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I was a young child when I had my first experience with the Akashic field in the back seat of my Mom’s Chevy. How cliche! All mystical experiences start off in the back of a Chevy! Anyway, my mother was driving me to my grandparent’s farm past rows of swaying corn fields on rural northwest Ohio roads. I sat in the roomy backseat with my Raggedy Ann doll tucked firmly on my lap. I recall looking around at the cars and people passing by as we drove with Olivia Newton John belting out Hopelessly Devoted To You on the radio, which played softly in the background.

What’s all of this about? Who are these people and where are they all going? I thought to myself. Are we all in some sort of movie?

Then this knowing came over me. That’s the best way I can describe it. A strong knowing. I saw an image of divine being (what I imagined to be God) in long robes surrounded by light and other divine beings. This being spoke to me without words but I understood immediately. It’s as if God said, “Yes, my child. You’re all part of this cosmic play. Every person and every thing on earth has a purpose and role to play. It’s all recorded and when you come home, it all gets played back for you like a movie.”

I was maybe five years old. None of this should have made sense but it all made perfect sense. I understood we’re all part of a play of light and goodness. I experienced this expansive and interconnected field of light. I felt completely embraced by love and support from my other home. Some would call it an awakening experience. Some would call it an overactive imagination! 🙂 I believe it was a remembering while I was still young enough to not be fully pinned down by the gravity of the earth plane. I believe I was connected to the Akashic field– the energetic membrane that connects us with life itself.

I pulled my floppy Raggedy Ann even closer. I also knew that I should keep this knowing to myself. This was the first of many encounters I had as a young child with Spirit. Since first officially being reintroduced to the Akashic Records in 2016, I now understand this was my first experience with this vast spiritual resource.

The Akashic WHAT? This sounds like some new-agey concept!

Akasha, in Sanskrit, refers to ether, the primordial substance from which all things are created. Instead of referring to Akasha as the fifth element, Sadguru calls it, THE ELEMENT. Mystics, sages and all ancient wisdom traditions have long held that there’s an interconnecting cosmic field that holds the energetic imprint of all information on the planet. In the Old and New Testament it’s referred to as the Mind of God or the Book of Life. The Akashic field is non-denominational and holds all the information about your soul’s journey. In the past we’ve imagined it to be like a library or the cloud, since it contains all of the information about your soul’s past, present, and future.

Philosopher and Scientist Ervin Laszlo, twice nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize, confirms that this Akashic Field is real and maintains a constant and enduring memory of the universe, including the record of all that’s happened on Earth and in the cosmos and all that is yet to happen.

As I type this I’m aware that this may sound p r e t t y f a r o u t there. My calling is to make the spiritual practical and bring heaven to earth in a grounded way. Here’s why I’m sharing this:

• Whether you know it or not, you’re connected and connecting with the Akashic field through your intuition
• This vast spiritual resource is your birthright
• The Akashic field is not only accessible to mystics, seers, and sleeping prophets like Edgar Cayce, it’s available to us all
• There’s so much more than past life information in your Akashic Record. There’s healing, wisdom, guidance, insight, creativity, and all the things that support us on our very human concerns while on earth

Since being reintroduced to the Akashic field in 2016, I’ve spent hundreds of hours in the Records. I’ve always been drawn to the energetic practices and perspective available in the Akashic atmosphere. But in the past few years I find myself pivoting away from what’s been traditionally taught about accessing the Akashic Records and feel called to reimagine the way we connect with this etheric space.

I believe it’s time to reimagine the traditional ways of accessing and reading the Records. It’s time for a more empowered and accessible approach.

I’ll be leading a 3-hour online workshop called “Meet Me in the Akashic Field: Reimagining Your Soul’s Records” on Friday, October 18th from 12-3pm Pacific. More to come on this soon on EventBrite and via my newsletter! Sign up for my newsletter on this blog site.

In the meantime, I’d love to read your comments and questions about the Akashic field. Share them here on this blog or via email at Kimberly Blanchard Coaching @ gmail . com

“My ex is Italian so my boys spend the summers with him in Italy. It’s tough for me. The first day they’re gone I feel lost and depressed… 😞

The second day I miss them so much I go into their closet and smell their clothes. 🥲

Then on the third day I’m FINE!  😁

Noooo, I’m not really fine. 🙁

I’m FANTASTIC!” 😃

This joke has been told by yours truly on comedy stages a few times, but the truth is I’m not totally fine on day three or fantastic on day four. I miss those messy, loud, fun, exasperating, long-legged teenagers at home all summer long. As a single parent for 300 days of the year I feel completely upside down the two months they’re gone. It’s like a hurricane passed through my house and for two months I’m left standing with all of the pieces of my upturned couch pillows scattered around until it magically gets cleaned up on their return.

This summer I’ve distracted myself with trips away from home for two of the eight weeks.

But this week I’ve been home. You’d think the kids had taken my legs with them on the Swiss Air flight, leaving me here ambling on two stumps. I’ve got so much more time for myself and feel completely lost and unable to sort out what to do with that time. I closed down Santa Monica public library on a Tuesday night checking out a dozen books I’ll likely never read and even cleaned every nook of my car on in the darkness of an evening on my own.

It’s not just the laughter we share at dinner, missing of the Pantene conditioner smell of their hair when I hug them, or longing to hear their upbeat voices in the next room, while I miss all those things a lot. I’m also missing the commitment to something outside of myself. I miss showing up for someone and something that needs (constant) attention. I’ve still got my work, relationships, workouts, and feeding myself (a part time job). But there are significant gaps in time when I’d typically be caring for those two beings when I don’t have any commitment to anyone or anything at all.

Insert feelings of despair, emptiness, and loss. Bird launching is tough, even two months at a time. And holding down the nest once my eaglets are in flight is not easy for this mama eagle.

Summer time is an opportunity for me to turn my attention to my internal commitments. Ut oh. This is where it gets messy. The empty house gets pretty darn haunted when the silence is a reflection of all the promises I made to myself for this summer. The things I wanted to do for myself. The blogs and newsletters I wanted to write, the open mics I wanted to do to reconnect with my love for stand-up, the YouTube videos I longed to create, the Insight Timer meditations and courses I wanted to record. Oh, and that messy hall closet I wanted to clean out. I don’t have any excuse for not following through on those internal promises.

Some internal promises are easier to keep. I keep up my workout routine and journaling. But the deeper, more vulnerable fires seem harder to fan the flames of. No one is there to say, “HEY, THAT BLOG ISN’T GONNA WRITE ITSELF! LET’S GET GOING!” or “GREAT JOB ON MAKING PROGRESS ON SCRIPTING THAT MEDITATION NO ONE ASKED YOU TO MAKE! KEEP GOING!”

Apparently this parent needs to reparent herself. Showing up for others and checking boxes on external promises — especially to my kiddos — seem a lot easier than showing up for myself and the promises I’ve made to me.

I’m embarrassed to admit this, but I posted a video on YouTube in April about my goal of creating 50 videos on YouTube in the next 4-6 months. Then I didn’t do post anything. NADA! I got distracted, made excuses, left town, checked out a lot of library books, and placed my attention on other things. I’ve been thinking about taking that video down in shame, but then a wise friend offered, “Why don’t you make your next video about ‘Why I didn’t follow through on making 50 videos?”

There’s still time to meet my goal (or take that thing down!). But the lesson asks what will it take for me to keep the promises I’ve made to myself?

Can you relate? Is it easier to show up for others even when you’re sick, tired, and depleted, but an Everest climb to follow through on your deeper yearnings and internal promises?

I forgive myself for not following through. There’s no use in curling up in a ball of embarrassment, apologizing for the blogs and newsletters I haven’t written, or deleting the YouTube video or my entire account.

What is helpful for me is to recommit to the promises I’ve made to myself and move forward. I’ve got five weeks left of summertime. There’s plenty o’ time to follow through on the dreams of my heart. I know my desires — even simple things like organizing the hall closet — are bread crumbs to lead me on my path.

What also helps me is to fast forward my brain to LAX airport when I embrace my eaglets on their return mid-August. I’m playing out two scenarios in my mind. One is the scenario when I coast through this summer missing them, doing all the basics to keep my life afloat, but not keeping my promises to myself. I’ve got a pit in my stomach just thinking about how disappointed I’ll feel in myself. I don’t love leaning into this scene of future regret and disappointment but this future possibility is like jet fuel to my self-promising engine.

The second scenario is me making this semi-public declaration and fully committing to my goals for myself, as if I’m overboard mid-Atlantic and the goals are my inflatable pants. Keeping my internal promises feels more brave, vulnerable, and a lot more fulfilling. This approach won’t only keep me afloat, it must just save my life.

I’m reigniting the flames of my internal promises. This blog is one promise, and I’m following through on that right now. I recorded and uploaded a new Insight Timer meditation yesterday. And I’m signed up for my first open mic in a year on Tuesday (wish me luck).

Mindset also helps. The truth is i don’t have to do any of these tasks. I GET to do all of these amazing things with the spaciousness and time I’ve got on my hands this summer.

I’ve also engaged two friends in checking on me and my promises. A little support can go a long way in keeping me accountable.

Do you have a promise you’ve made to yourself you’re struggling to keep? No matter how small the goal is, and how little external validation you might get by following through on it, and all of the valid distractions that keep you from your internal promises, KEEP GOING!

Life seems long, but just like the eight weeks of summer it sure does go by quickly. You’ve got this my friend, and I think I do, too.

“Thank you all!” I announced at the close of a 3-hour corporate training course on Teaming across Cultures on Zoom. The diverse group had been engaged over the span of three long virtual hours and readily shared their experiences of living and working across cultures. We spanned many national cultures and time zones — some joining in the wee hours of morning in Europe, some in Asia at 9am, a few in Africa at midnight, and several of us in late afternoon and evening in the Americas.

“I’d also like to thank God,” shared a Nigerian participant after my word of thanks. “Without God we wouldn’t be here and this training wouldn’t have been possible!”

Holy moly. Dropping the God bomb stunned me into awkward silence. You’d think they’d dropped the F bomb. “Ok, yes. Thank you for that,” I stuttered, wondering what the other participants from this Fortune 100 US-headquartered organization were thinking. After all this course is about working effectively across differences — cultures, styles, generations — and faiths? So it’s natural to thank God above from time to time?

As a Nigerian, religion is a core value and many Nigerians are either Christian or Muslim. GlobeSmart™️, a tool I have worked with for years, also notes, “Many Nigerians do not distinguish between their spirituality and the rest of their lives.” God, naturally, is a part of our zoom classroom experience and deserves acknowledgement.

In my attempt to honor the participant’s divine appreciation, I did a take two and bid the group farewell with, “Thank you again, bless you all!”

Maybe my closing blessing was no big deal. But for me as a US American who has led cross-cultural training since the 1990’s it felt extremely unnatural. Just like the constitutional separation of church and state, I’ve drawn clear lines between my corporate training work and my spiritual life even though I feel connected to the spiritual in my corporate work. I believe helping people understand themselves and others breeds peace and that my training work is part of my soul’s mission. I believe the group of us were brought together for a reason and not just by chance. I believe that as a group we’re stronger and can co-create more than as individuals. But throwing out the blessing bomb at the end of the session? Lord have mercy!

In another recent corporate training focused on working effectively with India I assigned small groups a discussion and gave them a list of cultural values to work with from a wide range of values from around the globe. The cultural values below the surface typically have a big impact on behaviors in the business world. If a culture values equality there is generally an expectation that everyone contributes no matter their amount of tenure, their title, or the amount of gray hair on their head. A group came back and reported proudly, “India has a strong value of Spirituality/Religion and the USA also has a strong value of Spirituality/Religion.” Truth be told it’s very common to discuss the importance of spirituality and religious diversity in India with corporate clients, but it seldom comes up in the US work environment where the sacred-secular divide is strong. This discussion along with my Nigerian participant’s closing comment got me thinking. What if the lines between the sacred and the secular in the US are being redrawn?

According to 2023 Pew Research* about nine-in-ten U.S. adults believe in God or another higher power. Most Americans (83%) believe that people have a soul or spirit in addition to their physical body.

Harvard Business Review** notes that faith is left out of workplace DEI strategy for fear of legal repercussions. A very small percentage of Fortune 100 companies include religion or interfaith engagement in their approach to diversity. It certainly was not a part of my Teaming across Cultures content.

The Diversity Wheel by Gardenswartz and Rowe, often leveraged by yours truly in DEI sessions related to culture, places religion as a diversity factor in one of its four layers. I’ve personally experienced the benefits of acknowledging and appreciating religious diversity at work especially while living in the Middle East. Knowing, understanding, and appreciating Islamic values and practices helped create a sense of belonging in Jordan and while traveling throughout the Arab World. Although I was raised in a Christian family and was baptized and later married in the church, I do not consider myself religious. Muslims refer to Christians and Jews as People of the Book, a term that implies acknowledgement and recognition of religious diversity. Surprisingly to me, my Jordanian friends and colleagues were always the first to wish me a “Merry Christmas!” and “Happy Easter!” I played along with this game even if I didn’t attend church to celebrate those holidays.

This is where I struggle. There is a large population of humans, like me, who consider themselves to be spiritual but not religious (SBNR)*. 22% of Americans are categorized as SBNR because they say they think of themselves as spiritual or they consider spirituality very important in their lives, but they neither think of themselves as religious nor say religion is very important in their lives. The younger generations are even more SBNR than older generations. Religion feels legitimized as a diversity variable, but spirituality without religion not so much. Even the term “Bring your woo to work!” can make eyes roll.

I recognize that religion and spirituality intersect for many. Of the 9 in 10 US adults who believe in God or a higher power, 54% who say they believe in “God as described in the Bible” and 34% who say they don’t believe in the biblical depiction of God but do believe there is “some other higher power or spiritual force in the universe.” Even 22% of U.S. adults who describe themselves as atheists say they believe there is some “higher power or spiritual force” in the universe.

The Dalai Lama speaks of two kinds of spirituality: “One spiritual with faith such as Christianity, Muslim, Judaism, Buddhism, Hinduism and so on. And other spiritualities without particular religious faith simply retain or preserve or increase these basic human good qualities such as human compassion.”

Perhaps I’m not alone in feeling like there’s an opportunity to include more and more of the Dalai Lama’s second kind of spirituality which isn’t connected to a particular religious faith at work. There’s an opportunity to bring spirituality into the (home) office door. I believe there’s an expanding group of people who yearn to integrate their spirituality and spiritual practices at work in an authentic and meaningful way. Well-known thought leaders in business like Simon Sinek and his golden circle as well as Brene Brown’s work on vulnerability, already bring spiritual concepts to work in a language that corporate America can digest. Even so I’m guessing there are doctors, lawyers, and workers of all types who feel spiritual practices can’t be practiced at work and in the era of inclusion spirituality doesn’t quite belong in the modern workplace.

Personally, I feel a chasm in my two work worlds. I have two websites: this blog site which fully displays my spiritual self, while the other houses my corporate training and coaching self. I’m still me, and spirituality lives within all I do at work, but I don’t feel comfortable including it in all that I do. My corporate work has a clear sacred-secular divide. But does it need to? I’m not saying I need to fly my woo flag or thank a higher power on every zoom call, but maybe there’s a way to express and integrate the belief that we’re all spiritual beings having a human experience in an authentic and meaningful way. Maybe there are authentic ways for me to express and bring more magic into the otherwise mundane tasks of emails, virtual training, project work, and even three-hour zoom calls.

In today’s era of Inclusion, spirituality deserves inclusion, too. Many organizations, teams, leaders, and individuals focus on inclusion of the whole self, psychological safety, care, work-life balance, mental health awareness, as well as physical wellness and safety at work. Organizations like Accenture, Intuit, and SalesForce, even have interfaith ERG’s to support religious diversity and wellness at work. But what about spiritual wellness? What are the challenges and opportunities of bringing more soulfulness into our work lives in a meaningful, authentic, and personal way no matter what kind of job we do? Especially if the job isn’t exactly spiritual in nature.

I don’t have all the answers here, but find myself wanting to ask and explore these questions. If you’d like to delve into this topic along with me, I’m offering a free 90 minute workshop on Bring Your Spirituality to Work on Friday, September 20. Register on EventBrite at:

https://linktw.in/LMRNzI

Now that I’ve taken a beat post-awkward corporate training dismount, I’ll end with one that feels right this time around.

The spirit in me honors and appreciates the spirit in you. Thank you for reading. Be well and many blessings to you, my friend.

*https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/2023/12/07/spiritual-beliefs/

** https://hbr.org/2023/06/where-religious-identity-fits-into-your-dei-strategy