Blocks. We all experience them. You want something, and something comes up and makes it seem impossible. That something can be real or imagined.

The want comes from deep within you. Desire for something; it’s the knowledge that you came to this reality to Do Something Big. Part of the process is moving beyond whatever is holding you in the space you currently reside.

Maybe you want to be a successful author. You imagine what the critics might say. It stops you.

Maybe you want to be thinner, but you imagine all of the diets that have never worked.

Maybe you want to own your dream home, but you cannot see how that could ever happen to a person like you.

Or maybe you’re really trying to write that book, but it’s not flowing. Or maybe it flows, but you have a friend read your first draft, and you get a disappointing review.

Maybe you’re trying to complete a project, but you can’t find the right subcontractor to help you finish the last bit of work. Or maybe the subcontractor you thought would do a great job messes up the job beyond repair.

Maybe you can’t get funding no matter where you look for the non-profit close to your heart.

Or maybe you just don’t know what is happening or why, but you just feel stuck. And that desire and knowledge of what you came here to do is just not going away.

Worse, maybe there’s actually someone out there who is out to get you and undermine your success any way he can. Someone who might be acting insidiously with the rage of fire and brimstone to ensure you are never able to do be successful with it. It has happened.

Even if you’ve got the cards stacked against you and a small army of detractors against you, it is no match whatsoever against the creative power of your flow. It is no match for the creative energy within you. Your work will stand on its own merit and attract those who want to hear what you have to say.

Of course, you could become embroiled in the discord. You could allow a war of words to become the most important part of your reality. You could allow the war of fear inside of you to become more powerful than your own creative flow.

When you allow the critics — inside and out — to have that much power over you, then you lose your voice. Spirit moves to a more open and pliable channel. And you become the biggest loser.

“The most authentic thing about us is our capacity to create, to overcome, to endure, to transform, to love, and to be greater than our suffering.” —Ben Okri

You may suffer, but you also have the power to be greater than that suffering. Commitment to the idea, the spirit, and the energy that flows through you is the power that is greater than anything that comes your way.

So how do you get beyond it?

There are quite a few tricks I’ve learned. You see, I’ve had a little of all of the above happen to me to some degree or another during my lifetime. Some things have been even worse than the maybe’s above.

If you’re stuck in a place of non-movement, here are some tips to get beyond your blocks.

Get moving. Sometimes when you’re stuck, the best thing to do is get moving. On something, anything. If you can’t move on your project, go for a walk. Don’t bring the iPod, let silence guide you to the still voice within yourself. If you can’t move mentally, sometimes the best thing to do is send a message to your mind that you are ready to move by moving your body.

Change the scenery. You can also get a change of scenery… go to a place different than where you are. Pick a place at random a few hours from where you are. If you have kids, pack them and a lunch and just go. Find a place where you can easily walk or hike in nature. Movement in a place far away from your usual stomping grounds creates a new perspective and movement within your spirit that will break you from a rut or block.

Turn off the internet. The internet browser is a great place to meet people and make connections, but it can also be a giant procrastination time suck and distraction away from the things that block you. Download an alternative browser (firefox, chrome, etc). Use one browser for productive work and research, use another for play. If you have two computers, use one as your work computer and another as your production computer. Set yourself a time and a time limit for play online, but the rest of your day is dedicated to production. Don’t check Facebook every 20 minutes.

Do something around the house. Sweep the floor, organize a file. Sometimes just clearing some clutter is enough to get you moving and feeling productive. That productive feeling then can be transferred towards your creative flow.

Feeling more energized? Feel like you might be able to do something now? Are you still churning on something that’s bothering you? If you’re getting some hardcore emotional things coming up that physical movement isn’t helping to clear, then you may need to turn your attention to your emotions.

If you’re angry, it may have helped to channel that angry energy into physical activity. I’ve found anger and anxiety are especially remedied by organizing and cleaning.

Chunk it down. Once you’re ready to do something, do something small but important. Don’t add to your stress by taking on a massive project and attempting to do it all at once. Break it down into workable steps. Make a list, and prioritize the action items. Do one thing that you know you can do, that you know is important.

Ask for help. Whether you ask your higher self, a guide, a friend, a relative, or a mentor, help is available to you. You are never as alone as you think you are, even in your darkest hour. Be persistent in seeking the help you need.

Above all, be patient. If you were delayed on a trip, and that delay meant you missed an opportunity for an accident, you’d be grateful for the delay… if only you knew. Sometimes a setback is happening for a reason you cannot understand or comprehend. A delay or block might be exactly what you need in order for other events to line up in a more perfect manner.

Persistence pays off. Some people advocate looking for the easiest way to do something. Sometimes the hardest way pays off more. The more blocks you can break through, the more fears you can dissipate, and the more challenges you can meet, the more you will succeed where others have given up.

I was watching my daughter learn how to jump on to our bed last night. It’s too tall for her… but she kept at it. She failed a LOT more times than she succeeded in the beginning. I helped her a few times. And then, something clicked for her and she made it up quite a few times in a row on her own. Her persistence paid off. From her perspective, she had many blocks to achieving this seemingly small feat, including her very valid fear of falling.

While achieving your goals of expressing your highest ideal is a reward, you’ll find a greater reward in confronting and overcoming any block that appears to stand in your way. Whether real or imagined, they’re part of the illusion we’re playing in.

My Subliminal Clearing: Z+ Advanced Ho’oponopono program talks about these illusions. It’s helped many people move past blocks and discover their power from a higher level. I’ll have more information on clearing blocks using the latest state-of-the-art techniques soon.

When you visit Mexico, you’ll learn to say, “No, gracias.” You’ll need to say it… A LOT.

In the United States, people beg for handouts. In Mexico, people beg you to buy something from them. You can either ignore them, or you can say, “No, gracias.” The Mexican vendors are quite good at catching your attention. They’re smiling, engaging, and asking great questions to bring your awareness to what they’re selling.

At first, I felt terrible for saying no so much. While I can be quite a smart aleck, I also consider myself a healer. Being nice to people is a part of who I am. Saying no abruptly and walking away felt uncomfortable. Discomfort is a sign that I can learn and get past some of my possibly limiting beliefs about myself, and learn to become more flexible. When I was younger, I didn’t like these uncomfortable feelings. Now, I relish the opportunity they present to grow.

As I walked down the street, I wanted to say “yes” to the smiling, inviting people, but I also knew if I was going to make it down the street for a quick lunch and back to work quickly, I would have to say, “No gracias,” many times.

I did it. And I didn’t like it.

Why did I feel bad? These people were infringing on my space as I walked down the street. It should have been easy to say no. I sat with it… walked with it… saying “No, gracias,” many times.

It wasn’t long before a little girl about 7 came up to my table at the restaurant with some toys around her wrist and blew this little whistle and said $1 please. There were signs all around that said please do not give the children money, as it encourages them and it is something Mexico is trying to stop. As I looked at her in the eyes, my heart was pulled. It’s only a dollar, I thought. And then i heard my friend Oh Be who was sitting across from me say, “No Gracias” and she looked at him and her sweet look turned sour on him and then she looked back at me with those eyes. I heard myself say “No Gracias” and her look turned sour on me as she walked away. This kid at 7 was already a pro… “nothing, personal mister.” I was thankful for her sour look as it made the rejection I passed her way a bit easier. She wasn’t going to be devastated by my rejection.

I considered why this bothered me so much, and what I came up with was that I really thought these folks would be devastated by my “no.”

Here was an illusion, my fantasy that i was torturing myself with. It wasn’t true. I realized I was projecting past instances in which I had devastated someone by a rejection into the present situation.

How cool I get to now get over this and get a more healthy view of what “No” means. At the same time, I don’t want to become like some people I know who take pleasure in “No” and rejecting people. I would have 17 days to find my happy medium in this live classroom of Cabo San Lucas, Mexico.

It became much easier to say no or just ignore the most aggressive people. It even became easier to say no to the children.

One of the challenges I gave myself was to figure out how to say “Yes” while saying “No”.

It was easier with the kids…it always is isn’t it.

My practice was to look at them deeply as the spiritual being that they are… lovingly with a smile and verbally say “No.” However, my challenge was to hold them in a spiritual place and say “Yes.” In a sense I was saying no and wrapping it in a great big “Yes” acknowledging them for who they really are.

While a bit more difficult with the adults…i decided to start with fun. I would say ” No Gracias” while waving my hands with the gestyre of “No” well before I even got close to them and they had started their presentation to me. This one really seemed to stop them and interrupt their pattern.

I also would say “Manana” (meaning tomorrow, or not today) before I even got to them…or when they would ask my to look at their wares. Most would just look at me with a blank stare, except the guys trying to sell fishing adventures, they wanted to sign me up tomorrow. Most folks wanted a sale now, the fishing guys were primed for tomorrow. Same with the golf and dinner cruise hawkers.

Next, I tried to say “Si” (Yes) to everyone, smile and keep walking. This confused them as well. I learned this one from a friend of mine years ago. Jerry would get all excited about what folks were trying to hawk him and act like he was going to buy and just keep walking. I never liked him doing it, and here I was trying it myself. I still didn’t like the effect.

I tried ignoring everyone. This worked well…but I was so inside myself in order to do this that I was missing my external world more than I liked. I could see how I could get used to it. I knew many narcissists and a few sociopaths who used this pattern most of the time. It is good to know I can do it and was glad to get back out of that pattern.

Ultimately I came around to a blend of all of them. My unconscious mind seemed to now have many choices on how to deal with it best with each individual. I grew beyond my one possible response, and I discovered the freedom of many responses for many situations.

Towards the end of my stay, I noticed that I was not getting approached as much anymore…not nearly the same. I wondered if it was because the recognized the same gringo playing different games with them each time they approached me and decided to give up.

Or maybe there was a different look I had that they recognized as someone who knew what they wanted and they decided to save their breath. I like to think this is the reason. I do think it is a bit of both.
I want to thank the people in Mexico for helping me to expand who I am and being able to say “No” and “Yes” in many new ways. It cleared something in me similar to what sales did for me.

Now i did buy stuff while there…and a few people had extraodinary way of getting into both Oh Be and myself to say “Yes” and buy when we wanted to say “No.”

I will talk about those lessons in Part two or “No Gracias”

I am not a guru, and I don’t want to be.

I am a teacher, and I am a healer.

It’s funny, many people will try to put me into the position of a guru, or even something else. When they do it, I am humbly thankful. Then I ask them to rearrange their thinking. Whenever I am in the position of guru, I shatter that image pretty quickly. I like being an iconoclast, for others, and for myself.

Over the years, I have had a bittersweet discovery. Most folks who believe too strongly in one thing are likely to swing back the other way when you least expect it.

The Blow Back of Change
I have had an experience recently when someone opened up to a new experience of the world, an experience full of love, hope, possibilities and miracles. The ho’oponopono experience can be pretty powerful when people begin to forgive others, and even more powerful when they start to forgive themselves.

Because I introduce people to that world, I experience a lot of their blow-back when the pendulum swings the other way. One day I will be the greatest person in their life, and then when the blow-back happens, which it inevitably will, I will be the target of their wrath. This is what Dr. Ihaleakala Hew Len calls “the Sh*t hitting the fan!”

In the field of persuasion, it is called oscillation. During oscillation, a person experiences wild swings back and forth, sometimes not so wild, and sometimes the swing takes a day, while other times it takes a year. But oscillation happens, trust me.

I think of myself as a pretty great teacher. I have a lot of fun watching my students and coaching clients understand concepts, and it is a privilege to sit with someone while they experience an opening. It moves me. It gives me hope in mankind. And it encourages me to learn and experience more about change and opening.

As far as a teacher, I consider myself quite adept. I will put myself at the top of the list of people in the world figuring out what blocks folks from moving forward. And I think I am just as good at helping them move forward and getting past those blocks. I have worked hard at learning this, and I have incredible passion every time I work with a client.

But that still doesn’t make me a guru.

Hypocrisy in Self Help
In the self help field, I have encountered an incredible amount of hypocrisy regarding this. Astounding amounts of hypocrisy. Staggering amounts, really.

The hypocrisy is not just in the leaders of the field. The hypocrisy exists also in their followers.

There are a lot of people who put on a beautiful, loving, kind face in public. They say just the right things to “trick” people into believing they are the guru. The secret to the trick is not that they persuade people, but they allow people to believe this and feed the belief. It’s rather hypnotic how it is done.

It is a fallibility of the ego, the old brain, not the new.

The possibility of being exposed as being merely human and not a magical guru after accepting the label is a fear worse than death in these gurus, or maybe a fear just worse than public speaking. People will protect that “good” label to the death.

And the funny thing is, that is the deception, right there. The only thing you will ever really need to really propel you in self-help. Don’t put it on, take it off right away if you have.

I know it feels good to be recognized, even revered. We wait for this experience all of our lives. Things we never heard from mom or dad, or from our bosses or friends, now there is this person who sees good in us.

The trap is in how you take it on. The release from the trap is true humility. Not the type of humility where you feel humiliated. No, I mean the type of humility where we surrender to something larger than ourselves.

The type where the woman who I helped open last month tells me that I should be different as a teacher of ho’oponopono. She stands superior and protected, telling me how I need to exist in her world and interpretation. Who put me there? Did I ask to be there? And what does her judgement say about her? Perhaps more than it says about me. I’m pretty happy with who I am.

And yes, I am an awesome teacher of ho’oponopono amongst many other things. I can help you understand it, use it, and become more open and receptive to it, especially the deeper elements.

But because I am often source of that experience, don’t then cancel it out because I said something that challenges your belief about what a person in my position should say or do.

Lynn Robinson from Vancouver was my coach when I was taking NLP Trainers Training back over a decade ago. She could see my conflict: I was a great teacher but didn’t think myself worthy of that title. She said I was combining the idea that I had to live up to a standard or ideal as a guru before I could teach.

This really resonated. She said, “Mark you are a wonderful teacher when you ‘share’ but not so great when you try to be perfect.” That was all I needed to hear. And it still works today.

It will work for you as well. I have seen it work for so many.

I am a human being doing the best I can to learn and teach these wonderful gifts God has given me. I also know that my ability to be a vessel to “SHARE” what I know with the tools I have learned with you is a Divine gift as well.

I am reminded often of the need for humility.

The greatest heart surgeon in the world cannot operate on his or her own heart. But if someone in my family needs a heart surgeon, I want him!

And I don’t care if he is fat. I don’t care what kind of food he ate for breakfast. I don’t care if he smokes a cigar once in a while. I don’t care if he has a drink after work. And I don’t care if he says some hurtful things, or even if I catch her swearing. And I don’t care what my neighbors or Facebook friends say about him.

If I need to, I will beg on my knees for his help if I need him.

You are the heart surgeon. And you are the one gossiping about them. And you are the one on your knees because you need his services.

What role are you playing? What are you willing to do to get over your judgements?

This is the real work…this is what it all comes down to in my work.

if you haven’t yet got the 6+ hours of teaching/sharing of the Z+ DVD’s you might want to check them out.

They are not just Ho’oponopono…and a matter of fact most of what is in there is what I have learned that works outside of Ho’oponopono. A lot of folks asked me if there was other things they could do with Ho’oponopono and I said yes, lots of things.

So I had a couple of friends film me, and I went to town sharing the best of what I know on these DVDs about what REALLY works. I have gained a lot of experiential knowledge from teaching thousands on stage and hundreds of clients throughout the years.

The woman I coached last month called me crying. She was 63 and has written many new age books and helped others write books that landed them on Oprah. She said nothing had come close to opening her up like the Subliminal Clearing DVDs did for her. She said they changed her life. She admitted that she had made it her secret goal to never be wrong, and to certainly never admit it, and to never say she was sorry. She said she didn’t know how I did it, but she decided to give it a try to play. And when she did, everything changed.

She said she had been praying to God for something…and when she got it, she knew this was her answer.

She – and I – also experienced blow back of the sh*it hitting the fan.

I am humbled by her story and experience. I feel like I was sharing…using the tools I have been given to be available to God for his will.

Why don’t you give it a try and see what happens?

And remember: I am here to share. I am not a Guru. I am human, and I promise I will disappoint you if you let me.

In my first introduction to ho’oponopono, the speech I heard put together a number of disparate puzzle pieces for me.

One intuitive puzzle piece said, “You are more than you think you are.”

Another said, “You need to be less than you think you are.”

For months, I couldn’t reconcile these two intuitions. How can I be more and less? And what does that mean?

Ho’oponopono opened my perspective. Through learning about the “zero state,” I realized that I am much, much more than who I thought I was. I have a vast reserve of capabilities, desires, hopes, and dreams. Some people call this God. Other people call it a higher self. Other people call it the universe.

To me, it feels more like a lifeline to a wider awareness. I don’t think there is line dividing me and All That Is. I am a part of the vast ocean of all that is, just like an ocean wave is a part of the ocean. But I am not the ocean, and the ocean is not the wave.

The intuition of being less than what I thought I was was telling me to let go of data. Let go of all of it. Everything that I believed about myself, everything that I thought was just how things were. This data is not something that we can recognize easily. We end up having unconscious assumptions about how things are. For me, I had many unconscious assumptions that busy = success. I inherited a lot of those beliefs from my very busy entrepreneurial parents. But as I started working with ho’oponopono and clearing data using great tools like Mark’s meditation videos in the Subliminal Manifestation: Attracting Wealth DVD, those unconscious patterns started unraveling.

I realized the dreams I had thought were going to make me happy weren’t making me happy as I accomplished them. Adorable mission style house in a beautiful suburb? Check. Fancy German sports car? Check. More clients than I could have ever dreamed about? Check. Money? Yep.

I had everything I could have ever hoped for, everything I could have ever wanted. And I was still chasing more.

But there was something whispering as intuition within me. Ho’oponopono helped me to open to those intuitions and open to happiness I could have never found on my own.

Some ho’oponopono teachers have explained how to use ho’oponopono to create wealth, cars, houses, even relationships.

But there’s something more important that ho’oponopono does, and that’s healing the relationship within you. When you begin to heal that relationship, when you start to let go to your intuition, to your heart, and to the deepest part of yourself, it opens doors to new avenues of creative consciousness that you simply cannot conceive of right now.

And I’m not saying I’ve found the keys to the kingdom. I just found keys to another room. I’m more than certain that I’m going to be exploring even more rooms, and they may be completely different than those you discover.

Our complexity and diversity is what keeps this place fun and exciting.

How to Use Ho’oponopono to Open Your Experience

Start with the mantra. Use the four statements: “I love you, Thank you, I’m sorry, Please forgive me.” These statements resonate your energy in a place where you can open and connect with the energy force that creates miracles in your experience.

Cultivate your awareness. Notice what’s different, and what’s the same. Even small events are messages of your experience. A butterfly landing on your arm can mean something. Two people telling you the same thing or using similar words. A person verbalizing something you had thought about. Notice the small things, and bigger things start to happen, too. The key is to cultivate your awareness. Once you start cultivating your awareness, you are given more and more significant messages.

Do something completely different. Take different ways home from work. Try new foods, especially those you said you’d never eat. Walk at a different time, take a different route. Start writing. Try painting. Play a guitar or the piano. Call someone you haven’t talked to in a long time. When the guy or girl who looks completely different than you’re “type” asks you on a date, say “yes.” When someone who holds your opposing political viewpoint says you’re wrong, agree with them and see things from their point of view.

Do something completely out of character. If you’re someone who always goes with the flow and says yes more than you should, say no. If you’re someone who finds certain belief systems offensive, pretend for a while that you believe those things. If you’re a vegetarian, eat meat. (I was actually vegetarian for 14 years.) If you’re a vehement meat eater, try going vegetarian.

The key to opening your experience for change is to keep seeking new experiences, new ways of being, new belief systems. Don’t shy away from conflict, opposing viewpoints, or things you’ve previously found offensive. Experience is most often the teacher, thinking and reading can spur the experiences, but they are not experiences in and of themselves.

The goal is to cultivate new experiences in order to experience something new.

If you’re not happy, if you’re doing everything you think you “should” and not following an internal compass that tells you what feels best, if you’re running your reactive patterns instead of choosing your experience, you’ve got to cultivate and reconnect yourself to that compass in order to shake things up and experience something different.

You think you know what you want. But something within you knows something else. And it’s just waiting for you to open to it.

It’s summer in Mount Shasta. Mark and I are working on new projects, but we’re also acutely aware that we’ve earned some time outside. We didn’t get much of a spring here. It snowed incessantly throughout March — totaling about 8 feet of accumulation — and rained and snowed most of April and May.

Yesterday, we spent time at Lake Siskiyou. The sky was as blue as you’d ever see it and the temperatures topped 90 degrees. We played with the kids and soaked up the sun.

As I sat on the banks of the lake listening to the motorboats going by, I closed my eyes and watched the light sparkles flash through my eyelids. It felt surreal. I joked to Mark that it was nature’s hypnotic subliminal video. I felt a quickening of connection and an opening of awareness. Those types of things happen when you’re in Shasta… not something I can really explain. You just have to come here and feel it.

My son has been studying the indigenous Indian populations, and I wondered if they had these feelings (without the motorboats) along the water ways here before modern toys came into play. Those cultures lived much more closely with nature and much more like how our ancestral selves lived.

I know that the experience of being in an enclosed space – even a stunningly beautiful home like I currently have – insulates us from the extraordinary beauty and inspiration of our world. It often leads us to feel cut off from nature, from abundance, and from our real selves.

We’re supposed to feel that beautiful inspired feeling more often than we do. It is our natural state.

That got me thinking about what other natural states of pure abundance we’re supposed to be feeling that we often do not in our modern world.

We’re supposed to feel immense love. Excitement. Happiness. Joy. Abundance of it all. We’re supposed to feel that most of the time. Sure, life has its stresses. We need stress in order to grow and expand our awareness. But your life is not supposed to be a trial of epic proportions. It’s just not. If it ever feels like it is, you’ve veered far away from your core self.

Mark’s meditations, especially the advanced ho’oponopono inner child meditation, are an excellent place to start reconnecting with that core self.

I have a personal goal of financial abundance that I’d like to see happen in the next few months. I don’t need it to happen, but I’d like to see it happen.

And as I sat meditating on that financial goal and ways to make that goal happen in this reality, I got a very strong inspired feeling. I’m sure you know that feeling, that feeling of knowingness that brings a physical feeling of openness and clarity. That feeling told me that I already have the goal, it has already happened. It exists in the here and now, I just see, hear, and feel it differently.

For example, you’ve heard of people who start to renovate their house and find something amazingly valuable behind the plaster in their living room, a discovery that grandma’s piece of furniture is worth thousands.

That energy is transmuted from a physical manifestation – such as a piece of furniture – into a symbolic manifestation. Sometimes you transmute your talent and expressive energy (e.g., songwriting) into symbolic manifestation of wealth.

All money is, all money will ever be, is a symbolic manifestation of what you believe you have and deserve.

If you don’t believe you have any money, you could sit on grandma’s coffee table for years and not transmute it into wealth. You could have the best songwriting skills on the planet and nothing every comes of it because you don’t believe you have what it takes.

There are myriad reasons why you may not transmute your wealth into its symbolic representation. There is no one right way to do it, no wrong way. Just tune into what you believe, clear limiting beliefs using any tool you can find, and begin to consciously tune yourself to a higher frequency of deservingness. Then, transmute what you’ve got into its natural symbolic representation of your beliefs.

I, of course, excitedly relayed my intuitions to Mark who thanked me for sharing what he already knew. He’s far down his own path of transmutation, and you’ll be excited to see the product he’s currently working on.

And now, I’m going to do some prep work for another trip down to the lake. I hear there are more messages waiting in the waves.

As a follow up to the intuitive guidance I wrote about the other day in surviving the shift, a model of understanding came to me that explains what is going on, and why so many people are feeling unbearable discontent right now.

The model is that of All That Is being the ocean, and we are individual waves. Each wave has a certain height, character and depth. But it is still a part of a larger whole.

We are all a part of All That Is, The Universe, God, a collective consciousness… whatever you want to call it. We are a part of this vast energetic pool of knowingness, and that knowingness seeks to experience life on earth through the individual experiences of each of us. The question of who am “I” and what is that knowingness isn’t important. Just knowing that you are you, and that there is a deeper part of yourself that is connected to a deeper part of All That Is.

It is within that deeper part of yourself that your larger knowing exists. When you relax, meditate, dream, you go into that deeper part of self that knows much more than you do about what is going on.

The deeper part knows your patterns, the things that block you consciously and unconsciously. The deeper part isn’t concerned with politics, healthcare, bankers, environmental disasters, having more money, the annoying co-worker, the current problem of the day, having a better car, or lifestyles of the rich and famous.

It isn’t that the deeper part doesn’t care about the environment, disasters, or the inequality in the world. The deeper part of you feels compassion, care, and love in such situations instead of anger, despair, or outrage. Ho’oponopono is only one of the ways that you can help yourself to get to the deeper part of yourself to feel these things. There are many other modalities that work, too, such as reiki and meditation. Walking through the woods, being in nature, these things help me open to that deeper part of myself as well.

There is a lot of anger, despair, and outrage in the world right now. There are even people feeling anger, despair and outrage that other people are feeling angry, despondent and outraged! I have to admit, I join in on some of those feelings sometimes. We’re human. It is our nature to explore all parts of our existence, from the shallows to the depths.

At those times, it is like I am further into the wave and further away from the ocean. I am more “out on a limb” and riding the wave of the current weather and situation that feels most important. Sometimes there is a reason to go out on the wave for a ride. We are manifest so that we can experience, and learning to travel the various depths and shallows of experience is a part of that life experience as a human. Depth is no better or worse than shallow.

But you can’t stay on the edge of the wave for long, especially during the storms. During the storms (like now), the propensity for seasickness and discombobulation on the edge of the wave will thrash you emotionally and make life difficult. You have to know how to find the depth again to recharge if you want to play on the waves again.

In the depth, there is knowing. There is peace, love, compassion, and joyfulness. You can look at the waves happening, but not be carried away by them. You can look at some of the most egregious actions and not be overwhelmed by them.

Mark has taught me, more than any other person, how to travel the length of the wave. It’s the reason why so many people from all walks of life come to him for incredible coaching experiences; they want to learn how to ride the wave from top to bottom and get the most out of life experience.

I can go shallow and dance on the waves, or I can go deep and feel the peace and knowingness. Living in Mount Shasta has accelerated my finding the depth within myself. I’m amazed at times at how deep it goes, and I’m certain I haven’t explored the full spectrum of who I am in that paradigm. I’m sure I can go deeper. And through being here, I am pretty sure that acceleration of exploration is going to continue.

This could have never happened in Texas. The environment there was not personally conducive to my depth.

Last night, I played with some shallow emotions. And even during a relatively unpretty emotional state, my deeper self was still communicating with me. I was still receiving intuitive guidance even though I was angry and wanting to punch someone. That, to me, felt like progress. And, I was able to recover from anger quickly, express it exactly how I wanted to, and reconnect deeper when I was done.

These situations come up for me, just like they do for you. But the resolution is accelerated. A year ago, an upset might have lasted a whole day. Now, I’m surprised if it lasts for more than an hour. And my learning from these experiences happen much, much faster. Clearing, breakthrough… the other side of pattern transcendence is incredibly freeing.

Overall, I think there is a move away from playing at the shallow end of self. I’m sensing that each of us are realizing that our greater power is in the collective whole rather than the individuation of ego. Connection to each other and all that is has a lot more power than egocentric pursuits. And those who pursue the gratification of ego are seen for who and what they are. They may win at certain games, but the wins are shallow and lonely, and their time will end sooner than you think.

I am sensing that each of us are getting signals to go deeper, to discover who we really are, and the path is within each of us. Your signal may be a thought to go do something that nurtures you (a pull towards something), or it may be that you are so sick and tired of hearing about “xyz” in the news media that you turn it off and spend some time alone with yourself (a push away from something). Whether you’re sensing a push or a pull, something is telling you to go deeper. That something is really your own self, inviting you to open up to the depth and connections within you.

We’ll get to a tipping point eventually, when enough of us begin to explore those depths and open up to our greater knowingness and intuitive guidance. What happens then will be very interesting. We can’t go deeper without affecting everyone else, as they are a part of us. The more we can play with the depths of our own consciousness, the more we can help others do so themselves just by the very nature of our own exploration… ripples in the greater ocean of all that we are.

“Why, sometimes I’ve believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.” -Queen Of Hearts.

I like to play with beliefs… my own and other people’s.

Even though my Kathy asks me to have more discretion, to me, Facebook is a huge playground.

After I post some things, I wonder how many people with unfriend me because they get ticked off… or how many people will play.

Recently I have been having a bit of fun with people over the authenticity of President Obama’s Birth Certificate.

While I have my own beliefs on what is happening, I am not stuck on those beliefs. I like to go from what I think I believe to what I don’t believe or don’t even want to believe.

Why?

Because it reveals how I believe what I believe… to myself.

Why is that important? Because it can show me how I might be blocking data based on a belief.

Let me go down the rabbit hole a bit with some examples that will hopefully let you see how important — and how powerful — this can be for you.

One of my biggest learning experiences came at a seminar I was at over 15 years ago. I was doing some therapy to a lady who was a former Nun. We were working on values and beliefs. And I couldn’t make any problems with this woman. As she stated her beliefs, I asked her if it was like X or Y…and she said, “No, it what I said it is.” I would ask, “so it is like Z?” And she would say “NO” is it exactly as I said it was.

What was happening was I was trying to make her reality fit within my reality so I could understand it. When I asked the seminar teacher what I could do, he said to me that I should maybe just go with what she said even though I didn’t understand. He further said that the process didn’t require my understanding to make it work.

I thought this was impossible, I thought I had to understand first. In essence, I was not learning anything new if I kept within my model. So I kept on with the process even though I didn’t understand her model, and she had a wonderful healing from it.

After the process was over and she got incredible movement, I, too, had a major shift and that shift then helped me to see (understand) what I was looking for earlier from her.

I had to go past my comfort zone of what I believed was possible for me, and I had to keep giving to this woman even though I didn’t understand her beliefs.

This may seem easy enough to do — but trust me — it is impossible when you are at the edge of your safe and familiar zone of beliefs. You enter into the “Twighlight Zone” of beliefs where anything can and will happen.

If you are committed to being right, you will find it impossible.

But if you will allow yourself the possibility of being wrong, it becomes possible.

With the former nun, I was absolutely right in wanting to know what I wanted to know and I could defend it like a top notch lawyer.

Was I going to be able to help this woman if I walked away in my right-ness? Would I maybe learn something new that might make me a better therapist and person? Could I set aside my beliefs and adopt hers? Could I make her right?

When I did move ahead I experienced a wonderful feeling, one quite different from what my fear of being wrong was telling me I would feel. I felt a release from the weight of wanting to be right, and with this release came a peace and a compassion. I could now use this compassion – and I did – to facilitate healing with this woman.

This new feeling and the new Data that came with it showed me what part of me I had been missing. It wasn’t what my fear had promised, in fact it was the exact opposite. A huge lesson that would now make it a bit easier next time to say yes to believing the impossible.

A wife of a famous coach once said to Kathy that she had no idea why her husband did coaching and charged so much for it because he wasn’t good at it at all, and he didn’t like doing it.

What I can tell you about this man was I believed what his wife had said. The reason I think was the case was that he didn’t like it when his beliefs were challenged. As a matter of fact, he hated it and would fight like a pit bull to be right while pretending to to be nice to people. He obviously had not learned what I did with the former nun, and not knowing this was holding him back.

It has also made him lose quite a bit in his life. But at least he’s still right.

The funny thing is that when I do coaching I can do both now. I can hold onto my beliefs and totally accept and adopt those of others when doing the work. If you have changed enough of your own personal beliefs over time, the idea of any belief you hold dear changing doesn’t carry the weight it once did and doesn’t require effort to defend it.

In fact, I will look for counter information that challenges them, and believe it. I always get new data that is useful whether I return to the belief or expand it to something new.

To me what makes a good coach or salesperson or businessperson is your ability to understand your customer and even more powerful is to be able acknowledge their beliefs without judgment. People feel this and trust you. They don’t necessarily need to know you hold the same belief…they just need to know you get it without judging them.

In a recent Andrew Austin seminar in Boulder, Colorado, Andrew said over and over again that (and I am paraphrasing here) one of the biggest keys in helping people was to take people literally when they talk. Like the former nun wanted me to do.

The guy that is the coach couldn’t do that because he was too worried about protecting his own truth than the people he is coaching, and it comes through to people and even his wife. People know he really doesn’t know what they are experiencing so they close down. A missed opportunity. For both the coach and the customer.

There is a book I recommend you read called “Improv.” It comes highly recommended from a lot of different folks. The premise as I see it (though I am willing to see it differently) is to say “Yes.” So if one of your fellow improvasationalists starts to do something silly, you don’t say no and do something else. You say, “Yes, and…” and you go along with what they are doing… past whatever you feel or believe about what they are doing. You have to say “Yes, and…” and you have to go right past your own beliefs and as you are falling in the land of the unknown and you keep saying “Yes, and…” Magical things happen in this space. People get entertained and laugh. You have to go past your resistance, you have to go past what doesn’t feel “right,” go past what you don’t want, and the moment people sense you past your resistant no, they love it.

Can you get past your “Resistant No?” Can you find your creative opening in “yes, and…?”

Kathy tells me that in Chicago, the famous creative comedy group Second City is brought into corporate settings to teach executives the power of “yes, and…” so that executives can find the place within them where new opportunities exist.

Recently, I spoke at a professional seminar. It was one of the few seminars in which I attended wearing a suit and tie. I started to play with this concept at this seminar. I thought the person hosting the seminar might come unglued, but it was an interesting experiment. I asked the people at the seminar whether or not we really went to the moon. I told folks there were plenty of pictures on the NASA web site that look odd, and make me wonder. There are pictures of the lunar module in different places without tire tracks to get it there, and then pictures of tire tracks but the module still on the lander. The seminar leader interrupted me, begging me to please tell people we went to the moon, please!

You see, he was saying NO before I was complete with the presentation, or even wondering where I might be going with it.

I actually found it humorous.

But here’s the point: if you start to believe that we didn’t actually go to the moon, you start to hear a voice in your head that gives you all of the objections of why this is not true. You start to feel that feeling… your WHOLE SYSTEM might be upset. But you will see the place where you are resistant. And you’ll see, hear, and feel the markers you need to come to terms with before you can make changes in other areas of your life.

Like the areas of your life where you are blocking wealth, love, happiness, health, productivity and all of that good stuff that seems to be just beyond your experience.

Yes. The same voice that tells you that you it is crazy… we definitely went to the moon for sure… this is the same resistant voice that tells you that you can’t lose weight, you can’t write a book, you can’t get up and speak in front of people. It’s the same voice that reminds you not to be too vulnerable in telling someone how much you really love them.

I want to know what keeps me from growing in greater experiences. what inside of me stops me saying “this is impossible.”

If I can discover the voice that stops me, or you, I can begin to get you past “impossible” for you, too.

The “cupcake monster” is very real at the moment for my almost-3-year old daughter. I can make fun of it, or I can get her to see the reality of it. Or I can connect with her and show her that our relationship is more important than whether or not I think the cupcake monster is real. If it is real to my daughter, then it is real to me. I want to know everything about this cupcake monster without judging her for it. I want to let her know that I have skills that can help her overcome the monster, if she wants, or help her build her own skills, or I can do nothing more than show her that at I care about what she thinks and feels.

I don’t know how many times at a certain point of asking her questions about the cupcake monster (it was spooky scary skeletons in the past), she will smile and come over and tell me she loves me.

We have been through many monsters together. Monsters that might still be in her 30-40 years later hidden away causing unwanted behaviors like they might be in you or me now.

Sometimes when I do work with people…the same thing happens. People will grow right out of their issue from 40 years ago because they have found someone who acknowledges their beliefs without judging and is curious enough to find out a bit more about their cupcake monster.

Go past your “No” to a different “know.”

You have so many gifts waiting for you…and you can always come back.

By the way, did you know Obama’s new birth certificate is a fake?

Here’s a clip from the successful Subliminal Clearing DVD, Z+ Advanced Ho’oponopono. In it, I discuss the concept of the inner child.

Hey everyone, Kathy here.

Mark is actually working a seminar this week, and he’s speaking at Kevin Hogan’s Boot Camp the week after that. But I couldn’t wait to tell you about this.

Mark did a teleseminar for free last week with Dr. John Burton about Dr. Burton’s new paradigm of healing called The Sacred Sequence. I finally got a chance to sit down and listen to the call, and I was really blown away.

You can get the call here.

Mark and I have both done sessions with Dr. Burton. He’s really quite talented and brilliant in how he works.

He’s incredibly intuitive, and if you have worked on your intuitive abilities whatsoever, it really is an incredible experience. From my own experience, it felt as if Dr. Burton was working with my own Higher Self and the imagery it wanted to use in communicating with me.

I still use the symbols and imagery uncovered during my sessions with him.

If you want to learn more about how Dr. Burton works, listen to that teleseminar. And if you do any healing work whatsoever, The Sacred Sequence is the perfect complement to any and all therapy.

I’ve had some people ask…

How does the Sacred Sequence relate to ho’oponopono?

Can Sacred Sequence be used for manifesting?

If you do any manifestation work to affect your reality, The Sacred Sequence is crucial to getting results FAST.

Let’s face it. We, as Spiritual Beings having physical experiences, came here for a reason. Deep within us, we carry a desire for experience, a desire to know from an experiential perspective. We want to LIVE! We want to EXPERIENCE!

And we want to live and experience fully.

We have these blocks that we carry in our unconscious… Dr. Hew Len calls it data, others call it programming, or patterns. These patterns often take a hold of us and capture our attention, often causing us – and others – great stress and anxiety.

How do you know when data is causing you problems?

According to Dr. Burton, whenever you have that experience of wondering “why does this keep happening to me?” — it means there is some pattern getting in the way. The stress and pain you feel is your message to do something about it.

We can use ho’oponopono to get to a place of peace. We can HOPE that the unique perspective from the Zero State allows us to clear the data in the way. We don’t really don’t have to look at the data. There is no requirement for healing that the data needs to be analyzed…

But there is immense power in the experience.

There is always great power in experience.

You can tell your children one thousand times not to touch the stove… but the experience of touching the stove is a lesson you never have to repeat.

What would the experience of removing that block that you now have teach you?

What does your life look like with that block gone?

The Sacred Sequence is the methodology of healing that gets you to that place.

Go ahead. You’ve got nothing to lose from listening to the teleseminar. You have everything to gain.

But after listening to it, you’ll know within you that there is an experience waiting for you… an experience of growth and change that only comes from transcending the traumas and limited belief systems of your primitive brain.

That experience WILL come to you. It might come to you in your marriage, in a relationship with a parent or child, or with a co-worker or boss or client.

That experience of freedom is waiting for you to open to it.

And frankly, the quickest and easiest method of removing that block is to look at it, experience it, and experience your power over it.

Edit: The next Sacred Sequence event will take place in the fall 2011. If you want to get more information when the event is ready for registration, watch this blog or download the teleseminar and give us your email!

Dr. John Burton, along with Mark J. Ryan, can show you how. On April 9-10 in Atlanta, GA, you can experience that freedom.

And that experience of removing the block will transform you into a magical manifesting machine… an emotional shape shifter.

I’ve done it. I’ve been there on a number of issues. When the blocks are removed, Spirit moves in and plays with you. Spirit asks you to dance and enjoy. It is something that happens that is BEYOND gratitude. It is beyond forgiveness. And it is beyond an apology.

It is pure love, joy, and it is magical.

Gratitude doesn’t even equate… it is purely and simply the most profound experience of love that you’ll ever feel.

The Sacred Sequence will get you there. Quickly.

Mark and Dr. Burton are keeping seminar attendance limited to a few people. If you sign up soon, you’ll get the early bird discount.

If you have ever glimpsed what is in that place of One Truth for you, you’ll know that you deserve to experience this. (We all do.)

It’s just a matter of time before we all experience it… and it will happen sooner for some than others.

How soon will it happen for you?

Kathy

P. S. The sooner you sign up for this seminar, the sooner you will begin to feel things shift in you.

It is almost as if Spirit starts moving ahead of time as soon as you align with the decision to heal the blocks that keep you from One Truth.

In the days before the event, it begins to shift. Events, memories, ideas, impressions, intuitions, they all begin to line up.

Once you decide to claim your birthright, your higher self and Spirit begin to align with the healing God desires for you.

Don’t believe me? Try it.

One year ago, we pulled two trucks into Mount Shasta and began unloading. A year later, a lot has changed… all for the better. Sometimes you really do need a change of scenery and location in order to make mindset changes easier and more productive.

Texas was good for us on a number of levels. The schools in Dripping Springs, where we lived, were phenomenally good for our son, Max.

But when we visited Mount Shasta in August of 2009, a few weeks before Mark took his trip to Russia to speak in Moscow and Novosibirsk to over 1,000 people, I had a very strong intuitive hit that Shasta was a place where we could more easily take care of ourselves. Actually, it was less of an intuitive hit and more like a giant sucker punch. Upon our return to Texas, it became like a siren going off inside of me that I couldn’t remain there long term. It took a few even more painful reminders after Mark returned from Russia for us to fully get that we really needed to take care of ourselves… and that we needed to move to a place that was a salve to our souls.

Spirit moved swiftly to open up an incredibly beautiful landing place in a neighborhood full of spiritually aware, heart-centered people… and healing animals. (One day I’ll write about our neighbor’s dog who has an amazing gift of opening heart energy… its really neat to watch and play with that dynamic.)

When we moved in here one year ago, I knew that we’d have about a year in this house. I allowed myself to relax into that knowledge. As time went on, I fell more and more in love with the place, the people, the environment, and the experience. Yet, something within me knew it wasn’t a forever home. I felt anxiety as I fell deeper in love with my life experience here knowing that it would eventually change.

But I was encouraged to open up and enjoy it as if it was going to last forever, even with the temptation to not fully enjoy it because I knew it wasn’t permanent. How do you fall in love with something that you know is temporary? The temptation is to focus more on what might be next rather than fall in love with the experience of the here and now was overpowering.

But there’s something very powerful in that overpowering experience, powerful in knowing that everything that is here in your experience is very temporary. This is true, no matter what your experience… everything is temporary. You might own your home outright, have the perfect career and a big pile of money, but it could all end in an instant and it certainly cannot “go with you” so to speak. This entire experience on earth is very temporary in the grand scheme of things.

To allow yourself to fall in love with that temporary experience is to allow yourself to fall in love with the permanent experience of being in love with life. Resisting loving something because it won’t last forever is resistance of love itself.

In realizing that and loving it with all of my heart anyway, I discovered a power of creative experience that opened me to another awareness and another experience of life that is deeper and more fulfilling than where I was previously.

Life as a Tree
I have done a meditation on my daily walks to my favorite meadow, imagining that I was as grounded and rooted in the earth as the great evergreen trees that surrounded me. I imagined that this was my permanent home, that I would live here for hundreds of years without ever losing my leaves, that great nutrients of life giving abundance were constantly flowing to my roots. I imagined my roots drilling deeper into the earth while I reached higher for the sunlight, swaying gently in the winds that came my way.

This meditation was incredibly powerful in allowing myself to ground into my environment and allowing myself to fall in love with it. I could sense that the beautiful trees that surrounded me had a consciousness of their own, not exactly like my own, but that the energy of growth and being alive is akin to a joy, a dancing, a concerto of experience.

The wind whispering between their branches and leaves was their song and dance, and that there was a playfulness to their existence… a playfulness of awareness that this serious business of being grown up had led me to forget.

Where We Are
Yes, Mount Shasta has been very good to me, very good to us, and 2010 has been a wonderful year of reconnection to Spirit and playfulness that we didn’t feel in Texas.

Of course, you don’t need to move or even visit a different place to get this feeling. You can get it where you are right now, but sometimes an external impetus as reminder works quicker and faster, and sometimes we are so tapped out that we cannot tap back in to feel it. From my own experience, I would highly encourage you to do what you need to do in order to find that reconnection to Spirit within yourself and your environment.

2010 has been a wonderful year of tremendous input into both of our spiritual growth. I can sense that 2011 is going to be a tremendous year of output from that reconnection. The energy that is flowing from us may resonate with your path, too. And there will be plenty of available experiences for you to discover if that is true.

Mark will be speaking at a number of seminars in the next few months, which excites me and inspires me. He’s also promised to start podcasting again and even videocasting, which we’ll launch in the next few weeks.

I myself hope to be writing more in 2011, some of that will end up here, too.

Mark has an amazing voice and presence that I – and many others – find to be incredibly connecting and inspiring. Coupled with his knowledge of all things relating to consciousness and personal development, well, I may be biased, but part of the reason I became interested in him and his work was watching him speak over 4 years ago. I am thrilled that more people will be able to experience what I did then. Mark is a tremendous speaker with much to share… 2011 will be a year of breakthroughs for many.

Here’s a toast to your own personal breakthroughs in 2011 so that you can allow a life experience of pure joy and happiness to expand your experience beyond your wildest dreams.

- Kathy