Discovering our Gifts

Wow. Another year has gone by. While channeling a message for our Heart-Centered Support Group I received a message that this year is all about uncovering our ‘Gifts’. As we contemplate who we are and become more authentic we get to step into our truth and we begin to see who we truly are from a perspective of BEing instead of what we Do. And what does that mean for us? It means that we are in an authentic state of BEing which is who we are – and this is our ‘gift’ to the world.

So it seems that this year – as it probably should be every year – the theme will be uncovering our ‘true gift’ and we may have many opportunities to rediscover this truth. Often we learn through challenges so remembering our ‘gift’ will make this an exciting journey and the challenges will not seem as difficult – as long as we are open to seeing. We may have many opportunities to see how we feel when we aren’t BEing our authentic selves but as we remember and share our authenticity with the world we will BEcome more aligned and will feel excited to share our ‘gift’ with the world.

Where we may experience challenges this year will be around the parts of ourselves where we aren’t being authentic. This year, since the goal will be to BEcome our authentic selves and share our ‘gift’ of ourselves to the world, we will have opportunities to see where we aren’t BEing ourselves. These will be the areas where we are holding onto suffering. Our natural state and gift will never be to suffer. Suffering is a ‘human’ quality and is caused when we are holding onto something that is no longer healthy such as when we hold onto feelings about past relationships or we hold onto emotions within our current relationships.

An example of holding onto emotions might be when we hold onto anger which is usually attached to a person or to an event connected to a person. As I have said many times: anger isn’t a primary emotion. So when we hold onto anger we have another emotion being completely suppressed. And any negative and suppressed emotion that we hold onto suggests that we haven’t forgiven that person. To ‘let go’ we have to forgive! We not only have to forgive the other person but we have to forgive ourselves. When we suffer – because we are holding onto unexpressed emotions – we can’t move on to healthier relationships either.

So I believe that we will be learning ‘forgiveness’ this year as this is the only way to truly let go and move into our authentic state to express our ‘gift’! To fast track this I suggest that you make a list of the areas in your life or the people in your life where you aren’t BEing authentic, where you are feeling the challenges, where you feel that you are suffering. Think of the people you feel stuck with: people at work, family or friends – people who you just can’t seem to forgive. These people will be highlighted for you this year so that you can move into your more authentic self. This process doesn’t have to be difficult – as long as you can forgive.

There are a number of ways to forgive people: putting yourself in their shoes, having compassion for them, or thinking of ways to be grateful for them. Think about the people on your list and apply any of these ideas on forgiveness. See how it works for you. And it is okay to remember that often we hold onto different grudges because there is a deeper core issue being triggered.

For me I have figured out that my biggest trigger is around not feeling supported. The people in my life who have triggered this the most are my family and I find it most difficult to forgive them. However, because not feeling supported is a very deep trigger for me it is not always apparent when I get triggered by that feeling. Once I can see that whatever it is that has ‘triggered’ the feelings in me is around ‘support’, I am able to consciously acknowledge my ego and my wounded inner child. Then I can offer the support to my ego and to my inner child that I have never felt from my family. And I can also acknowledge the support I have in other areas of my life so that I can ‘discuss’ with my ego that my belief isn’t true that ‘I’m never supported’.

Eventually, once we have truly forgiven from our gut – where our need is to feel safe – and from our heart – where our need is to trust – we will no longer be triggered the same way. For me it is an ongoing process!

Since this is a theme throughout the year I invite you to contemplate the ‘gift of yourself’ – the ‘gift’ of you without suffering, the ‘gift’ of you as a person who has forgiven others so that you can be authentic. As we move into the New Year how you would like to BE and what is your authentic ‘gift’ to the world? Once you remember who you are then practice BEing this from within yourself. Any time that you are taken out of this practice in BEing there will be something to contemplate. What triggered you to take you out of your authentic state? Who triggered you and what events lead up to you being taken out of authenticity?

And as part of your ‘practice’ in BEing take time each morning this year to connect with the Divine Spark within your heart, grounding it in the Heart of the Planet and then connecting it upward to the Heart of Source. This will create a space where you can get centered and where you can set your intentions for the day. It is also a space where you can contemplate your authentic self – and give forgiveness to those for whom forgiveness is required … for your own authenticity and ‘gifts’ to shine.

May your Dreams be realized in 2016 and may you have the Awareness to nurture this highest vision within! Happy New Year!

- See more at: http://www.intuitivesoul.com

 

Laurie Huston, Intuitive Soul, Intuitive Counseling, Setting Intentions for New Years, Clearing and Healing Techniques, intuitive counselor, Forgiveness, clearing energy, Happy New Year 2016, Discovering our Gifts.

Do You Feel the Holiday Magic?

Each year I share with you my message that I have always felt passionate about ‘the Magic of the Holidays’. And this year I’ve reviewed my blogs that go back to 2005 (LOL) to find some of the thoughts that have inspired me in the hopes that this will also inspire you to ‘remember this magic’. I have gone through and encompassed some of the best I have shared over the years and added some thoughts that reflect my current thinking and feeling about this ‘magic’. I also had a great conversation with Tom Campbell and offered some tips to grow towards love through this Holiday season (listen or watch here).

The ‘Magic of the Holidays’ is the incredible compassion that exists at this time of the year. When we are truly in the Magic of the Moment we are giving from the heart with no expectations. We feel washed over with joy – in just being. At the same time we remain authentic to ourselves and do not compromise who we are.

The ‘magic’ has nothing to do with gifts or how this time of year is typically monetized. It isn’t about whether or not we can find the perfect gift. In fact my new favorite quote is “the magic of the season isn’t given it’s found”.  I came across these thoughtful words in one of the many Christmas movies I have watched in the past week but I’m sorry that I can’t recall the actual source.

And the ‘magic’ isn’t ‘me-based’ and ‘what you can do for me’ which is how many people create expectation around the Holidays. It isn’t based on expectations at all. We often dread the Holidays because we want to change others to BE nicer and to see the problems with our dysfunctional relatives as being outside of ourselves and not able to touch us.

The ‘magic’ I refer to is within us. The ‘magic’ is remembering the excitement we had as children and the innocence we had at exploring new ventures and awaiting what new adventures were right around the corner.

The Magic is a choice we make to open our hearts and see the world differently. We can choose to change how we see our dysfunctional family and friends and accept them for who they are. We can choose to change ourselves on the inside first by focusing on how we want to feel this Holiday Season. We can choose to cultivate an essence of joy and radiate it from the inside out! We can find this. Inside ourselves. It isn’t ‘given’ because that might suggest that we ‘fix’ others… but it isn’t our journey to heal, fix or change someone else. Our journey is for us to evolve and grow spiritually! And our journey, and what we find on the inside, can be shared. It is shared by a vibration that we radiate from inside ourselves. It is about creating a connection to the Heart of the planet and the Heart of Source and it exists within our own unique Divine Spark. It is about what was told to Virginia back in Sept 21, 1897 when she asked the Editor of The New York Sun if there was a Santa Claus:

”VIRGINIA, your little friends are wrong. They have been affected by the skepticism of a skeptical age. They do not believe except [what] they see. They think that nothing can be which is not comprehensible by their little minds. All minds, Virginia, whether they be men’s or children’s, are little. In this great universe of ours man is a mere insect, an ant, in his intellect, as compared with the boundless world about him, as measured by the intelligence capable of grasping the whole of truth and knowledge.

Yes, VIRGINIA, there is a Santa Claus. He exists as certainly as love and generosity and devotion exist, and you know that they abound and give to your life its highest beauty and joy. Alas! how dreary would be the world if there were no Santa Claus. It would be as dreary as if there were no VIRGINIAS. There would be no childlike faith then, no poetry, no romance to make tolerable this existence. We should have no enjoyment, except in sense and sight. The eternal light with which childhood fills the world would be extinguished.

Not believe in Santa Claus! You might as well not believe in fairies! You might get your papa to hire men to watch in all the chimneys on Christmas Eve to catch Santa Claus, but even if they did not see Santa Claus coming down, what would that prove? Nobody sees Santa Claus, but that is no sign that there is no Santa Claus. The most real things in the world are those that neither children nor men can see. Did you ever see fairies dancing on the lawn? Of course not, but that’s no proof that they are not there. Nobody can conceive or imagine all the wonders there are unseen and unseeable in the world. 

You may tear apart the baby’s rattle and see what makes the noise inside, but there is a veil covering the unseen world which not the strongest man, nor even the united strength of all the strongest men that ever lived, could tear apart. Only faith, fancy, poetry, love, romance, can push aside that curtain and view and picture the supernal beauty and glory beyond. Is it all real? Ah, VIRGINIA, in all this world there is nothing else real and abiding.

No Santa Claus! Thank God! he lives, and he lives forever. A thousand years from now, Virginia, nay, ten times ten thousand years from now, he will continue to make glad the heart of childhood.”

How interesting that the message really needn’t change! The ‘Magic’ is the love, compassion, and generosity that exists – especially at this time of the year. It has the power to open our hearts so completely that we wonder how we have ever loved in the past.

However, to experience this we must move beyond our minds, our fears and pain, our egos… to a place that exists within all of us. That magic is the same piece of Divinity that is Source. It is our Home. It is what makes us all one. We have to nurture this Magic that exists in all of us or else we dull its magnificence. We dull it each time we are disappointed by the fear, pain and control that overtakes our lives. We dull it every time we give our fears more power than the “magic” within us and our lives.

That is the message I encourage you to embrace. To know, to remember, that the magic exists, we just have to hold it within our hearts. This time of year that magic is strongest and we can touch upon it… remember it… and we can rejoice that we have a touch of the Great Mystery within each of us.

Let that magic overflow in all you do. Let your heart remember what it always knew. Find your way to let the Magic nurture and foster your Divine Essence. And let that Essence flow out into your life, at this time of the year and every day of your life.

Remember the feeling of this Magic of the Holidays and make a promise to yourself to create Moments of Magic this holiday season! And you will be a part of the true spirit of the Holidays!

- See more at: http://www.intuitivesoul.com

The Masks we Wear!

As we just completed the Halloween holiday my attention was focusing on the masks we wear! I completed an interview with Tom Campbell recently and masks came up as a theme. I feel that this ‘masks’ theme will also be covered with Christopher Papadopoulos Nov 10^th airing Nov 16^th.

One of my thoughts around this theme is that we wear masks all the time as we try to be – or hope to be – someone other’s will like and appreciate. You know the masks I’m talking about: the ‘family’ masks we wear to try and please others in the family; the ‘relationship’ masks we wear to our significant other so that they won’t ‘leave us’; the ‘work’ masks we wear when we dislike our job/co-worker/boss etc. We find all sorts of different ways to wear a mask believing that our masked self is who people want to see. The problem is if we wear a mask long enough we get stuck in it. We can’t be authentic by dropping the masks to the people we know well and maybe even love because how do we change now after having worn the mask so long? Or we may forget our authentic self completely and just keep wearing the masks!

Another thought I had about masks as we celebrated Halloween is that people can often be more authentic when they dress up and participate in Halloween. We also do this with alcohol and vacations. Why is it we can feel comfortable BEing our authentic selves with some makeup to hide who we are, with some alcohol to give us courage to BE who we are, or with a vacation where we can experiment with pushing ourselves out of our comfort zones into our authentic selves or is it just because we are in a different place where no one knows us so we are able to BE our authentic selves?

Fear is the problem that we try to resolve through masks and it is courage that we require to free us from our masks or fear. Fear definitely is the culprit that helps us create our masks. We are afraid that we aren’t enough as we are and that we must be nicer, friendlier, and more aloof to hide our insecurities. And ultimately we are trying to be happier to please other people so that they will ‘like’ us and not ‘leave’ us!

The thing with happiness is that it isn’t something we can pretend. And it isn’t something outside of us. It comes from our ‘BEing’ level! It comes from who we are authentically. If fear prohibits us from being who we are, authentically, and courage is what will eventually allow us to be our authentic self, then why are masks used to make us feel safe?

I believe what happens is that we are unconsciously driven by our fears and we eventually walk around like sleepwalkers, unaware that we pretend to be someone else. As children we were naturally authentic and often didn’t care about what others thought of us but this fear crept in as we were disciplined and punished for BEing who we are. It became so ingrained in us to BE this person who would win approval that we kept on the masks that won approval and this ‘stuck’ on us and we became the masked person and forgot our authentic self.

We experiment with different masks on occasions such as Halloween, or in alcohol-infused situations, or on vacations and we have more courage, and as a result are more authentic, with these masks on. It is also probable that people use Halloween (masquerade) parties, alcohol and drugs, and even vacations to distract themselves from feeling uncomfortable about their lives as well as to give themselves courage. These distracting behaviors can be expressions of addictions and although I’m not going to delve into our ‘addictions’ in this article it is still worth mentioning because it is fear that pushes us to resort to addictions just as it is fear that makes us reach for masks.

I believe we want to experiment to remember who we are. And as we experiment we feel like we don’t have to worry that others will judge us when we wear an actual mask on Halloween or when we are ‘under the influence’ of alcohol, or are on vacation when we won’t be recognized and won’t be seeing again the people we meet. Ultimately these occasions assist us to feel safe BEing who we are.

So how can we remove our masks and be more authentic just as we may be on Halloween, under the influence of alcohol, or on vacation? I believe it will only happen when we are aware of what we are truly afraid of and breathe into our fears to see that they aren’t real but only part of our ‘story’. It can only happen if we choose to authentically feel into our bodies instead of avoiding feeling uncomfortable. It will happen when we get quiet and connect to the ‘now’ moment and with our body’s innate wisdom. It will happen when we feel safe inside enough to BE who we are. It will happen when we practice BEing our authentic self and not worrying about feeling judged for BEing who we are!

We can do this and perhaps instead of seeing these masks as a distraction we can allow our awareness of these masks to transport us towards our growth. And we can allow our Halloween experiences and our ‘vacation time’ to magically carry us into new opportunities to practice BEing authentic. Let’s have fun with this and celebrate our uniqueness!

See more at: http://www.intuitivesoul.com

 

Authenticity, BEing, Clearing and Healing Techniques, halloween, Heart-Centered Support Group, intuition and self awareness, Intuitive Counseling, intuitive counselor, Laurie Huston, masks, News for the Heart, News for the Heart Radio, Tom Campbell

What Choices do you make at your Trigger Point?

This month I want to write about something that has been occurring in my life on a regular basis. People are getting stuck in their lives and falling back on their ‘known’ story and so often such stories are full of drama because of the origin of those stories. This problem is occurring with people who are becoming conscious and honestly sincere in their evolution towards love. I believe that there is a mirror here for me and I’m exploring this as it isn’t just one client and I’m feeling stuck with my clients who are stuck! Oh MY!

I have been involved with several shows on ‘The Story of ME’ and it was the subject of my last blog.  And I have had several more shows since then with Christopher Papadopoulos, Thomas Campbell, and Jean Adrienne where we have also discussed this topic. So, we understand that this ‘story’ is not a representation of our truth, but really our story is from our perspectives that are due to our experiences that come from our egoic thinking mind. It typically has some level of insecurity, lack of self-confidence, inability to forgive or our trying to justify our actions or emotions. But we get stuck in the process and fall back into our ‘stories’!

What I want to explore is the moment we have that will allow us to make an easier shift towards getting out of our heads and into our bodies, heart and gut, where we can make present moment decisions that will not expedite our journey into full drama. That moment where we are first triggered. That moment when we are anxious or first feeling insecure, whatever the initial trigger is. That is the moment when we can head off the full blown drama attack.

So what is our ‘thinking mind’ really doing in that ‘trigger moment’? We’re trying to control and manipulate things so that they are the way we want them to be or believe we want them to be. But really the only thing we have any sort of control over, or have some sense of being in charge of, is our emotions (which our thinking mind doesn’t believe because it doesn’t deal with emotions but only thoughts and the memories of emotions).

So in the trigger moments I always say there is a choice! When that first moment of our trigger happens we can still make a rational choice. But after that we are in full blown attack and our rational mind is nowhere to be seen! Sometimes we just have to ride the wave and hope to come through the drama attack without too much damage.

So what is the choice you ask? It is to acknowledge we are feeling anxious. And to acknowledge that this anxiety creates a deeper fear within us that isn’t based on truth but rather a perceived misunderstanding that has been accepted as truth due to our past experiences. It means we can choose not to do the thing that makes it worse … you know grabbing food to fill the void or doing the thing that has the impact to push you to breaking point. It is the moment we can make a choice before the choice is appearing to be taken away from us. (The choice isn’t really taken away, it just feels like that.) It is that moment when we still have a choice to acknowledge that we are feeling uncomfortable before going over the edge. And if we can bring awareness into that feeling of discomfort we are conscious enough to bring ourselves into the now moment. Christopher Papadopoulos offered an amazing meditation in our last interview on this exact topic, it will allow us to move into our bodies to release the anxious energy. A must listen.

What I have learned from this whole experience was pretty impressive.  One of my longest term clients (and dear friend) who probably has triggered me the most due to the fact that our ‘stories’ are the same [we were both abandoned at a young age] inspired me to look deeper into this. I realized that what our ‘thinking mind’ is really doing is trying to put the blame or projecting the problem onto someone or something else; the closest thing for me is my health; for her it was an ex. These represent what we need to heal or accept within ourselves.

You see, we project our deepest core issues onto others when our core issue is much deeper and goes to a time when we weren’t conscious enough or emotionally mature enough to understand what was happening. I’ve been abandoning myself by making the wrong choices in my diet (filling the void with poor choices) and not being able to build my energy again. My client/friend had been making her issues about someone else when in fact the problem is never someone or something else… it is always our own issue.

So in a way our ego is just helping us heal or accept a deeper truth but our thinking mind goes to lay blame elsewhere! I think this is a normal response. It is just that if we can see the bigger picture then we can understand that our patterns and ‘stories’ were created before the age of 7 – before we were emotionally mature enough to comprehend what was happening, and unable to see that it wasn’t personal. As a spiritual Being we are able to understand mentally most concepts and feel into our emotions but as a child we had no reference point: we could only establish our own misunderstandings. And since we felt dependent on our parents we concluded, from a conceptual basis, this must be love.

To heal these wounds we have had to make different choices… and when we don’t realize that we continue with the same ‘stories’ as created by our young selves. We are unaware that what is happening isn’t just a re-enactment of the same core fear: these incidents continue to play out to assist us to create a different story.

At any point in the process we can create another story, choose to respond differently, see that it isn’t the other person or thing that is the problem but rather a belief we made before the age of 7 that is showing up to help us grow. Can you make the decision then – next time something ‘happens’ to you – to see the ‘bigger picture’ and choose to respond by becoming conscious and present?

- See more at: http://www.intuitivesoul.com