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Yesterday, my publisher Tami Simon, founder of Sounds True, was interviewing me for her podcast Insights At The Edge as a way to broadcast to the world that my new book The Daily Flame: 365 Love Letters From Your Inner Pilot Light is now available for preorder, with special bonuses that expire by the book launch on February 12 (learn more here). Tami asked me a question that was so profound that it inspired me to write a whole blog about it.
“So Lissa, you teach a lot about self-healing, and after reading The Daily Flame book, you suggest that this voice inside can be our best spiritual teacher, healer, therapist, mentor, teacher, muse, and guide. Does that mean you don’t need anybody on the outside?”
Great question. And the answer is no.
Since I started writing The Daily Flame emails ten years ago, people often ask me to define “Your Inner Pilot Light.” What is it? What is it not? How can you tell if you’re dialed into it? Can other scared, protective, or agenda-driven parts of your psyche trick you into thinking they’re your Inner Pilot Light? How does my notion of the Inner Pilot Light fit into other theological concepts? Honestly, I still wrestle with how to talk about the ineffable nature of this divinely mystical aspect of our humanity. But because our minds are desperate to understand what is essentially a felt sense, I tried to answer some of these questions in the introduction to my new book The Daily Flame: 365 Love Letters From Your Inner Pilot Light, which I’d like to share with you here.
Dear gorgeous, holy, radiant YOU,
Let me just start with the obvious. Darling…I adore you. You are the light of my life. Well…let me reframe that. As your Inner Pilot Light, I suppose I am the light of YOURS. But this is no burden for me! It is my raison d’être, my reason for being, my sacred calling—to love you unconditionally, to guide you on your authentic path, to remind you of your true nature, to love and accept and befriend all of the many parts of you, and to help you remember your wholeness, even when you forget.
I know Valentine’s Day can be triggering sometimes. If you’ve lost someone you love, Valentine’s Day can remind you of the hole you feel from their absence, and this remembering can blow your heart open with the pain of your loss.If you have a partner, you may feel disappointed in how your partner expresses love, perhaps in a love language different from yours. If you don’t have a partner, any number of insecure, self-critical parts can have a field day, attacking you for not being good enough, beautiful enough, smart enough, wise enough, sexy enough, loving enough, [fill in your blank] enough… These parts can exhaust you on what is meant to be a day of remembering to love.
As New Years approaches, let’s try something different. Studies show that approximately 40% of people make New Years Resolutions, but only between 8–19% of people actually follow through on fulfilling those promises two years later which means that 81–92% of people who make New Years Resolutions wind up feeling like undisciplined losers…
Bummer.
Most of us already have plenty of inner work ahead of us to fully recover from whatever “not enough” wounds we inherited during childhood. So why add insult to injury every New Years Day? This New Years, instead of focusing on all the ways we’re not good enough, beating ourselves up for all the ways we wish we would change, what if we try loving and accepting ourselves just as we are?
Try something new for a change.