The Warriors Voice

There is a Buddhist saying, “If you want to know your past, look into your present conditions. If you want to know your future, look into your present actions.” The clue here is that our present holds the answers which we need in order to navigate from where we are to where we want to go.
Join Jevon for an evening of discussion and fun as we explore tools and techniques which can be used to determine your current position, allowing you to map out the course that will lead you to your desired destinations

Date: April 29th, 2009
Time: 7:00 pm (Doors open @ 6:45)
Location: Britannia Room, 125, 6940 – Fisher Road SE (Evoco Inc)
Phone: (403) 861-2574
Email: jevon@thewarriorsvoice.com

So it time to talk about what’s been going on.

As you may, or may not know, I’m engaged in developing my Inner Facilitator. Last August I started a Personal Development Facilitation course which is about 2 years long. This course consists of 4 one week intensives plus 4 practicums. I did my first intensive last August/September and my first practicum wrapped up this past February. I have recently completed my second week intensive of my Facilitator training program and I have begun my second practicum. So the question I’m sure that is burning in all of your mind’s is, “Jevon, what has this done for you?”

When I was looking into this training I needed to get support from the company I work for to be able to do this. The tuition is $10,000.00 alone, plus the time off of work to go away for a week intensive without it being ‘my vacation’ time. So I put together a proposal and pitched it as ‘leadership training’. This was not a lie. I knew that focusing on this training would strengthen my leadership skills and foster my abilities to work with others to achieve common goals. One of the first results of this training has been me engaging at work in a far more active, rather than passive, capacity. I could no longer just do my job, but rather had the desire to co-create my reality in the office and take on responsibilities. This resulted in a promotion with raise for me.

Now what makes a promotion and raise so important. First off, it’s not just about the money. The pay increase is nice and I am grateful for it, but money alone will only make someone work just hard enough to not get fired. So again I hear you ask, “Jevon, what is it about a promotion and raise that is so important?” My answer, the promotion and raise are symbolic. These are easy for me, and us as humans, to see. I see that I have more responsibility and more authority, I see my paycheck is larger. It is very easy to see these items. I have been given more authority and responsibility because I am more of a leader and I choose to lead. However a raise and promotion are just the tip of the ice berg here. My marriage has be come far more rewarding and far deeper than I had ever believed possible. My health is improving, partly because I see that I need to take better care of my self, and with the shifting of some believes now engage fully in that area. Honestly, I would be hard pressed to think of an area in my life where I have not seen growth and change over the past 6 months.

I recognize that all the areas of my life where I see change are a result of the “Law of Attraction”. There are many, many books and movies on the subject of the Law of Attraction, but the simplest and easiest to understand that I have found is called Law of Attraction: The Science of Attracting More of What You Want and Less of What You Don’t by Michael J. Losier. You may have already heard of this, but simply put the Law of Attraction states that the universe is interested in what you are interested in. What ever you put your energy into you will get more of. So if I focus my energy on my lack of money, or on how much debt I have i will attract more debt and more lack of money, but If I focus on what I do have, how abundant I am then I will attract more of that.

So to tie this together. Since I’m focusing on leadership training, developing the skills and tools to assist me in being a facilitator, and I’m consciously working toward being a co-creator in my world that is what I’m attracting more of and the Promotion, the raise, my marriage, and my improved health are ‘visible evidence’ of me moving in that direction. Visible evidence is what keeps us going on a path that can be challenging.

“So what’s next for you Jevon?“ comes wafting on the breeze like the scent of a pie baking?

Well right now I’m in my second practicum and I need to complete a minimum of twenty more one-on-one sessions. I’m looking for individuals who would like to come and talk with me for one or more 1 hour sessions. If you, or any one you know, would be interested in changing up your life, I would be honored if you joined me on my journey.

Also for this practicum I will be giving and introductory session. I will be posting details as I get this set up and organized. If you would be interested in receiving e-mail updates directly on this please let me know.

Walk in peace,

Jevon, In-service

“Life moves pretty fast. If you don’t stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it. ” – Ferris Bueller

After reading 2 friends blogs and their ‘annual reviews’ I was encouraged, nay Inspired, to write my own annual review. I believe that this practice will help me to keep some perspective on my life and to realize, just how much has life has happened to me and how much I have happened to my life.

It seems like just yesterday, but for the latter part of 2007 and January of 2008 I spent a great deal of time putting together a ‘Mens Workshop’. This was created as a first step around mens work in the personal development arena in Calgary as I was one of a few men who I knew was doing it and I felt that I needed some mens time. However before this came to fruition I was informed that I was not qualified to call it a workshop. Ok, well we went ahead and had the mens seminar in January with 3 of us there and some of the most valuable learning I had received.

February brought me time to enjoy one of my christmas presents a glorious massage and a new kitchen sink with a FRED. FRED is the nick name for my sink disposal unit and stands for F*#cking Ridiculous Electronic Device. This was the first kitchen sink I installed and the first new circuit I have run in my house. Gotta say that I love new experiences.

In April I teamed on another MKFacilitations workshop, The Dance of Partnership, and began really pushing getting Facilitator training started. Facilitator training came from 2 places. 1) I wanted to be able to create workshops and not just seminars and 2) I had requested support from the company I work for in getting leadership training. I had looked at several possibilities from various sources and also had been ‘pushing’ MKFacilitations to create a program.

By May I began writing the proposal for my Leadership training and sent it in to my boss for approval and began working with MKFacilitations and Alan (who is also taking the training with me) to find dates and times to do this work.

In June I was talking to my brother who indicated that he was going to carry out dad’s last wishes (as far as he could) which was to sprinkle my dad’s ashes on Mt. McPhail where my father liked to go hunting. I asked to come along to be apart of Dad’s last wish and as a result decided that I also wanted to go hunting. My father only took me hunting once as his health could not longer endure the strain by the time I was of age to go hunting and so I haven’t been out since I was about 16. I had a lot of catchup to do. I needed to get my PAL (Possession and Acquisition License) so that I could own a rifle. I studied and took the exam in June passing with a 98%.

Also in June I teamed ‘Hourglass of Change workshop’ in radium and attended with Tarra. This was an awesome experience as I had not been in workshop with Tarra since 2006. We spent the weekend together and I feel found a deeper level of connection.

It was a bit of everything in July. From a raucous Stampede Party, to a short film festival; from a gig in the park in the rain to a lesbian wedding; from Brennan’s infamous birthday party to Mystery Science Theatre 3000 evening.

August was a big month for me. I attended my first MKFacilitations Retreat in Golden BC called “Pathway to Purpose”. This week long intensive was amazing. I spent the week discovering my self at a much deeper level going places that I generally refuse to go in my psyche. I spent the week living in a Tee-Pee (no I didn’t have to I chose to stay in the Tee-Pee, and no it’s not as ‘roughing it’ as it sounds ) I met some new friends, some old friends and some parts of my self that I didn’t know were friends.

I can’t talk much about the retreat as it is something you have to experience. Even if I told you about it and what happened for me, it would not be the same for you. I recommend looking at MKFacilitations if you are even slightly interested. They are not offering a retreat this summer, but they are offering it next winter. (http://www.mkfacilitations.com/events.htm#Retreat)

The August retreat was one of the largest kickoff’s to several events in my life. I quit smoking 12 days after the retreat ended, made many renewed commitments to Tarra which spawned a great 4 month finish to the year. The retreat also was the ‘symbolic’ start of my Facilitator training.

Facilitator training is a 2 year commitment of study and practice ending in approximately August 2010. During this time I will work with private clients in my practicum to hone my skills and style as a facilitator, create and facilitate workshops and part of a retreat. It is an area that I’m finding very challenging and truly exciting.

September saw a great deal of physical change around my house and life style. Facilitator training provided an immediate opportunity to create a healing space in my house. This means Tarra and I have dedicated one room in our house to be a sanctuary and peaceful where we can go and meditate, read books quietly, it is wear I meet with my clients, and were we have massage sessions (Tarra is very adept at giving massage, and I’m learning).

October came and along with it Thanksgiving (in Canada) and along with it things to be thankful about. Thanksgiving 2007 brought me a new friend, Brennan, with whom I’ve had some amazingly fun times this year. Not to be out done Thanksgiving this year brought me a new friend Aaron. This man is kinda like my evil twin…actually I’m the evil one cuz I have the beard (reference to Mirror, Mirror – Star Trek). Aaron and I have already begun plotting, scheming, and laughing Maniacally. October also means Halloween when I attended on of the fun-est halloween party’s ever. Who knew that Mystery Science Theater would have prepared me so well.

November brought with it a hunting trip with my brother and his eldest son. The 3 of us spent a day up in the mountains stalking a deer or two and scattering my dads ashes. This was one of the most magical experiences I’ve had yet. To see the moon set and the sunrise while sitting on the edge of a mountain, surrounded by more mountains. I took pictures, but again it’s something that needs to be experienced.

The month of December was full of hustle and bustle. Along with working on my practicum in the evenings and weekends, my work moved offices (no small feat), and there was christmas in there too. I had a great Christmas Day and then on the 28th my whole family, 16 of us, all went to Radium for a few days to have a family fun time, which it was. Then back for New Years Eve with some very good friends and some impromptu Karaoke. A great way to wind up a fabulous year.

Overall for the year It was a very steady and continuous journey into the unknown for me, and one which I’ve enjoyed. I thought I’d summarize and make lists of some things from this year.

Books Read or Reading
- Laws of Spirit Dan Millman
- Iron John: Robert Bly
- Fire in the Belly: Sam Keen
- Law of attraction: Michael J. Losier

Movies Watched
- Into the Wild
- The Dark Knight
- Speed Racer
- Quantum of Solace
(for those that know me, they know I’ve seen way more movies — on average I watch about 3 movies a week)

Podcasts
- The New Man
- The Mind of Men

Have a great 2009….I know I plan too.

Walk in Peace,
Warrior Jevon:In-Service

Hows it goin?
That is a question that I seem to hear a great deal. It seems to be the greeting that we are now using. Responses I usually hear from most people are, “Not Bad”, “Ok”, “Not Great”, “Shitty” and in case you are wondering what my response is I say “Grand!” Lately I’ve been thinking about the answer to that question within the framework of my life and wondering what the answer might be/could be for me, besides an auto-response of “Grand!”

Firstly about my auto-response. About a year ago I saw “The Secret” on Oprah (yes I occasionally watch Oprah) and one of the things I heard was that the universe doesn’t hear the words ‘Don’t’ or ‘Not’. When people ask you how you are doing and you say “Not Bad” what the universe hears is “Bad” and it says to itself you want more ‘bad’ here it comes. If you don’t believe me that this is how the universe works then I have an example for you; whatever you do Do Not think about a red car. Now how many of you just saw a red car in your mind. Even though I told you not to think about it I’ll bet it was the first thought in your head.

A response of Not Bad will get you more of the same. What the people on the Oprah show suggested was switching up your language to saying, “Good.” instead of, “Not Bad.” and seeing how that affected your life. So I switched my ‘auto-response’ to “Grand!”. Now sometimes I genuinely mean it. My life is truly grand and I believe it fully. Sometimes I hear my self say grand and not really mean it. When I catch my self doing this I stop and think about what I have said and I hear my internal dialogue turn to, “Yes! I am grand. I have so much going for me.” This auto-response has made a great deal of difference in my life.

What’s Goin on?
Another kind of greeting that I have been noticing lately is “What’s Goin on?” or “What’s happening?” and if you are really retro and into old beer adds then the phrase “WHAAA-SSSUPPPP” can also be used. I hear this phrase when the person asking it has more than 3 seconds that they’d like to commit to talking with me. Answers to this question can include “Not Much”, “Keepin it Real” or “Same Shit Different Pile.” For this one I don’t have an auto-response, but I have been listening to what I say when I answer this question and I have begun wondering “What is the truth underneath my response?” When I say I’m grand I can usually list off very quickly a handful of reasons why I believe I’m Grand, but what is really going on for me right now?

At a surface level this can be answered fairly obviously by listing events in my recent history and apply my judgements on those events to determine what’s going on.

That formula again: “Hows It Goin?” = ((E+J) X S)L)/L

        
Ultimately the “Surface” answer to “Hows it going” and “Whats going on” is based on how much living in the moment I am doing ( how aware I am of the events that I experience) and how much focus I give to the ‘positive’ or the ‘negative’ events. If I am focused on the positive events and someone asks, “What’s goin on?” my response will be, “So many people are smiling at me to day and I just got a raise and saw an awesome sun rise”. If I focus on the negative I will more likely respond, “ I just got cut off in traffic and almost died”

Now I’m wondering, “If all of that is at the surface, then How am I and/or What’s goin on for me at a deeper level?”

Well, here I am, still in the ‘throws’ of switching The Warriorsvoice hosting from a DIY situation (or a do it myself situation) over to a hosted solution. I’m still working through some of the ‘stickier’ points of configuring PodPress, to get my podcasts back on-line, amoung other configurations and finding it very frustrating. While the hosting solution I have chosen seems to have many good points they don’t have very much (if any) help or guidance to offer.

In this struggle I got thinking about how much I want guidance here, how much I want someone or something to show me what I need to do to accomplish my desired task and that I could not complete my task without external guidance. I began to see how much I believe that I don’t know what I’m doing and that someone else will have to do it because I’m not capable. I then noticed that I’m always willing to go to the place of “I’m very smart. An intelligent human who can do so much, but I don’t know everything about everything and therefore need to research, learn, study a great deal to accomplish what I want, and since I need things done now someone else will have to show me”.

This belief has many of advantages for me some of which are,

• I can’t take the initiative because I don’t know what I’m doing and therefore won’t get it perfect.
• If i try and fail that will mean I’m not an intelligent human being, but rather a stubborn, pig headed man

This belief, “That If I don’t know everything about something then I should not attempt anything to do with something, at least not without supervision” is holding me back though. By not having the courage to attempt and learn from the attempt I don’t grow in the arena of something and remain stuck in the arena’s that I do know.

It is this belief that has helped keep me from experiencing joy, fund and excitement of Big Game hunting. As a teenager I wanted so desperately to go hunting. Due to my fathers health we were only able to accomplish this once when I was 16. I never hunted after that until this week. I wouldn’t go out, because I had no one to show me what to do, no one to instruct me, no one to guide me. I waited 21 years to ask my brother to take me out. My brother hunted with my father before I did and continued hunting as an adult. I asked him if he would take me out hunting so that we could take care of my fathers final wishes together.

So this past week I engaged in a big game hunt. I have been working towards this for months, getting my Firearms license, getting all of the gear i needed to go hunting, getting my game tags. I went with my brother and his eldest son. I had one of the best day’s I have ever experienced. No, I did not get anything, but I learned how to hunt and was learning in the company of men. I would like to do that again with them next year.

But I was asked, “Would I ever go out hunting alone?” I said No, because I don’t know what to do if I do get an animal. I don’t know how to prepare it, I don’t have the facility to bone it out so that I can butcher it, I don’t have the resources. I was relying on my brother for all of this knowledge. I feel that I could only go out with other hunters so I didn’t have to handle it on my own.

I wonder what would happen if I surrendered the control around getting the outcome perfect with every attempt, I surrendered the belief that, “If I do not get it perfect I am a failure” and allowed my self to feel the experience and accepted the learnings from the experiences.

In the arena of hunting then I could do some basic research and learning about how to ‘deal with an animal’ and not have to rely on others to do that for me and then I could go out my self if I wanted to. Hmmmm…..

Well thats where I’m at right now.

As far as the shift goes I’ve mostly moved over now, and have the links for those who which to subscribe for free and be updated on the fly as I post and Muse here.

to subscribe to the podcasts (and yes I will be casting agin) use http://thewarriorsvoice.com/blog/?feed=podcast
to subscribe to the blog articles use http://feeds.feedburner.com/TheWarriorsVoice

Walk in Peace,
Jevon

Well we have successfully changed servers.

We may experience a little upheaval as we adjust to our new home, but we are on the new server and will handle the issues as they arise.

Welcome to the new space.

Jevon

We are moving the warriors voice to another webhost to better enable us to provide content and information.  Over the next week or so the site might be unavailable from time to time.

We appologize for any inconvenience.

Jevon

I have added a new security feature for myself on this blog to prevent spammers from attacking my site.

However this has not gone quite as planned. If you are wanting to post a comment to any of the articles you have 2 options:

Where you are asked to enter the word you will not see a picture, but there is an audio file available for you to listen to and it will give you the word
Or
You can email me directly and then I can post for you.

Sorry for the inconvenience and I hope to have the corrected in the near future.

Walk in Peace,

Warrior Jevon

After much time spent on visioning and ‘feeling’ what it is like to have the life that I have visioned I have come to the following vision statement for my self:
“To offer Service”.

I feel that this is what my vision is and that any action I take should lead me toward that vision. While service can also be an action and therefore any action I take should be of service I know that if I live my life in service then I will have the fullest Life I can. Also when I am in service then the person, persons, group, community who require my service will present them selves and that by being of service to my self, people around me, community I will serve all.

This feels like a very lofty goal as at this point I am able to serve/be in service for only a few minutes/hours at a time. However I know what this feels like and know that I can live this with practice.

However I can’t do this alone. While I am not a ‘religious’ man I am a spiritual man and have know for sometime that I needed to reconnect with that piece of my life to have completeness. Part of what created this vision came from Creator or God or The Universe. (Use the term here that you have for that which is greater than ourselves). With the help and guidance of the Universe I believe I can accomplish anything.

I have seen all of the potential results of living my life on purpose and know that this is my calling and can now see ways of being there.

Coming soon: Posts around mission statements.

Walk in Peace,

Samurai Jevon

I have added a new calendar which will show my ‘Facilitations’ Schedule along with other events that may be of interest.

You can view this calendar by going to http://thewarriorsvoice.com/phpicalendar/

Please click around and experiment with the best layout and color scheme for you. If you click on an ‘even’t then any details I have on that event will be displayed along with any links.

Let me know if an event is coming up that you would like to share.

Samurai Jevon