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: 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: 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

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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.

—

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: 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: 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

One woman’s reclamation of grief as a solitary journey

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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: 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: 6 minutes

Reconnecting to our individuality enhances our experience of life and the world around us — and helps us see the uniqueness within others

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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.

Ditching the over-commercialization of holiday madness in lieu of a practice for connecting to the sacredness of the solstice season

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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!)

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*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.

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

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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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Craving inspiration and travel, a chef’s quest for culture and culinary fusion highlights the need for silence to enrich it all

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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 ex-Buddhist, fierce mama and devout meditator’s seeking to find her spiritual home leads to the ancient devotion of the rosary

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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.

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.

______

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.

Divorce is not for the faint of heart, it is for the strong of spirit. If done consciously, it can be a potent catalyst for transformation and healing.

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We held hands as we approached the courthouse. Not quite sure what to expect, we were nervous and full of emotion. I wore a special dress I’d purchased just for the occasion. He wore his most dapper sport jacket. We’d thoughtfully crafted vows to reflect our intentions and commitment to one another as we embraced this next chapter of our lives. As we neared the building entrance, I spotted a pristine white feather resting on the pathway ahead. I took this as a wink from the Universe that we were on the right track.

Once inside, a notary public graciously agreed to take our photo to commemorate the event. In it, our embrace looks comfortable and familiar. We made our way to the correct courtroom. After a short wait, the judge called our names. With my arm in his, we approached the bench. We stood hand in hand as she asked us the requisite questions. We responded through tears. By the end, even the court reporter was crying. It was a profoundly meaningful ceremony. And with it, we were… divorced.

The journey to such a graceful ending was anything but easy, and we were just about the worst bet ever for a peaceful divorce.

Two strong-willed attorneys, our personalities meshed like kerosene and fire from our first date – a date that ironically ended in a fight. That initial disagreement foreshadowed what was to later become an incredibly high-conflict marriage. It was a marriage where fights were explosive and frequent. They happened in public, in private, and everywhere in between.

Despite the discord, however, there also was a deep connection. We shared values and a passion for social justice. We debated philosophy and spirituality for hours on end. He challenged and grew me in ways no one else ever had. An Erin Brockovich-style attorney who regularly took on some of the largest chemical and pharmaceutical corporations in the world, I was in awe of this self-made man who came from little to co-found a successful multi-city law firm.

As the relationship progressed, I chose to focus on our points of connection while I simultaneously ignored the red flags, like the constant fighting, as well as my gut sense that we may not have been an ideal romantic match. I chose to ignore the still, small voice of my wisest, most authentic self, which was no match for my ‘social’ self — the part of me that was more concerned with impressing and not disappointing others. 

It was my ‘social’ self that ultimately convinced me to override my gut in pursuit of a perfect life on paper.

Back then, I believed a perfect-looking life and marriage would solve all of my problems, the largest of which was a cripplingly-low self-worth. I’d spent years in search of every possible crutch I could find to prop it up. And I looked just about everywhere – outside myself, that is: unnecessary plastic surgery for the parts of my body I loathed; copious amounts of alcohol to feel more comfortable in social settings; a law degree to prove the intelligence I doubted; and the coup’ de grace, marriage to a powerful man in order to avoid the terrifying work of standing on my own.

It was far easier and safer to ride his coattails and support his success than to create something of my own. 

Although my husband never asked me to, I essentially put all my eggs — my time, my toil, my talents – in his basket. But I soon discovered you cannot hand over all your eggs without consequence. Adding to the already high level of conflict in our home, I became resentful and angry with him for holding all the power — power I had ever so willingly entrusted solely unto him.

What I have since learned is that anger, much like all of our human emotions, is simply a messenger. 

Social science researcher, Karla McLaren, actually calls anger ‘the honorable sentry’ who signals the violation of an interpersonal boundary. But it wasn’t my husband who was doing the boundary violating in this case. It was I. By attaching my self-worth to something outside of myself (e.g., my husband), I had violated one of my own sacred boundaries.

Over time, the river of resentments became a tidal wave, despite much counseling and some of the best marital resources we could find. From the outside, our life had never looked so shiny and Instagram perfect. On the inside, however, our marriage was at the height of its dysfunction, and my worth and relationship with myself was in shambles.

Ten years into the relationship and seeing little potential for improvement, I made the difficult decision to leave. I would love to say that from there, we effortlessly glided through the proceedings into the graceful divorce ceremony described above. Instead, that victory was harder won, involving a progression of steps over the course of several years.

I first had to reclaim the self-worth I’d been so quick to attach to externals like my education, my work, or my husband.

I then had to take radical responsibility for my part in helping create such a difficult marriage. I had to show up wholeheartedly for hard conversations. And I had to make amends and express gratitude where it was due. Only then were we able to come together for true healing and the blessing of a beautiful post-divorce friendship.

That initial step of reclaiming myself was incredibly uncomfortable, but my divorce was the perfect setup. On my own and with plenty of space for self-reflection, I began actively listening for the voice of my wise, authentic self over that of my social self. I also was no longer able to hide behind the armor of a successful husband or flashy lifestyle. I felt exposed and vulnerable, like a turtle without a shell.

That place of absolute vulnerability was quite synchronistic, however, as it allowed me to look for my worth where I’d never looked before: inside, to the spiritual being having the human experience. 

And in the boldest move of surrender in my life to that point, I asked the Universe to take the reins. 

In response, breadcrumb after serendipitous breadcrumb appeared on my path to lead the way. These breadcrumbs took me to incredible mentors like Dr. Martha Beck, as well as wisdom traditions and spiritual teachings that told me something the religious dogma of my youth never had: Born magnificent and worthy I was. Worthy not because of my religion; not because my body was the right size; not because of the degrees I held; and not because I was married to a successful man. I was worthy just by virtue of being me, a cherished droplet from the sea of the Divine.

My self-worth was born anew from a solid foundation.

It was only from this place of worth grounded in divine love and connection that I felt safe and courageous enough to take the terrifying step of looking at my part in creating such a dysfunctional, conflict-ridden marriage.

To end our marriage, we had opted to use the Collaborative Law process, which meant we agreed to resolve the matter outside of a courtroom with the help of a team of trained professionals. But while the collaborative model offers a gentler approach than traditional family law, even the best of legal circumstances do little to address the emotional and spiritual needs of the parties during the proceedings.

As I began to heal myself, I felt an intense urge to turn the healing energy toward my rocky relationship with my ex. We’d been civil during the process, but merely civil was no longer enough for me. 

Much like a desire to spring clean and declutter, I wanted to clean my side of the marital street. 

It was a street littered with the debris of resentments, unexpressed feelings, and loose ends, like my continued insistence that my husband had been the instigator and root cause of all our conflict.

A fierce and fearless litigator, he was an easy scapegoat for my ‘poor, poor, pitiful me’ stories. After years of pointing a stern index finger at my husband as the source of all our marital misery, however, a few key teachers, most importantly Byron Katie, helped me see instead the three fingers that had been pointing back at me all along.

For ages, I’d worn like a badge of victim honor, the belief that I had a hot-tempered husband who was hell-bent on controlling me. Katie’s system of inquiry, The Work, allowed me to examine the painful story I’d been carrying and explore whether the opposite of this rage-inducing thought might be true.

In other words, could it possibly be just as true that my husband had a hot-tempered wife who was hell-bent on controlling him? Yes, it could. Although my trigger points and hot button issues were different than my husband’s, I begrudgingly had to admit that I, too, had a fiery disposition and a strong desire to get my way. I soon realized I was so obsessed with collecting evidence of my husband’s bad temper and controlling tendencies, I’d glazed right over my own.

With further examination, other painful thoughts like:

‘My husband should have cared more’ became their opposite: ‘I should have cared more.’ 

I found so many places where that could be true, not the least of which was my tendency to prioritize a perfect marriage façade over the true emotional intimacy my husband desired.

This exercise of questioning all the negative, resentful thoughts I carried about my husband snowballed. I soon realized I was no longer a victim, but a co-creator in our marital woes, and I was deeply sorry for my actions.

For so long, I had resisted taking responsibility for any part of the unhappiness of our marriage, fearing it would leave me feeling vulnerable and diminished — that by admitting any wrongdoing, the playing field would no longer be level and I would be left in a power deficit. Instead, however, this exercise had the opposite effect. Owning my part became incredibly empowering. Emboldened, I took the final, most transformative step of my healing journey: sharing my newfound discoveries and revelations with my husband.

From Byron Katie’s book Loving What Is: Four Questions That Can Change Your Life, I was inspired to make amends by reporting on my role in our conflict. For so long, I had desperately wanted validation that my husband was the bad guy. But I now had a choice:

Do I want to be right, or do I want to be free?

So I wrote a long letter to him conveying all of my regrets without any justifications. There would be no more, But you started it! protestations.

I also shared everything I appreciated about him as a spouse, as well as the things about our marriage for which I was grateful. When I sent that letter, there was no guarantee he would respond, or even read it. No matter. The exercise of simply writing it, regardless of the outcome, was incredibly healing. 

Two years after I left my marriage, my side of the street finally felt clean.

When my soon-to-be-ex-husband did actually read it and respond in a gracious and loving way, it was icing on the cake. And what sweet icing it was. Taking responsibility and making amends paved the way for us to finalize our divorce with the meaningful ceremony described above.

Much like the thought and careful preparation that went into planning our wedding all those years before, we were able to honor the ending of our marriage in a similar way.

The responsibility and amends process we shared also paved the way for four years of the most incredible post-divorce friendship I could have imagined, one in which we finally communicated with kindness, tearfully shared our regrets, and reminisced with laughter over a decade of shared experiences.

When my ex-husband passed away unexpectedly in 2018, I feel both proud and blessed to say there were no words left unsaid and no apologies left unoffered. The resentment and anger that fueled my departure feel like a distant memory. In its place, I now feel an abiding love and appreciation for the man that he was.

Divorce is not for the faint of heart, it is for the strong of spirit. If done consciously, it can provide one of the most potent catalysts for transformation available. Only through my own path from high-conflict marriage to a loving post-divorce relationship with my ex-husband was I finally able to discover my own strength of spirit and the self-worth I’d been seeking all along.

You may also enjoy reading 6 Steps to Move from Divorce to Happily Ever After by Sage Cohen

The post A Divorce Made in Heaven: The Gift of Conscious Un-Coupling appeared first on BEST SELF.

Estimated reading time: 14 minutes

Caregiving and grief connects a young woman to her rich ancestry and an unexpected soul calling

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Through the noise, purpose was born.

Priya Soni

SACRED BEGINNINGS

The moments that define our perspectives about life are not always discernible. In fact they can be as soft as a whisper, a waft of a childhood memory. Nonetheless, they leave their imprint. There is one defining moment for me that has remained throughout some of my most challenging times. It was the first time I felt like I was being held by a force larger than me.

Temple on Sundays was a sanctuary for my family. As I entered what I considered, in my 7-year-old eyes, ‘a gigantic room’, I immediately felt at home. The room was full of men, women and children focusing their energy on several kirtans — spiritual stories voiced or sung, that convey a collective feeling and connection that we receive from a higher power. Music accompanied the kirtans. The drumbeat of the tabla attracted my attention.

A man with long jet-black hair, tied in a loose bun veraciously played his tabla, eyes closed, swinging his head left to right, harmonizing to its rhythm and sound.

His adoration to his faith was palpable. I was enamored by him and his effortless comfort with expressing his devotion. I wondered what it felt like to feel even a sliver of the joy that emanated from him.

Being a shy child, my mother escorted me to the front of the room at the end of each visit. She softly voiced, “Put this dollar in this pile here. That helps the temple with their services. Drop to your knees. That shows respect to the holy among us. Place your palms together and say “num-us-tay.” That means: “The sacred in me bows to the sacred in you.” Smiling, she continued, “We are one.”

As I grew older, the meaning of sacred exploration was impacted by my maternal grandmother and paternal grandfather. Nani, my grandmother, was very vocal about her beliefs and admiration of a higher power. They were her Gods, emitting an infinite wisdom.

One of my favorite memories was observing her delight as she talked about her lifelong dedication to spirituality. She became a schoolgirl, giggling at the wonder of it all and said excitedly, “I’m telling you, I saw honey come out of the Gods. Sweet and pure. My soul was alive!” And right then and there, I knew any summoning of her most authentic self surpassed the space and time in which she existed. She epitomized true love, far reaching and rippling for years to come.

Papaji, my grandfather, was a simple, honorable and harmonious man. He was invigorated by his commitment to value all humanity.

He educated people with his smile. In the time that he lived with us, which was less than a year, I observed his allegiance to spiritual scriptures. Through him, I learned to treasure stillness as a companion, having the power to embrace any magnitude of crisis. He believed in order to repair the divisiveness within our collective human condition, we must be willing to see the goodness situated within others and ourselves. Only then can we live with a peaceful heart.

Listening to my heart would become my most valued compass as it guided me down paths I could have never imagined I would walk.

SACRED LESSONS

In the fall of 2003, my mother called me in New York. “Your father’s gait is having problems. We have gone to see some specialists, but they don’t know what it is.” “His gait?” I asked. She continued, “Priya, he’s been walking funny and complaining of stiff legs.” I put the phone down convinced that this was a fleeting issue. My father was unquestionably strong-willed. He was born to conquer any challenges that stood in his way.

It was not until I came home to Maryland for Christmas in the winter of 2003, a month before I moved to Los Angeles, that I realized the decline of his health. He seemed older and frail, but still determined to take on his daily activities. He was not able bend his legs so when he walked, he wobbled side to side, carefully rationing off the energy it took to get from point A to point B.

My father was a man who prided himself in expedience and his effortless ability to mold “no” into a complete sentence. It is perhaps what many first generation immigrants feel as they make a home in a new country, the nudge of possibility and the urgency to grasp hold of the accomplishments already created — an uncomfortable steadiness that sustains. His quick-paced nature was no longer his most prized quality.

After continued and repeated visits to doctors and specialists, we would forever learn the true meaning of living in questions.

Medical professionals were unable to ascertain a diagnosis as every test run was negative, normal or inconclusive. What they could determine was that he had a neurological condition that would gradually show its degenerative presence over the course of an unknown number of years. He was only 63 years old. My heart was broken. I dreaded staring into the abyss. But what was more chilling was the unfathomable staring back at me.

Caring for my father over the course of 12 years gradually increased in its intensity, given the arc of time. Moreover, my role as caregiver, or as I would say, ‘dedicated daughter’, looked different as time progressed. At first, it was a supportive role, being encouraging from afar. Then it was regular touchpoints and being more practical in nature as I recognized significant signs of the illness. His challenges in speaking became more apparent. He started to have slurred speech and his voice had a coarse undertone. My father refused to see a speech therapist. I imagine visiting another specialist was a reality too harsh to digest at the time.

Given my training as an actor, I was familiar with the techniques of voice training. So most days, I sat on the phone with him rigorously practicing pronunciation, breathing, pacing and articulation. Witnessing him struggle to pronounce each word made me grieve the days where he robustly exercised his loud voice, most often boisterous call outs of our names from the bottom of the stairs, “Priyaaaa!” I wondered daily how he would operate in a world that often correlates one’s communication with success and leadership. He was an Indian man with a thick accent so the road to prosperity had more consistently been strewn with many bumps and bruises.

Nevertheless, that could not compare to what was ahead. I was determined never to let any of us surrender to the intimidating nature of this illness. As the years progressed, so did my visits from Los Angeles to Maryland. I often felt I was living two lives, faithfully pounding the pavement with auditions and a cherished community of friends — and anxiously settling into uncharted territory, alone as a long distance caregiver.

According to statistics, the average age of a family caregiver in the United States is a woman in her late 40’s, who works and provides unpaid care for at least 20 hours a week.

I was in my late 20’s, an actor running from one job to another in a car that broke down more often than I can remember. This was not an average situation, if there ever could be one with caregiving.

In the fall of 2007, my parents moved to Oregon, where my sister lived. This way they were closer to my sister and me. Visits home became easier and more frequent. My silence about our ‘family situation’ grew more profound. I was fiercely protective of our experience and I had come to accept that no one outside of our family could relate to the depth of anguish we moved through every day.

My heart skipped a beat every time the phone rang. I had gone from being a dedicated daughter to caregiver to manager of crises. We were always in crisis. One day my mother called me to share my father had fallen again and this time ‘he was lucky’. She was frantic with concern and understandably emotionally drained. At this point, it had been years of me juggling a double life and I was depleted of energy with caregiving from a distance. It was time to come home, so I left Los Angeles and moved back in with my parents.

I have perpetually felt a huge responsibility and found purpose in caring for my family from as early as I can remember. Perhaps it was the cultural norm of being the eldest Indian daughter. But most definitely, it was from witnessing my father do the same from afar with his family in India.

It was not until the moment I arrived at my parent’s house with two large suitcases that I realized my life would drastically change. I stood at the curb outside my parent’s home, paralyzed with fear. As I opened the front door, my father took my hand and softly said, “I’m sorry.” He was overcome with guilt.

For months, I engrossed myself in a life of care. It was a practice of patience and stamina. I often felt I was shedding skin, trying to grasp on to a sense of identity, tirelessly aching to give birth to a new self that I recognized emerging. Days were complex and demanded creative thinking. My to-do list was filled with a multitude of tasks that included monitoring his breathing and developing handmade communication tools so he felt heard. It moved to blending foods as he had difficulty in swallowing, which is common with nervous system disorders.

What I had not accounted for in his last several years was speech aphasia — a communication disorder, which ceased any ability to communicate his needs. He moved from walker to power chair. As soon as we could find some course of comfort in how to continually manage his daily needs, I moved back to New York, but traveled back to Oregon 4-7 times a year to oversee his care. In his last few years, he lost all mobility and required care 24 hours/7 days a week. We were fortunate to find two caregivers from Tibet who understood our culture and what we valued with care for my father.

Making sure he had a voice was of utmost importance to us.

My father spent many years as a forensics chemist and was as scientist at heart, full to the brim with curiosity and a keen observer. After much searching, my sister found a speech augmentation tool for his iPad that allowed my father to type his transformed beliefs. I sat with him for hours and occasionally I saw the glimmer in his eyes again as his new hypotheses for life were proven through the insights of his writing.

On a monthly basis, my mother had friends and family over, calling it a spiritual discussion group. With one single button, his new interpretations of subjects such as acceptance, happiness, serenity and even death were revealed. All he had to do was press, ‘play’. As I listened to my father’s words shared out, I was once again a novice discovering the world around me, listening to his kirtan, remembering that we are one.

For 12 years, my father was dying an excruciatingly slow death and yet, in the experiencing of that is where I learned to live. Caregiving is extraordinary because it asks you to live in contrasts every day.I felt reduced by the treacherous and unpredictable effects of my father’s illness. And it taught me that the self-resilience I had been seeking for years was nestled within me. It educated me on the depths of suffering, an uncomfortable place to inhabit and a residence drowning in compassion. Compassion has become a way of life. It has allowed me to become more indulgent in the present and has been my host to forgiveness. It has asked me to thrive in a land of simplicities so that every day I am inspired by the soft whispers of life.

I am in awe of the humanity that was exhibited by the hospice workers, caregivers and our community. As the years have moved on beyond my father’s passing, they continue to encapsulate us with their warmth during harrowing and uplifting times. Most importantly, I will forever be in partnership with my father as I walk through this ‘gigantic world’. He was my greatest teacher, repeatedly leaning on the wisdom of hope and fury, and unapologetic in his vulnerability. Caregiving has created a revolution in my soul, one that that will forever cultivate a sacred resting place for my heart.

SACRED ASSIGNMENT

An open heart has encouraged me to have more lightness in my steps and greater agency in how I live. It also enlivened my voice. Witnessing my father transition out of this world galvanized me to live more purposefully. I had grieved for years, much before my father’s passing, devoid of any journey along the five stages of grief. I have always felt I lost my father twice — once when he started to have some of the intense symptoms of this illness, and again when he died three years ago. Reintroducing myself to a world without him was daunting but I felt guided to show up more transparently. I now had time to breath in life from a different lens. I had spent many years nurturing every facet related to caregiving. I was primed to uncover what this destined in the larger scheme of life.

So, I transitioned from manager of crises to researcher of care. I felt called to connect with others who had been through loss and caregiving.

I felt compelled to hear their story, their voices, heartaches and heartwarming experiences. In those moments, I too shared my expedition with care and the mysteries our family became accustomed to over the years with an illness that had no name. We discussed how we moved through the pain, what we learned, the advice we would give others and how grief, loss and care was shaping our lives today. It was both humbling and healing. We became mentors in those instances, entrusting each other with some of our most sacred secrets. In some way, we belonged to each other through our communal discoveries.

I was not alone anymore.

I wondered what it would look like to create a movement where we started to hear the voices of family caregivers, a hidden and bountiful population.I ruminated on the possibilities of how the wisdom and knowledge from our care experiences could be a source of comfort for so many walking the path of caregiving, while also honoring the despair that often accompanies one’s journey.

It became clear to me that I wanted to make a dent in how we as a country were providing support for family caregivers.

The first step was to reach out to caregivers to share their stories and surprisingly, many were willing to do so. Perhaps they were just waiting to be asked. Within the care experience, the focal point tends to be the caree, understandably so, but the caregiver perspective is also a pertinent part of the story.

Inspired by my new diverse community, I dedicated my Instagram feed to their stories. I asked caregivers to share a 6-word story, one challenge and how that challenge shaped them. This was mine: Through the noise, purpose was born. I was driven to understand how I could gently shift a conversation that was so rooted in hardship to one that also encompassed our changing perceptions. I continually received feedback from caregivers that the process of sharing was cathartic and those visiting my page were grateful to read the variety of stories posted.

Soon after, I created a program that focused on helping those who have been caregivers become mentors, calling them ‘caregiver visionaries’, by reviewing their life’s turning points, caregiving story and the powerful streams of insight accumulated over the years. I ultimately aid adults in turning the unexpected role of being a caregiver into a role of a lifetime. I call this The Caregiving Effect: a platform and service I created two years ago.

I believe we all have the capacity to transform our most challenging life terrains into meaningful contributions.

Since my launch of The Caregiving Effect, I have also become a Certified Caregiving Consultant to help those currently in the throes of caring for a family member. To say that my cup is overflowing with gratitude is an understatement. I am indebted to the myriad family caregivers and caregiver advocates that have spoken up over the years. Through them and their contribution, I have learned that life’s sacred journey is to endlessly dedicate to beginning again. We are one among a powerful collective of millions with stories of care.

And this is my kirtan.

You may also enjoy reading 7 Ways to Release Grief from Your Body, by Joni Sensel.

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An extraordinary story of survival and hope — fueled by Magick

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 Editor’s Note: Damien Echols served nearly two decades on death row — 10 years of that in solitary confinement — for a crime he didn’t commit. Rather than giving in to anger or bitterness at his mistreatment by the justice system, he used his incarceration to explore the practice of hermetic magick, giving him the strength and hope to 

• • •

With every thought, word, and deed you are influencing the world around you and determining what comes your way. Even when I was in solitary confinement waiting to be executed, I could still shape my reality to a large degree. Granted, most people do this unconsciously — they make things happen in their lives without giving it a second thought. The only difference between a magician and your average person on the street is that a magician does magick intentionally.

In my opinion, if you’re constantly exerting influence on reality, it’s a good idea to learn how to do it well.

I think spiritual visionaries have always been powerful practitioners of magick — the prophets of the Old Testament, Jesus, Muhammad, Lao Tzu, and Gautama Buddha, just to name a few. These people devoted their lives to spiritual evolution for the benefit of everyone. When someone asked the Buddha, “What are you? Are you a god, or are you a man?” The Buddha simply replied, “I’m awake.” He meant that he had awakened to how the whole thing works — to the laws of karma and to the fact that reality isn’t just something predetermined that happens to us. He was awake to knowledge that we can all shape reality and create better environments for ourselves. We can actually do something about it.

Call this something whatever you’d like. I prefer to call it magick.

Every person on this earth is born with an entire universe of potential in them. Most people never cultivate the seeds of that potential, so the seeds go to waste and the people go through life wondering what went wrong, or blaming the world for everything that did go wrong. Magick waters those seeds to make that potential stir, grow, and flower. It accelerates our spiritual and mental development in ways we never could have predicted. Our ability to shape our destiny and the world around us using magick is limited only by our own belief, dedication, and creativity.

The week I walked off of death row was the most stressful in my life. I lived with a constant fear that it wasn’t going to happen. The prosecutor’s office and my attorneys were in heated talks about my deal. The prosecutor was doing everything he could to prevent being sued for sending an innocent man to death row, and my attorneys were doing their damnedest to help me survive the political maneuvering of the state. If the deal hit a snag of any sort, I knew I was going to die in my cell.

For several days, the stress was so crushing that I developed flu-like symptoms and broke out in painful sores on the inside of my mouth. Medical science has engaged in lots of research linking stress and its effects on the immune system. Another way of viewing this phenomenon is to understand that our thinking changes our energy field, and our energy field shapes our experience of our physical body. A large number of techniques practiced in magick are devoted to strengthening our energy field and understanding our energetic anatomy. Among other things, the stronger our aura, the more powerful our magick.

In magick, there’s one level of reality that we pay particular attention to, and it goes by many names around the world. The Chinese call it chiorqi, the Japanese say ki. In the ancient Jewish Kabbalah, it’s called ruach, and the Hindus refer to it as prana. In the fictional Star Wars universe, we know it as The Force. I just call it energy, because the word comes with less baggage and cultural nuance for me. Plus, there’s no particular religious significance to the word. Even scientists (especially physicists) talk about energy.

We are constantly interacting with other forms of energy — the energy of other people, places, and things. We absorb energy that is left behind after certain events have occurred. We are always bombarded by energy even if we don’t realize it, and it has definite effects on us. In some cases, it can pollute our energetic field and clutter it with harmful debris that eventually turns into blockages. We take in energy through all kinds of different methods — from the food we eat, the water we drink, and the people we spend time with.

Someone once said that we become a combination of the energies of the four people we spend the most time with.

That’s why it’s important to surround yourself with people who teach you and make your life better. Also keep in mind that success and failure are both energies. If you surround yourself with people who are happy and successful, you can absorb and benefit from their positive energy.

Each level of reality affects the others. Thoughts stir up emotions, and emotions determine how much energy you direct toward whatever it is you’re thinking about. And the physical plane is where we can see the culmination of the process as energy manifests in various ways. This is where the power of attention comes in.

Have you ever known someone who wallows in negative thinking to live a positive life? Our lives are largely determined by where we place our attention — in other words, our lives depend on how we direct our thoughts and the energy we invest in those thoughts. If you spend your time focusing on negative results, your life is probably not going to be very happy. And if you direct your energy into positive endeavors, chances are your life will be more positive than not. Of course, magick involves a lot more than messages found in books like, The Power of Positive Thinking, but it’s important to understand just how powerful our thoughts are. If we worry too much about catching the flu — visualizing how miserable we’d be lying in bed, aching, fevered, and just feeling awful — we’re putting a lot of energy in one particular direction, and we probably shouldn’t be surprised if we end up getting sick. As Bob Proctor, an expert on the law of attraction says, “Thoughts become things. If you see it in your mind, you will hold it in your hand.” If you want a simple way to start doing magick, just change the focus of your thoughts and see what happens.

At some point, my wife and I began a particular practice to get me off death row. We each repeated a version of the following affirmation at least once every day. Here’s mine:

May I be home, free from prison, living happily with my Lorri. May it come about in a way that brings harm to none and is for the good of all, and in no way let this reverse or bring upon me or my loved ones any curse.

We concentrated on this outcome every single day, without fail. And within one year of starting this practice, I walked off of death row. One thing I learned was to pay careful attention to what you ask for.

Know exactly what you want and phrase it accordingly, because most of the time magick is going to give you exactly what you ask for.

And what you ask for might not be the same thing as what you had in mind.

Afterward, Lorri and I realized that we didn’t say, “Let me be found innocent” or “May Damien have a new trial” or “Let the authorities catch the person who actually committed the murders.” All we said is some version of what I wrote above, and that’s exactly what happened.

It’s also important to point out here that the deeper parts of our psyche don’t understand words. That’s not how they communicate. Fundamentally, those aspects of our consciousness use images, and if you keep reinforcing a particular image — say, lying sick in bed — that’s what it sees, not the story behind the image. That part of you isn’t so good at detecting preferences; it just sees the picture. In one way of speaking, it starts running a program based on the mental image, which makes it more likely that the image will manifest in the material plane. And before you know it, you’re lying sick in bed, exactly the way you didn’t want to be.

I have a piece of artwork above my bed to constantly remind me of how powerful attention is. It’s a print of the painting Daniel in the Lion’s Den, from the biblical story in which Daniel was thrown into a dungeon full of lions. The lions stand around him, eyeing him hungrily, but Daniel doesn’t even look at them. Instead, he stares up into a shaft of light coming down from somewhere above with an expression of profound peace; it’s as if he doesn’t even know that he’s surrounded by lions.

The image means a lot to me. It reminds me not to allow negative circumstances to pull me down and to never wallow in misfortune, even though the world might say it’s okay to do so. I want to emulate Daniel and stay focused on the light, no matter my situation — even when I’m surrounded by lions.

All that matters is that light — the very light we shape and direct when we practice magick.

Magick is a never-ending process. There’s no end to the path and no end to your exploration. The most important aspect here is your intention. Remember: where your attention goes, your energy flows. If you want magick to work for you, engage it wholeheartedly, experiment, and modify the practices according to your experience.

After a while, you’ll realize that performing high magick is deceptively simple. At the beginning, it might seem complex, but eventually you’ll find that it doesn’t take much effort at all. Trust me: you’ll get there. With consistent practice, magick becomes second nature. All you’re really doing is a more refined version of what you’ve done every day of your life. It’s just that now you’ll be doing it more deliberately and with a lot more power. All you need is to have the patience and determination to continue through the roadblocks, especially in the early stages when it might feel like you’re floundering around.

You may also enjoy reading Muddy Universe | Biocentrism And The Power Of Consciousness by Robert Lanza

The post Life After Death Row: How Magick Saved My Life appeared first on BEST SELF.

A life-changing book points one woman back to herself

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Sometimes, when you least expect it, a book can completely change your life.

In college I’d had a part-time job in a small independent bookstore. It was the best job I’d ever had, and I enjoyed it so much I decided to take a year off before going to law school. Instead, I wanted to try my hand at the New York City book publishing business, with the thought that I’d learn the tricks of the business and publish a book of my own one day.

One year had turned into four, and I never ended up applying to law school. Instead, I’d worked my way into the editorial department at Penguin USA. I had finally been promoted to associate editor, which meant I was acquiring books of my own and was no longer answering someone else’s phone. I also had an office (with a door!), great co-workers and a salary abundant enough I could almost afford an apartment without roommates.

In other words, I had everything I’d been telling myself I needed in order to be happy. And yet, I was not at all happy.

One particularly bad afternoon, a co-worker walked into my office. She took one look at me — head on my desk — and made a proclamation.

“I think you should read this book my mom keeps telling me about,” she said. “It’s called The Power of Now.”

Even through my depressive haze, the title rang a bell. I lifted my head and scanned the bookshelf next to my desk. Voilà, Eckhart Tolle’s book was sitting right there.

Turns out the publisher had sent me a copy of the book months before, when I’d reached out about another project. Assessing that it was too ‘woo-woo’ for my tastes, I’d put it on the shelf and forgotten about it.

But I had reached a point of desperation. My friend’s mom seemed to think this would help, and that was good enough for me. I took the book home with me for the weekend.

And proceeded to not put it down all weekend long.

I read it on the subway.

I read it over dinner.

The more I read, the lighter and — could it be true? — the happier I felt.

Monday morning, I walked back into my friend’s office and said, “Reading that book felt like a spa for my soul. I wish Eckhart Tolle would start a religion.”

Since I could talk about nothing but that book, it didn’t take long for a different friend of mine to check it out.

“That book is just Buddhism,” she told me after reading the first couple chapters. She seemed disappointed, but I was elated.

Buddhism! I thought. That’s a religion!

A few weeks later I was sitting on a cushion at a Buddhist meditation center in Chelsea. And there, as I took course after course, something remarkable happened. I started to recognize the feeling I’d felt when I first read The Power of Now. It wasn’t quite lightness, though it was light. It wasn’t exactly happiness, though I certainly felt more joyful.

The feeling, as it turned out, was peace.

I began to follow that feeling everywhere. It became the most important feeling in my whole life. Chasing it took me on a journey over the course of the next few months and years. First, it drew me to leave Penguin for a new job at Hyperion Books. Then it led me to start playing the guitar again, and making art. Peace was the feeling that kept me returning to the meditation cushion, even when it was excruciating. At first a few times a week, and then every single day.

Finally, it was what called me to leave New York altogether, and take a job working at a small spirituality publisher in Colorado.

Looking back at the woman I was before reading Eckhart’s book, I see someone who did not know herself deeply. She’d pushed aside what truly lit her up — creativity, authenticity, the spiritual mysteries — in exchange for what she thought she was supposed to care about, like job titles and celebrity sightings and hot new restaurants.

That woman was completely lost, and it was a book that found her. Or more accurately, it was a book that pointed her back toward herself.

Since that time, I’ve curated my life very carefully so there is more and more peace; less and less stress, tension, and anxiety. And I can honestly say that the domino effect of goodness all started with The Power of Now.

My own book, The Book You Were Born to Write, is being published this month. It’s a book that walks aspiring transformational authors step-by-step through the process of getting their wisdom onto the page and into the world.

Naturally I am excited about the book for lots of different reasons. But there’s one reason that pulses with more life than the others.

I’m excited to have written this book, because I want more books like The Power of Now in the world.

Perhaps I would have found my way out of NYC without Eckhart. But it might have taken a lot longer, and might have been a lot more painful. The cliché is true: Books open up new worlds. They can be powerful catalysts for change and growth, and for healing the divisions inside ourselves — which is required in order to heal the division in the world around us.

If you are in pain, try picking up a book.

If you see someone else in pain, try recommending a book that helped you. (Or, as in the case of my coworker, a book your mom keeps telling you to read. Moms are usually right.)

And most importantly, if you have a transformative book in you — one that wants to come out into the world — consider committing the time and energy and resources into actually writing it. You never know who might be out there waiting to tell a story like mine about the book you were born to write.

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

The post The Book of Your Life: The Transformative Power of Prose appeared first on BEST SELF.

A 4^th generation physician living a nature-starved lifestyle saved herself by taking a walk on the wild side — connecting to the powerful guidance of spirit animals

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We can benefit from the natural world in many ways simply by beginning to open to it. And one of the easiest — and most fun — ways to begin to open to nature is to connect with animal spirits, or beasties. It can begin with a simple encounter like I had with Walrus.

The summer I decided to take a sabbatical from my medical practice, I didn’t know if or how I was going to figure out a way to feel good again at work. In the previous couple years, I had completely lost my mojo for the diagnosis of disease, which was the main task of my job as a board certified pathologist. Instead, I had become more curious about what makes people well. I wanted to focus my energies there, but I had no idea how. With four kids we hoped to send to college and a mortgage to pay, we were depending on my income.

During that summer, I stumbled into a walrus, albeit one that was lifeless, taxidermied, and hanging on the wall at a shop in our downtown. Nonetheless, I was mesmerized. His enormous tusks and whiskered face beckoned to me. I got curious.

Could this unusual beastie be trying to tell me something? As I learned more about walruses, I discovered a few things. I watched some footage of them hanging out on a beach and I noticed that, unlike me, they didn’t seem to be caught up in their heads worrying about the future. Instead, they were extremely relaxed. I also learned that, essentially, they have no competition. They are ‘apex predators’. Putting these two ideas together, I wondered if the walrus was trying to show me that if I could just manage to relax and be myself, that whatever I chose to do next with my career, I would have no competition.This message gave me a lot of hope.

With Walrus’s assistance, I eventually walked away from medicine to discover work that I love again.

I wasn’t aware of the deeper world of nature until the beasties found me and I started connecting with them. I believe the reason so many of us are drawn to animals and hold them in such high regard is that they are vibrational role models; working with their spirits is an invitation to join in their high state of alignment.

A beastie is a spirit that bears a special significance for an individual. It is a source of strength and insight. This creature’s spirit is aligned with the spirit of the person who works with it. I believe working with beasties in this way is embedded in our DNA or our collective experience. Though our Western culture currently lacks a strong connection to the practice of working with spirit animals, many beloved creative works point to this possibility again and again.

Two kinds of Beasties: Guest Beasties and Core Beasties

There are two basic categories of beasties. The first I like to think of as guest beasties. They’re around for a limited time. They come to stay with you for a moment or a month, or even a year, to bring a message or share some wisdom. Guest beasties arrive to guide you through something important that’s going on in your life. They’re basically saying, “Hey! Over here! Notice me, because I’m trying to tell you something that’s important for you to know right now.”

The other kind of beastie is what I like to think of as core beasties. They are often referred to as guardians, familiars, protectors, or power animals. The word power is often thought of only in terms of intimidation and strength. While it’s true that a core beastie does offer strength, it’s not the strength of being more powerful than others, but the strength that comes from being connected to your true self. The core in core beastie is the core of you.

Guest Beasties

Guest beasties are beasties that appear for a limited time to bring you a specific message. It’s kind of like a guest coming to visit who won’t be around forever. The good news: unlike houseguests, you won’t have to change the sheets or get up early to make coffee for them. Instead, the visit of a guest beastie can lighten your load.

They show up in your life to point you in a new direction, offer a solution, or teach you something.

Even our biggest fears, like not having enough money, a place to live, or good health, can be calmed by connecting with a simple message from a guest beastie.

The first step to working with guest beasties is to notice which beastie is showing up. Although they sometimes make a dramatic entrance, beasties often simply appear as you go about your day — as you read the newspaper, pick up the mail, or walk down the street. You don’t need to see the actual, three-dimensional version of the beastie for it to be a guest beastie with a message for you. Beasties you see on a digital screen, that you read about in a book, that appear in a dream, or that present themselves on a gift someone gives you — they all count. You may even hear a beastie rather than see it. Or, even more mysteriously, you might see just a tail, a tooth, a glistening trail on the sidewalk, a web, scat, or other evidence. All of them count. All you need to do is pay attention.

For example, if Tiger wants to get your attention, the man making your latte may have a tiger tattoo that catches your eye, and you ask him about it. Or you visit the zoo, and you can’t get enough of watching the tiger lounging majestically in its habitat. Maybe a friend gives you a birthday card with “Hey, Tiger!” as part of the message. Or a PBS documentary on tigers is playing at the dentist’s office while you get your teeth cleaned, and later your child offers you their stuffed tiger toy to snuggle with. You might even have all of these things happen within the short space of a few days. Play with life’s wonder; nothing is insignificant or without meaning.

Guest beasties typically exit once we have received the support and guidance we need.

During the period they are in our lives, we may feel extremely close to them and work deeply together. In some circumstances, a guest beastie like this may, over time, join your core beastie as a lifetime guide and helper.

Core Beasties

A connection with a core beastie — what some people call a ‘power animal’ — can be one of the most magical relationships, mentorships, and friendships you’ll ever have.

A core beastie is a spirit, in animal form, that you have a relationship with over a very long period of time. Many shamanic teachers say that a core beastie is with you for life.

Some people call core beasties power animals, but the word power is often confusing. The core beastie you connect with will empower you, yet it doesn’t bring you power, as our culture tends to popularly define it: an ability to dominate others or control the world. The power I’m talking about here is the peaceful strength that arises from expressing your unique essence in all areas of your life. I use the term core beastie because it more clearly communicates what this relationship is about: fortifying and enlivening the center or core of you.

The amazing and special thing about a core beastie is that when you discover one and get to know it, it’s like coming home to yourself. When you connect with the energy of an animal — or for that matter, anything in nature (an ocean, a tree, a rock) — you’re connecting with its vibration or inherent spirit. You feel that energy, for example, when you see an oak tree or a wildflower and recognize its beauty. When you discover your core beastie, it will feel uniquely uplifting. He or she will make you feel stronger when you think of them. It’s kind of like being in the company of someone who’s very positive, in tune with you, and supports you. A core beastie plays an empowering and protective role.

As a general rule, just as with guest beasties, core beasties are the spirits of wild animals. A wild animal lives in surrender to its own self and is able to fully express its heart’s desires without limits. Your core beastie will choose you — not the other way around. Regardless of how it appears, the beastie that chooses you does so because it has perfect, unique messages, strengths, and teachings for you. But be aware that your ego could get in the way. You may want your core beastie to be a soaring condor because your ego wants a condor, even though another precious beastie is trying to get your attention. If your ego gets in the way, you’ll find connecting with a core beastie more difficult and challenging.

Let go of the attachment to the beastie you want to appear and welcome the one that does appear bearing the gift of its messages.

Recall that a guest beastie is typically temporary (visiting for a moment, a week, or other limited time), whereas a core beastie is an animal spirit that has been with you your whole life, whether you’ve been conscious of it or not. Does one pop into your head instantly? Another easy way to tune in to your core beasties is to ask yourself these questions:

• Did you have a well-loved stuffed animal or book about a particular animal as a kid?
• What was the first animal you’d run to at the museum or zoo when you were a child?
• Have you ever had an incredible encounter with a wild animal? It could be an attack, an intense and powerful dream, a very unusual sighting, or an experience with a wild animal that felt significant.
• Have you had recurring dreams where a certain animal shows up over and over again? Even if — and especially if — it’s a scary dream?

Having a core beastie is like having a mentor who encourages you and really sees what’s possible for you. And like a relationship with a mentor (or a friend or a lover), your relationship with a core beastie is a two-way street: you get out of it what you put in. When you honor a relationship with a core beastie, it thrives — and so do you. Forging a wonderful, strong relationship with a core beastie is like cracking open a doorway into a vast world of nature and other beasties. By entering, you open yourself to receiving many more messages and making further discoveries.

Here are a few portraits of some beasties:

Bear

Solitude, Motherhood, Creativity, Dreaming

There’s a strange smell in the air. I quickly rise and encourage my cub to climb the tree. We climb together, up into the green branches. With my cub secured, I continue to sniff and observe the ground below. There, I spot her. It’s another young female bear, near my age. I huff at my cub, admonishing her to stay put, and quickly scale back down the tree to confront this stranger. I need this area to myself for my family to thrive. I storm toward her, raising a ruckus. She quickly retreats without a fight. Relieved, I sigh and collapse in a heap on the soft pine-needle floor and call to my cub. Lightning fast, she slips down the trunk and runs to greet me.

Bears are masterful at enjoying their own good company. These introverted creatures spend much of their life in solitude; it’s what bears do best. Bear lumbers in to remind you that perhaps you, too, could benefit from a respite from the constant buzzing.

A mother bear is an also an expert at teaching her little ones the skills they’ll need to be wholly independent. Once they’ve been raised, she chases those prepared cubs up a tree and leaves them there, fully expecting that they will take responsibility for themselves now. Is it time for you to take full responsibility for yourself? Conversely, is it time for you to let go of something (or someone) you helped create, trusting that you have prepared it well? Bear’s presence can also help you dream a new dream. Bear reminds you that what you really want isn’t that far off (even if it feels that way now). Don’t forget to stop for honey on your way there.

Aligning Affirmations:

GO YOUR OWN WAY

Find strength in solitude. Discover alone.

SAVOR THE AMBLE

Find delight in the journey. Stop often for honey.

EXPECT YOUR CREATIONS TO THRIVE

You did your part. Now let go. Be fierce. Believe.

CHAKRA:  Womb/sacral. Bear can help you strike a balance between giving and receiving. Are you shattered from giving too much and need to practice the art of receiving at this time? Or does your cup runneth over, making it the right time to share your bounty? Notice and make adjustments as needed.

BEASTLY PRACTICE:  Practice balancing in a modified Yogic Bear Pose to activate Bear energy. While seated on a mat or cushion, grab each foot with each hand. Inhale and lean back to lift both heels off of the floor a few inches. Find your balance. Then inhale and push your feet outward and upward, straightening the legs. (To modify for ease, keep knees bent.) Lift your feet up and out toward the corners of the room. Breathe and hold for two to four breaths. Repeat a few times. Notice new insights from your body.

VOCATION:  With bears, body language is everything. If you want to take charge, stand tall. To understand a situation more deeply, notice the subtle sign others give with their bodies. Become adept at reading these postures, and you’ll become better at what you do.

WELLNESS:  Drop all the ‘shoulds’ and let your omnivore self eat what it’s hungry for. If it feels good, explore medicinal herbs and teas.

CREATIVITY: A fertilized bear egg will develop into a viable pregnancy only if conditions become ideal. This is called delayed implantation. If you are in a creative process and are experiencing a delay, trust (and breathe). When conditions are ripe, your creation will begin to manifest and, with your collaboration, become fully fleshed out.

RELATING:  In Hindu mythology, Jambavan, the king of bears, an immortal being and son of the creator of the Universe, reincarnated as a bear in order to serve Lord Rama. Jambavan helped Hanuman, the monkey king, realize his immense capabilities. Like this mythological bear, you are being empowered to serve the greater good and to help others realize their own power and unique skills. Reflect people’s light back to them.

LOVE:  Play some Barry White and snuggle a loved one under some cozy covers in your own bear cave to improve your love quotient. If you are seeking love, do the same, but embrace a pillow and imagine your perfect snuggle partner. Ask Bear to help deliver them to you at the perfect time.

*If Bear is your core beastie, you get a tiny bit ornery if forced to go too many days without alone time.

Peacock

Art of Ceremony, Self-Expression, Compassion, Pride

In the early morning I fly up to a ridge, where I can survey my territory. I spot a female and quickly fly down to extend my invitation. I shimmy my feathers first and then — snap! — bring my tail up and fan it out in its full glory. Then I turn to face her directly and vibrate the feathers in order to more fully attract her attention. Today, she turns away and seems uninterested. I continue in earnest until the sun becomes too hot, and then I reluctantly retreat to the shade. Tomorrow is a new day and a new opportunity.

Peacock struts in ceremonially and with absolute grace to remind you that the eyes of compassion are always on you. Quan Yin, the goddess of mercy, love, and kindness, recognized by many all over the planet, is often depicted riding on a sacred peacock with the hundreds of eyes in his feathers representing the all-seeing eyes of this divine expression of the Creator’s love. Peacock wants you to know just how beloved you are. When you can go out into the world with trust, knowing you are loved, life can become a daring adventure. It’s time to step out with the trust and innocence of a child who has nothing to fear. This is a time to be bold. You may wander, but you are never lost. Saying yes to what’s calling you will keep the all-seeing eyes of compassion upon you. Train yourself to recognize the loving eyes that are seeing you always.

Aligning Affirmations:

ACCEPT YOUR DISTINCTIVENESS

You’re magnificent. Own it. Show it off. Strut your stuff.

LEVERAGE LOVELINESS

Entice with beauty. Reward with delight.

EMBODY POISE

Move graciously. Carefully. With great concentration and awareness.

CHAKRA:  Throat. The color of the throat chakra is sapphire blue. Riffle through your closet and don something with this color, or find another creative way to bring this rich blue into your experience to bring balance to self-expression.

BEASTLY PRACTICE:  Peacocks are leaf-litter hunters and love dusk and dawn for foraging. Take yourself on a peacock strut either early at dawn or as the sun is setting, and walk mindfully, drinking in all the beauty of nature.

VOCATION:  Peacocks make loud and plaintive calls. They are far from shy. If you’ve been suppressing yourself, it’s time to speak up and share your own thoughts at work.

WELLNESS:  Peacocks are not picky eaters and will eat just about anything they can find on the forest floor, including fruits, seeds, insects, and reptiles. It’s a great time to try new foods. Expand your culinary horizons. Choose something you’ve never tried before when you dine out or make a brand-new recipe. Favor natural, unprocessed foods from the earth.

CREATIVITY: The plumage of the male peacock has no equal. It dazzles. Don’t be afraid to be loud and proud about your creative work. It’s time to put it on display, share it, and let others see the glory of what you have made.

RELATING:  Peacocks tend to roost together in trees in ‘parties’ for protection. If you are feeling disempowered or anxious, a party is the cure. Call a last-minute potluck or toss some popcorn in a bowl and invite a few of your favorite friends over.

LOVE:  Peacocks take their courtship very seriously, and males will stop at nothing — singing and dancing their hearts out — for a chance to be with the female of their choice. This is no time to be lax. If you’re in a committed partnership, it’s time to dance like you mean it and pull out all the stops. If you are seeking love, just like the peahen, you are in the driver’s seat (whether you are male or female). Look for the one whose dance has the most heart.

*If Peacock is your core beastie, you surprise people with the incredible ways you express yourself.

Sloth

Gentleness, Trust, Conservation of Personal Energy, Cooperation

Moving slowly up the tree, I pause to nibble a few leaves. The jungle symphony provides the soothing soundtrack for our morning. We cruise gently and imperceptibly among the trees. Our dreamy pace is our protection. My baby is beginning to grow up and has begun grabbing a vine or two of his own, to test his strength. It won’t be long before we part ways.

Sloth arrives very slowly to gently make you aware that there’s no sin in conserving your energy for what is most important to you. Have you been exceedingly busy, responding to all of the needs of others and ignoring your own most basic needs? Sloth offers you her Mona Lisa smile and wordlessly reminds you to periodically withdraw yourself from the caretaking of the world and lovingly attend to your own sweet center and/or family. Sloth was named, by some terribly misinformed explorer, for one of the seven deadly sins. But Sloth is not indifferent to the world and its suffering, nor is she lazy. Sloth is simply a skillful model of energy conservation and healthy self-care. She reminds you to attend first and foremost to your own needs. To rest sufficiently. To eat nourishing foods. When you take care of yourself, as Sloth does, you can become a helpful guide for others.

Aligning Affirmations:

PROCEED SLOWLY

There’s no need to do it faster. Pokey is perfect.

TAKE TIME TO PROCESS

Break it down. Allow lengthy digestion. Days, not minutes.

ENJOY OBSCURITY.

Move quietly among all you adore.

CHAKRA:  Heart. Sloths quietly live in harmony with all that is. Take a few minutes today to be outdoors, set an intention to come into harmony with all of nature, and notice what happens—notice what you sense, smell, see, taste, or simply know.

BEASTLY PRACTICE:  Sloths, like owls, have the incredible ability to turn their heads nearly 360 degrees. Take an issue that has been bothering you the last twenty-four to forty-eight hours and examine it carefully from all perspectives. Then, if you like, stay the course or feel free to make a 180-degree turn.

VOCATION:  It can take a sloth up to one month to digest a meal. Give yourself at least thirty days to consider carefully all of your ideas, information, and input before launching a new product/program/initiative or making a big decision.

WELLNESS:  Once a week, sloths will descend from their tree to defecate and urinate. Each time you go to the bathroom and close the door today, do a one-minute sloth blessing and release: take this opportunity to thank God, the Universe, the Earth, or whomever you pray to for all the nourishment you’ve received. Then release everything (including this waste) that is not serving you. Amen.

CREATIVITY: Sloth mothers are extremely tender and gentle with their babies. Give yourself a very tender and peaceful atmosphere in which to create. Clear out any old energy by spraying flower essences, sage, or simply burning a candle with intention, and invite Sloth to watch over you as you work at your chosen craft.

RELATING:  Sloths are a wandering, welcoming habitat for many other beasties, including algae, moths, beetles, and more. Offer yourself as a soft place for others to be nourished.

LOVE:  Sloths have a very slow rate of metabolism and need to sunbathe often to maintain their body temperature. To strengthen your relationship or to increase the chances of finding love, spend a few minutes soaking up the sun. Notice how the sun never asks anything of you: it simply shines.

*If Sloth is your core beastie, you naturally broadcast the creative talents of others.

You may also enjoy reading How Good Are You Willing To Let Life Get? Daily Messages From A Spirit Animal by Sarah Bamford Seidelmann

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Through breath and meditation we can reconnect to the voice within, the holy fire of our truth — and return to ‘human love’

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I wish I had a magical mantra you could repeat when needed and poof– suddenly – you don’t just know, but FEEL the love that you are. The hard part about loving ourselves is that it takes hard work. It takes daily, inner doses of raw honey — of letting love reach within us where it has never been before.

I don’t know why so many of us were wired this way — to love others with ease even through their massive failings and faults, but then judge the slightest little thing wesay or do. And then use our human mistakes as reasons to withdraw or withhold our own love for ourselves. Or worse, allow those mistakes (which are the whole point of being here) to convince us that we aren’t worthy of love.

The grace, the silver lining, the miracle in all this, is that so many of us are in this together — this calling to become the love we seek to give others.

The greatest spiritual tool I can offer you is something we all possess. I call it the ‘Soul-Voice Meditation’ — the capacity to turn our focus and attention inward, to the heart.

Whether you take a minute in the shower, five on the commute to work, or twenty minutes before bed at night, that intention of going within and meeting the presence that exists within you (that is you) will melt those obstacles that can block you from feeling the love that is yours.

I call it the Soul-Voice Meditation because that’s what I meet with when I go within, the presence and uncompromising reality of the soul. It’s like stepping into a vat of honey that I keep forgetting is right here. It’s this endless supply of love that I never have to earn access to or prove I’m worthy of; I just have to remember that it’s right here in my own imperfect and terrifically flawed heart.

This, I think, is the whole point: that something as divine as love (which never ends) lives and breathes within this shifting, temporary space of the human heart — and that it’s ours to experience and share and to ultimately become. I don’t think the point is to be that love all of the time. I think the point is to be both this eternal love, and also this fumbling, lost-in-the-dark type human. That’s the work, the paradox, and the opportunity we’re handed in coming here. To be human love. And to get better and better at returning to the source of love whenever we think we’ve been separated from it, or when we mistake its origin in someone or something else. With less and less time, and with more and more forgiveness.

So, what I suggest is to just start. Just do what you can to love yourself right now.

Take one breath, close your eyes and intend to enter your heart. Take a second breath and know that you are meeting with the truth of who you are, a soul of love. Take a third breath and surface from behind your eyes to see out now with the eyes of love.

Then just let that love guide you. Start with those three breaths at some point in your day. No one needs to know you’re doing it. You don’t need a meditation cushion or a candle, or incense — all you need is this desire to encounter the love that you are. You and your soul will take it from there, knowing that with love you’ll find all your own answers within you.

I often hear the adage, or some version of it, that “we must become who we needed most when we were young.” When I was a little girl, I needed to be led, again and again, back to the truth that I contained the love I seek. I needed to be reminded that as a female, I am not an object, or a commodity. Love is my birthright, and I am entirely worthy of it. I am beloved here on earth, and that no matter what happens, my body is sacred.

I needed to know that this quiet, unassuming voice inside me is actually a holy fire; it’s the most powerful force in this world.

It’s the force of unfaltering love. I can trust it to guide me. I can trust this voice, if I dare to follow it, to become not what someone else needs me to be, or wants me to become, but simply the truth of who I am.

I can choose to be nothing less or more than exactly who I am; and this is enough.

I needed to be taught that there have always been divine ladies of an uncompromising love that have existed throughout history and in all the world religions. There have been Goddesses and female Buddhas and human women who embodied a love that allowed them to transform into warrior-saints, and mystics, and poetesses, in order to rise above the limits of what their cultures and religions allowed for them as females; so they could demonstrate to the world what happens when a woman sets her own soul free.

When I was little I needed The Divine Feminine Oracle.

I needed the Soul-Voice Meditation.

I needed to be the love that I already am.

And so, this is what I have created.

You may also enjoy reading Stories in Motion: Oracles for the Modern Seeker by Colette Baron-Reid

The post Three Breaths: Connecting to The Holy Fire of Truth Within appeared first on BEST SELF.

Take down your blind spots: the unconscious patterns of behavior that are fueled by emotions and beliefs — that misguide us from acting upon our truest intuitive senses

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A friend of mine, the founder and president of a well-known leadership consultancy startup in San Francisco with a promising ‘runway’ for success, recently faced a pivotal life decision. Just as his company was getting off the ground, landing big contracts, and wading waist deep into highly creative and well-funded projects, he was offered another job as CEO of a competing company. The offer forced him to choose between the company he had poured his heart and soul into and heading up another, more established organization with a team twice the size.

From the outside it looked like a clear choice: stay with his own creation and see it through to the next stage. This would enable him to launch his own voice and work into the world and write the book he’d been longing to create, among other things. He had a great staff working for him and the vision was his — they needed him. His company was the new sexy consultancy on the block and its story was just starting to be written. Still, the offer pulled at him, and he found himself considering it.

One day while I was walking at the lake in my neighborhood, he called me and relayed his dilemma to me, saying with a mixture of curiosity and lighthearted angst, “Kelly, I don’t know what to do. I was offered this position and even though I have so many reasons not to take it, I feel an intuitive pull toward it. I want to explore it if you have a few minutes to do so.” He continued, listing out all the pros and cons of taking the offer and turning it down.

Gut intuition is a mysterious thing. It has its own life and its own currents, even when it flies in the face of our most rational ideas.

As he spoke, I could hear that there was a sense of alignment or ‘yes’ when he spoke about leaving his company to take the new job — even though it fundamentally contradicted his ideas about who he was and what he should do. The clarity behind all of his questions and analytic processing was shining through: it felt right to him to take it. My job as a sounding board was simply to point that out and support his continued inquiry.

He took some long walks alone in nature, quietly reflecting, and consulted with other trusted friends and colleagues. He eventually made his decision: he left his own brainchild for the CEO position. He has since said it was without a doubt the best choice he could have made, with positive ripple effects in many directions. The act took courage, because he had to be willing to let others down and possibly be perceived in a negative light. And it was a personal risk; he had a family to consider and was in a hard-earned position of security that was largely under his own control. Yet even with those elements factored in, his commitment to his own personal integrity and to listening to his intuition kept the perceived risk from getting in the way of acting on his inner knowing.

Shortly before taking the job, he described to me that he just had a felt sense that it was ‘right’. While he could give logical reasons for the move, the primary motivator was his gut feeling. When he realized he was leaning that way, he had checked it out with friends, asking if he had a ‘blind spot’ — an unconscious impulse, fueled by emotions and beliefs, that create habit-building patterns in relationship to ourselves and others.At some point it became a ‘choiceless choice’ for my friend: the answer revealed itself, and he had to heed the call.

When something feels ‘right’ it doesn’t mean the situation is bull’s eye perfect and will provide unending happiness and bliss. Rather, it means the situation is aligned and we are on track with taking the next step in the unfolding (choose your own adventure) story of our lives. When we act in alignment with our inner knowing and intuitive sense, there is a feeling of ‘rightness’ that carries signature qualities: alignment, ease, flow, and a natural ‘yes’. A lack of resistance. It’s a form of knowing that doesn’t assert itself, yet it is clear as day. I call this the ‘100 percent yes’.

I have discovered for myself — in my work and relationships — that anything less than a ‘100 percent yes’ is a ‘no’.

This doesn’t mean that I don’t make decisions that involve sacrifice or compromise — I do. Or that I never change course after making one of those decisions; I do that, too. But when I say yes to something that has, say, a 75 percent feeling of ‘yes’, I usually get exactly what I signed up for: it turns out there’s a 25 percent ‘no’ in the mix.

Waking Up to Intuition

Blind spots are tricky because we can’t see them; their nature is to hide in plain sight. Because it frees you to see more clearly, illuminating your blind spots helps you access this natural intuition and life wisdom and keeps you from getting bogged down in other fixed ways of seeing. And as a result, you make better decisions. Who doesn’t want that? Your intellect and reason are still involved, but you aren’t a slave to your ideas any longer. And let’s face it, how can you objectively know how things should go anyway?

The thing about trusting your intuition and acting from it is that the next moment always comes, carrying with it a new opportunity to listen and respond spontaneously to each new possibility. And when this becomes a habit, even when you are faced with the biggest challenges of your life, you can still navigate from a place of openness, curiosity, and listening for the next best step. When your blind spots drop away, you can welcome feelings of loss, heartache, and fear of change and step into the next wild, unknown moment — feeling your way in.

The Power of the Felt Sense

We waste precious energetic resources when we defend against what is right in front of us and see what’s not really there.In contrast, seeing clearly allows us to gain access to our body’s natural wisdom in the form of signals that come through the felt sense of the body. These signals are often outside of our conscious awareness or rational processes, and require space, time, and reflection to be heard (they are like the still, small voice that whispers instead of whacking us on the head).

If we are checked out from our bodies and the messages they transmit in the form of sensations and emotions, we block access to what is right in front of us: valuable information that supports us in finding our true north. But as we mindfully meet, greet, and welcome all of who we are, we are better able to clear the noise (the false beliefs, unconscious biases, and suppressed emotions) in the signal and listen to what is clear, simple, and most true for us in any given moment. Our defenses against the world are softened, and that makes all the difference in the world.

How do we practically use our newfound connection to what is right in front of us, what we no longer miss, along with the power of our gut and heart’s intuitional navigation system? The next practice can be applied to just about any life situation, in real time, using present-sight.

8 Steps for Opening to Your Blind Spots and Navigating from Your Intuition

To begin this exercise, as you’re getting used to it, I suggest you select a particular issue you’d like greater insight on. Then work through the steps using that as the situation at hand. Soon enough, answering the questions related to these steps and taking the suggested stances will become second nature, and as a result, your inner knowing will assume an ever greater role in all of your choices.

1. Listen to what’s real, using mindful awareness — the tools of insight and practice

What do you feel in your body as you consider a decision? Do you feel a strong ‘no’ or ‘yes’ that you are ignoring? Chances are that’s relevant information to listen to. If you can’t tell whether what you’re experiencing is fear or not, take time and sit with it. Notice the emotions, the thoughts, the feelings. Your clarity will emerge as you give everything in your experience the space to be here and to deliver its messages to you.

2. Tell yourself the truth as you listen — the tools of honesty and vulnerability

As you acknowledge what you feel and all that is in your experience, can you tell yourself any truth of the moment? For example: I feel hurt and angry. My sense is that this marriage has reached a pivot point and we need help trying to save it. I feel scared and I don’t want to do anything right now except hide. The truth of the moment, unveiled and unhidden from yourself, has the power to work wonders. The naming of it will deeply relieve you from the tension and struggle of holding it in.

3. Act from your inner knowing as you tell yourself the truth — the tools of discriminative wisdom and empowered responsiveness

As you listen and tell yourself the truth, what do you most know about this situation or about what you’re learning? What action is being called for in your life? Acting from your inner knowing may mean taking no action at all, but it’s what you know to do, or not do. It could mean having a conversation with someone, or saying no where you’re sure there is a ‘no’. Remember the idea that anything that isn’t a 100 percent ‘yes’ is a ‘no’. That can help clarify when you aren’t listening to your inner knowing. Acting comes from a place of empowerment and strength, but it also comes through vulnerability. If it comes from fear, it may not reflect your deepest knowing.

4. Be comfortable with not needing a reason for your actions and decisions — the tool of surfing the unknown with self-confidence and trust

People will ask you to explain yourself. You can give them a reason if you want to, or you can give yourself permission to say, “I don’t know. I have a sense that this is what I need to do.” Watch for times when you know strongly and without a reason that you need to do something and then make up a reason for the choice so that you (or others) can feel comfortable with your decision. Let yourself not know why you do what you do. Of course, sometimes you’ll be utterly clear about why you’re making a given choice, but that won’t always be the case. Give yourself permission to not know, yet to still act. What a relief!

5. Be comfortable with failure if your actions lead you astray — the tools of self-compassion and curiosity

Understand that part of the learning journey means you will fail, you will mess up, you will not say the right thing, and you will hurt others and yourself. When you understand that, you are far more willing to take responsibility for and learn from your actions than when you resist your mistakes. When you are in resistance, you will try to hide what you did wrong, try to push things through that don’t need pushing anymore, and try to prove that you’re right. Failure just means you are learning, and the more comfortable you are with the process, the better you will surf the waves.

6. Let yourself off the hook from your ‘shoulds’, your self-blame, the prison of your own mind — the tools of emotional intelligence and inquiry

Retire your loyal soldiers: your inner critic — the voice of ‘shoulds’. Letting yourself off the hook from those harsh, judgmental voices allows you to let in where you betray yourself or another, or where you are blind and not listening. In not needing to be a certain way, you become who you are: a full-spectrum human being.

7. Laugh at yourself and let go of taking yourself so seriously — the tools of awareness and humor

Place yourself in the context of history and think of all the love and war and birth and death that have come before you. See what a tiny point you are in the grand array of the world. Laugh at how you make such meaning of everything and feel that so much is at stake. Find the humor in the way you hold on, and in doing so, let go.

8. Love what comes — the tools of compassion and welcoming

It’s so easy to forget to love what comes. It’s so easy to resist and refuse what life hands you. It’s doing the simple thing of loving, with a welcoming presence, what arises in your life that changes everything. Love is the chief blind spot unlocker. It undoes our hatred, the way we blame and judge, and the way we don’t listen well. Let love reside inside you and speak from your most profound depths. When we trust that we can take an aligned action in the world — any action that is spontaneous and relevant to the moment — it is easier to love because viewing through the lens of love doesn’t threaten. We can love while we experience everything else under the sun. It seems to hold this whole thing together, doesn’t it?

The blind spot outing will set you free. May the journey to your intuitive self begin. Bon Voyage.

You may also enjoy Issue 11: Lodro Rinzler | A Mindful Life with Kristen Noel

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Philip Goldberg writes the human story of the spiritual guru Paramahansa Yogananda

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As an idealistic, inquisitive student in the 1960s, I made what seemed like a radical shift from Marxist, atheist, anti-religious, political activist to questing seeker, enchanted by the philosophical and spiritual insights of the East. Neglecting my assigned course work, I read everything I could about Yoga, Vedanta, Hinduism, Buddhism, Taoism, and world mysticism, including Western commentators such as Alan Watts and Aldous Huxley, the fiction of Herman Hesse and J. D. Salinger, and the poetry and song lyrics of artists whose lives and work were influenced by those Eastern spiritual traditions. What I learned was not only revelatory, it was practical, empirical, and transformative. I was hardly alone in making that transition; the counterculture was awash in Indian music, fabrics, and ideas, not to mention the music and cultural influence of The Beatles, whose journey to India in 1968 seemed to tilt the planet so the East’s treasures could easily pour into the West. All of which inspired a move away from the drugs that had, for many, opened the doors of perception toward safer and more reliable paths to spiritual experience.

Into my mixed bag of resources came Paramahansa Yogananda’s Autobiography of a Yogi. It was one of the most eagerly borrowed and blatantly ripped-off books in the low-rent districts of strongholds like Berkeley, Cambridge, Madison, Ann Arbor, and the East Village.

I still have the copy I read back then. It’s a hard cover, and the price on the jacket is $5. Since it was unlikely I had five bucks to spare in those hand-to-mouth days, I probably borrowed the book and failed either to return it or pass it along. It was too precious to part with, and it has remained with me through about fifteen moves spanning the continent. The iconic memoir that launched millions of spiritual paths accelerated mine. I was already practicing meditation and yoga postures daily when it landed in my lap like a key piece of evidence for a detective working a case; the self-portrait of a bona fide yogi, the enticing depictions of sacred India, the descriptions of saints, sages, and miracle workers — all convincing proof that what I’d learned, intuited, and contemplated could in fact be true.

I never became a disciple or a formal student of Yogananda’s, but as my spiritual path deepened and broadened I continued to learn from his writings. When I took up serious research for my book, American Veda: From Emerson and The Beatles to Yoga and Meditation, How Indian Spirituality Changed the West, Yogananda was one of many prominent gurus whose lives I explored. He stood out for several reasons: 1) he was the first major guru to make America his home and the headquarters of his international organization, 2) he was the best-known and most influential Indian teacher from 1920 to the late 1960s (the Los Angeles Times called him “the 20th century’s first superstar guru”), 3) his immense contribution to the transmission of India’s wisdom to the West has endured long after his death, 4) Autobiography of a Yogi was, by far, the most often-mentioned book in the 300 plus interviews I conducted for American Veda,and 5) his life story was so moving, complex, and compelling I felt frustrated having only one chapter to devote to it.

Out of that experience came the idea to write a bona fide biography. The first response by those in whom I confided was: Why bother when Yogananda’s seminal memoir still sold thousands of copies a year? The answer was: the autobiography is as much about other people as it is about Yogananda, and the story contains huge gaps. Less than 10 percent of the book is about Yogananda’s years in America, where he spent almost all of his adult life, and where he made his impact. Periods of several years are virtually dismissed in one-sentence summaries. Books by direct disciples fill some gaps, but far from all, and they read more like tributes than actual biographies.

My goal was to paint a more complete picture of Yogananda than was available elsewhere, and to place his personal narrative in a historical context.

After all, his life spanned nearly six decades of massive social change, lived out in two hemispheres and two vastly different cultures. His teaching years in the West traversed the Roaring Twenties, the Great Depression, World War II, the dawn of the Atomic Age, and the postwar boom.

I chose to emphasize Yogananda’s human story rather than his teachings, which can readily be accessed firsthand. Even if you believe he was a saint or a divine incarnation, as many of his disciples do, he was nevertheless human — exceptional in numerous ways, extraordinary in many, driven by a unique mission, but still human, with all the paradoxes and complexities that term implies.  He had quirks, idiosyncrasies, and peculiarities shaped by a specific family in a specific culture at a specific time in history. He was traditional in many ways and independent and unconventional in others.

He shouldered tremendous burdens as the head of a spiritual organization. He endured managerial distress and continuous financial pressure. On many occasions, he expressed a yearning to renounce it all and return to India and the simple life of a Himalayan ascetic. But he stuck it out, wrestling with tough decisions, beset by strong emotions, celebrating victories and suffering defeats, enjoying worldly pleasures and struggling with sorrow. He was party to controversial lawsuits played out in lurid headlines and salacious allegations.  He learned important lessons; he grew as a man; he evolved as a soul — always fulfilling his worldly duties with his eyes fixed on the prize of Self-Realization.

People on the spiritual path tend to romanticize, idealize, and glorify revered teachers, sometimes to the point of deifying them as perfect incarnations of God.

Many labor under the impression that awakened masters are immune from disappointment, anger, and interpersonal conflicts. Not only is this a misconception, it is a disservice to the humanness of those exceptional individuals. On one level, their consciousness may indeed be stationed in the Transcendent, beyond the slings and arrows of what we call the human condition. But on the level of individuality, where a distinct personality inhabits a specific body, they are subject to the karmic laws of cause and effect and they encounter the ups and downs of the material realm. The Big Self is eternal and absolute; the small self gets sick, enjoys pleasure, endures pain, and dies. I knew going in that the status of a great soul was beyond my capacity to describe, but I could narrate the tale of the human being who was born Mukunda Lal Ghosh in 1893 and died Paramahansa Yogananda in 1952.

After I completed the biography, I realized how much wisdom and inspiration I had gleaned in the process of writing it. Yogananda’s story offers useful takeaways for everyone. Even though he was a renunciate monk, he was so deeply committed to his earthly mission that his discipline and perseverance would be the envy of most entrepreneurs. As productive as he was, however, he never lost sight of his number one priority: achieving and maintaining union with the Divine. He taught his students to balance the spiritual and the material, but urged them to place the spiritual first and perform their spiritual practices daily, without fail. He modeled that ideal, and he also modeled spiritual engagement over detachment. He spoke out on behalf of Mahatma Gandhi and India’s freedom struggle, denounced the greed and materialism that led to the Great Depression, raged against militarism and war, bigotry and racism. He was a monk in the world, offering the insights of ancient sages to people with jobs and families, and he walked his talk with dignity, integrity, and courage. Anyone who reads his life story carefully will find him a spiritual role model for the ages.

Learn more about Paramahansa Yogananda’s Autobiography of a Yogi.

You may also enjoy reading Jazz & Spirituality | The Mindful Music of Jack DeJohnette by Peter Occhiogrosso

The post Yogananda & Me: The Human Story of a Spiritual Guru appeared first on BEST SELF.

When a doctor cannot logically explain the communication he receives from his son after his tragic death, he relearns how to live life

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The death of my son, Christopher, at the age of 22, changed everything I thought I knew, in ways I never expected. Beyond my grief, came a glimpse of immortality that shattered my scientific, analytic view of the world.

Chris was a brain damaged, developmentally disabled child who challenged everyone he knew with his unpredictable behavior and uncanny insights. He drowned in a shallow stream bed while walking with friends along a trail in the Berkshire Mountains. As Chris underwent resuscitation in a local E.R., my wife, Christina, and I sat silently by the phone in Manhattan, waiting for news, immobilized by fear and the feeling of being powerless.

Suddenly, the room felt supercharged with electricity, as if lightning were about to strike. Christina andI had exactly the same experience: a pure white light flooded our vision. A glowing shape, powerful and majestic, with Christopher’s face, emerged from the light. The sublime joy, limitless strength and total freedom radiating from this being exceeded anything I’ve ever known or imagined.

He was with us for a few seconds. Then he was gone and the phone was ringing to bring us news of the failed resuscitation. The flood of emotion was overwhelming and confusing. The happiness of Christopher’s spirit was exhilarating. But somehow it had no impact on our grief at losing the flesh-and-blood child. It felt as if two rivers rushing in opposite directions were sweeping over us.

We buried Chris in the Berkshires and at his graveside released twenty-two bright yellow balloons to celebrate his life.

Each balloon was attached to a short, frayed yellow ribbon, because I’d had to cut them free from a sandbag to which they were all tied. The next day we returned to New York City. We stopped at a red light near Columbus Circle, a place with some significance to Chris, because it was named after another Christopher. We were stunned when a yellow balloon with a short frayed yellow ribbon descended from the sky, hovered directly in front of our car, and then drifted away. There were five people in the car. We all saw it.  To my wife and me, the balloon’s visit was even more extraordinary than the visit of Christopher’s majestic spirit four days earlier. To the children in the back seat, it was all pretty routine. Of course, this was one of the balloons we‘d released at Christopher’s grave. Of course, Chris had sent it. What could be more natural?

I could almost feel Christopher laughing. “I know you, Leo,” he seemed to be saying. “You’re such a skeptic and you’re always trying to be so logical. Given time, you’d doubt the vision of my spirit and dismiss it as a shared hallucination. Try to explain away this balloon.” I couldn’t explain away the balloon. I obsessed about it. During the months that followed, I would relive these two visits — the appearance of Christopher’s spirit and the flight of the balloon — over and over again, as if they were drugs that could help me make sense of Christopher’s tragic life and early death.

Three weeks after his funeral, I had a third visit. It took the form of a mysterious illness that lasted for six hours. I was suddenly overcome with a flu-like feeling and lay in bed, incapacitated. I felt as if Christopher was taking over my mind. I began to experience all the frustrations and disappointments he had known and I began to feel the strength and generosity of his character more deeply than ever, how he turned pain and disability into love and joy.

It was five years before my next contact with Chris. We talked about him often in the family, but there were no surprise visits and I began to wonder whether he was with us or had moved on.

Then one night I was awakened with his voice urging me, “You have to tell my story. People need to know.”

So I began working on a book about him, recently published under the name Already Here, a Doctor Discovers the Truth about Heaven. As I prepared to write, I asked Chris for guidance. I wasn’t sure what to expect, so I threw out questions almost casually and waited for a response. Replies always came, usually right away, if I was alone. I would hear a voice speak directly to my mind. It was gentle but commanding and it always said much more than I expected. Writing Already Here brought me on a spiritual journey in which I came to know Christopher as my teacher.

At first Chris brought me concepts with which I could feel quite comfortable, ideas like embracing adversity and “Life is a constant overcoming of who we are, to become who we can be.” He then moved on to ideas that challenged my concept of reality at its roots: the illusory nature of space and time and the role of human consciousness in the universe. I recognized that Christopher’s revelations contained ancient wisdom that was designed to deepen my understanding.

As I attempted to transcribe these dialogues, I discovered three themes in his teaching. I call them The Gift of the Opposite, the Gift of Presence and the Gift of Timelessness. The Gift of the Opposite actually describes Christopher’s M.O. while he was still alive. He was always looking for the counterpoints or contrasting views, in ways that could be maddening or funny or full of insight. It also describes the fundamental organizing principle of our Universe: All things contain their opposite at all times, a profoundly meaningful concept that underlies ancient Chinese philosophy. The Gift of Presence describes a Zen-like way of being attentive that’s essential for recognizing the Opposite. The Gift of Timelessness is a way of entering into what mystics call The Eternal Present. Chris’s spirit called it ‘God’s Moment’.

My most important discovery was that Christopher’s teachings were not just esoteric precepts from beyond the grave.

In his short and difficult life, he had actually embodied these gifts and used them in paradoxical ways to teach others. I began to realize that the angelic being we’d seen at the moment of Christopher’s death had always been within him, shining through his awkward body and damaged brain, transforming pain into love and disappointment into joy. He showed me that each of us is so much more than we appear to be. Who we are is not limited by our physical bodies. We exist even when our bodies do not. We can be robust and full of grace even when our bodies are broken. Those of us who seem to be the least, may actually offer the most.

I gave Christopher’s book the title, Already Here, because of the last conversation I had with his spirit. I had asked Chris what it was like in Heaven. I’m not sure why it took me a year to ask that question. He answered joyfully: “It’s what I always wanted. Everyone is here. Everyone. Even you… You’re already here, you know.” I felt a chill run down my spine and I was able to grasp, in a visceral way, the true meaning of ‘God’s Moment’. An irresistible smile spread across my face and I began laughing.

We had no more dialogues after that. Chris’s last words to me were, “Now I’ve told you everything you need to know.” His visits ended, but not my homework. He never explained why he wanted me to tell his story, but in writingAlready Here,I developed my own motivation. There are many Christophers in the world, people who are challenged or challenging, who confound our assumptions and expectations. They may suffer from disabilities or illness or pain, or they may simply be outliers. Although to me Christopher seems exceptional, he told me in no uncertain terms that he was “just like everyone else.” I want people to find the Christophers in their own lives, the hidden teachers of the spirit, and I hope that Christopher’s story can help guide their journey.

You may also enjoy reading Doing Death Differently: Embracing the Home Funeral by Kelly Notaras

The post Lessons from Beyond: How the Death of My Son Taught Me To Live appeared first on BEST SELF.

A highly sensitive child who could sense the emotions and stories of others, learns to express her true gifts and powers via oracles

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Growing up as a highly sensitive person, given to knowing things about everyone around me (without permission), I felt way too much, all the time. The world was a big blur of diaphanous stuff, brimming with information, feelings that were not mine, stories about others I shouldn’t know about and a pervading sense that I just didn’t belong, had no map, and my boat just might capsize at any minute.

The one thing I wanted was certainty. I was three when I discovered I could dream about other people’s secrets — my mom’s in particular, although it took her 22 years to tell me the truth about why she was afraid of me and my nightmares. I don’t blame her.

What do you say to a kid who sees her grandfather die in a concentration camp in her dreams when you are pretending to be someone and something else?

Oy vey says the kid at the Anglican church staring lovingly at Jesus. Never mind, knowing when someone is lying to you all the time about something huge is a tad crazy making on top of it all. No safety possible when fear was everywhere.

The stories we tell are most powerful and I indeed had a very festive time growing up intuitive adapting myself to the story of my family and learning about my own albeit stranger version (I think the term dysfunctional is highly overrated) in an upwardly mobile academically minded family. They had plans for me to be a lawyer. The universe had way more interesting ideas for me.

By the time I was five, my father was wafting philosophically about numerous things, making my sister and me sit at his feet (because he said so!) so he could school us in Plato, Aristotle, Socrates, Atlantis and aliens. (My favorite part of that was watching one of my gerbils perch behind him and poop on his shoulder — c’mon I was five!) However, to this day one thing he kept repeating has become one of the most powerful concepts I have learned that has kept me sane. He said. “The only constant in life is change — remember this and you will always be on an adventure.”

Although the desire for certainty is a driving force in all of us (not just me!), knowing this is the greatest blessing.

We are all storytellers and always moving, changing, evolving, transforming and transcending. We are stories in motion, and long ago I discovered the way to track those stories about myself and other people. I found a tool that could help shape them and get clarity and guidance about the stories that make us, well, us!

For 30 years in this weird and wonderful profession as an intuitive and spiritual teacher, oracles have been my passion.

I discovered oracles in my teens and became an avid student of classical tarot, and dove into my father’s dusty antique book collections that described others from ancient cultures around the world like the Chinese I-Ching, Norse, and Celtic Runes, and other forms of divination — ways to communicate with the Otherness — the Universe that is conscious and alive. Oracles were the ultimate story tellers, mirrors of truth, navigational maps and communication devices.

I came to understand that they originated in the Goddess culture dating all the way back to the Paleolithic age, and all of their sacred use began well before the system of patriarchy and religious domination sought to silence and destroy them as viable methods of intimate divine dialog. There are legitimate reasons for the fear surrounding their use. We remember at a cellular level things like the Inquisition — the Holocaust of women. Yet, today, oracles and divination practices survive and are returning to us with great fervor!

I didn’t know back then it would be my calling, but looking back today, with my 8^th Oracle deck in print, the Mystical Shaman Oracle (co-authored with my Hay House colleague Alberto Villoldo) a bestseller that just landed on the selves recently, and 6 more under contract with my publisher Hay House, I see it with such obvious clarity.

Watch the trailer for the Mystical Shamam Oracle card deck

The numinous and the mystical have their own ways of guiding us, and now more than ever many of us are turning to alternative methods to connect to a practical spirituality that is direct and intimate. Oracle cards of many shapes and sizes are readily available these days. They are not all the same. Some are daily positive messages, affirmations, and others, like mine are true systems of divination.

What most people don’t know and I am committed to teaching about is the original use of oracles. Oracles used rightly are not meant to be predictive tools of the fortune teller, even though that’s often been the case. They are so much more.

They (Oracles) are also prescriptive tools to empower you to create your reality and track your intentions, not predict it as if your story in motion would stop at a destination one special day.

Here’s an example. My own personal experience with using oracles as a means to help me navigate my world and co-create it rather than predict it, hit home to me in my early 30s as both my parents died tragically back to back, after the demise of my father’s multi-million-dollar business. They died paupers — the thing my mom was most afraid of, happened. I had gotten clean and sober 5 years before, so I had a handle on my own experience, and was no longer self-medicating to avoid it. Watching them lose everything with such powerlessness was soul destroying for all of us. You can’t help but feel completely lost when it appears your world is disintegrating. Their friends avoided them like they had a contagious disease. So many hard lessons were learned over the course of a few painful years that seemed like they would never end.

What kept me on track was turning to my oracles to show me with clarity about where I was at and what my next action needed to be to stay grounded, sober, sane and continuing to grow.

Oracle cards specifically showed me what I couldn’t see. They helped me avoid making some serious missteps. When you are flailing around in the dark, and everything you’ve come to know as true for you is gone who has the flashlight? I got through it all not by looking to my oracles for predictions and hope for the future that had no substance as of yet. (Although that was true too, after all I made my living seeing things for others.)

It was the power of remaining in the 24 hours. The story I could weave into the world one day at a time could sustain me, and I could evolve out loud, make mistakes (human here!) but still find the truth in my world, when admittedly, in many respects I was in denial. They never lied. They told me the truth even when I didn’t like what they said. Choosing one card a day was enough to keep me centered, connected to my Higher Power and help me to radically accept where I was at. I could see I was a story in motion and not fixed in time or experience.

The issue for me after a while was the archaic language and ideas that matched the culture the oracle systems were made to serve. I wasn’t living in medieval times! So I became obsessed about making my own — hybrids of those venerated traditions that could be done in a more contemporary way for the modern seeker. Now, today my unique oracle decks are published in 27 languages and I have an online school, Oracle School, that trains students from all over the world how to use oracle cards as personal empowerment tools and a way to open their connection to the universe, to co-create their reality and so much more.

One thing is for certain. If you know how to accurately see how the story you tell yourself and others, whether consciously or not, impacts the way you create and experience your world, it opens up an entire new way of being. You are no longer at the mercy of Fate and now a conscious creator of Destiny.

where does a novice begin?

Choosing one card a day can make all the difference! We set up a way for people to come and choose a card (up to 3) on my website a few years ago — choosing from some of my oracle card decks. Over 3 million people have come, and more coming every day!

We all need guidance, and clarity and a reminder of the mystical side of life. You don’t need to be an expert to experience the astounding epiphanies oracle cards have to offer. You just need to be willing to open your mind, and automatically you will open your innate connection to a loving universe where anything becomes possible. If you are willing to try, the universe is willing to meet you, and you will find with oracle cards, it’s very chatty too! And, why not, have a divine dialog about your life? You are a story in motion and heading into a new adventure every day. In these topsy turvy times, why not get all the help we can get!

I, for one am ready to contribute to a new story — this one for us all with peace, purpose, creativity and way more laughter and love. So to help me stay on track today, I will pick a card. You?

You may also enjoy reading Millenneagram: A Badass Twist on an Ancient Tool of Self Discovery by Hannah Paasch

The post Stories in Motion: Oracles for the Modern Seeker appeared first on BEST SELF.

How one woman’s search for deeper meaning and connection reveals a key energetic ingredient that she calls CHARGE

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What makes us truly alive? Ever since I was a small child, I’ve been asking some form of that question.

What is it that makes people tick? Why do people do what they do? Why do we have good days and bad? Why do some succeed while others fail, even when they’re from the same family, with the same set of genes and socio-economic status?

I have also been a passionate seeker of aliveness in myself, courting it like a lover, embracing its fleeting moments until I could finally establish a long-term relationship. That took years of my own therapy, scores of workshops and trainings, a truckload of self-help books, and a persistent fascination with how the life force flows through us.

I didn’t find my answers in graduate school, even though I dutifully went through all my courses.  I didn’t find it in the self-help books, even though I’ve made my career reading and writing them. Nor did I find it searching for the meaning of life.

But when I truly felt alive ­— fully living through the sensate, intelligent miracle of my body — the meaning of life was obvious.

It was to fully engage with life itself, through our own bodies, here on this earth, in this glorious moment of now. This is as potent a spiritual experience as meditating on a cushion, (something I also do) yet infinitely more challenging.

As I look at humanity, in all its trials and tribulations, I see that our natural aliveness has been diminished. Living disconnected from our bodies, in work that is often meaningless, shut down from our emotions, with so many people in post-traumatic stress, I see a veiled search for that aliveness. Maybe it’s the ubiquity of coffee shops promising that jolt of energy, or the zooming rates of anxiety and depression, trying to manage that energy, or the violence and addiction that comes from the inability to control that energy, but it seems that everywhere, something is terribly wrong. What are we missing?

The gold of my own journey took place through finding my way back to my body.

Growing up in the 50’s, post World War II shell-shocked society of middle America, I suffered the usual slings and arrows of a dysfunctional childhood. Like everyone else around me, I went to school, and learned to curb my life force by sitting still at a desk for six hours a day, mastering small movements with a pencil. And like everyone around me, I had to shut down. But even more, I was oblivious to the fact that I was shut down. It just seemed normal. Finding my way back to my body changed all that.

Wanting to make a difference for others, I became a bodyworker, then a somatic psychotherapist, then a yoga teacher, workshop leader and writer of many books on chakras, energy, yoga, and social change. I’ve traveled the world and taught in dozens of cultures on most every continent on the planet.

Through all of my work I’ve seen a pervasive thread that ties everything together. It is perhaps the unifying force that physicists search for, the quintessential ingredient within spiritual experience, the bedrock of emotion, the energy of love made manifest.  Everyone has it, yet we are all searching for it. It is both elusive and obvious, subtle and potent, practical yet profound.

I call this energy CHARGE, my word for the life force that runs through each one of us.

I think of it as an acronym for Consciousness Having a Really Genuine Experience.

When we have a charge about something, we know it.

Whether it’s anger or excitement, pleasure or fear, this energy sharpens awareness, tingles our senses, and animates our body. It is then shaped by our psyche, and either expressed through our words and actions or blocked and stored in our tissues.

The more I examined this mysterious essence, the more it appeared to be what people were seeking, but no one was naming it.  We want mental health, but that only describes half the problem. We want physical health as well, and that describes the other half. But how do we put these two realms together?

Just as the hardware and software in your computer can only operate when you send electricity through the system, your mind and body are connected through the energy that flows through you.

In your computer, the programming that’s found in the software basically tells that energy where to go in the hardware and where not to go. It says pick up the letter Q or the color red, or arrange your electrons to browse this website. This creates your experience.

In the same way, the programming in your mind tells your life force where to go or not go in your body. It may say things like:

“Sit up straight, people are looking at you.”

“Don’t open your heart, it’s not safe,”

“Hold back your emotions, or you’ll look weak,”

“Don’t open your mouth, you’ll say something stupid.”

“Smile!  You’re supposed to be nice.”

And then that programming shuts down the natural flow of your charge, and locks it up in various parts of your body, your emotions, or your behaviors and habits. And there it remains, locked up and inaccessible. I call that “binding the charge.” It is tied up in knots, like a brown paper package.

The result? Bodies that hurt or put on weight; minds that can’t focus, emotions that are either too numb or leak out too strongly, and epidemic levels of anxiety and depression.

All of this can be addressed by skillfully freeing the charge from its bound up state, sending it through the muscles and tissues of the body, and allowing it to illuminate the mind with insight and awareness.

Throughout my life I’ve helped people find their way back to their bodies and reclaim their power. I’ve helped them activate their chakras, energy centers in the body that receive, assimilate, store, and transmit charge. Each of the chakras handles charge in a different way, from the fight or flight of the first chakra, to the realization and awakening of the crown.

What I’ve found is that charge needs to be balanced for us to feel healthy and productive. We naturally charge and discharge through our day, from the simple act of inhaling and exhaling 20 times a minute, to the rhythms of eating, resting, working and playing. But some people find themselves using dysfunctional ways to balance their charge, such as raging at their kids or spouse or working to exhaustion, while others use drugs or television to stay numb and keep their charge locked up. Some people have too much and are unable to settle or be still, while others barely have enough to get out of bed in the morning.

Once you understand the concept of charge and how it works, it becomes as plain as the nose on your face. You will marvel that you didn’t see it before. Learning about charge is the place to start. Say hello to that life force when it comes barreling through you. Make friends with it.  Learning ways to consciously charge and discharge helps you stay in balance. But learning to harvest that charge into your tissues is where the real aliveness takes place.  And that is its own reward.

You may also enjoy reading Boundaries, Boundaries, and More Boundaries: The Key To Managing Energy Vampires by Christiane Northrup, M.D.

The post Taking Charge: The Key To Our Aliveness appeared first on BEST SELF.

Redefining true masculine power opens the floodgates to healing men and society as a whole

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When the floodgate of sexual harassment and rape allegations against powerful men in media and politics opened this past Fall 2017, it sparked a long overdue national conversation about male sexual misconduct. With the #MeToo movement now maturing, it’s also time to discuss how men can move beyond cultural notions of manliness, and heal and awaken to true masculine power.

Being truly a man is not such a simple matter. It is not so much a successful meeting of cultural standards and expectations as it is an integrity-generating, compassion-deepening outgrowing of them, an open-eyed, fully embodied passage through the very patterns and expectations that underlie and generate each culture’s — and subculture’s — notions of manliness. Far too often, manhood gets reduced to obedience to a group ethic, in order to be “one of the boys” (an unwittingly telling phrase). Such initiations, whatever their defining rituals, can dumb men so far down that it looks like up to them, especially when their behavior snares the rest of the group’s approval. When sex is reduced to a display of power or a sign that one is indeed a man, all involved are impoverished, and whatever underlies such “prowess” is left unexamined.

All the pressure and shame of trying to be a certain kind of man, all the anxiety and tension that can go with that, often can be briefly but potently eased very quickly through sex. And so too can the sense of not having much power, or of not being very important. So whatever feeds men’s sexual appetite, whatever amplifies it, whatever keeps it front and central, can easily take on an exaggerated emphasis, as is so lavishly illustrated by our culture’s sexual obsession. How easy it is to burden sex with the obligation to make us feel better or more secure or more manly!

Historical View of Rape

One of the biggest problems with rape is that throughout human history it has been sanctioned and tolerated in a variety of contexts, with such an okaying influencing contemporary takes on rape, numbing many to the bare reality of it. The echo of this okaying, this legitimizing of or noninterference with sexual violence, may be faint but it persists.

Consider, for starters, the reputed practice of jus primae noctis (Latin for “right of the first night”) by which a member of the nobility could take a woman on her wedding night and bed her, no matter how opposed she was to this, while the groom could do nothing to stop this. (The earliest mention of this practice is found in the epic of Gilgamesh.) Though there is some debate about whether this practice (also known as droit du seigneur, meaning “right of the lord”) was actually exercised, kings and feudal nobles certainly had the power to enforce it, and not just on wedding nights, given that the men beneath them were little more than indentured servants, whose property — including their wives — could be taken from them at almost any time.

Also consider that, up until not so long ago, a married man had the right to have sex when he wanted it from his wife, no matter how opposed she was to this; marital rape was not called rape for a very long time, regardless of its severity. And consider wartime rape, which has a history as long as that of war itself, and still happens to this day, getting headlines but little countering action. In war, the raping of enemy women has been viewed — and often still is — as a male right.

It’s estimated that almost one in five women (and just under 2 percent of men) in the US have been raped or otherwise sexually assaulted.

Fewer than half the victims report this, and only 3 percent of the perpetrators are convicted. In more than half of the US states, rapists who have impregnated their victims can sue for custody and visitation rights. In the US, 15 percent of sexual assault and rape victims are under the age twelve. These are appalling numbers, and need more than just a skimming over.

Rape as a man’s right: this sentiment still finds some degree of legitimacy not only in the context of spoils of war, but also in those men for whom the sexualized overpowering of another is a turn-on, especially when they’re able to dehumanize that other, reducing her — or him — to little more than a prop (or mere property) in their sexual fantasies and actions. The not uncommon hesitation of many men in positions of considerable power to take really strong stands regarding rape only contributes to the viewing of rape as something bad, but not that bad.

When a man feels overpowered by a woman (in the sense that her mere presence strongly arouses him), he may not feel good about this if she shows no sexual interest in him, perhaps not even noticing him. If he’s (1) sufficiently bothered by her “ability” to so easily turn him on, and (2) makes her responsible for his arousal, “bringing out the beast in him” as she has done (however unknowingly), he may fantasize about “pouncing on her” (after all, what else is a beast to do?), thereby entering, however passively, into the retributive logic and eroticized violence that’s central to rape. He may never act this out with a flesh-and-blood woman, perhaps limiting himself to using pornography in which women are “punished” or “put in their place” — hurt and debased — for their sexual allure. But in this he is, unwittingly or not, contextually aligned with rape, tending to relate to a woman’s body as a site of conquest, a place to “prove” himself.

The Issue of Consent

The lack of consent central to rape doesn’t have to be overtly expressed to be real. The absence of any apparent opposition does not necessarily mean consent. That is, being unable to say no doesn’t necessarily mean saying yes. And even saying yes doesn’t always mean yes; many only say yes because they fear the consequences of saying no, a fear that may date back to their early years, when any sign of noncompliance was met with aggression, censure, crippling shame, or a withdrawal of love.

Part of the problem here is that the whole notion of consent usually gets only a superficial look, featuring an unquestioning acceptance of another’s yes, as if that yes were undoubtedly an adult yes uninfluenced by one’s past, a yes that, of course, should be taken literally. The myth of consenting adults is prevalent in contemporary culture, all too often taken at face value, as if those engaged in such a “contract” were doing so as real adults. However, the very consent given may be coming not from a grown-up place in us, but from a place of unresolved woundedness so that we may be speaking more as adulterated children than as actual adults.

This means that we need to know not only where we’re coming from when we agree to something but also where the other is coming from when he or she makes such an agreement. Implicit in this is some degree of self-knowledge in both parties, along with an obvious transparency. Furthermore, being clear about where we’re coming from includes being out-front about our motivations, including that of wanting the other to say yes — and perhaps wanting to go ahead even if that yes feels partial, reluctant, or artificial to us. If we’re being run by our sexual appetite, our caring about possibly disrespecting the other’s actual boundaries will matter little to us; after all, they’ve said yes, so why not proceed?

Rape is a crossing of another’s sexual boundaries without their permission — or with their coerced permission. It is an eroticized trespassing and violation of their being. Its tools are various combinations of physical force, threat, coercion, abuse of authority, manipulation, and a capacity to shut off empathy and override conscience. Rape features aggression and lust in a darkly compelling embrace, being allowed to possess and run one, in contexts ranging from the mundane to the evil.

The Journey to Healing

To begin to heal is to see what’s fragmented in you, compartmentalized, pushed away, or kept in the shadows — and to approach it not with missionary zeal or quick-fix ambitions, but with patience and compassion.

Healing doesn’t necessarily mean curing. It’s not a matter of getting rid of your endarkened or less-than-healthy qualities — as if excising a tumor — but of openly facing, exploring, and making as wise as possible use of them. This is the essence of self-acceptance. Nothing gets left out. Everything has its place. The deeper your healing, the more you become whole, and the more capable of relating skillfully to everything that you are.

True masculine power happens when courage, integrity, vulnerability, compassion, awareness, and the capacity to take strong action are all functioning together. Such power is potent but not aggressive, challenging but not shaming, grounded but not rigid, forceful but not pushy. It requires head, heart, and guts in full-blooded alignment.

You may also enjoy Interview: Lewis Howes | Redefining Masculinity with Kristen Noel

The post To Be a Man: Fully Facing Rape and Awakening to True Masculine Power appeared first on BEST SELF.

A woman’s journey through intuitive writing connects us all to a process for healing the pain of the past

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On Christmas Eve I pressed send on a 65,000-word memoir, Love in a Nightmare, detailing the wounds of my childhood. It was attached to an email to my family. The process of writing the narrative for the painful stories of my childhood was the Feng Shui I needed to create space for the healing, and the real book I wanted to share with the world to come through.

I found my best self in the middle of the page when the words I was writing not only began to heal me, but helped me recognize that they could help others. A process I call intuitive writing changed and enhanced my connection to my intuition, inner healer and warrior goddess. Writing authentic words from this connected place began creating the ripple effect I’d dreamed of.

We’d be forced to go with him every other weekend. He’d find it amusing to drive my sister and I around at night in his two-seater sports car with her sitting on the middle console. Highway 1 was curvy, on the edge of the cliffs of the Headlands. He’d turn the headlights off with a joint in his hand, and the windows rolled up. I guess I was lucky I didn’t fit on the console. This was before the days of the seatbelt law.

There was a time I’d refuse to share these stories about my dad, afraid I’d offend, disappoint or upset my family. But it was my truth.

Author Anne Lamott reminds us, “Own everything that happened to you. Tell your stories. If they wanted you to write warmly about them, they should have behaved better.” I’ve read that quote a thousand times, shaking as I published my stories. I’ve decided my own healing is more important than pleasing people, but that certainly doesn’t make it any easier.

During my process I learned to write from an embodied, aware, authentic and unapologetic place inside of me. The awareness I was using to write from was becoming the magic I needed to tell stories that felt like they were not only healing me, but by virtue of bravely stepping forward to share the tough stuff, potentially healing others too. I found by staying connected to my feeling senses the writing came through me, instead of feeling forced by me. It felt more channeled than contrived.

Here are 5 things I carried throughout my life in the name of prioritizing the needs and opinions of others; things that kept me quiet, ashamed and afraid. They weren’t easy to write down, but doing so freed me from their vice grip on my heart. They are untruths, but they felt very real to me at one time.

1. My opinions don’t matter
2. I have to be perfect to be loved by a man
3. I have to achieve more to be enough in this world
4. Being good enough means you do what you’re told, always
5. I’m unlovable and unworthy

At the end of the day, when we protect everyone else before we protect ourselves, no one benefits. By writing, I was able to peel the layers of pain off my heart, contemplate them with awareness, let go of past wounds, and begin to tell a new story. With the awareness the writing gave me, I had a choice: forgiveness, compassion and love — or stay stuck in resentment, shame and fear. And once I was aware, there really was no going back to being stuck.

I’ve been combining my skills, knowledge and experience in my career as a holistic physical therapist with therapeutic writing to develop a process that feels like my life’s purpose.

Intuitive writing has continued to prove its merits as a healing modality over and over again.

Telling our stories is healing for both us, and for the reader. When someone hears themselves in our story and gets to say, “Me too,” we help them feel connected, hopeful, inspired and sometimes we change lives.

This was the case with my friend Shirley, who found one of my blogs online at the exact right moment. After reading it she reached out to me on Facebook asking for help. As a mother of five, she had recently quit her job to stay home with her kids. She soon found herself becoming more and more depressed, and I would only later find out, had even contemplated suicide.

After chatting with Shirley and sending her some links to read, I promised her I’d gather some more resources and told her to “Hang in there.” No words really seemed appropriate at the time, but words were my thing and I was determined to help her. I ended up writing a blog about self-care for Shirley and asked my readers to chime in with support in the comments. They didn’t disappoint. After reading that blog and those comments, Shirley started feeling like somebody cared. And she started reaching out for more help.

Fast forward to this past year when Shirley published her first two blogs: one about the real and raw story of her depression, and the next a call to other mothers needing help. I swear, if that’s the only thing I ever do with my writing, it’ll be enough. I felt the extremely powerful ripple.

Intuitive writing is the way we touch hearts, a direct line to the soul, and a new paradigm in communication. Rather than over-thinking and creating from a place of rules and obligation, intuitive writing gives us permission to express our full-on, authentic, best self on the page, which is the way to attract those who need it the most to the messages they most need to hear.

Here are 4 important steps for writing intuitive words that heal:

1. Know what you desire

This may seem obvious, but you might be surprised when faced with the question, “What do you really want?” many women just don’t know. They’ve been care-taking for so long, they’ve lost themselves. They’ve spent a lifetime prioritizing everyone but themselves and find themselves unable to answer that question. Knowing what you truly desire will require getting still, carving out some time for self-care, and protecting that time in your calendar. Everything’s going to start with these sacred trail-markers — your desires. Get crystal clear about them.

2. Practice body awareness

To be able to follow the trail of your desires will require a fierce and regular awareness practice. Getting in touch with how you feel, and giving yourself permission to feel everything is the beginning. Your body is the gateway to your intuition, to clarity, to creative flow and to the essence of your soul. You’ll need to get good at feeling to heal, and to write words that come from your unlimited source.

3. Be brave, every day

This particular journey is not for the faint of heart. Not everyone is cut out to help heal the world, but if you’re one of those that hear that call, then you’ll need to start reframing things like doubt and fear. Using fear as a compass to point you in the direction of your desires is a start. You’ll have to get used to feeling a little uncomfortable and get more excited when fear pays a visit. Having more fun with my fear has been a game-changer and allows me to write the things that matter the most, which end up helping more people.

4. Make doing what scares you a habit

Taking action is the final step to writing the thing that will heal the world. Being able to write (and share) the thing you’re afraid to write about is going to be one of the most liberating things you’ve ever done. And maybe, like me, you’ll find that for the one person you repel with your words, ten more flock to you and your brave, honest, wild and crazy, fiercely alive whole self. Take daily action based on what aligns with those desires of yours and watch as the magic starts to happen and you’re suddenly living the life you crave.

Through my own writing and healing I’ve discovered myself and a deep purpose and passion — to be a Sherpa for others on their journey. Imagine the world when more of us take this journey to our souls and begin to write, speak and act in more aware, connected, aligned, and purpose-driven ways. This work changes the world… and it can start with you and me, one word at a time.

You may also enjoy reading The Book of Your Life: The Transformative Power of Prose by Kelly Notaras

The post The Ripple: How Intuitive Writing Can Change the World, One Word at a Time appeared first on BEST SELF.

Downsizing to a tiny house brings consciousness to how de-cluttering your life in all aspects creates space for healing, expansion and new paradigms

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When I tell people I sold a 2,000-square-foot, three-bedroom, two-bathroom house (as well as almost all of its contents) to live in a 240-square-foot house, they’re usually dumbfounded. Why on earth would I let go of a lovely home in a beautiful, coveted, seaside community to live in a tiny house on wheels?

The answer is because I long for freedom, travel, and adventure. The responsibilities and time commitments that come with owning and maintaining a traditional home, its contents, and the property on which it resides, are counterintuitive to my life’s vision. As lovely as all that sounds, it’s been quite a journey to get here.

One day, my wife Melissa and I were talking about the challenges of ‘adulting’: mortgage payments, house maintenance, yard work. “Do you ever think about cashing it all in?” I asked, somewhat rhetorically. “You mean sell the house?” Melissa asked. I was taken aback because I was just mumbling some frustration. “I guess, sure. That’s one idea,” I said. “We could totally do it,” she said. “Sell the house. Sell all the stuff in it. Maybe even move to a different country.” Clearly, Melissa had given this some thought.  We daydreamed a bit more and then went about our night. A couple days later, she brought it up again. “You know, we could move to Belize. They speak English and use the U.S. dollar so it would be an easy transition.” OK, she really had thought about this!

And so began our exploration of a dramatic lifestyle change, which, by the way, would not include living in Belize — this fair-skinned, Irish girl can’t handle that kind of heat year-round.

I’ve never been much of a pack rat, but getting rid of that many belongings has its challenges.

Where do we begin? Should we save anything in case we decide tiny house living isn’t for us later on? When should we put our current house on the market? We decided the best way to approach this massive change was to work from big to small. We started with the house and determined what, if any, work needed to be done before we could list it for sale. A little paint here, a new walkway and stairs there, and we’d be good to go.

As Melissa coordinated the house projects, I moved to the next step: selling furniture and other large items. Enter online yard sale groups. Where we lived, these were a gold mine filled with extremely active members excited for good deals. Stuff went flying out of our house – dining room set, ottomans, couches, bar stools, desk, nightstand, patio furniture — you name it, we had it. Logistically, things were going along smoothly. We were caught up in the excitement of simplifying, making money off our things, and meeting lots of great people who were excited to get such great deals on some beautiful pieces.

Then someone bought the coffee table.

The void it left in our family room was shocking. I mean the physical void. The center of the room looked so empty. Barren. This is when the reality hit me. I had no emotional attachment to the piece. In fact, we had gotten it from friends of ours whom we had a nasty falling out with, so I was glad to see it go. But this was the first big item that a buyer picked up and took away. My gut felt as empty as the room.

As we got rid of physical clutter, the mental clutter built up.

Doubts arose. Are we doing the right thing? What are we thinking? Will we regret this decision? Why would we get rid of these beautiful pieces of furniture? Isn’t this what “success” is? We’re supposed to own a home filled with nice things. That’s when you know you’ve made it, right?

Designing a new template for life is scary when you’re taught there’s only one: go to school, get a degree, get married, buy a house, have children. We had already challenged the status quo when we got married (we’re one of the first legally-married same-sex couples in the United States) and by choosing to not have children. Now we’re selling our house with plans to travel the country with our little home in tow.

In my 15+-year career working with clients to help them fulfill their unique vision for their life, I am used to helping them clear the clutter and blocks that stand in their way. It’s a whole different ballgame when it’s me. But like I tell my clients, when resistance or fear comes up, sit with it and give it space to be heard so it can become your creative partner — your ride or die. And few things bring up resistance more than clearing clutter.

When doubts came up, I would look for signs to keep going.

And a big one came in one of those online yard sale sites. Someone posted asking if anyone from our town was planning on putting their house on the market soon. She listed what her family was looking for and their budget, which was way above our home’s value. I debated contacting her, but then thought, why not?

I teach the importance of putting action behind your intention, so I messaged her and told her we were in the process of finalizing projects to then sell our property. I listed each room and the respective dimensions and sent over some pictures. I didn’t think for a second that she’d be interested because her family was so large, as was her budget, but I knew just by reaching out to her I was putting energy in the right direction. She wrote back right away telling me she loved what she saw. Two weeks later, she and her family came to see the house, and within a week we had an accepted offer for much more than any real estate agent suggested we list it for. We closed the following month. Thanks, universe!

A crazy story, for sure. But I attribute the serendipity to our commitment to our dream, and, primarily, to our downsizing that showed we meant business. That’s just one of the powerful results of clearing clutter and removing items, thoughts, or even people, from your life that you no longer love, need, or use. By letting go of the old, you make room for the new. You stir up stale energy and breathe in new life. You invite in opportunities.

If clutter was just stuff, it would be easy to get rid of it. But it’s not.

The clutter in your life — whether physical, emotional, digital, or mental — is there to alert you to what’s working in your life and what’s not.

It’s like a temper tantrum of the soul and it’s time to pay attention to what it’s trying to say. If you reframe it this way, sorting clutter becomes a cool treasure hunt. You’ll begin to see it as a powerful tool for transformation — a catalyst for positive change.

I define clutter as anything that gets in the way of living the life of your dreams. This can be an outdated wardrobe that’s overtaken your closet. It can be piles of paperwork that need your attention or that you don’t know what to do with. It can also be your nagging inner critic, toxic relationships, debt, or extra body weight. Those friends who drain your energy? Clutter. Your belief that if you can’t do it perfectly then you shouldn’t do it at all? Clutter.

Stubborn clutter is almost always indicative of a non-clutter issue. All of this stuff is siphoning your energy little by little, leaving you with nothing left to put toward your goals. So why do you allow these things to stay in your life? That’s the big question, and that’s precisely how you can understand the role clutter plays in your life.

To begin to uncover your message in the mess, start with the physical clutter hotspot that bothers you the most.  As you do this, pay attention to any mental chatter that comes up as it is in there that the wisdom can be found.

Here are five powerful steps to help you get started:

1. Set realistic expectations.

Instead of waiting until you have a free day to clean out your bedroom, find a small window of time to go through one dresser drawer. Your resistance will always win if you expect yourself to do a large project all at once. With all or nothing thinking, nothing always wins.

2. Use a focusing tool to keep your eye on the prize.

My favorite is the Pomodoro Technique®. It’s a fancy-sounding strategy that is actually quite simple: First, eliminate any distractions. Shut down your email. Silence your phone. Let your family know you’re busy. Then sit down to the task at hand and set a timer for 25 minutes. Begin your sorting and stay the course for the full 25 minutes. When you find yourself distracted (and you will), come back and remind yourself that a break is coming as soon as the timer goes off.

3. Have a journal or notebook handy.

Often, the first clutter you need to clear is your monkey mind. Your resistance will chime up and tell you all the reasons you should be doing something else. Jot this noise down. Get it up and out of your body. This might be how you spend the first 10 minutes of your Pomodoro round, or it might end up being the whole round. It’s all good. You’re still clearing clutter.

4. Sort into three piles.

When you begin going through items, don’t get caught up on finding homes for things. Just sort. Put items in one of three piles: Keep, Maybe, Donate. By using just these piles, your sort will go much more quickly and you’ll soon experience the satisfaction of progress. With clutter, the success is in the action, not the outcome, so starting in this way fuels your fire to keep going.

5. Get rid of the “Donate” pile ASAP.

After your sorting (whether just one round or more), send your donation pile off as soon as possible. Put it in your car to drop off somewhere, schedule a pickup, or ask someone who might be interested in the items to come get them by a certain day.

Using this approach makes things more manageable, gets your resistance on board, and ups your chances of getting it done. And by just getting started, you will feel the powerful effects that you may think can only be found at the finish line.

Maybe a challenging task ends up being easier to complete.

Perhaps that job offer finally comes.

Maybe you meet an intriguing new love interest.

Yes, all of this can really happen when you clear things that no longer add value to your life because you open the channels for all sorts of gifts and opportunities to come your way. Take it step by step, and you’ll be surprised how quickly your progress snowballs. You needn’t sell all your belongings and build a tiny house to feel the powerful effects of downsizing. Start with that one drawer and you’ll feel the energetic shift almost immediately.

Happy clearing!

You may also enjoy reading Going With The Flow: Using Feng Shui To Create Movement in Your Life by Patricia Lohan

The post The Art of De-Cluttering: A Tiny House Creates A Surprising Catalyst for Expansion appeared first on BEST SELF.

A rabbi’s story of the redemptive power of pain — how suffering can provide a window of transformation

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There is a crack in everything.

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

Every one of us sooner or later walks through hell. The hell of being hurt or the hell of hurting another. The hell of cancer, the hell of a reluctant shovelful of earth upon the casket of someone we deeply loved. The hell of divorce, of a kid in trouble, of Alzheimer’s, of addiction, of stress, of aging — of knowing that this year, like any year, may be our last. We all walk through hell.

The point is to not come out empty-handed; the point is to make your life worthy of your suffering. To be human is to suffer, and there is profound power in the suffering we endure if we transform it into a more authentic, meaningful life. Pain is a great teacher, but the lessons do not come easily.

Whenever I’m tempted to dismiss pain as merely a step toward enlightenment, I think about a friend of mine who had cancer three times and said to me from his hospital bed before he died, “This much character I don’t need!” I do not intend to glorify suffering or suggest that the lessons we learn from pain are somehow worth the cost. But the truth is that most often, for most people, real change is the result of real pain.

As the senior rabbi of one of the world’s largest synagogues, I have witnessed a lot of pain.

It’s my phone that rings when people’s bodies or lives fall apart. The couch in my office is often drenched with tears, and there are days when an entire box of tissues is gone by late afternoon. I have tried to help thousands of people face their emotional and physical pain, and after 27 years of listening, comforting, showing up, and holding them, I thought I knew a great deal about suffering. The truth is that it wasn’t until my own pain brought me to my knees that I could really understand the suffering of those who came to me wounded and afraid.

A few months after a frightening car accident from which I thought I had emerged physically unharmed, I was pulling into the garage at home when a herniated disc touched and burned a nerve in my spine. The pain was paralyzing; I could not step out of the car. The doctor said to call the paramedics. Instead of dialing 911, I used my upper body to drag my lower body inch-by-inch, writhing and screaming, across the oil-stained garage into my house, where I curled up and wept on the floor, fetal and begging for morphine. Through the seductive opioids, the surgery, more and more and more drugs, the exhaustion, the withdrawal, the depression, the fear, the bitterness of Why me? Why now? and the healing that followed, I learned a good deal more about pain, both physical and emotional, than a lifetime of witnessing others’ pain had taught me.

At first, I did not take my pain seriously. I took painkillers, tried to hide the fact that I wasn’t sleeping much, kept up my brutal pace at work, and grimaced whenever I stood up. After the surgery, a woman who was a Temple trustee at the time called me and said, “You broke your back for the synagogue.” Her words shot through me. She was wrong from a medical standpoint, but she was right spiritually. I was ground down by years of carrying the suffering of others, as well as the begging, pleasing, encouraging, and cheerleading that fundraising required when others refused to believe.

So what did I do just 10 days after spinal surgery? I allowed a doctor to shoot me up so that I could walk back out onto the stage and play my part.

It was the High Holy Days — the 10 holiest days of the entire year for Jews — the Super Bowl for rabbis, especially in my case and especially that year.

We had just finished a two-year renovation of our historic 1,800-seat sanctuary, a magnificent place of prayer created in 1929 by movie moguls Louis B. Mayer, the Warner brothers, Carl Laemmle, and other famous Hollywood luminaries. The congregation had spent the two years of the 200 million dollar renovation in temporary worship space, but this year we were coming home to a stunning, inspiring place of prayer: Its 140-foot golden, green and tan dome speckled with colors diffused through enormous blue and crimson stained-glass windows and bathed in soft light from above by 30-foot brass chandeliers, dangling from the dome like earrings on a queen.

I didn’t really want to acknowledge it, but all that fundraising, along with running such a large congregation with a staff of hundreds and 7,000 members left me depleted. I was spent and confused. “You’ve got six hours,” the head of the hospital’s spinal team told me as he jabbed the needle in. “After that, you won’t be able to stand.”

My wife was the only person to tell me I was wrong to be on the pulpit that night as the project I had worked so hard to make real was finally unveiled. She was the only one worried more about me than about the congregation’s expectations of me. Even I was not worried about me. If the pain was a relentless teacher, the student was a relentless denier.

I made it through the evening, but afterward I continued to suffer terribly for months, trapped in my old ways — always there for everyone, always punching above my weight, the hardest, the longest, and the fastest. I knew no other way.  And then there were the drugs. I spiraled, like millions of others, into the lethargy and depression of steroids and opioids. The pain was dulled, but the pain was still in charge.

The Canadian philosopher Marshall McLuhan often repeated the aphorism: “We don’t know who discovered water, but it wasn’t the fish.”

What he meant was that we are so close to our own lives, so immersed in our own reality, that we actually have the least perspective on it. Only when it’s hooked, thrashing in a net, gills gasping, and flailing for breath, only then does a fish discover water. So it is with humans. Only when pain suddenly jerks us out of our otherwise ordinary life do we discover something powerful and true about ourselves.

I have seen this up close thousands of times in hospital rooms, cemeteries, criminal courts, homes, and my office as others sat upon what I call my couch of tears, weeping from deep within. Through sickness we discover the blessing of health, through loss we discover the true depths of love, through foolishness we know maturity and wisdom. Pain shocks us and propels us from where we thought we were — who we thought we were — to something far more real and true.

When pain visited me, I knew intellectually that I was not making history. I was not the first middle-aged man to herniate a disc. But pain is not a matter of intellect — it is a matter of the spirit and a matter of the soul.  It took years for me to appreciate pain’s victory.  Now I am grateful for my defeat. It forced me to change my stubborn ways. It forced me to make peace with age, flesh, bone, decline, limitation, and the simple fact that we are all merely human. We can only do so much, then we have to let go.

My pain forced me to stop many things. One of the first and most seemingly insignificant, but symbolically powerful things I had to stop was my war with weeds. Yes . . . weeds.  Ever since buying our current home 11 years earlier, I’d been obsessed with getting rid of the weeds on the large, very steep hill behind it. I wanted nothing but a blanket of perfect, dark-green ivy when I looked out my back windows. I tried sprays, potions, axes, shovels, a chainsaw, machetes, pitchforks, trimmers, loppers — you name it. For a decade, every few days I was up on that hill slipping, falling, cursing bent over and at war with those weeds while my wife, Betsy, shook her head and futilely uttered a simple truth repeated by wives to their husbands for 5,000 years: “You know we could hire someone to do that.”

About a month after my spinal surgery, I emerged from the narcotic and steroidal haze just enough to walk the few steps to the back patio and lie on a lounge chair. That’s when I saw  hundreds of tall, gangly weeds sprouting on the back hill. It was an insult to my infirmity, but I could do nothing to combat this aggressive new crop of nature’s unceasing will. Then I noticed something else: a group of tiny yellow birds perched atop those once-hated weeds. For weeks their singing kept me company each afternoon as I tried to heal in the warm sun. The weeds I had beaten back for years now attracted those delicate, little yellow birds.

Pain cracks us open. It breaks us. But in the breaking, there is a new kind of wholeness that emerges.

From my brokenness, a new, beautiful mantra emerged: weeds bring yellow birds.

My book, More Beautiful Than Before; How Suffering Transforms Us, is a book about real pain in its many forms and the lessons it comes to teach us. It describes a journey through pain in three stages: surviving, healing, and growing. It is an exploration of pain’s fierce, liberating, sorrowful, comforting, ugly, beautiful deep truths. The truths I learned are that when we must endure, we can endure; that we can be good even when we cannot be happy; and that the sun rises no matter how dark the night. The ancient parables and scientific insights I share from my journeys walking hand-in-hand with so many others, will, I hope, help move people from pain to wisdom.

They say every preacher has one sermon, one truth that he delivers 100 different ways. Mine is to inspire in us all a life worthy of our suffering: a life gentler, wiser, and more beautiful than before.

You may also enjoy reading Gratitude: The Gateway To Transformation by Bobbie C. Thompson

The post More Beautiful Than Before: How Suffering Transforms Us appeared first on BEST SELF.

A 37-year old mother’s raw account of her battle with stage 4 breast cancer — squeezing the joy from amidst her struggle

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What is it like to have cancer? Hmm, the best way to describe it is your life gets flash-forwarded, flipped, turned upside down and then in the quiet and stillness of a moment a third eye is opened — to see what is important. You’ve joined the club you never wanted to join. Your world is literally rocked, halted and life swirls around you. Certain moments stop and stand still, some come and go in a flash, thankfully, then there are others that leave you wondering, Why me?

I’ve been on this cancer journey since December of 2015. I was diagnosed with stage 4 breast cancer at the fresh age of 36.

How could I be sick? How could I be stage 4? I grew up organic, I never smoked, I exercised often, it doesn’t run in my family. Is it the environment? Is it from a virus? Was it from the processed food I did eat? They say everyone has the gene and that it has been found in cavemen. The first instinct is to ask, Why? We all know if we find the why we find the cure. Once I accepted the fact that I’ll never know why or how I got sick, then I was on the road to healing.

There were many stages of healing that I had to go through. This is my story and experience; I have realized from talking with many cancer patients that each journey is unique. No two cancers are the same, just like no two lives are the same. I share my journey with you in light that you may understand the challenges, heartache and yes, the beauty that does come with this.

I am a wife of 17 years, mother of four. One boy, 16, and 3 girls, 13, 12, and 7. I honestly feel like this journey is the toughest on the ‘co-survivors’, as they call them — the spouses. My husband. He has picked up the pieces, roles of both parents, and watched the love of his life suffer as well as deal with the drama that’s thrown at us. He has done a great job doing the best he can to make it work. Has he wanted to throw in the towel, and have we had heated arguments? Of course. We are married aren’t we?!

We both strive to not let cancer rob us of our love for each other or our children of their childhood.

Our biggest fear is not only that they will get cancer, but that they will not be able to enjoy their childhood by being overcome with worry. As you can tell, I love and worry about them all. My heart is broken with this diagnosis. I can choose to be a victim of cancer or to rise up and live with cancer. I choose Hope. I choose to make it great. Do I have my hard moments? Of course, I’m human. I cry, let it out, then I look forward at what I can do right now.

Now is what I have — it is all any of us have, really.

I have been on 5 different cocktails of chemo. Been close to remission, only to have the cancer mutate and then to switch to another Chemo Cocktail. The difficult part is hearing that I ran out of options for targeted chemo, and learning that I’m running out of treatment options altogether.

Currently I am on a clinical trial, with hope that this immunoconjugate will work. I had to temporarily move away from my family for 10 weeks to do this. A different city, a different state, I had to let go of parenting for a short bit to heal, with hope that I’ll be around for a long time.  Many people say, “you’re the strongest person I know.”

Truth is, you never know how strong you are until being strong is all you have.

I refuse to give up. There is so much life to fight for. I am sad, but if I let that consume me, cancer wins. I am angry that a mother, wife, sister, friend has to go through this, but if I let that consume me, cancer wins. I can easily curl up into a ball and give up, but as much as you all love living your life, I do too.  And I won’t go down without a fight. I’m not letting cancer win if I have anything so say in all of this.

I have dreams of getting my life back. Through this journey I have learned to master making lemonade out of lemons. Adversity is never ending even when in the eye of the storm. We’ve had to deal with our own family causing heartache due to selfish intentions. Being told it’s too hard to look at so they don’t come around. Hearing that I’m not the same — the fact is that I am not the same person that I was; I’ve had to seek out options for treatment, alternative forms of diet, medicine, learn while being ill…all this while in the biggest storm life has dealt us. In the end you trust that they didn’t realize how much they have hurt you or they wouldn’t have done what they did. You learn to let a lot go and appreciate the little things.

It is the little things that have become the big things. Taking 10 minutes to tuck each child into bed turns into 20, or until they tell you they’re tired and ready to go to bed. It’s listening more and talking less. It’s giving extra hugs and kisses, it’s embracing family dinners. It’s taking the extra time to tell someone you care and how much they mean to you. It’s writing letters to each child for all of their milestones in case you are gone — so they have something to hold onto to remind them of your love.

You see, I may know my fate, how my story will end. I have been given my death sentence, and I have chosen to make what life I have left — great. Through this emotional rollercoaster, heartache, disappointments, you realize so many different things. Surprisingly, there is beauty through it all. Don’t get me wrong, there is NO beauty in cancer. It’s an ugly beast. The beauty is the way God comforts us. God knows our hearts and our needs. He has never left my side. He may be shaking his head at me when I’ve gone on a tizzy about how people should treat people. Then I acknowledge that they just don’t understand how hard this is. They are misunderstanding my words and intentions, as well as theirs…which can easily be done. You have to take yourself out of the equation, be still, hold a cancer patient’s hand to truly feel what they are feeling.

Don’t ask them how they are, it diminishes us as a person.

I refuse to let my life be solely about cancer. I am a person, I am strong, I am a wife, mother of 4, I am a friend. I am a volunteer, missionary, I love life, I miss my job as a physical therapist. I am still me, I am just sick and trying to get out of this storm. What I would rather hear is “What are you up to today?’ Don’t just read my blog and be a ghost. Stay active in my life and be my friend. I may not be able to dine out like I used to, so let’s dine in. My answer will let you know how I’m feeling. If I am out and about, it’s a good day. If I am laying around, then you know it’s rough. If you are curious about treatment and feelings, be honest and ask. Especially if you don’t understand. Honestly that is why I blog. To help people understand. Before I was diagnosed, I had no clue of everything that went into being a patient. I was naïve to the process.

Pretty much for me, a stage 4 diagnosis meant that my treatment has never stopped. I am currently on my clinical trial — my 6th cocktail. I waited out a hurricane, literally — Hurricane Harvey in Houston — to get my last hope of a rainbow, a cure, that I will come out on the other side. A trial drug called DS8201a has currently been working hard and fast. The side effects have been the same. This trial drug is called an immunoconjugate. It is chemo mixed with immuno-therapy. The chemo kills the cancer, the ‘immuno’ part trains my immune system to attack any abnormal cancer cell. It’s like a trojan horse.

While waiting out the storm the cancer has spread the worst it has ever been, my counts were the highest they’ve ever been. I’m happy to say that after one dose they have dropped all the way down to almost ‘normal’ range. This truly is a miracle. Almost 2 years later, after countless hours of reading, searching, studying, talking to other cancer patients, and now going on my 4th opinion — I refuse to give up. My best advice is if someone tells you no, keep searching, advocating for yourself.

This life is worth fighting for.

[Editor’s Note: Valynda passed away a few months after writing this story and is survived by her loving family.]

You may also enjoy reading Doing Death Differently: Embracing the Home Funeral by Kelly Notaras

The post From The Eye of The Storm: A Personal Account of Stage 4 Cancer appeared first on BEST SELF.

A poetic exploration of the human experience in all of its guts and glory

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Let me keep surrendering myself until I am utterly transparent.

—Psalm 19

The ultimate value of staying open is that we’re scoured clean of all that might burden us: memories, wounds, assumptions, and conclusions — even the debris of unworkable dreams. And more important than what we reach for or aspire to is the cleansing release of all that takes up residence in the reservoir of our perception and feeling. For unprocessed experience and unlived dreams clog our arteries of being, and this can be life threatening. So, like it or not, we’re asked to let everything in and through, trusting that it’s the passage of life through us that is renewing, not what we accumulate or accomplish along the way. As blood must pass through organs, as rivers must empty into the sea, thoughts and feelings must pass through our being, if we’re to stay fresh and changeable. After all these years, I’ve come to see that the aim is not to be empty or full, but to stay an open channel for everything life has to offer. I’m still learning how to do this.

Instructions to My Smaller Self

When hurt, it’s important to scream. Just don’t pray to the scream. When sad, it’s important to grieve. Just don’t build a kingdom of your loss. When falling through whatever you thought would last, admit, “I’m lost and confused.” Just don’t map the world as lost and confused. And when riding the wave, however it appears, feel the strength in you released. Just don’t believe the strength comes from you alone. But most of all, when listening to others, say, “This may be so.” Then look for yourself at what life is painting with all its colors.

Time Is a Rose

What is time but God undressing Himself of His Mystery hour by hour? Or if it suits you, think of time as the wind of existence moving the pollen of being from one decade to the next. Or as an eternal flute that perpetuates the one song we all try to sing until a child is born with more depth and heart than any one child should have. You can understand time as the unfolding of nature or the workings of physics. Whatever language works for you, any will do. But under all our efforts to name what is unnameable, we’re swept along like minnows tucked in the ocean. And while love and suffering let us glimpse the totality of life, it is gratitude that lets us feel our place in the Infinite Sway of Things.

This is why the life of feeling matters. Because, just as a whale feels the entire surface of the ocean as it breaches, someone moved to help another feels the entire surface of humanity as their care breaches the ocean of circumstance. As a cocoon tears, as bark peels, as the hard casing that grows fruit splits — the casing of our pretense and stubbornness breaks open, so the soul can unfold like a rose and fill the world. This is a fate to be longed for, even though we fear it.

Adapted from Things That Join the Sea and the Sky: Field Notes on Living by Mark Nepo (Sounds True, November 2017). Copyright © 2017 Mark Nepo.

You may also enjoy Podcast: Mark Nepo | Entrainments of Heart by Best Self Media

The post Letting Everything In and Through | Explorations of the Human Experience appeared first on BEST SELF.

Exploring the dark corner of grief and suffering: blame

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There’s such a pervasive weirdness in our culture around grief and death.

We judge, and then we blame, dissect, and minimize. People look for the flaws in what someone did to get to this place: She didn’t exercise enough. Didn’t take enough vitamins. Took too many. He shouldn’t have been walking on that side of the road. They shouldn’t have gone to that country if it has a history of monsoons. If he’s that upset, he must not have been very stable before this happened. I bet they had unresolved childhood issues—see what unhealed issues do to you?

I have a theory (as yet scientifically unproven) that the more random or out-of-order the loss, the more judgment and correction the grieving person hears.

It’s like we just can’t reconcile the fact that someone could be alive and well at breakfast and dead by lunch. We can’t understand how someone who ate well, exercised, and was a generally good human being can get cancer and die at the age of thirty-four. We can’t understand how a perfectly healthy child can drop dead of what started as a simple cough. How someone biking to work, using a dedicated bike lane, wearing reflective clothing, their bike adorned with flashing lights, can be struck and killed in an instant.

Or, how on a beautiful, ordinary summer day in 2009, I could watch my partner, Matt, drown. Matt was strong, fit, and healthy. He was just three months away from his fortieth birthday. With his abilities and experience, there was no reason he should have drowned.

Losses like this highlight the tenuous nature of life. How easily, how quickly life can change. It’s terrifying to think that someone who seemingly did everything right could still die. It’s also terrifying to look at a person torn apart by their grief, knowing that could be us someday.

When Matt died, the one (and only) news story I read blamed him for his death because he wasn’t wearing a life jacket — to go swimming. The more polite comments underneath the article made Matt into an angel, looking over everyone, even those who didn’t know him; his work on earth was done. Far more of the comments blamed me for ‘making’ him go in the water, or castigated both of us for being too stupid to know better.

In the days after Matt died, I overheard more than one conversation in which people judged my response to Matt’s death quite unfavorably. Keep in mind that I wasn’t publicly screaming, didn’t hit anyone, and wasn’t causing big ‘scenes’ anywhere. I was simply—openly—very, very sad.

Victim Shaming and the Culture of Blame

My experience of blame and judgment, both for my grief, and of Matt in regards to his own death, is not unique. Most grieving people have felt judged and shamed inside their pain.

Especially when the loss is unusual or accidental, the backlash of blame is intense. We immediately point out what someone else did wrong. That person did something ridiculous or stupid; we would never do that. It soothes our brains, in some ways, to believe that through our own good sense, we, and all those we love, can be kept safe. And if something bad did happen (through no fault of our own), we’d be strong enough to handle it. Grief wouldn’t take us down like that; we’d deal with it so much better than that other person. Everything will be OK.

Brené Brown’s research states that blame is a way to discharge pain and discomfort. Intense grief is a reminder that our lives here are tenuous at best. Evidence of someone else’s nightmare is proof that we could be next. That’s seriously uncomfortable evidence. We have to do some fancy footwork (or rather, fancy brain-work) to minimize our discomfort and maintain our sense of safety.

When someone comes to you in your pain and says, “I can’t even imagine,” the truth is: They can imagine. Their brains automatically began to imagine. As mammals, neuro-biologically, we’re connected to each other. Empathy is actually a limbic system connection with the other person’s pain (or their joy). Being close to someone else’s pain makes us feel pain. Our brains know we’re connected.

Seeing someone in pain touches off a reaction in us, and that reaction makes us very uncomfortable. Faced with this visceral knowledge that we, too, could be in a similar situation, we shut down our empathy centers. We deny our connection. We shift into judgment and blame. It’s an emotionally protective instinct. In many different ways, in many different forms, our response to others’ pain is to lobby blame: If something terrible happens, you brought it on yourself.

Blaming someone for their pain — whether that’s grief or some kind of interpersonal violence — is our go-to mechanism. How quick we are to demonize rather than empathize. How quick we are to move into debate, rather than hang out in the actual pain of the situation.

At the root of our fears around grief, and in our approaches to grief and loss, is a fear of connection, and a fear of acknowledging — really feeling — our relatedness. What happens to one person can happen to anyone. We see ourselves reflected in another person’s pain, and we don’t like to see ourselves there.

Disasters and deaths bring out a level of emotional empathy that asks you to go there, to acknowledge that this could happen to you or someone you love, no matter how safe you try to be. We hate to see evidence of the fact that there is very little in this life over which we have control. We’ll do almost anything to avoid letting that in.

What starts as limbic system-based connection reverts to a brainstem survival instinct. It’s an us-or-them response, one that puts those in pain on the wrong side of the line, and us, always on the right. We distance ourselves from pain rather than feel annihilated by it. The culture of blame keeps us safe. Or rather, it lets us believe we’re safe.

Down the Rabbit Hole of Pain Avoidance

We want so desperately to see evidence that everyone we love is safe, and will always be safe. We want so desperately to believe we’ll survive, no matter what happens. We want to believe we have control.

To maintain this belief, we’ve created — and sustained — an entire culture based on a magical thinking continuum: think the right thoughts, do the right things, be evolved/non-attached/optimistic/faithful enough and everything will be OK.

Pain and grief are never seen as healthy responses to loss. They’re far too threatening for that. We resist them in equal measure to our fear of being consumed by them.

The problem with this (among many problems) is that it creates a societally acceptable blame structure in which any kind of hardship or pain is met with shame, judgment, and an admonishment to quickly get back to ‘normal’. If you can’t rise above it, you are, once again, doing something wrong.

Attachment Is Survival

Pain has to be welcomed and understood and given actual true space at the table. Otherwise, we cannot do the work we do, whether that is the personal work of showing up and staying alive, or the wider global work of making the world safe, equitable, and beautiful for all beings. We have to be able to say what’s true without fear of being seen as weak, damaged, or somehow failing the cultural storyline. We need to make it just as normal to talk about our pain as it is to talk about our joy.

There is no need to rush redemption.

Hard, painful, terrible things happen. That is the nature of being alive, here in this world. Not everything works out; not everything happens for a reason. The real path here, the real way forward, is not in denying that irredeemable pain exists, but by acknowledging that it does. By becoming a culture strong enough to bear witness to pain. By sticking together inside what hurts. By opening ourselves to each other’s pain, knowing that this could be us the next time around.

When we’re afraid of loss, we cling to a system of right and wrong, of well and unwell, in order to safeguard our connections to those we love. We think barricading ourselves against pain and suffering will help us survive.

Our deeply embedded aversion to acknowledging pain and hardship keeps us from what we most want: Safety in the form of love, connection, and kinship. We defend ourselves against losing it, but in doing so we keep ourselves from living it.

The tricky thing is, true survival never exists in a world where we have to lie about our own hearts, or pretend we’re more in control than we are. It just makes us desperately more anxious, and more rabid in our attempts to make everything work out in the end.

The most efficient and effective way to be ‘safe’ in this world is to stop denying that hard and impossible things happen. Telling the truth allows us to connect, to fully enter the experience of another and feel with them.

Real safety is in entering each other’s pain, recognizing ourselves inside it. As one of my oldest teachers used to say, Poignancy is kinship. It’s evidence of connection. That we hurt for each other shows our relatedness. Our limbic systems, our hearts, and our bodies are made for this; we long for that connection. That you see your own potential for grief and loss in someone else’s grief? That’s beautiful.

When emotion comes up, we can let that poignancy run through us. It hurts, but it hurts because we’re related, because we’re connected. It should hurt. There’s nothing wrong with that. When we recognize pain and grief as a healthy response to loss, we can respond with skill and grace, rather than blame and bypass. We can respond by loving each other, no matter what happens.

Finding safety means to come together, with open hearts and a willing curiosity about everything we experience: love, joy, optimism, fear, loss, and heartbreak. When there is nothing we can’t answer with love and connection, we have a safety that can’t be taken away by the external forces of the world. It won’t keep us from loss, but it will let us feel held and supported inside what cannot be made right.

The real cutting edge of growth and development is in hurting with each other. It’s in companionship, not correction. Acknowledgment — being seen and heard and witnessed inside the truth about one’s own life — is the only real medicine of grief.

You may also enjoy reading Doing Death Differently: Embracing the Home Funeral by Kelly Notaras

The post The Secret Side of Grief: The Culture of Blame appeared first on BEST SELF.

Listening To What Our Bodies Have To Say About The Choices We Are Making

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A person of integrity is someone whose life isn’t full of contradictions.

They do as they say, and they say as they do. Who they are on the inside is who they are on the outside, and who they are on the outside is aligned with how they feel on the inside. They have declared what is important to them and who they want to be in this lifetime. The actions they take and choices they make are aligned with that declaration and reflect that they feel worthy and deserving to manifest that which they most desire.

Whether it’s our marriage, our health, our work, or our relationships, there is usually at least one area of our life where we willfully ignore or cover something up that doesn’t feel right. That lack of comfort, that gnawing anxiety, that quiet but persistent voice in our head that’s trying to warn us to change the course — those are all signals that we are living out of integrity. And the problem is, the more we lose touch with our integrity, the more likely we are to continue to make choices that widen the divide, taking us further and further away from it.

Think of it as being adrift at sea. Your integrity is the lighthouse on the horizon — when you swim toward the shore, the beacon grows stronger and brighter until, at last, you are home. But when you get too far from shore, the tide pulls you away. As you drift farther out to sea, the lighthouse grows dim in the distance. Eventually, you can’t see its light at all, and you’ve lost any sense of the way back. Once we let integrity guide us, everything becomes easier — clearer. It’s as if we’ve been living in the dark, and then suddenly someone switches on a light.

That someone is you.

One of the most powerful ways the Universe attempts to wake us up is through our bodies — it is the one messenger that we ultimately cannot ignore.

Our bodies are always giving us feedback on how we are managing our life, as well as what lessons we need to learn. They always let us know how and if we are taking enough care of our life; but we tend to ignore the messages.

I meet so many people who are not taking care of their body. They work too much, take on too much stress, don’t eat or sleep well, or are somehow out of balance. Their body tries to tell them that they are out of whack — they catch a cold, have headaches, fall asleep during a conference call, or trip when rushing to their car. Yet we still don’t listen. We keep living life in the same manner. Our body keeps trying — maybe the cold becomes a flu, the headaches become migraines, or the next stumble results in a broken bone. And we still don’t listen! It’s like the Universe knocks and knocks, and when we continue not to hear the calling, it has no choice but to do something, sometimes drastic, to get our attention. It has no choice but to smash down our door.

This happened to me when I was mentally exhausted from ping ponging back and forth about my marriage — Do I stay, or should I go? Trying to make the relationship work was like pushing a boulder up a hill, but because I have always been the “strong one” I kept pushing. Too arrogant to think that my body would ever betray me, I was shocked when I fainted at a social gathering. That’s when I knew my body wasn’t giving out on me, but instead was sending me the wakeup call I couldn’t ignore!

Remarkably, there is often a direct correlation between our physical issues and the insight we need to realize. For example, the person with a stiff neck needs to stop looking back at the past. The person with constant headaches needs to look at the incessant negative internal dialogue that keeps looping around in their mind. The person with leg issues needs to look at how they are stuck and unable to move forward.

Here’s the bottom line: When it comes to our body, if we don’t listen to it, it won’t listen to us!

Our outer world holds up a mirror, an invitation to look within. It gives us an opportunity to see how we need to change and grow. As we shift our inner world, the outer world will follow. Understanding the magnitude of this reciprocal relationship of the outer and the inner — how the outer is always reflecting what is going on inside us — is a huge advantage when we commit to an integrity-guided life.

We only need to remember to look in that mirror to see where we’re stuck, experiencing chaos, making unhealthy choices, or not creating what we say we want. That is our signal to look inside, to see what is going on. As you tend to your inner world, your outer world will follow. This will enable you to leave bad relationships, break lazy habits, and embrace positive structure and actions. You’ll see opportunity where you never did before. If you don’t look in that mirror, you’ll continue to do what you’ve always done and get what you’ve always gotten.

It’s important to listen to your body. When you experience the gift of feedback from your body, you’ll realize how often you’ve been settling and how costly mediocrity can be.

Not sure what your body is trying to tell you? Here are 10 questions to help provide you with valuable insight:

1. What in your life is painfully obvious?
2. Is there a situation that is causing you frustration or angst?
3. If you see that situation as a mirror, what is it trying to reveal to you?
4. Is there a relationship in your life that triggers you or causes pain?
5. Why is this person in your life?
6. What are they there to show or teach you?
7. What disowned quality do you project onto this person that you need to take back?
8. Is there any ‘dis-ease’ in your body or issue with your health?
9. What is it trying to show you?
10. How does your outer world reflect your inner world?

Ask and you shall receive. All the answers you are looking for can be found when you learn to listen to what your body is trying to tell you. Are you ready to hear?

You may also enjoy reading Return of the Gentleman: The Art of Living Authentically by Dain Heer

The post Integrity as Your Beacon | What Our Bodies Tell Us About the Choices We Make appeared first on BEST SELF.

Expressing your inner most thoughts and feelings in a daily journal is a healthy and easy way to practice being the best YOU

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That tiny key with a pink ribbon running through it — I can still feel the weight of it in my flawless little hand. Aside from my set of Hello Kitty erasers and my dollhouse dresser, this was the most important thing I owned; it was the key to my diary. I was ten-years old.

In that diary went every thought, whisper, and ​doubt — every tragedy, real and imagined. It was biographical. It was fiction. It was magical.

It was healing. It had many hiding places, and accordingly, much was hidden in it.

It’s odd to consider that my original relationship to journaling was subversive. As a child I wanted out of my house, out of my classroom, out of my body, out of my life, but these were things I could only tell to my diary. ​Growing up in ​suburban New York in a fairly comfortable family wasn’t so bad, but that diary told another story.

In certain sections, I had an avatar — Ashley was her name — and she was beautiful. She had friends, she didn’t care about grades, she never did homework, and she definitely didn’t have glasses. But she did get into heaps of fascinating trouble. She was popular, and the right boy was noticeably interested.

That ten-year old me was also profoundly sad at times.​ That was when my ‘real’ identity would seep back into those handwritten pages — a dejected, disappointed girl, a burden in her own home, where there were other, more important events and people to tend to.

According to both the diary and my memory, I was supported in my family; I was loved so much, but left alone a lot. No complaints, but I do remember that there was a fair dose of internal confusion. I didn’t know where I belonged, but in that diary, I had a place.

Almost four decades later, that special portable place is still a part of me. My days and my work, my teaching and my ways of seeing of the world, all revolve around my notebooks, these treasure troves of study, worship, listening and learning.

Throughout my adult life, journaling has served me as a tool for refining my thinking, my teaching and my ways of being. It moves me towards new patterns of thinking, and continues to help me see what beliefs and assumptions are taking up space in my mind. Writing in my journal is a portal to my clearest creativity, particularly in the early morning when my intuition is high.

During my (thankfully) elegant divorce, tough moments in parenting, getting sober, being a loving partner, and losing my mom last year, journaling gave me perspective, vision, and leverage on myself. Whether I’m writing poetry, noting a passing emotional state, or just free-writing in the early morning, my journal helps me to reframe, regroup, and refine my highest self.

5 reasons to journal:

1. Each time you pick up your journal, you’re providing yourself with a safe space to connect to your own wise advice.

2. Writing with your hand means you’re spending a few minutes away from your technology — which is great for your mood and your overall well-being.

3. Handwriting allows your heart to come through what you are expressing.

4. Noting your reflections on paper allows you to choose what thoughts you’ll pursue and those you’ll release.

5. Journaling is the ultimate way to practice YOU.

You may also enjoy reading Letters to My Mindful Self by Wendy Wolff

The post Practice You | Coming Home to Your Inner Self Through Journaling appeared first on BEST SELF.

A poem about spiritual restoration from Nancy Levin

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restoration

the truth has been patiently walking beside me
periodically darting out in an attempt
to capture my attention
then today it just gently reached over
held my hand and gave it a squeeze
reminding me that i do want and need
and love

so this is what it feels like
to inhabit my body
a home familiar yet unrecognizable
breath hydrating the space
between flesh and bone

still flashes of the past hover
as film overlay on present day
haunting me with life before
and life unlived

once
i was a woman
with a husband
and a dog

it was a time
when water
didn’t behave
as water


how quickly spells are cast
and broken
but life going on without me
leaves me breathless
so i trust in the power
of restoration

seems i am always settling in
and then settling in
all over again
to the changing terrain below
the weather is coming for us
and it’s breathtaking

now loosening my grip
on
what i desire
it draws toward me

what makes the heart
start beating again

balancing as i settle in once more

living and breathing
on the other side
of letting go

fierce
wild and free

You may enjoy reading other poetry and pieces by Nancy Levin

The post Restoration: A Poem appeared first on BEST SELF.

We can’t take our old selves with our limited-thinking baggage into our new evolutionary selves. And why would we want to?

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Life is a learning and growing process. It’s uncomfortable and rarely ever straightforward. It seems like every time I take a step forward, I take that same step back. We’ve all got things that are halting our progression, keeping us stuck and not embodying the next evolution of our character. But the funny thing is that it is us personally who are holding onto these things. Life’s energy wants to keep moving us forward, but we hold onto that which is behind us, that which may no longer serve us.

I’m really good at that, at fighting life’s current. It wants to take me higher, but I cannot take my old self with me.

The old Carter with his old behavioral and thought patterns, has to be left behind. That is a scary thing for most of us, because we are leaving behind the sense of self which we once had, the very thing that had made me, me. We have to leave that behind — not momentarily, but for good — and we’re leaving it behind for a potential, future self that we can’t yet see, can’t yet imagine. We don’t know who we are going to be next.

Why would we choose to leave our comforts behind then? Because at a certain point, fighting the current, holding onto these things that no longer serve us, becomes so painful, so tiring, that we have to let go. It’s the only way to feel life again, to reconnect with the self inside us that is fighting for room to blossom. We have to give it room to do so, which means we have to remove stuff from our minds and our lives; we have to let go of the shit we don’t need anymore. It’s almost always painful at first, but like a light bulb to the sun, that pain becomes overtaken by the newfound joy and life that now have space to enter us.

Now that I have this new great feeling of life, this new higher sense of self, this joy and drive and inspiration — wouldn’t it be great to include those things that used to make me happy with my new life? But, it doesn’t work that way, it never does. I would not be merely bringing these old things into my ‘new life’, I’d be choosing my old life over the new one and then I’d start to feel like I used to again, repeating the cycle. I’d start to feel the pain again that forced me to change in the first place. It’s like starting to see the light and then being thrown back into the shadows. It hurts. The only way to change is to change for good: take a step down a new path and then keep walking it; there is no going back.

Could you imagine a butterfly coming out of its cocoon and still thinking it was a caterpillar? Crawling around because it doesn’t realize that it can fly? Eating leaves because it doesn’t know it can access the flower’s sweet nectars? It’s kind of like that. It’s really tragicomic. Our next evolution is always right inside us waiting to become, but we have to let go of what we were before.

The butterfly is wise; it doesn’t think back to its caterpillar life, that’s over and done with.

We humans however, with our amazing abilities to think and romanticize the past, we keep going back to our caterpillar behavior because it is what we know, it is what we’ve always done, it is comfortable. To really become butterflies, we don’t get to go back to being caterpillars. Why would we even want to?

Editor’s Note:

Sometimes a picture conveys a 1000 words — and this one of Carter, leaping forward off a cliff into the unknown waters below — depicts the next leg of his life’s journey. By the time this piece is live, he will have left the comforts of his old self behind as he traverses the Camino de Santiago; a pilgrimage he has embarked upon to further his personal evolution body, mind and soul, reaching for his best self.

You may also enjoy Morning Yoga & Meditation for Energy, Awareness and Intention with Carter Miles

The post Can’t Take My Old Self With Me appeared first on BEST SELF.

Musings, Reflections and Trusting the Timing: Introductory remarks by Dan Millman author of The Hidden School

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Maybe you’ve heard the story about a master artist who sculpted beautiful dogs from blocks of wood. Asked how he did it, he said, “I just cut away everything that isn’t the dog.” In a sense, I suppose, we each sculpt our best selves, and our lives, in a similar fashion — cutting away the excess, the complications, until we reach a state of simplicity and authenticity. It’s a lifelong art project.

My best writerly self is one facet of that lifetime work-in-progress. With the publication of my first book, Way of the Peaceful Warrior in 1980, I could never have guessed that thirty-seven years would pass before I’d complete The Hidden School.

Ramakrishna, the Indian sage, once said that if we try to open a walnut shell when it’s still green, it is nearly impossible — but if we wait until it ripens, it opens with just a tap. I had to endure that ripening process before I was ready to share this final peaceful warrior saga. Only now can I grasp the words of Martin Buber:

All journeys have secret destinations of which the traveler is unaware.

The Hidden School, which unfolds within the time-frame of my first book, can be read as a stand-alone adventure — yet it’s an essential part of Way of the Peaceful Warrior because it reveals the initiation that prepared me for the death, rebirth, and awakening described at the climax of my first book. It completes the puzzle and winding paths I traveled toward my best self, still unaware of my destination.

Now I understand my life by looking backward, but I had to live it forward, driving at times as if through the darkest night, seeing only as far as the headlight beams. Along the way, I encountered unpredictable twists and turns like those I describe in The Hidden School.

As you’ll see from the opening pages, I still had much to learn on my quest to find the heart of the peaceful warrior’s way, and find myself in the process.

PROLOGUE

In 1966, during my college years, I met a mysterious service station mechanic I called Socrates, described in Way of the Peaceful Warrior. During our time together, Soc spoke of a woman shaman in Hawaii with whom he’d studied many years before. He also told me about a book he’d lost in the desert, and a school hidden somewhere in Asia, but the details soon drifted into the recesses of my memory.

Later, when I graduated, my old mentor sent me away with the words “No more spoon-feeding, junior. Time to learn from your own experience.” In the years that followed I married, fathered a child, coached gymnastics at Stanford University, and then taught movement arts while on the faculty of Oberlin College.

Eight years had passed since I first wandered into Soc’s all-night service station. To the casual eye, my life looked as good as it had during my college years as an elite athlete. But I was haunted by the feeling that I was missing something important—that real life was passing me by while I played pretend in the shallows of convention. Meanwhile, my wife and I had agreed to a formal separation.

Then I was awarded a worldwide travel grant from the college to research martial arts and mind-body disciplines. This opportunity reawakened those memories and the possibility that now I might find the people and places Socrates had mentioned years before. I could combine professional research with my personal quest.

Having completed the first leg of my travels in Hawaii, I’d now set my sights on Japan. That was before a chance discovery changed everything and proved the saying “Whenever you want to do something, you have to do something else first.”

It all began on a rainy September morning. . . .

PART ONE

Chapter One

A shower of leaves in the gray dawn drew my gaze out the rain-spattered window of my motel room on the island of Oahu. Dark clouds matched my mood as I floated between heaven and earth, rootless, drifting through the in-between. My summer on Molokai with Mama Chia had raced by. Now I had a nine-month leave of absence before resuming my teaching duties.

Walking across the carpeted floor, clad only in my underwear, I stopped and glanced at my reflection in the bathroom mirror. Have I changed? I wondered. My muscular frame, a carryover from my college gymnastics days and recent labors on Molokai, looked the same. So did my tanned face, long jaw, and customary crew cut from the day before. Only the eyes gazing back at me seemed different. Will I one day resemble my old mentor, Socrates?

As soon as I’d arrived on Oahu a few days before, I’d called my seven-year-old daughter, who excitedly told me, “I’m going to travel like you, Daddy!” She and her mom were going to Texas to visit with relatives for a few months, maybe longer. Once again I dialed the number she’d given me, but no one answered. So I sat down and wrote her a note on the back of a picture postcard, punctuating it with Xs and Os, acutely aware of their inadequacy during my absence. I missed my daughter; the decision to travel all these months was not one I took lightly. I slipped the postcard into a leather-bound journal I’d purchased a few days before to record notes of my travels. I could mail the card later from the airport.

Now it was time to pack once again. . . .

A few minutes later, realizing how easy it would be to forget the postcard I’d slid into my journal, I unzipped the pack and tugged at the journal, trying to extract it without dislodging all my neatly folded clothing. It wouldn’t budge. Frustrated, I pulled harder. As the journal came loose, its clasp must have caught the lining; I heard and felt a rip in the pack’s fabric. Reaching inside, I felt a slight bulge where the piece of lining had pulled away from the outer canvas shell. Then my hand found and drew out a thick envelope with a short message from Mama Chia written on the outside.

Socrates asked me to give you this letter when I thought you were ready.

Ready for what? I wondered. . .

Intrigued, I opened the envelope and began to read a letter from Socrates.

Text copyright © 2017 by Dan Millman. Taken from THE HIDDEN SCHOOL: Return of the Peaceful Warrior. Published by North Star Way, an imprint of Simon & Schuster, Inc.  Printed with permission of Simon & Schuster, Inc.

You may also enjoy reading Interview: Lewis Howes | Redefining Masculinity with Kristen Noel

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One woman’s journey to help others who have had an abortion transform their grief, regrets and conflicting emotions into healing practices and principles

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At 19, I sat in the waiting room of my college’s medical clinic, clasping my sweaty hands and trying to think of all the reasons why there was no way that the pregnancy test I just took could be positive.

The test was positive.

Two weeks earlier, I was sitting in a well-known reproductive health clinic, requesting an IUD (intrauterine device) to prevent pregnancy, but the nurse turned me down and assured me that condoms would suffice. A voice in my gut told me to demand the IUD, but I ignored that voice.

I grew up without sex education, raised by conventional parents who thought talking about sex would encourage me to have it.

I learned by getting pregnant that condoms (and nearly all forms of birth control) are less than 100 percent effective. I had a drinking problem, no job, and no money. I lived a thousand miles away from home. The father was a beautiful heroin addict and the world’s worst drug dealer. He had two clients, and one of them was his self.

As I came to learn, one in three women in the United States would have an abortion in her lifetime. I wished a circle of them would tell me how to heal, but only one woman had ever told me that she had terminated a pregnancy.

For weeks I wandered through an Internet labyrinth of misleading and conflicting information: “post-abortion syndrome,” a made-up term on Christian anti-abortion websites, described a host of unappealing symptoms, like self-hatred and baby phobia; I found sanitized descriptions of “mixed emotions lasting a brief period” and “relief” on websites for organizations I trusted to prepare me for the abortion I never wanted to have. This was my first clue that reproductive, mental, and spiritual healthcare was in disarray.

In my college library, I searched for a book-length account of abortion by a memoirist with the wisdom to help me integrate my garage band of clashing thoughts and emotions into a symphony of my own design, but there was a gap in the literature where a memoir of abortion should have been. All I found were two books of essays about abortion.

In one book, every woman felt relieved; in the other, every woman felt regretful. These two emotions never appeared together in one essay, let alone in one woman. It seemed like a conspiracy in which millions of women were bound to an implicit social contract to match their emotion to a political persuasion.

Conflicted, full of angst and yet resolute, I had an abortion. Thus began the real journey of my life — the undeniable and inescapable loss of everything I thought I knew, including who I thought I was.

I wasn’t prepared for the long tunnel of grit and grief — that dark tunnel that leads us to the light.

Over the next three years, I morphed into a full-blown feminist. I parroted the classic pro-choice abortion story: Best decision for me. Feel good. Dreams coming true. But I felt like a fraud. I had a Gloria Steinem book collection (she is still a heroine of mine) and a private battle with intrusive thoughts and panic attacks associated with my abortion that landed me in therapy. But I could hardly admit to myself that my depression had anything to do with deferring motherhood, let alone admit to my progressive friends who perceived suffering after an abortion as a myth constructed by the conservative religious right and believed only by women who didn’t have minds of their own.

Taking a cocktail of antidepressants, I took my next move toward enlightenment by enrolling in a Tibetan Buddhism course at Columbia University in New York City. One day, when I was visiting my professor in her office, she told me about Mizuko Kuyo, a Japanese Buddhist ritual for abortion, miscarriage, and dead children. Mizuko means water baby. Kuyo means respect.

Without any evidence, I decided that other religious and secular teachings about abortion existed. Inspired by rebellious women in history who attained emotional freedom through spiritual practices, I would participate in every single one of them. I traveled the country to forge a path of holistic healing. Pit stops included a Roman Catholic retreat for abortion staffed with picketers, a crash course in grief from a Planned Parenthood counselor, a night in a motel with a ‘Midwife for the Soul’, and a Jewish ‘wild woman’ celebration hosted by a wise and zany rabbi. For seven years, I researched and reported on the emotional, mental, and spiritual aspects of abortion, listening to and reading hundreds of abortion stories.

Part of my research involved digging into the deeply divided public information about abortion that had left me so confused when I sought guidance. I wanted to find out, for example, why some academic studies indicated that women regret their abortions and other studies said women fundamentally do not. When I read the fine print on one of these studies about regret, conducted by a progressive reproductive health think tank, I found that women who seemed too distraught (i.e., they were crying) were not recruited — about half of potential participants. So a study about regret was conducted by leaving out women who expressed the deepest emotions.

This was an astonishing discovery that made too much sense: mainstream media used such study results to educate the public. Reproductive health organizations used such study results to inform patients with web content. Women’s magazines write viral articles about such studies. It became clear that inside this web of half-truths, women do not receive comprehensive information about our health.

I am convinced that women must take one hundred percent responsibility for the outcomes of our health decisions, mental health, and spiritual conditions.

As a graduate student at Harvard University, I traced the lost history of women healers and priestesses and discovered that erasing women’s emotions, experiences, and healing powers is an ancient type of patriarchal oppression. Ironically, a prominent form of modern patriarchy masquerades as feminism: women telling women to stop talking about grief and psychic pain around abortions. Women pretending that certain stories about abortion are irrelevant.

I wrote May Cause Love, because it’s the book I had wanted to read during an era of my life that now seems like ages ago. My memoir was essentially blackballed from mainstream media outlets. Thirty-five publishers rejected my book until the bold and badass team at HarperOne said yes. Despite the book’s positive trade reviews and glowing blurbs from New York Times bestselling authors, you will not find a single word about my book printed in a mainstream women’s magazine.

One month before it hit bookshelves, it was clear that none of them would provide a standard review of the book. Seasoned journalists — all women who had experienced abortion — began pitching articles about May Cause Love, sometimes more than one journalist pitching the same magazine. Not a single pitch was accepted, even though articles about abortion ran daily on the websites.

Two weeks before the memoir was released, women across the country joined forces and started organizing to put copies of May Cause Love in the hands of the readers who needed it most: people who have experienced abortion. They called bookstores and emailed organizations, book clubs, and universities, sharing their own experiences with abortion and what the book meant to them. They sold out three bookstores in Denver on day one; it hit #4 in the Abortion category on Amazon, behind the #1 book on all of Amazon, which occupied the first three slots with its hardcover, digital, and audio versions. Next, the team set up a book drive page on my website where readers could donate copies of May Cause Love to prisons, women’s shelters, and addiction rehabs. Or, they could send them directly to our P.O. Box so I could bring the donated books to women in a transformational home for addiction recovery.

I had the opportunity to read a three-page handwritten letter from an inmate who had read a donated copy in a Maine women’s prison. She’d terminated her first pregnancy, some twenty-five years ago, when she was 15. What would have happened if ‘Team May Cause Love’ had been there for her after her abortion?

That’s when we launched Revolution After Abortion: The Seminar — a four-day event beyond the social and political context, designed specifically for people who have experienced abortion. The event is like May Cause Love University, based on thousands of hours of unreleased research about how to integrate an experience with abortion by unlearning cultural myths and practicing potent healing principles to live an extraordinary life.

In the midst of all this, exactly thirteen years and one day after my first pregnancy test, I found out that I was expecting my first child with my husband. We decided to break the rule about keeping it a secret until the second trimester. As of this writing, I’m seven weeks along.

I have heard nearly every pregnancy disaster story imaginable. Regardless of the outcome, there will be grief and there will be joy.

Whether I’m holding my baby in December or on a different date in the mysterious future, one thing is sure: I will teach my children to break any social rule that results in people feeling isolated and separate from one another. When we share our experiences from a place of honesty and connection, telling the truth about abortion doesn’t tear us apart; it can spark a revolution.

You may also enjoy reading Girls Mentorship: Potential and Vulnerability, by Jenni Luke

The post May Cause Love | A Journey of Enlightenment After Abortion appeared first on BEST SELF.

Danielle Laporte’s White Hot Truth — Paradoxes, Passion & Pursuit

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Thank the lies for showing you the truth.

Danielle LaPorte

Paradoxes. Passion. Pursuit. The human experience rolled up in the prose of the one-and-only Danielle LaPorte. I still remember the first time I saw her on stage — poetic badass in motion. It’s kind of like what another Best-Selfer, Jonathan Fields said, “When Danielle LaPorte writes (or speaks), there is nowhere to hide.” I second the notion. And then she isn’t afraid to dole out hugs afterwards (she had me at bear hug embrace).

White Hot Truth: Clarity for keeping it real on your spiritual path from one seeker to another, is hot off the publishing presses and is something worth celebrating. It’s a refreshingly real plunge into the complexities of self-help fatigue and ambition overdrive — calling out where we go awry.

And in Danielle LaPorte style, she goes there — digs deep and dives into the complexities of seeking. This book cuts through the crap — the myriad stuff we think, feel and ultimately second guess ourselves on. And all of this is wrapped in a beautiful package, like everything she creates.

Check out her video, Feeling Helpless About the State of the World:

A Provocation from Danielle LaPorte

True wisdom usually holds and transcends opposing points of view. Wisdom knows that there is always an exception to the rule, that there is a time and place, and that a case-by-case approach is divine protocol.

If you can comfortably hold your paradoxes, you’re going to be just fine. Because I’m suggesting that you:

1. Love yourself first and foremost and… Include the world in your loving (and then get off your ass and be more selflessly engaged)
2. Raise your standards and… Be more flexible and accommodating
3. Forgive and… Don’t forget
4. Honour spiritual traditions and… Be your own guru
5. Be open-hearted and… Have clear, strong boundaries
6. Be understanding and… Don’t take any shit
7. Have a vision and… Go with the flow
8. Trust and… Do the work
9. Get real and… Be idealistic
10. Be steadfast in your Truth and… Make all kinds of exceptions
11. Have strong preferences and… Be easy to please
12. Lead with your heart and… Your head
13. Own your extraordinariness and… Your ordinariness

Because it’s up to you and… we’re all in this together.

And hey, we have all the time in the world, but… this is urgent.

This excerpt is from Danielle LaPorte’s new book, White Hot Truth, Chapter 3: TRUTHFULLY SEEKING: How wisdom happens (hint: paradoxically)

You can read or listen to the entire chapter free by clicking HERE.

Download a printable sheet of paradoxes HERE.

You may also enjoy Interview: Danielle LaPorte | The Desire Map with Kristen Noel

The post Danielle LaPorte: How to be truly wise? Rock your paradoxes appeared first on BEST SELF.

Nadia Lopez transforms her life — and that of a struggling neighborhood — through the school she founded

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Mott Hall Bridges Academy in Brownsville, Brooklyn was born from the journey of my self-discovery and desire to create a learning institution that would honor children. Considered amongst the most disadvantaged and violent of communities in New York City, hopelessness resonated from those who live here. I saw beyond the despair and found that in fact there was a sense of unwavering resilience. Ultimately, despite the circumstances that these children and their families faced — they wanted to be acknowledged and respected — and I wanted to work towards giving them what they deserved.

My students face adversities that most adults would never want to endure.

Whether it is being raised by a crack addict, having no food in their home, being sexually abused, or dealing with a number of other post-traumatic stress related issues, my work has been to provide a safe, loving, and nurturing learning environment. My experiences of being raised in a single-family household to becoming a single mother, allowed me to empathize with my students on a level that many would not be able to relate to.

When I was in my early twenties, I firmly believed that the measure of success was based upon what society hailed as the ‘American Dream’. By the time I was twenty-four, I finished college, owned a home, had my first child, and worked for a company that offered lucrative pay and benefits. From the outside everything looked perfect, but in reality I was living an absolute nightmare.

I was subjected to mental and physical abuse in my marriage, along with numerous acts of adultery. For those who knew me well, it was hard to believe that I would allow myself to endure such a toxic relationship. And yet, I never wanted to have my daughter experience growing up in a single-parent household. I knew all too well the feeling of hurt and disappointment when my parents separated when I was only in seventh grade. I kept up a good face, but on the inside I was ashamed and slowly spiraling into depression, which led me to be hospitalized briefly.

I knew in that moment I was not living my best self and I needed to be in a space where I would just think, breathe and learn to love myself without the fear of judgment from others.

I found the solitude I needed visiting friends in Georgia. For nearly three months I stayed with them and their family, overcoming emotional pain and rebuilding my faith.

When I returned to New York, I returned to my corporate job, but I missed the time spent with my daughter. I wondered about her school-age years and whether she would experience a teacher whose classroom encouraged a love for learning and inspired greatness? The question came across my mind almost every day, until I finally made the decision to pursue a career in education through an alternative teaching program, which allowed me to teach while earning a degree in Special Education. Finally, I was pursuing my passion and my marriage seemed to be improving, until a year later when my then husband woke up one morning to tell me he was no longer in love and decided he needed to be happy. I felt betrayed and unable to face my students who I needed to teach that day. It took all of the energy and courage for me to drive to work, only to sit in my car for nearly an hour crying because I felt like a failure. It was in that moment I saw the school’s principal. She looked me in the eyes and asked, “What’s wrong?” With a heavy heart, I responded, “He says he doesn’t love me anymore and that he’s leaving to be happy.”

Without hesitation, she reminded me of all the children who showed up every day, seeking my love and guidance.

So, even if one person didn’t care to value who I am, the children in the school will remind me and never let me forget. That day, those words and the children in my classroom saved my life. I realized then and there that my happiness was not contingent upon one man, but actually living in my purpose.

Over time, my personal experience led me to design and implement programs that would focus on the social-emotional aspect of learning. I created a club for girls that would allow them the opportunity to receive mentorship, while giving them a safe space to share and work through their struggles. For the first time, I realized how much pain existed within our classrooms and that these children had no guidance or support to deal with it.

Three years later, I became the founding teacher at an all-girls school where my mission became to empower girls of color through education and mold them into leaders who would impact their communities. It was one of the most rewarding experiences and profound moments in my life. The girls, who ranged from eleven to thirteen years of age, were inquisitive, impressionable, and remarkable.

I saw myself in each of those beautiful girls and decided that they would learn the power of self-love, forgiveness, and not worrying about the judgment of others.

Twice a week I conducted a leadership workshop, then managed an after-school club that taught life skills. On any given day more than thirty girls would attend.

Being with my girls all day gave me great joy, but I longed for a co-ed setting because I knew that our young men needed just as much support as our young women — we needed to heal our communities as a whole. Reflecting on my relationship, I wondered how many missed opportunities there were for so many of our young men to receive mentorship and the guidance to manage their own personal issues. In many ways I knew that education would be the platform for me to offer hope and the love that so many children needed in their most formidable years.

It’s been six years since Mott Hall Bridges Academy opened its doors and has become a beacon of hope for the community of Brownsville. I have created She Is Me for our girls, and also I Matter, to provide our boys with positive models through mentoring and the opportunity to engage in dialogue about issues that impact their community.

My first graduation class is now headed to their senior year of high school, preparing for college, while I make room for our new incoming sixth graders.

Imagine, out of the pain of one man walking away — doors have opened for so many children to walk in — and fill my heart.

Isn’t life curiously divine that way? When we are willing to see things differently — we make room for endless opportunity. Every action matters. What thing could you do in your community? When we heal one person, we heal us all.

*Editor’s Note:

Little did I know, but Nadia Lopez was already in my house — here on my coffee table, featured in the iconic Humans of New York Stories. ~ Kristen Noel

You may also enjoy reading Youth Activism | Are You There? Messages From Our Future by Shea Ki

The post When One Door Closes | The Lopez Effect: Transforming Self & Community appeared first on BEST SELF.

Healing from Grief Lies In Honoring the Pain

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I was scanning the books on the Barnes and Noble shelves, searching for the one that would show me the magic formula to take away my pain. Grief was my new companion, pulsating through my being. We were one.

I was in my 30s. What did I know about death? There was no preparing for the moment when my husband would be taken from me. A shocking diagnosis descended upon us and illness consumed my beloved. We were ill-equipped and unprepared to handle this — my heart left shattered in a million pieces. The only world I had known gone forever — leaving me with memories and ashes. There was nothing and everything to reassemble.

As I skimmed through all of the self-help books, I knew there would be no easy answers to putting the pieces of my heart back together. But I didn’t yet know that my loss would lead me to discover more than I could ever imagine — that it would hold gifts and a sense of purpose.

I spent years in denial, anger, and darkness. In my desperation, I even bargained with the universe: “I’ll do anything if you would just make it stop hurting so much!” All I could think about was how much I wanted my old life back, and if I couldn’t have that, I just wanted to sit on a park bench and wait for life to be over.

I was my own worst enemy because I was so lost in my personal anguish that I didn’t want to start over. I was stuck, immobilized by it all.

I hate to think what would have happened to me if I hadn’t had two small children to care for. I needed to be strong for them. After all, they had lost their father, so their world had been shattered, too. I did what I could to keep their lives as ‘normal’ as possible, waiting until they were safely tucked into their beds before crying myself to sleep. Often, I awoke in a cold sweat at 3:00 a.m. riddled with fear, anxiety, and uncertainty. Holding it together became my new full-time job. But it couldn’t be sustained — eventually something had to give.

When death or any kind of loss happens in our lives – divorce, job loss, or illness – we can feel helpless, hopeless, and out of control. We get lost in our own heads, and our minds become a maze of confusion. We become strangers in our own bodies. Fighting to free ourselves from the pain, we often find ourselves more frustrated, angrier, and even bitter. We want a pill to dull the pain, or a glass of wine to numb our feelings — to self medicate the emotions away. We stay in dysfunctional relationships to avoid being alone.

I know.

After wallowing in my pain for years, I finally realized that I couldn’t run from it anymore. I had to embrace it.

Why not? At that point if felt as if I had tried everything else! I started by honoring the pain. Previously pretending it wasn’t there hadn’t made it go away. I allowed myself to experience it fully and to soften around it. I learned to accept what I couldn’t will away. I began to surrender to it, and then…slowly, I began to let it go.

And to my amazement — in doing so, I came to understand that there are gifts in any loss or change. That’s hard to accept, but when we choose to do something with those gifts we can finally move on.

In my search to healing, I didn’t realize how much I had closed myself off from love — not just for others or from others. Somewhere deep within, I decided love was meant for everyone else, and I created a hard shell of protection around my heart, from self-love.

Sure, at the deepest level, my heart longed for love and joy, but I denied what I needed because the loss I had experienced was so great that I couldn’t imagine opening my heart again. I couldn’t go back there. It wasn’t until I surrendered to my pain that I began to stop seeing myself as damaged and broken. And yet, I came to understand that love was the missing piece to heal my heart. If I wanted love, I needed to live in love. I needed to open my heart to myself first and be love.

I thought that I had lost love, but I now understand that it isn’t possible for us to lose something that we already are. We just have to learn how to love ourselves again. We have to find our way back. Then and only then can we open our hearts to others. The very thing I had been blocking was the key to unlocking my healing.

When you reconnect with yourself, you’ll find your way back to the love that resides in each of us. And you can only reconnect with yourself when you accept your pain.

Here are steps I took that brought me back to love:

Meditation

I learned to be still with myself and take time to ‘just be.’ Meditation allows us to discover our innate perfection. We’re all born into this world in pure love. My mantra is: Be Love, Live Love, and Give Love. When we send our love out into the world, others will start to do the same. So, surrender to your pain. Allow it to rear its vulnerability, acknowledge it, feel compassion for it, love it, wish it well, and send it on its way. The waves of pain may feel like they’re going to break you, but they won’t. They’ll just break your heart open. That’s how you let go of the pain and surrender.

Yoga

I practice yoga not for exercise, but as a way to connect with myself, as well as express myself. As you step on to your mat, imagine it as your sacred space. Use the time to disconnect from technology and the noise around you. Let it be ‘you’ time without thoughts about what you need to do for anyone else. In my yoga classes, I dance with my mind, body, and breath. I flow like water running down a mountain stream. It creates the space for physical healing.

Creativity

Find a form of expression that you enjoy, and do it for the love of it. Paint, write, color, dance – whatever helps you reconnect with your playfulness. Don’t worry whether you’re “good at it” or not! Take a class, and try something new, leaving your judgments at the door. Express yourself. Play with your inner child. You’ll soon discover that s/he’s your new best friend.

Nature

Get outside and connect with our world. Take a hike or a walk, noticing the plants and the birds. Ride a bike, look up at the big blue open sky, or go to the zoo, the mountains, or the beach. When we connect with nature, we’re able to step outside of our small little world and find where we belong within the greater universe. Allow yourself to be enveloped and supported by the beauty and purity of nature.

Love and Kindness

The gift is in the giving. When we help or give of ourselves to others – whether friends, family, or strangers – we often wind up helping ourselves. Be a mentor or volunteer. Or simply find some way to share your wisdom and your gifts. Giving to others makes us feel like we’re worthy of taking up space on the planet. It gives us a sense of purpose. How great does it feel to make a difference in someone’s life? We all need one another. We all want love. So, let it begin with you, and watch what happens.

If you’ve suffered a loss, be patient with yourself. Don’t expect healing to happen overnight, but at the same time, take care not to wallow for too long in your pain. The sooner you’re able to step outside of yourself and observe your pain as a passing visitor – not who you are – the faster you’ll be able to befriend it and give yourself the compassion you need.

True healing is not about finding an alternative route around it — we cannot bypass our life experiences and lessons and overlook the pain. Only then can it move and heal. Books can help. Friends and family can help. But ultimately, it’s up to you to open your heart to yourself and allow the healing to take place — to feel what you feel. Opening your heart involves kindness and patience. Treat yourself like you would a beloved child, and you will – no matter how dark it feels at any given moment – begin to see light again.

>Learn more at KatheCrawford.com

You may also enjoy reading The Courageous Art of Supporting Someone in Grief (At Any Age) by Angie Lucas

The post Healing From Grief | 5 Tips to Help appeared first on BEST SELF.

The author discovers the prescience — and virtual reality — of her dreams as she witnesses them appear in her awakened life.

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Where was I, and how did I get here? Squinting into the kind eyes of a paramedic, I rubbed my throbbing head in silence. Turning my gaze, I glanced out the rear window of the ambulance, and saw a wrecked car teetering awkwardly against the sidewalk. That’s when my breath caught, my hand stopped in mid-air and I stared, stunned.

Because three days before, I had dreamed that exact image: the view of the red car, windshield smashed in a series of rippling circles like a stone dropped into water, facing wrong-side-out toward oncoming traffic. Waking up frightened, I had told my mother about the dream, with no idea that it was soon to come terribly true.

Thankfully no one was hurt. But when I heard details of the accident, especially what happened in the seconds right before the collision, I was astounded by the realization that this precognitive dream might have saved my life.

Rushing and late for high school, we had chiseled frost off only a small patch of the driver’s side windshield, leaving the rest of the windows coated in a mixture of snow and ice, affording little visibility.

The last thing I remembered was hurtling towards an intersection.

Apparently, as we entered the intersection, I had inexplicably jumped from the passenger seat right into the driver’s lap. Then, in the next instant, we were struck sidelong and sent into a spin, ending with the car smashed against the opposite curb. The passenger side was crushed on impact.

With our windows covered in snow, I could not have seen the other car lunging towards us. How had I known to jump out of danger? Did it have something to do with the dream three days before? Had my unconscious mind recognized the scenario, thrusting me clear of the blow?

Many people describe déjà vu events: The strong sensation of having experienced or seen something before, when an odd current of recognition momentarily floods in. Having experienced this on a number of occasions, I have, a few times, been able to trace the phenomenon back to a dream.

In my twenties, on a solo trip to the outskirts of London, I came upon a scene that was eerily familiar. Passing through the gates of a country home, my skin began to tingle as I cast my gaze to the right and left recognizing the rolling terrain, the landscape with the sleepy pond spanned by a short stone bridge. I knew this place — but I couldn’t know this place. I had never been here before. As if I had momentarily peaked through into an alternate universe, my senses woke up, taking in the cool breeze, the cackle of geese, the strange stillness of the afternoon air.

All at once, I realized that I had seen all of this in a recent dream.

Returning home to the United States a week later, poring over my journals, I had discovered the recorded snippet: A misty day, long open stretches of parkland, a fragrant stillness in the air, a quaint bridge, the placid peace of the little lake. Laying a hand on the open page, staring off into space, I had been filled with more questions than answers.

What do I make of these occurrences? Where do they come from? Are we tapping into some reservoir containing the experiences of a lifetime, each event emitting some resonance that our psyches decipher?

Going back to the image of a stone thrown in water, I wonder whether each event of our lives is like a pebble plunked into the waters of perception, sending ripples in all directions — into the future, into the past, and resonating in the present as well. Is time really fluid and multidimensional, rather than linear, as we tend to believe? And why do we perceive some experiences barreling down the pike towards us, through dreams or déjà vu, and not others?

Mesmerized by these questions, I often end in the same place I began: in a state of wonder. Gazing out at an incomprehensible world, I am bewitched by the mystery, and heartened by the unaccountable caresses and nudges of psychic experience that seem to intone, Stay open, stay curious, and trust that there is more here than you could ever imagine.

You may also enjoy reading Muddy Universe | Biocentrism And The Power Of Consciousness by Robert Lanza

The post Virtual Reality | The Prescience Of Dreams appeared first on BEST SELF.

In a time of stress, surrendering and embracing trust leads to an unfolding of miracles

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Could you trust that there is something mysterious being woven into the fabric of your every day life?

The year 2007 was a whirlwind. I’d just separated from a 17-year relationship, changed careers, and left sleepy Norfolk for city life in London. Everything familiar was left behind. Friends thought I was crazy — but deep down I knew it was the right thing for me. I’d been numb for too long; it was time to shake up my life on all fronts.

Listening to that small, albeit wobbly, inner voice, I chose to carry on and to ignore my fears and trust my intuition. I was ready for my own self-love affair. My new life plan entailed working at a magazine for a few months then taking off to travel around the world with a mini-sized hairdryer. It was time to re-discover me.

My journey did not start out as planned (they seldom do). After four long, tiring and unsuccessful weeks of pounding the pavement hunting for a flat in North London, I was on my last and final attempt.

I had only four days left before starting work at the magazine; I desperately needed a new home.

My sights were set on Hampstead, a lovely neighborhood that reminded me of home, with lots of leafy trees, but the available flats I saw were out of my budget. I’d been relying on the internet to find an apartment once real estate agents assured me there was no chance that I would find what I was looking for on my budget. When there is a will (and an internet), there is a way!

That morning I kept hearing in my head the song by Bobby McFerrin, Don’t Worry, Be Happy. My instincts told me everything was going to work out. How? I had no idea.

I found a quaint coffee shop overlooking the canal in Little Venice. If I could have stayed in that vicinity I would have (they had trees, too), but the reality was the only thing in my price range at that point was my cup of mocha!

Exhausted, I collapsed at a small table in the corner of the coffee house and proceeded to start scribbling on a notepad. I still had faith, but I had no idea how this was all going to unfold.

Nothing could have prepared me for what happened next…

This very refined woman, who looked like she’d just walked off the cover of Vogue, walked over and sat beside me, smiling and giving out a sigh of relief to be off her 3-inch, what looked like Louboutin heels. “Wow, that looks delicious!” she said, admiring my Mocha heaped with cream.

Then another charming woman walked in and joined us. She was laced in fine jewelry and saddled with designer bags. One of the ladies introduced herself as Amanda, a practicing Buddhist; the other was Emma, a real estate agent. They were intrigued by my story: a country girl moving to London, flat hunting, changing careers, walking away from a 17-year relationship, all in one big sweep. “It’s a life-laundry,” I said smiling (yes, life-laundry on spin cycle).

We sat casually chatting for a while and after hearing that I had looked at 25 places to no avail, Emma looked to her friend and said, “You’ve been thinking of renting your attic room haven’t you?” Amanda’s eyes lit up as she turned to face me, “Yes, I have a very large room in the eves, with an en-suite bathroom, in a big house I rattle around in all day. Though most of the time I’m never there, as I’m off travelling on retreats, so you are very welcome to come and have a look if you like. You look like someone who can be trusted!”

Where do you live? I asked. “Hampstead,” she replied (pinch me!).

Everything started to move very fast. Don’t Worry, Be Happy was now playing on the radio, just as I’d heard that morning in my head.

“It’s a sign!” I told my new friends. “Meher Baba (a Tibetan Lama) would call this serendipity,” Amanda squealed. I sat there in awe of what had just happened. My desires were coming to fruition.

By that afternoon, I was being served high tea and biscuits in a house in Hampstead — Hampstead-heaven. I was offered the whole top floor, which was fully furnished, including a queen-sized bed draped in gorgeous linens and French doors that opened to a balcony looking over a beautifully tendered garden.

Weeks of searching for somewhere to live and in one afternoon, I’m saved by a mocha. With more trees than I bargained for and weekly rent only £130 — now that was a miracle!

In the weeks that followed, real-life miracles were coming at me faster than I could recount. Life through the spiritual lens was no longer just about tarot cards, incense sticks and sitting cross-legged like a pretzel — this felt like magic! I’d never experienced anything like it.

Miracles were happening, my vibe was high, life had moved into the fast lane. If ever I doubted anything, Amanda would look at me and say, “Just ask: What should I do now? Where should I go? Who should I speak to? (A Course in Miracles.) Be patient and open and let go; intuition will guide you — just keep moving with the energy of what you want!”

Intuitively, I knew my time with the Amanda, the nights sipping champagne, deep in conversation until the early morning hours, was priceless and would be etched in my memory forever.

So what is the greatest lesson that I learned that magical summer? You never know when your Fairy Godmother is going to arrive.

So stay open, have faith, trust in yourself, move with the energy of your desires and lean into your inner resources knowing that there is something far greater at work in your life. And ponder the notion that you are your very own Fairy Godmother with the power to manifest your desires, to guide you and put you exactly where you need to be. You need only ask. Wave your own magic wand (and dream big — Hampstead big!).

You may also enjoy reading Interview: Mike Dooley | Infinite Possibilities with Kristen Noel

The post Champagne, Mocha & Fairy Godmothers: Embracing Trust and Serendipity appeared first on BEST SELF.

5 Simple tips help you jumpstart manifesting dreams — now

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What is the most treasured desire at the center of your heart? Is it clear to you, or discarded and buried away — out of sight out of mind?

It is essential to visualize the life that you dream of living. It is also crucial that you believe that you can create whatever you want in your life. The only thing that stands between you and a boundless field of unlimited potential available for you to tap into is energy — energy activated for manifesting, or energy expended upon limited thinking. Which do you desire to call forth?

The truth is that you are here to live into those dreams. That is your purpose! There is no dream too great for your soul to manifest — and you are far more powerful than you could ever possibly imagine.

I believe that as long as we follow our heart — that inner voice — we will remain on our soul’s track, no matter the outcome.

If our intentions are deeply rooted in positive energy and truth, then surely, we can align with that inner guidance and innate wisdom.

Sometimes people ask me about my dreams and what exactly it means to live them. The answer for me is this: I insist upon living my dreams, which are constantly evolving, and seeking that which I desire. As a matter of fact — this is a non-negotiable for me. I believe that this is my spiritual birthright and is at the core of the contract that I made with the Universe. I agree to show up every day and ‘do the work,’ to grow and evolve on a soul level. And in return, I ask that my desires manifest into my reality.

Manifesting is something that happens with divine timing, not necessarily my personal calendar. As each of my dreams becomes reality, I am already expanding my intentions and imagining new ones. However, there are a few ongoing expectations that I try to maintain in my daily life despite all other surrounding circumstances:

Experience as much love in my heart and body as humanly possible each and every day. Positive energy begets positive feelings and experiences.

Trust and follow my intuition, even when I don’t understand the path on which I am being guided. Seek out the golden lining in all of life’s crazy adventures, even when it’s most challenging.

Design each day as I choose it to be, infused with positive energy and love, open and receptive to the magic and miracles.

Wherever you find yourself right now, trust that your life is perfect on every level. If you love what you have created for yourself, then you can settle in and feel gratitude, basking in those manifestations. If you are feeling that you’d like to make some changes, no matter the size — simply acknowledge in this moment that you have the power to do so. That’s the good news, no matter what you are experiencing. One intention towards change begins the momentum.

Do you want to create a shift in your life? The first step is to remember that everything is energy — energy that can be transformed to create something new in your reality.

Here are some tips to guide you along your path of transformation:

1. Consider that your current reality is potentially a reflection of your old self and your obsolete or expired wishes and intentions.
2. Try to see the golden lining in your present situation, or at least be curious. There are valuable lessons all around you. The more you can appreciate where you’re at right now, the easier it is to shift into a new reality in life. The present moment, and how you perceive it, is your point of power. And gratitude is everything!
3. Follow your intuition when it comes to taking action steps. Baby step by baby step, you will transform your present situation into something more positive when aligned with your highest self and inner navigation.
4. Remember that you are already in transition to your newly imagined reality — or something even greater. Make sure that your thoughts and words are aligning with that which you would like to be living. Be on the lookout for the signs that the Universe is conspiring with you, and/or possibly signaling you to pay attention.
5. Feel excited about your next steps as often as possible, knowing that divine timing has your best interests at heart. Try not to be attached to ‘how’ and ‘when’ this shift will occur. Notice the wonder that surrounds you every day.

Subtle shifts in your energy and actions will create great distance between you and your pre-conceived notions of what is possible in life. It is as simple as deciding — get conscious, clear and centered — and voila! Welcome to your new reality!

You may also enjoy reading Moonshot Magic: Declaring & Committing to Something Extraordinary by Amy Elizabeth Gordon

The post Living The Dream | Simple Tips For Manifesting Dreams appeared first on BEST SELF.

A Q&A with Eric Giuliani, who left an unfulfilling job to pursue a life-long passion for travel

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Getting lost will help you find yourself

~ Eric Giuliani

Eric Giuliani left an unfulfilling career 18 months ago for a life of travel, circumnavigating the globe and documenting his journey through photographs, film, and writing [follow at traveltall.com]. Finally living vibrantly, we catch up with Eric in Phuket for a reality check on his dramatic shift.

Questions by Carter Miles

In Episode 1, you mentioned “hitting rock bottom.” What was this like for you?

Rock bottom was the realization that my boring job and routine will never change unless I decide to take ownership for putting myself in that position. I realized that I needed to stand up and do something about the lack of love in my life (and I don’t mean relationships). I hated what I was doing.

I was living Einstein’s definition of insanity, which is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result. The rock bottom feeling would always hit me the most as I would drive to work and sit in my car for a few minutes before getting out. That time alone, knowing that the next 8 hours were going to be awful, was always the low point for me. My buddy and I called that the “car sit.” It’s when you sit and drag out the last few sips of coffee, send a few more text messages and then listen to one more song on the radio, because you don’t want to get of your car to face the day.

How did you cope with the life you were living?

I think on paper my life was great; I had a well-paying job with flexible hours and all the modern amenities of a young professional living in Miami Beach. So it was a bit confusing for me, because I had all the things most people would strive for. There wasn’t much to cope with in that sense, almost like ‘ignorance is bliss.’ I didn’t know what I didn’t know. But when I really got down to it and started to tap into myself and who I wanted to be, the thing I had to cope with the most was the lack of creativity in my life. Everyday was a carbon copy of the one before it, and in that realization was a spark that demanded change. A creative force was churning inside me and I had to stifle it every day until finally, it began to force its way out.

Did you have a distinct moment when you decided, now’s the time to change? 

About 5 years ago, I took a leave of absence from my job and flew around the world to see the places I’d always dreamt of. I spent all my money and I only had 90 days for the journey, but it was such an eye-opening experience that when I returned from that trip, I knew that I needed to figure out a way to get back to that vibrant way of living.

What classes/information did you seek out before embarking on your travels?

Since I had no background in photography, filmmaking, writing or website design, I needed to learn everything, which was overwhelming. So I broke them down into simple, easy-to-manage categories. I wrote down the steps I needed to learn and then checked them off as I moved my way through them — that really helped me mentally in the sense that it was like, Okay, here is step one, just do that today. Step one for photography, for example, was simply learning about how to buy a camera. Then I registered at our community college for classes in photography and writing and attended free photography workshops at my local camera store. I enrolled in online writing and filmmaking classes at Matador U and watched thousands of Youtube videos. I took a website design workshop to learn how to build and maintain my own site. I also read several self-help books in order to really work on my thought process — that began to expand my limited view of what my life could be.

To practice photography, I would get up every morning before sunrise, walk to the beach with my camera and film things as the sun was coming up. Afterwards, I would workout on the beach and then go to work. After I finished one job around 3pm, I would go to a second job until about 7pm. People always say they don’t have enough time or money to do what I’m doing and that was the case for me as well, so I had to find more time and more money. But during that time alone, early in the morning with the sand and the sun, I could visualize this life coming into being — and this is why I believe it is all working out now.

Why start in Africa, and more specifically South Africa?

I wanted to start at the southern tip of Africa and work my way up. I figured Africa would be the hardest continent to cross, so I wanted to do that first — because I knew that if I could make it across Africa, the rest of the world would be easier — or so I thought… LOL! As it turned out, getting stuck in Siberia in the middle of winter rivaled some of the hardest parts of Africa.

Describe how you felt on the plane to South Africa?

It’s funny, I wrote a chapter about missing the only flight on this journey and thinking, If I can’t even make the flight out of Florida, then how on earth am I going to make it around the globe? It was a mad scramble to rebook and race to another airport to make my connection at JFK; so to be honest, I was just happy to have made the flight at all — I didn’t really have time to reflect upon or to prepare for what was in store.

Who is the girl that you travelled with halfway up Africa?

I don’t want to say her name, because she asked me not to, but she has been a central figure in my life and some of the chapters I’ve written along the way. I guess you could call her my “girlfriend,” although we don’t use labels like that. She is a really special human being and I’ve never met anyone like her. It’s hard to change your life, and she was there for many of my growing pains. She picked me up many times when I was down. And even though we are no longer traveling together, and don’t speak as often as I would like, she is still very much in my life and at the end of the day, I would do anything for her — and I believe she would do the same for me.

What essentials do you carry in your backpack?

I try to travel as light as humanly possible. I have just a few pairs of shorts, two pairs of jeans, one pair of sneakers, about 8 t-shirts and some workout clothes. Other than that, I just have a small backpack for my camera and tripod. My iPhone, Macbook and Canon 7d camera are the most essential things I carry besides my passport. I’m always looking for ways to get rid of things and downsize, even though I don’t have much to begin with. I see people traveling with these monstrous backpacks and just shake my head.

Were there ever moments along the journey where you literally asked yourself, Am I nuts? Do you ever question yourself along the way?

I question myself everyday; I wonder where my next creative idea will come from and if I’ll then be able to carry it out. Now I question myself less and less, but it also comes in waves; some weeks I don’t question myself as much but then others… it’s like my mind is relentless.

What words would you share with someone reading this, sitting in a cubicle, feeling unfulfilled and passionless?

You’re there because you put yourself there. And the only way out is to get yourself out.  At the end of the day, we are where we are because of the choices we have made. I hated my job more than anyone, but I’m grateful for that now, because that is what pushed me to learn all these new skills and change my life. Even when times are bad, I know that I’ve created those bad times. Once I took ownership for not just the good I created in my life, but also the bad, my whole perspective on what is possible in this life changed.

Do you ever get lonely, or break down emotionally?

I recently started getting lonely; it took about a year of traveling to feel lonely for the first time, which happened to be around the holidays. I was crossing Russia and China at the time and no one spoke English, so it was difficult to communicate. On top of all that, it was freezing cold — and I hate the cold. This is also when I had a bit of an emotional breakdown, because I had asked the girl I had been traveling with in Africa to meet me in Beijing, which was not far from her location at the time; when she said no and decided to fly back to Miami instead, that really hurt.

Do you have any moments where all doubt/insecurity is momentarily suspended?

I have a lot of those moments. I feel super-human at times and when I get into that groove, that’s really the reason why I am doing this — that feeling is better than anything else. If I could bottle it, I’d be financially secure. But on the flip side, there are many times each day when I question and doubt my self and my work. It’s a constant battle in my mind and I have to coach and train myself to rise above my doubts and to push on, no matter what.

Do you have any music or literature to keep you motivated on your journey?

When I travelled around the world 5 years ago, I ready about 10 books that really changed my life. This time I don’t seem to be reading as much, but my favorite is The Alchemist. I also read a lot of Eckhart Tolle and Dr. Wayne Dyer-type books, because they help keep me inspired and focused. I like the way Elizabeth Gilbert writes as well, so I am a big fan of her work. And I like The Artist’s Way by Julia Cameron.

What relationships have persisted throughout your travels?

The one with myself, and with God, which to me can be one and the same — not that I’m God, but that God lives inside all of us. At the end of the day, this all boils down to, How well do I want to get to know my true self and Do I really have a burning desire to do that?

How have your travels changed your perception of human nature and culture?

I think the news is often not telling the whole story, which is why I made one episode about all the dangers along my route in Africa. However, if I traveled based on the U.S. Department of State website, I would have not visited about 75% of the places I did. People have been nice, helpful and kind to me everywhere I’ve traveled. I’ve spent time learning about other religions and beliefs and that has really opened up my mind to views that are not necessarily my own.

Do you believe that life has a purpose?

I believe that the purpose of life is the purpose you give it. I don’t believe in the limitations of circumstances, but rather that anyone can do anything they want at any point in their life. There are people from disadvantaged backgrounds from all over the world that are living their dream, so what excuse do I have?  We can learn any skill we want and in turn, we can create any future we like.

Do you have any last message to depart our readers with?

I want to thank everyone that has joined my journey on social media, the comments, ‘likes’ and emails I get — during some tough times, they really makes all the difference for me.

You may also enjoy reading The Hidden Bias | Challenging Cultural Biases through Travel, by Fateme Banishoeib

The post Travel Tall | Heeding A Passion For Travel appeared first on BEST SELF.

Courageous, Outrageous, Contagious — get your spark of madness on and be a Holy Fool

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You’re only given a little spark of madness. You mustn’t lose it.

Robin Williams

April often arrives in light-hearted fare bringing practical jokes, hoaxes, and crazy pranks designed to bring forth big belly laughs — a certain lightness of being. April Fools’ Day inspires a form of madness; however, there’s another way to assure that you hold onto that spark — by becoming a Holy Fool!

Joseph Campbell said the Holy Fool is the most dangerous person on earth because s/he is willing to break from convention to take an action that is inspired from within. The Fool has no concern for naysayers and is not limited, stoppable, nor controllable. No one has power over the Fool. She is destined to answer the call, following it no matter what.

You may not have realized, but this issue of Best Self Magazine is full of Holy Fools, from Dr. Kelly Brogan on our cover, to Travel Tall’s Eric Guiliani and more. Holy Fools can be disruptive to mainstream conventions — agreed. But aren’t we all, on some level, waiting for some positive disruption – to step into the world and embrace our full power, to actualize what we came here to do in this lifetime?

I think of the Holy Fool as similar to the Court Jester, the only person in the Royal Court who dares to speak truth to the King without consequence.

Or the Koshari of the Hopi and Pueblo peoples of the Southwest, who in the midst of sacred ceremonies makes us laugh at ourselves by mimicking our behavior so we can see ourselves in a new way.

I’ve been the recipient of the untoward attentions of such “sacred clowns” while attending a Pueblo ceremony. Their role is to create lessons at the expense of another’s seriousness, recognizing that laughter is a great shape-shifter of old habits and patterns. I often wonder if the striped ceremonial dress of the Koshari isn’t designed to remind us of the need to break free from our self-imposed prisons. What would that look like to you?

What if you didn’t care what others think? What if you didn’t care what YOU think? What then would your heart call you to do? And how might you express your own spark of madness?

• Would you be the first to speak rather than waiting for affirmation that your listeners would agree?
• Would you sing with gusto, for example, all of the songs you know that have the word “blue” in them while waiting in line for a bus? (A friend and I once did that — it took folks about 15 minutes of self-conscious restraint before they joyfully joined in.)
• Would you voice a wildly unpopular opinion and kindle a new discussion?
• Would you show up at a public place with Laughter Yoga, free hugs or even a performance?
• Would you launch a new movement using social media and organize your own demonstration against injustice, corporate domination or nuclear power?

Any one of us can play a role in change. Do you think Rosa Parks knew what would happen when she refused to give up her seat on the bus? Did Rachel Carson know she would start a movement against pesticides when she wrote Silent Spring? Did the genius behind the documentary Blackfish know it would put SeaWorld under the scrutiny that would result in their decision to phase out the orca ‘entertainment’ and no longer breed killer whales? When Kris Carr decided to find her own way to live a crazy, sexy life with cancer, did she know that her experience navigating her own health would impact millions? Of course not. The beauty of the Holy Fool is that she will take that first step without being attached to outcome.

Perhaps the first step you take will be toward your own liberation. A friend who was a fool for love had experienced a devastating betrayal, yet instead of addressing it, she decided to take the high road and move on. On the exterior all appeared well; it seemed to work — on the interior it didn’t; things were awry and unresolved. Ultimately, she gave voice to her outrage through a well-penned letter, releasing herself from the wrenching hold of self-defeating messages like “you’re bigger than this; it doesn’t really matter; be a lady; take the high road.” The Holy Fool is not dismissive of emotional realities.

Taking the ‘high road’ for others can result in a detour from necessary and healing truth-telling.

There is a distinct nuance between outrage and anger. Psychologist Dr. Margaret Paul reminds us that outrage is far more therapeutic than anger. Outrage is the response to injustice with a desire for change, while anger is often utilized to remain immobilized in victimhood. Outrage comes from our essence to take loving action, while anger is an ego response that keeps us entrenched in blame and powerlessness.

So here’s my suggestion. This April, let’s consider engaging in a new dialogue, one that communes with our inner Holy Fool. Ask yourself what part of you most needs and desires to be expressed — convention be damned:

What is that inner truth of yours hidden from the light of day, duped by your self-abandonment as you try to fit in to what others expect?

Could you unleash your Holy Fool and reveal your greatest passions?

Your life is not a rehearsal for someday taking center stage for what matters most. Let’s be willing to say what we love and what we know, without editing and rehearsing ourselves into oblivion. Our world is changing, one voice at a time, and yours is needed. Speaking your truth, especially when convention is expected, opens the door to your liberation and the liberation of those around you. When we cease from masquerading and instigate our own Holy Fool action – we embody the change we wish to see in the world — one courageous, outrageous, and hopefully contagious action step at a time.

Go ahead. I dare you. Take that first bold step!

Forget safety.
Live where you fear to live.
Destroy your reputation.
Be notorious.

Rumi

Please join our Holy Fools Challenge and initiate one inspired action that your soul is calling you to carry out in support of something you are passionate about, for example: social justice, animals, the environment, peace, health, happiness, indigenous cultures, living a purposeful life, creating conscious business, the life you truly yearn for… the possibilities are endless. It doesn’t need to be extravagant or showy. It simply needs to come from your heart in response to something you are ready to take a bold step toward instigating or changing. It can be very personal or it can be global in scope.

You can enter here. And when you do, you’re an automatic winner of a $300 discount toward Transformational Speaking — Online! We’ll read what you’re doing, and one of you will win a full enrollment to the Online Academy to support you in aligning your full voice with the change you’re bringing to the world. 

Sage counsel from Holy Fools

When someone says, “Be more practical,” they are scared for you. You don’t really overcome fear, but you can develop a relationship with it and learn to contain it.
The bigger fear for me was not living my own life.

Chris Jordan

I knew I was the person to take on the Koch brothers to stop a pipeline on our organic farm. To keep going, I kept giving myself little dares. Taking the leap is a lot like planting a field. You keep working and never know if you’ll get a crop. I call that “engaged optimism.”

Atina Diffley

I get a physical response in my body when my intuition speaks. In the fast pace of the ER, I have to make space for peace and solitude. My mind and heart need to be quiet to really tune in and listen.

Sam Ko, MD.

When you choose to follow the urge of your Holy Fool, you initiate on an adventure.
Magic and synchronicity point the way.  You create your own rulebook.
I could never go back because I’m having so much fun!

Charles McAlpine

The ultimate revolutionary and dangerous act for our times is to be satisfied and happy. The moment you decide you’re happy and satisfied and you connect to the healthy foundations of your own self and your own wisdom and your own power, the game really opens to infinite possibilities. That’s super dangerous for this culture which is based on dissatisfaction in everything we do.

Manuel Maqueda

Omega Institute events this summer

You may also enjoy A Game of Half Life: Exploring Wholeness through Play by Andrea Yang

The post Holy Fool | The Power Of Purpose And Self-Expression appeared first on BEST SELF.

Unconditional love creates space for spontaneous healing of a life-long affliction

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I’ve never been one of those people.

I’m sure you’ve heard stories about people who are able to perceive the extra-ordinary; to ‘see and hear’ intelligences that are otherworldly and non-physical. They claim to communicate with a loved one passed, or hear messages from angelic realms, or see auras — to ‘just know’ things that are seemingly impossible for them to know. Things that defy logic and reason.

Though slightly envious of those people, prior to my own illness-induced foray into being an intuitive — I thought they were all totally nuts.

I envied them because they seemed to have the ability to believe with great conviction in something larger than themselves. It was as if they knew a secret the rest of the world had yet to discover, and knowing it was the key to their inner strength and serenity.

I compared that with the strict conservative religion I was taught I should believe in as a child, which made the gap inside me grow even wider. I longed to feel connected to a divine someone or something beyond myself. But try as I might, I never could. Religion felt punitive and the spiritual/esoteric realm seemed too ridiculous and sensational.

And then, I literally experienced a miracle — something so mind-blowingly powerful it couldn’t be dismissed as new-age nonsense or explained by traditional religion or debunked by rational thought.

I’ll defy my southern inclination to tell the long tale, and just give you the gist. In 2008, I was diagnosed with a debilitating, painful and chronic illness (stage 4 endometriosis that resulted in a full hysterectomy). My doctors said that surgery would make it better, so I tried it. It didn’t help. In fact, it got worse. So much worse, that over the next four years I went on to endure three more surgeries, each promising to ‘fix’ it. Nothing came close and I went from sick to — do you have a living will — kind of ill

My fourth surgery was hell on earth — it was the final straw that broke the camel’s back — and I snapped. I was failing to recover, fearing for my life, and filled with rage and resentment towards an aloof and uncaring God who abandoned me, despite a lifetime of trying to seek and please Him. “Well…” I thought, “Screw this!”

If I was going to die, I damn sure wanted to know why. Come hell or high water, every fiber of my being was committed to this end. I decided to pray and ask for… no, demand answers.

And that’s when things got weird.

The instant I made this declaration, as clear as a bell, I heard a voice from within me say, “Heather, you can accept what has happened to you with grace and dignity, or you can remain in your anger and bitterness for the rest of your days. Choose wisely.”

At the same time, I noticed a presence within me that I had never felt before — there watching, listening and waiting. It felt indescribably peaceful and full of love. In that moment, I knew no matter what happened to me, everything would be ok.

I also knew I had a serious choice to make. Anger or grace?

Overcome by a wave of relief, in releasing my unyielding resistance – I asked instead for unconditional love. I allowed myself to embrace the fullness of what this presence was offering me. I let go of everything, the questions of Why and Would I live another day. I even relinquished my insistence on being healed. And as I made peace with this Divine Presence, my body relaxed and I fell into a deep, restful and restorative sleep.

When I thought it couldn’t get any weirder, I woke up the next morning completely healed. No more pain or illness. ‘Spontaneous recovery’ is what they call it — when they have no other way of explaining it scientifically.

And not only that, I could still hear the voice! After months of devouring every esoteric and scientific book I could get my hands on, I discovered that this power and voice was actually my Higher Self; the Divine Presence (or call it God, whichever works for you) that resides within each and every human being, waiting to be realized. I also discovered I could hear this voice in and for other people, too. So, my life’s work as an intuitive guide and spiritual development coach unfolded organically from there.

As I reflect on my story, there are many things that could be said about it. But for me, the biggest epiphany is this:

I was wrong. I am one of those people. And so are you.

At any moment, each of us can tap into this power within ourselves. We are not terrestrial beings trying to find our way back to Divine Presence, but fully embodied and beautiful manifestations of it. We are not separate from this power — we are this power. You are your Higher Self here in physical form. And miracles happen the moment you have faith in and listen to the wisdom waiting within.

Ultimately, I believe true faith isn’t something that can be taught. Rather, it’s something you actively choose and experience. You find your own personal faith by making a commitment to enter into a relationship with your Higher Self and to seek it each and every day. No religion, dogma, creed or movement will ever be able tell you your truth or give you what you need. It’s not out there. It’s inside, and that’s where you’ve got to learn to look.

I know this seems to be a Herculean task in our stress-filled, fast-paced world. But it is much simpler than you might expect. Here are a few techniques to set you on your way:

• ACCEPT: Accept and love yourself without You don’t need to change yourself or be ‘perfect.’
• SLOW DOWN: Slow down, Turbo! Perpetual motion prevents you from being able to hear the messages. You’ve got to be able to breathe to take them in. Don’t miss them.
• OBSERVE STILLNESS: Learn how to listen to yourself. This is really what meditation is all about — cultivating the art of witnessing what’s going on within a framework of detachment. Out with the old and in with the new you.
• SEIZE JOY: Start having more fun! The natural by-product of fun is abundant joy and happiness. Alignment with your Higher Self is that gateway.

My hope is that my story moves you in some meaningful way to discover your truth and embrace your birthright to a fulfilling life that expresses the potential of your soul. Remember that within you lies all that you seek and an ever-present Higher Self. You are more powerful than you can possibly imagine — and never alone.

heatheraliceshea.com

You may also enjoy reading Interview: Kelly Brogan, MD | A Mind Of Your Own with Kristen Noel

The post From Illness to Healed | Self Healing Through Unconditional Love appeared first on BEST SELF.

A spiritual approach to living and living well, even with illness

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How can we move in the direction of healing ourselves? I believe that this is an essential question for anyone with a disease or illness to contemplate. And let’s face it, that is pretty much all of us. If you have not experienced your own health issues (lucky you!), then chances are good that you know someone who is going through or has gone through their own health challenges. My biggest health challenge started in 1990 when I was diagnosed with Inflammatory Bowel Disease (IBD). So began my life as an inpatient.

One of the mantras of IBD’s national health organization, CCFA (Crohn’s and Colitis Foundation of America) is, Hope for a cure. YES! Of course, I hope to one day see a cure for IBD, as well as many other illnesses. Lately though, my thinking is shifting. Is it really all about the cure? What about the journey of the healing?

After spending one year as a social work intern at one of New Jersey’s leading cancer centers, I had an ”a-ha” moment while I was trying to help clients. As I led one-on-one assessments to provide my social work services for patients with advanced cancer, I realized I was the one being helped.

I was finally beginning to see that healing is not synonymous with being cured.

One particular client stood out. As he tapped into his painting talents from high school, I watched in awe as he transformed from denial to acceptance and from panic to living in each moment. He became a joy to be around; his energy was bursting with life. Was he cured? No. Was he healed? I would say yes. He gave me one of his drawings. I framed it and will always cherish it as a lesson learned about the process of healing.

Ever wonder what it is like to witness someone transform in a health crisis, while you are in the midst of your own? If you are like me, you experiment and try things on for size. In 2013, I vowed to try anything and everything that would help in my own personal healing. To even have one pain-free day would be more than I hoped for or expected. I kept a blog, Seeking Wellness: A Year of Choices with Hope of Restored Health. What I discovered about myself was that I was evolving into an open-minded skeptic.

In that year, I had many adventures. I got dehydrated in a human sweatbox while testing out Ayurvedic treatments; I was zapped while I used my cell phone on a Raymond Royal Rife machine; I tried to take selfies of my hands unsuccessfully during an acupuncture session (ouch); and I learned how to be serious during tree pose in yoga without bursting into the song, Let It Grow from Dr. Seuss’ “The Lorax” movie. As I opened up my mind to new treatments, something was happening to me. I became lighter. Well, not weight-wise lighter, and not lighter in my choice of clothes (I do have a tendency to wear all black), but I felt playful, and I was not taking myself as seriously anymore.

I was smiling more. Dare I admit that I was changing? Laughing more and with that, evolving. This Type A was becoming less hard on herself.

I was having so much fun learning all of these new healing modalities that I did not stop after that first year of seeking. I like to say I am still a work in progress, but I’m happy to report that progress has been made.

So, did these new modalities help me physically? Am I cured? Given that I am typing this article from a hospital bed, I guess the answer has to be no. Am I healed? Let’s just say I am definitely a lot further along on the path of becoming Maslow’s definition of a self-actualized person than I have ever been before. I am learning how to love myself, to forgive in the truest sense, and to step forward into the future as the ”best self” I can be. And I have learned to appreciate the profound wisdom put forth by my beloved Doctor Seuss: “Today you are You, that is truer than true. There is no one alive who is Youer than You.”

Follow Sharon on Facebook

You may also enjoy reading What Not to Say to Someone Living with Chronic Illness by Sweta Vikram

The post Healing vs. Cured | Living With Illness appeared first on BEST SELF.

Self-love is the key to true emotional and physical healing

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Have you ever wondered why some people succeed at healing and others don’t? Do you worry that your body is going to break down and turn against you? When it comes to your health, do you believe that you have control or are you destined to just take your chances with a spin of the terminal-illness roulette wheel?

These questions have been the driving force of my adult life and have allowed me to connect with the ultimate source of all healing: the mystical, spiritual divine energy in our hearts where the healing of physical pain and illness occurs.

When it comes to healing yourself, what I’ve come to know for sure is that there is a difference between trying to think and affirm your way out of pain and illness and connecting straight to the Divine Source. There is a way to align your heart, your body, and your soul with deep truth, healing, and love. In this space, there is nothing you need to do to heal yourself. No chakras to fix, no reiki to do, just the ability to allow God to fill every cell of your being with more of itself — with pure love.

For years I struggled with this truth. I would go back and forth between loving God and hating God. Loving how divine I felt when I allowed myself to receive love and then hating God for keeping me addicted to this flow of divinity. I struggled with my ”one-ness” as I took refuge in my divinity closet. I was afraid to let anyone know that I was wholeheartedly consumed and in love with God. Not the God of churches and religion, but the God within myself — the holy spirit — an essence that permeated every single aspect of life and every moment of my day.

Accepting the role of God in my life has been a journey filled with confusion, bargaining, and fear — as well as amazing opportunities.

Early on, I gave lectures and workshops advertised as Ayurveda wellness. I ran a wellness center and led writing and healing sessions. From time to time, God would attempt to implant his healing wisdom through me, into the people who came to me. But people hadn’t come for that. They didn’t come to me for wisdom. People just wanted a ”healthier pill.”

I felt trapped. In the safe hidden spaces of my soul I knew I could let the voice of love out and relish in the peace I felt in the stillness. But most of the time I hid my truth from the rest of the world. When I left the private, safe comfort of my meditation space I felt like I had to be a different person out in the world. I could not find the words to explain what I felt, saw, and heard because I was convinced people would think I was crazy. So I kept my spiritual life a secret.

I remembered being judged by a colleague several years back. At the time, I wanted desperately to fit in, to be like everyone else. I was so anxious to be in control and to achieve in the eyes of the outside world that I was willing to go against my self and my inner wisdom. God was offering me undying love, light, and acceptance — release from every anger, fear, and resentment I had created in my mind and body — but I chose to hide this gift from the world. That, my friends, is the kind of choice that creates pain and illness in your body. That is a decision that leads to addictions in order to hide, muffle, and repress what we know to be true within ourselves and the rest of the world.

So there I was, carrying my secret in a gathering of my ”healing touch” friends — a small group of women who got together periodically to support each another as we pursued our healing touch studies. One of the women whom I hadn’t seen in almost two years was seated next to me at the table. She looked down at my arm and saw a yellow bracelet adorning my wrist. I had purchased several of them from a scholarship fundraiser in honor of one of my fellow Unity prayer chaplains who had passed away. I had saved one as a healing reminder for myself that said:

“The Kingdom of God Is Within – Luke 17:21.” My friend touched my bracelet and said, “What? Are you all religious now?”

I was crushed; my heart was broken. I felt so judged and so misunderstood. I decided in that moment to deny my love affair with the divine in the hope that it would help me fit in, so I replied, “Oh, no…it’s just a fundraiser for a friend that died of cancer.” Like Judas, I publicly and completely denied my truth.

It would be 10 more years that I lived in denial. In private, I would honor my love of God and spirit in my heart and soul; in public, I would live separated from my truth. Looking back, I can see the silly irony in this… I wanted to be unhappy, to be stressed and scared and worried… that was what my mother had taught me was normal. Don’t make waves. It‘s better to just fit in.

During this period of separation, I experienced the physical manifestation of this unhappiness through a stiff, tight neck and shoulders and a constant feeling of tension in my left side. I was diagnosed with fibromyalgia, put into a wheelchair, and told by my doctors that I wouldn’t walk again. Today I walk pain free.

For years, people have asked me how I got out of my wheelchair. What medicine did I take, what therapy did I follow? I kept asking myself, “How do I tell people that what healed me was love, what healed me was God”?

It’s too easy. Or is it too hard? They want medicine. They want the answer to be outside themselves — outside of their control. How do I tell people that aligning with divinity is what healed my physical body?

I realize now that despite medical terminology, I was not experiencing a true physical illness. My pain had become an energetic pattern, a way of holding my body in order to stay in a state of resistance. This is how we create illness. When it becomes too painful to resist any longer, eventually we have to choose. This is the free will that everyone talks about.

True free will is not about whom you choose to marry, what career path you take, or what country you choose to live in. It’s whether or not you choose to say yes to your divinity.

Ultimately, I chose love. I chose to allow myself to be a vessel and reflection for the divine in all its forms. I allowed the divine mystic in me to take center stage. I allowed the light of my calling to shine so that others could see that reflection for themselves and create their own safe haven for healing. That choice created a shift in the consciousness of every cell in my body. As I allowed my body to align with the consciousness of God, of creation and creator, I no longer embraced illness or disease… only love.

MarthaBlessing.com

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The post Healing Yourself: Spiritual Doctoring 101 appeared first on BEST SELF.

Tapping into the hidden power of fear

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We all want change and forward movement, yet we simultaneously seem to fear and resist it. This is evident in the myriad New Year’s resolutions that are made and rarely followed through to completion. Why does this happen? Why do we resist true and lasting change? Self-sabotage and lack of follow-through certainly play their part, as does deferring to what we call our ”higher priorities.” Whatever excuse we may call forth, the fact remains that we won’t achieve the change we are seeking unless we take a deeper look at the parts of ourselves that resist transformation.

One thing we know for certain is that real change beckons us to leave our comfort zones. It is precisely because of this comfort that we are so reluctant to consistently follow through with what is needed to enact the changes we want to make. Many would say that one of the main reasons we don’t want to stray from such comfort is because of our fear of the unknown. I would say that we don’t really fear the unknown so much as we fear the known coming to an end. Take a moment to sit with that idea. For most people, wading through the mystery of the unknown doesn’t feel safe; it seems to go against our instinct of self-preservation. I think this is actually a byproduct of our conditioning — the things we have been taught to fear or learned to fear through our experience. We have been conditioned to fear feeling or looking stupid, to fear failure or being ostracized by our peers or those we love.

Most of these fears don’t even make logical sense when we think about them. They are an outgrowth of the two basic needs we have as children: to feel safe and to feel wanted. When these needs become compromised, we exert the adult behaviors of control and acceptance. We endeavor to control others, our environment, or ourselves while also seeking acceptance from others through our actions or behaviors. These modes of behavior are at the root of our fear of change, which is really just a safety issue. Instead of taking a risk, going out on a limb, or stepping out of our comfort zone, we end up stagnating, procrastinating, and failing to follow through. This often leads us to experience anger and frustration.

Although we generally attribute negative connotations to anger and frustration, these emotions can actually be our greatest harbingers of clarity.

Anger shows us precisely where we want to feel empowered in our lives. Frustration, an aspect of anger, is generally preceded by feelings of helplessness and/or hopelessness, the foundation of our tendency to procrastinate. Procrastination has three main causes: 1) an unclear vision; 2) a clunky vision; and 3) vision that is not in alignment with our highest values. So where does anger come in? It can help us see where we want to feel empowered in our lives. We can use it to gain clarity instead of using it as fuel for discouragement and self-sabotage.

It is important to ask yourself: What is it I truly want from this vision? How do I want to feel upon attaining this? What could the possibilities look like? Allow yourself to really ponder these questions. If you find your vision is clunky, how can you take this now- clarified vision and break it up into smaller, more achievable steps? Keep it simple. An important first step is to make a list of all the things that are needed to make this vision a reality. This may start off simply by doing some research, making some phone calls, or gathering specific resources and then breaking up the steps necessary to begin to put all of those separate pieces together. Lastly, if the change or transformation you are looking to accomplish is not in alignment with your highest values, that is when you end up doing things that we label ”higher priorities.” Most times, this is simply because we are unable to see how the change we seek would fulfill these values.

So how do we determine what our highest values are? We can determine these by asking ourselves some very clear questions. Take a moment to write these questions down on a separate sheet of paper and answer them honestly and thoroughly. Go back and circle the answers that are repeated most often – these are your highest values in this moment and what will feel like your purpose. When you can clearly identify these, that is when you can begin to link your vision to those values and clearly see how your vision will fulfill them.

11 questions that can help determine your highest values:

1. What do you fill your physical space with – when you look at your personal space at home or in your office, what is there?
2. How do you spend your time?
3. How do you spend your energy?
4. What do you spend your money on beyond set monthly expenses?
5. Where are you most organized and ordered?
6. Where are you most disciplined and reliable?
7. What do you think about or focus on most?
8. What do you envision or dream most about?
9. What do you find yourself often talking about?
10. What are you most inspired about?
11. Toward what do you set goals?

Now that you have a clearer idea of what you value, you can focus on aligning your vision and personal goals with those values. Discard your conditioned patterns of procrastination to create the transformation you desire. Change happens when we are willing to walk through our resistance with courage and wisdom instead of succumbing to fear and doubt. Go ahead – use your fear for good!

Learn more at www.lawofreflections.com

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The post Why Are We So Afraid Of Fear? appeared first on BEST SELF.

Time to reflect, time to heal, release and redirect our energies

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As we approach the conclusion of another year, it’s a great opportunity to reflect. As a life coach and lover of understanding myself, I do this often. But there is something special about this time of the year. It’s the perfect time to really dig deep, to ponder the areas where we feel stuck, think about habits we wish to release, and contemplate the things that no longer serve us. It’s the perfect time to heal.

I am convinced that there are two necessary processes we must go through in order to heal. First, we must change the way we think about ourselves, and second, we must look at our supposed negative habitual behaviors with kindness and compassion.

The first major thing to consider when trying to heal yourself is that it is extremely difficult to make lasting changes if you don’t stop the negative self-talk.

You’ll never be able to hate yourself skinny, doubt yourself into trying new things, or be angry enough to get healthy.

We must love ourselves, encourage ourselves, and believe in ourselves in order to feel better. It is only then that we can move forward and evolve from a positive place.

Many people think if they resist their issues just the right amount, they will find motivation to change. They set the intention to eat healthier, exercise five days a week, quit smoking, date more, be kinder to loved ones… insert your goal here. After a week or two, they completely give up because they think they have already failed, they lose interest, or they just plain forget.

This is the perfect ammunition to feel worse than when you started because once again you’ve tried and failed. Like many other things in life, it is very easy to turn what started out as a good intention into another reason to beat yourself up. Sound familiar? You aren’t alone.

Next time you decide to embark on a quest for positive action, try this: fuel yourself with good thoughts and feelings. Lasting motivation comes from feeling good, and feeling good comes from thoughts that serve you in a positive way.

Hating yourself will never help you in the long term.

Another place people also frequently get stuck is in disdain for those habits we label as bad. What most folks don’t realize is that those issues we view as problems or weaknesses actually do serve us in ways in which we may not always completely understand. Until we can find understanding, appreciation, and acceptance of these habits, it’s extremely difficult to let them go. This is why contemplating where our habits come from, and looking for the good, can be a very eye-opening experience.

I used to suffer from anxiety while driving on expressways. It wasn’t until I stopped fighting it (hating it and trying to overcome it with breathing exercises, listening to relaxing music, etc.), that it seemed to disappear into thin air. One day I realized I had developed this anxiety because I was afraid of being hurt by dangerous drivers, and the possibility of hurting others as well. I was just trying to protect myself and the people around me…how nice is that?! Once I realized this, I was able to accept it and even like it a little. And then, poof, I was ready to let it go with complete ease.

Maybe your fear of social situations is just you trying to avoid feeling uncomfortable. Your lack of drive to look for a new job could possibly be you trying to protect yourself from potential rejection. Maybe you don’t date for that same reason too, and your resistance to exercise is your way of avoiding negative comparison to others. Your habit of snapping at those you love could be your way of keeping people at a distance so they can’t hurt you. Maybe overeating and shopping allow you to numb out so you can avoid thinking about the things in your life you find unsettling.

Just because you have been a certain way for a long time doesn’t mean you have to be that way forever.

When we change our perspective and understand how we regularly develop patterns in order to comfort ourselves, it often loosens the grip and gives us wiggle room for positive growth. The reality is, we are all just trying to take care of ourselves, although sometimes we have a funny way of doing so. Once you understand that we are all works in progress and evolving regularly, you give yourself the space to grow.

Every day is a new opportunity for change. Every day is a new opportunity to love yourself a little more. Every day is a new opportunity to accept yourself as you are, no matter what. Every day is a new opportunity to reflect and contemplate the things you want to work on. Every day is a new opportunity to work on those things, and to be okay with sometimes slipping up. Every day is a new opportunity to realize perfection is an illusion, and you are perfectly imperfect. Every day is a new opportunity to know you are doing the best you can, and that is good enough.

Melanierudnick.com

You may also enjoy reading New Year, New Opportunity to Develop Responsible Financial Habits by Kristen Baker

The post Reflection Time appeared first on BEST SELF.

A lifetime of questions answered in a single realization… a love story about gender recognition

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In early spring of this past year, I found myself on a precipice. I was painfully aware of the inner turmoil that was gripping me with increasing force, and was at a complete loss as to any solutions. It had been years since the last time I’d felt so hopeless, but this time a few significant differences prevented me from allowing the same degree of self-destruction to ensue. Since discovering that I was HIV positive, I’d settled into an entirely new life and paradigm in New York City while rehabilitating from a dangerous drug addiction. I was immersed in a supportive community that revolved around holistic wellness, and among people who exalted me within it. I’d developed more or less of a persona, a brand even, wherein the Bearded Yogi could facilitate Karma Yoga, a philosophy and lifestyle that was becoming my life’s work.

The happier it seemed I ought to have been on the surface, the more potent my anguish would become.

All I knew for sure was that expressing my authentic feelings was a priority no matter what, and that whatever happened, I was committed to sharing the true journey with my friends and family through the words and images I began to publish on my personal website.

This commitment led me to take the first steps toward what I call the “Pilgrimage of Divine Love.” I had come too far in life to ignore the signs that were surfacing. It was once again time for a great shift in direction. I was caught up in the daily grind of surviving in New York City, while trying to access the means to continue down a more fulfilling path of synthesizing my passions for philanthropy, yoga, connection, and active service. Simultaneously, my own deep stuff was continually rising up, and as I participated in self-work and sought the guidance of various healers and teachers over the years, I dug deeper into the meat, the ugly stuff that we’d rather not look at or feel, and eventually the perfect storm had manifested itself to once again knock me off course. Or onto my true course, as it turns out.

My decision to go spend a few months in the Bahamas this spring and summer stemmed from my connection to the Sivananda Yoga Ashram, where several years prior I’d already spent two years and left with a certificate to teach yoga in hand. I needed a safe and quiet space to go inward. I sensed the great importance of finding such an environment, and this was the ideal place. I took my camera and my notebooks, my meditation cushion and my tent, and I knew that I would return a different person. I had no idea just how different…

While at the ashram, I examined my entire life. I turned toward the painful memories instead of away from them, and I shone a spotlight on the darkest, dimmest corners of my consciousness. Day by day, I wrote in my journal and made a great effort to care lovingly for myself amid a rigorous schedule of yoga and meditation. Slowly, layer after layer of the persona I’d created to wear as a protective shell shed itself to reveal a vulnerable but strong inner child who’d been clamoring to be heard and seen my whole life, and who I’d spent so much valuable energy ignoring, out of fear.

As I became acquainted with this inner being, the true me, I understood that she has always been a woman.

The magnitude of that moment of realization, that I am in fact a trans woman and have been all along, is impossible to describe. The difference between every moment leading up to it, and every moment afterward, is immense and undeniable. The vague sense of disconnection with myself I’d always felt but never quite identified was in glaring opposition to the sudden wholeness that replaced it, as if fissures had been filled in and sealed at last. All of the experiences I’d unearthed from my childhood memories while at the ashram no longer held the degree of power over me they had previously. Released from their grip, I had come full circle through my devotion to complete surrender throughout this process. At long last, I allowed my true self to blossom as I’d always sensed possible yet never quite grasped how to enact.

The most exciting thing about all this, is that it’s only the beginning. The wholeness I’d been seeking for so long, and the self-love and self-acceptance I’d spent years craving are now newly integrated into my being, and fill me with a fresh sense of awareness about everything. Seeing the world through the eyes of a trans woman informs each moment in an entirely different way. The hormones I’ve started taking have filled my body with a sense of fullness and ease that is both unfamiliar after a lifetime of running and hiding from myself, and more familiar than anything else I’ve ever experienced.

And my biggest feeling of gratitude is for being able to share this journey with you. The “Pilgrimage of Divine Love” is simply my own name for a model of living in which we listen to the signals life whispers to us as we go about our days and accept the challenges we are handed — to face fearlessly our deepest insecurities when we are given the opportunity to do so. In my opinion, it is only in this way that we merge with Divine Love, the divine love within that we can’t go without.

 JaseCannon.com

You may also enjoy reading Desire to Heal by Jase Cannon

The post Gender Transformation | A Pilgrimage of Divine Love appeared first on BEST SELF.

Finding your inner truth and purpose requires listening to your intuition, and often taking a leap of faith

—

For a long time, I was haunted by this question:

 What’s my purpose in life?

My biggest fear was that I was missing the boat.

I’d spent my teenage years as a professional actress, a childhood dream come true.

But, then — moving against my deepest desires during college — I agreed to attend medical school. Mentors and extended family members enthusiastically encouraged this choice and yet, a voice inside kept whispering, then speaking, then screaming, “I don’t want to be a doctor!”  For the first time in my life, fear won a massive victory: I decided to follow these well-intentioned voices of reason, rather than my own inner Truth.

So, I turned down the opportunity to attend Oxford University to receive a Masters in Public Health. Turned down my inner child asking to work and serve around the globe — as I’d spent the prior few years doing (everywhere from Southern Africa to the Thai/Burma border and the Amazon of Peru). And left behind the creative and spiritual practices that fed my soul to enter the confines of a hospital.

Part of this, I think, came from my childhood. I’d grown up in a family with lots of love and adventure (we moved all around the United States by the time I was 15) and yet, money had always been in short supply. My mom and I sometimes shared a bedroom and, when I was an infant, we’d slept in our car. When others began to advise me how I could live without such financial stress, I was eager to believe them. 

As much as I wanted to follow my dreams, I also knew I didn’t want to end up poor.

Sadly, even though my inner Truth had guided me toward my bliss and my purpose for years, when it came to my career, I no longer had the courage to honor this truth, in the face of reasonable advice from “wise elders.”

I entered medical school and, unlike my peers — who seemed eager and joyful at our white coat ceremony — I felt a growing sense of dread. In anatomy lab and biochemistry class, I felt out of place and trapped, but I buried these under the mounting workload.

Self-betrayal is a funny thing — it starts off heart-wrenching, but becomes more habitual as time goes on.

It doesn’t become easier, exactly, but we can learn to numb our regret until a crisis makes us look at her head-on.

As we entered clinical years, the hours I needed to spend in the hospital increased greatly to 12-24 hour shifts — and I was expected to spend most of the remaining hours in my day learning about ear infections or antibiotics.

At heart, I have always been a mystic, a world-traveler — a hard worker, yes, with a Capricorn sun sign, but Sagittarius and other free-spirited, fiery, spiritually-seeking signs rule my chart. During these long years of medical school, I longed to read Rumi, Sharon Salzberg, and Mary Oliver, not memorize the minute differences between bacterial strains or a dizzying array of medications.

Finally, towards the end of my third year, I felt like I would burst. After a day when I thought I’d never be released from the hospital, amidst of a week of bad events, I stood at my 10^th story window, teetering on the ledge, longing to jump.  The sorrow of ignoring my Truth had grown so strong that it would no longer be ignored.

It was then I fully understood the fiery truth behind this quote:

If you bring forth what is within you, what you bring forth will save you. If you do not bring forth what is within you, what you do not bring forth will destroy you.

— Gospel of Thomas

Several months earlier, I’d started to sense that something creative wanted to come through me. It was as though I was pregnant with a project that was gestating inside me. Months before, I felt like I was entering the third trimester. However, with the intense demands on my schedule, I ignored this inner knowing. Ignored the feeling that something needed to be born. I kept plowing ahead, until one day what I didn’t bring forth nearly destroyed me. Now, I was crowning, with all of the fiery pain that comes with birth, and this baby needed to be born.

And so, stepping down from this ledge, I knew what I needed to do. I decided to take several weeks off medical school. Each day, I would head to my neighborhood cafe, and try to station myself in the corner, with my back resting comfortably against the wall. Using exercises from “Marry Your Muse” — I began writing and writing and writing. Over the next few weeks, I wrote nearly 200 single-spaced pages — the raw Truth of my soul scrawled in neat lines across my computer screen. As I brought forth what was within me, she saved me. And, with this and the support of my wonderful friends, I slowly came back to life.

The irony is that — while I’m so glad I didn’t jump — I knew it was time to take a big leap: I needed to live my Truth in all areas of my life.

I’d long been lying to myself and others about what I truly wanted to do and who I truly was:  it was time to own all of this, all of ME, in my messy and wounded glory.  As I brought forth this Truth, I also became clear that I was supposed to finish medical school.

And, a funny thing happened: As I started to live and speak my Truth, I came to realize that I’d known my purpose all along. As a child, I sometimes said the meaning of life was to be happy and help others do the same. By the time I entered college, I’d already read dozens of spiritual, self-help, and personal development books by everyone from Deepak Chopra to Pema Chodron, Steven Covey to Wayne Dyer. Under the “objective” line on my CV, I’d long included the line “create projects that inform, enlighten, and inspire.” And, when an advisor had asked me years before, I told him I wanted to write; he told me writing was an “avocation” not a vocation, and promptly suggested I find another way to make a living.

What he didn’t know was that I was speaking to him directly from my soul’s purpose, which is to awaken and help others do the same. When we speak of our personal legend from this place of inner knowing, only the Truth in her raw glory will set us free.

In a research year, then my last year of medical school, I began to listen to the yearnings of my soul — which steadily grew clearer as I agreed to listen and act upon them. During my free evenings, I began attending teachings of the many meditation and spiritual thought leaders who come through New York City. Working with a mentor, I completed an elective in the science of meditation, where my spiritual seeker and inner nerd finally reunited. I continued writing, and started publishing blogs in the Huffington Post and other outlets. When a creative, meditating cardiologist invited me to serve on his project in India, I leapt at the opportunity, and soon found myself on a pilgrimage to humanity’s large gathering — Kumbh Mela, where over 50 million (yes, million!) people gather on the most sacred days to bathe in the holy Ganges River, with the hopes of purifying their karma.

As medical school came to a close, I was certain I didn’t want to enter residency the following year. My last elective was a month-long rotation in the medical unit at ABC News, which I absolutely loved.  Roaming the sets of shows like Good Morning America, writing scripts that appeared on national television, and bumping into Diane Sawyer in the hallway were the stuff of my dreams. My last week, I met with my boss and asked if he knew anyone in HR. He promptly announced that he had just gotten approval for a new position in the medical unit, and basically offered me a job on the spot. The position was set to begin 3 days after I graduated med school, but he let me take a week off before beginning.

Mythologist Joseph Campbell famously said, “Follow your bliss, and the Universe will open doors where there were only walls.”

Stepping into my new soul-directed life, I see his words coming to life in dramatic ways. Now, 6 months post-graduation, I am working as a medical journalist at ABC News, where I also teach my colleagues to meditate and am organizing a health and wellness speaker series. I am travelling internationally to teach mindfulness and neuroscience in hospitals and schools, and creating a digital series called “Anatomy of a Calling” (about finding a life at the intersection of passion and purpose).

This all seems like another dream come true – and I guess it is, but first I had to find my way out of the nightmare.  The secret was simple: Learn to hear and honor my deepest Truth, no matter the fear, no matter the cost. Listening to her guidance, I’m now in a position where I can fly!

And the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom.

~ Anais Nin

3 Minute Meditation video: 

[Editor’s Note: Jamie lost her life on 10/12/2015. She packed a great deal into her short 31 years and touched the lives of many. She will be deeply missed; however, her legacy and footprint remain as testament to what is possible. We are grateful she crossed our Best Self path. RIP. Learn more of Jamie on this Facebook page.]

You may also enjoy Interview: Brendon Burchard | Live, Love, Matter with Kristen Noel

The post Which Way? Finding Your Inner Truth And Purpose appeared first on BEST SELF.

The desire to leave my day job was just a scary little spark back in August 2012…

—

On a walk in Melbourne, Australia, my close friend — the President of Hay House and this month’s Best Self cover boy — Reid Tracy said to me, “It’s not about your indispensability at work. It’s about your irreplaceability as a human.” Whoa. He was right. It’s about who I am, not what I do. I had been living in a long-running story that everyone loved me because of what I did for them, when in fact they all loved me for just being me!

That right there was a straight-up master class on business with soul and the soul of business. Not to mention worthiness!

I was the Event Director at Hay House for 12 years. It was my dream job until I began craving the opportunity to use my own personal experience and more of my gifts ¬in another capacity to help others. I wanted to be a coach, an author, a speaker, a teacher.

There was one problem: I had long been tied to the belief that I had to be “Super Woman” in order to “earn” my worth.

If I were working for myself, how worthy could I possibly be? Would my beloved friends in the Hay House family still love me if I no longer performed for them as I had done for so many years? Not to mention all the “what ifs” that came into my head. “What if I fall flat on my face?” “What if I end up without a job or a career?”

Buoyed by my underlying commitment to being indispensable, I developed excuses to stay in the job, and thus stay safe. “I can’t make a living only as an author, speaker, and coach,” I told myself. My beliefs, excuses, and commitments were holding me back.

It really took me some time to understand that I’m not loved for what I do. I’m truly loved — by both my family of friends at Hay House and the people I know outside of work — for who I am. To them, my worth is unconditional.

Reid has always been my greatest cheerleader and most trusted advisor, so when I finally told him I wanted to quit my job and he said, “I’ll tell you when you can quit,” I listened. “Stay here a little longer and use the time to build your platform,” he advised. “That way you’ll have a firm foundation under you when you leave.”

He was right. By “platform,” Reid meant working on my “side hustle” — building my coaching practice and online presence, publishing my book, getting some speaking engagements — to be solid enough to make it without the full-time job.

I spent over a year doing that while still working at Hay House, and I loved it. Clearly, my “side job” was what I was meant to do. During that time, I also focused on strengthening my self-worth.

It was only by becoming willing to be worthy of the life I wanted that I was able to finally go out into the world, on my own as me, full time.

In the interest of full disclosure, Reid had to give me a little push. “It’s time for you to go,” he said one day on the phone, not long after delivering the huge news that Hay House wanted to pick up my self-published book Jump… And Your Life Will Appear. My fears were still a bit in my way, even after I had created a strong enough platform for myself. In fact, the first thing I said to him was, “You’re firing me?!” Good thing my sense of worthiness was strong enough by then to say yes to fully immersing myself in coaching, writing, speaking, teaching — to serving from front and center instead of from backstage. Good thing I had the courage to jump!

It was time to raise my havingness level. In order to have more, we have to change our thinking, behaviors, and habits related to self-worth — little by little. As we do that, we can continue to increase our “worth threshold.” By that, I mean what we’ll allow ourselves to receive more and more.

Our self-worth beliefs — that we have always thought of as fact — will determine how much we let ourselves have. We can inch past our current threshold of what we’re willing to have by catching ourselves when we perpetuate patterns and behaviors of low self-worth.

Here are some strategies for increasing that worth threshold:

Positive Self-Talk.

Listen for self-judgments, and replace them with nurturing self-talk. “I can’t believe I could be so stupid” becomes “I did the best I could. It’s safe to be imperfect. Nobody else is perfect either. I love myself anyway.”

When my critical voice starts to shout, I say, “Oh, here you are again. I’ve been expecting you, and I’m going to turn your volume down now.

We’re not doing that anymore.” When you practice nurturing, loving self-talk, you can more easily elicit compassion for yourself by talking to the small child within. How can you beat up on yourself if you’re relating to your young, vulnerable self? And in truth, the part of you that feels stupid really is that young, vulnerable child.

Stop Yourself.

One of the best strategies to stop poor self-worth habits in their tracks is moment-to-moment awareness and mindfulness. Once you become mindful of behaviors and patterns that aren’t in keeping with the self-worth you desire, you can begin to catch yourself in the act. For example, the next time you put everyone else’s needs ahead of your own, you can stop and ask yourself what you want. The next time you tell yourself “I can’t,” you can say, “Wait a minute. Is it true that I can’t? What do I really want here? If I want this, what’s holding me back? What am I really afraid of? Can I talk myself down from my fears and still go after what I want?

Look Around You.

Your outer life is a reflection of the state of your inner self-worth. So look around. Does your environment reflect someone with the high self-worth you’re after? If not, how can you change your environment to be closer to what you deserve? Now, I’m aware that you may not necessarily be able to go out and buy a beautiful home tomorrow. You might need to do some real work on your self-worth before you could make that happen. But you can make small changes in the interim. It might be as simple as cleaning more often. Finally fix something you’ve let go for a long time. Spruce the place up in whatever ways you can. As your self-worth increases, so will your net worth.

Bragging Rights.

Get yourself a “boasting buddy,” and share your successes without shame. It’s important to have people in your life who are happy for you when good things happen. We have a fear that others will feel jealous, but if they do, that’s their issue to resolve. Some people even try to bring us down when we experience something great. It’s their own lack of self-worth at play, though, so feel compassion for them, if you can.

Then, when you find yourself feeling jealous of others, remind yourself that if they can do it, so can you.

Their success is only an indication that it can be done. You aren’t excluded from that success unless you allow yourself to be.

Your Own Personal Cheerleader.

Besides a “boasting buddy,” ask that friend (or someone else) to be your personal cheerleader. Then, offer to reciprocate. In this role, you and your friend will give each other self-worth pep talks when you find that you’re getting down on yourselves. Give each other reality checks about self-judgments. Encourage each other to step past your fears and go for what you desire. Hold each other accountable for any action steps you set. Just make a rule that no negativity is allowed, and any pushing toward your goals should be gentle, not forceful.

Find a Community.

The main reason I started my coaching groups is so that everyone could cheer each other on with unconditional love and support. It has turned out to be more powerful than my wildest dreams. Everyone helps each other in unbelievable ways. We soothe one another during the hard times and pat each other on the back when something goes well. If you can find such a community, you’ll be amazed at the results. If you can’t find one, create one — either to meet in person or online. Once again, just have a rule in place that no negativity is allowed!

Yes, it takes work to get past the programming of our childhoods. But it isn’t a burden. It’s something to cherish and relish. As adults, we have a wonderful opportunity.

We can choose to base our identities on who we truly are inside — the personality, the essence we came into this life with.

This is who you were before you were imprinted with anybody else’s opinions — imperfect, human, thoroughly beautiful, and oh so worthy. Trust me: There’s so much more possible for you than you know! Self-worth is the key. Turn that key in the lock, and open the door. The life you most desire is waiting.

nancylevin.com

You may also enjoy Issue 12: Nancy Levin | #Worthy with Kristen Noel

The post Willing to Be Worthy appeared first on BEST SELF.

I didn’t know I was an entrepreneur, I just knew I wanted to love my career…

—

As a little girl I used to imagine myself as an adult. I imagined life as a marine biologist, swimming with whales and befriending dolphins. I saw myself as a psychologist with my own private practice in Santa Barbara. I smiled at the thought of writing advertisements for a hip company in Manhattan (with sassy heels and power suit to go with my fancy corner office… obviously!).

A career could be so cool, right?

The Big Hoax

But here I was, years out of college, settled into full-time job as an executive assistant at a nonprofit organization for $12 an hour, wondering, “Is this it?”

This is why I studied hard to get good grades in school? This is why I took on a mountain of student-loan debt? This is why I’ve continued to do the “responsible” thing — so I could spend the majority of my waking life at a job that I feel lukewarm about at best? So I could wriggle myself into a box of a job description that’s two sizes too small, and the leftover scraps at the end of the day are where my life squeezes into the picture?

I started to wonder if this whole 9-to-5, give-your-life-away-in-exchange-for-a-paycheck, hamster-wheel rigmarole was, well, a hoax.

         hoax |hōks|

         noun: a humorous or malicious deception

There had to be another way to do this thing.

I had to believe that a career could be more of a playground than a prison… one where we get to make up our own rules. Play with whom we want to play with. Create our own game from scratch. Invent our life around what brings us joy.

Doesn’t it just make sense to design our work around our greatest gifts and our truest self-expression? Wouldn’t we naturally contribute what we’re great at and make a difference in the world doing what we do best? Wouldn’t we just be better people?

Yes! A career could be SO cool!

Bankruptcy and Birds

And so I leapt. I up and quit my job to start my own energy-healing practice. Only problem is, when it came to business, I didn’t know what I didn’t know. I got an office and some clients, but it wasn’t enough. I started falling behind on bills, which turned into falling behind on mortgage payments. I was steadily sinking toward bankruptcy and foreclosure.

I remember one particular day when I was at the lowest point of my low. I was walking to the café around the corner, counting my change to see if I could afford a cup of coffee and trying to ignore my ringing cell phone, which I knew was a bill collector.

It was one of those something-has-got-to-give moments.

All I wanted was to be able to do what I was uniquely good at — what I enjoyed — and to be able to support myself in return. Was that too much to ask?

Tears started burning the inside of my eyes and suddenly, in this desperate moment, I became totally present. I felt my feet as they hit the concrete with each step. I felt the sun on my face. I looked up and saw a couple birds flying overhead in the bright blue sky. And, it occurred to me…

The birds weren’t stressed out. They were just existing. Maybe that’s what’s natural. What if life were actually… simple? What if this life I’ve carved out for myself, with all the obstacles and struggle, was just… invented?

My day with the birds marked a turning point in reality as I knew it. Subtle and yet galaxy-shifting all at once. Because I made a decision that day to rewrite the script of my life. To invent my experience as I wanted it to be.

In the coming years I broke through into a new reality I had only suspected was possible. I’ve run my business from the beaches of Belize, islands off the coast of Panama, and while vagabonding around the U.S. in a motorhome. I’ve broken through to new income levels I had always assumed were for other people, not little ol’ me. As founder of the digital magazine Business Heroine, I’ve created whatever projects struck my fancy including producing a magazine, creating trainings for rising entrepreneurs, and speaking around the country.

Business Heroine was not listed in the job postings section on Craigslist, that’s for sure. So I just made it up. Every bit of it! And now it’s real. It elevates humanity, it generates abundance, and it is FUN. The best part? I show up as ME and that is my career.

Ummm, YEP, a career can be way cool.

Purpose-driven, freedom-infused, joy-activating business IS real. And the access point is soul.

Five Types of Freedom

Whenever I lead workshops, I ask the audience members why they want to have their own business and, while expressed in various ways, the same themes inevitably emerge in their answers:

• Financial Freedom — To ditch the world of trading your time for a paycheck and generate financial abundance that supports your desired lifestyle
• Time Freedom — To have spaciousness and flexibility of schedule so that your calendar is dedicated to life and love, more than it is to work
• Location Freedom — To be able to run your business from anywhere in the world, whether it’s a Tahitian island, a Tibetan mountain top, or the comfort of your own home
• Brain Freedom — To operate within your daily life in the way that works best for you, so that you can move in flow with your thinking style, strengths, and natural tendencies
• Soul Freedom — To be who you are here on the planet to be, to share your gifts generously, and to make a difference in the way in which you are uniquely designed to do

Can I get an amen? The desire for each of these freedoms is what led me into entrepreneurship, too.

What I’ve discovered over the years, in witnessing my own experience and the experiences of Business Heroines I’ve met all around the world, is that the last freedom on the list — Soul Freedom — trumps the others.

After all, money is fantastic and yet we all know it doesn’t buy happiness. Time grows stale if it’s not put to good use…

Travel and adventure can eventually become rote if there is no bigger purpose. How many times have we heard stories of people who had tons of worldly success yet were secretly unhappy?

Soul, on the other hand.

When you are fully aligned with your purpose on the planet — completely on fire for your mission — it is impossible to be miserable. When you are serving the people who were born to receive what you were born to offer, work doesn’t feel like “work” at all. It just feels like being yourself.

That’s what’s natural. Like the birds.

Say YES to Your Soul

Is it always easy? Of course not.

Designing a life and business around your unique calling takes courage — exposing yourself to the elements and baring your most precious art to other people’s opinions. It takes faith and trust in yourself to make decisions based on desire versus should and the net will appear when you leap. Indeed, soul-fueled business is not for the faint of heart. It’s for the strong of heart.

The definition of a Business Heroine (and also our tagline) is an “entrepreneur who says she will, and does.”

Yes she faces obstacles, doubts, and her fair share of fears. But she says yes to her destiny and she does it anyway.

Because there comes a day when you identify more with the BIG YOU that you are growing into rather than the shoes-too-small version of yourself you settled for in the past. There comes a day when the pain of settling for less hurts worse than the fear of surrendering to the abyss of the unknown. A day when you care more about your mission and service to the world than you do about staying safe and comfy in your own harbor.

There comes a day when you are done letting yourself down. Pretending to be less than you know you are is no longer an option. Because, soul-fueled one, you are here change the world, and entrepreneurship is your tool for doing just that.

Let your soul fuel you.

To learn more about Business Heroine and Anne’s courses and workshops, visit businessheroinemagazine.com or click the banner image below for your free subscription:

You may also enjoy Podcast: Jim Brown | True Abundance: One Man’s Search for (Mindful Money) Meaning by Best Self Magazine

The post An Entrepreneur Who Says She Will, And Does appeared first on BEST SELF.

I was born with one foot in this world and one foot in another…

—

From as early as I can remember, I was extremely psychic and “plugged into” the spiritual side. But, unlike most children who gradually lose this ability with time, my connection and psychic skills grew in strength with every passing year. Growing up this way was scary and confusing, and I have spent my entire life learning to come to terms with this and live peacefully.

I have always been able to ‘see inside people’. When I looked at someone, I could see around and within them a permanent glow: an aura made up of a conglomeration of colors, shapes, and swirls. This internal glow also varied in size and stature: Some people’s inner glow was dull, while others were luminous, like a high-wattage light bulb.

I could also see a person’s struggles. I could see their challenges. People’s inner glows contained “little movies,” and when I watched these little movies that were floating around inside their aura, I could see what upset them and what was causing them pain.

This was something, I quickly learned, that was not always a blessing.

One evening when I was eight, my father’s friend came over for dinner, and I noticed he wasn’t behaving the way he usually did. My sister and I usually loved to watch the way he devoured his meal, stuffing large portions of chicken and bread into his mouth at a rapid pace, while talking incessantly and slurping his coke (I always wondered why he didn’t get in trouble for talking with his mouth full and making a mess).

But on this evening, he was subdued. He was quiet and picking at his food and moving it around his plate. I looked into his aura and saw he was thinking about a petite, dark-haired woman. I could also see that he was going to visit her after this dinner, and that he wanted to go now and be with her.

I was confused. In Sunday school I’d learned that we’re only supposed to be with the person we’re married to. God said it should be like this, but this woman wasn’t his wife. His wife was tall and blonde-haired, and she laughed a lot. She would talk to us and play with us after church.

So I asked him, “Who is the small, dark-haired woman that you’re going to visit after this dinner?”

His head flung toward me like a gun being fired, and he stammered, “Wh… wh… what did you say?”

“Who is the small, dark-haired woman you’re going to see after your dinner?”

He stared at me for a long time and then his eyes hardened and turned to slits. He leaned across the table, sticking his big face into mine and yelled, “You should mind your own business, you creepy kid!” Grabbing his keys and wallet, he stormed out of the house, leaving me shaken and ashamed in my chair.

After that event, I tried to stop voicing what I saw inside people, but it didn’t always work.

Sometimes it just slipped out, and sometimes I thought everyone knew it too and it was okay to talk about it.

When I was 12, I asked my teacher if she’d recovered from morning sickness. She had been away for some weeks, and on the day she returned I asked her in class if she was feeling better now.

In a little movie in her aura I could see her sick in bed with nausea. I also saw her holding her tummy, which had a tiny baby in it. My sister, Rebekah, had been born when I was 10, and I remembered the way mum couldn’t get out of bed in the morning and how terribly sick she had been. Mum had called this terrible sickness ”morning sickness.”

I really liked my teacher and I was worried about her, so I asked, “Have you recovered from morning sickness yet?”

She froze, her face turning white with shock. She simply stared at me, blinking and swallowing and not saying anything. After the longest time, she pointed a long finger toward me and said in a low and menacing voice, “You are a gossip and a liar, Belinda Davidson, and you aren’t to be trusted.”

She then sent me out of the room, and I spent the morning crouched and crying against a brick wall wondering what I’d done wrong.

Growing up psychic wasn’t only the problem I had — I was also born with the ability to see and communicate with ghosts and spirits, know intuitively what people were thinking and feeling, and ”take on” people’s negative feelings and illnesses.

When I was a child, I didn’t know I was born an empath, a psychic, a ghost whisperer, a medium or a healer.

I didn’t know what these things were, or how to cope with the sensitivities of these abilities. I only knew that what was happening to me was scary, and that when I tried to tell other people about it, they simply told me I was weird and not to talk about it.

But when I was 19, my life changed forever when my deceased grandmother appeared to me.

Unbeknownst to any of us, my grandmother’s son (my uncle) wanted to commit suicide. In fact, it was on the very day my grandmother appeared to me that he had planned to end his life. She told me to contact him, and this saved his life!

This experience changed me. It was the first time I’d experienced ”light” in what I could do and see. After years of struggling with my powers, and being punished for talking about what I could see, I’d finally done something right!

Shortly after this, the universe blessed me with a succession of events that helped me embrace my inner light and life purpose even more. I was being led to the right experiences to help me accept who I was. And one of those places was a remote aboriginal community in the Australian desert.

My father was working as a doctor in remote parts of Australia and one day asked me to visit and assist him. I spent my days helping him in the clinic, and it was there that I also experienced firsthand the psychic and telepathic abilities that can be found among Australian aborigines — something they are quite open to and accepting of. Seeing this and being a part of it was just what I needed to finally feel inspired and encouraged to dig deep into myself and get to know the extent of my ”psychic-ness.“

So over the coming years, I spent hours and hours meditating and connecting with my higher purpose.

I asked myself over and over why I had been given these gifts, and what I was to do with them.

I often felt overwhelmed by their power, but I knew, deep down, there was a reason I was so different from everyone else, and there was a divine purpose to this gift.

Shortly after this, I began working as a medical intuitive, and within a very short space of time many people from many countries were consulting with me, wanting to know what was wrong with them so that they could heal their lives.

Within only a few years of my grandmother’s message from the grave, I was using my psychic, empath, healing, and ghost-whispering abilities to help people, and my clinic and business as a medical intuitive and healer flourished.

I had embraced my dark, and it lead me to my inner light… and nowadays, I wake every morning knowing I’m doing what my soul wants me to do!

belindadavidson.com

You may also enjoy reading Where Did You Go? A Conversation on Connecting with the Dead by Bridgitte Jackson-Buckley

The post Born Between Two Worlds: A Story of a Modern-Day Mystic appeared first on BEST SELF.

A journey inward, to find the ‘soul-voice’, the inner-guide to our happiness and abundance

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“The funny part is that it’s all so simple.

What we are meant to do is who we are. Nothing more. Our soul-work is merely an extension of our own essence. It just takes such an effort for so many of us to get that naked. To simply let what we do be who we are.” [Meggan Watterson, REVEAL: A Sacred Manual for Getting Spiritually Naked (New York: Hay House, 2013), 133]

It might sound odd, or too simplistic, but the most powerful thing you can do for yourself and the course of your life is to listen inward. I don’t think there’s one magical way to do that, a meditation technique you have to master or a spiritual leader you need to follow. I think what we have lost touch with is the intrinsic trust in our own capacity to know what to do next. And the only way to strengthen that trust is to begin to cultivate our capacity to hear and then act on the guidance we receive from within.

Why is this so crucial? We are often presented with so many opportunities, sometimes even overwhelmed by them. And it can be difficult to discern our own truth in the midst of considering what our family, friends, and peers might want us to do or think is best for us. It has been a messy, humbling path for me to realize that ultimately, I’m the only one who can know what’s true for me. And that my sole responsibility to others is not to please them, but to do the arduous work of going within and figuring out what I really need to do.

It’s up to me to know what lights me up, because only then can I truly inspire others and share the depths of who I really am.

Writer and activist Anne Lamott wisely points out that, “Lighthouses don’t go running all over an island looking for boats to save, they just stand there shining.” [Anne Lamott, Bird By Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life (New York and San Francisco: Pantheon, 1994), 236] It’s such a paradox, and it can feel counterintuitive to take time to focus inward and disengage with what happens to be going on around us. But I have found personally that the most expedient way to find work in the world that really feeds us in more ways than just a paycheck is to cultivate our relationship with our own soul. It’s a more feminine way of moving in the world; it’s practicing the art of coming home to the true self, the soul, again and again, and then making our life about that union.

Fear can often drive us to run around desperate, reaching out to people and to opportunities from a place of actually not trusting that we’re going to find our way. We can lean too heavily on our love relationships — stressing out partners and lovers with the weight of the questions we, in the end, need to find the answers to for ourselves. We too often forget that the most important relationship we have in this lifetime is the one we can only create from within, which I explore deeply in my latest book How to Love Yourself (and Sometimes Other People).

Because when we begin to get intimate with the soul, we remember that what’s ours to share can never be lost.

We remember our own worth. And we remember the intrinsic value of our presence in the world. We remember that there is no limit to what can unfold when we trust that at some divinely aligned time, and in a way perhaps we didn’t originally imagine, our soul will radiate its light.

In Divinity School, I studied the prayer of heart practiced by Christian monastics known as Hesychasts. The intention is to allow our consciousness to be centered in the heart. I began to practice this prayer daily in a meditation I eventually called the soul-voice meditation. I noticed a presence that would surface to meet me there – within the heart – a presence I recognized as my soul. At the time, I had no idea how I would be of greatest service – as a theologian, a writer, and a spiritual teacher. I didn’t know the exact steps I needed to take to share the ocean of love I sensed inside me.

I knew one thing though, and it has proven to be the most significant. I didn’t want fear to guide me. I wanted to move the way love wanted me to move. I knew that whatever unfolded for me then would be the highest possible version of my life — however that might look. Success for me has never been about a certain amount of wealth or material security. Success for me is the incalculable worth that floods me when all that I am is being utilized, when what exists within me is being shared.

Following the soul-voice can feel to the ego like you’re moving forward blindfolded.

The ego wants to know specifics, timelines, dates, guarantees. And the ego is needed, is very necessary. It’s just that by going within and becoming fluent in the various languages the soul uses to speak to you, the soul can remain sovereign to the ego. The soul can guide you to take the modest looking chalice that the ego might think is too boring or plain. Only the soul knows how to expand what we thought was possible for our lives. Only the soul knows to choose the direction that will lead us to the work we have come here to do.

To listen and act on the soul-voice rather than the voice of fear is the most powerful demonstration of self-love. To trust the guidance that you can only find from within is deeply healing not just for your own life but also for those around you. The place the soul leads you to is where you can share the essence of who you are and in the process meet the world’s deepest needs.

You may also enjoy reading Is Self Love Selfish? Maybe, But Don’t Let That Stop You by Scott Stabile

The post Soul-Voice appeared first on BEST SELF.

Burdened with a debilitating condition, opting to live medicine free brings forth both challenges and a renewed spirituality and joy for life.

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I was sitting on the edge of my bed, head in my hands, staring at a giant basket of pill bottles, which I needed to be able to function. Tears were streaming down my face, snot was dripping out my nose, hair was stringy and dirty, and I was still sporting yesterday’s yoga pants and hooded sweatshirt. My world was spinning and had been reduced to this pile of prescription pain meds that I had come to know all too well: muscle relaxers, hormones, and mood stabilizers. I could dig through the myriad bottles in the middle of the night, still half asleep, to find which one I needed in the moment, take it, roll over, and fall back to sleep. It had become completely automatic, practically robotic.

Medications had become an extension of my being.

In 1995 I was diagnosed with endometriosis, a painful reproductive disease that occurs when cells lining the uterus grow outside the uterus and into other areas of the abdomen and body. I’d done all the things on the doctors’ ”how-to-treat-endometriosis” checklist. In fact, I had done most of them several times. From laparoscopy surgeries to remove endometriosis cells and Lupron treatments to manipulate hormone levels, the list of poking and prodding necessities seemed endless. And yet there I was, 14 years later, in no better shape than before the diagnosis and in more pain than ever, desperately searching for the right chemical concoction to give me back my life.

I stared at the empty medical promises — a pile of take-this-and-it-will-help-you-feel-better pills — spread out in front of me. I could barely think as anger and hatred boiled throughout my body, and rage and confusion hung in the air around me. I picked up each bottle, held it, and considered how it made me feel. As I picked up bottle after bottle, I felt more and more deflated. The realization that all my hopes for a better future were placed in these pills weighed heavily on my heart. I went through the whole basket of bottles and didn’t take a single pill. I suddenly knew nothing in that basket was going to make everything better. I felt empty. I no longer knew if I was tired or if all those pills were making me tired. I was living in a medicated fog, and I was done.

As I sat on the side of my bed that day, staring at that pile of pills, crying uncontrollably, I finally admitted to myself that I had been desperately trying to get well for over half of my life. The pill popping wasn’t working.

So I quit. That was the last day I ever took a pain pill, muscle relaxer, or mood stabilizer. I needed a new direction. I knew I was going to feel pain, but I was feeling pain even with all the medication. What did I have to lose?

That was day I took a stand for myself. A fire burning deep inside my belly motivated me. In that moment I accepted that life sucked with the pills and it was going to suck without them. My prescriptions were supposed to be bringing me quality of life, but my quality of life had never been worse. I didn’t know what the hell I was going to do next but I didn’t care. All I knew was I couldn’t keep doing what I was doing and continue to expect different results.

The day I awakened to the possibilities of listening and honoring my body was the worst day of my life. I wish I could say I had some beautiful ah-ha moment and courageously chose to take my life in a new direction, but that’s not my story. My intellect bullied my emotional body, shaming it into silence until the day my emotional body stood up for itself. The fire inside me was the tiny voice of inner wisdom. That voice had always been there, but conventional thinking told me this voice of mine was not smart, it was not worth using, and it definitely didn’t know more than the doctors. So I kept quiet.

In that silence, I lost myself. After almost two decades of placing no value on my own thoughts and feelings, I had a lot of work to do to trust myself and discover self-love.

The basis of my awakening was finally choosing to no longer protect ugliness, anger, hate, resentment, and shame that had built up inside me while living with chronic pain and disease.

No longer pretending to be fine meant finally feeling the hurt I ignored, crying the tears I avoided, and letting go of the emotions I held onto, the way a terrified kindergartener clings to her mom on the first day of school. In the past, it was normal for me to deny my own feelings in the name of looking good, living up to expectations, and not causing a fuss. It was time for this to stop.

I’ve had a lot of help “unlearning” the coping mechanisms I created in order to deal with chronic pain and endometriosis, including acupuncture, chiropractic care, kinesiology, and other energy work therapies. Since that shattering day in 2009, I have filled my emotional toolbox with new ways to deal with stress, negativity, and trauma. Most important, I’ve learned to listen to both my physical and emotional body, rather than masking their messages with pills.

Today my life looks very different than it once did. I now allow myself to feel all feelings and sensations, even if they’re uncomfortable or painful. I now believe that my sensitive body is powerful, and I view physical pain or tension as communication from my emotional body and a road map for uncovering negative thoughts and beliefs. Listening to my body is a tool for discovering unhelpful mental patterns.

Through kinesiology and spiritual work I’ve learned to interpret my body’s communications. Today, a headache is an opportunity to discover where self-doubt is hiding; a sore throat allows me to explore where I am not expressing myself; tightness in my neck and shoulders tells me that I am bearing the weight of some situation; and mid-back pain says there is guilt in my past that I am carrying with me into the future. It is amazing how recognizing and releasing mental patterns allows these physical symptoms to quickly clear up and move out of my life. I no longer get lingering head colds or sinus infections that last for weeks.

To me, awakening means tuning in to internal knowingness and discovering the self-love that allows us to move confidently in that direction.

Waking up means truly embracing and understanding that everything I need comes from within. It is already here, and it has been all along.

I no longer live a fast-paced, high-stress life. Living up to projected expectations no longer rules my day. Depleting energy reserves and exhausting my body are not in my best interest. Instead, I do what is right for me in order to be my best self.

I always imagined that discovering spirituality, mindfulness, and awakening to consciousness sounded like a dream of sunshine and happy faces, a beautifully euphoric scene full of butterflies and magic fairy dust, but in reality, awakening to my own power has been the most difficult thing I’ve ever done. I’ve never felt crazier or more unstable, but I now know it’s not because I am actually crazy or unstable, it is because I am allowing myself to fully feel the vast spectrum of emotions.

Perhaps it would have been easier to stay asleep, to remain average, and continue to live behind the “I’m fine” mask. But that’s not my path. Awakening isn’t about living fearlessly; instead, it is about fearfully looking your demons in the face, walking straight up to them, and introducing yourself.

I invite you to not only listen to your own body and inner wisdom, but to find the courage to honor what it has to say. You never know, you might awaken to the life you never knew you always wanted.

audreymichel.com

You may also enjoy Interview: Kelly Brogan, MD | A Mind Of Your Own with Kristen Noel

The post Living Medicine Free | A Painful Awakening appeared first on BEST SELF.

Reflecting on the joys of inspiring youth, schoolteacher Rebekah Stoll realizes that her students have equally inspired her

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Twenty students gathered around five working kitchens, aprons in place, recipes set before them with excitement in the air and the warmth from the ovens heating the chilly classroom. Enthusiastic chatter from students can be heard as they are preparing their feast. Later in the day, there are 24 young men and women eager to begin their first sewing project, each needing my immediate assistance. The sounds of scissors cutting fabric and sewing machines humming is in the background. These are the sounds of students learning through creativity.

Inspiring youth is an important and challenging job. There are many pressures on high school students that stem from social expectations, familial obligations, and academic overload. Creating a safe, creative outlet for students helps them master the necessary skills to cope with their daily struggles. One field of study that can help students with these challenges is Family and Consumer Science (FACS), the modern-day version of home economics. While these courses are required at the middle school level in New York State, most people do not realize that this field still exists. Districts are quick to eliminate these programs even though there is an initiative in education for College- & Career-Ready skills and Career & Technology education — right where FACS teachers fit in. Yes, we still enjoy baking cookies, but more important, we offer courses on parenting, child development, nutrition, fashion, life skills, culinary skills, career success, and money management.

In an environment where students can be themselves, where they can be creative, comfortable, successful, and safe, they are likely to transfer those assets to other areas of their lives.

After an unexpected layoff, I was lucky enough to obtain a new position quickly. Shortly thereafter, I realized that starting my new job was the best thing that ever happened to me. I had become stagnant in my former one. I had not been taking risks, I had been too quick to fall in line with the status quo, and I had not pushing myself hard enough. I had to reinvent myself, as I was teaching different courses at new grade levels. It was overwhelming but eye-opening, and I was reminded of how amazing students could really be.

A wonderful sophomore student named Stephanie* enrolled in my Basic Foods class. Stephanie is a very quiet, shy student who is also very intelligent. In class she was engaged, asked great questions, would do additional work at home, and shared some of her successes with me. Her mother communicated how much Stephanie loved my class and was so grateful to have the opportunity to learn from me. Stephanie and I are both vegetarians and I was granted permission to expose my students to alternative nutritional venues. Because of this, my students were able to explore different cooking techniques, consume a variety of vegetables, explore food ethics, and learn about nutrition in ways they had not been previously exposed to. This shared experience allowed Stephanie to feel more comfortable in my classroom and so she was able to be herself and open up a little bit.

Partway through the year I asked students to write a few words on their own time about the class so we could add it to the course catalogue the next year. Stephanie said:

“My experience so far in cooking class is amazing. When I get older I plan on going into the Family and Consumer Science field. I want to be able to continue classes like this throughout my high school years so I can get as much knowledge on cooking as I can. My favorite topic so far in this class is the baking unit because I love to bake cupcakes.”

Recently I discovered that Stephanie is an entrepreneur, running a successful cupcake business as a high school junior. Her customers rave about her culinary skills and her attention to detail.

As an educator, seeing a student use the skills learned in class in the real world is both inspiring and amazing.

Other students may not enter with Stephanie’s sense of purpose and direction. Maria’s* direction is less certain; she is less sure of what she wants to do with her life. Under tremendous stress in terms of her academic work, she fears the possibility of falling behind, but all of that disappears when she hears the hum of the sewing machine in her Advanced Fashion class. She is able to be creative, express herself, and get lost in the moment when she is sewing. Some days she comes to class upset over her difficult trigonometry class, feeling like she is going to fail at life because she is struggling academically. Once she gets to work in the fashion class, however, she finds her groove and creates beautiful pieces of art. She may not always like or appreciate the work she does, but she pushes herself to try new things and improve her skills.

Maria’s class was assigned a project where they had to choose a famous artist’s work and recreate it in fabric. Some of the students complained at first because they were not making clothes. Maria dove into the project immediately, diligently working during class and spending countless hours of her free time perfecting her work. Her finished product is absolutely beautiful! The students all remark when they come into my classroom how much it looks like the original piece. It would have been easy to dismiss the project when the students began complaining, but Maria’s excitement encouraged me and the other students to continue. Eventually, the assignment was a success with the class. It is often difficult for teachers to break out of their comfort zone and try a lesson that is somewhat unorthodox, but students like Maria help revitalize our enthusiasm for thinking outside of the box.

Although I was devastated at being laid off when it first happened, it really was the best thing that happened to me professionally.

I met many amazing students, faculty, and staff that will stay with me forever. New opportunities arose which made me a better, stronger, more flexible teacher, while exposing me to new challenges. Students like Stephanie and Maria are what make teaching so rewarding. They are what make all the difficulties and moments of self-doubt worth it. I may not be the reason that Stephanie has a baking business, and Maria may have found a love for sewing without me, but I am proud to have assisted in their journey. They motivate me to strive for connection with all of my students; you can never predict your effect on them. Although my goal as a teacher is to give students a safe, comfortable environment in which to learn and be influenced, I often find that I am the one being inspired by their creativity, lust for life, excitement, and sense of possibility.

*Names have been changed to protect the students’ identities.

You may also enjoy reading Youth Activism | Are You There? Messages From Our Future by Shea Ki

The post Inspiring Youth | Who’s Teaching Whom? appeared first on BEST SELF.

Finding your passion can take a long road — but the timing is always divine.

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It’s 1968, and I’m eight years old and sitting on the big brown plaid couch in the Schiller’s house. They live down the street from us in my new neighborhood in Syosset, Long Island. The TV is on and I’m next to Keith, the oldest kid and the cutest boy I’ve ever seen. He’s nine. Robbie is there also. He’s cute too, but not as cute as Keith.

We’re waiting for something to come on TV. Something very special to me.

Before my family moved to Syosset, we lived in the East 80s in Manhattan. I went to a little public school on East 82nd Street. When I was in first grade I had the most wonderful teacher. Her name was Miss Seidman. She loved art. We didn’t have formal art classes in my school. Everything we learned happened in the classroom.

Miss Seidman knew I loved art too. Painting and drawing. The culture of her classroom was very open. If I wanted to paint, I painted. I was free to be at the easel in the back of the classroom as much as I liked. That year there was a citywide art contest sponsored by CBS and the Brooklyn Museum. Miss Seidman entered one of my paintings. I didn’t know anything about it until my mom and dad told me I’d won. My painting was going on tour! It was displayed at Bloomingdale’s and Gimbels, and at the Brooklyn Museum! We went to see it at each show.

We moved at the end of June, and I received a letter from CBS that included a beautiful award certificate, a letter saying that my painting would be displayed as background art to the CBS “eye” logo, on a specific date and time. There was also a note saying that they were unable to return my painting. While the idea of being on TV was exciting to me, the fact that I would never get my painting back made me sad and angry.

So we’re sitting in the den, waiting for the commercial break so that we can see my painting.

And then there it was! MY PAINTING! It was of a little man wearing a black top hat and black suit, flying a kite with two little kids, with clouds in the sky on a beautiful day. I felt proud. Keith appraised it quietly, nodded his head, and said in all seriousness, “That’s good… really good.” I was happy. I knew I wanted to be an artist.

When I started going to school in Syosset, the culture was different. Art class was offered once a week for 45 minutes. That wasn’t nearly enough! Fortunately, my parents were designers, so my exposure to the arts was very rich at home

When I was in third grade, I had two epileptic seizures in my classroom, in front of all of my classmates. It terrified them and made me an outcast.

I went from being a confident child to being a fearful one. I doubted myself.

As I grew older, I isolated myself. I never stopped creating art. I was sent to art camps in the summers, and my parents supported my interests wholeheartedly. But I had an internal voice, a voice that said, “You’re not good enough, your artwork isn’t good enough,” and I spent too much time comparing myself to other kids who were young artists. Everybody’s artwork was better than mine. I started losing my dream.

From junior high on, I had a dream of going to RISD, the Rhode Island School of Design. That was my school. But when the time came to start the college application process I was so insecure and so afraid of rejection that I applied to only one school, a school with an open-enrollment policy, so I knew I would get in. I never talked about my feelings with anyone. I had no idea what I would study. I had given up the idea that I would study art.

I dropped out of school after seven months, and began a 33-year job journey. Some jobs I created for myself. Every time I had a self-made job, I would design a business card for myself. I loved creating the cards. I had a pile of them. The jobs they described were never as good as the process of designing the cards!

I tried one thing after another, enjoying the work at first and then becoming bored and frustrated. My heart was unsettled.

Every so often, I would make art. I would notice that when I was making art, time would disappear. I felt alive and filled with joy. The intensity of my thought process and the depth of my involvement created what some would call a bliss state. I would complete my art piece and like what I’d done. Then I would start to worry that I would never make anything as good as what I’d just created. And I’d shut down, thinking “What if I never have another good idea?”

I was convinced that I wouldn’t do well if I studied art. I couldn’t draw very well and didn’t understand that drawing is a skill I could learn.

I dabbled in various things through my 20s, 30s and 40s, avoiding my creativity more than embracing it.

And I lived in a state of chronic, sometimes incapacitating depression. My therapist would ask me regularly “Are you doing your artwork?” and I’d say no, and he would say, “You must. It’s so important.”

By the time I was 50, I’d suffered a terrible bout of depression. I lost my Dad, ended a relationship, and had no idea what I was going to do with my life. I wondered whether being alive was even worth it. I was working with a therapist who kept suggesting that I consider going back to school. That felt impossible to me.

I started volunteering at my town’s LGBTQ community center. I asked for an assignment that would allow me to work independently. I was taught to maintain the center’s website, which was designed in WordPress. I fell in love with the work. I learned how to write code. It satisfied my eye for detail. I started to think that maybe I could start a business making simple websites. And add my love of graphic design.

I taught myself hungrily, day and night; took some classes; and hired a friend to teach me how to use design software.

It was time. I owed it to myself to take a chance. To do what I knew I wanted to do when I was eight.

I knew that if I didn’t take the chance, I’d regret it for the rest of my life.

In just two years, I’ve built a successful business. I have a team of colleagues working with me. I wake up every morning with a smile on my face. I’m at my desk working by 6:15. Not because I have to be but because I just want to. I love what I do. My work has become play.

I don’t have to hold on to my artwork anymore. Now that I’m exercising my art “muscles” I see that the more I create, the more I grow, and instead of running out of ideas, the ideas flow. I’ve given myself permission to thrive, and I’m not afraid anymore.

Once in a while I feel sad that it took me so long to figure all of this out. My very wise brother said to me, “Don’t be sad, just say to yourself, I got here as soon as I could, and be proud of what you’ve accomplished.”

Recently I was at the Brooklyn Museum and was speaking with an intern. I told him about the contest and how my painting had been displayed and that I’d never seen it again. He directed me to the archives on the museum’s website. And there it was! Not the painting itself, but the information about the collection with photographs from the exhibit. My painting is tucked away in the archives at the Brooklyn Museum. I don’t need to see it. Just knowing where it lives is enough.

nantepperdesign.com

You may also enjoy Which Way? Finding Your Inner Truth And Purpose by Jamie Zimmerman

The post Finding Your Passion | I Got Here As Soon As I Could appeared first on BEST SELF.

(Hu)man’s best friend and sometimes our greatest teachers, how animals help us tune into our inner power and sensitivities

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When I was eight years old, my mother suffered an aneurism and died suddenly. My father had a hush-hush way of dealing with it: If we didn’t talk about it, we could pretend it never happened. Fawn, my sweet little Pekingese, took care of me emotionally. She became my surrogate mother, all 10 pounds of her. She had the patience of a saint and allowed me to bury my head in her fur and cry.

The days were long and lonely after my mother’s passing. I spent many an hour with Fawn. The house had an empty feeling to it, and Fawn helped to fill the void. After school, she and I used to lie on the floor in the living room, basking in the late-afternoon sun. Recalling it, I can still feel the warmth of the sun on my skin, her musky smell, the wetness of her small flat nose when I leaned in to kiss it. I used to scoop her up in my arms to get a bit closer to her. I knew she missed my mother too.

The summer following my mother’s death, my older sister Kathy, Fawn, and I were shipped off to my grandparents’ farm on the rolling grassy plains of northwestern Nebraska. It was a very different life from the one in suburban New Jersey, and I loved it. Something resonated deeply within me; something was gently awakening.

The Animal Communicator

The pain of my mother’s passing was still very heavy in my heart. During that summer I would teach myself what I now understand to be the basics of energy balancing and animal communication. Though I wasn’t aware of exactly what I was doing then, I made the discovery that I had energy in my hands. I could soothe wild barn kittens by gently holding them in my hands. The kittens would be so nervous and skittish until my hands started to heat up. I would whisper to them and send them the message that I was helping them, sending them love from my heart to theirs. They seemed to listen. I didn’t know that what I was doing was any different than how other people “talked” to their animals. We communicated without words. Their nervous bodies would soon relax and then they would begin to purr.

I could get my grandfather’s farm dog to play with me by beaming my hands at him. For me, this was just a playful game. I didn’t see this as a gift or practice. I did know that watching the animals and sending energy to them helped relax them and it helped them to trust me.

Around that time, I started to have vivid dreams that very often came true. Sometimes I dreamt about my friends and their families, and my dreams were extremely accurate. I was a natural at any sixth-sense endeavor. As a child, I didn’t have a choice whether or not to be intuitive. It was just who I was, the strongest part of my nature.

I was always uncontrollably drawn to animals that were hurt or suffering. I always felt compelled to put my hands on them.

No matter how nervous they were, I could calm them down. I knew I was making a difference, and if felt right and good in my heart to be able to help. It always calmed me too.

As a kid I didn’t know where I was going with my “special gifts,” but I knew I was a little different from most of the other kids. It wasn’t always easy but it did help to make me strong. All I wanted was to be able to share my hands with every animal I met. I wasn’t sure where it would take me, but it was my passion, my calling.

We spent three summers in the wilds of Nebraska on my grandparents’ farm. Those summers shaped the course of my life. My love and respect for all animals saved me from loneliness and an uncertain future. The animals bestowed upon me invaluable gifts. They taught me to communicate from my heart and to trust my intuition. What started with Fawn helping to heal me ultimately evolved my gift of healing and awakened my mission to serve.

I started volunteering at a local animal shelter when I was 12. I had never known what happened to pets that were sick or what happened to the animals that didn’t get adopted. I learned quickly; the things I witnessed were inhumane and indelibly imprinted upon me.

That place was a living hell for the animals, filled with fear and anxiety. It was a small shelter and there was no room for holding dogs to assess them and find out what they needed. Many healthy and sick dogs, cats, kittens and bunnies died in fear in crowded gas chambers, some fighting to their deaths. I swore then that someday I would help animals in need. I didn’t know how, I just knew I had to make a difference. As a 12-year- old, I witnessed cruel practices that I will never forget, practices that are still happening today in shelters all around our “civilized” country.

Today, I am living my dream come true. I have worked with thousands of animals helping to give them a voice through animal communication and easing their pain with the energy in my hands.

I have helped dogs, cats, bunnies, horses, and myriad other critters in all stages of life. I have eased the burden of transition for dying animals, making it a peaceful passing with an abundance of love. I have nursed ailing animals back to health.

These days I continue to talk with animals all over the country, through long-distance communication. My dreams continue to develop as I continue to grow with them. I teach everyone I work with simple skills that help them to hear their animals’ inner voices. I teach them to support their four-legged family members by using the energy in their own hands. I have traveled all over the country teaching what I now call “CinergE,” my life’s work.

I am in the process of developing a CinergE program for animal shelters. I have seen so many animals transform, blossoming into the perfect pets after working with me. Each time this happens I give thanks for never giving up on my dreams. No matter what the popular opinion has been, I have persevered and continued on my somewhat unconventional path.

Recently I saw a little rescue dog that was afraid of life. I put my hands on him and tuned into his worries.

He was very frightened, but he didn’t resist or fight me. He shivered and stared up at me with concerned eyes.

Next we went for a confidence-building walk. He was terrified of being outside; it was chaotic and frightening for him. I sat down on the ground next to him and he told me that in his previous home he had never seen the light of day. He lived in a basement with many other fearful dogs with a single overhead light bulb. There were noises that scared him that could be heard through the floor above.

I reached over and he didn’t move. He looked at me with sad eyes and I let the energy flow. He snuggled up next to me. I assured him he was now safe. I called his family over to us and handed them his leash. The little dog was transformed and no longer afraid, now behaving like a regular well-adjusted dog. He even peed outside. He had never done this outside of his yard. Every time I got close to him he would jump up on my legs and give me a kiss. I taught his people how to continue to work with him and they were thrilled. Healing is a process for all of us, a reciprocal process — one that beautifully works both ways.

I will spend the rest of my life reaching out to people to help me make a difference in the lives of our animal family members, no matter how great or small. I made a promise to myself and I continue to keep it, 46 years later.

Learn more at CindyBrody.com

You may also enjoy reading Saving Sadie: Loving A Dog With Special Needs…and Paying It Forward by Joal Derse

The post Animal Communicator | Destined to Heal: One Paw at a Time appeared first on BEST SELF.

—

I’m skeptical about the word “awakening.” I think it implies a transformative moment — a shaft of sunlight through the clouds.

In my experience, I’ve never had the romantic Hollywood version of awakening in my life. For me, it’s been incremental and often not immediately rewarding. In terms of character, my growth has entailed learning to do what I don’t want to do. For instance, I don’t want to walk up the stairs to my office and write today. I’d rather do anything else. But I committed to it, and I’m going to do it regardless of what I want or don’t want. That’s not sexy or glamorous, but it has been immensely gratifying. It has shown me that I’m strong and that I have worth and tenacity. I think that my process of awakening has stemmed from a realization that all this talk about the pursuit of happiness wasn’t really all that valuable to me, and that I’d much rather have a life infused with meaning than happiness.

That’s not to say I haven’t found a whole lot of happiness along the way, it’s just not my goal anymore.

And that has been my most profound awakening.

Nowhere am I more keenly aware of my being “awake,” or not, than I am in my writing. In my newest book, Everything You Ever Wanted, there were so many things that required me to be radically honest. Complex ideas of identity and reinvention came to the forefront as I tried to share the story of how my family came together and why, who we are as a family, and how strong my desire was to awake to a second act in my life.

Learn more at JillianLauren.com

You may also enjoy reading Interview: Giancarlo Esposito | Leap Of Faith with Kristen Noel

The post Awakening Isn’t a Fairytale appeared first on BEST SELF.

A process for discovering your ‘elixir’ — your signature best self — that special value that only you can add to the world

—

Business as usual can make us cynical about doing business at all. Think Enron and nefarious mortgage loans. Think of cut-throat competition the way that Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos is attributed as saying: “…Amazon should approach these small publishers the way a cheetah would pursue a sickly gazelle.” Think “management by stress” and “bottom line efficiency” in which human beings are over-worked and under-valued. Think marketing as manipulation.

In the early-21st century, there remain countless signs of business as usual, but a growing band of us across the globe are determined to do business as unusual for the greater good.

It’s a world where we each — especially us misfits with quirks, hidden talents, and mosaic backgrounds — can come home by doing business as art.

My Homeward Bound Journey

Business as usual was my frame of business for a long time. A poet in a Texan’s body, I resisted business as a young man and went to Austin to cultivate a pseudo-Marxist anti-capitalist stance. In my framing during the ’80s and ’90s, business equaled greed, and marketing equaled manipulation. A self-imposed ascetic, I devoted my twenties to writing, teaching, and voluntary simplicity.

Then yoga screwed up my life in beautiful ways. Restless, open-hearted, and newly married by my early 30s, I had traveled one summer from Texas to the Zen Mountain Monastery outside of Woodstock, New York, for a residency. The previous month I had spent at Woodstock’s Byrdcliffe Artist-in-Residency to finish a book proposal for my agent about yoga & the writing life. Within a few days of arriving at the monastery, I found a few allies and my place there in hauling blue stones, mowing the vast meadow, starving my hungry ego. Among the mountains and in the occasional forays into Woodstock, I also sensed a comfort and camaraderie I rarely felt in the “Big D [Dallas].”

One afternoon, I stood among the monastery’s cemetery housed in evergreens. Suddenly and without why, I heard and felt “home” whisper inside me. Having grown up in a family of islands, I did not know then that home was even something I ached for.

Within two months, this fifth-generation Texan moved his and his wife’s things to a tiny cottage in Woodstock to write, teach yoga, and venture onward. I sent notes to my writer friends: “Some places have a village idiot. Woodstock is a village of idiots. For the first time, I feel right at home.”

At the time, what I felt to be home was a place where my peculiar sensitivities and my desire for a meaningful life could be accepted.

It turns out, that was only part of the story and only the beginning of what I would discover about journeying home.

Fast-forward 30 years later from that anti-capitalist stance, and this poet with grad school training in philosophical hermeneutics (don’t ask) heads up a thriving business with a robust team that builds business artists and helps businesses grow with integrity.

My experience has borne out fundamental truths: We each have a signature elixir — something of distinct value that perhaps only we each can deliver to our respective people. Why only you? Why signature? Why distinct? Because only you have the core inner personality that lets you elevate people a certain way. Because only you have the lived heritage that has allowed you to build specific skills and talents through trial and fire.

Only you and what you create and deliver resonates with a certain core group of people.

Whether you are an artist or CEO, a thought leader or conversation starter, when you own your medicine and own the story you must tell, you inevitably feel as if you’re homeward bound, returning to your people with a message and medicine they ache for.

My saying this now with sure-footed confidence would sound unrecognizable to that earnest 20-something poet or to the 30-something shaggy barefoot writer-yogi. But being unrecognizable to your former self and even to the people who once knew you, it turns out, is part of the journey home in this new world.

The Terror, the Wonder

The path to discovering and delivering your elixir with integrity can be terrifying.

In the twelve years since I moved to Woodstock, my first marriage dissolved, a lightning bolt sent a fire roaring through my study and decimated the farmhouse my second wife and I had bought, debilitating Lyme Disease has visited me four times, two little girls have arrived, and my father has died.

I was cracked open and my heart expanded in concentric rings. It’s not the collections of suffering and hardship alone, though, that make us formidable and distinct.

It’s how we habitually contend with those hardships, solve difficult problems certain ways, and build up a specific skill set that we bring forward to our endeavors over the years that distinguishes us.

It’s in part, learning how to draw from that heritage that helps you create, own, and deliver your elixir.

But the very act of owning your medicine in public — of standing up and out and saying that you have something of value to contribute — feels like risky business. You might rather just do your work, write your book, create your encaustic canvases, make your films, serve your clients and students, and “be done” with the rest of the world.

I understand that stance. But I also often imagine Jonas Salk toiling in his laboratory after World War II when polio was wiping out tens of thousands of Americans. By chance and wit and compassion, he became determined to discover a vaccine. Tens of thousands of tests and heaps of criticism later, he succeeded. An introvert, the last thing Salk wanted was for his image to land on the cover of Time Magazine. But it did. And Salk went on to found the revolutionary inter-disciplinary Salk Institute.

Now imagine if he did all of that work but didn’t tell the right people who could help him spread that vaccine. Imagine if he discovered that vaccine but out of fear of drawing a lot of attention to himself or out of fear of being viewed as vain he closed his lab door, kept his mouth shut, and went back to work on his next experiment. And then imagine him ten years later growing resentful because no one knew of the great work he’s doing.

Sound familiar?

Because here’s the deal: When you live the quest, you come home not only to your best self but more to a village of sorts, to other people who ache for the elixir your core self has discovered or created or is co-creating with them.

When you witness your impact, you’re buoyed to engage and serve more.

If you feel the least bit trepidatious about venturing forward with an idea that you know will bring you home to your true self and will bring relief or elevation to other people, know that for many of us wanting to do business as unusual that this challenge is in part what we’ve signed on for.

The remarkable thing is you do not have to meet these challenges alone.

Your Core Ally

My way of life in these middle years is to track wonder. That does not mean I’m naive or wish upon stars or float around Never-Never Land. An unflinching inner skeptic keeps my ear to the ground to follow wonder’s tracks as an unapologetic grown-up well acquainted with rings of fire.

Wonder, simply put, is not kid’s stuff. Tracking wonder is radically grown-up stuff for those who want to journey homeward. Why?

Because more than any other cognitive or emotional experience, wonder cracks you open to possibility.

When you stand a little astonished at the way sun slides on a sidewalk or at the way you’ve changed in twenty years, you receive that reality without asking anything in return. The openness of wonder helps you get clear about why you do what you do, face challenges with less angst, and not grasp at outcome. Wonder is a core ally.

Tracking Wonder also is the name of the consultancy I founded several years ago. My team and I have built business artists in a variety of fields, people who are ready to own their signature elixir and to challenge business as usual. People who are ready to do their best work in the world and to muster the skill set and hone the craft necessary to captivate and elevate other people in books, brands, and intentional lives.

Admittedly, each day I am a little astonished and a lot humbled.

Your Signature Best Self

To do our best work in the world we each can bring forward a signature part of our respective best self. What we call “best self” has become increasingly more clear to me since the long-ago days when I closed my Woodstock yoga classes with “The best in me reaching out to the best in you.”

When in my twenties, I was immersed in the ideas of Jung and of Jungian thinker James Hillman to try to understand and act on what I now call our signature best self. I suspect this signature best self is part of our biology, our environment, and something called mind and habit that has contributed to some nugget within each of us. Hillman calls it “the soul’s code,” an acorn of sorts he says we are each born with that supersedes nature and nurture.

Whatever you want to call it, something does distinguish how we each individually create and elevate other people — signature best self to signature best self.

The Greeks called it the “daimon,” a kind of guardian that does not protect our ego in a cozy comfort zone but instead a guardian that protects what is best within each of us that must be acknowledged, fortified, and brought out so that we each might flourish in the world.

The daimon is contradictory and paradoxical. It speaks in the language of metaphor and symbol. Try to live your life by ignoring the daimon’s yearning and signature way of being expressed, and it will act out.

You can call that acting out a mid-life crisis, but I think that phrase cheapens our experience. Instead, in those middle decades — sometimes starting in our twenties — these moments of deep fertile confusion are opportunities to keep living our quest that we might come a little closer to arriving home.

To glimpse your daimon, your core guide, consider how you uniquely think about situations or solve problems. List your intellectual and creative obsessions — and own them as potential elixir ingredients instead of as simple peculiarities. What do you know more about than many other people whom you know? What special combination of interests, experiences, and skills makes you “you” — and how can you bring those distinctions forward?

Salve Your Patch of the Planet

The beautiful thing: Your core guide has medicine — creative, intellectual, business, spiritual — to serve and salve a patch of the planet.

Your patch of the planet is your imaginable and deeply felt audience with whom you identify and empathize. They are in part the audience that your best self comes home to. They’re the patrons or students, the 40-60-year-old seekers, the mid-managers with an ache in their heart, or the 20-something leaders whom you genuinely want to captivate and elevate. Imagine their daily lives, listen to them, speak to them, engage them, and bring them up to a better place.

My heroes embrace and bring forward their signature best selves in ways that reach their patch of the planet.

There is the former college administrator who owned her heritage and signature self to leap and launch the Women of Wonder Circle for women who want to move out of their sexual abuse into a more empowered, beautiful life.

There is the former art curator and Natalie Goldberg protege who owned her heritage and signature elixir to lead the conversation of The Creative Mix for bold who are mixing things up in art and life.

There is the VP of Marketing for a corporation who owned his heritage and medicine to lead the conversation on inter-generational leadership to build up Millennials who can lead on purpose.

There are countless other people, too, who are my homeward bound heroes.

It’s not easy work. These heroes don’t want to take a tour but to live the quest.

And here’s another surprise for this once-reclusive writer:

DIT beats DIY. Do it together.

Suspicious of group-think and overly attached to our own “originality,” we creatives often wear the DIY badge with honor. Maybe to a fault. Soldiering on in a DIY culture — especially when the digital revolution seems to suggest that an artist or writer or entrepreneur can and should be able to do everything on his or her own — is, in a word, exhausting.

And not ultimately as impactful.

When your core guide and core self is fully recognized and engaged with other people also bringing out their core self in a mutually beneficial way, then you might taste what Aristotle calls eu-daimon-ia. Your daimon, your core guide, flourishes not in isolated flow but in optimal engagement. The pursuit of eudaimonia translates loosely in English to “the pursuit of happiness.” It is a collective happiness for the greater good.

The pursuit of eudaimonia may be the lifelong journey toward our home. Together.

Home might be the way mind feels wrapped in skin that fits just right. A place where best self and rebellious self are embraced and held. A place where your quirks are potential strengths; your peculiarities, potential badges of honor; your oddities, potential medicine.

After all, we long to belong. When we reach the middle of our lives, we want to feel at home in the world we inhabit, create in, and engage.

We want a way of life and of right livelihood, a way of making things and of making a difference that brings out the best in us and those around us.

The road to that kind of home is usually circuitous if not a little treacherous, but there’s really no better path I have found to feeling utterly, wildly alive.

P.S. Need a compass? I created this Compass of Wonder PDF expressly to help business artists like you navigate your way home to doing business as art.

Learn more about Jeffrey Davis’ work at trackingwonder.com.

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

The post Tracking Wonder: Finding Your Unique Value appeared first on BEST SELF.

“Living through what I couldn’t possibly imagine ever getting past, I realized that I have what it takes to traverse any fear…

—

I was at the San Diego airport, waiting to board my plane home after having produced Hay House’s first “I Can Do It At Sea” cruise. It was April 12, 2008 — one of those dates in my life that I’ll never forget, the kind that lives in infamy forever.

I looked at my phone and noticed a voicemail that came in while I was going through security. As I listened, the tone of my husband’s voice literally made my knees buckle. The next thing I knew, I was collapsed on the carpet at the gate while everyone else began boarding the plane around me. My body was both burning and frozen as I listened to this man I had been married to for nearly eighteen years. The tone of his voice was crushing, and the words were pure threat.

“I read your journals. You’d better get your ass home — there’s hell to pay.”

All I could think was that I had more than seventy journals. Which parts had he read?

To this day, I have no recollection of getting on the plane or flying or even listening to the multiple voicemails he left for me while I was in the air. I didn’t answer his calls while I was in the car on my way home from the airport.

I felt like I was in an earthquake. Only instead of the ground, it was the life I had built that was crumbling beneath my feet.

After the plane landed in Denver, I drove straight to Boulder, where I live. But I didn’t go home. Instead, I went to the St. Julien Hotel, got a room, and left my bags there. Then I walked the two blocks to my apartment — and my husband. I was in a daze, but I can still vividly remember what it was like to stand at the base of the stairs, my heart pounding out of my chest, wondering how I was going to make it up the three flights to my front door.

He’d heard me coming and was waiting just inside the door. He held up four of my journals and announced that he was going to make copies of certain pages and send them to my parents, my sister, my friends, and my coworkers. He looked forward to seeing what they thought of me, once they knew the real me.

“Never let anyone see you sweat” had been my motto for as long as I could remember. I was so afraid of his threat to expose me, of letting anyone see my imperfections. No one knows how to push your buttons harder than someone you’ve been married to for eighteen years.

When I first met my husband, it as was if he introduced himself to me by saying, “Hi, I am broken.” And I replied “Great. I am Super Woman. I will fix you.”

Our core wounds were a match made in heaven. He was charming and tall and gorgeous and sweet and swept me off my feet with his sense of adventure. I made sure everyone thought we were the perfect couple with everything going for us. But as the marriage progressed and the patterns of enmeshment became more ingrained, I found myself sublimating all my own desires for his — and somewhere along the way I forgot to live my own life.

I was very busy managing the perceptions of others and projecting an image of perfection to the world. It was far more important to me that everyone thought my life was perfect and that I was happy, than that I actually be happy.

For a long time I believed that happiness and fun were just for other people.

So, there I was, looking at my husband of eighteen years threatening me with my most sacred writing.

The sting in my mouth was the bitter taste of a marriage crashing.

The truth is that our relationship had been slowly falling apart for quite some time. I’d chosen to stay in denial so deeply that it had taken something this monumental to wake me up. Suddenly, I was faced with what to do when the life I’m living no longer fits on the foundation where it’s settled? And, how do I find the courage to make a dramatic change? Because my foundation wasn’t just rocked — it was obliterated.

I had a choice: I could stay numb and go back to sleep, or I could face my fears and embrace change. I could stand still, or I could get ready for the greatest jump of my life.

Hourglass: a last love poem

written on the morning I finally filed for divorce

i loved you

as much as i could

as long as i could

hard as i could

hard as it was

steadily holding on

to the small piece of maybe

that was finally destroyed

i have done all i can

we came together

in our respective corners

at the bottom of an hourglass

with our own strengths

our own wounds

marriage is to be found

in the voyage

through the tiny neck

of this timepiece

crossing up and over

to the opposite quadrants

those qualities of the other

missing in ourselves

are to be absorbed

for each to become whole

my love

hard as we tried

we simply did not make it

through the passage

the wounds too deep

the rage too loud

the voice too silent

and though i love you

i cannot be

married to you

i lost myself

in the giving of everything

to you

i now know

heartbreak in one

is a pain

unable to be healed

by the other

we can only

heal ourselves

for months

i have been nowhere

and everywhere

wheeling my home behind me

into the havens of others

now i need to land safely

inside the space of my own

i was starving to death

before hunger finally saved my life

waking me to desire

and now you are free

from the wanting more

than i could give

and i will love you

beyond the wound

Marriage was a long time to be away from myself… and so the journey began.

It was a little over two years from the fateful day my husband read my journals to the day I filed for divorce. Leaving my marriage was the hardest thing I have ever done. It was as if I was jumping off a cliff in hopes of saving my life, without really knowing what — if anything — would catch me.

But somehow, the ground appeared beneath my feet as I landed. And what’s more, the most miraculous things began to occur. Doors opened. Unforeseen opportunities presented themselves. I not only survived, I thrived.

It wasn’t always pretty, and it wasn’t always easy. But it was so deeply worth it.

That two-year period prior to the jump was filled with pain, fear, and wonderful growth — learning that gave birth to the transformative process I offer in my book Jump … And Your Life Will Appear.

As the Event Director for Hay House from November 2002 to August 2014 — leaving my “day job” is another massive jump I’ve just taken! — I was lucky enough to travel around the world, and become quite close to, some of the greatest minds of our time in the fields of self-help, inspiration, motivation and wellness. I’d had a front row seat and a backstage pass for over a decade, and while I’d absorbed their teachings by osmosis, they wouldn’t be able to really resonate with me until I was in a crisis of my own and able to open myself up fully, really willing to reveal myself and ask for help from the people who I had always been there to serve.

When my marriage came crashing down, I relied on their teachings to make it through.

A couple of them even used me as a spiritual guinea pig, trying out self-empowerment experiments on me.

It was a terrifying experience for me to peel back the layers and expose my vulnerability, because I had so much invested in this identity, in my perfectionism, in being the one getting the gold star — so much invested in believing I would find internal value from external reward. When I was finally willing to go to those people to ask for help, I would discover that they were there for me fiercely, just waiting to rally around me. And with their support I eventually gained the courage to find and use my own voice.

All their attention, love, and wisdom eventually led me to undertake my own journey toward helping others. I immersed myself in my dear friend and mentor Debbie Ford’s shadow work and eventually became a Certified Integrative Coach after a yearlong rigorous and transformational training through her Institute. I wrote my first book, Writing for My Life — a compilation of poetry, a kind of poetic memoir — as I was leaving my marriage and finding my own voice.

Since I started speaking at Hay House’s I Can Do It! conferences and Writer’s Workshops over the past few years — in addition to producing them — more and more opportunities emerged. And my coaching practice is thriving.

But all of those changes are simply outward signs of a transformation that happened inside of me. Since my divorce, I have become — thankfully — more myself than I ever thought I could be. I have learned who I am by living life for me, in alignment with my own truth and desire, instead of in response to someone or something else.

I’ve become familiar with the stranger I had been living with for forty-five years: The real Nancy Levin — the woman I’d always been, underneath the masks I had been wearing for so long.

And you know what? I really, really like her.

My story is the culmination of my experience, the chronicle of what I learned along the way, the process I took to let go and leap in order to live my own life. Please overlay your own marriage, or relationship, or career, or home, or anyone or anything that you’ve held on to so tightly in your life that it’s as if you made a “til death do us part” vow. While I lived it, I felt my way through, but later, specific steps that I had taken began to surface in my consciousness. It became clear through working with my clients in my coaching practice, that I had a powerful roadmap others could follow if they adapted my route to their own circumstances.

In my case, of course, the jump involved a divorce, but for my clients it has worked with any kind of change — whether you want to switch jobs or careers, move to a different part of the world, set boundaries with someone in your life (no matter who it is), do something new that you’ve hesitated to try, increase your capacity for self-love, or simply move out of fear into profound courage and love. Whatever you want to change, wherever you want to jump, this process is here to support you.

Are you hiding in your life? Have you been called to make changes that you’ve been too afraid to make? Here’s an “inch-by-inch” guide to give you the courage and faith you need to feel supported as you jump into your new and better life.

It’s time to clear the path ahead and move toward letting go and leaping with these 10 steps:

• Step 1: Admit to yourself what you already know.
• Step 2: Tell the truth to someone safe.
• Step 3: Imagine yourself free.
• Step 4: Make one different choice.
• Step 5: Set your new boundaries.
• Step 6: Ask for help.
• Step 7: Honor your resistance.
• Step 8: Jump!
• Step 9: The Graceful Exit.
• Step 10: Say Yes… and then say it again… and again.

The irony is that all of the people who I was so busy trying to please (and most afraid of being vulnerable with, being myself with, and asking for help from) were the very people who were there to support me in rebuilding my self-esteem, self-love and forgiveness, once I finally let down my guard.

I realize now that if I was able to leave my marriage — and not only survive, but truly thrive on the other side of my greatest fear — then I can do anything.

Living through what I couldn’t possibly imagine ever getting past, I realized that I have what it takes to traverse any fear.

Once I discovered internally what I had been seeking externally, I learned that my needs come first. Period. And that the only way to have true deep loving connection is to stand fully revealed. All love begins with self-love and we live in the sweet spot when my vulnerability meets yours.

Almost daily, I give gratitude that he did read those journals and that I did finally leave because I can’t even imagine still hiding in my old life of constantly abandoning myself for the sake of another.

So at some point it started to occur to me that, while I thought I was just getting divorced, I was in fact rebuilding my relationship with myself. I was learning how to have a voice, instead of checking in with him or checking out. Every choice we make is either in service of the future we most desire, or sabotaging it. So most of all, I was finally most committed to honoring and claiming my own desire.

And now the next leap of faith — leaving my “day job,” wouldn’t even have been a glimmer in my eye, let alone a reality, had I not taken that first all-important step, allowing it to catapult me into the unknown. The woman I am today has everything to do with saying yes to uncertainty, and fully accepting my hand in orchestrating all the relationships, events and circumstances in my life in order to extract the wisdom I specifically came into this lifetime to learn. Leaving my marriage was a conscious decision to no longer live in reaction to anyone or anything else, to take the plunge into living on my own terms, finally honoring my own desires. A massive lesson I am eternally grateful for.

Leaving my position at Hay House bears a different gift. Trust me, the journey to quitting my dream job hasn’t been easy. This decision has also been two years in the making!

The idea was just a scary little spark back in August 2012 when, on a walk in Melbourne, Australia, my close friend — and President/CEO of Hay House — Reid Tracy said to me, “It’s not about your indispensability at work. It’s about your irreplaceability as a human.” Woah. He was right. It’s about who I am, not what I do. I had been living in a long-running story that everyone loved me because of what I did for them.

Immersing myself in the truth that people love me simply because I am me — that each of us are loved because of our own singular exquisite brilliance — was a complete game-changer.

I finally clearly saw the way I had been running myself ragged using all my people-pleasing and perfectionism as the currency with which I was buying love and attention. And then I stopped. And I was still loved. Actually, I was loved even more than before, because I had surrendered to the genuine flow, instead of my old pattern of chasing. It was a revelation.

Having spent the last few years in deep inquiry, excavating my interior landscape, I’ve discovered that honoring my authenticity and vulnerability by saying yes to what I most desire, while welcoming all the unforeseen gifts, opportunities and surprises as well, is a profound act of self-love.

All of this gives me the courage to answer the call and say yes to fully immersing myself in coaching, writing, speaking, teaching — serving from front-and-center now, instead of backstage.

I am profoundly grateful to the magnificent souls I have drawn into my life who always hold me at my highest and reflect my bright shining light back to me, especially when I need to be reminded of it the most.

I know I am not alone. I am supported and blessed as I now step out to take my place and claim my space in the world. As me. And I now know that’s enough and all I need to be.

The last words that my dear friend and mentor, the late Debbie Ford, ever said to me were: “Go live your life. Don’t work yourself to death. I love you, babydoll.”

I echo her words: Live your life—the one you were meant to live. Take a deep breath and dive into the future you most desire.

NancyLevin.com

You may also enjoy Podcast: Matt Kahn | Transformation & Collaboration: Redefining The Law of Attraction by Best Self Magazine

The post My own jump… inch by inch appeared first on BEST SELF.

Letting go of rigidity and embracing your body’s and mind’s own agenda and flow creates more joy and peace. Here are 5 ways to realign

—

And the world cannot be discovered by a journey of miles, no matter how long, but only by a spiritual journey, a journey of one inch, very arduous and humbling and joyful, by which we arrive at the ground at our own feet, and learn to be at home.

― Wendell Berry

As we prepare to click the calendar to a new year, I’m reflecting upon several significant changes I’ve made over the past several months. The conscious choices I’ve made, and continue to make, in order to realign whatever is out of whack inside me. All the ways in which I self-regulate and return to center, rather than reacting to chaos or seeking peace outside of me.

Taking time now to notice and acknowledge the integral implementations that have allowed me to stop abandoning myself and “stay home,” even when it’s been most challenging. I want to share a few foundations with you.

Sleep and move — on your own terms

Last Friday I had a surprise overnight getaway with my man. On Saturday morning I woke naturally, as usual — anywhere between 5am and 6am is fair game for me — but unexpectedly, there was no possible way I could get out of bed. I was bone-tired, and instead of poking, prodding and guilting myself with ‘shoulds’, I settled back in and allowed sleep to take me. Two hours later, completely rested and refreshed, I was ready to greet the day of adventure awaiting.

I’ve always been a “morning person” and absolutely love the early moments I get to myself, before time starts gunning for a marathon finish. I’ve also spent most of my life as a highly responsible over-achiever and people-pleaser, viewing any lingering in bed as lazy and irresponsible. Thankfully, through all the shadow work I’ve immersed myself in, I’ve since learned to embrace, own and integrate those disowned parts of myself. I now listen to my body — respecting and responding to its real-time rhythms instead of holding it to the rigid, sterile standard I used to.

The same has happened in relation to exercise.

After years of relentless and rigorous training, I now let my body decide when and how it wants to move.

Allowing sleep and movement to flow naturally honors my alive desires instead of defaulting to auto-pilot by operating on old, outdated rules that no longer serve me. Here on the brink of turning 50, I’m more forgiving and accepting of my body than I have ever been. And no longer fighting that fight has made all the difference.

Schedule play and productivity

Growing up, I never had much appreciation or reverence for play. In fact, I used to think that happiness and fun were for other people. I found play a waste of time, and believed that people who engaged in it were lazy or not on a serious path. I have since learned that play is not at all frivolous — it’s actually vital and healing. Especially when I work hard and play hard, choosing to balance workaholism and diligence with loving life and laughing.

Everything that needs to get done will get done. It always does. Always.

Time and time again I have proven this to myself, yet it’s taken me years to really believe it. So much energy I’ve wasted in stress, procrastination and worry by trying to force myself to do this or that. Endlessly punishing myself by not allowing any fun in until I had produced. Or worse finding myself in the midst of adventures and activities, doing fun things yet not having any of the fun myself.

And then I discovered there was more to life than working all the time. {gasp}

Now I do what nourishes my soul first, knowing that I’ll be much more creative and efficient once I’ve gotten my blood flowing by hiking, running, riding my bike, skiing, etc. Productivity feeds off of play — make your play work for you.

Befriend frustration

Sometimes our fiercest frustrations reward us with our greatest gifts. Once we surrender our willfulness. Here’s what I mean.

I’m not going to go into the long drawn out story of calls and chats with Apple support, followed by Genius Bar visits. I will spare you the part about one tech having me do some “troubleshooting steps” that actually resulted in my computer being more screwed up than it was when I began, ultimately having me go to the Genius Bar empty-handed, due to being in the midst of an epic 60+ hour “Erase and Restore from Time Capsule” that had my devices otherwise engaged. And I’m definitely not going to tell you that even when I asked said Genius for a another appointment — one that was sooner than the next available online in 48 hours later — with a straight-up, outright request for the appointment they must be saving for Obama, should he be in the area with an immediate mac-mergency, the Genius said, “I’m sorry but no, we’re not holding anything for him.”

I didn’t actually believe him and don’t like to take “No” for an answer, but he was sweet and helpful and I trusted his advice since it’s what he said he’d do in my situation. Maybe they always say that, but I found a bit of solace in it. I mean really, at that point, what was I to do given that my laptop — and essentially the contents of my entire life — had been deleted and was now receiving a data transfusion (I hope!) from my time capsule backup.

As I left the store I got an instant hit that I really did have a choice about what thoughts to think which would, in turn, affect how I was feeling.

In that moment I chose to envision my computer completely healed, all data in tact. I decided that I wasn’t going to spend the rest of the day or weekend feeling frustrated or beating myself up for doing this or not doing that since I have come to learn and accept that I am always doing the very best I can at any given time.

I made up my mind to be kind to myself, remembering how futile it is to stress out about any impending outcome. Que sera, sera… whatever will be, will be… and my worrying certainly won’t help matters. But my positive thoughts can. Or at least they can support me in having a fun-filled weekend of love, hikes, bikes, meaningful connections and conversations, yummy meals! And I even met my writing deadlines after I dug out and dusted off my old Mac PowerBook from 1902.

My system flooded with joy and relief, knowing that I no longer need to choose my old default habit of stewing in a negative funk.

Instead, by accepting what is and surrendering, positivity and peace are just a thought away.

And a wise friend said to me, “So interesting how your computer issues are a metaphor for your life. I think the key word was ‘restore’. When we restore a computer, we reset it to function, often at its original settings. When we ‘restore’ our thinking, we also get a chance to wipe things clean before a fresh start.”

Thankfully, after a few stops and starts, I’m happy to report that the restore worked! My computer is fully up and running in all its glory — with all of my data!

Lesson learned! I’m so grateful I didn’t waste a weekend — or even part of day — and that I really get, on a visceral level, how empowered we all are to create our own experiences by consciously choosing fun over frustration.

Disengage your ‘rally muscle’

By November 2012, I had been the Event Director at Hay House for a decade, without ever taking a week off. Spending an average of two thirds each year on the road — 213 days was my record, and 73-days straight with just carry-on luggage! — I didn’t long for additional travel. And when I was at home, working was an escape from whatever was going on in my personal life.

I had long since maxed out the allotment of vacation days I was allowed to accrue and since I hadn’t cashed any in, I was essentially losing time and money. And then, Hurricane Sandy hit.

After a couple of days being stranded in Pasadena where my last event had been, I made the executive decision to postpone our I Can Do It! New York conference given the excessive flight cancellations and significant venue damage. I scrambled for two days to postpone and reschedule 30 authors and 2500 attendees, and then found myself flying to the most unexpected thing possible ­— a vacation. I let anyone who needed to know that I was going off the grid. I flew to Fresno to meet my man who was just about to make his way back home to Colorado. Roadtrip!!! Spending the next nine days camping and hiking through four National Parks was medicine. Yosemite, Zion, Bryce and Canyonlands changed me.

That trip was a turning point, my first true stepping stone in learning how to let go.

For so long, I feared that if I cut loose, I would completely lose my superpowers of being the one and only one who can get anything and everything done. And if I lost that, who would I be?

What happened is that, instead of allowing myself to sink into the reprieve and truly enjoy it, I spent a lot of time – a lot of time ­– worrying about not wanting to do anything. And worrying about everything that had to be done once I got back to work. I just couldn’t let myself be.

The truth is that I really can’t rally like I used to. Can’t just muscle through it if I don’t want to do it. Some days I really wondered if it would ever come back, that ability to plow full steam ahead into the “doing.” Pretty much all of me thought this was a problem at first. But now that I know struggle and relaxation are critical stages of the flow cycle, I regularly allow myself time to fully disengage my “rally muscle” by embracing unplugged downtime. I’m clear that surrendering to my desires won’t cause me to abandon responsibility, it will help me to flourish instead.

Love yourself in love

After a lifetime of losing myself in love, and living in reaction to others instead of from my own authentic agency, I’m grateful now to be in a supportive, loving, healthy relationship where we each speak our truth and make conscious choices not to lose ourselves.

Finally, I’ve learned to love myself in love.

I’m not saying it’s always easy. Some days my relationship feels like a teaching hospital – we’re clearly learning as we go through the cycle of wounds and healing. Other times I feel like I’ve been enrolled in an Ivy League Ph.D. program without having completed any pre-requisite coursework, or even nursery school for that matter! But more often than not I am actively engaged in allowing myself to feel safe and held and, dare I say, taken care of. This is big and new.

The most important thing I’ve learned is that speaking up in the moment, rather than letting feelings fester, saves a lot of time, anxiety and pain.

Sharing from our hearts creates safety and trust. Skillful, transparent relating cultivates and cares for the intimacy we crave.

Remember to give yourself the gift of your own undivided attention. Take time for stillness and space. And learn to recognize when the relationship requires a particular type of watering that can only be found by putting the needs of the relationship as a whole before the needs of either one of you. Try it. I bet you’ll be pleasantly surprised by the depth available here.

When you find yourself out of alignment, it throws everything off. Remember, your inner housekeeping will get you back on track when you are out of whack. Spend some time with these questions, so you can embark upon this New Year with the courageous commitment to begin building the foundation for the life you want to live into.

• How can I be more forgiving and accepting of my body?
• Where can I surrender my willfulness, and allow?
• How can I make my play work for me?
• When will I relax my rally muscle, and be instead of do?
• How will I practice loving myself in love, instead of losing myself in love?

These are just some of the elements that have propelled me into this life I truly love — beyond fear and into freedom and empowerment. You can claim the self-confidence and self-esteem to love and be loved like never before. Be bold by living in right-relationship to your integrity, consistently admitting to yourself what you already know to be true.

Ultimately, it is all about a restore to our original setting. Before the armor, the mask and the cape. Before we felt the need to hide any aspect of ourselves to be loved. Before we believed we weren’t enough. Ultimately, it’s a restore to wholeness.

whole (a poem)

while the healing navigates

the map my heart and mind makes,

it’s the radiating rhythm

of vibration and stillness

that now allows me

to receive what hides

and translate all there is to see.

this journey to knowing,

deep in my essence,

that i am loved.

no matter what i do or don’t do,

even if i don’t do anything i will be loved.

but to believe, i needed courage.

i found it in my body.

my body,

a treasure chest,

its cellular secrets under lock and key

until the moment they were ready to be freed.

in the body

love first develops as hunger.

these walls have cellular memory.

there is a haunting here.

tight fitting skin,

barely wrapping bones

in dehydrated desert conditions

are infused with vitality

fleshed out and expanded

nourished and recalibrated

buoyant.

sensation returning and there,

my breath still held,

i felt full for the first time.

my power is very confusing.

and although my legs just want to run

i can feel my feet begin to find their roots,

sourcing safety for my strength.

i found my grounding

and what feeds me

in asking for help

from an intuitive hand.

my body,

once a fortress,

now begs for entry

and re-entry.

the thaw begins like this,

after being frozen in place

for so long,

waves of flame and prayer

release me,

finally locating the passage

from my heart,

revealing the way to healing.

and so in the softening,

i learn that love

presents in many forms:

in flames on candles carried

in kisses and wishes of peace

in snow surrounding a mountain waterfall.

my body melts

outside its lines.

my thoughts,

my own

for the first time.

and as pieces of me

return or arrive,

desire alone senses

the rise and fall

of what’s alive

inside.

and now,

stripped of all

i once defined

myself by,

it takes only a moment

to notice

i have always been

whole.

You may also enjoy Interview: Nancy Levin | #Worthy by Kristen Noel

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A reluctant psychic conveys the omnipresence of the dead with endearing comfort

—

When Suzan Saxman first went to kindergarten, she was surprised to discover that each child in the class was surrounded by helpers. Old men and women were leaning over the little ones protectively, cats and dogs were curling between their legs, and nuns in old-fashioned habits guided their hands to the right answers. “I didn’t realize there would be so many aides in the room,” she innocently told her mother, who marched off to the school the next day to find out if her daughter was also getting additional assistance, only to find out that no one was. Suzan was seeing things. Suzan was seeing the dead.

Suzan, with whom I cowrote The Reluctant Psychic (St. Martins 2015), has been communing with the dead her whole life and what she has encountered primarily are not malevolent spirits who want to frighten or haunt the living but souls still reaching out to those they love, eager to lend a hand, albeit an invisible one.

That’s what she told me when I first consulted her. My daughter had been sick for over a year with a mysterious illness that confounded even the best diagnosticians, and I found myself seeking out this woman I’d heard about from a friend at the gym.

I’d never been to a psychic before. I’d never even thought of going to one, but I was desperate.

“Your daughter is named for your mother, Patricia,” she said before I’d even sat down in the little screened-off room in her clothing store. “Your mother used to live in your daughter’s room, before she died. She’s there still, watching out for your daughter. She brings her dead cat with her, a big white cat, a Persian. The cat’s very fluffy and your mother is very beautiful, like a movie star, like Elizabeth Taylor. She’s here right now in the room with us. She wants you to know that.”

I felt the floor, the walls, and the ceiling of my reality disappear. It wasn’t that I hadn’t believed in an afterlife, but that belief was vague and insubstantial. To have this woman I’d never met before name my mother, describe her, and even identify her beloved cat, changed everything I understood about the world around me. Over the next few months as my daughter journeyed through a medical ordeal that Suzan had also predicted I found myself calling on my beloved dead for help. “Daddy, please tell me which test to get done next.” “Mom, help us find the money for the consultation with the specialist.” Somehow each of these things I asked for — from unexpected advice to mysterious bank refunds — miraculously materialized.

“The dead want to help out,” explained Malidoma Some, an African elder who taught a workshop on ancestor practice I attended soon after meeting Suzan. “It helps them feel useful, it helps them feel known, it helps them process their karma.

But unfortunately in America the unacknowledged dead are everywhere. Your cities are filled with souls waiting to be remembered and called upon.”

As I became mindful of the dead, the dead became mindful of me. Each night I recited the names of all the dead: grandparents, deceased aunts and uncles, long-gone pets, friends who went too soon, teachers I’d loved, really anyone I’d known or heard about or might be related to who had gone to the other side. If I didn’t know someone’s name, I’d say something like “and Grandpa Matthew’s mom who died in Ireland in childbirth.” I’d reach out to that woman I never knew whose very name had disappeared and speak my concerns about my daughter. How much unused mothering energy she must still have, I told myself. Out of the blue, a distant cousin sent me an envelope of old daguerreotypes, one of which was identified as a photo of Grandpa Matthew’s mother. Her name, Catherine, was written in elegant script on the back and in her hand was another photo of her mother.

I began to experience the great lengths of the dead behind me, mother before mother, father before father. Beneath me, too, the dirt was nothing but the dust of ancestors, of ancient sea creatures, of vanished trees, of species long since gone extinct. The world of the living was also the world of the dead.

“That’s right,” said Suzan when I talked about all of this with her one day over vegan quesadillas at lunch.

“It’s all just back and forth, comings and goings. It’s important to remember that. It makes all that dying business much less scary.”

Which it did. Late at night, lying in the dark, I often feel them close, my ancestors, my beloved dead. Once long ago I had said to my daughter on a plane that seemed to be crashing but thankfully didn’t, “No matter what happens, I will always be your mom. I will always be there for you.” I had meant it, and now I know that my mother is still there for me too. All the dead are. All the dead since the beginning of time.

You may also enjoy reading Where Did You Go? A Conversation on Connecting with the Dead by Bridgette Jackson-Buckley

The post Mindful of the Dead | Lessons From a Reluctant Psychic appeared first on BEST SELF.

Dream big. Allow yourself to go to the wildest places, declare yourself a lotto winner. Miracles happen regularly…

—

leap

lēp/

verb

1. jump or spring a long way, to a great height, or with great force

faith

fāTH/

noun

1. complete trust or confidence in someone or something

Leap of Faith | The 10 Essentials

1. Don’t beat yourself up before you start.
2. Expect to make mistakes, consider them opportunities for learning.
3. If you don’t give it a try, you’ll die wondering…what if?
4. Stay in the present, don’t project too far ahead, no need to create the ending before the beginning.
5. Dream big. Allow yourself to go to the wildest places, declare yourself a lotto winner. Don’t let reality beat you down. Miracles happen regularly – we just forget to expect them.
6. Notice the small steps of accomplishments and the miracles that occur along the way. Be grateful when they happen. Gratitude multiplies.
7. Jump and your wings will appear.
8. You don’t have to know how you will get to your destination, the Universe takes care of the details. Set your intention and watch the magic unfold.
9. Magic can’t happen if you don’t believe it exists.
10. Your soul has a purpose and it is your duty to fulfill it. Listen to your gut. Your intuition is your true north compass not the monkey-mind that shuts you down and tells you it’s impossible.

Please follow Eileen’s blogs, Confessions of a Modern Day Housewife, and Goddessgrotto.

You may also enjoy reading Face-Off With (Creepy) Fear by Jenna Knudsen

The post Leap Of Faith | 10 Essential Tips For Shifting Your Life appeared first on BEST SELF.

Taking down fear requires persistent attention — but yields unimaginable rewards

—

Does fear ever leave us alone?  Do we ever outgrow it? Does it ever tire of dancing on our souls? Not mine. Mine is f@!#ing relentless.

Every move I make, path I decide to venture down, every change, decision or choice… Boom! There it is — mocking me — calling me out. Sliding up next to me and wrapping its arm around me like the creepy uncle we avoid at a family reunion.

Do you recognize this fear that I am speaking of? As soon as you get crazy inspired to do something big in life, something that excites you, something that calls to you and makes your heart flutter… it shows up. Dark. Powerful. Familiar. Heavy. Poking at every weak spot in your psyche. And so damn real, it feels like it’s in the room with you sitting right on your lap, weighing you down.

Why should I get to have, be or do anything that I want? Do I really deserve all of this? Who do I think I am?

As soon as I contemplate taking a “leap of faith” and changing the direction of my life, endless mind-chatter ignites.  It leaps boldly into the fear zone of my consciousness.

In the spirit of transparency, let me state that I crave safety. My soul aches for a life-is-good, all-is-well, kumbaya feeling. Yet, this platform of security I yearn for has eluded me. It is always just out of reach — minus the tiny pockets of calm. I look up and ask the Universe, is the joke over yet? Enough with the character building!

Flashback… I was living my life, raising two kids, working at one “job” to develop another — my coaching career. I fluctuated between inspired and numb on a daily basis. Nothing was dreadfully wrong and yet nothing felt ecstatically right. Ever felt comfortably numb?

The one constant was my daily prayer. During meditation I prayed that my best and highest path would show up in my life.  I know I am on this planet for a purpose. I pray to remind myself of this too. I believe in all things fun. But more than that, I want to live a life that contributes to others, to the world.

A few years ago the course of my life/career was thrown off track by a hurricane-force financial disaster. This is not my beautiful life. This is not my beautiful car. Letting the days go by. (All 80’s peeps know what I am talking about…) But I digress…

My emotional resume: Scared. Unsure. Single Mom of a tween and a teen. Floating at the mercy of the tide.

Guess who is knocking on the door? Creepy Uncle Fear! Waving a hand-written invite to my personalized pity party, we sit down together for a deep, tête-a-tête about what a failure I am. No negative detail goes unaddressed. Every possible thing that ever went wrong is under the spotlight. Fear has invited its best friends: judgment, insecurity, unworthiness…all working in tandem to see how small I can feel. Fear pointed out to me, This “living your dreams” bullshit is just that. It ain’t gonna happen. Look how it all worked out for you, Jenna. Get real and get back in your cubical! I got small and allowed fear to take up residency.

I spent years being “practical.” I worked. I paid my bills, barely. I got through each day. I told myself that being responsible was the new inspired. Living ‘on purpose’ was a phrase that made me cringe each time I glanced at Oprah’s magazine covers. It was a message I taught my coaching clients, but one that I was not practicing myself. I was living life as a full-blown hypocrite. I taught others to go for it! Live their dreams!  Burn the boat!  Squeeze every bit of juice out of life!  I believed it was available to them.

What was I doing wrong? What about me?

I whipped up a great story around why I was living as a sell-out. I made excuses, lived in denial and did everything necessary to get through each day doing a job for which I felt no passion and had no connection. What did I get then, you ask? A paycheck. The every-two-weeks paycheck. Stable. Steady. Safe. I operated from a place of fear.

My soul was dying a slow death, all in the name of safety.

During this period I stayed connected to my yoga and meditation practice. In that space, my world of endless possibilities still existed. It is where I connected to my higher self. In that space I still knew my life had purpose. When I had the courage to leap, even an inch forward, the stars aligned for the purpose of bringing my life to a higher state. People and opportunities entered my life with synchronistic beauty.

And Jenna lived happily ever after…

Oh snap. Wouldn’t a fairytale ending be sweet? “No bueno!” yelled Uncle Fear. Fear jumped right on in and called forth all sorts of new anxieties to stop me in my tracks, whispering things about losing paychecks, losing security, being ungrateful, acting irresponsibly and on and on it went. I was standing on the cliff, knowing it was time to jump. Anyone who has ever considered life a ‘personal growth’ journey knows that these are the big moments. When opportunity arrives, we do one of two things — take it or don’t. It was jump or settle. (Can you feel my heart breaking as I type that dirty word…’settle’?). Could I settle into ‘settle’? — it was a slow death in my mind.

I made a choice and I jumped. Today is a Brave New World because I took the leap.

Looking back I can tell you this, I have no regrets. I did what I did. I took care of my family. I built amazing relationships. I learned new professional skills. I gained business knowledge that will serve me well going forward. Friends who had given me professional opportunity, revealed themselves as family when they acknowledged that my happiness was more important than the “bottom line” of their business. Everything had served a purpose. It all prepared me for my life’s exciting next leap!

After deciding to go for it, my fear watched me from the cliff’s edge and I could hear his loud words, “You’re an idiot!  This is such a stupid move! So irresponsible!” Now, as I move forward, as I engage, as I re-connect with the world that I know and love, a world where everything is possible and anything can be fun, these self-defeating theories fade into the distance, losing their grip upon me. Mind you, my creepy uncle has not gone completely — he can return, uninvitingly knocking at the door, but he no longer lives with me.

Behind the door that opened for me, there are 10,000 of the most amazing, generous and successful people I have ever known in my new Isagenix family! I am living a beautiful, fun, fulfilling life.  I love my life and I love sharing what I do — helping others take their leap toward their best life.

A leap of faith is exactly that. No one can leap for us. No one can push us. No one can decide for us if it’s the right leap for us. Deep down you know.

Deciding and committing and leaping is how we change our lives.

Deciding and committing and leaping is how we change the world.

Deciding and committing and leaping is the hardest damn thing, yet makes life worth living.

It’s now. Today. We are here for such a short amount of time and no one gets a guarantee of when the party’s over. There is no such thing as failure. There are choices that don’t work out and lead us to different choices. We are a glorious work-in-progress. My point is this… go for it! Tell your creepy uncle to take a long walk off of a short pier. Surround yourself with people who are leaping! When opportunity knocks… answer! Hold a space in your life for things to work out beautifully. Consider joy an option!

The next time you have to decide whether to jump with faith, think of this… and know that I am pushing you with love!

Come to the edge, he said.  They said, we are afraid. Come to the edge, he said. They came.  He pushed them…and they flew.  

~ Guillaume Apollinaire 

You may also enjoy reading Leap Of Faith by Eileen Haber

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