Have you experienced the past few months as intense, chaotic, and full of uncertainty?
Yes?
You’re not alone.
Some days feel like a tough slog. Like we’re moving through dense resistance. Which is all the more reason to embrace your spiritual practice and deepen into it.
Many seers have spoken of this time we are in as an amplification, when everything is speeding up and gaining power. This is exactly why you have to choose your own sanity, clarity and peace.
Not only because the chaos is ever growing, but because the benefit of you doing your inner work is amplified during this time. In other words, you can use this time to fast track your liberation.
Recently, we explored the big idea in which I asked you what myth are you living. If you’re still ruminating on this, here’s another tool that might help you drill into it: archetypes.
The concept of archetype is something Carl Jung spent a tremendous amount of time exploring and is so rich! Caroline Myss has built on Jung’s work and expounded on how we can access and utilize archetypal energy to better understand ourselves and the world.
A powerful way to help understand where you are on your life path, is to recognize what story or stories are playing out in your life. This is a question/idea that comes from Carl Jung. He famously said:
I was driven to ask myself in all seriousness: “What is the myth you are living?”
I found no answer to this question, and had to admit that I was not living with a myth, or even in a myth, but rather in an uncertain cloud
of theoretical possibilities which I was beginning to regard with increasing distrust.
Happy New Year!
Are you ready for 2025?
It still feels pretty new, which is why it’s helpful to employ some anchoring exercises to support you as you get clear about how you want this year to be for you.
I always start my year by choosing a word or phrase, something to focus on, dive into, and act as a theme or inquiry for the upcoming 365 days.
Some of the ones I’ve chosen in past years include: receive, relax, joy, shine, communion… you get the idea. Once you hit on your word (or phrase), the invitation is to spend the next 12 months deepening into how you can experience it in your life.
I love sharing spiritual tools with you with this blog.
Sometimes it's a poem, mantra, prayer, breath exercise, or affirmation. But each technique is one I’ve tried and tested over the decades and is now part of my box of go-tos. The ones I rely on when I need additional support, assistance or help reconnecting to the truth of myself, which is love.
Today I felt called to share one that I return to again and again. It's a breath I was taught by my guru over twenty years ago called the Chittakash, which is the heart space over the head.
How much we allow ourselves to have in our lives is a function of what we think we deserve.
Have you ever been at a party or a club or walked down a block of a ritzy area of town and wished that it was your life, that you lived there or had those friends?
And over the summer I had an interesting realization.
I just got back from a 3-day business workshop that was designed to help women entrepreneurs break through success and money barriers. It was informative, emotional and healing but it was also a bit of a marathon, going from early in the morning until late into the night.
I enjoy these kinds of events especially because I’m committed to my personal development and self-growth. I love to immerse myself in new ways of thinking, bond with other women and meet fellow entrepreneurs. I find the experiences to be fulfilling and inspiring but then I have to come home.
I love being an American but one thing that’s been vexing me lately is how work and career have taken over our lives. It’s as if we are no longer human beings but human doers. The overriding message is that when I’m not “doing”, I’m nothing.
It’s easy, when we talk about spirituality and living a “more spiritual life” to forget about the body.
We use expressions like, “we are a spirit having a human experience.” Or, “focus on the essence not on the form.” The emphasis is always away from the corporeal body because it isn’t really who we are.
Many of us who have struggled with weight or body image issues, certainly know this to be true.
There were years when I saw my body as the enemy – it was fat and ugly. Why would I want to be in it? I wanted to dissociate from it entirely. It was definitely not me.
I was listening to a speaker recently explain why people don’t obtain results. And do you know what she said?
Think about one of the New Year’s resolutions you made ten months ago. Maybe, like many of us, you had ‘lose weight’ on your list. Let’s say fifteen pounds.
Those of us who are committed to a spiritual path can sometimes feel split in two. There’s the contemplative, ascetic side of our nature, the part that loves meditation, silence and oneness with God. Then there’s the other side of us that’s out there in the world earning a living, being a consumer, friend and partner.
How do we merge these two aspects of ourselves that seem disparate but in reality are one?
The exciting answer is, YES!
As Pema Chodron reminds us, “Whatever is happening is the path to enlightenment.”
When I was twenty-six, I discovered, quite to my surprise, that I was pregnant.
I panicked because I was not ready to have a baby.
I’d only been married three short months. My new husband and I were still getting to know one another. Were we, as a couple, prepared for a child?
And I certainly didn’t know enough about anything – life, parenting, culture... There was so much more I needed to learn before I could be a mom, wasn’t there?
After spending a few weeks in denial, I quickly moved into anger. How could I have been so stupid? What was I thinking?
Ever have one of those days when you just hit the wall? When your efforts create no results and nothing seems to work?
Days like that are frustrating, tiring and, frankly, discouraging.
And what if tomorrow you embraced a new idea, a new way of looking at life? One that felt more invigorating and enlivening. A perspective that was less about doing and more about receiving.
I recently had an a-ha about this when I saw a post on Facebook. It was an image of a woman floating effortlessly in the water and said:
Turns out that you aren’t alone. More than ever, Americans are enhancing their every day lives by incorporating some kind of creative outlet. Whether it’s painting a plate on date night or joining a weekly Bollywood dance class, we’re choosing to spend more of our time in creative pursuit.
Hmmmmm.
It was the agreement I made with myself when I left my spiritual teacher in 2004, when I agreed that I would be in charge of my life – good and bad. That whatever happened, I would own it.
Things are going exactly according to plan and you are clearly in charge of your life. But then- all of a sudden- life takes charge and is controlling the wheel of your destiny.
When that happens, tasks take forever to complete. No one calls you back. Or maybe you think things will go a specific way just to get entirely rerouted.
When life seems to be in charge - it can trigger uncertainty or the internal skeptic- and make us feel unsure or cloudy.
Day turns into night, flowers bloom and wither, stocks rise and fall. We move houses, change jobs, meet new people, and shift our mindsets.
Change is a natural part of life but sometimes, especially in our intimate relationships, change can be a challenge.
We want to know that there is routine, that things will stay the same. That my assistant will be at work on time, that the bus will stop at the corner at 8:30 every morning, that Safeway always carries the deodorant I prefer.
Just as we have our coffee every morning, we come to expect people to be the same day after day, too, and when they shift, that can upset out status quo.
Whether you’re just about to graduate from college, a millennial rethinking your career path or in your 50s looking at being an empty nester, the answer is the same.
This can be hard because it often seems like there are multiple people speaking to us all day long. It isn’t just one clear voice guiding us.
This is a really useful tool. Because it can help us distinguish which aspect of ourselves we might be listening to or activating.
Or to be more specific, when your shadow behavior is pointed out to you by someone you love and trust.
Recently I had a conversation with my husband in which he shared that over the past year I’d demonstrated more controlling behavior. He gave a few specific examples, some I agreed with and others I wanted to immediately reject.
It wasn’t that I was being more controlling it was that I was finally coming in to my own, doing what I wanted as opposed to what other people were telling me to do.
My husband was infinitely kind, loving and soft when he spoke to me but what I heard was, “You’re a controllingbit** and I don’t want to be with you.”
Have you ever had the experience of meeting someone and, after a brief period of time, it’s as if you’ve always known them?
Or perhaps you have a good friend you haven’t seen in years (or decades) and as soon as you’re together, it’s like no time has passed?
I have a soul sister like that and I’ll call her Natalie.
Last year I stayed in a town just a few hours from where she lives. I hadn’t talked to her in awhile but we’d stayed in touch on Facebook. I messaged her letting her know I was nearby.
Natalie immediately called and said she was on her way to this very same town as her daughter was participating in a state event!
I was a little nervous to see her again. Even though we’d reconnected via social media and the phone in the last few years, I hadn’t seen her or physically been with her in almost 20 years.
Maybe it was disappointment at some of my life choices or that I’d backed out of a plan we’d made together. Either way, I felt stifled and judged and in need of some space and time. I’d relocated, moving a thousand miles away, so it became easy to stop communicating with her.
