Inside Out: A Journey to Inner Peace

by Kim Babcock

Overview

Getting to know yourself seems like a never-ending process. Everything constantly changes. From one trend to the next, transformation is unavoidable, which perpetuates the cycle of life. As this world spins faster, and as this change pushes you to the next level of yourself, getting tangled up in the whirlwind of it can seem inevitable. In Inside Out, author Kimberly Babcock shares her story to enable you to know yourself inside and out.

Using her personal experiences as a starting point, Babcock tells how a terrible car accident in 2015 changed the course of her life. She tells how that pivotal moment helped her discover herself. A medium and spiritual coach, she teaches you how to listen to your divine inner being and connect with the spiritual world, the place inside you where the nirvana exists.

Inside Out takes you on a personal journey of intimate self-discovery in getting to know your true divine self as you reconnect to your heart. Discover the way of the heart as Babcock guides you through a practical journey of divine self-remembrance.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781504378864
Publisher:	Balboa Press
Publication date:	04/24/2017
Pages:	212
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.50(h) x 0.48(d)

Read an Excerpt

CHAPTER 1

The Catalyst

Getting to know yourself in this day and age seems like a never-ending process. Everything in life continually changes. From one trend to the next, transformation is inevitable, which perpetuates the cycle of life. As this world continually spins faster and as this change pushes you to the next level of yourself, getting tangled up in the whirlwind of it can seem inevitable. The important thing to remember is that, although we may feel powerless as the world changes, we always have control over our inner worlds, personal powers, and the changes we allow within us. It is up to us to keep our inner spaces sacred, and what a gift it is to know that we have that choice, that power actually.

As I sit here and begin writing this chapter to share the event that drastically changed everything for me, I am dumbfounded in the realization that it is exactly two years ago to this day that I had the experience I am going to share. This event was the catalyst for changing everything in my life for the better.

It was November 7, 2015. I was driving to work, like any other day. At that time in my life, the death grip that my reality had on me was suffocating my existence. I was living a double life as a medium and a clinical coordinator for a physical therapy and rehab facility. I wanted change, and I needed the universe to help me make it happen.

While driving to work, I began begging the universe to please change my path and to put me on my true path of spiritual work, an effort that was so fulfilling to me. I continued in a state of resistance and emotional despair. I was trying to avoid my current situation and my life, and I was longing for something I did not yet have.

While still driving to work, in my heart I began pleading with the universe to give me a sign and make it so obvious that I could not miss it. I wanted a sign that would restore hope within me. I thought to myself, Please give me a sign that will put me on my spiritual path and make it so obvious I can't miss it.

Those were my actual words from my heart to the universe. Boy, was I brave. I didn't even realize what I was asking for. Nonetheless the universe answered right then and there. I got what I asked for, but it wasn't in the way I expected. The universe took me very literally, and the next thing I knew, I woke up with my airbags in my lap and smoke everywhere. I was completely disoriented. I felt like I was waking from a deep, prolonged sleep, one that lasted perhaps from a past life to this one.

Here I was, waking up from an accident in complete and utter disorientation. The smell of the airbags and the smoke rolling from under the hood of my car were extremely nauseating. My ears were painfully ringing, and it was like I'd been standing next to a twelve-gauge shotgun during fire. The silence and stillness in the aftermath of the crash was deafening. As I looked down, I noticed my seat belt was still buckled. But my body had been shoved forward and to the right, causing the seat belt to dig into my hip.

Shards of intense, burning pain began shooting down the back of the right side of my neck. The stinging in my right hand began to set in. The airbag had struck my hand, and my entire hand was numb and briefly paralyzed. My knees were aching, and I was feeling shooting pain up my thighs from hitting the dash, I assume. And my right ankle was throbbing and bleeding a little. It had gotten tangled up with the gas and brake pedals.

As I came to and tried to gather myself, it hit me. I had been in a bad wreck, and looking out over the hood, I knew I had totaled my new car. I seemed to have been immediately robbed of my orientation to myself, my memory, and my surroundings. But I was grateful for the pain because it centered my awareness. I quickly realized that I certainly wasn't going to work anytime soon. The universe answered me quite literally, right then and there.

Eventually the EMTs showed up and took me to the hospital. They began flooding me with the normal array of questions: How old are you? What's your birthdate? And so on.

To my surprise, I couldn't answer them. Recalling my age or birthday seemed like a memory that was buried somewhere deep inside me. No matter how hard I tried or how many times I thought about it, I couldn't remember. In this moment, I knew something was wrong and couldn't help but cry. What the hell is going on? I thought to myself.

I was angry and embarrassed, and I was strapped to a gurney in the back of an ambulance. In these moments, I felt like I had completely lost myself yet all the while still somehow knowing myself.

I was evaluated and diagnosed with a severe brain injury and concussion. I went through three months of speech therapy and cognitive rehabilitation. I experienced symptoms like debilitating hypersensitivity to sound, severe decrease in proprioceptive abilities, extreme dizziness and vertigo, and confusion and memory loss. I still occasionally suffer with bouts of vertigo, but it's much more manageable. Memory loss has also been a great struggle and can be incredibly humbling at times. I guess, in a situation like this, you truly realize how human you really are. Talk about a rude awakening.

Looking back now, I realize that the experience I went through was a direct reflection of my consciousness, of my need to escape the current reality I was experiencing. Little did I know, it would become the catalyst and doorway to my awakening and complete self-awareness.

You see, in the time I spent recovering, I could not return to work. The good news was that I had already been practicing private readings and doing sessions on the side for a few years. And having had that practice under my belt, one thing I knew for sure was that I didn't need my human mind to function for me to channel and connect to the spirit world. It was my small glimmer of hope that maybe it really was time for a life change. I knew that, when I do my mediumship, I must suppress my mind completely anyway to achieve that connection. So, the fact that my cognitive function wasn't up to par seemed less of a threat, and while I was home recovering, I was elated to realize that I could continue mediumship. And so I did.

In the meantime, the company I worked for had lost its contract with the nursing home. The entire therapy department was dissolved, so I couldn't have returned to work even if I wanted to. This was the universe taking me literally and manifesting what I had asked for specifically. The news of my company losing the contract was perhaps one of the biggest motivators for me to just dive into my spiritual practice completely. I gave myself permission and took the leap of faith.

Within just a few months, I opened a local metaphysical shop where I practiced my readings as a medium and Reiki- a form on energy healing. I also held community gatherings for guided meditations. I maintained my shop for a year, and the response I received in my tiny little village of New Concord, Ohio, inspired me. In the time I spent at my shop and interacting with my clients and the community, I realized that people are spiritually starving and craving something more, something much bigger. While working in my community and even while on tour, I've identified a deep desire among people to know their spiritual selves. Individuals are longing to get to know their spiritual selves and to figure out what resonates with them. They desire a truer sense of self-identity.

I interacted with young children, college kids, high school students, adults, and even the elderly at my shop. No matter the age, I quickly realized that people are seeking something greater. They are searching for the deep connection to themselves, a link that bridges the gap between this life and the afterlife. They yearn for something that resonates deep within them and awakens their soul with a sense of fulfillment.

That collection of experiences produced the title of this book. I quickly recognized a population of individuals on the rise who are searching for spiritual depth and fulfillment. So many have turned themselves inside out in search for meaning and that true connection to themselves, the exploration of getting to know oneself beyond what they've been conditioned to know and believe.

Spirituality can easily become a fashionable term used to decorate the ego. I naturally felt compelled to help individuals turn their eyes back to themselves as they yearn to become more spiritually cognizant of their truth. I've encountered people who only had a sense of identity with external material things, and worse yet, I know many people who are addicted to their illnesses for a sense of identity. And through that addiction, they become divorced from their true identities.

All of these interactions fueled me even further to know what people are actually looking for. In 2016, I launched my first tour and traveled around the United States to host spiritual conventions. I traveled to six different cities: Honolulu, Denver, Sedona, Chicago, New York, and more. Throughout these travels as a medium, I found myself doing spiritual coaching instead of mediumship. So many different walks of life come to these events and search for something they feel a connection to.

And what I found after the tour is that, as a collective, the majority of mankind is living inside out. They are living inside out in the quest to know themselves, in their quest to find happiness and in their pursuit to know their purposes. As long as individuals believe they have to search, they have not yet realized what happiness is. It is not something to be found; rather it is something to be realized.

From as early as I can remember, I've always trusted the way I feel, and having faith in that internal notion has been my inner compass for growth and development. If something didn't feel right, I simply wouldn't associate myself with it, yet at the same time, I'd push myself through personal boundaries so I could continue to evolve. Many would call it stepping outside of my comfort zone. Although it might have been scary, I knew it felt right and resonated at some level deep inside.

Curiosity seems to pave the way for most of my self-exploration and personal growth too. I follow that curiosity through new depths of my soul, continually discovering myself in new ways. Customarily, others don't comprehend my actions, but I'm happy to be misunderstood. True freedom is personal development beyond the acceptance of others.

Strangely, I feel comfortable when I'm in a foreign place speaking with strangers. Perhaps it's because I uphold an everlasting adoration for all diversities in life. Perhaps it's because I trust in something greater than myself and know my place inside that greatness. I have a love for breathing the air of new places and meeting new faces. I seem to find myself there. I love and appreciate all cultural diversities and can see how they all contribute to the collective evolution of humankind. I know and feel the truth in this now, but that hasn't always been the case.

Growing up, my high school years were some of the most difficult years of my life for many reasons. From my freshman year to my senior year in high school, instead of learning about life one sip at a time, I felt like I was drinking from a fire hose on full blast. As a freshman, I began dating (and am now married to) my high school sweetheart. He graduated and joined the military, and we soon began a long-distance relationship. I also began a promising modeling career but seemed to have lost all of my friends in that process.

As I recall this time in my life, I can count numerous occasions where I had to sometimes disarm my friends from their own jealousy and insecurities just to maintain a friendship. The trouble with this was that I would disarm them by humiliating myself. I've always been comfortable in my own skin and never felt the need to compare that to others. But when I could sense jealousy or see displays of inferiority among my peers, I would quickly do whatever I could to comfort them at their level of insecurity, and oftentimes that was at my own expense, especially when I shared the news of the modeling contract with my friends.

I quickly learned that, even with a modeling contract on the table in Miami, this career didn't feel right to me. There was a sense of emptiness with it. I have a great appreciation for models of all kinds because I've been there, but a good friend opened my eyes to the emptiness when she asked, "So how do you like getting paid to look pretty?"

At that moment, it was simple. It just wasn't me. I knew I needed more — more one-on-one connection with people and more opportunity to talk with new people and get to know their innermost thoughts. Modeling couldn't fill that void for me. I needed multidimensional connections that fostered love, authenticity, and growth.

In the years following high school, I went through what felt like a cyclone of circumstances — from getting married to becoming a mother and searching for my life's purpose and every step in between. I even dropped out of college five times before I finished my two degrees. I can say that now without embarrassment because I accept myself completely and understand that every level of my past has brought me to this very moment.

I searched externally for many years for self-definition but always seemed to come up empty-handed or unfulfilled. When I finally accomplished a degree in physical therapy and a bachelor of arts degree in health care management, I became a clinical coordinator for a rehab clinic at a local nursing home, providing physical therapy while managing the therapy clinic. I thought I had found my purpose, only to soon realize I'd feel unappeased once again. I settled into this role for a short time before I would begin the search, yet again.

I tried to fit into the normal routine that seemed most accepted by society, punching a time clock, setting up a 401(k), and creating a retirement plan. But again, something just did not feel right. I felt like I was living a lie, and when I had that feeling, I knew it was time to prepare for another change.

CHAPTER 2

Accepting Me

Throughout my life, I've personally battled with identity issues and truly knowing myself at the core level. I've witnessed my identity — or what I thought was my identity — collapse through different circumstances in my life. And now as I approach my mid-thirties, I know why my sense of identity didn't uphold in those circumstances. It doesn't exist there. But I'd have to go through many struggles to realize this.

One of the earliest examples I can remember is when I was probably in third grade. I rode the bus to and from school, and if you ever had to ride the bus, you know that what happens on the bus is far worse than what happens at school. Growing up, I was teased a lot. One boy in particular teased me daily on the bus. I was an easy target, I guess. He teased me about the mole on my face above my lip. My mom used to tell me that it was a beauty mark. So when the boys on the bus would tease me and ask me what was on my face. I'd tell them it was a beauty mark.

Their response crushed me, "Well, it sure isn't working."

When I got home from school that day, I actually picked the mole off my face. Their cruelty so mortified me that I tried to change the way I looked. Disgusting, I know. Even worse, the mole came right back. I had to accept it and ignore their cruel remarks.

As I grew and matured, not only was my identity changing, but so was the way I perceived the world. I went through numerous experiences that seemed to be solely based on my identity, and going through these different events made me fight even harder to get to know myself.

One example I can remember perfectly, when I was a new grad, fresh out of college from physical therapy studies, I had taken a position at an outpatient facility as a PTA (physical therapist's assistant). I was the only PTA at this chiropractic clinic, and made my own schedule. The chiropractor who hired me was rather young too. Now, being raised an Army brat, I was always taught that, if you're going to do something, you'd better give it your all or don't do it at all. And as a new grad in a new position, I was intense about following laws and regulations that governed my therapy license. Shouldn't we all be anyways? I guess I was naïve in believing everyone was as law-abiding and ethical. When something was immoral, believe me, I didn't hesitate to knock on my boss' door and demand his time for a discussion.

I'll never forget one day in particular when I did this. I had the Ohio State laws memorized, and as I recited them to him and shoved his work back to him in disapproval of his immoral actions (mind you, he was my boss and a chiropractor), he was taken aback with my bravery and diligence. He sat back with his arms crossed, smiling.

I asked him, "Why are you smiling?"

"Ya know, Kim, I almost didn't hire you because you're pretty, and pretty don't work hard. But you impress me."

(Continues…)

---

Excerpted from "Inside Out"
by .
Copyright © 2017 Kim Babcock.
Excerpted by permission of Balboa Press.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

---

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments, ix,
Chapter 1 The Catalyst, 1,
Chapter 2 Accepting Me, 14,
Chapter 3 More than Medium, 27,
Chapter 4 Inside Out, 49,
Chapter 5 Ego, 68,
Chapter 6 Dying to Live, 78,
Chapter 7 Awakening, 89,
Chapter 8 Harmonious Mind, Body, and Soul, 105,
Chapter 9 The Art of Surrender, 123,
Chapter 10 The Path of Least Resistance, 138,
Chapter 11 A Life with Purpose, 153,
Chapter 12 Barriers, 168,
Chapter 13 Motivation, 182,
Chapter 14 Heartbeat, 191,