One of the significant events that accelerated my growth in reclaiming true power was a 6-day women’s leadership retreat I attended in April 2010. I included this experience in my Day 23 post as part of my journey to awakening consciousness:

I also started my own personal journey to understand what creative women’s leadership looks like, and how women can transform themselves and their communities. In April 2010 I participated in a 6-day women’s leadership retreat (Cultivating Women’s Leadership Training), led by Toby Herzlich and Nina Simons, a co-founder of Bioneers, a nonprofit organization based in Santa Fe, New Mexico. The retreat was a fun and rigorous workshop exploring how women can most effectively transform themselves and the world. Twenty women of diverse cultures, ages and backgrounds participated in this program, and we all learned much from and with each other. I left the retreat with a full heart and a strong sense of purpose that continues to fuel me to transform my vision into action.

One of the exercises we did during this retreat was “timed writing.” This method helps to get stuff out onto paper without self-editing. We were instructed to treat our pen and hand as extensions of our mind and told that the goal was to get as much out on a page as we could in the limited time we were given. If I recall the experience correctly, it felt like stream of consciousness writing. In any event, we were engaged in investigating the belief that we can attract what we want by investing in our longings. I don’t exactly recall how long we were given for this exercise, but of the timed writings I wrote in my notebook in April 2010 was as follows:

In my heart of hearts, what I long for, what I most desire, what I most yearn for, is …
the world without hate, discrimination, anger, injustice, hierarchy of human values, scarcity.
What I yearn for is a world, Mother Earth, restored in Her magnificent beauty; a world in which humankind and nature — animals, insects, plants, flowers, birds, mammals, fish — all live in harmony and value Life. Not in a primitive, idyllic way, but in a way that we, humans, are good stewards of the nature and treat it with respect and kindness which we would want to receive from other beings.
In my heart of hearts, what I long for most is a world of beauty, fairness, equality, justice, kindness, joy, love, peace, creativity for my two girls to thrive and manifest their souls’ destinies and mission in this life, and their offspring’s.
What I yearn for is healing and balance — letting out of the power that has been repressed for generations.
What I yearn for is to release this power to realize the dreams of my ancestors who came before me for me to have this life to build upon what they have built before me.
What I yearn for most is to feel the joy, beauty, love and life and feeling juicy, feeling alive and engaged.
What I yearn for is a green world where Life thrives and greed and money-first mentality goes away.
What I yearn for is to dance — dance with Life, move with grace, move with joy and liveliness, move with passion and power.
What I yearn for most in life is to love fully.

I am amazed. My longings as recorded nearly two years ago are the same longings I have today! Not only that, I already knew (before I could live them out) what my soul’s longings were in the depth of my heart.

We know. We know what we truly want already. We know the answers to what we are seeking if we look deep enough into our hearts.

Although it’s been less than two years since I was dreaming about my heart’s longings with those other kindred souls — I wouldn’t be surprised if they deem themselves as “women who run with the wolves” — I’ve come a long, long way since then, including shedding my identity as a corporate lawyer and leaving my corporate employment. All these longings seemed to me then as visible yet untouchable like the full moon I saw during the retreat. However, I know that they are not untouchable any longer because I am living, manifesting, and dancing with my longings now.

I find it uncanny that, even taking into account that I was writing in a stream-of-consciousness state, the two modes of being I identified as “what I yearn for most” were:

1. “to feel the joy, beauty, love and life and feeling juicy, feeling alive and engaged”; and
2. “to love fully.”

I deem these longings as my life time’s “work in progress.” That said, I am thrilled to report that what used to be simply my longings — “what I yearn for most” — have become my reality! I wouldn’t deny that my current life is hard work, but it is rich beyond anything I’ve ever imagined. Ironically, my life before MyCrownShift was also hard work (in a different sense — not soul-strengthening “hard work,” but soul-draining “hard work”), but it was undoubtedly poor in spirit and joy. Between these two paths then, if life is hard work either way, why would I go back to my life before MyCrownShift!

As Dr. Estes wisely counsels, “the work is to keep doing the work.” I’ll keep investing in my longings, and keep moving forward, to attract what my soul wants in Life: experiencing Joy in Beauty, Community and Imaginality.