By Tama Kieves on November 14, 2011
Inspiration is an invitation to uncharted abundance. It’s not just the invitation to create a song, a yoga studio, a screenplay and some good money. It’s the invitation to create yourself. The creator is changed by the created. Yet if you refuse to listen to your own beckoning ideas, you hold back exponential resources within. You may think you’re just being practical. But how practical is it to deny your greatest powers?
You wouldn’t tell a baby to never expect to walk. Why would you tell yourself that you could achieve only what you’ve already experienced? You are still developing, aren’t you? It’s never “realistic” to deny your miraculous creative impulses. It’s self-annihilating. The reality is, you are a miracle. You are a growing, conscious spark of unparalleled energy. Your heart is the compass between the landscapes of what you currently know and what you can yet know in your lifetime.
I had a therapist who always talked about doing new things. She loved to challenge herself. The woman was a black belt in kung fu “just for fun.” I guess listening to everyone’s problems all day made her need to attack something at night. But she was frisky and creative, and urged me to try new things. At the time, I couldn’t imagine voluntarily adding some challenge to my life. I was doing everything in my fizzling power to avoid them. That zealous healer babbled on about the joy of expansion, and I looked at her with bleary pleading eyes and said, “English please.” But all these many years later, she remains with me. It’s not what she said. I remember the sparkle in her eyes. I remember the ease of her skin. She wasn’t just getting through her life like everyone else on the bus. This woman was alive.
Doing something new allows you to discover more of your natural largesse. I recently put on a new seminar. I was a bit nervous. I’ve taught thousands of workshops, but this one was all fresh content. I didn’t know what questions participants might ask. I didn’t know the catchy way to answer things. I wasn’t a well-oiled machine. I felt this gnawing in my stomach — not butterflies, closer to buzzards. I’m a bit of a control freak, though very shiny and spontaneous about it all. See, I like doing well. I’ve built up “buzz” and reputation. Truth is, I love having my workshops leave participants gazing at each other, dazed, happy, and as though they might just light up a cigarette afterward.
But I had to allow myself to grow. I had to flex new muscles. I had to take the chance that I could fizzle, which for me, would feel like having the worst hair day of your life, having your photo taken, and then maybe, if you’re very lucky, being burned at the stake. I had to walk my talk, which, by the way, never feels powerful until later, when you’re safe, fat and happy, and can entertain your friends. At the time, it means just walking forward and trying not to cry in public. But here’s the part I forgot: I’m not in control, but I am in the proximity of grace. I am not alone. I am not limited to the crude strengths I’ve experienced thus far. I am co-creating with a Universe that does not ever have self-esteem issues or a lack of horsepower or compassion. I am becoming more of myself — by using more of myself —discovering unknown power as I walk into the unknown.
Here’s what happened. The participants had breakthroughs, insights and stories I never could have predicted or manufactured. Something else was going on. This same essence often takes me by surprise in retreats. It’s a presence in the room, a love that’s in the water, where laughter erupts and tears glisten, or maybe our crown chakras open up like guppies swallowing the light. I don’t know. I do know that the attendees share unbelievable things. I say incredible things. This unrepeatable waltz begins to happen as though it had been reenacted a thousand times. It couldn’t go any better, though some insane part of me will dissect it later, anyway. It’s humbling. It’s moving. And it’s so far beyond anything that I alone could ever make happen. And I would have missed this if I hadn’t dared it. The experience reminds me of this line from “A Course in Miracles” — “The Holy Spirit is invisible, but you can see the results of His Presence… What He enables you to do is clearly not of this world.”
Russell Simmons, the hip-hop mogul with record labels, fashion labels, and multiple HBO reality shows, says he co-created his success by following an inner voice and taking risks. He says, “Time and time again I watch as the people who listen to their higher selves move on to bigger and better things, while the people who listen to the low notes end up stuck in one place or fade away altogether. They never realized that in ignoring their higher selves, they’re blocking their ability to be blessed.”
Where might you be blocking your ability to be blessed? Fear keeps you small and smallness keeps you fearful. It’s a pitiful system and it ages you like trauma, cigarette smoke, and too much gossip. Keep listening to your sweetest truth. Your truth is never an instinct that diminishes you. Remember, you have a presence within you that can do anything. You are not limited to what you’ve experienced in the past. You are not limited to what someone else has experienced in the past. There is something alive and inspired that wants to come through you. It’s an evolutionary impulse in your cells to grow and expand. You’re hungry for the new because you hunger for yourself. You know there are still unexpressed reserves within you.
Go beyond what you have done before. Expose yourself to grace.
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By Guest Blogger on October 25, 2011
When you get on the path to fulfill your dream, pursue a cherished goal or commit to an inspiring project, there are two kinds of people that you’ll meet: allies and adversaries. Both are inevitable.
There will always be allies and adversaries.
There will always be people who cheer you on as well as those who challenge you. There will always be people who get what you’re up to and those whose minds are nailed shut.
It’s easy to love the allies.
They’re clearly on your side. They cheer for you. They pitch in. They affirm your choices and direction. It’s harder to love the adversaries. Yet, both need to be embraced. Both need to be befriended. Why?
Because allies and adversaries are mirrors.
They each reveal different aspects of your soul. Allies reveal those soul energies, inner qualities and perspectives that you’ve already embraced and integrated. Allies reflect and reinforce those energies. That’s why it feels good to be around allies. They amplify your connection to those aspects of yourself that you already appreciate, accept and embrace. In the presence of allies, you feel affirmed.
Adversaries offer a different reflection.
They reveal those soul energies, inner qualities and perspectives that you’ve yet to embrace and integrate. Adversaries reflect and reinforce the unresolved and unredeemed aspects of your soul. When they raise questions, cast doubt and challenge your assumptions, you feel threatened, off-balance and on the defense. Adversaries amplify the aspects of your soul that are under-appreciated, perhaps denied and certainly un-integrated. In their presence, it’s easy to get defensive.
Defensiveness is a red flag.
Defensiveness points to the places in you that are not fully integrated. Your own inner tensions are mirrored in the tensions that you experience in relation to your adversary. The key words here are that you experience.
The tensions are in your experience.
And it’s this experience that needs to be transformed if you’re going to engage with the inevitable adversaries wisely and skillfully.
I’m not denying that there are people out there who object to your choices, disagree with your agenda, and oppose what you do and stand for. I’m saying that encountering such people is inevitable. And that for you to encounter them skillfully, you need to attend to the tension in you that they reflect.
The person-out-there is not the primary challenge.
The primary challenge is within you. Facing, embracing and transforming the primary challenge establishes a foundation for working with the conditions around you creatively. But you can’t do this when you’re caught in defensiveness. Your capacity to perceive the inner challenges is obscured when you’re defensive.
Defensiveness turns your attention away from the primary challenge.
And focuses you on controlling, convincing, defeating and eliminating the external adversary ? which you may be able to do . . . temporarily. But really doing so is just a distraction from the primary work.
Until you face and resolve the inner tension that the outer adversaries reflect – adversaries will keep appearing on your path.
Their purpose is to heighten your awareness and turn your attention to the un-integrated perspectives, qualities and energies within you. Because as you integrate the un-redeemed dimensions of your own soul – you are able to more fully, powerfully and playfully engage with the world.
The wonderful thing about your primary challenges is that they are in your experience.
They’re not out there. They’re in you. So you don’t need to be in a room with your adversary to do this primary work. You can do deeper, more effective and more transformational work when you focus only on your own experience.
Here’s how:
1. Set aside 10 minutes of sacred uninterrupted time.
2. Settle your body in a comfortable meditative posture.
3. Call to mind one of your adversaries.Use their image as soul bait – to call forth your inner tensions. Focus on their image, remember an event, replay their voice just enough to active an inner reaction.
4. Then shift your attention away from the story and into the body. Physically locate the source of defensiveness in your body. Gently turn the light of loving awareness to that place in your body. Recognize that you’re approaching a point of vulnerability.
5. Use the breath as a medium for transmitting awareness and blessing. As you breathe in, feel the tensions and sensations at that place in the body. As you breathe out, send a gentle wave of appreciation, acceptance and blessing to that place. Breathe in and be aware of the sensations. Breathe out and radiate acceptance and blessing.
6. Remember that you’re not trying to change, reform, improve or fix what’s there. You’re simply connecting to it with awareness, acceptance and loving kindness. These are the qualities that will, breath-by-breath, untangle the inner tensions. In this process, emotions may arise; let them. And infuse the emotions with acceptance, appreciation and blessing. Greet whatever arises as a friend – and bathe it in blessing.
7. When you’re done, sit quietly for a moment. Then re-enter your daily life.
As you work with your primary challenges and inner tensions, allies and adversaries still appear.
This isn’t a magical formula for getting everyone to think like you.
It’s a method for recognizing and transforming your own defensiveness. Defensiveness isn’t something you need to control, suppress or even get rid of. Defensiveness is a call. It’s your soul waving a red flag and calling, “Over here, over here. Please bring your loving awareness over here.”
The energy, perspective and creativity you need to move your life and dream forward is hidden underneath the defensiveness.
You don’t have to figure out why you’re defensive. Just return to the body. Feel into the place where the vulnerability resides and infuse it with loving awareness.
The more you practice with infusing the vulnerable, un-integrated places in your body/mind with loving-kindness, the more your relationship with outer adversaries changes.
When you meet the inevitable challenging people on your path, you won’t meet them as an adversary.
You’ll recognize them as teachers. As people who, by blocking your path, are helping you to stop and discover the places within your own mind and heart that you were going to leave behind as you headed toward your dream. But your dream really needs all of you. Allies remind you to celebrate those parts of you that you’ve already embraced. And adversaries remind you to widen the circle of your heart and expand the horizon of your vision to include those parts of you that are hidden in your most vulnerable places.
Eric Klein is both a best-selling business author and an ordained teacher in a 5,000-year- old yoga lineage. His latest book is “50 Ways to Leave Your Karma: Freedom, Fear and the Art of Getting Unstuck.”
Photo credit: Jurrian Persyn
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By Kate Northrup Moller on August 15, 2011
It will happen later. His best friend will ask you out instead. You’ll be kissed in the movies instead of on a beach. You’ll end up going to a different school because the one you thought you’d get into didn’t work out.
She’ll move away. Someone else will move in next door. She’ll be a little weird at first, a little more shy, but ultimately really good at riding bikes and playing dolls.
That part you always wanted will go to that other girl instead. And you’ll rock it out in the chorus like your life depended on it. Because on some level it does.
The road you were going to take will be flooded and closed. The inn where you were going to stay will be under renovations. He’ll be taller than you thought. And have a funny accent. But will be a good kisser nonetheless.
You’ll get a flat tire on the way to that crucial meeting and end up peeing your pants laughing with the gas station attendant over a copy of Us Magazine. And someone else will fill in for you because they always do.
You won’t get that dream job like you thought you would. It will go to someone else with far less creative drive and vision than you. Someone far better suited for a cubicle than you.
You’ll be put in groups with people who put your panties in a wrinkle. You’ll sit next to someone on the plane who you’d never talk to except that they won’t shut up … and you’ll end up staying in touch for years and taking family vacations together.
Five years after you graduate, life won’t look anything like you would have imagined. You’ll be single when you thought you’d be married. You’ll have kids when you thought you’d be in the Peace Corps. That trip to Laos will get delayed because you’ve got to stay home and take care of your grandmother. Laos will be there. You’re grandmother won’t always.
He’ll move overseas and oddly the Atlantic Ocean between you will bring you closer than you ever dreamed possible. You won’t get engaged, married, or pregnant when you thought. You’ll miss the bus/train/plane/ferry that you thought you just HAD to be on.
You’ll fall off the turnip truck. You’ll jump on a different bandwagon than you intended. You’ll get fired when you thought you ought to be getting hired.
You’ll realize you forgot the outfit you had planned to wear and that the shoes are all wrong now that you have a full-length mirror to see the whole outfit. Your shirt will be wrinkled and you’ll spill red wine on your white jeans.
Your dog will eat your five-year plan. You’ll drop your Blackberry in the toilet (at least once). Your computer will crash, and you’ll delete the first draft of your magnum opus. You’ll accidentally delete your hard drive and end up with a clean slate.
You’ll show up late to the date with the guy you were sure was going to fit into your husband suit and realize he’s less than graceful under stress and not so flexible (better to know now than later).
When you thought you’d be baking pies and living behind your very own white picket fence you’ll find yourself doing something so entirely different you couldn’t have even imagined it a year before. There will be moments when you’ll look around and not even recognize your own life … in a good way.
You’ll take a wrong turn and end up in an entirely different city than you intended. You’ll dial the wrong number and end up in love with an entirely different person than you intended.
You’ll flunk out and end up taking five years instead of four to graduate. You’ll have your heart broken when you were sure you were with the one and then meet the other one a month later. You’ll move to a new city to start a new business with those perfect new business partners and then it will all go to shit. And you’ll move across the country again only to realize that that’s where you belonged the whole time.
You’ll drive as far away from home as possible thinking that it will make you feel free. Then you’ll get homesick and drive back four months later because you suddenly feel trapped.
You’ll imagine the open road, country music playing loud, you singing at the top of your lungs and flirting with a new man in every town. And then you’ll invite someone to come with you on a whim and realize driving around the country by yourself was a terrible idea anyway … and that it’s way more fun when you’re traveling with someone you love.
You won’t do it at the right time.
You’ll be late.
You’ll be early.
You’ll get re-routed.
You’ll get delayed.
You’ll change your mind.
You’ll change your heart.
It’s not going to turn out the way you thought it would.
It will be better.
Earlier this year Kate traveled 19,000 miles by car and 11,000 miles by plane (plus 300 miles by boat) on her Freedom Tour. Follow her adventures today as she embarks on The Freedom Tour 2.0 by visiting: http://katemoller.com.
Photo credit: jeco
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By Rory Freedman on April 30, 2010
Jesus kicked my ass again—and I loved every second of it.
I’m a Jew, but I grew up in a non-Jew town, and I kinda had Jesus-jealousy for much of my life. Christianity had such an allure: the quiet calm inside a church, the white Communion dresses, and of course, all the bells and whistles of Christmas. Now, as an adult, I’m past the white dress thing. But the rest of it still holds a certain mystique. Yeah, some of it is trite, like the prettiness of Christmas lights, but I really do appreciate some real aspects of the religion. One of them is Lent. I have no idea what the real purpose or meaning of Lent is. But my friends are always scrambling around, giving up sweets, or alcohol, or Facebook, etc., and it seemed kinda cool. So for the past few years, I’ve taken on practicing Lent, too. I welcome opportunities to be a better person. Because I’m vegan, I’ve already taken all animal products out of my diet permanently. I feel good knowing that I’m not contributing to the suffering or death of any animals; no need for me to give up something food-related. But there was a little somethin’ somethin’ I needed to address: shit-talking. This year, for Lent, I tried to give up talking about people. And let me tell you something, it kicked my ass.
Let me start off by saying that I am a woman of integrity, and overall, I really don’t shit-talk people that much. So I thought. All of sudden, I felt like I couldn’t open my mouth. My friend had a crush on a guy and wanted to know what I thought… I thought he was a cagey mother-fucker and a total weirdo. One of The Real Housewives of New York was parading around in fur, yet calling herself an animal lover. And a guy I had gone out with had turned out to be a total douchebag. Ahhhhhhhhhh!!!!!!!!! What had I gotten myself into? I’m a woman—the need to express myself and be fully understood is biological! Now I had gone and gagged myself. How was I going to get through these forty days?
I’m not gonna lie, I did not do a perfect job: My friend pressed and pressed, so I finally told her what I really thought of the guy. Chelsea Handler took the Real Housewife to task, and I posted it on my Facebook page. And when someone asked about the guy I went out with, I said he turned out to be a douchebag. Am I proud of all that? No. But there were also multiple victories where I did keep my mouth shut in cases that I normally wouldn’t have. Whether it’s bad-mouthing someone on TV, talking about a random guy we’ll never see again, or shit-talking someone we know, words have weight. And even if the person never knows what we’ve said, the energy is out there. If a tree falls and no one is there to hear it, it’s still a fallen tree. If the person never knows they’re being bad-mouthed, it’s still mean and hurtful. Not only am I being ugly to them, I’m also being ugly to myself. Shit-talking is like poisoning my own well water. It muddies my waters and darkens my energy field. All for what? Letting someone know what I think? Who am I? Why are MY thoughts so important that they must be known? And what if I’m wrong? Maybe my friend’s guy isn’t a cagey mo-fo; maybe he’s just nervous with women. Maybe the Real Housewife genuinely doesn’t know that animals killed for fur are electrocuted anally and/or vaginally. And maybe the guy I went out with isn’t a douchebag; maybe he’s just struggling with some issues and doing it the best way he knows how. (Chances are, my friend’s guy IS cagey, the Housewife IS selfish, and my guy IS a d-bag. But for argument’s sake, I coulda been wrong.) Unfortunately, I can’t take back any of the mean things I said about these people. (Sorry, but I just gotta say: Wearing fur is total fucking bullshit. Check out http://www.skintradethemovie.com/ if you don’t believe me.)
No, I did not do a perfect job during Lent. I couldn’t even do a perfect job now, writing this! But I learned a really valuable lesson that has stayed with me, despite the passing of Easter. I do not want to talk about people. It feels better not to. It has been said that we have two ears yet only one mouth, so we should listen twice as much as we speak. I like this. I have no doubt I will continue to struggle with keeping my mouth shut. But these recent forty days have been a real eye-opener and a true blessing. Praise be to Jesus.
My challenge to all of you who skipped Lent or want to try something else: Do it for the month of May. Give up gossip, or complaining, or best of all, eating dead animals! Visit goveg.com for a free starter kit!
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