Please welcome back expert career and life coach Tama Kieves, bestselling author of This Time I Dance! Creating the Work You Love who has helped thousands world-wide to discover and live their creative dreams. Woohoo, yes please. Big love and thanks to Tama. Enjoy, Pinkies!

I meet many people blocked to their own desires and I want to wring my hands, in sadness, because I know the joy and awe of living one's dreams in one's lifetime. And I'm like the crazy host at the party that says, "You have to try the ginger chicken... the sesame tofu... the cobbler... the brownies." I want everyone to swallow bliss. I want everyone to feel as though they're standing on the mountain top, having their own personal picnic with God and God just says, can you pass the crackers please, and you do, but you can't help giggling because it's just ridiculous to be this alive.  Some days I am living proof that this is possible -- and I want to picnic with you.

The magic wand: sacred neutrality

So, how come people who are born with talents and genius and infinite goodness, don't know what they want or how to get there? Oh, I could go on about this. But I'll give you a magic wand instead. I want to give you the trick up my sleeve that works every time. I want to give you something that is the essence of my coaching and teaching. I'll call it sacred neutrality. Those two words may not do much for you on first glance. You may have been hoping for "abra cadabra" or some encrypted morsel from the Kabbalah or even some fresh catch of the day from Dr. Phil. Well let me tell you, sacred neutrality is the door. It's the portal. It's the way in to the belly of the Universe. It's the way into the truth and the truth is everything you want.

The wisdom path of A Course in Miracles teaches, "When a situation is dedicated wholly to truth, peace is inevitable."  That's how it works. When I'm practicing sacred neutrality, I'm just looking for the truth. I'm not defending against it. When I listen to a student or client, I am observing and listening. I don't find anything negative. It's all communication. It's all energy. I'm curious. I'm not conclusive. I don't know what it means. I don't have the same background story, the same pesky, repetitive inner narrators, the ones that talk too loud, like maybe your Aunt from Brooklyn, who says, "So, what, so now you think you're a Rockefeller?" loud enough for even the dead Rockefellers to hear.

I consider myself a sacred witness.

Everything gives me information. I'm not just stalking someone's right career, I'm stalking their consciousness. I'm trying to discover why they choose what they choose. I want to know what they believe about everything because I know their beliefs are the root of their choices. I know that it is often just one belief between us and the floodgates. After all, a vibrant career or marriage is just the reflection of a vibrant mind and soul. I am looking to find where someone has limited their love and genius, chosen a wounded perspective instead. I am not looking to make this self wrong. I am looking to hold its hand, hear its story, and choose another destiny.

Hinduism reveres the different aspects of God and one of them is Shiva, the destroyer. Sacred neutrality will destroy your old stories about who you are and what you can have in this life time. In the presence of love, everything falls away but the truth. My job is to be the one with a tiny pickax who dismantles old identities. I prefer to work with gentle tools, but life has often preceded me. You know, first it's the whisper, then the nudge, and then the 2 x 4. Lately, I have seen more people who have ignored the 2 x 4. That's when the Sequoia falls, and let me tell you, that while it may be silent in the forest when no one is around, it's like a rock concert in a canyon when it falls on your life.

I love being a sacred witness. Sometimes, someone needs to admit something, confess something, and I am there to hold it. Everything is loved. Everything is forgiven. That's the thing about entering present, sacred time together. The past is in the past and we have a chance to make things different now.

What do I listen for?

I am hunting heat. That's all I'm doing. I've following cues. I don't have fancy barometers in my bag of tricks. I've long ago ripped up assessment tests and diagnostics because as much as I want to help define someone, I'm more interested in expanding them first. Besides, the soul will always lead us.

I can feel the heat because I don't have anything against it. I don't have anything for it. It's my neutrality that can allow me to herald discoveries. I don't have to please their father. I don't have to make up for a botched marriage, a stint with alcoholism, or a crazy sister. I have nothing to prove. I have nothing to gain. I'm just paying attention. Sometimes I feel like the cosmic optometrist who simply puts a new lens over someone's eyes. "Can you see clearer like this?" I ask. "Does this float your boat?" "Does this make you giggle?" "Does this make you course with strength and possibilities?" "Are you seeing God yet?" I don't have any invested interest in what they choose. I know that something has already chosen them.

I'm delighted by my students' dreams and desires. I am infinitely fascinated with what fascinates them. They begin to sparkle like rubies when they speak the truth. I can't help but find myself entranced. I am captivated by their innocence, the way lines fall off their face when they speak about what they love, the way their voice warbles and trills like dawn birdsong after a long winter. I am always taken by what others love -- the choreography behind it all -- because when you really get to see what someone loves, it's often the ultimate healing for whatever they have walked through in life. With distance -- the master plan unfolds, the chess game is revealed, the chemistry makes sense, and the algebra adds up, and it's all I can do to just not slap my knees, like a hillbilly in a big perfect factory pumping out geniuses, and say, "Well, would you look at that!"

I wanted to share some of this with you.

Take a play out of my playbook. Be neutral. Be kind. Be available to yourself. The secrets are all there. They are plain as day in the right day in the right light. Approach yourself with infinite love that can wait until the end of time, if that's what it will take for you to know your truth. Be exquisite in your interest. Listen to everything you think and feel with sacred neutralit y-- the way a butterfly would look at you, no opinion, no history, no agenda, just a sense of beingness, a respect for another living entity. Listen with fascination and follow the lights.

I love how the Buddhist nun Pema Chödrön encourages a similar strategy for all of life. She says, "A much more interesting, kind, adventurous and joyful approach to life is to begin to develop our curiosity, not caring whether the object of our inquisitiveness is bitter or sweet. To lead a life that goes beyond pettiness and prejudice and always wanting to make sure that everything turns out on our own terms, to lead a more passionate, full, and delightful life than that, we must realize that we can endure a lot of pain and pleasure for the sake of finding out who we are and what this world is, how we tick and how our world ticks, how the whole thing just is."

Remember, it's such a deep and precious intimacy to know what you want -- and to allow what you want -- and to want what you want. It's such a prayer, a sense of forgiveness, of being unabashed, and of sparkling with freedom. It is a union to finally speak the name of your beloved, to allow yourself simply to love what you love and to value and claim it, praise it, and devote your life to it.