198: Book Club ✨ OUTRAGEOUS OPENNESS: Letting the Divine Take the Lead by Tosha Silver

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Almost exactly 10 years ago, in what I retroactively have called my apocalypse year of 2013, I remember walking home from yoga class across the city, coming from Chelsea, heading back home toward Nolita, and I was walking through the NoHo neighborhood north of Houston on my way home. This was a year that I was struggling for any scrap of happiness I could muster. I felt so down, so deflated by the year. Both personally professionally dating wise relationships that year felt like every rug I ever found steady ground on got instantly pulled from beneath my feet. There was no stable ground. I was often trudging through what felt like quicksand trying to reach some sense of peace and stability.

I was listening to music as I was wont to do at that time. Podcasts weren't quite a thing for me yet that was a couple years around the corner. It was a sunny summer day. I like to pretend I'm starring in a movie when I walk through New York City streets. Doesn't matter where. I just picture myself as a character in some kind of montage. I even remember the song. It was one of those from Fun Period that was playing if you're lost.

In a zone or you're sinking like a stone, carry on.

Here I was, head over heels in unrequited love, AKA Limerence, chatting with somebody who was emotionally unavailable. Yet I still felt hopelessly giddy about it. All of a sudden I see one of those white wispy wishes cross my path and so I chase it down. I try not to swipe the air around it. I try to let it fall into my open palm so I could get this wishy. And almost instantly my inner seventh grader jumped in first with I hope this guy is the one. Yes, it's embarrassing to admit this to you because I turned 30 that year, but still I had that first impulsive thought, I hope this guy is the one, please. But because of one book, that impulsive wish transformed into something different in that moment, something that changed my life and completely shifted my approach to business.

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Instead of the thought I hope this guy is the one. My wish that day shifted to May this relationship unfold for the highest good of all involved. I realized that that became the only thing I cared more about when it came to dating, when it came to business clients earning money, that there was no wish I could or should make, that the only wish were that everything unfold for the highest good for all involved.

This book and this process taught me to drop my specific wishes and expectations and AKA resentments in waiting and instead trust the divine surrender to what wants to be and wish only that everything unfold for the highest good of all involved. That book, the one we're going to talk about in today's book club Spotlight, is Outrageous Openness Letting the Divine Take the Lead by Tosha Silver. Just as I did in the first book club episode 178 where I talked about three big ideas from Jenny Odell's book Saving Time. A few caveats. This isn't a comprehensive summary of the book, nor is it a book review where I critically examine the content. Instead, I'm bringing you three big ideas from the book that sparked aha moments and mindset shifts for me. I truly hope these inspire similar paradigm shifts for you. As always, my goal is to help you set even more of your time free and to help you do that while serving the highest good. Which is directly a concept that I took away from Outrageous Openness. First, a little background about the book. I found out about it in 2013 just before that opening story about the wishy when I was invited to attend a dinner with people that I didn't know very well. As I mentioned, my morale was down. I was struggling. I'm so glad I even said yes to that dinner. I wasn't feeling very fit for people consumption or vice versa. But I remember attending and one of the women at that dinner said, take it from me, do not pass go. You need to one click Order this book Outrageous Openness. Just take my word for it. So I did on faith from this new friend I one click ordered oo, as it's affectionately called by people who love this book. And of course a book like this, especially one as quirky and wonderfully spiritually guided as this one is going to find you and as I say, leap off the shelf at just the right time. Turns out Outrageous Openness was first self published by Tosha Silver in March of 2012, and as she writes on her blog, at that time she could barely give the books away. She really struggled with writing this book even though she had been an English major at Yale. She had a lot of health problems in her 20s and she felt extremely blocked when it came to writing. And so a lot of her process of surrender. She describes the process of even writing the book and surrendering it to something bigger than herself, saying, guide me. If this is something I'm meant to do, I need some help here. The book ended up becoming a word of mouth viral sensation even before things were going so viral on the Internet in the way that they are today. This is a decade ago, don't forget, but pretty soon it just started going and going and going and it became so popular, thousands of ratings and reviews on Amazon, that ATRIA ended up acquiring the book and republished it in June of 2014. Two years later. @ the time of this recording, it has 3,500 ratings and reviews on Amazon, fewer than 101 stars. Okay, so I'm not alone in my love for this book. When I get into the three takeaways, some of them might sound obvious to you, but part of what I find so joyful about this book is how it's written, the quirky anecdotes and the whimsical writing style. It's about letting the messages wash over you, traveling with you, revisiting them when needed, as Tosha would even encourage using the book like an oracle, flipping it open to any page, pointing to a sentence, and knowing that that might be the message that you need in that very moment. I've reread it many times and you pick up different points of emphasis with each time you revisit the work. I was also part of Tosha's oo, her Outrageous Openness Forum for five years. I took all the courses she offered. It really helped me transform the pain and suffering and attachment to the way things needed to be into a sense of calm surrender. And that has served me so well pre pandemic, during the Pandemic to Even Where We Are Now. Tosha also credits Florence Scovel Shin and her delightfully quirky book the Game of Life and how to Play it that has 4,000 ratings. That's a book that similarly Florence self published in 1925. So Florence's version does include Some quotes from the Bible and anecdotes of her understanding of God and man. It is the kind of power of positive thinking type stuff that you get from this time period. Kind of reminds me as well as a parallel to think and grow rich. But I really enjoyed the game of life and how to play it even if you're not religious. Even Tosha Silver is kind of open to all religions, all faith traditions, all spirituality. She loves it all. So without further ado, let's get into the three big ideas of this book.

Number one, trust in divine order and Divine Source. These have a lot to do with non attachment and non grasping. Or there's a Sanskrit word that Tosha uses often for that, aparagraha. These have to do with non attachment and non grasping. The Sanskrit phrase for the latter is aparagraha. There's a bigger picture to manifestation that also includes parab to Karma or our soul's course of study that intertwines in every moment. And this is something I really, really appreciate from Tosha Silver that yes, a lot of this is about divine order, trusting in the bigger picture, trusting that we will be provided for. It is about abundance and it's about this intertwining and interweaving of our karma and our soul's course of study. She talks about this more in her book it's not yout Money, which I also highly recommend. That manifestation is not just about the grocery list for God. It's about saying, show me what I'm meant to do and have and be. I'm not going to just make a list of demands for the universe and come to expect that. And also there are some of us where we have old souls that we might think we're meant to acquire millions of dollars, but maybe our soul has a different path, a different learning or course of study that it's here to do in this lifetime. Tosha writes, divine order says that the perfect solution to any problem is already selected if you allow yourself to be guided. Divine Source says there is a natural universal abundance that knows how to meet every need, harmonizing with this force of love. Call it the Shakti God Goddess. One mind, whatever you will, is the golden key to everything. If a state of radical openness, acceptance and attention is held, anyone can learn how to move with these divine principles. Eventually, the individual ego's drive to make things happen falls away, replaced with a relaxed, trusting openness to to answers as they spontaneously arise. These tools are truly accessible to anyone and grow markedly stronger with practice. Synchronicities and magic unfold with more and more frequency, strengthening one's innate trust in the process. One only needs to be willing to be outrageously open.

Even if you're not religious. I just saw the clock is at 11:11 as I recorded that phrase. And this isn't about giving your life over and expecting somebody to come save you, being some external divine force. It's also about recognizing the divine within you and trusting that you are connected. You do have wisdom. You have a higher self. You have a soul. You have a spirit. You have guides and ways of being guided in the world that don't just have to rely on willpower and brute force and motivating yourself through fear or carrots and sticks. That's what I really appreciate about divine order and divine source, that even Tosha would say it's not about expecting some higher power to solve all your problems, but it is about surrendering to the greater intelligence at work that connects all of us to each other, to the planet, to the flow of life, and to the flow of our own life and the path that we are uniquely meant to take.

We'll be right back just after this.

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The second big idea she said right at the end of that first quote. Outrageous openness. Surrender to the flow, to what wants to happen. When she was writing the book, she said that at some point the willpower just wasn't working. This book was not getting written. It was creating so much turmoil and anguish because she felt called to write it, having done 30,000 individual readings, most often around astrology. She was reading people's charts. And she did this every day, day after day, day after day. She would write articles for one of the San Francisco papers. She had a column. That's where a lot of these quirky stories come from. But when it came to the book, she just felt so blocked. So Tosha's shift was saying, if you wish this written, I cannot do this on my own. You know my limits. But the perfect route is already selected. So. So if this is your will, fling open the doors. If this is meant to be, please bring the right help. Later in the book she quotes Kurt Vonnegut saying, unexpected travel suggestions are dancing lessons from God. And I love marrying these two ideas around outrageous openness. That part of being outrageously open is dropping our ideas about how things need to be, how things need to proceed, and asking for help, saying if you wish this written, if you wish this done, I can't do this on my own, please show me the way. Or holding faith that the perfect path is already selected or the perfect next client is already selected and on their way to me. And in doing so we can shift our vibration. Even I know that might sound out there, but probably to free timers, you're with me on this. That just our internal state and being in a state of gratitude and joy and abundance and serendipity and is so much more magnetic and attractive to other people and opportunities anyway. But the bigger point, it's not just again about what we can get, it's about putting ourselves in such a place that we're so open that we can tune into our intuition. We can notice things in our environment, we can read those more subtle clues about what we're meant to do next. One of Tosha's activities is practicing this by putting herself out into the world. So she writes.

Whenever I can. I love to be receptive to how the day wishes to unfold without any planning or interference of the mind. Since this skill grows with practice, I'll intentionally create situations that involve relaxing and letting my instincts guide me, especially during stressful times. Offering a few hours for the subconscious to take over and meander is as relaxing as a two week holiday. So here's an adventure I love. I take the ferry to San Francisco without a plan for the afternoon, turn off my phone and just start walking. The divine is in the lead. I've done this as a spiritual practice for years now. Once or twice a month I figure we would make a date with a friend or a new love interest. Why not make one with the divine? Intuition reliably takes over and directs the outing.

The third big idea is offering. This goes hand in hand with outrageous openness. When problems feel bigger or more intractable than your ability to meet them, offer them up to the divine. And again, if you struggle with the idea of offering it up to something outside of you. Consider the divine highest wisdom within you that's already attuned to the universe at the deepest levels that already has whispers about the next course of action. Ask to be shown next steps. You can even ask to be hit over the head with signs to show you the next steps. You can have a sense of humor about this. Tosha writes, amidst this endless phantasmagoria of change, it's possible to learn to rest upon the divine like a life raft in deep water. Rather than cling to each individual illusion of safety, the mind can learn to find the Divine and her protection in every situation. A little bit later, she says, install the divine as the true owner. Become detached. Let go of any grasping for outcome. Let go of any attachment to the place, or it will block resolution. Detachment creates room for creation. If it's hard to detach, pray to be able to let go and receive the highest outcome. Know that one way or another, no matter how things currently look, God is your source and you are safe.

On this note of praying to let go of your attachment to how things need to be or what you need to have to be happy, her second book, Change Me Prayers, is all about this. It's different prayers for different areas of life. To say, I turn this over to you now. My way of tackling this source of stress or this problem, this conundrum, it's no longer working. Change me into somebody who can let go of my attachment. Here another example, saying something along the lines, like offering this up in a meditation or a prayer or a walk. My perfect new path is already selected and will arrive at the right time. I will be shown the steps to receive it. Tosha says, don't strong arm a solution. Call in divine order. Allow that the right solution is already chosen and you will be guided to it effortlessly at the right time. Then let go. Follow the steps as they appear. You'll be shown the way.

These three ideas, divine order and divine source, outrageous openness and offering, have truly changed my life. I also feel that they're an ongoing work in progress. It could take a lifetime. In fact, any problem, large or small, can be offered up in this way, can be offered as practice to embody these skills at deeper and deeper levels. And I have found that even when my more cynical side pops up, this is all hogwash. This doesn't work. This is, you know, you need to make things happen that actually, it's the times that I lean into these three big ideas, these skills, these deep ways of being that's when the magic happens. That's when the shifts happen. So I have found in my life in the last decade that I've been practicing these principles. They have always come to serve me and bring me peace. And that peace is so important, even as a precursor to problem solving. I want to read you a great line from the conclusion of the book. Tosha says Something happens after you align with the divine for a while. You begin to feel on a cellular level that things are unfolding exactly in the way that they should, at the rate and timing they need. You start to trust the process. You relax from the endless pushing that most of us learned at birth. On some fundamental, mysterious level, you just let go. Not with that bitterness people feel when they fear the ego's dreams won't occur. Not with passivity, as right actions do get shown. Rather, you relax into this calm curiosity about where the flow might go. You're detached, yet somehow riveted by how the story will unfold. You feel spaciously receptive and open to what wishes to come. You give it all room to blossom. You trust the highest, one way or another, eventually will unfold. You rest because as the right actions get revealed, a lot will arise to be done. You wait for the signs and the timing rather than rip open the cocoon. You trust that delays might be welcome. You trust that delays can be good. You trust that all delays are perfect and you stay present just to witness your own birth. With that, you hereby have permission to let go of your attachment to the way things need to be. To release your grip, to open your palms in an offering of surrender. To surrender to something higher than yourself. Surrendering and leaning into the flow to the collective consciousness that surrounds us, to a new way of being that can release the pressure and the burden that might be sitting on your shoulders. You have permission to let it all go, and you have permission to ask for help. You have permission to ask to be shown the one next step for you to make.

Thank you so much for listening. Have a beautiful, divinely guided rest of your.

Day.

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