 And we did. We brought some beautiful, goddess warrior energy to Davis and thank you for, again, coming and joining us to celebrate this beautiful event. Heather, Ash and Barry here. We're really good at this. There we go. Thank you. Thank you. This is the one that was just given birth and there's my coffee over there. Sorry, great. Yeah, so if you haven't turned off your phone, please do so. We're doing a little bit of recording. We have access to the same team, and I wanted to mention that, again, we don't want to insist quite as possible, so recording part and most of us are in here now. I've selected refresh. So, the wardrobe is... Well, how many of you have been into the wardrobe before? Some of us do, actually, but I talked to a lot of people from the Sacramento area and personally from the store, so I got here tonight. Again, it's really my pleasure that you are getting to store a little bit better. And we are known for putting on very special events like this one. And this one, I think we've founded a scene for this a couple of years ago. Damping each other, Ash. And there you are. And Autumn. And how they're fond of each other. And, again, this is really, really, really special launching for this beautiful book and project. And what the wardrobe has in common with Warrior of God is, in case you aren't familiar with our store, is that we're really here to empower women to align with their choice and express it through color and style and adornment. So that's been my mission for 30 years. I've actually known Heather for, gosh, I think more than 30 years. So, again, it's really wonderful to have her back in town, creating, again, a lot of great awareness in terms of the divine feminine and our expression. So, on that note, I think that we are going to start the inner revolution. And I love that quote in one of your books. And if you would like to stay in touch with the wardrobe, I have a newsletter called Fashion for Thought. And I've been doing that letter for 10 years. So I try and sign up over there on the keyboard. Thank you. Or you can communicate and follow us on Facebook or social media, whatever works best for you. But I try and stay something valuable and keep you in touch with fashion in the way that I interpret it. And, again, I hope that I can help you get to know those that I don't already know of the next little window of time and that you'll come for some of our other special events. And so, let's see. This event is co-created along with Davis Media Access. And Davis Media Access, for those of you who don't know, is our local television station. And it is an important grassroots project that we're not going to be introducing to you. It has made a very, very impactful in our region. So, on that note, I would like to introduce Autumn LaBea, who I know. And thank you again, Autumn, for helping us put this together along with my wonderful team. I want to just do a quick acknowledgement of Reina and Sarah, who I'm staffed with, the wardrobe editor in the show, who's on camera about this. Thank you. She mentions a woman named Autumn, as me. And she taught, her Ash talks in the book about a time when we were very young and very new to spiritual exploration and kind of figuring out the world, seeing it through you. A lot happened since then. She circumnavigated the globe. I settled down here in Davis. I keep coming together and that friendship is more than, I don't know, 30 years. You know, she's been present at the birth of all our children. She's been a goddess, mama. She's family. The one thing, she's taught me a lot of things over the years. But the one thing Heather Ash does really well is encourage people to say yes. Yes, when you think you can do something. Yes, when you're stuck. Yes, when your beliefs about who you are are limited yourself. And that's really what this book is about. And when she called me, we talked a lot from airports. I'm here in Davis. When she called me and said, this book, I want to get this book on the New York Times bestseller. That is my dream. I said, great, let's do a book launch. This one. The last event we did here was with Angie Goodman. So I think we have a track record of really powerful uplifting women with important things to say to Davis. So it is my great pleasure to be introduced to you. Thank you to Autumn, of course. And it's such a joy to be back here. I went to undergraduate here in 1984 for coming to Davis. And so, cycle. Really, really fun. So I'd like to start with just a little round things. If you close your eyes and settle in to your belly. It's something that you're grateful for tonight. You need anything in your life. Let go of what's stimulated that sense of gravity and really bring it in into your project. And just experience. And I'd like you to also thank yourself for coming out tonight. Whatever it was that's not in here. Thank yourself for your willingness to step towards whatever the half-war you're now is here for. For you. And when you're ready, you can go ahead and hope to learn about it. It's going to be a pleasure to meet you. So I'll just start with this quick preface around myself and the book. And Autumn said that we both went to undergrad here and we met as journalists that you see, oh, we worked. Yes, journalists like California, I believe. So I grew up in Southeast Asia in all of the places where I was created. And when I first came to Davis, I was like, what is wrong here? And I couldn't name it, though. I just knew that I felt disconnected and I felt like people around me were disconnected. And I was raised in countries that were deeply connected to spirit and to family and to each other. And it took me a while to figure out what was going on. So for two years, I was political around anything you could be political around. And two years in, I went, okay, wait a minute. I'm pissed off. All my friends are super angry and nothing to take care of. And so I was like, this isn't right. So that's when I started studying different spiritual traditions. And literally Autumn and I went to the library one day, one summer. I told her over this moment, check out every book we could on Earth's spirituality and got a spiritual opinion. We were like, what is this stuff? We don't know. And then carried the books back. We spent the summer reading. Like, oh my god, listen to this. And that just opened everything. So where I started was around European shamanism. Because I felt I'm a European descent. I'm curious, what did my ancestors, ancestors, ancestors believe? And what I learned was the importance of us to come back into the cycles, especially as we know we're in a very linear thought society. That you do this, you do this, you do this, and then you're supposed to get someplace. Which isn't the way life works. But there's these cycles that work. So that was a big piece of that tradition. And then there was a point where I realized that something's missing. And about that time I had a dream. And in the dream, this man showed up and I knew in my mind, I'm like, I'm going to study with this man. And my life is about to completely change. And then we're waking up thinking, right, where am I going to meet this powerful person in Davis, California? And literally a week later, someone came to my office and said, oh my god, you have to meet this man. And I went, I'm not ready. Oh no, hold on, no. And it took me a year. And that man was Don Miguel Ruiz, who's the author of The Four Agreements. And when I got myself ready to drag all my class with me one day to go meet him, and walked into the room and just fell in love. These are my people. And then I met Miguel. And I was really blessed the next month. He took my room. And so my work now is about blending these different traditions that I've been blessed to be part of and really to bring, synthesize down what's the most practical way that we as modern Western women can use these ancient traditions to help ourselves come back into work. A hundred years ago, a little bit over, women didn't have the right to vote. We're about to possibly vote for our first female president. A hundred years. That's not very much time. And as women, a hundred years ago, we had very few rights, we had very few possibilities. We pretty much had one choice, which was getting married and having kids and taking care of the family. There were, of course, some women that were outside of that, but mostly that was what the path was. So while as women in the West, this isn't true around the world, unfortunately, but at least in the West, we have an incredible amount of external freedom. We can vote. We can choose who we want to partner with. We can really work on the job that we want to work. So our external freedoms are incredible. And we have a lot of women and men behind us to thank for that, that struggled and fought and created the pathways for opening. But what I've noticed is this, is that while we have all these external freedoms, we don't have as many internal freedoms. We're still chained to old ways of thinking about ourselves and each other. So as women, we've often been incredibly domesticated to take care of everybody else and not think about ourselves, to put ourselves down, to compare ourselves and to compete with other women. To not really feel like we can bring our full light out. There's this sense of like, is it okay? Is it really okay for me to shine? So what Warrior Goddess, the Warrior Goddess work is about, it's about us as women saying, yes, I can be authentically 100% myself and getting free on the inside. How do we get free on the inside? That's what my passion is about. And what we're chained to, is as I see it, we each have, if you agree with me, this what I call the image of perfection. So this image of who we're supposed to be in the world. And what we often do is spend our time comparing ourselves to who we're supposed to be or who we were instead of living here. So our whole focus is on comparing ourselves to this and then comparing ourselves out here. And that causes this incredible suffering and we're not with ourselves. We're disconnected. And so really, the Warrior Goddess work is about coming back home to ourselves only 100%. So we're, we let this go. We realize this, you're never going to do this. And that's okay. You know I took about a year when sometime in the past I was like okay, I'm going to do everything that voice of perfection tells me to. Like I'm going to nail this. And I did. There was like a three second. Where I listened and I did everything it told me to do basically. Now do you suppose that when I hit that mark it went, that voice went, awesome, Heather Ash, you rock. High five, I'm retiring. What did it say? But that wasn't good enough. That wasn't good enough. Yeah, yeah, fine. You cannot win. And we think we can. It's a losing proposition because that voice is not talking to you about your best interest. It's trying to keep you safe. Safety and freedom don't go together. You can be safe but there's a huge consequence. And we don't need more safe people. We actually need more women that are wild and free and are finding their voice and their power and bringing it into the world. So when Warrior Goddess Training first came out, the first really beautiful book that Heather showed, there's a really fun thing that you can do as an author which you can call all your friends and say, hey, I just want to go on Amazon and buy it on this day. And all your friends go to Amazon and buy it on a day and become a best seller for a day. And it's like super like, oh, I was a best seller on Amazon for one day. And then Lamont's back to at number 11,423. So what was different about Warrior Goddess Training is I did the whole party in Yale, and all my friends bought their books and came home. And the book shot up to number one in two categories, Shamanism and God. So over two years later, it continues to be number one. It was two categories. And it's because it was one thing. We as women are ready to do something different. And there's something, I've had so many women like, the cover, the word, like, Warrior Goddess, what it is, is it's an energy that's deeply needed right now. And we, for all of us, not Yale, for my dear, dear friend, Craig, for being here. Well, I was like, well, yes. I was writing all my books and listening to more podcasts in line with anybody on the planet. So, Warrior Energy. Warrior Energy is about our clarity, our focus, our presence. It's about 100%, yes, I'm in. We'll talk more about this, too. So, and let me do something that they might stand up for a moment. So, Warrior Energy, I'd like you to feel this in your body. 100%. So, bring yourself 100%. Here we go. Awesome. How's it feel? Power. Power. Focus. You got more. Woo! Good. What else, what do you notice? Strength, energy, yeah. And then, Goddess Energy. Hello! How's it feel? How's that feel? Sit, stop, open, sitting, slow and relaxed. Breathe. Good. Go ahead and come to your seat. So, that Goddess Energy is our creativity. It's our openness. It's the yes, as well. The beauty of these two things is it's not that we're here like, okay, 50% Warrior and 50% Goddess, you know, we're gonna have it. It's not about that. And he saw all of us, and he was like, oh, I get it, you're bouncing the masculine feminine. No, I'm not. We're taking two qualities and finding, what's our expression of those qualities? Expression. And some of us are very warrior oriented. That's our essence, that's our nature. And some of us are more Goddess oriented, that's our nature. So, what we want to do is come to find what's my essence and also be able to use both of these qualities skillfully. So, even if you are Super Goddess, you want to be able to pull that warrior up whenever it's needed. Right? Even if you're Super Warrior, you want to be able to call up that Goddess Energy when it's needed. Because there's different situations where that's what it's called for. And some of us are more 50-50 Warrior Goddess. For what's your expression? And recognizing too, there's women that we often create shells. So, we create these layers of I'm supposed to be more warrior or I'm supposed to be more Goddess. So, we want to, so much of this is an un-learning to come back to our offer. So, once warrior Goddess training came out, I started giving letters from women all around the world asking questions, sharing incredible stories of places that were struggling, asking for advice. As I was answering these women and women and feeling into what the questions were, what I started doing is gathering what were the biggest pain points that we as women are experiencing in our lives. And that was the foundation of Warrior Goddess Way. So, I took all of that information and ate it and digested it, basically, and sat with it and then brought out Warrior Goddess Way. And so, Warrior Goddess Way is a deepening into how do we take these tools and use them to transform different areas of our life that were stuck. So, there's three main pillars of Warrior Goddess Way and there's a secret way. So, the three pillars, wisdom, second pillar, authenticity, third pillar, yes! So, that's the way. The way is how do we begin to walk holding our wisdom, our authenticity, and our yes. And that's what we'll be exploring today. Those three pillars and how do we bring them into life? So, wisdom. We each have deep wisdom in ourselves, in our bones. When we come out of our little mind and come into our bodies, everything starts to shift. So, that's why I'm so passionate. We need to stop comparing ourselves to who we think we're supposed to be and really come here because here's where our wisdom is in the body in this present moment. Not, when I was 20, I could do that and I can't do it now. Or, if I haven't hit this mark I'm just going to judge myself because I should be here. Not helping us get to our wisdom. And those are habits that we want to start to clear. So, as we come back to ourselves, what we're starting to do is to learn to listen to what is coming from me. And some of the things that we journey through towards our wisdom is to really learn to start forgiving ourselves and to start forgiving others. Why? There's a whole section in what you're about this way of and some people think we shouldn't forgive. There's a long list of why people think we shouldn't forgive. There are really good reasons. But I go through each one and like and here's why and here's another one. Why? Why? Because you don't want to carry that weight. It's about ourselves. I take rooms to Peru and there's one journey that I was in Peru and one of the shamans, he was doing healing and he kept muttering in Spanish as people would come to the healing and take it on. And I find like the third person I'm like got it. Because what I'm seeing is all of this huge weight that everybody was carrying. And that's what happens when we don't forgive when we hold on to it, especially not forgiving ourselves. Because my guess is we probably made one or two mistakes in your life and how many of us haven't forgiven ourselves for things that we've done and we're still carrying it. And anytime we don't forgive somebody else we're carrying them as well. We're carrying whatever the event is and we're carrying their energy as well. And so really part of coming back to our wisdom is learning how to forgive. We'll talk more about this about the rightness of forgiving. Because I am definitely not, you must forgive and then you'll get to your wisdom at all. There's a process. We'll talk about that in yes as well. The other thing to help us get back to our wisdom is the other thing I notice is women if we have a tendency, not all of us but many women have a tendency to apologize constantly. Anybody fall, anybody always can't or is it just me? So somebody can step on my toe and I'll say oh I'm sorry! Not for that now, but I used to be like oh! And as I started tracking that in myself I realized I just apologize for everything. Like there's a way I've apologized for existing. And I really believe that's a cultural thing that's gotten passed down so as women to come back into our wisdom we need to start looking at where am I apologizing unconscious and start to shift that power and then also looking at where am I not willing to apologize. Where do I go into defense rather than just saying I'm sorry. So learning what apology really is the deepness of connecting to someone from your heart and saying I'm sorry. And facing that rather than running from it. And also letting go of that just unconscious, sorry! Oh sorry! I'm sorry for existing. You get to take up space. And as we do that we start again dropping into our wisdom. There's another piece around wisdom and this is one of my favorite parts of the book which is around our stories. So each of us is one of our storytellers. That's what we do as humans. Our brain makes some stories and we're really good at it. And you can make up a story that frees you and you can make the story that changes you. We have stories from our past that bring us more energy or stories from our past that drain our energy. So when we recognize that we are responsible for our stories how we tell ourselves our story we take our power back. One of the things I've noticed about stories is that there's what I call right stories and unright stories. And this is a big piece because I've seen a lot of us create a tremendous amount of suffering around our unright stories and also hang out with our right stories and ignore them. So what is right and unright? I had a story when I was living in Davis and people would say where'd you grow up? I grew up in Davis. I grew up in Southeast Asia. I moved every two years which meant that we moved someplace. I would be the awkward gawky kid. I wouldn't know anybody. I'd be super shy. And then about a year in I'd start settling in. I'd make friends. I'd start opening up. I'd get excited about where we were living and then we moved. And so the cycle would start over again. So the time I came to college was just a wee bit of issues around it. So how does that story feel? Sad, yeah, broke down, yeah. And that's what I realized one day. I'm telling my story and I'm like, I am so bored of this story. Every time I tell it it doesn't feel good anymore. It doesn't feel good in my body. It doesn't feel good in me anymore. And so I thought, okay, I've been settling in for a couple of years. So let's just change and see what happens. I said I was raised in Southeast Asia. We moved every two years. By the time I was 15 I'd been to Egypt and Austria and Germany and India and to the states all over the place. I had been to so many different cultures. So by the time that I moved to the United States I was incredibly open-minded, very, very compassionate and had a deep passion for intimacy and knew how to connect with different people. That's how it would feel. Okay, which one is the truth? Both. And neither. It's a story. So when we get that, that's huge. When we get that they're not truths they're not happening now. It's fluid. You get to be a storyteller and choose how you want to tell your story. What will serve you the best? Now, this is not about going, I hate that story, I don't like it. I'm going to just put a better story on top of it. That doesn't work. Because what that's like is taking a beach ball and pushing it under the water which takes a tremendous amount of energy and then trying to put something else here while you're bouncing, you can do it under the water. What's going to happen? It's going to pop up because you haven't really rewritten the story you've just tried to bury it. So we don't want to do that. We want to be able to bring the story up and when it's ripe how do you know it's ripe because you're kind of bored of it or you're just like, this is just ready. You just feel it in your body. I think I can shift my perspective a little bit. It can be just a tiny shift and it will shift everything. Shift how you feel about yourself how you see a story. So that's a ripe story. But then there are unripe stories and an unripe story is a story that has a lot of energy in it still that you're attached to. It's one you're not, and those are the ones usually were like, I'm done with that story. I just wanted to go away. But if you really feel into it, it's not ripe yet. So we want to be really gentle with ourselves around this idea of is it ripe or is it unripe and to love them equally. Because the truth is some of us, I think most of us are going to go through our life with a lot of unripe stories. Can we love ourselves through the places we're not ripe? Is that okay? The answer is yes. And if you love those unripe stories okay. I am probably going to go to my death bed hoping that everyone on the planet loves me. I'm a liberator. But that's one of my four things. Have I done a ton of work on it? Yes. Am I much better? Yes. That's part of the default. So maybe you'll write in one day. But I've just learned to just go, oh sweetie, there's that unripe story. You're okay, you're safe. I'm a warrior, guys. I shouldn't have that story. Which is so not loving to ourselves. So with fruit. Now we talk about fruit for a minute. Are you ready? How do you write the fruit? Put it in a brown paper bag. So one way is you take the fruit, you stick it in a brown paper bag. It's so cool. What happens is it's in its own little environment and so it's off-gassing. What its own off-gasses then help it to write it faster. So sometimes in order to write the story you need to go away. You need to isolate yourself. You need to sit with your own story. You need to be with the discomfort. You need to go to a brown paper bag, you close it and be with the story. And you'll find your way through to write the fruit. Put it next to another fruit. Exactly, this is one of my favorite. Find people that are right in the area you want to write in. So it doesn't mean that person has been perfect in all angles and so you can stand next to them. It means if you are dealing with relationship and you're trying to write in something around a relationship, you find people that are like rocking on their relationship and you go stand next to them. You don't even have to talk to them next to them. It doesn't matter. Take in some of their body odor. It doesn't matter. It doesn't matter. Because they've got it. They've worked that piece. We can really help each other in this way. And so what if I need to do a mess? You're not right about that. So you don't have to like, I'm not standing next to them. They haven't dealt with everything. If they're right in that area that you want to write in, so reading books, physically being around people. When I figured this out, I was like, oh, no wonder I spent years literally following Miguel around. I was always right close to him. And I was like, right, I was writing. I was just hanging out in his energy field and there's something really powerful. So the books he read, the people that you hang out with, again, doesn't mean at least I'm going to seem like I was only hanging out with right people. Not going to serve you either. You actually want people that are going to also diverge for a second and then come back. There was this amazing experience for the Viagra Foods. Viagra Seers, where they created a totally enclosed environment and they put people into it. I think for 30 years. And what happened in that environment is they planted a bunch of trees. They had a bunch of trees and for the first two years the trees grew really fast. Look how cool this experiment is. And then the third year old trees fell over. All the trees fell over. And when they opened up the environment and they figured out what happened what they recognized is to get their center to have wind to get solid. So really, the more what Viagra Seers told people called petty tyrants that you have in your life that make your life miserable Why? Because you were going to get so strong. You're going to find your center. Yeah. Some of us are super strong, right? So you don't want to avoid we don't want to live our lives going I'm going to avoid all the uncomfortable things in my life because you're not going to get that strength. This is where the water comes in. So another way to write it is to put it in the sun. Take fruit and put it in the sun. And what that does is it is that we take our stories and we bring them out we share them with other people that can just sit and go yeah, that's your story I'm here, I'm listening So there's a way that when we as women open up and share our stories we feel seen, we feel heard we realize it's not just our story I've been listening to and reading about women that were part of the first wave second, whatever you want to call it of feminism in the 70s, late 60s, early 70s and what they talked about was so like oh, is that they never talked to each other and then they started sitting down and talking and realizing they all had the same issues and how radical that was that women had never talked to each other and so we need to keep doing the same thing of sharing, of bringing it into the life bringing it into the life, bringing it into the life so that it can get unraveled and here's the thing I've seen you know or I know the story when it's starting to write then by who I call I have friends that I can call and tell a story and they'll be like oh my god I can't believe the bastard you should definitely be really pissed at me I know, can you believe it and then I have other friends that I can call that I'll be like and they'll be like how's that working for you great and I call those people when I'm actually ready I'm ripened up and I'm ready to unpack it so just notice that don't judge yourself for it because I still call for them I'm like I can't believe it I feel so good but I know at some point I'm going to have to unwrap it because it feels good in the short run and that's that exploration around stories unripe, ripe, love them whole as we connect as we unravel the old stories create more space because that's what it does it creates more space inside of us what happens naturally is we start stepping towards our authenticity and authenticity is not something that we have to find it's something that we're unlayering because we're authentic it's there we just tend to put roles ideas of who we're supposed to be on top of it so coming back into our authenticity one of the best ways to reconnect with our authenticity is to get quiet to sit to go into stillness to have some sort of meditation or sitting practice where we're reconnecting to our stillness over and over again because it's from our stillness that our authenticity arises naturally hey I see people that I know it's so fun I know that it starts to come from the stillness our stories the old ways that we've thought of who we're supposed to be do not read and to speak we're going to need to learn thought but when we start to witness and this is a key part of born goddess when we start to step back and open and witness what's my mind up to what's happening in my emotional body what's happening in my physical body then we start to learn to be more skillful around not just running down that path oh it must be true we recognize our mind says so much stuff that's not true it's crazy I read a statistic that every day you have about 65,000 thoughts and that of those thoughts 85% lots of the same thoughts you have of looking into ourselves who's listening and who's talking why do you have to keep repeating that and part of this is just the habit we just get into this habit so retraining ourselves to go toward the stillness rather than towards the noise and hold I like to think about is that I'm holding whatever is happening from a place of connection with someone and what arises and naturally is our authenticity is our unique expression one of the things that I love about the Toltec work and the Toltecs were a group of people that came together to love and central Mexico to study perception and I'm really curious about how do we create our reality and the word Toltec means artists of the spirit and that what our art is is our life and that for each of us we are each a unique ray of light and I love that metaphor that we're each a unique ray of light we're here to shine on our light our world needs our particular light when we're busy comparing ourselves in our life we're not doing our guess but when we really connect into our authenticity and surrender up who we think we're supposed to be to land into who this being is now and get curious who is this being there's so many women that I've talked to who I am I've spent my life raising my kids or in my job and now I don't know and I'm like great what do you love what lights you up even a tiny bit go towards that and see, be curious so for all of us to let go of who we've been or who we're supposed to be to find out who is this being what do I love and to start naming things that light you up and doing more of them and I would think about it that this work is what do more things you love what a terrible task and do more of the things you love and the second one clean up clean up the old beliefs and agreements that arise and that's what leads us back into our authenticity is the letting go of what's not us and the reclaiming of and love your corpse, love your flaws one of my favorite stories is I had a roommate who had just fallen in love and had a new lover and she told me this next story that one night she was like, I have so many flaws how can you love me and her lover's like, sweetie those are like flaws features so love your features we all have features it's great and whatever it is that lights you up do more of it we forget one of my favorite things to do is running down hallways running down hallways so literally I mean hallways are like I think it's from living in a hotel in bay 5 or 6 months with my sister I've terrorized the hotel but it lights me up why not make some jars of lighting up like organize them I'm like I need to do five so whatever it is no matter how quirky celebrate it it's part of your authenticity that's part of your sweetness so our third and the word about his way is this word yes and I had debates like should it be yay because if you know me you know that I say you constantly pretty much so we decided to go for yes but you all know that it's also yay you're welcome to use yay as often as possible and yay will happen when my tire will be flat yay because I retrained myself to celebrate seriously celebrate everyone here's what happens most of us something unpleasant arises in what we do yeah resist our energy goes away we judge it we judge ourselves we close and anytime you close what you're doing is closing to yourself closing to your creativity closing to your body closing to your own presence so yes is about re-changing ourselves so that something different arises and we just go I'm here because what's going to happen is your creativity is going to stand up you're going to show up and be able to go like what is this how do I work with this so stay connected to your authenticity in that way now this is super not easy this is like serious warrior dodging right because to be able to retrain yourself that something difficult happens and you open instead of closing we do that we do that by opening to our closures that's where it starts so again witness you notice yourself closing to something you go oh look how well I'm resisting you notice yourself judging wow my judge my judge my judge and you open to the judgment what we usually do is like I'm judging myself because I'm judging because I shouldn't be judging some of them are spiritual I wouldn't be judging so practice opening to the closures there's a funny part in the book where I talk about stepping in dog behavior in my new clean shoes and tracking it across the floor and being like closing in yay I get to wear new shoes that anything any little thing you can begin to practice on so when you practice on the little things what happens when the big things arise is it becomes more natural rather than close but it's a deep practice now we just had this discussion today I'm in the middle of this really beautiful 21 day giveaway right now online and I'll anybody okay check this out oh that's cool so if anybody wants to be on my mailing list and you jump into the work as 21 day giveaway we're two weeks in we have a week to go but it's really beautiful because I'm doing a little audio every day 5-6 minute audio and the teaching and the piece of art for the community that's gorgeous and all the information's there so you'll have access to all the stuff from the past as well so if you want to play I always forget to do this later so I'm just going to pass it around so if you're not on my list and you'd like to you know what I'm up to so I just lost my train of thought yay dog yay dog with the little things start with the small things smells I have a smell I don't like the smell closing through it I'm turning towards the smell seriously because it will retrain you so when the big thing arises you're like I'm here I'm present I'm ready this is true of everything you know people will say to me well how do I deal with it when I go home and my family's judging me and they're telling me that I'm doing my life how do I open that and I'm like too late to be practicing opening in different places in your life you don't have any hope of opening in this big situation does that make sense when my dad was having leukemia my dad was a Buddhist and when he got leukemia I remember just feeling so heartbroken for him because he had a practice and when he needed the most he could practice in here he got to work it for sure at that moment I was like right you can't wait until the emergency happens to expect yourself to then drop into the stillness or your authenticity or your yes or your wisdom it's too hard but if you practice in all the little ways you'll be able to just a tiny bit so in the grocery store this happened yesterday I'm on the train on the way up here and there were some really loud people talking and like joking with each other and they've been drinking obviously and I thought I should just move I'm in my sun zone I'm working on my book people are bothering me and then I felt into it I'm like no practice opening sweetie so I just opened my fields instead of like I don't mind them what are they doing I'm in my zone hello I just opened like they have as much right to do as I do and I can move but let me practice and it was great the moment I opened it's not fucking the skill that and grocery stores are your best products seriously so you notice something like there's somebody fighting in the next aisle over and seducing grocery stores all like the famous needle I'd be like anchor happening I don't like anchors I didn't now I can rate with it move towards and sometimes I would just move my car and just be like so you practice moving towards the discomfort I'd say one of the hallmarks of more you guys is that we're learning to move towards discomfort rather than away and it's not because we're sadistic it's because we want to be free it's because we want to be free and any place you're closing down is because you're free imagine this you should reflect you were raised in a family that thought blue-haired children were growing they were geniuses, they were amazing they were going to succeed in everything they did and that in your family it was also believed that green-haired children well they just weren't that smart they weren't well, your sibling is really smart like well you could get married or you could do like do something you could move to maybe imagine how the whole society feels that so you're the blue-haired child you've just gotten accepted to UC Davis it's your first job, lay on campus you're walking across campus in your life and someone comes up to you and says what are you doing on campus, you don't belong you get off campus, what would your reaction be your whole life you've been told you're going to succeed, you've got this green-haired child, what would your reaction be whatever, you'd be like they're having a weird day well, nothing to do with me and then you'd go on with your day and wouldn't create a blip because there's no resonance in your body that that is true see where we're going green-haired child somehow that in UC Davis parents would say somebody walking through campus the first day someone comes up to you and says what are you doing here, you don't belong what's their reaction to you you're right, so here's what we do we go one or two paths so I'm sure there's more but this is the two that I see one path is contraction, they're right oh my god, they saw me I'm never going to be able to succeed and either they're going to drop out immediately or that is going to go in and is going to dismantle it's going to infect because the infection's already there it's going to keep dismantling their confidence until they drop out at some point does that make sense so that's one thing or we do this I'm going to succeed, what are you talking about I'm fine, I'm going to make it happen we're going to rebellion we push, we fight the great thing about rebellion is that when we go into rebellion we will push through our own fears and our own barriers to get things done but there's a downside to rebellion we're not in our authenticity we're in fight mode all the time so at some point rebellion has to be unwoven as well because what it is did it change the primary belief so what you have is you have rebellion and yeah, green hair, beliefs right so that needs to get unwoven so this can get here so there's nothing outside of us everything's recollecting back beliefs that we have anytime you get triggered you can go it's them they're doing it but the truth is everything inside of you is resonating it might not be exactly the same thing but there's some old beliefs that has gotten lit up the good things anytime we go into discomfort what's connected to it is an old belief or an agreement every belief and agreement we've ever made in our life takes energy repeat that again because this is every every agreement you've ever made in your life takes energy what that means if there's an obstacle in your life that has this much energy and you have this much energy who wins the obstacle right but if the obstacle has this much energy and you have this much energy what happens you don't even notice it's an obstacle right or you're just like ah I could settle that that's easy hop quiz who will put the energy in the obstacle we did the good news is the moment you recognize that without judgment without blame and yes did you inherit obstacles from your great great great grandmother from your culture yes but the moment you take it on it's yours we take responsibility for that we can do something we don't take responsibility for we're helpless and as much as I would like to be able to control everyone on the planet to do what I want them to do obviously do you ever notice this people just don't behave and all that energy we spend on making other people behave and stop it there's only one person you can change and commit to begin to pull the energy out the obstacle arises because what you're seeing the moment an obstacle arises is your energy it's where your energy is locked here's another way to see it how long do you have time it's about eight times awesome that's everything awesome anytime you set an intent you get clear I want a new job I want to love more whatever the intent is whether it's really tangible or very broad what you're doing I believe is planting a seed into the universe and saying hey universe I want more of this and I feel the universe goes awesome that's cool and then something is synchronicities allies start showing up you get all the support that starts to show up and or the obstacle starts to show up so everything between you and where you want to go starts to show up all the obstacles and what we've often been trained to do is an obstacle arises and we go I didn't want to go there anymore oh see I don't deserve it or it's not fair it's my mother she impressed me longer I wouldn't have this obstacle whatever we do with it to blame or judge to feel victimized by it or to blame but we're spending energy we're used to incremental belief that's causing the obstacle to present and it's going to be awesome and it's not saying if you do this right there'll be no obstacles in your life no you might notice you're in a body you might notice you're probably staging you might notice people die people abandon people change just because you show up present doesn't mean that all everything's going to go away and that means you're doing it perfectly that is spiritual nonsense we are going to be broken open our hearts are going to get broken because every time we really feel into that tenderness of being human and let ourselves feel our grief and feel our life there's so much power in going to rewards and discomfort and opening to it and listening to what's the obstacle from here is always going to be our perception because life's just doing life and I love there's one of my favorite quotes by the flier and Katie is you can fight against reality but reality is going to win only when you've suffered a time an obstacle arises what I pray for all of us is you go you are a worthy obstacle and you go wind here's the wind awesome this is going to make me more resilient, stronger more present, more compassionate you can use everything in your life to benefit you you can also use everything you have against you and most of us have learned to use everything against us we read a spiritual book and then three days later we're judging ourselves because we're not doing what it said we're inspired by someone and then we're like yeah but I'll never be I think we like to serve you no matter what it is when my first book Sorry I told my cat came out and a big, big break in my life so it's funny now my dear friends that are here know it was not funny but I knew her many late night called so this book comes out the book's about change that week my business partner my beloved, my husband my father of the community that we had created we moved out of the house and so I'm like I just gave up to a girl and I just lost my beloved in one week and I remember picking up the book and opening to the first page and the first paragraph says have you ever had your life turned upside down in a moment and I slammed it and was like you have her great I wrote a book for myself now I have to figure out how to live this really hard time there was a moment in that when as I was going through it it took a long time it wasn't right for many, many years I'll just say that, it took me two, three years for it to get right for all of that there was a moment I realized wow I feel so broken right now and so terrified around love that I could close an armor in my heart that that would be an easy path and I just was like and I don't want to do that I want to use this the most difficult thing that's ever happened to me to date, to open me more and that was just my command like I don't know how I'm going to do that but I just set that intent in that commitment I want to use this to open me and it did I'm so grateful now because I was willing to look at what do I actually want here how do I use this for me I believe there are a lot of music against me but that's what friends are for so wisdom authenticity, yes the wisdom is that as we have experiences we deepen we learn, we grow and wisdom isn't about being perfect wisdom is actually about embracing how that life is all the parts of us and that all the different parts of us also contain wisdom and I like to think about is that we each have a wise child self this innocent like play wise child and we all have a very wise elder self as well we need both of them we need that crazy play fun energy innocence and we also need that wise I've been through it all we're all going to survive authenticity that it's not something we strive to find it's something that we become by unlayering by looking at what does not feel like it's me, let that go and that there's ways, one of my favorite ways to work with that is stillness practices and also using our senses going back into our senses, what am I smelling here what am I tasting the moment we come back into our senses we become more authentic because we're actually here in the present moment if you really want to have a scare experience I invite you to sit still for ten minutes with a piece of paper with the word past present and future written on it and every time you haven't thought about the past put a little check to the little part any time you haven't thought about the future put a little mark on it any time you haven't thought about the present what would have thought about the present be like what you'll most find it is oh my god did I turn the oven off I don't know if I'm doing this right but other people meditate so much better maybe if I keep meditating I'll be, I mean I'll find that your mind is balancing past so using our senses helps us come back here and then yes learning to open to everything and opening to our closures opening to our fears opening to our judgments there's beauty that happens when we start to open to everything and move towards being somewhere and that brings us back into our ways so this place of celebrating is a radical act I believe especially at this time and also the need for us to be real to be vulnerable to show up with each other