 
My Story

I met Jon when I was 18. I remember it so vividly, I walked into a bar and the second I glanced at him, the world literally stood still. In that very moment, it was as though I was floating inside a massive bubble. I felt myself expand way beyond my own body and it seemed the only person in the room was him and I. The bar fell completely silent for that split second and the moment seemed to be wrapped in this beautiful cocoon of complete peace. It was without a doubt, love at first sight. I turned to my sister and said, I'm going to marry that man.

I was in complete awe of Jon. He was quite literally the most incredible looking man I had ever seen and he had this presence which was so captivating. The man had swag! He was so confident, so knowing, so worldly. He was from England and was here travelling through Australia and Indonesia. We spent the night hanging out and chatting to all hours of the morning. He left the next day with the promise to meet up the following night. He rang me later that day to apologise because he'd managed to score a one way ticket to Sydney at a really cheap rate and therefore couldn't keep our date. I was completely devastated but he gave me his email address and said we would keep in touch. An entire year later, I couldn't move on, I was so certain that I was going to spend the rest of my life with him. How could I be so wrong about something that I was so sure about? We sent a few emails here and there, mainly me emailing long letters and him responding with one or two lines. At this stage he was all the way in Thailand and internet was very expensive and very scarce so he couldn't really write too much.

About a year later, I got a phone call and it was Jon. He was living over in Perth and had enough money for a flight to LA. He said if it was cheaper to fly to LA from Brisbane, he would come and see me before he went, otherwise, he would go directly from Perth. There was no way I was letting this opportunity pass me by. I was so in-love and just had to know if there was a future. Even if it meant just a small moment in time, I needed to explore this. It was cheaper to fly from Brisbane to LA but with the airfare included from Perth to me, it ended up being dearer. I gave it a lot of thought, and told him that I would pay for his flight to Brisbane. I borrowed money from my brother-in-law as I was an 18 year old who earned next to nothing and purchased the ticket to Brisbane for my love.

As the story goes, he arrived, we fell madly in love and he never went to LA. I was so smitten, so in-love, so happy. I had never had a boyfriend before and it was everything I hoped it would be. I hadn't had the happiest of childhoods, my parents split up when I was about 12 so things weren't really stable for me. I was always the odd one out growing up so this was really the first time I truly felt like I belonged to someone or something. I had never considered that anyone could possibly love me, I never allowed that someone could want me enough to actually choose to be with me so this was a very precious time in my life. It was a complete fairytale, sure we had our ups and downs but I was so in-love and so happy.

There were definitely moments when I questioned if this was all there was to life. I was only young and had always wanted to travel. Because Jon had been there and done that, he wasn't interested in doing it anymore and he had established himself really well in what ended up being a great career for him. Jon had the gift of the gab, he started off selling door to door phone contracts and because he was so good at it, before too long, he was running the whole company. He was so determined and so ambitious, he blew me away with his ability to do anything he set his mind to.

Before long, we brought our first home, started renovating it and life couldn't seem to be any more perfect. That feeling I had crept in on the occasion, is this all there is, don't you want more? But as quickly as it rose up in me, I pushed it away because I couldn't imagine life without the only person who ever made me feel like I was a part of something. Eventually, Jonny proposed to me and I happily started planning our wedding. I was overcome with joy and excitement. I never thought that I would ever be lucky enough to marry the man of my dreams, and live this abundant life that I was in.

One weekend, about 11 weeks before the big day, he took me to a romantic getaway on a mountaintop retreat. We had our own little secluded cabin with and open log fire and complete privacy. We had some wine and just started chatting about life. There was an incident that happened a little period of time before that, and I just couldn't shake it. I asked him again, after the 100th time if there was anything I should know. I was a little afraid to broach this with him as it always ended up in a massive argument and I didn't want to spoil the weekend. Surprisingly he was so calm and didn't get mad the way he always had before. He turned to me, and told me how much he loved me, but he had been having an affair. What happened next completely changed my life forever. I suddenly realised that I was screaming, and I just couldn't stop. Looking back now, I understand that was the moment my mind snapped and I had an emotional breakdown. I was completely outside of my body and couldn't control what was happening. I knew that I was screaming, I knew that I was completely losing it, but in that moment I felt like I was two people and I was watching this woman breakdown.

Where I was, with the level of awareness and fear I had within me at that time in my life, I decided to stay with him. I cancelled the wedding but everything else remained the same. We started couples therapy and tried so hard to rebuild what was broken. I think I knew deep down that there was no coming back from that level of betrayal. But the most difficult thing was how much I loved him, I thought I was doing the right thing by following my heart.

It turned out the woman he was having the affair with was threatening him. She had told him she was pregnant and if he didn't leave me to be with her, she would destroy his life. And that she absolutely nearly achieved. She had private investigators take photos of the two of them having sex and sent them attached with a letter to my parents, my sister and my work. She would send me messages regularly threatening me and at one stage we ended up with immigration at our doorstep with Jonny almost getting kicked out of the country.

This was the absolute worst period of my life but what this woman didn't realise, is the more that she pushed us, the closer it brought us and in the end, I thought, there is no way he would ever do this again! We have seen the worst of the worst play out after this affair and it was enough to scare any man straight. Or so I thought.

After a few years, life settled down again, but things were never the same. We eventually did get engaged again but I could never commit to a date to be married. One night he was out on the town and didn't get home till all hours of the morning. He woke me up stumbling in drunk and then passed out snoring. I couldn't get back to sleep and tossed and turned for what seemed like ages. The next minute, his phone received a text message. He had a setting on his phone to keep reminding him of an unopened message and it kept vibrating on the timber floorboards. After about 3 alerts I pushed him to open his phone but he was completely passed out. In a huff, I went around to his side to open the text so I could get some sleep. The message was from Cassie, his receptionist. I thought nothing of it at first but the message read:

People know that aren't supposed to know.

My mind just blew at that moment. It then started hitting me, what is a woman doing texting my fiancé at 2:30am? I knew I needed truth in this situation so I did the only thing I could do.....

What do they know?

We went back and forth like this for what seemed like an eternity. I didn't get a lot of information as I was trying to tread very lightly, I didn't want her to catch on that it wasn't Jon. At this stage what I had gathered was: Something happened on a trip to Sydney, she knew he was with someone and she felt bad but her friends said who gives a shit.

I asked if she would like what had happened last time to happen again and she agreed. I asked if I could head over, She said "Sure, I've just dropped a pinger so I'll be up for hours!"

Um...... O.K! Looks like I've got my work cut out for me! At this stage it was about 4am and it was as though I'd been the one to drop a pinger. I was wired! I got the keys for his car and grabbed a baseball cap. I tried to look as "manish" as I could and drove over to her house. I didn't know what the hell I was doing but I knew, I needed to hear truth, as it was clear, I was getting none of it at home.

I arrived at the address she had given me, my heart was pounding. She walked up to the car, opened the door and looked in at me from the passenger side with a massive smile. The smile turned to complete horror when she realised that I was not her handsome, charismatic boss coming to give her round two. I said to her, "hey, you must be Cassie, guess who I am?". She replied very coyly "Um, you're Kellie". Yup sweetheart you got it in one! I explained to her that I didn't want any trouble, I wasn't there to hurt her, I just needed to get some answers. She agreed to come with me for a drive. Looking back now, Cassie was either ridiculously stupid, really trusting, or bloody brave, I'm not sure which one, but she was pinging off her head so maybe she was just very, very stoned?

We started driving and her phone rang. It was her friends and I heard her say, no, it's not Jon, it's Kellie. Next minute, the mates are all tearing up the road chasing us, I swear it was like a scene out of Miami Vice. I told the girls that I didn't want trouble I just wanted to talk to her. They told me that they would feel more comfortable if we all chatted inside the house. I agreed.

So here I sat, in a house, with a massive party going on, everyone high on ecstasy and me in men's clothes, no makeup and bad hair. It was the weirdest thing ever. She began explaining to me that her and Jon had just kissed in Sydney. My head was swimming, can you break up with someone for just kissing? So, to paint a picture, I'm sitting on the couch with a group of young women, all sitting on the floor around my feet. They were watching me like I was the final season of the bachelor, waiting for my next move. It was story time, and I began the long, detailed saga of Jon's first affair.

By the end, the girls all were looking around at each other with absolute horror. Cassie then perked up and said, "O.K Kellie, I need to tell you, we actually did sleep together". I literally said, "Righto", I stood up turned to my audience and announced, "thanks ladies, I'll be off then". Cassie grabbed me and hugged me. I gently removed her arms from around me and said "oh honey, I'm not here to make a friend with the girl who fucked my fiance, I'm just here for the truth because that lying sack of shit won't tell me". With that I walked out, got in the car, and started driving.

I was so shocked at how happy I was. I am going to go home, break up with him and I feel so bloody happy, it was exhilarating. By this stage it was about 6:30am and I was still wired. I phoned one of my oldest friends Katie because I knew she would be awake. She answered the phone confused as to why I would be ringing so early. I honestly went to say, "Hey babe, guess what, I'm going to go home and dump Jonny's arse" but what came out was one long, loud, bellowing scream! Screaming again like the last time. I knew I was screaming, but for some reason, I had no control over it. Once again, looking back now, I was in complete shock.

I got home and my father was sitting on my balcony, he was living with us at the time and obviously, as old people do, they get up really early to sit on balcony's. I walked up the stairs and he met me at the top, confused as to where I had been so early. Once again, I couldn't get the words out, I was trying to say, He's done it again but I could only point and say, "he's, he's". The words just couldn't make it out of my mouth. I collapsed in my dad's arms sobbing my heart out. I finally said, "dad, he's done it again" and with that my dad took off out of the house. Completely overwhelmed and confronted by not being able to do anything.

I went into the bedroom, the smell of stale alcohol pinching my nose and that son of a bitch sleeping soundly. I walked over and pushed his shoulder yelling, wake up! He stirred a bit and I repeated harder. He eventually woke up and screamed at me, "What the fuck?" Oh man, I thought, It's go time! I screamed at him, "Oh right!! What the fuck indeed! What the fuck did you do with Cassie?"

"Nothing, go and fuck off" he replied and then rolled over, I screamed, "Oh no you don't you cheating fucking bastard, wake the fuck up and face what you have done". He swore black and blue that nothing had happened, so, I picked up the phone and called Cassie.

"Hey, Cassie, it's Kellie. So, um, Jon seems to think you're full of shit, do you want to let him know what you just told me?". I handed the phone to Jon and with his head in his hands it's all he could do but mumble in the phone. I could hear her apologising in the background and I thought to myself, "Jesus Christ Cassie, get off the pills love, you're tripping!"

Jonny hung the phone up, looked at me and said, "So what the fuck do you want me to do then?" Well....... I launched at him fists swinging. I didn't manage to connect any of them as much as that would have been great for the story. He held my hands back and we screamed at each other for a little while. After some time, I took off and went to my sisters.

I booted him out but was completely devastated. I had a trip booked overseas with Jon's best friends girlfriend, and just before I left to go, he came and saw me. We were lying on the bed chatting and he said that he had a feeling this was it and had accepted it. I knew there was no chance for us, but I wanted him to fight. I wanted to feel like I had actually been worth something to him. I couldn't believe he was letting me go so easily. He left and I went into the walk in wardrobe and picked up the box of memories I had with him. It had little candy wrappers from our ski trip together, every single movie stump that we had seen together, every card he had ever given me, every note he had written me. Any time that we had done anything together that felt special, I kept a little memento. Lots of little things that only we knew the meaning of. There were the pictures that someone took of him proposing to me, the champagne cork out of the bottle we toasted that night. So many things and I was going through all of them.

Then, the anger came on. The screams started and I was throwing the stuff all over the room. I was so sad and so overwhelmed. I sat on the floor sobbing my heart out. My dad appeared at my door, he came and sat down next to me, his eyes full of pain because he couldn't make me feel better. He said to me "You will never need any man as much as you need your dad". I sobbed in his arms.

We sat there, hugging for a while and I looked up to see Jon, standing in the doorway. My dad got up and walked out and Jon came to sit next to me. He explained he got halfway to the place he was staying and he couldn't go another step forward, he had to turn back to tell me something. He told me how much he loved me and couldn't stand the idea of losing me. He told me that he would do anything to prove to me that he could be the man that I needed him to be, the man that I always knew he could be.

That's all I ever needed to hear from him. He told me to go overseas, be a single woman, do whatever I needed to do, and if there was a chance that I could ever get past this, he would spend his lifetime making it up to me.

I did just that, I went overseas and I was single. I met a man in Ireland and I went home with him. It was one of the most horrible experiences. I just needed to understand what it felt like for Jon. What was it like to be with another person? Was it easy for him to do it? The truth is, it was horrible and it wasn't easy. I only thought of Jon the whole time, it made me feel physically sick and I couldn't get out of there quick enough. Jonny was ringing me every other day, telling me how much he missed me, telling me that he had dreamt of me the night before and that he couldn't wait till I got home.

I completed the holiday and had a great time. I remember at one point my cousin was driving us through the beautiful hills of Ireland and I felt the happiest I had felt in a long time. I thought to myself, I can do this, I can travel, I'm going to do this. I made up my mind. I was going to go back to Australia, end things with Jon and travel.

I arrived back at the airport, Jonny was picking me up but he was really late. I was surprised as he was supposed to be eagerly trying to get back with me. He eventually turned up and then dropped me home, saying he needed to get to work. I asked him if he felt we needed a chat, he said he would do it later.

Later that afternoon, we met at the Story Bridge Hotel, a local bar and we sat down together. I told him that I had given it a lot of thought, and for now, I was going to go back to Ireland and travel. I still loved him deeply, and who knows, maybe in a year if we wanted to give it another try we could see what that brings. He shrugged and said, no worries, I've got to get back to work. I was so surprised at how well he took it and knew something was up.

As I was soon to find out, Jon had been also sleeping with a girl named Kate who he worked with. He had got her a job in his office and they had been starting to sleep together before I went overseas. He had been asking me to give him another chance, the whole time, sleeping with her. Apparently the girl I travelled with told her boyfriend that I had slept with someone and he told Jon. Jon then decided that was not good enough for him, and as a result, started a relationship with Kate. I was overseas for 3 weeks.

The decision to leave wasn't met with the feeling of being empowered and it also didn't make things easier. In fact it made me feel the opposite, worthless, unlovable, afraid, lonely, used and betrayed. What made matters worse is the second we settled our separation, he moved her into the home that we brought and renovated together. They even stayed in the very same bed that we shared. It was the biggest kick in the guts and sent me spiralling into an abyss of despair and heartbreak.

I simply could not move on from the pain. Over the years I went through stages of pure hatred for him. Such bitterness and anger that poisoned my body and my life. I was an angry, bitter woman that was so shut off from life and love and played out my hurt in such typical ways. This only contributed more and more to the pain and suffering that I was feeling. The acting out of this level of anger and trauma that I was going through sprayed more and more trauma into the very open, very raw and now septic wound of my heart.

It haunted my days and my nights knowing that my home, which I had with the love of my life was now the home of this new woman. My heart ached every single day and the physical and emotional pain of my was too much for me to bare. I was simply a fraction of a person at this stage. I was so overwhelmed with grief and betrayal that I didn't know how I was ever going to get through this. The problem here was also, no-one else knew what to do either. No-one could understand or empathise with what I was going through because no-one around me had ever gone through any kind of tragedy. People just expect you to dust yourself and move on. As they would say, he doesn't deserver you, he's a player, you're too good for him. In my heart, that didn't make things easier. I had no-one that could really give me any healthy support at this stage because, everyone else was living their lives and I don't think anyone knew just how bad it was.

I remember one day when things couldn't have got any worse, it was bout 3 months after we broke up and I was told that he was taking her home to his family for Christmas. This completely smashed any last piece of my heart that had not already been shattered. I once again, went to that place of complete emotional breakdown and all of a sudden I was an observer watching myself play out an incredibly scary moment.

I could no longer stand the physical pain of my heart. I didn't feel like I could even breath again. The loss was just so devastating I couldn't seem to see a way out of what I was feeling. It truly felt for me as though someone had died and the pain around it was just too overwhelming. I remember the day, I had finished work and decided that I couldn't take one more step forward. I felt like I was spiralling out of control and the place I was in couldn't feel any worse. I was so afraid of how bad it already was and I knew that it was not finished, it was about to get so much worse. This was something I didn't have the awareness for, or the strength. I went to my sisters place to bath my niece and nephew but what I was really doing was saying goodbye to them.

I went home, grabbed the old fashioned disposable blade of one of his shavers, and I drove myself to a secluded area about half an hour from where I lived. I drove my car to a field and sat there for more than four hours just breaking my heart sobbing. It was so weird because I didn't think you could cry that hard for that long. The tears just wouldn't stop! My cries were big gulping sobs and I they just wouldn't subside. I had the blade in my hand ready to do what I was so afraid to do but seemed the only way out of the prison I was in. I was sobbing so hard, with the blade pressed against my wrist and I was seconds from making the cut which I had convinced myself was the only option I had.

At that moment I saw a little rabbit racing through the grass in front of me. This completely jumped me out of my tears as I had never seen a rabbit in the wild around where I lived. This jolted me out of the abyss my mind had escaped into and the logic started to flow back in. I started to, at that moment ask a question to whatever mighty power was out there guiding me. I turned the radio on and I said, whatever the next song, that will let me know if there is any hope in going forward.

Gloria Gaynor I will survive came on the radio and I started laughing my head off. There was no way any song could have been any more appropriate with what I was going through at that time. I started to come back into my body a little more at this stage and I asked for another song. Supertramp, It's raining again came on next. The words of this song absolutely represented what I was experiencing in that moment and what would be the next 12 years of my journey.

It's Raining again,

Oh no, my love's at and end.

Oh no, it's raining again

and you know it's hard to pretend.

Oh no it's raining again

Too bad I'm losing a friend.

Oh no, it's raining again

Oh will my heart ever mend

C'mon you little fighter,

There's no need to get uptight

C,mon you little fighter,

and get back up again

Oh get back up again,

Fill your heart again.

That's all I needed at that time, the universe completely opened up to show me that there was hope and it came just at that point that I didn't feel I could go on. I started the car back up, turned my phone on to about 50 voice messages from my family and my ex. Someone had a bad feeling and when they couldn't get a hold of me, panic set in. My ex called and begged me not do anything, he said he would leave the woman he was with and be with me if that's what I wanted. It absolutely was exactly what I wanted, it's all I wanted, but I knew it wasn't right. I said no and told him I never wanted to speak to him again.

I want to be able to say that things got better. The truth is, they didn't. Sure I had varying moments of promise and hope that things would be ok but it was fleeting and I had done a really good job at this point in closing my heart off. Had I the wisdom and the knowing that I have now, things would have looked completely different. Things would never have got as bleak as they were however, had things never have gotten that bad, I would never have the wisdom that I have now.

My next few years was a downward spiral of self hatred and anger. Then, when I had finally had enough, that's when the real work started. I had years and years of closing myself off, and I had to work through those years and years of protection before I could even scratch the surface of healing the trauma that this situation caused me.

With every step forward I took I had to deal with more of the damage that this had caused and bring it to the surface for healing, I became fixated on thinking that the situation was reliving itself. I was getting more and more frustrated because every single time the feelings would arise, I was under the impression I had to do something about it. What I didn't realise at the time, was my emotional body was healing itself and I just needed to let it do it's thing and get out of the way. My trying to take action thinking that the situation was recurring was actually extending the process even more.

Years and years had gone by, I had lived overseas for a period of time but still, there was no relief from the situation. It was haunting my life and eventually, started haunting my dreams. At this stage, we had been broken up 10 years and I had been single for that whole time. My heart was so closed off that I couldn't allow love in any capacity to enter my world. By this stage he had got married and had 2 children with this woman, I hated that I knew this, but for some reason, everyone in my world felt that I needed to know at every moment when something happened in his life.

For about 6 months I had non stop dreams of him. In the dreams we were always getting back together, he was telling me how much he loved me and missed me. I would wake up feeling so happy and relieved to then realise it was just a dream. This completely haunted me and affected every other day of my life. Finally, the dreams got so bad and so frequent that I knew something had to be done. I had gained quite a lot of awareness at this stage and was really tapping deep into the consciousness journey so I knew that it required something different to happen. I had gone years trying to hate him and by this stage, I had accepted that I was just going to love him for the rest of my life.

I felt that this was so unfair, after all, I knew he was a cheater, I knew that I didn't want to be with a cheater, I knew logically that I deserved more, but I also knew that it was more healthy for my life to love him rather than hate him. I was having a conversation with my friend surrounding the dreams and how much they were torturing me and she said something to me very gently. "Kell, I wouldn't normally say this, I don't really know why I am, but what would happen if you just admit to yourself that you want to be back with him?" The second she said it, I burst out crying and I couldn't stop. The fear that rose in me at that moment felt like someone was sitting on my chest.

Because I was so far on my conscious journey I knew that when fear was present, it was giving you the biggest opportunities of healing. My healing came first and foremost in my life so the second my awareness was directed at this, I knew I couldn't ignore it. So, I acknowledged to myself no matter how crazy it seemed, that I was in love with him, and I wanted to get back with him.

Strangely enough, it was his birthday so I sent him a text wishing him happy birthday. We sent a couple of messages back and forward and I asked him if he would be interested in meeting me for a coffee. He said yes and we scheduled a time. My heart and my mind were all over the place. This was 10 years since I had been with him and I had changed so much. I was truly believed that I would see him again and realise that I was not actually in love with him but instead, had been holding on to the feelings I had for him all those years ago.

The morning of our meeting, my brother-in-law and sister rang me on loudspeaker. They asked me if I was sitting down. I knew it was about him, I could just feel it, my heart flew up to my throat and my knees went weak. I honestly thought I was going to pass out. Jon and Kate have split up! My head spun and I thought I was going to be sick. Jon had sent an email to my brother-in-law telling him the news. So here I was, planning to see him so I could realise that I didn't love him anymore and now I find out that he's single too.

That afternoon I was trembling as I turned up to our meeting place. I felt so overwhelmed. We had an awkward hug and sat down to chat. He told me that Kate and him were over because she had been having an affair. You would think that I would feel some kind of satisfaction from this but I actually didn't. He simply said to me, "Karma right!". At this stage I had received a certificate in psychosomatic therapy and was an accredited yoga teacher so my life was all about light and love! I stood upon my little pedestal of light and virtue and responded in the way any enlightened being would respond. "Oh Jonny, I'm so sorry to hear that, I'm sure it has nothing to do with Karma!" Problem is, I wasn't enlightened so that was a load of bullshit, it was totally Karma.

We only had a brief catchup and I left with more confusion than I arrived with. I didn't understand how I felt, and I was unsure if I was in-love with him or not. I messaged him and asked if we could catch up again, and he suggested we make it a little longer over an evening. The following week he took me for dinner. He picked me up from my apartment and we went for a meal to a lovely restaurant near my place. It was a much more relaxed atmosphere than the one before and I felt a lot more calm. This time I had a lot more courage to really look at him and when I did finally look into his eyes, it felt like home. I felt like he was as familiar to me as if I was looking at myself in the mirror. I always thought that he was my soul mate and now, in this place I was at, I knew it to be true. Jon had changed so much, he was totally in love with his daughters and he was no longer obsessed with the power and wealth that he had been caught up in before. He was so much more grounded and softer. We chatted for hours, we laughed, reminisced, shared stories. At one stage he looked deep into my eyes and wouldn't break eye-contact. My heart was beating so hard I thought my chest would break open, it felt like the moment went on forever and pretty soon I broke gaze, I was feeling so much of everything I couldn't keep looking. The fear and confusion that was here for me now was very confronting. What did this mean? Was this meaning that we were still in love? Were we maybe going to eventually get back together? Did this actually all just happen? Is he still a cheater?

He dropped me home a little later and got out of the car to open my door for me. I was so bloody nervous and at that moment I realised, holy shit, we're on a date! I didn't know what was going on for him at that stage but with that gesture I knew, he was wooing me. I thought that was the extent of it but the next thing I knew he was walking with me up to my apartment. I got so nervous and start babbling on with some incomprehensible crap and next minute I knew, his arm was around my shoulder. I nearly DIED! We got up to the front door and he stepped inside with me. He then said thanks for a good night and put his arms around me, he hugged me for about 2 minutes. It felt like 5 and I melted into his arms. He turned and left and without a word of a lie, I stood there for 15minutes with my mouth wide open, not quite knowing if I was dreaming or not. My thoughts were in overdrive and without a doubt, I was taken away from my self.

I was at this point so certain that we were going to get back together. It felt clear to me, he was so beautiful and had grown so much as a person that I felt all my life and my journey had really led to this point. Maybe the reason I couldn't get over him was because we were in fact, destined to be together. Stranger things have happened. I mean, wouldn't this be the stuff that movies are written about?

We caught up about a week later and this time I invited my sister and brother-in-law along. We had all been really close when Jon and I were together so it seemed fitting and I thought that it would show us what we could expect by being back together. It was a really horrible day. Jon was weird, hungover, and being the obnoxious Jon that I knew. That beautiful, humble, grounded man who I saw last week just wasn't there. In that moment I knew it wasn't what I wanted. I walked home that night alone and decided to cut through the park. I went straight to the middle of the field, laid down on the grass with my heart pressed against the earth, and cried and cried. I was convinced that I had just had my closure which I had tried to chase for years and years.

The next few months were a complete rollercoaster of emotions. The healing that was occurring for me at that time was really bringing up all my feelings for Jon to the surface however I didn't really understand that's what was happening. I was confused thinking that I was having these feelings for him not realising that this was all a part of the healing process. I was so perplexed with what was coming up for me, I thought that I needed to take action. So, with much consideration, I felt that only thing left to do, was to tell him that I still loved him. I convinced myself that is what would bring me the freedom and closure I was trying to achieve.

We organised to meet up one night for drinks. We arrived at the Story Bridge Hotel, quite appropriate seeing that is where we went to break up. We sat chatting for ages. I was so nervous trying to find the opportunity to say what I needed to say. I felt in my heart that if I told him I loved him, he would say that he didn't love me anymore and that would give me the closure I was looking for. What surprised me the most is he actually geared the conversation to our past which gave me the opening I was looking for. He began talking about how he regretted so much what happened with him and I, that if he could take it all back he would have and if he had his time over he would cherish what we had together. He told me that he wished he wasn't so focused on money, he knows that isn't what happiness is made of now and he would have been happier just in a tent living with me. I started saying to him how hard it had been for me the last 6 months because I had been struggling so much with my feelings for him. I told him that I was still very much in love with him. I told him it had always been him from the moment I laid eyes on him, it had only ever been him and would only ever be him. With that, he started crying his eyes out and told me that he was still so in-love with me too. We sat in the middle of a crowded bar, crying and holding each-other. I felt that my life, finally started to make sense. All the grief, all the pain, all the suffering was all because we were meant to be together. Everything I had gone through the last 10 years hadn't been for nothing! The reason I couldn't move on, was because I wasn't supposed to move on. My heart knew so strongly what my head wasn't willing to admit.

He explained to me that he was going through a really bitter divorce and at that stage, he really needed to make sure his girls were cared for as they came first. He explained that he couldn't give me a lot at that stage. I told him that I was fine, all I wanted was to spend time with him, to slowly get to know him again and see where it lead us. We said our goodbyes and I went home walking on air.

The next day was a complete bubble of happiness, joy, clarity, disbelief and complete relief. I felt like the last 10 years finally made sense. I was debriefing my friend at breakfast and burst out crying with such happiness and relief. The nightmare was finally over. What felt like 10 years of complete torture finally had it's completion and I could now just focus on playing out the rest of my life. All the work I had done on myself, the dedication to myself and healing all lead me to this point! Freedom! I went to the markets that day and brought flowers, I nearly cried out with joy because as I was waiting in line I thought to myself, I am just standing here buying flowers! I have no problems in life! For the first time ever, there is nothing to fix, no confusion, no upset, no questions. Everything in my life made sense. It is as though a big black cloud that had settled itself over my life had finally lifted and all I felt was space and joy. I felt like for the first time, the pieces finally fit.

A few days later we went for dinner again. Jon took me to a great restaurant he had been dying to try. As soon as he picked me up, something felt off. I could just sense the energy was not right. We went for dinner but it was strained and didn't feel as open as it had when we both confessed our feelings. I just let the evening play out and tried to not put too much pressure on it. Looking back now, I didn't want to rock the boat and went into a complete place of submission and fear. The following week I barely heard from him. I rang him at one stage to try and talk but he didn't answer. I messaged him a pretty heartfelt message suggesting that something felt a little strange and asked if all was ok. I never heard another thing back.

This was completely gut wrenching. I couldn't believe that I was here again! That weekend I went to a friends baby shower at a local bar. I was a complete mess. The freedom and relief from the week before, a distant memory and now all that was in it's place was more pain and more confusion than there was before. Well what do you know, guess who I bumped into there! He walked right up to me and said, "Kell, my phone has broken, here have a look at it, I can't see who's calling, I can't open texts, I know you messaged but I haven't been able to message back". I felt such relief, there was a really reasonable explanation! It seemed pretty comical because don't we as women go through the whole crazy, maybe he lost his phone, maybe a family member died, maybe he died scenario with our mates. His phone actually did break. Although, there are a million ways to get into contact with someone. I mean, he could have Facebook messaged me right? But, I wasn't going to look into that right now, I was happy and he told me he would call me the next week.

We made plans to do something the next week. I told him that I would prefer we do something a bit more relaxed, no dinner, nothing like that, just hanging out at home so we could really chat and get to know each other in a more relaxed atmosphere. He was supposed to be coming over about 6pm and I didn't hear from him until well after 7. He explained that he had his girls with him and they had just eaten but he asked if I would meet them for ice-cream. This was a complete and utter cop out. I wasn't comfortable meeting his children at this stage, I didn't want to put too much pressure on the situation and I wouldn't want to put that kind of pressure on a couple of innocent little kiddies. I told him to enjoy his night and we'd catch up again another time.

After some reflection I realised that this wasn't good enough for me. I messaged him that although I loved him very much and although I wanted nothing more than to get to know him again, I knew that he had the ability to give me more than the crumbs I was getting. I was fine to take things slow but I wouldn't be treated like an afterthought. I told him that I was stepping away from the situation, if he wanted me, he knew were to find me but I wouldn't be waiting. He messaged me back and said simply, he couldn't give me what I wanted. Seemed a little full on considering all I was asking for was to get to know him again. Let's just say nearly three years later, I still haven't heard from him.

This had been the most difficult thing for me, opening myself up to the idea of us getting back together to then have it completely crush me again. I understand that all things happen for a reason but really? Would life be so bloody cruel to put me through that again? The three years after had been a complete rollercoaster of emotions. Complete frustration and anger for how this had played out to be left again, with nothing. No closure, no contact, just a complete shut out. He literally smashed through my world again and left me broken and alone like he did before. The rebuilding stage from this wasn't as difficult as the first time. You see, I was getting to professional status in dealing with the pieces of my broken heart but as it is with all things, there is a reason for it all.

The incident that put me on my path to myself, came from heartbreak and severe trauma. Some of us don't need to go through such extreme situations to get onto our journey and some of us need to go through more extreme situations to get there. Irrespective of where our journey originates, the path is all one in the same. Breaking down the layers of protection to reveal the beautiful, complete, loving being that lies within each and every one of us. To inspire us to keep going on our own individual journey in raising consciousness within ourselves, and assisting in raising consciousness within others. I can see now, in complete retrospect my lessons and how they got me to where I was today, how it lead me to conceiving the idea of this book. It is my own destiny to be writing this book and it has come only from the journey that I have stepped onto.

Whether this even makes it to print is not the purpose, I am simply following the stirrings of my heart, the whispers of my truth and moving with the flow of life. Letting the words out, fulfilling the part that I play, taking the relevant action that I'm inspired to take, with no resistance. Even when things don't make sense to me, or I don't agree with them, I listen to the stirrings of my heart and do whatever it feels I need to do at that time. You see, it is never the outcome itself that is the purpose, it is what wisdom you gather from it, and who knows, this wisdom may just resonate with one person and contribute to them stepping onto their own path of consciousness. If that is the case, I have contributed to the healing of the world, and therefore have discovered my own purpose through all of this.

Here, I have broken down the lessons that I have uncovered along the way. I have written this for you, from my heart to your heart in the hope that maybe you will find some purpose or sense of relief on your own path. I hope that my words offer some support and some encouragement to understand what is happening for you so that you can navigate through this more effectively and without unnecessary suffering. One thing I know for certain, we are never alone, we are always given the very thing we need, at the complete perfect time, to help us with the next part of our journey. If you are holding this book in your hands, I am humbled and feel privileged to be a part of that healing place for you. I will give you complete honesty, unedited rawness and my absolute promise that you will not feel alone through this. I have gone through my journey the way I have, so I can be here, for you, holding your hand through your next phase. See me as your best friend or your favourite Aunty, taking you gently through the steps which opened up the greatest amount of healing for me.

Vulnerability

This completely sucks! Being vulnerable is painful, embarrassing, exhausting and lonely. Why the hell then would anybody ever want to be vulnerable? Because vulnerability is truth and when truth is present in your life, life gives you back only truth. Truth of what is for you, truth of who you really are and truth of the people who are around you. The more truth in life, the more joy, love and light you bring into your world and you receive.

Unfortunately, for those of you not quite used to vulnerability (pretty much all of us) this is really tough and it's going to confront you like no body's business. But like anything, the more difficult something is, the bigger the pay off.

Vulnerability, we all have a fair idea what it means but could you really explain it if you were asked? I feel that the explanation in itself is vulnerability because it is different for each and every one of us. For some people vulnerability is simply admitting you don't know the answer. For others it is saying the first I love you, holding eye gaze for that second longer, telling your mother that you love her or telling someone that you need them.

Why is it so hard to be vulnerable? What you are vulnerable of is something that was programmed into you at a very early age. Our resistance to vulnerability or lack of it may even be unknown to us. You may never have considered, ever until this moment, that you don't allow yourself to be vulnerable. I was certainly unaware for a very long time that I was lacking in the ability to be vulnerable.

Vulnerability sits in the Sacral Chakra, this is the area around our pelvis. It is the place that is related to our families, work, money, creativity, relationships and home life. All the aspects in life to which vulnerability would be a challenge. We create certain rules around which aspects get to see the version of ourselves we choose to show. For example, vulnerability can come really easily when you're creating but you'll find it incredibly difficult to be vulnerable with your family. Or you can find it is easy to be vulnerable with family but incredibly difficult to be vulnerable in your work life.

Vulnerability is a fear in asking for what we truly want. When we ask for what we want, we run the risk of either getting what we want, and then being responsible for it, or worse than that, not getting what we want and dealing with the rejection that comes with it. We also open ourselves up to ridicule and judgment from others for thinking we're silly, childish, over-emotional or crazy. I swear, the things I put myself through on a regular basis to always be vulnerable, sometimes I think I am being crazy.

A lot of people view vulnerability as weakness and this also couldn't be further from the truth. Vulnerability actually takes an immense amount of confidence and strength, not only to be vulnerable, but strength for the aftermath of what vulnerability brings. Let's for the moment however, try and break it down further.

Vulnerability is asking for the deepest parts of our selves to be in some way validated. To really ask for your heart be seen in that moment. Whether it is asking for a pay rise, asking for forgiveness, asking for help or asking for a situation to be better than what it currently is. In this moment we are asking for another person to give us more than what they are currently giving us. It also means that we are in that moment handing over a lot of power because it is up to them to supply us with what we need.

This is an incredibly confronting thing for most of us, especially those of us that have had to learn to do life on our own for a very long time. I personally have struggled in the past with being vulnerable around men. For me, even just admitting that I wanted a committed relationship to anyone around me let alone a man was the most terrifying thing in the world. I had this belief for a really long time that there was no way a man would want to be in a committed relationship with me if I admitted that is what I wanted. In this society, we as women, have really had a lot of pressure put on us to play hard to get. The problem with this is, when you're too hard to get, most people won't even try.

Due to the breakup I experienced, I really closed myself off and with that, came a fear of ever being truly vulnerable. The problem with closing yourself off, is eventually, when you go open yourself back up, you have-to through the pain all over again of what closed you off in the first place. It's a tough path to go through but it's unfortunately the only way through it.

I have always been the kind of person that can't just be with someone for the sake of it. If I'm going to be in a relationship, I need to really feel it. Most people would call it picky and it's probably exactly what it looks like from an external perspective. How I explain it however, is that I had a very deep, very intense love and I know what that felt like. My benchmark is pretty high and I'm not willing to compromise that feeling for anything. I would rather be on my own than deny myself of that feeling in a relationship. Sure in those 12 years I've dated and I've given things ago with different people. The ones that I was really into, they didn't want me and the ones that did want me, I was never really into.

I met this guy one night. I was pretty drunk and couldn't remember what he looked like or even what we spoke about as we didn't chat for that long but I remember his energy. All I remember was looking up at him and feeling like he was larger than life. It was towards the end of the night so I gave him my number and went home without another thought. He messaged me the next morning and we agreed to go out the following week.

That Sunday, I was a barrel of nerves. I was normally really great when it came to dates and I hardly ever got nervous. This was so different, I was beside myself with butterflies and panic, so much that I wanted to cancel the date. My friend turned around to me and said "what the hell is wrong with you?" Even she knew this was out of the ordinary. I turned to her and said, "I don't know mate, but I just know this is something very, very big, I just feel it". Very weird considering I couldn't really remember him.

About 5 minutes into the date, I knew life was never going to be the same again. He had this gentle strength about him that completely blew me away. I was too scared to really look into his eyes because I knew exactly what this meant and I was beyond scared. We had a really incredible night and things got very deep, very quickly. Neither of us wanted the date to end and so he stayed the night with me.

Two days later we caught up again, we were on the couch chatting and I built up the courage to look into his eyes in the way I had avoided before, I really let myself fall into them. At that moment, for me to really be vulnerable, was to allow myself to look into his eyes in that way. That was the hard part for me, because that meant the scariest outcome, Love. And the very fear that made me avoid looking deep into his eyes, was exactly what was realised, I fell in love.

Vulnerability for some is to say the first I love you. Now, there was no way I was going to tell this man after 2 days of dating him that I was in-love with him. That would be bloody insane, cat lady crazy! So I did what any normal woman would do, I told him 4 days later! Sure Kellie, why not, throw yourself in the bloody deep end why don't you. Be single for 12 years and dive head first into something after 4 days. Now that is playing hard to get!

There was some perspective here so I will let you know the why. We were at my place after having a lovely dinner chatting away about life. He then broke the conversation to let me know how afraid he was because he felt like he was about to lose himself in me. He proceeded to tell me how much fear that left him with and what it meant to him if he was to allow himself to completely fall for me. You see, he had also had a terrible break up like mine and the fear he had of falling in love again and potentially putting himself through another breakup was too much to bare. This beautiful man before me, so vulnerable, so raw, so honest and all I saw in him was strength and courage. All I could do was smile. I put aside my own fears of rejection and decided that what I could offer to this situation was some reassurance and to tell him that he doesn't have to worry because I already had fallen for him. I was in-love, it had already happened for me and I was happy to just wait until his feelings became stronger than the fear.

In this moment the immense vulnerability of telling me his fears, telling me his feelings and putting all of that on the table was met with my own admission of my truth and feeling absolute safety in doing so. But let's take a step back, it was my vulnerability of something I struggled so hard with, simply looking into his eyes, really looking into his eyes that then allowed him to return to me with his own vulnerability. In this moment, it started off small but then opened the flood gates to some really intense truth and vulnerability to be shared. This was the first time ever, I had truly allowed myself to be vulnerable to this level with a man. It was very new terrain for me and it came with some pretty intense emotions.

So this is a lovely story and beautiful example where it all ended like a fairytale. Eventually after a week, he told me he had let himself fall and he was very much in love with me too and it all turned out wonderful. Vulnerability was shared and it ended with love and the promise of a new relationship. Pretty good payoff if you ask me. But what about when the opposite happens. Let us take a look at when things don't end so well.

Not long after the I love you's in this situation came a very big crash. Fears came too hard into play and the connection was not enough, or maybe it was too much and it triggered the fear in both of us. This fear played itself out in very different ways, for a man, when he is triggered and feels vulnerable, he needs isolation and space. For a woman to be triggered and feeling vulnerable, she needs reassurance and support. So you can see, these are both complete conflicting needs at this point and surely to end in complete disaster.

Things weren't going very well and eventually, they went so badly that he decided he couldn't keep going. It was all too much and he just couldn't navigate through it. I understand now that there were many times that I was called to be vulnerable and really let my heart be shown to this man. The problem was, being so used to being the strong one and feeling like I had it all together, I misunderstood this for a need to be stronger. He was coming to me and telling me how afraid he was and I was dismissing it. I was thinking that the more fear he showed to me, the stronger I needed to be. This was absolutely not what this situation called for, there was a call for me to be just as vulnerable. And I don't mean vulnerable with him, I mean vulnerable with myself. To stop for a second and see that I was absolutely not in control, I was absolutely not feeling fearless and taking it in my stride, to admit to myself that this meant more to me than anything had done for a really long time. My arrogance and stubbornness in not allowing the Kellie that was so afraid and raw to be present, kept me shut off to myself, and it kept me shut off to him.

Looking back, I was coming from a place that I thought I needed to be at. I was not real with myself, or him about where I actually was in life and that place was someone that was desperate to be loved and kept safe. I had experienced the worst betrayal and it nearly killed me. For me to open to him meant that I could go there again and I didn't do it, I thought I did, but to really open up to him, meant to be truly vulnerable with myself.

I didn't trust myself though the whole time we were dating. I second guessed everything I did for fear of losing him. I held back when I wanted to dive in, I was controlled and calculated to try and come across in the best light that I could. I felt that if he realised that I wasn't strong, he wouldn't want me anymore. He saw all these things in me which I was so happy with him seeing, and I was scared that if I wasn't like that all the time, he wouldn't want me. I was so afraid that I wasn't enough on my own, I had built a character, the strong, intelligent, fearless, woman that has it all together. I felt that if I dropped out of the character even for a second, he wouldn't like what he saw and would leave me.

When things ended, I was completely devastated as this was the first man I had opened my heart to (or thought I did) since the terrible break up of 12 years ago. I couldn't believe that it was over like this, so quickly. I thought that I was going to start journeying on this wonderful adventure of self discovery with another human being by my side. So what was I to do? Being vulnerable at this time is even more difficult, you have suffered a massive rejection, your worst fears are realised and you are left in the aftermath alone and shattered.

Vulnerability in this moment is something that you really need to stay with, despite every part of you wanting to shut off and close down, it is so vital at these moments to keep yourself open. The vulnerability in itself is sitting with it, being true to your feelings and just acknowledging that you're devastated and lost. Admitting that you don't know the answers, admitting that you don't understand, admitting that you're crushed admitting that this has actually happened, admitting that you contributed to it and accepting the deep regret that comes with it.

We tend to close ourselves off when we experience any form of rejection and that is the most dangerous thing we could possibly do. You see, when we close ourselves off like that, we begin a decaying process that starts on the inside, and eventually makes it's way to the outside. We become bitter, unlovable, angry, nasty, cranky and cynical. We lose the magic in our hearts and when we lose it there, it is gone from our lives. That magic which is the only thing that can heal and bring joy to our lives, becomes shrivelled and dry. The light goes out in our eyes and life becomes heavy and forced.

Sure we can have moments of good things happening and fun times but they're just that, they're moments. We never truly get to experience the joy of simply sitting in a beautiful park, or watching a child play. We need extreme situations to raise any kind of response in us because we have numbed ourselves to the joys of life. This is why we constantly crave bigger and better because our responses have weakened and it needs to be that loud in order for us to feel something, anything.

When we can sit with vulnerability, allow ourselves to really feel the pain and discomfort of our truth in that moment, as much as it hurts, as much as it drives us crazy, this is the stuff that keeps us open and alive. This is the stuff that allows us to feel joy in the simplicity of life. This is the stuff that keeps the flow of life moving through us and brings forth the things that are really meant for us.

I was so devastated from this experience. It was the closest I had allowed myself to let love in, to let that much of my heart be seen and to let another person move my heart. I truly thought I was in such an amazing place in life to accept this kind of love and I felt like I had matured enough emotionally to be ready for it. So why had this ended like this? Why did this come into my life? Could life be so cruel to offer me this miracle and then so painfully rip it away? The reality is, I never really knew the level of vulnerability that I know now. I had never even scratched the surface of being vulnerable with someone and I certainly, regardless how much I thought that I had, allowed someone into my heart. I did try and reach out a few times to my love. It took an immense amount of strength and courage to do so because it opened me up to more and more rejection. I needed for him to hear my truth and I needed to understand why he shut me out the way he did. I was so vulnerable, so raw in doing this. I listened to my heart at every single moment and my heart lead me to do some things that I was so embarrassed doing. But it was my truth and I was being real with myself. It didn't go down well, my questions went unanswered and ignored and eventually, my heart told me that I had done all I could.

It didn't stop me loving him, it didn't stop the pain, and being in my vulnerability through all of this, did not give me the answers I wanted but it gave me what I needed at that time. It doesn't always give you the answers that you want, it sometimes gives you no answers at all relating to the current situation. But what it gives you, is the ability to stay open and the magic to be present in your heart. This is the biggest pay off and if you simply hold on to the trust of this, you will give yourself permission every single time to be vulnerable.

As I mentioned previously, there is a certain strength in vulnerability. When you take your focus away from the little picture and look at the bigger picture of magic and joy, it removes the pressure of the situation having to work out a certain way. Because the point of vulnerability, is not getting what you want, the point of vulnerability is keeping the magic in your heart. It's to avoid yourself decaying from the inside out and it's to avoid you losing the ability to to see your true magnificence. There is such a strength in that! Allowing yourself to be raw in every single moment. To put yourself through pain and suffering, humiliation and judgment to keep your heart alive and give yourself the opportunity to see your own magnificence.

Allowing myself to sit in vulnerability for a really long time was difficult and conflicting. My emotions were like a see-saw and it was very hard at this moment to stay connected to myself. I always go to the park when I'm either really, really happy, or really, really sad. It's the place I go to ground myself and it really allows me to connect very deeply. With the aftermath of this experience, I spent a lot of time at the park. I would highly recommend that you find a place that is special to you, and in these moments, go to your place and let it hold you, let it love you and let it heal you.

This one particular day I was in the park, I was so sad and I went to really allow myself to feel, release and heal. I sat on the grass, with my sunglasses on and I let myself cry. It was very difficult at first because I felt so silly but it was more important for me to be really vulnerable in that moment. So I let myself cry, and it felt so bloody good. As I was sitting in the park, on my own, publicly crying, a little old lady walked right towards me. She bent over and asked me if I was ok. Normally, I would have put on my bravest voice and answered the way a strong woman would answer, oh yeh I'm really fine, but in this moment I could really step back and let my truth answer for me, I allowed myself to be truly vulnerable. I looked at her and said, "no, I'm not ok" and I cried harder than I had been. She then asked me if I wanted her to hold my hand. A perfect stranger, in that moment, offered me the kind of support I have never allowed myself to receive before. I accepted her offer and here I was, in the park, holding hands with a complete stranger, sobbing my beautiful little heart out.

When we think about the payoff that comes with this level of vulnerability, it won't be anything you can ever pin point. It doesn't come with a catalogue of outcomes or guarantees of things getting better or working out. But what occurs deep beneath the surface is a massive awakening that sets a chain reaction that you would never have in your wildest dreams been able to predict.

Let's illustrate this in another way. If we consider what is required for a Tsunami to be created. It is the result of an earthquake, a volcano or a landslide underneath the ocean floor. Because it is occurring so deep underneath a massive surface of water, it doesn't actually alert any obvious danger to the surface when it occurs. Scientists have had to create state of the art equipment to measure and detect the outcomes of this underwater movement. We are completely unaware of the conception creating this phenomena and it would be impossible for us, without this equipment to predict how it was going to effect, when it was going to effect and where it was going to effect. Then we look at the aftermath of this chain reaction. What starts off as a simple shift in water level, escalates and eventually creates something that has so much power within it, is so indistructable that it literally takes no prisoners.

The devastation that follows a Tsunami is evidence not just of how powerful and indistructable it was but the shift way beneath the oceans surface that created this whole thing to play out. That is the exact same thing we can expect when we allow ourselves to be truly vulnerable. We create a cosmic shift beneath our own surface which creates a force that is so powerful and indistructable, nothing can stand in it's way. Yes, the Tsunami creates a lot of devastation, but this is not the purpose of the analogy, the analogy is to show us how something so powerful can be created from a shift which was undetectable to us.

So how does this all work, how is it that being vulnerable can create these incredible shifts that help us to tap into the kind of power we could only dream of? Because when we are truly vulnerable, when we allow ourselves to reach the very core of our being and become vulnerable with that part of ourselves, we are tapped into our truest divine self. We have unlocked the door to ultimate trust, and ultimate surrender and in that place, we allow our divinity to take over.

This is the ultimate payoff, to have access to this incredible gift of true trust and surrender. When you're in this place, it makes the simple things in life so enjoyable. Simply blinking can bring immense amount of joy and happiness. Watching nature play out around you and eating a beautiful meal all bring such immense amounts of joy that you feel quite content in the simple things in life. This does not mean that you only get to experience simple joys, quite the contrary, the enjoyment of these simpler things actually create their own momentum and they bring more and more experiences of joy to your world. What happens in this place is that we are more content than we were before with the simple things in life. And then, when the big things in life happen, it cracks our world open with more joy, love and light that we could ever imagine. It illuminates not only our path but it sends a flood of light onto the paths of those around us. Spreading joy, spreading love, spreading light all from our divine hearts.

The people and the experiences that come into your life from this place are truly inspired and breathtaking. Things you could never have even imagined that could be achieved become daily ritual and this further expands and opens you to more and more opportunity. You strengthen the inner voice so well that you no longer need to struggle to hear it or decode it. It becomes easier for you to follow your intuition and you do so with less hesitation and fear. You throw yourself into opportunities that you never would have been open to before, you understand things that you never even would have heard before and you see things that you never would have been able to see before. All these things that are here for you, that come to you in the core of your vulnerability.

So the next time you feel so afraid to ask for what you want in any moment, to ask for your heart to be seen, to ask for more than what your current situation is offering, take a step back from the outcome of this situation and look at the bigger picture. You're not asking for just this moment, what you're really asking for are the doors to be unlocked to your divine being and when you hold that as your intention, the outcome is insignificant. The potential embarrassment or rejection you may feel in that moment is short lived and paves the way for your true divinity to be realised. This is what you tap into, and this is what you hold close to your heart in these moments. This is what will take you from fear to trust and support you through the dark moments. This is something that you need to hold with you at these times, the support that is here for you when you decide to take this plunge is unwavering. It will continue to be there, you just need to keep trusting and keep being vulnerable. The deeper you go, the bigger the reward.

One thing that most people don't talk about in the vulnerability phase is the hangover period that follows. This is key information that really supports you through this process. Think about when you go out on the town and have a great night. The drinks are flowing, you're having the most enjoyable night. You are up dancing and really letting yourself go, you have forgotten the responsibilities of life, any issues that may be bringing you down, you just want to let your hair down and have fun. Alcohol, when consumed in a healthy state, really assists in losing your inhibitions. You feel on top of the world! You say things and do things that you normally wouldn't have the confidence to say or do. You feel so relaxed and that tension you felt before has disappeared.

When you lose your inhibitions in this way, you're really letting your true self and your true desires come to the surface. As they say, what's inside sober, comes out drunk. It's your truest self at this moment that is given a chance to come out and play. Now think about what happens after, hangover from hell. The next morning you cringe at what you did the night before, you become embarrassed with the things you remember saying, or don't remember saying. You keep getting flashbacks and you hide your face in the shame of what you did. This is the exact same feeling you get when you go through a vulnerability hangover.

Similar to losing your inhibitions, vulnerability is also exposing your truest self. So the aftermath of this, is the experience of those same emotions. Cringing at the memory of what you said, fear of judgement or persecution and embarrassment. It is no different. This is why when people have shared vulnerability with you in the past that they may go a little awol afterwards. They are experiencing the hangover from hell.

This seems a little unfair considering that it has taken you all this strength and courage to be vulnerable in the first place, not only does it come with no guarantees that I'll get what I want, but I'll also experience a hangover from it too. Pretty crappy exchange when you look at it like that. However, once again we take a step away from the immediate situation and look at the bigger picture! Remember the divine self that we tapped into! It's the same situation for this. The hangover is as just as much a part of the vulnerability experience as the vulnerability itself.

But like all things, the universe will not make us go through all of this without some sort of payoff. There are some instances when we have been extremely vulnerable, have not received the outcome that we were hoping for, but on the flip side, we don't feel rejection, we don't feel shame or embarrassment, instead what we are left with is nothing. We actually no longer desire the thing that we asked for. The significance of whatever lead us to be vulnerable in the first place ceases to have any relevance in our life what-so-ever. Now that is a bloody good payoff. This has happened to me so many times I can't even tell you.

I was set up on a blind date with this guy who I ended up being really attracted to. Nothing happened on the first date but we kept in contact and went out a couple of times. I couldn't figure out if he was actually interested in me or if it was just a budding friendship. It was driving me completely crazy and I knew something had to be done. I worked up so much courage to have the conversation about wether we were actually dating or was this just a friendship. I felt sick the whole day but I knew that it had to be done. The vulnerability I felt was so overwhelming, however the not knowing was pretty unbearable too.

I heard his car pull up and I could hear him making his way up towards my house, my heart was beating, my mouth was dry and my stomach was somewhere around my ankles. He got to the front door and as soon as he walked in, I realised that I had absolutely no interest in him. It was incredible, this very second I realised that I was not one bit attracted to him and therefore I didn't need to have the conversation.

In this moment, the vulnerability was experienced in just being prepared to have the conversation. It actually didn't need to go any further than that. This can happen from time to time, the intention of doing something sometimes removes the actual need to do something. The trick to this is however, you have to be authentically prepared to go through with it. There's no use in trying to trick the universe, it will win every single time.

Eventually this all gets a lot easier. Just like with other things in life that you practice, the more you do it, the easier it gets. It does transform from being very difficult and confronting to being a necessary part of life. You advance from being terrified of asking for what you truly want to a place of confidence and sublime trust. Eventually, you will be so acutely tuned into your self worth that you will no longer need to ask for more than you are currently experiencing. Your body, your soul and your mind all commands what is your highest good and life delivers it to you with little or no resistance.

Outcomes that leave you feeling disappointed, this becomes a journey altogether and doesn't suggest you are failing or on the wrong path. Practicing some compassion towards yourself at these moments are necessary in moving rapidly through the challenges of the lesson and guide you a little more smoothly to the knowing and wisdom that completes this phase.

Everything we do, every step we make is the fabric that is used to weave the tapestry that is life. The most vibrant colours and beautiful weaves which we find ourselves appreciating the most, are created from those times in life that brought us the greatest challenge. This is the ultimate payoff and the thing you can be most certain about, with every single expression of vulnerability, it will open the door to a magnificent payoff.

Love

I have had two very big love's in my life and I question whether I'm the luckiest or the most unlucky person alive. Relationships have not been an easy journey for me. Mainly because I had the experience of a very deep, very real love with Jon and could never bring myself to settle for anything less than what I felt for him. Yes, it was an unhealthy love, yes it wasn't conscious but most definitely, what I felt was real and it was strong! It outlined my life's journey, determined my path and took me to the darkest places that one person could possibly go. Still, I would never, replace that experience with anything. I wouldn't give it back and I would most certainly, given the choice, do it all over again. I've heard a lot that when people have had a really tough breakup or relationship experience that they tend to go for something safe afterwards. I have never been this kind of person and it has always perplexed me why people do this. It's never going to be a fulfilling relationship, it will only delay the inevitable of having to look deep into the eye of the storm at what created the heartbreak in the first place.

No matter what I have done in life, no matter what life has dealt me, I have always been true to my heart. If something hasn't felt right, I haven't continued with it, because I know that a connection that isn't reaching the very depths of my soul, is just going to keep me stunted and closed. Who wants to live a life of safety? Yeh it might not be scary but you're never, ever going to be scratching the edges of your soul. You're never going to really feel the expansion of your heart in all it's glory, yes it absolutely stings, it can cripple you, it can leave you for dead, but you went there and you conquered and you only bring miracles into your life when you really, truly go there.

When I met Tygue, I felt the second big love, the love that my heart knew I would experience again, but my mind could never be certain. What I felt in the short time that we knew each-other, was the very thing I had held out for all those years. It's why I could never be with anyone after the breakup with Jon, because that feeling, is worth holding out for. As I have come to experience, quite painfully, it comes with absolutely no guarantees. Just because this love is present, it does not mean that you will be with this person forever, it doesn't even mean you will be with them for a long period of time. This seems pretty cruel and the reality is, why would someone choose to go ahead with this. Once again, the payoff is, your path unfolds more and you are fast tracked on your journey to true self love and discovery.

There are a few myths that need to be squashed here to be able to go on any further. The longer that you believe these myths to be true, you will be in for some very rude awakenings. There is no person meant for us in this world. There is no happily ever after. There is no such thing as true love. You will not be complete once you find that perfect person. You will not be saved by that perfect person. Life does not start when you find that perfect person.

This is a pretty bitter pill to swallow especially when we have been fed this our entire lives. I know that this is not nice to hear and probably will seem like I've just told you Santa Claus doesn't exist but this belief is keeping you so far away from the real truth that it is just causing you more pain and suffering holding on to it. That does not mean that we are not here to experience real, game changing, deep love and connection. We absolutely are here for that! It is a very real and very beautiful payoff for opening your heart and following your truth. Life was not meant to be a boring story, if it is, you're only half living it. Life should be exciting, filled with wonder and amazement, but, life is not about finding that connection outside of yourself, life is about finding that connection within yourself and that in turn gives you everything you could truly want and more.

I am most certainly someone who has been defined by love. It has been something that has been driving me for as long as I can remember. I was as little as 5 years of age when I was aware of love outside of myself. It makes me a little awkward saying this but I remember driving in the car next to my uncle, and sitting on my legs so I would appear taller and people would think he was my husband. It made me feel special that people would think I belonged to someone, that someone thought I was so special that they wanted to be my husband. At such a young age, this was what I deemed as important in life. I believed that when you were married, your worth was met. Now being so young, this wasn't a learned behaviour, this was a belief I was born into. It came from generations of people before me, filling a social expectation of success by being married. It is completely understandable why we are all so driven to just get married, settle down and find our own success and value in this way, we have been told this for generations and generations not only by society but by the fairytales we were raised on, the movie plots that we are entertained by and the music we listen to and love. All of it is about finding completion with that true love.

Yes, there is a reason for this. The love of another person absolutely makes you feel complete for a period of time. It's called the honeymoon phase and it brings so much joy and excitement to your life. But that fades, and it fades fast. If you are in a relationship to give you something that you don't currently have, then this will fade even quicker and will bring you the biggest slap in the face you could imagine. Anything that we yearn for, whether it is a child, a career, a goal to accomplish, if we look for any of these things to complete us, we will be sorely disappointed once we achieve the said thing, because that feeling of emptiness is the only guarantee that will come from this. It does not mean that if you have these things, they don't bring you joy, the surely will, but not when they are experienced to eliminate feelings of emptiness. The only thing that can fill that void, is connection with the self.

This is not to say I don't believe in marriage and commitment. I am 100% someone who loves the idea of meeting that perfect person for me and playing happy ever after, however, I know that this is a by product of the connection that lies within myself. The connection with another person doesn't complete me, my completion allows me to experience that level of connection. After all, there is some truth behind every myth. There is a perfect person out there who will complete you and you will have moments of happily ever after. That person will bring with them a love that you never thought was possible and with that will come every other thing in life that you could possibly want. That person, is you.

The only thing a relationship is here to offer us, is a very close mirror to show us the absolute truth of who we are. How open we are to experiencing love within ourselves is precisely the love we experience in our external connection. If we are finding the love we have in our lives now is unrewarding, unsatisfying and dull, then we are not expanding ourselves. We are living a limited life hiding from our own magnificence behind a version of life which we think we should be in. Marriage, kids, a beautiful home does not equate to a successful life. Yes, you may in fact find this through that expression but it is not a life to strive for. Just the same as a life of financial and material abundance does not equate to success and is not something to strive for. Yes, these things can happen as a result of tapping into your true life's purpose and there is nothing wrong with wanting these things in your life. The key here is, if they are the things you identify with to bring you some form of happiness, then you are going to be sorely disappointed. These are the things that happiness brings into your life, not the other way around. The more we are defined by something, the more that area of life will disappoint us.

If we find that the love we are experiencing is full of chaos, pain, suffering and torment, then this is precisely the relationship we have with ourselves. It cannot be outside of us, if it is not within us. If you crave for a better relationship in life, then give that to yourself. Step away from your current situation and wholeheartedly give yourself some exclusive time and space. There is nothing a relationship can do for us that we cannot do better for ourselves, sometimes a little bit of space to just be on our own is the very thing that will give us the connection that we are ultimately craving.

Some of us tend to throw ourselves into relationships to avoid really looking at what our truth is. Ultimately, it's not easy, and that is why most people don't do it. There isn't a lot of rewards straight up when you go on this kind of journey, in fact, mostly you are living off a lot of blind faith. You keep pushing yourself to show up every single day and you stick with a lot of sad and lonely moments. But they are just that, moments, small moments in time that open up the space for the really important things to come to the surface. Our refusal to allow this process is doing nothing more than stunting our growth and limiting our existing experiences.

Imagine being able to choose only one thing to eat for the rest of your life. You can choose whatever food you want, but you will not be able to eat anything else. It may start off really exciting and fulfilling, especially if it is your most favourite thing in the world. You get to eat it for breakfast, lunch and dinner and at first, this is highly satisfying. But then, things get pretty boring! The taste that you love so much at first begins to lose it's magnificence. What you started out savouring and adoring, now brings you a feeling of complete underwhelm and a longing for something else. You no longer attack the meal with gusto and excitement, you probably have come to resent the food and feel sickened at the very thought of it. This is the very same thing that we experience when we don't allow our the internal journey of connection to be our primary focus. When we fill our lives with everything else we can think of to avoid that inner awakening, we succumb to a life of boredom and mediocrity.

Sure, relationships are fun, they offer an exciting promise of a new world opening up to us, they give us the hope that maybe we have found something incredible. And mostly, we have very much found something incredible. But all that is happening in this exchange is an opportunity for us to see the very thing within us that is our truth. I can guarantee, the very thing that you are throwing yourself into a relationship for, to find that knee wobbling love that will finally bring you some sense of peace and clarity, is never going to be found. You then will grow bored and either, put up with it because you don't want to be on your own, or replace it with another relationship because you figure that the feeling is dissatisfaction with the person or the relationship. It's never going to happen, you will never find the connection you are looking for because the connection you are truly craving, is the one within yourself. I have literally witnessed friends of mine become manic looking for the next partner. They have stopped at nothing, and anyone to scratch the itch of avoiding the discomfort that comes with the internal journey of self discovery.

The internal journey is the only thing that will bring the promise of a new world opening up to us. It is the only thing that promises something truly incredible and the best part about this, is there is no way it can be taken away from us. There is no threat of it suddenly dying, leaving us for another woman, leaving us because it doesn't love us anymore. It can't disappear because once the connection is secured, it remains with us forever. As a result of this connection, everything else is a pure gift. The relationships we experience outside of ourselves, from this place are that much more fulfilling and loving. The jobs we have from this place are that much more rewarding, the security we have from his place is that much more secure. We can't lose through this journey, we can't fail ever, we can't make a mistake or a wrong turn. It may be challenging, it may be frustrating and it will make you question everything you know to be true, it will require you to show up every single day and answer the calls of your heart. It will require from you unbridled truth and an immense amount of trust however, it will also bring to you, the very things that you may not even think are available to you right now. It will open your world up to wonders that you didn't think could be possible and relationships that you never thought you could access.

The only way to not experience this, is by not allowing ourselves to partake in the journey. To constantly fill our lives with distractions is the very sure way to slow down the awakening process and keep you further from the things you want. There's no tricking this path, there's no use in saying, I don't want to be on my own right now because I don't like how it makes me feel, so I'll jump into this relationship because it's more exciting than being on my own. This will blow up magnificently in your face, your head will spin for years. You then find that you will require another event or situation to help you heal from this trauma. The very thing that you brought into your life to avoid feeling the original discomfort has created it's own pain which you now need another fix in order to avoid feeling that. It's a vicious cycle of disappointment, upon disappointment, upon let down upon let down. It never ends, the pattern of avoidance and covering up the pain which that avoidance has brought to your life becomes a constant battle within itself, further pulling you away from the very connection that will be your salvation.

When you are in a place of real connection with yourself, you find your reality will start to represent that deep connection. Everything slots into place and adds to the blissful experience of this connection. This doesn't mean that you stop feeling pain and sadness, this very pain and sadness is a part of the awakening journey. The only time we no longer need to experience this, is when we cease to play out our experience in the physical world and we expand to our next destination, or in other terms, we die. In this physical experience, our life will continue to grow, continue to expand and this is the only thing we can be certain about. We will come up against challenges and situations which will test us time and time again, but with those very things, comes more knowing, more awakening, more love and eventually, more bliss. Every single moment and opportunity opens us up to a deeper place within ourselves. This extends to the relationships outside of ourselves and offers a deeper place for others to meet us. The connections become stronger and more secure.

When we are constantly looking outside of ourselves to chase that feeling we crave, we are missing the mark. We become Alice chasing the white rabbit trying to find his destination all the while ignoring our own journey. The very journey that tells you the only place you want to be is home (yourself). The very thing you were so bored with, not wanting to experience, and craving something outside of yourself to transform is in fact the very thing that you are craving. The further you chase the white rabbit, the farther away you are from your home and the longer it will take you to return. That time will come, the time when you look around at your situation and realise that nothing has brought you the happiness you thought it would. You have completed everything you set out to achieve, you have the house, the husband, the children, the career! Everything you wanted out of life, you have conquered but in this place, once the stillness kicks in, you are left with the uneasy feeling of something missing. You may quickly dismiss it and latch on to another goal or find something else to fix, but that too will only bring small moments of satisfaction. The feeling will creep back in, that is for certain. And the more it is ignored, the louder it gets, and when it gets loud, you don't want to hear what it has to say, because that is when it becomes tragedy, sickness, or debilitation. Something will come into your world to throw the biggest bomb in your tracks, to bring you to a situation that forces you to make that connection with yourself. The question that you need to ask yourself at this time is, am I going to start now, when the path is a little easier, or do I want to wait until I have no choice and the path is littered with debris from the bomb blast?

Maybe I was lucky to have had tragedy strike when it did for me, twice. The love that I found and was taken away both times has certainly caused a lot of pain and suffering for me. I wouldn't change it however, I look at the growth I have had and the things that have happened in my life as a result of this playing out and I can say, hand on my heart, I would go head first into something the next time there is a connection like I had with Jon and Tygue. I can also say without a doubt, that I will turn away from any experience that doesn't give me a connection like this because that will only limit my growth. It is like cutting the lawn with a pair of scissors, painstaking and never-ending. Holding a space for those deeper connections to reveal themselves to you is like getting a heavy duty lawnmower to cut that grass. Swift, quick and clean. Those connections are when you are truly experiencing God. Maybe only fleeting, maybe will bring pain and suffering, but as I once read, I would rather sit at a table once and have a banquet with God than nibble all day on crumbs with someone mediocre.

So how can we be sure that what we are currently experiencing can't lead to that banquet with God? This is a really simple solution, ask yourself and the truth will be evident. If you are living your life for this relationship and have completely forgotten yourself in it, then, it's time to take a look at things. If you are bored in the relationship and you feel like there must be more to life but you're too scared to leave, it's time to take a look at things. If the relationship is toxic and is bringing a lot of sadness and suffering but you love the person and you're waiting for things to get better, it's time to take a look at things. If you are just in this relationship for the sake of it because you don't want to be alone, then it's time to take a look at things. If you are you are in a situation like this but you don't want to take action yet, this is fine. Just bringing awareness to it can be enough to start moving things. You will transform this situation when you're ready but just be aware, the situation will only transform, when you do.

Ask yourself the question, do I truly know myself? Am I living my life's purpose? Does this current situation or relationship allow me the space and freedom to answer that question and go on a path of self discovery?

If it truly does, wonderful, you can enjoy a really great journey with a loving partner who supports your quest for what truly makes you happy. You can know that this is the case also, because they too are on their own journey of self discovery and finding purpose. You both support and love each other in such a way that whatever that person needs to help them on their journey, you would not stand in their way, even if that means they can't be with you. When you can really step in and honour that place within yourself and that same place for your partner, then congratulations, you are in a healthy relationship.

If you answered no, this current situation or relationship that is playing out does not allow me the space to realise my life's purpose. It does not instil confidence in me that I could seek the answers I'm looking for, then ask yourself this.... Do you want to continue playing out this current scenario at the sacrifice of you fulfilling these answers? The kind of relationship that is harmonious with your journey, is that which brings you closer to yourself. If you find that the relationship itself is all about the other person, your needs come second best and your feelings and emotions do not get a chance to be shared and honoured, then maybe it is time that you gave yourself some time and space to figure those things out. If your situation limits your ability to simply just walk away, then I'm afraid, this is going to be very difficult for you, however life will not change unless you grab the courage to step away. This requires an immense amount of trust, support and courage to do but I can guarantee, the moment you make the decision, life will support you and give you what you need at the moments when you need them.

I have a cousin Karen who was in an extremely abusive, highly toxic relationship that she was caught in for years. She didn't think she could leave because all of her money was tied up in the house and she didn't have a full time job. She had two young boys that she was the primary carer for and things seemed pretty hopeless. She walked away from that situation, truly terrified of how she was going to make ends meet, not only for herself, but for her boys. But she did it, she stepped into the fear and walked away from a lot of money and no security. Not even a year later she had her own successful business as a full time yoga instructor making an incredibly healthy income, living in a beautiful house near the beach and for the first time in her life, supporting herself financially and emotionally. Sure she has had her ups and downs, she has had to remain extremely focused and trusting, but she did it, and she did it within no time. Never again will she feel the fear of having to be with a man for security because she has created security for herself. This, cannot be taken away.

If your situation seems destitute, there are always steps you can take to get out of the nightmare. If you really want to improve your situation, you will. If you don't feel there is a way out, you are still not ready to wake up! You still have not reached a place where you have had enough. You have not exhausted this situation enough with pain and suffering so what will play out now, is absolutely more pain and suffering. It will continue to do this up until the time that you are ready to wake up! The longer this takes, the more trauma is experienced and the more work you will need to do to clear the wounds to bring you back to the journey of connecting with yourself.

The healing journey looks like this. When we came into this world, we were born with features that were passed down from generations before us. We are a perfect combination of 50% our mother and our father. Whether the 50% is the physical features of our mother and the biological features of our father or a dilution of both physical and biological features of both parents. But ultimately, we have exactly half of our mother and half of our father. Not only do we inherit the physical and biological makeup of our parents equally, but we also inherit the emotional makeup. This means that the belief systems our parents have, will absolutely be the very same belief systems that we inherit. In fact, seven generations of belief systems before us our played out in our life.

When we are born, we play out the mothers story for the first few years of our life and then once we reach puberty, we develop our own identity and our own story. The thing here is, it comes from a filter based on our belief systems, our personalities, the intensity of our emotions, our environment and the influential energies around us. It is all determined on the level you are in the food chain, first child, second, middle, youngest, only child, all things are key here. So we begin playing out patterns and behaviours through a combination of all of these things. Those patterns and behaviours frame our reality and the way we respond to that reality. What one person then experiences from a situation, will be something completely different to how another person experiences that same thing.

The way we view and respond to a situation can leave a fracture on our emotional self, which causes it's own level of pain and discomfort. Depending on the health of our emotional self at that time determines how greatly this affects us and determines if we grow from this situation, or if we shut down. Mostly, being that a lot of the foundational beliefs we hold now were as a result of what we experienced as kids, we didn't have the tools to consciously do anything about this. We can be pretty certain that we shut down at this point. Now that pain doesn't go anywhere, it doesn't disappear and life continues. It bury's itself, deep into our hearts, hidden from view of anyone who comes into our lives. It hides so well, we don't even know it's there. Just because we don't know it's there, we don't stop feeling it. It's like a phantom itch that we can't isolate and scratch. We then begin to reach out and fill our lives with things to prevent us from feeling this pain, whether it is relationships, career aspirations, a skill that we have which we define ourselves by or a hobby, whatever it is that we put our energy into, to avoid feeling this original pain. I will go into this more thoroughly a little later

I completely threw myself into wanting a relationship, I developed crush after crush to latch on to in the hope it would ease my pain. When this didn't work, it would only strengthen my feelings for the person which in turn, added more pain to the mix. What happens here, is we get creative, we start to use all sorts of tricks to avoid this pain and the original pain, we create lots and lots of patterns which we play out for years and years all tried and tested to put in place the certainty of never having to face that original, horrible pain.

Life then, as it does in all of it's profound wisdom, meets us with mirrors of these patterns to show us what we are playing out in our life. Because sometimes we don't even know the patterns we are playing out, it can be hard for us to decipher the experiences we are having as reflections of who we are. Due to the fact that the underlying energy through all of this is pain, we can be guaranteed that the experiences that are reflecting us, are not going to be pretty. We will fight them, cringe at them, hate them and avoid them rather than look at what they represent. They then start to create their own painful experiences which we once again, respond to based on our very own cultivation of emotional makeup, beliefs and reason. This layer of pain will require more and more patterns to protect and play out, until we are ready to finally stop, and look at what these situations are telling us. When we finally see it, we become free of it.

This is the awakening journey, unravelling our patterns and stories via a decoding of the experiences life gives us. This leads us back to the original hurt which shut us down all those years ago. Because at this point, we are so much more equipped to deal with it emotionally than we were when we were young, it's pretty crazy when we finally see it. But as with all things, to release it fully, we must experience it. It still hurts the same, it's really painful as it all unravels, but it's a very welcomed pain. It actually comes with an immense amount of relief and surrender so through this place, it is not scary, it's incredibly peaceful and supported.

The journey back to healing the original pain is one thing, but to get there we need to address all the other hurts and pains that were bi-products of this original energy playing out. The more we have ignored, the more we have avoided, the more we have to clear and the longer our journeys will be. Don't get me wrong, you could go through a situation which absolutely clears all of this in a heartbeat. Buddha did, but it came from deep levels of searching and questioning everything he knew to be true in this world before got to this point. Ekharte Tohle, found enlightenment in a moment, but this also came with an intense amount of suffering.

Accelerated healing can become available to us, if that is our journey, but this also can only come from our willingness to actually get on to the journey itself. Once again, the more we avoid, the more we push away the truth, the louder life gets to put us on track. The question here is, do you want to do this the hard way, or the easy way? The easy way actually looks difficult at first! The universe has an amazing sense of humour and it will disguise the most amazing things in the worst situations. This is why, when you get to the end of that lesson, you can truly laugh about it, it is so damn funny! When this happens and you can see the humour in it all is when ultimate healing has taken place. When you can get to a situation and just laugh, darling, you got this! You got this so good!

Algorithm of Life

Why do we do the things we do? How can we do them better? This is a question I have been asking myself for many years and the moment that I rest on an explanation, I am quick to learn the complete opposite can also be true. What I've come to realise, failure for me was so necessary. It built the framework for what was to house my knowing and direction in life. As always, only retrospect has offered me the clarity around this, and the many joys that these failures have gifted, I can confidently say, I'm happy to fail at it all over again.

One thing that can be sure, with every "failure" or experience, when given enough space, honesty and healing, can awaken the greatest "aha" moments. One of those moments for me was when I discovered what I call, the Algorithm of life. This is something that I have placed every single experience or set back in my life into its formula and so far can say, it all leads to the same conclusion. So what is it? How does it work? This is so simple its scary! I am not suggesting the situation that we find ourselves in is simple, we know this is not the case, there are fundaments to it which make it extremely complex. This is entirely why we benefit from stepping out of our situation, creating a simple explanation, understand that and then step back into the matter at hand with a fresh set of eyes.

We have a very special gift that we are born with, this gift defies all logic and reason, it is nothing that can be measured or proven however if you ask any successful human being on this planet, you will know that it is the primary thing which lead them to realising their greatness. This thing is intuition, or, gut instinct. How strong our intuition is, depends on how accurately we are tuned into it. How accurately we are tuned into it is determined by how often we listen to and follow the direction of it.

The difficulty in following our gut instinct is it almost always speaks to us through a certain amount of fear. This fear can be varying levels of intensity but it will always have a question lingering over it as to whether it is right or not. Sometimes, facing the fear doesn't seem worth it based on the current circumstances. In the situation it appears that the outcome is not worth the fear, however, this is another mistake that we commonly make with our instincts, we try and ascertain a how or an outcome. The reality is, the outcome or the hows can be so ingenious that we wouldn't have been able to come up with it even if we tried. Allowing the situation to play out however it needs to is key in successfully following your intuition. The more that you try and direct it, control it or determine it, the more it will confuse you and increase the fear levels.

When we get an instinct regarding something and the outcome doesn't promise to be as exciting, it can limit our enthusiasm with taking action. For e.g. Let's say that we have met a man, he's gorgeous, funny, exciting, he's saying all the right things and he liiiiiiikes you! You start messaging each other but you have this subtle pang in your gut that says to you, something is not right here. You weigh it up and conclude that this is too much fun messaging and flirting. Your instinct is telling you that this isn't a great outcome, however, it's been so long since you've met someone and he is so great and so fun. How are you supposed to walk away from this with absolutely no proof that it's not going to work out?

Scenario 1: you don't walk away. The payoff for staying in it and letting the situation play out is so much more exciting than just, walking away. After-all, that subtle pang could be wrong! I could be just being paranoid! You're not going to risk walking away from this tall drink of water just because of paranoia! What happens if you're alone forever? What happens if you were meant to be together? And so on and so forth. The instinct was there but the fear of following it was so huge and it didn't promise an outcome worth following. Staying in the current situation offered more at this moment than following the fear and walking away from something. The situation plays out like this....

Guy says and does all the right things, you become more and more invested as time goes on. You end up going on an awesome date and it's all fantastic. You think you had an awesome time and he seemed to enjoy himself too. Things got pretty passionate, you spent the night with him and then, nothing! You never hear from him again. You're left feeling used, cheated and you allowed yourself to fall for him. Your gut told you this was going to happen but you wanted to play it out. You then go through a phase of self hatred and hating on men, you feel so crushed that someone could do this to you and it takes you weeks to get over it. You eventually do but it hurt, it hurt a lot.

Scenario 2: You followed your intuition. Something seemed off and although this was a lot of fun, you know nothing good is going to come from it because your instinct is ALWAYS right. You politely let him know that you're not interested and end it there. Two days later, you're filling up your car with petrol and your eyes lock with the most handsome guy you've ever seen! It's love at the petrol bowser!

Now, your intuition didn't tell you that you would meet this Mr Perfect at the petrol bowser, it just said, don't pursue the tall drink of water. The outcome wasn't presented to you but the steps were. The step to be taken at that point in time was, walk away! This is the thing with your intuition, it always knows what is best for you at the time. It will not lead you astray, following it can be really terrifying but trusting that your highest self has your back is all you need to focus on.

So we have established that our instincts are always right. The more we trust and follow them, the stronger they get until such time as it's an undeniable message that we can't confuse as paranoia. We have such strong instincts about things because we already know how the situation plays out. Some scientific theories suggest that time is not linear, this means that it doesn't occur between point A and point B, in fact, some theories suggest it doesn't exist at all, all things are happening simultaneously and we are just in a state of consciousness of this particular moment. This can also mean that we are aware on some deeper levels of our conscious, how things are playing out in different moments both in the past and in the future. With this theory, it makes sense that our intuition knows how a situation has played out and that is the telling tale that we need to follow it's guidance. If we don't listen to our instincts this completely changes the course of events playing out our path and we require that much more energy to bring us back on track. Makes sense then why we suffer so much when something hasn't gone "according to plan".

Think about steering a boat in really rough weather. It takes so much more energy and strength to be able to manoeuvre the boat to stay on track, the driver becomes utterly exhausted. This is the same when life has to work over-time to bring us back to course, it needs to work that much harder to bring things back into alignment. A lot of unnecessary strain is put on to your life as it works overtime to bring you back to the balance of your destiny.

We have established the importance of following your intuition but what if you don't know what your intuition is telling you? How do you get a good read to know what is right and what is wrong? The simple explanation here is, nothing is actually wrong or right. This might seem completely hypocritical to what I have just said but quite simply, sometimes we need to stuff up and ignore our intuition. Sometimes, it's the mistakes we make that give us the nuggets of wisdom that help us in bigger situations down the track. When we look at it this way, it's not really a mistake or a failure. It is a necessary step that playing out a much bigger picture. Think of it as, losing the battle but winning the war. Sometimes, following your intuition can seem like failing. What happens when you trust your gut but the outcome ends up not turning out in your favour? As John Lennon (My favourite person that has ever lived) once quoted:

"Everything will be ok in the end, if it's not ok, it's not the end".

This couldn't be more true. Sometimes we find ourselves having followed our intuition but things appear worse than they were before. In this instance, faith and surrender is all to do here. Keep trusting, keep your vibration raised, feel the fear and immerse yourself in it. The most amazing things come on the other side of fear. We have now ascertained the importance of our intuition, now let's take a look how this fits into the algorithm.

A situation occurs which calls for you to either, walk away, or stay and play out the scenario. We have already established that your intuition has an awareness of which version is best for you to play out. Your intuition represents the truth of the situation. It knows beyond what is logical the absolute truth irrespective of what reality the situation is playing out. Lets take the best scenario and that is, the external situation reflects your intuition or the truth. This is the favoured scenario as it makes it easy to follow your intuition and then you are free to move on. Imagine if you have an instinct surrounding a horse race. You have this overwhelming feeling it is going to win. At the same time, someone with exceptional insider knowledge tells you that this horse is an absolute definite and everyone who's anyone is putting their life savings on this filly to win. You now have enough evidence to confidently follow what you knew to be true and it creates little conflict on your behalf. When the situation at hand matches your intuition, you have a real sense of confidence that this is the best choice you could make as everything is in support of your intuition.

Now we look at the opposite. What if the external situation doesn't match your intuition, what if they both say conflicting things? Now is the tricky part, this is when you really need to use that trust muscle you've been working so hard to build. When the external situation does not match your intuition, the level of confidence rapidly decreases. You no longer have the support of everything proving your intuition is correct and this makes it so hard to muster the strength to follow it. We can go two ways here, we can throw caution to the wind and follow our intuition despite our lack of confidence. We are so in trust that we know even if this situation doesn't work out, it is setting up the scene for something better to come our way down the track. We push through the discomfort of the fear and uncertainty and we reach the other end. At this point there is a real sense of freedom and a deepening of self love, acceptance and understanding.

The second option, which is the more popular option, is to try and get our external situation to match our intuition. We don't have the confidence to follow our own inner guidance so we try and manipulate our reality to support what we know is the truth within us. After all, we have learnt the behaviour from a very young age that if we could have some validation and reassurance from outside of ourselves, it will give us the confidence we need to believe in what we are feeling. Rarely have we been empowered to look within ourselves for the answers and solutions.

We will in this moment spend sometimes years on accessing our external world to give us the reassurance to follow our inner guidance, or what is more commonly known as, closure. My goodness, I was seeking closure for 13 years so I can wholeheartedly say from a place of authority, this is a much longer, more painful process. Sometimes however, as I explained earlier, this is a necessary process and it allows the opportunity to learn some valuable lessons which are necessary for life down the track.

This is the problem with looking outside of ourselves to seek reassurance, it will never, ever be enough. It offers a complete false sense of security as the second it ceases to be there, so disappears our confidence and self belief. When seeking external support and validation, it comes with a certain level of expectation and condition, with expectation and condition comes pressure, and when pressure is present, most people are going to run hence, our validation is no longer accessible. Where we seek our validation and reassurance from outside of ourselves, we build a foundation that is basically built on neediness. We know that the place of neediness is probably one of the more off putting energies yet it is such a powerful energy that controls quite a lot.

Think about when you meet someone and they have this needy energy around them to be noticed, it is the biggest turn off. This energy completely eclipses any endearing quality they may have which would normally appeal to you. When we are faced with someone in that place of neediness it does a number of things, it makes us pity them, it repels us against them and we feel this insane pressure to give them what we sometimes can't even give to ourselves. Now consider what it is like when we do that to others! We literally turn people off us, we create a forcefield around us that repels people and makes them not want to be near us let alone offer us validation.

If we manage to seek validation from an external source or person, it is pretty important that we require that external source to maintain it's position so it can continue to reassure us. This is where the pressure and the neediness is really ramped up. A couple of things play out here, either the pressure gets too much and the external expression falls away, in which case we lose that false sense of self belief and confidence and desperately try to get the validation back. Or, it is no longer enough validation for us, we need bigger and better so we start searching for more and more external factors to validate us.

It is a hamster wheel that we will never get out of. Constantly playing out and turning around an immense amount of energy and effort which, if redirected, could give you everything you are wanting in that moment and more. If we redirect this intention from outside of ourselves to inside ourselves, we find that the validation is real and constant. There is no threat of it disappearing or being taken away as it belongs to us and we make the choice of whether we give ourselves this validation or not. When we have it, it's a certainty and that then adds more and more validation and reassurance to the pot. Before we know it, we are a vessel of absolute faith, belief, trust and knowing towards ourselves and that is something that cannot be taken away.

From this place we also send out a new energy, one of confidence and completeness. We literally become more appealing to those around us. The energy that we emanate from this place is so attractive to other people that we become so much more interesting. We then start to receive all the external validation we can stand but the difference here is, it doesn't have to be there and it doesn't have to stay so it comes with a real sense of ease around it. We then start to perpetuate the energy within us and it grows, expands and explodes from our being shining a beautiful light from us that is so much more vibrant and beautiful than what was before. From this place, we become more beautiful, more connected, more appealing and more open.

Here we begin to command a new way of being. Suddenly things that were unclear have a new sense of clarity around them. We are given stronger signs and direction in our next move. We find that the pathway to where we are going becomes more visible and the obstacles that may have littered our journey are limited or obsolete. Things that may have stopped us in our tracks previously now create very little resistance if not any. When faced with situations that would normally wipe us out or set us back months, we take it all in our stride and move forward with trust and strength.

Jon was a constant in my life for a very long time. For nearly 12 years all I did with my life was attempt to get over him so I could move on with my life, fall in-love with someone else and put it all behind me. The intense amount of hurt and pain that I was dealing with on a daily basis really put a lot of question marks over my own emotional stability. If I was to pay attention to what "I was supposed to feel", I would have thought I was going mad. Grief is given a time frame of what is acceptable to deal with and anything that falls short of that or extends beyond that, we don't really know what to do with it so therefore we categorise it as wrong. I knew I didn't want to feel these feelings for Jon anymore. The logical part of my brain knew that this was not a healthy place to be in, but no matter what I did, I simply could not move forward. I was constantly seeking closure from the situation so I could move on. At one point, the situation felt so desperate that I thought perhaps getting back together was the answer. Maybe the reason I couldn't get over it was because I wasn't supposed to, maybe we are actually meant to be together.

When I discovered the algorithm of life, I could quite easily put it all together. My intuition knew that there was an immense amount of love between Jon and I. There was also a real injustice that had occurred. I was terribly hurt and the behaviour that Jon had displayed suggested that he couldn't have possibly loved me. I knew better however, I knew that Jon loved me very much but Jon's ability to be faithful was a limitation within himself. I knew in my heart of hearts that what I had with Jon was real however, he just couldn't live up to the man that I knew he could be. I had a much higher opinion of him than he did of himself and being with me meant that he had to try and be that version. It was simply, too hard being with me. This is what I knew in my heart of hearts to be true, but I needed something to confirm that for me. So I chased for years, some form of validation from anywhere I could find it to confirm that I was right. I would tell people the story of what happened to get them to agree with me, I would reach out to Jon for some form of closure at different points over the years. I would try everything to get my external world to confirm what I knew in my heart was the truth.

This took 12 exhausting years of failure for me to finally put it behind me and just accept that I didn't need people to confirm what I felt in my heart. I didn't need my world around me to confirm that I knew what was right in my heart. I didn't need to constantly battle with my inner world and my outer world to have them saying the same thing. Because what happens here, is when you simply accept your inner world and let the outer world catchup, it almost always does. You will find that the second you accept your inner world as your only guide, you find your outer world accepts that this is the authority now too so it steps into line taking direction from the boss! You!

Whatever you give your power too, that is the thing that will dictate your world. If you give your power to the external world, it will be what drives you. This means when something happens outside of yourself, you are at it's mercy. Your whole world will revolve around this external factor and you will simply be it's passenger. It will continue to dictate your reality and you will need to work that much harder to turn things around to a reality that you're comfortable with, or, you simply give up. When you give the power to your inner world, this is where everything else is a the mercy of you. You suddenly decide what you want your external world to be and just like a composer, you begin to orchestrate a world that belongs to you. The external world begins to respond to your inner dialogue and it waits to hear what you want it to do next.

Had I all those years ago, simply trusted my inner world, I would have allowed Jonny to play out his life entirely the way he chose and I could then start playing my own life out how I chose. I could have saved myself years of hurt and anguish and simply went on my merry way living my life. Alas, as all things go, hindsight is a luxury only after the fact. The truth of the matter is, I would not have been able to cultivate the wisdom required of me to actually trust my inner world. One did not exist until the other had played out so it was a necessary pain. A necessary process that took me on a journey of self discovery.

Another element of the algorithm is the complete opposite to what has been established here. It is when your intuition is completely aligned with your external situation however, you don't want to follow your intuition. This is when the desire to once again manipulate your external situation becomes the focus so you can have the excuse to not follow what your gut is telling you. Why would we do something like this? It is usually when the payoff doesn't appear as great as the situation playing out. Let's take a look at the tall drink of water we met earlier on. Our intuition says, DON'T GO THERE! But, we don't want to listen to our intuition, we want to gulp down the tall drink of water and we don't care what happens in the end.

This very situation played out with a dear friend of mine. She met a guy, he was handsome, charismatic, exciting and adventurous. The second she met him, her instincts screamed at her to walk the other way. From the second I had met him, I was screaming at her to walk away. I could see that this situation was plagued with a certain disaster that would surely see her get very, very hurt. At the time she was living in a shared accomodation with two brothers. These guys saw the writing on the wall also and shared my concerns for where she was headed. There were a lot of warning signs along the way for my friend however, she ignored all of it.

Rather than listen to the signs and herself, she instead removed all the things from her life that were not in compliance with what she wanted to do. She moved out of the place she was living in away from the roommates who were supporting her intuition and, the pressure built so much between my friend and I that we stopped talking for a long period of time. This ensured that all of the things which were reminding her that this was a bad situation were silenced and she could continue playing out this scenario.

For the first while, things were amazing and she was extremely happy that she didn't follow her instincts. Slowly but surely, cracks appeared and it was a very long, toxic situation that was playing out.

This doesn't mean however, that it was the wrong thing to do. Like I mentioned before, sometimes, we need to play out these things for us to learn the lessons which build wisdom in areas of our life that mould us into the version of ourselves that we become. Sometimes we need to play things out to let go of behaviours and beliefs that are no longer serving us. For e.g., my friend, although had a very challenging time, learnt so much from her experience that she wouldn't change it for the world. She grew so much as a person that the lessons she learned through this, have only strengthened her abilities as a successful human being. When she met her partner, she felt she was a useless human being, she could never do anything for herself and had relied on her previous relationship to do everything for her. What she became in this relationship was a more self sufficient person who learned how to be highly independent.

This is why there is nothing to fear with making decisions. You can't make the "wrong" decision ever. Anything you do is always leading you to a certain destination. Whatever path you need to take to reach that destination is completely necessary to bring you either the experiences that you need or the wisdom that you need to have the skills necessary to manoeuvre through the bigger challenges. This ensures that when those bigger challenges do come, you have gathered enough tools to be able to complete the challenge more easily and efficiently. Sometimes we don't quite understand why we have attracted or gone through a situation. We don't realise at the time that these situations have helped us to unhook from a very old pattern and behaviour that has been limiting our existence for our whole lives.

These situations are sure to bring us our biggest challenges. When we can see the bigger picture, it allows us to step outside of our situation and we are offered with a real sense of enthusiasm, the clarity and confidence to complete this new challenge we have been previously training for. We know that it is building towards something really big and rewarding. However, when that bigger picture is unclear, we can really question the why so much, we add another level of resistance and limitation to the scenario. When this limitation and resistance is present, we restrict ourselves from moving on with ease and rapidness. This requires an immense level of trust not only in ourselves, but in the universe supporting our every move. When there is no light present to guide us and direct us to our next move, it can plague us with a new set of challenges that drain so much energy it becomes it's very own monster.

So what do we do when we are offered no clear steps in moving forward? We do absolutely nothing. There are no reassurances here because there is nothing to be done. Sitting with the discomfort and accepting the present circumstances is all to do here. This can be extremely difficult especially when the current circumstances are less than favourable. Patience, trust and self connection will help you here. It just isn't over yet. Take a deep breath, connect your heart, dance around the lounge room, go get a massage, whatever you need to find that trust and connection with yourself, do it.

Like all things, changing a behaviour takes time, it takes persistence and you will tumble and fall a number of times before it becomes second nature. This is the beauty of learning a new skill or behaviour, to become an expert, you must practice. Take time, start with the little whispers and let them be your guide. Don't do things for an outcome, do it simply for the art of learning and following your inner guidance. You will have to keep coming back to this at first but don't take it too seriously. Have fun with it, play with it, stuff it up, make "wrong" choices, see how it plays out. All of this is setting the intention for success with the bigger challenges.

Your Home

If I was to tell you that your home environment is a direct reflection of your inner world, would that scare the shit out of you? You may never have looked at it in this way before but how comfortable you are in your home environment is actually an insight into the relationship with yourself.

Is your home your sanctuary? Is it clean and clutter free or is it complete mayhem. Does your home represent who you are or is it a mish mash of things just thrown together. Do you have an area of the home that is your special place? Do you feel relaxed when you come home or are you full of anxiety and chaos?

How our home is treated by us is absolutely how we are treating our inner world. Let's look at what is going on for us if our place is full of clutter. Are you a hoarder? Do you have so much crap in your home that you wouldn't even know where to start? The energy behind hoarding and clutter is fear and overwhelm. Fear being that you won't have enough and clutter is complete emotional overwhelm. In this instance what is here is deep confusion littered with mixed emotions that there is no escape from. This is literally like being in a prison emotionally and physically and it is a very hard place to try and pull yourself out of every day.

The thing to bring our awareness to is, whenever we are feeling lack of space in our world, take a look at our surroundings at home or at work and notice how much physical space we have here. This is our first indication and opportunity to create some emotional space. There is nothing more rewarding than a big cull of "things" and it is unbelievable how cathartic this can be.

After the breakup with Jon and I, we had to go through a legal separation due to the property we shared. I was so heartbroken at the time that the only thing I needed to take care of, was my heart. I walked away with no fight and a fraction of what I was entitled to. I received a small settlement, enough to put a deposit on a little apartment. It was the first time I lived on my own and it came with a lot of different emotions and challenges. I felt a lot of fear, I was completely devastated over the break up and felt quite alone and uncertain what life held for me.

I remember when I moved in, I needed to buy all new furniture because I literally had nothing to my name. Everything that I had with my ex stayed with him and I started from scratch. I wanted it this way as I didn't want to have such painful memories haunt me every day. I remember the way that I decided to decorate my new apartment was very minimal because I wanted it to be more of a party house than a home. I imagined the weekends would be full of dancing and drinking and I needed to create lots of space to achieve this. You can already see where this is about to go.

Sunday morning was always spent waking up with a brutal hangover, I would head downstairs afraid to see the debauchery from the night before. It was always the same, most weekends my friend and I would head out and invite a bunch of random guys back to the apartment. We would continue drinking until all hours of the morning, sometimes up until 9 am. We would have the music blaring, dancing barefoot around the lounge room, spilling drinks and generally creating mayhem.

The morning after always looked the same, the random men would be nowhere to be seen having slithered away at some point after getting what they wanted. The place would literally look like a brothel and was definitely treated like one. The floors would be black from the sticky alcohol spilt and not cleaned up. CD's would be strewn across the floor with little respect or care, and endless amounts of bottles, smashed glass, cigarette butts and filth would be layered on the floor.

The task of cleaning this was the worst as it was always done with a hangover and it was always done half heartedly. This was literally every single weekend. What the weekly mess consisted of was a beast all of it's own. I was never one for being a Betty Homemaker, in fact, I had never really taken much pride in my environment. It was what I was used to and I didn't really consider how much of an impact this made on my life.

I remember I moved overseas and when I returned home, I needed to live with my sister until I found a job. This took a lot longer than I expected and was a massive journey all in itself. I had lost a lot confidence and couldn't seem to cop a break. My fear and my anger at this stage in my life was really overwhelming. I didn't have a home, I had packed on a lot of weight and Jon was a constant reminder every single day of how shit my life had become.

So I found myself jobless, broke and fat. I knew that something had to shift as I was once again, going on that downward spiral. I had to break the vicious cycle and the first thing I could think of was to be in my own space. So how the hell was I going to do this? I had my dad live in my apartment whilst I was overseas so he could pay the mortgage for me. I had no money so how was I going to make the repayments? I just had to trust! I found my dad another place to live and I moved back into my apartment with a new found respect for it that wasn't there before.

Our work life, relationships, sexuality, money and home-life all reside in the sacral chakra. The sacral chakra is the energy centre that determines our relationship with these areas of life. It represents the area around the inner thighs and the lower abdomen below the belly button. If your sacral chakra is blocked, you will find disharmony in any of these areas of life. Usually when one is out, the others may be out too. It was clear to see, my sacral was soooooo blocked.

I used to be a smoker and had quit not long before. This not only contributed to the anger I was already feeling but also made me pile on the weight even more. I moved back into my little apartment and due to my dad living there, it now smelt of old man and was completely cluttered. I had a lot of time on one hand and needed to keep myself busy to keep the ciggies out of the other hand. I went through each and every corner of that apartment, cleaning and clearing. It was such a cathartic experience and really gave me the space emotionally that I knew I needed at that time.

Now, I need to mention, everyone around me thought I was crazy. Everyone was telling me to wait til I had a job first and then move back but I know that I wouldn't be able to get a decent job until I created the space to open that up for me. I didn't have any evidence of this, it was just a whisper from my truest heart and I followed that guidance. Before long I got an incredible job and I absolutely loved the team I worked with and the company I worked for.

Around that time, I had made friends with a woman named Libby. She was a friend of my very close mate Jules. Libby was a pretty incredible woman. She spoke so beautifully, dressed so impeccably and she was absolutely stunning. She had such an amazing presence about her, I loved her immediately. Both Libby and Jules were married but it didn't stop us having a lot in common and it turned out, our mutual belief in a higher power, fuelled a stronger bond. Strangely enough, around the same time, Jules and Libby both left their husbands. Jules was completely crushed but Libby was completely empowered.

We sat in a coffee shop one day, chatting about our emotional struggles at the time and this idea developed with the three of us. We decided that every single week we were going to meet up for dinner, and we would all be there as a support for whoever needed at that time. It was profound, it was empowering and it was everything I needed at that time. We as women, took each other under our beautiful wings and inspired, consoled and built one another up. We called it the Butterfly Club because we felt that we were all in a transformational stage from Caterpillar to Butterfly.

I can not understate the effects that this had on my life. These women were both extraordinary talents individually. Jules is an incredible fashion designer who's talent, personal drive and style is just exceptional. Libby, who was working for Lorna Jane at the time had incredible personal style and could literally polish a turd and make it gleam. I think Libby saw me as a little project and she could see that this turd could be the sparkliest of them all.

The inspiration from the Butterfly Club sent shockwaves through my world. I would highly recommend and encourage anyone to build their own little club of women who are wanting more from life, sharing a common bond in self improvement to meet up and be once a week and do what we three Butterflies did. Why do something on your own when you can access a tribe to do it.

The girls started talking to me about decorating my home. I had a pretty small mortgage and I tossed the idea up of going for it and doing a renovation. The girls were so encouraging of it and I was absolutely terrified. From the financial perspective I was in a really advanced place and I didn't want to increase my borrowing capacity. Once again, all fear based. But I bit the bullet and decided to go for it. The girls had incredible style and talents so they were more than excited and willing to help me.

The renovations were incredible. My home was so beautiful, so spectacular, I never thought den of iniquity could be transformed into something so beautiful. My friends did a spectacular job, picking the colours, and choosing the furniture it was honestly, breathtaking. Jules chose the colour palette, she chose a beautiful Tiffany Blue feature wall to represent the colour of my eyes, white walls to represent my teeth and a sandy coloured couch to represent my hair. The apartment was every girls dream place. The spare room upstairs that I kept as a room for guests to come and party, was turned into a Boudoir. I had a beautiful makeup table, and a massive book case which displayed all of my shoes. This was something dreams were made of. I cherished my place and it really became my haven. I was and still am, a massive Beatles fan. I named my apartment Penny Lane to bring in a little representation of me into the place.

About two years later Jules suggested that I needed an update. I had accumulated a few more things to her original design scheme and it was starting again to look a little cluttered. So, I gave her a budget, she took off to Ikea and sent me off for the day whilst she transformed my place once again. I felt so sick in the stomach. I felt really anxious the whole day and that same fear that was aroused the time I first decided to renovate, had resurfaced.

It was so peculiar to me, where was this coming from and what was I afraid of? It hit me like a tonne of bricks. At that moment it was clear to me, the fear I had experienced the first time, came just before I had a massive shift in my inner world. Could it be that I knew I was going to go through another massive shift? I knew changes were coming again and I realised that with my apartment getting an update, my inner world was getting an update also. The nerves and fear were the knowing that was coming.

Oh wow! Was I on to something. It was so true, I started to reflect our dramatically I had changed as a person when my outer world was becoming more streamlined and more beautiful. The more my home reflected beauty, the more pride I was taking in myself. I was standing taller, more proud, taking myself more seriously, respecting myself more and valuing myself more. This was a big shift considering the angry, bitter, version of myself that only a few short years ago was living in this place.

I remember when my place was finished with the first renovation and Jules said, now only men that deserve to be in here can enter. It never occurred to me that I could do that. Be discerning of who I chose to let in and who I didn't. I couldn't believe how much I had changed in those years. Eventually, as we now know, life expands and grows and our awareness gets too big so we need to expand into another container. The same was going for my beautiful little home and my lovely, secure, safe job.

It occurred to me at some point here that my apartment, although very beautiful, wasn't actually what I would have chosen for myself. What an odd thought I remember pondering. Why would I have not actually designed my apartment the way I wanted to. I was obsessed with the 60's and 70's era. I had been ever since I was a little girl. I loved anything vintage from the movies, the clothes and especially the music. After all, I called my place Penny Lane. What was strange however, was that this was my place, but the only thing that really represented me, was what I called it. It never occurred to me before that, that I could actually have it they way I wanted it. I just didn't have the awareness or the confidence until now. I vowed at that point that the next time I decorated my apartment, I was going to have it decorated as though you had just stepped into the 60's.

I was moving quite deeply into the conscious path with yoga and i had a lot of coaching and mentoring with a method of therapy called Psychosomatic. Psychosomatic translates to the mind body. It means quite literally, the body and the mind are connected. What is for one, is also for the other. Basically whatever is present emotionally, our bodies will represent that. If you look at body language, your mind dictates how the body moves. If we have a thought, our body will mimic the thought in an action. It makes sense then that if you have a recurring thought, or a belief system, the body will be mimicking that thought in a more permanent state. For example, flesh will build, will represent different temperatures and colour and show us exactly what emotional state the person is in. The shape, size and tone of our limbs all gives us insight into exactly how our life played out from a young age and what challenges we face in life as result.

What it also does is opens a dialogue for understanding how our life is playing out and how we can manipulate our reality to more of what we want. This is the key to life's success, understanding and interpreting our world so that we can change the conversation to be more of what we want to talk about. I love this so much and I have gained so much wisdom and positive life changes from this therapeutic method that I decided to become certified in it. I thought that I would really be able to make a difference and help people though this as it had such an impact on me.

The Jon stuff at this stage reared its head again and this was the stage in life where we reconnected. I was getting a lot of mentoring though this and just kept turning up, every time with my truth in every situation. Eventually I threw my hands up in the air and said to my guide at that time, I just can't stand it, why is this area of my life so fucked? Why can't I just meet someone, fall in-love so I can forget about Jon forever and just be happy. Why does this keep on happening. He asked me how happy I was with my job. "No you don't!" I said. "Stay away from my job, that is the only area of life that I am happy in and is easy for me".

"Well" He said! "Maybe that is the very reason why the other areas aren't working out". For christ sake! I challenged ever single part of my life and this is the only area that I didn't have to be challenged in. I had an amazing job, with people I loved working with, for a company that I loved working for. To be fair, I actually hated the job itself. I was working as a pharmaceutical Rep. My role was to go in and visit pharmacists all day, every day and talk to them about the commercial value of branded medicine in their business.

It was so clear that my own personal beliefs supported more of an holistic approach to healing where you treat pain and illness though the emotional body. Medicine represents suppression. It only focuses on the physical healing and I could see how this was reflecting and holding me back in some important areas of my life. I am not discrediting modern medicine with this statement, but I've decided in my life, that I will approach everything first with the emotional body to heal myself. It does help that I haven't suffered any disease or illnesses so it's easy for me to do this. Nonetheless, how could I be practicing one thing for myself, and endorsing another thing in my work life. It was imbalanced and I could see where this was playing out in my life.

I opened up my consciousness to allow something else to come through. There was a certain amount of fear around it as there was a redundancy coming either that very year or the following year and I stood to pocket about $80,000 tax free. This was a real quandary. On one hand, I knew that for me to be able to finally be free of all the Jon bullshit and to have the best chance of moving on and falling in love again, I needed a big conscious shift through my sacral chakra to get the energy pumping through that area. However, that is a lot of money.

Sure enough, an opportunity presented itself to me and it presented itself with a massive fork in the road. I was offered a position with an optical company. It wasn't selling medicine so I felt good about it and the eyes, psychosomatically represent the heart. It all felt pretty right but that money was a lot to walk away from. I could take a whole year off work and live in a tropical paradise like Bali. Imagine the Eat, Pray, Love I could do with that opportunity. But it was unclear when the redundancy would come.

At that point in time there was a guy that I had met a while back online. We had actually never met. He was just here for the weekend but for some reason we just kept chatting for months later. He was massively into climbing mountains and was currently over in Nepal climbing Everest. He had done Base Camp and this was his first attempt at the big guy.

You will probably remember the Nepal earthquakes. This had hit, right at the time my virtual friend was climbing the mountain. I had tried to message him on watsapp and I could see that he wasn't getting the messages. This started to freak me out and I googled his name to see if I could get any more information. His name was reported as missing and I was shocked at how badly it affected me. I am not one of those people that jump on the bandwagon of a tragedy. I couldn't understand my reaction because I had in fact, never met this guy and never actually spoken to him. We had just been texting for months and I had grown quite fond of our messaging. It was a little comfort to know someone was thinking of me and I too would think about him.

I remember driving to yoga and in that moment, it hit me, life is too short, we could be snuffed out in a hot second and I am sitting here worrying about money! What was I going to achieve putting my whole life on hold for the sake of $80k. It seemed really insignificant at that point so I made the decision to go for the new opportunity and leave my current, safe, consistent place of business with the people and the company that I love. A few days later, I got word from my friend. He was thankfully fine but the decision was already made and I committed to it.

Within one week, I did a phone interview, flew to Sydney for a face to face and was offered the job and resigned from my current employment. I was happy with my decision and only three short months later, found out I would have got the redundancy! I promise you this when I tell you, I laughed when I found out and I have never looked back and regretted my decision once.

I accepted the role on the Friday and the next day I was driving with my friend past an apartment block that she wanted to look at. We had a little time but I absolutely hated looking at property so it's a miracle I agreed. She wanted my opinion on a three bedroom apartment in this particular block. When we went in, it honestly felt like someone was pulling me down by my ankles. It had the worst feeling in world and I was shocked that I had never had this kind of physical reaction to anything before. I was certainly deep into my conscious journey and this was evidence that my sensitivity was definitely increasing.

I told her she would be crazy to live there as her and her husband didn't have the greatest relationship as it was. I felt the energy in this place was far too off and she would have living nightmare there. She told me that there was actually another apartment on the top floor which was smaller but she loved it a lot more. We went up to take a look and as soon as I walked in, I had this overwhelming knowing that I had to live there too.

It just so happened that an apartment that was a little smaller again was up for sale. It was the display apartment with amazing city views, 1 bedroom and a study, perfect for a single person. We organised to go and look at it and and the second I stepped in, I knew without a shadow of a doubt, that I had to live there. The apartment was actually decorated in vintage style. The feature wallpaper was psychedelic and I just knew it was made for me. I could actually have my dream place decorated in mid-century modern. I didn't even know if I could afford it but I put in a ridiculous offer and waited. The offer was accepted and I then had the overwhelming task of closing off my old life.

It was a really difficult decision as to whether I would sell my old place or rent it out. On one hand it offered a massive ego boost to confirm my success with a portfolio of property. On the other hand, it offered a chance to really cut ties with the old version of myself and move on to a new chapter. As with all things, my growth comes first so I snipped that chord and detached myself from the journey from broken, lost, sad and empty woman to empowered, loving, awakening, powerhouse of divine feminine.

I used this opportunity to get rid of almost everything! I threw away years of collected crap, all my furniture and cleared so much of my wardrobes. This was like an emotional cleanse. I felt lighter, I felt more positive, more connected and more empowered overtime I parted with something else. I cleared through 10 years of sadness, anger, depression, fear and loneliness and stepped into my new tower of strength and inner success. It was me! Every little piece of furniture and decoration was 100% me and 100% chosen by me and I have to say, I never knew I had it in me. My apartment was a show stopper and I never before had the confidence to think I could design something so incredible.

Stepping into this part of myself, having the confidence to let go of my old life and move into something new, also having the confidence to have it fully represent my tastes, completely transformed my inner world. I knew my home represented the direct reflection of my inner world, I just was blown away by another level of this. I didn't know my inner world could be this bloody beautiful. I didn't know I had this in me and what came from this was a deep level of confidence, trust, elegance and poise that I would never have recognised was me. If you literally showed this version of me to the lost, broken Kellie that stepped into that apartment, I would have never believed that was possible. I was meditating once when I was going through something which evoked a lot of fear in me and a voice within me said "If you knew what was coming from this, you wouldn't be afraid right now". If I had any indication of the person that I was to become in the next 10 years, way back when, I would never have been afraid.

To this day, if I feel I'm going through a real period of overwhelm and disconnection, I clear out my closets. I know that any clearing of my physical world, will reflect in my inner world. This goes the same for job changes, home changes, people changes. When you have something in your life that is toxic and is no longer bringing out the best in you, change it. Remove it by either stepping away, cutting ties, moving or changing. Sometimes just a shift in your perception of it is enough to change the dynamic. Give it a shot, clear out your closets and compare how you feel before, what emotions come over you during and then how you feel after. I guarantee it will blow your mind.

Truth

Porky Pies........ These are some big protective walls we place around us so firmly to evade ourselves really being seen. And why would we want to do that? To avoid rejection. Because if someone rejected us or couldn't love us for the pretend version of ourselves, we can deal with that. It hurts, but it's not as catastrophic as someone rejecting us for who our truthful self is. In this case, lies are a perfect antidote for hiding and protecting ourselves. We have gotten so good at it that sometimes, we don't even realise we are lying.

The problem with this, is when we tell lies, albeit little white ones, we allow the world around us to lie right back. We are exposed to friends telling lies, lovers, partners, colleagues, family and life itself. When truth is not present, love cannot be present either and therefore, we love ourselves that little bit less. We also take on an energy which is untrusting, protective, suspicious and wary. This is such a turn off for the people around us and contributes to very restrictive relationships.

So think about the tiny little lies that we tell each and every day... and the big whoppers that we tell to save face. Mostly these are for self preservation and some we don't consider a big deal. The little lies we tell each and everyday for e.g. someone has asked you to go to a tupperware party and it is quite literally the last thing you want to do. Immediately we dig deep into our repertoire of excuses as to why we can't attend the said event or occasion. Dentist appointment, babysitting our niece or nephew, family event, study or anything that is a valid reason as to why we can't go. The thing with going down this path, is there is a very subtle energy that is given out which makes things greatly uncomfortable. We are much smarter people than what we give ourselves credit for and this subtle energy beams like a beacon of deceit creating waves of distrust and awkwardness between ourselves and our relationships. Not only is this subtle energy playing out, but we then have to invest a lot of energy in covering the white lie. Remembering what we said, when we said it and going to such lengths as hiding out or covering our tracks. This is purely EXHAUSTING! And all to simply avoid saying no to something that we really don't want to do.

What if, we could in that moment simply tell the truth? There is a very big necessity of using tact here so you can do this with a lot of love and respect. Rather than, "No, I'm good, I couldn't think of anything worse" you could dress it this way. "I love your company and the time we spend together, this isn't really something I find enjoyable but I would love it if we could organise a catch up with the two of us doing something different" It's truthful, it's tactful and you can bet your sweet arse you will never be exposed to going to another Tupperware party.

I have been doing this for some time and I also encourage my friends to do the same to me. You can't even believe the relief this puts on everyone around me to be able to honestly just say "no". Nowadays we don't even create fluffiness around it. We simply say, "Oh god no, couldn't think of anything worse", and I can assure you, not once, has this created any difficulty within our relationships. In fact, we laugh at each other when we say this and are genuinely really thankful for the honesty that comes with it. As a matter of fact, when you do get or give an acceptance to an invitation it makes it that much more special because you know, it's really aligned with you or the other person.

The other areas of life that we use white lies, sick days at work..... This was a big one for me as I truly believe that sometimes, you really just need a day to yourself. This is quite an easy one to get around but it takes a level of confidence in what you're requesting. When we tell lies, we tend to overdo the information we give. Simply, I'm not feeling ok today and I can't come to work, is really sufficient. Having the confidence in knowing that you're not ok, and you do need a day to yourself to get things in a good space is key. Knowing you deserve to have this time and honouring yourself to do this is a key part in loving yourself that little bit more.

If, you're fine, something important has come up and you can easily perform work duties but you want to attend an appointment, you have something great planned the night before or there is a friend in town for one day and one day only. Take an annual leave day! You get 4 weeks a year, one day isn't going to kill you. Saving up these annual leave days is coming from a place of not enough, which is extremely fear based. This is something we will touch on later in the book. But for now, take the bloody annual leave day. We exist best in this world living on a plane of balance, taking away from one area because you're afraid of not having enough, is not within balance and the universe will have a very interesting way of putting things back into balance, and I can guarantee, you will not like it.

Truth at the very core of your existence says so much more than the words you use. The words are simply expression through a vessel which represent a much deeper meaning and state of being. When truth is present in your life, it allows more of your truth to come to the surface and be expressed. The more lies that you use in this world, the more you are burying your own truth. This is totally ok, but we go on a little mission here to discover our own truth. When we identify that we want truth in our life, we start to become truth, truth of who we are. And when we become truth, we are alerted to the areas of life that we don't even know when we are lying.

When we lie to ourselves, it is built as a protection barrier. Protection from people seeing our very truth, our most vulnerable self, the thing that we believe if people knew, could destroy us. Quite the contrary, when we reveal truth, it creates invincibility, nothing can penetrate it. When light (truth) exists, nothing can be hidden from it, so therefore nothing can threaten it. All things are illuminated when light hits it. This is the same for your life, your life is illuminates when truth is allowed to be present.

We are not the lies we tell, we are not the lies we don't even know we're telling. We are not bad for telling lies, the more we lie to ourselves and others, the more afraid we are. If we are aware of the lies we tell but can't help it, the fear is quite real, it's quite raw and what is here for us is the opportunity to hear some truth now, it is in this truth, that you can feel safe, loved and supported, in taking the first step in asking for truth to be present in your life. Acknowledging that when you do this, the universe will support you with the tools, the support, and the wisdom you need at the very moment that you need it. The only thing you need to bring to the table, is trust and the commitment to yourself to bring truth forward.

I love to use analogies as they paint a really easy picture to be able to comprehend something which can be quite complex. It also takes us out of our current experience which can be quite blinding to look at, and allows our mind to absorb the explanation a little easier to then relook at our circumstance with a stronger vision.

Imagine you are sitting in a house where the walls around you are all glass. Inside the house is beautifully lit with gorgeous furniture and beautiful music. You could spend hours investigating every single trinket in the house and you would never grow tired of doing so.

What is even more spectacular is where this house is situated. It is right on the edge of the most picturesque location you could even imagine. On one side, there is a the ocean, vast and majestic, the most incredible sunrises captivate each and every day. Behind us there is a luscious rainforest, filled with the most incredible plant and wildlife playing out a different scene at every moment. There's a magnificent waterfall which flows and cascades, a vision that you could sit and watch for hours at a time. At night, the glass ceiling puts on the most spectacular light display of stars and planets which blanket the evening sky. A display that can't even be re-enacted by the most advanced fireworks display. The scene is soaked up each and every night and brings more joy than is humanly possible. This glass home offers you comfort, love, beauty and joy all at once.

Imagine now that over the years, dirt has started to build up on the glass walls and ceilings. So subtle that it was unnoticeable at first but as time has gone on, it has become so thick that the beautiful scenery from outside is now just a distant memory. We have a feeling that it exists but it has been so long that we can't really be sure. We look around at our home that was once beautifully lit and had sweet music playing in the background, it no longer looks the same. It has dust sheets covering up the ornate furniture, the sounds are so dim that they are barely audible, and the warm vibrant light that used to shine so brightly is now grey and dreary.

Slowly you become afraid of the memories of how things were before. You start to forget and then you grow used to your surrounding the way they are. You are however, growing resentful of your current situation, it no longer feels magical like it used to. You feel trapped, uneasy, untrusting and claustrophobic. The way things were, you are beginning to wonder if it was a dream. Did it really used to feel this way? It couldn't have because you would never have let that feeling go for anything. But something happened a long time ago, maybe before you even knew who you really were. You became scared, in a moment and it started to change the dynamic for which you were currently existing. With every fear that presented, truth began to fade. Fear now was gaining momentum and it was showering more and more dirt on the walls around you. The more the walls around you became hidden, the more the inside of the home became dim also. When this started to happen, the fear intensified and the need to protect yourself became more and more prevalent.

Eventually, this starts to become so painful, because even though you don't quite remember how the world outside used to look, or the world within the glass home used to feel, you can hear some subtle sounds of the music that has been muffled, the ocean that exists outside, the waterfall that cascades behind us, and the electrical display that is still playing out above us. You start to realise that it's worth exploring. You start to feel the allure of truth. Truth being exactly what is outside and exactly what is inside.

How does truth become experienced? it is quite simple. For you to experience truth, you must become truth. Truth in every moment will start to wipe away the layers of dirt surrounding your glass home. With every layer that is wiped away, the world outside begins to exist again, and the world inside begins to open. Slowly at first, layer by layer, truth by truth. Some areas open up quicker than others, some can reveal a fair bit of pain and suffering. The areas that are the most beautiful tend to do this, because they were the hardest to cover up in the first place. Slowly, slowly, gently, gently, the world around us starts to take shape. We start to notice the beauty in the things around us again. The music starts to become clearer and louder. With every truthful moment, a small part of our world shines through to the world outside of us, and the world outside of us shines through to us.

What is most confronting when truth is being revealed, is the lengths we have gone to, to hide our truth in the first place. This is why, we start of small. We don't even know most of the time what is our truth and what is not. We can be existing for years living a lie to ourselves and it's only one day, when we have been practicing truth that we realise the most deafening lie we have been telling ourselves every day. We could be working towards a goal or a career that we have believed deep within ourselves to be everything that we wanted. We could have been planning for years, working hard toward our goal, then all of a sudden we wake up and realise, this is nothing that you have really wanted. This can absolutely occur. But don't be distressed, this is just an example and it's surely nothing you need to resolve right now. All of this becomes apparent to us, right at the exact time we have the strength and the tools to do something about it. We can find immense success and relief in these moments so when the time comes for your ultimate truth to be revealed, the feeling you will gain from acknowledging this, will far outweigh the time and effort that you put into whatever you thought was your truth to begin with.

With truth being revealed comes a real sense of peace and tranquility. The crazy part is, getting to that truth can be a very stressful and painful process. This is why a lot of people won't delve into this in their lifetimes. It takes work and it's bloody uncomfortable. For us few that have questioned ourselves and decided that we would rather die than live a lie, it's tough. It's a hard road and it's a painful one. We suffer immensely and we do it over and over again. But we do it because we know and we trust that the waterfall, the ocean, the sky is all worth it and will bring us the most magnificent joy and fulfilment than we could ever imagine.

So start off small, begin to be truthful in every moment that you have awareness of a lie or a fib, or the desire for your heart to be seen. In that moment that you go to tell a white lie, or a big lie, think about how much dirt you would like to clear from the glass walls. Consider how badly you want to experience that beautiful world around you and the world within you. Think about what your current experience in life is and weigh up wether it is enough for you anymore. Have the strength to know that the more truthful you are to the world around you, the more truthful the world around you will be to you. This will have different degrees of challenge for you. Some truths are easy and you realise they weren't for any specific reason but to save a bit of time with an explanation. Some truths are bloody hard and you fear that you could potentially lose a relationship or create a whole lot of drama in your life as a result. The thing that we need to understand in these instances are, if it was a lie that was keeping you together, then the truth can do one of two things. It can open the relationship or the experience up to a new way which was better than before, or, it can completely remove the experience or the person from your life in which a space will be open for a better experience, or person to enter into your world. Nothing that is really, truly for us, can be taken away from us when truth is present. If it falls away, the lesson is learnt and the path needs to be cleared for an upgrade.

This can be another challenging aspect of truth telling. Because you can never know what sticks around and what falls away. I have had many relationships and friendships fall away from my life, and I have suffered the loss of these in some pretty brutal ways but what is worse, is never experiencing the vast ocean, the majestic waterfall or the spectacular night sky that will only enrich the life I lead.

If it's the big truth you need to tell but don't have the confidence, this is fine. Just keep telling the little truths every single day, without fail and you will build that muscle which is required to tell the big truths. Practice from now on, when someone asks how you are and you feel like utter shit..... Just say, I'm not feeling it today, but that's ok. That is enough truth in that moment to slowly build the muscle.

Before too long, we notice that all we have is truth in our lives. We also notice that our feelings become more real and obvious to us. We are more discerning in the choices we make in life and the people around us become more truthful. Our experiences are more real, and we feel way more deeply and authentically with every moment than we did before.

If this is bringing forward a fair amount of fear reading this..... good! This means you are getting it and you are ready to take the next step. When fear in this way is present, it means that big changes are rumbling through your life. This is the moment in life when you look behind you and consider how life is playing out for you currently. Is it fulfilling? Are you feeling joy? Are you feeling like you can do anything you set your heart to? Now stand here at the fork in the road that is your future, and make the decision on how you want things to play out. Do you want the magic and the intensity of a life that you probably wouldn't even imagine is possible? Do you want the excitement of anything being possible and incredible people and circumstances coming into your life? Do you want to experience life more fully and be open to a new way of life? Do you want to see life as more beautiful and reduce that feeling of, is this all there is?

Be warned, it won't be all roses and fairy floss, this decision comes with immense sacrifice and courage. It won't always be easy, it will hurt sometimes, it will hurt a lot and you will go through stages of massive highs and big lows. But, this in itself is the journey and with this comes the rewards.

You've picked this book up for a reason, you're ready to take the leap of faith and surrender your life to life itself. The question is, are you going to do it? Are you going to take this step forward with me and open your world to the insane truth of life? Are you prepared to do things differently and challenge yourself in ways that you never thought possible? Are you ready to start loving yourself a whole lot more and therefore allowing the people around you to love you a whole lot more.

Place your hand on your heart, close your eyes, feel the breath under your chest and the gentle beat of your heart under your hand. Breath into your hand and feel the tingle that is your truth. There's a stirring there that is truth itself and this is what it feels like. It feels familiar, it feels gentle, it feels right, it feels like love because that's exactly what it is. Step forward darling heart, life will support you!

Original Pain

We are born into this world completely unique. We have our own way of seeing the world around us, feeling what we feel, with our own level of sensitivity, understanding and awareness. As we touched on earlier, we respond to our environment based on all of these factors which also has its own level of uniqueness. From the time of our conception, we live out of our mothers filters of life therefore we come from her own individual expression and her belief systems. How our reality manifests and how we respond to this is determined by a combination of our filters and hers, which was also passed down from her mother.

Imagine that your mum has a pair of glasses that individualises the way she sees the world, it creates her own version of colours, shapes and bends the light in a way that is completely unique to her, making her world something that no-one else has the ability to understand or see. It's as though she then places those same glasses on you, and you see the world through the very same filter as she has. Because you have different personalities, different levels of sensitivity and desires, the filter is the same, but your expression and response can be completely different which in turn makes your lenses completely individual to you.

From the time we are conceived, we live out of our mothers identity, her story. It is when we experience our first menstruation that we individualise ourselves and we start to live out of our own story, our own identity. However, we are doing this via the filters that have already been establish through the mothers story. This sets the foundation of how our lives are going to be set up and play out.

Anything that occurs in our life from a young age, creates a marking that we continue to reference our entire lives. That reference comes with its own story which is unique to us. It has developed as a belief and we therefore attract our reality based on this belief. Not only does this reference create our reality, but it's our foundational set up that also determines how we respond to that reality. The entire purpose of our real world is to bring us back to this original reference to free ourselves from the prison this very thing has created in our lives. Our reality will continue to bring forward experiences in an attempt to highlight this for us to learn the lesson and move on. By doing this, we undo the thread that has previously bound us and live out a different world based on a completely new reference point.

When I was younger, I was badly bullied by certain family members both immediate and extended. I was such a lonely child, being the third girl in a family of 4, it's pretty textbook. My family probably think nothing of it as their reality was completely different. Everyone had their own story playing out and this is just my version. Because I was such a highly sensitive and emotional child, things that went on for me, affected me that extra bit more than the average person. I felt everything so deeply that things just hurt me that much more.

We were often sent down to our grandparents for school holidays and I hated this with a passion. My grandparents were cranky and mean and I never felt safe being here. My Aunty lived around the corner from my grandparents house and she had 3 kids, 2 girls and 1 Boy. The girls were both the same age group as my older sisters and the boys naturally paired off with one another so, that left me, alone and constantly being left out. This was one thing to feel but when you add angry grandparents in the mix that have a very low tolerance for that many kids, it was a recipe for disaster.

One of my cousins took such great pleasure in being mean to me. She was really close with one of my older sisters and the two of them would gang up on me constantly. Sure I was probably annoying as I always wanted to be accepted and never felt in these moments that I was. I felt terribly unsafe, terribly alone and I lived in a highly anxious state for the duration of our stay there. This was for sometimes up to 11 weeks that I would be in this environment so naturally, was a lot of anxiety and toxicity for a kid to be living with.

Being bored children, I suppose I was a great source of entertainment because, my deep levels of sensitivity and high levels of emotions meant that I would offer the best reactions. It would take a while for these reactions to occur but you could set your clock by it. I would be playing on my own, minding my own business and then the antagonising would start. I would ignore it for as long as I could until I was bursting inside, eventually, I would snap and I would react like a crazed lunatic. I had these long fingernails as a child and you could bet if you took everyone of my siblings aside at any given point in time, they would have chunks of flesh torn out from their forearms.

So, the situation would play out like this time and time again, however, it always ended the same way, I would be in so much trouble from the adults, punished for physically lashing out and the antagonisers would get off scot free. The injustice that I felt from this was too much to comprehend and there was no way with the level of emotional awareness and maturity I had that I could see this situation for what it was. I couldn't believe that I would be the one punished when I had done nothing wrong and I was the one being tormented. This teamed with my loneliness meant that as a young girl, I constantly felt alone and I felt that no-one ever had my back. This was the set up for how I would spend the rest of my life. Being fiercely independent and never relying on anyone to help me. No matter who is around me, no matter what my circumstances are, I always feel that same level of loneliness and I have a natural distrust that people's agenda is authentic. This isn't necessarily on the surface, I am a naturally very open and trusting person but it is a very core belief I have established. This is so much more complex the deeper we look into it as the very essence that drives a woman is her desire for deep human connection and this is in complete conflict of that.

What we most crave in life is to be in a place of harmony, when every element of our world is in perfect arrangement. We seek this state of being on so many levels both consciously and subconsciously. When at the very base level of my being has had this complete conflict playing out, it is the very thing that dictates the foundation to which my reality is set up. So in effect, this is my reference point in life.

Through the filter of my mothers reality of abandonment, I came into this world feeling that abandonment also. Because of this, my reality was playing out this very same story. I felt left out all the time and my behaviour was very needy of love and attention. From the moment my mother gave birth to me, I was in constant need of love and affection. If I wasn't being picked up and cuddled all the time I would be crying my eyes out and wouldn't stop for hours. Needless to say, this took its toll on my mother with 2 other little babies under the age of 3 to look after.

This feeling of abandonment has played out my entire life in a lot of different ways. I was physically forgotten on 2 occasions that I remember when I was a child which further added to my feelings of loneliness and being left out. To this day if someone walks ahead of me I catch myself getting very off guard and my mood can dramatically change.

From this young age I have consistently manifested these feelings of abandonment and loneliness in my own reality. My reality has been acting as a mirror to draw my attention to the underlying energy so I have the ability to see it and free myself from it. The difficulty with this however, is it has only been a luxury I have been afforded to see, after the fact. As these situations have played out previously in my life, it has simply further confirmed that people in my life abandon me and I am left to feel lonely. From this place, I have slowly built a big, strong wall of protection around me, keeping me safe from the very thing that I fear the most, abandonment. This big, strong, sturdy, steadfast wall has meant that I have also, shut a lot of people out of my life for fear of them abandoning me..... See the irony?

What I know to be true now however, is that every occurrence in my life offers me the opportunity to shine a light on the truth of the situation playing out, see my reflection in it and free myself forever from the very thing that has imprisoned me in the first place. It sounds from this that it's a very easy process, this is not the case. Sometimes we have to play out these situations for years and years before we actually free ourselves from it. Every-time the situation has played itself out, we get that little bit closer to freeing ourselves from it. The catch here is, every single time we experience this, we are reliving the very pain and heartache that this feeling has been contributing to our entire lives.

We think when we are faced with a situation in life that the pain and heartbreak is coming from the event itself but this is not the case, the pain is actually coming from the original hurt of those filters we were born with.

Have you ever wondered why some people seem to react to something that you would never be bothered by? It leaves you with such confusion because you don't see the issue at all. This is the very same when you respond to things that others may not see as an issue. The reason for this is, your unique filters and expressions are just that. When something doesn't affect you, it's not hitting any of your pain body and therefore not a reflection for you. This just shows, a situation doesn't create pain, it's your original pain that is being exposed. If the situation was the thing that caused pain, then it would be painful for all of us collectively.

So when we are faced with a situation that are affecting us, we have a choice. We have generations and generations of pain and suffering that we have inherited which is here for us in these moments to either, heal and release from, or continue playing out. The choice is simple, which way do you want to continue.

If we choose in this moment to continue playing out the cycle, as we have previously established, this may be imperative to gaining wisdom and strength for something bigger which is going on under the surface. We may have to cycle through this many times before we actually are ready to see it for what it is. Essentially, it is just an important part of the process and is not "wrong" if you choose to stay playing this out. What this offers us however is an opportunity to clear away more debris surrounding this belief system that has been accumulating not only from your lifetime, but from generations before you. It makes sense then, that when you clear through your belief systems and free yourself from this, you enable a clearing to start taking place and heal the wounds of these previous generations too.

If we choose to heal from this rather than continue to play it out, we are now targeting this situation from a more conscious perspective. It's almost as though we send lots of orders to all the necessary areas of our being to synchronise and work together to clear this situation once and for all. How we manage this process is by simply observing, and showing compassion and kindness to yourself. There's no point in forcing this outcome as that is only going to create more blockages and add an element of pressure to yourself. This becomes an oxymoron and won't heal you but will simply perpetuate the situation into something more uncomfortable.

If you have made the decision to heal the situation, allow it to do it's thing. Put trust and faith that whatever is occurring is in fact, healing it. If it seems that things are getting worse, this may be completely necessary for the ties to become untangled. All we need to do here is simply observe. Observe our feelings, observe our responses and give a lot of love and compassion to ourselves. Let ourselves react and respond in whatever way we need to in order to release the "energy". Do things that you love during this process, give yourself space and support throughout. Get massages, pamper yourself, eat delicious food. Whatever it is that you need to do to make yourself as comfortable as possible in the discomfort, do this. Finding a real comfort in the discomfort is actually an awesome space to be in.

When we are truly free of a belief system imprisoning us, we are able to walk away from the situation with completely no ties to it's outcome. This means, we have no emotion towards it, there is no energetic charge. When we are in this place, we have successfully moved to a new place of existence, free of this previous entrapment. This might come in a single moment after much anguish surrounding the situation. In most cases there has been such a build up of emotion and energy surrounding it that you become exhausted and simply, give in. This is again, an awesome place to be in, this is when our body's have truly let go of something. This is the ultimate place of surrender, where, nothing is felt. Then, you know that the situation has truly cleared.

The old pattern of behaviour may cycle again a couple of times but you will see from this space, it fails to have any hold over you anymore, you now move into the place where you don't react at all. Eventually, it will just fizzle and you will stop experiencing that pattern anymore. You can't even imagine the freedom that this brings to your life. As we have already established, once that space is present, the universe will then go ahead and fill the space with something that is more for you. Maybe a healthier relationship, a better place within an existing relationship, a new idea, a new purpose or a new career. The opportunities are endless.

So now we understand why these situations are playing out and what we can do when we start to notice the pattern. But what we also need to be clear on, is another purpose that is playing out. The opportunity to acknowledge the pain body that this behaviour is trying to highlight. The belief system, as we have seen, comes with it's own pain body and this has never been acknowledged, ever. When I was younger and had such deep feelings of abandonment and loneliness, I never acknowledged those feelings. I detested feeling this way and I didn't understand at the time how to safely clear this.

When we have an emotion or a feeling build up inside of us (energy), there is a healthy expression, and a damaging expression. A healthy expression will simply acknowledge what the feeling is and give it permission to be there and do what it needs to do. This feeling may intensify but it will eventually dissolve, leaving you with a sense of peace and lots of space.

The damaging expression of this is to push away the feelings or try and control the situation to eliminate the feelings. We then beat ourselves up if the situation doesn't work out the way we tried to control or we don't like our reaction to it all. What tends to happen here is the situation that brought these feelings up in the first place will intensify and we will lose control of ourselves eventually. This latter expression will also leave a few battle scars along the way causing the debris of pain to build up which will require another level of healing down the track.

Had I the wisdom and awareness then that I have now, I would have acknowledged the pain body of that inner child. Because that wasn't how my life played out, I was given the opportunity as I have illustrated, to do this along the way. The many situations that have presented in my life I have channelled by being abandoned or feelings of deep loneliness and these have taken me on my own little journey of self discovery and enlightenment. Every situation that I manifested gave me little steps along the way to heal and release. Eventually, I came to a place of complete understanding around the whole expression and I came face to face with the little girl within me that needed that deep love and acknowledgment of her pain.

The question I can hear you asking is, how do you acknowledge that inner child. The answer is simple, you listen to her. You give yourself an amount of space and patience to allow her to speak clearly. When you hear it, there will be no doubt as to what you are to do. I don't mean by this that you will "hear" her, you could do but it doesn't have to be that literal. You will gain a sense of peace and understanding and what you choose to do with this is entirely up to you. For me, journaling is a great help to gaining this kind of clarification. I was going through a situation that was causing me such deep levels of fear and desperation. I was so frustrated because I felt that I was allowing the feelings and nothing was happening, the situation was getting worse. This is completely normal and the frustration was another level of feeling that was releasing here. In this moment, I didn't search for the answer, I allowed the answer to come to me in whatever time frame it needed to.

I gave myself space.

Eventually, I picked up my computer and I started writing, what does my inner child need from me right now? The words came out of me so fast and I just kept typing question after question. What I established in this moment is that I am a person, like most of us, that thrives on empowerment. I never had this kind of empowerment and encouragement as a child but you could best bet, if someone told me I was doing a good job or if I was told I had a talent for something, I would want to put my heart and soul into it. Because for so many years I had been seeing my inner child as a victim, she really didn't have anyone, not even me, offer her the empowerment she was so craving.

It was like a lightening bolt went off inside of me. All of a sudden it became so clear. All this time that I was spending on "healing" my inner child was actually working and now what was required was to empower her. She didn't want to be a victim anymore, she wanted someone to tell her she was great and that she was doing a good job in life. It was that little girls experiences, her filters and her personality that built up the strength and the tenacity that I have to this day. Without her hard work and going through the "trauma" that she did, I was able to be the woman that I am. I was so proud of her in that moment and I wanted to reward her. That is what my inner child was craving. To be rewarded.

So, I decided to do just that. I thought about if someone would have come to me as a child, when I really needed it, and said, "Kellie, you've been such an awesome little girl and because you're so great at life, we want to reward you by giving you a whole day dedicated to just you, what would you like to do?" This was tough to answer because what I wanted to do as a child was nothing that I could probably stand doing now. But I gave it some space and I wrote down a lot of things I loved doing and eating that I never got a chance to do much when I was young. There is a theme park where I'm from called Dreamworld, and as a child, I was mesmerised by it. It felt so magical being there and just the thought of it gave me such excitement. So that is what I did, I took my mid thirty self to dreamworld. I went on all the rides, I ate fairy floss and I had the best day ever.

This was just my way of acknowledging my inner child and it was the kind of healing that she needed. It could have looked like anything and the important thing to understand here is, like you, what you need in your life is completely individual to you. There are no rules, there are no things you have to do. This is the entire point, you are the master of your own self and you have the wisdom within you to heal, empower, strengthen and release whatever it is that you need to in order to step into the powerful feminine that you are. If you're reading this, it is because you have chosen the awakened path, you have decided that enough is enough and you have decided that you will be a benchmark for the new way of the feminine. You have agreed to enter into this world, at this time to heal the wounds of your ancestors and clearing the path for humanity to live in a new way. A way of love, support, kindness and compassion. But by doing this, you need to firstly, give that to yourself.

There is no point skipping over yourself and going straight to an overload of kindness and compassion to others. The only way you can truly show true compassion and true kindness to others, is when you can offer that same luxury to yourself. When it is done in this way, it comes without expectation and is more authentic. It doesn't come with a sacrifice of your own needs so therefore you will not be burned out and pained in the process. It also strengthens you to be able to give so much more to others. You have the ability to be there for them in a completely new way, one of inspiration and empowerment. From this place you are really doing a service to others. You are lighting the path for them, just as I am doing for you now and the joy that this creates is unspeakable. The sense of purpose you feel is enough to give you ten times more strength and energy than you had before. It gives you more clarity, more understanding, more wisdom and most importantly, more humbleness.

When you come from a place of helping people and showing compassion when you cannot show the same level to yourself, there is a massive imbalance that occurs. This situation will bring forward its own level of real life manifestations to equalise the imbalance. This is why when you see people that are avid do-gooders, they always seem to be passive aggressive or completely dispelled from a sense of reality. They are in fact avoiding their own reality by focusing on the pain and suffering of others around them. This is the best place of these people to stay in complete avoidance of their own levels of pain and suffering. The way they view the world is, if someone has a bigger problem then me, then I have no right to dwell on my own hurt. You may know people like this or you may very well be this person also. As I have illustrated before, when this is the case, the imbalance that it causes will need to use a lot of energy to rebalance.

This is where the term, charity starts at home is most relevant. Love yourself first! At all moments and at all times, give yourself love and acknowledgement for whatever it is that you are feeling, experiencing and reacting to. If you are being the worlds biggest mega-bitch, give yourself a break. Rather than beat yourself up about it, just acknowledge the part of you that needed to be a bitch. She was only acting out of her own level of hurt and frustration because SHE hasn't been seen and acknowledged. If you are being a victim, love that part of yourself too because SHE has never been acknowledged and loved in the way that she needed to. If you are throwing a massive tantrum and you feel humiliated afterwards, love that part too because SHE needed to throw a tantrum and she doesn't need to feel guilt for something that she needed at that time. Give her a break, when you do, she will just love you back even more in return.

Shifts

You know those periods that we go through where life just completely sucks? Maybe something has happened to spur it on or we just can't seem to get out of this funk we're trapped in. Life gets really difficult and intense for no apparent reason then one day, we wake up and it's lifted. That my darling, is a shift and it is a completely necessary part of the awakening process. The good news is, when we experience a shift, it is life telling us we are on the right path and are ready to move onto the next step.

When we are experiencing a shift it's highly unlikely that we will know we're in the thick of it or feel like we have a way out of it. It's not until that moment right before we are ready to let go that we can identify it and see it for what it is. The question is, what is it and what are the benefits of it?

A shift is a shift in consciousness. It is when our vibration increases to a higher state than it was before. The entire purpose of life on this planet is to raise our consciousness and bring us back to oneness. Oneness is a state of being where we are directly connected to our highest self, we become one with all that is, or as it may also be referred to as God.

If we can imagine for just a moment that our world is a small box. When we are on path to awakening we start to grow and expand our consciousness. Suddenly we become too big for the box that we currently live in. Things start to get really uncomfortable. Every edge of our being is pushed to it's limits and we find ourselves irritable, disorientated and confronted. All of a sudden right at the point when we feel like we don't even have the space to breath, the box breaks open and we are now in a place of abundant space and freedom. Now our world feels easy, enjoyable, light and spacious.

This is exactly what is occurring with our shifts. We suddenly get too big for our current state of being. Our consciousness or our soul is expanding and our lives need the space to house our new level of awareness. These shifts happen regularly, at varying levels of intensity and for different lengths of time. They come with a great level of emotional discomfort and sometimes you can actually feel like you are going insane. Usually there is a situation that triggers a shift to occur but it can also happen on it's own and there is just no rhyme or reason as to why we are feeling quite shitty.

When you start to sit back and notice the patterns of your shifts and learn how to work with them, we find that the pain and suffering that comes with them doesn't have the same destructive feeling as it did before. It fails to control us and instead, we sit back and observe it allowing whatever is here, to just play out.

Through our lifetime we have done a really incredible job of perfecting protection mechanisms. Any event in life that has caused deep trauma to us, we have built layers of protection to ensure we never have to experience that level of pain again. No-one is exempt of this, it is the situation with every single human being on this planet. Some of us have more obvious traumas that we are open to sharing and acknowledging. Some of us have it so deep and buried that we refuse to acknowledge it and don't even realise it's there playing out in our everyday lives.

We have over the years, built up mass amounts of protection to ensure this trauma refrains from bringing us any more pain and suffering. What we have done however is also shielded our inner self, our divine being, our hearts, our souls from also seeing the light of day. To reveal our hearts, our truest self and live a life of complete connection, we must unfortunately, go through the eye of the storm. This is life, the whole purpose is the awakening of truth. It is not a destination, it is a revealing process and each box that is broken open, reveals a deeper level of who we are.

The healing that is available to us through these shifts is absolutely phenomenal. At every moment that we are experiencing a shift in life, great amounts of healing are taking place. I remember when I was younger, my brother fell off his bike and his body slid down the road tearing all the skin off his back. HIs whole back was bloody and raw and he had big chunks of gravel caught in the open flesh. The poor little bugger, he had to lie, face down on the floor and it was my job to swat away the flies that were landing on his wounds. It was even just the gentle footsteps of a fly that would shoot immense amounts of pain through him. My mum had to sit there and pick all the bits of gravel out of his back which caused my little brother to scream his lungs out in pain.

We can understand that it is imperative to get the gravel out of the wounds, rocks just don't belong in skin and it would never be able to heal. It is a really painful process but a necessary one. The same goes for our shifts, they create a lot of pain throughout the process but what it is providing is a clearing out of debris so the wounds have an opportunity to heal.

And just like the gentle footsteps of the fly, things that normally wouldn't affect us, at these particular times can completely send us over the edge.

We can gain so much wisdom and healing through the shifts we experience in life if we actually understood our own patterns around this, we could start to see it in a new way and have a lot more patience with ourselves through the process. Like anything, practice makes perfect and we slowly build the muscles required to get to get us to pro status here. The biggest thing that we can do for ourselves when going through shifts, is to be patient and loving.

When we start to get a little more familiar with the patterns of our life, we give ourselves an upper hand when it comes to playing with the cards that are dealt to us. Like the inhale and exhale of the breath, the highs and lows of the tides, and the waxing and waning of the moon, our life also pulses with these same principles. Just like we map out the moon phase and the tides, the same should be for our own personal shift patterns.

One thing that you will begin to notice when you start to map out your own pulse of life, our shifts are heavily linked to the menstrual cycle. This can be an excellent way to navigate around whats coming up for you and if you can start to notice the patterns around this, it will make it easier for you to understand how to manoeuvre around this more effectively.

We as women are the purest of feminine representation. We will go into this with more detail a little later but for right now I would love to set the scene for you. The feminine energy is also represented in the earth, the ocean, the moon and darkness or the shadows. Feminine energy is our emotions and it relates to the inner world. Masculine energy is the sky, the sun, light or truth. It relates to our thoughts and our external world.

You will absolutely freak out when you start to understand how this plays out in your life because there is a reason our menstrual cycle is an average of 28 days, it is the very same time frame that the moon goes through it's cycle. The menstrual cycle is referred to in yoga as our moon time. If we start to watch the cycles of our menstruation, we will see that we either flow on the new moon or the full moon, or we ovulate on the new moon or the full moon. Each of these phases offers us some insight into what may be going on for us at that time.

When we a flowing on the new moon, the energy draws us in for self reflection, deep nurturing and solitude, whereas when we flow on the full moon we are more comfortable being out and about in the world and it's an opportunity for great creativity. Honouring these cycles and understanding them can lead to a much deeper connection with your self than you could ever imagine. Mostly our relationship with our moon cycle has been that of an irritating family member. We dread it coming, we hate it being here, it brings us a lot of discomfort and is just a nuisance. Some of us unfortunately also have a lot of physical pain when we are flowing. If this is the reality, it can be incredibly difficult to embrace our cycle, however we are going to take a look at this on a deeper level so at least you can allow the idea that your relationship with this can be more healthy.

For now we are going to look at the moon cycle and how this contributes to the patterns of our shifting. You know when there's a full moon out and it seems to send everyone a little bit crazy? That is because we are so deeply affected by the moon. Especially women as we share the same fundamental essence of the moon, the feminine. The moon controls the tides (the ocean is also feminine) and the fact that we are mostly made up of water, it completely makes sense that it has an astounding affect on us too.

The moon being feminine, also represents our emotional, internal world. When the moon is at it's fullness, it is completely illuminated by the earths sun, so therefore, that phase of the moon symbolises when there is the most amount of light (awareness) on the darkness or shadows of life (things that don't serve us). This can be a very intense period as it can be quite painful to acknowledge these things within ourselves. So as the moon waxes towards fullness, things get quite intense as our awareness is being directed to the thing in life which needs to be released. The waning period is the releasing stage, that is when the pressure starts to lift. You may also find that you may have a sleepless night leading up to the full moon.

The new moon, or the death moon, is the phase when the earth completely blocks the sun's light from illuminating it. This is the complete shadow stage, and the time where we immerse ourselves on inner reflection. This can be quite an emotional stage as it also represents the death of an old phase or belief. The 3 days leading up to a new moon is the death phase and the 3 days following are the new moon so a great opportunity to start a new project or conceive an idea. This is the time that we really go into ourselves and identify what it is that we want to put our focus and attention on.

Our menstrual cycle reflects the very same principles as the moon. As we build up towards the bleeding phase, life gets fairly intense. We are highly emotional, overwhelmed by things that usually don't bother us and we feel like we are completely losing the plot. It is always the moment that we start bleeding when the relief sets in! "Oh thank-god it was just my period". The thing is, it wasn't just your period. What was happening is the waxing phase leading towards your period.

Awareness is shining a light on the shadows of life that need to be acknowledged. This comes with a lot of resistance and discomfort. Our coping mechanisms seems to completely disappear because we are using all of our energy fighting the truth. Finally, when we have the bleeding phase, it's allowing all that built up energy to release. This is the waning phase, or the letting go phase and it comes with a lot of relief. At this point we usually judge ourselves for overreacting, being too emotional and not dealing with things in the way we normally would.

What is interesting is how society has taught us to relate to our periods. We are encouraged to just keep going, pretend it isn't there and go on with our daily life. More and more paraphernalia is created to make it more discreet. We literally shove things into our bodies so we don't have to see it and then we discard it. We have trained ourselves to ignore and deny our opportunity to grow and expand by stuffing ourselves up and then discarding our most intimate wisdom.

Our menstrual cycle is a real gift which taps into the wisdom of our truest self. It allows us the opportunity to really feel and acknowledge what is here for us in that moment. It gives us an insight into what might be holding us back in our lives and a chance to really release and let go what's no longer in alignment with our truest nature. Why would we want to deny ourselves of that? Why would we not embrace this intimate wisdom which gives us the tools to really delve into strengthening the relationship with ourselves. Why would we want to limit our ability to empower ourselves by knowing the most intimate parts of who we are and allowing for self love to deepen.

What if we started to listen to our bodies at that time, really noticed the patterns of our own cycle and what it is alerting us to in life. What if we started to honour that process and tap into the primitive wisdom that has been hidden from us for so long. Once we start to empower our inner world, we also start to empower our external world.

If there is a lot of physical pain and discomfort with our periods, this can as I mentioned before, be a little more difficult to embrace. I have a couple of friends that have experienced really bad endometriosis. Two of them have needed surgery to laser off the scar tissue from their bodies. If we break it down here, what happens when we scar? Our bodies have gone through a sense of trauma. I use the analogy that the body is fighting itself and has gone a couple of rounds with Mike Tyson. The physical scarring is the battle wounds. If this is relevant for us, then even more so, we are to give deeper levels of love, nurturing, acceptance and kindness to ourselves at this time.

On the first day of our cycle, we should really try and give ourselves a day of doing nothing. If this is impossible for you in your current life, then start small and allow the possibility that life can support you in this way if you make the decision to honour yourself. But like everything, baby steps. Maybe first giving yourself permission to have a beautiful meal, an extra few minutes on your lunch break, a little nap in the afternoon or a lovely relaxing bath. Just something here to begin to nurture yourself in a way that you may not have done before.

When we really start to connect with the cycles that are present in our lives, we find that the moon connects with our own menstrual cycle, and these things also align with our own bigger shifts of consciousness. They all facilitate the process of acknowledgment and release to bring us more awareness, assist in raising our vibration which in turn brings us more joy and purpose.

When we can start to see the patterns in our own lives it is like we give ourselves a road map to help navigate through what is normally, quite difficult terrain. At the times in life that we are shifting, wether it be through menstruation or the bigger shifts in life, rather than getting completely stuck in the funk and drowning in the thickness of it, we step back and see it for what it is representing. An opportunity for immense amounts of healing and a raising of our vibration.

When going through a shift, it is like getting caught in a rip. One minute we are swimming through the ocean, getting lifted off and gently set back down with every passing wave. Next thing we realise is we're swimming around but getting nowhere, our arms and legs are moving rapidly but we seem to be getting pulled deeper and deeper into the quiet, vast, unforgiving ocean. At this point, panic sets in, we start swimming harder, faster than we were before, so afraid of the unknown. We don't know where we're being pulled to, how are we will be taken, and most terrifyingly, what the hell is underneath us. The more we fight against the rip, the more we lose. We grow exhausted, our muscles start to cramp up and our body begins to let us down. Eventually, we don't have the energy to keep our head above water, and we end up drowning.

The key to surviving a rip, is simply, tread water. Let the rip take you wherever it needs to. Eventually, you will be taken to the outside of the rip and can swim back to shore. You may end up 2km down the beach but you're safe and most importantly, you're not dead. Sure you felt the fear of uncertainty around you, however you kept calm, and fell into trust that you would be safe.

This is the exact same thing that you experience when going through a shift. The more you fight it, the more you drown. Getting caught in the emotion of what is present here will only see you be consumed by it. Sitting above the emotions, just observing and getting curious, is when we can just lay back and float to whatever destination life has in store for us. The emotions don't stop, they don't disappear, we just remove ourselves from being owned by them. Rather, we allow them to play out and acknowledge that they are not real, they are just an habitual response from a learned behaviour.

When we give ourselves permission to see it in this new way, we move into a place of connection. When we are in this place, we allow life to flow more easily and allow the things that need to play out, to play out with little resistance from our part. Resistance from us only increases the pain and suffering of an already difficult time. Observing allows us to watch it play out, with little or no emotional attachment. This is a little difficult to do at first but as with all things, be patient. We are practicing an entire new way of living and it will take some time for it to happen naturally.

Once we start playing with the cycles of life, seeing how it all interconnects, we really begin to be wowed by the intelligence of our physical and emotional bodies. We gain a newfound respect for ourselves and other women in a way that we have never seen before. We start to build a completely new relationship with ourselves that commands so much more respect and trust. We find that rather than retreat and feel shame for overreacting or getting too emotional, we wear our reactions like a badge of honour because in that moment we were connected to our truth in a situation. If we flew off the handle it is because we no longer feel comfortable or honoured in that situation. We are standing up and hearing our own inner voice saying, "No, I deserve more than what this situation is presenting".

Imagine what life would look like when we start to take this perspective on things. We move from a place of being the victim or completely disregarding ourselves, to being a woman who has completely stepped into her power and her birthright of the divine feminine. Imagine the world you could create for yourself when you not only empower yourself in this way, but the women around you also. After all, to acknowledge and support someone else in their power is to acknowledge, support and strengthen our own.

The healing that is here for us during our various shifting opportunities shouldn't be underestimated. Whatever situations may have played out in our past causing us varying levels of trauma or, the trauma of generations before us that has been inherited by us, have left a scar on our emotional body. To have the opportunity to heal this is truly a gift which keeps on giving.

Naturally with all things, it get worse just before it gets better. Have you heard the term, the darkest part of the night is just before dawn? This is the same with our healing, just when something is about to have some special life medicine, it gets a little bit worse. This is the very thing that life is alerting us to, for us to release and move on from. It may be that the same thing comes up time and time again, I know I struggled with my situation that went on for nearly 13 years, it caused me more frustration than I can even explain due to the amount of times I had to confront it.

If it is the same thing coming up over and over again, I understand the amount of frustration this actually causes. Every single shift that happens we feel like it's finally over, only to have it rear its ugly head again in a couple of months time. What is that all about? When we have a recurring situation like this, it indicates just how deeply our lives were affected by it. This is the very thing that you have built the biggest layers of protection around and therefore the very thing that needs the most amount of healing. Like an onion there are layers, upon layers, upon layers and each time it comes up, there is another layer that has been healed and dissolved. This can take many, many times before you get to the core of the trauma and then, ultimate healing takes place. This is the point where you really are connecting to your highest self and in that place, you also connect with abundance, miracles, immense amount of joy and freedom.

This is not to say that you don't still go through the journey of shifts and clearing. We are never at a destination, we are constantly moving through different stages of awakening. Each stage moving through its only level of discomfort and challenges and then each stage bringing more joy and more connection to who we really are. Each level we move through comes a much deeper love and connection with ourselves which gives us the strength and courage to keep going. It helps us to follow the patterns of life and use it to propel us deeper into ourselves.

I used to get so annoyed when people would say to me, you really need to spend some time on yourself. It absolutely sent me wild because all I seemed to do was work on myself. I was completely dedicated to my conscious awakening so this felt to me like I was on a really strict diet and then was told that I needed to go on a diet. I can see now however, in retrospect what I was actually being told. Through the shifts that I was experiencing in life, I was getting so caught up in what I was shifting out of, I missed entirely what I was shifting towards. My focus was always the external situation that was bringing forward this shift. I would try and decipher it, pick it, prod it, play with it and figure out what it was representing in my world. It didn't occur to me that what I was doing was keeping me fixated on the trauma, not the healing.

As the saying suggests, energy flows where attention goes. This couldn't be more true. Wherever you put your energy, that is exactly the area of life that will command you. My attention was healing the very thing that created the most amount of trauma in my life, a terrible breakup. Every single time a shift would come, it would bring up the hurt, the pain and the suffering all over again that I experienced through this breakup. This kept on coming up for me because there was so much gravel in the wound. I was slowly picking out the gravel bit by bit and every time it was bringing up more and more pain. My focus always was on the why was this happening. Hadn't I gone through enough, hadn't I done enough to try and clear this situation. The answer was yes, I had gone through enough, yes I had done enough and now was the time for me to just sit back and let it do it's thing.

Our bodies and our souls have such intelligence to heal itself. Think about when you cut your finger. Straight away, your body is sending wisdom to the area that has been affected to bring all the things together to heal that trauma. The blood clots together to create a natural plug and the open skin starts to connect again and eventually there's no evidence that there was ever a wound. This is the same emotionally, when we have experienced any trauma, we're never just left alone to suffer. Our emotional body starts to send wisdom to the place that has suffered the effects of the trauma, slowly healing it from the inside out.

Trauma can look very different for any one of us. Some of us can be completed wiped out and affected by a breakup, as I was, or that same level of trauma can be experienced via a death or maybe an accident or attack of some kind. We may not even be able to pin point where the trauma stemmed from. It could have been a simple comment that was made at a particularly vulnerable stage in our life or it could be something that didn't even happen to us. No experience is right or wrong, better or worse. Every single person on this planet is fighting their own inner battle and what might be completely insignificant for one of us, maybe completely debilitating for another.

The shifts in our lives, bring us the opportunity to clear out as much of the junk that we've filled our lives with to bandaid the pain and suffering that this has caused us. It can sometimes take years or, it can be cleared in one foul swoop of ultimate healing. Whatever is needed for us in our lives at that time will be exactly what is here for us. If it is a slowly, slowly, gently, gently process, it will be exactly what is needed for our journeys.

The key to fast track this is as I mentioned before, is where we put our focus. When my years, upon years, upon years of shifting kept bringing me back to my breakup, I literally did EVERYTHING in my power to assist in the healing process. I challenged myself every single time to do some pretty embarrassing things, all with the intention of trying to move on from what I felt was holding me back in life. Looking back, the only thing I needed to focus on was the healing itself. To step away from the why and just focus on the what. The what was the healing, the why was an unanswerable riddle which would keep me locked in the puzzle.

I can understand that with my journey, I have needed to take action so my knowledge around the situation can be a lot deeper. It's like when you make the most amount of mistakes, you become the expert at failing which gives you the wisdom to be more successful. I understand that's the path I was given. My friend Jules just went through a breakup and she said to me the thing that fast tracked her healing, was doing the complete opposite to which I had done. We both laughed our heads off at this because it is so true. I made the mistakes so she could know what not to do. This is what I hope I can provide here. The opportunity to not have-to go down the windy road that I went through instead, just taking the nuggets that I've uncovered along the way to fast track your own journey to incredible healing and therefore deep connection with yourself.

When we start to go through our shifts, and notice the the patterns playing out, we just step into observation and allow whatever unfolds to unfold. It is imperative at this stage that we listen to the whispers of our own hearts and if we are called to action on something, definitely do it. There is a reason we need to take action, it may not mean you get the outcome you are looking for, it is because it is the outcome you need for your journey to be what it needs to be.

If you are called to action, own it. If you feel embarrassed or horrified when you have answered the call to do something, even if it doesn't work out and you're left with the question why, pat yourself on the back and celebrate yourself. You may feel foolish, you may judge yourself and you may be embarrassed that whatever characters were involved in this will think you're a bit kooky. But own it! I own it every step of the way. I am so proud that I put my heart and the connecting of my most divine self in front of every single thing that I do. It takes away the cringe factor and actually puts me in a place of empowerment and strength. When we can see it in this way, we cultivate more strength, more personal power and we turn the whispers of our truest hearts into loud, proud conversations that are undeniable.

Challenging Yourself

Challenging yourself will never get easy. In fact, with every moment that you are challenging yourself the intensity will increase and you will find it more and more difficult. There is a payoff however, because with every challenge comes a pretty incredible breakthrough that will surely set your world on fire.

Challenges can look incredibly different for each and every one of us so don't underestimate that what might be difficult for you and easy for another, is actually giving the same outcome.

I had a phone call from my dear friend Litsa who is well and truly on her journey and is committed to challenging herself to think and act more empowered every day. She had just completed the International Woman's Day Fun Run on her own. She was sitting in a coffee shop by herself and was so close to tears because of how challenging it was to do something completely independent.

At a first glance, yeh it seems very admirable but when we take a look at Litsa's story and the challenges she has had to overcome, we understand that it represents something so much bigger.

Litsa has been my friend since I was 13. We went to high school together and she has always been a really dear, adorable and sweet friend. Lits comes from a very culturally strong, Greek family. Her father is a very high profile member of the Greek community and her mother is extremely well known. She has an older brother, quite a few years ahead of her and a younger sister, who is only 18 months younger than her. Her sister, Ange is her soul mate. The two of them have always been inseparable and have both been incredibly close friends of mine for many, many years.

The girls were perfect little greek girls. They did greek dancing, always were working at the Paniyiri, the annual Greek Festival and were known by everyone around them. Their lives were immersed in their greek culture and there was a lot of expectation around them to fit the prototype of what it meant to be a good greek woman. Angie was a little more rebellious than Lits but she still had a deep respect for her culture.

I have a few friends that come from different ethnic cultures and it amazes me the beliefs they have. I would talk to my friends for hours about all the different traditions and what their lives were like growing up. They were always a part of massive extended families, everyone was their cousin or Aunty and Uncle. I was so envious of this because my belief system was that I was never apart of anything, I had a real lack of belonging. The very opposite was for any of my ethnic friends, each and every one of them felt that they lacked in the ability to really be themselves.

Lits was no different. She always felt the pressures from a young age to always be going above and beyond to do "the right thing" and be the good girl. She put everyone else before herself and went over and above to constantly please her peers. Angie, throughout life, was always by her side and this further cemented her inability to be seen as an individual and to really feel like she was her own person. Lits married very young to a very respectable greek man which fully completed the duties of a good greek girl. She was very lucky however, that the man she married was a massive support to her and really encouraged her to do what makes her happy.

Litsa had two little kiddies, whom she loves with all of her heart. Her youngest, a little girl Stasia, is the absolute spitting image of Litsa herself. The thing with Stasia is, she's a little firecracker of a kid. A complete individual with a spunky attitude and a very unique way of looking at the world. Litsa was absolutely enamoured by Stasia and so began the desire for her to really encourage this amazing little girl to be more of who she was, because she was mesmerising.

This began the inward reflection for Lits about where she felt she lacked this thing she admired so much in her daughter. She could identify that she never really did anything on her own and she now began to now crave, the very thing she admired so much in her daughter, individualism. She could identify such strength and perfection in this and never wanted to limit her daughters ability to embrace this within herself. So she understood, to do this, she then must embrace and allow it within herself. And so came Litsa's journey to start believing in herself more, and empowering herself more so she could be a role model for her daughter.

She has started off slowly, not feeling the need to accept every single invitation for an event that was extended to her. If she wanted to go somewhere, she would but if she didn't feel like it, she would challenge herself to honour what she wanted in that moment. This came with a lot of guilt at first but the more she did it, the more empowered she felt. Then came the challenge of standing up for herself and not letting people walk all over her. In her job, she felt a lot of pressure to be a people pleaser and would always be so apologetic in everything she did. She would bend over backwards for her clients but it was coming from a real place of fear and she would go over and above with little or no recognition. She quickly changed her attitude surrounding this and began to put a value in the amazing service she offered her clients. No more did she come from a place of apologising and scrambling to please, she now took confidence in her approach and only did something when her value was met. This completely changed the dynamic of her work life and she began to see where she was given more respect in her role.

Doing the run, on her own, in representation for women, was a massive milestone for Lits. It really represented her stepping into this new place of empowerment and individualism. Doing it solo was absolutely necessary for her to announce to the world that she wanted to be seen as her own person, not as the sister of her siblings, not as the daughter of her parents, not as the good little greek girl, but as a woman who was strong, individual and confident in herself to command what she wanted in life. This situation was so emotional for her because what she was in that moment doing, was clearing generations of pressure for her to be a the old way.

She was welling up and choking back tears as she explained to me the pressures she felt to be a certain way. The good little greek girl that didn't have the confidence to be herself around people and how stifled that made her feel. She is the most beautiful human being and feeling the freedom to just be herself has been a real challenge for her. It made her reflect in that moment the things in the past that she has missed out on because she was too afraid to do things on her own. And now, in this moment, my dear friend felt indestructible.

No wonder this was so huge for her and no wonder she was so terrified in doing this. She couldn't believe the amount of emotion she was feeling after this, and I couldn't have been more excited for her, because you see, she was standing up in that moment saying enough is enough. No longer would she be the good little greek girl that does what she is expected. She was going to be a powerful woman who is unapologetic in who she is and she is going to be the fierce strong woman that she knows is within her. She was going to go home to her little girl and tell her that she can achieve anything she wants to achieve because she is an inspiration to her child and the women around her.

What an incredible realisation and what an incredible moment to have. This was something seemingly simple if you look at it, but what it represents was something so huge and magnificent. These things will happen all the time when you challenge yourself. They move you to experience such pride and love for yourself that you literally can fall into a heap of emotions.

The question is, why is this necessary, what does this create for us and what does life look like without it. Let's take a look first at what this is and the energy that it creates.

Challenging ourselves is what builds our solar plexus. Our solar plexus is an energy centre that houses our identity, our will power, our confidence and our ego. When this area becomes blocked through various ways, it responds via expression of emotion. The emotions that are expressed are depression, sadness, fear or anxiety. Depression and sadness are a result of holding on to the past and being identified by our past, fear and anxiety are identification with the future. When we are experiencing these varied emotions, we invite situations to play out in our life to further express this.

When a situation arises for us to challenge ourself, if we don't rise to this challenge, we begin to limit ourselves and the way the world responds to us. We grow more self conscious, we lose confidence and self belief. Like everything there is polarity in life and if we push ourselves too hard, put too much pressure on ourselves, we begin to have an over inflated solar plexus. This usually plays out with a lot of aggression, feelings of things never being good enough and high expectations of yourself and others. This is a lot of pressure for not only yourself but the people around you.

Sometimes in life, the challenge can be literally to do nothing at all. If you're a person who is constantly pushing yourself and doing everything you can to achieve, doing nothing is immensely challenging and this is where you would feel the most discomfort.

So let's take a look at what the payoff here is. What does this create for us? The universe will do everything for you to support and encourage you, so whenever we are faced with a difficult challenge, you can absolutely be guaranteed that there is a massive pay off. Being challenged and rising to that challenge will have amazing pay offs and these are limitless.

The freedom that is experienced via this is reward in itself but it doesn't stop there. Our life will open up to a lot of opportunity and growth as a result. Job opportunities, new friendships, new love, new adventures, new ideas, new homes. The opportunities are endless. It also increases our confidence, our security, our personal strength and we become inspired by life around us. When we are in this vibration, the people around us naturally gravitate towards us and love being in our space. We become beacons of light, illuminating a path that other people want to walk on.

Challenges and experiences that are offered to us are opportunities to send a really loud, powerful message to the universe around us. It's one thing to think positively but it's another thing entirely to align our actions with our intentions. Always remember that our actions are sending even louder messages to the universe about what we want and what we desire. Much louder than getting into a positive mindset or visually manifesting.

Let's take a look at a simple scenario and the fear this can bring up through the challenge. Asking for something that we want!!! This can quite literally be the most challenging thing in the world for most of us. God forbid we ask for what we want and receive it, however, most of us can't bring ourselves to do this. The fear that comes from not receiving what we want is more powerful than actually asking for it. Either way if you think about it you're doomed because not asking for what we want gives us nothing and you are left with, not having what you want. So what if, when you ask for what you want? There is a 50/50 chance that you will actually get what you want.

Pushing yourself to step out of your comfort zone and having the confidence and self love to ask for what you really want brings many rewards. If you don't get what you want in that moment, don't be under any illusions that the universe hears this and propels more rapidly something bigger and better for you than what you were asking for in the first place.

I'm feeling in this moment drawn to look at an example relating to men. Imagine that you have seen a guy across the room and you are just drawn to him. You can't be sure if he's single or if he would even be interested in you, but you are feeling a stirring in your heart that you cannot ignore. You could do one of two things, nothing and hope that he comes up to you, or, you could take the bull by the horns and go to him. Create a conversation and look for an opportunity to see if it's mutual. If the idea of this makes your heart literally stop than this is precisely what you must do. Now it can go either way, he could be completely disinterested and give you nothing or, he could be really interested and want to chat to you further. Either way, you've lost nothing because you had nothing to begin with.

Why would we not do this? Because rejection is absolutely mortifying. How the hell would we come back from being rejected. It is quite literally one of the hardest things to accept. There's a simple solution to this, get used to being rejected. It will happen time and time again until you no longer are affected by rejection. You just need to look at it in a different way. A rejection doesn't have to be personal. It doesn't mean that you are not good enough and it doesn't mean that you are unworthy. It actually has nothing to do with you! Any time we are rejected it is because the other person or the situation is not aligned with what we ultimately want.

I can't tell you the amount of times I have been rejected in life. It happens a lot and yeh it stings for a little bit but this is where retrospect is a magnificent thing. Sometimes we have the luxury of being able to realise that what we gain in our lives from that rejection is way more valuable than what we would have gained had we have gotten what we wanted in that moment.

I remember I was rejected by this guy once who I thought was literally punching well above his weight. I was willing to give things a shot with him and I pushed myself in a moment to ask for what I wanted. He said no and to my astonishment, he ended up being with another woman who I felt I was better than in so many ways. I felt I was so much more exciting, she had 2 children and I had no baggage. I lived inner city in an exciting apartment and she lived out in the suburbs somewhere far far away. I felt that I was more attractive, more fun and had so much more to offer than she did. As I write this, I'm shaking my head laughing at my arrogance and laughing about what I actually wanted in that moment. The truth is, the guy I was wanting to be with was all these things. He was quiet, he wasn't exciting to me, he wasn't fun and we were completely mismatched. I look at what my life would be like if we were in a relationship and I shudder. Our lives were not aligned, our needs and wants and ideas of what was fulfilling weren't in anyway complimentary to one another. Had we have gone forward with things, we would have both been miserable. So in this moment, rejection sucked, but where my life has grown as a result of it was 10 times more exciting than what it was at that time.

We need to, in these moments step away from the outcome of the situation and feel trust that what we are given is for the better. Easier said than done and this does require some practice. In every single moment, ask for what you want, push yourself out of your comfort zone and don't be locked in to how it needs to play out. It is actually the doing part in this exercise that holds the value, not the outcome.

So how do we accept the rejection that could potentially come from asking for what we want? It's simple, we accept it! We acknowledge and choose to put our focus on what we have achieved in this moment. We have taken a huge step in loving and committing to ourselves. What an incredible act of self love and feeling proud about what you have done in this moment needs to be the focus. Ok, so it didn't work out! That's ok, because what you have done is held up a neon sign to the universe saying, I am strong and confident enough to ask for what I want in life, so universe, start sending me what I truly want. If in this moment, this situation is not going to give me ultimately what I want, I trust that this is paving the way for what I truly desire to come into my reality. And I trust you universe that you are working overtime to give me what I really, truly want. I trust that this situation was not about the outcome but was about the intention I was setting up to getting what I want.

When you step away from the small details and take a look at the bigger picture, you bring a lightness to the situation that removes any pain and suffering that can come from being rejected. Let's go back to our original example of chatting to the cute guy from across the room. You've had the balls to go up and ask for what you want and you find out that he has a girlfriend or is simply not interested in you. I can guarantee that he isn't sitting there thinking, this girl is bat shit crazy and I wish she didn't come up to me. He is thinking, damn! This girl is interested in me, how flattering is this? I never have women come up and chat me up and this feels so good. Sure I've got a girlfriend but it's bloody nice to have someone validate me in this way. He puffs his chest a little, stands taller and feels really good about himself in that moment. And you did that! In that one act of asking for what you wanted, you made another human being feel on top of the world.

If you didn't make him feel on top of the world, if he responded rudely and immaturely, well, thank your lucky stars because there is no way the universe is going to give you such a shitty person to enter into your life and you my love, have dodged a big fat, damaging bullet.

In this same place of the solar plexus we are faced with challenges of uncertainty. Sometimes we don't quite know what we want or which decision to make. There's a really easy fix for this, and that is, do something. If uncertainty is present, doing nothing sends a message to the universe that you want more uncertainty and more confusion. So doing something can be the easiest way to seek clarity. You know in this moment that whatever outcome you are given is your answer, so therefore, that's the certainty that you were looking for.

If in this moment you are given an outcome that is not right for you, you will easily be able to identify this and then, there is your certainty. Treat it like a game, putting some fun into it and seeing it in this lighthearted way will make the journey so much more enjoyable.

This will surely strengthen this area in a really healthy way. It assists in eliminating or weakening the feelings of depression, sadness, anxiety or fear. You will still experience varying levels of these emotions but you will start to change the way you relate and react to these emotions.

Everyone on this planet experiences varying levels of these feelings and if you can say with your hand on your heart, you don't experience this, you're in such deep denial, or you haven't yet identified that's what it is. This energy can sometimes be quite debilitating and can really limit our ability to take in life and accept the joys that can be available to us.

Every step is critical, and every step is guiding you closer to eliminating the effects these feelings have in your life. The biggest misconception that we have in life is that these feelings don't belong and that we must take steps in eliminating them forever. This will not ever happen and you're wasting a lot of energy in trying to achieve this. Instead, our response and our judgement on these feelings dramatically alter and no longer do they control our lives, they simply become something different. More on that later.

Now we have prepared ourselves for the worst case scenario of rejection, I think you will agree, we can work around that. It will feel like a little challenge within itself but you will build the muscle to be able to bounce back from that pretty quickly. Let's look at the other scenario and that is, you get given what you want in that moment.

The situation has been raised for you to challenge yourself in a moment and ask for what you want. You feel all sorts of fear and anxiety to confront this situation head on and you are feeling all sorts of crazy emotions. But you do it, you accept the challenge and you rise to the occasion. Like a beautiful vision of self love and confidence you make your way towards the gorgeous man from across the room. You greet him warmly and his eyes reflect to you a deep sense of admiration for this gorgeous woman who is taking the bull by the horns and living life on the edge. In this moment you are so exciting, so confident, so sexy and he cannot help but be captivated by you.

Next minute, you have each others number and plans for a heading out on a date together. What an incredible outcome and now, you can spend less energy on wondering what could have been and actually experiences what is!

The universe doesn't stop rewarding you there, it continues to feed you more and more of what you want. From the little things like a kind acknowledgment for a job well done by a colleague to a blossoming new romance or rekindled romance in an existing relationship. The opportunities are endless and the rewards too are endless and magnificent.

If you are quite the opposite of this and rise to any sort of challenge then the complete opposite is here for you. The challenge in this instance is doing absolutely nothing. There can be such an intense level of discomfort and suffering which comes from doing nothing that this is like pure torture for you.

When you are constantly filling your life with challenge after challenge, you create such a manic circulation of energy that what comes from this is high levels of anxiety. Anxiety as we've already established is living in future state and highly fear based. You are living life of not being enough. When we feel that we are not enough, we are constantly trying to improve the things around us. Our situations, our emotions, our beliefs, our lifestyles, and the lives of the people around us.

This is a lot of pressure and a lot of expectation you put not only on yourself but the people around you. The energy of not being enough and not having enough is quite debilitating and has a sense of neediness attached to it. You are constantly looking for more and this can be extremely exhausting for the people around you and for yourself. They people in your life are also feeling like they are never enough and they struggle to feel any kind of purpose in your world. Mostly they will not enjoy being around you for long periods of time.

Forget relationships, having this level of energy will never see you fulfilled in one or in a healthy relationship of any kind. There will always be a feeling of, is there better out there? Or, life is lacklustre and boring with this person. There's no excitement here and is this all there is to life.

The challenge this brings is allowing things to be rather than striving to make things more. My friend Courtney has moved so many times and gets so bored and stagnant when she's in the one place for too long. Interestingly, she was raised as an army brat so moved around a lot as a young chid. What she struggles with is literally standing still and not doing anything.

Whenever she feels confronted in life or goes through a difficult patch, there is desire for her to move again. She wants to quit her job, pack up her things and move to a completely new city. She believes that she has nowhere left to go in her current situation, she has achieved everything she needs to achieve and the challenge is over. If she moves and faces a new set of challenges, then she will find happiness. This is such a mirage and this kind of belief will continue to play out in her life until she faces it, sits back and does absolutely nothing with it.

So what can you expect when you are faced with this scenario of ceasing to take action. I can promise you, it will not feel nice. It will push you so far out of your comfort zone, it will make you feel sick, it will give you anxiety, it will make you frustrated, even angry and frantic. You will almost have to lock yourself away in a room and give the key to a good friend because this will be living hell for you. The reassuring thing here is, this feeling will not last forever, it is only momentary and the pressure will be eased soon enough.

The question you are probably asking at this point is, why would I do this? Why would I not challenge myself in this way and what are the benefits. Aside from the emotional responses that occur for you which we touched on before, the anxiety, the fear and how we make the people feel around us, there is another pay off. This is that you are giving yourself enough space in life for the universe to step in and offer you what is rightfully yours.

The very same energy that comes from not having the confidence in doing something is that which is constantly having to do everything. Both are coming from fear of not getting what you want. Challenging yourself to sit in stillness is sending a message to the universe that you are in full trust that you will be given what you want. There will be a massive moment of discomfort that I have just gone into and it is up to you to really sit with that discomfort and immerse yourself in it. The more you feel discomfort, allow yourself to step into trust. The more you feel angry and frustrated, remind yourself of why you are doing this and step into trust.

Now comes the difficulty in knowing when to take action and when to do nothing. This was always a struggle for me because it was never very clear as to what was required in that moment. Sometimes, the addiction to constantly doing something was quite intense and it would trick me into thinking that action needed to be taken. Sometimes also I would be mistaken in thinking that nothing needed to be done and I would end up procrastinating on something far longer than I would have liked.

The answer to this is just keep trying. Try to remain still and do nothing. And if this is the time when we should have done nothing, we will know soon enough. Trusting in ourself to know what is right and what is wrong is key here. This may sound like a lot of oxymorons here as in one breath I'm saying to feel into the discomfort and do nothing and the next I'm asking to trust and follow our intuition. What if one is disguised as the other? What if my intuition is actually not my intuition and it's the addiction of constantly doing something disguising itself? This can absolutely be true so in this instance, it's trial and error. Whatever we do, however it plays out, notice what we're feeling before and where we are feeling it, then, notice what we feel after and where we are feeling it.

This will be so extremely subtle at first and will take some practice however, the more practice, the more familiar we become with it, the better we get at noticing it and the less subtle it becomes. It ends up being an absolute certainty of what direction to take and there's such a confidence within us that it really doesn't matter the outcome, what matters is that we are now trusting ourself.

When we fall more into this kind of behaviour, we find that we are constantly being rewarded with trusting ourselves and our confidence sky rockets. We no longer have that neediness energy surrounding us. People feel so much more relaxed around us and in fact, they want to be around us more and feel the effects of the lightness we have in our life. We become inspirational and a joy to be around. You notice that people are coming to you and asking for your advice as they want to start living their lives the way that you live yours. Suddenly you're the one standing at one side of the room and you have that gorgeous guy approaching you because he wants to understand what makes this glorious woman tick. Suddenly you are being asked to take on that special project at work because your boss respects you and admires your way of thinking.

Take notice in the little ways your life has changed. You will suddenly enjoy the simpler pleasures that life has to offer. You will want to spend time alone enjoying your own company and will feel rejuvenated in doing this. You will find yourself stealing moments of silence just watching a beautiful butterfly dance amongst the flowers. You will find that you look at your phone that little bit less and will be less driven to the validation of a text from someone.

You will find that you won't be comparing yourself so much to the people around you, in fact, you will instead be inspired by the people around you. You will either see ever so clearly what you don't want in your own life or you will feel inspired by what you do want in your life. You move from being someone that life happens to, to being someone that makes life happen. You start to see every challenge as an opportunity of growth and every situation a chance to love yourself more and more.

You no longer are consumed with what others think about you as you think so highly of yourself it doesn't even occur to you. You still have the ups and downs but they are far less debilitating than they were before. Instead of being consumed by depression or anxiety, these are now just emotions that you acknowledge and observe rather than feelings that cripple you.

The biggest misconception that we have when it comes to personal evolvement is that the end result is joy and nothing more. This couldn't be further from the truth. I find it is so damaging and complete bullshit when people only talk about the times that they feel joy. A lot of people talk about the pain and suffering that came before the experience of joy but no-one talks about the pain and suffering that will surely follow the experience of joy. Because this is the truth, it is never ending. We cannot experience one without the other and it is a revolving door.

We don't get to a place in life and suddenly lessons are learnt and it's now party time. The lessons never stop, the growth always continues. Feeling like crap some days and not wanting to get out of bed still occurs. It doesn't ever go away. But what happens is our reactions to these feelings change. We no longer are identified by them, instead they become just another experience. A full spectrum of experiences making up the entire experience of life. Don't let this dishearten you, I know that you have thought your entire life that happily ever after is an achievable state of being. This couldn't be further from the truth and as long as you hold on to that farce, the longer you will take to experience the real joy that is here for you.

Reflections

Every situation, every person and every moment is an opportunity for us to see what is truly within us. Life reflects to us via these experiences, a snapshot of what is really going on in our inner world. Because mostly what it is reflecting to us is buried deep below the surface, it is sometimes really difficult to decode. The same theme could be reflecting out to us for years and years before we notice the pattern and identify what our truth is. There is no time frame to which we need to see the reflection, all is revealed to us in the perfect moment. At that point, there is rarely anything for us to do and the moment can come with a real sense of peace and freedom.

The reason for the reflections is the journey all in itself. Life is talking to us through our experiences and we respond to life with our reactions. Our reactions depend completely on our personalities, our belief systems and our fears. Our belief systems are usually passed on to us from our parents and or something we have developed through our own experiences in the early stages of life.

We all have a very unique purpose on this earth. We are gifted with very individual talents and ways of thinking which create an opportunity for things to be better than they were before. All of this designed to assist in the raising of consciousness in our world. The journey of life, is actually a journey of the self via the landmarks of life. These landmarks are obstacles and opportunities placed in our path to help us uncover and awaken our true magnificence.

It's like a puzzle, the whole point of it is to take all the separate pieces, fit them together to create a whole image. This symbolises our own journeys. We take a whole bunch of pieces (experiences), they all fit together to create one image (our oneness). What is oneness? It is the connection to our soul, our heart, our magnificence. It is God, or source, or consciousness.

The experiences and the people in our lives are here to help us on that journey, to show us which piece of the puzzle fits to develop the whole picture. The more challenging the experience or the person actually helps us to complete more of the puzzle, making it easier to determine what the bigger picture is.

So if life is having a conversation with us through our experiences and we are responding to life through our reactions, how do we know if we are responding in the way that we want? What if we are sending back a response that is completely the opposite of what we what we are trying to say? How do we even know if the universe is understanding us clearly? It is like going to another country and having very limited understanding of the language. We use hand gestures and broken words to communicate and eventually we may be understood but it can take a while, or, we are not understood at all and we find ourselves lost and confused.

This is where we start to learn the language of the universe so that we can respond back to it in the most articulate way, leaving no room for confusion or misunderstanding. We know we have started to hear the message correctly and respond correctly when the pattern stops or we have come to a new chapter in our lives. How well we understand the language is directly reflected in how well we are in the flow of life.

This naturally comes with a lot of work and consistency on our part. Like anything, the more dedicated we are to something the more successful we will become. We start to become the masters of our own universe having a beautiful conversation back and forth sharing experiences of love and harmony.

The universe will only ever show us our most intimate truth, it doesn't just have a chat for the sake of it, it sends us raw and unbridled honesty. As all things in life, if we don't like the conversation, change it. Unfortunately here, the only way to change it is to see what the conversation is actually telling us.

Some reflections can be really easy to see and when we have those aha moments it can be pretty comical. It's almost as though you smack yourself in the forehead and yell... "of course"! Other reflections can be really difficult to determine, we fight so hard to avoid seeing what we don't want to see. This is completely normal, the reflections that we fight the hardest to acknowledge are usually the deepest truths being uncovered. It's only accurate that we fight these ones the most as they are buried the deepest. They also bring us the most freedom and represent the biggest shifts in our reality.

Lets take a look at when our experiences reflect our truth. If we are someone that has a lot of unexpressed anger, we will find our experiences to be riddled with anger. Whether it be experiences of road rage, passive aggressive people in our lives, or we are the victim ourselves of violence. What life is showing us here is the very level of anger that we have within ourselves.

A few years ago I was studying to be a yoga teacher. I was learning all about deep connection to the self, was chanting and practicing ahimsa (sanskrit word for non violence) I was feeling pretty zen and connected at this stage of my life. I remember I was out on the town with a friend one night. I was walking into a bar and some woman stormed past and pushed me. She was unknown to me and this was completely unprovoked. I'm the kind of person that stands up for myself and there was no way at that moment that I was going to let someone do that to me. I walked up to her, tapped her on the shoulder to ask her why she thought she could put her hands on me like that.

Next minute, my hair was being ripped out of my head and closed fist punches were coming at me from all directions. It was all I could do to protect my head and my face and I was knocked to the ground. A security guard pulled her off me and she took off with her boyfriend following close behind her. I was so shaken up and was pleading with the security guard to do something as I didn't know this woman. He shrugged his shoulders and went back to his post. I ran out of the bar and followed them down the street, I was extremely disorientated and not quite sure what I was doing at this stage. A policeman passed me, I grabbed him and pleaded for him to chase this girl and arrest her. He yelled at me whilst passing by that he was being called off to another incident so couldn't do anything. I stood there, in the middle of the mall, my peach dress blackened from being thrown onto a dirty bar floor and my hair a mess with big chunks ripped out of it. I had lost my friend and didn't know what to do. I was still in immense amount of shock but I somehow made my way home.

For about 2 weeks after that I was going through a bit of a post traumatic experience. I normally wouldn't have thought something like this was a very big deal but there was something about the sheer violence of this woman that stayed with me. It was literally haunting me and every time I found myself in a quiet moment, the incident would play out again in my mind causing a lot of confusion and trauma. I couldn't understand how I could be this self loving yoga teacher and an experience like that could happen. It made no sense to me at all.

I saw a conscious mentor of mine not long after this experience and he explained to me that the very level of violence of this situation, was the very same level of violence that I had towards myself. This came as a complete shock to me however it was so true. As far along as I felt I was on my journey, the universe was there to show me exactly where I actually was.

So what was I to do with that information? I couldn't at that stage see the reflection but I believed it, I knew that for me to have this situation play out, life was showing me exactly what I was doing to myself on a daily basis. What to do with this information? Simply reflect on it, look at the different areas I do show violence towards myself, don't judge it and then give myself more love everyday.

I had been bulimic since I was 12 years of age. At some stages of my life I had made myself sick after every single meal. At this particular stage it wasn't as severe as when I was younger but it was something I had never admitted to anyone before that or myself. Because it wasn't an everyday occurrence I didn't really think it was bulimia but irrespective of how often it played out, I would momentarily make myself physically sick because I had that deep level of self loathing.

With some of the reflections, they are revealed to you in that moment and there is nothing for you to do. With other things, you know there must be a reflection. It's not so easy to see but you just bring your awareness to it and wait until it's ready to play out. Some ways that can help this along are simply asking the question to yourself, what is the reflection? And then leave it alone until the answer becomes obvious.

I have a best friend of about 30 years. She has always been in my life and at moments especially over the last few years, we have been inseparable. It is so weird because she couldn't look anymore opposite to me, she is dark skinned, dark eyes, dark hair, I am blonde hair, blue eyes, caucasian skin however, we are always asked if are sisters. It never ceases to amaze us how many times we were asked that question. We were so close that we even ended up living in the same apartment block. I remember at the time my conscious coach said to me when I told him, wow, clearly the reflection is getting ready to be intensified. I didn't know at the time what that actually meant. I was soon to discover however.

Our relationship once you broke it down was pretty unhealthy. We spent almost every moment of our lives together apart from working or sleeping. It got to the point where mostly we didn't even need conversation we would know exactly what the other was thinking. My friend appeared to have it all, she had a very successful career, she was very attractive and highly intelligent. One thing that drove me crazy with her was that she could never be single. From the time we were 12 years of age she had boyfriend after boyfriend jumping from one relationship to another. Why this made me so angry I couldn't work out but some of the men she chose to be with literally used to make my blood boil. Was it jealousy? I couldn't for the life of me figure it out? Surely it wasn't because I would never in a million years have dated half of the men she did. I would ask her, can't you just be on your own for a little while? She told me one day that she just preferred life when she was in a relationship. I couldn't understand how she could make that comment considering she had literally never been out of a relationship.

I tried so hard to not get caught up in her decisions but it made me so bloody livid all the time. I had spent a lot of time single and always preferred to be single than date someone that I just wasn't that into. My friend was the complete opposite and she would instead prefer to be with someone that she wasn't that into than be single. So where the bloody hell was the reflection?

At one stage she was married to someone that I could not stand. He was emotionally abusive and quite a violent man. He would go out drinking and without fail his evening would end because he got in a fight with someone. They couldn't ever go out together because my friend would always be so on edge in fear that he would turn violent and her energy towards him would be the very thing that would make him turn violent. He had a terrible relationship with alcohol and was a very unhealthy and unstable man. I couldn't understand why my friend would allow herself to be in a relationship this level of violence. This went on for years and years and I was always the one she would come to when things got bad.

I remember one particular Sunday, I had a really lovely day and was in a really great mood. My friend was so upset because she'd had a really big argument with her husband. I caught up with her as any friend does when their mate is sad. Within half an hour I suddenly realised that I was talking about my heartbreak of 12 years ago and my frustrations with not being able to get over it and crying my eyes out.

My friend was then offering me a sympathetic ear and her mood had completely shifted. I realised at that moment that my friend needed to feel like her situation wasn't as bad by focusing on a problem in someone else's life. The issue here is, by me putting so much focus on something in my life, I wasn't able to move on.

I'm never the kind of person that would tell people they need to leave a relationship but things got so bad, for so long and I was so exhausted that I was telling her she needed to get out. Eventually, he moved to another state and the relationship was finally over. She brought herself this ring at that time. She spent an absolute fortune on it, the stone in the ring represented power. It was her power ring and I was so happy that my friend was finally starting to realise that this guy was just no good in her life.

The frustrations didn't end there because the second he moved away she couldn't go one moment without dating someone, chatting to someone online or looking for someone to be a potential partner. I think I heard, I have met the best guy in the world, I am in love with him or I have waited my whole life to feel like this continuously over the next 9 months. This was filling me with such anger because I couldn't understand why a person of such intelligence and ability constantly needed to be validated from a man. Throughout this whole time, she still was in regular contact with her ex and was not only trying to fill her life with a boyfriend but was still allowing him to control what she did, and when she did it. A couple of times she even attempted getting back with this guy. I would try and approach the subject gently with her, just suggesting that maybe if she calmed down on trying to constantly feed her life with men, she mind find something really incredible within herself and lead a much happier existence. This would make her so angry and she would simply reply, I like dating guys, it's fun and I get a lot out of it. It literally sent me wild with anger, why could she not just be on her own for even just a moment? Still, the reflection was not clear.

I realised that in this current situation with my friend, the relationship wasn't bringing out the best in me, and I certainly wasn't being the kind of friend that I wanted to be. I was full of anger and resentment for my best mate and finally I accepted that it was time to step away. The difficult thing about this is, you don't know how it's going to play out. That person may never be a part of your life again or, the relationship could return to you in a better, healthier way. The same with any relationships in your life, if there is a toxic situation and you step away from it, you give it space to heal and either bring something that is more for you into your life or give the relationship an opportunity to return to you in a better way that is more loving and compassionate.

Having this space gave me a lot of discomfort at times. The amount of moments that I wanted to pick up the phone and say hi, or knock on her door and sit and chat. It was tough at first, and then it got worse as the anger and resentment intensified. It brought up so much anger that I had for my friend that even I didn't realise how bad things had gotten. The most difficult thing here is, my friend is a really lovely person. She is very kind and supportive so to have this level of anger and resentment for her was quite confronting and brought up a lot of judgment in myself.

What I came to understand through this period, is that when you're ready to see the reflection in yourself, you no longer need it to play out externally. You have the space now to gently reveal itself to you and it comes with a lot less resistance than what you were experiencing before. It's not something that should be rushed, it's a gentle part of the process which needs just that, gentleness, love and patience with yourself.

Once I sat with the discomfort of all of this, I was able to allow that space to reveal truth to me. Like a sudden download of information I was having conversation with another friend regarding something I had discovered and the more I spoke, the more clarity I received.

You see, when we have a lack of something within ourselves, we seek the balance of that in an external manifestation. For example, if we are lacking sweetness in life, we are driven to find sweetness in other ways, usually in the most obvious manifestation you can imagine.... sugar! The same goes for every single thing you can think of. If we are lacking in one thing, we compensate with the very thing that can bring us a direct hit. What occurred to me in that moment was my friend was lacking in feeling like she had power hence, the power ring. She was frantically trying to access it in anyway she could externally to herself. We have masculine and feminine energy with everything and power is a masculine energy. So if we are depleted in something and we search for it in the most obvious external manifestation, it stands to reason, we would look for a masculine energy, via the man!

This went off in my head with alarm bells. It became apparent to me in that moment that what my dear friend was doing, was trying to source her power through a relationship. This is why she constantly needed to be in one, because it was the only time she felt powerful. This is why she needed to buy the power ring, she was desperately seeking power in a form outside of herself because she didn't feel she had any within her. I couldn't believe that something so obvious had not been clear to me. I started to have in that moment a lot more compassion and understanding for my friend. Still, the reflection was not clear.

It was literally one day later that I had that same awakened moment for myself. I had reached out to my ex many times to sit and talk with me so I could gain some kind of closure however, he refused to discuss it and I was left feeling hopeless and powerless. In one moment, I could see that I was giving over all of my personal power to my ex, because I didn't think I could move on without him giving me the closure I craved. The reflections came continuously over the next week. I needed Jon to give me closure because I felt my power would be ignited once I could finalise that part of my life. However, it went deeper than that. Once I could be within my personal power, it would mean I was finally over Jon and I could open my heart to another man. Opening my heart to another man would assist in healing the scars of the very thing that closed me off in the first place. The very pain that closed me off in the first place was not feeling loved or accepted. If I could open my heart to a man, I could heal the pain that the lack of love and acceptance caused me and then finally, I could be whole and complete. The reflection was even more clear, as much as my friend needed a man to feel complete, so did I.

In that one moment, I unwrapped two massive things in my life that was holding me back. Firstly, the need to gain closure from my ex, and secondly, the years and years of reflection that my friend was playing out for me. I couldn't believe that the two were even connected. The second that this realisation hit, my body seemed to completely let itself go. I couldn't stand up and I felt like I was going to pass out. The energy that was surging through my body was more than 20 years of reflection finally being seen. My head felt like it was going to explode but in a totally good way, my body felt like it was unable to function, but in a good way and in that moment I felt nothing but peace and calm. Looking around my vision was physically clearer, and there was a lightness in my body that I hadn't felt before. This was newness, this was a very big letting go of a very, very old story.

The intensifying of anger and disharmony with my very best friend was life pushing for the reflection to be finally seen and released. I understand now that the intensity of our feelings, the build up of anger that we have and the deepening of frustration starts to get really concentrated just before we have the awakening. It's like it volume gets turned up really, really loud, so we can't ignore it anymore. The more the volume gets turned up the more painful it becomes and the more obvious it becomes. When we are in a place of understanding this and working with the reflection, the action to take becomes clear to us. I knew I needed to step away from my dear friend but I didn't understand at the time, why. I trusted that because I was called to action, I didn't need to understand the why, I just needed to give myself the space. This sent a very clear message to the universe saying, I am ready to see my reflection now, give it to me in a gentle and loving way with as little resistance from me.

The reflection was there for me years ago to see, when I first came back from overseas and had the falling out with my friend. Because I was so consumed with anger and bitterness at that time, I was unable to hear the subtle whispers of my heart giving me direction and as a result, the situation blew up in my face bringing me more pain and suffering than was necessary. Life will constantly give you opportunities to see these things, it is up to us to stop, take notice, and give action to prevent unnecessary pain and suffering.

Now this was a very big reflection for me to have uncovered but there have been many small ones that have come along the way too. These reflections that life offers to us through experiences and the people around us can be really quick to see once we give our attention to them. What is important however is that we give it the space to show its truth to us.

My friend Bec rang me the other day and she was really down in the dumps. She had a very successful career in sales for many years and had been with her current company for about 4 years. She was one of the original people in her team and was a very decorated employee, was a part of many special projects and was a top performer. She lived in a regional area and as a result only ever saw her team at monthly state meetings and didn't get to catch up with her colleagues as often as they did with one another.

She was on the phone to me explaining how sad she was because she felt incredibly left out. She felt that even though she was one of the longest standing employees in the team, that the was an imposter. All of the other team members had only been there a short time and she felt like she was treated as though she was the new kid in town with no experience. She said to me that she questioned how fulfilling her job actually was and how she felt that she had so much purpose in her life than doing what she was currently doing. She was so mad in that moment that other people in her life seemed to have it all together, seemed to know exactly what they were doing with their lives and felt incredibly satisfied with their achievements. This was so funny to me because my friend was definitely one of those people you would think that about. I actually laughed at her and said, don't you see? You are absolutely someone that anyone would look at and think they had it all together. She had an incredibly successful career, earned good money, was married to a guy who had a great career and she had a lovely little baby daughter that she absolutely adored. She lived in a beautiful home right smack bam in one of the most sought after holiday destinations in Australia. She was confident, self assured, impeccably dressed, well spoken and highly educated.

This is the thing with life, no matter who the person, no matter how close they are, not matter what our judgments are on their life, every single person is fighting their own battles which make them question every single thing about their lives. Every single person is on their own journey trying to figure out their own magnificence in their own unique way. There is no rule book, there is no way that is right or wrong, and there is no two journeys that are the same. How one person gets to that magical place of purpose in their own lives is completely different to how another person does.

So my dear friend was in a real state of anguish over this, she knew there was something more and her current situation was making her feel really shitty about herself. This is where we go into a little bit of enquiry, we breakdown the situation that is unfolding and see what it actually represents in our lives.

Sometimes it can really help to have some support doing this. Coaching of some kind can really be of great benefit in our lives. There are so many things available to us for this kind of mentoring. I use the analogy here of a professional athlete. The more successful the athlete the bigger the team that is around to support them. Anybody at the top of the game accesses professional trainers and we should be no different. No matter how intelligent we are, no matter how much we think we have our lives together, no matter how strong we are, coaching can sometimes weed any of the unnecessary suffering and offer us immense amount of support on our journey. There is absolutely no shame in seeking professional guidance, and in fact, it takes an immense amount of humility, courage and openness to allow the exploration of the deepest part of your truth to be revealed.

In this particular incident with my friend we went through some enquiry. Just by her talking about it we could illustrate that the feelings of being left out took her back to when she was a younger girl always feeling left out. It had only been a few months before that she had identified a pattern in herself where she felt that she always had to let people know she knew the answers. She felt that if she didn't let on to the people around her that she knew the answers, they would think she was dumb and she would feel left out. When this knowing came to her, it relieved so much pressure in her to always let others know she was right and months of joy came from this moment.

What was obvious now is that back when she was younger and felt left out, she used knowledge to make her feel like she was included. A few months ago when she moved through that need to use knowledge, it brought up in her the original issue that the knowledge was masking and that was feeling left out. So, it was clear, the reflection of this situation with work was not actually the problem at all and there was nothing she needed to do about that, seeing and validating this young girl who had never felt included was where she needed to put her energy and focus and that would then, eliminate the situation that was playing out currently.

This situation that she was experiencing brought up a two things for her, firstly, her feelings of inadequacy and secondly, it made her question that there was something more she could be doing but she didn't know what it was. At this moment all that is needed is to take one step at a time. Firstly, acknowledging and healing the young girl who felt inadequate would clear the space for her own true purpose to reveal itself. "But how will I know my true purpose? There's nothing that I can think of that I'm good enough at that makes me feel like I have any purpose". The solution here is, you don't need to figure it out, it will reveal itself to you when the time is right. When the healing of the core of your being has taken place, you discover your own connection to self and from that place, your purpose is revealed. The only thing you need to do is give it space to unravel. Just by asking the question and letting it go, is enough to get the rumblings happening to uncover what it is that you're trying understand.

Patience, love, understanding and compassion are all that is needed in these moments. The more pressure we put on ourself to try and see something, the harder it becomes for us to see it. Giving ourselves space, some quiet time and permission to do more of what we love is the key that unlocks this kind of information.

Absoluteness

Absoluteness is such a rigid and limiting place. It offers no flexibility, no opportunity and no openness. When this is present in our lives, what we are saying to the universe is, keep me locked in to this belief and situation, I want no solutions, I want no opportunities and I want things to remain as they are. What we think we want in one situation, can be completely the opposite to what we actually do want and strong statements regarding this can be our undoing.

One of my best mates just recently went through a really tough break up. It absolutely crushed her and she's been on a massive rollercoaster ride of emotions. Last week she happily declared that she does not want a relationship. She is more than happy just being on her own and doing her thing. Cool, fair enough, and rightly so considering what she has just gone through. The next time I saw her, she announced to me that she caught herself having a completely different feeling that very morning. She decided that maybe she did want to have someone in her life. She knew she didn't want casual sex but if the situation presented itself to her to actually have a beautiful man enter her life would she actually be so quick to say no to it? Of course not and she couldn't believe how full of shit she was in that moment.

It literally blew her away as that very day she had two extremely conflicting desires about what she wanted and both of these desires she attached an absolute statement to. I do not want a relationship and if the right man came along I would consider it. So the question is, which desire will the universe deliver on? Simple, neither! It will do absolutely nothing because there is such conflict and rigidness in what is being asked for. We will go into this in more detail at a later stage but for now, let's focus on the absoluteness of a statement and complications that it brings.

When something is absolute, it offers no room for creativity or flexibility. What happens if you have such strict, rigid beliefs about something but your happiness actually exists in believing the complete opposite? The energy that is present with this is arrogance, stubbornness and limitations. Think about what it would be like in life if your joints didn't work. Think about the pain and discomfort of simple tasks like sitting down. You actually couldn't! You would either need to lie down or stand up. How boring and limiting. The same with your mind, when you limit yourself with such rigid thoughts and outcomes, you limit your experience to one dimensions and leave out all the exciting flavours of multi-dimentional opportunities.

There is a woman I see walking around the area that I live. She is an elderly woman and she is always in workout gear. I always see her out and about walking and no matter what time I am around, she's always about. It makes me realise that she is just always out walking. What is so alarming about this woman is her legs. One of her legs she is missing a knee. If you can imagine, she walks around with her leg arched backwards. If she looks down on her leg the middle part where the knee would normally be, disappears behind her. When she is walking, she has to kick her leg out from the hip to make her leg move forward. Every time I see her it makes me feel like someone is scratching their nails down a blackboard. Her leg is red and irritated, the flesh looks hard and rock solid and she looks like she would be in massive amounts of pain. This woman is physically so rigid that she finds it so difficult to literally take steps forward in life.

Every time I see this woman, it attracts such a reaction in me that I am reminded about the areas in life that I am being so rigid and where it is limiting my ability to move forward in life. And it is exhausting! It is no surprise either that whenever I see this woman, she is always alone and she is never looking up. She has her eye firmly on the task at hand which is, pushing her body forward in life. I imagine that she has been doing this her whole life and barely given herself a moments peace.

When we are so steadfast in a belief, it allows no alternatives. We not only exhaust ourselves, but we exhaust the people around us. They feel our tension, they feel the pressure we are putting on ourselves but what they aren't so good at feeling is that we are doing this to ourselves, they are feeling that this is all directed at them. Exit good friend, family member, boyfriend, potential boyfriend or potential great friend.

Not only is this a pretty toxic feeling for those around us, but we are walking around each and everyday with these stiff beliefs, constantly confusing not only ourselves but the universe around us. What happens then is disappointment that we aren't getting what we want in life and this then creates an energy of frustration, anger, disappointment and just wanting to give up.

Rigid thoughts relate to the Third Eye Chakra. This is the spot smack bam in between our eyes. It's kind of appropriate because if you think about it, you can't see what's right between your own eyes. This is also a blockage in the third eye chakra, inability to see truth and see your own reflection. Some of the emotions that relate to a blocked third eye chakra is feelings of anger, irritation, self criticism and feelings of rejection.

Some identifying physical symptoms of a blocked third eye chakra can be headaches, migraines, sinus issues, poor eyesight and confusion. Ways that you can help to relieve this are massage, meditation and even something as simple as stroking the area of the third eye. Just a focus and desire to clear the third eye will send an intention to get things moving.

But what do we do if we have so many conflicting beliefs around a situation in one day? To understand this, we need to understand the natural order of a woman and what it means to be a woman in this world.

You may never have been told this before, but the entire essence of a woman is the energy of forever changing. You see, it is our absolute prerogative, the natural law of our existence to be flexible and always moving. The woman's essence is movement herself and her role in this world is to be all these things. Just like the ocean a woman is deep and vast and she moves with the pulse of the moon and the tide.

What is damaging is when we go against this flexibility and build walls around something that should not be contained. Introducing anything rigid and inflexible here would fight against our natural impulses. I would never do this, I only want this, I don't want this, I am not this, I am this etc etc. All extremely limiting and damaging. So lets just say you make an absolute statement and it's something you completely believe in this moment. The universe will send you exactly that. you will be given exactly what you ask for and what you believe. The problem that occurs here is we as women change so dramatically what we want at any given time, this isn't always, necessarily what we do want.

I remember hearing a stories about people that joined Tinder and would have people they had never met, go over to their place and hook up. I was so horrified by this and I remember specifically saying "I would NEVER, EVER, EVER have some guy that I had never met come to my place. It's so dangerous and desperate. I'm not even kidding you, not even a week later, I had a guy that played me so bloody well that he came over to my place at 2:30am and I found myself doing things to him that I had vowed I would never do to a stranger. Hypocritical much? How was I one minute, saying I would NEVER, EVER do something and judging people go to doing the exact same thing. I felt so guilty, so ashamed and so stupid for putting myself in that position. But what did I learn in that situation? I learned that I am completely full of shit. I learned that I need to accept myself and back myself with every decision I make. I learned to not be so quick to allow someone to convince me of something that I wasn't comfortable in doing. I learned to not judge others for doing something that I would have no idea how I would react in their situation and I learned to not be so absolute in what I said.

It was almost like making that statement sent a little challenge to the universe to kick me right in the teeth and show me exactly what I would and wouldn't do in a situation. Right there was my truth in that situation. I was so needy for attention and affection and I was kidding myself in thinking that I wasn't. So what could I have done differently? I could have acknowledged that what other people do is completely up to them and I couldn't possibly know what I would do in the same situation. This is was an extremely humbling experience and it certainly cut through my own arrogance and judgment to put me right back there on earth as a human.

Aside from giving me a big, fat wake up call, absoluteness denies the universe's ability to deliver something that is really for you in that moment and bring you clarity to be more discerning on what you don't really want. What clarity I gained in this moment that I am only interested in mutually respectful and loving exchanges with men moving forward. It's not limiting, it's keeping it open but it's also eliminating any potentially damaging experiences playing out.

What does absoluteness look like from a metaphysical perspective. When we are so rigid and steadfast in our beliefs and we don't offer ourselves any flexibility, we are putting our hand up to experience a world of pain and suffering. Imagine that you experience a fall of some nature. If you are rigid and tight with no flexibility you will do so much damage in that fall that it would take you quite a while to recover. Imagine now if you had the same fall but instead of being rigid with your limbs being stiff and straight that instead, your limbs are nimble and flexible. They move easily and your body is soft and fluid. You will experience no where near as much damage and suffering as you did with the first fall. This is because your flexibility in a dangerous situation offered you a safe landing. You will most likely still experience some level of pain and discomfort but rather than broken bones you may just experience a couple of cuts and grazes.

So look at emotionally what happens when you experience a fall. When you are rigid, stiff and unmoving you will experience a lot more pain and discomfort from an emotional set back versus if you were more open and flexible. Sure you have little set back but the recovery phase is so much quicker when you are more flexible and soft.

Taking a look at the way people respond to us when we are inflexible and unmoving. There is a certain ignorance and arrogance that we are acting out that is being picked up by the people around us. What it is telling the people in our lives is that they cannot make a mistake around you. If they changed their mind or slipped up in any innocent way, you will be unforgiving and merciless. This is a pretty high pressure situation for anyone to be apart of you will find that your relationships are limited, stressful and superficial. The people around you will put in the bare minimum that they need to and will look for any excuse to get the hell out of there.

This works the same way when you expect absoluteness from the people around you. If your friend or loved one says something in the heat of the moment, what do you do? Do you grow frustrated with them because in the next breath they are doing something completely different? Well you know what? Suck it up sweetheart because you are a pain in the arse friend. You are such a nit picker and a drill sergeant that I would guarantee you, your friends or loved ones don't have the confidence to be completely honest with you in life. They are so scared of your reaction towards them that they don't tell you things, give you half the story or leave you out of the conversation entirely due to the sheer pain and suffering you cause them.

This might be a bitter pill to swallow but I can assure you, the more you see things this way, the easier you are with the people around you, the less you expect from them and the more you will receive from them. More love, more compassion, more support, more kindness, more consideration, more help and more of themselves they have to offer you. Imagine the relationships around you being more fulfilling and more giving. And likewise, the more fulfilling and giving you become to the relationships around you.

Aren't you exhausted with this tension that you are living with? With these rigid beliefs that offer no flexibility or freedom surrounding them? What would it look like if you could just change your wording to represent a little more flexibility. For e.g. I would never, ever, ever have a guy that I didn't know come over to my house versus: I can't imagine that I would ever do that but hey, you never know. It makes everything a little softer and therefore the energy surrounding it is a little softer. It's more humble, less ignorant and less judgemental.

Lets take this theory a little further and consider the areas in our lives that we have very rigid beliefs. One of these areas can be that list which we have all written at one time or another. The perfect partner!!! I was watching recently a reality TV show Married at First Sight and it was blowing me away some of the requests that two of the people had particularly. There was one woman who kept going on about her ideal man being Polynesian. Firstly, I have to say, if you truly want something that bad and there is absolutely no way, no how in changing your mind, then do something about it, move to the bloody Polynesian Islands.

What this woman loved so much about a Polynesian partner was the culture that came with it. Ok, so we're getting somewhere, what about instead of locking in that the person needed to be Polynesian that she asked for the man to be cultural or open to experiencing different cultures. This way, you are not limiting yourself. Instead you are opening yourself up to an entire country of men not just 10,000 Polynesian men in Australia. Odds are starting to increase aren't they! Possibilities are becoming a little more achievable.

A man on the same show wanted a woman with small ears, and 60kg amongst other things. It was pretty apparent that what this guy was asking for was so specific that it ruled out any reality of it being available to him. And even if it did appear, you could bet he would find something wrong with it. Striving for certain physical attributes in a person is not only ignorant, but it's superficial and limiting. Sure, you can identify that health and wellbeing mean a lot to you but that doesn't mean that a person with these specific attributes will make you happy in the long run. Unless of course you are only interested in superficial connection, in which case, there is nothing wrong with that, but this will have it's own limiting experience for you. You will struggle to feel completely fulfilled in any of your relationships.

Now, let us take a look at what the universe opens up to you when you are less absolute in your statements. It works the same method that we will continue to go over throughout this entire book. What you put out with your intentions, thoughts and words, is exactly what you get back in your experiences and responses to the world.

Absoluteness as we have identified, offers no space for creativity. When there is no creativity in life, we miss out on some really exciting things. Let's take a look at our absoluteness with something like money. A friend asks you to go on a holiday with her and your immediate response is, I can't go on that holiday because I don't have the money for it. Think about what message you are sending here. I have no trust that the universe will provide me what I truly want. Instead offer the following statement. I can't confirm at this stage, I will leave it open to see if any opportunities come up but I can't promise you anything right now. It may be that you don't get to go on the holiday. There are no guarantees that you will be given what you want, 100% of the time, however, you will never believe what creative ways that you can manifest the money and the time to get what you really desire.

Another really good friend has mastered this ability to manifest money like a bloody champion. When we first met, she actually came from a very deep place of lack. All she ever wanted was to buy a house and she felt like such a failure because she was in her 30's and didn't own her own home. She felt that she was always saving furiously but could never seem to get far enough ahead to get a good down payment. This was always the language she used, no matter what I do, I just can't seem to get ahead.

All that her reality hears in this instance is, no matter what things I try, I will never alter this current situation. So what changed for her? Firstly, the most important thing to discover in this moment is the importance of what she wanted to begin with. Through asking some questions, we were able to get down to the core belief that was here. She was comparing her own success to other peoples and thinking she needed to have a house to be like everyone else. So, it wasn't owning a house that was so important, it was her perception that she would join this special club and feel like a mature successful person if she owned her own home.

Then, the next step is getting things into some healthy perspective. Breaking down the actual beliefs to show her how bloody stupid they are. Firstly, what was the difference between paying a mortgage and paying rent? Sure you will own something in the long run, way, way, way down the track, in like 30 years time but what is the benefit of that? To own something? This comes from a real place of lack, fear that there will not be enough for you. So desperately wanting to own something is a danger in itself because we never really do own anything. It is never a part of us, it can never be a part of us and our identification that something is owned by us will surely bring it's own pressures and stress.

She has a really great lifestyle right now, her and her partner earn really good money and they live very comfortably. They have the ability to live wherever they want and can change homes whenever they want. If they were to break up, they wouldn't have the stress and pressure of dividing property. She could enjoy a lifestyle affording the things that were really important to her which ultimately she may not be able to achieve with a mortgage.

Now that we have broken down the belief system that owning her own home is the only thing that determines her success and happiness she can step away from it having so much control over her. In this place, she was able to step away from the energy of lack and neediness and create some healthy space around the situation. Space for what she really wanted to come through. Space to take the absoluteness of no matter what I do I can't seem to get ahead to really feeling and believing a more open statement.

The trick to this is, simply making the statement is just one ingredient to the recipe. You need to be able to come from a place of truly believing and trusting. In this moment, my friend was able to remove herself from a completely locked in belief to really feeling and believing there was another way. Her mantra became, anything is possible and what is for me will not pass me.

So what happened next? She had her mother contact her to tell her they were splitting up some money between her and her sisters and was going to give her a healthy sum of cash which was the exact amount that closed the gap between her savings and a deposit. She purchased a home not long after and true to form, nothing really changed for her. She didn't all of a sudden feel like she was finally a success, because she had already identified beforehand that she was a success.

The exciting thing is, this is only one part of the story. My friend literally became a manifesting machine. What used to plague her in the past with lack of money and inability to get ahead suddenly became a consistent flow of abundance. The creative ways that money made its way into her life was completely mind blowing. Even as I write this I am blown away with how much things changed for her. She rings me all the time to tell me all the ways in which she finds money coming at her. You'll never believe this but, I just got off the phone to my boss and they just decided to give me a pay rise and have back paid me the last 4 months. No word of a lie, this actually happened to her. She rang me one time stressing that she needed at least another $6000 spending money for an overseas trip. We went through and reminded her that she is a money creating master and she let it go in that moment. A couple of days later she phoned me to say that she had been accidentally overpaying funds into her bill account and she had $7000 that she hadn't accounted for. Another time her husband was paid a bonus out of the blue. It literally happens all the time for her.

When we allow ourselves the space in our lives to have more flexibility in our thoughts and in our words, we open up a world of opportunity and abundance around us. Your life and your reality will transform in ways that you can't even imagine to support this light, incredible, flexible and open being that you have become. The ways in which it does this can be extremely creative and this is why it is important to not lock in anything. You are simply limiting your own opportunities and experiences in life by doing this.

Think about what it would be like if you decided all of a sudden that you would only wear one outfit. It can be a really incredible outfit and it most likely is if you were to make such a declaration. None-the-less, regardless how incredible the outfit, you will only ever be wearing this. How quickly do you think you will get over it. Imagine the places you couldn't go because you didn't have the appropriate outfit for that occasion? Imagine the limited experiences you would have as a result. You would become bored, lacklustre, and then you could only imagine how that would affect the people around you.

Take your mind back to a time when you brought a new outfit. Think about where you were, what made you buy it, you may have brought it for an occasion or just to have for an unknown. Think about then when you stepped out in the new outfit how exciting you felt. How amazing you felt wearing it and how you felt in that moment that anything could happen.

Now imagine never feeling like that again. How devastating! How boring! How uninspiring! How hopeless. Don't you want to always feel like there is magic in your life. That anything in any moment can happen and you are willing and open for it to do so. You could be walking around the corner and bump into the man of your dreams! You could win the lottery! You could meet a person that offers you an incredible job! You could meet a new friend that opens your world up to things you could never have believed possible! You could discover a talent that you never realised was in you! You could find yourself writing a book! You could find yourself inspiring people around you in ways that you never even considered! You could find yourself opening the door to your brand new home and dancing through the hallways knowing that you allowed all of this to happen. You opened yourself up to allowing that anything is possible and anything can happen! And it does happen! It happens everyday and it happens in ways that you never dreamt of. But you didn't dream it because you knew the minute that you tried to control the way something played out, you were being absolute again.

Connection

When you really start to honour the stirrings of your heart, start trusting in that inner voice, falling into the flow of life and not second guessing where you're being led, a certain magic and stillness falls into our life. There's a certain amount of peace and calmness surrounding us. This is when we are most connected. In this place there is a real presence, a real feeling of contentment with all that is around you, the feeling is a much welcomed relief from the pains and pressures that our journey can bring us. I used to think contentment was a very boring state of being which meant that you were somehow settling however I know now that it truly is a place of peacefulness and freedom. There is a certain amount of patience that it takes to be still when you're in this place of connection. It can get uncomfortable in it's own way. The discomfort seems to come from the waiting game of what now? What's next? What can go wrong? Will this last and How do I fast track an outcome I'm looking for?

The connection phase comes usually after the shift. I know these moments don't last forever, I know they are fleeting until the next shift comes along but I also know that they are what builds momentum to meet the challenges that come up along the way. They are a time for us to really take a break, put our feet up and pat ourselves on the back for a job well done. What I know from these moments is if we really soak them up, dive deeply into them and keep ourselves grounded at this time, we can really lengthen enhance our experience here.

When we go from a period of intensity and find ourselves out the other side, there is a real sense of wanting to get out there and party. We are lifted to these giddy heights of bliss and excitement that they can too, as much as the lows of the shift, take us completely away from ourselves and our connection.

True connection is not hyperactive and it's not desperation. When we find ourselves in the low points getting caught in melancholy the reason we find ourselves so down, is because we are not connected. We have caught ourselves up in the emotional rip and it's swept us away. This is desperate and the easiest way to see we are not connected. When we are in the place of complete and utter elation, the joy and excitement is so much that we can barely breath, we are also disconnected. In this place, the energy is not grounded and we lose ourselves in the emotion again.

This does not mean that we can't get excited. That would be really crap to not be exited about what is to come, but there is a real difference between, being excited and grounded and being hyperactive and getting caught in the mania of it all. Let's take a little look at this further.

Think about someone you know who is really grounded. They come across as balanced, confident, present, humble, open, content, alluring, gentle, cool and they're quite reassuring to be around. We find ourselves naturally drawn to people who are grounded as they make us feel all of those things too. We want to become more of what they are because there is a real attractive quality about someone who is grounded.

When someone is quite hyperactive, over-excited and a little manic, we find ourselves watching from afar but they are a little too much to be around. They come across as highly anxious, scatty, dismissive, over indulgent, overbearing, intense and they can be quite off putting. Sure they may be alright to be around for a small amount of time and can be quite entertaining, they're quite and adventurous energy which can be exciting however it is really exhausting trying to keep up with them. You find yourself soon enough searching for the more humble acquaintances of a grounded person. You feel the conversation is more relevant, you feel like you are actually participating and that you are more connected to them than the manic entertainer.

When someone is highly excitable and manic like this, there is a real desperation about them. Their excitement and eagerness depends completely on the event or person that created this level of bliss. If the situation changed or ceased to continue, the person would definitely come down like a house of cards. The reason for this is, the happiness and joy was completely outside of themselves and therefore it is out of their control as to how long it continues to exist for. Let's illustrate this further.

When I met Tygue, I felt as thought life made sense. All of a sudden it was clear why I had gone through the suffering and intensity of the whole Jon saga. This had happened to prepare me for opening up to a deeper, healthier connection. I felt this real sense of purpose and relief wash over me because now, I could put the heartache of the past firmly behind me. I started to fantasise about my new life and what it looked like. Who was I now without pain, hurt, confusion, sorrow and challenge? I knew what it was like to go through moments of life without this, those small flashes in time that gave me relief from the lessons. I was fun, enigmatic, excited, loveable, friendly, positive and resilient. I knew how stunning my life was through these periods and I felt like I could achieve and be anything I set my mind to. Life was full of hope and promise. You can see that it was quite alluring to get caught up in the excitement of life without this big, heavy, black cloud around me.

I began to grow more and more excited with the idea of life. The other areas of life that were limited as a result of these challenges seemed more manageable and this filled me with even more excitement. Before too long, I got so swept away with the promise of a new life and existence, I was overcome with such bliss and excitement that it pretty quickly turned manic. I remember speaking to my friend Litsa and explaining to her this wonderful thing that had finally happened in my life. I was once again, very aware of myself at the moment but I felt as though I was outside of my body watching on. It was like I was on crack! Babbling excitedly at 100 miles an hour, not even coming up for breath.

There were two major things wrong here. Firstly, an exciting thing occurred in my life which all of a sudden, I created into a whole new super world. I completely took myself out of my current situation, which was actually pretty bloody good and I plonked myself in the super world imagining that I would arrive at a destination and be saved. Something that was bringing me immense amount of joy, suddenly became my saviour. The pressure that kind of energy would have put on Tygue would have been terrifying. All of a sudden, he was responsible for my life's happiness. Any wrong step he potentially made meant that my life would be a disappointment and therefore he would be too. There was no way he would be able to live up to the pressure of fulfilling my life's happiness. And don't be under any illusions, just because I didn't tell him this or act like this around him, does not mean he didn't feel it.

The second problem with this is, I was accessing something completely outside of myself to give me validation and fulfilment. I was no longer complete and enough just on my own, I needed the affections and guarantees of a new love to keep me in my new life that I had now grown really attached to. This is the ultimate disconnection from self. I put my whole life's purpose and happiness on something outside of myself so therefore, I needed to hold on to this thing for dear life so I wouldn't jeopardise my whole life's happiness. When we try and hold onto something so hard, we are coming from a place of fear, we are scared that we will not have enough, or are not good enough for what we have and it won't last. And nothing good can come from that place of lack.

Had I remained completely connected at this time of extreme bliss and excitement, I would have still felt the joy, however it would be a lot more grounded. This would have multiple benefits as firstly, you allow the subtleties of your heart to guide you. I may have been able to see more clearly that there was a real call to be more vulnerable than I was. I would have been so much more present in the moment and really allowed my heart to be seen, and who knows, I maybe wouldn't have scared off the only man I had allowed myself to really love after such a long time.

It's unfair to go into retrospect in this way, as this does not do us any favours but I feel it is important in this particular instance to illustrate the damage that disconnection can cause. Naturally, all these things have a purpose and have worked out the way they needed to. If disconnection is present for you, this is not an opening to start punishing yourself for being disconnected. Quite the contrary, it is an opening to start reconnecting. Acknowledging that how you have done it in the past has been necessary for your own souls growth.

When we are connected we are not only connected to our divine self, but we are connected to our relationships more and we are connected to the power cord of life. This is the very thing that plugs us into abundance and opportunity. When we are plugged into this, the universe offers us everything we could ever want in lightning fast speed. Just a thought and desire suddenly is delivered in another moment, it will make your head spin how quickly it occurs.

I identified that I wasn't really happy in my job. Although I loved the product I was selling, I was unmotivated, unsupported and bored. I didn't love the people I worked with and I wanted more flexibility. I said to a friend that day, right, I'm going to put it out there, I want a job that pays as much as I'm on now, if not more, I want the flexibility that I currently have and I want to work less. With that, I just announced it and then forgot about it. That very afternoon, I got a phone call from an old colleague that I adored. We were just chit chatting and he asked how work was going, I explained the scenario and what do you know, he was looking at hiring someone in the next couple of weeks! Same money, less work, and it was with people that I already adored and loved. This is how quickly things start to manifest when you're plugged into connection with the universe and yourself.

We are so afraid in life to surrender to the flow of life. It's fair enough, the unknown is a very terrifying thing and it takes a lot of trust and resilience to really allow yourself to fall. We have a whole lifetime of habits that limit our ability to fall into trust and surrender. We have learned them from a very young age and it is the only reality we have ever known. We are here at this moment, training ourselves to actually trust our hearts. When we have in the past, trusted ourselves and been burned by that, it only further cements our resistance to trust. What is even more difficult, is our hearts sometimes make no bloody sense. It asks us to do things that are downright terrifying and seem pointless at the time. Why the hell would we put ourselves through this kind of pain and suffering for an uncertain outcome? This is where the trust comes in.

Let's do a little exercise here. Imagine a person in your life, whether they are still with us or not, that you trust implicitly. They are responsible, consistent and always just want the very best for you. Now, imagine that person asked if they could borrow a large sum of money from you. It was large enough that you would certainly miss it, but they promised you that if you loaned them the money, they would be able to return it to you two fold. They wouldn't be able to tell you when or how, but you would get twice your money back eventually. You know that they wouldn't ask unless it was completely necessary, it was a bit of a sacrifice from your end but you trust this person implicitly and you know that whatever they did with it, you knew it would be for a very good reason. Naturally, you wouldn't hesitate! You would hand that money over quick smart and trust that it would come back to you at some point.

This is the same with the whispers of your heart. When you are truly connected and have fallen into trust of your divine heart, it is your most trusted supporter. It always want what is best for you, it always cares and loves you above anything else, and it would never put you through unnecessary pain. When you truly listen to the connection of your heart, it will guide you to places you won't quite understand, and you won't necessarily want to do the things that you're guided to do, however you don't ask questions. You nod in trust, absolutely certain in the knowing that it is for your greatest good and to deepen that trust even further.

The things that we are guided to do are the impulses and urges that we have. Those things that when we think about them, our heart skips a beat. When our heart moves in anyway, this is the time that we stop and listen. I mostly know when my heart is talking to me when I am directed to the most insane of things. The ideas that come to me and my natural response is, "no way!" Heart stops, my stomach drops and Bingo! I know what needs to be done. Most of the time I will question it for days, weeks even, but the whispers don't go away. They continue, relentlessly reminding you through thought and feeling. When you ignore it long enough, trust me, something big will happen to throw a spanner in your world. And it won't be pretty.

At first when I was following the whispers of my own heart I went through a little bargaining process. I would hear the calling and then I would go back and forth arguing with myself over it. Eventually I would need to convince myself of the reasons that it made sense to do it. I would come up with a million reasons to back it up so then I could feel more confident in what I was doing. Then, I would need to establish some outcomes to support the reasons why I would do it which ultimately convinced me to follow the calling of my heart.

This was a really viscous cycle which only caused unnecessary suffering. You see, what I was doing here was not coming from a place of trust. If I truly trusted, I wouldn't have to back it up with a million reasons to do it, I would simply just do it no question. And the outcome would be inconsequential so therefore I would have no expectation of a particular outcome. Success would be in the doing, not in the outcome. The more I listened to my heart with no resistance, the louder the whispers of my heart became. The louder my heart whispered, the more I trusted, the more I trusted, the more I was connected and so on.

When we're strongly connected to self, the extremes don't stop. We are always going to go through the ebbs and flow of life and if we do the work to eliminate this part of our lives, we will be severely disappointed. What we are best to understand now is that the shadows of life, or the low points, are what provides us with the biggest growths. The shadow supports the light, the awakening process is as blissful because of awakening itself. When something is awakened, it must have been asleep. We find that in our own journeys, the greatest moments actually come from the deepest lows.

There are so many things that support this knowing, my favourite is the Lotus flower. The Lotus flower roots itself in mud, shoots itself through this and blossoms above the water. Each day it sheds it's petals and re-blooms. When we look at the analogy this has on our life we can see it's symbolism is quite special and reassuring. We push through difficult terrain to show our true beauty and then go through a daily ritual of releasing the old and opening to the new.

When we remember this, hear it, feel it, let it soak into our very being we connect to it when times get tough. I found it helped to have a little gentle reminder to reassure us when times get tough. For me, I had a little tattoo on the inside of my wrist that simply reads love. Every time I look at it, I'm reminded to see each and every situation with love. Sure, that doesn't always happen, after all, we are only human.

This is something to always remember, we are only human, and we do human things and we make human mistakes. We are not here living a life of enlightened beings seeing each situation with love and compassion for all. It's bullshit and it's not real. If we had that level of awareness, we would not be living on planet earth as human beings. If you think that to be on the awakened journey you need to be hugging trees, holding crystal, chanting and sending cosmic messages of love though the stratosphere then you're mistaken. Yes, you can find a lot of happiness, joy and inner peace this way, in fact, I have chanted a lot, I love Crystals and trees and when I hug someone I allow my heart to really touch in with theirs, but you don't need to do all of this to be connected.

These things can assist in connection, they can make you feel really bloody good. They hold a certain vibration that makes us feel good and in that place it is easier to connect however, connection only ever comes from within. The second we find ourselves seeking connection through something outside of ourselves, we have misunderstood connection and therefore do not experience it.

What tends to happen is this, connection is strong, we are a lot more open and present with life and we feel good. When we are in a place of connection and being open and present with life, we attract some really cool things into our world. This is the law of attraction and it works on the vibration of energy. As we know, like attracts like, when we are connected our vibration is high, we attract other people, and therefore situations that hold that same high vibration.

We've established, when we are connected, we feel good, good things happen. Then, the good things bring us a sense of excitement, joy and further fuel the goody good that's going on in our lives. If we maintained our connection at this point, we can just continue to expect more good, and the story ends. However, what happens here usually is, the fear creeps in. The fear that there is somehow not enough goody good to go around, or we are not worthy of the goody good that is here. This is the old chestnut that developed itself from when we were really little, and even was passed down from seven generations before us.

We established at some point that our magnificence was somehow not real and we became scared of life. We decided that we would hold on to the fear and did everything we could to make sure this fear survived. We told ourselves all kinds of stories to support this and then spent the rest of our lives playing out the stories to make sure this fear remained in tact. When this fear is present, connection is lost. When connection is present, fear cannot exist. It is as the old saying goes, what is on the other side of fear is happiness. Happiness is connection.

When the fear presents itself, we latch on to the one thing tangible thing that brought us that goody good feeling. What we don't realise in these moments is the tangible thing didn't bring the goody good, it was the connection that brought the tangible thing. So without the connection, it's fair to say, the tangible thing, actually isn't goody good after-all. It doesn't actually exist.

The only thing that is to do in these moments, is hold on to the connection, keep that alive. There will be moments that it slips in and out, and that's ok, as I said before, we are only human. We are training a brand new muscle here that we didn't even know we had. It's going to take time, and you're going to have to be reminded, a lot. But like all things, it becomes easier, it becomes engrained in you and eventually, it's like breathing. It just happens.

Just as much as we need to hold on to the connection for the goody good times, we need to maintain this connection through the lower times. This ensures that we only spend as much time in these heavier moments as we absolutely need to. When we stay connected, the healing that's here for us has a chance to just, do it's thing.

When I was going through the healing stages with Jon, I had this idea in my head that it was my job to heal myself. This essentially is true but let's take a look at it in another way. When you cut your finger, do you physically clot the blood to stop the blood flow? No, this is the wisdom of your body which begins this healing process. Do you then watch the skin at every moment binding together offering it direction and insist on managing the whole process? No, you really don't, because the wisdom of your body, knows exactly what to do, when to do it. It's only when you realise that something is failing, that your intuition knows to take action and you seek assistance if that is what is needed.

It is the same with emotional healing, all you need to do, is stay connected. You let the emotional body take care of the pain just like you do the physical body. There is absolutely nothing you need to do here except put your energy into staying connected. This connection allows you the space to let the healing take place and the intuition that alerts you when you need some extra assistance. Assistance can look like a variety of things. It can be a beautiful meal, a loving conversation with someone special, a beautiful healing Kahuna massage, a supportive session with professional healer or just maybe a hug from a loved one.

This is all a choice we make, we decide at any moment when we disconnect. Sometimes that choice is lucid, sometimes our minds completely tear us away from our connection so quickly we didn't even know it happened. But this is something we practice, we just keep coming back to connection. Even if we find ourselves a million times a day having to reconnect, we do it. It won't always be like this. It will eventually get easier and before you know it, you just find yourself being more connected than not.

Some ways that can bring us back to connection is sometimes just the acknowledgement of connection. Just seeing that we need to reconnect can bring us there. We can reconnect through breath. Just sitting and focusing on the inhale and exhale can bring you back to a calm place of connection to self. One way that I find to be quite successful is showing compassion and kindness to ourselves in that moment. Really stepping in and seeing ourselves as perfection for disconnecting. That's right, disconnection is perfection, for without disconnection, we don't have connection. This is all a part of the journey and the entire purpose of why we are here. It is perfect to be connected, and perfect to be disconnected. Both sides of the coin offering us exactly what we need at every moment for our journeys.

Acceptance

Acceptance! What exactly is it? How do you accept? How do you take something that is so painful and hard to live with on a day to day basis and accept that this is your life? How do you fathom that this may be present for the rest of your days on earth and there's nothing you can do to change it? How do you, after trying a million different things to escape a situation, finally throw your hands up in the air and accept it? What would life look like with the acceptance of this situation?

If you could master acceptance in your everyday world, you can pretty much expect to be winning in all areas of life. Sure, things will continue to happen which confront you and cause you a certain amount of pain and discomfort but the reaction is far less damaging and you will bounce back in rapid timing.

Who knows why things happen and the way in which they happen. It's ultimately all for a bigger picture that you are not yet privy to. The beauty of retrospect is you can look back and understand why things didn't work out and mostly you are genuinely grateful that things happened the way they did. The exception to this is when you can't gain that retrospect because you're still caught in whatever it is that is playing out.

This can be pure torture on our lives and the idea of letting it go seems way too difficult and even impossible. Letting go, which we will go into later, is a necessary part of moving forward in life but there's a stage that comes before the letting go phase. This is acceptance.

Acceptance doesn't mean you need to like something, it doesn't mean you need to agree with it, it simply means that you are acknowledging it in this moment as your reality. The quickest and easiest way for us to move on from an uncomfortable situation, phase in life or a current reality, is to simply accept this is true for right now.

The more we try and understand it, break it down, fight it or avoid it, the longer it will stick around, haunting and torturing our everyday. Sure it's easy to accept a reality at this moment which doesn't really affect us in the long run for e.g. an annoying relative that will be gone in half an hour or a task that we are just not enjoying. But what about those things that have been lingering around in our lives causing us all sorts of turmoil. A pending job loss, an inevitable break up or a financial burden that keeps us awake at night.

It is imperative for your emotional wellbeing and also your rapid recovery that you accept what is your current situation. This may seem a little overwhelming at this point and it may feel completely out of your ability right now but here's the trick, accept that too! Accept that right now you can't accept your current situation. Accepting how you feel and respond in every moment is strengthening the muscle to being able to accept the bigger things.

Let's start with a little look into what lack of acceptance is and how it affects different areas of your life. Lack of acceptance ultimately is a lack of trust. We are not confident that the situation at hand is going to work out in the most favourable of ways. It is most certainly a survival mechanism taking over and the question is, what needs to survive? The belief system that is holding on, creating these situations to occur is what needs to survive. This is what we resist acknowledging and ultimately letting go of.

Let me break this down a little more simply. Every situation we find ourselves in, is a direct reflection of ourselves played out in a certain reality. This is to show us what our truth is in that very moment. Whether we like it or not, this is our reality. You will see this reflection theme referenced throughout this book as it is the rule of life. What we are presented with via situation or person is our current state of truth. If you don't like this, denial will only see it strengthen the reflection and the situations will become more extreme.

So basically, our current reality, or our current truth, is playing out in a scenario and that scenario is here to show us what that truth is. it's a little conversation that is happening around us in a different language and we are learning the language. There is some kind of story that has been playing out for a very long time which is represented in this scenario, life wants us to know it and what is here for you, is the chance to see the story, and end it.

Here is the tricky part, we have been placed here, on this earth within a vessel that is the human body, and with that body comes limitations and the complexities that exist with these limitations. We have been born with an ego, and I'm sure this is not the first time you have heard this. An ego is part of our identity and it's sole purpose in life is to stay alive. Whenever we evolve, we literally threaten the mortality of the ego. The ego has many layers, layers that we have built on over the years and with every layer that the ego is stripped, it will most certainly raise hell.

So what happens when we are faced with a conflicting situation of truth wanting to be revealed, and the ego wanting to exist? Quite simply, battle. We begin to fight within ourselves and so begins the game. Why it has to be so painful is the game itself, because without pain and suffering, we eliminate the opposite, happiness and joy. What we can do however, is soften some of the suffering and acceptance is a very useful tool in doing this.

Let me take a moment here to offer a little story to illustrate this further. I am a middle child and therefore have always felt like I was left out and ignored, because quite simply, I was. My whole life has been set up this way and I've developed over the years mechanisms to make sure that I am never ignored or left out. This has involved being the clown, being an attention seeker and speaking about 10 decibels above everyone else. My belief system has been the fear that I will miss out on things because people won't know I'm around. As much as I tried so hard to not be ignored, you can best bet that I was always feeling like I was left out or I was literally left out and ignored. It used to play itself out in really creative ways and for a really long time, I would fight, yell, scream and create drama confronting these situations or people that were leaving me out or ignoring me. Don't even get me started on men not responding with text messages..... This would quite literally send me livid.

The pain and suffering this caused me was debilitating sometimes but what I wasn't quite grasping at this point was the mechanisms that I created to ensure I was seen and acknowledged, were the very things that pushed people away. I was overbearing and hard work and people really needed a lot of energy to be around me. They would also feel a lot of fear when I was around because one step in the wrong direction for them, meant an uncertain ear bashing or argument with me.

It used to upset me to no end because I was also, always the person that ensured other people weren't left out or ignored. I would go above and beyond to make sure everyone was included and felt relevant when they were around me. This would enrage me even further, how can I be always ignored and left out when I am the first person to acknowledge and include others? Isn't that how it's supposed to work, you treat others the way you want to be treated? I remember the moment that this changed forever. I was playing out the story of being ignored my entire life until one day, I saw the story.

I was at a course and a group of us were going up the road for lunch. I was driving and about 4 other women piled into the car to get a lift with me. As soon as I parked, all four women jumped out of the car and proceeded to walk ahead of me. I wasn't as quick as all of them and I was so angry at how they could have walked off on me like that. I was the one who had driven them and here they were, taking advantage of me and leaving me out of the group. I stewed on this all through lunch and on the way back to the car, I noticed that they did it to one of the other girls. I wasn't going to let this happen so I held back and waited for the straggler. The two of us eventually caught up to the group and what do you know, the whole group took off on me again, including the woman I had waited behind to include. I was so ropable but something happened in that moment. I realised that the woman I had waited for hadn't actually asked me to wait for her. In fact, I just assumed that it was a problem for her that she was left behind. What if, she had purposefully straggled behind because she needed a little bit of space from the group? It never occurred to me that people don't always want to be included. IT hit me like a bolt of lightening and then it occurred to me further, I'm always so afraid of being left out, look at what always occurs... I'm left out. So what I fear in that moment is playing out time and time again.

The pain that has been caused over the years of being left out, feeling ignored and not being acknowledged had left a lot of emotional scars. It was my egos refusal to see all the times that I was being left out as my own fears that it kept on playing out time and time again.

So in this one little, seemingly insignificant moment, I was awakened to a deep belief that had been playing out since I was a little girl. I can't tell you the relief and the changes this has made to my life since acknowledging this but I will mention again, the level of suffering that this had caused through my lifetime, was a catalyst all on it's own. I was ready to see and acknowledge the truth in this moment.

Sometimes these moments come out of the blue like this because we are ready to see them, and some of them come from acceptance of the current situation. It's not always so easy for us to see our story playing out or the reflection of truth in a scenario and this is where the acceptance part comes in.

When we are confronted with a situation playing out, it can be so trivial that it's almost impossible for us to work out what the reflection is. This is quite ok, and we don't need to understand every single story and every single moment. This is all a journey of discovery that we are on, and is quite simply, the meaning of life. Things are revealed to us right at the very moment in time that we are ready to deal with it. Trying to understand right away these stories, and trust me, I know this better than anyone, puts such an immense amount of pressure and strain on you, that it's a lesson all on it's own. So just work with what is presented to you and if you can't quite figure it out, or understand how to solve it, practice acceptance.

Let's take a look at some of the more difficult things that are presented to us. Financial pressure can be a big one for a lot of people so we will use this example. You may be constantly faced with months and months of no money, bills coming in, stress of how you are going to make ends meet and fear of what the future brings. This is a vicious circle that you are caught up in because what is driving this lack of money in the first place is what is keeping the situation alive currently. What is driving it is fear itself. Fear that things are not going to work out in your favour and fear that you will never have enough. The interesting thing here is, fear is an emotion that is expressed when you are focused on the future. So if we take a look at what is causing the fear and acknowledging what is driving the situation, we can break it down a little better and give ourselves the opportunity to cut the cycle versus feeding it.

The fear of not having enough means our future is quite literally dictated by what our current belief is. Our fear that is present when we are focused on the future is adding more fear into the mix and expanding our current reality. This is an exercise that I do all the time and it really helps cut through that fear. I look at what the worst case scenario is and imagine how I would deal with that situation.

Let's say for example that I'm afraid I won't have enough money to make my mortgage repayments and I lose my apartment. That is the absolute worst case scenario. I'm out on my arse and my beautiful apartment that I love is lost forever. What would I do in that scenario? I would move in to my cousins house and live there for a period of time until I could get back on my feet again and find somewhere to rent. Sure I've lost my apartment and that would suck, but there's a solution and it doesn't mean the end of the world. It is actually quite exciting because if I lived at my cousins, I would have no attachments to anything and my world would be open to be able to do anything, move anywhere and make any changes in my life that I might not have been able to make before. In this moment, I've faced my fear and the reality is, life doesn't look that bad. In fact, the idea of having no fear in my future feels like a bit of a relief. So, lovely! That is step one! The worst case scenario is faced and I have eliminated the fear of the future which is assisting in feeding my present situation.

Now how do I eliminate the fear of my current reality? Here is the golden ticket. You accept it! Simple as that, you accept that your current reality is not favourable and probably sucks to no end, but it is what is here and theres' no point in fighting it. Right now in this moment, I have so many bills and I can't see a way out of it so quite simply, I'm going to accept that this is where I am at. There's no need to solve it, no need to change it, no need to do anything except for accept it as your current reality. What a relief is this! There is nothing to be done! Just by accepting that this is the current reality, you send a shockwave through the energy system of your current reality and you let it know that you are not going to fight it anymore.

So how does this look moving forward? It looks however it is meant to look. Your reality will play out in whatever way it needs to, to put your firmly on your path for the next instalment which is your life. If that is to lose everything to start again then so be it. That sounds pretty flippant and ignorant but the truth is, you're current state is a pure living hell and the outcome of what is here for you I can guarantee is a lot more relaxed. When you have nothing more to lose, there is a real freedom in that. The only thing that is holding you back right now is the fear that is keeping this situation alive. When it doesn't exist, whatever reality you will be experiencing will have a real sense of peace to it.

Acceptance is the quickest way to fast track an outcome and fast tracking an outcome is when you can actually move on with your life. I promise you this, when you accept, in this moment, your current reality, it will transform. It will reveal your next move and it will heal the current situation in the best way for you. It will open up opportunities that you may have never even considered a possibility and it moves the energy of fear into something more positive. Solutions become available to you, fear transforms and sometimes, the thing that you were most afraid of turns out to be the biggest blessing that you could have imagined.

But none of this is possible to you, unless you can practice acceptance. As I stated before, acceptance is in every moment not just every situation. Sometimes you need to accept things over and over again, for months at a time. Sometimes your reality will not change but your emotions towards your reality can be the thing that transforms. When this happens, once again, opportunities become available or you find that the current situation is actually ideal for you right now or doesn't bother you in the slightest.

Sometimes I truly make a game out of this and the relief that comes from acceptance can bring a lot of joy to your life. What is also does, is it transforms the energy from negative emotions, to positive ones. What was present before in fear, now resides in trust and gratitude. And I can promise you, when trust and gratitude are present, what magic evolves from that place will take your breath away.

Try practicing this in little spurts. Accepting your current reality can be accepting that you're in a traffic jam and you will be late for work. This brings to the reality a feeling of frustration, anger, desperation and fear of getting in trouble and or missing a deadline. Once again, look at the worse case scenario.... You lose your job because you've been late too many times. (thats most likely not going to happen in this day and age but it's the worst). If this situation was to occur the truth is, you're living on eggshells with your job anyway and that is a highly intense, highly pressured reality to exist in. It's probably a good thing you don't work there and you hate it anyway. So, que sera! Kick back, put on a good song or an audio book, enjoy the time you have on your own in the car with yourself and I can almost promise you, you will magically tack on 15 mins extra timing than you would have had if you continued stressing about the traffic.

Try accepting in all moments that you can and see how this perpetuates and starts to transform your world. Your stress levels will reduce, your disposition will be lighter and more open and you will find people will enjoy being around you a lot more.

One thing that you will continually need to do, is to remind yourself to accept. It's amazing how many times in my life I realise I've been stressing over a situation or problem and after weeks of pain and suffering, I realise that I haven't accepted the situation. The battle going on in my life at this time has been so consuming that I had forgotten to accept it. This continually happens to this day and is a part of the journey towards acceptance. So when this happens, don't beat yourself up, laugh when you realise how clever this all is that you forgot to accept. And then, you accept.

Laughing at a situation and seeing it's hilarity is an incredible way to transform the energy also. When you can genuinely sit back, observe it and see the craziness in how it has played out, we lighten up the whole situation and our response to it. This does wonders for moving through a phase in lightning fast ways.

So take a few moments to identify some things that are affecting your current reality. Rather than try and work them out or get locked into them in this moment, try accepting this is what is going on for right now. After all, nothing is forever and things can change in a hot second. Breath a sigh of relief that you are facing the fear and you're beating it. Pour yourself a glass of wine and smile at the fact that your life is about to change in some miraculous ways. I'm excited of you..... how do you feel?

Emotions

Emotions! There is a reason there are so many songs about this, movies inspired by this, artwork representing or evoking this. Emotions are just as much a part of us as our bones, muscles and blood. To deny any of these things eliminates our ability to live. Physically if we removed our bones, denied their very existence, we would have no foundation for our body to stand up! Our organs would not have the protection that they need to keep them housed in a safe environment, the only outcome would be death.

The same as emotions, denial of them inhibits our ability to actually live life. The thing that separates us from animals is our ability to feel. Without emotions, we are merely on this earth to eat, procreate and survive. We are given the gift of consciousness, and with this gift we can choose to simply keep it wrapped up in a corner of the room, never allowing it to see the light of day, or, we can unwrap it, play with it, experience it and allow it a life all of it's own.

There is an entire spectrum of different feelings or emotions that we experience at any given time. Our emotions, like the colour wheel range from dark, dense colours, to light, magnificent colours. No two are the same but each can be a combination of multiple colours. Neither end of the spectrum from dark and dense or light and magnificent is right or wrong. Imagine for a moment that you viewed the dark colours as wrong and the light colours as right, then trying to create a masterpiece of art only using the "right" colours. You would find that the piece would lack a lot of depth and perspective when eliminating the darker "wrong" colours.

The very same principles relate to our emotions. We have so many emotions ranging from dark, dense emotions of anger, frustration, rage, depression, sadness, grief, envy or devastation to light loving feelings of happiness, joy, love, contentment and excitement. The very same way that colours are neither right or wrong, nor are our emotions.

We are extremely open and enthusiastic when allowing ourselves to enjoy the feelings of excitement, joy, happiness and love but we are not so enthusiastic and resist feeling their opposite or duality of depression, hatred, anger and despair. It's pretty clear as to why we do this. It is because the feelings that bring lightness into our life are easy and manageable, they make us feel good and we ultimately crave feeling good. It's also easy to see why we would avoid feeling the yuckier emotions. Nobody loves feeling depression, anger, contempt or sadness. How are these feelings inspiring or helpful to our lives? They simply hold us back, make us feel unloved and drive people away from our lives eliminating our ability to be able to connect. If you deny these more negative feelings you will also find that it eliminates the positive feelings.

Duality is a natural law in life. You simply cannot have one without the other. We wouldn't be able to have light if we didn't have darkness, we couldn't have right if we didn't have wrong, and we wouldn't know joy if we didn't know sadness. Duality is in fact, supporting the life we live and the earth around us. Just like the inhale and exhale of our breath, if all we experienced was inhale we would die within a few minutes. If we only exhaled we would also die within a few minutes. Our bodies naturally take charge of this duality to keep us alive.

Try to just inhale for a couple of breaths without exhaling, you wouldn't even be able to last a couple of seconds before things got incredibly uncomfortable. Take a few moments to understand what you are feeling as a result of this. You are no doubt left with feelings of discomfort, anxiety, fear and a weird feeling around the middle of your stomach.

The inhales represents a lot more than just a breath. The inhale is taking in life force energy. It is the first thing that we do when we enter this world, we take in a breath. Breath is the thing that is with us our entire lives, When we stop breathing, our bodies begin to shut down. The inhale is quite literally representing new life! It is taking in the new, new experiences, new opportunities, new beliefs, new beginnings and new moments.

The exhale represents death. It is the very last thing we do before we die, we take our last breath. It represents completion, acceptance, surrender, the death of what is no longer serving us and the creating of space or nothingness. When space is present, it allows for more truth of who we are to be present.

So just like both the inhale and the exhale as being fundamental in our existence so are our feelings and emotions. Let's use the analogy for the moment that the feelings we judge as "good", excitement, happiness, joy and fun and represent this as the inhale. Now we represent the "bad" feelings of sadness, depression, fear and unworthiness with the exhale.

When we only allow ourselves to feel "good" feelings, we are only taking in the inhale, we draw in new opportunities, new beliefs, new experiences. But with all of these new opportunities we aren't able to let go of the old opportunities so we find ourselves overwhelmed, overextended, feeling anxiety, pressure, stress, exhaustion and the inability to relax and let go.

When we only allow ourselves to feel the "bad" we are only experiencing the end of something. The death phase, and that will elave us with literally nothing. Feelings of nothingness, unworthiness, depletion, depression and the inability to allow joy and happiness.

When we put it this way, we can clearly see it for it's limitations and can identify it's not an ideal way of living. But it doesn't take away from the truth in the matter and that is, we are afraid of really feeling our feelings. This fear comes from our past experiences where we maybe struggled through bouts of depression and despair. Life looked incredibly bleak and was full of suffering. Also our fear in allowing us to really take in the joy of life because there is the possibility that it can be taken away and we will be left with a sense of longing and sadness.

I really went through a terrible time with my breakup. I was so in love with my partner and felt such betrayal for what happened to me. My relationship ended due to a lot of cheating and if that wasn't enough, when the it was finally over, the way I was treated through the separation was cruel and punishing. It wasn't enough to have the humiliation and betrayal of feeling like you are not enough for the love of your life but to be bullied after the fact when you're just trying to survive each day was complete torture.

This experience literally smashed away the foundations of anything I understood about life. I went from being someone very naive, and always looking through rose coloured glasses to someone who was quite cynical, harsh and aggressive. I thought that being these things was keeping me from being hurt but what it did was keep me locked into the hurt that limited my life.

The feelings I experienced at that point in time were extreme loneliness, desperation, fear of the future, anger, despair, unworthiness, sadness and deep, deep loss. These feelings were so overwhelming, so confronting and so heart wrenching that it really brought me close on many occasions to ending my life. This is something I'm immensely proud of to this day because I have been to the darkest places life could take me and I have survived to tell the story.

There are a couple of questions which need to be answered here, one of them is why did it get so bad? And the other question is, does it really need to get so bad? I can only answer these question because my experience allowed me to know this. Without experiencing how bad life got, I couldn't offer you this answer and I also couldn't offer you the hope and reassurance of how incredible life gets after this. For now let's look at why things got so bad.

Looking back now, it is clear that life got so bad because I fought my feelings. I had a judgment on what was right and wrong and I completely lost myself in my emotions. The trick that I have learnt as a result of my own journey is that every single emotion is actually highly relevant and necessary. I've also learnt that every single feeling and emotion is right! You read that correctly, every single emotion and feeling is correct and you have the right to allow yourself to feel every single thing from the tip of your toes to the centre of your heart.

Ok, so what if in one moment I'm feeling so angry that I want to punch someone in the face? Surely that cannot be a healthy thing to feel. I mean, if we all went around feeling so angry and punching people in the face what would our world look like? The key point here is that you don't have to do anything with your feelings. Just because you have a feeling, it doesn't mean it's a call to action. This is actually the very reason we avoid our feelings, because we believe when we feel something, we need to do something about it.

What an incredible amount of pressure that puts on you and your life. When you're feeling deep, deep despair, how on earth are you supposed to take action on that? You can't even see what life looks beyond this moment! You're so busy trying to remember to simply breath that anything more is completely overwhelming and impossible. The only thing you can do at this moment is take one step at at time. You simply breath, you put all your focus and your intention on taking that inhale and exhale. You step away from owning your feeling or it owning you in that moment and instead, you just observe it. This is an incredibly difficult thing to do here and it does take a lot of practice, but you practice the small things first and then when the big things come along, you have some reference points in what you need to do.

Being angry and wanting to punch someone doesn't have to be wrong or dangerous, but it can be dangerous if we play it out. If we are simply allowing the feeling to be there and we focus on just breathing and observing, we start to see the feeling for what it really is. Because punching someone in the face isn't a feeling, it's an action related to a feeling. The feeling is just anger and when we simply acknowledge if from a place of non judgment, there is no need for it to be anything else in that moment.

The truth in life is, we are not actually our feelings or emotions. Feelings and emotions are energy that moves through our body reflecting our beliefs and programs that have come from our experiences in life. None of these programs or beliefs are right or wrong, they simply just are. So when we have a feeling or emotion arise, we don't try and become it, we just watch it. Watching it looks like it would if you were watching a movie in a cinema. You can believe the story, you can believe the characters and you can feel a sense of expectation to how the storyline plays out but your life and how you live it is not affected by the outcome.

When we watch our emotions we apply the same principles. We don't deny what is happening, we acknowledge it's truth and relevance in that moment, we admit that it doesn't feel great, we stop and really connect into what we are feeling. We get curious, we move into inquiry of what it is, where it is in our bodies and what our minds response is. Just like we would watch a movie scene play out, we are simply observing it.

If you think about what is happening when we go to the movies. We are in a dimly lit space with rows of seats all facing this massive white screen that plays out a series of movements and sounds. If we were to turn our bodies around to what is making the movements play out on the screen all we will see is a tube of light that is flickering with different colours. We can't make out any shapes or images from this tube, we just see different depths of light and dust particles which would normally be invisible, floating around in space. So does this mean that the scene is actually happening or is it just lots of light playing out on a flat space creating objects that look familiar to us?

When we acknowledge this perspective we have the understanding that what is actually playing out is only relevant when it's against a big white backdrop. If it were against a big black backdrop it would have a whole new perspective. What we take from this is every single thing that occurs has multiple perspectives and it is our choice to take on whatever perspective we want depending on simply how we look at it. Our feelings are the very same. Depending on wether we want to look at it on a white screen, a black screen or turn around completely, we remove the hold the feeling has over us and change the entire outcome in that one moment.

When we fight against our feelings, we are in a place of resistance. Resistance only strengthens the hold, increasing the pressure and fuelling the fire of which we are trying to extinguish. The feelings we have in this moment do not disappear, they return to us the very same intention we are putting into it. If we meet it with resistance it will resist also, if we meet it with anger, it will add anger to the mix, if we try and ignore it, it will ignore us and get louder and louder. It will bury itself deeper and deeper into our world existing beneath the surface of life reflecting itself in with everyday experiences.

Feelings and emotions as we established earlier are just translatable energy moving through our body. Another natural law is that energy is not created or destroyed, it shifts and moves into something else but it is always present. Do we judge energy? Do we say it is right or wrong? No, it just is. And when we give energy the space to express itself, it does what it needs to do, and then transforms. Do you see in that moment when we simply let it be and allow it to express itself, it doesn't hang around for longer than it needs to. It's our fighting or avoidance that keeps it stuck in place refusing to move on.

When we go through a traumatic experience, in that moment we don't see a way out, we can't understand that these feelings aren't going to be with us forever because we feel them so intensely. Our world is literally falling apart and we don't have the perspective at this stage to completely comprehend what this will look like on the other side. The feelings are so overwhelming and so scary we think they will destroy us. Naturally, when we are threatened by anything destroying us, we go into fight or flight mode. This is a natural instinct and we are now going to try and train ourselves to react in a completely different way.

When we train ourselves to just sit with our feelings, acknowledge them and just let them play out, not only do we fast track the healing process but we ensure the feelings that are here, don't bury themselves deep into our bodies playing out their reflections in our experiences.

If you have the feeling of anger, and in that moment it feels so horrible but there's nothing you can do. You are programmed to do one of two things, fight or flight. When you fight it, you are asking the anger to fight you back. When you get a fight back, you can be guaranteed, it's nasty, it's vicious and it will end with a lot of scars and exhaustion. This simply creates more anger and more suffering. If we avoid it or ignore it, it will get louder until we acknowledge it. Just because we refuse to acknowledge something that is there, it doesn't make it disappear.

What happens now is the anger starts to reveal itself in our everyday lives. Playing out in every situation, in ever reality until we are ready to see it and accept it. Only when we do this, do we free ourselves from it. If you find that you are constantly dealing with angry people, maybe you have been the victim of road rage or you have an angry partner or children. They are simply reflections of the anger that you have within you, playing out to show you what your own unacknowledged feelings are.

This is the beauty of acknowledging your feelings, they go away! If you ignore them or fight them, they can be playing out reflections for years. Acknowledging and simply sitting with them, ensures they only are around for a small period of time. Try it the next time you have a feeling arise. Don't do anything with it, don't fight it, don't ignore it, don't question why or how. Just sit with it and observe how it feels in your body, observe your minds response to it and let it do what it needs to do. Notice how long it hangs around. You would be lucky to feel it for more than 5 minutes.

When it is a very intense feeling or emotion, this will naturally be a lot more difficult to practice this. It comes with such immense amounts of pain that your body will physically start to fight also. You will squirm in your chair, you will want to throw your arm and legs around quite violently in the hope that they fall off. It gets really, really uncomfortable and your heart hurts more than you can imagine. But stick with it, hold a space for yourself to just feel it. I can promise you, you will not be in it for too long, the universe will support you and keep you safe in these moments, you just need to hold on to that trust that it won't destroy you. Because as we have identified, it is these moments in life that bring the most incredible blessings.

What if in these moments you want to kill yourself? Do things like this get that bad? Yes, sometimes they really do. That isn't an exclusive for everyone, some people would never in their lives contemplate ending things. The more sensitive the person, the more this is likely to be a response. We all have different programming and beliefs and the feeling of suicide is directly relatable to the feeling of having the right to be here.

What determines whether we feel this way or not are the feelings we had when we were a child. From the time we entered into this world, up until our early teens. This is where we developed the base chakra. The base chakra is the area from the tips of our toes all the way up to the knees and the outside of the upper legs. This area relates to feelings of stability, our worthiness, our right to be here and how safe we feel on this earth. Somebody that felt very supported and loved as a child would have a very healthy base chakra. Someone that was challenged at this stage of their lives would find basic human rights such as feeling they have a right to be here, or feeling that life is here to support them extremely challenging or unavailable completely.

When we go through an intense period in life perhaps a terrible breakup or a loss of some kind, we can sometimes, depending who we are and the health of our base chakra, dance with the idea of suicide. This is sometimes just a thought that comes into our mind or something that we will actually attempt. The feelings that we are faced with at this moment are so overwhelming that we can't imagine life without them. In this moment we are so identified with our mind that we allow it to take the drivers seat and it takes us on a wild ride of different scenarios and outcomes further contributing to the feelings we are already experiencing.

What do we do in this place? Simply, come back to the body. We get out of the mind and come into our body using the breath. Just counting the length of time to inhale and then counting the exhale can bring us into this place. Slowing the breath will then bring us to a calmer and more relaxed place. Only when we're in this place can we then start to feel and observe what emotions are here.

Suicidal thoughts can sometimes be a very reassuring thing. They represent the death of something, if we find ourselves going through a phase of deep sadness in life but there's nothing really significant going, it usually means that a phase of life is coming to it's completion and we actually are mourning the death of this. Our mind is a very limited thing, it only sees what it is told and is unable to look beyond this so in these moments we can't differentiate between the death of a belief system or a phase other than the death of us.

So, what is the payoff to all of this? We know that the feelings don't go anywhere if we don't acknowledge them, and we know the only way to make sure they go away is by observing and accepting them, but for what reason? What is the point of it all?

When we acknowledge the entire spectrum of emotions the good, the bad and the ugly we increase our capacity to feel love and light. Imagine a beautiful tropical paradise. It is spectacular, green, luscious and warm. Amongst this beauty just looking at this living paradise, we feel the most joy in that moment. We seem to forget the difficulties that our lives have experienced, we forget the stress that we are experiencing at the point in time and we look on with wonder and amazement at the beautiful scenery that is before us. It completely takes our breath away and gives us hope that there is something bigger at play, allowing us to be magnificent also. In those moments that we experience beauty in this way, we experience god.

Why do you think it always cost so much money to go and witness these spectacular places? Because this is the evidence that shows us the magic in this life and this is the stuff that fuels us and inspires us. In those moments I have always found myself saying, "wow, you wouldn't be dead for quids". Pretty funny statement considering that only months before I was wanting to kill myself! Nice contradictions Kellie! But no, it's not a contradiction, because the very feelings that took me to the darkest corners of my life, offered the duality for me to really see through my heart the magnificence in these other things. When you don't allow yourself to feel your feelings, you dull down the receptors that take in the magnificence in life also.

You start to feel everything more acutely, the wind on your face, the sun on your skin, the rain on your back. These small moments bring immense amount of joy to your life, joy that you would normally need the grandest of experiences to evoke that level of feeling. We increase and strengthen the receptors that allow us to feel happiness and joy so that every single moment big or small, has a level of satisfaction that is so much more than we ever experienced before.

We open up our world to have more compassion and feeling for others, we see the hearts and the souls of the people around us more easily and we give them more allowances to express and allow their own feelings. We encourage the people around us to share and express their feelings in a healthy way and change the dynamic around our relationships. We go from being scared and closed off to open and loving. Giving more love than we ever were able to give before and receiving more love than we were able to receive before. We expand our world and our consciousness in ways that we would never have believed were available to us before.

We send a clear message to the universe saying, I allow myself to take in all the experiences life has to offer and I ask you for more wonderful experiences and opportunities to come my way. I inhale the love and the light that is available to me and I exhale and release the things that are no longer serving me. I acknowledge and honour each and every emotion that arises in me, for I know and I trust that it is all here for my ability to heal any past hurts, grief or damaging beliefs that are holding me back from my truest and most divine path. I allow every person around me to feel safe to feel and knowledge their own emotions for I know the more I allow them to do so, the more I give myself permission to do the same. I don't judge myself or others for persecuting me in the past when I expressed my feelings. I don't judge myself or others for condemning me and shutting me out of their lives when I didn't respond to my feelings in a way that was deemed acceptable. I understand that in those moments, the people that condemned me or persecuted me had at some point in their lives had someone do the same to them. They were taught that they shouldn't allow themselves to acknowledge their own feelings and emotions and as a result, they have limited their own abilities to experience the levels of joy and love that I have given myself permission to experience.

In these moments I have great compassion and understanding for people that cannot see what I see, and I give them the freedom to play out their lives the way they need to, for them to reach a level of understanding and freedom that I feel in this moment. I understand that just because I have reached this level of awareness, others around me may not understand or may be afraid of what changes that makes to their lives and as a result, they may not want to journey forward with me in my current state of being. I feel this, I acknowledge this and I allow everything in my life to feel the support that the universe has for me here in these moments.

Acknowledging and loving ourselves enough to feel our emotions in every moment allows so much more into our lives than we can possibly fathom. The journey this takes you on itself is one that is glittered with as much magic as it is painful to go through. With everything we experience we life rewards us for showing up in that moment. When we show up in these moments, we are on path. We tell the universe that we are a willing participant in the conversation that is consciousness. We answer the calls of the universe and respond with our actions and our willingness to agree to the terms. We allow the magic of the universe to touch the deepest parts of our hearts and we respond with allowing the deepest parts of our hearts to be seen and acknowledged.

We trust that when we delve deep into acknowledgment of our feelings that we are truly supported by the world around. We are open to receive the right amount of wisdom and knowledge that is here for us at the precise time that we need it for our journey to develop. We trust that when we show up in this way, trusting in what is present to us, that we are rewarded with all the gifts the universe has available.

We trust that the feelings we are caught in at this moment will not destroy us, they will not impale us if we simply honour them and give them the space they need to move through us in a healthy and loving way. We acknowledge that we still will feel emotions relating to the darker side of life, feelings of despair, sadness, anger, depression and grief. But these feelings fail to have the same hold and impact on our lives that they did before we had this awareness. We don't do this work to eliminate these feelings, we do this work to enhance the level of joy, love and light that is available to us when we are in the trust and flow of life.

There is a certain excitement that this awareness brings, a buzz of promise and hope to the endless possibilities. There needs to be a payoff because otherwise, why would we do it? Always with the level of challenge that we experience we are met with that same level of miracle, the duality plays out here also, promising us a reward for a job well done. Wear the reward as a badge of honour! Cherish it, celebrate it, immerse yourself in it because this was the universe acknowledging you turning up and doing whatever it takes to see your true magnificence.

There's a reason why a lot of people don't take the steps of this kind of journey, because it is hard. It is scary, it is challenging and the trust that it takes for us to simply step our foot onto the path is immense. A lot of the time, we don't see the payoff for a really long time. A lot of the time we think the universe has forgotten us and we are the exception to the rule. In fact, the most challenging lessons you will absolutely feel that every time. You will get angry, you will fight, scream, cry and yell. You will feel despair and you will fee that you are forgotten and you are all alone. If you have felt this in your lifetime, then you are the ones that will receive the biggest payoffs.

Every time that you feel the payoff hasn't come, know that it is because it is bigger and better than you could ever imagine. The universe is saving up something extra special for you and you must remain in trust and acceptance to receive it. Don't feel bad if you slip here and then and get frustrated. I have sworn my head off, screaming at the universe for forgetting me and feeling frustrated because it didn't stick to it's end of the bargain. Just allow that you feel it in those moments. It's ok and nothing you need to be ashamed of. It's all a part of the process and this too needs to be acknowledged and felt. The system works for every aspect of our life and you can apply these principles to everything. Acknowledge it, feel it, observe it, allow it and then nothing. There is nothing more to do.

Openness

Beginning the opening process is quite confronting. It takes a lot of courage and strength. Just acknowledging that we're closed is difficult enough to look at. We can justify it in a million different ways and the absolute truth is, no matter what went on to close us off in the first place, it is 100% justifiable. Whatever pain and heartache that caused us to close our precious, beautiful hearts was so overwhelming when it occurred, that we felt it was the only way we could survive. There is no shame in this, no persecution and anger that needs to be directed at ourselves for this, it nearly killed us and we were afraid for our lives. We did the only thing we knew to do with the awareness that we had at that time. We couldn't know any better, because we weren't meant to know any better. This all occurred so we could be a part of the awakening process. The one that you have already begun.

What we need to wake up to right now, at this moment, is the knowing that life cannot go on the way it has been, closed like we have been. It's no longer giving us the value of life that we are truly seeking. Our happiness, our purpose and the joy that life can bring just cannot penetrate through anything that is closed. Imagine a beautiful flowing creek, water trickling down a pathway towards it's destination. We know that the water is fresh and drinkable because it is flowing. We see the movement of the glistening water through the gentle ripples and swells. The trickle is making it's way towards the full body of water that awaits it. It beckons and calls the trickle, increasing it's rapid flow as it moves closer, and closer to it's destination. The path it moves along is windy and filled with obstacles, different things fall into it's path but the water finds away around it each and every time. Sometimes it slows the flow, but still, it manages to find a way around whatever is placed in it's path.

The beautiful body of water that beckons the trickle is vast, open, connected and powerful. It is an endless source of support for the trickle, because in this place, there is no threat of extinction. The trickle of water cannot dry up and cease to exist, it moves through the giant, powerful being that is holding it, keeping it safe and connecting it to each and every movement of it's being. The trickle is now a part of something bigger, more magnificent and more powerful than it could have ever imagined.

This is consciousness, this is oneness, this is ultimate connection to something bigger than us, more powerful than we can imagine, something that supports us, holds us, loves us and keeps us powerful. We cannot be destroyed in this connection because we are the connection. We are the body of water, strong, powerful and majestic. We then become the very thing that beckons and calls for the other trickles of water to come and join it. We share with it the wisdom of the very path that we carved out, over years and years of travelling, further adding to the imprint of the path, making it easier, and more enjoyable for the little trickles of water that follow us. There is no end to the trickle, there is no beginning, it is all a constant flow connected to everything. We know then, that when we can build momentum at the places along the path that have the most obstruction, when we can gather a force that pushes hard enough to clear this out of the way, it makes an easier journey for the beautiful trickles of water that follow us. We do this, because we know we are all connected, so therefore we in turn make it easier on ourselves.

The water that is moving and flowing is the purest, cleanest and most delicious water. It is so inviting with it's glittery surface reflecting the sun's light against it. It winks, shines and beams against the rocky terrain building so much momentum as it moves closer to the open waters. It always starts off as a trickle, but as it moves closer and closer, it becomes larger, faster and fuller. It is building more and more momentum and force as time goes on, becoming more and more powerful in itself. At this point, nothing can stick to it, the obstacles that once cause the biggest hold ups, now minuscule in it's effect. The water just glides over it, only further building momentum and strength until it takes that final leap of faith and cascades into the beautiful body of awareness below.

This is such a beautiful analogy and I'm sure you can connect the dots of how your journey and the whole purpose fits into it. Think about what could happen when we build something really big in the path of this flow of water that restricts it moving towards it's calling.

We don't know where the trickle of water will lead but we're going along merrily, flowing with the movement of water having fun and soaking up the views. We then hit a rocky patch, we get cut up, bruised, maybe broken from this obstruction, we get to the other end barely surviving. We now realise that this path the water is on, has the potential to kill us. Some of us, build so much protection around us to stop ourselves from being affected by the threats of the rocky obstacle, that the water struggles carry us along the path. Thing become so hard, the flow of water constantly pushing and pulling to get us through even the gentlest of areas, that the flow becomes weak and limited. It ends up taking us so long to get along the path, that we become dreary, feel hopeless and simply want to get off the path.

Some of us, were so damaged by the obstruction that we refuse to allow anything that could threaten us to come anywhere near our existence. This was absolutely me. I built a wall, it was so high, so thick and I made certain absolutely nothing was getting through. The special thing about this wall also, was that it was completely undetectable by me. I never would, in my wildest dreams, thought I had a wall up the size that I did. I couldn't understand that when I met anyone, or connected with anyone why they didn't get me. Why did everyone always say I was scary and "too much work". I always felt I was so easygoing and loving. I would never do anything to hurt another human being I was so supportive and loving of the people around me, how was it then that all anyone saw was something that was, too hard work or intimidating? Looking back now, my god, of course it was intimidating. I had a big, overbearing, gigantic wall around me that no-one had the energy to climb. Everyone was too busy trying to manoeuvre around their own path that they didn't have the capacity to climb my wall too. Not only this, what the hell were they going to find on the other side? I will tell you what is there, something not so lovely to look at.

When we have a wall like this around us, prohibiting the water from moving along it's path, the water becomes still. It tries to find an escape and after multiple attempts it finally just sits still. At first it looks perfectly ok, resting in a little puddle but eventually, slowly and surely the water starts to lose it's freshness. It becomes still and stale, algae begins to grow and before we know it, the once clear, pure water flowing on the path is still, green, murky and houses all the gross things in life we try to avoid.

This is precisely what happens to us. We become stale, stagnant and we fester. The feelings that were once pain and anguish begin to develop and grow. They become anger, aggression and nastiness we don't see this, as we are so trapped still in the pain. We only feel pain and we feel that we are expressing pain but our filter has become distorted. We send a message to the outside world of pain, it goes through it's filter of murky algae, slime and bugs and it gets disguised as bitterness, forcefulness, aggression, desperation and nastiness. What happens when we send out messages of this nature? We are met with the very same thing. We get so perplexed and hurt again in the process, we continue to thicken and strengthen that wall. It's a vicious cycle and only intensifies the hurt and suffering that we thought we were preventing ourselves from experiencing.

Resisting the urge to build that wall takes a lot of trust. Sometimes we actually have-to build the wall and experience life with it to know that it's worse. Only then can we have the wisdom in knowing, sure the obstructions in the path are painful and damaging, but it's a hell of a lot better than the stale, murky waters behind the wall. When we arrive at this place, it takes an immense amount of strength and courage to knock down that wall. Slowly at first, feeling into it, step by step we pull it down. Until eventually, the water finds its way to the path and it begins to flow again.

The water at this stage is still murky, it is still covered in algae but the more that it flows, it becomes too fast for the algae to keep up. And so the cleansing period begins. Slowly, slowly, gently, gently, gently, the water goes from a deep moss green to a more diluted hue. As the paths progresses with every obstacle that shows up along the way, the algae finds a new resting place and then the purification increases. Every obstacle now is no longer seen as causing pain and trauma, but it's providing purification and cleansing. We change our perception to rather than focusing on the difficulty of moving through the terrain, we allow ourselves to sit through it acknowledging that each obstruction is taking away more algae from the water.

No longer does the algae dominate the water, the water is clean, fluid and well and truly back in motion. It moves faster, with more purpose, the obstacles now nowhere near as obstructing as they once were. They are now a little opportunity to propel us further, the trickle behind us catching up, pooling together, allowing us to feel bigger than we did before and then all of a sudden, it gushes over the obstacle with such force, bringing one big surge forward, faster and more determined before.

My beautiful friend Courtney is almost like a mirror image of me. She is 10 years younger and I just love her because I see so much of myself in her. I am like a big sister to her and hold a really special place for her in my heart. Because she reminds me so much of me, I feel like in some way, my caring for her is healing the part of me that was so broken all those years ago.

Courtney has had her own challenges and like most of us, they're with men. My darling friend was very hurt in a past relationship and as a result, has done a pretty good job in shutting down her heart. She is so determined to step into truth and follow the awakened path that she is putting her hand up for every challenge that she's faced with. And, like clockwork, when we announce that we want truth, the universe sets the scene to give us the biggest dose of truth it can muster.

Now, don't be under any illusions that because you've announced that you want the awakened path and you want truth that the universe is going to give you all sweet, lovely wonderful things immediately. That is not going to happen and if you do it expecting this, you will give up the first challenge that comes your way. What needs to happen first is we go through the process of opening yourself up again to reveal truth. The truth the universe gives you, is the very truth that is in you. Truth of your hearts whisper.

My darling friend met this guy out one night and she literally stopped in her tracks. This was so rare for her as she was the kind of woman that really shut men down. She hung out with him the whole night and at one point, during the night, they lost each-other. Courtney couldn't get him off her mind. This guy was like no-one else she had ever met. When they were together, they had bumped into someone that was a mutual friend, she had considered contacting the mutual friend to find out a way to get in touch with him. She opted against it, deciding that she would leave it to the universe to decide her fate.

Not even two weeks later she got a Facebook request from him. It turns out, he bumped into their mutual friend and had the exact same desires Courtney had to reconnect. He straight up told her he liked her, was so bummed that he lost her and wanted to go out with her that very weekend. She absolutely melted over his direct nature and of course agreed to go out with him. Now, it was very clear that this man knew what he wanted and wasn't afraid to go for it. It was the very thing she saw in him that night they met. It was such an important quality for her to actually be straight up with a man and not play any of these rubbish games.

She understood as important as it was for her to get truth from someone, she needed to meet the situation with truth also. There's no power play here with who gives truth first. Once you've asked for the truth path, you give truth irrespective of what you're met with. If you decide to give your truth and you are met with disappointment of some kind, you don't just then withhold continuing truth, you give truth in spite of this knowing the more you deliver your truth to the world, the more you will get it back. If you're getting back lies after some time, guess what, you're still not giving all your truth.

The truth for her, was to reverse the closing off of her heart which she had worked so hard on shutting down in the first place. This was a pretty good situation to give that a whirl. That meant that every moment she needed to allow herself to open up in a way she hadn't done before. He had told her that he would message her the next day and, he didn't. Her initial reaction was to shut down and forget the whole thing. But this was habitual. This was something she had taught herself to do when she had been hurt in the past. This was no longer her truth. So she stayed open, watching herself, watching her reactions and watching her thought patterns. She was met with a couple of days of real anguish. It was so hard to watch but so inspiring at the same time.

The truth that she felt, the whisper of her heart, was the moment she saw him. She stopped in her tracks, and she knew there was something big here. Now big does not mean, this will be the love of her life, it could, but it doesn't have to mean this. Big means, there is a soul contract here between two people to show each other their ultimate reflection. Truth in this moment, was being revealed in a big way. And like all things, before truth, comes discomfort.

Courtney struggled with this and normally would have shut off and shut down. When challenged with what she wanted from this situation, she kept open and eventually shot out a little message saying, hey, are we meeting tomorrow? He responded quite quickly and gave a rough time and general area to meet. She relaxed, after taking a moment to seek truth and the universe delivered the answer to her. That's all she needed to do here.

Date day came, and she did not hear from him at all. Now she was so uncomfortable and so angry. As the hours wore on, she became more and more agitated. You see, Courtney's M.O was to cut it off and wipe someone the second she perceived them to let her down. This was too much for her to bare and was so far out of her comfort zone. But god bless her, she stayed with it.

As the day wore on and she still hadn't heard anything, Courtney in observing her discomfort and really staying open and being present with this, was able to see the pattern of when she started shutting down and how that had affected her life. She could see how her first love absolutely crucified her and sent her into this place of being severely closed off. She also identified that her second relationship she went into so was so she could feel safe and wouldn't get hurt. Although the second relationship was safe, she didn't have the same passion and she identified that the first relationship definitely showed her the most growth as a person. She could acknowledge that yes, there was a lot of hurt there, but she was proud of the person that she had become as a result of this hurt. Pretty big awakening in one day.

It was clear with her behaviour over the few days with this situation that she was someone who was so inconsistent and driven by fear. The second she felt an ounce of someone letting her down, she completely shut them out jumped to a conclusion regarding how bad they were and was ready to throw in the towel. Every time she did this, she looked at herself, and with no promise of a different outcome, she stayed open and kept herself as centred as she could.

This guy never contacted her, he completely left her hanging, set up a date and never followed it up. The thing that was so hard to acknowledge here, is this is exactly how Courtney was when it came to men. She would shut them out and cut them off in a hot second if she got scared. Even though she didn't physically do it to this guy, energetically she kept shutting him out and pushing him away the moment she got scared. Yes, he gave her reason to, however, if she remained open the whole time and was not playing out her fear, she would not have experienced the reflection as it wouldn't exist. This was the very thing she did to many other men in her past, shut them out the second she felt fear, and it seems the very thing this guy was doing to her. She could justify it in a million ways, but the truth is, every time she felt fear in some way, she would shut herself down and shut any man that was near her so far out of her life their head was spinning.

This isn't here as a lesson in how bad we are. This is not even here as an opportunity to test us. It's simply a lesson to show us our truth in that moment. How we react further illustrates our truth and offers us areas that we can direct our attention to. Courtney's area is fear and her response to fear, is becoming untrusting of those around her, assuming they are out to get her and shutting them out before they get a chance to do it. Like most of us really.

In this moment, what was here for Courtney was unbridled truth. As hard as it was for her to look at, as hard as it was to sit with, she told the universe she wanted to be on the truth path, and that was exactly what she got. A situation that revealed her very own truth to her, in the only way that could pack enough punch to really let it sink in. If it was some guy she met that aroused no feeling in her, it wouldn't have happened. This was here in a pretty brutal way, to give her exactly what she asked for.

Not all openness needs to be as abrupt and harsh as this. But it needs to be whatever it is to get to the core of our heart. Trust in ourselves that we're on the right path, trust in our own hearts that we are only given what we can handle and trust that when we open ourselves in this way, it's not the situation in this moment that is the gold, this situation is actually irrelevant in the grand scheme of things. The relevance is when you start to get to the core of it all. Past they fear, past the reactions of fear and right in the middle of the openness that is revealing your heart.

Courtney naturally was really upset, it was a crappy lesson that really didn't feel nice. But she stuck with it, she applauded herself for allowing in that moment to step into the bravery of openness. We all have to start somewhere and jumping in like this, was sending a very solid message to the world and her heart saying, I want to open! I want to feel, I want my heart whisper start to roar. I want to feel connected to truth because I want to see the magnificence of the body of water that I am being beckoned to. I want to remove all the algae which has attached itself to my beautiful movement, staining and contaminating the purity of my heart. I want to share with the people that come into my world the truth of who I am, I want them to see the purity of my essence not the disguises of my hurt and pain. I want to see my wall and demolish it in one foul swoop. I want to trust that the path is leading me towards something bigger, more powerful and more magnificent than I ever could imagine. I want to see the obstacles that come my way as the opportunities for more purification and healing of my world. I see that they are here for me to keep me open and on my path.

I'm connected to my openness, my path will open up to me opportunities and treasures that I only dreamed of. I know that my openness will give me more joy than one stinking date, with a person that represented the version of my old self whom I no longer want to identify with. Because when I see my reflection in someone, and own it as my own, the light of truth awakens it and it ceases to be there. When it ceases to be there the reflection can't exist either so I free my world to be met with reflections of my openness.

It hurts, because truth does, it's hard to look at a situation and know that it is our openness that is shining right back at us, but the sooner we step out of our emotions towards the situation, we gain the perspective we need to see it for what it truly is. And then, freedom.

The openness along our path at every moment is further opportunity for clearing and purification. Taking the focus off the obstacle and seeing it for the clearing that is taking place allows us to truly embrace the experience and see it from a place of love. It hurts, of course it hurts, our arses are still being carried over a rocky path, but the pain becomes insignificant next to the clearing that it provides us. We just readjust our perception and move with the motion, trusting that the more we sit back and relax, the quicker we can manoeuvre through the rough terrain of the obstacles.

The day after this ordeal, my darling friend rang me. She ended up having a great evening with friends and she made some incredible realisations from telling her story. She could see so clearly that the second she stepped into her fear, she shut down. She became suspicious, insecure and cynical. She phoned around to get answers from people she knew supported the old Courtney's way of thinking and collected a pile of evidence that confirmed she was right to be closed off. She could see the call for her to be open and break down her walls was so strong as she knew these experiences wouldn't stop until she did.

All of this realisation in a couple of days and through one experience. So powerful, so reflective and offering so much healing and truth. Painful, yes, feeling rejected and hurt, yes. Staying open and feeling more determined to stay on path, hell yes! This just showed her everything she no longer wanted to be in life and everything she now wanted. The pain was a bi-product not of the situation, but from the tearing down of the very thing that was protecting the pain. The pain was being released and healed, a developed reaction to what she had put in place to begin with when she first had the reflection of truth. This situation brought up every single experience she had ever encountered over the years which was there to show her the very reflection, that she was not ready to look at until now.

She felt exhilarated, motivated and energised by truth and it propelled her even further on her journey, excited for the next obstacle that she could smash away with her momentum. 25 years old and learning the lessons that some people never even understand their whole lifetime. 25 years old and standing up, having the strength and the courage to defy everything she has ever known to be true, and trust in the path that is awakening the whisper of her heart.

Fear

Fear can be such a crippling and debilitating emotion. It can drive us to do some pretty foolish things which we can look back on with deep regret. Fear is the number one thing which prevents us from doing anything that follows our heart and it makes complete sense why. Fear is an horrendous feeling which can take us from being the most confident, well put together, contained person, to a desperate, agitated, maniac trying to cling to anyone or anything for safety. It is in our fear that we can really see how we have absolutely no control! We can think we have it all together, we can think that we know where we are going and what we want in life, but the second fear is introduced to the mix, you find out quick smart where you're at in life.

The best part about fear is, on the other side of it, there is huge opportunity, huge awakenings and masses of blissfulness. This is another clever joke the universe has on us in disguising the best things via the most debilitating of circumstances. How much we fight during this time depicts how much we suffer. There is no way to eliminate the fear, it's not the point of it all, the point is we use the fear, we become friends with it, we get creative around it, we get curios with it and we grasp the opportunity to show us what our deepest truth is in that moment.

The universe will always, always place you firmly on your path at every moment. How much you resist this by ignoring the little signs and inner calling depends on how forcefully the universe needs to adjust your path. This is sometimes pretty difficult to decipher and it's not until after the fact that you realise you didn't trust your inner voice. This is completely ok because as with all things, these opportunities are strengthening the muscles to turn up the volume on the inner voice. At first the voice is subtle and easily mistakable, but the more we take action, the more opportunity we have to increase the volume.

I remember when I got back from overseas and I was desperate for a job. An opportunity arose that paid really good money, but it seemed a little too good to be true. I remember having a little ping of something not being right but I quickly pushed it away thinking the most important thing at this stage was to get a job and get some money in my pocket. I was living with my sister Erin at the time and was desperate to gain my independence back.

The job started off really well, I worked with another guy and we got on like a house on fire. I didn't feel great about the product that I was working with however, I drank the cool-aid and was on board thinking that it was a great solution for consumers. About a month into the role, I had a new boss start, her name was Carly and the very second I laid eyes on her, I knew that things were going to get very, very bad. Carly was a very aggressive woman and was not in the role to empower the people around her, she was there to beat her way to the top no matter who she trampled on.

Naturally, it did not take long for my world to crumble and I found myself with no job, and a crushed ego. I had always prided myself on being loved by the companies I worked for and being celebrated by them so this was a bitter pill to swallow. I was so fearful and so scared, I had no money, no car, no job and no home. I was absolutely desperate to get out of my sisters house and begin to pull my life back together and I did the only thing I knew how to do, I fell into a deep trust and just believed that I was where I was supposed to be.

I knew that something big had to change so I decided to move back into my apartment, regardless that I had no money, and really fall into the trust that the world was supporting me. I lived off credit cards for the next few months and rode my world by the skin of my teeth. There were no jobs around at that point which I felt were within the skill set that I was worthy of. The challenge was to maintain my self worth and only look for opportunities that I knew I would flourish in. Taking a step back was not an option, no matter how alluring it was to just take any opportunity and get myself a decent income, I really stepped into trust and waited for the perfect opportunity to present itself.

Eventually that opportunity did come and I ended up working for an amazing global company, with the most amazing group of people. I had the best team, a great salary, an exciting product and to this day I still maintain close relationships to some of these people. They were, and still are the most inspirational people I have ever known.

What I failed to heed the warnings at the start of all of this, I ignored my inner whisper. There was something that wasn't adding up for me, but I put my importance on getting out of my current situation. This is never going to end well! Doing something just for the sake of avoiding the discomfort of what is here, is never going to give you a good outcome. But the question is, how do we know when the situation needs to be played out, and how do we know when to move on? This is an interesting one, how we do it is by looking at what the fight is underneath the event. If you are avoiding facing the situation and desperately looking for any chance to not look at it, then there's the key that you need to just stop and sit in the "shit". When you are desperately trying to hold on to the situation and are looking for any excuse to stay in it, then it's time to either move on, or work on removing your attachment to it.

When I fell in love with Tygue, the feeling was so wonderful, I felt like I had finally reached a destination. I felt like after all the suffering I had gone through in life, that things were finally working out for me. The problem here was, I was looking at this love to fulfil me and heal the suffering I had experienced in the past. No longer was I just "experiencing" the moment, I started to depend on it, needing this connection to survive. Even though there were some things which were playing out that I wasn't ok with, I ignored the signs and instead of coming back to myself and keeping myself out of attachment to this relationship, I fell deeper into the neediness of it. I was latching on to my feelings for him and the rarity of that to keep me in a situation which wasn't honouring myself. Needless to say, that blew up in my face.

The fear that eclipsed me a that time in my life was soul crushing. But what it did, was show me my deepest, darkest truth. As I have explained, the people and situations in our life are here to show us the very thing we are most hiding from, our truth. The fear that is associated with our truth is so intense that it's so easy to want to run away. This is the illusion of fear, we think it holds the power but instead, it is actually shining a light on the power that we have within us. What is available to us within that fear, is something that you don't even know is within you. It's a truth that is bubbling under the surface, screaming to be seen and acknowledged. The truth of who we are, what we are using to disguise this truth and the invitation to clear all the debris and heal what is our deepest hurt. All of this is opening a space for who we truly are to be present.

After the situation with my job loss and the immense amount of fear that I felt, it really allowed me to see my truth at that point. As egotistical as Carly was, I was just as egotistical. I wasn't willing to hear someone I didn't respect tell me what to do. I will take direction and advice from anyone I feel is a respectful and admirable person. The second I see in them inauthentically, I close off to them and reject them. This is highly egotistical on my behalf and the truth is, there is always something you can learn from every person. Carly represented the highly aggressive woman that I was at that point in time. What was presented to me was an opportunity to really see the truth in who I was and that was, a very soft, nurturing, feminine, kind woman who leads with love not fear. I had never previously seen strength in the powerful feminine. I was raised through a very long lineage of aggressive women and I thought you needed to be loud and confrontational to be heard. What I learned from Carly was how off-putting that was, and how weak it was.

I've had the ability in recent years to be exposed to many women in my career who are in fact, very strong, very capable and very inspiring women, but they come from a place of deep nurturing, deep personal awareness and a kindness that is truly inspiring and effective. When we step into the truth of who we are in this way, it is 10 times stronger than acting out of fear and aggression. When we act and respond with fear and aggression, we are fearful that not only are we not enough, but there is not enough of something to go around. I have worked with people before who don't quite believe they are good enough to be leaders. These people are constantly living in fear that they will be somehow found out, they identify the qualities in others that they long for, and they target these people to try and bring them down. These people are so afraid that there is not enough to go around, they try and destroy that very thing they crave in another because they feel by destroying it, they will have more power.

When we as divine beings of exceptional capabilities and opportunities identify and encourage the strengths in those around us, we also strengthen our own gifts and make ourselves that much more powerful. It has the complete opposite effect on what we think. We think by bringing down another to ensure we are the last one standing that we are indestructible. What we don't quite realise is yes, we have what we clung onto, but we are in constant fear of losing it, we become it's prisoner. We also have a trail of destruction around us which then will reflect the very level of destruction that we are facing within ourselves. When we are in desperate fear of a quality in another person, celebrate it, acknowledge and love that person for it, when we do this, we evoke that very quality in ourselves to rise and conquer.

After the situation with Tygue was finally ripped away from my desperate grasp, I went into months of soul searching, isolation and inner reflection. I was left so bewildered at how I could have opened my life to something so wonderful and it slip through my fingers. The battle was unceasing with feelings of, he did this to me that heartless bastard, how could he be so cruel, to, I can't believe I stuffed this up and I wish I did things differently. The fear I was faced with at that time I had thought was the fear of losing a love I had waited so long to experience however, what was actually occurring was a fear of what I was discovering about my own truth.

Tygue in all of his magnificence not only brought into my life a deep love that I will remember and be grateful to forever, but he also showed me the exact truth of who I was. The experience with Tygue showed me just how desperately I needed the love of a man to shield me from that original pain I felt which kept me out of connection to my soul. I was searching on a deep journey of self discovery but the self discovery was a tool I was using to "fix" myself. I thought by fixing myself I then could be in a better position of attracting and accepting the love of a partner into my life. I couldn't see a way that I could be truly happy, on my own, through connection to myself. It never occurred to me that I was looking at it wrong. Sure, I knew connection to the self was important, after-all, it was all I ever read, worked towards and was driven by. But the driver that sat behind that motivation was using the connection of self to find a connection with another person. This was ok, my aim was just slightly off. What I couldn't quite grasp at this point was the connection to self meant, nothing else actually mattered. Sure, I would be open to and embrace a relationship into my life, but I'm more driven to holding that connection with myself above all things.

What was on the other side of fear here for me, was a power that I never knew existed. By deepening the connection to myself, I was able to deepen the connection with others. I all of a sudden started seeing the truth in every situation with little resistance. I was able to see so easily the truth bubbling under the surface of challenges in other peoples lives. It became so obvious to me what they needed to do to conquer that obstacle. I could also see the little loose string that needed to be pulled to propel them onto their healing journey and could deeply feel the original pain that was causing their own limitations. All of this became so clear to me in others, because it was so clear within myself. Where I used to shift so quickly into judgment and defence of other people around me, I was quicker to step back and look at the bigger picture and my own truth in the situation. Upon doing this, it once again, deepened the connection with myself and my own heart.

All of this exciting stuff came from Tygue's very reflection of my own truth. What was so evident was a deep fear in him, was no different to the deep fear I had within myself. A fear I was so afraid of looking at for the illusion that life was ending rather than opening further. Sure, I felt deeply for him and the hurt that was there was very real, but it became a different hurt. Once I could see the representation that not only he brought to my life, but I brought to his life, it turned the heart wrenching pain into a friendly pain. A friendly pain that made me thankful for him and all that came through him. A friendly pain that only wanted for him the same level of inner joy and happiness that I wanted for myself. The friendly pain that was so confident that our souls were connected forever in that moment of deep love and truth.

It is so easy to let fear take you away. You can feel like you are in the most connected place, finally in a situation where you have it all figured out and then WHAMMO!! An external situation will develop and it threatens something within you that you didn't acknowledge previously. The very thing that it threatens however, is the very thing that is prime for healing. In my experience with the job loss, it threatened in me my security, the fear that I would lose the very foundations around me. The fact in the matter was at this point, the foundations around me were unhealthy and full of ego. I was ready to release a lot of anger and aggression at this point. And true to how the world works, it threw everything at me that brought up in me that anger and aggression. I had met a guy around that time who seemed like an awesome match for me. He was so big and masculine, he was a firefighter so had that manly rescue quality which makes women weak in the knees. We had a couple of really awesome dates and out of the blue, he just decided he didn't want to progress. I was pretty bewildered because I was of the impression he liked me a little more than I liked him. This absolutely crushed my ego! I was so offended that I would be dumped by someone, especially at a time when things were going pretty crappy for me. On top of this, my best mate was MIA after meeting a new guy and she had no time for me, another thing which brought up an immense amount of anger for me. So, here I was, dealing with every area of my life crumbling around me, raising in me every fear and attachment I had to these things.

Life works like that, when it's time to heal, all things that are hiding that pain are confronted. For me at that point, the anger and aggression was hiding the fear of security and my confidence in the universe providing me everything I needed. When Tygue and I didn't work out, the universe didn't need to throw anything else at me, I decided that this time, I was going to surrender and dive into the fear. It took me on it's own little journey and it was definitely tough, but I went with it. Rather than ignoring what was wanting to be healed and released, I allowed it to come through and it was a much more gentler process this time around. This was softer, calmer and more nurturing than the previous experience where I fought and latched on.

When we fall deep into surrender of the situation, we don't stop the situation from playing out, but what we do is transform the energy surrounding it to make it a less bumpy ride. In this place, it is so much easier to access the trust and support from the world around us. We see the opportunities of growth and healing that are here for us a little more easily and we awaken a deeper connection within ourselves.

Let's take a look at this a little more closely. Think about a moment when a situation raised deep fear in your life. Whether it was a job loss, a relationship breakup, a sickness or financial loss of some kind. The feeling that eclipses you right at the moment of realisation is probably the most present moment you can imagine. Every one of the senses in your body is heightened! You are aware of EVERYTHING! The prickling feeling on your skin, the deafness that comes over you, the stillness of the world around you, the sinking of your stomach, the pounding of your heart. This feeling seems so foreign to us, however, it is probably something that has been playing out under the surface of our lives for longer than we can remember. In this moment, the fear is actually truth bubbling to the surface. Truth of exactly that which we are afraid of, the threat of our security. Here is the fun part, the security that is threatened, was never a sure thing to begin with. This is why we were always afraid of it! It was inevitable that it was going to end, it was just a matter of when, because the truth is, nothing that is outside of us, can give us more than what we get from ourselves.

Security lies in the base chakra. This is our foundations and it starts developing from the time we are conceived until the time we reach puberty. The base chakra is represented in our feet, all the way up to our knees and the outside of the tops of our legs. This is where we have developed our relationship to the support of life! This development comes from the mothers belief systems and depending on the state of her emotional wellbeing at this time, determines the level of our own fears. If we were given a lot of emotional and physical support as a child, we have a real sense of belonging to the world and feel we have the right to be here. This doesn't eliminate challenges of fear but it certainly makes it easier to face challenges when they arise. You're a little quicker to bounce back. What can develop from this place however is the limitations of the belief that you can't do it yourself. When you have been given a lot of emotional and physical support at a young age, you perhaps have lacked in the development of tapping into your own source of support. In this case your belief relies on people around you to give you everything that you need rather than the ability to source it yourself.

When you lacked the physical and or emotional support at a young age, you are always coming from the underlying filter that, I do not belong here and my right to be here is questionable. This is absolutely where I came from. I am a highly emotional person and never had my emotions truly acknowledged as a child. From this place, anything that happens to us is met with a bulldozer demolishing the world around us and it can be a tough place to claw back from. The difference here is, when you come from this belief system, you do have the strength to claw back from this place on your own and you aren't afraid to really, truly go to these depths. You don't need to desperately rely on the people around you to give you what you need, you know you can do this yourself. The challenge here is, not falling into the victim mentality that the world is against you and feeling into trust that you are supported and the universe is always there offering solutions. Sometimes, we have-to let go of our own control to let things present themselves to us.

In this original place of fear, when you're so present and every sense you have is heightened, right here is the defining moment. The presence here is actually complete grace. It offers an opportunity to unlock the truth of your soul and the accelerated healing of the pain that has been hiding it. This is the time when you decide your next move. Do you, react and scramble to cling on to anything to prevent you from going into the abyss of fear? Or do we stop, go deep within and surrender to the fear, make friends with it and see what truth it wants us to know.

Let's look at the first scenario, we react and scramble into the fear. When something is threatening us, we lose our composure and cling to the thing that is threatened with utter desperation. What we choose in this moment is the lack of trust that we will not have our needs met, that we will be forgotten and that we will cease to exist. Our life and mortality is completely threatened. Your truth in this moment is that you are so far out of trust that you will constantly rely on things outside of yourself to keep you safe and supported. The threat here is, when faced with the destruction of this, you will continue to go through it over and over again until the truth is seen.

When you choose to really delve into the fear at this moment, the only thing to do is nothing. Stop, get present with what is occurring, what you open up to here is an opportunity for the grace that is present to expand, to show you your ultimate truth and the healing that comes with that. In this place you identify the things that you are clinging to and you see them for what they actually are. They are illusions! Illusions that were created from a young age, based on the filters that we have developed, designed to keep us further from accessing our deepest connection with self.

When we are raised feeling the importance of for e.g. a home, marriage and children to define success and happiness, we place this firmly as a goal that we stop at nothing to achieve. When something happens in our life, we use this as an excuse for not getting what we want and do whatever we can to eliminate the thing which takes us away from our goal. This can potentially become the struggle of life, constantly swatting away challenges that take us away from feeling the completion that our version of success brings us. Alternatively we achieve the very thing that we have believed will bring us success only to realise that it has become highly unsatisfying and empty. In which case, we start to scavenge for other things that can replicate the version of success but in a different vessel, i.e. another relationship or home. This is the master trick of the mind and the ego, refocusing your attention on another goal to try and receive the feeling of completion the promise of this situation didn't bring you. You redirect yourself so you can strive for something else to bring that feeling through. All the while, you're being distracted further and further from the only thing that can bring you true completion, yourself.

When we can see the things in life that we have built so much importance around to bring us our own version of success, when we acknowledge that it is a fallacy, we open up the opportunity to unhook our attachment to it, and therefore move more within the flow of life. What comes from this place is an opportunity to have all the things we wanted, but never to be afraid of losing them again. Because when you have no attachment to something, there is also no fear surrounding it. This does not mean that you go through life not experiencing family, a home, a marriage, a great career, financial abundance. It simply means that you are not defined by it, because you know, that it is simply a bi-product of the relationship you have with yourself. As long as the connection with self is prevalent, all things cease to have any power over you.

From this place what you receive comes fearlessly. When it comes fearlessly, you are more present to just be with the beauty of what it represents. In terms of a relationship, having one without fear allows your heart to open to true connection. When you are without fear of losing your relationship, you leave the space there for more connection, more love and more passion to be present. When you live in a home where you have no fear of losing it, you can enjoy it for what it is providing you and you see it with more gratitude. When gratitude is present, more abundance and more joy flows into your life.

When we can step back and observe fear as an invitation to open up a deeper connection within ourselves, we start to not fear the fear. We begin to instead, befriend it and love it for what it is offering us. When you can transform the response to fear in this way, you stop reacting and start responding. The fear sends an invitation to you for more awakening and you respond with trust and gratitude for what is awakening. You shake off the old skin of limitation and avoidance and you step forward with a freedom and lightness that you had never known was there before. The world around you sees this and it smiles towards you. It beams a light of love straight into your heart and your heart responds with more lightness and love.

From here, watch the serendipity begin. People begin to appear in your life bringing opportunities to bring you closer to your purpose. The conversation between yourself and the world around you becomes clearer and more accurate. The language you have taught yourself to speak becomes more fluent and accurate and you are gifted with spectacular moments of true presence and connection not only with the people around you, but with yourself. This is the flow of life, this is what the gift of fear opens up and this is the awakening process.

Power

Once upon a time, women ruled the world. It was a matriarchal society which denoted the feminine way. Our lives were more directed towards emotional expression and our inner world. Life was felt, not thought. Our power and our world existed within us and all the answers were realised here, in our inner world. The women who ruled this world had little use for man other than fertilisation, providing food and lifting heavy things. They did not believe men had the mental capacity to support anything other than this and therefore, our brothers held little relevance let alone any kind of power. This was not healthy as it was separation, not connection, which was the feminine way and therefore could not be sustained.

The men began to crave more power as this is the masculine way. To do this, they needed to somehow bring fear to this current society in order to completely demolish the matriarchal way. This was done by creating a myth of God. God needed to be something that existed outside of ourselves which was the masculine way. A power that was beyond anything we could ever imagine, God needed to be modelled in the image of man to ensure man had relevance. God was all things good, all things just and this myth developed the desire to access God's love at any cost. No longer did the people look into themselves for answers, they now looked to God. To further create fear around this, there needed to be a threat of God and so became the creation of the devil, also in the form of the masculine. Somehow I think that men at this time were a little more clever than these women gave them credit for. And so paved the way for the patriarchal society to be born, or HIStory. The patriarchal society was denoted by focus on the masculine way of the mind and the external world. All things that exist outside of ourselves.

Through the ages we can see that women have held little relevance in the history book and held very little power. Sure there are some stories of where women completely stood against their positions in life through defying the odds, however, this was rare. Women, up until the last couple of generations have not been able to access their personal power and only had relevance if they were married.

As human beings, we have a primitive drive to bring us feelings of being complete. When we are unbalanced of something, our bodies and our lives will go to great lengths to seek out that balance. If we are in depletion of something, we crave the very thing we are void of. We all have within us the masculine and feminine energy or the yin and the yang. When we are in complete balance of this, we are truly connected and therefore, complete. If we are lacking in more of the masculine energy for e.g. then we will crave more masculine things. If we are lacking in more of the feminine energy, we will crave more feminine things. Through the patriarchal way, we have been taught to look outside of ourselves for things to make us feel complete and whole. Therefore, when we are lacking in the masculine, we begin to search outside of ourselves.

Our personal power is represented in the Solar Plexus, the area above the naval and below the heart. This is where our identity is housed, our personal power, confidence, freedom and ability to choose. It is our centre sun. The sun is the very representation of masculine energy, so therefore the solar plexus is also masculine.

What this illustrates is the pattern of the women in history. Her desire to feel compete and whole and her lack of ability for accessing her own strength and power. If she can access that masculine energy of the solar plexus then she can feel like she is complete and whole. Because she has been taught to look outside of herself for this, she naturally is drawn to the very thing that represents the masculine energy, the man. This is why women until now are only feeling relevant when they have a masculine partner.

We can see through the ages were there has been a little shift in women accessing their own personal power, when the men have stepped out of reality and the woman haven't been able to get a physical representation of the masculine energy. This is illustrated perfectly in the industrial era. We saw at this period a lot of the men being sent away to war. The women were called on to take on masculine roles, to keep the economy moving. Hence they did all the mens duties, worked in the factories, they were the main bread winner for their families and they even were the main provider of sporting entertainment that was usually exclusive to the men. A good example of this is the movie A League Of Their Own. This is the first time women began to really access their solar plexus but it was done, by becoming and replacing the man. What happened when the men returned? Life went back to normal however, things were different, women had a taste of power and they liked it.

Then we saw the burning bra phase. Once again, through World War II the men were sent away and it opened up a space for the reflection of the masculine to come via the feminine. Women had enough and they wanted the very same rights a man had. The way they were trying to access the masculine energy at this time, was once again, becoming the masculine. They did this by turning their backs on their femininity, symbolically burning the very thing that represented the support of the most feminine attribute, the breasts. What we saw develop in this time was women showing their disgust and burning the symbolism of support for the feminine. The feminine was represented through this time as weak, powerless and helpless. It was really coming from a place of the victim space and we had very little if not any awareness of just how powerful the mighty feminine was. So in this era, we saw once again, the desire for power (masculine energy) through women wanting to be men. This is not healthy, we close ourselves off to the very thing that makes us powerful as women. The very thing that makes us complete and therefore, what we think we are striving towards is actually having the opposite effect. We are more disconnected, more confused and still, we have no power.

Sure it might appear that we hold positions of power or control, but it's all outside of ourselves and it's not in our way, the divine feminine. It's mimicking the masculine which is all about power, identity and the mind all external to ourselves. When we see any woman in a position of power through the patriarchal way, we see a very masculine woman, void of emotion and empathy. That is not the feminine way, the feminine way is a different matriarchal way of absolute expression of the emotions. It is compassion, love, support, nurturing and connection. That is not weak and it is not powerless, in fact, it is absolute strength and absolute power.

When we look over the ages we see that the times where women were in power, they were disempowering the masculine, therefore they were disempowering themselves. More recently in our patriarchal systems, it has been at the sacrifice of the feminine power, therefore we have not had a global empowerment of the feminine energy. This has expressed itself in the desperate ways in the health of our planet. The feminine is represented in the earth, the masculine in the sky. We see the reflection of lack of feminine empowerment through lack of health and wellbeing in our planet. We can see over the ages also, the world has been in a see-saw phase of trying to balance itself out. We can see that still in our current global reality.

But there is a shift in our consciousness, we see life slowly coming back into balance. It is the way of the divine feminine and the superior masculine. This is not meaning the feminine is more powerful than the masculine, or vice versa, this is referring to the feminine and the masculine within each and everyone of us. This is our world coming into complete connection and wholeness. This is the masculine and the feminine within all of us being perfectly balanced and healthy.

How does this look and how does this work? Firstly, for us to be able to create any kind of change, we first need to be the change we seek. We can see that the feminine rising is absolutely taking a more vocal step in our world today. It is exhilarating to watch and exciting to see the new wave of being is beginning. However, there is still some confusion surrounding true strength of the feminine. True feminism is kindness, love, support, nurturing, openness and deep places of receiving. We do not tear down another to gain power. Gaining power does not come from removing someone else's power, quite the contrary. Gaining power comes from a deep place of empowerment. Empowering ourselves, empowering others on their journey, empowering men. We empower men by allowing them to be who they ultimately are. We embrace our brothers who offer us the deepest reflection and polarity of ourselves. We embrace and empower them by seeing their magnificence and most importantly, their hearts.

When we disempower something, it is because we are in fear of it. To be in fear of it, actually gives it power over us so you see, you cannot disempower something without giving it power. This is coming from a really negative space which feeds a vicious cycle of fear and resentment. What happens when we feed fear and resentment? We get back fear and resentment also. The cycle never stops. We come to the argument now of, who cuts the cycle? Who's responsibility is it to break the cycle and stand up to say, I will not be a part of the problem? You do! The very person who hears it, the person who is aware at that moment holds the responsibility to make the change and kill the cycle. Easier said than done right! Wrong! It is just as easily said and done.

The question now is, how do we break the cycle and this is where the beauty lies. The cycle is broken within ourselves. All that we see in our reality is a direct reflection of the reality which exists in all of us. If we look at what is reflecting on a global scale, this absolutely is a global reflection of what is happening for humanity. We are teetering on the edge of a complete destruction of the old way, the old way of separation, being outside of ourselves and battling between the masculine and feminine. The old way, is no longer serving or supporting our awakening consciousness.

We see women rising to lash out against not having enough human rights. Women feel they are not getting the same as men and we are calling for more than what we currently have. What this symbolises is within us, we want more of the power the masculine has, we don't feel as powerful as the masculine so therefore, our feminine is not in her power. How she feels like she needs to access more of her feminine power is by taking from the masculine.

We see it playing out in ways of pulling down our brothers and emasculating them. We see in the Eastern world where women have no power whatsoever and are still being killed for disrespecting men, the feminine is powerless. We are at war between the masculine and feminine in our globe because we are battling with the masculine and feminine within ourselves. We are craving power but have not been taught to access it through the self. We are battling within ourselves and having a power play of stripping the power of one to feed the other. We are not looking at the internal reflection so therefore desperately seeking this outside of ourselves and tearing down the reflection of where we want it the most.

What we need to focus our attention on is not taking power from one to give to the other, i.e. taking from the masculine to give to the feminine. We pump more power into the thing that is lacking and bring it up to the level of the area that currently holds more of the power. It is like if you had one over developed bicep. It is strong, magnificent and it is admired for it's beauty and perfection. We don't strip it of it's power so that it can be in more balance of the other bicep, we actually feed the weaker bicep, bringing it up to the same level as the magnificent bicep.

By turning our intention towards our inner world, and working through the healing process that has crippled our souls for generations, we start to open the space for true access of the power within. When we do this, our vibration is lifted higher and higher and becomes so strong that we raise the vibration of the people around us. At this point, we have a domino effect, one by one, we start to raise the consciousness of the entire globe. When we can access our personal power we acknowledge that we are perfect and complete, their is no tearing down or raping another of their power because we are a continued source of our own power. When we have it within ourselves, it cannot be taken away, it cannot be stolen from us, it only feeds itself and gets bigger and bigger.

Is this an idealist view? No, it's really not. Can we do it? We absolutely can. It actually is insignificant whether the people around us are a part of this or not. Once you make the change within yourself, your reality greatly transforms and you no longer represent the old way. It ceases to exist and now you represent the new way. You are strong and connected to your power and it is completely irrelevant whether others join your or not. You are only responsible for your power and you have no need for it to be fed via any other source but your own.

It makes it difficult to comprehend this. For example, what happens if you are being held captive by a man. Well, for starters it's probably a bad example because there is no way he's going to give you this book to read. But let's say, you have needed to access completion outside of yourself via the representation of a man, and you are in a very controlling relationship which you don't feel there is a way out of. I have had very real, very close people in my life that have experienced this exact thing. They felt they had no personal control, so they were looking for excess outside of the self to balance out what they were lacking. This is the very extreme place where a woman is not accessing her personal power. She feel the only way she has any relevance in life is when she is in a relationship and in a relationship with a man who is extremely controlling. Firstly, this is the place when we need to get very real with our current situation. Getting real with something does not mean having to change it in that moment. That is overwhelming and it is unrealistic. This is in itself, a journey. Just seeing that we are in a relationship and are being controlled is enough at this stage. We shine a light on the truth and we give consciousness a chance to grow.

The things we can do in this instance are, look for ways that we can start to claim more control within ourselves. The easiest way to do it in this environment is to start small. Look at the little things we can start to reclaim our power with. Thoughts are a big one. We get to decide what we think and how we respond to a situation. By making the choice to think differently about a situation is enough to transform the energy and get the ball rolling. One way we can change the way we think about a situation is by turning the reflection inwards. Once we start to look at our own reflection of a situation, life dissolves the need to offer us the physical manifestation of our truth, so therefore it removed from our reality.

Here, the two very things you can do in this situation is change the way you think about the situation, and look inwards for the reflection. Life will take care of the rest. Slowly but surely, you will be given the very next step you need to take to move you further along your path to self empowerment. There is always a solution and we are incredibly resourceful people so just trust that the answers will come to us. When the need to survive is present, we can do incredible things in our world. This in itself is accessing solar plexus energy so trusting in the power that your soul has to evolve in this lifetime is enough to begin feeding that energy.

When we give things the space to develop, we find that a healthy alternative is given to us along the way. We no longer have-to be forceful and controlling as that is not the feminine way. We can do this in a more nurturing, more loving and supportive environment. There are many things available to us to offer support and nurturing, through this we can begin the journey towards the self via the feminine way, the way of the divine. No longer is the masculine way of separation, power outside of ourselves and power of the mind driving us, it is our heart, true connection to all things and power within ourselves that is on the rise.

The strength of the feminine is nothing to shy away from. I see a lot on social media with women striving for more than what we currently have and I embrace them and I applaud them. We see women banding together in armies wanting more than what we currently have. We are standing with more self worth than we have ever had and I fully and wholeheartedly embrace and support the feminine way. However, it should not come at the sacrifice of men and their power. We come from the feminine way of connection and unity not separation. The more we demand and cry out for the feminine the more we are coming from a place of lack and fear. When we are coming from this place, we give what we are fighting against more power.

In this place also, we come from an energy of demanding rather than commanding. Demanding is the behaviour of a spoilt child afraid that they won't get their fair share. It comes from a place of stamping feet in fear of missing out. Once again, the place of lack and fear. When we come from a place of commanding, we are firmly within our power, plugged into our self worth and we command what we want knowing that we are in alignment of it already. When we are in true alignment, we already have what it is we are seeking so therefore we are coming from a place of pure confidence, pure power and plugged into the source of that energy.

For most of my life, I was looking outside of myself to access my personal power. I was looking for the love of a man to shield me from the pain I didn't want to experience, when the love of a man further mimicked the pain that I was using him to shield me from, I went on a very long quest to heal myself from that. What my new mission became was to heal myself and gain closure from the hurt of one love, so I could be open to another love and then shield myself from the pain that I didn't want to acknowledge. When I could feel that I was successfully in a position to shield that pain and evaporate the scars that were left from years of suffering, then and only then, could I start my life and be happy.

What I was doing the whole time was looking outside of myself for something to heal me. I was not in trust of who I was at the centre of my being to allow the wisdom that was within me to heal my suffering. The healing was happening, it was happening the whole time, I was just not giving my awareness to it therefore, it didn't exist for me. Only when I exhausted every single opportunity did I start to see and demolish every single pattern I had created. Only then was I free to see the magnificence and the glory of what was there the whole time, my own personal power. My own self belief that made me wake up in the morning and smile because I was completely connected.

When I allowed the healing process to take place, I freed a massive space within myself for the truest part of my being to step forward and take the reigns. In this place is where I could acknowledge, see and connect to the strength of who I was. To complete the balance of my powerful masculine and my divine feminine. To bring them into perfect alignment so that I may then live my life the new way, completely connected to myself and then perform my duty in awakening consciousness around me. I know that in this place, when I am supporting my fellow humans in finding their personal power and stepping into who they truly are, I am further empowering myself and I increase my own strength as a result.

Only from the place of being truly healed ourselves, only from a place of being able to look directly at our own reflections in things and take full responsibility for the part that we have played can we step into our own power. Only when we have done all of this can we truly be there to empower and light the way for others to access their own power. In this place we do not stand above or below anyone, we do not force our views and direct people to do anything. From this place we simply stand in our truth, and offer the space for others to stand in theirs. We celebrate them for where they are on their journeys knowing that they are still magnificent reflections of ourselves.

I honestly laugh now at the journey I have been on. I laugh at how the answers were there for me the whole time, they just were disguised in a way that I didn't recognise. I laugh at how frustrated I became when people would tell me that I could only access the place I was seeking through the self. I laugh because I thought that I was. I thought the whole time on this journey that I was seeking the answers from within but I was under so many illusions. My patterning and my beliefs were so guarded and so deeply ingrained that they controlled my version of reality. When I could finally give myself the solitude and space for inner reflection, could I finally begin to decode the messages, break the patterns and beliefs that distorted my reality.

They were right, the answers are within you. How you get to the conclusion of those answers is completely individual to you. Because, you are completely individual. You are a magnificent manifestation of consciousness itself. A breathing, walking, talking manifestation of light and love. The journey here on this earth is to come back to that place of light and love. To know and understand that we are perfect and complete just as we are. There is nothing we need to do, nowhere we need to be, no wisdom we need to access that isn't given to us right at the very time we need it. The very moment before we feel like we can't step another foot forward, our world expands again and we delve deeper into an even higher consciousness.

The suffering that comes along with the journey is in fact the payoff, because through the suffering comes the awakening. It's this process in all of it's magnificence that brings the most joy. No doubt as I write this, I'm yet to go through another shift which will call me to get even deeper than I am now. But now I know that the connection that exists within me, will continue to drive me forward with less suffering and stickiness than has been in the past. Because at this point, the healing that we accept into our life, we are assured a clearer path to now continue life in the new way, the way that is beyond pain and suffering. This is the ultimate payoff. To open life to all the wonders of a healthy, balanced person. A person that has survived the past trauma of generations of old stories, of old belief systems and patterns playing out, is a person who can step into their truest power and tap into the wonders of the universe. The gifts that come via the truest of connections.

When we have truly stepped into our personal power, when we have accessed and plugged into the source that is all things, we sit on a different vibration where things begin to happen in real time. There's no waiting to arrive at a destination, you become the destination. You stop learning the lessons because you know that all there is now is reflection. Gentle little reminders of the old way that may still be playing out in your life. They become more subtle arousing less reaction from us and certainly less suffering. Our happiness no longer exists outside of ourselves so therefore we no longer have to desperately cling on to keeping it. It is a constant flow of energy, continuously feeding itself and growing day by day.

In this place, where the healing has been completed, the reflections are seen and the patterns are exposed, we can focus on the things in life that bring us joy. In this place, we have more awareness of what brings us joy and we invite more of this into our lives. Because we are in full support of ourselves, our external world is also in full support of us and we find that opportunities to further open this state of being are placed into our consciousness. We have more and more opportunities to experience joy and the true beauty of our connection. Because we are in complete connection of the self, we find that life reflects this also and reflects back to us more connection in our relationships, our work and our home. The synchronicity of life completely offers us further evidence of our connected state.

We know in this place that the wonderful things around us that are occurring and further expanding the depths of our truth are simply bi-products of the connection we have within us so therefore, we hold no attachments to them. They don't control us and there is no need for them to be anything more than what they are. We are in such a deep place of trust and confidence within ourselves that we know, the minute something shows up for us, it is to open us up further to our depth and connection so that we may play out our lives purpose. We know when something doesn't happen for us or opportunities fall through, it is because they are no longer in support or alignment in what steps we need to take for the next step of our journey.

In this place, life has continued purpose and joy. We still experience high vibrational and low vibrational moments, however we are no longer attached to the emotion and the edginess of what usually comes with them. We can step away and simply observe, acknowledging that each state of being is simply here to offer us a deeper connection of truth and self. We embrace these opportunities by really becoming friends and honouring the cycles. We accept the value and the wisdom that these periods in life bring to us and we get excited to see what the next shift awakens within us.

