Brenda's Bicycles

As mid-May comes and goes, I want to stop and quickly catch up my journey of the last couple of weeks. The last time that I wrote, I was just preparing to head northward, leaving Lima behind in the dust.

The first leg of that journey was to the town of Trujillo. After two magical days of exploring in that region of the north central coast of Peru, I took one extra day to begin tackling more than a thousand photos, attempting to get them back in control. Wow, I have been on a whirlwind of adventures, rapidly building up a huge collection of captured visual memories. Because of my recent photo postings, I will not take time here to summarize my adventure in Trujillo. My photos more than adequately do just that.

After that third day inTrujillo, I took a night bus to the far northern reaches of Peru’s extremely long Pacific coastline.

Ever since my friend Sufi first told me about Máncora, I had felt an unusual inner magnet, seemingly pulling me toward this beautiful area of sandy beaches, hot sun, and renowned surf. In late February, when receiving guidance to prepare to leave Calca, I somehow knew that part of my final journey through Peru would include a well-deserved relaxing pause at this ocean oasis.

My first stop in Máncora was to a little privately owned bungalow, above Pocitas beach, a couple of miles west of the main town. This was a place that my friend Sufi had stayed at – a magical space with gorgeous views, lots of privacy, and my own self-contained kitchen. The only drawback was that it had no internet and very limited access to stores or restaurants.

But for what I had planned during that first week, internet and restaurant food were not really requirements.

Beach Ceremonies

After spending the first day walking to town several times, each time bringing back as many groceries as I could carry, I began to relax into my inspired purpose. I wanted to enjoy quality beach time partnered up with the magical sacred plant medicine of Huachuma. And I did just that.

For three back-to-back days, I drank Huachuma early in the morning, and then meditated throughout the day – with much of that meditation taking place near the crashing and dancing surf.

In the process of that meditation, I was surprised when my journey took me into exploring more body shame – self-loathing regarding my body – dysfunctional feelings that I was not even aware still existed. Deeply buried parts of me had continued to feel defective and unworthy of even my own self-love.

As I processed through these very subtle, still-buried issues, I was taken back to that horrifying, shame-inducing bikini incident clear back at age twelve. Several times I have written about the experience in my blog, and shared the profound journey I have gone through as a result of trying to heal the aftermath. If you want to refresh your memory, the most recent blog about the incident was when writing about the integration period of my third month at the Ayahuasca retreat – sometime in late April, 2014.

To make a long story shorter, I will omit most details. Suffice it to say that my processing showed me that part of my healing needed to involve me buying myself another bikini. It has been forty-eight years since that debilitating emotional experience in the summer of 1967, and since that time, I had never again even tried to wear a bikini. Instead, I have always worn a one-piece swimsuit, or perhaps an all-covering tank-ini. I somehow believed that my body was just too ugly and defective to pull it off – that I was not shapely enough – that I was too fat in my belly – that my shoulders were too big – that my this was too that – and blah, blah, blah.

On Saturday, May 9, 2015, I walked into Máncora to take care of that guidance. A few hours later, I returned home with my new prize, still unsure if I dared show myself in public. I was so excited to wear my bikini on that first day that I actually tied the top on upside down – with the neck strap tied around my back, and the back strap tied around my neck. I can laugh and giggle in retrospect. I wondered why it fit kind of funny, but I wore it to the beach anyway, and I felt so much self-love as I exposed my body to the sun.

It is impossible to describe in words. Somehow, just the act of wearing a bikini every day for the last ten days has healed so much of another layer of self-loathing that I did not even know was still there. I no longer feel ashamed of my body. And even though the wearing of this bikini has nothing to do with sexuality, I also feel that wearing it has healed a great deal of the buried self-judgments that have kept me from even being willing to let those parts of me fully heal.

Literally every day since that first Saturday, I have worn my bikini for most of the day – sunbathing for an hour or two per day, and for the rest of the day covering myself with a scarf or a swim dress.

And it is amazing how good I feel in it – and how it actually fits much better when I don’t have it on upside down.

When I arrived in Máncora, I never would have guessed that my healing would take such a turn, but it has indeed been magical. I am absolutely loving my tan body, and feeling so much younger and more beautiful in my own skin.

Eighteen Years Young

And when I bought that bikini, I wasn’t even thinking about the fact that on May 13, 2015, I would be officially turning eighteen years old – in official Brenda-years that is.

My transgender status has never been a secret on this blog. I openly talk about my early journey in my “about” page, and very frequently I have delved deeply into the emotions I have gone through while healing the many struggles that began decades ago as I tried to hide those transgender fears from the world.

But I have many friends on Facebook with whom I had never shared my past, and something inside of me just wanted to rectify that omission.

To take care of yet-another level of healing related to the issue, I felt strongly guided to make a public coming-out announcement on my eighteenth birthday.

Facebook Confessions

I giggled with loving confidence as I typed and later edited the words before posting them as my status. And I radiated love mixed with giggles as I spent most of the subsequent day responding to beautiful comments resulting from that post. I am so grateful that I followed the guidance to publicly share … and following are the words that were my actual public status on May 13, 2015.

“Today is my eighteenth birthday … but given that my mother gave birth to me just over sixty years ago, my statement may leave a few people scratching their heads.

This announcement has been a long time in coming. The vast majority of my friends have been on the inside of this poorly kept secret for many years now … but I realize that many of my more recent friends just might not know what I am talking about … so here it is, in plain bold print.

I am a beautiful and courageous transgender woman, physically reborn on May 13, 1997. When my mother gave birth to me back in 1955, I had little boy parts. By around age ten I was already loathing those parts, wishing I had the power to make everything right … but I did not.

Instead, I did the only thing that a ten year old child could do to survive. I pretended to be what everyone else told me I was. I was so convincing in my role-playing that I even almost convinced myself. I felt deep shame and self-loathing regarding my inner feelings, and wanted nothing more than to just be normal and fit in. But in the process of desperately pretending, I closed my heart and kept it very guarded, even from my own view.

Over the years, that beautiful heart gradually became more and more distraught as I fought to keep it hidden and safe. Meanwhile, I became an expert at acting in the role that was given to me. In the midst of well-hidden struggles, I grew up, became a man, and fathered a beautiful family – an incredible treasure for which I will always be deeply grateful.

Somehow, the suicidal feelings of a distraught teenager were so deeply buried that I did not even know they were still in there. Many like me do not even survive their teen years.

In my thirties and early forties, I faced some of the deepest agony imaginable … I realized that I had two choices. One option was to go on pretending to be something I was not. I didn’t want to hurt those I loved, but the thought of pretending for the rest of my life felt worse than suffocating my own heart. The other option was to be my true and genuine self, knowing that my “choice” to stay alive would not be understood by those closest to me – knowing that they might feel betrayed by me. But it was really an option of dying a slow suffocating death or learning to finally live from my heart, expressing my true self.

The journey of the last eighteen years has been both magical and extremely heart-wrenching at times. The early years were filled both with joys and with many tears. I began to heal in magical ways clear back in 2003, but it was not until 2009, when my heart unequivocally guided me to travel and write, embarking on a journey of self-discovery and self-healing, that the healing became an unstoppable obsession.

Since that first one-way flight to Mexico on June 11, 2009, my life has been a magical quest … a quest that has at times been quite turbulent. My intense healing process has frequently pulled me kicking and screaming through the prickly muck of revisiting a lifetime of self-hatred and self-loathing – facing stuff that I had always projected onto others in the past. And in the process I have methodically chipped away at the struggles of a lifetime of social-dysfunction that began at a very tender age.

Back in 2012, in the midst of unexpected debilitating turbulence, I literally had to re-live all of the repressed suicidal emotions that I had not allowed myself to feel as an innocent teenager. With the guidance of a dear teacher during that time in Guatemala, I eventually found the strength and courage to feel that old repressed agony and I was able to let it move through me and out of me, eventually leaving it behind in a dust cloud of emotional celebration. Having had to feel that old emotion to the core, I honestly do not know how I physically stayed alive back in the late 1960s.

And then, my time in Peru working with the sacred plant medicines, has been unbelievably life-changing in ways that words cannot fully describe. That deeply guarded heart has finally been cracked wide open, giving me access to the magic of increasing divine love that I never imagined possible – a process that continues to expand on a daily basis.

As I celebrate the completion of my eighteenth year as Brenda, I am proud to announce that for the first time in my life, I am proud to be myself. And I can actually say with genuine love that I am grateful for literally everything in my past, no matter how painful it was at the time. Every one of my past struggles is part of the clay that is becoming the beautiful evolving sculpture of who I am today.

As a birthday present to myself, I am enjoying a few weeks on the magical sandy beaches of Máncora, in northern Peru … integrating my healing of the last eighteen months, while continuing to expand my heart in unexpected ways.

I feel ready to move forward and share my life and love as guided by an awakening heart … not as an activist with a cause, but as a lover of life simply wanting to share my healing insights with anyone who might want to listen. I am eager to see where this next phase of my life might take me.”

My Deepest Fear

I have also been quite busy in keeping up with the project that I am doing with my friends Lori, Rose, and Jeanette.

Just yesterday, I wrote the following writing, and I would love to make this experience public. It pulls together meditative events of the last four years – deep emotional processing events that have resulted in a major healing breakthrough in my life.

The question of the week last week was:

“Would you all please share a deep fear that you have faced, and talk about how you resolved it?”

And my answer to that question, as sent to my friends, was the following:

“I have been pondering all week about the lifetime of fears that I have faced. It seems that my social paranoia developed at a very tender age, and then skyrocketed when my secret gender dysphoria became undeniable. I felt as if the humiliating struggles of my youth and young-adulthood were literally going to suffocate my soul, and I could not seem find a way out of the unsolvable dilemma. For the majority of my early life, I lived with a deeply confused and repressed heart, not knowing if there was anyone I could trust – not daring to share my struggles with another living soul.

With every step during those turbulent years, my levels of self-hatred viciously bubbled and churned, all while I tried to wear a happy mask for the benefit of others. If there were a way to measure the inner turmoil, my levels of shame and unworthiness would have been skyrocketing off the charts.

Somehow, I survived every one of those frightening journeys. There are so many things I could write about. It seems that the majority of the fears that I faced center around the emotional struggles of attempting to be my true self while desperately trying not to lose everyone and everything that genuinely made my life feel meaningful.

Then there are the agonizing fears that I faced related to uprooting my entire life, intentionally sabotaging my career, dismantling my financial stability, releasing my worldly possessions, and stepping out of known stability into a passionate journey of yet-unknown self-discovery and writing.

At times, since that 2005 guidance to go back to school, the fear was unbearable; but the passion to follow my heart was so strong that nothing would cause me to look over my shoulder for very long. In those first years of my travels, I faced many fears that took me into the depths of sobbing. The journey I was on made very little sense to a conditioned logical mind.

But I am not going to write about any of those experiences in a direct manner. Instead, my heart tells me to focus on a chain of meditative journeys that began about four years ago – events regarding my feelings of extreme unworthiness.

So, without further rambling, here is my answer.

The beginning of this unexpected series of events took place about four years ago, during a cacao ceremony in Guatemala. Keith (my teacher at the time), was holding energetic space for me while I ventured deep into my subconscious mind on a metaphorical journey. For the most part, Keith remained silent, occasionally asking a question or suggesting a possible metaphor that I might utilize. I was very comfortable with such journeys by now. I clearly understood the profound way that symbols, images and metaphors can be used to work with our own subconscious mind.

In the midst of the slightly-visual meditation, I found myself in a hallway, standing in front of a closed door. As I imagined myself trying to walk through that door, Keith intuitively suggested that behind that door were all of my Higher Dimensional friends – my Higher Self, angels, spiritual guides etc…

“Brenda,” Keith gently reminded me, “these are Higher Beings that love you more than you could possibly know, with pure unconditional love.”

At the time, I was shocked and confused by the sheer terror that surged into my heart as I contemplated opening that door and stepping through it. The visceral reaction made no logical sense. Why would imagining myself simply walking into a room filled with loving divine beings cause me to shake with such intense anxiety and fear?

After repeated failed attempts to visualize myself entering that room, I just couldn’t do it.

Instead, I unexpectedly visualized myself racing away down a small hallway, turning a sharp a corner, and ducking into a tiny broom closet where I curled up and sobbed on the floor. I was shaking inside with real, physical terror, and I was sobbing externally in my chair as Keith reassured me that I was OK – telling me that I can only do what I can do, and that I can try again at a future time.

Over the next couple of years, my emotional healing process took me in a different direction, and for whatever reason, I never tried to return to that room in meditation. The thought did not even cross my mind.

Meanwhile, a couple of years later, in August 2013, in a seemingly unrelated incident, I was about to make a Skype call to my dear friend Michelle … and I was terrified to dial her number.

Unfolding intuition at the time was causing me to quietly dabble with the possibilities of several hallucinogenic sacred plant medicines – telling me that I had a future journey with such substances. For years, I had been strongly resisting the very thought of doing so. Back in 2009, I first heard of Ayahuasca, and my reaction was something like, “That’s nice … but you will never see me doing that.” I was terrified that if I did so, that everyone I loved would instantly judge me – hating me and abandoning me.

So, after a brief “dabbling” experience in early August, 2013, I wanted to talk to Michelle about my journey. I knew in my heart that all was beautiful and well, but as I tried to share my experience with my dear friend during that Skype call, I began to shake and sob with sheer terror. A volcano of intense self-judgment literally erupted out of nowhere. The emotion that turbulently raged through me was a feeling of absolutely certainty that our friendship was over, that I had disappointed one of the most precious and loving people in my life, and that I should feel deep shame and guilt, blah, blah, blah.

To my delight, my fears were unfounded. In that beautiful conversation, I released a great deal of old “stuff”, and our friendship simply strengthened.

Eight months later, in the third month of a deep-immersion Ayahuasca retreat in the jungles of Peru, I found myself resting in my room enjoying a period of relaxed integration. Just a few hours earlier, I drank a full dose of cacao to help me further connect to my heart. To my surprise, as I rested and meditated, intuitions suddenly took me back to that meditation of a few years earlier – the one where I was standing in the hallway behind a door – where just through that door was an entire entourage of my Higher Dimensional Friends, all of whom loved me unconditionally, beyond my capacity to understand.

“Surely I can walk through that door now,” I pondered to myself with a confident giggle.

As I went deep into my subconscious, I tried to visualize myself turning that door knob and stepping through, I was shocked when the same fears again flooded me. These were intense overwhelming fears of extreme unworthiness – telling me that I am such a screw up, that I am a massive failure, that I do not deserve to be in the same Universe with these Magical Higher Beings. I felt as if I instead belonged in some eternal hell, and I dared not meditatively imagine seeing even a brief glimpse of a Divine Being.

But I was not going to give up in this April 2014 meditation. Seeing how I seemed unable to walk through that door, intuitions quickly suggested a different approach. I switched metaphors and imagined myself lying on a bed, already inside that room, with my eyes closed. I remembered a metaphor from one teacher of A Course In Miracles – a metaphor suggesting that we are all just innocent children having a nightmare, and we just need to wake up and remember who we are.

As I imagined myself lying in that bed, I tried to find the courage to open my eyes and look around. But instead, I found myself shaking and trembling with my eyes tightly clenched. Immediately, I intuitively remembered my Skype call with Michelle. I was feeling the exact same emotions as I had felt in that call – emotions where I feared that I had disappointed a dear friend – that I was unworthy of being loved by that friend – that no matter how pure I might feel, that my friend will surely judge and hate me – blah, blah, blah.

Yes, these emotions were exactly the same.

It was magical and real. I finally realized that the reason I could not walk through that door, or open my eyes inside that room, was that I felt as if I were the biggest F@#k-up on the planet.

In my head, I knew all of the right spiritual phrases. I knew that I was innocent and pure, that I have always done the best I can, and that I am loved unconditionally, blah, blah, blah …

But even with that mental understanding, my body was shaking with terror and fear. This was not the territory of my head … I was exploring the world of hidden, deep, repressed emotion … and this emotion insisted that I would be the exception to the rule. This emotion screamed that my life was a major disappointment, and that I would burn up with shame in the presence of such divine love.

Finally, my heart felt my Higher Friends intuitively calling out to me, telling me in an experiential way just how innocent and worthy I am … and have always been. Somehow, they helped me understand, at a deeper feeling level, that I have never done anything wrong – reminding me that everything I have done was just experience, and that all of it served a purpose. I wish I could pass along this experience … but it was not an experience that mere words can communicate. Words fall flat unless the underlying energy accompanies them … and in this experience, I was deeply connected to that energy.

It felt like an eternity before I had the courage to meditatively open my eyes in the presence of my Divine Friends. Finally, we were crying and laughing together, celebrating and high-fiving with jumps for joy. I had finally been able to believe and embrace a profound new layer of my own divinity – of the divinity that animates the core of each and every one of us.

It was one of the most powerful meditations I had ever done – one that I will never forget. But it was not the end of my journey. Instead, it was simply another beginning – one of many such beginnings to come.

During this last year in the Sacred Valley, as I explored the sacred plant medicine of Huachuma (San Pedro cactus) … the journey has continued taking me ever deeper. On so many occasions I have again faced additional fears of unworthiness … and gone through similar earth-shattering heart-opening baby steps.

And so, as a simple answer to the question of the week, it seems that my deepest fear has been to face the deep illusion of my own unworthiness and to instead embrace the divinity of who I really am.

There is a Marianne Williamson quote that I first heard just over ten years ago. The words have always resonated with me. Today, as I finish up this writing, I feel inspired to share it, and to integrate the deeper meaning that is now so obvious to me. The quote comes from her book, “Return To Love”.

“Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness, that most frightens us. We ask ourselves ‘Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous?’ Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There’s nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won’t feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It is not just in some of us; it’s in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we’re liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.” Marianne Williamson

And so, it seems that my deepest fear was that I am a divine being who is expected to do everything that divine beings do.

I has been an intense ride, but after all the deep healing I have done over the years, I can finally say that I do feel worthy to begin stepping further into my light – into my “brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous, or whatever” paths that my heart guides me to follow.

While the process is an ongoing journey, my inner lights are now shining, and getting brighter all the time. Facing my deepest fear has been so worth it.”

Passion To Travel And Write

And then, just this morning it was my turn to pose a question to my friends. I went ahead and wrote my response at the same time, and would also love to share my words on this one.

The question I asked this week was:

“Would you please share a little bit about your adventures in leaving Utah? Please include several details such as things like: What process guided you to uproot and move your life? … and … How has your life changed as a result of trusting and following that guidance? … “

And I would love to share the answer to my own question. Here is what I wrote:

“I was completely blindsided by my own guidance to pull up all of my roots. Starting as far back as 2005, when I was guided to return to school to get my post graduate degree in Mental Health Counseling, I sensed that something was up – but even through the four years of going to school, walking away from my job, giving away most all of my possessions, and selling my house – even through all of that, I had no idea that I would soon be leaving Utah to become a world traveler.

It was in early April of 2009 that I woke up from a very vivid dream – an unusual dream involving a strange man moving into my room, large numbers of bicycles hanging from hooks on the ceiling, a clump of tangled string on the floor, and hundreds of honey-soaked bees. Within a day or two, in the midst of exploring the symbolism while immersed in meditation, the meaning of the dream was undeniably clear.

Bicycles have long represented “Freedom to Explore” in my journey. Each bicycle on the ceiling was of a different color, and represented a different choice, a different journey on which I was free to embark. I was being shown that it is time to embrace that freedom, and to begin exploring the world. I was also clearly shown that I would be writing about my explorations – writing with a passionate mission – and that somehow, this writing was related to my future.

The man in my room was one of my Higher Guides, moving closer to me, making himself available to assist me in my journey. It later also became clear that he would help me to choose which bicycles to take down next.

The clump of tangled string on the floor felt extremely out of place. In the dream I had felt guided to pick it up and throw it away; but as I had repeatedly tried to do just that, the string became suddenly covered in bees and honey. The first time I tried, it was just a couple of bees that appeared as if out of nowhere. Each time I tried to grab the string with my fingers I jumped back with fright as the number of loudly-buzzing bees seemed to double in number. Finally, I found a screwdriver to stick under the sticky mess, picking it up with fear that the bees would climb onto my hands and sting me as I carefully walked toward the door.

Meditating soon showed me that the bees represented all of the “busy bees” – the busywork that I had going on in my life – and that I was terrified to touch it or to let it all go. It is only as I write today that I realize it was actually much more than that. At the time, I was clinging to my attachments of how that busywork made me feel. Somehow, I identified myself and my purpose with the countless time-consuming things that I was doing, and I was in many ways frightened to lose my identity.

One more disjointed thing that happened at the end of the dream is that when I finally threw the honey-soaked string out of the front door, I had turned around to an unexpected sight. There on a sofa was my youngest son, dressed up in a suit. Sitting beside him was a young woman that he had barely starting dating.

“He’s getting married to her,” I exclaimed with knowing excitement as I then awoke from the dream.

I really believe that this was simply a fun detail to confirm for me the truth of what I was being shown in the dream. Not more than a month later I received official word of the engagement, and the wedding itself happened just over two months into my travels.

In early April, 2009, I still had about eight weeks to go before I would graduate with my Master’s degree. The interpretation of the dream came with such passionate clarity that NOT following the dream seemed to me as an absurd impossibility.

My heart made it clear that I would be traveling for quite some time, and I literally needed to pull up ALL of my roots … so during that eight weeks I began to do just that. I gave notice to my dear friend Jeanette, thanking her for helping me to explore the dream, and letting her know that I was moving out of her home on June 11, 2009. I soon began the tedious task of boxing and storing what few worldly possessions I had left.

I told the Utah Pride Center that I would be resigning from my position on the board of directors at the end of the Pride Festival in early June. I also gave notice that I would be ending my involvement with facilitating two therapy groups at the center – one for transgender adults, and one for parents of transgender youth. Then, when I had completed enough hours to graduate, I resigned from my internship at a local substance-abuse treatment center … and I began to spend considerable quality time with friends and family.

All logic says I should have been frightened to make such a move, and at some level, I guess part of me was … but the passion surging through me was so magical that all I wanted to do was to finish discarding all of those strings that tied me down.

On June 2, 2009, I cut another major string as I walked down the aisle with my cap and gown. I had finished my advanced degree, and was now a proud “Master of Science in Mental Health Counseling (MSC/MHC)” – a degree that I then suspected I would likely never use in a traditional way.

Just a few days later, I cut the final strings as I fulfilled my final obligations in volunteering at the Utah Pride Festival, literally disintegrating the last of those remaining loose ends of that clump of string.

My eyes still swell with tears when I remember back to the evening of June 11, 2009, just hours before boarding a one-way flight to Cozumel, Yucatan, Mexico. My closest magical friends had gathered at “Chin Wah Restaurant”, celebrating my journey with me. It was a magical evening overflowing with radiant unconditional love and passionate excitement for life. I have never felt so profoundly loved in all of my life.

Just hours later I was aboard a midnight flight to Atlanta, and onward to Cozumel. In just over three weeks, I will celebrate six years of travel and writing, and through it all, the passion has only grown stronger. At the time, I knew that I would be traveling for at least four to six months, but if you would have told me that I would be on the road for six years, I would have struggled to believe the possibility of those words.

And wow, has my life ever changed in magical ways – ways that might never have happened had I remained in Utah. I have faced more fears than I could possibly count, and healed more layers of old wounds than I could even begin to list.

In the unfolding, evolving journey of these years, I have learned a complete new way of living my life.

My eyes have been opened in so many indescribable ways as I have experienced living among so many different cultures – not just those of Mexico, Belize, Guatemala, and Peru – but in also meeting other travelers from all over Europe, Canada, Israel, Australia, and too many other places to count. What used to seem like such a huge and frightening world now feels much smaller, and seems to be filled with beautiful people with hearts just like mine.

My personal healing has been beyond expectations. When I began traveling, I knew that something inside would sabotage me if I didn’t find and heal it. I never knew just what that “something” was – only that it existed, and that it caused me to procrastinate and avoid embracing my light. Just yesterday, I wrote about my journey with finally facing my deepest fears of embracing that light, and I truly believe that I am ready to take the next steps into my passionate future as it gradually reveals itself to me.

My expanding capacity to love, both myself and others, still surprises me. I still occasionally find myself wanting to withhold love from certain people or events, but it is so much easier to catch myself and to turn that around, sending love to all parts of me that I see reflected in an external world. This continues to be an ongoing journey of heart expansion – but the journey is now so much more joyous to explore.

I could go on forever trying to capture all of the blessings (many of them disguised as struggles) that have come to me on this journey of leaving Utah and setting off to embrace something new and unknown. But I have already written thousands of pages in my blog, doing just that.

My heart swells with profound gratitude for all of the amazing and magical friends and family that have supported me in this journey of self-discovery. And something tells me that I am still just at the beginning.”

My Most Influential Books

Just over two weeks ago, another of my friends asked the following question:

“What are your three favorite books? Please share “why” these are your favorite. Please also share the knowledge that you gained from the book or the way these books have influenced your life. If you will also share one or two key things from the book that you want to use or reignite in your life right now.”

And here is my answer:

“I was struggling through so much of my life that I never learned to be a reader of books. In fact, it wasn’t until the first Lord of the Ring’s movie came in 2001 out that I began to read books just for fun. Once I read the first book, I became an avid reader.

Shortly after that, Alisa, a magical friend and my massage therapist at the time, began to feed me spiritual books that she thought I would like. Ever since I have learned to love books. Since 2009, when I began traveling, I have cut back a great deal on my reading … yet many books continue to influence my heart. Today, in my writing, I plan highlight three of them, and then give honorable mention to another fifteen.

****

The first book that has profoundly influenced my journey is one of the books that Jeanette mentioned in her response. My friend Alisa first told me about this book during one of our inspired massage sessions. As I began to read this little book, it quickly became my most precious and intimate friend. So, without further delay, my first book is “10 Secret for Success and Inner Peace” by Wayne Dyer. Like Jeanette, I too own a copy autographed by Wayne Dyer, and I believe we got our autographs at the same time, during that magical “I Can Do It” conference that we attended together in Las Vegas.

For me, this book is not a book of mental teachings … it is a book of heart inspirations. It doesn’t preach self-help rules and/or religious principles, it talks about generic heart-based concepts of truths that still reach inside of me and cause my heart to giggle with recognition of something I had always known but could not at the time express in words.

When I began to make my weekly “mountain time” trips in the summer of 2004, this book went with me every week. I read at least one chapter almost every week. Without fail, the words inspired me and made my heart come alive with inner song. At times I even memorized passages that flowed like poetry through my soul. For much of one year, I re-read “chapter one” of this book almost every week.

That first chapter is titled “Have a Mind That Is Open to Everything and Attached to Nothing”. In that chapter, Dr. Dyer talked about the conditioning that we go through as children, and how we live our lives based on what we were taught by others rather than based on our direct inspiration through our hearts. I could not get enough of that chapter. Literally every time I read it I get something new that wakes up in my heart. The words of that chapter seem to have guided my journey of healing, beginning with Journey Seminars, and continuing to this day. Part of my life mission seems to be a deep need to understand the human conditioning process, inside out … and to then heal my own conditioning … and to then assist others to do the same.

The second chapter is “Don’t Die with Your Music Still in You”. This chapter also sang to my heart, becoming the basis of the inspiration for a major part of my personal mission statement … the part that goes “I will compose and perform the special music I hear in my own heart, creating a safe and loving environment where others feel inspired and empowered to discover and to perform their own beautiful music.”

Literally all ten chapters of this book flow with deep heart-inspiring wisdom.

Because of space and weight restrictions, I have not physically carried this book in my travels since late 2009. Back in 2012, when I was deeply struggling with the overwhelming (and very old) suicidal emotions flowing through me, I downloaded a Kindle version of this book and went back to reread it all from cover to cover. As usual, it inspired me to the core and reconnected me with my own inspired essence. I will forever overflow with gratitude for these inspired words of Dr. Wayne Dyer.

I think I will take the time in the days to come to reread this magical little book. It seems that new things jump out at me whenever I further open something in my life. Perhaps this little book might have a great deal more to offer me after all of the magical healing I have done in the last few years.

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The second book on my list is “This Time I Dance”, by Tama Kieves. I first found this book during a magical quest of following tiny, subtle, heart guidance. As I prepared to visit Lava Hot Springs with Lori, Jeanette, and Lisa, in the Feb, 2007 timeframe, I received a very unusual sense of heart-knowing.

“I need to go visit that crystal store while we are there,” I told Jeanette. “In my heart, I know that I am supposed to buy something there.”

A few days later, I giggled as we perused the shelves of that magical new-age store. A strange photo had captured the fancy of my heart. It was a shiny foil-like image of a white tiger walking on a planet somewhere in outer space, with lots of magical and colorful space objects in the background. The next morning after returning home with this little framed image, I was browsing a bookstore at a local spiritual center in Salt Lake City. To my shock, as I picked up an unknown book and opened it to a random page, the title of that chapter was “Let a Tiger Guard the Temple of Your Heart.” Immediately, a jolt of knowing connected my previous tiger with this tiger, telling me I had to buy this book – a book titled, “This Time I Dance”.

As I read through that book, I often found myself sobbing and sobbing with deep emotional release and inspired recognition. Tama was a successful Harvard-educated lawyer on a path to partnership in a very successful Denver, Colorado law firm. But then, after a heart-opening visit to a beach in California, she returned to Colorado, quit her job, and began following her heart to write this book – working as a waitress to support her very difficult-but-determined quest.

Tama’s journey so profoundly inspired my own. In early 2007, I was deeply struggling with my own career as a highly-successful software engineer in a prestigious national software engineering company. After twenty-nine years of being incredibly skilled at what I did, my heart was now empty and devoid of interest in continuing on that path – yet I was terrified at the prospect of leaving my financial security behind. Yes, in November 2005, I had followed guidance to go back to school to get my Master’s Degree in Mental Health, so I was already on the path of change – but at the time I was still teetering back and forth over the abyss of my insecurities.

This precious book found me at a time when I needed to face all of those deep fears, and I faced them all while reading about Tama’s journey in doing the same. Her courage to follow her heart at all costs inspired me that I could somehow find the capacity to do the same. I knew that my own journey was coming very soon, but was still frightened to face that inevitable transition.

Later that same year I embraced that fear with giggling love as I said goodbye to my financial career. At my request, my software engineering company had reluctantly added me as the last person on the layoff list as they let go of literally half of their engineers in one big event. While the fears did not totally dissolve for several more years, this inspired little book gave me the courage and strength to slide right through every one of them. And Tama’s personal, connecting, metaphorical writing style has also influenced me in ways that continue to evolve.

As part of my commitment in writing these words, I feel inspired to take another look at how Tama’s personal writing style has inspired me, and to further integrate that magical little twist in future writing.

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The third book on my list is “The Alchemist”, by Paulo Coelho.

Prior to my travels beginning in June, 2009, I had never heard of this precious little book – at least I didn’t think I had heard of it.

As I explored Belize in February, 2010, I found myself browsing through many little bookstores in several little towns. Invariably, I kept coming across a display of books by the author Paulo Coelho. Intuition told me that I needed to pay attention to this synchronicity, and soon, after resisting for at least five or six times, I walked away from one of those small stores with a copy of “The Alchemist”.

Once I started reading, I could not put this book down. It inspired me from the opening paragraph to the end of the last page, filling my heart with aliveness and magic with every step of “Santiago’s” journey. He was a young shepherd boy who one night had a dream – a dream that stayed with him in his core. Not knowing what to do or how to follow his dream, Santiago simply surrendered to the synchronous events that began to magically unfold in his life. At times the events were not always what he would have called “happy”, but literally, this little shepherd boy found the inner wisdom to see them all as the magical catalysts that pushed him forward in pursuing his dream.

My heart sang with every unfolding event in this inspired little novel. With every word, inner confirmation told me that in my own journey, I am a real life “Santiago”, in my own similar quest to follow a dream, and to find myself … learning to trust the synchronicities of the Universe with every experience along the way.

To my delight, while studying Spanish for a week, just a couple of months later, I found a Spanish version of the book, and read it again, doing so very slowly with a dictionary at my side, pausing often to look up word after word. I finished the entire book in just a week, and it inspired me again, even more deeply.

Later, in a Skype conversation with my dear friend Pyper, I excitedly told her about this precious book.

“Brenda,” Pyper giggled back at me. “Remember that gift I gave you on your last day during your internship, as you were preparing to leave for Mexico. What I gave you was that very book, with a message written on the inside cover.”

I giggled with surprise as I realized that I already have a hardback version of this magical little book waiting for me back home, stored somewhere in a cardboard box. When Pyper gave me that little gift with a handwritten message inside, I was so busy preparing for my own magical journey of synchronicities that I didn’t even have time to appreciate what she had given me.

Since that time, I have read and reread this special little book several more times. Every time I do so it again inspires me to the core. Just a year ago, as I finished up my three-month Ayahuasca retreat in Iquitos, the book again came back to visit me in my meditation, telling me that very soon, it will be time to take my own magical learning back to my starting point. It seems that even now, as I begin to work my way back toward the north that I may be in the process of doing just that.

As a takeaway assignment for writing about this book, I think I will spend some time in meditation, again allowing myself to revisit all of the magical synchronicities that have guided me during the last six years. There is no doubt that doing so will again activate another burst of gratitude and inspiration in an already-overflowing heart.

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I don’t feel like I can end this writing without mentioning fourteen other books.

Perhaps the most important book on my honorable mention list is “Oneness” by Rasha. This book is a channeled guided to working with energy and emotional densities in this period on the planet. The words of higher wisdom in this book continue to influence me on a daily basis.

The next honorable mention is Eckhart Tolle’s “A New Earth”, which has guided much of my healing journey in working with what he calls the “Pain Body”. I recently listened to the audio recording of this book, and was blown away by how much more it continues to resonate with me now – even more so than when I began my journey in 2009.

Then there is Don Miguel Ruiz’s well-known book, “The Four Agreements”. I have reread this several times, and most deeply resonate with the parts of this book that talk about the mental conditioning that we all go through.

And my list would never be complete without mentioning the seven Harry Potter books by J.K. Rowling and four Hobbit / Lord of the Rings books by J.R.R. Tolkein. I will be forever grateful for the profound journeys of Harry and Frodo, and all of the supporting cast of characters. These books (and the movies produced about them) profoundly inspire my magic, my inspiration, and my courage to follow my heart. The stories throughout these books have given me deep healing metaphors that continue to inspire my process.

Thank you, Lori, for asking this inspired question. It has been fun revisiting how the written word has been such an integral part of my own magical healing journey.”

It wasn’t until after completing the assignment that I realized I had omitted to mention another of my profound guides. Since 2005, the book “A Course in Miracles” was, and still is, a profound inspiring influence on my journey.

Máncora Wrap-Up

My first two weeks in Máncora have been magical and healing, plus I have acquired a very nice tan, transforming my body from pasty-white to a very healthy light brown. I feel so much younger and my skin is so much smoother.

It has been a profoundly-needed break for relaxation and rest, even though I have done much more with my time here than relax and rest. And it was not until I was here in the middle of my journey this last week that I realized the perfection of the timing. I literally am giving myself an eighteenth birthday present – time to enjoy and integrate like never before.

Just this morning, I decided to stay at least one more week. I am absolutely loving the ocean, and simply devouring the quiet internet time to begin catching up on long-anticipated writing.

Who knows what the future holds. I certainly do not. The only thing I know for sure is that I have felt unexpectedly guided to extend my hotel reservations here through the 26^th, knowing this may just be another step toward a longer stay.

Copyright © 2015 by Brenda Larsen, All Rights Reserved