We must be willing to take an honest look at ourselves and step out beyond our judgmental mind. It is here that we will have a life-altering shift in perception, an opening of our heart.

Fear keeps us rooted in the past. Fear of the unknown, fear of abandonment, fear of rejection, fear of not having enough, fear of not being enough, fear of the future-all these fears and more keep us trapped, repeating the same old patterns and making the same choices over and over again. Fear prevents us from moving outside the comfort-or even the familiar discomfort-of what we know. It's nearly impossible to achieve our highest vision for our lives as long as we are being guided by our fears.

By looking through the eyes of co-creation - seeing that we are co-creating this universe, co-creating our relationships, and co-creating our experiences - we can find the unseen patterns that exist inside of us. And with this clear-eyed wisdom, we are able to cut the line, drop the anchor, and set ourselves free.

We've all had at least a fleeting experience of a deep connection with the Divine in a meditation, in a moment of realization, or at a time when we felt blessed by the universe because everything was going our way. When we look through divine eyes, there is no judgment, no need to be righteous or to make ourselves wrong.

Our pain can be our greatest teacher. It leads us to places we'd never go on our own.

In trying to express only those aspects of ourselves that we believe will guarantee us the acceptance of others, we suppress some of our most valuable and interesting features and sentence ourselves to a life of reenacting the same outworn scripts. Reclaiming the parts of ourselves that we have relegated to the shadow is the most reliable path to actualizing all of our human potential. Once befriended, our shadow becomes a divine map that—when properly read and followed—reconnects us to the life we were meant to live and the people we were meant to be.

It is only when you're lying to yourself or hating some aspect of yourself that you'll get an emotional charge from someone else's behavior.