BLOGS

The fear you experience in this life is taught to, or put upon, you in your life. Fear is of this particular experience with great purpose. Each of you came into this life to have AN experience. That experience integrally includes the fears that you are here to heal.  Without fear, there is no reason to be here.  You also have free will.  So, in this life you will choose, through free will, how much of your fears you will heal or not.  

The fears that you learned in this life set the stage for the challenges in this life.  Those challenges may present as beliefs, patterns, judgments, emotions, or more.  All are anchored in beliefs.  Beliefs that were taught to you in some way and which elicited fear or discomfort in you.  Beliefs that at some point in life, you bought into as if they must be real or truth. 

You came into this life from love and are of love.  Therefore, the fear that was put upon you, or that you learned, is what throws you off balance

The challenges in this life are what hide your truth.  Your truth is made up of love and all of the love-based emotions.  In truth, you are love because it is from the energy of love that you were ultimately sourced.  In other words, soulfully you came in from the energy of love and so, you “know” love and the love-based emotions and are here to unveil them and the truth of you!

You came into this life from love and are of love.  Therefore, the fear that was put upon you, or that you learned, is what throws you off balance or “out of tune.” This life begins with you learning that fear exists and then believing that it is real in your life.  Yet much like a note out of tune, fear is the out of balance that needs to be removed to bring you back into tune or balance with the truth of you (or how the note is to sound if it is going to be in harmony with the chord).  

The presence of emotion in this life is critically important to mastery or the purpose of your experience in this life.  So, lets look at why.  All emotions can be divided into love-based emotions — e.g., love, joy, acceptance, freedom, peace, etc. — and fear-based emotions — e.g., fear, anger, hurt, attachment, guilt, shame, abandonment, etc.  This simple division of your emotions matches the dualistic model that sets the current stage of this life. Once you know if you are experiencing fear- or love-based emotions, you know if you are feeling limited or free, respectively. 

To know when you are feeling fear or fear-based emotions and when you are feeling love or love-based emotions, is to know when you are standing in the illusion of this life and when you are standing in the truth of you.  Remember my last blog, out-of-tune Note C felt life was separate and different but it was all an illusion!  It was always, in truth, at one with the chord as Note C.  It just had to transcend the out of tune.

In the next part of this self-mastery series I’ll discuss understanding your emotions and learning where some of them originate.

When learning about Self-Mastery, it is critical that one is very aware of their emotions and feelings. Emotions are the language of the soul. We all have the same emotions.  It is a universal language in this life and an integral part of your purpose in this life. It is also an integral part of your experience in this life.   Consequently, understanding your emotions and knowing how and why you feel are important aspects of self- and life-mastery.  Let’s address this.

Emotions are energy that is transformed into feelings within your body.  The energy of your emotions connect you to the energy of this physical life and to the energy from where you came. Therefore, emotions are the way to know the truth of who and what you are.  Let’s look at what that means.  

you experience fear and fear-based emotions in this life in order to “know” the truth of your Self

Imagine the energy from where you came, it is the energy of sound.  Now, imagine that sound is one chord of infinite notes.  You are Note C.  You know you are Note C but do not know what that means because all you know is the sound of the chord.  Then, one day, Note C goes out of tune and the whole chord screams, “Note C is out of tune!”  You are like, “That’s me! That’s me!” 

All can hear you and you can “identify” you because you are no longer in harmony or unity with the chord, “The One”. It appears to you that you are separate and can be “seen” by the chord as Note C and that you can feel your Self as separate from the chord as Note C.  But the illusion is that you are separate because you never left the chord.   

Being out of tune IS this life and the out of tune are your fear-based emotions.  Consequently, your fears of this life are critical to your purpose.  Let’s now look at what all this means and why it is an integral part of our general purpose in this life.

Let’s go back to being Note C.  The out of tune is fear.  When a note is out of tune it stands out because it is not harmonious.  It can be extremely out of tune or just a wee bit out of tune.  But either way, as it is tuned back into harmony with the chord it is aware of its Self! 

As a result, once it is in tune and in harmony with the infinite chord it has an awareness of who and what it is as an integral part of the infinite. Consequently, you experience fear and fear-based emotions in this life in order to “know” the truth of your Self and how you are an integral part of the whole.  

In my next blog we will uncover just how much these fears can hide the truth of who you are, and why acknowledging and overcoming fear-based emotions is vital to your life mastery journey.

The holidays are about love, unity, and acceptance. People tend to gather with family, friends, and loved ones. And yet holidays can bring up one of the deepest wounds or challenges that we are here to heal: loneliness. All of us can feel lonely. Some suffer with it more than others. Loneliness is that feeling that comes from a fear that there is no one out there who loves you for who you are. So, what is loneliness? Why do we experience this painful emotion?  How does it fit into life mastery? How might The Sage’s Template help you move through and beyond the loneliness?

Loneliness is a temporary experience that illuminates the illusion of being separate. Imagine you are a spark in a flame. You know you are a spark but all you know is the flame until, one day, you jutty off the flame and find you are in complete darkness.  There is a nothingness from the absence of light and other sparks. You don’t realize that you’re going to fall back to the sun and be one with the flame. So, you experience fear of the aloneness that is in complete absence of belonging.  That is much like loneliness. You can feel so separate and alone as if there is no sense of belonging. And yet one day you are one with the whole again.  It is important to know that when you, or someone you know, feels lonely, it is not a permanent state of existence.  It can be quite reassuring to understand that it is a temporary experience.

Fear is always an illusion.  Love is always truth.  Where there is love there is an absence of fear and where there is fear there is an absence of love.

The greatest illusion in this life is that of being separate.  As the parable above shows, the spark was never really separate from the flame.  Sparks jut off the flame and come back to the flame constantly!  That is just part of the experience of being of the one flame.  In likeness, you enter this physical life from a place of energy, love.  In that energetic place you are one energy of love. On this earth, however, you experience fear, and it begins with the fear of separation.  You leave an energy realm to enter a physical water realm to enter the air realm.  Slowly you move away from your awareness of the one. You see the illusion of this life as the reality. Just like loneliness creates an illusion that you are completely separate from love and you believe it is a reality.  But it is not.

Fear is always an illusion.  Love is always truth.  Where there is love there is an absence of fear and where there is fear there is an absence of love. The most painful fear in this life is loneliness. because it is the experience of the absence of love in its purest sense. All other fear-based emotions contain fear, except fear itself.  Yet, with fear itself, there is not that absence because there is a threat perceived. You can perceive fear without feeling lonely, but you cannot feel lonely without feeling fear. Do your best to be aware that this is a time-limited experience that you can master.  You can make it through this, like you can master any of the fear-based emotions. 

So why is it that when you feel lonely you want to further isolate?  Loneliness is the illusion that “others” do not love you.  The truth of this life exists within you.  That is where you learn there is no separation between you and others. The greatest love begins with the love for your Self because it illuminates the truth that you are love.  When you love your Self, you cannot feel loneliness.  So, when experiencing loneliness, you are falling away from others because the truth (beyond the fear) is that the love and the oneness are to be found within your true Self.  The problem is that many people will see the need to isolate as a giving in or a giving up on life.  That is not the truth of why you feel like “being left alone” when you’re lonely.  You feel that way because at a higher level you know that the love you need to move beyond the loneliness is the love for Self.

The Sage’s Template is a tool that helps you understand the experience you are having and how it fits into the context of life and its mastery.  Consequently, it is a tool to help you heal.  In this case, it can help you, or someone you love, heal the loneliness. When we talk about Life Mastery we talk about a life of freedom. Mastery is a path of enlightenment. Enlightenment is about living in a state of love, acceptance, and freedom. Once you are aware of loneliness being the purest of fear, you can begin to understand that because this is such a deep wound,  it is of a high level of mastery.  When you are ready to heal your deepest wounds, you are ready to step into the magic of this life.  Life gives you these challenges to open gateways into freedom and love. It does not offer this level of challenge to destroy you, even though it may feel that way!

In conclusion, loneliness is a deep feeling of not being lovable. It is an absence, a nothingness, a void. It is a state of complete separation from that which you are: love. Loneliness is the deepest fear that represents the greatest illusion: that of being separate. If you didn’t truly believe you were separate, then you could not truly feel lonely. This life offers you the opportunity to master the feeling of loneliness as a gateway to mastering the fear and illusion of being separate.  That will bring you the greatest of love, acceptance, and freedom!!! 

How do we keep love alive?  For love to continue it cannot be stopped or limited.  Love is about opening.  Opening your Self, each other, and doors in life.  Limitations are about fear.  Limitations stop love from opening and growing.  In a relationship each person is responsible for keeping love alive.  Each person will have their strengths and weaknesses, styles and patterns.  So, when all of this is put together, we have several key parts to keeping love alive in a partnership.  Today I will address the unfolding awareness, communication, and behaviors that you and your partner can implement to keep your love growing!

Awareness in a relationship is a foundational key!  A true partnership requires each person to be aware of their own Self, each other, and the experience they wish to have.  Once the awareness is active it will constantly unfold in life.  In other words, awareness leads to more awareness.  You can see how this is a key part to the opening of the relationship and its love.  The more aware you are with your Self, the more you know your strengths and challenges.  The more you are aware of your partner the more you realize there is a lot to know.  Your awareness will open you to not thinking you know. The assumption that you know your partner or your partner knows you, limits the relationship.  The opportunity to learn stops immediately upon that assumption.  Awareness!  It will help you see that life is a constant adventure of exploration, not an endpoint of knowing the answer.

As your awareness becomes a rhythm in your own life, you will wish to communicate your new learnings.  Each person wants to be known.  As you gain awareness of your Self you will want others to know you.  That is true of your partner as well.  Each of you is in a constant state of change.  So, how do you communicate so that you are embracing the constant change?  I teach a style of communicating called Teach and Explore Communication. At its core is Compassionate Curiosity.  If each person in a partnership can learn to stay in a constant state of Compassionate Curiosity, then they will always be asking questions to explore their partner.   If you are in a constant state of exploration of your partner and you are willing to be explored by your partner, then you will always be on an adventure of learning about one another and life, together and as individuals. Compassion is a key ingredient to love.  When it is coupled with curiosity, it opens doors endlessly.  When a couple learns to constantly open doors, their relationship will keep moving and growing!

In a healthy, growing relationship, your communication deepens beyond verbal and into sexual.  Sexual expression is the most intimate and opening form of communication between partners.  If you are communicating in a way that opens doors, sexual expression will continue to grow and be exciting.  It can stay a form of intimate communication rather than a behavior. The sacred exchange that can occur during lovemaking can unite the two of you beyond your physical bodies. Because of this, it is critical to keep your bedroom as a sacred place (not that you are only going to have sex in that room!).   Too often, sex is a behavior in the relationship and consequently, it becomes boring or uneventful.  Incidentally, boring is the absence of self.  If there is an absence of self in the sexual expression in a partnership, then slowly sex will become uninteresting, and the partners can drift apart.  If sexual expression remains a part of a deeper communication between the partners, then it will continue to open and be a point of exploration for the partners. 

As your awareness becomes habit and your communication is anchored in Compassionate Curiosity, you will both want to experience more of life with and through one another.  There are many ways in which partners can enjoy physically experiencing their relationship.  Each day, set aside a time where you can sit quietly and talk.  Make it a time that both of you can look forward to.  Create a weekly date night. For example, experience a new restaurant every Friday night! Take, at least, an annual trip together ALONE.  This does not have to be expensive, just intimate. Introduce spontaneous intimate events throughout life.  For example, sharing a hot bath, serving the other for a day, planning a picnic or an event that is special to your partner.  I often make the couples with whom I work, speak with only their eyes.  It is an amazing experience for them.  Can you do this with your partner?  Another idea is to create a love game with little cards that you hide around that, when found, have an instruction of what you wish your partner to do.  This can be intimate sexually and/or emotionally.  Have a movie night periodically, at home or at a theatre. If you are readers, share your reading time.  Open your day with a quote of affirmation or gratitude and share your interpretation of the statement/teaching.  Awaken each morning and look at your partner and say, “Thank you for being beside me.” As you crawl into bed at the end of a day, share three things you are so very grateful for in your partner and do your best not to repeat them.  Regardless of what you choose to share, the idea is to create an experience where, as partners, you are focused on one another, figuratively or literally. There are many ideas that can be shared here but without the awareness or communication, they are just tasks that will slowly slip away into the shadows as you get lost in the day-to-day monotony of expectations.

Keep your love alive by opening doors!  If you limit your partner you are limiting the partnership.  Teach your partner about you and ask your partner about her or him.  Do your best to work at being Compassionately Curious! Then learn to play!!  Play together like you just met! Always. May each of you find great, endless love in this life and beyond!

This month trees’ leaves change to colors.  Beautiful colors.  Colors that no one knew were there when the leaves were all green.  Colors that no one knew were there when there were no leaves and the tree was barren.  And yet here they are. 

There are times in life when you are lost in your challenges and your colors are missing completely.  You are in a gray, sad space.  No one knows who you are beyond the pain you are experiencing.  And yet, you are beautiful colors beyond the gray pain.

There are times when you are participating in life and showing a happy face and yet the experiences are mostly superficial and similar over and over.  Patterns remain the same, days remain the same, people remain the same.  People think they know you but they do not.  They only know the part of you that participates in the same old stuff.

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Hate is fear; fear is the absence of love! Within your Self, when you judge and hate you are not able to feel love. You may think that your hate and judgment are about the other person or group of people but it is only happening inside you. You are the one living with the hate, rage, anger, and heavy density. It clutters your mind and shadows your heart. Consequently, you are the only one who ends up suffering until, of course, your anger causes harm to others.

We are given this life and we were given free will. Free will says you have the right to live with your hate, anger, rage, and judgment. Free will also allows people to live in harmony, love, unity and peace. Free will gives each of us the opportunity to live this life as we choose. What it does not do is support the destruction of the free will and the rights of another human being.

You are not born with fear and anger or any of the fear-based emotions. You are not born with judgment since judgment comes from fear. You learned all of that, and the beliefs associated with them, in this lifetime. You thought you had to believe as you were taught to believe. But now you have a choice. Do you want to live with love for you, from you, and for others? Or do you want to live in absence of love? Do you want a life filled with pain, suffering, anger, and heat or a life filled with love and happiness?

Can you be grateful for who you are at the same time you’re hating another? The answer is no. So, yes, it is your right to hate, judge, and be angry. It is your choice to live at that level of suffering. Just remember suffering begets suffering and fear begets fear. It is love that begets gratitude, joy, and love. So, I ask you which do you prefer? And be clear, because even if you were feeling anger and hate at those who are angry and hateful you are feeding the darkness not light.

May each and every one of you be graced with gratitude, forgiveness, and love.

Have you ever felt so defensive that your heart was pounding, or you felt you had no choice in the matter, or you felt you were waiting for someone else to make a decision that was going to affect you and your life, or….? Learn how to remain in your power regardless of what is happening around you!

You have a beautiful, strong, graceful power within you that is part of your truth! We all do! Many times in life you may feel powerless and small. In order to not slip away from that powerful graceful You, you must know what challenges get illuminated when the power temporarily leaves or hides. You also want to understand that it is a force that takes you away from that truth of your own power. In this blog, I will address just that.

Someone or something that “goes against” you or your rights is a force. It is coming from a place of ego or prideful will. It is a fear-based effort. For example, if I tell you that you have to go to work at 8 AM even though you own your own business, I am forcing you to do it my way because my ego says I know best because I am fearful of you not doing good enough! You then feel the energy of my core feeling of not being good enough and feel your power slip and your confidence may eventually slip. If, however, you are aware of your Self and your power, your response to my ridiculous effort to control my own emotional chaos would be, “ Are you fearful or untrusting about my work? Tell me what is happening within you that makes you push me out the door before I would normally leave?” Most people would get defensive and then make assumptions about my comment that would lead them farther from their power.

Knowing that all people have a fear-based set of emotions that dictate their challenges in this life and a set of love-based emotions that define their truth, helps you to begin the process of letting their words be theirs. When you listen intently to the content of the other’s words in absence of this awareness, you are following their thoughts, worries, opinions, etc. By following another you are leaving your Self and truth behind. It is at this point that you leave your Self open to losing connection with your power.

As you go through this week see if you can watch others speak and see when they are speaking from their fear-based “stuff” and when they are speaking from their love-based truth!

I will address different aspects of feeling powerless in future blog writings. Enjoy this start!!

WEEK TWO

Welcome back to our 30-Day Challenge: Stress, Self and Better Health!

Let’s review last week’s challenge: Expectations. How many of you put the rubber band on your wrist? Were you surprised by the number of times you had to go for the rubber band? Did you notice a change in the number of times you noted the words of expectation as you went through the week? I don’t want any of you to change your words. That is stress producing. If the words are used (in thought or verbiage), listen for them and hear them but do NOT change them. The words will change on their own as you begin to learn more about your Self and what you are about.

How many expectations did you put upon your Self versus another? Was it lopsided or balanced? This will teach you what you learned. If you are more apt to speak expectations to others but not to your Self, what might you be judging in others? Or, vice versa, if you are finding yourself speaking expectations to your Self but not as frequently to others, what are you feeling about you and your worth?

Did you find your Self very aware of others using expectations? If so, you may be on the way to understanding from whom you experience stress versus from whom there is more support.

This is a great beginning for you all! As you join me in the online course you will learn more about the expectations versus truth and support. Let’s turn our attention to this week’s challenge!!

Stress, Self and Better Health: Self Awareness

It is very important that you learn to listen to your Self. How many of you like to be heard by others? Well then, that answers the question as to why you simply listen to your Self rather than constantly correcting your Self.

In living a balanced life, everything centers (or rests) in YOU! This life is your’s and is about you. Life, therefore, is experienced inside YOU! Consequently, when talking about developing balance in your life you must know what that experience means to you. As we talk about stress, self and health the self is in the middle of the equation because it is the very piece that balances the stressors and it’s health. So this week’s challenge will address self awareness.

Many times, when asked about your Self you may quickly answer with what you do. That is not, however, who you are. This culture tends to enforce an external view of self and others. This tends to be a large part of your stress level and, consequently, your health. So let’s go within!

In general, you can better any aspect of your life by knowing what you wish to experience as a result of the relationship with that aspect. If it is your career, how do you want to experience the hours you spend in your career? If it is your partnership, how do you want to experience your partnership? And so on… Too often you may find yourself saying “I want my job to be …,” or “I wish my partner was/would…” Both of those thoughts are of the external portion of the relationship. You want to ask your Self what YOU want to experience. It may sound something like this: I want to experience a fulfillment that gives me internal calm with each person with whom I work; or, I would like to experience a beautiful hum from the rhythm in my relationship with my partner. It doesn’t matter that others understand your experience or not. It matters that it makes sense to YOU!

So this week we will do an exercise that helps you understand how to define the experiences you are wishing to have in your life. What is your favorite type of movie, book or music? Write that down. Now, ask your Self why you like that type. Does it move you, make you laugh, excite you, etc.? As you move through the week see if you can come up with other experiences that type of entertainment evokes in you. It may bring up memories, challenges, fears, dreams, emotions, identifying elements, or so much more! While doing that can you name your favorite movie, book, or artist? What makes it your favorite? Answer that question as if there is no one else on this earth but you. this is not an easy request. Give it your best and we will do much more with this in the workshop!

I am so thankful to you all for participating!