illness
The Spirit Rituals Of Life – Part 3
Pain can just make things downright miserable. We can have the best of everything: a great job; a wonderful, caring spouse; a wonderful home; wealth and luxury; the list goes on, but if you’re in emotional pain, or suffering from a chronic illness, it is very difficult to connect spiritually… let alone do anything uplifting every day.
But, committing to rituals that are good for us every day, can help relieve the pain. I have many clients who suffer from fibromyalgia, depression, and all kinds of pain. One thing that I can say for sure is that whatever may help or work for one person, may not for another. Each person needs to be helped on a individual level.
I have found that emotional pain is sometimes just as painful as physical pain. Those that have lost loved ones sometimes don’t want to get out of bed, just like my client who suffers from migraines, she just wants to lay in bed most days with the shades drawn and to be left alone.
While I was alone in the woods, I asked some questions regarding pain, and how pain can help us to take action to connect with more happiness or contentment.
How can we relieve physical pain? Spirit says, “If it doesn’t kill you, it makes me stronger.” Do things that help alleviate pain. For example, one of my clients suffered from severe osteoarthritis and arthritis, so she took it upon herself to start taking supplements that build up the joints and help cushion the bones when they grind against each other. She said that this one little daily ritual is what has saved her from experiencing the pain on a grand scale. It has minimized her discomfort remarkably.
Our Spiritual Contracts
Before we come into this lifetime, we design a soul contract. We choose a family that we want to be born to and we plan specific things that we want to accomplish, such as career, relationships, children, and so on. The contract is about our spiritual self and therefore also includes those things that we need to overcome and learn from.
Some of the more important things in your contract may come as a surprise, because often they are those things you do not want to do! This is usually a sure way of knowing that something is contractual. The things we prefer to do, or have done, we’ve already mastered, but the challenges and obstacles offer us opportunity to overcome our fears and anxieties, to step forward and learn more, to grow spiritually.
Some contracts are also much longer than others. Some of us remain here for a long time, while others do not. I doubt anyone knows for sure, but for the time that we are here, we must make every effort to learn and grow from every life experience.
This is also why some of us attract the wrong people, and constantly get into the wrong relationships? In these cases it is often your soul contract trying to teach you to speak up for yourself and claim your self-worth.
When old souls come in, usually nothing bothers them. They tend to take things with a grain of salt. However, when new souls come in, they are often very excited about so many things and can’t seem to get enough done.
Spirit Courage, Body Bravery
We all know someone who clearly walks to the beat of their own drum. These people typically have a robust inner strength, and refuse to accept at will any pertinent information handed to them by anyone in a position of authority. The one such character that stands out in my life is my maternal grandfather.
We came from a small town of 8,000 souls. Although our neighbors enjoyed the comforts of electricity, running water and all the modern conveniences of that time, my grandfather instead chose a code of living that suited him best.
The farmers in the area also had the use of tractors and other types of modern farming equipment that enabled them to work in a more worldly fashion, but my grandfather stubbornly refused to adhere to these modern trends. He had reliable horses to pull his plow and haul the hay, used kerosene lanterns when electric lighting was easily available to him, and firmly kept to his agenda with a tedious water pump that was needed for the normal household chores.
He was a very dedicated and diligent employee, working in the shipyard. He helped to load cargo ships from all corners of the globe, which came for the mighty salmon our region was extremely well-known for. Papa, as he was known to one and all, married at a very young age, which was a normal occurrence in those days, and managed to sire 15 children. He was also very well-versed and totally immersed in politics. The entire neighborhood would first ask his advice before casting their ballot, or not, for any politician brave enough to run for local office.
Are We There Yet?
Are we there yet? It’s okay to ask. The answer, however, should always be no. If we become preoccupied with destination, we lose sight of the purpose of the journey in the first place. When we honor the journey, we are able to keep on the path of forward motion.
Life itself is the journey. We learn the hard lessons, and finally understand that it’s a never-ending process. Often things occur in the guise of mistakes, failures, misunderstandings, hurts. But in truth, not learning from these events is the only failure. And if you don’t learn it the first time, it is highly likely the lesson will repeat itself, over and over again, until you actually do learn it.
When our behavior and actions change, we convert what we have learned into wisdom. For some people the process is a lifelong quest, while others utilize what they have learned and it moves them along quickly. Some people need to go deeper within themselves to make progress.
It is always good to ask if we are there yet. Especially at the beginning of every journey, or when the learned lessons tell us there is more work to be done – inner work to get to the very core of our being. For some people inner work can be very frightening, as many of us deeply suppress the things that we don’t want to deal with. But to complete the journey we must peel away the layers, like peeling an onion.
My Childhood Near Death Experience
I am currently writing my thesis on Near Death Experiences (NDEs) and I have discovered recently that I had an NDE myself as a child. An NDE is when someone clinically dies, but then comes back to life, and lives to tell about it.
There were blocks of time in my childhood which were ‘spotty’ and had huge gaps in them. While I was reading the book Embraced by the Light by Betty J. Eadie, I had a flashback of my first NDE. The event happened when I was about nine years old. I remember one summer I was really sick. I had an upper respiratory infection which turned into pneumonia. I remember staring out the window, seeing the neighborhood children playing, but I could not join them. The doctors couldn’t find an effective antibiotic to combat my pneumonia.
One afternoon, I was given some cold medication and strong antibiotics. I went to take a nap and suddenly I couldn’t breathe! I struggled to catch my breath. I passed out on the bed. I was moving through a tunnel into the light. I remember my grandmother meeting me and holding my hand. It was my father’s mother, whom I never knew in this life! She died very young when my dad was only 19 years old.
The Permission To Grieve
If you’ve recently experienced a deep loss, my soul reaches out to yours today. I extend my condolences and healing energy in your time of grief. I don’t just say it because it sounds like a nice thing to say as a medium. I say it because I truly mean it.
This October I suffered one of the worst losses of my life. My mother passed, rather unexpectedly. She was only 60 years old. I knew my mom hadn’t been feeling well for a few weeks, but she tried to assure me she only had “the flu.”
My mom knew I was a psychic medium, and that it was hard to get anything past me. She wasn’t exactly lying. She had no formal diagnosis to tell her what was causing her illness, but I am fairly certain that she knew it was something much more sinister than a simple bout of the flu.
Sometimes our intuitive gifts can also feel like a curse, because my gut knew exactly what was wrong, but I didn’t want to even say the word out loud. I just told her she needed to go to the doctor. She agreed, changed the subject and left it at that. This discussion happened three weeks before her passing.
Opal – The Powerful Seeing Jewel
Opal is known as the ‘seeing jewel.’ Its name originates from the Latin word opalus. I was told this by the owner of a beautiful crystal store in South Africa. Most Opal he said can be as much as 65 million years old! The stone contains a high percentage of water, which creates a play of color through light, and a sparkly phenomena.
Opal’s energy represents both the higher emotional body and higher mental body. This jewel adds light to the aura and helps to bring buried emotions to the surface. When I bought my first Opal from an interesting lady at a psychic fayre, she told me that the name originates from the Sanskrit writings and means ‘precious stone.’ It is amongst the most popular of stones sold throughout the ages.
The lady in question was from the Far East and said that in her culture Opal is a holy stone that holds the spirit of truth within. She added that the Greeks believed it provided protection from illness and the power of prophesy. She told me that Opal carries the energy of the Moon and water, and that it would enhance my psychic awareness. She also warned of its use in any rituals, because of its powerful energy.