After hearing friends recommend The Body Magician for a while, the most recent time Joyce Ong mentioned Bruce Scott‘s name, my body gave a little nod of encouragement so I booked a session with him for yesterday evening.

We connected immediately recognising that because physiology and psychology are inextricably intertwined, we’re building the same bridge, just from different ends.

After the conclusion of the session he said “You can have whatever you want. You’ve done the work.” I smiled knowingly: I already have everything I want in this moment.

Later in sharing my experience of the session with a friend I asked her, “I wonder what he was calibrating to. Maybe the way the energy flows through my body without many kinks or blocks?”

I remembered when my friend Silja Silbuch said something similar, but she followed it up with an explanation immediately. “You’ve really done the work. I don’t feel any sense of competition from you like I do with most women.”

And then I recalled a conversation Marcin Paszkowski and I had where he asked me “What is The Work?” I reflected his question back to him and he answered for himself.

Something along the lines of ‘finding yourself in similar situations and responding differently. That’s how you know when you’ve done the work.’

I thought of Byron Katie and The Work of telling the opposite story to neutralise any charge. How impactful her book “Loving What Is” was for me when I first read it about 5 years ago.

And more recently, how refreshing her book “A Mind at Home with Itself” has been – hearing someone else describe the sensation of the full empty that Deb Maes and I discuss when we joke about how you gain ‘nothing’ when you work with us. Just a stripping a way of all that doesn’t serve you.

I felt gratitude bloom in my heart for Deb consistently modelling that experience for me so I felt so compelled to do the work. And for Michael’s service to me in the process. His generosity in sprinkling salt so my myriad of self-inflicted wounds (in the form of stories I told myself) could heal. How well he learned how to hold space for me (just be still and silent) so I could have the space I need to release any friction in the system.

How I’ve surrendered to the emptying out process even more fully during this season. How I choose to work with someone specifically because I could feel my body was unbalanced around his, and he didn’t appear to be open to other forms of relating. And how much I’ve learned about myself from that experience.

And I wept. And I felt peaceful as the sobs shuddered through my body. It felt indistinguishable from the pulsing energetic orgasm I experienced earlier that evening.

Yeah, I guess I can see how others say I have done the work. I’ve been devoted to this process for nearly a decade now.

Maybe what my mind got caught on is the idea of “done.” In my experience the work is never actually “done.”

When we think we’ve arrived is when we’ve fallen asleep again.

There isn’t a point at which there’s nothing else to clean up.

Our perception refines, our sensitivity increases, and we discover more and more and more “work” to do.

I still see the same patterns playing out, revealing my inner imbalances, only they are subtler now. Habitually bringing them to light, has allowed me to become very efficient at releasing them in the moments they appear.

This is the basis of my book enLIGHTen UP – it’s an ongoing process. The process of mental maturation and spiritual saturation.

Once upon a time this thought was devastating, because I was desperate for a finish line. I was so exhausted and overwhelmed from so many years being imbalanced by doing so much – way more than was natural or comfortable for my body.

But as I’ve continued to meditate daily and attend to what’s before me in the most mindful way I can, I’ve come to discover a profound sense of harmony in myself.

And the best part is I know it only gets better. Thank goodness I still have plenty of “work” I have yet to discover.

Only now I know it isn’t something I do. It’s something I am. Like yoga. We don’t do it, we are it.

Being the work. There’s freedom untold on the other side of each and every story we surrender. AND you’ll gain ‘nothing’ from it.