The Holy Sh!t Handbook
A guided Journal Experience with Beloved Presence
Hi! My big face in your face.
Up until now, I’ve lived my life through periods of connection, purpose and “aliveness” alternating with feeling stuck, depressed and unsatisfied.
It takes me awhile (every time), to awaken to the fact that I am able to shift my attitude and awareness to create a better experience of living.
It’s incredibly hard in times of stuck to believe that anything will get better. The fear is that it will never change, that I somehow lack the necessary ‘whatever’ to shift the heaviness of living in my current situation.
It’s a terrible feeling.
Disconnected. Lacking passion, focus, opportunity… it feels like I’m wasting my life. I know I have talents and gifts. I had a vision for my life that wasn’t this stagnant mess of ennui… I must not be good enough to bring it all to fruition.
My nephew calls my life the “pursuit of the transcendent.”
He’s not wrong.
But in the midst of the chaos, before we rediscover the calm peace and joy at the centre - the pursuit feels anything but transcendent. It feels chaotic and often bad, filled with guilt and shame and failure and inconsistency and doubt.
There is nothing in our society that prepares us for the life that we are meant to live.
Nothing.
So I wrote a beginners Handbook.
The Holy Sh!t Handbook. A Guided Journal Experience with Beloved Presence.
I wrote this because it’s what I’ve needed - every time I’ve gotten stuck and sank into depression and doubt and shame.
I’ve needed a Divine Reminder.
A reminder - a constant, consistent reminder, to choose to see and believe and think and act in the world the way I know in my heart it was created.
With love and inclusion. One Love.
Every day we can be excited to awake and live, knowing that everything we do is working towards our mutual joy and happiness.
We can do jobs that we enjoy and satisfy, while we work towards fulfilling the visions we have of our lives and our purpose while on Earth.
We can have faith and confidence in our choices.
We can be supported and seen in our lives and our pursuits.
We can spend our time here being fruitful and participate in partnership with the Universe and develop nurturing relationships based in truthful, effective communication.
We can live in a loving world where we give and receive with abundance and gratitude.
I have stopped doubting the joyful visions of my life.
The Holy Sh!t Handbook
A Guided Journal Experience with Beloved Presence.
Divine Reminders to help us bring our greatest visions and daily actions in line with Creation.
I wrote The Holy Sh!t Handbook based on the following foundation beliefs:
There is only Love.
This Creation is made of love. This isn’t something of which we can be convinced. It’s on us to do for ourselves. We have to choose, for just a moment, to allow the possibility of being wrong about the ‘big bad world’ this whole time.
It only takes once - of seeing the world filled with light and love and limitless possibility to change our lives. We’re never quite satisfied with anything less after that.
The HSH was written to help us experience the world of love more often.
There is only Inclusion.
There is no “Them”. There is only “Us”.
We are Descendants of Creator - all of us and together we are w-holy-ness.
Every encounter is a holy encounter because we are meeting Creator face to face in every moment.
It changes how we live life when we behold all the worlds as a great kinship of beings - joined forever and never apart in the mind of Creator.
Now our Minds are One.
Everything that happens is for our best benefit.
We have turned this inheritance of joy and peace into a Pollyanna pejorative, then congratulated ourselves on our sneering cynicism. Calling negativity “being realistic” has as much validity as “everything happens for a reason” and I’d rather live in a Creation that wants the best benefit for me and for everyone.
I don’t understand why bad things happen to good people, or why there is pain and suffering and loss. I don’t have those answers but since it looks like perspective determines reality, I’m going to believe we’re in it together and no hurt is forever.
It’s a lonely, grey and lifeless world to live feeling like we are victims of a chaotic, random universe.
It’s frustrating to feel impotent to effect change. It’s depressing and sad to feel hopeless and ineffectual - always spinning our wheels without gaining traction and feeling like we’re failing all the time.
I get it. I’ve been there - repeatedly, in my life.
Honestly though, looking back - none of it feels inconsequential or random. It’s all part of bringing us here to this moment where we decide to commit to creating a new life for ourselves.
We doubt love and inclusion and then become inconsistent at living in wholeness.
We live in a world made by people ignorant of the the truth of themselves, who have convinced us that life is brutal and fearful and full of attack when the exact opposite is true.
It just takes persistence and effort to bring it to Earth.
Who chooses sadness over happiness? Who chooses fear over peace and joy?
Who chooses attack over love?
No one… but the bridge from one to the other is filled with inconsistency, doubt, shame and guilt and we need constant reminders to keep us practicing love and inclusion on Earth.
It’s a simple premise - but it is the hardest consistent practice that I’ve ever been called to do.
The results are worth it. Hands down.
Love and inclusion and equality - joy and peace and forgiveness. They are all ours to have in life if we can be brave enough to give them to our fellow beings here in the world.
“The purpose of your life is to find your passion. The meaning of your life is to share it.”
Since being guided by Beloved Presence - I have returned to a state of child-like expectancy of a life filled with wonder and joy.
There is hope and excitement and enjoyment in small daily things.
We feel free to be who we are without the need to change anything about ourselves. We know that who we are is loved unconditionally at all times, in all situations because we are one with a loving inclusive Creator.
It changes our life to practice loving oneness with all of Creation - but it’s so, SO easy to forget - and the forgetting leads back to separation and it’s the separation that makes life so hellish.
The Holy Sh!t Handbook is a divine reminder to come back to gratitude for who you really are.
The HSH is a divine reminder to return to acceptance and allowing truth to be what it is in your life. The HSH is a divine reminder that life is love and peace and joy - if we can remember to choose to see it that way first.
We all know how it feels when we’re choosing exclusion and fear and attack. We make plans and goals that don’t happen because we lack the passion and engagement required to connect to the people that actually need our gifts.
We are exhausted by our unfulfilling day jobs. We’re tired and bored and restless. We fill our time with Netflix, movies and video games. We shop beyond our means for things that don’t satisfy our needs.
We repeat depressing habits without mindfulness.
We take excessive naps and over eat and use cleaning and organizing and planning and reading and other “good” habits to avoid feeling our actual feelings.
We pretend to be productive and successful instead of actually accepting the truth of our situation and following the guidance from Beloved Presence that will actually result in happiness.
Trust in your connection with Beloved Presence. The goal for us is happiness.
We’ve already done that life. The life of avoiding and numbing and attacking self and others.
Let’s try a different guide.
We can try a different path - one that turns life into an adventure instead of a chore. We can live a life that makes us eager to wake up in the morning with anticipation.
We can live a life with more passion, more energy and hope. We can live with more patience and acceptance when people and things don’t go as planned. We can be happier in our jobs and still see a way through to opportunities that will change our experience.
We can learn to create and pursue goals and build a future based upon the Guide that never fails. We can build trust in loving inclusion of our existence.
The Holy Sh!t Handbook
A Guided Journal Experience with Beloved Presence.
Divine Reminders to help us bring our greatest visions and daily actions in line with Creation.
Aligning our lives with our highest vision is more often an act of “unlearning” as opposed to adding new information.
We have spent most of our lives telling ourselves terrible stories about what it means to be us and alive on the Earth right now.
“Things don’t work out for me.”
“I’m bad / a loser / stupid / ugly…”
“Success happens for other people.”
We accept this sad version of our lives because it’s often easier to accept our smallness, our wretchedness and failure than it is to believe that we’re loved and valued and worthy of the greatest visions of ourselves.
We are a pile of gold foil-covered chocolates in the hands of Creator. A gift of sweetness to one another.
Few of us are supported or encouraged to hold space for happy life visions. Our families, friends and colleagues aren’t able to do it for themselves - it makes it hard to help others to do the same.
Often, we’re not even sure what would make us happy. We’ve become strangers to ourselves and abandoned our relationship with the wisdom and guidance of Beloved Presence.
We carry a lot of baggage and false stories about the meaning of our lives and our purpose.
We often sacrifice our own needs and wants to satisify others, but in the end neither are happy. We reject the visions of our life that show us the possibilities that would give us the most joy and happiness. We listen to the Divided Mind (ego) that lacks gratitude for anything because it is never satisfied - yet it constantly feeds us a litany of negative feedback to keep us in mental prison.
The Divided Mind makes life a battle - for opportunity, resources, value… it builds a hierarchy of worth where we are either winning at the top or losing anywhere else. Even if it’s in our own head - it’s a tyrant master with blindness as it’s goal.
The truth is far more appealing.
Every encounter is a holy encounter.
Creation is here to deliver whatever we need - our responsibility is learning how to ask with consistency and gratitude. We are empowered to be fully and completely, happy and joyful in this Creation - we just need to be pointed in the right direction and given Divine Reminders to keep us focused.
You are loved. Cherished. Valuable and Worthy.
Your gifts and passions are particular to you. You see the world in a unique and valuable way. Your way is necessary in the world - there are people waiting for what you have to offer.
Whatever your gifts are, they are needed in the world and that secret vision of your life, where you are fantastically happy - is the map you are intended to follow.
A holy clowder encounter.
Follow the correct map.
Give up the heaviness of having to know all the time. Give up the weight of trying to have all the answers or knowing the right thing to do. Give up our flawed small judgements and let Beloved Presence be our Guide.
The Guide that never fails.
It is a freedom to no longer have to know what the right thing is in any given situation - I can ask and trust in the answer.
The Holy Sh!t Handbook takes us on the journey of aligning our self and perspective with a larger, connected whole. Beloved Presence is the answer to every question and the HSH is a Divine Reminder to take with us into the world.
So… what is this thing?
The Holy Sh!t Handbook is a digital download book. It’s 90 pages of reminders of the truth of our whole-i-ness, plus prompts and exercises to help you experience that love and inclusion in the world.
It can be printed and put on a clipboard, or bound with a cover. It can be read on the ebook reader of your choice and used in companionship with a sketchbook or journal - or whatever you use in your life to self-reflect and muse.
It’s definitely intended for those of us with the inclination to write or draw or record our thoughts in some way. It’s also a perfect for someone who wants to start a deeper dialogue with their Self for the first time.
Ella is too lazy to try The Handbook in public.
Action Intended
The Handbook ideas are intended to be taken out into the world and used repeatedly in both easy and difficult situations. The hard part is remembering to ask for the support and Guidance when we’re in a jam.
Practice is the only thing that works and practice is what the Handbook supports - constant, repeated, Divine Reminders.
The Handbook doesn’t work if we keep it in our office or studio or library and forget to bring the experiences out into the world.
I’ve often thought of how easy it is to be in joy and peace in the calm of my own home and how difficult it is to remain in wholeness out in the “marketplace”.
The Handbook will help for the simple reason that practice builds habits, and habits are thoughts and actions we rely on to move us through the sticky parts of living.
This is for you if…
you’re tired of not making headway in your life in any way. If habits of the past haven’t been giving you the results you want - give The Holy Sh!t Handbook a try.
It’s been written with creatives in mind who want to align their lives with their passion and purpose. It doesn’t speak directly to creative pursuits, but more indirectly to mindset and focus and attitude - which are the foundations for creating a life more suitable to your highest visions of what your life could be. This has always been your map - you need the support to remain in that vision, even when things seem to be crumbling apart around you.
Above all else, the handbook was written as a reminder of who you really are and the infallible guidance, love and support available to you at all times. If we can remember to turn to that guidance when we alone are not enough to maintain the vision of the world that is loving and inclusive.
WHoly You
You are worth receiving every joy-filled vision of your soul. Creating that life is why you’re here - becoming w(holy) who you are on the Earth is the reason you’re here.
Your happiness is Creator’s only desire for you. They want for you to filled with joy and love and satisfaction and be able to look on this world with eyes that see w(holiness) in all things.
Your gifts and talents are not an accident.
They are your particular way of sharing your loving truth with the world. Your way is beautiful and needed and necessary.
The world is not whole until we are all sharing our part. This is mine.
The Holysh!t Handbook
A Guided Journal experience of Beloved Presence.