A writer's first word is "Yes."

And if the world had told her "No," it was only because she agreed.
She had, somehow, allowed herself to sway and bend with the limits of others.
But then, the sun rose.  And she saw.  And knew that "No" was now a thing of her past.

So she opened herself, and let the dream-seeds in her heart
receive Light and Air.  With a mother's love, she spoke to them:

"I am ready.  I am ready to host your sweet growth inside me.
I am able.  I am able to nurture you into something real and gorgeous.
I am yours.  I am yours to speak and write through.  Yes.  Completely, yes."

What is your soul's purpose?

The single greatest question I get from people seeking an Akashic consultation is, "What is my soul's purpose?"

There is a one-size-fits-all answer to this question.  It is: "Your purpose is what you decide it is."

The simplicity of that truth frees some, but frightens or puzzles most.  We've been conditioned and socialized to doubt the sufficiency of our own wisdom.  This is both tragic, and also easy to change.

Your purpose is what you decide it is.  It likely includes a persistent desire, but there is no external pronouncement of what you should be doing with your life or work.  Claiming responsibility for yourself begins with knowing and respecting who you are at your core.  It takes time and willingness to dig, to dive, to decide.  You are fully capable of doing each of these things.  It isn't appropriate, or clean, to be informed by someone or something outside of yourself what your life is meant to amount to.  It is disabling to externally seek The Answer to your own sensible and enjoyable life.

So, the first step in getting clear and certain about your soul's purpose is an internal work.  Private and personal.  Not delegated or outsourced.  It is an excavation of your heart, and here are three things to keep in mind during your excavation:

  1. Your purpose isn't fixed.  It will change and grow as you do.
  2. Your purpose isn't a drag.  It will feel great to live from.
  3. Your purpose doesn't need anyone's approval.  It will make its way into the world if you allow it.

And here are four exploratory questions to bring your attention to a likely area of your purpose:

  1. When are you most energized and excited?
  2. When are you most creative and inspired?
  3. What are you most passionate and concerned about?
  4. What do you receive the most compliments about?

After you've taken the initial step of identifying your persistent desire, you'll have some strategizing to do.  You'll need to figure out a course of action.  And if you're like most, you'll have some doubts or fears to blaze through.  That is the point at which a consultation with me will prove most helpful.

This post is intended to remind you of what you already know.  I am at your service in the activation of that knowledge.  You are wise.  You are powerful.  And you are encouraged to trust yourself above the voice or offering of another.

Reigniting the Empathic Revolution!

More than two years ago, I started a video series called "Empathic Revolution."  I had -- and continue to have -- an unstoppable desire to see more gentleness, less violence... more generosity, less competition... more hope, less cynicism... more embrace, less judgment... more expansion, less constriction.  In a word: empathy.  When you feel the reality of another, you can't help but heed the Golden Rule... because you really, deeply understand that any difference between you and another is superficial.  In essence, there is no difference.

So, I have come to believe that this little seven-letter word -- e m p a t h y -- has all the muscle and majesty needed to brighten and lighten our world.  In the four videos beneath this post, I shared my starter-thoughts about how an Empathic Revolution might begin and look.  I had no idea of process or procedure... hence the two-year hiatus!  In that time, many things coalesced and aligned -- within, around and beyond me.  They all now point and urge to begin.  Again.

On June 7, 2010, we left off with the questions:  "What can we do to put our heart in action?" and "What does activated empathy look like?"  The answer to these questions will vary for everyone, of course.  And while there is no universally appropriate response, I do know it starts by: (1) deciding TO put your heart in empathic action; and (2) deciding HOW you will do so, as in, what means or method will you use to ACT OUT your empathy?

One of my lifelong gifts as a born empath with heightened sensitivity has been to see and enliven the gifts of others.  I've always, always loved doing this.  Recently, I started doing it with more intention and intensity.  In one-on-one Akashic consultations, I've been giving people an undistorted view of themselves.  These are sacred, intimate conversations that lead people to loving clarity, wisdom and power to express their greatest aspects and gifts.  These multi-dimensional consultations have become one of my favorite contributions to make to the Empathic Revolution.  Rousing full soul expression is a joyful privilege for which I am very grateful.  I'd love to work with you in this way, and invite you to schedule a session on the page titled "Deep Knowing."

Empathic Revolution:  A Video Series

The following videos were created and published two years ago!
It's now time to pick up where we left off...
The above video was originally uploaded to YouTube April 21, 2010.
The above video was originally uploaded to YouTube May 4, 2010.
The above video was originally uploaded to YouTube May 4, 2010.
The above video was originally uploaded to YouTube June 7, 2010.

The cost of being a visionary.

Those around/closest to you may not:

  • See what you see.
  • Understand what you understand.
  • Care about what you care about -- or if they do, it's to a lesser degree.
  • Be willing to live/die for the same convictions you're willing to live/die for.

These facts should not arouse self-pity, but stamina.

And willingness.

To proceed anyway.

Loneliness is never justification to abandon your vision.

How empathic writers come to be.

Some things you know to be true.

In your gut.  In your heart.  You just know.    

Thankfully, there aren't that many things
that will earn that degree of certainty within you,
because the ones that do... you crusade for.

Crusades begin small. And they grow
to such a momentous force
they, eventually, require all of you.
But you won't mind.

It will be a devouring you welcome.
Because as you are swallowed,
you come alive with a purpose
and a direction you didn't before think possible.

And before, it wasn't possible;
back when you were mealy-mouthed
and afraid of your own shadow.

But something happened...

Your heart cracked.  And when you didn't die,
you knew it was so you could disrupt
the shenanigans of monsters and pimps.

You survived so you could change
the cultural palate from thirst for blood
to thirst for beauty.

I'm so glad you're still here.  Still writing.

How to write the change you want to see in the world.

Mothers' breast milk should be pure and powerful... instead it is loaded with dioxin and many other toxic contaminants.

Forests -- literally, the lungs of our planet -- should be large and thick... instead North America has less than 4% left, and we are quickly slicing through everyone else's trees, too.

Oceans, topsoil, air, 100+ endangered species a day, as well as our overall sense of well-being and contentment are all vulnerable to and/or vanishing under the deadening weight of chronic materialism.

Please consider the words below, authored in 1955 by marketing consultant Victor Lebow, and carried out daily by most in dominant culture...
...that internalized mandate has disconnected us from our own cores, each other and the ecosystems that make Life possible.  We should be righting mad about this.  Writing mad.  Mad enough to heat up the cool, pathologically desensitized.  Mad enough to arouse the limp and disinterested.  Be alarmed.  It is an appropriate response.

Empathic writers have long sent letters to editors, senators and  representatives to voice their concerns.  That's good, but this revolt demands more of us.  Seeds of sanity -- freedom from mental derangement -- must be embedded more deeply and more broadly than letter-writing campaigns.  Our culture is in long need of a new and viable saturation.  One that absolutely replaces Lebow's call to consumerism as a way of life.

Many of the doctors in the Nazi death camps tried to help the imprisoned Jews by giving them, from time to time, an aspirin to lick.  Can you see the littleness of that gesture, however well intended?

Socialized craziness requires of us radical revolt and resistance. Aspirin-licking ain't gonna relieve this planetary migraine.

We *have* to come together and shut the Sick Show down. United in sanity. Bonded in our knowing of Life. Committed to act, and to cause acts. The redeeming kind. The saving, correcting, game-changing kind.  We are homo sapien, not homo consumericus.

Start with your Burn, your holy indignation, and craft from there:  songs, movies, books, articles, public service announcements, plays, TV shows,  business plans, small farms, urban homesteads, community gardens, workplace outings, birthday celebrations.  Allow sanity -- sound, healthy thought -- to pervade all of your outputs and creations.

Embrace the burden that gnaws at you.  It entrusted itself to you.  Your particular area of care is just that. YOUR area of care.  Own it.  Then assert your creative influence into that space.  Strike this match made in heaven, and express it on earth.  Letting your ink flow into the parts your heart sees as arid or 'off' will, ironically, strengthen you.  As writer. As citizen.  As lovely, lively human.

Cultural conventions that cause cancerous, disastrous consequences have been parading as normalcy.  When, exactly, do we wake up from the prolonged stupor of the industrial mania that is sucking all forms, signs and whispers of life at hyperspeed?

Will we mindlessly shop 'til everything drops?

Remember how delicious it was to play outside.  To make discoveries in *the natural world.*  To watch the flight-pattern of a bumblebee or red-breasted robin.  To get splashed by fresh water from a lake, or salt water from an ocean.  To eat berries and pears straight from a tree.  To get breathless from a mountain hike.  To get romanced by the silver light of a full moon, or energized by the golden light of the sun.  To get quiet and still from the closeness of a deer.  To get drunk from the scent of honeysuckle.   To feel your skin extend to the green land around you.  To remember when you preferred a monarch butterfly to a manic mall.

Start there.  From the place of your deepest care.  And write as if your life depended on the blossoming of your words, because it does.

Leverage the wonderful technology we have at-hand.  Use it -- via the Twitter and Facebook buttons below -- to share this post with others.  Start planting your seeds of sanity all over the place.  Now.

Please.  Thank you.


Sticks + Stones

"Sticks and stones may break my bones
but words will never hurt me."

Um, someone got that all wrong.  And shamelessly
kept the wrongness alive for generations.
Words can hurt, help and everything in between.

In commerce, they're often used to manipulate a purchase.
In anger, they're often used to attack or defend.
In love, they're often lost... and replaced with action.

That's the best and highest use of words,
when they graduate into vital verbs.  Deeds
that actually mend bones.


A writer's praise of work.

Work makes water wetter.

It makes your bed give you
its deepest rest.

Work...
the kind that requires movement
and effort and occasional grunting...
that kind of work
stocks your soul's warehouse.

Have you ever noticed
how sweating makes your noticings
more succulent?

Full and ready
to burst itself
all over a page
or screen.

Get nitty-gritty
stinky-dirty
for a change.

Leave your sanitized desk
and filtered air.
Stop clicking keys
and mice.

Work up a funk
so you can write
with muscle.


How to make reign with your words.

This feat is done by knowing
who's agenda is on
your plate,
your pillow,
your paycheck,
your promises.

Who's orders are you carrying out?

It's a terribly inconvenient question to ask and answer.
But it is how reign is made.

Walls.
They don't cave,
but sometimes WE do.
Our inner _____ collapses
from the weight of outer _____.

So we must ask the Architect:

"Exactly how much pressure
is the structure of my life
designed to withstand?
Am I in need of upgrades,
reinforcements, maybe
a complete gutting?"

Oh, wait.  What's that?
I am the Architect?

Yes.

I am the Architect.
And fore(wo)man.

It's up to me to speak
and write accordingly.

Your pen is a hammer.
Build.

God has pens.

The sacred is not found,
it is embodied.

You and me, we are the living temples.
Our mouths, the chalice.
Our eyes, the windows.
Our hearts, the doors.

And with our hands
we write the songs that get heaven's attention,
and we write the sermons that seize the sleepy:

"Rest later.  You don't want to miss this."

So we must use the power of our ink
as if the world is waiting to be roused
and relieved of its cynicism,
because it is.

Be like Gutenberg, my friend...
fire up your press, and publish your perspectives.
Type, click, print, push 'send', hit 'OK'.
Get your ideas, and ideals, out there.
It's time.  Don't you hear the bells ringing?


How to write like a Redwood.

Empathic writers hold affection
for those we write to.

Whether it’s a manifesto, magazine article,
corporate memo, screenplay, love poem or policy...

...there is something we want to say,
and someone we want to say it to.

Writing is a lot of things but, primarily, it is reaching.

It leans itself forward to connect an idea with a mind.
And ideally, a heart.

The best writing is clear and honest.
It stands tall, like a Redwood.
Easily seen.  Distinguishable.

And when you’ve read writing like that,
a lot of times you stand taller, too.

Because you’ve been honored, rather than bragged to.

Respected, rather than manipulated.

Seen, rather than sold.

Write tall, like a Redwood.
Use your words as an ecosystem,
rather than a clamor.

Endure the aging, the winds, the verticality.
Enjoy the knowing, the songs, the community.

Be a marvel and a home
to others.


How to birth the earth you want to live on.

To birth the earth you want to live on, know and name your values.
Then, let those values guide your decisions... relationships...
diet... purchases... recreation, etc.

Break open your dam.  Release your flood-gates.  Evict your excuses.
Trust that you are ready to flow and show now.

As an empathic writer, you are empowered to summon
the concepts and consonants... the virtues and vowels
that form your truth.  Clear.  Fuss-free.  Like this:

This blog is written on behalf of sanity which, for me, is made of:

* SAPIENCE - We are Wise.

* SENSITIVITY - We are Perceptive.

* SIMPLICITY - We are Elegant.

* SOLIDARITY - We are One.

* SUFFICIENCY - We are Enough.

What about you?  What are some of the values that you live by
(or want to live by)?  Share in the comments below!