Birthing Your Life Dream

Radical Forgiveness

2012-02-23T09:05:30-06:00

There comes a time in our lives when we must take command, let go of all that "happened to us", and declare our lives as our very own.

All too often we find adults in their 40, even 50's and older still blaming their family of origin for stuggles that they are going through, even though perhaps one or even both parents have passed on.

When we blame others for our misgivings or short comings, we have given our lives over to those persons who we continue to blame. We are telling them "it's your fault that I have this deficiency" wherever that "deficiency" or struggle or hardship exists, rather than owning personal responsibility as full grown adults.

This gets us forever stuck in the original incident, and with at least part of us wanting revenge. It ties up our life force energy and deprives us from possibilies of joy and confidence that would be there for us if we could shift our perspective.

I strongly believe that in the healing process, there are stages of taking back one's power.

When one feels still victimized by their past, it is first very appropriate and usually crucial to spend time with professional therapists getting at the anger, rage, grief, loss, and other various emotions stuck in the mind, heart and even the cells of the body.

As we move through this release stage, we give ourselves permission to fully express these pent up emotions, we look for moments that we empowered ourselves during these situations (thereby recognizing our resiliency, strength, brilliance, adaptability, etc), we aim to develop compassion for our perpretrators (what wounds or unhealed places in their lives were motivating them) and we learn to look for spiritual and life lessons that the situations brought to us.

This can be powerful work; three of my clients who were incest survivors directly confronted their perpetrators after extensive work during our sessions over time. Two received apologies, one was scoffed and rediculed, but in all cases each person experienced a powerful life transformation from wounded child to strong adult and the transformation was deeply moving for each of us.

There comes a time after this cathartic work where radical forgiveness needs to occur as a final releasing step.

Radical forgiveness is an outlook originated by Colin Tipping, and the philosophy is simple yet profound:

As souls, we chose our parents, relatives, etc to come to us and teach us powerful lessons about manifesting strength, brilliance, compassion, or any of a myriad of other wonderful loving traits - for our Divine spiritual evoluation and blessing.

In fact is was a soul agreement between our perpetrators and ourselves for this to occur and in some cases, it involved considerable sacrifice on the part of our soul partner to honor their part of the agreement and treat us as they agreed to do.

In addition, even though the situation might have felt traumatic as it occured, when we come around to see the Gift that we gained during the situation, we come to bless the individuals who were involved in the situation and actually thank them for the service that they performed for us. We see them as in their own way serving as teachers and healers.

When we acknowledge the Gift that these individuals have brought or perhaps are still bringing to us, we have the potential to single handedly transform the relationship from one of conflict to pure love and gratitude.

As we shift within ourselves, our sparring partner so to speak suddenly opens their heart and the relationship transforms to amazing love beyond all imagination.

For some individuals the place of radical forgiveness occurs almost immediately after a devastating incident. For example, several years ago I read of policeman who was attacked and shot point blank by a criminal.

This left him severely disabled. Yet he pleaded for clemency for his perpetrator and in fact ended up traveling and speaking for peace and forgiveness in the whole justice system.

In some cases this process might only occur after years of post traumatic stress syndrome therapy.

However, in all cases, when we come to the point of radical forgiveness, we arrive at a complete re-framing of the event(s) and feel gratitude for our experience of it and what we discovered from it or how we blossomed forth in greatness as a result of the experience.

Forgiving vs. Forgetting:

Some individuals confuse these two terms. When we forgive, we let go of the emotional charge of the event, and feel inner peace, acceptance and even gratitude for what we learned.

Forgiving does not mean wiping the memory away. We can still remember what happened, and use this memory to assist others who are going through similar experiences.

The key is that when we speak of the forgiven experience, we have zero feeling of remorse, anger, resentment, hate, etc. as we speak. Only peace, acceptance and even thankfulness.

I strongly urge you to read Colin's book Radical Forgiveness (or listen to the CD series).

I believe that this is breakthrough or cutting edge work, and provides for us a potent bridge to wonderful healing within ourselves and our relationships.

Somervillle MA-Living Heaven, Living Hell.

2012-02-09T17:08:21-06:00

Inside our home it was one of the most amazing and wonderful communities that I had ever co-created.

Outside our dwelling and in many ways the dwelling itself was one of the very worst if not the worst place I had ever lived.

It all started in the late fall of 1982 when I was in profound pain over a breakup with a girlfriend who I lived with. Almost immediately and before I could find another place to move into, she began dating around, and soon stopped coming home till mid to late morning the next day.

Walter who attended one of her spiritual support group meetings asked her who the artist was as he noticed my nature photography on the wall.

Through this, he and I met and within three months Walter who himself was recovering from a difficult breakup found his own apartment to move into and invited me to join.

Heaven: Scenes from our Annual Talent Show Parties

We lived on the second story of a triple decker unit in the Winter Hill section of Somerville. Our neighborhood was working and lower middle class, mostly white and a rather worn section of town.

Tufts University towered about 1.5 miles away, and Harvard Square - gateway to most of my social and community life - beckoned me from 2 miles away in the opposite direction.

Walter’s immediately shared his vision with me, of starting a community art center that would support budding musicians and other artists. He was also a great poet and song writer himself.

Fresh from my Masters Degree in Creative Arts Therapies, I committed myself to be the world’s first and foremost practicing Psy-meteorologist, using weather as therapy, healing and metaphor for personal transformation.

Once Walter and I established a comfortable household, he invited his musician partner Keith to join us from Wisconsin.

Keith was also recovering from a difficult divorce and needed support. Once Keith moved in, things moved into gear.

At first, Keith and I having very different perspectives and personalities frequently found ourselves uncomfortable with one another. Eventually we learned to accept our differences and become friends.

In the interim, Walter who was an excellent mediator sat down separately then together with each of us and processed.

During his time with me, Walter discovered that he could visually see energy patterns in people, especially centering on our life energy meridians.

I discovered that I could visually see chakras or life force energy centers. We soon put our two systems together and grew immensely from the process.

Heaven:

Within months, at my suggestion we formed a group that I named the Art/Life/Spirit group. The purpose of this group was to offer spiritual support and a prayer circle for spiritual artists.

We determined that while many people can be artistic, it was the highly sensitive and spiritual questing types of artist who we wished to meet and support.

Our group swiftly coalesced as a vibrant magnet for the Community at large that drew numerous fascinating individuals who either joined or passed through our circle.

Members included a vivacious Afro-American woman who called herself Queen, a singer-song writer who Keith started dating & performing with, several of my artistic & spiritual friends, fellow dance community members, and a couple of Walter’s friends who included a poet, a fellow who loved to work on VW’s and a humorist.

We invited Jeff Crock, a prominent life energy awareness instructor to give a workshop for our group. I immediately included this insightful work in my budding life energy healing practice.

Eventually a cat who was the sole attendee to a workshop that I offered but didn’t take (I left the doors open, he walked upstairs and into our apartment) adapted us. It was a beautiful black and white cat who I named Finesse.

Finesse was also a healing & very spiritual cat. Once he walked from two rooms over, through our healing circle and directly on the genital area of a woman in the middle who we were working on but as men wouldn’t dare touch. He merely laid there, looked up at us and started purring.

Sometimes he also sat in the kitchen meditating in a sunbeam that splashed through the window onto the floor.

Walter, playfully posing for a Somerville News article on Psy-meteorology and photo of me performing at our Talent Show Party

As artists, we decided to host an Annual Talent Show Party. We held it in the very middle of winter – Late January- when frost coated the inside of our windows.

We packed up to 30 people into our small apartment, and performances of poetry, music and humor lasted up to nearly midnight. Otherwise, we enjoyed lots of loving ambience and camaraderie that included great food, much cheer and warmth that served to coalesce even more ice on the windows.

Walter in astounding generosity offered to pay all the rent except utilities for about a year to free up extra money for both Keith and myself to pursue our passions. This was a tremendous healing for me in that it was the very first time in my life that I was in essence paid to follow my dreams.

During that time, the Boston Globe newspaper published an extensive article about Psy-meteorology, and Boston Magazine – Boston’s upper crust publication- did a wonderful article including a photo of a weather system drawn across Keith’s bare back. Boston’s WBZ radio, the 50,000 watt all talk/all news radio station featured me as a guest speaker, and I counseled callers from across New England over the air.

Keith and his girlfriend-partner began to perform at coffee houses, Walter honed up his book of humor, and both Walter and I grew immensely in our life energy awareness work.

Eventually, both Walter and my friends urged me to start up a life energy healing practice.

Hell:

As wonderful as our community life was, it was an amazingly awful neighborhood. In fact, I still sometimes get dreams at night that speak of the bleakness, desolation and oppression that the neighborhood represented for me.

Have you ever been in a situation that was so polarized between brilliance and darkness that all you could do was to stay put and enjoy the greatness while sweating out the dark? This was it for me.

Inside the house it was a constant bath of noise. We lived on Broadway, one of the busiest streets that ran through Somerville. There was no insulation between the floors and the violence was almost unspeakable.

A man weighing about 300 pounds lived above us. Every morning and again at night, it sounded like an elephant walked on my bedroom ceiling. I knew not of any white noise machines at that time, and tried to turn on the radio for the static end of the FM dial. However this didn’t work well, as the radio would tune into drifting frequencies that then suddenly blasted fuzzy music or words into the room.

The other bedrooms were no better; one was tiny & dark with no windows and the other, about the size of a small closet straddled Broadway with its incessant noise.

One year a small business next door doubled in size and installed a huge central air conditioner between my bedroom window and their wall facing it. It literally rattled both my bedroom floor and windows, especially in the summer trashing my sleep.

After several months of this, I introduced myself to the business owner and gently asked if he could install a noise buffer. It took awhile, but to my amazement he did it! This was one bright spot for me.

At least one or two weekend nights per month between one and three a.m. a tremendous CRASH shattered my sleep, followed by deafening silence.

Another drunk or drugged driver had just smashed into a cement light pole at the top of our hill. Bright street lights revealed the crunched car with its glittering stream of fluids running down the street. Within minutes, sirens blared into the night as police and firemen rushed to the scene.

Walking out the door was a profoundly dangerous proposition. I endured several attacks by clean cut, shorts & T-shirt clad white youngsters usually aged between about 18 and 23.

One threw a rock from across the street at me just a block from the apartment in the middle of the afternoon. When I glared at him, he walked over to me and invited me to fight him. Next thing I knew, a fist stuck my face.

One evening as I walked towards Harvard Square and my dance community, a distant unearthly scream of a woman apparently being attacked filled the night air. I felt so helpless and angry for what she was going through, and wished I could have done something to help her. The haunting sound stayed in my mind for quite awhile afterwards.

Within months as I walked home from Harvard Square one night, two very clean cut white men started walking along side of me. They proceeded to tell me that they intended to beat me unconscious then place me on the rail road track for a train to run over me, and for no reason except the sport of it. They did not want my money, they only wanted to create carnage.

I calmly asked for them to refrain, but next thing I knew one fist hit my face, breaking my glasses as they cut my nose and flew off. The next punch hit my stomach. I knew that they were serious and began to holler like I’ve never hollered before.

Suddenly about 4 people showed up to my rescue, including a woman carrying a bamboo pole. The young men sleeked off into the shadows.

We called the police to file a report, but the police apparently used to this type of thing took about 45 minutes to arrive.

Ironically, after that I considered buying mace to protect myself, but was told that I would have a 30 day wait before approval.

Keith who was built like a lumber jack usually drove his car, but when he was out walking he was sometimes accosted as well.

Once a group of kids who I would estimate were middle school aged taunted me for being a Harvard University person (using a derogatory term next to “Harvard” that I forget now).

But it wasn’t just me. Our next door neighbor, a sweet elderly woman told us that there was a recent break-in robbery just two doors down from our apartment.

Late one night as I took a very short walk down Broadway, a car screeched to a halt near me. Suddenly a woman passenger leaped out, and a fellow jumped out in hot pursuit. She seemed to be running for her life, but he caught up to her and forced her back into the car which then sped off.

One afternoon as I was doing laundry at the Laundromat, a middle aged Asian man came in crying. He was tied up in wire, his arms and hands completely immobilized. He had been robbed and bound – in broad daylight and his attackers had gotten away.

After 2 ½ years our household broke up due to significant life changes for each of us.

I moved to Brighton, a better suburban neighborhood, but our apartment endured a break-in, door smashed in with possessions thrown all over the floor.

Since that crucible time, each of the three of us has gone on to lead successful lives.

Walter has given many comedy performances and combined some of his work in life energy healing with comedy. He choreographs what he calls “energy theater” and also conducts laughter yoga sessions.

Keith broke up with his girlfriend and went on to meet & marry the love of his life. Together they work with disabled children using the expressive arts and drama.

I went on to establish a private practice in life energy healing and counseling, created and directed an internationally acclaimed storm chase tour company, and authored the book “Birthing Your Life Dream”, teaching many workshops along the way.

Pitfalls of Comparisons

2012-01-07T17:06:33-06:00

So often we may find ourselves either consciously or unconsciously comparing ourselves negatively towards other people, other lifestyles, or other whatevers..you fill in the blank.

This activity only serves to create suffering and lack consciousness within our minds and our lives.

It's one thing to set reasonable goals for ourselves & strive for them; it's quite another to look at other peoples lives with envy, jealousy, or words like "those lucky dogs"..

When I was in high school, the following poem came to me that I think says it all in just six lines:

The grass is always greener on the other side

and if it looks greener

go ahead, go there.

Then you might find though it be greener,

there is too much fertilizer

So you'll burn your feet

Namaste...

Stephen

Re-Visiting My Mom's Parents and Their Home

2011-12-27T10:54:49-06:00

They lived in a large white two story frame home. In the front a massive wrap -around blue-gray porch graced the house, complete with wide white pillars and a grated gate or fence made of thick cross hatched wood.

During stay over’s when I was a young child, I would hop into my yellow roller skates and glide across the porch, listening to the rumble of wood beneath wheels.

Under the porch I gazed into a fascinating world of musty smells and spiders of all shapes & colors.

Bordering the house along the side were what we later called “firecracker bushes”, tall bushes with huge white, blue and lavender balls of flowers that blossomed in the summer.

Trees bent big branches across part of the sidewalk, creating shade and birdsong during the warmer months.

The front of the house faced one of the main boulevards going into town. Beyond the houses rolled fields and a little bluff towards the distance.

Curb and sidewalk loomed several steps above the street, something I had seen nowhere else.

In back of the house, a large yard bordered backyards of all the neighbors who also lined the boulevard.

Thus, I could look deep into the western horizon, and at sunset, tree-like TV antennas mounted on roofs silhouetted their branches against the twilight sky.

There were two doors to the house, one along the kitchen atop several steps, and the front door which led directly into the living room from the porch.

We always used the kitchen door to go in and out of the house.

My grandma grew waist high forests of dill along the space by the kitchen door, and she used the dill for canning the most delicious pickles I have ever tasted. Unfortunately the family recipe has been lost.

My Grandma, Mary Blockstein was an amazing cook. Her birthday was July 4^th, and we enjoyed family get togethers at that time as well as on some Thanksgivings.

She would fix elaborate 5 course meals that would start in the summertime with balls of honeydew, water mellon and cantaloupe, then move into delicious homemade soup, followed by a sumptuous main course, then lush salads followed by some of the most delicious apple pie I’ve ever tasted in my life.

She had brown eyes and long dark graying hair tied around her neck.

Her dining room was filled with elaborate Victorian rugs donned with patterns subtle in color. Large antique cabinets for dishes and other things graced the walls and a pull-ring sliding door that lurked behind a wall could be brought out to separate the living room and dining room areas.

A large piano graced the dining room and it was fun to get my hands on it & play it, even though it was out of tune much of the time.

Below the dining room and living room area, a large tornado cellar beckoned. Steep, narrow steps dropped into the cellar from inside the house (even as a child with small feet I had to really hold on going down those stairs) and large flip up doors accessed the cellar from the back yard, with steep but wider steps.

The cellar, filled with musty smells, also had an old scrub board washer and hand cranked roller style dryer.

Mason jars of canned food decked some of the shelves.

My Grandpa, Harry Blockstein, a somewhat petite man with blue eyes and white hair was a humble kind man. He was sensitive to beauty, and when we were outside and he heard a bird singing in the tree, he would say “yoy… listen to the Cardinal singing..” (or Robin, if it was singing)

He owned a shoe store and both repaired and sold boots. A walk into his store, located on one of the main streets was a visit to an amazing world.

Boxes upon boxes of shoes climbed the shelves along the wall, and partially dissected shoes in repair mode lie on tables. A rich smell of leather filled the air.

He was a very busy man, working 6 days per week, yet despite his schedule, he always remained kind and warm hearted.

During the Summer, the local firehouse blew their siren every night at 9 pm .

Sometimes the weather there was intense; I remember one visit when so much snow fell during dinner that my parents had to pick me up and carry me to the car when it was time to drive home after dark.

My Mom’s brother Bob owned a convertible sports car, and I remember one night when we rode under a magical sky filled with stars and crisp wind rushing upon our faces.

In many ways, this place felt home for me, even though I did not actually live there.

As a child, I always hungered for the Midwest. On trips, it was magical for me when we crossed the border from Pennsylvania & drove into Ohio and the land began to flatten while the sky seemed to grow bigger.

When I got older, I realized that my Grandparent Blockstein’s home felt like Iowa, even though it was in Western Pennsylvania, some 40 miles S.E. of Pittsburgh and I had never set foot in Iowa.

Since then, as I shared my memory of their home with people who grew up in rural Midwest towns from Kansas, Iowa and Minnesota, they universally told me that the home and town that I described could have been lifted right up from their home towns.

This got reinforced in March of 2010, when a strong tornado blew through a town located within two miles of my Grandparent’s home.

One person explained that the curb and sidewalk was so elevated above the street because the original road was probably a dirt road for horse and buggy, and that the steps made it convenient to step from horse and carriage onto the sidewalk.

My Grandma and Grandpa were both very hard working and had a difficult life.

I honor them for who they were, for so hard they worked and for the positive impact that they had on my life

In the Lap of Santa

2011-12-24T06:51:40-06:00

When I was four years old and in fact during my entire childhood, everything was magic and awesome.

Experiencing Santa was no different.

Our family grew up in the Hebrew tradition, so Santa was not a normal conversation piece for us.

However, during a trip to my Mom's parents, it was decided that I would visit him at his local domain in the town Firehouse.

I felt excited and awe struck to be invited to visit this strange man who I had only heard about in songs played on the radio.

As we entered the open Firehouse garage, there he sat, seemingly on a throne and huge - - bigger than life-- in a magnificent red outfit and gigantic white beard.

I felt shy, timid, as I was led to this powerful presence who hosted children like myself on his lap.

Some of the children squirmed and squiggled, some laughed and giggled, some seemed to rub their eyes in disbelief.

When it was my turn, I watched as his gigantic fingers beckoned me to hop on.

With a big HO HO HO, he smiled and asked me what I wanted for Christmas.

Undoubtedly I told him that I didn't celebrate Christmas, but he invited me to share anyways.

My heart burst free and took wing as I gleefully told him all my childhood dreams of wondrous toys and other things.

What an amazing joy and release it was for me to share with him all the things that I desired in life and receive unconditional permission and head nodding in response.

Before I knew it, our session was finished.

On one hand, it felt like a total healing for me to have such permission to share my dreams.

On the other hand, I felt awe and confusion about what just happened.

They actually taped that session onto the equivalent of a 78 RPM recording.

Years later, I found the record and listened with awe at my high pitched child voice

filled with excitement that mingled with infinite amounts of scratches on a record seemingly ready to leap off the turn table at any moment.

So went my only encounter with Santa.

Regardless of your tradition, I wish you a very happy Holiday season.

Ode to Beauty

2011-12-10T07:25:04-06:00

Through Beauty We Discover Truth

"In our brokenness, our hearts reach for beauty"

- Lily Yeh, Founder of Barefoot Artists, reviewed in the latest issue of "Yes!" magazine

All the beauty that we see outside ourselves also radiates from within each of us.

Our Bodies, Our Sacred Miraculous Temples

2011-11-19T09:17:35-06:00

What a sacred vessel that God gave us to move through the world!

Most of the time, our bodies with all their intricacies faithfully work on their own without us ever thinking about it, giving us the freedom to fully express ourselves in the world.

Our bodies are living miraculous systems of aliveness, who are invested in maintaining their own lives -and ours.

Our heart is almost like an infinite time machine, pumping precious life fluids through our veins without our ever thinking about it.

Our lungs transmute the air we breathe into parcels that feed our myriads of cells and keep us alive. Unless we focus on our breath, this process also occurs without ever a thought on our part.

When an attacker such as a bacteria or virus enters our blood system, an entire military complex of white blood cells attack and surround the invaders, killing them and flushing them out of our system.

Our liver, also a much un-thought of organ attacks toxins that enter our system from air, water and things we eat. Our liver works hard to break toxic compounds into non-toxic compounds that then may be either integrated or flushed out of the body.

Our kidneys filter our blood, eliminating old tired cells.

Each organ that we have within us serves a Divine purpose that honors the greater good of our physical and emotional being.

Each system, whether it be the digestive system, the circulatory system, the eliminator system, our skin, the muscle system, the nervous system -- all work together in harmony to maintain our life force.

We have multi yards of intestinal tract. Our blood vessels if stacked end to end could circle the world five times.

What a sacred vessel that God gave us to move within the world.

I believe that given the precious Gift we have of our health, it's important for each of us to remember and give thanks for this Gift.

Good health is one of the greatest prosperities that anyone can have.

Our bodies tolerate a remarkable amount of stress and still maintain themselves in the face of it.

Instead of judge a skin flab here, a gray hair there, let us give thanks and treat ourselves with the loving kindness that we truly deserve.. our bodies included.

Your Best is More Than Good Enough

2011-10-29T13:10:37-05:00

We can be our own worst critic, harder on ourselves than any living acquaintence.

For many of us, our inner critic stems from our childhood, when we never could clear the hurdles or measure up to standards that family members imposed upon us.

Now in our adulthood, perhaps we have become friends with our original childhood critic, or we have made peace with them in other ways.

Yet the internalized inner critic lives on.

Through the inner critic, no matter how hard we've tried in a given situation, it could have always been bettter.

This sets up a profound gap of dissatisfaction and restlessness, where we continuously strive towards yet never reach our goal because the bar keeps rising higher and higher.

Your Best is Truly More Than Good Enough!

If at the end of your day, or at the completion of your project/ assignment, or after concluding your interview, you can look into yourself, declare with honesty:

"I gave it my all. I was fully engaged, fully committed, and did everything within my power to successfully accomplish the task at hand".

than this is all that you need for acknowledging your competance and success.

With this awareness and inner strength, even if some external party is dissatisfied with your work, you can look inside yourself & know that you were in full integrity with your deepest commitment. This inner knowing is all that really matters.

If a boss of yours at work, or a significant other in your life constantly judges you as "not being good enough" in the face of your honest heartfelt commitments to do the work at hand, perhaps it's time for you to have a conference with them and discuss the concern.

If they refuse to hear you out and continue to set unrealistic goals or requirements, perhaps it's time to change your life by declaring your worth and changing jobs or ending the friendship.

The Delicate Preciousness of Life

2011-09-28T20:51:25-05:00

It's so fleeting, tenuous and precious.

We live it daily, not giving it a thought.

Yet before birth, we were handed an amusement ride ticket called "life" and nobody knows when it's time to turn that ticket back in- - or if we will be asked to exchange it for a different ride while still at the park.

This Fall I have been teaching brain injured college students the creative arts for self discovery.

They remind me every time that I see them that a mere one second occasion can totally change a life in unexpected dramatic ways.

Some of their stories are so deeply sad. For instance the super athletic, high achieving high school student who was transformed to a wheel chair, fuzzy speech, occasional unexpected convulsions due to an accident.

The high functioning student now confined to a wheel chair, grieving his old life after going to his high school home coming.

The students stricken by brain cancer at an early age and now, despite profound enthusiasm and intelligence, bear the burden of equally profoundly tenacious health.

The ski accident survivor who smashed head first into a tree and does so well with his verbal skills but can not decipher his own hand writing.

In a way, despite our "dominion over the earth", our lives are as fragile as those of insects and trees.

What a reminder to live our lives fully, with wisdom and discernment yet faith and passion.

What a reminder to honor and follow our dreams.

What a reminder to express gratitude every day for the many blessings that we have.

Amazingly, most of my students, despite their intense challenges have a very positive attitude, and believe in God - and that God is working with them.

So many of us get up every day and go onto our routines taking everything for granted, not thinking of anything except our schedule or something wrong in our personal world.

These students are teaching me, and through this I would like to remind you that with the tenacious preciousness that our lives/our worlds represent, it is so vastly important for us to live it fully, gratefully and with honor towards ourselves and all others who we interact with.

When Making Decisions

2011-08-21T06:58:13-05:00

In the end, there is no right or wrong, only experience and positive spiritual lessons to be gained.

I believe that it's so important that we listen for the "still small voice within" as it says in the Bible; that still small voice being the voice of our inner Truth, our Divine given wisdom that runs like a sub-surface current invisibly carrying the river forward.

It is sometimes so very hard to make choices in life because different parts of ourselves may be in conflict about anticipated outcome, or what other people may think.

When we feel such self conflct, it becomes hard to make that leap because we feel shattered.

That "Still Small Voice" sometimes may have the innocence of a child and defy all logic or previous life time experience.

Or that "Still Small Voice" may restrict, modify or postpone a strong current of desire that wants to be expressed in this moment.

It may demand stretching and reaching into previously unexplored crannies and spaces of life and possibility, triggering emotions of fear, trepidation and resistance - yet be the perfect next step.

An old Hindu story stated that in order to hide God so humans could not find him/her, the Universe decided to hide God inside each of us.

Indeed inside sometimes is the hardest place to look.