I’m half way through being 50. Well, maybe a bit more than half way but it is summer and I think the whole summer can count as half way if I want it to. And it’s not that I’m trying to resist or sugar coat the reality of linear time moseying along at sometimes frightening speed. I’m excited about being 50 – and for what comes after that.

Recently I have had the awareness of how much this year is a U journey for me. Maybe every year is, but it is particularly prominent this year.  There are three big chunks of Theory U – sensing, presencing and realizing. They do flow, but they are also iterative and there are many U journeys within overall bigger, longer, more expansive U journeys. And thank goodness for that.

I was excited to recognize I am in the presencing phase.  I felt invited to more fully relax into the summer and the continual unfolding of my journey, of me.  The transition to realizing energy will arrive as I go to California in late August, the first of many trainings with good people in varied environments.  Even as the energy shifts, sensing and presencing will continue to be a rhythm in each day, each experience, each movement.

So, what does this mean for me to feel the presencing energy of these moments this summer? And why the heck is it even important? In a post from a few months ago on turning 50, I wrote:  “This is a time for me to break old, limiting patterns, to step more fully into what is mine to do, to completely embrace my purposeful path and live into all that has been on my own edges for awhile.”  The ability to do this is activated,  amplified and accelerated by presencing.

Part of presencing is being in stillness.  The summer has been providing me with this opportunity.  The stillness that comes from not too many meetings or other obligations and lots of choice along the way about where to tune in time and attention.

Presencing is also about letting go and letting come.  Being in the stillness allows not just the witnessing of this but the embodiment of it.  I feel it fully in my body and in my spirit, in my being.  I sense the deep movement I am in and know with that sense of deep knowing that I am embracing my path, my unfolding and yes, my living into what has been on the edges.

It is evidenced by how fast I have been spinning into and out of turmoil in these last few months.  Faster than I ever have before.  I’m learning how to be in it without being overwhelmed by it or projecting it onto someone else – trying to make my experience someone else’s fault; enquiring into my experience to understand what is mine to own, what is projection from someone else, what I need to let go of and grab hold of, what is mine to learn.  I feel a bit of joy and anticipation in it and am not needing to rush into the next phase.  When I feel my anxiety rising because my book still needs editing and is sitting waiting for me and I don’t yet know how I will publish it or any other of a myriad of things I’m in the middle of, I breathe, let go of following those thoughts into the future of doom and trust the book’s energy will invigorate me in the right moment.

Work opportunities arrive, some land, some flow away.  Trusting the right things will show up.  Seeing where the invitations are, the openness, the readiness for me, what I have to offer and my journey.  Seeing where the energy isn’t.  Feeling how it is guiding my path.  No need to try to grab everything that might be within reach but being intentional about moving with the flow of what is mine to do, where I am needed, where I’m not.

I’m witnessing the evolution of my own spiritual growth, my knowing who I am.  I find myself leaning in, not jumping to conclusions, not lashing out at others but sharing my experience and my questions, and breathing through experiences that would have spun me out not even that long ago.  At the end of each of these periods of turbulence, I come out more grounded, more deeply connected to my core and my purpose and less attached to people, places and things – ready to let go of anything that hooks me and anything where the energetic openness is not available.

Trusting the guidance from the subtle realms and feeling more deeply connected – with a sense of, “of course this is how it is, how simple, easy and available.”  Opening more fully.  Yes, the journey to open heartedness and somehow even more than that.  Surrendering with joy and delight into the shifting shape of my world.