Category: Awareness

Posted on

Winter – A time for reflection and visioning

December marks the beginning of the winter season. The light wanes here in the Northern Hemisphere, and cooler temperatures dominate the day. 

It is a time of deep silence and retreat, when Nature stops, rests and gathers strength and wisdom for the coming burst of new life in the spring. In the silence of winter, is the opportunity to discover your own essence, deep in your heart. 

Many years ago in my spiritual guidance training, we learned that our soul lives in our deep heart—the area of our heart that is beyond our ego and everyday experience. It is the deep heart, where our soul lives, that whispers to us guidance on how to live our most fulfilling life, far beyond what our minds can imagine.

Each winter, Nature calls us to stop, go within, and reconnect with the wisdom of our own heart. It is there that our soul can share with us what we long to hear—the way to live a truly glorious life that allows us to bring out our full potential and live our deepest purpose.

Our soul follows the same seasonal rhythms as Nature. It goes through a rebirth just like most of the natural world. For our soul, winter is a time of letting go, clearing out all that has been from the previous seasons, and creating space for what wishes to be birthed in the coming year. If we take the time to go deeply within and cultivate inner silence, we will start to hear what our soul longs to create in the coming year.

The challenge that many of us face in December is the pull of many outward demands on our time: attending holiday gatherings, completing end-of-year work activities, entertaining guests, shopping for gifts, spending time with our families and friends. These demands can put us in direct conflict with the soul’s call to go inward. Very few of us can take the time to completely step out of our lives and turn deeply inward to commune with our soul.

And then January hits and most people scurry to set New Year’s Resolutions that, for the most part, don’t last much longer than February. When I was a gym member, I used to see the numbers of people at the gym spike in January, but wain by February.

Why not try something different this year?

There is a beautiful practice I am offer as a process to support your soul through this winter season. It has four steps, which you can do at your own pace, but ideally should be spaced out a few days apart to allow for time to distill the learning from each step.

  1. Harvest the seeds of the life you have lived
    • Take time to reflect on the past year and journal the answers to these questions.
      • What were your most important events and learnings?
      • How did those events influence and change you?
      • What are the learnings you will take forward into the New Year?
  2. Create space for the new life
    • Go through the different areas of your life and clean out everything that no longer has life or connection for you. You can do this literally by cleaning out your closets, desk drawers, files and cabinets. Unless you make space for a new life, there will be no room for something new to be birthed.
  3. Practice tuning into your deep heart—your soul
    • The birthing process takes time; it doesn’t happen overnight. Cultivate a daily practice of meditation, spending time in Nature, tuning in—whatever allows you to be in the silent space within where you can hear the whisperings of your soul. Practice patience.
  4. Sort out what is essential versus what is not
    • Evaluate all you are doing and identify what you can let go of. Simplify your life so that you make more time and space to support your inner process. Creation is a two-stage process. It occurs first internally before it occurs externally. The more you can support what is unfolding internally, the more you will start to see it occurring externally without effort. You will be attracting what is needed to support your soul’s unfoldment.

I encourage you to try this process and see how it impacts your life. In a time when there is so much pressure to “do,” the process will help you “be.” Being is a much more joyous experience and will help you attract what you need to live a fulfilling soul-directed life.

This winter season, I invite you to dive deep and connect with your soul so you can birth a more fulfilling life in 2024. I’ve created a worksheet that I share with my clients at the end of each year to help them create a heart-directed vision for the coming year. You can download it here if you would like to use it to guide you on creating your vision for 2024.

Posted on

The Wall

The fear gripped me; I could barely breathe. As I looked up at my white-knuckled hand frantically grasping the fraying root, I searched with hawk-like intensity the cliff wall for another handhold. A part of me knew that at any minute the root would snap, and I would plummet into the black yawning abyss below. Tears streamed down my face as I sobbed and gasped for air through my constricted throat. My chest felt as if 200 pounds were pressing down on it. I was sure that at any moment the end would come.

With my free hand I probed the cliff wall, desperately seeking any possible other handhold. There had to be something else I could grab to feel safe, but I was unable to find anything in the crumbling burnt-red cliff wall.

Below my feet dangled in the vast airiness of the chasm. I could feel the void calling me, pulling me down. The voice in my head seemed to be coming from the black abyss below, “Just let go. It will be alright.”

How often over the past decades of my life had I heard that voice deep inside, and how often had my ego-personality responded in terror and resistance? I believed that letting go would mean death—dissolution, like a snail in salted water…dissolved away into nothingness…to fall forever in the darkness and emptiness…to become the emptiness…to be nothing. I fought even harder and clawed at the cliff. Anything is better than nothingness, even terror.

Why was this voice so sure that letting go would be alright? My ego-mind was completely baffled. Surely I would die. With every slip of my hand on the root, I was more sure of that fate. The fear-ball in the pit of my stomach validated that outcome. And yet the voice persisted.

All these years the situation has been the same. I find myself clinging to a crumbling reality, my ego believing that death is eminent. And the voice has always been there telling me that everything is alright and to just let go. Insane. How could “falling” be “alright?” How could “death” be “alright!?” Yet something, some small quiet place inside me knew that the voice spoke truth. My grip relaxed, and I slipped just a bit. Panic. My grip tightened.

Why do we struggle against letting go and trusting that deep inner voice that is trying to guide us? Why is letting go into the effortlessness of “falling” so terrifying to us that we stay clinging to the most devastating situations that hurt and disrespect who we are? We think we are “safe.” But we are trapped on our cliff wall of illusion, forever clinging to the imagined safety of our cliff-reality.

The ego-personality seems be obsessed with clinging to something, anything outside itself for validation, safety and “love.” Yet, never is true fulfillment achieved from that endless struggle. The sages say that fulfillment and true liberation come from within, from that black “abyss” inside us that seems so empty. How can that be? How can fulfillment come from emptiness? My ego-mind reels from the paradox and clings more feverishly to my cliff-reality. I slip a little further.

In the end, I’ll fall, whether I let go or just give up. I know that without doubt. And I also know at my deepest awareness—that small quiet place inside me—that falling will be a relief…a letting go of effort and struggle and pain. How long can I hold on? How long will I hold on? How long will my ego-personality continue to struggle and toil away searching and grasping for the perceived safety and love on the crumbling cliff-wall of my reality?

Salvation only exists in the letting go and trusting that the void that lives at the core of my being will set me free. It’s up to me when I choose to let go and fall into Love.

Posted on

The Impact of Conditioning: How You Are Limiting Your Possibilities

Likely most of you have seen this picture at some point. It’s been around for many years. I used it 20 years ago when I taught Stephen Covey’s landmark personal effectiveness workshop, Seven Habits of Highly Effective People.

We would divide the workshop participants into two groups. One half would close their eyes, and we would briefly show the other half a similar drawing but was clearly an old lady with a scarf on her head. Then we would switch and have the other half briefly see a similar line drawing but was clearly a young lady wearing a necklace. We then had the entire group see this picture and asked them what they saw.

Almost unanimously those that had been shown either the young or old lady would immediately see the same lady in this picture. Many really struggled to see the opposite lady. We would even have to trace with our pointer the outline of the other lady to help their minds grasp the alternative reality in the picture. It was fascinating to see how easily everyone was “conditioned” to see a specific image!

This simple yet powerful exercise demonstrated how we see only what we are conditioned to see! True to Covey’s words,

“We see the world as we are, not as it is.”

The latest neuroscience research confirms this disturbing reality as it has discovered that as much as 80% of our behaviors are driven by our unconscious conditioning. This unconscious conditioning dramatically shapes our reality and therefore greatly influences our response to that “reality.” What we see in the world and how we respond depends on whether we have been conditioned to see either “the old lady” or “the young lady.”

But the truth is both the old lady and the young lady exist. Both “realities” exist, illuminating that there are many ways to see the world—to see reality. This simple exercise of how unconscious conditioning limits a person’s ability to see alternative perspectives begs the questions…

What are you not seeing in your life?

What opportunities are you missing?

What creative solutions are blind to you?

What do you perceive about your relationships that are shaped by your conditioning from earlier experiences?

What if the solutions to your challenges were right in front of you but you couldn’t see them?

With a limited perspective of reality, you hinder your ability to find creative solutions, see opportunities, respond to situations, and make truly conscious choices.

You are victim to your unconscious conditioning, reacting to situations in the same way over and over again, missing alternative perspectives that could potentially give you insight to a more creative, fulfilling and successful outcome…and life!

So how do you release your conditioning in order to expand your perception and interpretation of reality?

It starts with awareness.

The more you can stand apart from your thoughts, feelings and judgments, the more you can observe and be at choice. This takes practice and patience. Your conditioning has been functioning automatically for many years, and it will take time to “decondition” yourself. A regular meditation practice is incredibly helpful to cultivate this ability. If you don’t have one, you can start by sitting and focusing on your breath for 5 minutes each morning. This is an easy practice that can yield a huge return.

Be curious about a perspective that is different than yours.

If you “see the old lady” and someone else “sees the young lady,” be excited and inquisitive! Seek to really understand their perspective. This practice can foster a genuine curiosity in life—the key to eliminating judgment and evaluation which lock you into a limited perspective. Practice makes permanent; so the more you can seek first to understand instead of sharing your perspective, the more you will open yourself to other “realities.” You’ll start to cultivate the ability to see both the old lady and the young lady…and who knows what else?