Becoming Spiritual

with Alicia Eichmann

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What if your soul knows why you’re here?

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What if your soul knows why you’re here?

What if it chose this life, these circumstances?

What if you have your destiny imprinted on you when you come into this life?

Scientists have found energy fields around all living things, that hold the blueprint for their adult form, they embody the potentiality of what they will become.

What if your soul made agreements before it came into this life?

What if forgetting is part of the process, so that in rediscovering it you might take a beautiful journey of growth and healing, what if your soul came to this life and this time for a certain purpose?

What if you could accept your entire life as if you had chosen it?

What if you could accept the mystery, and embrace the parts that you don’t understand?

What if you could stop judging your story, and everyone else’s?

What if you chose to believe and accept that every part of your past has had meaning and purpose?

What if we suspend judgment, and ask for enlightenment?

What if we dare to expand our perspective, to allow spirit to show us the bigger picture?

What if you are a beautiful, eternal knowing soul?

What if your magnificent, loving soul knows why you are here?

What if our true spiritual nature is what the enlightened masters and spiritual teachers have been trying to tell us?

What if the religious traditions have mistakenly transmitted a tainted message?

What if the good news is so much better than we ever knew?

What if God is bigger than we thought?

What if God is not out there somewhere judging and measuring us, but is here and there and in me and in you, and in everything, loving and creatively sustaining all of it?

What if God is the Source Energy that created everything and sustains everything, and that makes up the very fabric of the universe, including our very being?

What if all of creation is made of energy, all of those energetic beings are connected on an energetic level?

What if your soul existed before you were born and will go on living after your body dies?

What if your soul chose for you to live here, now, where you are, to heal and be healed, to experience certain experiences, to learn certain things, to contribute to the growth and healing of humanity in certain ways?

What if your inner wisdom is so much more beautiful and wise than you ever knew?

What if life is about so much more than following the rules and going to the right place when you die?

What if living in heaven or hell is a daily choice we make and a daily reality that we choose to live out?

What if these ideas are stirring hope in you?

What if it’s true?

What if you are pure energy?

What if you’re here for an intelligent, definite purpose?

What if you’re on a mission of light and love?

What if we’ve misunderstood Jesus?

What if we can find a new way to be spiritual?

What if all the spiritual teachers and founders of religion all started out saying the same thing?

It’s all way more simple and complex than we thought. It’s full of hope and joy and peace, and an actual path forward.

It’s a reason to get up every morning, it’s the motivation to show up for your loved ones, to follow a lighter path, to spread love, compassion, empathy.

It’s time to feel our connection to each other. It’s time to acknowledge our common bond, our same nature.

It’s time for you to listen to the call of our soul, your inner mind, your true self.

Within you, our cultural conditioning has created a false self fed by fear and run by reason and a glorification of rational thought.

What if this false self is the source of sin and suffering?

What if that is what the sinful nature means?

What if we can truly live a spirit filled life, what if we can be transformed by the renewing of our mind?

What if we can stop searching and find the key right here, inside of us?

It’s in your heart, in your soul.

Your soul holds the key. You’ve already received the divine download.

It’s been there since you were born, waiting for you to awaken to it, waiting patiently for it to be your time.

What it’s your time,
to awaken,
to a new reality,
in which everything is spiritual,
everything you do matters,

You hold the key to your own empowerment,
and it starts by quieting your mind
and listening to your heart,
because it knows,
it conspires with your soul,
to free you from the false self.

What if your soul knows why you’re here?

Inspiration for this poem drew partly from The Seat of the Soul, by Gary Zukav, and A Soul’s Code, by James Hillman.

I use affiliate links for books. I appreciate your support.

My Story – Part 1

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Early Years

I grew up in church. I’ve been ‘saved’ ever since I can remember. I have vague memories in early grade school of answering the “if you want to receive Jesus or just rededicate and make sure” call to come forward.

Church was a regular part of life that I took for granted, without thinking about it until everything changed in 6th grade.

Growing up in Kansas City we’d get anywhere from 0 to 4 or 5 good snows each winter and they weren’t often thick enough for sledding, so when we got a good snow it was a big deal. But I can’t really remember the sledding. All I remember is the last time we headed out to go sledding, and I never made it there.

I was sitting ‘shotgun’ in the front seat, my brother and neighborhood playmate were in the back seat. We stopped at one of two stop lights that were on the way to the park with the great sledding hill. As the light turned green my dad looked up and started to go and I looked over and saw that this lady in a van was running the red light and was going to hit us. I instinctively folded my arms over my chest and ducked my head, and boom, crash.

I woke up a second later in the car, pushed up against the far left side of the intersection. My door was smashed in, my dad was checking to see if I was ok. Apparently I seemed fine, but then I started to move and realized my shoulder hurt, bad.

I remember asking my dad what was taking so long and he said the ambulance was on its way, but was taking a bit because the first report that went out said no one was hurt.

It turned out all I broke was a collarbone. And while that was a painful injury with what felt for a 10 year old to be a painstakingly slow and annoying 8-12 week recovery, it was also a miracle.

I distinctly remember them telling me that if the van, which impacted the car near my feet, had been a foot closer to me that I could have been in a body cast.

I remember simultaneously not being able to truly process what that meant – body cast? what did that even mean? what did that look like? – and knowing without a shadow of a doubt that something had saved me and that I was here for a reason. I walked away from that accident with a sense of calling and destiny that I’ve never been able to escape.

But it took 20+ years to make sense of it. I set off on a personal quest for meaning in the only source I knew – the bible. I found a copy of Haley’s Bible handbook in our house, and I remember sitting in our sunroom in the summer between 6th and 7th grade, reading it, and then reading the Bible, and then reading the handbook again. I set out to read the Bible and understand it.

And not just the Gospels and Genesis. I read Numbers, and Leviticus, and the minor prophets, referring to the handbook when I didn’t understand something.

Bible Quizzing

In 8th grade I visited a Nazarene church with a mission friend who was home on furlough and discovered Bible quizzing. So cool, I was hooked.

It was April and there were only two months and a few quiz meets left in the year. I went home and memorized as many as I could of the dedicated 100 memory verses that there would recitation questions about.

The following year I memorized all of them. And when I won the jump I knew the answers to the question 95% of the time. I started memorizing whole chapters. We went to regionals and nationals and won trophies. It was a lot of fun.

Senior year came and it was time to go to college. I almost went to MidAmerica Nazarene University in Kansas City, but my parents convinced me to visit Oral Roberts University in Tulsa, and I really felt the presence of God there, somehow I knew that was where I was supposed to be.

I absolutely loved my four years there, and I remember talking to the career guidance counselor freshman year about picking a major and telling him I wanted to teach and he said there were two tracks. I could get a degree in education and go that route or I could pick a topic and take it all the way to a doctorate and then teach it at the graduate level.

Getting My Degrees

I decided to go deep. Now I just need a topic. Some good friends of our family that I looked up to advised me to get a ‘tent making skill’. Many times over the years I’ve questioned my degrees and wished I would have listened to them. But at the time although I enjoyed everything I learned in school, church was my world. I felt drawn to whatever had the highest meaning about life in an ultimate sense. For me that was the Bible and I felt drawn to study it deeper.

I wanted to understand, to know, why I was here, why we here, what God was really telling us through the Bible.

So I picked New Testament as my major. I tried to minor in Youth Ministry or Psychology, but because of the classes ended up needing another option and ended up picking Old Testament. So I learned both Greek and Hebrew, and it was fascinating to learn to read the text and the terms in the original language, while also studying the accompanying culture.

Senior year I met my now-husband, and after graduation followed him home to Virginia Beach, Virginia to get my Masters degree at Regent University. They had the degree I was looking for, not the typical 60 hour MA or the practical ministry track, but the 72 hour Pre-Doctoral academic track. Yep, that’s for me, because I am so serious about this. I started my studies in Virginia in Jan 2006.

In 2007 we got engaged, Charles graduated and found a full time webmaster job at the School of Divinity where I was still a student, and we got married in the fall. I took the spring semester off and then resumed my studies, finishing in May of 2009.

In the fall and winter of 2008 I came to a fork in the road. I was preparing to graduate, which raised the question, what next? Was I getting my doctorate? Where? How?

That Christmas we had a really special time with extended family and I remember coming away from that holiday with an impression having been left on me. Something touched my heart, changing my priorities. I had only applied to a few, hard-to-get-into doctoral programs, and when the letters came back negative, it felt right.

Having Kids

I felt in my heart that it was time to start a family, and then see where we went from there. I graduated in May, started looking for a job to help pay back student loans, and found one building websites for a small real estate team. We started trying and I got pregnant in Aug. I worked in the office full time for 9 months and then after my son was born they let me switch to working part time, mostly from home.

One night that summer right before I found out I was pregnant, I woke up from the only dream I’ve ever had that impacted me this way. In my dream I had seen a boy and he and I had this special bond, and then I woke up and found myself crying from a real sense of loss. Because it felt so real and meaningful, when I woke I felt I had lost something I was meant to have. A week or two later I found out I was pregnant and then I was at peace because I knew God had shown me my son. I told my friends and family that I knew it was boy, and didn’t even think about names for the first kid because I knew my husband had always wanted to name his first son after himself, and his father. And I knew we were having a boy. That’s the only time in my whole life up to this point that I’ve ever had a dream like that. Usually I don’t even remember them at all.

Searching

During my years in college and grad school I always felt a bit restless, like I was searching for something I could never find. I got used to this feeling, it was a constant companion that never went away. 

Until I got pregnant for the first time.  

Being pregnant filled me with this incredible peace that I was where I was supposed to be and doing exactly what I was supposed to be doing. I think the dream really contributed to me being able to be in that place during my first pregnancy. 

That restless feeling went away for 8 years. I spent those years working from home and raising kids. We had another boy in 2011, and another in 2014 and then got surprised with a final fourth in 2016, while debating whether to have 3 or 4 kids. But he is meant to be here, I see now how he completes us. Looking back I also see so much providence in his coming in 2016, helping me to keep my priorities on family at a pivotal time.

When he turned 6 months old and started sleeping through the night, I began to get back to normal, getting enough sleep and feeling more myself – as happens at some point for us after each baby. But this time that restless feeling came back.

I couldn’t shake it.

What now? What’s my purpose? What is the meaning of everything? What are we doing here? Isn’t there something more?

At the same time the feeling was more one of purpose and hope and curiosity. I knew so much more than last time. 

Me and my husband. Our four boys. Doing life together. Ok, what does that look like?

As my older boys had gotten into school, it became increasingly on my heart to research homeschooling and consider homeschooling our boys.

This would require leaving my job, and so I started reaching online business and other ways to work from home, with greater freedom and autonomy.

Early in my research, learning about homeschooling took an unexpected turn into personal growth and healing. 

What I found in a few early books I read helped shed incredible light on me, and why I was the way I was. It helped me see how being schooled had formed a large part of my identity. This set me on a course to ‘unschool’ myself and made me more determined to find a way to homeschool my boys.

Starting a Blog

I’ve always been a big reader, but I had slowed down quite a bit during those early child raising years. But now I was searching again and I was hungry so I read book after book about psychology, business, personal development, nutrition.

I started a blog in the Spring of 2017 called Energy for Moms and I shared about the books I was reading. I was increasingly not only restless, but truly unhappy and just feeling, stuck. You can see in my blog archives from the summer of 2017 where I talked about trying to read my way out of starting to feel depressed. After my second son I had been in a bad place emotionally for awhile and I wanted to keep from going back to that state of mind.

So I searched, and I learned, and I worked, and made dinner and changed diapers, and searched, and read. I took courses and learned strategy. I read books and worked on my mindset, and my attitude, and my patience. I took a blogging course, and recorded a couple of videos during that time, saying where I was at and where I wanted to be. It’s evident in my writing that I had a faint but solid glimmer of hope and resigned determination to just keep going forward.

I learned a lot about the blogging and the online world, but I hit a few roadblocks. I stopped writing. I rebranded to Energy for Mompreneurs. This felt a bit silly because I was not an entrepreneur yet, but that was the world I felt drawn to and I wanted to learn everything I could about it and figure out how to belong in it. As 2018 turned into 2019 I was switching my focus from writing and blogging to figuring out how women made money now, without building a reader base first.

 So I learned all about service-based solo entrepreneurs, I met a lot of other moms and saw what they based their businesses on. The biggest categories seemed to be virtual assistants, marketers, and coaches. I knew I had the potential to do any of those. I was encouraged by my options.

In all of my spare time from mid 2017 to mid 2018 I worked on ideas for my business. I talked to women online, did market research, learned how to diy my branding, looked at which of my skills were marketable, and made my first money from a small job for a friend.

The first half of 2018 was full of turmoil at work, and this combined with the culmination of my own journey brought me to a breaking point in August. 

By late summer 2018 I had set up two desks in my office, with two computers. One was for my job, and one was for my business. I would work the hours for my job at that desk, and then look for time to sit at my business desk and work on figuring out a plan that would carry me to the future I was envisioning. 

I remember two days in a row sitting at my computer desk for my job, and sitting there, making myself work and just sitting there crying through the process of getting simple tasks done.

That was when I knew it was time to make a change. My parents came in town for the weekend and at the end of their visit, on the way to the airport I finally told them where I was at, how I was feeling and what I wanted to do. My dad called the next day and offered to loan me some money as an extra emergency fund for my income. The next monday, Aug 27, I gave my company two weeks notice.

My last day was Sept 7, 2018. I had been there since Aug 3, 2009. Some of my friends thought I should just be grateful for a reliable job that paid well and let me work from home. But what had long been God’s provision and a perfect fit had become a toxic environment for me. And I see now that something in me had been awakened and I was being called forward into a new season.

Reflecting on this past year

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It’s Saturday. Two of the boys spent the night at grandma’s. The third woke me up at 5am with bad dreams. The fourth, who is 3, crawled into our bed at 6:30am.

It’s been exhausting two weeks, a busy month, a crazy summer, and insanely unpredictable year of transition and change.

And all I can think is how grateful I am for all of it. For the boys, for this house, for a year of growth and change.

It’s been a year of change in two different and deeply meaningful senses. My husband lost his job the first week of January and we immediately decided to sell our house of 5 years and rent while he found a new job he could settle into. During the past 8 months we’ve lived in 3 places and each tried multiple jobs, or for me – business models. So it’s been a lot of physical change and shaking up of life.

The other year of change just ended in the traditional sense. On Aug 27, 2018 I gave my boss of 9 years my two weeks notice. I knew in my heart that it was time for me to move on to a new chapter, a new season of life. My goals were to prepare a way to start homeschooling our boys, and to give my husband greater career flexibility. I had just finished a year of research and networking and my plan was to start my own business.

My husband was suddenly let go due to downsizing, in Jan. He got a new job across town in April and we moved into a nearby rental house, taking the opportunity to start homeschooling.

In May he got a better job across town the other direction, this time near his parents and in the area we wanted to be in. While we gave him time to get settled in the job, we debated breaking our lease early, and whether to rent again or buy, while being told that the market was hot and it would be best to wait a while to buy. Meanwhile the kids and I were a bit cramped in our small white rental house. I remained incredibly grateful for it, but also starting to dream about a house in Chesapeake.

After only just starting to look at neighborhoods, mainly focusing on learning the traffic patterns of the area, looking for where our price range might coincide with a decent commute, I saved a few properties on zillow, and then got an email of a similar house, it was a FSBO that just came on the market that day, which was Aug 23. I called the seller the next day, we saw the house the following day, negotiated price the following week, ratified a contract, and set closing for Aug 30.

Despite the fact that neither of us were using an agent, everything went so smoothly that closing was moved up to Aug 27.

I woke up that day super excited about closing on the house, and then slowly realized it was exactly a year to the day since the day I had given my boss notice a year earlier.

This year has been full of miracles, and growth, a rekindling of hope, a rediscovering of faith, a stripping back of old layers of bad habits, old thinking.

I feel like I’ve come back home, and at the same time am starting a new season that feels like a whole new life. I have so much yet to learn and figure out, but I finally feel I am setting out on the right journey, that I’m headed down the right path.

I’m looking forward to sharing that journey with you, sharing what I’ve learned, where I’ve been, where I’m at, and discovering together where we are all headed as we make sense of this wonderful gift called life.

Why we shouldn’t just stand firm

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Reflections on finding our spiritual path, and why we need an answer beyond just rejecting manic self improvement or embracing the basic tenets of Stoicism

Earlier this week I read Stand Firm: Resisting the Self-Improvement Craze by Svend Brinkmann (affiliate link). A friend recommended it to a friend and I ended up reading a borrowed copy in a day.

What was most illuminating to me was the way this author helped me see how I disagree with how he would solve the problem he was discussing. But perhaps equally helpful was how he looked at the personal growth and development movement from an outside perspective.

He critiqued what he saw as a religion of the self, and talked about how the push to constantly improve yourself has permeated every part of our culture.

As someone with an internal drive to constantly improve, his message did not immediately resonate with me, but I found myself open to seeing what he was seeing, knowing that this is part of my quest to understand both the broader discussion and the experience and the reactions that people are having today. The success of his book and his resulting demand as a speaker is evidence that his message resonates with people.

I continued reading, wanting to understand why, and to see what I can learn from him, how he might give me some wisdom to round out my own pursuit of knowledge.

So I kept going, reading chapters about saying no, thinking about the negative, and not working with a coach. I see how he is pointing out an obnoxious tendency in society that he is probably right needs correcting. I see how there are excesses in the modern ‘positive-thinking, say-yes, personal growth, find-the-answer-inside-yourself’ movement. But I think there is so much good and actual advancement represented here that instead of rejecting it we should look at how it can be corrected and given better guidance and direction.

His solution, which he wishes to point the reader to without fully explaining it himself, is the tradition of Stoicism with its emphasis on acceptance, steadiness, goodness and self-discipline. He focuses on exhorting the reader in the practice of standing firm, and occasionally resisting forward motion and the command of society to be ever flexible, always changing.

I found myself both agreeing and disagreeing with him at the same time. He helped me see something I was too close to the issue to see, how the emphasis on self improvement has perhaps become pervasive and destructive in certain ways. But I would argue that instead of simply rejecting or resisting it, as one would stand in a river and brace against the current, that we need to restore what should be at the heart of this positive, empowering movement.

What I see here, as in so many other places, is that the heart, the compass, the guiding light is missing. I see in the personal growth, self-help movement, so much hunger and desire for change and for good. Good people who once felt stuck are cultivating hope that they can be better and that they can make the world better. We need this.

I would argue that the correct approach to the problem that he sees is not to swing the other direction but to seek to add spiritual truth to the conversation around personal growth and development.

Brinkmann helped me see the role of Stoicism in a new light as well. I’m truly grateful for that as I’ve been navigating these different ideologies and trying to get a sense of what each one is, where it fits, and how it relates to the problems at hand.

I’ve recently become a fan of Ryan Holiday, partly because of his peripheral content aimed at helping budding writers. But his core content has been all about bringing the ideas of Stoicism to personal development. Stoicism sounds smart and wise, and certainly has value in its response and contrast to the whims and trends that currently rise and fall in our culture. It would be good to see a return to a greater sense of duty, honor, and discipline.

However, I think that to embrace Stoicism and look no further would be to settle for good rather than seeking great. Or perhaps that is not saying it strongly enough.

I’m coming to see how many personal development frameworks put out today by various authors seem incredibly smart, novel and effective – an attractive combination for Americans with our penchant for the new and novel, the useful and effective – but lack a sustained power in and of themselves to truly transform, at least not without a lot of grit and self-discipline, and a low conversion rate of those who are able to simply follow the formula and get the same results.

But that low success rate means many who have flocked to these ideas are still stuck in their circumstances, sometimes also financially or emotionally drained, or both, from applying the required effort and resources.

But this does not mean that we should encourage them to stop dreaming, stop reaching higher; the last thing I want to see is an improved ability instead to simply stay where we are and get better at accepting it and being grateful for all we have.

Yes, gratitude is key, but so is growth. It is both a moral imperative and our birthright, for all who desire it to spend their lives continually growing and improving and striving for something greater than they have today. This is not embracing a power or money-seeking mindset but rather the same beautiful spirit found in nature. All of creation is constantly growing and expanding and we have that same nature in us.

We are meant to spend our lives growing into the truest sense and expression of ourselves, bearing the fruit of love, service and joy in contribution to the greater good of the rest of humanity and nature as well.

So how do we pursue this healthy, divinely sponsored growth, without pursuing the excess of a ‘religion of self’ which Brinkmann rightly critiques, or solely embracing Stoicism, which Holiday has so ably reintroduced as a useful tool?

I believe we need to embrace our divine calling to a spiritual path and a spiritually-enhanced understanding of our lives. I do not yet by any means have all or even most of the answers. But I believe with my entire being that our future lies down this path.

We are spiritual beings just as much as we are physical beings. In our progress, our history, and the evolution of our understanding, we have recently been through a long phase of history where science and reason was emphasized and prioritized above emotion, art, love, and faith, everything related to spirit, spirituality, and that which is sacred or holy, not completely understood with the mind, or examinable with the scientific method.

We are now in a new season of human history where we correcting back toward the middle. This is why you hear so many great men and women talking now about bridging faith and science and pursuing an ecumenical approach to social, economic and religious issues.

I think Rob Bell is onto something when he talks about holism. I think Marianne Williamson is onto something when she talks about the politics of love and recovering the soul of America. I recently did some research on the most influential spiritual leaders alive today and found recurring themes in their work around ecumenism, healing, love and the bridging of faith and science.

Simply reading a list of quotes from Deepak Chopra freed me to realize that I can begin sharing and perhaps teaching when I am still seeking and learning myself. He said to learn from those who are also seeking and be wary of anyone who has all the answers. That was so freeing because while I’m so excited about everything I’ve learned and am continuing to learn, I still feel like there is so much I don’t know. I feel as if I am just getting started. I feel my whole life has led up to this point, of finally finding the right path for me, the path I must take. And that I am only now heading down the path, having finally found it.

We need to re-embrace a sense of mystery, and to hold in tension the quest for spiritual truth with an acceptance that the journey will take a lifetime and that some of the best spiritual truths exist primarily in paradox form.

We are spiritual beings. 

We are spiritual beings who unfortunately have forgotten who we are, we have lost our birthright, we have misplaced our sense of certainty, of destiny, of awe.

We are spiritual beings who unfortunately in today’s world too often have mental, emotional or spiritual wounds around words and concepts such as God, sin, salvation, and surrender.

But that reflects more on the imperfect human messengers, teachers, leaders, who have come before us, than on the nature of the divine, on the character of God.

I believe the most dangerous tendency in our world today is the inclination and habit of rejecting a spiritual nature, understanding or explanation for anything. And I believe our greatest cause for hope is the growing tide of awareness and desire for depth, meaning and spiritual truth.

When I look back at everything I have learned in my journey so far, the most meaningful and powerful parts of my journey were where I had a fresh revelation around the deep, present nature of spirituality constantly surrounding us.

It is time for us to press in to our own spiritual journeys, to a fresh knowledge and revelation of the divine, our divine nature, our beautiful world, and our place in it. To pursue a true sense of holism, a marriage of the sacred and mundane, and an understanding, to quote Rob Bell, that “everything is spiritual.”

How to Find Your Voice this Summer

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I think it’s incredibly powerful to slow down and question the purpose of everything, to be sure that you have your own intent behind the activities that you are doing.

I have begun including affiliate links for the books I mention. If you use them I may make a commission at no additional cost to you. I am so grateful for your support. Learn more here.

Hey beautiful,

Has your summer been restful so far? I love how the pace of everything has been slower, and I’ve been using the time to do a lot of soul searching. Unfortunately that usually leads to a lot of journaling and thinking, but less time writing and blogging. But I have been developing the habit of sharing small posts on Facebook.

I keep thinking I need to create a content schedule to help me get back on track with a regular posting schedule. But then I realize I am doing the foundational work of finding clarity about my identity and my mission and I’m finding that that just can’t be rushed.

If you’re finding yourself digging deeper into who you are and what you really want to do, I want to encourage you to embrace that process.

I think sometimes we have seasons in life where we wake up and realize we’ve been going through the motions, doing all the obligatory things, letting people and life just rush us along through everything.

I think it’s incredibly powerful to slow down and question the purpose of everything, to be sure that you have your own intent behind the activities that you are doing. And when you find yourself asking ‘why’, why am I even doing x or y or z, if you don’t find a satisfactory answer that lines up with your values and aligns with a fresh vision for your life, give yourself permission to stop doing those things.

Allow yourself to outgrow things that no longer serve who you’re becoming, or where you are in your life now. Sometimes even people, places and activities need to be downmoted in priority when you are deciding how to spend your time, money and energy.

And that’s okay.

With YouTube videos and online courses as a solid second, my favorite way by far to push myself forward in personal growth and finding my way in life, is to read books and capture my thoughts in my journal.

I’ve always prioritized non-fiction, personal development, spirituality, psychology, business. But recently I’ve heard several teachers and authors I respect encouraging us to also read fiction, biography, history, not just self-help. So I’m taking that seriously.

(And as soon as I decided to read some fiction, not knowing at all where to start, one of you recommended a book and offered to send me a copy. I’m accepting that my life is like that now. When you truly begin to seek and live in alignment with the goodness of the Universe and God’s divine purposes, and your own truth, when you are ready for the next thing, it just shows up. Our upcoming home purchase is a great example, I’ll be sharing that story in the facebook group soon.)

I’ve found that the right book always shows up next, whether it’s mentioned in a book I’m reading, shows up in amazon as similar to recent purchases, is recommended by a friend, or draws my attention when I’m browsing Barnes and Noble. I’ve come increasingly serious about paying attention and being open to what I might read next.

I started reading Mastery, by Robert Greene recently and he talks about how those who become great at something, go through the process of giving themselves a self-apprenticeship in a topic that captivates them. The way he talks about it makes me think of how James Hillman talks in The Soul’s Code about the way each of us has a soul that will draw us toward our destiny through interests that naturally and intrinsically fascinate and captivate us.

That’s been true for me with books and learning. I keep trying to find the common thread, the core topic that runs through all of the books and information that I love to read and share with you all.

I started out my membership focused on sharing from books, a book a week, in a methodical book-based way, but now that I’ve done that for a month, I found I needed to keep searching for a theme, something I could consistently speak to and be known for. Something that would organize my own thoughts and be a filter for what I share.

Through the books and authors and videos and personal life stories, whatever I might share, I want there to be a clear theme that I always help you with so that you know what you can always expect to get, and you can come check out my writing when you feel the need for that thing, and when friends are talking about that, you can recommend my stuff.

Way too many people are generalists, trying to cover too many topics. I’ve known that, and that I didn’t want to fall into the same trap. But it’s taken me years to dial down into my unique space, which I think is a testament to why so many don’t, because it is really hard. Steven Pressfield says in Do the Work, that when you ask yourself that simple, clear question of your work, “what is this really about”, he says that is the thorniest nut to crack.

My Core Theme

What I’ve got so far is this sense that everything I look at, I see spiritual depth to it. And sometimes that is my favorite part of an author’s work or of an idea, and sometimes it is the crucial thing that I feel is missing, that I think would take whatever it is, to the next level. It would add an important dimension to the discussion or to the application of the concept, whatever it is.

I was walking across the parking lot to the grocery story last week and I was thinking about an example and had this sudden, strong sense, of ‘yeah, that is important!’ and ‘why doesn’t everyone see this?’ As I was thinking about how I don’t see anyone covering quite that thing in quite the way I would, it dawned on me that that must be it. That layer I see is what I need to speak to.

So I’ve set my intention to look everywhere for that layer I see, to begin to define it, and get feedback from you all both about what it is – how to describe it – and how it helps you practically in your life.

I think the essence of it for me right now is finding the spiritual depth in everything and integrating that truth and feeling to whatever we are talking about – especially the practical, every day stuff.

Rob Bell would say (as he does in What We Talk About When We Talk About God) that it’s about marrying the mundane and the sacred, removing the false separation there, pursuing a holistic integrated approach to our lives.

This has gotten me thinking about the strategies that most helped me get to the point of finding that unique layer this summer, that focus that would really allow me to find my voice.

You’ve still got time left this summer to take advantage of the slower pace and extra down time to listen to yourself and reflect on where you are compared to who you are at your core and where you truly want to be.

A few things stand out as the most helpful and I wanted to share them with you.

3 Tips for Finding Yourself and Your Voice

1. Align with your future self

When I learned, with help from Morgana McCabe Allan, to take time to look into the future and envision my future self and then allow that vision to speak to me, I gained an immensely valuable tool that I want you to understand and utilize as well.

You can visualize who you are becoming, and when you really feel into that future reality, you begin to train your brain both consciously and subconsciously to look for ways to make it happen. And I think a really powerful practical application of this concept is learning to live in alignment with that vision now.

One example of that for me is really unplugging and relaxing (mentally not physically lol) when my husband and I took our 4 boys camping a few times this summer. Part of my future vision for our family is the freedom to have outdoor adventures. So when we do the version of that that we can afford to do now, I choose to fully embrace the experience, and be thankful for it and treasure all of the experience, being present and joyful, in alignment with how I envision my future self – who is of course more successful, wise and carefree – how she would enjoy her off time with family. I’m also doing this with my visions for being a writer, homeschooling my boys, and improving my physical health.

There is incredible power in considering who you want to be, and taking every opportunity to at least mentally begin to live in that reality. The rest of life will then get on board with your vision and conspire to make it happen.

2. Consider what you love

Another thing I’ve found incredibly powerful and informative is really diving deep into your desires. Allow yourself to go there.

What makes you truly happy? Which activities make your heart sing? What is it about them that you love? What is your favorite part of it? What are you precisely doing in that moment where you feel at one with your soul, at peace with the universe? When do you find yourself in the flow and losing track of time?

These questions are drawn from the line of questioning that Gay Hendricks uses in The Big Leap to find your zone of genius. They are also inline with the idea of having a soul, a true self, with a destiny imprinted on it. I believe that we each have a sense of destiny and knowing, that we need to uncover.

Do we discover ourselves or create ourselves? I believe it is one and the same. Our modern culture and mode of coming to adulthood causes us to lose a sense of self, of true identity and unqiueness. Through the process of coming of age we too often lose our sense of unique desire for that which lights us up. But at any time we can choose to recover it and begin to live in alignment with our core design. We discover who we truly are and create a life in alignment with the truth of who we are and how we are wired. Within your desires are the call of the divine on your life. A good resource for discovering your core desired feelings is The Desire Map, by Danielle LaPorte. Identifying how you want to feel, as well as which kinds of activities speak to you on a primal level, these kinds of self-discovery can help you uncover a sense of joy that you may have lost or muffled.

The point here is to take time to examine yourself and discover what makes you truly happy. What do you want? What brings you joy? What do you desire to have in your life?

3. Find the common thread

What do you always see in everything? What is most fascinating to you, and what do you see is often missing? What bugs you when it gets left out, and why is it important?

Once you’ve worked on understanding who you are and what you want, look around at the world around you and ask yourself what stands out to you.

What do you most want to speak to, contribute to, or change? Where do you see a need that no one is addressing, or where someone is helping but with a crucial component missing?

Begin to watch and think, and journal and take notes. Begin to keep track of those pieces that spark your interest, and they will start to form a common thread that will point you to a unique contribution that you could take great joy in devoting a season of your life to.

I’d love to hear if this was helpful and if you’d like for me to go deeper on this or related topics.

With all my love,
Alicia

What I’m Excited About

  • Ryan Holiday released pre-order bonuses for his Oct release, Stillness is the Key .
  • Bo Eason is giving early access to his book, There is No Plan B for Your A Game , to those who pre-order it.
  • I’m giving up desserts for good as part of who I’m becoming, and I’m about 2 weeks in and feeling good about the long term commitment.
  • I’m wrapping up a training series I got from Gabrielle Bernstein about being a spiritual teacher and it was amazing.
  • I’m adding amazon affiliate links to my book references in my blog posts, so that you can support me in this way if you would like.

What I’m Reading
Mastery, by Robert Greene
There is No Plan B for Your A Game, by Bo Eason
The Artist’s Way, by Julia Cameron
The Science of Self-Empowerment, by Gregg Braden
A Course in Weight Loss, by Marianne Williamson
The Tapping Solution, by Nick Ortner With all my love,

News from My Life
We’re moving! Across town at the end of August, to be closer to my husband’s work and his family.

Next on Alicia’s Soul Adventure
I’m working on a new framework for it that is topic-based instead of book-based. Stay tuned! If you’re not a member yet, click below for more info.


Dear Homeschooling Mom

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I applaud you. I salute you. I adore you. My heart beats as one with you. Don’t ever stop, just keep going.

Your mission is sacred.

You have divine assistance ever ready to support you when needed. All you have to do is ask.

I prayed for years to join you. And now I am one of you. It’s been several months now. I just got my second ever homeschooling approval letter in the mail. It’s official; we’re set to homeschool for our first full school year starting this fall.

It’s interesting to have all the kids all summer knowing that there is no ‘relief’ in the fall, there is no break, no end, this is the new normal. Me. The kids. Doing life together.

And yet no relief was greater than getting that letter in the mail after sending in my letter of intent and our test scores as required by the state.

And yet it’s intense. There is always someone talking to me, touching me, interrupting me, questioning me. Someone is always eating, or pooping, or arguing, or talking.

Some days it is just intense and real, and I make it through. But some days it’s just heavenly and those are becoming more and more frequent. We’re learning how to get along, how to do life together. We’re finding routines, co-creating our days, our schedules, our outings, even our menu.

And then the fear returns. They are fun and wonderful and getting along, yes. But they take so much time, when will I ever work?

When will I write, when will I record videos, will they ever all sleep consistently on the same schedule? Please?

But then I remember to choose faith, to choose love, to choose hope, to believe in mission, purpose and alignment.

What has God put on your heart, for your children, for yourself?

I believe you can find alignment there, and a sense of peace and joy, that will give you a sense of purpose and alignment. And which in turn will give you an acceptance and ownership of your life. And that will revolutionize your use of your energy and your relationship with time.

Which in turn changes – everything.

Dear homeschooling mom, don’t ever give up. Yours is a sacred, holy mission, a beautiful task. Know this, you have everything you need to succeed, and whatever God has put on your heart in addition, a way will be made for you to do all that truly matters, all that you are meant to do and be, you will be given divine capacity for the task.

I have friends who work and homeschool. Knowing them bolsters my faith, as I hope to now lift yours.

You have the time and energy and creativity for everything you wish to do. Learn to listen to yourself, so you know what that truly is. Then really listen to your kids so you know what matters to each of them, and what really doesn’t.

Find what is true for you and your family. It doesn’t matter what other families juggle. What is important to you, to your husband, to the kids?

What are you doing just because?

Figure it out and stop doing it, and give yourself permission to find more time for the stuff that makes your heart sing, and then give yourself permission to make money doing it, if you want.

Your mission is sacred, God is your ally, and I am your biggest fan.

You’ve got this, momma, you’ve so got this.

With all my love,
Alicia

My Letter to You

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Daughter, sister, friend, 

I see you, I know you, I was you. I love you.

I see your struggles, your heartache, your frustrations, your hope. I know you know there is a better way but sometimes you despair of ever finding it.

I see you shopping for groceries, paying the bills, learning new skills, finding time for real talk with your husband, having those challenging conversations with your kids.

I see you in those quiet moments, I feel your determination, your desperation, to find a better way, to make a change, to create a life for your family, that is more, more than you have now, different than you had growing up.

I see you doing dishes, listening to podcasts, reading books, networking on Facebook, going to church, looking for friends, trying to pray.

I see you looking for answers, unsure where to go, where to look, where is safe, who can you trust. I’m here to help you, and I love you.

I know you love your husband, your heart hurts for his struggle, the burden he carries to provide. I know your love for your kids, and all your hopes and fears and dreams for them. I know that deep down you despair of knowing what beliefs you can confidently pass onto them. 

I know that education opened your eyes to the world but also burdened you with knowledge, and debt. I know you see things you don’t know how to grapple with. I know you see the effect of the culture and yet you still fall under its sway. It feels like an uphill battle, going upstream with a small paddle.

I know your struggle with technology, with food, with business, with always striving to make everyone happy. I know that church gives you a high of spirit and relationships for a moment but then leaves you empty. I’ve been there too.

I know you feel shaky in your faith and wish you could find solid ground. I know you feel the tug of your soul, your heart lights up when you make and create, and you despair of having enough time for your art, and your family, and your home, and your own well being.

I’m here to tell you that work life balance is not a myth, and that you can change your relationship with every aspect of your reality – time, money, family, faith, kids, marriage, health, self.

And it starts with a transformation of faith. You’re going to rediscover God in a way that is real to you, so real you can feel it in your bones.

God is alive and well and calling us all forward into a new dispensation of his grace. Science is illuminating the spiritual. The divine is revealing itself to us in new and fresh ways. 

You can find solid ground, and integration of faith and practice. You can have an understanding, an experience, a faith so flexible and yet solid that you can teach it to your kids.

You can discover your own true power, a power greater than you ever realized you had. And yet that is so truly you and a part of the you that is you, that once you find it, you feel like you always knew it to be true. On a deep level you always knew you were so much more than the shell, the shadow, the small version of yourself, of your life that you’ve been living.

You are more than your past, than your mistakes, than your successes. You are more even than your current hopes and dreams for your future. You are so much more than you can conceive in this moment. 

You are beautifully, mysteriously, powerfully good, and strong, empowered and inhabited by the divine energy and wisdom that created the universe, and it’s time to reclaim the truth of who you are.

Your single most important task is this remembering. Your world, your friends, your family, they need you to remember, to recover the forgotten truth of who you are.

Together we will help you remember and recover your identity and through it, your power. 

And when you do, I promise you that everything will change. 

You’ll do work that makes your heart sing, that doesn’t feel like work, and you’ll have time in the transition for everything.

And as you build your foundation, you’ll retire your husband and teach your kids and pour into others and sit in stillness with yourself. You’ll have time for it all and abundance overflowing. 

Because God is here, working in and through and with us. All we need to do is answer the call, be receptive, seek alignment, and expect goodness, love, joy and abundance.

Let go of Resistance, seek Assistance. Your desire is enough.

Let go of your fear, and embrace Faith. Embrace the love that flows into and out of your soul.

We received a tainted religious tradition and a wrecked culture driven by greed and fear, that feeds on the innocent and tempts us into lives of addiction and consumption. 

We now declare that this ends here, with us. We will embrace love and the renewing of our minds. We will press into spirit and find our true power. We will learn and grow and thrive and remove our inner blocks. We will fight the fight of our mind and emotions. We will battle resistance and fear and greed.

So that our children can know a different world, can be raised in a lighter, better world, have a deeply empowering perspective on life that allows their generation to create a radically better world that matches the transformation of their inner lives.

We commit to healing ourselves so that our children can start with a fresh perspective, a new paradigm of Spirit and Truth. We align with the divine, all encompassing source of love that is God, and set our intention to embrace the transformation God intends for us, so that our children can be free of our blocks and limiting beliefs, with the freedom to live at a higher level, to partner with God in the ongoing evolution of humanity, the positive moral arc of history. 

We now declare that it ends with us. We must rise up, we must meet the challenge, rise to the occasion, fight our own demons, conquer our resistance, embrace our power, and offer healing to the world. In all of this we are not alone, our victory will come through the assistance of our inspired imagination powered by love, we no longer work from a striving placed relying on our own willpower. 

As we first heal ourselves and each other we will cleanse the energy of our homes, changing our language and our thoughts, our actions, our emotions. We choose to radically transform our hearts and thus our environments so that our kids can learn a better way at a younger age. They will stand on our shoulders and call us blessed.

They will embody the next stage in human evolution, in the beautiful picture of truth, beauty and grace that the divine in us is calling us forward into.

Cultivate the Mindset that will Create the Right Practice

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I’ve been listening to Gabby Bernstein talk about having a spiritual practice. And then I was re-watching a video by Bo Eason and he was talking about how those who are great at what they do focus more on the practice than the game, so that when the time comes, when the opportunity comes, they are ready – to perform at their best.

And I’ve realized I need a practice. No, I need to learn how to practice.

I need a spiritual practice, and a physical one, and a financial one, and a relational one.

Practice is defined as a) the actual application of an idea, and b) the habitual procedure or way of doing something.

It’s basically consistent ongoing action.

Yeah, I’ve always been bad at that. And it’s time for that to change.

Do you remember writing papers in school? Were you a procrastinator?

I wasn’t. I’d get the assignment, make note of the due date and start and finish the paper right in the middle of that timeline.

But you know what I never did? I never revised my first draft. I was a decent enough writer that I’d always write it, and turn it in to see what would happen. I almost always got A’s.

And so I never learned to hone my craft, to keep working at it, to make it better.

For the last 10 years I’ve been a multi-tasker and a generalist, both at work and at home.

I’ve decided it’s time to change that. It’s time to simplify and streamline and narrow life down to a few things, and do them really well.

That’s another reason I haven’t developed a habit of practice. When you’re doing a ton of different things, if you tried to do them all on a regular schedule, it’d be overwhelming. When you’re keeping plates spinning, you can’t be in that place of routine and regular practice of key activities. You don’t have the time or the mental capacity. You’re not making space for that state of mind that accompanies practice.

I was watching a live teaching recently by Morgana McCabe Allan where she talked about having places for thoughts, notes and ideas so that you don’t hold them in your head. I’ve heard this before, but I was freshly convicted.

It’s time for me to stop living a haphazard life and become intentional in my every day living. And whatever hinders me from that needs to be put in line or cut out.

At first I’m not sure how to change a habit that is so ingrained. I’ve found I have a deep compulsion to address things in my life randomly, and a strong resistance to consistent order.

How do I begin to change?

As I literally sit here and ask myself that question I realize I can start by looking at the habits I have changed and the practices I have started. And the big changes my husband and I have made in the past year with our family.

I started a journaling practice for the first time about a year ago and that has solidified into a consistent part of my life. I’ve also been consistently cultivating a mindset of gratitude and a dialogue in my head around giving myself permission to be happy, to feel good, to expand my awareness, to accelerate my personal growth, to seek and expect to change my life in increasingly dramatic ways.

I’ve been cultivating a mental state of expecting growth, joy, peace, and transformation.

So I’m seeing the fruit of that every month, every week, every day.

Ten months ago I quit my job of 9 years. Seven months ago I started making money on my own. Five months ago my husband changed jobs. Four months ago we sold our house of 5 years and moved. Three months ago I started homeschooling. 

Two years ago I set my intention to change our lives dramatically and as I pressed into that with God what I found was that the first order of business was for me to change on the inside. And then at a certain point in that process things began to transform externally in our lives in big ways.

So now when I feel the need to go to a deeper level with personal disciplines, and I have a desire for further external change, I realize that one has to precede the other.

Which means the question is simply this: What mindset and attitude do I need to cultivate to become the person I’m meant to become in the course of this next season?

Centered. Confident. Patient. Aligned.

That’s my mission.

What’s yours?

My Initial Soul Adventure Welcome Text

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“For this we now declare: WE SHALL MEET LIFE WITH FULL PRESENCE AND POWER.”

Brendon Burchard

Hi, I’m Alicia

I love Brendon’s quote above. It’s from his book, The Motivation Manifesto.

I believe that it’s time for us to show up, to discover ourselves, to find out what it even looks like for us to meet life with presence and power.

That’s what Alicia’s Soul Adventure is all about. It’s my story, but it’s also yours. We’re all on the same journey. I just happen to be a compulsive self development book reader who realized she loves to teach more than coach, who is answering the call of my own soul to become more visible and begin to serve, to see how my healing can now heal others.

My Story

When I was 12, I was in a car wreck. A van ran a red light and hit our car on the front right, just forward of where I was sitting shotgun. I broke my collarbone, took a few months to fully recover. No big deal.

But what was a big deal, what changed the direction of my life forever was the fact that they told me a foot closer to me and I could have been in a body cast. Something deep inside me awoke that day. I had this sense that I’d been protected for a purpose, and I started searching for a deeper meaning in life. I’ve been restless ever sense, looking for purpose and meaning, a deeper truth than you see on the surface of life.

I grew up in church and the summer after the accident I started reading the Bible myself. And I wasn’t reading Genesis or Matthew or Romans. I was reading Leviticus and Numbers and the minor prophets, the stuff no one ever reads. I even found a bible handbook and read along in it so I’d understand.

That’s how hungry I was. Fast forward through highschool, college and grad school. I got BA and MA degrees in Biblical Literature. Then I got married and became a mom and had that realization we all get at some point that school didn’t really prepare us for this, for life. I began to feel that together, public school and the church had let me down. I wasn’t ready. I did everything they said, but I knew I was missing stuff. There had to be more, more insight into how to really live life, really make the most of this one life we all have.

I had serious questions, and practical life challenges. And at my core I’m a reader and researcher, so that’s what I did. Whenever I had questions about nutrition, exercise, sex, parenting – life in general – I found a book and started reading. I also read a lot of business, psychology and history.

These books were all incredibly wonderful and helpful practically. But all that insight came at a cost; at some point the perfect storm of convincing evidence brought a scary truth down on me and I felt the spiritual-intellectual foundation of my life crumbling.

Evolution was true.

Yeah, I know some of you are thinking, “What? That’s it? Of course it is, where have you been?”

For others I feel like I’m the kid telling you santa isn’t real. “Really? No. No, it can’t be. Are you sure?”

Anyway, that was the catalyst for a crisis of faith that lasted several years. I researched my way out of that one too. I finished a couple of months ago (spring 2019).

And what I discovered was something beatiful. And to put it in a ridiculously short nutshell it was basically this: God is alive and well, and at work in the world, and so much bigger than the religion I grew up with.

I’m still confused on some things, but I’m confident I have the important parts figured out and I’m hungrier than ever to fill in the gaps.

And I’ve gone far enough and gotten enough feedback from friends to realize that it’s time to share what I know, and whatever I’m reading about next.

My Invitation to You

Are you hungry too? Do you want to go with me?

Are you looking for positive influences and for mentors to show you the way to better future, a different place than where you’ve always been?

My mission is to help you discover your own inner power and strength, and to unlock a whole new level of life and how you look at the world, in a way that you will never be the same again. It’s as much of a transformation as Neo taking the red pill in the Matrix, but it’s much better news on the other side.

Have you heard people say that you become the sum of the 5 voices that you surround yourself with? I completely believe that. Years ago I heard Gary Vaynerchuk talk about this, saying you could choose online mentors to be some of those voices, especially as a way to begin to transform your life without moving or quitting your job or anything big, (at least not at first). That’s what I did and now that’s what I want to be for you.

I am a teacher and content creator and I want to be one of your voices, someone who is a constant source of inspiration, encouragement, positivity, and depth, calling you to greatness, calling you to be truly you.

A little big about my background: I have a Masters degree in Biblical Literature, Pre-Doctoral studies from Regent University, a Bachelors degree in New Testament from Oral Roberts University. I’m a licensed Growth Coach with Lifeforming Leadership Coaching. I have 9 years experience as a webmaster and marketer for a small real estate team in southeastern Virginia.

I have sat under the digital teaching of Brendon Burchard, Bo Eason, Gabrielle Bernstein, Marianne Williamson, Gary Vaynerchuk, Dana Malstaff, and Ruth Soukup through their online courses and videos. I’ve also spent the past 10 years reading extensively in personal development, business, psychology, science, faith and spirituality. Other big influences for me are Wayne Dyer, Ryan Holiday, Steven Pressfield, Simon Sinek, Tony Robbins and Gay Hendricks.

I love outdoor adventures, any projects my husband or our four boys are working on, and I’m a total personal development book junkie. I’m also a huge Star Wars fan – legacy series, I haven’t even watched the new movies yet.

But Bo Eason helped me realize why I love Star Wars so much, reading all the books in high school and re-reading them in college. (Seriously, I’m not joking. Don’t laugh. Ok, just a little.)

It’s because my life theme is discovering your own strength and power, a power that shocks and surprises you, that has been dormant inside without you realizing it.

Do you know who we are?

You and I?

We’re Luke Skywalker. We have the force. We are a force – to be reckoned with. And I believe it’s time to wake up, embrace our healing, become community, and offer healing to the world from a place of healing, power and strength.

That’s my vision. Welcome to my soul adventure.

All my love,
Alicia Eichmann

Join the Soul Adventure

My mission is to fight apathy and stagnation and help us awaken to our inner power. My passion is self development and spiritual growth books.

I’m combining those in a (really) affordable membership, on purpose. Because I want you  with me. 

You.

I want you.

If this speaks to you, if my approach, my voice, my mission resonates with you, I want you to sign up and give me a shot.

I could charge way more, but I’m not, so that the money won’t stop anyone who is drawn to my message of hope.

For the cost of a book ($15), each month I’ll teach you about 4. Each week you’ll get a summary video and worksheet covering the main topics and takeaways from that week’s book. You’ll also get access to the Soul Adventure Community facebook group.

No long term commitment. Get instant access to the bonuses and the archives. New content weekly. Incredible wisdom and insight from 4+ books every month. Let’s do this.

See you on the other side.

Manifesting is Just Answered Prayer

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If you grew up in church like I did, words like manifesting, vibration and energy might seem unfamiliar at best and forbidden territory at worst. But if, like me, you’re also a mom working from home, figuring out how to help support your family with a lot of hope but limited resources – you might be wondering if this manifesting thing can help you accomplish your goals, maybe without compromising your faith.

Our generation is stuck in this middle ground between the church tradition we inherited and the results that we see others getting, seemingly far outside the bounds of what is for us familiar territory.

I’m right there with you. I grew up in church, memorizing scripture as a Bible quizzer. I went to a mainstream charismatic university, and even got a masters degree in Biblical Literature.

Growing up in church I read the scripture and then looked at the way everyone in church lived their lives and in my spirit for a long time sat pressing questions, “Where is the power and presence? Where are the miracles and answers to prayer?” It seemed to me that none of the adults truly lived as if God’s word was true. Church had become habit and tradition, lacking an abiding power and presence of God in a real, material way.

After 20+ years of searching and wondering, I’ve begun to find the answer. The simple version is that the real substance of power and change lies with our own thoughts and emotions. The long answer would explore two things I think. The first is how we as collective believers lost the heritage of an experiential practice, a way of living and perceiving our daily lives that was holistic and embraced the personal power of the individual.

The second is that in some ways we are simply seeing the next stage in our spiritual and physical evolution. As civilization has progressed, the role of fear in our daily lives has changed, opening the way for a new experience of love and fulfillment, that can expand much greater in our minds and experiences now that we are not in a daily battle simply for survival.

I have come to believe that there is indeed one God, one divine presence, who is in all of creation, whose presence sustains us, and who has been graciously revealing himself to us throughout history and across cultures, in ways that humanity in each time and place could understand. He has continually met us at who we are, where we are.

Thousands of years ago men and women looked at the cosmic elements of the sun and stars, and at the expansive and sometimes merciless elements of the weather and imagined a pantheon of gods immersed in their own story.

Then God revealed himself as one God, a good, loving God. All of the ancient religions had a multitude of gods, and all of the modern religions, in their essence, come down to one divine presence. Part of the Abraham story was a revelation to men that God did not desire human sacrifice, a practice early men adopted out of fear of the natural elements.

In the Hebrew scriptures of the Jewish people we see a progressive revelation, as over time greater truth is revealed to them. In exile they learn from other nations and add spirits to their understanding. Then Jesus comes bringing an entirely new revelation of spiritual truth, ending the tradition of sacrifice and introducing the concept of a personal relationship with the divine, an experience aided by spirit and focused on teachings centered around love as the ultimate truth.

So what does this have to do with manifesting? I’m getting there, promise.

Christianity has a long history with a wide range of experience. Throughout much of church history, and in a multitude of ways, the ego of humanity has interfered with God’s divine purpose. We now have so much history of different ways of interpreting scripture that many have become disillusioned and the experience of Christianity has frequently fallen into a simple practice of religion.

Which is why I, and I’m sure many of you, have had this life-long question, and what I see now in our generation is a new revelation of God to his people, that is the same truth, but revealed in fresh language so that we can hear it anew, and receive the truth in our hearts, without it getting stuck in our minds because of the mental baggage associated with some words, terms or ideas.

The heart of authentic religion and true spirituality, the revelation from God to us is twofold 1) the relationship that we can individually have with the divine, and 2) the power and freedom that we are each meant to walk in as divine creations and daughters of the Most High.

As a young adult I knew scripture so well I couldn’t hear it anymore, and even knowing the original traditions and context, I struggled to apply it to the modern world I saw. But when I began to study the spiritual teachers God has given us today, people like Marianne Williamson, Wayne Dyer, Gabrielle Bernstein, and so many others, new terms like manifesting, vibration and energy opened my eyes to see what God was saying in the scriptures that I’ve known from my childhood.

We are each called to embrace our own journey of changing our minds from fear to love, and aligning our lives with the true self God created us to be, and our own intuitive knowledge of the divine that is in us and also in everything, all of creation.

As we embrace that journey and those truths, and we align our thoughts with truth and love, when we then set our intention to create the life we desire, the divine nature that is in everything aids us in bringing that to us which we ask for.

Manifesting is a new word for the ancient truth that God is good, and is in us and all things, and will assist us when we align ourselves with love.

When we set an intention to create a certain reality in our lives, and we have the true thoughts and emotions around it of faith and gratitude, and we are aligned with a mission of love and God’s purpose, that is a heartfelt prayer to God, and when that thing comes to fruition in our lives it is answered prayer and today we often hear people use the word manifesting to describe the experience, referring to the way their desire became real in its material form.

Jesus said “Ask and it will be given to you, seek and you will find, knock and the door will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives, he who seeks finds, and to him who knocks the door will be opened.” (Matt 7:7-8)