Have You Paid Your OUTCOME Tax?

We talk about taxes as if they're a cycle of Nature: "It's tax season". (Brace for collective groan.) Maybe that's how spring fever earned its name: from people boiling about the money they give to the government.

However, there's one place taxing is good, welcome even: your mind. The more you s-t-r-e-t-c-h your grey matter, the greater the probability you'll come up with stupendous (as distinct from stupid) ideas, and become more effective, magnanimous, and satisfied, in business and in life. Think of it as the outcome tax. READ MORE

Walking Between the Worlds: Samhain, Spirit and Sacred Story

This is a mystical time of year, when the veils between worlds are whisper thin. Secularly called Hallowe'en, in Earth-based traditions the turning of the wheel is known as Samhain (pronounced 'sow-in'), a powerful time to manifest intent.

In the U.S., Hallowe'en is about costumes, trick-or-treating, and occasionally, mischief. On the Celtic calendar, Samhain ushers in winter and the mysteries of the dark. October 31^st precedes Day of the Dead/All Soul's Day on November 1^st, a paean to the ancestors. The dark side — that which is hidden from our view — calls us to remember our transpersonal soulscape.

I've experienced a lot of death in 2014, including my Mom, my literal and actual oldest friend at 101, one of my greatest spiritual teachers, Angeles Arrien, and several acquaintances. This season of dying and release is an excellent moment to explore what is ending or "dying" within our own beings. What do you need to let go of in your life in order to move forward? Samhain and All Soul's Day is an invitation for each of us to embrace personal and planetary transformation.

Visionary activist astrologer Caroline Casey says, "We cannot live through the dead, but we can invite the dead to live through us." What gifts are asking, aching to be brought forth through you, when the entire world is awash in liminal rebirth?

The real treat of Samhain is the opportunity for quantum growth. The trick, perhaps, would be turning our backs on these inner voices beseeching us to shine our brilliance and step fully into our aliveness, passion, purpose and service.

It's time to remove your mask, and become who you came here to be.

Profound or Profane? What's Your Story?

I love The Velveteen Rabbit, a "children's story" that has reached across generations to touch hearts and minds for almost one hundred years. I referenced a particularly potent passage in a radio interview earlier this year, and more recently quoted the same material in a client blog post on creative aging. One of the regular readers, a rather dour sort, had a very different response to this glowing passage: he called it "garbage," "crass" and "repugnant".

To say I was shocked is putting it mildly.

The real question is, what story was he receiving? Clearly not the one I intended. Comedian Fred Allen said, "A human being is nothing but a story with a skin around it." My skin is rather thin since my awakening journey. Yet I'm still running a storyline.

Alan Shelton has crafted a way through. The creator of Story Theory and the Globalish Institute says, "Story is more than something you tell, read or watch. It's a moving target that comes to life as you live it. Without the proper rooting, you (or your organization) could easily live someone else's life." Story Theory and the Globalish Institute grew out of Alan's own roots, in downtown L.A. What better way to engage the future than to engage with the world in which you've been steeped to a potent brew?

Every day we hear words that our minds can weave into stories either profound or profane. The distinction lies in how deeply we listen, and whether we respond from our head or our heart — ideally, a blended wisdom of both, in service to a higher purpose.

The classic quote that angered the above-mentioned blog reader follows. I'd love to know how you feel about it:

"What is REAL?" asked the Rabbit. "Does it mean having things that buzz inside you and a stick-out handle?"

"Real isn't how you are made," said the Skin Horse. "It's a thing that happens to you. When a child loves you for a long, long time, not just to play with, but REALLY loves you, then you become Real."

"Does it happen all at once, like being wound up, or bit by bit?"

"It doesn’t happen all at once. You become. It takes a long time. That's why it doesn't often happen to people who break easily, or who have sharp edges, or who have to be carefully kept. Generally, by the time you are Real, most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out and you get loose in the joints and very shabby. But these things don't matter at all, because once you are Real you can't be ugly, except to people who don't understand."

Samhain, Spirit and Sacred Story

In the U.S., Halloween is all about costumes, trick-or-treating, and occasionally, mischief. But on the Celtic calendar this day, known as Samhain, ushers in winter and the mysteries of the dark. October 31^st precedes Day of the Dead/All Soul's Day on November 1^st, a paean to the ancestors. The dark side — that which is hidden from view — calls us to remember our transpersonal soulscape.

As mythologist Kathleen Jenks writes on Myth*ing Links, this is an excellent time to explore what is ending or "dying" within our own beings. What do you need to release in order to move forward in your life? Now, when the veils between worlds are thin, is a ripe moment for each of us to embrace personal and planetary transformation.

And the souls of those who have gone before can still share their wisdom with us, if we invite their collaboration. Visionary activist astrologer Caroline Casey likes to say, "We cannot live through the dead, but we can invite the dead to live through us." What gifts are asking, aching to be brought forth through you in this quantum moment, when the entire world is awash in tremulous rebirth?

The real treat of Samhain is the opportunity for quantum growth. The trick, perhaps, would be turning your back on those inner voices begging you to shine your brilliance and step fully into your aliveness, passion, purpose and service.

It's time to remove your mask, and step fully into who you came here to be.

The Velcro Factor: How to Speak in the Language Others Can Hear

You know how to talk. You've been doing it for decades. But are your listeners hearing your intended message?

Learning to speak in the language others can hear is a critical task many of us never master, because it requires putting yourself in the receiver's role and asking if the way you're presenting your information makes sense to this particular audience.

For example: if I began a talk on personal growth by saying, "When I emerged from the womb after my dark night of the soul, I felt reborn, and ready to give my gift to the world," many people might completely comprehend what I was trying to say — but there are many, many more whose eyes would glaze over in confusion.

But what if I started with, "After a long illness during which I began to question the purpose of my life, I began anew with a deeper understanding of who I am and what I'm here to do." Is this clearer? I'm expressing the same thoughts, but for two distinct audiences. Sharing the second introduction with a group more attuned to the first message would be as ineffective as the reverse.

I grew into this awareness of learning to speak in the language others can hear slowly. One terrific though unwitting resource was my brother. When he was deep in the throes of his awakening, I eagerly sent him a book that had been given to me at a pivotal time in my own growth: Louise Hay's classic, You Can Heal Your Life. I've read it hundreds of times over the years and integrated her teachings into my life in numerous ways.

My brother added my offering to "the pile": books he'd already been given by well-meaning friends. Clearly, it didn't speak to him.

Not long afterward, I attended a weekend workshop on personal mastery. The trainer highly recommended a book that imparted spiritual principles through the lens of basketball, Sacred Hoops. I made a mental note to check it out.

As I held the book in my hands and glanced through its pages, I couldn't imagine why I'd want to read it. Basketball doesn't interest me in the slightest. Plus, I was already familiar with much of the content from other sources. Then I realized with a grin and an "Oh, duh!" that I was supposed to send the book to my brother, who loves basketball and, in his forties, continued to play at every opportunity. I bought the book and mailed it special delivery, without a note.

Less than a week later I received a four-page letter (this man is not a letter-writer! And this was before we were all on daily email), saying the package had been waiting when he'd come home from work that Monday evening, "after the worst weekend of my life." He wrote, "I can't put it down, I'm already halfway through it and I wish it was 1,000 pages long." I nearly wept with joy and gratitude that I'd been guided to send him exactly what he needed, at exactly the right time. All I had to do was get my own preconceptions out of the way, and speak in his language — in this case, basketball.

Actress and playwright Elizabeth Fuller calls this awareness, "The Velcro Factor": being so specific with her examples in a performance that audience members can recognize themselves in what she and partner Conrad Bishop share. Thus, the message "sticks."

Sending my brother Sacred Hoops was a Velcro Factor experience for me. Choose what you use, learn to discern. Communicate in the language your audience can hear.

How to Use Your Life

I read The Alchemist perhaps fifteen years ago, but never fully grasped Paulo Coehlo's journey until today, when his semi-autobiographical The Zahir presented the key clue. In The Zahir, Coehlo chronicles his lifelong resistance and eventual surrender that allowed him to craft and publish The Pilgrimage at age 40. The Pilgrimage, his first novel, depicts his journey along the Camino de Santiago de Compostela, the transformational route in northern Spain that Shirley MacLaine also eloquently described, in The Camino.

I decided to read The Pilgrimage in 2012 after ingesting Coehlo's latest autobiographical masterpiece, Aleph. But it's only now, learning the order in which he wrote his books (The Pilgrimage first, then The Alchemist, beloved worldwide) that my ah-ha erupted: In The Alchemist, the young protagonist is named Santiago! With this brilliant literary echo, Coehlo conveys how he has become the path, his experience informing his journey and infusing the reader with faith in the outcome.

This is the essence and purpose of my own life work: to use what I have understood at each stage of my unfolding in service to the next, and to all with whom I come in contact. Are you using your life to its maximum potential, pouring the elixir of who you've been into who you're becoming?

Being Outrageous: Getting the Rage Out?

"We are constantly invited to be what we are."

~ Henry David Thoreau

Are you mad as hell and not gonna take it anymore? Purple with rage? Or enwrapped in wrath? Though the dictionary may use the words rage and wrath interchangeably, they are not the same. Otherwise we'd hear about "road wrath"!

Rage is a savage, devouring energy; wrath, while fierce, is also the province of the dakinis, who initiate creative change (think of the goddess Kali). Wrath is righteous; rage just wants to be right.

Since this is an ideal moment to transmute anger in the alchemical fire, several lightplayers and I filleted, seasoned and simmered a few thoughts on this distinction:

∞ "Rage is cooking without anything in the pot; wrath is cooking a full stew."

∞ "We can make medicine from joy instead of from pain."

∞ "Rage merely makes you age; wrath keeps you on the path."

The next time you get mad, get thinking: am I enraged or wrathful? Is this a purposeful fury? Am I cooking with a full pot here?

Here are some tools to assist you in enlightening up into wholeness/holiness/healing (all from the same root word, hale):

1) Laugh. The Buddha said we all want to know the answers to four key questions: "Who am I? Where did I come from? Where am I going? And will there be food there?" Laughter lights us up. Conscious evolution is purposeful play! Whatever brings you belly laughs is healthy, because laughter oxygenates body and brain, thereby strengthening our "amuse" system. Think of something that's troubling you and consider this: if it will be funny in the retelling six months hence, it's funny now — if you allow the possibility.

2) Live the WOW (Witness Our Wonder). A vivacious 73-year-old woman made a quantum shift in her thinking, from "Life is a series of emergencies," to "Life is full of surprises!" Instead of anxiously reacting to every "oh no!" she's now able to anticipate the next "ah ha!"

3) Give what you seek. Peace troubadour and author James Twyman says giving others what you most desire is the surest path to inner peace, because there is no separation between us. "If I'm lacking peace, you're lacking peace. If I give you peace, then I receive that same peace," he says.

4) Do a "vow break." This is a wonderful way to get sticky energy unstuck. You can rescind any vows you may have taken prior to incarnating to have a certain experience in this life. The formula is from the book, What Is Lightbody? by Tashira Tachi-ren. The same vow break can be found on my CD, What You Need to Know Now-A Road Map for Personal Transformation.

"I now rescind any and all vows I have taken to experience the illusion of (fill in the blank, for example, "not having enough money".) I declare this vow null and void in this incarnation and all incarnations across time and space, parallel realities, parallel universes, alternate realities, alternate universes, all planetary systems, all Source systems, all dimensions, and the Void.

"I ask for the release of all crystals, devices, thought forms, emotions, matrices, veils, cellular memory, pictures of reality, genetic limitation, and death. NOW!"

May your creative cauldron burn brightly. Happy transmutation!

Synchronicity Rising vs. Shopping Away Your Soul

On Thursday, the cross-quarter gateway known as Lammas, with a full Aquarian moon lighting up the sky and the Olympic rings, I had an incredible encounter with a man ahead of me in line at the grocery store. We casually commented that the lines seemed to be moving slowly, and I said, "I think most of the checkers are new; it's not easy to master all those codes on the register. I had to use one at my very first job when I was 16 and (I imitated the hunt and peck motion)." I laughed and said, "Now, of course, we all have computers so we're fast on the keys."

Then I looked at him and said, "Are you old enough to remember what I'm talking about?" He said, "Oh, yes, I'm older than you." 

Naturally, I had to take the challenge so I asked, "How old are you?" He said, "55." I said, "Dude!" and high-fived him. Then I asked, "When's your birthday?" He replied without missing a beat, "2/4/57" ~ which is exactly the way I always say it! I got what I imagine was a look of incredulity on my face and asked, "What time?" Meanwhile he's still processing what's happening, and says, "Wait ~ you're an Aquarian too?" And then he says, "It was sometime early in the morning, like 1 am." I was born just after 1 am. I said, "We're twins!" It was the coolest connection, though I think it flipped him out a little. For me, it was simply "synchronicity rising!"

Contrast this with some construction that's been going on for quite awhile next to the community pool here. The pool is located not far from the freeway onramp, but a stand of trees afforded a measure of privacy and peace. I noticed the greenery was slowly morphing into bulldozers, but had no idea why. Over the weekend I happened to mention some other nearby construction to a young Whole Foods employee, and he referenced the swim site construction by saying, "I'm designing the benches for the mall!" I thought he was making a very dry joke.

But no: the construction by the freeway is a new shopping center underway. Incredulous in a far different manner than during Thursday's heart-sync'd encounter, I said sarcastically, "Oh, I'm sure we need another mall!" That was when he repeated the information about the bench design, and I realized he was serious. I congratulated him on landing the project ~ I always support art, in all its guises ~ but the desecration of nature for human consumption galls me.

In this kairos moment when reclaiming our soul connection is key to personal and planetary evolution, the trees are our allies and guides. We won't realize our life purpose by buying the leopard print tights, but by becoming our wildness ~ not as violence; as an abiding, sensuous connection with Nature and all our planetary kin.

Hey, I grew up in a town that had more shopping malls per square mile than any other; I thought the trees planted inside the mall grew there! And I enjoy a beautiful new outfit as much as the next woman (or guy). The difference is, I know materialism isn't the path to what we might term synchronicitree.

I invite and invoke your primal need to be in natural surroundings, so that the synchronicity I experienced in the market knows how to find you. When you're living in the flow, such encounters will tickle you into joy everywhere ~ and you won't rely on shopping as a way to remember your soul.

Spring Equinox: Stoking the Fires of Transformation

Did you know that on Equinox, you can balance a raw egg on end, because everything (day and night, and thus, the world) is in balance? This is the lore, anyway; I've not yet tried it.

Spring Equinox 2012 (Autumn Equinox for our Southern Hemisphere allies) is an Equinox like no other: a time when the world is breaking open to a new age, when what breakthrough biologist Bruce Lipton calls "imaginal cells" (each of us as cells in the body of Gaia) reimagine ourselves/our cells into greater harmony, joy, and the regenerative power of possibility, beyond patriarchy and domination to limitless co-creative play, purpose and passion.

It is the time of the Ram, as transformation fans our inner flames into a bonfire of celebration. As you e/merge from your personal egg into the Light of the new, what will you bring to the Cosmic Egg as we dream a new world into BE-ing?

How to Save Time Forever

This month, approximately 75 countries worldwide will create an annual illusion: saving time. We move the hands of our clocks ahead, and think we've harnessed the sun. In the U.S., our participation begins at 2 am on Sunday, March 12th.

How time flies when we perceive it as linear. By contrast, cultures that live in tune with natural rhythms do not alter their clocks, because clocks do not define their time. The seasons and the stars do. I once heard thought leader Deepak Chopra share how he explained existence to his three-year-old granddaughter as they walked along the beach at sunset. Essentially, he told her she is made of starlight, and that the spirit of the stars is reflected in her eyes. Tara was silent while she digested this information. Then she said, "Nanna, look up!" When Chopra asked why, she replied, "The stars want to see themselves!"

Time is elastic. Athletes know this. When athletes move into the space known as "the zone," time slows down. They see every move or play with perfect clarity, and execute the correct maneuvers as if in a dream, sensing the favorable outcome. Something expands within them that translates into success.

How many people do you know who never seem to have "enough" time? We are each gifted with the same twenty-four hour cycle to use as we choose. People who are time-deprived are exhibiting one aspect of our pervasive scarcity consciousness.

Psychologist Maria Nemeth writes, in The Energy of Money, "Scarcity is a reality in the physical domain. As a minister friend of mine once told me, 'It's as though we got bored living without limits. We decided to incarnate — which means, literally, to turn into meat. We further chose to work with the limits of form, time and finite energy. This was to see how much of the divine we could bring into the mundane before it was time for us to leave.'"

As paradoxical as it may seem, says Nemeth, "We reach the infinite through living fully in the finite. The infinite is not reached by trying to ignore limits, as many of us try to do."

And in Eastern Body, Western Mind, chakra expert Anodea Judith observes, "Manifestation requires an acceptance of limitation. A boundary allows us to contain, and thus collect and build."

So holding the "both/and" is a prerequisite to freedom, whether from the constraints of the clock or the tyranny of the paycheck: "We must accept limitation in order to transcend it." This is what zone athletes do.

My articles, Embracing Paradox Can Help You Beat the Clock and 'Om' Is Where the Heart Is suggest ways to shift your beliefs about time and creativity.

I also include extensive information about using natural time to reclaim our feminine power, passion and purpose in my e-course, Loving Our Lunacy.

As we set our clocks ahead, on Saturday night or sometime soon, let's look out at the stars and remember what we're made of. Recognize the expansive possibilities that exist within the limits of form.

There is enough. It's all a question of consciousness. Choose to embrace the both/and, and you'll grow with the flow!

What Does It Take to Get Glowing?

Last Friday I dueted with Jennifer Alhasa on her new blogtalkradio show, Get Glowing. We discussed what it means to get glowing, what blocks us from shining our light — and how best to reclaim our power, passion and purpose. Enjoy the replay (just 30 minutes long), and please let us know what you think!

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!

Of Chocolate, Face Cream, and Life Purpose

The call to claim our purpose usually sounds at a somewhat inconvenient moment. Sometimes we hear whispers years before we're ready to acknowledge them, let alone begin taking the steps necessary to create a new reality. And while the call can come at any life stage, there's something special about the thirties, when our inner voice tends to start asking, "Is this all there is?"

Recently I've been privileged to meet two vibrant, self-aware women, both 35, who have started heart-centered, Earth-based, health-conscious businesses. In each instance, a health crossroads precipitated the call (as is true in my own life). READ THE REST @ TheNewGreenEconomy.com

Are You A USB?

No, not a computer interface ~ an Ultra Sensitive Being. For me, becoming a Sensitive in the early '90s (or rather, becoming aware that I am) meant stepping fully into my life purpose and planetary service, so the "downside" — noticing and often reacting to olfactory and other stimuli that for most people fly under the radar — is a small exchange. And yet, given that our language evolves more slowly than we do, I dislike being labeled (or self-labeling) as a "chemically sensitive" person. Ultra Sensitive Being resonates more fully with the truth that sensitivity, like all conditions, contains an inherent wholeness.

It's therefore with great gratitude that I read Stefanie Miller's article, Being Ultra Sensitive this morning.

Later, I also found this wonderful article on eHow, of all places: How to Be A Healthy Empath, which lists 17 clear, helpful tips for recognizing energy that isn't yours, clearing your space, strengthening your energetic field. and nurturing yourself in an accelerated world. Great guidance for almost anyone, whether or not you identify as an empath!