The path from false confidence to True Confidence

This whole notion of Self Confidence has been on my mind and heart a lot lately. It seems to have been a major theme in my life. My struggle to gain confidence in myself, in my work, in my social life, etc. 

Lately a new understanding of what real Confidence IS and ISN'T has become much more clear, and has been incredibly reassuring for me, and may be for you too.

It seems to me that there is self confidence that comes from really believing in yourself, believing that what you think, say, and feel is worth something and matters, and that you are good at what you do. You can look in the mirror and say "yeah, I like myself." or you can make the changes you need to make to be able to to say that. 

That's all good and healthy basic self esteem that is important to develop. But there can still be this seed of doubt that we are constantly dancing with in that. This feeling like "as long as things are going my way, and I'm getting the results that I want, then I'm Confident." so we live with this fear of losing it if we make a mistake or fail, and this constant effort to gain more of it, and maintain what we have. 

A lot of personal growth teachings are all based around building self confidence and pumping up your self esteem with a lot of positive affirmation and dedicated work on yourself to imagine yourself as the person you most want to be, so you can feel good about yourself. And that's all fine....to a certain point, but it never quite gives you the whole thing. 

At any moment you could lose everything you have, you could fail miserably or feel embarrassed when things don't work out the way you imagined them. And while having a positive attitude helps to keep you from totally falling apart when that happens, it's still heartbreaking, and no amount of affirmations can totally shield you from that pain. 

I've experienced those heartbreaks many times in my life - as we all have - that left me feeling just worthless, hopeless, and helpless, despite how much work I'd done to "pump myself up" and grow more confident in "who I am," as a person. 

So I've been in search of a deeper sense of Self Confidence, one that couldn't be shaken by the unpredictable ups and downs of Life. And while it's still a process of really standing in it fully in every moment, I feel I've at least discovered what that is. 

It's a sense of Confidence that comes from being so rooted in the ground of your eternal Beingness, that no matter what happens in life, you know it will never really touch You (capital "Y" You). You have experiences, some painful, some joyful, but you see that they are just that - experiences passing through, and the peace, contentment, and wholeness of Being is still there in the background the whole time. 

It's not something we can even really describe with words. It's something that must just be discovered and felt for ourselves directly. 

And the only way to get there, the only road there is to take, is to be willing to be completely and totally insecure about EVERYTHING!

That road is littered with all our fears, all our deepest shames, self hatred, grudges, shortcomings, and inferiority complexes. And we must be willing to face them, honestly, and with an open heart, to walk through them, to see what makes it to the other side. See what's left of ourselves when it's all been faced. 

And that which is left, is our True Nature. Who we essentially Are, before our persona or ego was formed, which doesn't need to be pumped up or believed in or affirmed, it's just what's True. 

That which survives the fire of insecurity is Confidence. True and abiding self confidence, that we don't have to work at or maintain. It's just THERE, no matter what. 

You can't force this kind of confidence to happen for you, it happens for all of as when we are ready and willing. All we are asked to do is tell the truth, be honest about everything, and face it head on to see what's true about it. And all that's not true evaporates on it's own in the light of this sincere facing of it. 

So now when I'm feeling insecure, I take it as a sign that I'm on the right track! I don't try and pump myself up or believe in myself more, I just face it, and let it fall away, and breathe the Knowing of the deeper truth, the most essential Truth, through my Being with an open hearted "Yes" that welcomes in all experiences, but is not torn down or defined by any of them.

With warm wishes for wherever you find yourself in this moment,

I love you,

~Jessica

What do you cling to?

So I've been working on (or rather....life's been working on ME) to get totally honest about the things I cling to in my life as a way to avoid feeling the things I don't want to feel, or resist the changes that are happening in me as I am opening up and awakening more and more.

Food has been a big one, using food to emotionally medicate myself, and "keep down" the emotions and energy that wants to come up and be expressed/released. 

It comes with a feeling of desperation, like I just "need" that, whatever it is (usually something sweet) to feel OK. 

We all have our go to "fixes," those things it feels like we just can't live without, or we will suffer horribly if we don't have it. Maybe it's watching TV, smoking pot, maybe it's playing video games or excessive Facebooking, or relationships and sex. Even things that seem healthy like exercise can for some people become an emotional crutch that keeps them in a pattern of avoidance. 

We learn these strategies in childhood, when our emotional needs aren't met. We adapt and find ways to get them met, or at least put a band-aid on it until we can find something better to hopefully fulfill us. 

It's human nature, and I don't say all this to shame ourselves for doing it, because we all do it in some way, and we have to recognize and have compassion for ourselves that it's only because we've been hurt and let down in the past that we do it. But to become Free and truly happy within ourselves, it's something we all must walk through and overcome. 

It's a tricky business unhooking from our emotional clinging and addictions, and it's not a quick fix, but in my own process I've discovered that a combination of sheer willpower (self discipline) and HUGE amounts of self love and compassion is a good formula for success. 

First step is creating awareness, looking really honestly at your habits and when you are caught up in a pattern of addiction or clinging. You'll know because it will come with a feeling of desperation and compulsion, like you've just "gota do it!."

Second is being willing to ask the question "What pain am I avoiding? What change am I resisting? What need am I trying to get met through doing ________?" 

I do a lot of journaling to get clear on this.

Third, and here's the tricky part, you must be willing to face and feel those feelings head on, let them come up, witness them fully, express them, cry, scream, throw a fit, let them come UP and OUT!

Then Fourth, give to YOURSELF the very thing you are seeking underneath that addiction. Just a hint: it's going to be Love. So actively, LOVE yourself. Literally wrap your arms around yourself, and tell yourself "I love you."

Tell yourself everything you ever wanted to hear from others but never did.

Give yourself the comforting affirmations of support and validation you've been seeking from others this whole time, and forgive yourself for seeking it and failing to get it.

Because it wasn't your fault.

Your are innocent.

And you are worthy of Love, now and always.

You've just been looking for it in the places you are least likely to find it. 

Where is it really? Inside of you. Only YOU can give yourself the Love you seek. Only YOU can let it in. 

Lastly comes the self-discipline part, which I should really re-frame and call self-devotion (sounds nicer)....because you are becoming devoted to your own deepest healing and realizing the Love that you already ARE.

So every time you get that urge creeping up inside you....like "oh god, I just need a cigarette.... I just need some ice cream.... I just need to call that guy or that girl..." you STOP, and you go sit on your couch, or your meditation cushion, or in your car, and you repeat steps one through four as above until the craving melts away. 

A special note on this - most of us want to kind of skip over step three, where we express the emotional fully and consciously and FEEL it...because that part is uncomfortable, and we want to just get to the love, thinking that will make it "go away." But I have learned that it doesn't work that way. You can't make your pain any less painful, there is no dancing around it. But when you let go, and just feel it fully, and express it authentically, it doesn't feel like suffering, it just feels like intense emotion passing through. It's when we resist it that it becomes this monstrous thing that we need fear. 

And, of course, you may fail to completely give up whatever your "thing" is on the first few tries. That's OK! It's a process. It certainly still is for me. But every time we don't feed that craving, and every second we spend being willing to face ourselves honestly, we gain ground, and soon the power of that addiction losses it's hold on us and we find ourselves able to live without it, more whole, complete, filled by the love in our own hearts, and free to be moved by the Spirit within us wherever we need to go. 

Much love and heart felt blessings!
~Jessica

Remembering to Remember - A pathway to Effortless Joy

I was inspired to write this post based on a workshop my good friend and soul sister Teri Jo Wheeler and I are teaching this Sunday called Lighten Up! Falling into Effortless Joy.

But I woke up this morning, and I wasn't feeling all that joyful. And I started having self doubt like "how am I supposed to teach a workshop on effortless joy and how happiness is already inside us when I don't feel happy or joyful all the time?

And how am I supposed to write a blog post on the subject when I'm not feeling it?"

And it caused me to look deeper into the whole notion of Effortless Joy, and I realized that in reality, having an expectation that we should be totally joyful and happy all the time is unrealistic, because we are human, and there is a whole array of emotional experiences we are here to have. 

Emotions come and go, thoughts come and go, experiences come and go, but what is it that is always here? In a world that is constantly changing, what is the one constant, effortless, unchanging element?

Meditators know what I'm talking about, and it's defined by many names but can never really be defined, because it is the one thing that exists outside of concepts, and within which all concepts appear.

It's Presence. Consciousness. Awareness. The One Eternal Witness. 

The experiencer of what is experienced, 

The seer of what is seen. 

No matter what emotions and thoughts are on the surface, joyful, excited, sad, frustrated, there is still this aware presence within it all that remains unchanged and uncolored by the experience.

This aware presence has no agenda to fix or change what appears within it, it simply notices it with neutrality. It's our human ego, which is constructed out of thoughts and beliefs from our conditioning and forms our identity that judges what shows up before us and within us.

And I realized today that the goal is not to try and feel Joyful all the time, the goal is to Remember to Remember the One who witnesses it all, (because we so often get sped up and caught up in our humanness and forget). 

The more we remember to remember, the more time we spend noticing the one who notices, and resting back into the experiencer of the experience, the more effortless life becomes on all levels.

Emotions flow through us like passing clouds, instead of sticking around and multiplying, churning into a full on storm. 

When we rest in awareness, we stop resisting the emotions, and they come up and out of us naturally, revealing the clear sunny skies that are there behind the clouds always. 

The sunny skies are like our natural resting place, which is happy, joyous and free. Like a baby, they don't have to try and find the "bright side" in life, they just live there, and when emotions come up, they express it and let it go in the moment, and then rest in the happiness and wonder of Life again. 

It's a process to get back to that state of complete surrender and absolute union with pure Consciousness, because through our conditioning and the development of our human ego, we have accumulated many sticking points in our awareness, areas that pull us out of the moment and into human drama again. And that's okay! That's why we become human beings, so we can fall asleep, get identified with limited ideas about ourselves, just so we can have something to experience waking up from!

The key is compassion for ourselves, forgiveness for the ways we still get caught up and pulled in, and a commitment to gently bring our attention back to the One, the Eternal Witness. 

We just need to Remember to Remember, as often as we can, and inevitably, Effortless Joy and abiding Happiness and Freedom will become our experience.

In Love, Joy, and Compassion for all human hearts,
~Jessica

P.S. If you live in the Seattle area, come on out and join us for our workshop this Sunday September 9th from 3-6pm at East West Bookshop! Click for details 

The Power of I Don't Know

     As I sit down to write this today, I must be honest and say that it has been a tough week for me. One full of big growth opportunities and heartbreak/heart opening. My mind has struggled to keep up with the feelings in my heart, as I have faced some major choices in my life. 


     And I admit that I have stumbled, I have said the wrong things and caused pain in myself and my beloved. I have had to face myself more honestly than ever before, and the only real truth that I've discovered in it all is that I Don't Know. 


     I have been going around and around in my head trying to figure out what the "right" thing to do is, make the choice that is in mine and everyone's "highest good," and it's been so stressful that I've hardly ate or slept. 


     I finally hit a point on Wednesday night of total collapse, of just giving up, just laying it all down in total defeated surrender. I realized I was just trying too hard, trying to weigh all the options, trying to listen to my heart, listen to the Universe, listen to all the others involved and consider their feelings, as if walking a razor thin tight rope that I inevitably fell from, and not too gracefully either. 


    But I realize now that falling from the tight rope was always what was meant to happen. Life brought me to such a tight spot, such a confusing, heart wrenching, painful scary spot, for the very purpose of allowing me to fall, to fall into the I Don't Know. 


     Because I don't. Jessica doesn't know what's best for Jessica. My five year plan? I don't know! My one week plan? I don't know that either! I don't even know what I should do ten minutes from now, really, I don't. 


     At first it was a very scary place, to feel totally out of control of my life and destiny, to really not know what I want or what's best for me... 


     Me, the Angel Medium, who makes my living telling other people what they should do and bringing through direct guidance from the Universe... I. Don't. Know. Anything. It's a whole new paradigm.


     But once I just accepted that, once I just let go fully into that, I actually felt so much relief! So much freedom! Like "Wow, I don't know! And I don't have to know! It's not my job to know right now!!! God knows, and that's good enough for me! I'll just relax here until God decides to clue me in. Take a bath...go for a walk....maybe watch some TV." 


     And as I've relaxed, naturally, my heart has softened, and deeper layers of its love have come to the surface. I see that there is more, MUCH more, to the situation I am dealing with than I have been aware of so far. The human heart in relationship with other hearts is so complex, so delicate, and really - so beautiful. 


     My mind, when it catches something sometimes, wants to just charge forward, and doesn't always want to wait and see, wait and allow, stop, rest, and let Spirit lead. It thinks it knows the way, and tries to be very clever and diplomatic in navigating situations to stay safe... AND get what it wants. 


     But if you're lucky (thank you God!) you will fail, like me, and be forced to let go, relax, and allow, and I'm telling you, it makes it all SO much easier!


     All that's true for me right now is how much I deeply love and appreciate my partner and everyone in my life. How grateful I am for my relationship, and wanting to honor, witness, receive, and bless my husband and myself. 


     I've dropped into this deeper place of acknowledgement for what IS, now that I'm not trying so hard to get somewhere else. It's humbling and settling and opening in a way that is more Effortless than ever.


     And I know also that in this surrender, this settling in the Now, resting in I Don't Know, that the Divine Plan is unfolding itself through me and my life, and the truth will be revealed in the perfect time and way, and the subsequent action or non-action steps will be clear. 


     It reminds me of that song by Lucy Schwarts "I don't Know a Thing." I'm officially making it the theme of today's party! 


     So, Happy I Don't Know Day to you! May Love guide us, as we surrender to the Universe, that we are all but dancing stars within, moved by some great unseen force of Mystery, Magic and Wonder. 


How AWEsome indeed!


Love always,
~Jessica

www.EffortlessLivingCoach.com 

Daring to Love and Live Wide Open!

         As I sit here and open to what I’m supposed to write about, my heart just feels so open and in Love with Life! I mean I am positively bursting with love in this moment! Love for everyone in my life, love for the miracles that are unfolding around me, in every sacred breath, Love for Love itself! I FREAKIN LLOOOOOOOOVVVVVVVVVVVVVEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE SO MUCH!!!!!!!!!!

          It’s so beautiful, to feel this openness, to be overwhelmed with gratitude for it all, I just want to cry! And laugh! And scream! And dance!!! And even though I’m sitting here very still and quiet, all of that is happening on the inside anyway!!!! It’s as if there’s a party in my heart!!!!!!!!!! AND YOU’RE ALL INVITED!!!!!!! WOOOOOOHOOOOOO!!!!

          I didn’t always feel this way though of course. This is kind of a new experience, to be sitting here in a local coffee shop with my lap top, having a full on soul-gasm for no apparent reason other then clearly seeing how AWESOME I am and Life is!

          As a child I easily rested in this space of pure openness and Love. I was fascinated by life and how it worked, and totally immersed in each moment, filled with awe, excitement, and joy. But then like so many of us, Life closed in on me and I started to shut down my heart, my light, and my love.  

          My heart was broken when the world didn’t meet me with the same innocence that I expressed. My parents divorced when I was 8, my mom was an alcoholic, my dad wasn’t emotionally present, I struggled with making friends, and was hurt many times, bullied even.

          For such a sensitive soul like myself, I didn’t know how to process these experiences, I took it all so personally as a child, thinking there must be something terribly wrong with me, and not knowing how to be, because I couldn’t be what I thought other people wanted me to be, but I didn’t feel safe to be myself. So I just shut down, and started living life from outside myself, in a state of disassociation.

          This resulted in deep depression, anxiety, and chronic fatigue syndrome in my early teen years. I pretty much threw in the towel on my life. It was all too much, I couldn’t bring myself to get out of bed, let alone face going to school. It was like it just hurt to be alive in a body, and so bed was where I stayed for three months straight. The only place I felt safe.

          And I reached a cross roads where I had to make a choice: stay or leave. I knew I couldn’t go on living the way I was, but I didn’t want to give up.

Then there was a little voice inside me one night that spoke to me and said “you can heal yourself. There’s something more for you here.” And I grabbed onto that voice, knowing that it came from some deeper place of truth then the chaos of my mind, and as they say…. the rest is history.

          I healed myself. I devoured spiritual and personal growth books, I opened to my spirit, to my connection with the Universe, a source of Love that was so much bigger then me, and yet, not separate from me in any way. All at the tender age of 15.

          It’s been a journey since then, of slowly but surely peeling back the layers of protection I formed around my heart and soul out of my pain, facing that pain, standing side by side with it, and embracing it like a friend until it drops it’s shape, to be replaced by deeper compassion for myself and all beings simultaniously.

          It’s like we spend so much time trying to hide from the monsters in our closets, when really if we just open up the door, and give them a hug, we realize they are all just little kid versions of ourselves dressed up in Halloween costumes to try and get our attention!

          So now that this original innocence (and we all thought it was original sin! Bahahahaha!!!) has been revealed again, how now do I live in the world as a pure open being, daring to love fully, and not shut down?

          Well, the key insight I am realizing in this very moment that is the difference between the innocence of the child I was, to the woman I am now, is the recognition that NOTHING I WANT IS OUTSIDE OF ME! I am not separate from the Love I once sought! IT’S ALL RIGHT HERE WITHIN!!!!!!!!!! That’s a major paradigm shift!

          And when we realize that there is nothing outside of us, just projections and reflections of our own inner divinity in play (even the icky stuff), there is no more seeking and grasping to try and get love, and so no trauma when it is withheld from us. Feeling a lack of love from outside simply becomes the signal to give that which we seek to ourselves.

          So I say Dare to Love! Dare to live life totally open! Breath through the pain of the heart that breaks again and again, each time leaving behind a deeper and wider opening for the Love that we are to fill and shine through.

          AND WE ARE FREEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!! Totally utterly free to be who and what we are!!!! To shine our brightness, our greatness, our glory, not to prove anything, not to get anything, but for NO REASON other then to be AWESOME and experience the pure BLISS of being alive!!!!!!

          YES! LIFE CAN BE THIS GOOD!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

So may this next breath (INHALE) be a Blessing upon you (EXHALE) and upon all beings everywhere as we open together in this holy moment!

Love always,

~Jessica 

www.EffortlessLivingCoach.com

Opening together - Finding our sacred community

Hello beauty-full ones! 


For most of my life I've felt like my spiritual journey has been a basically solo path. I've had great friends and partnerships come and go, and been involved in communities, but it's always felt like two separate worlds - the inner word of my relationship with the Divine, and the outer world and my relationships with others. And while I can talk about spirituality with my husband and friends, this feeling of loneliness and separation has still persisted. 


And I hear this from many of my clients and people I talk to, this sense of loneliness on the path, of having these deep experiences of communion with God in the quiet moments within, but how do I then share that with those I love? 


I have felt a deep yearning for community, for people to share my self with on a deeper more authentic level. People I can be totally honest with and express the fullness of the Love that I feel inside. 


Many of us feel this way, it's human nature, we crave relationship, to share and experience love. 


But what I notice for me is that, the deeper I go into my personal healing, the feelings of vulnerability and sensitivity have become so much more acute, as the false layers of personality I've created to protect myself unravel and fall away. 


It's scary sometimes to walk in this world with this new level of vulnerable presence, of just being raw, and there's a part of me that wants to contract around that and avoid people out of protection.


And while part of it for me has been to acknowledge how sensitive I am and be discerning about the people and situations I spend time around, part of it is also to allow myself to keep opening, with others, to share my self even though I feel scared, and put my heart out there anyway. 


It's hard! It's easy now for me to go be with nature and open to the Bliss of Oneness and expanded consciousness, but then to sit with another human being, and open to the same level is scary! I just feel so exposed!


But I'll tell you what, the more I've been doing it, the more I've been attracting the friends who appreciate and reflect the same back at me.


It's as simple as just being honest with others, about how I'm really feeling, not putting on a happy face all the time trying to be likable. And doing my work in the world, expressing my gifts (this Blog for example). Just telling the truth, and telling the truth about how I feel about others too. Giving people complements from the heart, letting people know how much I care about them.


We always want life to work in this order: "Okay Universe, bring me some like-hearted friends so I can finally share myself authentically."


And the universe goes: "Actually hunny, you need to share yourself Authentically, then we'll bring you the like-hearted friends who will reciprocate that."


And something else I've noticed is the Universe gives you a lot for a little. So a drop of authentic self expression will deliver a bucketful of support. Then you give just a cup and receive a bathtub full! 


Bottom line though guys is that we're really not meant to do this on our own. The awakening that is occurring on planet earth right now is a group effort, and we're here to share it. 


And in fact, there's something about sharing it with another, our insights, our light, our healing, and our love, that makes it somehow more real, as if expressing it and having it witnessed and received allows the change to become integrated and take root on a deeper level. 


And we have an effect on one another, especially when two people come together both willing to share from that space of authenticity and vulnerability. There's a spiraling sensation that happens, where one person's expression of Truth awakens and expands Truth for the other person, and back and forth it goes, until an even wider space of openness is reached that may have not been possible for each person individually. 


But we have to be willing to go there, to be vulnerable, to be honest and real, and open our heart to another. And be willing to keep opening and communicating through the hard spots too, because the other inherent gift in relationship is that we are mirrors both for the love within us, and for the woundedness within us. 


Usually when we hit those road blocks of "she said that, and I felt hurt..." we close down, and either ignore it but put a wall around our heart when we interact with that person, or we simply cut them out of our lives. 


The gift though if both parties are willing to listen and open in mutual compassion, is to walk through those barriers, and have a healing instead of a breakup. 


And I think the times we are in are calling us to this realization more then ever. Those of us who are on the transformation path are being moved into position to play our part in the larger play of the ascension of consciousness here on planet earth. And we depend on each other to all play our roles on cue, to carry this thing off without a hitch. And really we can't make a mistake....because even what we would judge as a "mistake" is all part of the process too. 


So let's just take a break from being so consumed with our own "character" and look around, realize what we're all doing here, and have some fun.


The Angels let me know today that the Solstice in June coming up will be a mile marker for us, in coming out of some of the heavier energy of deep individual emotional processing, and joining together in community celebration instead. 


So I'm going "Yes! Finally! Party on the earth plane!! Yippee!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I'll bring the hummus!!" 


LOL! So I appreciate you all who are reading this, because you are a part of my heart and community (I like to think that my community is a reflection of my heart) and I love you, and send you blessings for this next phase of the journey. 


Let's play!!


~Jessica


www.EffortlessLivingCoach.com 

Healing poem of the Goddess

Here's a teaching:

Just let Life destroy you. 

Let it tear you down and crush you.

Break your bones, compress you

Into soft warm clay, 

So you can be molded into the shape of God

Again and again and again.

Go limp, and allow

The Creator to create you anew

In each new moment. 

You Have nothing to hold on to,

No form to maintain.

You are simply the formless substance of all Life,

Appearing but for a moment,

As a Blessings,

Laid down upon the Alter

Of the ONE.