What does burning your boat mean to you? by Heidi Hornlein

What does burning your boat mean? -- An example:

When your boat lands at an unknown shore and you burn that boat you’re making sure that you cannot choose  to sail back. You can only go forward and explore this new land.

In my life I have burnt a few boats, some unwillingly, but some consciously.  Today I will tell you about a time when I consciously took on that risk, knowing that I would have to undergo an uncomfortable period  – while also knowing, deep in my heart, that I would be able to find my way through it, that this difficult time would be transitory and not my final destiny.

In my house in Umbria, I lived with an Italian man. We were not married because he, as a “good Italian” had not divorced his first wife.  So, though separated for several years, he remained unwilling to ever divorce – which, in fact, he never did. He provided the money so that I could enjoy exploring farming and immersing myself deeply in nature. A very tiring but exciting time where I learned a lot about plants and animals – and along with that also a good deal about humans - and I began to understand the laws of nature in an intuitive way. But I didn’t earn money, except for the few eggs and chickens I sold, and I became ever more aware that I needed to take care of myself, to make sure that the money I had invested in our house wouldn’t be lost and that I would have a pension of my own – despite his reassurance that in case of his death I would get his pension. I doubted it – and in fact did die a short time ago and his pension does go to his first and only wife and not to his last mate.

I hadn’t been able then to talk with him clearly about my fears, about my need for safety. So what did I do? I fell in love with a younger man which sent my companion into a Mediterranean wrath, leaving me and trying to kick me out of the house. I didn’t leave as had been bought partly with my own money. Finally it was he who left me with a house to stay in, a freezer full of food, the vegetable garden in bloom, and a car - but with no money at all to buy gasoline!

What to do now? My mother lent me some money and I brainstormed what I could do to get some more: painting flats, translating, or – voice lessons!

Bam. That was it. In a few years I went from 1 initial student to about 30, from working with one choir to five choirs. I really got on well and I understood how brilliant I was as a voice teacher – which I never would have discovered if I had stayed with that man and lived off his money.

I burnt my boat again when I stopped leading the choir at the German Church in Rome. I feared that few students would find their way to work with me and that I would not be able to survive. All the old fears popped up again.

In fact, it did happen as I had feared, but it didn’t bother me much. I trusted deeply in myself that things would work out well. And I also realized that working with people in the way I had for the last twenty years was no longer igniting me as it once had when I had been driven by passion to find out how VOICE works.

That decision to stop teaching set me free for other things, enabling me to pursue training in counseling and coaching, into my deep interest in healing relationships - and in healing my own old patterns and conditionings.

In time, I got a small inheritance after my mothers death which allowed me not to be concerned if I earned any additional income. So not only did I survive but I really began to thrive – and I still do! I don’t yet have a reasonable income, but the fears about that are gone and I trust deeply that I am on the right path, that I will earn a living now doing the things I really feel called to bring into the world: love, relationships, our authentic voice in the world, our evolving growth into higher levels of consciousness.

What Sunny Boy Is Teaching Me by Mark Davenport

Early on a chilly morning this November as Heidi and I were crawling into the car, I heard a tiny mew coming from across the street where an old feed mill was located.  I could not resist that plaintive little voice and we discovered a two month old kitten among some trash surrounding one of the towers.  It seemed clear that he (as we learned a bit later) was lost or abandoned so almost without discussion we put him in the car with us and took him home.

He showed his colors even on the ride home, becoming calm and curious within a few minutes. Once at home, rested and fed, he began to meet our other cats.  He was fearless!  He did not expect any problems and so met very few!  His “in your face” curiosity about the world and all its inhabitants won our hearts and our admiration at once. We were witnessing the irrepressible urge of life to grow and expand and fill all voids with energetic and chaotic activity.  

We may have been concerned about how the resident cats would react to him (and each did so differently according to their own personalities) but he was not.  The whole world and all it contained were his to chew, climb, crawl into or up, hang onto with needle claws, or try to eat. Many parts of the world and many of its creatures resisted his relentless investigations, but his persistence was irresistible.

We soon understood that his energy was, if I may say so, impersonal.  That is, not a function of that animal we soon named Sunny Boy, but a natural force, a way of being in this world, a kind of intelligence that would sooner or later grant him his glorious reign in catdom...or destroy him if he blundered into the wrong circumstances, or perhaps worse, gradually rebuff him so that his boundless curiosity might become, if you will, bound, domesticated, tamed, shackled, replaced by a dispirited drudgery.

It’s now nearly two months later and he has easily doubled his size.  We have to look twice to be sure he’s not one of the ten year old toms with the same coloring.  His spirit remains intact, though tempered somewhat already by intelligence and experience.  By that I mean that he does understand “NO!” but that does not deter him from immediately searching for a way around the prohibition so as to do what he had intended to do anyway.  Or he will quickly be distracted by some other rolling, bouncy, juicy, reactive, or whatever it may be that he finds in his way next.

He has no sense of guilt, though he seems capable of some kind of embarrassment if he miscalculates a pounce or is thwarted in some way.  We have some older cats who need special diets which he finds very tasty, so keeping him out of the room where they eat is a continual task.  Today I had to toss him out while entering the room and again while exiting.  His reaction to this was to vigorously attack a loose insole in one of Heidi’s shoes.  Had he first encountered another cat, or me, we would have caught his anger and frustration.  But the energy from his disappointment was soon expended upon the shoe insole.

Both Heidi and I, separately, have raised many cats in our lives.  Sunny Boy is our first joint “pet parenting” project.  In fact we are learning a lot from this “impersonal “ force running around our house and yard (in ever expanding circles!).  We see something that we have to some unfortunate degree lost as we grew up: a way of encountering life with gusto, with endless curiosity and pluck. Sunny Boy doesn't ask permission.  He just acts and watches the universe’s reaction, makes necessary adjustments and continues on his way.  True, he is amoral in the usual meaning of that word.  But he is deeply pre-moral, in a sense, in his lack of judgement, blame, or even criticism of his world.  He accepts and learns and just goes on...and on, undaunted-

His example is infectious.  He is showing me how limited my world of fears and worries is, how circumscribed my own boundaries of impressibility are, how I stop long before the world even thinks of stopping me.  I need to allow that same “impersonal” push forward to be expressed through me, accepting whatever I bump up against “out there” to react however it will but without letting that reaction deter me from what I need to make manifest while still alive and kicking.

I’m not advocating Sunny Boy’s “pre-morality” for myself, of course. The discrimination that a sense of right and wrong, understood differently as I have matured, is part of what my native energy has encountered and navigated with varying degrees of aplomb over the decades.  My life is more complicated than Sunny Boy’s can ever be, but may it never be less than it might be through unnecessary limitations in curiosity and courage.  

Thank you, Sunny Boy. Grow and prosper...and remind me how.