A guide to becoming a master guru & healer
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Oh the joy of coming up with catchy titles that grab our attention.
Jokes aside, this is my story of how I’m learning to become my own spiritual guide. Hopefully this short memoir inspires your ‘inner guru’.
Ok, this is big!
So a few weeks back I had a totally unprovoked and deeply profound ‘awakening’ experience where I witnessed a lifetime of trauma being released from my body. It began at sunrise as I noticed a dense pressure build in my chest. I began to feel dizzy and confused. As I laid down by the pool, the uncomfortable feeling began to release through gasps of air. My breathing continued to intensify, triggering a flood of emotions flowing out of my body through tears of relief. Eventually my body began to move in ecstatic gestures of liberation; occasionally inviting giggles and joyous sounds. This process cycled for several hours and then I found myself naturally guiding this release experience through conscious breathing for another five hours. It was totally amazing!
As I was landing from this incredible journey, a strong memory emerged before me. Six years ago I wasn’t feeling so great and decide to spend a week in silence. On the fifth day, as I was having my morning shower, I noticed a similar pressure building in my chest. As I was drying and wrapping the towel around my body, I heard my girlfriend at that time stirring about in the kitchen. As I walked out of the bathroom, I felt the energy move up quickly and I fell into my girlfriend’s arms. I began to hyperventilate. As she held me, tears began to flood. I felt so much lightness in my body and started to laugh uncontrollably. The entire process probably lasted for thirty minutes to an hour. For the next three days, I heard a echoing whisper in my mind that kept repeating…’your breath is the most important thing in your life’. Since then, I have built a consistent breathwork practice into my daily routine.
What I’ve learned from these experiences is that I am my own healer. There is nothing outside of me that can heal me. It’s not that I’m broken; quite the contrary. It’s that I, as we all do, have emotional imprints of varying degrees of intensity. Some prefer to call this trauma. Most of these emotions have become lodged in the body. We are often not even aware of their origin because they were most likely imprinted before the mind was fully developed; generally in early childhood although some trauma imprinted post-childhood is so severe that our minds block it out entirely. What I’m now realizing is that these emotional imprints will continue to run my life until they are released from my body. What I mean by this is that every experience that I have in my life is subconsciously being run through a complex web of emotional imprints, from which my mind reacts with a standard set of responses that are sourced in a subconscious mechanism that is attempting to keep me safe from feeling pain. The thing is this…I am a slave to my emotions until I release them. When I release them, I am no longer triggered by experiences based upon past emotional imprints from my childhood. I become free to create my life as I choose. As I see it, this is what is meant by becoming an adult rather than a wounded child running through life in a larger, adult-like body.
I was tired of running a long time ago, but it was all I knew. And so, I have spent the past twenty years ‘working on myself’, quite literally running from one ‘healing’ opportunity to another. I was trying to force my own transformation through decades of searching. I was exhausted and began to accept that this ‘block’ I felt within me may never leave. It was this acceptance that helped me to slow down and begin to appreciate myself in an entirely new way. I began enjoy my life from a more relaxed state. A subtle contentment began to grow within me. Things began to flow more effortlessly and I started to notice an increased level of synchronicity in my life. It felt almost magical, like everything was lining up perfectly without me doing anything to make this happen. After a while, I began to surrender into this flow and trust in life itself to move through me versus my previous pattern of forcing my will upon life. This changed everything!
Eventually I found myself in Bali writing a book. I had know idea what it would be about, but I trusted in the process. The day before my flight, the table of contents for the book rapidly trickled into my mind. I quickly jotted it down and tucked it away. Once I landed at my jungle oasis just outside Ubud, Bali, I placed my notes next to the computer. Each morning, I would meditate on one chapter. I would then open my computer and the words would tumble out onto the screen with ease as if they were written through me rather than by me. The book was written within three months. It is called Born to Connect. Written as a short memoir, it transverses a collection of life experiences that helped me to understand my purpose; I was born to connect. Through these stories I also present my perspective on how we foster a culture of connection within ourselves, our relationships and ultimately, how we bring this connection into all that we create.
Imagine what the world would look like if all of our creative expressions were sourced in an energy of wholeness, acceptance and unconditional love for ourselves. With nothing to prove to ourselves or anyone else, we freely surrender into life itself and trust in its divine flow through us. Life becomes art. Whatever we choose to place our focus on and create, whether an artistic expression, entrepreneurial endeavor or anything else, flows out of us and grows into the world with ease and joy; like a miraculous and mysterious game that were playing. It’s as if we‘re in a dance with life. I like to think of it like permaculture or gardening where we’re working with nature verses forcing our will upon it. I refer to this process as surrendered leadership, which is a process of listening, allowing and supporting. I believe this is the kind of leadership that life is inviting us into at this moment in time.
Through writing the book, I was quite literally called to ‘build in Bali’. These words would ring in my mind occasionally as I took breaks from writing to connect with my body through ecstatic dance at my favorite Ubudian yoga shalas. Eventually, I took these guided messages to heart and found myself building an institute here in Bali. The intention is to provide a nurturing home for visionary creatives to surrender into a deep state of acceptance, so that they can reconnect with their true essence from a place of stillness and allow there passion to flow with freedom and ease. PURE, to Purposefully Unite & Radiate Essence, guides its clients through their own individual ‘awakening’ journeys through its programs and private coaching sessions with myself and our team of wellness & personal development practitioners. It would be such an honor to receive you at our institute in Bali or to work with you remotely from the comfort of your own home. Feel free to reach out to me at ryan@pureproject.org if you’d like to learn more or schedule a free thirty minute exploratory call with me.
The big takaway here is that we are our own guru and that our life journey is guiding us to come back to ourselves, so that we can listen to our own guidance. Our body always knows what’s best for us. All we need to do is slow down, listen and allow. When the mind begins to calm, our body will speak to us and do what it needs to release any resistance to accepting our divine perfection. What follows from here is unconditional love, peace and total joy.
Enjoy the ride!
