emotional challenges
Ask Spirit To Guide Your Every Step
As babies we learned to walk on our own. We may have had some guidance and support from our parents or caregivers, to protect us from falling, but in the end we mastered it on our own. And once we learned to walk, we could in time advance to running, skipping, jumping, and so on.
Similarly, we must learn to make major life decisions for ourselves. We may receive guidance and support along the way from others, including Spirit, but in the end, we must master our life choices on our own.
One of the major challenges we all face in life is how we choose to manage stress and hardship in our life. Stress is a given. Setbacks happen. Overcoming adversity is part and parcel of our journey in this lifetime. No one can live an entirely peaceful and easy life of serene bliss, without dealing with some drama and chaos from time to time.
But we choose different ways to cope with the daily challenges of life. Some people choose to lead a healthy, uplifting lifestyle, as well as practice spirituality, while others sadly opt for destructive ways to ‘cope,’ such as substance abuse, various forms of addiction, and self-sabotaging behaviors, which only serves to make their troubles worse.
When it comes to spirituality, everyone must choose their own path. It is usually what works best for you personally that is ultimately the best way to go. But some choose to not have any belief system. One thing I have learned in this life is that spirituality is essential.
You don’t have to go it alone. There is a great force, a powerful presence known as God, Source, Universe, Spirit, the Divine that guides and protects us. All we must do is ask.
Another important life lesson I have learned is that no one can truly know what you are personally going through, except yourself. Others will have their ideas and opinions of who you are, and what you may be going through, but none of that really matters.
The Self-Healing Miracle Of Letting Go
In the mid-90s, I had the opportunity to attend The Sedona Method Technique Teacher Training course in Arizona. The experience pierced the core of my being and changed my life forever.
Initially, I was reluctant to go, because I was living in Michigan at the time with my husband and two young daughters. My youngest was around a year old and our older daughter was only five. We had not been living in Michigan very long as we had only recently moved there, and I was terribly worried about leaving them for two weeks!
Nevertheless, I convinced myself to go, because my husband had gone to a previous workshop and raved about how it transformed his life. I sensed it would be good tool to incorporate into my psychic readings and metaphysical work.
When I arrived at the workshop there were attendees from all over the world, including psychiatrists, psychologists, and even scientists. To be honest, I felt a little awkward being thrown in with a bunch of ‘genius nerds’ with various fancy post-graduate degrees. It was a bit intimidating to feel that many of them probably had a much better understanding and formal education on human behavior than I did. However, that did not prevent me from also learning this wonderful technique.
The Sedona Method is based on the concept of Emotional Intelligence (EQ). It is different from intellectual intelligence, because it refers to our ability to recognize and regulate our own emotions, and how skilled we are at using social awareness to find solutions to daily challenges and life problems.
The Sedona Method therefore teaches one how to improve your EQ. In the same way we can go to the gym to strengthen a muscle, or do brain training puzzles to improve our memory, we can also train and develop our emotional intelligence.
Our natural impulse when something makes us sad, angry, or fearful, is to resist and fight back, or shut down emotionally to it. Emotional intelligence requires that we take a step back, take a breath, and release the urge to go with a kneejerk reaction of firing back or shutting down.
Finding The Courage To Heal
All of us will experience some heartache, adversity and grief in our life. It may be a serious health scare, the ending of a relationship or marriage, the tragic loss of a loved one, retrenchment from a ‘secure’ job, sudden bankruptcy, becoming homeless due to a foreclosure, or becoming the victim of abuse and violence.
These major setbacks in life can be truly devastating, and the pain and trauma extremely difficult to rise up from again. In such times of loss or trauma, it is vital to allow yourself to feel your true emotions. To effectively process and heal from traumatic events. hardship and bereavement, we must acknowledge our raw feelings. Grief and trauma are deeply private and personal journeys with no rules and no deadlines.
However, do not allow the ego to keep you trapped indefinitely in a place of anger, bitterness, hopelessness, or self-pity. If left unattended for too long, our initial emotional responses to the negative event can become toxic in a way that simply keeps us away from our truly divine self and our future happiness.
Yes, it is always hard work to release intense loss or trauma and move forward. It takes courage, self-awareness, and inner strength. However, if you proceed with faith, trusting and believing that this too shall pass, and that there is a reason for everything, even if you don’t understand it right now, you will ultimately be able to move forward in a healthy and productive way.
No matter what happens to you in life, you will grow stronger and wiser by working through it. Regardless how intense the dark night of your soul may be, move forward step by step, day by day, trusting that you can heal and will become stronger. Focus on self-care and loving yourself and hold the faith that better days are coming into your life. We all deserve to be happy and have inner peace.
Astrology Forecast July 5 – 11, 2021
Our best bet for getting anything productive done this week will be under today’s Taurus Moon moving into Gemini this evening. The rest of the week will however unfold under a veil of emotional confusion and the tendency to go hide in our Cancer shells. The Moon in Taurus has been making us more success-driven, while the Moon in the Gemini tends to sharpen our mental faculties. We are more awake this afternoon and looking for new experiences and impressions. This is a good time for all kinds of communication, contacts, training, and learning.
We’ll need to watch for gossip or misinformation on Tuesday and Wednesday, as the Gemini Moon inspires people to share without the facts or make comments that could be taken the wrong way. Our best bet during this phase is to watch and listen, rather than advising or sharing our opinions.
Beware the Gemini Moon square Jupiter in Pisces tomorrow, as it can get us into trouble with the authorities or invite legal problems. Be sure to follow the rules and comply with regulations. Conflict and drama could also surface in romantic relationships, so mind your P’s and Q’s when interacting with your partner or that new love interest.
The Moon will dive into emotional Cancer on Thursday, culminating in a Cancer New Moon on Friday. If you feel the urge to hide out under the covers or draw the drapes and take the phone off the hook, it’s not a bad idea, as feelings are easily hurt and self-doubt or confusion can make it difficult to interact with the rest of the world. On an up note, this time of isolation will give us a chance to go deep within and revisit our spiritual centers, clearing out whatever messages or ideas aren’t working while encouraging us to trust our intuition more readily.
Sunday’s Leo Moon will have us feeling more like ourselves, ready to face the world again, and thanks to Mercury’s entry into Cancer, encouraging us to share from the heart and soul.
The Wisdom Of Intuitive Eating
I remember reading an article many years ago about a research study conducted with children suffering from various nutritional deficiencies and food allergies. The scientists invited about 20 of these kids into a room with a table on which there was a variety of foods on display. They allowed each child to help themselves to any of the food they preferred. The outcome was astounding!
Each child chose a selection of food that their body naturally would tolerate the best. In other words, they instinctively chose foods that would not a bad for them or cause an allergic reaction. Furthermore, the children also chose more foods containing the nutrients their little bodies were lacking.
This confirmed for me the fact that our intuition or inner guidance system is not merely something we rely on when we are facing major life challenges, or when we are engaging in some form of spiritual practice. Intuition guides us every day in everything we do.
Intuitive eating is very much about honoring the temple which houses our soul. I believe we could potentially become nutritionally much healthier if we learn to trust our intuition more when we make dietary choices, instead of following fad diets and food trends.
Intuitive eating is about challenging modern society’s ‘food police,’ as well as the negative self-talk about eating and food choices many of us tend to engage in.
Intuitive eaters soon find that they eat just the right amount of various foods to nourish and satisfy their body, as they learn to truly recognize their body’s signals. Once you can do this, you are on your way to building a healthy relationship with food.
Be gentle with yourself. Avoid those magazines and influencer images on social media that prompts you to put pressure on yourself to look a certain way. Don’t give energy to such things. Instead, listen to your own body. You are uniquely you, and so is your body. When you express self-love within, you will also express it outwardly. Self-love ‘turns head’s like no designer outfit can!
Rediscovering The Untouched Soul
Our soul is always a clean slate when we are born. Knowing this and living accordingly is true spirituality. However, the virgin territory of our soul is often more or less blemished or darkened due to many traumas and challenges throughout our lifetime.
Along our life path, we often lose much of the spiritual innocence we had as children. Instead, we begin to dwell in shadows of darkness in various forms: indifference to the destiny of others, confinement in our own; laziness, vanity, greed, envy, violence, hatred.
None of us can deny having at times dark thoughts or toxic emotions, malicious habits or selfish behaviors. However, no matter how widespread and ingrained the darkness may become in us, it is also certain that something immaculate always persists in some corner of our inner being. Even if it is tiny, there is an eternal point of light within where our higher self always remains pure and original. The sacred we carry within cannot be defiled.
As much as life may have made us callous or cynical, we always have this sacred stronghold inside. Herein lies the hope of those who practice spirituality: to reach that virgin point and rediscover in it one’s original nature.
This original nature, pure and innocent, we have sometimes forgotten to such an extent that we need someone or something to remind us to look inside ourselves to rediscover who we truly are.
We sometimes need someone to explain that we suffer because we have stopped believing in purity, beauty and what is good. We need someone to remind us that our deepest identity is virginal and fruitful, empty and full, both things, however contradictory this may seem.