Updated: How to be be charismatic and attract your destiny
“Think about what would save your life, and then reach toward that.”
At a festive gathering — in between the worlds — a skinny, awkward man asks a charismatic witch man what he could do to attract love and his destiny. The witch man says, “Sit at the corner of the table and think about what you could do or say to save your life right now and then reach toward that.”
Dream, September 27, 2021
Charisma is your personal magic. It's so easy to recognize charisma in others — they are charming and alluring. "Reach toward what would save your life" means align yourself with your natural gifts and divine purpose and then head toward that — and don't look back. Your love and destiny will follow.
Ferris Wheel of Activators
Sometimes in dreams you are given assignments or astral homework. The purpose of which is to clear out energy blocks or to act as guide posts along your path, pointing you to a new trailhead.
Advice and assignments from the astral realm line up in a queue in your mind, and wait for you to act upon it. If you don’t, the queue gets backed up and new messages from the Divine won’t be able to cut in line to get to you.
On Sunday, June 19, 2022, I saw in a dream what they called my activators rotating on a ferris wheel — similar to the Wheel of Fortune tarot card. An activator is an energy that you draw power from. It propels you through life with passion. I was assigned to categorize the activities and people in my life that act as activators.
I began with a blank astrological chart. In each of the 12 houses I wrote down values or concepts that are vital to my existence. Each one is a dimension that I can travel to or a room in my mind that I can dance inside of.
Underneath each dimension, I wrote down the activities that activate these values. I took note of the ones that repeat.
Hiking activates Freedom and Solitude and Play and Beauty. Working with my dreams in waking life activates Mystery, Exploration, Divination, Creation and more. Reading teleports me to the dimension of Mystery and Wisdom. Worship is Love.
The last part of my astral homework was to categorize the people in my life. I chose colors for the persons closest to me and drew lines connecting them to the realms they activate. Some people are more influential than others.
If I know what activities and people activate my passion for life then I have no reason to ever be bored or uninspired. I just spin the wheel and try something else.
You can download your own blank ferris wheel here.
Healing your inner child is time travel
When I was in Sedona, Arizona last year for my 37th birthday, I met with four different healers. A shaman, dream weaver, reiki therapist and someone whose business card said multidimensional intuitive. Each one talked about the importance of healing your inner child.
During one of the sessions, I was given a visualization exercise that had profound effects on my psyche and was definitely a form of time travel.
The exercise:
I was told to go back in my mind to my first moment of shame. I was told to see myself as a child and let myself feel every painful thing Little Claudia was feeling. To induce tears. To let that moment in time break through me and cry. I did. Then I was told to swoop in — as myself from this current point of existence — knowing everything I know now, with all the love I have now, and to pick up that little version of me and heal her with my compassion and wisdom and tell her all the things she needed to hear back then.
My first moment of shame:
I was 4 years old and I was in an upstairs bedroom listening to the radio. There was a Spanish love song playing and I was singing along with it. I had a pen and a piece of paper and I was writing a love letter. I don’t know to who, but I suspect it was to God. My mother came into the room and asked me what I was doing. I told her I was writing a love letter. She laughed at me and I felt embarrassed for the first time in my life. I didn’t want to finish my letter. I didn’t want to sing along to the love song. I thought I had done something wrong — and I was ashamed of being so in love.
How I healed Little Claudia:
In Sedona I was 37 years old when I went back in time and picked up my 4-year-old self and I hugged her, and I kissed her and I told her she had done nothing wrong. I told her she came into this world in love and that’s how she was supposed to remain. I told her to write more and more love letters, and to sing along to all the Spanish love songs and to never — for one moment — feel embarrassed about it. I told her that her heart was pure and that was her super power and to let herself be guided by that for the rest of her life.
We walked out of that bedroom together, Little Claudia and I, and she’s been with me ever since.
Draw your inner child’s dream bedroom
One of the healing frogs, and
a page from my book “A New Temple”
I dreamed that child me was standing in an empty room. My husband was there. He offered to build me the childhood bedroom that I never had but always wanted. Just then the door flew open and the frogs — who I call the “healing frogs” — hopped in to help.
Unfortunately, I woke up. So I meditated to re-enter the dream. I envisioned everything that child me dreamed of having: a wall full of books, a window seat for reading, a view of a river, an art easel, and a microscope.
I then envisioned what adult me would appreciate: a chaise lounge and bar cart with endless, flowing champagne, a sitting area for friends and tea, and another window with a view of mountains.
This room is now a visual safe space that I can return to in meditation for solace. If there is an answer I need, I can pull a book from my shelf. If there is something that is confusing me, I can inspect it under the microscope.
After completing the drawing, it became obvious to me that all the spaces and things inside my room are the most important aspects of my life — quietude, learning, art, connection, nature, and celebration.
A case for growing angel wings
From Meditations on the Tarot by Robert Powell
The organs of action are simply crystallised will. I walk not because I have legs but rather, on the contrary, I have legs because I have the will to move about. I touch, I take and I give not because I have arms, but I have arms because I have the will to touch, to take and to give.
Action plan: Crystallize the will to fly closer to the Mystery of the Universe. You might just sprout spiritual wings.
Note: This post is an excerpt from my weekly mind dump newsletter, sent out each Friday.
The Inner Why Technique
How to do it:
When you notice a sudden change in your emotional state (e.g., you start becoming anxious, sad, frustrated, or angry), immediately give yourself the best quick explanation you can for WHY you think that change in your emotions just occurred. The sooner you can do it after the emotional change, the better. — Spencer Greenberg
Note: This post is an excerpt from my weekly mind dump newsletter, sent out each Friday.
How to challenge your fear
“You must challenge fear and ask it what it means to say. As you go into the fear with eyes open, heart open and courage flowing freely, you will see that fear is only an empty room. Fear is only as strong as your avoidance of it. The greater your reluctance to see the fear, to accept it and embrace it, the more power you allow it.”
— Emmanuel's Book: A Manual for Living Comfortably in the Cosmos
A definition of time and space:
Space is what you desire and Time is all the ways you move toward that desire.
A mantra for clearing shame
Sometimes — seemingly out of nowhere — I’ll find myself stuck in a spiderweb of negativity. What I feel is resentment or fear or anxiety. I avoid giving it a story. I simply say:
This feeling does not belong to me. I return it back to the Universe.
And then I’ll often make a sweeping away gesture with my arms that looks really silly and weird, but is so damn helpful at releasing shame and shooing it away.
Ideas for bringing more pleasure into your daily life
I took a Clearer Thinking program test that helps you bring more joy into your life by enlightening you to what your greatest sources of pleasure are. (I recommended it in Recomendo.)
I discovered my greatest pleasures are mostly Sensorial. With the highest being humor, nature, animals and sound/music. Which is not surprising because this is what I try to fill my days with. But my favorite part of the program is at the end when you’re given ideas as to how to consciously bring even more pleasure into your life. Here they are below.
How to ascend (a growing list of ways to elevate your energy)
Unanchor yourself
Make conscious choices
Exist in the waiting period
Sunbathe
Space out the silences
Ask for guidance
Pray & listen (meditate)
Stretch past your shame
See people as energies
Forgive. Accept. Love.
Breathe as deeply as you can into your mind, heart and body
Sound bathe in nature / Soul bathe in nature
Five steps for creating a new idea
This short, creative self-help book was written in the 1930s by an ad exec and it is, by far, the most useful text I’ve come across on the subject of creating new ideas.
“An idea is nothing more nor less than a new combination of old elements … This technique of the mind follows five steps. I am sure that you will all recognize them individually. But the important thing is to recognize their relationship and to grasp the fact that the mind follows these five steps in definite order — that by no possibility can one of them be taken before the preceding one is completed, if an idea is to be produced.”
The steps — summarized as succinctly as possible — are:
Gather raw material — specific and general. In advertising an idea results from a new combination of specific knowledge about products and people with general knowledge about life and events.
Masticate your material — take the different bits of material which you have gathered and feel them all over, as it were, with the tentacles of the mind. Make connections. Write every new thought down. Do this until you are beyond tired and even then go further.
Make absolutely no effort of a direct nature — drop the whole subject and put the problem out of your mind. Watch a movie. Listen to music. Go for a walk. Sleep.
Out of nowhere the Idea will appear — this is the way ideas come: after you have stopped straining for them and have passed through a period of rest and relaxation from the search.
Take your little newborn idea out into the world of reality — do not make the mistake of holding your idea close to your chest at this stage. Submit it to the criticism of the judicious.
“When you do this, a surprising thing will happen. You will find that a good idea has, as it were, self-expanding qualities. It stimulates those who see it to add to it. Thus possibilities in it which you have overlooked will come to light.”
A chart for finding your reason for being
Ikigai is a Japanese concept that translates roughly to “reason for being.” Your Ikigai is found at the intersection where your passions and talents converge with the things that the world needs and is willing to pay for. Make a list of all the things you're curious about and figure out where they intersect. Then, find a medium through which you can express that passion.
Old horoscope — what kind of woman to be
Be a woman who knows her own magic and in that self-awareness find a potent confidence with which to live.
— Old horoscope, 2003
Favorite quotes: Warrior Goddess Training by HeatherAsh Amara
The first step to claiming your strength and igniting your will is to get clear about what you want. Not what your victim wants, or what your judge wants, or what you would like, but what your highest vision and purpose is for yourself. What I have found is that when you get clear about your heart's desire, the Universe steps up in magnificent ways to support you!
So I say, if you are burning, burn. If you can stand it, the shame will burn away and leave you shining, radiant, and righteously shameless. —Elizabeth Cunningham
What is your main taproot? Make it deep and solid. Redirect it if it has grown attached to a person or ideal. Anchor yourself in infinity, in earth, to the life-force. Where is your true source of energy and stability? Reach deep.
How to clear old emotions: Take five minutes each day, whether you feel like it or not, to move through some emotions. You can also do this by dancing vigorously and yelling. Use your voice; scream, cry, om, growl . . . let your emotions move!
Life does not personally punish people or seek to cause suffering; it simply moves.
When you let go of who you wish you were, you reclaim your power to be radiantly, magnetically, and creatively who you are.
How to define your problems
To start defining your problems, say (out loud) “everything in my life is completely fine. Notice what objections arise.
— #53 on 100 Tips For A Better Life
Six right livelihood guidelines
Consume mindfully.
Eat with awareness and gratitude.
Pause before buying and see if breathing is enough.
Pay attention to the effects of media you consume.
Pause. Breathe. Listen.
When you feel compelled to speak in a meeting or conversation, pause.
Breathe before entering your home, place of work, or school.
Listen to the people you encounter. They are buddhas.
Practice gratitude.
Notice what you have
Be equally grateful for opportunities and challenges.
Share joy, not negativity.
Cultivate compassion and loving kindness.
Notice where help is needed and be quick to help
Consider others' perspectives deeply.
Work for peace at many levels.
Discover wisdom
Cultivate "don't know" mind (= curiosity).
Find connections between Buddhist teachings and your life.
Be open to what arises in every moment.
Accept constant change.