They say beauty is in the eye of the beholder, we say, beauty has nothing to do with form or what’s seen with the human eye. True beauty is grace. Our life experiences are what we chose to make them consciously or unconsciously. This week in the wondering if there was actual growth happening, in the lows that hit thereafter the thought, ‘are we progressing?’ is when we popped the clutch, steered into the sharp curve in the road and pushed the pedal!

To be clear, no one said this process would be easy, in fact we knew it would challenge us. What we didn’t expect is the mental fatigue that was veiling the reality of growth that already had taken place on the horizon, we just couldn’t consciously see it yet, but our bodies knew in advance. The fatigue was like a mirage. See, we weren’t really tired, that was our signal that something had grown within us and we needed to rest to have the mental sharpness to see the view from the 12 week climb. Had we quit we would have missed the mountain view and yet because we persisted we had breakthrough after breakthrough shortly after. Even though we couldn’t see the vantage point we climbed to through the veil of fatigue, we pressed ahead with our reads anyway (not perfectly), continued with our masterminding, our class attendance perfect, our service cards happening, our meditations enjoyable, our sits, affirmations and faith….and then suddenly out of nowhere in a 48 hour window we each broke through one after the other. (Just 2 examples of several in less than 2 days are below.)

I (Jordan here) noticed Larry was struggling with highly charged emotions just after stepping out of the office with a realization of an attainable goal. It was almost as if I witnessed Larry being excited about a business goal and him knowing it was attainable to within a matter of seconds almost immediately taking it away from himself. Instead of an emotional response with a peptide addiction to an old thought habit in reaction to his, I calmly noticed he was in the crux of a possible feeding frenzy of old peptides. In so many words I said, ‘Larry, that verbal tone is just those old peptides needing a ride on the wave, see the wave, literally wave goodbye, that’s the old blueprint.’ He immediately received this, huge!  We then decided to connect with each other using the Marco Polo app instead of face to face (this works well as busy parents when it’s not always convenient to do a mastermind face to face on the fly) and I charted out a new way he might consider seeing the thought cycle to interrupt with our MMKE tools. The new affirmation I helped Larry create was born of this experience, and here it is: “I am valuable!” This is such a simple statement yet neither of us had ever realized it needed to be written and deeply accepted by each of us!

Going through this as a couple is so wonderful because as we each take turns being ‘the helper’, we each have the opportunity to observe, share and grow every time regardless of whether we are the receiver or helper. It’s a win win. But there’s a hidden catch here, wait a moment, keep reading. The trick is, is for each of us to be positioned to receive the positive (yet somewhat critical) feedback free of the ego when it’s our turn to receive the correction. AND for each of us to willingly help the other unconditionally.  To me, this window, the window ‘to receive’ observational feedback in the crux of a possible peptide cascade is the real growth; creating that space in-between to discover rather than condemn ourselves and each other. This happens individually too… through all of these weeks of work we have created an inner space of command and creation to observe and steer the ship over the waters instead of the waters sending the ship to and fro.

I mentioned I too had a breakthrough the very next day, while mine isn’t nearly as romantic it was a pivotal point to pat myself on the back and acknowledge how much 12 weeks can effect change. Basically I stepped in cat and then dog dung on my front lawn (such friendly neighbors we have) both steps within a 10 minute window (while raking leaves) and I was the observer naturally. I didn’t like the unfortunate inconvenience, but my emotions didn’t determine the outcome. Instead of anger and a cascade of negative thoughts I had composure and awareness that the old peptides aren’t clinging to drama, they’re oriented towards calm. Huge! Larry helped guide me to this awareness as he calmly noticed my face composure and voice intonation waning at the last moment, yet I and we conquered! So glad I stepped into a new awareness and prism of thought; “I grow and expand in the calm of inconvenience!” Isn’t it funny how so much clarity and power there is in seemingly inconvenient situations? It’s our consciousness that we get to add to a situation or refrain from (it’s our choice) that the energy performs. WE ARE ENERGY and when we pull back from acting upon Universal Substance intentionally and emotionally, the Universal Mind doesn’t stop growing but the infinite intelligence of the Universal Mind can now shine through, guide us, and help us gently get home. There is massive massive growth in refrain!!

As a couple drilling down these past 12 weeks is so valuable because it lends to a cause of learning and progress in the home which lends to healthy efficient progress in the family, in the community and on and on. In hindsight, we knew we were going into this process as individuals, as a couple, as parents, as best friends but we didn’t know we were also creating a new space to share as a family. This new space is like a safe haven of observation that emerged from the friction, the will to persist and faith in the effort.