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This is the time to check in to the calling of your heart

June 18, 2018

You become mature when you become the authority in your own life.

Joseph Campbell, Reflections on the Art of Living

calling of your heart

A Quiet Writing deep-dive Tarot Narrative each Monday to share intuitive guidance, wisdom and insights from aligned books – for the week and anytime…

This week: this is the time to check in to the calling of your heart

Theme for the week beginning 18 June

The underlying theme for this week to guide our overall focus is from Lisa McLoughlin’s Life Design Cards deck – #36 Take a past, present, future walk.

After last week’s message of making the most of our new life opportunities and not wasting time, hopefully we have started to focus in a little more. This week’s message urges us to take time for a check in on alignment with the calling of your heart.

Sometimes as we venture on new paths, we can get side-tracked, trying to do all the things that come at us. In this we can lose our creative identity. The theme card for this week encourages us to take a walk in nature to check in to the past, present and future as a way of aligning ourselves.

calling of your heart

Advice from the Life Design Cards Guidebook for #36 is to take a walk in nature and for the first ten minutes focus on the past. Then take ten minutes to focus on the present, then ten minutes to focus on the future. What powerful advice!

Notice what comes up for you. What metaphors do you see in your immediate environment as your thoughts percolate?

Checking in in this way helps to work out how aligned to are to the true calling of your heart. There is nothing like being in nature and the power of metaphor as a way to check in.

Tarot Narrative for the week beginning 18 June

calling of your heart

Tarot Narrative: 

It’s time for a check in against past, present and future. And how you really feel about it all. Let your feelings be the guide as you look at the master plan, the bigger picture of what you’re building. And if something feels really right or strong, take that step towards it, listening to the calling of your heart.

Cards: Queen of Cups and Three of Coins from the Spolia Tarot and #36 Come to the Edge from Wisdom of the Oracle.

Check in to the calling of your heart

Last week we had the Six of Wands and Nine of Coins combining with a strong message to stop, have a quiet celebration but keep moving. The focus was on appreciating how far you have come and seeing what the next steps are. This week the Queen of Cups and Three of Coins come together to suggest it’s time to check back in to the calling of your heart.

It’s time to look at feeling as your guide and your emotional side as your key resource. Feelings can be very useful, and sometimes we can downplay them as we work more from our head. Perhaps we overplay them too at times. But this week is all about tapping into the heart of your authentic work and checking back in to see if you are on the right track.

The Three of Coins reminds us that we are looking at building our work in the world on a large scale. What’s the big picture and the grand plan? Are you clear on where the pieces of what you do each day fit with the whole? Do the priorities that you work on each day align?  Are you feeling lost in some way?

Recently we’ve done some important work in stepping up to our goals; we’ve celebrated successes and reaching milestones. Now we are encouraged to spend time this week seeing how our work aligns to our long-term creativity and building the cathedral of our work. How it fits with the calling of your heart.

heart of your calling

How will you check back in with the calling of your heart?

I created this image above many years ago – a layered lino-cut called ‘Poetry as Art’. For me, creativity is all about the sacred creative. We might be sitting there at our desk in our quiet place writing but it connects to a wider landscape. The building of our work in the world and a higher spirituality and calling.

We are encouraged this week to check in to that calling of the heart and to see if we are on track. The Queen of Cups tells us it’s all about feeling and emotions as our guide. We may have found ourselves too much in our head lately or too cluttered with ideas. This week is about our authentic heart work as a touchstone to what to do and where to focus.

The Three of Coins reminds us that this in the context of our long-haul creativity and plans. And the Wisdom of the Oracle card, Come to the Edge also encourages us to listen to our heart and soul, not our head. We are invited to see where a leap of faith or intuitive step into our big vision might be calling us at this time. If we tune into our heart and authentic heart work, it will be easier to feel aligned with the possibilities.

calling of your heart

This image via pexels.com

Book notes: Reflections on the art of living

You become mature when you become the authority in your own life.

Joseph Campbell, Reflections on the Art of Living

This quote from Joseph Campbell popped up for me for this week. I came across it via Danielle LaPorte’s White Hot Truth and it’s from the Joseph Campbell book, Reflections on the Art of Living. These books and any others that you know will help you tune in to your heart’s calling is encouraged reading this week. This week is all about being the authority in your own life and getting clear of other influences. It’s great to be inspired by others but we need to swim in our own lane and weave those creative influences in our own way. It’s about knowing and honouring our influences but not being over-shadowed by them. Boundary setting of all kinds also might be important this week and White Hot Truth is an excellent resource for thoughts on setting boundaries.

white hot truth

How can you listen to the calling of your heart?

So how can you move into listening to the calling of your heart?

This week’s cards suggest we need to get back to our creative roots, our motivation, our why.

I’ve been feeling a little scattered lately. I’m making huge steps like becoming a Certified Beautiful You life coach – I’ll share more about this journey later this week. I’ve also been pulling together my Jung/Myers-Briggs Personality Stories personality assessment, ecourse and coaching package. Both the product of a long-term investment in my skills and ways I can take my learning forward.

But I’m finding I’ve got a few too many ideas and also feeling the influence of others’ work. It’s great to have ideas and be influenced but in the end, we have to get back to what we are shaping through our work in the world. Whether it’s a creative project, creative business or a more wholehearted life, what it is the authentic heart of it?

I’m feeling I need to get back to the calling of my heart this week as I bring all this work forward. What is it all about? Where does my own creativity fit with all of this? What am I sharing and why? How is my writing going as the authentic heart of my business?

Tips for tuning into the heart of your calling

Here are some tips for checking in to the calling of your heart this week. Take time to reflect and journal on any that catch your attention:

  • take a past, present, future walk: The activity from our Life Designs theme card offers the opportunity of insight as we tune into our senses, outside in nature, getting out of our head and reflecting for 10 minutes on each of the past, present and future. What metaphors arise?
  • blog from the heart:  How can blogging become more heart-centred and a guide to your calling? Blogging is a fabulous way to shape your work, listening to your authentic heart, honing your voice.
  • scope your business overall: Play with the scope of your business overall from a feeling point of view. Create a visual collage about what your work is about and see what comes through.
  • see where the pieces fit:  Take time to reflect on where you are putting your energies. See if the pieces fit with the whole and where you can adjust for better alignment.
  • balance input and outputs – Make a list of inputs (books, courses, personal development, money out) and a list of outputs (creative products, services, certification, money in, project results). See if it is aligned with where you want to go. Check in to:  Are you focussing too much on inputs with few results? Is your creative well running dry? Do you keep doing courses or reading books when you need to create your own work in the world? How can you get this in better balance?
  • taking risks: What’s the heart risk that might help you take that big step towards your vision? What will help you move through fear and do your own bigger work in the world?

calling of your heart

Thoughts for this week

I recently received Jen Carrington’s latest Letter via email and she is singing the same song about how we work on our businesses and creative projects. Her words:

Because here’s the thing I’ve learned over and over again from my clients, creative friends, and my own business journey too: success – real, meaningful, change-your-own-life success – comes from diving deep and building and running your business on your own terms. From doing things your own way, from building your own intuition and vision as a business owner, and from knowing what noise will serve you and what noise isn’t worth your focus and energy too.

Here’s to a week of working out which noise serves you and which noise detracts you from your own cathedral like vision of your work.

Love to hear your thoughts!

I’d love to hear about what checking in to the calling of your heart means for you! All best wishes for a week of resetting direction and priorities by using our heart as our guide and knowing the true nature of our work in the world.

May you find that taking a few moments to check in with your heart’s work brings joy and focus. And let me know what you think of this post and this weekly Tarot Narrative!

Keep in touch & free ebook on the ’36 Books that Shaped my Story’

You can work with me to help tap into that inner wisdom and magic guidance. Free 30-45 minute coaching consults chats are available so please get in touch at terri@quietwriting.com to talk further. I’d love to be a guide alongside to help you conduct creativity and magic with spirit and heart in your own unique way. And to help you ignite the psychological links in your passions!

You can download my free 94-page ebook on the 36 Books that Shaped my Story – just sign up with your email address in the box to the right or below.  You will also receive updates from Quiet Writing and its passions. This includes personality type, coaching, creativity, writing, tarot and other connections to help express your unique voice in the world.

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If you enjoyed this post, please share via your preferred social media channel – links are below.

You might also enjoy:

Our heart always knows the way – a wholehearted story

Your body of work: the greatest gift of transition to a bright new life

Honor your lineage – Sage Cohen’s Fierce on the Page

Blossoming on your own terms for long-term success

Gathering my lessons – a wholehearted story

personality and story reading notes transcending

Non-Ordinary Transcendent Experiences – a review of ‘The Power of NOTEs’ by Nicole Gruel, PhD

January 18, 2019

Want to learn more about Non-Ordinary Transcendent Experiences? ‘The Power of NOTEs’ will help you understand and work with them as a source for transformation. Read on!

NOTEs are an important aspect of the human experience that help point towards and awaken the desire, curiosity, and courage to explore more of what life could be.

from The Power of NOTEs by Nicole Gruel PhD

transcendent experiences

Nicole Gruel PhD

Have you ever experienced something that felt out of the ordinary, super-charged or transcendent, that changed your life in some key way?

Many of us have, yet it’s an area of human experience we tend not to talk about. Often this is because we don’t quite understand what happened. We keep quiet, often for years, as we try to make sense of it and what it meant. It’s frequently a solitary, and sometimes, painful journey. But more people are beginning to talk about these non-ordinary transcendent experiences however they manifest. They are emerging as sources of positive transformation and personal power if we pay attention, talk about them and work through them.

Dr Nicole Gruel’s new book, ‘The Power of NOTEs: How Non-Ordinary Transcendent Experiences Transform the Way We Live, Love and Lead‘ is an important, research-based contribution to the field of spiritual psychology and transformation.

After a near-death experience and the sudden loss of family members, Nicole found herself deep in the realm of non-ordinary transcendent experiences. In particular, she learnt their power for positive change.

Nicole has gone on to explore NOTEs deeply including via PhD studies. Her Doctoral Dissertation  focused on “AfterNOTEs: Non-Ordinary Transcendent Experiences and their Aftereffects Through Jung’s Topology”. This involved interviewing people who had experienced NOTES and working through the psychological dimensions of their response. This deep qualitative and quantitative research, combined with personal experience and NOTEs community connection, provides the rich source material that this excellent, practical book is woven around.

So what are NOTEs?

A non-ordinary transcendent experience is a rare and unfamiliar event that takes you beyond your regular understanding of yourself and the world.

from The Power of NOTES

An acronym created by transpersonal psychologist William Braud, ‘NOTE’ captures experiences at the intersection of “paranormal research, exceptional human experiences, and transpersonal psychology.” (p3). Well-known examples include near-death experiences and paranormal encounters, but the scope of NOTEs is much wider and more inclusive than this.

In the opening chapter, Nicole explains that she groups over 500 potential NOTEs into nine categories, such as Death-related experiences, Encounter experiences, and Mystical experiences. Nicole describes each category of NOTEs, helping the reader to connect with their own personal database of experiences.

transcendent experiences

What is the power of NOTEs?

The power of NOTEs is realising their potential for our growth and insight. Nicole explains the ability of NOTEs to take us out of ourselves and our habitual ways of being:

For many experiencers, tasting our core self is the greatest gift of a NOTE. (p7)

It is a type of disruption forcing our attention in new ways and often taking some time to integrate. This is often because societal and cultural contexts make it hard for us to talk about them. Nicole explores this with examples from the lives of experiencers. She shows too that NOTEs offer wisdom and insight that has implications beyond the individual.

Greater wisdom calls for us to access the insights of NOTEs as best we can, for these experiences provide a necessary lens into other ways of seeing and being in the world. (p9)

Research shows that when people share NOTEs, it has many benefits for individual wellbeing, such as reducing stress. Nicole has made it her mission to help people share and understand NOTEs as part of the human and collective experience.

The landscape of NOTEs

I had the pleasure of attending the online launch of Nicole’s book recently, where we had a virtual tour through the book. We also heard from leaders and writers in the NOTEs community. These experiences, alongside reading the book, have helped me better understand the landscape of NOTEs.

The book explores NOTEs from all perspectives including the dark and light sides of being an experiencer and from the viewpoint of neuroscience. Nicole scopes neuroscience perspectives and evidence that shows we are hard-wired to experience NOTEs.

A fellow personality type practitioner, Nicole also looks through the personality lens at the gifts of NOTEs:

NOTEs are powerful because they put us on the fast track toward a fuller expression of who we most naturally and uniquely are.

Research shows that the specific content of a near-death experience, its impact and significance is influenced by people’s personal psychology.

Connecting NOTEs experiences with Jung’s eight psychological types, Nicole explores eight gifts or transcendent dimensions of personality using James Graham Johnston’s model of the Gift’s Compass™. For example, Introverted Thinking (Ti) connects with The Conceptual Gift.

Using this lens of personality, Nicole explains that:

Experiencer stories show that the more the natural or true self is made available through NOTEs, the more a person’s dominant personality preferences take on transcendent aspects. (p40)

This ground-breaking perspective, informed by conversations with NOTEs experiencers, helps provide psychological insights into these transcendent events.

transcendent experiences

Working and transforming with NOTEs

The second half of the book explores NOTEs as clues to our natural flow states; ways to work with NOTEs during and beyond experiences; and how NOTEs can be a transformative power in how we live, love and lead.

Each chapter provides practical tips and practices for working with NOTEs as a transformative power source. Nicole shows how we can create a NOTEs biography and Well-being Wheel, with these tools based on recent, pioneering research and experiences of people actively working on integrating NOTEs into life stories. The self-leadership framework highlights the importance of validating and appropriately sharing NOTEs.

Ultimately, no one is a better coach and guide for you than you. (p62)

The power of love and legacy are keys to the self-leadership experience of working with NOTEs in a personally transformative way.

The experience of reading The Power of NOTEs

I encourage you to read The Power of NOTEs. It is beautifully and clearly written, full of lived and researched wisdom. As Katie Mottram puts it so well in her foreword:

This is not just a book; Nicole has gifted you an experience.

I couldn’t agree more. As if to highlight this, I had a transcendent experience during my reading of the book.

I realised my experiences of NOTEs are mostly in the Encounter experiences category: a kind of synchronicity related to “something wondrous or awesome, like a spectacular view or moving music...” Many years ago, I had a series of astounding synchronistic events with rainbows at a peak time of change and transformation. They had a profound effect on me as rainbow after rainbow connected in an ongoing narrative.

I started Nicole’s book in the early morning hours of a sleepless night two days away from Christmas, the first anniversary of my mother’s death. A few hours later, still restless, I got up early and headed out to the deck. There the most stunning rainbow greeted me in the sky. Rainbows are something I connect with my mother and also my father. I chose songs and poems with the symbolism of rainbows for both their funerals as a way of continuing to connect with them.

My experience of reading the book, reflecting on my own NOTEs symbolism, seemed to open up this connection. It would have been so easy to miss this rainbow.

transcendent experiences

Connecting with the power of NOTEs

Reading this book will help you connect with the power of NOTEs in your life. As the ‘Praise’ upfront in the book, the Foreword and the online book launch all show, there is a groundswell of research, interest and support in the area of non-ordinary transcendent experiences.

Organisations such as the International Spiritual Emergence Network (ISEN), American Center for the Integration of Spiritually Transformative Experiences (ACISTE), the International Association for Near Death Studies (IANDS) and the Near Death Experience Research Foundation (NDERF) provide a touchpoint for experiences and research around them. You can find further links and information here.

More authors are stepping up to write their stories and gather, honour and structure the experiences of others as Nicole has done. You might like to read my book review of Mystical Interludes II – a Collection of Ordinary People’s Mystical Experiences, collected and edited by Emily Rodavich. The Power of NOTES and Mystical Interludes II came to me in a synchronistic way, at the same time from unique connections but covering similar terrain.

Read Nicole Gruel’s book to recognise, honour and structure such experiences in your life and also in the lives of those you love. If you have had a NOTE, this book can help others share in and understand your experience. Likewise, if you think someone you know may have experienced a NOTE, this book is a useful way to open the conversation or quietly support them. For counsellors, coaches and other professional people, this is an important resource to open up thoughts about spiritually transformative experiences in practice.

And as I finish writing, I hear the sounds of the children next door playing under the water sprinkler in the Sydney midsummer heat. One excitedly shouts: “There’s a rainbow!”

transcendent experiences

Thought pieces + footnotes

Dr Nicole Gruel is an author, speaker and transformational coach. Descendant from a long line of samurai, she has spent over two decades exploring human potential. You can connect with her at DrNicoleGruel.com.

The Power of NOTES was provided as a review copy by the author in return for a fair review. I am grateful to Dr Nicole Gruel for sharing this book with me.

To purchase, you can use the below link.

For Amazon.com.au:

The Power of NOTEs: Non-Ordinary Transcendent Experiences Transforming the Way We Live, Love, and Lead

Image 1 (feature image), 2 & 5 provided by Nicole Gruel and used with permission and thanks.

You might also enjoy:

Intuition: how to understand and master it – a review of ‘The Inner Tree’ by Maura McCarley Torkildson

“You are the authority on you”: a review of Danielle LaPorte’s White Hot Truth

Being ‘Fierce on the Page’ – a book review

Being a vessel – or working with introverted intuition

36 Books that Shaped my Story – Reading as Creative Influence

When the inner voice calls, and calls again – my journey to wholehearted livings

How to read for more creativity, productivity and pleasure

Keep in touch 

Quiet Writing is on Facebook and Instagram – keep in touch and interact with the growing Quiet Writing community. Look forward to connecting with you and inspiring your wholehearted story!

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inspiration & influence love, loss & longing

Joy and grief: the paradox and wisdom of finding joy alongside grief

December 19, 2018

This post explores joy and grief: how I have been able to find joy alongside deep grief, the challenges and what it has it taught me.

joy and grief

When you see joy beside the agony, you have the keen vision of a Soul warrior.

Danielle LaPorte

Joy and grief in 2018

Joy is my word of the year for 2018. I shared the beginning of my story of working with ‘joy’ here. It certainly wasn’t what I expected. Though I knew it was never going to be an easy or straightforward journey. Reflecting on this past year, I’ve found the journey of exploring joy falls into themes or stages around the quarters of the year of finding joy…

  1. alongside deep grief
  2. and resilience in challenge
  3. in travel and being away from home
  4. in creative work and my calling

This post explores finding joy alongside deep grief and how the two can co-exist. A focus of the first quarter of 2018, this theme and learning has continued through-out this year in different ways. It’s been an undercurrent that I continue to work with even now.

The challenge of choosing joy

Choosing joy as my word was always going to be full of challenge. The end of 2016 and all of 2017 were very challenging as I supported my beautiful mother after her diagnosis with metastatic breast cancer in September 2016. After a very tough year, my mother passed away on Christmas Day last year and her funeral was in the first week of 2018.  So as you can imagine, joy was not a feature of life through that time. 

But I chose the word joy because I wanted more of it in my life. It’s a word often associated with Christmas and that time highlighted just how far I felt from feeling joy. Even the concept of ‘enJOYing’ life in any way can seem challenging when you are caring for another with a terminal illness and then supporting them in the final stages of life. A friend described this time as an “agonising privilege” and it is this exactly. So putting in a claim for a year around joy in 2018 always felt somewhat audacious and optimistic. I wondered what it would bring.

joy and greif

Finding joy alongside deep grief

Balancing even the thought of joy with grief was hard in practice especially at the start of the year. I attended the Priestess Business Workshop,  part of The Goddess Roadtrip led by Julie Parker and Sora Surya No in early January. It was the day before my mother’s funeral and being amongst powerful, supportive allies and female energy felt like the best place to be. The wonderful Jade McKenzie ran a session at the workshop on being seen and what we unapologetically wanted to be. We stood up one by one to say this and be witnessed by the room and women there. 

The statement I wrote down, in line with my word of the year, was: “I am unapologetically joyful.” When it came to my turn to stand up, I just froze. I couldn’t get the words out. The tears came and the room, full of female coaches and healers of all kinds, was silent and encouraging. All the women there held powerful, silent space for me as I gathered my strength and dealt with the tsunami of emotions barrelling through me.

Eventually, through tears, I was able to say the words, “I am unapologetically joyful“. I felt immediately stronger claiming joy, if also very fragile. It demonstrated the enormous tension that lies in the juxtaposition of grief and joy. I began to have a deeper sense that day of how challenging this paradox of grief and joy might be.

It’s like we are drawn into a binary view of the world, not allowing ourselves to feel joy in any way when we are in deep sadness and pain. I realised finding joy, playfulness, fun, laughter and happiness again against a backdrop of deep grief was not going to be easy. But it felt central to this year’s journey.

joy and grief

The paradox of joy and grief

A big learning this year is that it’s okay to feel the joy of everyday things at the same time as we feel immense pain. We tend to make it an either/or, saying to ourselves either I feel grief or I feel joy. I cannot feel both. It can feel like a terrible tension and betrayal of our pain if we feel good in any way. And feeling joy or lighter feelings can somehow feel like a betrayal of a particular person and their memory. It as if we feel we need to stay in a certain emotional space to honour that person. In this, we can deny ourselves positive feelings and experiences that can help us move through the grief and loss. Over time, this can set in and become habitual and the mindset of how we live.

Danielle LaPorte in her book White Hot Truth has much to say about the wisdom of paradox and courage to change your beliefs. She deals with a number of paradoxes such as: 

Lead with your heart and… Your head.

Be open-hearted and… Have clear, strong boundaries.

Trust and… Do the work.

From Rock Your Paradoxes 

For me, joy and grief is a kind of paradox and polarity we can work with, one that does rock our beliefs but brings wisdom in its wake.

Difference between joy and happiness

Danielle has something to say about that too in her piece, The difference between joy and happiness. And why it helps to know.

Herein lies the heart of the matter. The key thing is it is not about a mutually exclusive choice between feeling grief or joy. It’s not about the more fleeting feelings of happiness either. Learning to navigate the paradox of feeling joy and grief at the same time is a journey of wisdom. It’s one I’ve spent much of the year on. Danielle’s piece provides powerful insights. Here are a few perspectives that distil my experiential learning about joy and grief:

Consciousness is not an either/or equation. It’s about bothness.
The capacity to expand into bothness — the awareness of your joy in all circumstances — is so much of what it means to evolve…

Happiness is like rising bubbles — delightful and inevitably fleeting. Joy is the oxygen — ever present….

Joy is the fibre of your Soul….

This means that it’s possible to grieve with your whole heart, and still sense your joy. You can feel rage, and be aware of joy waiting patiently for you to return, and take deep comfort in that.

Danielle LaPorte 

 

Lessons from joy and grief

So this year has been full of heart-felt lessons about joy and grief.

It’s been full of learning to live in paradox and seeing joy as a kind of oxygen. This learning set the tone of the first quarter of the year as I moved through the deep grief of losing my mother. As people who have been there will know, it’s a defining moment of your life. At the same time, I also experienced my job being deleted and becoming redundant in February. So there were layers of different kinds of grief I was working through all at the same time.

I learnt it was okay to feel joy – celebrating the joy of my mother’s beautiful life, the strength that lives on in me, my female ancestry and lineage, her loving kindness and knowing she was cheering me on as always as I moved into a new phase of life. All of these qualities and the simple pleasures of water, light, tea, sun, reading, swimming, friends and family helped me navigate much at this time.

Grief and joy can co-exist. By weaving one with the other, the passage through is deeply felt but somehow more sure-footed and grounded. Being able to smile and embrace the full gamut of emotions simultaneously is a wholehearted learning joy has taught me.

This first part of the year set the tone. It taught me that joy is often found in the smallest moments that we allow ourselves to feel even as we feel great sorrow. The light of joy can shine gently into the shadows of our sadness helping us find pockets of positive reflections to sustain us and move us forward.

I learnt more on this on the way through the year – and share further in the next posts to come.

Shared with much love and in memory of my mother, the most truly beautiful person, who taught me how to feel joy alongside deep grief in the most selfless of ways. 

joy and grief

More information: Word of the Year resources

Working on a Word of the Year is a powerful process. Susannah Conway has a fabulous free Word of the Year ecourse available each year that I often dive into. It works really well alongside the Unravel Your Year process and free workbook that Susannah also creates and generously shares each year. I’ve been working through both processes to review my year and plan for the next one since 2014.

I credit these practices with contributing to deep realisations about where I was stuck and needed to make change. In 2016, I started doing things differently and began to make my transition and now at the end of 2018, I am two years in to my change journey and life is very different. It’s much more in line with the dreams and visions I had way back in 2014!

Amy Palko also offers My Word Goddess Readings with suggestions for your word for the year linked to a Goddess of the Year. Also a practice I have invested in for a few years now, it provides valuable intuitive insights and suggestions for words that might help drive your year’s energy positively.  

You might also enjoy:

Finding JOY in the everyday – reflections on my Word of the Year for 2018

Joy – 18 inspiring quotes on enjoying what you do and love

Grief and pain can be our most important teachers – a wholehearted story

Never too old – finding courage and skill to empower your dreams

How I plan to manifest energy joy and intention to make the most of the coming year

Keep in touch + read the books that shaped my story

You might also find inspiration in my free 94-page ebook on the ’36 Books that Shaped my Story’ – all about wholehearted self-leadership, reading as creative influence and books to inspire your own journey. Just pop your email address in the box below. 

You will receive the ebook straight away! Plus you’ll receive monthly Beach Notes with updates and inspiring resources from Quiet Writing. This includes writing, personality type, coaching, creativity, tarot, productivity and ways to express your unique voice in the world.

Quiet Writing is on Facebook and Instagram – keep in touch and interact with the growing Quiet Writing community. Look forward to connecting with you and inspiring your wholehearted story!

inspiration & influence reading notes

“You are the authority on you” – a review of Danielle LaPorte’s ‘White Hot Truth’

April 4, 2017

white hot truth

 

“I’m a seeker who writes about what I find. And maybe, on just the right day, I can help you flatten your learning curve. If I’ve got anything to say, it’s this: you are the authority on you.”
Danielle LaPorte – White Hot Truth: Clarity for keeping it real on your spiritual path from one seeker to another

I am a huge fan of Danielle LaPorte. I love her clear, crisp, grounded, heart-filled way of talking and thinking. Her work is concurrently suffused with spirit and light whilst being grounded in experience and day to day living.

She speaks directly to my heart, and I’ve been listening for nearly 10 years now since I first came across her work when I was somewhat completely brought to my knees with the open-hearted surgery that is grief.

Back then, Danielle’s web-site was called White Hot Truth, something I needed at a time when each day had the consistency of mud I tried to swim through. “Yes, I’ll have some of that ‘White Hot Truth’ please“. I read and followed, a gentle disciple of the heart, as Danielle spoke to me of hope and self-compassion.

I’ve since followed her work and when I saw that White Hot Truth was coming back in another form as a book, I signed up to read ahead, review and be part of the ‘White Hot Truth’ launch team. I knew from experience this would be something very special, a honed diamond sparkling its message for me and others to catch.

The light in White Hot Truth

White Hot Truth is this diamond, each chapter a facet of light, grounded in a memoir-kind of reflection, distilling experience that heads straight for the heart. I alternated between reading on-screen and listening to Danielle’s voice via the audiobook. This made the reading process all the richer as I shifted between my voice engaging directly with the words, and Danielle’s voice reading her own.

The book traverses so many realms – it’s deep and wide but its terrain is clear and sweeps away any barriers to understanding in its path. The essence of the book is to become aware of the lies or unhelpful blocks that may have found their way into our trusting hearts including the “really big lies” of inadequacy, authority and affiliation. And to recognise that we are able to take in so much influence and so many ideas and still be the authority on ourselves, the one to make the decisions with wisdom, the one to set boundaries with an open heart.

Some quotes from White Hot Truth

Danielle draws from wide sources to find the most perfect quotes to place strategically. And then sprinkled through like stars sending their energy through the text, there are Danielle’s own quotable quotes and truthbombs.

A few of my favourites of so many I have highlighted:

On flow: “It was too much flow and not enough restraint. I was a river in need of some riverbanks.”

On forgiveness: “The heart runs on its own clock, untethered from calendar days or years.”

On self-help: “The best self-help is self-compassion.”

On approval: “Working for approval takes up a lot of energy, and it can be a huge distraction from seeing the gifts that you already hold in your hands.”

Wisdom, paradox and authenticity in White Hot Truth

A key piece of wisdom threaded through-out is that of paradox. White Hot Truth shows how with clarity, you can take both perspectives and find a path. For example, you can lead with your heart and your head. You don’t have to choose. How many of us have shut down one side of the equation because we fear losing the other, when really it’s a false dichotomy. I know I have. This book opens up paradox as a kind of wisdom.

I read White Hot Truth concurrently with Marrow by Elizabeth Lesser. In Marrow, Elizabeth talks about ‘Authenticity Deficit Disorder’, how we tiptoe around those things we really want to say or be, those things that really matter as we go through our days. It seems that sometimes it takes a tragedy, serious illness or terrible grief to make us go there to the marrow. And even then we can manage to side step it.

In White Hot Truth, Danielle speaks directly, supporting us to honour our authenticity and love who and what we are. She encourages us to recognise where we may have inadvertently blunted our ability to cut through. She shows us how to speak up without fear, through being a voice and model for how to speak up.

Being real and who we are as influence

Mark Nepo in The Book of Awakening talks about the energy of being real, of ‘mana’, of the extraordinary power of being who we are to influence others:

In this way, without any intent to shape others, we simply have to be authentic, and a sense of ‘mana’, of spiritual light and warmth, will emanate from our souls, causing others to grow – not towards us, but towards the light that moves through us.

White Hot Truth made me smile with recognition and more than once, I held my heart as my eyes filled with tears as something broke through, probably self-compassion.

At times laugh-out-loud funny, other times shocking and sobering, it’s a ball of bright authentic light offered as a guide from one seeker to another to illuminate our path. I’m so grateful for its warm and passionate influence. Like ‘The Hierophant’ card in tarot, this book is a teacher and a reminder that:

….we are not alone; we can actually take someone else’s advice and methods and recast them to meet our own needs

Playing with Symbols, Monicka Clio Sakki

In fact White Hot Truth encourages us to do exactly that and for you to be the authority on you. I know it will shape and guide my own inspired path now and for years to come.

Review and Publication notes:

White Hot Truth will be published on 16 May 2017 and is available on pre-order. Because I am part of the White Hot Truth Launch Team, I got the advanced digital copy. You can get a chance to listen to the book before it’s in stores with the free audio book. Find out how here: daniellelaporte.com/whitehottruth/

Keep in touch & free ebook on the ’36 Books that Shaped my Story’

You can download my free 95-page ebook on the 36 Books that Shaped my Story – just sign up with your email address in the box to the right or below.  You will also receive updates from Quiet Writing and its passions. This includes personality type, coaching, creativity, writing, tarot and other connections to help express your unique voice in the world.

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You might also enjoy:

Influence, gratitude and choosing to shine – Danielle LaPorte

 

20 practical ways of showing up and being brave (and helpful)

Intuition, writing and work – eight ways intuition can guide your creativity

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creativity inspiration & influence

Joy – 18 inspiring quotes on enjoying what you do and love

February 16, 2018

Joy

Joy is my word for the year for 2018. Here are 18 quotes about joy, spirit and soulful work sparking my year. I hope they inspire you too.

Choosing a word for the year is like deciding on a destination for how you want to feel but not knowing how it will play out. It’s like setting an intention for feeling the tone of the year with no plan for the details. Inviting the energy of a word into your life, you wait to see how it unfolds and manifests.

PASSION was my word for the year for 2017. It was such an inspiring way to get back to what I love as a guiding force in my life. I shared 17 quotes about passion about the driving energy of doing what you love. Last year was a challenging journey which took me back to the heart of what I love as the map and soul of its next steps.

I discovered passion was about feeling your authentic heart, in my case writing, and getting it into its rightful place in your life. It was about following my intuition more deeply and finding a vision that went beyond the everyday. Moreover, it was a guide for transition in a year of crossing over to a new place, sensing potential, seeing opportunity and knowing how to combine my skills in new ways. It was about learning to play bigger and weave all that has happened to me into a book, a new way of living, a new career, a creative life. In there also was an understanding of my uniqueness, the elements that combine as passions within me. As Meryl Streep reminds us:

What makes you different and weird, that’s your strength. 

Finding joy

So in turning the corner into 2018 after a challenging time, joy was beckoning me. Sometimes you can take a while to work through your word for the year; other times it arrives, more obviously and insistently. And then there are synchronicities also, like the card my daughter gave me for Christmas. It was a beautifully crafted message of JOY made from handpainted Egyptian papyrus. This sealed the deal perfectly.

As often happens with your word of the year, you have a sense of its meaning but a deeper dive yields surprises and connections. And there is serendipity and further synchronicity too.

This week via an inspiring webinar on Energy Matters in Coaching with Meg Mann I was introduced to the work of David R Hawkins. In particular, we were shown his map of the scale of consciousness as we progress through achieving greater levels of consciousness. And my eye zeroed in on JOY sitting right up near the top described by way of self-view as “complete” and emotion as “serenity”.

David R Hawkins says of the energy of this phase:

As we move up towards this level, inner joy, quiet, and inner knowingness begin to take place. Within this energy field, we connect with something that is rocklike and ever present.

So this year’s focus is no lightweight endeavour but one that has enormous potential to calm and ground me. I knew choosing joy this year was always going to be a challenging task and this scale just helped highlight this.

Being unapologetically joyful

As part of a Goddess Roadtrip Sydney workshop recently on ‘being seen’, we were asked by Jade McKenzie to stand up and say to the group what we were unapologetically going to be this year. Given my focus for the year, I chose “joyful”, but when I stood up to say the words “This year I will be unapologetically joyful…”, I couldn’t get the words out of my mouth. I was so mired in grief after the very recent loss of my mother. Eventually, I did say the words with the support of a room of beautiful women who held space for me, quietly, as I got there. But in this moment, I realised the intensity and depth of exploration in this journey of learning about joy this year. In part, it’s about allowing the juxtaposition of grief and joy in my life, something that can seem an uncomfortable fit just now.

Joy

Quotes about joy

I love quotes. The distilled wisdom of others in the form of words we can hold, repeat, learn from and reflect on is a balm and portal for me.

I found the 17 quotes on PASSION last year were a place to start from, a way to begin to explore the terrain of what it meant. Frequently, I returned to those words as I did to the Pinterest page I created on PASSION. Both are great ways to unravel the multiple meanings and nuances of words as we seek to explore them in our lives.

So to commence my exploration of JOY in 2018, here are 18 quotes about JOY to begin to tease out its contours and character for this year’s journey. I hope you find some inspiration for your journey this year.

“We cannot cure the world of sorrows but we can choose to live in joy.” – Joseph Campbell

“If all you did was just look for things to appreciate, you would live a joyous, spectacular life.” – Abraham-Hicks

“Be content with what you have, rejoice in the way things are. When you realize there is nothing lacking, the whole world belongs to you.” – Lao Tzu 

“The body heals with play, the mind heals with laughter and the spirit heals with joy.” – Proverb

“Feelings are just visitors. Let them come and go.” – Mooji

“Joy comes to us in ordinary moments. We risk missing out when we get too busy chasing down the extraordinary.” – Brene Brown

“Joy is the best makeup. But a little lipstick is a close runner-up.” – Anne Lamott

“Strive not to get more done, but to have less to do.” – Francine Jay

“Comparison is the thief of joy.” – Theodore Roosevelt

“Be a rainbow in someone else’s cloud.” – Maya Angelou 

“When you do things from your soul, you feel a river moving in you, a joy.” – Rumi

“Your joy is where you locate your white hot Truth – your pure-burning is-ness, from where you have the creative power to turn thought into matter.” – Danielle LaPorte

“Joy is what happens to us when we allow ourselves to recognize how good things really are.” – Marianne Williamson

“You don’t have a soul. You are a Soul. You have a body.” – C. S. Lewis

“You should write because you love the shape of stories and sentences and the creation of different words on a page.” – Annie Proulx

“Don’t wait for everything to be perfect before you decide to enjoy your life.” – Joyce Meyer

“Ordinary riches can be stolen, real riches cannot. In your soul are infinitely precious things that cannot be taken from you.” – Oscar Wilde

“JOY is a meeting place, of deep intentionality and self forgetting, the bodily alchemy of what lies inside us in communion with what formally seemed outside, but is now neither, but become a living frontier, a voice speaking between us and the world: dance, laughter, affection, skin touching skin, singing in the car, music in the street, the quiet irreplaceable and companionable presence of a daughter: the sheer intoxicating beauty of the world inhabited as an edge between what we previously thought was us and what we thought was other than us.” – David Whyte

Do read the whole David Whyte’s beautiful meditation on JOY from which these words come. It is pure magic. They are such a balm for the soul. It seems like much of this work on joy is about spirit, inner stillness and soul, quiet writing perhaps. I welcome joy in as we venture forward together getting to know each other in a deeper way this year.

Share your thoughts

Which is your favourite quote from these ones? Or do you have another quote or thought on joy that inspires you? What does joy mean to you? Would love to hear – share your thoughts in the comments!

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You might also enjoy:

How I plan to manifest energy, joy and intention to make the most of this year

The unique voice of what we love

Exploring magic as the heart of creative inspiration

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Image of me above by David Kennedy photography with thanks.

inspiration & influence planning & productivity reading notes

Creative and Connected #9 – on the art and love of reading

August 12, 2017

Read in order to live.

Gustave Flaubert

reading

Here’s a round-up of what I’ve enjoyed and shared this week on various social platforms on the art and love of reading. My post on How to read for more creativity, pleasure and productivity has been really well received this week. Thank you so much for the feedback about how this post has inspired thoughts about reading practices. Above all, it was so lovely to connect with kindred souls who share my passion for reading.

So to further share that joy, here are some podcasts and reads that celebrate the art and love of reading.

Podcasts on the history, art and love of reading

I listened to two podcasts about reading this week and they were perfect counterpoints about the historical contexts of reading and current ways to enjoy reading.

In Our Time: Culture – Reading – BBC Radio 4

In this discussion from 2000, Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the history of the politics and practice of reading. The podcast covers the history of reading in social and political contexts with a particular emphasis on how women were banned from reading in times past and how it was seen as a trivial activity for them. This historical perspective makes you realise how far we have come. I always feel a responsibility to take these hard-won rights forward.

Guinevere de la Mare and the Silent Book Club – on the Secret Library Podcast with Caroline Donahue

This was such a great podcast chat on a movement I had completely missed – the Silent Book Club. Developed in response to the occasional pressure and social nature of book clubs, Silent Book Clubs involve just turning up together to a venue and reading. It emanated from Guinevere turning up with friends to a bar and just reading over a glass of wine. And this is the flavour behind the Silent Book Club. With Chapters growing all over the world, it’s a word of mouth trend that celebrates just sitting in a public place with others and reading. I can’t actually think of anything more appealing right now. Introverts unite! I notice there is no Australian branch so I think I’ll start a Sydney one – if any local people are interested, let me know. Happy days!

 

reading

 

Books and reading notes

My reading week

In line with my post this week and reading more and the accountability here, I finished two books I’ve had underway recently. Jojo Moyes’ Paris for One was such a fun read, full of chance encounters that result in quirky life changes and fresh perspectives. I loved the last story especially.

I finished listening to The Writer’s Guide to Training Your Dragon, by Scott Baker as an audio book. As a result, I’m weaving dictation into my days via my iPhone and Mac Pro as I work. It’s so easy and a stepping stone to using dictation more fully for writing and transcription.

I’ve continued savouring David Whyte’s Crossing the Unknown Sea: Work as a Pilgrimage of Identity in a slow read (probably too slow) on work and identity. It does, however, feel like it’s mirroring my life, so maybe there’s a reason for the slowness of my reading, so my life can keep time. A favourite quote this week:

To find good work, no matter the path we have chosen, means coming out of hiding. Good work means visibility. (p146)

reading

Book notes on this week’s theme of the art and love of reading

Alberto Manguel is an author to savour on the art and love of reading.

His  A History of Reading takes us into the heart of the experience of reading through a series of interconnected essays. It focuses on his personal response to reading from all angles, such as: learning to read, picture reading, being read to and reading from various standpoints such as translator and author. It’s a beautiful reflection and treasure trove on reading.

In ‘A Reading Diary: A Year of Reading Favourite Books’, Manguel decides to reread some of his favourite books, one month at a time. It’s a journey over a year, blending memoir, journal writing and reviewing into a reflective reading experience. There’s a lovely review of this book here.

One thing I have found as I revisited my books about books and reading this past week is that the authors are all so witty and funny.

A favourite book of mine in this genre is the fabulous Ex Libris: Confessions of a Common Reader, by Anne Fadiman. This 1998 book was recommended to me by a fellow bibliophile and it’s a book of essays celebrating the love of books. It’s so very funny in the way that only a book lover can appreciate. My favourite essay is ‘Marrying Libraries’ about how Anne and her husband are merging their book collections into one after a time together and the conflict and negotiations that ensue. So many great thoughts and laughs:

Books wrote our life story, and as they accumulated on our shelves (and on our windowsills, and underneath our sofa, and on top of our refrigerator), they became chapters in it themselves. How could it be otherwise?

I’m a huge Nick Hornby fan. No other writer makes me laugh out loud as much, and so I was delighted to stumble across his collection of essays on reading, first published in the US Believer Magazine. The Complete Polysyllabic Spree is the full collection of these 28 monthly essays on the books he has bought and read. I just smile the whole way through reading these essays. They are a romp through reading, including the classics, with humour as the connecting thread.

Some of Nick’s thoughts:

If reading books is to survive as a leisure activity – and there are statistics to show that this is by no means assured – then we have to promote the joys of reading, rather than the (dubious) benefits.

and

I’m a writer, and I need to read, for inspiration and education and because I want to get better, and only books can teach me how.

In terms of novels about books and love of books as a connecting factor, there are two main ones that stand out for me:

84 Charing Cross Road, Helene Hanff – My copy has disappeared, ironically, but it’s a slim volume celebrating books as a connecting piece between people, in this case, a London antiquarian bookseller and a New York based reader. Based on the true story of their connection and exchange of letter over nearly 20 years, it’s a celebration of books, reading and the connections they inspire.

The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society, Mary Ann Shaffer – This book is focused on post-war Guernsey and is told entirely through letters between various correspondents. It tells the story of connections between columnist Juliet Ashton and the members of the Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Society, as they live under German occupation. Mary Ann Shaffer wrote this book, her first novel, when she was 70. Sadly, she didn’t get to see it in print. It’s a heart-warming story of friendship, love and books across the miles.

reading

Blog/Twitter/Instagram posts and interactions:

On the art and love of reading, Joanna Penn’s post on Habits of a Book Junkie in a Digital Age is excellent on digital reading strategies and trends including how to review books.

I shared the beautiful piece by Kerstin Pilz, on Tiny Buddha, How a 10 day silent retreat helped heal my grieving heart last week. Inspired by Katherine Bell’s guest post here: Our Heart Always Knows the Way, the first of our Wholehearted Stories series, Kerstin has written a fabulous post on how life change is all about hard work and not luck in Why luck had nothing to do with my self-directed life.

On Instagram, there’s been plenty of activity around Susannah Conway’s The August Break focused around noticing, community and inspiration. Yesterday’s prompt was lavender. Not being able to think of any lavender in my immediate surroundings, I went back to my recent iphone shots and found this skyscape I had forgotten about:

 

reading

Another thought would have been the Murasaki-Shikibu lavender ink I write with every day – I thought of this hours after! It’s a great month of prompts for noticing and seeing afresh, also connecting with special memories, sacred objects and new people.

I also shared that my favourite novel is Rebecca by Daphne Du Maurier. Here’s me thinking it’s an unusual choice. Clearly not, when it’s been voted UK’s favourite book from the past 225 years. I’m so glad so many people are discovering its pleasures!

On Quiet Writing and Tarot Narratives

On Quiet Writing, we have been exploring the art and love of reading in the post on How to read for more creativity, pleasure and productivity

Here are some other relevant posts on Quiet Writing on books and reading:

“You are the authority on you” – a review of Danielle LaPorte’s White Hot Truth

Reading Australian Women Writers in 2017

Being ‘Fierce on the Page’ – A Book Review

My Tarot Narratives on Instagram have continued to be a rich source of inspiration and insight for my creative journey. Thanks for all the creative interactions. Thomas Moore’s SoulMates keeps popping up lately. Here was a key quote that emerged:

I’m not suggesting that all psychological experience is interior, but it’s clear that the dynamics, dramas, and characters of the individual soul play themselves out in the external world, so that relationship is always a dialectic between inner and outer, a dance between actual people and one’s own life of the soul.

Have a fabulous creative weekend!

Creative and Connected is a regular post each Friday and the previous posts are below. I hope you enjoy it. I would love any feedback via social media or comments and let me know what you are enjoying too.

Feature image via pexels.com

Image 2 of ‘Compartment C, Car 193‘ 1938, by Edward Hopper, in Edward Hopper by Rolf Gunter Renner, Taschen

Image 4 of ‘The Quiet Room’ c1929, by Sir George Clausen from ‘The Reading Woman’ Calendar 2017

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Subscribe via email (see the link at the top) to make sure you receive updates from Quiet Writing and its passions in 2017. This includes MBTI developments, coaching, creativity and other connections to help express your unique voice in the world. My free e-book on the books that have shaped my story is coming soon for subscribers only – so sign up to be the first to receive it!

Quiet Writing is on Facebook – Please visit here and ‘Like’ to keep in touch and interact with the growing Quiet Writing community. There are regular posts on intuition, influence, creativity, productivity, writing, voice, introversion and personality including Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI).

If you enjoyed this post, please share via your preferred social media channel – links are below.

You might also enjoy:

Creative and Connected #8 – ways to honour your unique life blend

Creative and Connected #7 – how to craft a successful life on your own terms

Creative and Connected #6 – how to be a creative entrepreneur

Creative and Connected #5 – being accountable to ourselves and others

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