Upstream Self-Care

Much of our self-care is just symptom management. 

Managing symptoms is really important! It calms the nervous system, and our nervous system is often over-worked.

However, our nervous system is NOT overworked by “life.” Our nervous system is overworked by our own unhealthy inner relationships with our mind, heart, and bodies. 

This is a really simple concept to understand, yet it can be extraordinarily challenging to experience and know: our problems aren’t “out there,” they’re in here. The outside world - how it occurs to us - is a reflection of our inner world.

Take beauty, for instance. “Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.” The way I experience it, actually, is that beauty is in the mind of the beholder - much of what the eye sees is what the mind has told it to look for.

One of my daily self-creation declarations is my access to a greater range of beauty than my default seeing provides:

"I am that this moment is perfect - I see beauty in everything, and I create incredible value from all life's experiences."

A client was recently struggling with his over-analyzing mind. The way he saw it, if he could only feel less fear and anxiety, then his mind would calm down. 

That’s what I call “downstream self-care,” or simply dealing with symptoms. He could calm his fear and that would likely calm his mind for the time-being, but it wouldn’t address the source of the inner pain of his thinking. 

Self-care for symptoms is like getting a really good water filter to clean the pollutants out of the water before we drink it. It works, but it doesn’t deal with the pollution at its source.

Instead of even talking about his fear and anxiety as an access to quelling the symptom of an over-analyzing mind, I instead inquired into the nature of his mind itself - in his experience.

Inherent in his wanting to quiet his over-analyzing mind was judgment - he does not like that over-analyzing mind! So we navigated that experience and he uncovered what I wish for all of us to uncover: ALL parts of us are for us, and seeing that creates space for a whole new and empowered experience of each of our parts.

As he healed his relationship with his mind, he actually healed much of the pain of his fear and anxiety too.

There are a few key techniques I use to explore the terrain upstream. I’ve written about them before, and I could write about them again, but it would only be a map.

We can take courses and read books (and blogs!), but a culture focused on self-care for symptoms will only ever see "problems" that need fixing and solving.

True healing and integration doesn’t come from reading a map, it comes from walking the landscape itself.

Walking upstream is an inner process. What I do as a life- and soul-coach is create space for people to navigate that inner landscape safely and with a compass: 

The upstream-pointing compass is pointing to the same place for all of us: innate peace, beauty, wholeness, and holiness. That’s the true Source of our existence, and somewhere between that source and our current experience of life, the waters get a little murky.

So while self-care for symptoms is helpful, care for the True Self is our spiritual curriculum and an entirely different experience.

Much Love. ❤️

Who Am I?

There’s a segment in the second half of the Mind Mastery Experience where the room gets very quiet. 

Very quiet.

It sometimes happens with a participant sitting up front with me, and they’ve likely just said something starting with this: “I am …”

So we explore together, all of us in the room, who this “I” is that we so easily describe and address.

I’m an overthinker. 

I’m anxious.

I’m unsure.

I’m stressed.

I’m working on it.

I’m a work in progress.

I’m not perfect.

I’m angry.

In the quiet of this simple yet powerful conversation, all prior descriptions of the Self gently and lightly fall away…

Until there’s nothing left.*

What makes a cup so useful is the space it contains.

——— Feel free to continue reading or stop here ❤️ ———

Similarly, the more we free our minds from the inherited, default, descriptive, compensatory, and judgmental notions of who we think we are, the more space we have in our being to intentionally create who we are.

For the last couple years, I’ve had an hourly alarm go off to remind me to slow down and reflect upon whatever knowing I was looking to deepen into my subconscious mind. The last couple weeks, I’ve often been reflecting hourly on the question, “Who am I?”  

As my clients eventually find out, intentional conversations with me often identify existing “I am…” sentences. When we do the work to clean up our pre-existing notions of who we are, there’s a space that opens up. In that space we have an experience of who we really are. 

I have lots of intentional answers to that question - “Who am I?” - so one valuable outcome of asking the question has been for me to continually practice getting in touch with who I am consciously creating myself to be.

"Consciousness is a very subtle and powerful thing. You cannot help but create. Remember the goal of this pathway is to learn to deliberately create with perfect mastery.”

- The Way of Mastery

Another valuable outcome to asking the question - "Who am I?" - has been to simply explore in peace, wonder, and curiosity the space of awareness (and possibility for being) that I ultimately am (and that you ultimately are). 

We live our lives mostly in reaction - to circumstances, to commitments, to feelings and impulses and desires. We go through our days however we go through them, but we seldom get present to who it is we really are.

Who am I? I love that the question itself often now lays me down in a space of quiet freedom to show up however it is I'd like to show up.

Indeed, it's only ever been Life itself living me, by Grace and Blessing. "Who am I?" is a question that reminds me of that Truth.

That's why this segment of the Mind Mastery Experience gets so quiet - the True Self is a space of quiet awareness, an inner nebula, a birthplace of being, fueled by the Divine energy at the source of all that is.

Much Love. ❤️

* The Void: Śūnyatā (Buddhism), Wuji (Taoism), Shunya (Hinduism), Ayin (Jewish mysticism), Fana (Islamic mysticism), Luminous Darkness (Christian mysticism).

P.S. My inspiration to ask this question comes from two places: the self-inquiry practice of Ramana Maharshi and an assignment in a seminar I’m taking. 

Listening Only for This in the New Year

When we open our mouths to speak, wisdom is right there.

Wisdom is a knowing. It’s not a “knowing” in the intellectual sense. Intellectual understanding really is the booby prize, a participation ribbon that carries very little significance on its own.

Wisdom is a resonance. It’s not a resonance with what we already “know” or what we’ve heard before or what we read in a book or saw in an Instagram reel. It’s an inner resonance, like when two instruments are perfectly in tune. 

Even when we’re talking bullcrap, lying, or manipulating, wisdom is there. It’s that part of us that knows we’re speaking dishonestly. It’s that part of us that knows integrity, honesty, and authentic expression are not this, but they're possible.

...Only when we we grow beyond the limitation of resisting, avoiding, or reacting from our fears.

This evening I had another incredibly insightful and powerful conversation with a client. We’ve found a beautiful rhythm in our conversations where she speaks until there’s nothing left to say, and I simply listen. 

I’m not listening to respond. I’m not listening to understand. I’m not listening to shift or to fix or to transform anything. I'm not listening to get somewhere.

I’m listening simply to be with her and her experience accurately and completely.

(Perhaps a more descriptive term than "listening" is that I’m experiencing the expression of life through her.)

Then, I ask or express from accuracy, towards accuracy. And it just so happens that it uncovers for her a deeper level of awareness and insight. 

“Accuracy is looking closely at what’s happening. It’s also slowing down, quieting down, and witnessing the inner dialogues, the inner feelings, and the inner desires at play in our lives.” - Read the original blog post here

When we get accurate, wisdom gets louder. It's like seeing the code behind the Matrix - and Truth and insight show up.

That's the power and magic of a transformational conversation, what my friend Pete calls our "Ministry of Deep Listening."

So here's the simplest and most profound insight that I can share in this final post of 2025, and it's what my client fully got in our conversation - not "got" like a good idea or like a lesson she's heard before and has come across again. No, she got it like a Truth that she'll never unsee:

"The small tweaks are what make the biggest difference."

Indeed.

Entering this new year, I wish you profound growth - spiritual, physical, emotional, mental, relationship, and effectiveness - through the tiniest of micro tweaks that best come from listening to the wisdom that's already always speaking to you.

If you want support in learning how to hear it and honor it, reach out and let's talk.

Happy New Year.

Much Love. ❤️