Support is essential for creating and growing the world of your business.

Over the past few weeks, Ive had a number of exploratory conversations with friends and colleagues about Support – what it is, for them; what part it has played in their success; how they access it and how they share it.

Ultimately, Support is about relationship – not just your relationships with the people, places and endeavors you support, and those that support you, but also about your relationship with Support itself.

Support is a soul quality. It has its own frequency, its own field of resonance, its own architecture and pattern.

And, because its a soul quality, it is also within you, and me, and every living being. By connecting with your soul, and the soul of Support, you engage the power of Support in your life, and in your business.

You can cultivate this quality, strengthen it within you, and deepen your relationship with it. By doing so, you activate it, receive the benefits it bestows, and contribute to it in ways that allow miracles to unfold.

This week, I talked with writer and branding superstar Alexandra Franzen about the role that support has played in the inception and rocketing growth of her business.

Some key points that emerged from our exploration:

1. When youre first starting out in your business, ask for support from those people who love you and are invested in your success. Tell everyone you know about your new business, and ask for what you need to help make it happen.

2. You can ask for and receive support from the very people and situations you are leaving behind.

3. During this early stage of creation, be receptive to all forms of support that flow your way.

4. Use your discernment to choose which offers of support you will say yes to, and which ones are not what you need at the moment. Your yes-es and no-s will become much clearer as your business develops a clear, strong presence.

5. Invest in the right support for yourself and your business. It will help you grow your business much faster and more skillfully than trying to do it all yourself.

6. In the early stages of your business, you may not know precisely what forms of support you need. This is the stage of exploring the unknown. Approach the mystery with curiosity and a spirit of adventure.

7. As your business grows, you will need more specialized and concrete forms of support for building your business. Share information and resources with your colleagues and friends.

8. Support shows up in many forms. Seemingly magical opportunities knock on your door. You find yourself in the right place at the right time. Learn to recognize and receive these gifts from the Deva of Support.

Listen to my conversation with Alex, below.

I’d love to hear your own stories about the business of support — how has support showed up for you at critical times in the life of your business?

The Heart of Support: A digital deep-dive into healing and transformation.

The early registration discount for The Heart of Support Deep Dive ends at 9 am PDT next Tuesday, July 31st.

To shape a healthy, harmonious relationship with support, please join me and an intimate circle of creative women for this one-day digital deep dive into The Heart of Support.

As your business grows, its energy field becomes too big for you to hold successfully on your own. It takes the right kind of support to help you sustain that growth, and skillfully harmonize the increasingly complex world of your business.

During this profoundly playful day, we’ll explore and shape a new relationship with support.

What will you create, when you know you are fully supported?

When: Friday, August 10th. 9 am to 4 pm, Pacific Time/12 noon to 7 pm EDT.

Where: On the phone. In the comfort of your living room. Or kitchen. Or garden.

Read more and register here.

When was the last time you held hands with your business? Canoodled with it by candle light? Showed it the depths of your devotion?

Remember those early days, when you couldn’t get enough of each other? When all you wanted was to be together? When every moment was luscious with promise?

Desire and Intention form powerful bonds between you and your business. And if those bonds are deep and true, they bear the golden fruit of lasting love.

Consider these three questions:

• Do you love your business?
• Do you love it the way you love the people who are dearest to you?
• Do you love it so much that you want it to be itself, even if that isnt what you imagined it to be, or what you’re comfortable with?

The relationship between you and your business has the potential to be deeply intimate, rich and rewarding. After all, it emerges from your soul’s calling to serve and bless the world; from the natural flow of your own creative genius, and your heart’s wish to live a life of sacred abundance, fullness, and delight.

Love makes all of this possible.

When you love your business, you nurture its life without guilt or obligation, with the buoyant joy of true devotion. In turn, your business loves you; it delights in supporting you and the perfect unfolding of your own life.

Without love, the relationship between you becomes transactional — I’ll love you if you do this for me, or behave this way, or become who I want you to be. And transactional relationships are scarred by conflict and power struggles.

The relationship between you and your business is a gift. And gifts are made to be cherished.

There are so many ways in which you can cherish your Business Deva. Here’s one that needs just a little of your time and attention. And a pen, some writing paper, and an envelope.

Clear space in your schedule. Gather your supplies. Go to a favorite, quiet spot where you can be alone to write.

Ground, center, and attune to your Business Deva — the being that holds, in its energy field, the pattern for the perfect unfolding of your business. Light a candle or a stick of incense, or ring a bell to remind you to gather your love and attention into this sacred moment of communion and connection with your business.

Feel the love you have for your business. Feel all the ways in which you deeply love this creation, which has emerged from the desire of your heart but which has its own life, its own soul, and its own purposes with which it wants to serve and bless both you and the world.

Write a love letter to your Business Deva. Share how you feel about it; express your love and appreciation for it; write about your deepest desires and your vision for your unfolding relationship.

Write about the ways in which your life is enriched and made more full and whole, because of its presence in your life.

Let yourself feel, fully, your true feelings for your Business Deva – what you know in your deepest heart.

Let your love radiate through your whole body and energy field, as you write this love letter to your Business Deva.

When you finish, sign and date the letter, and place it in the envelope.

Next: Create a sacred space that is dedicated to your relationship with your Business Deva. This may be as simple as a corner of your desk or a small table in your office or study. It may be as elaborate as an altar in the heart of your home.

Ground this space, bless it, and place in it those objects that symbolize your most loving intentions for the unfolding of this relationship.

A rock for grounding, perhaps. Or a feather to remind you that this is a relationship of soul and spirit. A circle of string or beads, to represent wholeness. A candle for illumination. Chocolate or honey, for sweetness.

A flowering plant for life, growth and fragrance.

Be creative – give yourself freedom and permission to play. Sacred spaces are fluid. You will change, add, move, or take away elements of this space as your relationship with your Business Deva grows and changes.

Once you have created your sacred space, place your love letter to your Business Deva in it. Place it there with the clear intention that it will bring you and your Business Deva into closer, more harmonious and loving relationship with each other.

Share your love letter in the Comments below. Together, let’s hold a creative space for the relationship between you and your Business Deva to flourish.

“After working through BYOBA I’ve found myself in the midst of the best business partnership I could ever have imagined. I’m working with someone who is in total alignment, whom I love and respect tremendously, and we both bring so much to each other’s businesses – it’s amazing. I’m so grateful!”
–Nathalie Lussier, Website design, Media and Marketing Specialist.

This past month has felt, at times, like a dizzying hike along a mountain trail. My wonderful assistant, Angie Wheeler, left to take on a full-time job at the beginning of February and the process of finding the right person to take her place has been both challenging and growthful.

A great working relationship doesn’t just happen. It requires work on both inner and outer levels. Like a good marriage, it is based in a clear vision of what is truly important to you — those qualities, values, skills and ways of being in the world that are essential to you and your business.

So, start by making a list of everything that’s essential to you, in a co-worker. You’re not seeking perfection, here, but rather those qualities, skills and attributes that are both necessary and sufficient to grow the world of your business in harmony with your vision and values.

Think right fit for the job, rather than Mother Teresa!

Once you’re clear about what’s essential to you, you can call on your Business Deva and on your friends, colleagues and allies in many dimensions to help you connect with the right person.

You’ll do your homework, of course. You’ll meet with people on your short-list, feel the quality of their presence and be guided by your intuition about how they might fit into the world of your business.

You’ll ask questions, listen for their responses, share your own heart and hear theirs in return. You’ll check their references and talk to people they’ve worked with. You’ll use your discernment to sift through all of this information.

Inner and outer work go hand in hand, in this process.

You’ll attune to the soul essence of this person, as well as to their personhood — everything that makes them who they are, unique and irreplaceable. You’ll consider the alignment between them and the soul of your business.

Throughout the process, you’ll ask yourself one fundamental question: Will this person bring greater harmony, wholeness, coherency and integration to the ecology of your business — or not?

And you’ll ask yourself if your business, in turn, can offer them what they need to truly flourish.

There is an element of serendipity and magic in connecting with the right people for your co-workers — those whose vision and values, skill, knowledge and experience are in harmony with the world of your business.

Business — like any creation — is an ecology of relationships fostered through love and devotion, clear communication, integrity, willingness, reciprocity and partnership, generosity of spirit, and a host of other soul qualities.

Different people in your business’s ecology may embody these qualities to greater or lesser degree. We are all individuals, and we bring our souls as well as our personalities to work with us.

If too many of these essential qualities are missing, if the person you’re considering isn’t sufficiently mature or skilled, or if there’s a large energetic discrepancy between them and you, it will cause friction and difficulty in your business.

On the other hand, if the person has the practical skills, genius, and experience your business needs, there’s sufficient resonance and alignment between you, and you have clear agreements and strong systems to support you, your business and everyone in it will flourish.

Here are some essential elements to consider, in crafting a soul-centered business relationship:

Once you’ve made the decision to hire someone, offer them welcome, appreciation and hospitality. You are making a commitment to their well-being, and you contribute to the quality of the relationship by your own attitude toward them.

Give them time and support to find their place in the world of your business. Hold qualities of flexibility, appreciation and patience, as you build trust and negotiate the differences between you.

The best business relationships are those in which each person feels safe, cherished, and encouraged to grow according to the inner pattern of their being; where boundaries and agreements are clearly delineated and understood; and there is a foundation of love, flexibility, trust, humor, good will and clear communication.

Soul-centered decision-making takes into account the well-being and fulfillment of everyone involved. Wholeness embraces everyone and everything in your business’s ecology and provides a container for everyone’s perfect unfolding.

“BYOBA is a treasure chest of spiritual and practical greatness. Every time I open it and work with it I find new perspective, an ‘a-ha”, a gem of wisdom, or a great ‘clunk’ of re-alignment in my life. This is the most transformative class I’ve ever experienced.”
-Gillian Berry, Educator

“Expanded vision, empowered healing, growth made easy — these are just a few of the gifts I received from participating in Become Your Own Business Adviser.”
- Kathryn Elliott, PhD, Editor

Starting April 9th, I will teach the fifth session of Become Your Own Business Adviser. The program is a 12-week journey into sacred prosperity, and the loving, conscious evolution of your business.

Details and registration are here.

February has been a month of new construction. The house of my business is growing, and I’m adding rooms, creating spaces in which it can continue to flourish.

When my kids were young, their friends were small too. So a weekend sleepover would mean I’d stumble over a pile of eight or ten little boys in pajamas snoring happily on the floor of our family room on a Sunday morning.

Now, my boys are young men with wives and families of their own. When they come to visit, they require more than a floor in the family room. They need privacy, and room for suitcases, diaper bags and sippy cups. My house fills up with baby car-seats, stuffed toys, and cots that double as playpens.

The needs of my family have changed. And my home has changed to meet those needs. My new house is more spacious, differently configured than the one in which my boys grew up. Yet it serves and supports the qualities I have always cherished: Beauty, freedom, organic order. Inclusiveness, sovereignty, play. Belonging, hospitality, generosity. Humor, openness, curiosity, adventure.

Your business is a growing, evolving being. Its needs and its relationships change over time. And the house of your business will need renovation, expansion and renewal to support those changes.

The challenge is to shape a structure that is just the right size, shape and fit, so it meets the needs of your business now; is strong enough to hold those qualities that are essential to your business; and is flexible enough to grow with you.

If the house of your business is too big for your needs, you will stagger around burdened by the weight it. It will drain your energy and resources, instead of supporting the life that you want to live.

If the house of your business is too small, it won’t give you enough support and structure so you can flourish with ease. Without the right kind of support, you spend your time and energy on things that don’t serve you or the evolution of your business.

For me, finding the right fit has meant moving the administration of my business from an independent VA to a full-service agency. Reconfiguring my schedule so I have time to build infrastructure, nurture relationships and research, write and create new programs.

It has meant revisiting all aspects of my business to see if they continue to support those values that are essential to my work and my life – generosity, integrity, service, devotion, prosperity, beauty, and truth.

Each wing added to the house of my business also requires a stronger, deeper foundation to support it. And that foundation rests on daily practices of inner connection and attunement to wholeness.

To grow your business, you must also grow yourself — you must become the person whose life includes the evolving shape and form of your business.

Like all growth, this happens on both inner and outer levels: Through inner practices of meditation and reflection, energy alchemy, blessing, and communion with the Sacred. And in the crucible of those relationships, choices and actions that shape your daily life.

The work of growing a business takes place first in the realm of spirit, soul, and subtle energy. This inner work is then woven into the basket of relationships, energies and structures in the 3-dimensional world that support your business and make it a living reality.

Success in business is the result of skillfully weaving together soul and structure; inner and outer work; business and essence.

The technologies and skills of energy alchemy are ancient. The practice of business is newer, but also has a noble lineage. As a conscious, creative entrepreneur, mastering these skills can help you grow your business in alignment with your heart, your values and your vision — while bringing you the prosperity you need to support your life and that of your family and community.

Having taught energy alchemy practices and programs for over thirty years, I’m delighted to announce that registration for the fifth session of my evolutionary program, Become Your Own Business Adviser, will open next Monday, February 27th at 9 am.

If you would like to learn more about how energy alchemy can help you grow your business, please join me for a no-cost preview teleclass on Wednesday, March 7th. We’ll meet for an hour to talk about how to Become Your Own Business Adviser: an Introduction to Energy Alchemy. You’ll find program details and call registration here.

Here’s a question from one of the participants in last fall’s session of Become Your Own Business Adviser, which I respond to, in this post. It’s an issue that comes up often, in online business circles.

If you struggle with shiny object syndrome, you may find it useful to explore the soul roots of restlessness and longing, and give these sacred prompts a voice and a place in your life.

Q: I am recognizing and desiring to shift a pattern of mine that Ive been aware of for quite a while. One in which I get really excited about something, think it is the absolute perfect next step for me, jump in, but instead of diving really deeply and staying there Im in and out and off to the next thing.

A: The pattern you describe – of being called by your soul to a particular work, and then promptly getting distracted, looking for the next shiny thing out there – is painful, when you stop long enough to feel the hunger and anxiety that drives it.

And, if you go deeper still, youll find the flow of your incarnation, the pattern your soul came here to express and experience, moving underground, calling you to participate in its emergence.

Deep Desire is the call of the Sacred in you, the call of your soul to direct the power of your incarnation into the flow of a particular current or stream.

Structure creates banks for the flow of the river of your life – and it is those banks that lend it power and efficacy.

When you resist structure, you are really resisting your Divinely human power to create and manifest.

Since the focus of this program is conscious manifestation as a sacred process, its inevitable that your patterns and pictures around this will rise to the surface.

Transformation is not incremental change. It is radical, in the sense that it changes patterns at their roots.

So when you engage with a program such as this one, which brings you back to your own power and to your ability to transform your life and your business in radical ways, then everything within you that is invested in maintaining the status quo – your programming, pictures, beliefs, fears, agreements and so on – will rise up in whatever way it can, to keep you where it believes you will be safe.

Thank you for recognizing the pattern, being willing to explore it and work with it, and for re-committing yourself to the process.

Structure is the ground beneath your feet. It creates safety, stability, boundaries, and most importantly, forms that shape the raw, creative power of Flow into something that can contribute to your life and the life of the world.

Ultimately, this program and everything it offers is a response to your question. If you commit to a specific time each day – as little as 20 or 30 minutes – to do the work and to engage with the course materials, the exercises here will help you dissolve resistance, heal your relationship with your soul and with structure, and bring your dreams to fruition.

Use the class forums to ask for what you need — accountability partners, someone to check in with you — and share your discoveries and insights with us. This will help anchor your intention in concrete action, mobilize your allies, and we will celebrate each step with you, as you commit to the work and experience where it takes you.

If you have a question you would like me to answer on the blog, please send it to my assistant, amanda @ hiroboga . com.

Your questions can be about anything that’s on your mind right now. Some of the issues that recur for creative entrepreneurs are:

• how to transform stubborn patterns
• how to handle the flow of information and make clear choices without getting confused or overwhelmed
• how to rediscover the joy that brought you to your business in the first place, but that may have disappeared in the noise of daily activity
• how to revive a business that has grown stale or is no longer in harmony with your life and your values
• how to address procrastination and resistance or
• how to connect with and honor your heart’s true desires

– among other things.

If you’d like to learn energy alchemy tools for growing your business in powerful, sustainable ways, please join me for a no-cost, preview teleclass for Become Your Own Business Adviser, on Wednesday, March 7th at 5 pm Pacific Time. Details and registration here.

On this foggy February morning, the sea and sky outside my window blend into layered swaths of gray. The horizon has disappeared, and the mountains that rim it hold their breath in the mist, blindly awaiting its return.

Some days, the world of my business feels this way too. I know the horizon is there, but I cannot see it.

Yet I know the familiar world will reappear in time — the clouds will lift, the sun will emerge. The sea will leap and embrace the rocky shore in fronds of foam. Gulls and eagles will ride the wind. The dance of sea and sky, the unflinching rim of the horizon, will be visible once more.

What keeps me — or you, or any of us — from panicking when fog blots out the known world?

Experience, of course. We know that these Northwest mists obscure without fundamentally altering the bones of the landscape.

But I remember waking up one morning when I was five years old, and walking out in my pyjamas into a world dissolved in fog. Oh, the magic of it! Its soft, cold whiteness. Its mysterious power to restore the world to its true, invisible majesty.

I ran out into the fog that morning, my whole body blazing with delight. Arms flung wide. Embracing cloud, tasting its sweetness on my tongue.

How did I know it was friendly? That we belonged together, fog and I, sisters sharing a delicious secret?

There is a knowing we are born with. Until it dissolves into the doubts and certainties, the hissing neon grids of belief and opinion that blind us to what we know, more surely than fog blankets the horizon.

That inner knowing keeps me sure-footed, walking the tideline of my business with confidence even when I can’t see the ground under my feet.

In April, I will teach the fifth session of my three-month program, Become Your Own Business Adviser.

A 12-week journey back to belonging, back to a world re-enchanted — its hidden meanings and inner connections revealed.

A pathway home to what you’ve known all along, and may have forgotten, lost or misplaced — your own inner genius, and the relationships that nurture and cradle its becoming.

Rediscover your intimate relationship with visible and invisible worlds.

Restore your unerring knowledge of wholeness, and the ways of wholeness.

Re-claim the relationships through which you shape your world and the world of your business, with the ease that emerges from wholeness.

It’s a journey of exploration and discovery. Of discovering who you are, beyond the stories spit out by the crackling neon grid.

Embrace the soul of your business, its beauty, joy and purpose. Touch that tender place of friendship and belonging, where you and the soul of your business are sisters — unique and individual, yet kin to each other.

Deepen your relationship.

Discover what the two of you are here to create together. Anchor your intimate desire in clear intention, alignment and action.

Want to know more? Join me for a free preview call on Wednesday, March 7th at 5 pm Pacific Time.

Read more about the program, and register for the preview call, here.

And read what folks who have taken the program say about it, here.

This morning, I opened an email from a client who said:

I recently became aware that I’ve been strangling the life blood out of my business by paying down debt as soon as money appears in my bank account. So I always feel behind, always short, never enough to do what I need to do – such as having a new website designed.

I’ve been doing this because I want to be rid of debt as soon as possible. Do you have any words of wisdom or suggestions for me, on the subject of debt? I know I need to shift my perspective on it – and not resist it as I have been. How can I work with this energy?

In our culture, we live in an ecology of debt and credit. We are all experiencing the effects of having blithely and blindly blundered into a skewed relationship with debt.

Since 2008, we’ve seen record levels of consumer debt, layoffs, bankruptcies, foreclosures, business failures, and a recession that’s left so many of us scared and shaken.

And yet, we have an intensely ambivalent relationship to debt.

On the one hand, we are urged to spend freely, to consider ourselves entitled to the things we want, and to have them now.

“You deserve it!” is the slogan of the Me Decade. And even though you may think you’re too sophisticated to have bought into the mythologies of the consumer generation, the next time you’re feeling stressed, disappointed or vulnerable, notice how you meet those feelings. What do you reach for, to alleviate them?

Faced with a global economic meltdown, we feel helpless, vulnerable, ashamed of being in debt. We’re not living up to the cultural images of what constitutes a good life – a house, a car, vacations in exotic destinations, plenty of money in the bank – and that causes us shame too.

Then there’s the whole “prosperity consciousness” culture, which – in a fundamental distortion and misunderstanding about the nature of Divine Abundance — says that if we’re in debt, it’s because our consciousness is mired in beliefs about poverty and lack.

In this scenario, there’s something wrong with us if we’re not riding a wave of continual prosperity. In this scenario, our faulty beliefs are to blame; our consciousness can’t be trusted because it’s tainted with doubt. We’re doing it wrong – whatever It is.

Debt becomes evidence of our lack of moral fiber, or of our failure to align ourselves with the beneficial powers of the universe — or whatever else we believe it to be. It becomes a noose of judgment, blame and shame that we place around our necks.

Those of us who are more mindful of how we live may pride ourselves on not taking on debt. We pay our bills on time. We buy what we can afford. We are frugal, thrifty, virtuous in our relationship with debt.

And yet, we are not insulated from the larger economic currents that swirl around us. We are embedded in a cultural and economic ecology that affects us no matter how frugal or mindful we may be.

We are also embedded in an energetic ecology that includes the fear and hope, the anxiety and suffering of every single being on this planet.

When your own pain around money and debt meets the fear and pain of millions of others in the energetic ether, it is amplified and distorted.

You cannot do anything with feelings that are not your own. You can’t process or integrate them, soothe or alleviate them. You can only release them — separate your own feelings from the ambient field of emotions that swirls like a great, toxic cloud in the energy field of the world — and return to the truth of your own being.

So the first step in creating a new relationship with debt is to strip it of all the existing cultural and emotional baggage that has accumulated around it. Restore it to its essence.

You can use energy alchemy, guided imagery or other means to do this. I’ll offer an energy alchemy process for this in a future post.

For now, attune to the soul level of Debt. Everything that exists has a spiritual counterpart. Debt, once you’ve stripped it of anything that is not its essence, has its own soul as well. One of the spiritual truths at the heart of debt is interdependence.

We are interdependent beings. Every breath we take is dependent on the air we breathe, on the trees who convert carbon dioxide into oxygen, on all the beings, mortal or invisible, who are involved in maintaining the ecology of the Earth so we can inhale and exhale in the rhythm of life.

We define debt as obligation. Yet Debt is an acknowledgment of our utter vulnerability, of our dependence on the web of life – and of life’s dependence on us, in turn.

Debt makes it possible for us to grow and thrive; to contribute to our world; to participate in the activity of wholeness through reciprocity.

Take some time to appreciate and express your gratitude for all the “debts” that support your life: The activity of the sun, the Earth, the sky. Your business. Your health. The love and support of your family and friends. The contribution of your clients, colleagues and customers. The money loaned to you by your bank, or by your creditors.

Bring yourself into right relationship with debt, through acts of appreciation, gratitude and love.

Then, consider your monetary debts in the light of this renewed relationship. Receive what you need with gratitude, knowing that the Source of supply – the money with which you repay your debt – is the same Source that gives you the gift of breath and life. That causes the sun to shine each morning.

When you find yourself clenching up, feeling panicked and filled with fear, making your payments in order to get rid of debt as quickly as possible – stop.

Breathe. Remind yourself that each breath is a gift of grace.

Connect with your soul, and with the Sacred. Connect with something or someone whom you love, until the vibration of love fills you.

Then, extend that feeling of love to Debt. Meet her with love, gratitude and appreciation. Greet her as an invited guest.

Stand in your integrity and repay money you’ve borrowed in a way that contributes to your own wholeness, and to the wholeness of all that is. Humbly. Knowing that debt, too, is part of the Sacred. That it has its rightful place in the web of life.

If you deplete yourself and your business in order to repay your debt as quickly as possible, you are disrupting the pattern of wholeness. And that gives rise to other problems. It’s the equivalent of using pesticides to control weeds, killing beneficial bacteria in the soil and poisoning the food and water supply.

Ask yourself this question: If I trusted myself, trusted the Source of my supply, and trusted Wholeness, what rhythm of debt repayment feels right to me? What proportion of my income should I contribute to repaying my debt, and what proportion should I allocate to building my business so it can create more safety, stability, support, and income flow for me?

As your income grows, you’ll need to revisit this question, and adjust your payment schedule accordingly.

When you write checks to repay loans, give thanks for the love that gave you the support you needed, when you needed it. And the grace that has given you the money to repay that support.

Cultivate faith and trust that the Source that gave you life will guide you and grace you with all that you need to remain integral and whole.

Your obligation is to honor your commitments, both to your creditors and to the wholeness and integrity of your life. And to offer your own gifts in return. To flourish. To be free. To be yourself.

Grace is not an obligation — it cannot be repaid. But you can participate in its activity through love, appreciation, gratitude, integrity — and right relationship with debt.

I’d love to hear your thoughts, insights, stories and experiences with Debt. Have you struggled with it in the past? What is your present relationship with it? Let’s talk about this and bring it out of hiding, back into our hearts.

“Let yourself be silently drawn by the stronger pull of what you really love.” -Rumi

What do you deeply and truly long for?

Sink down below the surface of your wants, to the heart of your desire. Allow your longing to emerge from the depths of your being.

Desire is one of the qualities of incarnation, and it leads us to our soul’s purposes.

This is sacred exploration. You don’t have to know how your desire will be fulfilled, or attach outcomes to it. Your desire is a messenger from your soul. Receive it with respect, hospitality, gratitude and love.

What do you want to receive — from life, from your business?

What do you want to offer or give to your world, to your clients?

Your desires will have both inner and outer components.

On an inner level, you may feel the flow of your soul carrying you towards the person you will be when your desire is fulfilled.

Inner desire is the desire of your soul to experience and express its Divine qualities.

When you enter deeply into inner desire, into the heart of your longing, it’s always about giving and receiving qualities of Essence: Among them are love; belonging; tenderness; sovereignty; presence; unity; wholeness.

On an outer level, your desires may include something specific you want to create, in your life or your business, with concrete outcomes that will allow you to recognize when you have achieved it.

Outer desires are expressions of your gifts, your talents, your personal preferences and your incarnational purposes. To teach. To learn music or astronomy. To grow a garden, or babies. To make art, or music. To cook or to farm. To write; to play with children; to build or travel or climb mountains or weave stories.

What are your true desires? How do you feel, when you connect with them?

This post is an excerpt from Become Your Own Business Adviser.

To stand in your power, learn energy alchemy skills, and get practical support for creating and manifesting what you want in your business, join me and a community of creative, conscious entrepreneurs for the next session of this program, starting September 26th.

Early registration discount is available through Wednesday, September 7th.

PICTURES

Every experience you’ve ever had is recorded in the cells of your body and the neurocircuitry of your brain.

When you feel the feelings and sensations that arise in your body, when you make room for them and let them flow, then the natural cycle of that experience is completed. The experience itself becomes integrated into your life. You learn and grow and become an evolving you, as a result of it. It becomes part of you.

Often, however, we don’t allow ourselves to fully feel what we feel. Perhaps your feelings were denied, belittled, or laughed at by others, and you decided it wasn’t safe to feel them any longer. Or maybe, when you were a kid, you were told you had to eat dinner even if you weren’t feeling hungry. Or you had to wear a jacket even though you weren’t cold.

After a while, you learned to deny or mistrust the truth of your own sensations, feelings, and inner knowing about what’s right for you.

Those feelings and sensations that you don’t feel fully, remain trapped in your body. They are stored in your memory and in your psyche as pictures. They are images, ideas, thoughts and symbols through which you filter all of your experiences.

These unresolved pictures distort and shape your current experience of reality.

BELIEFS, PATTERNS & STORIES

A cluster of pictures forms a belief or a pattern.

Out of these patterns and beliefs, you create stories about who you are, how life works (or doesn’t), what you need, deserve, owe, are responsible for. What you can and cannot do or be. And a host of other things.

CHOOSE YOUR PATH

You are not your pictures. You are not your beliefs, or feelings, or thoughts, or experiences. You are an incarnate soul.

You have the power to work with your pictures and beliefs in a conscious way. Once you understand that your pictures, beliefs, patterns and stories are not you, you can choose how you want to interact with them.

You can transform them or release them, using energy technologies. You can bake a cake with them, or play with them in various ways.

You don’t have to stew in them, beat your head against them, or collapse into them unless you choose to. And you don’t have to allow them to shape your experience of reality now.

Every single interaction you have, in your business and in your life, is an opportunity to understand yourself, your patterns, your pictures and your stories more deeply. Every experience is an opportunity to write a different story.

This post is an excerpt from Become Your Own Business Adviser.

To regain your power, learn energy alchemy skills, and get practical support for creating and manifesting what you want in your business, join us for the next session of this program, starting September 26th.

Early registration discount is available through Wednesday, September 7th.

To bring anything into the world of form, to bring a creation down to earth from the realm of possibility and potential, requires a number of elements to come into harmony and resonance with each other.

Three elements that are essential to all manifestation are: alignment of purpose; power; and participation in the activity of wholeness.

Today, let’s talk about alignment of purpose, in relation to something you want to create in your business.

Become aware of your whole being: your body, your emotions, your thoughts, your past, your future, your present reality.

Gather all of these aspects of yourself together — bring them into the wholeness that is your Self right now.

Together, these constitute what I call your incarnational system.

This is your personhood, that which makes you uniquely yourself. This is what you’ve chosen as the raw material of your life this time around.

Your soul is the aspect of you that over-arches all of these different aspects of yourself.

Your soul chooses the circumstances and the variables that make up your incarnational system. It chose the family you were born into, the culture, the religious tradition, the genetic heritage, and the physical structure of your body.

It chose these as the best possible combination of resources with which to grow you and to incarnate the potentials you came here to bring into the world.

But your soul’s purpose is not necessarily the same as your incarnational purpose.

Your incarnational purpose – the purpose that emerges from your personality – is very specific. It is intimately involved with your in-born talents, your gifts, the things you love, and your life’s direction.

Your incarnational purpose is to express your genius and gifts, to be all of who you are, as fully as possible.

If you look at what you love to do – what you loved, especially when you were very young – you’ll probably get a clear picture of your incarnational purpose.

Most of us knew in our early years what we were here to do but we didn’t have the physical resources to do it then. So we let our deep desires sink into unconsciousness.

To access your incarnational purpose now, you may have to excavate through layers of beliefs, pictures, programming or agreements under which your purpose is buried.

Often, what it gets covered up with are what I call pictures: perfect pictures, shoulds, family or cultural beliefs and programming.

Your purpose can get buried under beliefs about who you are and what you are capable of: I can’t do this because I’m not good enough; I’m not smart enough or wealthy enough or powerful enough.

It can disappear under the weight of gender programming that you may intellectually have rejected, but that shows up as resistance or fear: Women do this and men do that and that’s the way it rolls.

Your pictures and beliefs are not you. They are forms of energy, and they can be transformed.

As you dissolve and transform your pictures, you will get much clearer about what your incarnational purpose is.

The more closely you align yourself with your incarnational purpose, the more easily you can access your personal power. That, in turn, will make it much easier to manifest what you want in your life.

If there isn’t a clear alignment between what you want to create and your incarnational purpose, you will struggle to make your creative project happen.

If, for instance, you love the outdoors-you love being outdoors, it’s part of your incarnational purpose to serve nature, and to give voice to the natural world-yet you choose a creative project that will lock you up in a basement for six months in front of a computer screen, you’ll have much more difficulty making that project happen.

Because you’re going against the grain of your nature and the grain of your incarnational purpose.

Your soul has its own purpose, separate from your incarnation, even though it participates in your incarnational purpose with you.

Because your soul exists along a continuum between unity at one end and your specificity, your personality, your incarnation at the other end.

Part of your soul participates in the purposes of your incarnation, but your soul also operates simultaneously in the realm of wholeness.

Your soul doesn’t just ask: What do I want to create for myself, how can I fully be myself?

It also asks: What fits into the context of my life most fully? What is the next step that is going to emerge out of wholeness, out of my place in wholeness, to serve wholeness?

Your soul’s purpose is to participate in wholeness; to express love, delight, joy, creativity and all of those qualities that emerge from Source, from wholeness.

When you can align your creative project with both your soul’s purpose and your incarnational purpose, you will greatly increase your power to create and manifest it.

This post is an excerpt from Become Your Own Business Adviser.

To learn energy skills and get practical support for creating and manifesting what you want in your business, join us for the next session of this program, starting September 26th.

Early registration discount is available through Wednesday, September 7th.