This  greeting card is  published by Brush Dance, a company in Mill Valley, California,  with the painting and calligraphy© by Renee Locks.

It is visible to my clients and a constant reminder to myself of how I aspire to navigate in this life of mine.

The storm I’m writing about this week concerns my efforts to transform the platform of my business from a website about my teaching Resonance Repatterning® to a website about my private psychotherapy practice, Resonant Healing.

As I have mentioned in past articles,  the metamorphosis of my practice emphasis has been going on since November 2010 and has involved a great deal of soul-searching. Hopefully a lot of growth has begun as I continue clearing out my old cobwebs and more out-moded patterns.

Like many people I have found it difficult to fully express myself and promote my work without hiding behind some kind of shield. One of my realizations over the past few months was noticing just how much I hid my talent and training as a clinical social worker/psychotherapist and played it safe by obscuring these with the security of the Resonance Repatterning  system.

Consequently, when it came time to make myself visible without reliance on my props I did a lot of Repatterning  work on myself to get myself through writing all of the new text . I anticipated that when that part was finished  I would feel really relieved.  I expected that at last my sense of purpose and equilibrium were being restored.

The really tricky thing about expectations is that when they don’t pan out disappointment takes their place. The worst part of this cycle is that together they obscure the literally awesome way that the Divine orchestrates  giving us even more good than our hearts’ desire. Expectations and disappointment keep us from perceiving the divine flow in our everyday lives.

What has surfaced over the past week and a half  is how scary a prospect it is for me to show myself even more publicly than I had before. My feelings of vulnerability did not abate as I made progress with the website and continued working with my wonderful website designer, Mark Ledbetter, www.markledbetter.com/webdesign.html.

I have been wanting to write this article for at least two weeks and it was just too scary to reveal myself. I felt my ambivalence and stubborn reluctance to sit at my computer to write this.

Yesterday I cleared away some of my ancient pattern of expectation and disappointment and today, there in my inbox was an article by my teacher Mark Silver, www.theheartof business.com. He reminded me to use a Sufi tool I learned from him in The Heart of Money: A Transformational Journey class last Spring.

The tool is about using a veil to keep your heart open and have the heart’s tenderness protected at the same time. The article that appeared today is entitled Finding the Courage to Be A Lot More Visible.

I hope you’ll find it as helpful to use as I do. Here is Mark’s article and please keep checking into www.beyourbliss.info to see how it is evolving.

February 21st, 2012
By Mark Posted in 3 Journeys of Marketing.

Finding the Courage to Be A Lot More Visible

When I was a paramedic I had a kind of anonymous visibility. My uniform represented a public entity, and when we pulled up on scene lights and sirens we tended to get a lot of attention. Often a crowd had gathered, and all eyes were on us.

Being in business requires a different kind of visibility, one that is much more vulnerable. For one, you don’t have a radio to call for backup. And two, you aren’t a role or an anonymous face of an entity. You are you. You represent yourself.

And yet you still have to be visible. Ooo… that can be scary. Let’s fix that.

Not Everyone Gets a Backstage Pass

Our hearts are tender. If someone’s heart doesn’t feel tender, it’s because it’s walled up and armored over. Too many people probably poked at it when that person was young. Often the most armored people have the most tender hearts. Sad but true.

Being visible means that more people see you. More people to poke sticks at you. More scary.

Except it’s not true. Being visible is not the same as being naked. Tenderness doesn’t have to mean being fully exposed.

In the center of your heart is the Holy of Holies. When different traditions refer to the heart as the House of God, this is what they are talking about. It is a tender, sacred space.

When we’re talking about visibility, we’re not talking about exposing that to the world. That is just for you and Divine. Only God, and perhaps your intimate beloved, gets a backstage pass.

That’s What the Veil Is For

There’s been a lot of noise in Western media about how anti-feminist the Islamic veil is. And I would agree with that if an outside authority is forcing a woman to wear it.

Many traditions recommend covering yourself in various ways, whether it’s a hat or other head covering, or traditional robes. By clothing ourselves in holiness, we make ourselves mindful of the protection our inner selves need so desperately.

By veiling your inner heart from the outer world, you can open it completely to the Source of Love.

With your core infused, immersed, saturated in the power of Divine Love, you can then face the world and be visible… to a certain extent.

Working with a client with this exercise, once she felt the veil over herself, there was a confidence and clarity she felt. She also felt more free to be open-hearted and generous in her business, trusting that what was truly precious to her wouldn’t need to be given away.

Standing Up Fully Veiled

If you’re veiled, what does get seen? Your authentic expression from your heart gets put out into the world. Not your heart itself, but the expression of your heart. Your words. Your videos. Your opinions and expertise and information. Your emotions and your stories.

But not your inner heart itself.

This may run counter to what many people have told you, that you need to have your heart out there. But look at any healthy person in the public eye, and they take care to protect aspects of their private lives, to protect their heart and their privacy. We each need that.

And here’s the great thing about a veil: it’s not armor. Armor is solid, impenetrable (except when it cracks and falls away.) Veils vary in thickness. Veils reveal some of what’s behind them. Light can shine through a veil.

Your heart can shine out into the world through the veil, but without revealing your most tender aspects. You are protected.

The Exercise

This is an exercise partially from the Heart of Money Transformational Journey, and it’s also something I use with clients regularly. The other day I asked a client to try this out, and it was remarkable how she felt immediately afterward, how much safer and more empowered she felt to step into more visibility and leadership.

Take a moment to connect with the most tender, sacred part of your heart. Now ask for a veil to be placed between it and the outside world. Don’t “visualize” or try to make it happen from your own will. Just ask.

Then notice. What do you perceive? Does it feel safer to let go of some of your self-created armor? Do you feel more able to step into visibility.

Spend 3 minutes right now asking for and receiving the Divine veil around your tender heart. And then share your experience on the blog, so others will be inspired to get the same help.

Article ©2012 Mark Silver, all rights reserved. Reprinted with permission. This article and hundreds of others, along with other free resources are available at http://www.heartofbusiness.com