I have chosen three amazing experiences to share with you that crystallized my growth in intimately knowing and honoring my own heart and self. The first literally introduced me to who I truly was inside. The second was more a captivated love affair with myself and the third a story of genuine unconditional love in unconventional form. May these stories open your heart so that you can hear and honor the voice inside. May these stories move you to ask yourself seven important questions to truly hear and trust your heart talk.

Story 1

I was volunteering overseas on a medical mission for an organization called Operation Smile. The team was performing craniofacial surgery for children living in the Philippines in the providence of Albay in Legaspi City. We were working and living in a village at the base of an active volcano called Mount Mayon. During our mission, Mount Mayon smoldered often, provoked several earthquakes, and eventually erupted. Everyone on the team was there on a volunteer basis. Our places of origin were from all over the globe. Passion for the children and our mission was the common language shared across the multi-cultures represented by each team member. Due to the volcanic ash from the smoldering volcano earlier in the week we had already been without electricity for a few days.

One evening, I was sitting on the floor writing in my journal in a small bathroom by way of candlelight. I had discovered this was a great writing spot because the candlelight filled the entire room. As I was journaling of my experiences of a day’s work at the hospital, the room suddenly began to quiver. I paused looking up at the door as the building then aggressively trembled beneath me and my candle soon extinguished. I sat still with my breathe and my heart beat— noticing I was still holding the candle as if it was lit.

Paralysis overtook me – I did not move. An internal silence slowly seeped in amongst the loud trembling of the walls. My heart beat became increasingly louder while simultaneously a sensation of extreme peace began to surface. Soon the peace surrounded me and filled the entire blackened bathroom. I had no idea what was to come next. Off in the corner of the room, as if gazing upon some old time silent movie with the fluttering of the film—every aspect of my life — play by play —–was shown to me.

I watched awe struck, in this dark shaking room a screen by screen play back of me and my every thought, every act, every choice, every feeling I had ever experienced from the day of my birth to that exact moment in time. My heart was talking to me, talking to me loudly showing me my life essence over the course of 3o years. Tears filled my eyes and a wave of complete peace rose out from heart as I saw and accepted for the first time who I was.

Being completely cognizant that I may not walk out of this alive, I accepted all of myself for the first time. I surrendered to who I was in that moment and all I had been and done with my life. I accepted my death with complete calm and complete resolve to all my life choices. I met my heart and for the first time met myself. The earthquake struck along with the eruption of Mount Mayon.

The team survived though the volcanic ash was overwhelming and we were unable to fly out of Legaspi back to Manila. The team received news that a bus would drive us out early the next morning drudging its way through muddy roads 14 hours back to Manila. Upon receipt of this news, several of us looked at each other and with heart space filled hugs decided together no one would go to sleep that night. We feared we would not wake up by being covered in ash, suit, or lava. We instead spent the evening dancing, eating, singing, and playing music. Though it was un- spoken, we all knew we spent the evening celebrating our death and therefore celebrating our re-birth. Thus at the age of 30 embracing who I was – who I truly was – free from all of society, family, and self imposed expectations and limitations—I was born.

Story 2

Having been born at the age of 30 it was five years later when I deeply and profoundly fell in love with myself. It took me five years to shed the layers that had accumulated in my lifetime of patterns built, influences and expectations of others followed, and choices made that were wounding my heart and inner knowing. The most concise way to describe this shedding was I divorced myself. I divorced the old body that held the new heart. I divorced my husband, I divorced my friends, my family, and my career. I divorced my preconceived ideas of what my life was supposed to look like, I divorced my genetic coding, I divorced my body aches and pains, I divorced my old eating patterns, I divorced my unconscious way of living.

A friend of mine described it in the following terms: most individuals walk around with a thorn in their foot. At first it hurts and bothers them for awhile. It impacts their ability to walk effortlessly forward in their lives. They think to themselves – who am I to worry or complain about this thorn when some have no feet – some have more thorns than I-so they stop complaining about it – they ignore it – they become content with living life with this thorn and they just go through each day accepting the pain, the discomfort, the unbalance they feel with each walking step. Until one day somebody walks by and offers to remove the thorn or an event occurs and they chose on their own to remove the thorn. Suddenly an entire new world appears – a world that is pain free with more balance and ease in each walking step. They are now lighter on their feet and they can more easily and readily move forward in their life.

I divorced my old way of living by removing my own thorn. It is important that I tell you of the rawness that always accompanies when one first removes the thorn. The rawness is real and is necessary. The rawness creates a space for you to rebuild your inner strength while the wound heals. The rawness prevents you from bolting into choices that truly do not serve your heart. It creates a limp in your step and slowness in your progress forward. Many become depressed during this time when in fact it is a time of celebration and honoring of your courage. The rawness gives you time to focus and center on your next steps forward without leaping. Once the rawness subsided – I moved from the Northeast to Boulder, Colorado. I chose to no longer suppress my intuitive skills and abilities and I opened my own business dedicated to serving children and families as a Child Intuitive.

Getting back to the day I deeply fell in love with myself was precisely on the day of my 35th birthday – July 20, 2005. I had recorded one of my intuitive sessions over the phone for a newborn in Atlanta, Georgia. To make sure the reading had successfully recorded, I sat down in the center of my living room and listened before mailing it off to my client. Though I had recorded over 50 sessions of clients up to that point, I had never taken the time to sit down and listen to an entire session.

As my voice poured into my living room from the recording device – I sat their in complete awe listening to this voice. Who was this person I thought? What amazing purity and beauty was resonating from this voice I was hearing. I truly was so removed from the fact it was me I was listening to. This was not me that was impossible – my self perception did not even come close to what I could objectively hear from this voice flowing out of the recorder. Tears welled in my eyes — my jaw dropped – I started to hug my knees and rock back and forth.

Who was this woman? Her skills were inspiring – her abilities to see and love this child from across the country by just connecting with the boy’s energy – was just mind blowing – the genuineness and authenticity in the precision of each word that was magically coming through her voice was remarkable. I need to meet this woman I thought. What true love and purity this woman exhibits. Reality snapped back into place and the true recognition that this woman I was falling in love with through her voice alone — was me.

I curled up into a ball on my living room floor and sobbed. I then started to out loud apologize to my heart and every other part of my body that I allowed over the years at times to be wounded, hurt, used, abandoned, taken advantage of, dishonored, disrespected, and misunderstood in my life up to that day. Who are we to live anyway less than to honor our true selves – to honor our bodies and all the messages we receive – who are we to ignore our feelings and our intuition-who are we but to truly love ourselves. We serve no one without loving ourselves first.

Story 3

“Your nature now” she said to me, “no longer corporate”. She was referring to the energy behind my current state of being. I had just lost my job. Yes, the corporate job that I manipulated myself into thinking I could fit into to make good money. She being Eliza.

Eliza is a woman in her 70’s filled with love, light, and unconditional giving and service to others. Most individuals cannot truly grasp when I describe these attributes about this amazing woman. Most think they understand — you probably have visions of a woman who gives to the needy or who helps anyone out when they are down – or a woman who volunteers her time to help charities and fills a room with love just with her very presence. These are all preprogrammed views in our culture on how a “giving woman” lives inside our boxed prescribed view of life. The way of life we all believe we must embody — job, mortgage, family, thank you cards, holiday gifts, expressions of gratitude displayed in a credit card shaped gift certificate, etc.

Oh if I could only describe the multitude ways of living that are truly at our fingertips. The true bliss in life and love that most worldly individuals can’t see. The new perspectives and views and ways to interact in the world to love, be, and give to each other. It is like a multifaceted diamond. Eliza taught me. Not through lectures, a book, or workshops. She taught through a new paradigm or rather an old paradigm – a paradigm of teaching currently lost- pure teaching known to the core of all great leaders from Jesus to Mother Theresa, Gandhi, to Yogananda —- she taught me by just being herself.

I walked down the steps to enter a small metaphysical book store in downtown Boulder the same way I did every week to release and connect with the divine when over burdened with my life in the “corporate world”. I knew I was not fully living the life I wanted – though I had started my own business as a Child Intuitive performing intuitive readings for children and families— I had still been enticed by money to join a company who needed research/testing on children’s language development.

This job took most of my energy and focus – over 50 hours a week of my energy to be exact as I walked down the steps Eliza was standing at the base of the stairs at the counter when she looked directly up at me. Meeting her for the first time, she reprimanded me in her own way and style “you want a reading – come on” and she started leading me to the back of the store. My thoughts were scattered. Not really, I was thinking. I do these (readings) myself. I am not really in the mood to focus on me.

My thoughts came to a halt as she spoke and I knew then- this woman was going to shake up my world – I was just unaware as to the extent in which this would happen. I felt nervous inside yet was filled with a paradoxical calm and centeredness. Eliza looked like a “street person”. She had long gray hair that met the middle of her back. She smiled lots with but a few teeth – the rest of her smile was filled with a black void that I could see was a gateway to her heart. She wore lots of layers of heavy looking like blankets and a homemade crocheted hat that covered her ears. Her room was filled was scarves hanging from all rafters – large fans flared out on the walls along with various objects and prayer beads dangling from push pins.

There was a table covered in cloth with piles and piles of books pushed to one side. Two chairs were set up facing across the table from each other. Eliza sat in one and me in the other. She also had piles of card decks some on the floor and others on the corner of her table. She pulled from several card decks and just started shuffling, talking, and asking me lots of questions. Our relationship had started. Eliza – did not charge for her services – she requested what she called a love offering.

With no rationale explanation I started to see Eliza regularly – sometimes I scheduled appointments – sometimes I just showed up. “What is happening?” was my thoughts every time I naturally arrived to see Elizabeth – I felt like Dan Millman in Way of the Peaceful Warrior and his meetings with Socrates. Our sessions at first were filled with an energy of formality. I would come in with an agenda of issues and through cards, drawing with chalks, crying, tissues, answers were revealed. One day Eliza took my hand – walked me out into the book store and bought me $85.00 worth of books. She charged me nothing. Allowing myself to receive was one of the first of many lessons Eliza showed me. How could someone just give without wanting anything in return? To make up for my own insecurity around my ingrained belief system that nothing is for free – I would give her cash or checks ranging from $40 to $100.

Everyday was unexpected – some days I would walk out of sessions with Eliza with gifts from her of prayer beads, flyers, scarves, a marble polar bear, or spiritual music cd’s. Things were shifting. I was changing. In my own business and sessions with families and children I watched myself change and give away freely my books, my trinkets, and toys. I saw myself start to perform readings with a new fluidity involving reading excerpts from books randomly, or drawing with chalk for the client to express something and giving it to them to take home. Over time my sessions with Eliza became more relaxed. We would laugh more, share more, and love more. Nothing was as it appeared – another life lesson learned. Though I always embraced this concept intellectually I was living it now first hand. Eliza was not just a street looking intuitive reader parked in the back of a small book store; she was a woman with her Ph.D. along with several other degrees. Her personal biography she did not advertise – “Credentials mean everything and credentials mean nothing” she said. She also was a woman who had traveled all over the world with large and small experiences that made her all that she is. As our relationship loosened we started to talk as friends on the phone.

One evening she told me “Come tomorrow at noon I want you to meet someone.” I arrived abit before noon and was introduced to a woman from Siberia who performed healing through honey — the honey is applied warm to your back and through her hands toxins are removed from the body. Eliza and I chatted and informally had a session – in going with the flow and allowing myself to receive soon I found myself laying down on a soft cushion on the floor behind a wall partition in the back of this small bookstore with warm honey being poured on my back. Lost in the healing – one hour later my back was being cleaned and this woman from Siberia proceeded to share with me all her intuitive insights she learned of my body and me. I owed nothing – these 2 women were just living from the heart and genuinely wanted to express love through their gifts and talents.

How many of us can truly grasp how life can be genuinely lived and experienced directly from the heart? Most individuals do not allow it to enter their lives and when it does no one trusts it or believes it. “They want something from me” they may think or “They need something from me” – “I do not deserve to just be loved for me.” How many of you think this? How many of you have this engrained deep in your belief system? It is time to shatter this belief and allow your light to shine and to allow love to enter your world. To do this one must……

Meet your heart – know your heart – love your heart – hear your heart talk

In the process of sharing I hope these stories have awakened something inside of you. A new perspective, a remembering, or maybe just the birth of an original awareness. I offer to you the following 7 questions that will introduce you directly to your heart and your heart’s voice. The answers to these questions on yourself, your child, a close friend, or various family members will introduce you to one’s own HEART TALK. By listening closely to this voice that resonates out from each and everyone’s heart – a new understanding of yourself and others will naturally unfold.

• 1. During your free time what do you think about the most, what interests you the most or what do you find yourself doing? What books do you find yourself reading?
• 2. If you could express yourself in anyway or style – dancing, singing, drawing, writing? What would be your ultimate form of expression?
• 3. What do you see first when you walk into a room? Do you see people first, objects, shapes, colors, faces?
• 4. What makes you laugh?
• 5. What makes you light up? A beautiful song — being with a group of close friends, helping others, dancing by yourself?
• 6. If you could do any activity today what would it be?
• 7. What would that activity involve? In other words what would categorize that activity– Body movement? Working with color? Helping others?

Write your answers down and take a look at all of them from a bigger picture perspective – as a bird would fly higher to get a broader view of his surroundings to find more worms. What do they all have in common? How do you perceive your world and how do you wish to participate in your world? What form of expression to you wish to offer the world? What do you enjoy the most? What makes you smile and shine? Your heart knows and if you listen to the answers to these questions and continue to listen to your Heart Talk you will know too.