Participation or Victim

Lately, due to some work I’ve been doing, I discovered something profound. It is highlighted in the Movie “The Lorax” and I’m beginning to grasp its significance in all our lives.

We feel the need to be victims, consciously and unconsciously. Because the alternative is Being responsible for not only our own lives, but that of our planet’s as well.

Through the centuries, to “participate” in life was a double edged sword. We were damned if we did anything, and damned if we didn’t’. An example of this would be during the crusades. To watch and not do anything or to not say anything, made us almost as guilty as those doing the killings, and certainly left us with the guilt and shame as burdens to carry. Yet, to stand up against the crusaders, whether to say “no” or to continue practicing religious beliefs other than Christianity, meant certain death.Many spiritual teachers (including myself) have reinforced that the only work we have to do is our own. But at what cost? Are we taking full responsibility and participating in life, while we sit by and allow our earth to be raped of all its beauty? We say it doesn’t affect us when the rainforest is being demolished halfway around the world. We don’t see it. We don’t believe we can make a difference, so we work on “us” and know (or is it hope) that real change begins within.

I believe that when we fight against something, or resist it, it will persist (ie when we give something negative energy and hold that energy, it keeps it stuck). So, is fighting against our raping and polluting the earth, is that the same as participating? Or by holding a love vibration is it enough to stop the destruction? Or am I just fooling myself and still afraid to participate because taking responsibility is too horrible to consider? Because what can just one person do? Do I just accept that I’m a victim?

I believe I am responsible for “my” world, but doesn’t that mean “our” world too? And how do we “participate”? Conscious Choices and Conscious Actions where our message is one of Love and Compassion and “service” as we do our part to take care of Self and Planet. To not “hate” when we see those in “victim” mode who continue to have disregard for our waters and land. To lovingly devote our hearts in service to pick up litter, to replant trees and foliage that has been destructed. To send Love and Wellness to the planet. Being like the Lorax, not fighting, but loving and “planting the seeds” of love and compassion to all.

See more at: http://www.intuitivesoul.com/participation-or-victim

Pain a Divine Purpose

I’ve come to have a new appreciation of pain in the past few months. Chronic Pain is debilitating, but I never understood how it can infiltrate every area of your life. Physical pain impacts your mental, emotional, and spiritual well-being. When we are stuck in our emotional pain/trauma it can impact every area as well.

Which makes me contemplate pain in a deeper way, and why we never seem to heal our deepest wounds. I’ve been dealing with abandonment on every level my entire adult life. Each layer going deeper and deeper. Like pain, I wonder if instead of trying to “fix” it, are we just supposed to love and accept it? Take responsibility for it and then surrender it to our inner Divine?

I certainly know I didn’t “attract” this pain (I believe, like many other spiritual truths, we have misunderstood the Law of Attraction. We attract from our “resonance” to people and events, but the Law of Attraction is only one law in this Universe), and in the midst of my suffering, I do feel powerless, separate and victimized (aka abandoned), which only adds to my mental, emotional, physical and spiritual dis”ease”. However, I can see that I am responsible for everything and everyone in my life that creates the stress that makes me feel abandoned, powerless and stuck in my painful story.

So I wonder if not everything and everyone in our life is our Divine Purpose. Here to gently guide and honor our journey; to love and accept us for exactly who we are. Not to change or fix, but to let us see what our choices are, so, we may make new choices from a different perspective. To remind us that life surrounds us with opportunities to surrender our ego/mind attempts to control our life and invites our higher Inner Divine to support and nurture us from that higher perspective that we will never be able to see from this three dimensional perspective.

I believe everything is our Divine Purpose, especially our pain. We are not here to “do” things differently, we are here to BE! The only thing we need to become aware of is our perspectives, based from our unconscious and conscious beliefs. We need to respond instead of react. To surrender our ego’s desire to be “right” and justified, and move into a place of love and acceptance to all. May we see our pain, in whatever form in materializes, as an opportunity to create a deeper connection to our Inner Divine Wisdom. To love and accept our pain as the message of possibilities that exist to bring us back to Self and balanced in mind, body and spirit.

See more at: http://www.intuitivesoul.com/pain-a-divine-purpose

What are your Perceptions?

This month, I have been reviewing my perceptions and the perceptions of those around me. By perceptions I mean our thoughts about what others or ourselves are believing about what is happening in the world around us. I have noticed that I have been slipping into perceiving incorrectly and I have been bringing it up for discussion. I discussed this first with Jean Adrienne and later Eric Altman and I delved into it.

We tend to get very confused around the two, often separated, views in our world: on the one side we have the views of our ‘human aspect’ or ‘human nature’: the views of the inner child who strives to be right or the ego that creates disharmony in our lives and on the other side we have the views of the more enlightened and evolved ‘higher aspect’ or ‘higher nature’ of ourselves which we call our intuition, our higher self, our soul, or our BEing. The human nature, often referred to as the lower nature, doesn’t necessarily view things the same as our higher nature.

The thing that Eric and I discussed at length on my show was that we aren’t two different pieces, higher and lower nature, we are one. What we see as conflicting are aspects of our one nature and each of these aspects is truly just as important as the other. We are human beings that are having a spiritual experience, but we are also having a human experience. We’re not here to choose sides – we are here to find a way to bring them together and make them whole!

People who try to convince us that for us to BE evolved in this world we must transcend the ego are delusional. It is like trying to pretend that we have a million dollars when we can’t pay the rent. It is denying the aspect of ourselves that is here experiencing this world, the emotional richness of this world. The other aspect that is our BEing, our higher nature, is most helpful when we give this part of ourselves the opportunity to participate in a grounded and centered ‘vehicle’, our bodies. To think that we can just fly off to some higher nature world without being grounded and centered is equally delusional. The higher nature and the lower nature are both an essential aspect of our oneness – and every bit as important.

When it comes to perceptions, this is the human aspect of us that comes to light. It is that part of us that feels like we must defend ourselves, prove that we are right, or hide our vulnerabilities by reacting as if we are invulnerable. Whenever we are reacting, we have slipped (or separated) into our humanness and it is best to recognize this. We are human; we need not try to pretend we are anything but. However, to let this human aspect rule our lives is the opposite of what we are desiring – if we want to grow into love. [Laurie, do we want to ‘grow into love’ or ‘grow in love’? There MAY be a distinction here … and … unless EVERY blog refers to love in this way, you may want to introduce the concept of ‘love’ earlier in the article … to set the stage for this … to show that ‘love’ is the goal, the purpose, of all life and living – or whatever the heck love is all about (where’s Tina Turner at a time like this when we are asking “What’s Love All About?”. BTW: by introducing ‘love’ here … you may want to consider adding it to the latter part of this article.]

When we aren’t recognizing our perceptions then we blame others for how we are feeling. We make our dis-ease into the person opposite us, our job, our employers, our friends and/or our family. We hope that instead of taking responsibility for our discomfort we can displace it onto someone or something else. We are afraid of seeing our own vulnerabilities, our own pain and fears. We have this belief that life is too much of a struggle and to actually touch these waters is to drown in our pain.

Earlier this month in a support group call Eric discussed the idea that “if you aren’t getting what you want then you don’t love yourself”. Therein lies our biggest problem: our lack of self-esteem, confidence, and self-love are what create our perceptions about life to go askew. We react from a place of low self-esteem or it may show up as the opposite, arrogance… yet either way it comes from a place of judging self or others. It comes from fear instead of love.

Think of an example where you are blaming someone else for your discomfort. This could be with a lover, and ex-lover, a work colleague, friend, or family member where something has occurred that you have perceived that you were betrayed, hurt, angry about, or where something has “happened” to you. Everything you are feeling in this situation is perception. You have taken something that happened and made it personal and made it about you. Therefore you have placed the blame on someone else for this occurrence, for your feeling this way. You may feel this has made you depressed or contributed to your already low self-esteem. However, no matter what, it is your perception of what has “happened” to you that has created an inner story and likely a story that you have been playing since you were a child.

When a story keeps playing in your life, you know the pattern is there to assist you to evolve towards love. However, what I am inviting you to become conscious about is that what you believed happened is not the motivation of the other people but rather you replaying your story: that in fact, the other person or people involved have their own story replaying in their ego and these people are as caught up as you are; that these people also just want to feel loved; and these people are also reacting to their own story, not trying to play into yours. And that if these people were conscious, they would be able to explain why they did what they did and that it had nothing to do with you.

What I invite you to ponder is what your underlying fear is? What moves you to react? What emotion are you trying to defer, distract or escape from that is the real problem? And if you could realize that by projecting it onto someone else you are not accepting your human side and that diving into this emotion would quickly disperse the fears, the emotions, and, in fact, even the perceptions – once the answers to these questions are identified.

It is never as unpleasant as we believe. It would empower you to see what is real and true. This is just adding to your story and you can discover that all the others that you are blaming, are as innocent as you are … or as human!

See more at http://www.intuitivesoul.com/what-are-your-perceptions

Motivation and Resistance

Lately, my focus has been on “When the Law of Attraction (LOA) Doesn’t Work”, so much so that I am considering writing a book on it. On my journey I continue to encounter resistance to change and it leads me to understand my motivation to create. Often we are trying to create something outside ourselves that will fill a void within us. Many sources of the LOA suggest that we can manifest money, cars, houses and relationships and we get caught up in the illusion that this will fill the unhappiness within us.

We, of course, know that happiness must start within first before we can manifest it outside of ourselves. So, determining our motivation is key. Are we trying to attract/create from a place of fear (eg. when we want money it is often because we are afraid we won’t have enough or are coming from a place of lack or poverty consciousness) or love (eg. if we can come from a soul’s desire to evolve and an acceptance of all that is, not trying to change, do or need). Can something outside of us, that is desired from a place of pain, fear and lack do anything but maintain the status quo and greediness of our society? How can we come from an authentic space of allowing love, heart and soul to guide us in our evolution?

Are we looking at the emptiness, loneliness, sadness, unworthiness that evades our hearts, the separation and abandonment we feel within and working towards bringing these states into balance through awareness and consciousness? Or are we trying to fill the elusive void with things outside us, in an attempt to capture brief moments of inauthentic happiness and fulfillment until the next conquest?

I believe that our motivation for creating must begin with acceptance of who we are and an understanding from an authentic place not one of avoidance and fear of not being good enough for others to love and accept us for who we are. I feel we must begin with where we are and acknowledge the fear that is often the guide in our choices. This awareness is the beginning step to create real change. Resistance often holds us back because we are afraid of the unknown, yet, predetermining or trying to control our future is what keeps us stuck. We have to embrace change, and become conscious of our choices so that we can move towards creating the change within us from a place of love and acceptance. We have to be aware of our motivations at all time. We have to let go of our past regrets and future worries and Be who we are. Then make choices from a state of growing into love. Simple, but not always easy.

See more at: http://www.intuitivesoul.com/motivation-and-resistance

Conscious Creation from the Heart

My feeling is that Conscious Creation isn’t about the mind, or “The Secret” philosophy, which is the Law of Attraction. This keeps us focused outside ourselves.

It focuses on the “who” we want in our lives, and the “how” which is all about control; the ego driven desires (biggest house, best education, fastest car, the most money, to be the sexiest, the prettiest, the best etc!!). We search outside for all the “comforts” of the ego. This is how the mind works. The mind is external. It is our external senses. What we see, hear, smell, taste etc. We are never satisfied from a mind/ego space. When something goes wrong, we blame it on something outside ourselves. When a relationship changes, we focus on what we’ve lost. We focus on it being “personal”. It is always about “me”. The ego. Or if we have low self esteem, and many of us do, we blame ourselves for doing something wrong! We go over and over what we could have, would have, or should have done.

When we focus outside ourselves, we are never satisfied or we never feel enough! We can shift the energy of our situation, by being grateful! By forgiving. By being positive. By getting by on what we have. By accepting our circumstances. By loving ourselves. Except we don’t know what love is when focused on our minds and egos. It is limited, based on our experiences of love. And because we are seeing it from outside ourselves. We are seeing the world as what it reflects to us. We see our world by our relationships; through our homes; through what we have accumulated; through whether we can “survive”. Our world, defined by our ego, is seen through how much money we have, our bills/debt, whether we are “successful” or a failure. We see everything outside ourselves through our ego! Are we “right”? Do we have “enough”? The problem is we will never have enough!!!

We are reminded to go back to our childhood innocence! This is where our souls spoke to us the loudest. Reminding us Who we are! Our soul will never tell us we need to have so much money in the bank. Or have the biggest house or fastest car. However, we may have gotten excited by a flashy red bicycle or sports car, because it was beautiful and shiny, our hair would blow in the wind and we felt free!

Our hearts don’t care “who” we love, what they look like or what letters they have before or after their name. It doesn’t care about how “big” their house is or how much money they make. Our hearts care about how we feel around them. How our heart opens and expands when we’re with them. Once our hearts stop opening or expanding, then we stop growing and is time to change something within us. Our heart doesn’t care where we live or how “successful” we are or whether we impress our friends, family or neighbours! Our heart cares about how much we love and how much we can accept Who we Are! To just BE who we are without the fear attached to it.

Our heart/soul speaks to us through gentle nudgings. It reminds us everything is “perfect” just the way it is. No matter how turbulent it appears outside us. It speaks through our passion for life and reminds us what makes us feel passionate! Our heart/soul is speaking to us when we get lost in a book because our imagination is inspired. While we are writing, creating a piece of art or observing a piece of art. When time is lost, it is because we were aligned with our soul.

Our soul doesn’t care about our bills or our bank account, however, it doesn’t want us to live in disappointment either. It aches when we continue to focus outside because it means we will never be satisfied! We can never feel our “magic” if we focus outside. And we need to remember our magic!!!

Conscious creation is about aligning with our Souls’ purpose and being guided through that gentle guidance coming from our hearts. Instead of focusing on money or career, we need to focus on being aligned with what our soul work is. Instead of focusing on our Soulmate, we want to focus on aligning our inner Being with who we are from this soul perspective. Instead of focusing on the big house, we align with our “inner” home. Then the universe can align with what is in our true and best interest.

Conscious Creation is making choices from Love instead of fear. Aligning ourselves with our inner Truth. Coming from a place of integrity from the place within us, not outside us.

When the Law of Attraction Doesn’t Work

The biggest part of my journey has been to understand my own growth and spiritual evolution. Like many of us, I have been hearing about the Law of Attraction (LOA) for almost 20 years, through sources like Abraham Hicks, then the movie The Secret. This has been an empowering and exciting part of this journey. However, we all seem to be going through extraordinary challenges, and I question whether the LOA is always in the forefront of what we are creating.

My current understanding of life has changed. I feel that we need to be more authentic than always being “happy” and thinking only positive thoughts; that our unconscious is already full of emotions that we can’t deal with at this time; that what we really need is to be in the Now moment and focusing on opening our hearts and accepting and loving who we are versus trying to control our dreams through our fears.

What is worse is many people feel like failures when the LOA isn’t working for them. Another way we are betrayed, unworthy and/or abandoned by God. However, I have come to realize that there are some main reasons why the LOA doesn’t work the way we were taught in The Secret.

1. There are more laws then the LOA that are at play in the Universe. Our planet has the Law of Projection, where we see where we need to grow mirrored in others around us. But we see these people, or mirrors, as separate from ourselves and therefore can’t take 100% responsibility for our growth and what is in our lives. How can we attract when we aren’t aware what we are projecting?

2. We are using our will over the Will of God. We are always trying to control our future, through our expectations and attachments to what occurs in our future. We want to be in the driver’s seat, and the LOA is the perfect vehicle to allow us this control. We aren’t aligning with our Soul and inner Divine essence so that we co-create what our soul desires or needs, which we may not be aware of.

3. We have underlying and unhealed unconscious programming that governs our life. Most of our programming came into effect within our first 7 years. And we also agreed to our family’s lineage lessons and our Soul’s lessons from past lives. These unconscious programs come into effect when we try to change our old, stuck patterns.

There is confusion around what being responsible for our lives really means. LOA uses responsibility to mean that we are attracting what we don’t want through our conscious thoughts and our negative thinking. I believe instead that if something is in our lives that affects us, we are responsible for our reactions, responses, acceptance, healing and growth. Everything in our lives is here for a reason. It would be most beneficial if we could establish the reasons and motivations for what we “don’t want” in our lives, and from there make different choices.

See more at: http://www.intuitivesoul.com/when-the-law-of-attraction-doesnt-work
 

Holiday Relationships

We are coming into the Holiday season, one that has so much promise and is full of expectations, good and bad. Some may even feel the excitement of possibilities that they haven’t felt in so long. One thing I hear most often that continues to be expressed around the Holidays is about our dysfunctional relationships.

The holidays are a difficult time of year for many people. If you are single, the hopes of finding true love and magic at this time, hold allure, although, it may also hold a great deal of sadness and lost hope. If you are in a new relationship then there are the expectations of a relationship going to the next level. Or if you are in an existing relationship it is about maintaining or rediscovering the spark. Also there are the family get-together’s that create so much stress, as we try to meet our own ego’s expectations of having the “perfect” Holiday Dinner. All scenarios can create a stressful holiday season!

There is no easy solution, but we can find a way to get out of our heads and into the one place that we belong during the holidays, our Heart! The Magic of the Holiday season is that there is an energy of “giving”. We all have had the disappointment of not getting what we wanted. This is because of our expectations and our ego wanting something that we anticipated from someone else. Yet we all know the magic of discovering the perfect gift for someone else. However, this may have led to disappointment if it was not received with the joy that we put into it.

The holiday season is about Giving, not getting. If we could change our perspectives around this and only focus on how we can serve others; friends, partners, and our families, we wouldn’t be so stressed and we could embrace the Magic of the Holiday Season. When we are in our heads we are trying to control and manipulate those around us as well as ourselves, so that we will be liked or accepted.

The problem is that we are going about this from a mental and ego’s viewpoint. When we try and control or manipulate a situation, it is because we are holding a past memory that has a belief or fear within it. When we hold our beliefs and fears from the place of a core wound, we react instead of respond. The Holidays are filled with memories, beliefs, and fears that reflect our core wounds. Our mission, if we choose to accept it, is to stop focusing on what we want, and shift it over to what we can give to others! Think of all the beautiful gifts that you have to offer the people in your life and your community.

The gift of theHolidays is that the Magic of this time is strong, and we have an opportunity to connect into this beautiful vibration of giving more easily. My invitation to you is get out of your head and your ego’s “wantings” and shift your focus towards what you can give to others. When you do this with your heart it means that you don’t expect anything in return. Imagine that this Holiday season you have the time, energy and/or money (if necessary) that others don’t, and that you just want to give because you don’t need anything in return. Your heart is full and exuberant. You are expressing your Soul’s essence and snuggling safely within your heart’s space.

Happy Holidays!

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