Speaking

“Clear-headed and commanding, Erin Stewart is a deeply charismatic thinker and speaker. Her message is profoundly spiritual, persuasively optimistic. She guides listeners on the necessary path of investing meaning and purpose in the daily adventure of living. She is at once compassionate and strong, loving and incisive—a storehouse of power and goodness.”

Michael Mulligan, Headmaster of Thacher School

As your keynote speaker, Erin Louise Stewart will inspire and empower you to step boldly into your infinite potential and possibilities. Contact her for your next event and be greatly impacted by her clear, compelling, and powerful presence. You will never be the same!

Below, is a keynote address she gave entitled “The Power of Yes!” Enjoy!

Chapel Service Talk by Erin Stewart (mother of Moizee ’08)

May 11, 2008
The Power of Yes!

It takes a village to raise a child. Happy Mother’s Day blessings to everyone who provide the honorable service to loving and caring for another!

I am grateful for this beautiful community, and I acknowledge the faculty, staff, students, parents, friends and family. Thank you for being who you are and for what you contribute to make the Thacher community the blessing and gift it is for all of us.

My talk—The Power of Yes!—was inspired by the Thacher students during their Senior Exhibition presentations. I was profoundly moved by the brilliance, excellence, diversity, poise, passion, courage, boldness, willingness to stretch, beauty, creativity, talent, and power with which each student embodied his or her presentation. The Senior Exes touched a chord within all of us, an inner recognition, a longing, a remembrance that the beautiful light so bright and fully expressed within our children is the same beautiful light within each of us that desires to be as bold and fully expressed.

What we all experienced during that weekend is the quintessential Thacher experience: the conscious, deliberate, and intentional support that holds our children every step of the way to reveal their excellence.

• There is a sacred “yes” within all of us!

This is inborn. It is encoded in our spiritual nature. It is the sacred agreement that we made to come into this physical experience. We are in a perpetual state of becoming more of who we really are. It takes shape in the form of an inner calling, purpose, and passion that is our essential gift to bring forth onto the planet.

• There is a sacred “yes” within the

Universe! We live in a Universe based on Spiritual Principles and Laws, such as Intelligence, Oneness, Wholeness, Order, Love, and Infinite possibility. Quantum physics states that we don’t experience reality – but rather, we experience our perception of reality.

Everything is energy – like attracts like – we create our reality by what we think, say, feel, and do.

Scripture says, “It is done unto you as you believe.” Every thought and word is a prayer – what are you praying?

Ernest Holmes – the founder of Religious Science, once said, “Imagine a group of people that arrived on the planet for something and against nothing.” Imagine yourself as this group. What would it be like to be for something and against nothing? To be for what you desire – for what you intend – for what you dream and envision for yourself and for the highest good of all?

I said “yes” to living a Spirit-inspired life. Moving as spirit called me to move. Living from the inside-out vs. the outside-in. Not conforming to outside opinion or mainstream thinking that says “it has to be this way.”

I dismantled the paradigm of my being “head of household” and established Spirit as “head of household”. When my children were little, they would come to me with their endless list of needs, desires, and wants. I empowered them by directing them to the same Source that I access—the Source, Intelligence, and Power within. We became co-creators, creating a life that we love to live. In a paradigm of win/win, everyone gets what they want.

As the sole parent of two children and a businesswoman I became exhausted from maintaining the daily givens of life. Too busy, distracted and over extended, I felt like I was missing out on my children and what was most important in life, essential and meaningful connection.

Spirit told me to close the door on my hair salon and to take a minimum of one year off to rest. Thus our six-year pilgrimage, the sacred journey within, began! We dismantled our life as we had known it, closing my business, moving out of our home, selling our car, and letting go of most of our belongings, bringing them down to what we could carry on a plane and five boxes stored in a friend’s garage.

Living light, we ended up in Tobago, a small island in the Caribbean. With no work, no school, we lived simply. We immersed ourselves in the land, people, culture, elements, and a very slow, delicious pace of life. Open, spontaneous, flexible, resilient, and adaptable, we became masters of walking in the unknown. Jumping metaphorical cliffs, not seeing what’s before you, yet taking the next right steps anyway. Following our inner impulses, we were led to where we were supposed to be and whatever we needed was always provided. Our spiritual senses heightened, we were keenly aware of a loving and supportive Universe. We deepened our awareness of who we are and our place in a global world.

Education is another place that I said “yes” to a clear intention, a pure desire for the best opportunities in education that my children could have—education that nurtured and cultivated the light within them, and supported their individuality and freedom to fully express who they essentially are. This education ranged from play based/art based schools with very little homework, testing and grading, to very structured intensely academic traditional schools, to a term spent under a thatched roof in an international school, to public schools, and [ultimately,] college prep boarding schools. My son went to Cate and graduated yesterday from Loyola Marymount University. Moizee’s extraordinary experience at Thacher has been an answered prayer and beyond our wildest dreams, and has well paved the way to ensure a successful next four years at USC.

My spiritual teacher, Dr. Michael Beckwith, is the founder and spiritual leader of the Agape International Spiritual Center in Culver City, a global movement of creating a world that works for everyone. Twenty years ago when Dr. Michael said “yes” to the vision, he was not the person he is today. He didn’t have the skills, money, resources, people, and buildings, but what he had was the power of his “yes”. Within the “yes” he had everything. He had the courage and willingness to move in the direction of his vision. Out of his “yes” the people, skills, resources, buildings, and money came. Most importantly he became the person that could allow the vision to be revealed through him! Who he is today is not who he will be as he says “yes” to the next level of expansion for the vision.

There is a saying that “Life doesn’t call the qualified – it qualifies the called.”

And this is true for everyone! We all have a calling. We all have the ability to stand with both feet firmly planted in our essential yes! Everything that is needed or required for the fulfillment of our calling is inherent within our “yes!”

Take a moment and turn within. Reflect over your journey of evolution, noticing all of your “yeses” along the way. Notice how life is “for” you – even when there appeared to be an obstacle. Notice how you have been brought through, time and time again, life has conspired for you making a way out of what appeared to be “no way”.

Love, in the form of people, places, and things, was brought forth when you needed it. The evidence of “yes” is the accumulation of every moment that brought you into this moment – you are alive – you are here!

We all have a “sacred yes” within an infinite ever-expanding Reality that is seeking to express more of who we really are.  

• What is seeking to emerge more fully and completely through you?
• How does your “sacred yes” fulfill your essential nature that is of bliss and joy – yet serves others?
• What are you willing to release to live more of the “yes”?
• What are you willing to embrace to be the “yes” that you are?

Rest in the “yes” of your own inner vastness – one who is aware of his or her own infinite nature, capacities, potentiality, and possibility! With Life, Love, Intelligence, and a benevolent, harmonious, and essentially good Universe “for you” there truly is nothing against you! All is well!

“Boldness Has Genius, Power, and Magic In It”

Until one is committed, there is hesitancy; the chance to draw back, always ineffectiveness. The moment one definitely commits oneself, then providence moves too. All sorts of things occur to help one that would never have otherwise occurred. A whole stream of events issue from the decision, raising in one’s favor all manner of unforeseen incidents, meetings, and material assistance which no person could have dreamed would come their way. Whatever you want to do, begin it!

--Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe