Insightful Inspirations

I often get my messages in metaphors that relate to my life in some way. It is so I can interpret the language of the cosmos into a way that can be (somewhat) understood. Our ability to perceive the vastness of this information is limited by our own systems, perceptions, etc. But I feel what ever is needed will come through, regardless.

That being said, I am going to share my personal message I received this week. I often have long, in depth conversations in my sleep (it is challenging to by my husband and sleep next to me ). This one came in  my sleep by I requested to remember it so I can share it with you.

I was shown a diving board as my spring board into the next place I want to go into my life. It was balanced, springy, and ready to launch me. Then it was explained that this was a metaphor for being weighed down by either past, present or future. I am always striving to be in the present moment, but what that mean is a combination of my past experiences, my current experience and my thoughts on the future. Not just the present.

The back of the diving board represents the past. If it is balanced, it provides support for the board and allows it to extend out over the water. If it out of balance the board may fall over or prevent the board itself to be springy.

The board itself is the future. If we are stretching ourselves too far out into the future with our worries and concerns, the board is very long and we could walk down it forever before we get to the end, and most likely won’t be able to be supported by the past and present.

The end of the board is your present, your launching off spot. If you are in the past, you are still on the steps, if you are walking down the board you are focused on the future.

I hope this is making as much sense to you as it did to me.

Bottom line, the past has made you who you are and adds value to your moment, but isn’t something to focus on. The future is out there and you can make goals, but give yourself places to jump off from rather than keep extending your board to a place impossible to reach. Then…get ready to JUMP!

Insightful Inspiration for the week

Use this metaphor to examine your own life. Is your diving board in balance? Are you able to use your past to support you rather than hinder you? Are you able to give yourself places to jump off rather than constantly push your thoughts into the “what ifs” of the future? How can you bring yourself into balance and prepare yourself for the next leap? Remember, you can always go for a swim, get out and do it again for the next experience.

Have a nice swim! We are all still learning so let yourself have a break from the “perfect”.

I was going to call this post the dilemma of an over-doer. But I thought is it really possible to have too MANY opportunities? As I talk with friends who are wives, mothers, and or workers of the world. I hear all of these stories about how much they have to do. Me included. As I start to look at all the things I am busy with, it isn’t always what I want to  be busy with, but think I SHOULD be busy with. (the dreaded should!)

My kids have the opportunity to be in this sport, that club, go to this party, etc. I in turn get invited to events, asked to do things, and participate in random things here and there. I feel like I am presented with so many options of things to be involved with. Don’t even get me started on the volunteering I do… that is an endless pit all by itself. But I can feel a twinge of guilt pop up if I don’t take advantage of all of the opportunities. What better do I have to do? Just sit at home! EEK.

What I am seeing now is we have been brought up from a world of lack. We didn’t have what we wanted or we were trained we never would. It was unreasonable to expect it. “don’t complain later if you change your mind” So we end up scooping up all the opportunities that come, for fear we will regret not doing it. We overwhelm ourselves, deplete ourselves and ultimately forget the gratitude that we once had for these opportunities individually.

Insightful Inspiration for the week

Notice all the “opportunities” you are taking advantage of just because you feel you should. Maybe it is even something fun, like being invited to a party, even though you know last night you promised you were going to just stay home and rest for a few days. Try saying no, with the realization that new opportunities will come, when it is time.

If you can’t relate to the dilemma of an over doer… your inspiration is to see where you can say yes to one more thing. It is all about balance.

Tell me how it goes.

Eww… okay, I know, but as the stress of the holidays bears down on my VERY sensitive skin, I get reminded of what I hear regularly from my guides. Don’t push it or force the issue to the surface before it is ready. This isn’t really all about a pimple… I just wanted to get your attention and I love metaphors present in our life. Even the unpleasant ones. Okay, a better one might be that a mother duck doesn’t help her babies out of their eggs. Even though she knows what needs to happen next and it seems like such a struggle. It is a necessary struggle.

But that is just it, it IS related to your life. So quickly we want to rush through hard situations and push things through to the other side when things are “clear” again. We want to force things to be done before they are and in doing so make things worse or make them last longer than necessary.

When I offer healings to others I  have to set my space to allow them to be supported where they are rather than where they “should” be. I do not judge where they are at and try and point them where I want them to go, but simply help them be more present in their power NOW. I am sympathetic to the struggle but often times can find humor in it too, where there typically is none. (not always appreciated by the client but helpful to the healing nevertheless) But my judgement is no more useful than their own, on what to do next.  The reason this is true is for several profound reasons. One most important fact being I don’t know what I don’t know. Meaning, I may have an idea in my head of what might work better. But the direction this person is heading is usually in a place I couldn’t even dream up. So who am I to limit the healing with my thoughts and ideas. Instead, I open up to the power of the miracle and just facilitate whatever goodness wants to show up. Maybe there are some hints in their on where to look, but never a “should” or “must” or hurry and get to the next place in life.

Now if only I could do that in my own life 100% of the time!

Insightful Inspiration of the Week

What are you trying to force to closure before it is ready? What issue are you trying to rush? See if you can allow yourself to drop away some of that urgency and just be with the situation at hand. Notice, are you making it worse by trying to “fix it”? Perhaps you are suppose to just step back and allow it to turn itself. Maybe you are over correcting and it will swing back into balance if you take your expectations out of it.

Release yourself from the responsibility to make things “right” and see what purpose the situation is serving. Don’t beat yourself up for where you are or how you got there. Instead see the good of it. If you can’t figure it out now, try stepping back from it. Find something else to do that is fun and makes you laugh. Then return to it with fresh eyes to see what else you can learn. This isn’t to say the universe doesn’t want us to have endurance, but sometimes it wants us to take our white knuckled grip of the steering wheel and let it drive. Remember, you can’t know, what you don’t know. But divinity is there to help us allow more of the goodness to show up so we can know it. If we allow it to. This is called surrender.

There is more to life than worry but some days it sure doesn’t feel like it does it? Sometime we are consumed with ourselves. The what ifs, the if onlys and the why mes! We just can’t help ourselves sometimes. We use everything around us to validate our victim state rather than validate our success. We have trouble just being satisfied with status quo. We have been taught status quo is BAD!

Status quo isn’tbad. It is just status quo… nothing more, nothing less. Wikipedia defines it as “current or existing state of affairs”. Aka the present moment, how things are, or NOW. Spiritual advisers since the beginning of time have been telling us the happiness is in the now, so  in other words, happiness is in status quo. Maintaining status quo is really what we have labeled as bad and the funny thing is, it is impossible to maintain status quo. It is always changing, moment to moment, even if you held you breath and sat still would be different because the earth is moving, you heart is beating, your stomach is working as so on. Maintaining status quo is impossible, so why are we so afraid of it. We are so afraid we aren’t moving in the right direction we start creating directions we “might”  move into to worry about. Stuff that hasn’t happened yet, yet we are trying to plan for it just in case it does which ironically makes it happen!

I did a reading today that actually was telling her she could move in a new direction, but if she chose not to, she can look around and expect more of the same. I think that is what we label bad. If we don’t like what we see, we don’t want it to stay the same. We want it to change. But if we don’t like what we see we fear change because we are afraid of creating more of the same or WORSE! If we could just get moving and not have any expectations on all of it, we would save ourselves a lot of mental anguish and bring in new experiences, for good or bad… but never dull!

Insightful Inspiration of the week

Accept status quo. Status quo is serving you up a dose of just what you need. Embrace it! Swallow it whole and then keep moving forward. Release yourself from the expectation that you SHOULD be somewhere different or things will be better WHEN something happens. Right now, life is as you have created it. Look around, use it as a shopping experience. Focus on what you want more of and go from there. Congratulations! You have come so far on your growth. The majority of your suffering has passed. Make a mental note of where you are now and know the next path is still unwritten there is more joy to have than pain. Bring it on by firmly planting your feet on all you have already built and allowing the next thing to come as it will with or without your worries.

Generally I am pretty open to my happy, optomistic self. But occasionally, like all of us, I get a little down. It is often a place I resist with fearce determination. I try and meditate, take herbs, get accupuncture, etc. to “fix” the “problem. To feel “better”. I spend so much time trying to treat the symptoms I don’t get down to what is really going on. I am trying to talk to myself about an imbalance I am ready to address. If only I would stop and listen!

Why don’t I stop and listen knowing what I know about all things? Well, what is there to look at is very painful and scary. I am afraid if I look at it, it will take hold and be the truth of who I am. I don’t trust myself to be with this pain and ever get out of it again. So instead of supporting this thing, I try and run from it, which only makes it worse and stronger. So what if I opened up to this and was this way forever? I want to be able to love myself no matter what.  But I have put certain criteria on  myself that make me “lovable” if I don’t meet those criteria I am what… not lovable? Of course not! I am still lovable. Sometimes I just have to remind myself that no matter what I am lovable. It is a test of the faith and trust I claim to have. It is me, like a toddler, acting up, just to make sure you still love me, no matter what. So I rise to the challenge and love my darkness just as I love my lightness in order to make room for light within me to shine brighter.

Insightful Inspiration of the week

This week, have a good cry without judgement on yourself of how you “should” be feeling. We have put obligations on our emotions. Emotions are not obligated to do anything, they are there to tell us about how we are interacting with the world around us. If we block ourselves off to our emotions or judgement as right or wrong, we are stealing away the power they have to communicate with us. Then these emotions stop working properly and get out of balance. We start feeling sad at times when we aren’t sure why. We feel more anger at a situation than is what you truly feel because you have blocked off the last four times you felt anger. 

See if you want things to fall back into balance. As you release this emotional valve, try no to judge it. Just let it open up and see what happens next. If there is a lot in there, don’t worry, it will stop flowing eventually and swing back the other way. When you start to doubt you should have opened the flood gates, just notice. Where is the fear of these emotions coming from? Did you learn as a kid these kinds of outbursts would get you in trouble? Just notice the fear is there as well. Fear of feeling.   Why are you afraid of feeling?  Just notice. Pay attention, see if you can send love to this part of yourself and let it be what ever it needs to be.

If other’s around you freak out by this new openness, just notice that too. That is their havingness for this situation and has nothing to do with the right an wrong of you. Send them compassion, but try and keep it from getting into your space about how you are feeling.

Write me if you want. I always love to hear how it is going.

If you read my blogs at all, you know I am not really going to tell you to give up if you are feeling overwhelmed. But the truth is, it is part of the reason we have trouble moving forward sometimes. We can see there is so much to fix and so much going wrong, we just can’t make it work, so why try? It is like trying to contiplate swimming across the ocean.  Add to this the way things are today, especially in the US, we are bombarded with unconscious ways of doing things where our food, clothes, lives come from corporate practices that are less than good for our bodies, let alone our energy, we are maxed out.

What I am seeing happen a lot lately is the straw factor… the camel is so overloaded that one straw throws the whole thing off. It makes the person feel crazy, because they thing “I should be able to handle one piece of straw”. But the straw isn’t the issue, the issue is all the rest of the crap that made you so sensitive, you can’t take it any more. Give yourself a break and then look at all the things behind that last thing that threw you over the edge. It isn’t just that one thing it is everything. I know I have already mentioned keeping your space clean, but it is more than just dusting and decluttering. It is just starting to notice where you are overwhelming yourself with negativity.

If someone can take a piece of jewelry from someone else and hold it in their hand and tell their story (which is a fun exercise to try, most of us can do this to some extent), imagine this power being held in everything you have in your house. That lamp you bought has the energy of the people who made the metal, plastic, cloth and parts associated with this lamp. It has the energy of the packing company and the material suppliers of that. It has the energy of the person who loaded it on the truck, drove the truck and stocked it on the shelves. It has the energy of the person who sold it to you… and so on! Energy is on every thing and affecting you, even if you don’t know it.

I tell you this not to overwhelm your further. But to just make you aware of why you are feeling overwhelmed and empower you to change it. Sometimes simplifying your life, space and world can help you learn your limits and modify accodingly. It can help you just be more mindful in your life, which helps you be more in the present moment and manifest what you want in life. It isn’t about noticing everything that is wrong around you, it is just about noticing everything around you, period. Notice how many things you have in your house. Think about the effort brought into manifesting that into your home. Be mindful of what you label as important and give yourself a break for feeling bombarded by the world. You are, sometimes you just need a break from it and kids do too.

Insightful Inspiration for the week

Pick one thing in your life to pay more attention to this week. Maybe it is just your toothpaste or the shampoo you use. Think about the energy that is put into this thing, where the materials came from, how they came together, how they got to you. Notice if that is what you want to be putting into your energy. Just do this with one thing and notice how you feel about this product. It may be something you feel good about… it is just to notice. This isn’t an exercise in ridding your life of negative energy, it is just about being more aware of all the sources that come to you so that when you are feeling overwhelmed, you know how to reduce the noise and get back to yourself. It is about understand how your energy interacts with the world, and doing it consicously.   Good luck. If you feel overwhelmed just by this one extra thing, this is also something to just notice. What can you do to help yourself feel less overwhelmed instead? Share your ideas.

Have a wonderful weekend!

Gravity is something we live with every day. It defines our life, how much we weigh, how fast we can go, how high we can jump. But if you go out there to places like Wikipedia you can tell right away we are still trying to figure it all out.

How can something we live with every day, be something we never think about, and something we don’t quite understand? This is the same thing with our intuition and inner guidance. We have it there every day, waiting to be used and quite often just automatically playing a role in our lives. But when we try and think about it and control it, it begins to blow our minds. 

With gravity, without it, we would be weightless, unable to hold a posture of our choosing, eventually loosing strength and orientation in our lives. The weightless part might sound appealing to some of you… but the point is the same with intuition. Without our intuition we would loose strength, orientation and purpose. We don’t question whether gravity exists, so why do we question our intuition?

Insightful Inspiration of the Week

This week, don’t question the existence or accuracy of your intuition. Trust it, like you do gravity, to work and be there. You don’t jump out of  bed and say “I hope I don’t float away!” You just jump out of bed and trust your feet to hit the ground. Trust your intuition to work. It may have seem to have been on hiatus, but it is right there, working for you all of the time. The thing to work on is the need to control it, manipulate it, and doubt it. Not to turn on the intuition switch, but rather to work on turning off the insanity that tells you it isn’t there.  Put your feet on the ground and start listening.

If you have trouble trusting, journal what is blocking you from this trust. Focus on the messages that are coming up to block the trust rather than trying to heighten the intuition.

Let me know how it goes.

Are you a slave to your comfort? Perhaps you would like to try something new, but it is uncomfortable. People tend to get very comfy in one spot or another and then don’t want to move on to the next place. It is like a bird who never leaves the nest to do an amazing thing, fly. If the bird stayed where it was comfortable and known, they would never experience the world. However, we as people often get so afraid to leave the nest, we keep ourselves from living the amazing life we have ahead of us.

Maybe we have convinced ourselves that we “have to” do it this way or that. Maybe we get stuck on a career path, that we don’t feel equipt to abandon or a new hobby we think the other people doing are already better at and don’t need us newbies to intrude. But the truth is, no one can bring to the table what you do. What ever path you have chosen to take is a unique one, that you can bring into your next steps. For example, lets say you are a nurse and you have been entertaining ideas of being a computer programmer. Completely unqualified? Maybe, but maybe the computer software that is being used for nurses and doctors could be improved by your background in the field. Maybe the way you learned to do things in the nursing field will help people do things better in the computer field. You never know until you try! We are judging our ability to contribute, when the truth is, we can ALWAYS contribute. Just because our perspective and background is unique and brings new ways of looking at things.

We don’t always want to try something new, because it is uncharted waters. It is places no one has ever been and we may fail. But without the unknown, we never grow, experience and expand who we are. Which is what we really want, so why do we get so stuck?

Insightful Inspiration of the Week

Is there something new you have been avoiding trying because you doubt your ability to do it? Is there a path you tell people you “would do” if you were someone else with different circumstances? Well, this week, you should try and get out there and do it! Just give it a try. Notice what “buts” and “ifs” come up while you plan it out and use that as a way to understand yourself fuller and move forward. Even it is something small. Try something new. It will bring you great satisfaction whether you succeed or fail because it is moving you closer to yourself.

There is one thing that overwhelmingly comes up in the healings I do for other people… People can not be moved into a place they are not ready for. I can try and heal them, clear them, advise them and tell them their likely path but it won’t help them be somewhere they aren’t. It merely supports them to be where they are. So why bother?  Because you can’t go anywhere until you are somewhere. When I offer a healing to someone, I am offering them grounding, presence and the ability to have more of the NOW.

What does this mean? It means that most of the time we spend trying to propel ourselves forward to some place other than where we are. We are always on the go, moving towards news goals, executing plans and “improving” ourselves. But if we never stop to enjoy where we are, we are always chasing our tails. We can’t put ourselves in alignment with our highest good,  unless we take time to notice what that even is. This is the real reason a lot of spiritual practices talk about being still and meditating or praying. It is because most of us don’t slow down long enough to listen to ourselves and just be.

I am not saying stop moving forward and setting goals. What I am saying is to try and be grateful for where you are first. This gives you a sense of direction. If you don’t first notice where you are, you can’t get up enough energy to go where you want. It is like looking at a map for directions without knowing where you are. It is all just random roads and landmarks that mean nothing.

Insightful Inspiration of the Week

Notice where you are. Be with that feeling and send gratitude towards it. When you are setting goals this week, first map out where you have come to. List out your accomplishments, your amazing life and notice where you are now. Are you fed? Are you warm? Are you in clothes that you like and picked out from a closet of clothes?  Your life is amazing no matter where you are at. Bring yourself fully into that amazing part of yourself and the only place you will choose to go on the map from here is to more amazing places. If you are directly conscious efforts to where you are, you will have more awareness of where you are going and make choices about those directions.

You are not in complete control, but that is the fun part! You never know what is coming next, but once it does you can just be with it.

It is great to set goals and make visions for the future, but this week, try and focus on where you are, not where you want to go. Even if you can only do it for a few minutes a day. As always, you are encouraged to share!