Day 52: Amara Rose

November 21, 2009 at 12:01 am, Category: Featured, Inspiration

“When we scratch the surface, it’s amazing how alike we are.  You know, you scratch the surface, and the essence of who we are underneath is the same.  And so holding the space for people to express that in the world in whatever form it’s going to take for them is such an amazing blessing.”

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Toni Reece: Thank you so much for agreeing to be part of this project.

Amara Rose: Oh, Toni, it’s an honor.  I’m so thrilled to be here with you.

Toni: Oh, fantastic!  Well before we go into the questions, can you do a brief introduction?

Amara: Sure.  What would you like me to focus on?

Toni: Just you – who you are and what you do!

Amara: Okay.  Well, for a number of years now, I’ve been saying that I’m a midwife for our global rebirth, and I actually had the word midwife on my business card in quotes “midwifery” – “midwifing your life purpose” or something like that.  And people said “Oh, you’re a midwife”; and I say “Yes, but I don’t deliver babies, I help deliver your dreams.”

It really does feel like the essence of who so many of us are now because the whole planet, as I know you know from the many people you talk to, is in the process of incredible transformation as our evolution has amped to levels that we’ve never known as a collective before, and so many of us have been called now to be midwifes, to literally help this process along.  So that’s really who I feel that I am in my deepest heart of hearts, and I’m very honored and privileged to be able to fulfill that function at this time.

Toni: I love that – a midwife for global rebirth – that’s awesome!  When you think of the work that you do, Amara, or even your personal relationships and your personal perspective, and you think about inspiration, who do you inspire and how do you do that?

Amara: That’s such a wonderful question.  You know, I see my whole life and everything that I do now since I came through what I call my own dark night of the soul journey — where I was living a very kind of mainstream life and pretty much asleep to what my true purpose on earth was — and I went through a long healing journey as many of us have and woke up and, on the far side of that, began to live on purpose, and I was clear about what my service was.  And so I sort of see everything that happens to me now and my life itself as archetypal; so that whenever I understand something, as soon as I’m clear about it, I put it back out into the world in whatever form that takes.

And since I’ve always been a writer, it’s often in the form of my newsletter or blog or articles that I post to the website or, increasingly these days, social media.  Sometimes it’s a talk.  Sometimes it’s working directly with clients.  I’m always so delighted when people say just what you just said – “That’s so inspiring”, “You’ve really helped me open up to that”, “Wow, that’s really incredible.”  Because I don’t intentionally set out to do that, I just intentionally am there to be in service and provide the resources and the information, and I guess the inspiration; but I don’t think of myself as being someone who is out there just to inspire but more to provide the pathway and the tools and the resources and the light; holding the lamplight high to help people get to where they most want to go on their own journey.  So for me, it’s a gift when someone comes back and says “That’s so inspiring”, because I see myself as pretty much a creative catalyst or what did I once call myself … “your personal evolution partner.”

Toni: Oh, that’s great!  Well as that creative catalyst as far as providing that creativity and  helping to shine that light with the people that you inspire, how do you think that that helps other people explore their own potential?  How does what you do in being that creative catalyst, how does it drive others’ potential?

Amara: Well, I feel that it gives people — again, from seeing my own life as kind of an archetype — it gives them a model and a bridge.  In other words, the same as we all look at somebody else who has done whatever they’ve done in their life and they say, “You know, if they can do it, I can do it.”  And while I don’t think what I’ve done is necessarily so amazing, any more amazing that what anybody else can do.  Because I have those resources which I’m constantly adding to — and I can provide those to people and help them hone their own direction — it helps them mostly to have that support that we really all crave to take that next step to step into your greatness because we all have that inside of us, Toni, as I know that you know, to such an amazing degree.

Sometimes it’s just that people have not been seen for that, their greatness that they’ve been hiding it under a bushel, and they haven’t had the recognition to be who they came here to be.  And sometimes it’s simply that; it’s simply listening them into their greatness and holding the space.  That’s what I feel that I do best, is to really hold that space with somebody to see them, to acknowledge them.  When we scratch the surface, it’s amazing how alike we are.  You know, you scratch the surface, and the essence of who we are underneath is the same.  And so holding the space for people to express that in the world in whatever form it’s going to take for them is such an amazing blessing.

I’m thinking of the first time that I ever put a circle together, a small women’s circle, and all I pretty much had to do was arrange the altar and set our intention and do an invocation and then just sit back.  And I was just amazed because I was thinking “Okay, I hope I’ll be a good facilitator.”  And there was really nothing for me to do but to sit back and watch their wisdom emerge; and it did.

And that’s when it really brought it home to me.  It was like “Wow, what people have inside them inspires me!”  It’s so incredible; and that’s what I feel that we’re all doing for each other.  That’s why it was harder to answer that first question “who do I inspire” because I think it’s always a mutuality.  We’re always looking in the mirror.  So if you say “Wow, that really inspires me”, I feel inspired right back, and the glow just keeps getting brighter and brighter.  And that’s what we can all do for each other.

Toni: When you are in that process of helping someone and holding that space for them and allowing people to be who they need to be and to reach that greatness, that’s awesome – but how do you stay inspired?  I know that you’ve already spoken to being in the presence of that and seeing someone reveal that is inspiring for you; however, what else?  What else do you seek for inspiration?

Amara: What are some of the specifics, where are some of the places that I go?

Toni: Yes …

Amara: One of the biggest ones and one of the things that I really encourage other people because we’ve gotten so divorced from this in our hurry-hurry-100-mile-per-hour life — which I know really well because I was living into that really deep in myself before my own journey came with a bang not a whimper and saying “Hello, you’ve mastered this life, now it’s time to focus on your spiritual journey.”

So for me and for so many people, a huge piece is reconnecting with nature, reconnecting with our essence.  So getting back into nature, spending some time out in the woods — by water if you live by an ocean or by a river or stream.  Sitting in a stream is totally amazing, sitting on a rock in a stream and letting the water rush over your legs.  Singing; I once sat in a stream and sang.  It’s so elemental, but just connecting – I know this is probably gonna sound funny because it sounds like a cliché, but at the beginning of this whole thing when my journey was getting intense and I lived in a major city – I lived in San Francisco at the time — and I would go, I got myself going into a park and throwing my arms around trees and hugging them.

You know, you have the expression tree hugger, but I was really feeling … and I talk about this on my CD … I was hugging the trees and it felt like they were hugging me back.  And in fact, they were, because nature is always there for us, just waiting for us to connect with her.  So being in nature is really huge, and it’s always restorative for me.

Another one for many, many years was journaling.  I don’t do it as much now, but I journaled for years.  And a lot of times I wouldn’t even necessarily know what I was thinking or feeling until I wrote it out and got that clarity.  So journaling is really huge.

These days, too, with so much on the internet just watching an inspirational video sometimes, just like two minutes, can completely shift my reality.  There is such amazing stuff out that people send me links all the time.  One of the ones that I connected with recently, there is a wonderful site called BraveHeart Women, and she sends links that say “get inspired in 10 minutes.”  And every day there’s a new video and it’s just something incredible; and you watch what these people have overcome, what they’ve gone through, and something like that just brings me right back to center.

So those are some of the ways.  Reaching out to connect with some of the inspirational people in my life.  I have a wonderful, dear friend who I’ve written about who has just turned 96.

Toni: Oh, fantastic!

Amara: She’s just a pinnacle of love and joy.  She’s so interested in you.  What’s amazing about her, and I think the reason that spirit has kept her around so long is that nobody wants to let her leave because she’s so interested in everybody else.  She doesn’t want to talk about herself.  She wants to know about  you.  And that’s the essence of an inspiring person, right, because they’re so interested in everything around them.  So being connected with people like that, people like Ellie who, what Louise Hay termed an “elder of excellence”, and Louise Hay herself is a font of inspiration.

Toni: When you use all these tools that you speak of — and you’ve given some wonderful examples of what you do to stay inspired or when you seek inspiration — how does that help you then explore your own potential?

Amara: These are really wonderful questions.  How does it help me explore my own potential?  I feel that all of these vehicles, Toni, take me deeper.  So, you know, if I’m at any kind of a stuck place in my own life or even if I’m not, when I tap into nature or to what somebody else is doing, it enables me to feel that I can take what I’m working on to the next level.

And I like to say, we can either live in tension or we can live our highest intention.   So just as that’s a really subtle shift, I’m a real fan of that and that’s something that … sometimes it’s the tiniest shift that makes the biggest difference.

Another one is, and I’ve talked and written about this a lot, moving from scared to sacred.  You switch one letter, you know, you move the “c” behind the “a” and you’ve changed everything.  You’ve changed your whole reality.  So for me, using any of these tools or connecting any of these people enables me to go deeper into my own service and then again have more to turn back out into the world to be of service to others.

Toni: And that’s how you explore your own potential, but allowing yourself to go deeper, experiencing the shift, so that you can throw all of that back out to the people that you are inspiring.  And I’m wondering if … It seems the people that are coming to the Get Inspired! Project are so generous with their information in this very short period of time, and I’m wondering if there was a moment, a brief moment, that you could just help us understand, and I know that we don’t have a lot of time, that allowed you to go “I need to do this differently; I need to make that shift” – was there something that propelled you, or was it just the journey?

Amara: You mean when I first stepped into doing the work that I do now?

Toni: Yes.

Amara: Oh, well, it was a long journey, but basically like I said — I eluded to it earlier — for me it was a crisis through the body as it is for many of us.  And when I came out of the womb of that long, healing journey, it was just clear.  In other words, there was nothing else I could do, and that’s my greatest joy is to help people get to that place.

That’s an excellent question, because that’s my greatest joy, to help people get to that place in their own life where they’re so clear, where they’re so on purpose that there is no choice anymore.  It’s like, this is what I’m here for; this is what I do.

And so, that’s how it was for me.  I loved my life before.  I had a thriving marketing communications business.  I went into the tunnel of a long dark night, I came out 3-1/4 years later, and I knew that this is who I was.  I didn’t necessarily have the language for it yet.  I mean, I wasn’t necessarily saying “Oh, now I’m a life coach”, but I just knew that this was my work and whatever shape it was going to take would materialize.

It’s kind of like there is a famous saying by Nietzsche, “If we have our own why of life, we can get along with any how.”  And that’s pretty much how it was for me.  At that point, I had the “why” and I trusted the “how” to show up — and it has — and it’s been evolving over time.

Toni: That’s where I think, again, the generosity of time that you have given in this interview and for this project, the learning and the benefits that come out of this — I know that I’m saying this with every interview — but I believe it from the deepest part of my heart.

And what I’m hearing in your interview is that based on that dark night journey that you took, it would so be awesome for other people to not have an event that propelled them into knowing what their purpose is, but if they can get there in an easier way, in a joyful way, that that’s what you can help them to do so that they can avoid the journey that you were on.

Amara: Well, I don’t know that I would necessarily say avoid, because everyone’s soul contract is what it is; it’s not for me to say.  But certainly, if I could facilitate their ability to do it with conscious awareness and to know that there’s a reason that they are going through whatever they have chosen to go through.  And when I say “chosen”, I mean on the soul level; it may not necessarily seem like a choice they are making here in a body.

I wouldn’t say that what I went through was necessarily so difficult — it’s easier to say that now — it was harder when I was in it.  So it isn’t necessarily for me to say to make it easier for someone, but to give them the support and the tools and the knowledge that they’re doing it for a purpose that will become clear on the far side that they may not necessarily be able to see right now while it’s scary.  But that they’re coming through to something that they are going to be able to say “Ahhh, this is what I’m supposed to do now.”

What I would say to everyone — because this is really important and I have said this a lot — is that if you’re here now, whatever your life looks like now, if you incarnate now, you’re part of the shift.  And we are going through the hugest shift that humanity has ever known.  So if you are here now, whatever it looks like in your life and however difficult it may be, you are part of it, so you are a blessing if you are here now.

Toni: Thank you so much for the information that you gave on such a personal level, and I can’t tell you how — to represent the Get Inspired! Project team — what you’ve done for us and others with your interview.  We are incredibly grateful, so I thank you for that, and I look forward to seeing you in the future and talking to you soon.

Amara: Thank you, Toni.  As I said, it’s a great joy and an honor to be here with you.  And the fact that you even felt called to do this project is an exact example of what I’m talking about.  This was your calling, and it’s a great, great blessing, so I am honored to part of it, thank you.

Toni: Thank you so much, take care.

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For more information about Amara Rose:  www.liveyourlight.com

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