Healing
How To Thrive In Challenging Times
The world can be a challenging place, especially nowadays. However, not only can we cope more easily with any personal, national, or global crisis, we can thrive at the same time. Yes, it can be done, and the following spiritual and conscious living suggestions may help you restore balance and personal bliss in these times.
Choose Your Company Carefully
It is essential that, while going through any type of life challenge, you wisely choose whom you interact with. If you were to allow it, certain people will only serve to increase your stress and anxiety, while others might be supportive in a positive way and make you feel uplifted and empowered. So be careful about who you spend your time with, and avoid the energy thieves on social media.
A great way of connecting with the right kind of folk would be to join a support group or like-minded ‘tribe’ consisting of people whose collective objective is to help one another remain positive and maintain a sense of sanity – no matter what might be going on in their personal lives, or in the rest of the world.
Make Time For Daily Meditation
Anyone can meditate, and that includes you! Therefore, if you would like to reduce the harmful effects that stress can bring to bear on your body and mind, particularly during a challenging time, a simple daily meditation practice can be immensely helpful.
Simple Ways To Reduce Your Stress Levels
We all feel the effects of stress in our lives at the moment. This is an especially difficult time in the world, and it is challenging us in ways that we did not expect.
Stress is a feeling of being under way too much pressure. This pressure can come from different aspects of your daily life, such as career challenges, life transitions, relationship conflict, health problems, family issues and financial worries. Whatever the stressors in your life are, they can affect your well-being very negatively.
We all experience stress, but how we handle it affects our lives to various degrees. You might have tried different approaches, but not much has worked. Sometimes the solution is much simpler than one might realize. Here are some positive lifestyle tips to manage your stress levels. Even if you just apply a couple a day, these basic strategies can make a real difference in cultivating a calmer state and greater peace of mind.
Get Enough Sleep
Sleep is so important in so many ways, and so often neglected in our busy lives. Adequate sleep helps us to stay focused, heal is from within, and manage our days so much better.
If you are not sleeping well, or not getting enough sleep, make every effort to resolve this. It is probably the most important thing you can do to reduce your stress levels. I find meditation music or white noise very helpful, and taking short naps during the day are an excellent means to get extra rest.
A New Breed Of Lightworker
What an extraordinary time in history this present day is! We have the entire world sitting up and taking notice of the many strange, disturbing events that are unfolding before our very eyes. One cannot berate anyone who is currently experiencing extreme stress and anxiety, with all that is happening around us. Instead we must offer our compassion and understanding.
However, there is also an inspirational side to these highly provocative circumstances. We have in our own homes, neighborhood and communities those blessed by the Divine. They are the everyday caretakers who are making these events a part of their own soul’s journey.
They are a new breed of lightworkers, seizing it as a unique opportunity to reach out to others, with little fanfare, and no trepidation or significant thought given to how they could possibly be jeopardizing themselves, or those close to them.
This is a time when exceptional people are stepping outside their own small nucleus of existence, and braving their own fears, in order to serve a higher purpose. How can such a complete selfless act go unappreciated and unrewarded? Maybe the answer is not so simple.
Lightworkers on this plane come in all shapes and sizes. We do not easily recognize them. They do not carry a sign attached to them saying, “Hey, look at me. I am a lightworker.” These are souls who come from every walk of life. And these days some of them are paramedics, doctors, nurses and caregivers.
On The Positive Side Of A Pandemic
These are painful, difficult times. There is a lot of uncertainty in our world and it is so hard to see so many people suffering. However, there are also many beautiful, magical, heroic moments happening everywhere on the planet.
These moments of unity and love, occurring at the same time as so much hardship and pain is occurring, is what will matter most in the end. It is important during times like this to balance the darkness with the light. In today’s post, I wish to therefore focus on some of these more uplifting, inspirational trends of recent weeks.
There is a man in Spain whose upstairs neighbor was in the hospital due to a Covid-19 infection. The man reached up high every night and fed the hospitalized man’s dog on the balcony of his apartment, thus keeping the dog alive throughout the owner’s hospitalization. Sometimes the smallest act of kindness can have the most lasting impact.
In some places, pet shelters have been emptying with more people recently adopting cats and dogs as companions. In the process more animals are being spared euthanasia and given good homes. Many people are now being comforted and loved by their new fur babies during a difficult time.
Nurses, doctors, truck drivers, janitors, grocery store workers and many other service workers are now being praised as heroes. There is a new appreciation for the important work they do. Some wealthy people have donating money, time and energy to feed people and support the unemployed.
From Separation Comes Unity
During my morning meditation, I became very aware of the isolation many people are currently experiencing, from having to self-quarantine or shelter in place.
Some are trapped in close quarters with family members, whom they don’t get along with, while others are solitary and feeling very alone. Whatever the circumstances, this is not easy for any of us, day after day, while grim news keeps coming in from the outside world.
In the Tarot there is a card, The Hermit, depicting an old, wise man who has chosen to retreat and isolate himself from the rest of the world. The card symbolizes spiritual isolation and social distancing, in order to seek wisdom and understanding within; to confront one’s inner demons, such as addictions, dependencies, habits or patterns; as well as learning to not rely on others, but to form one’s own opinions.
The Hermit card teaches us to find an inner solace and strength, a light within. There is much that we can learn from his wisdom. In normal life, we get so caught up in the mundane routines of everyday life, that we seldom pay attention to our inner being. We also spend so much time texting and scrolling through social media, that we get caught up in other’s opinions, attitudes and experiences, that we lose touch with our inner compass.
One of my Tarot mentors described The Hermit card as, “Stop the world, I want to get off.” It certainly seems in many ways that our world has been stopped in its tracks (but the planet itself has not stopped spinning). Many have nowhere to turn at this point, but inward. This may be a blessing in disguise in many ways.
The Spiritual Significance Of A Global Pandemic
Remember that defining moment recently, when the novel coronavirus finally made its way into your everyday reality? Your spiritual well-being and metaphysical beliefs were probably the last things on your mind. In fact, the spiritual meaning of this pandemic will not be a major consideration for most at this time. But in the dark, difficult days that still lie ahead, the Covid-19 pandemic will increasingly reveal its profound spiritual truths. And in its devastating aftermath, we will have no choice but to acknowledge and embrace its spiritual significance in our post-pandemic reality.
When Covid-19 was officially declared a global pandemic, and made its unwelcome way into international news headlines, many people reverted to the ‘first law of nature.’ They responded instinctively with their best personal strategies for self-preservation.
Some hysterically stockpiled a lifetime supply of hand sanitizer and toilet paper, while others stubbornly gathered en masse at street festivals, religious gatherings, and even at their nearest beach, despite medical experts and authorities advising against it. Many simply carried on with life ‘as normal’, until they could no longer ignore the writing on the wall.
Meanwhile, the least anchored among us, tried to alleviate their overwhelming anxiety and confusion by seeking certainty in fake news, superstition, and the outlandish fearmongering of conspiracy theorists. Some went into hardcore survival mode, compelled by their lack consciousness and a scarcity mentality, while other still continue to choose the path of least resistance: denial. And in-between these polar opposite responses, the best, and worst examples of human behavior continue to surface all over the world.
A Golden Opportunity For Inner Work
We are all feeling the same kind of mixed emotions at the moment. I have been spending some time trying to process the events of the last few weeks, and what is going on in the world these days. Below are some of my thoughts on it. Note, it is possibly different from what you might think and believe, but it is nevertheless my truth.
I have been feeling for the past few years that we are heading towards something momentous. I didn’t really know what it would be, or what it would look like, but I just had this foreboding or premonition that something major was going to happen. I have sensed that our planet needed a shift to correct things. To maybe put things into perspective, to put things back on track, or in alignment.
I consulted spirit for insight on recent events, and I have been shown that this is a time for us to reconnect with our faith, our divine purpose and our inner being. And we must really connect with our ‘inner lion’ for hope and courage!
The Covid-19 pandemic has given us the golden opportunity to have more time to think and really connect with our inner being, and the higher self. We now have a unique opportunity to discover who we really are and connect with our true spiritual nature.