grace
Multi-Tasking Does Not Cultivate A Quality Life
I’m sure there has been a time in your life when you may have been too active on a hot summer, day without adequately hydrating, or juggling far too many tasks at once without taking a break. While you may have crossed the finish line, or pleased your boss by checking off all the tasks you completed, your sense of well-being was probably rock bottom, and your nerves frazzled. You possibly also questioned whether or not the best version of yourself showed up for life the next day.
Although many of us have found ways to multi-task our hectic lives, research is increasingly showing that effective multi-tasking is in fact a myth. Working on multiple projects at once doesn’t necessarily make us high achievers, or a successful super humans. Multitasking for most individuals merely replaces quality with quantity, and often leaves us feeling overwhelmed and disconnected from our deeper purpose.
As a spiritualist, I make it a practice not to judge how others achieve their everyday objectives and goals. But I do counsel many people who seem to have traded quantity for quality in their lives, and are missing out on the gift of savoring the sweet taste of personal achievement that is purposely focused and uninterrupted.
While old habits are tough to break, each of us has the innate capacity to build new processes within our mind. Psychological tools, such as Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP) for example, can be used to re-program the mind to think differently.
Metaphysics and New Thought spirituality also teaches that through positive thinking we can manifest healthier outcomes in all areas of our lives. Many indigenous peoples also have a long tradition of spiritual practices, such as vision quests, dream interpretation, divination, and rituals and ceremonies, to help seekers find their best path.
Creating Space For Divine Love
Love has a life of its own. In its true, pure form and spiritual essence, love is a transcendent energy emanating from God – the supreme loving and lovable Source. When love descends from this uppermost divine realm of origin and takes seed in our heart, we can know it is an act, and element of grace that we receive.
When the seed of love is planted in our heart, it is to be watered, nurtured, cultivated, and protected with our life and soul. Love needs space to grow, and nourishment to flourish. It is the quality of consciousness that creates this space and atmosphere for love to thrive.
When tending to the garden of the heart, we must first examine and prepare the foundation. Just as flowering plants would struggle to grow in dry soil, so too will love not readily emerge from a hardened heart. It requires softness, flexibility and receptivity. Love, likewise, needs a base that is rich in qualities to give. Soil stripped of nutrients does not foster growth, nor does a heart that is deplete of a generous, giving spirit.
Furthermore, there are weeds of unwanted things that must be removed to allow for love to expand. Lust, anger, greed, selfishness has no place in the garden of love. Love in its genuine spiritual essence will not take root in an atmosphere surrounded by manipulation, anger, resentment or narcissism.
Again, love has a life of its own. It cannot be pushed or pulled, or ‘gamed’ into being. To truly experience its pure divine scent and flavor, the heart must be open, soft, receptive, giving, honest, respectful, and devoted to the supreme, eternal, transcendent, loving Source.
Forgiveness Brings Lightness To The Heart
Forgiveness can be one of the most difficult challenges we face in life, especially for those of us who have been horribly wronged. But the angels say that we cannot move forward with anger or hatred in our heart. Only when we can truly forgive and let go of our past, will we reap the rewards of the future. Blessings come once we let go of the things that are holding us back.
When you struggle with forgiveness, it helps to remind yourself that God, the Divine, Source, Spirit, the Universe, always forgives us, no matter what we do. And our angels never leave our side. They do shake their heads at times, but they are right there through each life choice and every step we take, no matter what.
When we are in a place of unforgiveness, we must choose to look at life in a different way. What good is it to hold onto anger and resentment towards someone who has wronged you? It is usually not affecting them in any way, and it is also not serving you. All it really does is hold you back from moving forward and living your best life.
Your past, both the good and bad, provided you with life lessons, and if you truly consider what you have been through, and the growth and wisdom gained from those experiences, you will appreciate the lessons learned, and never repeat them. Life lessons empower us to move forward in a healthy way and not repeat the mistakes of the past.
Soulmate Love Requires Patience, Hope and Perseverance
Should I wait for him? This is a question I have been asked many times in my work. Especially when there is a deep, strong soul-to-soul love, with a sense of eternity and meaning to it, this question naturally arises when such partners are parted.
The answer, I find, is within. It is not a matter of should or shouldn’t, good or bad, right or wrong, nor even a matter of the outcome. It is a matter of heart. And it is a very individual choice.
An intuitive reading can support, but not substitute the process of discovering such a personal choice. As an empathic intuitive, for example, I can offer you a description of the energy I feel around your relationship situation, to provide you with information that may help you discern. I can also support you in trusting your own heart, and then in moving forward accordingly.
But the ultimate answer always lays within your own love and desires. From my experience of love in separation, I have learned that the path of patience, if chosen, will call for a profound degree of it, along with several stepping stones of spiritual qualities and concepts to uphold it.
Love between souls is a spiritual exchange. It steps back and views the beloved through the lens of eternity. It sees the individual spirit soul – the birthless, deathless being within – who is on an evolutionary journey, passing through human experience in this world.
Transcending Turbulence And Restoring Peace Within
One of the most moving metaphors I have ever heard, describes the calm that rests beneath the surface of the ocean. While there may be waves and turbulence on the top, if you dive down deeper, you will come to waters that are more still.
Similarly, the troubles of life that bring disturbance to the body, mind, and relationship dynamics of the world, occur at levels which are external to the eternal self. By going deeper, peace within can be found.
Spiritual traditions of the world define the self and the soul in varying ways. The ancient Vedic texts, for example, identifies the individual soul as measuring one ten-thousandth the size of the tip of a hair, and states that it is located in the region of the heart, seated beside the Paramatma, or Supreme Soul (God).
In the Vedic tradition, consciousness is recognized as the symptom of the soul, which is carried throughout the body by the blood, as it is circulated by the beating heart. When the heart stops and consciousness leaves the body, it is because the soul has departed.
Lord Krishna further describes in Bhagavad-gita that this atomic soul is never born, and never dies. It is immutable, unchangeable, indestructible, and always aloof from matter and its influences.
These spiritual teachings go on to highlight that the pure eternal soul is one’s real identity – the ‘I’ or ‘me’ felt by each and every living being. In this world, it has become temporarily covered by a subtle body made up of mind, intelligence, and false ego, as well as by the physical body comprised of earth, water, fire, air, and ether. In this state, the modes of material nature act upon it, and one acts out various behaviors compelled by the energies of those coverings. But the soul itself remains untouched and unaffected.
Sheltering In Gentle Grace
The subject and substance of grace is near and dear to my heart. Its consistency is gentle and ethereal, but nonetheless a source of grounded strength. I appreciate it as a richly layered, soft, spiritually textured energy, flowing between Heaven and Earth – divine in its origin from God, yet accessible in unlimited ways within, and around us.
A few years ago, I wrote a book on grace, moving in divine alignment. The words channeled through me, as if being dictated by Grace herself, a feminine goddess personifying the compassionate energy emanating from God as the Supreme Source. Therein, the quality of grace on the hard paths of life revealed itself to me as follows.
When the dance stands still in the dark – outside my comfort zone, in the space of the unknown, in the history of pain, before the next step – I tend to feel neither peaceful, patient, nor poised.
I have grabbed for answers, change, relief, but found none independently within my clutch. So, I envision a fabric of grace, formed when the favor of God becomes interwoven with the sweetness of elegant movement and presence.
Unlike ordinary cloth, the fabric of grace dons a mystical twist. It is a lifeline of being, bearing inexhaustible strength to uplift and pull us forward through all experiences.
There is an artistry of the soul in reaching for this spiritual material of grace. It calls forth inner enlightenment and skill to clasp it in the heart, not in the hands.
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.