In today's episode Kate and Elizabeth discuss the ongoing process of self-discovery and gaining new insights. How self-reflection and self-care should be prioritized in order to effectively navigate life’s challenges and tap into our potential. How our bodies have a vast potential energy with the ability to influence our DNA, self-regulate and make changes. Why taking responsibility for our own healing is necessary and vital to our capacity for love and joy in our life. They discuss how to process emotions from childhood such as grief, recognize patterns that do not serve us, and take action to care for ourselves. 

Gregg Braden Website

In this episode Kate and Elizabeth focus on how to overcome self-pity and transform one's wellbeing. Their conversation includes accepting one's current reality, discovering the divine spirit within, and taking ownership of one's life. Additionally, they emphasize the need to take responsibility for one's actions and be conscious in life. Learning to live awake is a journey worth taking.

In this week's episode, Elizabeth and Kate jump off by talking about Deepak Chopra's teachings on the Wisdom of Uncertainty and the Wisdom of Insecurity found in The Seven Spiritual Laws of Success.  

Are you ever trying to figure out the answer to something and no matter how you think about it, you're stuck? Elizabeth and Kate talk about realizing that "figuring it out" (by constant thinking) doesn't work because we end up using parts of our brains that are not the center of stillness or intuition. Instead, when we have a question or a problem, one technique is to set the thing we are thinking about on a mental shelf and go into meditation with a mantra, counting, or breathing practice, essentially letting the buzzing problem go untouched during our sit. Then when we rise from the sit and go about our days, how do we handle the decisions to be made and the persistent thoughts that seem to still be clamoring (if a bit more quietly)? By not focusing on it. Kate and Elizabeth discuss how that looks in practice and how we do it together in community. 

In today's episode Kate and Elizabeth discuss the benefits of gaining spiritual principles and practices, such as meditation, spiritual reparenting and mindful living. Through practices such as faith, action, and exercise, individuals can gain insight into the effects of meditation and take steps to make positive changes in their lives. Additionally, their conversation leads to how meditation can improve cognitive functioning and reduce feelings of anxiety and depression. They move into the importance of creating a morning practice as a means of centering oneself. Finally, they discuss the "law of substitution" and other positive mantras and  how to create a mindful practice.

Elizabeth begins by reading a personal reflection about the troubled relationship she had between her head and her heart and learning to live peacably with both--now that head is no longer demaning heart be silent. Taming our heads by meditation means our minds no longer dominate our hearts' intuition and guidance--or force it into submission.  Kate shares about a form of therapy that is enabling her heart to offer healing to the traumatic mental images following her mother's death. 

One bellweather for whether head or heart is in charge is to consider how we treat ourselves when we are tired--do we keep adding commitments, or go home and rest? When heart tells us to slow down and head barrels forward, what is the resistance in us to honoring what we know is right for us? Are our habits true to us? 

Elizabeth and Kate discuss the meaning they each find in a passage in A Parenthesis in Eternity by Joel S. Goldsmith. Goldsmith says that if we live in the invisible source, we draw only good from life. But how can we reconcile that with the pain and evil we see in the world? Elizabeth and Kate talk about how to have real faith despite our ubiquitous perceptions of suffering and how human consciousness fails where the spiritual connection creates a different world. We can practice experiencing good no matter what: by making a conscious choice to focus on the good; by watching our reactions in the moment that personalize our pain; by laughing; and by noticing that those who have survived the greatest suffering are often the most grateful.  

Today we talk about the practice moment to moment awareness to pain as it arises using the example of Kate navigating driving in the rain after her mother was killed in a car accident during a storm. Elizabeth and Kate talk about practicing Michael Singer's vision of allowing pain to enter and leave the body as energy when pain comes to avoid storing it and hardening it. They talk about meditation techniques they have used and the openness to try new ones.  

Michael Singer, The Untethered Soul - We reference him a lot, and there's a reason for that. Check out his website, and try not to be drawn into this book from the first page. 

Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet, 

"Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart
and to try to love the questions themselves
like locked rooms and like books that are written
in a very foreign tongue.
Do not now seek the answers,
which cannot be given you
because you would not be able to live them.
And the point is, to live everything.
Live the questions now.
Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it,
live along some distant day
into the answer."

David M. Potter, Stanford Professor of History, as quoted to me by my father: "All the Simple Answers Seem Suspect" – David M. Potter

Plato, The Apology: "The unexamined life..." (yep, we love returning to this idea as well)

Ramana Maharshi, the Who Am I teaching instructions. 

Joel S. Goldsmith, A Parenthesis in Eternity: Chapter VI, God, the Consciousness of the Individual, on the Buddha's seeking first outside, and then within: "He does it all, but he does not find God. Then when he decides to eat and be comfortable, he sits down under the Bodhi tree and there, alone with God, he meets Him face to face and receives his illumination. He had been seeking God in practices, exercises, diets, and fasting, and God is not to be found in any of these. God is to be found only within. It is not easy to shut out the world and enter the inner sanctuary of your being, but if you have to do this and stay away from the world for a year..."

Magic carpet rides are often sourced to One Thousand and One Nights, or at least it is in Brewers Dictionary of Phrase and Fable, which I found on Wikipedia.

Julia Cameron, The Artist's Way, suggesting Morning Pages for all creative enterprises. More on that here.

Today we explore how beliefs impact our decision-making, how we use beliefs to identify ourselves both inwardly and outwardly, and we look at how we come by our beliefs with curious non-judgment. Can we admit the restrictive nature of our beliefs? We get down to our oldest, most core beliefs and try to either gently hold or let go of those which cause us harm. Do we need to abandon some of our beliefs for better ones? We discuss searching out whether our beliefs are obstacles to trusting our inner knowledge. Are our beliefs bringing us what we really want out of life, or is it time to reassess and let go?

In this episode we talk about a section of the Joel S. Goldsmith book Parenthesis in Eternity and how it offers us direction in the practice of going within, seeking stillness, and beginning to access the answers we need. Goldsmith says that all kinds of talents can be found through this inner realm, in addition to our true purpose in life. We focus on the difference between listening to our heart’s calling for how to be, versus the desire to tell others how they need to be. We discuss the law of substitution and mindfulness as well as living principles like honesty. How do we unblock when we struggle to sit still so that we actually can take risks, get vulnerable and experience intuition? How a fish knows its ocean (or doesn't).