Discover the Gift presents a simple roadmap to a journey of self-discovery that will undoubtedly change your life forever. Sharing their own heartfelt personal stories of tragedy and redemption, Demian and Shajen introduce us to eight fundamental steps that will help you discover the gift within you and prepare you to share that gift with others. Along the way, you will receive both direction and support from a wide range of the world's most influential transformational leaders, people from all walks of life who not only live their gift every day but who have made it their purpose to help you do the same. Among them are His Holiness the Dalai Lama, His Holiness Sri Sri Ravi Shankar, Mark Victor Hansen, Dr. Sonia Powers, Mary Manin Morrissey, Dr. Barbara De Angelis, Jack Canfield, and Michael Bernard Beckwith, to name just a few.
Inspiring as well as practical, Discover the Gift illuminates that place inside each of us where an extraordinary gift awaits to come alive.
Your destiny awaits. Discover the gift. It's why you're here.
Discover the Gift presents a simple roadmap to a journey of self-discovery that will undoubtedly change your life forever. Sharing their own heartfelt personal stories of tragedy and redemption, Demian and Shajen introduce us to eight fundamental steps that will help you discover the gift within you and prepare you to share that gift with others. Along the way, you will receive both direction and support from a wide range of the world's most influential transformational leaders, people from all walks of life who not only live their gift every day but who have made it their purpose to help you do the same. Among them are His Holiness the Dalai Lama, His Holiness Sri Sri Ravi Shankar, Mark Victor Hansen, Dr. Sonia Powers, Mary Manin Morrissey, Dr. Barbara De Angelis, Jack Canfield, and Michael Bernard Beckwith, to name just a few.
Inspiring as well as practical, Discover the Gift illuminates that place inside each of us where an extraordinary gift awaits to come alive.
Your destiny awaits. Discover the gift. It's why you're here.
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Overview
Discover the Gift presents a simple roadmap to a journey of self-discovery that will undoubtedly change your life forever. Sharing their own heartfelt personal stories of tragedy and redemption, Demian and Shajen introduce us to eight fundamental steps that will help you discover the gift within you and prepare you to share that gift with others. Along the way, you will receive both direction and support from a wide range of the world's most influential transformational leaders, people from all walks of life who not only live their gift every day but who have made it their purpose to help you do the same. Among them are His Holiness the Dalai Lama, His Holiness Sri Sri Ravi Shankar, Mark Victor Hansen, Dr. Sonia Powers, Mary Manin Morrissey, Dr. Barbara De Angelis, Jack Canfield, and Michael Bernard Beckwith, to name just a few.
Inspiring as well as practical, Discover the Gift illuminates that place inside each of us where an extraordinary gift awaits to come alive.
Your destiny awaits. Discover the gift. It's why you're here.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781504364515 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Balboa Press |
| Publication date: | 09/07/2016 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 196 |
| File size: | 363 KB |
About the Author
Shajen Joy Aziz, MEd, MA, is an award winning international best-selling author, filmmaker, and motivational trainer and speaker. She is most passionate about creating a world where our children can thrive in powerful and positive ways. She is first author and cocreator of the international best-selling book and film Discover the Gift: It's Why We're Here (www.discoverthegift.com). Her book is currently published in twenty-two countries and eleven languages, and her film, which is in five languages and ten countries, is now digitally distributed by Gaiam TV throughout the United States and Canada (Discover the Gift on Gaiam TV).
Shajen's groundwork for over twenty years as a progressive educator, school administrator, teacher, and counselor paved the way for her to become a leader within the transformational and peace building communities. In a very short time, Shajen's global life-coaching and training program based on Discover the Gift has amassed a dedicated community of over 250 ambassadors, coaches, and trainers from around the globe, actively engaged in sharing their passions and gifts while inspiring others to do the same.
Shajen has been a guest faculty member for the Shift Network and has been featured alongside Deepak Chopra, Marianne Williamson, Desmond Tutu, Barbara Marx Hubbard, and Eckhart Tolle, to name a few. As a leading expert in self-actualization and personal development, she has had the pleasure of sharing the speaking stage with other influential new-thought leaders and colleagues, such as Jack Canfield, Michael Bernard Beckwith, Dr. Barbara De Angelis, Sir Ken Robinson, Dr. Sue Morter, Janet and Chris Attwood, David Wolfe, and many more. Shajen's work has been featured in the Huffington Post, ABC, NBC, CNN, Spirit and Destiny magazine, the Shift Network, Examiner.com, Catalyst, Spiritual Networks, Life Connection magazine, and Vision magazine, amongst numerous others internationally. Her work regularly appears around the globe through multiple media outlets and within the international unity and religious sciences and interfaith communities.
Along with being a founding member of the Southern California Association of Transformational Leaders (Assoc. of Transformational Leaders) and the Women's Speakers Assoc., Shajen is an active trailblazer for children, education, and healthcare reform. A few of her recognitions include the 2014 Woman of Outstanding Leadership Award from the International Women's Leadership Assoc., the 2012 Peace and Creativity Award presented by Congresswoman Karen Bass, and the 2011 and 2012 Woman of the Year Award from the National Association of Professional Women for her dedication and excellence in her field of education. In 2011 Shajen was also awarded the Global Humanitarian Award presented by Dr. Barbara De Angelis and Rev. Michael Bernard Beckwith.
Shajen's primary philosophy is based on creating a conscious, compassionate world one person, one family, one community at a time, and it begins with you.
Read an Excerpt
Discover the Gift
It's Why We're Here
By Shajen Joy Aziz, Demian Lichtenstein
Balboa Press
Copyright © 2016 Shajen Joy AzizAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-5043-6443-0
CHAPTER 1
THE GIFT OF OUR LIVES
* * *
Our grandfather Icek — though I called him Tata, a term of endearment in Polish — had recently undergone triple-bypass heart surgery. He was eighty-four years old, and the operation hadn't gone well.
When I walked into his hospital room, he smiled weakly at me in a way that made me instantly understand that this extraordinary man would never leave that room.
"Look," I said, "I know you're dying." He nodded, unafraid.
"What's the one thing you want me to know, that matters most, that you want me to tell my grandchildren?" I asked.
"I'll tell you a story, Demian," he said. I pulled up a chair as he continued. "Back in World War II, I was a young soldier in Poland, and your grandmother Dora — whom you never met — was pregnant with your father. We were on a train trying to escape when the Nazis stopped it in order to round up the Jews. We managed to slip away and found ourselves walking in the snow, trying to get to a field hospital. We did, and that's where your father was born.
"Unfortunately, we couldn't stay because the Nazis were coming. So I took your grandmother, wrapped your father in a rug, stole a jeep and a sack of food, and drove as far as I could before the jeep ran out of gas. Your grandmother and I walked again in the snow until the food was gone. Then there came a time when we couldn't walk anymore, not one more step, and I'll never forget — we were in a snowstorm, I was carrying Dora on my back and your father in my arms — and I thought that maybe if I just rested for a little while I could get up and go again.
"But the truth is that we had passed one person after another on the road who had thought the same thing. They'd stopped and died in their place in the freezing snow. I looked into the eyes of my infant son, who, as if our predicament wasn't horrible enough, was dying of pneumonia, and I said to him, 'One day your son will know no war. But today we have to do our part. You have to live through the night, and I will keep going because I know that if I stop, I will die and my son won't live.'"
Tata looked up at me and said, "And you wouldn't exist.
"We made it to a Russian hospital, but the administrator told me that I needed to throw your father in the trash because they were not going to save a dying Jewish baby. I begged, but they wouldn't help. I didn't know what to do. Your father needed medicine.
And I was not willing to tell your grandmother, who was also sick, that our son had to die.
"Finally I sat on a bench, holding your father, and looked up to see a nurse staring at me. She handed me a crumpled piece of paper; it was a note with an address on it. She told me to meet her there that night and she would take the baby. I was afraid, but what else could I do?
"When I got to the address, the nurse took your father and told me to return in a week. She said, 'If he is alive, I will return him to you. If not, I will bury him.' So I did. I gave your father to a total stranger, wished them well, and left.
"A week later, I returned and was amazed to find her holding a happy, healthy, beautiful baby boy. The nurse had healed him. Through my tears I thanked her and asked her why she had done this. 'Because when your son looked at me, his eyes told me he had to survive. '"
I had tears in my eyes. "And so the one thing that I am most proud of" Tata continued, "is that I kept my promise that night to your father — and here you are, and who you are to me is my heart. "
I left my grandfather that night, and I never saw him alive again. But what he said will always stay with me. So many people all over the world have made so many sacrifices, have literally given their lives so that their families could endure and have the opportunity to discover the Gifts within themselves and to experience the richness of life.
That's what matters. That's what matters.
— DEMIAN
Much as in the traditions of the Native American and Chinese cultures, among others, Demian and I have a deep reverence and respect and love for our grandmothers and grandfathers. We owe our lives to the multiple gifts of our grandparents' bravery and intelligence, and their unwavering beliefs and commitment to a better future. We are grateful for every life experience they made possible.
Demian and I, as well as all the people of the world, stand on the shoulders of thousands of human beings who came before us, whom we will never know and who have allowed us to live in a world of compassion for the present and the future. We are resilient, and those who know us, unstoppable.
We don't subscribe to any religious system, nor do we believe that any one religion or belief is right or wrong. Rather, we stand united with compassion and respect and love for the earth and all of her inhabitants.
— SHAJEN
CHAPTER 2IN THE BEGINNING
* * *
As we begin our journey together, we would like to share with you a story of a brother and sister whose world was turned upside down.
SHAJEN: Our parents, Richard and Fonda, both artists, met in New York City late in the summer of 1962. Richard was a student at the School of Visual Arts, via the Israel Academy of Art, by way of the Polish Academy of Art. The story, as told by my mother, went like this:
"New York was in the midst of a full-blown renaissance. Artists, poets, beatniks, musicians, and writers filled the streets. Your father was one of them, always carrying his small easel and art pad under one arm. On the day we met, he was very late to class. He later said he'd had to push through a crowd of students smoking and drinking coffee in front of the building to get to the classroom on the top floor.
I was there, standing on a pedestal in all my young, naked, nineteen-year-old glory, making extra money as a nude model. A sheet covered part of my body. I had long, dark, curly hair that fell across my shoulder.
"Your father walked into the loft and found a place at the back of the room. I stood on my pedestal in front of maybe twenty-five artists, some surrounded by swirls of gray cigarette smoke floating in the air, caught by shafts of sunlight. I noticed two pretty painters watching your father as he crossed the floor. One raised her eyebrows at the other, who just smiled and sipped her coffee.
"Richard set up his easel, took out his charcoal, and began to draw. "Meanwhile, Sam, the instructor, did what he always did: he brewed me a cup of tea and looked at his watch. When my time was up, I stepped off the podium, covered myself, and took the tea. Then he asked if I'd like to see the students' work, and together we went from one rendition of myself to another. They were all beautiful.
"But one drawing made me stop. I stared over Richard's shoulder at his work, amazed. But an even more powerful moment occurred when he turned to look at me. I was instantly in love. Why? Because in his eyes I saw my two future children and knew they would be the loves of my life. Beyond anything else, that is why we married.
"I don't know what Richard saw, but in his thick Polish accent he asked, 'Do you like it?'
"'I love it,' I said, unself-consciously wiping away a tear. 'Your line ... it's sublime.' Richard looked back at his sketch. 'Sublime ...? This is a good word ... yes?'
"'Yes, a very good word,' I said."
DEMIAN: My parents moved to Acworth, New Hampshire, and lived on a small horse ranch. Richard bred Appaloosa horses, sculpted, and made linoleum prints. My mother painted. Then one day when I was about two, my mother disappeared for a little while and came back carrying a crying, snotty little bundle in her arms. She cooed to it and gave it all her attention. When she peeled back the blanket to show me, I met my sister. And to be as Freudian and direct about it as I can, my mother took her breasts out of my mouth and put them into my sister's. In that profoundly and unconsciously disturbing moment I determined that this strange new creature was my enemy, and either she was going to go or I was going to go.
Of course, I had no idea of how to get rid of my sister, so I decided to leave. I just walked out of the house. Remember, I was only two years old. Luckily for me, our German sheepdog, Bosch, went with me down the driveway and followed me onto a dirt road, and then onto a two-lane, paved country highway.
Thus, I was later told, began a frantic search. My parents called the hospitals, the local sheriff, and all their friends. They searched the property, they looked in the wells, they ran all over. And, meanwhile, I was still on my roughly two-and-a-half-mile journey — much of which I actually remember — along the highway until I plopped myself on a neighbor's front lawn.
The neighbors called my parents, and my mother came to get me.
Prior to my sister's arrival, the world was a completely abundant place. It was soft and warm and filled with mother's milk, the nectar of the gods. I was coddled and taken care of, and all my needs and desires were met. But then my darling sister arrived, and my special place, my experience of being the most important thing, went away. And then the world became one of lack, scarcity, coldness, and feeling alone. My world was something to be afraid of.
The story is significant because it was the first moment I experienced separateness, a break in my mother and I belonging solely to each other. It became fundamentally clear that the world was no longer just about me. I lost the ability to be the creator of my own existence, though as a two-year-old I certainly didn't think of it in that way. I just felt it. Like people with chronic physical pain, the gnawing emotional pain became the backdrop of my existence.
SHAJEN: If only our parents' marriage had endured. But when I was two and Demian four, they divorced to follow their individual passions. We lived in New Hampshire, but our father went back to New York, and our mother, who had fallen in love with a man who shall remain nameless (who would later become our stepfather), eventually moved us into a house on top of Temple Hill, in the Broad Brook Valley in Vermont. Even so, our parents always told us that whatever had happened, they somehow knew that they had needed into this parents' it easier to have children together, that they had needed to bring us world. As hard as it was to be separated from our father, our depth of commitment and unconditional love for us made than one would expect.
CHAPTER 3OUR WORLD COMES APART
* * *
SHAJEN: The years passed, and we shuttled between cities and houses and families. We lived with Fonda and our step father during the school year. On vacations we visited our dad in New York City. We were adventurers, enjoying our city status with the local farm kids and our country status with the city kids. Although we were young, we were adept at traveling on Amtrak and always loved the epic moment when the conductor yelled, "All aboard!" or "Next stop, New York City!" On the way back we'd hear, "White River Junction, Vermont!" This was our routine.
Yet our lives were about to change again.
Vermont is harsh in winter, and survival on top of a small mountain in the forest requires a very intimate relationship with nature. If you had to keep a fire going in the stove, you were always busy. As children we spent hours chopping, stacking, and hauling wood, as well as becoming experts at fire starting. Sweating and full of splinters, we carried the wood to the house and threw it into a crawl space so small that only children could fit inside. The crawl space was a very dark and scary place, abundant with creatures that scurried or flew in the night, from bats and spiders to squirrels and mice, big black beetles, huge centipedes, and hardwood lice. We didn't look forward to being told, "Get down in the crawl space and throw up some wood."
Still, our home was filled with possibility. We could slide down two flights of stairs on a rope from Demian's bedroom to the kitchen. We had a music room with a piano, drums, guitars, and harmonicas. We also had a two-story greenhouse, a sauna, an eighty-foot deck, and what felt like hundreds of small nooks and crannies waiting for us to explore and play in. We were happy. Our mother loved us. Our home felt like a castle in the sky, in which we imagined we would play forever.
Our mother, Fonda, was vibrant, magnetic, full of zest and enthusiasm. Whenever she walked into a room, everyone would sense the immediate surge of energy and turn to look. She was a fearless trailblazer and a woman before her time. She was never afraid of hard work. She raised her children, ran her own business — the Oasis health food store and café, in Woodstock, Vermont — developed real estate, and created statewide arts programs with the Vermont Arts Council. At the same time, she was involved in theater, painting, sculpture, gardening, yoga, and silk screening. She believed in living green and had created a life that followed her values and dreams. In many ways she was living her Gift, yet she lacked one major piece: a partner who could match her energy, compassion, and inspirations.
We were aware of dark undercurrents that lurked in the hearts of our mother and stepfather. Their fights could be explosive. Often we ran into the woods and climbed the ladder to our tree house to escape all the arguing. The inability of these two people — who were both younger than we are now — to see the profound Gift in themselves led to events that would disastrously affect their lives, as well as ours. When adults are not conscious of how unconscious they are, they are unaware of how damaging their actions can be. In many cases the children suffer more than adults realize.
While Demian and I spent winter recess in New York City with our father, Fonda was in emotional turmoil back in Vermont. After many years together, our stepfather, had left her for another woman, an act that left us all disappointed and confused.
Fonda knew it would be tough to make it through the winter with the added burden of keeping up the enormous mountainside house alone. Our family coming apart was like watching a ball of yarn unravel uncontrollably, creating a massive tangled web along the way. The other woman was no surprise for us, as our stepfather had been struggling with monogamy for quite some time. Our lives were changing again and that meant the unknown. Nevertheless, our mom did her best to hold it all together, but on one cold Vermont night in 1981, when I was twelve and Demian was fourteen, our world came undone even more.
Our mother had stepped out of the shower and smelled smoke. Dripping wet, she wrapped a towel quickly around her body and ran into the hallway. She stopped in horror on the walkway suspended over the downstairs kitchen. It wasn't just smoke. It was fire, and it was everywhere. Naked and alone, our mother threw on some clothes and ran downstairs. Smoke stung her eyes and filled her lungs, the flames licked at her hair. Panicked, she began breaking windows and throwing our possessions out of the house into the snow.
We have often imagined what it was like for our mother to stand in the frigid night with the entire mountain lit up by fire and everything she had ever created burning in front of her eyes. And I mean everything we held dear: every family photo, home movie, heirloom. We lost it all. Even the charcoal drawing my father had made on the day he met our mother was gone.
In its place was a blaze that could be seen for twenty miles.
The fire department and paramedics finally arrived and treated Fonda for smoke inhalation and minor burns. It was too late to save the house, so they concentrated on preventing the fire from spreading into the surrounding forest.
Back in New York City we were asleep in our beds. We remember our father shaking us to wake up and soon thereafter explaining that our home in Vermont had burned down.
"Is Mom okay?" we asked, almost in the same instant, holding our breaths.
"Yes, she is fine, and she wants to talk to you both." We ran to the phone.
It's a dislocating moment when the world you think most solid and stable is gone, and you realize that all you have left are the few pieces of clothing in your suitcase. It is a strange and hollow feeling as a young mind tries to wrap itself around the impermanence of existence, and the sudden end of life as you knew it. Our home was gone. Vanished. The future was suddenly a big question mark. Demian and I, and our father, talked a lot about what we would do, where we would live, what schools we would attend, what would happen to our friendships. We were anxious and didn't know what to expect.
We stayed with our father for a few more days but realized we needed to be at our mother's side. We returned to Vermont. What we found were the charred and still smoking ruins of our previous life, and our mom in a state of traumatic shock and disbelief. Although she'd still been reeling from our step father's leaving, and from raising two kids alone, Fonda now had to focus on the basics of survival. She borrowed clothes and blankets from her friends and tried to figure out her next move.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Discover the Gift by Shajen Joy Aziz, Demian Lichtenstein. Copyright © 2016 Shajen Joy Aziz. Excerpted by permission of Balboa Press.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
Table of Contents
Contents
Acknowledgments, xi,Before We Begin: A Note from Shajen Joy Aziz, xv,
What Is the Gift?, xix,
PART ONE: Our Story,
THE GIFT OF OUR LIVES, 1,
IN THE BEGINNING, 5,
OUR WORLD COMES APART, 9,
A DEFINING MOMENT, 23,
PART TWO: Eight Steps to Discovering and Unfolding Your Gift,
A REVELATION, 33,
STEP 1: RECEPTIVITY, 43,
STEP 2: INTENTION, 55,
STEP 3: ACTIVATION, 66,
STEP 4: INFINITE FEEDBACK, 80,
STEP 5: VIBRATION, 95,
STEP 6: ADVERSITY AND TRANSFORMATION, 105,
STEP 7: CREATING A CONSCIOUS AND COMPASSIONATE WORLD, 123,
STEP 8: LOVE — THE ULTIMATE GIFT, 134,
FOLLOW YOUR HEART, 149,
Contributor Biographies, 153,