Shame Off You! - The Journey Back To The Garden

'You Should Be Ashamed of Yourself!'

-Somebody From Your Past  (Hopefully not your present.)

Question: Why is public speaking the number one fear of humanity, a fate worse than death for many people?

Answer: The nightmare of being publicly shamed. It's about shame, folks. And where there is shame, there is anxiety. And perhaps all anxiety is performance anxiety.

Performance anxiety has paralyzed many a human being from expressing themselves, and not just sexually and artistically. The anxiety comes from the following linking in our thinking: Our performance-ability equals our lovability. The end of anxiety, Viagra not withstanding, comes from releasing the belief that we must perform to be loved. The remedies that facilitate the healing are self-love and a commitment to being authentic. Both involve getting some practice at facing, embracing, and releasing shame.

Performance anxiety comes easy to me. I am a performer by trade, one who deals with an abundance of anxiety, both on and especially off the stage. My greatest challenge in my intimate relationships is remembering to cease performing. In my original family unit, being myself didn’t seem to work all that well, so I learned other ways to get my needs met. Performance, which started as a coping mechanism, evolved into a successful career. Becoming an entertainer sprung forth from the belief that simply being who I am was not enough. I have seen it time and time again with others as well... our wounds become the doorway for our larger gifts to emerge.

Pretending to be someone I’m not in order to be accepted and liked by others has been a full time gig, and most of my life I was not even conscious that I was working it. Now I am at a place where I can see what I am doing when I’m hiding behind a facade, seducing others with talent or charm, or withholding a truth to not rock the boat. Like seals in captivity, I learned to pass through hoops to get the fish. Only I’m beginning to realize I’m not in captivity. And the first step towards claiming my freedom is awareness.

When I become aware that I’m acting out an old pattern, if I sidestep shame, I can celebrate. What was once unconscious is becoming conscious. Soon, in God’s perfect timing, the inspiration and willingness will arise to leave behind the old and step into something new. If I beat myself up, I slow the process down and suffer my guilt. But if I simply observe the pattern from a neutral place, the light of my non-judgmental awareness begins to transform it. Modern physics has rediscovered that the observer changes the observed just by witnessing it. This is also the alchemical solution to dissolving old, unwanted beliefs and behaviors: observation without the shame and judgment.

In addition to celebration, I choose to grieve what the lack of authenticity has been costing me... loss of self-esteem, loss of connection with others, and being out of harmony with my own values. I give myself compassion for my deep longing to be liked by others, to avoid being criticized and abandoned. And I affirm in gentle tones that I can survive and even thrive without the validation of others, that I no longer have to perform to be loved, and that I am worthy of love just for who I am. In other words, I stop abandoning myself.

A while back I was talking to a new friend, and she asked me what it was in my relationship history that women haven’t ‘gotten’ about me. I had trouble answering, and after watching me squirm for a few moments she volunteered a guess. “Scott, you lead with your sensitivity, and all the men I’ve ever met who do that have rage in their shadow. I think that what women haven’t understood is that you can be a real angry son-of-a-bitch sometimes.” I laughed uproariously, and told her she was right-on. It felt so freeing - and frightening! - to know that someone could see past my Spiritual Sensitive Guy, and was inviting me to acknowledge a wider range of expression than what I usually put out to others.

Trying to be nice all the time is like stocking your kitchen just with sweets. What about cooking spicy once in a while? I've been in relationships where my fears of loss and abandonment were stronger than my commitment to expressing my truth and taking care of myself. I put my partner’s feelings before my own, and we both suffered from it.

Yes, there are ways of being spicy that can damage the delicate thread of intimate relationships,  but there are also ways that are likely to contribute to connection. Marshall Rosenberg’s Nonviolent Communication has helped me learn both the consciousness and the language of self-responsibility, emotional honesty, and compassion. More information about his work can be found by visiting www.cnvc.org.

I also have a kindred spirit friend named Marina Smerling who teaches NVC and is somewhat of a shame release specialist. Her email museletter is called the Shameless Heart and I highly suggest you consider signing up at www.shamelessheart.com.

Lately I have been observing how much seeking approval and validation from others has cost me in my adult life. I have kept all that pretty hidden from people, including myself, because I was embarrassed to be wanting something that I judged as so unspiritual. My evolution requires asking people for what I want openly instead of manipulatively. I am also learning to look at my thirst for external acceptance as a signal it is time for some internal loving, a time to flood my inner landscape with positive self-talk. Instead of judging myself for being needy, I am practicing meeting my needs by appreciating myself from within.

Unworthiness has got to be the ultimate state of pretending. When I believe that there is something about me that renders me unlovable, I am suffering from a profound case of mistaken identity. We are all innocent, precious and lovable children of God. No matter what. No exceptions. Part of what makes children so pure is that they are transparent, with no hidden agendas. Authenticity, then, is part of a pathway back to our true identity. We take the fig leaf off that we put on ages ago when we allowed the serpent (shame) to convince us that we had something to hide, and we journey together, back to the garden.


Scott Grace wears many hats. He is a counselor, coach, minister, inspirational speaker, recording artist and modern day troubadour. He travels through the United States, Canada and Europe giving concerts, talks and workshops, as well as presenting at conferences. Scott can be contacted at scott@scottsongs.com. His website, www.scottsongs.com, is an inspiring and playful place to visit.

 

WARNING: Abundant Attention Happiness Disorder Is Fast Becoming An Epidemic!

Might you already be afflicted with AAHD?

There are more and more people exhibiting symptoms. They may greet you with a typical ‘how are you’, but something is very off when they ask. They actually look you in the eye and smile. They actually have time for you to respond. They actually want you to respond with more than a few words. They actually care.

Doctors are seeing more and more cases of AAHD, and it is reaching epidemic proportions. These people walk into offices with no complaints, just for a checkup. They read books, not just skim them. They play with their children. They have hobbies. They do foreplay, and cuddle and talk afterwards.

Many are severely underwhelmed by life, which is a term coined by noted AAHD researcher and sufferer, Scott Kalechstein Grace. He defines underwhelm as when life’s daily tasks and challenges have become so consistently manageable that a sense of overall stability takes over the human nervous system.

It is estimated that the entire continent of Australia is infected with AAHD, as evidence by the widespread daily usage of the perverted phrase, “No worries. mate.”

AAHD starts in childhood, when well-meaning parents, probably AAHD sufferers themselves, begin to give their children an abundance of eye contact, presence, and warm, loving attention. These children are often deprived of TV and video games and made to spend time outside in nature, interacting with other children, animals and trees. More often than not, blood tests of young AAHD sufferers reveal a pronounced sugar and processed food deficiency.

Successful treatment of this disorder begins with a steady and disciplined diet of fast food, three basic microwaved meals per day, supplemented with plenty of candy and soft drinks. Meals should be served in front of a television or a computer, to relieve the temptation to indulge in ‘family time’, where bonding may unwittingly occur. Parents are encouraged to ‘get a life’, and not spend so much time with their children.

Thanks to modern and efficient portable communication devices, most people, while engaged in a phone conversation, are also preparing a meal, typing an email, driving a car, and sometimes even making love. AAHD sufferers are often found ‘single-tasking’, which is a term for the primitive practice of doing only one thing at a time. In some of the most advanced cases, the diseased have been known to wait patiently on the phone while on a long hold, without any engagement in any other activity, except perhaps some singing or whistling.

If you have been reading this article all the way to the bottom without doing anything else you may be suffering from AAHD. If so, stay away from www.scottsongs.com, where you would find resources, songs, books, etc. that will surely take you down the rabbit hole of becoming present, centered, joyful, and at ease with life.

The Beauty of Tears

 "In My Defenselessness My Safety Lies"

-A Course in Miracles


I have a personal beauty secret to reveal, something that makes both my skin and my heart youthful, radiant, and baby soft. It also doubles as my secret weight loss miracle formula. While applying this elixir in the last two months, I actually lost most of my beer belly, effortlessly, without changing my diet or giving up beer.

Full disclosure: My primary relationship over the last ten years has recently changed form, and the sadness I've allowed myself to feel around this change has helped me shed tons of emotional weight, as well as fifteen pounds of body fat. I've come through a dark night, and I feel so much lighter and brighter. The sun is shining again in my heart in a way that it hasn't in a long time.

My secret is simple: I cry. Often. When I’m sad. When I’m happy. When I’m touched by beauty. When I let myself fully receive love, or take in someone's appreciation.  Whether I’m grieving the illusion of a loss, or counting and celebrating my blessings, I love, love, love to cry!

I wasn’t always this way. I once was a typical prisoner of our culture, treating my feeling body and vulnerability as a weakness to be avoided. The cost of this protection plan was an over-active mind, a closed heart, and a lack of compassion for myself and others. I was emotionally removed from my life, a spectator in an ivory tower rather than a player on the field. This was not the detachment from the world that spiritual practices encourage us to develop. This was fear of feeling my feelings, fear of living, fear of loving.

Then, when I hit the ripe young age of 34, I had an earthquake of a vision, which led to a flood of healing. Very clearly I was able to see how judgment was running rampant in my life. My mind was filled with judgments, almost every moment of my waking day. Judging myself and others was how I thought I kept myself safe in the world.

An interesting thing happened when I allowed myself this new awareness. I began to cry. I cried for all the pain I was in that I had been too guarded from to even notice. I cried for the separation I felt from other people, from life, and especially from my own heart. I cried for all the years I had been too afraid to cry.

A wise therapist/guide held my hand during this process. As I sobbed through each session, he held space and did not try to make me feel better, thank God. Sometimes his support astonished me. He would say things like,  “Great job, Scott! Congratulations! Each tear you are crying is a piece of your past being released, an old pattern of rigidity dissolving out of your life. You are waking up! You are coming home to your heart!”

I was so grateful for his strength of perception, his consistent trust that I was safe and on my path, for if I would have gone through it on my own I might have believed I was going crazy. I was crying every day, every night, and I had little say over when or where. After a lifetime of living in my head, I had a lot of catch up crying to do.

That process was, as I look back on it, a time of soul retrieval. Before that process I was rarely moved by beauty. Then one day a few months into my healing cycle, while watching a sunset on the beach, I found myself crying, overwhelmed by the loveliness of it, God’s daily masterpiece. I realized that it was my willingness to surrender to sadness that had given birth to this new ability to be so touched by life’s joys. Water was flowing again in my life. The drought was over!

In the magical (not really for children) children’s story, The Knight In The Rusty Armor, Robert Fisher tells of a knight who lives in an ivory tower. He excels at covering up his heart by putting on a suit of armor every day and galloping off to rescue princesses in an attempt to win their love and adoration. He eventually finds himself stuck in his armor and can’t get it off.  He goes to see Gladbag, the court jester and wise man for council. Gladbag directs the knight to Merlin, a teacher in the remote forest who gets the knight to begin his emotional journey and start to grieve the many years he was hiding his vulnerability in armor.

Contemplating all the real love he missed out on while living that way, he falls to the ground, weeps for hours, and falls asleep in a puddle of his own tears.  The next morning he wakes to find that his visor has rusted away. The knight discovers that it is his own tears that will melt the steel and free him from his armor.

Sondra Ray, in her book Loving Relationships, goes as far as to say this: ‘Never miss an opportunity to cry!’

Sometimes I wonder how much the earth is reflecting humanity’s collective emotional drought, our unwillingness to feel our feelings, to preserve and honor our own personal rainforests.  I believe that the most important thing we can do to help restore the planet to balance is to live balanced lives. For most of us, that means re-discovering our ability to feel. Un-cried tears harden into the bricks that build emotional walls, and that’s what enables people to violate and abuse each other, and the planet, without the understanding that what they are doing they are doing to themselves.

In The Knight In The Rusty Armor, early on in the story, the knight shakes the court jester’s hand to thank him for his advice, and he almost crushes it. Gladbag yelps, and then says to the knight, “When your armor isn’t there, of other’s pain you’ll be aware.”

Could the Holocaust have happened if the German people, as children, hadn’t had their feelings and their innocence invalidated, over and over again?  Closer to home, the United States grew our country, spreading an empire west by conquering the Native American people, practically wiping them out in the name of Manifest Destiny, a head trip used to justify massacring people who, in our minds were not really people, certainly not people with rights and hearts like ours.

If enough of us find our tears, these tragedies will not repeat themselves, for rising from the depths of our grief comes our heart connection to life, and we will not destroy whom and what we feel connected to. Our oneness is not a concept, but a heartfelt truth that the ego cannot being to grasp.

The world has had enough ivory towers of ego strength, and is hungry for the power of authenticity and vulnerability, human beings embracing all parts of their humanity with unconditional acceptance and love. Paradoxically, this acceptance opens the doorway to our divinity.

I was raised to pride myself to be a highly intelligent person, maybe a little too intelligent for my own good, trapped in the complexity of a dry and brittle intellect.

I find that my tears are honest, simple, and soften the fortress of my mind like nothing else can.


Do you have a personal drought going on? Is your life so busy, your heart so protected, your mind so in charge, that you rarely give yourself the time to stop and water the roses?  Do you fear drowning in your emotional body, and so have chosen to stay out of the water entirely? You are being invited to leave the weary desert behind, precious Child of God, and come home and drink from the radiant, lush rainforest of your heart.


One of my songs contains these lyrics:

      

May I laugh all my laughter,

May I cry all my tears,

May I love the rain as deeply

As the sun when when it clears



These words have become a steady reminder for me to go with the river’s flow of my feelings. Sometimes the current takes me through turbulent white water, and other times through calm, still waters, but always it renews and refreshes me, helping me feel alive, passionately and compassionately alive.



Scott Grace is an intuitive life coach who serves worldwide and does sessions via phone or Skype. Read more about his coaching practice at www.scottsongs.com or schedule a session at 415 721 2954, or email at info@scottsongs.com

Change Your State; Change Your Life!

By Scott Grace

I went to college. Dropped in, then dropped out. University of Buffalo. Two years. Didn't take any English courses. Sorry for my. Grammar...

In those two years I would have loved to have had a girlfriend. Just one, out of the eight thousand female students at UB. But nobody was there for me. In fact I was fond of repeating on a regular basis: There's nobody here for me. No female ladies with whom I could date and relate. Nobody who could get me, me and my deep sensitivity.

After leaving and going back to NYC I was in Greenwich Village one afternoon, where I lived and felt right at home, where I got me. It was there I met someone. A female someone. We were a lovely match for a while, and had lots of fun. When we eventually parted ways there were no hurt or hard feelings. Guess where she went to school for the two years that I did? The University of Buffalo. Nope, I'm not shitting you.

Why didn't I meet her there? Cause I was in an exclusive, committed, monogamous relationship with my fear. And, as if it kept me warm at night, I was snuggled up tightly to the belief: There's nobody here for poor me.

As soon as I was back in New York, where I felt safe and comfortable, my vibration changed. I started strutting my stuff, instead of strutting my victimhood. Kimberly walked right in through the door of my open heart and mind. Isn't that funny? I still laugh when I think about it. What a cosmic joke! I could have met her at college if I was open and available. But somehow it felt safer and easier for me to keep believing that there's nobody here for me rather than to reach out, take some risks, and learn to deal with the inevitable hurts and disappointments that are a part of any process or project that's worthwhile on this planet. It's as if I had one foot on the accelerator and one foot on the brake, and was hoping to get somewhere.

When I got back to NYC, my old stomping grounds, an environment where I felt safe to stomp, I released the brakes, found my stride, and found my girlfriend.

Since then I've aspired to uncover the things I am telling myself that are self-defeating, and wake up from the scarcity trance while I am still in college, so to speak. In the midst of a challenging outer environment, I want to improve my inner game, find my stride, and start feeling safe and comfortable inside my own skin, right here and right now. That's what moves mountains and makes miracles. Strut your stuff when times are tough. Find your stride and enjoy the ride. Change your state, change your life!

The fastest, simplest, and most efficient tool I have found for changing my state is the Emotional Freedom Technique. In the hands of an experienced and intuitive facilitator such as myself, the results can be nothing short of amazing. It activates the feel-good endorphins, and helps you release the trance state of scarcity you might be in. Then, as you strut your stuff with some consistency, Divine Synchronicity takes you to where you want to be - a new relationship, more money, more self-love, more whatever. Change your state, change your life!

Most of us have got it upside down, bass ackwards! Here's a paradox you can take to the bank....

You might believe, if you have money challenges, that you desperately need more money before you can let go of the desperation and feel safe again. And the paradox is that the fastest way of creating more money is to release the desperation and start feeling safe, right here and right now. Seek ye first the Kingdom and all these things will be added unto you might sound a little other worldly Biblical and not very modern day practical, but it is extremely grounded in the real world. It's timeless, and when it comes to those pesky little universal laws, you can't break the law and get away with it. Your vibrations go out and that's what you get back. No exceptions. Do what you love, and the money will follow. Be who you are and the relationship will follow. Be in your love and all the good stuff will follow. Put first things first. Don't procrastinate joy. Be who you are, a joyful being. Tend to your vibes. Change your state. Otherwise, your soulmate might be right next door but you won't connect. You are unconsciously driving away what you most want, cause you are not being and broadcasting who you really are.

When trying to get (or to give) what you want in life, does it feel like you sometimes have one foot on the accelerator and one on the brake? Could you benefit from a thorough tune up, a coaching session with me consisting of messages from your guides, EFT to help you release blocks, doable action steps for what to do after the session ends, and a channeled song to bring it all from the head to the heart of your experience?  It's like working with a psychic, a channeler, a life coach, an empathic friend, an EFT wizard, and a music therapist who can channel your unique essence into a song, and getting the benefits of all those perspectives and modalities rolled into one amazing session.

While I love working with people on a regular weekly basis, I am also available for the occasional tune-up, whenever you feel you could use help to stay on track, to get back on track, or to assist you though a difficult  patch. I especially love working with people in a crisis. It brings out my best, the angel in me, to guide people through a patch of darkness and into their light.

Is your vehicle due for a tune up? Have you lost your power steering when it comes to your direction, or your shock absorbers when you are facing bumpy challenges? Are you trying to drive with one foot on the accelerator and one on the brake, or when you are low or zero on gas? Let my jumper cables juice you up, help you fill up your tank, reset and trust your inner GPS, and get thee zooming forward!

Change your state, change your life.

Scott Grace is an intuitive, game changing, state changing life coach who serves worldwide and does sessions via phone or Skype. Read more about his coaching practice at www.scottsongs.com or call  415 721 2954, or email at info@scottsongs.com to schedule a session.

Confessions of a Psychic Coach

 Gangway, folks! I'm out of the closet as a psychic coach. No more toe tipping and treading lightly by using words like intuitive.  The fact is, I see auras, read chakras, hear and talk to guides - the whole nine yards. I deliver out-of-this-world messages in a down-to earth way, 97% woo-woo free. But, oh how I've shied away from owning that I'm psychic.  I've adopted a don't ask, don't tell policy about my gifts. Even after graduating from years of study at a Psychic Training Institute, I've stayed away from the 'P' word.  Probably because I have my own judgements about airy-fairy New Agey psychics who clutch crystals and promote ideas like past lives are important, or that when Mercury is Retrograde you should hide under your covers until it passes.

By the way, I do believe that recalling past lives can come in handy if you are invited to a Come As You Were Party and you haven't a thing to wear. And caring about Mercury being in Retrograde can be useful for anyone who has plumb forgotten that they themselves are a Heavenly Body, more powerful as a creative force than all the stars in the cosmos.  

Coming out has its challenges. When people hear that I am psychic, they occasionally ask me to predict their future. I make it clear that I prefer not serving my clients greasy spiritual junk food, and that's what predictions are to me. I do see and articulate the soul lessons and big picture blessings behind and within each challenge that a person is facing, and point out the ways life is attempting to help each person grow out of their stuck places and into their authentic power and true selves. 

I delight in helping you in bringing to light the subconscious beliefs that are holding you back, and offer practical tools to release them, such as EFT, which, in the hands of a skilled facilitator such as yours truly, can move mountains. Then I hold up a soul mirror and reflect your magnificence right back atcha in the form of a channeled song that arrives in your inbox five minutes after the session ends, a song that you can play every day on your way towards living your dreams.

That's what I do with my psychic powers. Nothing airy fairy about it. It's not woo woo if it works. The tools and homework assignments I give make it clear that the power is in your hands. If you want to remain a victim, or would love to hear celestial predictions about when and where you will meet your soulmate, stay away. I have balls, but they are not crystal. The only thing I predict is that as you stop holding hands with your fears, you will spring forward in wondrous ways, and exciting openings will happen in your life that are deliciously unpredictable. Who needs predictions, when you have personal power and a magical universe to play and prosper in? 

If the use of my psychic gifts does not lead to your grounded progress and practical next steps, then, as they say from my home town of Brooklyn, Fuggetabouttit! 

It's not about my powers and gifts. It's about you and yours.

Sometimes people come for a session tight-lipped to test me, to build trust. They want me to tune into them in an all-purpose generic way and tell them what I see and sense without volunteering anything about themselves, their desires or their challenges. It's fun for me. A little scary sometimes, when performance anxiety temporarily passes through my nervous system, but I do enjoy being out on my edge. 

One time at a busy Psychic Fair a young man not even twenty plopped down on the chair in front of me and asked to 'read' him blind. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw his friends waiting outside the door. I imagined they dared him to get a reading, or they drew straws and he got the short one. I closed my eyes, said hello to his soul, and got connected to the Universal Delivery Service. "You are on a quest to find out all you can about how dark darkness can be. It's like you are at Hogwarts taking a crash course in the Dark Arts. Sometimes you forget that the negativity you are dabbling in is not permanent and does not define you, that it's just a place you are visiting to gather some experience. You will, when you are good and ready, come to the other side of this exploration, and move on to more fulfilling adventures and easier classrooms. Rather than just cursing at it, ask yourself what you want to create and invent to make a difference amidst all the madness you see around you, and you'll be well on your way." When I stopped talking I opened my eyes and saw him crying. He mumbled a few words about how he never felt seen until this moment, thanked me profusely, and then slipped away. I was deeply touched, knowing that our short time together made a significant difference in his life.

Most of the time, it helps for people to forego the generic and ask specific questions about a heart's desire or a challenge. It's like going to get a massage. You get a better massage if you tell the therapist that your lower back could use some attention, that you don't like having your feet rubbed, and that your shoulders need a soft approach. 

So much healing happens in relationship. The more you relate and reveal, the more you receive. The more a person is honest, vulnerable and open with me in session, the more they come away transformed. If you don't let me in, I have no business getting in your business. I have not been invited. 

It is true that you cannot be supported or healed unless you ask for support and healing. Asking for help from God, guides, angels, human friends, and, yes, psychic coaches, is a prerequisite for receiving it. 

Have you asked for help today?

Scott Grace delights in playing Spiritual Santa Claus and giving away complementary thirty minute coaching sessions to anyone who asks, by phone or by Skype. Email him at info@scottsongs.com to set up a time, or visit him at www.scottsongs.com

Embodying Ease & Grace - A Tribute to my Teacher, Marcela Flekalova

''Love is the cure, for your pain will keep giving birth to more pain until your eyes constantly exhale love as effortlessly as your body yields its scent.''

~ Rumi


I've had a few significant spiritual teachers in my lifetime, but only one I got to play tennis with.

I met Marcela when she came to me for a song session. I was very honored, as she was a well-known healer in the San Diego area with her own reputable ‘School of Healership’, and she was coming to see me. She knew the transformative power of music, and wanted her own personal song so she could sing it to her inner child. From that session we took a walk on the beach. From that walk we made a date to play tennis.

Marcela was the recipient of some severe physical and sexual abuse as a child, which motivated her to learn everything she could about healing. She was from Prague, Czechoslovakia, and was once a tennis player on the pro circuit. In her prime, she was seeded 51st in the world.  When I met her she was approaching sixty, almost twice my age, and yet she easily whipped my butt on the court.  In fact, I did not win a game. Not minding the lopsided score, I asked her if she would play me again, and we did. Many times. We always played at least one set, and, with the exception of one time when she was sluggish from a cold, she always whipped my butt. My game improved tremendously in her presence, and I felt lucky to be on the court with her.

The contrast between us was very telling. I huffed and puffed to get each ball, worked up a good sweat, and ended our matches deliriously spent. She breezed through each moment, gracefully moving without struggle, like a cross between a classical dancer and a disciplined Zen meditator. I asked her once how she made it look so easy. ''Scott, you value effort, and pride yourself on it. I value ease and grace, and over the course of many years and much practice, have become an embodiment of what I value.''

''Oh.''

One evening Marcela came to one of my concerts. A few days later we were having lunch after tennis, and she asked me if I would like some feedback about my performance. I said yes, excited that Marcela had seen me in action doing something I do really well, and anticipating spoonfuls of praise. ''Scott, there is a part of you still craving approval, and you pull and drain energy from the audience unconsciously while you are entertaining them. I could feel you needing something from us, your audience, your fans, something that we could not and should not give. And when we applauded and appreciated you after each song, you didn't really let it in. Your belief in your own unworthiness blocked it. Your body tensed up, your breath became shallow. And that's not surprising. There's a wound there, and if you heal it, you will become a much better performer, and a much happier human being.''

''Oh.''

Humble pie was the main dish served when hanging out with Marcela, both on and off the court. My inner guidance nudged me to have a session with her, to see if she could assist me with my issues as well as she could see and name them. So I did.

After the first, which was quite helpful, I began having weekly sessions with her. She did bodywork, shamanic work, emotional release work, psychic work, inner child healing, re-parenting, and life coaching, all rolled into these amazing sessions. Gradually I let myself trust and open to her power, quite a scary thing for me, since I had such an overpowering mother. And so, Marcela became somewhat of a guide to me - a healer, a mentor, and yes, a spiritual teacher.

Marcela knew the thing I most wanted in my life was more intimacy, especially in the form of a life partner. A great deal of our work together focused on bringing to the surface and clearing the fears, blocks and beliefs I harbored in regards to letting in love. ''Scott, right now, as much as your conscious mind wants intimacy, on a deeper heart level, you push away love and partnership more than you welcome it. Your inner child is somewhat frozen in there, waiting for the warmth of your own loving to thaw himself out. Before you can let somebody else in, you need to let yourself in first.'' I had heard that many times, even uttered the words myself to others, but this time I was ready to walk the walk, and not just talk the talk.

Marcela suggested I start collecting and sleeping with stuffed animals.  Boy, did I have resistance to that! Marcela's office was filled with large, flamboyant, colorful stuffed animals, and now she was trying to pass the disease on to me! I guess I had some judgments about adults playing with child's toys, judgments that were a clever cover by my ego to mask my fear of becoming vulnerable. But I did start a collection, one that I grew to love, as I grew to love the child inside me through Marcela's guidance.

My four-year old daughter is currently quite happy with my colorful collection of soft, inviting creatures. I am so glad I am passing on my cuddly animals to her, and not my unworthiness, fear of suffocation, and resistance to being loved. Through my work with Marcela, gradually I began to thaw out and soften, and my heart became more spacious, open, and available for intimacy. Venus, my life partner, entered the scene as if on cue. I had no doubt that the work I was doing with Marcela played a big part in that.

Soon after we began dating, Venus and I had dinner with Marcela.  I felt as if our new relationship received a mitzvah, the love and blessings of my teacher. Soon after that, we lost touch as she moved to Oregon, and I moved to the Bay Area to start a life with Venus.  A month ago I found out that Marcela Flekova made her transition. I've been filled with both sadness and gratitude. I trust she is continuing to glide through life with ease and grace, the ease and grace she lived while inside a body, the ease and grace she passed on to me and countless others.

I'll never forget Marcela on the tennis court, hitting each ball powerfully and purposefully, without aggression, strain or struggle, radiating effortless effort, power versus force.

Marcela taught by example, without dogma. I consider myself blessed to have hung out with her, and to have had the wisdom and willingness to recognize and receive her as a teacher. When the student is ready, the teacher appears, ready to serve. Tennis, anyone?



Scott Grace is an intuitive life coach that has a blast playing Santa Claus all year 'round and giving away complementary thirty minute sessions. For info click on:  http://www.scottsongs.com/pages/coaching_councelling.html, or say hello at info@scottsongs.com or 415 721 2954 to schedule a session. In addition, he is the author of the book, Teach Me How To Love, a True Story that Touches Hearts and Helps with the Laundry! Check it out at Amazon at: http://www.amazon.com/Teach-Me-How-Love-Touches/dp/061549210X/ref=cm_cr_pr_product_top or buy the book with a 17 song CD of Scott's music in the back at: http://www.scottsongs.com