What Is It You Really Want?

When was the last time you checked in with yourself to ask yourself what it is that you really want? I think if you’re like any other human being, you could give me an answer right away because we humans tend to have ourselves on our mind a lot of the time. But for the sake of this moment of reflection, I’m not interested in what you don’t want and I’m not especially interested in what you think you want or need. I’m interested in you giving yourself the time to sink into the quiet inside of you and see what bubbles up from your curiosity.

What is it that you really want?

Is it a deeper connection to yourself? A deeper connection to your partner or your friends? Would you like to trust yourself more? Would you like to not worry so much? Are you tired of the same old fears coming up and rueing the day?

It’s not often that we allow ourselves the time to reflect on these deeper needs because we’re so good at adapting to our ever-changing circumstances and tolerating things inside of ourselves not realizing that we actually have choice.

Oof. Tolerations.

Are there parts of yourself or beliefs that you have that you tolerate the consequences of? If you’re not sure right in this moment, that’s OK. It’s a deep question. As a dear client of mine recently said when I pointed out some behavior of hers that she’s learned to tolerate, she so honestly replied with, “It’s taken me a while to even get here to talk about it because I was so used to my old behaviors towards myself, that I couldn’t tell you that it was behaviors that I was tolerating. I thought they were just... me.”

Did that make you nod your head? I did when she said it because it is so true about the human condition. We get so used to our ways of doing things. We get so used to our habits of thought. We get locked in to ideas of what we think we want out of life or a career or ourselves that we stay focused on the idea as opposed to being present with what’s changing inside of us. As Teddy mentioned in the interview this week, it wasn’t until he realized that keeping up with the celebrity scene wasn’t getting him out of bed in the morning so to speak, that he assessed what he was doing with his life and started his journey inward to start asking himself these deeper questions I’m posing to you today.

I want to circle back to what I said earlier about not being especially interested in what you think you want or need. I want to clarify what I mean. We tend to have thoughts about things that we think we want or need outside of us because we innocently believe we need those things for our well being. And it’s a trick of the mind because you have your well being right now. You don’t need anything else to obtain it. It’s a judgement or an assessment if you will, from constantly looking outside of ourselves and believing we won’t be OK without x, y and z. It’s deeply important for me to share that with you because I recently woke up to some demons that have been living rent-free in my head that I thought I had cut out like the cancer they are, years ago. And that’s money fears. I’ve woken up to them before and I’ve seen how they were fears that didn’t belong to me, they were other people’s fears that I had absorbed. But they’d been rearing their ugly ahead again in the recent past and when I was kind of shocked to be feeling what I thought was an old thought system I had cut out, I had realized in hindsight that yes, my initial realization of my money fears had definitely changed my relationship to money, but because of those initial realizations, I hadn’t noticed that I was actually still tolerating a bunch of thinking around money.

For example, when I was really busy in my practice, I would entertain thoughts that it could all go away. And when it was quieter, because that’s the ebb and flow of business, I would entertain thoughts that I may not get more clients. All of them rooted in fear, none of them rooted in truth. It wasn’t until I realized I was tired of the dog and pony show inside my mind, and as I asked YOU earlier, I asked myself what is it that I really wanted? (Answer: to be free of the grip of these money stories), then I was reminded that I am the one in charge of my experience and I have the choice to stop identifying with them. It has been an incredible journey since for me, because I feel a deep peace.. but I will warn you from experience - when you’re done with old habits in your brain, and you begin to choose to not get caught up in them and stay in your peace instead? They will rear their ugly head... louder and louder. Almost as if they want you to believe you need them in order to avoid the fearful story they’ve created. The ultimate gaslighter. But what’s fabulous? Is when you know this, when you remember this conversation we’ve had today, you’ll see through it. All I ask is for you to have patience while you practice staying in your peace while you allow the noise to pass.

As Father Greg said last week, practice makes permanent, boy oh boy is that right on the money.

So, dear ones, what is it that you really want? What is it that you want to be free of? What are you tolerating that you can be done with? I so want your heart to be given the opportunity to rest, and you are absolutely capable of experiencing that.

Sending love in all directions and I’ll see you next week...

Jess

Move Beyond The Mind You Have

When do you feel love in your heart? What does it feel like? Is it a tingly sensation all over? Does it feel like relief? Does it feel warm? Does it feel like you’ve dropped into a peaceful place? Take a moment to reflect on that for me.

Now what do you suppose takes you away from that loving feeling? In conversation with Father Greg from Homeboy Industries on the podcast, he mentioned something that really hit me in the chest about his work - “How do you infuse hope in kids whom hope is foreign?“ It hit me because I have spoken with countless people who, although most haven’t come from tumultuous backgrounds such as gang life, feel as though love and therefore hope, IS foreign to them. In fact, how is it that I myself, coming from a very loving home, and a very privileged life when it comes to loving relationships, have experienced that sense of hope and love being foreign? Like they have gone missing? I feel a little shy saying it considering I have had resources and people in my life that equate to incredible privilege compared to many, but I know it’s a feeling that many of you can relate to, at some point or another in your life. And it makes me curious - knowing that we come into this world as a little ball of love and hope - which I’m sure you’ve felt when in the presence of a baby, you don’t have to take my word for it - it makes me curious…

How is it that we forget who we are?

For me personally, I know that when I’ve felt the depths of despair it’s because I’ve made up a future that scares the living hell out of me. I’ve made up a perspective of myself that isn’t rooted in truth. The world that I’ve created in my mind is absolutely terrifying and I’m living in it and experiencing it as if it IS truth. And the tricky thing about those terrifying times? We only see in life what enforces the current movie that’s playing in our mind, so a terrible cycle gets created in what we’re thinking and what we’re seeing. One reinforces the other.

We all have histories full of experiences that act as different notes of the music being played through our mind, but the theme I notice in us all is that when it comes to those periods of our life, however momentary or long, the love we have for ourselves becomes conditional.

Until we feel fulfilled by what we see in our lives, we must withhold love from ourselves.

Not until everything is in some arbitrary version of perfect - we abstain from allowing ourselves to drop into the essence of who we are - almost as if that abstaining is punishment for not getting it ‘right’ in life. And yet, the more we abstain, the more we avoid dropping into our true essence, the more gas we’re throwing on the fire that is the horrific movie in our mind that creates that cycle of illusory hell that we feel we can’t get out of.

So how do we break the cycle? I understand it can be hard to see who we are at our core when the noise in our mind is loud, I’ve been there. So here are some thoughts that are straight from Father Greg’s mouth yesterday that I won’t even attempt to say more succinctly (though I will comment throughout from my own peanut gallery)...

“Move beyond the mind that you have” (yes)

“Make friends with your wound or you’ll be tempted to despise the wounded” (and it goes without saying that if you haven’t made friends with your wounds, you will be tempted to despise yourself… as the wounded... as illustrated by everything I said earlier... ok, carrying on)

“The goal is not to be a stranger to yourself” (this seems so simple but a point that we so often miss because we’re caught up in running away from a falsified version of ourselves in our mind)

“Fall in love with being loving” (couldn’t have said it better)

“Practice makes permanent” (absolutely) and…

“Ventilate the world with tenderness” to which I would add ventilate your own pain, your own fear, the delusions you have of your life... with tenderness towards yourself. As Father Greg so beautifully put, “Love is like water to a very dry sponge and the moment of connection of water to sponge is tenderness.” And finally, as he shared from his experience of creating Homeboy Industries, “you can create a community that is transformational with dosing one another with love and tenderness”, and I believe you can create an environment inside of yourself that is transformational by dosing yourself with love and tenderness. With that, eventually, you will allow yourself to see from a deeper place, all that you are, more permanently, and the implications of that are infinite.

So how are you feeling now? Do a little scan for me... are you feeling a little lighter? Warm? Is that a bit of a smile peaking through? Ahhhhh... there you are. God I love being here with you.

Sending love in all directions and I’ll see you next week~

Jess

Insights On A Sunday Morning

Last Sunday morning, I curled up on my couch with a big, cozy blanket, grabbed my cup of coffee that has become a Sunday treat, and a delicious almond croissant (did you know Trader Joe’s has croissants that rival a french bakery? They do… they’re in the freezer section of all places, but I highly encourage you to check them out). One of my favorite teachers, Elsie Spittle, had recently given a talk, so I pulled her up on my TV and settled in for an hour of bliss.

In the talk, Elsie said something that stuck with me. You know those moments when you hear something that you very well may have heard a million times before, but for whatever reason, this time it wakes you up inside?

“Your body is an expression of spirit.”

I couldn’t stop reflecting on how profound that awareness is. For a time, I think I had seen my body as a vessel for my spirit, separate from me. I didn’t disregard it for that reason, but it looked more like a task to take care of it from that perspective. It felt good to feed it well, it felt good to exercise to keep it healthy, but again, it felt separate from me. I hadn’t really noticed that I felt this way until I heard Elsie - “Your body is an expression of spirit” - in one fell swoop I felt a feeling of coming together of all of my parts. As if before I heard her, I saw myself only as the formless energy that is my spirit, the me that shines through my eyeballs, the me that people feel when in connection, but it made me feel so touched, even tender, to see the whole of me as an expression of my essence.

Upon my reflecting I realized something from a more pragmatic perspective as well. When we are lost in thought, when we are consumed with the script the story writer in our mind is telling us, our body reflects that back to us. I’ve shared this before, how our body is the greatest alert system for where we are in our head, but I’m seeing it deeper. What a gift, our body is. It is a constant mirror, reflecting back to us where we are in our state of mind. When we are suffering, when we are… I can’t think of a better word so I’ll say it again… consumed by the world we’re creating inside of ourselves, our body works with us in unison to let us know we’ve gotten off track. An analogy that comes to mind is our cars: If we see an alert on our dashboard that we need to get an oil change, that is a gift from the car saying, “Hey! I’m not functioning quite right anymore, do this then I’ll be working like new!” Without thinking twice, we know what we need to do. We may drive around with the light on as long as possible before we sense that it’s absolutely necessary to get the car fixed, but we respect the fact that we know it needs fixing in order to work well.

The same goes with our bodies.

What if we began to consider this for ourselves more consistently? Respecting our bodies as an expression of our spirit? What if when we began to get the alerts from our body - a tinge here, an inner pressure feeling there, a sore back here, a little dizziness there - what if when we got those signals we respected our spirit in the same way we do our cars? What would that look like for us as humans?

What comes up for me is that those signals are an opportunity to look at the mirror our body is holding up for us. We aren’t broken by nature. We aren’t in a constant state of dis-ease, by nature. So if when our spirit is free to express itself through this skin suit of ours, we feel relaxed and confident and at ease, or differently put, full of life and energy and charisma, whenever we feel we’ve gone away from those baselines, it’s an OPPORTUNITY to notice our state of mind and check in. I personally remind myself in these moments that I am willing to be uncomfortable while the thinking I’m in passes (because it will pass, it always does), then inquire (like taking the car to the mechanic), “What do I need right now?” I am always, always, always met with an answer which ranges from, “Get a drink of water” to “Stop kicking the can down the road” - it’s fascinating to me every single time and when I nurture that voice and honor it, I find myself back in flow, feeling my essence like a warm hearth in my core.

Because I have freed her from the trappings of my mind.

“Your body is an expression of spirit.”

Sending love in all directions,

Jessie

Dear Diary

Dear diary,

My first big publication came out last week - a feature in Goop called “11 Professionals Helping People Find More Satisfying, Successful Careers” to be exact. I have been waiting for this feature to come out for nearly a year now and I’ve learned so much along the way that I wanted to write down the two big takeaways so I don’t forget them…

PATIENCE, young grasshopper.

You truly cannot move at a faster pace than the greater intelligence behind life. TRULY. Every step of the way, IS the way. A few months back, I found myself absolutely exhausted of my running script around this Goop article - thoughts of questioning when I thought it would come out, hopes that it would be a gamechanger for my business, fears that I was holding too high of expectations - and it dawned on me, “Jessie! There is nothing holding you back in life… ever! Your thoughts are making you feel like things should be happening faster or life would look different if only things would be happening when you think they should, but beyond your thinking there is the flow of life that you can trust… stop spinning about it, it will come out when it’s supposed to… enjoy what’s happening now.” It’s amazing when you think you know something deep down then you get smacked upside the head with an aha that takes you deeper. And guess what happened once I saw this, yet again, for myself? It felt like I was pulled back at warp speed into observation mode of the unfoldings of the last year anticipating Goop’s release and of course, I could see how all of my experiences, my insights and realizations, HAD to happen BEFORE the article came out. If it was released when I was originally expecting it to, I wouldn’t have been ready. I would have managed because we always rise to the occasion, but it holds so much more impact and I’m so much more peaceful, now. Takeaway? I’ve said it before but I’ll say it again… LIVE IN THE FEELING OF HINDSIGHT.

FOREBODING JOY IS A REAL THING.

Shoutout to Brene Brown for this heads up! The day Goop came out I was so excited I could hardly get out of bed fast enough. If the evening before (when I got the official YES IT’S COMING OUT TOMORROW!) was any kind of indication of my mood, the big release day was going to feel like my first visit to Disneyland mixed with Christmas eve as a youngin, the moment I turned around to my husband on bended knee, college graduation day and my wedding day all wrapped up into one. I went to the computer before the Goop newsletter was sent out, carefully typed in g-o-o-p dot c-o-m, scrolled down the homepage with baited breath and BOOM!!! There it was… the perfectly curated intro to the article, scroll scroll scroll, then…. my face. In one of the top online magazines on the internet. Cue excited feelings aaaandd….. nothing. What took the excitement’s place?! Everything that I would have never thought would be flying through my mind. Fears, worries, stress. ALL made up. Brene Brown says, “Our actual experiences of joy—those intense feelings of deep spiritual connection and pleasure—seize us in a very vulnerable way” and boyyyy was she right! To be completely honest, I have brushed by this feeling before but it’s never sat with me the way it did the day of the release. All day I felt like I was walking a tightrope of extreme joy and gratitude, then my foot would occasionally slip into doom and gloom. Luckily, with what I know to be true about my mind, I was able to witness it all and consistently stay in the moment because I so desperately didn’t want to miss any of it by being distracted by the nonsense trying to run the show upstairs (shoutout to the hubs for stepping in as a sideline coach!). All of this to say, I am incredibly grateful I was able to witness myself in the experience because it was the first time that JOY churned up fear in a real way for me. Staying out of the muck of my mind while chaos is going on around me?! I can ride that wave til the cows come home, but this was a new one for me. The takeaway? FEARFUL THOUGHTS ARE TRULY NONSENSICAL AND THERE IS NEVER A GOOD TIME TO ENTERTAIN THEM.

With that, I will leave you for today, dear diary. Moving forward, let’s remember that you’ll be learning new things every day for the rest of your life and you don’t know anything til the moment that you know everything.

XO,

Jessie

Be Your Own Spiritual Activist

“Maybe it’s the ultimate act of self-love to be a spiritual activist FOR YOURSELF…”

This bubbled up the other day as I started out on a long overdue and much needed walk for fresh air. The Southern California rain had been encouraging a very introverted and introspective mood that was frankly quite low to begin with due to my hormones raging from switching up my birth control after 15 years. I had been really in my head about my next moves for work; What’s on the back burner, what’s ahead of me and brainstorming what I could do to move things forward. My thinking went from creative, exploratory, exciting to DOOM AND GLOOM. Isn’t it amazing how Thought can do that? One minute you’re in the middle of playing around in your thoughts as if you have every color of Play Doh and you’re curiously putting different sculptures together, breaking them apart, smooshing them into new shapes. Then all of a sudden the Play Doh weighs more, the beautiful bright colors are no longer and the dough isn’t pliable. You look down at a pile of rocks that are multiplying with each rock feeling really real, really heavy and really significant - aka DOOM AND GLOOM.

With my hormonal low mood, I already felt like I had a thick layer of green gas hanging around me 24/7 that I was fully aware I was looking at life through. I reminded myself on multiple occasions, even when I didn’t sense the green gas as much, to not take my gnarly thoughts seriously. My spiritual self had my human self’s back, so to speak. But who knows what happened on this particular day, the thought storm of Play Doh turned rocks was too heavy to handle. I reached into the ol’ goody bag of tools I have for these moments, also known as the only tool I have for these moments, and I asked myself OUT LOUD, “What do I need to do right now?” Wisdom always knocks with the answer and I was moved to go outside for a walk, and as always, it was exactly what I needed.

After getting outside, my perspective naturally came back and I could see where my thoughts went to hell without me noticing. You may already be a step ahead of me, but it was the moment I started to fall into the ol’ trap of needing to figure out things to do to move me forward faster in my work - whatever that even means. I say that because my own expectations and timelines are all made up, so who am I comparing myself to should I figure out something that would move me along faster? My own expectations? That again, are made up? I remembered all of this then AHA! What I know to be true, what is best for my well-being, is to TRUST the greater intelligence of life. TRUST that Universal Mind, the ever-flowing energy that is around me and within me, that my Wisdom is tapped into, will continue to nudge me forward via my gut instinct and when I heed it’s direction, everything unfolds EXACTLY the way it’s supposed to - beyond any of my wildest hopes or expectations. With my re-gained perspective came that delicious feeling of peace washing over me then there she was…

“Maybe it’s the ultimate act of self-love to be a spiritual activist FOR YOURSELF…”

It was so clear. To stay in the drivers seat of my thoughts, to remind myself that I can’t trust or believe the things going through my mind because my feelings coming from those thoughts were going to make me feel scared, anxious, fearful or just plain yucky - especially when I’m already in a low mood (from the hormones, but generally also from hunger, lack of sleep, hard day, etc etc) - is being an activist for my spiritual health to continue leading a soul-centered life. Like I said earlier, acting accordingly to what I know to be true about what’s going on in my mind when I feel like shit (aka nonsense that shouldn’t be paid attention to) is merely my spiritual self having my human self’s back. It’s like seeing the traffic on the freeway coming to a screeching halt from a distance so you make a quick decision to exit and take side streets to your destination.

So I say do it. Take the exit before the three car pile up. Be your own spiritual activist for a soul-centered life.

It’s the ultimate act in self-love. If you’ve ever been unsure how to have self-love, this is it, folks. Honoring what you know to be true, that Universal Mind HAS YOU, and it isn’t some airy-fairy, luck of the draw look at life. That it’s 100% my experience, as I’m sure you’ve experienced as well, that when you follow those inner nudges - your KNOWING inside - life flows and unfolds in a manner that can’t be described. Things always work out. So speak up for yourself! Talk to those very real looking thoughts and tell them you don’t want to believe them anymore and fall back into the lazy river of life that’s already flowing and pulling you forward!

Lastly, after having this insight I approached a staircase I needed to climb. I looked up at how many stairs there were and how steep they were, I took a deep breath in with my eyes closed, then with my first step on the first stair my inner voice, my Wisdom, said “Slow and steady.” I felt a zing of energy go from my toes through the crown of my head. I knew it meant much more than just climbing the stairs in front of me. I lifted my head in full gratitude with tears in my eyes and said, “Thank you.”

Here’s to you and your spiritual activism for your soul-centered life…

Here’s to us.

All my love,

Jessie

Here's To Your Roller Coaster

Have you ever noticed that as a culture when we refer to riding a roller coaster at a theme park, the perspective or feeling we get from it is FUN. Maybe we aren’t personally big fans of roller coasters, but we know the intention behind the experience is to be thrilled, get an adrenaline rush, feel accomplished and revved up to go for another spin when it’s over.

But when we’re asked by our friends and loved ones how life has been when we’re catching up, if we reply with, “life has been a roller coaster!” the intention behind it and the feeling we share is that it’s been kind of rough. Of course we’re referring to the highs and lows we’ve been experiencing, but we initially get a sense that, in general, we’ve been feeling the suck. Today, I share with you a short story that takes back the meaning of roller coaster when we refer to our adventurous lives.

Because that is what life is, pure adventure.

If that sounds a bit too sugar coated for you, let me remind you: The deeper we are grounded in the perspective that we are ALWAYS OK, that we are standing in the middle of our well-being 100% of the time and the only thing that keeps us from feeling it is Thought. When we find ourselves in the pits, we may be hypnotized by it momentarily (or not so momentarily), but we can trust that eventually we will naturally shift into more of an observer of our own thinking as opposed to believing we’re messed up, life is falling apart, or everything is going to hell in a handbasket. So our experiences - good and bad - can then just be part of the whole adventure.

Is it really possible to be in the driver’s seat of our experience when we’re feeling shitty? YES! Read on…

The other night, I found myself really exhausted at the end of a long day. I had been in my thoughts about a big project that’s on the move, so I was more than done with myself. As I was driving home, sitting in traffic, the wave of exhaustion and being tired of staying in my thoughts made me cry - it was a good release. I got home, I was alone for the evening so I plopped in front of the TV and ate my dinner. Moments later I felt the sadness coming towards me again, but this time I had to pause the TV to give full attention to what felt like a force running full steam ahead right at me. I knew I couldn’t see it’s face for what it was because it was moving too fast then it hit me and I wept. Full on. I was looking at what was around me and thinking how a book on my coffee table that I’ve been loving didn’t look appealing anymore. I thought about my clients, my future success… I questioned everything. All within a matter of moments and I kept weeping.

Shortly after these few moments of grave sadness passed through me, it was as if I could see clearly again. I thought to myself, “My God! You are weeping as if someone died!” I asked myself out loud, “Am I going to be OK?” And of course, my Wisdom inside of me nodded with an ever so knowing, YES. And within a few breaths, perspective came back to me. I was calm, I remembered all that I knew, then I was moved to take a shower so I took it. I headed to bed after this whirlwind experience that felt incredibly spiritual - though it was painful, I couldn’t help but find it awe-inspiring. I was so grateful for the understanding I have of how our mind works. Even though my insecurity level was quite high, my consciousness stayed quite high also. In the old days when I would experience this type of force of insecure thinking, I would believe it meant something about me, about my life. I would get tossed into an anxiety attack and it would take a few days of analyzing where it came from to gain some relief. This time around, even though those same insecure thoughts flowed through and I had to hold ground… I did just that. I held my ground and rode the wave of sadness. I witnessed myself. I let the gnarly wave of Thought energy kick everything up in my mind and I reminded myself that it was exactly that. It wasn’t real, and it would be gone soon… however painful and uncomfortable, I sat in the experience and reminded myself what I knew.

When I spoke with my husband the next day about it all, he clarified an incredible perspective on the whole experience in a way that I loved. I knew what it was that I was experiencing (Thought), but I couldn’t stop reveling at how intense it was.

“It’s the adventure of living life” he said.

Beautiful. Simple. Ordinary.

That’s exactly it, my love. It’s the adventure of living life. The roller coaster. There’s no need to make sense of it. There’s no need to judge it. It’s just part of the ever evolving experience of being a spiritual being having a human experience on this planet. And it’s in those moments that we learn, we grow, we’re reminded of what we know and what we don’t know; they keep us on our toes and provide texture and color to our lives.

I will continue to be amazed… here’s to your roller coaster.

All my love and see you again very soon~

XO, Jessie

Lose The Thoughts... Keep The Feeling

Let me ask you this…

Have you ever found yourself in a routine of doing something, whether that be a daily or weekly task or even a tradition with family, and you eventually find yourself feeling like you have to push hard or lift some serious mental weights to make it happen? Maybe it’s going to the gym, your morning meditation, the order in which you do your morning routine or it’s the cookies you always bring to the Christmas party?

Any of these things became a routine in your life, an expectation you placed on your own head, because at SOME point they brought you peace, joy, excitement… a full heart. Then one day, it feels hard, it’s not as fulfilling… but because at one point it was the thing that felt like a game-changer in your life or it was something that brought you and those around you a ton of love, it feels blasphemous to let it go.

Are you with me?

I was just having this discussion with a dear friend who has been getting deeper and deeper into the understanding of how our minds work. Understanding how we operate. Understanding that real change and peace comes from following our own Wisdom, our gut instinct, and that we don’t have to believe our thinking 100% of the time. That real change comes from understanding that when we take action and make decisions from the inside-out we are not lost - it’s when we look for things on the outside to make our insides feel better that we feel more lost than ever.

Apologies… long winded side bar.

Back to my friend.

He had gotten in a routine of journaling and meditating every morning as tools to ease his anxiety (pre learning about this understanding). These tools are absolutely beautiful and there’s nothing wrong with him having them in his life, but with this new understanding, he started to find himself waking up with less and less anxiety yet he felt he had to do his routine, even though it was becoming uninspired - even though he wasn’t necessarily motivated to do them anymore. Once he saw it for himself that it was just a thought in his head that he had to do these things to start his day off on the right foot, he dropped the journaling and found himself newly inspired for his meditation. And who knows! The journaling will more than likely reappear in his life at some point, maybe it already has since we talked, but seeing it clearly that there is much more benefit to his well-being and energy if he journals and meditates when he’s moved to, was a game-changer!

I have brought all of this up to share that I have come across this ‘I have to’ feeling with this beautiful, cathartic, love-filled blog that I share with you. Over the last several weeks as I’ve gotten busier and busier in my days, I’ve felt frustrated, drained and overwhelmed with getting my article out on a Monday (even if it’s 11:59pm, god willing). Something that started out as a way to get deeper into my own understanding and share my story so you all could benefit from the journey and insights I was having, has become a subject of stressful thinking in my mind. Have the last few blogs been in vein? Absolutely not. However, I have had to find ways to strike a match to light the candle within me to be inspired and motivated to stay on this timeline I set up for myself!

SO! In staying in line with what I teach, I am doing for myself exactly what I tell everyone else to live by. After this week, my blog features will be coming to you when it hits me in the gut to share a new revelation or an insight that has taken me deeper. Not only will I be re-inspired, you will feel that inspiration seeping through the screen as well. My writings may very well still be delivered to you on a Monday, because that’s the funny thing about removing an expectation thought, the routine may not change but since there’s nothing on it anymore, the inspiration is back in flow. However, it may come to you on a different day, I may skip a week or you may receive two in one week instead! My inner fire has already been re-ignited and I’m so incredibly grateful you have been here, and ARE here, to witness my journey.

Lastly, I had thought to myself, “But Jessie, it’s called MONDAY Musings! What are you gonna do, just look like a weirdo that sends out a Monday Musings blog on a Saturday?!” And then it hit me… I made up the title, so I can very well change it ;)

How is THAT for a metaphor about EVERYTHING we see in life as fixed, when truly, EVERYTHING is fluid…

All my love and see you on the next Musings release.

XOXO,

Jessie

What Are You Seeking?

No matter who you are, no matter what you do, where you are from, who you were raised by, what your circumstances were growing up; No matter your age, your relationship status, the color of your skin or the culture you're immersed in... WE ALL seek the same things.

Belonging, safety, love, peace, joy, purpose, happiness, success, health...

Can you take a wild guess as to where you find them or who you need in your life to achieve such graces?

You might've guessed it but I'll put it to you loud and clear...

You have them all, and then-some, within you, RIGHT NOW.

Prepping to write this, I sat for a few minutes with my eyes closed, my forehead relaxed and my tongue released from the roof of my mouth (I highly recommend doing this right now if you aren't already). I put on one of my favorite meditation tunes from my husband (Click here if you'd like it for yourself), and I imagined myself falling back... into myself. Does that make sense? I visualized myself literally falling backwards, or rather, floating backwards, into an abyss... into my Consciousness. The feeling that washed over me was pure peace and tranquility, then the tears came. Tears of immense gratitude for feeling all of those graces I mentioned above: Belonging, safety, love, peace, joy, purpose, happiness, success, health.

Now if I threw you for a little loop by saying consciousness, never fear,  I am here to share how I came to understanding it more clearly for myself. It has taken some chipping away at the overused version of the word that often times brings thoughts and feelings of hierarchy or someone achieving some level of understanding that you will never achieve. Divine Consciousness is purely our gift of awareness that resides within ALL of us, all the time. It is within this awareness that we can realize for ourselves that we have all of the answers to all of our life's qualms... answers to questions that each and every one of us has. As Sydney Banks says in his profound book that I refer to on a consistent basis for deepening my understanding of our experience of life, The Missing Link:

Mental health lies within the consciousness of all human beings, but it is shrouded and held prisoner by our own erroneous thoughts.

Side bar: Those thoughts are why our level of consciousness can go up and down throughout the day. When we're believing our stressful thinking {still happens to me, even if just for a moment - I'm human, too!}, our consciousness is in the ground because we're flailing around trying to find answers in those crappy thoughts as opposed to our wisdom, our gut instinct. When we are peaceful inside, in flow with our wisdom, we have a higher consciousness because we are aware that our knowing has us, and will continue to reveal answers as we need them. Ok, carry on with Syd...

This is why we must look past our contaminated thoughts to find the purity and wisdom that lies inside our own consciousness.

When the wise tell us to look within, they are directing us beyond intellectual analysis of personal thought, to a higher order of knowledge called wisdom.

Like the sun, your wisdom is always present beyond the clouds of your erroneous thoughts

Isla Mujeres, Mexico

When I fell back into myself in my brief meditation, those tears of gratitude were not only coming from the peace that washed over me from feeling the depth of truth that all which we seek lies within us; But from this place I felt expansive, a deep feeling of love that unleashed a flood of memories where I felt this same feeling because I was present and totally aware (conscious) of how pure the moment was. Nothing that was extraordinary, but absolutely ordinary: flashes of memories with my family sitting around the table with coffee or going on a bike ride, me at a tiny age in the back seat of my parent's car, collecting myself to head out on an exciting day trip adventure. My husband and I on a walk talking about our dreams, watching a sunset in Joshua Tree on vacation with my friends who are family, a moment where I sobbed in traffic because immense gratitude hit me so hard I couldn't contain myself, looking up at the stars during an outdoor summer concert...

Have you had these types of experiences? The kind where something hits you out of no where and you think to yourself how perfect a moment, an experience or a feeling is? And you're totally aware of it and grateful for it? You even say to yourself "I want to remember this forever."

In those moments, you were just completely aware of YOU - the brush and branches of any thinking that may have normally gotten in the way was gone, and you were experiencing YOURSELF in pure alignment form. It may have looked like it was the experience you were having that brought on all of those beautiful feelings, but you were truly just experiencing yourself, shining bright and effortless. The more you can realize for yourself that that IS you 100% of the time, even when you are distracted by your thinking, the more your thinking will stop distracting you. The feeling is so incredibly amazing that you'll naturally continue to make the effort to ignore your stressful thoughts. Like I've said many times before about this understanding: it feels like pure magic that no one told us we had.

Throughout your day, whenever you experience peace wash over you, even if it's just for a moment, pause to sit with it if you can or at the very least, just notice it. If you are reading this and thinking "There is no way I can have even a moment of what she is talking about - I work a stressful 9-5, I have kids, I have to make the meals, I barely even have time to take a crap in a peaceful state of mind." Well, to that I say, you are proving my point that we all innocently believe that the life that goes on outside of us is where we seek: Belonging, safety, love, peace, joy, purpose, happiness, success, health... But the truth is, when you are aware of what exists within you underneath the chaos of your mind, it makes no difference where you are, what you're doing or who you're interacting with - you can experience consistent, beautiful peace inside - because it's YOU; And nothing outside of yourself can take you away from YOU, only you can do that by continuing to believe your old script.

As a 15 year old client of mine said so clearly to me the other day when she had a huge insight into her anxiety, "OMG! It's like I'm choosing to get caught up in my own drama! My thoughts are my drama! They aren't real, they're just drama!"

Mmhmmm.....

All my love and see you next week,

Jessie

In Sickness And In Health, You Always Have A Choice

I've been bubbling on what to share for today - I had a few ideas, good ones, but they were coming from my intellect. Experiences I have had lately that are great examples of being aware of the 3 principles in motion, but they aren't meant for today, my gut isn't sounding the alarm. Instead of pushing myself to sit in front of the computer, I stayed put, knowing my Wisdom would bubble up with something, even if it was in the eleventh hour.

And just like that, as Wisdom always does when you look the other way, it hit me...

I was sitting on the couch watching "The Great British Bake Off" on Netflix (the sweetest [no pun intended] show. I highly recommend it for winding down without having to commit to a storyline), and this massive insight hit me:

Our spiritual selves can be at peace even while our physical human selves, our bodies (or as I call them, skin suits) are experiencing physical changes or pain.

It takes a commitment to the observation of the interplay between the spiritual and physical since in the face of physical pain in our bodies, our thinking can run rampant. But if you can stay in a higher consciousness (awareness) of what is happening in your thinking, you will naturally be given the opportunity to stay in a peaceful, content (even joyful) inner experience. Think about pain or dis-ease in the body, of course you feel it, there's no way around it - every sensation: burning, pinching, prickling, tingling, nausea, etc. But as soon as you feel it, you have the free will to choose to continue breathing life into that pain by way of staying hypnotized by your fearful thinking around it OR you can be aware that you're experiencing physical pain (this is the observing of the interplay I was talking about at the top), and with the nature of how your mind works when you observe, a distance is created between you and the thinking around how much pain you're in, giving you the space to allow that thinking to pass which organically shifts your focus elsewhere.

WHOA.

The more I allow this to unfold, I'm brought back to the fact that our internal experience does not depend on our external circumstances; Therefore our physical pain would be in the same contention for outside experience, since our physical body is outside of our spiritual selves. Are you with me? (Hang in there, this next example will help make it more clear...)

For example, I have always struggled with a nauseated belly when I'm nervous. I was experiencing it the other day just before I left my house for a workshop that I was teaching. First, I was quickly aware that I was in my thinking about how the workshop would go, so my anxiety immediately dissipated when I said out loud, "Jess, you're not there yet which is why you feel anxious and nervous. You always rise to the occasion. Take one step at a time, come back to the moment." Realizing that I had become gripped by my thinking when I wasn't looking, then choosing to get in the driver's seat of my experience, naturally allowed the thinking and feeling to pass. However, because I had gotten so wound up momentarily, my stomach was still nauseated after I felt more peaceful, so my thinking, once released from my grip as far as the workshop, found it's way to focus on my upset stomach. As our minds work, it had a field day with my thoughts around my nausea and I quickly became hypnotized by it. I became even more nauseated as more and more insecure thinking was being created, and I even thought for a moment, "Should I just throw up so I can feel better?" But as soon as that thought swam through, I caught myself believing all of my made up nonsense and took the distance. I knew in that moment, that just like the nature of Thought, the nausea would pass if I didn't breathe life into my thinking around it. And sure enough, I was naturally shifted to focusing on other things and realized many minutes later that everything had left me and I was back in the moment. All of this happened within minutes, by the way, that's how quickly we can be overtaken, as well as how quickly we can catch ourselves and choose a different adventure.

You always have the choice when you observe where you are in your thinking...

Your well-being does not depend on your physical health.

Yet again, a moment of clarity that just came shining through. You can be managing anything from acute or chronic pain to terminal illness, and as much as you breathe life into the fearful or insecure thinking that swims around the physical attributes, because your feelings and emotions come from your thinking 100% of the time, you can choose to stay hypnotized by it or just be aware of what's happening, so it passes through you naturally. You cannot be destabilized from your well-being when you stay in observation and awareness. You are human, of course, so pain can absolutely take you by surprise, your thinking can run a 10k marathon before you catch it, or hell, you can suffer from your thinking around your physical pain just because you feel like it, that's the beauty of free will! But the difference between understanding how your mind and internal experience works versus being gripped by your chaotic mind because you don't know what's happening, is having the freedom to choose how you feel, inside. You are OK either way, because we are always OK (which brings peace in and of itself), but isn't it freeing knowing you don't have to stay gripped by an experience?

Ahhhhh....

All my love, see you next week~

Jessie