Iyanla Vanzant opened her heart up at

the Celebrate Your Life Conference

The 5th Annual “Celebrate Your Life” conference, which featured the country’s top bestselling authors and speakers, was held in Lombard, Illinois from June 10 to June 13, 2011. Without a doubt, this event inspired, motivated and reminded its attendees to live a life filled with gratitude and purpose! Bestselling authors Marianne Williamson, Iyanla Vanzant, Doreen Virtue, Don Miguel Ruiz, Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor, Gregg Braden, Neale Donald Walsch, Gary Zukav and many more co-created a powerful, life-changing event. Attendees got a chance to meet their favorite authors in person, attended motivating and inspiring workshops, shopped from unique vendors, made friends from all over the world and took time for themselves!

Iyanla Vanzant, author of One Day My Soul Just Opened Up, In The Meantime: Finding Yourself And The Love You Want and Peace From Broken Pieces, one of the keynote speakers of the event, opened up her share with a beautiful song that sings “my life is not my own. I belong to you. I give myself away.” She asked us to hold hands and, while we were doing so, to remember that we were holding the hands of angels and angels were holding our hands. Powerful and profound introduction to her session!

Vanzant reminded us to “give stuff away, from a thought to matter.” Yet, to keep in mind that to give the gift of myself to the world “I need to make sure my cup is full. Then, give from the overflow. In order to heal, I needed to give away my stories, my dysfunction, my pain and limitations, my attachment to suffering,” Iyanla said.

The writer also supported her audience in remembering that all of us “have the right, the reason and the responsibility to use our voices.” God gave us our voices for a reason.  When things simply don’t feel right, when abuse or injustice show up, we need to be the change we want to see around us. Sometimes, she said, “You are the teacher, even being a broken self. Speak up! And say it however it comes, fix it later.”

Sometimes -Iyanla reflected during her session- the most loving thing we can say under certain circumstances is NO. So, let us exercise our “NO” muscle!

She shared with us that she needed adult supervision to grow and heal. She needed to embrace her Higher Self, her own inner Divinity. “After all, if I cannot win an argument in my own mind, I’m lost. That’s why we need to identify our crazy, those aspects of ourselves originated by fear. And let our Higher Self be in charge, be the king and queen of our personal kingdom.”

She challenged us to ask ourselves what can we celebrate in the midst of whatever we are growing through? Look for the strawberry, for pure honey in the midst of the honeycomb.

“You got to tell your truth. The healing is in the share. Sharing with the intention to heal. Give yourself permission to be fabulous. And let God be God! I found the courage to surrender. I didn’t turn things around or heal myself. I gave myself away,” Vanzant shared.

Lastly, Iyanla reminded us that when it comes to dealing with people and their paths, we need to remember that their lives are not of our business. Whatever their souls choose is between God and them!” We cannot take their path and their healing opportunities away from them. We just need to remember that a Glorious God lives in everyone’s heart at all times and that nothing happens in God’s world by mistake.

Iyanla, thanks for everything! To you, Two Wings Up!!!

Think about this… We assumed with relative naturalness that coming from different geographic backgrounds and cultures we all developed different languages. Nevertheless, in the religious field, many have chosen to believe that their way of worshiping God is the right and only valid way for all humanity.
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Around 35 years ago, your best friend made fun of you in front of your classmates simply because you were having an extremely bad hair day. Till these days you:

a) Wish her death.

b) Cry every time you remember that nightmare.

c) Pretend you don’t care but, since then, very carefully, you monitor your hairstyle to make sure every hair is in the right place.

d) Hardly think about it. That was the last time you cared about her. Her cruelty ruined your friendship -and your self esteem.

e) Any and all of the above.
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“Science without religion is lame,

religion without science is blind.”

– Albert Einstein

Dopamine is part of a reward system that is important in human and animal behavior, and dopamine levels are elevated in the brain when we experience pleasure or well being. Pleasure is associated both with the anticipation of activities essential to survival—for example, eating and sex—and with the activities themselves.
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¹⁹Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy, and where thieves break in and steal. ²⁰But store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where moth and rust do not destroy, and where thieves do not break in and steal. ²¹For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.

–MATTHEW 6.19-21

This Jesus’ teaching serves me to remember that anything and everything that I can either see or touch will never be the source of my genuine and permanent joy and peace. The material world has been designed to undergo transformation, change, construction and destruction. The only permanent aspect of the material world is its inconsistency.
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Tinting

Social Media

with

Love, Kindness

and Compassion

Combining my experience in the world of moving images and my need to share spiritual tools that can make our lives a worthy adventure, I conceived What 1 Can Do Social Media Campaign. Sometimes we tent to forget the power of one. Personalities such as Mahatma Gandhi, Mother Teresa, Martin Luther King Jr., Maria Callas, Albert Einstein, Valentina Tereshkova, John Lennon, Marie Curie or Rudolf Nureyev remind us that we are not only magnificent but that we have the right and the duty to be radically ourselves. It is in choosing to act from our power within, in embracing our uniqueness and profound beauty that we get to give the best of us to the world. But what are we going to do with all that we are? Because we are beating, thinking, feeling, walking, creative love -that’s what we are, the embodiment of love, love dressed in flesh-, we get to call forth life. But we are also free and we get to choose what to do with our fantastic powers. We have free will to choose between supporting love and life or neglecting them. Every here and now, we get choose between an act of love or hatred. What would you choose?

What 1 Can Do is a campaign that offer us the opportunity to remember that who we are and what we do matter. We are worthy and we can make a difference in each other’s lives and in the world, one thought, feeling, and action at a time. If we choose to care for others and ourselves our personal decisions and actions could impact our lives in ways that we cannot even begin to imagine. That’s how some of the greatest names you can remember changed the world for the better and are still alive in our memories and hearts. Let us help each other remember that we are capable of doing what the great men and women of history have done: become a caring and beneficial presence in today’s world.

What 1 Call Can Do reminds us to make that phone call, period. Sometimes, we feel it is important for us to make a phone call that we have been procrastinating for whatever reason and we simply don’t do it. We convince ourselves that there is something more important than celebrating a friend’s birthday, a child’s birth or call the authorities to report domestic violence or child abuse. If it feels important to make that phone call, it is important! Let us make it! Let us trust our intuition and remember that we can make a difference in our lives and in the lives of others by making the call we may be procrastinating. Let us never underestimate What 1 Call Can Do!

The What 1 Can Do teachings are very simple, as simple as the greatest revelations we realize throughout our lives. The What 1 Can Do campaign does not teach us anything; it reminds us what we already know intuitively, that we are the ones we’ve been waiting for! The Gandhis, the Mothers Teresas, the Martin Luther King Jrs., the Tereshkovas, the Einsteins, the Jesuses, the Buddhas. If we want to experience a beautiful, peaceful, loving, caring, just world, we need to cultivate these values in ourselves first. By using our own gifts, talents, abilities and resources we can make a difference in our world. We get to choose who we are, what we are and what we do. And if things don’t go as planned, we can always choose again and choose differently! Let us never underestimate What 1 Can Do!

When you see the following image,

how does it resonate with you?

a) Do you remember the kid who broke your heart for the very first time?

b) Do you think about the cruel bitch that stole your first husband 20 years ago?

c) In the middle of May, do you keep repeating to yourself that this year you should not forget your best friend’s birthday in September?

d) It remains you that by the end of this month, after you pay all your bills, you will not have enough money to give to yourself the freaky rose that your life coach told you to get for you. Of course, you think, if you had a man…

e) You feel definitely crucified between the past and the future when you see this goddamned rose!
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A Spiritual Campaign

Designed to Help Us

Experience, Know and Express

Love, Kindness and Compassion

through Social Media

Combining my experience in the world of moving images and my need to share spiritual tools that can make our lives a worthy adventure, I conceived Tapping Into Kindness, a series of 5 spots that help us remember that, when facing challenging situations, we always have the option of breathing, validating our feelings and choosing a kinder response to share with the world. These on-line doses of kindness are posted on YouTube and you can access them by searching “Tapping Into Kindness” in Google or YouTube.
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You are visiting the big apple for the first time. You are as single as you can be -again- and decided to treat yourself flying to and spending a whole week in what you consider to be the main city of the whole world. Suddenly, from nowhere, a cute man gives you “the look.” What happens then?

a) Do you believe he would be the perfect candidate for your sister Mary?

b) He sort of remains you the guy who sat next to you in the airplane, looking sad and distant, probably overwhelmed by the vicissitudes of life and whose attention you desperately tried to catch with no success.

c) He looks just like Ed, your best friend’s ex husband! He’s probably an egomaniac with an inferiority complex.

d) Even though he seems to be staring at you, you believe he must be looking at someone else. He’s cute, sexy, interesting and wild but… you don’t believe you may be his type and, of course, he’s not yours!
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There’s so much beauty and magnificence in the sacred teachings of the different religions. And there is so much Truth. Nevertheless, in order for me to truly taste them and enjoy them, I choose to interpret them from a personal perspective. For example, the Psalm 23 from the Hebrew Bible is a beautiful prayer but… what does it mean to me?
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