:: Aham Prema ::

I've always been a people watcher.  As a young girl, I openly looked at everyone I came in contact with, wondering who was the happiest?  It was a little disheartening during my exploration to uncover that it seemed that almost everyone had a significant amount of unhappiness and troubles in life.  I guess I wanted to live a fairy tale.  Some people, however, had a great time with life, even through its challenges. I noticed that those who were overall most happiest usually had a sense of humor about their experience.  They weren't richer, more beautiful, or better off.  They were just happy with what was and were strong in rolling with it.  Everyone goes through hard times. Being truly happy is not by getting somewhere or accomplishing something.  It is a part of who you are .  It is your character, your essential being, the fabric of you.  Children are often born with a knowing of it, but many of us lose touch with this understand...

My notes, adapted from Gregg Braden's book Walking Between the Worlds, one of my most life-altering reads from my all-time favorite author. The Three Universal Fears Your charge of universal fears, though often unconscious, is your promise that you will create patterns of relationships showing you these fears. With few exceptions, our experiences of pain, suffering, illness, disease, and emotional trauma have their roots in these core universal fears. These are the three basic underlying fears many of us experience: 1. Abandonment and Separation We feel left or abandoned by our creator without explanation or reason. We feel alone . (Ex: "our father who art in heaven" vs. "our father who is everywhere"). Expressed as : relationships where you are devastated when they fail, always being the one who gets "left" in the relationship, and/or being the first to leave a good relationship so that you are not hurt. 2. Self Worth We are not ...

Here's another lesson for me... and as I explore it more deeply, I write myself instructions, and share it with y'all =) As always, the key is balance.  Most of us are great at either giving or receiving, but not at both.   If you give more than receive, you feel drained, resentful, and experience lack. If you receive more than give, you won't enjoy what you have and may experience boredom. Balance comes from giving as you are guided to, without fear, and receiving with joy and gratitude.   This applies to all kinds of things, not just presents but also presence - in things such as service, time, and love. How much do you give to others each day?  Do you hoard what you have?  Do you give it all away?  Ideally you'd give away that which you do not need or which would benefit someone else more than yourself, keeping that which you most treasure for you.... and loving it like crazy. How much do you receive each day?  When you do re...

Loved this...every word! Long, but well worth it. Never read her books, but great read. J.K. Rowling's Commencement Address to Harvard's Class of 2008 President Faust, members of the Harvard Corporation and the Board of Overseers, members of the faculty, proud parents, and, above all, graduates. The first thing I would like to say is ‘thank you.’ Not only has Harvard given me an extraordinary honour, but the weeks of fear and nausea I’ve experienced at the thought of giving this commencement address have made me lose weight. A win-win situation! Now all I have to do is take deep breaths, squint at the red banners and fool myself into believing I am at the world’s best-educated Harry Potter convention. Delivering a commencement address is a great responsibility; or so I thought until I cast my mind back to my own graduation. The commencement speaker that day was the distinguished British philosopher Baroness Mary Warnock. Reflecting on her speech has helped me enormousl...

Excerpt from Saying Yes to Change. Fearlessness is being without self-deception. The willingness to look at ourselves and face what’s inside takes courage because we’re bound to discover things that we don’t like. There’s no hiding or denial for the brave. The catch-22 is that we don’t know what it is that we’re unwilling to see. The ego is clever and whatever makes it cringe in shame gets shoved under the covers. The only way that we can reclaim whatever its holding hostage under there is to be aware of our judgments about other people. They hold the key to what we judge most harshly about ourselves. All human beings tuck the behaviors, desires and emotions that make them feel ashamed into their shadow, which is invisible because its out of our visual field. If we could look inside, we’d see it contains all the disowned parts of ourselves that anyone we wanted to please may have criticized. In order to get their love, we became separate from ourselves. The process of sealing off sham...