Pilgramage and Traveling Your Life Path with Jen Cohen

Dear Magic Party women!
Thank you to those of you who came to the last Magic Parties’ Women’s Circle in September. If you weren’t with us, I am sharing thoughts with any of you on a journey, on a personal pilgrimage, or at a crossroad. If you were with us, we would like to hear what is opening up for you, what questions got evoked, what answers flooded into you from sitting with these question, how you are feeling on your path today, which lesson you think you are learning most directly now? If you were not with us, read the lessons and questions below in this blog as they will help move you forward along your life path.

Some thoughts on pilgrimage:
Some of us go willingly at first at least. Some of us go kicking and screaming. Either way the pilgrim is compelled by the forces of blank ( you fill in the blank that fits for you) to step onto the path and walk. What you find along the way will make you forget why you wanted to walk at all, it will make you wonder if it mattered at all, will force you to go beyond your current ideas of who you are and how you are. And that dear ones, is the point I dare say.

I thought I’d also post the questions I asked at The Magic Parties Women’s Circle. Some of you may want them for future reference.

The lessons and The questions:
1. Entering the unknown: What do you know for sure? Are you willing to trust that completely?
2. Letting go: What would you have to let go of to take this pilgrimage? Are you willing to let that go?
3. Dealing with fear and scarcity: What would you have to confront on this pilgrimage? What would you need to have with you to be able to confront that?
4. Letting desire be bigger than fear: What is already dying or dead but you are willing (using your will) yourself to do anyway? What is calling to you from your future that you are avoiding hearing?

We’d very much love to hear from you!

Blessings on your way to mecca........Jen

Poems from the Women’s Circle

For A New Beginning
John O'Donohue's To Bless the Space Between Us, A Book of Blessings

“In out-of-the-way places of the heart,
Where your thoughts never think to wander,
This beginning has been quietly forming,
Waiting until you were ready to emerge.

For a long time it has watched your desire,
Feeling the emptiness growing inside you,
Noticing how you willed yourself on,
Still unable to leave what you had outgrown.

It watched you play with the seduction of safety
And the gray promises that sameness whispered,
Heard the waves of turmoil rise and relent,
Wondered would you always live like this.
Then the delight, when your courage kindled,
And out you stepped onto new ground,
Your eyes young again with energy and dream,
A path of plenitude opening before you.

Though your destination is not yet clear
You can trust the promise of this opening;
Unfurl yourself into the grace of beginning
That is at one with your life's desire.

Awaken your spirit to adventure;
Hold nothing back, learn to find ease in risk;
Soon you will be home in a new rhythm,
For your soul senses the world that awaits you”

Ready to Lead?: a story for leaders and their mentors pp.63-64– Alan Price

“We all reach the point where we dream of packing our bags, walking to the shore, and setting sail for new worlds. But few of us actually set sail.

Many get lost in the dream and never take action. Many pack, unpack, and repack their bags, but never walk to the shore. Many walk to the shore, enjoy the breeze and the view, only to walk back home. Many step onto the boat, load it with provisions, check the maps and instruments, but never pull up the anchor. Many set sail but only go out far enough to look back at the land from a new view.

A few sail off and break free of the land. They go with the deeper currents, follow the stars that call them, and reach new worlds. Let us set sail for new worlds. Let us reach them together. “


Let us know what’s up with you. Use this space to blog and comment to our community.

Work Life Balance

In our "Turning our Dreams into Action" teleclass, we've been working our dreams for the last 10 weeks. Our dreams are varied as we are individuals on our own journeys. Some participants dream of a deeper relationship with their husband, some dream of being a well known author, some dream of creating health and well being in their lives, some dream of the contribution they have yet to make in the world, and I've been dreaming of my own television show.

One participant is dreaming on creating work life balance. We each have a partner that we work with as our "buddy" for the 12 weeks to be accountable to, to make us feel better when the going gets tough, to witness our challenges and accomplishments. Here is what one buddy said to her partner that I thought was worth sharing.

Work/life balance doesn’t mean you get up every day and 50% of your day is work and 50% of your day is life (non-work). Work/life balance is about ebb and flow. Some days you can invest more of yourself into non-work and some days you’ll need to invest more in work. Look at work/life in chunks of time vs on a daily basis. The challenge is once you get through a heavy work period, think about swinging the pendulum more towards “life” for a little while to even things out. Ebb and flow.

I think this perspective on ebb and flow makes many of us not feel like a failure daily when it comes to my work/life balance challenges.