We’ve Got It a Bit Backwards

A beautiful, new idea pops like a tart into my head. “I should call this doctor I used to know and share how healing the essential oils have been for me. I bet she could help people with them too. Hmm...cool,” I think. Then the dreaded floodgates of the mind open. “I can’t do that. I haven’t talked to her in years. I’ll sound silly. I’ll sound too salesy since I haven’t talk to her in so long. Maybe another time,” I proclaim. This is the ol’ heart speaking then ego overriding mechanism we humans are all too familiar with. So what do we tend to do? We wait to call the doctor. If we are lucky, we listen to our heart and do it anyway.

It’s been brought to my attention, so I wanted to bring it to your attention too that I think we’ve got it all backwards.

Love, which is the formless energy that powers us, that we are tapped into at all times, is pulsing through our being. We get these cool ideas all the time that are in alignment with this loving energy like, “Hmm, I should call that doctor.” And we say no to this. But it’s LOVE! Love is safe and kind and lovey dovey and cozy. It wants what we want. It has our best interest at heart. And we say no.

I say we have it backwards because what we do innocently and unknowingly is follow the voice of fear instead. We think fear is safe and love is scary. We follow the familiar voices that don’t have our best interest at heart. We just think they do because they are familiar. Familiar doesn’t mean truth. So the next time you start following internal suggestions that are sounding or feeling complex, scary, hurried or uncomfortable; wait a minute. Let that pass. Love will come back on line to tell you what to do next. It’s always there, no fail. We must be insane to follow fear and not love, but we do it all day. We just need to learn to lean into love more and more and remind ourselves how beautifully safe it is there. The scales will begin to tilt in the right direction. Let’s “unbackwards” ourselves and set the heart free.

What Happens When Your Ego
Pulls "A Waldo"
(Spoiler Alert: He Eventually Gets Found)

I was walking among my tree friends listening to one of my favorite mentor's podcasts (Say that three times fast). On the recording was a woman talking about something many of us can relate to. She was saying that she tries to recreate the feeling of love before she does anything important because she doesn’t want to take action from any other state. Do you relate?

I used to think that I needed to do that too. If I was unhappy or angry, my mind would tell me that it was a bad time to write. If I felt uninspired, I believed deeply it was a bad time to create. I was sure this was my heart. I’m never surprised at how disguised our ego can be. My ego was the one keeping me from taking action until I felt a certain way. A way it deemed "safe" or "appropriate". The ego has a sneaky way of playing the “until” game. I need to wait to ask that guy out “until” I lose ten pounds. I need to wait to do yoga “until” I’m in perfect health and my body can handle it. I need to wait to ask that agent for representation “until” I feel more confident. You get the point. It’s all ego. You and I don’t need to wait “until” we feel a certain way to do something.

We can easily take action from what occurs to us in the moment. The present moment. We need not plan. What feels right now? Go in that direction. Loosen your grip. Have fun. Be playful. And don’t wait. Write when you are unhappy. Have sex when you are sad. Go to that job interview even if you’re nervous. These “less than love feelings” don’t mean you shouldn’t do what your wisdom and common sense tell you to do in the moment. It’s just your ego’s fancy way of keeping you from your greatness. And this world needs your greatness.

Who Are We Really?

“What a liberation to realize that the “voice in my head” is not who I am. Who am I then? The one who sees that.” Eckhart Tolle

I’ve been questioning life since I was young. I vividly remember, my pony tailed adorned self asking myself, “What would be here if we didn’t exist? Like white, blank space?” These types of questions have entered into my awareness all my life. Is peace attainable for everyone and what does it actually feel like? Is life supposed to be this tough or is there something else out there?

Luckily, I’ve always believed that there is. I’m crazy, grateful to be so introspective about these things. My curiosity has led me on such a wild ride. I like to keep digging deeper. It makes sense why I wanted to be an archaeologist for a semester in college. True story.

During my life coach training we constantly talk about stepping back from the “human” part of our experience and looking at what comes before that. The energy that powers the Universe. The force that makes the trees grow and makes your lungs work without your knowledge and puts thoughts in your head all day, every day without your control. There is so much more to us than just our brain. Our brain, while necessary for life, doesn’t have divine intelligence. Divine intelligence does come to us through our brain though. We aren’t our brains. Because our brains are limited, they can only do so much and are only filled with memories. Who we really are is what comes before all of the subconscious patterning of our brains that puts us in the past or the present. We are the love that is the present moment. As Eckhart Tolle puts it, we are the space between the thoughts. We are the observer watching our experience. We are part of that loving force powering all things. That is our gasoline. We get free gas from a crazy luxurious station and we run around like chickens with our heads cut off listening to our brains instead. “No thanks, I’ll choose suffering.” What a silly concept. We are unlimited potential.

It’s helpful to remember that we are the formless, loving energy that is before thought, beliefs, age, race and gender. In that space anything is possible. Try to loosen your grip on what you are “seeing” with your eyes. It’s your own personal brain’s interpretation of the situation. Maybe you are “seeing” it from your past experiences or your future fears. When you can realize you are lost in arbitrary thought, then you can be naturally pulled back into the present moment and “see” the loving truth right in front of you. Because you are love, love begins to think you! Wow! Deep! And oh so awesome!

For example, I was told that something physical I have, I’d have my whole life. My brain logged that bit of information and took it as truth. But I decided to be willing to be wrong about everything I knew. When I was in a state of calm the other day, another solution came to me for healing. There is a new natural therapy out there that could actually reverse the physical problem. Had I listened to my brain, that idea wouldn’t have had the open door to come in. Love always wants to come in your door. It’s always knocking. It’s way in is an open mind and heart.

Good things and bad things happen but the “suffering” we experience in our mind adds so much more unnecessary pain. Attempt to notice when you are adding your own special fear sauce to dinner when it’s beautiful enough simple and lovely. We don’t need the worry. We think that the worry and the “trying to figure it all out” is serving us. But that’s our brain doing the best it knows how to do!  It’s life changing to see how small and meaningless thoughts are compared to who we really are. When we know that we are love, the space between thoughts, formless life force energy, pure unlimited potential, then the rest of the human stuff we “experience” no longer belongs to us. It’s comes in and leaves. Always moving. Eckhardt also beautifully makes this point, “Life is the dancer and you are the dance.” If you remember who you really are, and let the tiny dancer of love move through you,  the dance becomes way more groovy.  We are afraid to let go and be danced, but how can that be scary if the dancer is love?

How to Easily Obtain Love (Maybe it's just a little shift in perspective)

I’ve been thinking about big things lately. Deep things. That’s kind of normal in this Jamie body. I like to contemplate the soul and existence and why my socks still look dirty after I wash them.

And during one of my ponderings I was thinking about Love and God and Peace. All the same things to me disguised with different letters of the english language. I got to thinking that we make these concepts out to be so illusive. We think they are these big, grand things we spend our whole lives trying to “get” or “achieve” just like everything else. When we see them in that light, they do seem a bit far off and too big for us little ol’ us. “Love” seems too divine, like for monks and stuff. “God” and “Universe” seem so... God! And “peace” seems like a short lived experience for only the lucky ones who must have done something really great in their past life. But, I’m beginning to disagree. The reason we don’t feel these “things” more often is because we view them as difficult to obtain.

I realize now, it’s the other way around. It’s that easy. Love is so simple. Peace is who we are 365 days a year, for our whole lives, underneath thought. It’s our default state. (even if we’ve forgotten because of so much “suffering” thought piled on top, like a lawn under and dozen kids after the candy-showering of a freshly cracked pinnata.

Love is just okayness. It’s simplicity. It’s acceptance. It’s subtle. It’s anything uncomplicated. Peace is the same. And so is God. And the Universe. Gentle, simple, there everyday. It never goes aways. But sometimes we can’t see it if we are looking through the wrong lense. Maybe we just have to begin to see that it’s here everyday. All the time. And it’s not such a big far away thing. And we don’t need anything to change on the outside world to achieve it. It’s already ours. That’s the great illusion. If I could just have that thing I’d feel better. If I could just have cleaner socks, more people would like me.

Open your mind a little today to the energy of love feeling like the energy of a gentle friend in your life instead of a scary monster. Maybe God feels like a sweet pet you adore instead of a big man on a loud speaker who gives you a twix only if you’re “good”. Maybe peace is as attainable as laughter instead of this weird detached state you’ll achieve and never be able to relate to other humanoids again. Let’s not complicate these magnificently simple gifts of ours. They are all around us and they’re ours for the easy taking.

What Lies Beyond Thought?

We hold onto things because we think that they are serving us.  And by things I mean: concepts, ideas, stories, thoughts, beliefs and emotions.

That is the only reason. We think they are serving us.

Emotions are thoughts and thoughts are energy. They are supposed to move through our minds undisturbed. That is the system. But we keep them in place when we innocently try to figure them out or judge them or control them or intervene in some unnecessary way.

I notice I have emotion I want to hang onto quite a bit and wanted to get to the bottom of it because obviously for some reason my mind thinks this is serving me in some way. Somehow keeping me “safe” from something. I’ve gotten a little smarter than that these days so I decided to get really honest with myself I asked myself, “Why am I afraid of just having these thoughts and emotions just move through and move on?”

I realized that I’d be afraid there would be no “me” anymore if I didn’t hold onto any thought or emotion. (I mean really think about that!)  Who would I be without my thoughts and emotions staying?  I’d have no story, no beliefs without that. I wouldn’t have an identity or even a past.  Would the identity and life history of “Jamie Wozny” cease to exist? It’s all a story of a bunch of compiled thoughts any way.

But what a beautiful realization because without “me” I just “am”. A blank slate where anything is possible and I’m not tied to the chains if anything in my past. That’s the space of “being” people talk about. The love we are underneath thought. We don’t need these stories to survive. They just make us think we do. Again, they are only there because they think they are helping us. But the peace comes when we can let them go and realize there is no need to hold tightly onto thoughts, emotions, our stories so that we have a great story, a purpose, a meaning. We won’t cease to exist if we let the thoughts and emotions ride through us. We will actually being to truly exist.

The All and The Nothingness

I’ve immersed myself in the study of my inner-workings, my mind, my spirit, the divine, human potential, healing and the like for the last 5 or so years of my life. When one lives in this world, one hears many phrases over and over again spoken as commonly as the words “the” and “and”. Phrases like, “surrender”, “universe” and “be” are a few. They become somewhat trendy like soy lattes and Uber. You hear them so much that they begin to have an intellectual meaning at first. Then one day after years of marinating in your halo adorned noggin, they hit you on a deeper level and you think, “Ohhhhhh, SURRENDER!” or “Wowwww, UNIVERSE” or “Yeah!!!! I just need to BEEEEEEE.” I recently had one of those moments with the word “nothingness”.

As a young (super young) and curious woman in the Los Angeles spiritual community, my well-meaning self would hear the phrase, “We are everything and nothing at the same time.” I’d then put my fist gently under my chin like a scholar, slowly bobble-doll-nod my head and agree with my peers saying things like, “Yeah, totally, we are all and nothing at the same thing.” (what?!) Until recently, I realized that maybe I actually had no idea of what that might look like. But last week I got a deeper glimpse. One of those aha moments. And I am so very lucky.

Because I’m aware of many of my judgments and belief systems, I see what goes on in my head a lot. (Yikes, bikes) Sometimes, I don’t know what to do or not to do with them, but I see them nonetheless. In these instances, I bring my bag of Halloween goodies (tis the season) to an outside source to help me see what I can’t see myself. (Like what I do for other people.)

Things trigger us all, but what I like to do is get curious about those pings and pangs I feel. They are just thought in the form of emotion. What is this? Is this thought since it feels like a smelly baby diaper would smell? Do I need to trust this? Sadly, many people aren’t taught to question these feelings. They trust everything in their heads. Schools don’t teach that most of what goes on up there is useless and fleeting and just moving energy. Most thoughts aren’t true because they are coming from fear. My hope for you is to get curious too. When you shed the light on the monsters, you see they were only a shadow. Every. Time. Because, well, simply put, there is only love. And if we aren’t seeing things that way, our mind is just out of control.

Getting back on track…EARTH to Jamie!

I used to do a lot of digging around in my beliefs around success and I’d ask myself, “What would it feel like if I had everything I wanted and people judged me but I just didn’t care.” Well, I would feel free. But with that feeling of freedom came this sense of nothingness. Like, there would be nothing else to “achieve”. (Ah, Thank you ‘American Dream’ for that one.) It felt as though in that space things would cease to exist or some how spiral out of control. Or that there would be nothing else to do there and how can you do nothing? It was as if my ego needed to be doing to feel satisfied.

And then it hit me. Oh my soul! The nothingness I’m describing is peace. Nothingness is who we are! It’s our true nature. It’s the peace people speak of. The nothingness is peace! Our true state is connected to everything at once. It’s the nothingness. Nothingness is peace.

Holy cow, how sneaky the ego is. Peace was right in front of my face and it was making me feel uncomfortable. I was questioning it left and right. Trying hard to stay out of that space when all I desperately wanted was to have that peace. I already am that peace. I just needed to remember it! And feel it and know what it was. So, now I recognize when I feel that and I acknowledge it. When I’m slowed down and not needing to control or ‘do’, I’m just being. Being inspired and taking action from that place. Being in the moment. Just being. Whistling do re me as I walk the dogs. Laughing at myself. Kissing long and hard. Feeling music in my bones. Our mind may come back on line in these moments sometimes and feel a little funny because our mind tries to keep us safe based on past experiences it has associated to something uncomfortable related to that peace. But just noticing that this is what it is doing is usually enough for those thoughts to pass and fade. As I like to shout on the mountaintops, “It’s all about awareness.”

My wish for you is if you have a sense of this nothingness I speak of, sit with it longer. Let it be your normal. It’s your home base. Let it be uncomfortable and then let it get more comfortable and then let it be so peaceful you become the next trendy guru who rides an Uber while drinking a soy latte. Marinate there as often as possible. No need to force it. Just trust it. It’s you. It’s me. It’s all of us. The all and the nothing. Now, how cool is that?

I Smelled It And I Cried

I’ve been open these days. Open to having the Divine show me something new. Show me something really, really cool. Something mind-blowing. Something healing.

I walked into a brand new, nicely put together yoga studio last month.  It was filled with head-wrapped, feather wearing, healthy-eating yogis. We were all there for an ecstatic dance event. There was a sweet woman all in white, tucked in the corner giving out essential oil samples while we waited to enter the main studio.

Because I had some time to kill, I grabbed my generous serving of an herbal tea sample and headed over to the woman in the corner. “What do you have here?” I politely asked, not really having much interest.  She said she was sampling essential oils. I asked if she had something for the nervous system. She handed me an oil. I smelled and I thought, “Ok, that’s nice but I guess it just smells good. This fun scratch and sniff ordeal will kill a little time while I wait for the big event.” Then I get to talking to her a bit. I explain I’m a healer who has done a lot of my own healing over the past 5 years and I still have a couple symptoms I’m working on healing now. She looked at me like she was gazing at a sunset for a minute. Then she handed me something. “Smell this one,” she said.

What happened to me in that moment was nothing short of magical. Love filled my body and gratitude filled my eyes. I began to cry. But, it wasn’t me crying you see. It was energy. Moving through. Caused by one little magical bottle of oil. I hugged her, for what seemed like ten minutes, but was probably only shy of one. I proclaimed, “I had no idea they were so powerful.” She replied calmly, “It’s your time.”

So this nay-saying, oil-doubting healer woke up that day. I am forever changed. Essential oils aren’t just these nice things that smell good, that massage therapists sometimes use to cover awkward, accidental smells that may happen behind those closed doors. No, that’s not it at all. Actually, it’s so far from it.

These oils are magical. They are plants and seeds and barks. The ones she shared with me that night are therapeutic grade and they can literally replace your entire medicine cabinet.

They heal emotional wounds. They detox your body. They can be used instead of steroids as an anti-inflammatory. They can be used in place of antibiotics. You can clean your house with them. You can meditate with them and help you connect with spirit. You can use as a sleep aid. You can clear your skin or mend your wounds or uplift your moods or even help boost your immune system so much that your tumors begin to shrink. There are countless healing properties and these are only a few examples.

These oils are nature. Western medicine is synthetic and can’t fuse with your cells. The oils are phyto nutrients so they can actually merge with your cells and heal you on a cellular level. They are “God in a bottle” as I like to say. Natural healing at it’s finest.  There are countless uses for these little blessings. This brand is ingestible because it is so pure. You can even cook with them!

Most are even safe to use on animals. My dog had gone deaf because of the antibiotics his vet put him on for an ear infection. I was devastated because I didn’t know if his hearing would come back. With a little reiki, time and patience, he ended up getting his hearing back but I was weary of ever doing that to him again.  A few months passed and my sweet boy found a few-day-old salami sub on the side of the road, causing his allergies to act up and yet another ear infection to manifest. This time I had to think outside of the box. I was new to the oils but I grabbed my oil bible and looked in the dog section. Five days later, after a little bottle of an oil called purity rubbed in his ear, my little guy is ear infection free, no deaf side effects.

I’m hearing numerous stories of people whose lives have changed by using these oils. They allow us the opportunity to heal our bodies naturally, on a cellular level. They support us, repair us, relieve us and love us. And I sure as heck love them too.

My hope is to bring these oils to those who need them the most. People like me, who have no idea what’s in store. I want to connect them to the people who will appreciate them and benefit from their selfless magic as well.