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Full of anxiety and anticipation, I boarded a 747 headed for Australia for what would turn out to be the adventure of my life. I slowly made my way down the aisle looking for my seat. I was one of the first to board, and as I moved deeper into the womb of the nearly empty cabin, I had the sensation I was somehow going back in time in readiness for a re-birth. Suddenly I was overcome with a slightly claustrophobic feeling. I found my seat in the back, sat down and quickly opened the overhead air vent, hoping this feeling would soon pass.

While waiting for the other passengers to board, I closed my eyes and tried slowing down my breathing to minimize my stress. Over and over, like a mantra in my head, I kept repeating, “You can do this! You will be safe!” The reason for my panic was simple. I was now face to face with the exceptionally tall order I’d given myself. I have been psychic all my life, while at the same time living a typical day-to-day earthbound existence. Now, following psychic promptings I’d received and for no other reason, and despite a desperate fear of flying, I was about to take off for a place I’d never seen. I would be traveling 8000 miles with no plan of what to do when I got there, and no money to tide me over till I got one. I decided to trust the universe and the first test.

In this strange place between fright and mini-intervals of calm, I felt something hit my ankle. I turned on the overhead light, bent over to find, resting on the floor at my feet a small amber-colored rock the size of a half dollar bearing the word “COURAGE” in gold letters. I picked it up, I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. Was the dim light playing tricks with my eyes? I got up to look around and discovered I was still the only passenger in the rear of the plane. The stone appeared not to have rolled along the floor but to have fallen from above, and to my left. It seemed improbable that it had flown that far from the forward cabin where others were boarding or even from behind or overhead.
I decided it was meant for me and, trying to reason how it had arrived and what it might mean, I remembered reading about people going on a vision quest as part of their search for greater understanding and meaning in their lives. For many, the journey had started with a call; as mine had, a compelling inner urge they could either accept or reject. If they accepted, they were then given supernatural help along the way. Although I didn’t think I was on such a quest, was this small stone a sign that I was being helped? I would certainly be needing courage and protection. I felt comforted when I thought this small gift might have come as supernatural support.

Several days before I left, I had tried to overcome my fear of flying with mental exercises and affirmation. But I still felt anxious, 17 hours seemed like a long time to be in the air. It would be the longest flight I had ever taken. I knew I had to find a way to calm myself or I would be a wreck by the time I landed in Melbourne. Clutching my courage stone, I watched as, one by one, passengers began to enter what had been, for a short time, my private world. Nervous chatter vibrated off the cabin walls as they found their seats. Two Japanese women had seats next to mine but when they saw a vacant center row, they quickly claimed it. They must have been experienced travelers
who knew how to take care of themselves on long flights. “Well, good for me!” I now had three seats all to myself and could sprawl out and get more comfortable.

The chatter settled into small murmuring as the steward told us to prepare for takeoff. Above the roar of the engines, passenger conversations, and the steward’s muffled words about oxygen masks, I could hear my heart pounding loud and fast in my chest. But when the plane finally lifted off the ground, and I felt my body being thrust back against my seat, for a brief moment my fear evaporated. Takeoff is the only part of flying that I don’t seem to mind, especially if I have a window seat which allows me to see where we are and where we’ve been. I watched as the cars, lakes and cities shrank in size, the higher we climbed.

It was a clear day with an occasional cloud here and there. One caught my attention, for a tiny moment it resembled a winged being. Leaning forward to get a better look, I recalled my fascination with clouds as a child. I would lie on the ground for hours, watching as they took on various shapes. This happy train of thought was short lived when we suddenly hit some turbulence. My fear returned, my body tensing with every bump. Even when it stopped, I couldn’t settle down. It was hard for me to focus on reading, or get interested in any of the movies offered. The farther away from home I got, the more I questioned my purpose in taking this trip. It was too late to turn back, I was irrevocably committed. All I could do at this point was surrender and let my thoughts take flight.

This article is the first chapter of Charlene’s memoir about her vision quest to Australia, Memoirs of a Mystic. If you would like to read the rest of the story we invite you to purchase her book at her website www.charleneryan.com

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In 1996, after a chance meeting at the pyramid ruins in Teotihuacan, Mexico, Ray embarked on a 6-year apprenticeship with don Miguel Ruiz M.D. (author of the international bestseller about the wisdom of the Toltec of ancient Mexico, The Four Agreements. Now a master coach and mentor serving both individuals and businesses, Ray has synthesized the tradition of age-less Toltec wisdom with his own experiences crafting a dynamic process, BeliefWorks™, designed to guide his clients beyond the mirage of their own beliefs and agreements.

As author of the book, The Power Of Belief, and BeliefWorks (Hampton Roads) and founder of Everyday Wisdom.us,, Ray has helped hundreds of individuals and businesses forge new beliefs and agreements to affect lasting and positive change.

His corporate clients have included:

• Kraft Foods, Chicago, IL University of Colorado, Boulder , CO
• Magic Access, New York, NY Ransom Associates, Seattle, WA
• Robinson Mechanical Company, Denver, CO The Boulder Weekly, Boulder, CO
• Wooden Village Imports, Philadelphia, PA Encompass Services, Boulder, CO

Ray is a articulate, provocative and inspiring speaker easily creating opportunities for people to identify and reconnect with their natural skills, talents and abilities. In addition to his mentoring practice, he teaches seminars about age-less wisdom of the Toltec and BeliefWorks™ throughout the United States and abroad.

Besides individual and business coaching, he trains other coaches, consultants, therapists, managers, educators and trainers in the dynamic process, BeliefWorks™, helping them offer their clients, employees and students a new tool to reach their greatest potential and maximum effectiveness.

Before becoming an author, Ray had careers as a professional musician, engineer and a corporate executive for a nation-wide facilities company with over one billion dollars in annual sales.

BeliefWorks™ is a registered mark of Everyday Wisdom.us Inc.

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Popular Psychology “You Can Do It!” books, glossy magazines all about Self, New Age mantras, along with an endless progression of television commercials, pound out the message, You can have it all! You can be happy, successful, attractive, and vibrant. You can have passion in your work, all the while tapping into an effortless, endless wellspring of energy. It sounds sooo good! Yet if you can’t do it, after trying really hard, you may end up feeling like a self-help failure. All of this can leave you wondering, What’s wrong with me?

Sometimes the quest for self-improvement, rather than making us feel better, leaves us feeling worse. At first exhilarating, as we continue to search for self-improvement, it can actually increase our stress and feed the belief we’ve been trying so desperately to get rid of. That awful belief, I Can’t.

Part of the self-improvement mantra is manifestation. If I really really believe it, if I sharpen my intent, I will manifest whatever I desire. And if I don’t get what I want there must be something wrong with me.

When what you want doesn’t appear in the way you expect, what gets sharpened is an old agreement:
Somehow I don’t get it.

It will never happen.
I must be, in some way, defective.

Or perhaps you decide that all the “You Can Do It!” stuff out there is simply a quick way for some folks to make barrels full of money, and for most people it just doesn’t work.

One woman wrote me, “I have such a strong positive belief about my success as a novelist that occasionally I wonder if I’m deluded. Meaning, the risk and reward of having gone through a lot of savings, believing it will come back in spades . . . spiritually and with real life security. I’ve worked so hard, and enjoyed it, but I need the rewards and recognition to prove to my family and friends that I wasn’t crazy.”

What struck me about her letter was the comment: I have such a strong positive belief about my success . . . that occasionally I wonder if I’m deluded.

I have talked to many people who have wholeheartedly adopted the idea of I Can!, gone way out on a limb—financially, physically, emotionally—and feel that if success doesn’t come back to them in the way they expect it, they’ll be very disappointed! At they same time they wonder: Am I fooling myself?

There is a hidden fear in this pattern, a monster of sorts hiding in the closet. What if it doesn’t work out as expected?

If things don’t work out as expected these people are often more than disappointed, they’re devastated! Devastated because adopting the strategies found in personal growth manuals is a great strategy to avoid past pain.

Thinking that after all this time you have finally found something that will fix that real yet unnamed fear is intoxicating. Perhaps even a delusion because if you adopt the idea—I Can!—without ever changing the real beliefs you have about yourself, then the road to disappointment is well marked and heavily traveled.

If your pursuit of improvement rests on a bed of fear-based beliefs, it will only lead to more of the same. If the journey toward a higher level of functioning is driven by the engine of fear, then each turn in the road will be experienced through the same less-than outlook that initiated the trip.

Often the motive for self-improvement rests on one simple belief. A belief with agreements like:

I’m not okay as I am.
No one will accept me like this.
To be honest, I cannot accept myself like this either.

Buying into the myth of self-improvement is a protective story we tell ourselves that is a thin veneer easily torn by distress, disappointment, or perceived failure. The myth of self-improvement is self-rejection because its seed is the belief, I’m not.

I’m not is often the real belief driving us to change, a belief undeniably propelled by the engine of fear.

Everyone wants to be recognized for their achievements and acknowledged for the work they do, and hear that they are on the right track. We want to be nurtured, get compliments, and be treated with respect.

We want it, but we don’t need it. When we need it, we act from desperation and become powerless hunting for the prize of acceptance and recognition. Any program of self-improvement that is infected with self-defeating beliefs, driven by an engine fueled with fear, is an all-out treasure hunt for the prize.

Instead of looking for the prize, be the prize. Loving yourself without judgment, without limits, is the gift you give yourself when you become the prize you have been seeking. Being the prize makes you compelling, draws more opportunity than you ever thought possible, and spawns beliefs that will take you exactly where you want to go.

The push to change is inevitable. We are alive and life is evolving and ever expanding. Life exists embracing the marriage of opposites, cleanly and without conflict.

Is it possible to rest in complete self-acceptance, totally comfortable with who you are, breathing out in total surrender to what is, and then with the next in-breath, be charged with the desire to create something different—an evolution of life?

Rather than toiling to improve what you believe is flawed, recognize and change the stories you tell about how you are not enough. You can’t get any better than you are, you can’t go to the store and buy what’s missing, but you can always take a different action by believing something else about yourself. Something else that nourishes you and feels right. Self-love and dedication to the prime directive of not-fear are so much easier to adopt than being sharply focused on the often fruitless pursuit of self-improvement.

Instead of being obsessed with improvement, try cleaning up the stories you have about how you should be. Get rid of descriptions of better, worse, right, wrong. Use the integrity of your emotions to guide you into making decisions on how to proceed. Build a conscious framework of agreements that supports what you want to achieve. Let your engine for change be the engine of love, self-love, rejecting the lie that you are the special one who just can’t do it, no matter how hard you try.

The ideas, practices, and advice found in personal growth writings are often wonderful and inspiring wisdom. Use them as a gift to yourself, not because you need to be fixed, but because you want to awaken and experience the pleasure of life in its fullest expression. Use them because you have decided you deserve only the best. Do it because it feels good!

Devour inspiring wisdom as an expression of the affirmation of Life that needs no improvement but is always changing, creating, and evolving, as it always has.

As it always will.

This article is an excerpt from Ray Dodd’s New Book, Beliefworks , available now from Hampton Roads Publishing, and is copyright 2006 Ray Dodd. All rights reserved.

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