Meditation
How To Gain Confidence
Confidence isn’t about feeling superior to others. Confidence simply means feeling sure of yourself and your abilities, but not in an arrogant way. It’s the quiet, inner knowledge that you are capable. Confident people feel ready for everyday challenges.
For some of us it takes years of trial and error to gain self-confidence. Most people are their own worst critic. They judge themselves much harder than others would. And some will never feel good enough, or worthy of all the good things life has to offer.
Confidence really isn’t something that anyone else can give you. If you are not feeling confident, no matter how much praise and affirmation others may offer you, it will just fall on deaf ears. If you don’t believe it yourself, you simply will not hear it, or feel it.
As a psychic medium, it took me a few times of demonstrating for large groups to feel confident in myself and my mediumship. I have always trusted the spirit world to provide validation for the continuity of consciousness. The spirit world always brings forth messages and advice for clients without judgment. Spirit is consistently loving and kind, bringing forth messages for the highest good of my clients.
One of the biggest challenges for most, if not all psychic mediums, is the fear of ‘getting it wrong.’ Well, spirit never gives incorrect information. As humans we may interpret what we are seeing, hearing, and feeling incorrectly, but the original message is never inaccurate. The medium is just the messenger in the middle – and we are human and fallible. Therefore, in a mediumship session with me, I always try not to interpret too much of what I’m hearing, seeing and feeling. I just give the information with a basic sense of trust.
The True Meaning Of Surrender
When life becomes too challenging, and things begin to fall apart for us, we usually seek spiritual guidance and comfort. And in these circumstances we often tend to hear terms like surrender, release and acceptance. We are told to just let it go and simply be in the moment.
But what does it really mean to surrender? It’s a term often used in spiritual and metaphysical circles. Is there even such a thing? And if so, what does it entail? According to the dictionary, surrender means to stop fighting and admit defeat. It also conjures up the vision of waving a white flag. But is spiritual surrender truly nothing more than throwing in the towel, and graciously accepting our defeat?
I prefer to explore the meaning of spiritual ‘surrender’ through the metaphor of a painting I made, which is my way of meditating and reflecting on life. The painting is of an angel and I even named it Surrender. I chose this name, because it is the energy this angel emanates. His pose and posture also symbolizes the act of surrender.
At the time of working with the energy of this piece, I was in the process of leaving the security of a mainstream finance career, to establish myself as a full-time artist, energy healer and spiritual reader. Meanwhile, I was also very busy navigating a family separation and divorce. There were so many major changes in my life, and so much about my future and my life path that remained uncertain and unknown.
During my painting time, I felt connected to an energy that provide me with wise counsel. It was during a time in my life when I wasn’t feeling grounded in my own wisdom, and I needed a way to feel into it. This painting for me became the bridge in my understanding, as I navigated my new life changes.
How To Remain Grateful
In our daily life, it is all too easy to lose sight of the good things. We tend to get lost in negativity and stress, and we are also affected by the opinions and drama of those around us. At times it can be overwhelming.
In these moments we lose our sense of spiritual awareness and connection. I often speak with clients who experience exactly this. Indeed, it takes practice and re-commitment on a daily basis, in order to maintain our balance and inner peace, and remain true to our beliefs and mantras.
One of our own worst enemies is actually our false beliefs about ourselves. It is so easy to allow self-doubt to take over and let the negative thoughts creep in. Self-worth is a daily challenge for most, if not all of us.
To remain grounded and positive, I find that doing my daily gratitude list really helps get me back to that spiritual place within. When you are feeling low, or have had a stressful day, try keeping the following set of reminders posted as a list on your fridge, or somewhere you can see it daily. It will help change your focus.
What am I grateful for today? Who or what made my life easier or better today?
Did I allow negativity to affect me today? How can I remain grounded and avoid that next time?
Is there a better way I can deal with that difficult person or situation?
Meditation Made Easy
No doubt you’ve heard of the many physical, mental and spiritual benefits of meditation. And like many people, you are keen to give it a go, but still don’t know where to start? Well, it doesn’t have to be complicated or intimidating. According to Shunryu Suzuki, the Sōtō Zen master who helped popularize Zen Buddhism in the United States, approaching meditation with a beginner’s mind is actually ideal.
The most common misconception it that meditation is a state of “thinking of nothing” or “clearing your mind.” It is simply impossible to not think at all. One would basically have to be totally unconscious to achieve that. Instead, meditation is a spiritual practice in which we learn to be more mindful – to center, breathe, and achieve greater calm, inner peace and clarity.
Meditation is about embracing whatever is happening in the present moment, but without getting caught up in any of it. Meditation is about going with the flow, instead of resisting or suppressing your thoughts and feelings.
Meditation in its various forms has been practiced by cultures all over the world for millennia. The oldest documented evidence of the practice of meditation has been found in ancient Indian wall art that dates back to approximately 5,000 to 3,500 BC.
Meditation is an awareness practice, or an enhanced state of consciousness. It does not have to be associated with a specific religion or spiritual tradition. Anyone can meditate, no matter what their belief system. It also does not have to involve sitting or lying passively. It can be anything from coloring mandalas, to taking a walk in nature.
How To Overcome Negative Thought Patterns
There are times when one may be feeling very serene, and completely at peace with ourselves and the world. One may even be feeling highly satisfied with the spiritual growth and personal healing you have accomplished thus far. Then, quite unexpectedly, you lose your sense of alignment. You suddenly feel ‘disconnected’ from the source of our being.
This feeling is especially triggered when one feels overwhelmed by life’s responsibilities, or the constant demands of others. And once we slip into this negative state of mind, many deeply buried, unpleasant memories tend to emerge in our consciousness in the form of haunting ‘flashbacks.’
I recently heard a friend referring to this experience as cognitive distortion. We can so easily begin to catastrophize, and expect the ‘other shoe to drop,’ once our anxiety level becomes this amplified. The mind is powerful and under these circumstances we tend to indulge in a lot of ‘what if’ thinking. The mind races, imagining all the worst case scenarios as potential outcomes.
This kind of catastrophic thinking typically takes our mind into two directions. Firstly, it puts a truly negative spin on the current situation. And secondly, it causes us to anticipate all the many, many things that could possibly go wrong in the future.
Polarized thinking is another problem for some of us. This thought pattern is when we only see things in terms of right or wrong, and this can lead to setting unachievable standards for ourselves and others, as well as send our stress levels through the roof! Polarized thinking crops up when we find ourselves basing our hopes and expectations on, for example, getting that dream job, impressing other people, finding our soulmate, becoming famous, and so on.
Things Will Always Fall Into Place
During a recent interview for a paranormal podcast, I was asked what the wisest advice or guidance was that my spirit guide or angel had ever given me. The answer was easy, “Fear not, things will always fall into place.”
I was rushing around one day, hurried, feeling like there was just too much I had to do. I was feeling stressed out and anxious. All I wished for was to arrive at a place of stillness and contentment. But I forget at times that we can find stillness and inner peace right now, in any given moment. It is all about perspective and knowing that things change constantly, and our circumstances may very soon be different.
Sometimes we can become trapped in a way of thinking that isn’t good for us. We get into a rut and we feel there is no way out, or that things won’t ever change. But they always do in the end. That is the thing: knowing that circumstances always change and energy is always shifting.
Instead of being sucked into this kind of negative thought pattern, try the following strategies instead.
Keep a positive attitude. Become the energy you wish to attract. Like attracts like.
Visualize to materialize. I like to do this literally right on the cusp of sleep. It really makes things manifest for me easily this way for the next day, or days ahead.
Take Negative Emotions All The Way Home
When life gets tough or something happens to upset me, whether it be big or small, I make it a point to become very quiet and mindful. I do this to get clear, so that I can see all sides of a situation, as well as stay open to learning any possible spiritual lessons that are being offered.
Typically, there’s a strong emotion linked to what has occurred. If I can allow it to be there in a calm way, I can start to see the situation from a clearer perspective.
If the situation involves being hurt, for example, I take some time out – long enough to not hastily defend myself or problem-solve. Doing this creates an opening where the Divine can step in and take over.
I like to think of it as having a weight on me and imagining a group of cherub angels coming along to lift the heavy burden emotions I’m experiencing. They then take it from me and fly away. Though this is just a visualization, there is great relief at times in turning situations over to a higher power.
I have noticed, as I get older, that certain things that used to bother me so much, and would take weeks or months to get over, I now release in just a day, or even a couple of hours. This is because I no longer allow myself to be overwhelmed by the emotion in the moment.
I believe what helps to accomplish this is going beyond the difficult emotion, into a realm or a land less frequented. I refer to is as “taking it all the way home.” What I mean by this is to examine what it is I am most afraid of.