the inside out,Lighting up the lives of all around you,Shining your Bright Knowledge down through the ages to come.You are stronger than you know:Throw down your shields, and declare yourself boldly.Together let’s illuminate your wayBack to your true self, Bright One.Welcome home.
Contents
Part One: Invitation and Initiation
The Bright Way Philosophy: Past Wisdom + Present Illumination
The Bright Way Spiral: Navigating the Spiral
Part Two: Step into the Bright Way
Fire: Light Your Eternal Flame
Water: Pour Heart and Soul into Your Purpose
Step Three: Create Your Practicum Plan
Air: Prepare to Fly: Map Your Dreams
Earth: Ground Your Intentions in Real Life
Spirit: Your Ongoing Creative Story: Joy and Resilience in Sacred Reciprocity
Valediction: Your Creativity Spirals Ever Outward: The Wheel Turns
The concert finishes, the house lights blaze, and applause rings out. I take a bow happily and bound off the stage to meet my audience. And it happens, as always; among the people surrounding me, several approach with a particular shyness I’ve come to recognize. They hail from all walks of life, yet they share a deeply hidden desire. Sometimes they know my dramatic story of severe performance anxiety and how I finally managed to recover from it. Others know me only as a performer, composer, writer, and teacher and generously assume that I’ve always had confidence and motivation. Either way, there are two things they probably don’t know: the vast potential they hold inside themselves, and how much their story is my story.
Rewind three decades. I remember one concert in particular, a showcase of the top student pianists. When I was fifteen, my diplomat family moved to Baghdad while I attended high school in nearby Cyprus. The concert, which took place during my second year there, was a special occasion for me because my father was present. I was the only representative of my teacher’s studio that evening, so I wanted to make my piano teacher, Kleri, proud. But I was at the height of self-consciousness; my body had betrayed me in a most awkward phase of frizzy hair, braces, and acne. Climbing the stairs to the stage, I felt dumpy, absurd, and fragmented into a thousand shards of stress. Ice-cold nervous sweat trickled down my back and spiked out under my arms as I confronted the looming beast of a piano.
The audience waited silently. I thought about my father and my teacher sitting there in the shadows, expectantly. The room became a vacuum. My ears dialed the silence up to a roar. I launched into Poulenc’s Nocturne no. 1 — only to be catapulted out within three bars.
The piano keys — keys that had been my daily companions for almost a decade — mocked me as they danced, rearranging themselves before my eyes. I couldn’t regain a handhold in the music. Clutching at the song, I hoped my fingers would somehow remember what to do on their own. They betrayed me, too, with a grotesque parody of the song I thought I knew so well clanging in my ears. Titters arose from some boys in my class, the same ones who bullied me about my appearance every day. I was mortified that my father had come all the way from Baghdad to witness this fiasco. I felt sure he was ashamed that I was his daughter, especially given that my mother is beautiful and accomplished. I was a total disappointment.
Mercilessly I threw myself in again. This time I made even less headway. My stomach twisted in the knowledge that my teacher was watching all this. She could only feel that I was letting her down in the most public way possible. I dreaded damaging our close relationship. Cringing at the evidence left behind, having sweat all over the keyboard and the piano bench, I fled the stage as quickly as possible. The hall filled with outright laughter from my tormentors and appalled silence from everyone
