SHINE: RESCRIPTING YOUR LIFE IN PARTNRSHIP WITH THE UNIVERSE · SHINE: RESCRIPTING YOUR LIFE IN PARTNRSHIP WITH THE UNIVERSE Page 1 of 22 Also by Yene Assegid FORGET NOT THE SPARROWS

SHINE: RESCRIPTING YOUR LIFE IN PARTNRSHIP WITH THE UNIVERSE

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Also by Yene Assegid

FORGET NOT THE SPARROWS

An African Story: Unfinished Conversations with My Grandmother

BUTTERFLIES OVER AFRICA

Perspectives on changing and transforming the continent


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SHINE

RESCRIPTING YOUR LIFE IN PARTNERSHIP

WITH THE UNIVERSE

YENE ASSEGID


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Copyright © 2015 by Yene Assegid PhD

Published by Tuesday Mornings Rue Andre Van Hasselt 40 1030 Brussels Belgium

Editorial: Tuesday Mornings

Cover illustration: Gamatong

Cover design: Gamatong

Layout: Johyver Ampang

Author Photo: MQ, Beijing, China

All rights reserved. This book my not be reproduced in whole or in part

without written permission from the publisher, except by a reviewer who

may quote brief passages in a review; nor may any part of this book be

reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by

any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or other,

without written permission from the publisher.

ISBN: 978-0-9885792-3-1


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To Matthias


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“There is surely nothing other than the single purpose of the present

moment. A man's whole life is a succession of moment after moment.

There will be nothing else to do, and nothing else to pursue. Live being true

to the single purpose of the moment.”

― Tsunetomo Yamamoto, Hagakure: The Book of the Samurai


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PRAISE FOR

Shine: Rescripting Your Life In Partnership With The Universe

“The title of Yene Assegid’s latest book, Shine, could not be more apt. From

the beginning, when she finds herself in an ambulance after a ‘soul shut

down’, through her profound analysis of how an ailing spirit can be lovingly

cared for and restored to health and happiness, Assegid’s powerful

optimism and insights shine through. For anyone overwhelmed by the

pressures and pain of the world today, this inspirational book is the perfect

medicine.”

― Joan Baxter, author of Dust in Our Eyes: An Unblinkered look at Africa.

“If there is one book you must read on how to creatively draw on your

inner assets to successfully realise your full humanity, it should be Shine:

Rescripting Your Life in Partnership With The Universe. It is a must read for

everyone who is either on a quest for self-fulfillment, or in need of sound

anchorage in the midst of or following life-shaking experiences, or on a new

journey of humanitarianism in its fullest sense. Assegid offers an amazing

menu of insightful and inspiring ideas, brilliant nuggets of wisdom, and a

rich array of illuminating lessons. She draws on imagination, real-life stories,

and multi-disciplinarity to show how we can let our ego go, our fears

tumble, our dreams of beauty become reality, and our constructed walls of

separation and isolation from others bridged. She draws deep into our

often-darkened crevices of humanity with enlightening questions and

creative answers. Many books tell us how to solve specific existential

problems but not how to navigate the many paths to the fullest range of

them; this book does both.”


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― Akwasi Aidoo, PhD, Senior Fellow at Humanity United, and Founding CEO of TrustAfrica.

“Yene Assegid has written a sincere, personal, spiritual and encouraging

little book. After you read it through, then re-start anywhere and read it in

pieces. Open it anywhere and read a passage or two to gain your daily

inspiration. I was moved by her sincerity. It helped me to see her soul.”

― Frank T. Gallo, Ph.D., author of The Enlightened Leader

“The book touches on the things that really matter in life in a way that

inspires deep reflection and motivates one to an attitudinal change. In this

book, I found myself and was able to put many things, events and people in

perspective. It’s a must read for everyone.”

― Bond Emeruwa, President of the Nigerian Film Guild

“In Shine, Yene manages to take the reader through a journey of self-

discovery. The book provides easy to follow lessons on finding your true

gift, which forms the basis of why we are here. An essential read for anyone

looking for a greater meaning to life’s purpose.”

― Kelo Kubu, TEDxJohannesburg

“Dr Yene Assegid is a new breed of Super Star. Like a bright comet she

travels across the globe bringing new awareness and awe to where there was

previously darkness. It’s such a pleasure to be in her presence. Yene has a

way of reminding us all, that we were children, and we can access that joy,

happiness and curiosity again.”

― Adrian Cahill, Executive Coach


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FOREWORD

Yene Assegid’s has the gift to inspire and to make others wise and this is what

her latest book, Shine: Rescripting Your Life in Partnership with the Universe does.

It is a wonderful book from a prudent and sensitive heart birthed in her ‘soul

shut down’.

Shine draws our disparate lives to focus on what really matters in life. The

book poses the fundamental question of what really matters in life? A

question a clever lawyer once posed to Jesus Christ and the answer he got was

no more than a single sentence. “Love the Lord, your God with all your heart

and mind and soul, and your neighbour as yourself”.

Yene Assegid, in her ‘soul shut down’ after years of ‘roaming the world, from

teacher to teacher, program to program, experience to experience’ and diving

deep in her ‘inner world with all its curves and corners’, heard the same answer

deep in her soul. She was in good company as St Augustine of Hippo after

years of roaming realised too that our hearts are restless until they rest in God.

This is wisdom: life stripped of all its complexities, pomp and splendour,

prejudices and foibles, joys and sorrows, dreams and aspirations, sins and

virtues, is simply about our relationship with God – the ‘Universe’ and others

through loving, giving, and sharing.

Yene Assegid timeously points us to the core of life, God, and our role as

channels of God’s love to serve and care for others. In acts of love and

service we and others are enriched making our world a better place.


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A truth attested by inspiring lives like, Nelson Mandela Conversations with

Myself, Vaclav Havel The Art Of The Impossible, Arianna Huffington Thrive, Rumi

Poems of Rumi, John O’Donohue Eternal Echoes, and Martin Buber I and Thou.

Shine: Rescripting Your Life in Partnership with the Universe is a living testament of

a friend of the Universe, lovingly and caringly sharing the experience of her

‘soul shut down’ or what Christian mystics would describe as ‘the dark night

of the soul’, to make us wise in our journey in this life.

― Rt. Revd. Dr. Musonda Trevor Selwyn Mwamba, Assistant Bishop in the Diocese of Chelmsford (Church of England), Rector of Barking and Vicar of St Margaret of Antioch, (Formerly Bishop of Botswana)


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PREFACE

In the past twenty years, I had the chance to work with hundreds of people and

many organizations leadership, transformation and change. Often, especially

during individual coaching sessions, I witnessed strong men and women struggle

with existential issues as they moved through the process of transformation. It

was very moving to accompany people through their challenges, their struggles

and eventually stand in witness to their victories. On the inside, my heart always

ached for and with them in time of pain. While in my role of coach or trainer, I

had to remain calm and composed to actually do my job to serve them best. I

learned a lot in these times. It made me conscious of how vulnerable we are in

life. It made me conscious of the choices that we actually have, right in our

hands. It made me realise the power of commitment and determination; it

brought me up close and personal with the power of faith and courage. It

humbled me. It often brought me to tears as I witnessed resilience in action.

One day I found myself in a peculiar situation. It was about six months after my

family’s relocation from Beijing to Brussels. It was February 2015. It happened

in the mountains in Austria where we had travelled to along with close friends

from Sierra Leone for a skiing holiday. We had a beautiful chalet with a breath-

taking view. The weather was like it’s been pre-arranged. It was the first time in

months that I took a break. For whatever reason this is the time my soul chose

to shut down. It was the first time I took a break in months, possibly years. And

I found myself unable to engage with life. It was a more than a breakdown. A

crisis I had never before experienced.

I remembered all the people I had worked with all the years of my professional

life. I remembered all the amazing transformations I had witnessed before. And

I knew one thing for sure: a crisis can be a gift. Shifting perspectives to find the

gift is the challenge. It’s one thing to know and understand intellectually how


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crisis can be a gift; it’s another ball game to actually embody this inner knowing

and walk the path of transformation. This book is about the process of

embodying the process of change, especially in times of crisis. It’s about

partnering with the Universe to achieve transformation.

What happens during a soul shut down is scary. My own experience of it was

terrifying. I felt exhausted from a lifetime of moving from one country to

another. I felt exhausted from life, from setting up homes, dismantling them and

moving again to set up once more; from setting up projects and leaving them

each time we move as a family; from manifesting and not manifesting the

dreams; from building community and saying goodbye; from witnessing the

changing seasons in people’s lives. It had all been too much. In the recent years

prior to this moment, too many of my friends and family members had passed

away – many unexpected bereavements added to the depletion of my energy.

While I know that the loss of close friends or family is part of life, the tough call

is when a few losses become many losses and death becomes something

common to life; then, making sense becomes difficult. This is when, in my life,

I had unbearable feelings of being overwhelmed. I was in a strange situation. On

one hand I felt this sense of being overwhelmed, and on the other I felt this urge

to learn, understand what was happening so that I could make a turn around for

my own survival.

I never thought I would end up in an ambulance but there I was, in the back of

an ambulance for the second time within three months. Some time before the

ambulance incident, I had collapsed and lost consciousness at home. I did not

take it seriously. I discounted it as part of the usual toll of existence and kept on

going with life as usual. Yet in hindsight, it was clearly a warning. By the time of

the first ambulance incident, my soul felt so overstretched and I could literally

see my energy seeping away. I felt detached but at the same time very consciously

watching the paramedics, as if it was someone else they were working on. I just


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looked. I just watched. I looked everywhere to understand what was happening

and why it was happening. I knew in my heart that unless something changes in

my life, the future did not look good. I took a hard look at myself and asked if

this is the kind of living I wish for? It was not. I realised that whatever is in the

way of the type of life I want; I have to let it go. This book is a result of what I

have found.

What I have found is what happens when life becomes overwhelming and we

can’t see a way back to our authentic energy. Nothing makes sense. It seems as

if hours turn into days and weeks into months and years right before our eyes.

The New Year comes and goes, holidays merge into one another and we remain

on the virtual treadmill of life that keeps going and going. At the same time, our

tasks have to be completed; life and work obligations remain stagnant on

glorified to-do lists. In short, life loses its colour. Flavours become more and

more bland. The simple joys of life become rare and seemingly out of reach.

The effects of exhaustion are alarming to say the least. It’s disorienting. It’s not

a good space to be in. But with a little bit of distance, it can be a gift. When you

find yourself in the middle of it you do have a choice. Either you let your loss of

focus take over and your rapidly empting energy reserves draw you down, or you

can use it as an opportunity for change, a time to re-orient, re-direct, redesign

and rescript your life.

Exhaustion and a sense of being overwhelmed is what can happen when we stop

believing in our dreams and lose our passion for life and in life. My light bulb

moment came while I was asking myself, how can I not give or receive energy?

One of my daughters said matter-of-factly: “Maman, energy cannot be made or

destroyed, it can only be transformed from one form to another, or transferred

from one object to another – it’s basic physics”.


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It’s simple: Whatever energy we have we can maintain, increase or decrease

depending on the thoughts we entertain, the choices we make and the actions

we take. It’s amazing how much energy we can consciously gain or

unconsciously lose. We have the opportunity to be a channel for energy to

support others and ourselves.

My intention here is to show how by engaging with Spirit, with the Universe. It

is this divine spirit that is within us all, whether through prayer or meditation or

just in alone time, we can rescript our lives. We can find ways to use our gifts in

service of others and thereby give our own lives more meaning. By Universe,

Spirit, Divine Power, I am talking about that which is indescribable – God. It is

not about religion, it’s about understanding that we are not just beings of flesh

and blood but in fact spiritual beings connected to the highest power of creation.

And as we design, create and live out our lives we have the choice of partnering

with the power of the Universe to serve our highest purpose.

We need to find the courage to do what we love to do, to follow our dreams,

even if we are already grown up – especially when we are all grown-up. All the

dreams we let go of, all the smiles we have swallowed, all the kindness we chose

to forego, all the fun we forgot to have – all of that costs us energy. It is the cost

of this energy that turns into illness, sadness and dis-ease.

Have you ever wondered, when your the turning point will come? When will it

be time to finally say, ‘enough is enough’? For some it is when we reach the end

of the rope, when we can no longer face another day; for others it’s hearing just

one more unkind comment from someone or being involved in yet another

argument or being sick one more time. It’s when a pattern keeps coming back

and when we finally say “no” to that and say 'yes' to what is not yet. It’s the

space between what was no longer is, and what is to be has not yet happened.

This is a space where both larger-than-life change is possible and at the same


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time where equally large levels of doubt and fear can sabotage the process. It’s

dark. It’s unclear and it’s also invigorating to enter this land of possibilities. The

end of my rope is not the end of yours; it’s different for each person. The only

thing that matters is our ability to recognise that we have reached the end of our

own personal rope and know that it is never too late to turn it around and make

a dramatic, meaningful and amazing transformation. Ideally, we can make the

changes we wish to make before we reach that end. Ideally, we can set up internal

warning signals to let us know when we are on thin ice.

Please join me on this journey where I start to walk my talk and find my own

way back to source. I hope it will bring you both energy and insights to fire you

up, gear you up and launch you ahead to manifest your dreams.

Connect with your inner power right now

You can change your life, if you choose to

You can make that change happen now.

Yene Assegid

Brussels

2015


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RESCRIPTING YOUR LIFE

WORKING IN PARTNERSHIP WITH THE UNIVERSE

What if we had the power to fast forward, rewind, play, pause, change, and

edit our lives as we live? How many of us would go back and forth across the

lines of time to make the best of our lives? Well, I have good news: it is

absolutely possible to rescript our lives.

Yes, you heard me, you read right; it is possible. And it will not only impact

on our lives today, but it could possibly impact not only our lives but those

of lives of generations to come in a positive way.

Of course we can’t technically go back in time, although I would dare say I

believe that time travel is possible through meditation, prayer and healing. For

me time travel happens when we consciously travel to the past, in thoughts,

meaning, prayer or meditation, and consciously choose a new relationship

with what was. So, for example, we keep re-hashing a hurtful incident that

happened in the past. We could go to the time of that incident and explore

various perspectives about it. The most efficient perspective being that no

matter what happened, we can choose our reaction to it. We can choose the

amount of emotions we want to invest in it. And most of all, we can choose

to ask the Universe for help in dealing with the hardship this situation brought

into our lives.

In a similar way, it is possible to change the course of time through making a

few simple lifestyle choices. What is it that we see re-occurring over and over

again despite our wish to have a different reality?


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Being able to rescript our lives gives us the freedom to enjoy living today in

the present while we co-create with the Universe the tomorrow that we wish

to have.

Each one of us is simply an expression of the Universe, each in our own

way. When I see myself in you and you see yourself in me, we are able to

connect at a very different level with depth, compassion and empathy. In

such times we are able to co-create beautiful realities all around us.

When we cannot connect to each other, when I simply see you as separate

from me or when I see myself as separate from the rest; then, I operate in a

lonely vacuum. There is no flow. There is no juice. It becomes hard labour.

In South Africa there is a concept known as Ubuntu. It is best described in the

Nguni phrase umuntu ngumuntu ngabantu which means that a person is a person

through other people or ‘I am because you are’. By embracing this concept

we emerge from the vacuum. We are in a vacuum when we live without

connecting to other living beings, humans as well as animals, even plants. We

float without direction, without anchor. We are just one of many others just

floating. The only sense we have of life is our own ego-driven reality. There

is nothing before and nothing after. There is little or no continuity. When we

speak of life from the ubuntu perspective, the vacuum melts away to make

space for a dynamic system where all things are connected. I see you as a

whole with all your faults and imperfections as well as your qualities and you

see me in the same way. I accept you as you are and you accept me as I am.

We enter a field of communion where we mutually share and feel each other’s

hearts. A oneness emerges. It is in this mindful connection where we can

sense each other. We can laugh and cry together. We can celebrate and mourn

together. We share the burdens and we share the joy. This makes our burdens


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lighter and our moments of joy exponentially expand. A partnership emerges

organically among all beings and this allows the emergence of the best in each

person, in service of the whole.

The action of rescripting our lives can be most effective when we do it with

this sense of interconnectedness with each other and with the universe.

When we understand that the Universe is in partnership with us, when we

allow Spirit to work with us, then we can trust that all the resources we need

will be put at our disposal. All we need to achieve our dreams will be there

every step of the way. All we have to do is to move forward one step at a time

knowing the Universe will provide and being grateful for all that comes our

way.

We don’t need to have a network, a business card or a personal connection

to the so-called ‘right’ people. Once we understand that this is our way

forward, all doubt, all fear, all confusion melt away and are we naturally are

drawn to move forward with Faith, Courage and Audacity.

I can say, “been there, done that” to most things in life, as probably many of

you can. If there is such a thing as an average range of life experiences, I think

there is very little I have not seen or done, or explored. Some experiences

were pleasant, some unpleasant even painful. Some were fun and some silly

or just plain stupid. Whatever these experiences, I know that I would not be

where I am today if I had not gone through them all. At the end of it all, we

come to realise that it’s really the journey that makes us, shapes us and moulds

us into our being.


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So, why is it that despite all these experiences, adventures, blessings, gifts and

so on that we have had, do we still sometimes feel a lingering sense of

emptiness? It’s a sense of not having hit the nail on the head. It’s a sense of

feeling that life is slipping away.

Most of us live with a constant sense of urgency as if we are living to complete

an end instead of understanding that getting there is part of the journey. We

all know the phrase that life is about the journey not the destination. But do

we really truly understand what it means? If we did, would most of us keep

running from one activity to another? Do we really understand that this

mindless activity is the part of the source of our emptiness? I have tried to fill

this void in my own life with work, with sports, with friends, with parties,

with all sorts of things. And at the end of the day, when the dust settles it’s

back again to the same inner void feeling. All the activities are simply a series

of things to do for a short time. And for a short time there is some pleasure

in it, but all too soon, it becomes boring just like the toys from last Christmas.

I know that unless I rescript my life, I will reach a place of no return. I need

to do it to find peace inside my soul. I want to find that which I need to find

so that instead of filling my life with activities, I can fill it with meaningful

action that brings to me and those I interact with abundance, energy, peace,

happiness and fun. I now know how to create such a reality.


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SHINE: RESCRIPTING YOUR LIFE IN PARTNRSHIP WITH THE UNIVERSE · SHINE: RESCRIPTING YOUR LIFE IN PARTNRSHIP WITH THE UNIVERSE Page 1 of 22 Also by Yene Assegid FORGET NOT THE SPARROWS