It’s the end of January and for many of us, that means one thing: failure.

“And let there be no purpose in friendship save the deepening of the spirit.” –Kahlil Gibran, The Prophet, On Friendship

The Presence Process by Michael Brown has been nothing short of amazing. I am amazing. I can finally fully participate in my life, and it feels good.

It happened so quickly. One minute my eight year old daughter and I were preparing to go on a bike ride, leaving her grandfather to watch the football game. The next minute, I’m screaming at my daughter for not being ready, then in my father-in-law’s face because he got involved in the situation. All she had to do was put her shoes on and we would have been on our way.

I signed up for my first Awareness Institute weekend workshop because I’d had enough of myself. I’d had enough of the self-hatred and the self-pitying, enough of the shame and regret. I signed up for the workshop because something deep within me whispered, “There’s more to life than this.” Today, I couldn’t be more grateful for that whisper.

My journey began when I noticed a new spark of light in a friend, and some energy that was pure and truthful beckoned me to find out if I could unlock this same light in myself. From the moment I made the leap into my first Awareness Institute workshop, I felt myself trusting something larger than myself.

I was introduced to the Awareness Institute by a loving and caring family friend. I jumped right in with a weekend workshop and experienced a profound opening. It truly blew my mind and rocked my world.

You could say I was a mature kid for my age. As a child, I was self-sufficient and could function independently — no parental supervision required. One could say I was never a “troubled” individual, but still somewhere deep inside there was a struggle.

I have lived the majority of my life feeling a constant anxiety that I had labeled just a necessary “stress” of living. Even in the simple everyday tasks of waking up, getting ready for work, and showing up on time, my mind continually found ways to fear the outcome of how I may somehow mess up or do something wrong: I might take too long, be late, give a wrong answer, or there could be traffic. And for as long as I can remember, I believed that stress was just a normal part of living.

From the moment I walked into my first hug at an Awareness Institute workshop I knew I had found the place to do my feeling (healing) work. It was not the traditional “peace, love, happiness, rainbows and unicorns – let’s all be happy and pretend everything is fine” range of feelings that I had grown up with. No, it was something much more honest and real.

I had dinner not too long ago with a friend who gave me the following advice: don’t stare at the rock. See, she’s friends with a mountain biker who shared that advice with her, and it stuck. In mountain biking you encounter many rocks and other obstacles on the trail, but here’s the thing: if you stare at the rock, you will hit it. Like magic, every. single. time.

In the past I thought love was based on certain conditions. Conditions that I learned from my parents. As these learned conditions were not met, I blamed my parents. It was their fault that my relationships fell apart. I felt that these patterns I had learned were set in stone, unchangeable, permanent, and true.

“You are what you believe you are. Your thoughts create your reality.” We’ve all heard or read this by now. But it takes a certain willingness or environment for me to honestly examine what this mind of mine is producing. The looking part is essential or phrases like those can quickly become cliche.

I’ve always been drawn to ask people about the things we don’t normally talk about – our deepest fears and most farfetched dreams, the obsessions that keep us awake at night, the “confessions” that tumble out in darkness when everyone else has gone to sleep and it’s just two voices whispering fervently beneath the bedcovers. The meeting of the secret, ineffable realm and tangible, sensate reality.

I first came to a Level I workshop with the Awareness Institute on the advice of my meditation instructor. Although I didn’t know it at the time, I had for a long time been trying to use meditation as a tool for what spiritual teacher Michael Browne calls “achieving sedation and control. “ I wanted to wake up into my own life, wake up into the flow of creativity and joy all around me…

When I was a child, I lived for story time. I loved the chance to become immersed in the story, in the unknown- I loved the surprises that unfolded. I loved how, for a moment in time, I experienced whatever my imagination added to the words on the page. It was like a teleportation, from my little bed out into an infinite universe of possibility.

For years I’d known I had everything in the world to be grateful for: two healthy, amazing daughters, a devoted, loving husband, a lovely home, a purposeful teaching career, long-term sobriety… however, I had always lived with a persistent sense of unease, of impending doom.

What would you say if I told you that this moment would never happen again? Well, it’s true. There are no repeats, re-runs, re-dos. All you’ve got is this very moment, right now.

I don’t remember when I first heard about “enlightenment” or “awakening,” but I know that a force bigger than my self brought me to the Awareness Institute four years ago. On the recommendation of a friend, I showed up to a one-day workshop on “Conscious Relating” hoping to resolve some of my blocks to intimacy. What I experienced was my own vulnerability in a way I’d never accessed before – and the beginning of a much deeper journey into the truth and heart of myself.