Taking full responsibility ... the pain and the power :)

Wow, wow, wow. What huge revelations for me over this past week ...

You know, it was not accidental that I used the image of a genie to promote my 15-week Miracle Coaching Program a few weeks ago.

The Universe is waiting to giving us exactly what we want, just like the genie in the bottle. The only problem is that the Universe is waiting for very clear instructions from us. If we give it mixed messages, it gives us mixed results. This is why I talk so frequently about the importance of congruence.

All too often, what we are asking for consciously is being undermined by what we are asking for unconsciously (through our unrecognized old limiting beliefs and unresolved icky karma).

This recent taking full responsibility for what I am creating has been very painful but also very empowering.

Very painful because when I revisited the article I wrote about liberating relationships, the one that drew Entropy to me, I realized that in that article I was NOT asking clearly for what I really want. When I go back and read it now, it sounds mixed. Some parts I like, other parts sound hard and cold. I will be happy if you leave me, no matter what? Really? Who wants to live in that kind of world, where we can cultivate a relationship for months or years and then one of us abruptly disconnects and everything we co-created is just *gone*

I'm going to be happy after that? Not likely. Let's be honest. It's disheartening to keep starting over, again and again. How can we invest our whole heart in something transient and fleeting?

So now I'm going to start asking clearly for what I really do want. A permanent partner. A guy I can count on. A partnership where we co-create a really magnificent life and we trust each other so much that we know we're going to have this connection and this paradise until the end of time. That's what I want. I don't want any fleeting relationship bullshit. I want real, true, lasting love.

What have I had to erase from my unconscious mind to become more congruent with this vision? Well, my mom raised us to be extremely self-sufficient. She didn't even help us with laundry or making our lunch. It was "do it yourself or it's not getting done." She thought she was helping us (and I take full responsibility for "choosing my parents" before I incarnated), but what she was really doing was giving us anti-intimacy training.

This is why I've been using Emotional Freedom Technique to rewire my entire unconscious mind for intimacy and lasting connection.

In the meantime, as I transition from the cold hard world of self-sufficiency and individual achievement to the warm soft world of the intimacy, interdependency, and the heart, I've been sending the Universe mixed messages. Which means I also sent Entropy mixed messages.

No wonder, then, that I didn't receive exactly what I wanted.

So today has been painful. I'm pretty pissed off at myself for spending another year asking without clarity and receiving mixed results.

At the same time, I'm grateful for the clarity that I now have.

I want the real thing. I want all the love, intimacy, sex, and affection that I can handle. I want a partnership where we spread this teaching and healing to the far corners of the earth. And I want it with a masculine, sexy, powerful man who's going to be by my side from now until the end of time.

That's my wish, Genie. Bring it on :)

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Oh, and Barry Kirkey just called, so I went on the show impromptu -- talking about meditation, with sound effects, lol :-p Make sure to tune in ... :)

The importance of staying connected

Because our Word is very powerful, I rewrote an article that I published last year, and you can find the new version on Spiritual Seduction here.

Although I have previously lived in a Glass House on this issue, it has become increasingly obvious to me over the past year how important it is that we make a commitment to stay connected to the people in our lives even when things get messy or rough or painful. I am therefore making this commitment to all of my relationships, and I expect the same in return. This has now become a non-negotiable for me.

Disconnection is the symbol of our separation from God. Disconnection is weakness, not strength. I am no longer willing to tolerate it in any area of my life. This means a prior agreement with any potential romantic partner to do completion work, no matter how things turn out between us.

I have zero interest in fleeting relationships. I now declare that my relationships are so strong, they weather any storm and last forever.

On vulnerability ... and the "guru" problem

A few posts back, I wrote about strategies people use to avoid their own pain. You can read that article here.

I break a lot of taboos in the dating/coaching industry on a regular basis, and that is very intentional on my part. One of the biggest taboos that I break is revealing my own pain and sticking points, contemporaneously, as I'm working them out.

That's a taboo because most of the industry seems to believe that, to have credibility as a coach or healer, you must present an image of invulnerability. You must show people you have it all figured out.

I don't follow that rule. I don't say, oh yeah, way back when, I had this issue, but now all my problems are solved. The truth is that most of my problems ARE solved because I have unraveled them one by one (how else did I learn what I'm teaching), but it wouldn't be very authentic of me to pretend that they all are.

What I would much rather do is live by example. The way that I solved most of my problems is by going through the exact process that I reveal on this blog day in and day out. Being vulnerable enough to acknowledge my anger and grief, move through the messiness that came up, maybe end up feeling embarrassed and sheepish and surprised (like, "wow, I was not really angry at that person but rather at myself"), and finally come out on the other side to bliss again.

One of the wonderful things about Emotional Freedom Technique is that it allows us to bring all this messiness to the surface in a gentle way and clear it out quickly. But to be good at EFT, we need to be fully accepting of the messiness. We don't judge anger and grief. We allow them to be there until they are fully released. We honor the purpose they served in our life.

This is why, during an EFT session, I am there WITH you. Guiding you and opening your mind and heart, to be sure, but not judging you. Not holding myself above you. I see myself in you because we are all connected at a spiritual level. That's why so many of my clients say that I can feel their feelings and think their thoughts right along with them. Know Thyself, and you will know everyone else, too.

(This is, incidentally, what I look for in men nowadays, too. Is he strong enough to hold all of my emotions without judging me or himself? We all want someone strong enough to help us become our best self.)

Seeing oneself or others as a "guru" is not particularly helpful for this process. If we are acting as if someone else is "perfect," then we expect them to teach us some form of perfection, which is an illusion. How is a "perfect" person going to show us how to love and accept all of ourselves, in all our messiness? How is a "perfect" person going to help us feel comfortable with intimacy? How is a "perfect" person going to do anything other than show us more strategies for avoiding pain? Strategies that don't work long term.

We don't ever need to put anyone above or below us. It's not helpful. We are all equal, even if in the present moment, we recognize that someone has the capacity to teach us something or be our guide for a while on our journey.

Relatedly, here's another way many people are avoiding their own pain: when they hear someone else's pain or issue, they immediately judge that person as "less than" themselves. They attempt to create distance between themselves and their own pain by putting distance between themselves and the other person. They label the other person as "damaged," "needy," "self-absorbed," or "manipulative."

This does not work long-term. If someone has appeared in your life -- and especially if they are PERSISTENTLY appearing -- they are there to teach you something. We criticize in others what we don't like (and don't want to own) in ourselves.

The way this stuff gets healed is to start noticing our reaction. Instead of saying, "that person has so much pain, I am so much farther along than him/her," (hierarchical thinking), we start saying, "yes, now that I look deeper into myself, I can see my own pain or issues reflected in that person."

This is why I no longer subscribe to the "cut negative people out of your life" conventional wisdom. When we heal the negativity in ourselves, one of two things will happen: either the other person will disappear from our lives without us doing anything at all, or -- even more miraculously -- the other person will change before our eyes.

This is all part of doing the Shadow work that I talked about a few days ago.

Turn away if you like. Disown the part of yourself that is standing before your eyes. But you'll only be prolonging your own healing process by doing that.

If we are not brave enough to get messy, we are not going to get healed. If we don't get ourselves healed (and, yes, *everyone* needs healing), then we are not accessing our full power. And I'm here to tell you, the power that we are not yet accessing is ENORMOUS.

Are you going to try to be neat and tidy and perfect today? Are you going to be superior and judge others? Or are you going to revel in your own and others' messiness and gain access to powers you didn't even realize you had? I know which one I'm going to choose ...

So today I am setting an intention to embrace my own and other people's messiness, in all its beauty and glory. Here's to seeing every single brother and sister on this planet as a part of our own holy Self. :)

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Here are some testimonials from clients I've coached using this style. If you'd like to sign up for a session, go here.

The Pesky Ego

Lol, I'm having a very humorous realization right now.

First of all, I woke up feeling downright cheerful. I had also received a large number of encouraging messages and posts on Facebook overnight, so that bolstered my good mood.

And now I'm sitting here in wonderment, very shortly to begin a call with a client, and wondering when my ego is ever going to let up.

We all have ego still, but in working with clients and myself, I notice it comes up for different people in different places in their lives. Most areas of my life run rather smoothly, with very little egoic attachment, and even my dating life runs smoothly. The sticking point has been getting deeply intimate with a particular partner.

I'm seriously starting to wonder if any guy is going to be able to get under my ego's radar screen. Entropy almost did it. He managed to get very deep in to my emotional centers before my defenses went up. (It's funny how I don't feel any anger with him at all anymore -- I feel puzzlement with my ego instead.) He was very good at not triggering fear in me for many months. But then the wall of fear went back up, and I'm really wondering if anyone can help me bring it down.

Even this morning, as I started to feel really good and optimistic, at exactly the moment of bliss and thinking "everything's working out for me just great" ... that's when I noticed the fear creep in again.

I've been intrigued by this question for several years now ... how do we work with our fear, which is at the root of every problem any of us has? This has become my life's work.

Dating as a Coach, part 2

This is a follow-up to the previous article, which you can read here.

In my ongoing experimentation with mixing dating and coaching ...

It turns out the sexy guy from Wednesday's date is down to do an EFT session with me on our next date. He seems really open to it, actually, which is refreshing. I told him that I'm very unorthodox and that we can drink wine while we do it, and he picked up the ball and made a fun flirtatious comment back :)

I've dabbled with mixing healing and dating before, but not with anyone where it seemed like there was real potential. Uncharted waters ... this could be fun. Especially because both I and the person I do EFT with always feel so happy and upbeat after a session. In a way, it's a great starting point for a date. In a way, it's also a great starting point for intimacy, because we go so deep during my sessions.

Stay tuned ...

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Also, in the lessons learned department, from here on out I'll be making a prior agreement with anyone I get involved with that, no matter what happens between us, we are agreeing to do completion work if we break up. I would like any breakup from here on out to result in full healing of both of us.

What's the girl equivalent of "cocky"?

Tonight I'm feeling the girl equivalent of "cocky" for the first time in quite a while ...

so I'm celebrating by hanging out with my dad, drinking a lovely Shiraz, and cross-posting over at Spiritual Seduction.

You can check out my girl equivalent of cockiness over there...

:-)

Dating as a Coach

I posted over on Spiritual Seduction today and will probably continue to post over there, so please make sure you sign up for the RSS feed.

Last night I went on a date with a guy I just met, and it raised some intriguing questions for me.

He was very sexy. There was pretty instant chemistry. He seemed grounded and reflective. I was feeling extremely present for the first time in a while, which felt wonderful. I also felt super relaxed with the holiday ahead of me.

He was a gentleman, which is definitely one of my turn-ons with guys. He picked me up at my apartment and dropped me off home again, he chose a nice restaurant (Andalu in the Mission), dropped me off there while he parked so I wouldn't have to walk (especially appreciated when the girl is wearing high heels), and paid for dinner without any hesitation at all. The dinner (tapas style, including an absolutely scrumptious dessert) was delicious, and the conversation was fun. He's a musician who loves music so much that he dreams of having a grand piano in his house.

Well, we pretty quickly dropped into deep comfort conversation. Then the energy shifted dramatically. I felt it first in my third eye, which is the seat of intuition: a headache between my eyebrows. Which I mentioned because that's how I am -- very transparent.

Not long after that, he started sharing with me a lot of darker feeling stories. Frustration with the hip hop industry and what it teaches youngsters. And next about his years-long relationship that broke up about six months ago.

This is where it becomes interesting to date as a coach and healer. As he tuned into these experiences, the painful feelings in my body increased. He said he was pretty much over it, but he's not. I am an empath. My clients often tell me that I can feel what they feel and often can read their minds. It's not really any different when I go on a date. As he tuned into these old wounds, what I felt in my body was third eye blocked, and rage and grief in my solar plexus and all across my mid-section. (I can tune into people's energy when they send me emails, too. It's pretty much a constant thing now. I can feel the energy of men approaching me from behind before I've even seen them. Etc.)

So I told him this, what I was feeling, and then he acknowledged he was feeling it too. More layers of grief, anger, resentment, and frustration started coming to the surface. I appreciated his willingness to be open and vulnerable and honest. I also felt tremendous compassion. But at the same time I was experiencing so much dark energy in my body that I wasn't sure what to do. When emotions like that arise in myself, I clear them as quickly as possible so I can bounce back to happiness and joy.

If I were with a client, I would know exactly what to do to clear this. What he's carrying around is pretty heavy, so I estimate it would take about five sessions. It's probably rooted deep in the past, in childhood experiences that he doesn't even realize are connected to the present moment.

But what do I do on a date, where I want the man to lead, and I'm not interested in trying to "fix" him? How much do I invest in a man who seems to have a lot to offer and yet who I know won't be able to be truly present, happy, and alive with me until this stuff is healed? What if he doesn't know how to heal it? Do I help him?

I don't know. Terrance suggested I explore it more by exposing myself to more of it. I may do that, especially because there was chemistry and attraction, and I have set a new intention not to disconnect from people even when the going gets rough.

Stay tuned ...

Which comes first, sex or marriage? And musings about pain and connection ...

Before getting in to this question, I want to take a moment to talk about pain. What is pain? Most people don't think of it this way, but it's almost always an inner conflict. We feel pain because the self is divided. This is why dualistic thinking such as judgment is so painful for both the person judging and the person being judged. By dividing the world into "good" and "bad," we create duality and therefore pain.

Now, before anyone reading this has a knee-jerk defensive reaction to say "I don't have pain. I am able to judge people without feeling pain." ... I'm going to ask you to set aside all of your preconceived notions about pain for a moment and ask you to consider how you live your life:

* Do you stay chronically busy?
* Do you drink a lot of alcohol, participate in extreme sports, or use drugs or sex or porn to feel better (temporarily)?
* Do you distract yourself with various goals?
* Do you numb yourself by watching television?
* Do you unfriend people on Facebook or cut off relationships when other people do something you don't like?
* Do you deliberately do things you know will trigger pain in someone else because deep down you believe they deserve to feel pain for what they did?
* Are you criticizing, judging, or punishing anyone or anything?
* When someone else expresses pain, do you disconnect by giving advice, avoiding the person, or attempting to "fix" their problem so you won't have to deal with it?

These and a zillion other things people do ... I've done many of them myself and am not judging anyone ... but they are all ways of avoiding pain. Most people don't realize how much pain they are carrying around because they have various ways of anesthetizing themselves. The only problem is that numbing the pain doesn't work in the long run.

The only way to erase pain long term so that all those avoidance strategies are no longer necessary is to go straight into the pain, find the source of it, and become present with it until it dissolves. Then it's gone forever.

This is one reason why doing nothing can be so transformative. This is also why participating in silent meditation retreats is very powerful. When doing nothing, there is no way for me to avoid whatever pain I might be feeling. It may take a while because even in the midst of silence and meditation, the egoic mind has many strategies for avoiding pain, but ultimately sheer boredom and inactivity means I'm going to become present with whatever is going on.

Which may get very intense for a while, indeed it may get unbearably intense, but ...

If we can find the hidden inner conflict giving rise to the pain, we can resolve things at the root. Even awareness of the inner conflict will be helpful, because an inner conflict is less painful when we can see it. It's an "a-ha" moment of saying, wow, now I see how I was in a no-win situation with this. No wonder I haven't been feeling good or getting the results I want.

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In the midst of this doing nothing, I found one of these inner conflicts and wanted to share:

Entropy may have been right about something he said a while back, much as I didn't want to admit it at the time. (It's always something to be aware of, when we have a knee-jerk reaction of disagreeing with someone else -- what aspect of our own Shadow do we not want to acknowledge that we feel the need to disagree so vehemently?)

Anyway, he said something about not really being able to achieve a high enough level of intimacy with someone until after having sex. Wow, did I resist that idea.

But lately people have been asking why I haven't said yes to any of the marriage proposals I've received recently -- some from guys I respect a lot and even feel a lot of attraction for -- and part of the answer to that question is that I haven't felt a high enough level of intimacy. I'm pretty sure now that part of why I haven't felt it is that I haven't had sex with them.

Now, the flip side of the inner conflict is that I'm not sure I feel safe having sex with someone unless I already have received a permanent commitment from them. Why? Because sex and the level of intimacy I'm talking about stirs up a lot of feelings for people (note discussion of pain above). Without the container of a permanent commitment, what assurance do I have that both I and the guy are going to stay connected when the going gets rough? I'm weary of disconnection, and I know I've been as prone to disconnecting when I feel scared or pain as the men I date. I've abruptly ended relationships, unfriended people on Facebook, and done other silly things as a reaction to my own pain. Those strategies do not work long term, and I'd like to wean myself off of them entirely.

The biggest thing I would like to convey on this blog is how huge the rewards are if we all stop disconnecting from pain and learn to become present with it instead. As Marshall Rosenberg once said, "if you want to enjoy intimacy, you must learn to enjoy pain." Yet, in our culture, there is almost a stigma about feeling pain. "Oh, you feel pain, there must be something wrong with you."

Hogwash. I don't know anyone who has resolved all of their pain yet. Not one single person. And yes, that goes for you too, readers. Deep down everyone knows this. In fact, if anything, it's the people who are most critical of other people's pain who are in the most pain themselves and don't know how to deal with it. They criticize other people for what they don't like in themselves.

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Anyway ... that's my question for today ... how to resolve the inner conflict noted above?

In the meantime, I'd be so thrilled to see all of us learn to become more compassionate and stay connected when faced with our own and other people's pain. It's when we stay connected and present that miracles happen.

And you see, here's a little secret: by doing nothing and staying connected with my own pain until it dissolves, I am increasing my capacity for true intimacy. The more I can do this for myself, the more I am able to do it with others.

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Postscript on Today's Blog

I feel soooo much better. Presence has returned. I feel happy again. I feel light. Hooray!

Quite humorously, one of my friends was triggered by this post and unfriended me on Facebook. We talked it out, and he re-friended me. No worries. We all feel reactive sometimes. I would hope my friends would be equally understanding with me.

I'm also setting an intention to be much more aware of all the different ways in which I disconnect. If I want others to stay connected more, I need to be the change I want to see in the world.

Finally, I would like to thank a few people for their support during this time:

* Terrance Thames for his precious support yesterday. His inquiry-style approach helped me get a lot of clarity on my inner conflict.

* Hypnotica for checking in on me during the darkest moments.

* Kate Winch for her encouragement and for appreciating the contribution that my compassion has made in her life. It feels really nice to know that I matter. Thank you, Kate. :-)

* Entropy for his sense of humor and patience.

In the midst of all this, I stopped nearly all of my activities, but my coaching of clients went on as normal. In fact, in the midst of all this, one of my clients has been manifesting large amounts of cash left and right. :-) Something about coaching always gives me calm in the midst of even the heaviest storm.

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone!

Ah, some healing at last :-)

The way I go about all this is very unconventional, but it definitely works.

So I wasn't sure what the sticking point was with healing myself after the breakup with E. I knew I had not received sufficient empathy. My posting blog posts was my way of meeting that need. I definitely would have preferred to meet it through conversations with him. But where we don't have the participation of the other person, we can still heal ourselves by providing empathy to ourselves. I needed to receive empathy to restore my sense of trust in my world. Mostly, I needed to feel heard in a non-violent way, acknowledging the validity of my own basic human needs such as accountability and reliability.

Still, something was stuck. I was still feeling hurt and angry. A text message from a friend of mine last night helped something click. I realized that I had met my own need for empathy by blogging. But what I had not done is empathize with E.

When I wrote a while back about healing the memory of my kitten, I may have mentioned a surprising discovery. The memory did not fully heal until I had cleared the pain from ALL perspectives. I literally stepped into the shoes of myself as a four-year old, my dad who was there with me, my kitten who was killed by the car, and (this was the really surprising one) the driver of the car, even though we never knew who it was. Only when the grief from all of those perspectives was cleared did the memory lose its emotional charge.

This discovery surprised me because I'd never heard anyone mention such a thing, but it's not all that surprising. Because we are all connected, we play all of the roles in every situation we've ever been in. Healing is not complete for anyone until every person involved in a situation has received empathy and been healed.

Over the past 24 hours, I allowed myself to step into E's shoes. As best I was able, I tried to understand where he was coming from when he did each thing that he did. I found that I had a lot more compassion for his choices. Things did move fast, and we came up against a few unresolved issues that neither of us had fully considered. We both got a little scared, and then a little reactive, and the next thing you know there are a series of misunderstandings. I would do a lot of things differently if I had it to do over again, and I imagine he would, too.

Anyway, once I stepped into his shoes, I noticed that the hurt and anger and blame disappeared. Suddenly he seemed very human again. I realized that even my need for accountability was really a disguised need for empathy. I needed to understand and feel compassion for both of our perspectives.

From my perspective, some very good healing has happened the past few days. In a way, I did the mediation that I had requested entirely within myself. I imaginatively played both of our roles and the mediator's role. As much as I would have liked to resolve this between us privately, there is something magically transformative about public blogging. There's something powerfully healing about being transparent and being witnessed by a community. To read more about the power of this approach, I recommend you google "Dominic Barter Restorative Circle."

Even though both of us could have addressed the situation in a much more loving and forgiving way, I still love and accept him and myself completely.

There are no rules :-)

In the past few weeks, you may have noticed I've broken pretty much every rule and dating taboo in the book.

I get a LOT of emails from guys (and girls) asking me for advice about this situation or that situation. Most of them are looking for rules. A rule they can "apply" to tell them "what to do."

I understand the longing for rules. We think somehow if there is a "formula" for life, then we will have "figured it out." We'll be safer. We'll get predictable results. Etc.

It doesn't work that way. You can follow other people's advice and systems until the end of time and not have any real success. You can follow other people's advice and hold yourself back from doing what's really in your heart to do. You can follow other people's advice (everyone has a different opinion, so good luck following them all) until you've over-thought yourself into total and complete mental gridlock.

And you'll end up even more frustrated than when you started.

You'd be better off making your own rules.

I hear guys saying, "oh, I can't do that. she'll think I'm needy."

Who gives a rat's ass what she thinks. What do YOU want to do?

Or how about "I can't do it. I'm stuck in my pathetic story."

Well, then emulate Edward the Vampire from Twilight. He's as stuck as you can be in his dark story, and it's not stopping him from getting the girl.

Do you have any idea how refreshing it is to be around that rare individual who is acting from their own authentic center instead of censoring themselves worrying what YOU might think of them?

I didn't start receiving multiple marriage proposals (most of them coming out of the blue sky, by the way, with no cultivation or intention whatsoever on my part) until I started breaking all the fucking rules and doing things entirely by intuition.

I trust intuition will get me the rest of the way Home.

Fuck the rules. Fuck conventional wisdom.

Try following your heart today. It knows what to do.

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Fritz just got up on the counter and lapped up all of the froth from the milk I had prepared for my morning hazelnut cappuccino. Notice that he is not following any rules ... I love him anyway :-)

In this photo, notice Fritz's apparent lack of concern that he broke the rules:

Chakras Opening

I'm in a pretty deep state of apathy recently, and it seems to be a trend.

What a strange time, then, for my sexual chakras to be opening.

This is what happened. I had a really intense bout of menstrual cramps on Friday. So intense I could barely function.

Then Friday night and most of the weekend, I did a bunch of intense EFT. Sadness is stored in the lungs, and I was releasing huge amounts of it, which included crying, coughing, and gasping for air. This is not unusual with EFT, and nothing to be alarmed about. Almost everyone walking around in your everyday life has these emotions suppressed deep in their body. When we get them out, there is a huge release of emotion and energy, and then things shift.

Well, things did shift. I can feel major energy shifts in my body, and I felt several over the weekend.

Then suddenly on Sunday something new happened. I started feeling swirling energy in my pelvis. This did not come from any sexual encounter or sexual healing, and my EFT had not been focused on sexuality. But something opened up down there, and I've been feeling the swirling energy ever since.

For those who are familiar with the chakras, you may have heard of Kundalini energy, which is likened to a serpent that has the potential to uncoil. Well, it kinda feels like that, like an uncoiling that is rising from my pelvis up to my other chakras. This is what Wikipedia has to say:

Kundalini (kuṇḍalinī कुण्डलिनी) Sanskrit, literally "coiled". In Indian yoga, a "corporeal energy" - an unconscious, instinctive or libidinal force or Shakti, envisioned either as a goddess or else as a sleeping serpent coiled at the base of the spine, hence a number of English renderings of the term such as 'serpent power'.

Yoga and Tantra propose that this energy can be "awakened" by Guru, but body and spirit must be prepared by yogic austerities such as pranayama, or breath control, physical exercises, visualization, and chanting. It rises from muladhara chakra up a subtle channel at the base of the spine (called Sushumna), and from there to top of the head merging with the sahasrara, or crown chakra. The awakening is not a physical occurrence. It consists exclusively of development in consciousness. With awakening of the Kundalini our consciousness expands and we become more aware of the truth. When Kundalini Shakti is conceived as a goddess, then, when it rises to the head, it unites itself with the Supreme Being (Lord Shiva). Then aspirant becomes engrossed in deep meditation and infinite bliss. The arousing of kundalini is said to be the one and only way of attaining Divine Wisdom. Self-Realization is said to be equivalent to Divine Wisdom or Gnosis or what amounts to the same thing: Self-Knowledge. The awakening of the Kundalini shows itself as "awakening of inner knowledge" and brings with itself pure joy, pure knowledge and pure love.

However, like every form of energy one must also learn to understand spiritual energy. In order to be able to integrate this spiritual energy, careful purification and strengthening of the body and nervous system are required beforehand. By trying to force results, considerable psychic disturbances and at times even permanent mental damage can occur. A spiritual master who walked this path before is required to guide the aspirant. Often will be found that negative experiences occurred only when acting without appropriate guidance or ignoring advice.

Kundalini can only be awakened through the grace of a Siddha-Guru who awakens the kundalini shakti of his discipline through shaktipat, or blessing. A Siddha Guru is a spiritual teacher, a master, whose identification with the supreme Self is uninterrupted.

The most famous of the Yoga Upanishads, the Yogatattva, mentions four kinds of yoga, one of which, laya-yoga, involves Kundalini.

It's odd that they say this can only be awakened through a guru, because unless you count long-distance connections, no guru other than me was involved in this "awakening."

Anyway, I have no idea what this means for my life. When my heart chakra opened a few years ago, that was a major shift, and I would imagine this one will be also.

For now, I just wanted to share the experience.

Erika's New 15-Week Miracle Coaching Program - Learn How to Do What I Do With EFT

Hey everyone,

In response to several requests I received from people who wanted to learn to use EFT the way I use it, I have created a new coaching program. I already have two confirmed signups and potentially a third, and there are only so many people that I can give this kind of focused attention to at any one time, so if you're interested, please email me as soon as possible at erika.awakening@gmail.com.

Why is it that many people try out Emotional Freedom Technique (tapping) and don't get lasting results or any results at all? They are not using it in an effective way. Period. EFT works. If it didn't work for you, then you didn't get to the core, root issues that are causing your problems.

This 15-week program will go way beyond basic uses of EFT. My intention is to teach you the entire framework within which I use EFT, which is a very deep understanding of how people's belief systems operate, and how that creates their reality.

If you're anything like I was a few years ago, you may be very frustrated with all this Law of Attraction, "create your own reality" stuff. I tried the affirmations and the visualizations and hypnosis and various forms of coaching, and nothing was working for me. My life was rife with conflict, and I seemed to be perpetually stuck in a place that didn't feel very good. I felt isolated and disconnected, and things seemed really hopeless. Lots of people promised they could help me, but I'd go to them with a specific problem in my life, and they were full of well meaning but ultimately unhelpful advice.

My problems didn't get solved until I came up with my own comprehensive method for solving them. It took me five years to develop this. I took the best that each teacher had to offer me, discarded everything that didn't work, and found a way to integrate it all together. This approach is in no way limited to the dating/relationship arena. My two confirmed signups are going to use this method to coach actors and musicians and to start a new business. Once you learn my system, you can apply it to anything.

My system does not involve manipulation of any kind. It is based in radical honesty and transparency. It is based on the idea that our subconscious mind will not allow us to receive things, such as money or an abundant dating life, unless what we receive supports the highest good of everyone involved.

The only thing standing between you and everything you want from life is fear. As we erase the fear (and the limiting beliefs that support that fear), what you want will naturally be attracted into your life. This is a course in creating miracles (which are actually done through us and not by us), and once you learn it from me, you can then use my method to transform your own life and to coach others in whatever life arena you choose.

Here is a sketch of how a 15-session course (with 1.5 hour sessions) will look. Because this will be the first time I'm teaching it, we'll need to be somewhat flexible about the schedule and follow intuition about possible adjustments. I envision part of our sessions would be pure teaching by me, and part of it would be me doing actual EFT with you so you can see how the techniques work in action. I envision email support from me and you practicing with yourself and others between sessions so that you can put the teachings into action. This will help cement the knowledge.

Here's the sketch of the 15-week program:

1. Opening up the Possibilities
- intention of creating the life of our dreams
- congruence
- downward/upward spirals and why/how they happen
- full self-responsibility for everything we manifest
- all creation starts inside and is reflected in the world we see as projection
- giving away our power vs. staying in our power
- the Miracle mindset (my work is deeply influenced by A Course in Miracles)
- Ultimate Truth Statements and tail enders
- Higher self and ego
- Tapping in to our intuition

2. Crash course in non-violent communication and its application to EFT
- feelings/needs language
- how being in tune with feelings and needs will assist your sessions
- your comfort level with all feelings, no matter how intense, is absolutely essential to your success
- how being in tune with feelings and needs (rather than strategies) opens up the possibilities of fulfillment by the Universe
- EFT as super-powered empathy (what I really hear behind what you're saying is ....)

3. Presence and the transformation of feelings
- how we use our bodies as energy transformers when working with clients
- all problems are a disruption in the flow of universal life and healing energy (judgments/fear/shame/hiding/etc)
- there are only two emotions: love and fear
- the problem with judgments; how we transform judgments with EFT

4. Limiting beliefs
- how beliefs are created
- Life experiences, the earlier the better
- Trauma with a capital T and lower case t
- I can't do this because ....
- Stories we tell ourselves (victim/hero/conqueror stories = ego)
- The importance of our interpretations
- Fear of failure/fear of success
- Guilt, attack thoughts, and self-punishment
- Personal Peace Procedure

5. Understanding stuckness: Inner conflicts
- the word "should"
- inner conflicts and congruence
- tapping all sides of a conflict
- understanding the "inner committee" and the "outer committee"
- how to resolve inner conflicts
- win/win orientation versus guilt

6. Understanding stuckness: Secondary benefits
- why people want to keep their problems
- understanding the main forms of secondary benefits
- sneaky saboteurs ("Deep down, I don't want to succeed because ...")
- how to resolve secondary benefit situations and get people unstuck using EFT

7. The power of body awareness, part 1: body as metaphor
- using EFT with an understanding of the messages our body is giving us

8. The power of body awareness, part 2: Pain, Sickness, and Suffering
- chasing the pain with EFT
- chronic pain
- the gifts that pain has to offer us, seen correctly
- pain as a symptom of inner conflict, judgment, shame, etc.

9. Understanding addictions
- coverups for pain
- hamster wheel patterns
- loss of presence fuels addiction
- how to handle addictions using EFT

10. Dissociation/suppression/difficult-to-identify issues
- the pain is too much
- disconnected from the pain
- don't want to remember/can't remember
- how to bring this stuff up
- how to handle large traumas
- the importance of meditation
- the value of provocation

11. The Shadow Self/Mirroring Patterns
- a topic unto itself
- not being afraid of bringing up big stuff to be resolved
- comfort with transitional discomfort
- dissolving karmic loops ("I don't understand why this same awful thing keeps happening to me over and over again ...")
- how to recognize and handle mirror patterns

12. Patterns of hiding and shame: how to bring clients to transparency and spontaneity
- anything people are hiding or dissociating takes tremendous energy
- anything they are hiding is not working for them
- how to shift these patterns so people feel comfortable being transparent and spontaneous

13. Enlisting the Help of the universe: nobody has to do any of this all by themselves
- this involves me teaching a lot of my secret advanced EFT techniques that make all this work MUCH easier
- this will be a fun, playful session

14. Advanced EFT techniques and EFT expectation management
- stories people tell us
- past lives
- birth trauma
- clearing from all perspectives
- right/left brain integration

15. Concluding session: helping clients get in touch with their Dharma
- or covering whatever we think is best to wrap up

When I started to write this all down, I realized the knowledge is so vast that I'm not sure we can cover all of it in 15 sessions, but this will be a wonderful start at least, and I feel confident that especially with additional email support and follow-up I can guide my students in applying this very effectively with their own clients and students.

Once you've learned the techniques with specific examples, it becomes very easy to expand to other areas. You'll see -- it's very exciting!

I am offering this 15-week program for the same price as my three-month all-inclusive coaching with unlimited email support, which is $5000. I envision providing a lot of email support and resources between sessions to enhance your knowledge. Again, I will not be able to accept many more students into the program, and I expect the prices to go up the next time I teach it because this knowledge is worth far, far more than what I'm charging for it. So if you're interested, please email me as soon as you can at erika.awakening@gmail.com.

The best part of the program is that while you are learning my method, we will also apply EFT to whatever issue you decide to put as front and center, and we'll clear out your limiting beliefs about it. So this program serves two purposes: learn my method and work toward whatever is your most important goal right now :-)