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Inside

Introduction

We all revel in a great love story or reading the prose of those highly inspired by love's awakenings. We want to be swept off our feet and live happily ever after. We want to have it all, and live the fairy tale. We devour romance novels and swoon in the movie theaters as we wonder how to make our own love fantasies come to life. We daydream, imagine, and ask if it will ever happen to us. We are all magically drawn to Somewhere In Time, The Notebook and of course... Cinderella. We leave the theater saying, "Oh, I want THAT!"

But who is Cinderella really? Why does her story hold such a treasured place in our romantic hearts? Her experience of being controlled and held down by her dominating stepmother and two equally evil forces in the guise of her step-sisters, only to overcome and be uplifted through the power of her own desire, is one that holds universal hope for us all. At one moment she was in rags, her life in terminal tatters. She felt that surely her fate was sealed. But through the power of her desire, in the miracle of a holy instant, her life began anew. Her seemingly hopeless plight was transformed into living a waking dream, through the power of the spirit forces, her Fairy Godmother.

The key to the timeless magic of Cinderella is not so much in the perfect fit of the glass slipper, or the tireless search by her Prince to find her. It is in the depths of tattered and hopeless despair where her journey began. As Cinderella chooses to turn her thoughts upward, she takes us from the realm of the beaten down and barely ordinary, to the life transforming spirit of the majestic peaks of the extraordinary. Cinderella allows us to not only experience the possibility of magic, transformation, and love, but when we remember her story we are joyously inspired to hope and believe, "I can have that dream life too!"

But who is today's Cinderella? Does her story still fit the old archetypal textbook model of a standard search and rescue mission? Or is there a conscious transformation revealing itself in Cindy's twenty-first century experience? The rebirth of Cinderella comes to life through her desire to change her circumstance. It is then that she awakens to her own spiritual powers. Today's Cindy does not need a Prince to rescue her. She has learned how to authentically rescue herself. Creating her enchanted love is merely confirmation of her unlimited ability to recreate her life anew.

Like my soul-sister Cinderella, I too, had come to a point in my life where I was downtrodden, defeated, and filled with hopeless despair. My journey down under began with my innocent and life long desire to consciously experience every miraculous aspect of birth and motherhood.

My story began in 1992, at the age of 30, when I married what my friend's and family believed to be a "nice Jewish boy". I finally experienced the highest of my life's highs when I had the children I had so longed for all my life. It was truly maternal bliss. However, my bliss was unexpectedly peppered with rising conflict between my former husband and myself. We were faced with parenting choices that caused our respective alter egos to rise to the surface. We became masterful at pushing each other's unresolved emotional buttons, and acquired the art of being able to bring out the worst in each other.

The road to my ultimate destination of motherhood was nothing like the fairy tale dream I had envisioned it to be. I thought that during this time I would have been celebrating my glorious rite of passage into motherhood. Sadly however, it was one of the rudest of awakenings to learn that my former husband not only disrespected my maternal vision for these parenting choices, but he vengefully sought to vilify me for it.

Becoming a Mother for the first time, I held idealized and profound visions of an ecstatic soul journey connecting me with the heavenly spirits of my unborn children. This inspired me to create what I felt was a truly authentic feminist birth. I sought to have an experience different from the spiritually disconnected standard hospital process; I didn't want this mechanistic based paradigm to dictate how my body should conform. I needed to know I could keep my feminine dignity. I believed there was an inherent wisdom within my body that I could trust.

As a result, I went through an in-depth, eye-opening exploration of all my options. I read everything I could find about pregnancy and birth. My desire was to know my true feminine power through the most powerful of all acts; creating, nurturing and bringing forth life into this world.

The deepest recesses of my heart beckoned me to believe that this profound right of passage deserved to be more sacred and intimate, rather than invasive or surgical. I knew some women who had the birth I dreamed of, and I was ready to join them in their sacred sisterhood. I believed it was more than possible for my baby and I to walk away from our birth experience with our bodies and souls intact. I ecstatically awaited this once-in-a-lifetime miracle.

But the reality of my first birth experience was anything but the beautiful, spiritual vision I had created. Somehow I got swallowed up in the illusion of the hospital birth machine that stood for the promise of a safe and satisfying birth. Without realizing it, I had lost my personal power and trust in the wisdom of my own body, to the cold, clinical procedures and automation that completely took over my birth experience. Unbelievably, I was smashed by the cultural Americana techno-birth Mack truck. It was one of the most emotionally pain filled nightmares I ever endured. This experience left me shattered to my core, not unlike the way rape shatters the spirit of its victims. My once ecstatic mothering soul was left bewildered, exhausted and spiritually deflated. This is where my Cinderella story really begins. Carl Jung said there is no coming to consciousness without pain. This birth experience was my awakening. This was my epiphany.

It was soon after the birth of my first son that I discovered how much I cherished and wanted to protect the sanctuary of his childhood. I had begun to see the world and my parenting choices through the clearest lens of all - that of the growing consciousness of my child. I metamorphosed into conscious motherhood and began to trust this intuitive parenting that was guiding my parenting choices. Researching my birth options was just the beginning of my maternal instincts being brought to life within me. Giving myself permission to seek second opinions and trust my intuition had transformed me at my very core. It caused me to question, with good reason, even the most basic of cultural assumptions about birth, feminism, child rearing, health, and education. But this new perspective and insight had become the very foundation of a bewildering conflict that was developing between my former husband and me.

Unfortunately, the very last thing that he wanted was any kind of personal transformation; not for himself and certainly not for his wife. He was engulfed in an ocean of conformity and rigidity. While growing up, these were the tickets required to get the approval and affection that his emotionally starved soul sought. My awakening conflicted with his upbringing and beliefs. Now he was becoming less and less able to exert his control over me and keep me inside his safe little box.

How could I have known that the idyllic life I had always dreamed of was about to spiral out of control? Our clashing values had crumbled the foundation of our marriage. Unbelievably, my dreams of "forever" were soon to be replaced by becoming part of one of the most heart-wrenching of statistics; 50% of marriages end in divorce.

So at the age of 37, I became a single Mother of my three and five year old sons. Now I had to begin a new emotional and spiritual journey. I had to focus on finding a way of moving past the pain-filled stigma of being divorced, and all the personal doubt and shame that went with it.

Then, when I thought I could bear no more, my world was rocked when the unimaginable happened to me as a Mother. Just a few months after my divorce, my former husband embarked on a vicious custody dispute that left me emotionally spent, spiritually bewildered, and financially ruined. To my amazement, at the very foundation of the trial was the question of my judgment in my mothering choices; those choices that had been sprouted from my maternal instincts and were solidly supported by my intense research into conscious parenting.

How had my life-long dream turned into a malicious court nightmare? How had the very feeling of a higher connection to the wisdom of the eternal spirit of motherhood been contemptuously perverted and twisted into a cultural based cause for questioning my judgment? My fairy tale dream of motherhood and my deep commitment to my maternal instincts had kicked the shit out of me. How did I end up in this unimaginable place? I begged God for my life to be over.

How was it possible then for me to go from this dark place in my life to living the ecstasy of the Cinderella dream that is now mine to share? What did Cinderella do at her lowest point? She dared to dream a bigger dream. It was her power of desire that lifted her out of her struggles. From this tattered place I shifted my focus upward. I became committed to finding and using every aspect of eternal spiritual truth to recreate my own heavenly life on earth. I embarked on a spiritual soul train. It has been a never-ending thrill ride to different lands of contrasting experiences that I have used to creatively manifest many life changing miracles.

Even from this place however, the idea of moving on to find a date, or a new partner, let alone a partner that might actually be my soul mate, seemed daunting at best and very nearly impossible. After all, I was not exactly the most desirable catch, through traditional worldly eyes that is.

I went forward with the grace of spirit, and I made the deliberate choice to focus on the qualities that were non-negotiable for my eternal lover. I knew I could not dwell on what was lacking in the past. With my heart felt vision now complete there was no stopping this cosmic collision. I had completed my process of creating him in my mind's eye, and through the power of our pure mutual desire my Prince materialized for me less than two hours later. The life force that began flowing between us escalated at break-neck speed and we both felt the explosion of the universe's second big bang.

My confidence in the spiritual forces of the universe to conspire to allow us to "have it all" has paved the path for me to embrace the ecstasy of this enchanted love into my life. With my faith in my spirituality, I resurrected the belief that I could have it all. Yes, my new love was one hundred percent divinely inspired. There is no accident or coincidence here. The spiritual forces of the universe yielded to our intense desires to find one another. He is just one of many miraculous manifestations that I have deliberately created with the awareness of my inner powers. He is the essence of the Divine for which I had always been searching. And yes, he truly is my Prince Charming.

The souls of my children eagerly embraced his presence into their lives. Having us all of us together put the finishing touches on the vision of the conscious family which I had always yearned for. We are each other's soul mates and fairy tale dreams can come true.

Will there be other negative experiences I'll be asked to hurdle? Undoubtedly. Does that mean that fairy tales really aren't true? Absolutely not. The gift of the transformed twenty-first century Cinderella is in the power of knowing that our deepest desires can be answered through our own creative powers. Whatever omniscient power we feel is outside of us, is really the life giving creative power that lies within us. No matter what our current circumstance, we have the power to choose where we focus our attention. Through our active attention on the choice of our thoughts and feelings, we create our own reality. With hope, faith, patience and trust, combined in the invisible ethers of time and space, our prayers can really be answered.

Through my passionate and contrasting journey into motherhood I learned that the universal spiritual laws have proven themselves over time and time again. Having it all is not just for a privileged few, it is the birthright of everyone who yearns and learns and applies the principles. I now invite you, wherever you are on your path, to know you can have it all, to want the rest of your life to start as soon as possible, to go from here to eternity, and believe that fairy tales can come true.

Epilogue

Once upon a time, in a land far away, there lived a very dashing and charming Prince. He searched the land far and wide and vowed that he would indeed find his enchanted love. He took a glass slipper and filled it with ideals of his perfect Princess, and dared to dream he could call her forth. He never gave up believing he could have it all and live a fairy tale life. At times, he could be found journaling and blissfully daydreaming with loving anticipation about his beloved. Before he even met her, he smiled in sweet delicious knowing that she would feel him calling her forth into their united reality. He never doubted for a moment that she was on her way to meeting him one day soon.

Almost simultaneously, with her struggles as inspiration, this very tattered Cinderella created an unbelievable vision of her soul's yearning desire for a life mate. She quietly daydreamed and remembered that on a cold winter's eve many moons before, with the planets and stars in miraculous harmonious alignment, she had silently said a prayer beseeching the powers of the universe. The prayer was heard throughout the galaxies, and she sensed the angels and fairies scurrying throughout the heavens. Then, in an instant, her fairy Godmother appeared and she gently reminded Cinderella of her own inner powers. She guided her to scribe on parchment the longings of her heart's deepest desire. When the feelings and the words to describe them were complete, she was ready to be found. In that moment, in the land far away, Prince Charming felt her almost instantly. Across the many rivers and streams, fields and forests, mountains and miles, he recognized the feeling from somewhere in Time, a love that travels through the eternities.

He looked past the tattered experiences of her earlier life. He looked into her eyes and ecstatically embraced all of who she was becoming. The distant lands that separated them proved meaningless; the love that bound them was eternal and unstoppable. Without a moment's hesitation he beckoned her to share the rest of life's abundant journey. Through the power of love she was awakened from the slumber of her tattered past. Her Prince had knelt at her feet to usher her into their Magic Kingdom...