Ep 129: The Power of Reflection & Looking Within

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Truth and Transcendence brought to you by BeingSpace with Katherine Llewellyn.

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Truth and Transcendence, episode 129.

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Well, happy New Year again.

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Second episode of 2024.

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I hope you're easing into your year in the way that you would like to.

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I tend to find, coming into the new year, I carry with me a mixture of thoughts and feelings about the previous year, thoughts and feelings and hopes and fears and so forth about the coming year, and also that sense of how actually do I feel right now?

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Do I feel refreshed after my break?

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Do I feel exhausted because I worked through?

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Do I feel full of an experience of love and connection with my fellow man because of having wonderful connections over the Christmas and holiday period?

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Do I feel isolated, confused?

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All of these experiences are with us as we come into the year and that's a perfect example of the multiplicity and complexity of what it's like to be a human being.

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And it leads on to today's theme, which is reflection, self-reflection, and I'm going to talk about this under the umbrella of reminders, because I think anyone listening to this particular podcast already knows that reflection is one of our greatest superpowers, because if you're not somebody who can reflect and does reflect, you're probably going to be too busy, too distracted, too much doing other things or just simply trying to entertain yourself or avoid feeling uncomfortable to actually even tune in in the first place.

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So there's me making an assumption straight away about the type of people and the quality of people who listen to truth and transcendence.

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So if I want to reflect on that particular assumption I've just made, I could go into many different levels and depths about my perceptions of reality, my perceptions of human beings, patterns, how people behave, choices people make, what attracts people, what appeals to people, what nourishes people.

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Very much of that is stuff I've made up in my own head.

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Much of it is based on my own experience.

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But what's a very powerful thing to do for me is to remember that, with a lot of these conclusions and thoughts and framings and contexts and so forth, I just don't know.

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And in order for reflection to be something that we can use powerfully in our lives, quite often the first thing to do is to connect with and accept that we don't know.

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Because if we think we do know about everything that's going on, we think we completely understand ourselves from beginning to end.

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We come to believe that we absolutely understand those around us.

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They can no longer surprise us because we know all about them.

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We know all about our customers, our clients, our supervisors, our boss, our CEO, our board, the government agencies.

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We have to deal with, the marketplace, our competitors.

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The minute we think we know everything, there is to know about any of these, and I think, if we're all honest, sometimes that is a danger to think right.

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I know now.

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Now I know that's the time when our reflective capacity is shut down, because why would we bother to reflect if we already know everything?

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Why would we bother to reflect?

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Because reflection, on the one hand, is the easiest thing in the world.

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It's just a question of pausing, going into a receptive space and allowing our sensations, thoughts, experiences, messages, whatever you like, to just float up to the surface of our consciousness, some of it from the subconscious, some of it from the conscious.

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The easiest thing in the world.

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Or reflection can involve actually grappling with stuff that comes up for us, diving deep, asking questions, investigating some detective work into our inner world.

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And that is work.

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And actually, for most of us, moving into a space of utter receptivity and openness to what may emerge from within us.

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For many of us, that in itself is work.

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One of my favorite stories that you may have heard me tell when I guest in another people's podcast is I was working with a particular client organization and these people were in comms.

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They made equipment that would be used in call centers and it was quite a fast-paced business.

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It was growing very quickly, they were moving from one thing to the other very quickly, it was quite high energy.

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It was quite exciting, it was quite stimulating, and they asked me to come in and help them to transition the culture such that they could actually stretch to support the growth that they were making.

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So the sales side, the marketing side, was working incredibly effectively.

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They were getting a lot of business, growing their customer base, but to do that they had to grow their employee base and they had to improve systems and processes and all of that, all of which they were well capable of doing.

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They had the HR sorted out, et cetera.

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But they knew that there was a psychological and emotional component to this stretching experience and that's what they wanted me to help them with.

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So I came in and we agreed between us that the first thing we were going to do was a diagnostic on the organization in order to understand better on multiple different layers of the nature of the existing culture, so that they could then set some parameters and set some objectives in terms of developing the culture in the way that would help everybody and help the business.

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I knew that for them to do that or I suspected I couldn't know, but I suspected that in order for them to accomplish all of that, they were going to need to become comfortable with being in that space of receptivity, of stillness, of pausing and reflection.

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So I showed up for the first session.

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There were seven people sitting there in a circle with me, and I was going to teach them how to use this diagnostic methods, these seven energy levels method, which you may have heard me speak about In fact, I might do an episode about it one day, I think, because it's a really very powerful method.

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And before I started teaching this to them, I said great, the first thing we're going to do is sit here for five minutes in silence.

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They proceeded to spend 15 minutes trying to argue and explain to me why sitting in silence for five minutes would be a really bad idea.

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When I pointed out to them that they had just spent 15 minutes telling me why this was the wrong use of a five minute piece of time, they recognized that perhaps they had some resistance to pausing, being still.

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We then spent five minutes in silence and at the end of that they told me that was an utterly revelatory experience because suddenly there was space for all the things that they were not consciously running away from but that they couldn't catch up with them because they were moving so quickly in their daily activities.

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All the thoughts, feelings, fears, hopes, considerations, reflections an extraordinary amount of content appeared in their minds and they also noticed sensations in their bodies.

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Some of them felt very twitchy and fidgety, some people felt very heavy, some people felt a kind of a rushing of energy and some people felt several of those experiences in that five minute period.

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They were astonished at how much material was available to them, and that was just in five minutes.

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So that was a kind of entry level example of reflection for them, and we then proceeded to do some much more in-depth work about how to reflect and how to use the reflective capacity to help them in their diagnostic program they were about to undertake.

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So I think from that we can see that reflecting, and particularly reflecting deeply, is something many of us don't even feel we have the space to do or, on some level, don't want to create the space to do that.

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We have a resistance to it.

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Now I'm going to do another episode about resistance, so I won't go into it very deeply now.

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But resistance occurs when we're moving forward, when we're moving into a place we've never been before, when we're stretching ourselves.

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So how come reflection is something that, for most of us, requires stretching, and why do we use this amazing faculty so little?

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Well, we are in a culture which is predominantly guided by the masculine principle and by that I don't mean by men, I mean although that may be true, but I mean the principle which is all about progress, accomplishment, doing action, decision making and all of that.

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We have those capacities.

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As a culture, we have those capacities very highly developed.

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So what that means is our natural preference in that context is for things that can be packaged, categorized, rationalized and controlled.

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We like to feel in control and what that does?

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That gives free reign to the ego that wishes to control, and that is uncomfortable.

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When we feel we're not in control, now to reflect, we have to let go of control, and when we're letting go of control in the act of reflecting, we don't know what we're letting go of control of.

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If you're holding a china cup, let's say, and you let go of the china cup, it falls to the floor.

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It smashes.

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You knew that was what was going to happen.

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You knew there might be a loud cracking sound.

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You knew that bits of the cup might fly off in different directions.

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You already knew you might have to then get the cats and lock them in a room.

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While you clean it all up, you might have to make sure you're not barefoot.

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You might have to spend some time clearing it up, but it's a limited, controlled experiment.

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When we open up into our reflective space, we don't know what's going to happen.

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We don't know what we're going to find, and for a lot of us we suspect that some of what we might find is something that we don't really want to find.

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A lot of us in our lives are a bit suspicious of ourselves some of the time.

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A lot of us think, well, I got away with that.

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What else might I get away with if I don't keep myself rained in?

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I've had people say to me that they feel that their natural self, if it was in complete free reign, would be intolerable to other people and therefore they have to keep themselves shackled to some degree.

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Now, for most of us, this is on a very minor level, but there are those among us, at least some of the time, who experienced it on quite a high level and go through life feeling that we have to limit ourselves, we have to keep ourselves under control, otherwise we're going to fly in the face of what's acceptable to others or we might let ourselves down or lose control.

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So what that means is we then have this suspicion that in our subconscious, where we keep all the things that we're not looking at on a regular, daily basis, in our conscious mind, that there are things in there that we are not going to like, because a reflection can be quite a challenging thing for us to do in any depth.

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But that's also the great thing about reflection, because it does go beyond what we already know.

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It goes beyond what we already think we understand.

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It goes beyond our own self-limiting belief systems and the structures that we have in our lives, some of which are limiting for us, not all of them.

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All of them are really helpful for us and growthful and expansive.

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So when we move into a reflective state, we outstrip those self-imposed pressures and we also outstrip external pressures and influences.

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We find a quiet space within us of autonomy and freedom, and that autonomy and freedom gives us phenomenal power.

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You know how some people show up, and we notice them show up in the room or at an event or in our organization, or they're a friend of a friend or someone new partner, and sometimes one of these people will look at them and think what is it about that person?

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They have there's a peace about them, and yet they've got great energy.

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They have equanimity, and yet they can be expressive and colourful.

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What is it about them?

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They seem to be in sync with themselves.

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They're not afraid of themselves, they're not afraid of other people, they're not in a state of self-protection all the time.

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What is it about them?

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Very possibly that maybe somebody who has a practice of deep self-reflection, and what that means is they face the things that trouble them, they face the things that excite them, they face the things that tempt them, that call them.

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All of these experiences.

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They actually face them, they consider them, they reflect on them and they question themselves.

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They notice their own assumptions, like I, at the beginning of this conversation, mentioned some assumptions I had about the sort of people who listened to this podcast and the hilarious joke is, of course, I'll never know who listens unless people write to me, which, of course, most people won't.

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So it's really valuable to really delve into our reflection and question the assumptions we're holding, the beliefs we're holding, the conclusions we're drawing, because when we don't do that, we keep running our lives and conducting ourselves and making decisions based on those unexamined assumptions and also based on the fact that we are avoiding part of our experience because we're not pausing and reflecting on it.

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So what can then tend to happen is that we make choices and lead our lives in a manner that seeks to avoid encountering those experiences that we don't want to reflect on.

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So, in other words, we limit ourselves significantly, and when we do reflect, we find a great deal of insight, creativity and motivation.

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So it's very, very exciting and wonderful.

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I've done a lot of work with clients around reflection.

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I've done that in group contexts and I've done that working one-to-one.

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I'm launching a new workshop this year, coming up in a few weeks, and there's a very interesting group that's already collecting together for that.

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We're going to dedicate the day to self-reflection and we're going to use all sorts of techniques, methods, structures, processes, to examine our relationship with reflection, to deepen our reflection, to look at where we are now in our lives, to look at what really matters to us, to examine the things that we are investing energy in that don't matter to us, in order that we can be free, that we can liberate ourselves from the self-limitations that we place on ourselves, and some of those self-limitations we genuinely believe are coming from outside of us.

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Now, some of them are, but some of the limitations that we believe are coming from outside of us are actually coming from within us, because we are limiting ourselves in response to an external circumstance.

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So we're going to be doing that as a group, and the value of doing this as a group is that we know everyone else is doing it as well, and that's very supportive, because otherwise, reflecting can start to feel like a kind of existential nightmare, because we start encountering things that are difficult and we're on our own Now.

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That in itself is a fantastically powerful and wonderful experience.

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I had an incredible conversation this morning with a friend who's encountering a very difficult situation, and we were talking about the fact that he's dealing with it.

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He has to deal with it on his own, and he was saying, there's a real merit and value in that for him because that means he can really strengthen himself in ways he might not do if he was doing this with other people.

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So that is a really wonderful thing to do.

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But equally, doing it in a group can also encourage us and nourish us and help us and boost us and bolster us up as we're engaging in this challenging experience.

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So of course, I have assumptions about how people will be coming out of that experience and I've used those assumptions to help me design it.

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And I absolutely don't know how people will experience the day and I don't know how they'll feel at the end of it and I don't know how I will feel during it or afterwards.

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But I know for sure I'm going to do a lot of reflection before, during and after, and that's what will allow me to be flexible enough and elastic enough and elastic enough to roll with the realities of what's happening with that group on that day and honor and expand and deepen the reflection taking place.

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So if you're already going to join me on that weekend, I look forward to seeing you.

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It's going to be fantastic.

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If you're not, I really invite you to look at your year, look at your life and ask yourself the question could I be investing in my own self-reflection more, and could I be investing in the quality and depth of my self-reflection more, and could I be enlisting other people more to support me in that?

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Could I be helping other people with their own self-reflection which, of course, means not adding our own interpretations of their reflections, helping them have the space to do it for themselves, because otherwise it's not their self-reflection?

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In other words, could I actually give myself more of this particular extraordinary superpower than I have of reflection this year, and can I see how that might, in fact, would, really expand my experience of fulfillment and my successes in the coming year?

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So self-reflection, this is a reminder.

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Everything I've said today I'm assuming you already know, so, if you really consider this in the light of this is a reminder to her and me speaking to you, to the part of you that knows all of this, and maybe that part of you might enjoy a little bit more airtime perhaps In our busy, busy world.

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This is something that for all of us, I think is worth considering and reconsidering from time to time.

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So thank you for listening, have a fantastic week and I will see you next time.

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Thank you for listening to Truth and Transcendence and thank you for supporting the show by rating, reviewing, subscribing, buying me a coffee and telling a friend.

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If you'd like to know more about my work, you can find out about mentoring, workshops and energy treatments on BeingSpaceworld.

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Have a wonderful week and I'll see you next time.

Ep 129: The Power of Reflection & Looking Within

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