suffering
Change – The Sublime Season Of Necessity
We are part of a world that is continually changing. It’s happening in the very air we breathe. But why is change so difficult? For most people, creating major changes in their lives makes for a difficult and unsettling period. The reason being that attachment to familiar activities, along with the people, places, friends and family which have constituted one’s world thus far, increases the probability of not wanting to let go. But change is inevitable, and without it the pain endured by trying to remain unmoved is almost unbearable… growing in intensity with each day endured.
Nothing remains the same. Try as we might, we cannot continue to live in an unaltered world. Chaos is part of dissolving our imagined pristine worlds. Chaos fosters the creative change so vitally needed in our day-to-day living. In all actuality, people don’t change; seasons do. And, when the season of change is upon us, we are powerless in the face of it. To surrender totally remains the only option, if we are too prevent an extended, abysmal stay in an unwanted reality.
In order to stay alive, we must destroy the food we eat by consuming it, through the destructive process of assimilation. If we left it in an untouched form, by not digesting it and not having it changed into the chemical composition we need, we would literally starve to death. So too must we participate in the process of destroying some of the existing elements in our lives in order to continue living more fully. We can only procrastinate, hide, deny and resist for so long, until ‘creation of the new’ demands our response, with or without our approval.
An Accelerated Path
Many people come to me after years, sometimes decades, of trying everything else: Astrology, Numerology, Genetics, Past Life Regression, therapy, and so on. Years of being understood, validated, affirmed, and being told narratives regarding why they are the way they are, did not bring them all the answers.
There is worth in all of the above practices, both in Psychology and Spirituality, or Metaphysics. However, growth requires challenge, and we are now in a ‘feel good’ culture, where if anyone gets upset, there is the potential of backlash, or even a lawsuit.
In the 1960s there was an amazing education role play called Brown Eyes, developed by an elementary school teacher. You can look up the video online, as well as the reunion footage years later with the kids, who are now adults. The game created a scenario in which children, and later also adults, were able to experience the profound effects of discrimination, prejudice and racism.
However, teachers were eventually sued for doing this role play in class, because of the emotional upset caused by the experience. Of course, the role play was not upsetting to the minority children who experienced the discrimination and prejudice all the time in their daily lives.
Be Patient And Trust The Process
Life presents many challenges to each of us. Even those people who you think have lucky ‘horseshoes’ and ‘rainbows’ over them, have their own challenges, just like you and me. However, it is how they choose to deal with adversity that makes the real difference in their ‘fortunate’ lives. Their choice of reaction, or non-reaction, to each setback or negative event in their life, is what creates their ‘luck.’
If your life seems to be suffering from a lot of ‘bad luck’ lately, take another look at how you reacted to your last break-up, loss of a job, lack of finances, or not manifesting your dreams. Are you that person who chooses to sulk, complain and be envious of the success of others… or are you the person that knows that challenges are just side-steps towards what you are going to achieve for yourself?
Your perception, or the way you look at life, is what makes or breaks us in the end. That person who seems to have everything you desire, did not get there because they were ‘lucky.’ They arrived where they are because they believed, and they worked hard on what was important to them.
When that job didn’t come in that they wanted, they didn’t get upset or discouraged,. They didn’t give up and think they were not good enough. They stood back up, shook it off. They accepted that they didn’t get that job because something far better was probably in store for them down the road. It often is that simple.
Awakening Soul To Soul
Awaken Soul to Soul, a 2012 spiritual documentary explores how the current global shift and our personal crises are an impetus to awaken to oneness. The film asks us to examine our deepest levels of connection as a solution to the problems we all face. We can’t possibly begin to solve the common ills of the world unless we realize our shared humanity and spirituality. But how to begin this journey, to awaken our own souls?
One step we can all take is to discover our own spiritual gifts and use them in constructive ways. Intuition, or ‘knowing without knowing,’ for example, is a quality we all have to some degree. Learning to listen to our intuition, or inner guidance, through practice and meditation, will connect us to our own soul, as well as that of others.
This process may involve distancing ourselves from toxicity, including people, places or things with negative energies, as well as the hectic pace and sensory onslaught of the modern world (social media, television news). The psychic part of us, like any other part of our body and soul, does not function at full effect if it is unhealthy.
Becoming aware of our own healing ability, as well as our metaphysical creativity, is also part of the awakening soul. Learning Reiki, or aura reading, for example, will develop extra-sensory gifts, while sharing them with others. Something as simple as creative journaling or free form poetry can be a spiritual release and an awakening of the subconscious.
Crippled By Our Failure To Express Honest Emotion
Expressing our truth openly and honestly, provides a channel for further rites of passage in real intimacy. When we do not convey what is actually bothering us, we impede our communication and inadvertently cripple our relationships.
Because we are gods in the making, who have temporarily assumed a physical form as human beings, we are subjected to the basic emotions of earthly existence. These undeveloped emotional sensations constitute real and necessary experiences, while we take on the Earth experience.
When we are unwilling, or seemingly unable to express these innate feelings, an overt shyness takes hold which manifests as a manipulative need to gain control over other people. As paradoxical as this may seem, repressing our true feelings can make us ever more capable and adept at employing a favorable charismatic strategy over people and situations in order to remain ‘hidden.’
To cover up a deep sense of experiencing oneself as ‘wrong,’ accompanied by a genuine knowledge of presenting oneself as ‘phony,’ a loss of innate power is reverberated throughout the body and mind, coupled by the need to present oneself as invincible and correct.
The soul knows this act of contrition is deceptive, but will support the gesture, so that the human enacting her role may survive in her particular social environment. The person will continue to enact a subversive way of calculated behavior, by seeming to comply, but all the while, determined to be more perfect, right and flawless in personal presentation. In other words, to get her way in the end, a deceitful manner concocts undue pressure, along with the vulnerable defense of protecting one’s motivations from being detected.
The Past Can Prevent Your Future
Why am I stuck? Why am I not advancing? Why can’t I find love? Why is money never coming to me and always flowing out from me? These are questions I struggled with for a long time in my own life.
I delved deep into many aspects of life design, manifesting change, the Law of Attraction, deliberate creating, and personal growth and reinvention. I have watched, listened and been active in more workshops, online webinars and online learning in this genre than most will ever do in a lifetime. I have read the books and taken many notes. I have made the visions boards and spoken the affirmations. But no matter where I turned, I was always confronted with actual reality versus trying to ‘positive think and believe’ something else. How can we believe we are destined to be something different or better simply by speaking it…or visualizing it? The truth is, it isn’t that simple.
In my search for answers I have also watched others who have participated in the forums, seminars and workshops, and actually achieved something significant in their life. And it has been my observation that the people who have truly risen above their circumstances and achieved their dreams, are the ones that did the deeper inner work.
Dealing With Depression
Why are depressed people often considered a ‘downer’? To feel depressed is one of the most scorned, stigmatized emotions. Why, one has to wonder? I believe part of the reason is that people are uncomfortable being around someone who suffers from depression. Again, why? Are they maybe so unstable in their own façade of happiness that being around a depressed person will somehow set them off, tipping the balance in their fragile construction of superficial happiness?
Maybe the discomfort is due to others feeling compelled to ‘help’… only to end up feeling angry, frustrated or helpless around the depressed person, because they just don’t know how to be of any real assistance. This attempt at ‘helping’ is usually aimed at getting rid of the depression, but in truth an important part of real help is simple acceptance.
If one is truly centered, it usually does not matter if another is depressed or angry. Dealing with someone else’s depression is simply like accepting the weather. You wear a raincoat if you have to go out, or you simply stay inside and wait for the storm to settle.
Various genetic, social and environmental factors can affect mood and cause depression. Poverty, abusive relationships, family violence, addiction, toxic environments, including food additives and air pollution (including off-gassing), can all be factors in causing depression, as well as weight gain, anxiety, sexual dysfunction, and so on.