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The process of self-discovery is not a linear path. We become aware of an essential truth, something we are capable of, something we desire to hold in a prominent focus as we move forward in life and then somehow, often without even realizing it we get side tracked, thrown off course.
These meanderings in our process of living, feeling we’ve lost our Self for a while, aren’t for lack of setting intentions, making a commitment or willingness. The experiences always show up for a purpose. They are additional opportunities to get clear and hone-in on the pure vision of what we are creating with our lives. They may show us what we don’t want or they may show us more specifically what we do want. They definitly show us the areas where we are ready to grow.
Sometimes what we know we want is put on the back burner due to circumstances that feel out of our control, economic, family or other responsibilities. Other times it’s in response to a relationship or a group of people in our lives.
As an intuitive person the energies around us influence our feelings. What we manifest is rooted in our emotions toward something. So feelings are a critical factor in our creations. A partner or a social circle can work to awaken us in beautiful ways but can also pull us off track with their emotions or differing priorities.
When we feel another’s energy and respond to it, we are to varying degrees matching their vibration. I call this mirroring. Empathic intuition is one form of this. We sense the emotional energy and match it from the second chakra.
Without the conscious awareness of holding our own energy space we can get lost in mirroring through our empathy and not stay rooted in our Self. We make a better witness, and offer a sense of strength and grounding to others, when we have a clear awareness of what are our feelings versus the feelings of another. It is through mirroring or taking on the energy of our environment that we get thrown off course… if there really is such a thing… we are side tracked with an opportunity for new awareness.
To hold our course, the vision we want to create in our lives, we need to learn how to be present for others in a deeply feeling way while holding our presence for ourselves. We strengthen this ability by regularly meditating to refresh our sense of being grounded (first chakra), clear our energy field of energy that is not our own (sixth chakra) and call our energy back to fill us up.
There’s no need to be self-critical about the cycles of losing and finding our Self over and over again. Honestly, this process is what we are here for, to remember who we are at the very essence, heal, grow and to have experiences that help us see our truth more and more clearly each day.
I was reminded of the power of vulnerability at my book group this month. One woman shared a perceived failure, a self-judged imperfection and we all relaxed more deeply into our Self. The energy of the room opened up and became more connected. We each saw ourselves reflected, in the quiet moments where we are alone with our inner voice. We reached out to comfort the Self we saw in her. We held her with more compassion than we might hold ourselves.
We spend an immense amount of unconscious energy holding up the identity that we feel safe letting others see. The curious thing is that when we share our challenges, the less than shiny aspects of ourselves in healthy relationships, instead of activating the judgment of others, it invites them to love us more. They receive a signal that their own rough edges will be loved too. Suddenly there is new found safety in being a full-spectrum human being.
We all have experiences we count as failures, imperfections, things that don’t turn out the way we’d hoped, relationships, situations that got messy and we mired around in the muck. We weren’t our best. We should have known better, is what we tell ourselves. And we have periods of crisis that feel like about as much as one soul can handle, whether it’s external circumstances or an internal battle that stresses our life to the max.
Yet we still have to show up in our life. We can’t permanently take a vacation from everything and everyone to avoid being seen in the midst of it. The rough spots in the road of life evoke a deep sense of vulnerability. How much do we have to prop-up the Self that is doing “just fine,” or “great,” to the world while struggling in private?
It’s in the poop, the dirty, imperfect parts of our life that we learn the most. It busts us open and helps us grow. The discomfort stretches us. But unless we are a chronic complainer that drains the energy of everyone around with our misery, we generally hide these challenges from most of the world or save them for our closest loved ones. There is a reason for this. Our closest loved ones have established a known level of safety. We can live a richer life by allowing deeper vulnerability with more people in our lives. It literally shifts the energy of every future moment.
Our intuition helps us tune-in to supportive places and relationships in our lives to reveal our challenge. Simply giving a short but honest answer to the stranger who asks, “How are you?” allows them to admit their own full spectrum of emotion to themselves and have a better day with the relief of it… “It’s been a rough day but I’m hanging in.” This isn’t about dumping your shit on others, rather allowing the truth of you to be seen by another in a way that allows you both to relax into the present moment rather than faking it. This is how the poop gets beautiful. It’s the real, the true and the authentic Self revealed. The most beautiful state of existance.
Todays writing inspired by another wordpress blogger Getting At What Matters
NASA Photo Eagle Nebula
Our inner-guidance helps us see opportunities to evolve and grow when an area of our life is outdated or out-of-alignment. We feel inclined to make a change, move to a new town, quit a job, begin or end a relationship. Intuition leads us to override our reptilian brain; the part of us that is determined to do it the old way and put perceived safety first.
We naturally return to what’s familiar, have a rhythm, form habits, routines, get into ruts. Doing it the usual way is easier than figuring out a new way, even if the usual way is mediocre and slightly irritating. When we avoid change we feel the energy drain associated with our resistance.
Each time we’re faced with a transition, an opportunity to change our life, it involves risk. That risk is where our intuition helps us override the tendency to seek safety in the familiar. Yet, to take risks that are wise and purposeful we have to know we are in alignment.
Alignment means that our actions are congruent with our truth, the yes that lives within our individual soul. Our intuition nudges us to stay in alignment, giving us opportunity after opportunity to make small shifts. It asks us to take notice, listen closely to what a stranger is talking about, take a different route home from work, call someone when were not sure why to discover they tell us something we needed to know. That inner voice will give us our yes and our no if we listen… oh this feels right, I’m at ease… oh that feels off, my stomach is tight when I think of it.
Living out-of-alignment, like a pebble in the shoe, progressively produces larger consequences: a blister, favoring the foot, the limping turns into back tension, that causes discomfort sleeping, then getting worn down from lack of sleep and catching a virus. How much irritation must the pebble cause to get our attention? What is speaking to us to change: the lack of integrity in our work environment, the evolving culture of our neighborhood that no longer fits us, social activities that no longer satisfy or repeated conflicts in a relationship? Will we make a change before the old way of being causes excessive suffering?
If we ignore the quiet voice of our inner-guidance for too long the small choices that take us out of alignment start adding up and realignment requires a larger risk. A commitment to living in congruence with our inner-guidance, responding to the simple gentler shifts as the opportunities present themselves, make for a much more enjoyable life. Our power to stay in alignment is in the center of our head, our intuition. Listen to it and let it inform your choices.
Life throws us obstacles, bumps that come out of nowhere. The goal is to stay loose enough to adjust to the changes and centered enough to keep in control when the shit hits the fan. When the ground beneath us moves so fast that it’s hard to focus, we have to tune into our intuitive knowing, stay in that controlled out-of-control state.
Skiing and snowboarding teach us this flexibility. If you want to enjoy your journey downhill there’s no option but to be 100% present; aligned body-mind-spirit. Adjust to the shifting terrain, in the moment.
Our core (third chakra), center-of-gravity is in the bliss zone, balanced with velocity, snow and the contour of the mountain. When another skier crosses our path, a mogul, rock or tree faces us, we turn but we don’t turn permanently away from our intended path. We take a turn that avoids collision and another turn that returns us to our direction of choice.
In the moment we may recognize that our chosen path is not taking us in a direction that is going to bring us pleasure, success or good circumstances, so we permanently redirect our course. If we don’t foresee the need to turn or the obstacle throws us out of our center we’ll crash. Varying degrees of wipeout occur, depending on how tuned-in we were to our body and our surroundings.
We make graceful turns when we are centered in our truth, tuned-in to our surroundings and willing to adjust course when the flow points us in a different direction. Practicing mediation tools each day gives us this core strength when faced with any challenge. To do this we:
- Take the time early in the day to clear our mind (sixth chakra) of the past and other people’s energy or agendas.
- Ground (root chakra) our energy in the present day.
- Call any of our scattered energy back to ourselves and visualized it filling every cell of our body.
Being grounded and saturated in our true essence is the bliss zone. It allows us to be present for the obstacles in life and to navigate them without feeling as much trauma. It feels aligned, peaceful and full of possibility. Taking responsibility for our life by owning our energy space teaches us that we can keep our focus yet be flexible enough to make graceful turns.
Work energy is great to access at the appropriate times but it puts a damper on warm connections with loved ones and can override our personal needs, the true juice of a joyful life. Shifting our lead energy vibration between work and non-work time can be difficult. There is pleasure derived from certain aspects of the work and it takes our focus off of other aspects of life we have less control over. Our focused, productive analytical Self is “on” and were getting things done but how do we change the tone when the work day is done?
Today I was reminded of the unspoken lesson that Mister Rogers reinforced at the beginning of each TV program. He walked in the door of his home, took off his suit jacket and put on a cardigan. Then he changed out of his professional shoes and into sneakers. All while singing! He ritualistically shifted gears as soon as he got home, to a focus on relaxation, connection and playfulness.
In addition to changing our clothes or moving into a new environment, we can consciously change the volume of certain vibrations of energy in our space. Visualizing an imaginary gauge in front of us to make adjustments, like a fuel gauge reads empty to full, the needle can show us how full our space is of a specific energy. Is our analyzer on 75%, decision maker at 50%, income earner and task oriented Self at 100%? What about our creative energy, curiosity, sensuality, adventurousness?
At the start of a work day we turn up those energies that will be helpful to in getting our work done. At the end of the day imagine turning them down and turning up the volume of the vibrations you want to experience while not working. You may also want to visualize the energy from all of your work encounters and activities moving out of your space into a balloon and either tie the string holding that energy balloon somewhere to retrieve later when needed or set it free to move out of your aura field, leaving a cleaner space for your next focus.
I’m applying the Mister Rogers principle to consciously shift my energy from work to personal time… won’t you join me? Turn down the analytical, achievement oriented business vibration and turning up the creative, nurturing, permission to relax vibration at the end of your work day.
Each time we take on a new role or let go of a familiar one, our identity goes through a transition. We may not know how to be, or what to tell people when they ask us questions that we had an easy answer for in the past, like “What do you do?” Letting parts of us that we valued fall away once they are no longer “in the present” feels hard. They served us well and there is comfort in familiarity. It’s easier to stay attached to these old aspects of our Self because of the way they made us feel in the past. But once we set them free the “lightness of being” we find is often so much better.
It’s risky to let go of an old identity to make room for a new identity that is not fully formed. There are unknown details to be worked out. It requires experimentation and exposure to the new aspects of our self that come to the forefront. We may not be sure we’ll really like the new role or stick with it for long. It may trigger the fear of loss of acceptance from relationships or communities that were formed based on our old identity. Will the friendships follow us on our new journey into parenthood or move across country?
Some aspects of our identity are formed by the responses we receive from others. We subconsciously agree with how they “see us” and support it through how we represent ourselves to them. This is particularly true with family. Parents want their children to be a certain way, to help the child be successful in life and to make the parent feel more comfortable. These expectations create a silent requirement to perform in a way that meets the approval of our caretakers, molding our public-facing identity. The identity we show others is often not the essence of our true Self. It is a safer projection of what we feel comfortable revealing to the world in order to be accepted.
As adults we have the opportunity to revisit some of the aspects of our identity that were formed based on our environment or expected family role. We can notice where these are no longer true for us and psychically update the aspect of our seventh chakra, where “the way we show ourselves to the world” is stored. We may need to heal some wounds or change certain “pictures” we have of ourselves to activate this healing. Calling on the assistance of a spiritual mentor or clairvoyant healer in this process allows us to see beyond our own limitations.
If you are ready for an easy identity update, send a psychic request to your Akashic/Soul record keeper to update our identity to present time. You don’t need to delve into the quicksand here, keep it light. But if you see a specific false belief that continues to alter the way you show up in the world, you can take it deeper with a detailed request of what you are ready to remove, and what belief you would like to replace it with. Always remember to fill-in your aura with the vibration of your own essence before completing a healing meditation.
A Dark Night of the Soul is a period of time or season that many of us on the spiritual journey find ourselves in once or more in our life. The Dark Night comes unexpectedly through some change or experience that causes us to question all that we’ve known to be true. It is a time where we find ourselves feeling disillusioned with a temporary loss of faith. What we trusted appears in a new light to have been temporary and incomplete. The foundation we’d built our perception of the world on shifted and in that shift we found ourselves unsettled. What felt meaningful feels meaningless, what seemed solid looks unreliable, what we thought we knew to be true comes into question.
Walking through a Dark Night of the Soul period requires intense resilience. It pushes our edge, uses every ounce of our psychological capacity for survival. The Dark Night can be triggered by things like divorce, loss of a job, loss of a role or identity we’ve identified with or physical illness. Where it takes us is a profound void that may feel like depression, hollowness, hopelessness, emptiness and doubt.
How do we endure this mental and spiritual struggle? What gets us through the void and back to a point of inner-peace? I’ve found that, an essential aspect of the healing and growth the Dark Night has to offer comes through the following conscious choices:
- Acknowledging that the cycle of living in the unknown has purpose.
- Calling on our inner-guidance with much more frequency and consistency.
- Moving our body to allow the cycle to stay in motion on the physical level.
- Seeking support through the council of spiritual mentors who have walked the path before.
These paths of self-care give us strength and help us see that we will make our way to a season of light again.
The Dark Night may feel like a stuck place in our external life or a place where everything is in chaos. However stagnant it feels or looks in the physical form it is an active season for the soul. The soul is in chrysalis. It has gone within and on certain levels may require us to go unconscious about some of the work underway. Transformation, upgrading our soul to integrate all the bits-and-pieces we’ve been encountering in our self-awareness and growth at the deepest level.
Some of these levels of processing are beyond what we can or are ready to consciously “see” as they transform. We have to be patient and trust the inner activity. We have to ask our mind, as it seeks to fix what appears to be broken, the mind that wants a solution, wants answers, to be patient while the Dark Night chrysalis is evolving us from the caterpillar to the butterfly.
The void has us fear a loss of Self. It has us feel alone and as if we may have lost all of the ground we had gained through our conscious growth and commitment to self-awareness and health. In reality there is no loss, at the other side of this deeply challenging soul searching cycle we find ourselves renewed, more mature, with an inner radiance that transcends our prior light.
The Dark Night is a soul crisis. It pushes us to the full extent of what we feel our soul is capable of handling. It may temporarily break our spirit but the Great Spirit/God never gives us more than we can handle. The discovery of our inner strength, the renewal and appreciation for what generates inner-peace for us, makes the journey through the void, the rebirthing of our higher Self, well worth the battles we face when staring at the unknown.
To understand darkness we must know light, to value pleasure we must also known pain. Yet when we suffer we feel it is a signal that something is wrong in our life, something needs to be changed or healed.
We only suffer because the mind notices incongruence in what we desire and what we are experiencing. It thinks about the pain of not having what we want, stews on it and torments us with it. Webster’s Dictionary defines this dependency, “suffering implies conscious endurance of pain or distress.” If our mind doesn’t know the pain, we don’t suffer, hence laughing gas at the dentist office.
The human mind can suffer over very abstract subjects, such as not knowing one’s purpose, relationships that aren’t as we would hope them to be, regrets, not feeling clear about what path to take, not feeling connected to others in a fulfilling way, worry, feeling powerless, not knowing what the future will bring, feeling stuck or stagnant in our life. Suffering takes the emotional forms of anxiety, unhappiness, tension, inner-conflict, fear, grief and depression.
“A cold in the head causes less suffering than an idea.” Jules Renard
Everyone I work with as a clairvoyant desires relief from some level of suffering. Externally it may look like the suffering is an experience of the physical body, like it is being caused by someone in their lives, some condition they must tolerate or the lack of an answer to an elusive question. But the real source of suffering is what the mind does with the emotions these physical and circumstantial experiences evoke. To relieve suffering we must go to its source, the belief system.
When we love someone and can’t be with them because either they don’t feel the same about us or circumstances keep us a part, our heart feels broken, disappointed and longs for the connection of their company. It is our belief about it that causes us suffering. Usually it’s something like our life will not be as good without this particular person or we will never feel love again. Our mind notices that pain and wants relief. It may seek relief through the company of another lover, a bottle of wine or self-critical thoughts that shut down the feelings.
The intuitive mind senses and responds to emotions while the analytical mind calculates questions and tries to “figure them out.” When we can’t figure it out we suffer. The analytical mind spins and we have no place to go but the sense that something is wrong because we can’t see a solution that relieves our pain. The analytical mind processes the painful emotions and physical sensations seeking relief in the form of an answer. If there is no formula to make our pain go away, which is the case with emotional distress, the mind suffers over its own suffering, compounding the sensation that something is wrong.
Our subconscious beliefs about what to expect from our experiences, other people or life in general, live in our blind spot and create the greatest suffering. Some are inherited in our DNA, others are acquired from experiences. All are written in the book of our soul, the Akashic records.
To release the mind from suffering we must shift false and outdated beliefs. This goes beyond psychology to soul level transformation. It often requires the help of someone who can see and heal our subconscious blind spot. What we can do for ourselves is practice stilling the analytical mind through meditation or intentional body movement (yoga, walking outdoors, dance, breath work etc). Stopping the mind from its obsessive search for answers to emotional experiences provides healthy relief of our suffering. When we meditate regularly it breaks the cycle of unproductive mental activity, setting us free and bringing greater peace.
Past experiences alter the lens we perceive our life through, causing our perception of certain relationships to be tinted, foggy, distorted and even blinding us. When we act on inner-guidance that is skewed by a false perspective we don’t generally get positive results. These past reference points are often the biggest block to accurately interpreting our intuition.
Our relationship with our inner-guidance is similar to our relationship with a friend. We build trust through experiences together. In all relationships we enter with assumptions based on our past. Those unconscious beliefs and expectations effect how long it will take us to create a sense of safety and trust with the person. If our past experiences have been full of betrayal and pain we may never feel safety and trust. We may not be able to embrace the positive a person has to offer as we see them through a false belief filter.
Most limitations we face in relationships start with false beliefs. The lens through which we perceive the world attracts familiar experiences and has us automatically respond to life in a way that gives us an expected result. We formed these beliefs through our own encounters and the examples shown to us by family and society. In the moment of their creation they had truth and relevance. That doesn’t mean they are true and relevant today.
To build a sense of trust with our intuition we need to form a conscious relationship with it, becoming aware of our filters based on outdated beliefs. This means when we check-in with our inner-guidance and get a response, we dive deeper. We ask ourselves if the information is true for us in this specific time and place. We ask if it is in alignment for our body, mind and heart. What feels good to our body can harm our mind and heart. What feels good to our mind may not be the best choice for our heart or body. Alignment is the key.
Awareness of our experience based lenses and how they distort our view in relationships can help us understand why we aren’t interpreting our intuition clearly. The experiences we have that show us our intuition is true, protecting us from harm and directing us on a positive path, help develop trust. When we clean out false beliefs influencing our perception we build more trust in our inner-guidance. This encourages us to seek out its company and deeply listen to what it has to say in every situation.
We all encounter experiences that trigger a knot in our stomach that just won’t go away; relationships that are unstable, bills that we don’t have the money to pay, situations at work that undermine our sense of power, unexpected changes that leave us feeling out of control of our circumstances. When we dismiss our intuitive guidance it adds to this sense of anxiety, we are at odds with our truth. Ultimately we all desire to have a sense of inner peace.
Anxiety is formed at a decision point or indecision point, when a fight or flight experience occurs. If we deny ourselves permission to confront or exit a situation, we must control, ignore, or belittle the response in our body overriding it with our brain’s demand to stay put and tolerate it. In doing so we discount our most basic survival need, a sense of safety. The desire to run or defend ourselves, churns in our belly with no place to go.
Anxiety is felt in the abdomen, our third chakra core of personal power. When we deny our self permission to act, we suppress our power and our stomach tightens. Our body holds the cellular memory of trauma. It can be activated even if we’ve psychologically and emotionally processed an experience. While we may not feel the emotion of anxiety, we may notice the tension held in our belly. A new experience triggers a memory of when we suppressed our instinctual needs in the past.
Reunion with the body’s wisdom happens when we notice the tightness in our stomach before it turns into something more painful, letting it inform our path of action. A check-in with our intuition helps us see if the anxiety is asking us to speak our truth, physically leave a situation or make different choices that don’t result in us finding ourselves in the conflicted environment again.
To cultivate a sense of inner peace, we can consciously assist our body, mind and spirit with alignment. First we breathe into the part of our body where we have tension and notice what it brings to mind about our life. Then we free ourselves from anxiety by listening to our intuitive guidance and acting in accordance with our needs.
