Hello. My name is Julie Roick. 

A long time ago, I was married to someone most people would consider a nice guy. A nice guy, but a busy guy. A guy who apparently needed to keep me busy too. I will call him Suit. Suit and I had four children, three dogs, a couple of cats, and a modest home in Fancy Pants Town. I spent my days, taking care of them, living the mantra my mother gave me “marriage is a lot of work.” She was right!

One night, years into this marriage-is-a-lot-of-work thing, I experienced a wake-up call. A literal wake-up call.

As I lay sound asleep, I felt the blankets being pulled off of me towards my feet. I struggled to pull them back up, deliriously trying to comprehend what was going on. I battled whatever it was that was pulling them down, but the force was too strong. Tired of the struggle, I opened my eyes. Above my bed, was the most beautiful, glowing light, kind of like a star, but golden in color, sparkling and warm, I stared at it, completely captivated by its beauty, it seemed otherworldly, almost fairy-like. I was mesmerized. It was there long enough for me to say to myself, “I don’t want to ever forget this moment” and then whoosh — it flew out the window. I fell back asleep happy to know, or at least think, my mother who had died months earlier had just visited me. Since her death, I felt completely lost and this ethereal visit comforted me.

Recounting in the morning the nocturnal events to Suit, he despaired, “Great, we have a ghost in the house.” Wanting a more positive explanation, I consulted my friend, Metaphysical. She told me whatever it was it was trying to wake me up. I told her it did. She said, “no, I mean wake you up — from the life you are living.”

That was over 20 years ago. My wake-up call. Not everyone is blessed to have them or to have them in such a beautiful, profoundly special way. Many of us get these calls but don’t heed them. I didn’t. The specialness of the encounter seemingly wasn’t enough for me to understand the significance right away. Then, busy with four children, pets, and Suit, I didn’t really understand the meaning and it took me a long time to figure it out.

I ended up driving away from Suit and Fancy Pants town with four children, three dogs, the cats, and a rowing shell on the roof of my car for a new adventure, miles away in Quaint Town. The plan, now freed from Suit’s daily whims was that I might find myself. 

With the liberation from the expectations my mom had of me and my marriage, I was free to live the way I wanted. I officially parted ways with Suit but not without it being very messy, hurtful, and not handled with any sort of grace. Suffice it to say, I fell in love with my trainer who was also married. I am giving you the CliffNotes version to save all of us from the torture. Gym Crush and I did get married a few years later. The way it started though wasn’t right. I knew it and know that. But I was still sound asleep. Not an excuse, just an observation, and the truth. Sound asleep.

And then the wake-up call was understood, about five years ago. Yes, fifteen years after the official wake-up call!

I listened, read, and podcasted Eckhart Tolle’s A New Earth five times — yes, it took me five times on repeat to fully understand it. It taught me what it means to wake up. He fully explains how the Ego is not our True Self and understanding this truth allows you to wake up from the dream world your Ego has you living in. He explains how to lift the Ego’s veil.

Stories, labels, beliefs, and experiences layer onto our True Selves. This experiential layering creates Ego. These layers have created a lens through which we view life, giving opinions, perspectives, belief systems, and morals (or lack thereof), all coming from Ego. Because the word Ego is a bit loaded with different interpretations (how egoic!), so I use the term Influenced Self. Let me paint a clearer picture of this idea.

Imagine for a moment, you were born into a different family, with different beliefs, experiences, and stories.

Where would you be right now at this very moment?

You probably wouldn’t be here.

You might live in a different town, maybe even a different country and your life trajectory would have put you somewhere else entirely. You would be on the surface, someone else. But underneath all of the beliefs, experiences, and stories from your current life or the one you momentarily imagined, you would still have your True Self. This stripped-down personality with God-given gifts and talents is the Self not tainted by the layers of experiences. Our True Self gets twisted up with life experiences and the degrees vary from one human to the next.

Nothing against your parents or upbringing. We all have stories, some more dysfunctional than others. All of these influences, are just that though, influences and when you take them away and step back from your stories, you wake up to the magical reality of who you really are — light, love, and a human with talents and gifts just waiting to be shared with the world without all of the layers.

Of course, we are human and we are in our life situations because of relationships we have cultivated based on our Influenced Self. But by waking up to the reality that your Influenced Self is not really who you are, you go about life in a completely different way.

Armed with the wake-up call, you can take some space in all of your experiences and observe the situation, knowing your Influenced Self doesn’t need to show up. Your gift to the experience is your presence, without the layers, the judgments, the opinions, the influences, and the stories. You can just be in the moment holding space for whomever you are with. A moment with more spaciousness, peace, love, patience, tolerance, and light without judgments or preconceived or fabricated thoughts, ideas, and opinions. Your raw True Self can show up, still with all of your gifts and talents, just without the junk that has been layered on top.

Before my wake-up call, I busied myself with my familial obligations living with the mantra, “marriage is a lot of work.” When my Jiminy Crickett (my mother) died, I no longer felt obligated to stay in a difficult marriage. All of these stories, the ones about Suit, marriage, Gym Crush, and my mother’s so-called expectations are just that, stories that skewed my perceptions and in turn, made things messy. Throw some Catholic Guilt into the mix and you have a recipe for staying sound asleep. If I had really awakened way back when, the end of my marriage would have been filled with grace and love, despite it still being the end.

The wonderful thing about this newfound way of living is it is infectious. What you give to another, you receive. Drama is diffused or non-existent and replaced by love. We were born to love and be loved. By releasing our Influenced Self, we give space for love to show up more often. When you wake up, you wake up to peace and happiness. 

So many people think peace and happiness are byproducts of a journey, a journey out there — when the kids grow up, when I make X amount of dollars, when we go on that trip, finish that project, change the world, fill in the blank. But really, peace and happiness are within reach, every single day when you journey into yourself, come home to yourself, your True Self, and wake up to the presence of the moment. This is where peace and happiness reside, in these moments. Our goal is to string as many of these moments together as possible and live a life filled with love and light.

My life mission is to help people wake up sooner than I did and fill the world with love, peace, and happiness. I hope I just saved you 20 years of figuring all of this out. Now it is your turn to wake up and start living from your True Self.

Thank you.