The dear, brilliant poet and coach Connie Weismann spoke this to me and all of her students when she taught about the patterns, tapes, and keys that live without our minds, a revolutionary thought to her young spiritual seeking students. This was the1970s when few knew that our thinking created our reality. We all felt that we were those inner, sometimes punishing voices in our heads trying to warn us about life and love but her work was revolutionary and advanced. Pre-Neuro-Linguistic-Programming, neuroscience, and more and more authors writing about how our thinking creates our lives.
That was a time in LA when there was much experimentation with all kinds of drugs, Gestalt Therapy became popular, and many non-traditional methods of healing began to emerge. Spirituality was beginning to join with psychology. Connie was a pioneer, untrained in traditional psychological methods but extremely intuitive and experimental. She was probably an empath but no one knew what that meant at the time. She was a powerful and courageous pioneer.
I will never forget her saying, "Sand your ego and polish your soul." That one sentence sums up the work for all of us seekers who wanted to awaken to the truth of life. Learning to live from your soul, your heart, your true self is the true work of life. Today, it is more and more accepted that the thoughts in our minds create our actions and outcomes. "Thoughts create things." For me, even though that one sentence was powerful, it was unattainable and I still struggle with it today. I am still only human but I am learning who I am from the source of love and growing stronger every day. As a sensitive person, these lessons can be even more challenging as I receive so much in the way of feelings and sensations which can confuse my thinking.
My programming went so deep and has been around for so long that I have had to work with it daily and often it had me abandoning myself to jobs and relationships just to find a place to land but guess what? It didn't work. Now, I am aware of those patterns, tapes, and keys of the ego-mind, but that doesn't mean I can erase them like numbers off a chalkboard. It takes work, it takes releasing fears and pain to get to the true me. How many missteps? How many "If I do this, they might not notice I am terrified and faking it." How many times did I think I forgave myself and found the shame monster bigger and badder than before blocking my access to the real me?
You have to be a strong person to choose freedom from the personality's programs to discover that higher part of you that is waiting patiently for you to come home to yourself. This is the way of love, not self-hate, or shame as they are only dark shadows of unconscious beliefs accepted in childhood but could well also be ancestral programming. These patterns, tapes, and keys, as Connie called them, are held in the ego. But love is eternal and lives in our hearts and our souls leading us to the truth if we but recognize that the ego is just a voice from the past. The work is turning often to our higher consciousness that can hear the voice of the ego.
"Love is your password into the depths of Life and all that you have taken birth to fulfill as you deliver your gifts, talents, and skills on our beautiful planet, as you committedly participate in your practices of spiritual awakening." Dr. Michael Beckwith
Your true name is love, your true identity is love. I named my work True Heart Training because to become the best of yourself, your soul's purpose, you need to train yourself to listen to your heart's answers and not your programmed mind. Everything is always shifting in the outside world, nothing stays the same, no answers sustain us for long. Change is inevitable but our inner world, our connection to the higher power, is with us for life.
Have the courage to sand your ego and polish your soul. The work of freeing yourself from your ego's programs will give you the freedom to live the spiritual truth of your soul. Only love, humility, kindness, and service are what sustains us through our transition from ego-shattering events, illness, broken relationships, and financial crisis.
Don't we all know that when we turn to our hearts, we find the courage to keep going? Listen I am no saint and I am still working on this every day. It is a practice of a lifetime and I have been walking through so many doors to get to this moment and know that there are many others I have to walk through to challenge my ego and accept the love of my soul. I wish you the courage to look to your heart and not your head for peace, love, and joy.
This has been my life's work and I am someone who can walk the talk when it comes to having compassion and understanding of other sensitive beings challenging journeys. I promise the more you find your answers inside yourself and live free of fitting in, the happier, more prosperous, and at peace, you will be.