Journey to Inner Wisdom

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With summer here, it is time to take a break and recreate. Taking time to replenish our body, mind, and spirit is important and necessary for a healthy life. Enjoy your summer and enjoy listening to Sarah and Crystal's conversation about re-creating ourselves through recreation and leisure.

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In today's episode, we talk about sound, vibration, healing, and sound baths Jordan Scott and Jilda Farias.

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Melissa McCormick was born and raised and still lives in Windsor, Ontario, Canada. At the age of 19, she was returning home from a night out with her friends in Detroit, Michigan, when she became stranded on the freeway just minutes away from the Detroit-Windsor tunnel. She was subsequently robbed at gunpoint, kidnapped and over a terrifying twelve hour period, gang raped repeatedly.

Working closely with the Detroit police, the perpetrators were brought to justice and three of the men remain incarcerated today.

Melissa’s Canadian best-selling book The Queen's Daughterdescribes in detail the assault and the aftermath of being a rape victim.

Melissa is past President of the Windsor and Essex County Sexual Assault Crisis Center (2005-2008), past president of the Windsor Women’s Economic Forum, founding member and past president of Ladies Exclusive Alliance (LEA) and a former Rotarian. She is the recipient of numerous awards and honors for her work in the non-profit sector and is the 2009 Athena Award recipient sponsored by the Windsor and District Chamber of Commerce.

In June 2015, Melissa was awarded an Honorary Doctor of Laws Degree from the University of Windsor and addressed the graduates with her inspiring message at the 103rd Convocation.

At the end of 2005 she closed her successful retail business after 20 years to devote herself to the “Cause” and to represent all the victims who do not yet have the courage to stand up and speak out.

You will learn how Melissa overcame the odds to become a successful mother, entrepreneur and friend.

This story is so compelling that Melissa's book has inspisred the production of the award winning short film Determined now available on DVD. www.emotivefilms.ca

Most recently Melissa celebrated the launch of the highly anticipated sequel to The Queen's Daughter. Thick Skin not only continues her story but it focuses on the aftermath of trauma answering the many questions that victims have asked over the years.

Social Media Links:

https://www.queens-daughter.com/home

https://www.facebook.com/search/top?q=queen%27s%20daughter%20publications%20ltd

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCJnFyGDW0zTnRWgEQGEM81A

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In this episode, I have the pleasure of speaking with guest speaker Vikki MacKinnon. She is an Author, International Speaker,
Intuitive Numerologist, and Life Purpose Coach

Vikki discovered numerology over 40 years ago and as she tell us about her journey, you will learn how it has impacted her life and the lives of those who have chosen to work with her. She has taught numerology as well as lead workshops across Canada and She has also trained numerologists in Japan.

We will be talking about:

How she discovered numerology
∙ How it helped Vikki
∙ What numbers are
∙ What numerology is
∙ No one is ever just one number
∙ No number is inherently good or inherently bad
∙ What we can learn from our name
∙ What we can learn from our date
∙ What is a personal year

Get in contact with Vikki MacKinnon through Facebook Group: https://www.facebook.com/VikkiGotYourNumber/
or contact her at numerology@shaw.ca.

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Today I am talking with Kimberley Banfield about Perception and Perspective Comfort Zone. She has had an amazing life journey Kimberley is a Soulcologist and the founder of Soulcology™. She is an Intuition and Soul Purpose Mentor, teacher and speaker, she guides Entrepreneurs, Explorers and Everyday Women to find the clarity, confidence and courage to listen to their intuition, heal past experiences and find and fulfil their souls purpose. What she loves the most is helping women to make their life a moment that matters™

Facebook Group: The Soulcology Collective -
https://www.facebook.com/groups/thesoulcologycollective

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/kimberley_banfield_/, https://www.instagram.com/soulcology_/

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Jenn Sadai has combined her love of writing with her passion for empowering women into three purposeful series. The Self-esteem Series currently contains three non-fiction stories tackling common issues that affect a woman's self-esteem.

Dark Confessions of an Extraordinary, Ordinary Woman explores the dark consequences of domestic violence, drug use, and depression. Dirty Secrets of the World's Worst Employee addresses bullying and sexual harassment in the workplace. Cottage Cheese Thighs delves into how societal expectations and marketing ploys harm our body image.

The Survivor Series, Her Own Hero and Her Beauty Burns, are action-packed, suspenseful fictional stories proving that women have the power to save themselves.

Her "True Tales" Series unintentionally began with No Kids Required, the true stories of 20 trailblazing women who've chosen not to have children. Women Ready to Rise expanded the series, showcasing 22 inspirational stories of turning tragedies into triumphs.

Jenn Sadai is a proud Canadian, born in Windsor, Ontario, where she resides with her heroic husband and two lovable labs. Jenn can always be reached through the various social media accounts or by email at

https://jennsadai.com/

jennsadai19@gmail.com

https://www.facebook.com/Darkconfessionsofanextraordinaryordinarywoman

https://www.instagram.com/jennsadai/?hl=en

Self Esteem Series: Dark Secrets of an Extraordinary, Ordinary Woman, Dirty Secrets of the world’s worst Employee, Cottage cheese thighs – body shame that is prevalent in our society

We Rise By Lifting One Another: Women Ready to Rise – 22 women, these extraordinary, yet ordinary women rose again and so will you; No Kids Required – 20 women who have chosen to be childfree

The Survivor Series: Her Own Hero – Fiction: Her Beauty Burns - Fiction

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In this episode, we will be talking about Mediation. We will explore the benefits, uses, and types of meditation. The episode will end with a guided Chakra Meditation for clearing and charging your Chakras. Cynthia Ballard is my guest today. She is an intuitive Reiki Empath. She will share some insights, stories and guide us through our meditation. Visit her youtube channel for more Chakra Healing Music, Frequency Healing and Meditation https://bit.ly/3qD1K4Z

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Welcome to A Journey to Inner Wisdom. This is Crystal, Wisdomologist and the host of this Podcast.
The end of August always means the end of summer for me. I loved the beginning of the school year when I was in school and when I was working in an academic setting. I loved and still love getting some new supplies for my desk, a new notebook, some colored pencils. September is also a time for me to review the recent past and set some goals for the fall term.

This summer has been a time of rest and relaxation for me… When my grandchildren spend time with us in the summer, it is pure joy, even if they stretched my energy to its limits! It is a time to focus on them and our relationships.
I have been quiet on social media and just enjoying the abundance of summer.
So, now as fall is upon us, I am reflecting back on the last 6 months of this podcast and thought it would be good to review where I have been and where I am going with it!
If you have been listening in, you will know that I am following the Alphabet on this journey to inner wisdom. And there is method in this madness. In my work with my clients and programs, I always start with awareness, we move to beliefs and then to curiosity, which leads to decision making and decernment…so when I was sitting with these three words, I thought why not just continue…
I spent two months on E. Why? Because this cycle of awareness, beliefs, curiosity, discernment…uncovers emotions…and we often don’t deal well with our emotions…they get pushed down, buried, ignored and they become a source of pain and suffering. They become blocks to growth and awareness.
I also spent time exploring the Enneagram a bit as it is such a wonderful, dynamic tool of growth and wisdom. When I came to F, I wanted to be get physical on this journey so Forest Bathing in the spring took us out into nature and the wisdom of the trees. Gratitude is essential on this journey, and I often forget to be grateful for the abundance in my life. On that note, I want to thank all my wonderful guests over the last six months who have shared their journey and their insights on the journey to inner wisdom.
I then spent time with grief…from a selfish perspective as my niece had died this spring and I was struggling with my own grief process. And then on a practical note H was heart powered coaching and hand analysis, I was Intuition, J was the journey of Devanni, and I missed K because I was taking a break, and you will get K today! I jumped to laughter yoga wit Katherine Kimmens, this was such a therapeutic, informative and energizing activity and last week Money with Jessica Marie.
So my sense is that using the alphabet as my guide, I have been able to follow a system to talk about the journey to inner wisdom…so all this to say that I will continue to use the alphabet for my podcasts…although, I have to say x and z are a bit worrisome!!! But I am trusting my intuition on those and I am sure I will be surprised!
As with any journey, there are many ways to get to where we are going. In this journey to inner wisdom there are many tools and practices, paths and possibilities, and guides and mentors. Some we search for, some we bump into, and some are set down plunk in front of us whether we are looking or not. I will explore some of these tools and practices, paths and possibilities, and interview guides and mentors who may have an influence on your journey. On my own journey, I continue to discover both extraordinary wisdom and, in some ways, even more importantly the ordinary wisdom that is in front of my nose!

We all have a different journey...what may strike one of us may not resonate with someone else. Our task is to be aware and awake in order to notice the invitations that are in front of us.

So today, I invite you to relax and be aware of your different ways of knowing. I am going to talk about the clairs today. So what are the clairs…not eclairs…Clair means clear…so when I say clairvoyant…it means clear seeing.
we have five physical senses. When we use our five physical senses, we filter what we see, hear, touch, feel and taste through our belief systems, through our personality, so it is an interpretation of reality.
Our intutitive senses, often called clairs are different in that they are soul senses and clair means clear…untainted by our perception. So clairvoyant is clear seeing.

When I teach the awareness exercise we begin with the five physical senses …what we see, hear, touch, smell or taste. These senses are connected to our brain which interprets what we are sensing. We then become aware of our emotions, how we react to what we are aware of around us. The next level is tuning into our intuition and imagination…here is where we begin to access the senses of our soul…our clairs!
By DR SANJAY TEOTIA on November 10, 2020, in Practical Spirituality
There is a voice inside you that whispers all day long – and if you listen to this voice, you will know what’s right for you, says DR SANJAY TEOTIA

Intuition is the ability to acquire knowledge without taking recourse to conscious reasoning. It is a process that gives us the ability to know something directly without analytical reasoning, bridging the gap between the conscious and non-conscious parts of our mind and also between instinct and reason. We all need to learn to listen more to our intuition or soul and not to the negative voice of ego and fear, the voices of doom, which is also the voice of our mind.

We are all intuitive and we all have soul senses or clair senses…often times as children when we are experiencing our clair senses, we are told to pay attention, stop daydreaming, pay attention to the task at hand, we learned at a young age to not trust our soul senses, our intuition…but we still have intuition…and we may have to pause to become more aware of it.
Let me first talk about each of the clairs and then I will give you a little exercise that will help you begin to once again access these intuitive gifts.
The first clair that most people think of is clairvoyant…being able to see clearly. You see images either still or like a movie. You may see them in your mind or above your head. You may use words like I see or I am seeing. You may say “this looks right or it doesn’t look right.”
Clair Audience is clear hearing. You may hear whispers, someone’s name, a song. You may find yourself saying I hear you or it sounds like…words that relate to hearing.
Clair Sentience is about feeling. You might say: I feel…You are sensitive to the energy of others and the energy around you. You may get goosebumps or shiver. You feel something is right or wrong.
Clair alience means clear smelling…you can smell odors that aren’t physically present.
Clair gustance means clear tasting…this is when you taste something that isn’t physically present.
These parallel our five phyicical senses. And there is one more..
Clair cognizance is about knowing. You just know things that it seems unusual to know. You may be making a big decision and you wake up in the morning and you just know the answer. There is a certainty about your knowing. You use the words’…I know…
So how can we get in touch with our clairs…our soul senses.

Well, think about daydreaming and what happens to us. We are transported somewhere and we lose track of our physical surroundings. Think of the last time you were daydreaming and what it was like…whether it was in a lecture, meeting, a boring party, waiting for someone to arrive for an appointment…or just sitting out on the deck in the sunshine…
Daydreaming, like night dreaming taps into our soul senses. So a great way to tap into your clairs is to sit and daydream. Try it now, if you are not driving or need to concentrate on something. Multitasking and daydreaming just don’t work!
Sit and begin to think about either a past great vacation or a vacation that you are anticipating. Start to put the story together…let your imagination take over and see where you go and what happens…take your time and spend enough time to really savor the experience.
When you come back…take some time to think about what happened to you in the day dream…did you hear the sounds of the vacation setting, did you see the place, what did you feel…the breeze, the sun, the water, …what did you smell or taste…what did you know about this experience as it unfolded/
You will begin to get in touch with your dominant clair and be able to have more access to it.
If you want to develop your soul senses, your intuition, a mentor or guide would be a wonderful help.
So off you go to explore your clairs…your soul senses. There are many resources on the internet as well as some great books that can also guide you on the journey to your soul senses.

See you next time…as we continue the journey to inner wisdom.

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In this episode, I have the honour to speak with guest speaker Jessica Marie about Money. Jessica Marie has been her own journey in her relationship with money. She now guides women to become empowered in their relationship with money.
Financial Empowerment Coach she facilities a Money Mastery Master Class https://www.facebook.com/jessica.beaton.338 and is CEO Money.Power.Freedom

You took a big first step towards becoming financially empowered so give yourself a pat on the back!
Click to download all the Freebies:

Annual BOSS BUDGET and Monthly BOSS BUDGET
On The Money Tracker
Power Cash Envelopes
Debt Elimination Tracker
Ways to Earn Extra Money
Ways to Lower Your Costs

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Laughter Yoga is a unique form of exercise that was founded in 1995 by Dr. Madan Kataria, a medical doctor from Mumbai, India, where anyone can laugh for no reason without the need for jokes or comedy. Dr. Kataria, and his wife, Madhuri, developed a program that combines laughter as a physical and playful body exercise with yoga in the form of deep yogic breathing (no poses). Scientific research shows that the body does not know the difference between real or fake laughter. So, while the laughter often is initially forced, it soon becomes real due to eye contact and the contagious nature of laughter in a group. What started as one group of 5 people in a park in Mumbai on March 13, 1995, has now grown to become a worldwide phenomenon with more than 8000 clubs in over 100 countries. Laughter Yoga has four active ingredients: laughing, singing, dancing and child-like playfulness. It doesn’t work however, until it is actually used! No special equipment or clothing is needed and it is a great exercise for people of all ages. Keep in mind, 60 seconds of hearty laughter equals 10 minutes on a rowing machine. Laughter Yoga is a high impact cardiovascular workout so drink plenty of water. www.laughyourselfhealthy.com

My mission since taking the leadership training in 2010, the teacher training in 2012 and becoming a LAUGHTER AMBASSADOR OF CANADA, in 2017, is to encourage laughter everywhere I go, every day, with everyone, beginning with the young to those who are young at heart in all walks of life. My goal is to create a world where healthy people come together in harmony and peace, creating a lifetime of happiness for one and for all. My purpose is to lead by example so I can laugh forever in the minds of others.

In life, I am the matriarch of 2 sons, grandmother of 3, holistic practitioner, teacher, singer songwriter, improvisor, gelotologist, online journalist, vloger, lover of life, a story teller with a unique flare for creating anticipation and intrigue and laughter friend to all. I am a speaker – educator and a fashionista with a snazzy & unique fashion sense.

“Every great dream begins with a dreamer. Always remember, you have within you the strength, the patience, and the passion to reach for the stars to change the world.” —Harriet Tubman

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In this episode, I have the pleasure to have Devanni Peters as a guest to talk about "J" in the journey to inner wisdom. "Journey". Davanni was
born in Mexico to a religious, German Mennonite family, and moved to Canada settling in Leamington, Ontario. Her father became the bishop of the church providing a good life for his sixteen children. Her parents were strict and feared their children would get caught up in the material world, forget about God and lose their salvation.

After marriage and two children, the belief system that Devani was taught growing up, and the Mennonite religion, no longer resonated. She was ready for change and began searching outside the community for answers. She found yoga at a fitness center and after months of attending regular classes, she became stronger, more flexible and began to feel a sense of calm.

In 2007 she experienced an awakening that changed the direction of her life. It was an inner transformation that shifted her mind, body, and soul. With the deep desire to follow her heart and continue to learn, she made the decision to leave her marriage, family, and community in the search of freedom and empowerment.

She experienced much pain emotionally, communication was a challenge and it was hard for her to speak her truth.
she blamed others for her life not working. Her addictions and attachments were keeping her in a state of suffering.
She has the desire to help people move through their struggles and suffering so that they can live a free and empowered life. she teaches others to trust their Inner Being and return balance to their physical body with yoga, meditation, breathworks and Ayurvedic Natural Medicine.

Social Media Links:
https://www.devanniyoga.com/
https://www.instagram.com/spirituallifestylistdevanni/

Melissa McCormick: https://www.queens-daughter.com/publishingservices

From Mennonite to Yogi

Learn to live from the inside out.

If you don't speak up for yourself and take charge of your life and your mind, someone else will.

If you wish to change your outside world, your outer condition, you must first look into and purify the inside.

We build strength, power, and courage with practice.

Never give up.

You cant keep doing the same thing and expect different results. The seeds you plant today is what will spring forth tomorrow.

You can't blame others for your life and circumstances anymore.

You can't keep letting your mind, emotions, memories, and other people control you.

You know that there is a power within you that can help guide you to a more fulfilling and joyful life, free and empowered.
In this fascinating autobiography you will learn how one woman found the courage to leave her traditional Mennonite upbringing, her home, and her family in order to find the truth. Devanni’s incredible courage led her to a five-year, personal journey that changed her life forever. Devanni will share the many lessons learned including:

 The purpose of life
 The truth about God and Jesus
 The value of meditation and breathworks
 Yoga and the daily practices
 The power of Karma
 Freedom to follow your intuition
 Knowing that all the answers are within

Devanni explains that her education did not come easily. She attended workshops, read constantly, and spent long periods of time within the disciplined walls of exclusive ashrams to learn the importance of structure, maintaining daily practices, observing with silence, and adhering to the strict rules.

During this exotic journey Devanni discovered how to love deeply, how to stay balanced, how to use her intuition, how to live with truth and how to develop her strong, unquestionable faith in God.

Devanni was inspired and Divinely guided to share her story. She wants to help others move forward, to be authentic and true, to love themselves and to feel honest joy. Is there a longing or discontent in your life?

Are you ready to follow your heart's truth? Live the life you are
destined for and experience more joy and fulfillment, grab Devanni's book.

She will share the transformation that took place in her life. How she went from lack to abundance, from depression to joy, from doubting to
believing. She says "I know if I can do it so can you."

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Today I am talking with Kimberley Banfield who has had an amazing life journey Kimberley is a Soulcologist and the founder of Soulcology™. She is an Intuition and Soul Purpose Mentor, teacher and speaker, she guides Entrepreneurs, Explorers and Everyday Women to find the clarity, confidence and courage to listen to their intuition, heal past experiences and find and fulfil their souls purpose. What she loves the most is helping women to make their life a moment that matters™

“There is no logical way to the discovery of these elemental laws. There is only the way of intuition,
which is helped by a feeling for the order lying behind the appearance.” Albert Einstein

Link for the Real-Life Reasons You Don't Listen to Your Intuition; free
resource: https://colossal-designer-5509.ck.page/8-real-life-reasons-resource

Tune-In Tools™ Guidebook: https://colossal-designer-5509.ck.page/products/5-tune-in-tools-
guidebook

The Intuitive Woman Program™: soulcology.teachable.com/p/the-intuitive-woman-program-self-
paced

Facebook Group: The Soulcology Collective -
https://www.facebook.com/groups/thesoulcologycollective

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/kimberley_banfield_/, https://www.instagram.com/soulcology_/

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In this episode, we have the honour of having guest speaker Rosemary Heenan and we'll talk about the letter "H" in the journey to inner wisdom. Heart Centred Coaching and Hand Analysis.

Rosemary studied with the late Debbie Ford, New York Times best-selling author of The Dark Side of the Lightchasers, including coaching training through her institute. She share that the Shadow work made a profound difference for Rosemary. She learned how to be authentic and true to herself.

“To have your hands read is to stare deep into the truth mirror and to stand revealed before your very eyes. A hand reading shows you who you are today and who you can be at your very best.” – Richard Unger, Director of International Institute of Hand Analysis

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In this episode, we are talking about the G of the ABC's of Awareness. "Grief". I have the honour of having Sam Lucier as a guest. She has been working with groups and individuals for the last 25 years focusing on the journey of grief and grieving. She is a co-founder of the South Okanagan Loss Society. Tune in to learn more about the tools and the role grief plays journey to inner wisdom.

The Human soul doesn’t want to be advised or fixed or saved. It simply wants to be witnessed as it is Parker Palmer

Social Media Links:

https://www.solspenticton.com/ South Okanagan Loss Society for Resources Speaking Grief documentary https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0mELerlSakg

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In this episode, I have the honour of having Diane Bertolin as a guest talking about the power of Gratitude. She is a Mortgage broker by day and blogger by night!

Connect with her at: https://www.instagram.com/birthofbella1967/?hl=en
https://vaginanista.com/ menopause, spirituality, politics, reviews, recipes
https://www.facebook.com/diane.bertolin

Overview: https://positivepsychology.com/benefits-of-gratitude/
Robert Emmons (2010), the preeminent scholar in this field, makes the argument that gratitude allows a person
to:
· celebrate the present
· block toxic emotions (envy, resentment, regret, depression)
· be more stress-resilient, and
· strengthen social ties and self-worth.

Gratitude research is on-going by experts worldwide!

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Patty has been learning from nature for as long as she can remember. For the past 23 years, she'd lived on 12 acres of mature forest land. Living harmoniously with nature, Patty has learned how each season changes in the forest, as we change in our lives as well.

Anticipation of springs potential, a summer full of growth, letting go in the fall of what is ready to move, and a winter engaged with rest and rejuvenation.

Working with healing horses, she carries the lessons they have shared with her. These beautiful animals are energy in the web of life. Once we can tap into this space we are able to see and feel it everywhere.

Reiki in Nature is a beautiful coming together of healing energies. Nature Bathing of the Senses is a full sensory immersion in the beauty and wonder of nature. By slowing to the pulse and rhythm of nature, we listen to the whispers of our own intuition and discover a little more balance in life. Nature takes our breath away and breathes new life into us.

Nature Guide – Lifetime Experience
USUI Reiki Master – Canadian Reiki Association
USUI Reiki Master Teacher – Truthful Healings, Windsor
Equine Guided Educator, Cert. – Skyhorse Equine Guided Education, Californi

Patty Soucie Social Media Links:

https://www.facebook.com/patty.soucie

Reiki in the Woods and Forest Bathing the Senses

Works at Estate of Health in Kingsville, Ontario Canada

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Podcast - The Emotion Code Drl. Bradley Nelson

Welcome to A Journey to Inner Wisdom. I am Crystal Kotow-Sullivan, Wisdomologist and the host of this Podcast. In this podcast, I explore Wisdom particularly, the tools, practices, and guides that assist and nurture us on the journey to our own inner wisdom.

As with any journey, there are many ways to get to where we are going. In this journey to inner wisdom, there are many tools and practices, paths and possibilities, and guides and mentors that/who we can avail for this journey. Some we search for, some we bump into, and some are set down plunk in front of us. I will explore some of these tools and practices, paths and possibilities, and interview guides and mentors who may have an influence on your journey.

I use the word tools because in whatever we do we have some tools - carpenters have tools, chefs have tools, artists have tools, teachers have tools...maybe not in a box but in a file! So too, there are tools for this journey.

We all have a different journey...what may strike one of us may not resonate with someone else. Our task is to be aware and awake in order to notice when it is our time to embrace what/who is being placed in our path.

It is not always easy to know where to start! I tend to start my workshops and programs with Awareness, Beliefs, and Curiosity…so, I thought I should just continue with the ABCs of Wisdom…It may sound like a simplistic way to explore Wisdom...but anyway that we come at wisdom, Wisdom itself will be revealed as needed. And so I have continued with Discernment, Emotional Freedom Technique or tapping, The the Enneagram, And today The Emotion Code.

I choose each topic because it can either illuminate our path on our journey or it is a tool or practice that we can use along the journey.

Today I am doing something a little different. I recently read The Emotion Code by Dr. Bradley Nelson...in one day! I was so taken by his approach and the way he wrote about trapped emotions, that I couldn't put the book down. so I am going to do a book report today.

The Emotion Code methods and EFT are forms of energy work that combine the mind, the body, and its energy field to release emotions and stress that maybe causing discomfort physically, mentally and/or spiritually.

Bradley's book was first published in 2007 and a new publication was released in 2019 with a forward by Tony Robbins.

The Forward, Acknowledgments, and Introduction give you a good understanding of who Bradley Nelson is and the story of his healing journey for himself, his family, and his patients.

Throughout the book you will find more insights into who his is and what he is about...it is a good story.

Part 1 explores Trapped Emotions...what are they? How they get trapped, and how do trapped emotions impact our health and wellbeing. He defines trapped emotions as actually consisting of well-defined energies that have shape and form. Although they are not visible they are real.

How do they get trapped?

First, our body generates the emotional vibration, and then we begin to feel the emotion and any thoughts or physical sensations that come along with it - knot in out stomach, constriction/expansion in our chest, dry mouth, etc. We choose to let the emotion go and we move on, after a few seconds to several minutes.

When there is an interruption to this process, the emotion may get stuck or trapped in our body. The interruption may be a simple fright of someone unexpectedly walking around a corner or it could be more traumatic in nature...an accident, a fall, an argument, etc.

We are then unable to release the emotion and it is stuck in our body rather than being released. These are the trapped emotions that Nelson is talking about.

Throughout the book, Nelson relates stories of his patients as well as sighting testimonials about the results of using the Emotion Code to release these trapped emotions. They are interesting and engaging. Nelson uses muscle testing as a tool to access our subconscious mind and the trapped emotions that reside there. He has created an Emotion Code Chart that helps to isolate the name of/ kind of trapped emotion that is being identified - all with muscle testing. Later in the book he actually goes through different methods of muscle testing that can be used on oneself or with someone else. Disclaimer...this is a book review only, I am not a medical professional. If you have any type of ailment, be sure to consult a medical professional.

Different physical effects of trapped emotions are discussed such as phobias, PTSD, night terrors even some physical injuries like knee and shoulder pain. In part 2 of the book he explores the energetic world and the realization that quantum theory shows we are all energetically connected. He further explains his introduction to the use of magnets in the release of trapped emotions. This section contains more theoretical information, which is interesting, but the practical section is part 3 of the book. So you may want to skip this part and go right to part three unless you are interested and enjoy the science behind his work...I do!

In part 3 The steps to releasing trapped emotions are laid out in detail, including as I said different ways to muscle test, the questions to ask about trapped emotions, how to identify exactly what emotion is being targeted and then the process of releasing the trapped emotion.

There are 10 different muscle testing techniques that he explains quite effectively. As well as the possibility to using a pendulum to test for trapped emotions. Personally the sway test works best for me. I trust it the most of all the other muscle testing. The illustrations were very helpful. Bottom line...

In it all it is about trusting your intuition.

The steps to releasing the trapped emotions are laid out clearly and concisely. with a flowchart to assist you in the process of releasing trapped emotions. I found the steps easy to follow and the flowchart was a very useful as I was identifying my trapped emotions. It is important to realize that we can only release one trapped emotion at at time...so set aside some time to do this to go through the steps.

Chapter 7 was very interesting for me as Nelson talks about inherited or intergenerational trapped emotions. We understand more about intergenerational trauma and its treatment, thanks to people like Gabor Mate. We may not even be aware of carrying intergenerational trapped emotions so Nelson adds a question when it is not clear where the trapped emotion falls on his chart. He will ask "Is this an inherited trapped emotion? Our subconscious mind will react and recognize this more specific question when using the chart.

When The emotion is clearly identified, the steps to release the trapped emotion are the same.

I love Chapter 8 "The walls around our hearts"

In his paper written in 2003, J. Andrew Armour, University of Montreal, states:

"It is only recently that the neurocardiological aspects of heart disease have been considered anew.2, 4, 13, 14 The reemergence of neurocardiology, as the field is now called, has been driven by an increased amount of evidence demonstrating that complex and synergistic interactions occur between neurons in the heart and those in the brain."

He further states that "The fact that the heart effectively possesses its own “little brain” has major implications with respect to neuronal interactions involved in regulating cardiac function.

With this new understanding of our heart brain or "little brain" as it is sometimes called having some 40,000 neurons of its own, it begins to make more sense when we talk about our heart building a wall, just as our brain may do the same thing to protect ourselves from pain and suffering by putting up defense mechanisms. By the way our head brain has an average of 86 billion neurons!!!!

Now if we talk about the electromagnetic energy of the brain and the heart...according to an article in Psychology today, November 2020:

With an electrical component about 60 times greater and an electromagnetic energy field 5000 times greater than the brain’s, the heart has a significant influence on the body down to the cellular level." This is the energetic level that is so powerful.This smart 'small brain" also protects us from pain and suffering by creating a wall. the Heart is a powerful organ.

Back to the Emotion Code...Nelson gives a new script, not so different from the first one but will some added questions about the presence of the heart wall and how to get past it to the trapped emotions. Again, great directions in his steps and questions as well as the flow chart.

Nelson then talks about proxy distance healing and working with animals. If any of you have animals you will know how animals are affected by loss and absence whether of people or their animal friends. He has some great stories about both as well as guidelines for the steps to take with each.

On some level we all know that unresolved or trapped emotions cause us pain and suffering...sometimes we are not even aware of the heaviness that may exist in our lives. Trapped emotions can take the spark away from our lives...we may blame it on stress, overwork, fatigue etc etc...but becoming aware of the underlying trapped emotions and then releasing them, can free us to live fuller lives, open the space for transformation, have a better relationship with our emotions and realize all emotions are messengers that we need to pay attention to...there are many ways that our emotions can become trapped...interruptions, very strong emotions, traumatic interruptions. It all goes back to awareness and curiosity...

I think this book is a very interesting book, worth a read, even if you don't practice the methodology.

If you feel you do have trapped emotions that are impeding your life journey, consider seeking professional help and care.

There are many healing modalities that can help you release trapped emotions besides Nelson's methods. And thanks to our understanding of energy, there are many energy workers who can shift your energy and free those trapped emotions.

I was recently participated in a Sound Bath evening and it was amazing to experience the energy shift that occurred...but that is another podcast!

I hope you will join me next time when I chat with Patty Soucie about Forest Bathing. She will take you on a Forest Bathing journey as well. Until next time...

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Today I have the pleasure to have Lois Campbell with me to talk about her experience with Enneagram and how she has used it in both her works and her life and it's impact on both.

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Welcome to a Journey to Inner Wisdom Podcast. I am Crystal Kotow-Sullivan, your host. I am a wisdomologist and guide. Today I am going to talk about the Enneagram. If you have seen me recently on Facebook or looking at my website you will see that I have been talking about the Enneagram and am in the middle of a 10-week Enneagram Program. But Before I tell you about the Enneagram, Let me set a context as to why I am so passionate about using the Enneagram as a tool on a journey to inner Wisdom.

Over the years in my personal growth and development as well as In my work as a guide, coach, and educator I have read, heard, and encountered these phrases..." we sleep through our lives, when we are awake, we can discover our true essence, we are like zombies walking, working, doing our lives. We are simply unconscious of who we are and why we are here.

Someone recently asked me, what does that mean...I am awake...I know what I am up to...Sure we know what we are doing, and where we are going...but who are we really? We come into this world of time and space and inhabit a human body, then we develop a personality that is our persona or mask to protect ourselves...so who are we under the persona? Why do we need to protect ourselves? We develop our personality from early childhood as we come to certain conclusions about our environment. These conclusions constitute our belief system about ourselves, our caregivers, the world around us.

Our personality gets us through life but we forget who we really are under this mask, we are asleep to our true self, our essence.
If you think back to your early childhood, you may remember things when you felt and experienced your true self - happy, free, connected, joyful, adventurous, and more. But kids are vulnerable and sometimes come to mistaken conclusions about what is happening around them. From their fears and hurts, they create their mask, their persona, their personality. This personality is to protect them from the harshness of the world around them. And we all do a damn good job of creating our personality so that we can find our way in our world. But in the process amnesia sets in and we forget who we really are.

How, then do we rediscover our essence, our true self? How do we get behind the mask?

What we often do is try to figure out how to work with our personality. We read self-help books, we go to therapy, we journal and notice our habits and patterns. This is all good and necessary work. We can figure out how to work with our personality and make some changes.

The thing is that we are still working with our personality and may not have gotten to the beliefs behind what made our personality what it is in the first place.

Getting to those beliefs, private perceptions and patterns will take us down a different path. We will begin to go behind the mask and start to wake up to our true essence. Have you ever wondered why the self-help industry is so large - or that self-help books continue to be best sellers after decades and thousands of books being published? We long to be known...to ourselves and to others. Our essence, our soul is pushing us to go behind the mask of our personality and discover our true self.

And there are different ways to do that... for some people reading a book can wake them up - and life will no longer be the same. that has happened to me numerous times over my life. Authors like Claudia Black, Harville Hendrix, Carolyn Myss, Jean Houston, have impacted and changed my course in life. For some people, it is literature or fiction that can transform them.

For other people, it may be a conference. I was once listening to Sharon Wegshieder Cruse at an Adult Children of Alcoholics conference and after 30 minutes she said something and I had to leave to take care of something critical in my life...it was a life-transforming moment. I was never the same person after that moment of clarity.

For some people, it is working with a coach, whether a life coach, business coach, soul coach or spiritual coach. or working with a therapist or counsellor. Over the years I have worked with several therapists and spiritual directors and presently with a soul coach. Each experience took me deeper into who I am. Working with an objective professional opened my mind, heart and soul to new perspectives about myself and the world.

When I worked on my MA in counselling psychology, part of our requirement was to go to an Adlerian therapist. This was amazing as my underlying beliefs became clear to me and I was able to create new beliefs that were more supportive of my heart's desires.

A workshop, a retreat, a program, a class, all have the potential to wake us up if we are open to waking up! Just as meditation, journaling, yoga, travel, art, music, etc., etc. I think deep down we long to know our true self and we are always looking for ways to wake up.

The universe provides us with endless opportunities to wake up. If we pay attention.

The enneagram is one of those tools that can wake us up - generally, someone who wants to know more is already waking up and searching for a way to become more fully aware.I have been working with, reading about, using, practicing with, playing with, researching the enneagram off and on for over 30 years. It is such a dynamic tool, that I continue to learn and deepen my learning about how effective it is in our awakening process.

When my children were just entering their teenage years, we did a multi-family enneagram weekend. There were 7 parents and 7 kids between 9 and 15. As a community, we continued our conversations about how the enneagram helped us understand ourselves and our children and vice versa. Even after 25 years we sometimes relate to one another in an enneagram conversation!

So what is the enneagram? The enneagram is an ancient tool of wisdom. Some of the ancient Mystery Schools of Greece and Mesopotamia mention the enneagram. There is also evidence that the enneagram was part of the Sufi tradition. It is also rooted in mathematical laws and patterns. There are nine stopping points on the enneagram circle...by the way, ennea means 9 in greek. Each of the points is related to other points on the circle and we can learn from each of the ennea points. We gravitate to one of the ennea points but are influenced by other points depending on whether we are open to growth or we are regressing and hiding out.

Some people use the enneagram only on a surface level as a psychological tool to understand personality types much like the Myers Briggs Type Indicator.

For me, the real richness of the enneagram is to take it to a deeper level where we begin to look at

why I developed my particular persona in the first place
What are my blind spots
how to recognize when I am living unconsciously
how do I wake up and discover my true essence in my ennea point
What can I learn from the other spaces around the circle?
How do I continue to live my authentic self without judging my personality/persona/mask

Right now I am nearing the end of my 10-week Enneagram program. Let me walk you through how we are exploring each of the eanna spaces.

The overall approach is the Awareness, Beliefs and Curiosity Cycle. We begin exploring each Ennea space with Awareness -What is the centre of knowing for each ennea space...is it body, heart or mind?

What is the perspective of the ennea space?

What is the focus of attention of each ennea point?

We then begin to look at Beliefs - these are recognized as the patterns that we engage in in our lives, the blindspots - what we don't know that we don't know, and the pain or passion of the ennea space.

As we move from beliefs to curiosity, we begin to explore how the movement of growth for the ennea space, both in the wings of the space and the lines of growth. We can learn from each ennea space, but there are some spaces that are more connected to our own space.

This is done in a stance of curiosity as it leaves us open to possibility and to growth. When we judge our behaviours, blindspots and shadow, we shut outselves off. Our brain shuts down as we have made a conclusion. Our brain loves conclusions because it means the work is done! so Curiosity is essential for the path to transformation.

We then look at how we would show up in the world when we move from our shadow self to the high side. We discover our superpower, and are able to get in touch with our deepest desires. We are waking up. The enneagram can continue to reawaken and deepen our sense of our true self. It is like a spiral...certainly not linear!

When My son had a psychotic break 20 years ago, I went to sleep, I did not want to feel the pain and loss. Every so often I would surface and wake up but the pain was intense. As an ennea 7, I avoid pain and when I do, I miss out on a lot of life. I worked hard over those years to leave guilt behind, to let my son lead his own life to make his own choices...but it was painful when he would not choose the healthy path.

With the wisdom of the enneagram, I know that my centre of intelligence is my mind. And I am Claircognizant which also keeps me in my head. I am comfortable with my body/gut intelligence but I have paid less attention to my heart in my life. So, that is an area of growth for me at this time in my life.

So why do I tell you this? Because The enneagram has been a tool of growth and healing for me. It has helped me face my shadow and challenges me to stay awake and be true to my essence. Perhaps it could be a tool that will guide you on your journey as well. There are many books and websites that are available to learn about the enneagram. I recommend a book called "The Enneagram Made Easy" by Renee Baron & Elizabeth Wagele

It is a good place to start if you are interested in knowing more.

I hope you will join me again. I will be reviewing Bradley Nelson's book "The Emotion Code" as I continue with the E of the ABCs of Wisdom. Also, I will do another episode on the enneagram with a colleague and good friend who has also been using the enneagram for many years as a Coach and consultant.

Until next time...enjoy the journey

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Welcome to A Journey to Inner Wisdom. I am Crystal Kotow-Sullivan and I am a Wisdomologist. In this podcast I will be covering the ABCs if the journey.

Hi everyone, welcome to Journey to Inner Wisdom. Today I am going to talk about EFT – Emotional Freedom Technique – E in the Wisdom alphabet! You may know EFT Simply as tapping.

I have been using Tapping myself and with my clients for over 30 years, as well as worked with a practitioner to get at some deeper shifts about 10 years ago.

I love Tapping because it is easy to learn and use. I can teach my clients how to tap and they can use it on their own.

I often use it when I am driving and I get angry or frustrated with other drivers. I can tap at the stop light! Over time you will find that some tapping points work better for you than others.

For those who are not familiar with EFT, it evolved first from Applied Kinesiology (1960s) which is based on muscle testing. In the 1980s, Roger Callahan used a diagnostic procedure using muscle testing along clients tapping on acupressure points which he paired with exposure therapy to develop Thought Field Therapy. Gary Craig, in the 1990s, dispensed with the muscle testing and used 13 meridian end points. This then developed into EFT which can be learned and used by anyone.

It is based on acupuncture points on our body. Acupuncture has been around for over 2500 years and it is based on the energy flow in the meridians of our body. Typically, acupuncture is applied with needles, but we also know that if we apply pressure to certain points we can get similar results. Both acupuncture and acupressure are based on the energy flow through the meridians in our bodies. When these meridians are blocked, we can become ill. There are 12 meridians running in our body according to Chinese medicine.

Tapping is based on 9 energy points found at the end of these meridians. I am going to walk you through an EFT exercise today so you can learn these points.

When Gary Craig begin using and teaching EFT, it seemed like magic. It worked so well and so quickly it was like snake oil! Over the last 50 years, there have been over 51 peer reviewed papers that report of investigate the clinical outcomes of EFT. It is now considered an evidence-based treatment.

So then how does it work?

There are three reasons that EFT works according to Church in the EFT Manual:

First, EFT reduces stress.

Second, EFT diminishes the intensity of emotional trauma, and

Third, EFT modifies the way the brain processes emotional information.

We all know about stress. When we are stressed our bodies do not function at optimal level. When we reduce stress, all of our systems – circulation, respiration, digestion and every other system works better! Circumstances may not change but when we have made our resources available because we are calm, we improve our functioning abilities. This is why EFT works with such a variety of aliments and complaints.

With recent discoveries about brain plasiticity we also know that once we begin to rewire our neural pathways and change how we think.

If we are working with a traumatic memory, the memory does not go away, but our emotional reaction to that memory shifts and changes.

Tapping can be used with our emotions, physical ailments and performance. Today in order to teach you the process, I am going to use affirmations. Sometimes affirmations get blocked by our past memories without even knowing it! There are many resources available for learning EFT. If you are interested, I would recommend Nick Ortner’s site. He is the author of The Tapping Solution. He has some great resources on his website as well as a Podcast and an app for doing EFT.

Napoleon Hill in his classic book, Think and grow Rich, stated that when we are in a heightened state of awareness, speaking our affirmations becomes even more effective…our body, mind and spirit are primed to take on the affirmations with little or no resistance from our inner voice.

Affirmations when practiced, impact our neuropathways and can shift our perception and belief system.

So today I am going to teach you the Tapping process with the nine points. We will go through the points several times before we actually do the Tapping. We will explore and create our own affirmations to use during the tapping Session.

So let’s go…

Emotional Freedom Technique – Tapping

Now, you can’t see me so I will explain these points as clearly as I can…Let’s locate them first before we start…

Now lets go through the sequence. Take your two fingers and tap on these points. Some people use both hands, I like using just one hand and you can use which ever hand is your dominant hand.

Side of the Hand Karate Chop - take two fingers as if you are pointing to something. Take them and tap them against the side or your palm…not on your palm but the narrow side under your little finger…tap and repeat your affirmation three times as you tap.
Top of the Head - TAP
Start of Eyebrow - TAP
Outer edge of Eye – on the bone - TAP
Under the Eye – on the bone under the pupil - TAP
Under the Nose - TAP
Between lower lip and chin - TAP
Collarbone point- Find the notch of your collar bones, move 2cm down, now 2 cm out…this is the tapping point - TAP
Arm point – 4 inches below the arm pit – TAP
END AGAIN WITH THE KARATE CHOP

Affirmations

You may have a favourite affirmation already. If not here are some examples that you could use.

Remember,

Begin with ‘I am…”
Use the present tense.
Affirm what you want…not what you don’t want!
Keep it brief.
Be specific. I am driving my new, navy blue Mercedes C-class Cabriolet.
Include an action word and end it in -ing.
Make it about you not others.
You could also add, ‘…or something (someone) better.”

Some examples from Jack Canfield, Shakti Gawain, Zig Ziglar

I am constantly aware that my world today is full of abundance and opportunity
I follow my heart and feel joyful because I am doing what I was born to do.
I am calmly expanding my comfort zone to include everything I want to be, do and have.
I am acting in alignment with my true life purpose.
I am now attuned to my higher purpose and my life is unfolding exactly as it needs to.
I am intelligent, competent, persistent and creative.
I am enough.
I am an open channel to creative energy.
I accept all aspects of my internal weather and learn from the changing climate.
I am confident in my ability to___________.
I listen to my intuition and my inner guide.
I give myself the care and attention I deserve.

First, Rate your belief level of your affirmation…jot that down or hold it in your mind…0, not at all, 10 unwavering belief

Let’s do some Tapping

State your affirmation I am going to say mine out loud:

I am calmly expanding my comfort zone to include everything I want to be, do and have.

Side of the Hand BEGIN WITH AFFIRMATION
Top of the Head ALL OR PART OF AFFIRMATION
Start of Eyebrow ALL OR PART OF AFFIRMATION
Outer edge of Eye – on the bone ALL OR PART OF AFFIRMATION
Under the Eye – on the bone under the pupil ALL OR PART OF AFFIRMATION
Under the Nose ALL OR PART OF AFFIRMATION
Between lower lip and chin ALL OR PART OF AFFIRMATION
Collarbone point- Find the notch of your collar bones, move 2cm down, now 2 cm out…this is the tapping point ALL OR PART OF AFFIRMATION
Arm point – 4 inches below the arm pit, for women this is where your bra sits ALL OR PART OF AFFIRMATION

Back to the Karate Chop and the full affirmation.

Do this with your morning mediation and take some time to journal as well. You will begin to notice patterns and when we are aware of patterns we have choices about how we are being.

Church in the EFT Manual stats that EFT breaks our habit of being ourselves. I am not sure if he said it first or Joe Dispenza! Dispenza’a book Breaking the Habit of Being Yourself is another resource, though not about EFT is about changing the neural pathways and the way we experience and engage in the now.

Try this when you are feeling stressed, if you need a boost of energy, if you have a hard time falling asleep, or need to calm your mind. As you do more research, you will find that EFT can be used in many areas of our lives -

If you are interested in working with emotions or physical issues, I would encourage you to seek out a professional who works with EFT. Otherwise, you can use it on your own.

Thanks for joining me today. I hope you join me again in two weeks when I talk about the Enneagram.

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Welcome to A Journey to Inner Wisdom. I am Crystal Kotow-Sullivan and your host of this Podcast. I am a Wisdomologist and I will be exploring Wisdom and the journey to our own inner wisdom.

As with any journey, there are many ways to get to where we are going. In this journey there are many tools available to guide us on the journey as well as people who will guide and mentor us.

I am going to talk about the ABCs of a Journey to Inner Wisdom…Awareness, Beliefs and Balance, Curiosity and Creativity, Discernment and decisions, the Enneagram and energy centres, Focus, Flow, and Flourish and Gratitude, Generosity and grace. At this moment it is the ABCDEFGs of a Journey to Inner Wisdom. I will get the rest of the alphabet with time!

From time to time, I will invite guests to join the conversation and share their journeys and the tools they use and guides who have journeyed with them. And you will hear about my own on-going journey.

I hope you will join me on this adventure.

Discernment and Decision Making

Welcome to this episode of a journey to inner wisdom. I started my podcasts with wisdom and transitions and then went into the ABCs of the journey…awareness, beliefs and curiosity/creativity and today I will talk about discernment and decision making…so far I have been able to follow the ABCs with the little diversion into transitions…but then when we are in transition whether emotionally, physically, spiritually, or mentally…it is usually the time we are seeking to tap into our inner wisdom.

So often we look for answers outside of ourselves and make decisions on what society, family or friends expect of us. Living from other people’s expectations is part of the conditioning that we experience as human beings…it adds a layer to our limiting beliefs.

When we find ourselves unsettled in our work or relationships, it is often because we are there to satisfy someone else’s expectations.

A journey to inner wisdom is about tapping into your expectations, your desires and de-conditioning your mind and beliefs.

As we gain clarity about what we truly desire, we begin to make decisions and trust our intuition and instincts. We begin to trust our inner knowing.

We make a multitude of decisions every day. Some are simple and unconscious, like getting out of bed, brushing our teeth, heading to the gym. Some are more complicated…what to wear… although my pandemic wardrobe has been pretty basic, so my daily decisions aren’t that complicated!!! I recently went out to a small gathering and it was a big deal to make a decision about what to wear!! Seriously, though, then there are those life changing decisions like work, where to live, relationships, kids or not kids, etc. How do we make those decisions?

First, we need to be awake and aware, we need to be clear about how our beliefs could impact our decision making and finally in the process of making a decision we need to be curious.

Most of us when making a decision will list the pros and cons of whatever it is that we are deciding upon. This is a good way to clarify what we want and don‘t want.

I want to explore a tool of discernment that gives us even more information about the decision at hand.

As always, let’s look at the words: decision and discernment …

The Merriam-Webster dictionary:

Decide:

: to make a final choice or judgment about

: to select as a course of action

: to infer on the basis of evidence

decide (v.)

late 14c., "to settle a dispute, determine a controversy," from Old French decider, from Latin decidere "to decide, determine," literally "to cut off," from de "off" (see de-) + caedere "to cut" (from PIE root kae-id-* "to strike"). For Latin vowel change, see acquisition. Sense is of resolving difficulties "at a stroke." Meaning "to make up one's mind" is attested from 1830. Related: Decided; deciding.

Decision

: a choice that you make about something after thinking about it : the result of deciding

decision (n.)

mid-15c., "act of deciding," from Old French décision (14c.), from Latin decisionem (nominative decisio) "a decision, settlement, agreement," noun of action from past-participle stem of decidere "to decide, determine," literally "to cut off," from de "off" (see de-) + caedere "to cut" (from PIE root *kae-id- "to strike").

Meaning "final judgment or opinion in a case" is from 1550s. Meaning "quality of being decided in character, ability to make prompt determinations" is from 1781; sense of "a resolution, a fixing of purpose" is by 1886. Decision-making (adjective) is recorded by 1946.

Discern:

: to detect with the eyes

: to detect with senses other than vision

: to come to know or recognize mentally

Discernment

: the quality of being able to grasp and comprehend what is obscure

: skill in discerning

: an act of perceiving or discerning something

Origins of discern

"perceive or recognize the difference or distinction between (two or more things);" also "distinguish (an object) with the eyes, see distinctly, behold;" also "perceive rationally, understand;" late 14c., from Old French discerner (13c.) "distinguish (between), separate" (by sifting), and directly from Latin discernere "to separate, set apart, divide, distribute; distinguish, perceive," from dis- "off, away" (see dis-) + cernere "distinguish, separate, sift" (from PIE root krei- "to sieve," thus "discriminate, distinguish"). Related: Discerned*; discerning**.

Discern then could mean to sift away…what it is that is not important or separate the differences in what we see.

Just an aside, as to why I look at the meaning of words and where they come from. The original meanings of words were made up by someone. Overtime we change the meaning of words. Cool which means the temperature is between warm and cold can also mean a person is somewhat detached. We also use cool to describe certain colors, or that someone is hip! Well what about hip!!! We could look at that word as well.

I would like you to start noticing how you use words and what they really mean…are there some words that mean something else to you? Can we create new meanings for ourselves…so now you know why I am paying such attention to words?

Back to discernment…When we use discernment to make our decisions, we are sifting through differences, and distinctions that can guide us in our final decision. But how do we go about this?

I am going to suggest that there is another way go about discerning your options. It is the four-column method of discernment.

I learned this years ago and it has proven to be a valuable tool when I am making decisions. The process brings us into the meta awareness that I talked about in a previous podcast.

So, let me take you through the steps of a four-column discernment.

First, identify the decision to be made. Make it practical, real, be sure it is your decision to make, and that you can obtain the necessary information about the situation.

Second, formulate a statement about the decision to be made and then create a contrary statement as well. For example: I will move to Paris. I will not move to Paris. Your statement cannot include or, or if in it.

Third, set up four columns in your journal or on a piece of paper. Above the first two columns write your statement. I will move to Paris. And pros and cons in each of those first two columns. Now write the contrary statement about the third and fourth columns with pros and cons again in those two columns. Now I have my two statements on my chart. I will move to Paris is above column one and two and pros and cons respectively. I will not move to Paris is above column three and four and pros and cons respectively.

Fourth, comes the fun. Brainstorm and fill in the four columns. The first two are relatively easy and what we are used to doing when we make decisions. The second two may seem redundant until we come to the double negative! Cons for I won’t move to Paris! You really have to think about this…I know I do.

Let me give you an image of what this might be like. Your statement and the pros and cons are like you walking down your street and you are recognizing all the usual landmarks. The contrary statement is like walking back…same landmarks but a different perspective. You will see something that was not in view from the other direction.

Let me walk you through an example…

I am considering moving to Paris for part of the year, but it is not clear whether this is the right decision at this point in time. First, I will create my two statements, very simply “I will move to Paris”, “I will not move to Paris.”

Let me walk you through my statements. I’ll take my first statement and do the pros and cons as follows…

See how the last column revealed something that could not have come up in the first two or even three. For me what is revealing is the regret!

I have always found the last column the most interesting and the most useful.

Last step, which is key to the whole process. This is where you get out of your head/your mind and begin to trust your intuition and inner knowing.

Over the next three days to a week, I will live as if I am going to move to Paris. I notice how I am feeling, what is happening around me, how is my intuition working, what is my energy like…I will journal each day to notice patterns.

Then, over the following three days to a week, I will live as if I am not going to move to Paris. I will again, notice how I am feeling, what is happening around me, how is my intuition working, what is my energy like…I will journal each day to notice patterns.

After the time spend living in the reality of each statement, I will compare my journal entries.

In which time was I inspired, energetic, joyful, most myself…that is the decision my inner being is directing me toward.

Having a guide who work with you during this process is often a good idea. I have also used this method within a group of trusted friends.

Following these steps will lead you to a decision that comes from your heart and not from the expectations of others or from your private logic. Be sure you take a stance of curiosity. There is no room for judgement here, another reason to work with a guide who will call you back to curiosity!

Sometimes a decision is clear, you know right away in your body, this is it.

A friend recently was buying a house and the moment she walked in she knew it was right. Sometimes we are unsure and then the four column is a helpful tool.

Going through the four-column discernment to make decisions also helps us to carry out the task with more calmness and awareness.

The next time you have a decision to make and you are uncertain work with the four-column discernment process. Practice on some smaller decisions so that when the larger transition decisions come up you will be comfortable with the process. It is a great way to develop and trust your intuition as well.

Thanks for joining me today. See you next time on a journey to inner wisdom.

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This episode may seem repetitious to you…and we often don’t like repetition. That is probably because the word repeat has been associated with repeating work in school when we didn’t get it! It doesn’t carry a very pleasing meaning. However, if we look more closely at the work repeat, I think it will make sense why I am repeating and not just reviewing my last episodes.

Repeat comes from the prefix Re- meaning ‘go back’, and ‘peat’ from the Latin “petere” which means ‘to seek’. When we repeat something, the purpose is to go back and seek or look for something that we may have missed or not noticed the first time through. When I teach the Awareness Exercise, there is a lot of repetition because as we enter into different levels of awareness by using our senses, our energy centers, our intuition, our memory and imagination, we will discover new and different perspectives.

Review, another word that education may have muddied for us, needs some attention. WE were told to review your work for the exam or the mid-term. We weren’t always told why it was a good idea to sharpen the neural pathways of learning the material, we just did it because the teacher said or not!

Again, ‘re-‘ is about going back and view is about seeing.

Both are beneficial to learning and as we now know when we review, we are reinforcing our neural pathways and anchoring our learning.

Today, I will use the word repeat because I want you to go back and seek…another word for seek is search…I want you to search for new meanings and new insights to your understanding of awareness and beliefs and perspectives.

Difference between repeat and review: Review is to look back and repeat is to about going back to seek…

1520s, "inspect, examine," from view (n.). From 1765 as "to regard in a certain way;" from 1935 as "to watch television." Related: Viewed; viewing.

early 15c., "formal inspection or survey" (of land); mid-15c., "visual perception," from Anglo-French vewe "view," Old French veue "light, brightness; look, appearance; eyesight, vision," noun use of fem. past participle of veoir "to see," from Latin videre "to see" (from PIE root *weid- "to see"). Sense of "manner of regarding something" attested from early 15c. Meaning "sight or prospect of a landscape, etc." is recorded from c. 1600.

Think about meditation and the chanting of a mantra during your meditation. You are repeating the mantra in order to seek something deeper.

When we learn a new motor skill, we repeat in order to create a body memory so we can perform the task again. Once it is learned our body remembers.

Today through repetition we are going back and seeking new perspectives on what I have been talking about in the first episodes of a journey to inner wisdom

Here is a great poem by Marion Woodman that is a great description of going back and repeating!

‘Linearity does not come naturally

to me. It kills my imagination.

Nothing happens.

No bell rings

No moment of here and now.

No moment that says yes.

Without these, I am not alive.

I prefer the pleasure

of the journey through the spiral.

Relax.

Enjoy the spiral.

If you miss something

on the first round,

don’t worry.

You might pick it up

on the second – or third – or ninth.

It doesn’t matter.

Relax.

Timing is everything.

If this bell does ring,

it will resonate

through all the rungs of your spiral.

If it doesn’t ring,

it is the wrong spiral –

or the wrong time –

or there is no bell.’

The journey to inner wisdom is the journey to becoming ourselves…

First let’s look back at wisdom: Marion Goodman, was a Jungian analyst, feminist and poet. From her book, “Coming home to myself” she writes…

‘A life truly lived

Constantly burns away

Veils of illusion,

opening our eyes

To our uniqueness.

A life truly lived

Burns away

what is not longer relevant

Gradually reveals

Our essence

Until, at last,

We are strong enough

to stand in our naked truth’

Coming Home to Myself is really a great way to describe the journey to inner wisdom. We are journeying to our true essence and stripping away the limiting beliefs and conditioned beliefs that we have taken on from family, society, all the influences around us.

It is often during a transition that we begin searching for a deeper understanding of what is happening to us and around us. A transition is about going to the other side of where we are now. Without awareness of what is happening to us, we may miss opportunities or not even recognize what is happening.

In order to see how we can deepen our understanding and application of awareness and beliefs I will unfold the topic of curiosity. Remember, we have to be awakened to be aware! As we become meta aware, have a deeper awareness, we are able to begin to notice patterns in our life that will reveal our private belief system. This private belief system has been made up by us so we can get our needs met and survive in our world. We created it during our early childhood, and it is the unconscious operating system that guides our decisions and actions. We will also begin to notice certain beliefs that we have inherited, appropriated, or assimilated from our family, our society, our friends, our community. These conditioned beliefs also long for our attention and full awareness to determine if they are serving us on our journey.

I invite you to reflect on the following question:

How have you been paying attention to your inner world?

How have you been paying attention to your outer world?

What senses have been prominent in your awareness?

What energy – mind, heart, body - do you experience when you take time to be aware of your day or week?

What patterns have you noticed that surprised you?

Have there been other surprises when you have practiced being more aware of your inner and outer world?

Have you been curious or judgemental about what you have noticed?

As we begin to examine our life patterns and our private belief system, it is helpful to take a stance of Curiosity.

Let’s take a closer look at the word, curious.

Merriam-Webster Dictionary:

: having a desire to learn or know more about something or someone

: marked by desire to investigate and learn

mid-14c., "subtle, sophisticated;" late 14c., "eager to know, inquisitive, desirous of seeing" (often in a bad sense), also "wrought with or requiring care and art;" from Old French curios "solicitous, anxious, inquisitive; odd, strange" (Modern French curieux) and directly from Latin curiosus "careful, diligent; inquiring eagerly, meddlesome," akin to cura "care" (see cure (n.)).

The objective sense of "exciting curiosity" is by 1715 in English. In booksellers' catalogues, the word was a euphemism for "erotic, pornographic" (1877); such material was called curiosa (1883), the Latin neuter plural of curiosus. Related: Curiously; curiousness. Curiouser and curiouser is from "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland" (1865).

Cura comes from ‘care’. So give a care to what you are uncovering.

Oft times I find that people will review their life patterns and be very judgmental about the paths taken or not taken. Judgement will shut down the possibility of further exploration of ones’ limiting beliefs. Once I make a judgement about myself, my situation, my choice or my action, my brain shuts down as the judgment has a finality to it, that does not leave space for further exploration.

Curiosity, on the other hand, helps us uncover the deeper meaning and movement in our lives. Curiosity allows us to step into a neutral zone where patterns and meanings unseen to this point are revealed. From an article entitled ‘The Importance of Curiosity’ in Entrepreneur Magazine, 2018, I quote, “We think it’s like breathing – essential to life.”

In the Harvard Business Review, research is sited on curiosity with the following conclusions:

An increase in curiosity leads to an increase in creativity.

Curiosity Fosters better communication.

It Helps reduce conflict.

It Helps us adapt to uncertainty.

Forces us to give more thought to decisions and come up with creative remedies rather than default to the simplest solutions to problems.

Curiosity is natural in kids. It is often snuffed out by the time we are adults unless it is nurtured by teachers and parents.

So how can we take a stance of curiosity and leave our judgement behind?

First, ask questions, be inquisitive about yourself, others and the world around you. The Right Question Institute found that children ask an average of 300 questions a day…how many have you asked today?

Have an open mind. I am sure you heard this before, your mind is like a parachute, it works better when it is open. Ask why something is the way it is and look for alternative explanations. Ask about things you take for granted or perform in a rote manner.

Don’t assume, get a diversity of information, meet new people, read something that is different from your normal reading.

Research done by the Merck group found that the more curiosity, the more ideas, the more chance for innovation.

We can move from what we know to what we think we could know…it is then about retooling our perspective and recreating our beliefs.

Here is a great quote. It is a Japanese proverb:

‘You can’t see the whole sky through a bamboo tube.’

Remind yourself to be curious. Put up a sticky note!

Make a list of things you want to try or know about – keep the list on your phone or on your desk where you can see it.

Being curious may mean stretching your boundaries.

Be playful. Many adults are embarrassed to play. Lucky that some of us have grandkids as we have permission to play. Give yourself permission to play without your grandkids!

Being curious leads us to big questions, Big questions lead us through transitions in a more graceful and aware way.

Elizabeth Gilbert in Big Magic states:

‘Fear is always triggered by creativity because creativity asks you to enter into the realm of uncertain outcomes.’

I like to think about curiosity like this…I wonder about something and I take the steps and wander into the realm of what if…why not…why…and I gain wisdom in the process about myself or the world around me or both!

I could be surprised and energized. I could be disappointed and sad. Whatever I feel, or whatever I am reminded of or whatever is evoked by this curiosity, I have broken away from my judgemental mind and opened the myself to possibilities.

I don’t think I can leave without looking a bit further into judgement.

Our personal belief system fuels our thoughts about the world and others. We observe and evaluate from our private logic most of the time. We make the world and others fit our perceptions of the world and of people. Whether we have an opinion or not will not change what is the situation we are judging and as the Japanese proverb states, we probably don’t have the full picture!

So, easy for me to say be curious and not judgemental…but how do we do this when our minds are constantly observing and evaluating…

By becoming aware of your thoughts, your perceptions and observing them, you begin to realize you are not your thoughts and you can change them from judgemental to curious…we use our meta cognition to step back and observe our thoughts and notice patterns…yes once again patterns!!!

Word of caution. Don’t beat yourself up for judging…it is a natural reaction! Step back, take a breath and be grateful that you are aware and that you can observe what is happening…then be curious.

So it seems that being curious will increase our creativity…I sometimes hear people say “I am not creative.” Everyone is creative…but how do we release our creativity.

Let’s look at the words first…

Creativity…

Create

: to make or produce (something)

: to cause (something new) to exist

: to produce (something new, such as a work of art) by using your talents and imagination

create (v.)

"to bring into being," early 15c., from Latin creatus, past participle of creare "to make, bring forth, produce, procreate, beget, cause," related to Ceres and to crescere "arise, be born, increase, grow," from PIE root ker- (2) "to grow." De Vaan writes that the original meaning of creare "was 'to make grow', which can still be found in older texts ...." Related: Created; creating*.

Here are some great quotes about creativity.

"You can't use up creativity. The more you use the more you have." -- Maya Angelou

"Creativity involves breaking out of expected patterns in order to look at things in a different way." -- Edward de Bono The Use of Lateral Thinking

De Bono, “Studies have shown that 90% of error in thinking is due to error in perception. If you can change your perception, you can change your emotion, and this can lead to new ideas. Logic will never change emotion or perception.”

Great, now how do I nurture my creativity…of course

first be curious,

Learn something new

Suspend judgement, our judgment stops us from trying new things, having new experiences, meeting new people.

Oh, I can never do that!

I’m not good at that.

That’s too dangerous

I’m too old

That’s childish…according to who

Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

Each of us is born with two contradictory sets of instructions: a conservative tendency, made up of instincts for self-preservation, self-aggrandizement, and saving energy, and an expansive tendency made up of instincts for exploring, for enjoying novelty and risk - the curiosity that leads to creativity belongs to this set. But whereas the first tendency requires little encouragement or support from outside to motivate behaviour, the second can wilt if not cultivated.

What are your conditioned thoughts…pay attention to what you are saying and what is behind the words…are they your words or are they from somewhere ‘else?

So be curious…cultivate those expansive thoughts…see what you can get up to in the next few weeks and let’s see what adventures we can have on this journey to inner wisdom/

Quotes:

Martin Seligman

Creativity is bound up in our ability to find new ways around old problems.

"The creative adult is the child who survived." -- Ursula Leguin

"Everything you can imagine is real." -- Pablo Picasso

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Welcome to A Journey to Inner Wisdom. I am Crystal Kotow-Sullivan and your host of this Podcast.

I am going to talk about the many facets of the Journey to Inner Wisdom. As with any journey, there are many ways to get to where we are going. In this journey there are many tools available to guide us on the journey as well as people who will guide and mentor us.

I am going to talk about the ABCs of the Journey to inner Wisdom…Awareness, Beliefs, Curiosity and Creativity, Discernment and direction, the Enneagram and energy, Focus, Flow, and Flourish and Gratitude, generosity and grace.

From time to time, I will invite guest to join the conversation and share their journeys and the tools and guides who journeyed with them. And you will hear about my own on-going journey.

I hope you will join me on this adventure.

Episode 4 Past present, present, future present, future?

Living in the present – creating the present from the future rather than the past.

I talked about our private logic last week or limiting beliefs, mistaken logic, subjective perception, etc. I’m doing two podcast because it is very important to work on our private logic, bring it to consciousness in order to travel the journey to inner wisdom. It is the first step to becoming aware of how we live a past present life.

I’ve noticed a lot of people are talking about limiting beliefs these days or maybe it’s because I am as well and so I am noticing it more. It is like buying a new red car and suddenly you see red cars everywhere! Our energy follows our thoughts. Which is why it is so important to know where our thoughts are coming from. Our thoughts give life to our private logic. Or maybe it is because it is so important to pay attention to our private logic and stop living from those beliefs.

I was thinking in images the other day and I saw a file cabinet with 3 drawers. The top drawer contained all of our consciousness- mental physical, emotional and spiritual Easily accessible, subjective and not hard to find. The middle drawer contains all of the stuff that we could access easily when needed – skills, habits, facts, memories, stories, emotions, etc. Ad then there is the bottom drawer. It has all the parts that we’ve filed away for a variety of reasons – not important, too painful, embarrassing, another lifetime, disappointments, failures, etc. You will also find in this drawer – conditioning files, family expectations, social pressures, religious pressure, media, rules you live by whether they make sense or not, etc. all impacting your private logic. Our private logic resides in this drawer because we are not even conscious that we have a subjective belief system that tints our perception of ourselves, others, relationships, our world, work, money, love, sex, parenting, - epic list!!!!

And it rules our day to day interactions, decisions, and attitude toward ourselves and the world around us.

As I said last episode, pulling this file from the bottom drawer to the top drawer is not always simple or easy. We deny that we have such a file – we justify the way we move thru life – despite stumbling and wondering – where did that come from!

Let me tell you something about my private logic. When I was in my early 40s, I did some work on uncovering my private logic. An early memory uncovered an interesting belief I had about myself. I was in grade 3 - 8 years old and the teacher gave us homework to write about how the tractor had improved the work of horses. I had no idea what the teacher wanted me to do. I even looked in the encyclopedia that my parents had gotten for us. I wrote one sentence. In school a few days later the teacher read the marks and I got zero and she laughed at it. I was so embarrassed at 8 years old. I must have been beet red and I was so warm. I wanted to cry. I decided then and there that I must be stupid. I recall the teacher used that word. So, I spent a lot of my life trying to prove that I was smart. Once I realized this, I was also able to see that this experience was also a gift as I love to learn and may not have embraced learning so vigorously except that I had this experience. Education was not a value in our family. My dad finished grade 8, my mom finished high school and went to secretarial school and briefly worked as a secretary. That is what she wanted me to do rather than go to university. So our private logic once uncovered can be full of revelations about who we are.

Best-selling author, Carolyn Myss, talks about being people being under a spell. A spell is a thought form, a perception, an illusion. She talks about each of us living in our own reality. This would be our subjective perception or private logic. We need to realize we are not the centre of the universe! So, ask yourself, what rules have I created in my life…they come from your private logic.

Most rules start with

I must… I must walk 10, 000 steps before I have a treat.

I need to… I need to take care of…

I need… I need ___ hours of sleep

I have to be… I have to be prepared for anything

If I don’t… If I don’t plan the family gathering no one will.

I demand… I demand respect…

Also, ask yourself what are your rules around money, work, leisure time, parenting, retirement, etc. These rules will reveal your underlying patterns of beliefs that may be holding you back in some area of your life.

I think you get the idea…

Let’s go a bit deeper with these questions if you are ready to recall, release and recreate a new way of being.

Ask yourself:

What do I believe about myself?

What kind of person am I?

What do I believe about men, women, relationships, work, money, love, sex, the world, parenting, play, religion, business, education, health, spirituality, etc.?

Notice the patterns as you begin to answer these questions. Dr. Joe Dispenza in his book, “Breaking the Habit of Being Yourself”, states,

“When you think from your past memories, you can only create past experiences. As all of the ‘knowns’ in your life cause your brain to think and feel in familiar ways, thus creating knowable outcomes you continually reaffirm your life as you know it. And since your brain is equal to your environment then each morning, your senses plug you into the same reality and initiate the same stream of consciousness” p 43

Recently I came across the allegory, Plato’s Cave. I think it is a great example of how our perception and private logic keeps us hostage.

Briefly and redacted…

Some people were in a cave and they thought they were trapped. They were facing the back wall of the cave and there was a fire behind their backs. The saw people moving on the back wall…their shadows…they were frightened and would not take their eyes off the wall for fear of being hurt. Just behind them was the opening of the cave but they would not look and so they could not see that if they changed their perspective they could walk away.

I think you can see how subjective perception keeps us trapped. For centuries we believed that the earth was the centre of the universe. Galileo was excommunicated when he made it known that the Sun is the centre of our galaxy. And how many more times have we had to change our perspective as Science reveals more truths about the universe, like Quantum Physics!!! More later!

I want to read you an excerpt from Owen O’Kane’s new book “Ten Times Happier”. I just found this today and it is a great example of a modern-day Plato’s cave. Our life unfolds depending on where we focus our thoughts and energy.

“It was week four of a twelve-week group programme for ten very depressed clients. I was a newly qualified therapist in the early days of my career. I had a nice circle of chairs set up and a scented candle burning, and I was even wearing my therapist cardigan. What could go wrong? In short everything! All of the clients in the group were angry, frustrated and disillusioned with everything, and that included me. I was stuck and they were stuck. The only comfort in the room was the wafting smell of the lavender and ginger candle.

Suddenly one of the participants, Angela, a recently divorced mum of two young children, declared, “Therapy is Bullshit, all we do is sit and complain.”

There was a rapturous applause from the group and there it was, my therapist light bulb moment.

I had an intuitive urge to ask everyone in the group to stand up, which I did. In truth I wasn’t quite sure what I was going to do with them, but I knew I had to do something. I had to think on my feet, knowing that the ‘Hokey Cokey” or a group hug wasn’t going to cut it in this instance. Trust me, ten angry, depressed clients are not an easy audience and I momentarily felt like I was in the lion’s den.

Then something quite magical happened. As the group stood up they suddenly quietened and a new mood of curiosity entered the room. Doing what any therapist would do, I commented on the change of atmosphere. A reply soon followed from Angela: “Well, at least now we’re doing something to get us out of this mess.” It was the doing something that opened the door to new possibilities.

More quick thinking was required on my part. I realized the only props I had in the room were a window looking out onto a nice view of some trees and a dark, crumbling wall on the other side of the room. I decided these polar opposite views would be my tools. The window would represent a future that looked more hopeful and the dark wall would represent all the difficulties in the past that helped maintain depression.

I asked the entire group to form a line while I explained to them what the window and the wall represented. Then I asked them to turn towards the side of the room that represented what they would like therapy to focus on. Almost perfectly synchronized, they all turned towards the window. There was silence as they looked out onto the trees and a tangible sense of calm entered the room.

I then asked them where they felt their attention was focussed most of the time in everyday life. Again, perfectly synchronized, without hesitancy, they all turned towards the wall. None of the group said anything as they continued to stare at the wall. After a moment’s silence, I asked a simple question: “What do you think might be the problem with spending a lot of time focussed on the wall?”

This time the reply came from John, a twenty-four-year-old who rarely spoke in the group.

John’s career as a professional sportsman had ended suddenly after an accident caused serious injuries. He felt hopeless and was struggling to move forward with his life. He gently said, “If I stay stuck looking at this wall, I have my back turned to the future.”

And at that moment, amazingly, everyone independently and unprompted turned back towards the window, some slowly, some reluctantly, and some more deliberately. This was to be our focus for the remaining weeks.

…

Each week the atmosphere in the room lightened, laughter increased and at the final session everyone in the group brought an item that would remind them of the process. I was struck most by one woman, Jean, who brought a blank white page. She held it up and said, “I’ve brought this today because I have a chance to write a new, more hopeful story.”

P 1 to 13

I want to comment of manifesting because this is about creating your future reality. One of the reason’s manifesting exercises may not work is because we have not cleared our subjective perception, our private logic in order to create a new subjective perception or a new playbook. When we clear our private logic, create or reinvent our subjective perception, we can then look toward the future and create our transitions rather than reliving them.

Be careful here because there is also the pitfall of focusing so much on the future that we miss the moment, the now that I spoke about in episode 2 is fleeting but where we want to be. That is what mindfulness is all about…being in the here and now. Our default is to plan so much because we want to be in control. But can we ever be in control…it is an illusion! Joe Dispenza talks about living in the future present, which is where O’Kane took his group. They lived in hope of the future by being present to the moment, the now. Living in the future keeps us detached from the present moment and the experiences it gives us. So let’s begin to transition from past present living to the now with a future present guiding us.

In the next episode, I will focus on…curiosity…and creativity. We will explore how curiosity can assist our journey of awareness and help us uncover our private logic. And, I haven’t talked about wisdom yet…so I will delve into that topic as well and put all of this into a bigger context. And we will continue to see the interconnectedness of all of our ABCs of a journey to inner wisdom.

Thanks for joining me.

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Welcome to this episode of a journey to inner wisdom…it is all about awareness today…well mostly if I can stay on topic! There are other words that I will interchange with awareness…attention and awake for example…but I will always relate to awareness.

I hope you had a chance to consider the transitions that you have or are going through in your life and how you are going or have gone through them. And have you noticed any fractals on your daily journey? I was out walking, looking into the canopy atop the forest and the patterns are amazing. I have parsley growing in my greenhouse and the patterns are wonderful.

I always like to start by looking at the word itself and where it came from.

1828 - Aware – late old English – watchful, vigilant

-Ness -denotes action, quality, or state

1752 – awaredom

Today: Merriam-Webster Dictionary

knowledge and understanding that something is happening or exists

situational awareness is simply knowing what is going on around us and being able to assess how it will impact the near future. Like driving, or cooking or walking, and seeing a dog!

I know, you are thinking, ‘that is so obvious…. of course I am aware of what is happening!’ “I know that I am listening to this podcast…I know I am also driving or walking or making dinner.’

Think for a moment of a time you were driving or going somewhere on the subway or a train and suddenly you wonder, “how did I get here? Did I go through a red light? Did I miss my stop? We often run on automatic in our busy world.

Tony DeMello once said:

Most people even though they don’t know it, are asleep. They are born asleep, they live asleep, they marry in their sleep, they breed in their sleep, they die in their sleep without even waking up. They never understand the loveliness, - beauty of this thing called human existence.

George Gurdjieff.

“Awakening is possible only for those who seek it and want it, for those who are ready to struggle with themselves and work on themselves for a very long time and very persistently in order to attain it.”

Sometimes we have numbed ourselves in order to avoid pain or face a difficult situation. We can do that with substances, work, gaming, or disconnecting from the now. When we do this, we are not present to the present…it is like we are a wraith going through life and not engaging with life.

George Gurdjieff.

“In order to awaken, first of all one must realize that one is in a state of sleep.”

There is the rub!!! We often don’t realize that we are asleep.

According to Deepak Chopra, awakening happens when you are no longer living in a dream world where you filter everything through your ego and focus on the future and the past. Instead, you have an almost simultaneous awareness of your individual self and the connection between that and everything else. This is beyond situational awareness! Richard Rohr

Our job as conscious humans is to bring the beauty and goodness of everything to full consciousness, to full delight, to full awareness.

Conscious and unconscious are really what I am talking about when I talk about awareness. According to Alfred Adler, “The unconscious is nothing other than that which we have been unable to formulate into clear concepts

If we are sleeping through our lives, what is it that we must wake up to in order to fully engage in our way of being…in our deeper way of knowing.

In order to do this, we must go beyond just knowing and understanding that something is happening or existing. We need to go beyond situational awareness which can be called the first order of knowing…we notice and maybe do a bit of reflection and conclude that we understand what is going on around us.

When we go deeper into what more is happening besides what meets the eye or any other sense for that matter, we may begin to notice more than our conscious mind can register. Our perception actually gives what is happening a twist, a tint, a bit of an interpretation that others do not have. I am often not even aware of the twist or bias of my own perception. It falls in the realm of I don’t know what I don’t know and resides in my unconscious.

Let’s explore what deeper awareness may look like. In education and psychology, we talk about cognition and metacognition. Cognition is comprised of our mental processes, our conscious mental activities – thinking understanding learning, and remembering. Metacognition is the awareness of one’s own learning or thinking processes.

What if we could enter into the realm of meta-awareness and observe how we pay attention and react to the world around us? What if by entering into the deeper level or second-order awareness, we become aware that our unique perspective on the world is our own creation and we can change that perception at any time. We can do this because we created it in the first place. Okay, I am already talking about beliefs and perception and am jumping to the next episode!!!

When I shift from situational awareness and enter into the field of meta-awareness, as DeMello states I wake up and I begin to notice what is going on at a deeper level, and then I am able to shift my perspective. I now have more choices. I begin to notice patterns. As de Mello states, “that is what wisdom means: to be changed without the slightest effort of your part, to be transformed believe it or not, merely by waking to reality that is not words, that lies beyond the reach of words.”

How do we shift to meta-awareness? There are many roads to meta-awareness – yoga, meditation, guided retreats, therapy, energy work, coaching, The awareness exercise, to name a few. I have used all of these and perhaps the simplest way to develop your meta-awareness is by using the Awareness Exercise. I was first introduced to a form of the Awareness exercise on a 7-day silent retreat 40 years ago. I have used it myself and with retreatants as well as taught it at workshops over the decades. It will take you into meta-awareness when used consistently.

So to reiterate…Meta-awareness involves waking up to what’s going on with us – with our thoughts, our feelings, our body sensations, and impulses – in each moment. We are simultaneously ‘in’ our experience (feeling and sensing what’s going on) and at the same time, we’re able to notice some of the ways it’s unfolding for us.

When we have that awareness, then we can choose what we do next. When we don’t have it, we’re stuck in the rut of our familiar, habitual reactions.

Meta awareness: How do we pay attention?

Whatever tools of awareness that we use, what is important is that we are paying attention with all of our senses, our head, heart and gut, our imagination and memory, and our intuition.

Our senses will give us a cursory inventory of what is happening around us. What we see, hear, taste touch, and smell. Our brain is directly involved with interpreting what our senses sense.

Our energy centers, our heart, our head, and our gut, will take us to deeper levels.

Our heart will reveal our emotional response, both positive and negative, to what is/has happened. One of the big obstacles is that we often don’t pay attention to our negative emotions and sometimes overemphasize our positive emotions. When we are in meta-awareness we can observe in a somewhat detached way and learn from our emotions rather than being ruled by them.

Of course, our head/brain is directly connected to our five senses, however, I am talking here about our mind and the spin we put on what we experience. Our mind is always looking for evidence that supports our perspectives. Our mind can also get in the way! Especially when we have a two-way conversation and argue with ourselves. Michael Singer’s book The Untethered Soul will help with that!

And our gut/body will give us information about whatever is happening to us. Our body is a repository of our memories and emotions. Think for a moment of a great vacation and you can experience the emotions and even have a body reaction. If I think about being bit by a dog when I was 8 years old or touch the scar on my leg, I can experience the scene as if it was yesterday. So our bodies hold trauma as well and if your body is holding trauma be sure to get professional help to release the trauma.

With each energy center, we need to be aware of how we are reacting/interacting with the experience. Often, we are not…and so it is a moment when we are asleep!

Usually, we have a dominant energy center but as we become more aware, we can develop the other two centers to be more active and responsive to the world around us.

Our intuition often downplayed in our culture is another way of knowing and serves our awareness. Our intuition is the soft, still, voice that reveals our deepest wisdom.

Our imagination and memory also impact our awareness. Our memories are about our past and our imagination is more about our future…even when we recall a memory and then we imagine it happening again we take it into the future.

Using all of these ways of paying attention, we become more aware of our inner and outer patterns of being and doing. As we become more aware of these patterns, we then have more choices about how we engage in the world.

When I practice the awareness exercise, I begin to notice aspects of my day that I missed or didn’t pay attention to and I find that there is a richness to my day that I was not aware of. With regular practice, I being to notice those moments as they happen rather than later in the day.

For example:

You are waiting for the subway and it is a hot muggy day. You begin to be irritated and your thoughts are in complaint mode. You become more tense and uncomfortable. Cranky and irritable.

Another way is to be aware that you are hot and sweaty. Your jaw is clenched, so you relax it, you notice others around you, you scan your body to get a reading on how you are experiencing the situation. You notice your irritation and your crankiness. Simply by noticing, you are able to make a choice to stay irritated or to relax and let life unfold…there is not much you can do about the heat and you cant make the train come any faster! Your choice…but now you are aware…

Meta awareness brings the unconscious to our consciousness.

In episode 1 I talked about transitions, let me get back to transition for a moment. I have been reflecting on transitions since the last episode and I want to take the conversation a little further. I was speaking about the big transitions that we go through in our lives…graduations, weddings, births and deaths, work, business, moving our home, etc. Eckart Tolle in his book the Power of Now, states

As soon as you honor the present moment, all unhappiness and struggle dissolve, and life begins to flow with joy and ease. When you act out the present-moment awareness, whatever you do becomes imbued with a sense of quality, care, and love - even the most simple action.

Eckart Tolle

Think about what the present is…it is a moment in time, a pause between the past and the future that is gone in an instant. If I am not aware, meta aware, I miss the moment. I am either thinking about what just happened or planning for what will happen next. Don’t get me wrong, it is important to plan, but often our minds spend more time in the future than in the Now. For some of us, our minds spend more time analyzing the past, or being sentimental about the past and how we would love it if the present were the same…and we just missed the present!!!

Meta awareness brings us fully into the present and we become more available to choose how to live and respond in this moment.

So I invite you to practice meta-awareness…review your day, notice your reactions, notice your lack of reaction, notice what you didn’t notice before, and soon you will begin to notice patterns and uncover beliefs about your life, and your world. Let your unconscious knowing rise to consciousness and begin to understand what you don’t know you don’t know!

Next time we will explore those beliefs and patterns that we begin to discover and uncover when we are practicing meta-awareness. I am sure you have already noticed that a journey to inner wisdom is not a linear journey. Each of the topics that I explore will impact the others and they are all intertwined in an intimate and sometimes mysterious way. But then isn’t life just like that…it certainly is not linear!

See you next time…on a journey to inner wisdom.

"Many people in this world are still so identified with every thought that arises in their head. There is not the slightest space of awareness there."

Eckart Tolle

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Welcome to A Journey to Inner Wisdom. I am Crystal Kotow-Sullivan and your host of this Podcast.

I am going to talk about the many facets of the Journey to Inner Wisdom. As with any journey, there are many ways to get to where we are going. In this journey, there are many tools available to guide us on the journey as well as people who will guide and mentor us.

I am going to talk about the ABCs of the Journey to inner Wisdom…Awareness, Beliefs, Curiosity NS XRATIVITY, Discernment and direction, the Enneagram AND ENERGY, Focus, Flow, and Flourish and Gratitude, generosity, and grace.

From time to time, I will invite guests to join the conversation and share their journeys and the tools and guides who journeyed with them. And you will hear about my own ongoing journey.

I hope you will join me on this adventure.

Episode 3

Awareness and Beliefs and perceptions

Welcome to episode 3 of a journey to inner wisdom. Thanks for listening...

In the last episode, I talked about awareness. Today I will talk about our beliefs and perceptions and at the same time, awareness will be underlying the conversation sometimes quietly and sometimes in a noisy kind of way. We will begin to see the connectedness that exists between everything!

Let’s start with the words themselves:

Belief - something that is accepted, considered to be true, or held as an opinion: something believed

Merriam-webster dictionary

Old English - confidence reposed in a person or thing late 12 century

Belief meant "trust in God," while faith meant "loyalty to a person based on promise or duty" (a sense preserved in keep one's faith, in good (or bad) faith, and in the common usage of faithful, faithless, which contain no notion of divinity). But faith, as cognate of Latin fides, took on the religious sense beginning in 14c. translations and belief had by 16c. become limited to "mental acceptance of something as true," from the religious use in the sense of "things held to be true as a matter of religious doctrine."

Perception - the way you think about or understand someone or something

Perceive c. 1300, perceiven, "become aware of, gain knowledge of," especially "to come to know by direct experience,

The meaning "intuitive or direct recognition of some innate quality" is from 1827.

Per – by means of Cep (kap) – grasp

Percept - an impression of an object obtained by use of the senses 1864 first used

Eckart Tolle

The primary cause of unhappiness is never the situation but thought about it. Be aware of the thoughts you are thinking. Separate them from the situation, which is always neutral. It is as it is.

My perceptions create my belief system. I will call my belief system several different things today… private logic, unconscious beliefs, mistaken logic. My perception of what is happening in the world around me is a continuation of my imagination and my memories as well as the many ways that I am aware of my world. From this combination, I have created a belief system that tints everything I experience in my world. My perception leads me to certain conclusions about myself, the world, people relationships, work, love, sex, and money…everything. It is like wearing rose-colored glasses, everything is tinted. The rose color is created by our own unique belief system which can keep us trapped and unable to move forward.

Here is an explanation of private logic from Adlerian theory. “Private logic is another one of Adler's major constructs. Private logic provides a life pattern that begins in childhood and provides a compass by which to live. Because we are part of the larger social system and must learn to interact with that system, we develop our own set of rules to help us overcome our feelings of inferiority and achieve our goals. Private logic is unique to each person and sometimes is not logical. The goal in Adlerian therapy is to understand a person's private logic to help the person better understand where his beliefs get in the way of daily function, to lessen the faulty thinking of private logic, and to help people change its framework to see things in a more healthy way. Private logic is unique and feelings of superiority or fear of inferiority are meaningful only to the individual.”

(Seligman & Reichenberg, 2014).

I create my reality from my perception. That perception is a culmination of my early memories, my family of origin, the conclusions I came to as a child, and the messages I heard every day in my family. And the evidence I have gathered to support this perception that I hold as my truth. I have also gathered a tribe that supports my perspective. We are usually not aware of what our private belief system is. We created it as children and it is like the operating system on a computer…it is there but we don’t see it, we just use it.

How did we create this belief system? Well, as children we are pretty smart, we observe and inspect our little world and we figure out how to get our basic needs met, get attention, get quiet time…whatever it is we need. If you have been around small kids, you can figure out what they are up to most of the time. And in the process, we watch and observe our little world. We pick up the beliefs of our caretakers…parents, grandparents, aunts and uncles, nanny, daycare workers…those we spend the most time with. Then from this unconscious belief system we attempt to get our needs met. Here is the rub…we keep this belief system into adulthood…and the belief system was formed by a child with limited experience in a limited world! So, for many people, their private logic works. When it doesn’t it is like finding yourself in Paris but you have a map of London. Where am I?

Let me tell you about my life and an example of one aspect of my private logic that I have unearthed over the years. I grew up as the oldest of 5 children on a farm. My dad was first generation Ukrainian-Russian and there was a general suspicion of other people in our family, which came from my babka as my dad was a kind, happy and friendly guy. My grandmother couldn’t read or write English so she was naturally wary because she could not understand all that was happening. She spoke some English but was certainly not fluent. The distrust was passed on. As a child, this atmosphere was integrated into my belief system. We shared a house with my babka until I was 8. I spent a lot of time with her. I was a favorite and I knew I was spoiled when I was with her.

As a young adult, I remember becoming aware that I found cashiers and salesclerks a bit cranky… (I had part-time jobs as both when I was in school and I was not cranky!). One day I became aware – actually after doing some pretty intense therapy and self-development work, that if I changed my perspective perhaps the salesclerks and cashiers would be different, and I might have a different experience when shopping. So, I experimented and over time, I did realize it was all about how I was showing up at the store and how I was at the checkout! Suddenly, I realized that an old belief had tinted the way I saw the world. And I get it, sometimes people have a bad day…I will give them that.

Only by entering into a deeper level of awareness was I able to examine my private logic, release what I didn’t want, and create a new way of being in the world. Until I was aware, it was like I had no choice about how I was reacting or interacting with the world around me…my unconscious beliefs, my private logic, ruled!!! Once conscious, I had a choice. I could continue to believe that all salespeople and cashiers were cranky, or I could make up a new story.

So, my underlying perception, the private logic I had created as a child, worked for me then, but as an adult, it didn’t. I had picked this up from my family of origin…my grandmother, whom I loved, and spend as much time as I could with her…I learned to not trust people. In my world that meant people did not have my best interest in mind which when shopping was to give me a pleasant experience! But I was the one being cranky and so who wants to be nice to a cranky customer!!!

Now, there is another layer to this! I was the oldest of 5 and, as I said was spoilt by my babka and I just expected (unconsciously) to continue to be spoiled for many years after…of course I didn’t realize this until much later in adulthood when I realized something was amiss when I got cranky when things didn’t go my way. As a kid, I knew how to get what I wanted from my grandmother in terms of love, attention and treats! Didn’t always work with my parents if I remember correctly!!!

And there are many more stories about my own private logic that I have unearthed… more later!

So, our perception of the world, relationships, people, work, money, love, sex, freedom, etc. is all colored by those early unconscious conclusions that we came to as little kids. It worked for us then!

Thai Nguyen says it well, “The window through which you look determines what you see.”

However, I want to point out that as children, despite the fact that we could figure out our world in our little minds and heart, we did not have the bigger picture of our world. I did not understand that the reason my grandmother did not trust people was that she did not fully understand what was going on around her due to her limited English, and not being able to read and write. I also now know that she came from a country that was repressive and that is why she emigrated to Canada. And how could I know then that when someone is in this situation they would become anxious and fearful? I only saw her as a strong, working farm woman who loved me. So even though I could read, write, speak fluent English and had several degrees and for the most part did not have to worry about being understood and understanding, I picked up this belief from my babka.

How can two kids from the same family have two very different inner experiences of the same event – their perceptions and conclusions about life are different. The outer world is the same! We make up our inner world – so if we have made it up in the past we can release it, reimagine it, redesign it, – we have choices about how we perceive the world.

It is like the story of the two kids at a birthday party in their friend’s backyard. They both see a pile of dung in the back corner of the yard.

The one kid starts to cry and runs inside ‘mommy, mommy, there is a pile of poop in the back yard, how can we have a birthday party? I want to go home right now! His sister is running around whooping and hollering…Mommy, mommy, look, there must be a pony somewhere…please help me find it!!!

Think about your own family and how each sibling is a little different in terms of how they maneuver in life. Each one has their own private logic that unconsciously guides them in their life.

What if my perspective is hindering me from living my full potential? What if your perspective is just a bit off? Am I missing out or not seeing what the universe is presenting to me every day? We are back into the realm of I don’t know what I don’t know.

What if my lack of awareness of the beliefs underlying my perspective is sometimes a roadblock to my moving forward and flourishing?

Awareness of my private logic can free me to view my world both inner and outer with new eyes and open possibilities so far unseen.

Awareness is not just looking within – it is looking outside as well to see how the world looked from my tinted lenses. Unravelling the tint in those lenses can reveal some interesting surprises about how we are being and what we are doing in the world.

So how do I become aware of the interplay for my outer and inner world?

Paying attention to patterns is a good first step. Also, working with a coach who can help you unearth those unconscious beliefs and guide you to releasing and creating new beliefs. It is not just about noticing what is happening but more importantly, ‘How is what is happening in my inner world impacting my experience of my outer world and vice versa? How is my heart responding, how is my body responding, what thoughts are surfacing related to this outer event?

Now that being said, it is not a simple task to undo years of creating neural pathways that support our perceptions. It takes some work to rewire our brains. And this we can do! So, begin to be aware at the deeper level beyond the surface of noticing what happens in your life – begin to notice how your perception created what is happening in your life. Begin to notice how your imagination and memories, experiences, environment, etc. have created that private logic – then realizing we have choices about what we believe and then we can move into redesigning and creating our transitions.

Join me for the next episode when I will continue to talk about beliefs and perceptions and how we want to live in the present, the now, not in the past present or the future present… I will also give you some questions to reflect on that can spark your exploration into your private logic.

The moment you become aware of the ego in you, it is strictly speaking no longer the ego, but just an old, conditioned mind-pattern. Ego implies unawareness. Awareness and ego cannot coexist.

Eckart Tolle

The thoughts we choose to think are the tools we use to paint the canvas of our lives.

Louise Hay

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When we embark on a journey, any journey and specifically with the journey to inner wisdom, we often find ourselves in a transition in some form. So, before we explore the ABCs of the Journey to Inner Wisdom, I am going to have a look at Transitions…mainly because I love working with people in transition and because I have just gone through a major transition myself.

Transition - a change from one state or condition to another Webster-Merriman Dictionary

The prefix Trans comes from the Latin meaning: across, beyond, through, on the other side of, to go beyond.

I want you to think about your own transitions and the language that you use when describing those transitions…

I have been through many transitions in my life as you have…some I’ve handled gracefully and some with less grace and other transitions seemed to handle me.

Let’s begin by looking at the different types of transitions that make up our lives.

There are natural transitions like the seasons, daily transition of day to night, light to dark, waking to sleeping.

Birth and death are also natural transitions for all life on this planet and these transitions will vary but are inevitable.

Then there are the social transitions which vary according to culture and expectations. Things like birthdays, graduations, weddings, engagements, milestones in business and work, anniversaries…we are always marking transitions…sometimes with a grand celebration and sometimes with a note in our calendars.

We also go through relationship transitions, business/work/jobs, economic transitions.

Our lives are full of beginnings, middles and ends…some are easy, some we take for granted and some we have to work our way through to the other side.

Some catch us by surprise, unexpectantly changing the course of our lives. Some are welcomed, some are not welcomed and some we may just want to ignore.

Some will occasionally blindside us and leave us in shock…

I think you get the idea…we are always either beginning, in the middle of or coming out of a transition…

Let me tell you about some of my transition – first, you need to know that I love to mark transitions, a party or celebration…sometimes taken to the absurd! A celebration can raise our awareness that life is transforming…like graduation from university or college…life is not longer ruled by assignments and exams rather it is transitioning to application of the accomplished studies.

Being aware of transitions can lead to a deeper knowing about what is actually happening in our lives and may give us a bigger perspective on how we are making the transition.

Let me tell you some of my transition stories…

All transitions, as I said have a beginning, a middle and an end.

The beginnings of any transition are generally recognizable. We are entering into something new…

The endings are generally recognizable as well…

In both cases depending on the transition we will experience a variety of emotions and thoughts. Transitions also impact our health and wellbeing.

Okay, some stories…

My husband and I spend time working in Africa. At the end of 6 years we were returning to Canada. I was sad about the transition as we had made many friends while there. Our two children were born there. WE had made wonderful memories and had had visits from family members over the years. WE had returned to Canada several times over the 6 years so felt connected there as well. As we were saying our goodbyes, I would say…something like…we will meet again…this isn’t really goodbye! I was really avoiding saying goodbye. One of the teachers that had worked with us took me aside one day and gave me an article about grieving and saying goodbye…this new awareness that I was bargaining and not facing the endings of this era in my life woke me up and I begian to say goodbye for good to everyone. I realized then that I was closing this time or chapter of my life and if and when I meet some of theses people again it would be a gift. I cried my way through the next two weeks but when I got on the plane and left, I was ready for my next adventure. I had made a graceful transition in the end!

This learning has helped me be aware of the many times I have left people, places, jobs behind…I always say goodbye and close the chapter.

I have had many visits with the people from that chapter of my life and each time it is so exciting to connect without any baggage.

My family has often given me a hard time because I like to create celebrations to mark transitions and here is a story about a bizarre celebration! Our dear friend Lubinda came from Africa to live with us for a year. After a few months she was not feeling well and found out that she had a serious amoeba in her gut. It was terrifying and we were all worried, especially Lubinda. This was a transition in her health situation that was not great but we all needed to work together to get her healthy. Well we had an amoeba party and we posted amoebas on her bedroom door. We celebrated that the doctors had been able to discover what was ailing her…the celebration marked our support of her wellness journey and she picked herself up and was more hopeful about the journey to wellness…

A more traditional and not so traditional celebration was for my mom’s 90th birthday. She did not want a party, but how many people get to be 90! So rather than put all the focus on her, we had a zero celebration. There were 8 people celebrating a ‘Zero” birthday as well as two new babies coming before the end of the year! Do We had a Zero party to mark the transition from one decade to the next for all of these people? It was a rip-roaring success and my mother was thrilled, even thought we did manage to make it mostly about her.

After 14 years of marriage, I left our relationship. This was probably one of the most painful transitions I have made. As part of the transition out of the marriage, we went to marriage therapy to learn why our relationship ended and how not to make the same mistake again. I wanted to be fully aware of my part in the breakup and I wanted to be fully aware as I entered another relationship. The transition was interesting as we ended up back together and to mark the transition back into the relationship, we had an intimate celebration with a few people who had supported us during this painful and then joyful time.

Over the last, almost two years, I think transitions have been particularly difficult because In some ways we have been forced into being in transition in so many ways. Our lives as we have known them shifted and changed many times. Our work may have changed, our finances, our contact with friends and family, our wellbeing has shifted and all of these things continue to be in transition…there was a beginning and we are all hoping there will soon be an ending and a transition to something more familiar with a bit more certainty. Every aspect of our lives ws turned on end…even getting groceries and we all remember the toilet paper shortage!

During this time, the chaos, I don’t think that is too strong a work…Chaos – a state of disorder and confusion…I think we can all agree that this is what it seemed like many times over the last 22 months. More on chaos later…

During times like this it is easy to not be in touch with what is going on internally because we are so focused on managing our external lives…like how to get food, how to manage work, children, school, etc.

For me, the time of COVID has been a major transition period – unexpected, unplanned but welcomed. During the time of COVID, I realized I had been coasting for a long time and had not really engaged in purposeful living. I was living externally and not pausing to notice the internal movements and messages. I blamed COVID for my low-level anxiety, my lethargy, my lack of drive.

A series of fortunate events occurred over the last four months that have pushed me through a long, exhausting transition period to create the Journey to Inner Wisdom.

Just as COVID was beginning to make itself known but before travel was suspended, I spend a week with two of my soul sisters sharing our lives again after 20 years. One of them had gone through a major life changing event the previous year and we came together to support her in her new chapter.

Right after this wonderful week, I attended a Wellness Leadership Academy weekend in Toronto and was inspired to tap into my magic.

When I tell this story now, my head spins as some many things came together in such a short period of time.

When we got back home a friend of mine called as asked if John and I would consider being a part of a webcast that would talk about the changing world around us in particular the impact on lifestyle, relationships and entertainment…our first shows were focused on the devastating effect of cancelling weddings and how to maneuver through the practical elements as well as the impact on the relationship. Over the course of 65 episodes, I met some amazing people who guided, and fed my transition journey.

Early in the series, our team did a 6 week program on finding our purpose…mine was unearthing treasure…

In the new year we focused on getting our ducks lines up for a great year. Our first guest spoke about heart felt goals as opposed to a more corporate approach. This shift resonated with me and I was able to actualize my purpose and this is when Journey to Inner Wisdom was born.

In the midst of this, I was guided through a should retrieval that was a huge transition for me. My son has suffered with Schizophrenia for the last 20 years…I realized I had gotten myself stuck back when he had his first psychotic break. With the help of one of my mentors, I was able to transition from holding that pain to being free to move forward.

This created a space within me to move into a new chapter with gusto!

Now, I believe with the depth of my being that my purpose if to guide other women on their journey to inner wisdom.

I want to say that I am grateful for the guides and wise people who have intersected with my journey over the years. They have assisted me, encouraged me and love me through the many transitions in my life. Some have been lifetime guides and some for a specific reason and some for just a season. All are appreciated and held in my heart.

I encourage you to explore how you go through transitions and who are your guides for the journey.

Oh and I did say I would comment on chaos… another definition has to with the Mathematics of things…a pattern or state of order existing within apparent disorder, as in the irregularities of a coastline or a snowflake

Fractals are examples of chaos that is ordered. Pinecones, ferns, broccoli, peacock feathers, even our body…circulatory system…our brain…the neurons and dendrites…it looks chaotic but there is order.

Ben Weiss explains, “whenever you observe a series of patterns repeating over and over again, at many different scales, and where any small part resembles the whole, that’s a fractal.”

The interesting thing about chaos is the there is order but not the order we expect…and out of chaos comes recognizable order and transformation

So when you find yourself thinking that life is chaotic…look a little closer to see what life is telling you.

Join me next time as I explore Awareness, being awake to our life and taking the time to look a little closer by raising our awareness.

In the meantime, think about your own transitions and how your journeyed through them…Also, have a look for fractals, I was just at a market and saw one of those beautiful Romanesco vegetables…that is a wonderful example of a fractal.

See you next time.

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I am going to talk about the ABCs of a Journey to Inner Wisdom…Awareness, Beliefs – private and conditioned, and Balance, Curiosity and Creativity, Discernment and decisions, the Enneagram and energy centres, Focus, Flow, and Flourish and Gratitude, Generosity and grace. At this moment it is the ABCDEFGs of a Journey to Inner Wisdom. I will get the rest of the alphabet with time! Now, I must warn you that I will start with ABC but I may meander a bit! Because as we all know Life is not linear!!!

I hope you will join me on this adventure. Enjoy the Introductory Podcast: Wisdom and my Journey.

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I am a Wisdomologist and I will be exploring Wisdom and the journey to our own inner wisdom.

As with any journey, there are many ways to get to where we are going. In this journey, there are many tools available to guide us on the journey as well as people who will guide and mentor us.

Journey to Inner Wisdom: Recent Episodes

Crystal Kotow-Sullivan