The Gift of My 41st Birthday

What I discovered about Consciousness, my Inner Child, and the quiet voice I almost ignored

I am humbled to have reached my 41st birthday yesterday. I got to celebrate with my hubby and really embrace the inner me as we explored the expansive sunlight here in Phoenix. It was a gorgeous day of just 80 degrees / 26°C (we're not quite to the summer heat) and there were birds everywhere — blue skies stretched beyond what the eyes could see.

I find that as we increase in age, we often don't think too much (or too long) on 'what we want'. This could be for the celebrations themselves, the gifts we desire, or even the cake we select for our birthday candles.

I remember as a little girl, I loved everything in bright colors — the more glitter, the better. I also loved birthdays. They were the one day my inner princess could come out and shine, and nobody would bat an eye. I always got that extra slice of cake, too.

That inner girl — I see her at about age 8 — still travels with me. I don’t always get to interact with her, but she made an appearance this year. I felt her when I went up to the cake counter to select my birthday cake.

The glass case was filled with options: decadent cakes, pristine cakes, sophisticated cakes. And as I scanned each one, I heard a voice say, “Select the sophisticated cake. You’re 41 now, right?”

But then — there it was. Tucked between two elegant options was a cake straight from the heart of my 8-year-old self. Smaller, but double layered. Swirled in bright tie-dye colors with white frosting, confetti, rosettes, and sprinkles galore. Plus ribbons shooting out from the heart of it. I literally felt my heart flutter at the sight — my 8-year-old sweetheart was so ecstatic.

But I didn’t choose it.

Instead, I turned toward the sophisticated cakes and selected something practical. The wild thing is that I didn’t even flinch.

It was like I was on autopilot. I was.

And just like that, the flutter quieted… as if my 8-year-old self had stepped back into the shadows.

I didn’t think much of it at the time. Not until I got home.

The festivities were quiet, the day had gently wound down, and I found myself sitting in reflection, asking what my real gift was for turning 41.

That’s when it hit me.

I hadn’t followed my gift…

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The True Gift of my 41st Birthday

I began the day as I often do: seated in my beloved La-Z-Boy recliner, nestled below an east-facing window. That’s where I sit to watch the sunrise.

Through this window I watch the gorgeous sun rise.

I wake around 5 a.m., just in time to take the pups 🐶🐶🐶 outside, brush my teeth, and settle in for the morning show. I grab a book and let the sky do its thing — rising in beauty, radiating gold. On this day, I kept my phone off (except for the camera) and let myself be fully present.

I had recently finished The Untethered Soul and The Surrender Experiment — both of which felt like soul-expanding reads.

And shoutout to my dear friend

Billie Moon

for the recommendation of The Untethered Soul, which sat untouched on my bookshelf for nearly four years. It’s moments like this that I know we are supported and guided if we’re willing to listen to the nudges.

Michael’s writing has a way of gently unraveling you while holding your hand. His words helped me stitch together so many threads from my own spiritual journey — especially around Consciousness.

Let me walk you through the thread that unraveled the truth of my birthday gift.

Listening to the Voice Inside

The first chapter of The Untethered Soul is called The Voice Inside Your Head.

We all know of it’s existence and can hear it’s constant chatter, but I humbly admit that I hadn’t yet taken the true, connective, committed time to better understand it. Not only just to sit with it, or observe it as many have advised. But to better understand it's origins, when I had started to deny it or push it down, and truly what it’s attempting to communicate with me.

I paused when I first read this:

"You will someday come to see that there is no use for that incessant internal chatter, and there is no reason to constantly attempt to figure everything out. Eventually you will see that the real cause of problems is not life itself. It's the commotion the mind makes about life that really causes problems."

And then:

"True personal growth is about transcending the part of you that is not okay and needs protection. This is done by constantly remembering that you are the one inside that notices the voice talking. That is the way out. The one inside who is aware that you are always talking to yourself about yourself is always silent. It's a doorway to the depths of your being. To be aware that you are watching the voice talk is to stand on the threshold of a fantastic inner journey."

It was like a portal opened. I was finally ready to walk through.

As I kept reading, Michael began expanding the concept — diving into the true nature of Consciousness.

“Consciousness is the highest word you will ever utter. There is nothing higher or deeper than consciousness. Consciousness is pure awareness.”

“…without awareness of being, or consciousness, there is nothing… if no one is aware of the objects, their existence or nonexistence becomes completely irrelevant.”

“So now, if I ask you, ‘Who are you?’ you answer,
‘I am the one who sees. From back in here somewhere, I look out, and I am aware of the events, thoughts, and emotions that pass before me.’”

“Behind it all, there you are. You go so deep that you realize that’s where you’ve always been. At each stage of your life you have seen different thoughts, emotions, and objects pass before you. But you have always been the conscious receiver of all that was.”

In reading these, I felt like the many puzzle pieces of what Consciousness was/is, that I had been carefully collecting across my Life Journey, had suddenly come together to illustrate a grander image. A mosaic of the Self that transcends form, thought, emotion.

Simple. But vast.
But it’s also so vast, and it’s gravity is like no other.

And at the center of it all?

“Now you are in your center of consciousness. You are behind everything, just watching. That is your true home. Take everything else away and you’re still there, aware that everything is gone. But take the center of awareness away, and there is nothing. That center is the seat of Self. From that seat, you are aware that there are thoughts, emotions, and a world coming in through your senses. But now you are aware that you’re aware. That is the seat of the Buddhist Self, the Hindu Atman, and the Judeo-Christian Soul. The great mystery begins once you take the seat deep within.”

In life, when we are going through our actions and adventures in remembering, this is why I believe we need to continue to explore until we find someone who helps us “see” the whole picture.

Someone who stops is in our tracks.

Because often times it’s just the words they use, or the context they share that provides the needed illumination to see our reflection in the mirror.

For me, it was Michael’s ability to truly take your hand and walk you through his perspective, illustrating through countless examples and metaphors.

Remembering the Inner Seat

Once I set down The Untethered Soul, I immediately picked up The Surrender Experiment. This book shares Michael’s personal journey of letting go and surrendering fully to Life’s flow.

It opened another doorway — this time into something more embodied.

I could finally grasp the idea:

I am Consciousness.
I am not my body.
I am not my thoughts.
I am not my emotions.

But here’s the revelation that changed everything:

I have full agency over my Consciousness — where it focuses, what it tunes into, and how deeply it identifies. Sometimes we get so deep into it that we feel that focus becomes us. It’s almost like zooming into something at such a granular level that you ‘forget’ you’re there.

It’s like watching a movie in a theatre. You know you’re sitting in a seat… but for those two hours, your Consciousness is transported. You are the movie.

Did I physically move? Nope. But my Consciousness did. This is why I believe in the power of storytelling. Because it moves us — sometimes literally.

Michael’s work also introduced me to The Search for Truth, originally written as a substitute for his doctoral dissertation. His early contemplations in the 1970s on meditation and yoga formed the basis for the book.

Being the nerd that I am, I wanted to dive in, too. I was curious what he was contemplating at that time and what his thoughts of the deeper ‘why’ were.

The book has been all that and more for me. It has single-handedly become my top favorite to recommend and share, as it does an incredibly approachable job walking through the pathways of how we go from the human who thinks their “voice” is them, to understanding the vast and expansive space of something more.

The excerpts of expansion began:

"Yet the truth of the matter is that some 99% of our thoughts are concerned solely with that one, infinitely small area of space which is taken up by our own body, thoughts, and emotions -- ...Where shall I go? What will he think of me? Why did I say that?..."

"All thoughts of this type are concerned with what has happened, is happening, or will happen to that minuscule part of the universe which is comprised of one body, one set of emotions, and one pattern of thoughts. This is the EGO fully exposed."

The EGO fully exposed? My goodness, tell me more!

He brought back for me Freud’s concepts of the ID, EGO, and SUPEREGO I learned first back in high school, then layered in concepts of our intellect (aka our computer), our memory (aka our library), our body and our 5 senses (aka our physical receptors) and our chakras (aka our emotional receptors), and how they work in concert to (essentially) illustrate our entire world.

But this illustration, as well as the progression of walking through his books, led me to this:

“From this we can conclude that there is such a thing as “consciousness” which remains the same regardless of what it is focused upon. And we can all enter into this state of pure consciousness, though it may involve a large amount of training. In this state, one is conscious only of one thing — being conscious. The words “I AM” have often been used to describe this state.”

“At this level of pure consciousness, one is not conscious of anything else in the Universe —just the I AM. This is the first step out of ego-consciousness (the psychical self) and into higher states of consciousness (the Spiritual Self). Thus, we again conclude that Spiritual Man is pure consciousness.”

“…from this center of pure consciousness we can, at will, direct our attention upon anything in the Universe. Thus, both the animal self (body-consciousness) and the psychical self (ego-consciousness) exist only due to the fact that the Spiritual Self has become aware of these aspects of the Universe—one body, one set of emotions, one matrix of thoughts—and not the converse. The Spiritual Self is the cause of consciousness in the body, while the body, per se, has nothing to do with the Spiritual Self, save his identification therein. The same relationship holds true for thoughts and emotions.”

And when we see that whole model?

We start to step back from it. We loosen the grip.
We start to be able to take the seat.

I finish reading these and other passages, and then realize it’s time for me to start getting ready. I decide to listen to one of Michael’s recent podcast episodes to further marinate in his theories.

I find Episode 69 which is titled “Above the Line: The Path to True Awareness and Freedom.” There was something within the intro that captures me, as I feel like it’s touching on all these interwoven concepts of his from his books: “True awakening comes from recognizing that you are not your body, thoughts, or past experiences but the consciousness that is aware of them. By letting go of ego-based attachments and conditioned responses, you can transcend suffering and experience inner peace, love, and true spiritual awakening.”

Too many synchronicities were here for me not to listen. So as I got dressed for my birthday breakfast, I soaked it all in.

What illuminated for me was this: every moment of my life is a simple choice.
Do I want to go “below the line”,
or float into the “above the line” area?

Michael’s concept of “the line” is essentially these two “directions”:

1. Being “above the line” means that you are releasing, sinking back and deeper and deeper into your Consciousness.
   Or in essence, into the source of Self.

2. Going “below the line” means that we get caught up in our EGO, and what it says we need to do or accomplish (pretty much) immediately.
   Essentially, when we go “below the line”,
   we are diving into the deep of our psyche.

What he shares towards his closing summaries is where everything I had read, and everything I had heard up until this moment, came into connection.

"Your entire life is about letting go of your identification with the Ego."

I felt something inside ‘click’.

He then shared:

"It's not about going to God, it's about not leaving. You're already there."

"Start letting go! That's how to get above the line, you let go of the pull to go below the line. Ego is extremely strong. Why? Because you've been married to it all of your lifetime! And your whole culture — everything, everybody — teaches you to be like that!"

"You went to college — you went to school — nobody taught you this! They teach you how to be successful, as opposed to:
’Hello! You're the highest thing to walk the face of this earth, but you identify with something that's not. What do I do? Let go! Let go! Just keep relaxing, releasing; relaxing, releasing.’”

"You should get higher everyday of your life. Every single day of your life should be higher than the day before!
How? Because you use the day before to let go. To let go of yourself. You just keep letting go — it gets higher and higher! And then where the Great ones went, they had the ability to let go. And they merge. They fall back. Consciousness is no longer tending to look down, it's not even looking up! It just gets pulled back into the ocean, and that's what enlightenment is! That's the merge! That's the yoga! Yoga means union — merging with God. And 'My Father and I are one', Christ said."

I sat there for a moment at my makeup table, looking at my reflection in my mirror.

I realized in that exact moment what this all meant.

And there is something I have learned along my journey inward.
That when something feels right or “true”,
it is when it (literally) vibrates within me.
It’s when it feels “right” or “correct”.

In a most literal sense, this is what I’ve come to describe as “resonance”.
It’s the “truth” vibrating within you…

It was now vibrating within me.

I have also been navigating a lot of unique (and downright tough) scenarios in my life lately, many of which are around my finances.
I left my corporate job back in September 2024 and since then have come to the spot where the money has run out.

Has it been scary?
Oh heck yes.

But I am filled with such immense gratitude as it’s been the catalyst to reflect on what is important, including the very real conversation of money and ‘things’.

Gently tucked between all this knowledge in this podcast episode, Michael shared this:

"Which would you rather have?
That car and that house?
Or unconditional peace, love, and well-being?
That's all you're trying to get for the car and the house, anyways!"

Tears began to stream down my face.
Over my fresh birthday makeup, none the less.

But I have never been in a moment of more peace and of more freedom.

I realized in that exact moment I had been chasing for years that image.
That societal pinnacle point.
And for all intensive purposes, I had made it!
I had reached it, danced on it, and sunk my flag right into that summit!

But what I really was chasing was the peace.
The love.
The well-being and the “I’m okay”.

Then what bubbled up next:
my EGO was the driver of that vehicle.
It was the driver of that momentum,
of the go-go-go,
of the push,
of the extremes.
I had thought that was me.

As I gazed back into that mirror, I realized I was sitting at the mirror with my EGO.

More tears began to pour from my eyes, knowing that I was now sitting in this place of absolute peace and calm.

There was nothing I “had” to do.
Realizing all was a choice.

And that the choice was finally back in my hands.
And all I had to do was open my hands and set it all free.
Release it.

As Michael had shared:

“What do I do? Let go! Let go! Just keep relaxing, releasing; relaxing, releasing."

My 41st birthday is the birthday of Release.

I imagined I was like a sweet dove that has been kept in captivity in the hands of my EGO.
I kept stepping into the cage for as long as I can remember.
It was the lead in some of my worst moments, yet some of my most successful ones. But I was trapped, because I kept going below the line with it, straight into the depths of the fear and the worry, the stress and the rules, the “must-do’s” and attempting to ‘Keep up with the Jones’.

But as I continued to gaze at myself in that makeup mirror, I realized that all there is, is this very moment.
And in this very moment, like we all do, we have a choice.

Do we continue to go down that path, or do we make the choice to release?
To set free. To allow.

I then realized I was just given the gift of a lifetime.
I was given the most incredible birthday gift I have ever received,
and more than likely will ever receive.

I have received the gift of freedom.
Of ‘going with the flow’ of life,
and allowing my path to naturally unfold without going below the line to “figure it all out”, or “plan it all out.”

The True Gift of my 41st Birthday is Freedom.
It is one of remembering that:
I am the one who sees.
I am the one who listens.
And I am the one who chooses.

And I choose to release it all.
Day after day, night after night.
So I can choose to be in the moment with my sweet 8-year-old-self.

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And about that cake…

The cake wasn’t just about frosting and sprinkles. It wasn’t even about nostalgia.

It was about that moment where my inner child — the bright-eyed 8-year-old who still loves color, sparkle, and play — reached out to me.
And I didn’t reach back.

After my realization last night, I contemplated a bit more this morning under the gorgeous sunrise.
And this is when I made the connection that even my 8-year-old self was silenced by my EGO.

I did not allow, I instead pushed her away.

I took a few moments to go inward, to call upon her and ask her if she would like to revisit the ‘cake conversation’.
I could feel the surge of excitement from within me.

As I put the finishing touches on this gorgeous post from my heart, to yours, I am happy to report:
I instead chose the sparkly.

I ventured over to the store and picked up that gorgeous cake.

Funny enough, the same one wasn’t waiting for me in the case (someone else had purchased it). But in inquiring if they had more, they had another version…
and this one had Lavender frosting on it.

I knew in my heart, in that exact moment, I was standing in a full circle.

The power from my heart must have radiated through that entire store. The clerk who was helping me was the most gracious and kind soul. She immediately started asking if I wanted to add extra ribbons, sprinkles, and a ‘Happy Birthday’ emblem.

I ecstatically allowed the joy to burst out and say “yes - yes - yes!” to all!

And she had the perfect Happy Birthday emblem:
it had every color of that gorgeous rainbow
that my inner-8-year-old absolutely loves 🌈✨.

My beloved friend, I share this message, from my heart to yours:

Never second guess.
Never look away.
Never convince yourself you must go with the sophisticated.

But more than these:
always take a moment to listen.
always allow the space to consider the sparkly.

That little flutter was my queue.
It was the gentle tap of her hand,
asking to be seen in a moment that makes her still feel very seen.
It’s her fairy princess sparkles day (aka my birthday). 🙏✨

Allow this to be a signpost on your journey, too:
Remember, there is a gentle magic that comes to us on our birthdays.
Our inner child comes up to the surface to play again,
because it's the day of wishes, magic, songs,
and exciting connections and a gift that makes us feel special.

Allow this to be an invitation for your next birthday:
Get the cake, or the treat, or the streamers and balloons you've always wanted.

We're never too old.

Embracing my 8-year-old-self,
and equipped with one of the most powerful gifts I've ever received,
has made this birthday absolutely incredible.

Thank you for allowing me to share it with you. 🙏✨

I most literally, from my soul to yours, cannot wait to see what this next year brings.

Namaste,
💜 Lavender

Hello, sweet friend! 👋 Yearning for connection and deeper meaning?
I'm Lavender, and I have a deep passion for unearthing the wisdom woven into life's tapestry. ✨ My own Life Journey, from navigating childhood complexities to a 20+ year corporate career with 55,000+ hours of interviewing (deeply studying humans), has honed my ability to discern human potential. Now, I share stories (past to present) that illuminate our paths, exploring resilience, transformation, purpose, and connecting with the magic within. Your deeper exploration begins here.✨

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My last Stories from My Own Life Journey post, if you’d like to wander through it:

The Sacred Practice of Learning: One Additional Question ✨

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💗✨ If the content here at Life Journey: empowered has resonated with you, if a story sparked a moment of self-discovery, or if the shared wisdom illuminated your path, I welcome your kind support. Creating this space is a heartfelt endeavor, fueled by a desire to connect and empower. Your contribution, be it the cost of a tea 🫖 or the joy of a new book 📖, directly nourishes this work and allows me to continue sharing these soulful explorations. 👇