The mind-body-spirit book market is saturated with books these days. It’s undoubtedly one of the fastest growing branches of the publishing world. Most of us love to find a great book to inspire us, but how do you sift the wheat from the chaff with so many books from which to choose? Furthermore, how many of us buy books with the best of intentions for reading them, and then leave them on the shelf unopened for months or even years?

Well, THIS TUESDAY, April 20th, you have a chance to buy a real gem. That’s the day Patrick Ryan’s book Awakened Wisdom: A Guide to Reclaiming Your Brilliance comes to Amazon. Patrick, a former Buddhist monk, and a world-renowned coach, workshop leader and spiritual teacher, has written this book based upon the teaching of his workshop of the same name, which he has been delivering all over the planet for years. In other words, the system in the book has been tried and tested (and greatly loved) by hundreds and hundreds of people.

Ok, so that takes care of how we know whether or not this book is worth checking out, but what about the other problem– finding the time to read it and absorb it properly? In our hectic day-to-day living, it’s just so hard to manage to sit down in a quiet place and READ, what to speak of absorbing rich, new information.

Well, here’s where things get really fun. Patrick is offering an unprecedented 2-session “Awakened Wisdom Virtual Experience” over the Internet, where he will PERSONALLY guide you through the “8 States of an Awakened Life”, which are the cornerstones of all his world-famous work. If you buy the book on the 20th, you’ll receive it in plenty of time to follow along during the webcast, and get the very most out of your “virtual experience”.

The Awakened Wisdom Virtual Experience will be on May 5-6, via webcast, and will be hosted by my friend and colleague, Lynn Serafinn, from Spirit Authors. She tells me that there will also be some opportunity to ask Patrick your questions about his teachings. You can attend either via the web or call in over the telephone. You can ask questions via either method, as there will be a way to post your questions online during the broadcast.

And if you can’t make the live event, don’t worry. The audio will be available for download AND will be available only to those who register for the VIP pass. In addition to the Virtual Experience, there are over 30 of us who are giving away some FABULOUS free spiritual gifts to you when you buy Patrick’s book. I’m giving away a free copy of my Report, “Three Steps To Transcending The Grip of Survival Energy,” which outlines a formula for being able to regain a healthy balance in the places where your Survival Energy, and all the limitations that come with it, can take a back seat in your life, rather than being what steers your life.

I do encourage you to go over to Awakened Wisdom Book Launch Page right away and sign up for a “launch reminder”. That way, on Tuesday morning, when the gifts are ready, Patrick will send you a “go and get them” reminder, so you can buy the book and get all the great gifts, including the VIP Pass to the Awakened Wisdom Virtual Experience.

If you happen to be reading this on Tuesday, go on over there right NOW and get the book so you can claim your VIP pass.

So there you go. A great book AND a way to help you learn what it has to offer as well. What a great gift from Patrick Ryan!

I hope to “see” you at the Awakened Wisdom Virtual Experience on May 5 – 6. I’ll be tuning in for sure.

Today, I am hosting an article written by Patrick Ryan, author of Awakened Wisdom: A Guide to Reclaiming Your Brilliance. This is the fifth stop on Patrick’s 14-day Virtual Blog Tour to promote the launch of his new book.  After reading today’s article, be sure to sign up for the book launch reminder here: http://ow.ly/1kB3m .  Then, follow Patrick to his next stop at Kate Griffith’s blog at: http://mumsdaword.blogspot.com/

Awakened Wisdom is a guide that will not only support you personally in creating an amazing life according to your own wisdom, it can also inform you about the wellbeing of the relationships in your life.  Each of the Eight States of an Awakened Life applies, as well, to the awakened life of a relationship.

When you are in a relationship with someone else, you are both creating a third entity, which is your relationship. Your relationship has a life of its own. Your relationship has a dream for what it is becoming, it has it’s own life purpose, and – given the chance – it matures, develops, and grows just like each of the two of you that are in the relationship. Your relationship also has wants and needs, things that it requires so that it can be healthy and vibrant.

Just as you must give your body, food, rest, exercise and care, your relationship also requires those things.  Each of the eight states can be used as a guide to gain insight into what your relationship needs from both of you at this time.

For example, one of the eight states is called a Good State of Words. This state teaches us about the creative power of words in this universe.  The words that we speak about our relationship, and the words that we speak to each other, shape the relationship. They affect the nature of the relationship, the happiness of it, the health of it. When we speak words of love and affection, we contribute those energies to the nature of the relationship. When we speak words of blame, disrespect, or hurt, we inject that energy into the relationship and the relationship then transforms itself accordingly.

This is really good news, because words are such a powerful force of creation we can use this power to shape shift the relationship accordingly.

Another one of the eight states is a Good State of Effort. When we consider our relationship through a Good State of Effort, we are asked to consider how much effort we are putting into it and also what is the quality of our effort.

A Good State of Effort asks us to look into the amplitude of our effort. In life, in general, it is helpful to apply the right amount of effort. Put in too much or too little and the result is not as optimum as it could be.

When I talk about the quality of our effort, I am referring to the emotional quality that we bring as we apply our effort. For example, if we show up in our relationship with distorted emotions, such as resentment, then even though we are applying effort, it does not get the result we want.

It is wise then to be very conscious of the type of effort that we apply. I suggest that, for most of us, bringing in some ease and delight, fun, and intimacy would go a long way to nurturing your relationship.

In Awakened Wisdom, I present eight states such as this. I am sure that if they are applied to the relationships in your life, you will have a beautiful and amazing experience through both the easy and the challenging times.

Be well,

Patrick Ryan

www.AwakenedWisdom.com

Patrick’s Blog tour continues tomorrow with Kate Griffith’s  blog at: http://mumsdaword.blogspot.com/

How can you create a life well-lived?  Get Patrick’s new book on April 20^th and find out. To receive updates in regards to the official Amazon book launch on April 20^th, please visit http://ow.ly/1kB3m

I wanted to share a dance with you all…a dance of life and living (Be sure to click on the link at the end of this post to watch a very inspiring video).

On this Sunday, as I post this, I’m connected to my gratitude for the many blessings that have woven their way into my life, even in the midst of some of the most challenging times I’ve ever endured.  I imagine this to be true for all of us.  Let this short video re-connect you with the inner dance that your Spirit is always doing with this trippy reality we call life.

Let this video remind you of the joy that people create even in the midst of living in a terrorized and impoverished country…and inspire you to do this in your own way with consciousness, choice, and joy.

I'll never forget the first time I saw the film, Billy Elliot.  It was 9 years ago, and I went to see it in a rundown theater in Albuquerque.  I was with my Spiritual Teacher, who happens to be Irish.  I hadn't really heard anything about it, but we were in the mood to see a movie, and the idea of Irish, dancing, and youth were all appealing.  As we watched the movie, I really enjoyed it, found it quite funny, and – by the end – pretty inspiring.  Yet, it was what happened after the film that really turned out to have a dramatic impact on me that I have come to use as a teaching piece for my clients and workshop participants ever since.

When my teacher and I started walking to her car after the show, I noticed that I was beginning to feel a bit sad, like tears couldn't be far away…and they weren't.  While she went into a grocery store to pick some things up after we left the theater, I suddenly found myself sobbing uncontrollably.  I was, to say the least, totally bewildered.  Fortunately, though, one of the earliest skills I learned when I was training to be a coach was tracking, like a tracker in an old Western, the source of any emotional upsets or distress.  So, I wracked my brain, while still wearing out my shirt sleeve, to see if I could remember when I started feeling any kind of sadness or melancholy during the film.  What then came to me immediately was a scene near the end of the film, where Billy's father and brother have come to put him (at age 11 or 12) on a train to go live his dream…of going to Ballet School in London.  In this scene, Billy's father lifts him up off the train platform and tearfully embraces him.  I had felt the twinge of sadness and tears coming then, but for whatever reason, its seismic impact had to wait for the grocery store parking lot.  

What I came to realize was that seeing the genuine love of that father for his son reopened a deep, deep wound I had thought I'd come to terms with around my birth father.  [The story, and its full impact, of my father and I is part of a series I'm doing on my other blog, Spirited Musings (see the link on the top of the page above this posting).]  Suffice it to say here that the core of that wound was abandonment.  That night, out of the blue, in a Von's parking lot, I was getting to experience another level of healing the gaping tear that my father's leaving our family had created in my heart.  Getting to release more of that old energy, that old grief, was very satisfying (I highly recommend the practice).  But, that was only the beginning of what Billy Elliot had to offer me, and many others.  It was several years later, when I had gotten the inspiration to start using films in my Parenting Your Inner Selves workshops (now the Raising Your Spirit's Voice workshop) that I watched Billy Elliot again.  This time, there was a trove of new gifts and treasures I hadn't noticed before.  

The first thing that was quite a revelation for me was realizing that this film really was the only film I'd found (still true, to this day) that shows someone healthfully making the journey from being a child (born magical, alive, passionate, and sure of himself) – with all of his essential gifts and qualities challenged and trashed by life circumstances beyond his control – to a man that is whole with his life's purpose still intact.  Now that, in and of itself, is nothing new in films.  What makes Billy Elliot so rare and valuable is it's the only movie I've seen, with the possible exception of Slumdog Millionaire, that shows the journey from childhood magic, to loss and tragedy, and back to magic and divinity again all the way through to his adult life.  Put another way, I can't think of any other movie that depicts a wounded child, inner and outer, making it to adulthood with his Spirit so intact and unadulterated. 

When you watch the film carefully, what you will see is a blueprint for how to face family dysfunctions, tragedy, and disappointment without having to lose your core self and self-esteem. You can pay attention to how easy it is for us (particularly men, in my experience) to cover up devastating heartache under bravado, workaholism, feigned lack of interest, and rage.  You can carefully observe the relationship between Billy's Dad and Billy's older brother, Tony.  The rage that Tony takes out on his father and Billy looks suspiciously similar to the rage that Billy's father takes out on life in general.  It shows the way in which energy patterns get unconsciously transmitted from one generation to the next, leaving a pathway of dysfunction that no child ever asks for and no adult easily gets to heal.  You can see how a deeply hurt heart (the province of the Divine Feminine) gets falsely "protected" by a bulldozing, un-Divined Masculine energy.  You also will likely notice a key theme and source of childhood/adolescent dysfunction centered around what happens when you are not following the pack in your family?  What happens when all eyes are on you to be a certain way, and your heart is clearly guiding you to go another?  Most importantly, perhaps, you will see the healing power of not giving up your dream, or your personal and spiritual integrity, and noticing how healing that is for those watching you do so.

For this middle-aged man, what this film has repeatedly given me, time and time again, that's been an even greater gift than the insights I've referred to above, is a visceral reminder of the joy that I had, as a boy, in dancing, taking life one day at a time, dreaming, using my imagination without any limitations, and loving out loud…no matter what.  It never fails to connect me with the boy who still lives inside me…not just the boy that still carries the scars of his wounds and hurts, but also the boy who has never stopped dreaming or seeing the best in people, even when they can't.  This has been the gift that I've been giving to myself and others my whole life.  Once upon a time, I had forgotten that.  A young Irish boy in a film helped – and continues to help – me remember the cost of forgetting.