To Do Your Work Introduction is exactly that: introduction to my in-progress book, To Do Your Work. This book explores the twelve pressure points of modern life within the spiritual practice of personal power.
The world is experiencing the shift of extraordinary change – a change creating powerful pressure within to get clear, to be conscious, to do your work.
But – you don’t need me telling you about this change because you feel it within you on all levels, body, mind, heart, and soul. You feel the pressure. You feel the need to resolve your inner conflict. You seek relief and the confidence that you can live your best life now.
The friction of this change creates internal pressure points. The pressure exists within you as two opposing motions such as the push and pull between reaction and response, unconsciousness and full awareness, self-denial and self-truth.
This pressure also exists right at the juncture between who you are physically and who you are spiritually as you struggle to find physical-spiritual integration.
The urge to push beyond these pressure points comes from deep within your emerging sense of personal power to establish connection, coherency, and creative expression in all aspects of your life, body, mind, heart, and soul.
Externally, each pressure point strikes at some aspect of personal power and tries to control and manipulate by creating internal fear to turn away from your intrinsic worth, choice, and trust.
This is a book to explore power — specifically your personal power and how you can identify what holds you back from living as the amazing powerful being that you inherently are. This book also takes a spiritual perspective — meaning the approach helps you address all levels of self from worldly to sacred, from everyday into the transcendent mysteries of the universe.
This book offers a clear path of release for the twelve pressure points of power of this change as well as the related fears holding you back. Each lesson defines an outdated belief which is the fulcrum of the pressure. Each lesson begins with an easily accessible definition which leads to understanding the fallacy of the pressure point. I offer stories about myself and others who have struggled and successfully found relief. Then each lesson dives deep into the way the energy of the pressure and its related fear is felt within on a personal level. Finally, each lesson concludes with a specific path of release – a path you can explore and make your own.
Along the way, I explain the current power dynamic which attempts to dominate and limit your life and inherent creative expression. Instead of living within the manipulation of Power-Over/Power-Under, you learn how overcoming fear leads to a life of Power-With and Power-Within.
The pressure points and related fears are so fundamental to human existence, the ideas may deeply surprise you and will certainly stir up anything which no longer serves you. You will question fundamental beliefs and assumptions about how you live your life.
Know this is not a quick-fix book. Instead, we walk through the tough, the raw, and the real to look directly at what is holding you back. Take your time. Give yourself space. Allow your unfolding however it may emerge for you.
My goal isn’t to tell you exactly how to live your life. My goal is to provide a perspective which helps relieve the pressure and the fear so you can expand beyond the change and find within yourself the ability to create the life you consciously choose. This is possible because you learn how to release the perceptions which distort your view, the expectations and judgments which keep you from reaching your goals, and the misguided notions which weigh you down.
To do your work is spiritual practice.
To do you work is a claiming of personal power.
To do your work is the personal process of learning to exercise personal agency and autonomy with self as Power-Within and in the world as Power-With.
To do your work, life offers opportunity and challenge within both anticipation and the unexpected.
In any moment is choice to react or to respond to the possibilities of the moment.
Choice confronts all the inner dark bits and nagging notions of failure and imperfection.
To do your work, fully awake, requires commitment and self-responsibility, trust and truth, plus the ability to laugh, learn, and love.
This is the deep road, the deep dive, and the invitation to deep personal exploration.
One walks this road, not in arrogance, but with the simple recognition that to forgo the choice to do your work is neither honest nor truthful to the depth of life experience you desire.
To do your work is life lived fully with compassion for self and other, and with joy for the release and expansion which come in grand motion and tiny nuance.
To do your work requires determination and the ability to see forward progress even in the sidestep and the seemingly backward motion.
To do your work is to find value within self and to let go of obstacles and blocks, to move beyond that which might have been truth yesterday but no longer serves the best you can be and become today and tomorrow.
Essentially, to do your work is a journey of release, a journey of and for your heart.
This is a book for your journey.
A guidebook for fear release.
A book with twelve pressure points to live beyond, assisting you to do your work.
This is personal work integrated across all aspects body, mind, heart, and soul.
Yes, this is a spiritual journey.
But more specifically, this is your life’s journey.
Finding truth within helps you answer questions and do your work as you embrace a new outlook on your wonderful, amazing life.
Again, give yourself the opportunity to absorb and release at a pace which supports the depth and breadth of your being and becoming.
Know that the road is not easy, but the release and integration process is ultimately empowering and life-altering.
You may live the same life, but life will never be the same again.
While there is a chronological progression to the lessons, feel free to gravitate to whatever lesson calls your attention. Also know you may visit a lesson more than once to attend to the deeper layers. This doesn’t mean you failed the first time through. Instead, know that you are expanding and now able to access the blooming of your essential self at a deeper level.
Also know that in the first couple of sections, I am weaving together concepts which provide the foundation for understanding the twelve pressure points and their connection with personal work and personal power. I am also weaving together the wisdom of body and mind with the inherent understanding of heart and soul. For that is who we are as human beings – integrated physical-spiritual beings.
Reach out to me if you have questions or need clarification. I’m always honored to stand as witness and fellow traveler on your path, assisting as best I can when asked.
No longer isolated by fear, we can engage and connect, ready to learn, laugh, and love always.
Now is time: to do your work!
In Joy!
Cheryl
To Do Your Work: Introduction is the beginning of this book. To read other excerpts, start here.