Life has a way of giving us experiences that will serve us, as long as we are listening.
In the early 1990’s I lived in Hong Kong for about 18 months. It is an amazing place to live. It runs at 900 miles an hour 24/7. It has approximately 7.5 million inhabitants, which means over 7000 people per KM². That´s a lot of folks on one relatively small piece of land.
On my daily journey to work, I would regularly be walking on pavements which were wide enough to allow 12 people to walk side by side. Each person had their own purpose, direction and was living inside their own thoughts. No-one was really speaking with anyone else. All in their own bubble. Around them would be chaos, traffic noise, street vendors trying to sell you stuff, and even flashing lights from advertising signs.
It was in these moments that I found myself at peace. In a deep state of calm. It wasn´t something I had learnt, no technique, no mantras or the likes. Just an automatic inner connection with myself. Unbeknownst to me, I was tapping into my inner wisdom, my true self.
In 2010 I was introduced to the 3 Principles, and it was like uncovering a part of me that I never knew was there. At this point in my life, I had been experiencing daily headaches for around 25 years. I was living off paracetamol, codeine and other pain medications. I had tried lots of alternative therapies and the best thing about them was the lying down for half an hour. There was a massive “hint” right there…
Three months after being introduced to the 3Ps, I experienced several days without head pain. My initial reaction was “I´ll be back to “normal” tomorrow. But I wasn´t. The pain seemed to have disappeared. I spoke with a neurologist a few days later and he explained that due to the volume of pain medication I had been taking that it would take 28 days for them to completely clear my system.
28 days seemed like an eternity, but I recorded my journey. 28 days, 56 days, 100 days, 200 days. The journey began on 19th November 2010. Without me being aware of it, I had dropped into my body´s inner wisdom, its true self.
In 2017 I was diagnosed with breast cancer. I attended the appointment with the consultant on my own. I reassured both the consultant and the cancer nurse that I was ok and asked them to tell me the results of the various tests. I received the results calmly, no tears, no “why me” etc. The consultant left the room, and the nurse asked if I had understood that I had been given a cancer diagnosis. I replied that I had and asked her what the next step was. The nurse had a look on her face that was a picture of “never met anyone like you before”.
This calm reaction stayed with me during my whole cancer journey. Even when I had to have part of my wound re-stitched. No heighted emotions just an innate calm. This was my inner wisdom in action, connecting to my true self.
Inner wisdom isn´t a switch that you turn on and off, you are gifted this when you are born. Most people are unaware of it. Some people are naturally calm, others not so much. But we all are blessed with the gift of wisdom whether we realise it or not.
“Wisdom is not found in the world of form, nor in remote corners of the globe. Wisdom lies within our own consciousness” Sydney Banks, The Missing Link.
Each of us has access to inner wisdom, and yet we have been taught not to follow it or trust it or to ignore it.
Inner wisdom is referred to by a host of other names including gut instinct, inner guidance, intuition, inner knowing, higher self, and the still small voice within, and the true self.
Whichever name you resonate with most is perfect because it is not in the language we use, but in the feeling of it and, the fact that you recognise it within yourself.
My introduction to the 3 Principles in 2010 was like an awakening and realisation that I am not special, unique or weird. I was just coming home to the awareness that I had been living in my true nature, despite the world, not because of it. The 3 Principles now gave me the language to speak about it.
I first heard Michael Neill refer to connecting to your Inner Wisdom (Inner Self, true essence) as the diamond within. He described it as each of us being a perfect diamond which is covered in layers of conditioned thinking (horse shit) that we have picked up along the journey of life and then covered with nail polish (the mask we show to the world) … This was such a vivid description of what happens inside most human beings that it stayed with me, and I now talk about the inner diamond deep within all of us as part of my work.
For one reason or another we have formed the idea that we aren´t good enough to show up in the world as we are, so we present a “fake” version of ourselves by hiding behind a mask. We think that the mask will be more acceptable to the world and it will hide all our flaws and imperfections.
But what if we are looking at the whole situation back to front. What if the world is waiting for us to show up as we truly are, imperfections included? What if we realised that we are whole, complete and enough, as we are?
Wouldn´t this remove or negate the need for all the pretence and hiding?
Afterall, a diamond covered in horse shit is still a perfect gemstone. Nothing broken, nothing to fix, just a beautiful (and expensive) gift to the world.
As I sat in front of the cancer consultant in 2017 I wasn´t pretending to have it all together, I was just being “me”.
Isn´t it time that you were brave enough, bold enough and courageous enough to rip off the mask you wear every day and show the world your own gorgeous multi-faceted inner diamond?
The world is waiting for the real you to show up. Are you ready?
To connect with Maureen York and find out more about the work she does, please visit the link: www.maureenyork.com
If you would like to spend time with speakers like this in person and hear them share their wisdom and experience in a beautiful setting in Albir, Spain in November each year, you can find tickets here www.thevivaevent.com/registration