Life is a dream for the soul and in every moment we have a choice to wake up or stay asleep.  It's our choice and both options carry their own joys and pains.  I can slumber into eternity as a child and tell myself I'm okay coz none of it is my fault.  I can make whichever choice I choose to make and I can enjoy it or complain about it, that's my choice too.  Free will is a choice, a string of choices, responsibility, response-ability.

In choosing to stay asleep, I can allow myself to believe that I am powerless, not responsible for any of the things happening in my life.  I can blame others for how I'm feeling, what I'm thinking, my own behaviours, my experiences, my reactions.  I can tell myself that sleeping is much better than waking up and I can keep tossing and turning through life, buffeted by its calls to wake up for as many lifetimes as I choose to.  My soul set alarms for me a very long time ago and I can choose the snooze button as often as I like, for as long as I like.  We really do have that much choice.

I myself made the choice many times during this life to stay asleep.  I thought life was a nightmare that I couldn't wake up from.  Sometimes I despaired, sometimes I cherished it, most times I told myself it wasn't happening and it wasn't my fault.  I blamed everyone around me for disturbing my slumber and barked at anyone who dared to try and wake me up.  That's what it's like when we choose to keep sleeping.  Now that I've chosen to wake up, the sun is a little bright in my newly opened eyes.  There's still a tiny bit of cognitive dissonance (aka ego) trying to persuade me to go back to sleep.  Each day presents hundreds of new opportunities to choose and I choose love, life, freedom, awareness and mindfulness.  I know the power and responsibility of choices and I'm prepared to own mine.  I don't need to blame anyone else for my choices anymore.  If I choose to think a certain way, it's my choice, nobody else makes me think!  If I choose to feel a certain way, it's my choice, nobody else makes me feel anything!  If I choose to see things a certain way, it's my choice.  I'm awake, it's my life, my responsibility.  Things that I experienced 4, 10, 25, 48 years ago are not to blame for the choices I am making now because it's always my choice.

I remember how awful it felt for me the first time I started waking up to this, to choice.  I had the most extreme reaction to it because I was convinced I had no choices, no power.  Although I had an over-developed sense of responsibility, it was mis-guided and more rescuing/disempowering of myself and others than healthy, empowering and effective.  I made the choice to wake up anyway and it hurt!  It hurt my eyes, my ears, my gut, my heart, my life, my kids, my family, my marriage, my job, my friends, my bank account and mostly, it hurt my ego.  I almost died many times in the ensuing battle to wake up and choose life.

Now I'm waking up again because when we make the choice to wake up, we simply move into another dream state.  Over and over we move through these states until eventually we are fully awake and that is a long way off for just about everyone on earth.  Wisdom leads us to keep choosing anyway and I've learned that we are all waking up, whether we like it or not.  What we get to choose is how much we enjoy it or how painful it is.  If we enjoy it, we're okay.  If we resist it, pain will remind us we have a choice.  Pain though, is not the bad guy, it's just another alarm that we can choose to wake up to or hit the snooze button on and stay asleep.  Our choice.

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Within every moment I spend in your presence,

An entire lifetime of love exists.

Within every lifetime I get to share with you,

A chain of whole moments come together in their own sensual dance of is-ness.

Within every look you send my way,

An entire conversation exists without words.  

Within every conversation,

A look exists beyond what the eyes think they see.

Within every dream I have of you,

An awakening exists that calls to my soul.

Within every awakening that you call to my soul,

My soul calls to yours in tandem.

Within every breath is a heartbeat,

Strong, sure, healthy and determined.

Within every heartbeat is a breath, 

And it tastes sweeter than any candy.

Within every ending their is a beginning, 

A choice to do it all again.

Within every moment I spend with you,

I know I'd go through it all repeatedly, 

To be here with you in the end.

I love you

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ॐ ॐ ॐॐ ॐ ॐ

lokah samasta sukhino bhavantu

#innerchild #mindfulness #inspiration #healing #awakening #light #selflove #soul #unity #gratitude  #mythoughts #livinglife #love #remembering #beingreal  #divinity #gabriel #healingtrauma #follow4follow #spiritual #faith #faithful #god #grace #spirituality #trust #peace #hope #wisdom #compassion #forgiveness #thankful #knowledge #meditation #meditate #guidance

Just for today I'm going to free myself up to be aware of how many times I speak of beauty.  There were so many times in this life that I silenced myself and drew to me others who silenced me to reflect myself back to me.  At the time I could only see them and their 'abuse' of me as my ego would have me blame everyone and everything else for my pain instead of learning how to recognise the fear that created my anguish.  Michael Leunig says there are only two feelings: Love and fear.  I agree with him wholeheartedly.  There are many many emotions that set of chemical reactions inside of my being to lead me to my truth.  I believe that these two feelings live underneath those emotions, igniting me either to 'do' or to 'be'.  

When I first began to ponder this, the cognitive dissonance I faced inside was huge.  I'd only just discovered I had feelings and I was 38 years old!!! I was not about to whittle them down to just 2 when such an array of emotions presented so attractively within me to dazzle and distract.  Anytime something was too much to bear, I could just blame emotion for my behaviour now right?  Although I embraced the idea, something felt a little 'off' about it too.  For me, the idea that there are only 2 feelings felt simple and as someone who has mastered complicated in this life, I love simplicity, so I continued to allow Leunig's theory to gestate within me and pop into my consciousness regularly.  In those early days I got pedantic about it and grabbed hold of it like a dog with a slipper: is this love or fear?  Let's not much around.  I then saw how I was not feeling better sometimes and decided to relax and explore emotions further.  There was such a huge array and I slowly began to let myself experience each one as it arose within me: anger, contentment, frustration, peace, guilt, freedom, shame, joy, blame, happiness, sadness, bliss, grief, cheer, and many others before I eventually found the core emotion I had carried throughout this lifetime - rage.  

There are many learned people in the world who say that rage begins in infancy.  When the energy of emotion is activated in an infant, the only way they can possibly release this energy is through crying as their bodies to not move much in the first few months aside from the occasional startle reflex.  In most of our cultures on earth, we soothe infants to stop them cringe believing that cries are somehow painful or not okay.  What if those cries are muscle-strengthening for our emotional system?  Each time emotion is activated, the body is prepared for action on a subconscious level but infants can't act, they can barely move at all and their only option is to cry it out.  I come along and soothe baby which then means the energy recedes but where to?  That energy actually gets stored in the muscles, in the diaphragm, in the pelvis, in the body, anywhere possible so that homeostasis (balance) can be restored quickly.  This happens every single time a baby has any e-motion!! Over time that energy builds up and what do you know, at about two years of age it begins erupting out again, usually in the form of tantrums.  Our culture steps in again to soothe it chastise this away, not recognising the natural need for this release of pent up energy.

I've worked back to release most of the trapped emotional energy that had fixed within me since infancy.  Even my physiotherapist had spoken of how the muscles of my body had never learned to work normally due to tapped emotional energy from infancy getting in the way of healthy motor range.  I thought at the time he was crazy but with the physical healing I experience constantly from previously believed disabilities and from agony, I see his wisdom.  I took it back to rage in infancy and before, in the womb and when I did, something amazing happened.  My heart opened into the beauty and wonder of my own amazing ability to live and breathe.  I then began to see past myself, my ego, to the spectacular and infinite miracle of creation.  I see past the emotions now to the feelings and beyond. Although it sometimes still takes a few hours, I see the beauty of every agony now, the gift in every pain.  I've spent decades seeing the tragedy of every trauma and the agony of every abuse but now I see so much more.  I see there is a blessing in each too.  I spent the last 12 years trying to create a better world, aka: a world that worked how I wanted it to.  A loving, kind world where trauma wasn't possible and abuse did not exist.  Now I am learning to accept the world for what it is and create all that within myself instead.  To create an inner world where my inner child can release the emotion, move in this body, throw tantrums, self soothe and move instead into joy, bliss and peace.  I'm delighted to say it's working too.  Everything about me is moving more freely now and my hearts sings with joy every day that I'm alive.  I still have moments when I blame and sulk, as anyone does.  I'm okay with that as I want to be naturally me not some perfect caricature if myself.  Just for today I'm going to free myself up to be aware of how many times I speak of beauty.  More muscle strengthening supporting the neurons in my brain to build a path to peace.  My infant self is now naturally free to be naturally me.

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ॐ ॐ ॐॐ ॐ ॐ

lokah samasta sukhino bhavantu

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I'm so grateful to have been of service today.  The more I serve, the more my heart opens.  Although I serve two or three days each week already, today really helped me to feel 'useful' for the first time in almost 18 months.  It was only a bit of data entry but I actually felt like I was capable at something and that is a gift in my life.  While using this time post-trauma to more fully explore my feelings, awareness, body, spirituality and life purpose, it's been lonely and scary at times and, my confidence disappeared altogether last year after experiencing some nastiness directed at me.  It's been a long road but I'm really feeling positive and, my perception of 'service' has grown along with the rest of me.  I'm thankful every day For this opportunity to rise above, find my bliss, forgive myself and others for every painful experience I've had, learn more love, draw closer to God, surrender more ego, spend more time relaxing, nurture my body, create an ultra healthy lifestyle and forge more lasting relationships with people I care about.  I'm so grateful to myself, my soul, my inner child, my husband, the few people who still speak to me, the new people in my life who accept me for who I really am and to God for drawing me towards more service all those months ago when everything felt so hopeless and terrifying.  Re-birthing is one of the hardest things I've ever done and it's not any easier the second or third times, it's just different.  I'm proud of myself now.  I knew I'd make it and I used every tool I've ever learned to support myself.  I now feel so confident in my self-parenting skills and, although I was sure before all this that my inner child was one very lucky little girl to have me as a parent, I've really taken it up a notch now.

Everything has expanded within my consciousness and there is very little pain left inside me now.  Allowing every trauma to arise, flow and leave through me has been incredible, empowering, challenging, intriguing, daunting, wonderful, immobilising at times, harrowing, brilliant, beneficial, tragic and wondrous.  I don't even know how to describe the beauty I believe life to be anymore.  This miracle that I get to breathe in and out every day is magnificent and in this moment, the two people I thank the most are my mother and father.  Regardless of their skill or lack of skill as parents, it was they who made it possible for me to come into this life.  I breathe because of them and I truly appreciate their gift, perhaps today for the first time ever.  

Whatever this moment is becoming I know that I can say I have healed fully from childhood abuse and trauma.  It IS possible, it does happen and it's happening to me.  I'm grateful at a profound level for every moment of my life and my soul knows the gifts hidden within the perception I had of pain.  Now I see the diamonds and I'm not afraid of the dark anymore.  Last week I stood in a room with a big huntsman spider on the wall in front of me and I apologised to it because I still felt some fear in seeing it.  I marvelled at this woman who has had a phobic terror of spiders for over 47 years standing talking to one and sending it love.  The old me would have left the room in terror or asked someone to kill the poor thing immediately.  The me now is grateful to all the spiders who came to help that terror release from my body, mind and spirit.  The me now accepts the creator within that represents the spiders without.  The now me has blended the Light with the Shadow inside and is weaving a web of indescribable grace around and within me.

Yes, serving today has profoundly opened me up all over again to the millions of ways just breathing in love and breathing out love is service.  Namaste.

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ॐ ॐ ॐॐ ॐ ॐ

lokah samasta sukhino bhavantu

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How much do you trust your 'gut', your intuition, your Self?

I thought I had to really work at trusting me and especially over the past two weeks, I've been affirming "I trust myself" 108x a day with my mala.  The other day it was pointed out to me that I'm very good at trusting my intuition and as I went to grab the story' I had attached to that truth, this angel corrected me.  She pointed out that from hearing my other stories over the past few years, she could easily see that in very adept at trusting my gut and have been for most of my life.  Thanks to the 'story' and her ability to not only listen but to trust her own gut, I have spent some time this week reflecting on why I did not see it this way myself.  I don't blame myself or anyone else for my perception being as different as it needed to be.  I'm grateful that I'm seeing it now.  It was my dietician that pointed it out to me and I was immediately able to recognise how food had been one tool that had helped me to learn that trust.

During my youth I would think about what I wanted to eat and my gut would react.  If I thought of having a meal and felt sick at the thought, I would think of another food.  Sometimes I'd think of up to 20 or 30 foods before I would find one that made my spirit leap in my heart but, I have chosen my meals this way for about 35 years now and any time I did not listen, I would suffer so I've listened intently.  In this past two year particularly, I've been able to expand on this gift to intuit flavours I've never tried before and blend them in ways I hadn't previously heard of.  In essence, I'm expanding my intuition beyond my physical and mental comprehension and embracing my claircognizance, an ability I had not previously been aware was called what it was.  I knew I was able to merge with the collective consciousness and unconsciousness and I marvelled at how easily it happened.  Now as I breathe into it more, I am finding more of myself in the process and am grateful for the guidance of my School to help keep me safe while I grow.

My intuition has never let me down.  When I began exploring the concept of the Inner Child, I adopted the belief that my Inner Child, as my emotional self, was simply the spiritual self I needed to parent.  I accepted that as a Child of God I was a spiritual being born into a world that did not know how to raise Angels.  It was now time for me to re-parent myself knowing that was who I was and protecting, nurturing, loving that precious, innocent part of myself.  As soon as I accepted that as my truth, other facets of my personality came to my consciousness demanding my attention and before I knew it, my unconscious had become conscious.  I became aware of parts of my psyche that I did and did not like.  Some parts I rejected initially, only to recognise along the way that I wanted to be unconditional Love and my gut told me that to do that, i needed to love each part of myself unconditionally.  All around me I saw patterns begin to emerge and coalesce into signs that I could use to guide my growth.  I became afraid so I put safety guards into place to protect myself spiritually, just in case.  I figured that as I didn't know much about spirituality or religion, I'd best be ultra careful and I prayed constantly for guidance and protection, being very mindful of the words I uttered.  I became more aware of the songs I sang along to in order to create peace for myself as I reasoned that for me, my words are prayers and so I wanted to be careful even when singing along to songs to not invite the wrong energies in.  All of this I intuited from my amazing Self.  Because I was filled with a lot of self doubt and a lack of confidence, I drew to me many people and experiences that supported my doubts and rests and created opportunities for me to embed and strengthen the neural pathways that told me I was worthless, crazy and incompetent.  My gut led me to resist as best I could, with Love.  Surrounded by hostility, bias, blame, judgment and disbelief, I still clung to my own belief that it's possible to be Love in any situation no matter what the experience.  Many times I faltered and fell back, toppling into fear, chastising and beating up on myself for my perceived foolishness but my gut kept prompting.  That little voice inside was so persistent and compelling and I wanted to believe.  Like a light leading me home, it glowed softly within me and whenever I faltered it would shine suddenly brighter to grab my atttention back and lead me home again to the love in my heart.

While I'm very aware that there are thousands of modalities, religions, belief systems, practices and concepts in this world that might explain my gift one way or another and some of them would even say my gift was not a blessing, not 'good', not advisable, and even 'wrong', I know in my own heart it is Love and Light for me.  My 'gut' has never, ever, ever steered me wrong and it is my very best and truest friend, my lifelong companion and my staunchest ally.  It brought me together with my incredible and amazing husband; it comforts my anxieties; it spurs me into courage when I'm afraid; it draws me up to my full height inside when I'm slumped over my self in weariness or distress; it has called me home to my Divinity in more ways and in more moments than I can count or recall.  Whatever I or anyone else calls it, it is what has kept me alive to this date; led me to strive for better; taught me to love; filled me with compassion; fuelled my passions; loved my children; brought me friends; created abundance; manifested joy; taught me lessons and brought God to life within me.  I trust that, I trust me, I trust life and I trust my intuition.  Right now I'm so very grateful for the 'stories' that I told that allow angels to help me awaken more fully and to my intuition for spurring me into telling those stories so the opportunity opens up for me to bring that extra guidance in.

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ॐ ॐ ॐॐ ॐ ॐ

lokah samasta sukhino bhavantu

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Have you ever had the sense that you're walking a mile in the shoes of someone you've judged before?

Walking a mile in someone else's shoes may be painful at times but oh how beautifully enriching too.  A few years ago I went through something difficult and as I stood crying over my own plight, I saw clearly in my minds eye how I had once judged others for the way they handled the same situation.  I instantly knew in my heart that I was walking a mile in their shoes for my judgment.  Maybe fear was playing a hand here but fear is ego and ego had a purpose too.  Ego is not just something to get rid f or kill off for me as if I do that, I'm feeding it more energy that I don't want to.  I prefer to embrace my ego as a friend these days knowing that my Inner Child is a fundamental part of my ego too and I will do nothing to consciously cause her harm.  Since that day I have become more mindfully aware of the judgments I make and how unfounded any of them were/are.  We are each doing the best we can in any given moment and, I can only see who I am in other people.  I may struggle to accept that at times but my resistance doesn't change the truth, it just masks it, hides it from me so I can stay comfortable in my ignorance.  Feeding my ego this way is like stuffing comfort food into the mouth of a toddler and is really unhealthy over time.  The empty calories of distractions and the tasteless satisfaction of righteousness without love do little for the mind, body or spirit and over time, will create carcinogenic behaviours within my bodies.  I still have a choice though over which thoughts I choose to think and which feelings I choose to feel.  I can choose to only acknowledge and experience the sugary thoughts and feelings that create fluffy fullness on my palate.  I can choose only the salty, bitter thoughts and feelings that curl my taste buds into acrid and angry isolation on the fringes of life.  I can even choose to only experience manufactured and processed thoughts and feelings that mimic reality in ways I don't need to work too hard to Xperience and can blame others for providing to me.  What I know now is that I choose nature - the natural thoughts and feelings that come and go like plants, trees, insects, birds and like nature herself, leaving precious footprints within and without that I can use as a path to wholeness, wellness, fulfilment and joy.  

Judgment is neither good or bad, it just is.  When my judgments are harsh they are showing me something I have yet to make peace with in and about myself.  When I judge something favourably it is also a pointer to myself and the qualities I have in me to admire, a great place to start building self love.  I can use judgment to separate myself from the rest of my world and feed my ego empty calories or, I can accept that the upside of judgment is discernment.  Discernment helps me to be safe and loving, to navigate the moment as it is instead of as my ego/fear tells me it could, should, ought or must be.  Judgments are like feelings, simply messengers for me to discover more about myself so that I am free to choose.  More and more my eidetic memory, which has recalled every thought and feeling I've ever had, is showing me those judgments more and more and I'm using those memories to create more love.  With focus, intention, Ho'oponopono and Love, I'm finding peace, bliss, joy and gratitude fills most of my time and I like it.  I feel blessed to have the awareness I have now and the judgments I made in yester-moments have helped me to get here too.

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ॐ ॐ ॐॐ ॐ ॐ

lokah samasta sukhino bhavantu

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Practice

In my 'sleep' I mastered the art of beating up on myself, judging myself, hating myself and stifling the very Light of who I was.  The inner Critic, critical parent, shadow self, wounded child, adapted rebel child and rescuing disempowering parent parts of my ego/psyche had carte blanche in my mind to behave as they wanted because I was completely unaware of the existence of any such thing and, I believed I was completely powerless to change it.  I simply believed I was crazy and I had no concept of how hardship or trauma could in any way be positive, useful or a blessing to anyone, especially to me.  A couple of amazing lovelies have reminded me today of how precious it can be to start waking up to life and how much having a guide can help in that, someone real enough to share their journey to love.  There are many people in the world who think like I used to and do not want to change it, or do not know how to change it and may never choose to learn and I applaud the path they are on and their conviction in following their own path.  Mastering what I did has been the catalyst for my pendulum to be able to swing across to the opposite side of that criticism so that I could, using my own analogy, create my own 'goal posts' for myself.  Once I set my posts in, I then have an area to kick my 'ball' into that I can use as a guide.   For me now, I have self hatred as one post and self love as the other.  I can 'kick my ball' towards those two posts and know that I'm roughly within the boundaries of where I want to be.  Like the AFL football in Victoria that I grew up following, I have a couple of surrounding posts on either side of these which allow me to excuse any wide kicks as okay and adding to my 'score'.  Every now and then I will also kick outside the line and get penalised but I can come back into the centre and kick off again.  With practice, I can get better at it all and one day, if I choose to, I can master the game of me.  Mastery though is not about reaching some goal of perfection, for me it's about being real and authentic, accepting who I am and loving myself as that.

What I've really learned is that practice is the key.  Practice is what creates mastery.  Although I once found it easy to view life as a string of abuses, challenges, accidents, miseries, traumas, sufferings, stuff ups, mistakes, agonies and tortures, I now see it all as practice.  Each of those things separately and combined was an opportunity for me to practice being me and sometimes it felt good while other times it didn't.  Ultimately though, each one was still just practice.  I learned really helpful things and forgot them, repeatedly - practice; I made the same mistakes a thousand times - practice; I tried hard and thought I got nowhere - practice; I saw others make mistakes and judged them for it - their practice; I hit brick wall after brick wall - practice.  

We do have a choice in any given moment to change our perceptions if we want to.  That choice only becomes available through awareness, if I'm not aware of something why or how would I change it anyway?  When we become aware of how critical we are, we can choose to change it, I know I did.  Imagine how someone you love would react if you spoke to them the way you criticise yourself!  Picture a beloved child, grandchild, niece, nephew, or student of yours at a young age being spoken to with that tone, those words, that look and imagine how they would slump in dejection or retaliate in rebellion; how they would squash down who they are in order to escape your criticism.  Now imagine taking it back or apologising; saying sorry and changing it to something more positive, affirming and less judgmental.  Imagine telling them how proud you are of them for practising their mastery in such a creative and unique way and imagine you are meaning what you say.  I practice this and I love the joy in my heart as I do.

I invite you now to think of one thing that you have criticised yourself for lately and to lovingly remind yourself that you were just practising.  Make a choice today to change your criticisms into supporting and empowering self love and set your goal posts today.  If you'd like to share how it goes in the comments below, you might even inspire someone else to practice their mastery too.

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ॐ ॐ ॐॐ ॐ ॐ

lokah samasta sukhino bhavantu

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Faith

Faith is something I'm still strengthening.  Each moment for me is another opportunity to open my heart to more Love through faith: faith that life will hold me; faith that my belief in myself is solid; faith that Love is real; faith that my breath will sustain my body; faith that my legs will hold me up; faith that nature is the miracle I experience it as; faith that my heart will heal if it breaks.  It takes courage to have faith and it takes faith to have courage, even if it's unconscious faith.  I don't believe faith has to be about religion or even spirituality.  I think faith is about trust - trusting what I can't see, touch, taste or hear.  Faith for me is about trusting myself, trusting that what I believe is real  IS real for me.  When I have faith in others, I'm trusting my own beliefs.  When I trust that my legs will hold me up, I'm trusting my own beliefs.  When I trust that life will hold me, I can't see it, it's only my beliefs I'm trusting.  

My trust has changed with my faith.  The things I trust now are different to the things I trusted ten years ago or in my childhood.  My beliefs have changed since then as they should.  Even religion tells us to change our beliefs between childhood and adulthood.  Spirituality also requires that we expand (change) our beliefs to expand our consciousness.  As our beliefs change, so too does our faith.  For me it expands like the air that I breathe expands within my lungs.  Breathing in faith and breathing out faith keeps me totally grounded in this moment.  It takes faith in myself to give myself so fully to my breath and I had to practice as, like most people who experienced extreme and repeated trauma for decades, I shallow breathe a lot.  Even now, I need to focus to be mindful of my breathing.  Shallow breathing activates the adrenals which physically increases anxiety and I don't need that so I've been doing grounding exercises for the past five years that focus on the body and the breath.  I'm now practising pranayama thanks to Guru Shakti Durga here in Australia who knows the intricate balance required for a healthy, calm mind and body and teaches therapists to support healing in people of all ages for any reason that presents, whether physical, emotional, psychological, energetic or spiritual.

My level of faith changes daily from strength to strength and I love how I get to see the strength of it too.  I find that many opportunities arise for me to either believe I'm being tested, attacked or punished (like I used to believe) or to believe that it's just life proving to me that yes my faith is strong now, stronger than yesterday, stronger than last time I experienced something similar.  I accept now that there is no punishment from life, life just is and only my faith, my beliefs, make it anything other than what it is.  I'm choosing to believe it's the same with people now too.  I'm not a saint, I forget a lot of times but I have faith that this will become my 'set-point' one day.  I know that one day my instinctual brain will accept it if I practice it enough in myself, I have faith, I believe I can achieve it.  I'm excited, I feel blessed and I'm filled with peace and joy just thinking about being this me that I've always been underneath my old lack of faith.

I've supported many people now who are valiantly trying to heal from trauma, some of it horrendous.  What many don't realise when they set out to find relief is that their beliefs and core values will be challenged and, in order for healing to occur, this challenge must take place inside.  It's the maturation of the egoic self and it's rarely easy.  It's the reason we need support while healing, the reason we can't do it completely alone.  The road to healing is fraught with perils and support can make a huge difference.  Allowing our beliefs to be challenged within is the start of something wonderful but the ego resists with all its got at first and pushing through can be exhausting, terrifying, challenging and also incredible, amazing and oh so worth it.  I have pushed through many times now and literally fell through many others and without fail, on the other side of my pain and fear every single time has been joy.  As I learn more and more about who I am on every level, I become more aware of how valuable I am to myself and my life and just how important it has been for me to challenge my old beliefs and to have faith, in myself and in life.  What do you have faith in right now?

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It can be easy to get caught up in believing that things are terrible, that there's no hope or that things can't get better/worse than they are but in any moment we each have the chance to start over.  In that moment the brain responds best to simplicity, to keeping it small.  You may have heard the term "tiny baby steps".  There's a reason why this idea has surfaced in the collective conscious.  The brain, when faced with change, physically reacts because it has to 'do something different' and it prefers to do things automatically.  It has so much to do in order that we function well: heartrate, breathing, temperature, hunger, thirst, impulses, action, reaction, instincts, procreation.  Our brain does so much that we are usually not aware of and when we throw something new into the mix, it has to juggle and adapt.  The smaller the step we add, the more easily our brain assimilates the new thing and this gives it the opportunity to keep humming happily along at the same time.

A small thing might be something as simple as noticing my own thoughts or feelings; noticing energy in my body; seeing or hearing something a different way.   Mindfulness is what creates change for the brain and there are many opportunities in life to create more mindfulness.  When I reflect I see how much I once considered these opportunities traumatic because my minds ability to cope was overwhelmed.  The shift in awareness was so big that my mind/ego thought it would not survive intact.  When that happens, the ego believes it is facing its Armageddon, and that it is dying a death it can neither escape or fathom.  This can seem to happen once in a lifetime or hundreds of times each day.  It actually happens in each and every moment as one moment is all that really exists.  In this moment, we are born to our egoic self and we die again too, to be reborn into this new moment all over again.  Like Groundhog Day we get to do it all again, over and over until we have created enough tiny baby steps to make a lasting difference.  We have awakened the sleeping giant within and ignited our prefrontal cortex to enable higher functioning. This change in itself is gargantuan and can feel to the mind/ego a bit like the 'Big Bang' or like the asteroid that wiped out the dinosaurs.  

We each reach this holocaust of our minds, this time of pruning and pairing in order to awaken more fully into who we are.  We each react in different ways to it and we will each judge others for the way they act, react, cope and function.  Eventually we will see that we and everyone around us is doing the same thing, the same way and that it's only our own perception of everything that is changing.  Groundhog Day only ends when we wake up to the true beauty we don't yet perceive in ourselves and our world.  Learning to love unconditionally whatever we perceive is one way we can wake up and truly enjoy what is.

Today I choose to take one more small baby step towards loving myself unconditionally.  I'm on day 14 of using my affirmation: "I trust myself" and each day of that has given me one more thing to accept about me in support of assimilating this 'truth' into my awareness.  What one step will you choose today to move a little closer to Unconditional Love for yourself?

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Today I want to share my experience of a food angel with you.  Sharon Honson is a dietician in Cessnock, New South Wales, Australia.  I first began seeing her in late 2014 when my gp gave me a care plan as a 45+ obese woman with complex health issues.  I disliked dieticians back then because I had formed judgments around them that I told myself it was okay to have.  As I was still a bit unaware then of my own attitude towards my body and diet, I didn't know that I was drawing people to me that reflected my own lack of compassion and understanding for myself.  I blamed and judged them for mirroring what I needed to see on myself.  In stepped Sharon.  I thought I knew what I needed to about diet but I went along in order to discover if there were some things I could tweak.  My blood tests had shown my cholesterol was up and I was determined I was not going to begin medicating for it.  Armed with my usual mistrust and lofty attitude, I showed up ready to tell her how to help me and to my amazement she listened and agreed.  I'd never had that from a dietician before.  I'd grown used to either being firm or being silent and I'd never felt understood and heard before.  Again, I didn't know that now I'd changed my view of myself to a more loving one, I attracted more kindness to me.

In the two years since then I've seen her about 10 times.  When my free visits ran out, I paid to see her.  When I felt compelled to leave my beloved job, she held the space for me to break open without malice; when I found that I needed to remove all animal products, stimulants and sweeteners of any kind from my diet, she helped me explore my options; when I found I needed more natural drinks, she gave me nettles to make the tea I liked; when I beat up on myself for only eating tinned vegatables due to having no other option for months, she reminded me of how fabulously I was doing given my circumstances (no electricity); when I moved back into town and began creating incredible meals, she applauded me and asked for recipes and tips; I was treated with respect, dignity and compassion always and it was perfectly timed for me.

Sharon knows what she's doing.  She is smart, learned, lives her own philosophy and has a very big heart.  I cannot rate her highly enough as a human being and as a professional.  If you live anywhere near Cessnock and you need a dietician for ANY reason, please do yourself a favour and get in to see Sharon.  I may not see her again because my visits are now up and I'm moving next year but I will be staying in touch.  I'll still be sharing new recipes and recalling the food angel that held a space for me when I broke in two and learned to love my body again.

Sharon Honson

 117-119 Vincent St

Cessnock, New South Wales 2325

Australia

0417 203 261

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