By Ilona Selke

At dinner one night in Ubud, an artist town in Bali, it turned out that the person sitting next to me had worked in the early years with Harry Palmer of Avatar to help “put him on the map.” He was older now, and had accumulated a sizable amount of wisdom, which was shining through his eyes.

I couldn’t help but ask, “What is the quintessence of your life’s studies? If you were to put it into one sentence, what would it be?” He liked my questions, so he was kind enough to answer. He said, “It is our ability to choose! It is the power of choice!”

He explained that, at any moment, we can stand back and choose which way we wish to respond, or feel, or focus on what we really want. Something tingled in me. A good cosmic coincidence arrangement was going on here!

The power of choice.

He hit the nail on the head! In fact, that was the name of the magical personal growth course developed by Dr. Rod Newton, for which I had been invited to take over international marketing. We’ve been teaching the course worldwide since 1990, calling it the Living From Vision (LFV) course. Many graduates from LFV have told us the same thing: the training to choose and to refocus their vision amidst adversity has helped them realize that we live in a dreaming universe.

I am reminded of one graduate in particular who had studied under a couple of Indian gurus with intense fervor before he began studying Living From Vision. He told me that one of the most valuable life tools he had ever received was the STOP-LOOK-CHOOSE method LFV teaches. Here’s how it works.

When you find yourself in any situation you don’t agree with…

1. Step Back: In your mind, transport yourself to a serene, peaceful place such as a beautiful beach. Really see yourself there and allow all anxiety to leave your body until you feel completely at ease.

2. Take a Look: Observe the problem area while remaining completely outside of it in this peaceful place. As you begin to get an overview of the situation, you feel even more relaxed.

3. Define Your Goal: Take the position of being the director of your life’s film. Refocus on what you really want. Describe your goal clearly.

4. Imagine and Feel Your Success: Allow yourself to feel exactly what it is you really want as if it has already happened. Use all of your senses and imagine yourself experiencing the sensations that go along with your goal. Hold the vision of your success until you can feel it with 100% certainty all the way to your core.

5. Let Go: Let go and let the universe rearrange itself for the highest good of all concerned.

This technique allows you to actually step out of the “movie,” the drama, the story. As you make space for a new awareness to come in, you realize that this movie unfolding around you is affected by (yet separate from) the light that brings the scene to life. From there, you can refocus on what you really want, make a choice, then re-enter your life movie. The changes will be noticeable. I love to practice this over and over when faced with anything that is less than beautiful.

When you are able to pull out of a negative or less-than-satisfying situation, you exercise a very important aspect of your being. By becoming aware, we take one of the most important steps in our spiritual evolution. First and foremost, you are the essence of awareness itself. Outer reality is secondary to that awareness; it responds to that awareness. You have the power to change your inner movie script. Once you have mastered stopping the movie and stepping out, it will become easier and easier to choose in your mind, heart, and soul what you really want.

Practice daily how to focus on what you want and manifest it. (This free app can help.) In doing so, you will unify the left and right hemispheres of your brain and begin to access higher levels of consciousness. Merging the two halves of our brain results in a singularity from which we can co-create a new reality.

Refocus. Imagine a better outcome. Then reassemble a new reality. The secret ingredient that is vital to your success is embodying the feeling of your ideal outcome as though it has already happened. As always, “practice makes perfect.” Awareness can accomplish miracles. It is the hidden power of the unseen universe. It is what quantum physics is trying to describe.

In the beginning of any practice, start with small goals.  With time, practice, and in cases of true need, you will learn to shift larger aspects of your life to express more harmony, more beauty, and more fulfillment. Much like yogis are able to create miraculous manifestations, healings, etc., you can co-create an ever more beautiful reality simply by using focus and the power of choice.

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About the Author: Ilona Selke is an international bestselling author, seminar leader, lecturer, musician and CEO/cofounder of Living from Vision. Over 30+ years, Ilona has inspired thousands of people worldwide to discover the power of their consciousness and create a successful life. Her new book “Dream Big: The Universe Is Listening” offers real-life stories of transformation as well as practical tips anyone can use to shapeshift their lives from the inside out. For more information, visit www.IlonaSelke.com and www.LivingFromVision.com.

An excerpt from Reclaiming Your Body by Suzanne Scurlock-Durana

While the English language frequently refers to what our bodies know — “gut feelings,” hearts “reaching out” to others, etc. — many of us have learned to ignore, deny, or even mistrust our body’s inherent wisdom. Even worse, a lot of people don’t like their bodies very much at all.

As a result, we often cut ourselves off from one of our greatest allies. In Reclaiming Your Body: Healing from Trauma and Awakening to Your Body’s, author Suzanne Scurlock-Durana provides the tools and guidance necessary to reconnect with our body’s inner guidance system of sensation, imagery, and inner knowing. Her book includes chapters for each main “wisdom area” of the body — the heart, gut, pelvis, legs and feet, bones, and brain — and explores each area’s unique roles in the process of developing full-body presence.

We hope you’ll enjoy this short excerpt, which speaks to the wisdom of the heart.

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The heart is the wellspring of our inspiration for life. The characteristic wisdom of the heart is in how it inspires us to live more deeply and fully and to create from our gifts. The energy of love resides throughout the entire body. It is the foundational energy upon which our creative inspirations are born.

Although the energy field of the heart has been proven to be quite powerful, in our culture today the voice of the heart is often muted or ignored altogether. When our heart’s intelligence isn’t activated, we can easily feel confused, or we may listen only to the voice of the head telling us what we should do. The inspiration of our deepest heart’s knowing is then lost to us.

There is a distinct feeling when we drop into our heart and let it open up. When we share from our heart, there is an authenticity and vulnerability that create a feeling of connection and intimacy if the listener is open and receptive.

There is also a distinct feeling when we are not connected to our heart. This could manifest as “coldheartedness,” which might be experienced as a chill in the room or a conversation killer, and it will create a block to genuine intimacy.

Another feeling occurs when we are in our heart in an overly sympathetic manner. These kinds of interchanges often feel cloying, sometimes suffocating, and frequently invasive.

Yet another experience occurs when our heart resonates with another person’s heart. A warmth in meeting, ease of connection, feeling deeply seen and heard — these are the empathetic connections that may become lifelong relationships or enduring imprints on our heart.

What is the quality of energy that our hearts generate? The heart expresses warmth, compassion, forgiveness, empathy, loving-kindness, and most of all inspiration. A full-hearted person is a happy person.

In Chinese medicine, the element of the heart is fire, and there is a distinct sensation when this element is balanced. We feel excited, creative, and “on fire” for life. The heart is the birthplace of our deepest inspirations, so when it has been suppressed or exhausted, we may have a flat, muted experience. Burnout approaches when our creative fire has gone out.

Priming the Deep Well of the Heart

The heart is the home of compassion. When I work with someone in the helping professions, especially healthcare providers, their genuine concern for others is apparent. Their warmth and caring is frequently the original inspiration that moved them toward their profession.

However, when I sit with them long enough, I often discover that they are much better at giving than receiving. The front of a caregiver’s heart — the part that they radiate love from — feels warm and wide open.

However, often they have much less awareness of the back of their heart, the heart space of self-love and nurturing. I think of this as the deep well that feeds the rest of the heart. Like any well, when it is not primed and replenished, it runs dry and burnout starts to take hold. The front of the heart — the part shared with the world — needs connection to the deeper well of the heart in order to survive and thrive.

This means self-care is mandatory, not optional. The airlines truly do have it right. You must “put your own oxygen mask on first” before helping those in need around you. What the flight attendant doesn’t say is that if you fail to care for yourself first, unconsciousness or even death may result. Yet many of us have been taught to ignore our own needs as we focus on caring for those around us. This is a sure recipe for disaster. Now is the time to turn this paradigm around and treat our own heart as a primary resource that is to be treasured and deeply valued.

The heart is the home of our deepest inspiration and the well of our love for life. Having respect for the wisdom of the heart and living from its rich depths is essential.

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Suzanne Scurlock-Durana, is the author of Reclaiming Your Body and Full Body Presence. Her Healing from the Core curriculum combined with CranioSacral therapy and other bodywork modalities creates a complete, body-centered guide to awareness, healing, and joy. She teaches around the world and lives in Reston, Virginia. Visit her online at www.healingfromthecore.com.

Excerpted from the book Reclaiming Your Body: Healing from Trauma and Awakening to Your Body’s Wisdom. Copyright ©2017 by Suzanne Scurlock-Durana. Printed with permission from New World Library — www.newworldlibrary.com.

Excerpted from The Book of Truth by Paul Selig with the permission of TarcherPerigee, an imprint of Penguin Random House. Copyright © 2017 by Paul Selig.

Now, we will say this for you. Some things are required. You hold yourself in a body, you are required to care for the body, you have a livelihood at this time because you’ve agreed to a world that operates in commerce. As you bypass the systems of control or agreed upon ways of exchange, you actually call higher ways into manifestation. At this juncture, we will say, few of you are prepared to release the life that you’ve claimed in worry or in expectation to what might be born as you and for you in a higher way.

Here we go:

“On this day I choose to release myself from all expectations of how things should be, or what they should look like as perceived by the small self. And in this claim of freedom, I realize myself as the one who is independent from the foils and beliefs of collective agreement that would seek to hinder me from my true expression as my True Self. I know who I am in truth. I know what I am in truth. I know how I serve in truth. I am here. I am here. I am here.”

This is a claim that is made by you to re-create the self outside a fixed agenda or outside of the perceptions that you are holding in investment because you cannot imagine yourself without being realized in certain ways. Even the identity you hold that was prescribed by you as who you should be seeks to impale you in a series of ways upon the intractability of physical manifestation.

What this means is that if your belief that your progress is dependent upon anything in form, you are using that thing to justify and claim you in a small way. It can be anything, you see. “When I have the perfect marriage, or the perfect employment, the perfect practice, the perfect insight, the perfect realization, I will be here as I truly am. But until that moment, I will wait and claim this thing as what I require to be free.”

The only requirement for freedom is realization of what you are, because the moment this is understood, all ties and tethers to what was created for you or by you to be in agreement to a system of control is leaving, is gone, is eradicated in truth.

Now we come back to the idea of truth for one reason only. The systems of control that we speak of, or the ways that you would seek to realize yourself through external manifestations, are never in truth. And we will tell you why. All that is in truth is present now in this very moment, in the eternal now that you have encountered in the reading of this text and through the alignment to the what that you are. The Divine Self operates as what you are in the eternal now. And anything that is not present as you is simply an idea of what is required to call you forward.

Now, this is confusing for Paul. “But there are things we need, and we call them into being. We require food, we go to the market. Don’t tell me my needs are met now if I have an empty kitchen.”

We are telling you something very different. The idea of expectation as something to strive to, or claim for, or bring yourself as in consort to at the cost of the present moment you stand in, is what is being addressed. The infinite now is always here. It is here as you, as you walk to the market, as you prepare your meal. But the justification of what you should be as predicated on some future event—“when I am this or that, have claimed this or that”—is never true because your realization only happens in the moment you stand in.

The path to enlightenment, if you wish to use that term, is always now because enlightenment is now and not on some prescribed date at some other point in time. Until you all understand that what you have done so far is prepare the way for manifestation that is already present as what you are, you will be confused by this. In a higher octave, the Divine as you is fully present, and the realization of this and the knowing of this is the creation of what you are in manifested form. You are not becoming what you are not, you are claiming what you are. And as you come to be at this alignment, in this awareness, the release of the lies that you have given credence to will claim you in freedom.

Guest post by Bahriye Goren-Gulek

What is it about certain individuals that inspire not only themselves but also the people around them? In her recent book, Be: Become Your True Self, And Inspire Those Around You, author and branding expert Bahriye Goren-Gulek explores that certain sense of being that comes with deeper levels of awareness — which ultimately turns ordinary leaders into inspiring leaders.

Her book highlights eight concepts that readers can use to help them on the path to reaching deeper levels of awareness. Each chapter ends with an interview with a leading business professional who, according to the author, has learned how to bring that specific concept to life. Below, the author has shared an excerpt from Chapter 1, titled “Intuition.”

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The stories we tell ourselves:

As human beings we are known to be notorious storytellers. Our whole life experience is based on the stories we tell ourselves. Think about it. Isn’t every experience you recall a personal commentary, a thought, a perception, even an interpretation of occurrences? Two people can attend the exact same concert yet have two completely different thoughts about it and, as a result, two totally different stories to tell afterwards. You probably describe the last company outing very differently than some of your colleagues or team members might describe it. And what happens when we add the opinions and expectations of people around us to our own thoughts? The mixture of all these thoughts and opinions becomes our story and description of who we are, or who we think we are. Our thoughts create our stories, which in turn create our life – or rather, it creates how we experience our life.

In essence, our characters and personalities are a result of the stories we create about ourselves, as well as the people that influence us, especially at a younger age. I don’t want to go too deeply into this as it could be a topic for a separate book, but the ancient Chinese philosopher Lao Tzu summed it up perfectly when he wrote: “Watch your thoughts; they become words. Watch your words; they become actions. Watch your actions; they become habits. Watch your habits; they become character. Watch your character; it becomes your destiny.”

The thoughts and words Lao Tzu refers to are literally the stories we tell ourselves and others, over and over again. So then, how exactly does this relate to intuition? In essence: our fears and desires are a direct result of the stories we tell ourselves, and in turn these stories reinforce our fears and desires, and the vicious cycle begins. As a child, you weren’t scared to speak your mind. And yet, over time, you got conditioned to sometimes bite your tongue. You might have been humiliated (or felt humiliated) when you spoke up and people reacted adversely, so the story you told yourself was that when you speak up in certain situations, you get ‘punished’, which turned you somewhat introverted. As David Lynch (director and screenwriter) pointed out so eloquently: “We think we understand the rules when we become adults but what we really experience is a narrowing of the imagination.”

This same principle applies to the workplace. I’ve worked in environments where people are governed by fear. And guess what? Most likely, the leaders in those workplaces have many fears within themselves. We all know the insecure overachiever profile. I was even recruited by one of my first employers because I was one of them. But when an insecure overachiever gets to be in charge, they will demand the same work ethic from the people who work for them. I can guarantee you fear is never the best adviser.

The first time I became a leader, I wasn’t leading with awareness at all, and it was reflected in how my team was operating. I didn’t realize a lot of my words and actions were driven by my own insecurities, and it resulted in my team behaving in the same way. Fear makes people shut down, and nothing is more detrimental to creativity than fear. The point here is clear: people around us mirror who we are and what we radiate. If we are mindful and at peace, the people we lead will become more mindful and more at peace. Professor Mark Beeman, who specializes in cognitive neuroscience at Northwestern University, has conducted one of the most groundbreaking studies on insights and where creative problem-solving comes from. He

has shown different patterns of brain activity in high-insight versus low-insight anagram solvers, when people are completely at rest. The key conclusion was that insights do not come from logical reasoning, but are a sudden knowing that pops up in a restful state. They emerge out of a moment of nothingness. They emerge from what I would call intuition.

So how do we tune into this magical source called intuition? It is actually simpler than you might think, yet at the same time, its simplicity is also one of the hardest things to achieve, especially in our digitally ‘always on’ society.

First of all, it’s important to realize that your intuition is already present. It’s inside of you, so you don’t need to go anywhere or do anything! I have participated in many corporate and self-help training programmes out there, seeking tools to become a better person. Drumming sessions to build better teams and drum out the frustrations? Why not? Phrases like ‘limiting beliefs’ and ‘growing edge’ are thrown at you from all directions. I’ve seen colleagues break down, weeping, in some of these workshops, because they feel lost.

It was only after I took a break from going to these workshops that I could see what the main learning point was. The key is to remove the barriers we have put in place, versus searching to find that holy grail as if it is something outside of us. Over the years, we have become so skilled at protecting ourselves, our image, our status, that in the process we have also killed that which makes us the best leaders: our inner wisdom. We have become externally driven versus internally driven. You must recall those moments where you feel this tinkling in your gut. When all of a sudden you get an idea, or you are interviewing someone for a job and you know that it’s a bull’s eye. You just know it!

So how to bring back what we seem to have lost?

You get your intuition back when you make space for it, when you are able to silence the mind. The word ‘mindfulness’ has become extremely popular these days, giving it both a mystical as well as an unreachable status. Nothing could be further from the truth. It basically comes down to being able to stop thinking, stop talking, stop doing, and listen. Still the rational mind. The mind that society has put on a pedestal, where we think we can outsmart life. But the fact of the matter is that the rational mind doesn’t know everything. And, often, it can hinder us to find the right answers.

I challenge you to take 10-15 minutes of silence every day. Alone. Just switch off your phone, your laptop. And don’t switch on the TV or radio either. Sit still, even if it feels uncomfortable or boring at first, close your eyes and just focus on your breath. If you are having a hard time sitting still, you can also take a walk while doing this. The key is to not interact, not think back over things that happened or things that you want to do. Just be. Of course, thoughts will

come up. Let them. Don’t resist. Just keep being still, whether by sitting still or

while in motion. Be still.

Be: Become Your True Self, And Inspire Those Around You by Bahriye Goren-Gulek is available in both Kindle and Paperback version via Amazon.

About the Author

In her recent book, Be: Become Your True Self, And Inspire Those Around You, author Bahriye Goren-Gulek draws on her 15 years of global experience as a brand strategy expert to inspire readers to achieve deeper levels of awareness in order to transform ordinary leadership into extraordinary leadership.

A seasoned brand strategist, Goren-Gulek has worked on both the client (Unilever) and agency side where she has consulted world class multinationals across the globe. As the former Executive Director of Innovation and Strategy at Wallace Church & Co., an award winning branding agency in New York, she has worked with the most talented creative and brand leaders. She is a university lecturer at the graduate and undergraduate level at business schools in New York, Colorado, Singapore and Taiwan. She lives with her husband, son and their dog in Boulder, Colorado.