Estimated reading time: 14 minutes

An ode to small towns, to the places we once belonged — to homecoming, rediscovery and living in communion with land

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I would be remiss in telling you how two suburbanites found home at our farm, ‘Oakhaven’, without first sharing our motives. There were a few. We had been watching the steady decline of the small towns we love for some years now, especially since the late 90’s.

One of my favorite childhood memories is riding with my parents across the back roads of Georgia to visit my grandparents for Christmas. The dark country roads would suddenly brighten with strings of twinkly lights against the cold night sky. Fuzzy tinsel outlines of candy canes, Santas, and gold and silver bells hung from lampposts along the street. I know it sounds idealistic, but that’s how the world is supposed to be when you’re a child – full of magic, wonder and stardust.

But now, during the day, the sun outshines the strung lights and the truth is laid bare: small towns are drying up.

Historic main street buildings sit vacant, slowly crumbling, waiting on investors. They are like their elderly, forgotten in local nursing homes, quietly living out their last days staring out the window at the parking lot.

Tides turned on small town America and somebody, somewhere, somehow decided that they were no longer fashionable — and left them to dwindle and starve. Swarms of people and industry packed their bags and moved away. It’s a harsh reality, but there is still time to turn things around.

There are a growing number of us who have seen through the trappings of easy city living. Our memories from childhood are calling us back to these small towns we once escaped from. We are rediscovering our true values, understanding that a successful life is one of simplicity, humility, and close relationships — of belonging. We recognize small towns as the jewels that they are, for it’s in community that human beings thrive, not isolated and anonymous in a city.

It was my grandmother who called me to come back here. She’s been gone for 17 years, but I feel her with me every day.

My grandparents are the ones who knitted my spirit into the land during summer visits to their farm. Memories of standing barefoot with her in the garden, eating tomatoes off the vine and lazy afternoon pond fishing have had a boomerang effect on me in my empty-nesting years.

I found Oakhaven while daydreaming and perusing a real estate website. It consisted of an 1870’s farmhouse on 100 acres with a stocked 2-acre lake, a chicken house, and a few old barns. My soul was aflutter. It was the perfect setup to lead a more self-sufficient lifestyle and to be in better relationship with the land as the provider of our food. After following the listing for over a year, we decided to visit it in person.

Stepping onto the land for the first time in May of 2020, we knew Oakhaven was special. So many places in the world have their history covered up under layers of concrete and ambition, but out here in rural Alabama, the stories of the people are alive in the soil. We felt it. The towering oaks, magnolias, and pecan trees were heavy with thick, leafy branches as it was almost June. The pear and lemon trees were beginning to bear fruit, and in the distance, we could just see the pond at the base of several sloping hills.

The house had stood unoccupied for years but remarkably hadn’t yet fallen into disrepair. It was stately but not ornate, a balance of 1870’s Italianate style and farmhouse function. Entering the front door, my husband, Neil, and I both felt we had been transported back to our grandparents’ generation, when time was marked by seasons, and families lived in harmony with the land. Our connection to this place was instantaneous, and we knew by the end of the day it would be our home.

The house had waited for us.

Neil and I were both born in Alabama — Birmingham and Dothan respectively — but our lives had taken very indirect routes around the globe to bring us back to this part of the world. His interest in martial arts led him to study with a grandmaster in the mountains of Japan. Later, a career in the military opened a door to even more adventures in South America and the Middle East. I, on the other hand, had lived abroad in Europe and Africa, studying art and raising children. We met later in life and found our way back home together. They say that life eventually comes full circle, and for us that is happening on a farm in Eufaula, Alabama.

As we would come to discover, Oakhaven was rich in history and had been home to three families over the past 150 years. Colonel Hiram Hawkins and his wife Louisiana headed south after his regiment in Kentucky surrendered at the end of the Civil War. They relocated to Eufaula with his mother and built the house, living there until Colonel Hawkins was the last to pass in 1914. For some time after his death, the house was vacant and fell into disrepair.

An historical article reports that in the early 1930’s, much of the rare wrought iron had been scattered across the yard. The prominent Comer family purchased and completely restored the home, caring for it for the next 60 years. When we found it, Oakhaven was being used as a hunter’s weekend getaway, and it hadn’t been fully occupied by a family in decades. In August of 2020, it was love at first sight, and we became the fourth owners. Once again, the home was in need of a major restoration and love.

We were excited to spend our first weekend in the empty house before restorations began. During the day, we would take walks and sit in different parts of the property. The views in every direction were intoxicating to us. On more than one occasion, I’ve been moved to tears by something I can’t quite put into words. The feeling hits me at the spirit level. My attention skips from pine groves to sweeping skies to tiny wild daffodils.

Reorienting to the land and to open spaces is like traveling to a foreign country.

The senses are alive and awake to everything that feels unfamiliar. Over the course of two days, I spotted a black widow spider, the remains of a timber rattler, and caught sight of a family of wild boar in the front yard. At sunset, the coyotes performed their chaotic evening serenade just over the ridge. For the first time in my life, I felt what it was like to live among the untamed. It was both thrilling and unsettling at the same time — writhing in aliveness.

Out in the country, the absence of people is heard in the silence and seen in the darkness. When the moon and stars disappear behind clouds, the black night becomes one thing and takes up all the negative space. It’s surprising to learn how living remotely brings life back to simple truths that are millennia old.

Living on the land makes me understand how traditional roles make sense. In the city, a woman feels confident in the order of things, but in reality, she is heavily dependent on systems to organize life and play the role of the protector. Out here on the farm, my illusions of control were shattered in one weekend. Not only did I experience the need to feel safe, but also the sheer workload ahead of us made me realize my reliance on my husband’s physical strength. Add to that the fury caused by rousing a long-dormant septic system from its sleep, and I had to surrender my feminist card.

Dependence is a difficult thing for the modern woman to admit, but there is something profound in this kind of partnership with each other and with the land.

If Oakhaven is our Eden, then paradise will sooner or later reveal a snake. That first night in the house, I decided to take a shower and wash our two little dogs at the same time. The three of us piled into the tub. I was shocked at how dirty the dogs were. The water turned a filthy brown and made its way toward my knees. Next, I heard a guttural belch from the toilet. The sink chimed in. I yelled for Neil, who appeared with a plunger, and heroically began pumping, first the shower, then the toilet, and then the sink.

After several minutes, the swampy water receded back down the drain and we were saved. I buried the thought that anything more than dirt had come out of the pipes. It had probably been years since anyone had taken a shower in that house. My mind flashed to the bathtub scene from the movie, “The Money Pit”, and I felt sick to my stomach. The three of us emerged from behind the shower curtain, dirtier than when we entered. Tired, we dried off and headed for the blow-up mattress. What had I gotten us into?

Fall was approaching, so the nights began to offer some reprieve from the heat. Little did I know that the slight change in temperature would have such a dramatic effect on the house. At night, when we settled onto the air mattress with the dogs at our feet, the house came alive.

Loud bangs and groans of what sounded like metal ships hitting icebergs pierced the contrasting silence.

As I lie awake, I heard the scratching of an animal under the floor. By morning, the air had leaked out of the mattress and the four of us woke up in a life-size taco. Groggy and irritable, we sat in our beach chairs in the kitchen. Just as I was about to take my first sip of life-giving coffee, Neil turned to me and said, “I think we have a poltergeist.”

Of course, he was only kidding, right? Ghosts don’t actually exist. Everyone jokes that an old house has a ghost or two, that’s just part of the charm. But on the off-chance ghosts are real, I rationalized, has anyone ever been murdered by a ghost?

Neil proceeded to tell me that at some point in the middle of the night, he heard not only what sounded like footsteps, but also the crashing of dishes in the kitchen. He had jumped up, pistol drawn, and searched the house, including the dirt floor crawlspace underneath, but found nothing. When he shared this story, I got angry. It’s hard to sell a haunted house. We were stuck with it. I yelled out to no one, “Get used to us, we’re not going anywhere!” Then I looked at Neil seething with anger and told him to never say that again.

If this line of thinking sounds irrational, please know it happened pre-coffee. I did come back to my senses, and after a little research online, I read about the settling noises old houses make during the change of seasons. A new friend and fellow historic homeowner assured me that this was normal. As a matter of fact, she told me old homes that had been vacant for a while had the most to say when new owners moved in. She reassured me that the house would settle down once it got to know us and learned our habits and patterns.

Once she explained this to me, the way I saw our house shifted. We were less homeowners and more caretakers now. Oakhaven had its own personality, formed by a history full of families with stories that had accumulated into the walls and floors.

Everyone says that old houses are special because of their character and the quality of their materials. I think they are special because they are archives of memory, silent witnesses to the passage of time.

Over the course of this first weekend, Oakhaven initiated us as stewards. Now it was our turn to add a chapter to its story. For all my concerns about safety and being out in the middle of nowhere, I couldn’t wait to come back again. The unknowns of country life were beginning to take the shape of adventure in my mind. With these realizations, I began to settle into a kind of peace that only comes from a deep knowing.

We had finally found a home to belong to.

I have always tried to live by the old adage, ‘To whom much is given, much is expected’. We have always known that Oakhaven was not meant to be our private escape from reality. It is a place of peace to be honored and shared with others. We intend to share its beauty and historical significance by offering art and writing workshops, homestead learning experiences, as well as advanced martial arts and wilderness survival courses. It is bursting with inspiration for creative endeavors.

More than anything, we hope to reach back and help the younger generation to reconnect with the spirit of local community and traditional ways of being with the land. This knowledge is their spiritual birthright as human beings no matter how far and wide they may travel. We are betting on a bright future for our children, and that starts with a foundation of wellbeing, harmony and connection with nature.

To see more of Christie’s artwork, you may also enjoy reading In The Service of Art.

The post There’s No Place Like Home: An Artist Reconnects to the Whispers of Her Past appeared first on BEST SELF.

Estimated reading time: 8 minutes

A brave woman steps from beneath the shadows of shame, abuse, unworthiness and pain to heal from deep trauma — and help others do the same

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The Break

At the age of 39, I had a psychotic break.

It happened during a time when I was under a significant level of work and relationship-related stress. The tipping point came when I recovered a memory of being molested at the age of three.

The break itself was terrifying, because I couldn’t distinguish between hallucinations and reality; people I knew were suddenly different to me. I couldn’t figure out what was really happening versus the paranoia-driven creations in my brain.

As I slowly returned to reality, I had a fresh perspective on previous years of mental illness and treatments I had undertaken. I finally understood why, years after the molestation, I was taking dangerous risks — physical and emotional risks — that led to further traumatic episodes.

In college, I was drinking and behaving in promiscuous ways. One night on a girl’s trip to Mexico, I was gang-raped. Although I now understand that I wasn’t to blame, I do take responsibility for putting myself in situations where I could get hurt. Later I would become entangled in two relationships in which I was abused — one of them my first marriage.

The psychotic break in 2007 helped me understand why I was placing no value on myself and my body.

Molested at three, I felt completely alone and unprotected from life’s dangers. I believed I wasn’t worthy of unconditional love. I believed I got what I deserved.

Even the job I was doing at the time of my break was dangerous for me. My married boss lured me into a relationship using classic predatory grooming tactics. Not having remembered my childhood molestation, I was unprepared to deal with his antics.

In fact, I believe that his behavior is what led to my memory recovery. I had already gone through a similar experience — I just hadn’t remembered it yet.

But I had undertaken years of therapy and treatment for mental illness, even before the break. Besides taking medication for depression and anxiety, I went to a psychologist who treated me with cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) and eye movement desensitization and reprocessing (EMDR) for posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD).

These treatments helped me immensely with healing from the domestic violence and rape. But I wasn’t prepared for the memory that came flooding back to me. I believe my brain went into survival mode, creating an alternate reality for me, and putting me into fight-or-flight mode.

With rest, therapy and medication, I survived the psychotic break and I began to heal.

As time passed, I found my way into a healthier relationship and had a baby girl. I started working for someone who appreciated my talents but did not try to take advantage of me. I learned how to stand up for myself in a healthy way.

Gradually I built a better life. It was a restart.

Reprocessing the Trauma

Fast forward to 2019. I was 52, and my daughter was 10. Two years earlier I had married the love of my life, a good man who treats me well.

I was struggling with my career — the burnout was severe — and wanting to make a change. I downshifted from taking on another leadership role in technology marketing (the field I worked in for 25+ years) so that I could spend more time focused on other activities that would help me feel motivated and fulfilled.

And I finally decided to write a book: a prescriptive memoir. My goal? Helping other complex trauma survivors get through their own healing journeys.

I felt strong, alive, ready.

Starting in January 2021, I began writing. I went deep into my experiences — good and bad — and worked consistently to get the first, second and third drafts completed by the end of the year. Of course, other things happened that year. The pandemic raged on. I continued to work from home while my husband returned to the office. Luckily my daughter was able to return to school. I kept writing.

Writing about my experiences gave me the opportunity to look at them from a different, more mature, clear-headed perspective.

Realizations were a routine occurrence. For example, I finally put together that at the time of the molestation, I wouldn’t have been able to see. That was the same year that my four-year-old brother’s preschool teacher discovered that he wasn’t seeing well. My mother took us both to the eye doctor. We each had severely limited vision and needed strong glasses.

I realized that the molestation would have been that much more terrifying because of this impairment. And although it is rare for someone to remember experiences from that age, it would make it even more difficult for me because of my lack of vision.

And there’s a parallel that goes with this. In 2021, I finally had eye surgery — refractive lens exchange along with laser — and could see without glasses or contact lenses for the first time in my life. Remarkably, I was also able to see other aspects of my life more clearly.

I put together a timeline of my life interwoven with major events in my family. I realized it was Spring of 2012 when my mother was sharing more details about the extended family with me, just a few months before she would die after a 25-year battle with Lupus.

She had always been more open with me than others were about what had happened in the family. Because of her, I learned of my grandmother’s rape at 13. She told me about her father abusing my grandmother when she and her siblings were little. And she told me that her cousin had recently gone to prison for raping a 13-year-old girl.

But it wasn’t until I was writing the book that I gave it all a hard look.

There was an interconnectedness of family trauma and secrets and abuse; it all became clearer to me through the writing of the book and underscored my decision to share my story.

Although it was clear to me that others in the family wanted me to keep quiet, I declared to myself that there would be no more sweeping under the rug. I planned to stop the cycle, at least in my own family lineage. I resolved to help others do the same.

Hitting an Unexpected Wall

Then in May, having completed the writing of my book and working on the marketing for it while looking for a publisher, I considered a new writing project.

I decided to write a limited series television screenplay inspired by my life story. But it would be different from the book. This time the lead role would be a fictional character, and the story would be more extreme than my own. I’d weave in some drama and humor to make sure it would be entertaining enough for television.

Before I started to write the first draft, I knew I should do some research, this time about more than the psychological aspects that I dug into so much for my book. I thought about where it would take place and began to look into the setting so I could create something realistic.

I also decided to do more research into my family — and my mom’s cousin — to be able to write a story initially based on reality but expanded into a broader storyline. As I was researching, I read the court records for my mom’s cousin, the one who went to prison for raping a 13-year-old.

This is how I discovered it was his own daughter that he raped. Learning this left me utterly heart broken. I felt such shock, unable to fathom how his daughter could survive that horror and be in a better place now. I knew from my own experience that she was probably broken.

And for me, learning the details of what actually happened brought back all my own feelings from past traumas. It was like the wounds were freshly opened.

I was suddenly that three-year-old, sickened and afraid, not understanding what was happening, and not knowing where to go for help. And then I was 39 again, going through the nightmare of unreality that terrified me during the psychotic break. And finally, I was a mother, looking at my 13-year-old daughter, fearful of what could happen to her and wondering how I’ll ever be able to fully protect her from life’s tragedies.

I felt derailed. Prior to my discovery, I had big plans for my summer. I would be promoting my author platform, building my followers through social media, speaking, and writing. And I had big plans for the screenplay.

But I completely stalled; my motivation swept away. Even so, I knew I could not give up. At least, not completely.

Living with mental illness can be a real slog. For months (or years in my case), you’re doing just fine, and then there’s that blasted trigger, stopping you cold.

What did I do, you may ask?

I decided to simply go through it. I let the stall-out happen, giving myself grace so that I could heal again (and heal as many times as I needed). Having the past experiences I did, I was able to see clearly that I would survive, and life would get better.

And that’s just what happened.

Why am I sharing this? Because you are not alone in the depths and darkness of your despair. There is a way out… and I’m living proof. I want that for you.

You may also enjoy reading Recovering from Emotional Abuse and Learned Toxic Behaviors, by Dr. Lisa Cooney

The post Breaking the Cycle: Healing from Complex Trauma appeared first on BEST SELF.

Estimated reading time: 11 minutes

Great change is always preceded by chaos and confusion, yet our darkest moments can serve a great purpose

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It has happened to all of us — an illness, an event, or an uncomfortable truth engulfs our life like a rogue wave, and we are thrown ass over tea kettle onto the beach. Not only is there sand in our bikini bottoms, but we are rattled and forced to evolve or stay stuck in the limbo that is unfolding. We need a way not to just cope, but to shift our perspective so we can take back our power: To NAME our emotional state, CLAIM resonant actions that align with our core beliefs and then REFRAME our mindset so we can move ahead with strategic and visionary optimism.

For me and many women, this transition happens slowly over time, like an ache or a longing. While for others it feels more like a collision that clears the way for a new beginning that they never saw coming. Whether a single dramatic event or a series of them, it is an awakening that forces us to claim something of our very own and finally ‘gives us permission’ to start a business, begin a big project, earn that degree we never finished, leave a marriage, or even to fall in love all over again.

Like a personal check-in, this is the point when women realize that it is time to take up more space and build energetic boundaries that will fill them instead of deplete them.

Although one traumatic incident is often the passageway to enlightenment, we may be afraid to admit to our stories and the pain we endured as a result. It’s certainly easier to bury them than stare at them. Yet struggle is often the portal to a vast reservoir of inner resourcefulness. Not only are we gifted great wisdom, but we learn of the internal strength that we possess, enabling us to boldly rise again. If we allow ourselves to dig into the truth behind our darkest moments, we will find an authentic spirit within that has the ingenuity, resourcefulness, and courage to guide us back home to our truth.

What does all this mean? Let me share a little bit of my story behind the inception of the Name, Claim and Reframe® structure.  

My collision with this new way of thinking happened in my mid-fifties —with a financial reset that forced me to realize that if I was to survive the impact, I needed to upgrade the frequency of who I was and how I approached my life going forward. My priorities shifted, causing false identities and uncomfortable truths to rise to the surface.

I knew that if I didn’t evolve, I would stay stuck, reacting to life instead of responding to it.

One afternoon, my husband and I discovered that an investment that we believed was ‘safe’ had been lost. We were in the red and needed to liquidate assets quickly to raise capital.  Throughout our marriage, my husband and I had both contributed to our household and been prudent investors, but I see now in hindsight that I had checked out of the financial conversation, choosing to ignore the details, and leaving my husband to do all the worrying and problem solving. Now that we were in a more tenuous position, I needed to look at the cold hard truth of what we were facing. My husband was building a consulting practice and we were very simply spending more than we were making. We had a fairly high cost of living that included a vacation home, and if things kept going the way they had been we were in danger of losing it all.

I was angry and afraid and I wanted to point fingers, but truthfully, I was at fault too. Because I had been in denial, and not in the conversation with my partner about our finances, I had willingly surrendered not only my power but my sovereignty. This is a common mistake that many women make, turning the finances over to their spouse without question, despite contributing to the annual income.

To face this situation, I had to look at what frightened me most, talking about where we were in the red and taking ownership of my part in my family’s financial state of affairs. A woman who chooses to be the sovereign of her own life asks hard questions, shares difficult truths, and is never afraid to reveal her deepest fears. She takes a seat at the table. My partner and I were forced to have a courageous conversation; Do we take on more debt to continue to live a life we clearly couldn’t afford, or do we sell our second home and release a false identity that no longer served the life we hoped to save?

I cannot begin to find the words to express the emotion conjured by this financial challenge. Humility, shame, and regret only scratch the surface, but I knew that this wave of truth had come to save us from ourselves — and serve us.

Our financial shock, as scary as it seemed, was not life threatening. It was instead the jolt of reality that would set us free so we could chart a new and more visionary course for the future. I Named the terror of us losing what we had worked so hard to build then I got onto the other side of it so, together we could Claim a solution to navigate our next steps.

Selling our vacation home so suddenly felt like a fire sale and sharing this news with others was steeped in shame and regret. Yet as people’s bewildered and patronizing glances washed over me, I dug into the reality of the situation: we were lucky to have a second home to sell. In changing my perspective, I Reframed my thinking. It was time for us to write a new story and leave behind the false life (and identities) we had been living and labeling.

When you intentionally wake up, serendipity reigns and circumstances fall into place. Our vacation property sold for more than we expected, and we were able to straighten out our finances and curate a lifestyle that better fit the goals we had for the life we hoped to rebuild.   Instead of anger at my situation, I took ownership for my part, reframing my mindset by choosing to feel compassion for my husband (who had been navigating this situation alone) and for myself (for hiding from it).

This experience brought us back together as equal partners, restoring trust within our marriage so we could stand together to see a way forward. I saw our situation not so much as a crisis, but rather an opportunity to get creative and scrappy — more raw and real. By accepting the mess, we were in as a blessed portal to salvation, we had taken control of our lives, Claiming the autonomy that was essential to forge a future of our choosing.

As I began to accept the situation that we found ourselves in, I mentally Reframed it for what it was, merely a hiccup in my bigger life story — and a powerful life lesson. When we stop running from our truths, we can begin to instead look for and Claim the hidden treasure within them.

While these may seem like mere words and constructs, when put into motion they hold enormous power. I had the ability to shed the shame of my story and use it as an opportunity to reinvent myself, Reframe my identity. I no longer wanted to hide from the things in my life that I felt like I wasn’t capable of handling. I wanted to face it all, but without the panic I had experienced through our days in the financial mire.

I felt a strong pull from within to rise, stronger and more enlightened with a clearer vision and sense of purpose. The experience of being lost presented me with a golden opportunity to take my power back in a way I never had before. In a bold decision I made a transformational leap, pivoting from an over thirty-year career in education to become what had been calling all along, a certified Life and Leadership Coach. Using my past pain to model, teach and guide, I yearned to be a beacon of hope for others who had lost their way.

In all chaos, there is a secret order that breeds curiosity, versatility, and resourcefulness. The best guides have traveled the path, understand the obstacles, and can share humbly from their scars of enlightenment. The experience of being lost myself offered me the road map to develop Name, Claim and Reframe®, or the way of the Gentle Warrior. I understood that anyone could use these three steps at any point in their life, whether with dramatic events of upheaval like mine, or with a minor micro life mess.

Anyone who has been knocked to their knees needs to believe that they have the power to rise again and the framework to do so. Whatever disrupts ‘the who’ you thought you were and ‘the what’ you thought was sacred (marriage, health, financial stability), the power to recover lies within you. Maybe your disaster is calling you to become something better than you were before.

Great change is always preceded by chaos and confusion, and our darkest moments have a great purpose.

No one ever wants to hear this in the heat of the moment, but it’s true. The unexpected storm that collided with your life is bringing you the circumstances to emerge into a more authentic version of yourself…if you allow it. Isn’t it empowering to realize that you have the choice to start embracing adverse experiences instead of resisting them or being taken down by them?

We all know a woman who, despite life’s challenges, has curated a well-lived life. Instead of leading with a sword and shield, she elegantly draws upon her own inner resources to guide and direct her actions. Standing resolutely in her truths, she is one with the most authentic and essential parts of herself. But that doesn’t mean she hasn’t faced off with her own life adversity — it means that she stood in her humanness and grace while doing it. As we observe her graceful sovereignty, we wonder to ourselves, how can I achieve that?

I started the journey towards building the framework for Name, Claim and Reframe®, or what I call living life like a Gentle Warrior because I am a warrior in recovery, having made the intentional choice to align with a more feminine approach to life. Although I have always been a straight shooter, my actions or shall I say, ‘reactions’ were fueled by emotional triggers, core wounds, and deep seeded insecurities. I had armored up like a warrior to protect my essential self and often felt emotionally depleted, resentful, and very unbalanced.

I would venture to guess that you wear your own suit of metaphorical armor. You’ve likely got your ways, patterns and belief systems to take shelter beneath.

This armor hides your unseen truths, your false identities, and most importantly, the pain that you have stuffed away and never acknowledged. You have learned to cope, sometimes reverting to the same old stale behaviors of the past that leave you feeling empty and unfulfilled.

The overarching message of, Name, Claim & Reframe-Your Path to a Well-Lived Life, is to illustrate how the suit of armor that we have built over our essential selves has inhibited us from our most potent power and skewed the balance of the divine masculine and feminine ingenuity that exists within all human beings, regardless of their gender identity. It is embodying both, we are all of it — and we can use all of it to our benefit. I’ve learned to call forth a more attuned approach to life when I speak of “living in the way of the Gentle Warrior.”

What are the key traits of a woman who has put down her metaphorical cloak of armor to walk in the way of a Gentle Warrior?

She has learned to Name uncomfortable emotions and has an acute awareness around the stability of each side of her wholeness, both the feminine and masculine gifts that she offers the world. She understands how to recalibrate these dualities, especially when she is triggered into reacting instead of responding to adverse situations.

She asks herself, what is going on here and what is underneath this feeling?

She has the tools and resources to Claim resonant actions, because she is conscious that her core beliefs and energetic boundaries are the gatekeepers to her inner resourcefulness. The Reframe comes when she slows down, realigning her thinking around a triggering situation and choosing to respond with new ownership.

She knows how to take ownership, calm herself and process as she moves through the experience.

This intentional act of separating her ego from the situation allows her to proceed with a more optimistic, strategic, and visionary mindset. In other words, while we (you and me) may not be able to change what life throws our way, we can choose to shift the meaning we give to it in a more positive perspective that will better serve the boundaries of the life we are choosing to live.

She asks, what does this have to teach me and how can I use it?

Name, Claim & Reframe presents you with the ability to choose — to rewrite the outdated internal narratives that drag you down, so you can rediscover who you really are and take aligned action from there, in service of the greater good of YOU. And by doing so, not only are you gifted great wisdom, but you learn of the internal strength that is conjured when you make the choice to boldly rise again. Life’s bruising is inevitable, but enlightenment from the bruising is optional. If we allow ourselves to dig into the truth behind our darkest moments, we will find that we are closer to the spirit of a Gentle Warrior than we might think. Doesn’t that sound like a better path? A life well-lived isn’t a path without twists and turns and bumps in the road. It is one of meaning. Which are you going to choose?

You may also enjoy reading Interview: Jonathan Fields | The Good Life, by Kristen Noel.

The post Name, Claim & Reframe: A Pathway to a Well-Lived Life appeared first on BEST SELF.

Estimated reading time: 5 minutes

How we can let go, leave, break up, cut cords, erect boundaries, dissolve attachments and heal without aggression and anger — and instead do so with love

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Best Selfers! To let go? To dissolve attachments? To cut cords or pray for healing? These are all the right questions in terms of how we heal and move on.

[Excerpted from How to Be Loving: As Your Heart Is Breaking Open and Our World Is Waking Up, by Danielle LaPorte]

If you’ve done some metaphysical homework (of course you have—you’re here), you’ve probably come across the idea of “cutting energy cords” with people and places. We “send all that energy back to its source and cut-cut-cut those cords!” That practice can be a powerful remedy to imbalances and protecting ourselves. But . . . sometimes . . .

If you’re in an emotionally volatile space, it can be difficult to dissolve energetic ties with people you’re angry at or a situation that felt wounding or hurtful. The “cutting ties” gesture itself can have an underlying aggression. And that will just generate more angst—which is just another energy hook, more of the same story.

You can’t let go of something that you’re aggressively trying to let go of.

We want to gently and thoroughly let go of all of the residual scars of a painful connection or event. Your part in the pain, their part in it, the pain in the middle. The pain over the pain. And then we offer it all up to be transformed into a higher vibration—which is how we create Wisdom.

We don’t want to approach this as a “cutting away” or separating from our sorrow. It’s about turning to the Divine with our pain and being healed through that connection.

Ultimately this is about identifying with our expansive nature––our Loving Nature, instead of feeling constricted. Constriction grips. Expansion lets things flow. And when we’re expanded, we open ourselves to receive more healing and blessings.

Nothing leaves us until we thoroughly Love it.

We can’t curse it to release it. We can’t attack it to release it. That only creates more clinging and pushback.

Bless it: Thank you for what you taught me. May you be free. Then whatever it is—a relationship or a painful thoughtform—gets what it’s always wanted: some Love. And then it will go on its way. Finally.

About How To Be Loving

When you turn to the heart, you uncondition your mind of all kinds of social programming. The intelligence of Love dissolves eons of dogma that tells us to prove our “worth” and sort who’s superior or inferior. Being Loving doesn’t necessarily mean feeling more. It means feeling everything with more Love. It’s the ultimate inclusiveness. Because in your heart, it’s ALL IN—your light and your shadows—and everyone else’s. This is the non-dual place where complete Self acceptance has room to grow.

How To Be Loving is a nuanced perspective on the life changing power of Self Compassion, shadow work, and being more receptive to Higher Guidance. This is a guide on how to use the genius of your heart to create conditions for healing.

You may also enjoy reading Choose Love: A Vital Strategy for More Success, by Kate Beeders.

The post How to Be Loving: Letting Go vs. “Cutting Cords” appeared first on BEST SELF.

Estimated reading time: 11 minutes

A mother’s account of letting go of who she was in an old story and allowing herself to evolve into a new one

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My chest feels achy. It’s felt like this for weeks now. I keep catching myself holding my breath, losing focus, reaching for something to soothe me, staring into space. This isn’t me — who is this person, I wonder. And yet, I recognize her.

I met this version of myself once before, years ago, when I was learning how to travel from girlhood into motherhood. And now, here she is again, getting her sons ready for their first days of school without her, learning how to be their cheerleader instead of their coach, figuring out how to let go while still holding on. This is me after 13 years of homeschooling.

Homeschooling was never the plan. It started when my almost-four-year-old leaned over and whispered, “I want to know everything, Mama,” lighting a fire inside me.

The year was 2009, and I was a 27-year-old mother of two intensely active, curious, wildly creative little boys (read: “not ready for Pre-K but bored to tears at home”) living in rural Georgia with very limited resources. A co-worker of mine at the public school had met my son and told me he wasn’t ready for the classroom. She told me he’d need to learn to sit still first, that he should wait a year and then start. But I didn’t want him to wait. So, I decided to teach him myself.

The next day, with fear screaming into every cell of my body, I took $50 I couldn’t really spare to the bookstore and found my way into becoming a homeschooling mother.

I was only going to homeschool for one year at first. But seeing his face light up at every new discovery, every library trip, every arts & crafts experiment changed me. Then one year turned into two and his little brother turned four and wanted to know everything too. Two years turned into three and we found ourselves loving our little homeschooling life and everything it afforded us both inside and out of the classroom.

It wasn’t that anything was wrong with traditional schools — or that something was wrong with our kids. The more I taught them and researched curriculum options for each grade level, it was more of trusting this feeling I had that a home education was the best place for them to thrive. At the same time I sensed that we’d created monsters (wink). The good kind of monsters with voracious appetites — the ones who want to know everything, want to put their fingers on everything and experience the world right up close, want to build and invent new things and explore every single crevice the world has in its depths, and want to ask why a million times every day without ever raising their hands. And I didn’t want to tame them. I wanted to plug into their curiosity and wonder — to foster more of the same.

I blame it on the way my husband and I grew up as big dreamers, became parents at 23 and 24, and started using every penny we could find to pack up our kids and move again and again in search of wild adventures. I also blame it on how we committed to a nontraditional family value early on: one of us was always going to make a way to stay home full-time and the other would work from home as much as possible. As crazy as that seemed at the time, and even though we had no idea how exactly that was going to roll out — as a result, I’ve been able to spend most days with my whole family at home while building a consulting business that pays our bills. Our lifestyle of packing up and adventuring took on a life of its own and became our children’s incredible education.

It began with selling everything. We sold our home, cars, and furniture, and made travel our life. Outdoor adventure became our textbook. National parks became our playground. And we lived full-time in our 30-foot Airstream while traveling the US for seven years before finding our home in a small community on the coast of Maine.

It was a dream I never could have planned for. We found nature healing and teaching us in unexpected ways.

I found wisdom and inspiration from researchers and authors like John Holt, Ken Robinson, Blake Boles, and in books like The Teenage Liberation Handbook. I built community in unexpected new ways and connected with other homeschooling moms and found resources to help with every roadblock I encountered. We hit our groove, met a bump in the road, cobbled through, made it work, and hit our groove again a million times over. We loved our homeschooling life.

And then, quite suddenly at the end of last school year, when my youngest gently, kindly said, “Mama, I don’t want to homeschool anymore,” it was over.

In truth, he was only giving voice to something I’d known was coming for a while.

Homeschooling wasn’t serving us anymore; the longer we traveled and the older my kids got, the more difficult it was to find new resources, make lasting friendships, and expand our circles. It was time for something new, and we all knew it. The winds of change were upon us.

Skip ahead. As the school year starts this year, I’m turning in my homeschool badge to watch one son spend his senior year in online dual enrollment classes (senior year high school and freshman year college) and the other get on the bus each morning to attend the public high school down the street.

I could pretend I’m not struggling, but I don’t. My achy chest won’t let me. Instead, I’m embracing how I’m changing, who I’m becoming.

I realize this transition isn’t just about me, and yet, I also realize this version of me might become something permanent, so I feel a call to get to know her. She’s someone who knows how to wade through critical transitions, someone who’s getting comfortable in her new skin, emerging, stepping up, becoming. Who she is exactly, I can’t know yet. But I have a sneaking suspicion I might even start to like her if I give her a chance. I’m making room for her to emerge.

I keep reminding myself this is what it’s like to have kids who aren’t kids anymore. This is also what it’s like to have homeschooled for so long and suddenly stopped. This is what it’s like to let go of everything we’ve always had together and start holding on to something new.

And yet, like the butterfly who’s just become something unrecognizable to its former self, there’s pain in the remaking, a bit of struggle in the redefining. I may not have this figured out for a while. I may have to find my way like I have so many times before. I’m going to have to be okay with that. For now, I’m redefining what motherhood means to me — motherhood without homeschooling.

Deep down I realize I always hoped our long homeschool days would lead here. I always knew which son would want to try public high school just as surely as I knew which one would want to enter college early. But the truth is, I wasn’t always exactly sure we’d arrive — or that I’d be ready.

For the past 13 years, we’ve been trying untraditional approaches to education, testing out new things, following curiosities, discovering learning as a pleasurable activity — something I missed in my own achievement-focused summa cum laude-focused academic life. For the past 13 years, I had hoped their education could be different, hoped it would work out extremely well, but no one could guarantee me it would.

Even now, big questions remain. I don’t know whether my sons will have learning gaps I couldn’t fill as their sole teacher for so long. I don’t know if they’ll receive scholarships that will allow them to go where they want to go and do what they want to do. I don’t know if they’ll love art school or college or whatever path they choose. I don’t even know if public high school will welcome us.

I don’t know anything, really.

Except this — I know I’ve taught them how to pivot when something isn’t working. They know they have options. They know how to follow their intuitions. They know there’s more than one way. They know anything is possible.

All in all, I feel good about that. It’s true that only parts of our homeschool story have been the rainbow kind, but there’s more than golden memories lying here at the end. There’s respect, relationships, and more adventures taken and happy days spent together than any mother could dream of.

Despite its challenges, our little homeschooling life has been the life of my dreams.

Except now, sitting here alone at my quiet kitchen table where we usually share audiobooks, loud breakfast discussions, and heated homeschool debates — I have a decision to make.

I have to decide if the life of my dreams is over or if I still have the energy to create something new.

I’m letting go of being the center of their worlds to watch all our worlds get bigger, letting go of my little boys and getting to know the young men they’re becoming.

But I’m still holding on, too. Holding onto being their mother no matter what season we’re entering together, holding onto the memories and embracing their next season with heart, mind, and arms wide open.

I’ll think about our long, slow homeschool mornings full of books read aloud, homemade muffins, and pots of Earl Grey tea for as long as I live. But if I’m lucky, I’ll get to think about the adventures we’re still having and are yet to have, too.

So, with the homeschooling door closing and so many feelings still swirling inside me, my conclusion is this — there is no end to the life of our dreams, only new seasons adding depth, new waves bringing new realities.

There is no failure — only pivots and discoveries.

Wherever we find ourselves, we always get to choose how to approach what’s next, and I’m choosing to try my best to love whatever comes next for us.

One day at a time. . . .

The morning of his first day of school finally arrives. He wakes early to the alarm he set for himself, showers, dresses in the clothes and shoes he set out the night before. I cook him a special breakfast and he makes a cup of tea. With his back turned, packing his own lunchbox, his dad asks, “Are you nervous?” He replies simply, “Yeah,” and keeps nodding his head to the music in his earbuds. He doesn’t look nervous at all.

Watching him get on the bus for the first time, I feel tears sting my eyes, but I feel something new, too.

My chest isn’t achy anymore. Instead, I’m feeling something else — something expansive.

Yes, I’m swallowing a lump in my throat as I sit on the porch and peek through the trees to see him step onto the bus and roll to the school without me, but I have things that need my attention, too. I take a few minutes to breathe, process my feelings, and send him all my love and all kinds of distant hugs. Then I fire off emails to the women in my email group, polish a new piece for potential homeschool families, send a magazine pitch, and head inside to dig into projects for my clients and help his brother get settled into his dual enrollment agenda for the day.

And I smile, thinking about the cookies and milk we’ll have this afternoon when he gets home from school and all the stories he’ll have to share. One of my life’s biggest and best seasons is over, but my life is not over. Another one is beginning. I think this one might be big and beautiful, too. At the very least I can stay open for it.

You may also enjoy reading Redefining Togetherness: One Mother’s Quest for an Adventurous Family Life, by Celeste Orr

The post An Epilogue to Homeschooling: A Mother Hangs Up Her Homeschooling Hat…Now What? appeared first on BEST SELF.

Estimated reading time: 7 minutes

A poetic exploration of the cultural and personal storms that befall us all as humans — and the inner practice to survive them

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I am excited to share that my new book, Surviving Storms: Finding the Strength to Meet Adversity, will be published this September by St. Martin’s Essentials. It is a book that has taken three years to retrieve and shape. Like everyone, my understanding of things has been shaped by the pandemic. But I continue to believe in the goodness we are born with and the courage we each have to summon to let that goodness into the world. We need each other more than ever. Each generation is challenged to choose love over fear. It is our turn. The following conversation explores the new book and the terrain it enters. ~ Mark Nepo

Q: What are you exploring with Surviving Storms?

We live in a turbulent time. Storms are everywhere, of every shape and size. And like every generation before us, like every soul’s journey on Earth, we must learn the art of surviving storms, so we can endure and build a better world. The reason heartwork is so important in surviving storms is that, as a tree needs to deepen its roots and widen its trunk to endure the force of unexpected storms, we need to know our true self so we can deepen our roots and solidify our connection to all Spirit and all life. Then, we, too, can endure the force of unexpected storms. This is especially relevant now. Every generation has its share of turbulence and chaos—personal storms, relational storms, life storms. And all the traditions offer practices and resources to help us be strong enough and kind enough to meet the challenges of our day. It is our turn to rediscover these practices and resources in order to repair ourselves and our world. All this is inner practice. All this is heartwork that we each need to personalize. This is what Surviving Storms explores.

Q: Can you describe the journey this book takes us on?

The first two chapters of this book describe the storms of our time—where we are and how we got here. They outline the fault lines of our refracted society, including: our loss of relationship, the isolation of technology, the dissolution of reality, the loss of a common good, the press of narcissism over inclusion, and our addiction to violence. The third chapter explores the nature and life of storms. And the fourth chapter unpacks the purpose of goodness. The rest of the book describes the perennial practices and resources that we can reacquaint ourselves with in order to restore our basic human nature and transcend our perceived differences. This task is nothing short of the remaking of humanity, yet one more time.

Q: Please speak to the difficulties we face today as part of a pattern in history?  

The long swells of history crest and crash, century after century. The kindness and cruelty of an age expands and contracts. The openness and narrowness of how we learn either grows or collapses depending on how each generation reacts to the storms they encounter and create. As I write this, a good part of humanity is in such a collapse of narrowness, in such a contraction of cruelty. And though we have crashed, the harsh beauty of waves is that they always reform, gathering all they’ve been through to rise and crest again. Likewise, we can learn from what we’ve been through. We can expand again and open our minds and hearts. We can find our way back to kindness, if we dare to see each other in ourselves and accept the truth of what we’ve broken. Then, we can see what needs repair.

Q: You talk about the maturing of compassion. What do you mean by this?

Ultimately, loving is the practice ground for everything. Early in life, there is an initiation into the practice of compassion through the commonality of our experience with others. If I have suffered a broken heart, then when I witness your heart breaking, I can easily identify with what you’re going through. This sort of compassion, based on our common experience, is an ongoing apprenticeship that never ends. But over the years, as I’ve thinned what builds between my heart and the world, I’ve come to see that this form of compassion, dear and necessary as it is, leads to a maturing of compassion. Once our heart is opened, the practice of identifying with others leads us to the noble and necessary act of feeling compassion for those that we have no common experience with.

Q: You have a chapter called “Ten Thousand Hands.” What are you exploring here?

I offer this metaphor to explore the difference between our infinite want and our very finite reach in this world. For the heart has ten thousand hands that want to lift and hold everything, to leave no dream untried. But the life that carries the heart has only two hands. And so, intoxicated with life, we reach for more than we can carry, and meaning well, we promise more than we can ever hope to care for. In this way, we try to live as many lives as possible rather than inhabit the one life we are given. This is a common, inner tension. For as human beings, our being is infinite and unlimited, but our humanness is very finite and limited. Feeling this innate cross-purpose, we can be seduced by the want to do everything and to go everywhere—though we can’t. Without accepting our very human limits, we can inadvertently do harm to each other.

Q: Can you speak more about what it means to work with what we’re given?

Though there’s nothing wrong with working for things we want, I have found that my deepest gifts have shown themselves when working with what I’ve been given. I’ve come to see that working for what I want is often an apprenticeship for working with what I’m given. For by working with what we’re given, our soul shows itself. All of this is how the heart initiates us into the art of acceptance where, far from resignation, we are asked to be kind and useful beyond all intent.

Q: An early chapter is called “The Old World Is Gone.” What are you suggesting here? 

As the pandemic spread around the world, it brought moments from my cancer journey sharply before me. One profound moment in particular echoes where we are in a compelling way. It was the moment of my diagnosis more than thirty years ago. I was sitting in a doctor’s office when I heard the words, “You have cancer.”

I was, of course, frightened and disoriented. I thought, he must have made a mistake. How could this be me? Stunned, I left that appointment reeling. But the door I had walked through to keep that appointment was gone. There was no way back to my life before that moment. Life would never be the same. The old world was gone.

I think this transformative moment has gripped the world. Collectively, the world before the pandemic is gone. There is no way back to life before the coronavirus. We have no choice but to accept the truth of what is and love our way forward, discovering the new life unlived ahead of us.

To be sure, there is nothing glorious or mysterious about disease. The cancer I had was not as important as what it opened in me. Likewise, there is nothing glorious or mysterious about the coronavirus. It can never be as important as what it is opening in humanity. As cancer was a catalyst for transformation when I was ill, we need to ask: What is the appearance of this pandemic trying to open in us and teach us? How is it transforming us as a global family?

Q: What is your hope for anyone engaging with this book?

The Hebrew word for blessing means “more life.” This is the blessing that comes from being educated by the heart—we are given more life. This is the blessing I wish for everyone who reads this book—that as a fish grows stronger for having a healthy and muscular gill, you are given more life for having an expansive and well-tuned heart.

You may also enjoy reading other articles by Mark Nepo for Best Self Magazine.

The post Surviving Storms: A Q&A from the Heart with Mark Nepo appeared first on BEST SELF.

Estimated reading time: 12 minutes

The power of prose to reveal and express our true selves — a journey of healing and reinvention

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I started writing in a journal when I was 11 years old, as a way to communicate with my brother who died. In sharing with him on those early pages, I was able to make some sense of myself — and the world. My journal was my best friend and over the years the volumes accumulated to well over 70…until I destroyed them in 2008 after my then-husband read them. The crushing betrayal of him invading my privacy — and what he discovered inside them — became the catalyst to the life I’m living now.

Had I not written the truth, I wouldn’t have been able to step into it. 

I began keeping a journal again once we were separated and I was living on my own. My journal invites curiosity while reminding me of possibility. Since I know how confronting a blank page can be, I offer guidance to prompt your own inquiry and discovery. It’s never too soon or too late to know what’s true for you and give yourself permission to live it.  

As a lifelong journaler, it’s been my absolute dream come true to create this journal. But, truth be told, The Art of Change is no ordinary journal. It’s a proven roadmap that will guide you to make choices and take action in support of the vision you desire. So you can make the changes in your life that you want to make.

The Art of Change contains concepts and explorations to support and deepen your own inner excavation, ultimately for you to be able to own your worth and live life on your own terms, stepping into center stage of your own life. 

In my own experience, journaling has been key to really getting to understand and know myself. So, this journal is going to give you the opportunity to truly make a commitment to yourself, to slow down and get quiet and take pen to paper, to investigate what is true for you.

The Art of Change is an invitation to immerse yourself in the Eight Dimensions of Reinvention —one each week — with a coaching concept to contemplate, and then an exploration with daily prompts that build on each other throughout the week. The Art of Change guides you on a transformative journey though Vision, Calibration, Beliefs, Self-Worth, Boundaries, Choice, Self-Confidence, and Visibility.

Once you embody The Art of Change, you can consciously curate what you want to bring into your life, as well as what you choose to release. You can think of this journal as a way to have me by your side, coaching you and guiding you in the direction of your own reinvention.

Below is an excerpt from The Art of Change: A Guided Journal — 8 Weeks to Making a Meaningful Shift in Your Life [Hay House, Inc. 2022]

WEEK 1: VISION

The central aspect of the art of change is the process of reinvention. Reinvention isn’t about scrubbing your life clean of any signs that you’ve lived it. It’s about returning to the essence of who you actually are—the you that, quite possibly, has been hanging out beneath a mountain of habits, obligations, and inherited beliefs, gesturing wildly to get your attention: “Heyyyy, remember me?”

This is the true you—the inner spark that you sense when you’re most at home in your body and your mind. It’s the brightness that radiates out from you and touches everything you encounter; it makes colors more vivid and food tastier. It’s the sense of passion and purpose you were born with, which gives life texture and meaning. In short, it’s the essential part of you that makes life worth living.

Now, you might be thinking, Well, that sounds nice, but it’s definitely not my experience—at least not most of the time. So how can it possibly be the “true me”?

I’m here to say that it is—even during the times you’ve lost direction, which is super easy to do if you’re pinned beneath that gigantic mountain of patterns and behaviors you’ve come to identify as “me.” In truth, who you are is infinite, which means it’s not limited or defined by your life circumstances. In fact, the true self—which is calm, confident, and empowered—tends to become even more resilient when we are connected to it, because it isn’t deterred by so-called obstacles or the litany of reasons to bury our heads in the sand and give up. In fact, when we live from the true self, we are inspired to discover creative solutions in the midst of pretty dismal situations. To use a cliché, we are inspired to turn lemons into lemonade because that’s just part of our nature as human beings.

Unfortunately, we aren’t often taught or encouraged by our society to dig deep and use this part of who we are as a vital resource to move us forward. We don’t even know it’s there half the time, much less that the true self is our superpower! This is why we have to be curious and courageous (and if you’re here, reading this, I already know you are!). We must have the courage to embark on a journey of self-discovery that allows us to deeply explore our dreams, passions, and values; challenge limiting beliefs and ineffective habits that we’ve mistakenly taken at face value as “the way things are”; celebrate our true self as a magnificent being who is not fixed in space and time but is constantly evolving toward greater joy and contribution; and embrace our potential and purpose with enthusiasm and the willingness to learn and grow.

It’s your birthright to live as your true self, but it takes practice to do so. At the foundation of this coaching journal, this practice will come by embracing my Transformation Equation: Change = Vision + Choice + Action

Your Vision: Your True North

This week focuses on the first dimension of reinvention: vision. There’s a reason that vision comes first in the Transformation Equation. Vision is the secret to creating real and lasting change. If you want change to occur, first you need to have a clear vision of where you want to go. Then you need to be willing to make different choices and take different actions.

When we set our course in alignment with our vision, it has the power to transform us. Vision becomes a gravitational force pulling us toward its fulfillment. Vision is essential to the journey. It becomes the map that guides our trajectory. Once we know where we’re headed, we can make choices and take actions to support our vision. Every choice we make or action we take will either serve or sabotage our vision.

Here’s what’s so exciting about your vision: It doesn’t need to be created. Just like your true self, your vision already exists within you. It is likely a bit dormant or dusty, or it has been neglected as other things got prioritized and pushed to the top of the to-do list—but your vision is still there! We’re going to uncover it, unconceal it, and dust it off so it can actually get some fresh air and the light of our loving attention.

Why is knowing your vision so important? Well, because you simply cannot hope to become an effective practitioner of the art of change without identifying a fresh and clear vision that reflects your most authentic desires.

Many of us may feel disconnected from our vision because we have not plugged into our authentic desires. Even if we are not aware of it, we may be living someone else’s version of what a “good,” “normal,” “stable,” “successful” life looks like. A lot of times, a life that is bereft of a person’s authentic desires may look like a life in which nothing ever feels good enough . . . or some vital but unidentifiable ingredient is missing, sapping our life of its spice and zest. If this is true for you, it’s a sign you’re disconnected from your own definitions of truth and success, or that you’ve taken on someone else’s.

A powerful vision starts with powerful desires that actually move and excite you on a fundamental level. But if you’ve been disconnected from your desires for as long as you can remember, it’s time to become present and still. It’s time to give yourself the gift of your own undivided attention. So often, people are too busy being busy to check in with themselves, but this process requires your full permission to be here, now.

In fact, you may want to take a moment to slow down and put your hand over your heart as you simply feel into your body. Your body is the barometer of your truth.

We tend to think we’ll find answers in our head. We’re so used to overriding our body and what we feel, but our feelings have a lot of important information for us when we stop to consider them. (If it isn’t already obvious, you’ll be invited to check in with your body and how you really feel throughout the course of this coaching journal. This means you are not to be perfunctory! No more telling yourself and others, “I’m fine,” especially when that’s probably not the case. I want you to take the time to be very specific about what’s alive for you. Dig deep and be honest with yourself.)

The exercises in this section will give you permission to discover your desires and your vision, in all their glory. For now, I invite you to suspend needing to know how you’re going to get from here to there—a preoccupation that can extinguish the fire of transformation before you’ve even begun the journey!

Right now, it’s about opening up to wanting and receiving.

Powered by Desire

One of the reasons we get so disconnected from our authentic desires (and thus, our authentic vision and authentic self) is that we’re accustomed to tamping down our wanting. Often, we’ve already convinced ourselves we can’t have what we want, or we put someone else’s needs or desires ahead of our own. We’re even taught that it’s best to not have any wants—to be independent and self-sufficient, and to resist the need for help from the outside world. Also, we tend to get caught up in the fear that we can’t have what we want, so why bother? We convince ourselves it would be too painful to want something we’ll probably never end up getting. This is why, so often, when we do tap into a genuine desire, we dismiss it and give ourselves a long list of reasons why we aren’t worthy of it or why other people deserve it more than we do. These are all tricks our mind plays to keep us from feeling the magnitude of our desires.

We also operate under the assumption that life is a zero-sum game: “If someone else has, I go without, or if I have, someone else goes without.” We’re trained to believe that desire is selfish—and that it’s a bad or irresponsible thing! In truth, one of the greatest tools to support you on this journey is . . . selfishness. In fact, selfishness is the foundation for a fulfilling life. I’m talking about the kind of selfishness that fills your cup and allows you to ditch your people-pleasing ways, so you can get your own needs met. Until you know how to give yourself enough air, you’ll always be gasping just to keep going. You might tend to fear being selfish to such a degree that you end up becoming selfless—which ultimately means that with each giving act, you vanish. You end up abandoning yourself and your own needs.

Being selfish isn’t about one-upping or exploiting others. It’s about remembering the universe is an abundant place that’s more than capable of giving all of us what we truly want and need.

First, we have to become more comfortable with feeling and acknowledging desires—and recognizing that we are worthy of having them fulfilled. We have to fill our own pitcher before giving to anyone else, otherwise we’re just giving from an ever-depleted vessel.

This week, you’re going to give yourself full permission to want. The daily prompts at the end of this section will enable you to go into specific areas of your life (which I chose because they’re common themes that have arisen over and over among the thousands of people I’ve worked with), almost as if you are dividing your life into several slices of pie, so you can identify the vision that lives in that particular area. For the most thoroughness, be sure to spend at least 10 minutes on each daily prompt.

By allowing your vision to be bite-sized, digestible, and manageable, you ensure that you don’t overwhelm yourself. Taking incremental steps actually prepares you for the next step and sets you up to accomplish what you want. Procrastination is often the result of putting something off because it feels like it’s “too big.” In contrast, by getting connected to the very practical matter of what exactly needs to happen to move you closer to your desires, you end up building (and living!) an integrated, holistic vision—which will be your map, as well as your compass, throughout the next eight weeks.

There is no right or wrong here. Your vision is 100 percent yours. It’s your ideal set of circumstances that you have the power to activate when you take responsibility for what’s in your control. As you go about discovering your vision, allow yourself to be in the presence of passion, desire, and dreaming, even if you have a knee-jerk aversion to wanting. Give yourself free rein. This process is just for you!

As you explore your vision this week, I invite you to stay in the “I”. Remember, reinvention isn’t about dusting off someone else’s vision or modeling your vision on others’. It isn’t about curating your world so that it looks like your favorite influencer’s Instagram page. It’s time to stop idealizing others and to begin inhabiting your own life on your own terms. Build a vision that allows you to step into the center stage of your own life!

Journal Prompts:

1. Write down the area of your life you’d most like to change.
2. Give yourself permission for the vision you hold for this area of your life six months from now to arise and make some notes.
3. In order for your vision to be fulfilled, what do you choose to eliminate from your life?
4. In order for your vision to be fulfilled, what do you choose to integrate into your life?
5. What will be possible and available for you in your life when you live in alignment with your vision?

Allow yourself to breathe, to dream, to become…doesn’t that feel better already?

You may also enjoy browsing other articles and podcasts from Nancy Levin for Best Self Magazine.

The post The Art of Change: Transformation Through Journaling appeared first on BEST SELF.

Estimated reading time: 5 minutes

Breath and Prayer combined are medicine for the nervous system and the soul — and have myriad health benefits

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I love Jesus. But I also struggle with anxiety. One of my favorite tools I’ve discovered to help manage my anxiety while also strengthening my faith is breath prayer.

Christian breath prayers have been around for centuries, but they aren’t common in a lot of faith communities, so you may not be familiar with them. And depending on your background, you may be a bit leery of breathing techniques or contemplative prayer practices like breath prayer, as they may seem at first glance to be too much like a new age, humanistic, or Eastern spiritual practice.

I’d like to help demystify these simple but potentially powerful prayers for you.

Christian breath prayers combine the practice of deep breathing with prayers of meditation on God’s Word to help calm your body while focusing your mind on truth.

Breath prayers have been practiced by Christians throughout history. Some believe breath prayers began with the repetitive prayers of the Psalms. Others attribute the first breath prayers to the desert fathers and mothers as early as the 3^rd century. After years of intense persecution when many Christians were martyred, these men and women went out to the Egyptian desert to pray and meditate on God’s Word, often praying breath prayers throughout their days.

One of the earliest known breath prayers prayed by these early Christians, is known as “The Jesus Prayer” and is based on Luke 18:13: “Lord Jesus Christ, have mercy on me.” Breath prayers like this one have been carried through the centuries by Christians around the world, particularly the Orthodox Christians in Russia and Greece. (A more thorough history of breath prayers can be found on p.18 of Pray Like You Breathe, by Houston Heflin).

Breath prayers are typically based on Scripture and are very short, broken into two halves, and prayed in rhythm with the breath: the first half is prayed while inhaling, and the second half while exhaling. 

Breath prayers work as an effective tool for calming anxiety because they combine two powerful practices: breathing and prayer.

The practice of deep breathing techniques, or breathwork, has many proven physical health benefits. Numerous studies have shown its effectiveness in reducing stress and assisting with pain management, as well as reducing anxiety, depression, and insomnia.

Breathing is often called the bridge between the brain and the body. Breathing gives us a direct connection to the vagus nerve in our parasympathetic nervous system — the system that regulates our stress response. Changing our breathing by taking slow, deep breaths can directly affect the signals being sent from the vagus nerve to the brain, telling the brain that we are not in distress and easing the body’s stress response.

In his book, Anatomy of the Soul, Dr. Curt Thompson writes, “By controlling our breath, we can willfully influence the brain and the autonomic nervous system and literally change our mind-body state. By changing the pattern of our breathing, we change the pattern of the information being sent to the brain. In other words, how often, how fast, and how much you inflate your lungs directly affects the brain and how it operates.”

Just as breathing is critical to our physical health (we literally cannot live without breathing), prayer is critical to our spiritual health.

Prayer gives us a direct connection to God. Breathing may be a bridge between the brain and the body, but prayer is a bridge from our heart to His.

In many ways, prayer is like a spiritual breath:

Breath has a rhythm to it, a cadence of inhales and exhales. Prayer has a rhythm too, a cadence of inhaling God’s grace and exhaling our fears.

Breathing can help reset & realign your nervous system. Prayer can help reset & realign your soul.

Deep breathing can calm the brain & the body. Prayer can calm the mind & the soul.

When you connect breathwork to prayer, you have a powerful tool that can bridge the brain, body, mind and soul, especially in times of stress. We slow down our breathing because this literally calms our physical body, and we focus on God’s Word because this reorients our mind toward Christ.

And the best part? Breath prayers are simple and easy to learn. If you can breathe, you can pray a breath prayer.

Want to give a breath prayer a try?

Begin with the breath:

Inhale slowly and deeply through your nose for 5 seconds, then exhale slowly and fully through your mouth for 5 seconds. Repeat this a couple of times as you focus on the slow and steady rhythm of your breath.

Now, begin to pray. You can start with one of my favorite breath prayers, from Psalm 23:1:

Inhale: Lord, You are my shepherd,
Exhale: I have all that I need.

Breathe in deeply as you focus your thoughts on: Lord, You are my shepherd.

Exhale slowly as you focus your thoughts on: I have all that I need.

Repeat this several times, keeping your breathing slow and steady and meditating on the words of the prayer. Try praying this breath prayer throughout the day. Meditate on the words and listen to what God may be telling you through His Word as you pray to Him.

Give breath prayers a try for a few days in a row and pay attention to how they are affecting your overall mental health. Breath prayers aren’t a cure for anxiety, nor are they a replacement for professional medical treatment or therapy, but they can be a powerful tool that benefits your physical, mental, and spiritual health. So go ahead, take a deep breath, and discover that every breath can be an invitation to pray.

You may also enjoy reading Breath Your Way to Better Health, by Natasha Zolotareva.

The post Breath Prayer: An Ancient Practice to Calm Anxiety and Strengthen Your Faith appeared first on BEST SELF.

Estimated reading time: 15 minutes

Activating your sixth sense, your intuition, is both an invitation and a homecoming — a return to your divine state of being

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Our world is at a tipping point. Recovering from the upheaval of the COVID pandemic, rocking and rolling through economic disruption, and reeling at every turn from daily climate disasters. It is undoubtably apparent that we humans need to do something different to create a livable future.

But as Albert Einstein once said, “We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them.” It is time that we begin to seek and expand into new ways of thinking, creating, and solving the problems we face in ourselves, with others, and on our planet. The missing link? Incorporating our intuition and adding it into our way of thinking. Einstein was onto something. He understood the merit of this necessary ingredient for problem-solving.

If we want to shift our world, we have to shift our relationship to our intuitive selves.

Unfortunately, for many years, as an intuitive and spiritual teacher I have felt as though I was teaching out in the wilderness, publicly considered a ‘weirdo’ and dismissed as ‘woo-woo’, misunderstood — my message wrongly perceived as having no basis in science or reality or considered ‘practical’ in any way.

Fast forward to 2022, however, where these dismissive perceptions are thankfully beginning to change. Science now acknowledges that humans have six senses and that our intuition is an internal energetic awareness of vibration, or ‘vibes’. This sense is centered in the heart, gut, and possibly even skin, and is far more perceptive and sensitive than our external five senses are.

For example, scientist and author Gregg Braden goes so far as to suggest the heart is 5000 times more acute than our five physical senses. Our sixth sense, which I call ‘our vibes’, keeps us connected to our spiritual self instead of only our physical self. It serves as an inner radar that guides us in meaningful ways when we learn to not only access but trust it. It works to keep us safe, out of harm’s way, and protected from danger in the world. It offers guidance on our health and emotional wellbeing and move us to create meaning and purpose in our lives. 

In other words, our sixth sense is the ‘sensitivity chip’ we need to keep us faithful to who we are, grounded in where we are, conscious of what we contribute, and interested in our impact and influence on our planet as we travel through life.

This sense brings out the best in who we are: our awareness, compassion, creativity, and contribution. Sadly, this sense has been ignored by the majority of people, thus leading to the problems we face today. By acknowledging and using our intuitive intelligence, our sixth sense, we will find our way to innovative, creative, balanced healing solutions to all the problems we face today.

In my book, Trust Your Vibes: Living an Extraordinary Life by Activating your Intuitive Intelligence, I help you activate this great superpower. Intuition is not something to develop. Instead, it is an inner light of awareness that we need to turn on…and leave on. 

This light flickers off and on in most people because it is natural. The problem is that intuition has been generally ignored, dismissed, and devalued up until recently — instead of followed.

Now is the time to change this once and for all.

Recognizing and activating our intuitive intelligence and giving it our proper attention, respect, and cooperation will radically transform our lives and the planet.

Our sixth sense is our solution sense. It guides us where mere physical observation and outward awareness fail. It leads us to insights and understanding that open the way for better decisions, interactions, and creations. It is the change in thinking we need.

I believe that activating our sixth sense is no longer optional in life. On the contrary, it is an essential source of guidance for all human beings who wish to thrive, create, and positively contribute in life. The best part about activating and following your vibes is that it immediately balances, grounds, and reassures you. Better yet, it adds a sprinkle of mystery and magic back into your days and makes your life more joyful and genuinely fun. 

We are all hard-wired with a sixth sense. It is ready to serve you the minute you decide to let it. Yes, Einstein was right. We cannot solve problems with the same thinking that got us into them in the first place. We can solve them, however, by using our superpower, our intuition, and allowing it to lead us to the best version of ourselves and the best creations in our lives.

Trusting your vibes will help make that possible for you. Let me explain more…

The following is excerpted from Sonia Choquette’s new book, Trust Your Vibes: Live An Extraordinary Life By Activating Your Intuitive Intelligence, ©Hay House, June 2022

Over the past 50 years, I’ve taught millions of people to have an extraordinary life. An ‘extraordinary life’ is available to everyone because it is our natural birthright. It isn’t something we hack into with our clever intellect. It’s something we surrender into. An extraordinary life comes from connecting with your authentic Self, your Divine spirit, your inner guidance, and letting this part of you become the navigator of your life.

The only way to live an extraordinary life is to trust your vibes, the turn-by-turn directions coming from your spirit. This means letting go of the safety of the known, the place of certainty and control that keeps you small, stuck, and limited. It means taking a leap of faith and doing something different. An extraordinary life asks you to step into the unknown, where you will meet an entire constellation of hidden support that lies far beyond our limited logic and perception. This leap is not into the void. It is a leap back into your true Self.

Trusting your vibes is trusting your empowered spirit and letting go of the fear that keeps you from living authentically. Stop for a moment and recognize how often your true spirit, experienced as your vibes, has already successfully guided you in life. These same vibes will continue to guide you to live your best life as long as you trust them to do so.

The first step in living an intuitively guided life is to recognize that you are a spiritual being, that you are naturally designed to be intuitive, that you feel your intuition through ‘vibes’ — and that trusting your vibes is necessary if you want to experience your best life.

Some people dismiss vibes as ‘woo-woo’. This is the worst decision you could ever make because ‘woo-woo’ is the way to go. What people call woo-woo is transcending logic and tuning in to the voice of your spirit, your true Self, your Divine personal power. We all need a little woo-woo to rise above the fray of an ordinary life of struggle and survival, to free ourselves from the tyranny that comes with endlessly trying to figure things out, and to happily get on our way to living a life of wonder, grace, and flow.

What Are Vibes?

Your vibes are the voice of your authentic Self, your spirit (as opposed to your inauthentic ego Self) guiding you through life. Your spirit does not communicate to you through thoughts or words. Instead, it transmits information energetically, through your body, just like your other senses do. You don’t think vibes. You feel them. And I don’t mean ‘feel’ as in feeling an emotion. I mean sensing subtle energetic vibrations or signals that convey a more accurate understanding of what is happening in your life than meets the eye or is evident at the moment. Your vibes work like energetic traffic signals, such as red, yellow, and green, or like merge, caution, and stop signs, depending on the message. Your spirit communicates like a satellite GPS radar, helping you navigate the road ahead by sending advance warnings and helpful directions as you go. Once you become aware of vibes, you will begin to seek out these signals from your spirit to guide you.

Like road signs, vibes are easy to miss if you aren’t paying attention or are distracted. And you don’t want to miss them, because if you do, you may get turned around, led off course, and even completely lost. Through vibes, your spirit quickly tells you how to get to where you want to go in life in the most direct way possible. Your spirit also points out marvels along the way that you might otherwise not see because you didn’t even know they were there. And vibes, of course, also keep you from crashing. That’s why it’s important to be on the alert for vibes and follow your inner signals.

Many great people who have changed the world for the better have attributed their phenomenal success to somehow embracing the woo-woo transmissions coming their way. Thomas Edison once said, “The first step is an intuition — and comes with a burst.” Oprah Winfrey said, “Learning to trust your instincts, using your intuitive sense of what’s best for you, is paramount for any lasting success. I’ve trusted the still, small voice of intuition my entire life. And the only time I’ve made mistakes is when I didn’t listen.”

But the person who summed up trusting your vibes better than any other is Albert Einstein when he said, “The intuitive mind is a sacred gift. The rational mind is a faithful servant. We have created a society that honors the servant and has forgotten the gift.”

Intuitively guided people use all six senses and put the sixth sense first. They know they are spiritual beings, co-creators with the Universe, here to connect with their heart’s desires and contribute to the world’s betterment. So, they let their spirit lead in confidence and follow its guidance without hesitation, knowing that if they do, everything will turn out better than they could have possibly imagined.

These people recognize the spirit in themselves and others and seek to connect with that spirit in every way. A person who trusts their vibes is deeply attuned to the body, listens for the signals from spirit, and expects positive guidance and outcomes every day.

Intuitively guided people feel secure because they are connected to their sacred gift Einstein spoke of, their Universal Light, and while they may have flickering moments of doubt, they know they will always receive Divine support to help them overcome it. You can be one of these extraordinary people by trusting your vibes, beginning today…right here in this very moment.

Quiz: How Intuitive Are You Now?

Let’s start by recognizing how presently attuned and responsive you already are to your vibes. Complete the following questionnaire, answering with either rarely, sometimes or often, after each statement.

1. When I’m with someone, I easily understand how they feel.

2. I love to physically move and exercise.

3. I listen to my gut feelings, even if they don’t make sense.

4. I’m aware of when someone is lying to me or manipulating me.

5. I can tell if I’m on the wrong track, and I change it.

6. I know when someone is misleading me.

7. I tend to get overly involved with other people’s problems.

8. I get immediate answers even when I don’t fully understand the problem.

9. I change my plans quickly if I get a bad feeling.

10. I share what I have and don’t worry about having enough.

11. I feel protected in some way, as though someone were watching over me.

12. I can say no even when it’s difficult.

13. I express my true feelings, even when they’re unpopular.

14. I trust myself to make the final decision.

15. I’m careful whom I ask for advice.

16. I like to take risks and try new things.

17. I take care of my body.

18. I pay attention to people and listen closely when they speak.

19. I know things before they happen.

20. I often think of people and then they call me the same day.

21. I sense whether people and situations are good for me.

22. I’m a creative thinker and love to doodle or play when I have a free moment.

23. I have a great sense of humor.

24. There are a lot of coincidences in my life.

25. I believe I have helpers on the Other Side, such as guardian angels.

26. I’m spontaneous and love to dance.

When you’ve completed the questionnaire, go back and look at your answers. Give yourself one point for each Rarely, two points for each Sometimes, and three points for each Often.

If your score was 26–39:

You’re not presently in the habit of noticing your intuition — but this will change rapidly when you use the practices and tools in my book. As you open to your intuitive Self, your sense of adventure and vitality will increase significantly.

If your score was 40–59:

You’re already quite tuned in to your sixth sense, although you may not call it that. You may just consider yourself ‘hypersensitive’ or ‘lucky’. As you work with these practices, you’ll experience an increasing sense of safety, guidance, and creativity, and your life will become much more exciting and satisfying.

If your score was 60–78:

You probably realize that your sixth sense is exceptionally developed, but you may not trust it completely. As you practice the tools in this book, you’ll develop the confidence you need to begin living the joyful life of a fully awakened six-sensory being. You’ll learn how to navigate life with grace and ease and soar above problems rather than struggle through them.

Start by Listening to Your Body

Perhaps the most immediate way to tune in to your vibes is by listening to the energetic feedback of your physical body. Your head listens to your ego, which filters out and distorts information, believes what is not true, or convinces you that it’s okay to do what’s harmful. Your body, however, listens to your spirit, which tells the truth. It honestly and accurately reflects how energy impacts you on a vibrational level through physical signals, such as aches, pains, flutters, ripples, tightness, fatigue, or even sickness to keep you safe and aligned with your spirit. Of course, the signals change depending on what they are trying to tell you.

The good news is, not only is the body an honest, intuitive channel, it’s also straightforward. In other words, if you’re on the right track doing what supports your soul and spirit, then you’re going to feel more at ease, full of life, relaxed, and peaceful. Your heart will open and beat steadily. Your energy will increase, and you’ll be relatively free from stress. If, on the other hand, you’re making choices that compromise or betray your spirit, or if you find yourself in circumstances that threaten or disrupt your energetic wellbeing, your heart will pound, your stress will rise, your sleep may be harder to come by, and your body may even hurt.

If you ignore these signals for a long time, your physical body will turn up the volume and try even harder to get your attention. These louder signals result in greater tension, irritability, insomnia, reactivity, anxiety, or any number of little to bigger physical disturbances. And if you ignore your body’s signals completely, a ‘red alert’ siren turns on in the way of more significant physical disturbance, and there’s a good chance that you could become ill or depressed.

Woo-Woo Workout

Try something I call a ‘vibe check’. By this I mean run a mental scanner over yourself from head to toe and see if you’re receiving any signals. Do you sense any psychic telegrams in the form of aches, pains, tingles, illness, or tension? If so, ask the feeling directly what it is telling you. Then answer out loud. Don’t overthink it and try to figure it out, because you’ll get stuck back in your head. Instead, sound it out by speaking directly from the heart and do it quickly. The faster you acknowledge what you’re feeling in a vibe check, the more precise the answer coming through will be. Be curious about the message and let your body do the listening.

While taking your shower, vibe check again. Water washes away mental debris and interference and leaves your mind quiet so your heart can be heard. Something in you opens while under running water that frees the intuitive voice inside. Mentally scan your body from the feet up, slowly. Check to see if you notice anything at all, however slight, that is trying to tell you something. Remember, vibes are subtle. If you pause or hesitate at any part of your body, your body is trying to tell you something. Instead, ask it directly what’s going on. Ask what it wants you to know, what is essential that you haven’t noticed before, and what it needs. Then let it know that you’re now paying attention.

If you curse, reject, or criticize your body regularly, please stop, because you’re really hurting yourself by attacking your primary intuitive receiver. Your body is your ally, so quit diminishing, poisoning, harming, or ignoring it. Don’t shoot the messenger — after all, your body can only work with what you give it, and it’s just trying to protect you either from yourself or from something in your world.

If you have a particular physical challenge, ask your body what you can do to ease the problem. Don’t dismiss what you feel as if it’s only your imagination when your body talks to you either — even if it is, what you’re imagining will have meaning. Instead, pay close attention and voice these body messages out loud so that you can hear what your body is saying. The more you acknowledge your body’s signals out loud, the clearer and more precise your body’s messages will be.

Vibe check often throughout the day. Be alert for any tension, tightness, rumbles, tickles, flickers, uneasiness, pain, loss, or surge of energy, or fits of restlessness — and see if they correlate to the situation you’re in. For example, does the tightness in your chest correspond to entering your workplace? Does the burst of energy you feel have anything to do with the great new friend you just met or the class you enrolled in? Notice how your body communicates the red and green lights of intuitive feedback, and don’t censor or dismiss a thing.

Always Trust Your Vibes

Trusting your vibes creates a partnership with the Universe that moves you through each day as though it were a dance with the Divine. What you will discover when surrendering control over to your Divine spirit, the Universe will partner with you — and together, you’ll create a life of grace, harmony, simplicity, and abundance. While this may seem far-fetched, risky, and unlikely to the five-sensory person, for the intuitive and soulful person, this is your natural design, guaranteed to make your life better and better.

You may also enjoy Kristen Noel’s interview with Sonia Choquette.

The post Your Sixth Sense: Trusting Your Vibes to Lead an Extraordinary Life appeared first on BEST SELF.

Estimated reading time: 9 minutes

Reframing our relationship to darkness can help us see it as a benevolent spiritual teacher and avail us of a limitless field of possibility

—

So many of us have been taught to fear the dark, the unknown, the unwanted, the unfamiliar. When the terrain we’re standing on feels unstable or wobbly, our conditioned tendency is to try to get back to seemingly solid ground, the familiar, the light, that which we can label and rationally understand. Yet no matter who we are, being human is filled with uncertainty…and together we are facing a time collectively of unprecedented change and global uncertainty.  

So, what can darkness teach us?

When we recognize that spiritual growth is about letting go entirely of the familiar shore, without yet seeing the next shore, in order to open to something more…we open our hearts to the luminous darkness. What do I mean by darkness? Darkness is not the absence of light, but something deeper…more elemental. Think of darkness as the field of all possibility. The mystery from which we all come and to which we will all return. The fertile spaciousness that is the backdrop of every moment. The unformed. Unseen. Invisible. Emergent. The yin restorative aspect of nature and consciousness.

Consider the life experiences you may have had recognizing the teacher of darkness.

Perhaps you’ve learned to embrace more of who you are, through listening to and welcoming the deeper darker undercurrents of your internal experience. Perhaps you’ve experienced a “dark night,” a time when an illness or life change turned things upside down but simultaneously opened your heart in such a way that has never since been closed. Maybe you’ve learned to listen to and trust your inner compass through having to navigate the groundless unknown. Or perhaps you’ve recognized the teacher of darkness through practices of slowing down, and mindfully pausing from the busy human world. As meditation teaches us, simply by surrendering to presence, we remember the dark, receptive aspect of being as the seat of authentic power.

Wisdom traditions, across the globe throughout history, have recognized the teacher of darkness as an instigator of spiritual growth. But in today’s world of bright artificial lights, speed, and the rational mind, we seem to have forgotten the wisdom of darkness. I believe we all crave the deeply restorative message that darkness can provide us. I believe we’re tired of this habit of pushing away one half of our human experience. I feel for all of us in this age of change…and want with all my heart for humanity to learn to navigate the unknown with Wisdom. Compassion. Clear Seeing.

I sense, in the unrelenting disruption of our times, a collective call to re-learn, to journey through the dark, to deeply listen, sense, attune, and feel our way through the unknown — rather than to fear it. 

I spent the first year of the global pandemic finishing a new book, Luminous Darkness: An Engaged Buddhist Approach to Embracing the Unknown. While I was at first resistant to the calling I felt to write about darkness, I recognized the undeniable importance of this topic for all of us in these times. Through decades of spiritual practice and activism, seven years spent as a Zen Buddhist monastic, time immersed in animism and shadow work, and one who has navigated illness and loss, I’ve come to perceive darkness as a benevolent spiritual teacher. A powerful guide paving a radical path to wholeness.

It is in meeting the unknown that we remember the wisdom of our bodies beyond the rational mind. It is in befriending the night — physically and metaphorically — that we remember an inner strength more steadfast than we’re aware of. It is by learning to rest in the mind of “I don’t know” that we can awaken to a relational intelligence that includes the entire cosmos.

It is through turning towards, rather than away, from what we label dark within ourselves that the sacred messenger of shadow gets revealed.

Here is an excerpt from Luminous Darkness:

From Luminous Darkness: An Engaged Buddhist Approach to Embracing the Unknown by Deborah Eden Tull © 2022 by Deborah Eden Tull. Reprinted in arrangement with Shambhala Publications, Inc. Boulder, CO. www.shambhala.com

[pg. 15–18]

Redefining Darkness

I live in the lush, dense, dark, temperate rainforest of Western North Carolina. In the spring and summer, when the mountains explode with the green of trees, ferns, herbs, fungi, and flowers, my husband and I enjoy exploring the deep off-trail woods. There is no known direction as we walk. No set human-created path to follow. We let our intuitions guide us, or we find a meandering creek to lead the way. The forest is wildly dynamic, pregnant with life, and we walk, barefoot, among leaves, pine needles, rocks, earth, and wet marsh. We move slowly and with care, guided by curiosity, wonder, and body awareness. The terrain is a balance of nocturnal shade contrasted with patches of golden sunlight bursting with photosynthesis. The forest expresses nature’s stillness and complexity, harmony and chaos, in perfect balance. Linear time dissolves as we then rest for what seems like hours under the sheltering shade of the trees.

Walking off-trail through a dense forest is the metaphor I will use for our journey into endarkenment. There is no existing human-made trail for understanding darkness. A brightly lit path with signs pointing out the direction will never allow us to sense and feel our way into the mystery itself. Additionally, everyone’s journey will be different and unique.

The forest wilderness is a metaphor for both the spiritual journey and our collective journey through today’s global uncertainty.

We can no longer rely on our existing orientation to guide us. The challenges we face call for the development of new relational forms of knowing and navigation. The forms we seek, however, already exist within each of us.

Like a thicketed forest, the terrain of darkness can only be traversed by sensing, feeling, inquiring, and listening with our whole bodies, being both curious and humble at the same time. A dissertation that “sheds light” on darkness would merely offer a path into the light or the known. The creative challenge for me as a dharma teacher and writer is to invite you into an embodied exploration.

For those of you who are wondering, What is endarkenment? What exactly do you mean by darkness? I will soon offer definitions and propose fresh ways of perceiving darkness. By so doing, I will encourage the spirit of possibility rather than conclusion.

The architecture of this book will invite you to question your existing associations with darkness—both physical and metaphorical. We will explore some of the emotional, psychological, spiritual, and ecological repercussions of rejecting darkness. We will then invoke the spiritual teachings revealed by divine darkness, ultimately embracing an expansively larger perspective where dark and light exist in partnership within ourselves and our world. Finally, I will explore the inspiring invitation that endarkenment offers as we face unprecedented global change. I encourage you to let each chapter open your perception to different and fresh dimensions of what darkness is.

The first step to understanding endarkenment is to become curious about darkness beyond your familiar associations. Be open to what you don’t know that you don’t know . . . about darkness and light, about yourself, about the mystery itself. We can learn to meet the unknown and the experience of not knowing with an open and humble heart, much more full of wonder and willingness than fear.

Endarkenment celebrates 5 aspects of embodied meditation and spirituality:

1. Our awakening through embodiment and earth connection. Only by bringing our awareness down into our bodies and affirming our connection with the earth, away from the realm of concepts and ideas, do we remember who we really are.

2. The restoration of our ability to see clearly with the heart by surrendering to receptivity and by taking responsibility for the lens through which we are perceiving. I am not referring solely to the organ of the heart, though it’s an extraordinary organ of relational intelligence. I am speaking of the heart of our beings, the sacred integration of body-heart-mind accessed through meditation.

3. The reclamation of our true nature or original consciousness by releasing hierarchical perception. All hierarchical thinking is a distortion in consciousness, as I will explore in this book. There is no exception. Hierarchy was invented by humankind, and it has been passed down through the generations.

4. The deepening of our relationship with ourselves and others and our intercommunicative relationship with nature, the visible and invisible matrix of life. Endarkenment invites us into multinatural awareness, interbeing through pathways for communication and collaboration with life. These pathways already exist within our bodies. While earth-based and animistic traditions have celebrated multinatural awareness throughout history, contemporary society is limited by a human-centered and technology-centered paradigm.

5. The willingness to meet all life—including shadows—with fierce compassion. Embodied meditation embraces all aspects of our humanity, rather than trying to transcend dark to get to the light.

* * *

Experiential Practice: Meeting Darkness

Please prepare to pause and close your eyes for a few minutes. Set the intention, with eyes closed, to take in a few deep, conscious breaths. Feel the air as it enters your body, fills your body, and leaves your body. Be aware of your body’s connection to gravity and sense the earth beneath you. Once you have settled into darkened stillness, notice with curiosity what is moving through your internal landscape. Go slowly . . . noticing your body, mind, and feelings.

When you are ready, keep your eyes closed and become aware of the outer landscape of sound, temperature, and the way the space you are in feels.

Then, continue to remain in the darkened stillness and allow yourself to become aware of the inner and outer landscapes at the same time.

Notice how, void of visual perception, all of your other senses awaken. In the darkness, our perception opens beyond our habitual visual orientation to life.

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If we’re willing to question our assumptions about what darkness is and instead open up to its radiant invitation, new but ancient pathways for understanding can unfurl within us.

In my own life journey, it has been the darkness that has nourished me to bloom, to flourish, to embrace the full spectrum of my experience, and to reclaim the wholeness that cannot be accessed by reaching only to the light.

Like dark soil protects a germinating seed…or the dark cocoon tenderly holds the caterpillar in metamorphosis…it is darkness that invokes the dreamer within to emerge and guide us beyond the mind of limitation and separation. 

To join me in exploring Luminous Darkness or learn more about my new book, connect with me online: E-mail | Website | Instagram | Facebook | Youtube

Click here to donate to Mindful Living Revolution via Paypal

You may also enjoy reading Lost and Found: Bewilderment as an Invitation to Transformation, by Jeffrey Davis.

The post Luminous Darkness: A Radical Path to Embracing the Unknown appeared first on BEST SELF.

Estimated reading time: 9 minutes

Interior design is about more than aesthetics — it’s an opportunity to reveal and heal our authentic selves and our homes

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I bought my first home in 2014. It was a complete gut job. Along with the help of my contractor dad and realtor mom, I soon designed a work of art. From custom cabinets to designer flooring, no detail was spared — the house was impeccable. People would regularly remark how it looked like something straight out of a décor magazine. And I was truly overjoyed with the outcome.

But as the years went by, I started to realize that something was off. 

I’ll never forget the day my first intuitive mentor walked into my home and asked me if it was mine. I said yes, but she said the energy didn’t match up. She was right. This home I bought and rebuilt was not ‘mine’. On paper it was, but in my heart, it wasn’t reflective of me.

Cue the Pandemic.

Like most of the world, when the pandemic hit, I was relegated to my home — suddenly seeing things I hadn’t seen before, feeling things I had rushed by previously. I no longer spent long days away at work or weekends out and about.  Like everyone else, I had to sit in my house and experience what I had denied. The realizations came fast.

The truth was that I had given away permission and ownership of my home years before. In fact, I had never truly claimed the space.

True, I paid for the home. True, I picked out most of the design. True, I lived in it. But even more true, I did it all as a child would — by asking permission from my parents. I required their stamp of approval for everything that transpired in the home. I couldn’t even hire a plumber without running it by them first.

I was now stuck in this place I had helped build and felt trapped. I had allowed the outside world and the opinions of others to dictate my moves. I didn’t listen to my heart when it begged me to move on. Instead, I pushed it all aside telling myself it was a great investment and I should stop complaining, I was lucky to have such a beautiful place to live. Still there was quiet unrest within me.

But a truth once acknowledged is hard to ignore.

Unable to escape these internal realities, I appealed to my husband. Together we ultimately decided that the best course of action was to move on. And move on, we did. Across country far from the forces that were holding me hostage. This decision would free me and simultaneously open a tumultuous emotional journey of healing and reclaiming that I was ready to face. Within two years, we moved from California to Tennessee.

Finally, away from the crushing realities of my old home, I was able to gain some perspective.  Ownership and self-agency were not the only things missing from this previous home. What was missing in my home was me,my innermost self. And I had to accept that I had been complicit in this. What I had created was the outward expectation of what I was ‘supposed’ to be, and in doing this, I had silenced my spirit. 

Now free, it was not to be silenced again.

The mere act of buying our new house in Tennessee was one of pure intuitive guidance. I tuned into my spirit and turned off all outer influences. No one even knew about our purchase until it was signed, sealed and a moving date secured. The fact that the home was bought sight unseen was negligible. 

With two kids two years old and under, plus our dog, we drove across country and straight to our new home — and it couldn’t have been more perfect. Now that didn’t mean there was not work to be done, paint to be freshened, carpet to be installed, but it was perfect in the fact that it gave me and my family freedom to flourish…to express who we were and to become. 

A living room should capture the light and fresh air to create an intentional space for entertaining and living at ease. The tall ceilings, bright colors and minimalism provide the perfect backdrop for open concept living.

My husband and I had one motive in our move, to start OUR life. Not the life anyone expected us to live or wanted us to live, but the life WE wanted for ourselves and our children. We set that intention and we never once wavered in it.

Come to find out, the power of intention is remarkable. So remarkable, in fact, that our move, our new life, and everything that has transpired in between led me to start a company that is designed to help others find truth in their own homes and their hearts.

Where there is discomfort in our lives, there is also a path being illuminated. I created The Intentional Home by Courtney Meyers to help build intentional interiors for inspired living.

What does that mean?

It means, crafting homes in a way that’s as beautiful and unique as the people who live in them so that they can live an authentically comfortable life in style. The most important part of the whole equation is the individual — not the design choices; the fabrics, finishings and furnishings.

Clean lines and designer finishes combined with a touch of glamour elevate this master bath to create an on-trend façade. By bringing in the bright lights and mirrors, the room scales much larger than it is and makes up for the lack of natural light while making the most of the space in design and function.

When it comes to intentional interiors, it’s important to start with the person you’re designing for.  We all carry a history, a story, a past with us (as my story so clearly demonstrates). We hold onto objects from these times in our lives. We cultivate the energy around us. And we find ourselves believing what we’ve put out into the universe, or even worse, allowing ourselves to be guided by ideals other than our own.

So, what I find is that when someone wants to change up their surroundings, whether it be their décor or entire home, it stems from something much deeper. What they’re currently living in doesn’t serve them anymore. And more often than not, it’s their innermost self — pushing to be recognized; something needs to be heard.

By doing an intuitive deep dive, together, we get to the heart of what needs to change so that one’s true spirit can come alive and thrive in a supporting environment. This unique design approach combines coaching, home healing and intention setting to create an inspired living plan.

One client of mine came to me with a desire to ‘freshen up’ her kitchen. But what she didn’t realize was her kitchen wasn’t the issue. It was all the stuff she had squirreled away inside it, and even more so, her reasons for keeping it all. Not only was the mental load weighing on her, the actual physical space and the items in it were creating an anxiety-inducing environment. The walls were literally closing in on her. 

A gourmet kitchen, designed with the cook in mind. A perfect retreat to nourish your creativity and spirit while creating a welcoming space for family & friends. Every home should be equipped with a beautiful central gathering place, such as this.

Once all the stuff was removed, it was as if my client could finally breathe and her room and life were filled with oxygen. She could examine her space with fresh eyes and begin to take more control over her surroundings…and her life. She could decide what stayed, what went — what worked, what didn’t. Our work is not yet done, but we’ve cleared one major hurdle, and we’re one step closer to the fun part…décor. 

Buying new lamps or painting a wall is definitely the simpler route to take when you think of redecorating. However, I have found, from my own experience creating a beautiful façade only gets you so far. The truth finds a way to emerge through the cracks. Until you allow your spirit to come forth, you will not be at peace in your home — and you will constantly be looking outward for ways to make it better.

A home truly comes alive when its occupants are honest, real and open. When they not only honor their own truths but also those of the home. It’s a symbiotic relationship that allows for a beautiful flow of energy and intentional living — one that will be felt by you and anyone you welcome through your doors.

When we bring intention back into our homes and our lives, we give ourselves the permission to live at our absolute best, I am living proof. This work is living proof — and getting to help others reconnect to their spirit and environment feels like the best job in the world. Is your home speaking to you? If so, lean into its whisper and listen to your spirit. Trust me, you won’t regret it.

You may also enjoy reading 4 Tips for Designing a Positive and Calming Home, by Laura May

The post The Intentional Home: Leveraging Design to Redecorate Our Lives appeared first on BEST SELF.

Estimated reading time: 6 minutes

Strategies and solutions for a post-pandemic world and a reminder that it’s OK to not know what to do

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One Monday morning last April I awoke with a deep ache in my bones. The week before, I’d encountered two unexpected losses in my leadership and organizational consulting business: I was hired for a retreat I intrinsically knew I wasn’t right for, and it didn’t go well. Another client was going through a merger and their coaching budget was slashed. And then two contracts had successfully come to an end. I was bereft.

But there was something else. Having been a healing/educational entrepreneur since 1998, I’m used to setbacks and cycles in my business. I could sense there was a desperate feeling lurking beyond the normal loss, but I couldn’t pinpoint exactly what it was. Everyone else I talked to, even friends who were coming off huge successes like selling their first book, seemed to be feeling it too, saying some version of the same thing:

I am not okay. Depressed. I can’t shake the despair.

No matter what side of the political spectrum you’re on—with war abroad, destructive wildfires and tornadoes, a country in aggressive polarization, inflation and mass shootings—we can all agree: the news is bad. There’s no way to prevent yourself from being affected by it. And still, I sensed this feeling of I am not okay—echoed by my clients, my family, colleagues—was related to the news, but not completely.

What was this underlying common malaise we were all experiencing?

I started returning to my spiritual practice in the morning, a few minutes of breathing, maybe a little chant, followed by writing letters to myself. And here’s what started coming through:

You’ve never recovered from a pandemic before.

This is what it looks like to wake up to what you’ve been through, even as it continues.

It’s okay to not know how to do it, or what comes next.

And you can’t go back.

I sat with the message, especially the parts about it being okay to not know; and that I can’t go back. As I called upon my inner strength to help me navigate those waters, the heavy feelings started to shift.

With all the losses we’ve had over the past few years, perhaps the loss of life as we knew it, and how we thought it would go, is the one that is most personal for many of us. Who we were and how we lived our lives before Covid-19 will never be the same. Trying to wrangle myself back into a shape and life that no longer existed, by thinking I know how to do this, was keeping me from finding new ways of being and connecting to the world.

In late June when I heard the news of the Roe vs Wade overturn, I worried that I would slink back into a morass of despair. But I heard the words again: it’s okay to not know what to do. Trust yourself. I fell into two days of feeling absolutely gutted, but I knew that on the other side of those feelings, my renewed excitement about life and knowledge of what to do from an aligned place would bobble to the surface. And that’s what happened. After donating to two organizations that help elect democratic women in office (Emily’s List and Emerge America), I followed the impetus to share these internal tools I’d developed, in a personal program I call the Covid Reset.

For a while I’d been thinking about forming a group to help people master their Covid reset. But then I thought, who wants to spend another hour or so with a bunch of heads in Zoom squares?! Certainly not me.

So, while a group process may be in the future, for now, I want to take people on an intimate journey (maybe with Zoom, but with all the attention on them) to discover more deeply what is happening inside and teach them how to access tools that would work specifically for them, with their lives and their schedule, because we’re all different. And that’s how the Covid Reset was born, a private three-month weekly training to set yourself on a path to healthy reemergence, in which you learn to trust yourself in an entirely new way.

Because the Covid Reset is tailored to fit each participant, everyone will get something different out of it. However, there are some things to be expected as I guide people through my 3-stage experience that I call The Crux, The Tools and The Strategy.

The Crux

As we talk and I listen to the layers in your recent stories, get to know the players in your world, and the circumstances of your life, rich insights will emerge. By the end of the month, we’ll have developed a rapport and be able to name the central theme or core issue underlying it all. A generic example: you’re operating from a sense of “not enough.” This lays the groundwork for: 

The Tools

I’ll listen to what you rely on to get by, and together we’ll see what’s missing, what you honestly don’t know how to create and where you have hidden skills that you can transfer towards navigating your world more effectively. For example: A Mom who thought she had zero financial skills realized that she knew where every stray sock in the house was, and where it belonged. When she transferred that skill of knowing where things are really at and where they need to go to her general finances, her relationship with money completely changed. 

The Strategy

We’ll focus on how you want to feel and who you want to be moving forward, building the skills, strength and resilience to birth that vision.

Of course, if you’ve ever been in a healing or growth-oriented process, it may not happen quite so linearly. But I can guarantee that each participant will end the Reset with increased clarity, freedom and feelings of agency. 

When I discussed my Covid Reset idea with a dear friend, she asked, “So are you going back to being a therapist?” Not quite. I do still have my license, but now I prefer to think of myself as a mountain-climbing Sherpa. You could climb the mountain yourself, but if you don’t know the terrain, the signs of weather, when to rest instead of pushing it, it’s much better and safer to climb with the partnership of an experienced guide. That’s the kind of partnership I offer in my personal and professional growth roles.

In sitting in the ‘not knowing what to do’ I decided to do something about it.

My goal in creating this program is to help others lighten their load, strengthen their self-trust, make meaning of chaos, strategize and improve their sense of agency. Benefits of that include:

• Tools to manage the hard stuff to access the freedom on the other side
• Decreased anxiety
• A new vision
• A deeper sense of connection with your purpose
• Increased ability to focus
• Satisfying relationships — less bickering, more teamwork

If any of this resonates with you, I’d love to connect and learn more. In the meantime, I wish you the best in moving through this chaotic new world with an abundance of grace. And remember, you are not alone in this experience — and it’s OK to not know what to do.

You may also enjoy reading Real Talk: 6 Women Share How They’ve Been Navigating Covid-19, by Sweta Vikram.

The post First Time Recovering from a Pandemic? It Might Be Time for a Reset appeared first on BEST SELF.

Estimated reading time: 3 minutes

A deeply moving story of unrequited love from the early 1900’s inspires an exploration of pain and healing

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I learned today that in 1917 the novelist E.M. Forster was in Egypt for the first time. As a conscientious objector in World War I, Forster served as a Chief Searcher (for missing servicemen) for the British Red Cross in Alexandria, Egypt. Fate kept making him look for what was missing. It was during this time that Forster, who was openly gay, fell deeply in love with an Egyptian tram driver, Mohammed el-Adl, an affair that changed his life.

Eventually, Forster had to return to England, but the two men kept a faithful correspondence, even after Mohammed married. Their love sustained, despite being inter-racial and gay and despite living a continent away. When Mohammed died in 1922 from tuberculosis, his wife, whose name is impossible to find, sent her husband’s wedding ring to Forster. It is this deeply tender gesture from a woman whose name I’ll never know that stopped me, that made me want to know the center of this love: the love between the two men, the love between Mohammed and his wife, and the love of this woman for her husband’s lover.

What deeply human pain and release allowed her to be so giving in a time of such grief?

This is the wisdom I want to learn. This is the story I want to piece together from the smattering of affections found like feathers in the rain.

In the center of our pain and beyond what we can comprehend is a release that heals, when we can endure the pain and give over to its release.

I felt this pain and release during my struggle with cancer when I was young. I felt this pain and release during the dissolution of my second marriage when I had to leave in order to live the life I was given back. I felt it when my father, staring into Eternity, held my hand before his death. And now, across the years and miles, I feel it in the small drop of Mohammed’s ring into an envelope that his tender wife sealed and sent to England.

It is the unexpected gesture that binds us. It makes me think of my dear friend Robert scattering seed for the ground feeders in his yard. It makes me think of my dear friend Paul rowing the empty boat of his life now that his sweet wife has died. It makes me think of my dear friend George sanding the shelf of a bookcase he is making for his granddaughter. It makes me think of my dear friend Don adding dabs of red to a painting he created almost fifty years ago. The moments that keep us connected are like the drop of that wedding ring in its envelope. It makes me think of my dear wife Susan holding our dog’s head during a thunderstorm.

It’s all we can hope for, really, to hold each other through the storm and share what’s left. 

—

Mark will be offering a 3-session webinar in Aug 2022 called Pain, Fear, and Grief: The Deeper Teachers (Aug 7, 14, 21, 2022, 1-2:30PM ET). Registration at live.marknepo.com.

You may also enjoy reading Living What Matters: Reflections, Prose and 52 Prompts for Self-Inquiry, by Mark Nepo.

The post What’s Left: The Power of a Gesture to Release and Heal Pain appeared first on BEST SELF.

Estimated reading time: 12 minutes

We know that love and unity are beautiful ideals, but the question remains: How do we get there?

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If it wasn’t for bravery, I would never know the joy of moving past each inner barrier within me. Barriers that I had no idea were self-imposed limitations until each edge was challenged. If it wasn’t for bravery, I never would have spoken up for myself, boldly declaring how much the individual within me matters, equally and uniquely throughout a sea of self-expression.

If it wasn’t for bravery, how else would I have mustered the courage to move in the direction of inspired resonant desire? If it wasn’t for bravery, my humility would have stagnated in shame, simmering in a pot of bubbling despair, due to all the potential I was once afraid of somehow getting wrong.

For all these reasons and more, I honor the attribute of bravery for all the ways it has helped me make the type of inspired choices that reminds me of the true hero living in every heart awaiting activation. A hero that comes to life, once decisions are made from a depth of unwavering inner value without needing to compromise any degree of ethics in order to have what you want.

As bravery has so clearly taught me, things don’t have to always be comfortable in order to be the right direction to explore. In fact, they seldom are. While discomfort isn’t always necessary as proof of inner growth, there remains a transformation underway whenever discomfort surfaces.

It is not a pain letting you know you’ve ventured off path, but a confirmation that you are in the process of rescuing your most hurt and helpless parts from each hiding spot of despair.

Such an emotional rescue mission occurs once ready to exchange the insatiable hunger of ego for a chance to be guided in life by the boldest and bravest wisdom waiting for permission to lead your way.

The question remains, when will you allow the power of bravery to navigate your choices?

When will you allow bravery to make its wisest decisions through you without a need to negotiate?

When will you enter the mystery of life, not needing to know where life may be headed, since the only way to find your destiny is allowing your highest honor and ethics to do the choosing?

When will the real sacrifice of not stepping into your bravery be recognized as all the time spent putting off “big decisions”, which only feel uncertain to the one always needing something to compare, contrast, and contemplate?

Perhaps you are reading these words recognizing how boldly bravery has orchestrated this fateful meeting with you. Maybe this was the plan all along, with each moment in time sequenced in such a precise way to ensure you would see, hear, and feel the invitation bravery is sending you right now. What if, no matter how unready, unworthy, or unprepared you may feel, bravery stands peacefully present with the unwavering faith of knowing what you are now ready to explore within yourself and throughout the world around you? A chance to move in a direction where unconditional love is no longer hidden in the pockets of those you insist on earning it back from, but an opportunity to remember the love that comes alive within you, the more often it is recognized, embraced, and honored?

As you enter into a brand-new chapter of your most profound expansion, may the following book excerpt from All for Love: The Transformative Power of Holding Space act as your new guiding light.

May it help you turn inward toward all the parts begging to be faced with a love only your kindness and compassion may convey.

May each insight help you transform patterns of fear into waves of excitement as only the attribute of bravery can do. Knowing the immeasurable depth of bravery is one of ten essential attributes needed to access the healing potential and embodied consciousness that I refer to as the transformative power of holding space. A power so direct, precise, and bold, it exists as the very evolutionary force awakening in every heart to reverse the momentum of a dying planet at the rate in which you open up and align with truth in the most compelling and heart-centered way. Your next bold step forward awaits you. As a roadmap of success and a wise companion for your journey ahead, here are the potent words that bravery wishes for you to know right now.

[Excerpt from All for Love: The Transformative Power of Holding Space, courtesy of Sounds True]

The Attribute of Bravery

Through the attribute of bravery, you can move through the discomfort of “what is” without anything to defend, maintain, argue, negotiate, or avoid. As you begin to see how inevitable encounters with pain help you unravel your fear of it, you will be better able to hold unwavering space for yourself and others as you survive dire circumstances.

As your relationship with fear and pain become more heart-centered, your awareness will help you see beyond the categories of like or dislike, which will make facing “what is” more tolerable than you’d ever imagined.

When bravery leads the way, it instinctively provides you with the strength, endurance, grace, and tenacity to overcome the plight of discomfort. Through this attribute, your fear of the unknown will no longer rattle your senses or stifle your ego. Rather, it will help the ego let go of its deeply engrained belief in control. This transforms the realm of the unknown into something curious, intriguing, and even exciting instead of being so overwhelming to process.

In order to go where the ego has never truly gone, it is essential to choose as you’ve never chosen before.

This also means you will more than likely have to feel what you’ve never felt before—all within a reality of greater support and renewed perspective where you have everything to welcome and nothing to avoid. As you hold greater space during moments of discomfort, you are gathering key pieces of evidence to remind you of how strong, capable, and ready you are to face pain and fear. In gaining more time to notice your true resilience, even when life doesn’t offer experiences worth accepting, you’ll develop an even greater sense of bravery that will help you rise from the ashes of defeat, devastation, and despair. By cultivating the at- tribute of bravery, you’ll really be present with yourself, while becoming an even stronger source of companionship for the people you choose to support.

From a space-holding perspective, the emotional pain that you must face reflects the visceral intensity of transformation in progress. Whether you’re clearing out a deeply lodged layer of emotional debris or witnessing the active expansion of a newly awakening consciousness, the very sensation of discomfort confirms the existential growing pains of your evolving healing journey.

Even when the ego hears this, it can wonder, Well, is there any way to make it less intense? While it’s natural to wonder this, it’s important to recognize that healing occurs as a ratio of time versus intensity. For the journey to be easier, it would require more time. If that happened, though, your ego would become in- censed at how slowly life moves along. On the other hand, to be on the most progressive path that offers comprehensive healing, the journey can include reoccurring waves of intensity as your most direct pathway of completion. Since the attribute of bravery helps you overcome the discomfort of “what is,” such a high intensity journey can quickly become an exciting opportunity to move beyond each personal limit.

Since the ego often personifies itself as a protector, it is important to remember that it only attempts to shield you from the circumstances and outcomes you continually fear.

As you confront each one bravely, you’ll find fewer situations to be afraid of, even perhaps discovering how less frightening each moment can be when you face “what is” instead of imagining “what if.” Such a definitive shift ultimately leaves your ego with no one to coddle, convince, or control. This causes the ego to meet the inevitability of its own demise, unaware that what it perceives as death is actually a doorway to eternal rebirth. Through the attribute of bravery, your ability to hold space compassionately releases the ego from its belief in control, which allows such a profound moment of letting go to occur.

As I wrote in The Universe Always Has a Plan, “You are not the one who lets go. You are the one being let go of.” This means that while many people attempt to let go as if it’s a willful process, it is actually a rather spontaneous unfolding of being released from the ego’s grip, once it sees control as nothing more than an idea it once believed in.

Ironically, the ego, which is the only part of you in a constant battle against the threat of “what is,” doesn’t actually know what it’s fighting or avoiding beyond its belief in frightening ideas. While the nature of each circumstance highlights uninterruptible milestones of healing, you do possess the power to determine how insightful or intolerable any moment can be. Through the attribute of bravery, you no longer wait for a perfect sign from the Universe to face what’s already happening or meant to occur. Instead, your ability to hold space helps you enter the next highest level in your journey even when it presents itself as the very situation you had hoped to avoid.

What Could Possibly Go Wrong?

When facing “what is,” all too often, whatever the ego can’t control represents what we believe could possibly go wrong. In fact, just because the ego thinks a situation has gone awry doesn’t mean you’ve made a mistake or engaged in any wrongdoing. Beyond moments of abuse (which always require swift action in the name of your sovereignty and safety), we commonly perceive unfairness from others when the ego doesn’t get its way. As another form of irony, even if the ego constantly got its way, it would be no happier than before.

Since the ego commonly perceives pain as a barrier to happiness, it insists that only in pain’s absence can true happiness exist. In truth, happiness is an extension of aliveness. Aliveness is the will to live. The more you say yes to living on life’s unpredictable terms, the more happiness you may experience. While it’s beyond the ego’s capacity to imagine how happiness and pain can coexist in the same field of reality, it’s never beyond your awareness to appreciate how freeing painful experiences can be, even when they show up as unwelcomed moments of intensity.

From the ego’s perspective, the question of what could possibly go wrong also includes the triggering of deep vulnerabilities since it sees feelings of sensitivity as a weakness that increases the threat of rejection. In reality, the more you are stripped of your defenses and rendered helpless by the hands of fate, the greater the likelihood of establishing intimate connections. Perhaps the ego considers vulnerability a weakness because it has no access to the attribute of bravery that makes it a gift instead of a curse. This is why you are such a vital part of your healing journey, not only as the one who experiences evolutionary change but as the space holder who has access to the very bravery that allows facing “what is” to unfold with grace.

When not getting your way is no longer proof of bad luck, a karmic setback, evidence of a low vibration, or any other kind of judgment, you will leap across the threshold of victimhood into a renewed depth of empowerment.

While the ego believes, I’d be much more open, if only things were different, it is the attribute of bravery that reminds you that there will never be a better time to lean into pain or face discomfort than at the moment it begins. Whether such experiences bring out the worst in others, lead to fights among family members in crisis, widen a wedge of discord in relationships, or even create unexpected loss—you can face each circumstance with your highest values and deepest strengths intact when fueled by the power of your own unwavering support. All that is required is a willingness to be brave, even while holding space for the aspects of self that know of no other way but to be afraid.

It is also important to remember that there is no wrong way to be brave. There are simply moments of courageous resolve that may not go as planned. Isn’t that okay? Isn’t it okay, even when a strong response of dislike makes unwelcomed change seem like something that shouldn’t be happening. Isn’t it okay that the ego can think, imagine, or conclude anything it wants without pre- venting you from taking the very steps that only seem scary the more you delay the inevitable?

Imagine holding a frightened child in your arms who says, “I’m too scared to keep going.” Through the attribute of bravery, you can say, “I really know how you feel, but we can only find true safety in moving forward.”

While many people insist they aren’t brave enough to face looming hardships, frustrations, or discomforts, it is the facing of these uncomfortable experiences, no matter how fearful we may be, that brings our deepest bravery to life.

Setting an Intention for Bravery

To release any fear of pain and patterns of avoidance and hold a space of bravery for yourself and others, please repeat the following words out loud:

You may also enjoy reading Transformation & Collaboration: Redefining the Law of Attraction, by Matt Kahn.

The post Bravery: An Invitation of Becoming, Loving & Healing appeared first on BEST SELF.

Estimated reading time: 10 minutes

A roadmap for claiming control of your divorce (and life) even in the throes of upheaval and chaos

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Divorcing differently…is it really possible?

“Look, the last thing I could imagine doing when my life was spiraling out of control during my divorce — was get ZEN and centered and make grounded decisions. That sounds like pie-in-the-sky, woo-woo nonsense. Come on, is that really possible?” she asked.

I hear you…in fact, I was you. But of course, it is possible! I responded.

I guess the real question for anyone begins with asking themselves what they think is possible with their own life…who is in charge calling the shots? Who is making the decisions? Is your life happening TO you or FOR you? And if so, why? (and btw, you’ll want to answer those questions before moving ahead with your divorce).

There are life moments when we are called to task…here are the circumstances…now what are you going to do with them? It’s hard to see choice within any upheaval, particularly divorce where oftentimes little if anything is spared — not your heart, your home, your finances, your wellbeing or that of your children.

Divorce is an ending, but it is also an opportunity for a new beginning…and that’s not a platitude lightly tossed around.

Imagine approaching this from a different angle. We can’t control all life events, but we can control how we experience them…and that is NOT ‘woo.’

The times we feel most out of control are the times we most need to show up for our Best Selves — to step back and consciously declare how we want to navigate, how we want it all to go and what condition we want to be in when we land on the other side of things. Do you want to arrive screeching in on two wheels, a broken, depleted, frazzled mess trailing a string of debris behind you — or not?

Anyone who has ever experienced divorce knows exactly what’s at stake — and many don’t see choice in the matter. I get that completely. As a matter of fact, I’ve swam in all of those same waters, drowning in the gamut of emotions that can wash over you like a tidal wave: fear, shame, anger, despair, anxiety, overwhelm, etc. While in the midst of it, it can feel like you are the only person experiencing this — its isolation deafening.

Then stuck in the middle are your kids, witnessing it all, feeling it all, experiencing it all. There is no hiding the pain of divorce from our children, no matter the age, no matter how well you play act. They are energetic sponges who can read and feel you and the energy of the house — even if they don’t understand it. So many critical mistakes are made by parents in the early stages of divorce that leave lasting imprints upon their children that can be avoided.

There’s no denying that divorce can feel like a series of wildfires that need to be extinguished.

Yes, the stakes are high — your health, your finances, the emotional security of your kids. Yes, there are many tentacles that have the potential to be far-reaching and long-lasting, which is precisely why you want to be in the driver’s seat making proactive, tactical, practical, heart-centered and intuitive decisions that resonate with you to the core. And yes, it is possible. Besides, you are the one who will live with these decisions and choices for a long time after the ink dries on the divorce decree and all the other players advising you have long disappeared.

This is your life. Take charge of it now. And it starts with giving yourself a break. No one expects you to have a law degree or a PhD in child psychology, but you can become your biggest advocate and ally by remaining connected to yourself.

Back to the “how” — how we are going to do this differently?

How many times in your life have you said something you wished you hadn’t…or made a kneejerk reaction you wished you had given more thought to? Many times, right? We’ve all been there. The same holds true with divorce. Impulsive decisions that are not well-thought out or made for the wrong reasons (like anger, revenge or the need to be right) leave us scrambling to clean up unnecessary messes.

It doesn’t have to be this way. You can actually design how you want your divorce — and life — to look.

And even if you’ve never approached your life quite like this before, it’s never too late to start. It’s never too late to step into the version of yourself that you can stand behind, one who makes decisions from grounded footing. I’d even go out on a limb and say that these skills are “life skills” that you can keep in your toolbox to call upon and apply to any life adversity or bump in the road.

The most critical time to lay the groundwork and set the tone of your divorce is during the first hundred days.

It is within this emotionally charged window that you’ll be asked to make some of the most important decisions of your life. This is where you can put the brakes on this becoming a long and expensive runaway train, or not.

The problem is that most people are ill-equipped to confidently make these kinds of decisions in that moment. But we can choose to act instead of react.

Here are 5 Shifts that can help you gain control over your divorce and save you time, money and a tremendous amount of emotional suffering for you and your children.

1. Believe Your Divorce Is The Opportunity Of A Lifetime

Let’s face it…divorce is a gut punch. And when you’re in the throes of it, all you see are broken dreams and families — chaos, heartbreak, financial devastation and fear for the future…not opportunity.

Yet, herein lies your opportunity, perhaps the greatest opportunity of your life…the chance to get it right — to clean up the mess behind you, to tame the divorce train wreck, and to design what comes next. 

You see, divorce is an opportunity to write a different narrative for you and your children — and avoid the classic pitfalls that trip people up. 

It’s also a chance to reevaluate where you’ve been and more importantly, where you want to go. To look at all the events, beliefs, patterns and missteps that led to here. To break cycles. To develop new, healthy behaviors. To embrace your worth. To rescript the person you want to be and the life you want to live. This is about a new perspective, not an old story.  

Divorce is also an opportunity to model and instill the values that will set up your children well for navigating their own relationships and life hiccups.

2. Become The CEO Of Your Divorce

It’s not only possible to step into your power when feeling powerless…it’s absolutely necessary. 

Divorce can take months or years to resolve and rack up staggering costs. Factor in alimony or child support and you’re looking at financial ramifications of hundreds of thousands of dollars over the course of several years. That’s precisely why you need to take a leadership seat at this table.  

As CEO of your divorce, you will:

• Set the Vision: That’s establishing a clear goal for the outcomes you want for yourself and your kids, both short and long-term…and a plan for getting there

• Demonstrate Leadership: That means managing your team of lawyers, therapists, mediators and so on so that they are serving your agenda, not theirs…and save a LOT of money in the process

• Take Action: That’s making decisions mindfully and confidently, and communicating clearly with all involved

• Get Results: And when you do the above you’ll steer your divorce across the finish line, achieving the goals you set forth

In the end, divorce is like a business. It is not a time to sit back and let someone else take the lead in your ultimate decision-making. It is a time to step into your inner CEO and manage what is before you with clarity, resolve, thoughtfulness and heart. 

3. Harness The Power Of Your Intuition

Do you want to know the single most common mistake with divorce? It’s not harnessing the power of your intuition and understanding the critical role it plays. 

For most, divorce is new territory leaving one feeling desperate for answers, guidance, and advice. So, we seek counsel from others: lawyers, therapists, friends, family members, co-workers and just about anyone who will listen.

We heed their advice, follow their agendas and forget to check in with ourselves, asking “What do I really want? How do I feel about this? How do I want this process to go?”

We waste tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars, hurt our kids, embroil them in custody battles and remain stuck and dragged down by years of ongoing legal entanglements.

Why? Because we didn’t listen to ourselves — our intuition. Maybe we didn’t know how, maybe we felt it wasn’t important, or just bunch of spiritual mumbo jumbo. But nothing could be further from the truth. 

Intuition often doesn’t get the credit it deserves. We’re often taught to keep our heart out of our negotiations — but that’s not the path that serves you best. Intuition is a power player and learning how to harness it is a gamechanger.

You may not have used your intuition getting into your marriage, but you can certainly use it getting out of it.

4. Choose You First

The emergency instructions on an airplane always advise you to put your oxygen mask on first, then assist others. And for good reason. You can’t help anyone if you don’t first help yourself — this pertains to divorce too. 

This is not to suggest that you dismiss the needs of your kids — far from it. But too often, during the dissolution of a marriage, people put the needs of others above their own. When you do that, everyone loses. If you can’t be your best self, you can’t be the best for your children…you can’t build a solid house on a wobbly foundation.

This is a call to prioritize YOU.

Don’t make self-care an afterthought, something to catch up on once the dust settles. The key is to take care of yourself WHILE going through the divorce process. Divorce will rock you to the core, and you need to support yourself through it. And you know what? You can create a plan to thrive…right from the start.

5. Invest In Coaching

Most people dive in blindly, throwing money at the legal system, making concessions that don’t improve anything, and making massive decisions without a plan. Because it’s all new and terrifying and they don’t know any better.

But this is where coaching comes in. An expert who’s been through it all and can guide you through the process, saving you money and months of heartache — while fortifying you to face what feels like the battle of your life.

In working with a coach you will gain new perspectives and ideas, develop an action plan and have an accountability partner. A coach is like a Sherpa holding your hand — walking beside you, holding your hand and empowering you to make decisions for your life that you won’t regret — and design a new chapter to thrive within.

You don’t have to do this alone.

Why doesn’t everyone do it this way? Because we get in our own way. We roll our eyes, we assume that it is too simple. Besides, who has time and money for self-care or a coach when in the throes of chaos? Ironically (or not), the price of not doing this is far steeper.

We must remember that our lives are interconnected. When one aspect is out of whack, it has trickle-down impact upon the rest. So, the sooner you take a holistic approach to your lives (and your divorce), the sooner you can cross the bridge from untethered to empowered.

If you’re a mother facing off with divorce and want to get off the emotional rollercoaster and save time money and heartache for your family, learn more at IntuitiveDivorce.com.

The post Divorcing Differently: An Intuitive Path from Untethered to Empowered appeared first on BEST SELF.

Estimated reading time: 5 minutes

One entrepreneurial woman’s journey to cease from self-sabotage and fitting into cliched stereotypes, reveals a new kind of power

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When we fail to define and claim our power, we unknowingly place our worth in the wrong hands and ultimately pay a significant price for it, losing ourselves as a result.

After having launched my startup media platform, SWAAY, as a novice in the world of entrepreneurship, I had finally reached the notoriously cutthroat fundraising phase of my new career. I was as bright-eyed and hopeful as any newcomer would be, but I had to look and play the part of a powerful woman if I wanted investors to take me and my business seriously. I had dressed for the part in my well-tailored pantsuit and embodied an air of power, confidence, and self-assurance, even though in reality, I was brimming with anxiety.

Looking back, I realize that the idealized vision of the powerful woman I wanted to be was a culmination of traits that I thought I needed to embody after having seen them so skillfully mastered by the women I held in such high regard.

However, it wasn’t until I began meeting with other ‘powerful’ people that I came to learn how flawed my relationship with power actually was.

One of the most notable incidents I can recall occurred while meeting with a successful investor and media industry veteran. While I was excited to deliver my pitch and discuss business as it pertained to the future of my company, I instead found myself on the receiving end of an onslaught of his inappropriate opinions and unsolicited advice.

“Honey, let me give you one piece of advice. Never mention your beauty pageant past. You’re a businesswoman now, and if you want to be taken seriously, you shouldn’t bring up your pageant history.”

Like many of us would be, I was in complete shock by his blatant disrespect—not to mention outdated perspective. But rather than leverage this moment to educate him on the significance pageantry has had in my story and in making me the businesswoman sitting before him, I gave his words the power to make me feel worthless.

Much like myself, so many women fall victim to limiting self-beliefs and imposter syndrome. We hand our power over to false allies who we believe to know better about our strengths than we do. More often than not, we misconstrue our own perception of power with pride, leading us to our inevitable downfall. As I came to this realization, I was tempted to sink further into self-pity and shame for having allowed myself to react this way, but instead I chose to reclaim my power and here is how you can do the same!

Take Accountability

Before you can begin healing your relationship with power, it’s important that you first hold yourself accountable by taking responsibility for your negative beliefs and actions. Consider what disempowering beliefs you succumb to the most and what situations are most triggering of these beliefs.

One way you can make the most out of this exercise is to write down the beliefs and actions that don’t benefit you and create a list of truths to counter them with. You can refer to that list later on if you ever find yourself falling back into old patterns. It takes courage to look, but revealing is healing.

Understand What Power Means to You

In order to understand what power means to you, a great first step is to set some time aside to explore what power has looked like to you in the past. Uncover the meaning it’s held for you. Think back to a time when you felt the most powerful and consider the following:

• What was the situation?
• Why did you feel powerful?
• What were the most prominent emotions that you felt at the time?

Now imagine what would make you feel powerful at your current stage of life by considering:

• What attributes would make you feel powerful?
• What does it look like to be powerful in your career/craft?
• What would you like to accomplish in order to feel more powerful?

For some women, power means having a high-level position, mastering a skill, achieving a goal or even showing up as a stronger, more confident person than you have been in the past. Explore your options and connect with both the physical and emotional elements of what power feels like to you.

Hone Your Internal Locus of Control

An internal locus of control can be defined as the belief that you control your own destiny as opposed to having your destiny pre-determined for you. When you hone and refine this internal belief, it becomes easier to operate in the world from a place of self-assurance, confidence and resounding clarity. Although your external circumstances may create limitations for what you can achieve, your internal locus of control will ultimately help you navigate around those roadblocks and remind you of your truth.

Here are some ways you can begin the process of becoming more internally focused:

Create a checklist: By creating a list of achievable goals you can work towards on a daily basis, you can build momentum towards achieving bigger goals.

Embrace independence: Learning to stand on your own is far more important than you may realize. Start by making decisions for yourself where you would normally ask for or listen to an outside opinion. While this in itself is a big step, an even bigger step is following through each time you make a decision. Each time you achieve this, you will increase your trust in your own judgment aligning with your internal compass—and making it easier to ignore external opinions and advice meant to sway you.

To be powerful is to connect to one’s inner truth in all of its facets. It isn’t about denying where we’ve come from, the roles we’ve played, even the missteps along the way. It has all played an important role to arriving here…empowered.

You may also enjoy reading The Architecture of Thought: Mind Over Matter is Real, but You Have to Believe it to See it, by Samantha Glorioso.

The post Power Play: Redefining Your Relationship to Power appeared first on BEST SELF.

Estimated reading time: 7 minutes

How in a crazy world in crisis and change, investing in self is the roadmap to releasing being ruled by fear

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In response to the crazy world of change that ours has become, I am thrilled to share that once we begin to invest in self, we begin to blossom and transcend being ruled by fear

I doubt there is anyone who hasn’t been touched in powerful ways by the unexpected shifts and interruptions that have taken place in the last two years. Surprising separation. Deepening confusions. Unanswered questions. Deteriorating trust and a lack of clarity about where to go for clear information.

The list is a long one. The world we have known was given a huge time-out, while individuals have been bombarded with fear.

What many may not have considered is that on a Soul level, this interruption also served as a huge revealer.

Who am I at this point in my life?

What can I count on? How stable am I emotionally?

Do I really trust myself and the other people in my life?

How safe do I feel with others having their own, unique perspectives and making their own individual choices?

This has indeed been a time of tremendous revelation. And it has been my experience that so many people have discovered gaps in the foundation of self that they had no idea were there.

Sometimes interruptions to the status quo of our habitual choices shed tremendous light on us, revealing the need for a powerful response and deepening.

This is what I have witnessed taking place in the world, and to be honest, though I had no idea what the wakeup call would be, I have not been surprised that the world has begun to receive what I believe will continue to be unprecedented wakeup calls.

This is mostly due to the fact that I have been immersed in learning about the planetary shifts taking place since 1990. I have watched the beginning of an accelerated shift which has also brought never-before-experienced breakthroughs in science, medicine and technology. I have also enjoyed the deepening of conversations about health—true health that is holistic in nature, that has been inspired by an awakening of consciousness.

Before I go further, let me introduce myself. I am Ron Baker, the founder of a School of Self-Mastery that has been helping thousands of people from around the world for the last twenty-five years.

I am also the little boy who grew up in a home with alcoholism, divorce and a complete lack of understanding how to connect and communicate. For thirteen years I lived with a father in the house who never said a single thing to me—not one engaged conversation, just a few barked orders along the way. I know separation, fear and doubt. I know what it is to not know where to go for clear answers or who to trust. The pandemic did not introduce those ideas to me.

Fortunately, having the tools to resolve each of those challenges is also not new to me. I have spent three decades invested in an education focused on claiming the whole self, as well as understanding the unprecedented shifts that we are experiencing as a planet.

The greatest news is that everything taking place, including the revelation of the wounded gaps that we each carry, is a vital step in getting to the solutions that we all need.

Until we are willing to interrupt the agendas and compensations that we have all learned to keep running, as a coping mechanism for not being taught HOW to connect to the inner self, we cannot truly heal and grow into the fulfillment that these shifting energies are trying to awaken for us all.

Bottom line: We all need help. We all need a true understanding of what will allow us to face these challenges—including a clear map, an inspiring vision, and nurturing tools that work in reliable ways.

That is what I have learned and have been offering for so many years now. I have such gratitude for the journey I have taken over the last three decades, because it has allowed me to become a distinct, clear light in this time of confusion, separation and darkness.

I now begin to understand why I have waited till now to introduce my story to the world in a bigger way. What I mean is that I have spent the last years preparing a memoir called, Bright Lights, Big Empty, which gives me a clear way to share a distinct journey from wounded confusions to empowered levels of personal fulfillment.

By sharing my story, I look forward to inspiring seekers who want more clarity and education about what is taking place in our individual and collective lives. I look forward to providing a rare context of this evolutionary shift that is trying to encourage us all into depths of our potential that few have realized.

I began my journey into adulthood, filled with insecurity and self-doubt—deeply hoping that performing on important world stages, from Broadway and Lincoln Center in New York City to the Bolshoi in Moscow and Monte Carlo in Europe, would allow me to prove my worth. All the while, I mostly proved that I had a gift for magical thinking.

In that time, Life revealed to me many of the gaps that I carried, which I now embrace as a perfect and crucial part of my journey into more wholeness, empowerment and fulfillment. By shifting my outer, desperate search to include a meaningful inner journey, I ended up finding the core of self.

By learning to identify and integrate nine distinct levels of nurturing that had been missing (safety, connection, affection, acknowledgment, acceptance, compassion, clear guidance, support, and encouragement), I was able to resolve a majority of my fear, shame and doubt.

For twenty-five years I have been guiding so many others with crucial clues and tons of nurturing.

Learning to value self is the grand prize that we all seek.

From there, every part of our lives can heal and improve.

In response to the crazy world of change that ours has become, I am thrilled to share that once we begin to invest in self, we begin to blossom and transcend being ruled by fear. We also become less dependent on the systems around us. Instead, we begin to realize how much more we need others than we may have considered in our busy rat race approaches.

Combing a clear map of self with an understanding that we are all being supported much more fully than most of us were taught, is priceless.

What is actually taking place is nothing less than the awakening of the soul energy in our lives. And the potentials that this will reveal gives us the power to transcend more and more limits that have ruled our lives.

I am so thrilled to offer this practical journey of learning to nurture my wounded inner child in Bright Lights, Big Empty, which includes grappling with confused sexuality, learning how to open to invest in mutual support, and finding out that each of us ultimately gets to choose who we most want to be.

Freeing people with clarity and nurturing tools has been the greatest privilege of my life. And I cannot wait to share this story of hope as a beacon of light that offers clear solutions to separation, confusion and fear.

You may also enjoy reading Nurturing and Vulnerability: The Power of Healing Our Wounded Child, by Ron Baker.

The post Solo Performance: Releasing Fear from the Inside Out appeared first on BEST SELF.

Estimated reading time: 10 minutes

In the discomfort of aloneness, one woman discovers her individuality that had long been buried in the shadow of the bigness of others in her life

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I never wanted to be alone, ever, but that is precisely what I did. I got vastly lonely first before confronting the nervous energy coursing through me that engaged a need for relentless mobility. It is how I hid. I went from event to event, chore to chore, not even able to settle down enough to read a book—avoiding self. Watching a movie alone on the couch took an epic amount of effort. Why am I like this, I thought?

In a new relationship, the usual love-struck aches felt increasingly more desperate. Being without my boyfriend on the weekend felt like I would lose everything—as if the connection would just fade away if I didn’t cling to the identification of oneness (us-ness). I would start to get ready for our date around 11 in the morning, almost counting the hours when I could connect and not have to be alone.

Naturally this backfired, as who wants to be anyone’s everything, and he gently reminded me he had a life of his own. I thought, wait, so do I. Why am I behaving like this? I am so much more than that. Yes, I have a life. I’m an entrepreneur with a successful career and a social life and interests. There are dimensions to me beyond coupling and motherhood. On the weekends I was with my kids (I’m a single mom with shared custody), I was engulfed in their schedules and taking care of them because I told myself that is what committed moms do.

I had not seen my behavior, my perpetual busyness, my strategy for avoiding aloneness as means to evade a feeling of emptiness inside.

When I was suddenly by myself in my non-custody time, the pain kicked in and I realized I had no more hostages in my space. I became painfully aware I no longer wanted to dominate or push so hard. I could be separate from you, and I would not die. I didn’t need others to witness me and my life to live. I also didn’t need to push people away because I was afraid that I would be engulfed. Who was I trying to prove something to?

At 52 years old, in this paralyzing chasm of “in-between”, I began to understand that this had to do with the relationship with my mother. I know, so cliché, roll out some Freud, but when I saw a connection between our one-year period of not speaking, and this feeling of loneliness—a “knowing” clicked inside me. A proverbial Aha. A “get thee to therapy” blinking sign.

This new energy directed me to find a therapist. I had not been on the couch for six years since I had faced sexual abuse and gotten sober. Was there more to dig into? Really? The relationship with my mom had been severed by something I had put up with for decades—a modus operandi that her opinion was more important than mine. This particular break-up conversation pertained to my ecclesiastic practices and her distaste for them. I had reacted as one would having been hung up on… I refused to talk to her again. One year later I saw the two-pronged epiphany.

I was done with being overshadowed and undermined, and I was finally standing up within myself to become the unique me.

Her feelings that had overshadowed me in childhood would no longer be more important than mine. They could no longer overcrowd the space in which I chose to identify myself as an individual, different from her. The time had come to get to the business of becoming me and standing in it unapologetically.

While I always felt like I had a big personality, I saw the ways I would hedge and hide myself. Only on the surface would I pretend to know who I was. I presented one way, felt another…maybe you can relate? I don’t want to throw my mom, or my dad, or anyone for that matter under the bus, but what I understood was that my unique self had been subsumed by the overbearing shadow of my parents in my childhood.

Getting sober, going on Shamanic journeys, buying a house on my own in South Central Los Angeles, all of it seemed individual to me. But I would still feel like in some way I was just a mirror of my mom. She was twice divorced (like me). She was a single mom (like me). She was a homeowner (like me). She ran a business (like me). I couldn’t bear drawing comparisons between my accomplishments and associating them with her—fearing that in a way, it made me her.

I had to individuate and the cross I was to bear (literally and figuratively) was in that time-severing argument about Jesus of all things.

This is less about Jesus and going to church, which I don’t do much of—and more of her invalidation of my opinion that was the final straw. No more. It brought back all the memories of her meltdowns and hysteria in my childhood, that had no room for me (or anything that wasn’t her). Invalidating my voice, invalidated me.

More specifically, the day that she hung up on my borderline evangelical grandfather (who has been the light of my life) and pronounced, “There is no more God.” That will suck the divinity right out of a nine-year-old at rapid speed.

I found solace in how, slowly, on my own, for the last few years, with a lot of conscious effort—I was eradicating the potential to dominate and take up all the space from my own daughters. Parenting allows us to reparent those parts of ourselves that were neglected and got carried into our adulthood. I consciously practiced pulling back my own bigness in an effort allow my young girls to feel safe to become themselves. That’s massive.

It’s seductive to use our children as sounding boards, a seduction a parent must refrain from.

The success of this practice was evident and playing out in real time. When my 16-year-old met her first boyfriend, she made it abundantly clear that even though I also had a new boyfriend, she wasn’t interested in hearing about him or meeting him. Not until you are serious, mom. At first, I was ticked off and maybe a bit hurt. Seriously? How could you to say that? And then it hit me like a ton of bricks. This was her first love. She needed to be front and center in her love story…and best yet, she had healthy boundaries and a sense of self. Halleluiah!  

Even my overbearing tendencies and sway couldn’t dominate her own becoming. As much as it initially stung, I realized I had given to her what my mom never could do for me. I was the first to know when my mom thought my dad cheated on her. “Where is your father?” she asked mid-swing of a family wedding. I knew he was outside with another woman and I felt searingly complicit and entangled in my mere nine year old innocence. Post-divorce,she had this guy visiting from Canada, or another guy from Norway, and I knew it all…too much—and it took up all the oxygen in the room.

I lived in tandem with her pain, and as a young teen, there was no space for the coming of my innocence, let alone claiming my voice. When she tried to get involved with the men in my life as a mother-in-law later down the road, it was awkward and almost too late. She and I didn’t fit in the same room, no matter how many times she either tried to charm by baking eggplant parmigiana or helping me on a short film I directed. I couldn’t control my surges of vitriol. I didn’t understand them.

Now I do. I was strangled by the umbilical cord way out of the womb.

When we are not allowed to identify with our uniqueness, overshadowed by more domineering people, we push away or hide or shrink. For me, it was never getting fully engaged in a relationship because that felt like death; death of self. It terrified me. So, I stayed on the periphery despite marrying. What I realized in this current state of aloneness was that my wanting to be with my current boyfriend all the time was actually a step in the right direction.

My seeming neediness was actually readiness to interrupt this pattern and heal.

As I dove into therapy, peeling back the layers of this pain, I saw that my unique identity had floundered and shriveled in the shadow of my mother. It had never been safe to emerge. I had been battling with this relationship with her my whole life, which was a long time to have buried me. Now that I was coming to terms with how I could extricate and lean more into the becoming of my own self, I could feel a tiny bit of my power coming back and with it, even a little compassion. How could she know how she behaved if that was all that was taught to her?

Yet that didn’t change my reality or heal my unhealed wounds or make me any less lonely. It did make me desirous to be free of it and to never do the same to my girls. Suddenly I saw my loneliness in a different light. I understood this sense of not being safe when alone. It didn’t feel safe or comfortable to be alone with my truest self, with the truth—because I’d never done it.

Of course, I was a nervous wreck! The thought of therapy and meeting someone (me) intimately for the first time can be challenging enough. I had been running from this pain for a lifetime; shoving it places, acting out, self-medicating—anything to avoid its pierce. But I was ready. Therapy provided the mirror to see who I was apart from the controlling factors of how my mother had decided to see me, or not see me at all.

I felt engulfed with sadness and enraged that I was having to go to therapy to figure this out, as a lifetime of emotions bubbled to the surface. Yet, I also understood I was making these efforts so I didn’t sever the relationship with my mother forever, brushing it off like it didn’t matter.

How could I stand by my staunch belief that women can heal women, if I cut off a section of my own maternal legacy?

I could feel the watchful gaze of the many women before me, and my mother—women I had never met who beckoned to me. You, the strong one, go forth and change our patterns. Ugh, can’t I just overeat, watch some fake sex on Bridgerton and check out instead, please?Instead, I was resigned that I could find my unique self, and possibly even reunite with her on my own terms, not expecting her to change, but holding onto my position…my self.

Who would I be in this new space…would she see me? Her freak-outs and drama could no longer dominate who I was or shut me out. I was clear who I had become, was becoming, and I could proceed forward with or without her influence. I held to the notion this was possible. I let go of the details of how, why and when for our reunion, and focused on the bigger scope. My God has a larger view, more than my drive-in screen on a double ticket.

So, my journey for individuation from my childhood began.

As a sexual abuse survivor, silence was pain. So, I roared out as loudly as I could. I fought him and her and the oppression of myself. I leaned on sobriety, tapping (EFT), Shamanic vision quests, had curses removed from me, mapped my astrological chart, had my enneagram read, and even hired a manifestation coach. But none of those specific scenarios set me up for the big bang epiphany. In fairness, they guided me and moved the awareness needle, but it was ME who had to allow each of those experiences and modalities to point me in the right direction.

When I got quiet in the trust that I could finally handle what my inner self had to say to me, I was waxing wise. In the silence we sit with the pain, but we can also hear our answers. I could see the most pressing pattern, avoiding getting busy knowing the unique me. I was able to reframe my uncomfortable state.

When the silence gets too much, now I listen because it’s got something to say that I’m ready to hear…and heal…and claim.  

You may also enjoy reading A Limited Edition of One: Owning & Unleashing Your Uniqueness, by Amanda Blair.

The post Unclaimed: Finding My Unique Identity…Finally appeared first on BEST SELF.

Estimated reading time: 13 minutes

From a psychiatric ward, misdiagnosed and over-medicated, to practicing a new kind of medicine: Absolute Health

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The Fall

It’s the one story that I never wanted to tell. I was scared to, because I felt a lot of shame around it all. And from time to time, I still do. When I was beginning to think about writing a book, someone in the publishing business told me that I should tell my story, that it could be helpful to others. And so, I’ve come to telling it.

That story begins when I was in my early twenties, in college, during a cold, snowy New England winter. During those crisp, frosty days which began and ended with the long shadows of dawn and dusk, I started to have out-of-body experiences, otherwise known as “paranormal” experiences or psychic openings. They included telepathy, clairvoyance, precognition, and psychokinesis. I wasn’t doing drugs of any sort — recreational or prescription — I was merely experiencing the drug of an expanded consciousness.

I traveled. I flew over snow drifts. Beyond my body and beyond my mind, I teleported through space, above ground, unaided by aircraft, trapezes, or ziplines. I could know peoples’ thoughts, hearing their words in the ears of my mind — all verified in sometimes embarrassing conversations. I seemed to have psychokinetic powers — bending metal, for example. Car keys changed form in my fingers, melting like objects in a Salvador Dali painting. I foresaw future events, like my physics professor’s request that I lead the class when he was away.

Other sensations emerged as well, a little less paranormal, if we’re being technical about it. I felt a deep kinship with dogs — something I’ve always felt. But this was a bit more. It seemed as though I could communicate with my canine friends directly, through the silences of intention and listening.

Perhaps the most compelling experience was the ever-present peace of mind that I felt, no matter what was going on. A feeling of lightness and joy. With this transcendent feeling state came the most certain truth that there is more to life than the experience of my five senses, and that this “more” is the essential key to a greater and truer reality.

That continuous peace of mind offered me an insight that I would only come to fully understand many years later. It was my first glimpse of our essential nature, of a way to freedom from suffering, my first glimpse of Absolute Health — a concept of health so unlike anything I had grown up with, so unlike anything I had been taught.

Openings and Closings

My psychic openings during that New England winter lasted several months or maybe a bit more. I don’t remember exactly. What was vivid and memorable was how it all ended — abruptly, with my incarceration. Talking, perhaps too much, about my experiences with people who didn’t understand them, I was taken against my will to a hospital emergency room and involuntarily admitted to a locked psychiatric ward. A hypodermic needle in my butt numbed my senses and dulled my mind. A wheelchair transported me upstairs to the hospital’s third floor — to a locked ward where I stayed for nearly six weeks. I’d been deemed crazy.

In the days that followed, medications took hold — four of them, to be exact. For schizophrenia, I was given an antipsychotic; for manic depression, lithium; for clinical depression, an antidepressant. Finally, for the side effects of the antipsychotic, yet another pill.

Because of the drugs, I have very few memories of my time in that ward. After that nearly six-week period, I was discharged to my parents, with a psychiatric diagnosis of “schizo-affective” and “manic-depressive.” I returned home on those same four medications, destined to be drugged for life. By then, winter had turned to spring, and summer was almost upon us. I withdrew from college, since I’d been away for too long and I was in no shape to return. For the next year and a half, I was essentially asleep in a body, mentally dull, emotionally numb, and physically anesthetized.

But being drugged for life was not to be my destiny. One day, a stifling hot summer day, my courageous, free-thinking mother came up to my bedroom, where I spent most of my waking hours, and told me that the medications needed to go. In an act of great love and faith, she slowly weaned me, cutting tablets and emptying capsules. Little by little, day by day, I crawled back into the person I had always known. As I stopped taking the drugs, thoughts returned. Feelings returned. Physical sensations returned. I returned to my mind. I returned to my body. I returned to what I now understand was a spiritual awakening gone awry.

That story I never wanted to tell forever changed me and everything I’d ever understood about life — about consciousness, time, space, medicine, health, and healing. It’s the story that fueled my life path, my choice of medicine as a calling, and how I practice medicine.

Revelations

My psychic adventures and that introduction to conventional psychiatry were profound and formative teachers. But they weren’t the only ones.

Earlier on in my life, when I was thirteen, my father had a catastrophic stroke that left him hemiplegic and partially aphasic — he was paralyzed on one side and had difficulty finding the words he wanted to say. He was only forty-nine at the time. In the days that followed his stroke, he was unable to speak. Through weeks and months of therapy, his speech improved and his paralyzed side became more mobile, but neither got back to normal, the way he was before.

Nearly eighteen years later, when I was in my fourth and final year of medical school, I bore witness to the cure that returned my father’s speech. Completely. Over the years since then, I’ve borne witness to more of the seemingly miraculous: miraculous healings that defied conventional medical thinking, and miraculous phenomena that defied the laws of classical physics.

Through it all, I came to understand that what Western medicine holds to be tried and true is otherwise, and that reality is not what I’d always thought it to be — there’s a greater reality beyond cognition, beyond our thinking brains, beyond what we perceive with our five senses.

I became convinced that healing beyond the bounds of our conventional Western model was possible, and that healing can come easily, without effort. And so too, can all that we’re needing, no matter what’s going on.

Effortless Healing, Effortless Manifesting

What if there was a simple, effortless way to feel well and to thrive? What if there was a simple, effortless way to heal from illness and to shift challenging circumstances in your life?

Well, there is. You don’t need to struggle. You don’t need to try to change things or make things happen.

Whatever you’re needing for whatever’s going on in our life — whether it’s a health issue or a challenging situation — can be had in a moment. In this very moment. It’s simply a stop, pause, and breath away. All that you need to do, to heal that health issue or to shift that challenging situation, is to first stop, pause, and be here now.

It’s by surrendering to the present moment, and by allowing disease, that suffering and disease can leave us. We don’t have to struggle to be well. In fact, it’s by surrendering that we can become well. The same principle holds for challenging circumstances and situations in our lives. We don’t have to struggle to shift them. Rather, it’s by surrendering to being, rather than doing, that those challenges can leave us.

Perhaps this sounds implausible. Perhaps even magical thinking. If you’re not feeling well — if you’re ailing in any way or seeking change in your life — it may seem that you should be taking action, doing something to shift circumstances and situations. But it’s not magical thinking. Everything that you’ll ever need for anything and everything that’s going on in your life can arise from being, not doing.

To be clear, it’s not that we never take action. We don’t simply wait around for things to change or happen. But things changing, things happening — whether you’re healing a health issue or transforming a challenging situation — arises from a place of peace. Peace mentally. Peace emotionally. And peace physically. This place of peace is Absolute Health. It’s from this place of Absolute Health, of inner peace, that healing happens. And it’s from this place of peace, that clarity, solutions, and effortless, inspired action arises.

I didn’t always get this. In fact, it took me many, many years to get it. Years of living in an unwell body, with emotional strife, with challenging life circumstances, and more. I was always trying to fix things, to make them better, to make them change or go away. When I finally stopped with all of the trying, when I started to just be present with what I was experiencing in the moment, I came to know Absolute Health and inner peace. And then things started to change. My health improved. Circumstances and situations got better.

The Science of Being

Science has a lot to say about being. Here’s what some of that science tells us: Our thoughts and feelings affect our health and well-being instantaneously. Every thought and feeling is either creating a state of ease or dis-ease. A calm, peaceful mind creates a calm and peaceful body. A disturbed mind creates stress in the body.

When the mind is calm, it activates the parasympathetic nervous system. That’s the system we need for rest, rejuvenation, and healing, as well as sleep and digestion. All the good stuff that nurtures and nourishes us.

When the mind’s not calm, the sympathetic nervous system is turned on. That’s the system we need to be active, alert, vigilant. It serves us in times of stress. The sympathetic system inhibits sleep and digestion, and so, too, healing — we can’t be sleeping or eating when we need to be alert and vigilant. And we can’t heal when our body is needing to use its resources to protect us.

The sympathetic system often gets a bad rap, but we need it. It evolved to protect us from deadly threats. When early humans faced dangerous predators or situations, those threats would provoke anxiety and fear and turn on our sympathetic, fight-or-flight system. We still need this system to avoid danger and to function in the world — I need it to navigate the streets and traffic of New York City and to avoid aggressive dogs when my canine companion and I are out for a walk. The problem is that nowadays, for many of us, the sympathetic system remains turned on for longer than it needs to be.

Given the stressors of modern life, many of us are in a constant state of fight-or-flight. Our emotions are turned on and turned up, and we think we have to take action to fight off threats or fix problems. Or we attempt to “flee” problems or anxiety to escape them. Either way, we’re stuck in the gear of worry. And when our sympathetic system is on more often than not, when we don’t need it to be, it creates undesirable stress, dis-ease, and even disease.

A calm mind, a peaceful mind — by turning on that parasympathetic system — is where we need to be for healing to happen. It won’t happen otherwise.

We cultivate that peaceful mind by being here now, with all that we’re experiencing in the present moment. Thoughts, feelings, physical sensations. Even difficult ones. 

Research studies have shown that being present with feelings can keep us well and get us well. A 2016 study of women with breast cancer demonstrated that women who were more able to be with their feelings about their health, even difficult ones, had less symptoms of sickness. Those who weren’t able to were sicker.¹ In 2019, a study of individuals undergoing cancer treatment revealed the same connection between feelings and health: Those who avoided their feelings of uncertainty and fear fared worse.²

Other studies have demonstrated the connection between feeling feelings and chronic depression and anxiety. Individuals experienced less depression and less anxiety when they could be with their feelings of sadness or worry.³ Another study showed that being present with feelings, including difficult ones, leads to longer, healthier lives.⁴

And when it comes to physical pain, recent brain research has demonstrated that feeling feelings can help those with chronic physical pain. Being present with feelings can ease that pain.⁵ 

Here’s my take home message: Feeling feelings, rather than resisting or denying them, can move us from dis-ease to ease, to that place of peace where healing happens. What we resist, persists. Being with what is — is how we shift what is.

Finding Your Way to Absolute Health and Inner Peace

My book, Beyond Medicine: A Physician’s Revolutionary Prescription for Achieving Absolute Health and Finding Inner Peace, teaches you how to do just that.

Beyond Medicine isn’t a book about healing per se, though it can help you get better from a health issue, if that’s what’s going on for you. Rather, it’s about how to navigate living in a body, with ease, and how to navigate circumstances and situations in your life, with ease.

You’ll learn how to use the five Absolute Health tools for “being here now”, so you can experience inner peace in mere moments. You’ll also learn about your Four Primary Medicines — food, lifestyle, relationships and community, and purpose — essential medicines for finding your way.

You’ll learn about emotional healing and come to understand just what healing is. Healing may be an improvement in our physical health, but I offer that healing may be a departure from that body…that is, death. Whatever form healing takes — it’s always a return home to inner peace, no matter what.

If this notion of healing and dying is difficult for you, I’ll teach you how to be fearless in the face of illness, dying, and death. And how that fearlessness can, in fact, heal you, how it can return you to your body, to improved health. Or how that fearlessness can help you leave, peacefully and gracefully, if it’s your time to go.      

Then, I invite you to travel with me to an extraordinary reality where consciousness transcends space and time and our minds and bodies. A reality where we don’t necessarily begin at birth and end at death — where some aspect of us exists before we’re born and persists after we die. A reality where our minds can affect matter, where our minds can heal our bodies.

If all of that seems implausible or perhaps even impossible to wrap your head around, I offer up the trove of scientific research that may help you to suspend your disbelief. And I share stories of seemingly apparent miracles, and explain that miracles are the natural order of things when we get out of the way.

Finally, I close with suggestions on how you can find your own, unique way home to Absolute Health, inner peace, and healing.

I invite you to travel with me beyond medicine — beyond Western medicine, beyond mind-body medicine, beyond holistic and integrative medicine, beyond any medicine. Beyond the need to search for a cure for what ails you. To a place where healing happens, clarity, solutions, and inspired action arise, and miracles can manifest. Simply. Effortlessly. In this very moment.

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References

1. Rebecca Reed et al., “Emotional Acceptance, Inflammation, and Sickness Symptoms Across the First Two Years Following Breast Cancer Diagnosis,” Brain, Behavior, and Immunity 56 (2016): 165–74, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.bbi.2016.02.018
2. Bruno Aldaz et al., “Is Avoidance of Illness Uncertainty Associated with Distress During Oncology Treatment? A Daily Diary Study,” Psychology & Health 34, no. 4 (2019): 422–37, https://doi.org/10.1080/08870446.2018.1532511
3. Todd Kashdan et al., “Experiential Avoidance as a Generalized Psychological Vulnerability: Comparisons with Coping and Emotion Regulation Strategies,” Behaviour Research and Therapy 44, no. 9 (September 2006): 1301–20, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.brat.2005.10.003
4. Benjamin Chapman et al., “Emotion Suppression and Mortality Risk Over a 12-Year Follow-Up,” Journal of Psychosomatic Research 75, no. 4 (October 2013): 381–85, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jpsychores.2013.07.014
5. Javeria Hashmi et al., “Shape Shifting Pain: Chronification of Back Pain Shifts Brain Representation from Nociceptive to Emotional Circuits,” Brain 136, no. 9 (September 2013): 2751–68, https://doi.org/10.1093/brain/awt211

Based on the book Beyond Medicine. Copyright © 2021 by Patricia A. Muehsam, MD. Reprinted with permission from New World Library. www.NewWorldLibrary.com

You may also enjoy reading As Mainstream Medicine is Failing Us, Is Functional Medicine the New Frontier? by Sophia Smith

The post Beyond Medicine: A Physician’s Revolutionary Prescription for Absolute Health appeared first on BEST SELF.

Estimated reading time: 8 minutes

How small daily efforts reap great rewards and free us from the places we get stuck

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I’ve always been someone who feels very deeply. A few years ago, I would have rephrased that statement with, “I’m someone who feels too deeply.” Most of my life I’ve tried to feel less in order to fit in with others who seemed to have it all together, even when their world was falling apart. Why must I be so affected by everything? I’d ask myself. Why can’t I close myself off from the depth of my emotions?

I used to think intricately and meticulously about everything. I’d overanalyze and project onto others. I’d often mistake a person’s silence as anger or resentment, and if I didn’t check all my boxes for what I deemed as ‘perfection’, I’d judge and ridicule myself. I guess you could say I was both a hypersensitive person and a perfectionist. Sometimes these traits worked to my advantage. Others, they were my Achilles heel. 

I remember one instance years ago after leaving a meeting with my boss where I was convinced that she was upset with me.

She wasn’t as friendly or talkative as she usually was. I could swear when she looked at me, she seemed aggravated. And when I brought up a project I was working on, she didn’t have any comments on my progress. I left her office with a flood of thoughts that analyzed the previous weeks to locate where I could have slipped up. What did I do or say that caused her sudden dislike of me? Was my work performance not as good as it usually was? Why wasn’t she excited to discuss my new project?

I had to send her an email later that week and when I received no reply, even though the email didn’t require a response, I descended into the deep end of self-analysis. I talked it over with a co-worker, carefully detailing every unspoken word or gesture that could have indicated our boss’ disapproval of me during our meeting. After spending far too much time describing empty nuances, my co-worker politely said, “Do you always question yourself this much? I doubt her behavior has anything to do with you and everything to do with her own busy schedule. You need to trust yourself more.”

Ah, yes, trust. That tricky and elusive relationship I always felt was out of arm’s reach.

Self-trust was foreign territory for me…if you couldn’t already tell. The worst part was feeling like I was the only person who had these types of thoughts. Going through something challenging is difficult but feeling alone in the experience is even harder.

The following week after my meeting I learned that my boss was dealing with personal issues at home which was why she was distracted. Her behavior had nothing to do with me, as my co-worker alluded to. The most uncomfortable epiphany from this experience was realizing how long I’d been walking through life as though the world revolved around me. Looking back now, I can laugh, but when going through it, I began to question my sanity if something as minor as a difference in behavior caused an internal breakdown. 

The beauty of landing on the other side of your fears and insecurities is that you can learn to eventually love them. But there’s another nugget of wisdom for self here. This speculating on the source of another’s discomfort consumed a great deal of energy. Suppose my boss had been upset with me and my intuition had been correct. I really had two choices: address it head on or ignore it because it was out of my control. Those options were always there for me to choose from, I just couldn’t see them because I was focusing on my faults.

There have been countless times in my life where I told family and friends to embrace their presumed ‘flaws’. Why can’t we find beauty in our imperfections? Why don’t we harness the power of our shortcomings and use them as a catalyst for growth and enhancement?

I always say that our power is in our perspective.

So, if you’re moving through life believing that your weaknesses and bad habits define you and hold you back, they will, in fact, do just that. Not only because you’re allowing them to, but because you believe they hold that type of power over you. And sometimes, you just don’t trust yourself enough to overcome inner obstacles.

Most of us think that we simply are the way we are. We believe there are qualities about ourselves that we just can’t change despite the number of self-help books we acquire, the self-development workshops we attend, or the number of times we meditate, journal and exercise our insecurities away. To most people, there’s an innate core structure to our beings and regardless of how hard we try to alter our DNA, we’ll forever remain true to the root of our genes.

This used to be my thought process. Even when I spent countless amounts of money on improving my overall health, personality and well-being, there was this underlying conviction that told me my efforts would eventually dissipate and I’d be back at square one — still wishing I was stronger, more confident, and less affected by life. 

The truth is you can change in any moment.

In any moment that you choose to think about yourself, your circumstances, your relationships, and life differently, you’re sparking the fires of transformation. Sometimes it’s easy to ignite those flames, but it’s difficult to keep them burning. Saying you’ll do something and then actually doing it is the starting point for improving yourself, but to create lasting change you must proactively work on yourself every day. It doesn’t have to be all day, every day. It can be short periods of time in the morning, afternoon and night. The key is sticking to it and remembering that with a little daily effort, you will see results.

A few months ago, I worked with a personality trait development program, Dharma Life Sciences. This was the first program I ever used to help me understand why I think and behave the way that I do. The mission of the program is to help people rewire their natural thought processes to heal the parts of themselves that provoke anxiety and discover new ways to become balanced. Between talking weekly with a mentor and spending fifteen minutes a day playing rewiring games on the program’s app, I noticed how my weaknesses transformed into steady inner strength. 

The key to healing my hypersensitivity and perfectionism was not outside of myself. It merely took tuning into my thought processes and rewiring the thoughts that were no longer in alignment with who I wanted to be.

The first changes that took place were in moments where I’d catch myself over-analyzing a situation and then consciously change my thoughts about it. So, if a coworker didn’t say hello to me at work, I wouldn’t jump to the conclusion that I did something to bother him or her. I’d look at the whole picture and realize that maybe this person was dealing with something unrelated to me and simply didn’t want to socialize.

In other cases, I didn’t beat myself up if I wasn’t able to complete every task on my To-Do list. I didn’t castigate myself if I got distracted. Instead, I chose to redirect my attention onto other things.

Many times, when I was writing, I felt the need for unadulterated silence. If my windows were open and I heard landscapers mowing lawns or neighbors blasting loud music, I got frustrated and stopped working. I couldn’t focus on anything but the clamorous sounds preventing me from writing. It was a viscous cycle of pressuring myself to finish daily projects in as little time as possible, and then scolding myself for being so easily distracted.

When working on healing the hypersensitive perfectionist within me through the Dharma Life Sciences program, those noisy disturbances didn’t interfere with my ability to work. I changed my thoughts surrounding the type of person I inherently was – someone unequipped to work if not in her desired settings – and prove to myself that I’m capable of overcoming any internal obstacle if worked on the right way.

Over time, I didn’t catch myself in those triggering moments because I had naturally transformed into someone who wasn’t overthinking or projecting. It’s kind of like upgrading an old, outdated system to a higher level of programming. It didn’t happen overnight, but with small daily efforts, the programming I was living with for years slipped away and was replaced by conscious awareness. 

Conscious awareness means that I choose the thoughts I want to think which in turn creates the emotions I want to feel.

What’s so powerful about this DLS approach is that it increases your ability to be consciously aware, while also implementing unconscious changes that help you become the person you desire to be. By becoming more conscious of your patterns, you unconsciously create new ways of being that support your ideal lifestyle.

I always believed that the best version of myself would arrive in my later years, so it’s been refreshing to take the driver’s seat of my life. This doesn’t mean that I won’t experience feelings of self-doubt, frustration or overthinking. I’ll always feel those emotions at some point or another, but now I know how to deal with them. I’m no longer the passenger sitting in the backseat while my flaws steer the vehicle. I’m the one leading the way, and for the first time in my life, I feel comfortable doing so.

Instead of playing the victim to a predestined personality, I’m altering the parts of myself that no longer serve who I want to be. I choose how I want to show up for my life.

How do I want to show up for my life?

With less fear, more balance and a deep-rooted trust that my thoughts and emotions are as powerful as I make them. And with that awareness, I’m already stronger, happier and more at peace.

I want you to know this is possible for you too.

You may also enjoy reading Never Here, Always There: Learning to Live in the Present Moment, by Danielle Bertoli

The post Releasing The Mind: A Journey From Overthinking and Projection…to Peace appeared first on BEST SELF.

Estimated reading time: 10 minutes

A love note, prod and embrace from one creator to another to finally step into your creative dream project and get it done

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I used to be a professional disease hunter, a board-certified surgical pathologist. I was the M.D. in a white coat who stared at your skin (or breast, brain or bone, etc.) biopsy under the microscope and let your doctor know what, if any disease was present. After twenty years, I grew less interested in what makes people sick and more curious about what makes people WELL.  

As I began to explore this state of wellbeing, I discovered that people who regularly dance, sing, tell stories and create things tend to be very lively… full of LIFE. Joyful. Vital. Healthy. There is something about self-expression that makes us more ALIVE. 

I eventually quit disease hunting to help humans have more LIVELY lives. 

At their request, I lovingly help my clients get their ships righted and back on a trajectory towards more vitality, peace and contentment. I’ve learned a lot about what stops us from prioritizing the things that make us more ALIVE. So, whether you have a book to write, a song to record, paintings to paint or a new invention/idea to help others, these are five very valid reasons to get it done…now. 

Number Five: Do it because somebody told you that you can’t.

A lot of us who feel drawn to create fancy ourselves as black sheep. We believe we don’t fit in, or that everybody is against us for some reason or another. It’s a perspective and rebellion can be a powerful motivator. Years ago, when I presented my first draft of a book to an editor I admired greatly, she told me that I couldn’t write that book. In fact, I wouldn’t be ready to write it for at least three years. Her assessment sent me to my bed to weep uncontrollably for hours and wedged me in a semi-permanent quagmire of self-pity that lasted three full months. I must have moved through a few of the stages of grief because I finally hit anger. PAYDIRT. I got incensed. Who was this woman to tell me I couldn’t write a book? I found a new editor who believed I could write a book and I did write that book and went on to (outrageously) write five more.

Maybe you believe you can’t do your creative act because of something a teacher said to you back in the eighth grade or because your mother wouldn’t approve. Or maybe there’s a wounded part of you thwarting you at every turn that wants to keep you safe. Gently put your arm around them and remind them that you’re a sovereign adult and that it’s going to be OK. And then do this thing! Please remember to surround yourself with your champions, those people who believe that you can and will do this wonderful creative thing. There is almost nothing sweeter than proving a naysayer wrong. 

Number Four:  Because it will make you a better human.

Not only will your life become more LIVELY and AMAZING, as you make your creative act, you will develop a very deep and rare compassion for others…especially other creatives. That author who wrote the book that changed your life? The songwriter whose song got you through a dark night of the soul? The filmmaker who helped you see the madness of being a tortured artist? You will begin to see yourself as a member of a crazy sort of wonder-family with these other creators. You will want to get down on your knees and thank them for the body of work they have created because you will see just how challenging it is to create any work at all.  

In addition, most challenging of all for many of us is this: you will have to ask for help. Somewhere in this process, you will realize that you cannot do this thing alone. It is in the asking that you will need to learn to trust others and listen. And with help, you can make something even better. Much better.  

You will also, I’m sorry to report, have to stick your neck out. Maybe what you are creating isn’t an excruciatingly personal memoir or series of nude self-portraits, but even if the work you create isn’t super vulnerable, sharing it with others will be. Your heart will grow at least 6 ¾ sizes, one hundred percent guaranteed. 

Number Three:  Because it will scare the hell out of you

Everybody knows that “doing the thing you think you cannot do” is the BEST thing you can do. But we avoid it like the plague: hiding under the covers, hitting snooze and idly gossiping about those people out there doing those very things. [Writing your book, painting your paintings, launching your new service to help others] is your hero’s journey. It is a normal and expected part of the tantalizing story that the hero must refuse their calling at first. That’s why it’s such an exciting plot twist when they change their mind and SAY YES. This is the PLOT TWIST you have been waiting for! And Joseph Campbell assures us all that once we say yes, all manner of magical things will happen and “…doors will open where you would not have thought there would be doors and there wouldn’t be a door for anyone else.” Not miraculous enough for you? Keep reading.

You will be forced to SLAY THE DRAGON on this amazing quest, which of course is your fear: 

1. Fear of critics. (tip: go read the one-star reviews of your absolutely favorite creator). 

• Fear that it’s already been done and been done better by somebody else (Ha! A laughable lie! Nobody can do it like you will do it). 

• Fear you are an imposter and not the artist/writer/torch singer or creative you claim to be (for example: Just because you haven’t been obsessed with writing in a journal since second grade doesn’t mean you’re not meant to be a writer!). 

We all know how the hero’s story goes. The dragon guards the hero’s treasure. Facing your myriad fears, this treasure will be acquired by you and it will be something you can share with your family, your community and the world!  Come on! Who doesn’t love treasure! It’s one of the last things on earth you cannot buy with Amazon Prime. This adventure promises to be a powerful spiritual housecleaning of your body, mind, and spirit and you’ll emerge a clearer, more confident version of yourself.

Number Two: Because it is the most Generous thing you can do. 

A lot of us worry that if we take the time and resources to do this creative thing it will be selfish. We worry that it will make us bad mothers, sisters, daughters and friends. The truth is just the opposite: as you become willing to create, you will set others free automatically to do their thing: to paint huge portraits of Marmosets, to shoot a short dramatic film about Dandelion coffee, to write and perform an opera about Lizzo and her flute…to follow their yearnings. 

If you are a mother or father or uncle or aunt of grandmother or grandfather, it is morally imperative that you make this creative act. If you show your kids that you’re a martyr, they will grow up to be martyrs. But, if you show them you are a creator, they will become creators too. Author Brenda Uleand says it best:  

“[Write your book or paint your painting or sing your songs] Because there is nothing that makes people so generous, joyful, lively, bold and compassionate, so indifferent to fighting and the accumulation of objects and money. Because the best way to know truth or beauty is to express it.”

Number One:  Because a Messy House (or basement) won’t haunt you on your deathbed like the creativity you never exercised might. 

But I hear you cry, “There’s no time! I’m busy with [challenging stain removal situations with my laundry, sorting complex recycling, dusting my Lladro collection, shredding damning documents, booking dental appointments for my six kids]! We each have the same twenty four hours each day. It is prioritizing that makes the difference between living a little more each day and dying a little more each day. If you decided that this creation was of critical importance, it would get done. And yes…you might very well run out of paper towels or your eyebrows might get wildly untamed (temporarily) and you might get a red check by your name at the library, but the other option is so much more bleak: You will reach the end of your days without having truly lived. 

As Mary Oliver said,

“It is six A.M., and I am working. I am absentminded, reckless, heedless of social obligations, etc. It is as it must be. The tire goes flat, the tooth falls out, there will be a hundred meals without mustard. The poem gets written. I have wrestled with the angel and I am stained with light and I have no shame. Neither do I have guilt. My responsibility is not to the ordinary, or the timely. It does not include mustard, or teeth. It does not extend to the lost button, or the beans in the pot. My loyalty is to the inner vision, whenever and howsoever it may arrive.”

― Mary Oliver, Upstream: Selected Essays

A Post-Script from the field:

I’ve just published my first novel (after writing five non-fiction books) Where the Deer Dream and I have to report that the process was extremely mysterious as it always is when you are acting as a conduit for something greater than yourself. I’m a bit sheepish to admit that I gave up several times on this particular hero’s journey. The dragons I had to slay seemed more fiery and intimidating than ever before. Each time that I gave up, something strange happened. The first time I had quit the novel, I was leading a Pachydermal Pilgrimage in Thailand when my co-leader shared a personal detail about her sister that was so specific and so rare (The chance of her sister having this precise experience was one in a million). This was my missing puzzle piece, her sister was the human who I could now interview and finish my novel. 

Then, even after that crazy synchronicity, I gave up again. This time I chickened out because I thought the whole manuscript was terrible and I just didn’t believe I could do the story justice anymore. I didn’t know how. Months later, in the murky parking garage at Seattle SeaTac Airport I stumbled into a stranger who needed help and as I offered my assistance to her, she spontaneously shared a personal detail about her life that was so specific I could hardly believe my ears. It was intimately tied to my novel. In that moment in the dark damp garage, I knew that I had to find a way to finish this book. So, even when I have been through this process dozens of times, it’s never a passive process. But, what I want you to know is that you will not be alone. This project of yours has a spirit and life of it’s own! It will be riding shotgun with you to ensure you keep going! 

All you need to do is keep saying YES: To it and to your life. 

I hope you’ve decided to make creative action a priority, because we need you to be as ALIVE as you possibly can be. Your responsibility is to the extraordinary. We are inter-depending on you!

—

Ready to get your book written? Join Sarah + Inger for their group writing program in January!

You may also enjoy reading How Good Are You Willing to Let Life Get? Daily Messages from a Spirit Animal, by Sarah Bamford Seidelmann.

The post The Creative Hero’s Journey: 5 Reasons You Should Write Your Book, Paint Your Picture, Sing Your Song appeared first on BEST SELF.

Estimated reading time: 10 minutes

One woman’s reclamation of grief as a solitary journey

—

Sitting on the sturdy plastic church chair on the end of one of several rectangular tables, I watched — or, rather, allowed my eyeballs to take in — a slideshow of pictures, most of which were from his childhood. Small Danny, often wearing a tie and frequently photographed with his viola — its neck in his right hand by his side or the instrument positioned under his chin; bow ready in either case to play something magical…to play something most people wouldn’t expect from the limbs of a sturdy-but-skinny young Swedish-German boy from Minnesota.

After ten minutes or so, I noticed none of the photos in the slideshow included me, until…ahh — but there’s one. We were standing in front of his house, I think (or was it the kitchen — stationed in front of a casserole?) when I visited during summer break. I remember the heat and the mosquitos and the leeches in the lake (“There are WAY more than 10,000 lakes in Minnesota”, he explained). I had a brightly colored striped shirt which somehow highlighted my nose ring. I looked uncomfortable as I usually do when I didn’t plan on having my photo taken; as I also usually do when photos are planned.

I’ll always remember (which isn’t quite the same as saying “I’ll never forget”) this day: my late husband Dan’s second memorial service, held on this predictably freezing day in February.

I don’t remember it because of the people who attended, the things that were said, or even that it was the second event — the second memorial held to recognize the thing it took an entire year for me to truly take in: he’s gone. No, not for those things. I don’t recall those clearly — everything was blurry and surreal that year. Twelve years later, many things still are. I recall the impression it made, the tone of the day, the confusion of it all. I’d previously regarded myself as the center of his and our collective universe. And now, here, in his place of birth, I was confronted with the possibility I might be wrong.

Who are they talking about? Who is Danny?

I’d only known (and loved—oh, how I loved) Dan, sans the eeeee sound of “nny”. A stranger for only a split-second as I walked up the steps of our mutual college dorm in Philadelphia, PA, he was only ever Dan to me. We were two kids from the other side of the States who couldn’t have known our choice of university would seal a fate both beautiful and brutal. He was the formal-sounding Daniel only when I was attempting to sound serious. “Daniel Larry Fritz, pick your pants up off the flooooor!” I serious/joked while cleaning our subsequent tiny NYC apartment. “Daniel, I’m so coooold…!” when I needed him to use his radiator-like body to defrost my feet.

I suspect we knew it in an instant on those dorm stairs, too, but after seven years together, we “officially” decided we knew each other sufficiently to make it official. The officiant used both of our full names to marry us in a ceremony our friends and family had waited for — the most inevitable of inevitabilities. Four years later, the cycle of “Until Death Us Do Part” was complete — a reality even the author of that timeless script hadn’t anticipated.

I knew Dan, but who was Danny?

I was angry. I felt betrayed-by-proxy. Who are they talking about? My grief prevented me from seeing anything clearly. Until it was pointed out to me — gently, subtly, and when I was finally able to hear it — that a person’s personal experience with someone is exactly that: personal, I felt like it was a betrayal. I didn’t think the people at the second memorial, his own family, knew Dan.

But they knew Danny.

And I didn’t. I’d missed out on those formative years; the years before the dorm steps; the years before we knew each other — those 18 years when he was, at least sometimes, Danny. Danny belonged to his family and friends from before. Dan, however, was mine.

It was a rocky road from the bitterness I felt at this second memorial to the illogical comfort I now take in this thought (sing it with me): Grief is the loneliest feeling that you’ll ever do….

If you’ve ever lost someone dear — your dad, husband, child, wife, cat; if you’ve ever lost an idea, lost direction, lost your identity…the thought may cross your mind: “No one understands me. No one knows how this feels.”

The popular wisdom is to disagree. “Of course we understand. Of course you’re not alone.” I’m here to tell you I agree — with you, not “them.” No one understands. You’re alone. Alone in your exact experience, alone in your precise feeling of alone.

“They” are only trying to be nice and encouraging — but in my experience, this dismissal of your truth only prolongs the hurt.

Grief feels personal because it is personal.

When I finally both realized and acceptedthis, I felt less alone. And this is another reason why grief is so hard; so isolating: because even if you spoke with your grief twin — one who seemingly walked through the exact same steps on your grief path, she wouldn’t understand. Grief is the loneliest experience, but it also belongs to you. It’s the gift you have left; the peace which surpasses all understanding…

***

I didn’t join the requisite support group when Dan/Danny died. As many times as the social worker on the 12th floor insisted I give it a try, I rejected the suggestion in the same way I’d scoff at a decaf Americano: “Oof! Why bother?!” It wasn’t that decaf (or support groups) or aren’t okay or useful, it’s just that both concepts don’t appeal to me and, I didn’t think would work for me.  

Grief may be Universal in that it touches us all, but that universality concept doesn’t address the deeply personal side of grief. There’s nothing about the cadence of the way he said, “Rise and shine, Susie Q! Get in that shaaa-wah!” anyone else can understand. The tilt of his head when he was trying not to contradict me, the squint when it was waaaay past time to leave the party, or the sound of the exhale when he took his last breath and I inhaled my new life.

There is nothing, nothing a group could understand about that.

I hear you arguing — “But people who are grieving get the gist, lady! People understand what you’re going through — at least in general.” I agree. In ‘general’, they do. But grief is specific; grief is all the atoms of a person broken down into fine details and you — only you — have the microscope to see them. Grief is an invisible wave you’re riding that no one else can see. “Look! She’s gliding through the air” they say, when in reality you’re seconds from crashing, mere inches from sinking to the ocean’s floor.

Grief is a bundle of experiences and, yes, things — actual, physical things you don’t wish to share.

In my box of Dan’s physical things is his white undershirt — the one with stains which now smells musty, but used to smell like him. I kept his tiny BlackBerry with the green rubber case — the one I used to look up TV sitcom scripts and read from when he was half awake/half asleep on the 12th floor of Sloan Kettering’s hospital floor. There’s the urn — the big one I once carried onto a plane, whispering to the TSA man, “My husband’s ashes are in there,” while holding my breath he wouldn’t take it out of the bag for inspection. I might have melted into the floor and joined him in the great beyond. There’s his computer case — way too big for my 13-inch laptop — my “MacIntrash” as he first called it back in that dorm room, attempting to impress me with his PC-preferred wit. There are the scraps of paper he wrote on. I’ve scanned and saved and laminated every last bit of physical him.

My grief bundle also contains every word he ever spoke while we slept in late, blankets over our heads to keep warm (and the heating bill low). It includes all our inside jokes from DVD extras and episode 3 of the British Office. My grief is how it felt for him to place his hand on the small of my back when I was mid-panic-attack; his eyes as he pretended to love the mixed-berry fruit crumble I made fresh from the oven, Dan! Just like mom never made! Or the way he didn’t pretend at all when I manufactured a vegan version of his beloved childhood meal of Minnesota Wild Rice soup. It was, objectively, terrible…

My grief is knowing what I knew beyond anything else: he would never leave me (even though he did). It’s walking down aisle 9 of the grocery store and dancing with him to Huey Lewis and the News — spotting the specials in the frozen section while feeling like the luckiest girl in the world. In the frozen section… “It’s hip to eat square!”

My grief is telling him it was okay to let go — so late in the game was I to this thing he needed to hear, but I did it (it was the hardest thing…).

Of course, it was a lie — it would never be okay. But even lies were appropriate when it came to my love for him.

And the truth as you see it, as you experienced it, is also enough. If I’ve realized anything, it’s that the only thing I really have — an object invisible to others — is my experience of him. Of Dan. Of my husband. No one else can claim this. Not his mother, father, sister, brother, best male friend — and certainly no support group. No circle of people grieving for their own Dans, perhaps their Danny. No one else.

***

Let me step back for a paragraph so we can catch our Universal breaths. The truth is grief isn’t always about loss in the death sense. To make it nice and current, this pandemic has caused layer-upon-layer of loss and reasons to grieve, and it also feels personal. One person’s homeschooling conundrum is another person’s decision to let their hair go grey is another person’s aunt who is on a ventilator. “It’s all relative” takes on a topical twist. We gather stories but still don’t/can’t quite understand each other. To break a broken record further, that’s because it’s personal.

***

If you’re still with me, I can feel you waiting for me to change my mind about groups. Maybe you’ve had an incredibly helpful experience in a group. I’m truly happy for you! This is good news!! Maybe you’ve felt held and supported AND understood in your community. It’s oh so good to be in community and share.

But still — your grief, my grief, our Universal, personal grief — it belongs to us together, individually.

These ideas can exist simultaneously.

When I close my eyes and remember him, it’s just the two of us, his hand in mine, using words intended only for me. No one understands what that was like. I cherish that. It belongs to me. It’s personal.

You may also enjoy reading Life After Death: Healing Grief, Redefined, by Sarah Nannen

The post It’s Personal: A Reflection on Grief appeared first on BEST SELF.

Estimated reading time: 11 minutes

Embracing the unknown in a world of definitives and data can actually be a catalyst for creative breakthrough

—

When I get lost while driving in the Hudson Valley — which is often — I usually welcome seeing a new place. When one of my two young daughters asks me a thought-stopping question (“Papa, are we indigenous people anywhere on the planet?” “Papa, do our eyes really see nature as it is?”), I prefer to say, “I don’t know. Let’s think about that.”

The truth is, I’m comfortable with occasionally getting lost — on the road, in my mind, and in my life.

To say so can seem like a radical stance these days. After all, we have created a world that distracts us from confusion’s discomfort. Have a question? Ask Siri. Got lost on the road? Ask Google Maps. Feeling a little lost about who you are at this moment or feeling as if everything you’ve held to be true has been disrupted? Ask, um, I don’t know. Let’s think about that.

I used to think that this comfort with confusion was a character flaw. Why can’t I just get with the world’s program and be 100% confident that I know what’s what about life and about my identity? Why can’t I just provide ready-made answers to the people and organizations I work with?

But I have a different outlook now. My work with innovators and change-makers of different stripes has helped me normalize instead of pathologize this comfort with confusion. For over 20 years, I have worked with people who go through long stages of confusion. The melee in their businesses and endeavors inevitably overlaps with uncertainty about their identities. Despite profound discomfort, they still hunger for a way to pass through unknown territory to a greater possibility “on the other side.”

When I compared their experiences with my studies in the psychology of creativity and of certain wisdom traditions, I sought ways to help them (and myself) navigate if not celebrate this stage of becoming. “Could a certain kind of confusion,” I’ve long wondered, “be an invitation for creative breakthrough or even spiritual transformation?” For this question, at least, I now can respond with a confident “Yes.”

But such breakthroughs often require a detour into the deep woods of wonder.

To be in wonder with confusion could be our guide to survive if not thrive in our uncertain times.

Wonder is a heightened state of awareness brought on by something that surprises us. That surprise either delights us, disorients us, or both. When something threatens our sense of what is real and true, our default response is to fight or flee from reality. Since 2020, for instance, many of us have experienced grave loss. We’ve lost loved ones, jobs, businesses, beliefs, and a load of things we once took for granted. It’s natural for us to cling to the comfort of the known or some notion of normal, but no breakthrough or transformation that I’m aware of arose from such clinging.

Wonder, instead, pauses that fight-or-flight reactivity and brings us into an instant state of creative mindfulness. The science of wonder increasingly corroborates this unique feature. For just a few fleeting moments, these experiences of wonder dissolve our default biased ways of thinking and perceiving so we can see again what is real and true, beautiful and possible — about ourselves, our lives, other people, and the world around us.

Of wonder’s many facets, bewilderment is what I call the disorienting facet of wonder. It is a state of utter disorientation or confusion that, if navigated well, can lead to transformation.

When in bewilderment, you can feel both exhilarated by the new world you might venture into while also confused, if not lost in the present.

Isn’t it paradoxical that one way to find deep fulfillment often requires getting temporarily lost?

Perhaps more than any other facet of wonder, bewilderment can unhinge your comfortable sense of reality. (Yikes.) So why would you deliberately track this facet?

Bewilderment holds beautiful truths. It challenges the self-defined roles we play (“I am a teacher.” “I am an accountant.”  “I am a Buddhist.”  “I am an environmental activist.” “I am a CEO.”) and “de-centers” the self. The cognitive neuroscientist Kelly Bulkeley noted that when we feel wonder, our “ordinary sense of personal identity is dramatically altered, leading to new knowledge and understanding that ultimately recenters the self.” Wonder, benign as it may seem, sometimes drops our ego’s protective guard, and our sense of self can be left vulnerable for reinvention as rigid roles dissolve or overlap. We become aware again of the mystery of who we are and could become, as if we were a child again. 

Several years ago, when our second daughter was born, I did battle with my selves. The wandering poet self who created new ideas and things seemed at odds with the self who built a business and provided security as a husband and father. Eventually, and not easily, those roles meshed into something like a business artist and a wondering papa where my selves could mesh instead of be in battle.

So much is possible.

Think of that well-known character Dorothy in the film version of The Wizard of Oz. A tornado disrupts her black-and-white Kansas reality and lands her in a bewildering technicolor realm. She’s not sure where she is or even who she is. Her eyes are wide in wonder, ready for discovery.

We all have tornado moments. Like Dorothy, we enter unknown land within our own souls —even if it shows up as something as seemingly ordinary as a job transition or relationship change. If we pay attention, we’re experiencing wonder.

Imagine your own tornado life moment. What profoundly surprising situations seemingly beyond your control have spun you for a loop? How did you respond? Did you think you were to blame? Were you able to spin initial fear into fascination? How were you able to get your footing and move forward with your life goals, perhaps with a new perspective and renewed courage? Now, consider this: When you venture toward living this one life with more creativity and artful resilience, you likely will induce your own tornado moments. Yes, you read that correctly.

As you stretch into terra incognita, you may, like an extended rubber band, want to contract to a familiar place. If you start pursuing a dream or desire, you can feel conflicted between competing desires to stay safe or explore what’s new. That’s an understandable reaction. It can be helpful, though, to stop in your tracks and feel what you’re feeling. Really, feeling the confusion is an essential step to not bypass this experience. How does your moment of bewilderment feel in your body? Along your skin? What feelings come up for you? Are you nervous about letting go of anything? Do you feel as if a part of you is dying?

This question is important: In your personal tornado moment, what would you compare these feelings to — being adrift on the ocean or lost in wild woods? Are you curious about the unknown possibilities of what could be birthed and created? Acknowledge the tension. Doing so lets more of you accept this state as an opportunity for growth and discovery. Feel it. Don’t flee it.

“Sell cleverness and buy bewilderment,” the Sufi poet Rumi writes. What an invitation! These days, after all, bewilderment can come freely if you’re open to it.

So, I invite you to celebrate this degree of confusion. When you do so, you taste the freedom in not trying to control all outcomes and in not having the answers for everything before you venture forward.

We celebrate bewilderment because you’re being honest and you’ve ventured somewhere in your mind, creativity, or life that is new, exciting, and transformative. Doing so admittedly can be hard. The dominant work culture in the United States has long valued the expert or manager with all the answers, but consider this: in this ever-changing climate, the person who can entertain ambiguities and whose mind is more flexible will have many advantages over the person who has nothing, but a brain filled with big data.

Surprises after all are learning opportunities. Our brains process novel information and sensory input, and then file away memories in the same region. So, we actually pay more attention to and remember what surprises us. Some studies are suggesting that when our expectations of core knowledge are defied, we learn better and explore more.

Being in bewilderment is an opportunity to hold the space between seeming oppositions.

Who I am now versus who I want to be. My current job versus my creativity. My for-pay work versus my for-passion work. My life as a parent versus my life as an artist. An idea of individuality versus an idea of community. We are wired in binary left-right thinking, but wonder trips our wiring and opens possibilities in the space between.

You can think of your wonder mind as the safe and brave container for your breakthrough. It’s the incubator for creative bewilderment. Befriend your wonder mind in this pause. When you pause long enough to get curious and more creative than reactive, you suspend the stress response, and your panicky amygdala calms down while your much more relaxed hippocampus lights up. This part of the brain detects novel information and sensory input. It’s involved in decision-making, learning, and long-term memory. The hippocampus is also a key area where your adult brain can generate new neurons, which science has only recently confirmed.

The fulfilled innovators I’ve worked with and studied have taught me how to foster a more creative mindset by expecting surprises, and preparing for them. We must be open and willing to leave our maps behind and accept our confusion if we want to become wiser. A creative mindset of fruitful bewilderment sets us up to do that much better than a distressed or panicked mindset.

I call this creative approach “fertile confusion” because we can use confusion to see ourselves anew and to redefine aspects of our lives or who we are through creative experiments. Fertile confusion is a state in which you refrain from seeking easy solutions or revert to old patterns long enough to transform your worldview, yourself, or your approach to a complex endeavor.

When you fertilize confusion, you can till the soil of your soul.

Consider Kerra Bolton. Kerra had built a successful career as a journalist, political pundit, and media communications specialist. As the media communications director for a prominent political figure, she was in North Carolina’s political inner circle and played a part in President Obama’s momentous win of that state in 2008. By 2016, she left North Carolina and those roles for Mexico. Her mother died just before she left, and the country’s divisive political climate shook Kerra’s sense of safety.

As a Black woman, she wanted a new start. She wanted to shed the identity tied to politics and media communications. “Artist” is what kept beckoning her toward a future horizon, but she had little idea how that would happen. During her phase of bewilderment, Bolton stayed open to possibility.

After a quick stint in making masks as an artist, she started publishing bold opinion pieces, including for CNN.com — which brought her notoriety and the attention of Ted Watchtel, founder of the International Institute of Restorative Practices (IIRP). The IIRP defines restorative practices as “an emerging social science that studies how to strengthen relationships between individuals as well as social connections within communities.” Watchtel hired Bolton as a journalist to travel with filmmaker Cassidy Friedman to document IIRP’s effects in the city of Detroit where restorative practices had helped rebuild relationships between the police force and communities of color.

While in Detroit, Bolton was personally moved by the encounters, and the filmmaker started to turn the lens on Bolton. She became not only a journalist but an “actor” in the unfolding narrative. That shift in lens awakened Kerra’s creativity in an even brighter light that meshed with her strong drive for justice and abiding curiosity in social issues. Fast-forward two years later, and Bolton helped Wachtel produce the award-winning docuseries Detroit Rising: How the Motor City Becomes a Restorative City — a project that Bolton says “led to discovering my voice as a filmmaker.” Now she is working on Return of the Black Madonna, which she notes “follows my experiences learning to swim, dive and map sunken slave ships with Black marine archeologists” — with Bolton as the protagonist.

In some ways, Bolton held the space between her roles as journalist and communications specialist and artist. The once-unknown space between has become an identity of her own making that weaves parts of her new role as documentary filmmaker and actress. Located on a beach in Mexico, she now runs her own film crew, some of whom have worked with Spike Lee. Through navigating her bewilderment, she has evolved in her unique way.

That’s the wonder of bewilderment.

Are you ready to accept your invitation?

—

Portions of this essay have been adapted from or excerpted from Jeffrey Davis’s book TRACKING WONDER: Reclaiming a Life of Meaning and Possibility in a World Obsessed with Productivity © 2021 Jeffrey Davis. Reprinted with permission of the author and the publisher, Sounds True, Inc.

You may also enjoy reading Poetry, Wonder and the Creative Mind, by Jeffrey Davis

The post Lost and Found: Bewilderment as an Invitation to Transformation appeared first on BEST SELF.

Estimated reading time: 10 minutes

One man’s journey to finding connection in loss

—

We never really know when it will be the last time we talk to someone, the last time we see them, the last hug.

The time was 2:23pm. Or there about. It’s hard to pinpoint the precise time when you’re in that deep sleep state where time seems not to exist. That’s when Sara passed on…ascending to a new dimension, free from the paralyzed body that imprisoned her for thirty years.

I felt her passage…a swirl of orange light that rose from the lake in my dream and disappeared into the sky above.

Moments later, I was awoken by the vibration of my phone—a text had just come in from my sister, Janet: She’s gone…it was easy for her, but difficult for us.

Sara was the oldest of my two sisters, the ‘Flower Power’ child, the tail end of the peace-and-Aquarius generation which defined the 60’s and 70’s civil rights and anti-establishment movement. She was pretty, funny, creative, smart…and knew how to work a system, including our family system. Leveraging these skills, if there was a way to get out of household chores, she found it, Janet and I covering in an effort to simply “keep the peace”. She wore the bellbottom jeans, tie-died halter tops, sought refuge with a Guru or two in California, and disrupted more than a few family dinners with her indignant antics. Yet she loved and she cared, and taught me the ‘ways of the world’ that would give this young boy a leg up as I approached adolescence.

Memories flooded through my mind during that brief sleep. Actually, it was more of short nap, a dream state alone in my car. I knew she was gravely ill and I was trying desperately to get to Michigan from my home in Woodstock, NY (ironically, the home of the 60’s hippie culture and origin of the famous concert in 1969) in order to be with her. Her smile that could light up a room always told me that she loved that I wound up here. I tried desperately to get to her that day, wrangling airlines and flights like trying to herd a pack of wild cats, but it was futile. I wasn’t meant to be there in that moment and needed to surrender to that. I had been out in California when I received the news of her hospitalization and health condition.

Hour after hour staring up at the airport monitor at my gate, with multiple flight delays and cancellations beyond my control…it was evident that it was not meant to be—at least in my timing or my way. I wasn’t going anywhere anytime soon. In a moment of defeat, I felt called to retreat from the airport, to be somewhere alone. So, with hours to spare, I left the terminal and headed for my car in the parking lot. Exhausted from having battled my way back from California just the night before, seemingly repeating it again this day, and frustratingly deflated from not being able to get where I so desperately wanted to be…I opened the passenger seat door of my car and got in. Reclining the seat, I even amused myself, hmmm, who know how comfortable this seat in recline could be? I glanced at the clock…2:15, set an alarm on my phone to awaken me for the flight and fell asleep instantly.

I went back to Lake Michigan, the touchstone and the location of virtually all of my childhood memories…at least the happiest ones.

While we grew up in the now-rusty town of Saginaw, we had a gorgeous summer cabin on the shores of Lake Michigan—the result of my parents’ desire to forge a kind of utopian retreat, away from the small thinking of the community we lived in and imbued with their curiosity of life. At that time, no one wanted to be on the Big Lake. Summer dwellers flocked to the myriad small lakes of inland Michigan, with boating activities and warmer waters for swimming. My parents’ vision was different. They wanted expansive, raw, quiet open space.

Just after I was born, they bought an inexpensive 40-acre parcel with a quarter-mile of beachfront, nestled in a saddle between two 200-foot high, wooded sand dunes. They named it Paraggi, after the intimate, stunningly beautiful fishing village on the Italian coast that they fell in love with during their travels. Sara painted the sign that greeted visitors at the entrance to our sandy driveway (more of a long, bumpy beach road). It simply read “Paraggi,” painted in pink and orange with flowers in a swirly, 60’s groovy font. It makes my heart beam just thinking of that sign.

Paraggi was a world without tv, without social constraints, without the ‘shoulds’ of normal living. It began as a sandy swath. Then came a modest single room cabin with an out-house. And then a separate cabin with two bedrooms and…wait for it…a bathroom. And years later, a masterfully designed main cabin. All of the structures were built upon deeply buried telephone poles, and ‘floated’ several feet above the ever-shifting dunes that confounded most architects. The structures were connected by a series of decks—named ‘the aft deck’, ‘the poop deck’ and ‘the main deck’—nautical terms inspired by my father’s love of sailing (though we never had a boat). My parents were visionaries in their own right.

It was on those decks that the countless conversations of life unfolded as we watched the summer sun set over the lake, or dramatic storms approach from the west. It’s where I tinkered with my minibike, sipped my first beer and learned about girls. In the screened-in porch, we read comic books in the rain, played cards ‘til 2am and slept in sleeping bags ‘til noon. It’s where I connected to nature, explored woods for hours on end, and everyone freed their mind. My father was reading Deepak Chopra before he had become, well, ‘Deepak Chopra’.

With all this family connectedness, you’d think we siblings would become close-knit in our adulthood. We didn’t.

We loved each other deeply…and still do…but that tight, know-every-life-detail kind of closeness was not what my parents sowed. Quite the opposite—they actually eschewed those uber-close tightknit families…they thought they robbed children of their innate rugged individualism. They would hold our cousins as examples. Maybe they were right, maybe not…I was a bit of a celebrity among the cousins for leaving Michigan and branching out to California, New York and beyond…but as we matured, it sure seemed like those cousins were enjoying life surrounded by family and traditions, while we were all dotted across the map, connected by infrequent phone calls and even less frequent visits.

For Sara, that distance felt more like isolation during the many years following a car accident that left her paralyzed and wheelchair-bound—although amazingly alive—three decades after as she swerved off a rural road to avoid hitting a deer in the dark of night. The car rolled down a ravine and landed in a tree. Sara, with no seatbelt on (mercifully), landed in the brush and was identified by a hunter in the early light of dawn the next morning. She survived and beat many odds along the journey, including getting to meet and have a relationship with two beautiful grandchildren. Fortunately, in recent years, her daughter Heather, a lovely and caring only child, moved close by and was able to help her during her the later years of her life journey.

So here I found myself, resigned to my car with my inability to get to Michigan—trying to get to Sara…to hold her hand one last time, to tell her I love her, to say goodbye to her lifeless body that lay there unconscious before they turned off the machines sustaining her. When it became abundantly clear that that wasn’t happening and that she would likely be gone before I arrived, I still yearned to get there to hold Janet who had made it there in time and my niece as she said goodbye to her Mother. But I was grounded. Even driving there at this point would have been futile, an 11-hour journey.

Hope springs eternal. I held out. Waited. Was determined to get there. God, the Universe, my angels, maybe my sister had other plans for me.

I never made it to Michigan that day, but something more miraculous had unfolded. Sara met me on the deck overlooking the lake in my dream. She came to me as if to say, it’s okay little brother. I’m free. I love you so much. Live your beautiful life. I sobbed and grieved and laughed. It was one of the most profound spiritual experiences of my life.

I could’ve easily missed this. In fact, the old version of myself would’ve. I received this sacred gift of connection from my sister because I was open to receive…because I listened to myself when I felt called to leave the hustle and bustle of the airport, and to retreat. For whatever reason(s) I wasn’t meant to travel that day. And those details don’t really even matter. I could’ve chosen to get all worked up and upset, resisting. Or to be curious about why events were unfolding as they were…and go with the flow. I’m grateful I chose the latter.

In hindsight, as I reflected upon this, I knew that it was a slice of grace that could’ve easily slipped through my fingers.

Had I been on the plane at 30,000 feet, I would’ve likely missed it. Had I stayed in the noisy terminal, I would’ve likely missed it. Had I gone home, I would’ve likely been busying myself at my desk and would’ve missed it. But I didn’t.

I wasn’t distracted and instead sat in the presence of my pain there in my car, divinely connected with my family and my sister as she left her body.

We are surrounded by the mysteries of life and if you are anything like me, you’ve likely taken for granted the interconnectedness we possess. But not anymore for me.

I share this deeply personal experience because it reminded me how to live. It reconnected me to the people and places I value and love—and it demonstrated how to follow my intuitive hits and show up for myself. Don’t miss yours.  

I made it to Michigan the next day, this time on a flight only slightly delayed—and for whatever reason, that was divine timing. I spent a short, yet deeply moving and fully present time with my small family as we remembered and celebrated Sara’s life in our own way. Through tears and laughter and togetherness, we began our healing.

Sometimes (probably all the times) we don’t get to define the terms of our ‘goodbyes’, but it is my belief that when we can release the need to control what that outcome should be—we avail ourselves of something far greater. Connecting to Sara in that way, in that moment, in that car, was the greatest gift I could’ve received.

Life. It is meant to me tasted, experienced, felt. Not to be rushed through.

Thank you for meeting me on the deck, Sara. I love you too. Rest in peace sister, you are free.

You may also enjoy reading Life After Death: Healing Grief, Redefined, by Sarah Nannen

The post Saying Goodbye to Sara appeared first on BEST SELF.

Estimated reading time: 11 minutes

A treasure trove of letters from the early 1900’s becomes fodder for an author’s book that will inspire today’s women and activists

—

In 1892, when my great-grandmother Mary Davies was 20 years old, she took a trip from Topeka, Kansas, to Pontardulais, the village in Wales where her immigrant father had grown up. In 1976, when I was 21, I traveled from Poughkeepsie, New York, to Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and India, to teach English and study meditation.

After four months in Britain, Mary returned to the U.S. and found a job in New York City with the publisher Dodd, Mead and Company. After a year and a half in Asia, I moved to Manhattan and worked for Springer Publishing.

You can see why, in my fifties, when I started digging into her travel diary and discovered the many letters she saved, I felt a kinship with Mary.

I often get the spooky feeling she saved these items for me, so I could write about her. Not that she knew her great-granddaughter would be a writer, but I feel her words have been entrusted to me. 

That’s why I am anxious about having used her as the model for a character in To March or to Marry, a historical novel about suffrage and women’s clubs. I believe I have accurately depicted her pluckiness and practicality in the face of such challenges as dealing with her dreamy, romantic husband, who barely made a living as a violin teacher. But in my quest to write about the crises in women’s lives that inspired the early feminist movement, I have introduced events that I am pretty sure did not happen to her.

For instance, it’s unlikely that she met Margaret Sanger, who took on the mission of making birth control available to all women. I shifted the birthdates of Mary’s daughter and twin sons by eight years so Abbie, the character Mary is based on, would be investigating birth control during the period of Sanger’s early activism (1911-1918). I felt justified by a 1932 letter Mary wrote to her daughter, Helen, at the time Helen learned she was unexpectedly pregnant with her second child (my mother). Mary’s comment suggests that her own second pregnancy came a bit earlier than hoped: “You did your best. Only don’t have twins!”

From that brief but feelingful remark, I constructed a plot device revolving around the Comstock Act, which made it illegal to send “obscene, lewd or lascivious” publications through the mail—including information on birth control. The law was extended to prohibit possession of a condom or a pessary (a device similar to the modern-day diaphragm).

In later years, Sanger took an interest in eugenics, espousing racist attitudes that have made her persona non grata nowadays, but in the nineteen-teens, she was courageous in challenging the Comstock law. Although Mary came from a background so conventional that I don’t believe she was a keen supporter of suffrage, I do think she would have been in favor of birth control. In 1905, when her husband was making enough money to hire an Irish washwoman to help with the arduous task of doing laundry, Mary wrote to her mother, “This will be her tenth child, and so unwelcome! Isn’t it awful? Then I look at our own little baby and think of the care and love we bestow on her, and how other little babies get just enough attention to enable them to live, it seems awful.”

Both for herself and for lower-income women, surely she saw the value of what was then called “family limitation.”

I have no evidence that Mary ever made friends with someone like Louise, the book’s other protagonist, whose attraction to the suffrage movement disrupts her friendship with Abbie. After her parents’ divorce, at the age of fourteen, Mary taught herself typewriting and shorthand and found a satisfying job despite being unable to vote. I’m guessing she didn’t see what the fuss was all about, and Abbie adopts the same attitude. That is, until she realizes men are unlikely to change a law that’s inimical to women’s wellbeing—unless women can vote. 

Louise, who is completely fictional, springs out of my extensive research on the suffrage movement. Many suffragists were educated and articulate, and several of them wrote memoirs about the period leading up to the passage of the 19^th Amendment. I found detailed first-hand accounts of women marching, picketing, getting arrested, and going on hunger strike, so I am confident in my characterization of the bold, quick-tempered Louise and her immersion in suffrage activities. But then I don’t have to worry about her opinion of me.

With Mary, I am on firm ground in regard to her women’s club. In 1904 and 1905, she wrote to her mother almost daily, filling her letters with baby Helen’s antics, household duties, sewing projects, and details of Athenaeum Club meetings. I had never heard of the women’s club movement, although I soon learned it numbered 1.5 million members by 1916. The letters show that Mary’s weekly club meetings were integral to her sense of wellbeing. I believe she would be happy to know I have brought her club back to life, while showing how women’s clubs were a critical, if undervalued, strand of early feminism.

Radical suffragists derided the conservative, largely middle-class clubs, and clubwomen did indeed idealize marriage and motherhood.

It’s understandable that suffs who were out lobbying legislators, speaking on street corners, or serving prison terms, would dismiss the sedate activities of the clubs as unimportant, even pathetic. But a study published during the Second Wave of feminism pointed out the vital role of the clubs. In The Clubwoman as Feminist (Holmes & Meier, 1980), Dr. Karen J. Blair showed how clubs not only changed men’s views of what women were capable of but also trained women in skills that later fitted them for jobs in business and government.

The clubs took the position that a housewife’s values and talents were just what the world needed in the period when the Industrial Revolution was creating professional jobs for middle-class men even as the immigrants who worked in factories and sweatshops were living in poverty. Men were too busy earning a living to devote attention to culture, so one popular type of club engaged women in the appreciation of literature and art by selecting a yearly theme (French culture, for example) and assigning topics to members, who researched and wrote papers to be read aloud at meetings. Other clubs focused on social reform and community service, instigating such projects as citywide trash collection, free kindergarten, the creation of public parks, the establishment of local libraries.

It’s clear from Mary’s letters that the Athenaeum was a literary club. (“Mrs. Flint had a paper on [William Cullen] Bryant, the poet, and then she wanted to discuss a certain poem of his, so she asked someone to read it. No one volunteered, of course, so she asked me. I think I have a reputation for being a good reader in the club.”) The novel’s version of the Athenaeum is similar. However, Mary had been out in the world as a working woman until her marriage to August Wingebach, and documents show she served as club president and as Bronx Borough Director of the New York City Federation of Women’s Clubs. I have portrayed Abbie as the leading edge of her club, nudging the members towards addressing social issues as they become problematic in her own life.

I don’t have Mary’s letters from the period after the birth of the twins, which is perhaps fortunate, since I was free to send Abbie on adventures that advance the action of the novel while revealing the brutal realities of women’s lives. I pray Mary’s forgiveness for stretching her character farther than she went in real life.

I have always admired my great-grandmother. It was such a pleasure to live with her for a year while writing To March or to Marry. Now we continue to keep company as I reach out to share our book with the world.

You may also enjoy reading Soul-Voice, by Meggan Watterson

The post Feminism for the Ages: How My Great Grandmother Became a Character in My Novel appeared first on BEST SELF.

Estimated reading time: 4 minutes

Saved by her own mother’s intuition when she was only 3 years old, one woman goes on to be a fierce activator of the intuition of others

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When I think about intuition, I instantly think about my mother.

She never talked too openly about ‘trusting your gut’ or ‘following your instinct’. In fact, she often told me she didn’t really believe in that sort of thing. However, she was a woman of strong faith who did believe in miracles. A schoolteacher by profession, she loved sharing stories about her life’s challenging moments that instilled in me a deep knowing that life conspires to help us, if we are brave enough to listen.

Her ‘orange truck’ story was the one that really made me a believer.

It went something like this:

One day at the park, my older brother Billy (then 5 years old) got it into his mischief-loving head to ‘tease mommy’ by running off with me (3 years old) towards the busy road nearby as fast as our little legs would carry us. 

Eight months pregnant in sweltering summer heat, my mother knew she had zero chance of catching up with us in time to stop my brother from dragging us both out into the trafficked street. She yelled to get him to stop. His response was to tug at me to run even faster. She thought he would have enough sense to slow down once we got closer to the road, but in fact, it was the opposite. A few yards away from real danger and with no way to stop us, she was overwrought by a vision in her mind. 

“It was like everything was in slow motion. I saw your brother step out into the street and pull you out with him. Out of nowhere, an orange truck comes. It is moving so fast…it hit you both… my babies lying on the pavement…my soul died right then and there!”

Upon seeing this play out in cinematic fashion in her head, she let out the most gut-wrenching and blood-curdling scream imaginable. My brother and I were at the edge of the road now, when he heard her. 

Her scream startled him enough to make him stop and turn back to her. “Mommy what’s wrong?” He yelled.

In that instant, in that split second between when she screamed and my brother turned around to face her in the distance, an orange truck going 65 miles an hour in a 30 mph zone, flew by us. The wind from its velocity blowing my dress and my hair across my face. Had my mother not screamed, had she not been in tune enough with her intuition and instinct, my brother and I would be dead.

You cannot make this stuff up.

I owe my life to my mother twice. Once for bringing me into this world and again for her willingness to follow her intuition in moments we needed miracles the most, that kept me here.

Fast forward to today, and I can clearly see how my mother’s influence set the stage for me to embrace my life’s purpose as an intuitive life coach trainer and intuition teacher. Her brave example of following the wisdom within and trusting what it tells and shows us have made all the difference in my life.

In her words, “The answers are already inside you, just trust them when they show up.”

You may also enjoy reading I Am a Warrior Goddess: Empowering Girls to Be Both Fierce and Feeling, by Jennifer Adams

The post You Can Run, But You Can’t Hide…From Your Intuition, That Is appeared first on BEST SELF.

Estimated reading time: 7 minutes

A witty, vulnerable, self-deprecating journey of truth-telling and healing — one woman rises from the depths of a midlife crisis

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One day, I noticed that I had something stuck to my side. I didn’t know what it was, but it slapped me with every step. Step. Smack. Step. Smack. It was getting in the way and slowing me down. My clothes didn’t fit right anymore. My shoulders were hunched from carrying this burden and my eyes were always downward, looking where I was going, as I was so unsure of my footing.

But it wasn’t surgery that I needed to remove this appendage. It was self-esteem. Confidence. Happiness.

This protuberance, this painful weight I was dragging around, was not an actual thing. What was attached to me was more insidious. It was shame. It was regret. It was things I said and did years prior and things I said and did more recently. It was stuff I tried to wash away that never got fully cleansed — like a lingering stain whose shadow remained no matter how many times you tried to scrub it out.  These memories, feelings about myself, worry about how I was being perceived, life-changing circumstances and the utter, debilitating depression and loss that came with all of this, stuck to me like glue.

One day I was the CEO of a renowned advertising agency and seemingly the next moment, I was hiding my thirty plus pounds of weight gain under baggy sweaters that covered the top of my too tight, unbuttoned jeans. My pants were always open.

I worried so much about my external perception that I allowed my internal health and wellness to diminish.

I only saw myself as a jobless, directionless, divorced, single, middle-aged mess with a cancer diagnosis, whose last of three children moved out for college. Any good or positive thoughts I had about myself had left the building.

No one noticed I was spiraling out of control. No one noticed I constantly made excuses as to why I had to stay home and not meet for dinner, or anything else. After all, I worked for thirty years in advertising and was very good at showing people only what I wanted them to see. I covered my body under voluminous clothing and hid my emotions behind a fake smile and small talk. Aphorisms and adages from my childhood echoed in my thoughts. Phrases that had been ingrained into my upbringing stopped me in my tracks from telling people what was happening in my life:

Don’t Air Dirty Laundry in Public.

There’s Nothing A Good Night’s Sleep Can’t Fix.

God Helps Those That Help Themselves.

It took a night of drinking and a jolting realization the next morning — along with an unforgettable hangover — that I needed help. The internal worry and stress that were keeping me silent about my pain needed to be released.

I knew I had to start believing that there was no such thing anymore as dirty laundry — that there was only the truth.

I had to get out of bed, wash, dress and wake up to the fact that I couldn’t sleep away my problems. Finally, I had to rouse my own sense of independence and inner strength and know that self-sufficiency didn’t mean that I had to do everything alone; that asking for help is helping yourself.  

The lessons my well-meaning mother and grand parents told me to bolster me up and give me confidence were antiquated. They were making me feel solitary, alone and lost. The thing that was slapping my side said I was:

Scared

Useless

Unworthy

Weak

I had to stop myself from believing these things. They were becoming self-fulfilling and holding me back. I had to tell myself a different story. I needed to define myself with new words — new adjectives — that were positive and uplifting.

The story I wanted to write for myself was one of bravery, self-love, truth and healing.

And, why not?  Self-pity wasn’t working for me. It was quickly becoming a dead-end. It took me to the edge of a cliff.

I finally saw myself as having to do one thing and one thing only: come out into the open and save myself. All the million things I thought I needed to do to feel better and re-emerge into the world as a vibrant, contributive individual — lose weight, go back to work, spend time with friends and family — fell away when I realized I had one urgent task ahead of me and that was to understand what was true about my life and my being.

So, I began to write, clearly and candidly about how I felt, what I was going through, what I was doing and what I wanted for my life. I was also clear with myself, from the beginning that I wanted my story to help others. And I knew this was important because while I was going through this thing that I called a ‘midlife crisis’, I never felt more alone. I thought that if I told my story and people could read it and take away things that were relevant for them, they would be able to find hope, or solutions or even camaraderie. And I began to think that for me, this was a midlife crisis — but for someone else, it could be a life change crisis, at any age.

Once I decided to share the story of the small, dark room I had locked myself in, I could see light shining under the door.

I wrote story after story about the things that put me in that space. As I released my words into the world, the door began to creak open, little by little. The appendage that was slapping my side shrunk with each loving, forgiving and honest thought I allowed in. It confirmed that we are often the result of what we tell ourselves. It takes facing the tough times of life — the difficult, depleting and depressing moments; the things we wish we said, did or didn’t say or do, to reconcile our truth and start the healing process.

Friends of mine who have read my memoir said to me, “Wow, you did some crazy things.” And my only response is, “I know.” I did do some crazy things. I did do stuff that I’m not proud of, to this day, but that’s OK, because I no longer believe my laundry is dirty. I survived my suffering by being vulnerable, open and honest with myself, about myself. Doing this gave meaning to both my pain and growth.

I have an acute sense of gratitude for the lobster that crawled out from under my kitchen chair one morning. I watched it come out of hiding from whatever drunken madness ensued the night before. I saw myself in this lobster. I was in the same position. I needed to come into the open and save myself too. My memoir, There Will Be Lobster begins with the story of this pivotal moment in my life.

When, through writing, you un-attach yourself from things that have been stuck to you for a long time – like shame, regret and remorse, and put your story out into the world – openly and honestly, the hope is that it crosses the path of even just one person who will benefit from reading it. You hope that when it’s in front of that person, or people, that they recognize why this book came to them. Things that are in front of us are there for a reason. It’s for each of us to notice and try to understand why something has come into our field of vision.

What I hope, for anyone who reads this book, is that it will instigate their own journey to disconnect from the negative stories, painful things that are stuck to them and depleting words that box them in.  And then, ultimately, understand how to make the changes they need to find their way forward and write the story they want to be in.

You may also enjoy reading The Beauty of Vulnerability: How Being Vulnerable Can Improve Relationships, by Laura Bishop

The post Emerging From The Shadows of Suffering: A Healing Journey Through A Midlife Crisis appeared first on BEST SELF.

Estimated reading time: 6 minutes

Reconnecting to our individuality enhances our experience of life and the world around us — and helps us see the uniqueness within others

—

It happened in the main shopping street in Windhoek, Namibia. I caught sight of my smiling reflection in a shop front. The window was full of clothes that looked nothing like those I was wearing, or could imagine buying. There was a blue satin, hip-hugging evening dress with a wide frill around the bottom in a bold patterned fabric in pinks and lilacs. This was next to a shiny two-piece with a peplum jacket in an apricot colour. The people around me were speaking a language I didn’t understand. It was baking hot. On all levels the situation was foreign to me.

I stood still for a few moments, totally at ease and kid-like happy. Why did I feel totally at home here, in a place 10,000 kilometres away from where I grew up?  Then I got it. I finally realized that being a fish out of water in so many areas of my life, for so many years, had become my superpower. Whenever I’d tried to fit in, I’d rapidly become a diluted version of myself and suffered deeply. When I relaxed into my differentness — the thing that every human being on the planet is born with — I felt totally alive.

Following my bizarre fashion-induced epiphany I formulated the wish to empower as many individuals as possible to live and thrive as their unique selves in their everyday lives.

Although we are all born as limited editions of one, sadly, over time, as external influences grow, we tend to neglect this vital asset.

There are outside expectations and metrics regarding everything from appearance to career, happiness to success. Social, gender-specific and cultural norms throw all sorts of obstacles in our way. Fitting in looks like being an easier option — until we reach the painful conclusion that trying to be someone else is never going to fly. And why would we want it to when we already own a unique identity that no one can ever steal?

Two intensive years down the road, my book, Limited Edition of One, was published. I also created a related coaching and mentoring methodology focused on enabling individuals and organizations to tune in to what makes them immune to duplication. The purpose of these tools is two-fold. Firstly they are about encouraging and enabling people to recognize and own what makes them guaranteed limited editions of one. This builds the most amazing on-board portfolio of aptitudes, abilities, skills and ideas that is available exclusively to us, every single day of our lives. Secondly, immersing ourselves confidently in what makes us different is fertile ground for identifying and embracing the individuality of others and seeing the benefits that brings. Conversations on diversity are important to have; absorbing diversity seamlessly into our working and personal lives is how real progress is made.

How to train your uniqueness muscle

Spoiler alert. Training your uniqueness muscle isn’t as hard as it may sound. The key is ‘daily differentness’, the everyday stuff that differentiates us from everyone else. Zoom in on the detail. We all do different things, think different things and imagine different things, all of the time. Start to become aware of and capture the endless small examples of your intrinsic uniqueness in a journal or in your phone. You can use written or spoken words, or take some snapshots as reminders. Alternatively you can simply reflect on your observations in a meditation, on a walk, or over a coffee… With time (and practice) you will automatically be drawn to your precious differentiators and navigate your way serenely through the sea of sameness.

Here are some daily differentness warm up exercises:

Personality

What makes you who you really are?

What did you love doing as a kid and why? Do any aspects of your daily life now bring in elements of these activities? Think of a person you spent a lot of time with during your childhood. What did that relationship give you? Take a random possession in your hand. What would it say about you if it could talk? Choose an item of clothing you’re wearing right now and come up with a reason why it’s a limited edition of one, anything from the outline of a hole in it, to an occasion you wore it at in the past. Be aware of how you interact with people you come across today, in person, in writing, or on screen… What aspects of your character might this express?

Programme

What do you do that nobody else does?

What food did you like eating most as a kid? Be specific and bring to mind the person who normally made it, the packaging around it, where you ate it… Do you have any one-off ways of eating now, from unusual ingredient combinations, to the way you twist your fork when you eat spaghetti? What would be your perfect way of being woken up in the morning? What would you be doing at 3pm on your ideal day? What activities can make you forget time? Bring to mind a familiar place that evokes a specific feeling, anything from the hallway of your current home when you enter it, to a beautiful garden you pass on your dog walk. Describe that feeling. Take in the view from a window you look through today; it’s the film set of a moment of your life.

Perceptions

How do you take in the world around you?

Scan-read a small quantity of text, digital or printed. Which words stand out and what do they make you think of? Look for the extraordinary in the ordinary. Patterns on items you use or see regularly, a person making a heart-warming gesture of kindness, a face in tree bark… Choose one of your senses and make it the hero of the day. For instance, acknowledge all the smells you come across, or the sounds you hear and what your responses are. Look at a stranger, either physically or via an image. Give your imagination the freedom to invent the person behind the face. What are their likes and dislikes? What were they doing an hour before you became aware of them?

“Use it or lose it” applies to the uniqueness muscle too. Fortunately, using it has many rewards. Making our unique contributions to the situations and relationships we are part of are great sources of satisfaction and wellbeing. And if you find yourself tempted back into the sea of sameness every now and again, dip your toe in, remind yourself how it feels. Then draw these wise words from Oscar Wilde in the imaginary sand:

Be yourself. Everyone else is already taken.

You may also enjoy reading Enoughness: A Journey of Self-Care and Self-Love, by Megan Hale

The post A Limited Edition Of One: Owning & Unleashing Your Uniqueness appeared first on BEST SELF.

Estimated reading time: 12 minutes

After navigating the loss of her terminally ill child, Joyal Mulheron sets out to change the landscape for bereaved families

—

Grief has been an integral part of my life and identity ever since the sudden death of my father, when I was fifteen. After losing my mother this past summer, I learned about Joyal Mulheron from a mutual friend. Joyal’s story and the work she and her non-profit are doing around grief and bereavement care moved me profoundly—enough to write this article. In the midst of our nation’s current grief epidemic, I felt compelled to share this extraordinary journey and one  woman’s determination to change a broken system.

Joyal Mulheron has a warm smile, a hint of sadness behind her eyes, and a steely determination to bring about a seismic change in bereavement care. 

Her passionate dedication to helping make grief and bereavement more manageable for those who have lost loved ones is rooted in her own family’s experience. After becoming parents to two healthy daughters, one adopted from Ethiopia, Joyal and her husband had a third daughter.

Eleanora’s birth — and death — changed her family’s life forever.

Eleanora was born with a chromosomal abnormality that affected her entire body. It was so severe she wasn’t expected to survive for more than a few hours. She ended up living for almost five months, thanks in no small part to Joyal, who had a background in science and took on the monumental task of orchestrating and administering her care. “Honestly, she would have near-death episodes frequently, sometimes multiple times a day — it was very intense and so incredibly complicated. I was doing her drug compounding. I was figuring out her caloric intake. When she died, we had 23 medical and home providers. I was the care center. I knew everything she needed and how much she could manage.”

The physical trauma was only one part, though. As Joyal was carefully managing her daughter’s health care, she also was preparing for the inevitable. “I can remember holding her on one side and the phone on the other, negotiating the rate for her cremation. And I’m thinking how wrong it is that I cannot be fully present for my baby when she needs me most.“

That was the beginning of Joyal’s conviction that something was terribly wrong with the bereavement system. 

She talks about appalling phone calls she got from her insurance caseworker, asking, “Do you think she’s going to live for ten days? Or do you think she’s going to live for more than ten days? Because I have to fill out different paperwork.” 

The broken systems and trauma that Joyal experienced — before and after Eleanora’s death, fueled her drive to bring about change in bereavement care.

After Eleanora died, Joyal experienced the dysphoria that affects many bereaved family members. She couldn’t remember if she’d showered or eaten.According to a 2015 New England Journal of Medicine review, newly bereaved individuals experience: “dysphoria, anxiety, depression, and anger…physiological changes such as an increased heart rate or blood pressure, increased cortisol levels, sleep disturbance, and changes in the immune system.” Neighbors found her wandering outside in the cold with no coat. She lost her ability to focus on self-care and had no idea how to look for a therapist or a support system to help her through the intense fog. 

In time, the pressure to get back to “normal” was mounting. When a health policy advisor position at the Partnership for a Healthier America came Joyal’s way, she initially rejected it. Eventually, she accepted the opportunity to further healthy eating and end childhood obesity. Despite the familiar pull of work’s intensity, she was still struggling with her grief and achieving some semblance of normalcy after losing Eleanora.

Ultimately, following a flood of traumatic national events that stunned the nation, Joyal decided to leave her job.

“Trayvon Martin… and the Sandy Hook massacre and the Chicago homicides. I just remember thinking something has to exist to support people. It’s too much. So many families need help.”

After she stopped working, Joyal got very ill for about six months — which is not uncommon for bereaved parents. In retrospect, she knows it was essentially a delayed reaction. Scientific evidence indicates that bereaved parents are more likely to suffer more depressive symptoms, poorer well-being, less purpose in life, more health complications, marital disruption, psychiatric hospitalization, and even premature death.

When she came out on the other side of her illness, her husband and family encouraged her to focus on researching and transforming bereavement care. “When I started exploring the idea,  I put on my sneakers and walked around different communities, and people invited me into their lives. At the police station, at the church, at all these places, people were sharing their stories. Very quickly, the scope of this problem became abundantly clear to me.”

In 2014, Joyal founded Evermore, a nonprofit dedicated to making America more livable for bereaved families. “At first, I was only going to focus on the implications of child death on American families — it was what I knew best. But it was impossible to ignore all the concerning data around sibling death, around the long-lasting effects of premature death of any kind.”

Research shows that bereavement causes significant health declines, even early death among some survivors, including bereaved parents, siblings, and spouses. Yet, our nation spends little to no funding to support the health of family members in the aftermath of the loss of a loved one.

As Joyal learned more about death and its fallout on surviving family members and America’s failure to support them, she began compiling data on grief statistics and resources. She established a platform for the bereaved to connect and share their stories.

The staggering statistics and personal stories on Evermore’s website powerfully detail the emotional, physical, and sometimes economic toll of losing a loved one and myriad ways in which the nation’s systems fail to help the bereaved cope. An estimated 18 million Americans have experienced the death of a child, 10 million American children have lost a biological parent or sibling, and black Americans are at least twice as likely to lose a child or sibling. And this was before the Covid pandemic. As Joyal explains, “A significant bereavement event for an individual threatens their health, their well-being, their economic solvency, and the family stability.” Evermore began to highlight the need for revolutionizing the way our society handles death and bereavement — from supports for the bereaved to training for law enforcement, medical staff, first responders, teachers, insurance caseworkers, death investigators, friends, and neighbors.

Compartmentalization was and is sometimes a brutal challenge for Joyal — still grieving the loss of Eleanora while dealing with the facts, and figures, and faces of bereavement — along with the challenges of getting a nonprofit up and running.”The first three years were so challenging.  I had to be careful — I’ve gotten much better at it — there are times when I must put up the guard rails because I know — I’m going to have this conversation — and I can’t jump into an accounting meeting afterward. There have been a couple of times I’ve almost walked away because the pain is just too great.”

Eventually, besides supporting grieving family members and consolidating data around death and bereavement, Joyal put her policy background to work. Evermore began examining American society’s systemic shortcomings surrounding bereavement — and imagining the possibilities of policy reform to enact meaningful change. 

“One of the things that I’ve learned in doing this is people don’t even realize that they have rights when it comes to losing a loved one. Shifting the public conversation, getting to that realization, ‘Oh, I had a right not to lose my job’ or ‘I had a right not to be treated in a certain way’ is paramount.”

When it comes to death and grief, the impacts disproportionately affect communities of color, exacerbating the health and healthcare disparities that marginalize our nation’s most vulnerable children and communities. “I often say we’ve made strides in palliative care and hospice because that’s where white people die. Families share astonishing stories, and the status quo is unacceptable,” she says. When she meets with Members of Congress on both sides of the aisle, she walks them through a series of alarming statistics. 

Grieving kids have more school failures, lower attainment, increased challenges academically. They have drug abuse issues, violent crime involvement, youth delinquency, suicide attempts, suicide completions, premature death to any cause, and sometimes psychiatric episodes. Black children are three times more likely to lose a mother and twice as likely to lose a father by age 10 when compared to white children. More than half of bereaved and orphaned children in the US are not receiving their social security benefits. And only a tiny percentage of bereaved children receive food assistance. Those are substantial social failings with long-lasting ramifications.

One study reported that 90 percent of juvenile justice detainees report a loved one’s death before being incarcerated. Policymakers are beginning to realize that suicide, juvenile justice, substance abuse — may be outcomes of an event that no one is even examining.

Addressing the racial inequities surrounding bereavement care is one of the most important things that could come out of Evermore’s advocacy. Calling, writing, and meeting with Members of Congress and other leaders on both sides of the aisle, Joyal and Evermore’s robust advocacy efforts resulted in considerable success — the addition of bereavement care language to the FY21 Appropriations budget. 

“We got on the House side last March, and then the Senate released their companion bill later in the fall. Then those two bills were woven into an Omnibus. We were very fortunate — our language got in — it’s the first language that directs Health and Human Service agencies to report what they’re doing about bereavement care. There’s no price tag attached to it right now, but in the future, we hope the federal government recognizes bereavement care as important as other pressing social issues. This year, we’re beginning to work on setting a national benchmark around what Bereavement Leave should look like and following up on the language from last year.”

Joyal Mulheron speaks out on the case for Bereavement Leave

The case for Bereavement Leave made by Evermore is both compelling and timely. As they report, the unexpected death of a loved one is the most common traumatic experience for Americans. Many say their loss is their worst life experience. Employees who need time off work to grieve and cope with a loved one’s death have no legal right to take leave, with narrow exceptions in two states and two localities. Bereavement is not acceptable grounds for taking unpaid leave under the Family and Medical Leave Act, despite recent efforts to add bereavement to this law. While many employers offer bereavement leave, it is often only a few days, which is insufficient time for most employees to return to work and productivity after a family member’s death. As our nation faces the coronavirus pandemic, drug overdoses, suicide, and mass gun violence events, employers are having to acknowledge grief and its implications for families while staying solvent and productive. It is a difficult balance for employers to strike. To address these needs and set national standards, Evermore recommends employers institute a bereavement leave benefit.

Joyal says that most employers do what they can to help, but a few have only extended leave under the threat of public opinion.

As she works to enact Bereavement Leave legislation, Joyal has a more immediate goal. “My hope is that we can establish a White House Office of Bereavement. To me, that is one of the most urgent public policy calls. The White House office is an executive action, which doesn’t require Congress to act. It’s a fiscally wise move since, with a few staff members, you can begin marshaling the full power and authority of the US government, and it provides a coordinated and centralized response immediately for the American public.”

President Biden’s personal experiences with grief and bereavement could heighten the opportunity to advance bereavement care during his administration. At the end of April, Biden’s American Families Plan included a three day Bereavement Leave. A heartened Joyal says, “the measure still needs Congressional approval, but this is a HUGE step forward for America’s families.” But as she points out, “Grief and bereavement know no party — and shouldn’t. No one is immune. Yes, there is leadership experience, and I also think about the sheer time we’re in — the concurrent epidemics of Covid, suicide, homicide, mass casualty events, and overdose. It certainly helps to have that lived experience because once it’s personal, you understand it differently — just like anything else.”

Evermore’s mission is rooted in emotion. But Joyal must still face the logistical challenges that come with running a nonprofit.

“It’s largely a volunteer effort, so we’re starting to do fundraising. I’m out there and talking to key people in a targeted way, but now I must bring the funding. I’ve got to build the organization in a way that allows for Bereavement Leave and law enforcement response, and data systems, among other things. And we don’t want to lose sight of how to help people with grief — a whole other set of necessary supports.”

The issues surrounding bereavement have never been more universal.

Amid this year of unimaginable loss, society has focused on collective experiences of grief in unprecedented ways. Model, actress, and social media sensation Chrissy Teigen started a national conversation about society’s aversion to publicly acknowledging death and bereavement when she posted hospital photographs taken of her, her husband John Legend, and their son Jack, who died as a baby prematurely. While some reacted negatively to her incredible transparency throughout the process, Teigen beautifully defended her position — and her decision to share her experience gave grieving moms throughout the world the chance to connect and commiserate.

Kaye Steinsapir recently tweeted the experience of losing her 12-year-old daughter, Molly, following a traumatic brain injury. The outpouring of support helped sustain her. “When I’m sitting here in this sterile room hour after hour, your messages of hope make me feel less alone,” she told her followers. Her story cut through the noise and negativity of Twitter, bringing grieving parents together as they sought to support Steinsapir.

The recent Netflix film, Pieces of A Woman, is a raw portrait of a mother navigating grief after her daughter dies minutes after being born. Writer Kata Weber based her wrenching screenplay on her tragedy. Vanessa Kirby’s vulnerable portrayal of the bereaved mom earned her Golden Globe and Oscar nominations. Much like 2016’s Manchester By the Sea, Pieces of A Woman ruthlessly depicts the emotional upheaval that comes with loss. The film’s stars, Kirby and Ellen Burstyn, recently spoke with Joyal. In an incredibly moving conversation, the three discussed the importance of movies like this — their potential to educate the public while allowing those grieving to feel they are not alone.

Most importantly, Joyal wants bereaved individuals and their families to understand that they are not at fault. “There’s validation that this tragedy has many tentacles that influence their life. We don’t have the right responses as a nation. Compounding traumas can send individuals and families into tailspins that today they believe is their own doing or fault. It’s so overwhelming. All of them need to know — this isn’t your fault — our society needs a social paradigm shift.” She takes a deep breath. “It means so much to me to get this right for families.” 

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You can learn more about Evermore and their initiatives here — and find out how to donate here:  https://live-evermore.org and can follow them on Instagram or Facebook

You may also enjoy reading Life After Death: Healing Grief, Redefined, by Sarah Nannen

The post Space to Grieve: One Woman’s Courage to Take On a Broken System appeared first on BEST SELF.

Estimated reading time: 4 minutes

Exposing the often overlooked 4^th trauma response and taking down our learned behaviors that satisfy the needs of others but abandon our own

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We’ve all heard about fight, flight & freeze. These are trauma responses — the automatic responses from your body when you experience threat. They are all self-explanatory, but what about the fourth response? One so insidious and societally acceptable (even rewarded), that we barely even talk about it or notice it’s there?

This fourth response is known as ‘fawning’.

Fawning is when we appease, people please, pretend we are happy when we’re not, and even consent to things we don’t really want in order to mollify the emotions of others around us.

Fawning is widely displayed and, innocently, taught. We teach our children to fawn by saying “smile” when they don’t want to. We make them stay still when they want to move and we tell them to let people hug them when they don’t want to be touched. All because it makes the other person feel better.

This is different from having and teaching manners. Manners are a respectful way to say “I see you.” We might teach our children to say “thank you” or “I’m sorry I bumped into you,” but do we teach them how to respect and see themselves? Do we teach them to tell someone “I don’t like the way you touched me,” or “I feel stressed when you speak to me like this?” Do we teach them to listen to their bodies or to what someone else wants their body to do?

We teach our children to fawn because we fawn.

Yes, we get stressed when other people are uncomfortable, so we make our children act in ways that keep other people comfortable as well. It’s in those moments of “hug your uncle” when they don’t want to that we teach them to override their intuition and boundaries in those moments. They learn that, by repressing their own feelings, they’re sparing someone else’s disappointment or embarrassment.

And then we call it “nice”. So we grow up being valued for being “nice” (or bypassing our feelings) and then we meet someone who takes advantage of us and we let them — because we’re nice and we’ve grown accustomed to this behavior.

The shadow of fawning is deep resentment and aggression. I’ve sat with many people who use this strategy and, when given the opportunity to feel how they really feel, a lot of hatred and even violence emerges. This is just the necessary swing of the pendulum. Every fawning moment is a boundary break. Resentment and aggression exists to protect those boundaries. When we stop fawning, we also stop being angry.

I experience fawning and the teaching of fawning as an innocent one because it’s completely unconscious and it stems from intergenerational trauma. At some point in your life, or your ancestor’s lives, speaking or being your truth was threatening. That information stays in your cells until it get released. The information being: your truth = threat.

So we unconsciously live from the fawn response, consistently monitoring and modulating our truths so that we can feel safe. It’s a fear response and it’s taught, not through language, but through behaviors.

We release this unconscious response by making it conscious. You can do this right now. Just ask yourself: when do I smile, say yes, or act interested when I don’t want to? What does it feel like in my body when I do that? Would I actually be threatened if I stopped, or would it only feel like that?

This is the beginning. Notice how it feels, where it happens, how you fawn, and then you’re on the road to recovery. I strongly recommend working with a Somatic Experiencing therapist who can help you embody these responses so you can better notice when they happen and then redirect them.

You may also enjoy reading The Sacred Pause: The Art of Activating Healing Energy, by Travis Eliot

The post Fawning: The Missing Piece in Traumatic Healing appeared first on BEST SELF.

Estimated reading time: 5 minutes

How a pandemic, a public pool and an obsession with the British Royal family inspired one writer to claim her spot on the book shelves

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The trick is getting to the pool early enough to claim the best lane. I want the one with the long wire running lengthwise above the water, or else I’ll crash. Not like car crash crash, more like beginning backstroke crash — I need the visual aid of the wire above me to keep from hitting the hard plastic lane dividers. My backstroke resembles a drunk toddler careening from side to side unless I track the wire, and I jam more than one finger when I don’t get the right lane. So I’m diligent about lining up early, six feet from my fellow swimmer, so that when pool manager James calls out in his deep baritone, “Head on in, and remember, I love you all,” I make a beeline for one of the two lanes with the wire above it.

Pushing off the wall, I feel the whoosh of water behind my bright orange swim cap. At five meters out, I pass the horizontal wire with little blue flags running down the length, signaling my ascent into deeper water. From there I follow the vertical wire, strung above me like a tightrope. Thwack. Thwack. Thwack — I windmill my arms and remind myself to relax my shoulders. Soon the vertical wire is my only visual marker, a silhouette against the sky. At this point I have no reference for my progress, and my mind plays a trick on me. Despite my body straining and my heart pumping, the illusion makes me feel suspended in place, time and sound cease to exist. I’m travelling down the lane but feel like I’m swimming in place, my mind blissfully blank. Suddenly, the second set of flags appear over my head, signaling the approaching wall, and the world snaps back into focus with a sharp whoosh. Suddenly, my physical exertion matches my mind’s eye and I’m hyper aware of my breathing, my movement, my thoughts.

I took up swimming during the pandemic. With the gyms closed, my living room failing as a makeshift yoga studio, and my driveway a poor substitute for Zoom fitness classes, I started swimming laps. My neighborhood municipal pool stayed open during lockdown and gave everyone their own lane, which in crowded Los Angeles is a little slice of heaven. Besides the grocery store and the occasional can’t-put-it-off doctor’s appointment, the pool became one of the few places I ventured to during quarantine.

The last 400 days have felt like one long trip down the wire, without any markers, unable to judge any progress.

I stared at the wire, at the sky, but couldn’t figure out how far or how fast my life was moving. The days bleeding into each other, the dishes, my work desk crowding the living room, the halfhearted way I ask my daughter “how was school?” even though I knew Zoom classes suck. But then suddenly I would see a flag in my peripheral vision and feel a flush of progress. Like when I finished a draft of my first novel.

My obsession, at least since 2017, is the British Royal Family. I started following them like some people follow the Kardashians, mostly to divert my attention from the news and fractious political environment. The Crown on Netflix was my gateway drug. When Meghan Markle married Prince Harry in a storybook Windsor wedding in 2018, I was all in. Here was a bi-racial, American divorcee joining the family that invented the stiff upper lip. She was a breath of fresh air, no, a gust, the likes of which the world hasn’t seen since Diana. Could Harry, Meghan, William, and Kate live up to their new nickname “The Fab Four?”

Alas, no. Harry and Meghan’s break up with “The Firm” fascinated me. It became the inspiration for my forthcoming book.

In my fictionalized version of the very public Royal drama, the exiled Duke and Duchess are summoned back to London to find the missing heir, only to uncover shocking family secrets along the way. It’s juicy, it’s lavish, and it’s fun — and exactly what I needed to get through 2020.

As the COVID-19 pandemic bore down on me, on the world, I was consumed by anxiety and confusion. I woke up every morning at 6am with my mind racing. So instead of just lying there spinning, I wrapped myself in a warm housecoat, opened my laptop, and wrote pages, grateful for the quiet respite from my thoughts. My encyclopedic Royal knowledge was actually the foundation I needed to craft the world of my novel. I found an amazing book coach — I’m a former athlete who responds super well to coaching — and completed a first draft in twelve weeks. Since then, I’ve been revising, taking writing classes, and wondering when to call it done (never finished, just done).

I get my best ideas while swimming. Something about the pool puts me in the right headspace. There’s no phone buzzing, no email pinging, no family to look after. It’s just the water, my controlled breath, and deep thoughts. After each workout, I stand just outside the pool gates, dripping wet, furiously dictating voice memos into my phone, my swim ruminations becoming future pages.

The other day I gazed across the concrete pool deck, bare and charmless as only a city run facility can be. This sure doesn’t look like a place to find my creative spirit, I thought. But yet, I found inspiration in the little blue flags that fluttered above me like butterfly wings. I came to crave the sudden rush when I ceased to be weightless and lost, and instead feel catapulted forward by my own power. Late at night, when I’m writing in the makeshift office/pandemic school room off the garage, I often feel stuck. So, I close my eyes and transport myself back into the pool. I follow the wire and spot the flags, and my squeaky desk chair jolts forward as if powered by an unseen hand. That’s salvation. That’s my muse.

You may also enjoy reading Swimming for Strength, Injury Recover, Positivity and Overall Health, by Jane Sandwood

The post Finding My Lane: Pandemics, Pools and the Royal Family appeared first on BEST SELF.

Estimated reading time: 7 minutes

A meditation teacher and fellow occasionally anxious person shares Buddhist advice for calming the stressed-out mind

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Pre-pandemic, I was at a dinner with friends. The music was pleasant, the food tasty, and the company divine. It’s rare this particular group gathers together so it felt like a real treat. At some point, the topic of politics came up (as it tends to at times), and I noticed when my friend Jonathan changed the subject. Later on, while we were exiting the restaurant, I took him aside and asked how he was doing. “I’m sorry about earlier,” he said, “but I’ve gotten so anxious, I have to watch a half hour of animal videos each night just to come back to some semblance of normal.”

I had no idea my friend’s anxiety had risen to this level, and while I was saddened to hear it, I figured watching animals play was better than what so many of us do to lessen the overwhelm that plagues us. Some are so on edge, they habitually pick up a bottle and pour a drink. Others prefer popping pills. Some throw themselves into work in some hopeless effort to ‘catch up’ and be free of work anxiety, pretending that tomorrow won’t bring new emails to respond to. So . . . animal videos? I could shrug and accept my friend’s coping mechanism pretty easily.

The conversation stuck with me though, giving birth to my noticing how all-pervasive and perpetual anxiety is for so many people. This realization in turn gave birth my new book, Take Back Your Mind: Buddhist Advice for Anxious Times, which was written during this most anxious of times, the pandemic.

Of course, it’s not just my friend who was experiencing new levels of stress leading to anxiety. According to one study, anxiety is the number one mental health problem among women and is second only to alcohol and drug abuse among men. Yet, this rampant problem is rarely addressed as a public health epidemic. Close to forty million people in the United States suffer from an anxiety disorder, according to the Anxiety and Depression Association of America [[1]]. And if we’re honest, that’s exactly what it is — an epidemic.

Anxiety is the monkey so many of us carry on our backs, one we always want to be rid of, yet rarely discuss.

So I figured I’d open the discussion. I’ve suffered with anxiety all my life. Ten-year-old me couldn’t even attend a sleepover at a friend’s house because it was too stressful. Though I started meditating at age six, it’s not like I was able to breathe away all the stressful triggers over the course of my life (nor at any point in Take Back Your Mind do I expect you to). I’ve had to work with multiple modalities, including various meditation techniques and ways of discerning how to reduce certain triggers, and look directly at anxiety itself, all in order to live a life that allows me to notice when anxiety arises, acknowledge it, and come back to reality.

The fact of the matter is we all have stressors in our lives — work deadlines, family issues, a whole pandemic throwing our usual routines out of whack — and the question becomes what do we do when that stressor slaps us in the face? The brain is a problem-solving device so it has a tendency to spin out every possible ‘What if’ storyline out there, moving us from a place of experiencing stress to locking ourselves in anxiety. So while I have times when stressful situations arise and get the best of me, I’ve learned over the years to unhook myself from the stories that keep me locked in that state and come back into the present moment much more quickly.

The odd and perhaps controversial thing about my book is that I point out there is a choice we make to keep ourselves locked in stress.

I know — it doesn’t feel like a choice. But who is telling you to be anxious? Did your boss, when she wrote you asking for that project to be in her inbox by end of day, also say, “And I want you to be anxious about it every minute from now until then?” I doubt it. I am guessing no one has ever told you that you need to be anxious. So who is holding you in that state? Well, bad news: it’s you.

There’s a traditional analogy in Buddhism that illustrates this point: A man is walking in the forest when, out of nowhere, he is shot with an arrow. Now, instead of pulling it out and tending to his own healing process, he begins to spin out, thinking “Who shot me? Why am I always the one being shot? Everyone else gets to go around being happy, but I take one walk in the woods and as usual, I end up in trouble. Chuck at work deserves to be shot, not me.” And so on. This mental spiraling is known as the second arrow.

            Arrow #1: The suffering inflicted upon us as part of life.

            Arrow #2: The suffering we inflict on ourselves in response.

We all experience arrows in our lives.

Rent comes due and not enough money is in your bank account. There are budget cuts at work. Your colleague says, “I need you to call me” (I just physically shuddered while typing that one!). These stressors are the first arrow. But instead of spending all day every day trying to problem-solve, dragging us deep into a rabbit hole of anxious thinking, we can acknowledge the situation, attend to it to the best of our ability, and be present for the rest of our lives.

It surprises no one that I as the long-term meditation teacher would recommend meditation here. But I won’t be Pollyanna about it and pretend that if you do a bit of meditation you no longer ever give into ‘the sky is falling’ anxious thinking. Instead of expecting meditation to be a twenty minute venture after which you’re cured of negative thinking forever more, we need to think of ‘stress-reduction’ and meditation as long-terms endeavors, not unlike learning a new language or working out.

These activities all take time: If you have been spending all your waking hours chasing ‘What if’ storylines then when you begin to engage in stress-reduction and meditation techniques it might feel akin to wading into the ocean and trying to turn the tide back with your own two hands. Yet the more we do it, day after day, week over week, the easier it becomes. You wouldn’t expect yourself to be fluent in a new language or lose 20 pounds overnight, would you? Why should we suspect that taming the mind of its anxiety would be any different?

Yet through engaging in a meditation practice and — here’s the juicy part — working with your mind in the other waking hours of your day, your mind quite literally changes.

These techniques rewire the brain and train it to notice when anxious stories pop up and not to go down the rabbit hole with each one. Instead, we train to unhook ourselves from that story, take a breath, and re-enter the present moment. That’s step one.

Step two is beginning to notice all of the goodness under our noses: the freshness of flowers on the mantle, our young child cooing contentedly in the other room, the warmth of the sun on our skin…all of these simple joys are waiting to be discovered if we can lift the veil of our own anxiety long enough to see them.

^[1] Emma Pattee, “The Difference Between Worry, Stress and Anxiety,” New York Times, February 26, 2020

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For  more guidance you can check out Lodro Rinzler’s new book, Take Back Your Mind: Buddhist Advice for Anxious Times.

You may also enjoy reading Interview: Lodro Rinzler | A Mindful Life, by Kristen Noel.

The post Taking Back Your Mind: A Practical Approach to Stress & Anxiety Relief appeared first on BEST SELF.

Estimated reading time: 7 minutes

A surprising take on procrastination — how to use it, not be used by it — and clear up the mind-clutter in the process

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Writing a second book should be much easier than writing your first, right? After all, you know what it takes so it should be a breeze. Oh, how I wish that was the case for me, but alas it was just the opposite.

Back in 2017 when I wrote What Your Clutter Is Trying to Tell You, it came out surprisingly easy. In fact, I wrote the entire thing in about eight weeks. Granted it’s a relatively short book, but putting it together was quick and, dare I say, fun.

Fast forward to the end of 2019 when the deadline for my new book, From Clutter to Clarity: Clean Up Your Mindset to Clear Out Your Clutter was racing toward me like a freight train. I tried all the tricks:

I set up a nice spot where I could write,

I schedule specific hours in my week dedicated to book writing,

I scoured decades worth of blog posts to pull from, and

I processed my writer’s block with trusted family and friends.

Still, I could barely get the wheels in motion. I’d have successful moments but most of the time I sat staring at the blinking cursor praying for inspiration.

I had some serious resistance getting in the way. I tried ignoring it. I tried negotiating with it. I tried clearing it. To describe it as stubborn wouldn’t do it justice, so I had no choice but to sit with it quietly and listen.

In it I heard young Kerri’s fears:

“What if this one isn’t as good as the first one?”

“What if this one doesn’t hit the bestseller’s list? Will my publisher/family/I be disappointed?”

“What if people find out I’m really a fraud pretending to know my stuff?”

“Who do I think I am to write another book?”

Blah blah blah.

I’m sure you can relate to some of those with whatever mountain you’re trying to climb.

It was time to take my own advice. Instead of trying to push through, I needed to work on clearing the mental clutter. I grabbed my journal, wrote those questions down and answered them with whatever poured out of the pen.

I didn’t overthink.

I didn’t try to drum up some big ‘ah-ha’ moment. I just wrote.

And I was reminded why I recommend this to my students and members all the time.

You see, it didn’t matter what I wrote in response to those fears. What mattered was honoring them enough to hold space for them. Shutting them down wasn’t working. Attempting to do so only made them louder. Once I acknowledged them, the chatter became less frequent. Once I validated them, they quieted down big time.

Did they perk back up every now and then? Sure, but I knew how to respond. While the book didn’t come together seamlessly as a result of this, the duration of any blocks shortened significantly.

We often write off procrastination to being lazy when, in fact, it’s a form of protection…

…as evidenced by the fears that young Kerri was squawking about as I wrote.

Below is an excerpt from my new book, From Clutter to Clarity, where I explain more:

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The next time you’re dragging your feet, consider how you might be protecting yourself. What small steps can you take to dip a toe outside of your comfort zone so you can show your younger self that all is well? At the very least, you can learn from my mistakes and start by not beating yourself up for procrastinating!

You may also enjoy reading The Art of De-Cluttering: A Tiny House Creates A Surprising Catalyst for Expansion by Kerri Richardson

The post Rethinking Procrastination: Maybe It’s Not So Bad After All? appeared first on BEST SELF.

A mother of a full-time traveling family gives herself permission to do things differently, to seek deeper connection…and to redefine it all

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Isn’t it interesting how an image can evoke so many emotions? Of course, that’s why they say a picture is worth a thousand words. Visual art moves us humans. Yes, some of us seem to be moved more easily than others, but the potential is there for us all. I happen to be one of those easily moved and motivated by photography. I think it’s because I begin to see the story within it.

This was something I didn’t fully realize, however, until I was an adult. Growing up, my sister was the ‘artsy’ one and I was the ‘sporty’ one. In dutifully fulfilling that label, it took me quite a while to find this love and appreciation.

Recently, while searching for some inspiring family camping photos, I came across this provocative image of a family living in the 1930’s California wilderness (featured above). It moved me deeply, and I had to do some further digging to figure out why. What was their why? What is this family’s story? Their reason for adventure?

I’m a camp-loving lady, and after seven years of full-time travel, camping around the US with my family in our Airstream travel trailer — we’re making a lifestyle change, a big one. I was hoping to find a collection of photographs to help me celebrate the beautiful, wild places camp-loving families are enjoying today, and while I found plenty of appropriate images, this one stopped me in my tracks.

As you may have guessed, this photograph does not depict a happy family having a wild and wonderful camping adventure. Sadly, it depicts a darker tale. It was taken around 1936-37 when photographer Dorothea Lange was traveling in California working for the Resettlement Administration, finding families in need, desperate for food, work, and a way to take care of their children; families willing to sacrifice everything for a chance at a better life.

The photographer’s note tells us that so many families just like this one were supposed to be shipped back to Oklahoma that year, but thought staying in California would give them a better life. So instead, they set up camp and made a home in wild places. Many of these families were starving and barely had enough shelter to survive the cold months, but they stayed on, camping in the wilderness long before it was a trendy thing to do.

It reminds me of my own family’s story. 

In 2006, while out for some ‘nature therapy’ with my brand-new baby, I heard a whisper deep in my soul say, “What if there’s more? What if you could move to that place you’ve been dreaming of and have an adventurous family life? What if there’s more than you know?”

My response was immediate: “You bet I’ll go. Who doesn’t want an adventurous family life?” And although some part of me wanted to respond with, “That would be nice, but what about the money and our family and…” I couldn’t stop my heart from soaring.

Six months later, I had sold everything I owned and was on a plane with my husband, our baby, and five suitcases moving from a small town in rural Georgia to the suburbs of Sydney, Australia.

Thankfully, we were not facing desperate financial circumstances like the family in that photograph, but we were certainly facing the unknown, trading everything we knew for a better life — taking a chance on a life full of family adventure.

Then, in 2013, we did it again. We sold everything we owned, packed ourselves into a camper, and set out for a life of full-time travel in search of another better life for our family. People tried to convince us to make a different choice. The government didn’t know what to do with us without a permanent address. And we even experienced a few dire straits along the way, too. But nothing could stop us.

Suburban life felt like a trap to us — an impetus for change for our increasingly disconnected-and-distracted-and-starting-to-sleepwalk-through-life young family. It felt like the opposite of the adventurous life we had imagined. We didn’t know what to do to remedy the situation, so we packed up our little boys (at the ripe old ages of 5 and 8 years old) and chose full-time family travel instead.

All these years later, I can look back and say it was one of the best decisions we’ve ever made.

We woke up to more adventure.

We woke up to bigger dreams.

We woke up to deeper relationships with each other.

And yes, we also sacrificed our careers, our friendships, and our extended family relationships. We spent every dime we had and then some. But we also knew there had to be a way for our family to find the kind of togetherness we’d dreamed about — the adventurous family life I’d been hoping for. And we found it.  

We redefined the way our family approaches life. We redefined togetherness on our terms.

Did you know someone could just do that? Make up a new definition of what it means to be a family and then try it? 

How audacious.

How presumptuous.

And yet, we did it. We moved to places we’d never heard of before. We camped in deserts and on ocean shores. We lived in places our parents had never even dreamed of. Our home was so tiny it was almost too uncomfortable for our family of four at times, but we camped in every state in the continental United States and found the kind of togetherness we were hoping to find along the way.

And here’s the really cool thing about it:

We aren’t extremely special people — at least not any more special than every person reading these words.

We had significant financial obstacles (although, I will wholeheartedly admit, not as significant as some).

We had a tremendous lack of experience.

And we had loads of fear.

But when the choice came between disconnect, depression, and disillusionment versus deep relationship, adventure, and a great big family life — we chose to take the leap. And it was amazing. Another remarkable thing is that we’re not alone. There are thousands of families doing the same thing, many way more adventurous than us. (A quick search on Instagram for #travelingfamily or #fulltimefamily will show you just how many.)

Seven years later, we’re better because of it. We are different people.

Our lives have expanded, our minds have expanded, and our hearts have expanded, too. We wouldn’t trade those experiences for anything.

But as I write this, we find ourselves needing to redefine togetherness…again.

Yep, we bought a house (one that isn’t on wheels)! Our kids are now older, and we’ve all been dreaming of putting down roots and pulling back our travels for a season — hoping we can gather strength for international adventures in the years to come.

That means we’re coming back to a more ‘traditional’ life for now. But I’m not leaving behind my quest for adventure by any means. Instead, I find myself redefining that, too.

As you read these words, you may be a lover of travel, or you may not be. You may be struggling with travel restrictions or a change to your work or financial situation. You may be facing all sorts of obstacles right now keeping you from living the adventurous life you imagined.But what if you could see that all through a different lens?

And if you’re finding yourself in a place where you feel the need to redefine your life or your family right now, I want you to know this:

I believe every person can rewrite, shift, and find an adventurous family life if they look for it, no matter their circumstances and/or perceived limitations.

I believe we can all redefine togetherness when we need to — whether that involves the travel kind of adventure or not, or whether we have to wait a little while longer for it.

Redefining one’s own life means daring to imagine that life could be different, realizing that whatever you’ve been created for is always within reach, trusting that when you step out (and sometimes fall down), someone will be there to support you, guide you, and help you on your path.

It means you get to make the rules and run the show.

It means that at the end of your life when you realize your last moments are near, you can breathe easily and enter the rest you deserve, knowing you gave life your best shot, relishing in the fact that you left it all on the field — you didn’t save or waste or lose a thing.

This year I published my first book, Togetherness Redefined: Finding a Different Kind of Family Togetherness, to speak words of encouragement to all parents who want that kind of life because I know it’s something I’m not alone in desiring. Heaps of mothers and grandmothers (and even a few dads and granddads) all over the world have told me as much themselves.

We want deeper relationships. We want more adventure, happier days, something better to do together than watch Netflix and run from place to place every day of the week.

We want a different kind of family togetherness.

One like this (from the book):

“I believe in the power of parenthood, the potential that lives inside of every single parent who loves a child and wants what’s best for him or her. I believe that parents are the key to family togetherness and so many good outcomes for our kids — not government intervention or fancy programs, not mentors or teachers, not even schools or churches — parents. Not just the organic lunch type of parents, the extremely talented craft-making mamas, or the highly educated homeschooling experts either — plain old parents like you and me starting small, doing our best with the moments we have, and starting over every time we get it wrong. We’re the ones leading the way to family togetherness.”

Sometimes, that might mean embarking on a big, audacious adventure – moving to a new place, buying a home, starting a new career, going back to school, getting into something new, meeting new people, seeing new places. Other times, it might mean settling down and reevaluating, leaning into family and friends, getting the rest and rejuvenation we need, and gathering strength for adventures ahead.

Whatever it is, I bet we can do it, even if it means redefining a thing or two. Give yourself permission and see where it leads you.

You may also enjoy reading Travel Tall | Heeding a Passion for Travel, by Eric Giuliani.

The post Redefining Togetherness: One Mother’s Quest for an Adventurous Family Life appeared first on BEST SELF.

To reclaim our rightful autonomy and make sense of the world’s crises, injustices and destruction, we must understand the true drivers of human dysfunction

—

Centuries ago, we lost something very precious.

It radically changed the course of our evolution, progressively disconnecting us from our humanity and bringing us to the brink of destruction. Deprived of this vital nourishment, we have fallen prey to manic marketing, fear-mongering, tantalizing smart tech, seductive social media and addictive mobile connectivity…seeking to reconnect. Instead, we find ourselves in the midst of a moral, mental, emotional, spiritual, social and planetary breakdown…and we urgently need to reconnect with the truth.

When Emperor Constantine made Christianity the ruling religion in the Roman Empire in the early 300s, he made life hell for those who refused to convert, using torture and intimidation. Those who submitted were afforded tax breaks and social ‘acceptability’,  but they were also forced to accept the idea that they were sinful, innately unworthy and in need of a religious intermediary to plead their case before a judgemental God (while paying dearly for the privilege). In the process, they lost their connection to their inner spiritual selves.

But religious dictatorship dealt an even deadlier blow to humanity.

Throughout the Middle Ages and beyond, it crushed all opposing philosophies and innate spiritual wisdom, especially the ancient teachings that celebrated our spiritual essence, profound connection with our living planet, and capacity for spiritual evolution — a tradition that would have taken us in entirely the opposite direction to our current digital dependence. Many of those versed in ancient wisdom were burnt at the stake to deter other dissenters and to obliterate their powerful knowledge. Forced instead to be ruled, condemned and do penance for whatever the Church deemed to be sinful, politically expedient or just plain lucrative, we lost our pathway to conscious evolution.

The Split from Innate Knowing

Thus began the Split — humanity’s divergence from innate intelligence, spiritual sovereignty and natural balance, towards a self-serving hierarchy imposed by man. The quest for self-knowledge and enlightenment was brutally quashed by a religious construct designed to dominate and disempower. Over time, stripped of our own spiritual guidance and awareness of natural phenomena, we increasingly disconnected from our divinity and Mother Earth.

Now, centuries later, with many more religions requiring servitude, the Split continues to widen. We have lost touch with the need for symbiosis with nature; our spiritual access to universal intelligence; our awareness of how cosmic forces affect us; our creative and healing powers; and the truth itself.

When our ancestors lost this vital connection, their enforced beliefs got handed down through successive generations, with newborns automatically becoming a certain religion the moment they popped out of the womb. The programming continued throughout their upbringing, deepening the disempowering doctrines of unworthiness and the need to atone. Even atheists could not escape the fumes from the religious engines revving all around them. They were in the air they breathed, the words they heard, the superstitions they picked up, the sainted names of schools, hospitals and institutions, the religious garb worn by adherents, the legal and political infrastructures, and the judgements made if they were not part of the same religious club.

Stuck in Self-Destruct Mode

Imposing religious dogma didn’t just force the early converts to kowtow to the Church; turning to this new god meant turning against themselves. On the dial of human consciousness, the needle got stuck on self-destruct when our hearts and souls were hijacked for political gain.

Believing ourselves to be inherently unworthy breeds self-rejection, which promotes self-sabotage and destructive behaviour, which has led to the progressive degradation of our planet. This destructive programming has become so deeply embedded in our psyche that most people are completely unaware of it running — and often ruining — their lives.

At Least 60 Degrees of Separation

The Split has caused a progressive separation from — and destruction of — key aspects of life. Denatured foods; drug-based healthcare; dysfunctional relationships; polluted environment; depleted natural resources; corrupt governments; profit-driven industry; harmful, exploitative technologies; and the irradiation of our entire planet…we are endlessly creative in the ways we sabotage our own survival.

Our denial of the obvious is an integral part of the programming designed to derail our empowered evolution. It is our most potent form of self-sabotage, undermining our self-image, relationships, health, career, finances and fulfillment.

Our subconscious self-rejection also manifests itself in our bodies, with disease proliferating worldwide — especially auto-immune diseases, which are the direct result of the body attacking itself. Largely due to emotional neglect, we have become a cancer society, consuming ourselves from the inside out. If unresolved, the self-destruct software programmed into us at the cellular level causes our cells to attack themselves.

In the grip of global PTSD, driven by our unmet emotional and spiritual needs, we compromise our values, integrity and health, distract ourselves from our pain and trauma, and do whatever we can to feed our empty hearts and souls. Social media helps fill the void, but it fails to provide a cure. Instead, it keeps us distracted, unfulfilled and desperately seeking…something.

Few are conscious enough to confront the causal core, and our programming keeps us from perceiving our diminished sense of self, our negative beliefs and the reality upon which our lives are built. If our sense of self is founded on a lie, we won’t want to hear the truth (and may not recognize it if we do).

We have been sold a bill of gods…but will we buy the truth?

When we remove all constructs founded on fear and punishment, we realize they are designed to disempower us. They keep us from recognizing that our power lies in not being bound by limiting beliefs, but in understanding where all true power is born, bred and propagated: in our own hearts and minds.

Our self-reject, self-destruct programming is now so deeply engrained, its reach so pervasive, and its impact so catastrophic that we fail to see the bigger picture. We think disease is normal; political corruption is inevitable; environmental destruction will be cancelled out by job creation and a booming economy; and the irradiation of all life on earth is necessary for global advancement. Yet, no matter how bad things get, our subconscious programming will always override logic, science and even the most compelling arguments for saving our planet…unless we consciously change it.

Changing our minds changes everything…and brings us back together

Consequently, the Split has caused a cascade of dysfunction that has brought us to the current gaping chasm between our atrophied hearts and today’s ruthless tech takeover.

Science won’t fix this — and hard-core scientists won’t touch spiritual stuff. Lawsuits won’t fix it — and they only further divide us. New laws won’t fix it — and existing protective laws and human rights conventions are being violated by the very institutions that created them. Blaming others won’t fix it — because the problem is not out there. Religion certainly won’t fix it — and seeking comfort there is like paying protection money to a Mafia that’s harming us. While we must push back against oppression, that won’t change the programming that drives our dysfunction.

Programming: How We Got from There to Here

The indoctrination of our ancestors caused certain pivotal beliefs to become so deeply embedded in the human psyche that they now pervade the collective mindset without anyone making the connection or realizing what’s really going on.

Regardless of whether we are religious or not, we have all (through schooling, religion, upbringing or society) been programmed to varying degrees to believe that:

• we are sinful, unworthy, unacceptable or not good enough
• we must defer to an external authority and no longer have faith in ourselves
• we are powerless to create or orchestrate our own lives
• we need a system to fix things for us
• spirituality is lightweight/invalid and only rational, measurable scientific processes count
• we must compromise in order to be accepted/approved by others, or otherwise pay a price

Programming creates sustained unthinking conformity. Changing it creates resistance — objections, denial, anger and defensiveness — even in the face of the truth, and the depth of the programming reflects how much of a person is being suppressed. The deeper the programming, therefore, the greater the resistance to seeing it for what it really is…and the greater the payoff for transforming it.

A Crescendo of Crises — the Hallmark of a Symptomatic Approach

When we fail to understand the true cause of our crises, the symptoms get progressively worse, pulling us even further outside ourselves. We blindly react to the chaos this creates, caught in the spin cycle of our own unconscious making. Disease, climate change, addiction, corruption, depression and despair — the growing symptoms of the Split cause emotional and physical burnout that further erodes wholeness and health. No longer conscious of our essential interconnectedness, we squander our most precious resources.

We seek solutions to climate change, when it’s our emotional climate that must change.

But when we understand how our beliefs define our reality, we begin to see that our circumstances reflect what is going on inside. Global crises therefore serve to graphically illustrate the power/nature of our collective programming (subconscious beliefs), pushing us to address that root cause, rather than focusing on the increasing fallout. Unless we choose to consciously evolve — by embodying beliefs that elevate consciousness and honour all aspects of life — we will be consumed by the chaos we have subconsciously created…and palliative care will be all that remains.

If, instead, we open up to those higher dimensions to regain what our ancestors lost, we will ultimately realign with our innate wisdom. We will also realize that the early Church State, having bred subservience, self-rejection and spiritual disconnection, set the scene for a soulless tech takeover.  

A Wireless Wake-up Call for Humanity

Now, with 5G (the fifth generation of wireless technology), we are seeing the deadly effects of that disconnect. This technology threatens to annihilate life on Earth by irradiating us from space and everywhere in our environment, with billions of antennae broadcasting destruction. We blame governments for harming us, yet it is our programming that has disrupted the natural order of things.

That natural order was understood by the Gnostic teachers of ancient wisdom,[i] who saw the cosmos as a living entity interacting and co-evolving with human consciousness. With their profound knowledge of sacred geometry, physics, cosmology, astronomy, mathematics and holistic medicine, they understood that humans were capable of godlike creations and enlightenment through the study of natural phenomena and planetary intelligence.

Echoing that ancient wisdom, quantum physics is now demonstrating how our thoughts and emotions generate physical outcomes, how we are all connected via a unified field of energy, and how consciousness creates our reality. We are mentally, emotionally, neurologically and spiritually designed to create; by elevating our consciousness, we can literally change our world. If we wish to thrive — or even survive — as a species, we must reconnect with the truth, nature’s magic and our own creatorship.

Instead, we berate and condemn each other for the many terrible things we are doing — calling ourselves losers, selfish, blind, worthless and greedy. Yet our actions are not evidence of us being terrible human beings; they merely demonstrate how staggeringly good a job the early Church did in programming us. It judged and condemned us first, and we have been perpetuating that condemnation ever since — condemning ourselves and everyone else who fails to recognize and embody their true humanity.

Betrayed Beyond Belief

This vicious betrayal continues to pervert the human psyche and derail our evolution. It represents the greatest ever desecration of the human spirit and it stems from this brutal fact: our ancestors were persecuted and burned alive because they believed in themselves. They believed in their own wisdom, their inherent divinity, the vital importance of communing with nature and our capacity for co-evolving with the living cosmos. They vehemently opposed the vengeful alien god being forced upon them, knowing that it was the very opposite of what humanity needed for consciousness, harmony and prosperity to prevail.

We have been conned and turned against ourselves at the deepest possible level. We urgently need to reclaim the ancient wisdom that was taken from us, and to start telling ourselves and each other how truly extraordinary we are. We must start believing in ourselves again — having faith in ourselves and in each other, rather than continuing our robotic rituals in a blind search for what is missing within.

The Plot Thickens…Paradoxically

There are many other parallels between ancient and current times, and many tragic ironies.[ii] 

The Church has gained immense power by preaching lies and crushing the human spirit — just as the trillion-dollar wireless industry has gained power by suppressing the truth about wireless radiation and violating humanity by irradiating us without our informed consent.

Ancient wisdom promoted conscious evolution, which is precisely why the Church suppressed it. In its place, it bred shame, self-rejection and the notion of a vengeful god that condoned the slaughter of heathens — in reality, those who fostered self-love, unity and cosmic understanding. Today, those exposing destructive political agendas and speaking the truth are blacklisted and censored on social media; some are silenced permanently.

Much of today’s scientific knowledge — including the basic principles of computer science, without which the digital age would not exist — came from our ancestors’ esoteric knowledge, which directly inspired discoveries made by Plato, Newton etc, yet is rejected by most scientists today. Nature and our bodies’ innate intelligence protect us from illness, unless weakened by fear/punishment.

When the Church stripped science of its esoteric elements, it led to the current deadly imbalance in our spiritually bankrupt modern society and technologies. The push for pharma-driven ‘solutions’ has undermined our natural immunity and our faith in our innate healing powers.

The brutal eradication of esoteric/spiritual wisdom bred such terror that we are still, today, afraid to challenge religions…so the sin spin goes on. Under the guise of a pandemic, fear-mongering has turned much of the population into sheep, blindly allowing themselves to be ‘taken care of’ by the governments intentionally harming them.

But the most devastating irony of all is this: those who have been deeply programmed often fiercely defend the religions that told them they were unworthy, while often attacking those who try to tell them the truth. They do this because religious programming in our formative years becomes so deeply enmeshed with our sense of self that challenging it is tantamount to challenging our existence.

The Real Original Sin

It would be impossible to adequately convey the profound schism caused by centuries of religious dictatorship, although some experts have documented its tragic trajectory.[iii] In his extraordinary book, Not in His Image, John Lamb Lash chronicles how the Church massacred, tortured, persecuted, lied and terrorized its way to supremacy…and then wrote its own version of what happened. Lash also shares the true origins and nature of our immensely wise and earth-loving ancestors, exposing the Church’s distortion of concepts such as heresy (which actually comes from a Greek word meaning to freely choose) and Paganism —  a culture that deeply respected the land and sensory experience as a spiritual pathway.[iv]

In reading that shocking history, we can glimpse the enormity of what the Church has done…and covered up. But no one has calculated what it has cost us — or challenged the current perpetuators of that original sin against humanity. Two thousand years is a long time to get away with murder, yet the deadly programming continues unchecked, while our world descends into unconscious, chaotic self-destruction.

The Church and the wireless industry now run on parallel lines of programmed de-humanization, with one having paved the way for the other, and both now costing us the Earth. Big Pharma has joined the party, now running its own parallel drug line, with all three helping each other take control of humanity. 

Yet they jointly also represent a deeper calling.

Digital Superhighway or Divine Super-Human?

Derailed on our evolutionary path, divested of our divine birthright, and degraded in our self-image, we now stand at a crucial crossroads in our existence. We can continue speeding down the superhighway of digital denial, dementia and destruction, or we can take the scenic route to super-human creatorship and a universe of infinite potential. But can we become conscious enough to see the deadly virus that infects human software? Can we uninstall and reboot?

Paradoxically, there is a divine—digital interplay that holds a potential breakthrough for humankind. If we once again become grounded in the truth and in the Earth itself (and if we ground/hardwire our wireless devices), we can simultaneously reconnect with our innate spiritual wisdom and universal consciousness. Connecting with the Earth and our higher faculties fosters enlightenment and conscious evolution. The digital age can then serve humanity, promoting true global awareness, infinite growth and spiritual fulfillment.

Becoming conscious and healing our emotional dysfunction is the most powerful thing we can do to restore personal and planetary health.

It’s not our leaders that we need to change; it’s our minds. It’s not about understanding politics, the law or human rights; it’s about becoming conscious of just how deeply we have been programmed, how far we have strayed from our humanity and how disconnected we have become from our own divinity, our living planet, and the phenomenal power of our minds.

Negatively programmed, our minds create hell on Earth. Positively programmed, our minds can elevate us to the highest echelons of human consciousness and evolution — infinitely more enlightening, empowering and life-enhancing than any killer-‘smart’ technologies.

We must snap out of our tech-driven stupor, regain full consciousness and wake up to the truth.

[i] Gnostic: one who understands divine matters/is an initiated teacher in the Mystery Schools (spiritual universities and educational centres of antiquity).

[ii] See: The Forbidden Universe: The occult origins of science and the search for the mind of God, by Lynn Picknett and Clive Prince; and Not in His Image—Gnostic vision, sacred ecology and the future of belief, by John Lamb Lash.

[iii] ibid.

[iv] A heretic is therefore one who chooses what to believe, rather than succumbing to the Church’s doctrines; and Pagans were systematically eradicated by the Church because their independent, nature-based culture posed a threat to its supremacy.

Olga Sheean’s latest books; click an image to view on Amazon

You may also enjoy reading Politics: Palliative Care for a Curable Disease? by Olga Sheean

The post The Split: Why We Lost Consciousness and Need to Wake Up appeared first on BEST SELF.

Ditching the over-commercialization of holiday madness in lieu of a practice for connecting to the sacredness of the solstice season

—

My mission (in creating The 13 Holy Nights Oracle Deck and companion book) is to take the over-commercialized winter holidays back from the makers of materialism, and to return the focus of the solstice season to the Sacred. Instead of being swept away in the yearly avalanche of commercialism and materialism, this beautiful practice supports us in slowing down and tuning in; reconnecting us to our own inner light…to the mystery and magic of something greater.

I learned about The 13 Holy Nights practice many years ago from my qigong teacher. This ancient, nature-based ritual, has since completely changed the way I move through winter and the holiday season (and truly, the way I move through my life). Rather than just being dark and cold, the winter season now holds the promise of a tangible connection to the infinite, the mystery…the world of Spirit. I still participate in the usual holiday traditions, but I’m not nearly as consumed by it all as I once was. There’s a sacredness that I swim in during those 13 short winter days and long dark nights regardless of what is happening around me. Every year, the magic gets deeper, more profound and more tangible. As the years pass, I fall more and more in love with The 13 Holy Nights.

The practice begins on the winter solstice (December 21^st 2020), the longest, darkest night of the year. What is the natural world doing at that time? The trees have dropped their leaves; animals and plants are quieting down, conserving energy; everything is drawing energy inward. We humans in the northern hemisphere, on the other hand, are at our most frantic: shopping compulsively, over-indulging in sugar and alcohol, and jam-packing our December calendars with social activity.

The chaos of the holidays is the exact opposite of what is natural to our bodies (and energy bodies) during the peak of winter.

What’s more, the overwhelming stress and chaos of the holidays distracts us from the true and potent magic available if we were to quiet down, simmer down, and tune in.

So, how is the 13 Holy Nights practice actually done?* Each day of the 13 Holy Nights corresponds to a month in the coming year (with the exception of the first 24-hour period which corresponds to the entire year to come). On the first night, three oracle cards are drawn  — one animal card, one herb card, and one mineral card.

These three cards will be your constant guides throughout the coming year and represent the overarching themes you will be working with. For each of the following 12 nights, one card is selected, providing further and more particular insight into each of the 12 calendar months. In addition to drawing oracle cards, the idea is basically to be present and record everything that you experience, notice, intuit, feel, think, dream, etc. into a 13 Holy Nights journal. The information that you gather into your journal represents an imprint, a blueprint, a foreshadowing, a ‘sneak peek’ of the year to come.

By simply paying attention during this magical 13-day window you receive, directly from Higher Mind (the World of Spirit, the Mystery, God, the Field or whatever language you like), the spiritual tools and guidance you will need to navigate the upcoming adventures and challenges of the new year. You also have the precious opportunity to plant YOUR dream seeds, YOUR intentions and inspirations, in the fertile soil of the darkness so that they may sprout in the spring, bloom in the expansiveness of summer and be harvested as the fruits of your labor in the fall…before diving back in for another cycle of seasons.

It is the co-creative process AMPLIFIED by aligning yourself with nature.

The dream seeds you plant in the rich darkness of the 13 Holy Nights are like turbo-charged New Year’s resolutions. Rather than simply writing down a list of intentions you actually do the things, activities and practices you want to strengthen or develop in the coming year; you actually see or otherwise connect with the people you would like to have in your life; and you actually engage with the world in ways that bring you joy and happiness. A very real energetic imprint is created and stamped into a riptide of energy that is literally swept right into your future. It’s legit magic.

As you make your way through your year, the synchronicities that unfailingly unfold from your 13 Holy Nights journal will give you waves of goosebumps, will make you laugh out loud in disbelief and will fortify your faith in the unseen world of energy and Spirit. The wisdom jotted down in your journal will be like your own personal crystal ball, astrologer, psychic, therapist and guide. I’ve had countless 13HN journal entries manifest word for word in the exact month that corresponds to the Holy Night in which I wrote them down.

For example, one year — it was a sunny afternoon in June — I received an unexpected phone call: a dear friend who lives on the other side of the country happened to be passing through town. We had a delightful meal together before he made his way to the airport to fly home. After he left I had a nagging feeling that there may have been something written about him in my Holy Nights journal. When I pulled it out to check, I discovered that I had written down a fragment of a dream on the 7th Holy Night (the night that corresponds to the month of June). These words were scribbled in my journal, “A surprise visit from Tommy, so much kindness and connection there.” Whoa.

The 13 Holy Nights opens a portal into the potent, dark, quiet, still magic of deep winter. It is the most powerful time to re-connect, receive, replenish, reset and co-create. When we practice the 13 Holy Nights, we align with the rhythm of the seasons and are enfolded in the stunning intelligence of nature — an intelligence which, if we could only learn to follow it, could lead us out of the downward spiral of chaos we are now experiencing across our planet.

Nature is brilliant beyond our comprehension.

I am reminded of this daily by my cactus and succulent gardens: the exquisite natural design is so clear in their geometric fractal patterns. I believe that by aligning ourselves with that natural design and intelligence we discover our own natural human potential. This is what the practice of the 13 Holy Nights is about: tuning into the rhythm of the seasons, aligning with the intelligence of nature, reclaiming the true magic of the solstice season… and reclaiming a part of ourselves.

In so many ways our modern industrialized, technologically-dependent culture has rejected, abused and turned away from Mother Nature. We spend the majority of our time indoors, out of touch with the earth and her seasons and cut off from light of the sun, moon and stars. Poisonous chemicals pervade our air, water, food, homes, clothing, medicines, etc. We live and breathe in an invisible soup of man-made electrical frequencies.** We are now entirely submerged in a world filled to the brim with manmade toxins.

I wonder: Who would we be? How would we feel? How would these bodies and minds function and what would we be capable of if we lived in the pristine and natural environment we lived and evolved in for eons? We don’t know.

Historians and researchers question how certain ancient civilizations (the ancient Egyptians, Incas and Mayans etc.) accomplished unbelievable architectural feats or attained seemingly impossible knowledge without access to machines, computers and technology. What if we are capable of much more than we know? Every single person alive today knows only how it feels to be human while slogging through an environment cut off from nature and saturated with synthetic chemicals and poisons.

Lara Day discusses the 13 Holy Nights

In this moment, as I sit outside in my backyard writing, I smell my neighbors chemically fragranced dryer sheets permeating the air. I can actually taste the overwhelming synthetic fragrance in the back of my throat. What if ancient peoples were capable of such brilliance simply because their bodies and brains were in sync with nature and were not overloaded with, and dumbed-down by toxins? What if the poisonous ways of our modern industrial high-tech culture are keeping us from accessing higher levels of consciousness that would otherwise be quite natural to us all?

Currently, in the New Age movement, there is a lot of talk about a ‘Great Awakening’ that is in motion. It can sound fairly intangible, esoteric and far out to many, including those of us who speak woo. I’ve been thinking lately…What if this ‘Great Awakening’ isn’t some far-out sci-fi awakening to Buddha-like enlightenment and Yoda-like super powers, but instead, a here-and-now awakening to the corrupt power structures of our current global culture that are spewing toxicity into our environment and thus into our bodies, hearts and minds? And…wait for it…here’s where it comes full circle…because if we weren’t so absurdly toxic and cut off from nature maybe we would be more Buddha/Yoda-like with a greater capacity to utilize more of our brain power and thus access higher levels of consciousness. And perhaps levitate space ships out of soggy bogs with just the firm command of our thoughts.

This year more than ever before, I am fervently looking forward to aligning with nature by diving deep into the womb of winter.

With the world out there feeling more and more toxic and chaotic and the promise of a winter quarantine fast approaching, there has never been a more auspicious time to engage in the practice of the 13 Holy Nights. I am holding a vision of families and individuals all over the world soaking in the quiet stillness of the dark nights of winter and bringing back, from this place of primordial magic, inspired visions of a beautiful new world.

I am holding a vision of the quiet inward dive of the Holy Nights replacing the yearly maniacal surge of holiday madness and materialism gone wild. I am holding a vision of the 13 Holy Nights re-aligning us ALL with the intelligence of nature.

Th 13 Holy Nights practice is a return to the light within the darkness, to the sacred and stunning design of nature and the intelligence of the Universe. The 13 Holy Nights is a 13-day practice in being present, in tasting what is possible when we truly tune in to the energy within us and all around us, that is us. If we can practice plugging into the Mystery, during this magical 13-day window, when the elements and energies all around us are in cahoots with our inward dive, perhaps we can begin to let that feeling bleed out into the rest of our year. Perhaps we can learn to awaken within the dream. Perhaps we can usher in the ‘Great Awakening’.

Join me this winter. May we all dive deep!

(One of my intentions for the Holy Nights this year is to gaze into the unfiltered light of 13 sunrises and 13 sunsets…aligning with the light, aligning with nature!)

—

*For complete details, please visit: 13holynightsoracle.com

**See The Invisible Rainbow by Arthur Firstenberg for more on this topic.

You may also enjoy reading Rewilding: Revealing Winter’s Gifts of Impermanence and Connection, by Micah Mortali, M.A.

The post 13 Holy Nights: Reclaiming the True Magic of the Solstice Season appeared first on BEST SELF.

Standing at a critical technological crossroads, we have become oblivious to our own demise in body, mind and spirit

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Have you realized your unique creative potential? In living your precious life, how much have you evolved emotionally, spiritually or ecologically? Have you enhanced your personal responsibility, autonomy, relationships or custodianship of the planet? Are you fulfilled and happy with who you are?

If we look beneath the virtual reality of our tech-driven world, we see a deep yearning for connection and meaningful fulfillment.

Something fundamental is missing and many of us are trying to fill the void. While wireless technologies promise mobility, convenience and freedom, they have instead compromised our humanity, while distracting us from what we have lost and keeping us stuck in a perpetual loop of unmet emotional and spiritual needs.

With endless information at our fingertips, we may feel more in charge of our lives than ever before, but we have never been less free. We have become mobile databases, generating masses of personal data used to track, control and exploit us.

We have lost an essential part of our humanness — the part that relates to compassion, caring for others and seeking heartfelt connections. Our humanity matters more than any inanimate gadget, and if we deny the proven dangers of wireless devices, harming ourselves and others while disengaging from the natural world around us, it shows us just how dehumanized we have become…and it means we no longer care.

I call this social greedia — not caring how much we harm people, the planet or society, in our need for social-media sustenance.

Absorbed in our digital world, we lose touch with nature, our inner wisdom and the higher faculties designed to keep us true to ourselves. We fail to see that we have been masterfully played by those with a vested interest in keeping us emotionally disconnected, socially seduced, stressed, insecure and burnt out.

Focused outwards on the symptoms of our dysfunction, we distract ourselves from our pain, blaming others for not fixing things, while failing to take responsibility for the way we live.

Our choices matter. They affect everyone, and the increasing demand for an easy wireless lifestyle is making life hell for those feeling its effects. Not caring or taking the appropriate action for our planet or each other is part of the syndrome of dumbing down and emotional detachment caused by wireless radiation. This is what makes the current technological takeover so masterful. On top of the logistical, physical and emotional dependence on mobile technologies, the loss of empathy, emotional intelligence and consciousness really seals the deal. That’s not just tragic; it’s deadly, because not caring means we give in and don’t fight back.  

A wake-up call… or the big long sleep?

Right now, if you are relatively healthy and you use a cell phone or other wireless devices, you are taking your health for granted. But you can expect a wake-up call very soon. I’ve had mine, in the form of a brain tumor, so I may be a little bit ahead of you. But it won’t be long before you get it…or it gets you. Then you will realize just how much you have lost and that the human rights you also took for granted are no longer respected or enforced. Wireless technology has taken over, increasingly pulling us away from what is healthy and natural for our bodies, minds and spirits. In the process, we are losing consciousness, surrendering our own personal evolution to the evolution of inanimate technology.

If technology runs our lives, we no longer do.

And if the evolution of technology overrides the evolution of humanity, we will have eliminated ourselves from the equation.

We urgently need to get back in the driver’s seat and steer things in a healthier direction. Consciousness is the very antithesis of the tech takeover — and the only true antidote to it. But how do we regain consciousness if we do not realize we have lost it? How do we become conscious of not being conscious?

We must find stillness and give ourselves the opportunity to feel, process and integrate what is happening in our lives. We were never intended to process so much information, to be so mentally over-stimulated, to be spiritually and emotionally disengaged, or to have so many things clamouring for our attention.

Many people are in overwhelm, their brains on fire, their hearts empty, and their lives a non-stop juggling act. We must separate ourselves from our ‘upregulating’ gadgetry in order to reconnect with our deeper selves…or even to simply be present.

In most cases, smart phones serve as the delivery device — a virtual umbilical cord — that keeps us co-dependent. Only by switching them off and opening our eyes and hearts to what is around us can we start to see what we are losing. As precious trees are cut down to facilitate the delivery of 5G, as more and more children get cancer from wireless radiation, and as smart devices increasingly run our homes, choices and every move, consciousness is the only thing left inside us that we can fully own and control…and that no one else can control.

Evolution is about finding a higher way, and we can only evolve if we are conscious of what we are doing. We are being pushed to reclaim our hearts and humanity in the face of a heartless, predatory technology. As technology evolves, so does disease, due to the deepening separation of head from heart and our focus on symptoms versus underlying cause. We now have more epidemics of disease, more social dysfunction, and more mental illness then ever before in our world. The frequencies being beamed at us are changing the way we behave, think and feel, controlling us without us even knowing it. This is the price we pay for not consciously evolving — for having surrendered our personal autonomy, our spiritual sovereignty, our emotional integrity and our physical functionality to gadgets that promise to do it all for us.

‘Social greedia’ or conscious evolution?

Being human is about being truly present, compassionate and wise, and making simple, healthy choices that promote our collective survival and prosperity. With every choice we make, we have the capacity and the option to evolve to a higher plane of existence. We can collectively feed the machine that will ultimately render us almost obsolete, or we can feed our hearts and spirits, broadcasting our own healthy frequencies and starving the predators that are leaching the life out of us.

This means reconnecting with our humanity, which is what keeps us connected to what matters most. It also keeps us connected to what is right. If we lose touch with our humanity, we lose our moral compass…and we can’t use GPS to find our way home.

We stand at a crucial crossroads in our evolution: stripped of our humanity, subsumed by wireless gadgets, we are pliant puppets in the tech takeover, oblivious to our own demise.

Conscious evolution is an active choice. We can choose long-term viability over short-term gratification; we can choose enduring spiritual connection over instant wireless connectivity; and we can choose to feed our own healthy neural networks rather than feeding data-hungry online networks that exploit our every move, friendship, purchase, weakness, need, emotion or desire.

Only by choosing to consciously evolve can we hope to outwit the predator that stalks us. Disguised as our friend, it seduces us with the promise of an exciting futuristic life, while scrambling our brains and weakening our bodies with its invisible irradiating waves. The stealthy wireless stalker makes us forget who we really are, feeding our needs and getting us hooked on its addictive offerings.

It is human trafficking of the most tragic and insidious kind. The only escape lies in conscious self-awareness, withdrawal from our addictions, and an active commitment to being fully human. We must return to love, engage our true nature, reclaim our personal autonomy and choose to evolve for the sake of every precious beating heart.

Olga Sheean’s latest books; click an image to view on Amazon

You may also enjoy reading an interview with Olga Sheean, Innate Wisdom: Reawakening Our Truth, Reclaiming Our Power, Changing Our World, by Alison Main.

The post Social Greedia: Has Our Evolution Been Derailed? appeared first on BEST SELF.

A provocative dive into the body politic in search of meaningful change and results, requiring the active participation of us all

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How many politicians do you know who are actively committed to their own personal growth? How many do yoga, meditate or invest in healthy behavioural change? How many have resolved their own dysfunction, limiting beliefs, insecurities, unmet needs, poor boundaries and personal conflicts? Precious few, would probably be the answer. Yet politicians are tasked with resolving the crises that result from all of those issues… without addressing a single one of them.

They grapple with the symptoms of our collective dysfunction — not the root cause — which is why they so seldom fix things.

It’s not that there are no good politicians left or that none of them wish to truly change things for the better. The problem is the negative programming that has conditioned us to think and act in certain limiting, self-destructive ways, regardless of what others might try to do to change things. For as long as we fail to address this fundamental driver of human dysfunction — and of every problem on the planet — politics will never work.

Via religion, schooling and parenting, most of us are taught that we are unworthy, unacceptable or just plain not good enough. Our distorted self-image and low self-worth breed deference to others, a lack of faith in self, a failure to take personal responsibility for our lives and, consequently, a tendency to blame the authorities for not fixing things for us. Profoundly disempowered, we are unaware that our subconscious self-rejection creates havoc in our lives, producing human dramas that keep us focused on the external symptoms of our dysfunction rather than its internal drivers.  

Because of this programming (as deeply rooted in themselves as in the general population), politicians face an impossible task: solving our problems for us.

While ostensibly addressing key issues, they instead become the scapegoats for our dysfunction, the indicators of our subservience and the enablers of our crippling co-dependence. They are excellent mirrors of what is not working, but they are profoundly misguided in their mission. 

Are you leading your own life?

The true purpose of any political leader is to inspire us to become leaders in our own lives, since we are the only ones with direct control over our circumstances. 

Unless leaders fulfill that role, they merely serve as figureheads for our collective failure to understand how life really works. They may introduce new policies, change some laws or promote certain initiatives, but unless they address the human dysfunction that drives every single problem on the planet, they can only provide political palliative care. And, since most politicians are so ensnared by their own dysfunctional psyche, they can hardly even do that.

How can a politician solve these problems?

How can a president resolve unemployment when the subconscious beliefs and self-worth of individuals determine what they create and attract in life? 

How can a leader build a thriving economy if the people have a poverty mentality or do not believe in their right or ability to prosper? 

How can an elected official create meaningful lasting change if the people don’t believe in their own ability to make a difference… and don’t even try? 

How can a politician create unity when mass programming promotes divisiveness, self-rejection and intolerance? 

How can any leader instill a sense of ownership and pride when its people have surrendered responsibility for almost every aspect of their lives, blaming governments for their problems and expecting someone else to fix them?

Every leader is a reflection of its people — how empowered or conscious they are and to what degree they have surrendered their personal autonomy in favor of being led, healed, fixed or bailed out. 

Every president reflects what is missing in the psyche and self-worth of the people. A president’s failure to fix things reflects the people’s failure to take charge of their own lives. Sickness and disease reflect individuals’ failure to adjust their lifestyle or embrace their own healing powers. 

Why politicians can never win

Politics usually addresses symptoms, which is why it never ultimately changes anything. Instead of holding political leaders responsible for the state of things, we the people must be accountable for our own lives — which, in turn, affects the economy and the prevailing mindset and direction of a nation.

Whatever is currently wrong with our world went wrong in our minds long before we ever voted. Debt, disease, depression, crime, addiction, wars and poverty are the glaring symptoms of a race that has failed to fully understand or empower itself. We are missing a crucial piece of the human puzzle and we are ‘driving blind’ through life, failing to master our relationships, emotions, economies or minds. 

Globally, we are in a state of ongoing crisis and collective post-traumatic stress disorder, with no real game plan and no framework for masterful living. We grapple with the symptoms of dysfunction without understanding the underlying cause. 

Weapons of mass seduction

We are putty in the hands of political players… and we have been played. Lured by technologies that give the illusion of freedom, we have been seduced into subservience and the surrender of our personal data. Due to our unresolved dysfunction and unmet emotional needs, we are addicted to invasive, pervasive, harmful technologies that have transformed us into human databases. Because we have failed to recognize and resolve our disempowerment, technological evolution has superseded human evolution, hurtling ahead with our tacit consent, leveraging our co-dependence, ruling by default, and leaving our humanity in the dust. 

In politics, issues are mostly addressed in isolation, with no understanding or consideration of the big picture or the underlying dynamics. As with conventional medicine, it is a symptomatic approach that never gets to the core of the issue. That would involve examining how the human psyche and our electromagnetism affect our world — not how particular policies work. Policies don’t change people, although they may provide opportunities. Only people can change themselves and thereby change everything else.

To create balance and harmony, we must understand how human dysfunction creates the scenarios we call life.

Only when leaders address that dysfunction and inspire individuals to take responsibility for their own lives will things change in a meaningful way. Failing that, we go round and round. New presidential players, same old pajamas (and some truly appalling hairdos). 

Disease is exploding out of control, our environment is polluted, suicide is on the rise, gadgets are running our lives, we’ve sold our souls (and all our personal data) to commercial interests, technology has hijacked our humanity… and no leader will ever resolve these issues unless he/she addresses human dysfunction (starting with his/her own). Addressing climate change, adopting sustainability policies, levying carbon taxes — none of these things will change us, the perpetrators of the damage that prompts such inherently futile efforts. 

Who is running the party?

Ultimately, the collective loss of personal autonomy creates political anarchy, which is what we are currently witnessing in the U.S. and elsewhere, with the collapse of solid values, morality, integrity, honesty, compassion and basic human decency. 

In this supposedly free world, how many people are truly free? How many are free of debt, disease, stress, conflict, prejudice, emotional issues, stigma or pain? For as long as the sources of our dysfunction remain unaddressed — and embodied by our leaders — we will never be free. We cannot even freely choose what we want, since our choices are determined by our dysfunctional beliefs, which affect the outcomes. 

Effective leadership has less to do with political savvy than an understanding of healthy human dynamics. 

While it is crucial for leaders to promote real change, they cannot lead anyone anywhere good unless they first empower themselves, resolve their own dysfunction, and become conscious of our interconnectedness. 

What’s your policy for powerful living?

True leadership means leading by example, embodying self-responsibility, healthy boundaries and choices, respect and compassion for self and others, an awareness of our creative capacity, and a genuine commitment to excellence in how we live our lives and in our reverence for the planet on which we all depend. 

We do not need — and cannot rely upon — a president or any other leader for that. We must become leaders in our own lives if we truly want to create the kind of world that we expect elected leaders to create for us.

Creating a happy, functional society is not their job. It is ours and ours alone. 

If we take on that all-important personal responsibility, there is nothing we cannot do — and we will, as a result, generate leadership partners who support us in this endeavor. Rather than exploiting our dysfunction, manipulating our weaknesses, seducing us with ‘smart’ technologies or taking advantage of our low self-worth (as governments currently do), they will be champions for our greatness, cheerleaders in our collective successes, and co-creators in the conscious evolution of our species. 

When we address our own dysfunction by transforming our limiting beliefs and behaviors, we can turn our weaknesses into strengths and embody the kind of healthy self-worth that generates true freedom, prosperity and fulfillment — far beyond what any president or leader could ever do for us.  

True governance does not come from the White House, 10 Downing Street or anywhere else. It comes from within.

The author’s latest books; click an image to view on Amazon

You may also enjoy Brendon Burchard Interview | Live, Love, Matter with Kristen Noel.

The post Politics: Palliative Care for a Curable Disease? appeared first on BEST SELF.

Estimated reading time: 4 minutes

Musings from an environmental anthropologist dedicated to exploring wild, untamed foods — even in her own backyard

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Is it possible to be homesick, not for a place, but for the past?

One of the central themes of my book, Feasting Wild: In Search of the Last Untamed Food, is the sense of nostalgia we might feel for a time when eating meant something different. When nutritious food came fresh from the pristine nature all around us. When we knew the seasons and could identify the abundant edible plants growing in our backyards.

How had we lost this deep connection to the earth? 

This sense of being homesick for the past has taken on new meaning since COVID-19. How we long for a time before this global pandemic and all the suffering it has brought! And yet, I have found new meaning in being home. I spent many years traveling to research my book — from the far flung rainforests of Borneo, to the wild game markets of the Democratic Republic of Congo, and even a thrilling excursion to an island off the coast of Maine. During the past few months, I have been forced to be home in New Mexico where I grew up, rerooted in a place I rarely visited long enough to do laundry. 

Unable to travel, my first feeling was one of being stuck, static, confined. I yearned for an adventure.

But as the days passed, I found a new sense of being grounded.

I learned to ferment foods, something I had never had the patience to do before. I reconnected with family and friends, and found joy in such simple pleasures as waking up before sunrise to watch the day begin with a steaming cup of coffee and a good book. As the sky turned pink then blue with a flourish of colors I had never noticed, I found pleasure in the feeling of just being here, now, in this moment.

Ironically, staying home has made me appreciate the edible weeds in my backyard, not as a nuisance but as little gifts. Reminders that the past is always with us.

Although sometimes long gone days might appear sweeter, we possess the capacity to imagine and create a brighter future, today.

The feelings of nostalgia and homesickness are transformed by rediscovering the delicious moments that have been here with us all along.

You may also enjoy reading Off the Mat, Into the Kitchen: Bringing Mindfulness to Our Plate, by Tamal and Victoria Dodge

The post From Globetrotting to Grounded: An Exploration of Wild Foods and Connection appeared first on BEST SELF.

One woman’s primal and poetic reclaiming of her feminine self in all of its glorious connection to Mother Earth and her own animal nature

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Last week, I reached for Mary Oliver’s poem Wild Geese — you know the line, “Let the soft animal of your body love what it loves.” Something in me just needed to read it again.

For the last six weeks, since the disappearance of my beloved cat Mila upon moving in with my partner, I’ve been contemplating what I am calling ‘animal nature’. And it’s not just that my mind is trying to grok this concept as it did in the beginning, rather the contemplation is more an experiential exploration. An embodied remembering of my own animal nature. One long overdue.

I just moved to an alive and wild piece of land to live with a man.

A piece of land that is presumably just fine without humans, but since we’re here, I get the sense that She would prefer we engage with Her. (Yes, the choice to use and capitalize feminine pronouns here is purposeful. I like to remember that the Earth is associated with the feminine archetype. How we — each of us — engage with Her, therefore, is telling on many levels.)

My first intuition when Mila left sounded like, “cultivate Life here.” So, trying to show I was listening, I planted some local tomato starts in pots on the deck, made sure all the indoor plants had fresh soil and plenty of light, and I worked on creating a freshness in and around the house. Then, I also became obsessed with trying to ‘listen’ to what the next intuition would instruct me to do. What did the land want? What did this new life want of me? What did my cat need in order to want to come back and make this home with us?

Honestly, I was no longer in the flow with life, I was trying to perform. Trying to be a good little woman, as we sometimes do, in order to please — what? My cat? The land? Nature? God?

See what I did there? I began to treat what were sacred invitations to return to my animal nature like it was something I could earn.

We do this so often as women. We think, “If I am good, maybe I will be deemed worthy.” So we stay quiet, and tidy until something jolts us awake. Like a missing animal. Or a man’s body. Or a welcome change of scenery reveals to us the tightness of how we’ve been living in our own body.

Animals are not quiet and tidy. This ‘good girl’ way of thinking is an old trap — the oldest — and we know it deep within us. Something in each of us wants to revolt.  It’s why women everywhere are leaning in close to one another and announcing, “I am a goddamned cheetah.” (To quote Glennon Doyle’s recent book Untamed.)

We are brainwashed from the beginning that our animal nature is dirty. That a woman is to be obedient. That if she is too wild, too sexual, too in her body, too alluring, she will actually repel God and her worthiness from her.

We are taught that in order to be worthy, we must tame our animal nature. Which is horse shit. Actually, horse shit is holier than whatever that is.

The Sacred, however, is not outside of us, judging us, waiting for us to clean up our act before we can be worthy. Of our cat, our pleasure, of the ability to take a full and deep breath inside our free and undulating bodies. The Sacred, and you can call it God or Nature or Universe or whatever, actually exists inside of all of the places of embodied pleasure. Embodied animal nature.

When I say that I’ve been contemplating animal nature, what I really should say is that I’ve been invited in the last few weeks into an even-deeper remembering.

Invited to let, as Mary Oliver says, “the soft animal of my body love what it loves.”

Invited to recognize the layers of healing available to me now. (And to you — this is your invitation too.)

Invited to remember the ways my body wants to move, in big movements. It wants to sweat and heave and breathe bigger than I’ve been allowing myself to breathe. It wants to remember all of the sounds it knows to make — the sounds I always look around, even on this mountain top, to see who would hear me if I made them. So I generally don’t. Taming my animal nature from erupting from my own throat.

And it’s not my partner’s fault that upon moving in, I had subconsciously decided to quiet myself around certain issues, to temper my vocals, to stop my breath somewhere around my diaphragm. This man will talk to me about anything.

I know that unfortunately, I am not the only woman to have ever quieted herself.

Indeed, I help women to liberate their own silences and there I was, doing it again, calling it a ‘feminine’ consideration, calling it patience, waiting for things to work out over time. But leaving things unspoken. Which is really just a recipe for an eventual eruption. Because animal nature, even in the throat, is not to be tamed. 

Then last weekend, we were standing in the morning sun, dripping sweat for the second day, clearing a garden plot at my animal-nature-reclaiming request, each doing more physical labor than we were used to doing, and the wheelbarrow handle snapped when we still had plenty of sod to move.

Looking back, that snap was divine.

I made a suggestive request (instead of saying outright what I desired), he did another thing entirely, and then the energy snapped too. I realized that sometimes he can’t hear me because I am not in my true voice when I say them. And we had to shovel these heavy piles of sod and throw — in fact heave — them over the edge of the yard, and as we did, I let my animal body take over. To make sounds. I let my stomach take in the full breaths. I let myself yell in frustration. I let myself say another layer of my own, previously-quieted truth.

All that was deep and transformative medicine for my animal nature.

This man will go to all of the natural, sweaty, embodied, dark, real places with me. It is not his job to understand what a woman’s original taming feels like, because I don’t really think a man can. He tries to understand as I explain parts of it to him. And I can’t help but to think that it is also his invitation. If I, as a woman, allow my deep, erotic, animal passion to fully emerge, it is good for him.

I am letting my animal body get used to stretching out again in full permission.

To be me.

This nature is not separate from me, though to some extent, it has been. In ways, my separation from these wild parts has caused closures in places I did not ever want to see close — it just happened over time. It has caused, over time, years of performance and holding myself up in society’s confines. I break plenty of rules, and I’ll be damned if it still doesn’t have me somewhat tied.

Over these last six weeks, lost parts have been returning — all somehow connected to this theme. After Mila left, my body stopped eating meat and I was more attuned to what it actually needed. My son and I are digging in the garden and I’m teaching him the structure of it all as I remember it. My first college degree was in sustainable agriculture, but I let that go as I had climbed a career ladder. I just started to compost again, collecting scraps to recycle into nutrients that feel too precious to waste now. I’m digging dirt in the mornings and evenings, when my breath has habitually been tightest, and now I’m standing on that mountain as the sun goes up and down, attuning to rhythms that I had tuned out.

I bought a box of clay and my son and I have been engaged in the tactile nature of molding it, unattached to outcome, while music plays in the background and our brains create. He paints quietly on the porch in the air and the shade. I take time to read fiction while my body sways in a hammock. I have taken hours to simply sit with the other cat on my lap, her animal body, nuzzling in, making contact.

I’ve made love to my partner many times, many ways, finding my breath and my heart in richer and richer ways. Calling parts of my woman-self back in this primal space.

I’m writing in the mornings. I have decided that I will put the foods in my mouth that feed my pleasure. Nothing else. I’m listening to the land, not with an anxious pressure that I hear everything She’s trying to tell me, but with a new sense of gratitude. She has a lot to say.

She, Mother Earth, is sending us a very clear invitation, to come home to our own bodies and activate our remembering of what we know.

I’m breathing it in as I’m able and sharing wisdom with other women. I’m watching as women are gathering together, sharing inquiry, intuitions, and knowledge, tapping into something both old and new. I’m picking wild berries and listening to bird calls I can’t yet decipher, but maybe one day we will get to know one another better.

I’m breathing.

My muscles, today, are aching from all the heaving.

I’m remembering something ancient and new. Without rush. Coming through me as a remembering, coming through this life transition.

When I read Wild Geese this last time, it was actually the last line that stood out to me as the true medicine of these wild times. It reads, “…over and over announcing your place in the family of things.”

I’m reminded that animals know their place in the family of things.

Animals wouldn’t position themselves, like humans have, like I have, to being ‘outside’ or ‘other than’ the natural world. They wouldn’t imagine otherwise with a brain that says, “Do I belong? May I live as myself? May I take a nap now?” They don’t ask if they are worthy of their place in nature. They don’t try, as we do, to control. They don’t grieve like humans grieve, because we judge that something should not be happening. They wouldn’t ever consider that they are separate from the Sacred nature of all that is, that God is outside of them, these lies of separation that we’re spending lifetimes mending. They don’t try to be good. They don’t try to please. They are integral to life, to the whole. Of course they are.

How naturally beautiful.

How inviting.

To be an animal in the family of things.

And as I pick the berries, as I ponder how to make a peppermint tincture, as I shovel dirt, as my breath deepens in a certain restoration, and as I allow my soft animal body to love the soft animal body of this man, I think — this is what we are creating and remembering, both: our place in the family of things.

—

Note from the author:

Written in gratitude to Mary Oliver for her articulation of her close observation, to Glennon Doyle for helping modern women to awaken, to the indigenous people of this land that my hands are now touching, and to the animals, our teachers.

And to Mila. Thank you, you sweet and ancient soul, for this deep activation of Sacred Remembering. 

by Mary Oliver

You do not have to be good.

You do not have to walk on your knees

for a hundred miles through the desert repenting.

You only have to let the soft animal of your body

love what it loves.

Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.

Meanwhile the world goes on.

Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain

are moving across the landscapes,

over the prairies and the deep trees,

the mountains and the rivers.

Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,

are heading home again.

Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,

the world offers itself to your imagination,

calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting —

over and over announcing your place

in the family of things.

You may also enjoy reading Soul Voice, by Meggan Watterson

The post Animal Nature: An Invitation for Reclaiming, Untaming & Being appeared first on BEST SELF.

Once locked away in a prison cell for 25 years — one extraordinary man discovers how to heal his own pain through the service of others

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Usually, people think that I’m a strong, happy person…but behind my smiles they just don’t know how much I’m in pain and almost broken…”

—CoolNSmart.com

Pain. How can a person understand life when life was crushed before living it? And what about the crude impact on the development of such a person? To answer this, I have to go back to ask my 7-year-old self this very question. He remembers.

I’m a curious life observer. I have learned to witness and read others. I have tried many times to study and understand the mind of others — in an effort to understand my own. I have tried many times to visualize this feeling of happiness or elation that others may feel; yet in the end, I still come up with the same conclusion: The grass is not greener on the other side.

And this coming from a man who has spent 25 years in prison, means something.

I wonder if there is such a thing as everlasting pain or sorrow. I truly want to believe that the answer is No. That it can go, fade, become something else. Yet, I can attest firsthand that there is such a thing, that there is such a space where pain is felt. It resides, thrives and creates indelible scars.

At the age of seven, I was taken from my parents and placed in a foster home. Before this, I lived in countless environments that were not beneficial to any child. I lived in a shelter with my parents and my brothers, I lived in a hotel, I lived in a tiny apartment — and I also lived on the streets.

So, at the mere age of seven, when police and social workers told me that they were taking me from all of this and placing me in an environment that was deemed productive for my growth and development, one that would be safe — I was confused and unsure of what any of that really meant.

Some part of me felt grateful to be taken somewhere safe; a home with a warm bed to sleep upon, hot meals to eat and a notion of comfort I was unfamiliar with. However, the very ‘comfort’ that I was given also quickly revealed the price I would pay for that. Survival became crucial. And this same home where I was intended to be ‘safe’ and cared for was the same place where innocence was removed and molestation wore a face that smiled.

Now I know what pain is.

I learned that pain exists both physically and mentally. My young mind was left to navigate the pain and the choices before me. This small boy must decide; Do I stay and face the pains of molestation in the name of ‘comfort’ or do I leave and go back into the abyss of the unknown? And between the ages of 8-10 I would be confronted with that very choice over and over again. That young, vulnerable self concluded that the unknown was worse than what I was enduring. Besides, who could possibly understand the unspeakable dilemma — a choice between abuse or discomfort?

From the age of seven to sixteen, I remained in foster care. 9 years. During this time, I lost my grandmother and my uncle — the only two people in my family who had helped ease the pain of my young life. My grandmother was able to pull me from the system and adopt me — though that didn’t last long. When she died, my uncle did the same…and then he died.

This was an unimaginable series of losses for me. I didn’t question their love. That love made me feel that there was light at the end of the tunnel. It gave me connection and a sense of belonging to something, someone. It was someplace I could bury my pains and find my smile. But losing the only two people in my life that I loved more than anything or anybody only added to the pains that I thought I once buried.

I thought of my pain almost as the ‘Internal City’ described by Plato in The Republic where men build cities on top of cities.

Those cities were my wounds — new levels were being reconstructed upon them, compartmentalized. I couldn’t fathom just how deep pain could go. Yet, I wasn’t quite done adding layers.

At the age of sixteen, I was headed to prison for a crime that my misguided mind helped commit and I was being sent away for a very long time — longer than I had been alive. What do you mean that you are charging me for the murder of a man? This cannot be right because I know to my core that my actions did not cause the death of anyone.

When you are locked away in the cell, all of your days begin to look the same; the dreams you once had begin to fade quickly.

The memories that you try to hold onto begin to crawl away, and the only thing that remains is the pain — a constant companion. My cell wasn’t big enough to contain it all.

In the novel The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas, the protagonist was locked away in a dungeon. He had no friends. He had no visitors. He heard no words. He saw no faces. He dreamed no more — all the protagonist knew and had was pain. It was the solitude that made him decide that life within these circumstances was simply not worth living.

When the day came to finalize his plan and end his life because it had all become unbearable — he heard a sound. The sound told him that he was not alone, and it was this belief that gave him the will to want to live again. He needed to know where that sound was coming from and by whom. That sound is the recognition needed for a person to understand that humanity still exists, that humanity is still alive even amidst the darkest hopelessness.

The prison cell resembles that solitude; resembles that space where thoughts of humanity have faded. It was in these prison cells that all I had was my pain, and my pain became the noise; became the thing or the element that made me want to live; the pain became the force that guided my body; the pain transformed into something totally life-saving. I lived and slept with pain.

Pain became my best friend because it stayed with me every day; each day I cried on the inside, but no one would ever know because on the outside I smiled — something I learned to do a long time before.

But what do we do with it? How do we contain it and carry it? More importantly, how do we transform it? I wasn’t sure it was even possible…but I knew it was worth a try. Like the Count, I heard a whisper; my soul.

As the years passed in prison, I began to observe the younger generation of inmates coming in and listened to their complaining about how hard life was or how they just wanted to give up because they were not able to do so much time — I knew what it was. I knew what they were experiencing like a familiar ghost. They were filled with anger and rage they didn’t know what to do with. They wanted to fight the system because they were mad. I knew that it was their pain that they wanted to let out; they wanted to remove it, but they couldn’t — they couldn’t identify it and didn’t know how to release it.

I understood the signs because I saw them as clear as day. I lived them. I was them. I understood these young men so well that every time I saw them show up I would try to tell them, “I know the road that you’re traveling and it’s not a good one. This path has a fatal ending and sucks your humanity, leaves you numb and unwilling to love, unwilling to trust ever again. It will close you down. Harden you and make you forget your heart. And for this reason, I ask you to leave your pains with me. Give them over to me because I can bear them. I know what it’s like at the end of this road, and I’m willing to take your pains as long as you are willing to make changes — and are willing to witness happiness.”

You should’ve seen some of their faces when I muttered these words. It wasn’t your typical prison chatter. But I know them to be true to the core of my being. We all need a place to lay our pain down.

Do I tell people who complain or think that life is unfair, that they really don’t understand what’s unfair? Of course not. Life can be hard and I’ve certainly learned that the hard way. I promise you, few would want to walk a mile in my shoes. So, when you think that life is killing you, is so unfair, or unfavorable — I want you to understand that there is a man who saw and lived more traumas and witnessed more pains than I hope you ever see in a lifetime. But it is possible to allow yourself to heal from it all — to lay it down.

Healing is a choice, a hard choice.

I don’t want people to be driven by sorrow or by an ocean of anger — or all the things that have happened to them along the way. I want them to understand that pain exists in this human experience. However, we can do something with it. We can use it instead of being used by it. And mark my words, it can crush and crumble us.

We are not weak because we can’t handle the pain. We become weak because we relinquish our power and allow the pain to destroy us.

And this is what I try to help people see — we can remove ourselves from the equation of everlasting pain. I know this. I stare pain down every day, so give yours to me and be and live free. And perhaps one day, you too will shoulder the pain of another and help set them free. When we see each other’s pain, we see a reflection of our own. Imagine the world if we could just shift our relationship to pain and each other. Imagine how nice that would be.

Never underestimate the pain of a person because the truth is everyone is struggling.It’s just some people hide it better than others.

—CoolNSmart.com

—

Author’s Note:

In March 2020 I was released from prison after 25 years and have begun the healing journey of releasing my own pain. My broad shoulders have held the pain of my life and that of others — it has been a part of my calling, but I am allowing myself to receive right now. I like to believe that in learning to heal my pain, I am a part of healing that of the collective. I also had my very first birthday party. Pain still whispers to me, but you know what? Life is good and I am free in more ways than one.

You may also enjoy reading Life After Death Row: How Magick Saved my Life, by Damien Echols

The post Give Me Your Pain: One Man’s Quest to Bear the Pain of Others’ and Heal His Own appeared first on BEST SELF.

One woman’s search for emotional healing guides her outside her own doorstep into the embrace of Mother Nature

—

I’m a wife and a mom. I buy groceries, give hugs, cook meals, plan adventures, scrub floors, and wash dishes. I’m also a writer and I homeschool my teenagers, and for the past two and a half years I’ve been trying to work remotely full-time, travel with my family full-time, homeschool full-time, manage a full-time graduate school schedule, and start my own business. To say it’s been too much is putting it mildly.

I knew it was too much for anyone to handle (apart from Captain Marvel or Superwoman perhaps, neither of which am I anything like), but I told myself it was temporary – a necessary evil in a season of necessary transition. Still, it’s been too much for too long, and I feel myself breaking and barreling towards burnout.

I’m in the process of untangling myself from the fray, reducing my workload, finishing projects, adding margin to my schedule, and learning how to rest in simple pleasures — but admittedly, it’s hard to let go.

I don’t deserve a medal or an accolade; what I need is therapy – someone or something to help me find the real me again.

I saw a therapist for the first time last summer. Although I grew up believing therapists and counseling were for people unlike myself – people with problems bigger than mine – thankfully, someone taught me better. On top of overcommitting myself, I had been through a lot the year prior, and I was feeling shaky. So, I made an appointment and drove the hour it took to get to her office. It was raining, and I was so nervous by the time I got there that I spent the entire hour babbling on about nothing to the point that she didn’t get a word in edgewise. I made a follow-up appointment a few weeks later to try to remedy the situation, to listen and seek her advice, but the same thing happened again, and I felt worse when I left.

In that moment, I realized that therapy can mean different things in different seasons of our lives. I needed to find my kind of therapy, so I started looking outside, and I found it in nature.

Some part of me knew nature was my therapy all along; it just took me a while to embrace it.

As a little girl, when life got too heavy and too hard, I would grab a journal or book and run outside to the big sweetgum tree in our backyard and sit there reading and writing until things turned around. As a teenager, I would go for bike rides on old dirt roads to sort out my feelings. In college, I would take my books to the big open field on north campus and watch deer meander through the meadow while I tackled the never-ending stack of homework.

As a young mom in the suburbs, my husband and I chose the home with woods in the backyard and a neighboring wooded lot. In the spring and summer months, I took my babies outside for bike riding, walks in the cul-de-sac, and runs through sprinklers — driven indoors only by the summer heat. In the fall, we gathered piles of leaves and jumped into them. We even got outside in the winter months too.

When my kids were older, we moved to the coast for better weather, and I piled them into the car every other day for a drive to the beach where we enjoyed hours of fun in the sun.

Eventually, we ditched traditional living and started traveling full-time as a family to experience nature all over the U.S., to connect with our kids on a deeper level, and to escape the unnecessary busyness that was plaguing our lives. Since then, we’ve seen 48 states, spent months in national parks and national forests, tried our hand at sailing, and had unforgettable experiences in our rolling 200-square-foot camper home.

Looking back, I can point to the times when I’ve been my best self; it’s always been the times I was immersing myself in nature. Other times, it felt like something was missing. I should have seen it sooner.

And now, I go back to nature again for the therapy I need to help me shift toward my best self in this new season. Thankfully, it seems to be working so far.

Just recently, I felt a peace I haven’t felt in a long time as I drove with my husband to the top of Cadillac Mountain in Acadia National Park to watch the sun set over islands, mountains, and a dense fog rolling over ocean waves. The next morning, I stepped out of my camper door and hopped onto my paddleboard at high tide in the salty waters of Somes Sound to take in another stunning view. A harbor seal watched me warily as I stared at the mountains in the distance, breathing deeply and enjoying the water for hours, letting a deep sense of gratitude wash over my soul’s broken spaces.

In moments like these, it seems like I’m living inside someone else’s journal entry from a beautiful vacation week on the coast of Maine, but thankfully, this is not a week-long vacation. As I write this, I’m sitting outside on a cliff overlooking the outgoing tide while birds sing back and forth to one another from neighboring islands announcing the storm that’s rolling in.

Because we’re slowing down our family travels for a while, we’re parking our little rolling home here for the foreseeable future, and I know it’s exactly where I need to be to heal.

Nature is my therapy.

It may not always be this way, but for now, I feel more alive in nature, like I’m coming back to myself. I gain perspective and peace, and I find it easier to walk away from the clutter I’ve invited into my life. I may have to try returning to a human therapist when I need another shift (hopefully she won’t run the other way), but in the meantime, I’m leaning into what I know helps.

My life feels too loud sometimes, too chaotic, too full. So, I step outside and let the woods and the salty-sweet smell of the sea take me to another place. I feel alive almost instantly, miles away from the bleary-eyed mama standing over a sink full of dirty dishes I was only moments before.

My brain feels too tired sometimes, too full, too scattered, like I’ve been asking too much of it for far too long. So, I close my MacBook and step outside. Almost instantly, I have a new perspective, a clearer view. I feel awake and alive, thankful and free.

My heart feels too heavy sometimes, too worried about the world, too defeated to be a part of the solution. So, I go for a walk with an audiobook that helps me realize I am a part of the solution and my voice matters. I come back to my family an hour later a new woman.

These stories play out over and over for me. I feel like myself when I’m sitting outside, even if I’m writing or working or teaching homeschool to my kids, my breathing is easier, my face rests in a smile, and I can relax. This lets me know my nature-therapy is doing its work.

When I’m depleted as profoundly as I have been these past few years, I have to find what feeds me, what fills me up, what gives more than it takes. My faith does this sometimes, and so does my family and friends, but in those relationships, I’m far too tempted to perform – something that can be destructive for people like me. With nature, there is no performance, no temptation to be anything other than me. No pressure to keep a conversation going, no way I could be depended on for anything.

I show up, and nature is there to feed my soul. She doesn’t need one thing from me.

“I can’t believe we get to live here,” is all I could say the other night as we watched the sun set on top of that mountain in Acadia – words that have been echoing in my mind ever since. The fact that we’re surrounded by so much beauty still astounds me. I’m not extremely wealthy by the world’s current definition of the word, but my life feels richer and fuller than I ever imagined it could. I didn’t inherit a home here or grow up in this wild and wonderful place, but I’m raising my children here as a girl who found her thing and chose a life that’s allowing me to chase it – even if that requires a tiny home and camping lifestyle to achieve.

John Muir said, “Everybody needs beauty as well as bread, places to play in and pray in, where nature may heal and give strength to body and soul.”

I’m pretty sure he was talking about me, and I often wonder how many people feel the same. For every soul searching for his/her kind of therapy, seeking respite from days, weeks, months, and years that are too much, too heavy, and too busy, maybe nature could be your kind of therapy too. There’s plenty to go around. Let’s remember to embrace Mother Earth and care for her as she does us…let’s return the favor.

You may also enjoy reading Nature Rx: The Healing Power of Nature, by Justin Bogardus

The post A Walk On The Wild Side: Nature as Therapy appeared first on BEST SELF.

With whimsy, wisdom and heart — Sarah and Alice the Elephant, her spirit animal, dish up daily reflections and a prompt for prayer to heal your life.

—

I was seated facing the majestic Apu Pachatusan, a mountain of immense spiritual power in the sacred valley of Peru. Assisted by a local shaman, our small group worked with masterful plant medicines to heal. In the first ceremony, beneath the intense Andean sun, I was drawn to a feather that was caught in a tree branch, somehow dangling and spinning freely in the wind. The immense softness and lightness of the feather beckoned to me.

As I sat near the spinning feather, under the healing influence of the ceremony, it felt like the entire Universe embraced me with love. A recent rejection from my literary agent popped into my head. It was a fictional piece I’d been working on for three years on and off.  Intellectually, I had come to terms with the fact that they just weren’t interested. Apparently, though, I had suppressed all of the actual grief that came with such an unexpected “no thank you.”  

I began to cry and release the pain. 

As my tears dried quickly in the dry air, I immediately felt much lighter and a new idea arrived.  Yes, I would go back to the fiction at some point, but there was a new project I could begin immediately that felt as soft and light as that spinning feather.

The idea was simple. I would share a daily message from one of my helping spirits.

My heart was now at full sail, billowing with love and anticipation. Just the idea of spending more time with Alice the Elephant daily thrilled me. Alice is a very buoyant and salty beastie and she has been a true friend to me.

Without Alice’s superlative counsel and love, I mused, I’d still be scared, faithless, and frozen in place in my old job at the hospital, afraid to make a move. Alice’s advice hasn’t always been easy to swallow, but it’s served me so well I thought it might help others too. Big transformation is Alice’s specialty. 

In my early forties, I was a physician (a pathologist, to be specific). I hunted disease for a living. I loved that career until, unwittingly, I got a call to the hero’s journey. After what I fondly refer to as my ‘radical sabbatical’, I came out the other side as a shamanic healer, a life coach (or as I sometimes refer to myself, a Life Obstacle Assassin), a creative and a writer.  

After two decades of disease hunting, I’d grown more curious about what creates health.

After leaving medicine, I decided to dedicate my life to creating wellbeing in myself and others. I found that the shamanic path of spiritual and soul-centric healing offered powerful tools for doing just that: connecting with spiritual realms full of love, singing, dancing, telling stories and being creative in myriad ways. 

I’ve discovered a very special subset of people (that’s us!) who are healers, artists, and helpers. We have magical powers, and we have unique challenges too. 

With Alice’s blessing, after returning home from Peru, I launched a One Hundred Day project to begin sharing these messages.

As I began to visit Alice every day and share her messages publicly, a marvelous thing happened. People liked it! Especially the healers, creatives and helpers. I made simple art pieces to go with Alice’s missives. The comments keep coming. “I love this!” “Yes, more Alice!” “Thank you, Alice!” It was helping people, which was fun. 

One weekend, I stopped posting, because I was busy running a retreat. On Saturday, somebody messaged me, saying, “Where did Alice go? I was counting on her today!”

I realized this was important work. People needed Alice. I felt excited, because feeling useful is the best feeling in the world. 

Here are a few samplings of Alice’s daily blessings:

I decided I’d develop this beloved project into a book of daily inspirations, one for every day of the year. After each day’s Alice lesson, I’d add my own commentary, an invitation or suggestion, and finally a prayer. 

As I reread the finished book, a year later, I see many themes: prayer, meditation, humility, moderation, self-love, family, friendship, creativity, pitfalls and quagmires, recovery from addiction, and dealing with fear. I had so much fun reviewing old lessons and learning new ones from Alice. 

Maybe you’ve had some heartbreaking creative rejection or disappointment of another kind recently too? Maybe your heart could use a little of that spinning feather-soft lightness as well? 

In this time of the pandemic, so much transformation is possible. It’s going to take willingness on our part if we’re going to get where we want to go. Together we can co-create that beautiful world that we all want to live in and Alice has the wisdom that can help get us there. 

I send you lots of love and a freight train fully-loaded with courage and willingness.  

—

P.S. Spirit animals can teach us so much. If you don’t have a connection to yours yet, I highly suggest seeking one out. If you go to www.followyourfeelgood.com and subscribe, you’ll get taken directly to a recording where I will guide you on a drum journey to connect with your spirit animal.

You may also enjoy reading Soul Dog: A Journey into the Spiritual Life of Animals by Elena Mannes

The post How Good Are You Willing To Let Life Get? Daily Messages From A Spirit Animal appeared first on BEST SELF.

What’s happening beneath the tears we cry? Whether they are tears of joy or sorrow — they connect us to pieces and even forgotten parts of ourselves.

—

“I love to cry — as long as it’s not about my life.” It was a simple statement, a line I’ve said a thousand times before. But when your dad is a shrink — like mine — you never know where a conversation might take you. 

A few months ago I was visiting him down in Destin, Florida. We were sitting outside, having coffee and breakfast while we read our separate books. Mine was a tearjerker — my favorite kind to read. 

I don’t remember exactly what prompted me to share the thought, but I remember his response. 

“What exactly makes you cry,” he asked. “What doesn’t?” I laughed. 

By the tone of his voice, I knew what was coming next: he was going to find a way to psycho-analyze me. 

It’s true. I’ve been known to shed a tear over anything and everything. Movies, books and TV shows, of course. But I’ve also lost it over a sad song or even a commercial. I always thought it was because I was really empathetic to the pain and suffering of others. 

But according to Dr. Randy Hammer, also known as my dad, it’s more of an egocentric concept. 

My first reaction to this was to get defensive — I don’t think of myself as egotistical. But he went on to explain that even when you think you’re crying about something else, you’re really projecting that emotion from yourself. 

I was intrigued at this breakfast-table-analysis of my psyche, and asked him to explain. 

He said when something makes you cry, it’s because whatever you’re watching, reading or listening to triggers a moment or a memory in your life that has significant emotional energy attached to it. 

He asked the question again — what makes me cry  — and I tried to think about it. To look back on all the times I’ve cried and see if there was a common denominator. I couldn’t put my finger on anything specific, so I tried to think thematically. The things that came to mind were stories of friendship and family, of loss and love. 

I thought back to one of my favorite movies of all time, Beaches. A story of two best friends who are nothing alike, yet have a bond that makes them almost like sisters. The movie spans three decades of the ups and downs of their friendship.

All these years after the movie came out, and even though I know how the story ends, it still makes me cry the ugliest kind of tears. 

Prompted by my dad’s theory, I thought back to the close friendships in my life…

and my middle-school best friend, Amy Rae Wilmot, came to mind. 

I was short and round with brown hair, and Jewish. She was tall and skinny and blonde and her father was in school at a Lutheran Seminary. But we were BEST friends. We signed every note we passed in class with LYLAS, love you like a sister. 

The summer after eighth grade, Amy’s dad graduated from the seminary and moved their family all the way from Missouri to North Carolina. I was devastated. And a lot of tears were shed. 

I remember the week after she left, I had an appointment at the eye doctor. They were about to do some sort of test that involved poking my eye with a strip of paper to check my tear ducts. I laughed and told the doctor that I knew with certainty my tear ducts were A-OK.  

If my dad’s theory was right, then maybe all the times I’ve cried over scenes or songs that deal with the loss of a friend, I was recalling how it felt when I was thirteen and suddenly alone. Not sure who I would sit next to during lunch, who I’d have slumber parties and inside jokes with. 

My dad gave me another example, one that related to his life. He told me that he always gets emotional when he sees a father-son reunion. The reason — it triggers all of the emotions tied to the loss of his own father over twenty years ago. When my dad sees those happy reunions, it reminds him, sometimes on a subconscious level, of something he can no longer have. 

But it’s not only sad memories that bring us to tears. He said positive memories can have the same effect, flooding us with the emotional energy tied to different moments in our lives. 

The more I thought about my dad’s theory, the more it made sense, especially in the context of my life. You’d think that as often as I cry about things that happen to other — even fictional people, I would shed my fair share of tears about things going on with me. 

But I don’t. 

I know it’s not the most healthy habit, but I tend to avoid dealing with my own negative emotions. I either push them down or channel them onto a page. I’m not a journal writer, but my debut novel, You and Me and Us, is definitely a tearjerker. People cry while reading the book, and I cried a lot while writing it. Which was unfortunate on the days I wrote in public at a coffee shop!  

Whether my tears are brought on by something I’m reading or something I’m writing, I usually feel better after a good cry. According to my dad, there’s a reason for that. He explained…

Crying can be cathartic because it releases endorphins — feel good chemicals that can help ease physical and emotional pain. 

So go ahead and pick up that sad book, play that sad song and watch that sad movie. Especially now with so much uncertainty in the world, we could all use a good cry. I know I could! 

And the next time I try to explain to someone why I’m drawn to tearjerkers, I might have to modify my answer. Because even when I think I’m not crying about my own life, it turns out, maybe I am. 

You may also enjoy reading Emotional Intelligence: What is it and Why Should You Care? by Shawn Mike

The post What Are You Really Crying About? appeared first on BEST SELF.

Reflections from a trailblazer of women’s health looking back — a personal letter of love and gratitude to her younger self

—

Dear Chris (circa 1994), 

I have just finished watching episode 2 of Kelly Turner’s Radical Remission docuseries produced by Hay House. And I have found myself cheering, “Yes! Yes! Yes!” These are the types of healing stories that your pioneering work spoke of so many years ago when very few people were listening.

Even then you knew that people had the power to heal themselves — that our bodies know how to heal. 

And now (finally), many more people are ready to listen.   

As I look back at everything you believed and practiced so many years ago, I have such great fondness for you, and such admiration for your courage to keep going despite the world in general, and medicine in particular — not being ready to hear what you had to say. Teaching people that ‘food was medicine’ and that we can all heal ourselves physically, emotionally, and spiritually, was often considered weird. 

Some people said your patients were ‘crazy’ when they told the truth about their experiences.  

And, you were considered equally crazy because you validated your patients’ experiences. You were called ‘a quack’ for prescribing herbs, supplements, meditation, exercise, and organic food. Yet you persisted. Why? Because it worked! And because you knew that it was unethical to withhold information from patients, no matter how out of the box that information appeared.  

And an amazing thing happened — together you healed.

Like your patients, you found the path to healing your own body, including a fibroid tumor, a breast abscess, and a dysfunctional labor.

When you wrote the first edition of Women’s Bodies, Women’s Wisdom in 1994 you forged new territory with very little support from your colleagues and society. Your book chronicled the effect of women’s histories on their bodies. But, the idea that the mind and body were intimately connected was simply not accepted back then. Yet, somehow your belief in the truth was strong enough to get you through. 

Little did you know that it would take more than 20 years for the mainstream culture to finally believe women, and that many more women would begin to stand up for themselves and others by speaking about their experiences, as with the #MeToo movement. 

If you had known what was coming, you might not have had the courage to make your journey. 

I’m glad you didn’t know that sticking with your truth would end your marriage, or that it would lead to several lawsuits that had nothing whatsoever to do with malpractice or wrong doing.  

Damn girl! I don’t know how you did it! 

You couldn’t have realized back then that the work you were doing in a small town in Maine would eventually reach all over the world..

And that the very personal losses, grief, pain, healing, triumphs, and transformations that you and your patients experienced would have universal themes that would help millions of women worldwide (and continue to do so today). But, you had faith and you stood strong.

Do you remember how you could barely look at the finished copy of Women’s Bodies, Women’s Wisdom? You couldn’t really take it in. Writing that book was an arduous task. And you were like a mother after a traumatic delivery who had a hard time bonding with her baby. All you could see were the parts that weren’t quite perfect. 

The week before Women’s Bodies, Women’s Wisdom was published, you had awakened screaming several times during the night. You were certain that someone was in the house with a gun wanting to kill you. 

Then, on the same day in June, 1994, when your book was published by Random House (a mainstream publisher), you were scheduled for grand rounds, the weekly meeting where everyone goes over case histories. You knew intuitively that you were about to walk through a wall of fear that historically women who have told the truth about their lives have had to walk through.

Entering the hospital that day — the same hospital where you had spent so many years placating your critics and keeping a low profile — was your ‘coming out’. You would no longer hide your truth the way you once did in the 1980s when your picture was on the cover of East West Journal and you bought every copy at the food coop so your colleagues would not see it. This time around you fearlessly went into the hospital ready to be pounced on. 

Instead, you found that most of your colleagues didn’t even care. They hadn’t seen the book, except one colleague who gave you a hug and told you that he never would have had the courage to do what you did.

While you felt profound relief, you still weren’t winning any popularity contests.

Would it have helped you back then to have known that most of your critics would be retired or dead now and that you would still be going strong? Would it have helped you to know how many younger doctors and nurses and naturopaths and acupuncturists you would someday influence and help? I’ll bet it would. But life can only be lived proactively and understood retrospectively.     

You were a wayshower. You still are. You have helped women through every stage of their lives and taught them to trust the wisdom inherent in their hearts and bodies — wisdom they don’t need a doctor to validate. Not only have you shown the way, you first explored which direction to go and then drew the map for others to follow. You climbed an unmarked peak in the dark and established a path.

But, because of you, other women have been able to install the landscape lighting, and a few benches to rest upon. 

As a result of all you’ve done, you have received so many astounding opportunities to get your empowering message out to the masses including PBS specials, the appearances on The Oprah Winfrey Show, NBC Nightly News, The View, Dr. Oz, The Today Show, and Good Morning America.  

So, my dear girl, I salute you. I wish I could reach back and give you a huge hug. Thank you with all my heart for everything that you have stood for, endured, and celebrated so that many others could do the same. We are all in this together. What you’ve done has changed the world.  

With enormous love, 
Christiane (2020) 

You may also enjoy watching Interview: Dr. Christiane Northrup & Kate Northrup | The New Conversation with Kristen Noel.

The post A Letter To My Younger Self: I Couldn’t Have Gotten Here Without You appeared first on BEST SELF.

Personal musings and an excerpt from Mark Nepo’s latest book guide us through darkness and life’s messiness — to emerge with meaning and connection

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Since books arrive like children, after months of labor, the timing of their arrival is well beyond us. And so, in the midst of this profound, painful, and transformative time, my new book, The Book of Soul: 52 Paths to Living What Matters is arriving this May. As with all my books, they are thresholds of inquiry and so, are my teachers. I’m still learning from this one. And I am grateful that it offers pathways to living what matters, because we need that now more than ever, to reveal and strengthen our kinship of being. That web of relationship will help us heal and emerge from this pandemic in new and ancient ways. For love must move as quickly as disease, light must move as quickly as darkness, and give must move as quickly as take. I hope it feeds your soul during this trying time.  ~ Mark Nepo

An excerpt from The Book of Soul:

The Agents of Kindness

The fundamental challenge of the twenty-first century is to help each other stay awake, by being who we are and staying in relationship. To do this, we need every single tradition. For as the sun causes every plant to grow, the one unnamable Spirit causes all forms of belief to enter the world. And just as we need all plants to have a vital incarnation of nature, we need all forms of belief to have a vital incarnation of humanity. 

This acceptance of the many ways we can journey toward meaning and grace is essential to our survival as a species. The turmoil or peace of the world depends on whether we repel what is unfamiliar or treat it as our teacher. So the nature of belief is not limited to what we choose to believe in, but is more about being students of the diversity of life as manifest through relationship.

By living our life and playing our part, we hold the Universe together. To climb with a loved one to the summit of their suffering will soften our judgments and introduce us to joy. In climbing together through our pain and joy, we come to a timeless place where truth in all its forms comes to rest. It is kindness and suffering that bring us to that timeless place that everyone knows as home, once what is unnecessary is loved out of the way.

It’s the silken threads of care woven through the brutal storms of time that hold everything together.

A loved one’s picture carried through a war and delivered to a grandchild thirty years later. The seed that isn’t washed away that takes root, arriving in the world as an orchid whose beauty makes a young girl become a painter. The memory of the moment we met twenty-five years ago overwhelming me as I watch you sleep this morning. The laughter of my father while planing a piece of mahogany, which kept me believing in the love of work and the work of love while going through cancer. These silken threads are everywhere — a web of barely visible connections that infuse us with resilience when we’re forced or loved to find our way through what we’re given. 

In the midst of great turmoil, in the cascade of human catastrophes, these threads of care seem obsolete — artifacts of a gentler time. But they wait under all the breakage that overcomes us. These fine threads of care can be lost but never broken. They wait for the devotion of a single soul, daring to stand up for life in the midst of cruelty, daring to love everyone in the face of prejudice, daring to step out of the drama that says we’re strangers or enemies, daring to help those in hiding come out into the open.

One silken thread of care held onto and followed, sometimes for years, can repair the world.

It was my grandmother who taught me to be kind, who, with the weary faith of a sturdy immigrant, taught me that life opens for those who dare to give. Once living in the open, there is no career but being kind.

So let’s keep each other company, which means let’s be companions, which goes back to the French, meaning “one who breaks bread with another.” It always comes down this…

Our willingness to walk together through the storm and share what we have, so we can create a path to all that matters. 

—

This excerpt is from Mark Nepo’s new book, The Book of Soul: 52 Paths to Living What Matters, which is being published this month by St. Martin’s Essentials. Mark is offering online webinars and retreats. Please visit www.MarkNepo.com for details.

During these trying times, Mark is offering a 3-session online webinar in June 2020, as a way for us to deepen and strengthen our roots as we endure this storm. 

You may also enjoy Podcast: Mark Nepo | Entrainments of Heart by Best Self Media

The post Living What Matters: Reflections, Prose and 52 Prompts for Self-Inquiry appeared first on BEST SELF.

A refreshing perspective from a seasoned ‘money guy’ who shares sound financial strategies for debt relief and vibrant living.

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Have you ever felt absolutely overwhelmed by the burden of debt? You are not alone. 

Debt is a pervasively significant stressor with household debt in the U.S. recently reaching record levels surpassing $14 trillion. 

And while managing and reducing financial stress is a core tenet of wellbeing, it can get overlooked in schedules laden with responsibilities, especially when remaining personal time has already been allocated to self-care activities like yoga classes, self-help books and happy thoughts. 

I wrote this piece as a pathway to reducing debt while prioritizing wellbeing to help you set your Best Self free with a holistic approach.

Whether you’re facing credit card balances, student loans, auto loans, or mortgages, monthly debt payments collectively impact almost everyone regardless of age and other socioeconomic factors. And when debt balances grow to a point where you’re barely managing to meet minimum monthly payment requirements, it can feel crushing for anyone from college graduates entering the workforce to senior citizens living on a fixed income.  

While society sometimes associates being in debt with extravagant lifestyles or irresponsible  consumerism, for many the path into debt is much more innocent. Unemployment, unforeseen medical expenses and financially assisting a family member or friend in need are a few circumstances that could lead even the most well-intentioned person into the monthly debt cycle. 

As for the rest of us, we’ve all made financial, professional or relationship decisions that we wish we could take back or at least handled differently. But here’s the thing…

Your debts do not define you.

What to do:

Pay yourself first. 

Of course, we’ll address an approach to tackling the financial impact of your debt, but let’s first focus on something much more important than monthly payments and statements. 

I’m referring to paying (valuing) you, the person, regardless of your current financial situation. 

How to do it: 

1. Make a list of any and all people that bring happiness into your life. Write down the friends who are empathetic listeners, those who have your back no matter what and the ones who make you laugh or are simply fun to be around. Plan a visit, meet for lunch, see a movie or simply catch up on a phone call. 
2. Make a second list of activities that YOU perceive as healthy for your mind and body. Walking in a nearby park or around your neighborhood. Lighting a scented candle and meditating. Listening to your favorite music and practicing conscious breathing. 
3. Make it definite. Schedule these activities in your calendar and start paying yourself first. Every Sunday, for each day of the following week, schedule at least one activity from your lists that you know will bring you happiness. Let it anchor your day. Whatever you face during the course of any day, that special time will be there for you. (NOTE: Your weekly planning day does not have to be Sunday as long as you commit to this exercise every week). 
4. Make it happen. Be 100% present during each of these daily activities. Don’t fold laundry during the phone chat with your friend on Tuesday evening. Resist the urge to check your smartphone for texts and emails while listening to music and practicing conscious breathing. Prioritize this time and give yourself permission to live in the moment. 

Remember this: Your relationships and experiences will define you much more than any debts or investments ever will. 

Show Me the Money

Yes, we still need to address the financial aspect of your debts, but now that you’ve first scheduled in self care you will be in a better position to manage your finances. Trust me.

What to do: 

Determine which of your non-mortgage debts charge the highest interest rates and prioritize first paying off the card with the highest annual percentage rate (APR), i.e. the card that charges the highest interest rate first. Perhaps it’s a credit card with a double-digit interest rate that you wish would forever disappear from your inbox each month. 

How to do it: 

Pay the minimum monthly payment on all cards and loans except for the card with the highest APR. All cash that is budgeted and available to pay beyond the minimum balances should be added to the minimum payment on the card with the highest APR.   

Illustrative example:

Aspen and Blaine have been best friends since high school and lead very similar financial lives. As a result, Aspen and Blaine have identical credit card rates, balances and minimum monthly payments as presented in the chart below. 

Credit Card Rate, Balance and Minimum Payment Summary – Aspen and Blaine 

Also, both Aspen and Blaine decided to pay a total of $500 each month toward their credit card balances ($150 more than their total $350 minimum monthly payment requirement) in order to pay off their balances faster. 

Up until this month Aspen and Blaine have both been equally allocating their additional $150 in payments above the minimums among their three cards ($50 extra toward each card) as follows: 

Credit Card Payments Summary (Last Month) – Aspen and Blaine 

This month, while Aspen and Blaine each continued to pay $500 in total toward their credit card balances, they allocated the amount to each card differently. This small adjustment will probably result in one person paying off their debts faster and paying less interest than the other. 

Aspen continued to equally allocate the additional $150 in payments above the minimums among the three cards ($50 extra toward each card) as follows: 

Credit Card Payments Summary (This Month) – Aspen

Blaine decided to allocate the entire additional $150 in payments above the minimum to Credit Card C (the highest rate card) and pay the minimum amount for Cards A and B as follows: 

Credit Card Payments Summary (This Month) – Blaine

Blaine’s approach to paying off her credit card balances is known as the Debt Avalanche Method. 

After paying off Credit Card C, Blaine will then allocate all extra debt repayment funds (the ‘Avalanche’ of repayment funds) to Credit Card B, the card with the next highest APR. And after Credit Card B is paid off, then the even larger ‘Avalanche’ will be directed solely on the final target: the remaining balance of Credit Card A. 

By first paying off cards with the highest rates, Blaine will probably pay off her credit card debt faster and pay less interest than Aspen without paying a dollar more than Aspen each month.  

Paying off Debts with ‘Hidden Cash’

It may be possible for you to add even more towards your next credit card balance payments by identifying overlooked sources of cash. And you can do this without significantly impacting your current lifestyle.   

Begin by harvesting cash from the low hanging fruit, i.e, expenses for products and services that you’re not using. These expenses may include one or more of the following: 

• Food items that often expire before you consume them. 
• Wasted energy (running lights, heat, A/C, music and TV in unoccupied rooms). 
• Gym memberships 
• Redundant or unused or subscriptions. Premium cable, Netflix, Hulu, and Disney +  

Simply review last month’s credit card and bank statements to determine if there are any credit card and debit charges for products or services which you rarely or never use. Cancel those product and service subscriptions immediately and apply the cash savings to your next credit card payment. 

Paying off Debts with ‘Money on the Table’

Also, don’t leave money on the table. Identify any ‘untapped’ assets and savings opportunities that could be converted to cash and applied directly or indirectly toward your credit card balances. 

• Gift cards: Keep track of expiration dates and balances and use gift cards to pay monthly expenses. 
• Uncashed checks: Cash all checks as soon as you receive them and immediately put your money to work for you by either paying down debt or depositing the cash in a high-yield savings account. 
• Discount codes and rebates for online purchases (Retailmenot.com, Honey, and Ebates.com): Before you click ‘pay now’ for an online purchase, check these and other discount sites for coupon codes and other offers. 

The initial objective is cutting waste, not needs and wants. And by making a few minor adjustments, you can make significant progress toward lessening your debt burden. 

Next Steps: Additional Income Streams

Once you’ve eliminated any recurring waste from your expenditures, you may want to further accelerate the debt reduction process. Look for extra ways that you can earn or save some extra money. Consider transforming a hobby into a revenue stream with a side hustle or part-time job.

The point is to generate extra money doing something that already interests you or brings you happiness. 

Give some honest thought to your finances each month, and determine how much you can pay above the minimum on your credit card balances. Commit to a number and add that amount to what you have been paying on the credit card with the highest APR (interest rate). Some months may be more challenging than others, but stay the course and you will see progress. And by taking the initiative, you’re living on your terms, responsibly addressing your finances and, most importantly, taking care of yourself. 

While tackling your debt is important, be careful not to give debt the power to postpone and distract you from regularly experiencing joy and contentment. By prioritizing and allocating time to self care and your key relationships, you will be on track to gain relief from financial stress and the freedom to be your Best Self.

You may also enjoy Podcast: Jim Brown | True Abundance: One Man’s Search for (Mindful Money) Meaning by Best Self Media

The post Breaking Free From The Debt Cycle appeared first on BEST SELF.

Times of disruption can provide opportunities that serve us — allowing us to transform challenge into meaningful new choices

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As we move more deeply into this time of global quarantine, many people are feeling out of control, frustrated, trapped and unsure about the future. We are all being faced with situations none of us have learned to navigate in our lifetimes.

With a constant stream of negative images and statistics on our devices, an interruption of so many jobs, all combined with the knowledge that there is no cure available at the moment — it is all too easy to become overwhelmed, fearful and eventually even angry. Some people have been hoarding, while others have been shutting down and distracting, simply hoping that things will somehow return ‘back to normal’.

No matter what circumstances you may find yourself in at the moment, I have some good news.

With a little help, we can all learn to dance with life more effectively.

One of the most immediate ways we can do that at the moment involves evaluating the choices we have been making in our habitual lives most recently, followed by introducing some proactive, nurturing alternatives. If we develop a healthy approach, we can all utilize this time of challenge to set ourselves up for a ‘new normal’ — one that is more balanced and meaningful.

Quite often, the quality of our journey is determined by the specific perspectives that we choose. For instance, if our perception about challenges is that they are “difficulties which impede and diminish our life experience,” then we will likely find ourselves resisting, fighting and struggling through the challenges we are presently facing. 

If that perspective is familiar to you and you are finding yourself in and out of fight, resistance and confusion, I look forward to guiding you into some healthier alternatives.

One of the most important starting places will be revealing how our challenges actually serve us. 

First, let me introduce myself. I am Ron Baker, and for over twenty-five years now, I’ve been a Self-Mastery Coach. Having had the opportunity to nurture thousands of people through a distinct process of personal transformation, my impression is that most people around the world have been moving through their lives without an empowering education about Self, without understanding how crucial nurturing is in our lives — particularly in times of challenge — and finally, without a clear trust that there is real power in the individual choices that we make.

To set up our exploration well, I encourage you to begin with a few questions:

• How have you been doing so far with this interruption? 
• Do you already have a nurturing approach that has allowed you to respond proactively to everything that is taking place? 
• Have you been using this time as an opportunity to deepen your connection to your inner Self? 

I don’t know about you, but growing up, I was never taught how to nurture myself or to use the events of my life as opportunities for developing Self — and I am grateful beyond words to now understand how important these skills are in our lives.

If we want to make this a time of real enhancement, rather than one more struggle that we merely endure, it is important that we prepare to make some empowering adjustments.

The 3 Levels of Self

Let’s start by considering that there are three different levels of Self held inside you: child, adult and Soul. And perhaps surprising, those three levels refer to much more than stages of chronological growth.

For instance, most people have never been taught that there are core qualities and gifts that are held as potentials in each of those three levels:

The innocence, wonder and trust of a child; the empowerment, clarity and passion of an adult; and the wisdom, greatness and sacredness of a Soul.

All of which are awakened most powerfully through nurturing.

Even though this may be a lot to consider at the moment, I find it helpful to have a list of healthy, core qualities that we can reference. Even if this is the first time you have considered some of these elements, each one has the power to deepen the personal fulfillment you will be able to create in your life. Just as important, each one requires an inner investment in Self. 

In my early life, I was only taught to focus on outer goals. And it was quite a journey for me to realize that approaching my life in this way didn’t create true fulfillment. Instead, that approach generally leads us into overly busy lives. 

Having generations of people who have been taught to focus most fully on outer goals, without a balance of nurturing investments in the inner Self, is the main reason most of us didn’t emerge from our childhoods feeling true wonder about life or a solid trust in our value as individuals.

Self has simply not been a typical priority in the world, as strange as it might sound to see it written in such simple words. 

Just see how it sounds if you take the time to say it out loud. “Self has simply not been a typical priority in the world.”

At the same time, I am thrilled to share that when any of us learns to make a more nurturing investment in Self, we put ourselves on a much clearer path to fulfillment. I know this is true, because even in times of challenge, I still maintain a sense of peace and clarity most of the time, which is exactly what I wish for you. 

Important side note: I will be suggesting some specific exercises as we continue to explore. Keep in mind that it is only when you take a moment to do the exercises that they will have the power to have any real impact.

Besides, when you begin to make proactive choices — such as taking the time to do these exercises — you begin to feel more in charge, based on investing in something you decide is important. This can be particularly helpful in a time when so many people are feeling out of control and unsure how to create tangible solutions. 

Finding out that you can impact your own experience will also inspire seeds of courage and clarity.

Lastly, whenever you make nurturing investments in Self, you send a clear message to your inner Self that you matter.

On the other hand, when you move through any of your challenges without nurturing, you tend to build fear and self-doubt instead — qualities of what I like to refer to as a wounded child versus a wonder child.

All of that leads me to more good news: it is never too late to invest in claiming Self. As a matter of fact, what better time than now, while many of us have some unexpected time on our hands, to make an initial investment in some nurturing alternatives?

Taking Inventory of Your Life

One of the most powerful tools we can use to set us up for healthy change is an inventory. So for instance, if you take a really honest look at your recent life, you will begin to discover which of your choices have been setting you up well and which ones have not. 

Without any need for judgment, it is helpful to become clear — no matter what you discover. Besides, it is only when you are clear that you can identify where you need healthier alternatives.

Exercise one. Ask yourself:

1. What have your top priorities been in recent years? 
2. How many of your day-to-day choices have supported those priorities?
3. If you had to start over today with a clean slate, which of those familiar choices would remain clear priorities?
4. Are there areas of your life (inner Self, work, family, relationships, fun, rest) that have been neglected and need to become a greater priority moving forward? 

Please take some time over the coming days, if not in this moment, to write down your answers. Don’t just do this in a random way in your head.

Putting something on paper makes the impact much more powerful. 

Once that is done, do the next step on a new page. 

Exercise two. Now that you are clearer about what your life has been, make a current list:

1. What do you choose as your current priorities?
2. What are some of the choices you can make that will set you up well to support those priorities day-to-day or at least each week?
3. Name a few NEW choices that you realize you need to introduce that set you up better than before / creating more balance.
4. Name ONE new choice that you are willing to begin practicing today.

Rescripting Challenge

Another important skill that we all need to learn, in order to truly enhance our lives, involves shifting old, limited perspectives into wiser approaches. For that, let’s return to the subject of ‘challenge’. 

In order to get clearer about what you might want to choose moving forward, let’s compare some the more typical perspectives of a wounded child with those of an empowered adult. 

The un-nurtured/wounded child part of us sees challenges through the fear of failure, afraid that we are not capable of taking effective steps or creating acceptable solutions. 

Without nurturing encouragement, the wounded child is afraid of affirming the doubts about Self that we carry. Instead, this part of us endures challenges alone, fearing we are not safe to ask for help and support. 

“I am alone. I don’t know how. It’s all too much for me. I don’t deserve support. I feel pressured to prove myself and I’m afraid to make a mistake!” These are all common perspectives of the wounded child. I know, because these are some of the wounded myths that I carried for many years.

On the other hand, once we begin to show up and nurture ourselves through our challenges, we begin to inspire pieces of the empowered adult potentials instead.

The empowered adult approaches life as a series of learning curves, with constant opportunities to develop Self along the way. 

The empowered adult sees challenges as an opportunity to explore new areas, with constant opportunities to discover new potentials and facets of Self. 

The empowered Adult learns from their inevitable mistakes and failures, grateful for the clarity that each brings, imbuing them with more effective approaches and a deeper awareness of what works well and what does not moving forward.

Hopefully some of the adult perspectives resonate as tangible possibilities. If so, a helpful choice you can begin to practice as we continue through this time of global interruption is to create reminders for yourself. You might create a sticky note or a reminder that you ask Siri to pop up on your smart phone each morning at a certain time. This is particularly helpful in a time of challenge, when the habitual perspectives of the wounded child fears try to suck you in.

To begin a clear negotiation, evaluating which choices come from the wounded child versus the empowered adult, is crucial for recognizing which of your choices set you up well and which ones do not. 

With that in place, I have even more good news. We still haven’t explored the deepest, wisest part of Self — the Soul.

While the Soul may never have been part of your typical conversations, it is extremely helpful to consider. Most of us have never been introduced to the Soul in any practical ways. I would like that to change. The Soul is a very real, practical part of us, that encourages us into wisdom, greatness and sacredness. 

What may be surprising is that what is most sacred to the Soul is the development of Self — ultimately learning to love and value Self as the foundation for our greatest fulfillment. 

When we consider that we have been living in a world which has not been encouraged to prioritize the inner Self, we can see how much we need to begin considering the Soul.

If we continue with our exploration of challenge in our lives, it is helpful to understand that our Souls actually set up our challenges. 

That is because the process of facing challenges is what encourages us to grow the most fully. Encouraging our growth and development is how our challenges truly serve us.

Let’s simply look back to our very first years to become clearer. From the very beginning our lives are structured with challenge, like learning to feed and dress ourselves. If we are nurtured through those initial challenges, we learn to claim the first levels of our personal potential in a sense of safety, love and value. If not, then we develop some important skills, but we don’t develop trust and a sense of safety.

From that point forward, our lives continue to be structured as a series of progressively deepening challenges. Beginning in first grade, we are challenged to learn how to read, how to work with numbers, to share with other children and to be away from home for more extended periods of time. By facing those circumstances, we develop skills and claim various capacities that we will need to thrive in the next levels that we reach. 

It is through the process of facing challenges that we gradually develop Self-confidence, building more and more trust that we are capable and have the power to impact our own lives and the lives of those around us, determined by the choices that we make. 

When that process of facing challenges is nurtured and encouraged, we even learn to trust that our development as an individual truly matters. 

Another gift of the Soul is that it encourages us to focus on teaching the collective, encouraging whatever serves the good of the whole — which is often done by introducing shared obstacles. Our present situation is a perfect example. The Soul recognizes this global interruption as the first time in history that so many people have been able to see firsthand the whole world facing the same challenge at the same time. 

In other words, the Soul understands that all things are there to serve us. From that perspective, we have the opportunity to allow this broader challenge to inspire us to recognize that we are all in this together — embracing our shared humanity and moving beyond our habitual barriers and separations. 

The coronavirus doesn’t care about race, religion, gender, culture, political party, continent or someone’s perceived status in society.

Just consider for a moment that on a Soul level this pandemic is trying to teach us to come together, helping and learning from one another.

The bottom line is that if we are willing to evaluate our challenges as opportunities, instead of roadblocks and pains in the butt, so much more becomes possible. 

More good news. There is an endless list of opportunities that we can all construct that will allow us to make forward moves and healthier choices — such as respecting, honoring and valuing one another in deeper ways than we might have considered in the ‘old normal’ of our lives. I deeply encourage you to continue exploring, and then share some of your inspirations with others. This is another proactive choice that you can make which makes a difference. Again, remember that we hold tremendous power in the choices that we choose to make as individuals.

What Now?

As we prepare to close, let’s do a recap of some highlights.

Facing challenges is an immediate opportunity to make powerful choices, starting with evaluating which ones work well and which ones do not. We all have learning curves and the need to make mistakes in the process of making forward progress. We can all relate to the process of facing challenges and we all have shared needs. All the while, we have Souls that are encouraging us to learn how to love and value in our lives — starting with Self. And there are some core qualities of the child, adult and Soul that will set us up brilliantly to create a more fulfilling dance with life — IF we allow that and choose that as our ‘new normal’.

Remember that even in a time of quarantine, you do not have to be alone. It is so important that we learn how to communicate and share what we are going through. In this way, we can all become allies for working through our challenges — even if that is only via video chat at the moment. 

Over time, it is so important that we don’t forget the lessons of this global challenge.

If we prepare well now, we can begin to invest in relationships that are based on mutual value and nurturing encouragement.

No matter what you choose as your starting places, take it one nurturing step at a time, acknowledging with each choice how much better nurturing feels than separating yourself or spending time blaming others for what you are going through and haven’t chosen to nurture… yet.

There is nothing like a global interruption of our habitually busy lives to give us some extra time to evaluate and make some new choices. The ones I have suggested are just the first of many practical suggestions I would love to make.

In order to provide you with more practical perspectives and nurturing tools, I have created a series of 5 FREE videos for that very purpose. You can easily find those to sign up for at the home page of my website below the opening picture. 

I have already had tremendous success in helping people from around the world to claim more of their personal potentials over these twenty-five years. And I am more than happy to show up during this time of shared challenge to help in any way that I can. Now the ball is in your court. 

Show up for yourself. Reach out. 

If you do, you will be well on your way to a beautiful new normal — one that is filled with meaning, value and purpose. If that is what you choose, you might even turn this time of challenge into one of the most meaningful times of your life. That is my wish for us all.

You may also enjoy reading Amazing Grace: Experiencing the extraordinary within the ordinary by Adyashanti

The post Dancing with Life in a Time of Global Challenge appeared first on BEST SELF.

Estimated reading time: 9 minutes

How the dance between the ego and higher consciousness is the divine space of transformation and soul evolution

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In my new book, The Universe Always Has a Plan, I outline the 10 Golden Rules of ‘letting go’. As you learn to surrender a need for controlling outcomes in exchange for a deeper alignment with the Universe and its highest plan for your life — you are able to embrace the dream-come-true reality of emotional freedom and reap the rewards of your soul’s highest living potential. 

One of the keys to letting go is redefining the Law of Attraction as a means of cooperating with the joy of your highest destiny, instead of trying to coerce the hands of fate in one way or another.

The Law of Attraction is a collaboration, not a form of control. 

It is a co-creative dance merging the power of your will with alignments to various timelines of potential that allow the advancement of consciousness, or transformation, to occur. There are many people who have attempted to employ the Law of Attraction, as it has been historically taught, with a mixed bag of results.

The sticking point in the Law of Attraction is nearly identical to the sticking point in the journey of healing.

As someone who has been working in close collaboration with the Universe as a healer for the past 15 years, I have come to see the complexities that exist between someone’s desire to heal and the journey of healing meant to unfold.

Imagine a child who has aspirations of growing up and becoming a chef. They spent time visualizing their future as a chef with myriad awards and restaurants, so much so that they now feel ready to walk into a professional kitchen and create the dishes they’ve dreamed of. Imagine if that child walked into a professional kitchen, having to dodge the traffic of a busy cooking line and, to their frustration, what they imagined would happen when they entered the kitchen has not come to be. It would be easy for this child to conclude that their imagination creates false realities and to give up dreaming entirely. 

And yet, there’s a voice inside this child that says: “You have made it to the right environment where you are meant to be, but it will take years to help you cultivate the personal maturity, as well as the skills needed, to work in and run a professional kitchen.”

From this moment of insight, the child realizes their desire is what put them on their destined path, that will require much training and preparation in order for their dreams to be actually fulfilled. This is much the same with implementing the Law of Attraction, or even the endeavor of healing. 

Your desire for wellness, or helping others — or your desire for any ‘greater’ circumstance, places you on a path where an intricate journey of transformation unfolds.

Such a journey involves the Universe helping all of us unravel our core ego structure of unconsciousness, which creates space for the soul to awaken and raise our vibration to a frequency where we can simultaneously exit one timeline while entering another.

Throughout your spiritual journey, the most mature question you can ask yourself is…

“How much of me will need to change in order to access the goals in mind?”

Such a question helps you realize that a co-creative partnership with the Universe will be: one part your doing or effort, and another part the Universe ‘undoing the outdated you’ that is ready to fulfill its mission by returning to Source. When focused too much on reaching the endpoint of your goal, instead of embracing the journey of transformation itself, you identify with the very ego structure that the Universe trying to unravel, which creates symptoms such as despair, loneliness, apathy, confusion, boredom, anger, resentment, fear, addictive tendencies, exhaustion and un-groundedness.

Just as a child dreaming of being a chef must go to culinary school to learn and work their way up the rankings in a professional kitchen, each and every spiritual being that yearns to attract greater circumstances or heal themselves (or others) must understand the education process the Universe provides when such a desire to transform arises.

You aren’t going to attract your envisioned reality simply because you desired it.

You will step into a higher dimension of potential because you will have outgrown your old reality by allowing the Universe to help you think, feel, and respond differently to the perceptions in view.

There is a Law of Attraction, but it isn’t a spiritual form of Amazon Prime. Instead, it is a rather clever play on words, suggesting: “You are attracted to greater circumstances, not because those circumstances will make you any happier, but because your true happiness is evolving into a higher version of yourself where those new shiny objects are merely symbols for the joy and fulfillment you will feel as a newly-transformed you.”

Will you get what you want? Will it be in this lifetime, or are you merely planting seeds for future incarnations? Only time will tell. It’s a tricky question for two simultaneous reasons: 

Your higher self wants you to be at a higher level of consciousness, while your ego yearns for you to stay at its current level of conditioning, just with ‘better’ bells and whistles to be engaged by.

Because the unconsciousness of ego contains the largest amount of emotional density carried in your energy field, the Universe, en route to helping you transform, must do everything in its power to unravel your ego to create space for a higher consciousness to emerge. 

As your ego is unraveled, if viewing from that vantage point of conditioning, your experience will seem like: The Universe is ignoring me, I am alone, nothing seems to change, everyone is against me or never giving the way I do, life is unfair — or how come other people have the opportunities that I deserve?

Such examples highlight the pattern of victimhood being unraveled in your ego, which is always sent from the Universe as a gift to receive and never a punishment of any kind. This is a very deep and meaningful process — and it’s no one’s fault.

Transformation is a vision quest, not a list of demands to fulfill.

All too often the Universe will help you outgrow the need for the things you desire from your conditioning, to make room for the worthiness to have what you purely desire, while equally recognizing it’s not about the things you desired, but rather the level of consciousness required to have those things.

I say all this as someone who is quite skilled at activating the Law of Attraction. On many occasions, I am able to manifest things instantly. In other instances it takes hours, days, or months, depending upon the current trajectory of my expanding consciousness. When someone comes to an event, retreat, or participates in programs like Angel Academy and Total Integration, I am working directly with the Akashic Records to determine how much can be transformed when in my presence and what I need to do to activate this healing. I will ask, “Can I move them into a new timeline?” 

If yes, whatever needs to be done will instantly occur to facilitate such change. Often times I hear, “They need a greater percentage of their ego integrated in preparation for such an advancement.” So I ask, “What percentage of ego can I help release in accordance with their Akashic Record?” Once I receive the answer, the very experience one has is exactly the medicine needed to move them forward in evolution.

When a person (or group) is ready for such a transformation, there are limitless tools and mens which a truly aligned healer can implement.

The Universe will help me search for access points into parallel dimensions where healing has already occurred. The Universe will grant me the power to shapeshift subtle energy bodies into radical states of wellness. The Universe will grant me the permission and capacity to rewire the subconscious and clear out cellular debris to inspire the remission of illness, the discovery of emotional freedom, transcendent bliss, and even moments of heavenly revelation. Not because I decided so, but because the Universe let me know what that person (or group) was ready to receive.

On a personal level, I want to radically shift each person’s circumstances in the blink of an eye. And yet, there is a system and protocol that I must follow and it’s the exact same framework being taught to you as your journey advances.

We’re all working with divine timing, not our personal will’s timing — for ourselves, and those we’re wanting to help/support.

Since the primary focus of the Universe is the integration of ego, the ego often lets go in moments of defeat, disappointment, or disillusionment. If you are identifying with ego, you will be experiencing such a crucial moment of defeat to clear out more conditioning, while erroneously believing it’s another sign that you aren’t worthy of the change you envision.

As you align with the healers and wayshowers who also act as loving companions throughout your journey, as well as educators of a new spiritual paradigm, you will come to see life is not about what you have or don’t have — financially, physically, emotionally or even spiritually. It’s a matter of embracing your current circumstances as the most fertile soil through which your awakened consciousness can blossom.

While the ego asks, “How can I make this different?” — the soul inquires, “How is this a perfect set-up to help me mature, grow, and expand?”

Having the power to instanty change things to be the way you want them would surely snuff out the greater gift of learning throughout life’s complex journey. At a certain point in your evolution, you will realize that everything takes time on this planet because that’s what you incarnated to experience.

Each of us came to Earth to manifest at a much slower speed than in Heaven, so we can get up close and personal with the inner workings of the Universe and get to know the journey of our growth at each vibrational level from start to finish.

With greater love for yourself and others, you can slow the pace of your ambitions to explore each facet of your reality from a more mature standpoint.

Just as a child envisioning being a chef might dream of running their first restaurant as a refuge from the slow agonizing pace of learning in culinary school — the wisdom of life reminds the child, “If you think culinary school is challenging, you have no idea what awaits you in a professional kitchen. Only by thriving in school may you succeed in the areas such schooling prepared you for.”

There is a reason you have what you have. There is a reason you don’t have what you don’t. 

It’s not a punishment or a sign that you are out of alignment. It is merely another stage of cosmic preparation, where the Universe is more interested in helping you embody your spiritual mastery than stalling your evolution with the brand new ‘objects’ your ego attached to.

You may also enjoy reading 11:11: Revealing the Meaning and Messages of Angel Numbers by Kyle Gray

The post Transformation & Collaboration: Redefining The Law of Attraction appeared first on BEST SELF.

A soldier discovers his true mission and the power of nature as he heals deep psychic wounds inflicted by war — and the survivor’s guilt that followed

—

I never thought I would live this long. 

This past Veterans Day, I realized that was both a conscious and an unconscious thought that had ruled the last couple years of my life. I’ve doubted my successes. I questioned my choices all in the context of the belief that I simply wasn’t supposed to be here. I felt like I was cheating and stealing from those for whose living was more justified.

When I first came home from Iraq 12 years ago, I questioned why I lived and others with more to live for — kids, communities, careers, and lovers — did not. Why did I — a single man without a partner, kids, career, or community to call home (or so I thought) — survive when others did not? 

This feeling I now had, however, was not that. I was over the initial shock of survival a few years after my return home.

Now, I was questioning why was I still alive? 

Cocaine had come and gone, as had alcoholism. I had a long run of personal and professional success. I had outlived most of the worst statistics of my generation of veterans, but now what? Why was I still here when I felt unwanted, unneeded, and unable to fit any more? 

Two years ago, I felt like the top of the world was just over the next rise. After being recruited away from my job to be an executive for a company whose values felt closely aligned with my own, it seemed that I was taking a step up the career ladder. Research I had been a part of — about the power of the outdoors to support healing from trauma — was received with great fanfare… I had success with my second film project — Skiing in Iraq — that had me returning to places I had been during war or cleaning up after war. I was confident that the next film project I’d tackle would find funding easily and give me enough time to film it and still leave me enough time to be with my family.

I was nearing 40, but as I excitedly told my wife, I felt like I was just starting. A few months later, this train got derailed. My new job and I were not a good fit. I left to pursue other goals. I set up shop as a ‘consultant’ in my extra bedroom. I wrote half-hearted emails to potential clients. I jealously watched my friends and peers accept positions of increasing responsibility, get projects funded, achieve great things, and acquire impressive titles. I mythologized their grandeur as I stared out the basement window to the base of my backyard fence. I promised myself that my situation was just short term.

I surprised myself by landing a few clients. I was excited about my work helping organizations with similar values as my own, do their work better. A few other friends were hanging out shingles of their own and a few joint projects made the future feel bright once again. Together we could make a bigger impact in our freelancing / entrepreneurial exercises than we could on our own.  Recruiters kept calling. I figured it couldn’t hurt to keep interviewing. After preparing for hours and putting on a shirt and tie, I made it through to a few final interviews, excited about the prospect of full-time work at someone else’s organization. I played the conversations over in my head about how I’d tell my fellow freelancers goodbye. Inevitably though, I’d wait a couple of days and get a phone call that started off positively, “We think you’re great…” before shifting to a “but…” and end with, “we can’t wait to see what you do next.” Meanwhile, my collaborative partners shared with me they were moving on as they collected full-time jobs.  

I got depressed. I acted like a jerk to my wife and to my close friends. Nobody, I told myself, wanted what I had. What was wrong with me?

What was wrong with other people? How come everyone else could find a fit in government/corporate/non-profit America? To answer these questions, I needed to look back on my life.

The War

My Mom reminded me the other day that when I was five years old, I told her I wanted to be in the Army or Navy. My Grandpa, a first-generation American whose parents were Czech, served in the Pacific Theater with the US Navy in World War II. My great aunt, the sister of my Grandpa’s wife, also served in the Pacific Theater as part of the Women’s Army Corps. My uncle was a Green Beret in Vietnam as well as my pediatric dentist and orthodontist; he was skilled at torture. Each of these relatives were great role models, but Grandpa was the winner — so if he was in the Navy, I was going to be in the Navy. Unfortunately, at my tall height (just over 6’4” at the time — I’d max out at 6’7”), the Navy required a medical waiver. The Army, however, was delighted to have me without any extra paperwork, so a soldier I’d be!

At the age of 17, I enrolled in an ROTC program at the University of Mississippi. My Dad had to sign my paperwork since I wasn’t legally an adult. After four years of college, I had a guaranteed job in the Army and a philosophy degree to show for my intellectual bravery when, on a steamy day in May 2000, I headed to Ft. Huachuca, AZ before a permanent duty assignment in Darmstadt, Germany. 

The next four years flew by in a blur. Prior to 9/11, the worst deployment one could get was Kosovo — Bosnia being the preferred choice — but fewer and fewer soldiers were getting deployed at all. We sang cadences in training and on long runs that begged for ‘somebody anybody start a war-eh!’ 

Then finally, somebody did.

I didn’t question why the United States wanted to invade Afghanistan. I assumed our engagement in Afghanistan would end quickly. I was most excited to finally be a soldier at war. This was what I had wanted since I was in kindergarten. This was what I had been training for the last five years.

But when the U.S. mobilized forces and invaded Afghanistan, I was left behind through no fault of my own. My unit was strategic intelligence. There aren’t any great books written about it because it didn’t participate in any of the cool battles or wars I read about growing up. Some of our unit got farmed out to other units. Most of us however, stayed at home in our highly protected, secure, containerized, intelligence facility (SCIF) in a rural area at the edge of the suburbs of Darmstadt. Our biggest threat seemed to be an angry dog that would sometimes break free from one of the local Germans out on a walk in the trails around the fenced-in facility.

Nonetheless, I tried hard to get myself deployed to Afghanistan.

I spent my lunch breaks calling around to other units begging other commanders to get me attached to the deploying unit. I needed orders from another unit so I could be released from a job that entailed what seemed like an obscene amount of time spent crafting PowerPoint presentations. No luck.

Later, when we made plans to invade Iraq, I was leading the one platoon that spent a good amount of time in the field within the larger Intelligence group. I figured I’d be a shoe-in for getting to go to war by invading Iraq through Turkey. The Turks, however, never gave us permission. As a result, half of my unit made it to Turkey, while the rest of us stayed home and eventually drove everyone back from the airport. I assumed Iraq would be a short war as well.

I was 0 for 2 for fighting the wars of my generation before getting a six-month deployment to Bosnia. 

This was an incredible opportunity and a challenging assignment — a combat zone, according to the hazardous pay I received — but I felt like I was cheating those who had been asked to fight a ‘real war’ in Iraq or Afghanistan. In 2004, I tried to extend my tour in Sarajevo, but the Army said no. So I said no to the Army. I quit.

I felt guilty leaving. Especially since many of my friends and colleagues were coming home with things like PTSD, Adjustment Disorder, missing limbs, or numerous other physical and mental aches and pains. But the dream I had hoped for when I finally got my commission did not match up with the reality of service. 

No doubt, I met a lot of great people during my time in the military, especially my fellow soldiers and NCOs. There were definitely some special cases in the junior ranks, but most of the shitbags were a few rungs up the ladder from me. I had a few leaders that seemed intent on crushing morale, confusing their subordinates, and peacocking around the office mandating endless changes to reams of PowerPoint slides that, while full of information, told the viewer nothing.

I knew it was time to leave the military, but I had no idea what I was going to do next. The Army was supposed to be my dream, and my dream was supposed to last 20 years. It did not. 

In a last-minute bid to stay, or rather return to Sarajevo, I did an internet search for land mine clearance organizations and applied to the first three companies that popped up in my search results. Surprisingly, I got a job. Instead of a trip back to Bosnia, I was sent down to Angola. After nine months, I experienced some medical complications. That’s when I was moved to Abkhazia, a breakaway province in the Republic of Georgia nestled between the Caucus Mountains and the Black Sea. 

Nine months into my stay, with a promotion glowing in the future, I got an email from the United States Army welcoming me back to service. My reaction was both sad and nervous. I had grown to love the life I was living. I was about to receive a promotion. I was dating an incredible woman. All of that was going to be taken away if I went off to fight in a war that, upon further reflection (or first reflection to be honest), I wasn’t sure I supported.

Stronger than those emotions, however, was a sense of relief. Relief that I would have a chance to go fight in my generation’s war. Relief that I would be able to make, or at least offer, the same sacrifice my friends and colleagues were making. My friends in the international community who had not served did not understand why I felt this way. I did not blame them. One friend with connections high up in his home country, made me an offer of political asylum. I knew I’d never take it. It was, however, one of the kindest gestures anyone has ever offered me. “Don’t let them take your life for an unworthy cause,” he pleaded.

But I was puffed up with pride as I prepared to return to life in the military. The dream I had at age five was going to come true… again.

After a few weeks of leave, I signed into Ft. Bragg along with hundreds of other men and women who had been recalled to service out of the Individual Ready Reserve. I was asked if I needed to delay my urinalysis to prove I was drug-free.  During our first physical fitness test, we were all told not to push ourselves too hard. Apparently, the Army was desperate for bodies.

Just after Easter, we flew to Baghdad. My first five months in the country were primarily staff work — everything I feared I would have to do in the Army when I left the first time. I took in reports from the five Civil Affairs teams assigned to cover the entirety of Western Baghdad. I did my best to create a cohesive picture for my commanders of how the United States Army was winning the hearts and minds of the Iraqi people.

A few times I got to go off base — ‘outside of the wire’ — to actually visit the people I was there trying to help. One of the missions I had recommended to my boss, and that he signed off on, was to support a group of farmers who did not have access to sorely needed vaccines for their livestock.  I had originally received permission to go on the mission with the veterinarian and team. I wanted to go to see if what I was thinking was helpful both to US goals as well as Iraqi’s. Unfortunately, I ended up staying behind because, no lie, I needed to update the color of yellow I had used on a PowerPoint presentation. As I walked to the gun rack where LTC Daniel Holland, VD was putting on his Kevlar helmet and grabbing his rifle, I said, “I can’t go Colonel. More PowerPoint for the boss.” “No worries,” he said excitedly, “There will be plenty more vaccinations!” I shook his hand, told him to be safe, and sat back down to more PowerPoint.

Two hours later his vehicle, which I was supposed to be in, drove over an improvised explosive device that was planted in the middle of a bridge.

The explosion killed all five people in the HMMWV. There were not enough recognizable pieces of bodies to be put into the caskets that would be draped with flags and sent home empty. 

In the aftermath of this deadly explosion, the sergeant in charge of that team decided to not go outside the wire again. The team leader decided his best course of action for the remainder of his tour was to stay in his room and play video games. I heard later he returned to Iraq a few more times.

I blame neither man for their actions after the explosion. With a team leader slot now open, I was able to negotiate a transfer out of my job and into the vacant position. I was 28 years old. After 23 years of waiting, I was finally going to war.

I loved my job in Iraq. I loved my team. I loved the people we met every day on the streets of Baghdad. 

Yes, we got shot at and blown up. But yes, we also got to work with people who, every day, despite the myriad threats on their lives, showed up to do good work for their community. 

On one of my last patrols, my team got blown up. Had the individuals who attacked us timed the blast a little better, I may not be here today. Instead, our truck’s tires took the bulk of the damage along with the front of our HMMWV. We saw four Iraqis killed by our team returning fire from the ambush zone. Later that day, at a meeting with the neighborhood leadership council, the council leader told me he was glad I was okay. He encouraged me not to take the attack personally. I wish there was a photo of the look on my face after he said that.I was simultaneously dumbfounded and furious.

Years later, I understood what he meant. The young men who attacked us were not necessarily trying to kill us. They may have even loved what they knew of America. Someone gave them a good enough reason to risk their lives in the attack, just like someone had given me a good enough reason to risk my life in Iraq. It is those ‘someones’ I wish waged wars, the ones who do the convincing, not the convinced.

A couple of days after we got blown up, I took my last patrol in Baghdad. My last act of war was giving up on replacing the dried-out gauze covering burns that had consumed about 90% of a young girl, maybe four or five years old. She lived in an internally displaced persons camp in view of a hospital. The skin underneath her gauze was necrotizing. Our attempts to help her only caused more pain. One of my soldiers took out his patrol cap and passed it around to collect hundreds of dollars for her medical treatment. After giving the money to the girl’s mother, we got back into our HMMWVs and drove back to base.  

Seven days later I was back at Fort Bragg. A few hours after landing I ate dinner at an Outback Steakhouse, got shit-faced drunk, and closed down a strip club. Four days later, I called the government travel agent to tell them I had to get home because my girlfriend was expecting. I got on a flight that afternoon, but not before I stopped at a dumpster as I left base to throw away my military gear I didn’t have to return.

I did not have a girlfriend.

I was glad to be out of the Army, but I still felt guilty for coming home. I felt like I had abandoned my friends, Iraqi and American. 

I was afraid I would not live up to the expectations I placed on myself for getting to live when many of my friends did not. If things happen for a reason, this one was a bad one and made no sense. I never heard my Grandpa or Great Aunt, even my Uncle, talk about any of this.

The Shift

After a few weeks of traveling around the States and overseas visiting friends and far flung beach towns trying to surf I moved to Philadelphia. I settled into life as a hard-partying graduate student… I was the only veteran in my cohort of fifty students. I remember one classmate expressing surprise that I had been to war. “The only other person I know who fought in a war was my grandpa,” he said. Graduate school provided me with an easy identity. I knew what to do each day and every night and a lot of mornings. I was able to drink copious amounts of booze and inhale piles of cocaine to get through the day. My life was burning down, but I did a good job hiding the worst of the fire from everyone I knew.

I graduated with an Urban Design degree at the height of the last economic meltdown in 2009. I found a job with a start-up non-profit working to get veterans into ‘green’ careers. Alone in Boulder, CO with few friends and the woman who would become my wife, I routinely called a friend, Chuck, I had served with in Baghdad who lived in nearby Colorado Springs. Our conversations centered around my discontent in my post-military existence. As happy as I was to have left the service, I was now ready to go back in because that is where I knew who I was. It was either that or end it all: suicide.

As happy as I originally was to have left the service, I was now ready to go back in because that is where I knew who I was. It was either that or end it all: suicide.

After a few phone calls, he encouraged me to do something, anything, that would move me away from this mindset. “But what?” I whined. “Come climbing with me. Get yourself the gear and we’ll meet up on the 20^th.” If I was going to die by suicide, waiting a couple of weeks was inconsequential, so on a weekday, I didn’t call in sick or ask for the day off. I just went climbing.

I was scared and nervous. My ego was in fits because I didn’t want to look like an idiot. Turns out though, I didn’t want to die, or even fall too far. So every opportunity I had to tumble down the rock, I clung hard to whatever hand hold or foot hold was available. Long before I even felt a fall coming, I yelled to Chuck to take up slack on the rope. Then we climbed on.

When I got to the top of the climb, I was exhausted, but amazed! What had I just done? I looked into the Rocky Mountains beyond the Front Range and down to the prairies in front of me. I was awed by the beauty I had been missing. As I tied into the rope to rappel down, I lost it. I began to shake and cry. All the pain and stress of the last two years of addiction, my year at war, perhaps even my years of feeling guilty for not going to war — all came coursing through me.

I know now I had a somatic experience. At the time though, after Chuck calmed me down and got me to the ground, I realized it was the first day in two years that I had not been fearful of my past or guilty about my future. 

That climb saved my life. It gave me a reason to be. If it could be this good for me, I thought, how good could it be for other veterans, especially those who fared far worse than me? 

This realization changed the course of my life. 

Eight months later I’d quit my full-time job to found Veterans Expeditions. My co-founder, Nick Watson, had a guiding job with another company, Colorado Wilderness Rides and Guides, that supported our work as best they could. The rest of VetEx was paid for by a small grant from my brother’s high school ex-girlfriend’s little brother’s company along with a combination of my credit card and a few odd jobs I picked up along the way. I hauled furniture. I was an administrative assistant for a company that did insulation and energy audits. I hawked concert and sports tickets. I planned events (did you know there’s a difference between an eight- and ten-person round table? I do now). I did whatever I could to reach my goal: to get as many veterans into the outdoors as possible.

Ultimately this experience led to a position with the Sierra Club, first as the director of their military outdoors program, and later overseeing the entire Sierra Club Outdoors serving veterans, service members, and non-military youth, and adults.

I came to realize that the power of time outdoors was not only an intrinsically healing experience for the mind and soul, but also a catalyst for deeper, more meaningful personal exploration — not just for veterans, but for all.

That’s why in 2014 I launched the Great Outdoors Lab with Dr. Dacher Keltner to put scientific data behind this transformative idea. That same year, I began to think about how time outdoors could be used to augment my personal experiences in war-torn nations. This led to the media project, Adventure Not War, which has resulted in a climbing project in Angola, skiing in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Surely this was all building to something bigger, something better, something more sustained. Only it wasn’t, or at least wouldn’t. Not in the way I wanted anyway.  

Changing the Narrative

The phone calls and emails for client work kept coming in. Small projects, sure, but enough to keep the mortgage paid. My next film project after Iraq, documenting the ski culture in Afghanistan, got funded by the family foundation of the fiancé of a friend I served with in Iraq. Small brand partners filled in the gaps after large brand partners, many of whom I’d been with for several years, walked away. My approach was too different; my films too intimate and dark, they didn’t “want to be associated with an American getting kidnapped and beheaded,” but they were “excited to see the project if I finished it.”

At the time, I couldn’t see the value of all the ‘yeses’ I was getting. The ‘nos’, from larger and more prestigious pocketbooks, were what reverberated in my head.

The irony of this was that the reason I went back to Iraq, and wanted to go to Afghanistan in the first place, was to reshape my own narrative and interactions with each country into something more positive than conflict, war, death, and explosions. Rather than going into these countries with a gun in hand, my goal was to find the spaces that remained beautiful and to seek out joy. 

It was a small team that went to Afghanistan. Myself and two filmmakers. Western military contractors stared aghast as we moved through airport security with ski and snowboard bags and the Afghans who became our guides for our nearly three weeks there. I had no Kevlar vest to put on, no assault rifle to manage, but we did have video cameras, outdoor gear, a healthy swivel on our heads, and plenty of smiles. 

Our mission was to capture the beauty of these nations that too often are only remembered for the horrors that defined them in existing media narratives.

In Angola, Iraq, and Afghanistan, I was amazed at how generously we were welcomed as adventurous travelers with nothing more to give than our time to their landscape and culture. 

Beauty exists everywhere — even if our global leadership at times seems intent on stamping it out. By shifting my own narrative about these places, I was also able to help shift other’s narratives about these locations as well. If nothing else, these expeditions and the films that we created encouraged viewers to stop and consider the positive in both the people and landscapes of war. 

The Struggle

But back in my basement, I was stuck in a negative feedback loop of my own design. Perhaps the belief, or even the belief I thought others had that I would die, should have died, or even the fear that my life wasn’t worth saving after war, persisted deep in my psyche. I wrote off as mere coincidence or inconsequential any good news or positive reinforcement I received. I discounted the belief others had in my work and person. They weren’t the people I wanted to believe in me. They didn’t have the status, the funding, the cache in my mind, to bring me what I thought I wanted. In short, I was a selfish, self-centered, entitled asshole.  

Yet, despite my best efforts to prove otherwise, many people continued to offer me a hand up, an open door, an introduction, enough funding to make the next project happen. But I couldn’t let go of that persistent thought: Shouldn’t I be dead anyway? After war, drugs, alcohol, and a pattern of poor decision-making, what right did I have to still be here?

This past Veterans Day, this swirl of doubt and confusion came together in one sweeping revelation. I was headed out to get a free oil change, thinking about the Afghan Ski Trip. I was thinking how much a friend who had died during our year in Iraq would have loved that trip, when the tears came. I pulled over onto a residential street in a suburb just south of Salt Lake City and cried ugly tears. I sent streams of viscous, thick snot all over my face and down into my beard in heaving sobs of tears.

That is when I realized that I had outlived every conscious and unconscious thought I had about surviving after war. 

I had completed a significant part of my journey and done so with my health relatively intact. I had a wife I loved who loved me a back, a kid I adored who adored me back, a cat that slept on my chest just like a cat in Baghdad, a dog who wagged herself sick with excitement when I came into the house. For nine years I hadn’t had a single dangerous relapse with drugs or alcohol.

But for the last 12 years after returning from four years of war, I was so convinced that if my life wasn’t all perfect, it wasn’t all worth it. I had been fighting so hard for survival, so hard to prove I was worthy of the life others did not receive, that I didn’t know to even define success before those tears came. 

Maybe all those ‘nos’ came because of my selfish entitlement. Maybe they came because I wasn’t the best candidate or my idea was really bad. Or maybe they came because I was simply too afraid. Or maybe, it had nothing to do with me at all. But on the other side, what about all those ‘yeses’? All those people who saw the spark, got a glimpse of the vision, felt the potential sliding into a glorious reality? Were they all lying or misguided, or were they able to see clearly what I could not?

The Awakening

As the sobs began to subside, I decided it was time to lean into those who believed; to try to match their belief in me with my belief in myself. I figured those who had shown time and time again that they wanted what was best for me were making sense. It was time to go back and ask for the help that had been offered but never accepted.

It was time to accept that when the help came, I had to do my part as well. I also had to recognize that I was committed to keep living.

No matter who you are or where you are, it can all be taken away in a moment’s notice, but that is not a reason not to work to create something big, bold, and beautiful. Doing that is hard and almost always necessitates copious amounts of failure, no’s, setbacks, and ‘not quites’, before yes is found. And that, I think, is the crux of it all. 

Yes, I survived. It was a vainglorious effort and the odds were stacked against me — as they are stacked against each one of us to varying degrees war or not. But the privilege was also stacked in my favor, even if I tried to ignore it, was angry I had it, jealous that others more deserving of me didn’t get it, or because it didn’t show up in the package I wanted.

So how did I shift from a survivalist mindset to one of thriving, or at least living? 

The first step is a reminder that past success, just like past failure, doesn’t determine the future.

There’s a good chance I’ll be back hawking tickets or moving furniture or something else, but this time with a sense of joy to be living. As for what needs to come next, it’s the same thing it has always been from that first climb: To promote the transformative power of adventure by building a community around that goal, without having to know what the journey, or even the destination will be moving forward. 

Second, I get to define what success looks like in my life — no one else’s — though it’s nice to collaborate with family and loved ones.

I’ve also had a lot of success. I need to embrace the lessons learned from the real failures, without tipping the balance to live in those failures and shortcomings (or successes), as if they are the only thing that defines me.

Third, I need to set priorities that allow me to move through my life with purpose.

Plenty of other amazing things out there could await me, but they all start by focusing on the act of not just everyday living, but everyday living through my purpose.

Fourth, I need to celebrate the lives of those I’ve lost, not just in Baghdad but in the years before and after the war.

I don’t need to feel guilty if a day goes by when I don’t remember everyone. But when I do, I need to remember their smiles and their gratitude for the time they got. It could all end tomorrow regardless of my success or failure since life is mostly, but not always, out of my control.

I’m so happy my life fell apart — even though it did take the better part of a day to get all that snot washed out of my beard. 

You may also enjoy watching Interview: Brendon Burchard | Live, Love, Matter with Kristen Noel

The post At War…With Myself: A Soldier’s Story of Spiritual Survival appeared first on BEST SELF.

Estimated reading time: 5 minutes

A refreshingly profound, yet simple and relatable new take on forgiveness

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“At its heart, forgiveness is a radical acceptance of ‘what was’ married to a prayer that the future needn’t recreate the past.“

 ~ Josh Radnor

Yeah, yeah, yeah! We’ve all heard about the importance of forgiveness. But what does forgiveness really mean and why in the heck should I let that demented so-and-so off the hook?

Forgiveness, like most meaningful concepts, has more baggage than a Samsonite store. Most of us believe it’s an act we’re forced to perform when horrific jerks do us wrong. But true forgiveness, according to A Course in Miracles is realizing no one has the power to do me wrong.

To believe someone or something outside myself can hurt me negates the Truth of who I am.

Being pissed off unplugs me from the field of infinite potentiality, this wild and crazy force that’s constantly trying to bless and guide me. It erects a big wall between me and my highest good.

Believing outside forces can hurt me stunts my growth. Blinds me to miracles. Creates an illusory world that makes me want to hide, feel guilty, close down.

Here are the top three reasons (and there are many more) I practice forgiveness like a mofo:

1. Forgiveness restores the natural order of love. 

If you’re a human being on this planet, you’ve probably heard Whitney Houston’s “I Will Always Love You.” It won Record of the Year at the 1994 Grammy Awards and, last I checked, holds the all-time record as best-selling single by a woman. You might even know that the song was originally written by Dolly Parton. 

But did you know that the back story behind this iconic song is a grand testament to forgiveness? Dolly originally wrote it for Porter Wagoner who, in 1967, gave the 21-year-old songwriter her big break. A spot on his weekly TV program, The Porter Wagoner Show, led to the duo recording dozens of songs and albums and bestselling hits. They won the Country Music Award for Vocal Duo of the Year three times.

But by 1973, Dolly was ready for more. She had big dreams, was tired of being ‘my pretty little girl’, as Wagoner often called her.  “I wanted my own band. I wanted a solo career,” she said. “God was telling me to go.” Porter wouldn’t hear of it.  “I made you,” he’d threaten.

So, she did what she knew best — she wrote him a song, marched into his office and sang it.

Although the song, I Will Always Love You, brought tears to his eyes, he wouldn’t let it go. He sued for breach of contract, demanded a share of her royalties, even bad-mouthed her all over Nashville. The once-loved country duo became estranged for many years. Even though she was blameless, Dolly agreed to a settlement, offering to pay her former partner a million dollars.

“I didn’t have a million dollars,” she says. “But over time, I was able to pay him back.”

And in 1981, when he was dropped from his label and fell on hard times, Dolly bought his label and gave it back to him, ensuring a future for his kids. In 1988, they performed together at a taping of Parton’s TV show Dolly! And in October 2007 when he died, she was at his bedside holding his hand. 

Dolly had every reason NOT to forgive Porter who wanted to keep her under his thumb. No one would blame her if she was still mad today. But look at all the love she’d have missed out on. 

As she said in a recent interview, “Forgiveness: It’s the only thing.”

2. Forgiveness opens new possibilities. 

I often say the biggest secret in the world is we all really love each other. We often don’t realize this truth because we refuse to forgive. We hold grudges. We actually believe the lie that other people can hurt us. 

If anyone had the right to hold a grudge, it was Nelson Mandela. He was imprisoned for 27 years, three of his children died during this time and his government treated him worse than an animal. But instead of letting those injustices take away his dignity, he used them to solidify a vision for a better world. He refused to BE imprisoned.

That is what forgiveness really is. Refusing to be imprisoned.

3.  Forgiveness solicits abundance.

Had Dolly held onto her anger at her former mentor, she’d never be where she is today. By letting go, by believing love is the only reality, the only thing that really matters she freed up her connection with her Divine Source. And as for that million dollars? Royalties for the song she wrote for Porter Wagoner pulled down three times that much in the first year alone. 

So we can believe others have the power to hurt us, we can believe in injustices out there or we can be like Dolly and know…

“Forgiveness, it’s the only thing.”

You may also enjoy watching Interview: Marianne Williamson | A Return To Love And Consciousness by Kristen Noel

The post The Grand Cosmic Blessing: Why Dolly Parton Practices The ‘F Word’ Every Chance She Gets appeared first on BEST SELF.

Question Bridge White Women, a social experiment, seeks to bridge the gap between the diversity of thought in one demographic, white women — and to initiate honest civil discourse

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A question is a powerful thing, a mighty use of words.

~ Krista Tippett

In an age of competing certainties, where we are both more interconnected than ever but also more polarized — how do we build bridges of understanding across the great divides of race, politics, class, and religion?

If you ask Taylor Swift, she’ll counsel us all to just, “Calm Down,” which isn’t bad advice (it’s also a great song and video). But there’s a more active and engaged response, and it’s embedded in the very structure of an ongoing multi-year transmedia project I’m a part of called, Question Bridge: White Women in America.

White women are not often asked how their skin color frees or confines them.

What does it mean to be a white woman in America today? What gives us hope? What keeps us up at night? How do we feel about the state of our bodies, our lives, our families, our communities, our nation, and the planet?

The project aims to help shape a civil national conversation, one that respectfully shows great diversity of thought within a single demographic while also highlighting the points of surprising convergence. 

And we chose white women, in particular, because we want to explore the forces that resulted in a voting pattern that split this group almost cleanly in half in the 2016 Presidential election — a great divide that mirrors the ideological rift in the nation as a whole.

The Question Bridge format is simple and straight forward: Once a white female signs up to participate, we invite her to sit in front of our camera, imagine a white woman different from herself in some way, and then ask any questions she wants to. She is then invited to answer pre-filmed questions from previous participants.

To date, more than 70 ideologically diverse white women from 7 different American cities have asked all types of questions — environmental, political, personal, religious, and more. Life and death, caregiving and childrearing, President Trump, climate change, abortion, immigration, faith, body image… nothing is off limits.

Our team of four white women, two journalists and two filmmakers — does not intervene. We never tell the women what to ask or how to answer (other than, at times, to encourage concision). We are there to facilitate a safe and inherently intimate dialogue in a judgment-free environment. Most importantly, we are there to listen.

It appears to be a revolutionary concept to not only ask people what they think, but to give them the opportunity to ask questions of others.

We begin by encouraging them to ask meaningful questions. We give them the platform, the space, and the respectful quiet that allows them to grow comfortable with the camera and the process. As they speak we glean a sense of their aspirations, obsessions, and political bent. Then we choose the appropriate recorded questions for them to answer in turn. Every single time, a little bit of magic happens.  Having begun with their own questions, they are uniquely open and thoughtful when they answer the questions of others.

During a filming in Phoenix, Arizona, a mid-aged Republican woman asked a provocative question that has been fun to take on the road: “In our political discourse we talk a lot about diversity. Do you think diversity of opinion is as important as diversity of race, gender, sexual orientation, or some of the more standard diversity markers we see? Why or why not?”

Her question touches a bruise without aiming to hurt. More, it invites exploration and conversation rather than defensiveness. It aspires to the kind of generous inquiry championed by Krista Tippett, journalist and host of the public radio program and podcast, On Being. In her book, Becoming Wise: An Inquiry into the Mystery and Art of Living, Tippett writes:

“We want others to acknowledge that our answers are right. We call the debate or get on the same page or take a vote and move on. The alternative involves a different orientation to the point of conversing in the first place: to invite searching — not on who is right and who is wrong and the arguments on every side; not on whether we can agree; but on what is at stake in human terms for us all…

“There is value in learning to speak together honestly and relate to each other with dignity, without rushing to common ground that would leave all the hard questions hanging.”

Hard questions are welcomed on Question Bridge. Women have asked: “What does white privilege mean to you?” “Why do you hate me? Is it because I’m a Republican or because you think I voted for Trump?” And, “Why don’t you worry about climate change when it will likely have devastating effects on your children?”

Yet, because the temperature of our current political climate has been lowered here — and because the women are not physically confronting each other — defensive or angry responses to these and other questions have been the exception. Almost all the answers are revelatory and heart felt.

“White Women in America” is the third in the Question Bridge series. The original concept and product, “Question Bridge: Black Community,” was created by conceptual artist and photography professor Chris Johnson, who is the Executive Producer for Question Bridge: White Women. Chris, an African American male, found early on that by limiting the project scope to a specific demographic, participants were less defensive and more vulnerable and willing to state their views.  

This was a genius discovery, and it’s propelled the goodwill and intimacy that accompanies each encounter on the current Question Bridge. Join us. Questionbridgewhitewomen.com

You may also enjoy watching Interview: Congressman Tim Ryan | America 2.0 with Kristen Noel

The post Building Bridges of Understanding One Question (and Answer) at a Time appeared first on BEST SELF.

Owning our ability to create healthy boundaries is a radical act of self-care that allows us to reclaim our power and protects us from those who drain us

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When it comes to Energy Vampires, BOUNDARIES are the key!!

One of the most powerful steps anyone can take to evade the dangers of energy vampires is to set up healthy and consistent boundaries. Establishing boundaries is not a skill that most empaths possess. We tend to give everyone the benefit of the doubt and often set ourselves up to be used by others.

But once we see the pattern, we can change it. And the result is far better health and relationships on all levels.

Here’s an example: 

One of my friends, we’ll call her Carol, recently met the man of her dreams, we’ll call him Jeff. Both Jeff and Carol are divorced and have adult children. And as is commonly the case, Jeff’s former spouse Joyce has all the characteristics of an energy vampire. Despite the fact that she and Jeff divorced 29 years ago, Joyce still blames Jeff for all her problems and continually complains about him to their adult children. She has never remarried or even had a long-term relationship. Jeff’s adult children have trouble dealing with her, but still feel as though they must divide their time equally between she and Jeff when they are in the area (Jeff’s children live out of state). 

This past summer, Jeff’s daughter Sibyl planned to visit her father at Carol’s home. Now this is where things got interesting. Carol had not only read Dodging Energy Vampires, she herself had also been on the front lines of this kind of relationship, having divorced a very narcissistic man 20 years before meeting Jeff. She had also been through some other energy vampire/empath type relationships with business associates and colleagues (yes, they come in all forms). 

Needless to say, she knew a thing or two about her own tendency to be people-pleasing and empathetic. She also felt badly for Sibyl and her struggles with her mother. Carol wanted to be a healing figure in Sibyl’s life and knew that this was important to Jeff. After all, Jeff had spent decades trying to be the parent who made up for the difficulty that his former wife kept creating in the life of his children.   

When the time came for the visit, Sibyl wanted her mother Joyce to drive her to Carol’s home after her visit with her mother. Sibyl shared this plan with her father — and Jeff mentioned this to Carol. And this turned out to be a  major turning point for Carol and Jeff. She wanted to make things easy and comfortable for Sibyl and her visit. But at the same time, she found herself feeling very uncomfortable with the prospect of having Joyce come to her home. She realized that having Joyce anywhere near her or her home was a significant boundary violation. And she had to stand up for herself on this — even at the risk of the inconvenience for Sibyl or Jeff’s discomfort.   

She also knew that, in the past, Jeff would have very likely asked her to bend a bit on this to make things more convenient for his daughter. Not only that, but she herself would have talked herself out of her own discomfort with the usual thoughts like…

What could it hurt? I can suck it up and tolerate meeting Joyce at least once. It would make it so much easier for Sibyl. 

But this time, Carol’s tendency to just ‘go along to get along’ was gone. Or —  in the words of the country song, ‘Her Give a Damn Was Busted’. 

And so she told Jeff that Joyce was not welcome anywhere near her home — now, or in the future. Carol had heard far too many stories of Jeff’s life with Joyce. And she was no longer willing to risk bringing that kind of negative energy into her home — or her relationship with Jeff. She knew she was taking a risk by standing up for herself and her boundaries. Growth of any kind almost always feels uncomfortable at first. And many people — especially empaths — tend to feel guilty when we stand up for ourselves. 

But Carol stood up for herself this time — even at the risk of disappointing Jeff and his daughter. She had come too far in her own healing and self-care to allow herself to go back to being a doormat — no matter how subtle. And here’s the good news. Carol’s taking a stand for healthy boundaries between Jeff’s ex-wife and his adult children and her, actually improved their relationship and brought in more intimacy and love than before. It was a significant turning point for both of them — given that both of them had had very significant relationships with energy vampires.

Yes — healing is possible. But first you have to know what you’re dealing with, understand your own empathetic nature — and then take action to protect your own energy and personal space. 

This makes all the difference!! And can change the lives of everyone involved.

No is a complete sentence.

~ Anne Lamott

You may also enjoy Interview: Dr. Christiane Northrup & Kate Northrup | The New Conversation by Kristen Noel

The post Boundaries, Boundaries, and More Boundaries: The Key To Managing Energy Vampires appeared first on BEST SELF.

A simple, yet profound process for untangling and releasing limited thinking, old patterns and feeling stuck — for stepping into true freedom and vibrancy

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During the final months of my marriage I struggled mightily with a tangled story fueled by hurt, fear, and a sense of betrayal. How could he leave me, we were supposed to grow old together! I can’t keep teaching and running our center in Austin without him. What did I do wrong? Why is this happening to me? How am I going to manage? I had many tools at my disposal from years of spiritual work and self-reflection, but I couldn’t seem to get myself out of the quicksand of my thoughts and hurt. 

We’ve all had experiences like this: that painful story that we keep replaying over and over again, creating more internal struggle and suffering. Whether your thoughts are about a situation that happened long ago that still haunts you, or a current relationship that takes you out of your peace and into a lightening-quick negative reaction in seconds flat, your mental stories drain your energy, vibrancy, and faith. 

I call this being stuck in a spin cycle, where our story about a situation causes an emotional reaction, and our emotions then strengthen the story we are telling ourselves.

It wasn’t until I was trying to help a dear friend who was stuck in his story that I discovered a simple process to help people (myself included!) get out of confusion into clarity and pain into peace.

The Warrior Heart practice was born out of my desire to help others untangle their stories and stay with the truth. This was five years ago, and since then the Warrior Heart practice has helped thousands release their stories and find the truth in many diverse areas, from relationships to health, from finances to long-term family patterns.

Here’s how it works.

We cause much of our own suffering because we tangle our feelings with our stories from the present and the past. To find freedom so we can live from creativity, intuition, and insight rather than reaction and despair we need to first separate our feeling from our story, and then explore our truth and our intent.

Just like the heart has four chambers, the Warrior Heart practice’s four chambers are all equally important. 

The Feeling Chamber — In the Feeling Chamber you ask the question, “What am I feeling?” Not why am I feeling this way or how can I not feel this way. Simply feel what you are feeling without trying to fix or change it!

The Story Chamber — In the Story Chamber you ask the question “What am I thinking?” Explore your story fully, not trying to make it better or trying to bypass your story. Be honest about what you are actually saying to yourself, without filters. 

The Truth Chamber — In the Truth Chamber you ask the question, “What do I know is true here?” Do your best to not bring in a better story and call it the truth. The truth is always really simple, with no justification, judgment, or explanation needed.

The Intent Chamber — In the Intent Chamber you ask the question, “What is my intent?” This is your intent with the situation you are untangling; not how you want others to be, but what focus you want to bring back into your experience. Your intent is one word.

Circling back: Once you have moved through the chambers from Feeling to Story, Truth to Intent, you now circle back. Take your intent and hold hands with the truth, then enter into the Story Chamber with new eyes. How else can you perceive your story? Always end in the Feeling Chamber, checking in with how you are feeling.

Here is a really personal example from my own life… this is what showed me that the Warrior Heart practice really works!

A friend and I had spent two years talking and exploring the possibility of being in a romantic relationship. We decided to try something new, so instead of diving in headfirst, we got to know each other slowly. We text-messaged questions to each other and shared our wants and desires. Together we processed unfinished emotions from old relationships. 

One day, a series of events happened, and I decided, Okay, I am in 100 percent. I’m ready to commit to this person and see what a relationship would look like. Unbeknownst to me, he made a decision right around that time: Okay, this is not going to work. I think there is something else better waiting for both of us.

And so, as fate would have it, we both showed up for a weeklong course I was teaching. I was excited to tell him what I’d realized, unaware that he had something else to share with me. Before the class started, I told him, “Can we spend a week alone, just you and me, and really see what is here?” He dropped his gaze. And I felt my stomach plummet to my toes. “Well, there is something I need to share with you, and I’m scared to tell you. I’m attracted to someone here at the workshop.” He went on to tell me that he wanted to follow and explore his attraction to this other woman.

And then over the next week, I watched as he fell in love with someone else.

One day, we were all going on an excursion, and I asked if he wanted to go for a walk with me. “I already have plans,” he said, looking with doe eyes at his new beloved. I felt crushed, and as I watched them walk away, the tears and overwhelm of emotions hit me like a tidal wave. “Okay, time to go to your room,” I said out loud to myself as I stood alone, uncertain about what to do next. 

“What are you feeling, Ash?” Disappointment. Sorrow. Abandoned. “And what is the story?” This always happens! The guy always picks someone else! I’m getting too old to date! “Truth?” He gets to choose. Oh! And I get to choose. “And what is your Intent for this situation?” Unconditional love. I want to love myself and others regardless of their choices. “And what do you want to choose now?” I want to go for a walk and enjoy this beautiful day.

Now, there was much more processing to come around this situation, which stirred up a lot of old past stories and pain. But in that moment, I was free.

Instead of spinning my emotions and story into an illusionary knot of bitterness, blame, or betrayal, I could stay with the truth: He gets to choose whom he wants to be in a relationship with. I get to choose my next step. 

And when I revisited the Story Chamber I saw a totally new way to frame the situation: “The universe loves me so much it is giving me a PhD in letting go!” 

I still had disappointment in the Feeling Chamber which took a few days to clear from my body, but the Warrior Heart practice helped me to feel a sense of excitement and courage around the situation rather than upset and self-punishment.

Now it’s your turn. Pick a current or past time when you were in reaction or triggered, and take yourself through the Chambers. 

Start with the Feeling Chamber. Close your eyes and feel your emotions and the sensations in your body without the story. Practice simply being with what you are feeling, breathing into all tension, tightness, and sensations. This is not always easy, but it is essential that you learn to separate out the feeling from the story, without exiting or repressing your emotions. 

Once you’ve spent some time feeling, then move into the Story Chamber. Imagine you are an archeologist, and you are exploring all the different layers of the story. Often the story you are telling yourself about a present issue is actually connected to past unresolved pain. 

Once you’ve thoroughly explored your story, step into the Truth Chamber. I always start with: “I am breathing.” Be with your breath, in this present moment. Now what else can you see is true? 

And finally, name your intent. Do you want to bring compassion, presence, love, or play into the situation? Your intent can be any word, and is your north star for how you will take action moving forward. Then you’ll go back through the Chambers to keep unweaving and untangling your story. 

We are in a pivotal paradigm shift in the world as we navigate increasingly difficult social justice, and population challenges. And there is an awakening that is also happening, a rise in consciousness and activism that is based in love. My hope is that no matter the challenges or struggles around us that we keep grounding into our own centered, still core so we can bring compassion, creativity, and inner peace back into the world. 

The Warrior Heart Practice was birthed as a response to what we need as humans now…

A simple, effective process to get out of struggle and confusion so we can bring our full radiant, heart-filled creativity to everything we do. 

Blessings on your journey!

You may also enjoy reading Forgiveness: The Path to Embracing My Lion Heart by Laura Bishop

The post Warrior of the Heart: A Simple Process to Move through Difficult Situations appeared first on BEST SELF.

How to navigate our lives by uniquely combining astrology and psychology — and use our planets wisely. Plus a collective chart for early 2020

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The Sun moves into Capricorn on December 21st, then moves into Aquarius on January 21st. Whether Capricorn and Aquarius have prominent positions in your birth chart or not, you can allow the energies of these signs to support and inform you during this darkest, coldest time of year. 

For me, it’s always a challenging time because it is the holiday season and my birthday season. As an Aquarius Sun sign, I revel in my friendships and have many groups in which I am involved. However, come holiday party time I am quite reluctant to have a full calendar. My Taurus Moon sign prefers one-on-one time and I no longer have the capacity to get altered or party for any length of time. My digestive sensitivities over time have won out and now I need to be quite careful with what I eat and what I imbibe.

I become the one leaving early and taking fewer invitations. My closest friends understand me, but sometimes I just feel like an epic wet blanket. The good news is the seasons of Capricorn and Aquarius are great times to finish important work and I use these two months to review the projects of the year and wrap things up. With the cooler weather it is also an invitation to go inward and dig deep into what we have accomplished in the last year, and to take some serious time to express gratitude for those who have helped us along the way.  

As a psychological astrologer, my business booms during this season and I notice that many clients get very anxious at this time of the year because they feel so much pressure to have grand holiday celebrations and bulletproof resolves for the coming year. Many people actually get depressed because their outsized expectations cannot match the real and gritty experiences of family gatherings, and their strict promises around dieting, exercising, and emotional self management cannot be kept.

In Capricorn season, we are reminded to walk our talk and to be diligent in keeping our word. Capricorn calls us to work hard to improve ourselves and the systems we are a part of. 

Its initiatory force can help us move out of a slump and into discipline and accountability. Yet we all need to engage this sense of responsibility with some tenderness and compassion. The worst thing we can do is set harsh goals and fail, and then punish ourselves. Make sane and slow promises to yourself and others and keep them.

It’s also a great time to plan, sort, and organize — to do what’s necessary to prepare for the end of one year and the beginning of another. We can let Capricorn inspire us to get real about the structures we’re part of — our families, maybe, or our workplaces — and to begin to do the hard work of fixing or replacing those that aren’t working well. 

This can be a time of realizing the fruits of our labors, too. If you’ve been striving to achieve a goal or to improve something in your inner world, this might be a time where you recognize yourself and are recognized by others for the work you’ve put in. 

If you notice yourself or others being more bossy or judgmental than usual, that might be some of the less skillful energy of Capricorn at work. More concerned than customary about how others see you? Judgmental? Insecure? Might also be Capricorn’s influence. Forgive yourself and others and remember: one way out is to keep climbing! Work harder and keep trying to improve. That’s the Capricorn way. 

Capricorn is ruled by the planet Saturn, which represents discipline, time, restriction, and karma. 

It reminds us that our lives are our own responsibility, and that when we choose to be accountable and responsible, we heal and enrich not only our own lives, but of those who came before us and will come after us.

Two other planets, Saturn and Pluto, are also in Capricorn this month. Saturn in Capricorn offers tremendous potential for restructuring at every level that which does not serve the common good, while Pluto brings deep transformational force to the current planetary dynamic. In our lifetimes, there has been no better moment for speaking truth to power; for refusing to tolerate a massively harmful status quo; and for the skillful creation of a new and honest order. 

Pluto and Saturn will stay in Capricorn as the Sun moves into Aquarius on January 21st, pouring their transformative power toward the Aquarian vision of collectivity and connection. The frameworks built so solidly during Capricorn season will be ready to fill with inspired community. It will be an ideal time to gather with others to hold and expand the vision of the world in which you all want to live. 

In Aquarius season, you might find yourself preoccupied with visions and decisions, and this can make you feel detached from others. Your brilliant ideas of how things should be — brilliant as they are — may lead you to feel superior to others when others don’t agree with you, or just don’t seem to get it. Take your irritation as a cue to pause, breathe, and hold your fellow humans in empathy and compassion as you work together (remember, Pluto and Saturn in Capricorn will keep inspiring a spirit of work) to build a better world. 

The highest expression of the next two months is a combination of modest and steady accountability for your words and deeds. 

The commitment to your dearest friends and family, which emphasizes the greatest good, and also the particularly quirky gifts of each person you love, including yourself.

You may also enjoy reading Mercury Rising | Understanding Mercury Retrograde by Leslie McGuirk

The post Karma and Reinvention: The Seasons of Capricorn and Aquarius (Dec 21-Feb 21) appeared first on BEST SELF.

One woman’s journey to an extraordinary life — from addiction and disconnection to seizing life in all of its sacredness, opportunity and exquisite beauty 

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There is tremendous sacredness in the seemingly mundane. Ordinary life avails us ample opportunities to connect with a deeper appreciation and grounded sense of gratitude. From this place, ordinary life, I fully recognize that Source sources me. 

Living in Hawaiʻi has granted me the opportunity to find the peaceful paradise within myself. Sure, the outside conditions are exquisite here in this tropical and abundant beauty. 

Yet there is truth in the notion of no escape; wherever we go, there we are. 

When we moved here we brought some things that remind me that we can manufacture our own suffering, wherever we happen to be (epic sunsets and all). Though I left my under-wire bras, nail polish and hair dye on the mainland, some pesky bad habits came along with me. The heavy baggage of impatience, lack of financial freedom and speediness have been unwelcome and fodder for further personal transformation. 

We also brought my husband’s parents and the baggage of that reality. 

We choose love and Aloha over drama and trouble and I committed to not having a typical mother-in-law relationship fraught with uneasiness. So we did this incredible jump across the ocean to an island in the middle of the mighty Pacifc, and along with our young boys, we all set the mighty Moonshot declaration of the “Grand ʻOhana” experiment. 

We share our resources, we multiply our joys and divide our sorrows and we generate as much laughter in this challenging cohabitation as possible. 

The benefits outweigh the costs. A few examples follow to illustrate this. We, as a family, are passionate about being good stewards of the earth. We don’t have to travel to visit each other. We collaborate as a team to eliminate single-use plastic at local events. We plant trees and learn Hawaiʻi lifeways with a local kumu, teacher. We each care for ourselves and we also tend to the space between us. 

The level of self-sovereignty married with the undeniable reality of our interdependence is part of what makes living a journey of transformation so extraordinary. 

If we see the world as messed up, guess what? Life feels pretty messed up. If we feel overly responsible or utterly apathetic, we are not right-sized and we feel overwhelmed. If we see the power of personal transformation, live with a tender heart of caring from a grounded grace of gratitude, we can ask ourselves, Are we showing up as the change we wish to see in the world? We can engage in self-inquiry on a regular basis. 

Then, knowing if we are instrumental, detrimental or inconsequential to any interaction, and courageously willing to change in here to ignite out there, guess what? Life is extraordinary. 

Life is extraordinary…

1. When we operate from flexibility and forgiveness, two essentials of resilience — life is extraordinary.
2. When we cultivate grace and kindness, two aspects of compassion — life is extraordinary.
3. When we live a life of abundance and gratitude, two rewards of service — life is extraordinary.

Healing and transformation are possible. We shall explore these through the lens of Three Realms: Resilience, Compassion and Service and the 12 distinctions of an extraordinary life: trust, focus, repair, faith, clarity, openness, reactivation, energy, interdependence, responsibility, generosity and consciousness.

Numerous opportunities remind me that true peace stems from a deeper inner knowing of unconditional love and compassion, Aloha, in the sacred meaning of the word. 

The quality of my life is not contingent upon external circumstances, and as my inner life transforms, so does my experience of reality.

I’ve had the great good fortune to pause and take the time to digest my life, write my transformational memoir and see the unconscious dictates of my mind give way to the power of conscious breath. I’ve stepped into command central of my nervous system through daily practice of both committed, intentional, high-performance activities as well as the sweet surrender to a higher grace through yoga, meditation and conscious breathwork. My experience of my higher Self is both driven and tender. From this foundation, I’m powerful, generous and magnify an extraordinary life. 

If I could only share 3 things with the world:

1. Recover from addictions that rob your soul of the beauty of the present moment. This includes substances such as alcohol and sugar, as well as technology and distraction. 
2. Heal your relationship with Self, Other, & Spirit, this is the SOS of our time. Heal one, heal them all. Our interconnectedness is staggering. 
3. Contemplate grace daily through yoga and meditation outside. Connect with a higher power daily, Natural Great Beauty is the ultimate Source.

My original Moonshot was to get sober from my decade of debauchery and inherited alcoholism. Next came relational healing with SOS. The foundation for these extraordinary experiences has been thirty plus years of contemplative practice, namely yoga, meditation and more recently, conscious breathwork.

Addictions Recovery, Relational Health, & Contemplative Practice, the ARC of connection

Addiction / ordinary definition: consumption of substance that brings temporary relief, short-term benefit, and then long-term pain, long-term consequences.
Addiction / extraordinary definition: activity resulting in avoidance of direct experience. Anything that robs your soul of the present moment.

Recovery / ordinary definition: a return to a normal state of health, mind or strength. The act of regaining something that is lost.
Recovery / extraordinary definition: a sense of integration and thriving that comes from spiritual awakening and resulting health-promoting activities.

After I got sober, I declared a Masters Degree in Psychology as a Moonshot, then the connection with my beloved (and I proposed marriage to him), then we declared to be responsible adults and create a loving atmosphere for two thriving young boys. There were lots of other extraordinary declarations over the last fifty years; those are just some highlights. 

Examples of other Moonshots from my clients:

• Buy a mango farm on Kauai to get out of the Pacific Northwest in the winter
• Marry your beloved and end a succession of divorce and failed relations
• Write a graphic novel for kids about compassion and magic
• Get out of debt and enjoy financial freedom
• Put your needs at the top of your list, fill your reservoirs of energy so that you can give freely to family and friends and community
• Turn community fundraising events into Plastic-Free Events (end single-use plastic) and promote the health of our ocean ecosystem
• Skillfully express successes and sorrows with a supportive network

You might notice, as we scratch the surface of these desires, that each one of them has to do with some aspect of the health of relationships. In essence, we are choosing to declare optimal relational health, and this is a tall order. In general, we want better relations with Self, Others, and Spirit (SOS).

You matter. Your relationships matter.

Let’s take a look, with curiosity and tenderness, at what relationships in your life are working, and which aren’t.  Again, this is the S.O.S. of our times. Let’s not be alarmed as if we are drowning, let’s do something about it. Let’s answer this signal of distress that our relationships are suffering. We live in a relational reality; everything in your life is a relationship, a connection that benefits from a clear energetic exchange… or not.

Let’s start with what matters most in terms of your relationship with yourself, your connection with your own breath.

This is a powerful technology from Kundalini Yoga tradition. Use this incredible breath tool regularly.

It gives you greater command of the central nervous system. From this place of empowerment comes greater compassion of self. From this arises more skillful means with others. In other words, it works to transform your relationship with yourself to one that is more tender, more compassionate. From this foundation of love, you enjoy better exchanges with others. This is guaranteed.

The Buddha told us this, too. If you are truly loving and kind with yourself, you can never harm another human being. We start by breathing like we love ourselves.

Alternate Nostril Breathing Exercise

• Exhale completely. Release what is no longer needed.
• Place right thumb over right nostril.
• Inhale through your left nostril. This is the body’s calming channel. 
• Pause at the peak of the inhale.
• Close left nostril with right ring finger while releasing the right thumb.
• Exhale out the right nostril.
• Pause at the bottom of the exhale.
• Inhale the right nostril only. This is the energizing channel in your body.
• Pause at peak of inhalation.
• Close right nostril with right thumb while releasing the ring finger.
• Exhale out the left nostril.
• Pause at the bottom of exhalation.
• Inhale the left nostril only.
• Pause at the top of your inhale.
• And repeat for five minutes.
• Release both sides and inhale deeply, exhale slowly.

Now notice the balanced energy in your being. You may perhaps feel more awake if you were tired. You may feel calm if you were anxious. This is the state of balanced pulsation, relaxed joyfulness, calm abiding. You have energy when you need it and calm in your pocket. It is transformational. Do this while you wait for your hot water for tea to boil in the morning. Or before bed.

Be Still, Do Breathing Exercise, Have Ease.

Next, after connection with breathing, I invite you to sit down and connect with your heart through a weekly writing practice. Perhaps you can choose Sunday, which is a perfect day for your media-free day, and to give yourself a chance to connect with your inner landscape. Handwriting connects your heart and mind and helps integrate the wisdom of your inner guidance system. To fully enjoy your experience, start with alternate nostril breathing exercises, enjoy a cup of tea, and do the writing prompts that follow.

Writing Exercise:

These sentence stems have been specifically selected to generate familiarity with the story you tell yourself about your life. Once we fully recognize that we are the author of our lives, we open up new possibilities of enlightenment.

These exercises are to (1) identify the present moment, (2) acknowledge the past, (3) declare your moonshot, (4) focus on one actionable step, (5) ensure you are operating out of your passionate purpose on this planet and (6) cultivate a culture of appreciation. Ready?

1. As I’m sitting here, I’m experiencing…
2. Where I’m from…
3. Where I’d like to be…
4. One thing I can do to get me there…
5. What matters most…
6. One thing I appreciate is…

Perhaps you might find it helpful to read a personal example:

1. As I’m sitting here, I’m experiencing a fullness in my belly after a delicious lunch, a sense of focus and steadiness in completion of my project, and gratitude for a cool breeze on my neck.
2. Where I’m from historically was a sense of indigestion; a combination of feeling too full from food or drink, and simultaneously empty from lack of fulfillment with my efforts.
3. Where I’d like to be is experiencing satiation without consuming or striving more than necessary and feeling a rich fullness from my career efforts.
4. One thing I can do to get me there is to eat until 80% full and work until 80% complete for the day and leave some appetite for life in general for the next day.
5. What matters most is the trust I have in myself; I aspire to do what I say I’m going to do and give that 100% easeful effort and conscious commitment.
6. One thing I appreciate is my recollection of the times I have given 100% without burnout or overextending myself. Examples include my trifecta of bliss: my continuous sobriety, my loving marriage, my deep connection with Natural Great Beauty. Next week I celebrate 25 years being alcohol-free. This is foundational for my spiritual growth. My marriage heals and nudges me to grow beyond my own selfish desires and invites great bliss. The cloud beings that glide across the sky, the ocean waves that grace the shore, the trees that give life-sustaining oxygen; these are a few of the marvels that comprise Natural Great Beauty. 

And so… I rest my case… and this ends as it begins… There is tremendous sacredness in the seemingly mundane. Ordinary life avails us ample opportunities to connect with a deeper appreciation and grounded sense of gratitude. From this place, ordinary life, I fully recognize that Source sources me. 

Moonshot: Aim High, Dive Deep And Live An Extraordinary Life is an invitation to approach the present moment with greater awareness, invite a moment of acceptance, and then act accordingly, from a place of tender, powerful generosity rooted in resilience.  This transformational memoir is for you if you have severed contact with your inner guidance system, felt blamed and shamed, and then criticized others and compromised your morals.

Invitation to Moonshot Movement

Perhaps you suffer from the epidemic in our dominant culture of distraction and busyness. You are addicted to things that rob your soul of the beauty of the present moment. You avoid the direct experience of the moment by chronic ‘doing’ vs. ‘being’. And you rise, like a mighty wave, with other like-minded peeps. You are poised to transform. You recognize what you’ve been doing isn’t getting you where you want to be. You are empowered to change in here to ignite out there.

Let’s start with the end in mind. We are in the midst of a cultural revolution. My purpose-driven passion as a social pioneer is the Moonshot Movement; to transform the world one relationship at a time. Let’s embrace the mind-blowing capacity of love to heal heart dis-ease and end addiction, as we contemplate a new reality. We declare something extraordinary, take committed action and we surrender to a higher grace, as we find ease and enjoyment in the process of transformation.

Perhaps you are now willing to trust yourself to no longer abandon yourself. You are willing to own your super-sensitivity as a superpower. Assertive strength coupled with calm abiding makes for a potent divine feminine and sacred masculine. The world needs this energetic exchange. Join me and declare your Moonshot, that something extraordinary that wouldn’t otherwise happen. And let the Magic unfold. I’m launching a new guidebook and coaching program based upon this.

Moonshot: commitment to something extraordinary; declaring what, by when.

Magic: surrender to something greater than yourself; inviting ease, flow, and grace.

Moonshot Magic is for you if:

1. You’re no longer willing to numb out. Period. You want to be awake, you have that desire and you are now, at this moment, ready to wake-up and basically get over yourself.
2. You’re willing to abandon the ‘us’ and ‘them’ mentality. You operate from a higher consciousness, and as a social pioneer you desire even higher levels of awareness.
3. You’ve had episodes of rage or have carried internalized shame of being a person of privilege. You are now willing to drop the stones of resentment from your heart. You see anger as a teacher and are ready to listen and step into your power; you won’t give up and you won’t back down. You truly understand that hate begets hate.
4. You’ve severed contact with your inner guidance system, felt blamed and shamed, and then criticized others and compromised your morals. You are primed for realignment with your inner guides.
5. You’re willing to be right-sized while simultaneously blowing the lid off mediocrity. Full stop. 
6. You’re willing to own your super-sensitive superpowers. You feel things deeply in your bones and your intuition responds fully to life. You are ready to hone this as a strength versus your Achille’s Heel.
7. You’re willing to see there’s nothing to fix out there. There is no ‘out there’, out there. Change in here, to ignite out there.
8. You recognize that we are in the midst of a cultural revolution and the power of the human heart can guide us. You love nature and recognize relational health is the way to heal the planet.
9. You suffer from the epidemic in our dominant culture of addiction to distraction and busyness. ‘Exhausted’ and ‘overwhelmed’ are frequent complaints, up until now.
10. You avoid direct experience of the moment by chronic ‘doing’ versus ‘being’. You crave more time in your life for what matters most and you are ready to see that time is the great equalizer, we all have the same amount of it in any given day.

If you’re still reading this, you are ready to quit manufacturing your own suffering, stop terrorizing yourself and start tenderizing your heart.

You are now willing and ready to trust yourself to no longer abandon yourself. Join the Moonshot Movement and declare your Moonshot; that something extraordinary that wouldn’t otherwise happen. And become fully empowered on this journey. Be. Do. Have.

Be empowered and prepared for miracles. Do the next right thing. Have the courage to surrender to success. The magic is around us to support us as we declare our Moonshot.

You may also enjoy reading Amazing Grace: Experiencing the extraordinary within the ordinary by Adyashanti

The post Moonshot Magic: Declaring & Committing to Something Extraordinary appeared first on BEST SELF.

A reformed people pleaser not only learns the profound benefits of healthy boundaries in her own life, she deconstructs and reframes them for you

—

A boundary is, in essence, where you end and another person begins. I define it as a limit that you set to define what you will and will not do, or what you will or will not accept or tolerate from others.

Our boundaries are all about who we are and what we want and need. Boundaries help us feel our best and make it possible for us to live the life we most desire. If you want to experience more joy and excitement in your life, it all begins with boundaries.

If you want a life of your own choice, if you want your own needs to be met more often than not, if you want the freedom to be your true self, and if you want better relationships, then you must learn to set them.

Wait a minute. Did I just say that better relationships come from better boundaries? 

This is often the first objection I hear. Turns out, most of us neglect to set boundaries in large part due to our fear that others won’t love or accept us if we do. Won’t the people in your life be angry at you for not acquiescing to their desires, and asserting your own instead? 

Well, some might — at least at first. But over time, if you’re relating with people who truly love you and want you to be happy, your authentic needs will eventually be welcomed. If there’s anything I’ve learned since my divorce, it’s that relationships are much more genuine and intimate when we are completely honest with each other. There’s less emotional discord when both parties are open about their needs. 

Staying in self-sacrifice mode is what blew up my marriage; it’s simply not sustainable. Falsehood and masks are the enemies of intimacy.

We often presuppose that our needs and desires will be in competition with those of others. But what if every party in a relationship could have his or her needs met at the same time? In truth, our own desires aren’t necessarily in opposition to what others want. Voicing them may even help others access their own true wants by example.

What I’ve learned is that if I’m suffering, my relationships suffer. 

My relationships have improved immeasurably since I’ve done my boundary work. I now prioritize self-love in a wholehearted way. I take at least as good care of myself as I take of the other people in my life. In fact, I’ve found that the more I love myself and take care of my own needs, the more love I have available for others. If I continually empty my cup trying to help others, I am left thirsty. It’s like trying to squeeze blood from a stone. But when I fill up — by offering myself self-love and self-respect, in large part by honoring my own boundaries — my cup overflows. I have much more to give to those I love. 

When I set healthy boundaries, I get my own needs and desires met more often than not. I then let everyone else in my life be a grown-up and take responsibility for getting one’s own needs and desires met. 

Bottom line? My needs are my job, and your needs are yours. Setting and keeping our own boundaries is an inside job.

How Do You Know If You Need to Set Boundaries?

Here are several “Boundary Needed!” scenarios I hear frequently from clients. Do any of these sound familiar?

• Your mother calls you five times a day and tells you everything you’re doing wrong in your life.
• Your significant other leaves dirty clothes on the floor knowing you’ll always pick them up.
• Your neighbor plays music very loud, disrupting your sleep.
• Your boss expects you to work overtime without prior notice or extra pay.
• Whenever you go out to eat with your friend, she tells you what you should and shouldn’t eat.
• Your partner makes plans for the two of you without ever asking for your input.
• Your extended family members assume you will tell them every detail about your life.
• You’re freezing in a restaurant, but you don’t want to ask that the heat be turned up.
• Your aunt drops by your house anytime she wants, expecting you to stop what you’re doing and spend time with her.
• Your teenager takes money from your wallet without asking, thinking you won’t mind.
• Your partner consistently puts you down and acts as though you’re overly sensitive if you feel hurt.

How many people’s needs do you shoulder on a regular basis because you haven’t set appropriate boundaries?

For example, it’s time to set some boundaries if…

• You frequently feel like a victim as a result of the behavior of others.
• You feel you have little privacy in your life.
• You usually let others make the plans when you spend time together, allowing them to choose the movie, the restaurant, or the vacation destination.
• You feel like you’re a pushover when others express their desires
• You prefer not to say anything when someone hurts you or cheats you (on purpose or accidentally).
• You feel it’s virtuous when you put others ahead of yourself, and you feel mean and selfish when you try to assert your own desires.
• You often feel resentful toward others because they don’t seem to take your needs into consideration.
• You’re sure you could never set boundaries with certain people in your life.
• You’ve been able to set some clear boundaries in your life but want to graduate to true ‘badassery’ in this area.

If you identify with any of the above, you probably believe some of the following common myths about boundaries:

• Love requires that we set no boundaries.
• Setting boundaries will make me a selfish person.
• Setting boundaries will make everyone hate me.
• I can have the life I want without setting uncomfortable boundaries.
• I can’t set a boundary because I don’t know what to say without causing an argument.
• If I take care of my own needs all the time, no one else will get their needs met.
• If I spend my life setting boundaries, I’ll no longer be a giving, generous person, and no one will want to be around me.
• Boundaries are restrictive, rather than freeing and expansive.
• Once I’ve set a boundary, I’m done and won’t need to set it again.

Do you hold to any of those myths? I’m going to bust every single one of them and reframe the whole conversation around setting limits. You’ll learn practical strategies for locating and managing your boundaries with the care and attention they deserve. Only then will you be able to fully live the life that was meant for you.

Introducing Boundary Badassery

The way of living I’ve just described is what I’ve come to call ‘boundary badassery’. It has taken a lot of work for me to become a ‘boundary badass’, and it never ceases to be a learning process. But ‘boundary ‘badassery’ has completely changed my life for the better. It has brought me greater peace, ease, contentment, and wellbeing in every area of my life. When I ask for what I want and honor my own needs, I no longer feel guilt or a pull of obligation to take care of the other person at my own expense.

It’s funny. The more I honor myself, the less I find myself engaged in conflicts about my boundaries. I have become more sensitive, so I feel pretty far in advance when I’m approaching a boundary! It’s become second nature to name my limits — immediately — when I notice they’re on the horizon. Plus, I do it without worrying others won’t like me anymore. Sound impossible? It’s not, I promise.

Everything I do begins with self-love. That’s because in my opinion, loving ourselves is the foundation of life — including loving others.

When it comes to boundaries, loving ourselves means that we know we have a right to our boundaries, no matter what they are and no matter what anyone else wants. We’ll collaborate and negotiate when and where it makes sense to us, but we don’t abandon the boundaries that are most important to us.

For those of us who have been the people pleasers, the rescuers, the fixers, and the savers — it feels radical to put ourselves in the position of priority, to check in with our own desires first, and to seek our own comfort first. I know it’s frightening, and some of you may be shaking in your shoes at the thought of setting certain boundaries. Trust me — I understand. I’ve been there. But if a do-it-all doormat like me can become a boundary badass, so can you!

Tips for Setting Boundaries That Stick

Most of us would agree that setting effective boundaries is important. Boundaries can protect us, make us feel safe and establish our self-esteem. I’d even go so far as to say that boundaries are essential for helping you make yourself a priority and find greater freedom. Yet, most people still struggle to set and maintain the boundaries needed to live a happy life! 

Becoming a ‘boundary badass’ begins when you understand what boundaries are and what they are not. This check-list can serve as a reminder that YOU have the power in each situation to choose how you will react and what to do next! 

Freedom is yours to claim! 

• A boundary is a limit that you set to define what you will and will not do, or what you will or will not accept or tolerate from others.
• By not setting boundaries, you abandon your true self. The consequences include squandering this life you’ve been given by not living it to the fullest.
• You are the one crossing your own boundaries. It’s no one else’s responsibility to see that your boundaries are not crossed.
• You can’t change others or force them to uphold your boundaries.
• You have a choice: the long-term pain of letting your boundaries be crossed versus the short-term discomfort of setting limits and keeping them.
• Healthy selfishness will be a game-changer in your life.
• Conflict can simply be the illumination of differences, and you can maintain relationships even if you agree to disagree.
• Becoming a ‘boundary badass’ means that you care at least as much about your own wants and needs as you do about anyone else’s.

My Invitation for You

I invite you to allow our exploration of boundaries to feel expansive and hopeful instead of constricting and fearful. While much will be said in my new book, Setting Boundaries Will Set Your Free about initiating boundaries to protect, preserve, or keep something out — your boundaries are also the way you can carefully choose and consciously curate what you want to bring in. 

Your willingness to feel the short-term discomfort of setting boundaries is the gateway to having everything you’re longing for in your life. Truth, connection, and freedom become available to you when you make your preferences your priority, with courage and grace.

Remember, each time you set a healthy boundary, you’re saying YES to YOU.

 
 the boundary is 
 the marker where 
 i can no longer be myself 
 no longer congruent with 
 or authentic to who i am
 
 when i am about to lose myself
 that’s the boundary point
 
 and yet 
 time and time again 
 we miss it
  
 the disconnection from self 
 that amplifies
 the way my attention pulls 
 toward you 
 as if my nervous system 
 is being dragged
 by a magnet 
  
 i have been lost 
 and we are bound 
 i need to find 
 the rhythm 
 of who i am 
 without you 
 while with you still 
  
 the vital recalibration 
 back to me
 knowing where i end
 and you begin 
 
 my body and mind rest
 restore and regulate best 
 when i am alone and 
 not satisfying 
 someone else’s needs
  
 slowing down now 
 i allow myself 
 the rest i have been 
 depriving myself of
 by over-giving 
 and being on high alert
  
 time to liberate me 
 instead of rescuing 
 everyone else
 only i can restore
 my resources
  
 no longer willing to do 
 whatever it takes
 when whatever it takes comes 
 at such a high cost to me
  
 no longer allowing 
 an old commitment to people-pleasing
 external validation and approval 
 to override my commitment 
 to my own truth and authenticity
  
 the patterns we’re running 
 won’t dissolve by 
 someone else making a change
  
 my boundary is mine to honor
  
 we think our withholds 
 will keep us safe 
 but revealing 
 is what allows connection 
 and healing  

You may also enjoy Podcast: Nancy Levin | Dancing into Connection and Trust by Best Self Media

The post Boundary Badassery: Daring to Set Boundaries appeared first on BEST SELF.

How ‘rewilding’ not only calms the nervous system, it reestablishes our bond with the living earth and our true selves

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I have a favorite patch of forest near Lake Mahkeenac in Stockbridge, Massachusetts, where I like to guide my groups. The trail winds through a forest of mixed hardwoods and evergreens, passing several massive eastern white pine trees.

I once walked in these woods on a bitter cold November Sunday with my son, Stryder, when he was four, and my good friend and mentor Moose, the groundskeeper and land steward at Kripalu. On that particular morning, Stryder sat down at the base of a massive tree, closed his eyes, and interlaced his little fingers in a prayer mudra. He sat there, and from what I could tell, prayed or meditated for a full five minutes. I observed him in wonder as my heart filled up to the brim and spilled over with love and gratitude for such a perfect moment.

When Moose let me know that the big tree where my son sat in prayer had recently broken off, about ten feet up, and fallen to the ground, I couldn’t help but feel sadness at the demise of the great tree, also a reminder of my son’s childhood passing by so quickly. I felt my heart opening big, vulnerable to the sweetness of life’s temporary treasures.

Life’s impermanence is on display so fully in the winter woods. Our species evolved, after all, in deep connection with trees. Impermanence is all around us, and though we may try to build walls of security, nature eventually washes them away or blows them down.

It is in surrendering and opening to this essential impermanence of nature that we can begin to live in harmony with our world, taking each moment as a gift and giving thanks for the moments we have, as precious and miraculous as they are.

This time of year can be stressful and hectic, and yet, right in the midst of this busy season comes the winter solstice — marking the shortest day and longest night of the year. It’s an ideal time to gift yourself with an embodied experience of the peace and stillness that can be found in nature during this season — even if you can’t get to the forest.

Rewilding is a return to our essential nature. It is an attempt to reclaim something of what we were before we used words like ‘civilized’ to define ourselves.

~ Micah Mortali

Here are a few ways to do that.

Do a candle or Christmas tree tratak meditation

Tratak means ‘to look or gaze’, and tratak meditation can be practiced on any object. A candle is one of the most traditional objects for tratak — or you can use the lights of your Christmas tree. Wrap yourself up in a blanket or cloak, turn out all the other lights in the room, and settle onto your cushion, letting your gaze rest on the tree or candle flame. When we gaze at flames or soft lights, our beta brainwave/monkey-mind activity shifts into alpha and theta, allowing the mind to become more relaxed, open, and receptive.

Connect with the evergreens

Spending time with the evergreen trees connects us with nature and reminds us of the life force within all beings that flourishes quietly even in the coldest months. Take a walk through the forest and appreciate the trees with all five senses. You could even make a white pine needle tea to sip on the solstice: Gather some white pine needles, drop in a boiling pot of water, and let steep for 1–3 minutes. The tea will smell and taste of the subtle scent and flavor of pine. If you’d like, add a little maple syrup. Allow yourself the time to smell, sip, and savor the experience of this communion with a tree.

Bring your attention to the transformation of water

There’s a profound, magical beauty to the way in which water transforms into ice and snow — an opportunity for us to tune in to the everyday alchemy of nature. Take a walk on or around the solstice with water, in all its forms, as the focus of your awareness.

Practice yoga nidra or restorative yoga

Align with this restful, quiet time of year by doing a slow, inward-focused practice. End your day with a peaceful yoga nidra or a restorative pose, such as supported Child pose: Spread the knees wide, place a bolster or two pillows under your chest and head, and turn your face to one side. Relax into the support, taking long, deep breaths.

Find a ‘sit spot’

The solstice is a great time to start a sit-spot practice; a foundational practice of the Kripalu School of Mindful Outdoor Leadership. Find a place in your yard or a nearby park that you can return to on a regular basis, observing the land and the behavior of the flora and fauna as time passes and the days gradually grow longer. Even five or 10 minutes spent in your spot daily, or every few days, will result in a growing bond with the landscape and a deeper awareness of the subtle seasonal changes.

Burn a yule log outside

According to pagan mythology, the battle between the Oak King and the Holly King comes to its peak on the Winter Solstice, when the Holly King, king of the waning year, is overcome by the Oak King, king of the waxing year, who then reigns supreme until midsummer. The two brothers are in an eternal struggle for the love of the Goddess (Earth), who reigns all year long. The burning of the Yule log marks this cycle of death and rebirth, and reminds us that the spring will come again, and the cycle will continue. May your solstice and New Year be a time of healing, rest, and reflection.

You may also enjoy reading Forest Bathing: How Immersing in Nature Can Help You Reconnect, by Tess Dinapoli

The post Rewilding: Revealing Winter’s Gifts of Impermanence and Connection appeared first on BEST SELF.

A renegade health journalist breaks from holiday convention to nurture a creative calling — a permission slip to do things differently

_

For the past five years, I’ve been hard at work writing and illustrating a book about what I call ‘Healthy Deviance’ — the art of being a healthy person in an unhealthy world. I’ve been so busy researching, drawing, and writing about this norm-defying art, in fact, that for a while there, I became something of a hermit. I copped out of countless social obligations and events. I essentially let a few holiday seasons pass me right by. And you know what? That worked out kind of great!

For several years running, I didn’t get a holiday tree or decorate the house. I didn’t go to parties. I didn’t send out cards. I didn’t go gift shopping. I sure as heck did not bake. I did not give a thought to holiday makeup or festive fashion, or to ‘right-now resolution-setting strategies’, or to ‘New Year, New You!’ workouts. I didn’t konmari my house. I just hunkered down and did my thing, and hoped people would understand.

Please know, I wasn’t abstaining from all this holiday merriment out of any inherent Grinch-iness. I just knew that if I wanted to get the book done, I needed to make discerning (and in some cases difficult) choices about which holiday traditions I would embrace, and which I would forego.

Having a hot buttered rum with my mom while listening to chamber music in her kitchen? Yes. Lighting Christmas Eve luminarias and singing carols with extended family around the apple tree where my father’s and grandmother’s ashes are buried? Yes. Cocktail parties, work functions, media appearances, mall runs, and cinnamon-scented beauty treatments? No. Thank you, really, but no.

It’s not that some of those opportunities I declined wouldn’t have been fun. At the time, I just found that being home and finishing my book seemed, well, funner.

Daring to Do the Season Differently

It is both a lovely and terrible thing that the holidays are steeped in so much tradition. Because from traditions, we harvest rich meaning, memories, and a heartwarming sense of continuity. But traditions can also come bundled with all sorts of painful and annoying constraints, including social expectations, financial burdens, and cultural pressures to conform.

Fulfilling other people’s ideals for holiday gift-giving observances, family celebrations, religious ceremonies, sugar-stuffed buffets, and liquor-drenched bashes can compel us to abandon our own priorities — or leave us feeling like we never had a chance to consider what we wanted from our holidays in the first place.

Here’s what I’ve discovered during my own recent holiday-disrupting experience: It takes courage and energy to depart from the status quo, particularly if you feel the need to explain your thoughts and feelings to others, or to have them support your decisions. But there is a kind, honest, loving way to announce that you are doing the holidays a little (or a lot) differently this year, if you choose. And the people who really love and care about you — with the possible exception of your closest relatives — will always want you to act on your highest choices. Right? Um, right.

In Oddness We Trust

Let us keep in mind that the term ‘holiday’ quite literally means ‘holy day’ — a day that is separated from other days by a sacred quality or meaning. You make things sacred by separating them from the ordinary, the typical, the status-quo.

You can do that however you like. Spend time playing and partying with people you love, or retreat into the rare, quiet bliss of your own solitary company. Intentionally immerse yourself in fun and frivolity, or invest yourself in exceptional quiet and contemplation. Behold the magical wonder that is holiday retail, or decide you’re going to have nothing to do with that consumerist insanity.

If you give yourself one gift this year, make it the repeated affirmation of this simple truth: Your holidays, like the rest of your life, are up to you.

Make some part of your holiday weird, different, exceptional by choice, imbue it with the power of your own focused choosing, and in the process, you can make it sacred.

Try this: Complete the sentence, “This year, I’ve decided to celebrate the holidays by …” Say the words aloud, and repeat the sentence until you come up with something that sounds true and right to you. Notice how that feels. Notice what comes up. Sit with that for a little while. Then decide what, if anything, you’ll do next.

Prepare for Resistance

When you decide to do your holidays differently than others, or just differently than you’ve always done them, you can count on somebody putting up some kind of fight. In many cases, that somebody might be you. Or some part of you, anyway.

It might be the part that fears missing out, that hates disappointing anyone, that dreads the guilt, gossip, judgment, nagging, or full-blown retribution you just know will come from refusing to go along with the ‘normal’ holiday program. It might be the part of you that doubts your own decisions, or that doesn’t exactly know what you want and figures it might be easier to just comply with what others already have planned.

Nobody can make you do what you don’t want to do (at least not in the context of holiday observances), but the amount of pressure that you might feel to accommodate others, and the amount of bone-rattling turbulence you might encounter in steering your way out of well-established ruts could be substantial.

Just know that things might get a little weird, and that some people might get a little peevish, as you experiment with new ways forward.

Unexpected responses may follow as you articulate decisions it never occurred to anyone (including you) that you might make.

What?! You’re skipping the cookie party? You’re not participating in the all-company gift exchange? You’re not coming to the evening church service, showing up at the family cabin, or singing in the traditional singalong this year? You’re not doing the customary New Year’s Bloody Mary brunch or silent wheat-grass detox or even that wonderful charity event you’ve done every year since 1986?

Okay. That’s fine. Even if somebody throws a fit, or you stay home feeling anxious and sorry for yourself. It’s fine, really. Give and share what you feel inspired to give and share, in the moment, with a free and open heart. Allow others to have their fun, and take responsibility for creating the fun (or beauty, or meaning, or space, or whatever good you are craving) that is fun for you.

It’s also fine, by the way, if you experiment with abandoning an old tradition and find that it sucks. That’s great! It turns out you LOVE that cookie party, and missing it was a total disaster that ruined your whole holiday season? Terrific. Now you know. That cookie party is going back on your list, dammit. Or you are going to create a new cookie party you like even better.

This is all good fodder for the holiday experiences you choose to have next. And the ones after that.

Try this: Envision a holiday experience you are craving, traditional or not. Write it down in as much detail as you can, describing when and where it will occur, and including all the sensual details you can regarding how you want this experience to be. How will it look, smell, sound, and taste? What will you personally be doing or enjoying as it unfolds? What attitude or feeling will you be radiating? If you have a supportive friend or partner you’d like to share this lush description with, do that. Then consider how you can make this aspect of your holiday happen. Take steps to cordon off some time and resources to honor this desire, even if you can’t make it happen at 100 percent. See how it feels to imagine creating and embodying the experience you choose.

Beware of Monsters and Machines

As the holidays approach, you will encounter two forces with almost unimaginable power: the multi-headed monster of the media, and the always-grinding gears of the retail-industry machine.

Both would very much like you to buy something, everything, anything, all at once, right now, for as much as they can possibly get you to pay. They would like you to hand over your time, your money, your credit, your attention, your appetites, your synaptic responses, and your cell tissue.

Both would like you to believe that they (and they alone) hold the keys to your holidays being wonderful and joyous, to your home being festive, to your body and your life being as good as they can possibly (read: should) be.

In many cases, these monsters and machines really will have something of value to offer. They will dangle a great many shiny objects and ideas that look good, taste good, feel good, that promise to make your life easier, and to make you look like an even greater success than you already are. But in a great many more cases, these beasts will take more than they give. They will extract more than you agreed to exchange. They will leave you feeling at a loss, confused, bereft of the things you most wanted, which was…what, again?

Oh, yes. To feel present, free, and at peace in your life. To feel connected with the people you love. To feel inspired by a sense of purpose. To feel radiant, resilient, and at ease in your own skin.

Yeah, sorry, there is no app for that. There is no program, no product, no listicle, no 10-step ‘New Year, New You!’ plan that can deliver these things, even though some of them may nudge bits and pieces into closer view. Or seem to.

The only way to have these things, really, is to claim them for yourself. And often, the only way to claim them is to shut off the noise, the promises, the come-ons and money-back guarantees that are forever being hurtled at you from screens, speakers, and display ads.

The only way to really possess and enjoy what you most desire (during the holidays and during your life) is to reclaim the awareness that you, and only you, can cultivate within your own body-mind, moment to moment. It’s that all-too-easy-to-lose awareness about what already feels good, about what already makes your eyes light up and your heart go Mmmm.

Basking in Enough

Here’s the Healthy Deviant truth I learned while writing my book, and that I now tell myself almost daily: You don’t need more things, or more knowledge, to be happy.

You need more space to feel the power of your own life force, and to decide for yourself where you will put it.

Try this: Look up from this article for a moment. Look around. Find something of beauty or pleasure or magic in your midst. Maybe it’s the quality of light out the window. Maybe it’s the feeling of your dog’s muzzle against your foot. Maybe it’s the bass line of the music you have on. Maybe it’s the smell of coffee. Maybe it’s the feeling of that big, deep breath you keep meaning to take in, and then let out, but too often don’t. Put your attention on what’s there and available to be enjoyed. Ask yourself: If I put this much attention on all the good I currently have in my life, would I really need to have more, be more, or know more, to be in a pretty sweet place?

There’s no right answer to that question. There’s just noticing the good in your midst. There’s just the value of embracing what is there and always available when you pull yourself free of the monsters and machines long enough to settle into the space of your own attention.

This is where we will find the real prize and gift we are all after in this lifetime. Not in the tinsel and the trappings and new-and-improved wonder products. Not in the warmed-over, amazing two-for-one offers and ‘BEST BODY EVER!’ promises. But in the moments and choices that allow us to show up with our own lights on and our true shine intact.

My book is done now (yes, it is a thing you can buy!), but I’m still not sending out holiday cards this year. So I’ll put my holiday wishes right here instead: This season, may we all take pleasure in the decisions that help us find and reflect the real source of sparkle at the center of our daily lives, where true joy is generated all year long.

Want More Healthy Deviant Wisdom?

Get a free sneak peek at the introduction to Pilar’s book, The Healthy Deviant, at www.healthydeviant.com. While you are there, check out some of her programs.

Are You a Healthy Deviant? Take the three-minute “Are You a Healthy Deviant?” quiz and find out where you fall on the Healthy Deviant spectrum.

Suggested Listening from The Living Experiment Podcast

• Holidays
• New Year
• Healthy Deviance 2
• Creativity vs. Consumption
• Satisfaction vs. Success

GO TO THE PODCAST

You may also enjoy reading The Making of a Health Deviant: Choosing a Healthy Life in an Unhealthy World, by Pilar Gerasimo

The post Daring To Disrupt: The Healthy Deviant’s Holiday Survival Guide appeared first on BEST SELF.

A visionary entrepreneur reveals his secret life weapon: journaling

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The visionary entrepreneurs, creators, and impact-makers I work with all connect around the idea that there are a tremendous amount of things any one of us can do. But just because we can do something, doesn’t necessarily mean we should. Does that sound familiar?

What is calling you — and is truly yours to do? Better yet, how do you unearth it?

The year 2020 is going to be a touchstone moment.

Perhaps you are already beginning to feel the pull of how this year will truly be different than the one you are leaving behind.

Perfect vision is 20/20, and achieving that clarity is possible through my favorite tool: journaling.

To some, a journal might seem like an assortment of blank pages bound together in a pretty book. But that blank canvas also holds the keys to something very special for all aspects of your life. And hold on, before you start with the excuses…it only needs to take you about 10–15 minutes per day to see results, impactful results.

In fact, peer-reviewed scientific evidence has shown that journaling actually improves your wellbeing and happiness. However, getting into the practice of journaling is not always easy.

Maybe you’ve tried journaling and stopped, or perhaps you’ve never done it because it seems so difficult and time consuming.

Trust me — it works. I’ve been doing it for years and believe it’s one of my secret weapons.

And that’s a big statement.

When I introduce the concept of journaling, the same objections and excuses always come up:

• What if somebody reads my journal?
• Can I really be fully honest in here?
• What do I write about?

First, you have to get out of your own head because your journal is just for you. If you are concerned about somebody else seeing it, get a small lockbox or even hide your journal.

Your journal is a place for getting deeper insights into what truly matters for you. One of the best ways is to ensure you make it a ‘practice’. Just one journal entry won’t cut it. You have to decide to make it a habit, but don’t make it too overwhelming — don’t set yourself up to fail. 

Journaling takes all those thoughts rolling around in our head — the ones that keep surfacing, being ignored and pushed back down, and resurfacing again, everything all jumbled together — and brings sense to them. Writing it down creates a beginning, middle, and end, an ability to see the whole picture — to see it all differently. It is your space to see the big picture, to work through and reassemble your thoughts, fears, beliefs and big ideas.

Think of it as an experiment. Experiments work because there’s a beginning and end. It’s simply something you are giving a go and trying on. Does this fit? Does this feel good? You can then decide if you want to add it to your life. Make it a large enough number of days to feel if it’s making a difference. Just give it some space to breathe and time to activate within you.

What should you write about?

The only thing you’ll need to do is get your pen moving. Typically, the topic I start writing about won’t be the same thing I end my page with.

2020 Journaling

Your journal is a sacred place to dig deeper into what your true intention is for 2020 and beyond.

To start, I’d recommend going out into nature someplace away from your office or home and into a setting that inspires you. Then open up your journal and simply take an entire full page to detail absolutely everything that is going well right now in your life or business. This will put you in a positive mood to begin envisioning your future.

Your next assignment is to take a compelling question and keep going deeper.

I will write my question on the top of a page on my journal and then continue writing more and more answers. Most times the first answers you get will be somewhat basic and won’t have much insight. Keep pushing yourself to come up with more distinctions and to go deeper. Don’t censor yourself either — just write. No one is grading you and it’s just for you.

Here are a couple questions to get you going for your 2020 Vision:

• What is my real work to be done here?
• What brings me the greatest joy, and how can I add more of that to my life?
• How can I more easily ask for exactly what my highest desire is right now?
• What does “effortless effort” look like in this situation?
• What would I do even if I knew it would fail?
• If I could see higher and further, what would I see for 2020?
• What is my greatest vision for 2020 and beyond?

As you are writing, you need to shut off the inner critic that sits on your shoulder, whispering negative feedback into your ear: Oh, that’s stupid. Who are you to get that? Why would that work?, etc.

You cannot creatively pour out your true heart’s desire and also edit yourself at the same time.

Just give yourself a break.

Now, once you have written out your answers, you’ll want to go even further with a technique I learned from my friend, innovation expert Bill Donius. You will be using your non-dominant hand to connect to even greater creativity, intuition, wholeness, dreams, and problem solving. Shake out your hands, and start writing again with your other hand. So, yep, that means if you are righthanded, you’ll use your left hand.

Don’t worry if you think writing with your other hand will be completely illegible — try it because I guarantee you there will be deeper, more insightful answers emerging. Every time I use this process, I’m astounded by the results.

I’ve been able to tap into answers that I never would have imagined and to have the confidence that I’m getting guidance from a more elevated self (some may say my ‘Best Self’[y1] , wink). It sounds a little weird — but it totally works.

The more you use your journal, the more it will become your personal tool for exploration and lighting your way for what’s next. This is a profound gift for unleashing your unlimited potential. My latest creation, The Cosmic Journal is designed to make you re-remember what is truly yours to do here. And sure, there’s no time like the threshold of a new year to start a journal…but the truth is, it doesn’t matter if it’s on the 1^st of January or the middle of June…just start. Simply write and witness what emerges. Journaling is your journey home.

The Cosmic Journal is a unique combination of a powerful oracle, wise sage, and friendly guide rolled into one. You can read it cover to cover or flip to a page at ‘random’ to see the perfect message awaiting you from the Universe, along with a writing prompt to nudge you to uncover your own answers. Learn more at CosmicJournal.com

You may also enjoy reading Practice You: Coming Home to Your Inner Self Through Journaling, by Elena Brower

The post 20/20: Achieving A Clear Life Vision Through Journaling appeared first on BEST SELF.

How life set on overdrive and a health crisis brought one UBER achiever to her knees — and how list-making revealed a new way to do it all

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We’ve become a society obsessed with being busy and doing more. It’s like a badge of honor to be spread too thin. The truth is that kind of thinking feeds the ego and leads to burnout.

I know because it happened to me.

A year after my first book, Listful Thinking: Using Lists to Be More Productive, Highly Successful and Less Stressed, was published my appendix burst.

That’s a very dramatic and dangerous way for your body to tell you to slow down and reprioritize.

I was too busy to listen to the signs my body was sending me.

I didn’t have time to go to the emergency room and so instead I waited too long. Two days too long.

When I finally got to the ER my appendix had ruptured and I needed emergency surgery, followed by another procedure to pull toxins out of my body. In total, I spent eight days in the hospital, six weeks out of work and more than a year recovering.

Launching a book is like having a business and I was saying yes to every networking event, every media inquiry and every speaking engagement. Plus, at the time I was working full-time as a senior health producer at Fox News Channel in New York City. I was juggling all my responsibilities at work, my side hustle, plus all that goes into being a wife, daughter and friend too.

I needed to get back on track. I had no choice but to embrace a new mantra, “Rest is the New Hustle.”

I took everything off my plate. Every appointment, every project, everything. Sometimes just washing my hair was the one thing I did for the day. It gave me a new perspective into how much we put on our plates and what really matters most.

That’s what I had in mind when I was writing my second book, Listful Living: A List-Making Journey to a Less Stressed You. Most of the pressure and stress we are under is self-inflicted and it doesn’t need to be that way. An early reader of the book put it best — she said “the hustle that got you here won’t get you there.” I was stressed, unhappy and needed structure to identify what was truly my priority.

“Rest Is The New Hustle” is a mantra I use when I think I need to do more. Sometimes it’s about doing less and allowing yourself some time to pause and evaluate before jumping in.

To be clear — I’m not saying that taking everything off your to-do list is this magical technique that will alleviate all stress and create the happiness that you’ve always wanted. That’s just not realistic. Instead, I’d like you to consider being more intentional about what you do — and to allow yourself to evaluate if it’s truly worthy of your time. You might be surprised.

The World Health Organization officially recognizes burnout as a condition now. People are taking it more seriously. Nearly 90 percent of all doctor visits are stress related. Stress can tear you apart — body, mind, and soul. It’s so important to have your priorities in place so you can put the right things on your to-do list and avoid burnout.

Here’s an exercise I take readers through in Listful Living:

PRIORITIZE YOUR LIFE

#1: What are your top priorities in life? Think really high-level here — what matters to you most overall? Make a list of those things. You can list anything like sleep, money, nutrition, family, meditation, etc.

#2: Take that list and put it in value order. One is the most important and 10 is the least important.

#3: What is your #1 top priority right now? This will probably change over time. But what is true right now? And make sure to be realistic. This shouldn’t be the thing you wished was your priority, but rather the thing that actually is your priority.

Now that you know this priority, it becomes the lens through which you will look at the world. For instance, if sleep is your #1 priority, then when someone asks you to go to a networking event in the evening you’ll instantly know you can’t attend. It would interfere with your core priority. That doesn’t mean you’re never going to an event again, but it means right now you’re going to pass.

EXAMINE YOUR STRESS STYLE

#1: Pick one scene from the last two months where you felt over-the-top stressed out.

Be as descriptive as possible — use your five senses to remember what you were feeling. Give yourself 10 minutes to write freely about that scene.

#2: How did that feel?

List out how you felt specifically after that very stressful moment in your recent memory. Use single words or phrases to describe your feelings from the scene. 

#3: List out briefly three other times you’ve felt very stressed out over the past year.

#4: Ok now what did you get from this exercise? What is the recurring theme? What are the similarities in these scenes? Perhaps the same person or place pops up in these stressful situations. Right now is not the time for judgment — you’re simply observing.  Write those common themes down.

Next I’d suggest doing similar exercises to uncover what you’d like your life, your stress levels and your productivity to look like. That’s what I’ve done in Listful Living. It’s designed in three parts very intentionally. The first part is where you look at your life without judgement, the second is where you dream about what you’d love your life to look like and then the third part is all about how to practically bring those pieces together. It’s a formula that I’ve used in my own life time and time again and I’m hoping this list-making tool can help you too.

Look. Dream. Practice.

You may also enjoy reading Chronic Stress: The Silent Hormone (and Life) Hijacker, by Dr. Stephanie Gray

The post Rest Is The New Hustle: A Meaningful Life Is Not Measured By Productivity appeared first on BEST SELF.

Wandering the streets of Tangier for an afternoon, Chef Christine Moss soaks up new sights, flavors — and brings home some recipes and life musings

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Soaking up the sights, smells and senses — Chef Christine Moss wanders the streets of Tangier for an afternoon and brings home some recipes and ideas about life

Sometimes a day trip is just enough of a taste of adventure to satiate your wanderlust. But sometimes, a day is simply not enough. I found this out the hard way. When planning my recent trip to Spain, there was so much I wanted to see and taste and experience including a side trip to Tangier, Morocco. So close; only an hour-long ferry ride away from the small Spanish town of Tarifa. How could I not try to experience more than one continent?

A good friend of mine tried to warn me that one day in Tangier would not be enough — and boy he was right! But that didn’t stop me.

I caught the bus from Seville to Tarifa, a three-hour ride and strolled the 10 block distance to my hostel in the old part of town. The guidebooks all read that Tarifa is good for windsurfing and catching the ferry to Morocco and not much else, but I found that to be untrue. Note to self: You can’t believe everything you read in guidebooks.

Tarifa is an amazing, beautiful white pueblo on the coast filled with the friendliest people. Art galleries and restaurants are everywhere you look. Suffice it to say, I could have spent weeks there.

The next morning I caught the early ferry to Tangier. Once again, the guidebooks all warned to watch out for people sweeping you up to take you on tours of the city — all looking for money. While wandering the narrow cobblestone streets, camera in hand, I felt very comfortable and welcomed. Making eye contact, saying Bonjour and Good Morning actually put me at ease. People were very friendly and I found those offering tours to be very respectful.

I think my experience as a single female traveler of color helped me blend in a little. Besides, I’m a native New Yorker. We’re born with a certain amount of street savvy. That is until I tried to speak.

Most people speak Arabic and French, maybe Spanish and a very little bit of English. My Spanish is pretty good and I can understand some French when spoken to me slowly.

I had one moment of conversation with a gentleman who kept apologizing for his bad English. I apologized for not knowing any Arabic, I asked him how to say thank you. “Shukraan” he replied.

If people are wandering around searching for tourists it is because this may be their only income to support their families. When we are kind, it goes a long way. When we open our minds and hearts to see things differently, we soften. And I certainly didn’t travel across the globe to isolate myself. One of the most delicious parts of travel for me is the adventure of meeting and connecting with new people.

One of the first places I noticed (probably because it smelled so good) was a small stand in a doorway selling warm flakey m’smen, a large and layered flatbread sold by the slice and spread with your choice of butter, marmalade, a soft white cheese or Nutella. As they say, When in Rome…I ordered a piece and chose the butter and marmalade.

He folded the bread over itself a few times before wrapping it up in foil. At that point, I hadn’t quite figured out how the money worked. I couldn’t convert Dirhams into Euros or dollars in my head. Maybe it was the heat, which was in the 90’s at 10 am, but I just surrendered and held my hand full of money and asked the man behind the counter for help in a mixture of Spanish, French and English.

He took a few coins and then gave me others back as change. I used the same approach in a little place next door when purchasing an Orangina soda. I could hear him comment to his friend, “American” and so I smiled and said “Yes, American. Shukraan” He then smiled that I knew the Arabic word for ‘thank you’ and said “la shukran ʿla wazhb” or ‘you’re welcome’.

The m’smen was the most delicious bread I have ever eaten.

The flavors were a combination of a lavash and crepes, that filled me for the rest of my day there. In retrospect I could have saved some for later in order to enjoy more things, but at the time I simply couldn’t stop eating it.

I purchased a ticket for a tour bus to see the Caves of Hercules and Cap Spartel, a lighthouse located where the Atlantic Ocean meets the Mediterranean. These sites are located a few miles outside of the city allowing me to see parts of Tangier and the coastline that I would have never have experienced just walking around. While, I’m glad I went, it did take up much of the day.

The mountains were full of mist and eucalyptus trees. In a field there was a group of children throwing rocks at cars who ran away when the bus driver yelled at them out the window. There were tents set up here and there along the beach with campfires. The sand was a beautiful brick red color, the water turquoise blue and the sea foam from the crashing waves, pure white. The air was fresh and green and I kept saying to myself over and over, I am in Africa, I am in Africa to firmly ground it my memories.

Once back outside the old city walls, I wandered within again and sat at an outdoor cafe. I ordered a hot mint tea and watched the daily life of this particular street as it happened by. There were cats and tourists, delivery trucks, bicycles and motorbikes. There were young girls in headscarves, blue jeans and fuzzy slippers carrying plates covered by plastic bags to the local oven around the corner.

The glass of mint tea was so hot that I couldn’t even touch it. So I sat and waited and watched and relaxed. I breathed into that moment and savored it.

People at the next tables made conversation with me, “Where are you from, how do you like it here?” I turned down the chance to purchase a watch. Finally, I used my own scarf to pick up the glass and sip some tea. Very sweet and very hot, it was exactly what my body needed. I felt immediately recharged and full of energy for the return ferry trip back to Spain.

One day in Tangier was definitely not enough — or perhaps it was…because in one day, I fell in love with the people, the land, the air and the ocean.

I will return for more than a day, to be sure. Stay tuned. In the meantime here is a recipe for m’smen to make at home. And while you are at it, enjoy with some super hot mint tea to accompany it. It is a great reminder to take pause, to savor the seemingly small moments that, strung together, provide a scrapbook of memories.

You may also enjoy other articles and recipes from Chef Christine Moss on her Author Page.

The post A Day In Tangier: The Awakening of a Chef’s Senses and Soul appeared first on BEST SELF.

From the abyss of depression and suicidal yearnings, one woman sets off on an adventure of living in her van — in search of herself, healing and authentic wellbeing

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Four years ago I planned to kill myself.

I settled into the driver’s seat of my 2010 Toyota Sienna, wiggled a bit to get comfortable, and clutched the steering wheel to remain steady. It took more courage than I’d anticipated to start the engine. I glanced over my shoulder at my studio cottage behind me. I had such deep affection for my tiny home. Choking on the burning lump in my throat, I turned the key in the ignition. My foot slowly depressed the gas pedal. I’d chosen the vernal equinox for this genesis. Surrounded by sunny yellow forsythia and vibrant purple crocuses heralding spring. I believed I would soar.

What’s the worst that can happen?

Every decision I face is evaluated by that one simple question.

I’d been divorced for several years, my son was in college, work was work, and I was battling an unrelenting restlessness. It had become physical. I could feel it in the pit of my stomach as the uncanny sensation of butterflies. In my struggle to identify and satiate this affliction I spent hours lost in internet rabbit holes searching for what I thought I needed.

When I finally found the cure it was more than shocking.

It was van life.

A nomadic lifestyle in which one lives, works, plays, and travels in a van. Like a hippie. Or a bar band. I had no idea this subculture existed, and that it was a growing trend! But once discovered, I knew I wanted in. Badly.

Upon further research I developed growing concerns. What would people think? Is this a mid-life crisis?

What if I failed?

I countered each mental roadblock with the query, “What’s the worst that can happen?”

This one question allowed me to determine if a perceived worst-case scenario was emotional or practical. I learned that my emotional issues were fear-based. By isolating each fear and breaking them down, they lost their power.

The analysis helped recalibrate my perception of success, sell my belongings, and downsize to a one-room cottage in anticipation of embarking on nomad life. It was happening. I was on my way!

Then my mother died.

My mother had succumbed to Alzheimer’s disease. At its onset, I moved across the country with my son to be near her and my father, and I had been her caretaker for a time. The disease defeated us. We moved her into a memory care facility and watched as she faded away to a place we couldn’t follow. My guilt over failing her was implacable.

Shame imprisoned me in a sinister abyss of depression.

Paralyzed by the weight of my failure I withdrew from life outside my tiny home. My job performance plummeted. There was no respite, but for sleep. I yearned to sleep forever. I begged for Death. When it didn’t come I plotted ways to meet it.

For a moment, I rested my head on the steering wheel of the minivan. It was time. I sat up straight, breathed deeply, and took inventory once more.

The one question endured even when contemplating my suicide, “What’s the worst that can happen?” 

The conclusion was undeniable, “It would destroy my son.”

Killing myself seemed the cruelest act I could perpetrate against the person I love most. Although he’s a grown man, I still do my best as a beacon he can look to at every stage of life. Even as a guide for what not to do.

Suicide conflicted with my parenting philosophy.

While I was too sick to research or reach out for help, I had no problem binging Netflix, overeating, drinking way too much red wine, and generally avoiding any physical activity or social interaction.

That’s still pretty much my ideal weekend. Without the wanting to die part.

Depression is a lifelong challenge I hid for years. That major depressive episode profoundly affected my perspective.

I finally granted myself permission to fully embrace my depression, and learned to live with it. Leaning into its desolation helped me discover how to remedy my despair.

It took some time for my ailing psyche to get there, but when it did it was a genuine epiphany: I should at once eliminate everything that did not benefit my mental wellness.

My job topped the list. So I quit.

Months passed before I began to feel anything approximating wellness. Nowhere did I feel better than on the road. I experimented with car dwelling. Venturing further for longer periods. My first solo cross-country adventure over three months was electrifyingly life-altering. The thrill of exploring new places was as exhilarating as I’d dreamed. But traveling alone astonished me in a most unexpected way.

It cloaked me in anonymity. Feeling unseen granted me a freedom I’d never felt before. It released me from the burden of others’ expectations. There was only me.

I could go anywhere and do anything. It had me feeling as close to comfortable in my own skin as I’d ever been. I was seeing myself from the inside out. I was smitten with the power of my liberation. Living as a nomad would be a decision I knew I wouldn’t regret.

There were logistics to consider before I actually hit the road full-time. Indecision that caused sleepless nights. Unanticipated problems to solve. Always gauging perceived risks with, “What’s the worst that can happen?”

As my foot pressed the gas pedal of the minivan, my own restlessness matched the vibrating impatience of the impending spring. I had been propelled to this very moment. Not by fate. By my own orchestration.

I eased out of the driveway of my tiny house for the last time. Alive. Captain of my own life for the first time.

This lifestyle isn’t glamorous or easy. The principal hardship is finding safe haven night after night. There’s disequilibrium in the exceeding amount of exposure to vulnerability. Underlying even the most ordinary task is the perpetual low hum of my apprehension.

I don’t travel in search of comfort. The adventure is in welcoming discomfort. In discovery. In navigating the unknown. Every challenge met is a victory of my ingenuity and spiritual endurance. I am empowered. And it is intoxicating.

In the past nine months I’ve rolled over twenty-thousand miles undaunted. Northeast from my former home in North Carolina, across the vast wilderness of Canada from Nova Scotia to British Columbia; now south down the rugged Pacific Coast Highway.

I’ve hiked lake shores crowded with 3-billion-year-old rock, photographed the deserted Golden Gate Bridge as San Francisco slumbered, dizzied at the depth of a billion stars in the blackest sky, and worshipped the sunrise from a mountaintop on my birthday.

Friends tell me I’m fearless. That’s not true. I live with my fears and let my depression walk alongside me. That is who I am. Nowhere am I more my badass self than on the road. In a minivan.

What’s the worst that can happen?

You may also enjoy reading Togetherness Redefined: A Family’s Story of Life on the Road, by Celeste Orr.

The post #VanLife: Facing Off With Depression & Discovering Freedom On The Road appeared first on BEST SELF.

Talking human potential, safe technology, quantum physics —and reclaiming our personal power with author and mastery coach Olga Sheean

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In the summer of 2018, I awakened in a fog to find myself lost… metaphysically, logistically and emotionally. A new business partnership was floundering. A personal relationship was crashing. My physical health was spiraling. My home was environmentally toxic. My social life was stagnant. And the world at large felt broken. Again. 

But mine is not a Hallmark movie fairytale of a fast-paced New York City woman who had it all and suddenly lost it, only to emerge on a Christmas tree farm in Vermont to meet the love of her life after adorably falling heels first into a snowbank in front of Kris Kringle’s village in the town square. 

No.

In fact, I had already moved through bewildering steps of displacement and dispossession many years prior. Chronically ill for decades, existentially worn out, a string of failed relationships, an abruptly interrupted career, a whirlwind of geographical relocation, and extended periods of financial distress. But through most of that, I came to realize, “Okay. I get it. I accept the epic quest set forth for me, equal parts Lord of the Rings, The Matrix, and Divergent. My life is one less ordinary.” But that insight didn’t seem to heal anything. 

I’d already done the stuff that you’re “supposed” to do in such circumstances — yoga, meditation, retreats, cognitive behavioral therapy, blood tests, doctor’s visits, acupuncture, Reiki, naturopathy, ending toxic relationships, purifying my home, spending a day with a Shaman, letting go, moving on… and ultimately starting again, somewhere new, from nothing. Yet despite all the work and the therapies, everything fell apart that June of 2018. Again. In a strangely familiar pattern. But this time, in a magnificently dramatic way. 

There was clearly no quick magical fix to what ailed me. Nonetheless, there was a path that returned me to everyday magic.

At the time of this new crisis, I’d just finishing reading EMF Off! A call to consciousness in our misguidedly microwaved world by Olga Sheean. This book found its way to me through the usual EMF (electro magnetic frequencies) circles. For me, a writer who covers the impact of electromagnetic fields on environmental and public health, those circles contain some exceptional voices and minds. 

Olga’s name stood out to me as the former United Nations employee who, in recent years, had released a number of scientifically rich publications to the World Health Organization, Health Canada, and other international governing bodies, calling for actionable change and accountability to protect humanity and the Earth against wireless radiation. Why a former photojournalist for World Wide Fund for Nature International in Switzerland would pen not only these documents, but also a book on EMFs and consciousness, is testament to Olga’s unique work in human dynamics and her own personal and health journey.   

I wanted to learn more. Navigating to her website, I was intrigued by her coaching consultations that spoke of transformative work, quantum physics, and personal magnetism. I sensed a kindred spirit as, like me, Olga had experienced life-altering, adverse health effects from radio frequency radiation (i.e. Wi-Fi, cell towers, and other wirelessly enabled devices), which sent us down parallel paths toward science writing and research. I wanted to learn her methodology for healing, and for dealing with not just my own crises, but those at large in the world. So we had a chat, and began working together.

Olga challenged me more than anyone else ever has. But she also helped me shift myself and my reality, more than any of her predecessors. Plus, as I can personally attest, she has the most awesome lyrical Irish accent. Which made interviewing Olga simply enchanting. Below is that conversation: 

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Alison Main: You are a writer, an editor, a relationship therapist, a mastery coach, a former photojournalist, and well, so much more. But before I define you…How do you see yourself? Who is Olga Sheean?       

Olga Sheean: I’m passionate about the deeper truth, always exploring and evolving as I discover another piece of the human puzzle, and digging down to the hidden gems and greatness buried inside every one of us. 

I’m also a disruptive thinker who likes to debunk the myths and subconscious programs that prevent us from seeing who we really are. 

And I’m a creative juxtapositioner, combining unlikely elements that inspire people to think beyond conventional limits. I love to laugh and to make others laugh, knowing how uplifting and healing it can be, especially if we are ill or struggling with challenges. 

So, essentially, I’m dedicated to exploring and exposing our true nature, the nature of reality, and the power of nature itself. I believe we need to understand and embrace all three of those in order to resolve what’s happening in the world and know how to thrive. 

AM: The term “empowerment coach” is probably self-limiting in light of your work. How have you come to this uniquely curated place?  

OS: I’ve been doing this for 26 years, and I started by working on myself. When we truly understand ourselves, we begin to understand human nature and the nature of reality. 

Empowerment has lots of different connotations. For me, it’s about living proactively, inspired by healthy self-worth to make enlightened choices, be daringly creative, practice emotional honesty, and be all that we can be. It’s about honoring our multi-dimensional selves, rather than living by someone else’s rules or limitations.  And it’s about reconnecting with the truth buried beneath the many layers of disconnectedness and programming that cloud our vision of what’s possible. 

AM: Kind of like a hero’s journey?

OS: I think we are all on a journey of self-discovery, and many of us dodge the call to greatness due to conditioning that limits our sense of self. So I explore the subconscious programming that drives that, and I look at each individual’s circumstances, which are reflections of what is missing, distorted or suppressed. That tells me everything I need to know about that person—the dynamics to address, the insecurities caused by their early programming, the purpose of their challenges, their hidden strengths, how they tend to sabotage their success, and what they are being called upon to do. 

AM: It’s hard work! 

OS: It can be, but you reach a point where it starts to be fun. When you start to work your emotional and spiritual muscles, and you activate your higher faculties, you begin to see that you can create magic in your life. But it doesn’t mean that you never have challenges. It means that your challenges become much more interesting and rewarding as you reach higher and master more of yourself. 

AM: In your work, you use the term “conscious evolution.” What does that mean?

OS: Conscious evolution is about mindfully choosing to grow, to know our selves and to live with focused intention. It means being aware of how we feel and what we want, and making conscious choices in favor of our personal evolution and the conscious living planet on which we depend. 

We now know from quantum physics that the universe is a living entity, and that consciousness, which you could also call focused awareness, can actually change things. 

Our thoughts are electrical. Our emotions are magnetic. We are always transmitting signals to each other and out into the world, and we are always having an impact, whether we are aware of it or not. 

Consciousness is also about slowing things down and bringing ourselves into the present moment. Most of the time, we are moving so fast and doing so many things that we cannot process or integrate our experiences. And if we don’t do that, we can’t connect with our feelings, which means we can’t proactively orchestrate our lives. We must be present in order to grow and evolve.

AM: How does this relate to our individual journeys toward healing, success, self-worth, and everyday magic?  

OS: I look at social media and all of the world’s problems… we were never intended to be exposed to so much crisis, mayhem and dysfunction. This has created a tremendous amount of stress, overwhelm, trauma, reactivity and disconnectedness.We’re not equipped to cope with that much grief, sadness and tragedy, especially if we are in a state of reactivity rather than being at peace with ourselves.But we are meant to connect with universal intelligence — the seamless, unified field of energy that connects us all. Becoming conscious of our interconnectedness reminds us of our impact on others and on our planet. And tapping into that consciousness inspires us, uplifts us, and opens us up to a dimension of infinite possibilities. 

AM: So, if we transmit positive energy, we can effect positive change, not just in our own lives, but in the world at large? 

OS: Yes. It’s one of the principles of quantum physics. We have the capacity to change things. We can use our minds to elevate our consciousness and literally make our minds matter. 

There is a crescendo of crises in our world because we are focused on the fallout and reacting to the symptoms, without addressing the underlying cause. 

Every crisis is a call to empowerment. If we don’t address the root cause of what’s happening, our symptoms get worse because they’re designed to get our attention so we get the message and reconnect with the deeper truth. 

AM: When a new, but familiar circumstance appears in front of me, I’ve found myself exclaiming out loud to the universe, “What now? What lesson did I not learn the last time?!” Do you see these patterns in your work? Where people meet the same challenge, and it escalates over time if they have failed to address a core issue? 

OS: Yes. Absolutely. We all have these patterns. And they are caused by our negative programming — the limiting beliefs, self-doubts, insecurities, negative projections or expectations that get passed on by parents, teachers, care-givers and religious leaders. And, ironically, even though we may see it as negative stuff that we want to discard, it takes us on a very particular path. 

If we understand what our programming is about, and if we choose to address it, we end up going on an amazing journey towards fulfillment. Each piece of programming is designed to put us in touch with a particular part of ourselves that is asking to be developed and expressed. 

AM: How do you address this? 

OS: One of the things that I work on is helping people to fill in their “missing pieces.” These are the essential formative qualities that failed to be cultivated in us when we were growing up — qualities such as acceptance, respect, support, encouragement, validation, self-expression. If they were cultivated in us in a loving, wholesome way, we would be whole, confident and fulfilled. We would know and love who we are, and we would go forth in life thriving and expressing that. 

But because we all have these missing pieces, we end up distorted, insecure, conflicted or incomplete. And we miss out on the qualities that promote healthy self-worth, which has a huge impact on our lives.

Our programming determines the people, challenges and circumstances that we attract.

When we are emotionally whole, we become magnetic for the fullness of life that we desire. We don’t even need to specifically strive towards something. But we need to take certain actions and embody the qualities that we want to see in our interactions and relationships. 

AM: What’s an example of how missing pieces may impact us?  

Acceptance is the #1 missing piece for everybody. If we fail to get healthy self-acceptance cultivated within us, we can spend our whole lives looking for love, acceptance and approval from others. And, because of that, we make compromises, we say yes when we want to say no, we make other people’s needs more important than ours, and we might do things for the sake of getting a favorable outcome. We will do anything, in fact, to avoid being rejected. We live in fear of rejection, even if we’re not aware of that. Ironically, this means that we self-reject in the hope of being accepted by others.

We could sit all day and say “I love myself. I’m amazing. I’m beautiful.” But it wouldn’t change anything if we’re not doing the actions that demonstrate that. Our subconscious is always listening and watching, and it needs to hear us love, accept, validate and support ourselves. When we do that, we change the programming, we fill in what’s been missing, and we attract more of the qualities that we are embodying. 

AM: So, purely from a relationship standpoint, until we fill in those missing pieces, are we attracting people who are already whole and can embody those missing pieces we seek? Or are we attracting people who have the same missing pieces as we do? 

OS: In intimate relationships, we will attract people with the same missing pieces as us. And that can be heartbreaking, because we’re really hoping that they will give us what has been missing, such as affection, understanding or tenderness. 

The goal, of course, is to get us to see that it’s missing in us, not to blame the other person for not giving it to us, which is what we often end up doing.

So we need to understand that we have that power, that it’s inside us. And if we fill in what’s emotionally missing in us, we break that cycle. 

Going back to what you said, “What lesson did I not learn the last time?” Well, I would say you probably got the lesson, but you may not have done the homework of filling in whatever was missing for you in that relationship.

And it’s also in how we deal with the other person. We may know that we deserve a better relationship, or a better partner. But if we don’t take ownership of that and start to embody that worthiness in the way we think, talk, act and interact, then we make it all about the other person. And if we haven’t changed what’s missing inside us, we will attract somebody else to show us that same thing. 

AM: You’ve written and published extensively on the health impacts of wireless radiation. Have you noticed any shift in public awareness and acceptance of this issue? 

OS: People have been feeling powerless to change things, because the industry appears to be so massive and daunting and impenetrable. They cannot see how one single person could make a difference. 

But I see that many more people are realizing how much authority we have surrendered, and how much control we’ve given to governments and industry. And because we’ve surrendered accountability for our own lives, government and industry see no reason to be accountable to us. 

Here, too, we get to see what’s missing in us if we look at what’s missing in our governments. Look at what they are doing to us or failing to give us. In irradiating us, they are violating our boundaries and our rights; they’re not listening to us; they’re harming our health; and they’re not taking us seriously. But we are doing all of those things and more to ourselves. Government and industry are doing to us exactly what we are doing to ourselves. We taught them how to treat us. We want them to fix things so we don’t have to, so we give them the authority to make choices on our behalf.

That’s part of the programming — surrendering responsibility, being taught to defer to an outside authority. But government and industry can’t fix things if our dysfunction and programming are the problem — and if we are the solution. Some people are beginning to get this and are taking back responsibility for their own lives and making choices that promote the kind of world they say they want to see. 

AM: I’ve noticed that simple suggestions like “Disable your Wi-Fi at night” or “Maintain distance between your mobile phone and your body” often elicit anxiety and fear. Why such extreme reactions to these healthy tips? Is this more than tech addiction? 

OS: I think it goes deeper than addiction. There’s a deep unmet need. 

Our tech-driven culture is a reflection of all that we have lost, over many generations. 

If we go back in time to the early 300s, when the early Roman Church State forcibly indoctrinated our ancestors, we discover a tragic untold story that marked a pivotal point in our history, because it profoundly subverted our personal autonomy for political purposes and radically derailed our evolution. 

It was a ruthless takeover that destroyed the ancient wisdom of our ancestors, eradicating their culture of self-knowledge, enlightenment and co-evolution with nature. This bred fear, self-rejection and spiritual separation — all of which is now so deeply embedded in the human psyche that we are oblivious to the worldwide havoc it has caused. 

Being told that we were innately sinful, unworthy and in need of redemption, the very opposite of our true nature, promoted shame and self-rejection, which led to judgement, condemnation and destructive behavior — toward ourselves and our planet. 

When we were forced to defer to an external authority, we also lost our spiritual autonomy and faith in self, which is why we now cede so much power and responsibility to government and industry. And we lost the deep connection to nature that our ancestors knew was vital for our survival and healthy evolution. Now, our deep need for spiritual connection, emotional nourishment, validation and belonging results in all kinds of addictions and dysfunction that prevent most people from understanding the deeper truth.

Coming back to self — even finding self — therefore requires tremendous awareness, forgiveness and self-love.

AM: What do we need for real change in the world? A consciousness revolution? Maybe “revolution” is the wrong word. A consciousness shift? 

OS: I think you said it. We need to become conscious of the fact that we’ve lost consciousness. We need to reconnect and wake up to the truth, which means taking responsibility for the power we have to change things. Huge chunks of ourselves are not being activated, embodied or leveraged in any way to create the kind of life that we’d like to have. 

We are suffering from a case of global PTSD.

People are traumatized by what’s happening. When you’re emotionally burnt out, you don’t want to do anything. You just want those other people, out there, the ones who messed it up, to fix it. But only we can do that, by becoming conscious of what’s really going on and reclaiming our rightful autonomy.

AM: It’s easy to default into a mentality of “I’m tired, I can’t fix this, let me play with a virtual toy for the next 10 hours.” It’s similar to going through something traumatic on a micro-scale, like breaking up with a romantic partner. You’re sad and lonely, so you want ice cream and Netflix. This is the same thing, but on a macro-scale. But maybe ice cream and Netflix are not the things people should be doing to truly heal. 

OS: You’re right. We seek comfort and, if that’s all we have, we’ll take it. Because if we don’t know what’s causing our emotional or spiritual hunger, we’ll go for an external fix, such as our smartphone and social media, that distracts us and gives us some sense of connection or engagement. If we can’t see how to give ourselves what’s missing, how to lift and love ourselves, then we’ll take the ice cream and the Netflix. 

The chaos in our world feels too daunting for us to resolve, so we compensate with comfort and distraction.  

AM: The tech and telecom industries have certainly given us a plethora of immediate gratification gadgets. Those of us who have started to feel the physical effects of this wireless technology, who have quite literally needed to put the wireless thing down to heal, have been thrown into this place where we realize that there has to be more than these devices and virtual realms. 

OS: We talk a lot about sensitivity, but I see that word differently now. Because of our burnout, many of us are emotionally numb and disconnected because that’s how we learned to deal with things. So this “sensitivity” is really our senses coming back to us — and throwing many of us into overwhelm because of all the stimuli.

And it’s not just about wireless technologies. We’ve also got vaccines, climate change, chemical toxins, environmental destruction, which are all part of the same chain. The irradiation of the planet is just the latest transgression. Things always get progressively worse, because they’re designed to get our attention and bring us back to our senses. 

AM: So this really comes back then to our own power. 

OS: Yes. And it’s hard for us to make these connections. We have very powerfully attracted this stuff into our environment. If we can get that piece, if we can step back from the blaming, the judging, the self-rejection, then we just might open the door to something amazing. 

The key thing to remember in all of this is that our programming will always override logic, reason, science, and even the most compelling arguments for saving our planet.

That’s why we’re looking at the destruction of our planet right now and thinking, “This is madness. Surely the people doing it must realize this is going to kill them, too, right?” But when you see how far removed we are from the things that nourish, heal, empower and inspire us, you see how dehumanized and deeply programmed we are. That’s why the science doesn’t penetrate. The programming will always override it. 

AM: I’ve always wondered why nothing seems to get through to people on the wireless health issue — the science, emotional stories, infographics, statistics, court cases, rallies. Nothing.

OS: It’s true. Nothing gets through because it’s our dysfunction that’s driving things. Our programming blinds us to what’s really going on — inside and out. 

Only by changing ourselves can we change the world. To me, that’s the solution right there.

If we all put our energy, focus, intentions and actions into promoting the positive, healthy, thriving world that we want, rather than giving all of our energy to sharing the bad news, we would have an extraordinary impact. 

AM: When you follow environmental health news, social media becomes its own traumatic assault. It’s one horrible thing after another. Even I don’t want to read it, and I write on this. Those who are blithely enjoying a symbiotic life with their wireless and virtual toys are certainly not going to want to engage with this information. They’ll either think “What’s the big deal?” or “Great. Just one more horrible thing.” But from hurricane destruction to wireless technology, we are just not reacting to news and information the way we used to. 

OS: We don’t have the mental capacity or the emotional resilience to do so. Instead, we feed the drama. But there’s also victimhood in there. It’s a distorted way of trying to get a sense of importance. We say there are terrible things being done to us, and we have a sense of righteous indignation, when in reality we’re doing many of these things to ourselves. 

If we stay stuck in that victim status, we remain disempowered. We are saying, “I’m powerless, I can’t fix this, these people are more powerful than me, there’s nothing I can do.” 

Victimhood does not serve us. We’ve all been there, at some point, but we won’t feel good about ourselves if we’re not achieving anything, and we really need to create the magic. 

There is no glory in being a victim. We can be victors when we understand how we work. 

AM: In my own work, I never wrote from a victimized vantage point. In fact, my intention was the opposite — to reclaim my own power and the power of universal energy. And yet, some people have taken my work, twisted it, and categorized me an “EHS sufferer” or “a victim of wireless technology.” I repeatedly message back, “I am not a victim. We are not victims.” But that doesn’t seem to resonate with some people.

OS: There’s power in being emotionally honest and exposing our own humanness. Due to programming, we are all dysfunctional, in some way, and the more we try to pretend we are okay (while subconsciously believing the opposite), the more the programming gets reinforced. So it’s kind of a conundrum. No, we don’t want to be victims. We don’t want to give that airtime, even though we’ll find lots of company if we do. But there’s also value in declaring that we’ve been there, done that, we were stuck there for a while, and now we’re out of that, because we know that’s not the answer.

The more accepting we are of ourselves, including the wobbly bits that come from negative programming, the more positively magnetic we become.

AM: Your book, EMF Off! is a “wireless wake-up call and a message for all humanity.” What led you to write it?   

OS: I felt there was nothing else out there that brought all of these elements together in one holistic view: the personal experience; the science of what wireless technology can do to us; the deeper truth about what’s happening; and the urgent need for us to regain consciousness and wake up to that truth. 

There’s a lot of talk about corruption in government and industry, but the biggest corruption of all — the corruption of our true selves— is happening inside us. Ultimately, I see my book as a message of hope, a deeper understanding about the nature of reality and our human nature. It’s resolving that internal conflict so we can be at peace and fully in charge of our lives. 

AM: You have a new publication, Tell Me The Truth. Tell me about the core message of that book.

OS: It’s about consciously reclaiming self-responsibility, and making conscious choices about the kind of world we say we want. It’s an invitation to show up and be powerful. 

I look at some of the things we say, the projections we have, the blame, and I turn them around. For example, if you don’t like the education system, what are you doing to educate yourself? You don’t like all the electronic surveillance in your life? How diligently do you monitor your words, behaviors, boundaries? You don’t like that governments aren’t accountable to us? How accountable are you to others about your choices? 

It’s an invitation to dip into that deeper truth, to embrace it, to start living it and see what shifts.

AM: What about the emergence of virtual reality and augmented reality… How much are these technologies taking us away from ourselves and our connections?

OS: It’s a reflection of what we’ve lost. It’s the inevitable culmination of what we’ve disconnected from. All this virtual and artificial stuff, in the larger divine plan, is designed to take us back to the true reality, to our human intelligence and our higher faculties. 

There is a deeper purpose and a bigger picture. If I’m caught up in a virtual reality, if I’m tantalized by artificiality, what does that say about me? To what extent am I human? What have I lost? What do I need to get back? 

We research health issues, wireless technologies, climate change, vaccines. But how much do we research ourselves? We are being pushed to become experts in our own humanness. I think this is why 5G has so galvanized people to finally push back, because our tech-centric society has become so inhuman. 

AM: When I look at where VR and AI has the potential to go, including transhumanism, most of it unnerves me. 

OS: That’s the part I should emphasize. Because it’s all so daunting, I think it’s really important to inspire, uplift and enlighten ourselves. We need to get more excited about being empowered humans than about using inanimate gadgets. Many of the things our gadgets can do, we can do better, and to far greater effect, when we activate our higher faculties. 

Our gadgets may give us a sense of being powerful and connected, but there’s a deeper part of us that’s completely disconnected. 

Our digital gadgets cannot compare to our own power. It’s like trying to be powerful by proxy, but it’s a poor runner-up to actually being powerfully human.

We are creators. We have the capacity to literally create our ideal reality. And there’s nothing more amazing than that.

AM: Can we use our digital technologies in a way that does not compromise our humanity? 

OS: Yes. We can make these technologies work for us, not be a slave to them. When we ground ourselves in the deeper truth of who we are, and when we ground our technologies in the earth through wiring, we can use the two together for extraordinary opportunities. We can access incredible knowledge, coming from a place of awareness and consciousness, and we can share it through digital and communications technologies to really elevate ourselves and each other.

You and I have been pushed to go there, in a way—to simplify, to get back to nature, to regain a sense of wonder. There is so much expanding wisdom on the planet that we can tap into, grounded in ourselves and in nature, connected to our true human nature, seeking to evolve consciously, and also by grounding and earthing our technologies. 

AM: I find that many people have an incorrect image about those of us who talk about the impact of wireless technologies. They envision an isolated person with a tin-foil hat, living in an underground bunker, with no access to a computer, Internet, or phone. And that’s just so very untrue for most of us. I live in the modern world. I have a computer with high-speed, wired Ethernet connection for Internet and phone. I am actively connected to information and communications, but in a safe way. But most people don’t realize these non-wireless options are available to them.

OS: Yes. We also have to acknowledge that we create the demand. If we are really being honest about wanting healthier technologies, then we have to say “no” to the unhealthy ones. But if we keep feeding the old ones, then there is no reason at all for the wireless industry to change. 

Humans will always rise to a challenge. So if there’s a demand for a healthy telecom technology, it will happen. We just have to call for it and say no to what doesn’t work.

But until we say no to the harmful stuff, we are still saying yes. 

AM: So what can we expect to see from you going forward? 

OS: I’m developing a new interview series, called The Hot Seat, which will feature dynamic conversations with individuals who are dodging their call to greatness and may be facing a crisis or challenge that’s trying to take them higher. Being in The Hot Seat will show them how to answer the call by turning their challenges into breakthroughs. 

I am also creating two online courses: 

Fit for Love, an emotional-fitness program that decodes relationship challenges and shows you how to find your best self and your best mate; and Tell Me the Truth: A Code for Freedom and Conscious Evolution, for those who want to reclaim their autonomy and orchestrate their own lives.

My next book — Get a Grip. Your Lunch is Ready — is a collection of quirky recipes with lots of irreverent humor, tasty tidbits about the power of real food, how the mind affects the body, and how to have fun in the kitchen. 

AM: Do you have any final thoughts for our readers? 

OS: We are being challenged to consciously evolve, to restore the natural order of things, to find our way back to wholeness, humanity and balance, and to start really loving who we are. 

We have the power to transform our lives, rewire our brains, be our best self, and create the reality we want.

You may also enjoy reading Radical Responsibility: The Key To Moving From Suffering To True Agency & Freedom by Fleet Maull

The post Innate Wisdom: Reawakening Our Truth, Reclaiming Our Power, Changing Our World appeared first on BEST SELF.

One woman muses about life on her own path to enlightenment — from an ashram to the iconic 90s TV show Friends

_______

A radio ad blared over the supermarket speakers, and a pit in my stomach grew to the size of the melon I was sniffing.

We’re celebrating the 25^th anniversary of Friends! Celebrate your favorite 90s TV show with us by sending in your favorite scenes and characters!

The melon wasn’t ripe enough for my upcoming fiftieth birthday celebration — a weekend away with dear friends — but the memory of watching Friends for the first time was as fragrant as ever.

I was twenty-something and living a totally different life than the glamorous group of friends in the show, with their huge Greenwich Village apartments and ample time to hang out in Central Perk. 

I turned my attention to the grapes while a classic Hudson Valley sunset took shape outside the supermarket window, and tried to focus on the birthday menu. 

—

When I was twenty-four, I lived in an ashram on the other side of the Catskills from where I live now.

“Didn’t you say your ex-boyfriend, or ex-fiancé or whatever, is a TV writer working on a new show about people in their 20s?” asked Vera, who worked in the ashram’s video department.

“Yes.” I said, proudly. After college he’d asked me to marry him, even though there was no ring or clear sense of what we were actually getting into. 

“Because there’s this new show called Friends. It’s about people in their 20s. It’s getting really good reviews. Is that his show?”

I felt the stirring of a tsunami starting to crest inside me. But first I had to deal with the culture shock.

“Wait…How do you even know what’s on TV?” 

“Well…errrr…” Vera reflected for a moment to see if it was okay to let me in on her secret. “Sometimes I watch when I’m working alone at night in the video department.” 

“You sneak! TV?!”  

I’d lived in the ashram without news or a TV for 14 months.

At a recent trip to the mall I’d discovered a new Madonna album had been released and I’d had no idea. Everyone at the ashram occasionally left to go to the mall or see a movie, but watching TV on ashram grounds, in an environment in which we abstained from meat, alcohol, entertainment and sex, seemed sacrosanct.

Vera and I were just returning from a little questionable outing ourselves, having walked several miles of country road, by modest cottages and colonies of bungalows, to the nearest restaurant: an Italian cafe with sugary tomato sauce and rubbery bread. We had been silent on the long stretch back towards the ashram, all talked out, bellies distended, bewitched by the cacophony of cicadas and crickets. At the edge of the ashram grounds we spotted a huge grey-blue bird perched on a branch spanning the banks of a stream. 

“Wow.” Our words returned. The bird, looking like a T-Rex and pelican combo, stared at us before taking off. I’d never seen anything like it.

“Heron. They’re prehistoric,” Vera said. 

Then Vera asked me about what was probably my ex’s show, and a deep serenity was replaced with a swirling mix of pride, jealousy and insecurity.

“Come over to the video department tomorrow night and we’ll watch it!”

—

The office where Vera edited video footage of the guru’s talks for worldwide distribution was clean and modern, with newly carpeted floors and the faint smell of nag champa incense. The renovated parts of the ashram were nicely done. Even though we lived in austerity, we did so tastefully.  

The choice to live in an ashram was more than an attempt to cultivate a discipline. I wanted to be enlightened.

I wanted to permanently center myself in bliss and equanimity so that I never again stared at a handful of pills wondering if there were enough to ensure that I never woke up. Moving to LA after college to make a go of the relationship with the writer turned out to be a disaster. The day I tallied the pills, I thought about one last resource I could try to make myself feel better before taking such drastic measures. 

A year before, a guy who radiated a stunning stillness took me to his meditation center on a date. Everyone there, despite bowing down to a picture of a guru on a chair, seemed calm and happy. Maybe I could be that way, too. I sat down and tried to soothe the nameless ache in my soul by chanting some cockamamie version of a mantra they shared. And lo and behold, after just five minutes, a sweet, loving sensation swelled, and receded and swelled again. I opened my eyes feeling clear and infinitely better. A year and a half later I was living in the ashram with the mantra, the guru, and the practices that helped keep my mind steady. 

At the ashram I’d remained focused and disciplined, rising early, meditating, going to the long morning chant and doing my seva — aka my job — as an admin to a department leader. My mind was less jittery, my identity as someone with irreparable damage was fading and even the guru herself took note of me. At one point I thought of becoming a monk. And then the guru went back to India. Without her presence, the straight and narrow path towards enlightenment grew wide and curvy. I started making little pilgrimages out into the happenings of the world.

For the most part, I was content. Then, I saw not only my ex’s name flash across that little screen in the opening credits, but his writing partner, also a good friend from college.

But it didn’t stop there. My high school acquaintance, Jennifer Aniston, lit up the screen. I had once been mistaken for her from behind: we both blew our curly hair into straight 80s bobs, and her well-defined derriere was a little less defined and more like mine back then.  

And then there was David Schwimmer, also a Northwestern alum, whom I’d met numerous times at college parties hosted by the coolest of the cutting edge, avant-garde theater crowd. He always looked past me, having already decided that our meeting was of no consequence.

There they were. And here I was. In an ashram in a partially renovated Borscht Belt hotel, with probably only one cable box. The show was new. It was funny. People I knew were out there ‘making it’, successfully navigating a world that felt harsh and terrifying to me. 

When the show ended, I wanted to run or hide, but living at the ashram I’d gotten used to having nowhere to turn but to myself.

Here I was, ego flaring, trying to digest an experience that showed me how little I had really grown. All the demons of jealousy and self-doubt were parading around on full display. But after the fog of inadequacy lifted, I saw something else: maybe, after months of serious practice, I was strong enough to make it out there, too. Maybe all those feelings were just a signal that my time in seclusion was up.

—

I stood on the supermarket line, on the brink of fifty with a shopping cart full of food: a mountain of abundance. Soon, I would celebrate with a group of amazing friends. We’d been there for each other in the good times, and also when our lives felt like they were stuck in second gear, when it started to pour, when it hadn’t been our day, week, month or year. My heart swelled as I emptied my cart onto the conveyor belt.

Suddenly, every minute that had brought me to this one made perfect sense.

You may also enjoy reading Finding My Way to We: How to Retain Your Identity in a Relationship, by Nancy Levin

The post ‘Friends’ on the Path to Enlightenment appeared first on BEST SELF.

Craving inspiration and travel, a chef’s quest for culture and culinary fusion highlights the need for silence to enrich it all

—

Silent Night, Holy Night. The sound of silence. John Cage’s 4’33”. 

I have never been much of a city person, though I grew up in one. As a result, when I was living there I created emotional boundaries and buffers to cope and survive within it. But each reprieve, each escape to places with more silence such as woods and mountains, made it increasingly more difficult to return ‘home’ to that city environment. 

I crave silence. I cannot sleep without it.

As a child, time spent at my grandparents’ house in the rural woods of the Poconos, bedtime was most silent. Darkness was so complete, I couldn’t see my hand waving in front of my face no matter how widely I opened my eyes. With bedroom door shut and windows closed, the silence embraced me — but we were strangers. My ears would ring and throb in the rhythm of my blood flowing through my veins. In the beginning it was hard to fall asleep like that, without the city hum of the Major Deegan highway below my window or the din of surrounding neighbors. It was jarring.

But as time went on, the silence became my long-lost best friend. My sanctuary. I even began to play games to see how far away I could hear noises. At first, I would hear the clock ticking in the next room. But my senses would move on… trailing off to hear the wind as it softly rustled through the leaves. Frogs chirping in the bog towards the back of the lawn. A car approaching a mile away as the road changed from paved to dirt.

Silence awakened my senses and awareness… and my needs.

When I went to Spain this fall on a solo travel adventure to refuel my creative juices — I was reminded of this need for silence in a place called Ronda, a stop towards the end of my trip. I had visited beautiful castles, cobblestoned streets, whitewashed pueblos and the red sands of Morocco. Each place bustling and busy, rich with sounds, scents and life — a tapestry of culture and culinary fusion. 

But then in Ronda, weaving through tourist clustered streets, I found myself wandering somewhat aimlessly without an agenda; just turning left and then right again and again down the least populated walkways — until I entered a plaza that was so incredibly silent, it brought me to tears. The heat of the sun, the uneven cobblestones I could feel through the bottoms of my espadrilles, no voices, no sounds of cars. It transformed something within me. It woke me up.

Just recently, I had attended the John Cage Mycology weekend at Bard College. Cage is well known for his experimental music and art — and his love of mushrooms (music to my mushroom-loving ears!). He says, “I have come to the conclusion that much can be learned about music by devoting oneself to the mushroom.” (From Music Lovers’ Field Companion written in 1954.) His famous work 4’33”is four minutes and thirty-three seconds of silence where one is meant to observe the auditory sounds of your surroundings. Shuffling papers, footsteps, restless arms in jackets, sniffles, the gurgling of our stomach, rain on a window pane and so on. 

Silence provides our ears, our bodies, our cells with a momentary gift to rest and recompose ourselves — to reconnect with our true selves.

It is the space where we can hear ourselves, our soul’s stirrings. For many, silence is a luxury. We are surrounded by traffic, construction, people, music, airplanes overhead, the evidence of life all about. But in this world of productivity and life set on overdrive, we need to consciously create it. Silence is oxygen for the soul. 

Silence is essential. We need silence, just as much as we need air, just as much as we need light. If our minds are crowded with words and thoughts, there is no space for us. 

~ Thich Nhat Hahn from Silence: The Power of Quiet In A World Full of Noise

If you want to tap into and nurture yourself and your creativity, create silence. And then find ways to sprinkle it throughout your day in as many ways as possible. 

Consider a quiet meal — one without sound, without electronic devices, without conversation. Connect to your senses, the flavors and textures of your food, the sensations within your body, the sounds about you.

Create ceremony for yourself wherever you can. Light some candles and shut off the buzzing hum of electric lights. Close your windows for a while to shut out the outside sounds. Close the curtains if you have them, they will muffle the sounds even more. I believe snowy days are Mother Nature’s way of embracing us with silence. A blanket of fluffy white snow temporarily, yet magically buffers the noise of the outside world, almost immersing us within a snow globe. 

Even consider choosing soft, gentle, warm and soothing foods like soup, oatmeal or mashed potatoes. They don’t call them ‘comfort foods’ for nothing! This month, I share with you one of the Garden Cafe’s most requested fall comfort meals, Lentil Loaf with Mashed Potatoes, Caramelized Onion and Mushroom Gravy. May it soothe your soul and remind you of the power of silence. Shhh.

You may also enjoy reading The Sacred Pause: The Art of Activating Healing Energy by Travis Eliot

The post Silence: Oxygen For The Soul appeared first on BEST SELF.

How an unlikely love story with a feral cat left one woman questioning, who is actually protecting whom? 

—

INTRO

*Diana Ventimiglia, Editor of The Karma of Cats, steps from behind her editing desk and shares some of her own feline friend musings as an introduction to Kelly McGonigal’s article, below.  

As the owner of a 17lb. tuxedo cat, I knew I’d love working on The Karma of Cats: Spiritual Wisdom from Our Feline Friends, but editing this book has turned out to be one of the most fun and insightful experiences I’ve had in a while. As any cat owner, I’ve learned to cultivate patience (I’m looking at that coffee mug you knocked over, Phillip), as well as acceptance that I won’t always get the cuddles I want. The love I have for my cat runs deep, and I’ve always cherished the ways he’s enhanced my life. Editing this collection of essays, though, has helped me realize just how profound my connection to my cat is and has given me a newfound respect for all that Phillip teaches me. 

In many ways, Phillip exemplifies much of how I’d like to live my life… he doesn’t care what others think of him, he expresses himself fully unafraid of judgment, he’s focused, determined and resilient. All of these essays crack open such lessons and celebrate the very unique bonds we have with our feline friends. They’re honest, sometimes funny, and extremely heartfelt. I encourage anyone who has a cat, or just has a love of pets, to read The Karma of Cats. You’ll be sure to laugh, cry, and walk away eager to hug your furry friend. 

—

Adopted: An Unlikely Love Story With A Feral Cat

By Kelly McGonigal 

[Excerpted from The Karma of Cats (Sounds True, 2019)]

In 2005, I was twenty-eight years old, living alone in San Francisco, and looking for a new apartment. I had finished graduate school the year before, and was working as a freelance writer and editor while teaching yoga at studios around the Bay Area. During my hunt, I read a book by the artist SARK, in which she describes stumbling upon a sign in San Francisco in 1989 advertising a magic cottage for rent. As I visited one dismal apartment after another, each more depressing than the last, I lamented, Where was my magic cottage? One day, desperate, I wandered the streets of San Francisco, looking at flyers stapled to telephone poles, hoping for a SARK-like miracle. That very evening, when I got home, I found a new post on Craigslist advertising “Magical Cottage for Rent!” I made an appointment and met the landlady the next day, bringing with me my checkbook and credit report.

Behind the cottage was a private garden, complete with a three-foot-tall Laughing Buddha statue. The statue was a bigger version of the very same buddha I had kept in the small garden plot I had tended when I was a graduate student. The landlady assured me that the buddha came with the apartment, despite not knowing which tenant had left it or how long it had been there. It was a sign, I thought. This was my magic cottage. As I signed the lease and wrote a check for the first and last month’s rent, a small, short-haired black cat appeared outside the sliding-glass door to the garden. The cat sat at the door and stared at us with yellow-green, slightly crossed eyes. “Who’s that?” I asked, surprised and charmed. “Oh, don’t worry about that stray cat,” the landlady said. “I’m sure if you ignore it, it will go away.”

It didn’t go away. As I discovered, my garden was the epicenter of a feral cat colony. The person who had lived in the cottage before me had fed the cats on a semiregular basis. A neighbor who had indoor cats would also occasionally leave out a can of food for the feral cats. Although I had moved in with my own indoor rescue cat, I gladly stepped into the role of colony caregiver. I named the regular cats Shadow, Tinkerbell, Mouse Patrol, and Princess.

But it was that very first cat I met at the cottage — the one who stared at me through the glass door with crossed eyes — who I fell in love with.

I named him Itsy-Bitsy. He was smaller than the other cats. Skinny, but not starved. He was all black except for a tuft of white fur over his heart. He was the spitting image of the cat in a framed photograph I had bought at IKEA a few months earlier. (Later on, I think there was something magical about that timing — that I had bought the photo so I would recognize Itsy-Bitsy when he appeared.)

Itsy-Bitsy’s left ear was clipped, evidence he had been trapped by a rescue organization, neutered, and returned outdoors because he was deemed too wild to be adopted. I should have taken that clipped ear as a sign that Itsy-Bitsy would break my heart. But I fell hard.

Within weeks of my moving in, Itsy-Bitsy would knock at my kitchen window every morning and evening to be petted and fed. He liked to lie outside whatever window I was closest to, moving around the perimeter of the cottage as I moved about. When I went outside, he would run up to have his chin scratched or lie down to have his belly rubbed. He loved to play, and I could make him jump and dance by dragging a stick across the ground. He learned his new name quickly. All I had to do was step outside and call, “Itsy-Bitsy!” and he would come running from whatever hill or nearby yard he had been in. Soon he was waiting for me on the fence outside my front door when I came home after dark.

My neighbor would sometimes feed him, thinking he was hungry. But Itsy-Bitsy would stay on the fence until I got home, even if he was fed.

Of course, I wanted to turn this feral cat into a pet, but Itsy-Bitsy was terrified of being in a closed space. Anytime I tried to bring him inside, he ran out. If I closed the door, he howled until he was free again — it was as if I were torturing him. Maybe some traumatic experience being trapped had imprinted this wild response in him. Even outdoors, he had his limits. Although he eagerly presented himself to be petted and rolled on the ground like he was in nirvana as I rubbed his belly, if I tried to pick him up, he became like a fish on a hook. He squirmed and flailed in that way that cats who refuse to be picked up do, until he exploded out of my arms and landed on his feet.

Six months into my stay at the cottage, rainy season came to San Francisco. That year, the jet stream carried storm after storm across the Pacific Ocean from Japan. When it rained, Itsy-Bitsy refused to take shelter. Instead, he sat outside my kitchen window, getting drenched and looking in. I researched online how to build a weather shelter for outdoor cats. My boyfriend, a graduate student living in Seattle, helped me construct a tent out of a blue tarp. We put it outside the kitchen window, under a wooden staircase to the roof of the main house. I hoped Itsy-Bitsy would take refuge in the tent. He wasn’t interested. Whenever it rained, Itsy-Bitsy appeared outside my kitchen window, where there was no shelter whatsoever.

I discovered that if I opened the window and sat on the kitchen floor, Itsy-Bitsy would hop onto the ledge and let me dry him off with a warm towel. He would stay there as long as I did, but if I tried to close the window to keep out the rain, he would panic and bolt. If I left the kitchen floor to do anything else, he would go back into the pouring rain. I spent a lot of time that rainy season on my kitchen floor with the window open. Sometimes I would read a book and drink chai tea while Itsy-Bitsy rested. Sometimes we just sat, and I would pet him, listening to the rain.

One morning Itsy-Bitsy showed up at my kitchen window with a huge, bleeding gash on the side of his head. I cleaned the wound as best I could. He didn’t resist. The wound looked too large to have come from another cat’s claws. Had Itsy-Bitsy gotten into a scrap with a raccoon or a dog? Had he escaped a hawk or coyote? According to the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, the average life span of a feral cat in San Francisco is only five years. I tried again and again to get Itsy-Bitsy to come inside.

I wanted to protect him from the rain, the predators, and all the other dangers of being a feral cat. I wanted to rescue him, but I never was able to make Itsy-Bitsy an indoor cat.

When my lease expired, I moved back to Palo Alto. I had accepted a full-time teaching position in the psychology department at Stanford University, and the commute to campus from my magical cottage involved three trains and a twenty-minute walk on either end. Sometimes, with train delays, it took three hours each way. I couldn’t stay in the cottage, and I couldn’t take Itsy-Bitsy with me. Of course I wanted to. But I knew the outdoors was his home.

I arranged to have the woman who lived next door take over feeding Itsy-Bitsy. We practiced before I moved. I made sure Itsy-Bitsy knew where his food would be from now on. I left a bag of dry food with my neighbor and said a tearful goodbye.

A year after I moved out, the woman who took over feeding Itsy-Bitsy emailed me to let me know he was okay. I was so relieved. But she also wrote, “For quite a while, Itsy-Bitsy sat out on the fence by your door waiting for you to come home at night.” When I read those words, I cried. I was heartbroken. I took it as proof that I had abandoned Itsy-Bitsy. The image of him waiting for me on the fence felt like evidence that I was the kind of person who let others down.

For a long time, I grieved over my failure to rescue Itsy-Bitsy.

I’m almost embarrassed to admit how much shame I felt over not being able to turn him into an indoor cat. I carried it with me for years.

As I was writing this essay, I talked with my husband about my guilt over not being able to protect Itsy-Bitsy. He listened patiently, then said, “You know, I never really thought Itsy-Bitsy needed protecting.” He reminded me of the time a raccoon had snuck up behind Itsy-Bitsy while he was eating from his bowl outside my kitchen window. Itsy-Bitsy turned around, hissed once, and returned to his kibble. The raccoon retreated. By all outward appearances, Itsy-Bitsy was the least vulnerable cat in the colony. Not skittish and hypervigilant like Tinkerbell. Not wary and always hiding in the bushes like Shadow. Not slinking around corners, belly close to the ground, like Princess. Itsy-Bitsy was fearless, confident, healthy, and happy. 

“Maybe Itsy-Bitsy was protecting you,” my husband mused.

I scoffed at this suggestion when he made it. But later, as I thought more about that year in the cottage, his comment rattled around my brain. My whole life, I’ve found it easier to offer compassion than to receive it. To be the one helping, not the one who needs help. It is hard for me to recognize when someone cares about me. 

In many aspects of my life, I have been like a feral cat wriggling out of an embrace.

I remembered something Itsy-Bitsy did after I’d been feeding him for a few weeks. In between meals, I left his food bowl outside the kitchen window alongside a bowl of fresh water. One morning I woke up to find a dead mouse in the otherwise empty food bowl. At the time, I thought Itsy-Bitsy was telling me I wasn’t feeding him enough. I assumed the mouse was a friendly nudge to keep the bowl full. Later, when I got more involved in animal rescue, I learned that leaving dead rodents can be a form of caregiving. It’s unlikely Itsy-Bitsy was scolding me for not providing for him. He might have been worried I wasn’t a strong enough hunter to feed myself. It’s possible he was sharing his bounty to make sure I didn’t go hungry. In researching this essay, I read an interview with a cat behaviorist who said that a fresh corpse is how a cat lets you know that you are family. In leaving me the mouse, Itsy-Bitsy might have been saying, “I’m adopting you.”

If the dead mouse was an act of caregiving, not a complaint, what other behaviors might I have misunderstood? When Itsy-Bitsy waited up for me, sitting on the fence in the dark, was he waiting for dinner — or did he want to make sure I got home safely? When he appeared, on command, anytime I called “Itsy-Bitsy,” was he responding to the possibility of food or play? Or did he think I needed him? Why did Itsy-Bitsy show up at my window every time it rained? I thought I was protecting Itsy-Bitsy. But maybe Itsy-Bitsy was checking on me. Maybe he didn’t want to leave until the rain stopped because he was keeping me company.

I know, it’s ridiculous to try to read the mind of a feral cat.

I don’t take any of these interpretations too seriously. But just considering them has broken open something inside of me.

My mind reels thinking that I might have been the recipient of a cat’s caregiving instinct — that the universe sent me the cottage not because the colony needed a caregiver, but because I needed a cat colony.

Now I look back at that year with wonder. How my “magical” cottage appeared, like magic, on Craigslist the very day I wished for it. How the tiny black cat from my framed IKEA photo appeared, like destiny, at the cottage door. How at a time I was living alone and struggling to find my place in the world, the universe gave me cats who needed to be fed every day. It was a purpose that filled some deep need in my soul. Never in my entire life have I felt as absolutely necessary as when I sat on the kitchen floor, in the rain, with Itsy-Bitsy purring. In those moments, I could not doubt that I was exactly where I was supposed to be. I always thought Itsy-Bitsy needed me, but the truth is I needed Itsy-Bitsy. Sixteen years ago, I could only see the year with Itsy-Bitsy one way: I had failed. I was an unworthy guardian. Now I wonder who was guarding whom.

You may also enjoy reading Soul Dog: A Journey into the Spiritual Life of Animals by Elena Mannes

The post The Karma of Cats: The Soul Prints of Our Feline Friends appeared first on BEST SELF.

How an ex-Buddhist, fierce mama and devout meditator’s seeking to find her spiritual home leads to the ancient devotion of the rosary

—

As a young mother I could not find a spiritual home, this despite the fact that I lived in a town with five Christian churches, a synagogue, any number of yoga studios, a Greek Orthodox monastery, a Tibetan Monastery, and a Zen Monastery. The problem was that on the weekends, after juggling child-care and work all week, I wanted to actually spend more time with my kids and in most religious settings having little kids around was a real problem. 

I was a Zen student when my children were born and I had the fantasy, encouraged by the Zen master, that somehow, I could integrate motherhood and meditation. I was given permission to nurse in the zendo. I am a strong meditator and I wore a snuggly so I could slip my nipple into my baby’s mouth with one deft motion while still keeping my back ramrod straight.

In many ways the bliss of nursing was what we were all searching for in the zendo, wasn’t it? The real oneness, the shared exhale, the true letting go.

Birds sang, the wind blew, and all was right with the world. My baby sighed and cooed—and a stern bald-headed nun shrieked across the zendo, “Silence!” After the meditation session she marched up to me. “This isn’t going to work. We can’t have this much noise in the zendo. It distracts the other students from their practice.”

I nodded obediently as I had been trained, but inwardly I had a revelation, “Would you silence the birds, the wind, life itself, if you could attain this unattainable thing you’ve vowed to attain?”

Motherhood changed me. My kids cracked me open. I realized that it was easy to sit still all day comparted with playing with a tired toddler or easing their fears or getting them to eat something healthy or helping them fall asleep after a hard day. I joked sometimes that it was one thing to seal yourself off in a cave for seventeen years to attain enlightenment and another entirely to raise a child during that time. Still, I yearned for spiritual companionship. I craved deep hard talks about my real concerns—from how to protect my kids from the berserk over-scheduling of modern life to worrying about the state of the planet and what it meant to all our children. 

My own mother had died when my children were very little and my mother-in-law lived thousands of miles away. Like so many other young people, I had a network of friends my age but no extended family living close enough to offer daily wisdom and support. I yearned for a group of men and women who might explore the spiritual teachings of parenting together.

What does it mean to mother our children? What does it mean to mother each other? What does it mean to mother the world?

For a little while we went to the Episcopal church down the road. But the kids were all marched out at the beginning of the service into a small back room so the grown-ups could get down to the serious business of hymns and homilies. Ex-Buddhist that I was, I ended up teaching Sunday School, taking care of my kids… and everyone else’s, too. 

In truth, I preferred to be with the kids who sat in a circle, babbled about what was really going on in their lives and asked endless questions. I began to imagine a group that was less interested in matters of dharma or dogma and more about, what I now called to myself, “sacred chit-chat.”  

We would meet and pray and talk, not about heady theological matters but the gritty tough stuff of everyday life.

In such a group, children would feel not only included but able to participate. Spiritual insights emerged from the mouths of everyone around us in our lives not just the robed masters and collared priests. Why was their spirituality privileged over the wisdom of old women who had raised children, kept everyone fed and clothed, and washed and buried the dead? We stopped going to the Episcopal church one day when, on our way to services, our daughter sighed in the back of the car, “Oh man, I hate Jesus.”

We settled into the rhythms of our own home. Some years earlier, for reasons it would take me a long time to understand, I started to pray the rosary. I hadn’t been raised Catholic, although my Irish ancestors certainly had been, and I didn’t know any other ex-Buddhists who found muttering the words of the Hail Mary mysteriously comforting. I usually prayed the rosary at night in bed with the kids. They’d play with my hair as I fingered my circle of beads and we’d all drift off to sleep together feeling soothed and held. “Pray for us now and at the hour of our death.”

I was embarrassed to tell anyone what I was doing. Compared to zazen or centering prayer, the rosary seemed like such an old-fashioned old lady thing to be doing. I mean, I was pro-choice, an avowed feminist, and well aware of Christianity’s history of violence. But I loved my rosary beads. 

Only many years later would I discover how old rosary beads actually are, that they are found in every religion, and hearken back to ancient devotions in which rose garlands would be woven with prayers for the Great Mother.

I would learn too that while meditation probably emerged from the hunting behaviors of early peoples, bead practices, on the other hand, seem to have evolved from the gathering behaviors of women as they collected seeds and nuts and berries. If the hunter is quiet and focused, the gatherer is a multitasker — chatting, muttering, moving about, and communing with others. Legions of grandmothers have wrapped their rosaries around their wrists, sneaking in a prayer or two between the dishes and the laundry. Children can be tended, old people cared for, the carrots chopped for dinner, all while staying in conversation with the Lady.

I began to explore the mysteries of the rosary, fifteen episodes from the life of the Virgin Mary, that one could visualize or explore while saying the prayers. Two pregnant women talk about how their children are going to change the world. A woman’s delivery does not go as planned and she ends up giving birth in a stable but it’s all okay and angels come. A mother loses her child and cannot find him for three days. I began to have the conversation with another mother that I had been longing to have, only this Mother was the Mother of All Life.

And then of course when I was no longer looking for it, the community I had been searching for my whole adult life finally materialized. 

My husband Clark was also a spiritual seeker increasingly dissatisfied with hierarchical religious communities that privileged the institution over the individual. He had become fascinated by leaderless twelve-step groups that offered healing and fellowship without becoming compromised by endless fundraising campaigns. Through a series of genuinely miraculous events, he decided that we should start a rosary circle together — and people started showing up.

Friends who’d long since abandoned their Catholic upbringing found their grandmother’s old beads. Others who’d been raised Jewish began praying the rosary. Neighbors who were Wiccan or Buddhist began coming too, along with those who were simply struggling and needed help with their families, their finances, or their health. A woman who’d written a popular book on Marian apparitions heard about us and started showing up each week, and the word began to spread. 

Some people brought their dogs, others their children. Kids could nurse or play or babble or color and they weren’t in the way, they were the point. 

Mothers could bring their worst fears and deepest prayers and together we could hold each other in both sorrow and joy.

We began a group online and soon people from all over the world were joining us praying the rosary in a spirit of openness and inclusion. There are lots of mothers in that group. Mothers struggling with difficult pregnancies and sick children. Mothers who have lost their children tragically and are now fighting for everyone else’s. Men who are seriously interested in exploring what it means to manifest their mothering from within. Mothers tending to the garden of the world in countless ways. 

In our family we have prayed the rosary together when friends and pets have passed on. It’s an all-purpose prayer, a mother’s first aid kit, for all the big moments in life from funerals to weddings. I never expected my kids to say the rosary, but they both turned to it when things went belly up as teenagers. Still, it comes and goes from their lives. But I know they will have it when they would need it most — when they became parents themselves. 

When I finally found the rosary, I was no longer searching for a spiritual home. I had found that home wherever I was with my own family.

You may also enjoy reading Entrainments of Heart: The Stitch Work of Community by Mark Nepo

The post A Circle of Beads, A Circle of Mothers: A Quest To Find Spiritual Belonging appeared first on BEST SELF.

Angel numbers are more than nods from above — they hold significant messages, meaning and are a call to spiritual action

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I was a teenager when I first noticed 11:11 appearing everywhere I looked. I remember looking at my first cell phone and seeing it appearing time and time again. I wondered if I was going crazy, or imagining it, or even unconsciously looking at my phone at that particular time, but what happened next was undeniable. I told my mum and some of my friends about it, and it started happening when they were with me too. Other repeating number sequences kept appearing as well, and not just on cell phones. We’d go to the store for groceries and the bill would be £11.11, or we’d order coffee and cake, and it would come to £4.44. It was the same wherever I went. 

I was fairly new to spirituality then, but I took some time to pray and ask about what was happening. I remember saying something like, “Angels, if it’s you sending me these numbers, I want to see them three times today, so that I know you’re trying to tell me something.” And the numbers kept coming — I knew that angels were sending messages. 

But the question was, what were they saying — what was the meaning behind them? I had no idea.

As one does, I remember Googling “What does 11:11 mean?” and reading several interpretations. Many people said the numbers indicated that this was a time to “make a wish” or “set an intention,” while others said they meant that angels were encouraging us to align our thoughts with the highest. So I did what I always do when Google doesn’t have a definitive answer: I meditated. 

During my meditation I remember reciting a simple prayer like: “Angels, thank you for revealing to me what I need to know about seeing 11:11,” and in flash I saw lots of images and scenes like movie clips in my mind, including images of Jesus and the Buddha, and heard the words “We are all one.” As my vision continued, I saw Muslim friends praying to Mecca and again heard “We are all one.” Then I saw a video of Bob Marley singing “One Love” and just felt encompassed by unity. I was one with angels, one with ascended masters and one with God! 

So, 11:11 is a message we’ve received time and time again through the ages: it’s a reminder that we are all one.

We are interlaced and interconnected with the field of energy that creates and cultivates the universe. 

But it doesn’t end there. 

For me, this recurring message isn’t just “You are one with all that is,” and that’s it. It’s a call to action. It’s almost as though the universe/God (same thing to me) is inviting us to be fully aware that the power and light of the universe are within us. Jesus said, “The Kingdom of Heaven is within you.” 

So, if the power and light of the universe are within us, what we choose to do in our life affects that energy. 

And so 11:11 is a call to align ourselves, our intentions, and our actions with the highest. That’s what it means to be a lightworker or an Earth angel. 

Angels & Numbers

Today, belief in angels is getting even stronger. In 2016 a survey of 2,000 Britons revealed that one third believed in angels and 1 in 10 believed they had encountered an angel, and recent polls in the USA have shown that 8 in 10 Americans believe in angels. This is so exciting! 

It’s no wonder that so many of us are receiving what can only be described as signs and messages from heaven at this time, because these beings want us to know that they are here for us. 

Living in a digital age — many of find ourselves looking at screens all day long, it only makes sense that the angels will begin to communicate with us through a digital means, by inspiring us to look at the clock or speed dials or other places that hold numbers at specific times.

If you always see the same numbers repeated – from license plates to receipts and digital clocks – it could be your angels sending you a message.

Angels are divine messengers who have existed in some form in almost every religion and culture since the dawn of time. In this digital age, they are finding new ways to remind you of your higher truth. 

Whenever you need guidance from your angels, simply ask.

Know that your angels are always listening and looking for an opportunity to send you a reminder that they are near.

For thousands of years, numbers have been considered auspicious and a way of understanding the universe. The ancient Greek philosopher Pythagoras believed that numbers had vibrational values that corresponded to those of musical notes. He created a system that was able to reveal information about a person’s personality and outer expression based solely on the numerical values of their name, date, and place of birth. This system is referred to as Pythagorean Numerology. 

In contrast, modern‐day numerology focuses on the numerological values of your name (to reveal your destiny number) and date of birth (to reveal your life path number). Through the information revealed, a person may understand their sense of calling toward a particular purpose, why certain personality traits are stronger than others, and what challenges they are here to face during this lifetime.

Although angel numbers may contain similar ideas and information to Pythagorean Numerology, the information about each angel number in my new book, Angel Numbers: The Message and Meaning Behind 11:11 and Other Number Sequences, is divinely inspired and channeled rather than calculated. 

What numbers are you seeing? Use the Angel Numbers Key Codex to get your message interpretation:

0. New Beginnings. Doors opening. God. 
1. The Self. Oneness. Higher Self. Universal connection. 
2. Union. Connection to others. Aligning with love. 
3. Expansion. Higher power. The Masters. 
4. Angels. Communication. Gifts expanding. 
5. Changes. Effort. Action and input required. 
6. Balance. Intention required. Carefulness. 
7. Magic. Manifestation. Divine Inspiration. 
8. Journey. Growth. Spiritual lessons. 
9. Self‐mastery. Union with higher self. Divine feminine.

For example: If, you’re constantly seeing 303 the message would be something like:

“The Higher Power and Holy Masters are supporting you, let the light in!”

Sure it’s fun to catch an angel number pop up on your phone, but I can assure you that along with the whimsy of it all — there are deeper messages of meaning and a spiritual call to action for you. The angels are calling. Are you ready to answer?

You may also enjoy reading Inside Out: Exploring The Out of Body Experience by Peter Occhiogrosso

The post 11:11: Revealing the Meaning and Messages of Angel Numbers appeared first on BEST SELF.

A discussion with a modern day lama who breaks with tradition in his journey of self-discovery that includes an anonymous wandering retreat and a near-death experience

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“How many of you did not understand anything I just said? Please raise your hands.”

Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche is addressing a crowd of 200 people in an auditorium on the campus of St. Thomas University, a Catholic college located in a residential area of St. Paul, Minnesota. On the second day of the Path of Liberation retreat that I’m attending, he has just spent more than an hour attempting to explain a profoundly subtle concept of meditation often called “nature of mind.” One reason I came all this way to spend a week with Mingyur and his team of master instructors was to learn how to recognize the nature of mind, a key to practicing Mahamudra, the highest level of meditative awareness in Tibetan Buddhism.

Still in his mid-forties, Mingyur Rinpoche is already one of the most popular, and most highly respected, teachers in the world of Tibetan Buddhism—a world that presents a Buddhism that, some Buddhists might argue, diverges from the teachings that the Buddha himself propounded some 2,500 years ago in northern India and what is now Nepal. Although the historical figure of Shakyamuni Buddha taught a way of life that relies entirely on one’s own human efforts, the Vajrayana tradition in which Mingyur and his fellow Tibetans work is replete with deities and celestial beings, male and female, although nothing quite like the Supreme Being of the Western Abrahamic faiths.

The Buddha did accept the gods and demigods of the Indic culture of his day, but believed them to be inferior to the human realm because only humans can become enlightened. Most Western followers now view Tibetan deities like Chenrezig, the bodhisattva of compassion, as metaphors for states of consciousness rather than actual beings, but the line can get blurry at times.

One key element of Tibetan Buddhism, however, is uniquely in touch with Western culture, both the aging baby boom generation of Americans now in their sixties and seventies and the Millennials, who are watching their futures go up in smoke:

None of the world’s major religious traditions has focused more of its teachings on the dying process, an event that looms larger than ever for many of us.

And yet, far from reflecting a morose obsession with the end of physical life, the Tibetans offer some of the most practical, empirical aids not only for seeing death as a positive experience, but also for learning how to undergo it with the least suffering and the greatest opportunity for transformation as consciousness continues in its next stage. An advanced practice known as phowa, for instance, designed to teach practitioners how to direct the transference of consciousness at the time of death, either for oneself or another, has virtually no counterpart in other religious traditions, nor in modern science, for that matter.

Even if you don’t believe in an afterlife or rebirth, simply knowing how to die consciously and without mind-clouding drugs can clearly be beneficial.

Even more to the point, the Tibetan view of the dying process also aligns closely with our current understanding of the near-death experience, or NDE, which has become a subject of intense interest in recent years. The Tibetan Book of the Dead—also known by its original Tibetan title of the Bardo Thodol, or “Liberation through Listening in the Between”—is the most popular of all the books in the Tibetan canon among Westerners.

Perhaps no sacred text more thoroughly explicates the process one’s consciousness goes through during and immediately after dying. Dr. Raymond Moody, whose 1975 classic Life After Life introduced the term near-death experience, and became a bestseller, was aware of the Bardo Thodol, which had been first translated into English in 1927. Moody found it astonishingly cognate with the one hundred or so NDEs he had been documenting. “The book contains a lengthy description of the various stages through which the soul goes after physical death,” he wrote in Life After Life. “The correspondence between the early stages of death which it relates and those which have been recounted to me by those who have come near to death is nothing short of fantastic.”

The goal of that text is to help readers recognize and navigate the several bardos, or “in-between” states during which the possibility of achieving enlightenment, or liberation from the wheel of suffering known as samsara, is greatly heightened. Composed in the 8th century by the Buddhist adept Padmasambhava, whose consort, the Tibetan princess Yeshe Tsogyal, wrote down this and other texts and hid them in various locations, the Bardo Thodol was discovered and revealed some six centuries later and has been recently translated into English any number of times.

However, for all its popularity—it was a favorite of Timothy Leary and served as the inspiration for the Beatles’ song “Tomorrow Never Knows”—the Bardo Thodol is also famously dense and difficult to follow. One reason I was eager to attend Mingyur’s retreat in St. Paul, besides the rare opportunity to learn more about Mahamudra from a genuine master, was that I had just finished reading his latest book, In Love with the World: A Monk’s Journey Through the Bardos of Living and Dying (written with Helen Tworkov; Spiegel & Grau, 2019). To my knowledge, it’s the first book by a modern Tibetan lama about his own near-death experience, and it’s nothing short of breathtaking.

After deciding to leave his all-too-comfortable life as the abbot of a large monastery in India and go on an anonymous wandering retreat, Mingyur finds himself immersed in a world that is as unsettling to the young lama (he was just 36 at the time) as it will be discomfiting to most Western readers—sleeping in vermin-infested train stations, begging for food, and nearly fatally sickened by the tainted scraps he is given.

But along the way, even as he struggles to overcome his own aversion and physical pain, Mingyur misses no chance to teach readers what he has learned from his intensive years-long study of the Bardo Thodol. Sharing his insights, he persistently invokes the voices of his teachers, most notably his father, a renowned meditation master himself, who practiced not so much tough love as continuous instruction illuminated by a series of appealing stories.

With his father’s guidance, Mingyur had studied the text in the original Tibetan and trained in the necessary skills to maintain his awareness during the process of dying. And so, when it slowly dawns on him that he might well be expiring of food poisoning and dysentery, rather than taking himself to a nearby clinic—where he would most likely have been treated, even without funds—he chooses to tough it out by drawing on his training and doing his best to “maintain awareness.” In the process, he enters what is clearly a near-death experience, although it may not be quite what you expect.

In the 44 years since Raymond Moody’s Life After Life was published, near-death experiences have been reported by tens of millions of people from all walks of life and many nations. Moreover, these experiences have occurred under conditions of rigorous observation, often by cardiologists and other medical professionals, and in numbers too great to ascribe to mere chance, delusion, or fabrication. Enough books about the subject have now been published to rate their own shelf in any sizable book store, while many have become number one bestsellers—and I get why that is. They can make for fascinating reading, more so if you’re open to the concept that when people “almost die,” they undergo extraordinary experiences, which you’ve probably read about by now: encounters with deceased loved ones and/or beings of light; feelings of indescribable bliss and love; the ability to observe from above medical personnel or family trying to revive them; and often a life review reminiscent of scenes from the Hollywood film It’s a Wonderful Life. I’ve read enough of these books, dozens actually, to know how they usually go, so I should announce upfront (spoiler alert!) that Mingyur’s description features few of those standard elements.

What it offers instead is a step-by-step appreciation of how everyday life consists of various stages of dying in small and significant ways, how best to deal with those moments, and how they are preparing us for the physical death of the body—and the continuity of consciousness that accounts of NDEs imply.

The Tibetan word bardo refers to more than just the stage between death and either enlightenment or rebirth, as described in the Bardo Thodol. As Mingyur points out, learning how to navigate the transitions, or in-between moments, in everyday life can be as valuable as understanding what we may face as we approach physical death. “Anything that interferes with mindless repetition can function as a wake-up call, and an antidote to automatic, mindless behavior and habitual fixations,” he writes in his new book. After enduring his first hellish train journey upon leaving his monastery under dark of night, and his own shock at realizing how much suffering ordinary people endure outside the closed world of a highly respected abbot, Mingyur spends some of the small amount of money he took with him to rent a room in a local “pilgrimage hostel” and purchase inexpensive treats like dal with rice. But he quickly runs out of funds and is forced to go to a nearby restaurant where he had been paying for his food and beg for a handout. He is told to return in the evening, when they will distribute the day’s leftovers scraped from customers’ plates.

The food they give him turns out to be toxic, and within a short time he begins to feel the intense pain associated with food poisoning and its attendant dysentery. No longer able to pay for lodging in the hostel, Mingyur takes up residence outdoors in a park surrounding the Cremation Stupa in Kushinagar, where the Buddha’s body was immolated—as good a place as any to meditate on the likelihood of death. Steadfastly resisting medical help, he instead focuses on maintaining meditative awareness and tracking his progress through the bardo of dying as he had learned. And, as his physical self steadily deteriorates, he takes us with him on his hallucinatory yet remarkably cogent interior journey.

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Mingyur Rinpoche may be the teacher most ideally suited to interpret the wisdom of the bardos and other elements of Tibetan teachings known collectively as the Dharma to a Western and worldwide audience for a number of reasons. His first book, The Joy of Living (2007), was a New York Times bestseller that successfully interpreted the basics of Buddhist practice for a non-Buddhist readership, and he has written several more books that have also sold well—to Buddhists and non-Buddhists—and have been translated into a dozen languages. He now has large established communities in the U.S., Mexico, Brazil, France, Germany, Denmark, and Russia, and his “Guided Meditation on the Body, Space, and Awareness” video has over 2 million views on YouTube. (It may be the best 15-minute “how to meditate” video I’ve ever watched.) And Netflix has just featured him on the “Mindfulness” episode of their new series The Mind, Explained.

Among Mingyur’s better-known American students are the renowned meditation research neuroscientist Richard Davidson (also featured in that Netflix series) and the celebrated performance and virtual reality artist Laurie Anderson. (Lou Reed, her late husband, was also a follower.) Anderson has said that she often quotes Mingyur in her work and that her favorite teaching of his is, “Try to practice how to be sad without actually being sad.” In an email, she added, “This is a colossal, mind-shaking distinction that has changed my life.” She has also just released a new recording, Songs from the Bardo, in which she reads excerpts from the Bardo Thodol with musical accompaniment.

Indeed, I spied Laurie while checking in for the retreat, her spiky hair and cherubic face little changed in the years since she was a leading performance artist in the 1970s (although we all left her in peace). The rest of the audience ranged in age from millennials to folks in their sixties and seventies who, like me, mainly sat on comfortable chairs because they could no longer manage the flexibility required to rest on a cushion in the classic full-lotus, or even less-demanding alternatives. They also varied in experience from having meditated for decades to only recently having started on the Buddhist path. We were all there to learn how to recognize the nature of mind, which may sound simple enough to anyone unfamiliar with the lineages of Tibetan Buddhism of which Mingyur is a master, yet which is anything but.

The nature of mind refers to a state of awareness entirely unobscured by mental concepts or beliefs—something Zen Buddhists call our “true nature,” and that Vedanta practitioners refer to as “nondual awareness.”

The Buddhist scholar-practitioner John Myrdhin Reynolds puts it this way in his commentary on another ancient text from the same treasure trove that gave us the Bardo Thodol: “The nature of the mind is like a mirror which has the natural and inherent capacity to reflect whatever is set before it, whether beautiful or ugly; but these reflections in no way affect or modify the nature of the mirror. . . . This nature of the mind transcends the specific contents of mind, that is, the incessant stream of thoughts continuously arising in the mind which reflects our psychological, cultural, and social conditioning.” That may be as succinct definition as I have found. The main problem is that, because this “capacity to reflect” is nonconceptual, it cannot be fully described in words, so Mingyur has been trying to tease an experience of the nature of mind out of us with questions that, to be honest, sound starkly futile. “Look at your thought,” he says with an open expression on his face, “and ask yourself if it has a shape. Or a color.”                                              

The Zen tradition, which in many ways is quite different from Tibetan Buddhism, hints at the difficulty of recognizing mind in a koan that appears in Case 23 of the koan collection Mumonkan, or “Gateless Gate,” when a Zen master demands of his student, “Show me your Original Face, the face you had before your parents were born.” What they are pointing at is akin to what we in the West might call the soul, or that core essence of each of us that exists outside of time and space, nationality and gender, and will survive death. The Tibetan iteration is perhaps more straightforward, but hardly less befuddling. “Look back at your mind,” Mingyur says, switching to a favorite metaphor. “If you can see the river, you’re out of the river. If you see the river, it doesn’t matter what kind of river it is: dirty river, clear river, turbulent or calm river. But if you fall in the river, you should have a calm river, nice temperature, clear river. You don’t want to fall into a dirty river.”

Applying this image to meditation practice, he clarifies: “If you can see the discomfort you’re feeling, you don’t need to stop feeling it. You can have a healthy sense of me, an unhealthy sense of me, or a luminous me. The unhealthy sense of me is very sensitive, black and white, very narrow. You cannot fight with it. If you believe this unhealthy sense of me is Yes sir!” (snapping to mock attention) “then it becomes your crazy boss. So, what we have to do is make friends. Say, Hi! and face it. On the cognitive level you ask, ‘Who am I?’ And on the meditative level, just be aware of it.”

Mingyur goes on like this for a while, suggesting that we ask ourselves, regarding our everyday actions and choices, “Who’s the boss?” (He is especially adept at turning colloquial American lingo to good use.) By this he means to ask ourselves which of the three elements that are considered key in Tibetan philosophy—body, speech, and mind—is calling the shots. Back in the mid-20th century, the legendary Indian sage Ramana Maharshi developed a following by asking anyone who made the pilgrimage to the holy Mount Arunachala in South India, where he regularly held forth, a simple question: “Who are you?” However his visitor responded—with their name, nationality, occupation, philosophy of life—Ramana would simply repeat the same question. Again, and again, and again, until, at last, the seeker fell into silence. He recommended that all those who sought his counsel ask themselves the same question continuously.

Looking for the nature of mind by following Mingyur’s clues is not unlike Ramana’s prescription, although it gets more complicated as you progress.

Am I the person having this thought—the person having this momentary feeling of anger, or lust, or serenity? Or am I the person aware of myself having this thought or this feeling?

One purpose of the retreat is to receive what are called “pointing out instructions”—by which a realized teacher helps you to directly experience the nature of mind. These instructions are traditionally given in private, although one of Mingyur’s team of senior instructors (Western masters who also teach throughout the retreat) had assured me that he has developed a way to do this simultaneously with large groups.

After continuing in this vein for a good twenty minutes or so, Mingyur, perhaps catching the vibe of silent obfuscation sweeping the audience, asks the question that opened this article: “How many of you did not understand anything I just said?”

Virtually every hand in the room, including mine, shoots up—the first time he’s gotten such an unambiguous response. Mingyur’s initial reaction is a look of genuine disbelief. He probably expected to have lost maybe half the group, but he seems momentarily stunned by this show of near-universal incomprehension. His shocked look freezes—and then he bursts into uproarious laughter, an infectious howl that has us echoing him with our own confused amusement. But that only sets him off further. At first he throws his hands up in mock incredulity. But then something else, something larger, seems to overtake him, and his laughter becomes almost hysterical. He continues the upward sweep of his hands back over his head and then behind him. Finally, he throws his whole body back until he is laid out completely supine, eyes facing the ceiling. This is almost painful to watch because he was already sitting in a full lotus on the silken “throne” that serves as his dais. His legs still wrapped in the lotus posture, he must be eerily flexible to be able to lay out in a full backwards 180.

That’s when I realize that maybe he’s laughing at himself as much as at us, laughing at the cosmic joke of thinking he can expect several hundred  people to instantly grasp the kind of subtle mind-training that most monks spend years in a cave learning.

And flexible is surely the right word. His own life has required the kind of mental and emotional elasticity that would make a contortionist envious. Mingyur was born 44 years ago in the foothills of the Himalayas, not far from where the Buddha himself grew up.

Like many Tibetans who came of age after the Chinese Communist invasion of Tibet in 1950, he was born outside the Motherland, in Nepal, and now lives perforce in India. He often speaks with real pride and gratefulness about being raised in the shadow of Mount Manaslu, the eighth-highest mountain in the world. His late father, Tulku Urgyen Rinpoche, who was born in Tibet and fled following the invasion, was a highly celebrated teacher of both Mahamudra and Dzogchen—two closely related forms of the highest level of meditation practice in the Tibetan traditions. Mingyur’s mother, Sonam Chodron, is descended from the two Tibetan kings who played key roles in importing Buddhism from India. He also has three older brothers who, like himself and his father, are recognized tulkus (indicated by the title of Rinpoche, pronounced RIN-po-SHAY), or reincarnations of lamas reaching back centuries. In Mingyur’s case, that would be to the first Yongey Mingyur, who died in 1708.

One of the first things that attracted me to the personality and teachings of Mingyur Rinpoche was his frankness about how much he suffered from anxiety as a child, something I’ve been trying to overcome since my own childhood experience at a Catholic parochial school.

As early as seven or eight, he endured anxiety that later grew into full-blown panic attacks triggered by events as quotidian as a thunderstorm, or the clangorous music of Tibetan horns and cymbals during monastic ritual prayer sessions. (Admittedly, the Tibetan music I’ve experienced here can be as ear- and mind-rattling as a Sun Ra concert, and nearly as exciting.) I had rarely heard lamas confessing their difficulties adapting to daily life, but Mingyur talked about how challenging he found meditation, even as taught by his father. During his first meditation instructions, he says, “I felt like I was driving a car with my feet on the gas and brake at the same time. Lots of energy, but no results.”

He finally got the knack, but his anxiety continued to manifest, often in unusual ways. In one of his books he describes his uncontrollable panic when, as a young teenager, his mother took him for the first time on a bus trip to Kathmandu. Having never before seen a bus or any comparable vehicle, he thought it was a huge, predatory beast—a perception that some adult urbanites can probably relate to. Nevertheless, he took the first of several traditional three-year retreats at age 13. By 20, he had become the functioning abbot of Sherab Ling, a major monastery that is part of the Tibetan diaspora in India, and later received full monastic ordination. In 2007, he oversaw the construction of Tergar Monastery in Bodh Gaya—the holy site in India where the Buddha is said to have obtained his Enlightenment.

Four years later, in the summer of 2011, Mingyur felt the call to leave a life that he says had become ultimately too cozy—and predictable—as abbot of a large monastery, waited on by attendants and sought out by thousands of students, monks, and Western seekers. He wanted to make a “wandering retreat,” in the tradition of not only the Buddha but also the itinerant ascetics and sadhus from whom the Buddha himself had learned—to cut his ties to safety as well as engrained habits. Mingyur later told the Buddhist magazine Lion’s Roar, “I had been meditating for many years, and of course I’m a meditation teacher, but I still had subtle pride, subtle ego.” His father told him that he had once tried to make a similar wandering retreat, but that his insistent students called him back, so he advised, “Don’t let anyone know.” Mingyur followed that counsel and escaped by calling a taxi to take him to the nearest train station (although he did leave a letter for his students, to be opened once his disappearance was noticed).

So began his plunge into an exceptionally turbulent, muddy river of unmediated life, in which he was to float for the next four and a half years. But he almost didn’t make it past his first month on the road when he ate that tainted food. His adventure is jam-packed. The first 48 hours of his journey—from one train station in Bodh Gaya to another in Varanasi—occupy almost half the book. Of course, much more is happening than travelogue, as harrowing as that is. Just riding on an Indian train in third class, so crowded that he is forced to sit on the floor with dozens of other travelers, sounds disconcerting even to those of us who have endured the New York subway system through its worst years. He uses the experience to explain the levels of meaning of the bardos.

“From the moment I left Tergar,” he writes, referring to his seat monastery in Bodh Gaya, “I was in-between in a literal way. Even on entering the train and getting a seat, I was in-between—as I was still, now, circling the station. Yet the true meaning of in-between has nothing to do with physical references but is about the anxiety of dislocation, of having left behind a mental zone of comfort, and not yet having arrived anywhere that restores that ease.”

And so, although we know this is all leading up to his near-death experience, Mingyur never takes the direct or predictable path, and even his apparent digressions are credible and gripping. That is largely thanks to his coauthor, Helen Tworkov, an accomplished writer and longtime practitioner. She keeps the narrative grounded by clarifying Mingyur’s explanations of both the complexities of the bardos and the dissolution of his senses as he nears death and then pulls back from the brink.

This approach has the distinct advantage of not requiring the reader to believe in anything “supernatural”—the great stumbling block thrown up by materialist scientists and atheists. I would even hazard to say that members of those overlapping demographics could read this book without having to abandon all their preconceptions. (Not entirely, of course. Sam Harris, one of the so-called Four Horsemen of the New Atheism, studied Mahamudra for several years with Mingyur’s father, and has created a meditation app based on what he learned. Nonetheless, he still rejects the veridical nature of the near-death experience.)

Interviewing Mingyur by phone before the retreat, I asked if he were familiar with the expansive literature of near-death experiences. He said that although he had heard about the books he hadn’t read any, so I described some of the most common aspects of NDEs and asked if they applied to his experience. “For me there was no other being helping, or any particular light leading me,” he replied.

“For me, it was that I tried to stay in awareness. Awareness is what we call ‘fundamental nature.’ Awareness is like sky, and then emotions, thoughts, perception, memory, whatever we are experiencing in our life—living or dying, it doesn’t matter. We perceive it like clouds.”

An oft-repeated Buddhist metaphor likens our inherent “buddha nature” or “primordial awareness” to the sun that constantly illumines the sky but that is temporarily obscured by clouds that pass in front of it. The clouds represent our ignorance and afflictive emotions such as anger, hatred, and jealousy. “When I was having this almost-dying experience—what I describe in my book as dissolving the elements in my body—I experienced these dissolutions,” he went on. “But my mind tried to stay in awareness: what we believe is present, pure, always there. Normally we do not recognize it. My father used to say that the bird flying in the sky doesn’t recognize sky, and the fish swimming in the water doesn’t recognize the water. We are living with this wonderful pure, present awareness, but we are not recognizing it.”

In his book Mingyur deftly describes this dissolution of elements that is believed to occur at death, his feeling that his body has become paralyzed and his senses have begun to liquefy, including his thoughts and emotions. And yet, he adds now, “At the same time, my mind was so vast, so present, so peaceful. I never felt like that in my life. When I felt all my senses’ dissolution, then what I felt was pure awareness. I stayed there for many hours within that state. And then somehow I came back to life. I began to feel my body, slowly I felt the senses. I could hear first, then I could see.”

After collapsing in the charnel ground, Mingyur is rescued by an Asian businessman with whom he had had been conversing off and on for several days before his illness set in. The man brings him to a nearby clinic (paying for his treatment), where Mingyur slowly recovers his health, although the process of nearly dying and then recovering occurs over many pages. As each of his senses gradually returns, he realizes that he is lying in a hospital of some sort, with no recollection of how he got here.

“And when I came back, the world had changed,” Mingyur told me in his sweet, small voice, which occasionally flies into the upper register when he becomes awestruck. “Before, when I was on the street, I felt like, Why had I come here? But when I came back, the street became like my home. This was a really big change, a big experience for me. But I didn’t feel a particular light, or that loved ones or someone had come to meet me.”

In his book, Mingyur admits to being “disappointed” to be back in his body after experiencing luminosity, and when I asked why, his reply was matter-of-fact.

“We believe that if you really die in that state, you’re free, you’re liberated,” he said. “You will achieve enlightenment. So sometimes I joke that it’s too bad that I came back to life again.”

And yet, he makes it clear that his return to the living was no accident. “In the end I felt a kind of strong love and compassion,” he said. “This is not the end, and for me to die—I sensed that I want to help others. Beyond concept, you can experience that compassion. And that feeling became stronger, and I think that was the main cause of bringing me to life again. When I came back to life, I had a strong feeling of gratitude, of appreciation for my life, about who I am. When I looked at the big trees in front of me [in the stupa park], they became really alive. It was like the trees were made of love. The sunlight and breeze flowing through my body felt pleasant, but more than pleasant. Before, it was just concepts, but now it was feeling, and the feeling was joy without grasping—contentment.”

I asked if his experience changed the way he teaches Dharma. “Before, I learned a lot of theory, a lot of cognitive aspects,” he replied. “But after that, it became more alive, more experiential. So when I teach, I now explore my own experience of what I call ‘head, heart, and habit.’ Head is the intellectual. Heart is the experiential—feelings. And the habit is bringing it into everyday life. So I try to bring my meditation into everyday life, and that really helps.”

And what about his life itself, I asked. How did his approach to living change? “That is where the title of my book comes from,” he said, his voice lighting up.

“When you love the world, the world loves you back. After that, I knew how to survive even though I didn’t have money or support.”

Having read that Mingyur was estimated to have spent more than 60,000 hours in meditation, I asked how his NDE was different from the profound experiences he must have undergone during prolonged meditation.

“I felt unlimited discovery within myself,” he said. “When we think about meditation, we think of it as peaceful, calm, and you will be more happy—but that’s all. It’s almost impossible to imagine beforehand, but as you practice, Wow! It’s Aha! My father told me when I was young that calm, pristine awareness is always there. I tried to practice that on a conceptual level but when I almost died, I didn’t have senses, I didn’t have thoughts as I normally understand them. Awareness is so vast, so present. No time. No front and back, no light and dark. I had this appreciation that death is not the end. Death is an illusion. There’s really no gap between this life and the next life.”

But, I asked, what about the Buddha’s teaching of “no soul” or “no self”—his famous proposition that we have no solid, continuously identifiable self that continues throughout this life, or from lifetime to lifetime?

“For me it’s just like thought,” Mingyur said. “One thought dies, another thought comes. I want to have water, and then I forget about it. Or I want to rest, or I want to have pizza.” Here he laughed. From his many videos it is clear that pizza, which he pronounces pee-suh, is a favorite food. “This concept comes from timeless awareness. Awareness cannot die. Yet, this awareness doesn’t have any kind of ‘thing’ that you can grab onto. It is almost invisible, beyond concept, and yet—it is so alive, so present. Because of this awareness, then, the thought comes and goes. And for me, death is like thought. Reincarnation, what we see, is only the literal level. But at the absolute level, no one is going to die. And no one is being born, also!”

I’ve read Robert Thurman’s excellent modern translation of the Bardo Thodol, but since I have yet to study its practices with a teacher, I asked for more guidance. I was also curious whether Mingyur thought the dying experience itself differed for people from different cultural backgrounds. “The Bardo Thodol says the most important practice is to just be with awareness,” he said. “But there’s a lot of perceptions, many different manifestations of lights or deities, or maras [emotional afflictions that can interfere with liberation].

There’s no limitation of what kind of experience you go through dying and after death. It depends on your culture, your faith, environment, your past experience; everybody is a little bit different.

It’s what we call ‘the perception of suchness’ or the perception of nature. That means there’s no limitation, although there’s so many different experiences of pure awareness—wisdom, love, compassion. Many people may experience different aspects of this awareness.

“There are many different states in the bardos. The first is experiencing the state of awareness without perception. And the second is you begin to have perceptions. Light is very important. And the sound of nature, the sound of dharmata,”he said, using a term forthe ultimate essence of reality. “Then your mind becomes more uncertain but you also feel love and peace, and everything is not so solid. Then slowly, conceptual things form again—you go through things in reverse—what we call ‘forward and backward.’ When you die, everything dissolves—consciousness, perceptions, memory—into pure awareness. Everybody experiences pure awareness, but the issue is whether you recognize it. When we recognize it, that is what we call liberation. If you don’t recognize it, you’ll be in that state for a while and then become unconscious. Then you wake up and begin the next journey. Awareness is always perfect, but recognition might not be.”

Here he burst briefly into his infectious, almost childlike laugh. Vajrayana teaches that we all have an opportunity for enlightenment, or liberation, following  the moment of death, but we have to be alert and remain aware in that moment, or it will pass us by; then we will reenter the cycle of samsara and be reborn willy-nilly. Mingyur emphasizes that his own training in this area helped him have a positive experience. Since few most of us will probably not study the Bardo Thodol at length, however, he wants us to know there are other ways to prepare for the inevitable. Toward the end of his book, he writes,

“When we accept that we are dying every day, and that living cannot be separated from dying, then the bardos offer a map of the mind during this lifetime; and each stage offers invaluable guidance for how to live every day.”

This is clearly the main point of the book, his reason for writing it. During a livestreamed interview conducted by the psychologist Richard Davidson, who has made a life work of studying the beneficial effects of meditation, Mingyur told him, “I wanted to call my book Dying Every Day—but my publisher didn’t like that!” (I laughed out loud when I heard this all-too-true response from a commercial publisher.) Making the most of his practical approach to life, Mingyur writes that simple things like sneezing and yawning are the best opportunities to “interrupt the normal mind.” Apart from those involuntary actions, though, when would he recommend that people practice dying every day?

“Especially when you are facing problems,” he replied. “Say, you break up with someone, you lose your job, or when you’re 18 years old and you leave home—these in-between moments are the precious moments when we can really connect to who we are. If you know how to learn from that, be with that, embrace the situation, that’s when you can find who you are. If you cannot die, you cannot be reborn in this life.”

Those are major life events that can be trying, but they don’t happen every day. What about examples of dying a little bit each day?

“Let’s say you have some plans, and something can’t happen, you get a little bit of a shock,” Mingyur replied. “You have to let it go. If you’re waiting for the toilet and someone comes and cuts the line—again, it’s a big shock. At that moment, when an unexpected situation comes, our mind becomes Aha! It’s a little bit of a gap, a little bit of a nonconceptual state of mind. In that moment, we are really close to our true nature, who we are. So, if you are aware of that moment, then you will discover a lot of great things within yourself. Normally we are holding too much to the dry, conceptual level of who we are, what the world is, what the situation is. We have a lot of expectations, a lot of preconceptions. During this gap these preconceptions are gone. The important thing is to be aware and be with that, and that’s when great ideas come. Great knowledge, great insight comes out of those moments. When you look at history, the great people’s life stories, their great insights come during this gap.”

So when somebody cuts you off in traffic or tries to get the better of you in a business deal, instead of getting angry, we can look at those as opportunities to grow?

“Yes, you’re right. And be with the moment. First you feel the uncertainty or fear—and there’s not only fear there. There is a sense of being, of who we are, but sometimes there’s something more there within yourself. Greater possibility, potential, awareness, compassion, wisdom. There are skills that you never thought of before. Once you let go of that death concept, you will see new opportunities.”

Tibetan lamas with advanced levels of realization may also engage in a practice called thukdam, entering into meditation when they sense they are about to die. Mingyur told me that his father, Tulku Urgyen, entered thukdam when he was dying and remained there for three days after his apparent death without any visible signs of decay. Richard Davidson is carrying on research into this phenomenon based in India and the U.S, and hopes to report the results in time. Meanwhile, I asked Mingyur how he feels about the apparent disparities in the accounts of Westerners who report back via mediums that on “the other side” there is no evidence of a particular tradition—not Christian, Buddhist, Hindu, or anything else. What they all describe in slightly different language is that souls there move through varying levels of awareness and spiritual growth, but without the sectarian terminology that we use on the Earth plane.

“Awareness doesn’t have a tradition,” he replied. “Awareness doesn’t belong to any religion, so the manifestation of awareness can be anything. It depends on your belief, your past experience, culture, mentality, personality. It can be experienced many different ways; it could be anything.”

If awareness, or the nature of mind, is universal, Mingyur explained, then these traditions, even his own, are simply vehicles to connect to that awareness. So, I asked, it doesn’t matter which vehicle helps you connect to awareness? “Yes, you’re right,” he said. “It doesn’t matter.”

Mingyur’s open-minded approach to teaching dharma has allowed him to reach a new, wider audience, and applies to the way he has organized Tergar, his teaching organization. Based in the Twin Cities of Minneapolis-Saint Paul, Tergar offers annual retreats but reaches many more people through Vajrayana Online, a subscription service that offers in-depth courses taught by Mingyur and his team of American senior instructors.

About a month after our phone interview, when I attended the Path of Liberation retreat described above, I experienced a major upgrade in my own meditation practice. I’d been meditating off and on for nearly 30 years, and following various schools of Tibetan Buddhism for at least 20, but I took the retreat because I felt I wasn’t really getting as much from meditation as I expected—partly because of my inconsistent application, to be sure, but partly from lack of knowledge. My daily practice certainly had helped relieve much of my own considerable anxiety and chronic depression, but I never felt that it reached what I had read and been told about its other benefits.

I signed up for Mingyur’s retreat on an impulse, and even before the week was out I realized I was finally having the experience of meditation I’d been reading about.

The key, according to Mingyur, was not trying to meditate, but also not losing awareness, and at the same time relaxing and letting the glimpses of awareness he spoke about come to rest in the mind.

Maybe that’s what all the classical teachers mean by “effortless effort.” And being in the presence of several hundred like-minded souls, as well as a fully realized teacher, certainly helped.

What I also learned, almost by accident, was that I had been mistaken all along in thinking that meditation in general, and experiencing the nature of mind in particular, would lead to some explosive burst of enlightenment, like taking ayahuasca (as I had done years ago) or sitting zazen for thousands of hours until you achieve satori.

I asked Edwin Kelley, one of the senior instructors—who had begun studying intensively with the forest monks of Burma some 27 years ago and later at the popular Insight Meditation Society in Barre, Mass., before becoming Mingyur’s student in 1998—how long it had taken him, after receiving pointing out instructions, to achieve any reliable level of confidence in his practice. “Oh,” he replied evenly, “I would say about ten years.” I suddenly got how much of a process it was, and that I had to be in it for the long haul.

What I also got is that, in place of the one Big Bang I’d been expecting, the realization process most likely consists of a long string of litte bangs, like the one that hit me speaking with Kelley. And yet, after a week of intensive practice, including several 90-minute meditation sessions and two 2-hour teachings each day, incorporating three full days of being in silence, I felt noticeably different by the end of the retreat. And I still feel a profound sense of being more deeply involved in the path and the practices four months later.

I look forward to meditating every morning, starting before I get out of bed, because I know my depression will lift and I’ll feel better. But an integral part of the meditation practice is feeling compassion for others, so feeling better expands to encompass how I feel about other people, and animals. For someone with a chronic hermit archetype, that’s a big deal.

One last thought occurred to me as I wound up my phone interview with Mingyur. I mentioned that virtually his entire book takes place within the first month of his wandering retreat, which continued for four and a half years following his near-death experience. “You must have a lot more stories,” I urged, “all the things that you experienced during the rest of your retreat that you might write about in time.”

“I don’t have plans to write about that, no,” Mingyur responded. I imagined him smiling on the other end of the line. “Of course,” he added, “I have some good experiences that I want to keep for myself!”

Recently, though, I’ve started hearing rumors that he has begun working with Helen Tworkov again for what could be a sequel about the rest of his retreat. He may not be planning to keep all those other good experiences to himself, after all.

Nothing endures but change, and accepting this has the potential to transform the dread of dying into joyful living.

~ Mingyur Rinpoche

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An online course called “Dying Every Day: Essence of the Bardos,” based on Mingyur’s new book, In Love with the World, is currently in progress and available with a subscription to Vajrayana Online. The subscription is on a sliding scale, $25 or $50/month. The course runs through the end of October and includes a downloadable course workbook PDF. It can be joined at any time and includes video and audio teachings by Mingyur Rinpoche and two of his American instructors.

A new online course, Awakening in Daily Life: The Bardos of This Life, taught by Mingyur Rinpoche and Tergar instructors, will begin Dec. 1, 2019. At its heart, the bardo teachings are concerned with the core teaching of impermanence, both in life and in death, and with the liberation that comes with recognizing the real nature of the mind in the midst of all that changes.

Learn more at learning.tergar.org

You may also enjoy reading Inside Out: Exploring the Out of Body Experience, by Peter Occhiogrosso

The post Dying Every Day: Exploring Life and the Near-Death Experience with Reincarnate Buddhist Lama Mingyur Rinpoche appeared first on BEST SELF.

From cancer to chronic illnesses, one woman tenaciously rises from the ashes of her life challenges and reveals a long-hidden gift: she is a psychic medium

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Over 1500 days ago, I thought I was going to die. I not only received a dreaded diagnosis that felt like life had dealt me a poor hand of Texas hold ‘em, but on top of that, it was like I had won the grand prize in one of the rarest death sweepstakes of all. But this wasn’t a card game, this was my life.

In 2015 I was diagnosed with sarcoma, an uncommon type of cancer found in fewer than 200,000 people in the United States. Out of its exceedingly many variants, I had soft tissue sarcoma in my anal and gluteal muscles. I had a ticket for a lethal raffle I didn’t voluntarily purchase.

This devastating news came less than two years after marrying my one and only, Nick. At the time, I was in ecstasy, dreaming away and formulating a ‘Life List’ of stupefying goals we set out to accomplish. We had it all planned out. This wasn’t a part of the plan.

Out of the blue, I was knocked to the ground by a jab to my jaw that said “Whoa, wait a second, fasten your seatbelt. You’re going to need it for what’s ahead.”

With my life completely turned upside down, I came to understand that all I had taken for granted was just as fragile as our human existence, as ephemeral as the numbered days we have on this planet.

It’s in those moments that hit you like a ton of bricks that you do a life scan. You finally recognize an array of little things which are actually so undeserving of your attention — and yet, they had been pulling you away from what is truly important. Don’t sweat the little stuff because life is now! There is no time to waste on trifles — the resentments, the grievances, the limited thinking, the feelings of unworthiness, etc.

Forget about overly planning or constantly dwelling on the past, the secret is living the present to the fullest because the present is the present.

But how?

With a single diagnosis, I felt everything was in shambles. But with the unconditional love and encouragement of my husband, I decided that no matter what, I had the power to create the best of my time with him, and that every moment on this earth would be nothing less than extraordinary. Nothing and no one (and certainly no diagnosis) was going to get in my way.

That said, what came next was no walk in the park. My body began to be emptied out slowly by my illnesses. In total to date, I’ve undergone thirteen surgeries and countless protocols.

Far from feeling sorry for myself or ashamed about my scars, I wear these marks like my badge of honor. They are much more significant than any masters or doctorate degree I could’ve attained. They’re a part of a story that I’m most proud of — proof that after everything I’ve been through, I’m still standing. They also guided me home to unforgotten places and parts of myself.

Through it all, I earnestly trusted that what was happening was no coincidence. I perceived that I had a bigger purpose.

A voice constantly reminded me that I had to carry out this message and not hold back about divulging my story, even when close family members and friends criticized me and judged my actions. 

Life can be so unexpected, yet so expected. I’ve always known I’d write a book about my multicolored life. Throughout my childhood I even owned several typewriters — it was just one of the signs. I was preparing even when I didn’t know it.

I considered chronicling my fabulous life adventures and experiences. But as it so often happens, it did not turn out exactly how I had envisioned at the time. There was ‘so much more’ that I had to accomplish before crafting a magnum opus.

Amid the blackout I was living, writing a book was not on my mind at that very moment. All my energy was focused on getting through each day, each medical test and frightening result.

But I was certain this was the most important journey of my life. I didn’t want to forget anything, because I knew that in the future I could touch people’s lives with my story. People who were experiencing the same things I was experiencing could learn from my story and feel a little less alone in their struggles. There was a call within to make meaning of this madness.

While cancer has definitively been the most challenging litmus test, it’s hardly been the only health setback I’ve faced throughout my life. Since 2011 I’ve been in a tug-of-war with a host of autoimmune diseases. First came Hashimoto’s, then lupus and connective tissue disorder in 2015. And then in the two years that followed, autoimmune retinopathy and Rheumatoid Arthritis joined the party, respectively. Not to mention I had pyloric stenosis at birth and nearly died during the surgery; my parents actually baptized me in the surgery room. No one thought I would live. But live I did and I refuse to let my health challenges define me and determine my destiny — and those aren’t just words.

There is ‘so much more’ about a person we often do not know.

Ever since growing up in Mayagüez, Puerto Rico, I’ve had a special gift: I was born a psychic medium and I could always communicate with the dead.

It wasn’t easy to accept it because of all of the controversy and conflict surrounding it. I was terribly afraid about how my family would react. I especially feared rejection, particularly being labeled as insane. Keeping my mediumship abilities a secret was the only way I knew how to protect myself, but it harmed me. Hiding it didn’t make it go away. It was the cause of severe anxiety throughout my life, and I never understand why.

On January 23, 2018, four days after celebrating my forty-fifth birthday, MaryAnn DiMarco, another psychic medium, wowed me by corroborating the lifelong suspicion of my gift. It was truly a breath of fresh air, an indescribable feeling of completeness and validation — a homecoming. She had set me free…free to be me in all aspects. After all of the hardships, this opened the door to a series of new and exciting possibilities.

For instance, I could help people reconnect with their loved ones and aid them in finding answers to questions that have haunted them for years, perhaps all of their lives, or bring guidance on a specific issue. With this revelation, I unleashed my life’s purpose from the corners of my life where I had hidden it.

So Much More is immeasurably more than just my personal story. It is a call to action. I urge and encourage people to pursue their passions and ambitions, no matter how big or small. I want to stimulate others to identify what gives meaning to their lives and to have the will and courage to go after it — to recollect the parts of themselves. 

It is my wish for people to grab life by the horns, I cannot stress this enough! No one is going to do it for you. No one knows what’s best for you. And yes, that may take some time to figure out, but it’s worth it. Stop and smell the flowers, be grateful for every little moment by cherishing and being thankful for everything you have already. Complaining about what is lacking will only lead you to a trap of victimhood that will paralyze your life. When you put fear, pessimism and negativity out in the Universe, it listens and returns fear, pessimism and negativity your way.

We can choose differently. We can release these emotions and see life through a new lens…even with cancer.

Believe me, I could have easily succumbed to that mentality. It would have been so much easier to have blamed my life circumstances upon bad luck. But ultimately, that would not have been the right decision, that attitude would have never allowed me to discover an invaluable set of tools and mechanisms that I can now share to help guide and empower others. Tools that I still put into practice every day of my life, because my journey is far from over.

My own struggles led me to find the voice which was always meant for me, including creating Artz Cure Sarcoma Foundation to help fund research for this rare and orphan cancer. The sad reality is that there are no drugs in the United States to treat sarcoma because pharmaceutical companies don’t have a financial incentive. What’s more, a lot of valuable information about sarcoma is not covered by the media because it’s not a sexy or well-known cancer.

My medical journey carries on. I am still a patient at the MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, Texas; I fly there every six months from New York for checkups. I also go to New York University every four weeks to receive intravenous treatment for my rheumatoid arthritis.

Life for me is about treasuring all its moments and finding the upside and beauty even in the tough ones.

It’s balancing the many roles in my life and giving more than my best to everything I do. It’s about showing up for it all. The message is simple: Nothing and no one can stop you from manifesting your dreams and goals; unless of course, that something is YOU. Show up for yourself. There is so much more. Trust me!

You may also enjoy reading From the Eye of the Storm: A Personal Account of Stage 4 Cancer, by Valynda Planeta

The post So Much More: One Woman’s Journey of Healing and Revealing Through Life’s Storms appeared first on BEST SELF.

One woman’s story of how non-sexual physical touch helped her discover a path to healing and a deeper connection with her partner after their miscarriage.

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It’s a plus! We’re pregnant!

I ecstatically shared the proof from three tests with my sweetheart at the beginning of this year. I even took snapshots of three pink pluses, my evidence. Yet, truth be told, even within that happiness, I had this awful, gnawing knowing that I tried to push down — the pregnancy wouldn’t last. Perhaps it was just nerves so, I did all the things I was supposed to do anyway: took the prenatal vitamins, made the doctor’s appointments, ate healthy food choices and exercised. All the things.

Then the day came, and the blood started to flow — just a little at first. Maybe everything would still be OK. Keep it together, Marla, I tried to tell myself, as if I had some control over the process. As if I could stop the bleeding and hold this baby safely in my womb. Two days later at my OBGYN’s office it was official, I was in the process of a miscarriage.

Even the word ‘miscarriage’ implies I did something wrong — I hadn’t properly carried this precious package. 

As a former doula supporting women through labor, delivery and postpartum, a former bodyworker, and now a relationship expert for couples, I thought I knew how to ask for what I needed in order to heal and have some sense of closure with my partner. But I didn’t and I didn’t fully grasp the magnitude of grief and the waves of emotional, physical, and spiritual fragments that needed to find a place to rearticulate inside of me in order to heal. I had to discover how to fully let go and bond with my partner through the experience of miscarriage.

Current advice for physical recovery after a miscarriage cautions women about infections, and encourages rest and self-care. Emotional recovery advises women to feel the cycles of grief and move through any thoughts that it might somehow be your fault, If only I had done… I’d still be pregnant. However, that kind of emotional torture only further eats away at our heart and leaves us feeling even more broken, empty, and wounded.

What you won’t find online is how to garner the power of Non-Sexual Physical Touch (NSPT) as a healing modality to recover from the trauma of miscarriage, to love yourself and reconnect with your partner without the pressure of sexual vibes flowing between you two. In fact, sexual activity is prohibited for 2-6 weeks following a miscarriage due to the possibility of infection. Most women just want to crawl into bed and fall asleep until we awaken free from the emotional pain of losing a pregnancy and all the hopes and visions that accompany the loss.

Celebrity Spiritual Advisor, Shellie Nelson, reminds us that “Physical touch is an opportunity to once again reconnect us to the Primal Pulse of life. It can help to soothe and heal us from the trauma of grief, pain, and loss.” Nelson goes on to say that, “If we don’t intentionally reconnect we can begin a pattern of going through the motions and begin a disconnect that continues long after the miscarriage.

Non-Sexual Physical Touch can connect us with our own worthiness, to be alive, to love, to live in awe.”

Receiving NSPT from a family member or friend can be equally healing, especially if your partner is not available to be physically or emotionally present. The human connection is what is most important.

One woman, now a mother of four, shared her experience of NSPT after a miscarriage with me:

I felt alone. I didn’t want to pull on my husband, mostly because I didn’t have the energy to even know how, plus he had his attention on the kids who were also experiencing grief. My younger brother, whom I never turned toward for comfort, reached out and asked if I wanted him to support me, knowing how much we had going on at home. I said yes. When he arrived, he just got into bed with me with no words at all…and held me. The little girl inside of me relaxed and was allowed to make sense of the experience through physical touch. Having my brother lying next to me — something I would never have known to ask for — was one of the most loving, connected experiences of my life.

After a miscarriage, the tendency is to want to acknowledge it happened, deal with the sadness and emotions, and move forward as quickly as possible because we want to get back to our normal, busy lives. But grief and loss are not so neat and orderly — and have their own healing timetable.

Coltrane Lord, Ayurvedic Educator understands NSPT deeply, “In an Ayurveda (the science of life) lifestyle, we practice ‘Abyanga’ on a daily basis. It is non-sexual intentional touch meant to bring the body’s energy and hormones back to homeostasis.” Lord goes on to say that, “After a miscarriage, non-sexual, intentional touch from a partner offers the traumatized feminine body a coherent field she can reference to self-heal. The experience is similar to a child needing a hug or soothing touch from a parent after she skinned her knee. When the physical body experiences trauma, it is a natural reflex to reach for comfort. Non-sexual, intentional touch allows the energetic body to ‘drink’ from the coherent field her partner or loved one is holding.”

Many couples will talk it out and attempt to mend their hearts through words. When talking is not enough to calm and heal, there is another path.

Loving, Non-Sexual Physical Touch is the healing balm to help couples move beyond the sadness into deep intimacy that does not include any sexual energy.

Just to be held is the wish of so many women. And their partners, male or female, also need that physical touch. Words are so limited in these situations, they seem to cause more trauma sometimes when they are meant to be loving.

According to Relationship Expert, Alexandra Stockwell, M.D., “One of the keys to healing together is for both to understand and accept that each person is having their own experience.” She goes on to say, “Men look to their partners for clues for what they are expected to do and how they can be helpful. After a miscarriage, women are not in a position to give that kind of information to allow men to be supportive, so that can be very destabilizing.”

A woman needs to know that she is loved, not a failure in any way, and that her emotions are valid and worthy of expression.

Her partner needs guidance on what to do with their own emotions and how to best support her. Miscarriage is a loss for both partners, thick with emotional charge — and within this source of deep personal pain, they must find their way back to each other.

Dr. Stockwell reminds us that NSPT will, “Bring communion into an otherwise internally isolating experience.”

And Isa Herrera, Women’s Pelvic Health Expert recommends, “After a miscarriage, sexual intimacy can be hard to resume. Everyone feels so hurt and is looking for the ‘why.’ I recommend all women start with ‘Outercourse’ and connect by touching, hugging, slow dancing and being intimate without the sex. Outercourse helps women connect deeply with her partner and to express love in a way that allows her to feel safe.”

Discomfort is more than just physical after a miscarriage. The emotional pain of miscarriage can make both partners feel as if they are going through it alone — especially as they attempt to muscle their way back to ‘normal’, life as it was, and to all the other responsibilities that demand their attention. Isolation post-miscarriage can be deafening.

“Try a firm hand on her shoulder, a gentle embrace and a moment to breathe together. With this touch, the pain of the unspoken, and the loss is able to unfurl more readily, and give way to the seed of healing,” says Postpartum Doula, Devon Tracy.

Here are just a few of the physical benefits of NSPT:

• Lowered blood pressure
• Decreased cortisol, the stress hormone in your system
• Increased oxytocin and other chemicals in the brain that lead to a feeling of wellbeing.

When you practice NSPT with intention, you co-create experiences with your partner where you are bonding during chemical release which means your memory will include the experience of being held, being together, and bonding through a challenging time.

Even months or years later, the practice of NSPT has the power to bond and heal those places that can’t be touched by talk therapy.

While writing this article, my partner and I revisited the practices we utilized earlier this year, and even more emotion was released. For more on the actual practices of NSPT I invite you to download our complimentary guide which includes:

• The 6 Hugging Positions
• Massage After Miscarriage Practice
• The Ultimate Spoon
• The Love Blanket

During the process of composing this article, I was revisited by my own loss and rode waves of emotion as I interviewed women and couples who experienced miscarriage, as well as the experts who contributed here. My partner and I practiced all of these NSPT techniques ten months after our miscarriage — and the unspoken, unhealed, unloved parts of myself were able to quietly step forward and feel the comfort, space, and permission to receive a new level of healing and integration from the experience. I was able to have closure on the miscarriage in a whole new way.

So please consider this an invitation if you have experienced a miscarriage at any time in your life (or any other emotional trauma), to ask for your partner to practice NSPT together for mutual healing.

Experiencing loss is a part of the human condition and how we choose to respond can be the difference between suffering and healing.

There is no true closure without healing, and Non-Sexual Physical Touch (NSPT) is an opportunity to reconnect with the essence and truth of who we are, what we care about, and to love ourselves while allowing our partner to love us through loss.

You may also enjoy reading The Virtue of Vulnerability: How Miscarriage Reconnected Me to my Intuition, by Cindy Kirkliss-Kramer.

The post Life After Miscarriage: The Healing Power of Non-Sexual Physical Touch appeared first on BEST SELF.

Confessions of a trailblazing female M.D. who says that she once colluded with her patient’s pain by prescribing psychotropics — but that was then

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You may trust me because I have an M.D. That may mean, to you, that I have information that you don’t have. I know things about your body — about bodies — that you are not privy to by virtue of your non-expert station in life.

You may trust me because I am a woman. Because women inspire the trust of a mother, with their flowing hair and eyelashes, their soft skin and breasts, and their uniquely prosodic voices.

What is it, then, for a woman to become a Western physician? Is it perhaps possible that egalitarian feminism has given us an opportunity to feel the difference between a man in a patriarchal role and a woman assuming that same position? Is a woman misusing her power more dangerous than a man? It feels easier to trust a female physician, but what is it to trust a woman who believes the body needs to be managed? Who likely has not cultivated any intimacy with her own body and its interplay with the mind and emotions let alone the body, mind and emotions of her patient. Perhaps only a women divested of her own relationship to her body’s innate wisdom could become a Western physician. And only as that physician can she then capture men and women as patients in a way that fundamentally disempowers them in service of her seeming expertise around the body machine.

This was my story. I was a woman seeking mastery over the body in the dominion of a patriarchal hierarchy that treats this mastery like some cultish code only select initiates have access to — not the layperson, and of course, not the patient. I did not know what a woman’s wisdom could look like.

I did not know that the body’s symptoms are a signpost for unexplored conflicts, tension, and imbalance. I did not know that there isn’t a way around fear and pain, only through. I did not know that suppressing and fixing scary symptoms only begets more complex challenges.

I did not know any of this, and because I am a woman, and a doctor, my patients trusted me nonetheless. They trusted me to write prescriptions for them and their unborn fetuses and breastfeeding infants…They trusted me when I colluded with their fear and assuaged their guilt about taking psychotropics.

I need you to know that I am aware of the ways in which I still wield my credentials, my expertise, and my woman-ness to inspire your trust. I also need you to know that you are choosing to place your trust in me, and that it is imperative to examine the places we are choosing to trust.

Perhaps the only person, institution, or group that deserves your trust is one that reminds you of what you already know. Not one that offers a poison apple that is irresistibly shiny and couldn’t possibly have been grown in your own back yard. Don’t abandon yourself in search of healing no matter how much the promise seems to offer you a sense of control. That sense of control will soon transform into dependency on a system that owns the power you gave it.

So if I have lured you in with the promise of what my credentials might offer, allow me to open the door to my examination room. Go ahead, get undressed, put this gown on, and start exploring. I won’t be back with a diagnosis or prognosis. Because only you know what can be known about you.

That’s why the best healthcare is delivered by Helpers and a community who hold a mirror to allow you see yourself better, not Western Doctors who only know the body as object.

I shared this missive recently and have rededicated myself to creating the conditions, in what ways I can, to liberate every person I touch to their own power. This power may be best experienced when we can witness our capacity to make self-affirming, self-loving, and self-aligned choices. But what is a choice? Are we really free to make them?

The Anatomy of Choice

It strikes me as, perhaps, the single most important feature of the human experience that we have (and retain) the capacity for choice. Sometimes referred to as free will, choice is our power. Our self-affirming impulse. It is the I AM whispered, spoken, and screamed out into the space beyond.

Choice of what socks to pull on, of what charity to donate to, of whom to make love to, of whether or not to end one’s own life. These choices, made in every moment, weave the fabric of who we are. And every poor choice misaligned with our deepest essence offers the opportunity to, by contrast, experience a higher integrity choice in the future.

It might be noted, as well, that in societies where choice is suppressed, dehumanization and the experience of our fellow persons as either compliant or non-compliant emerges (Handmaid’s Tale anyone?).

But the slippery slope to suppression of individual power begins with the ‘mindless’ automation of our behavior and actions. It begins when we allow ourselves to somnambulate, also known as ‘sleep walk’. When we allow our subconscious conditioning to remain subconscious, driving our preferences, opinions, and actions under the light of our awareness.

In fact, it may be that we don’t have choice until we know that we do.

The process of rendering the subconscious (read trauma imprints, parental brainwashing, even intergenerational patterning) conscious may be a lifetime spiritual pursuit. Right now, however, across the globe, we have a veritable emergency unfolding…an alchemical cauldron, the likes of which brewed the Holocaust and slavery. So how can individuals be re-empowered now?

Here’s what has worked for me…and all that I can share is my experience because I don’t know anything for certain.

1. Identify where you have put your trust: Trust is the connective tissue of our meta-organism. We long to trust. We do it even when we shouldn’t. We animate our beliefs with faith. And this faith-based trust is a vector with a direction from you to the other. It’s a piece of you that you give away. And this is why it hurts when it is violated or betrayed. Betrayal itself may simply be awakening to something you did not want to see. So how can we see with eyes wide open and actively choose where we are placing our trust? It begins with recognizing our influencers. At this point, I choose to trust mother earth, a handful of human beings, and the cosmic design of this mystery. But once upon a time, I trusted science, the medical establishment, and the principles of pharmaceutical interventions. I would have given all of my freedom away for the promise of safety. So where are you placing trust? Any big corporations on that list? Doctors? Governing agencies? Your parents? Whole Foods? Make a list.
2. Learn what is possible: There are visionaries, pioneers, and trailblazers in our midst. I’ve been known to say, however, that they are often the first to be captured by psychotropic medications. Those individuals, when their gifts are nurtured, can manifest within them what does not already exist without. The rest of us, however, do well to be inspired. We need to know what’s possible in order to awaken to our own directionality. Terminal cancer can be meaningfully transformed into vitality? Multiple medicated chronic psychiatric disorders can be shed like a too-tight skin? Organs can be regrown? People can get up out of wheelchairs? Yes. Allow the knowledge of these already-lived experiences to call you home to your rightful destiny.
3. Understand fear as a motivator: When life is about avoiding the bad and collecting the good (and more for you means less for me), then the driving force is fear. Hopefully we can all agree that acting from fear — from a story we tell ourselves about what is happening that inspires urgent short-sighted action — is never as powerful as acting from strength let alone from love. Look for the loudest voice around a given choice…is it “this is bad and needs to go away!” or is it “what is this about, and how can I support myself in discovering more?” If it’s the former, put a pause on related decisions and look for the choices that you can make that come from an inner sense of I’m worth it and will wait for myself rather than I’m terrified and need to feel ok immediately.

If we start here, we can learn about the landscape of choices, and even if we feel we “don’t have a choice,” we can recognize that we still have micro choices — places where we respond to what is. We can kick or not. Scream or not. Tell or not. We can run or not. Hide or not. In fact, this is one of the more powerful premises of Byron Katie’s methodology she calls ‘The Work’ which serves to dispel victimhood through the identification of each and every place that we played a part. Each and every place — even as a prisoner of war, even as an incest survivor — that we made small choices to participate with what unfolded. The point of this is not to blame the victim, but to end the illusion that we are powerless.

Choice vs Decision

Speaking of choices and decisions, are they the same? Plus column, minus column, squint and focus and take the leap! As it turns out, there is a way to live life without making a single decision. It’s called being present to what is. Decisions can feel like an intellectual test. But when that’s the case, it may be that it’s not the time to make a decision yet. When you don’t know what to do, wait until you do. Because there will come a moment when you know what to do. You make that phone call, you move your body to the left, you leave that job, and the action emerges from a felt knowing that that step emerges from the previous one. Decision-making can be a means of over-identifying with an intellectual or psychological understanding of the available terrain…an understanding that may be conditioned or limited. Choice on the other hand, can be an exercise in self-declaration, in self-authority, and in selecting opportunities from a place of personal agency, that are the truest reflection of who we are.

Choice Paralysis

In NYC, it can be difficult to go to a new restaurant or out on a date because of the nagging sense that there might have been a better option that was forsaken. Abundance of options can lead to a fearful state that invokes our childhood wounds around ‘doing something wrong’ that will lead us to isolation, rejection, and loss of love. But the truth is that our bodies can help cut through the noise. And our bodies have an inbuilt ‘yes’ and an inbuilt ‘no’. You may be attuned enough to feel the ‘hit’ if you get quiet enough. I’ve found that self-applied muscle testing methods can be a powerful tool. These days when I am confronted by 18 bottles of supplements on my counter, I’ll only take the ones my body says ‘yes’ to.

Your Body, Our Choice

Not so much, right? Even if your beliefs happen to fall on the side of mandatory vaccination or rendering elective abortion illegal, you might imagine that if you happened to fall on the wrong side of this particular approach to civil liberties, you might not appreciate the tyranny of the majority dictating what you can do with your body. Bodily sovereignty is something most of us must awaken to, however, because when we are afraid, we give up all sorts of power in exchange for a sense of control. We are not in our bodies, we fear them, we abuse them by making choices that we know our bodies reject, and for many of us, this started at a point of trauma wherein our souls literally fled the premises.

But the truth is that your body is trying to show you something.

Like my girlfriend who had a (large!) wart on her finger for an entire year. During that year she was traveling with her children around the world and her husband was working from their home in the States. I reflected that I might have done whatever I could, natural or otherwise, if I had been her, to get that thing off my finger. But she didn’t. She waited for her body to show her, and when she returned home and spent the summer with her husband and children, the wart fell off. In fact, according to German New Medicine, a wart relates to a separation conflict, so now she knows that that is how her body expresses that tension. Our bodies will tell us how to move, what to eat, and where we might be misaligned, if only we learn the language of this sophisticated organism.

Quote from a Vital Mind Reset-er:

“Funny experience today that shows that your body knows once you give it time to reset. I am on day 2 of a bad cold and thinking of what to eat. I was craving yogurt (non-dairy, no sugar) and thought I would make a mushroom omelet, something I don’t think I have ever made. Then I read this afternoon that yogurt, mushrooms, eggs, and yams are some of the best ways to shorten a cold’s length. So, I just need to make a yam and I should kick this thing quick! So cool my body was craving all that.”

As we welcome ourselves home to ourselves, we are invited anew to act as guardian over our own experience. We have the opportunity to retain our power, our native expertise over ourselves and to resist the fear-based temptation to outsource it. It doesn’t take much objective consideration to recognize that a woman presenting to an allopathic male gynecologist to learn more about her genital anatomy and presenting symptoms is ‘off’. Under the auspices of ritualized medicine (white coat, standardized office decor, physician speak), she allows a man to penetrate her most sacred regions, so that he can tell her what she apparently cannot discover about herself or through the supportive care of a female healer who herself is sharing the wisdom of her experience to awaken another’s.

Doctors only know what they know and they must believe that what they know is valuable or they wouldn’t be effective authorities or experts.

The premise of conventional medicine is the belief that we can engineer and architect a safer, more productive, more functional reality than nature itself can.

We’ve tried this with agriculture, and it turns out that the only hope we have for restoring our soil lies in cessation of all of our best practices and a good-faith effort to get out of the way of a deeper intelligence. This deeper wisdom is something we all possess. In fact, there is a Greek word I love — anamnesia — that means, in a sense, remembering what you already know. It is my sincere hope that this M.D. has helped you to remember that you don’t need me, my answers, or anything but the inspiration and support to finally turn your loving gaze inward.

You may also enjoy reading Interview: Kelly Brogan | A Mind of Your Own, by Kristen Noel

The post Your Body, Your Choice: Confessions of a Female Doctor appeared first on BEST SELF.

How we can inhabit a lifelong practice of listening, expressing and creating to animate our souls

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Such is my poetry: ironwork-poetry…

It is not a poetry thought out bit by bit.

It is not a beautiful produce, not a perfect fruit.

It is something like the air we all breathe

and the music of space we carry, deep inside.

~ Gabriel Celaya

As soon as we are born, we are part of an endless search that really goes nowhere. But it’s the journey and movement of the search that enlivens us. The great Hindu sage, Ramana Maharshi said, “There is no greater mystery than this, that we keep seeking reality though in fact we are reality.”

It is through this endless seeking that effort reveals grace. It is through the endless search that life moves through us until we realize that heaven is wherever we are, if we meet life completely with an open heart.

And just as moving through water keeps fish alive, moving through life brings our indwelling presence into the world. Moving through life allows meaning to accumulate through relationship. As some fish swim with no destination, we arrive with a yearning that has no destination, a search that keeps us alive, despite the thousand places we think we need to go.

But we are not fish. And as no one can survive the ocean without a vessel to carry them, even the sea of Spirit will drown us, if we don’t create vessels to carry us.

A fundamental purpose of creativity is to engage us in the creation of vessels that will carry us in the sea of Spirit, in which we need to immerse ourselves to make life meaningful.

My poems and books are the boats that carry me, that keep me close to the deep where I am most alive.

Inherently, will and surrender are the oars that steer the soul, working gifts that return us to the heart of what matters. And along the way, we are drawn into the search for whole-mind thinking, which is revealed through the life of metaphors; the search for belonging, which is revealed through the life of stories; and the search for authenticity, which is revealed through the life of poetry.

The search for whole-mind thinking reflects our inborn urge to regain Unity. And nothing brings the Wholeness of Reality into view more than the life of metaphors. For the more we see, the greater our chance at experiencing wisdom. And the more we feel, the greater our chance at experiencing compassion.

Each soul is a cell in the bloodstream of humanity and, as such, each soul is indispensable to the health of life. For without healthy cells, there can be no bloodstream. And without a healthy bloodstream, there is no place for cells to live. This is a metaphor that evokes whole-mind thinking.

A covenant that appears for being on the endless search is that we become committed to the art of putting things together. In the 1600s, the Japanese master Basho spoke about this to his student, Kikakou:

We shouldn’t abuse God’s creatures.

You must reverse your haiku.

Not:

a dragonfly;

remove its wing —

pepper tree.

But:

pepper tree;

add wings to it—

 dragonfly.

The world depends on which way this thought unfolds. The metaphors we come upon lead us to whole-mind thinking, which reminds us to put things together rather than take things apart.

Our search for belonging is brought forward through the life of stories, as narratives are the threads that bind us.

Once we know a person’s story, we tend to experience kinship over separation and to offer praise more than blame. I’m thinking of a woman I know who after the death of her lifelong friend was drawn to wear her friend’s sweater when all alone in the afternoon. She slowly began to feel the one, long story of women who were friends throughout the ages. She closed her eyes and began to feel the clothes and jewelry they all had shared.

I’m also thinking of being nine and watching my father in his basement workshop carefully building a model sailing ship, so immersed in using a tweezer to set the miniature rigging that I could sense the story of everyone who ever built a sailing ship in the quiet of our basement.

Or when I was in the Jewish Cemetery in Prague, watching an old man put his hand heavily on a family stone. Though I didn’t know the details of his loss, I stood close enough in silence to share in his mourning, and felt the endless story of loss and mourning reverberate around us. Stories of belonging restore our sense of kinship.

I’m often asked about the difference between my efforts in poetry and prose. In poetry, I have always searched for metaphors that reveal how everything is connected, how everything is informed and enlivened by the same Source. The further I go, the more I realize that in writing prose I’m taking those inscrutable, compelling metaphors and I am entering them, living with them, being in relationship and conversation with them; trying to retrieve and unfold the logic of Spirit nested within them. This is the basis for the spiritual nonfiction that I write. This is what rises in me when I try to release in prose what’s carried to me in poetry.

Finally, there is the search for authenticity, which is the bedrock of all our searching.

For no matter where we go, none of it matters, unless we are real. And poetry is the chief means of discovering and expressing authenticity. Because poetry offers us a direct way to live in truth. The poetry of authenticity can connect us to the wholeness of humanity and the mystery of the Universe at any time in any way. Poetry is the honest record of our days.

I’m thinking of the time in Washington Park when I saw an elderly man staring off into Eternity. Having seen me see him, he came over and sat beside me, and asked, “How can we go there together?” That question changed my life. Or the time I saw a homeless boy in South Africa, begging with such dignity that it made me explore all the ways my heart has been broken open through the years. Or that time in the hospital after having a cancerous rib removed from my back, when the doctor suddenly came to remove the tube siphoning blood from my lungs. Sitting at the foot of my bed, my dear friend Paul jumped to my side so I could hold on to him. That moment uncovered the essential step we all must take, if we are to love. These were authentic moments that revealed the poetry of life.

Ultimately, you can grunt your truth and it will still be beautiful. For the deeper sense of beauty is the shine of authenticity more than the aesthetic qualities that stun us. No matter how awkward, our authenticity is the foundation of lasting beauty. If someone coughs “I love you,” it’s more beautiful than an unfelt love sung in perfect pitch.

In the same way that no one can quench your thirst by drinking for you, drinking of life directly is the only way to stay essential and substantial.

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An Invitation into Whole-Mind Thinking

• In your journal, take a metaphor, one you’ve read or discovered yourself, and describe the whole-mind thinking it draws you into.
• In conversation with a friend or loved one, tell a story that demonstrates our struggle to belong. Later, weave the story you have told into a story that you write.
• In your journal, write a poem about a recent moment of authenticity you found yourself in.

[This article is an excerpt from Mark’s new book, Drinking from the River of Light, just published by Sounds True.]

You may enjoy reading other pieces by Mark Nepo for Best Self Magazine on his author page.

The post The Endless Search: One Man’s Journey To Life Expression appeared first on BEST SELF.

A raw account of healing and revealing — one mother recovers from people-pleasing and unworthiness through her son’s journey to sobriety

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With reminders of every fault, limiting belief and mess-up we’ve ever made on the tip of their tongues, our teenage children seem to almost effortlessly touch our core wounds. For years I lived in the painful shadow of this reality until I was able to shift my vantage point. Is it possible that our children can be our greatest teachers? What I discovered when fear and heartbreak forced me to be vulnerable and reflective is that yes, beautiful lessons are there for us.

At Home in His Home

Tears come at the most inconvenient time as I sit in the comfortable, but basic seat I strategically selected. Not in the front row, that would be too intense for him. But not at the back because I really want a front row seat to witness this. I feel a welling up as he walks on stage with the worship team and he takes his place on the left. He doesn’t make eye contact with me, but that’s nothing personal. He’s just in his zone, preparing to serve.

I am in His house today, and my son Cam’s house. It’s not mine but that’s a big part of why strong emotion has pushed its way up from my belly and turned into tears of healing this morning. I feel like this is a private concert just for me as I allow the salty tears to trickle. I’d hold them back but they feel so damn good; happy tears; cleansing tears; washing my soul of yet another layer of shame and hurt.

It was 4 years prior that the best friend of my oldest son Cam, sent me a text. I found it strange as I wondered how he got my number. I opened and read and felt instant overwhelm. It was short and to the point,

“I think you should know that it’s not water in Cam’s water bottle when he leaves for school. Check your liquor cabinet.”

What?! I didn’t even need to check the cabinet; I knew that it was true. But I did check and my heart sank.

We have a decent stash of bottles for when company comes over and I rarely, if ever, check them as I’m not really a drinker. Like my dad, alcohol doesn’t agree with me. An occasional glass of red wine with a nice meal is the extent of my consumption. On this day I discover nearly empty bottles, a few of them including the water look-a-like, vodka.

“Are these emptier? Maybe they aren’t?” I knowingly try to convince myself for a couple minutes. I even grab a marker and make discrete marks on the bottles so maybe I can be wrong if I come back again in a few days and the levels haven’t changed.

I feel so alone. Ashamed. “How has it come to this? How have I failed so badly as a parent?” I desperately begin, in my mind, to go back in time to see when it happened, when I messed up and Cam turned to alcohol to numb his feelings and cope. “When did he stop coming to me? How had I made him feel that he couldn’t come to me?”

Shame. Shame. Shame. I’d been so wrapped up in the busy of my own life I had a hard time pinpointing when it happened. And then I realized it had been happening gradually and I just didn’t want to admit it; didn’t want to face the pain and the mess. Cam had been dropping breadcrumbs behind himself for most of high school.

An eternal optimist, I see now that I convinced myself it would sort its self out. Clearly that hadn’t happened. I congratulate myself, sarcastically, for being ‘Parent-of-the Year’ and begin to assess my options.

I could ignore it and keep pretending. As a people-pleaser I was a master at pretending. I could go, in a reactive rage, bust his bedroom door open and tell him what an idiot he was and that he must stop immediately. I could try to reach him in conversation, just like we used to, although this seemed unlikely based on how much he’d withdrawn lately.

The truth is I did a mix of things; I watched him closely, I ached when he would be destructive with his behavior, I tip-toed sharing suggestions, I didn’t replenish our liquor cabinet and I started to worry and feel guilty, a lot.

Kevin Nealon, a comedian said “I’m a people-pleaser with a knack of letting people down.” That was me. And this was maybe the first time I realized that my years of people-pleasing had deep-seeded scars. A painful lack of worthiness stemming back to my feelings of not being loved, as child.

My being nice and saying yes all the time meant I failed to teach my kids how to create healthy boundaries for themselves.

There was no malice. I was doing the best I could raising two boys by myself. But that didn’t soothe what was now a constant flow of negative self-talk and shaming in my head.

For several years after this, we continued with one step forward and two steps back. I tried to be calm when my son struggled even though I was terrified of what might happen. I became a best-selling fiction writer with all the stories I wrote in my head when he didn’t come home from a party or when he’d stay in his bedroom for days. Counselling, days of detoxing, little wins — but more steps back than forward.

At work I kept up quite the charade. I was VP of Corporate Communications for a growing company, a team to manage, travel, bills to pay at home and aging parents to tend to on weekends. But the people-pleaser knows no boundaries when it comes to shoving down feelings and moving forward. In a warped way, I actually wore it like a badge of honor.

In fact, one day I recall my team was organizing an event. We had a big-name band playing a huge celebration party. VIP passes were issued for those who would require access to the celebrity green room. I had been running around all day and got back to my desk only an hour before the event started. One of my team had left my VIP badge at my desk. Get Shit Done Weber. That was the name on the badge. Not Amanda Weber.

While my oldest son was struggling with borderline depression and using alcohol to cope, I was recognized at work as the person who made sure everything happened as it should. If only they knew.

It deeply saddens me to see how I dishonored myself day after day, but at that time I recall so clearly seeing the VIP badge and thinking, You’re damn right, you can always rely on me!

Have you ever lay in bed, in the dark, as night falls and the veil between worlds seems thinner and prayer invites you in? I have. It was around this time in my life where I would often fall asleep praying for divine intervention — for a hand that could reach my struggling son and support him in a way that I didn’t seem to be able to. I was exhausted doing all the wrong things to help.

If I’m being honest, I was more of an enabler than a strong parent because it soothed my own pain.

Divine Intervention Arrives

Cam had been distant for several days on this sunny August morning, nothing new. I was heading out to the grocery store and invited him to come along. He agreed and I thought, Great, we can load up on healthy food and maybe this will be the day it all starts to turn around. I was right about one thing; change was coming but by this day, it was already in motion.

Unbeknownst to me, my son’s girlfriend of 4 years had broken up with him a few days prior. I didn’t know for sure but I imagined it had a lot to do with his drinking, moods and overall unhappiness.

As we sat in the car, in the grocery store parking lot, I felt a deep mama-bear intuition wash over me. With tingling in my head and pounding in my heart, I looked over at Cam and gently said, “Honey, you seem really low today. Can we talk?”

That was all it took. He hung his broken head and began to weep. This was something I had never seen from him before. To this day I recall exactly how I felt; I was so deeply sad for him but along with sadness I felt hope that for the first time something had cracked him open, just a sliver, and he was allowing emotions other than anger and self-hatred to flow.

I would find out that day, as we sat and talked, that he was on the third day of sobriety. He was struggling but he carried a determination that I had never witnessed before. He was deeply sad that his girlfriend had finally given up on him — and yet more sad that he had been such an unkind person to her. He had remorse, he had disappointment in himself, he had a lot of emotions tumbling out. I wouldn’t say he was hopeful, it was more despair, but he began to talk about being tired of letting God down. And how he just needed to do better. God, I thought. What about the rest of us?

And then I felt a wave of gratitude. God wasn’t available to me, but if he was available to Cam — I welcomed that opportunity.

An Abrupt Education

I was born in Belfast, Northern Ireland. A city which was, and still is, fiercely divided by religion. For generations Catholics and Protestants fought. Vicious fighting, terrorist fighting before the world used the term ‘terrorist’ in daily headlines. Car bombings, politically motivated violent rallies, not a safe place to raise family. Or so my Dad decided.

At the age of 3 (with my bothers 6 and 12) we immigrated to Canada. I was young and didn’t take in any of the reasons for our move but at 10 I got an abrupt education.

I had always wondered why we didn’t go to church, but as a kid you don’t often ask what seems like such logical questions. I had been playing with my best friend one Sunday morning. Her mom said it was time for her to go to church, which was a across the street at her Catholic school. We were besties, didn’t want to separate, so I went with her. I apprehensively walked in beside her, a people-pleaser who didn’t want to disrespect, into the school gymnasium they had converted for a church service. I would learn soon that they did this every Sunday morning as they raised money to build a dedicated church.

I sat, observed, pretended to mouth words of prayer when people, who clearly knew the script, were responding to the words of the Priest with conviction. I pretended to fit in. I wanted to fit in.

I’d never experienced so many people coming together in unity. It felt like a club of belonging. Do they notice that I don’t belong?

When my best friend walked up for what I would later discover was called ‘Communion’, there was no way I was getting left behind, so I went. I observed what everyone was doing. I copied, I took communion. Seemed like no big deal. Afterwards I asked my friend what that was and she told me. I felt shame. I felt like an impostor. I hoped that the Priest wouldn’t find out and be mad at me.

When I went home, I casually mentioned at the dinner table what I had done and my Dad, who literally NEVER raised his voice instructed me never to go back again. “The bloody Catholics forced me out my country, there is no damn way any child of mine is going to church!”

The truth is that he was equally as angry at both sides thus explaining our no-church-on-Sundays upbringing.

This was the time in my life when I began to feel very alone and scared when I thought about anything to do with God or life, for that matter. I felt that to pursue any kind of more expansive inquiries around “where do we go when we die” or “what is life about,” I was being disloyal to my parents. Missing this dimension of my being in the way that it happened, always left me with a sense of being less than and not worthy.

Around the age of 35 when my life was a mess with stress and busy and being reactive with my two sons, I remember making a list of things I wanted in my life. One of them was the freedom to explore types of spirituality that would fill this void of unworthiness.

The seed was planted.

Although God, in the traditional sense, has never really connected for me, being part of a divine Universe, the idea that we are all connected and were created in the essence of love — this did and continues to guide me every moment.

His Home

Cam continued to fight with all he had to be the person he knew he could be, for himself and for his God. And me, right along-side, with my Universal Divine, we have learned to accept each other’s beliefs and often muse about how similar they actually are. I never wish he would come to my side, but I often wonder if he prays for me to join him.

So here we are. I sit, mid-pack, in Cam’s house of worship and watch him walk out on stage preparing to serve as guitarist in the worship team. I release soft, healing tears.

I am comfortable with having no ultimate control, while over and over again Cam teaches me how to love him for who he is, by loving myself for who I am.

He strums his guitar strings, I take in a deep nourishing breath and together we celebrate Cam’s 952nd day sober.

You may also enjoy reading From Motherless to Motherhood: A Journey of Addiction, Relationship & Love, by Jan Hiner

The post At Home In His Home: Meeting My Sober Son Where He Is appeared first on BEST SELF.

Money is perceived as something that can make us happy, but can your money be happy? Exploring the relationship and energy behind it all.

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It’s a scene many of us know all too well: There you are, dreading paying your bills because you’re worried there’s just not enough money. Maybe you’re scrimping and saving every month, doing your best to hold on until payday, hoping you’ll survive. Most of us have had moments like this, but what if money didn’t have to be a struggle? What if you could make peace with your money and experience it as a happy part of your life?

I am on a mission to create more peace and happiness around money for people just like you.

And what most people don’t realize is that how we feel about money and how we relate to it affects the flow of money in our lives.

Take a moment and imagine your best friend. Think about how you feel towards this person, and how they feel towards you. Think about the fun you have together, and the ways in which your relationship is a balance of give and take. You both support each other, and you both can lean on each other.

Now imagine it can be this way with money, too. Money can be your friend. You can give money and receive money, and all of it can be part of a happy relationship with money.

In order to get to this happy money relationship, though, you may first need to understand how you currently feel about money. If you carry a lot of stress and worry about it, you may be thinking of money as an adversary or a source of fear, not a friend.

Ready to find out how you are viewing money now? Try this exercise.

If Money Were a Person, Who Would It Be?

Imagine you are walking down the street and you meet the personification of money:

• What does this person look like?
• How are they dressed?
• How do they walk?

Now, imagine that this person speaks to you.

• What do they say?
• Are they kind or unkind? Friendly or rude? Engaging or dismissive?
• What other qualities do they have?
• Are they interested in talking to you and being around you?

In working with thousands of people all over the world, I have found that, for so many of them, money shows up as mean and unfriendly. And sometimes they find that money is just difficult for them to be with: unresponsive, disinterested, apathetic towards them.

For those who have not had good experiences with money, I am sorry that life’s been unfair. I am sorry that things weren’t easy in the past. But I can assure you that doesn’t mean your future is fixed or that you can’t turn your life around or change your feelings toward money. Money can be ‘bad’, but it can also be ‘good’ – very good in fact, depending upon the intention you assign to it and the energy you connect with it. It can also show up as welcoming and kind, especially if you start changing your energy towards it and treat it like a best friend.

Create a Happy Money Life

Ultimately, we all choose our approach to money, and to life. How? I believe it begins with gratitude. Instead of believing there is never enough, you begin thinking: I have all that I need, and I am so grateful for it all. I am grateful for the work I do, the food I eat, the car I drive, and all the money I make.

When money comes in, you say, “Thank you” or, as we saying Japan, “Arigato.” Even when money leaves you, you can say it again; grateful for how the money served you or what it is bringing to you now.

Whatever happens, you can say thank you – powerful words that will help you start to transform your relationship with money. The more you do this, the less stress you’ll have, and the more happiness will flow through you and your money. And you’ll begin to see, without much effort, how quickly the unhappy money in your wallet starts to grow and smile and transform into happy money.

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You can learn more about happy money and download Ken’s FREE, ‘7 Questions to Unlock The Flow of Unhappy Money’ over at his website.

You may also enjoy reading True Abundance: One Man’s Search for (Mindful Money) Meaning, by Jim Brown

The post Is Your Money Happy? A Refreshing Approach To Navigating Your Finances appeared first on BEST SELF.

After being contacted regarding a #MeToo article, a former fashion model revisits her own story and finds inspiration to shift the bigger picture narrative

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I don’t talk a lot (if ever) about my former modeling career. It feels as if it’s a distant and closed chapter, long tucked away like the heavy portfolio I used to tote around on ‘go-sees’ as they were called, which were appointments to see clients. Yes, this was long before the digital era, long before selfies, mobile phones, social media and iPads and constant connectivity by virtue of our electronic devices. Calls were made from public payphones. Modeling was real. Very little, if anything was ever retouched. Photos were shot on film and carefully rushed by nervous assistants to photo labs to be developed at the end of the shoot day. There were no filters and there was actually something raw, simple and pure about it. Unlike today.

But within that purity and that lack of digital interconnectedness, lay a world where information was hard to come by and deviant behavior could go unknown. There were no online forums, no cross-referencing and researching — no way for young models to warn each other about smarmy photographers or agents or any other number of predators aside from the good ol’ fashioned way: word of mouth.

When I ended my career promptly after my 30^th birthday, the tides were changing and so was I. The ‘waif’ look was in and I was far from a waif or a wannabe. My heyday came in the glamourous early 90’s — make-up, big hair, curvy bodies. It was a celebration of womanhood. Until it wasn’t — and heroin chic was all the rage. Even though an emerging new market celebrating real women of real sizes was coming around the bend — I wanted out. Next chapter.

It’s interesting how seemingly ‘random’ things can pop up in our lives (and our inboxes) that we can summarily dismiss as being either insignificant or perhaps even irritating. Note to self: These are always the things to pay attention to.

I’ve recently been contacted a few times ‘out of the blue’ by reporters from reputable media outlets inquiring about my experience as a fashion model in the 1980’s – 90’s in Paris (and in particular, my interactions with certain modeling agents). Let’s just say this inquiry isn’t about celebration, but rather of questionable conduct…of which there was much. But that’s no new story. Yawn.

So why now? Is it a piggyback upon the #MeToo movement?

These inquiries made me both roll my eyes and get a bit frustrated. It was a long time ago. I quit modeling 20 years ago after a 15-year career. That chapter is closed.

Besides, what’s the objective here?

Yes, there are countless stories I could tell about sleazy European modeling agents who were entrusted with the lives and careers of young innocent models from around the globe who arrived bright-eyed, naïve and with a suitcase full of dreams. I could share the tales of physical and emotional abuse, and unscrupulous practices. I could uncover the ugly underbelly of the seemingly glamorous image-making industry. I could tell stories of rich playboys, drugs and even an American model in Milan who was sent to jail for killing an Italian playboy I knew. But those really aren’t my stories to tell. They aren’t my experiences. They weren’t my abuses. My abuser, my Paris agent, died several years ago. I still squirm at the memory of his groping hands, his emotionally abusive tactics and his nightly attempts to visit my bedroom when I was only 16 years old.

And yet, still, the journalists reach out leaving me messages on all my phones (I’m surprised at their resourcefulness) and by email.

Walking one morning with a friend, I mentioned the outreaches. I told him how I was being pursued by phone and email…and how I deleted messages and left emails un-responded to. This long-winded set-up is simply because he turned to me on our walk and said, Well, what if you could spin the story to serve others? Instead of feeding into the exposé nature of the inquiry, what if you got to express the things you do feel positive about sharing?

That stopped me in my tracks. Those words spoke to me.

Those sentiments gave me back my power and even made me contemplate the possibility of tip toeing back into that old chapter to take a peek — and connect to a forgotten piece of myself.

Like reaching back to hold the hand of my younger self, I could share things not motivated by being a part of a salacious article, not by jumping on the band wagon and commiserating for commiserating’s sake — but rather sharing because it could potentially be a part of shifting a narrative that needs to be shifted.

Don’t get me wrong, it’s not that I don’t believe stories shouldn’t be told and wrongs shouldn’t be ‘righted’ — that abusers shouldn’t be called out and held accountable. But if I’ve learned anything along my own life journey, it’s that there is always more to the story. Far too often we move through the chapters of our lives like checking to-dos off our lists. Done. However, that’s not how healing works. That’s not how we use our experiences and feel what is necessary.

It makes me question how I can parent myself better, how I can nurture feelings I may have suppressed and wounds I have left raw and untended. Shoving something to the back of the closet and declaring it as ‘the past’, doesn’t make it go away. Shaming, guilting or beating up ourselves doesn’t make them disappear — if anything it prolongs unnecessary agony. Our life chapters unfold as they do for a reason and they have led us to here, in this present moment.

So, why they are reaching out to me isn’t the only question. What am I going to do with it, is really all that matters. Like catching fireflies, the moment can slip through my fingertips or it can be seized. Encouraged by my friend, I chose the latter.

Of course, hind sight is 20/20. Of course, I wish I had made some different choices. And surely,   one-off abuses happen. However, there are industries like modeling, acting, performing — where abuses are pandemic and built into the fabric of their very foundation. Why is that an accepted norm? Why do we laugh about the ‘casting couch’, yet become outraged with the #MeToo movement? We can’t have it both ways. Are we in or are we out? Do we read about the perpetuation or do something about it? And even outside of those industries, abuses take place in work spaces everywhere. The big question isn’t is this happening…it’s why and what do we plan on doing to shift it?

How, where, when are we going to show up differently for ourselves and others?

Maybe just maybe, when we nurture our own wounds we can do the same for others and we can show them how to do it for themselves.

We can empower young people to trust their guts, to listen to the wisdom of their bodies and help give them voice. We need to talk to them and we need to protect them. We need to do better.

It’s kind of ironic that our technological conveniences have actually complicated life, interactions and our connection to our emotions. The information is there and yet, detachment still thrives.

It took me almost 3 weeks to respond to the one email I must’ve forgotten to delete. As I stared at it on my computer screen, I danced between the quick press of the delete button (making it and all its stirrings disappear into the ethernet) and a thoughtful response. And btw, of course, the skeptic in my did a quick Internet search on the reporter just to make sure he was legit (because in 2019, I am availed of that privilege). But it finally dawned on me having been sparked by the conversation I had with my friend, deleting didn’t feel empowering. It felt like I was stepping away from being the change I wanted to see in the world.

When we don’t show up at the table, we can’t shift the needle and impart change.

We don’t need more stories. We know the stories. We’ve all heard the stories. We need to explore the underbelly of why so we can change the stories. We all need to look at the societal role here and our part in the production. Where are our priorities — on celebrity, the Kardashians, on the insatiable desire for acquiring more stuff? Where were and are the parents in this equation? Why weren’t young girls telling anyone what was happening to them in the 1980’s – 90’s and clearly still aren’t?

We can also empower ourselves by doing something about it — not just by calling it out, but by leading a different way. Yes, changing the trajectory of any narrative requires showing up and telling our truth. Years ago when I was first sparked to begin writing my inspirational memoir, an epic phoenix-rising-from-the-ashes tale — a close editor friend, Nina, encouraged me to write more story. The notion made my skin crawl. I didn’t want to tell more. I wanted to share ‘just enough’, and tell others what to do and move on.

Oh how the Universe must’ve been laughing. Today, I fully recognize and guide authors to embrace the golden thread that weaves through Best Self Magazine: story. We hear and learn differently, in a much more impactful and authentic way via story. Good story transcends whether it’s yours or mine — it enfolds us all. It speaks Universal truth and connects us in unimaginable ways. It reconnects us to our power and to what is possible no matter the circumstances.

Of course my friend Nina was right. Of course I needed to tell more, but the timing was all wrong. I wasn’t ready. I wasn’t healed. I wasn’t making the connections. I was still partially asleep…and most of all, I was still in it. I was still stuck in the weeds of my own healing. And that’s ok. It’s just not the time to tell others what to do.

Chapters are meant to be traveled through. We aren’t meant to get stuck in one. They are fluid and evolving. But when we are wounded, we seek refuge and hide — unless we have the tools to nurture ourselves back to health, we often try to tuck them away, out of sight out of mind. That’s not how our healing works, and yet we are surprised when things pop back up in our lives and transport us to a forgotten land.

The irony isn’t lost upon me. And as I have picked my own memoir project back up after tabling it for years — suddenly, this chapter emerged again in real time.

Now, that doesn’t mean I’m going to pull out the old portfolios, but the timing is poignant for me. While I once hid (not even having any social media accounts), I now have reconnected with many model friends from back in the day. I’m no longer hiding, I’m going to use my voice to do something productive and empowering with my experiences.

I didn’t delete the email from the reporter; instead, this is what I sent him:

The abuses of the modeling industry is not a new story of which I honestly have little more to contribute than I ever did. I have been out of the fashion industry for 2 decades now and essentially have no interaction or connection to it any longer.

That said, what does interest me is a different twist…

What do we do to change it? Why is it still going on? Is it still going on? And if so, what does that say about society and the role we all play within it?

When I first went to Paris as a 16-year old, I didn’t have a mobile phone to text or call anyone. I didn’t have a computer to email or do a Google search. Life by virtue of the digital world (or lack there-of) should be playing a contributing factor in this equation.

I don’t have any salacious personal stories to share. I never experienced the degree of abuses being reported about. But what I am interested in is the other story — not just the ‘me too’, but rather the ‘what now’.

Perhaps your story is long written by now, but if you ever want to delve into the other story, let’s talk.

I never heard back from him. Clearly, this wasn’t the story he wanted to tell. But that’s OK. I don’t need him to tell it, I can speak for myself. It takes a village to lift one up, and yet that same village can also turn a blind eye. At some point, we need to decide what kind of village we want to be.

The chapters of our live are filled with proverbial forks in the road where we were faced with taking one path or another, choosing to go this way or that. Sometimes we may have regretted it. Perhaps we’ve beaten ourselves up about those choices. Sometimes we can’t let it go. But each and every one of those choices has informed who we are and how we got here despite the bumps, bruises, derailments and growing pains.

We are where we are…so now what? I always try to remind myself, Are you going to be used by the events of your life or are you going to use them?

Meaning is made. What can you do with the pieces and parts of your life that has been hidden away?

I don’t know if I’ll ever hear back from this reporter. It doesn’t really matter. His outreach reminded me of who I am and how I want to show up in life for myself, my son and others. It’s an awesome opportunity, one we are each availed of every time we’re challenged.

Let’s tell new, empowering stories. It’s not about revisionist history…it’s about seizing the meaning from the history we’ve had and consciously paving the path ahead. That’s how we shift the tides and create real legacy.

The post From #MeToo to #WhatNow: A Former Fashion Model Puts The ‘Self’ Back In Self-Empowerment appeared first on BEST SELF.

One mother’s ode to parenting in all of its complexities — how in loosening the hold on her children she found space to be a better parent

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I didn’t want to write my second book. The book I pitched to my publisher couldn’t have been more different than the one that’s landing “wherever books are sold” this month. But it’s the book they asked for (after they politely rejected my pitch), so it’s the one I was called to create.

I didn’t want to write it because I didn’t feel qualified to deliver what was requested — a book about parenting, filled with the wisdom that sprang from all of my many years of mothering five children. Nope, I couldn’t even pretend to feel like I was the right one for the job. Because the truth is that I was struggling. This offer to write my second book — a dream for so many people — was coming at one of the lowest points of my life.

My oldest son, the second of my five, and I had been estranged for nearly a year at that point — a separation that began with a set of explosive arguments followed by his decision to move out of the family home. I’ve heard it said that “you can only be as happy as your saddest child,” and those words proved true for me. There could be no joy in my life while he was hurting, only a gloomy haze clouding every moment. I felt frustrated and hopeless, like there was nothing I could do to repair our relationship or to help him through this challenging phase of his life.

The harder I tried, the further I pushed him away.

But I’m a writer. So I wrote.

I wrote about what I thought I knew to be true — what had worked (so far) and what didn’t (which was already painfully obvious). I shared lessons; some rooted in everyday rites of passage that a lot of women experience, others born from trauma and loss. Not long after making my way through the first pages, it became clear to me that what I was writing was not at all a parenting book, but rather a book about my experience of motherhood.

So there would be no advice on how to get a kid to go to bed peacefully or eat their vegetables without protest. What emerged instead was a message…

From my heart to the hearts of mothers everywhere, on how to navigate all the chaos, heartbreak, joy, and beautiful messiness of parenting while still maintaining a sense of self.

And even go after some big dreams in the process, because that’s exactly what I had been doing during those 21 years of parenting my little humans.

I filled more than 200 pages with stories, lessons, and tips for any mother to take care of her mind, body, and spirit. I dug deep into my past to uncover how the way my mother and father parented me as a child influences how I show up as a parent today. Through that process, I discovered a lesson so sweet that it became one of the main themes of the book and the “secret to successful mothering” I want to share with you right now.

Like I said in my book, I can only call myself the expert of five children, and on most days I’m not even confident in my expertise in parenting them. 

You see, I’m less of an expert and more of a diligent and dedicated student, standing in witness and awe of their “becoming.”

And every once in a while, I have to remind them to look both ways before crossing the street, put a bandage on a scrape, and get after them to do their homework on time. But beyond the joyful acts of loving and dutiful acts of protecting, there’s all the stuff out of my control that I have to leave to the Universe, faith, and trust. I’m forced to practice surrender.

It’s in surrender, letting go, that we find even more joy, growth, and success in motherhood.

Surrender in parenting is merely embracing the idea that our children — as the legendary poet, Khalil Gibran, said — come through us, not from us. When you understand and embrace that concept, you can begin to surrender some control and release a little bit of the pressure you might be putting on yourself to be the perfect mother or to raise the perfect child.

Our children do not belong to us. We are merely given the task of watching over them for a little while. 

And they are certainly not made only of our DNA. They have their own soul, born from another place. I have a specific set of responsibilities in parenting my children, and one of them is letting go enough to allow them to become who they were sent here to become, separate from my plans and ideas about how their paths should look.

Let me put it another way for you. Motherhood is not unlike gardening when it comes to the concept of control and surrender. In gardening, we prepare the soil, plant the seed, nurture it with fertilizer, food, and water, and then step back and watch it grow. The sun and rain have their part in it, too, and that part is out of our control. Once in a while, we have to step in and remove some weeds so growth can happen unobstructed, but there’s also so much of the process that we can’t dictate.

Parenting is a lot like that. The growth and success of a child depends on so much more than what is in our control.

I often say that I was a mother before I was a woman. When I had my first baby, my daughter Winona, at the tender age of 19, I had no idea of who I was or what I truly wanted to be, but I was determined to defy every stereotype of the teenage mother. At the same time that I was raising her, I was raising myself as a young woman and teaching myself how to parent. I read every book, attended every class, and took in every bit of advice I could. It was so important to me to be perfect, so I micromanaged every part of motherhood, leaving nothing to chance. Winona grew up to be a brilliant and responsible young woman, but parenting her in such a restrictive way created so much unnecessary stress and little room for her to express herself. Thank goodness she’s a willful and independent spirit who rebelled against my tight grasp. She’s so different from me, and I love it.

What I’ve learned since is that the more willing I am to release control, the easier it is for my children to find a path perfectly suited for their individual learning and growth.

So this was my intentional practice during the time I was writing. I had to know that what I felt to be true and what I had seen in glimpses throughout my years of parenting, was actually true.

I decided to let go of my son so he could find his own way.

I told him that I loved him, that I will always be his mother, and that our home will always be a soft and supportive place to land. I apologized for holding on too tightly and for thinking my way was the only way. I told him that I trusted him and that I believed that he has the wisdom to create a path to all his heart desires and all that the world has to offer him.

I let go, I surrendered, and I set us both free.

So while that had been my practice in fits and starts over the years, I had never been so intentional in living the practice of surrender every day. I resolved to continue to tend to my little garden, full of tiny seeds that were growing into the most beautiful buds and blossoms, and let the sun, wind, and rain take care of the rest.

The good news is that my son and I are on a (slow, steady, careful, compassionate) road to healing. I’m committed to keeping my promises, we’re learning to trust each other again, and the gloomy haze has lifted. This was hard work — surrender is no easy task for a mother. But it’s one that allows for both mother and child to bloom so magnificently.

You may also enjoy reading Getting Unhooked: Learning to Detach From Reactivity in Parenting by Mark Bertin

The post The Secret to Successful Mothering (That Took Me 21 Years to Learn) appeared first on BEST SELF.

A ‘money guy’ imparts a fresh perspective of finances — and reveals an interconnected roadmap to redefining ‘true abundance’  

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Money may be a cornerstone in your perpetually evolving financial plan, but to what extent is it an essential ingredient for living a rich and abundant life? And ultimately, can money buy you happiness? 

As you ponder these questions, you may find that rich is relative, happiness is subjective, and that money can facilitate abundance. But while our answers may be as diverse and unique as each individual in our global society, we can all begin by first stepping back and asking ourselves how we define ‘abundance’ — and how we keep score. 

What makes one feel abundant? Bank account or inner peace — can we have it all? I think so… and that’s not a pie-in-the-sky notion. But it requires some self-awareness, reflection and showing up for it all. Mindfulness is not just for yoga mats, it can also be implemented into our interactions with our finances. 

I’m a ‘money’ guy, but I’m also a man who knows that without self-care, family love and contentment — my bank account isn’t going to bail me out. 

True abundance is realizing joy from the quality of your experiences and relationships, regardless of how much money you earn or the wealth you accumulate. Money is simply a tool that can directly or indirectly impact the quality of those experiences and relationships, for better or worse. Merely pursuing money for the sake of accumulating more of it can be counterproductive and may actually be harmful to your health (e.g., stress) and relationships (e.g., neglecting key personal relationships by spending excessive time on work that you don’t perceive as meaningful and/or is not in alignment with your core values). 

Setting Up for Success

Once you’ve defined ‘abundance’ in the context of your experiences and relationships you can immediately start setting yourself up for success by harmonizing your money, your mindset and your values. 

Monthly Cash Flow: From a financial perspective, we live in a monthly society, so it’s important to establish a strong financial foundation for creating true abundance by generating more monthly cash flow than your monthly expenditures (living within your means). But how? 

Optimizing your most valuable cash flow producing asset… YOU

If you have a career or own a business, guess what your most valuable cash flow producing asset is? It is YOU. So, prioritizing and consistently investing in your intellectual growth, personal and professional networks, and health is vitally instrumental in creating sufficient cash flow and true abundance. Note: Proper sleep, nutrition and physical activity not only promote wellbeing, but also boost productivity! 

Aligning your expenditures with your values. 

Your bank statements and credit card statements are a reflection of your values from a financial perspective. You value your time, especially as your responsibilities expand. And unless you are living on passive income, you trade your time for money, even if you own a business and actively manage it. 

Spend some time each month reviewing your bank statements and credit card statements. Highlight any items of questionable value, especially if they are recurring monthly expenses for products and services that you rarely use, and consider cancelling them immediately. Bonus: this practice will also assist you in promptly identifying incorrect charges (e.g. duplicate billings) and fraudulent activity in your accounts.  

Even if you don’t want to look at your statements (for example, if you have debt or feel ashamed about how little you have) — shifting your practices can also help you shift your relationship with money in a favorable direction. Remember, not looking doesn’t shift anything in your life or your bank account. 

Financial Safety Nets  

Protect your most valuable cash flow producing asset (YOU). 

If you are unable to work, then you’re also unable to generate cash flow. One of the most effective ways to protect against this type of personal financial crisis is to have adequate disability insurance coverage. Policies vary regarding several factors, including: 

• Definition of disabled: e.g., unable to perform work in your chosen occupation vs. unable to perform work at any job.    
• Waiting period (amount of time before benefits begin). 
• Percentage of salary replaced (e.g., 60% of base salary). 
• Term of coverage (short-term policies typically pay up to one year whereas long-term policies may continue providing benefits until the disability ends or until retirement). 

Emergency Fund

Being able to tap into a cash reserve when unfavorable financial circumstances arise can mitigate the impact of financial and emotional stress (e.g., unemployment, home and auto repairs, medical expenses, and covering the waiting period for disability benefits). 

Bonus tip: Once you’ve accumulated enough cash to cover at least 6 months to one year of living expenses, consider allocating a portion of your emergency fund to take advantage of unforeseen opportunities!! I.e., an ‘Opportunity Fund’.

Minding Money Matters

Purposefully investing a portion of your monthly income in (a) your income producing abilities (e.g., expanding your professional skills with professional continuing education and attending conferences or launching a side hustle), and (b) your financial future (retirement plans). Regularly contributing to an employer-sponsored 401k plan or Individual Retirement Account (IRA) can help you save on taxes in the short term by deferring tax on a portion of your taxable wages and expediting the growth of your retirement assets by deferring taxes on investment income. 

Bonus Tips

Employer matching: Some employers match your 401k contributions up to a certain percentage of your salary (e.g., up to 6%). If your employer matches contributions to your 401k plan, then try to at least contribute enough to take advantage of the matching feature. It’s like receiving ‘free money’ toward your retirement. 

Index funds: These are mutual funds that track a benchmark like the S&P 500. The S&P 500 is a group of the 500 largest companies in the U.S. ranked by market capitalization (Shares Outstanding x Price per Share = Market Capitalization). 

Index funds are considered passive investing because they do not require investment analysis and stock picking skills to manage. By definition, these funds simply invest in stocks (or bonds) that make up the index that they track. Index funds also charge lower fees because they cost mutual fund companies less money to manage. 

And there’s more… index funds like the S&P 500 have historically generated higher returns than most actively managed mutual funds, whose objective is to outperform their respective index/benchmark. It’s like paying less for better results! 

Cognitive Biases: Being consciously aware of your core values and living in a way that respects those values can fast track your life toward ‘true abundance’. But even the most self-aware, well-intentioned person is susceptible to their cognitive biases including overconfidence bias and recency bias. 

Overconfidence Bias is the subjective perception that your knowledge, skills, judgment or abilities are greater than they truly (objectively) are. E.g., a study on overconfidence bias revealed that 93% of drivers claim to be above average. 

Left unchecked, overconfidence bias can cause you to make inaccurate evaluations and unfavorable decisions, especially for situations that require objectivity such as investing in the financial markets. E.g., you may practice at the elite level of your profession, but that level of professional excellence does not automatically translate into immediate expert proficiency investing in the financial markets. 

Develop a sharp awareness of your cognitive biases by noticing how these biases influence your thoughts, decisions and actions.

E.g., on a personal note, I sometimes catch myself being influenced by another cognitive bias, recency bias,while watching an episode of one of my favorite TV series including Billions and Game of Thrones. 

For the final season of Game of Thrones, HBO produced some episodes that were arguably on par with feature films in terms of writing and cinematography. As I watched these larger than life scenes play out in HD I’d notice myself exclaiming phrases like: “This is the best series ever!” and “The writers for this show are absolutely brilliant!” and “This is outstanding cinematography!!” 

Yet, a few weeks later I found myself making similar ‘best ever’ statements during the final episode of Billions, Season 4, especially as complex storylines intersected and lead to the ‘big reveal’: “That plot twist was awesome! These screenwriters are the best ever!!!”   

No harm done in the context of commenting on a TV series, but how could recency bias influence investing decisions when your hard-earned money is on the line? 

Recency Bias can cost you dearly if you make decisions involving significant long-term financial consequences based solely on recent circumstances, especially in markets in which you have little experience.  

Speculators who staked large portions of their assets on the rising Bitcoin trend in the autumn of 2017 experienced a reversal of fortune in 2018. After reaching all-time price highs near $20,000 in mid-December, Bitcoin prices began to decline in late December 2017 and continued on a downward trend to around $6,000 in 2018 and did not even rise above $10,000 (half the all-time price high) until the summer of 2019. 

By developing mindfulness in the context of your personal finances, prioritizing the care of your most valuable asset (you), and aligning your purchases with your values, you will gain confidence in managing your time and money in a way that serves your best interests. 

And as your confidence grows so will your belief that you can control your own destiny and gain the requisite resources for creating and experiencing true abundance throughout your journey. 

Buying Time

Due to the nature and location of our jobs, many of us generate income by exchanging most of our waking hours for a salary. As a result, commuting to and from work, time on the job, and addressing our other personal and professional responsibilities can leave little time for self-care and nurturing key relationships. 

But what if you could recover some of your valuable time by reversing the time-for-money paradigm? 

Specifically, you can use money to ‘buy time’ in little ways each week by delegating responsibilities like laundry, housekeeping, and dog walking. It’s like playing the role of CEO in running the business of you(i.e., your life). Successful business leaders ranging from small business owners to CEOs of major corporations leverage this principle every day. Even though they may be the ‘best suited’ to handle certain lower level tasks, they realize that it is not the best use of their time. So, they ‘buy time’ by hiring employees/independent contractors and investing in technology. Think about where you can buy back some time for yourself. 

When I was younger, I performed many tasks including landscaping, car washing and housekeeping. But now that I have significantly more family and professional responsibilities I decided that handling those tasks myself is simply not the best use of my time. Instead, I ‘buy time’ by delegating (paying someone to perform) those tasks and then allocate my ‘purchased time’ to relationships and experiences that I value. On a practical level, it also allows me to focus on areas where I can make more money and support others doing jobs that support me (actually both of us) — a win/win for all. 

Money can also cushion significant life transitions like career changes, parenting, or launching a business.

I saved and grew my investments during my 20’s to a point where I was able to pursue a career change (in health & wellness) in my early 30’s before returning to a career in finance. 

As you transition through various phases of your life, your definition and perception of ‘true abundance’ may evolve. Coincidentally, we live in a time where even money is evolving, from bills and coins, to digital currency to cryptocurrency. And while money will likely continue to have a place in our lives, keep in mind that it is merely a tool that has no intrinsic value — its value is only in what you exchange it for. 

As you pursue and experience ‘true abundance’, mindful money management can facilitate your ongoing journey of self-discovery, self-expression and meaningful connections. 

You may also enjoy reading How to Do What You Love and Make Money by Heather Nichols

The post True Abundance: One Man’s Search for (Mindful Money) Meaning appeared first on BEST SELF.

With humor and refreshing candor, one woman faces off with our desires to ‘self-help’ — offering a new twist on ‘enoughness’ and authentic self-worth

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Around the time I realized that meditation brought me a sense of sustainable sanity and decided to quit dabbling and commit whole heartedly to my practice, I had a meeting with one of my mentors after a weekend-long retreat. We were seated at an outdoor cafe around the corner from the studio space. It was fall. We both ordered chai tea. I was feeling clear, steady, open-hearted and vulnerable after a weekend of practice. So clear and open-hearted that I decided that it was the perfect time to confess to my mentor that I was a terrible meditator and probably a horrible ‘spiritual’ person. 

For one, I shared, I’m the most judgmental person that I know. I love to gossip. I’m also bossy, or I like to be the boss, which makes it very hard to collaborate with others. Also I’m a perfectionist wracked with chronic self-doubt. I have a mean girl who lives inside my head, monitoring how other people perceive me and telling me all of the ways that I’m wrong. Sure, I have some good qualities. Great qualities, even. But what should I do about the bad ones? Did she have some sage words on how to fix my gnarlier bits or how to make them go away? My mentor sipped her chai, and looked across the table from me. 

“What if these aspects that you don’t like about yourself never change? Because truth be told, they may not.” 

I sat there, quiet and dumbfounded. It had never occurred to me that maybe I would always be judgmental with a streak of perfectionism. A part of me might always feel like a fraud. And maybe that was okay. Maybe my work was to make friends with the dodgy bits of who I am, my demons so to speak, rather than trying to continually fix, change and improve. I figured it was at least worth a try. The perpetual pursuit of improving myself was frankly, really exhausting. So I gave self-acceptance a try. 

Looking back, this conversation was an early seedling that became the roots of my new book, Tea and Cake With Demons: A Buddhist Guide to Feeling Worthy. As the name suggests, it’s an exploration of the parts of ourselves that we generally prefer not to look at: chronic self-doubt, shame, perfectionism jealously; all of the bits that we try to hide from others, or at the very least prefer not to talk about in polite company. I wanted to write a book that picked up where this conversation with my mentor left off by asking the question: 

What if our nasty habits, neuroses and difficult emotions are not obstacles on our path, but rather the path itself?

Through the lens of the core Buddhist teachings of the Four Noble Truths and resulting Eight Fold Path, this book was written as a guide to finding self-acceptance and our inherent worth by creating space for our demons to be seen, understood and integrated. By inviting them in for tea.

As a meditation teacher and coach I’ve found myself having conversations about self-doubt and self-worth a lot over the past decade. There is a shelf in my office that houses nearly one hundred notebooks, all packed with the words and stories of clients (mostly women) from over a dozen countries. Regardless of their socio-economic background, age, cultural origin, religious beliefs and life experiences, there is one common thread that has remained consistent in these stories: rampant self-doubt that frequently manifests in the quiet, persistent suspicion that they are not quite ‘enough’. 

Perhaps you can relate to the feeling of not being quite _____ enough. (Fill in the blank.) 

Attractive enough. Productive enough. Financially or socially affluent enough. Self-doubt is always ready to point out fresh evidence of how we are falling short. A large part of inviting our demons to tea is to notice how this feeling of lack manifests for us personally. What rises to the surface in the moments when you feel the most overwhelmed and under-resourced? It might be worth closing your eyes and really feeling into this question. 

What rises to the surface in the moments when you feel the most overwhelmed and under-resourced?

This is a pretty good indicator of our most prominent personal demon material. Another aspect of inviting our demons to tea is having the ability to zoom out and get a wide lens view of our cultural norms. What are the narratives that exist here? It’s no wonder that so many of us struggle with feeling ‘enough’ when we live in a society that profits from our continual scurry to acquire something better, faster, more.

Something that I’ve found personally helpful in the practice of accepting my gnarlier bits, inviting my demons to tea, is to notice where my thinking becomes rigid and binary. It’s likely that many of us default to binary thinking — again, it’s part of our cultural norm. Yes vs. No. Right vs. Wrong. For me vs. Against me. Delicious vs. Disgusting. It’s a natural human habit to classify the world by what we like and what we don’t. To judge our circumstances in a snap. To some extent this is a wonderful quality. We can judge on the binary very quickly ‘safe’ and ‘not safe’ which keeps us from walking out into traffic. However this binary thinking can very easily become the primary lens through which we see the world, including how we see ourselves. Either I am winning or I am failing. I am good or I am bad. This sets up a system of self-aggression that demonizes the aspects of ourselves that we deem to be bad, failing, wrong and in need of fixing. 

The practice of inviting our demons to tea challenges us to begin shifting to a more curious, inclusive and fluid way of thinking.

We’re asked to entertain the idea that perhaps we are not an ‘either-or’ binary but rather a ‘both-and’ process. The great Zen teacher Shunryu Suzuki is rumored to have addressed a room full of his students by declaring “Each of you is perfect just the way that you are . . . and you can use a little improvement.” 

It’s the recognition that we are already complete, but not finished. Whole and also developing. Enough, and also still evolving. We are the brilliant wisdom bits and the gnarlier, neurotic demon bits all rolled into one. Accepting ourselves as ‘both-and’ is the key to stepping into our wholeness, and our fundamental worth. 

So what if these aspects that you don’t like about yourself never change? Because truth be told, they may not. You may always have dodgy bits. Demons. And maybe that’s okay. Maybe relaxing the urge to fix ourselves is the path to becoming really good friends with who we are. Every great fable has a fire-breathing monster that guards a vast amount of treasure. Sometimes we need a sword to defeat it. Sometimes we just invite it to have a seat at the table — and pour it a warm cup of tea. 

You may also enjoy reading Amazing Grace: Experiencing the extraordinary within the ordinary by Adyashanti

The post Inviting Your Demons to Tea: A Dance Between Self-Improvement & Self-Acceptance appeared first on BEST SELF.

Insights from Oz can guide your journey from helpless to empowered, lost to centered, from looking for answers out there to finding them within

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I’ve spent a lifetime working with brilliant people. I’ve edited Stephen Hawking’s A Brief History of Time, a dozen titles by Deepak Chopra, and bestselling books by the likes of Douglas Adams, Queen Noor, Byron Katie, Carol Burnett, Arianna Huffington, Paula Poundstone, and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. Then one day I had a revelation. All the wisdom I had encountered by editing these thought leaders was right there in a film I first watched when I was eleven years old: The Wizard of Oz. 

I mentioned this to a publisher who liked the idea, so I embarked on a five-year archaeological dig, a frame-by-frame hunt for wisdom in the most-watched film of all time. What did I find? Lots of illuminating gems of insight, like “There are no mistakes, only lessons,” and “When you ask for help, don’t be shy.” Then my pickaxe struck something even more substantial: nine massive chunks of wisdom that I identify as Emeralds, each of which is linked to an iconic moment in the movie. 

A Blueprint Within A Dream

As you’ll recall from the film, Dorothy’s experience in Oz is a dream. And dreams are the brain’s way of sorting daily information so that it makes sense and can be stored in the library of memory for future use. As viewers we can benefit from Dorothy’s dream of overcoming her obstacles on the Yellow Brick Road, her archetypal Hero’s Journey. What works for her might very well work for us on our own daily rites of passage. So what are these Emeralds of Oz?

Emerald 1: Listen to Your Longing

This is the moment when Dorothy steps into the barnyard and begins to sing that achingly beautiful song, “Over the Rainbow.” What does Dorothy long for? It changes. At first it’s a place where troubles melt like lemon drops. Later it becomes returning to Aunt Em and home. 

But this longing itself is the engine that drives the entire film, just as it propels us through our entire lives. 

So ask yourself this. What do you long for in a situation that is top of mind for you right now? Not what other people expect from you, or what you’re in the habit of doing. Not just what you want, or what you need. Go deeper. What outcome do you long for, with every fiber of your being? 

Emerald 2: See It as if For the First Time

This is the moment after Dorothy’s farmhouse has corkscrewed to a crash landing and she steps out into the Technicolor miracle of Oz. How can you bring fresh eyes to an issue you’re facing? When you set aside your biases — your sense that you know how this is going to turn out – you open yourself to that sense of wonderment too. It’s what Buddhists call Beginner’s Mind, one of the twin pillars of mindfulness. See it — whatever it is — as if for the first time and you feel fully present, you awaken to the miracle of being alive, right here, right now. 

Emerald 3: Celebrate Yourself Just For Showing Up

What did Dorothy do to earn a Munchkin parade? Nothing at all. She showed up, and her house just happened to land on the Wicked Witch of the East, killing her and liberating the Munchkin people. So celebrate yourself just for showing up, too. You didn’t have to offer your friend a shoulder to cry on the other day. You didn’t have to go to that PTA meeting, or to the gym, or practice the piano. But you did.

You showed up. And that makes all the difference. 

Celebrate others for showing up, too. Supermarket clerks, bank tellers, baristas, volunteer firefighters. They’re all around you, improving the quality of your life. Celebrate them, too. 

Emerald 4: Choose Compassion

This is a simple concept, but it only works when it’s translated into action. Dorothy demonstrates compassion on every step of her journey. She comes across the Scarecrow nailed to a pole and she says, “Oh, dear. That must be terribly uncomfortable. Let me help you.” Once he’s released, this odd creature becomes a loyal ally. This happens again when she meets the Tin Man, and yet again when she encounters the Cowardly Lion. She acts compassionately, and as a result these characters — who she might have turned away from, or feared — become friends who will gladly risk their lives for her.

Compassion has this great power when you unleash it, too. Choose it consistently, and watch the world around you transform.

Emerald 5: You Already Possess the Quality You Desire Most 

Sounds counterintuitive, right? I know I need courage, and you’re telling me I already have courage? Yet this is a major theme in The Wizard of Oz. The Scarecrow is desperate for brains, but look at how intelligent and capable he is. The Tin Man longs for a heart, but he’s so emotional that his biggest worry is rusting from his tears. The Cowardly Lion conveys his terrors in ways that are uproariously funny, and we know you can’t laugh and be afraid at the same time. 

You already possess the quality that you desire most as well. Like Dorothy’s friends, you may not know it. By becoming aware of this Emerald, however, you bring this hidden quality to the surface, where it becomes accessible in your everyday life. 

Emerald 6: Face your Fear

In the film this is the moment when Dorothy and her friends travel to the castle of the Wicked Witch of the West. Their mission is to confront her, get her broomstick, and bring it back to the Wizard of Oz. So often in our own lives we feel as if something scary is coming up behind us. When you feel this way, stop and ask yourself, What am I really afraid of? By facing it, you shrink it down to size. Chances are, it isn’t as scary as you imagine. It may even dissolve completely, like the Wicked Witch of the West under Dorothy’s bucket of water.

Emerald 7: Pull Back the Curtain and See Things as They Really Are

Toto plays a key role here. He pulls back the curtain in the Wizard’s throne room, and instead of ‘The Great and Powerful Oz’, Dorothy and her companions discover a little balding man frantically pulling on some levers, screaming ferociously into a microphone. Like the Wizard, we all tend to cloak our lives with drama. This Emerald is an invitation to pull back the curtain on all those stories you’re telling yourself. Look at that problem you’re facing after you’ve stripped all those illusions away. What’s really going on? It may not be such a big deal after all.

Emerald 8: You’ve Got the Power, and You’ve Had it All Along

Glinda tells Dorothy that all she has to do is click the heels of her Ruby Slippers three times and she can go back to Kansas. If only Dorothy had known! 

The thing about power is that we tend to underestimate how much we possess. 

We look outward to be saved. We become convinced that we’re helpless. But in every interaction you have power, whether you know it or not, whether you choose to use it or not. When you step into that power, things in your life change for the better. 

Emerald 9: There’s No Place Like Home

This is the famous mantra Dorothy repeats as she clicks the heels of the ruby slippers. She’s not just referring to a construct of wood and plaster, but to a place she has come to locate within herself after traveling the Yellow Brick Road. It’s more than a feeling, it’s a state of being. 

It’s the ground state of all being — the divine force that animates every religion and imbues every aspect of the universe with energy. 

The longing that launched Dorothy on her journey has come full circle to find both its source and its fulfillment. When we consider this Emerald, you and I realize that we are home, too. Like Dorothy, we never left; we just needed to become aware of this in order to return.

The Ultimate Self-Help Tool

While I was writing about the nine Emeralds of wisdom, I made another discovery. When you consider them in exactly the same order Dorothy did, something magical happens. Your awareness activates the Emeralds, and when you direct this energy toward a specific problem you’re facing, the issue shrinks as your sense of self expands. 

Since finishing the book I’ve been using the Emeralds in my own life to address obstacles that arise with my spouse, my children, and my work. Sometimes the effect is subtle and sometimes it’s dramatic, but the Emeralds always seem to shift things for the better. Now that the book is out, I’ve been hearing inspiring stories from readers of how these nuggets of wisdom are working to enrich their lives too.

I invite you to try the Emeralds of Oz out on whatever obstacles you may be facing. The changes we make together will ripple out into the world and make it possible for allof us to lead spacious, centered, and deeply connected lives. You’ve got this! 

May the life you’re leading become one where the dreams that you dare to dream really do come true.

Emeralds of Oz Worksheet

Like Dorothy did in The Wizard of Oz, you can use these Emeralds of Wisdom to address any obstacle, large or small, that you’re facing in your own life. The effect is magical! Feelings of helplessness give way to an awareness of your personal power; fear is replaced by equanimity; and the illusion of not being enough is dispelled by the truth that you’ve already got everything you need. I invite you to use this worksheet to activate the Emeralds in your own life. Just follow the process below, step by step.

CONSIDER YOUR ISSUE — You’re not sure whether to move or to take that new job; you and your partner disagree about money or parenting. Or perhaps you’re nervous about that big presentation at work, or that audition for a new choir. Bring to mind whatever is bothering you.

CONSIDER THE NINE EMERALDS AS THEY APPLY TO YOUR SITUATION.

1.         Listen to your longing. What is it that you long for in this situation? Now go deeper: What do you really long for? 
2.         See the situation as if for the first time. Set aside your memories, associations, biases, and prejudices—everything you “know.” What does the issue look like now?
3.         Celebrate yourself — and others — just for showing up. You’re changing the game just by showing up to address this issue. You’re amazing! Join the parade in your honor!
4.         Choose compassion. Consider each person in your troubling scenario and imagine walking a mile in their shoes. How can you help with their struggles? Now direct that same compassion toward yourself.
5.         Realize that you already possess what you desire most. Reflect on the quality you admire most in other people, then consider how it is already central to who you are.
6.         Face what you fear. Look at it closely. How does it look now?
7.         Pull back the curtain and see things as they really are. What’s there? Is it possible the problem is not nearly as dramatic or insurmountable as it seemed?
8.         You’ve got the power, and you’ve had it all along. That mojo is real, it’s yours, and now it’s time to use it. This knowledge is power in itself!
9.         There’s no place like home. And it’s inside you. When you return here, within yourself, you’re always home. You’re floating on the infinite sea of divine energy that connects us all.