Julieanne Chazotte

We are Fundamentally Ok!

Mon, 15 Jul 2019 13:20:27 -0700

When I first got into studying psychology and consciousness, it was definitely coming from a natural interest, but it was also because I felt something was inherently wrong with how I was feeling.

I didn’t feel fundamentally ok. I was easily knocked off my center and felt insecure much of the time. It looked to me as though if I could heal enough of my “issues”, then I’d be ok. What I didn’t see though was that this put being ok outside of me. It meant I would have to continue striving for something different than what was in order to be at ease.

Over the years, I’ve seen that thinking I have to fix myself in order to be happy and ok is no different than thinking I have to make “enough” money or have the “right” job in order to be happy. This doesn’t make any sense though. Being ok and happy internally does not come from something being different outside of ourselves. If it did, people would be much happier based on how often humans currently try this approach.

It’s precisely because it doesn’t work that way that we see so much uneasiness in the world.

What’s more accurate is that just like underneath the rockiness of the waves, there is still, peaceful water, underneath our ever-changing emotional experience is a peaceful feeling. Beyond thought, there is a sense that we are inherently ok.

My guess is we’ve all had a glimpse of what I’m pointing to here. That moment when your mind goes quiet and even though nothings different externally you just have this feeling, this knowing that all is well.

This experience use to look like an anomaly to me that was nice to have but it didn’t mean much. It wasn't until I looked here from insight that I realized I was actually onto something.

Recently I saw our fundamental okness even more clearly. I noticed I wasn't feeling anxious about something that had previously been bothering me. When I reflected on what had changed, I saw that I was feeling this deep okness and the...Read More

White Culture in Spiritual Communities

Sun, 07 Mar 2021 12:40:49 -0800

The thing about culture is it has a lot of invisible thought in it and much of it has been passed down from generation to generation.

We are born into it and unless it’s challenged, we don’t question it.

I remember moving to Arizona from Jersey and my boss asked me if I was a Sailor. I couldn’t understand why he was asking me that. Turns out I cursed a lot. I had no idea that it was something I had picked up culturally until I started listening and realized that no one around me was talking like that. This changed me.

Simply going outside my fishbowl changed me.

This is a big point worth reflection.

Because white culture is considered the norm, as Nyarkoa said, people not of that culture have to learn and adapt well to it in order to get by, to be safe, and to survive, but this is not true the other way around, which means it’s seen as just the way things are.

But it will be found in us as white people going outside our norms and culture that things will change for the better because it is the invisible thought of our culture that is creating the problem to begin with.

Our systems and policies are designed with the contaminated and unhealthy thought of white cultural conditioning, and it permeates even our spiritual communities.

After George Floyd was murdered, I saw the conversations happening within and outside our spiritual communities and they were almost identical, even between spiritual communities themselves.

Here is some of what I noticed mostly white people doing:

Taking this as an opportunity to teach spiritual lessons to a person who has experienced racism (i.e. “but our experience is coming via thought” or “your not neutral”)
Denying racism all together
Getting defensive
Making it about their comfort of lack thereof
Having a lack of understanding of history or of systemic...Read More

Uncovering a Healthy Mind

Thu, 17 Oct 2019 12:07:23 -0700

Last weekend I had the good fortune of attending the first weekend of the Soul-Centered Series led by Rohini and Angus Ross and Aaron Turner.

As I listened to what was being shared about how our experience is created, something so ordinary and unexpected happened.

I realized that the feeling behind much of my habitual thinking is the feeling of concern.

It went from being something I was blind to to something I could see so clearly.

I could all of a sudden see that the feeling of concern is not actually helpful or even related to any of the myriad of things I might want to feel concerned about.

It’s a habit my mind picked up at some point and the feeling of concern was so compelling to me, I innocently assumed there was a point to it that I should care about and even be vigilant for.

I hadn’t seen that I get concerned frequently about a number of...Read More

I Thought I could Tame Life!

Mon, 03 Jun 2019 19:51:23 -0700

Last week was filled with a tornado of different experiences. I was taking fertility medication and experienced some rather fascinating emotions. I also found out, about 15 minutes before I was going to an improv evening that I had been looking forward to for over a month, that I had lost my dear friend to cancer.

My friend was and still is an absolute force to be reckoned with and the impact that she has on the lives of those who knew her (and those who didn't) is powerful.

She taught people to stand their ground for what they believed in and to do the right thing even if it means ruffling a lot of feathers. She had this incredible ease and joy and lightness even when it was heavy. She was an incredible inspiration for so many.

I had recently gone to Tijuana to visit her during her treatment there and at the time things seemed to be heading in a very positive direction for her. With a turn of events though after that, it became clear, there wasn't much time left.

When I heard the news, I was in shock. I thought about whether or not I would go to the improv evening and in that moment a flash of her laughter and her beautiful smile crossed my mind and so I went.

I felt the shock and I soaked up the laughter and the present moment as much as I could. The next day it all settled in and tears came along with a psychic storm of thought.

During this storm, I reflected on an article by my colleague, mentor and friend, Rohini Ross, that spoke about how try as we may, we cannot find the security we long for outside ourselves.

When I read that, I saw how I had been trying ever so sneakily to tame life, to make it bow at my command, to get it all to fit in a pretty box with nice bows so that I could feel safe.

It was invisible to me that I had been doing this, and I saw how much energy I was actually using in that effort.

Last week was a recipe for seeing...Read More

We Live in a World of Thought

Mon, 08 Apr 2019 18:17:41 -0700

I spent this past weekend immersed with some amazing people and incredible teachers at the Three Principles Practitioner Conference in Manhattan Beach, CA.

As I soaked in all the Wisdom and humanity that was shared over 4 days, I felt a feeling of gratitude and presence and love come over me.In the past, I would have attributed this feeling to the speakers themselves. And while they helped point us all in that direction, it is so unbelievably valuable to recognize that the feeling getting woken up is the Truth of who and what we are.One of the echos I keep hearing as I relax my mind and feel the depth of the good feeling is that we live in a world of thought.To the intellect, this could seem like a maddening statement, however with a clear, reflective mind, the truth rings loud.I am grateful to remember at another level that experience itself is neutral, and that what I'm making of the experience itself is coming through thought.Today I feel a deeper presence moment to moment and a recognition that whatever thoughts are passing through me are temporary and illusory in nature.The only constant I have ever known is this good feeling beyond thought, at the center of who we are. There is freedom here. There is a compass here. I can see each moment with fresh eyes, and know that it's that Loving feeling that guides me. All else pales in comparison.

Art of Loving Family Around the Holidays

Sat, 22 Dec 2018 15:55:39 -0800

My personal experience has been that a good portion of my habitual thinking began as a child, and that seems to be true for most humans.

Now why that habitual thinking forms or when it happened exactly doesn’t seem to matter as much as seeing it for what it is, habitual and totally innocent.

It makes sense to me that when people go home for the holidays, this type of thinking can occur, and if insight has not yet happened, continues to look very real.

It has been so helpful for me in all areas of my life to see how unbelievably innocent this all is.

To most people it looks like their experience is coming from their family members behavior or the overall dynamics.

My experience has shown me that freedom comes when we see that it’s coming from thought in the moment that looks real but actually isn’t.

Then when we get triggered that crazy Uncle Larry chews with his mouth open or that an absent minded sibling forgets to include us in some tradition, we can see that our experience isn’t actually coming from that and we no longer take our thinking so seriously.

Inevitably then, the thinking settles down and we see with greater perspective and with greater perspective comes better choices and warmer feelings.

The most freeing thing of all is to see how unbelievably innocent it all really is. Our state of mind, their state of mind. It’s not personal, but rather impersonal. It’s a simple misuse of this incredible gift we have of thought.

If instead of thinking challenging thoughts around family are real in some way, we get to see it’s simply feedback we are heading on a thought train that doesn’t feel good.

The good news is we can go beyond thought, and we can follow the good feelings that are our nature and the entire experience changes.

Wishing you all happy holidays and hope this helps anyone who may be challenged at this time of year.

Much love

Freedom of Mind

Fri, 08 Dec 2017 16:40:43 -0800

One of the best parts about being a Transformational Life & Business Coach is that I get to see people's experiences from up close, but with enough distance to have perspective.

The thing that has stood out to me lately as I sit with people, is that the more freedom people have from their mind, the better their life seems to go.

Having more freedom from their minds doesn't mean that they experience less thought, interestingly enough. It often seems to mean that their minds are running at a steadier pace, that their thoughts don't look like reality to them, and that they can hear a subtler type of intelligence that plays out in all of our lives.

What this experience seems to give people is the ability to live in synch with their natural rhythm.

When I watch people get in synch like this, they often talk about having more spaciousness inside themselves, better quality thinking, and the feeling of being inspired. Their level of presence increases and subtle things begin to change as they have simple insights that course-correct them within their human experience. It's as if static comes off the line, and the person attunes to a good, natural feeling within.

This is a privilege to see. I can never guess what is going to change for someone, or what they are going to hear that wakes them up, but I can bet money on the fact that as they understand the principles behind what is creating their experience better, something will transform.

The Story of You!

Tue, 28 Nov 2017 15:23:06 -0800

I can remember hearing this quote for the first time and being blown away by it, even though I really didn't know what it was getting at. Somehow, I knew there was a truth to it.

More and more, I can see how incredibly easy it can be for us to believe the habitual thoughts we have about ourselves, about our lives, and about each other. These thoughts create a feeling and get projected out onto whatever is happening, making it look as if the outside world is creating our internal experience.

The truth though is that we are having a thought in that moment, that we give our attention to, and our consciousness (awareness) brings that thought and feeling alive for us.

This alone has been a profound thing for me to see. I no longer think that the outside world is what is creating my internal experience. I can more clearly see that it's my thinking about the outside world that creates it.

What really drove this home for me was when I realized that two people can be in the same exact situation and experience it completely differently. Seeing that each of us is having our own separate reality because of the thinking we choose to bring to life, helped me see that reality is in fact an illusion as Einstein stated.

It has also been powerful for me to see that much of our thinking comes from a collective story that we tell together. In the end however, it is our belief in this thinking that brings it to life within us, and the amazing news is that we have the capacity for fresh thought, which means that at any moment our reality can shift based on a new thought coming in that we put our attention to.

I had the experience of fresh thought yesterday while watching Westworld on HBO. It's a show about a futuristic park, looked after by robotic "hosts", allowing visitors to live in imagined narratives. No matter how real the fantasy may look, there are no consequences for visitors, allowing any wish they have to be...Read More

The Power of Fresh Thought

Fri, 24 Nov 2017 17:43:20 -0800

I've recently become aware of the immense power behind Fresh Thought. We've all experienced this phenomena. It might have gone something like this:

You're mulling over a challenge that you're having at work and nothing seems to come of it other than wishing you knew what to do. Then all of a sudden, in the shower, when you're singing or washing or whatever you're doing in there, it hits you like a ton of bricks. There's a feeling of excitement and if it were a movie scene, you'd come running out of the shower and forget to turn the water off. Eureka, you've got it!

This is the experience of Fresh Thought.

Fresh thought is epic! It's the opposite of stale thought. And what I realized about it recently is that it's available to us in a moment to moment basis in service to our well-being, not just for select occasions in the shower. After seeing this, I've spent less and less time ruminating on things, struggling for the answer, hoping it was all going to be ok, and more time being open to new ideas, inspiration, clarity, and revelation.

At the personal level, I thought, "Wow! This is huge. It takes way less energy and the quality of my thinking drastically improves." It didn't occur to me until this morning that there is a more global implication of this universal principle.

If at the personal level, I can become aware of stale thinking, we can do it at a more global level as well. A good example of this to me, would be the recent events with Harvey Weinstein.

Collectively, it's as if the stale thought of, "Unfortunately, this is how it is and there's nothing I can do" was no longer tolerable, and so a new thought emerged of, "This needs to change. We need to change this. This is no longer acceptable."

If this can happen within a system that has been setup long before the movie business, then it can happen with anything we experience together.

Once we see the...Read More

Embracing the Unknown

Tue, 21 Nov 2017 17:58:20 -0800

I use to think that there would come a time when I felt like I knew what I was doing. I was also under the false impression that I was one of the only people who didn't know what they were doing to begin with.

The thought that I needed to know was causing me stress and impacting how I was showing up in social settings, at work, and at home. I was consistently anxious that I would somehow miss the mark for not knowing.

It hasn't been until recently that I have begun to see clearly that we are really always in the unknown, and that this space is in fact safe.

What I have found by embracing this truth is that I am much more open to the resourcefulness of my wisdom to guide me in real time. It use to be that I reserved wisdom for special occasions and worked really hard to "know what I was doing" the rest of the time.

Now, it's quite the opposite. I am much more comfortable than I was before in being in unknown situations and look forward to the creative impulse that will come forward in response to whatever it is that I am engaged in.

This has small implications and big implications. Everyday decisions have gotten easier for me because I see that whatever feels right inside of me is most likely the best decision for me to make at that time. If I'm unsure still, I have a much better sense than ever before about whether to wait for more information to come in or act and respond to whatever is needed after I make the decision.

On a bigger scale, being comfortable that we are always in the unknown has assisted me in engaging in growing my business from a place of wisdom rather than from a place of insecurity as to whether the decision I am making is the right one or not. I can't tell you how huge this simple shift has been for me.

I went from feeling like an amateur as a coach to feeling like a business owner. I went from feeling trepidatious most of the time, to feeling more empowered and...Read More