I spent the weekend at Tatamagouche and was touched, once again by the beauty of nature and was inspired to allow nature to be my teacher. As I watched the river ebb and flow, carrying logs, leaves and sea life in its current, I could hear the words ‘let the river carry you.’ I knew this meant the river of life. I stood there and watched two different logs, one was entrenched into the river bed and was not moving, the other was floating freely, bobbing along the top of the water. As I sat in meditation and watched the river, I began to write this:
As soon as you let go of needing to grasp onto and hold things, you are in flow. You are in the place of appreciation. When you simply stand back and appreciate, there is no grasping, holding, strangling or struggling. This is the place of non-attachment and it is the place of freedom: not attached to outcomes, not attached to anything – yet appreciating everything. This is the place of curiosity. Being able to observe life, be carried by it and to let it flow in, through and around you.
Let go of your many worries, fears and fights, and let the river of life carry you safely between its banks. Simply let go.
This is living life as flow.

This is such a beautiful blessing when we really come to understand what it means. The words came to me today as a way of understanding that when we find ourselves standing in a place that seems foreign, or a place that we didn’t expect to be, when the path we have walked comes to an end, then a new path will begin to appear. This path appears as we walk it. With each footstep we take, the path is illuminated. The path is being created in real time, we couldn’t see the path before because we were caught up in what has always been, so we weren’t even looking for the path that is emerging.
I recognize that when I am doing the Action Learning process in a Discovery Circle, the rising up of new paths is what happens. As we learn to inquire into our thoughts, as we learn to enter into a space where we allow ourselves to be guided toward new insights, new pathways are being created. The path is opening up to us in our minds and it shows up in our lives. The things that we couldn’t see before suddenly begin to appear.
The blessing, May the path rise up to meet you, is a wonderful way to say, may you be able to step out in faith and recognize what you need is here for you. May you feel the solidness of life supporting you in each moment, may you feel that you are supported by life and that there are always new possibilities opening up in this world that is in a continual process of creation.
When we feel stuck, it is because the old path has taken us as far as it can and it is time for a new path to appear. Relax, listen, and receive the first step to take and then the next one will follow. This is what walking the contemplative path helps me do. When I begin each day in meditation, I see what my steps are to take that day. When I run into a road block, I move back into meditation and this enables me to open up to being shown the next step. Clarity comes to me through meditation and prayer. This rhythm of being and doing, is helping me to walk the path that is rising up to meet me in each moment.
One of my mentors once said, ‘Do what you know to do in the moment you know to do it’ and I now recognize that is how the path appears. Simply take the step that I know to take, in this moment. The path emerges out of the fog when I take the time to meditate in the moments that I feel stuck, then I can take action on the clarity that has come from my time of silence.

I am reminded of this gaelic blessing:

May the road rise up to meet you.
May the wind be always at your back.
May the sun shine warm upon your face;
the rains fall soft upon your fields and until we meet again,
may God hold you in the palm of His hand.

The quieter you become, the more you are able to hear. ~Rumi.

I read this quote by Rumi the other day and it reminded me of how often, as a child, I would come home with report cards that said I was too quiet. I was always discouraged by this because I loved to listen and learn from what I was hearing. I had thought I was merely being observant and was hurt to discover that my quietness was not encouraged.
Over the years, I have had to recognize that being quiet and listening are two of my greatest qualities. It is precisely because I am able to bring myself to a place of internal quiet that I am able to hear the forest speak and I am able to sense into the subtle undertones in the space around me. This capacity to be quiet and to listen has helped me be a good confidant for my friends and it is what makes me a good Life Energy Coach.
I now realize that the quieter I become on the inside, the more available I am to hear the voice of my intuition and the guidance that is always there for me. I am able to take leaps of faith because I know that there is something guiding me, something I can count on and I know that when I quiet myself and my mind, I am able to hear this guidance much more clearly.
This aptitude that I have always had to be quiet and to listen on deeper levels for the subtle is now serving me well in my live. However, I have had to go through a healing process to accept my quietness as a good thing because it was so often judged as ‘an area that needs work’ through my years in school. I went through a period of disliking my quietness intensely because it didn’t seem like an acceptable way to be.
Over the years, I have learned that many of us have disowned parts of ourselves because of the judgements others have made about us and we have to go through a process of reclaiming those parts in order to find our true wholeness. This quality of quietness that I so badly wanted to get rid of became part of my golden shadow. The golden shadow consists of those parts of ourselves that are good and wonderful and perhaps someone we admire or consider as an authority teased us about it or made negative comments about it, so we tried to disassociate from the quality in order to be ‘acceptable’. Some people may have been told that they try to help others too much and are not doing their own work, or they might have been told that they shouldn’t color outside the lines and now they don’t think they are creative, or they talk too much and now they don’t share their ideas. These comments that shut down our own naturalness and beauty are what create the golden shadow.
I was able to go back and see that in school I was told I was too serious, quiet, thoughtful, or introverted and to bring this golden light out of the shadows and embrace it. Now, I make my living because of these exact qualities. I help people learn to be quiet so that they can hear their own intuition, their guidance, and the wisdom that is within and around them.
What attributes do you need to reclaim about yourself? Perhaps you are funny, thoughtful, graceful, creative, kind, considerate, giving, or a natural leader. For each of us, there are attributes that are just part of our naturalness and it is time to reclaim them, bring them home to yourself and use them as the gifts that they are.

I am often asked by people to explain exactly what I do as a Life Energy Coach. The other day, this parable came to mind as a way to help explain it to people. The story goes like this:
In the history of mankind, society has so abused Wisdom that the Wisemen decided to take the secret of happiness and success away from man and hide it where he would never again find it. The big question was where should they hide it?
A council was called by the Chief Wiseman to discuess this question. The lesser of the Wisemen said, “We will bury the secret of happiness and success deep in the earth.”
But the Chief Wiseman siad, “No, that will never do, for man will dig deep down into the earth and find it.”
Then they said, “Well, we will sink the secret of happiness and success into the dark depths of the deepest ocean.”
But again, the Chief Wiseman replied, “No, not there, for man will learn to dive into the deep, dark depths of the ocean and will find it.”
Then one of the lesser Wisemen said, “We will take it to the top of the highest mountain and hide it there.”
But again, the Chief Wiseman said, “No, for man will eventually climb even the highest of mountains and find it, and again take it up for himself.”
Then the lesser of the Wisemen decided to give up and concluded, “We do not know where it can be hidden. It seems that there is no place on the earth or in the sea that man will not eventually discover.”
The the Chief Wiseman said, “Here is what we will do with the secret of happiness and success. We will hide it deep inside of man himself for he will never think to look for it there.”
To this day, according to the legen, man has been running to and fro over the earth – digging – diving and climbing, searching for something that he already possesses within himself.

As a Life Energy Coach, my work is all about helping you CONNECT to you, helping you LISTEN to you, so that you can discover the truth that is already inside of you waiting to come out. You have the secrets to your own healing, happiness and success buried inside of you. My work is to help you go inside and find them. In Life Energy Balancing sessions, I used a variety of healing modaltities, including Energy Medicine, Coaching, Wholebody Focusing and Spiritual Direction to help you go inside and discover the secrets to your own healing, happiness and success. Sometimes we all just need a little help meeting ourselves more deeply so that we can discover our answers. One of my mentors once said to me, “You are the answer you have been looking for, Kathy, everything you need is inside of you. If you overcome the fear of meeting yourself, what you will find is the beauty of your essential wholeness.” Now, my life’s work is about helping people settle more deeply into themselves so they can BE the answer they are searching for.