Dear ,

 

This email is packed with both information and inspiration. Here's a list of all you will find:

• A big discount in the cost for The Inner Life course and major changes in the scheduling for the Healing Overview - I am responding to your requests and my biography has a major event coming up.
• A real example of The Inner Life Biography Work - an exercise on the role of compliments and criticisms, acknowledgments and attacks in your life.
•  Inner Christmas in February - the reprint of The Inner Intention to Warm.

 

Sometimes I get carried away and over commit. Now that is a recurring theme in my biography!  Planning to begin the Healing Overview next week is one shocking example.  I have something far more significant happening that deserves and will receive all my attention - the birth of my first grandchild!

A week from today I am packing up for a four week visit with my daughter and her husband and soon, their newborn.  I will be a comforting mother for the first days, making sure my daughter takes long walks, talking with her about the coming birth and cooking favorite meals. Then the major event - a homebirth.  And finally, I get to be a grandmother, a biographical first and a big, joyful transition into being another generation. For at least two weeks, I will remain to continue to comfort, cook and celebrate each little moment of a new life.  Although I will still be working with my private clients, I realized The Inner Life has to wait.  I am sure you agree.

However, I also want to celebrate my grandchild's new life by sending out a few biography exercises at 7-10 day intervals.  You will get a valuable and practical "taste" of the benefits of doing the work of The Inner Life and I will have a chance to share a few bursting delights about my grandbaby and the beginning of a life of memories and stories. The first tasting is below.

I have heard from a number of people that they would love to begin The Inner Life but the economy, the world's and their own, make the $320 fee prohibitive.  Okay, I heard you and rethought the fee.  I am dropping the cost to $180 for the teleseminars ($20 each for the nine calls) and making the 20 minute consultation with me optional at another $25.  


Another obstacle to a number of potential participants was the scheduling.  To remedy this I will be dropping the Thursday evening session and adding a session on Saturdays from Noon - 1:30 Eastern, 9 AM Pacific.  

Some have asked if there is a way to do biography work solo and via email with no group interaction.  That's a good question. I am not able to offer The Inner Life Solo at this time but it is now under development.  I strongly feel that biography work as a path of healing your past, liberating your present and empowering your future is dependent on compassionate witnessing and mutual participation in process.  However, this essential social dynamic might follow preliminary solo work. We will see.  The earliest The Inner Life Solo will be available is Fall 2010.  The solo program is also important for those who are hearing impaired. Please email me if you will be interested in this solo work.

 

 

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First Approach -Seven Year Cycles

Both the consistent identification with my father and the one time dismissal of my compliment, shaped my sense of self and my behaviors. I was exalted by the connection with my father and annihilated by Gladys.

A life theme is an area of activity or a style of expressing yourself. You can take a particular life theme and discover the source of important attitudes and the presence or lack of self-esteem by reviewing the compliments and criticisms, the acknowledgements and attacks in regard to the theme. Here are a few life themes to consider: sports, appearance, creativity, music, attention, money, self-care.  

 

A personal example around sports.  I have been a fish all my life.  My favorite fairytale is The Little Mermaid.  So I get so many compliments on my swimming.  I remember being at camp one year and having all the coaches standing on the pier talking about my future as a competitive swimmer.  It never happened as my mother was too ill to support the demands of supporting me.  I have a lingering sense that my talents, though recognized, will not be supported. 

 
What do you learn about yourself working with these questions? Please feel free to share your insights with me. 

Participating in The Inner Life programs supports and encourages owning your life, moving beyond the force of your stories and setting the rest of your life on a new course of self-awareness.

Learn more about The Inner Life programs here.  

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[Note: please consider the thoughts, perhaps re-reading and visualizing a few times. Then do as many of the exploration steps as you have time for.]

  Thoughts  


Our living bodies have an active warmth.  When we die our bodies become cold as they have lost the intention to warm. Between life and death, what enters our bodies we warm to our temperature. Each breath we take we permeate with our warmth before we exhale. In breathing, the substance we are taking in is â€oeitself”, but once within our being, we impress something of ourselves into it. This something is our warmth. This also happens to all we touch. As we press against surfaces, we warm them up. Our bodies bear the intention to warm, not just to be warm.

Intimacy occurs when we feel the warmth of another and they feel our warmth. Think of the brush of warmed breath and warm skin. We experience active warmth coming from deep within others and they experience it coming from deep within us.

Pause your reading for a moment and simply imagine this sweet warm feeling of intimacy.

When I sit on a chair that was recently occupied by another, the chair bears their warmth.  Always I am aware that I am feeling something of the other, even if they are a stranger that I did not catch a glimpse of. Of course, I leave my warmth where I sit to be felt by another.

I also want my hands that reach out to touch another to be warm.  I want to give warmth, not need warmth. Yet, nothing feels better than a warm hug and warm words when some experience has left me chilled, unable to experience my own warmth.

Our souls warm what they breathe in. A new thought or feeling enters with one temperature and when we permeate with our interest, we warm it and change its temperature.

We feel heartwarmed noticing the warmth living in the way another speaks a phrase, sips her tea or scratches his head. Part of grief is the missing of the way a loved one warmed a thought, a feeling or a deed - the way they warmed the world.



I spent twenty minutes a few days ago gazing at Raphael's Alba Madonna in the National Gallery in Washington.  Raphael's painting warms my soul.  He warmed the world with this painting. Our great artists breathe in our earthly world and great spiritual realities to warm them with their souls and give them back to the world with their extraordinary genius. And this warmth remains forever.

 1 

On this Second Holy Night feel your intention to warm and how you experience this intention living in others.

 2 

A few questions to warm up with your contemplation and exploration:
What new ideas did you breathe in this year and how did you warm them with your own genius?
What great works of art have warmed your soul this year or over your lifetime?

 3 

Are you aware of your ability to kill/chill an idea, a desire or an effort to produce, create or manifest? (We human beings have the gift/curse of opposition.)

What lights your spiritual fires and keeps the warmth of enthusiasm living in your thinking, your feeling and your willing?

 4 

I breathed in the question, "What is the inner intention to warm about?" and I have warmed it with my soul.  Now it is your turn. 

Imagine your soul as a sun bring warming the past, the present and the future. You might want to make a list of how your inner sun warms all it receives.

 5 

Please warm us up with your warm thoughts and feelings about warmth.  Write a comment for us to read.