On the Fall and Spring Equinoxes, day and night are almost the same length. Darkness and Light are in balance. When you source from your center, you can embody steadiness in an uncertain world. Stress levels decrease. Your ability to be present increases.

In Buddhist practice, equanimity is one of the most sublime states of meditation – the foundation for wisdom.

The equinox is the center point on the continuum of light and dark. On the Fall Equinox, while Light and Dark are in balance, we are poised to enter the portal to Source.

Before the Fall Equinox, days are longer than nights.  After the Equinox, nights are longer. Days grow shorter as we head toward the Winter Solstice, the longest night of the year in the Northern Hemisphere. South of the equator, spring begins. Days get longer. Weather gets warmer.

Celebrating the equinox is an ancient practice. For millennia – even before the Inca lived, structures in Machu Picchu were built by people who knew the value of honoring the transitions of the earth’s journeys around the sun. These structures were used both for astronomical observations and for ceremonies celebrating life.

Indigenous peoples all over the world, including Europe, Africa and the Americas, built observatories to track the equinoxes. Stonehenge in England and the Intihuatana Stone at Machu Picchu in Peru still function this way.

How many 20th century observatories will still function 1200 years from now?

Intihuatana means “Hitching Post of the Sun.” In the middle of the day on the fall and spring equinoxes, the sun stands directly above the pillar, illuminating it. It stands as a pillar of Light. Shamanic legends say that when a sensitive person touches their forehead to the Intihuatana stone, it opens their spiritual vision.

The Intihuatana Stone

Source, through the brilliant intelligence of Nature, blesses us with natural times when the earth and sun support us being centered. Akashic Blessing Circles are held on or near the equinoxes and solstices.

At the Akashic Blessing Circle, we open our spiritual vision through a guided group journey. When the Akashic Record opens for the group, we open ourselves to receive blessings of liquid Light. We receive wisdom, insight and upliftment. Individuals may receive downloads specifically for them – beyond the words and group experience.

We attune and align with the Divine center of Being – and experience harmony and equanimity.

Upsets can take you by storm. Something happens – or someone says something that hits you like a tsunami – your stomach tenses up, or your heart contracts. Even if you meditate in the mornings, as soon as you get off the cushion and go out into the world – things happen. When what happens disturbs you, you go into upset.

Upsets can be subtle or harsh. When suppressing them no longer works for you, there is a way to resolve them. You don’t have to stay upset.

I’m not asking you to go anywhere into your own shadowy upsets that I myself do not go. As a sister traveler, I engage this same process of resolving upsets – before I ask this of you. I practice Emotional Connection and receive the benefits before I bring it to my coaching practice. It’s effective and rewarding – though not always easy.

Alongside the Akashic, the flower essences and the emotional connection work, I’m incorporating a newly emerging protocol for resolving upsets through the Language of Being.

When you can resolve upsets as they occur, you will have a steady ground from which to live, work and play, while staying connected with the voice of your body – where background conversations live. Background conversations are unspoken conversations that live in your body – what many of us think of as subconscious or unconscious information.

By connecting with the upset sensations in your body, you can bring background conversations into the foreground, where you can focus on them and transform them. As long as they are unknown, they aren’t likely to change.

Once you bring them to Light, you can update them to be aligned with your values. You can stop being hijacked by background conversations and upgrade them to carry you forward.

The Bedrock

For three weeks, I took on resolving my upsets along in a group course. With intense immersion, I found the “bedrock” of suppressed upsets from the past surfacing. Bedrock is consolidated rock that underlies loose material in the earth – the dense, metamorphic rock underneath accumulations of layer after layer of sedimentary rock. Sedimentary rocks are chock full of fossils – old, limiting personal stories cemented into place by family and cultural values – or standards.

Personal stories lack a “witness” perspective. Your spiritual Being observes your personal stories, but does not identify with them. When you have the space to witness your reactions to situations, you have a level of detachment that allows you to see a bigger picture – and not get lost in your emotions.

Emotions can be so powerful, they can be overwhelming. There is an art to connecting with them – but not drowning in them. Observing and connecting from the witness allows you to be with the sensations without getting lost in them – or going into drama – making up scary stories that never actually happened.

In sessions, you may have heard me refer to certain upsets or disturbances as “big honkers.” Like the bedrock, these are as fossilized emotions that haven’t moved.

Instead of moving out, fossilized emotions have solidified. The result is emotions that are rigid. Suppressed emotions live in your body and psyche – keeping you locked into your triggers.

When you are triggered, you need options besides suppressing or exploding. Neither suppressing nor exploding is an effective way to create desirable outcomes in the world. If you are living from Being, one of your values is to maintain dignity, your own and for others – while getting your concerns addressed.

“If you think you’re enlightened, go spend a week with your family.” –Ram Dass

The bedrock of upsets for many people is located in the domain of family. This is because we are biologically coupled to our families. What we experience with them effects us fundamentally – in our bodies. On top of that, we internalize ungrounded assumptions from family and culture that keep us trapped in unrealistic expectations.

First, connect with your body – then explore the conversations that accompany the sensations.

The Practice:

Here are some “fairy tales” in the domain of family that may operate as background conversations. Notice the sensations in your body as you read through them.

1. “My family is always there for me.”
2. “My family loves and accepts me for who I am.”
3. “My family will always protect and defend me.”
4. “Families support each other, no matter what happens.”
5. “Families share the same values.”
6. “Parents always have their children’s best interests at heart.”

Slow down – note how your body feels.

Take a breath, or a sip of water.

Here are some distinctions to ground conversations about families. Notice how your body feels as you read them.

1. Families are comprised of a group of individuals who are either biologically related or have a shared domestic history.
2. A family is not an undifferentiated unit, but a group of unique individuals whose paths often diverge. Not everyone in a family “fits” the family mold.
3. Individual family members have different values.
4. Individuals within families have a range of willingness to be honest.
5. In families, some members are on a spiritual path; others are not.
6. Biological relationship does not necessarily result in intimacy, safety or shared concerns.

Read the statements. Tune in to the sensations in your body. Respect them as signals of your background conversations. With which statements do you feel contraction or tension? With which ones do you feel relaxation or expansion?

Your body tells the story of upsets, both current and old. Contraction signals upset. Relaxation and expansion signals conversations that are more grounded and accurate.

When you resolve upsetting background conversations, new space opens up to be centered and peaceful. When upsets resolve, they no longer live in your body as background conversations. When your body clears, you relax. Your thoughts are upgraded – you can be more skillful in all of your relationships.

As you learn how to implement the process for resolving upsets, you will have an exceptional life skill to help you stay centered and connected to Source. The concept is simple to learn – effective when implemented – and the impact is sustainable.

Being at peace doesn’t have to take so much effort – it can be your norm.

Categories: Spiritual Coaching, the Language of Being, Emotional Connection

Moment by moment, life unfolds for us, through us – and around us.

Sometimes we love our lives; sometimes we may feel that life does not love us.

Unexpected events can shake things up. What was working for us stops working – or disappears completely. People or situations we counted on change, or leave our lives. We thought we knew – but now it’s clear that we don’t know where we’re headed. We’ve entered a territory for which we have no map.

At times we may shrink from our challenges. Or marshal the strength of our wills to fight against them. In extreme situations, we may be pushed to the limit of endurance.

Life is not an endurance test unless we fight what is unfolding in our lives. We all go through times when we are challenged to be present to our own suffering.

“I know you’re in a lot of pain,” Rima said to me, “but this is an opportunity for a lot of learning – if you’re willing to see it that way.”

When my younger sister died unexpectedly several decades ago, a healer blessed me with this gem of wisdom. Her words brought me peace. When I sat with this idea, I felt calmer. My grief felt a little less raw.

Wisdom didn’t take my pain away. It did, however, ground what I intuitively knew to be so.

Rima’s words opened the space for me to engage the loss of my beloved sister differently – to pay attention to what I could learn, even while grieving. This opened new possibilities in my spirituality and my humanity. I lost a life with her – and gained the knowing that life is precious. At the age of 23, I realized that I had to take my purpose in life seriously. My life meant more to me because I knew I wouldn’t live forever.

Ultimately, her death opened up the space for me to follow my calling – to engage more fully in life – and take a leap into the unknown – the mysterious realm of spiritual awakening.

In order to ascend, we are called to surrender to what is actually happening – to give up what we thought was supposed to happen – what we wanted or planned.

Ascension by Nancy Kern, acrylic on canvas 48×36”

The loss of possibilities – in love, health, home, freedom or identity – can push us to the edge of death, actual or perceived. Whether or not we let go, something gets taken away from us. Holding onto it doesn’t change that it is gone.

We grieve, we rage, we collapse. We get angry at ourselves, at other people or at Source. We get angry at God – or life itself.

Something inside of us dies.

What we may not recognize is that every loss, no matter how great, also opens new possibilities for us. Our Souls have a tremendous capacity for adaptation, for expanding in the aftermath of great loss.

My sister’s death brought with it the death of who I thought I was.

I lost a way of life. I lost my dreams of what I thought my future life would be. I lost the sense that tomorrow would look pretty much like today.

I could no longer take for granted that reality was under my control.

I was plunged into the abyss. I had to let go of a whole way of living and being in the world.

Death is part of life. It is followed by resurrection, reincarnation or new life. We lose our faith and then rediscover it. We say we are reborn. We lose our careers and then create new ones, saying we are reinventing ourselves.

There is no set time frame for regeneration after loss and death. It happens when the internal and external conditions are ripe. As the cycle of loss and rebirth repeats itself, our souls grow in wisdom. Our capacity to trust Source – and to trust how life really operates – increases.

We ascend to the next level in our spiritual development. Our previous spiritual ceiling becomes our new spiritual floor.

The images and colors in my painting Ascension evoke the womb of creation, where our souls originate, also known as the Akashic Records. The Divine incarnates or “enters the flesh” – we are born and live in the world. Here, we are informed by the phenomena of existing as Source in form. The physical world operates differently from the formless realms of pure Spirit. As we evolve, we increasingly merge with our divine nature even as we continue to live in physical bodies.

Source lives through us. To grow in wisdom, our souls incarnate.

Many people conceptualize ascension as a process of forever leaving worldly concerns aside, and rising above them. Some spiritual paths encourage “spiritual bypass” as a way to avoid suffering by not engaging fully in life.

Yet there is no transformative power in rising above life if we do not engage what unfolds in our lives. Repressing our experiences, or managing them to simply cope – not letting ourselves be changed – does not develop wisdom. Without the challenges, losses and breakdowns we experience as incarnate human beings – we don’t get the breakthroughs. Our souls do not evolve.

When we don’t let our sense of who we are and how things are change, we lose the possibility of living in greater surrender to Source. If we try to repress what life brings, we won’t answer – or even recognize the call when it comes knocking at our door.

In the course of your soul’s development, through many repetitions – coming and going through the portal from the world to Source and back to the world, you learn to ascend, to receive wisdom – and embody it in your life. Your soul expands when you surrender, and accept the loss of possibilities – and open to new ones.

Ascension requires us to incarnate through the body, engage the world head on, surrender to What Is – and give up our identities as ‘things’ that can be broken. Every time we do this, we merge more fully with Source. Instead of leaving our bodies through spiritual bypass, we bring Source energy to where we actually are – we live in embodied ascension.

How many times has a well-meaning friend, relative or counselor told you, when you were feeling “stuck” in a painful place – thinking the old same thoughts again and again, or experiencing recurring feelings that haven’t resolved – to JUST LET GO?

I know that I’ve been told this many times over the years – and it hasn’t been helpful.

The thing about letting go is – how do you do it?

If we knew how to do let go – we would just do it. It’s not that simple. It sounds simple…but it’s not. Desirable, yes.

What is letting go all about?

How do we let go?

When someone tells you to let go, ask them to talk more about letting go. Listen to see if they tell you how, in such a way that you can let go.

When someone says “just let go of it,” what it sounds like they are asking is for us to move beyond or recover from something we have experienced, some event that impacted our nervous systems in such a way that we keep replaying it over and over again – even though it happened years ago, or months or days. We are being asked to make something that was important to us when it happened in the past – unimportant in the present.

Why are we “holding on to it” – as they say? Are we stuck in the past?

We are “holding on” because the experience has imprinted our nervous systems – not because we want to hold on. Our bodies have evolved with mechanisms that generate a neurological reaction to what happens, or to what is said. Our nervous systems respond to stimuli by making adaptations. If something very intense happens – or happens repeatedly or at a very young age, our reaction is stronger and more deeply embedded. It becomes ingrained.

Holding on happens in our biology. Our bodies become programmed, in a sense, to repeat the cycle.

So how do we let go? What is the mechanism for letting go?

When someone tells me to let go, what I hear – when I ground what they are really saying to me, is “You are going into a territory that is uncomfortable for me. I don’t have the skills to support you through it. I’m asking you to let go – so I don’t have to hear about it anymore.”

People want to help, but when they can’t – and you are truly stuck – their suggestions can sound dismissive. They can have the undercurrents of a good-bad right-wrong conversation – of judgment. “It’s wrong to be stuck.”

When we are stuck, feeling judged for it is really not helpful! We may already feel frustrated.

Sometimes – when someone tells me I just need to let go, what I listen is – “I’m getting lost in the content of what you are saying. I can’t stay in the witness mode – therefore I can’t help you reframe the situation in such a way that your nervous system calms down.” The listener may themselves be getting activated – you may have touched a nerve in them – something they have not resolved in their biology.

People want to help. When they can’t help, they get frustrated. When they are frustrated, they tend not to own it. Instead of saying, “I’m feeling frustrated. I’ve reached the limit of my capacity or willingness to facilitate you – or to stay present while you share.” It’s as if they join us in being stuck.

How to let go starts with loosening your grip.

When I feel stuck, I start loosening my grip by tuning in to my body and my breath. I usually can identify a place, say in my gut, where I feel a tight sensation – it can even feel like something is pinching me. It can feel like the memory is holding on to me and won’t let go of me.

I once told a coach who was trying to help me let go of my story – “it feels like a hungry tiger – I have to feed it.” At that time, I needed to tell my story to someone who could hear it, who could bear witness to what I’d experienced – without judging me or any of the players in the story – someone who could be spacious and kind, and stay present – without trying to fix me.

At some stages of letting go, that is what we need. Being witnessed and held in that way can allow us to turn our attention more directly to our bodies.

How do we loosen our grip? We begin by relaxing the muscles of our bodies and talking ourselves down. Begin to tell yourself “All is well” again and again. Speak to yourself in reassuring ways. Allow space for the stuckness to be there. Don’t make it wrong. Tune into it.

As you stay present to the sensations – and witness them without getting swept into them, you’ll notice that they tend to soften. When they soften, you are loosening your grip. As you continue to stay present, being allowing, being kind – holding space for what is happening in the moment – you can say to yourself: “I’m here for you. I’m staying right here. There is space to feel just what I’m feeling.”

By taking these actions, you are opening new possibilities in your nervous system. You are meeting tension with calm. You are building a tolerance for the disruption, and beginning to see it as temporary.

What can happen for you over time is that the pinched, tight sensation gets smaller and smaller. As it softens, it may expand – becoming more spacious, less dense. It may begin to move. You will eventually experience the sensation as a wave of energy moving through you. When the wave crests, it dissolves again into the calm lake of a peaceful body.

This is the heart of emotional connection work. An emotion is a physical sensation coupled with a thought. When we address our thoughts, the physical sensations change. When the physical sensation changes, our thoughts change. When there is no longer a charge – anxious thoughts or physical tension around the memory – we have let go.

If we make Emotional Connection our practice, we ourselves become the kind person we need – one who can hear our story with compassion – not judging ourselves. We can bear witness to our own stories – we can be spacious and stay present to ourselves. We don’t need to be fixed. There is nothing broken.

Life is continuously being formed and re-formed by powerful creative forces. The actions of Source, the source of all that is created – underlie the workings of the universe – including our bodies and our planet. I am passionate about life forms, especially their actions as I sense them when I tune in through the Akasha while painting.

Nascent life forms – seeds, eggs, leaves uncurling, flowers opening, and microscopic life forms that live and move in water or within the earth – are compelling aspects of higher intelligence, with just as much mystery as stars and the fascinating unknown outer spaces of multiverse.

Images, thoughts and sensations of life coming into form demonstrate continuous change, which is fundamental to healing, evolution and opening new possibilities.

For eons, people have turned to elemental mysteries of nature: earth, fire, water and wind – to guide their lives and give them meaning.

Distinctions continue to be made in science, as well as in the arts. Over the past several hundred years, new elements have entered our common language, stirring our collective imagination. Scientists have articulated new phenomena – given names and images to subtle physical properties that in the past remained unnamed, or were speculations not grounded by physical data.

Once a culture names a phenomenon, our collective concepts develop and expand. Naming a photon a photon triggers us – scientists, artists and anyone whose imagination is sparked – to think about photons, talk about them, research them and imagine their place in our lives.

Just as the elements of earth, fire, water and land stir something deep and primordial in our bodies, so do images of cells, molecules, atoms – and quarks and photons.

Streaming Photon evokes a human response to a particle of light streaming through a sea of color. A photon is “an elementary particle, a quantum of light and all other forms of electromagnetic radiation.” (Wikipedia)

Light is energy that carries information. When photons are streaming, information is streaming. The Akashic Record is a field of energy and information – the non-manifest field which generates the world of form.

Streaming Photon by Nancy Kern, acrylic on canvas, 12×12”

My paintings are meant to be felt – not intellectualized. This moving image is not a representation of a photon. It evokes a felt sense.

When you have a few quiet moments, undisturbed by the needs of others, I invite you to tune in to the image.

Take a few cleansing breaths. Enjoy feeling your feet on the ground as your breath gets deeper.

Soften your gaze.

Sit and be with the image for several minutes.

Take it in – take in the colors, shapes, and movement as if they have no name.

As you gaze, you may notice sensations stirring in your body.

Perhaps the image stirs movement in you – in your body, your thoughts or your consciousness.

How do you sense the movement of photons – of Light?

Invite Light to enter your body, to stream energy and information through you.

Take it in.

Enjoy the sensations. You can’t do this wrong.

If you enjoyed tuning in to Streaming Photon, I invite you to post your experiences in the comments below.