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Leave Your Shoulds Behind

After a debilitating illness from overwork early in her career, Tosha Silver found a new way to live. Inspired by astrology and a deep connection to the divine, she teaches people around the world how to align with love.

By Tosha Silver

Omega: You grew up with a sign above your bed that said, "If you don't do it, it won't get done." Can you talk about our cultural obsession with hard work and how that influenced your life?

Tosha: I got the message from a young age that not only do you need to work hard, but also no one else will help you. You're on your own so pick up your boot straps and get it together. I really believe that we pick the homes that we're born into for the soul to evolve and learn.

My background was as an astrologer for many years and I happen to be a Capricorn, which got me to about the age of 28 with my entire endocrine system destroyed. I was just tapped out, like a well that had about an inch of water in it.

In retrospect, I think that all was meant to happen, because none of the work that I've spent the last 30 years on would have evolved. It forced me to begin to look at a completely different way to live that actually involved opening not just to the help of people, but to opening to the idea of the divine as the ultimate help.

We live in a culture that says, "You are the doer. You must make it all happen." That started to collapse when I got ill and I spent almost three years in bed. I went from being super active to spending a lot of time looking at a ceiling. The idea that, "God will do for you what you cannot do for yourself," became very real for me.

I began to see that you can't just hope for it; there's actually ways to pray for it and ways to invite it. Little by little this intense identification of the ego with being the doer and the one who makes everything happen, it just starts to fall away.

I think some people misunderstand it and think that it means passivity and you do nothing, but in fact, it means that the force of love becomes the animating presence. It does the acting through you, which is not nearly as exhausting. You're showing up to be the container for what wants to happen.

Omega: People might think that an astrologer is someone who has two clients a day and spends most of the day meditating. How did you become an astrologer with adrenal failure?

Tosha: I think that's one of the great misconceptions about people who do this kind of work. I never advertised; all my clients found me. I got out of college with an English degree and I happened to have these skills, because I'd been obsessed with metaphysics and astrology, and I had intuitive skills as well. One way or another, I fell into giving readings. It was very arduous, especially from the perspective of doer-ship. You think you are the only one that can help people.

This mindset applies to counselors and coaches, too. A lot of those people find me because they are so deep down the rabbit hole of, "I'm the doer and I have to save this person. And everyone in the word needs to know my work. And it's all on me."

Omega: Can you help explain how we can start to recognize signs from the divine in our life?

Tosha: It's great to start with a specific problem, as opposed to saying, "Okay, God, show me that you're here." Some people might do that and see a feather and think, "Oh, I feel like you're here." But I'm so practical, as a Capricorn. I think it sort of distinguishes this work. I'm honestly not a woo-woo, California person at all. I'm more about, 'Let’s make this real.'"

So, take a problem that you have that's very vivid in your life and the first step is the offering. You really take that problem and take both hands and face them to the sky and say, "I can't do this. This particular problem is driving me insane. I'm offering it now to the source of love to release me from the burden." And let the signs and the actions begin to get shown.

Sometimes when you do it, nothing happens immediately and it's honestly because it's not time yet to take an action. I think that's the piece that gets forgotten. People do it and wait three minutes, and they figure, "Oh, there's nothing helping."

But there are's things you do and you get immediate answers, like one second. A phone call, a billboard, a song, a pain in your back that's saying, "No."

You ask, "Hey, should I go to yoga today?" And all of a sudden there is this pain that's saying, "Oh, no, no, no. Not today. Rest up first."

Omega: Can you define what it means to live in divine order and how it might differ from self-care or other means of living a balanced life?

Tosha: The foundation of my work is moving out of the doer-ship. That is, this idea of, "I'm the doer. I've got to make this business fly. I’ve got to get this book on the best-seller list. I've got to do this. I've got to do that." I think many people live that way, even so-called spiritual people.

We need to get out of that constant drive toward getting what we think the ego wants with little respites, getting a massage here or taking a salt bath there.

Instead you can offer all of your desires, plans, and plots over to love. The only way to describe what happens is that you start to instinctively know when to move, when to stop, when to wait, when to act. It's an instinctive process that starts to arise from inside of you.

The "shoulds," which are so exhausting, start leaving.