>> Here’s the AUDIO for today’s Transformation Tuesday.
Answering your callings is not exhausting or depleting.
Refusing them — resisting them — is.
When you answer your callings, you begin to fulfill your Sacred Contract and purpose for coming to this planet, which is to learn some sacred lessons; to turn your thoughts into tangible things and to live in freedom, growth and joy, for the upliftment of everyone who watches your life unfold.
As part of that Contract, you were assured to have access to everything you’d need to do what you came here to do.
All the time.
All the energy.
All the money.
All the connections you need.
(You might not get everything you want exactly when you want it, but you will have access to everything you need to fulfill your Sacred Contract, exactly when you need it.)
The more you refuse your callings — and real talk: we all do at first — the more depleted and disconnected you feel. Because you are literally refusing to connect with and receive from Source.
But the more willingly you answer your callings to be, do, have or create whatever you came here to be, do, have or create, the more energized, charged up and inspired — fueled by Source, Spirit and All That Is — you’ll become as you go along.
This is where pronoia comes in.
You know what paranoia is, right?
The idea that everything in the world is out to get you?
Pronoia is the opposite of paranoia.
Pronoia is the principle that every person, place, thing, resource and atom in this Universe is collaborating and conspiring to bless you.
If this seems implausible to you, let me just insert one quick thing.
You are a powerful storyteller.
All humans are.
We make meaning of our lives by telling stories about what has, is and will happen to us, and why and how it’ll happen.
Through a phenomenon known as confirmation bias, we also have the power to find and even create evidence for any story we tell.
So if you choose to tell and believe and live into the story that the world is a hard, cold, scarce, harsh place and you never get what you need?
That will become your reality.
And if you choose to believe that every atom in this Universe is conspiring and collaborating for your highest good?
If you choose to tell the story that everything is always working out for you?
Then that will be your experience of life.
Up to you.
Head up + heart out, Tara
P.S.: Hit reply and let me know which story you choose: paranoia or pronoia.
Lest you be tempted to email me arguing for your limitations and the power of the unwanted things in your life, take note: I am relentlessin my optimism and my revelry is highly contagious.
You’ve been warned.
Also take note: What you focus on grows in your experience of it.
So choose intentionally what you focus on when you email me back.
>> Here’s the AUDIO for today’s Transformation Tuesday.
Your life is a river.
You were born a being of flow.
Every bend in the river — every plot twist, calling, adventure, transition, even the so-called obstacles and crises in your life — can create a logjam… or a watershed season.
You get to choose.
What do you choose?
Hit reply and let me know.
Oh, one more thing real quick: Keep in mind that often what starts out as a logjam becomes a watershed, as soon as the logs get tweaked back into alignment.
I’ll leave you with a beautiful poem I love to share with my students. It’s called Last Night as I was Sleeping, and it was written by the Spanish poet Antonio Machado.
Last night as I was sleeping, I dreamt — marvelous error! — that a spring was breaking out in my heart. I said: Along which secret aqueduct, Oh water, are you coming to me, water of a new life that I have never drunk?
Last night as I was sleeping, I dreamt — marvelous error! — that I had a beehive here inside my heart. And the golden bees were making white combs and sweet honey from my old failures.
Last night as I was sleeping, I dreamt — marvelous error! — that a fiery sun was giving light inside my heart. It was fiery because I felt warmth as from a hearth, and sun because it gave light and brought tears to my eyes.
Last night as I slept, I dreamt — marvelous error! — that it was God I had here inside my heart.
Picasso said that “every act of creation is first, an act of destruction.”
And he wasn’t alone.
Every sacred tradition has a story of sacred destruction as part and parcel of acts of creation.
Parvati — the Hindu goddess of fertility, divine strength and power — is married to Shiva, aka The Destroyer.
In the Kabbalah, the world of chaos and confusion dissolves and gives birth to a new world of Tikkun, which means rectification and correction.
Shoooooooot, Jesus Himself spent some of His time flipping tables and tearing veils to create a new, unmediated relationship between God and humanity.
In the sacred texts of our lives, this principle of Sacred Destruction is critical.
There are three categories of Resistance we must actively destroy in order to create our New Realities, or we risk staying stuck for a lifetime.
1. The first of these categories is LOW EXPECTATIONS: through a lifetime of trauma or so-called learning, we tend to practice, retell and wire in self-fulfilling stories of how certain subjects always play out to our disadvantage.
Then, we repeat our cycles and patterns of trauma.
Not because we don’t ACT differently, but because we don’t THINK differently.
We don’t expect any better, so we don’t get any better.
On some subjects, we don’t even allow ourselves to want more or better than what we already have.
So: low expectations have got to go.
2. The second set of stuff we must actively demolish are our UPPER LIMITS, the name given by Gay Hendricks in his book, The Big Leap, to the patterns of self-sabotage that serve as a ceiling on how good we’re willing to let our lives get.
[In my School, our entire month of June is devoted to studying The Big Leap, learning how to identify your personal Upper Limits and using this self-knowledge to leverage your Zone of Genius… with the benefit of your Sacred Money Archetypes!]
Catch this principle:Your Upper Limits must die for your New Reality to live.
3. The third and last set of things you must actively destroy for your New Reality to live is ENTANGLEMENTS.
Entanglements are what I call the exhausting:
relationship patterns
codependent habits of borrowing and “fixing” other grown folks’ chaos and
extreme tendencies toward over-self-reliance (I’ll do it myself) or
unworthiness (thoughts like: “I’m not enough”, or “who am I to deserve this??”).
These things have to go because they are exhausting.
They pose the danger of depleting the very energy you need to create your New Reality.
Oh… the other reasons entanglements have to go is that they are escalating: these particular patterns get harder and harder, less and less likely to break, over a lifetime. (Not impossible. But harder.)
If you are on the path of releasing the Resistance to your callings and taking awakened action instead, you are on the path of destroying some or all of these things.
Catch this principle: Destruction is a sacred component of creation.
Hit reply and tell me: What are you ready and willing to destroy now so that your New Reality can come to life?
Someone said to me the other day: “I really want to be disciplined, but I’m just not good at discipline.”
And I said, “I’ll bet you don’t really want ‘discipline’ per se.
Just hear me out.
I think what you really want is joy.
And freedom.
And continuous cycles of growth that expand who you are.
I think you want a body that feels wonderful and complies easily with your wishes.
And you want a whole life that feels delicious and like a series of gifts you gave to yourself: gifts that keep on giving.
You want relationships that thrive and juice you up, and you want to feel satisfied and eager, and you want to create and live in flow mode.
And you think that good habits are the way to get there.
And you think that discipline is the way to get to good habits.
But what actually keeps happening is your efforts at “discipline” keep flipping on your struggle switch, and what feels like self-sabotage follows from there. Shame spiral ensues. You set new discipline goals. Struggle switch flips to “ON”. Rinse and repeat.
Am I right about any of this?” I asked, checking in.
“Yeah. All of it.” my friend said.
The objectives of this human life are freedom, growth and joy. So anything that feels the opposite of freedom — like, say discipline — is likely to flip on the same struggle switch, over and over, that nearly ensures you either won’t stick with the effort to change or won’t be happy, even if you do.
Sound familiar?
So, if discipline isn’t the answer to everyday behaviors that facilitate our thriving and creating, then what is?
Rituals.
Rituals are the answer.
Rituals are habits made sacred.
Rituals have meaning. They create containers of meaningful, sacred space and time.
They are elective. We don’t have to do them. We choose to do them.
We can use them to make any area or task or project in our lives special, and they can turn any so-called “goal” or desire into a delicious, transformational romp.
Laura Day writes that “rituals are an external equivalent of embodiment. Just as embodying imprints your wish in your conscious and unconscious minds as well as in the energy of the Universe around you, rituals imprint your wish in your environment, everyday actions, and outer life. Rituals give form and shape to the events that you are creating now and empower them with sacredness.”
Habits can become, as she puts it “soulless reflexes.”
Habits connote “unconscious”. Autopilot.
And this is fine for some healthy habits. We don’t have to give a ton of thought to every single thing. You don’t have to make a super sacred ritual out of brushing your teeth… though you could (and I’d be into it, so hit reply and let me know if you do)!
My point is, to do that with everything would overburden our brains. So there is a proper place for habit.
But if you want to be a real-life transformation athlete, you need to carve out time and space for rituals, too.
Healthy habits, sure. But also sacred, meaningful moments.
And I’m talking about more than your morning ritual, though that’s a good start.
Building rituals throughout your day is the way to build a whole-life of your conscious creation.
Bringing sacred new everyday ways of being and special sacred moments into your life is how you dissolve and dissipate stubborn old, unwanted habits of thought and default ways of being without forcing or self-shaming or “discipline”.
So, get to your favorite spot to sit, and cozy on up. Sit with your feet flat on the ground, your weight equally distributed on your seat, your back fully supported.
Take a few breaths while your eyes are still open, and just feel the weight of your entire body settle in.
Feel the contact between your body and your seat.
Feel the contact of your feet on the floor.
Feel the contact of your arms and hands on your lap or on the chair.
Let every part of you be supported.
Let your body and your mind settle in at their own pace.
Take a few slightly deeper than normal breaths, and let your breath naturally slow down and settle in as well.
Feel the warmth in your body as you inhale, and feel your body relax and release tension, percent by percent, degree by degree as you exhale.
When you’re done, with your eyes closed, visualize that just above your head is a golden stream of flowing liquid light.
This is the light of love and of life.
This light represents of all the Resources of this Universe, straight from Source.
Allow this liquid, golden, molten love to pour and flow into the top of your head and just coat and infuse every cell it touches on its way through your body.
Allow it to fill you from your toe-tips all the way up.
As it streams into you, let it warm what needs warming. Let it cool what needs cooling.
Anyplace that is tense or tight or constricted or clenched, this liquid light simply soothes it open, coating it, filling it, infusing it with Limitless Love, with Infinite Intelligence.
This light knows where to go.
And as you sit and receive it, and breathe and open to it, every cell of you is filled with wellbeing.
You are filled with total and complete wellbeing from the very deepest nooks and crannies of your body and your organs, to your bones and connective tissues, all the way out to your skin.
Just feel what it feels like to be filled up with this light and love and life.
Just watch and feel it happen, you don’t have to make it happen or do anything for it to happen.
Just watch it happen. And feel it happen.
Let it soothe open your pelvic floor, your shoulders, your jaw.
And especially let it coat and fill and penetrate the innermost chambers and vessels of your heart. Let every cell of your heart be filled with this light and love from above. Allow any tightness in or around your chest to open up, degree by degree, and receive Source-level
Sit like this and be filled with this for another 10 minutes today.
Then, for the rest of the day, simply allow rays of this love and light to peek out from behind your eyes, to shine out from your fingertips to any other person or being you touch, and just to radiate this light and love out from your actual heart, all day today.
>> P.S. I’m delivering a keynote on the Recalibration Rituals of Conscious Creators at The Athena Pack, a 2-day summit for women entrepreneurs and business owners in Bozeman, Montana this THURSDAY! Click here to learn more + register.
>> Here’s the AUDIO of your Writing Prompt for today.
Prompt of the Day: The Revelry Game
Let’s take stock: What deeply satisfies you right now, when you choose to focus on or look at it?
Think or write about as many things as you can conjure up that cause you immense satisfaction when you hold them in your mind.
Here are some thought starters:
What about your life is thoroughly satisfying?
What about your history? What memories? What decisions you’ve made? What surprises you’ve experienced?
What have you created in the past or in your present that just feels so good to think about?
What about the world? What about nature satisfies and nourishes you?
What experiences deeply satisfy you?
What other beings on this planet and in your life cause you deep satisfaction and grounded joy when you consider them?
NOTE: Write your answers with no buts, no caveats, no exceptions. Don’t give into the urge to put conditions on your own happiness or to show off your intelligence by making it clear that you understand all the suffering in the world that coexist with the things that satisfy you.
>> Here’s the AUDIO for today’s Transformation Tuesday.
Most school days when I was a kid, my shoulders were sore.
They were sore because of this funny mix of emotions I had going on inside.
I was so 👏 freaking 👏 excited 👏 to get to school.
And at the same time, I was totally and completely engrossed in whatever I was reading or thinking about in the moment.
So I’d be moving forward with full speed and momentum, but also deeply captivated with the present moment, often reading or cooking up A Brilliant Idea.
As a result, as I was rushing around in my eagerness to get to school, I’d often miss the mark on getting through the doorway of my childhood home. I’d hit the door jamb hard with my shoulder 4 or 5 times before I even left for school on any given day.
This memory came to mind last week when I did exactly the same thing, at 43 years old, as I used to do when I was 9.
I was so excited to capture this inspired thought that had come to mind for one my School, and also so eager to get to a Co-Creation Session I was about to do with a client that I hit the door jamb with my shoulder, sparking this muscle memory and triggering all the associated emotions: exhilaration, satisfaction with this moment, eagerness for the moments to come, alignment, joy.
I was on one, as they say.
And I was wise enough to take a moment right then to jot something down in my journal.
A micro-revelry.
A reminder.
A reminder that this moment — this feeling — is *exactly* how I love to feel about work.
I love to feel like my projects and customers and relationships are a series of gifts that Past Tara has given Now Tara and her Now Customers: a series of moments creating in the flow and moments of creating even more flow.
Today I invite you to dwell in this possibility right here with me: That you can feel like your work is a gift to yourself and to the people you serve. Frequently. Regularly. Even consistently.
Whether you know it or not, it is possible to feel so delightedly satisfied with right now and eager about what’s next that you run into stuff trying to get to do whatever it is you do.
First, time for some real talk: You may not feel this way about work right now.
And a little more real talk: I’m not suggesting everyone can or even should desire to joy-trip through every moment of every workday.
But remember: The reason we’re all here is for freedom, growth and joy.
These are the strategic objectives of the human experience.
So, if you are not regularly experiencing freedom, growth or joy in connection with your work, your work strategy is ineffective.
Doesn’t mean you’re not bad or wrong. Doesn’t necessarily even mean your job, company, or line of work are bad or wrong for you.
Realizing your work strategy is spiritually ineffective is no reason for regret, shame, self-judgment or self-critique, nor is it cause to run away and join the circus tonight.
It’s just an ineffective strategy. That’s all. It’s not creating what you want.
But it might be a step on the path right into what you want.
See, it turns out that some of our most ineffective strategies for living in freedom, growth and joy — the jobs we take, the way we do them, our habitual relationship and self-management styles, our patterns of hiding, playing small, self-silencing and holding back our best work and best selves from the world — these ineffective strategies can be some of the most valuable strategies, in the long run.
Because they get us clearer and clearer on what will be effective.
Because they get us closer to fulfillment or clearer on what will get us closer to fulfillment.
And because, along the way, we might even learn something about ourselves.
We learn that full self-expression is how we create our best work.
We might learn that our sacred purpose in life is not actually to check things off on some cosmic list of achievements.
Or, along the way, we might unlearn a bunch of old, played-out family and cultural conditioning about what success looks like and what work can feel like. We might allow life-zapping scarcity, fears and perfectionism, for example, to dissolve and dissipate.
And when we do, what remains is the beautiful, fine-tuned, tuned-in core of who you really are and why you really came to the planet in the first place: a new clarity about your purpose and the thick skin, soft heart, relationships, skills and character you need to move into your new season and new projects boldly and unapologetically, finding satisfaction and also eagerness for what’s to come.
If you’re feeling like your past and present career choices and experiences haven’t been effective at lighting up your next steps into more freedom, growth and joy, I’ve got three things for you:
1. One thing to do: Focus on what is working and what does feel great about your work. Look back at your calendar for last week (or last year, if need be) and revisit what really floated your boat.
What was joyous? When did you feel in the flow?
What moments and meetings felt like you were in the perfect place at the perfect time?
What projects felt like you were downloading golden threads of inspiration from some other realm?
What were you doing and who were you being when you got your best and brightest ideas, or when you acted on them?
When you look back at your calendar for the last week or so, what work memories create the feeling Martha Beck calls “shackles off”?
What recurring elements, relationships or parts of your work now spark feelings of satisfaction, eagerness, freedom, growth or joy?
Be totally transparent with yourself.
Don’t give into the urge to resist the answers.
Allow them. Let them be true and okay and be heard, just by you.
You might be very surprised at what you find.
2. One thing to refrain from doing: Master the natural tendency to fixate, focus and ruminate on what’s not working.
Because what you focus on grows, period and point blank. Even if it’s unwanted: if you fixate on it, you’ll get more of it.
Getting deep into the problem is almost never the platform for receiving, allowing, downloading or experiencing a bolt of clarity as to the solution.
And it feels shitty, too.
So. If you’ve got a grudge or a grievance around your work, redirect the urge to play into that habit loop of calling your complaint buddies to chew on that cud again.
Instead, try this: Write it out. This allows your inner whatever to come up and flow out without being repressed or stuffed down.
It dissipates the emotional charge of frustration or anger or fear.
It creates some space into which solution energy and insights can flow. You might get a download to consult with someone else on a solution, but even that kind of conversation will be much more fruitful and uplifting than the grudge-fest sort we call “venting”.
If you need to vent, vent on your journal pages. Allow yourself to feel what you feel. Investigate your feelings for the gift of insight they might contain, as needed.
Wipe your emotional windshield clear, in this way.
Then keep it moving.
To paraphrase the brilliant Julia Cameron: Put the drama on the page, then leave the drama on the page.
3. One inspired viewpoint to breathe in:Your life’s work, your best work and your best life are all the same thing.
My work, my life and my sore shoulders are Exhibit A.
But don’t take my word for it. Here’s Exhibit B, from my dear, old friend Kahlil Gibran.
Maybe you’ve heard him quoted before, on the point that “work is love made visible.”
But you’ve likely not heard the rest of his take on work.
I offer it to you now as an invitation to breathe the spirit of love into your work, starting today.
Starting simply, by ceasing the rehearsal of what’s not working and reveling in what is.
That’s all inspiration is, after all. Breathing spirit in.
From Kahlil Gibran’s The Prophet — On Work (1923):
Always you have been told that work is a curse and labour a misfortune.
But I say to you that when you work you fulfill a part of earth’s furthest dream, assigned to you when that dream was born,
And in keeping yourself with labour you are in truth loving life,
And to love life through labour is to be intimate with life’s inmost secret.
And what is it to work with love?
It is to weave the cloth with threads drawn from your heart,
even as if your beloved were to wear that cloth.
It is to build a house with affection,
even as if your beloved were to dwell in that house.
It is to sow seeds with tenderness and reap the harvest with joy,
even as if your beloved were to eat the fruit.
It is to charge all things you fashion with a breath of your own spirit,
And to know that all the blessed dead
are standing about you and watching.
It is to write the code or create the marketing campaign or build the business or lead the team as though you are downloading love and possibilities and clarity and transformation directly into your users, even as if your beloved were to use your app or product or work for your company.
(NOTE: I added that previous paragraph. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ — Tara)
>> Here’s the AUDIO of today’s Transformation Tuesday. I hope you enjoy listening to it as much as I enjoyed speaking it.
You are a creator.
You came here with the uniquely human superpower of being able to think about something that doesn’t yet exist, then to cause that thing to exist.
Your expansion is inevitable.
You are on the right track.
You are in the perfect place at the perfect time.
Wherever you’re at right now?
Is juuuuust right.
There’s nowhere else you should be.
There’s nothing else you should be doing.
You haven’t messed this up.
You can’t even mess this up.
Every delay, every experience that seemed like a wrong step or mistake?
They served a purpose.
They were getting you clearer.
They were preparing you.
They will ultimately turn out to be beneficial to you, if you set down the struggle version of your story and allow the wonderful version to unfold.
There are millions of ways your path into an elevated, joyful life experience could look.
There’s not just one way.
And if you think you should be doing more, you’re wrong.
If you identify as an action-oriented, achievement-oriented human who loves to get things done, I hate to break it to you — strike that — I actually love to break it to you: Doing less is generally how the best things will come your way.
If that leaves you confused about next steps, here’s my prescription.
Sit still. Every day. Just for 5 minutes. Or 10 or 20.
De-chaos.
Get still.
Listen.
Receive your inspiration.
And when you do?
When you have those Big Bright Ideas or even those small but resonant little hunches?
Get after them. Milk them for all they’re worth.
Because there is no efficiency like the power of inspired action.
You are creating all the time, whether you know it or not.
Whether you’re creating what you want or not.
Let inspiration find you, and fuel your creating.
Let the process unfold, as it needs to unfold.
Let your inner resistance dissolve and dissipate all along the way.
Let it be easier than it has ever been.
Await your inspiration.
When you do take action, do it wholeheartedly and do it with a spirit of excellence.
But do it allowing for grace. Do it allowing for Divine Timing.
Do it watching the path light up ahead of you. Watch the other components of whatever it is you’re creating just line up and light up before you.
Then take the natural next step.
Make peace with the process.
Stop withholding approval of your own delightful self until such time as you’ve accomplished something.
Get nonresistant to your own greatness. Loosen up. Relax. Receive.
Love and approve of yourself starting now and all along the way, not just when you’ve lost the weight or started the business or written the book or you’ve done or been or acquired whatever it is that you want to be, do or have.
Love and approve of yourself starting now.
Look for and find the joy in the process as it plays out.
And let the Divine handle the how.
Release attachment to the granular specifics of any one way your path might unfold.
There are millions of ways things can and will work out for you.
So release attachment. Receive inspiration. Milk it when it comes.
That’s how you’ll learn to let it be easy.
Let it be easy.
Let it be easy.
Let it be easy.
Then watch what happens when you decide to let it be easy.
I predict a snowball of wonderful things will begin to be the order of your life.
And they’ll almost seem like magic, the brilliant creations and transformations that will unfold in your life, by grace and in a wonderful way when you stop fretting and regretting and start allowing instead.
In your next season, I predict that miracles will follow miracles and wonders will never cease.
Never.
I declare it.
P.S. Two quick announcements!
1. I’ve extended enrollment window for my School of Upliftment through next Tuesday, April 9th at midnight.
It’s not too late to join us for an everyday infusion of energy, transformation and elevation!
2. I’ve just decided to bring back our DIY/self-study option for enrolling in the School. For just $39/month, you can get a daily dose of Tara-style inspiration, meditations and writing prompts, 6 days a week in my Daily Ritual and Saturday Sacred Space emails.
Note: The DIY/self-guided option does not include access to our live classes, group coaching sessions or book study groups.
>> Here’s the AUDIO of today’s Transformation Tuesday.
Brilliant One,
I heard someone say that self-care is not about manicures, it’s about creating a life you don’t want to run from.
And I agree.
Except I’d go one step further.
Self-care is about all the loving ways we can feed and nourish and move and dress and adorn and adore our bodies, taking in as much as possible of the beauty we can put in, on and around them.
But at a soul-level, self-care is also about making all the lavishly self-loving, self-expressive, delectably unrepressing choices we can make in every area of our lives.
It’s about awakening and unfurling into a life free of self-judgment and self-criticism.
It’s about creating loving work, loving relationships, loving ways of operating in the world and in your body, and in your home.
Self-care is about fully and joyously inhabiting your physical spaces, to quote Louise Hay, filling your rooms with the vibration of love so that all who enter, yourself included, may be nourished by it.
It’s about opening yourself to receive the loving abundance that is your Divine Inheritance, in your finances and also in every way abundance shows up in the world.
It’s about giving yourself permission to bring 100% of yourself to the world, withholding less and less, gradually… then, over time, withholding nothing.
It’s about practicing radical acceptance of yourself and your experience of life, and your process of growing and learning in life, and even accepting the way the world works. It’s about no longer fighting the waves of life, but learning how to surf them instead.
Self-care includes doing what inspires you, just because it inspires you. No other reason, no other justification, no monetization needed.
Self-care is about indulging in nature.
Indulging in music and movement and travel: making the whole world your personal playground and becoming a citizen of the world, with a global point of view.
Self-care includes setting down your portfolio — the baggage — of grievances, grudges and struggles, so you can move forward in life with freedom and ease.
Indulging in revelry on any subject, any time, with anyone, just because it feels so good.
Self care is about giving your dreams, desires and creative callings the chance and the resources to come to life.
Which means self-care is also, at the core, about releasing and rewiring the habit of resisting or refusing your callings.
So self-care is about watching the fear of your own dreams and desires rise and fall, without letting it run your life or drive your decisions.
It’s about about creating a life — not just a life you don’t want to run from — a life you’re eager to live, a life you love to look at when you wake up in the morning.
Self-care is about trusting life.
It’s about lavishing openness and warmth on yourself.
It’s about pouring attention and affection and appreciation into yourself.
Giving yourself the time and space and resources to get ready and then to start doing what you deep down know is calling you, over and over again.
Because this life is not a one-and-done journey.
It is eternal. Just like you.
Which means that congratulations are due, because you literally have all the time in the world to practice becoming more and more you, through self-care of every shape, form, flavor and degree.
So if you want to start down this journey into soul-level self-care, start by giving yourself unconditional love for exactly who you are right now, exactly who you’ve always been, exactly who you’re becoming, and exactly wherever you are in the process.
Start by reminding yourself that you are a masterpiece and a work in progress.
NOTE: Today’s newsletter is a lesson and meditation I sent to my students as part of one of their Daily Rituals during our month of focus on the physical body. Consider it my gift, as I work and play this week in Malaysia. 🇲🇾
>> Here’s the AUDIO for today’s Transformation Tuesday.
I’m not one of those “life is short” people.
Because you are eternal. Your soul is eternal.
And so are all the elements of your body: the carbon, the nitrogen. They’re not making any more of that stuff you know. In our Universe, matter just shifts form. It never dies.
So you can never, really die.
That said, some of us are in these physical bodies for a shorter season, and others for long, leisurely extended ones.
Yet I’m not a big fan of fetishizing death as a cudgel for motivation.
“Hurry up and get it all done!” that story goes. “Check all the boxes off on your bucket list!”
“Achieve, accomplish, life is short”!
Eh. That’s not my jam. Because that’s not why we’re really here.
We’re here for freedom, growth and joy. For connection. For love and wisdom.
Yet, all the same, we are only in these beautiful, intelligent meat-covered skeletons made of stardust for a season.
A precious and powerful season.
We can find love and energy, satisfaction with right now and eagerness for more, when we meditate on the impermanence of life.
We can find freedom from the fear of death during our lives when we follow the words of Ram Dass, who advises us to “keep death on your shoulder and identify with your soul.”
In preparing for one of my talks, I found myself re-reading the old Steve Jobs commencement speech, which had several passages about the brilliance of our mortality.
“Remembering that I’ll be dead soon is the most important tool I’ve ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything — all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure — these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.”
He went on:
“No one wants to die. Even people who want to go to heaven don’t want to die to get there. And yet death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it. And that is as it should be, because Death is very likely the single best invention of Life. It is Life’s change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new.
Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma — which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of others’ opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.”
Everything else is secondary.
Inner peace lets you hear your own inner voice.
Another reason to release any inner struggles or self-judgment.
Another point in favor of lavish self-love, which reverses inner judgment and creates an atmosphere of inner peace.
Another argument to wholeheartedly engage with the subjects of your fears. To have the courage – the heart – to follow that inner voice.
So today, let’s take an Inner Retreat to become more at peace, more open and more at ease in your own beautiful, resilient and temporary body.
Take three deep, delicious, leisurely, grounding breaths.
Inhaling, filling your lungs all the way up, and exhaling, emptying them out.
Two more breaths just like that in your own time, as you allow your body to begin to ground down and sink in for today’s Inner Retreat.
Slowly scan down your body from the top to the bottom, just noting how it feels as you go.
Don’t try to change anything. Just note.
Today, I want you to do the exercise of focusing on your body’s different muscle groups, one by one, and shut the active energy in them down, one by one.
Start with your feet and your lower legs, shutting them off. Letting them sink in.
Then your upper legs and thighs, and your pelvis. Turn the power off. Shut the tension off.
Sinking in.
Now your belly and your chest, powering any active energy of holding or tightening down.
Next your lower arms, then your neck and your shoulders: power them down. Turn all activity in these muscles off.
Shut it down for these moments.
And finally your jaws, your face, your cheeks, your forehead and the crown of your head, even your eyelids and your gums, power them down. Turn any activity in those muscles off.
In this space, muscles fully relaxed and body sinking all the way in, all the way down, for the rest of your time this morning, focus on the word AT on the inhale, and EASE on your exhales.
Noticing how, even when you are fully unguarded, fully relaxed, fully deactivated, the breath of life still flows through you.
With no effort required from you.
Your lung still breathes.
Your heart still beats.
No effort needed at all.
The entire Universe continues to collaborate in your survival and thriving, even when you let yourself be in the state of ease.
When your mind wanders, come back to these words: AT EASE.
Allow yourself to hear the sounds and smell the smells around you, as you inhale and exhale, opening yourself to more and more ease.
REMINDER: If you’d like a little more clarity, freedom and spaciousness in your life, this is your last call to join my 10 Day Writing Challenge for Conscious Leaders and Creators.
