When you show up with love in your heart, what is returned to you is pure love.

While I knew this piece of universal wisdom to be true, I never experienced it so profoundly as I did the other day.  I flew to Miami to see my aging ailing Father. I have a good, although not very close, relationship with Dad. My childhood was tumultuous. My parents went through a long drawn out battle of a divorce that left a lot of emotional debris. My father, who was a renowned neuro-psychiatrist, went on to make some horrendous decisions in his personal life. His misguided thinking and its outcomes were splattered across the media headlines on more than one occasion. Other bad choices liquidated the wealth he had built up over his lengthy career.

I defined my Dad by these life-altering choices. Taking the lessons I learned with my as I watch his life experience crash and burn, I made different decisions – took different paths – in my own life.  What I didn’t know, until the other day, that the greatest gift I would ever get would be from my Dad.

This week my Dad taught me the following:

1. You do not know what you do not know
2. The natural human spirit creates life and faces the end of life with grace and dignity.
3. As long as there is breath in our lungs there are gifts in the lessons that can be learned – we continue to grow.
4. When you show up with love in your heart, what is returned to you is pure love.

In earlier visits with my Dad I showed up as if I was fulfilling a family obligation.  I had my expectations about what the short time we spent together would be like and got exactly what I expected. Year after year.  All I did was reaffirm what I thought to be true about my Dad and my relationship with him; Dad was a selfish SOB and he never knew or cared much for me.

This time I knew it might be the last time I would see him while he was still lucid. He’s bedridden and cannot see or hear very well.  I prepared his tiny meals and fed him as I would any infant.  Sitting at his bedside I decided that I would give him the gift of closure, peace of mind, so that he could let go comfortably.  I decided to arrive in a state of love instead of expectation.

I wasn’t prepared for what I experienced.  Here was a man who I thought was devoid of emotional tenderness, any interest in who I am as his daughter, and full of himself.  Who I experienced was a man stripped of all ego, all parts of him that he used to cope with his own inner pain, freely expressing his truth.  It was the most profound awakening I have ever witnessed. The awakening wasn’t within him. This new perspective came from within me.  I woke up to who my Dad really is at his deepest core and it rocked my world.

Dad expressed the lessons he learned, his love for me, my siblings, his wife whom he was once estranged and his love of life.  While his Alzheimer’s made it difficult for him to fully communicate what he wanted to say he spoke of his appreciation for life and all that it had to offer.  When his memory failed he would fill in the gaps with a little joke, a rhyme or pieces of an old song that surfaced out of nowhere. I was captivated and engaged as an observer and witness to the joy and delight that is my father.  My time with him flew by and I longed for more.

I kissed him goodbye when I left. The flight home was tearful as I felt a wave of stuck toxic energy within me release itself.  The resulting hole in my inner being was filled with love and appreciation for the resiliency, enormous power and inner wisdom that is the human spirit.  I am grateful that I had learned enough of my own lessons to get out of my own way so that I could experience what I never thought possible….to know and love and be loved for who I am for and by my Dad.

I was completely wrong about who I thought my Dad was. His actions were always well intended yet his choices of execution were woefully misguided through his own Inner Critic, his own pain. Dad is a man filled with love for his children and his purpose in life, to heal others in pain.  He never gave up his quest to become the man his heart longed to express. I was blessed to be a witness as he revealed his truth, all that he had learned, and all that he still had to share.

I invite you to show up with love in your heart the next time you visit with what you assume are your dysfunctional family relationships.  Give yourself the gift of the profound power, energy and lessons that can be learned through the purest expression of the human heart.

Exciting News!

My gut, my intuition, my Inner Wizard has been calling me to allow it to come out and play, to boldly and fully express herself.

The day has arrived. The Inner Wizard now boldly expressing herself at Moxie Therapy. This is the last blog I will be posting at InnerWizard.

For those of you who are new to this blog, the Inner Wizard is your unique expression of the human spirit. Some people call it a Higher Self, Inner Being, Soul, Heart-centered God force, or any number of other names that describe the voice of authenticity, intuition and the source of inspiration within each and every one of us. I playfully call it the Inner Wizard.

The Inner Wizard is:

Worthy
Inspirational
Zealous
Authentic
Responsible
Deliberate

When you show up in your life fully expressing those attributes, you’ve got Moxie!

What do those who achieve extraordinary success – Richard Branson, Oprah Winfrey, Steve Jobs, J.K. Rowling, Bette Midler, Mary Kay Ash, Angelina Jolie, Howard Stern, Danica Patrick and Ellen DeGeneres have in common?

Moxie

Those who rise above mere success to create an extraordinary life have the guts, fortitude, Moxie, the confident courage to achieve authentic greatness with unrelenting drive and passion.

“When you feel in your gut what you are and then dynamically pursue it – don’t back down and don’t give up – then you’re going to mystify a lot of folks.” – Bob Dylan

You are here to mystify a lot of folks. As such you already have within you everything you need to astound, amaze and electrify your world. You were given these gifts as your birthright:

M – ability to Master your opportunities

O – Omnipotent; having unlimited power to create

X – the “X” factor – your Authenticity; who you really are; unique purpose

I – Intuition: inner wisdom

E – Energetic expression: boldly thinking, speaking & acting with intention

In a word, you’ve got MOXIE!
“We are all divine, but I was the only one who had the nerve to call myself that.” — Bette Midler
To apply this formula you must first ask, acknowledge and honor what would make your heart sing. If you don’t know the answer to this question or are feeling miscast in the story that is your life you may be on a path that is not your own.

Unless you are tapped in to your Nature, your authenticity, instead of your Nurture, your conditioning, you cannot express your MOXIE.

To achieve, maintain and enjoy extraordinary success you have to stand centered in the truth of who you really are. You must think, speak, act and renew your commitment to express your Moxie as you live and breathe each and every day.
Join me to Claim Your Truth, Own Your Power, Command Your Stage at http://www.MoxieTherapy.com to Muster Up Your Moxie!