other, all to manipulate a better response from the other and hide being seen for who we really are, then the energy we will save will easily be enough to solve any global crisis.

Who's with me?

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 2014 - Stand up for your kids. Let’s gift the future generations with massively more conscious and present mental and emotional wellbeing.

please join this group here: https://www.facebook.com/groups/badparentsoftheworldunite/

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

Paedophilia

I feel disturbed by the UK's response to the tragic Jimmy Saville events. For the record, I feel to support and promote any words and actions which seek to understand abusers and extend compassion and healing to all living beings. I do not feel to support or feed words or actions which condemn, shame and blame because those impulses are rooted in people acting from their pain and often their inability to relate to their own anger and hurt in any other way, not from their sound-judgement. I understand it but I don't choose to feed or support it as it will never manifest healing for any victim or abuser. Culturally we are not encouraged to do anything but blame and be vengeful, sadly. But no words and actions rooted in condemnation ever lead to healing or closure for anyone, if anything they increase the traumas on both sides. I am a believer in Universal Innocence and seek to discover the roots of abuse that create abusers, not resort to just blaming the most recent in a long line of suffering, compulsive, wounded souls like JS. Sometimes people say 'but what if something like this happened to one of your kids?' - the answer is this: if that happened I would undoubtedly be too traumatised at first to speak or act from anything other than my trauma, I would not be of sound mind and my judgements and actions would be destructive. But just because I would find it almost impossible to practice what I've written above in that situation doesn't make the position less valid. I hope I would eventually encounter someone who would help me somehow seek out compassion and understanding.

Ironically, those who have sought out compassion and understanding for their abusers have found it the healthiest and quickest route to transforming both their own trauma and that of the abuser. Condemning and shaming has never helped a single victim or abuser, if anything it has entrenched their trauma deeper.

It's not the condemnation of the abuser which helps heal the victims, it's the victims' innocence that needs to be upheld and reminded and affirmed. This is not the same thing as blaming the abuser but it does include affirming how ill or even horrendous their actions have been. And in my opinion all abusers are victims too. It can be hard to accept this but no matter what a 'good time' they may appear to be having, abusers like JS are in deep deep suffering and/or mental illness. How else could they possibly hurt so many? There's no need for a clinical psychologist here. If you think it's ok to rape children, then you're ill.

For more info and compassionate good sense have a look here:

http://theforgivenessproject.com/

Phew, now I hope I can sleep...

www.jamiecatto.com

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

How To Attract Men

This is a blog for women who care about men being attracted to them visually (though not only visually). Ladies, I feel compelled to fill you in on a great truth! You are being lied to about the importance of your weight when it comes to attracting men! Would you be surprised to learn that for us men, it is FAR more central to our attraction to you that you hold yourself beautifully than how curvy you are. I know many women who, to those diet and weight-obsessed among you, might be considered 'overweight', yet to me, if they hold themselves beautifully, they are MILES more attractive than a thin women who slumps in her seat, or walks droopily. If a woman holds herself confidently, with grace and aligned posture, her attractiveness shines through no matter how much she weighs. Of course there are some clinically-obese women who some would acknowledge fall outside of this category but within the scope of the un-clnicallly obese, you would be amazed at how posture is the REAL factor in visual attraction for us men, not weight.

You could have a trim, fit, healthy body which fits the accepted dimensions of the female-read Gloss Magazines criteria for sexiness but if you slump in your seat, hold yourself poorly and walk with no grace, you will be far less attractive to a man than a woman who is curvier, weighs more but holds herself with confidence and elegance.

When I see promises of miracle diets on your magazines I always despair and think to myself: if these women spent half as much time addressing their posture as they did agonising about their weight then all their perceived man-attracting problems would be solved!

Please try it for a week. Balance a book on your head, think to yourself 'how would a totally confident woman sit in this chair? - how would she walk down this street? How would she enter this room?' - practice these kinds of questions and experiments and I promise you you will be amazed at the difference. You will receive compliments from men and women all over the place, often mistaking your new radiance for weight loss!

Please, on behalf of all men, give this idea a try and share with us below any results.

P.S. please don't write to me to tell me that visual attraction is a shallow thing with which to concern oneself. We all know a real, connected, present relationship is not based on the visual attraction alone.

Info for both Jamie's Creative and Intimacy weekends at www.jamiecatto.com – turn right at the crossroads

Intimacy of Excitement

We hold back our full excitement sometimes in case we look too keen or uncool. There's something so beautiful about childlike excitement but it can feel risky. We expose ourselves in our youngness and if we are not met there we can suddenly feel foolish and alienated. So often we limit our expression of joy to appear 'appropriate' and 'measured'.

I get much more excited by, and more intimate with, someone who is total in their passion and excitement than someone who plays it down to play it safe.

Your excitement is magnetic. Your excitement is attractive and juicy. When I see you consumed by your passion I am drawn to you and I want to be infected by your enthusiasm and spirit.

Show me your bigness and see how I myself am encouraged to open more and be seen in my own passions.

What is one specific aspect or area in your life you could be bigger in, something you could dare to be more seen in? Please share with us below.

4 Levels of Intimacy (at least)

Why so much about Intimacy and what do we get up to on these weekends? For me, Intimacy comes in 4 levels, or at least there's 4 things that especially inspire me right now.

1) Intimacy with my Lover: this has so much to do with dissolving old unconscious behaviours and strategies which fog intimacy. Ways I manipulate and control, even in subtle ways, to stay safe and in my 'perceived' comfort zone. A huge amount of mutual appreciation and effortless Intimacy lies behind these busy blocks. Intimacy arises effortlessly, naturally when we're all in the lightened-up, no nonsense space together and we realise that the thing in the way is only a mirage and once arrived at, has no substance.

2) Intimacy with everyone in my life: which means not turning up to work every day having to pretend I'm not crazy for everyone. I am crazy, you are, we all are, and I believe that the amount of energy we waste keeping up a mask, a role for everyone, a smaller than me version of myself, a crippled brochure of 'just my appropriate parts', is incredibly limiting as a lover, parent, artist, human. We're all addicted to approval from birth. So all my violent self-editing due to my approval addiction is really a manipulation to make you behave in a way I want, approving and accepting me, rather than risk how you might behave if I showed you my big, unapologetic, whole self. I want to loosen that stuff up. I am turned off by your appropriateness. In fact I find it provocative. It makes me want to go to the edge of it with you and see what's really there.

3) Intimacy with myself: I have rushed into so many decisions and actions without really checking in with myself in the moment 'what I actually want'. Things I take for granted, things I make myself do, things I deny myself due to limiting beliefs. I want the space to really listen to me. No one else will meet my needs no matter what they promise. No one will know my needs if I don't ask myself what I need and then communicate it to others. I need to give myself more space and not force myself through experiences that I don't really want just because it's expected or 'what I've always done'.

4) This really excites me - Intimacy with all the unexpected circumstances of my life - when something unexpected or not 'what I ordered' happens in my life, my old reaction would be to immediately control it, and 'guide' it back to how I originally wanted it. But now I want to leave more space. I choose to listen more to how these circumstances that I usually resist might actually be a gift, a benevolent beckoning from my soul to invite me back to a more honest, whole, version of myself. The characters that turn up to challenge me feel like they've been sent over by Central Casting to be just that kind of person who would make me react in that way and see what an over-reactive diva I can be! I believe the whole of external reality is set up to invite me back to presence. This is how I begin to trust what's going on and above all participate with what crosses my path.

all Creative and Intimacy weekends at www.jamiecatto.com - turn right at the crossroads

Suffering for Love

Sometimes in a household where a couple have much to accomplish; kids, jobs, money, the runnings of a home, it can be exhausting for them both, and there are inevitably some jobs that come up along the way that at the end of a tiring day, neither person wants to do.  The biggest trap the couple can fall into is to start competing for 'who's done more recently,' or 'who's most exhausted,'

If you and your partner begin competing in this way to justify being able to rest, then you are empowering and magnetising a reality where you believe you both must suffer to earn your rest. You start creating a reality where suffering becomes a currency - you start creating a belief that you both must to suffer for your love.

This inevitably creates an ugly, manipulative relationship where both people are inflating their sense of being a victim to get their needs met and competing for the ‘Martyr Crown.’ This will kill the attraction in the relationship stone dead.

To vulnerably ask for the support I need without fighting for it with the expectation of refusal or injustice, is Intimacy.

Try this:

Practice saying ‘No’ without following it with an excuse. There’s nothing sexier than someone who’s in touch with their ‘No’. We’re so used to fending off demands that we can forget our innate right to just say ‘No’ to something we don’t want to do. To make excuses while you say ‘No’ is a manipulative placating device to control the other person’s response to your refusal. It’s also a statement that you yourself doubt your own right to refuse and need to back it up with justifications. Justifications make you sound like you yourself lack the belief in your own justice. For a day (and for the rest of your life) take a long moment to check-in with yourself thoroughly before you agree to anything. Without an Intimate relationship with your own preferences and needs you will automatically roam and wander into situations and realities that don’t serve or excite you. Practice saying ‘No’ with full, centered presence whenever it is your truth. And don’t protect everyone so much from their responses to your truth. We are creating a honest, visible world and their messy responses are far more nourishing and authentic than this insipidly fake ‘politeness’ and ‘appropriateness’.

Please write what happens below and how you feel right now about being THAT honest.

Both Creative and Intimacy weekend workshops at http://www.jamiecatto.com/

Be Generous By Receiving

Some people feel weird about being given to. The moment someone volunteers ”I'll pay for this one” they say ”oh, no no…” and go into immediate resistance. In this situation I always say to the refuser: “safe to receive…safe to receive…”.

It's understandable that those of us who have been given love so transactionally in our lives are cautious to receive it when it’s offered because we have learned since childhood that the pay-back police are never far behind. But this auto response hugely limits Intimacy.

If you always say "no" when I try to give you something then you're never giving me the chance to feel generous and have the experience of giving to you. I want to have my gifts received. We all do. So be generous in your receiving, and generously allow others to feel generous in giving to you.

Intimacy is in receiving more and more of the other. Their gifts, their wounds, their truths, and generously allowing others to feel so received.

Please share with us below something you are now going to explore being open to receiving from someone close to you. I dare you to receive!

Both Creative and Intimacy weekend workshops at http://www.jamiecatto.com/

Intimacy Waits Patiently

When your lover or partner is complaining to you, you have two choices: you can do the usual defending dance, trying to show them why what they're saying is not true, why they're being unfair or wrong and proclaim your innocence. This is a big mistake. The moment you begin defending your position, you have surrendered your balls (or ovaries), your personal power, to them. You have joined their dance of negativity and sunk to their level of competing and defending.

A much more positive and powerful thing to do is 'not defend'. Just wait. Hold the space. Look at the person in the eyes and, while allowing them to be a complaining child, uphold your image of them as a responsible, powerful, wise being.

If you don't automatically join the defence dance, which can take some practice, then their complaint demons have nothing to fight against and with nothing feeding the conflict, the process can naturally transform into the expression of their real feelings.

It might drive this person mad at first that you refuse to join them down there in the darkness, but before long they will return to their own presence and to you for support with the real feelings that are arising, not the complaint that's trying to avoid those feelings.

Intimacy waits patiently for presence.

With a friend or lover, throughout the day, try and trick each other into defending. Try things like ‘why did you leave that in such a mess?’ and any criticism or accusation that begins ‘you always...’ or ‘you never....’ See if you can throw each other into auto-defense, denying or proclaiming innocence, for a full day. Bringing awareness to this knee-jerk self-defense blurting is advanced ninja stuff. To stalk your auto-reactions and bust them when they trick you into smallness is like tying a bell to the ankle of an insidious demon. You begin to hear it coming early. Please write below the knee jerk auto-react you are most easily suckered by - for me today SLQWNESS! Ugh I wanted to explode....you?

Both Creative and Intimacy weekend workshops at http://www.jamiecatto.com/

Like Me!

Whenever you hear yourself say anything about anyone, good or bad, practice the habit of saying "like me!" afterwards. So, "he's such a great guy, but not always completely honest………like me" or "she's so talented but a bit of an attention-seeker………like me”.  It's so liberating!

We can create a lot of false separation and alienation when we describe or pass judgments on others. We separate ourselves from them in our definitions. The truer and more Intimate way to live is to shout 'like me!' each time you judge something in another. We all have the potential to act in the darkest and lightest of ways and the only reason we judge is because we want to distance those ‘unacceptable’ qualities from ourselves.

This denial causes illness and separation, but joyously announcing one's fallibility at every opportunity dissolves this false separation and creates oxygen for everyone to be their perfectly flawed selves without feeling the need to live in hiding.

Once the separation is dissolved, Intimacy naturally arises…

For one full day, keep track of each and every judgment you placed in someone else (by writing it down) and every time add the “… like me!” phrase at the end. Then next day share with us 2 such judgments and their melted separation from your list.

All Jamie Catto weekend workshops at http://www.jamiecatto.com

The Harsh Truth About Dumping

It has become common practice in our relationships to blame and complain and dump on our partner when we don't feel good or our lover does something we don't like. But the truth is that whoever triggers us into a painful reaction is not responsible for the level of upset we go into. The 'trigger' is not the same as the 'cause'.

When something has happened to make us feel bad, instead of putting up with the discomfort of that pain, it is often easier to blame and dump on someone else, usually our partner, and make them feel the bad feeling instead of us. It's easier to be reactive and offload the painful feeling onto them than sit responsibly with the pain we feel.

This “dumping the pain onto someone else” is the same as pulling them into the path of a bullet that was meant for you. You’re using your partner, your friend, your lover as a human shield from the pain blast.

Especially for men, this is about the unsexiest and least gallant thing to do.

The vulnerable and nourishing action to take is to ask for support of this person so that they can responsibly and out of their own free choice give you the support and love you need.  It's ironic that the one person we want that support and love from is usually the first person we push away with our dumping.

Don't push away the one you want support from. Dare to ask for what you need today.

What are the ways that blamers and complainers hook you into defending yourself? Which ways of blaming you trigger you automatically into a defense dance, proclaiming your innocence? How we respond to being dumped-upon is a victim trap. It’s too easy to feel superior and shut down. It’s even easier to jump to your own defense and disempower yourself by debating the accuser point by point. The intelligent thing to do is use the encounter to really get a feeling-map on what accusations, criticisms and complaints habitually suck you into forgetting yourself? Which ones sting and still trigger a reactive charge in your body? Practice complaining and blaming with your friends or partners. If you know them well, give them full permission to really try and find those spots that somehow still ‘get’ you, and do them the service of really doing the same for them. Laugh together when you hit a sore one. This is a profound Intimacy to enter the cave of triggers together and clean some house while the dragon sleeps. Please comment below what the quickest thing to make you dump?

Intimacy weekend workshops at www.jamiecatto.com/about_intimacy