Beauty in Chaos: An Inner Journey to Restoring Love, Hope, and Freedom

By Denise Sivilay

In her early twenties, author Denise Sivilay was seeking fun and excitement in fashion, parties, and romantic relationships. In her late twenties, she began seeking ways to heal her life and purge herself of addictions and an attachment to a mind-set that had corrupted her emotionally, mentally, physically, and spiritually.

In Beauty in Chaos, Sivilay shares the life-changing lessons about love and life she has gleaned along the path of seeking self-love, healing, forgiveness, and true happiness. She narrates the stories of her life: from her birth in Laos in 1980, to escaping that violent environment and moving to Australia at three years old, to growing up without a father fi gure, to being a victim of her own self-sabotaging patterns and limiting beliefs.

From the good to the bad, Beauty in Chaos presents a journey where every event plays a role in the story. Sivilay shares how she was able to find happiness in the midst of sadness, and she encourages you to see the beauty in yourself, discover your own worth, and learn the value of real joy and love.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Balboa Press AU
• Release date: Apr 5, 2016
• ISBN: 9781504301374

Denise Sivilay

Denise Sivilay is a life coach and a personal development trainer who is passionate about helping other women overcome their fears and achieve their personal best. She was born in Vientiane, Laos, and lives in Sydney, Australia.

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Copyright © 2016 Denise Sivilay.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

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The author of this book does not dispense medical advice or prescribe the use of any technique as a form of treatment for physical, emotional, or medical problems without the advice of a physician, either directly or indirectly. The intent of the author is only to offer information of a general nature to help you in your quest for emotional and spiritual well-being. In the event you use any of the information in this book for yourself, which is your constitutional right, the author and the publisher assume no responsibility for your actions.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

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ISBN: 978-1-5043-0136-7 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-5043-0137-4 (e)

Balboa Press rev. date: 04/04/2016

CONTENTS

1    A Thousand Spiritual Deaths

2    When Love And Fear Collide

3    Plug Into Your Calling

4    Spiritual Transformation

5    True Success In Life

6    Ancient Wisdom For Lasting Inner Peace And Happiness

7    Love Is The Master Plan

It is an attractive idea, this notion of the perfect place waiting for us … a new place that will deliver all that our flawed previous home did not: healing, inspiration, energy, and love. Surely this search for the perfect place is nothing less than the search of happiness.

Perhaps there are two extremes: those who have never left and those who have never arrived. The rest of us are somewhere in between, travelling hopefully, because to stop would be an admission of failure.

—Kahtryn Heyman

INTRODUCTION

E ndure + Hope + Faith + Personal Action = Success

In my early twenties, like most people I was seeking fun and excitement in fashion, parties, and romantic relationships. In my late twenties, I began seeking ways to heal my life and purge myself of addictions and an attachment to a mindset that had corrupted me emotionally, mentally, physically, and spiritually.

Here is my humble attempt to share with you the life-changing lessons about love and life that I have learnt along the path of seeking self-love, healing, forgiveness, and true happiness. I am not Ms. Know-It-All, and my goal is not to tell you how to live your life but to share with you the fruits of my experiences through the good and difficult times. I want to show you how I started living a life of peace, happiness, and fulfilment and how it is possible when you don’t give up on what is true in your heart.

I was born on December 11, 1980, in Vientiane, Laos. During the Insurgency War in Laos, my family decided to escape the hostile environment in our country and seek a better life elsewhere. We escaped by crossing the Mekong River and lived in a refugee camp in Thailand for three years before emigrating to Australia when I was three years old.

My parents had separated at the same time. My father decided to emigrate to the United States, while my mother, her family, and I moved to Australia. Growing up without my biological father around was difficult. I didn’t have a father to provide me the love, protection, and support system required for the process of growing up and facing life’s ups and downs. It affected the way I saw the world and my sense of self-love and self-worth at the deepest level.

My mother remarried when I was five years old and had two other children, my two sisters. She went through a divorce with her second husband when I was fifteen. Being raised by a single mother and growing up in the public housing system was tough; there were many crimes and drug dealings on a daily basis. I grew up witnessing drug deals in broad daylight, and drugs were easily accessible to just about anyone.

The kids that I grew up with didn’t have a strong sense of direction or believe that they could do something great with their lives; most of them got caught up in bad relationships, crimes, gangs, or self-destructive lifestyles. I guess it is true what they say: Your level of consciousness is a reflection of the environment you have been exposed to.

Growing up, I became a victim of my self-sabotaging patterns and limiting beliefs. When I was fourteen, I began smoking and drinking alcohol, which eventually resulted in experimenting with various and more dangerous drugs. I became addicted to the pattern of self-destruction. Using drugs and alcohol was my outlet at the time. I was hanging around the wrong people, and I became lost in the wrong crowd. I’ve seen friends come and go; nights out partying and drinking myself into oblivion became the vicious, harmful pattern I fell into. I kept myself busy through engaging in negative thoughts and harmful activities so I didn’t have to think about what was really going on in my life and the things I had to change from within. The centre theme of my life was victimhood.

I was experiencing an existential crisis. But there is always a chance, another day to get it right, if we put our hearts and minds in the right place. If we choose to surround ourselves with positive people and a supportive and nurturing environment, it will allow us to break down the walls of our limiting beliefs and let our personality flourish and our creativity unfold.

A lack of self-love and a strong sense of inferiority birthed and fuelled my emotional pain and patterns of fear. A feeling of constant insecurity, unworthiness, and neurosis kept me stuck in a dark tunnel so that I couldn’t have seen the light even if it was right in front of me. A wrong quest to finding love and happiness outside of me was the reason I kept attracting bad relationships and wrong friends and associates. Paramananda said, Constantly we are hoping that someone else may give us knowledge and happiness. But that is not possible. These come only from within

In my mind and heart, I had died a thousand deaths, my soul had lost its true identity, and my heart had led itself astray. I was trying to find love, peace, and happiness outside of me and in all the wrong places. I needed to free myself from being my own worst enemy, from all the self-generated negativity, including self-sabotaging behaviour, stress, and doubt. I didn’t realise it at the time that the true journey of the heart wasn’t in searching for things to make us happy in the physical world. It is about becoming introspective and turning the life compass towards our inner spirit, because true love and happiness start and end within.

Often we are looking for love, approval, and validation in the outside world to feel better about ourselves, but the true treasure of life can only be found within. I was seeking romantic love to fulfil the part of me that felt alone and abandoned, hoping it would give me self-love, acceptance, and happiness. But I have come to a profound realisation that our true happiness is our own responsibility and that no relationship outside of us can truly offer what the heart desire. I was trying to find love outside of me because I didn’t have love inside of me. Self-love is what we all need to nurture our souls in order for us to grow and live our life to its full potential.

Self-love is our birthright, but our perception of what is a healthy self-image has been negatively impacted by media images, popular reality shows, television, movies, and magazines. We have overlooked and devalued our own unique gifts, because the external world has sold us the false idea of the perfect body, the perfect relationship, the perfect lifestyle, etc. We somehow have surrendered ourselves to the false ideas of what makes a meaningful, happy, and successful life.

My hope is that sharing with you the story of my personal struggles towards restoring hope, inner peace, love, and happiness in this fast-paced and complex world will help inspire, renew, and empower you to keep advancing through the challenges of life. It may be difficult to face the hard times without hurt and despair, but find hope and strength in knowing that it is not impossible to overcome all that is put before