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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.
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.
My desire for a spot close to the front of the airplane had me sit in a middle seat between two women on a fight home to Denver last week. Expecting the usual, ignore the stranger next to you, behavior of business travel, I was surprised to immediately be in conversation with the woman sitting to my right. I can’t even remember how the conversation started but it didn’t pause until we landed two hours later. By then I had heard 72 years of stories, Naomi’s life in a nutshell, and more importantly witnessed her joyful perspective on life.
Her vibrant energy created a shift in me, revitalizing my sense of appreciation and possibility. Inviting me to match the level of joy she lives in. If I blur the lens of the words that passed between us, the pure vitality Naomi offered through her positive perspective was transformational.
Each of us radiates energy that is a combination of our natural essence, our beliefs and energies we’ve held onto that we’ve accumulated along the way. Often we don’t notice our own energy, what we are presenting as a vibration to the world. When our energy is clear of fearful beliefs more
of our natural essence shines and we attract energy that matches what we want in our lives. In order to experience the spark of inspiration that generates transformation we have to be available to human connection.
The most powerful insights can come from the perspectives of strangers. They have a fresh perspective, one we haven’t been exposed to before. They don’t know our history and we are inclined to listen more closely to someone we just met. Our awareness is heightened.
The type of connection I experienced with Naomi was wonderfully unexpected. We can prepare ourselves to recognize these opportunities and be open to the transformational energy that is available through connection. We prepare by taking time to align our vibration with our essence. Start in a meditative space:
- Send a psychic “hello” to your essence, your soul, your authentic Self. Allow your inner voice to ask if there are beliefs that are pulling you out of alignment with your essence?
- Visualize those fears, disturbances and non-aligned energies moving out of your space into a bubble. Watch the bubble float to a distant mountain top and pop, transforming the energy into a new form. This makes more room for your own essence to expand. You may want to repeat this with several different focus areas in your life. Where you are showing up with a certain identity, such as work, romantic relationship, friendship, health or creative practice.
- Imagine a big golden ball of light hovering above your head. In the center of that ball is a magnet calling your energy back to you from any places you have left it that you are ready to retrieve it from. Once the golden ball of light is full of your essence, in your minds-eye reach up and pop it. See the energy of your essence flow down into you, filling in all the space that was opened when you moved out the non-aligned vibrations.
We naturally attract matching vibrations into our lives. Sometimes we have the fortune of attracting a connection that wakes us up and elevates us to a new level of self-awareness. I believe this happens when the person we encounter can see past our current state and notices our soul’s essence. The practice of consciously setting our energy invites connections that are transformational.
Have you ever wondered why some relationships end with a sense of being unsettled even when it is clear that the reasons for being together, the attraction or the love have faded away? We all have soul level contracts with many people. They consist of agreements made through conscious commitments to each other and unresolved experiences we have shared that build a backlog of karma.
Relationships that include experiences of pain or commitments unfulfilled leave us with a sense of incompletion. You know it’s over but it’s not really over, it’s just over for this lifetime. It’s the same for relationships that start but stop before the past karma has been resolved.
On a spirit level, karma is our energetic bank account, a reserve of resources we’ve built up from experiences as a soul. This energy carries forward into our new encounters. Karma is also a backlog of unresolved energy we have the opportunity to heal or release. As we wander this lifetime we are presented with opportunities every day to create more karma through our interactions.
When we have karma with someone, it means we have a history as soul’s together, experiences both positive and negative. We may have been married in the past, friends or opponents in war. We may have betrayed another soul, saved their life or had incomplete access to information about our experiences together, which left us unresolved as we exited that lifetime.
We are attracted to relationships where we have karma we need to complete. There’s something for us to do together and we feel it in a magnetic way. There’s a commitment to keep, a debt to fulfill, amends to make or we simply had such a great time with this soul in a previous life that we want to celebrate the reunion and have some more fun.
If we are in a relationship that releases that unresolved backlog through new experiences together, eventually we’ll get to a point where we feel there’s not as much drawing us to the person. We feel less attracted. The zing of excitement that the unresolved karma generated may leave the relationship feeling lackluster, in a slump, even boring. Often when the intense karma is complete in an intimate relationship one or both people feel it’s lost something and they want to end the agreement.
When we find ourselves at this juncture in a relationship, we need to create a new purpose for being together, such as agreeing to build joyful experiences together. With two willing and committed souls, making it past this threshold of awareness can take our relationship fulfillment to new heights.
If we want to release karma with another and they are not a willing participant in the healing process we can start by calling on our spiritual resources. At the basic level it requires taking responsibility for our contribution to the karma that has been created, whether it was through allowing ourselves to be the victim or inflicting some harm on another.
Using clairvoyance and soul healing tools in my work, I help clients look at the unresolved- energetically charged experiences in their relationships. In this process we release the charge on past experiences, bring the relationship agreement into the present desired state and communicate with the Akashic Record keeper to update the soul records with this new information. The soul agreement healing allows us to move forward without that sense of incompletion even when the other person is not interested in participating in resolution.
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.
It’s the perfect time of year to clean cobwebs and dust bunnies out of the corners of our life. The budding of spring evokes a desire to let go of what no longer matches our vision to make room for something fresh and new. Both in our physical world and our spirit, clearing energetic space lightens us up and brings us into the present moment.
To prepare ourselves for new opportunities that show-up along our path in love, at work or home, there are some spiritual spring cleaning tools we can use that don’t cost much more than time and intention.
In ancient spiritual traditions energy is cleared and healed with ritual smudging. Smudging is the act of burning sage, sweet grass or other plants, such as those collected near a place where a lightning strike burnt the earth. The sacred smoke purifies an area or object. Combined with spiritual invocation the smoke absorbs and neutralizes any negative energy. It cleanses the space to make way for new creation.
In The Smudging and Blessings Book Jane Alexander writes, “Cleansing a space or our bodies with techniques such as smudging clears away all the emotional and psychic ‘garbage’ that may have gathered over years or even hundreds of years.” Begin with a lit smudge bundle or braid of sweet grass and something to catch ashes, walk through each room of your home or office and take the smoke to each of the corners of the room. If the weather is nice, open doors and windows to allow fresh air to flow through, moving energy with the planet’s breathe.
After you have smudged the space take a moment to sit meditation. Clear your mind of distractions with deep breathing. Notice the grounding cord connected from the base of your spine down into the center of the earth. When you feel clear and centered visualize a large rose in the center of the home or office space. It’s stem running down through the floor, through the layers of the earth and rooting into the core of the planet. Then see a gold thread coming from each of the top four corners of the building or property into the center of the blossom of the rose. See four more gold threads connecting from the bottom corners of the space to the blossom of the rose. Mentally intend that the space is set at your vibration, in present time, today’s date. If you share space with others you can include their energy.
Clearing and owning the space we live and work in can be done as often as we like. It keeps the vibration current and in alignment with our energy. It makes the space more cooperative with our movements and rest. It removes the distraction of energetic holdovers from past inhabitants or events. Ultimately, cleaning our energetic space increases our intuitive clarity.
Energy is everywhere. Each physical space we enter has its own energy signature. This vibration is influenced by the thoughts, actions and emotions of whoever has passed through the building or room. Spiritual energy is like air, invisibly surrounding us at all times. We breathe in air molecules and our body uses the oxygen but expels the other gases we do not need. We don’t think about what is happening. The lungs brilliantly convert the air to feed our blood and fuel every bodily function. At higher altitudes there is less oxygen in the air. Our muscles move slower because it takes more breathes for the lungs to collect the oxygen needed to move. In a similar way, the spiritual energy in a space directly influences our vitality. A room that is clear and in alignment with our vibration will support a sense of ease. One that is not, may generate an lower vibration in the mind and body.
Some buildings or rooms contain negative residual vibrations of grief, depression, jealousy, anger, violence or pain. The spirit wants to crawl up out of the body to escape the energetic pollution. In response we may day-dream, experience physical exhaustion or begin feeling one of the emotions left in the room or building. I’ve walked into offices where there was a blanket of depression and passive aggressive energy, homes where depression or pain meets you at the door, gathering places where the joyous intentions of past groups raised the entire vibration of the building. When we find ourselves in a space that is lowering our energy it is in our best interest to leave or change the experience.
It is easy to clear energy is a space without interfering with the boundaries of others who share that space. Start by visualizing a large rose with a very long stem in the center of the room or building. See the stem of the rose deeply rooted into the earth. Imagine a golden thread from each of the top four corners of the room running down and connecting to the blossom of the rose. Do the same from the bottom four corners. Intend that you own this space while present so that your experience of it will match your vibration, not the other way around. In doing so you will find that you are able to have a deeper peace while you are in the room or building. This exercise is also helpful to use before bed in your bedroom if you are having trouble falling asleep.
