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Breaking Free-Peter's
Story
by
Peter Berry
www.berrytrip.us
On the evening of October 1, 2003, we were celebrating my promotion to
General Sales Manager for Toshiba Business Solutions for Asheville, NC and
Greenville, SC, and contemplating a huge renovation and addition to our 1916
Farmhouse in Asheville, NC. We should have been excited but instead we
felt a heavy weight. We began to
notice that our excitement was only on the surface, that underneath it all was a
dread of being burdened with more stuff, responsibility and debt.
We had achieved the “American Dream”; we had a big house, nice cars,
I had a great job with a huge and stable company, Licia had her own healing
practice and we had 2 beautiful, intelligent children.
What was wrong with us? Why
could we not enjoy our “success”?
The answer, when we could finally get to it, was simple – I was not fully
present to enjoy our success. I
was spending 12 hours a day, minimum, away from home while working so much that
when I did get home I was exhausted and emotionally wrung-out.
I only had 2 hours a day with my children and then 1 or 2 more hours with
Licia. Then on the weekends we had
all of the chores to do that could not be accomplished during the week and all
of the work necessary to maintain an old house set on 2 acres with
gardens. When I speak about this
now it seems so simple to see but it took a healing crisis for me to look
past the cultural programming I had bought into.
When Licia, my wife, and I met in 1986, it was literally love at first sight.
We committed to each other almost immediately, living together with a
joint bank account within 2 months! We
KNEW we were supposed to be together and we KNEW we had a special kind of
relationship that would lead us into amazing adventures.
When we began discussing our future together, we had all of the ideals
that young people in love have: we
would love like no one ever had, we would create art, we would grow spiritually
and share what we learned with others, that we would have kids and home school
them on a farm with an old house, that we would not step into the culture around
us that we were not comfortable with. Then
we began to listen to the definition of success that our society sells us
every day – be successful: conform and be a good cog in the machine.
And we bought it, slowly and almost completely.
We bought into the fear-based thinking of needing security and safety and
ignored what our Spirits were telling us. We
jumped into corporate and government jobs and let ourselves slip into the
consumer society and quickly created an addiction to stuff with the concurrent
debt that accumulated just as quickly.
Looking back now, Licia and I realize that the addiction to stuff and the
consumerism that we chose was an attempt to fill the void and cover up the pain
of separation from each other and Spirit. We
mistook our pain as the pain of not being successful enough and focused even
more on achieving “success” and found that it moved us even farther apart.
In 1996 we were living in Tucson, AZ; our sense was that the inner
discontent we felt was rooted in our work culture and the distance we had from
our families on the East coast. With
a 2 year-old son and another on the way we decided to move to Asheville and
start again. The only problem was
that we took us with us – we did not change our assumptions about what was
wrong.
When we settled in Asheville, 7 years ago, we crept back
into the arms of the consumer culture we really wanted to get away from.
We confused the pain we felt of separation from Spirit and each other with being out of
control with money. We thought that
by having rid ourselves of debt and by being careful with how we spent our money
that we could solve the over-consumption issues that we had developed in Tucson.
Of course, we hadn’t dealt with the core issues so we were doomed to
repeat them again. Within a year, I
was wrapped up in a job with great responsibilities and we had purchased an old
farmhouse on almost 2 acres of land in Asheville – parallel to our original
dream but locked into the arms of the consumer culture.
Of course, this choice included needing to make lots of money; so, after
some fits and starts, I ended up in sales for a local copier company.
Talk about locking in a commitment to the consumer culture – not only
was I selling products to businesses, I was selling myself the lie that this was
my long sought after calling! Licia
felt right away that something was wrong with the choice I had made and we began
to grow farther and farther apart. We
then had reached a crisis point from which things could not remain the same.
The crisis was precipitated by several events: we were planning a huge
renovation to our farmhouse (if the house was really right – the we would be
happy), my promotion and expanded responsibility (lots of money will make
everything alright – and we will be very happy), moving Licia’s healing
practice out of her downtown office (cut our expenses and we will not be so
stressed out – and then we will be happy), and last – Licia’s realization
that she was not fully living her dream and neither were we as a family.
The crisis was one evening when we sat across the couch from each other
after the kids were in bed and realized that if we did not change what we were
doing we could not stay together. This
was spiritual dynamite for me – throughout our relationship when things were
hard I would remember the night I met Licia when she reached out to shake my
hand and introduce herself. When
she looked me in the eyes, holding my hand and said “My name is Licia”, I
knew that we were meant to be together. The
thought of choosing “success” over her and our family was unthinkable. So, in partnership, we began to be open to allow Spirit to
guide us as to how to create the life we are meant to live.
Since our healing crisis in mid-October, we have committed to getting up
early every morning (4:30 am!), checking in with each other and working with
Spirit to lead us on our journey. We
worked consciously with the energies of the Harmonic Concordance (which we found
to be VERY powerful) and were guided to release our home, our community, and
Asheville. The next morning, we
were guided to sell our house and to draw the “right steward of the
property”. Ten days later, we
signed the contract with the new owner. It
never made it to the market.
After
deciding that we would leave Asheville by Christmas, we were guided one morning
in our early morning meeting to hold a workshop. What! A Workshop?
We have enough to do already! But we surrendered and held a half-day
Playshop on December 7 to share our process and the tools we have been using.
It was exciting, energizing and the feedback we have received has led us to
begin setting up PlayShops around the country. We feel that we have
begun the journey to doing the work together that we dreamed of when we met 17
years ago.
We've been published!
Our
story has been included in
Life
Lessons for Mastering the Law of Attraction: 7 Essential Ingredients for
Living a Prosperous Life!
by
Jack Canfield, Mark Victor Hansen, Jeanne Gabellini and Eva Gregory
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