Let me just start off by saying I’ve had a lot of jobs in different industries and I’ve been fired, given a “time out” and told that I had to work from the office or resign just to name a few of the “highlights”…LOL!  I guess this could be looked at as a major catastrophe, or that I had somehow failed.  Closer to the truth was that these were opportunities and they kept me moving in a direction that was more in alignment with who I am.

I was really out of alignment, for example, when I got fired from the Downtown Hilton shortly after I moved to Seattle.  The hotel did not treat people the way I thought they should and their policy of overselling rooms put me in a values conflict every single day that I worked there.  As a result I drug myself to the hotel day after day and couldn’t show up on time to save my life – my inability to be on time was a sign and symptom of how wrong a match this job was for me and so when the manager fired me because I was habitually late there was almost a sense of relief mixed in with my hurt and fear.  I knew I didn’t belong at this place but needed the job and didn’t know what I was looking for.  The motivation to go find something else wasn’t going to come without a little outside help   To some of you this will sound very familiar!!!

I had other experiences that were similar – however, the next example I am going to give you is a little different.

I had a job I loved more than any of the others (up til that point) working for a man I respected in the floor coverings industry when I became pregnant with my first child.  We decided that when the baby came, I would work from at home.  I told him that my husband and I had looked into the cost of childcare and decided that I would need to work at home if I was going to stay in the job.

I was a one woman office whose time spent as a manager allowed me to “mind meld and anticipate needs” it was the big joke with his wife who would come in and ask if he had consulted his brain (me) for permission to place anything on his schedule or tamper with anything else going on in the day to day business of the office.  As you can imagine, being so highly dependent on my skills, my boss wanted to give the working at home thing a go.

Spirit had other ideas for both of us – because neither of us would have made a change as long as we were together.

It wasn’t long before the Higher ups intervened through the office phone system.  The parent company refused to ring the phones over to my home number and my boss who was always on the road was left with no one to handle the phones while he was in the field.  Soon no one could get through and I was given a choice.

He called me in knowing what my answer would be but didn’t feel there was an alternative, he had to have someone for the phones and didn’t have the budget for another salary…I was going to have to come back into the office and daycare my son (which we couldn’t afford to do) or I was going to lose my job.

I felt so trapped and betrayed!  Why was this happening to me?  I wondered, signing my resignation, I stuffed my tears down as far as I could get them to go and wondered if we would make it financially.  While at home with my son I started to explore my interests and eventually started a handmade soap and lotion company.  Two years later, while I was pregnant with my second child that same boss called me to say he had a job that he thought I would be good at.  I asked if I could work from at home and he said, absolutely.

I worked side by side with this man for years and didn’t know anything about his passions.  He was inviting me to help him live them by promoting his family’s Southern Gospel group.  I was shocked that he could sing – and when I listened to the recording I felt my Spirit pull strongly toward the position.  I didn’t know anything about Southern Gospel Music, booking a singing group let alone managing one but before it was all over I would be a marketer, promoter, booking agent, publicity agent and band manager all in one.

I sold my soap company, Elysian Dream, in record time and started working for the group.  Within a few months, Spirit manifested a contact with one of the top 3 recording studios in Southern Gospel Music, a year later my boss and every member of his group took a leap of faith and moved from Washington State to Tennessee, almost a year to the date after their move they recorded a project at the studio with whom we had the contact and I found myself helping them negotiate a 10 year recording contract with the Producer who had been our greatest mentor for the last two years.

After helping my friends achieve their life purpose I realized I had hit on something that resonated deeply within my Being and started exploring myself from the inside out to more fully understand how to manifest this calling outside of the role of a marketer (as Spirit was calling me away from my ego, which was deeply embedded in that aspect of the job).

This experience was the pointer for what I do today – following the passions and purpose of my own Soul.  What looked like loss through the previous experiences was really an opportunity to sync up with something greater – my Highest Path and Purpose.  With each experience I learned and grew and began to understand where my Soul was trying to go.

If I hadn’t been fired and given my other experiences,  I would have been complacent and happy to stay where I was.  However, what looks like a terrible event may just be the push that you need to have the freedom to explore what you really, really want in life because all of a sudden you haven’t got as much to lose.  Many, many of my lightworker friends who were hearing their purpose but were paralyzed like a deer in headlights by the security of their income are facing similar pushes and shoves as the universe urges them to awaken!!!

I wonder if Susan Boyle (the latest unexpected superstar of Britain’s Got Talent) would have auditioned for the show if she had been comfortably employed with her life completely on track?

Susan Boyle – Britain’s Got Talent

Is it scary??? Yes…but it is also exciting and if you breathe into that fear it will transform into an energy that moves you toward the path you are meant to be on!

Nowadays I expect good to come from my storms…how about you?

How I Discovered Coaching

When I first became aware that I was on my Highest Path and Purpose it was very surreal.  I was enveloped in this energy that is securely anchored to Source and even though I had no idea where I was going – it was clear that Spirit was leading somewhere, leaving a trail of breadcrumbs for me to follow.

One day while at my computer I distinctly heard a voice (from outside of my own head) say life coach as if someone or something had been leaning over my right shoulder.  Now this really impacted me because clairaudience is not my usual channel and so I immediately typed it in the search bar to see what this life coaching thing was all about – where was this guidance leading?

As I searched I found several definitions of coaching and what really struck me about the modality is that you see your client as whole, capable and having all the internal resources they need to achieve whatever goal they may have.

My Definition of a Coach

A coach deploys what I call “full-body listening” in which they hold intense focus on their client (with no mental background chatter) using listening and their bodies response system as a way of syncing with the energy system of the client.

This allows them access to all the choices available, to see the situation from the client’s point of view, but also from many other directions as well.  By the coach holding this expanded space around their client and asking questions that guide the client toward the things that are available that they haven’t noticed or been able to see, the client becomes aware of more empowered paths and choices.

The NLP and Coaching Institute of California

One school in particular literally jumped out at me and when I talked to co-founder Kris Hallbom I was so pulled toward the NLPCA’s Coaching Program that I just knew (right then and there that somehow I would attend).

This program was a 23 day intensive.  At the time, my two young children were ages 4 and 7.  The intensive ran in July when the kids were off from school and my husband did not have the vacation to cover taking that much time off.  My mind looked at this situation and began to run statistics on the likelihood of this all working out, however Spirit was in the driver’s seat and simply said to Speak My Truth and trust what manifested.

When I spoke to my husband about it he was immediately on board as he saw what a great match it was to my natural tendencies.  The training itself was not all that expensive but hotel and food would kick it up a notch, regardless – he was willing to dip into our savings to send me.  His parents who are often busy, just happened to be available and were extremely excited about the prospect of having their grand kids all to themselves for several weeks for camping and other fun summer activities.  I watched in awestruck wonder as every little piece of what seemed impossible fell effortlessly into place!

The program itself was amazing. It was set just outside San Fransisco (one of my favorite cities ever!) in nearby and less expensive Burlingame where a quick drive would deposit you on the BART and into the heart of everything there is to do.

Operating Principles

We had five instructors who were the very embodiment of the teachings (each offering a vast amount of experience and a different area of expertise) over the duration of the course.  Covering a wide range of skills deeply anchored in the empowering perspectives of the NLP Operatives:

• Communication is redundant.
  You are always communicating, in all 3 major representational systems – auditory, visual and kinesthetic. You signal this through tone and tempo of your voice, posture, breathing patterns and gestures, as well as your language patterns and eye accessing cues.
• The meaning of your communication is the response that you get.
  Communication is not about what you intend, or about saying the right words; it’s about creating an experience in, and getting a response from, the listener. The “bottom line” is the response you elicit.
• The map is not the territory.
  People respond to their map of reality, not reality itself. NLP is the science of changing these maps (which then changes the way a person perceives and interacts with reality).
• Requisite variety.
  The element with in the system with the most flexibility will be the controlling element.
• People work perfectly.
  No one is wrong or broken; it’s simply a matter of finding out how they function now, so that you can effectively change that to something more useful or desirable. People don’t need to be “fixed”.
• People always make the best choice available to them at the time.
  (but often there are lots of better ones that they haven’t yet learned to access)
• Every behavior is useful in some context.
• Choice is better than no choice.
• Just about anyone can learn to do anything.
• People already have all the resources they need.
  What they need is access to these resources at the appropriate times and places.
• There is no such thing as failure only feedback.
  Every response can be utilized.
• Chunking.
  Anything can be accomplished (by anyone) if you break the task down into small enough chunks.
• Behind every behavior is a positive intent.
  While a behavior may be harmful or seem “bad”, there is always a positive intention behind the behavior.
• Symptoms – pains, anxiety, depression, tumors, colds, etc., are communications about needed action.
• We are all responsible for creating our own experience.
  Even when challenging events that we cannot control happen, we are responsible for our responses to the events. Typically we have much more control than we think we have. Another way of stating this presupposition is that “We consistently create our own environment” through our beliefs, filters, capabilities and behaviors.
• Energy flows where attention goes. (from Huna)

Learning to Coach

In the training we learned how to create the coaching state, holding the client from the viewpoint of the NLP presuppositions in total respect, while cultivating within ourselves a curious, not knowing state that allows our clients to go deep and find their own answers.  We learned to build trust to directionalize the conversation toward the client’s goals, to hold space for their agenda with active listening and specific questions, planning and action skills and how to create a meaningful metaphor on closing our sessions that the client could easily access to help them stay on target.

Coaching Skills and Tools

We learned the following coaching skills:

Accountability, Acknowledgment, Asking Permission, Bottom Lining, Challenging, Championing, Forward the Action, Goal Setting and Planning, Holding the Client’s Agenda, Inquiry, Intrude, Powerful Questions and Requesting Structures.

Along with these NLP skills:

Meta-Programing, Perceptual Positions, Neurological Level Alignment, Well-formed Outcomes, Backtracking, Universal Cycles of Change, Vision to Action, Ecology, Open Questions, Voting with Time, Energy and Money, Working with and Changing Beliefs (Six Step Reframing), Resonance Patterning and much more.

In Retrospect

This course really changed me.  I learned more about myself in 23 days than I had in many, many years and had the opportunity to shift many of my less productive mind patterns while we learned and practiced the material.

It helped me to embody an awakened Highest Path and Purpose perspective and I still rely on the mindsets and tools for creating shifts in perspectives that I learned in coaching in my personal walk everyday.

I made some amazing spiritual friendships and experienced as well as received much healing over the duration of the course.  In, fact you could very well say that this course is what awakened me to my path as a healer…it was the first step that I took toward that direction and I have never regretted it!

Reminder

For those of you who missed the teleclass on intuition the audio is available here (I’m still working out the technology end – so please excuse the static – it doesn’t last long) 

Special Offer

For those of you who might want to take up coaching, NLPCA is offering (this year only) a special price of $3600.00 for their training.  Be sure to head over to www.nlpca.com and check them out if you’ve been considering coach training!

My next post in this series will cover NLP Practitioner and Master Practitioner training

More and more it leads, like a dance I simply follow it without much thought to where it is going.  Lighting the way, with whom to speak,  what to investigate.  Guiding my hand so that souls may be heard, bringing forth an authenticity from within…helping others to understand just how much they already know.

Grow your confidence.   Listen to the messages all around you.  They will guide you – it is of no use to plan it out – simply flow with us – the voices of the core from within.  It will come to you at the moment of need – exactly what to do and what action to take.

Keep listening and we’ll keep whispering as you travel the inside road…

I’ve been walking this path and I am not yet ready to return.  Projects have materialized before me in direct response to spiritual query – I will have much that is exciting to share with you soon

Until then – listen and be true to yourself – you are sacred and loved!

Take your friends and family and wrap them up in a great big hug after seeing this

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Author’s Note:  The following post was inspired by questions asked of me by Albert Foong of the Urban Monk.  Thank you Albert for your questioning and seeking of the Truth

On Halloween or Samhain there is a belief that remains constant regardless of how you may celebrate the holiday – this is the understanding that on October 31st – the veils that typically keep us from seeing the world of energy and spirit and keep us firmly rooted in our 3rd dimensional reality grow thin even for those who typically don’t experience such things.

In ages past, it was also thought that this made people particularly vulnerable to negative entities who use this unaccustomed sight to generate and feed off of the fear energy of the those unlucky enough to encounter them.

This kind of thinking still survives, only now it lives in the collective subconscious mind where it mostly remains out of sight and unnoticed until something stimulates it into action.

So let me stimulate you by talking about the biggest beastie of them all – Lucifer himself.  When it comes to fear-based promotion, this guy has got a great publicist – after all what could be more terrifying than the very personification of evil itself?

So who is he and what does he really want?

The answer is simple.  Lucifer is an Archangel who was given a pathway to become one of humanities greatest teachers.  Stay with me now…

Why?

Because within our evolution came a time when our third energy center became very active within us. We moved up from the level of survival and simple pleasures and now were beginning to understand that we could influence and impact the world and situations around us. We could bend nature and others to our will.  As a result, individuality began to step forward above the group or collective thinking and as it began to take over the control booth a funny thing happened…we fell into judgment.

Now during this time the lower energy centers were in control – and we basically operated from two principles – moving away from pain or moving toward pleasure.  Only now there was another element getting mixed in -  what we believed would get us pleasure (or what I call projected into the future pleasure) – and this thing came to be called desire or what I want.  Soon all things pleasurable became good, anything that promoted our sense of will was good and anything that stood in the way of it was bad.

We chose this method of learning so that we could fully experience our individual impact on the whole.  In the Archangelic realms – plans were made to support us in this learning so that we could fully explore our own power and impact through our third energy center.

The Archangelic realms mirrored our internal split – many of the Angels were assigned to be space holders for Divine energies to support us in understanding and finding our way back to Oneness.  Others, were given the job of taking on negative energies in order to mirror to us our learning choices.  These were called by history – fallen angels – however they are merely high level dark teachers wearing masks.

So who is the Devil really?

He is the essence of Duality – a paradox – he is everything scary and he is everything Light.  The best way to consider it is through the concept of a spectrum – what you see and experience of him is determined by the vibration you are humming along at when you encounter him.

If you meet up with him when you are in a vibration of fear – he’s the scariest thing on cloven feet you’ve ever seen.  From the vibration of unconditional love he is the Angel of Light – the most beautiful of Archangels – the one who sang over the throne of God.

Some angels hold the space of Light,  fallen angels have followed us down into the darkness and will not come back until we all choose the light – this is how much they love us.

Lucifer’s job is to reflect to us the darkness that lives in our hearts – so that we may choose to live in love – this is what he does.  In order to do this he has to stay rooted in Source – otherwise it would be an impossibility to be meet us at each level within the spectrum.

What is he like?

I checked in with Lucifer to have a little chat before writing this post.  He is very funny!  As you can imagine he is also very charming.  I like him a lot.  It IS difficult to maintain the vibration necessary to see him as the angel of light rather than something of darkness as it requires you to consciously disconnect from the collective belief system and several times during the our conversation I was prompted to raise my vibration.  Like I said, it’s not easy – but it can be done!

His message is that he is really working FOR you.

He really appreciates anyone who can see him through the eyes of love as it is such a rare treat!  When you realize that Lucifer is really working FOR you rather than against you – what on Earth is there to possibly be afraid of???

So my dears, be Light-based tonight.  Enter your heart centers, open your seventh chakra’s, raise your vibrations and have yourself a wonderfully fun and Happy Halloween!

Image Credit

Last week I had a conversation with Source and the Angels that has changed my life.  I matter of factly told them I was done with illusion that I only wanted to live in Divine Truth and to – Bring it on!!!

I’ve been warned that I might want to use a little caution with this kind of enthusiastic statement – however, I am not a very cautious Spiritual Seeker

Well Source said, “O.K.” and it has been a pretty wild ride ever since!

This next story is a teaching about how we can take a step beyond forgiveness with the people that have hurt us most in life.

I was a fly on the wall observing a meeting most of us are unaware even occurs.  Here in this room sat my Higher Self,  Source the Archangels and my Guides discussing life lessons and hiring participants with whom I would dance in my current incarnation.  The candidates were reviewed according to the level of complement for what each Soul was working on – and that turned out to be quite the detailed process.

“What am I observing?” I whispered to Archangel Gabriel.  He simply smiled and said, “The truth”.

I returned my gaze to the meetings before me and a Soul I recognized came forward and was asked if he would be willing to play a role in the life situation displaying before him.  His gaze was cast toward a screen – I turned to watch with him and saw his beautiful Soul willingly take on a negativity that instantly transformed him from the very presence of beauty to something slinking in the darkness.

“Are you willing to play this part?” he was asked by the council.  “Are you willing to take this job in order to help the One before you evolve during it’s incarnation?”

“Yes.” he said gazing at me with such Love that my heart nearly burst – tears wet his eyes and with this answer he accepted the mission.

I began to cry tears of gratitude – it never occurred to me that we could be so loved and so supported by other Souls that they would be willing turn themselves into something despised by others in order to help move us toward our Highest Path and Purpose.

“Gabriel” I said, “is this the true Nature of Darkness.”  “Yes.” He said, “Even the Dark Teachers work for the Light – they simply take a different path to get there.”

When I consider the Dark Teachers in my life (the people I’ve encountered who’ve pushed me to grow with the energies of pain or fear) I’m now grateful for the lessons they taught me – because I understand what it must have taken for them to move themselves out of the Light and into extremely low vibrational energy in order to aid me with my life lessons.  Only the greatest kind of Love and Authority can produce Courage of this nature – and I find myself wondering if I have what it takes to make that kind of sacrifice?  I’ve certainly changed my mind about a lot of things due to this experience and I now know that Dark Teachers are more evolved than most of us believe

I’ve also come to recognize that along the way I made the decision that I no longer wanted to learn through darkness in my life.  I realized that I had an option and that I was drawing negative learning experiences to myself because at that time – I believed that I needed them.  That all ended when I chose to create positive learnings instead.

When we as a collective decide we no longer need darkness as a vehicle through which to receive our lessons and experiences – the Dark Teachers will be able to take off their costumes and return to the Light

Maybe it’s a strange idea that they are here because we want them to be here – but I think it makes sense…afterall we ARE that powerful!

Image by Aelle.

A Message From My Higher Self

During a recent meditation I received a beautiful message from my Higher Self that was the inspiration for writing this post that I had been playing with putting together for some time. I had been standing with her by the ocean, which is spiritually very sacred to me. We gazed out over the water together, breathing in the energy, sitting silently listening to the voice of the waves and the wind.

She turned to me suddenly at the height of this experience and said, “Do you know what it is about the ocean that you are connecting with?” I began to go inside and reflect when she directed my gaze by saying, “Look out onto the horizon and bring it all inside of you.” She paused for a moment and said softly, “It is not the water you love, it is the vastness…what would the water be without the horizon? What would this grandeur and beauty be without the space through which you can behold it? Understand that it is the space that you love and bring spaciousness into everything you do.”

The moment it was said, it rang true. The ocean which runs as far as the eye can see is vast, any object on it’s surface is clearly visible. Visually, it is a clean and clear landscape to behold and just by watching it, it begins to create similar properties within me. I organize myself internally to reflect its natural state…my thinking clears, my mind empties, oneness and spaciousness enter and I feel the separation melt away. I am consciousness, flowing, breathing, contracting and releasing without attachment.

Creating Spaciousness in Your Life

Creating space in life is a necessity. Especially when you consider that we can only successfully track 5-7 things, in our conscious awareness at a time. When we hold on to more than that the rest of the stuff gets pushed into our unconscious mind and this is how many of our unconscious patterns are born.

If you are on the path of personal development, you want to consciously control what is added to your unconscious mind. To do that you have to be mindful of your thoughts and maintain a level of spaciousness within your thinking. Here are some quick and easy ways of doing this that you can use throughout your day:

Focus on only one thing at a time.
Many of us run laundry lists of all the things we have to do on a continual loop within our minds. This takes up an enormous amount of space and energy to maintain! Write it down if you think you might forget and then allow you mind to only focus on the step that you can do right now. When that passes, move on to the next in the same order.

Breathe.
Pause every 15 minutes to half an hour and perform patterned breathing. The count can be anything you’d like, just make sure it follows an inhale, pause, exhale execution. Put your full concentration on what each part of the breath feels like. Perform the breathing patterns 3-5 times, and then continue on to the next thing.

Listen.
Stop and listen to your surroundings. Breathe deeply, while closing your eyes and listening with your full attention for about 2 minutes. Allow no censorship or thoughts about what you hear to come into your mind. Simply be with the sensations, texture and nuances of the sounds. Notice the vibrational quality to them and where in your body you can feel reverberations.

Practice putting your mind down.
This is one of my favorite little exercises in which I visualize giving my mind to something in my immediate environment (the airport is a great place for this). For some of you this may seem like a strange concept, but trust me. This is great fun once you get over the initial strange feeling and it’s a wonderful way to unload from the burden of non-stop thought for awhile!

Coaching and Space

In coaching, space is the foundation upon which all effective coaching techniques are built and when coaching isn’t working, it almost always comes down to the coaches mastery of this core skill. It works because it is one of the purest ways that we can interact with anyone or thing.

When I hold space for a client, I create a sacred field of connectedness and acceptance for them to work in. This is done by literally taking off my own views and filters of the world and entering a pure state of consciousness, where I am fully present and able to respond, where I am listening to what is said, and hearing what has not yet been uttered. From this place I can see very clearly what the client is attending to as well as what lies in the background outside of their vision. It is the quality of this attention, that provides insight and safety and makes coaching such an effective tool.

Holding space however, is not limited to coaching in it’s usefulness. It’s a way of being that can greatly enhance any aspect of life that it is applied to, since nearly all of life, is some form of relating

Generating the Coaching State (Holding Space)

Breathe. Start by breathing deeply and purposefully.
Visualize. See yourself and your environment bathed in white or golden light.
Feel. Place your attention in your body. Notice how the light fills you up, how each breath feels as it enters and exits your lungs, how your energy is revitalized and you are filled with peace.
Be. Now begin the get curious about the world around you, stretching your feeling senses into the environment around you. Notice how the air feels against your skin, enjoying an experience completely devoid of thought.
Explore. Like an explorer in new territory, interact with your surroundings in a way that lets you examine. Get curious about the paths and places before you and where they might lead. An adventure has found you and like a good story, you won’t know what it means until it is over…so simply allow yourself to get curious about and perhaps a little lost in, the experience!

How do I know when I’m holding space?
You are holding space when there are no distractions and the mind is quiet while the senses are awake. You’ll know you are there because you can be with a person or place without any planning about what you will do or say, or any trying to “figure things out”. There is a trust present as well as an observing curiosity. It is a safe, peaceful place…where anything can be looked at and transformed!

Practice holding space every day and you will be able to produce this state whenever you want to disconnect from looping thought patterns, limitation, dis-ease, resistance or anything else that is troubling you and tap into a new way of being with your problems and therefore discovering what is actually possible for you or anyone else at this given moment

Oh little girl
There are times when I feel
I’d rather not be
The one behind the wheel

~ Depeche Mode

The following outlines a common roadblock toward allowing your Higher-Self to guide your life and provides a process for moving through this resistance…

Do you want help or not?

Most of us think we want guidance…in fact, we ask for it repeatedly to be certain that our request is heard. When asking a service of our Spirit Team, we often hold on to it, out of fear that it won’t get done. By not letting go…we ensure that this is the case, and we are left to wonder why our Guides aren’t working for us.

Understanding Resistance

This bewildering phenomenon is one of the most common forms of self-sabotage that we encounter when working with Spirit. It is subtle and insidious and leaves us wondering why our situation hasn’t changed.

Well, let me ask you this. If you were riding with someone and they told you to take the wheel, but then stubbornly clung to it, continuing to steer the car…could you really drive for them? Wouldn’t your efforts to go this way or that be thrown off by their resistance toward letting go? Would you be confused? Perhaps, you would stop trying as you realize that they aren’t really ready for your help.

Recognizing when you’re holding on

We unconsciously do this to our Higher-Selves and Spirit Guides all of time and while they may stop trying to navigate in a moment like this, they remain by our sides, just waiting for us to release our troubles…and allow them to assist us.

If you have asked for spiritual assistance with something but don’t seem to be experiencing relief, do a quick internal search and notice if there is any part of you that is still holding on. Be with the idea and allow your awareness to scan your body for any tension areas.

The body speaks that which the mind refuses to acknowledge.

An easy way to find them is to start meditative breathing while contracting and relaxing all of your major muscle groups. Using this relaxation technique for contrast, you will be able to identify which areas in your body are not letting go…they will correspond with the part of yourself that does not want to release the issue into the hands of your Higher-Self and Guides.

Internal Explorations

When you are conscious of the part that is hanging on, notice the emotions that are present. Get curious about this operation within yourself, observe with a detached mindset, and allow yourself to accept what you find as simply part of the landscape. Now is not the time for meaning so give yourself the task of simply exploring.

Place your attention on the very center of the physical location of this part. Bring your consciousness into this area of your body and notice how it feels. It will likely make many changes while you give it your attention. Simply be with the changes, going more deeply into yourself with each iteration until you get a visual of yourself as this part. Notice how this you is holding onto your situation, are the hands clenched? Or is this holding on being represented in some other way?

Now notice your Higher-Self placing a reassuring hand upon the you that is holding on. This part of you looks up at your Higher Self and lets go. At the moment of release, step into this other you and experience the support of your Higher-Self and just how good it feels to let go.

Sweet surrender: the bliss of letting go

From this space of peace, observe the larger picture and notice what you’ve learned from experiencing this situation. Notice how grateful you are for this opportunity to receive support and see yourself entering into your current circumstances complete, whole and at peace…with your Higher-Self right beside you, ready and willing to take the wheel.

You decide to relax, and enjoy the ride while you let him/her navigate for a time…looking out the window, you notice that there is a lot to see as a passenger and wonder at what you would have missed, if you hadn’t decided to let go

The real paradox

In reality both you and your Higher-Self are in control…since you are one and the same. Your Higher-Self is simply your highly evolved, spiritual consciousness…but it is still, in essence, who you are. The paradox is, that until you recognize this unity, neither of you is really in control because you can counteract each other’s efforts like in the earlier scenario of two people trying to drive.

Life is a series of contraction and release. The trick is knowing which to do, when.

Navigating life with our Higher-Selves is a kind of dance. A common theme in dance is two partners becoming One and this is the great spiritual lesson of this practice that has evolved in nearly every culture on the planet.

In my coaching and NLP classes we practiced a technique called mirroring. You would find a partner and just move. One person would start and the other would mirror their movements. As you get in sync with your partner, they take over the lead and so it goes, back and forth until you can no longer tell who is leading and who is following…at this point it is simply flow.

I find that in my own relationship with my Higher-Self that this mirroring is how we started the dance. I desired to connect, and so I learned how to “mirror” my Higher-Self. I practiced and practiced until we achieved flow and the lines between us began to disappear.

If you are interested in learning how to “mirror” your Higher-Self, please sign up for my six week Dancing with Your Higher-Self Intuitive Coaching Course. In this program I will connect to your Higher-Self and Guides and download an agenda and homework assignments that are designed to bring you into your own connection with your Spiritual Resources.

As this work comes from your Higher-Self and Guide Team, it will be an act of discovery for us both to see just how your connection with them will unfold. The program consists of six weeks of coaching, one half hour call per week with homework. The price for the program is $150.00.

This is the continuation of an article I wrote on Valentine’s Day called Manifesting the Love of Your Life, in which I outlined the process of creating your love list and invited you to take my beliefs about love questionnaire to help you determine what energies are operating in your love life.

Armed with your list of what you want in a romantic partner and the belief systems you have about love that have been playing in the background you can now determine how close of a vibrational match you are to getting what you want.

Most people find incongruities at this point…and end up facing the fact that many of their thought patterns (while living in the same space) are in direct conflict with one another. With their energy so divided…it’s easy to see why they’ve been getting the results they have been.

Bringing it all to a clear space, is what I’d like to talk about next.

Adopting the Attitude of Heart-Centered Living

What most of us really want is relationships in which we feel safe to be ourselves, in which we can let down our walls and in which we don’t have to hide or guard our vulnerabilities.

This viewpoint can actually constrict our ability to love ourselves and others due to the amount of attention and energy we spend toward trying to be safe.

In heart-centered living, we don’t have to try to be safe because we let the feelings of life move through our hearts, seeing both pleasure and pain as part of the human experience. This viewpoint moves us into closer connection with ourselves and others as we are no longer occupied with rejecting, avoiding or otherwise resisting our life’s situations.

The most common ways people tend to get it wrong are:

(A) Not knowing how to safely experience pain and
(B) trying to find someplace outside of themselves in which to be safe.

You Are the Only One Who Can Break Your Heart

Relationships are often filled with these two motivators, fear of being hurt and the search for a safe haven. So will this person break your heart or will they be the safety you’re searching for?

The answer is neither. Your partners actions can not break your heart. Only you can do that. Pain is resistance to whatever we are experiencing. It is how we interact with, interpret and give meaning to the events in our lives that causes us to suffer as a result of pain.

Pain in and of itself is a good thing, it is a warning system that is there to give you information about your environment.

Emotional pain happens when we create a restriction of the flow into and out of our heart system by not fully acknowledging, feeling and accepting our emotions. When our emotions are not fully expressed, the energy of the heart becomes blocked and contracted creating a sense of isolation and aloneness.

You break your own heart by rejecting life and this in turn disconnects you from your inner being…so when you find yourself immersed in judgment, rejection, pain, grief and other emotions that make you want to contract, bring kindness to yourself and comfort the part of you having the feeling. Don’t abandon yourself…be there for you by accepting and being present with your feelings.

The Spiritual Levels of Sexual Partnership

Sexual union and marriage on a spiritual level can be visually understood by observing the yin-yang symbol which represents opposites that are mutually rooted within the same system, transforming into one another while always holding the balance that creates the whole.

A marriage, or intimate relationship represents the process of two becoming one. Sex is the closest we get physically to this spiritual experience.

When you enter a relationship, your commitment is not to the other person as much as it is to the process of becoming whole…this is where we often become confused. We’re not loosing ourselves, giving up or otherwise being unfairly treated as our egos would have us believe by being in a relationship…instead we are surrendering our lives over to our authentic selves and sacrificing our egos so that our separateness becomes one, spiritually.

This is about riding the line of our connectedness…or our bliss. The goal is to stay centered in that connected space. When we keep our beingness and consciousness on that line we create rapture…and through the doors of rapture resides the timeless space that is the gateway to both life and death. In essence, sexual union represents this timeless, whole state of rapture…the death of separateness and a re-birth into a state of wholeness, which on the physical plane is the energy of creation itself.

As you can imagine, the ego has no vested interest in going down this path which is why you need to be the one calling the shots…

So how do you want to show up in a relationship? Which version of your current reality will get you closer to being whole? Is it the story of love’s past, of your broken hearts, of your bad luck or is it something else?

Putting it Together

Creating something else requires us to view our role in a love relationship from a more empowering perspective.

Much of this is accomplished by aligning ourselves with the higher level spiritual truth behind the desire to be in relationship with a partner…the opportunity to consciously experience our spiritual wholeness on the physical plane.

So now that you know what the real goal is, are clear about what qualities you want in a partner and the beliefs you held around love that have been interfering with creating the kind of relationship you want, it’s time to tap into your personal power and determine how you want to show up, so that you can get different results.

Choosing How You Show Up in a Relationship

The following exercise is useful for determining possibilities and filtering through them for the most empowering results.

Enter a meditative state, close your eyes, relax, breathe deeply and see yourself surrounded by protective white light.

Travel in your mind through time and space, to a place where you can see stretched out far behind you, a path that represents your life so far.

Out in front of you is the myriad amount of possibilities that could unfold. Stretch your hand out before you, and set your mind toward how life would look if you were living it as your most loving self.

The possibilities respond to your thoughts and begin to reorganize, reaching up to touch your hand and as they do, you see a movie of what life is like in each of them.

Try on as many as you like, get curious about them and study their differences until you find one that fits you. You’ll know by the energy and love you feel in your body as you experience it.

Once you’ve found it, examine the actions you take from this possibility as well as the thoughts and beliefs you hold as this most loving person. Notice what is happening in your life as a result.

When you are satisfied, make a commitment to yourself to allow your consciousness to reside in this possible reality, by building a bridge between it and your present circumstances.

Create a vision board that represents what you saw and felt as your most loving self…allowing it to flow into manifestation through the power of your conscious choice and intent.

Remember, you are one who is in control of and designing how you show up in life and in love

As always, feel free to share your thoughts and experiences!

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Many clients have ideas about what they want in life and can’t figure out why they are not creating it.

What a client creates can be looked at as a reflection of the connection or lack of connection that they are currently experiencing with their values system. Within the dance of this system is a call to deeply and truly connect with and honor themselves.

For this reason, we have to get honest with ourselves about what is really important to us, and honor it, in order to get what we want in life. When we get clear about ourselves internally, we are ready to shift our external experience.

What Do You Value?

In order to find out what my clients value I have them do an exercise with index cards. I ask them to think about what is really really, important to them, and why it’s important. I then have them write these things on the front of the cards.

On the back of the cards I have them list all of the ways that they support these things with their time, money and energy.

Because much of what we do is unconscious, most people will find that there are areas in life that are really important to them that are not supported by their actions. I like to think of this in terms of voting.

Determining How You Vote

Because time and money equal energy, writing down how you support your values is a really clear way to see what level of alignment you currently have with the forces that drive you in life and where to make shifts that can bring you closer.

For example let’s say that you live in an artsy town and you just love the fact that you are surrounded by creative people because one of your values is to experience unique and beautiful things because this helps you be present to life.

If every time you buy something for your home, you find yourself in Ikea instead of the beautiful little artisan shops in your town, then you probably aren’t voting very consciously toward this value

At this point you can examine the energy behind the thoughts and impulses that led you to put your time and money into Ikea.

The Nature of the Thoughts Surrounding the Activity

In the above scenario we could imagine a thought of going to look for a few items for one’s living room, which then triggers an unconscious reaction which results with the idea of Ikea popping into your head and off you go without further examination. What happened to the value? Why did it never come into play?

Values take conscious awareness to implement and align with. In the above example, I used a value that is often brow-beaten by our unconscious alignment with our societies thought pattern of getting the best possible deal.

When I examine my own thought processes of getting a great deal, I notice a huge undertone of lack. Personally, that’s not the energy I want to put out in the world. This kind of unconscious motivation puts an invisible wall up between me and what I want to experience.

Using Body Wisdom to Determine What’s Most Important to Experience

For many people values are vague concepts floating around in their heads in a way that is disconnected from their experience. Often times they are not yet living their values because they haven’t learned to bring them into their bodies and therefore into their physical experience.

When you place your values inside of your body, you can access them environmentally, in this way you can feel where you are voting with your time and energy and whether or not you are honoring yourself with your actions.

When I place the energy of getting a good deal in my body as my primary motivation, I feel a bit sick in my stomach. When I place the energy of choosing to work with companies with an eye out for the whole as well as themselves, I feel a deep sense of rooted power.

My body will tell me which is the correct action for me. Now to clarify, I’m not saying to completely ignore price, I am only saying to examine the order in which you structure what is important, in other words, to determine which should come first.

Aligning Your Business with Your Values

When I first became aware of some of the unconscious processes that ran automatically in the background when I would search for products and services for my business, I was literally startled by what I found. I instantly made the decision to restructure my business to honor my values and I thought perhaps you might like to join me.

Here is what is on my list to do:

1. Find a hosting company that runs on solar energy
2. Use a credit card processor that gives 10% of their proceeds back to the environment
3. Produce business products, recordings and books on post consumer recycled paper and pop bottles
4. Use a financial institution who works with small companies that want to positively impact the world

Putting it in Action

When the main thrust of my energy enters the world from within my values, it makes a huge difference in how I honor myself and others.

If you would like to experiment similarly, and are searching for an easy way to find conscious businesses with which to partner, I suggest looking in the Co-Op America’s National Green Pages for the services you need.

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