Outrageous Openness: Letting the Divine Take the Lead by Tosha Silver, Dr. Christianne Northrup (Foreword)

A playful, enlightening, and creative collection (Spirituality and Practice) of spiritual lessons, anecdotes, and thoughts on the Divine's intervention in our lives, this brilliantly written and wonderfully entertaining book teaches us how to live purposefully and in line with the Force of Love. What if the Divine is constantly igniting roadside flares to get our attention? What if there actually is a Supreme Organizing Principle with an unbridled sense of humor? And what if we each have this ardent inner suitor who's writing us love letters every day that often go unopened? Whether we know it or not, we all experience the touch of the Divine in our lives every single day. After twenty-five years spent consulting and advising tens of thousands of people from all over the world, Tosha Silver realized that almost all of us have similar concerns: How do I stop worrying? How can I feel safe? Why do I feel so alone? and often, Who am I really? For the passionately spiritual and the bemusedly skeptical alike, she created Outrageous Openness. This delightful book, filled with wisdom and fresh perspectives, helps create a relaxed, trusting openness in the reader to discover answers to life's big questions as they spontaneously arise. Outrageous Openness opens the door to a profound truth: By allowing the Divine to lead the way, we can finally put down the heavy load of hopes, fears, and opinions about how things should be. We learn how to be guided to take the right actions at the right time, and to enjoy the spectacular show that is our life. Editorial Reviews Review If Amy Sedaris wrote obsessively about the Divine, this is what she might sound like. What a treat. -- Darren Main ? author of Yoga and the Path of the Urban Mystic and Inner Tranquility A fun, fresh spiritual tune-up. Reading it is a like taking a bicycle ride or sitting by the stream and suddenly feeling like everything is just deliciously okay. Tosha Silver has a beautiful, believable, honest voice, and she is a delightful companion. -- Tama Kieves ? best-selling author of Inspired & Unstoppable: Wildly Succeeding in Your Life's Work! One of the best books we've ever read! My wife Hollie and I are huge fans of Tosha Silver. She delivers inspiration on every page! -- Robert Holden ? author of Holy Shift! In a marketplace filled with lackluster spirituality books, this book sparkles with truth. Through touching personal stories, potent insights and holy humor, Tosha Silver reminds us that the only way to truly live is hand in hand, heart to heart, and hip bump to hip bump with the Divine. -- Sera Beak ? author of Red Hot and Holy: A Heretic's Love Story Tosha Silver's benevolent, heart expanding book will transform you mightily with the greatest of ease. -- SARK Artist ? Author, Succulent Wild Woman PlanetSARK.com This book offers readers a highly unusual gift - a way to release the exhausting pursuit of the ego's wishes and dreams, a path to living with joy, peace and contentment. Start down that path and miracles begin to happen beyond anything you could have predicted! -- Marci Shimoff ? #1 New York Times bestselling author of Happy For No Reason, Love For No Reason The holy grail is right here in this gem of a book. Tosha Silver's wisdom goes down as easy as a mint milkshake and leaves you feeling so free you'll want to do cartwheels on the beach. But don't be fooled by the simplicity of this message. Look no further for an easeful path to enlightenment infused with rapture and hope, which comes as much needed medicine for the soul. -- Lissa Rankin, M.D. ? New York Times bestselling author of Mind Over Medicine Tosha Silver is an empathetic guide along the ever-present seam between the everyday and the sacred, letting us know that we can pull a thread of aliveness for ourselves at any time. -- Mark Nepo ? author of The Endless Practice and Seven Thousand Ways to Listen This playful, enlightening, and creative collection presents the author's experiences with the Divine. -- Spiritualityandpractice.com About the Author Tosha Silver grew up thinking one day she would be a rabbi, a lawyer, or a weathergirl. But fate had other ideas. She graduated from Yale with a degree in English Literature but along the way fell madly in love with metaphysics and yogic philosophy. For the last 30 years she has taught many ways to align with the inner Divine. This book is adapted from her popular column at Examiner.com, a top 100 website that reaches over 37 million unique visitors a month. Tosha lives near San Francisco. Please visit ToshaSilver.com for more information. Excerpt. ® Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved. Outrageous Openness Chapter One SEEING THE WORLD AS YOU R U My Mother? Don't drink at the water's edge, throw yourself in. Become the water. Only then will your thirst be quenched. -Jeanette Berson Years ago I became fascinated by an adorable book called Are You My Mother?, the tale of a baby bird searching the world for its home. I wasn't exactly part of its target audience of teething toddlers. But because I live at the mercy of an endlessly metaphorical mind, the book held an unexpected appeal. As a lover of the Divine Feminine, I read it as a story of the Goddess glimmering in everything. Whether it's Guadalupe, Durga, Lakshmi, Quan Yin, or what in India would be known reverently as the Shakti, I can't help but love the Mother. I thought how most of us run from spot to spot perhaps unconsciously seeking Her everywhere. We restlessly scan the world saying, Is this my destination? Can I lay my burden down now? Am I safe? Can I finally let go? Yet some part of us knows that no person or place in this galaxy of impermanence can ever fully give that refuge. Everything comes and goes, even that which feels the most familiar. All eventually melts back into the ocean of existence like the iridescent multicolored sands of mandalas. Amidst this endless phantasmagoria of change, it's possible to learn to rest upon the Divine like a life raft in deep water. From the One all things emanate; to the One all things return. Rather than cling to each individual illusion of safety, the mind can learn to find the Divine and Her protection in every situation. It's tempting to try to make a particular job, livelihood, or relationship our salvation. Then we quickly become the slave of whatever we grip the most. But when you make the Divine your Source, you move through life with an ease and lightness, with an open hand. You allow whatever wishes to come, come. And whatever wishes to go, go. Every gain, and loss, has an odd kind of Providence. So everything and everyone can indeed become . . . your Mother. R U My Mother? Don't drink at the water's edge, throw yourself in. Become the water. Only then will your thirst be quenched. -Jeanette Berson Years ago I became fascinated by an adorable book called Are You My Mother?, the tale of a baby bird searching the world for its home. I wasn't exactly part of its target audience of teething toddlers. But because I live at the mercy of an endlessly metaphorical mind, the book held an unexpected appeal. As a lover of the Divine Feminine, I read it as a story of the Goddess glimmering in everything. Whether it's Guadalupe, Durga, Lakshmi, Quan Yin, or what in India would be known reverently as the Shakti, I can't help but love the Mother. I thought how most of us run from spot to spot perhaps unconsciously seeking Her everywhere. We restlessly scan the world saying, Is this my destination? Can I lay my burden down now? Am I safe? Can I finally let go? Yet some part of us knows that no person or place in this galaxy of impermanence can ever fully give that refuge. Everything comes and goes, even that which feels the most familiar. All eventually melts back into the ocean of existence like the iridescent multicolored sands of mandalas. Amidst this endless phantasmagoria of change, it's possible to learn to rest upon the Divine like a life raft in deep water. From the One all things emanate; to the One all things return. Rather than cling to each individual illusion of safety, the mind can learn to find the Divine and Her protection in every situation. It's tempting to try to make a particular job, livelihood, or relationship our salvation. Then we quickly become the slave of whatever we grip the most. But when you make the Divine your Source, you move through life with an ease and lightness, with an open hand. You allow whatever wishes to come, come. And whatever wishes to go, go. Every gain, and loss, has an odd kind of Providence. So everything and everyone can indeed become . . . your Mother.