Don't look back... You are not going that way!

The other day I had to go drop my son off in my old neighbourhood to pick up his car.  I drove by my old house.  Suddenly I was struck by a deep sense of sadness and loss.  I thought I had dealt with the grief of losing so much so I found it surprising that I should have such a visceral reaction to seeing my old home. Then it hit me… the sense of failure that is connected to that loss.  I felt that everything I had worked for over the last decades of my life was squandered and I had no-one but myself to blame.

Unconsciously every so called failure I had ever suffered came to the forefront.  People who know me know that I don’t dwell in the place of self-pity so I was completely taken by surprise. I knew I had to deal with this sense of failure so I worked with my altar, I asked the Gods and Spirit for answers.  Frankly I asked every God I knew to give me insight into this feeling of failure, loss and grief.  The answers did not come immediately but over the last couple of week they did come… slowly but surely.

I’m living from a place of SCARCITY:

In my everyday lately, even though I have more than enough I act as if I am down to my last resources.  We all know that you reap what you sow and I have been sowing lack.  As I go through my day I look to what I don’t have instead of what I have in abundance.  I have never gone to bed hungry or slept outside (glamping excluded) or not had the means to care for myself and mine.  I have always had an innate trust in myself and the Universe that it would provide. I need to go back to that space of trust and innocence that all will be well.

I’m coming from a place of FEAR:

Fear is taking up a big part of my daily thought process.  I ask myself questions like: How will I survive when I get old? Will I be alone? Where will I live? How will I eat? I need a new car… What if I lose my job?  And so it carries on and on… the constant reminder of what I could lose.  Why am I living in the future and causing myself so much anxiety?  Surely I know that what I do today will be the foundation for what happens tomorrow… but do I really?  I did everything right and still I have very little to show for it.  Once again I have to center myself and ground.  Do these material things matter?  Yes they do but not as a validation of who I am.  I can own absolutely nothing but still find joy in the sparkle in my Grandchildren’s eyes, in my Son’s laughing and growing into wonderful men.  I have nothing to fear, the future will take care of itself I must take care of now and live only in the moment.

I have made my world SMALL:

I have put my life on hold.  I have confined myself to the four walls of my office.  Why… because I don’t want to lose what I have.  I can’t lose what I have it is already gone and that which has stayed is more than I can ever need plus I have the love of my family and friends.  Each day I lock myself up in this room I lose a piece of myself and my world gets smaller.  I have some deep decisions to make. I need to define my next incarnation.  I have started asking myself questions such as; what is important to me and what am I here to do?  I need to clear my path and make plans to walk it fully and with conviction.  I need to start dreaming…

As I work with all these feelings I have noticed a small voice and it is getting louder each day.  That young woman I once was and still am, the one that I silenced so that I could fit in, is making herself heard.  The young woman that wanted to see the world and experience life fully and that made choices to stay in one place as to not disappoint.  Her free spirit is growing and her voice is becoming a roar in my ears.

What is she saying?  You are FREE!  In the words of Kris Kristofferson that Janis Joplin immortalized “Freedom's just another word for nothin' left to lose”.  I can never lose the love of the people who love me; that I know for a fact.  There is nothing else to lose expect my Soul if I continue to ignore the roar.  Therefore I will strike scarcity, fear and playing it small from my thoughts and I will breathe in breathe out… no fear no doubt.

There is a vast ocean of knowledge and experiences out there. I will start to investigate do my research and prepare.  The time is not 100% right… I know this instinctively but it is close…

Goodbye 2016

For many of us the end of 2016 can’t come quick enough.  Personally this has been a better year for me. The beginning was a touch chaotic but it quickly settled down into what could be described as tad monotonous.  The monotony was needed though, as I have required time to re-calibrate my life.  April 2014 was the end of my second twenty seven year Karmic cycle and since then I have been in the throes of cleaning up any Karmic debris and searching for a New Dream to make itself known.  So many things came to an end in this time and all the shifts have opened up so much space for new things to step forward.   I feel re-invented and it feels oddly natural reminding me that I have been re-inventing myself my whole life.   

At this time I usually look at the list that I created at the beginning of the year of the thing I wanted to do.  Guess what I didn’t do them all, of my list of seven things I did five… not too bad but the list was small this year.  Also these five things were just really about maintaining what was already happening.  The two I didn’t start, well they were new so I get it, this was not the time for new… only maintaining. I had to keep my focus very narrow. 

Now, it has been completely different for us as a human collective.  This year has shaken loose the dark underbelly of our nature.  The chaos that has risen up around us has been difficult to deal with at times.  The more vulnerable the people the more it was felt.  The violence and anger has been spilling out across the world driven by hatred and a separation from each other.   We have started to concentrate on the things that make us different rather than the things that are universally the same for all human beings.   With the rise of Trump and with Brexit it will not end anytime soon unfortunately.

I have to say that although I was hoping for a different outcome I knew there couldn’t be one.  This outcome, no matter how uncomfortable, is the better one.  We must remember that we were made for these times.  Each of us volunteered at a Soul level to be here and to do healing work, to stand up for the weak and push back at the darkness.  The question is – will we find the courage to stand our ground?  It is not going to be a time for apathy, each one of us will have to speak the unspeakable and stand by our conviction because as we all know…

“The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.” Edmund Burke

Love & Light

A Guide to finding your Soul's Age....

I have been noticing that the people who have embraced a spiritual lifestyle seem to be in competition about how “Old” their souls are.  Many of my clients ask me if I know the age of their Soul, so I thought it would be interesting to research and do a “Soul Age for Dummy’s” and believe me I feel like a dummy!  What I do know is that I know nothing...  

Many hours of research later I found that I have only scratched the very surface of this topic.  There is so much to learn and so much more involved than the age of your Soul.  Long periods of inner work has brought me to the conclusion that I am probably somewhere in on the second level of the Mature Soul stage.  It is complicated and difficult to understand the “levels” and “stages” within the levels, it boggles the mind actually ~ so that is why I asked my Soul. 

Here is my interpretation of the information I have gathered.  Have some fun with it to determine where you think you are. Keep in mind that it isn't really important, what is important is that you are doing the work you have come to do.

One of the first things to know is that each age has seven stages so you can be in one age for a very long time, centuries and countless lifetimes.  The Soul ages for the world’s population are bell shaped statistically.  If it were depicted on a graph it would look like this:

Infant Soul: These are the Souls that are just starting out on their journey.  Statistically there don’t seem to be many of these in our societies.  However one of the keys to these souls is that they are raw and primitive.  They don’t have the know-how to act within social norms and structures.  The things they do make no sense to us.  An example of an Infant soul may be a serial killer or a mother that murders her children.  They seem to lack any sense of the depth of what they have done and are completely without remorse. Often they are disconnected from society, can’t find their place in this world and don’t want to be here.

Baby Soul: These Souls are all about discipline and structure.  Now that they have made it through the seven stages of the Infant soul they are in need of serious structure.  From everything I have read religious fanatics are here, from the Taliban to the Deep South.  They crave a strong sense of belonging and the rules are fiercely obeyed and anyone who is not in agreement is just wrong and shunned.  They prefer to live in close-knit communities with like people.  Order is the word of the day.  Hitler is an example of a Baby soul running rampant and unchecked.

Young Soul: These Souls are ambitious, materialistic and highly driven.  I think these souls show up in our world all the time (and according to the graph above).  Everybody wants to be a hero!  Young souls are busy developing their own perspective and agenda, finding their own talents and their own way of seeing things and doing things.  It is “me against the world… and it is all about me”. These souls are competitive with themselves and others – they have a strong need to win.  Some well-known Young souls may be – Bill Clinton, John F. Kennedy Elvis Presley.

Mature Soul: These Souls are about interconnections.  It is no longer only about what is going on out there in the world but also about what is going on “in here”.  At this stage souls are starting to develop a sense of the bigger picture they want to know what makes them tick.  It is important for them to see other perspectives and allow others the freedom that they themselves seek.  All black or white views start to shift and everything seems to be grey as there is a realization that there are perspectives upon perspectives.  The souls start to develop empathy of others and their plight.  Inner conflict is very common.  Where young souls tend to blame everyone else mature souls blame themselves first.  Tony Blair, Meryl Streep, Shakespeare and Van Gogh are examples of mature souls.

Old Soul: The final leg of the journey…  Old souls have a well-developed sense of interdependence and independence possibly from a very young age.  The best way to recognize them is their inner calm and their deliberate and slower communication.  They know why they are here and what they are doing.  There isn't a big attachment to materialism however they are still connected with this world and live life fully and engaged.  Some are here to teach.  There are people who believe they are old souls purely because they are not materialistic but my understanding is that, that is not how it works.  If you have issues with being physical then there is still some way to go.  Examples are, Alice Walker, The Dalai Lama and Morgan Freeman some suggest Clint Eastwood.

All this research brought me to the question – WHY?  Why do we choose to re-incarnate?  One of the best answers I found was:

“The goal of evolution is not to escape from the wretched physical plane, despite what many teach. The end of reincarnation is not some sort of reward for good behaviour. Human existence is not a prison, or a wheel of torment, from which only the most worthy gain liberation.

We incarnate because we want to and we choose to. We keep doing it precisely because we want to come to terms with it. We know that in each life we will probably spend several decades not remembering who we are, not remembering our eternal Home, buying into the illusion of separation, experiencing fear. This is the very stuff which inspires us to become more conscious.

Completion occurs when it matters not whether you are incarnate or discarnate: you see through the illusion and you always feel at Home”.

Once the soul has completed the final stage it no longer has a need to return.  It can become one with the source and unify with soul mates that are also complete or become spirit guides.  There are however exceptions.  Gandhi returned after completion to spark a cultural revolution.  Even rarer is the return of Souls such as Jesus and Buddha who returned to become the physical embodiment of divine love, pure consciousness and ultimate truth, a piece of the Tao in human form.   

References:

The Michael Teachings

The Michael Handbook

http://personalityspirituality.net/articles/the-michael-teachings/reincarnation-the-35-steps/stage-5-the-old-soul/