For 12+ years I have been advising against using fluorescent bulbs and have removed them from our own two homes.  (Why are they always in the kitchen?)  I have seen and experienced the significant and long-term detrimental effects they have on the human subtle energy system.  They are stressful and can degrade your energy.  (The new bulbs also have mercury in them, no thanks!)

Here is some recent anecdotal evidence with more conventional measurement.  What do you think?

Are you as wealthy as you like?  Are you finding true fulfillment and meaning while  exchanging your greatest value with the world and earning as much wealth, wellness & wisdom as you want?

Then perhaps you too can benefit from healing your finances.

For over 12 years as a healer I’ve helped people to let go of the emotional, mental and spiritual issues surrounding money.  Wow, do we have some doozies!  Too many of us think it’s shameful to make lots of money, or pious to suffer with less.  I often hear the famous Bible passage misquoted — for the record, money is not the root of all evil.  The LOVE of money is.  The love of your fancy car and big house.  Loving your stuff to feel better compared to other people.

Here are just three ways that make creating healthy finances (and even getting rich) spiritually OK:

1. Be in Fair Exchange
You can make lots of money by offering your skills and natural gifts to the world in fair exchange. My definition of fair exchange involves both sides receiving more than they give.  How does that work?  Your client pays for a service and receives much more value than they paid.  You work and receive generous compensation for your time and expertise.

For instance, I just helped a client sell their house for $200+K more than the last offer by clearing some mental blockages against receiving so much money.  My fee for this service is roughly $200.  They made an extra $200,000, so they got their value.  It took me about 30 minutes of work, and I have to say, I’m happy to receive $200 for 30 minutes of work!

2. Be Authentically You

What is authenticity?  It means you are sharing your true gifts with the world, not offering what you think everyone wants to experience of you.  It means letting your unique light shine and being transparent about your quirks.  In business or life, authenticity in has the same seven attributes as a healing action from a Creative Healer: 

1. Based on compassion.  You know how people feel and you want to help.

2. In loving detachment.  You aren’t invested in the outcome.

3. No expectation or need of return.  Not expecting a certain reaction from anyone.

4. You connect to the highest potential in the situation.  You make the effort and use your expertise to hold only the greatest thoughts and intentions. 

5. Enables and empowers positive change.   It’s truth-based and thinks bigger than the “problem” addressed.  (It comes from the healer’s mindset!  This we teach!)

6. Not in ego.  No need to be soothed, admired, exalted, put on a pedestal.

7. Committed to help others.  Walk your talk.  Roll up your sleeves and put your muscle where your mouth is.

3. Give Aways
I charge a lot for my services due to the effectiveness and quick results of my work, my years of experience, and my unique viewpoints on healing and the mindset of the master healer.  But I always make room each month for a few giveaways, where I meet for free for 15 minutes with people who believe they can’t afford my services.  I have dreams and plans to expand my philanthropy as the Global Institute for Awakening grows, too. 

Please give away your money in a healthy way, however.  Don’t resent the giveaway.  Don’t give with strings — let go of how you think it should be spent.  And don’t give money away because you feel guilty about having it.  Your value in this world is absolutely priceless.  You deserve an abundance of everything there is, including money.

More Help with Money, Life Mastery & Healing Mastery

For more help and concrete money-healing exercises this month, join as a member — listen to our training call audio and fill out the wisdomkeeper workbook as you strengthen your money muscle in this month’s spiritual practice focus for the Life Mastery ~ Healing Mastery™ program.

Join here: http://GIAwaken.com/benefits

“Think how gratification blocks change.”  This phrase came up in a healing session today and gave me some unusual insights into how we stay stuck.  At first, I thought, “No, that can’t be right.  Getting what you want keeps you reaching towards the next thing.  Gratification of goals keeps you moving forward.”

Not always.  Not for this client.  Test it out yourself — think of those little habits you have that help you stay small and stuck.  Avoidance behaviors, other tasks that seem more important, something that must be done first, helping other people with their bigger and more important problems, all those wonderful things to eat and do and watch and play — all that, instead of reaching for your dreams.

Now ponder in what way gratifying these desires, these attempted sidetracks into pleasure, actually blocks change and holds you back.  Aha, the original statement starts to make sense.  How does gratifying these little escapes prevent you from moving forward?  That’s what the client had to see for herself.  She thought they were helping, making her feel better by indulging her a little to “fortify” her for the effort to move forward.  Nope, it was holding her back.  Today she saw that, let it go, and healed an erroneous, limiting belief or thought pattern.

When you reinforce the “yummy” reaction in those escapes, you reinforce staying where you are.  You create a loop of attachment to how things are now.  You reinforce the habit of gratification. 

Since life moves forward, creating an attachment to this point in time and this way of being will eventually hurt.  Since she’d been doing this since she was about age 7, she already was hurting!  She wondered why she sometimes avoided doing the work she longed most to do.

Can Gratitude Keep You Small?

Then came the second part:  ”Think how grateful allows me to feel safe.”  (As in, falsely safe — safe from stretching into her Potential.)

What?  Gratitude, a problem? 

Yes.  Gratitude is another powerful way to create attachment.  When you use gratitude to inapprorpriately reinforce current patterns (“oh, I have so much, I am so lucky right now the way I am”), it may become easier to avoid moving forward and changing this wonderful situation.  In fact for this client, it allowed her to feel safe – meaning she didn’t HAVE to change. 

To change in this situation, you have to do a little extra work to convince or move beyond the parts of your thinking mind that are grateful in that attached way.  Most people with this thought pattern stay with the gratitude, unfortunately, especially since it’s so popular nowadays to use gratitude.  Then they don’t move forward, and they wonder why not.

Gratitude and other spiritual skills of attachment and detachment are a double-edged sword!  You can use a hammer to build a house — or to commit a crime — it all depends on how you use it.  It’s a tool.  Change comes from the consciousness behind it.

Gratitude and spiritual skills of attachment can help you connect to bigger, more expansive, more healing ways of thinking and being…. or they can help you attach to inappropriately small-minded, outdate, or painful ways of being.  The solution is to learn how to use these spiritual skills appropriately. 

The skill itself is not a panacea.  You must learn to wield it.

Recommended Training

Teaching you to master spiritual skills and move yourself and the world towards success, peace, love, service, and joy is our primary goal in the Life Mastery ~ Healing Mastery™ program that comes with a year’s membership in the Global Institute for Awakening.  Each month, you can focus with our group on building a positive habit out of one spiritual skill.  With our insightful training & guidance, in just 10 minutes a day you can establish the habit of getting out of the way of your own authenticity, success and happiness.

By Donna Kozik, guest writer

Most of us were taught we should be happy and thankful for what we have.  I agree — gratitude is a key element of happiness.  Most of us were told as children that there are many others who are far less fortunate than us.  I agree — there are many whose lives are a daily struggle just to survive and meet the most basic of needs.

I believe our parents had good intentions by teaching us those things.  They wanted us to grow up to be happy, grateful and unselfish people.  They didn’t want us to be greedy and unappreciative.  But many of them — through no fault of their own — didn’t balance those lessons out with the permission or encouragement we needed to grow up and DREAM BIG.

Consequently, many of us are afraid to be successful, to be rich, or to even think BIG — because it’s in contradiction to much of our core conditioning.  The majority of us don’t even realize we’ve been programmed to expect less and demand less from life.  And often those of us who do give ourselves permission to dream just stay comfortable with the dream and never really take the steps to turn those dreams into reality.

Now there’s no point and no time to waste being angry with your parents.  They did the best they could with what they knew and with whatever conditioning they endured. I only bring this to your attention in case you’re one of the people who have been lulled into settling for less or into thinking small. By being aware of it, you can begin to change it.

Life, by its very nature, is designed to grow, to evolve and to become more than it started out as.  You do not need to worry that having your fair share will prevent another from having theirs.  There is more than enough success, money, food and anything else you can imagine to go around.

Is it nice to share?  You bet.  Is it good energy to spread your good fortune around?  You bet.  But let’s be clear about one thing  — the universe loves it when you dream big and think big.  One tree’s largeness does not prevent any other trees from growing big.

Recently I took part in #WriteChat (Sunday afternoons on Twitter).  I got into a conversation with an aspiring author who is sending out his manuscript to not one, not five but to a hundred agents at once.  Good for him!

First there’s the practical.  Don’t you agree he’s bound to get a better agent pursuing 100 versus five?  (When’s the last time you “went big” in pursuing more pages written?  More prospective clients contacted?)  Then, there’s the energy he’s bringing his book project.  No sitting home alone and “woe is me” going on there — he’s taking action and making relationships.  Something good — probably even better than he initially imagined — is bound to happen!

So why not challenge yourself to begin expanding your horizons right this very minute?  Imagine more, not less.  Think bigger, not smaller.  And open yourself up to abundance and opportunities.

About Donna Kozik
Donna Kozik is a business owner, 2-time award-winning author, and a member of the Friar Faithful.  You can find out more about her signature “Write a Book in a Weekend” virtual online events and get a free “12 Strategies to Becoming a Published Author” report at http://WriteWithDonna.com.  This article © 2010 Donna Kozik & Associates, Inc.

Follow Donna on Twitter:  http://twitter.com/DonnaKozik
On facebook:  http://www.facebook.com/donnakozik

The planet Mercury is zinging backwards through the sky right now.  I’ve noticed more and more people are aware of Mercury’s retrograde periods and are warning not to engage in contracts or agreements in this time.  It’s becoming cool to fuss about it.  But what does retrograde really mean?  Is it a serious threat?

Most of the time, as the planets circle the sun, they go “forward” in the sky.  But because Earth, too, is circling the sun, we get weird times when they appear to move backwards.  This is like when you are in a bus or a car and the car next to you moves forward but you see and feel like you’re going backwards.  From our angle, Mercury just looks like it’s traveling backwards right now.

1. Check its zodiacal sign for context

First of all, give this Mercury retrograde some context.  Whatever zodiac sign the planet is in gives its effects a definite flavor.  Mercury itself is the messenger god and the trickster healer.  His energies resonate with the exchange of information.  They govern communications, education, computers, internet, travel, etc.  That could be anything.

This retro, Mercury is in Virgo, which is about discrimination, analysis, and correcting.  It’s also about the energies of purity, humility, practicality and organization.  Virgo is the nurturing mother who knows best, healers, and all that is holy, pious or religious.  These are some areas where Mercury may turn over the dirt in your life.  If you want to track retrogrades, always check the sign they’re in.  In fact, you may also want to check what else is going on in the sky and in your charts, which may be much more significant.

2. Look for the inauthentic to surface

Imagine running your hand down a fabric like velvet with a “nap” or a directional fiber.  A cat or dog’s coat is similar.  It’s smooth one way, but when you go the opposite way, the fibers stand up and poke into your hand.  You can see all the way to the animal’s skin or the woven base of the fabric.  Some fabrics and furs will actually push your hand in another direction. 

A planet’s retrograde is like running your hand the wrong way over its orbit and energy.  Retrograde lifts up what is usually smooth and surfacey and has a look underneath.  It digs up and releases, often seemingly against our conscious will, what shouldn’t be there.  The inauthentic and out-of-place works itself out.

This is not a BAD thing!  Back in the day, we used to reverse the flow of vacuum cleaners to blow air out the hose to unclog it.  Retrogrades “unclog” the planet’s energy.  They are like a natural periodic cleanse that keeps Mercury energy running smoothly for you.  How convenient! 

Because so much crud will be surfacing, you will likely have to deal with it to help clear it away.  This inauthentic junk is also why some recommended you avoid nailing down permanent agreements or contracts during this time — some of the debris may be included. 

For me this time, writing my book this week I realized I’d drawn an old conclusion in one section, a conclusion I hadn’t updated with new insights yet.  I had to change the whole mnemonic of that chapter!  This is the kind of wonderful thing that comes from a retrograde period.  I was delighted!

3. Stay in integrity and hold a steady course

There’s never anything to “worry” about in the spiritual journey.  It’s all good in the end, and you always have all you need in every moment.  That means you have all you need to deal with Mercury retros, too.  If you are living and working in true authenticity and integrity, you’re good.  Embrace the period of change, and use it to naturally cleanse out what’s not working for you.  Maintain your balance with flexibility, and you’ll be fine through any planet’s retrograde period. 

(Oh, did I forget to mention they ALL do this?  And see, you’ve been OK all along!)

You can do it.  Take this opportunity to heal your worries about Mercury retrograde.  Embrace the change that life naturally and periodically moves us through. 

Dates This Time
Mercury retrograde begins: August 20, 2010, 3:59 pm EDT in Virgo
Ends: September 12, 2010, 7:09 pm EDT in Virgo
Note:  On either side of retrograde is a period where the planet is stopped or moving very, very slowly, which also affects the energy of that planet.  So retrogrades are now longer than you thought they were, who knew?  Best to do your best all the time and stop worrying!

Karen was born a healer and is so full of wisdom specificaly about healing and healers, we could talk all day!  Do join us — it’s free, all you have to do is register, and you can listen to past audios any time.

“Raise your vibration” by listening to these gurus who have mastered living a meaningful life to the fullest and giving back.   Click here to register for the free series.

Healer #3  |  20 August 2010
11am Pacific / noon Mountain / 1pm Central / 2pm Eastern US time

Karen Lamark Wilson  ~  International Academy of Intuitive Entrepreneurs (IAIE)
Professional Healer, Author, Visionary, Spiritual Mentor

Internationally known spiritual teacher and energy healer Karen Lamark Wilson was born a healer with a mission.  Since her childhood instruction by a native healer and her early adoption of Eastern medicine in the early 70s, Karen has been on the cutting edge of expanding humanity’s capacity to live fully.  She founded IAIE to help its members cultivate direct inner knowing and expanded consciousness in their businesses and lives.  Karen has two grown children and lives in Paradise Valley, Arizona, with her wonder dog, Koko, a furry white American Eskimo.

When you want to succeed at anything, the best advice is to find someone who has already succeeded, and do what they did!  Transform yourself by resonating with each of our guests for 30+ minutes. We are pleased to announce our first two Healers are Bee Jimpson and Sheri McConnell!

Live your life from a mindset of possibility like our guests are doing.  Let this new series further awaken your powerful innate ability to solve problems, think outside the box, operate authentically from the heart, and create BIG positive change on the planet!  

Sign up now to access all the live calls and the recorded audios:   http://GIAwaken.com/100Healers

Yes, this series means we are officially launching our membership Sept 1!  Your chance to save $50 ends August 31 and will not be repeated.  Make 2010 the year you expand your mindset and lifestyle to live with meaning, possibility, and joy.  Check out our life-changing benefits here: http://GIAwaken.com/benefits, and sign up ASAP!

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Healer #1  |  13 August 2010, 8am Pacific / 9am Mountain / 10am Central / 11am Eastern US time

Bee Jimpson  ~  The Next Sense
Professional Healer, Intuitive, and Intuition Teacher

Bee was raised in a culturally mixed home (Egyptian, Spanish, European and Quechua) in Argentina where traditional or folk healing was commonly used.  It wasn’t until much later in her life, however, that she stepped into her own power as a healer.  Today Bee travels the world to mentor other healers (including me) and teach people how to accept and truly use their intuition.  Join us to hear about her powerful journey!

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Healer #2  |  13 August 2010, 11am Pacific / noon Mountain / 1pm Central / 2pm Eastern US time

Sheri McConnell  ~  Smart Women’s Institute for Entrepreneurial Learning
Author, Millionaire Business Coach, and Mom of 4

Sheri helps women start and grow membership-based businesses to attain financial independence, so they can make powerful life decisions from a place of abundance and balance, not from a place of poverty, fear, doubt, and “what if”.  As you might guess, she has recovered from being in that position too many times herself.  Today, she is the author of  Smart Women Know Their “Why” – A Guide for Discovering Your Life Purpose While Owning a Business So You Can Create Positive Change in the World (and Make Big Profits!)  Join us to hear Sheri’s powerful story of healing and how she helps others today.  (P.S. She is my business coach this year for the Institute.)

Speaker:  Daria Boissonnas, Founder, Global Institute for Awakening

“Be not afraid of greatness: some are born great, some achieve greatness and some have greatness thrust upon them.”
–William Shakespeare, 12th Night, Act II, Scene V

I would rewrite that quote to say “Awakening” instead of greatness. Do you have intuitive, empathic, psychic or healing abilities that were almost thrust upon you? Do your abilities seem strange or make you uncomfortable? Do you feel different from others because of how you experience life? What can you do?

First of all, you’re not weird, you’re Awakening. But some of us are definitely thrown on our path by accident, illness, life crisis, or the development of psychic or healing abilities. Join us for this call and hear what Daria has to say after 12 years of working with folks like you (and being one herself).

Download the audio file (mp3)

We have many more calls coming up through the end of the year, including a surprise series starting tomorrow! Check our calendar page now:  http://GIAwaken.com/calendar

When I was little, my parents used to put my artwork up on the fridge. 

Today, I’m putting up a movie my high school age son made me, using one of my own rhymes, on my public blog. (Who knew it was just a big refrigerator? Spiritual sustenance, anyone? A pick-me-up snack for the soul?)

Please join our members and fans this month in practicing the mental, physical, and spiritual skills of letting go of what no longer serves you.  Only when you fully let go of yesterday can you be fully present here and now to all the abundance, joy, and opportunities right under your nose.  Letting go creates flow.

I hope this short clip puts a smile on your face, too.

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(Ack! Is that cute or what? I love it.)

If you can’t see the show, click here:  Let Go Show

Mastering life — and therefore mastering healing and problem-solving so you can live a great life you love — is all about understanding attachment and detachment.  It’s about letting GO appropriately.

Imagine you are a complex electronic device with a zillion cords coming out of you.  Your entire spiritual journey is about deciding what to plug into, and what to detach from.  And when. 

That’s the bottom line.  This activity actually defines who you are and what you can do in the world.  It definitely affects how yummy it is to live your daily life!

Your life’s journey is about deciding what is appropriate to be connected to, and what is harmful to connect to.  For example:

• What beliefs you should plug into
• What moment in time you enjoy attaching to (“now” is highly recommended by sages)
• What friends and colleagues to surround yourself with
• What issues you should let go of, repair or strengthen.

To do that well, it helps to learn how to easily sense or judge what connections will move you forward on your spiritual journey, and which ones are holding you back and even causing you pain. 

This month, our members are focusing on exercising that exact spiritual “muscle”!

Our member training right now is to focus your spiritual or self-improvement practice on recognizing harmful attachments and letting them GO.

Since we humans easily numb out to our pain, letting go is a crucial skill to have in your spiritual toolbox! 

The more easily, perceptively and sooner you can let go, the easier your life’s journey — not to mention you can save great emotional and financial expense as well as time along your way!

What Is Attachment?

Attachment is a natural energetic process all living beings do in order to exchange information.  In 12 years of energy healing, I’ve seen that conscious, living beings create energy bridges to communicate.  (And let me tell you, a heck of a lot more information goes across energetic connections than verbal or visual ones!) 

After you connect to another form of consciousness, whether a person or idea or system, then repeated communication builds a stronger connection.  Over time, energetic connections are built on many levels.  They become so complex they can be difficult to break.

Yet, after the communication is over, for instance after a relationship ends, these connections naturally fade.  They may be painful at first.  We have to adjust to them not being there.  We must change our habits of thinking and being to create new energy bridges that function similarly.  It’s hard.  But this fading process is natural and one of the reasons for the adage, “Time heals all wounds.”  

Sometimes, however, for reasons we may or may not be aware of, we hang on to a connection or energy bridge inappropriately.  The time has passed, the other person has moved on, or the belief is no longer appropriate. 

When we hang on to something beyond its expiration date… it starts to stink.  (Hadja noticed?)

In order to artificially halt the natural fading of this energy connection, you have to feed it energy, sometimes LOTS of daily energy.  You might use negative emotions to charge up that connection and keep it alive!  Ouch.

When we hold an attachment inappropriately, several things can happen, none of which are health- and happiness-inducing in my opinion.  Practicing letting go can help you eliminate this sort of thing from your life:

• Negative drama
• Fatigue
• Environmental clutter
• Physical clutter (energy of illness, toxins, parasites, cysts…)
• Emotional clutter
• Mental clutter
• Spiritual clutter (do you know exactly what you are here to do?)
• Repeating lessons and not learning
• Expense of time and money as you run in circles
• Not fully supporting yourself
• Poor finances

Let’s Let Go, Together

That’s why an important part of spiritual traditions involve exercises or practices to break the older, outdated attachments while creating and strengthening positive, life-enhancing attachments.

Please join us this month — join us as a member and save $50 through the end of August — and work on mastering this valuable skill.  Practicing letting go will contribute to the amount of grace and ease you can experience via your health, happiness and daily life.  Our program makes it easy, and we don’t tell you what to believe.  Let’s practice cutting those old attachments together!  You can do this.

“How poor are they that have not patience! 
What wound did ever heal but by degrees?” 
— William Shakespeare

Do you seek success?  Do you have a dream? The good old dictionary says success is the favorable end of an effort.  It means reaching a goal or finishing a task.  In a nutshell,
done = success.

Done won’t get you your dreams, however.  Sure, completion is  important, but if all I did was finish the tasks my busy life demands — paying bills, going to work, doing the laundry (woohoo!) — would I be a success?  Would I have truly succeeded at life?  What is missing in this equation?

I personally learned the answer the hard way.  In my early 30s, I followed the dotted lines and achieved everything a girl could possibly want.  My life was picture-perfect.  I was dripping in success.

But I felt miserable and stuck.  I was missing something BIG.  I was missing True Success.

Success Comes in Two Flavors: Temporary and True

Most of the time I say “success,” I mean an idea more like the dictionary’s second definition:  the attainment of wealth, achievement, position, bliss, fame, honor, etc.  This is more than finishing a task.  It goes beyond reacting to your life, beyond just getting by, and beyond coloring inside the lines.  It’s not the kind of success you have to repeat to keep moving forward, like doing laundry is.

This kind of success is an achievement!  It takes you to a new level.  Not only do you finish something, but it is bigger and different than what you had before.  Maybe you want to find the love of your life, live your ideal lifestyle in style, heal yourself of pain and bad habits, or achieve a big goal like making a million bucks before you turn 40.  True success does this in a meaningful, permanent way.  What does your heart desire?

To qualify as True Success, an achievement must have three traits:

1. It came from inside YOU. It began as a decision, a dream, or a choice.  You didn’t follow or just “go along” with someone else’s example or dictates.  You chose to reach for this, and you chose to take steps to implement it.

2. It’s a new direction. True success takes you off the path, out of your well-worn habits of thinking and doing.  You change the direction you would have gone, had you kept doing what you were doing.  Your trajectory changes.  Wonderful things happen you’d never expected or asked for.

3. It sticks. Something shifts and you can’t go back.  You don’t lose it again.  Spiritually, you have “realized” it, really gotten it on all levels in a way that changes who you are.  From there, you can easily help others achieve something similar.  That’s true success.

That’s what we teach you to achieve, right here at the Global Institute for Awakening!

Because true success happens naturally when you advance in your life’s journey of Awakening. True success and Awakening describe the same upshift, the same expansion.  Actively walking your life’s journey means leaving the old ways behind and rising in an upward spiral to greater and greater Potential and possibility — for you, your life, and your loved ones around you.

When you don’t reach for true success, you have temporary success. Whatever you just did, you will likely need to do again, or something similar, over and over.  You will stay in about the same place or advance slowly.  If you do achieve  what looks like True Success, it will slip through your fingers again. 

If it doesn’t stick, it wasn’t True Success.  You didn’t shift.

What to Do to Truly Succeed

True success flows naturally from our true nature, which grows, expands positively, loves, serves, and evolves into higher and higher Potential ways of being.  When you learn how that process — the spiritual journey — works, you can reach for the True Success and lift all of us up into a better way of being.  I believe the world could use a whole lot of this right now!

Whatever your goals, this process requires the 7 tasks of Awakening.  (For details and a list of suggestions for each step, get a free copy of our ebook and visual map of the steps in the header bar above.)  They are:

1.  Know Yourself

2.  Build Your Base

3.  Explore Possibility in the World

4.  Be the Change (Practice/Train)

5. Move Beyond Doubt

6. Let Go of Resistance

7. Step It Up (make the next Decision)

So ask yourself:  Do I want to get by?  Do I want to succeed in doing what I did yesterday… again?

Or do I want to dream and move forward into new exciting territory that has a higher Potential for wealth, wellness and wisdom for me, and through me for others?

THAT is the core result of Awakening.  You can’t uplevel without Awakening.  Awakening creates true success.

Are you ready to learn how to shift into true success, over and over, in ANY situation in your life? Make sure you’re working in all 7 tasks, ablove.  If you want help, join as a member to declare your goal to the Universe that you are creating True Success in your life over the next 12 months!

We know you have it in you.  You have a valuable gift for the world to share.  Your nature is to grow and expand and help others.  You can do this!!

Many, many blessings to you on your personal journey of Awakening and true success!

You are a spiritual being of consciousness. Your Potential to help, uplift, and heal is unlimited. 

On the other hand, you live in a world with limits, move around in a physical body with limits, and run your life with a limited, logical (emotional) mind.  Your everyday life is very “loud” with deadlines, sensory inputs, and probems. 

Your spiritual being is very “quiet” and subtle.  It can be challenging to connect with, espeically at first.  Your spiritual self can be easy to overlook or forget about in the daily bustle.

But some part of you knows there is more to life than you can see, buy, or measure.  You can likely feel this part of you calling to you.  It becomes particularly noticeable at times we humans tend to upshift our lives:  during life crises, in your teens, around age 28-30, in our forties, and our mid- to late 50s, for instance.  Here’s why:

Every single person on this planet has something important and unique to contribute to the world in a positive way.  Whether you call that your life purpose, your spiritual mission or your blessing, you have a natural ability in some way to bring a better way of being, thinking, and loving into this world.  You have a talent for helping people love to live their lives more.  We each do this in very different ways,  but we each have something crucial to contribute. 

When you don’t get your gift or blessing out into the world, you feel a kind of ache.  Some call this your spiritual calling.  Whatever you call it, if you ignore it, it gets louder and louder until you respond.  It may eventually cause extreme discomfort or crisis in your life until it triggers a response.  Over the years, clients have described their experiences as:

• Vague dissatisfaction or boredom, even though your life seems pretty darn good on the surface…
• Feeling cut off, lonely in a crowd, like nobody understands you…
• A constant search:  new jobs, new classes, new schools, new locations, new partners…
• An aching emptiness or longing, like a part of you or a close relative has died…
• Continuous pushback from the world, nothing working out well, feeling like a mess-up…
• Painful experiences like an accident, illness, death of a loved one, divorce, job loss, finanical failure, etc. that snap you out of your fog.
• A feeling you should be doing… something… but you don’t know what.

This is your greater potential (some say your higher self) aching to be let out of its box, to do good in the world and help you live a meaningful life that makes a big difference.  This is built into you.  It is your nature and your birthright.  And part of you always is aware of your gifts. 

It’s Time to Walk Forward into Your Potential

Many us can hear our purpose and Potential calling to us, but too few know what to do about it.  The soution is: walk your spiritual path.  Get a move on.  Allow your Awakening to unfold.  Taking the leap will help you find that missing part of yourself.  You will love the results.

Don’t leap blindly, of course.  Leap wisely by learning about the journey and how to read the signs along the way.   Do this, and you will see doors open for you.  You can find a way out of your struggles and into the light again.

You might be able to muddle through this life puzzle, this natural process called Awakening.  Or like I was, you may be really stuck and need some help.  Even if you’re a muddler, some guidance and training can make the journey much clearer, easier, and faster.  You can get that spiritual perspective from a mentor you trust, one who believes in you and who can support you advancing along your own path.  Consider joining Global Institute for Awakening with an annual membership full of guidance and inspiration.

Because it took me so long to find this information and get going on my own path, I offer you everything I’ve learned so far, plus stellar supporting advice from experts in their fields, here at the Global Institute for Awakening.  Take a copy of our free Spiritual Journey Wake-Up Kit with our blessings and no further obligation, in the header bar above.  Check our articles in the Category section to the right.

Without your gift, the world just isn’t whole.  Your spiritual being knows this and you can feel it.  I know this, and I’d love to use my gifts to support you here.

Check back tomorrow for the final fact #5 about your Awakening:  Success comes only from Awakening.

What would you do if the solution you were looking for — no, an even better one you hadn’t thought of yet — was waiting for you on the other side of an unlocked door?  You’d open the door and walk through, right?

Of course.

Like this door, the process of Awakening brings new solutions into your life.  It allows you to see beyond your current troubles and zap those limitations.  It gives you the steps and the tools you need to expand into your greatest Potential to live a meaningful life and make a difference. 

All you have to do is step forward and open that door.

It can be a bit tricky, however.  Sometimes that unlocked door looks like a difficult task, one you might even label “impossible” at the time.  You may need to let go of something or change your tactics.  It can be stressful, and you may tend to avoid taking action.  But simply by understanding a few facts about your spiritual journey, you can recognize new doors to magical new solutions in your life, and step through them.

Once you understand that it is much easier to allow Awakening and this type of change than it is to resist it, and once you come to trust this fact through your experiences, you will be much better able to push yourself through those doors and into your dreams.  Lots of doors!

Solve the Human Struggle

We’re human.  Our brains are actually hard-wired to be afraid of change, to fear the unknown.  We are wired to prefer predictability and routine.  If we did it yesterday, it will suit today, even if it is painful.  We tend to worry about the future, numb ourselves to pain, and resist change.  You can change this by Awakening.

Most of the pain and struggle in human life comes from resisting our spiritual journey.  It comes from hanging on to things better let go of, ignoring “lessons” and insights, or refusing to change our habits after we do learn a better way.  We suffer when we refuse to get help or ask questions, when we demand that others change first, or we say it doesn’t matter when it does.  That’s our hard-wired, culturally-strengthened human stubbornness, fear of change, and fear for the future at work.

In contrast, our higher or spiritual nature is hard-wired to grow and expand.  It is a powerful force within us that naturally uplifts us into a higher Potential for joy and helping others.  It longs to help, empower, enable, inspire, and heal.  And it shows us new and better doors and solutions all the time, though we aren’t so good at seeing these doors for what they are. 

Awakening means shifting out of our brain’s fear and doubt reaction into an expansive, can-do mindset.  You can do this in your life by learning about the process of Awakening, testing it, trusting it, and practicing stepping forward.  (It does become much easier with practice.)

Are You Spiritually Bound and Tied?

For a thousand years in China they used to bind women’s feet, starting in childhood, to keep them tiny.  Like your higher nature and Life itself, however, is the nature of children’s feet to grow, and it is essentially impossible to stop this growth.  The binding itself was severely painful and so were the resulting deformed feet.  This practice was deemed cruel and finally outlawed in 1911. 

Yet I look around me and see people who have bound themselves spiritually.  Is this not cruel, too?  They restrict themselves with other people’s tiny ideas of how they should be, or they hold back from following their dream.  They do what they did yesterday.  And in doing so, they have stunted their spiritual growth.  This is extremely painful, so they do their best to numb out. 

As humans, we naturally grow and expand spiritually and psychologically our whole lives.  We learn, let go, and move on to learn more.  When we get stuck in our routines, we bind our souls with limitation.  It is painful.  (It distorts your perspective on life, too.  The world seems an ugly horrible place because for you, spiritually, it is.)

On the other hand, when you trust the process of your higher nature and step into that Awakened mindset of expansion, you learn you can create anything you want, now or in the future.  End of fear and worry.  You begin to see there are unlocked doors and solutiosn everywhere.  You just hadn’t noticed before. 

And by trusting the process and opening those doors, over and over, you learn that even when there is some work or temporary pain involved in opening that unlocked door, it is much better on the other side.

It is easier to allow your Awakening process than to bind it in a small-thinking, small-living life.

The human struggle is built into us: an eternal, internal tussle between our greater spiritual nature of possibility, growth, and “yes”, with our limited physical/mental nature of doubt, worry, ”not enough”, and “what if…”  

Neither side is ”good’ or “bad”, it’s how we are.  The truth is simply this:  to live a happy, productive, meaningful life we must each learn to harmonize our spiritual and physical natures.  We must get them working together.

When we don’t have a process for growth, the suffering can get worse.  Do you know someone who has been thrust on their spiritual path not by a desire to explore their greatest potential to make a difference, but by sudden and devastating loss of some kind: an accident, illness, relationship breakup, natural disaster, death of a loved one, or financial loss?  This type of trauma foces us to look at the areas where our spiritual growth is stunted.  We are forced to figure out what ‘s important in life, to admit we were unhappy, and to find a deeper, more authentic source of joy.

Pain and suffering forces us to make progress on the spiritual journey of Awakening.

Allowing Your Awakening Sets You Free

By starting today to understand and walk your spiritual journey, however, I believe you can avoid potential pain and suffering in the future.  What you need is some basic information about the journey and a daily spiritual practice to keep you moving forward.  (Grab our free ebook in the header above to start, no obligation!  Membership offers a non-religious spiritual practice focus each month.)

Clients and spiritual teachers tell me stories all the time about how it was easier, in hindsight, to move through some challenge that shifted them into a more expansive way of being than it was to stay small and suffering.  It was easier to let go of the avoidance and fears, though they felt no solution was viable at the time, and step onto the path of personal Awakening.  I know this from my own challenging spiritual journey, too!

Walking your spiritual path lets you out of your cage.  Awakening creates healing in your life, even in your body and mind.  Awakening allows you to forgive,  to forget, to stop being so angry or so sensitive, to stop needing ice cream or alcohol or another vacation or that other thing to soothe you.

The natural process of Awakening transforms not only your pain into healing and joy, but helps reduce the struggle of those around you, too.  You become an example for them, a role model, even on an energetic level if you never discuss it with another person. 

I hope you too can see now that it is, in fact, easier to allow your Awakening than to struggle against it.  You are a valuable human being, a work of art in my opinion.  I wish you all the best in unfolding your greatest Potential through Awakening.  Go open that door!

Tomorrow:  Fact #4  Your Awakening is calling to you… can you hear it?

Daria, here.  I’m having a personal makeover and getting a special photo taken tomorrow, and it’s already been a surprisingly healing experience.  You might not think of hair, makeup and clothes as very deep, since they all go on the surface of the body, but think about what healing is: connecting with a higher Potential and bringing it into the world. 

Healing brings out or allows true authenticity.  Authenticity is all about matching what’s inside you — your gifts, inner power to make a difference, and endearing personality – to what’s outside you — your behavior, words, clothes, hair, makeup, etc. 

Think about it.  Are your clothes expressing your healing message for the world?  Is your hairstyle bringing out the highest potential in your face’s bone structure?  Or are you hiding from the world, as I have been doing and as I have seen so many clients do, by dressing a diamond in rags?

It’s fine to say you don’t want to dye your hair because of the chemicals or refuse to be beholden to fashion.  You set the parameters in your life.  You are in control.  But given your parameters, are you expressing your power to change the world in everything you do?

The Global Institute for Awakening is here to help you get better at doing that.  As your fearless leader, I’m living an experiment right now.  I didn’t think I wanted or needed to do any of this hair & makeup stuff or get fancy photos taken, but I’m realizing I was rationalizing it all away so I didn’t have to, and so I didn’t have to figure it all out either.  Already I’ve discovered that it’s not a burden to look better and dress to better compliment my figure — it’s actually enjoyable to express who I am on the outside of me.  It’s more comfortable, too.  Who knew.

More story to come. 

One thing about thinking of yourself as a healer and being aware of your profound ability to make a difference in every moment is that interesting healing opportunities crop up everywhere! 

Yesterday we drove home in a torrential downpour from touring the town’s brand new high school.  Right away, on the south edge of town, we noticed a long, thin, dark funnel cloud pulling out of the clouds ahead of us and running mostly parallel to the ground, with the wispy end angling downward slightly.  We watched in fascination as we drove right under it.  By the time we reached the library, the town’s tornado siren was wailing.

I grew up in the midwest and remember my parents alertly monitoring such potential twisters.  Most of the time, they never came near us.  In the 8-10 mins of our trip from the high school, the end had significantly widened and was now pointing down maybe 30 degrees off of vertical.  Eek!  Would it get bigger?  Would it reach for the earth?  We debated, watched, checked weather.com for news, and marveled that a long funnel cloud like that could hold its shape so steadily for such a long time.

Then, I realized the clouds were actually slowly drifting towards us.  Well, this was fascinating and educational and all, but what a pain if it touched down in town and messed up property!

“Do you think Reconnective Healing would do anything for it?” I asked my son, who is also a Reconnective Healing practitioner.   (Note: you do NOT have to do woo-woo healing to help make a difference and heal the world!!!  But please do notice the approach at hand — Awakening task #3: Explore the World, seek possibility…)

“I don’t know,” was his excellent answer.   (Task #4: Be the Change, not the knowitall.)

“Well, if Reconnective Healing brings out the highest potential for all in a situation, then whatever the outcome, it will be best,” I said and started healing work aimed at the clouds.   (Awakening task #5: Faith & Trust, task #6 Let Go of what-ifs, and again #4: DO something about it…)

Within two minutes the funnel had broken in half.  Within four minutes it was gone.  The sirens stopped.  We looked at each other.

Coincidence?  “Re-coincidence”?  What do you think?

I find it delightfully amusing that we will never know.  And does it really matter?  Either way, a tornado did not rip through our town today, and I hope you had an appreciably pleasant afternoon as well.

In each Facet of Awakening you must take an action.  That’s easy to understand.  In today’s action-oriented culture, however, it’s easy to forget the other side of every action or decision:  to open our lives and minds to receive the results of our actions. 

Most advice is about do, do, doing, but doing doesn’t work without receiving.  In a sense, receiving is like NOT DOING.  So how do we receive, then? 

Imagine you’re a child and I say “I have a wonderful surprise for you — hold out your hands and close your eyes!”  Receiving is like that: you don’t know precisely what’s coming, but every fiber of your being is alert in anticipation and expectancy, knowing that it’s going to be great.  (Even when it’s not exactly what you expected, I guarantee you there is a valuable gem of insight, wisdom, knowledge and love in there that’s greater than your original expectations.)

Receiving is like holding out your hands, and accepting what comes.  It means taking it in, and enjoying the results.  Ponder these other words that also mean receiving:

opening, accepting, listening, collecting,
appreciating, letting in, catching, welcoming,
earning, inviting, securing, acquiring,
picking up, swallowing, gaining, allowing,
permitting and getting and the big one: 
surrendering.

The popular self-growth advice to focus on feelings of gratitude and appreciation helps you practice receiving what you have (or want).  It holds you in the energy of having instead of not-having.  It keeps you in the energy of solution instead of problem, results instead of gap.

Here’s what’s important:  practicing receiving makes it easier to accept sudden opportunities on the spot, find better solutions, and fully enjoy what you have.

In today’s world, we are typically unpracticed at receiving.  OK, we’re really bad at it!  We are holding out our hands with our fists closed.  We must open those hands and receive in order to achieve.  We must accept in order to give.  This takes some practice and time, but slow and steady wins the race.

Next time you make a decision or take an action or experience a result, sit with it a moment.  Receive the decision.  Feel the appreciation for the idea in the first place and all that happens with it.  Accept it as done.  Appreciate the solution that can come, especially the one that’s better than you expected.  That wonderful surprise is already there, waiting for you to hold out your hands. 

How can you open to receive your greatest results today and in every moment?

This morning, I stopped by the coffee shop to buy Ancora beans.  (If you love an occasional cup of good, smooth, rich coffee you don’t need to muck up with cream or sugar, check them out here.) 

Anyway, I told the owner I liked the new table arrangement.  She explained they had recently lost their storage space, had to put all the boxes in the conference room, and brought out the tables & chairs from in there, rearranging everything as a result.  Bummer, now the shop can’t host private meetings in its conference room, a great revenue-generator.

As I waited, however, I noticed that the neatly arranged shelves under the counters only had small containers on the front edge of deep shelves.  Why not put boxes of supplies behind them?  There was tons of room.  How much else could be rearranged to open up that conference room again?

While driving away, I realized this is exactly what happens to us in life.  All of a sudden, you “lose your storage space” for something.  An event or problem or person you thought you’d successfully tucked away or dealt with comes back in your face and you have to deal with it.  Or something new and unexpected happens, ugh.

Too often when life throws something unpleasant in our faces, however, we make sacrifices in our current lives to hang on to the darn stuff, even if we’ve outgrown it.  The deadbeat ex needs to borrow money, so we hand it over and our bank account (and/or current relationship) suffers.  A dream or longing resurfaces and we take on a Herculean task to distract ourselves from remembering we really long to do something else.  Etc.

If the old thing that came back from “storage” is stressful in the least, we actually can’t think straight about it.  I’ve seen this over and over in doing healing work with people, and in life.  So we cope and compensate in a way that diminishes our current life and doesn’t make sense… to someone outside the situation.

What if it’s true that we have all the storage space we need, at all times?  What if an issue coming out of storage and back into our lives means we can let it go instead of hanging on to it in a new way?  What if it returned because you don’t need the storage it’s taking up any more?  This is often true.

For instance, I know I could have helped come up with a solution that would allow that room to be reopened.  I’m sure an organizing coach would be even better!  The owner’s storage issue (and it felt like there was an emotionally charged story behind losing the storage) doesn’t stress me or impair my thinking.  I can see past it all, see the situation and its possible solutions more clearly.

If you are stressed, you’re blocking seeing effective new solutions.  Check in with someone who can see your situation clearly, without the charge.  Bounce the issue off a good supportive friend or your coach/mentor.  Maybe it’s not the big deal you thought it was.  Maybe someone else can see an easy solution that won’t disrupt your life. 

Overall, the less “baggage” you have “in storage”, the healthier you are.  (And therefore the easier it is on your body to have the occasional cup of coffee, yum!      How can you find the support to take a new look at some of your ongoing storage troubles today?

I crashed today.  I’ve been working hard hard hard to get this beautiful site and the wonderful Institute up and running, and now that we are live…  boom, splat. 

I know from my healing work that pieces of our consciousness can get separated as we pass through life, and they behave like spoiled children to get their way.  Mine were out in full force, throwing tantrums.  I wanted sugar.  I wanted to goof off.  I wanted to do irrelevant useless things.  It became really hard to get things done.

This morning, I asked my coach what to do.  She said, “Sometimes you have to rest.” 

Um, right, I knew that.  (I was just in the middle of it and couldn’t see it.  This is why we need coaches, mentors, good friends, and support networks!)

By the time I hung up, I’d developed a huge headache, the kind I usually have to sleep off.  So I did.  All day.  Headache is 90% gone now.

I know, again from my work helping others heal and awaken, that this situation will work itself out.  When your spiritual journey takes you up a notch, which mine has recently, the parts of you that are still holding on to the old way (if they are holding too tightly) can make you sick.  The faster you move forward, the sicker you can feel if you are still hanging on.  So I am taking three days off.  I will rest and sleep and do silly things (but I’ll avoid the sugar, sigh).

Stay tuned.

Not 20 minutes into the yardwork today, one of our kids was stung on the inner arm by a wasp.  Crying and saying, “it hurts” over and over, she was gently guided by everyone into my office.  The area was already pink, about 2″ (5cm) across.  A bright red dot marked the center. I went to work.

• 4 minutes later it “mostly didn’t hurt” (only a little bit when she “thought about it on purpose”).  A small welt had begun rising around the red dot.
• 7 minutes in, the welt had elongated and frozen at less than a 1/2″ (1cm) across the long way.  The sting didn’t hurt at all.
• 10 minutes in, the red dot in the center was gone.  You could see a tiny circle there, but it was all skin color. The welt had reduced, and the bigger red area was much paler.  Pain and trauma behind her, back outside she went.

I am so grateful for the possibilities of healing! I feel for people who wouldn’t believe this was possible, who would assume that a wasp sting would really hurt for a while.  This isn’t the first sting that’s all but disappeared inside 15 minutes for me as a healer, and I’m grateful for every disappearance.

Are you fully open to life’s highest potential?  Where in your life are you making assumptions that limit your full enjoyment of life and its possibilities?  How can you let these go?

I’ve been meditating more and more recently, how about you?  Most of us know meditating can de-stress you big-time and strengthen your ability to hear inner guidance.  But when you sit down, do a million thoughts come flooding into your mind?

Me too!  But still I sit down, and I always learn something.  Practicing dealing with mental interruptions makes it easier each time.  Like going to the gym, but you are exercising your mind.  Mental strength is crucial to unlocking your Potential to heal yourself and the world.

Here’s an issue that came up for me right away in meditation this morning, and the spiritual principles I remembered to help me let it go and sink back into just breathing.

Issue: A struggle to tune out my busy environment out of a fear that I might miss something. I might need to hear that!  I might need to get involved and fix that!  What is making that noise?  This is a long-term pattern for me: I also used to be a pack rat as a child and young adult, too – I might need that some day! 

Let go to flow.  Know and trust that what you need will come to you in its own time.  Right now, I choose to meditate, so I choose to let meditation come to me. 

When you are interrupted with outside sounds, thank and bless what you hear as a great opportunity to exercise letting it go.  Name it and thank it and send it floating away.  (“weird truck-y sound, thank you, let go…”)  Return to watching your breathing.

Fixing is not flowing.  Thinking something can’t be done without me is a form of pride or self-importance. This type of thought actually blocks energy flow!  By seeing something as broken or needing fixing, you judge it and limit its potential.  Fixing something broken can’t get as good results as seeing its highest potential and getting out of the way of it coming to fruition.  Practice getting out of the way by letting go of these thoughts (“fixing, thank you, let go…”) and getting back to meditation.

Bonus: Apply this wisdom elsewhere in your life today.  Let go of something else distracting.  For instance, instead of receiving 20 emails a day (I know that’s not an exaggeration for some of us!) with products and services you don’t need right now but are curious about, let them go for now and seek them out when you really need them.  Or: let go of stockpiling supplies or clothes that you “might need” some day and give them away.  Remain present, figure out what you need to do NOW, and focus on taking that next step instead of wondering about what you might do in the future. 

Did that help?  Happy meditating.