When you allow yourself to feel what you feel without judging the feeling or blaming yourself or others, magic begins to move in your life. Feelings are raw energy, and when things are in motion, massive abundance has space to land. All healing lies on the other side of permission. Allowing. Creating space to Be present with what is, when it is.

Pain is a real felt experience. Sadness and grief and love and hopelessness are all portals to the divine. If we allow ourselves to feel it when we feel it, if we allow ourselves compassion and grace, if we pray, we take care of ourselves, we dance, weep, rest, wail, get still, we get better. - these are all symptoms of a healthy nervous system, of a healthy ecosystem.

The healing or mental health "industries" do their clients a disservice when they give over the message that we will "heal all our wounds." Most clients, when coming to me in the midst of a deep healing or spiritual journey, are still wondering where their future utopia that was promised to them will be found, and why they are still triggered if they "already worked through/ dealt with/ took care of/ processed that thing."

Someone asked my close friend recently, "How is Rivky so happy all the time?" My friend, who witnesses me often (and my clients know this as well), answered candidly: "It's because she lets herself feel sadness and anger, she alchemizes her grief, she lets her emotions move through her. She isn't happy all the time. She is allowing herself to feel all the time."

And it's true, I give myself permission to feel. I move grief and rage, devastation and joy - often. I don't shame my feelings anymore, that's the truth. I let them move through me, over and over again, and thereby free myself into the present moment over and over again... where all of life lives.

And I don't skip out on the joy. Everything, including the deepest pain, when fully felt, has something exquisite about it.

I feel my feelings... often. I just don't choose to identify with my feelings anymore or make a story or diagnosis about what my feelings mean about me, who I am, my nervous system, or my capacity. I see my feelings and your feelings as a sign of health. I don't judge them, shame them, suppress them, or choose to over-process them. I just choose to let them be, let them move, let them leave, let them stay. I don't choose to put them in a hierarchy of bad or good/ right or wrong. I just choose to let them exist, as they are, when they are, how they are.

And I always remind myself, many times a day: "You are the You feeling the feeling, you are not the feeling itself. You are You... your soul, your presence, your pure You energy."

Our freedom gets to be our sacred duty and gift to ourselves. No one will free us into the present moment, where life, with all it's inherent beauty and disappointment, pain, and hope, and everything in between lives, besides for us.

Being with what IS without judging or creating a story about it is the most sure path to heaven on earth that I know of.

Not a fake curated perfectionism feeding Heaven on Earth, but a real, alive, messy, pulsing art-filled heart open, grounded reality Heaven on Earth.