I doubt this is coming as new news to any of you. Like, did you even need to read beyond the title to get the point? Probably not.

But here’s the thing – we are largely blind to how many walls we have operating inside us because we’re used to them… until a moment or person comes along where we realize we feel disconnected and we don’t know how to bridge the divide.

Yesterday afternoon I taught two classes back to back and THE theme that unexpectedly showed up in both classes was around authentic expression.

We’re all taught, one way or another, that quite possibly the worst thing we could ever be is needy. Cheri Huber talks about this a lot in her work and when you look inside you might find that you have some pretty entrenched and slippery fears about being “that needy horrible thing”. Eek!

So we hide. We bottle up. And then, we go some shade of numb.

In one of the classes yesterday, Ascend, most people were participating via Skype so it’s sort of like an interactive Brady Bunch meditation class, with everyone sitting in their respective homes, cozy with tea in hand and cats on laps. The class started and we had our usual check in and then… it just felt all wrong. What was going on? I asked them. One person felt numb. One person said she felt disconnected. Everyone agreed. The group started discussing what they could do to create a feeling of connection. Chanting? Mantras? Nope, that didn’t feel right. Then someone blurted out what was bothering her, something she was feeling really scared about. Tears came. Suddenly we all felt A LOT more connected.

Funny how that is when we put our cards on the table – we invite an energy that had been dammed up to start flowing and everyone, both the speaker and those listening, can feel it… and feel the engagement of experiencing what’s real.

Oh, the crackling aliveness of vulnerable authenticity! So scary, it seems, and yet so deliciously freeing and energizing.

There’s a lot more I could say but I want to leave you with this (because it’s really a matter of living it instead of talking about it)…

Take a risk, today, this week, SOON, and say to yourself or someone else the thing you haven’t been wanting to say. It’s always there. Even right now, when you pause for 2 seconds, you can feel it lurking inside you wanting to come out. So let it out. Just say it. Get the flow going inside you, through you, and out into life.

I’ll bet you’ll start feeling a lot better.

This weekend I was speaking with a woman who had come to the realization that she has lived the vast majority of her life living in fear, preparing for the next imagined disaster, and feeling paralyzed to take action in her life. I think this is true for a lot of us. I mean, how many of your hopes and dreams are still sitting on the shelf? Anyhow, she’s been waking up to the fear spell and sees it’s a huge lie designed to restrict her expression and aliveness. She’s OVER IT but being sick of it isn’t enough to change it and she felt stuck on what else she could do to move things forward and posed the question almost everyone poses at this fork in the road….

If I’m not focusing on what’s wrong and getting caught up in the drama and stress of that, what else would I be doing?

Considering how much time we all spend consciously and unconsciously focusing on what’s wrong, you’d think this was one of life’s great mysteries… but it’s not.

It’s could be as simple as this -

Focus on creating beauty.

Take your attention so far off of “what’s wrong” that you choose to show up as a blessing in whatever small or grand way you are moved to. Let each moment be a prayerful offering of your creative energy to the space around you, to the muse that inspires you, to who you’re becoming, to those in your life, to the collective.

I often say the best cure for depression is to be creative. 20 minutes into virtually any creative activity and whatever bad mood or feeling of stuckness I had been feeling begins to shift. It never ceases to amaze me and every time I re-remember this “magic” trick I can’t believe I ever let a day go by without showing up for my creative practices.

And as amazing as it is, creating beauty takes this magic a step further.

In the face of beauty serious alchemy happens. Contractions expand, hardness softens, individuation connects. The world isn’t filled with pictures and calendars of sunsets, ocean views, and mountain ranges by coincidence! We all crave the elevating power of beauty. We want to experience the unmistakable way it opens our heart and brings us into graceful harmony with earth and spirit but we forget that we can be the creators of beauty, not just its recipients.

Life is such a precious gift. And you are so amazing! So puh-lease don’t waste one more of your glorious moments fretting about what’s wrong, holding yourself back with doubt, or feeling insecure. The irrational fear of survival that’s cloaked in a wet wool blanket of what’s wrong that we’ve all been conditioned to live by is ready to be released.

And we are the ones who are here to do it through how we each choose (and it is a choice) to show up in our every day life. Fear and preoccupation with what’s wrong won’t go running just because you’re sick of it and dream of feeling free. It requires us to see it for what it is and choose a new, generous, creative, and beauty-filled way of living. Here, now, in this moment.

We all know we’re in a time of massive change. What’s happening with Occupy Wall Street is amazing. People have HAD IT. And for good reason. This is a great example of a large scale gesture of people harnessing their creative energy to express their desire for collective balance.

But every gesture counts – every smile, every flower put in a vase, every choice of generosity and warmth, every artful touch. They all turn the tide towards elevation in their own way. Just think of how empty it feels when you go into a home you had loved after you packed all your things up. The beauty is gone, the space is only a shell of what it had been. Every moment has that quality… it is as alive as the beauty you bring to it.

So drop any story of what’s wrong that tries to falsely park itself in your attention and weigh you down. If something needs attention in your life, do what you need to do, but please don’t get all concerned, tight, or heavy about it. It’s sometimes easier said than done but truly – you have the power to break up dense fear energies and transmute them to something much lighter and freer when you remember what a rare blessing you are and create beauty in your life.

Start now. It could be as easy as smiling.

(Hey, that rhymes – we’re off to a good start!)

Here you are – beautiful, wild, passionate, intelligent, a throbbing mass of sensations barely able to contain how much vitality, desire, love, and inspiration is coursing through your being. You’re talented beyond words, with gifts you’ve been mastering for lifetimes. You are simultaneously so completely connected to the collective that within you is the entire universe, and so utterly unique that you are an irreplaceable instrument the greater intelligence is creating through with a purpose nobody but you can do. You are made of stardust, your voice is the voice of The Creator, you are love manifest.

Seeing you like this, I am in awe of the grandeur of life. Aren’t you!? I mean, take a moment to breath IN how completely mind glowingly cosmically exquisite this being human is, this being you is. It’s wild! Profound! The stuff dreams are made of! Only it’s real, everyday, and it’s called life and you get to live it. Right now. In this moment. Here it is – woo-hoo!!!!

So when I see you (or me) hunching your shoulders, looking critically at yourself in the mirror, holding onto a relationship with someone who treats you badly, telling yourself you can’t do it, looking away when you see someone hot instead of looking at them with your winning smile, and the other 10-bazillion actions that express the low self-worth we’ve each been conditioned to identify with, I want to run up to you and tear the victim mummy wrappings of conditioning OFF of you so you can start seeing who you really are – a divine expression of light in form.

The other day this was my status update on Facebook which got just about as many “likes” as anything I’ve ever posted, which is a LOT!

One of the biggest things I’m re-creating in myself is that it’s OK to take up the space I do, in all the ways that is, and to stop apologizing for being me… or my desires, feelings, dreams, and expression. We’re all dynamic, amazing, and unique – and that takes up some space, which, to me, is a GOOD thing.

One of my friends who is beautifully WAY over 6’0″ responded, “great freaking truths of goodness expressed here…here I am large of body and breath and sound and feeling and life, and there is this tension in me for taking up space…make it go away please!”

I think we all feel that. We want the tension of holding ourselves in and back to end, to GO AWAY. We want to feel free, to shine, to express the fullness of the love we are, and live fulfilling, connected lives of purpose.

But it’s not going to happen with us constantly criticizing ourselves into being small, and whipping ourselves into submission when we color outside the (painfully small) lines our egos tell us to stay within.

It’s going to happen when we say ENOUGH to the inner critic, tune into our respective muses for inspiration and guidance, honor our feelings and desires for expression, take what’s given to us and GO WITH IT!

I’ve been experimenting with this for awhile, and while it’s a forever becoming unfolding, I’m finding that as I keep peeling the layers of domesticated human off of me, the introvert I once thought I was is more and more a thing of the past, which is so fantastically freeing, not to mention FUN!

So let’s begin. Wild and free, baby – that’s where we’re going. You in!?

Your thoughts put you in prison or they can set you free. And I don’t know of anyone who gets to the heart of that matter more swiftly and simply than Byron Katie.

If you find this to be good, empowering medicine for you, also check out her 2 books “Loving What Is: Four Questions That Can Change Your Life” and “I Need Your Love – Is That True?: How to Stop Seeking Love, Approval, and Appreciation and Start Finding Them Instead“.

There was a time when you were five years old,
and you woke up full of awesome…

“Do you still have it?
The awesome.

Did someone take it from you?
Did you let them?
Did you hand it over, because someone told you weren’t beautiful enough, thin enough, smart enough, good enough?
Why the hell would you listen to them?
Did you consider they might be full of shit?”

Read it here from Pigtail Pals