What do you do when you place a call to the Universe and it answers? Do you short circuit the cosmic connection or do you listen and take dictation? Good thing for the world that Renaissance Woman, Carol Woodliff did the latter. This trained hypnotherapist, shaman (she studied with The Four Winds Society, founded by Alberto Villoldo) , teacher, author and healer allowed herself to be the hollow reed through which the music of Spirit played. Her book, entitled From Scared To Sacred is an open door through which she walked and invites the reader to do the same. First she needed to de-sensationalize the idea that she was receiving messages that she was instructed to document. “You want me to do what?” was her initial response. Her comfort level throughout this process varied and she came to trust what she called The Voice. Not once did it guide her to do anything that wasn’t loving and helpful for herself and those with whom she shared the wisdom it was espousing. Coming from a mainstream background of working in a law firm, this stretched her comfort zones all the more.
Humor is generously sprinkled throughout. I particularly giggled at her reference to ‘the inner marshmallow’; “the soft, sweet, tender place inside” and mis-hearing the words to The Lord’s Prayer (as do many children) and visualizing A God Named Art (“Our Father Who is Art in Heaven.”).
She explores topics such as fear, lying, triggers to emotional upheaval, seeing the world and people in it through the eyes of love, as well as coping with her mother’s illness and subsequent death. This was the experience that touched me the most deeply, since I took the hospice journey with my mother in 2010 and the ways in which Woodliff described the interactions mirrored some of my own toward the end of my mom’s earthly incarnation. Tears and goosebumps were my visceral response as my memories came rushing to the surface.
There is eloquence woven within each chapter and she invites the reader to engage in inner dialogue with inquiry questions completing each one. She admits that she doesn’t “live consciously in the sacred 100% of the time.” and assures the reader that she is fully human as well; dancing with the divine on a moment to moment basis. This book plays the music of her soul and perhaps yours as well.
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