We become curious apprentices of our own lives, willing to keep our eyes open to ourselves even when we would rather shrink away in disgust or hide behind fear.

We listen to the twitch in our back, the pang in our stomach, the depth charge in our headache, the cold we get every time we visit our parents.

We offer ourselves and ask from others the sacrament of forgiveness.

We ask, "What would I be willing to die for?"

We become miracle detectives, spotting one or creating one every day.

For every complaint we launch into the world, we counter with an action of gratitude.

We are willing to stand up and demand to be counted.

We declare the future we want and realize that to create it, we must allow ourselves to learn -- we aren't supposed to know. We need only be open to learning.

We let pieces of our ego be chipped away until we can look ourselves in the eye without blushing.

We breathe into the whole of our days and let them run through us, refusing to sip the sweet with a thimble and gulp the sour with a bucket.

We recount all the ways one person can make a difference in the world and then stake our claim to making our difference.

To paraphrase poet Derek Walcott, we feast on our life and give our heart back to ourselves.

We read poetry and dance to ecstatic music when we want to eat cookies and gobble bad TV.

We accept that straying from the path is almost always part of the path.

We throw our arms around ourselves every day and say, "I'm so glad to meet you."

We remember, each day, that we always have a choice, we always have an option, (which, by the by, is not the same as control.)

We ask, "What would I do if I knew I could not fail?"

This is an excerpt from my book in progress about how we organize our lives by our deepest knowing, live from the inside out, keep in touch with our spiritual knowing, our creative desires, our need to be of service in the world, while making a living, building a business, parenting our kids, and sweeping the floor. It's based on the Inner Organizer and the great community that has sprung up around the desire to live in a more integrated way while knowing we are going to forget, again and again, all we know!

If you have a story about how you organize your life from the inside out, send it to me by February 25th. Jennifer@comfortqueen.com

Copyright 2006 by Jennifer Louden, all rights reserved Please do not reproduce any part in any form without express permission.