Self Love Begins Here...

Valuing ourselves is the foundation from which we grow ourselves. Self Love is the garden that grows from the rich soil of our self-value.

 

1
The Journey through change and transformation
2
The IMPOSTER Syndrome
3
Breakthroughs
4
Fear & Anger- The Dance Of Shadows
5
Embracing My Weirdness & Shifting My Focus On Social Media
6
Leaning into the great Unknown.
7
My Journey with Ayahuasca
8
The Difference Between Knowing & BEING ~ Part One
9
Torn
10
Trusting My Own Voice

The Journey through change and transformation

As a Integrative empowerment coach for women I’ve heard it over and over again… ” How do I make LASTING Changes in my life”.

” I’ve tried therapy, coaching , medication , yoga etc..But I keep falling back into my old patterns.”

My message is one most don’t want to hear, change takes time and repeated practice. Recognizing your patterns is a fantastic first step, but awareness alone isn’t enough ( sadly ).

Creating lasting change is a journey , a journey of self discovery , and a commitment to the process.

That’s where we usually fall off the wagon , is in the commitment process. Most of the time we want to change but we don’t actually want to do the work or put in the time to really make it work.

This is why it feels so challenging to really shift from where we are to where we want to be.

Getting coaching, seeing a therapist, taking medication, doing yoga etc.. are great stepping stones and building blocks that help you on your journey, but in order for them to really really work you’ve got to be willing to commit to them. Your coach cannot solve all your problems for you, they can help you get clarity on whats blocking you from your full potential , but then you’ve got to be willing to work on letting go of that block once you know what it is.

Therapy can help you heal old wounds from your past and start being able to get your head above water , but your therapist is only able to go so far with you, you are the one whom needs to take the next step.

Medication is a great way to diminish systems that might be keeping you feeling trapped in a place that’s too hard to get out of alone, but meds alone are only going to go so far. Addressing the underlying issues that are perhaps causing these symptoms to arise is where the healing journey really starts to take place.

Yoga is a fantastic practice for opening up the body and mind and discovering new depths of connection to your body and soul. But doing enough yoga isn’t going to eradicate all your pain.

The healing journey is always a journey that begins and ends with you.

Healing is a ever evolving and moving target. It is the journey of the soul in this lifetime, it is life itself. Change isn’t something we wake up and get done in a week, it’s a process of unfolding and exploring ourselves on deeper and deeper levels.

No one person can change you , or heal you , or “fix” you. If you are not open to touching those places inside that might feel a bit scary to tap into , then the work will remain undone.

To decide to change, to break out of habits, patterns, and addictions takes courage plan and simple.

If change was easy we would have all changed everything about ourselves and our lives we don’t like many many years ago. Transformation can feel daunting, overwhelming , and confusing.

We can become so attached to our story of who we are ( even if it’s painful) because it’s what we know. Change can mean letting go of parts of our identity and that can feel super scary if you’re not ready.

This is where coaching , therapy etc.. come in as a way to help you on your journey and create a safe space to explore this process without feeling lost at sea. But the work always remains firmly in your hands.

As the quote from Einstein goes ” The definition of insanity is doing things in the same way over and over again and expecting different results.”

If we want to create change and healing in our lives first the willingness to go through what that will require of us must be present. Being willing to learn how to approach things from a new be it unfamiliar mindset. Most of us will spend the rest of our lives blaming other people for who we are and what are problems are. I’m not here to blame you or say ” it’s all your fault”, but I am here to help people take responsibility for their own lives. To own the power they possess , to recognize that you are responsible for your own life is extremely empowering.

My end note is this: Change is not a overnight process, the power to truly create the life you want lies in your hands, you don’t have to go it alone but the journey is always yours to take. Power comes with owning your responsibility for creating your life and the power you have to change it is always there waiting for you to tap into it. It is NEVER TO LATE TO CREATE THE LIFE YOU WANT.

 

The IMPOSTER Syndrome

imposter mask

This is a major epidemic that affects so many of us and reeks havoc on our self esteem.

Women are much more susceptible to this particular syndrome.

Ahhh… the Imposter Syndrome. Yes this is one of my biggest hurdles in life.

The Imposter Syndrome is when we feel as though we are not capable and don’t have the tools that we need in order to be successful and claim true success in our lives, when in truth we have all the tools we need and are fully capable but the fact is we feel like a FRAUD.

I bump up against this syndrome frequently in my line of work as I am a healer, teacher, coach, speaker, writer and I feel frequently like I have to have it ALL FIGURED OUT and Be PERFECT before I can even begin to help others.

Fearing that if others see my own sufferings, pains, struggles than they will write me off as someone they would want to listen to for guidance. Having been a massage therapist for 14 years and having chronic pain made me feel like a fraud, like somehow I should be absolved of physical pain because I help other people get out of pain. Or being an empowerment self love coach that I should never doubt myself or struggle with my own lack of self love and personal empowerment.

This is a fucking sham!!!

It’s a scenario where one can NEVER WIN. I won’t ever be perfect enough when it comes to those inner critics that live in my head, I won’t ever have enough figured out to appease those snarling gremlins that try to keep me scared, stuck , and small. The truth is I am great at what I do because I am human too.

The truth is NO ONE has it all figured out, no one is completely free of fear, or doubt, or worry.

In my empowerment coaching program there is an exercise where you go to the mirror and look into your own eyes and you repeat your worst fear of what other people might find out about you – Example:

“I am a fraud and I will never be truly successful. I remain small and with no value to others for the rest of my life. I will never amount to anything!”

You sit and say these things over and over and over while looking into your eyes until it no longer triggers you, until the voice inside says “ENOUGH!!!! This is not true, it’s time to move on!”

If our fears go unacknowledged, and we don’t have access to them or we are unaware of what they really are they can secretly control our lives.

Bringing our Fear to the forefront of our minds, acknowledging it, and then most importantly QUESTIONING IT.  As with the work of Byron Katie and her inquiry- we say “I am a fraud. I am not good enough. I will never be successful.” and then we ask “IS THAT TRUE? How can I know thats true?”

We can limit ourselves in such profound ways if we never question or doubt the inner voice in us that says “we are not enough”.   A helpful tip:

Don’t listen to everything you tell yourself about yourself!

Fears can be slippery tricksters that want nothing more then to keep controlling you. Fear says “Better the Devil you Know, then the Devil you don’t“. It wants you to stay small and it tells you it’s for your own protection. It will try to convince you it’s there to help and keep you safe.

Questioning whether this is the voice of inner guidance or inner fear will open you to new opportunities. How to tell the difference between Inner Guidance and Inner Fear, inner guidance feels good , feels like something is guiding you that loves you , inner fear feels like anxiety, doubt, insecurity.

Inner guidance says “psst…come this way“. Inner fear says “noooo don’t go that way… it’s dangerous“.

Tune in and learn to connect with your inner guidance. Give it a name, a voice you can hear over all others, a sound, a color – anything that will help you get more clear on when it’s true wisdom guiding you and offering you love and support, and when it’s fear keeping you small and afraid.

Love you all- Amber. 

 

Breakthroughs

love yourself

A quick post as I have not written a blog in awhile.

It’s been a full year so far and so much is coming up to the surface to be loved, healed, surrendered , and released.

I feel it’s a time of collective healing, as well as deep personal healing.

The last two weeks I’ve had MAJOR breakthroughs on some pretty big wounds and triggers of mine, it’s been great, and scary moving through the pain and being with it in a whole new way.

I’m only going to talk about one of the breakthroughs for simplicity and ease –

I’ve been struggling for a very long while with certain belief systems held by the people that surround me, pretty much since moving to Asheville I’ve had a lot come up around a certain topic ( topic is not the point so I will leave that out)…Every time I’m around people chatting about, or posting about said topic I would feel irritated, frustrated, judged, and sort of exhausted by it all.

It’s been popping up for me more and more frequently ( due to law of attraction and that which we focus on, both in resistance and simply by attention and thought – we ATTRACT) so it’s been in my face a good deal.

I finally felt ready to really check in with WHY I’m so bothered by this belief system and why I want to punch people in the face when they talk to me about it. So I did what I do when I really need to get clear on something, I took a candled light bath and did some tapping.

I realized this issue isn’t just around this one topic but many many topics that have come up through my life- and the issue is my desire to have people agree with me and hold my belief system.

I realize my own beliefs are a bit fringe for most, I hold pretty radical views on health , our bodies, our lives, the universe, and how we create our realities with all those topics. So when I hear people saying things about how I should be , or how I should eat, or what I need to do in order to XYZ.. I get annoyed.

I realized we all want people to believe what we believe and to uphold our belief system as life would be easier if we all could agree. We are in a time of very open , very public opinions and every one is shouting from one soap box or another and we are all begging to be heard.

So here I was in my bath tapping through the varying ways I was feeling really trying to get at the root of the nagging frustration I’ve had for several years now.

It came up and it felt like a massive release in my entire body- My inner guidance system sighed a big sigh of relief as the words ” You don’t need them to agree with you for you to be okay”, ” It’s okay for you to have beliefs that aren’t like most and it’s okay for you to hold those beliefs and to trust them”.  I realized I felt scared in my beliefs because there are so few that reflect back or hold the same kind of beliefs I do , that I feel vulnerable in these seemingly odd far out beliefs. Afraid that if no one else agreed with me that maybe I’m crazy or Wrong!??!?

But here I sat and this massive surge of acceptance for my own true guidance came over me, this powerful force that said ” You don’t need anyone else to tell you it’s okay to believe in yourself and your feelings about life to trust and know whats true for you”.

I had no real idea how badly I needed to connect to this part of myself , to hear my own inner wisdom and to trust in it so deeply.

I do believe the power is within us, we have so much more wisdom and understanding of ourselves then we usually allow ourselves to really feel and believe. I am in no way saying seeking guidance, inspiration , and information from external sources is wrong, I’m saying we tend to give our power away repeatedly to everyone and everything and we lose sight of our own voice and true deep inner knowing.

I feel that learning to really really listen to myself, to hear my own true voice inside, tune myself to that voice so clearly that when it speaks I feel it ring out in my body  is the best possible guidance I could ask to seek. No one outside of myself knows what is really best for me, no one can show me myself more clearly then myself. No one can know what will bring true and lasting health, love , joy, power , fulfillment into my life more then ME.

This doesn’t mean I stop learning, questioning, exploring etc.. It Means that I do those things while listening very closely to what messages, feelings, sensations , thoughts , images etc come up for me when being offered information from teachers outside myself.

Finding and connecting with my True North , my guiding star. my inner guidance system keeps me clued in by expressing itself through my body and my emotions.

I now vow to love and honor my own internal voice of wisdom , to love her and practice spending time hearing her wisdom even when a million voices are shouting at me to LOOK THIS WAY , LOOK OVER HERE, PAY ATTENTION TO THIS, NO REALLY THIS IS THE TRUTH, I HAVE THE ANSWER…..

I don’t have to be anyone other then me, and no one has to be me, or share my feelings, thoughts or beliefs in order for me to feel sure and sit in my own power. My beliefs are just that- Mine. 🙂

Fear & Anger- The Dance Of Shadows

Spoiler Alert: This post is a raw and vulnerable one.

 

Life has been  very , very odd lately. Nothing is turning out the way I thought it might, and that can be interesting.  I was heavy on the path of what I felt was my calling, my passion, and then it came to a screeching halt.  I partook in the Ayahuasca ceremony and then EVERYTHING CHANGED.

I’ve written about it over and over, each time coming to some new clarity and depth of understanding. For the first few weeks all I could do was to simply be present with the very intense overwhelming bizarre experience I had just undergone, then after that I felt the slate had literally been whipped clean. I felt empty , void of myself and  who i had known myself to me, a very disconcerting feeling indeed. Now nearly two months later the messages keep unfolding, like seeds that were planted are now beginning to bloom.

At first I wondered if I was falling into some deep depression as everything felt odd and off with myself and my life, then it started to come together. I realized my Aya experience did literally kill off a part of myself and that I was now in the process of building a new version of me to fit where the old had been.

My journey had nearly everything to do with FEAR, it was about facing myself and my fear in a way I had never imagined possible.  Now the question is how do I integrate this knowledge? How do I unravel the fear that lives in my mind? How do I break free from the chains that bind?

As I sit here writing this I cry, I cry because I want so much to express my heart with clarity and truth, to reveal my heart in a way that people can feel. I know I am not the only one who feels fear, who feels the tightness of existence, who feels the depth of love and loneliness entangled in herself. I’m not the only one with a painful past, or people whom I’ve hurt and people whom have hurt me. I’m not the only one who has painful family issues and a broken heart when it comes to healing those pains.

My story is not unique , it is a common story and that is why I want to tell it.  We lose sight of how much we are all going through this life together , and how much our lives, stories, loves, and sufferings are entangled.

I wrote a blog once awhile back about the difference between ” knowing ” something and ” being” it, and I see now how much “being it”, is truly everything. But being it takes practice, courage , and above all a serious commitment to the willingness to break open every part of yourself. Breaking open can be beyond freeing and liberating, but it can also be extraordinarily painful and incredibly scary at first. Breaking open means moving all that wisdom you’ve gained in your mind into your heart, it means feeling everything that comes with now being this wisdom, which can be bliss , and can be the doorway to incredible pain as we are so open to now feeling everything. Feeling deeply can be the hardest thing we can do.

 

Fear is a powerful force that can generate a very large amount of power over our lives. I’m not talking about the common fears such as walking out in traffic may possibly cause severe bodily damage so a bit of fear in regard to stepping out into oncoming traffic is very very healthy.

I’m talking about the other fear, the fear that hides out deep in our minds, the fear that can be a silent and excruciating weapon against our own happiness. I’ve given more thought and attention to this hidden power in myself then I thought possible, I had no idea the depth of fear that existed inside me. These deep old buried things , murky and dank , like a hidden sewer of pain hiding out in the guts of my mind. Fears created by a million different versions of myself throughout time.

The fears of childhood, adolescence , my young adult years, and the fears of my adult self. They can’t be separated , you pull on one and it inevitable leads to another. I’ve got to go in and pull them out at the roots to even begin to see them clearly.

As Daniel Pinchbeck so brilliantly named his book , its  ” BREAKING OPEN THE MIND”.

My mind fears itself, my ego fears losing itself, my identity fears death..etc..

I want to survive which is the instinct of all life- Survival . But What I want more then merely being alive is, to THRIVE.. To be joyously living, not simply existing.  So I ask my Higher Self ” What do I need to do in order to live a full and truly inspired life?” The answer is always ” Let go of this fear you’re carrying around in your heart”.  ” LOVE YOURSELF WITH EVERY FIBER OF YOUR BEING”  SIGH* Okay!

And so I dig and pull out the roots and look each fear in the dirty rudy face and breath LOVE into them.

My Fear is about never feeling accepted, my fear is about being left alone forever never feeling truly connected to life and other people. I see now that I create and perpetuate that fear, I keep myself disconnected and on the outside of life. I lock myself out , this is where I must learn to open the door to my own heart and let my own love in.

I look at how afraid I am to feel myself feeling fear, that was a huge part of what Ayahuasca showed me.

I fear feeling fear. I have been acutely aware of this now for nearly two months and I’ve been paying very close attention to this. I have been noticing what happens when I start to go into fear about something, I see how much I recoil at the sensation, so I’ve been doing my best to instead of moving away from it, I’ve been consciously moving toward it.

This is super painful , hard, annoying , and frankly – SCARY AS SHIT!

There are some things that make me feel like I’m being ripped apart when I move toward them, some fears that feel literally like death to me. (Worst then death, as death seems like it will be a very peaceful experience.) This is why Ayahuasca is so terrifying for pretty much everyone who has gone deep into the medicine, it shows you yourself – ALL OF YOU! All of you in ways you never could have conceived of experiencing yourself. It shows you your fear, your pain, your suffering, and then it shows you how thats all perfect and in order with life, but that it can all be let go of and moved through if you’re willing to face it.

No one is without a shadow self. The sneaky part of the shadow, of fear, is that when we hide from it, when we push it away, that is where it thrives and grows stronger. In the dark , in the shadows, in those murky depths is where it feeds and grows into the monsters we are so terrified of becoming ,or being consumed by.

The big fucking cosmic joke of life is , in order to dissolve all that you fear seeing and becoming or experiencing , you must be willing to face it.

The unbearable truth is the only way to move past your fears is the willingness to move into them and move through them one step at a  time.

What is so mind altering about Ayahuasca is not always the visions or truths you might get during your journey together, but the sheer joy of when it ends and you have actually lived through the experience.

It can literally feel like the best time of your life when its all over.  I think , personally, this is because ( for most) you have just now faced down some of your biggest darkest scariest parts of yourself and when its all over you see that you can face those horrors and live to tell the tale.

We all don’t have to take Aya to get there, she is a powerful tool in getting there quickly and very fiercely, but it is not needed to face who we are.

I do plan on partaking again in about two months and this very thought alone can bring me to my knees with fear. I check this fear and I ask ” what are you afraid of?” The answer is so simple, funny, and mind boggling – I’m afraid of myself.

I’ve never been a big fan of confrontation and this journey with my own fears has been the biggest confrontation of my life. I feel like I am purging now, purging the shame, the pain , the insecurities that have plagued me in ways I didn’t know. I am sitting inside the walls of the hell my own mind can create, the prison of which we all can lock ourselves in. I am deep inside now and I am experiencing more then ever how I am truly the only one who can set myself free.

Right now the biggest prison I’m working to move through is ANGER. I have a giant river of pure pain filled rage that brews under the surface, my fear is unleashing this anger. Over the years on my spiritual self loving journey I have definitely done a lot of work on processing, allowing, and releasing my anger.

BUT… I still have a huge fear of the power of the anger that I can feel inside me at times. The anger is most often directed at myself and it pops up most in traffic and in bizarre experiences of feeling inconvenienced.

I had a pattern of intense suppression going on throughout my life up until I really became conscious of myself and my ability to heal. I would stuff and stuff and stuff my anger down until it wouldn’t have any space left to be and it would erupt out of me like a volcano. I would scream and throw things and cry. It scared many friends and family members. Mostly I had huge amounts of shame after an explosion and I would internalize the pain and anger again and beat myself up about it creating a vicious loop.

Now I don’t feel the same overwhelming explosive quality to my anger due to having practiced processing, and learning how to love and forgive myself . Now my fear is of the ugliness of anger the sheer rejection of it from our culture. How as a spiritual person it is very frowned upon to be super angry.

My work with anger and fear is to find the space to be able to allow them to exist and to stop fighting them with everything I’ve got. Can I let myself feel angry and feel safe inside that feeling? Can I feel Fear and let fear be and not try desperately to wiggle away from it?

Can I embody both fear and anger while loving and accepting myself in the process? Can I surrender to feeling super shitty and let that be perfectly alright?

I also am feeling ready to embrace the fact that both Fear & Anger are Teachers and have shown up in my life to not just harm me and cause me suffering, but to guide me and help me more clearly know and understand myself on this journey as a human being.

I know my journey is always one of love, love for myself , and love for life itself. It is not always easy, clear, or direct but I am always moving in love and with love no matter how far away it can feel at times.

The intention for this new 37th year of my life is ” TOTAL EMBODIMENT” , the art and practice of fully embodying myself – the good, the painful, the beautiful , divine, horrifying, selfish, powerful, abundant, and yes even fearful angry me. My intention is to love and embrace ALL of myself even when in the moments it feels damn near impossible, I will simply do the only then I can , which is do my best from wherever I might be in the moment.

Love Amber.

Embracing My Weirdness & Shifting My Focus On Social Media

I have been in a really weird place now for awhile. I was in a funky space pre-Ayahuasca and now everything that was on my mind before I did it has exploded into my full fucking awareness. It’s like I unlocked my filter system and now I can’t be distracted from anything that has been on my mind. Every thought that has challenged me, every belief I’ve struggled with…they are all in the forefront of my mind.

All I can do is let it all come and do my best to navigate the sometimes overwhelming sea of feelings, thoughts, and sometimes very dark and heavy emotions.

Ayahuasca seems to have gone into my soul, my deepest memories, my past, my deepest pains and dragged it all straight into the forefront of my reality. I asked for this and now here it is. Ask and you shall receive. It’s not all “BAD”. It’s only different and something I’m not used to at this level of intensity.

I’m seeing myself and life in a new way. I have such a different perspective on who I have been. I feel like something has been deleted in me, some version of myself, and now I’m feeling a bit lost as I don’t quite know myself the way I thought I did.

It’s like the death experience I had during my Aya journey did actually kill some part of me. I feel a loss, but at the same time I feel like the part of me that has dissolved was a part of me that was no longer serving my highest good on my life journey.  But as with any identity shift it can be a time of confusion and discovery.

I’ve been deep into the heart of some of my biggest (emotional) pain in my life, and I am seeing it and feeling it from a new place, shifting my understanding of myself and my life in a big and surprising way.

I feel that I’m really coming to terms with myself as an introvert. Realizing the pain and struggle I had around this part of my identity. I feel more comfortable now with this part of myself. I feel far less guilt and stress around being someone who truly needs insane amounts of time to herself.

I see how this part of me has been sooo misunderstood and how it has hurt many people who couldn’t understand my need for solitude. I had no idea how to voice my needs in this area for a very long time, and in that journey I know people felt I was shutting them out. As I come to terms and better understand my own needs and feelings it is far easier for me to express clearly to others who I am and feel far more ease and acceptance in my introverted nature.

I see how those who are not introverted have a really hard time comprehending the real needs of those who are really truly introverted. I have a hard time understanding those who don’t need more downtime and can spend countless hours with people and then not feel totally drained.

I’m also really shifting my relationship with social media, namely, FACEBOOK.

Facebook is a double-edged sword for me. On one side, I love it for seeing into peoples’ lives and being able to connect even while being alone and being my introverted self. On the other side, it feels super-impersonal, isolating, and these days its feeling full of fear and endless, bad fucking news.

I mostly walk away from my Facebook interactions feeling depleted, depressed, and overall pretty shitty.

So I  deleted Facebook from my phone, which has been a new and wonderful world. I feel I am spending so much more time with my own thoughts and feelings and not constantly taking in a million different people’s thoughts and feelings about every subject all freaking day.

I am now only allowing myself about 10 minutes every few days on Facebook. This has greatly increased my overall feelings of happiness, contentment, and peace. I don’t feel I want to leave Facebook full stop, but this new way of approaching it thus far has really had noticeable positive affects on me and my overall quality of life. It’s hard to admit to myself how much time I must have been spending on it to notice such a major difference in spending less time on it.

I feel so deeply that I need to reconnect with my OWN VOICE, to feel my own thoughts and feelings, to follow my own inner-guidance instead of listening to everyone else tell me how to live, feel, eat, dress, love,  and pray!

I feel this is the time of embracing my own personal way of approaching life no matter how much it may differ, disappoint, confuse, or otherwise annoy others. I feel this is the time for me to learn to hear myself over the endless stream of noise coming from every direction in our world.

I have the answers I am seeking. I know whats best for me and I can listen to and follow my intuition and wisdom to come to all my own conclusions about pretty much anything. This is the time of embracing the unknown in me, embracing the weirdness, embracing the fear, and diving in with arms wide open ready to take it all in. This is my time to practice the magnificent and divine art of being ME!

Leaning into the great Unknown.

Since my Journey with the medicine vine Ayahuasca nearly two weeks ago I’ve had a very powerful shift in my perspective on my life and life in general.

Part of my intention of going into ceremony in the first place was to discover most clearly what was blocking me from truly stepping into my own personal and professional power. I got a pretty heavy duty answer to my question, but now I’m asking ,” what do I do with this new knowledge & insight?”

Now that I see that FEAR, and the fear of being abandoned ( which translates to- being without community, being without  understanding from others, feeling a sense of not  belonging , feeling like an outsider) has been ruling my life, the question is what do I do now?

I was having a great deal of overwhelm and anxiety in my reintegration process back into  my life post aya journey . I was having the most powerful and vivd dreams of my life, it seemed like every thing that has ever hurt inside me was brought to the surface all at once and I was having a hard time being with that. I was doing what I always have done , and thats figure it all out NOW.

I was going about my life as if this major freaking thing had not just taken place inside me, I was trying to control the experience after it happened and go about being who I was before I did it.

Instead of these intense feelings getting easier, they started getting worse. I even reached out for help from a facilitator ( one who helps run the aya ceremony journey)to make sure I was not going off the deep end.

He informed me of what I had known intuitively , that this was not uncommon for someone who had a very deep and intense experience with the medicine. But I was grumpy about it cuz I went into this to be happier, not more insane then when I went into it.

So I did what I do best, I got in the bathtub and I let myself cry and feel, and let go..

The answer appeared , I was still trying to approach everything from the exact same mindset I had before the ceremony . I was for the first time in my life unable to analyze and figure my way out of this feeling place.

My mind kept feeling like it was drawing one big major blank after another.

The only answer I could come up with about what to do next with my life was

” I DON’T KNOW!!”

And it dawned on me, this is the best answer I’ve ever gotten. This is where I am needing to start. I am in the space of not knowing , and my work begins here. I was so admit about filling up the space that had been opened in me through my ayahuasca journey that I was causing myself panic attacks. Who am I when I’m not knowing?

I’m very attached to having the answers, I like knowing things. I’m very good at knowing things and being full of ideas and answers.  There are plenty of things I don’t know, such as how to preform brain surgery, how to solve complex mathematical problems, how to bake a cake.. But these not knowings fall in the realm of choice and study, skill, and interest.

When it comes to me , my journey , my passions I am full of ideas, and I feel very knowledgable. But here I sit, BLANK.

Now my work begins , now I learn how to not know. I learn to sit in the discomfort of uncertainty. For the last few days I’ve been doing nothing~ meaning, simply sitting with this open space inside me and not trying to put anything inside it.

I for the first time am willing to see what unfolds without needing to figure it all out.

This is my job , this is part of what the source of energy that I met in my journey was telling me repeatedly~ SURRENDER.

Surrender to Not Knowing. It’s safe to be in the space of uncertainty, of infinite possibilities. I don’t have to get it all done right now, everything doesn’t have to be figured out and solved now.

I have no idea what the next step is on my journey through life. I have no idea what I’m going to do in regards to my work with women and the self love journey, I have no clue what I’m doing now. This is huge!!

I’ve been so tightly wound about my life and having to figure it out and have a plan that I’ve been unable to have access to my full capacity for joy, pleasure, play..

My work with self love began as I realized I was very, very ,very hard on myself all the time. I had an inner slave driver that was relentless. Even though to the outside world I looked like a relaxed person, I was extremely uptight.

When I was finally able to see that I didn’t need to punish myself in order to grow and be the person I knew I could be, I was able to begin my journey of love and healing.

And here I am 8 years after this realization, and I see how that slave driver has been tamed, but she is has learned sneaky tactics and maneuvers .

I still feel the call of perfection, of knowing it all, of being on top of my game, of pushing and pushing myself to grow and be better.

Not Knowing and sitting in open space filled with no answer or direction is very weird for me. But I have seen and felt things that cannot be unseen and unfelt. I know that the answer is to let go. Stop trying so hard to figure out everything and find a way to let it be.

This is the opposite of ” DOING”. I now learn how to let MYSELF BE.

My Mission should I choose to except it is~ the mission of allowing the unknown into myself and sitting within it’s fast expanse with awe and wonder.

Much Love~ Amber

My Journey with Ayahuasca

First I would like to preface with the fact that this will be my most Vulnerable blog post yet.

I will also not be discussing where or with whom I took this journey with for privacy purposes and to protect all those whom are involved.

This Past Friday night on September 2nd 2016 I partook of the sacred ancient plant medicine Ayahuasca. It was my first time ever partaking of the medicine. I would like to start by saying it is near impossible to describe such an indescribable experience and my own journey with it is a very personal one and can in no way shape or form be a perfect reflection of what may happen to any one else whom may partake in the medicine. This is a powerful life changing medicine, make sure you are with a Shaman who can safely and with deep loving intention hold the space  for the love and transformation to unfold.

I cannot describe to you my journey in its absolute entirety , but I will share the most important highlights.  I would also like to add that I spent weeks tuning into the energy of the medicine vine , everyday I called her and I set my intention with her. I told her I wanted her to show me where I am most blocked, show me whats holding me back from living my most full life. I asked her to not hold back , even if it was the hardest thing I’d ever do I wanted to see clearly the truth of my own limitations and to be give the gift of insight. I asked for a healing to take place that night and she answered and gave me all that I asked for and more.

Nothing on this earth can begin to touch what I experienced on Friday night, the words that come to mind are- Turned inside out, obliterated, dissolved, blown open, shattered, powerful, and totally alien to this physical life I know.

As the medicine began to take me past the fuzzy gentle space it started in , I began to ,what felt like , fall through the universe and its many layers. I felt like I was slipping through one dimension of thought and consciousness after another at a rapid uncontrollable speed.  The moment I could really begin to take a look around I was then pulled to the next place, then the next.

It very much felt like being on a water slide in that it keep pushing me at rapid speeds on and on and on…swirling and hurtling through space ( which was not really space at all).

This went on for an unknown period of time ( as there is truly zero concept of time in this frame of mind), and at some point I realized I had no body and I had left the world I knew behind. I was being pulled at such a powerful force toward totally dissolving myself I began to lose my mind . I mean that I began to lose touch with my own linear mind, my usual way of processing and thinking, or understanding things was becoming incredible hard to access. I started to lose language, I would try to conjure a word or think of something specific and as quickly as the words or ideas would form they would then crumble. Their meaning was lost and completely unimportant in the space where I was existing at that moment.

The only thing that mattered was this intense pressure of energy that was blasting out of my heart and simultaneously blasting into my heart. The call of this energy ( though it had no actual words ) was SURRENDER! All I wanted , and all the energy wanted was for me to LET GO.

I finally at some point let myself be dissolved into the void, it was nothingness and everything happening all at once. I was light, I was energy vibrating at the fastest possible frequency , I had for lack of better words- DIED. I was nowhere, and everywhere ,  I had no body , no mind, no language, no story- Yet I was EVERYTHING. The most powerful , total complete everything.

Since there was no concept of time ( as the only moment was NOW) I have no idea how long this lasted..

The next thing I knew some tiny part of me ( the human being Amber) had a doubt, there was a question , a wordless question that said , ” Who am I if I leave all this self, this story, this mind behind?”

And with that question ( which was more a feeling then a actual question) I was flung out of the void and it felt like I was split in two, like my soul was ripping. Then I was fiercely aware of SUFFERING. When I feared the void, when I clung to my identity, my story I felt agony. All this energy wanted ( relentlessly ) was for me to STOP CLINGING to my story of myself, to let go of the need to control everything , it kept calling me so powerfully to surrender. It was like an energetic echo that reverberated throughout every molecule  of existence .

I had what felt like lifetimes of being trapped outside of the beloved bliss of the dissolving void, I could feel it calling me on every level, but it took so much of me to let myself go. Even though the feeling of letting go was more relief then Ive ever known in physical life, the fear of death ( losing myself) was SO POWERFUL!

I wanted to understand things , but the journey was 100% about losing my mind, my idea of self, of letting go of those parts of me that lived every waking hour in fear.

This all went on for what felt like an infinite amount of time- I would dissolve and lose myself in the void of everything , and then again be blasted out due to fear . I was faced over and over and over with the most powerful reflection of my own FEAR I have EVER Known.

There were long stretches where all I knew was Fear, it was like my life-force was encased in a prison of fear. Like my human mask was being ripped off over and over and it was so scary to be revealed and seen so clearly. I saw and felt my fear, it danced before my eyes in scary images and I would laugh at them telling them they were dreams and they had no idea what being real fear was. These images would try to suck me in , but it was so clear to me that fear was in my mind and these images were illusions simply trying to give me a visual image of what fear looked like. Fear has no face, it belongs to no one.

Fear is a  nebulous abstract reality. I was at once deep in my fear as well as being completely removed from it and able to watch it as an observer. I for the first time in my life realized on every single level of my being how deeply the truth is that ,” Fear is a total construct of the mind”. I could see and understand so clearly how I was creating every minute of fear in my life.  I was confronted with what felt like the deepest fear I’ve ever known, I knew that this fear was the fear that was controlling my life.

I saw, felt, understood, and became the embodied knowing that I had a terror of Being ABANDONED.

A golden thread appeared and showed me how this fear had touched every aspect of my life, this fear had shaped my life. How I leave myself, how I am so terrified of living my life on the outside , of being left behind and forgotten , being alone and a outcast. I in-turn would isolate and separate myself before anyone ever had the chance. I left myself, and this pain of leaving myself had broken my spirits ability to let go. Feeling like I have to cling, to control, to hold tight or it might all disappear and leave me behind in the empty space.

Would I still exist if I let go? Would I still be real if I let the void, the empty take me for good? There was this never ending presence with me that held me in the middle of all this fear and said through its endless presence ” I will never leave” , ” Nothing but LOVE IS REAL”, ” There is Nothing to lose, there is nothing outside of this moment ” ” This fear is a dream created by you the dreamer”. Everything is NOW, and Now is EVERYTHING.

I finally was coming somewhat back to my body at this point and I was finally able to purge by Crying.

I cried for all the suffering I had created in my life, for all the sadness I had bought into, I cried for how I had hurt myself on such deep and powerful levels. I said over and over ” I am so sorry, I am so sorry , I am so sorry”. Tears poured out of me, my heart was cried by another woman in the room. Her tears and sobs felt like my heart breaking open and her sobs where my hearts song.

The only truth I knew and felt that I was taking with me from here on out is: ITS ALL LOVE, BECAUSE- ONLY LOVE IS REAL. My greatest fear is FEAR. My greatest barrier is my own beliefs and my investment in them even when they are so painful. My life is my own to create, there is no God person who thinks I should be any one else. The energy of life I met that night did not care on any level how I look, what I wear, how I live , it doesn’t need me to pray, to bow, to chant, to do one single thing for it, as it IS and LOVES ME beyond any love I could ever conceive of on this earthly plan.

There is no such thing as a spiritual person verse a non-spiritual person, because no matter what we are ALL THAT IS, AND ALL THAT IS IS US.

All my love my beautiful sisters and brothers. May we all continue to illuminate the path and yet know we are all teachers here together learning and becoming as one.

 

 

The Difference Between Knowing & BEING ~ Part One

self love

This is the “Age of Information”. We all have access to what seems like infinite info.

This day and age, we are all capable of being “experts” on any given topic of our choice. What I am here to talk about in this blog is the major difference between having a intellectual understanding of something and a practical fully-engaged, living-it experience.

More specifically, I am speaking on the topic of self help and personal awareness, as well as philosophical and spiritual matters.

I have been studying spiritual/self help information since I was around 11 or 12 years of age. I am now 36.

I really invested myself in this information sometime in my 20’s. I went from curious to ravenous for it.

It has taken me 15 years of active, dedicated, and deliberate intention to even begin to really START to embody this knowledge. The first step is intention, the desire to begin to open oneself to something beyond what we are shown in our everyday experience. An opening-up to ourselves and the bigger picture of life.

Every individual is different and has a different level of desire on how far down the rabbit hole they are interested in going. I’ve dedicated my life to knowing myself, to questioning and examining the fundamentals of the nature of reality and our existence. I have given myself completely to this practice.

With that in mind, I am also still a student of myself and the universe.  There was a time in my 20’s when I felt like I had all the answers and I was definitely arrogant and a bit of a fundamentalist in my own way.

It took me years of fumbling around and coming face to face with my own perceived limitations and struggles before I let myself fully acknowledge that I was always going to be a student of life no matter how much I knew.

It took me years of practice and continued focus before I stopped just KNOWING this information and I actually really started LIVING IT.

Right now in our world of technology and social media we are bombarded with endless information about how to better ourselves and live a more fully-enriched and authentic life. I love this and I’m so happy we have so much access to such fantastic and inspiring information. However, I feel due to the endless overwhelming stimulus and continued in-our-faceness of all of this information, we tend to start to block it out and really powerful life affirming messages just become noise.

On my Instagram feed I see about a thousand memes about loving myself and taking care of myself etc. This is super deep and truly meaningful, life changing information , but how it is presented then makes it less likely to be something we really take in on a deep and profound level.

It starts to feel like “Love yourself…yada yada yada“.

I, of course, would rather this Love Yourself Revolution exist than not exist, but what I am wanting to draw attention to is that Loving oneself and really living from a place of deep connectivity with one’s deepest love and compassion for yourself does not come overnight, or due to our exposure to this via Facebook or any other social media.

It becomes just another thing we have floating around in the infinite abyss of information in our minds.

Yes, all information starts with understanding it on an intellectual level, but it takes much more than “knowing something”, knowing the right words to say and what you should be doing, than actually doing it and living it.

We all have to start from exactly where we are, wherever that may be in regard to our own relationship with ourselves.  Knowing the verbiage and walking-the-walk are about a million miles away from each other, but one will lead you to the other with one small step at a time.

I began my real journey with loving myself when I first acknowledging the painful fact that I did not love myself. I “liked” only parts of myself and found certain aspects of myself acceptable, but on an overall scale I did not have a deep connection with my own love and approval. After that, I began examining all the ways not loving myself affected my life, how my own feelings about my worth and capabilities as a human being had shaped and molded my entire existence.

I knew all the mantras “Love  yourself. You are beautiful. You deserve all the love in the world” … “Fear is an illusion. Only love is real. You create your own reality.” I knew it all!! But I didn’t really know how to live my life from the space of those mantras.

I knew them, but in my heart I did not FEEL them. I only half-believed them and I wasn’t sure I believed them for myself and my life.  I had such a powerful belief system in place that told me, “You are not smart enough to really be successful, so why bother. You are terrible with money and you will most likely always be poor. You are not pretty enough, thin enough, sexy enough. You are too moody, too pissy, too intense, too much of an ungrateful bitch that no one will ever really love you”.

That system of belief was running the show and having someone show up and tell me to “love myself” only made me feel guilty and pissed off that I didn’t love myself .

I was so angry after all that time spent over years studying myself and learning everything I could about life, that at the end of the day I still didn’t fucking love myself. The reason I was still so out of touch with actually feeling my own love for myself was because I hadn’t shown up and taken the action of really becoming “one who loves”.

I plastered happy words onto my life but I still showed up in my life exactly as I had always shown up.

Loving myself (or yourself) is much more than words spoken. It is how we show up for ourselves in our own lives. It is feeling the fear of our own greatest weakness and painful vulnerability and then sitting with it in the most love we can conjure from where we are.

We cannot jump from despair to bliss in a heartbeat, but we can move up the vibrational scale of emotions one tiny vibrational, emotional step at a time.

If I am in fear, someone telling me that “fear is an illusion” is more painful and frustrating than helpful and inspiring. Do I believe fear is a construct of our own minds? Yes, but when I am smack in the middle of it, knowing something and being able to access it in my being are two very different things .

 

How Do We Go From Knowing to BEING?

I think every one may have their own personal journey, but I do think there are some steps that every one can take .

FIRST, I believe total willingness and deep intention to really move beyond Knowing is the most important step you will take on this journey. If you aren’t truly invested it will prove challenging to really dig in and get deep into the roots.

SECOND is a willingness to let go of thinking you already have all the answers. (This was the most important step for me.) Even if you don’t like the answers you have we still have a tendency to be attached to our beliefs even when they are painful and not serving us. Letting your mind be open to new insights and depths of comprehension. If we are holding tight to our current reality, it is that much harder to let a new one in.

THIRD is questioning every belief and thought you have. I know that sounds crazy and like a lot of work, but it is a major player in breaking down the barriers to a new level of being. We will never truly know the greatness of ourselves until we know the source of our pain and struggle, so taking a long hard look at all the thoughts you are thinking on a daily basis gives you great insight into what beliefs are holding you back. Every belief we have carries an emotion and emotions are our indicators of what we are creating in ourselves and our lives. If the thoughts you are thinking on a daily basis bring you anxiety, pain, fear, and depression then those thoughts are attracting more thoughts like themselves ( which is the nature of the mind) and those thoughts are in turn attracting more things into your life to feel anxious, depressed , and fearful about. Beliefs form our reality.

Looking at what a belief is…  What is a “thought” to you? Where does it come from? What is it’s purpose? Do you have control over your thoughts? YES! Does this take time, energy and lots of fucking practice. YES!

It is like any new skill. We cannot expect to take it on and be a master in an instant.

What you think causes the way you feel, and the way you feel causes the way you send out vibrations that then in turn attract all matters of circumstances and events into your life.

By really examining how our thoughts and beliefs about our thoughts are affecting every part of every day, is a major step in looking at life and yourself through a new lens.

When I say “We are all one“, it is a delightful catch phrase that has a pleasant idea behind it. But living from this belief is a whole other ball game. Really living our lives from a place of connectivity with one and another and seeing how we are all a part of each others lives is a major shift in our reality of separation. Living from the space of oneness… seeing how that person in traffic is an extension of yourself, seeing how your boss’s shitty behavior is an extension of yourself, and on and on. Seeing that every person and every thing that comes into your life is an extension of yourself is HUGE!

When I live from that space, I am able to slow down and be aware of how I am the creator of my life and the players in my life are showing up and reflecting back to me the thoughts, feelings, fears, and actions I fear, want, need, hate, love, etc.

Life really changes when we live it in full responsibility!

This can be infuriating as well as utterly liberating all at the same time. At times I wish life were different and that I believed in chance and coincidence and fate, but I am a firm believer in my own creative link to the universe and being a co-creator with life, not a person merely affected by life’s creations.

I can very easily choose to be unconscious and to not be deliberate in my thoughts, actions, and deeds, but in the end I end up with results that may or may not be what I want. It can be a big task to ask someone to acknowledge their power. To own their life in way they may never have thought of owing it. But the path I have found to being an active, loving, conscious participant in my life has been to take responsibility and to own my life fully.

Showing up of for yourself can look countless ways for countless different people. For me showing up and being one who loves, meant… leaving work that felt unfulfilling or painful, checking in with myself on why I allowed certain people to continue to treat me poorly, looking at my relationship with my boyfriends of the past and asking myself “Why did I stay so long, what about that behavior was serving me, and why did I think I deserved to be treated that way?“. It meant taking action where I could take action and/or lining up my energy in preparation to be able to take action in the future. It meant getting my thoughts and feelings about a given topic into a space of connectivity to what I was really wanting, versus taking action from a place of fear or from being focused on lack of what I wanted.

We only love ourselves to the extent that we allow ourselves to love ourselves. It cannot be done to us or for us by anyone else. If you are miserable in your life now and you are blaming others, that may feel better than owning your own part in the very misery you hate being in, but it will not change it.

I never ever want anyone to read this (or anything I write) and feel guilty or down on themselves, but it can occur when we have not been in the mindset of taking responsibility for our life and the circumstances we find ourselves in. Being one who loves is not about looking at yourself and your life and feeling like you are failing at it. No, it is really the opposite. Seeing how you create your life is not about blaming yourself for how shitty it may have turned out, but acknowledging your POWER of creation in that process.

The beauty is not only just knowing you are powerful in a “yeah, yeah, yeah… I’m powerful” sort of way. Its about feeling into the depth of who you are, looking into your mind and your soul’s deepest longings and seeing how life thus far has really shown up for you in exactly the way you have let yourself believe it would.

When I don’t know I’m powerful, I then give my power away to everyone else. I think other people can get what they want, but not me. Great power and owning it, will not be something that you wake up with after years of self-doubt and insecurity. A step in the direction of power is practicing consciously creating your life. By paying attention to how you feel, what you think, and what manifests in response to that.

You cannot take my word for it. Nothing is more infuriating then someone else telling you how to live. My desire is to have people choose for themselves to take action in going deeper, in moving beyond words that they know that are positive and uplifting, to living the Truth of those words. It is messy, scary, fun, amazing, playful, mind blowing, endlessly upsetting and will challenge you to the very depths of your being. But if you’re willing to go into a space of experiential practice, I can promise major shifts in your life.

From “Knowing stuff” to “BEING ONE WITH THIS KNOWLEDGE” is about breaking down our limiting beliefs and about opening up to new ways of thinking. Its about unlocking the mystery of You and delighting in everything you find, including all the horrible, ugly, messy shit you’ve swallowed over the years in regards to yourself. Its about moving one tiny, sweet step at a time in the direction of love and compassion for yourself. Its about looking into your own heart and finding all the reasons why you DO deserve all the love you have ever wanted. Why do you deserve this love? Because you were born and exist. Amazing how simple that is. We think we have to work so fucking hard to be lovable when really all we had to do was show up.

Think of a baby. Does that baby need to do something for you in order to deserve love? No! We believe this about babies but then tell ourselves a whole different story when it comes to ourselves.

How do you practice loving yourself? What does it feel like, look like, sound like?

How do you connect with and embody deep self-worth and self-love?

I have met a lot of wonderful people who say a lot of wonderful words, but in the end words are empty if I don’t see someone being it. As Ghandi said, “Be the change you want to see in the world“. He didn’t say,  “Preach the change, but you don’t have to actually do the work yourself.”

BE the love you want. BE the friend you want. BE the lover you want. Take it all in. Take all of life in. Change life from the inside, not from the outside. Be in Love with YOU & watch how the world will follow!!!

 

 

Torn

torn flower

I’ve been undergoing a mental break for well over a year now.

What I mean by “mental break” is ~ A break in my beliefs, reality, feelings about life, etc.

I’ve been really falling apart and working on reconfiguring the pieces. This isn’t exactly a bad thing , more of a challenging-shift-in-my-perspective kind of thing. I put my women’s group on hold for several months as I had lost steam with it. I lost my own feeling of connectivity to the message and I felt I needed time to go within and recharge myself with a new found understanding of self-love.

What I have found in the months that I’ve had to myself have been very potent indeed.

I have really come to see my triggers. There is no pretending they aren’t there anymore. I’ve come to see how I can’t really teach self-love without adding the spiritual dimension. Otherwise, there is an ENORMOUS gap in the teaching. But, in all honesty, I’m terrified of putting my spiritual beliefs out there.

Of all the things I’m comfortable about being vulnerable about, my spirituality is not one of them. I realize its a wound from years of feeling shut down and put down by friends and family members at a time I was much more vocal about my spiritual beliefs.

Now, I am scared to put the true raw essence of what I really believe and think out there. My spiritual relationship has become the most private relationship of my life. It has become so do to the fact that it is my most sacred relationship and my most important. I have very close friends whom barely even remotely know just how “far out” and *woo-woo* I am.

Its become a painful thing for me at this point in my life, painful that I feel like I have a secret identity. I think there are 4 people who really know the depth of my truest thoughts and feelings about the nature of life and reality and how we fit in it. I started telling myself a story that said ” I’m too radical”, ” I’m too weird for most people”. “My beliefs upset people and freak everybody out”.

I got so tired of feeling “weird”, and of feeling like I made people uncomfortable that I started hiding my beliefs.

This has caused a huge conflict within my own mind, heart, being, soul. I want to come out of the “spiritual closet” but I am still really scared.

The hardest part of all of this is, I have now spent so much time hiding my beliefs and feelings that I now feel disconnected to them in a way I never have before.

It is like I have taken my greatest truth and made it totally unlovable and unacceptable. This is extremely painful. I know that the answer lies within me. I am slowly but surely opening myself back up to this part of myself and I do that by starting to actually speak my real real real TRUTH.

I have systematically shoved my most sacred self into a box and shoved it under a dusty bed and now I’ve got to pull it out and dust it off.

I can’t truly live my life the way I want to and be who I really want to be if I’m hiding the most valuable beautiful magnificent part.

My relationship to my personal understanding of “God”, or what I like to call “The Universe” or “Source Energy” is what shapes every part of everyday of my life. I have no religion or any dogma that I follow. Only a truly personal, deeply intimate relationship to all that is~ness.

I would not be who I am if it weren’t for the beliefs I have and my own understanding of what the meaning of life is. I cannot imagine a life with no connection or relationship to some form of God.

My personal understanding of God is pretty flexible, meaning my concept of the life-giving energy of God is 100% non-judgmental. Meaning I do not believe in karma as karma (as it has been told to me) would imply that there is a right way to live life and that there is some right way of living you must one day master in order to be set free from your human experience. I believe we enjoy being human and we incarnate on purpose, not because we have to in order to learn certain things in order to ascend to some more enlightened state of being.

I believe we choose our parents, our color, our sex, our location, etc. before we are in human form. As when we have no physical body and we are in our energy body form, we see our lives and our planet from a much broader perspective. I don’t think our lives are mapped out, but I do think in the non~physical we can see “potentials” and we see conflict and all the things we would call challenging in life as fun and amazing opportunities to grow, expand, become more, play, challenge ourselves, and to simply have the experience of whatever bullshit we have set before ourselves on our path.

I believe in reincarnation. I believe in multiple layers of reality, in other dimensions. Plus the major factor that there is no such thing as time, and that everything that has been, and will be, is all happening now. Meaning I am living my past lives, current life, and my future lives all at once, not to mention other dimensional aspects of myself, and other bodies my soul inhabits in other plans of existence. I don’t think our souls are clumps of energy locked into human form. I think our souls are multi-dimensional and I think of the soul as more of a stream of energy and it can be a part of many people all at once, and that includes beings not of this earth.

I think life is far more bizarre, amazing, and totally insane then we have even begun to allow ourselves to process. And I am a 100% believer in the fact that we CREATE OUR OWN REALITIES. I mean ALL OF IT!

This is all fine and dandy and a lot of people love this concept (The Law of Attraction) until someone is rapped or murdered or something horrible happens to a child. Then the law of attraction is chucked out the window as we can’t believe that horrible things happening to people is also a part of their own creation. It’s not a mean point-your-finger-in-blame kind of creating reality. It is simply the fact that life comes through us, and happens through us, not TO us.

We, as a whole, are not creating consciously. So those horrible things are not things people have manifested intentionally, but by default. This is where people get mad at me, when I make everyone responsible for their own shit, no matter how dark or ugly that shit is.

It’s not something I’ve taken lightly. Its not something I haven’t examined on every level of my own being. It’s something that has been proven to me time and time again. When we focus on what is unwanted, or when we are in a chronic state of worry and anxiety, when we complain all the time about certain things, then by the power of our own minds, we attract to us those things that are a match to that vibration.

I do it all day everyday and so do you. I attract people rejecting my writing, or not acknowledging a super-vulnerable post of mine, or rejecting my spiritual beliefs because I BELIEVE PEOPLE DO THIS. I have so much energy around people not caring, not really investing, not really paying attention,  that I needlessly attract those experiences into my life.

I don’t have the energy to make this a clarifying-the-law-of-attraction-and-all-its-in’s-and-out’s blog, but I will say it is the fundamental ground from which all I know and believe stems from.

This is a tiny fragment of the depth of my beliefs and feelings in regard to the universe and our place in it. Now my work is to allow these beliefs to be okay, for it to be safe for me to share these parts of myself openly with friends, and to embrace and allow any whom want to push against what I have to say and to let it be okay for others to not believe what I believe. My dream is to have the courage to be as honest as I can about these parts of myself and to allow the gifts these teachings have brought me to be shared and to allow them to give me the life I know I was born to live.

This is a tiny coming-out-of-the-spiritual-closet blog, a beginning of a new era for me . My intention is to find my comfort and my confidence within these understandings and to let myself openly express and share every aspect of myself with the world regardless of my fear of being rejected or shunned for my unconventional beliefs.

 

Trusting My Own Voice

A note on some of today’s triggers that got my juices flowing, kicked up my anger, my pain, and most importantly buried beneath both my anger and pain…my FEAR. What I have come to deeply understand and feel most this past year, the lesson that has come up again and again and again and again and mother-fucking again is simply this…

I must. Listen. To my own…GUIDANCE!!!

I’m open to hearing other teachers. I’m ready and eager to learn, grow, and have new perspectives light up before me. But everything keeps circling back to MY OWN VOICE, MY OWN TRUTH. Learning to trust in this has been HUGE. I am a teacher, a guide, a leader, and a speaker. But what I want most is for everyone to find their inner-compass. To commit to themselves with fierce dedication and utter devotion.

I want to help create a space for women to re-learn, re-shape, and re-member who they really are. I know the one voice I need to practice loving, hearing, responding, and resonating with is MY OWN. Offer me your guidance and ideas, but know my heart must always listen to what feels like it’s own most resonate tune. There are SO many teachers, SO many voices and I feel I can go mad at times trying to cram them all in and make it all fit.

I am the one voice I’ve been dying to hear and believe in. This year has been about finding my voice and bringing it into the world. Then it became about listening to myself and what feels best for me in any given situation. Even if I seem insane, or selfish, ridiculous, petty, or off-the-mark completely…trusting in my own knowledge and wisdom has been life transformative.

I feel for perhaps the first time EVER…that I TRULY BELIEVE in MYSELF!

Written with happy tears streaming down my face, while sitting bottomless in preparation for tonight’s bath. That is all for tonight. 

Copyright © 2016. All content by Amber Desmond.