That's a Wrap 2023!

I can't believe this is the last episode of 2023.  It has been a joy to share this journey with you.  This final episode of the year are my biggest takeaways, lessons and mindset shifts this year.  AND I am sharing the 3 books that made a serious impact on me this year.

This year has been about being SEEN - by myself and others.  Next year is about DISCIPLINE and I am committing to a daily practice of showing up for myself and working through A Course In Miracles - Text and 365 Workbook Lessons.  If you are ready for the journey out of shame, guilt, and fear through love and forgiveness - please join me on a slow and steady year of transformation!  To register go to my Patreon page.  For more information, check out my website

Connect with me on social!  Instagram and TikTok.

Watch these episodes in full on my YouTube Channel.

Transcript

  Rise and shine, everybody. It's time to wake up with Susan. Spiritual awakening can be a beautiful, messy, and sometimes lonely journey. So let's do it together. I'm your host, Susan Sutherland. I'm an intuitive healer and spiritual mentor. We are all called to rise up above our conditioning and limiting beliefs and shine our light on ourselves and others.

So let's get to it.  Hi family, I hope you had a very Merry Christmas and I get to tell you that I did and the reason I get to tell you this is because my podcast is late. Um, I started recording it on the 23rd. In fact, I recorded it twice, both times to find out that something was wrong with the file and it wouldn't save or something was wrong and it was a bit frustrating.

And Mark convinced me that nobody actually cares or probably even knows. what time I have it scheduled to come out weekly, and it has been something that's been really important for me to be consistent and disciplined with, but I decided that he was right. I could either on the 23rd of December keep getting stressed and keep getting frustrated, which is exactly not the energy that I want to record in and send you all. 

So I decided to do a 20 minute meditation and then I went and did my grocery shopping. And I'm not a big fan of grocery shopping  or hustle and bustle vibes, but it was so awesome. And before I went in the store, I decided I was going to see how many times I could get like a really  toothy smile  back while I was in the store.

Like, how many people can I make give me a big toothy smile? And in order to get one, you have to give one. So I was just walking around just really smiling at people or complimenting their Fun christmas sweater or whatever, but I was delivering the good vibes and I got so many back in return And that is the way you do that hustle and bustle shopping because it was fun I was happy.

I was making people happy and it was great. So, um That was great. And this delay has allowed me to report back that my intentions and my boundary setting or, or just kind of planning out how I wanted Christmas Eve and Christmas to be, dude, we nailed it. We had Christmas Eve games. The kids are a bit older now, and we played candy can games, and musical chairs with candy canes, and bell pong, and all kinds of things, and we had prizes, and it was fun, and I genuinely enjoyed the whole celebration,  and then Christmas Day.

I mean, it is different when the youngest is 10 years old as opposed to having three little tiny kids, but it still felt magical, and we really enjoyed.  Our together time and even when you know, 17 people joined us it was it was wonderful So I'm gonna say that from now on my Thanksgiving plan is to decide and implement my Christmas strategy, which is if it feels like stress, we're not doing it and You show up ready to be present and have fun because if I have set myself up to be stress free You're not allowed to bring me yours.

And I think that's a great way to do Christmas. It was a winner. So, um, so because of the delay I can actually report back that that went really well.  And I got a new computer for Christmas so that means all of the struggles I have been having are a thing of the past. I'm going to move forward in a much more efficient way and not have the headaches that I had, but I'm super excited to share with you this week, my year end wrap up.

I cannot believe we are at the year end, but here we are. 2023. It is wrapping up and I just want to share  kind of some of the things I've progressed on mentally adjusting where I'm at or how I think about things just kind of a year in review, which has been really fun for me to contemplate and think about, um, to be able to share to really think back.

What are the, the really important,  um, transitions or, uh,  that I've had that I can share with you.  And the first one is around the idea of purpose. And  for a little while it was just, and I know a lot of you feel this too, like you have a purpose. I need to find my purpose. What is my purpose? And, and we have this longing on purpose that, that longing to find your purpose is purposeful.

It is meant to stir this up in you to say, What does my heart crave? What fulfills me? But I think when I was looking for it, I was looking for a specific  job or path. And what I have discovered over the course of the year is that purpose is so much broader than Me trying to, you know, pin it down to this very specific thing.

And I know now that my purpose is to be an ambassador of love. And fortunately that can show up in so, so many ways. And I don't have to try to pin it down now and I can see that purpose in all of the things that I do. Holding space for somebody who is struggling is purposeful when your purpose is to love.

To embody love, to hold a vibration of love, to be a healer.  is being an ambassador of love. To be a nurturing mother to my children is part of that purpose. And so I don't have to see being connected and being present with them as delaying my purpose. They are part of my purpose. Nurturing them in a way that hopefully  they are launched into adulthood with as few wounds as I can possibly  Send them off with knowing we are left right and center screwing up our kids at every step of the way But to allow them permission to discover their own truth to nurture Them as individuals to help them understand  That what society has prescribed for them, what their extended family might prescribe to them, might be something different than what they prescribe for themselves and that that is okay.

And teaching them that they have an inner voice and that they can listen to their inner voice is really important, um, in my parenting journey.  Mahatma Gandhi's  understanding of God is that God is truth, and his life was in search of truth. So in, in these experiments with people, in nonviolent resistance, or renunciating humanly desires, it was all with His desire to connect more with God, but it allowed this these different parts of his journey To be part of that purpose in search of truth and not one little specific thing He was doing was his purpose It is all meant for the greater good of his understanding with and connecting with God.

And so my understanding now of my purpose is much broader to include all of the little steps along the way. I was getting into a little bit of trouble  for myself when I would get a little snippet. I would get a little vision or piece of understanding of what is to come. down the road, and for me, Spirit's been showing me a lot of dot to dots lately, and I would be going, you know, 1, 2, 3, and get a glimpse of 40 and try to make a beeline over there.

Well, that, even if that's where you're going, going from 3 to 40 messes up the picture. That's not what you're supposed to be doing. 40 was meant to be your inspiration, your motivation, your, Hey, you're doing a great job. Keep doing it. This is where you're going. But I was trying to take the shortcut instead of allowing it to inspire me to four and five and six.

And so now I definitely have a better understanding that.  My purpose is right now, and there are a lot of ways to get to 40, but trying to skip there serves no one, and I need to embrace  for A or for B, but allow this moment to be my purpose, and not have it be the destination of where I think I'm going, because that doesn't work, and it screws up my picture.

My other big ticket item with regard to purpose is that nobody's is better than anybody else's and we are all here to do our own thing in our own way. And so this has been really important in understanding that it doesn't matter where you are on your journey in this lifetime or your journey As a soul over many lifetimes, you are on your perfect path.

You don't take somebody who should be thriving in third grade and throw them into AP physics, nor would you want somebody in AP physics to go back to kindergarten. We all are on our perfect path and have chosen our lives based on what we need to experience. So if there's somebody out there who's doing their personal work to live a Positive, impactful life, even if that impact is just on their immediate family. 

That is what they are called to do, and that is no greater or less than anyone else. And we come into this life with very different strengths, with different personalities, with things we're working on, and so while you can take on teachers, you should allow them to be  someone to inspire you. But if you try to go,  you know, line by line through somebody else's course of how they did something, then understand that you're totally different.

So what you're called to do or how you're called to do it may be completely opposite and you can't feel guilty that their way is not working for you. Well, you. actually really have to find your way. And so I hope that you find people who will inspire you to find your own answers and never feel like you should be doing something exactly like somebody else has done it because they're successful because that's just not how it works.

It's not how your personality or your your soul blueprint print. If  If they have mapped out steps and it feels in alignment to follow them, perfect. But if you have hesitation or something doesn't feel right, even if you paid for a course, even if you really appreciate that teacher, then it's not for you and that is also okay.

Um, so that's been really important on my journey as well. This year is, I like to take all the classes, but now I know that I have to take, take from it.  What I want and if does something doesn't feel right or it just doesn't feel in alignment for me Then it's not for me and that's okay.  Another big move for me this year is Away from God and back to God and I don't mean God as  All that is,  universe, source, I mean the word God, and I am still working on getting comfortable with it, but for me, God has for so long conjured up the image of the old white man with a white beard and a white robe who's sitting there ready to you.

Judge you and you know fire and brimstone and all of that and that is not even a little bit how I perceive God and so the word Just hasn't felt right for the feeling I have Or what I'm talking about in that connotation. And if I could always use the word source, I think that, I think source  feels the best to me.

It is from whence we came and what we will return to. But source feels powerful, right? Source has this like, like BAM ness to it. And for me, God just still has this. Super religious connotation of the person who's going to judge you and tell you if you were on the naughty or nice list, you know, but not as so old white guy with a white beard, but not jolly more like, do you need to go to hell or not?

Anyway, so because a lot of the texts that I am looking to dive deep into 2024, like A Course in Miracles, the book club I'm doing,  they, I mean, it probably mentions God 154, 000 times in it. And so I can't read and every time try to replace God with source. It just, it's not going to work out. So I've had to just try to retrain my mind away from God being.

the ultimate judgy guy in the white robe.  So what I did for a little while is I gave myself a new image and I'll tell you what it is so you can get a little chuckle. But it is a heart with a face and arms and legs and white sneakers and white gloves. Um,  but it was as opposite of the old man as I could come up with.

It is Something that  is not personified like instead of us being made in God's image We basically made God in our image. We're screwed up and Human, so we're gonna make you look  You know screwed up and human like you are  easy to displease and harsh and judgmental and You look like a person So I've really tried to get away with that and I don't want God to always be a dancing cartoon heart in my head.

I just needed to switch it away from that for right now. Um, how I really see it as is like the ultimate brightest light. But I was just trying to shift off of the old man, and so now I have a dancing heart. But I say all the time, God is love. God is love. God is love. Just trying to retrain myself and retrain that pattern of what that word conjures up, the feelings it conjures up for me.

Because if I'm going to read it 154, 000 times next year, I want it to conjure up the God is love feeling in me. So I have, I've moved away from God where, you know, most of the time when I was thinking it was universal  or creator, but I am trying to get myself really comfortable to go back to God with my new rebranded  version.

Um,  So that's been a big shift for me as well, um, but I'm pretty happy. I'm, I'm happy with that one. I wish I, maybe there was something better I could have come up with other than the dancing heart, but I hadn't gotten there yet. So that's what it is for now.  Um, another lesson is that expectation is the greatest source of disappointment.

Now, I don't say that with regard to intention setting, because. If I'm going to the grocery store two days before Christmas, I'm going to go ahead and tell you, I know I'm going to find parking. I know people are going to be pleasant. I know they're going to have everything I need. I know I'm not going to have to wait in line for a cashier.

I already set those expectations for how my shopping experience is going to go and it almost always does. And if,  if I have to wait, I assume that there's a specific cashier who needs me to smile, who needs me to hold them in a vibration of love while they're having a stressful day. Like, whatever it is, I just assume if everything doesn't go perfectly, then it was meant not to.

So that's how I deal with the expectation of life. However, where I tripped up a couple of times this year  was having expectations of other people and they didn't,  they didn't warrant it, but I built some situations up in my head for what I would get out of them or how things would be. And then I ended up really let down.

And when I think back,  About it. It wasn't, it wasn't that person's fault.  I,  I,  I had a pedestal and I stuck them on it. And then when they couldn't, you know, couldn't be there on that level, it disappointed me. But that was my fault. I, I did that. And so, um, I,  I just think you, you want to expect things to go well, but allow people to show you where they are.

Allow people to,  to be on their level  and not be disappointed that they're not on yours. Like, that's your expectation of somebody else, not how, how they're showing up. So, the same as we talked about third grade and kindergarten AP Physics,  if somebody's in AP Physics and they come and talk about the course material to me, I'm gonna look blinded, and it's not because  I don't love them or value them, it's because that's freaking over my head. 

And so, understanding where somebody is at, where they are, in their schooling, in their life, in their, you know, other relationships, what's happening in their world that they're showing up to your, your relationship with. will allow you to accept them where they are without  I guess trying to  to put them in a class they're not ready for.

I guess that's the only way I can say it. But um, also when you have those situations or relationships that aren't ideal or what you thought they should be or maybe they're really contentious. Maybe you're stuck in some situations that really suck. Like you have the worst boss in the world. Understand that that boss is serving you still.

So instead of seeing it as the ultimate problem or ruining your life, see it as this person is providing me lessons about how I'm not going to be when I'm a manager.  He or she is showing me.  All of the things that I'm going to be considerate of when I'm leading a team. And when you see things as opportunities,  it is so much easier to move through the lessons when you're like, Oh, okay, you're showing me because down the road, I'm going to have an opportunity to lead people and I need to know how it feels to have somebody who doesn't value your work or value your opinion or micromanages.

Whatever it is, when you can see  that relationship as teaching you something,  it is not going to be as hard. I promise. Another thing I've learned or kind of expanded my understanding of is that you have to do the work. You have to do your work. You can't do someone else's. You can't leave your AP class and go do the third creator's homework.

That doesn't help them. It doesn't serve you. You can only help them by being an example of being a really good student. And what does that, what does being a good student means? It means regardless of where you are on your journey, it is your goal to continue your improvement. And what I find a lot of  people who, you know, claim to be Christian without being Really, uh, practicing anything.

Just say, I believe this is how I see it is we've got cleaners who come on Friday and they, thank God they clean my kids rooms and their rooms look amazing. And then by Monday, they look dodgy. And then by Thursday, they look a wreck. Because my kids see the cleaners as the way and not the way shower.

However, if they would say, wow, the cleaners showed me what is possible. They showed me that being in this room, that is tidied up. I can be more productive. I can be more creative. I can sleep better. This feels good. It feels good to be in my clean room. But instead, they defer the responsibility to someone else.

And I feel like that's how a lot of people use  whatever their religion is, is they have deferred responsibility somewhere else. You did it. Therefore, I don't have to. I don't have to go within and do the work. My internal work to clean up my room because you did it. I'll wait on you to come on Friday. So, um,  another huge, huge shift of my mindset in 2023 that I am definitely carrying into and working on further for 2024 is my abundance mindset.

Now, I don't have a lot of time. scarcity mindset in that I feel lacking. I do not feel lacking. What I have is a scarcity mindset in which I feel guilty and so how I can tell you is when you see universal abundance as a pie  to which there is a limited amount and by you having a piece others have less  That creates a feeling of guilt or of competition.

Like there's only so much and we need to compete for it. But when you see abundance and money is just energy, we gave it its value. It doesn't inherently have value. And so when you cling on to it, feeling like more is not coming, that is from scarcity. Or when you resist having it because you feel guilty because other people don't have it.

That is also a scarcity mindset. But when you see it as  abundance is the ocean, and you could fill up a thimble or a bucket or a cargo ship,  and there's still be plenty for everyone else. We can line up the ocean with our buckets and all take a bucket full, and nobody's going to be like, well, you got a bucket and I got a thimble.

Grab your bucket, honey. There's plenty for everyone. And shifting that mindset for me has been really important to  energetically be available for more because I know the more that I have, the more that I can share, the more that I can give. Even if that means, you know, creating or having tools to create or subscriptions for things that make life easier so that I can produce more or just donate more.

When I am blocking abundance because I have  this guilt for having, because not everyone has, then I block my ability to share with those that don't have it. And so I've done a lot of work on that. There's still plenty to go, um, that I'm working through, but shifting that abundance mindset has definitely been a game changer in 2023.

And I'm going to continue working on that because your money mindset is programmed in. You learned about money from your parents. If they didn't have enough, then you learned how to be lacking and feel like there is scarcity. You, you likely do not have a very comfortable relationship with money. I never knew,  I never felt lacking, but I still learned. 

different things. Like, uh, there was no super abundance. And so now that I have more, I have a guilt about having more. And so it's really just shifting the paradigm of how you think about money and abundance and accepting that the more you have, the more you can serve and do good with. All right. And my last. 

my big ticket item, my big shift is progress, not perfection. And I'm still working on that. Um,  but I have come a long way and not that I was perfect before, but a lot of times I will get so caught up in  how it should be that I, you just lose the,  passion behind creating. Um,  we went to this, uh, one of those paint,  it's like a wine and sip painting, but I went with my little kids.

We didn't have any wine, but they just, they give you the canvas and the paint, and they just kind of guide you through a two hour painting session, and we all made the same snowman. But what was really cool about this is  our Our teacher is just moving on through and if you have screwed up your your shadowing for your backdrop He is still gonna move on through because we're there with eight other people  And what we found is by the end of it They looked really cute because we didn't have a choice to sit there and spend 30 minutes redoing and and redoing and it felt like the longer we spent on something, the more likely we were to screw it up.

And so when you just  let go and just move forward, it's not perfect, but the end result was still really cute and we actually finished where. is if I tried that at home and that's what I told my daughter is probably for 20 I could have bought all of the supplies. We would have pulled it up on YouTube and could have at least gotten started, but I know for sure that I would have never finished because I would get caught up that, um, this isn't quite right.

I'm going to let it dry and then redo this and then redo this and then redo this. And you never actually get to the finished product because you're so. Concerned with making it perfect whereas we had a great time ended up with three paintings of the same snowman But it was really fun because we just allowed it to move through So I'm gonna try to take that snowman with me a mental snowman of just go Just go, it's okay. 

And as always, it doesn't matter what you are doing, remember why you are doing it. So whether you are moving through or trying for perfection, consider why you are doing anything. When I was praying for a leader, a mentor, a class, a course, something to expand and push me in the fall immediately after. I got this email from MIU, which is Maharishi International University, and they have courses, um, to get your bachelorette.

or your bachelorette, your bachelor's degree in consciousness and human potential. Well, I never finished my bachelor's degree, but in three minutes I had my transcript from UNCC  from the 90s. Like, it was so easy and I was thinking, this is meant to be, this is meant to be.  Um, so started kind of going down that and I had to really do some deep diving with me and with a friend who did an Akashic Record reading for me so that I could start really getting insight, um. 

About whether or not this is the right decision for me, and it wasn't the wrong decision for me, but it was the wrong motivation. Because the motivation to get that degree was one from a limiting belief that somehow I'm not enough because I didn't finish college. So it wasn't even that the course material was what was calling me, it was responding to my own personal limiting belief.

And so I ended up Not registering for that, and what I found is that The Course in Miracles is the course that I need to be doing, which is what I have now signed up for for 2024, is leading a group of, of ladies through A Course in Miracles as my own form of accountability, doing a book club, because that is the course that my soul is calling for, and it is one I'm not going to get a degree from, but it is one that is going to expand me in the ways that I needed to be expanded, but not one that is just a response to that limiting belief that somehow I'm not enough because I didn't complete that.

And so when you are taking action,  allow yourself to really contemplate.  Are you doing it?  To bring you joy, to expand you, or to heal a wound. And I'm not saying that doing something to heal a wound is a bad idea. It is just really important to gain awareness of  Why are you doing it? Why are you taking this action, which allows you to move forward in a better way anyway? 

Let's see. Okay, so my theme is For this past year was seen and it ended up that I had my eyeball painted by an artist named Tracy Piper earlier in the year and She just did a collection of people's eyeballs all different people's eyeballs  And the book was called seen and it ended up being kind of my theme for the year Is to allow my authentic self to be seen  And to see myself, to start looking within, to really discover who I am and then allowing that person to be seen  by everyone else, not just my family, not just showing up at home as who I am, but showing up in the whole world as who I am.

And so that has been a scary journey. Um,  sometimes I just want to close that eye, but I'm continuing to push forward and That has been rewarding and there's really no going back. I feel really comfortable with who I am. I'm still getting comfortable putting myself out there as me, but there's no going back now.

There's no going back to a disingenuous version of myself. Even, I mean, Christmas Eve and Christmas Day, I probably had the most fun playing the reindeer games, being silly, enjoying everybody's comfort. company, I didn't have a drop of alcohol. And that was because I had been drinking  probably the past year before I quit because it made other people comfortable.

It made them comfortable because it's just weird if somebody's not having a drink with you or whatever. And so I decided in 2023 that I'm not doing that. And I did have the most fun of anybody. Um, so just showing up how I want to  has been really important. So that's been my theme of this year. Um, and it has allowed activities and relationships that needed to fall away or that weren't in alignment.

They just kind of do, and I'm more and more comfortable with that. If, if something doesn't work out, then I assume there's not a vibrational match there, and I'm good with it. Um, my theme for next year  is going to be  discipline. And, you know, I've had issues with discipline feeling like it is rule following, but discipline and disciple have the same root word and disciple is not follower, it is student.

And I know the more disciplined I can be, the better student I can be. And that is something that's really important to me. So I'm really shifting my mindset about that and saying, I'm going to be disciplined. That allows me to be a great student, and that's where I thrive. So, the college dropout who thrives as being a student, but for real, I like learning stuff.

So, um, so that's my year in review. Now it is time for my book recommendations from 2023,  and none of them were written any time even close to 2023. However, they were the ones that I needed at the time that I read them. So, I might put a book on my wish list or even buy a couple books on thrift books and I just hold them.

But when a book kind of gets recommended several times over and over or if it just kind of gets repeated to me then I know the timing is right and I go for it and a lot of times re reads happen that way too. Where I read something, but if you read it later at a  After you've developed, after you've expanded, you will pull nuggets from it that you didn't get the first time.

So, I think really important books, you should be very open to re reading. But, these are all older books, but they hit me because the timing was right. Now, the first book is a little bit of cheat to put it on my top three because it is a four book series. But, I am lumping them as one selection. Um, and they are The Conversations with God, books one through four, by Neil Donald Walsh.

And what I really loved about  this book is everything. The simplicity of it. I love that.  God is spoken, spoken about as he and she and his and her within the same sentence. It might be his da da da, her, to get you away from being attached to the man in the white robe or any kind of human construct that we give  all that is.

It is meant to take that away. And so I really found that valuable, but also  It challenged a lot of the dogma, the religious dogma, the societal dogma, that we grow up with, and helped me to really question some of our skewed understanding. Um, it's simple, it's digestible, and it helped me contemplate big subjects on my own.

Kind of gave me talking points to have an internal dialogue about. War and abortion and pandemics In a new way to think about things in a new way and it's really simple It is it is not some big complex Consciousness type understanding it is a dialogue a channeled written dialogue between Neal and God That's it, and so it's really easy to understand, it's easy to read, and it's meant to help you  gain your own understanding, to ask your own questions of God, to receive your own answers of God, um, and that's what's And what's really cool about it is it's even spoken in the book that this is still being channeled through a human.

And you're meant to find your own answers and not accept anything from anyone else as your absolute. And so it's really encouraging when other leaders and teachers are pointing you back to you. I think. Only the best do and I believe that Jesus did and he said everything I can do you can do too. People in religion has just skewed everything so much to think that you need a man in a confession booth to somehow garner your forgiveness or I don't know.

It's just gotten all screwed up, but you have the answers and  this is a great audible. It is really long. If you do, um, books 1 through 4, I think it's like a 90 hour audible. But y'all, it is one credit. So if you're looking for value for money on your audible, that's the way to go. I have the books too, but I did very much enjoy  The Audible, I listened to it on Audible as well,  and I enjoyed that because in the car there was nothing, I didn't need to take notes.

I might bookmark little conversations that I wanted to go back and reread with the hardcover book, but it's a really easy listen to, so I highly recommend that. It It is very thought provoking to question all of the constructs we've been given, everything you've been taught so far. It turns it up over on its head in, in a very palatable way.

Like, let's just rethink  how we perceive God. Um, and how we perceive each other in our society. So that is definitely one of the top three.  Another one is Jesus and the Essenes by Dorothy Cannon. Now, Dorothy Cannon is a hypnotherapist and her books  on spirituality are her experience with her patients  under hypnosis, but I've read a lot of them and I have experience hypnosis to, to help me with the understanding of what that experience is like and how she could have gotten this information.

Also, I read a lot of books by Michael Newton this year.  It just kind of, I went on a  hypnosis Um, little avenue there, but, but garnered so much information from their books, from people under hypnosis talking about past lives or experience on the other side. So those were really valuable, but Jesus in the Essenes particularly  was super helpful for me. 

At trying to understand where I felt such a gap between  how I perceive Jesus and the Bible. And there are the lost years. Jesus lost years was, which was like 12 to  30 something, and he died at 33, but there's a whole chunk of time where nobody mentions Jesus in the Bible. And so trying to understand  how religion is so,  I think I called it arrogant last week.

That Christianity says our way or the highway, but then Jesus and the Essenes seem to piece everything together for me I'm not gonna spoil it, but it has information on where his time was In those lost years,  which was really helpful to understand that those that he learned from and where he practiced were not in cahoots with how the Bible would lead you to believe that women were treated at the time or about slaves.

I don't know. I just found  this book to be reassuring that you don't have to throw the baby out with the bathwater. Like there's a lot of screwed up stuff with Christianity and  the dogma in religion. However, you can remove Jesus and Jesus's teachings and still be okay with that aspect of it without subscribing to the rest.

So I hope that makes sense.  Alright, my third and final book recommendation, also not written anytime recently, is by Paramahansa Yogananda. And it is Autobiography of a Yogi. Now, he was born in India, and very early on it was prophesied to him that he would meet his guru, learn from him, and then bring the  Practices of India, the ability to connect with God from India to the West, because as he believed, we in the West had sorted out the modern material world, but in doing so had really lost the spiritual connection that India has, and India, in its desire to be so spiritual, had never really grasped.

The modern material world. And he just really believed that there should be a balance and that  we could stop pitting one religion against another and look at the science of religion, which really has at the at the base of everything, the same core principles. It's just. Different paths to the same objective.

And so that was really his goal. But what was really fascinating for me about reading this is I, I didn't grow up Catholic, nor do I know about many of the devout saints of our time, of, of recent pretty modern history.  And so his experience with them, of,  of people who live without eating, or who bleed during Lent, um, in their devotion to Christ.

Like, it was just really wild for me. And when I was growing up, like, you learn from the Bible, but there was no current text. There's no current  reminders that you can have this powerful connection nowadays. Um, and so reading about those, I found it really fascinating, and I'm not sure why more of Of this is not known and maybe it's known to everybody else and I'm just I've got my head in the sand and never knew about it, but We learned the same Biblical parables over and over and over or or recited the same scriptures or went through the same Gospels but the fact that there are people  in, in modern ages that are performing these miracles that they are teaching about their ability to connect with Source, with all that is, I found really fascinating and really inspiring.

So it doesn't have to be all that one person did this in the past. It is like a lot of people have this really divine ability now, and that's really cool. And another thing that's really interesting about this book, Autobiography of a Yogi, is that it is a book that was handed out to everyone at Steve Jobs Memorial.

He had read it and was Seriously impacted by Perma Hanza Yogananda, and in his passing, wanted everyone to receive a copy of the book so that they may take their  that book and be inspired as he was. So I think that's really fascinating too. So that book had kind of been on my radar. I had. I've heard of it and heard other people who spoke of Yogananda a lot, um, but it's not like when you're ready for it, when it hits you, um, that's when you're ready to really receive the information for you.

Um,  so anyway, those are my book recommendations. It's been a fantastic year. This year has been a wild ride and this podcast has truly helped me to  To live out my my vision of being seen. It requires me to look within so that I have something To talk to you guys about but then it requires me to get over myself and put it out there So I thank you for being on this journey with me it has really been fun for me and hearing from you and Getting your feedback. 

It has really been super encouraging and, um, made the journey so much more fun. So I'm really looking forward to 2024. I am doing the book club. It is the one book book club of 365 lessons, a small task each day. Sometimes it's a journal entry. Sometimes it's just a reflection. Sometimes it's just something to think about in the morning and then the evening, but it's 365 lessons.

of A Course in Miracle, if it's something you are looking to do, to just take that step to look inside and really, um, uncover what's there. You,  you take a flashlight into a dark room and it's no longer dark. You just have to have the courage to turn your light on and open the door. So that's what we're doing next.

year is for just to open a door and it's not all dark. It's not all heavy. It is just saying, Hey, I'm showing up for me. So if that's something you're interested in, head to my website. It's five bucks a month, five bucks a month for 365 lessons. Um, so I hope you join me regardless. I hope you're really thinking about what your intentions are for the next year.

How are you lining yourself up? Not what are you taking away? What are you, what are you incorporating to feel like your best self, to feel like you are worthy of being taken care of? I hope you're thinking through how to implement small strategies that you can be consistent with and maybe find somebody to help you be accountable with those.

I know I need accountability partners, that's why I decided to. do a course in miracles with others instead of just saying I'm doing it by myself. So whatever you're saying that you want to do, check in with somebody, say, Hey, do you want to do this with me? Because you're guaranteed to have more success if you've got a friend on board. 

Either way, I'm rooting for you. I know it's going to be a great year. I think there's a big energy shift that is already taking place. I'm excited about it. I feel good and um, I'm pumped. I'm ready. So let's close out 2023. I'm sending you so much love. Um, thank you. Thank you for all you've done for me and I hope that you ring in the new year knowing that All of your wildest dreams are about to come true. 

Have a good one.