What Getting Hacked Taught Me About Receiving
Photo by Getty Images via Unsplash.
I don't know about you, but for me, the last six weeks have come with moments of great intensity—heightened emotions, unexpected circumstances, feelings I didn't see coming.
I'll be sharing more in the weeks ahead. But today, I want to tell you about being hacked.
Not because it's dramatic (though it felt that way in the moment). But because what happened after the hack clearly demonstrated what I've been living into the last few months—what true receiving actually looks like in real time. And why it's the focus of my upcoming workshop, The Gift of the Open Heart: A Weekend of Receiving.
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First, a little context.
For a long time, I believed receiving was about getting the experiences I wanted—the ones that felt good. If life wasn't serving that up, I took it personally. I thought I was doing something wrong.
As a Type 6 on the Enneagram, this personality comes with a healthy side of skepticism and a tendency toward worst-case-scenario thinking. For years, I believed this was a problem to solve. If I could just think more positively, visualize what I wanted, manifest better outcomes—then I'd feel better more often.
I tried that approach for decades.
Only recently have I discovered the deeper meaning of receiving: Receiving is about saying yes to what's here. Period. No matter how thrilling or painful the moment may be.
The mind doesn't like that. It wants to protect us from hurt, so it innocently points us away from pain toward pleasure. This is a beautiful coping strategy—until it isn't. Because what we end up doing is closing our hearts to our vulnerability, blocking the energy that wants to move through our system. Fear, shame, despair, embarrassment—they don't get to be fully felt. So they linger, unconsciously driving our actions, causing us to live less free.
This pattern keeps the "receive good / reject bad" cycle alive, reinforcing the idea that good and bad actually exist as separate categories. When in truth, they're all just experience—made of feeling, sensation, energy, and thought that the mind labels as one or the other.
Receiving in the old paradigm kept me afraid of certain experiences.
Receiving in this new paradigm allows the entire experience to move through without sticking.
Here's what I mean.
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A couple of weeks ago, I was hacked.
I received an email about a fraudulent charge and thought I was calling my payment processor for support. I wasn't. (No, I didn't click a link in an email or call a number from that email. I called the number that was directly inside my PayPal account transaction. Turns out, that number wasn't an official PayPal number.)
The process was gnarly—the hackers got access to my computer. But there was also true grace throughout. After six+ hours on the phone with hackers, my banks, credit cards, PayPal, and my IT support person, no money was lost… and my computer was fine. Whew! It could've turned out very differently.
I was grateful for that—and still, that night, my system was flooded. I was overwhelmed with self-judgment, shame, and embarrassment.
In the past, I would have soothed myself with a glass of wine—which would have been fine, no judgment. But this time, what felt most supportive was a hot bath.
As I soaked in the tub, my mind looped—rerunning the exchange with the hackers, replaying all the red flags I'd ignored.
As I became aware of the thoughts, I redirected attention to the body. I felt the tightness in my chest. The knot in my belly. The shaking of a system recovering from high alert.
I let the body be. I let the feelings out. I cried. I stayed with the shame, the embarrassment, the self-judgment.
In essence: I opened my heart to the places that wanted to close. I received the experience as it was.
And in doing that, I saw so clearly—this was a moment of suffering. But the suffering wasn't because of the hack. The suffering was because the experience didn't match who I thought myself to be.
I believed I was a smart person with a healthy dose of skepticism. I thought I was impenetrable to being hacked. So of course, pain showed up through self-judgment—trying to protect me from feeling the humiliation and shame underneath.
In the past, I would have believed the self-judgment rather than meet the experience underneath it.
This time, I did the opposite. And what happened next was profound.
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Staying with the experience helped me see the story for what it was: story. Not truth.
In that moment, I could feel the peace that's always with us, the love that's always with us, holding me. I was resourcing from Source—the infinite, impersonal intelligence that is who we truly are.
I felt my system settle. I heard Matzah (my dog) snoring on the bath mat—he never left my side. I received the love. And what was left was only now—the warmth of the water, the sound of the breath, connection to the body. It was strange to go so quickly from such a heightened experience to a peaceful one.
That lasted for a few hours. Then, in the middle of the night, I woke in terror.
Again, I welcomed that experience instead of pushing it away.
The next day, I shared what occurred and what I discovered with the students in my school.
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Since that day, the hack hasn't had a hold on me.
I haven't judged myself. I haven't blamed the hackers. I haven't ruminated on the red flags. I haven't believed that I messed up or was being punished.
That's what I would have done in the past. The shame would have slowly eaten at me. I would have run from it—with emotional eating, venting about how awful people can be, being hypervigilant with my bank accounts, trying to be better and more perfect in some way.
Because I received the experience and let it move, there's nothing there to run from. The hack feels like some distant time in a distant land.
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Most people would view being hacked as a bad experience and push it away. Understandably so. (And I might have had a more challenging time had the outcome looked different. I don't know.)
And, what I do know is that pushing away keeps the underlying emotional patterns—the ones that fuel our thoughts and actions—in place.
By meeting the hack and all that came with it, the experience wasn't so bad. It moved through and cleared quickly. And I felt the difference immediately.
This is the gift of the open heart.
When we receive what is—instead of trying to control and manipulate life into the experience we want (which is out of our control to begin with)—we open the flow. We break free of the mind's labels of good and bad. And we see that who we truly are is beyond that.
Who we truly are can hold both—the good and the bad—because there's a recognition that experience is all there ever is.
This may seem radical, especially if you've been in the camp of aiming for good experiences and avoiding bad ones. That's 100% beautiful and part of the journey. And it's also the level that keeps us stuck in the pattern.
Counterintuitive to the mind: when we receive what is, it moves and clears. It doesn't grip us the same way that avoiding and resisting experience does.
And when we build the capacity to turn toward the honest experience present, we connect with the infinite Source of Love—our True Nature. That experience is more nourishing and resourcing than any of the mind's coping strategies.
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If you're inspired by the above and ready to feel the impact of this shift—I invite you to join me for my upcoming workshop, The Gift of the Open Heart: A Weekend of Receiving.
August 28–30, 2026 | Granada Hills, CA
Limited to 20 participants
This is an immersive in-person weekend (with three follow-up sessions) where we'll explore:
What receiving actually means (and what it doesn't)
How to meet difficult emotions without pushing them away or getting lost in them
The difference between managing experience and allowing it to move through
How to break free from the mind's labels of good and bad
What becomes possible when you live from an open heart
Plus three virtual integration sessions in September to support what opened during the weekend.
Early bird pricing ends June 15, 2026.
→ Learn more and reserve your spot here.
With loving,
Amber
P.S. This weekend isn't about positive thinking, manifesting, or training your mind. It's about what happens when you stop trying to control experience and start living it—all of it. If that calls to you, I'd love to have you there.
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