An expedition to who you truly are, Indiana Jones style

April 18, 2017 ~ nicole

I have found my voice again and the art of using it. – Sidonie Gabrielle Colette

I went on an expedition looking for my soul gifts and along the way I found my voice.

I love when I hear young parents tell their children, “use your words” or “use your voice.” Encouraging them to use their voice is so unlike what those of us of a certain age were expected do; we were to be seen and not heard. Pair that with being told to “not” do so many things, or that what we did wasn’t “correct,” paralyzed not just our voices but our creativity. It raised “good” girls and boys, who possibly rebelled in more covert ways (I know I did), but it did not build women and men who felt they had something of value to say. At least that was my experience….

So, it’s been a lifelong struggle for me to find my voice, use my words and express myself. And now, after much revealing and healing, I can’t stop sharing my story and what I’ve learned because I know it has a purpose now: to guide, support and heal others.

Now, you may be asking yourself, what needed healing and how did I do it? The two are inextricably intertwined.

I had to question the beliefs (assumptions and opinions) I had formed about not just myself but life itself, and discover what was real and true.
I had to let go of expectations and wanting to control the outcome, which opened me to possibility and accepting uncertainty.
I had to acknowledge and face my fear of being shamed, blamed, unapproved of, rejected or disliked.
I had let go of aspects of my identity, and the persona I had created, that weren’t truly me or who I wanted to be.
I had to feel into what I truly cared about and valued, not what my family, friends or society thought I should value.
I had to move from a fear-based, scarcity mindset to one of abundance, which meant embracing gratitude, humility, acceptance, forgiveness, letting go, compassion, and unconditional love.
I had to understand the essence of who I truly am.

From the depths of this inner work–it’s true, you have to do the work, my friends–emerged my true, authentic voice. And much healing, some of which was super subtle requiring just a soft touch.

It was an excavation, almost an anthropological dig, and at the bottom of it was me! I’m not going to say that all that digging and uncovering was easy or not messy; it was, but the result has been absolutely life-changing, life-affirming and life-giving for me.

Know that the excavation is necessary. Know that you don’t have to do all the digging alone. And know that those of us, who have gone on the dig before you, can and will guide you with unconditional love, support and maybe even a bit of wisdom. It’s our mission to do so. Indiana Jones style :).

Your voice is welcome here. So, let me know how this makes you feel.

Copyright ©2017 Soulscape Coaching LLC.

The gift of retreating

September 11, 2016 ~ Nicole Gnutzman

“There is nothing more natural than for Life to align with Light in a sacred dance of co-existence and co-creation.” – Birgitte Rasine, The Serpent and the Jaguar: Living in Sacred Time

The Lake (Lake Atitlan) called me back and I returned, not alone this time as on my first solo retreat, but with 10 beautiful and brave souls, who were open to whatever awaited them there. And what awaited was more than any of us imagined.

As we opened to our retreat, we left the bustling world behind and immersed ourselves in a new energy, an interplay of quiet solitude and tribal community, relaxation and movement, restoration and revitalization, and receiving and giving.

We closed ourselves off to the world as we knew it and entered a cocoon, a sanctuary, to emerge from our chrysalis more vibrant and alive, and with bright wings that allowed us to rise above ourselves and the world and see with new eyes.

We lived into the spiral of life, the intertwining energies of the four elements: creation and destruction (fire), nourishment and growth (earth), deepening and flow (water), inspiration and clarity (air). And we yearned to take that emergence and transformation home with us, back into the world.

Re-entry into that world is always challenging after retreat as it seems less real or even unreal, an alternate reality of frenzied, ungrounded energy, disconnected from our own deeply felt experience while on retreat.

Retreating brings us back to our true selves, and we want to bring that radiant energy and truth back with us. It can feel like a burden as the world does not always welcome truth and radiance, but it’s a gift we must give to the world, knowing that everything we give will return to us perhaps not in that moment, but in time.

Our inclination may be to protect what we experienced, shielding it from the unremitting, relentless darkness of the world. If that helps us to keep the light within us alive, then let us hide it for awhile, but know, to hide it for too long, weakens it; it needs to be given to others, so they may shine too, and in their shining, their energy comes back to us. It is the energy of life, the spiral on its return journey, the law of attraction, flow.

If we have one mission in this life it is to rediscover who we truly are, so we can offer our light and our gifts to the world as we walk on our soul’s path. Retreating from the world for just a little while to deepen that connection to ourselves and to life itself allows us the spaciousness we need to restore that light. And then we, and others we touch with our light, can shine.

Many of us will return again to Atitlan. Our retreat may become an annual celebration of the transformative power of the Lake and our own transformation….

Copyright ©2016 Soulscape Coaching LLC

Accept or decline the mission

August 2, 2016 ~ Nicole Gnutzman

You may think you have no resistance to finding your purpose, but if that were true you would probably already know it. – Tim Kelley

Finding our purpose in life can be terrifying and sometimes perplexing. I know. As I was first exploring mine, I received a guided message saying I should make a documentary about ceremonial cacao. It came as a total surprise.

While I know a little something about cacao ceremony and am fascinated by the history of cacao, I know absolutely nothing about making a documentary. I, being the “doer” that I am, starting wondering how I could fulfill this “mission.”

My sister has an MFA, has taught film production and now heads the Media Studies program at a community college, and made a documentary film (a very long time ago), so I thought, she can help me! I even took the step of approaching her and she was mildly enthusiastic (she’s Canadian and still lives in Canada, so maybe I should have taken that mild enthusiasm more seriously :)).

Anyway, I soon realized that I actually didn’t want the responsibility of making a documentary. There are far better, more qualified people who could do it, and I had an inkling that my path lay elsewhere. It would have been a fun diversion, but documentaries need to be passion projects, they can take forever to be realized, and I just didn’t have quite enough passion or time.

Plus, to be honest, the thought of traipsing through the rain forest looking for indigenous shamans; the depth of relationship needed to gain their trust, so they would allow us to film them; and the time required to do this away from home and my husband, scared me. It was so far away from my current experience and I felt it put things I valued at risk.

I know now, and I even knew then, that what our soul wants for us is not always on the easy path. Could I actually say, “no,” to this?

So, I asked myself, why did Spirit give this to me? And then I just happened upon Elizabeth Gilbert’s Big Magic, in which she reveals that “inspiration will always try its best to work with you–but if you are not ready or available, it may indeed choose to leave you and to search for a different human collaborator.” So, I was off the hook…. I could leave this for someone else to take on as their mission and continue to look for my soul’s true purpose. Which is exactly what I did.

Just recently, not that I was looking for further confirmation, I read Tim Kelley’s True Purpose: 12 Strategies for Discovering the Difference You Are Meant to Make, in which he shares that “you can accept [your mission] or decline it” and “your soul can give you a new instruction that is at a higher level.” That’s what keeps happening to Tim, and that’s exactly what happened to me. I declined one mission only to have another one be revealed to me, one that fully supported what he calls my “blessing,” or what I like to refer to as my gifts, the things for which I am a “catalyst, a facilitator of some process.”

The reason that I like to talk about being on your “soul’s path” is that, while our purpose and gifts are foundational, our mission or “highest level instruction” continues to evolve and grow, building on that foundation. Our soul’s path is an unfolding, one which is revealed to us as we walk forward with trust.

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