soul purpose
Change Is A Spiritual Blessing
Changes can happen at any time in your life. It is often spontaneous, but it can also be triggered by major life events, such as the loss of a partner, spouse, or anyone that you love or care about. Whatever it may be, change is what we’re hit with in these times, and it can be so scary.
We often fear change or moving on. We enjoy changing our environment or lifestyle, or letting go of the memories, but change also has so many possibilities! Sometimes it’s actually what you have been waiting for, but we hold ourselves back.
No matter how much you try to avoid it, or fear it, change is constantly taking place in and around us. Our souls are always evolving, whether we want it to, or not. We must embrace this and open ourselves to it, because change can be very positive. For example, when you know that you must leave a bad relationship, because it is toxic, or when you need to move out of a home to downsize, because it makes better financial sense.
Starting over, making new friends, being happy, this is all part of change. Sometimes we have to learn to let go of things, to have more meaning and happiness in our lives. No one should ever force you into change against your free will, but many of us also try to prevent change from happening, keeping things the way they are, because it is convenient. But then they don’t grow personally, neither do they spiritually evolve.
Archangel Raphael – The Angel Of Healing
Rafael means Healing of God. His name not only refers to physical health, but also to that of the soul. He is a healing archangel that represents the aspect of God that helps us maintain a healthy balance in our body, and our emotions.
The body is the temple of the soul, but only if we are taking care of both. Harmony between body and soul translates to inner peace and a natural ease that guides us to joyful moments, and helps us be strong through the difficult times.
Raphael can be the guide that we need by our side, not only in times of difficulties, but also in every challenge, in every new project.
Rafael is also the Protector of Medicine, and is sometimes referred to as the Angel of Science, but he has also adopted other names, such as Archangel of Health; Angel of Healing; Angel of Providence; and even Protector of the Dusk Winds. He is also called the Angel of Consecration, because he helps all who consecrate their life to the service of a higher ideal.
He is also referred to as the Guardian of the East in some Kabalistic traditions, in which he represents the element of Air (as he is also called Ruler of the Winds) and the spirit (or mind) of the person. He is often invoked to free the spirit from what in the past was termed ‘demonic attacks,’ and nowadays we might refer to as obsessive thoughts.
The Spirit Rituals Of Life – Part 1
I recently had the opportunity to spend time in a cabin out in the woods. The best part for me was the bonfire at night, while listening to the wisdom of my spirit guides.
I had hoped to enjoy solitude there, but it turned out there were other folks staying in cabins nearby. I was on this three day vacation in the woods to meditate. I had planned to go on this trip alone to get some deeper spiritual insight into what brings true fulfillment in life.
I also knew in my heart I did not have to go to an ashram far away in India, or some other exotic destination. I knew in my heart going into the woods that true contentment and happiness can only be found from within.
Blessings come to us when we are willing to listen to that still silent voice within. Spirit always meets us halfway. The first blessing came on my first day there, when I learned that the people in the neighboring cabins were all leaving and I would have the place to myself soon, except for the people who run the camp. But they were far enough away and I could finally enjoy some serious silence and seclusion.
The first night was simply magical! If I walked a little ways from the cabin, I could see the entire sky lit up with stars. I walked to the camp store to purchase some odds and ends, and trekked back to my quiet spot in the woods to get a bonfire going. Then I just relaxed, peacefully watching the flames. I was surrounded with the elements of fire, water, air and of course earth.
We Are In The World, But Not Of It!
None of us want to be here. In the midst of all the possible effectual luring, substantiated commitments, and convincing amicable distractions, we still exist as unsettled, dissatisfied manifestations of deeply unresolved confusion.
We awake in continued perplexity and sleep in shrouded mystery. No matter how much we pursue avenues of supposedly purposeful, meaningful, productive, and prolific highways of verifiable efficiency, we remain discontent. Why? Because we inherently know that none of it really makes one bit of difference…and much less sense.
We try to say that it does, go to great lengths to make ourselves believe that it does…even to the point of creating all sorts of beheading scenarios of compelling, persuasive emotional intellectual arguments to prove it does, when it fact, the inescapable truth stands while the rest falls away. We are not the least bit interested in being here, on this planet, alive, taking up space, breathing.
We realize with full certainty that it’s either a harsh cruel joke on the part of the Divine Creator, for our being born simply to die; or that in order to get through it, we had better invent every possible employing situation as an ever evolving, turbulent, unsuspecting state of affairs to engage our minds, implode our hearts, and invest our bodies…while through these ineffectual, purposeless actions, our precious ruthless soul stimulates us to go on. Bottom line: she must be entertained while the band plays on.
Living Ecstatic Bliss By Remaining Open To Life!
Nothing is for certain. We are not locked in. Everything is at our disposal. We are as free as the wind. Responsibility remains with ourselves, while duty and obligation have no place in our lives, when subjected onto us by someone else. It’s an inside job. The greatest disservice and most fierce act of unkindness we will ever do to another is when we negate, abate and sublimate our ‘natural and convenient’ innate desires.
Unless we are authentic and the real deal, we do not, have not, and will not show up for our lives, relationships and work. We are merely playing ridiculous games of pretense. Regrettably and stupidly, not the first one of them fulfills, sustains or registers. It’s simply a dreary monotonous merry-go-round.
The long and short of it is this: it matters what we do – but only to us! If we are doing anything for anyone at anytime, for any other reason than for the gut-driven, instinctive passion that drives us to express our deeply embedded sublime, sensual, sacred, sexual, artistic natures, we are nothing but disposable phonies. We are merely walking around, in a desperately empty, apathetically numbed, half-awake daze… haphazardly avoiding the next car that may plow right into us. The one and only problem with that unlived scenario: we won’t even know what hit us. Our short time here on Earth would have been null, void and without meaning.
What meaning, you may ask? You might not see any meaning, but you know you are here for some reason or purpose, you just don’t know what that is. Of course, you don’t, because you have not showed up for your life, yet. You walk around with either a chip (boulder) on your shoulder, because your life hasn’t’ worked out as you planned. Or maybe you are displaying an exalted sense of elevated importance, thinking you deserve more than you have.
Choosing A Spiritual Path With Heart
There are many blind choices we make when we are too young or inexperienced to make the best decisions for ourselves. We are born into a family, or raised in a culture, for example, with its unique traditions and beliefs, or lack thereof, and we are usually quite susceptible in our youth to these influences.
In the process of becoming an adult, the questioning of such beliefs and traditions leads us towards who we will become, to discovering what truly resonates with us, and what does not. But this is something we may have taken lightly in our youth, and therefore needs to be looked over several times in our life to find out with real sincerity what is truly calling us.
It is possible that being born in a traditional Christian home, for example, we felt constrained and limited, even small and powerless, ultimately causing us to reject all dogmatic religion. For someone else, brought up maybe in an atheist home, the search for God or faith may bring a profound sense of empowerment and life purpose that nurtures their life. It all depends on us as individuals, and how we process our own reality.
Carlos Castaneda writes in The Teachings of Don Juan: A Yaqui Way of Knowledge, “Before you embark on any path ask the question: does this path have a heart? If the answer is no, you will know it, and then you must choose another path. The trouble is nobody asks the question; and when a man finally realizes that he has taken a path without a heart, the path is ready to kill him.”
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.