I’ve been meditating on a daily basis for over 30 years,  and been on a spiritual journey of self discovery and inner realization since 1983.

I’ve also been teaching meditation and coaching people in their journey to find inner happiness, joy and peace, for over 2 decades.

My experiences in this life have led me to my deepest awarenesses. They have  given me compassion and understanding of the  human condition.

They have given me the ability to not only transform my own life, but to help  transform, inspire, and encourage others in creating a more joyous, loving, and conscious life of their own.

I knew as a young child I was here on earth for a reason and a purpose. Since singing and acting came very naturally to me, I imagined my reason was to entertain. Right out of high school between the years of 1975-2006 I worked professionally as a singer and actress in many different jobs. As a singer, I toured the U.S and U.K. with Frankie Vallie and the Four seasons, Perry Como and Chris Hillman. I have done numerous commercials, acting and singing, on and off camera, several TV shows, and 2 movies “Hook” and Indy film “Salt.” I played Rhetta Cupp in four companies of “Pump Boys and Dinettes,” played three characters in “And Baby Makes Seven” by Paula Vogel, and worked with actor/playwright Raymond J. Barry for 10 years,  performing two of his plays “Once in Doubt” and “Mother’son.” in four different theaters. We took Mother’son to Scotland for the Edinburgh festival in 1995.

  

I became a mother to a beautiful daughter in 1996. When she was around five I started showing her songs on the piano. A year later she was at a birthday party playing piano and gathering a crowd. She finished her songs to a huge applause of grownups and children, and  began telling everyone I was her teacher. A mother at that party asked me if I would teach her daughter as well, and I said yes. Word of mouth soon spread and all of a sudden I was teaching non-traditional piano and singing and songwriting to children and adults. This was something I never set out to do, but I was enjoying it. It gave me an opportunity to inspire a love of music in my students and also to teach them to create their own music.

During my touring days I developed quite a drug problem. I was very fortunate to live through that very dark period of my life. I stopped all drugs and alcohol at the age of 27 in 1983, and I have been clean and sober ever since. This period taught me that I was asleep. And knowing that I was asleep gave me the ability to wake up and become conscious; conscious of my thoughts, my actions, my habits, and my choices.

  

My tumultuous past led me to embark on a spiritual journey and I began to meditate on a daily basis in 1988. I was transforming my life moment by moment, becoming the women I always knew I was, but had not become due to so many unconscious choices and detours. Now I was on the road to freedom to experience and achieve  joy,  peace and an unconditional love, that had nothing to do with my outside circumstances.

I started working individually with women and men to improve the quality of their lives. I was teaching them the tools I had discovered that helped me. I began feeling and seeing amazing changes and transformations in myself, and in the people I was working with. It became apparent to me that I needed to put what I knew into a book. I felt very comfortable sitting meditating with people, counseling and even speaking to large groups. But writing? I had no experience or confidence. I was so sure I couldn’t sit down and write my thoughts that I asked a friend to come over and sit at the computer while I just talked. Weeks later I went back to that document I dictated to my friend, and began to take one idea at a time and expound on it. From then on I was on my own at the computer. This was the beginning of my journey as a writer. Throughout the next couple of years I filled word documents with stories, insights and ideas. There was no formal book just word documents.

In 2008 I put together Meditation, Affirmation, and Conscious Choices Workshops. In these workshops I taught how to cultivate a relationship with joy, peace and unconditional love with the tool of meditation. I taught how to re-record over negative thinking with the tools of positive affirmations and mirror work. I taught how to recognize habits of fear, faultfinding, doubt, anger, guilt, sadness, impatience, lack, and replace them with new habits of faith, trust, compassion, joy, patience, and abundance, using the tool of conscious choices verses reactions.

In the beginning of 2009, working 4 to 6 hours daily, I started writing and rewriting the now 18 word documents I had accumulated over the years. It was incredibly exhilarating. Sometimes it felt as if it was writing itself. Other times, all that I was writing about was put to the test. The negative thoughts that would arise, the unconscious habits I had built that had to be smashed. The doubts, the fears, the resistance, all having to be transmuted to trust, faith, and willingness.  I had to reach inside of myself and bypass all the “I don’t know what I’m doing thoughts” and “Who do I think I am thoughts” and find a way to finish my book.

  

I had two different titles for the book. I went on the Internet and they were both taken. One was a Carl Jung book. Well I was in good company. I went into meditation one evening and when I came out the title came with me. “Silent M.a.g.i.c. and Other Remedies” It was later that the meaning of the word M.a.g.i.c. came to light. After that I realized it was already written and all I needed to do was show up to the keyboard and let that which was already done flow through me. I finished the book within the next 5 months.

Today I am still coaching people privately, giving meditation classes and teaching piano, singing, and songwriting. As for the future I am looking forward to bringing my workshops, now based on my book, all over the world. Entertaining others was definitely fun, and I love teaching, but nothing compares to helping another human being  transform their live and cultivate a spiritual practice that leads them to becoming their greatest selves. This is surely my reason, my purpose for being here on earth.

Photo By Amy Barnard