When You're About to Give Up…

"Come in out of the darkness." 

 

~ Stevie Nicks, Bella Donna

We're living our Light more magnificently than ever before, shining our radiance in everyday interactions. It's never been so easy — or, in some ways, so strange. Archangel Michael describes how it looks: "Our peace and comfortableness with the shifting energy will help other people feel more comfortable. We will do this from our hearts...by just walking through a grocery store, the post office, or sitting in a movie theatre. People will automatically feel a little bit calmer, because we are carrying that pivotal, new orientation point inside us..."

I've been noticing that people tend to park next to my car, even when an entire parking lot is virtually empty, or sit next to me when there are numerous other seats available. At first this disturbed me; then I began to understand. People feel drawn to the energy those of us who have walked this road carry, even if they are unaware of it or can't articulate it. Our role now is to listen them into awareness.

An example: our local senior center offers high-speed WiFi, though I don't usually get much work done there because as soon as I sit down, someone wants to chat! The conversation has been desultory — until last week. A woman sat by me, spoke casually at first, then shifted into deeply personal material. I felt called to respond as I would with a coaching client, and watched her growth in the moment as I validated how she was stepping into her power. It was remarkable, beautiful, and thrilling to observe: I was simultaneously participant and witness to the process.

Archangel Michael says, "Instead of taking months or days, it is taking hours or minutes to shift. Our service to the world is anchoring and just staying in that new center point...We are of service to the planet by BE-ing who we are."

Gillian Macbeth Louthan adds a surprising caveat: "When you feel like destroying something that you have worked on or worked for or worked toward — you are at the edge of succeeding. At the very edge of success, there is an 'initiation via potential sabotage'. Many are comfortable in succeeding a little bit, but not totally."

Darkness and Light are a Möbius strip, the both/and of life in 3D. May Sarton's Invocation to Kali expresses it best:

"Help us to be the always hopeful

Gardeners of the spirit

Who know that without darkness

Nothing comes to birth

As without light

Nothing flowers."

What Does It Mean to "Live Your Light"?

When I was first feeling my way into a new reality — before my "dark night of the soul" journey that would transfigure my life and catapult me from marketing communications maven to "midwife" for the soul — I'd begun a women's spiritual circle, and had attracted a few coaching clients, though the term "coaching" wasn't even on my radar at the time. (The coaching profession has only been a formalized entity for about two decades).

I was in love with the Emile Zola quote, "If you asked me what I came into this world to do, I will tell you: I came to live out loud." I was yearning, burning to live out loud, even as I struggled to understand what this might mean. I bought a box of greeting cards bearing this epigram and an exuberant figure, arms upraised, and used them to write a personal message to each client at the close of a session, as both affirmation and exhortation.

Then one day my carefully constructed life crumbled, eclipsed by a health crisis that halted the old in its tracks and called me to live experientially what I'd heretofore only grasped from books and workshops. It was a three-plus year initiation in the wilderness of my soul, and I e/merged (energy and emotion merged) on the far side as a lighthouse for others walking this path of personal awakening. I won't detail it here, as my website, numerous articles, CD and monthly newsletter cover this and much more. What I will share is how the name for my service evolved:

On the far side of the journey, I created Metamorphosis: The Center for Creative Change as my service vehicle. And while this was accurate, "Metamorphosis" was already the name of a type of healing work (hence confusing for some people) and the name itself was declarative. I felt called to invoke (literally, "give voice to") the possibility inherent in every human being. And then I housesat for a woman who had the book, Bringers of the Dawn, on her shelf.

Barbara Marciniak channels the Pleiadians, a collective of multidimensional star beings. In the book, they apprise us, "You must live your light …" The words chimed in my soul as a remembrance, and when I began to develop my website a year or so later, this was the invitation and invocation I chose.

When you live your light, you are living out loud, in tune with your highest purpose and service, as a beacon and resource for others. It doesn't matter what your 3D "assignment" is: whether you're an auto mechanic or mother, company president or country president, impoverished pilgrim or billionaire: when you live it, you shine, and this radiance is what uplifts and shifts humanity, and the planet we all share. This is what it means to become the gift.

Thanks for Living Out Loud ~ and for Living Your Light!

Blessings!

Illness As a Spiritual Journey

Last week, I was honored to duet with master retreat coach Helene van Manen on a teleclass for retreat coaches. The topic I chose is one I've lived into deeply: Illness As A Spiritual Journey. You can listen to the entire call here (begins @ 6 mins in):

Illness As A Spiritual Journey

Several people on the call requested the quotes included in the talk. Here are the salient ones:

1) From The Tao of Healing:

Some prefer knowing to being
Their illness is in their heads.
Some prefer being to knowing.
Their illness is in their hearts.

She who knows her illness is in her heart
Is halfway home.

2) My spiritual credo: "If it works for you ~ and harms none ~ it works for me." Similar to the Hippocratic oath: "First, do no harm," and to the Witches' Creed: "Do as thou wilt, and harm none."

3) Goethe: "Whatever you can do/Or dream you can/Begin it. Boldness has genius, power and magic in it./Begin it now!"

4) Poet David Whyte: "The rest of creation is holding its breath, waiting for you to take your place."

5) Author Boris Pasternak: "Your health is bound to be affected if, day after day, you say the opposite of what you feel, grovel before what you dislike, and rejoice at what brings you nothing but misfortune."

6) From my CD, What You Need to Know Now: A Road Map for Personal Transformation: "You need less than you think/And you have more than you know."

The following articles also discuss aspects of the healing journey, and provide resources and ideas for expanding your life:

How to See Yourself As An Artist
The Renewable Resource Called Y-O-U
Hot Flash: Hormone Mimics Wreak Havoc on Women's Health

If you're in the midst of a wake-up call disguised as illness or injury, or work with people as a healer/coach, I'm offering a 20% discount through the end of July on all coaching services (Traditional coaching, Discovery Journey, or business coaching) as well as Business Alchemy services (marketing and writing support to launch, change, or expand your business).

Email or call me now to begin the shift: 800-862-0157

∞ Blessings ∞

Rumi's Invitation

I posted the main article in my July What Shines newsletter to the International Coaching Network on LinkedIn, and received this luscious reply from a fellow coach; a Rumi quote new to me, and revivifying for us all:


Come! Take a pickaxe
And break apart
Your stony self.
The heart’s matrix
is glutted with rubies.
Springs of laughter
are buried in your breast.
Unstop the wine jar
Batter down the door
to the treasury
of nonexistence.
The water in your jug
is brackish and low.
Smash the jug
and come to the river!