At one point in our travels, my hubby and I were at the beautiful Milla Milla falls in Northern Queensland. We had arrived just shortly after the last cyclone had destroyed so much of the beautiful countryside and many of the trails and roads were damaged and blocked. It was awe inspiring to witness the ability of nature to destroy what we look at as so permanent and solid .. whole forests where the trees were uprooted, broken and tossed like match sticks ….forests left looking like broken fields of stubble. We drove though and managed to make it to the falls where we parked and walked down to the area to get a better look. There were quite a few people there but everyone spoke in hushed tones. The falls appear to just "silently" slip over the side of the cliff and "rain" down into the calm quiet pool beneath. I was lost in the tropical lushness, the ideas of how long the falls had been there, had remained so quietly unaffected by the cyclone. I wondered how many lovers had stolen moments under the cooling water, how many children had laughed and whiled away the hot summer days … there was a deep spirit there of life and water, something I had not thought much about in water rich Canada, but my time in Australia has made me acutely aware of. Water is life. I felt that as I stood in awe .. Breathing in all of it, pulling it into my soul so that when I could close my eyes and come back here whenever I wanted. We took some pics to help us remember. Suddenly a car roared up beside the falls .. The rest of us had parked away from the falls and walked in. Dust flew through the air. It was a convertible and you could immediately tell, without even looking at the license plate .. a tourist. The man behind the wheel, without turning his head, lifted an expensive camera high into the air, clear of the car, and snapped. Then he sped away. He too, would have a picture of his "experience" to "remember." When I first began speaking where I was grouped with motivational and inspirational speakers, new age visionaries etc … I noticed something odd about the masses of people who thronged to the conferences, the work shops, the classes …. they were often the same people. Over the years it became apparent that for many, the process of learning was a not a process at all .. just an endless scavenger hunt where they collected all the evidence of having "been there done that." There did not appear to be any practical application or personal application. It motivated me to change the way I did workshops and to make sure I made every effort to connect with the participants and facilitate them learning to apply what we experienced instead of just handing them information. At some point in the journey of our lives we have to get beyond the theory and do some practical living. That means stepping out of our heads (all left brained and limited) and being in the moment (using the right brain and being whole brained and limitless). We have to apply what we have learned, figure out what it means to us. Use it or lose it. Without that we are stunted in our growth much like the person who refuses to eat. The person who doesn't eat fails to nourish their physical body and they eventually wither away and die. Our minds, our souls require nourishment, exercise and use. If we are always looking for some outside stimulus to feed or move us we too will wither away and die. We are disconnected from our own power source. The fact is, wisdom, all the understanding of the world, who you are and how things work, is there within you, part of you. The journey was never meant to be just about an outward physical experience. To make sense of the physical you need to employ your own wisdom, your own understanding. You need to connect with that power within YOU. There is no need to purchase endless books, attend endless seminars, have people offer to sell you "the secret." It is like saying to you that I will sell you the secret of life and then telling you about air and the need to breathe. Air is there for the taking, for free. It existed before I decided to sell it and it is yours without paying me a dime and there is no need for you to completely understand how I analyse it in order for you to reap the benefits of it. So do we simply collect our pictures, our learnings and carry them with us through our lives in neat scrap books to show? For some it is a lovely scrapbook with coffee table presentation that says, I have done all this which is more than you, therefore I am a great human-doing and should be honoured and revered. The educated, degreed person often has this expectation of applied reverence in connection with their presence in any social setting. For others, it is an emotional warzone where they freely exhibit their war wounds, damaged with spiritual PTSD and enacting their tragedies over and over again, asking you to journey to their own private hell with them daily. When we step out of the experiences we have and apply them to our lives we enable the energy of life to flow to us, through us, and on. We are blessed because of that flow. We are energized and renewed. We take the moments, and learn the lessons, apply them to us, and let go of the rest. When we do not do that, we collect the books, the pictures, the wounds …. and we carry them with us even though they have no value and many are no longer necessary. WE do that. We choose to carry the guilt, the beliefs that limit us, the education that does not serve us, the people who destroy us, the ideas that keep us in our boxes. We carry all that extra weight throughout our lives. That extra weight often serves no practical purpose or application in our lives anymore. Once you have learned the lesson, applied it … you can let it go. I teach my clients to first learn to be in the moment, to embrace life .. To stand at the falls and feel. To listen to what that inner wisdom tells you about the meaning of this experience for YOU. It will not be the same things anyone else gets because this is YOUR life so allow it to be different. YOU are different. At the falls, it was that perfect moment for understanding life. It goes on, Life .. The spirit never dies. Storms come and go, trees are broken, we are broken, but the life giving water is as the spirit … it is always there. The spirit was there before the storm, it is there during the storm, it is there after the storm. Sometimes the roads are blocked and we cannot get to the water. We do that in our lives when we separate from spirit - as you may right now be separated from your higher power, the energy of life, God .. Whatever you call it or define it … but it is still there. We all choose to experience it in our own way, but the invitation is always to breathe deep and hold on to that life force. To hold on to YOU. That is what the moment at Milla Milla taught me. In a conference the lesson is not what the teacher says, it is what my inner voice says to me ABOUT what the teacher says. It is about how this applies to me, how I can use it. Nothing else is worth keeping. I take the moment, I use it, apply it, and move on. I invite you to breathe deep.