Was sitting up in bed this morning, listening to birdsong and enjoying the cool (ok, COLD — this is Wisconsin) breeze drifting in the windows…. ahhh…. when my cute little monkey mind noticed that my back hurt.

Very slightly. In one spot.

The pain had started in January and I’d finally done healing on it in May. My back has been recovering nicely since and doesn’t hurt anything like it used to. I’d slept wrong, though, woken up in the dark to find a tinge of the old pain from my odd arm position. I’d shifted my body and gone back to sleep.

And now as I sat, simply being, receiving birdsong and breeze, my mind noticed that my back felt slightly… off.

Next, my mind next remembered that my back had hurt there! And it had not been pleasant! Whoa!

To the mind, the memory of hurt is pretty much the same thing as the hurt itself, isn’t it? 

With this morsel of data, off my mind raced! A second later, it had dug up a related feeling of being punished.

“I hurt, therefore I’m being punished,” it insisted.

In my state of calm ease and peace, that thought seemed quite odd. Really? My back hurts because I’m being punished?

I let it go, like when the three-year-old announces that people are really cats in disguise. I simply observed my mind’s thought, neutrally suspended in the beauty of the morning.

Meanwhile, the mind decided to wake up the Curiosity Department. “Why do I think I’m being punished?” the CD wondered. And the CD sent little bundles of curiosity-consciousness out like ants to scour the landscape of my mind for crumbs.

“Because,” it announced a few seconds later, and quite proudly, “When I was little, the only time something hurt was when I was being punished.”

Hmm.

The mind is so cute, like a small child doing its best, adorably clumsy, simply due to its state of development. The mind can be especially entertaining when I am in a wordless place and can watch it run about busily comparing, contrasting, ranking, and reliving events from the past as if they were present.

It can be particularly irritating, however, when I am firmly ensconced in other thinking and judging parts of the mind itself, and cannot detach from these other thoughts.

But this morning, I patted my curiosity on the head and told it, “Nice connection. Good job.”

And I let it go, continuing to breathe birdsong and breeze for a short time before getting out of bed.

I don’t believe its idea, of course. What about all those bike wipeouts, the clumsy bumps, and the toe I jammed the day before 12th grade? Not punishment.

The trouble with the mind is that other parts of the mind like to believe the stories it comes up with. And that usually doesn’t lead anywhere useful.

When we practice a state of pure receiving, it becomes easier to stay neutral to the mind. Whether you call it meditation or listening or contemplation, the more we practice, the less the mind bothers us outside of practice, too. Then we can enjoy the mind’s machinations like we might watch busy squirrels play in the yard.

It is not possible to get rid of the mind. It is a layer of our human consciousness, and pretty handy for driving across town or figuring out how to change the batteries in your new electronic toy. But we can make peace with the mind, learn to recognize its favorite games, and practice stepping into a deeper form of consciousness in order to avoid the snares of monkey thought.

The delightful irony, of course, is that we must use our minds to develop this practice.

May you find ease in developing your practice.

© Daria Boissonnas 2013 All Rights Reserved. Please email us about reprint rights.

Share Your Wisdom

• Have you struggled with your monkey mind?
• What is your favorite method or practice to avoid getting caught up by the thinking mind and its stories?

Leave a reply, below!

This morning in church, the minister told the story of a young man who had found his absent father on facebook. (Or at least the man he believed was his father.)

Imagine years of pain, wondering where your father is and why he left. Not to mention, let’s admit it, our young minds would probably wonder what we had done wrong to send him away.

So the young man sent a message to the man he believed was his father.

No response.

Upset, the young man went out and did something stupid, on purpose. Something illegal (the minister did not mention what, but had spoken to the young man in jail), but, thankfully, something that did not hurt anyone.

We all sent prayers and healing to the young man. (You can, too.) May he find his way. May he find peace and love and self-acceptance and whatever he needs most.

Powering a Ghost Father

What stuck with me afterwards was this: How could you let someone have that much power over you? Especially someone who is not even there!

Though his father was nowhere to be seen, the young man created a father in his head, imagined what he would do, all the time reminding himself that this father was not there.

Then the young man allowed this imaginary father to haunt him.

Feeding your own consciousness into a thoughtform like this creates, in essence, a ghost. One you feed further, with your own energy… until it starts to feed on you.

• This ghost distracted the young man from living his own life.
• This ghost drove him to spend hours on the internet searching for his physical dad.
• And this ghost prevented the young man from noticing his own father-like qualities. (What was the young man searching for? Strength? Leadership? Courage? Appreciation? Love?)

He put so much power into this ghost that he incarcerated himself with these limiting thoughts — I must find my father, something is wrong with me because I don’t have a father, etc. He limited his own freedom.

Until the young man ended up in a physical jail cell, too.

How Much Power Do You Feed Your Ghost Father?

Granted, I don’t know what it was really like for him. I grew up with a responsible father at home.

But I have seen client after client losing energy because they are feeding ghost parents. These ghost parents still nag at them, belittle them, punish them, and worse.

I have definitely fed my own. My parents are in Arizona. But they used to sit on my shoulders and say the things they always said.

Not their fault. It’s something we do. We internalize our parents’ voices, opinions, etc.

And it is something we can stop doing.

Today.

(Find a healer or check out last year’s article for one way to do this.)

Many Fatherly Blessings to You

May you come to deep peace with your father.

May you arrive at a place where it doesn’t matter how he was or what he did or didn’t do.

May you lose any parasitic ghost father you’ve created and find infinite fatherness within yourself — all you need.

May you be complete in your fatherness. And a happy Father’s Day to you.

© Daria Boissonnas 2013 All Rights Reserved. Please email us about reprint rights.

Share Your Wisdom

• Have you suffered with an internalized parent nagging you or causing pain?
• How have you healed your father relationship? What was particularly useful to you? Leave a reply, below!

I was just listening to another parent’s story of an out-of-control, unrecognizable teenager.

It seems as if one day our kids are grinning lovingly at us, and the next they are sullen, slamming-the-door sorts of beasts. They don’t do what you ask them to, and they want to do things you don’t want them to do.

You yourself go from the wizard who could kiss the boo-boo better to an idiot, or worse.

Yeah, things get crazy in the teen years.

It’s not just hormones. If you can remember (heh), our teen years were when we began to find our independence, and learned to stand on our own two feet. We became more mobile, learned to drive and could go places without guardians, woohoo. Older, we could stay out later. We even longed to experiment with increasingly powerful situations and substances to find out who we were.

Adolescence and the process of independence from parents is a crucial part of our development as humans, one that I believe very few adults have completed well. I swear 90% of healing sessions I do work on issues of self-power not resolved by the end of adolescence. How can we help our kids not need healers for these issues?

What Makes the Difference?

I am writing about this all because we’ve got a high school senior and a high school junior. When they were little, I used to joke with my husband, “Oh they’re cute now, but one day they will be slamming doors at us, screaming, ‘I hate you I hate you I hate you!’”

It seemed amusing at the time.

Then again, so far we are up to about five or six slammed doors. I think I’ve heard “I hate you” only twice. But yes, check their birth certificates, they are teens.

Odd?

As my heart was breaking listening to this other parent’s story of her struggles, I wondered what was different about our house.

I thought about a friend who has very strict reins on her kid’s computer habits and, now that I mention it, almost every other activity, too. She told me why — “I don’t want him to do what I did at that age.” I’ve also heard, “I know what she can do at this age.”

Let me know if I’m missing something, but this is what occurred to me:

-> My friend doesn’t trust her kid to follow her marching orders, so she tries to overcontrol at a time when the kid is seeking independence and self-control.

-> At our house, we set up tasks and required behaviors that the kid will have to do as an adult anyway, training them to be adults.

What’s the core issue here? Trust.

1. Trust the Kid

I think trust has probably been the biggest factor in our ending up with non-monster teens.

I trust my kids to always be making the best decision they can make (which as this age, might not always be the wisest, I remind myself.) And then I make it my job to step in where they aren’t learning from consequences and show them easier options.

So when a kid doesn’t come home on time or do their chore, I trust them. I have spacey creative kids, and they probably got involved in what they were doing. I trust that they knew what they should have done. Then we have a Long Boring Talk in the near future about keeping your word, etc.

I used to NOT trust that they knew this, and things got ugly, fast.

But when I let go and did start trusting that they knew better, the issue shifted. It gave them more independence and respect they could feel. The issue became a behavioral thing then, down to mere choices or breaking old habits, not a question of whether they were smart enough or good enough or responsible enough.

Whew.

How much do you trust your teenager? Is there something you can trust them about or with? If there was something, what would it be?

2. Trust the Universe

I choose to trust the Universe too. Trust is a choice, after all. You can begin to trust right now with a simple choice. I deeply trust the Universe, even when I do not understand.

So when a teen is late coming home at night, I don’t run through every scenario that could have gone wrong. (Ok, once in a while I do catch myself doing this, and then I stop.)

I refuse to give negative fantasies, aka worry, any energy. I refuse to make those options any more likely.

Yes, I might ask the Universe to keep an eye on the kid. I might text said kid. Or I might go to bed without doing anything, following up with a Long Boring Talk about what it was like for them to be at that decision point and how they weighed their decisions, and how it felt to be at home waiting for them.

Each time a kid departs my supervisory radius, I trust that everything will work out for the best. This did not come easily at first. It is a spiritual practice.

What are you trying to control with your teen?  Can you truly control that?  How might letting go be a healthier choice?
Can you make a choice to let go of something stressful, right now? 

3. Be Trustable

When I first started parenting, my #1 rule, which I have only broken 3 times (sigh, long story), was to never ever lie to my kids. As a kid I was empathic and it was extremely confusing to experience adults lying to me. When I became a parent I realized how easy it is to throw a white lie at a kid, without even realizing it. (The kid won’t know, right? Wrong, lol.)

Honesty is always the best policy in our house, as in life. This is especially true in important relationships, which are based on trust, and which every parent models for their kid (whether they intend to or not, live with the kid or not).

In this house, admitting to having lied does not get you yelled at, but gets celebrated and may even get your punishment cancelled. Yay for telling the truth.

So we model telling the truth and being trustable. And no, it’s not always easy, and we don’t have a perfect track record by any means, but the results for our efforts have been priceless.

Our kids trust us to not blab confidences, even to other family members. Our kids trust us to be on their side, to support them, to help them figure out who they are, to always root for them, or to help them when they are confused or upset. That track record has carried into the teen years, though I notice they are more reluctant to outright ask for advice as teens, which I have to admit I miss.

Finally, I also believe being trustable includes not criticizing your kid. It seems to me that too much criticism, especially unasked for, makes one untrustable. Randomly criticizing is like randomly punishing, which drives animals mad in experiments.

You can help your kids improve, if they want you to help. I have to seriously stretch myself to allow my teens (or tweens or grade-schoolers) to express THEIR style in THEIR way.

Our job as parents is to help them see and learn to live up to their potential (not to be our dollies or puppets, tho). It’s easy to criticize when I get frustrated (then I apologize), and I’m working hard on this one. But it’s good for both of us.

Be trustable. Not criticizing yourself — or others — is another brilliant spiritual practice.

How are you trustable for your kids? How do they know this? Are you ever unpredictable or arbitrary? Or do you stick to what you say? 

4. Trust in Your Romantic Relationship

One of the big reasons I married my husband was trust. At the time I felt he was the only person on the planet I could 100% trust (well, also he’s super cute and funny).

Since trust is such a great element in friendship, my husband and I have sustained a fabulous friendship over, um, about 33 years now, yikes. Overall, we’ve enjoyed buckets of trust in our relationship, and it runneth over into the family, too.

I couldn’t live any other way, because I chose not to. Trust was a huge requirement for me for a life partnership.

How about you? Is trust a requirement for you? 

5. Trust Yourself

Finally, I trust myself. Hey, I’m not perfect, but I am doing my best.

Ya, the spanking experiment didn’t work and was shelved after only a couple months. Yelling, well that has not been so good, but I trust them to forgive me…in the long run.

Face it, we all have made parenting mistakes.

I choose to trust it will all work out in the end. I choose to trust that my kids’ wonderfulness and the power of his or her higher, divine self will trump my faulty parenting by miles and miles.

And personally, I choose to trust that God loves me no matter what stupid thing I say or do today. He’ll be waiting for me in the end, when we can all have a good laugh then.

So I trust myself. I choose to accept my innate trustworthiness.

Do you trust yourself? Where have you been naturally trustworthy? What is one thing you can do to allow yourself to trust you? (If you are still stuck, ask someone who trusts you WHY they do.)

An Exercise in Trust

So what do you think of the trust thing? Is it relevant? Try this. Think back to your childhood. Did you feel trusted as a kid? What did that feel like to NOT be trusted? Journal a page about that without stopping (you can burn or shred it when you are done).

Not being trusted rotted, as I recall. When it happened, I felt demeaned, not respected, and babied. And as a teen, I haaaaaated that.

Oh look, emotions! That there is raw gunpowder for the rebellious teen years, isn’t it?

The trouble with out-of-control teens is that the more they go crazy, the less and less you feel you can trust them. What if you just drew the line one day and said, “You know what honey, I’m going to trust you to make the best decision about your activities this weekend. Let me know if you want any input or help.” (And then you have to really let it go.)

What might happen? (After they pick themselves up off the floor, lol.) Want to find out?

Personally, I believe anyone who is a Child of God is trustworthy. (That would be everyone.)

If that is true, the key question becomes how can I live up to my inherent Trustworthiness, and bless others by sharing it?

I trust you will come up with something.

(c) 2013 Daria Boissonnas All Rights Reserved. Please contact us for reprint permissions.

As you may know, last year I took a break from daily interactions with my business and went on an almost-sabbatical to rethink my book. One of the many gifts in stepping back was that when I returned to the daily details of running my business (only a few times a month), I could much more clearly feel and understand how I had gotten so burned out.

One insight smacked me over the head during a marathon attempt to whittle down my email backlog.

As you may do, I follow quite a few experts in my industry. I follow healing and meditation experts, wellness experts, speaking experts, spiritual experts, entrepreneurial experts, marketing communications experts, and more. And as I do myself, these experts often offer free seminars, free instructional videos, or free downloads to get you to take another look at them. We all know these marketing freebies are designed to test your interest in a class or coaching opportunity they are offering, but many of the freebies contain good information. (And others of course are rawther trite, inspiring facepalms the world over.)

There I sat, fresh from my calming sabbatical, attacking my emails. For those containing interesting freebies, I opened up the audio or video or free report in a new tab. Soon I had two dozen tabs open, and hours of videos and audios to listen to, as well as reports to read. (And this is after bypassing many.)

The difference this time was that I could clearly feel the emotions of the situation washed over me.  It was not pleasant.

The inner feeling went like this: *worry worry worry*  When am I going to GET to these articles and videos? I can skim an article but videos take a HUGE chunk of time. *stomach twisting into knots*  If someone is giving me advice, I must have a problem. Omg, looking at all these freebies, I have two dozen very serious problems. When am I going to solve these disasters?  *fluster fluster*

The reason I had opened them all and not listened to a single one became clear. (Don’t let me shock you.) I did not want to.

Ugh. Who would? I thought my business was peachy keen and doing fine until I saw in my email that I need to have a list of 5,000 people, and an extensive product funnel, and be making six figures, and and and…

No.

I went for a walk. Away from my email, I could still viscerally feel the tension writhing within me. Before I opened my email, I didn’t think my business had any problems. I know what I have to do next (rewrite the book) and after that (offer a class), and beyond that, I simply was not worried. Nothing felt broken.

In the past, I have unsubscribed to marketers who seemed annoying, sleazy, or overly persistent. It was nice to whittle the baddies out. This time, I went back to my computer and unsubscribed to everyone but a few clients and friends, for whom I created an email “rule” to drop their future emails into a folder (not my in-box).

If I do not look in that folder in the next month, they are getting unsubscribed, too.

Two Solutions

1. Rule It. If you are not ready to give these emails up, create an email rule where they all get dumped into a single folder, such as my favorite: “To Read When I Have Time.” This way, you will not see them and be burdened by their implication that you are not whole. If you find you are not seeking them out to discover what problem you have, well then, don’t.

2. Unsubscribe from them all. If you find yourself longing for one down the road, seek it out and resubscribe. I dare you.

The Question of Marketing

This experience made me think a great deal about the marketing messages I am sending out, too. Few of us have as many problems as we think we have, or as many as we, in our insecurity, worry that we have or allow others to CONVINCE us we have.

There is nothing wrong with you. If you are seeking support for growth, seek it when you need it. Start with inexpensive sources, like a google search or free books at the library. When you listen to your inner voice and feel who you are without opening your email first, you will find you do not need that information IV that comes through your email inbox.

Thank you, experts. I will look for you when I need you.

And not until.

© 2013 Daria Boissonnas  All Rights Reserved

My friend is putting together a class on clearing clutter, and this perennial struggle has been top of my mind.  Then this morning, my meditation gave me an unexpected insight into the piles and disorganization we call clutter.

As I sat in meditation enjoying an unusually deep peace and nothingness, I began to see myself sitting at my desk, as if my eyes were open.

Oh dear.

I’m still in the throes of removing the large desk (and emptying seven large drawers) in my office. Stacks of paper dot the office countertops as well as my massage therapy table.  Evicted empty drawers huddle in one corner.  The shredder has been throwing a week-long confetti party on the far side of the room.  And a few accretions of miscellaneous… I’ll be nice — stuff… are now seeping across my desk like a glacier field.

As I “saw” this (with eyes closed), I could vividly feel how stressed I used to get about clutter.

Clutter used to drive me nuts.  Whenever I needed to concentrate or start a new project that required thinking or creativity, I would instantly become super-distracted by things out of place in my environment.  (Coincidentally, I lived a fairly ordered but cluttered life, so there was lots to be distracted by.)  The piles around me would scream: “You don’t have time for THAT, you have to take care of THIS.”  And send me reeling into uncertainty.

Ugh.

But this morning, in that lovely meditative place, I felt my old reaction with compassion and love.  (Awww…)  Then the stressed feeling faded completely, and I was looking at my office clutter while once again feeling that kind of deep peace you can only experience far out in nature or in meditation.

Peace? Amidst clutter like this? But… yes. I could feel Peace in the desk, in the papers, in the… stuff. Peace. Stillness. The scene suspended itself, as if it was waiting for me.  And I got it: clutter is OK.  Clutter doesn’t matter.  Only what I thought and how I felt about clutter made it miserable.  Inside the clutter is stillness.  Inside me is stillness.  Inside each atom of clutter is Tao, Presence, or God.  Inside chaos is the deepest Peace.

And I can (and may) find that stillness, in the midst of any chaos.

I sat with that for a while, until I felt I could reach it again in a non-meditative state. Even now, hours later, I feel deeply peaceful.

Do I still want to create systems so clutter does not build up in my life?  Of course. But this I know: should clutter creep up on me, like when I’m moving furniture around or when I get too busy to file for a while, there will be stillness and holiness in the center of that clutter.

Today I activated this insight by plopping my laptop on top of the clutter and peacefully writing this out for you.

How can you find Peace and Stillness in your clutter?

© 2013 Daria Boissonnas

Happy Valentine’s Day! Whether you have a romantic partner or not, let’s ponder and honor all the things that are so lovable about you! (Get ready for a long article.)

Nah, scratch that.

The details don’t matter. Here’s the truth of it: You are simply loveable. You were born lovable. Every bit of you.

How do you feel about that?

If you are having a hard time buying this idea, consider this: The divine essence of you is not only lovable, it may be Love itself. Your essence is infinitely lovable. Divine Essence, Life Force, Grace, All-Encompassing Love, Presence, God, Tao: it flows through your veins and along your nerve and energy pathways.

Therefore, the rest of you is lovable too, as an expression of Divine Essence. Every bit of you.

Love is simply who you are, from the inside out.

True, perhaps, from time to time, you might fall into an old reaction, an old habit of thinking or behaving… and then you might not act so lovably. You may yell or worry or cut someone off in traffic. You might think or do something mean. You might fear, feel insecure, or get defensive.

But how you act and think is a mere derivative of the Essence of you. And, yes, sometimes fears and lower energies can get in the mix. But at your core, you are Lovable.

Nothing in your Divine Essence can truly be lost. It is all there, like an acorn holds all the information to become a tree, whatever happens to the acorn. You are complete. Completely lovable. In every moment, in every situation.

If you are lovable in your inner core, then you are lovable in every cell of your body, and in your energy field. Love flows through all you are and do.

Listen to that Love. Can you hear it?

How can you tune into the song of Love within you, every day, in every moment… and hear it so distinctly… that you absentmindedly begin humming the tune for others?

© 2013 Daria Boissonnas

Last weekend someone asked to come see me for some healing. They said, “How about Monday?”

I gulped.

Between clients and especially on weekends, the massage therapy table in my office can become like a kitchen counter — a magnet for stuff that’s “between locations.” This time, I knew, it was particularly full. The boxes and papers from my new computer were all over the table. I’m also planning to remove the large desk in my office and have started to build temporary piles while I sort through everything. (You know how things get messy before they get better?) Also also, I knew my dining room table (visible across from my office) happened to be piled high with art projects and kid stuff, and the living room was strewn with games (7, I counted later), and I never managed to dust in January and and and…

I shrank into myself as I felt how messy my house was — waaay too messy to have someone in my home office so soon! So I started to say, “No, how about Thursday?” to give myself a few days to tidy up. Maybe an hour a day or so…

But as the words formed on my tongue, the Universe went…

“Ahem.”

And I heard it. I was putting my ego and perfectionism before their healing. My somewhat messy house was more important than their getting healing right away on Monday? No.

Taking a deep breath, I said, “OK, great.” If I had to throw stuff in boxes and stash them in a closet for a few hours, I would open my doors Monday morning.

Turns out, I spent an hour tidying up the massage therapy table that morning and easily cleaned it off properly. I left the games in the living room; we do have four kids after all. I didn’t dust (and I didn’t apologize for not dusting, drawing their attention to it like I used to, lol). And after the appointment I even showed the client some of the kids’ art that was piled in the dining room.

All that cringing was not about my house, it was about me and my insecurities. About the “rule” that echoes from my childhood that you are not worthy in the eyes of God unless your house is spotless. (Cancel, clear!)

Thank goodness I have all I need in every moment. Thank goodness I have an office and spectacular healing skills to offer to someone in pain. Thank goodness I live by the principle “healing first.”

© 2013 Daria Boissonnas

Over and over again in the spiritual journey, we encounter dark nights of the soul–periods when we get discouraged and bleak, despite our circumstances. This depression rarely makes sense: just last week you may have been totally upbeat about a certain project, with the world at your feet. Today, it seems hopeless. Even in the depths of a DNotS, you may be able to logically count many things to be grateful for and promising aspects of your life and project. But for some reason… the forecast feels bleak, really bleak.

In our dark nights of the soul, we shed what was holding us back. We let go of old limitations. The dark night of the soul is often the breakdown before the breakthrough. Though a difficult and uncomfortable experience, the process can be a good sign of letting go, with forward movement on its way.

But we must keep moving through our DNotS. Somewhere, hidden within each one is a kind of “pull tab” or “escape lever.” It’s the thing we have been hanging on to, which is disintegrating. When we fully let go of it, cut the strings, we emerge more quickly back into the light again. Happily, we often let go of these things in our sleep, or unconsciously. We have to keep showing up–you must get help if you need it, call your best friends, keep learning, meditating, exercising and all those things you do when things feel brighter.

Over the years, I’ve become familiar with the pattern of the dark night of the soul and have gotten better at recognizing them and sliding through them faster.  :)  But sometimes we (and I too!) can get stuck bumping up against something that does not move. This kind of stuckness, if it becomes chronic, eventually can disconnect us from our power core. We feel burned out. Worst of all, the process seems unending, a very long holding pattern.

Well, last year I finished my book and crashed into a wall of burnout like this. My hair started falling out, I could hardly function at work (and rudely inconvenienced a lot of people in the process–I’m so sorry!) At home, I easily hit my emotional tolerance level for kid noise and was wiped out by their unending (though wonderful) questions. Parenting was nearly impossible. It was so odd.  I could feel I was bumping up against something HUGE. Something old. Some issue that did NOT want to budge, and, unfortunately, did not want to release the book.

As a spiritual citizen and healer who helps others, I believe it’s my responsibility to move beyond my own blockages. Every healing shift I experience helps me help my clients more effectively. In fact I believe all healers owe it to their clients to take their own recommended medicine and get regular healing from other healers with diverse backgrounds, skills and techniques.

So I took a break from blogging for this particularly process of healing. I am grateful to all my readers for the sweet and supportive messages and love I have receieved. Yes, i’m back. I’m in the office, providing healing and healer-to-healer consulting.  I missed you. I missed blogging, and I’m glad to be back.

Have I entirely excavated what was holding me back? Mmmm… maybe not entirely, but I see the shape of it, and I”ve lopped off BIG chunks of it. Meanwhile, I continue to attend a local healing and intention circle, and I continue to heal.

Sometimes we need a silent retreat — we have to stop talking (blogging), so we can listen better to our hearts. I am happy to be back, and I look forward to sharing more healing wisdom with you.  

Until then, my friend, many blessings on your journey,

Was your dad perfect?

Mine was pretty good, but I can totally look back and spend hours listing things he might have done differently.

Not necessarily because that would have been better, mind you, lol. Just because I am an expert criticizer!

If you are reluctant to connect with your dad today, or if you are carrying old dad pain around, consider making this the year you decide to heal it.

You have moved out of the house. Maybe he has passed on. It’s time to let go.

Here the way I heal things “out there” that are bothering me.

Making Peace with the Inner Dad

On this Father’s Day (and maybe for the next year), contemplate how you feel about your father.

• Is your relationship an energy sink?
• Do you still entertain thoughts that he should have done this or acted that way?
• Is there any frustration or negative emotions that drain you?

You do not have to confront him or tell him anything. That will only create karma and more negativity down the road.

You can heal any relationship completely from your side. Whatever harmful connections between you two, you can unhook them from your side. And they will be gone.

How can you begin doing that? Consider this method:

1. Choose the most difficult thing about your relationship. What is he doing or not doing? In what way does he fall short?
2. Where in your life do you do what you complain about him doing?
3. Where in your life do you NOT do what you hate that he DIDN’T do?

It might not be easy to see these. Since they are so irritating in him, you won’t want to find them within you, of course. Nonetheless, in my life, it is exactly the things “out there” that annoy me so much that are what I am struggling with inside, too. Find a good friend or a spouse or a healer who can help you see yourself or brainstorm this.

Then ask yourself: how can you let go of these painful thoughts/qualities/behaviors yourself?

And: How can you do (in a healthy manner) for yourself, your inner child, or your children what he never did?

When you practice this for a while, it will not rankle that he did/didn’t do that. When you heal a mind pattern in you, you will not be bothered by his still having it.

You are responsible for you. You cannot heal your dad, but you can heal YOU.

Now find your own fatherlike qualities.

Instead of wanting someone else to DO something for you, how can you father yourself? In my experience, doing this will unseat the negative image of your dad.

We love dad, but we don’t have to drag the negative aspects of him around with us.

Happy Father’s Day.

© Daria Boissonnas 2012 All Rights Reserved. Please inquire about reprint rights.

I’m going on a pilgrimage, and have agreed to give up something of great value to me.

Right now, it’s all swirling in my head.

This is spring, a time of rebirth, newness, and growth. Perfect timing.

A pilgrimage is a journey to a place of great value. I am going within, on a great 12-month scavenger hunt to collect all the parts of me I have left by the wayside, and rebuild my life (and business) as an author and creativity coach. I’ve done this sort of thing before, all along my intensive healing journey of the last 15 years, but never so focused on a single topic or goal.

My sacrifice reminds me of the season of Lent that just ended, a season of soul-searching and giving up what is valuable to prepare for rediscovery and celebration. Indulgences can be distractions on our journeys. I prefer to move forward quickly, so I am willing to let go, if it will help.

A beneficial, bona fide spiritual teacher can suggest brilliant spiritual exercises that stretch you in a good way. When my carefully chosen teacher suggested this action, I could feel my energy shift from routine into Possibility. So I agreed.

But as the time nears, I am finding myself in deep resistance. I love this thing. I don’t want to give it up. I don’t want to leave it and especially everyone associated with it, even just for a few months. There are many strong business, career, and financial reasons I should not let it go, either. It makes me sad.

Most stories start with a conflict. This is mine.

The pilgrimage starts Thursday.

The thing is my blog.

Stay tuned.

© 2012 Daria Boissonnas

Yesterday I had the most wonderful time at a writer’s group. I was productive, ate great quiche, met other writers, and enjoyed being with other people who spend all day writing or thinking about writing.

Best of all, after working, we took turns reading some of what we’d written: two memoirs, a poem, a YA novel, and my nonfiction. And then we all commented on each other’s work.

This is where my warm fuzzies went a little cold.

How do you feel about criticism? Even criticism you have asked for?

One particular point they made stung for a while. It made me realize, first, how out of practice I am at taking constructive criticism. They pointed out a distracting detail in the story that starts my last chapter. At first, I couldn’t even understand what they were saying, and flashed back to the early stages of my book’s reading committee — 10 brave people who volunteered to read my book by email, chapter by chapter. When I saw the committee’s edits, I thought I’d sent files around for 10 different books, none of them the one I wrote. What were they talking about?

Criticism Insight #1: It’s all about them.

People read their own stuff into your stuff. When they criticize you, it has everything to do with them. The trick is, if you are writing for a broad audience, you do have to write flexibly enough to handle all their stuff, too. So while it’s good to remember that they are talking about their side of the fence, not yours, it’s also important to listen to what they have to say.

Criticism Insight #2: We tend to notice criticism over praise.

When I got home and reread my notes, their constructive ideas finally made sense. I made the edit. Then I remembered they also gave me great compliments: “I like how the book talks about healing in such a positive light.” “I like to hear your enthusiasm.” “That is a great story!”

I received that.

Criticism Insight #3: Even when you’re brilliant, people can complain about something.

Then I started thinking… If I brought a page of Faulkner, Hemingway, Twain, or Joyce to a writer’s group, read it and asked for critiques, I would get them! One of the readings we heard was so good, all I could find was one word that confused me. But I did find something. In fact, I feel bad that I did not emphasize how brilliant it was.

If you ask for critique, you get critique, even on masterful writing. Art is not set in stone. There are no right answers. Everyone would do it a little differently. Writers are notorious for changing (and changing and changing) their own work. Of course you can critique the masters — people earn PhDs doing so, but those writers are still masters for a reason.

Criticism insight #4: With practice, you can get a lot out of constructive criticism.

You asked for it, you got it. And you asked because you wanted to make your art better. Let go, listen, and have fun with it. See what others have to say. (Nobody said you had to take their criticisms, after all. One particular member of my committee clearly didn’t understand the kind of book I was writing, so most of their comments were inappropriate, and I moved on.) Constructive criticism is a resource for better art, for you, and for healing yourself, too, when you look at what catches you or ignites strong emotions.

All told, I cannot wait to back to the next writer’s brunch! What are you doing to take your art and healing to the next level?

© 2012 Daria Boissonnas

“I come forth and from the plane of mind I rule.”

I’ve just returned from facilitating another Radiant Life Retreat in Ojai, California. We dove deep and broke through to new, rich ground. What moved me deeply was the moment each woman chose to bust through into new territory. Can you imagine what it takes for a seedling to burst through the soil after winter? These women summoned everything they had to get a glimpse of the light.  Now, today, as the sun moves into Aries tonight at 10:15 pm pacific time, we all get a chance to enter new and stimulating territory in our lives.

We are welcoming Spring into our lives — as we do each year. And each year we get to leave a little something behind that no longer serves us so we can travel lighter and brighter. Both the shedding of winter and the embrace of Spring require DARING. We ask ourselves,”Can I live without that?” Or “If I really dare to launch, spring forth, break through, will it take hold? Will I thrive in the new land?”

Aries’ gift is daring. Sometimes it moves forward too impulsively or with too much effort, but when we ride the energy of Aries with grace, we have the capacity to summon our troupes, march forward, break through and be the pioneer of our own unexplored horizon. It’s inspiring to others. It’s inspiring for ourselves.

At its best, Aries seeds bold new ideas that will grow something worthwhile for all humanity. Aries comes forth with the power of the mind and says, “What about this, mankind? Have you considered THIS.” It offers THE NEW — served up (at times) with a little bravado, strut and a wink that says, ‘and I did it all by myself.”

Of course as an Aries grows and matures, he learns that nothing can be done alone and that while his part may be to plunge in with gusto, he’ll need a ton of support to see it through, to tend and grow his initial brilliant idea into a fully formed YES. Libras are great allies for Aries as they know how to choose wisely, work together and take the necessary time.

This month– daring ones–breathe in hope, innocence and chutzpah. If you have been hesitating, PLUNGE. If you have been sad, diligently search for a little spring in your heart and tend it lovingly. If you have an idea and have been brewing for a time, THE TIME IS NOW to ignite it, spark it, fire it up and send it out.

Come forth, my friends, with what you have to offer. Give your gift. You are, after all, the only one to give it.

Big love.

Heidi Rose Robbins grew up learning the zodiac with her alphabet. As a practicing astrologer for over 15 years, Heidi takes a practical, sensitive, and inspiring approach to astrology. It is Heidi’s passion and commitment to speak to the depth of who we are and to help us grow into the next outrageous blossoming of our true selves. Her thriving worldwide practice includes transformative retreats for women twice a year in Ojai, California. GIA is pleased to offer Heidi as a regular guest columnist.

A Poem for Aries

For a New Beginning

In out-of-the-way places of the heart,
Where your thoughts never think to wander,
This beginning has been quietly forming,
Waiting until you were ready to emerge.

For a long time it has watched your desire,
Feeling the emptiness growing inside you,
Noticing how you willed yourself on,
Still unable to leave what you had outgrown.

It watched you play with the seduction of safety
And the gray promises that sameness whispered,
Heard the waves of turmoil rise and relent,
Wondered would you always live like this.

Then the delight, when your courage kindled,
And out you stepped onto new ground,
Your eyes young again with energy and dream,
A path of plenitude opening before you.

Though your destination is not yet clear
You can trust the promise of this opening;
Unfurl yourself into the grace of beginning
That is at one with your life’s desire.

Awaken your spirit to adventure;
Hold nothing back, learn to find ease in risk;
Soon you will be home in a new rhythm,
For your soul senses the world that awaits you.

~ John O’Donohue ~

As a coach or mentor to healers, I often meet folks who are really weirded out by their own intuitive gifts. I get desperate emails from strangers asking what to do because they see double numbers on the clock all the time, or feel other people’s emotions, or know what people are about to say, or know what will happen later (and it does). Some see faces in windows or sense what they think are ghosts or spirits. They dream about things that come true.

Worse, they report feeling  frightened by these psychic happenings. They say their family has started to think they’re weird. They “freak out” their friends. And they have nobody to talk to about it.

If you feel the same way, here is what you can do.

1. Accept It with Gratitude

One, we all are naturally psychic, so the first thing is to accept this gift. Intuition is a perfectly normal part of who you are. Humans are not bags of chemicals and bones walking around on timers. We are energy beings, and only the slowest part of us is made of physical energy. Those other parts of your consciousness are connected to everything around you on nonphysical energy levels: to other people and their energies (including thoughts), to the timeline (forward and back), to residual energies people leave behind, etc.

Your energy body inputs a LOT of information that many humans typically ignore. If you are intuitive, you are simply allowing this information to float into your thinking mind. Wow, congratulations! That’s not easy to do.

Now stop whining and start refining. Yes, you are hearing your intuition more clearly, and that’s great. Feel the gratitude! You are connected with the Universe in a deeper way. Become a loving observer and see what your intuition has to say to you. Once, I heard my jacket say “take me with you” to walk to a restaurant on a warm sunny day. I thought it was silly, but did it because I was practicing listening to my intuition. Inside, the air conditioning made the place freezing, and having the jacket allowed me to enjoy lunch. Thank you, intuition.

2. Find Out: How Can This Information Be of Service?

Ask yourself this: how can you use this occasional (or frequent) additional information in your journey? I once had the (weirdest) strongest feeling I was driving to my death, so I postponed my nighttime winter trip to the light of early morning, and still almost wiped out on black ice at one point. I’m very glad I listened to myself.

Intuition can be used helpfully at home or at your job, in analytical tasks, raising your kids, grocery shopping, volunteering, making choices, advising friends, and in your own business to know which clients to accept and turn away, or how you can best help them.

Yes, sometimes you get random information that you just let go of. But ask yourself these questions to start using your intuition: If this were a gift, what would be its purpose? How can I tell the difference between thoughts and intuitive hits?

3. Connect with Kindred Spirits

Support yourself and your divine gift of intuition. Hang out with people who are also intuitive and believe in the importance of it.

Then look at who exactly is “freaking out” about your psychic abilities. Often, we project our own discomfort onto others, or they pick it up from us and send it back. If you were perfectly accepting about your intuition, as if this kind of thing happened every day and is normal, would they be? Or perhaps you need to shift who you hang out with… Sometimes, as we grow into who we really are, our friends change.

Your most important task on life’s spiritual journey is to know and accept yourself as you are. This is the only way you can fully discover your divine gifts and use them, which in my opinion is the whole point of this crazy game.  By hanging out with people who accept you, you can grow to fully accept yourself.

You are a swan. Stop playing with the ducklings and stretch your own beautiful, intuitive wings.

© 2012 Daria Boissonnas

My yoga teacher, Sofia Diaz, recently described the difference between intensity and pain in our daily practice. She said intensity was like a low hum in the body, stretching us to our limits and asking us to let go into something greater than ourselves. Pain is sharp and sudden and an obvious indication we should stop what we are doing. Many of us mistake intensity for pain. We pull back when we should drop further in.

A heart ache is an opportunity to ride intensity, to drop in, to open still further. Our hearts ache when the radiance and potency of the heart meet something other than unbounded love. Our hearts ache because the intensity of our love is met with something we perceive as other than that love. It is in the moment that the heart’s fierce gift meets obstruction that our greatest thresholds can be crossed.

How many of us give up on love because it’s embarrassing or raw or too revealing? How many of us pull back from an another’s eyes afraid to stay too long or afraid what another will think or how we ourselves will react? How many of us make our love ‘nice’ instead or letting it flow like the wild and powerful river it is?

We welcome the sign of Pisces today at 10:18 pm pacific time. This is the final sign of the zodiac. It is a sign of culmination and synthesis. It wraps up the zodiacal year and asks us to leave behind what we do not wish to carry into the next cycle. In many ways, it is a month of surrender — a surrender into a greater love.

Let us remember that the heart can ache as it witnesses exquisite beauty. It can ache as it registers a remarkable act of love or compassion. It can ache because it wants to learn to love ever more. And the month of Pisces is a month to learn to love bigger, deeper, wider, with less boundary, with less reserve. It’s a month to stand open and willing to be touched. It’s a month to choose intimacy rather than escape. And remember– intimacy can be felt as you order your coffee in the morning or as you thank someone for packing your groceries. It’s a choice about how you connect moment to moment.

This month, take the phrase “the eyes are a window to the soul” as a real and tangible truth — and meet the gaze of many. Look deeper. Love more. Let go of all (at least some?) of the emotional baggage or accounts you’ve been carrying. Put them down. Walk lighter. Uplift those you meet. Redeem what you can. Stand in a rain of grace and invite others in.

Heidi Rose Robbins grew up learning the zodiac with her alphabet. As a practicing astrologer for over 15 years, Heidi takes a practical, sensitive, and inspiring approach to astrology. It is Heidi’s passion and commitment to speak to the depth of who we are and to help us grow into the next outrageous blossoming of our true selves. Her thriving worldwide practice includes transformative retreats for women twice a year in Ojai, California. GIA is pleased to offer Heidi as a regular guest columnist.

***************************

A Poem for Pisces

Love Is Not Fragile, by Samantha Reynolds (bentlily.com)

Who taught you
to be sparing
with your love
as though your heart was a bank
as though love could dry up
nonsense
it is as if the ocean complained
it was too
wet
love is not fragile
it is as common as breath
it is play money
it is a race
to give more
go first
say it with impunity
you think you will ache
with vulnerability
but the strangest thing will happen
you will nearly drown
with peace.

On Friday I attended a writer’s retreat and I am still floating. Because I am a writer. It’s my life purpose, the way I fulfill my divine contract. When I returned, I was quite surprised to find the pain from a recent horrible relationship blowup had all but disappeared. This was a situation where for two weeks I was so preoccupied that I kept forgetting things and taking wrong turns while driving.

It reminded me how powerfully healing it is to do what you were born to do, to step into your divine purpose, even just for a few hours.

Many artists, healers, and creatives spend a great deal of time and money fixing their problems. While this process has merit, we also can get WAY too distracted by it! I have seen great healers obsessed with pathology instead of asking how to move beyond it. I have seen them with their backs to the future, toiling over clearing their past, like Sisyphus rolling the rock to the top of the hill only to have it roll down again, or worse, like Prometheus getting his liver eaten out every morning.

You can spend a lifetime clearing the ants from an anthill by stepping on them as they emerge. Or YOU can help yourself step beyond the anthill.

Your choice.

When you are in your purpose, time disappears, your heart sings, and you create so much nurturing and healing energy that you can help clear a LOT of those problems you thought you had. Imagine what it would be like to make your living expressing your creativity! Let the fantasy roll. Think up your next project.

Healing comes from connections that nurture, and the most powerful kinds include connecting to your divine purpose, your natural gifts, your creativity, and who you really are when you are in that groove.

Over and over, my highly gifted creative clients are unhappy and stuck because they are not devoting enough time to doing their creative thing. (The second most common absence is not getting out in nature enough–another source of powerful healing!) It’s time to give yourself permission to be happy and to heal.

Stop peeling the onion. Put it down and be done with it. Go do your creative thang.

When I write, my cup runneth over. So may it be for you.

© 2012 Daria Boissonnas

When you have a fight or other painful event in a relationship, how do you get back on track?

Many folks would say forgiveness.

I agree — that is a great place to start! However, I’m going to step out on a limb here so you can give your forgiveness practice more power. Forgiveness is not, as many believe, the entire healing process. It is the first step.

But it is an extremely important first step that allows the rest of healing to happen.

This came up for me recently, a little too close to home, when someone I love took dramatic offense and hurt at something I said with all good intentions. They were done with me; I was devastated. Several days later, a friend brilliantly and lovingly asked me, “What else do you need from this situation in order to heal?”

Great question! You can’t go anywhere if you don’t know where you want to go! It’s so easy to get stuck in the emotions of a crisis without looking for the healing solution.

I went within. I… I wanted to be forgiven. Even though I had technically done nothing wrong, they were genuinely hurting. I wanted this person to say, “That’s OK dear, I understand, things like this happen sometimes, I’ll get over it, I forgive you.”

The Power of Forgiveness Is Disconnection

When we are stressed by a negative event, our energy and consciousness freezes. It locks us into the event(s), which is now in the past. Even today, many of us are locked to painful events from earlier in your life. (Some vividly, as if it happened yesterday. Is there anything left from your upbringing that can rile you up upon thinking of it?)

When you maintain connections to the past, you must power those connections with your energy and consciousness. They are distractions and energy drains. You struggle where there could be ease. You feel adrift, confused, or vaguely dissatisfied with life when you tend these old wounds. It is as if you are carrying them around in a massive backpack, bending under their weight.

This I know: the heart of healing is connection. It is connection to that which sustains and nourishes, and disconnection from that which drains and demoralizes.

Forgiveness is a letting go, a healthy disconnection of your energy and consciousness from the painful experience. It is a release of blame and the need to receive anything back. Forgiveness turns you around, from being stuck in the past, attached to what happened, to facing forward again, being present in today, and moving forward into healing.

Sometimes, it’s easy to get over an offense. Hey, things happen and we can move on. But in situations where stress, outrage, shock, hurt, and other emotions have firmly attached us to that original fight or event, forgiveness is golden. It initiates the healing process.

But What If They Won’t Forgive You?

What do you do when you are the transgressor — intentional and repenting, or unintentional — and the person you hurt will not forgive you? What do you when the other person is refusing to reconcile?

You heal. You step beyond this situation, by disconnecting yourself. And the #1 rule about healing is this: you have all the resources you need at all times.

The way energy works, the only way you can experience or perceive someone not forgiving you is if, in some way, you have not fully forgiven yourself. This you must do. As soon and as much as you can.

Surprisingly, and wonderfully, when you forgive yourself — when you disconnect from that event and the pain around it — you make it much easier for the person you hurt to do so, too.

Now THAT is healing. (You healer, you!)

You are not dependent on other things or people for your happiness and spiritual journey. Any thought that says otherwise is Resistance. You can find everything in the world within you, including forgiveness.

I know this spiritual principle, but I’m human and I had gotten caught up in my emotions and forgotten. When I remembered that no forgiveness on the outside means no forgiveness on the inside, I knew it was 100% right. I was devastated and shocked, and had not forgiven myself in the uproar.

Forgive Yourself and Free Yourself to Heal

After a nice meditation of self-forgiveness (“I choose to forgive myself, I choose to let this go, I hand this situation over to God for resolution, I choose to forgive them for not forgiving me,” etc etc), I felt less upset. You may choose to take a physical action of forgiveness, too, like a donation to a relevant charity or sharing your newfound wisdom with someone.

I will repeat this meditation a few times. Connections of energy and consciousness are a bit insidious. Once built, they tend to resonate with similar connections and entwine themselves where they don’t  belong. To truly forgive and fully let go, it helps to repeat your forgiveness exercises and touch on the situation from a variety of angles. You might want to get help from a healer or counselor.

Once you have forgiven yourself, you will be able to freely look at the situation and see what you reacted emotionally to and do some healing (eliminating or rewriting patterns) around those issues. Sometimes this stage is so easy, once we let go/forgive, that we assume forgiveness was all that was necessary. Hallelujah!

When I am done with my self-forgiveness, I will no longer need forgiveness from the other person. I have not abandoned them or the situation, but I will have completely let go of the source of the painful rift between us. It will be water under the bridge. And I will rest in that wonderful place of genuine spiritual independence, where others truly have no power over my happiness.

I pray for them to find this inner release, too.

© 2012 Daria Boissonnas

Have you struggled to forgive yourself? Do you have advice or a different perspective? Please share it in the comments below!

Is there some area of your life where you know you need to make a change, but you just… haven’t… done it yet?

Maybe you’ve been intending to lose that extra 10 pounds, start a newsletter for your business, finish your book, or do that scrapbook.

I bet you give yourself grief for not taking those steps. (You do, don’t you?) You might feel bad, criticize yourself (even in front of others), punish yourself subtly, or worse.

Stop it.

Right now.

Your intentions to change are actually great news, even without the action step! Congratulations, you!

Here is why. When we make change, we generally move through three phases. Wanting to change while not taking action is the second step. And any progress beyond the first phase should be applauded!

The three phases of change look like this:

Beginning Phase: Nothing is wrong with me. I don’t need to change. What are you staring at?

Middle Phase: Uh oh, I noticed something I would like to change in my life. Ugh. Wow. How long has this been here? Why didn’t someone tell me? Oh, you did? Ack, just how pervasive is it? Oh, wow. Let me soak this in and get used to the idea. Let me look at it from all angles. I really want to change this, but I’m not sure what I want instead.

Final Phase: I am ready to do something about this issue. In fact I am doing something! I am really excited to start a program this afternoon. I already have done the first three exercises in the workbook. I looked at a lot of options, and I do believe this is the one for me. I am committed to this change, and have created a reward system for myself. I am doing this for me, and will enjoy the outcome.

Tips for Surviving the Middle Phase of Change

Yes, it’s GREAT to want to change, even if you are not yet ready to do so. Here are five ways to make it easier to survive–and graduate from this phase.

1. Celebrate. If you know you want to make a change, but you aren’t doing anything, you are in the middle phase. It’s OK, in fact, it’s great! Congratulations! You made it out of being stuck! Pat yourself on the back. Celebrate your moving forward! And let go of all that guilt. Just because you had the idea does not mean you are ready to live it… yet.

2. Get Clarity. Discover exactly what you DO want to change. Often, it’s not what you think at first, when you first move into the Middle Phase. This phase is about clarification. You see what you want to fix or eliminate, but what do you want to replace it with?

Sometimes, your original goal (eg. lose 20 pounds) is just a hint at what you really want, and your real goal (love myself enough to find a romantic partner) is something different. Dig deep. Go on retreats, consult with proven intuitives, ponder and dig around until you identify the real dream at the core of your desire to change. Keep moving forward.

3. Look At Your Options. Look around for solutions, but don’t buy anything yet. Especially don’t buy something just because it came along–it might have come along as a form of resistance, not a godsend solution. Take a good look at its merits and costs. Try programs out first–almost everyone gives away a free recording or exercise or something to try. Are you ready to stick to a schedule and do the work?

4. Give Yourself Time. Right now, you are analyzing the situation–and it’s never as cut-and-dried as it seems. You need some time. Allow yourself to have it.

If you get antsy, set a date to decide what you will do about your desire to change. If you don’t have the information or if you are not fully connected to creating a solution, set another date and some things to do or learn before that date.

5. Get Help If You Get Stuck. Yes, it is possible to get stuck in the Middle Phase, stuck in your resistance and fears and doubts, not moving forward when you want to. Get help, bounce your fears off others, and while you are exploring your resistance, be kind to yourself.

We do not punish second graders for not knowing high school math. Second grade is a phase, a stepping stone. Enjoy it. What right do you have to be mean to any of God’s children, yourself included?

When you let go of the guilt, self-criticism, angst, and self-sabotage you are raining down upon yourself, you open up a lot of energy to constructive uses, including healing. You can progress more quickly through the Middle Phase of Change and reach your end goal. Then you can celebrate once again!

© 2012 Daria Boissonnas

Have you ever thought of change this way before? Share your thoughts with us in the comment section below!

It is the worst feeling in the world when you unintentionally cause someone else pain. You wish you could rewind, unsay, and erase, erase, erase.

It is like lightning striking your relationship, too. It hurts both sides.

I’m at a loss to understand or amend what happened between me and a very important person in my life. This morning, my emotions are crippling my ability to think straight, so I’m doing what any writer might do to pull myself out of it. WRITING.

Sadly, the situation keeps making me think of a dramatic story I read in one of those emailed-to-everyone-and-their-brother chain emails. With the email long gone, I’ll retell it here (and please let me know if it comes from a book with copyrights, thx).

Once upon a time, there was a boy and his dad, some arrows and a fence. The boy opens the story by picking on another kid with his friends, as kids do. He badly hurts someone’s feelings without, like most kids, fully understanding what he has done.

So the father asks the boy to shoot a few arrows into the fence, and the kid does. The father explains that the arrows are like the insults he lobbed at the other kid. The arrows damaged the fence, and those comments hurt the kid, too.

Light bulb starts to go on in the son’s head. He wants to run apologize to the other kid right away.

But first the father asks him to pull the arrows out of the fence. They leave gaping holes and splintered wood. “Can you fix the fence?” asks the dad. Horrified, the kid realizes no. Even if you fill the holes with putty, they are still there. The fence is permanently damaged.

Lesson: When you hurt someone, you have created a wound that, even though you smooth it over later, is still there in some form. Permanent damage. Therefore, do everything you can to never hurt someone on purpose. Bite your tongue. Go for a walk. Let the vitriol cool off. Get some healing. Make the better choice, and love your neighbor.

But what about healing?

It will never, ever get better? Omg, what a depressing story! But so is my personal situation, in its recent rawness. It feels irreversible. I feel like our relationship will never be the same because this horrible, awful misunderstanding happened. There will be holes in the fence. We will always remember this.

Wait.

Sure, the dad’s demonstration helped the kid better understand THAT he hurt someone. But is it really true? Do hearts and humans, like wooden fences, never heal?

Is this an outdated, incorrect story? Is this one of the common cultural myths we are learning to heal beyond?

Do you think it is possible, with forgiveness and genuine healing (not repairing), to fill those holes and restore the relationship? Do you think the dad is teaching his kid the wrong principle, which, in reverse is this: when you get hurt you will never be able to repair yourself?

I myself believe that this story is old thinking. After 15 years as a healer, I know it is.

I know that genuinely healing a harmful relationship event (not fixing, not undoing) can transform the relationship by taking it to a new place of understanding, deepened love, and appreciation. It’s not quite “learning the lesson” in the event — it is transcending it to a place where it does not matter any more.

It’s easier to understand this by thinking of little things that are easy to forgive and forget, like a toddler wobbling and spilling your coffee on your lap. Unintentional, easy to let go of (maybe after you change and mop up). So can the BIG rifts in life be, with healing, true healing. To begin, you just have to ask how you can get to that bright and healed place.

Thanks for the reminder. Thanks for helping me pull out of my old attitude.

I am feeling better already.

© 2012 Daria Boissonnas

The holidays are in full swing and the thrill of the brand new year is upon us. Here are a few tasks for this week or next to get you in a great position for next year, clear and ready for your best year yet.

Out with the Old

1. File Your Finished Work. Congratulations! Yahoo, you published author, you! Now put those files where you can find them, right now, before they clutter up 2012. Do this in your office with paper files, and on your computer. Create a “2011 Sold Work” folder, and drop your project folders in there. This folder can be filed within your active writing folder, so you will always know where to find previous work.

2. Cull Your Unfinished Writing. Which ones will you let go of? Which projects have you already moved way beyond, with no reason to finish? I love this process! Invariably I find a poem I started or an article idea that I threw into a file and forgot about. You can hang onto the viable ones, and set them up to be finished next year. (See part II of this article for “In with the New”.)

As a writer, I rarely delete writing (you never know), so tuck away the projects you will not pursue  in either your deep-six folder or your future projects (but not right now) folder.

Then mentally and emotionally, let go of them. Create a ceremony if you like. For example, you may want to print an article you are killing, or the outline for a book that’s going bye-bey (double sided, 4 sheets to a page) and symbolically burn them in your fireplace, returning their energy to the Pool of All Possibility.

3. Tidy Up Your Accounting. Make sure you were paid for these projects, resending overdue invoices and giving their recipients a call. Put your invoices and receipts in order for accounting. When my business was small with few expenses, I taped receipts onto paper in a three-ring binder with 12 monthly tabs. Yellow paper held was cash receipts. The bank statements held bank receipts. Blue paper was for travel trips, etc.

Ready for 2012

When you are done with these steps, all your desktops should look beautifully clean. Enjoy getting ready for 2012. Here’s to you and a fabulous one-two. *toast*  ;)

Do you have any other year-end steps you take to prepare for a new year? Share them with us in the comments, below!

With energies shifting, more and more of us are becoming aware of our intuitive abilities. How about you? Do you know what form your intuition takes? Do you know how to recognize it and what to do with it?

Intuition comes in many guises. Intuition is simply a way of receiving information via the parts of your consciousness that are other than your physical body or rational, thinking mind.

Intuition is perfectly normal. We are all born with a vast spectrum of consciousness, a rainbow of flavors, which can receive information. So there are many ways you receive information, in addition to your five standard senses and your thinking mind.

Your job, my dear spiritual traveler, is to learn to be unafraid of your intuition, as you would be perfectly OK with sight or sound or other inputs you are used to. Your spiritual responsibility is to learn to recognize and decipher this additional information, and then figure out how to live a good life with it, and even use it to help people.

Intuition is a great source of objective information and guidance. When information comes in through these channels, it does not flow through the fallible human mind. It stays in its purest form, from God’s mouth to your ear, you might say. As we process or think about this intuitive info, or rationalize it, or interpret it, however, we begin to dirty the waters. A skillful intuitive does as little interpretation as possible.

To access your inner wisdom, you must first familiarize yourself with the way the extra info comes in. Learn to recognize it, and especially discern it from random thoughts — because your thinking mind can be mistaken. (Actually, the mind is quite famous for being mistaken, and for making up false stories of all kinds.)

I’m sorry to say that your intuition did not come with an owners manual. In this article series, we will take a good look at the several different kinds of intuition.

Types of Intuition – 1. Claircognizance

Most flavors of intuition begin with the prefix “clair-”, which comes to us from French, meaning “clear”. You can slap “clair” on the front end of any kind of word describing how you receive your information.  Er, that is, any word describing the way it feels like you receive your information. Er, that is, describing the most similar “normal” way of receiving information.

Oh, let’s just jump in, shall we?

1. Claircognizance — clear knowing. You just know. You know who is calling, and it turns out to be them. You know your lover will be home late, and they are. You know something bad will happen this morning, and you’re in a fender-bender. It is not belief or thoughts. You. Know.

Claircognizance may be the most common form of intuition today. I suspect it is more widespread than any survey can uncover… because you can have this form of intuition and not even know it! Ask yourself this: how many times a week do you experience or refer to what you may call: a funny feeling, impression, gut feeling, hunch, inkling, forboding, instinct, premonition or even a plain old thought! If you are not good at recognizing your intuition, claircognizance will totally feel like thoughts.

One close friend who is very claircognizant honestly believed he was a good guesser. He could find things in 20 minutes that other experts could not find for days, but he thought nothing of it. He didn’t know that everyone is born with perfectly normal levels of consciousness, beyond the thinking mind, that can gather information.

Now you know this.

For a few years, he didn’t believe me about being claircognizant. Now, he admits it. Better yet, he’s learning to differentiate this cleaner information from his chaotic monkey-minded thoughts.

When we don’t recognize the value of our intuition, we don’t benefit from it as well as we can. If he had admitted how valuable, incisive, and consistently accurate his gift was, he could have made a very highly paid living focusing on finding things that other experts could not. A great living based on one of his Divine Gifts!

Are You Claircognizant?

So think about it over the next few days… when you get a hunch, what does it feel like? Does it come with words or pictures? A feeling of calmness and peace? Or is it a random (but recognizable) blip of information in a river of thoughts?

Another clue to our intuition often comes from childhood. We tend to train ourselves to ignore our intuitive gifts as we grow up, but we can often see them in hindsight. Can you think of hunches you had regularly as a kid? Did you have a good people sense? Feel like animals talked to you or you to them? Good sense for how the grownups were feeling? Imaginary friends? Talked to fairies or your dead grandmother?

When I was little, I always had a “feeling” about trips. I knew exactly how I would feel emotionally during them, and I was 100% correct. In my early 20s, starting a Sunday night trip home, I felt like I was driving to my death. Spooked, I crashed with a friend and drove home at 4am. Even in the morning light, I almost wiped out on black ice in the mountains. We will never know for sure what would have happened, but I’m glad I listened to my gut and drove the next day.

Another gift I’ve had for as long as I can remember is being able to either predict coin tosses or know when the answer was blocked and I had no idea. 100% right when extensively tested by a disbelieving boyfriend once upon a time, LOL.

See if you can now begin to separate out your claircognizance from your other sensory inputs and mind activity. If you get a hunch about something, see if you can verify the extra information. Keep a notebook handy and see how you do. You may surprise yourself. You may completely validate what you’ve suspected for years, more like!

You are intuitive. How can you use your gifts to live a blissful life that benefits others?

Next time:  clairaudience.

Still Confused?

If you are looking for support in walking your spiritual path, consider a membership in GIA, where you learn to manage and confidently use your intuition and Divine Gifts, ultimately to make a great living fulfilling your Divine Purpose. Check out our benefits here: GIAwaken.com/benefits.

If you have another form of intuition, please comment below.