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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

But what about healing?

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

Wait.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I am feeling better already.

© 2012 Daria Boissonnas

Just who was it that said, “insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result”?

According to wikiquote, this quip is most often misattributed to:

• Benjamin Franklin (perhaps because he was insane for flying a metallicized kite in a lightning storm),

• Albert Einstein (because the internet believes Al was a Law of Attraction guru who said everything that’s cool), and

• Mark Twain (maybe because he had the same hairdresser as Einstein and we get the men mixed up).

But no, sorry, none of those wise men said it.

Don’t Seek and You Won’t Find

Seriously, according to wikiquote, the earliest occurrence of this quote is a 1981 Narcotics Anonymous booklet, and might have come from Alcoholics Anonymous. Next, it can be found in the writing of Rita Mae Brown, but to be polite we will not ask her where she got it.

This quote works when we are in denial or stuck in a negative loop, doing the same thing over and over, wishing our problem would magically go away. In this case, it is time for new tactics.

We could rewrite the quote in a catchy new phrase: “When your steps go round and round, another option must be found.”

Or make a great T-shirt out of: “Wishing is for fairy godmothers. Move your a$$.

A New Meaning

But hang on. Is it in fact nuts to keep doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result?

Maybe not. Not always, anyway.

In fact, I find we often need more of this kind of persistence-against-all-odds in our lives. Instead sapping our mental health, doing the same thing over and over while hoping for a new result can be an expression of our highest goals: healing, trust, and faith.

To attain healing, for example, you must think beyond the current situation and the results you expect to get. You must leap beyond them and expect, even if you don’t know what it looks like, a very different result — something new.

We celebrate the fact that Mark Twain, after receiving tons of rejections, sent out even more letters trying to publish his writing, expecting a different result from those same tactics.  Today, over 100 years after his death, his books are still required reading in high schools and sell like ice cream on a hot summer’s day.

Hooray for Einstein persisting in sharing his inside-out ideas until others could see  the world through his eyes and physics could evolve forward into a radical new paradigm that gave birth to quantum physics.

Thank goodness Annie Sullivan kept trying, over and over, against all odds and expectations, to help the deaf and blind child Helen Keller to understand sign language! By doing so, she helped enable Helen Keller to become a beloved writer and lecturer, winner of the Presidential Medal of Freedom, member of the National Women’s Hall of Fame, and the face on Alabama’s 2003 quarter coin.

Make the Leap, Step by Step

What kept them going? Hope? An inner knowing? Love? Inspiration?

Something did, something that helped them transcend all those rejections and failures, and shift into a new and better unexpected outcome. Add this magic into the mix and you no longer have insanity. You have faith, transcendence, and healing.

How about you? What new goal are you currently stretching for, or would like to reach? Do you need encouragement to keep going, to send out a few letters, or try one more time, even if your dream results feel impossibly far away?

Find the faith or a spiritual principle to hang it on. Identify a motive, a higher ideal, a reason why, source of curiosity, a reminder quote, or other fount of inspiration.

For me, I just reread Helen Keller’s story again. Wow. That helped me immensely. Where can you find your magic fairy dust to help you fly over the rainbow?

Yes, as you reach for your goal, it may be wise to learn and refine how you write those letters/teach your pupil/share your vision. But the advice is the same:

To create miracles, connect to the Potential within your dream (not the specifics) and take ordinary actions, over and over, while solidly and unfailingly expecting a surprising result, even a miraculous one.

This is what creates healing.

© 2012 Daria Boissonnas

What has helped you to transcend rejections or overcome old expectations? Share your story and wisdom with us in the comments!

The most powerful “cure” for feeling blue, sad, tired or depressed is helping others.

Now, even in the middle of the night, you can be inspired by healing and helping stories. KarmaTube.org offers videos about people who have helped others and overcome their own challenges. It inspires me to stop feeling like I am struggling or feeling sorry for my poor ego and get back on the bike again.

It is not often I come across an outside resource I recommend whole-heartedly, but I urge you to browse the FREE videos at KarmaTube. You can even join to support their mission.

Go here:  http://www.karmatube.org/

Now share your discoveries! In the comments below, please share your favorite video link there, and why it inspired you.

Did you like this KarmaTube? Then enjoy GIA’s FREE inspirational and educational series of audio interviews called “I Am a Healer” — 100 Inspiring Stories of Ordinary People Who are Changing the World and How You Can Too.

“I Am a Healer” — Register here to listen for FREE!

~ Daria’s Wednesday Wisdom column ~

The client called out of the blue. “You have to help me!” he said, “I’ve scheduled an important event and now my astrology says it’s a terrible day where everything will go wrong!”

While some people scoff at astrology, I find that as you step onto your spiritual path and further awaken your healing gifts, you actually become more sensitive to these background energies in the universe. In a sense, your readings can become increasingly accurate (especially with a good practitioner). At some point, you may become fearful of a negative prediction like Mercury retrograde, or a Saturn/Uranus alignment that makes you want to stay in bed all day and wait for next week to arrive.

Here are three key insights you are missing if you are afraid of the big bad astrologer, and how to resolve the problem.

1. As with all intuitive senses, much depends on interpretation.

Of course it helps to have a good reader who can tune into you and the meaning you need to hear in that moment. But even smashingly good intuitives and psychics often interpret the symbols they see through their own filters, and commonly make mistakes not in what they saw but in how they described it. That means there are many other valid interpretations of meaning, on many levels, whatever a reader or astrologer tells you.

This client was looking at a general chart of planetary energies and what they could, generally, mean. That means the astrologer did not customize the prediction to him. So we looked them over. Yes, I said, Saturn is the great teacher who brings lessons. When you are resisting his teachings, you might end up learning the hard way, ouch. Or, Saturn can mean that you will learn something wonderful and new from the event in question!

Uranus is an energy of great change and turnover–out with the old and in with the new. One way of interpreting that energy is that everything will go to heck in a hand basket. Another way is to say that transformation is coming. And I knew my client intended to create transformation with this event in question. He was relieved to hear these other, more specific interpretations, to say the least.

2. Events and forces in your personal spiritual journey may powerfully override astrological or other external forces.

I once had a dream where I was falling in love in a war zone. I was not fighting the war (was too young) and could hear it going on around me. Yet I was sappily, happily falling head over heels. In that moment, the environment of war was not affecting my spiritual journey with my beloved nearly as much as the forces of love and the hormones of youth.

Back to my client. Since I speak to bodies and higher selves, I asked his energy and received the message: “Yes yes yes, go go go! Having this event on that day ranks at a 10 out of 10 for him!” Something in his personal energy wanted that even then, no matter what was happening in the skies.

At this point in his life, the worrisome event represented a new, greater way of operating for him. He was stepping it up, moving forward. He would learn something new from this event and transform not only his own path but his students as well. His specific situation required a different interpretation from the negative general one.

3. There is ALWAYS something positive you can do in “negative” energy.

This is the greatest insight of them all. Don’t sit at home waiting for better energies to arrive next week! Whatever the prediction, there is some way you can turn it into something positive or at least something transformational. You are a natural born healer, and you have the gift to turn anything — anything — a positive way. That is the Gift of the Healer, which I discuss in detail in my book coming out this fall. We each have it.

If you must stay home, why not clean out the closet you’ve been meaning to? If you are going to postpone your event, how can you spin it to your advantage and do something extra with the time? Best of all, how can you stand firm in your intentions and move through the predicted negativity with aplomb and the eternal mind of a student? Even negative energies can have a purging effect when they take you through the darkness and out the other side.

There is ALWAYS something positive you can do in “negative” situations.

And it is your job as a healer to go find them. You can do this.

Today at  4:21 am PDT, the sun moved into Virgo. It’s harvest time, friends. Most of us don’t have much of a connection with sheathing wheat or gathering the bounty of the earth to prepare for the winter. The closest we get to a seed’s fruition is the farmer’s market.

But let’s take the harvest as a grand metaphor. What did you plant in the spring, that soaked in the summer’s heat and is now RIPE? Perhaps a great deal grew over the summer and your field is wild with abundance. Now you begin to gather what has grown and separate the wheat from the chaff. What will actually aid in your next life steps? Now you decide what you will store for future use. You come in out of the sun and see what you really have to work with.

The month of Virgo brings in the energy of hard work, discrimination and refinement. It works in and with the physical world to prepare the way for love to flow. It asks what systems, structures or rhythms are NOT working in your life. Virgo pays careful and systematic attention to what needs to be adjusted. It studies with care and executes with precision. There is no nonsense with Virgo. There is work to be done and Virgo loves work.

We go back to school in Virgo. We return from summer vacation. We buy new notebooks and new clothes. We prepare for the coming winter. We apply ourselves to what we love with great devotion and care. We cleanse, purify and pay attention to our health on all levels.

These are the days we sign up for a new yoga class, start to eat with great care or clear out patterns of thought or belief that no longer serve us. These are the days we assess what will need to be done in order for us to survive another winter. This is the time to clean up summer’s excess and buckle down for the work ahead.

Maybe it doesn’t sound like so much fun. But there’s nothing like making a few adjustments in our daily living that allow so much more beauty and life and love to pour through. There are many gifts that present themselves as we pay closer attention – as we freely give our attention – to what matters most in our life. Virgo pays attention. Virgo registers the most minute clue. Virgo offers herself in service to our greatest purpose.

I was always one of those children that LOVED going back to school. There was something about a fresh notebook and a fresh start. And a sense of growth and progression. Even if you didn’t particularly love to return to the classroom, ask yourself now where you’d like to apply your love, devotion and work. Let the month of Virgo launch you.

Heidi Rose Robbins grew up learning the zodiac with her alphabet, and has been a practicing astrologer for over 15 years. She has a practical, sensitive, and inspiring approach to astrology and a thriving world-wide practice that includes transformative retreats for women twice a year in Ojai, California. It is her 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.

A Poem by Mary Oliver –celebrating the energy of Virgo

Flare
12.

When loneliness comes stalking, go into the fields, consider
the orderliness of the world. Notice
something you have never noticed before,

like the tambourine sound of the snow-cricket
whose pale green body is no longer than your thumb.

Stare hard at the hummingbird, in the summer rain,
shaking the water-sparks from its wings.

Let grief be your sister, she will whether or no.
Rise up from the stump of sorrow, and be green also,
like the diligent leaves.

A lifetime isn’t long enough for the beauty of this world
and the responsibilities of your life.

Scatter your flowers over the graves, and walk away.
Be good-natured and untidy in your exuberance.

In the glare of your mind, be modest.
And beholden to what is tactile, and thrilling.

~ Mary Oliver ~
(The Leaf and the Cloud: A Poem)

~ Daria’s Wednesday Wisdom column ~ This post is an excerpt from Gift of the Healer by Daria Boissonnas, reprinted with permission. (Book is due out by end of 2011 — stay tuned!)

…The leaders and teachers I soon began studying and questioning – the ones producing unlikely miracle after miracle – were healers. Energy healers, in particular. But producing miracles in your life does not require energy healing! You do not even need to believe in energy healing. This gift is much deeper and simpler than that.

Because I first observed this amazing ability in healers, however, I think of it as the Gift of the Healer.

What jumps into your mind when you hear the word healer?

• A nurse or a doctor?
• A massage therapist, minister, or hospice worker?
• How about a lawyer, a scientist, or a talk-show host?
• Have you ever wondered if you were a healer?

In my experience, the word healer conjures up more confusion, discomfort, and even belligerence than it creates warm fuzzies. Even professional healers brush off the term because of the charge it carries and the confusion it triggers. I understand. When I call myself a healer, I know some folks imagine me sticking needles in dolls, hawking fake healing tonics, and dancing naked in the woods.

“Oh, that’s nice,” others say, carefully distancing themselves, “if it works for you.”

It does. Healing has allowed me to embrace possibility in my life. Better yet, it works for anyone who tries it, because we are all healers at our core. For humans, healing comes naturally, and I will show you how, every day, you do exactly what healers do to create extraordinary healing. When you learn to apply those skills mindfully, there is no telling how wonderful your life can become and how much more you can help others.

Many have tried to find a more descriptive term than healer: improvement facilitator, intention holder, possibility opener, paradigm catalyst. These seem forced to me. I like the word healer. It is short and sweet, easy to spell, and commonly used. In my book, that beats contrived phrases by a mile. (And this is my book.)

Healer is an important word with a distinct meaning. It carries power. I suspect many alternative healers avoid it because of the power it carries, but we should not shy away from this power. We cannot. We need all forms of our natural healing power, now more than ever. The world needs it. The world needs you. And you can do this.

You were born a healer.

© 2011 Daria Boissonnas
Note: Blog reprint policy does not apply to this article. Please contact us with requests.

“I have so much to accomplish today that I must meditate for two hours instead of one.”

–Mahatma Gandhi

What do you do in the morning to prepare for your day? You likely clean your teeth and wash and feed your body.  But what about maintaining your connection with your higher self and inner wisdom?  Do you refresh your connection to Source and to your Calling or life’s purpose?

Don’t be a victim to your day and your duties.  You are so much more than that. Decide right now to make ONE change.  Either set up a morning spiritual refresh activity or strengthen the one you have.

• Can you do a 10-minute relaxation meditation?
• Can you restfully contemplate your life purpose goals and vision for the world?
• Can you connect with the results you seek and visualize them so you can bring them out into the world?
• Can you sit quietly, ask a question, and listen for guidance or for today’s ideal focus or task?

You may resist this change for the first several days, but I challenge you to do this for 10 solid days in a row and see how it goes.

I don’t know about you, but if Ghandi found a morning refresh and centering worked for him, I’m inclined to think he knows something I haven’t figured out yet, and I’m willing to try it.  He was after all extremely effective at creating positive change.

Remember too that being “on” requires being “off”. Being successful out in the world requires inner success first.  The more centered, grounded, Connected, whole, happy, and spiritually refreshed you are, the better you can do what you were born to do.  And the more permanent positive change (aka healing) you can create in the world.

You can do this!  You were born to do this.

Source of quote (and a good article): http://www.huffingtonpost.com/philip-goldberg/meditation_b_827796.html

Wish you had more Time, Money, Health, Love, Support, Meaning, or Utter Bliss in your life?

These things flow in increasing amounts when you step into your Highest Calling. 
It’s not scary.  It’s not difficult.  It’s just that sometimes our stories or misunderstandings about our Calling make it seem that way.

Know what you should know about your Calling.  Check out these 10 facts right now!

AUDIO LINK:  Click to listen, right-click to download     1:05:37

New Transformational Workshop Starts March 16:
Calling In Your Calling

When you’re ready to discover your Calling and remove doubt about what you are here to do, join us for our 4-part transformational workshop “Calling In Your Calling“, starting March 16th.

This isn’t a boring class full of information only – it’s a package of powerful and practical insights, a personal reading to discover your own Calling, a one-on-one mentoring session to start to implement it, AND the healing to break through what’s been holding you back.

Commit to your Calling today.  Take a step towards fulfilling it.

Questions? Email us at support@GIAwaken.com.

News from Daria — Newsletter, 23 February 2011

Wow, the last few weeks have been a doozie! 

I’ve been experiencing profound healing (aka permanent positive change) that’s knocked me a bit off my routine.  I’ve enjoyed the astonishing new insights and visioning, however, both personally and for the Global Institute for Awakening.  I even shared one insight in a new video already. 

It’s created a rollercoaster of effects — offers from the Universe to step up and forward, and a couple to step back down and “stay safe” where things are familiar.  Whenever you expand forward, the Universe always offers you a chance to step down and stay small, too. It’s always your choice.

     …I choose up.  I choose up.  I choose up!

As a result, we have TWO exciting new classes coming up, one by phone and one in Minneapolis — see the section below. 
And as you might expect, we will be announcing quite a few exciting changes and surprises here in the next few weeks!  Watch your emails and newsletters!

Here’s to you and the healing power of your Highest Calling.  We look forward to supporting you in fully sharing your innermost priceless Gifts with the world. 

Many blessings,

. 

. 
Daria Boissonnas
Founder, Global Institute for Awakening

Announcements

(1) Early Bird ~ SAVE 50% OFF ~ Ends Today
for Our New Transformational Workshop “Calling In Your Calling”

Not your average class!  In addition to our powerful workshop full of hard-to-find insights and exploration to discover and fulfill your Higher Calling, we have created a transformational package including a reading of your Calling, a personal healing and attunement to your Calling, and one-on-one mentoring to take action on your Calling. 

Runs March 16 – April 13, plus your individual appts.

Register Now

(2) NEW Audio Available: “10 Facts You Need to Know About Your Higher Calling”

Life is a spiritual journey.  If you aren’t discovering and taking action on your spiritual calling… well, what ARE you doing? Your Calling or Blessing or Life Purpose is the greatest goal or quest you can accomplish.  And 2011 is a great year to step into your calling!

Audio is available on the Resources Page for everyone on our emailing list.  If you haven’t signed up for your free kit above, please do so and we’ll send you the link.

(3) Healing Intensive  ~ ”Awakening: The Next Sense”
Learn to do Awakening Healing & Quantum Alignments
Minneapolis, MN, March 11-14, 2011

Learn Awakening Healing, the only healing method currently endorsed and recommended by the Global Institute for Awakening! 
This is not energy healing, but a new kind of powerful healing becoming evident in the world. It does not merely repair the energy communication system in your being/body.  It does much more, restoring you to who you truly are and upgrading your energy system in a way that allows you to much more easily fulfill your greatest potential.

You can say it Awakens your gifts and clarifies your Path.  Join us and meet Daria in person!

Friday: 7pm to 10pm: Fundamentals of Intuition
Saturday: 10am to 6pm: Quantum Healing
Sunday: 9:30am to 6pm: Quantum Alignments
Monday: 9:30am to 6pm: Quantum Alignments and Starting a Practice

Office of The Next Sense: 715-796-2575 – info@beejimpson.com

Register Now   (not an affiliate link, we just recommend it!)

It’s what you were born to do.

It is the highest expression of your gifts.

And stepping into it creates the greatest life you can imagine, flowing with wealth, wellness, and genuine happiness.

It is your Higher Calling. But if you don’t know what it is or how it works, you can spend your life chasing shadows and suffering.

Join us for a free talk on Friday, Feb 18, when we’ll share 10 important facts you need to understand about awakening your Calling and creating your dream life in a way that naturally makes a positive difference. You’ll be glad you heard this info!

Super-Easy to Register for the Call

To register, just make sure you’re on our email list. If you’re new to us, sign up for our free kit at the top of this page and follow the directions. If you’re on our email list will receive reminders about this call and the audio afterwards.

Many blessings on your spiritual journey,

How are you like an SLR camera, and what does that have to do with living your best life? I’ll tell ya…

To register for this free call and get the audio afterwards, sign up for our free kit at the top of this page and follow the directions. If you’re already on our email list, you’ll get a reminder and notice when the audio posts.

See you on the call!

• Do you get up in the morning and do pretty much what you did yesterday?
• Do you feel like nothing you try will change the outcome of your life?
• Do you assume that what happened to you long ago has trapped you forever? (That’s a big myth!)

In the movie Groundhog Day, Bill Murray’s character falls into a time warp where no matter what crazy impulsive thing he does, even killing himself, he wakes up at exactly the same time on the same morning, over and over. 

It’s a movie of course, and the sarcastic angry character eventually shifts from manipulating his environment for the sense of power and accomplishment to genuinely connecting with those around him, esp his love interest. And it happens because this crazy time warp forces him, out of boredom, to stop looking at the surface of things.

Last week a client told me the same thing–that her life felt like the Groundhog Day movie.  Though she knew better, she observed herself every day repeating the same bad habits, the same shortcuts, the same behaviors that were keeping her stuck.  She said she felt like she lacked the power to stop repeating them. “How can I break out of that?” was her question.

Good question.

Plain and simple, I find behavior like this happens when a person is avoiding their Calling. 

It’s a very strong urge, the Calling.  It is an instinct so strong we can feel it but not always put words and actions on it. 

To block it off, to delay doing what you were born to do, to step out of your innate power, you need some serious firepower — lots of energy.  The most concentrated energy we can muster is called up by our emotions.  So the more stuck you get, the more frustrated and angry and grief-stricken and regretful and self-deprecating you get, the more you can “safely” avoid your calling.  The more you can stay attached to those things that happened in your childhood, the unfairness of life, the jealousy, the things that keep you small.  The more you can stay stuck.

BUT, Life is motion, and Life always moves forward.  As time passes, you naturally forget broken hearts, negative comments, etc.  To remember these things, you must think about them and drag in the energy of negative emotions to strengthen your connection with them.  Otherwise, your connections naturally fade.  To stay stuck in limiting habits, you need to generate negative emotion.  Unfortunatley, the side effect of this avoidance loop is that you suffer. A lot.  After a while, it feels awful and you would give anything to change it.

But suffering is not necessary. I remember when I was stuck in a similar place many years ago. I thought I would go crazy with how miserable I was, even I appeared to be living a fine life.  ONE thing pulled me through to the wonderful place I am today.  One thing.  It was that small part of me that knew, I mean it KNEW I was supposed to be doing something else.  Something greater.  Something that made a difference.  I had no idea what it was, but I hung onto that tiny bit of knowingness for dear life, and following it pulled me out of that misery and suffering. 

Can you hear or feel that tiny part of you that KNOWS you are not doing what you were meant to do?  Perhaps you even know what you are supposed to be doing, but feel helpless to break out of your current situation!

Are you ready to break free?  Are you ready to let go of the draining dramas and the tiring tirades once and for all?  The Global Institute for Awakening was founded to help you step into your Calling, the thing you were born to do.  If you aren’t following your calling, something will feel like it’s missing in your life.  You can win everything, get the job the spouse the car the house you desire, but something is still missing.  When life doesn’t satisfy, you’re missing your Calling. 

Following your Calling allows you to live the life of your dreams — full of health, wealth, wisdom, peace, love and joy – while making a big difference in the world.

I invite you to make a decision today to give up the distracting disempowerment and say yes to your Divine gifts.  To let go of the painful routine that is knowable and predictable and to say yes to allowing the Universe to blindly guide you into bliss.  To stop doubting and start trusting. To stop ignoring your gifts and acknowledge them. To stop depriving yourself of your lucrative dream life and start nourishing yourself.  Make the decision today.  Find that tiny bit of knowingness inside you that says you were meant to do something else, something greater than this.  Write your decision on paper.  Write supporting statements of intention.  And when you mean it, the Universe will answer you.

Then consider joining us for our new transformative seminar called “I Am My Calling:  How to Know and Fulfill Your Highest Calling to Create a Meaningful & Lucrative Business/Family/Life you Love that Makes a BIG Difference“.  This is more than just information!  You seek information when you’re stuck, but how do you get unstuck? 

We’re combining workshop classes with breakthrough personal work & healing work to disconnect those old connections that hold you back and align you more fully and easily with your innate Calling and divine gifts.  ”I Am My Calling” not only gives you the information, but helps you cut cords, break habits, and transition into implementing it in your life!

Learn more about this class and our earlybird registration prices here.  Class starts March 16, 2011.

•  Ever long for relief from a gift that feels like a curse?
•  Got an intuitive idea for a business you know can work… but on the other hand, don’t believe it can happen?
•  Know inside you are called to do something creative and wonderful, but you are afraid to step into it?
•  Feeling a calling… to… do… um, something… but not sure what?

We are each called to a greater expression of ourselves, but without some important information about this process, your calling can instead create pain, misery and depression.  Sign up for our email list so you can listen Wednesday to find out why that happens and how to reverse the pain and thrive with your calling.

Discover the simplest way to answer your deepest yearnings, know why you are here, and live a life of meaning, fulfillment, and purpose.  Best of all, discover why 2011 is such a great year to strengthen your commitment to your highest calling and step into it!

Register for the call and audio recording afterwards by simply signing up for our email list at the top of this page!  If you already have, you will receive a reminder just before the call and a notice about the audio later. 

Date: Wednesday January 26, 2011
Time: 11am Pacific/2pm Eastern US
Speaker:  Daria Boissonnas, Founder, Global Institute for Awakening

Imagine yourself as a small seed.

Contained in that tiny seed is the complete pattern of the full, complex plant in its greatest fruition. All the fullness of its potential beauty and delight and glory and gifts for the world is already there.  All the information it needs to fulfill its pattern and potential is there.  It lacks nothing in its essence or core pattern.

I also guarantee that a more powerful potential outcome than you can even imagine is in that seed, too.  It’s merely not realized in the physical world… yet.

All you have to do is allow what’s in that seed — the inner wisdom and full innate pattern — to unfold. It already knows how to.  It knows a zillion ways how to.  It has the information.  It has infinite potential.  Your job is simply to assist.

• To provide the most nurturing environment without suffocating or stunting growth.
• To exercise and master your ability to help without slowing the process.
• To build faith and trust in the seed’s potential and to step back and allow it to fulfill its greatest potential.

These are the seven steps of Awakening, which we practice each month here at GIA.  They are so important, we’ve provided a free ebook with more details on how to do those steps!  If you haven’t gotten a copy, sign up for it now at the top of the page.

Start now.  This is the year for your success!

2012 is coming up fast.  But people need you now.  This is the year to learn to step aside, uplevel, and let the seed that is you unfold more quickly into its greatest expression. Here are three steps to get you going:

1. Let go right now and allow the seed to be settled by gravity into its best place.  So often we are so obsessed with finding the “right” place or time that we never begin.

2. Step aside and let the rain soften the soil.  Allow the sun to shine on the growing plant, whatever it looks like in its awkward youth.  All you have is right under your nose… if you can see it.

3. Know that everything is best in the moment.  Trust that everything IS in there already and can emerge.  Trust that you have the power to help the seed within you.  Trust that the inner pattern of the seed knows a million ways to emerge and flower, and it’s hard to get in its way.  And trust that the rain, sun and other resources you need will appear as you need them.  If you find yourself worrying or getting in the way, you can actively work on building this trust.

You are a powerful being, constantly growing and increasingly fulfilling your potential.  May you enjoy many blessings on your exciting journey of growth this year!

If you are ready to make 2011 you year, we are here to make it easier and quicker for you, especially if you are here to help the world awaken.  Check out our amazing benefits HERE, and start your membership right away.

May 2011 the year you finally truly sprout your true purpose to help Awaken the planet! What can you do to start right now?  Take one simple step right now, in the next 10 minutes.

Listen to these powerful intuitive consults where Daria taps the higher wisdom of each callers to ask what steps they can take to most effectively and efficiently reach their goal.  (Sometimes, it’s surprising!) 

Sign up and you’ll get the call-in info right away, as well as the audio page where you can listen to the calls any time afterwards.

Here’s a video about last week’s amazing call: 

Sign Up for the Call & Audios

**Required.

Jump on our Holiday Sale through midnight tonight

Check out our holiday sale on your own Clear Wisdom to get a jump start on 2011!  Tap Daria’s 5 wisdoms in one consult, leave your doubt in the dust, and save hundreds of dollars, too. 

Short page with sale prices is here:   http://GIAwaken.com/clear-wisdom