pain
The Fallacy Of Future Happiness
One of the most consistent messages that come through when I am doing readings for clients, is the effects of the stories we tell about life and our circumstances. This is the first in a series of two blogs discussing two types of stories that people often tell themselves that have the potential to promote self-sabotage related to nearly every area of life.
We are all storytellers by nature and every experience that we have as human beings is an interpretation of the world around us. We apply labels to the world around us and the circumstances we find ourselves in every day. One of the most damaging stories that we tell ourselves are the future stories of happiness.
Spirit will often give us insights into patterns in our own lives to avoid. A consistent pattern to avoid is the fallacy that something in the future will eventually cause happiness. Happiness simply does not work like that.
I Have Looked At Life From Both Sides Now – Part 1
I can truly say that I have looked at life from both sides now. It all begins the day I wake up in a hospital. I have some tubing connected to me. I am feeling so, so tired, but I am comfortable. I am wrapped up in a warm, white blanket. At first I don’t remember how I came to be here. But little by little my memory is returning.
It all happened so quickly. There was a routine visit to the doctor about three months ago. He did a complete examination and while he was pressing in the left area of my lower abdomen, I suddenly experienced intense pain. The whole area was extremely sensitive. So, he ordered some tests, and a sonogram was done.
The Spiritual Teacher As The Enemy
In psychology, therapists are trained to handle what is known as transference behavior in some of their clients or patients. Spiritual healers, readers, and teachers generally do not have much knowledge or skill in this regard, which can be detrimental for both the practitioner and those who come to them for services.
What is transference? When people go to spiritual professionals, they are often hurt and in psychological, emotional or spiritual pain, which sometimes also manifests as physical pain. People mainly are ‘hurt’ by other people in their lives, with whom they have emotional connections. When emotional connections are damaged (real or imagined) people feel hurt, betrayed, abandoned or experience various other emotions. When seeking healing or guidance (in whatever modality) those feelings of hurt are often transferred to the healer, teacher or other ‘authority figures.’
Healing Through Radical Self-Forgiveness
There’s no getting around the fact that we’re our own worst critics. There has been much written on the subject of forgiving others, but what about forgiving ourselves? This is the first and most crucial step to real, lasting, healthy self-love.
The roots of the pain many of us feel are guilt and shame – the knowledge that we have wronged or hurt someone else, and the lasting fallout resulting in self-harm. Guilt is sometimes a catalyst to change behavior, but shame often comes with long-term effects, such as negative thinking patterns, self-harming behavior such as addiction, depression or anxiety, and self-sabotage.
Over long periods shame is like a poison in our bloodstream which touches every aspect of our lives. But it doesn’t have to last! There is a healthy way to overcome the legacies of shame and guilt, and it all starts with compassion.
Meditation Is For Everyone
Meditation is a wonderful technique to reduce stress. It is commonly used with the aim of reducing anxiety, stress and depression. Reducing stress has the potential to improve your quality of life. It’s believed to improve health and that reduces healthcare costs.
Meditation is basically a spiritual practice to focus the mind on a object, activity or thought. The goal is to achieve a clear, calm and relaxed state. Meditation involves a state of awareness in which the stress activity of the mind is neutralized.
Meditation has been practiced for thousands of years in religious traditions and spiritual belief systems. Since the 19th century, it has spread from its mostly Eastern origins to other cultures, where it is practiced today in both personal and professional settings. Meditation is not a form or prayer. Meditation is awareness. Awareness is meditation.
Choosing To Vibe With Your Tribe
Friends can become family, and family can become friends. Both can happen, but sadly family becoming friends sometimes never happens. There is no guarantee that being born into family will mean that the closest relationships that you will have will be with your siblings, or extended family. On the contrary, I receive many heartbreaking calls from clients who have persistently struggled trying to develop a relationship with their siblings, to no avail.
As a psychic, I can independently look at the energy of people’s family connections, and sometimes they were never meant to be close-knit, or best friends. In these cases, their personalities and the way they operate are often completely different. Attempts to create a relationship over the years may have miserable failed, and there is always one, or both, in that relationship who prefers to go to hurt and pain, rather than stepping back and looking objectively at the ways they separately think and operate.
Coping With The Pain Of Loss And Grief
Going through grief is a very natural response to loss. The more significant the loss, the more intense our grief will be. Grieving can result from the passing of a loved one, losing a job, divorce, loss of health.
Coping with loss can be overwhelming. We usually go through all kinds of difficult and very unexpected emotions – from shock to anger to disbelief. Sometimes we also feel guilty that maybe there could have been more one should have done. And then there is the sadness, which is hard to even put into words.
The pain of grief and bereavement can, and often does, also disrupt our physical health, making it very difficult to sleep, eat and function normally. It is very hard to think straight at such a time, but these are normal reactions to significant loss.