Hey everyone, I have a treat for you today. Please meet Diego, who recently completed my 15-Week Miracle Coaching Program. Diego and I met during my fateful Vegas trip last summer. This video is his first ever foray into recording himself, and he did the testimonial unscripted:
Diego is not unusual among my clients in that his goals at the beginning of the program shifted as we went along, as he realized that what he really wants is what we all want: happiness, empowerment, and peace. In particular, during the program, he let go of “striving” and a constant need to push himself and began to enjoy the moment.
Diego also wrote this article below about his experience and wanted me to share it with you …
(To give you some context as you read his words, Diego was born prematurely and had lived his entire life as a “survivor” and “hero” who had “prevailed against all odds.” Such an “identity” can help people get through difficult periods of their life, yet when it turns into a life-long mask and defense system, it can become a huge burden to carry. The “hero” often feels lonely and isolated and unsupported. In sessions, I help people let go of their false ego identities so that they can begin to feel a deep sense of connection with other people and with life in general.)
So now you can read these words from Diego, describing his transformational experience in my 15-Week Miracle Coaching Program:
Not that long ago I used to be completely driven, completely devoted to a goal: the job I had always wanted. I wanted out from third-world Central America to Europe, to design video games in a wildly creative emerging field.
As it happens, my lifelong drive got me there. My sheer determination and ability to turn a frustrating and painful adolescence fueled the bold new vision of my life. I got up on my horse, found my cause and set off for it. I was my own hero. Since I was born as a premature baby going straight to the Intensive Care Unit, that valiant struggle was the recipe for success in my life. And it had worked. I got that job.
I am telling you this so you will understand why I was feeling existentially threatened early one Monday morning [in 2010] as I [had a Skype session with Erika Awakening]. She was telling me that I was not to be a hero.
Not only that. She was actually asking what was wrong with not being a hero?
As scenes from the last fifteen or so years of my life intermittently spun about in my head, all those painful memories flashing at me, I screamed right back at her:
“It was wrong because then….. IT WAS ALL FOR NOTHING! All that pain, it was for… nothing…”
[Erika note: Diego is describing a common experience people have when they let go of a false ego identity — they don’t want to let it go because, for example, “if I didn’t need to be a victim in the first place, then all that suffering was for no good reason.” These realizations can be very painful at first. Addressing the part of the subconscious mind that wants to get the “reward” from all the past suffering is essential to being able to let the false identity go. Now back to Diego:]
Now I am sitting here, writing this sentence and recalling that breakthrough moment late last year when I let go of yet another mask from my past. When I allowed myself to let the guard down and be nothing less, nothing more than… me.
With the benefit of hindsight as I consider my life at either end of this 15-week program, then and now, I marvel at the shift. How much lighter I feel, all that baggage being gone!
Like my beholden Hero identity, this process of letting go of the very beliefs that we hold dearest, that have imperfectly carried us this far in life, only to be replaced by empowering, liberating ideas that ring intuitively true, would play out many times over during my 15 week stint in the Course in Miracles program.
The end of striving, the end of effort. To banish sacrifice, to eradicate guilt. To deny failure, to condemn judgment. To shed the cellophane walls and plastic chains that define our lives.
To celebrate life, love, joy, inspiration. To feel as One with everything and everybody. All our needs being met. Nothing is repressed, nothing is denied. Personal responsibility. Full transparency and accountability.
What do you feel as you read these words? Disbelief? Skepticism? Inspiration? Hope?
I ask you because everything that I just wrote feels true and authentic to me, nothing less than our birthright. Feasible. And it feels that way because I am making a choice to live all these things every day of my life. A choice for love over fear, life over death.
Maybe Erika’s path will turn out to be to your own key to lifelong personal enlightenment and self-fulfillment. Maybe there is another way for you. But my sincere wish is that if you felt any glimmer of hope and inspiration as you read my brief account, you will do something about it. Whatever you can do, or dream, I invite you to begin it.
I once felt the warm tinge of promise and optimism watching Erika Awakening speak in a hotel room in Las Vegas. I took the plunge. A few months later I find myself writing this, hopefully igniting that candle of hope for you in some way.
I like to think of it as the cycle of love. Or life. :)
– Diego
Like many of my clients, Diego has now started his own website (you can read more about him here, if you can read Swedish lol).
Please let us know what you think …