The Problem With Chronic Soul-Guilt!

Guilt is a tricky emotion. In my work I have found it to be possibly the most difficult one to deal with, especially in the context of clearing past-lives.

Why?

Well, there are a number of reasons. But let’s first, explore the positive side of guilt.

We are here to learn. In order to learn and to make well- informed choices, we need feedback from our environment. If I go out of my way to harm someone with my behavior, I ultimately want to be affected by witnessing the consequences and that often time happens through a healthy dose of guilt. In that sense, guilt is a great teacher. Best-case scenario, I offend, feel guilty, make amends, learn my lesson and change my behavior for all future occurrences.  As soon as I get the lesson, the guilt vanishes because there is really no reason to hang onto it. Its job is done!

As we all know though, there are circumstances, even in this lifetime, where it proves a little harder to forgive yourself. At times, we file certain situations as unforgivable and we feel like the damage that was done is beyond repair and even though, we have learned our lesson and wouldn’t repeat the mistake, we hang on to the guilt indefinitely. In the beginning, it’s a sore spot, but the more chronic it becomes, the more it fades into the background because its color permeates the whole landscape of your life. Next thing you know, things are not working out for you quite as smoothly. You are up for a sports scholarship but injure your knee. The love of your life leaves you, or maybe you just can’t get pregnant. In your mind, you wouldn’t necessarily put the two situations side by side because you don’t realize the influence your co-creative power has via your guilt channel.

Some guilt is even sneakier; it is the guilt of the survivor, the winner or the favorite sibling. You might feel bad that your popularity or good fortune is hurting someone else and start blocking your own good karma in order to minimize the impact.

I have found that nicer, more conscientious souls/people tend to more readily suffer from this condition.

Add some past-life guilt to that for the time you got pregnant out of wedlock (which you believed was going to transport you straight to hell) or fall in love with your brother’s wife and you have created the perfect storm. And that doesn’t even remotely start to touch the surface of the guilt for the lives where people were killed or huge crimes were committed by your will or your own hands.

As an old soul, I can guarantee you that you have participated in events and have experienced situations that you are not proud of.  If you haven’t reached enlightenment yet and there are areas in your life that you haven’t been able to heal despite all of your efforts, there is a good chance that you are suffering from chronic guilt.

Chronic soul guilt can be invisible. You might not even feel a twinge in your emotional body. Whereas fear and sadness from past-lives make it to the surface much quicker because we feel that we deserve to heal from them, the guilt that is labeled unforgivable is not making itself known because you don’t feel like you deserve to be set free from it. That’s when it turns into a vicious circle. It will block every coach, every remedy, every doctor and every spiritual practice you seek out for help, until you clear it!

(Also, read post “Learn To detect Undercurrents”)

My suggestion for anyone pursuing the path of self-healing and soul-evolution, work on clearing guilt and forgive yourself even if you believe there is nothing to clear.

How do you do that?

Here are a few tips:

1. Reframe your perception. We are all here to learn and therefore, are students of life.

We switch up the roles of victim and violator in order to evolve. Certain frequencies can only be learned in this force field of shadows and light. I.e. forgiveness can only be experienced if something went “wrong”. Who needs unconditionality if the conditions are light on light and love on love where everything is perfect?

So, in the big picture, it is always about learning and accepting the classrooms that we have been part of.

2. In prayer and meditation, send out apology emails to all the souls you have ever hurt and pray for their healing as well as forgive all the souls that have ever hurt you.

3. Get some flower essences for forgiveness.

4. Practice self-forgiveness meditation. One way you can practice that is to sit in front of a mirror and look directly into your eyes (this is also called soul gazing).

It helps to do this with soft light and to place a candle in front of you. Then repeat either out loud or telepathically: “I forgive you. You deserve forgiveness. I accept you and love you in every aspect of your being.” (Feel free to change the wording a bit to tailor it to your situation)

Practice for forty days, every day. If you miss a day, start by counting at day one again.

5. Seek out a professional to assist you, especially if you have memories of a situation that you don’t know how to reframe, or someone who is capable of filling in the blanks and help to release trapped energy.

6. Check for spots where your ego gets stuck. Most long-term guilt trips have a strong ego component to them. We feel that we should have done/known better and we stubbornly ignore our lesson and responsibility within the karmic set-up.

As always, add your own tools to the list of suggestions and remember, when you feel stuck and things are not moving, do consider chronic soul-guilt as the potential reason for your struggles!

Some People Are So Poor All They Have Is Money!

Working in Los Angeles has been a wonderful experience in many regards.

One of the things I enjoy most is the eclectic nature of my clientele. The differences in economic, religious, cultural and karmic backgrounds are fascinating and at times mind-boggling.

It has given me the opportunity to see abundance in a new light.

When I first arrived in town fifteen years ago my economic situation wasn’t strong or stable. It was actually pretty scary there for a while.

I didn’t have my green card yet, no credit, no job.

My parents rightfully decided, after having put me through college, that it was time for me to support myself.

Since I didn’t have any credit, LA proved to be a difficult place to find a place to live.

(The fact that I had five cats, at the time, didn’t help!).

I had spent my last five hundred dollars on an old seventies camping trailer, determined to figure it out. My plan was to camp out in Malibu or Venice, secure a job and get an apartment later.

 Hahaha, it turned out to be a big joke (not at all funny at the time). 

Why? Because after my “brilliant” solution, I found out that you can’t park a beat-up trailer older than ten years anywhere in LA County.

At the time, I didn’t have many options, so I started to call Campgrounds all over Southern California in order to secure a short-term solution for my home base.

Finally, thirty calls later, I located one named Follows Camp in the San Gabriel Mountains, an old Gold Mining Camp with spaces and cabins for long term residence.

As I drove up the dusty mountain road (an hour and a half from Venice Beach) for the first time on a hot August day, I promised myself this would be very, very temporary (like a month or two at the most).

My ego wasn’t amused, at all, and I was even more appalled when a week later a wildfire broke out that left me without electricity, unable to leave the mountain for a week. I was trapped.

My trailer didn’t have a functioning bathroom and the public campground ones were located past the dumpster where the bears loved to spend the night.

(That was quite an unsettling experience, especially in the beginning).

The folks that lived up there could have been straight out of a Western and reminded me of a different era.

There were weeks of fuel and food shortage and it was my faith and trust in the divine plan for my life that carried me through.

This is a sketch of my humble beginnings when I first arrived in California.

When I first started my business, I would drive all over town to go to people’s houses.

I saw everything from the tiniest one bedroom apartment of aspiring actors to opulent mansions; I would be greeted by a butler and served tea while I waited for the lady of the house to emerge from her chambers.

In the beginning, I was often intimidated by the wealth and opulence that I encountered.

There were many moments of feeling ashamed of where I was living and where I had to drive back to after these outings.

As the years progressed and I got a chance to work with hundreds of clients and witnessed my own soul evolution, I realized more and more that money and status don’t determine a souls wealth.

In a few cases, the loneliness and despair I encountered in mansions was astonishing to me.

As my ego deflated and character grew in the Follows Camp exile, (I now think it’s one of the best things that ever happened to me) I turned into a grateful, compassionate, diplomatic and more courageous person. I realized I had received a huge blessing in my life that I value to this day.

I encountered a multi-millionaire a few years ago, who hated his job and his life, and suffered from panic attacks due to his cutthroat job environment. But he was so scared of being poor, he refused to quit his one hundred hours a week job.

Conversely, I met some students, who worked two jobs in order to get by, yet they felt safer in the world than some people who seemingly had it all.

It made me realize that abundance and how rich you are in your circumstances is relative and some people are so poor that all they have is money!

(That of course doesn’t mean that you can’t have it all!)

What’s In Your Toolbox?

I hear a lot of people say things like:

“I used to meditate.”

“I used to journal.”

“I used to go to acupuncture.”

“I used to practice Yoga.”

“I used to do a juice cleanse once a year.”

And then, something happened and you stopped. Why do we stop things that work for us? 

Well, there could be a number of reasons. You enter a new relationship and your partner doesn’t believe in what you are doing, you got sick and had to stop for a while and then you just didn’t get back around to it, you have less time due to your new job, a financial dip, a wave of laziness and self-sabotage washed over you, a new method and practice came along that was cooler and you ditched the old one etc…

If you look at soul evolution and healing, we need a variety of tools in order to get the job done. The more skilled we become in using the right tools at the appropriate times, the better success we will have.

Most of you have more resources than you think to lead a fulfilling, healthy, aligned and soulful life.

At times, it is useful to take inventory and see which tools you already have in your toolbox. If they worked then, they might come in handy again.

So, my question to you is:

WHAT’S IN YOUR TOOLBOX?

Make a list. Once you determine and remember some of your old practices, take a moment and see if any of them call to you. It might just be time to start using one/some of them again.

And/or be willing to add on if you feel like you’re missing a vital tool in order to continue smoothly on your soul’s journey.

Develop Your Intuition I: Pay Attention

As you have probably noticed by now, life on planet earth can be pretty confusing and complex at times, to say the least.

How do we navigate in a sea filled with experts, opinions, questions, issues, egos, divine inspiration and self trying to stay centered and aligned?

Since everyone’s journey, karma, soul, biochemistry and divine blueprint are as unique as a fingerprint; the only reliable gauge is a well-developed intuition to help us discern what’s best for our highest -good on a case-by-case basis.

Therefore, I have decided to write a series of posts dedicated to this topic.

The first step: you have to learn to pay attention!

Intuitive hits come in many different forms.

Here are a few examples:

1. The gut feeling is very common: You are about to make a decision and all of a sudden you feel like someone punched you in the stomach. You might feel nauseous, upset, your muscles tighten, and rain clouds overshadow your usually sunny disposition.  If other people are involved, you might choose to dismiss this gut reaction and allow your head to take over.

“Don’t be silly, difficult, disappointing, weird, childish, unkind and push through, you promised,” said the head.

Who do you listen to usually, your gut or your head? How is that working for you?

If you tend to listen to your head, go back to some of these situations and see how that worked out for you.

Most people need some concrete examples to prove to themselves that their gut tends to be right before they find the strength to follow its guidance, even in the face of opposition.

2.The little voice in your head that tends to be quiet in comparison to the booming one of the ego, is another way intuition manifests. It takes some practice to master paying attention to this aspect of self. The question I find many people having in regards to this is:

“How do I know what’s my intuition and what I am making up?”

Some clues are:

a) Intuition tends to be drama free in it’s delivery of information. If you are overly emotional and/or have a strong attachment to the outcome of a situation, there is a high chance that your intuition is compromised.

b) The little voice usually shows up unexpected and is quite clear in it’s message.

If you haven’t developed your intuition yet, these messages tend to be short and precise in nature and only get expanded once we start paying attention.

c) In order to build trust, pay attention and match it up with reality, even if the process takes a few months. Let’s say you got the information that your sister is going to have a baby girl that you will be very close to, maybe you won’t find out immediately, but eventually you will.

When you do find out, remember what the voice feels and sounds like, after ten confirmed situations or so, you will notice that it has a very specific signature and feel to it which will make it easier to trust it over time.

3. Dreams are, for some people, the gateway that their subconscious uses to send messages. The key here is to recognize the intuitive dream frequency vs. other type of dreams. You will notice a distinct difference in your perception i.e. in colors, textures, a sense of being awake and present in the dream, waking up with a jolt, remembering the dream with more clarity, a knowing that what you were shown is important.

If dreams are a strong portal for you I suggest studying a bit of dream analysis and symbols in order to get more proficient in understanding the language of your subconscious.

4. The internal bell of truth is a gauge that many old souls have available.

Here is how it works:

You hear or read something and you know immediately if it resonates as true or false. Most people, including myself, voice it as:

“Not sure why but I know it’s true,” or “ that doesn’t ring true,” or “there are parts of this essay that don’t work for me, but the rest is great and I will use it.”

Usually, the bell of truth helps to discern quickly but requires more additional work if you want to explore a subject matter deeper.

5. Visions are another avenue through which we might receive intuitive information.

There are internal visions and external visions. Here is the distinction:

a) Internal visions are similar to the little voice in your head, only instead of words the information comes through images.

You might get a preview to a future event i.e. see the insight of a house you will live in, which college your son will go to, a business you will work for or a scene you will share with a future partner.

At other times, it might be a premonition in regards to an illness, the death of a loved one or the loss of a job.

(This aspect is a bit harder to digest because we usually don’t want to see ‘negative’ events for loved ones and ourselves. How to deal with that will be discussed in a future post on intuition).

Internal visions can also be symbolic in nature (i.e. colors, diagrams, geometric shapes and ancient symbols) in which case I suggest to study symbolism, numerology and the meaning of colors in order to be able to decipher the messages.

b) External visions can come in many different forms. Many people who have this gift find themselves catching flashes of bright light from the corner of their eyes, or multi-colored orbs that appear and then quickly disappear when you focus on them.

This also can translate itself in to perceiving shadows in a room or a fellow travelers aura.

If that aspect of the intuition is more developed you might be able to see ghosts, energy vortices or a scene of an era long gone emerge in front of your eyes if you were to visit some ancient, historical sight.

Many people that have this specific gift are afraid that they are crazy.

To me, the difference between being crazy and intuitive is quite simple.

If you are picking up on truthful aspects of reality (and the energetic world is a big part of it) you are not crazy but extremely lucky and gifted.

People that project their delusions onto the world around them aren’t doing so well. One of the telltale signs is that they are incapable of relating to the world around them and they are no longer aware that being able to perceive energetic visually isn’t the norm.

These are some common examples of how intuition expresses itself. Some people have access to all of the above forms and for others only one or two of the items may apply. You also might need to add on to the list because your intuition has found other creative forms to catch your attention.

Either way, there is no right or wrong way, nor is there a better or worse way.

The important thing for you to figure out is how your intuition works and to start paying attention to it.

The better you get at this first step, the easier it will be to develop your intuition further and to make good use of it as you navigate the exciting adventures and confusing waters of your soul’s earthly journey.

To be continued…