Patrick Ryan

Today is stop number 3 on the Virtual Blog Tour for Patrick Ryan’s book Awakened Wisdom – A Guide to Reclaiming Your Brilliance, which is coming to Amazon on Tuesday April 20. Yesterday, Patrick stopped at Schall Adam’s Girlfriend Mentors Site. For more awakened wisdom, be sure you check out Schall’s interview at http://www.mygirlfriendmentors.com/blog

“As students, we see our teachers come and go. After we leave, rarely do we get the chance to come back to tell them how they have impacted our lives. It is difficult to explain how the act of telling a teacher he changed your life can make you feel complete. What greater privilege can there be than to be able to tell someone, ‘You are the person who awakened my soul from its slumber; you were the vessel whence I found my voice.’”

This is a passage from my book The Garden of the Soul: lessons from four flowers that unearth the Self wherein I describe the feeling I had when I was reunited with a particularly influential teacher from my past after 33 years.  It is a wonderful thing to be able to glorify and give back something to our teachers and mentors, no matter how old we are. That is why, with great delight, I wish to share with you the highlights of a recent interview I conducted with one of my personal mentors, Patrick Ryan.

Patrick Ryan is an executive coach, leadership trainer, spiritual teacher and author. He was one of two leaders (the other is the wonderful Mary Butler) who trained, held and watched me evolve when I was on the 10-month Co-Active Leadership programme in 2007-2008 in Spain. Patrick and Mary’s expert training transformed my life in the most profound way and I can say without reservation that I seriously doubt I would be doing what I am doing today had I not crossed paths with them. After the course was over, I also had the great pleasure of talking Patrick’s workshop Awakened Wisdom when he delivered it in London (a rare treat). It was on that 3-day course that I stood up in front of a room of people and declared boldly that I was finally stepping into the (somewhat scary) call to become an internationally known author and spiritual teacher, no longer hiding from my own Essence. And the rest, as they say, is history… and the future is still unfolding, minute by minute.

So of course, when Patrick asked me to be the manager for the launch of his book Awakened Wisdom – A Guide to Reclaiming Your Brilliance, which was the long awaited book version of the teaching he had been transmitting through his workshop for many years, it was a no-brainer. What an opportunity to be able to give something back to one of the people who shaped my life so profoundly. In a nutshell, I simply want other people to enjoy and bask in the simple wisdom of his teachings. I also want Patrick to enjoy what he deserves by seeing his book reach thousands—perhaps millions—of people.

As part of the promotion for his book release, I had the great pleasure to interview Patrick on my radio show Lynn Serafinn’s Garden of the Soul on March 24^th. It was a wonderful interview, and I thought as part of the Virtual Blog Tour, it would be perfect to share the highlights from that interview with you.

You can hear or download the complete interview in the player below:

If it does not appear correctly on your screen, you can grab it online at:

http://www.blogtalkradio.com/lynn-serafinn/2010/03/24/ep-58-living-an-awakened-life

Here are some of the highlights of that interview:

Wisdom Gained From a Near-Death Experience

When Patrick was in his late teens, he “died”, his body being kept alive only from CPR. During that time, he “met the Divine,” which he describes as “that wisdom that is of this Universe and that this Universe is of”. He said this meeting, “Woke me up in a most profound way to the mystery and the ultimate nature of this world we are living in.”

He said, “That experience allowed me to see that there is a profound Wisdom holding this Universe. It enabled me to trust that that Wisdom ‘just is’, but at the same time it provided me no answers. So, I still had to go and figure it out. And that really is the journey all of us are on: ‘figuring it out’. And I think the thing we’re figuring out, at the core of it, is ‘who is the one that is walking the walk of this life?’ And, at the end of the path, when you keep dropping the veils, and move further and further into the Essence of that answer, you find there is no distinction between you and your neighbours, no distinction between you and the animals and the forest, or even the organisation you work for, and that we are just this one entity, this one Being that reflects back and forth who we are to each other.”

Reflections on Hearing and Answering Our “Call”

Patrick was leading a life on an entrepreneur, but was always interested in what makes people behave the way they do. He said he woke up one day curious about what else was “out there.” He felt “called”.

“But like with any call,” he says, “you usually cannot see the path ahead with much clarity. So it requires you to take a leap and just enter onto that path.”

I asked him, “What are some clues that people are hearing ‘a call’ in their life?”

He said, “For me, and also for a lot of people I was spoken with, some of the common factors include a ‘stirring within’, a sense of dissatisfaction with life as it is today, and a desire to touch into a deeper meaning or purpose. There’s a wanting to get more fulfilment or more congruency between our moving through every day and the higher levels of values we know exist, even if we don’t understand what they are.”

“I had always dreamed about going on a walkabout,” he continued. “That dream had never left me. And that’s something people should pay attention to. What’s the recurring, nagging, dream that won’t leave you alone? First it knocks gently, and then it shakes you harder, and at some point, if it’s important enough, it’s probably going to create something in your life much more dramatic until you ‘get it’.”

Experience as a Monk in Burma

Patrick told his story of how he became a monk in a monastery in Burma in the mid 90s, even though he had no such prior intention, nor did the monastery have a policy of taking on western disciples (he goes into this story in greater detail in his first book The Eagle’s Call).

He gave us a little taste about the essence of the teachings he received during his time as a monk, as well as a student of many shamans and other masters around the world. He said, “At the end of the day, I’m a very practical guy, and as much is it is easy to become seduced by the mysticism and big words around spirituality, it’s very important to me to be able to ground it to my daily life in such a way that makes sense. That’s why I created the ‘Eight States of an Awakened Life’ that my book Awakened Wisdom is based upon.”

Distorted Self, Divine Essence and the Observer

Patrick went on to explain the three-part aspects of our nature: the “Observer”, the “Distorted self” and our “Divine Essence”. He said it’s important to know “who’s in your shoes” at any particular moment in life.

He describes the “Distorted self” and the voice in us that “wants to take us out of the game” and “hold us in a zone of safety and comfort” and “whispers messages to us like ‘you’re not ready for that yet, if you do that people won’t like you, etc.” He said that it is interesting how the body will so often respond to this by getting ill on the very day you are meant to do something you fear, etc. He said, the more the “Distorted self” takes over the decision making in our lives, the more isolated we become and the more ‘self’ there is in us.

“On the other side, we have that part of us that is infinitely wise, that moves with the wisdom of what we acquired in this life, and also that goes beyond what can be explained by what we received in this life. This is the one in us that does not get caught in fear—the one that is about creating beauty in the world, about bringing life-giving energy into the world and transmitting it outward. It’s the one that can go into an organisation and sit in a meeting and speak the truth about what’s really going on, in a way that makes everyone go ‘Wow, you just nailed it. That’s exactly what we needed to hear.’ That aspect of us, I call the ‘Divine Essence’ because the more connect you get to this aspect, the less ‘self” there is in it.”

He said that our “Observer” is that other part of ourselves that is able to report the facts in life clearly and without judgment. Both Divine Essence and Distorted self are receiving the report from the Observer and “we get to choose who we’re going to put in charge.”

The Eight States of an Awakened Life

In the last part of our interview, Patrick named and described his “Eight States of an Awakened Life”.

1. A Good State of Intention
2. A Good State of Words
3. A Good State of Being
4. A Good State of Purpose
5. A Good State of Effort
6. A Good State of Practice
7. A Good State of Doing
8. A Good State of Understanding

He then offered a few REALLY simple and very profound practical example of how to apply the principles. If you wish to hear more, please listen to the audio.

Book coming to Amazon Tuesday April 20, 2010

I also strongly encourage you to buy Patrick’s book Awakened Wisdom – A Guide to Reclaiming Your Brilliance. Dozens of leaders in the mind-body-spirit field have joined together to support Patrick in celebration of the coming of this book, and are offering over 40 free gifts to everyone who purchases it on the day of its Amazon launch on Tuesday April 20^th.

I myself am offering 4 audio meditations from my transformation workshop The Garden of the Soul, to cultivate the four spiritual principles of Giving, Receiving, Becoming and Being. To be sure you receive this gift, along with all the others, just go to http://www.awakenedwisdom.com/Public/Amazon/BookLaunch/index.cfm and sign up for launch reminder so you remember to buy the book on April 20th.

Tomorrow, Thursday April 8, Patrick stops at Caron Goode’s “Intuitive Parenting” site. It should be really interesting. Check it out at http://intuitiveparenting.wordpress.com

But all too often, “some day” and the “big break” don’t come. This isn’t because we are unlucky or have “bad karma.” It’s because we are looking in the wrong direction to find the solutions to our lack of fulfilment. After going through my own transformations in life, teaching thousands of students over the years, working with hundreds of coaching clients and interviewing dozens of fascinating people on my radio show, I have learned one thing: the circumstances of our lives cannot be blamed (or at least not 100%) for our unhappiness. What are some of the worst circumstances you can imagine? Try to imagine being a 6-year-old boy and being exiled with no possessions and left to starve to death in the Siberian wasteland. Or how about being a teenage girl whose father murders her own mother in cold blood, marries her mother’s sister, and is then acquitted by the court? Can you imagine living with such things? Can you imagine surviving them to such a point where you felt so full of joy that you have made it your life’s work to spread joy to others? But it’s true. I have met these people,* and so many others, in my work. And happiness, I have found, is 100% a matter of allowing it to happen. But if we are blocking the pipeline to our own happiness, it will never flow.

There are many ways we block this pipeline to happiness. One is the unconscious way we talk about ourselves. Most of us pay little attention to the subtle ways we verbally undermine ourselves, whether in our heads or aloud, on an almost continual basis. Another way we get in our own way are all the “old stories” we tell about ourselves, such as “That’s just the way I am” or “I’m really bad with x, y, z.” A third way we block our own happiness is the almost autonomic way we tend to slip into “roles” in different circumstances. We might unthinkingly adopt a powerless, voiceless or even aggressive role in certain family, social or professional scenarios, for example. Both we and others begin to mistake these roles for ourselves, and we end up feeling drained and misunderstood. The end result of all these “monsters” is that we become disconnected to both our real emotions and from our bodily awareness. We can even become weakened or ill on a physical level and we certainly become desensitized to the “hero’s call” that is always around us. When we reach this level of disconnection, we can become resigned to our “lot” life, and lose faith that we can ever truly be happy.

But as I said, I passionately believe that every human being is a hero, and all of these things are part of the hero’s journey—even the struggle to come back to the Self. Every hero is a hero because he or she has faced the “monster” no one else had the courage to face. All the old stories, all the roles, all the self-talk, all the feelings of fear, anger, blame and loss—these are the monsters. And when we face them and come out the other side with the wisdom that only a true hero knows, we find the elixir that makes our lives, and the lives of those around us, truly magical.

This month at the Bedford and West Herts Wellness Circle I will be doing a mini-workshop about the hero’s journey, so you can get a tiny glimpse into where you are on the path. And if you’d like to step fully into that journey, be sure to sign up for the “Transformation Trilogy” that is starting THIS Saturday and Sunday (17/18 Oct) in Bedford. The Trilogy is a set of three weekend workshops spread over three months. You do NOT have to attend all three weekends, as they are completely separate courses, but you see the progression from course to course if you do. This weekend, we’ll be “Making Friends with the Monsters Under Your Bed” where we will be looking at all the things I have spoken about in this article, so that you will be REALLY ready to step into your inner hero in Workshop 2, “Becoming the Hero of Your Own Life”, in November.

NOTE:  We urgently need 5 more people to sign up for this weekend’s “Monsters” to give the course “buzz”. PLEASE book with me via telephone no later than 8pm Wednesday 14 May. Click HERE to read all information AND to book your place.

* The 6-year-old boy is author Andrew Bienkowski, and the teenage girl is actress Brenda Adelman, both extraordinary people I interviewed on my radio show. Click links above to listen to those great past shows.

Lisa selected number 19, which is the number for the attribute of “Life Purpose”. In my book The Garden of the Soul: lessons from four flowers that unearth the Self, Life Purpose is part of the section called “Lessons from the Rose”. The Rose teaches us “The Principle of Giving” which everything that emanates from within you, out into the world.

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Day 19: Life Purpose
Life purpose is the active process of embracing, expressing and living our reason to exist. Many people imagine Life Purpose to be something that they discover by asking the age-old questions of “Who am I?” and “Why am I here?” And while to some extent this is true, the term “Life Purpose” is meaningless until we consciously integrate our thoughts and feelings, and set them into action in our lives. If Life Purpose were merely a matter of receiving a message from some Divine source, it would mean we had a passive role to play with it, and it would not be an active process. We would probably fight against it, as we would perceive it as something that had come from outside of ourselves, and against which we were the powerless victims of fate. This is why it is important to remember that Life Purpose is an attribute of the Principle of Giving. It originates within the Self, and it can only manifest when we ourselves choose to send it into the world in an outward direction. At this moment we begin to live our lives “on purpose.”

Knowing this, we can finally cease our endless battle in life. We battle first against our true nature when we believe the answers to our own meaning lie outside ourselves and that we must struggle to find them. We do this because we believe ourselves to be inadequate. Feeling inadequate, we battle against the rest of the world, as we futilely attempt to fit within layers of external meaning that actually have no connection to our true Life Purpose. We seek to find it through study, career, achievements or intimate relationships, and eventually find that something is always missing in them. What is missing is our Purpose. Life Purpose is neither fate nor something earned by any of these things. It simply is. You might think of it as our spiritual DNA, in that it is so much a part of who we are, we cannot really separate ourselves from it. Our ultimate happiness lies in our ability to feel our Purpose, love our Purpose, express our Purpose and bring that Purpose tangibly into the world.

In The Garden of the Soul the Rose is the mentor of Life Purpose. She lives and expresses herself fully according to her nature, which is a perfect balance between sweetness and ferocity, gentleness and passion. She does not strive to be any of these extremes. They are simply who she is. And by being who she is, she provides a home to the ladybirds, sweet nectar to the bees and butterflies, and sensual pleasures to the human being. Thus, by allowing her whole self to be expressed openly, she fulfils her Life Purpose, and is in perfect harmony with the Divine. Living fully on purpose, the Universe that surrounds her treats her like royalty, as it serves her every desire with joy and delight. Similarly, when we step fully into our Life Purpose, the Universe serves us to ensure that this Purpose is fulfilled, for in doing so, we fulfil the greater purpose of the Universe itself.

Enquiries to cultivate this attribute

• What is the greatest message or gift I have to share with the rest of the World?
• How will the World change, when I live for the Purpose of sharing this?
• What will happen if I do not?

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This meditation came from my upcoming book The Companion Guide to the Garden of the Soul, which is a practical guide to the lessons from the four flowers that appear in my bestselling book The Garden of the Soul: lessons from four flowers that unearth the Self,. If you haven’t picked up your copy yet, check it out on Amazon by clicking HERE.

I read this selected meditation (and announced Lisa’s name on the air) on Wednesday 5 August 2009 on my weekly broadcast of “Lynn Serafinn’s Garden of the Soul on Blog Talk Radio. It really fit with the theme of my guests, Tina Turbin and Glenna Edwards, who were both children’s authors talking about how powerfully literature can affect our children’s view of life. You can listen to the show on demand at http://www.blogtalkradio.com/Lynn-Serafinn. (While you’re there, mark the show as your favourite!).

Next week, I will be away so the next show is Wednesday 19 August with special guest Reggie Odom. Be sure to tune in to find out what our next week’s number is. AND if you’d like to help me write my book, and get a chance at having your name announced on the radio and in my next book, don’t forget to send me your intuitive number from 1 – 80.

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I hope you liked this week’s Garden of the Soul Weekly Meditation. Read below to find you how you can help me write my next book, have your name mentioned on the radio, and have a chance to be mentioned in the book, under my acknowledgements.

ABOUT THIS COLLABORATIVE BOOK PROJECT…
I am writing a “Companion Guide to the Garden of the Soul: 80 Daily/Weekly Practices to Allow Your Spirit to Blossom”. The book has 80 Daily (or Weekly) meditations to help to cultivate the spiritual attributes of the four flowers in the book. All 80 attributes are already “assigned” a number, but the entries for them have not necessarily been written yet.

YOU CAN HELP ME WRITE MY BOOK!

• Every Wednesday through Sunday, just send me a number from 1 – 80 that you pick intuitively.
• I will put all the numbers into a “hat” and chose one at random.
• I will publish the correlating “meditation” for that number on the following Friday.
• AND… if you number is selected, I will also read your name and your intuitively chosen meditation ON THE AIR on my weekly broadcast of “Lynn Serafinn’s Garden of the Soul” at http://www.blogtalkradio.com/Lynn-Serafinn. Now that our show is 1 hour long, I have plenty of time for this. It’s just so much fun.
• AND…I will also mention every person whose number was selected in the “acknowledgements” section of my book when it is published!

HOW DO YOU SEND ME YOUR NUMBER?
You can SEND me your number by:

• Sending me a message on my Facebook group at http://www.facebook.com/LynnSerafinn
• Posting it on the wall of my Fan Page at http://tinyurl.com/gots-fan
• Via Twitter at http://www.twitter.com/LynnSerafinn
• Through my Ning group at http://gardenofthesoul.ning.com
• A comment on my blog at http://www.give-receive-become-be.com

HOW DO YOU RECEIVE YOUR WEEKLY MEDITATION?
You can RECEIVE your weekly mediation by:

• Subscribing to my blog at http://www.lynnserafinn.com
• Joining my Facebook group at http://tinyurl.com/fb-gots
• Joining my Facebook FAN page at: http://tinyurl.com/gots-fan
• Joining my Ning group at http://gardenofthesoul.ning.com
• Tuning in/downloading my weekly show at http://www.blogtalkradio.com/Lynn-Serafinn

SO FAR THE WEEKLY MEDITATIONS I HAVE SENT TO YOU HAVE BEEN:

• Day 75: Self-Awareness, selected by Kristina Berglund
• Day 11: Boldness, selected by Kate Parker
• Day 13: Vitality, selected by Callie Carling
• Day 48: Discovery, selected by Geoff Laughton
• Day 54: Rebirth, selected by Cindy Papale
• Day 45: Growth, selected by Jude Jennison
• Day 23: Elegance, selected by Callie Carling, Cindy Papale and Lynn Jaussi Rush
• Day 77: Continuity, selected by Shannon Jackson and Callie Carling
• Day 19: Life Purpose, selected by Lisa Lauffer
• Day ???: Coming next week! What does YOUR intuition tell you?

I look forward to receiving your intuitive number this week.

See you in the Garden!

Warm wishes,
Lynn Serafinn
Author of Amazon bestseller, The Garden of the Soul: lessons from four flowers that unearth the Self,
Official book site: http://www.give-receive-become-be.com
Coaching: http://www.create-a-life.co.uk