It could be the most disastrous thing that has ever happened in mass on planet Earth or it could be the most glorious, amazing transition that we could ever dream of. The choice is ours.

I believe the latter is what is happening and I have proof of why I believe that. It lies right in side of you.

My work in the world is to support people in getting in touch with what I fondly call their Internal Guidance System® or IGS®.

You see in ever single person on the planet has this amazing compass inside of them. It is literally pointing the way to the most successful way to think and act in any situation that they encounter. This unique guidance system is, in my opinion, what is going to direct us to create a new way of being in our lives that will then create a new revolutionary experience for all of us to live into.

Watch the video, (simply click on the link below) do the meditation and then read further if you connect to the experience. I will explain what I believe is happening and what I believe the outcome will be.

Did you feel your very own IGS®? For many it feels like a lifting or an expansive feeling when they say the positive statement and a collapsing, constricting feeling when they say the “negative” statement. I call the first “opening” and the latter “closing.” This is very important because these sensations are guiding you, your thoughts and your life in every moment. In following these sensations into the opening you are creating health and harmony in your life for yourself and everyone around you.

In the past 9 years I have been actively working with hundreds and hundreds of people, supporting them in getting in touch with their internal guidance. What happens in their lives is actually amazing, which I will share in a later post. The important thing is I am beginning to understand what is going on.

All of nature is operating into the “opening.” This is how everything stays in coherence with everything else. It is how all of life is experiencing the world around it. Birds and whales migrate into the opening, seeds sprout into their opening, animals forage and find food by following their openings, when people speak of abundance being all around us this is what they are referring too.

This may sound unbelievable but to me this is the missing ingredient in the experience of being human. It gives us a second way to find our path through our lives that replicates the way that all of nature is finding its way. When one uses their IGS® to navigate through life their life seems to just really work out and not just for themselves but for those around them too. So by following your IGS®, you are doing the very best you can to create a beautiful new future. It is in my observation and opinion the most powerful way that you can start contributing to the world.

Stay tuned for I will be giving insights and awareness on how to use this unique system as well as to why I am grateful and love the fact that we are at the end of the world as we know it.

Go forth and follow your openings. ;*?

The answer: have a personal goal to take responsibility for your internal experience and love yourself for who you are. This one step, if taken by all, will build more trust, love and compassion than any other. This one step is powerful enough to shift everything toward paradise quickly yet with grace.

2. Follow your Internal Guidance and express your personal brilliance
Each of us has a living Internal Guidance System (IGS) that is consistently attempting to align us with more love, joy and compassion. Our IGS delivers a series of personal desires that can be felt as an opening of energy in our body.

Your unique individual brilliance is being asked to be contributed through out your day, whenever you feel this openness it is a request from the Universe. It is in you having the courage to be brilliant and fulfill such requests that the answer to our future lies.

To seed, nourish and birth the dream of paradise reborn. Without your internal wisdom and expression of you, we will never reach this goal. Every human is apart of the symbiotic expression of earth. We are apart of nature not separate from it, so why would we not be a necessary part of the whole. Nothing in nature can be eliminated without the whole being affected. Such as it is with your beautiful consciousness, when aligned with Divine Guidance.

3. Manifest your world consciously and with intent
You are already manifesting every moment. It is not whether you want to participate in manifesting the world around you, it is only a matter of whether you do it consciously or unconsciously. Do you desire to be a contributor to our reality in an empowered way or a disempowered way?

What every you chose, for not choosing is a choice, you must taking credit for manifesting the world. Focus your thoughts on what you intend and enjoy the energy that is generated by supporting all the achievements being made toward a more beautiful world.

4. Create your personal vision of paradise and spread it among those you love
You have a source of divine energy flowing through you. This energy is desire that opens your entire body when it is focused upon. Each and every desire you have for the future is divine energy guiding your toward that future being achieved. You have inside you the part of paradise that you are responsible for believing in and creating.

Find your personal vision of what paradise will be and share it with all those you love and who love you. Spark them in their vision of what Paradise would be. It is the next global conversation worth having and it is up to you to start it!

5. Create community and hold it as a necessary foundation of our future
We are all on the verge of one great experiment coming to its fruition and the next one is about to begin. What is the next beautiful experiment you might ask? Divine collaboration. We have all been held separate by our egoic mind long enough. We all now know how to be an individual and many of us are beginning to wake up to our Oneness as well.

It is this unique combination that makes rebuilding of our human community both locally and globally so exciting and necessary. Our next human experiment will build itself on the foundation of community. Hold community close to your heart. Connect with others of like mind, of like region and share your gifts. It is in our relating that we will find the answers to all the worlds suffering so that it can be transmuted in to our greatest shining successes.

6. Be grateful for all your experiences and all that is
Every element of life holds a sacred gift. Some gifts take longer to unwrap than others. The most empowered way to receive anything is to give thanks to the giver before the gift is unwrapped. Gratitude thus occurs before you have decided if what you are being given is what you desired to receive. It is no different with life. Hold a body of gratitude then once the experience has completely unfolded you can see what the gift means to you.

7. Release attachment including being attached to non-attachment
Most everyone has attachment. Even those who strive for non-attachment can find themselves attached to the principle itself. This is what the ego does with all rules, guidelines or decrees. For this reason it can be more effective to simply release attachment when it is found than to be non-attached. Releasing attachment to outcomes promotes miracles occurring.

It allows for you as a being to shift from a human having a spiritual experience into Spirit having a human experience. This allows divine source energy to move and create through you unhindered by the ego’s understanding of what should be. There is no greater gift to the world than to allow divine energy to have it’s way through you.

8. See simplicity as the core of sacred living
Every moment is sacred, every molecule is sacred. There is simplistic geometry to all of life. It is in the simple moments that the sacred in life is found, felt, embodied and expressed. There is such great richness and depth in a small blooming flower, enough joy to last a lifetime if felt fully. Look for this simplicity throughout the complexity of your day and the complexity will wash away leaving behind the world of sacred living.

9. Express unconditional love
Unconditional love is in you always. It never needs to be found, it never needs to be generated, it never needs anything accept a noticing that it is there. Love is at the core of every atom of your being. EVERY ATOM. There are approximately 7*10 to the 27th atoms in your body, that is 7 followed by 27 zero’s. Imagine how much love that is inside of you available for you to express. Therefore you already are unconditional love so now it is about remembering and holding the intent to allow it to be expressed through you.

Be a commitment to you being love expressed. One last thing love is not necessarily the mushy gushy love of romance. Love is the practical, warm, compassionate, vibrant, life force energy that is coursing through the entire universe. So now you know you can express it at work too.

10. Look for the universal Oneness in your life
There is a universal Oneness that is under the surface of everything. It can be a big concept to tap into, so start small. Look for the synchronistic moments, the perfection of the way your life unfolds and most powerfully the commonality that those around you have with you. Even in moments of strife the Oneness is there. You can find it if you ask to see it.

Nature and the Universe are always secretly giving you clues of this as you roam about living the life you have chosen. By asking to see Oneness in your life it will leave more obvious clues for you to find. The inquiry brings with it a deeper understanding of Trust and Surrender to the adventure we have created for Our Self.

It is amazing how I can procrastinate for four days when writing an blog entry on procrastination. Since my last post on December 8th I have been diligently avoiding writing my next post, not consciously necessarily but not sub consciously either. Simply stated, I have been at battle with the part of myself that wants to destroy all my dreams and keep me isolated by the silent complaining from inside my head. A chorus of what I should be doing, what I think about doing and what would be great about life if I would only do X.

How do we go from being super excited about doing something new, different, better or that we dream of, to not starting it at all. Or worse yet only getting about 3 days to three weeks down the road with our new great thing before we let our lives take over, crushing all that forward momentum. Possibly you may resemble that remark? I believe you may have an inkling of what I am talking about?

Don’t get me wrong I “look” like one of those people who knows how to get things done and actually I am. However, it may take me up to a year or two to launch an idea with real enough consistency that makes it to the reality stage.

Do you have things that when you think about them you get this expanding feeling in your body and a fire in your belly? It is undeniable that you want to start doing these things that excite you but it has been weeks, months or even years and you have only gotten it going a wee bit or not at all? So here is my story and my solution that just happened to come my way.

As I blog this now there it is the fire in my belly and the expansion in the body about blogging. Yes, actually there it is again, I feel it right now. Why then has a month passed before writing a second post?

Fear and self-doubt.

Yep, I do not think I am able to write well. Actually, it’s not the idea’s or story part, it’s the grammar part of writing that I suck at. Since I have a deep fear of looking foolish and I really never bothered to learn grammar (what, I never planned on writing, I was going to be a dolphin trainer) I am terrified of being criticized. Hiring someone to edit all my posts at this stage is unrealistic so there my next post sits endlessly not being posted. Now, after this great book I read, I realize that fear and doubt is not the big problem. It is only a symptom of the big culprit, that is RESISTANCE.

Here is the big news flash! I have taken the bull by the horns and I am tackling my resistance and procrastination full force. It started with my purchasing a book The War of Art by Steven Pressfield.

If you have things that you would love to start to do or even better yet start to finish to do in your life, then RUN DON’T WALK to get this book. I cannot speak more highly of it and the beautiful butt kicking it gave me. I cried as I read it. I finally found that special someone who could walk into my head and write down all the silly thoughts that my mind tells me to keep me from living from that fire in the belly.

This list is taken from the book itself. Read it and see if you fit in any of the categories. If you desire to do any of the following:

1. Pursue any calling in writing, painting, music, film, dance, or any creative art, for fun or profit.
2. Desire to launch any entrepreneurial venture.
3. Any diet or health regimen.
4. Any program of spiritual advancement.
5. Any activity whose aim is tighter abdominal area.
6. Any course or program designed to over come an unwholesome habit or addiction.
7. Education of any kind.
8. Any act of political, moral, or ethical courage, including the decision to change for the better some unworthy pattern of thought or conduct in yourself.
9. The undertaking of any enterprise or endeavor whose aim is to help others.
10. Any act that entails commitment of the heart. The decision to get married, to have a child, to weather a rocky patch in a relationship.
11. The taking of any principled stand in the face of adversity.

Then this is the book for you. Truly, Steven outlines the war inside of our beings that is stopping us from being in our talent, our genius and he gives you the insights and steps to get started.

Sometimes you just gotta leave the resistance behind

This one book has gotten me blogging. So what is the big war we all have everyday with doing what we love, being who we want to be and creating a life of our dreams has an actual enemy you can face and crush. It’s name is RESISTANCE. That nasty little voice inside your head is more than just us being hard on ourselves it is, Resistance, a trickster, an uncaring energy that will zap you again and again if you let it. If you are going to become the dream of you that you can feel in your soul then you must know the enemy and Steven does a lovely job of giving you the lay of the land. He gives you your weapons so you can move past resistance to persistence.

The best part is it is an easy read. Took me about 3 hours but the difference has been huge.

Now, I will get back to my regularly scheduled blogging in progress.
See you in the next couple of days!

This is not something that appealed to me. Sure talking about my life in the context of the things I teach is one thing.

Frankly what is important to me has simply always been being as purposeful as I can, but never going so overboard with purpose that I miss the point of my life: mainly, just living it. But recently, I’ve started thinking that being dynamic IS an important part of who I am and what I do. My passion for LIVING is huge, and if that inspires others to look for their own passion in a bigger way, well, count me in.

So after years of hearing some really smart people share what they would be interested in hearing from me, (in the past few weeks it’s been constant and from every angle), I am taking on an additional expressive outlet: This blog.

I hope that my journey will inspire your own. I hope that you will pass this on to others in your life who are searching, and I hope that you will share your process and progress with me as well.

NOW AND ZEN … My first name is Zen. My friends call me Zen, Z or Auntie Zen. I have one dear soul sister that calls me Zennie – she is the only one that it actually feels warm and good when it comes out of her mouth. Everyone else who tries to call me that simply does not really know me (or they think they do, and it leaves me feeling like they really don’t). Zen is not short for anything, and no, I was not born with that name. I agreed to take the name at twenty-three. At some point I’ll write about how my first name came into being (and my two last names, for that matter). For now, feel free to just think of me as Zen, Z or Auntie Zen, and you can then be in the inner circle of those who know me well.

I got married on August 18, 2009, for the first time, at the age of 39. It still blows me away that I am married and actually LOVING it. That is something else I promise to blog more about. Marriage was a dreaded act that I always barely escaped from. It meant the end of me, or my freedom to BE me. [Side note: I have been engaged FIVE times, but was never engaged to the man I married.] My husband is quite the character, so much so that I am giving him a name in this blog: Moose. He is not big like a moose, he really does not look like a moose, and I don’t actually call him Moose. The reason I am giving him a personal title for my public life is to give him some space and anonymity. He is such a part of who I am now I would not be able to write about my life without writing about him, and he is ok with that. In fact I think he will enjoy reading about what I think of him and our life together, as much as I will enjoy writing about those precious truths. The personal title is also to keep him a bit more to myself too.

Moose means nothing other than he loves moose’s (okay, someone help me spell that). He has a box – a small box, but still a box – of moose things he has collected. I use his moose potholders in our kitchen (soon to be brought to you in video), and we have moose Christmas decorations. Every time I see a moose now, it represents him. So there you have it – the regal, sometimes awkward, seemingly thick-headed (yet soft), hard-to-mistake-for-anything-else creature that is my husband. This is his totem animal, and thus, his name in this blog. I have always considered my totem animal to be the hummingbird, by the way. If you envision a hummingbird and a Moose together as life partners, you pretty much get the picture of our relationship. Yeah, I know, but believe me it truly works.

Since I am all joyously married now I find it tough to not carry the theme into other areas of my life. You can expect this blog to be something old, something new, something borrowed, and sometimes, something blue. To be honest, it is the blue part is what has kept me from blogging about myself in the first place. The blue is not for sadness, but for my sense of humor and the way I live my life. Just to the line of impropriety without really crossing it (at least not too often. ) I love being human and spiritual too, so if you are not ready for a real woman, who loves life (and living it at the line but not over it) this blog will at times not be for you. That is AOK with me if it’s AOK with you.

Thank you for taking the time to read this first long passage and I look forward to getting to know your thoughts too.

A special thanks to Moose, my Dad (Les Kloppenburg), Kathleen Brucher, Teri Bigio, Jennifer Lieberman, Manju Bazzell, Maggie Wiess, Lisa Graham, Lance Freeman, Eddie Carden, Chris Pryor, Neil Rogin, Jim Channon, Van Jones, Rob Guralick, and all the other wonderful friends and family that have encouraged me in the past few months to get this blog going and to share more of my SELF with you. If I left anyone out please let me know. I hope you busy people actually now have time to read it occasionally.