READ THE BOOK
Enjoy sampling the Introduction of The Daily Flame book, as well as a few love letters.
Introduction
What is your Inner Pilot Light? Poet Mark Nepo describes it best: “Each person is born with an unencumbered spot, free of expectation and regret, free of ambition and embarrassment, free of fear and worry; an umbilical spot of grace where we were each first touched by God.”
Every life begins when a small spark of the Eternal Flame of cosmic consciousness splits off like a glowing ember of a universal bonfire. This unique spark ignites as the Organizing Intelligence that creates your organs, divides your cells, and develops you perfectly into a precious being decorated with thoughts, preferences, gifts, talents, emotions, and eccentricities. The Inner Pilot Light begins in every baby as the untainted, radiant, buoyant light of God/Goddess but often gets filmed over by trauma, conditioning, and the illusion of separation from the Eternal Flame from which this unique spark arises.
Although your Inner Pilot Light may grow dim as life’s inevitable challenges threaten to snuff out the full brilliance of this luminous fire, rest assured that your Inner Pilot Light never burns out. Even when you die, the spark returns to the Eternal Flame, adding the brilliance of this unique fractal of light to that which creates all life.
In mystical moments, you may be graced with a direct merging with your Inner Pilot Light, experiencing moments of clear seeing, transcendental knowing, enlivening ecstasy, bliss, and unity as your unique flame merges with the bonfire of all life. Yet more often than not, your Inner Pilot Light plays hide and seek, like fog creeping into a valley between coastal mountains off an ocean, cooling the luminous flames and quieting the burn back to an ember, then retreating back to sea and revealing your Inner Pilot Light in all its blazing clarity and glory. You may have moments of true remembering of the Oneness that links us all. Then the fog rolls back in, and you forget once again that your singular flame is also part of the One bonfire.
Welcome, precious one! You are about to embark upon a sort of pilgrimage with your “Inner Pilot Light.”
Over time, the fog may roll in less, and the fire within you may gain fuel from the practices that connect you to the Eternal Flame, stoking your inner fire with your devotion, your discipline, your prayers, your humility, and your longing to reconnect with that which once burst you into life.
As you peel away all that is not love to allow more oxygen to fan the flames of consciousness in your original spark, as the inevitable trauma of human life heals, and as the center of your love is unveiled, this flame within you grows to fill your cells. This original spark fills your whole body until it bleeds through your skin as an invisible field of love that touches the spaces around you, lending this warmth to all who come near.
Your Inner Pilot Light loves boundlessly but selectively, discriminates between what is and isn’t authentic to your true nature, and knows how to connect straight to Source. It guides the path, lights the way, navigates the journey, and asks only that you trust a mysterious process that won’t necessarily make sense to your rational mind. While making contact with your Inner Pilot Light is not quite as simplistic as rubbing a lamp and calling forth some inner genie that can magically make your life easy, you do have mystical magic within, which you can access through your sincere desire to connect with this inner Divinity.
Your Inner Pilot Light may not always sound trustworthy because you may have been conditioned to believe that God is a man with a long beard who lives in the sky and loves you from afar, while you are separate from God, maintaining reverent silence and behaving in respectable ways that might be endorsed by the church, temple, or mosque. But because you are simultaneously a spark of Divinity and an embodiment of humanity, it’s very likely that the spiritual essence of your Inner Pilot Light may like to wear purple peasant skirts, dance around the campfire, ignore the phone when it’s judgmental ol’ Aunt Gertrude, laugh inappropriately in the midst of something sacred, and bathe naked in a hot spring under the stars. Your Inner Pilot Light may guide you to sit in the lotus position and meditate while wearing long robes, but this Divine Spark might also cause a bit of a ruckus, like an undomesticated, wild stallion—hard to tame, in touch with the messiness of nature, and prone to galloping through open fields of wildflowers in the rain-soaked mud.
You may worry that your Inner Pilot Light will get you in trouble—and truth be told, it might. After all, if you listen to that voice inside of you, you might wind up doing something crazy, like leaving that soul-sucking job that requires you to compromise your integrity in exchange for a paycheck, or ditching your untrustworthy partner because you deserve to be treated with respect, or moving to Hawaii to photograph rainbows, or choosing to follow your dream of being a musician. Your Inner Pilot Light might care so much about the plight of the rainforests or the orphaned refugee children or the stolen lands of the indigenous people that it pushes you out of your comfort zone and into activism. It might instruct you to dance on bar tops, play the accordion, write a tell- all memoir, or liquidate your retirement account so you can transform a villa in the south of France into a sanctuary for others who are learning to connect with their Inner Pilot Lights.
Your Inner Pilot Light will listen compassionately to the part of you that resists, justifies, rationalizes, and protests. You may say, “But I can’t do that. That would be crazy!” When you do, your Inner Pilot Light will hold you close and whisper gently, “You don’t have to do anything right now, sweetheart. You only have to make peace with what’s true.” Then you will relax into the relief that comes with finally admitting what you’ve known all along—that transformation is seducing you, like a lover, and that you will surrender to this seduction when you are ready for change, and you will be held in a kind of grace until that time arrives.
What if you can’t feel your Inner Pilot Light? Does it ever burn out? No, my darling. You can rest assured that although your connection to this Divine Spark may feel tenuous or even absent at times, your Inner Pilot Light still fires away, even at the darkest times of your life. Maybe you’ve lost a loved one, you’ve been unfaithful, your heart got broken, you lost your job, your child cut you off, you’re dealing with a financial crisis, you’re addicted, you’re depressed, you’re suicidal, you’re having a crisis of faith, you’ve been the victim of a crime, or you’ve done something you can’t bear to face. Times like these can make you question whether your Inner Pilot Light still exists.
To doubt is human. To wonder if you have been abandoned by the Source of all love—and to feel pain in the doubting—is natural and understandable. But rest assured that while your Inner Pilot Light may hibernate as a glowing ember, it is never extinguished, not even when you die. You may even find that at the lowest times in your life, this inner spark sidles up closest.
This book is intended to support the kind of intimacy, comfort, nourishment, and grace that happens when you make contact with the Source of all love that fuels your very existence.
Regardless of your spiritual orientation, consider this book a prayer of sorts, one that invites you to gently, quietly reunite with the purest, most loving core of your being, the part that will help you navigate the in-between space in your spiritual life.
How might this miraculous reunion with what religious leaders might call “the Imminent Divine” happen? It is your longing for this reunion that will fuel this prayer and throw lighter fluid on your Inner Pilot Light. Once this prayer is offered with sincerity and humility, it is like casting a wondrous spell. A great magic is invoked because the Universe wants nothing more than to help you reconnect and remember. That which you are seeking is desperately seeking you.
So sit back and get ready for a magical ride. Your beloved Inner Pilot Light is waiting to welcome you back to the home that’s always been your true sanctuary.
How to Use This Book
Although this is written as a daybook, you do not need to begin reading this book at the beginning of a calendar year, and you do not have to remember to read it every day. You may start this journey whenever you are ready, and you’re free to go at your own pace, trusting the divine timing of such journeys. You may even want to use this book as an oracle, keeping it by your bedside and, when you feel the impulse, asking your Inner Pilot Light to help you open the book to the page with the message that is most relevant to you, right here and now.
Each Daily Flame is written in response to my ten-year practice of opening a portal from my consciousness to the collective consciousness, making myself receptive to the inquiry “What is needed today?” and listening to the response that drops in. Because we are all so unique, some love letters will feel personally relevant to you, as if some mysterious force chose this Daily Flame on this day, at just the right time, just for you. Others may not. As you read these daily love letters, I trust you will filter every message through your own inner guidance system, taking what resonates and tossing out what doesn’t.
My sincere prayer is that reading this book becomes for you a journey of its own, allowing you to access this connection for yourself, and that this becomes a lifelong love affair. I trust that reading these love letters will help you recognize the vibration of the kinds of messages your Inner Pilot Light is likely to drop in for you personally, and that you will also learn to discern the voices that can mimic your Inner Pilot Light but lack that same frequency of gentle and fierce unconditional love. You may find, even just a few weeks into this journey, that you no longer need someone else to help you translate the words of this loving consciousness that lives inside of you, that your Inner Pilot Light is dropping in messages that are customized just for you. If this happens, you can drop to your knees in gratitude and offer your thanks to this inner Beloved who yearns for you as much as you yearn to feel connected.
If you wish, you may start your journey by downloading the free “Meet Your Inner Pilot Light” guided meditation, as well as the 30 Practical Tips for Getting in Touch with Your Inner Pilot Light eBook, which you can find at InnerPilotLight.com. If you want additional support throughout the year, you can also sign up for the email version of the Daily Flame at InnerPilotLight.com.
Let us begin by summoning your Inner Pilot Light with an invocation.
An Inner Pilot Light Invocation
May you surrender all desire to make contact with your Inner Pilot Light to the invisible forces of love that will guide your journey and trust that the perfect path will unfold in divine timing, and you will know what is needed on a need-to-know basis.
May you open the portal into the love that is always present for you, always available to you, and always moving through you so it can overflow out of you and touch the heart of the world.
May your Inner Pilot Light comfort, illuminate, encourage, and guide you so that you may be blessed and you may be a blessing.
May this frequency of love help you love and accept all parts of yourself so that you become capable of transmitting this unconditional love and acceptance to those around you.
May you trust the guidance of this infinite part of you so you will know how you can serve love in your own unique way.
May blind faith transform into evidence-based faith as you dare to follow the guidance that comes through the Universe and gives you feedback.
May this be a journey of radical, heart-opening physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual healing.
May you be not a seeker but a finder, for you already have all that you need to have, all the love you could ever imagine, right here inside your own heart.
May you know that you are unspeakably precious, that you are enough, that there is no punishing God out there looking to judge you, that you cannot do this human life “wrong,” that you do not have to do anything to earn this love, and that you are deeply, unconditionally accepted just the way you are.
LOVE LETTER 1
My Sweet,
Do you realize that no matter what else is going on in your life—no matter how much stress you’re under, how much heartbreak you’re experiencing, how much pain you feel in your body or mind, or how much your life is full of fabulousness—I am always here for you?
I’m like your heartbeat. You may not always notice me, but I’m always present, doing my job, just beating away— thump, thump, thump—waiting for you to tap in.
You can access me anytime. And I don’t even charge overtime. Having trouble finding me?
Close your eyes. Imagine me as a golden light in your heart, expanding to fill your chest. Now see me filling your whole torso with my light and dropping down through your body like an extension cord made of my light. Ground me into the soil. See me going through the water table and the rock, all the way into the magma at the center of Mama Earth. Now plug me in, sugarplum!
Let Mama’s Earth energy come back up that cord of my light. Let me fill you to the brim until my light shoots out the top of your head and connects you to the cosmos. See me like a spotlight flashing to the stars as one giant firestick of golden light connecting you to All That Is.
Huzzah! Hoorah! Snap, crackle, pop!
Now take a few breaths. Abide in me, darling. Know that I am here.
From the Earth to the heavens,
YOUR INNER PILOT LIGHT
LOVE LETTER 2
Dearest Beloved,
Remember me? I’m that sparkly, effervescent, 100 percent authentic spark within you that never gets extinguished, no matter how rough life gets. I’m that pilot light that holds the Eternal Flame of your divine radiance, even when the main burners aren’t ignited fully. I’m the presence of unconditional love and acceptance inside of you, always here to help you heal that which is in need of healing.
Right now I’m here with a very important invitation. Just as an experiment, will you let me light the way for a while? Will you let me take the wheel in your life so we can journey together?
I know you’re accustomed to listening to other voices inside your head, and you may not have spent much time listening to mine. You’re so accustomed to listening to your adorably protective monkey mind, which is always working 24/7 just to try to keep you safe, rehashing the past and trying to control the future, grasping for what it wants and resisting what it doesn’t like.
Let’s see if that precious monkey mind would be willing to trust me enough to give us some space so you can experiment with how things might go if you listen to me for a bit.
Can you ask the parts inside of you that may object to you and me becoming intimate if they’d be willing to grant us just this little experiment? Let them know I’m just going to start by writing you a few love letters. No pressure. No Holy-Roller hellfire and brimstone. Just love and radical acceptance of even the parts you might judge as unlovable.
Are you up for a love that big?
Infinitely spacious,
YOUR INNER PILOT LIGHT
LOVE LETTER 174
Dearest Beloved,
I sang outside your window, serenading you with songs of love. But you weren’t listening.
I came to you in dreams, whispered sweet nothings in your ear, and granted you visions of what was possible, but you dismissed my voice when you woke up.
I showed up as thoughts in your head, affirming that you are beautiful, whole, and cherished, but you let your sweet, scared inner critic write me off.
I planted passages from books, blog posts, keynote speeches, and psychics in front of you, hoping you’d hear my voice. But you credited my gushing words of love to the writers, speakers, and psychics, missing altogether that I was using them to get through to you.
So today I kneel here before you, beseeching you to finally pay attention to my words.
Will you be mine?
With roses, chocolate, and love letters,
YOUR INNER PILOT LIGHT
LOVE LETTER 317
Dearest Dreamer,
I have a dream, that all men and women of all colors and creeds, all social classes and castes, all political affiliations and beliefs are equal children of an invisible force of love that you might call God/Goddess. Burning like the flame that ignites our life force and fans the flame of love in our own hearts, this spark has a direct experience of Oneness and also appreciates the multiplicity of ways that the Eternal Flame reveals Itself.
This spark knows that all men and women, in all ways, are created equal. Many humans have forgotten but are now remembering that you must have compassion and fierce love to help one another unlearn their way back to God/Goddess. You are remembering that most of you have been traumatized and you don’t even know it, and as long as you’re all acting out from unhealed trauma, you will continue to hurt yourselves and each other in the most unconscious ways.
You are remembering that you cannot exploit Mother Earth and her resources without harming yourselves. You are remembering that it’s time to share resources so that all men and women, all animals, and all of the natural world can thrive in harmony. You are remembering that you may have to make some choices that may feel like sacrifices, but what you will gain in doing so will far outweigh any inconvenience or discomfort.
You are remembering that everything is alive and sacred, and that deep joy and lasting fulfillment arise when the holy in everything and everyone in honored and celebrated. You are remembering that humans are tribal beings, deeply interdependent upon one another, rather than Lone Rangers who can do it all by yourselves. You are remembering the joy that bursts through you when you gather in conscious community to show your gratitude for Mother Earth, to perform ceremonies and rituals, to sing and dance and worship that invisible force of love that unites us all. You are remembering what it means to be fully embodied, conscious humans, the Godself witnessing the Godself in all
Her multiplicity of forms.
How are you doing all this remembering?
I am here inside of you, whispering sweet memories, showing you in your dreams, and awakening the deep knowing in your heart.
Let’s dream on, baby,
YOUR INNER PILOT LIGHT