THE DEATH OF THE MATADOR: AN INVITATION TO LIVE unHIDDEN

Many moons ago, my former therapist said to me that I was like a matador. I could use flashes of brilliance and "over-functioning" to distract and seduce someone's attention away from my banged-up heart, or the rising heat of my flustered not-knowingness, or a sudden feeling of aloneness so piercing that I felt like I was being swallowed alive.

As I have grown in capacity and potency, so has my matador. With an intentional and taut whip of the red scarf of sensual language or poetic metaphor, I can now bring hundreds of people to places of deeper illumination about themselves, the psyche, or the world around us. While I am grateful for this potency and transmission, it is also true that the deepest, most shadow-inflected and vulnerable parts of me stand slightly to the side. The stampeding and bloodied bull charges towards this thing I hold apart from me, red like fresh blood and raw rubies, brutal arrows like shark's teeth of my fear, shame, and ego pummeling its heaving, dying form.

My entire life, my matador choreography has done its job of distracting the seeing of everyone everywhere -- except for a teensy squad of intrepid individuals who seem to carry "matador kryptonite". These magical people are not good news for my ego structures, but they are GREAT NEWS for my soul.

I know the very minute I encounter a carrier of matador kryptonite. I know that they can see right through my protective bullshit. No matter my acrobatic matador moves and fancy fluttering of the sanguinary scarf, they refuse to be seduced by my display. And it *terrifies* me. I smile... slowly bat my eyelashes....and then fight them with my arrogance. I wrap my lip-glossed lips around the very fire-hose I use to blast my projections onto them, dehumanizing their lived experience because apparently, there are times that my belligerent ego needs a Hollywood-sized green-screen in order to see its own shadow. I invent very compelling stories about *their* woundedness, bringing the full weight of all my sophisticated Jungian psychotherapeutic blahblah to bear *inside of my own shadow.* (this makes me want to throw up a little....)

About a year ago, sitting at a table in the office of Robert Kandell, I "accidentally" met a world-class matador buster. My life has literally not been the same since. (This is also massively due to Rob's galactic Goddess of a wife, Morgan -- who weaves layers upon layers of mystical and marrow-deep brilliance and beauty I truly do not have the words for....)

Rob has a brilliant, instinctual, and stunningly sophisticated capacity to LISTEN -- not just to the words a person is saying, but the entire gestalt of how one is expressing him/herself. As he explains, "Everything is communication."

He attunes and tracks like a mothertrucker....all the while smiling and chatting in his charming, off-handed way. He is creating and playing a profound game moment by moment-- not in a way that is disrespectful, egoic or undermining....but in a way that exalts our humanness, our wholeness. Its extrapolated game theory going down in real life.....total Super Mario Brothers of the psyche, communication, and relationship.

*Brilliant beyond words.*

I am sharing all of this with you today because Robert is a straight-up communication *master*.....and...he has a thing about humility that I respect -- and also, respectfully challenge. Rob's entire life is devoted to learning to live unHIDDEN and to teach from his lived experience. (unHIDDEN is the name of his upcoming book, ps.)

He is teaching a one day course here in Los Angeles on Satrurday, September 22nd. Its going to be STUNNING. He is going to lay down and teach/reveal/create All The Things.

The sense of freedom I have from learning from Rob and being taught only a few of his wisdom seeds has been PROFOUND. I am more alive in my fullness and wholeness. I am learning many things about how I communicate and WHY I communicate. I am understanding more about why and when I manipulate and triage and over-function and seduce and do gnarly unconscious commerce / transactional things and energetically hire partners and lovers and friends and coaches and teachers and my mother for-crying-out-loud to either distract me from my deepest genius and/or catalyze deep evolutionary thrusts forward in my life.

I am learning to live unHIDDEN. It is a hot mess of a thing, and I have a bloodied, dying, battered matador on my hands....but today, I choose to sacrifice the fallen ghost of a thing I created to protect me for the TRUTH of my wholeness. This is what it means to live unHIDDEN.

If you are in Los Angeles, COME. If you are not in Los Angeles, COME.

Its Saturday September 22nd.

He has an entire team of rockstars and magical minions who will be there in support AND playing our own game within The Game.

OH!! Enter secret code name "gillian" and it will save you $50 from the ticket price! The early bird price of $197 expires tomorrow so if you register before tomorrow night, this is like a double bonus!

Come play, LA.

Lets live unHIDDEN, *TOGETHER*.

The original post on facebook can be found here