grief
Gratitude – A Message From My Guides
Sometimes when you are fearful or worried, the last thing you would envision thinking about is gratitude. When you are deep in grief, after the passing of a loved one, being grateful is also not your first thought. When you have lost a job, or have a sick child, the remote idea of gratitude can be the furthest thing from your mind.
However, it is during these times of worry, grief, or fear, that gratitude can be very helpful. If you can focus on even a small success, or a tiny attribute for which you can be grateful, it can make a world of difference to your perspective. Although changing your perspective will not necessarily alter your present circumstance, it can help you cope with your current reality.
Gratitude comes in all shapes and sizes. It can manifest in many forms at any time of the day. It does not have to be something magnificent or worldly, although it certainly can be something momentous, if that is what comes to mind.
Take a few minutes each day to be mindful and appreciative. Your focus can be as simple as having a safe home, or even a nice smile. Or it can be as complex as gradually improving health, or increased financial stability. It might be thoughts of a solid friendship, a dependable baby-sitter, or a full refrigerator. It can involve only yourself, or members of your family. It can encompass your entire neighborhood, your faith, or your workplace.
Shadow Work
Shadow work is the process of learning to speak your fears, anxieties, shame, grief, and rage before Spirit, and having it witnessed by humans. The latter is needed to heal toxic shame and to get you comfortable with being your authentic self in front of other human beings. Shadow work is speaking out whatever is currently uncomfortable for you to say in front of others. For some people shadow work is speaking out about one’s successes, happiness, gains and accomplishments.
Sharing works best when you are specific and refer to date, time, place, and people involved in actual events, as well as describing the specific emotions experienced at the time and describing actual behaviors and actions that occurred.
A shadow work group, like 12-Step programs, provides a safe sacred space and a confidential environment, where others are there to listen and witness your journey of healing, without interfering. Shadow work groups understand that they are just there to witness, and know that the real work is between you and your Higher Power.
Shadow work groups give you a safe place to practice saying things that normally are not spoken, or must be said with careful attention and energy. When you share precarious, painful, fearful or shameful information with such a safe group, you will slowly, with the help of your Higher Power, be able to heal the emotions and energy connected to those issues and events.
In time, instead of those issues and events ruling you, you will have the space to make choices – choices on who to talk to in your life circle about delicate personal matters, as well as when to do it, how to do it, or if it is even safe to share with certain people, or not.
A Message Of Love From The Rainbow Bridge
Recently, my beloved 18-year-old dog needed to be put down. I asked her, and her sister, to hold on until we moved out of state. For some reason, I just felt the need for them to make one more move with me. They had relocated with me wherever I went for the past 18 years, but this was a big one. They were both amazingly healthy, I was just nervous and concerned for their well-being.
Unfortunately, we were scammed in the real estate deal linked to this move, having been told the heater in our new home had been serviced and was in working order. Arriving there, we found out it was actually a very old oil heater. It was cracked, toxic and not working at all.
Keeping my dogs warm, which is essential for old dogs, was near impossible. The house only allowed for one space heater, or the electricity would go out. The dogs wandered around, and we struggled to keep a blanket or heater on them consistently. Soon one of my dogs stopped walking.
My dog was so loved. The pain was intense when she passed. However, she came to me in a dream soon after. In this vision she was young, beautiful, with a clean, shiny coat. She was also warm and comfortable, lying in the sun. There was a glimmering rainbow on her body – a symbol of the Rainbow Bridge that leads to the Other Side. I knew she was telling me she was doing okay now. She was in the light.
Feeling Like You’re Not Good Enough
Sometimes we put our heart and soul into a relationship, only to get cheated on, or dumped for no reason. The main question that usually comes to mind in this type of situation is, “Why am I not good enough?”
Take a moment and consider the relationships of relatives and friends, who have gone through similar a experience. Some people are able to jump right up and move forward, while others sit and wallow in self-doubt and self-loathing – sometimes for years.
Working with many people over the years, one of the biggest eye openers for me has been that it is typically the partner who is left behind, and then struggles to move forward, who compromised the most in the relationship. They usually gave, and gave, and gave, and didn’t receive much in return. Their needs always took a backseat in the relationship. They would sacrifice more and more, until there was nothing left for them to give, while their partner did not change and simply kept using and abusing them.
If you constantly compromise on what you really want from a relationship, the union will at some point simply disintegrate. The other person is never going to magically become someone different. That person you hoped they would become, after you moved in, or after you gave a little more, or after you married them, or after you had a child with them…never shows up. What you see in someone from the start, is simply who they are.
My Lives Between Lives
Recently, I had the privilege of being a ‘case history’ client for a friend of mine, who had recently returned from completing a past life regression on life-between-lives. I have been fortunate enough to have had wonderful experiences with past life regression in the past, but the ‘in-between lives’ experience was something new for me, and I felt honored that she asked me to partake as one of her case studies for her course assignment.
During our session I was taken back into the past, and received imagery of previous lives. Glimpsing previous lifetimes was to help me see more clearly lessons learned, or not learned. My friend was a wonderful facilitator, as was the help received from my own master spirit guide.
In our session, I learned where my fear of fire originated from. To date, no past life reading I have received has ever touched on the origin of this fear. I have now discovered that my fear of fire relates to a more recent life, in what appeared to be approximately a century ago.
I was a male soldier in the Navy. My uniform was white, and my father, like in so many of my other past life regression experiences, played a significant role in this life also. He was a senior staff member on that ship. I also saw the Star of David during the regression, which suggests I was of Jewish faith in that life.
That particular life experience ended for my father and I when our ship caught fire. My uniform also caught fire! I recalled the flames, and then drowning.
Thank You For Leaving Me
Heartbreak is never easy. I have heard the words, “But I love him,” so many times after a break-up. I have also heard, “No one can replace her.” I have even heard, “I’ll never even think about another person in this way, or even try to find someone new.”
Who is this mindset hurting? Look at the reality of it. It’s not hurting the other person, who walked out on the relationship. They walked out for a reason. Often they have also moved on with someone new. The only person being hurt, by hanging on, is the person hanging on.
I have also heard, “She is my soulmate,” or “He is my twin flame.” Well, if they are not on the same page as you in this lifetime, and not committed to making the relationship work, then they are not your soulmate, or twin flame. It takes a commitment from both parties.
Love is subjective. Love has to be equal from both people involved. However, when only one has their heart and soul invested, it will never last. If someone is able to walk out on the first argument, it is definitely not meant to be. If there is ever disrespect, it is also not meant to be.
I have also been at this place in my life. I was devastated when my husband walked out. I thought I had failed, but then I realized the truth. The marriage was over long before this happened. The equality of feelings was long gone, and respect was non-existent. He controlled what I did, even how I thought at times, and was wreaking havoc on my self-esteem.
Into The Primal Depths
We, as human beings, are voraciously indulgent pleasure seeking creatures! We are instinctively driven by deeply embedded, erotic, sensual needs that constantly demand our attention. By neglecting or denying the ‘sense of urgency’ of these needs, a physical and mental ‘mortal combat’ ensues.
We are stimulated by the thrilling edge of unknown horizons in forbidden sensuality. Ah! How we yearn for the ecstatic privilege to contact or engage the gregarious primal roar, and then, release its euphoric, orgasmic sigh of creation.
It is in those times alone, that we are reconciled with the ramified, non-negotiable urge to devote all we have, are and ever will be to that which cannot be expressed or even uttered in human words. During that inexpressible eternal moment, pain and pleasure are suspended forevermore.
How often are we aware enough to recognize and incorporate the electricity of immediate wonder into our lives in the instant it occurs? On the other hand, can we ever be cognizant enough to embrace the disguised blessings hidden deeply within pain?
Our motives are never pure! If, at any minute we deceive ourselves into believing they are, we suffer immeasurably through undisclosed discontent and unparalleled dissatisfaction. From that point on, we begin to build walls around us for protection. We misinterpret our own self-inflicted paranoia as a mal-aligned intent coming from another.
We judge, criticize and condemn the smallest matters. We’re continuously on edge, refusing to see how insidious our demands are. The malicious face of pretense will catch us when we are the least bit aware. Most especially, when we honestly believe we are the ones without guile.