tosha silver

Courage On My Altar

Posted by Barbara Techel

This is an altar in my bathroom. Normally I pull an oracle card each Sunday from The Wild Offering by Tosha Silver. It’s guidance for the week of which I’m reminded every time I have to sit for a few moments.

I love having these altars and reminders around my house as a way of keeping me grounded in what matters. But ever since the virus crisis began I’ve not changed out the card. This card just feels too fitting to let go of it quite yet.

COURAGE

“Divine courage is not the absence of fear but a nudge that says, “Keep going. Do it. Don’t worry. All will be well.” You have to get quiet enough to hear it. Dear Divine, may I feel your courage and Your will.”

We have all been tested to walk with our fear for quite a few weeks now. I appreciate this card as reminding us of our human spirit and the resilience we truly have within us if we face the fear and still continue to move forward, albeit with more deliberate thought and consideration.

It’s been my experience that in the quiet is when I’ve heard wisdom bubble to the surface that I needed at the time. Within those moments of stillness is when hope has shown itself to me and gave me the courage to take another step forward.

I’m reminding of how my mind can race to a conclusion because I don’t want to look at what is causing me fear or pain. And I’m reminded how this takes courage to stop the cycle because as a society we haven’t put enough value on slowing down and just being with what is in the moment. Not to mention we have been taught to run from those feelings.

But here we are, all discovering new courage within us as we’ve collectively had to slow down and listen, ponder and percolate in how we will move forward not only individually, but together as one.

I don’t know about you, but that feels so good in my bones and soul. And so it’s my wish that we all be blessed with this courage as we continue to learn to live in a new way.

xo,

Barbara

 

Making Space for Vulnerability to Morph into Confidence

Posted by Barbara Techel

Making Space for Vulnerability to Morph into Confidence

There is much in life that requires courage. And just because we may master it once doesn’t mean we won’t have to face it again in some other aspect. It also takes time when we find ourselves facing yet another layer we wish to shed and trusting that courage will be granted to us yet again. It’s building that inner muscle one day at a time that eventually you begin to feel a new strength gaining that you didn’t know you had.

I’m feeling this as I’m closing in on nearing the half-way point of going through the second draft of my manuscript, I’m Fine Just the Way I Am.

When the spark occurred last winter, seemingly out of the blue, as I drove to meet a friend for lunch, that perhaps I could write about the dark period I faced last year, I just wasn’t sure I could do it. It felt so incredibly vulnerable.

But then it began to morph into a possibility that perhaps by sharing my story, it could help someone else. But yet, I just wasn’t sure. And while I began this manuscript mid-way through 2018, there were many days I felt like I was trudging knee deep in muck…slogging through with so many doubts and fear that plagued me step-by-step.

Little-by-little courage started to make itself known which led to a growing confidence in writing this book. My writing flows so much easier these days than when I first began and it feels incredibly good. 

Just yesterday, as I do to each week to help set the tone, I randomly pick an oracle card from Tosha Silver’s deck, The Wild Offering. It’s a deck I have sitting on a small table in my bathroom. Perhaps an odd place you may think to keep an oracle card deck. But I love seeing the card I picked for the week where I can reflect on it several times throughout my day. 

When I finished my writing session this morning, I reflected on this line of the card: “You make space for something larger to take hold.” 

Writing a book I believe takes courage. It has taken for me the willingness to be with my shadows, my pain, and my fears, and to transcend them. While I’ll always be a work in progress and still falter at times, I have a new gained confidence I didn’t have a year ago.

The fear that felt so intensely consuming does not have the terrifying charge it had to it just a year ago. Writing for me is a way in which I’m able to witness myself transform. Going through the second draft, I have this new confidence that is guiding me that I wouldn’t have had, had I not been willing to take the necessary inward journey I did last year.

All of this has contributed to what I believe Tosha’s card is saying that it has made space not only for the evolved me to come through, but by also sharing this with other’s through my writing, may just perhaps allow for someone else to find the courage and confidence they seek to expand into who they wish to be, too.

And then that person holds that new vibrational space for another to do so…and it causes a ripple for yet another and another.

XO,

Barb