You can call me, Monique. It’s the name I’ve always been called. “Monique” means advisor. Who knew that would be my calling? I didn’t see it coming at all.
From my very beginning, I’ve always been able to observe myself, kind of like meditation teachers instruct their students to do. “Observe yourself, observe your mind,” is the instruction to achieve a deeper state of meditation. From a very young age, I was able to do this. If you had asked me more than a decade ago, I would’ve called it “disconnected.” But I’ve discovered through my own personal growth journey that it is my gift – a gift that has given me a reservoir of self-awareness. If you’re here at the (r)evolution of bliss, you may have peeped this quality within yourself.
When I was a child, I felt like a blank slate and I consciously copied the behavior of others to add to my blank canvas. Each time I added a new piece to my puzzle, the picture of who I could be became more complete.
They say, art imitates life, and there are some who say, life imitates art. Mimicry is intrinsic to life. It is how humans learn to walk, talk and be a part of society. I believe my ability to consciously observe myself taking notice of others and mimicking them, or emulating them, added to my self-awareness at an early age. As I have grown older, I have continued to evolve this self-awareness. And as my awareness has grown, I have ultimately been able to pull apart my “created” self from my authentic self where the two are no longer, or maybe even sometimes never were, a fit.
Meanwhile, in another realm of my childhood, I was taught not to trust my own mind and that communication was a threat to my safety in this world. These were emotional betrayals. However, these emotional betrayals and the undermining of my confidence in my natural critical thinking ability, in my trust in my opinions and in my thoughts are what, I believe, are responsible for my deep hunger and thirst for self-reflection and personal growth. And that is why they are my gifts. I have healed most of my wounds, and I choose to use what I have learned to the greatest benefit of myself and all of my clients. I am happy to be of service in this way.
To put my pain into context for you, these emotional betrayals (some would call abuse) both shaped and inhibited my ability to be self-possessed as a young woman. How I knew myself and saw myself as a child was free and important in the world just as I was; feeling confident in how I related to others and what I knew about life. After those interactions left me mistrustful of myself, I began to fail miserably as a young woman at being someone who could stand for herself and what she believed in – including my belief in what I knew to be true about myself. As I grew into the self I created as a woman, I became sadder, more frustrated and even angry to realize that I had lost something in the translation of who I thought I would become, and I had no idea how or when it had happened.
Coming back to myself, the free-spirited childlike woman, was a winding road. It began with a personal development seminar that altered my perspective incredibly of who I had been, who I was and who I wanted to be.
I became a coach, and then a leader at a global personal development organization. There, I worked with hundreds of individuals to allow each person greater access to who they were authentically. In my work, I deciphered that when I showed someone a mirror, it reflected back to both of us. I became a Life Coach, not to show anyone a formula or increase their productivity, but to release each person from the ideas they held that inhibited their full possession of the Self they were at their very core.
So when I reached the limits of my work as a coach and course leader in personal growth after 5+ years, and as a Life Coach after 3 years, I realized there was more I needed to be aware of to be of greatest service. I had to connect mind, body and spirit for full transcendence. This discovery became the exciting foundation of my new work.
This foundational work culminated in this very website, the (r)evolution of bliss. I am here to guide. I am not a guru. I want to show you that you are your best guru. You. No one else. I have deciphered that everyone’s journey is their own, and to honor that is to honor the gifts each individual has for the world.
I have mastered my mind. Being an “observer” has been the greatest cultivator of this mastery. I understand my mind as a tool, pliable and malleable, and not as a reality, rigid, structured and/or singularly defined. And mastery is not a state to be reached like a destination, but an opportunity for greater and greater understanding and deeper and deeper awareness.
As mastery becomes the journey and not the end-goal, life becomes your greatest canvas and from there, you can begin to set down colors / pigments / variations / thoughts / ideas / experiences of whatever variety you choose.
I have a life-painting palette that grows wild and I am constantly surprised by its diversity. It is ever-growing and ever-widening and ever-surprising. It is my hope. It is my joy. It is my life. It is my bliss.
This is me, Monique McIntyre. I am fierce bliss.
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