The Weight of False Beliefs

We all have false beliefs and it can be an arduous task to release ourselves from their grip on our lives. False beliefs limit us, holding us back from living freely and from our truest selves. Because we are often unaware of them, they rule our lives like insidious little demons that seek to sabotage us. The good news is we can release them, and when we do, we lighten our load immensely.

So how do we release ourselves from the grip of our false beliefs? First, we set the intention to observe ourselves throughout the day. We become aware of what motivates our actions. Once we witness ourselves in action enough times, we often come to see that there is a core false belief at work that drives our thoughts and emotions, and brings tension and contraction into our bodies. For example, once I brought awareness to the way I approached decisions, I began to notice the underlying motivations that drove them. I could see that I often asked others for their opinions covertly because I didn’t trust my own ability to make decisions that served me. When I saw this occurring repeatedly in my life, I realized that the underlying false belief is that I can’t make good decisions, that I am flawed in decision-making. I then intuited that this was due to a core false belief that I am wrong and incapable of making decisions for myself. Once I had awareness of this core false belief, I saw how it ruled so much of my life. How I interacted with others, how I limited myself because I feared the outcomes of my own decisions. My core false belief was like a silent snake that slithered throughout much of my life keeping me small and contracted.

The work of releasing false beliefs is the work of a lifetime. It is not easy, nor is it effortless, but it is the greatest gift you can give yourself and the people in your life. Each time you release a false belief you invite in more space for your Essence to come forward. It’s an amazing way to honor your humanity and your inner child that often created the beliefs out of necessity early in life. We can offer ourselves compassion for having false beliefs, and in doing so, we also open our hearts to others knowing that creating these beliefs is part of the human condition. Afterall, we are both human and divine and doing the inner work to lighten the load of our human selves, opens the door for more of our divinity to shine through.

A Call to Live Communally

Recent events here in Minnesota have brought community to the forefront of my heart and mind once again. As I witness neighbors protecting each other and sharing food, transportation, and resources, I’m reminded that we are often at our best during times of tragedy. I can’t help but wonder why we often don’t lead with open hearts during the quieter times in life. Why must our backs be against a wall to begin sharing and coming together in a deep way? Why do we go back to living separately when we see how generous, beautiful, and loving we are when we come together?

When we act communally, abundance, compassion, love, and a shared desire for peace drive arise. These are our highest energies as human beings and how we are meant to live both individually and collectively. We are all one. This is a spiritual truth. We suffer when we live from separation. Separation from our true selves, our Creator, from the Earth, plants, animals, and of course each other. Separation underlies all of our social ills. I see this time as an invitation to move from separation to Oneness.

We can build communal thinking and being into our daily lives, opening our hearts in the process. We can practice stillness and sit with how our choices affect others – other people, the Earth, the ecosystem, plants, and animals. We can offer prayers or send loving energy to those we know in need, including ourselves. We can take time to witness the abundance within the natural world and answer the invitation to live abundantly within our own lives. We can buy only what we need from the grocery store, letting go of the temptation to stock up on items for a later time. Invitations to live as one are abundant, if we are open to accepting them.

Communal living is a heart-set more than a mindset. Lead with your communal, abundant heart, and the mind will follow and watch your life bloom for living the way you were meant to live.

Leading with Curiosity

Lately I find myself wondering what might our world look like if we all lead with curiosity instead of the assumptions and misperceptions that seem to be at the forefront of our interactions these days? We seem to be stuck in the binary world of right and wrong, liberal and conservative, and those that belong and those that don’t belong.

We seem to have lost interest in learning about each other, finding it easier to stand firm in our righteousness and our need for certainty. What if instead of making assumptions about others based on how they look, who they associate with, or where they live, we asked open ended questions and got curious about who people really are and let them reveal themselves to us? What might we learn about them and about ourselves?

One of the most powerful experiences I’ve had in my life came when I set aside my need to prove my opinions and beliefs were the right ones and allowed someone with a vastly different worldview tell me his life story without interruption. As he spoke, my heart opened and although he had a very different background and lived experiences than I did, what struck me were the similarities in our stories. I felt great compassion for this man who had suffered, struggled, loved, and lost. His passion for his higher power shone through and although it manifested in different ways than mine did, I could appreciate how it was central to his life.

Once he finished sharing his story, I asked if I could share mine and he obliged. He met my careful listening with his own, and I felt heard. I don’t know if he understood my experience, but I did feel respected. Our ability to let go of righteousness and meet each other as human beings was profound. This experience continues to shape my life in many ways since that interaction.

What I learned is that curiosity often means active, compassionate listening. It’s a quiet wondering, a willingness to be open to surprise, mystery, and the divine that connects us all. At its core, its a desire to set aside our need for certainty. When we open to curiosity the world and everything and everyone in it opens up for us, and we open our hearts and minds in return. I’ve also learned that curiosity is contagious; the more curious I am, and the more I nourish it, the more I move through the world in open wonder and curiosity. I wish the same for us all.

Creating Your Big, Beautiful Life Through Loving Choices

We make dozens of decisions every day. Some small, some large. What happens when we take a moment to pause, center ourselves, root our hearts in love and compassion, and then make a choice from a place of love? Several years ago, I discovered that I was giving all of my power away by letting others make decisions for me. I was determined to regain my power of choice and began shifting my decision making from letting the fearful mind choose for me to opening to what my heart desired and what my soul was calling me to create. After a while, I discovered that when I made my decisions from a place of love, my life changed drastically. I began to include other people and other living beings in my choices. I became more spiritually aligned, choosing from a place of connectedness, rather than fear, scarcity, or guilt. I began creating the big, beautiful life I’d always dreamed of loving choice by loving choice.

In January I’m offering a class called “Living the Connection: Loving Choices for an Inspired Life” which incorporates everything I’ve learned on my journey to making choices rooted in the power of love. In this four-week class we’ll explore what it means to live a spiritually aligned life through loving choices that consider other people, animals, plants, the Earth and the Cosmos. You’ll discover how to discern what your heart is calling on you to choose and create in your life. I’ll share the Loving Choices, Inspired Living Map I created as a guide to making loving, spiritually aligned choices. You’ll gain practices that will help ground you and move from a fearful mind to an expansive heart and quiet body, the embodied place from which to make soulful choices.

I hope you’ll join me for the Living the Connection series. These times are calling for us to make decisions rooted in love. This is how we’ll create the world we wish to live in and br proud to give to future generations.

Learn more and register for the Living the Connection: Loving Choices for an Inspired Life series. I hope to see you in January!

The Dis-ease of Busyness

Some days I catch myself saying to myself and others, “I am so busy.” I’m not the only one who suffers from the dis-ease of being busy. It seems to be a badge of honor we wear proudly, yet I wonder at its cost and the perspective I’m bringing to my life with this admission.

What if being busy is taking the easy way out of life?

We find distractions to fill our days, perhaps becoming so busy that we don’t allow time and space for stillness and quiet. This can often be the hardest thing to do in our waking hours. Simply sitting with ourselves and allowing the grace of a quiet space and observation of our thoughts, stirrings of the heart, and sensations of the body can be life giving. What are we robbing ourselves of if we don’t give ourselves this space and time? It’s like saying everything and everyone else matters more than ourselves and our higher power. I wonder if the absence of this sacred time is at the root of our individual and collective dis-ease.

I find that when I begin my days with the nourishment of time and space with myself and the Divine that I am more compassionate, empathetic, connected, and open hearted with myself and others. On the rare days I don’t gift myself this time, it’s like going out into the world without skin on my body. I feel as though I am raw and unable to meet the world in the way it deserves to be met, with the best of me.

Busyness is also the absence of healthy boundaries. One of the greatest gifts we can give ourselves is to set boundaries around our sacred time with self and the Divine. If you don’t already have a morning spiritual practice of silence and stillness, I invite you to begin setting boundaries with your loved ones around your sacred time. Pay attention to what happens to those around you when you enforce this boundary. You may notice that others start to enact their own boundaries around the practices and times of day that are sacred to them. You may notice they are resistant to adhering to your boundaries. The important thing is that you are noticing, you are aware! Busyness stifles awareness. It drowns it out with actions and ruminations meant to distract us from our true selves. Give yourself and others the gift of stillness and silence and flip the cultural script that tells us it’s a token of our worth to be seen as busy. Nothing could be further from the truth. You are sacred. You are meant to be in silence, stillness, and solitude throughout your life.

Living an intentionally spiritual life is often difficult. It takes discipline. It requires your presence and your time. And it often means going against cultural norms. You are made for this work, for this way of being. Giving yourself the gift of time alone with yourself opens you to the magic of life that is always available to you. Lay down your busyness trophy and gift yourself the wonder of being present to your life. You’ll thank yourself for taking the harder path that actually makes life easier.

Your Attention Shapes Your Life

Epictetus famously said, “You become what you give your attention to.” His statement seems to carry even more weight today given the constant bombardment of attention getting tools the world has at its disposal.

If it seems your attention has been commoditized, you may be right. So how do we regain presence in a world aimed at grabbing our attention in a variety of ways? Mindfulness. It becomes a spiritual practice to train your attention on what you value in your life. This isn’t to say that you have to give up scrolling on your phone, but you can be mindful about how long you do it, when you do it, and the content you expose yourself to.  

I used to find myself playing games on my phone while I ate breakfast. I would mindlessly shovel food in my mouth while I labored over solving the days puzzles. I didn’t taste my food, in fact, I couldn’t even tell you what I ate. When I looked up from my phone, I was aware how heavy my head felt and that I had no awareness of what was going on around me. Life was literally passing me by.

Once I added mindfulness to my mornings, I no longer had my phone near me when I ate. I wanted eating to be a sacred practice, a communion between me and the gifts of nature in the bowl in front of me. The first 2-3 days I found myself craving the distraction that my phone offered, yet in sitting with the resistance I felt in my body, I realized it dissipated rather quickly if I didn’t give into the urge to pick up my phone. I told myself that I didn’t want to give my time to something that didn’t feed my soul. When the desire for distraction faded, I found gratitude for the plants that filled my bowl and how they would nourish and heal me.

After a few days of this practice, I noticed that I didn’t even miss playing the games. The day had passed and the games had still gone untouched on my phone. My head felt lighter, no longer weighed down by the energy of the illuminated screen. My body felt freer for being present to the start of my day.

This isn’t to say that we can’t play games on our phone, rather we can be mindful about how and when we do so. We can bring this mindfulness to any activity during our day whether it be washing dishes, folding laundry, or driving.

Epictetus was right, we do become what we give our attention to. Perhaps it’s time to perform a “spiritual audit” of our attention takers and send the energy draining, time-suckers packing and give ourselves the gift of time with what is most precious in our lives — the present moment.

Welcome!

I’m excited you’re here!

I’m brimming with excitement as I launch my spiritual direction practice. My journey to this spiritual direction calling has been a lifetime in the making and no one is more surprised than me that I am here! After spending decades as a research librarian, I began to see that I was being called to serve in a very different way, one in which I could center my passion for inner transformation and spirituality. I knew I wanted to be of service in the world and use the unique gifts that the Divine endowed in me. After deep contemplation and discernment, I realized that every moment of my life had been preparing me for what I know believe is my purpose in this life – to serve as a guide for others on their spiritual journeys. Life truly is a mystery to behold!

I’m so happy that you’re on this journey with me. If you’d like to stay abreast of my ruminations on all things spiritual, sign up below to receive my newsletter where I’ll also share information about the classes and events I’ll be offering. If you’re interested in a free 30 minute consultation to discuss if spiritual direction may be a good fit for you, please contact me here.