I was born being silly. My mother complained there was nary a family photo without me doing a silly pose. Humor is core to my personality; when I can't laugh at myself, I am done. Humor helped me navigate my family dynamics. Humor gave me a sense of identity and of being seen when I was searching for ways to belong in adolescence.
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"Laugh Story" Participants: Laura Lyons, Connie Clark, and Zelie Pfortzheimer,
Lyons, Colorado, 9/30-10/2/16,
photo by Sue Gelber
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Humor has been an essential spice in my dark nights of the soul, navigating my soul loss and external losses. Humor has taught me how I use and manage my personal power. Humor has helped me make sense and order of this sometimes painful and chaotic world. While being funny may not be a core part of your personality, everyone has an innate desire and ability to laugh, to find and use humor.
In the old days, we made slides out of photographs and put them in a carousel to project images on a screen when giving a presentation. Early in my career, during one of my first professional talks, as I walked toward the podium I dropped my entire tray of slides upside down, spewing them all over the floor. Sigh, no saving that show. I had to give my presentation without slides. The audience felt my anxiety and awkwardness. I felt their empathy and perhaps their sigh of relief - "Glad it's not me up there."
As the Fool would have it, the day before I had attended a self-esteem workshop. Remembering that, I laughed and explained to the audience that I was getting to practice self-esteem right here and now! They laughed. My choice and response for levity, standing in the mess of my slides, allowed them to laugh with me. A choice to not resist reality, to go with what was rather than what I'd planned or expected. Levity requires letting go of control to gain control. The presentation went fine.
There is an important place for levity in the healing arts, which can get stagnantly serious. Sometimes, seriousness without levity makes us serially ill and we go down rabbit holes, take dead-end exits and get in our own way while wanting to progress. We get separated from our self, truth, Mother Earth, and Source - in every sector of life. Dark needs light, low needs high, struggle needs ease and vice versa. Humor helps us navigate the ends of any duality. Here we have a chance to create a radical new middle, a
BOTH/AND world versus an EITHER/OR. My levity choice claimed, "I accept that my slides are on the floor, AND I am okay and can still do this."
You cannot expand while contracting, trust while controlling, create while fearing, empower while disempowering. Levity creates that space, that breath or that second that allows room for a different choice or vibration. Resistance of any kind serves the status quo - which we need sometimes, to get a grip on where we are and what is. And then we need to move; levity opens the door for movement.
Along the way, parts of you learned perhaps that having fun was wrong, incompatible with being productive. Maybe you were the brunt of other's comments when they use humor to hurt or to shame; like love, power, or generosity, humor can be used to hurt.
By contrast, levity and laughter that heals come from the same place as true love or kindness. This is you seeing you, loving you, being in right inner alignment, integrating intuition, heart and mind. Becoming Fooly realized is one expression of the amazing guru you already are. It includes dancing with the Fool, and more - humor and levity from essence is divine. It heals, connects, dissolves, awakens, provides perspective, illuminates truth, and transforms.
At the recent SoulCollage� Facilitator Conference in Lyons, Colorado, 54 Facilitators, (or "Fassiltaters," to quote Seena Frost's Committee member Ms. Ann Thrope!) joined me in reclaiming our Laugh Story, our natural ability to move up the emotional vibration scale. We celebrated this great time to be alive. In the 1960s, the collective started cracking open the structures in our culture that needed to be healed. Now, we continue to shift paradigms and systems to align more closely with the ideals of the Aquarian Age. These include unity, community, and defining who we each are within the context of the whole tribe - and with the intention of contributing to its success as much as to our own.
Regardless of who had won our election, there would still be pockets of Americans waking up to the existence of the shadow, to disturbing elements in our culture. Many are angry, frightened, dismayed, frustrated, and confused. We are all waking up to some no-longer-wanted aspect of our life, and waking up can be painful. My "Wake Up Wally" card represents the part of me that does not want to see painful realities. My "Suddenly I See" card depicts another side of me.
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Wake Up Wally, by Barb Horn
I Am the Princess who goes to great lengths to avoid having my sleep disturbed by the Pea. I prefer to stay where I am.
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Suddenly I See, by Barb Horn
I Am One Who suddenly sees. Holy cow! That is shocking, painful, exciting, surprising - but there is no going back to sleep.
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These disruptions are manifesting around you and inside you. And yes, it all feels and looks chaotic and messy - like my tray of slides on the floor. You are here on purpose, to participate in this great awakening. You are being asked, "What is possible now?" It is a BOTH/AND time, where we are being called to look at both sides and to create a radical new middle, our collective unity. That calling requires us to be comfortable with the uncomfortable.
Levity is essential for our forward progress. We cannot change people, but we can change our response. Claiming our power, voice and choice in response is where change happens. You can choose to wake up laughing everyday, as well as in any moment. What is your response?
Barb Horn has always been intrigued by self-discovery and transformation. Her high school counselor nixed that career; she pursued saving rivers, but never left the path of becoming
Fooly realized. A SoulCollage� Facilitator since 2008, Barb is also a certified alchemical hypnotherapist, cosmic emcee and toe reader, and founder of
AllEmbracingChange.com, "Find Your Laugh Story" via
her online class.