We’ll look at the primary narratives that define your identity and direct your life. When you tell the truth, your story changes. When your story changes, your life is transformed.

In this module, you’ll discover how to:

Tell the difference between self and story

Debunk old myths that do not define you

Open to new possibilities by questioning the status quo

Cultivate the witness perspective

Use writing as a liberating, spiritual practice

You’ll begin to explore the shadow aspects of your story — the off-limits part of the psyche that you deny, neglect and suppress through fear, guilt, regret or shame. You’ll discover that your shadow contains your so-called negative aspects as well as positive, self-affirming gifts and the potential that had always remained just beyond your vision.

In this module, you’ll discover how to:

• Identify the contents of your shadow
• Overcome shame by exposing your secrets (to yourself)
• Retrieve your disowned gifts and abandoned aptitudes
• Understand the role of darkness in spiritual awakening
• Integrate the shadow into daily life

You’ll come to see that desire is the lifeblood of humanity — however often we hide it in the shadows. Desire is the source of creativity, healing and growth. Yet desire is often misunderstood as a culprit in spiritual life rather than a much-needed ally. How can we straighten out this confusion and access the source of our vitality?

In this module, you’ll discover how to:

• Name your true desires without self-judgment
• Identify the fear stories associated with these desires
• Use desire as fuel for self-inquiry and liberation
• Reclaim the poetry of your life — “the force that through the green fuse drives the flower”
• Celebrate your earthly nature, knowing that you are a part of God

You’ll examine the paradox of why illumination (of desires, strengths and paths to freedom) often calls up internal darkness that will test you on the path of awakening. Every spiritual journey includes opponents and confrontations, doubts, temptations and naysaying voices that try to block self-fulfillment and progress.

In this module, you’ll discover how to:

• Confront your adversaries as difficult friends, not strangers
• Tap into the inverted power of anger
• Weaken fear through open awareness
• Use resistance to strengthen your resolve
• Practice courage as a form of self-care

You’ll recognize that you cannot transform what you have not first blessed — including (especially) your personal demons. Until you accept yourself “in the round” by including every imperfection, contradiction and confusion, you cannot recognize your original blessing: the essence of your human goodness, the genius you were born with.

In this module, you’ll discover how to:

• Accept yourself without condition
• Find inspiration and humor in your limitations
• Abandon the notion of original sin
• Be humble enough to be fully human
• Recognize your original genius

You’ll explore the relationship of pain, resilience and self-acceptance. You’ll come to see that true strength goes hand in hand with vulnerability, and that the challenges of life truly do make us stronger, provided we’re willing to learn from pain and to change our stories about what constitutes “good” and “bad” luck.

In this module, you’ll discover how to:

• Reframe experience by changing the story
• Cultivate courage in the face of life challenges
• Practice being “broken open” in order to be healed
• Dive when you’re falling, to reach greater depths
• Overcome self-pity with curiosity

You’ll examine your relationship to choice, and why conscious choosing is inseparable from personal power and resilience. Learning to choose well engenders meaning in your life. Meaning, in turn, bestows purpose and intention, which lead to wellbeing and enduring freedom.

In this module, you’ll discover how to:

• Recognize ambivalence as a breach of power
• Overcome guilt, shame and inauthenticity as obstacles to conscious choice
• Identify and focus personal intention
• Tell the truth about what really matters (and what no longer does)
• Be mindful of the link between personal choice and identity

You’ll see that the choice to love is the portal to an awakened life. Your earliest understanding of love, attachment, security and trust (in relation to your caregivers as a child) lays the groundwork for all future intimacies, whether romantic, platonic or familial. Once you understand how love has formed you, you enter into a whole new life.

In this module, you’ll discover how to:

• Identify your attachment patterns in love
• Recognize the dark sides of love, including jealousy, possessiveness and betrayal
• Leave space for yourself and the other in intimacy
• Relax the needs for control and dominance
• Be vulnerable without shame

You’ll harvest the wisdom — the eternal truth — that love and sacredness are inextricably connected. The purpose of life is to know the sacred, and to recognize existence as a sacred journey — from darkness to light, from amnesia to awe, from being story-bound to knowing yourself as the storyteller. This endows you with wisdom and possibility, and frees you from whatever myths have held you back.

In this module, you’ll discover how to:

• Frame your life as a pilgrimage to truth
• Practice beginner’s mind
• Celebrate the sacred in everyday life
• Recognize awe as nature’s alarm clock
• Embrace your birthright as an awakening being