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Recovering Our Authentic
Selves
by Meredith Young-Sowers
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"You already are authentic; the
challenge is to feel that you are." The room was
quiet. Fifty men and women sat in front of me, waiting
for the much-anticipated beginning of the year-long
training in Intuitive Perception and Energy Diagnosis at
the Stillpoint School of Advanced Energy Healing which I
founded and direct.
As I looked around the room, I thought of
conversations I’d had with many of the students. Among
them were men and women who were healers, accountants,
physicians, nurses, therapists, social workers,
carpenters, artists, interior decorators, investment
bankers, and moms and dads. What we shared was a
yearning to heal our lives. My students came to School
to learn how to become intuitive healers but also
wanting to understand themselves and their lives better.
We all wanted to renew ourselves and make peace with our
failings, fears, and negative attitudes, to find the
sacred within us and to find a spiritual community with
whom to share experiences on the journey. We needed to
understand the nature of our relationship with the
Creator, both as the energy of the Universe and as a
personal friend and mentor to whom we could turn for
guidance, comfort, and unconditional love. When they
started the year, like most of us, the students felt
inauthentic, burdened by fears and anxieties. By year’s
end, they saw the truth—that they were genuine
splinters of God’s love, and their fears dissolved.
All of our success in the world and our progress on a
spiritual path comes from learning to maximize the
insights we receive from our authentic selves. Sensing a
divine guiding hand is the way we look past our old
emotional blocks, even though they come from real
problems that we’ve actually experienced. We learn
that our lives aren’t made up of what we know through
our intellect but of the love and compassion we
experience in our hearts.
The Voice of The One
To find the spiritual directions we’re seeking—the
ways to love and have love returned—requires us to
visit the voices of our spirits to show us how to live
without an agenda. At first we’re frightened and
disbelieving. We think it’s impossible for us to love
without a deal that binds us at the level of our
weaknesses rather than our strengths. But the voice of
the sacred doesn’t dangle relationships in front of
us, whispering, "If we just do or become something,
then…" Instead, this inner voice tells us we are
more than enough; we are Divine. We can, of course, have
relationships that are nourishing and fulfilling as soon
as we learn to be ourselves without apology. This voice
speaks with the assurances we need. This is the voice of
our authentic selves, with a capital S.
By comparison, the voice of our personalities is the
one that, until now, we’ve always believed. This very
familiar voice separates us from others by telling us
that we’re not enough: we must do better, try harder.
This is the voice that is relentless in pushing us to
secure the material needs of our lives, even at the risk
of our health and sanity. We push and struggle for our
rightful share, and we are convinced that our
responsibilities are limited to our little corner of the
world and our individual families. This is the voice of
our (small s) selves—our personalities.
The way I found The One true and essential voice
inside me unfolded one sunny summer morning. I was on
vacation in Maine with Errol, my husband. My morning
routine was to sit quietly for a time watching the
water, read a few pages of an inspiring book, and then
walk for a while. I often would found surprising
insights while meandering alone along the quiet country
roads.
This particular day I had an amazing realization. I’d
been working on trying to love and care for myself, not
out of fear or resentment of others but out of
compassion and acceptance for myself. But I wasn’t
sure how I could find the inner voice of my authentic
self. I reflected on a statement I’d read earlier that
morning written by the Indian spiritual master Sathya
Sai Baba. The piece suggested that I should try to
understand my true nature, my authentic self, in much
the same way I think about my children, my home, my
work, my friends, and my physical body. When I thought,
"This is my body," I was to consider who it
was that was announcing it possesses a body. It isn’t
my body itself, but something in me that guides and
directs my body; it’s not my mind, because that, too,
is part of my physical composition. It is my spirit. And
my spirit is none other than The One—the Creator.
I read a concluding thought that made a lasting
impression as I tried to grapple with realizing that the
"me" that was making decisions about what to
think and do was none other than my authentic self. I
realized that the path to greater understanding, love,
and compassion was to find the "I am" that
creates life rather than the "I" of my
physical body and mind. I was looking for the part of me
that is the originator of ideas, the genuine Creator
within. My inner voice was the place where The One
abided. This voice was my authentic self, and my
Compassionate Healer was another aspect of this voice.
Growing Authentic
Working with people over the last twenty years has
taught me a great deal about myself and other people,
including how we can grow to accept ourselves and our
life circumstances. Acceptance gives us power and
courage to stay steady and strong instead of shifting
the blame for what we don’t like to others and losing
the will to make our own choices. Often we don’t
understand why things happen in our lives, but we don’t
need to understand why if we consider what; what will I
do now? Or: how can I respond to this challenging
scenario?
Life is a difficult journey. There is no way to
change how our lives are put together. We know that we
are born, we live, and we die. We know that we can’t
control the elements and that some of us are unhappy
more than we are content. If we can’t change the
framework of our lives, how can we live out our years,
getting the most from them? My answer is: by seeing our
experiences as gateways to greater understanding and
compassion.
When we connect with our authentic selves we learn
about our courage and grace as much as our suffering and
betrayals. When we only remember the misery and the
pain, we remain locked in yesterday. But the reason we
feel upset by dwelling on old suffering is not what we
think. By refusing to find the meaning of our negative
experiences, we think we are protecting ourselves from
discovering how we have fallen short in the past. But
the reality is that by finding the courage to look
squarely at our old pains and sorrows, we see the ways
we truly are authentic, thus liberating ourselves from
past suffering. As we learn to detach from the
criticisms of others and become our own loving parents
and mentors, we are able to see that "The
Source" sees our value and helps us to make our own
unique contributions to life, making the most of
opportunities we might otherwise have missed.
The End Becomes Our New Beginning
Nothing is set in stone. We know
that many possibilities lie before us. No illness is
absolutely terminal, no relationship is irrevocably
doomed, no loss is forever, and no suffering needs to
shroud our futures. We are The Creator’s charges—His/Her
hands and feet here on Earth to experience and enjoy the
sacred seeds of the love He/She has planted in our
hearts.
For me, writing my new book, Wisdom Bowls, was
a rebirth of greater confidence and commitment to the
work of spreading love in the world. I hope you will
read it and it inspires a rebirth for you as well, as
you face new possibilities in your life with renewed
energy and determination. We have everything we need in
order to live full, successful lives, assured that we
are kin with all the life on earth. Our circle of caring
is large, embracing all people and all nations. Every
creature and habitat is part of our web of life, and
every effort we make to strengthen it, no matter how
small, changes our future for the better.
The Earth and her children depend on each of us to be
wise, to have vision, to speak in joy, to extend love
and compassion, to own our power, to accept our true
natures, and to allow others to share our bounty. If our
capable hands and steady hearts shift ever so slightly
in the direction of loving, we move the planet in an
entirely new direction from where it has been in the
past. If we each lean just a little toward love and
understanding, what might our lives look like? What
might our children grow up to believe? What suffering
that we’ve borne through the years would we heal? Our
futures rest in our ability to love each other enough to
overcome our differences and reach out to one another in
peace and understanding. Peace in our hearts will create
peace on the planet. Fear is not in charge of our
destiny; we, as our authentic selves, are the creators
of the future we will pass along to those who walk in
our footsteps.
The exploration of our authentic nature leads to an
amazing realization. Rather than being the dim and
unenlightened persons we may think we are, we find that
deep inside we are as brilliant as the sun, no matter
what tragedy has befallen us. We can experience joy,
love and power when we understand what has blocked those
aspects of Love in our lives. We can open our hearts to
loving in ways we never have before. There is no perfect
time to find the answers to deep questions. The right
time is whenever and wherever we begin our journeys
toward an authentic reconnection with our true Selves.
© Copyright 2003
Meredith Young-Sowers. All Rights
Reserved.
The above is excerpted and adapted from
Wisdom Bowls; Overcoming Fear and Coming Home to Your
Authentic Self, by Meredith Young-Sowers (Stillpoint,
2002). For more about Wisdom Bowls, please
visit www.wisdombowls.com.
To learn more about Meredith’s work and The Stillpoint
School of Advanced Energy Healing, please click on www.meredithyoung-sowers.com.
Meredith Young-Sowers, an
internationally acclaimed spiritual teacher, intuitive
healer, counselor and author, she has published six
books, two of which have become best-selling classics.
Meredith lectures, leads workshops and offers
teleclasses all over the world, bringing her special
gracious blend of warmth, wisdom, intimacy, insight and
encouragement to her students. In her teachings and
writings, she draws on the spiritual lessons found in
the ordinary experiences of her daily life and shares
her ability to see the miraculous in the mundane.
Students and participants in her classes, workshops and
retreats say she empowers them to overcome the difficult
challenges in their lives.
Founder and director of the
Stillpoint Institute and School of Advanced Energy
Healing, and co-founder of Stillpoint Publishing with
Caroline Myss, Meredith is considered a pioneer in the
development of energy diagnosis methods. Her work, a new
path to healing that brings greater love, joy, and
comfort to people's lives, is considered a significant
breakthrough in the field of energy medicine.
Over the past twenty years
Meredith has counseled and done deep intuitive work
based on her knowledge of physical and emotional healing
and her inspired understanding of spiritual healing. The
brilliant methods and techniques she has developed to
teach spiritual healing have placed her at the forefront
of the mind-body-spirit revolution. An alumna and recipient of a
distinguished graduate award from Centenary College for
Women, Meredith holds both a Masters and a Doctor of
Divinity degree from the Universal Brotherhood
University.
Meredith Young-Sowers is the
author of the following published books and products: Wisdom
Bowls; Overcoming Fear and Coming Home to Your Authentic
Self, Stillpoint, 2002; The Angelic Messenger
Cards, Stillpoint, 1993; Agartha: A Journey to
the Stars (10th Anniversary Edition and
First Edition), Stillpoint, 1995; Teachings from the
Angelic Messenger Cards, Stillpoint, 1995; Spiritual
Crisis: What’s Really Behind Loss, Disease and Life’s
Major Hurts, Stillpoint, 1992; Language of the
Soul, Stillpoint, 1988; Agartha: The Essential
Guide to Personal Transformation in the New Era,
Ballentine Mass Market, 1988.
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