The title of my book is The Life That Woke Me Up Was My Own. If we turn that around to apply to your life, then the title is The Life That Wakes You Up Is Your Own. It’s true that our own life—your own life—is the source of your awakening. It’s not something outside you, although those outside books, teachers, and mystics can help you to navigate through the layers of conditioning covering up your awake Self.
What is waking up?
Actually, you are already awaken/ed. It’s just that most humans are not aware of that aspect of Self. People meditate for years trying to achieve an awakened state, when in actuality, there is an awakened state called our Presence right now. This Presence is fully connected to Source energy. This Presence is who are you.
You are an individualized expression of the divine. You are a Spiritual Being having a human experience. Not a human being who occasionally has a spiritual experience. Yet, this second option is what most people identify with and thus experience.
Waking up means being able to embrace the wholeness of this moment as it is right now. You don’t try to change it in any way. You don’t think it’s wrong. And if you do, you include that as part of the wholeness you embrace.
Waking up only happens when you commit to it. A person doesn’t wake up without choosing to.
To wake up requires practicing being awake.
Being awake is when you experience this moment, right now, fully and completely. You don’t get lost in your thoughts though you may be aware of them. You don’t get lost in your feelings though you feel them. You are the large circle of consciousness surrounding it all. You are aware of your own awareness. This is being awake. You know you are a Being. You experience yourself as nonphysical although you occupy the physical and enjoy it a lot!
You may at times feel quite expanded beyond your body and at the same time feel totally within your body. When you are awake, you realize that you are Love and Light. That is the reality of you. You realize that this love and light are yours to express.
7 Practices for Waking Up from the Inside Out
Practice #1: Slow down
You must have a time each day where you literally make slowing down your practice. I call it Stillness or Contemplative Meditation. Without this practice, you do not learn to slow down. You don’t realize the difference between the constant doing and thinking mode and that quiet place inside.
The goal, of course, is to bring the quiet place of Presence into your daily life, but unless you take time to feel and realize your Presence, you will never gain mastery at this. The horizontal plane of doing will eclipse the vertical plane of Being unless you work to strengthen your realization of the vertical plane.
Practice #2: Listen to Your Spirit
When you are in Stillness, listen to the small still voice within. You are not trying to listen; you are just open. You let go of your own thoughts and let the thoughts of Spirit flow. You may write afterwards by asking, “What would my intuition like me to know right now?”
Practice #3: Let Go of the False Self
The false self is your conditioned mind—those beliefs and rules you were told to follow in order to stay safe, succeed, and be loved. In the Inner Bonding method, we call this part the wounded child.
Many times, the false self takes the form of an authoritarian voice in your head. It tells you to get in line, it tells you ‘you’re not enough’, it says ‘stop being a flake’ or ‘your ideas are crazy.’ It says ‘work harder’ and ‘resting is for sissies’.
As you evolve and become more of your Essence in the moment, your false self will rear its head and try to take you down. Recognizing this phenomenon and learning to master the healing and integration of the false self is essential to awakening.
#4 Explore how your Essence was silenced and free that voice
Your inner child can help you with this. But you must show up for her/him. You must truly want to listen, nurture, and validate. The signs you pay attention to come through your feeling-state. You may, for instance, have a successful persona in your life; yet feel a lack of your own deeper value within. As you tune into this split, your inner younger self will be there to speak to you about how your persona doesn’t allow her full self-expression.
#5 Tune in to your Heart’s Desire
The desire of your heart is God/Spirit tapping on it. You are here to manifest your gifts. Your gifts come from your Spirit. You bring them into the phenomenal world by taking action on your inspired ideas. Don’t waste time manifesting anything less than your Heart’s Desire. Following your bliss is real. Most don’t do it though. It takes great courage to go against the grain of society and your own conditioning.
Your heart’s desire is of the heart. There are no guarantees. Yet when you follow your bliss, as Joseph Campbell has taught, doors open that could have opened only for you. But you don’t experience this unless you first commit to the journey.
#6 Express your Wisdom
Every woman I work with discovers a deep voice that comes straight from her heart and soul. When she expresses this voice, her world changes. In the Find Your Voice Retreat we will be exploring this in depth!
#7 Be visible
If a tree falls in the woods and there’s no one there, does it make a sound? No! Unless you are visible, that is, unless you share your wisdom, your gifts, your heart, your love, in a very real sense it does not exist. Many people stop when it comes to being visible for many reasons—from perfectionism to actual danger of being visible.
Being visible is essential to self-realization. You don’t have to do a Ted Talk to be visible. You can speak your truth to your friends and loved ones; you can publish a blog; you can speak in your community. Visibility starts with being visible to yourself and then sharing your heart and soul to your public, whatever that looks like.
If these practices resonate with you and you’d like to get support to attain mastery with waking up in your life, CLICK HERE to schedule a free Skype chat with me.
