WHERE ARE YOU? "Where are you now? There's obviously a sensible answer you could make to that - I'm in the kitchen, I'm at the office, I'm on the bus, I'm at the coffee shop. But whether you know it or not, right now you are at a crossroads. And this is always true - it's not that there is something very special about now, compared with every other moment in your life. At this very moment, dozens of paths fan out from where you are. Starting now, your life could go off in many different directions. And it may only take a tiny shift in the next few weeks, over the next few days , even in the next 5 minutes, to make the difference between whatever you have now and a much richer life - one filled with joy, love, and a much more powerful sense of really making a difference in the world." This quote is taken from my forthcoming book, LIVING AT THE CROSSROADS, which is due to be published in early September.

IT'S OK NOT TO KNOW In the Western world, we live in a culture dominated by goal-setting and planning. If you want something, you assess where you are now and where you want to be. Then you map out the steps to get from A to B, draw up an action-plan and start confidently striding out in the direction of your dreams. But what if your goal is to become your highest and best self? What if your deepest heart's desire is to fulfill the greatness you sense within yourself, to recognize and overcome your own limiting beliefs and to step up to living your life more authentically? How do you come up with an action plan for that? It's like asking a rosebud to come up with an action plan for becoming an opened rose. In outline, the answer is "soak up the sun and rain, relax, put no impediment in the way and the open bloom will arise from your own nature." The rosebud doesn't need to know in what order its petals should open nor by how many degrees they should open at which time. It's the same with us. Becoming who you are, at the deepest level of your being is not something you can write an Action Plan for. Logical planning will not speed up the process or make it easier. When you begin, not only do you not know what "the finished product" will look like, you almost definitely have a skewed idea of where you are starting from. If you could clearly see who you are right now, the job would be half-done! So it's OK to not know. It's OK not to have a plan. It's OK to operate by feel - by tuning in to the love and peace and truth inside you and to just keep moving in that direction. In fact, you can't align with your Deepest Self any other way! (If you'd like to listen to a meditation audio to help you align, you can find one at: http://chirb.it/J4y0Cb)

EXPECT THE UNEXPECTED! When I started this 90-Day Challenge, I was looking for a way to bring together all of my different skills and talents into one coherent whole. I wanted a way to live authentically - a way that expressed the best of who I am but coherently. It's very bitty and unconnected to have lots of different - apparently unconnected- areas of skill so that when people ask you what you do you say something like:(Insert your own skill mix here) "Well, I help people lose weight by tuning into their innate sense of what their bodies want to eat. And I teach meditation. And I teach people how to connect with their own instinctive self-healing abilities. Oh, and I help people get more in touch with their own creativity. And I design online learning courses. And I also help people tune into their Life Purpose. And ..." You get what I am saying. Yesterday I was at a networking group and talking - as you do- to some of the people there about this new skill of being able to read auras that has suddenly happened to me. I was telling them that it was so amazing, because it was a way to start talking to people about meditation, about finding their life purpose, healing their hurts, awakening their creativity - in a way that was appropriate for the needs of each person. The aura reading naturally brings up a discussion of areas of life where people are ready to grow, change, heal, expand. In fact, aura drawing and reading provides a unifying umbrella to put all of my skills under. It was only as I was answering the question "So, have you been able to do this all your life? When did you start doing it?" that I really registered that this ability has only blossomed in my life since I started the 90-day challenge. Now that cannot be a coincidence. But it reaffirms the hunch I had when I started - sometimes the answer is something you've never even thought of. Not only that, but it may be something you never would have thought of. I could never have done affirmations, Law of Attraction-style, such as "I'm so happy and grateful that I now have the ability to read auras," because such a possibility had never crossed my mind! But by attuning to my Highest Self and intending only that I get more deeply in tune with my own greatest good, something totally unexpected has happened. I'm so curious to see what the second half of my 90-day challenge will bring.

IRRATIONAL TRUST IN LIFE I thought it was time to reflect on what the Alignment Process seems to be doing for/to me. The main change is that I have never before experienced a sense of trust in Life/the Universe/God like I am experiencing now. It seems to go beyond trust , into knowing. I know my life is all right. I know I am on track. I know I am safe. That doesn't mean I don't get wet when it rains and cold when it snows and hungry if I don't eat! But I'm experiencing a sense of "Existential Security" - the opposite of existential anxiety, I suppose! Such feelings are not logical or rational. But I'm OK with "not-logical". Logical thinking depends on the work of the Conscious Mind. This is a fantastic part of us, and I very much appreciate it, but it can only handle 5-9 pieces of data at once. Whereas our Unconscious Mind has been estimated to be handling about 11 MILLION pieces of data at a time. So which part of us is more likely to have a better handle on what is actually going on? How many times in the past have you made an obviously logical, sensible decision, only to have something in you screaming NO! DON'T DO IT! DON'T GO THERE! You made the decision anyway and it all turned out disastrously. Some non-logical, non-rational part of you had computed the Bigger Picture using all kinds of data your conscious mind didn't even have access to - the body-language of the people involved, the pheromones they were giving off, the undercurrents in the tones of voice they used, the hidden tensions experienced by touch when you shook their hand, perhaps. We don't have language to categorize these kinds of impressions easily so we get them as gut feelings, hunches, dreams, inklings, itches we can't scratch. It doesn't mean they are wrong or stupid - simply that they aren't being processed by the part of our brain we feel most comfortable with. So when, rationally, it's "obvious" that I should be mapping out my life more carefully, paying more attention to long-term goals and coming up with a written long-term plan, but every part of me other than my rational mind is purring with contentment like a cat, waking me from deep restful sleep with optimism, joy and creative inspiration, and healing my body of long-lasting aches and pains, then I'm prepared to believe that on the deep levels of my life, everything is indeed, deeply all right.