A golden key to freedom...

It has been my experience, in my own life and also working with others as an intuitive healer, that even just looking for a positive light new perspective, and/or a positive new possibility or two, can bring a shift in any situation, sometimes a big one. 99.9% of us have brains that can spin out negative thoughts at any given moment… so what. Truly, no matter how negative our thoughts get, it only takes a few light thoughts to keep the momentum floating up, because consciousness truly is the foundation of everything and consciousness is love. So even your negative thoughts are consciousness, just like everything else. A bit like the poem Footprints in the Sand, even when we feel we are in our darkest times, Divine Grace will always float us up.

Worrying about negative thoughts is a bigger problem than the negative thoughts themselves, in my opinion. For me, when I am able to accept them as simply a part of my thought process I feel much more at ease immediately and I can then process and release them more quickly. Knowing that my faith, the many positive thoughts I have and all of the moments of love and gratitude that I feel throughout my day already float everything up feels most accurate in my heart. Nothing will keep us from having any negative thoughts, or difficult times, contrast is an important part of our experience. Trusting in the nature of consciousness, trusting Divine Grace in any form, trusting the love and gratitude in our hearts… no negative thought can weigh down the light that even one tiny drop of that kind of thinking creates in our lives. That is my experience anyway. Nothing is more powerful than asking Divine Grace, in whatever form feels close to our heart, for help to keep our lives on track and trusting that it is. 

I learned from my gurus to believe that everything happens for a reason, for my highest good, as a child. Holding that belief is a brilliant antidote to any negative thinking because it spirals literally everything up. It inspires ultimate trust and gives us the space to be human, to make mistakes, to have negative thoughts and experiences and still have wonderful amazing light filled lives. In my experience, the beliefs we hold have a lot more power in what creates our world than our thoughts do. Don’t get me wrong, I am all for reframing, finding new perspectives, and opening doors to new brighter possibilities, but finding and maintaining foundational understandings that support us to have faith and to trust the world that we live in is a golden key to freedom.

The joy of being wrong.

Earlier today I was having a wonderful conversation with a dear friend of twenty some odd years, who I’ve also worked with a lot over the last eight years, and a bit of our conversation inspired me to write. 

One of the many things that this friend let go of years ago was a deep-seated feeling that ‘being wrong’ was... well a threat to their life, it really was that intense for them. The freedom of letting that go was incredible. As we spoke of this they told me that they thought the flip side of it was they wanted to make other people wrong. Having known this person for many years and working with them in this way I was able to say, nope, that is not even a little bit true! I told them that I knew with 100% certainty that they truly did not like to hurt others, that they, in fact, loved to uplift and bring joy to others, and that told a very different story than the one they were telling themselves. They could not deny that they do love to uplift and bring joy and they were able to let go of that piece of old baloney, thankfully!

They are not the only person I’ve worked with who have had that fear of 'being wrong', that fear drives the feeling of needing to prove... well probably anything, really, right? I think we learn this in many areas of our life, that being ‘right’ is a goal that yields great rewards. That can be learned at school, from watching others, from positive reinforcement and negative reinforcement, it's so subtle. I think the only way to open it up and shift it in the world around us is to openly practice embracing being 'wrong' as much as being 'right', in the many ways it can show up as a gift to us. The times when being wrong was a happy surprise, or resolved an issue even!

I recently thought I had an issue with Comcast and spent hours on the phone with various agents who could not figure out why I was being overcharged. I finally had a friend offer to get on the phone with me so I could get to the bottom of this issue, what a blessing that was! Having her on there helped me feel steadier and more relaxed and I think it helped the guy drop the script and really listen. It also helped that he really knew his job and I was so grateful for that! It turned out it was my own mistake! He was the first person to see that I'd missed one of my bills and so there was no overcharge after all! I was so relieved and grateful and thanked him profusely and praised him for finding the issue for me! It turned the whole experience into a positive feeling and then he actually helped me get a better deal on my internet too, so it was a win in my book!

I can think of many many times in my life when I was intensely grateful to be totally fucking wrong, lol. I recently have thought to myself, wouldn’t it be wonderful if I am wrong about all of the things I believe that are not serving me and right about all of the things that are? I only want to be right about the things that will give me joy, that support my heart, that prove to me that love is the foundation of everything. Those things are the only things worth being right about, everything else... well those things can set the stage for me to feel wonderfully surprised, to be able to laugh at my silly inner critic when they’re proven to be inaccurate and to remind me yet again of the joy of being wrong! 😂💝

A short and winding road...

...from self-appreciation and forgiveness to freedom and a generous heart! lol

I just saw a post of someone offering beautiful amazing heart inspired action in the world and then I read a comment, "Why can't we all be like this girl?!" My first internal response was, "We can! There is nothing stopping us!" 

As I was contemplating the question that was posed though, just now... "Why can't we all be like that girl." A response came up from my heart, "For the very reason that you ask the question." When you appreciate and celebrate the wonderful beauty of inspired actions from the heart you honor them and that can inspire more of those actions in the world. Bringing the vibration of not enough, well... not as inspiring, lol.

But the thing is, thank goodness we aren't, that is for the best! If we were all like 'that girl' *insert the last beautiful inspired action you saw here*, if everything we did was beautiful inspired action from the heart, that would make those moments less amazing, less magical, and our world would become a dull place. In fact, we could not even have those moments if that were the case, and obviously, we all learn and grow from both our joyful and our painful experiences, as well as from times we were awesome, and times when we have been not so awesome... so maybe we are all in fact exactly 'like this girl', at just the right times for us and the people around us. 

And that way, we all get to have our own moments to shine! So I say, wouldn't it be amazing if we could all appreciate the times when we have been awesome and forgive ourselves for the times we haven't? And furthermore, let's forgive ourselves even if we don't feel like we have learned anything, why not forgive ourselves anyway, as a kindness. Maybe that is enough of a lesson, and it may even be what we were meant to learn all along. Forgiveness can be given as a gift, it does not necessarily have to be earned. And whoever we give it to, ourselves or others, we will feel freer and become more generous as a human. Because forgiveness is always a gift of freedom for the one who gives it and freedom gives the gift of a generous heart.

Trust Your Heart

All inspired ideas come from the heart! When you have time, take ten minutes to listen to the fantastic advice from Abraham-Hicks in the video above! They are one of my all-time favorite teachers. Abraham is the name that Esther Hicks’ guides use to give themselves a structure that people can connect with as they speak through her. In my experience she is an amazingly clear channel. I am so grateful for their influence in my life. I was sent to an Abraham-Hicks seminar as a gift from my wonderful ex-mother-in-law, Beth, either in late 2000 or early 2001, can't remember which. In that seminar, when Esther Hicks put her head down and invited Abraham in to speak through her, I saw a white light emanate from her head, an actual halo! As my head was jerking back in surprise I also noticed about eight other people in the audience react with head jerks at that same moment. 

As I listened to Abraham speak, everything they said felt 100% accurate to me. It was amazing to experience this in a conference room of... I think it was an Econo Lodge, in Albuquerque of all places. Sometimes the coolest things happen in the weirdest places, lol. I listened to their cd's for a few months after the seminar, and then did not really keep up with them for a number of years. And then in 2006 I saw them in The Secret, and it all came flooding back. It was the right time for me to dive into their amazing perspective, it felt so clear, so accurate and so magical to me. That dive led me to the next one, going to see John of God in Brazil. And that dive led me to Matrix Energetics and that dive sent me to Kaua'i and there I found the space to dive very deeply into my own heart. What an amazing gift, all of it!

Living on Kaua'i felt incredible for me because it is surrounded by as much space as one can find from all of the large, populated land masses and it is surrounded by salt water. Salt is a great energy purifier. I am a highly sensitive empath, as are many of you, which means we are able to feel other people’s emotions and also the emotions of the whole, especially during intense times. So, that space from most of the population of our planet and the pure and powerful vibration on Kaua’i gave me a feeling of peace that allowed me to hear my internal guidance very clearly. That was the most powerful dive of all. There was a lot of support for me to begin my work as an intuitive healer, and to anchor myself in my heart. I like to think of that work as making my heart my command base. It was an incredible few years. Initially incredibly intense, my father died and many things were challenging, a LOT of contrast in the first six months, but then everything shifted. Then I had about two an a half years of really amazing, and often genuinely magical, me time. I could not feel more blessed to have had the life I have had, actually all the lives that I have had within this one. 

On Kaua’i I learned how to create energetic boundaries so that I could be around others and not feel their emotions as my own. I have since shared it with many people. I call it the Silver Surfer but each time that I’ve shown a person how to create it for themselves it personalizes into whatever works best for them. I love sharing it, because it feels wonderful to see the results. I especially love sharing it with kids. When it came time for me to leave my way was made absolutely crystal clear my last days on Kaua’i were quite chaotic, but I knew it was the process of shifting from one stage of my life to another. And I was sent to the first place that I have ever found that genuinely feels like home to me, Lake Oswego, Oregon. The first time I stepped foot in Lake Oswego I felt totally blissed out, it was the same feeling I’d had visiting John of God in Abadiania, Brazil. Such a beautiful feeling!

All of this came from me trusting my own inner guidance, every single choice that I made was me following my internal guidance, and nothing else. There were plenty of times when people challenged me on my decisions, and it was not always easy to stand my ground, but I had a lot of amazing training, and outer support to do just that. Sometimes I’ve felt totally nuts, other times I’ve felt selfish, and others I’ve felt like I might be lost... but I always listen anyway. Thank GOD for my spiritual teachers, Baba Muktananda and Gurumayi Chidvilasananda. If I had not grown up with their guidance, inside and out, I would not have been able to do any of those things. The last direct command that Gurumayi gave me was to go to my inner guru for answers, and that has become the foundation of my life and my work with others too. 

Trust your own internal guidance. Trust your ideas, trust your heart, trust your own process and know that no other person will ever know you better than you will, when you are planted in your heart. So do the work to get into your heart and know the difference between the voice of your heart and the voice of your ego, and then trust what feels right for you. That work will always include meditation and present moment work, but for me it was also years of listening to and reading many different useful perspectives from people and teachers that inspired me. For me inspiring and useful perspectives feel light, they feel like love and they feel accurate for me. They are the perspectives that help me feel empowered to love myself... and to love others, even when I don't like them. My favorite perspectives are the ones that help me laugh at myself. Being able to laugh at ourselves is such a gift. Not taking ourselves too seriously, not feeling we need to be ‘right’ or composed, or anything but authentically ourselves, that is freedom. 

The teachers I listen to and trust all teach that perspective, to be our own true self, and that we can decide what that means at any given moment. I check in with how things feel to me all of the time, old or new. That is one of the wonderful things about meditation and present moment work... the freedom to be who we are right now, not who we were last year, yesterday or even ten minutes ago. So… when you are doing the work to hear in your heart, trust yourself, trust your ideas, trust your own internal guidance. You do not need to make sense to anyone else in the entire world, and neither do I or anyone else. We all only need to feel clarity in our own selves, or if we feel confused, own it! And then we can take the time to feel our way towards clarity without the weight of trying to be something we are not. Love, love and more love to all of you.

No is the new yes.

I truly believe that working on feeling love for everyone and everything is possible and it is the road to freedom. However, loving and resonating with is certainly not the same thing. If loving everything meant liking and choosing everything, if there were no contrast to give us all different tastes and flavors, life would become incredibly boring don’t you think? Loving is about seeing the light of consciousness in all beings, and in the world around us. Liking is figuring out what resonates with us, what floats our boats, finding the things that feel like love light and solution for each of us. Whatever feels accurate and inspired in our own heart, that is resonation, and that may shift at any given moment... and that is a-ok. 

I love this crazy meme because it takes that understanding and can help to release us from taking another person’s opinion of us personally. It can also help us accept and honor our own feelings and preferences, and free us from self-judgment. Loving and respecting others does not necessarily mean inviting them, or their thoughts and opinions, into our lives. It means appreciating everyone as reflections of contrasted consciousness, and deciding for ourselves how close or far we’d like to be from them. That’s why healthy boundaries can really help us feel more loving towards others. It's been my experience that trying to force myself to resonate with something that I do not resonate with does not yield a positive feeling result for me, quite the contrary in fact.

Standing up and saying no can be the most powerful loving act a person can choose. As the slightly altered Maggie Kuhn quote says, "Speak the truth even if your voice shakes." But always check in with your heart first, because that really is the only place our own truths can be found. And I have found that when I am speaking from that place, my voice does indeed often shake, and sometimes tears come too. It's as though something inside of me, something wonderful and Divine, is pushing the words out of me. And that has always yielded an amazing result in my life. I have deep gratitude for those moments in my life.

The beautiful thing is, when we give ourselves the space that feels loving to ourselves, we are more able to observe all people and things with the eyes of the heart. I am working on loving it all, knowing that it's all consciousness, and I am also working on surrounding myself with whatever floats my boat. That is how I truly can grow to feel love for everyone and everything more and more every day. And that is most definitely the road to freedom, IMHO. 

I Surrender to Love.

I recently noticed a thought arise in my mind that did not feel at all like me, like who I want to be as a person, or who I already am! My internal response was, “No, that is not me… I am love!” When that response arose, there was such a beautiful feeling, a relief, a knowing. The thoughts that are not love, they are part of this life, it’s not that they are not real, of course they are… but they are not in alignment with our true nature. All of our true nature is love, regardless of any outside information. Our true nature can be disguised, but it cannot be changed. A bit later I was about to meditate and I was focusing on my heart, on love, and the thought, “I surrender to Love.” came up. I realized that it is a much easier feeling for me to embrace, surrendering to love, than trying to do, or be anything. Just thinking, “I surrender to Love.” even feels centering and relaxing to me.

Much like the simple practice of saying, “Thank you!” My teacher, Gurumayi, said in a talk many years ago that even just saying “Thank you!” out loud once a day would bring a shift into one’s life. I tried it. Every day after that, when I would walk up to see her, I would actually just think, “Thank you!”. Afterwards I would go to a very fun and lively chant with my dad, one of my favorites. After two weeks as I was chanting suddenly everyone in the room looked like they all had gold light bursting out of them, the entire room was filled with their golden light. I was given a glimpse of all of our true nature, it was incredibly invigorating and so awe inspiring! I turned to my dad and excitedly told him what I was seeing, and he was so happy! What a beautiful time we had together on that trip! So many wonderful memories! Writing about it gives me joy, and gratitude for the wonderful times I had with my Dad, and for all that I have received from Gurumayi. Thank you, Gurumayi! I surrender to Love! 

There is a bonfire in your heart...

I recently found the following words written in the middle of an old empty journal. I wrote it on August 24, 1997. I don't remember writing it, it really took me by surprise. I cry every time I read it. I can only guess that I had a rather powerful meditation and then grabbed the nearest journal and wrote this down to be found later... as in now, ha ha ha. 

When I first read this it was unbelievably perfect timing... that has always been my experience of Gurumayi in my life. I met her when I was ten, I think. She was Malti then, not a Swami yet, but she gave me shaktipat all the same the moment that I met her... and has lived in my heart ever since, and quite possibly even before that day.

I want to share this for myself, and maybe also for those of you who feel to read it. I think there are words in it that are true for all of you, not just for me. So I offer this from my heart to all of you. We are all love, no matter what we may think about ourselves... we are all love, every one of us, at our core, through and through. 

Here is what I wrote:

August 24, 1997

Thank you Gurumayi

These are messages I received today from Gurumayi, my guru.

You are always pure gold, I have always seen you this way.

Giving and receiving happen without effort if you just relax.

You have always been worthy of all you have received.

I am always with you and you are always with me.

You are Love, everyone else has always seen this, allow yourself to see it now.

There is a bonfire in your heart, if you go there you will be reminded.

Have patience with yourself, you will find your way there.

I love you!

Contemplating the practice of consciously choosing our information intake.

I've been contemplating the practice of consciously choosing the information and perspectives that I connect with and the factors I use to decide. How it feels emotionally, heavy or light. Does it feel like love, solution, expansive, freedom? Is it helping me support what feels accurate and helpful in my own heart for me? Does it feel like freedom or does it feel confining? How is my body reacting to the information and what does that mean. For those of us that believe that everything is consciousness, that can really only be the one true fact because consciousness is 100% malleable, so everything that it creates is as well. Embracing that understanding changes the way we navigate. The emotions that any experience or information brings up can be shifted when the experience or information is reframed. That obviously will work in either direction, which is one reason that meditation can be very helpful. It teaches us to observe our thoughts without entangling ourselves in the story so we are able to see our patterns and decide what is still working for us, and what has become outdated and can be reframed and or released.

Consciously practicing reframing information towards lighter perspectives can be what some people call finding the silver lining, or even just realizing that our information or perspective could actually be totally wrong, or outdated. That is one reason that I love to find out that I am wrong about things, to have new information shift my own perception completely. That retrains my brain to let go of things that are no longer serving the momentum that I am wishing to keep in my life towards lighter, more fun, more easeful perspectives.

It can be very easy to open up to this when you realize that being wrong can be such a wonderful gift to us, right? It can be a happy surprise! I have worked with many people that have held the understanding that being wrong was a negative thing, that being right was always best. That is clearly learned behavior because it is obviously only the ego that cares about such things. The heart loves to learn, to grow, to be surprised and opened to new possibilities. So the heart loves to be ‘wrong’, ha ha ha. Obviously, there is no such thing as right or wrong on a higher level of understanding, but when being wrong can be a joyful experience and offer us the feeling of freedom when we find new information that feels right in the now. So being wrong is a beautiful thing!

Years ago I read about Buddha heads being cut off of statues in Asia by colonials, to make them easier to transport. What I read gave the impression that this was the only reason that Buddha heads existed. So for years, I had a bit of a weird and negative feeling about Buddha heads. I recently found out that is not true, that Buddha heads symbolize the Buddha’s enlightened state and the wisdom and wealth of knowledge that he attained. Yay for being wrong! Ha ha ha! I am not interested in information that opens me to fear but I will always welcome new information that gives me a more positive, fun and light perspective on anything!

It has been my experience that internal guidance and the enlightened beings that I have known do not tend to give warnings, plant seeds of fear, or point at anything we are not wanting in our lives. They might point out or bring to the surface fears we already have so that we may walk through them and overcome those fears. That is where practicing reframing really becomes incredibly helpful, ha ha ha. Reframing with humor is one of the best ways to lighten things up quickly. Finding the humor in any situation is a fantastic gift we can give ourselves. Think of Laughing Buddha, finding the humor in everything is incredibly powerful. It has been my experience that internal guidance always shows us where we are wanting to go. It shows us open doors, solutions, exciting new possibilities and redirects us using light and sparkle, rather than giving obstacles attention and focus. I know that I am hearing my internal guidance when I am in the throes of fear, and suddenly a lighter perspective explodes the darker one and gives me a wonderful laugh or burst of joy.

The momentum of higher perspectives is always from love and a deeper understanding of the nature of reality. The higher perspectives are obviously more planted in the knowledge of the play of consciousness, of the illusion, the maya, the vibrational nature of our world. The vibrational nature of our world makes it completely malleable, vibrating energy is not stuck, it is not solid. Solid is an illusion that we enjoy, it helps us experience our world more fully. It helps us play and learn and feel the confinement that then gives us the wonderful experience of freedom! And that is why the only truth is that everything is simultaneously true and not true. And that is why information is only as useful as it’s ability to support our chosen experiences, our goals, our dreams, our heart journeys.

That is why I try to be aware of the information and perspectives that I open myself up to and to find a way to either politely walk away, or set a boundary if necessary. If I find myself dealing with something that is creating fear I will work to reframe it, to find a silver lining or perspective that releases the fear. At times I have even been able to flip information completely, into information that actually shows me the true nature of the world as I see it… Love. When I am able to do that, it is the most wonderful experience of all. It is my understanding and experience that Divine Grace is pure consciousness, everything is made of consciousness and Divine Grace is Love, so everything is Love. That understanding gives me the ability to find my way through very difficult experiences and find my way back to my heart.

Again, that is why meditation and various present moment practices can be so useful. Being able to pause, observe our thoughts and emotions in the moment helps us figure out which information feels like it is supporting us, supporting our hearts. It actually helps us to get to know our own hearts, to find out what inspires us and gives us actual joy. Boundaries are incredibly useful in this world where we all are so excited to share our experiences and perspectives with each other. That is a beautiful and wonderful desire, however, our experiences and perspectives will not serve everyone the way that they serve us. Understanding that brings so much freedom to us, to our relationships and to our world. When we understand this, communication can be so much simpler, in both directions. Judging ourselves and others, and also taking things personally becomes more and more silly when we genuinely understand this, and that right there is such a wonderful freedom! Finding silliness can be the most wonderful cure for so many issues in life, ha ha ha.

Ok, I guess that is my piece for today so… peace out everyone! Love and silliness to all y’all.

Wellbeing radiates from the inside out and love is always the answer.

Wellbeing radiates from the inside out. The various structures we choose to interact with in our lives can reveal and support that wellbeing or hide it from us. The homes we live in, the groups we join, the Facebook pages that we like, the people we choose to give our time to, the schools of thought that we align ourselves with, and so on, these are not creating either discord or peace within us, the way that we perceive them is. The emotions that we feel when we interact with these things, that is how we know what they are touching in us. When we feel like we need to fix something, when our thoughts and actions feel heavy, we are not in alignment with solution, inspiration, and freedom, which lets us know that we are not observing from our heart. Love is always the answer, always, so the answer will always be found in the heart. This is an entirely personal journey for each and every one of us, understanding that for ourselves and honoring it as we observe others, that is truly the key to our own freedom and the freedom of all beings. ✨🌞✨💖✨🌈✨💖✨🚀