The Toltec tradition tells us that we surrender a portion of our life force when we dwell on any unhealed wounding event from our past. The unprocessed emotions surrounding these events burden us and weigh heavily on our hearts. They must be dealt with if we want access to all of our vitality. Ultimately, what we will find is that forgiveness is the key to reclaiming all the life force locked in past hurt.

Become aware of your negative expectations and practice replacing them with positive expectations.

Your life will be transformed when you make peace with your shadow.

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.

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.

Many of us are frightened to look within ourselves, and fear has us put up walls so thick we no longer remember who we really are.

Remember, all the answers you need are inside of you; you only have to become quiet enough to hear them.