What makes me a team member? WHY me?
BECAUSE I was a fool, way before knowing that such candor is the gift received at the END of all exploring… I was also too hungry to hear the wisdom of “be careful what you pray for as you may get it…” I had two prayers that were intimately connected. I wanted to heal my mind (with a vengeance), a healing I saw as the prerequisite to my second wish: hearing my voice and being heard…
My name is Mahalene Louis, Maha for short.
I am a motivational listener with a hearing loss (I kid you not!).
My body was born in France, and my soul, in the USA. It is indeed when I came to America that I realized the existence of parallel worlds. Certainly, arriving in NYC without speaking a word of English was enough a cultural shock to open a portal to new dimensions!
While learning English as quickly as possible (my studies were in ancient languages), I switched from words to colors. Being a communicator at heart, I had to have a way to express myself; it was a non-negotiable! Well, I must’ve died and gone to heaven, because I soon witnessed an artistic gift that came way out of nowhere… The difference between the multi-modal worlds I visited while painting and my “normal” everyday life was so startling that I resolved to be truly an explorer, and to go beyond the final frontier: the mind. I wanted to know across board the same “big littleness” I knew while making art, when I was at once here (totally focused), and not here (no judgment).
Being as destructive as I was creative, my life (and certainly this of my body) depended on my ability to suspend judgment and surrender to something greater. I ached to be at once “here and not here…” I wanted to extend what I felt while painting to the way I did money, to the way I ate, to how I made friends; to everything! This prayer for what I see as humility is how I ended up in a little synagogue, praying: “you got me, God! But if you want to continue using me to express beauty, you better do something about my crazies!”
This is when I was reminded of [the genes of] my parents, which I had done all I could to distance (short of going to the moon). This is also when I remembered that words were the sacred and magical place I would go to as a child… I heard again this little 5-year old version of me announcing that she would write a Hebrew-based book that would create world peace… But the biggest memory was when the door of the QKabbalah flew wide open, and when I “received” my new Art commission: to decode the Soul of the Torah as a metalanguage. “Do that,” said the still small voice, “and you will heal your mind!”
At first I was stunned: “Is this a joke, God?” And then I became angry: “WHY don’t you send someone else, like a rabbi or, at the least, someone who has their act together? Don’t you know that, if it weren’t for family, food, sex and money, I’d do great on Earth?”
I was yet to understand an important distinction: the work was not to be done by me, but through me! Followed a process I couldn’t stop even if I wanted to… Years of questioning my sanity, decades of what seemed like an interminable wax on wax off process, opening one art show after another, writing and illustrating an obscene amount of books (thanks, God, for big hard drives!). Parallel to a prolific creativity, I was eventually guided to become a coach, which definitely raised the ante… As an artiste, I was in role if acting outrageously: it came with the job’s description! As for being a guide, this came with an entirely new set of ethics… Was I the change I was advising? And if I couldn’t be that, who was I fooling?
Indeed, what I was attempting to lose brought me to my knees… Most painful was the doubt compelling me to hopelessly seek “your” approval: “I got it, I got it: do you believe me now? Do you love me now?” [Pause]
And the day did come when there was nothing left but the strange readiness to give it all. This is when the voice of Golden XPR took over and when IT, I and WE (thank you, Michael Wolf; thank you, World) became real.
So yes! It is the willingness to fail and fail and fail and fall again (what a fool!), as I would navigate through the meanders of “my” insane resistance to LOVE that made me a motivational listener with a hearing loss! Yielding and feeling the intense passion that moves through me broke me open to receiving the biggest gift of all: to Rest In Peace, and find in my sanctuary that I have a voice, and, even better, that I am the Voice, as there is only One of us; One Voice, One Mind – a Oneness which is divinely “enough!”
What makes me a team member? WHY me?
BECAUSE servant leadership has always been very real for me, even as a teenager when my hobbies included self-development and public speaking… I was looking for a practical solution to help my peers and eventually to contribute to the emergence of a global community. But first, I had to find a way to know that I was, enough…
My name is Michael Wolf.
I am the CEO and co-founder of emPowering NOW LLC.
I know that the key to making sound decisions and modeling courage is to inquire within, deeply enough to understand myself and therefore sustain inner peace. The decision to prioritize Self-knowledge – (which is really THE Decision) leads to the wisdom of discernment. I could see the link: without peace, no wholesome Power. Without wholesome Power, no global transformation or sustainability… bottom line: bummer!
My passion is and always was in communication and in business… In high school, I was known to enjoy engaging in debates, and doing a fair job at it… I then chose to study Business Administration in Marketing resulting in a Bachelors degree in this field from Texas A&M University. In my adult life, I garnered 30 years of business experience working at some of the world’s largest and most innovative technology companies including Xerox, PTC, Vignette and most recently, IBM Security.
I enjoy technology, yet not for the sake of technology’s itself. To me selling software has been more about understanding complex issues, while building relationships with folks who care about solving those problems. I do enjoy orchestrating the complex enterprise sales process. So much so that I have been blessed to regularly receive recognition for 100% club and several times have been awarded the company’s most prestigious award, President’s Club.
On one such award trip (we were in 2002), I went through a “near death experience” in the midst of a massage in the Pacific Ocean. Although temporary, the event was unforgettable. I had never had such a weird and undeniably ecstatic experience, never opened to a blissful and visceral knowing of universal connectedness and unconditional love…
The question then became: how could I share this precious knowing with the world? Soon followed by: how could I sustain this? I went through what any mystic does: the ups and downs of the “dark night of the soul…” I hit bottom more than once until I found that recovery involved a difficult divorce and as well, the renewed decision to know myself and embody wisdom… This was the only way I could be the change I wished to see, especially as I had three beautiful children I wanted to love, support and father the best I could… I thus read book after book. I became a student of global religions… I dived into energy medicine and went through dozens of transformation modalities. However, while each offered very real benefits, they all seemed to wear off when the workshop was over.
While working with different healers (and with myself), I could hear from within “healer, heal thyself!” The advice was even more so potent as I found myself penniless and even in debt, while working on donation, using the different modalities I had learned to assist my clients. I soon realized that something else was needed…
To address this gap, I wrote a business plan for emPowering NOW LLC. It was an act of faith, aiming to clarify my thoughts about doing just that – offering products, training and services to empower the NOW, sustainably. To succeed, the business vision required a rock-solid curriculum which could assist in leading anyone who sincerely wanted it to the “Promised Land” of the Eternal Now.
This is when Maha and I met: she was looking for a partner educated in business, information technologies and healing modalities, someone who could join her in bringing forth a project of global scope. I was looking for Maha’s lifework, dedicated to receiving the body of material that would become known as Golden XPR – a global path to transition from greed into grace and sustain the sense of enough.
I eventually realized that Maha’s lifework came with Maha, a being so diametrically opposed to me in every way that the relating could only be “PAIRfectly” surreal… Just right here, I would never have believed I would one day use the word “PAIRfectly” and feel the anger transform into laughter!