You’re more than a spirit – you’re a body too.
“We are not human beings having a spiritual experience; we are spiritual beings having a human experience.” – Teilhard de Chardin
In any spiritual practice or information, you quickly learn that you’re more than your body. This can be both liberating and confusing. It’s easy to begin to live your life in energy, live in spirit. That can be the “fun” part. But it’s important to remember that you’re still a body too. And that doesn’t have to be a downer.
Your energy, or life-force, is the power you possess as a being. It is where you create from, where you dream from, who you are in spirit. It’s the part deep within that you connect with in those moments of inspiration, of true affinity; it is the part of you that is aware and awakened when you enter your inner landscape through meditation, prayer, or simply your imagination.
But you are more than just a spirit, or life-force. It’s imperative to remember that you have a body, too! As a spiritual being in human form, you interact with the third dimension, or time and space. Our bodies are made from earth energy, in the form of chemicals, compounds and matter. The forces that have formed the earth like gravity, atmosphere, and food supply have shaped what our bodies are, what they need, and how they function. This synergy creates an unbreakable bond between our bodies and the earth.
Our bodies have their own operating system, and need little attention from our spirit to function. That might sound weird, but you’ve experienced this many times of your own life – when your spirit checks out of your body, wether trough daydreaming, sleeping or heavy drinking. 
Think about driving a car, for example. That feeling of “auto-pilot” is really you setting your body to perform an activity without you being conscious or present. Think about sleeping. While you are exploring the inner landscape of your spirit, or cavorting out on the astral dimensions as a being, your body is happily performing all the necessary functions for you to continue living. Breathing, digesting, circulating blood. Your body really requires very little of your attention to function. Think of people who sleepwalk! Or all the people around you that seem to be “asleep at the wheel” – merely going thru the motions without thinking, feeling, or really being themselves.
Bodies like and need few things, but the things they do need – they need in great and consistent quantity to be comfortable.
- Bodies like to feel safe. They like to feel protected from danger.
- Bodies like to be nourished. They like to be fed, watered, and given sustenance.
- Bodies like physical affection. They like to be touched, played with. They like to run and exert, they like it when energy is in movement.
- Bodies like to have freedom of choice. They like to be affirmed, recognized, appreciated.
Learning to listen to your body can open up a world of change and growth in your life. What messages is your body sending to you? Are you tuned in to these? What signs and signals have you been avoiding or ignoring? Bodies don’t like to be neglected, and the longer you refuse to listen to its wants and needs, the louder the shouting will become. A toothache will turn into oral cancer. A cough or cold will turn into bronchitis.
Dis-comfort or Dis-ease is your bodies response to a foreign energy, or a way of telling you that there is something in the third dimensional environment around you (time and space) it is not in agreement with.
Are you listening? It might be telling you to slow down, to give it time to acclimate, time to heal. It might be telling you to speed up – that it is capable and interested in more stimulus or activity than you are allowing or providing. Your body has information and experience, and can teach you great things.
When your spirit is not tuned in to your body, or listening to its feedback and advice, you can feel disconnected from reality. You can feel out of place in your relationships. Survival (food, shelter, clothing) might seem difficult or unattainable. Your emotions might feel overwhelming or uncomfortable. You can feel trapped or limited in your life. Oftentimes people will blame these things on everyone or everything around them – but really it is because they are simply not listening to their own bodies feedback and advice. Your body knows a lot about this world, about functioning well on planet earth. Remember, this is where it came from.
Your body can be your friend or your enemy. You can treat your body like a partner on your spiritual path, or it can be an obstacle. Some people, when embarking on a path inward towards knowing their true energy or being will neglect and dis-associate from their body.
But it’s yours, it’s amazingly complex, it has a vast knowledge of information to give you, and its the only one you get this time around. Are you listening to it, learning from it, allowing it time and space to be a true partner in your life?
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Finding Your Magic
I had a great time last night on my podcast, “Unexpectedly Psychic” with my pal and colleague, Kirstin Travers Smith. The conversation we had, and the readings I participated in, lit something up in my space that has been working its way to the surface. And today, as I was walking to get some lunch, it hit me like a ton of bricks.
You can spend your life searching for magic, for something magical, for amazement, for wonder. Something to give your life, our lives, this existance, meaning. But the more we explore space, and all its inhospitableness, the fact that human beings have somehow managed to survive – thrive even – on this rock spinning in the middle of a vast universe, is really magic enough. So, today – eat well. Laugh. Love. Hug someone. The magic is that none of this should exist at all. It’s all an incredible gift.
Happy Valentine’s Day!
Read More...Your Questions – Answered.
“Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves like books that are written in a very foreign tongue. Do not seek the answers, which you would not be able to live. The point is, to live everything. Live the questions. You will gradually, without noticing it, live some distant day into your answers.” — Letters to a Young Poet by Rainer Maria Rilke
Read More...The Prison In Your Mind.
Most people spend a great deal of their lives in a state of punishment.This energy can be so present that we no longer even notice it – it feels “normal” or “natural”. The most surprising thing about this is that most of the time, the punishment comes from within ourselves.
Read More...Going with the flow.
Often times, clients look to me as if I have all the answers – I certainly don’t make that claim. Each person is responsible for their own answers and truth. What I can do is sense and perceive energy, which is very different than having all the answers! One of the great things about working with energy and being psychic is that I make space to grow, learn, and change in my life too!
In my own life, I continue to get stuck all the time. One of the biggest lessons I find myself learning over and over (and over) is to “go with the flow.” I habitually try to control the outcome of my manifestations, and definitely get stuck creating “perfect pictures” – i.e. – if I just get this one thing – then everything will be perfect.
I came to San Francisco in October and fell in love with the city. The bay area is magical – especially for this boy from the midwest suburbs. The natural beauty, the energy of the ocean, the laid-back attitude of Californians was like an exotic dream. Not to mention the food – don’t get me started on the food!
But since I’ve been here, I’ve struggled a bit to ground, and to make being here “real.” I’ve been looking for additional work (those San Fran rents are high, folks!) and for an appropriate living situation. All the while, I’ve been spending time staying with friends and a really great guy I’ve been dating.
But you know what? It’s just not working. There’s no flow of energy, no serendipity, and I’ve been suspicious of that. What’s the problem? What needs to be cleared? Where am I handling energy that isn’t my own? I’ve been trying hard to figure it all out, to clear what needs to be cleared, and to get what I thought I wanted – a job, an apartment, and a life picture that “made sense.”
What I forgot was that when things are right, they just work out. Simply, without effort, and definitely without “hard work.” Oh, sure, I could try harder, I could force myself to take a job I wasn’t excited about, I could finagle some kind of apartment rental. But none of it would feel right. It wouldn’t be me.
Myself? I’m a seeker. I’m always on the move these days; its a part of myself I’m really enjoying exploring. I spent years feeling pinned down and trapped. Through intensive energy work, meditation, and clearing I recently found a great amount of freedom and now there is always a new opportunity on the horizon that is evocative, exciting and full of new adventure – when I’m in my flow.
So today, I blew up my perfect picture of being in San Francisco. Of how it’s all supposed to work. What it’s supposed to look like. And you know what? I got to say hello to the opportunity to travel to Seattle in February, back to Chicago in March, and New Orleans in April. Sounds kinda fun, right?
Now, a life like that might sound horrible to you, and this constant moving and traveling is definitely not for everyone! But what I’m trying to say is – if you’re trying to fit into a perfect picture of how things are “supposed” to work, and it’s not your truth, it will eat away at you. You’ll feel invalidated, not good enough. In part, because you aren’t. You’re trying to succeed at a game that simply isn’t yours.
Now, there’s a price to pay for making these kinds of choices. I might have to say goodbye to some really awesome people. But I’m sure I’ll see them again, and besides, relationships these days are mobile, elastic, and transferrable. And San Francisco will always be here, right? I’m excited that I was able to change my perspective and see an abundance being offered to me in other areas of my life.
Play your own game. The one you choose for yourself. Run your own energy, life-force, truth. Make choices and decisions based on what will make you happy – not anyone else. The rest will fall into place – that’s what happens when you’re in the flow.
Read More...Healing the healer.
There are people in our society that we immediately identify as healers. Doctors and nurses heal our bodies. Lawyers heal our legal troubles. Teachers heal our minds. Once you start to open up your awareness to how much healing really goes on in day to day life, you begin to notice healing happening around you all the time.
You might be a healer , and you might not be aware of how much of your energy is invested in healing or taking care of other people or their problems. You might be the spiritual healer of your workplace, your family, your friends or colleagues. People might see you as the one who “keeps everything together”, or “smooths everything over.” It’s a powerful role to have in any group, but like anything, it has a price.
If too much of your energy is invested in taking care of everyone else, you might be unconsciously taking on everyone else energy. How often have you heard someone say, “I feel so much better when I hang out with you!” Maybe you’re the only one at work that is capable of keeping the peace – constantly in the middle of childish squabbles and relationship problems. Meanwhile, you feel tired, or stretched thin. There’s often never any energy left at the end of the day to deal with your own life – so you sweep it under the rug.
Chances are, there are things in your life that you’re healing all the time. And you may not be getting validated for being in this important role in your relationships. But it doesn’t have to be that way. Once you start becoming more aware where your energy, or life-force, is being directed, you can start to see how its affecting others, and also, where you might be leaking energy like a garden hose! You might be healing a whole bunch of situations and relationships that really aren’t that important to you any more. They might be in past time. You might be ready to let some things fail – so that you can create something new in their place.
If you’re in a bunch of situations or relationships that aren’t fulfilling or validating to you, and you’re waiting for other people to change – you might be waiting for a really long time. Chances are, they’ve got you exactly where they want you – your healing energy is extremely valuable! Why should they begin to heal themselves – you’re doing a perfectly good job for them!
Perhaps it’s time for you to call some of your energy back to yourself – so you can create new things in present time that resonate with who you are in spirit. The hardest obstacle you’ll encounter when beginning to call back your own energy is guilt. Guilt that you should be obligated to fix everyone and everything else. “But if I stop healing them, they will suffer” is a common energy we handle – and it can keep you (and them) stuck. It simply isn’t true. All healing is self-healing, and each and every person is capable of healing themselves and creating the life they want to lead with just their own energy. It’s really that simple.
Sometimes we keep over-healing because people tell us how great we are, how much they love our energy. That can be very validating, but can also create an inequity – if they continually rely on your energy to “feel better”, you can be stuck needing to generate enough energy for more people than just yourself! And your energy always runs better in your own space. You can be stuck in a network of friends, colleagues and relatives that “rely” on you for so much – there might not be much left for you in your own life!
You can learn to heal without giving it all away. You can learn to create a healing space for others to heal themselves, without them needing your energy to do so. You can be validated as the healer that you are by learning how to heal yourself first. You can become responsible for your own energy alone instead of everyone else’s, and you’ll let go of feeling “in control” of situations and relationships that you’re really not in control of anyways. It makes it easier to know your own life-force more clearly, to find your own answers, and to make choices that resonate with you in spirit. It doesn’t mean that you don’t have compassion. It simply means that you require the people around you to find their own answers and to heal themselves too.
The funny thing is – that’s when the magic happens.
By healing yourself, you actually become the healing for others. And you won’t need to do anything – simply by being yourself, healing your own space and energy, you’ll get to have more in your life, and so will everyone else.
Others will follow your lead. They’ll start growing and changing too, just because you have. So who heals the healer? The healer themselves!
If you want to heal the world – heal yourself first.
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