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.

‎”Pain is a part of life, but suffering is optional,” said the guest speaker at church a few Sundays ago now, a Zen Buddhist spiritual teacher.

Though I’ve heard it a zillion times, I love this saying. It reminds me that it is not life itself that is painful as much as my demands and assumptions about what happens (or should happen) that really makes me miserable. It’s not what happens but my grasping expectations and demands about how life should be that hurt.

We suffer when we hold on to our wouldas, shouldas, and couldas. We suffer when we grasp tightly to what used to be or what might have been. Our choices make the difference, and this quote says suffering is a choice we can make or not make (whether we choose mindfully or through unconscious habits of thought doesn’t really matter here).

Whatever happens, we can choose to heal. I love to be reminded of that!

But Wait, Isn’t Pain a Form of Suffering?

This morning while washing dishes, a new thought snuck into my mental landscape, however… It wondered, “Isn’t pain itself…well, inherently painful, a form in fact of suffering?” When I am in pain, I am miserable. It hurts, darnit. I am physically suffering! When I am depressed, I am suffering mental/emotional/spiritual pain. Ouchies! So isn’t pain the same as suffering?

But that thought seems to contradict what the quote says. If pain is a form of suffering, the first part of the quote implies that suffering is a part of life, while the second half says suffering is entirely optional, not necessarily a part of life — we do not have to suffer.

Ut oh. I have contradicted the quote I love.

Interestingly, since the first half of the quote says that pain is always a part of life, the quote implies that pain cannot be suffering.

Whoa. Though my theory is now that pain and suffering are one, the quote implies that they are two unrelated things.

Already I’m super curious as to how exactly one can experience pain without suffering, and I have only washed two dishes.

What Does No-Pain Feel Like?

In detaching, in letting go of the grasping that causes pain, does life then stop hurting? Does your bum knee start to feel great again? Does thinking of your dead loved one bring only a smile to your face, without tears and sadness? What would a life without pain (aka suffering) even look like?

That depends on what you think pain is. After pondering my experiences as an energy healer, it is easy to conclude that yes, in fact, pain ONLY arises from attachment, from hanging on to expectations, from demanding that the world be somehow other than it is.

As they say in energy healing, pain is stuck energy. In my experience, I have found you can heal severe pain by eliminating these thought patterns and aberrations in the energy field, allowing Life Force to flow unimpeded once again.

THAT I can totally believe, based on what I’ve seen of pain and its causes in my healing office. Physical pain seems to filter down from other levels of our conscious being, such as fears and doubts that come from or create attachments.

Pain is stuck energy. The important question is now: why is the energy stuck?

In a perfect world, energy, consciousness, and information flow freely as life unfolds. Acorns become magnificent oak trees. Baby otters grow up to become adult otters, without anyone instructing them in otterness. The only way this beautiful process of unfoldment and evolution gets stuck and therefore painful, is because of an attachment. An idea or thought or action that stopped the free flow of energy and consciousness in our divine unfolding.

Whether it was a thought you created yourself or one you downloaded from the collective consciousness, there it is, a tether, holding back some part of a divine or natural process that cannot be stopped.

But life happens, relentlessly. As you continue to move forward through time and your life evolves, this tether or limitation starts to gum up the works. It becomes a sticking point, and requires you to cope with it. It can manifest in your life as a mental limitation (“I’m not good enough”) or a bum knee. Eventually, this tether causes so much interference between you and your perfect unfoldment that we come to understand the feeling of this interference as pain.

Ouch.

Pain is a symptom of attachment, of limitation, of not allowing life to unfold in its brilliance, whatever form that takes. Pain is a result of trying to control and dictate Life itself.

Of this I am sure.

So what about the initial quote? Do I still agree with it? Yes, but I might rephrase it for clarity. Try this one on for size:

“Pain often happens in life due to habitual or unconscious grasping, controlling, and attachment,
but (once you notice it) continuing to suffer because of these limitations is entirely optional.”

Yes, I will still use the initial quote, since mine is pretty unwieldy. But this newly realized rewriting is the deeper meaning I will give to that quote when I say it.

So, what did you think of while washing the dishes this morning?

© Daria Boissonnas 2013

About 14 years ago, I enthusiastically started what may be an unusual spiritual practice, one that seems very simple yet has challenged me and fascinated me ever since. This practice also has brought tremendous relief and inner peace as it has helped me see the world as a nonduality or unified whole — a friendly place.

I stopped believing in causality.

Yep.

This is such an odd practice, it may be hard to imagine at first. It took quite a bit of effort to slide into at first, to catch myself thinking in terms of “what caused this” and “who is to blame?” But let’s take a look at this practice and its benefits.

What Does No-Causality Look Like?

How about a nice concrete example to ponder –

Suppose you fall and scrape your knee by tripping on a heaved sidewalk tile. Without causality, you did not fall because of the heaved sidewalk tile. Nor because you happened to be thinking about a recent painful fight you had with your best friend which distracted you so that you didn’t notice the heaved section. There is no because. All three things are one, like different facets on a cut diamond. They are all the same diamond, seen from different angles at different (sequential, as we experience them) points in time.

Consider the scraped knee, a place in the body that bends and flexes and supports forward movement. Now it is hurting.

Consider the fight with a friend, their inflexibility about something that triggered your inflexibility about their inflexibility and the angry words you tossed back and forth. Perhaps you are afraid the fight will end your friendship, which has been a great support to your changing directions in life.

Consider the sidewalk, which helps us move forward in a straight line, to go where we want to go more easily than treading on grass and stones. It is heaved, its even pace broken, as broken as you feel with this new rift in your friendship. You and your friend took different positions on the issue, like the two squares of sidewalk that no longer meet eye to eye. (See the common threads?)

Not believing in causality means that what we would usually separate as cause and effect are one. Both what we call the cause and the effect are expressions of some latent pool or system of energy and consciousness. In the stream of time as we experience it, we happen to see one (which we call cause) before the next (we call that effect). But, like telephone poles along the road, they are all actually there the whole time, we just experience them sequentially.

This is an easy world of 100% responsibility, and it makes for a very pleasant place to live. Of course people in this world care about the “consequences” of their actions, or, shall we say, the far-reaching aspects of the energy and consciousness that their actions were a small part of. They know they are connected to everything, a part of everything, belong to everything.

This world is a place of deep peace, a blameless stillness and ease which allows one to focus on positive reactions.

The Effects of No Cause and Effect

OK, that subhead was a pun. There is no effect of not believing in causality. The shift transcends the mindset of blame and you simply experience the world without this filter, as it is.

For me, over the years, what I have experienced while not believing in causality is that I tend look at the world increasingly as a metaphorical representation of energy and consciousness that we happen to perceive largely through our physical and mental perceptions. What happens becomes less important than what it means and what it tells me about my resistance and hangups and how I am not experiencing the world as a safe and loving place. It has also helped me become a crackerjack interpreter of dreams, daydreams, persistent mental images, hangups and more (so my clients enthusiastically say).

I believe this shift in consciousness has empowered my healing, in a sense by allowing me to step aside more easily to let more healing flow through me. And I simply love looking at the world in this way.

It was not an instant shift, but took place over many years of catching myself in old thinking habits of blame and causality, and then applying my new philosophy of no-causality to see the situation from that viewpoint. Eventually, my habits shifted and the world became a beautiful, harmonious place of oneness.

May it become so for you, too.

© 2013 Daria Boissonnas  All Rights Reserved

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

Continuing from last week, we are exploring an often misquoted saying from the Gospel of Thomas, which erroneously is quoted like this:

INACCURATE:
“If you bring forth what is within you, what you bring forth will save you.
If you do not bring forth what is within you, what you do not bring forth will destroy you.”  (emphasis mine)

In the last article, we considered what the first part of the official translations mean, as a writer, artist or healer, and came up with three intentions for Awakening.

Now let’s look at the second part of the quote.

Part 2: The Thing about the Thing that Kills You

Consider the same five official translations for the second half of the quote (emphases mine):

Thomas O. Lambdin:
(70) “…That which you do not have within you will kill you if you do not have it within you.”

Stephen Patterson and Marvin Meyer:
70. “…If you do not have that within you, what you do not have within you [will] kill you.”

Stephen J. Patterson and James M. Robinson:
(70) …(2) “If you do not have it within you, (then) that which you do not have within you [will] kill you.”

Pico Iyer:
70.) …What you do not have within will kill you.

Coptic Ecumenical Project:
70. …If you do not have that within yourselves, this which you do not have within you will kill you.

In this part, the misquote almost restates the official translations of the first part: suppressing your gifts will kill you.

But in the official translations, it doesn’t seem to matter what you do any more. This part says you either have it, or you don’t. And not having it will somehow end your existence. Not having… something… has dire consequences.

What does this mean?

Know Your Gift, Divine Purpose, or Calling

One of the things I love about spiritual teachings and truths is that they can be interpreted in many ways or on many levels, and, if the teaching is deep enough, each of these interpretation provides valid insights. There is no “wrong” interpretation. (Just don’t mangle the teaching to say something else, lol.) So if you have other interpretations, please comment them below.

One way we could understand the correct second half of the phrase is like this: if you are pretending to be something other than what you are (that is, if you do not have within you what you are putting on the outside of you), it will kill you.

Well, ain’t that the truth. We have probably all done that at some point in our lives, moreso in our youth. Note to self: be genuine. Or, as I tell the kids, truth gets you much farther in life than lies.

What else does this teaching mean? To me, it’s all about seeing your own divinity, your own divine creative gifts, your own natural Inner Healer.

I bet you can think of a few incredibly gifted people who cannot see their own gifts. They don’t seem to appreciate how deep their abilities go or how much the rest of us, not having these gifts, treasure their abilities and their help. What I have observed in my clients over the years is that when you are truly living your gifts, it’s easy and fun. Effortless and enjoyable. The divine gift you bring to the world is so easy for you, in fact, that it can be hard to appreciate… or even notice at first.

Now let me ask you this: if a tree falls in the forest and there is no one to notice it, has it really fallen?

That is, if you have a divine gift inside you but you never see it, is it still there? Isn’t your gift, in a sense, absent from your being? If you do not look, do you really “have” it?

This teaching says to me that if you do not know what you have within you, for example if you do not explore your inner divinity, life purpose, calling, or Inner Healer, that omission will kill you. (You can interpret “kill” any way you like, from make you miserable to end your life.) If you never find out who you are, whether you get up the guts to express it or not, it you will simply cease to be.

Cease to be you.

This, in turn, reminds me of some of the oldest spiritual advice in the world, inscribed in the temple at Delphi: Know Thyself.

Know Thyself

When we get sucked into our angst, drama, and depression as writers, creatives, healers, and intuitives, we get pulled away from seeing that which we have within. We get sucked into a downward spiral of ego and insufficiency and crushed intentions. That is not the road to happiness, a meaningful life, and the joy of helping others.

Happiness comes from exploring, awakening, and expressing what you already have within. We know from the first half of the teaching that, whatever it looks like, what you are inside is GOOOOOOD. Take your time. Enjoy the chase. Enjoy the expression of your true self.

In a sense, fully investigated, this teaching of Jesus turned out to be even better advice for artists, writers and healers than I assumed.

What do YOU have within?

For 15 years I have done intuitive dream analysis and folks have loved it (just call me Joseph–lol!) I know there are a variety of theories about dreams, ranging from dreams being meaningful to meaningless. For some reason, my clients typically walk away with a big new self-insight and a new healing exercise to move beyond some aspect of their struggles.

Recently I have been working on a new phenomenon — DAYdream analysis. You do not have to fall asleep in order to find brilliant guidance. Simply look at the vivid scenes that flit through your head!!!

It’s been an—er—eye-opener.

We rarely pay attention to daydreams. When I catch myself daydreaming, I try to snap out of it and come back to “real life.” And my daydreams easily flit away. But now I am practicing noticing them. Since this is not yet a spiritual habit, I have to put a little effort into it, like when I trained myself to remember night dreams long enough to make a few notes in the morning before they, too, went poof.

Daydreams Are Rich Sources of Self-Information from Your Unconscious Mind

Your daydream is realer than real life. Though the term “daydream” generally represents a condition of happily not paying attention, actual daydreams can be positive or negative.

I am finding that a daydream is like a picture-based type of thought (but not our usual logical thought) floating through your head.  It’s a part of your consciousness, often reflecting the state of your being.  (Why wouldn’ t that part of you think about what’s going on, too?) I am finding that daydreams typically represent a currrent situation metaphorically or symbolically, and so by analyzing them, you can see the situation more clearly. When I look at daydreams as a longtime healer and intuitive or psychic reader, what often pops out next is a healing exercise to take advantage of positive issues and help move beyond disturbing ones. (Love it!)

To analyze daydreams, it helps to be very intuitive and experienced with metaphors and symbolism. Then again, nobody can interpret your inner symbolism like you can. Take a stab at it! Jot down the essentials of the daydream and what was going on when you had it. “What was going on” may include issues you are working on healing, or simply exactly what was happening at the moment.

The first daydream I analyzed was my own, a disturbing daydream where someone was being hurt on purpose. As a healer, I’d like to think I have healed beyond such unpleasantries, but no. There it was. Some innocent, uncertain part of me was being harmed on purpose by something that was totally taking advantage of my indecision. When I identified the relevant parts of me, I found a significant opportunity for healing. I’m excited to work through this issue. I saw an unexpected, hidden aspect of it through my daydream.

Daydream Analysis on Sale through 12/31/2012

Want to be part of the experiment? Record your daydream, and its context—what was going on just before it happened? Then email Support here at GIAwaken.com to connect and get an appointment. For just $10, I will analyze your daydream (via a 10-20 minute phone call) if you are one of the first 10 people to respond.

To your healing journey!

© 2012 Daria Boissonnas. All Rights Reserved. To reprint this article, email Support, at GIAwaken.com.

It is the job of poets, writers, artists, and healers to both uplift society in dark times and help them enjoy the good times.

As a former resident of New Jersey, the photos and news of hurricane Sandy has been personally shocking and devastating. As a writer/poet and healer who came to love New Jersey and its amazing people in my 13 years of living there, here is my small contribution:

Noble New Jersey

Oh noble New Jersey, your skirts are wet and torn,
Your people and trees uprooted, how ravaged your shores!
Although your lights fall dark in this dim week,
We, like your celebrated lighthouse peaks,
Remember and hold high your lighted heart, unmeek.

How can I—we—by that light help you along
Each step by tiny step, towards our brighter dawn?
Though creations of man may crumble and pass away,
Not hand nor storm nor the struggle of difficult days
Can mar the soul of our blessed New Jersey state.

–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,

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

Yesterday I found myself consulting with a wonderful doctor. (Due to ironic school regulations, I had to drag a kid out of his sick bed to have someone else say, “Yep, he has a virus and should be resting.”)

Here’s what struck me. Each time I said something positive (and true) like, “My kids rarely get sick,” she said, “Knock wood.” (And yes, she reached out and knocked on something.)

Remember that? From childhood? What a throwback for me. I’m sure I froze the first time she said it, trying to grok it.

What relic of an old time and a mindset the world is quickly outgrowing: the idea that spit happens and there’s nothing you can do about it. That thinking positively risks invoking the wrath of whatever else had been planned. That you have no right to take your own destiny into your hands. That it is dangerous to think positively and enjoy a good life.

It struck me as so strange that I think we should all pat ourselves on the back! We’ve come a long way, baby! We are no longer afraid to dream our dreams and then do something about them, to change the course of our lives. We are increasingly accepting that positive change (and healing) can be easy, and that much more is possible than we have assumed in the past. Yeah!

Yes, we can change the world for the better. Let’s honor how we used to think, honor our shift, and then keep moving forward. Knocking on wood is no longer necessary. We knocked, and that door opened.

© 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

Just went to the cabinet to get out some tea. When I opened it, one box jumped out at me and kerplunked on the counter. Kombucha. Detoxing tea.

(What do you think? Anything meaningful there?)

“It means I’m supposed to have that kind of tea!” exclaimed one corner of my mind.

Hmm. I have been feeling a little under the weather with a cold in the last two days. So I asked my body if it would benefit from hot tea right now (yes), and what kind would most benefit it.

Nope. Not that one. Thoughtful, I made the other kind of tea.

All the events around us have meaning, and the greatest meaning comes from tapping the truth within you. Our minds are busy things, but, as you may have learned over and over yourself, the mind is not always correct. It makes best guesses.

The heart knows. Your energy body knows. Your inner wisdom knows. Some part of you always knows the answer to questions about your best interests. Tap into that.

Fate may bring you in contact with a range of people, things, and experiences. Are you meant to engage them all? Not likely. But this I do know: You can learn from each connection.

Intuitively, it feels like I have two… somethings… to cleanse out of my life. A little more meditation, and I’ll soon figure them out. Thanks, tea!

© 2012 Daria Boissonnas

What struck you about my tea experience? Let me know in the comments, below.

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.

What is power? How would you define it?

Recently I read this definition: “Though power most often refers to the ability to influence people (Guerrero, DeVito & Hecht, 1999, p. 314), power is also related to dominance and status (Guerrero, DeVito & Hecht, 1999, p. 315)…”

Hunh? I spend all day focusing on empowering my clients and myself, but I’ve always thought of power as the ability to create healing changes, the kind of power that flows through you. Are we ultimately working towards the ability to influence, dominate, and have status?

Hmm… Well, sure. I like this definition because you can apply it perfectly to most valuable type of power you can develop, an ability most correlated with success — self-power. Power from within means you can influence yourself to write your novel, exercise, meditate every day, practice your art regularly, or get to sleep at a healthy time, even when all you feel like doing is sitting in front of a late movie with a bowl of ice cream.

Right, that power. The power that builds easy self-discipline. The power that takes you out of old, limiting habits and stretches for new habits, and keeps stretching, right through the discomfort stage.

This power is the ability to influence yourself to do what you know is good for you in the long run, when your head is full of reasons why not. It is the ability to dominate your “but-but-but” thoughts. And it is the status that says you honor your health, wealth, and happiness first. Good things come from this kind of power.

Then, when you use this power to take care of you (to put that proverbial oxygen mask over your own face), you will have more power to take care of others. You will empower your Inner Healer.

© 2012 Daria Boissonnas

How do you define power? What kind of power are you developing? Let us know in the comments below!

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