Soulshine

“One sees clearly only with the heart. Anything essential is invisible to the eyes.” Antoine de Saint-Exupery How often do we take the time to allow our hearts to make us the blessed ones? Only the heart can see clearly that true beauty runs beneath the surface of the eye. And only heart wisdom can reveal the mystery of natural beauty: that it begins within and blossoms outward through all of nature. It’s easy to see beauty on the surface. We see the beauty of a sunrise painted paisley across the blue sky with pink, and purple tones. And we see the beauty of red and yellow wild-flowers dancing across green gardens. But do we understand that this beauty emanates from within? That all of nature loves itself enough to blossom on the outside so beautifully? Can a violet frown upon itself for not being good enough? Can a rose have a bad petal day? Does the moon moan over its quarter-face? No. They long to grow into the fullness of their beauty, nurturing themselves fro...

"Don't you see? I'm not Lula Mae Barnes,  but I'm not Holly Golightly either!" Audrey Hepburn, Breakfast at Tiffany's Every year since 2004, I’ve directed a retreat I call Open Up Your Heart and Let Yourself Out . The focus of this retreat is on a particular human tendency that haunts many people: the fear of self that leads to an endless flight from self.  Those of us who grew up in addictive households have struggled for years with the misguided belief that we aren’t good enough. As a result, we’ve also struggled with an inner-need to escape from ourselves. And so we’ve run and run and run from the very person who dwells within us; the one that we are so afraid to face. Maybe we’re fearful of finding out that this person inside of us really isn’t good enough. Or maybe our fear is just the opposite: Maybe we’re fearful of finding out we actually are good enough and our whole identity will be turned upside-down. During my retreat, I use t...

“Look, I’m not the one with the problem. It’s the world that seems to have a problem with me. People take one look at me and go ‘a big stupid ugly ogre.’ They judge me before they even know me. That’s why I’m better off alone,” says Shrek. To which Donkey replies “When we met, I didn’t think you were a big stupid ugly ogre.” Mike Myers and Eddie Murphy, Shrek It’s true that people often judge us before they know us. But it’s equally true that we often judge ourselves before we even really know us. Codependents rarely know the person who exists inside of them. Oh, we think we know who we really are because we’ve believed the negative things about ourselves that we’ve heard playing through our heads since childhood. Parents and others told us we were “big stupid ugly ogre(s)” and we believed it. We simply accepted what we were told at face-value without ever challenging it and we’ve lived what we have believed about ourselves to this very day. We are often lik...