Every moment gives us another place to begin. This guided meditation invites you to reconnect with the present and intentionally choose the energy you carry into what comes next.

For most of my childhood, I thought courage belonged to extraordinary moments that made the news. The kind that arrives with urgency, danger, sacrifice, or a decision that changes everything in an instant. I never realized all the ways it showed up in my life.

Age has changed that understanding for me.

Some of the greatest acts of courage happen in times that receive very little attention from the world around us. Courage can appear when we speak honestly in a relationship, question something we have believed for decades, allow ourselves to feel an emotion fully, begin again after an experience changes us, or explore a spiritual question that opens an entirely new way of seeing life.

Sometimes courage is the willingness to meet ourselves more deeply.

We often speak about courage as though it were one quality, yet human experience asks for many different kinds of courage. The courage required to face physical pain is different from the courage required to express an unpopular idea. The courage required to reveal our authentic self is different from the courage required to reconsider a belief that once shaped our identity.

Over the years, I have come to see courage through five distinct faces: physical, social, intellectual, emotional, and spiritual.

Each ask something different from us.

Together, they help us live the life we dream of, deserve and desire.

Physical Courage

A few years ago, I became very ill and spent ten days in the hospital. My body had reached a point where I could barely function. I could not keep food down, my organs were beginning to shut down, and I had so little energy that even getting out of bed felt impossible.

Then the doctor told me that if I could not eat by the next day, he was going to place a feeding tube. Something shifted in me.

I remembered my own strength. I remembered that even in a weakened body, I still had access to my mind, my beliefs, my internal language, and the part of me that knew how to keep moving forward. I began reframing my thoughts and speaking to myself differently. I focused on strength, possibility, and the image of my body responding.

That moment became a turning point for me.

I began eating. I began moving. I began participating in my recovery in a completely different way. Two days later I walked out of that hospital carrying far more than physical strength. I walked out with a deeper understanding of courage. Sometimes physical courage is found in the moment when the body feels depleted and something within us still says, “I am here. You’ve got this!”

Physical courage is a form we recognize most easily because we see it constantly.

We see it in the firefighter entering a dangerous situation, the person enduring a difficult medical treatment, the athlete pushing the limits of physical endurance, or someone learning to use their body again after an injury.

It can also appear when someone gets out of bed exhausted and takes one meaningful step into the day. It can appear when a person begins moving their body again after years of feeling disconnected from it. It can appear when someone listens closely enough to their body to understand what it needs and then responds with care.

The body has its own intelligence, its own memories, and its own ways of communicating with us. Physical courage asks us to participate in that relationship and sometimes it asks us to endure.

Sometimes it asks us to rest. Sometimes it asks us to seek help, change direction, strengthen ourselves, or begin again.

The courageous act comes from listening closely enough to recognize what the body is asking of us and honoring that message with intention.

Physical courage reminds us that being human is an embodied experience. Our thoughts, emotions, memories, beliefs, and spiritual experiences all move through a nervous system and a physical body.

Caring for that body can become an act of courage in itself.

Social Courage

Coming out required a kind of courage I understood only after I lived through it.

For years, I had learned how to be acceptable. I understood how to read a room, how to meet expectations, and how to present the version of myself that made life easier for everyone around me.

Eventually, authenticity became louder than living my life for everyone else.

Coming out meant allowing people to see a truth that had always belonged to me. It meant choosing congruence over performance and trusting that a life built from truth would feel different from a life built around approval.

That decision changed far more than my relationships. It changed my relationship with myself.

Social courage, for me, became the willingness to let my outer life begin reflecting my inner truth.

There is something profoundly freeing about reaching the point where being fully yourself becomes more important than maintaining an identity that was created to keep everyone else comfortable.

Social courage begins where authenticity goes on tour.

We are naturally wired to connect. We are shaped by families, friendships, communities, cultures, schools, religious traditions, workplaces, and social expectations. From very early in life, we learn which parts of ourselves receive approval and which parts create discomfort in the people around us.

Those experiences influence how we present ourselves to the world.

Social courage develops when we begin choosing authenticity with greater awareness.

It may appear in a conversation where we finally express what we genuinely believe. It may appear when we create a boundary that protects something important to us. It may appear when we enter a room as ourselves rather than adjusting our personality to match what we imagine others expect.

Social courage also appears when we are willing to listen.

There is courage in speaking clearly, and there is equal courage in becoming genuinely curious about another person’s experience.

A courageous conversation can contain both.

This kind of courage becomes especially powerful when our authentic self has evolved beyond an identity we once carried comfortably. We become aligned with our core values. We choose the relationships that support our values. Our understanding of ourselves has expanded.

At that point, courage may mean allowing the people around us to meet the person we truly are.

Authenticity can feel vulnerable because connections matters deeply to the human nervous system.

Yet something remarkable happens when we begin creating relationships from a place of congruence. We gradually discover that authentic connection carries a different quality from approval earned through transformation.

Social courage asks a profound question.

Who are you willing to be when your life becomes an expression of what feels true inside you?

Intellectual Courage

I had inherited beliefs about God, spirituality, morality, and what it meant to be a good person. Many of those beliefs had been given to me long before I had the ability to examine them. They were woven into family, religion, culture, fear, belonging, and identity.

I started examining where my beliefs came from, how they had shaped me, and whether they still reflected what I had come to understand through experience, study, meditation, spirituality, and my own relationship with the Divine.

Deconstruction became less about tearing something down and more about discovering what was true for me beneath everything I had inherited.

That process required intellectual courage because each question opened another door.

I had to become willing to reconsider ideas I once accepted as absolute. I had to allow new information to change me. I had to trust that an evolving understanding could still be sacred.

Some of the most important growth in my life began with the courage to ask, “What if there is more here than I was originally taught?”

Intellectual courage is the willingness to examine our own thinking.

Where did this idea come from?

Who taught it to me?

What experiences reinforced it?

Does it still reflect what I understand today?

What will I discover if I look at this from another perspective?

These questions can open enormous internal spaces.

The brain naturally organizes experience through patterns because patterns help us navigate life efficiently. Once a belief becomes familiar, new information is often interpreted through the framework we already carry.

Intellectual courage interrupts that automatic process with curiosity.

It allows us to explore ideas that challenge us, examine evidence, reconsider assumptions, and update our understanding as we grow.

Changing our mind can be an act of courage because our beliefs often become intertwined with identity.

A belief may connect us to family history, community, tradition, or an earlier version of ourselves. When that belief evolves, the change can affect far more than an idea.

It can change the story we tell about who we are.

Intellectual courage gives us permission to keep learning.

Understanding becomes a living process rather than a destination.

Curiosity becomes an expression of wisdom.

Emotional Courage

For much of my life, I carried a story about being different.

At one point, even the nickname “Fruit Loop” became connected to that feeling. It reinforced the idea that something about me stood outside what was expected, and somewhere along the way, difference became tangled with the belief that I was somehow not good enough.

So I learned to adapt.

I learned how to become acceptable. I learned how to soften parts of myself, hide sensitivity, and shape myself around what I believed other people would receive more easily.

The belief that I was somehow lacking had influenced far more of my life than I once realized.

Emotional courage meant becoming willing to feel what lived beneath that story, to understand how it had shaped my choices, and to allow a new relationship with myself to emerge.

Over time, I began seeing that what once made me feel different was often connected to the very parts of me that became my greatest strengths.

Emotional courage asks us to experience life fully.

Human emotion moves through an extraordinary spectrum that includes joy, grief, excitement, tenderness, anger, wonder, longing, love, disappointment, compassion, anticipation, and awe.

Every emotion carries information.

Our nervous system continually evaluates what is happening within us and around us, while emotion helps organize attention, memory, motivation, and meaning.

Emotional courage involves becoming present enough to hear that information.

Many of us learned early to understand certain emotions are acceptable and others are inappropriate. We may have learned to appear strong, remain pleasant, stay composed, keep moving, or make everyone around us comfortable.

Eventually, emotional courage invites a deeper relationship with our internal experience.

It asks us to feel what is present long enough to understand what it may be communicating.

Grief may reveal the depth of love. Anger may illuminate a boundary. Fear may alert us to uncertainty. Joy may show us where our life feels expansive. Tenderness may reveal what matters most.

When we develop the capacity to remain present with emotion, we expand our ability to understand ourselves.

This does more than increase emotional awareness. It changes the way we relate to our own experience.

We begin understanding ourselves with curiosity rather than judgment. We become more capable of recognizing patterns. We become more aware of what triggers us, what nourishes us, what drains us, and what brings us alive.

Emotional courage creates room for a richer human experience because the heart becomes something we learn from rather than something we continually manage.

Spiritual Courage

My relationship with God has changed many times throughout my life.

There was a time when connection felt natural to me. As a child, I could experience the sacred without needing to define it. God felt personal, alive, present, and woven into life itself.

Then teachings, rules, interpretations, became layered over that original experience.

Years later, I began finding my way back.

Meditation became part of that journey. So did neuroscience, intuition, spiritual study, energy work, and my willingness to question beliefs that no longer reflected what I was experiencing.

Eventually, I began to understand that my authentic relationship with God could be deeply personal.

I did not have to inherit someone else’s definition of the Divine in order to experience the Divine.

Spiritual courage became the willingness to trust what I was discovering through lived experience. It became allowing my understanding of God to expand as I expanded.

For me, God became less confined to doctrine and more present in consciousness, love, nature, connection, intuition, stillness, and the moments when I feel most fully aligned with who I am.

That journey continues and that is part of spiritual courage too.

It is the willingness to allow our understanding of the sacred to remain alive enough to keep growing with us without the influence of doctrine.

Spiritual courage may be the most mysterious of the five because it asks us to enter questions that rarely provide simple answers.

Who am I?

Why am I here?

What gives my life meaning?

What is God?

What is consciousness?

What happens when this physical life ends?

What is the nature of connection?

How does my understanding of the Divine continue to evolve?

For many people, spirituality begins with inherited answers. We receive teachings, traditions, rituals, stories, and explanations that provide a framework for understanding existence.

Sometimes those teachings continue to feel deeply meaningful.

Sometimes our experience expands them.

Spiritual courage allows that exploration to unfold.

It gives us permission to enter mystery with reverence and curiosity.

For me, some of the most profound spiritual growth has occurred when I allowed a question to remain open long enough for my understanding to deepen.

There is something sacred about admitting that a mystery may contain more than one layer of meaning.

Spiritual courage asks us to develop a relationship with the Divine that becomes increasingly personal, experiential, and alive.

It may involve releasing an inherited interpretation and discovering a deeper one.

It may involve recognizing sacredness in places we once overlooked.

It may involve experiencing God through nature, meditation, relationship, silence, creativity, service, or moments of profound interconnectedness.

The spiritual journey continually invites expansion.

Each new understanding becomes another doorway to a journey that takes you to except and live your own authentic life.

Spiritual courage requires humility. The larger our awareness becomes, the more we recognize how much mystery remains.That realization can become beautiful rather than unsettling because mystery gives consciousness room to breathe.

Courage Rarely Travels Alone

Although these five faces of courage can be described separately, human experience rarely separates them so neatly.

A single moment can require several forms of courage at once.

A person navigating a major life transition may need physical courage to move through stress, social courage to express their changing identity, intellectual courage to question old assumptions, emotional courage to process what the transition brings forward, and spiritual courage to explore what the experience means.

One courageous act can ripple through every dimension of our lives.

This is why courage grows through practice.

Each time we choose authenticity, curiosity, emotional presence, embodied awareness, or spiritual exploration, we strengthen our capacity to meet life more fully.

Courage becomes less about performing bravery and more about expanding our ability to remain present inside our own experience.

Physical courage asks, What am I willing to move through?

Social courage asks, Who am I willing to become?

Intellectual courage asks, What am I willing to question?

Emotional courage asks, What am I willing to feel?

Spiritual courage asks, What am I willing to explore?

Courage has always been much larger than fear. Courage is our willingness to keep expanding beyond the familiar boundaries of who we once believed ourselves to be. One of the most courageous things we will ever do is continue becoming the authentic person our life keeps inviting us to discover.

Understanding courage is one thing. Discovering how it actually moves through your own life is something entirely different. I created a 15 page Five Faces of Courage Workbook to help you explore your physical, social, intellectual, emotional, and spiritual courage through reflection, self assessment, and guided exercises. You will have an opportunity to discover where courage already feels strong, where another part of you is ready to expand, and what your life may be asking of you right now. The workbook is available below for paid subscribers as a companion to this article.

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Recently, I found my handwritten notes from that sermon and started reading.

I laughed at my excessive highlighting. Then I realized something.

I was asking questions about awareness, identity, the inner critic, compassion, and the voice within us that I am still exploring today.

The language has evolved. My understanding of the brain, unconscious programming, spirituality, and human behavior has deepened considerably. Yet somehow, the questions were already there.

So I decided to revisit that sermon through everything I understand today.

In this episode, we explore the voices we carry, where they come from, how they become woven into identity, and what becomes possible when we begin listening beneath them.

Because sometimes the loudest voice inside us is simply the most practiced one.

And underneath it, something else is waiting to be heard.

Hi , I am glad you are here.

The Moon Someone Else Named

This Thursday evening, the August full moon slips into Earth’s shadow. Here is what the world calls this moon—and what your own inherited names have to do with it.

I remember my first full moon in Maui. I was really excited, and no one else in my family seemed as excited as I was. So I sat alone on the lanai with the ocean in front of me and that moon above it, and I stayed there for hours while everyone else was sleeping.

The moon looked different in Maui. I am sure everyone says that about the moon when they see it full in a place, they have never been before. I remember the dark night and the completely still wind. I could hear the waves breaking, and I was surprised that the birds were still singing so late. Each breath I took brought me comfort, as though the air itself knew what I needed.

I sat in deeper introspection that night than I had allowed myself in months. I ended up writing a poem about it, that was how inspired I felt. I remember having a vision of walking through a doorway back to me. That night, I felt like I was the only person in the world having a conversation with the moon, and she was telling me that a shift in my life was right around the corner.

Years later, I saw the pictures of that moon on my phone and remembered how special that night had been.

I have always called the August full moon the Sturgeon Moon. The name comes from lake sturgeon, huge freshwater fish whose ancestry reaches back more than one hundred million years which were caught beneath the late-summer moon by Algonquian-speaking nations.

The name of the August moon traveled to places where that fish has never swum. People repeat the name in complete sincerity. They received it from a source that seemed reliable. They had every reason to trust it. Yet it describes a lake several thousand miles from where they are standing.

I find that fascinating. Hold on to it for a moment because we will come back to it.

What the rest of the world sees

The Cree call this moon the Flying Up Moon, marking the season when young birds leave the nest and take their first flight. In England, it has been called the Lightning Moon for the storms that gather at the end of a hot summer. The Anglo-Saxons called it the Wyrt Moon because this was when herbs and roots were gathered. Older almanacs named the August moon the Grain Moon and the Green Corn Moon.

Cross the equator, and the whole frame turns over. In Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, Chile, and Argentina, late August sits at the lean end of winter, when stores run low and the harvest lies months away. Southern naming reflects that honestly, which makes the northern language of abundance sound strange in a southern mouth. Māori tradition goes further still and names every night of the lunar cycle rather than crowning one night per month, a quietly beautiful correction to the whole idea that a moon needs a single title.

Same rock. Same light. The moon reaches fullness at one shared instant for the entire planet, which means every person naming it is looking at the same celestial event. Each of those names is correct to the place that created it. Each one turns into fiction the moment it travels somewhere else and is repeated as though it were the truth about the sky.

The names you inherited

You carry names like that too.

Statements about who you are were handed to you by people who loved you, meant well, and described the world as they knew it: “You are the responsible one. You have always been too much. People like us stay quiet. Money stays hard for a family like ours.” You relied on those people and had every reason to trust them. Yet you may have left the ground from which those statements came a long time ago. The question is: Are you still carrying them?

The journey to your authenticity is simple enough to describe and slow to live. Notice which names you inherited. Thank the people who handed them to you, because they were describing their own ground in good faith. Then choose which names describe the ground you actually stand on now.

What actually happens in your brain on a night like this

Here is where I want to stay honest with you, because this corner of the internet fills up every month with claims that deserve a closer look.

Research suggests that any measurable effects of the full moon on human beings are modest and concentrate mostly in sleep. Some studies have found that people took longer to fall asleep and spent less time in deep sleep around the full moon. The more dramatic claims are those involving emergency rooms, accidents, and unusual human behavior, tend to fade as sample sizes grow.

So why gather on a night like this at all? Because of the cue. Your brain responds to repetition and to the meaning you create through ritual. A recurring ritual becomes a cue to pause, reflect, and meditate. The moon holds the appointment. Your nervous system does the rest.

Set your timer

The moon reaches full at 12:18 a.m. Eastern time on Friday, August 28, which places the moment at 9:18 p.m. on Thursday, August 27, here on the West Coast. This year, it arrives inside Earth’s shadow.

The eclipse is technically partial. At its deepest, about 93 percent of the Moon’s diameter will sit inside the umbra, the dark inner cone of Earth’s shadow, leaving a thin bright rim along one edge and a coppery cast across everything else. The Americas will see the entire event from start to finish. Europe and Africa will catch it close to moonset. It requires no glasses, filters, or special equipment.

Step outside. Give your eyes a few minutes to adjust. Look up. That alone is enough.

This article continues after the paywall with a guided meditation for this Thursday’s full moon.

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I am so glad you are here, .

Ever since I was a little girl, I wrote poetry. I always wondered what my work would sound like if I put them to music. There was one significant problem, I do not play an instrument and I do not sing. What I do have was a love of words.

I have always understood something about words intuitively, long before I began studying neuroscience, NLP, meditation, or the unconscious mind. Words carry something. They can change the feeling of a room. They can transport us into a memory. They can awaken an emotion we thought had processed.

When words are combined with music, something even more interesting happens. I feel it through every part of my being. That was actually one of the reasons I began writing songs in the first place.

I loved music, but I became increasingly aware that I did not always love the words I was repeatedly singing to myself. Some songs were beautiful musically while telling stories of abandonment, desperation, betrayal, worthlessness, longing, revenge, or the inability to live without another person. I would catch myself singing along because I loved the melody and suddenly think:

Do I really want to keep saying this to myself?

That question changed the way I listened to music. And eventually it made me want to write my own. I wanted words that felt congruent with me. Words that reminded me of my strength. Words that brought me closer to my center. Words that spoke to who I wanted to remember myself to be.

I started turning some of my poems into little songs to myself. At the time, they lived mostly on pieces of paper. There were words scratched out, sentences squeezed between lines, arrows pointing toward changes, and ideas written quickly before they disappeared. I had notes on my phone, in my paper journal, scratch pieces of paper. I can find anywhere when the inspiration hit.

They were never written with the expectation that anyone else would hear them. They were conversations with myself.

And one of those conversations became Hold On to Your Worth.

The Words We Rehearse

The song begins in a very different place than where it ends.

It begins with someone who feels trapped. Someone who believes there is nowhere left to go. Someone sitting metaphorically on the shore, watching the waves and wondering whether there is another way to anywhere but here with the pain and the exhaustion.

There is the story we sometimes tell ourselves when our circumstances become larger than our current ability to see beyond them. Then another voice enters. A deeper voice. The voice that says there is still something inside you. There is still a flame. There is still power. There is still a path. There is worth.

Looking at those handwritten pages now, I realize I was doing something I understand much more clearly today. I was interrupting one internal narrative and creating another.

That fascinates me. Because we all have internal narratives. They may sound like language, images, remembered conversations, sensations, beliefs, expectations, or assumptions we have repeated so many times that they begin to feel like reality.

The brain becomes extraordinarily efficient at what we practice.

When a pattern of thought, behavior, attention, or emotional response is repeated, the neural networks associated with that pattern can become easier to activate over time. This is part of the broader process we call neuroplasticity, the brain’s ability to adapt and reorganize itself in response to experience.

This does not mean that repeating a beautiful sentence magically erases a painful experience. It means something more practical and, to me, more empowering.

What we repeatedly practice matters. Where we place our attention matters. The language we rehearse matters. And this is where music becomes an important matter.

Why Music Gets In So Deep

Music involves far more than the part of the brain that processes sound. When we listen to music, networks associated with attention, memory, emotion, movement, anticipation, and reward can all become involved. That is one reason a song from thirty years ago can begin playing and suddenly you remember exactly where you were when you first heard it.

You may remember the person beside you. The car you were driving. A summer evening. A heartbreak. A dance floor. A kitchen. Your first love. Sometimes you can almost smell the room. Music and memory have a remarkable relationship because music creates patterns, and the brain is very good at learning patterns.

Rhythm organizes information through timing, giving the brain a predictable framework for following sounds and words. Melody creates patterns of pitch that the brain learns to expect, providing a musical pathway that can help associated words become easier to recall. Emotion gives an experience significance and words provide meaning.

Put those together and language can become much easier to remember. Think about how many song lyrics you know that you never consciously sat down and attempted to memorize. You simply heard them again and again. There was a time when you could play any song on the radio, and I could sing every single one of those songs. Decades later that realization made me think differently about the music I consumed.

If my brain was going to become exceptionally good at remembering the words I repeatedly sang, I wanted at least some of those words to remind me of something I genuinely wanted to remember. My strength. My relationship with myself. My ability to move through difficult experiences while remaining connected to who I am. My worth.

So, I began writing music for my own inner world.

Music as an Intentional Environment

We talk frequently about our environment as though it consists primarily of the people around us and the places where we spend our time. I think our environment also includes what we repeatedly hear. What we watch. What we read. What we say. What we sing. What we rehearse internally.

These things become part of the sensory and linguistic environment the brain is continuously processing. That does not mean every song needs to be spiritually uplifting or psychologically profound.

Please.

Sometimes I want a song simply because it makes me want to dance in my kitchen. There is tremendous value in joy too. However, awareness gives us choice.

There is a difference between unconsciously absorbing language and consciously choosing some of the language we repeatedly expose ourselves to. I began to wonder what would happen if music could become another form of meditation. Another way of directing attention. Another way of communicating with the deeper parts of ourselves. Another way of repeatedly returning to an idea we wanted to embrace.

In many ways, that is exactly what my songs became. They were mantras with melodies I could not yet hear. For years, I had the words. What I lacked was the ability to turn those words into the music I could imagine. I could write the lyrics. I could feel the emotion. I could hear the idea of the song somewhere inside me.

Then technology caught up with my imagination. Suddenly, I could take words that had existed quietly on paper and hear them as music. I have to admit, there is something slightly surreal about that. I spent years writing songs that essentially had no voice. And now they do.

Technology is often discussed in terms of productivity, how quickly something can be created, how efficiently something can be done, how much time can be saved.

This experience felt different. For me, technology became a bridge between creativity and limitation. I did not suddenly learn to play the piano. My singing voice did not mysteriously improve overnight.

Technology allowed me to express something that had already existed within me in a form I could never create on my own. And I love that because creativity has always been larger than the tools available to express it.

The Part of the Song I Understand Differently Today

There is one line in Hold On to Your Worth that deserves a deeper conversation:

“The way you feel is the choice you make.”

I understand that sentence differently today than I did when I originally wrote it. Emotions arise for many reasons. Our nervous system responds. Memories become activated. Circumstances affect us. Our bodies communicate with us. Our history influences interpretation.

We do not sit down each morning with a menu and consciously choose every emotion we are going to experience that day. The choice often comes later. What meaning will I continue giving this experience? What will I repeatedly rehearse? Where will I direct my attention next? Which internal voice will receive the microphone?

That, to me, is where personal power lives. Feeling pain and remaining connected to our power can exist together. Grief and worth can coexist. Fear and courage can coexist. Uncertainty and movement can coexist.

Our emotional state can be honored while we simultaneously begin strengthening another pathway. That is why the song moves the way it does.

It begins with pain. Then the voice changes.

Rise up. Step up. Walk your path with courage and grace. Hold on to your worth. The song never needed to pretend the pain had never existed. It needed to remind the person inside that pain that something else existed too.

The Voice That Answers Back

I think all of us have moments when one voice inside becomes particularly loud. The voice that remembers every disappointment. The voice that predicts the ending before we have lived it. The voice shaped by old experiences, old relationships, old expectations, or old versions of ourselves.

But there can also be another voice. Sometimes it whispers at first. It reminds us, you are still here.

There is more available. There is another interpretation. There is another choice. There is another step. There is still something inside you that remembers who you are. Personal growth is partly about strengthening our relationship with that voice.

Meditation helps us hear it. Awareness helps us recognize it. Intentional language gives it vocabulary. Music occasionally helps us remember the words.

A Song I Wrote for Myself

When I wrote Hold On to Your Worth, I was writing it for myself. I had no idea I would eventually have a platform where I could share it. I had no idea technology would someday allow me to hear it fully produced.

I certainly had no idea that years later I would look at those original handwritten pages and see something much larger than a song. I see evidence of a conversation I was having with myself. One part of me understood pain. Another part understood possibility. And somehow they both ended up on the same page.

That may be what I love most about finding these songs again. They remind me that sometimes we write something for the person we are in that moment, only to discover years later that the message still has somewhere else to go.

Maybe someone else needs the words. Maybe someone else needs the reminder. Maybe someone else needs to hear: Hold on to your worth.

That is why this song finally has a voice.

A Personal Gift From Me

Below the paywall, I am sharing something especially personal with you: the original poem and lyrics that became Hold On to Your Worth, along with the Suno recording that finally gave these words a musical voice.

These began as handwritten words to myself. Now I am sharing them with you. My hope is that you listen in your own way. Let the music become more than background sound. Hear the language. Notice what your mind responds to. Notice what your body feels. Notice which words seem to stay with you after the song has ended.

And if one line follows you into the rest of your day, perhaps allow it to be this one: Hold on to your worth.

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Then life gives us more information.

We learn. We experience. We question. We grow. And sometimes something we once felt certain about no longer fits the person we have become.

In this episode, I explore why changing your mind can be a sign of growth rather than inconsistency, how the brain is designed to adapt through experience, and why we do not have to remain permanently loyal to decisions made by an earlier version of ourselves.

Sometimes changing your mind means you learned something new.

Sometimes it means you finally saw a road that was there all along.

The First Verse I Ever Memorized, and the Way I Read It Now

John 3:16, the brain under fear, and the body under belonging

For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.

That sentence was the first scripture I ever memorized. I was in children’s church, and I remember the folding chairs, the felt board with its cutout figures of Jesus with children around him as he was sitting on a rock with the verse above it. The smell of coffee and cookies in the fellowship hall was my motivation to memorize it, not to mention the gold star that arrived when I recited the whole verse correctly. I said it perfectly and I earned the star and I walked out of that room carrying an idea that would go on to shape the next several decades of my life.

The verse arrived with instructions attached. The way I received it, the sentence meant this: there is one door, one name, and one correct answer, accept Jesus Christ into your heart, become a Christian, and you are safe. If you don’t, you stand separated from God, permanently, along with most of the human beings who have ever lived. Love was described as infinite in the very same breath that it was described as conditional. As a child, I believed what I was told. I took it very literal.

That belief became one the focal points that kept me away from my authenticity for a very long time. I chose the acceptable path, the acceptable partner, and the acceptable version of a life incongruent to me. I married a man inside that incongruency. I want to be clear about how I hold that thought because I received the greatest gift of my life from that marriage, and her name is my daughter. I would walk the entire road again to arrive at her. And in the same breath, I spent years performing a self that had been influenced by other people’s fear. Both of those truths live comfortably in one thought.

What the Gatekeeping Reading Does Inside the Brain

Years later, learning about the nervous system helped me understand why this verse affected me so deeply. What I discovered is that our brains experience belonging as a matter of survival. For most of human history, being separated from the tribe often meant death. Although our world has changed, our nervous systems still carry that ancient wiring. Researchers have shown that social rejection activates many of the same brain regions involved in physical pain. When our deepest belonging, our relationship with God is presented as something that can be lost, the nervous system does not experience that as an abstract theological idea. It experiences it as a threat.

When our brain senses that kind of threat, it shifts into protection mode. Stress hormones begin to rise, preparing us to survive. That’s incredibly helpful if we’re escaping immediate danger. It’s far less helpful when the danger is something we believe every day for years. Over time, chronic stress can affect our sleep, digestion, immune system, memory, and even the way we think. Curiosity gives way to certainty because certainty feels safer. Looking back, I can understand why fear-based beliefs become so difficult to question. Fear quietly limits the very abilities we need to examine the fear itself.

There is a language layer here as well, and this is where my NLP training changed everything for me. Sentences carry presuppositions, which are assumptions meaning they are not absolute truth. This leads to curiosity and flexibility. Say the verse the way I first heard it and notice what your unconscious mind quietly agrees to before the sentence even ends.

For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son that whosoever believes in him should not perish but have everlasting life.

We know God loves everyone. There is a belief involved. A person can spend an entire adult life debating the theology while that presupposition keeps running underneath, shaping how safe they feel inside their own body.

Then there is the social cost, and I consider this part the most damaging of all. A brain that has organized itself around one correct answer becomes remarkably efficient at sorting people, inside and outside, saved and lost, us and them. Sorting of that kind blocks the neural activity that supports taking another person’s perspective. That is how sincere, tender, loving people end up defending positions that hurt their own children. The sorting had already happened long before the argument ever started.

I want to describe what all of that felt like inside my own body, because I lived the physiology for years before I had any language to explain it. Whenever I sat with that verse the way I had been taught it, I would picture all of those people condemned, and a soreness would settle into the pit of my stomach and stay there. Sometimes I wept for them. Sometimes I grew angry at God, because the concept made no sense to me. That ache carried information. The gut holds a dense network of neurons in constant conversation with the brain; my body had been rejecting that doctrine for years while my mind went on reciting it.

The Question That Cracked It Open

At some point I began looking at every human being in front of me for exactly who they were, with every label set aside. Faith, culture, politics, background, all of the categories I had been handed for sorting people into groups. I set them down and looked at the person who remained.

Generous, honest, devoted to their families, kind in the small unwitnessed ways that tell you the truth about someone. Some of them read that scripture differently than I had been taught to read it. Some had chosen a different life entirely. And some were born into a culture where that particular invitation arrived at their door exactly zero times, through no decision of their own. My heart, the same heart that had recited the verse perfectly for a gold star, refused the conclusion I had been given. Every attempt to picture those people condemned collapsed the moment I made it.

The logic gave way first. If God is love, and if love is the origin of the whole sentence, then a system that delivers billions of people to permanent separation on the basis of geography, birth year, and family of origin describes something other than love. It describes an entrance exam that most of the world was never handed, and I was measuring my own character against the daily integrity of the very people that teaching excluded. Those people were my standard. A doctrine that condemned my standard had a problem inside it.

Then the language gave way, and this is where my training did the real work. In NLP we recognize a pattern called a mind read, which occurs when a person claims certain knowledge of what is happening inside another mind while holding no possible way to verify it. We are trained to hear that pattern and to ask the questions that dissolve it. How do you know that? Who decided? By what means was it verified? I turned those questions on the teaching I had carried since childhood and watched it come apart in my hands. The claim being made was knowledge of the mind of God. Who is inside. Who is outside. What God requires. What God does with everyone who falls short. Every piece of that is a mind read. It is an interpretation, offered by human beings, repeated with such confidence across so many generations that the interpretation came to be received as fact.

The verse remained. The instructions wrapped around it fell away. That distinction is the entire turning point, and I want to say plainly that people who still hold the traditional reading can carry it with sincere and generous hearts, and a great many of them do. My argument lives with the instructions rather than with the people.

The Way I Read That Same Verse Today

Today I read the identical sentence and I find something entirely different inside it. What is more, I find it in the words themselves rather than in the instructions that were wrapped around them.

Let’s read it again in a different reframe.

For God, so love the world that he gave his only begotten son that whosoever believes in him, should not perish, but have everlasting life.

Begin with the first movement of the verse. God loved first. The love comes first and the giving follows from the love. Love arrives ahead of anything achieved, confessed, purchased, or performed. That order matters enormously. Any reading that converts love into a payout for correct behavior has reversed the sentence. I personally call that manipulation. And let’s read the next verse which was never emphasized. John 3:17 says God did not send his son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him. There is no condemnation.

Now look at the word whosoever. It is the most generous word in the entire line, and it opens the door to every single person alive. The verse offers a welcome. The tradition I grew up inside converted that welcome into a fence.

Then consider what belief actually means. In the original language, the word points less toward agreeing with a set of doctrines and more toward trust, leaning your weight onto something you know will hold you. That’s a very different experience than simply saying, “I believe.” Trust lives in the body. It changes the way we breathe, the way we relate, and the way we move through life. Membership can be written on paper. Trust has to be lived.

Here is the piece that reorganized my whole spiritual life. I understand the message of Jesus as a message about direct access. He described a kingdom located within you. He spoke of oneness with the Father and then invited other people into that same oneness. He kept moving people past the officials, and back toward what was already alive inside them.

That verse has nothing to do with a one-way decision that leads to heaven or hell. So, I stopped asking permission to approach God because I no longer believed God was withholding access from me in the first place. Instead of trying to earn my way in, I began remembering a connection that had always been there. My spiritual life became less about qualifying and more about awakening. That’s what returning home means to me. It isn’t about finding God somewhere outside of myself. It’s about becoming aware of the relationship that has been present all along, regardless of the doctrine that was attached.

What the Inclusive Reading Does Inside the Brain and the Body

The body responds very differently when it experiences belonging instead of exclusion.

When our nervous system begins receiving consistent messages of safety and belonging, our whole body responds. Breathing naturally slows. Muscles that have quietly held tension for years begin to soften. Digestion improves because the body no longer believes it’s preparing for danger. We become more present, more connected, and more available to ourselves and to the people around us. Safety doesn’t just change our thoughts; it changes our physiology.

The prefrontal cortex comes fully back online, bringing reflection, creativity, generosity, humor, and the ability to hold complexity without becoming overwhelmed. People often describe it as finally feeling like themselves again.

I know that state from the inside, because on the day my interpretation reorganized, my heart opened and my whole body released a burden I had carried so long that I had stopped noticing it was there. What arrived alongside the release was a sense of interconnection. That verse had been handed to me as a one way road with a single gate. What I found underneath it was a web, a living exchange of perspectives and love running between people. My appreciation for every human being expanded, and my compassion expanded with it. I felt far closer to the way Jesus actually walked than to the instructions I received about how to live.

I have found that research points in the same direction. Andrew Newberg’s imaging work with people in deep prayer and meditation shows shifts in the parietal regions that maintain the boundary between self and everything else, and those shifts accompany the reported experience of unity. His work has also explored how a loving and benevolent God engages the brain differently from a punishing one. Your image of God trains your brain and whatever you hold your attention on, repeatedly and with feeling, becomes the world you live in, because attention plus repetition plus emotion is the working recipe for neuroplasticity.

That’s why I build my practice around language rather than willpower. A phrase that feels deeply true gives the nervous system somewhere new to organize itself. In my work, that becomes a Sacred Mantra during meditation and an Essential Mantra during everyday life. I’ll save the mechanics for another time. The principle is simple: The sentences you repeat become the physiology you live.

The Authority to Read It Differently

There is one more thought. I process language literally and that is how my mind thinks. For most of my life it meant that a sentence said exactly what it said, especially a sentence delivered by trusted adults inside a church. Literal processing and inherited doctrine make a heavy combination, because a metaphor received as a legal contract will proceed to run your life like a legal contract.

The day I understood that I could read that verse as metaphor, or as one person’s perspective recorded in a particular moment for a particular audience, something opened in me that has remained open ever since. The authority to make that choice lived inside me the entire time. No one grants it. You already hold it. You are permitted to read the sentences you inherited as poetry, as perspective, as a record of what somebody believed and wanted others to believe, and then to decide for yourself what stays true. That single permission changed my thinking more than any doctrine ever did.

A Statement, and an Invitation

I hold that first interpretation without value or judgement. The people who handed it to me were sincere and were passing along what had been handed to them. And I set it down completely, because it cost me years of authenticity and it costs this culture something enormous every single day.

Here is my statement.

Love came first.

Everyone is included.

Access is direct,

and it came already installed.

Belief means trust rather than membership.

And having everlasting life begins in the body of the person reading this, in this hour, rather than at some distant checkpoint where a stranger reviews your merit.

If you learned that verse the way I learned it, you may be carrying a presupposition that arrived before you had any say in the matter.

You are allowed to examine it.

You are allowed to keep whatever still rings true

and to set down whatever your body releases.

Your nervous system will tell you which is which.

That is spiritual intelligence, and you were born holding it.

If this article has brought a sentence from your own past to mind, something you learned before you were old enough to question it. I created something to help you explore it. Because recognizing an inherited belief is one thing. Discovering what it has quietly asked you to believe, how your body has carried it, and what you choose to believe today is something entirely different.

Paid subscribers can continue with me below, where I’ll share the companion workbook The Sentence You Inherited, along with a guided meditation designed to help you move from inherited language into something that feels authentically your own.

Your Companion Practice:

The Sentence You Inherited

Now it becomes personal.

I walked you through one of the earliest sentences I inherited and showed you how it shaped the way I understood love, belonging, God, and eventually myself. This companion workbook invites you

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I have been thinking about that question a lot lately.

When emotion is heightened, attention becomes focused, expectations have already been created, and everyone around you appears to be experiencing something extraordinary, the power of influence becomes fascinating.

Years ago, I experienced environments like this myself. At the time, I understood what was happening through one lens. Today, after decades of studying the mind, language, meditation, and human behavior, I see those same experiences very differently.

And when people began describing similar experiences happening in contemporary meditation and somatic events, I immediately recognized the pattern.

I had seen this room before.

In this episode, we’re going inside that room to explore the subtle power of influence—and one question that may change how you understand your own most powerful experiences.

Lately, I have been seeing more meditation practices centered around activating the pineal gland. And whenever I see a spiritual practice suddenly wrapped in scientific language, I get curious.

My spiritual growth is a huge part of why I meditate. I also believe we have to be careful when we take something symbolic, mystical, or experiential and present it as established neuroscience.

I come to this question with my own history. Long before anyone applied the word activation to a gland, I had powerful spiritual experiences at an altar in church, and I accepted the explanations I was given for them for many years. That history shapes everything I am about to say, and I will come back to it.

So, I started researching.

The Third Eye Began as Biology

Let us start with something I found interesting. There is a reptile in New Zealand called the tuatara, and its lineage reaches back roughly 240 million years. On top of its head is a small structure containing a lens, something similar to a cornea, and a retina containing photoreceptor cells. Scientists call it the parietal eye. It responds to light and helps regulate things such as basking and body temperature. It is part of the pineal complex and develops from the same general brain region that produces the pineal gland.

And guess what scientists also call it?

The third eye.

Versions of this structure exist in lizards, frogs, lampreys, and certain fish. German anatomist Franz Leydig described it in lizards all the way back in 1872, so when someone speaks about the third eye, the phrase carries a history that reaches directly into comparative anatomy.

Then we have René Descartes, who centuries ago described the pineal gland as the seat of the soul and believed it was where thought originated. Now we have two very different worlds, philosophy and biology, placing unusual significance on this tiny structure in the brain.

Many spiritual ideas have histories worth respecting. Questioning the scientific explanation behind something leaves plenty of room to honor the tradition and to respect someone’s experience. We can hold the symbolism with real affection and still ask whether the biology supports the story we are telling.

What Does the Pineal Gland Actually Do?

The pineal gland is a small endocrine structure near the center of the brain, and its primary known function is producing melatonin. Most of us associate melatonin with sleep, and it does much more than simply make us sleepy. It helps the body know when it is time to sleep and participates in the biological timing that influences many of our internal rhythms.

Here is the part I found especially interesting. The pineal gland appears to follow rather than lead. The suprachiasmatic nucleus in the hypothalamus acts as the body’s primary circadian pacemaker. It generates the timing information, and the pineal gland essentially translates that information into chemistry through melatonin.

In other words, the pineal gland is important. It appears to be important for reasons quite different from the ones some meditation trends offer. And there are things we can do that genuinely support this system, including morning light, darkness at night, consistent sleep patterns, and respect for our natural rhythms.

Rhythm handles the rest, and rhythm is available to every one of us today.

What About Pineal Gland Calcification?

This is probably the claim I hear most often. The idea is that the pineal gland becomes calcified, that this calcification blocks spiritual perception, and that we therefore need to decalcify the gland through supplements, cleanses, dietary changes, or other protocols. Here is where something real gets braided together with something that has never been established.

Pineal calcification is real.

Research has found it in most adults, with estimates across studies landing around 62 percent, and it increases with age. Physiological pineal calcification is often discovered by accident when someone receives brain imaging for an entirely unrelated reason. Radiologists have observed it for generations and describe it as a normal feature associated with aging.

That changes the conversation quite a bit. Something present in the majority of many adult populations, and typically found by chance, has gradually been reframed in parts of the wellness industry as a spiritual blockage. And conveniently, there is often something being sold to remove it.

That is the point where my discernment kicks in.

And Then There Is Fluoride

Another common claim is that fluoride calcifies the pineal gland and interferes with spiritual awareness. This one has an interesting history, because it began inside a real laboratory. In the late 1990s, researcher Jennifer Luke examined pineal tissue from older adults and found that fluoride accumulates there. She then raised an important scientific question: could fluoride accumulation affect pineal function?

Notice the wording.

She asked a question.

She stopped there, well short of establishing that fluoride blocks spiritual perception or closes the third eye. When the National Research Council later reviewed drinking water fluoride standards, it noted that whether fluoride exposure alters nighttime melatonin production or the circadian rhythm of melatonin in humans remains open for investigation.

This is one of those places where I think we benefit from understanding how science actually works. A researcher discovers something. The researcher proposes a possibility. The possibility awaits further investigation. And somewhere between the scientific paper and social media, we should “investigate” this becomes science “proves” this.

Those are two very different statements.

Does the Pineal Gland Produce DMT?

There is a popular theory that the pineal gland produces DMT and releases it during deep meditation, mystical experiences, birth, and death. From there, the pineal gland becomes the biological explanation for mystical consciousness. Again, there is a thread of legitimate science underneath the story.

Rick Strassman proposed a connection between the pineal gland and DMT as a hypothesis worth exploring. Then, in 2013, researchers detected DMT in living rat pineal tissue. You can imagine what happened next. For many people, the mystery was solved.

Except science kept going.

In 2019, researchers from the same laboratory measured DMT in the cerebral cortex of normally behaving rats. They compared rats whose pineal glands were intact with rats whose pineal glands had been surgically removed, and DMT remained present at similar levels in both groups. That suggests DMT synthesis is occurring through additional pathways or elsewhere in the brain. So, the very research often used to support the idea that the pineal gland is our mystical DMT factory eventually pointed toward a much more distributed biological process.

And I actually find that more interesting.

An experience stays real even when the explanation for it changes.

That distinction becomes very important.

Something Really Does Happen During Meditation

This is where I want to be very clear. Questioning pineal activation leaves my confidence in meditation completely intact. If anything, it deepens it. Meditation changes us.

Researchers studying experienced meditators have found changes involving the default mode network, which is the brain network heavily involved in self-referential thinking and that almost constant internal conversation we have with ourselves. Experienced meditators have shown reduced activity in major regions of this network during meditation, along with stronger communication between areas involved in self-monitoring and cognitive control. In simple language, some of the brain activity associated with our constant me, myself and my story begins to quiet.

Breathing adds another layer. Research on voluntary slow breathing has found increases in vagally mediated heart rate variability and shifts toward parasympathetic activity. Our physiology changes, our attention changes, our relationship with our thoughts can change.

And researchers who study these states describe them the same way. David Vago and David Silbersweig, working at the Functional Neuroimaging Laboratory at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, proposed a framework for the neuroscience of mindfulness organized around self-awareness, self-regulation and self-transcendence. Their model describes these capacities as emerging from the interaction of several large-scale brain networks, including the networks that carry our sense of a narrative self and the networks that handle attention and control, rather than from one magical location suddenly switching on. That makes much more sense to me. Awareness lives across the whole system rather than inside one tiny gland waiting to be switched on. Our brains and bodies are communicating through extraordinarily complex networks, and meditation changes the conditions within those networks.

To me, that is far more awe-inspiring than the myth.

I Know What These Experiences Feel Like

This is where my own history becomes important.

I understand why someone can have an extraordinary experience and become convinced of the explanation they were given for it.

I have lived it.

Long before meditation retreats were promising activation, awakening, or healing, I experienced very similar things at the altar in church. There was the promise of healing. A touch from God. The presence of the Holy Spirit.

People cried because they felt a release.

People shook because they believed it was the movement of something outside of their control.

Breathing changed when prompted or suggested.

People fell to the floor, surrendered emotionally, became aware of things they had been carrying, and sometimes moved or danced in ways we called dancing in the Spirit.

And I had all of these experiences too and they were real experiences.

My body responded. My emotions moved. My awareness changed. I experienced moments of surrender, connection, release and intensity.

Today, I simply question the explanation I was given for what happened.

At the altar, we called it God touching us. In another environment, someone might call a similar experience activating the pineal gland, releasing DMT, opening the third eye, raising consciousness, releasing trauma or experiencing a neurological awakening.

Different language.

Different setting.

Very similar human experience.

I want to say something clearly here, because I know how sensitive this is. A person can keep the explanation they were given, hold their faith exactly as it is, and still recognize the human pattern underneath. Those two things live together comfortably. My own questioning belongs to me, and I offer it as my story rather than as a correction of anyone else’s.

And that distinction matters to me.

An Experience and a Transformation Are Two Different Things

I have reached a point in my life where I hold intense experience and genuine transformation as two separate things. And here is probably my most controversial comparison. In some ways, I think these experiences can be similar to smoking a joint.

Your state changes. Your perception changes. Your body feels different. You may become deeply introspective. You might feel peaceful, emotional, connected, expansive or convinced that you have suddenly understood something profound. The experience can still hold real meaning, and you may actually discover something important. And eventually, the altered state passes and ordinary life returns.

So, my question has become:

What remains?

Did you learn something about yourself?

Did you change an old pattern?

Are you more compassionate?

More emotionally responsible?

More authentic?

Did you establish a boundary you desperately needed?

Did you finally have a conversation you had been avoiding?

Did you recognize an old belief and decide it no longer belongs in your life?

Because that is where I believe transformation happens.

Meditation, prayer, breath work, spiritual ceremonies can create conditions for insight. An intense emotional experience can temporarily interrupt our ordinary patterns enough for us to see ourselves differently. And the experience itself remains the opening rather than the arrival.

Transformation is what you do with what the experience reveals.

Why These Experiences Can Feel So Powerful

There is another piece of this worth understanding. At retreats, intensives, churches, workshops and large group events, several things can happen simultaneously. Breathing changes. Attention narrows. Expectation increases. There may be a charismatic leader at the front of the room. You are surrounded by other people having emotional experiences.

Someone cries.

Someone begins shaking.

Someone announces that something has just changed inside them.

And your nervous system is processing all of it.

Humans have been creating these environments for centuries. We saw versions of it in religious revivals. Spiritual traditions throughout history have used music, movement, chanting, breath, rhythm, repetition and collective emotion to create altered states. Today we sometimes add neuroscience terminology, and that scientific vocabulary can make an ancient human experience feel like a newly discovered neurological phenomenon.

Again, I hold the experience as completely real.

I am saying we benefit from separating the experience from the explanation we attach to it.

The Pineal Gland Can Still Be a Beautiful Symbol

All of this leaves the symbolism of the third eye fully intact. I actually think the pineal gland works beautifully as a spiritual symbol. It sits near the center of the brain. It carries centuries of philosophical and spiritual meaning. And directing attention toward a particular place can help settle attention and deepen introspection. Symbolic language can be incredibly powerful.

The difficulty begins when metaphor becomes anatomy, and it becomes far more concerning when metaphor becomes anatomy with a price tag attached. There is something lovely about saying, imagine opening your third eye. There is something very different about saying, your pineal gland is blocked, and I can sell you something that will activate it.

Those are two entirely different conversations.

Awareness Lives Across the Whole System

This may be my biggest takeaway from researching all of this. Awareness appears to emerge through networks rather than through one isolated location. Sensory information, nervous system regulation, attention, emotional processing, unconscious information, bodily sensations, imagery and intuition all interact.

That is one reason two meditation sessions can feel completely different. We are different when we enter them. Our nervous system is different. Our emotional state is different. Our expectations are different. Our bodies are different. The conditions have changed.

So instead of asking:

How do I activate my pineal gland?

I think there is a much better question:

What internal conditions can I create that allow greater awareness to emerge?

That changes everything. Now we are cultivating rather than chasing. We are cultivating stillness. We are developing sensory awareness. We are becoming emotionally present. We are increasing neural flexibility. We are learning to listen to the unconscious mind. We are inviting awareness rather than forcing it, and we are creating the conditions that make it easier to hear.

Where Discernment Matters

I love spiritual metaphors. I love mystery. I love experiences I cannot completely explain and I believe science protects all of that. For me, science makes the mystery even more interesting.

Meditation is extraordinary on its own, entirely apart from hidden glands, secret chemicals or mystical switches. Its power may be found in something far more complex, meaning its ability to reorganize perception, influence nervous system regulation, quiet habitual mental activity and allow deeper internal information to surface.

So I am becoming less interested in whether my pineal gland is activated.

Shaking can happen. Crying can happen. Colors can appear. Energy can move through the body. And every one of those can happen while my life the next morning stays exactly the same.

More importantly, I am over needing another human being to tell me I am less than and then sell me the remedy.

I want to know what happens afterward.

Who am I when I leave the meditation?

How do I treat people?

How do I treat myself?

What did I learn?

What am I willing to change?

Because after all the research, all the spiritual experiences and all the different explanations I have been given over the years, this is where I have landed.

The greatest evidence of transformation lives outside the meditation, outside the event.

It shows up in how we live once we open our eyes.

There is a point in this conversation where research can only take us so far. I can show you what science says about the pineal gland, meditation, breathing and altered states, and eventually the question becomes personal. What have you experienced? What were you told it meant? And perhaps most importantly, what remained after the experience was over? For paid subscribers, I created a companion journal to help you explore those questions alongside this article. Because discernment is not about taking meaningful experiences away from us. It is about becoming curious enough to separate what we experienced from the explanation we were given.

Sources

Belay, D. G., & Worku, M. G. (2023). Prevalence of pineal gland calcification: systematic review and meta-analysis. Systematic Reviews, 12(1), 32. https://doi.org/10.1186/s13643-023-02205-5

Luke, J. (2001). Fluoride deposition in the aged human pineal gland. Caries Research, 35(2), 125–128. https://doi.org/10.1159/000047443

National Research Council. (2006). Fluoride in Drinking Water: A Scientific Review of EPA’s Standards. Washington, DC: National Academies Press.

Barker, S. A., Borjigin, J., Lomnicka, I., & Strassman, R. (2013). LC/MS/MS analysis of the endogenous dimethyltryptamine hallucinogens, their precursors, and major metabolites in rat pineal gland microdialysate. Biomedical Chromatography, 27(12), 1690–1700. https://doi.org/10.1002/bmc.2981

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In this episode, I revisit one of my earliest teachings through the lens of where my spiritual journey has brought me today. Together, we’ll explore the difference between living on autopilot and living with awareness, why authentic transformation begins within, and how our deepest selves are uncovered rather than created.

If someone had asked me years ago where transformation came from, I would have answered without hesitation and I would have pointed to an altar, a church service, a gifted teacher, or someone who seemed more spiritual than me. I genuinely believed change arrived through an experience someone else could lead me into.

That belief shaped much of my early life. I loved God deeply and I wanted to become the very best version of myself, and I often looked outside myself for that answer. Each teacher, each book, each class, and each spiritual experience became another step along the path. Looking back, I feel grateful for every one of them because each season carried a lesson that prepared me for the next.

Today I see transformation differently. I still treasure great teachers, and I still believe in sacred moments. They inspire us, awaken us, and often reveal new possibilities. Lasting transformation, however, comes alive through the choices we make each day. It grows as we become active participants in our own lives, choosing our thoughts with intention, aligning our actions with our values, and taking responsibility for the direction we are creating. Rather than waiting for life to shape us, we begin shaping our lives with purpose. That is where transformation becomes real.

I Thought Someone Else Held the Answer

As my life unfolded, I continued my search for understanding. What began as a desire to grow spiritually evolved into a lifelong commitment to understanding the human experience from every angle I could find. Over the decades, I immersed myself in the study of psychology, spirituality, meditation, neuro-linguistic programming, coaching, neuroscience, neurotheology, energy healing, holistic health, nutrition, sound therapy, and shamanic counseling. Along the way, I earned a PhD in spiritual counseling, became a Master Trainer of NLP, completed numerous certifications, and spent thousands of hours reading, teaching, meditating, coaching, and walking alongside others on their own journeys. Every experience expanded my perspective, and looking back, I can see that each one prepared me for the philosophy I live by today.

One of the greatest gifts of that journey was discovering that wisdom has many teachers. I found inspiration in spiritual traditions, meditation, neuroscience, coaching, nature, and the countless people who crossed my path. Every experience offered another perspective, another question, or another insight. Over time, I realized something just as important. My own experiences mattered. My intuition mattered. The wisdom I discovered in stillness mattered. My relationship with the Divine became deeply personal, and I no longer felt the need to borrow someone else’s experience to validate my own. I could honor the teachers who helped shape me while also trusting the wisdom that was within me. That realization brought a freedom I had never experienced before. I call it soulful freedom, which became the title of my first book.

That realization did not diminish the teachers who came before me. It allowed me to integrate what resonated and lovingly release what no longer reflected my authentic self.

Then I Began to Understand the Brain

Learning about the brain gave meaning to something I had already begun experiencing. Every repeated thought strengthens familiar pathways. Every intentional practice supports new possibilities. Growth became something I could participate in through awareness, repetition, and conscious choice.

Instead of waiting for transformation to arrive, I began practicing it. Meditation became more than a quiet moment. It became a way of cultivating the qualities I wanted to bring into everyday life. Journaling, reflection, curiosity, and compassionate self-awareness all became part of that practice.

That is what I now call rewiring.

Realignment Changed My Life

As my understanding began to change, I found it harder to just think differently. I wanted to live differently. That became the journey of realignment. It invited me to bring my thoughts, values, actions, and spiritual life into harmony, so they reflected the same truth. I longed for a life that felt congruent, authentic, and transparent.

That kind of alignment took courage. It invited me to step beyond what was familiar and into what was true. I found myself making decisions that stretched every part of me. I redefined relationships, created healthier boundaries, released beliefs that no longer reflected my experience, and accepted that authenticity sometimes comes with a cost. I discovered that living in alignment occasionally means disappointing people who preferred an earlier version of me, and I learned that honoring my own truth brought a deeper peace than seeking someone else’s approval ever could.

My journey through religious deconstruction became one expression of that alignment. It was never about walking away from the Divine. It was about walking toward a relationship with the Divine that felt genuine, alive, and deeply personal. Rather than holding onto beliefs and dogma simply because they were familiar, I became willing to ask honest questions and trust where those questions led. The more I aligned my outer life with my inner authentic self , the more freedom I experienced. Congruence became less about having all the answers and more about having the courage to live the answers I had already found.

Then It Was Time to Rise

Eventually I realized that insight and alignment naturally invite action.

Dreams deserve movement.
Values deserve expression.
Healing deserves participation.

Those three realizations changed the direction of my life.

Dreams deserve movement because potential comes alive through action. For many years, one of the beliefs I carried was that I was not smart enough. As I continued rewiring my thinking and realigning my life, that belief gradually lost its influence. I decided to finish my PhD, and I wrote my dissertation, Soul Simple. That work became more than a research project. It became a reflection of everything I had come to believe about healing. I explored the relationship between holistic and allopathic approaches to health and proposed a model that nourishes the body, rewires the mind, and ignites the spirit. My hope was simple: to help people reclaim the power of choice in both their health and the direction of their lives. Looking back, I realize I was also writing those words for myself.

Values deserve expression because they were never meant to remain ideas. One of the most profound discoveries I made through neuro-linguistic programming was the difference between the values we believe we should have and the values that genuinely guide our lives. As I began honoring my core values instead of living from expectations and conscious thought , something shifted. My decisions became clearer. My relationships became healthier. My life felt more congruent. The more authentically I lived, the more energy, peace, and healing I experienced.

Healing deserves participation because healing is a relationship, not simply a diagnosis. There was a time in my life when I believed that the words of doctors carried the final answer, much like I had once believed the words of pastors carried the final answer. When I was diagnosed with chronic fatigue, I was told to take antidepressants and live a stress-free life. I respected that recommendation, and deep within me I knew there was more to my healing journey. That path did not feel congruent with who I was or what I believed was possible for my life.

Instead of accepting that my story had already been written, I chose to become an active participant in my healing. I began asking more questions, learning everything I could, nourishing my body differently, examining my beliefs, deepening my meditation practice, and listening more closely to my own inner wisdom. Over time, I realized that healing is not something we simply receive. It is something we participate in every day through the choices we make. Every nourishing meal, every intentional thought, every healthy boundary, every moment of stillness, and every authentic decision became another step toward the life I wanted to create.

I realize that experience was far more than recovering my health. It was one of the first times I fully trusted my own inner knowing, even when it led me in a different direction than someone else’s recommendation. That choice became another step in rewiring my mind, realigning my life, and ultimately rising into the best version of myself.

That is when I realized I was doing more than recovering. I was rising.

Rising became the practice of living intentionally. It became choosing courage over comfort, authenticity over approval, and creation over hesitation. Every step forward reminded me that transformation is something we help create through the lives we choose to live.

Rising became the practice of creating the life I wanted rather than waiting for permission to begin. It looked like having courageous conversations, building meaningful work, serving others, protecting healthy boundaries, and sharing my voice even when it felt vulnerable.

Every intentional action became another declaration that my future was something I could help create.

The Rhythm That Guides My Life

I can now describe my philosophy with three simple words.

Rewire.
Realign.
Rise.

Rewire your mind with intentional practices that strengthen the person you are becoming.

Realign your life so your thoughts, words, actions, values, and spirit move together with authenticity.

Rise by taking courageous action that reflects your purpose and creates the life you choose.

These words are more than my tagline. They are the rhythm that guides my meditations, my coaching, my writing, and my life. They remind me that transformation is not a single event. It is a lifelong relationship with awareness, authenticity, and intentional action.

Perhaps that is the invitation for all of us. Instead of asking where transformation can be found, we can ask how we will participate in it today.

One intentional thought.
One authentic choice.
One courageous step.

That is how we rewire.
That is how we realign.
That is how we rise.

Reading about transformation is one thing. Experiencing it is something entirely different.

Beyond the paywall, I invite you into a guided Rewire. Realign. Rise. meditation designed to help you move these ideas from your mind into your daily life. Together, we’ll quiet the outside noise, reconnect with your authentic self, and take one intentional step toward becoming the author of your own story.

This is more than a meditation. It’s an opportunity to pause, reflect, and begin living the philosophy we’ve explored together, one breath, one choice, and one courageous step at a time.

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You Don’t Even Know Me.

How many times have we decided who someone is before we’ve ever heard their story?

In this deeply personal episode, I share two childhood experiences that shaped the way I see judgment, compassion, and human connection. From a man asking for a drink of water on my mamah’s porch to a handful of pencils that taught me my first lesson about poverty, these memories became the foundation for one of the most important truths I’ve ever learned: the map is not the territory.

Tonight’s full moon is traditionally known as the Buck Moon, named for the time of year when a deer’s antlers are growing stronger and entering a new stage of development. It reminds me that some of our most meaningful growth happens quietly, long before anyone else can see it.

For thousands of years, people have gathered beneath the full moon to reflect, give thanks, pray, celebrate, and begin again. Whether you see the moon as a spiritual symbol, a rhythm of nature, or simply a beautiful reminder to pause, it offers something many of us rarely give ourselves: permission to stop.

Our lives move quickly. Our attention is constantly pulled outward. Yet our greatest insights often arrive when we become still long enough to notice what is going on inside us.

Tonight’s full moon is about allowing this moment to become a sacred pause. When we intentionally slow down, reflect on our experiences, express gratitude, and choose how we want to move forward, we strengthen the relationship we have with ourselves. Every meaningful transformation begins with awareness, and awareness begins with paying attention.

Tonight, I invite you to step outside, bring your journal, and spend a little time beneath the full moon. The ceremony that follows is a guided ceremony experience that will help you put down the weight that you have been carrying, reconnect and awaken tomorrow with greater peace, clarity and intention. (this guided full moon ceremony can be done under any full moon.)

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I remember the exact conditions I once believed I needed before I could meditate. I waited until I was home alone. I lit every candle, dimmed the lights, and unplugged the wall phone, back when we still had landlines, so nothing could interrupt me. I set a timer, closed my eyes, and entered what I considered my meditation time. When the timer sounded, the session ended, and the rest of my day resumed exactly where it had left off.

Looking back, my meditation practice resembled a Sunday visit to church more than a way of living. It happened at a specific time, in a specific place, under a carefully arranged set of conditions. I entered the room, completed the practice, and returned to ordinary life until the next scheduled session called me back to the cushion. Meditation lived inside a container, and that container had walls.

For many years, that was all I knew. When life became busy, meditation disappeared from the calendar. Life continued around it, and emotionally I felt like a yo-yo. On the days I meditated, I felt calm, focused, and more like myself. On the days I missed it, I felt scattered, reactive, and almost neurotic. My emotional steadiness seemed to rise and fall according to whether I had completed those twenty protected minutes.

I can still picture those scattered days. Small frustrations grew larger than they needed to be. Conversations with people I loved carried an edge that had very little to do with them and everything to do with the state of my nervous system. Decisions felt murky. My thoughts moved faster than my ability to sort through them. The candle and the timer gave me genuine access to peace, and yet that peace seemed to remain in the room after I left. It had not learned how to travel with me into the kitchen, the car, the office, or the difficult conversations where I needed it most.

The change in my understanding happened gradually. It came through years of meditation, observation, and paying attention to what was actually happening inside me. I began to realize meditation was never meant to become another appointment on my calendar. Meditation, in its fullest expression, is a quality of consciousness available throughout the entire day. It is present while I am sitting with a candle, standing in a grocery line, driving through traffic, grieving a loss, or listening to someone I love.

Meditation is where we build the skill. Life is where we practice it. Every conversation, every challenge, and every ordinary moment becomes another opportunity to strengthen what we developed during our formal practice. The quiet room teaches the nervous system what steadiness feels like. Daily life teaches us how to return to that steadiness while something is actually happening.

Science supports what many meditators eventually discover through experience. Researchers studying long-term meditation, including the neurotheology work associated with Andrew Newberg, have found that regular practice changes the brain in ways that continue long after a meditation session ends. Over time, areas connected with self-focused thinking, emotional regulation, attention, and the sense of being a separate self begin to function differently. The brain is learning a new way to organize experience, and those changes can carry into ordinary waking life.

I noticed this in my own body before I fully understood the neuroscience behind it. I began to feel more spacious inside. My breathing stayed steadier during demanding moments. I reacted less and responded more. I could feel a little more room between what happened and what I did next. That space changed everything because it gave me access to choice.

Neuroplasticity helps explain why. The brain strengthens the pathways we use repeatedly. Each time we settle into meditation, we rehearse attention, regulation, and return. Each time we bring those same qualities into daily life, we reinforce them again. Formal meditation creates the pattern, and everyday living gives us hundreds of opportunities to deepen it.

This understanding brought me tremendous relief. Missing a meditation session no longer meant I had failed or lost my progress. My practice had not disappeared. I had simply spent less time formally strengthening a skill that was already becoming part of who I was. The capacity remained available, ready the moment I brought my attention back to it.

Think about what one ordinary day asks of us. A meeting changes without warning. A teenager slams a door. A bill arrives that we were not expecting. Someone says something that activates an old wound. Grief surfaces in the middle of an otherwise normal afternoon. Each moment asks the same question the meditation cushion once asked in a quiet room: Can I stay connected to myself while this is happening?

This is where meditation becomes more than something we do. It becomes a way of being. The calm cultivated in stillness begins to show up while we are driving, parenting, leading, creating, grieving, celebrating, and making decisions. The purpose was never only to create twenty peaceful minutes. The deeper purpose was to create a fuller twenty-four hours.

This distinction is also where Sacred Mantra and Essential Mantra work together. Sacred Mantra carries the depth of formal meditation. It supports the inner work that happens when the nervous system is given time and permission to settle. In those protected moments, the mantra becomes a pathway inward, helping us move beneath the noise of the conscious mind and into a deeper relationship with ourselves.

Essential Mantra works differently. It was designed for real life. When frustration appears in traffic, fear walks into an important meeting, or grief suddenly rises in the middle of the day, the mantra is already there. Instead of waiting until the next meditation session, Essential Mantra helps us return to ourselves in the very moment we need it most.

The Pivotal States deepen this process because they help us recognize what is happening internally. We begin to notice when we are moving from thriving into barely surviving, from emotional vitality into numbness, from empowerment into disempowerment, or from authentic expression into silent suppression. Awareness gives us a place to begin, and the mantra gives us a way to respond.

Living with both Sacred Mantra and Essential Mantra allows meditation to leave the room without losing its depth. One practice strengthens our inner foundation. The other helps us bring that foundation into motion. Together, they teach the nervous system that steadiness belongs everywhere.

The difference first becomes visible in our emotional range. We may still feel those strong emotions; however, we become less likely to be controlled by them. Difficult moments continue to arrive because that is part of being human. What changes is how quickly and gracefully we find our way back to center.

Our performance changes as well. Focus becomes easier to access. Decisions become clearer. Relationships feel less reactive. We communicate from greater awareness because we are listening from a regulated state rather than speaking from an activated one. Many people have already experienced this without having language for it. They notice they think more clearly and relate more peacefully when they meditate consistently, then feel the difference when the practice fades.

That unevenness was never a character flaw. It was the natural result of treating a twenty-four-hour capacity as though it existed only inside twenty scheduled minutes. Once meditation becomes something we carry, the nervous system receives support throughout the entire day rather than only during protected periods of stillness.

If your meditation has mostly lived inside a quiet room with a candle and a timer, you are in good company. Mine did too. That was where my journey began, and those quiet moments gave me the foundation I needed. The container created safety while my nervous system learned an unfamiliar skill. There is genuine value in beginning there.

The invitation is to keep growing beyond the container. The skill we develop in stillness is meant to become available everywhere life unfolds. Over time, the line between meditation and living begins to soften. We stop thinking of meditation as something separate from our day and begin experiencing it as the consciousness we bring into the day.

This evolution also grows through relationship. Meditation is often represented by the image of one person sitting alone on a cushion in a quiet room. That image is beautiful, and it tells only part of the story. The fuller story includes the people who experience the steadier version of us. It includes the friend who notices we are listening differently, the family member who feels safer in our presence, and the community that helps us continue becoming who we are.

Our nervous systems influence one another. A regulated person can help create regulation in a room. A grounded presence can change the direction of a conversation. A community committed to awareness, healing, and authentic living can strengthen what each person is practicing individually. Meditation may begin privately, and its impact is always relational.

The candle and the timer were a beautiful beginning. Every stage of the journey has value, including the years when I believed peace lived only inside one protected room. I needed that room. I needed the structure. I needed the timer. And eventually, I discovered the room was never the whole practice. It was the doorway.

Beyond that doorway is a life in which meditation travels with us. It becomes the breath we return to, the awareness we bring into a difficult conversation, the pause that restores our choice, and the mantra that reminds us who we are. This is meditation beyond the timer. This is meditation as a state of being.

Neuro-Mantra Mapping was created for this evolution: to move meditation from a scheduled practice that rises and falls with circumstance into a lived consciousness that supports us through every Pivotal State a full life brings. The formal practice still matters. The quiet still matters. And the true transformation is revealed in who we become after the timer sounds.

Reading creates understanding.

Practice creates transformation.In the paid section, I’ll guide you through a meditation that helps you experience this shift for yourself, followed by a simple seven-day awareness practice and thoughtful journal prompts to support your journey from practicing meditation to living it.

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In this deeply personal episode, I share the journey that taught me authenticity isn’t found by choosing someone else’s path, it’s discovered when we allow our own experiences, wisdom, and spirituality to come together. If you’ve ever felt pulled in different directions or wondered whether your life is asking you to stop choosing between parts of yourself, this conversation is for you.