Category: Emotional Well-being


Highly Sensitive People Skills


Copyright Soul Arcanum LLC. All rights reserved. :)
 

Dear Soul Arcanum:

I’m hoping you can help me. I can see auras though not well. Because of this, I know that I have a clear aura. It’s physically exhausting for me to be around other people. Just being at work all day around lots of other people drains me to the point of exhaustion. This drives my husband crazy because I’m always tired. What I’ve read about auras suggests that my exhaustion has to do with my aura being clear. I thought if I tried to develop my ability to see auras better, maybe I wouldn’t be so tired all the time. I can now see auras better but this has only made me even more tired! Maybe I’m doing it wrong? It’s to the point that my main fear every day is not having time to rest. Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

Marie

Dear Marie:

Before I go into spiritual remedies, I must encourage you to make sure there is no physical cause for your exhaustion. Even if your doctor says you’re okay, it’s important to make sure you’re eating a very healthy diet and getting adequate rest and exercise. Please note that what most people consider a very healthy diet and what I’m talking about are two very different things. In my view, a very healthy diet is composed of whole, natural foods: vegetables, fruits and animal protein. The more processed a food is, the deader its energy will be. The typical modern diet and sedentary lifestyle is perfectly designed to cause low energy, dis-ease, and all sorts of other troublesome imbalances.

You say that you have a “clear aura.” I’m not sure what you mean by that, but I’m going to assume you mean that you have very thin psychic boundaries – that you’re not “thick-skinned.” I’m also going to assume that you’re not seeing colors in your own aura, and this is why you’re calling it clear. It can be much harder to see your own aura than to see other people’s auras because you are looking through your own aura when trying to see it. It may thus be that you are not seeing your aura at all, and this is why you’ve assumed that it is clear.

What you describe is a common syndrome associated with :highly sensitive people.” If you Google that term, you’ll find lots of interesting information. Basically, everyone who has keen intuition is highly sensitive, but some people are more affected by their sensitivity for various reasons. For example, a stereotypical Aquarius would tend to be less affected by high sensitivity than a Cancer because Cancers are much more emotional and much less philosophical than Aquarians tend to be.

Someone who has been consciously working with their psychic senses and has traveled a long ways down a conscious spiritual path will probably be much better at handling the unique challenges posed by high sensitivity. There are lots of highly sensitive people who have found ways to work with their thin skin. Every professional psychic I know falls into this category.

Unfortunately, I can’t give you a quick, simple way to conquer this problem that will prove both long-lasting and truly effective. Some people may tell you to wear certain stones or crystals or perform magickal rituals, but these measures are like bailing water out of the bottom of a boat instead of repairing the hole. You’re going to have to do some real inner work in order to get more comfortable in your thin skin.

The most important thing is to develop faith that everything happens for a good reason. This will allow you to walk through all sorts of potentially overwhelming, upsetting situations with grace and equanimity. It will allow you to maintain a calm, high vibration regardless of what is going on around you, and this high vibration will basically make you immune to other people being able to affect you.

One way to begin to develop this faith is to study near death experiences and life between life research. Near-death.com is one great resource; for the life between life research, I recommend books by Michael Newton Ph.D. The more you expose yourself to this information, the more you will come to understand that every experience blesses us in some way. This will enable you to be at peace with your own experiences (including the challenge of dealing with your high sensitivity), and it will enable you to remain serene when people around you are in turmoil.

I’m not surprised that trying to read auras better would exacerbate your problem, because what you did was become even <i>more</i> sensitive while at the same time tuning in to draw in more of others’ energy. In order to stop being affected by others, you’ll want to reverse this psychic flow. By this, I mean that instead of tuning in to others’ energy, you’ll set your own high tone and send that energy OUT.

You might begin by adopting the inner mantra, “The divine light in me greets the light in thee” or “Namaste” whenever you interact with another person. Visualize love and good wishes flowing from your heart out to them. Don’t get attached to them responding in any particular way; this is about who you are choosing to be and the energy you are choosing to send out into the world.

Don’t worry that if you send all these good vibes out, you’ll somehow run out. You’re not sending your own energy, you’re channeling divine love and light, which is endless. The more you channel this energy, the better you will feel yourself. It may be helpful for you to undertake some training in energy healing to learn how to maintain your own energetic well-being when interacting with others.

My next suggestion is for you to take up a regular meditation practice. Meditation will develop your inner observer, which will empower you to step back from whatever is happening around you and center in your own higher self. With this in mind, I’m going to offer you a mini meditation exercise that you can silently practice whenever you start to feel drained.

Take a moment to center yourself by relaxing your shoulders and taking a few big, deep breaths. Close your eyes and picture yourself sitting in an ancient Roman theater, watching a drama unfold on the stage below you. Focus in on the actors and allow yourself to get caught up in the emotions they are conveying. Notice how, as you identify with the actors, you experience those same emotions. Now pull your awareness back into your own body and remind yourself that these are actors on a stage playing out various parts. Mentally label what is happening on the stage “drama,” and then relax into the pleasure of watching it unfold. Now back up even more – lift right up out of your body and look down to observe yourself watching the performance. As you do this, you realize that you too are an actor on the stage of life. Smile at yourself and the people around you who have gotten so caught up in playing their parts that they have forgotten that life is just a big production we undertake because it’s exciting, like watching a drama on stage. You are now centered in your inner observer and should be able to observe yourself interacting with others without being thrown off of your own high vibration and spiritual center.

As you move through each day, whenever you find yourself starting to feel worn down by the events unfolding around you, remember to say “drama” to yourself, and then shift from taking in others’ energy to flowing love and compassion outward.

– Soul Arcanum

Can You Conquer Addictions with the Law of Attraction?


Copyright Soul Arcanum LLC. All rights reserved. :)
 

Dear Soul Arcanum:

Is it possible to use the law of attraction to manifest sobriety and the wisdom to eat only what one needs instead of overindulging? I’m stuck in a vicious cycle wherein I overindulge, which brings my energy way down and makes it hard to manifest what I want in my life, which just leads me to overindulge some more.

Patty

Dear Patty:

Addictions and “overindulging<” arise from misguided attempts to feel better. There is a deeper hunger driving this behavior, but because you’re not addressing that deeper need, no amount of other stuff will make you feel satisfied. Since you’re not conscious of what’s really going on, you gobble up more and more of what you don’t need because it brings you quick but temporary relief. This is like endlessly watering a plant that needs more sun; the plant won’t thrive and will probably begin to languish because even though you’re giving it a lot of attention, it’s not getting the light it needs.

Let’s say that to get more sun, the plant would have to be carefully transplanted to a nice sunny spot on the other side of your property. If you move the plant, you can move on to all sorts of other wonderful endeavors because you won’t have to endlessly deal with that problem anymore. This doesn’t necessarily mean you’re going to move the plant, of course. There are all sorts of reasons you may avoid doing whatever has to be done to fully take care of the situation.

You may not consciously realize what is needed. It may be that you’ve never transplanted a plant before and are afraid that you’ll mess things up and kill it. You may assume it will take too long and be a very messy chore and you just don’t want to deal with all of that right now. If there is a watering can nearby, it may seem so much easier to just give it a little more water in hopes that this remedy will do the trick.

Like plants that need more sun, people who develop addictions have needs that aren’t being acknowledged or addressed. By way of just one example, many people who have anxiety issues self-medicate with various substances. They may not consciously realize why they feel compelled to self-medicate. They may be afraid that digging in to those bigger issues will be overwhelming or painful. They may not know how to address those deeper needs, or feel like they just don’t have the time and energy to deal with those problems right now. They just want to feel better fast, and they’ve learned from experience that “over-indulging” is a quick and easy way to get a lift – at least for a little while.

The more a person uses a certain coping technique, the more it becomes an engrained habit. At the same time, because they aren’t dealing with their issues, life tends to grow more challenging and overwhelming. This is why addictions to food, alcohol and drugs become more and more difficult to break until a person hits “rock bottom” and their desire for change grows stronger than their desire to avoid unpleasant or difficult emotional issues.

To break free of addiction, it’s essential to start facing whatever you’ve been trying to avoid. This is where spiritual growth and healing come in. For example, seeing a hypnotherapist can help you become conscious of the issues underlying destructive behavior, find healing, and develop healthier habits. From traditional counseling to hypnotherapy to meditation, there are many ways to face the issues underlying addictive or compulsive behaviors. To become free, the important thing is to make a decision to do whatever you have to do to fully resolve the real issues.

We can’t create what we want in our lives without resolving inner conflicts and issues, for most of what we manifest arises from a subconscious level. This means we must consciously face and work through whatever issues may be underlying addictive behaviors to gain the power to use the law of attraction. For this reason, the more we devote ourselves to spiritual growth and personal improvement, the more powerful we grow as conscious creators of our own realities.

To use the law of attraction to quit drinking, lose weight, or achieve any other goal, you have to focus on what you want, not what you don’t want. With this in mind, it’s wise to let go of thoughts like I want to QUIT drinking or I want to STOP overeating. Instead, focus on who you do want to be and what you do want to create in your life.

It’s also wise to lighten up. I know addiction is a serious matter, but if we beat ourselves up about what we’ve done in the past, we’ll beat our vibration down. If we view a goal as being very hard to attain, we’ll just make it harder. This is why making peace with potentially not achieving a certain goal often empowers us to achieve it. By letting go of fear that we’ll fail and embodying the truth that “all is well,” we empower ourselves to gracefully flow toward where we want to go.

We “overindulge” because we want to feel better. When we alter our brain chemistry through things like drugs, alcohol, sugar, shopping, etc., our vibration rises and we get “high.” If we don’t know constructive ways to achieve a higher vibration, we become dependent on such practices for an immediate but temporary boost. Instead of viewing yourself as addicted to a particular habit or substance, it may be helpful to recognize that what you are really addicted to is feeling better, and that wanting to feel better is perfectly natural. It would also be wise to study more constructive ways to boost your vibration when you need a lift.

Be gentle with your body and patient with your heart. Make sure your goals are coming from a purely positive place of self-love. If you hate yourself for your past decisions, you’ll have a hard time manifesting positive change. Instead, approach your goals loving yourself, wanting to feel better, seeing yourself as capable of creating what you want and happily visualizing yourself as you want to be.

It’s also important to remember that since most of what we manifest arises from a subconscious level, how we see ourselves is very powerful. If we view ourselves as overweight alcoholics, we’ll tend to be overweight alcoholics. We have to come to see ourselves as we desire to be in order to become that person. This new image of ourselves must become brighter, more vivid and more alive than any old images we had of ourselves, which requires vigilant inner work. For a while, every time a situation comes up in which you would have overindulged in the past, you’ll have to override the thoughts, impulses and images that come up with the new way you want to be and behave. This may take a lot of will power and mental diligence at first, but the more you do it, the more it will become a habit. Eventually, those new images will become how you naturally see yourself and who you actually are.

Ask yourself what unmet needs are driving these undesired behaviors and find new ways to feel better. Get very clear about what achieving freedom from addiction means to you. Visualize yourself healthy, attractive, competent, empowered and free. Don’t fixate on undesired behaviors; the important thing is to vibrationally align with how you want to be and feel, and keep this vision vibrantly alive in your heart and mind.

– Soul Arcanum

Breaking Free of Helplessness


Copyright Soul Arcanum LLC. All rights reserved. :)
 

Dear Soul Arcanum:

Over the years I have become emotionally depressed and unhappy. I used to be a gal who would keep herself clean. I was happy and a go-getter. However, for the past seven years I have been emotionally depressed. I stay in the same clothes for weeks at a time and rarely shower or brush my teeth. I think about suicide a lot. My blood relatives are abusive and uncaring, and I live with a man I have a child with but I don’t feel an emotional attachment to either one of them. I want so badly for this man to leave my home but he refuses. He does nothing for me emotionally, physically or spiritually. This is a very unhealthy relationship. I’ve also lost my looks and gained 60 pounds. Sometimes I can’t even leave my home to shop for groceries. I need insights into what to do before I just can’t take this life anymore.

Randi

Dear Margo:

Since you’re having suicidal thoughts, I urge you to get medical help. None of the spiritual or practical ideas I suggest will be helpful if you can’t summon the will to live. In addition to your family physician, there are suicide hotlines you can call to get information about other local resources; please pick up the phone and reach out for local help today.

There are many things that can cause depression. Generally speaking, depression occurs when life force energy is inadequate or repressed. The greater our life force energy, the greater our health, happiness and personal power. Depression isn’t a feeling so much as an absence of feeling, a lack of passion, desire and all that gives life color.

Your depression probably began when you were going through a period of great angst due to the troubled relationships in your life. Perhaps you felt there was no good answer or solution, or you felt guilty for feeling the way you did, so you shut down emotionally to escape endless torment. Unfortunately, this eventually led you to stop feeling much of anything at all.

To break free, you’ll have to find the courage to feel whatever is behind this emotional numbness. This won’t be easy; you must be very afraid of facing the truth to have put yourself through so much suffering already.

In failing to honor the truth in your own heart, you are betraying yourself. When we deny our true feelings, when we say yes instead of no, when we don’t allow ourselves to leave miserable relationships due to guilt, when we do anything that goes against our true desires and needs, we disconnect from our emotional body. This leads us to disconnect from the voice of our intuition, which is why people can get endlessly stuck in depression: they can’t hear their inner guidance trying to tell them what to do to feel better.

As I mentioned above, the first thing is to seek medical help. After this, there are lots of practical steps you can take to shift toward positive change, but it may be hard for you to summon the will to get moving. This is where a sincere, caring hypnotherapist and/or energy healer may prove invaluable.

A hypnotherapist can help you consciously realize the fears that are keeping you stuck so you can face whatever is behind the depression and find a way through it. An energy healer can help you get your chi moving again without you having to summon the will to do anything except passively open up to receiving an influx of the life force energy you’re starving for. Such a healer can also temporarily clear away blocks and thus facilitate a greater flow of energy through your whole being, which will empower you to take constructive action.

For changes to last, however, you will have to renovate your inner world, and this is going to require a lot of effort on your part. You’re going to have to learn to think more positively, visualize what you desire, and take good care of yourself. You’ll have to learn how to better control what you think, feel, say and do; how to generate a higher flow of life force energy yourself; how to cultivate healthy relationships; how to love yourself better. There are endless spiritual practices and therapies that can help you with all of this.

It would be helpful to view depression as primarily a life force energy problem. You might explore Eastern ideas like feng shui and Qigong to gain understanding of how energy flow affects our health and happiness. This will motivate you to take the practical steps necessary to encourage a greater flow of life force energy. By taking small, simple steps to boost the energy available to you, you’ll empower yourself to take on the deeper issues at work here.

Once the outside help you receive has you capable of taking action on your own behalf, there are many little things you can do to launch yourself on an upward spiral.

First, clean yourself up! Take a shower, wash your hair, put on clean clothes. If you find this daunting, take just one step: turn on the faucet to heat the water. Then take another little step, and another. Before you know it, you will be clean and feeling much better. (Physical hygiene is directly related to metaphysical hygiene, so if you’re dirty physically, your aura is full of yucky energies too. This is why taking a shower can make us feel emotionally and mentally refreshed.)

There are lots of other things you can do to raise your vibration and boost your life force energy, which will both make you feel better and empower you to create whatever you want in your life. I don’t have room to list them all here, so check out this former column. These ideas may sound too simple to do much, but if you summon the will to work with them, they will work for you.

Above all, however, you must remedy the root cause of this depression to be free of it for good. As I mentioned above, this appears to be a classic case of self-betrayal. You are forcing yourself to deny the truth in your heart by staying in this relationship. Further, when two people are very unhappy together, negative feelings just keep circulating and dragging them both down into an ever more toxic situation.

To break free of depression, it’s imperative you trust your heart and take action accordingly. If your inner being is telling you that you must get out of this relationship, then your emotional pain is actually trying to help you by pushing you to take action. A good therapist can help you figure out how to create the outer circumstances your inner being is calling for.

To find true peace and happiness in life, you must listen to and honor the truth in your own heart above all. While you’re learning to do this, it would be wise stay away from people who bring you down, stress you out, or make you doubt yourself. Also, strive to act loving to yourself and others regardless of what other people do. This will make you feel good about yourself, draw positive energy to you, and shift you into harmony with a higher level of experience.

The fact that you wrote me for help is a positive, encouraging sign: it means you do want to live and find happiness. If you take the steps outlined above, you’ll begin to pull yourself out of this hole of despair, and eventually you’ll find yourself in the sun, feeling like your old self again. Please also remember the power of prayer: you have spirit guides and angels who are ever ready to help you find your way to greater health, peace and happiness.

– Soul Arcanum


Self-Betrayal and Depression


Copyright Soul Arcanum LLC. All rights reserved. :)
 

Dear Soul Arcanum:

Over the years I have become emotionally depressed and unhappy. I used to be a gal who would keep herself clean. I was happy and a go-getter. However, for the past seven years I have been emotionally depressed. I stay in the same clothes for weeks at a time and rarely shower or brush my teeth. I think about suicide a lot. My blood relatives are abusive and uncaring, and I live with a man I have a child with but I don’t feel an emotional attachment to either one of them. I want so badly for this man to leave my home but he refuses. He does nothing for me emotionally, physically or spiritually. This is a very unhealthy relationship. I’ve also lost my looks and gained 60 pounds. Sometimes I can’t even leave my home to shop for groceries. I need insights into what to do before I just can’t take this life anymore.

Randi

Dear Randi:

Since you’re having suicidal thoughts, I urge you to get medical help. None of the spiritual or practical ideas I suggest will be helpful if you can’t summon the will to live. In addition to your family physician, there are suicide hotlines you can call to get information about other local resources; please pick up the phone and reach out for local help today.

There are many things that can cause depression. Generally speaking, depression occurs when life force energy is inadequate or repressed. The greater our life force energy, the greater our health, happiness and personal power. Depression isn’t a feeling so much as an absence of feeling, a lack of passion, desire and all that gives life color.

Your depression probably began when you were going through a period of great angst due to the troubled relationships in your life. Perhaps you felt there was no good answer or solution, or you felt guilty for feeling the way you did, so you shut down emotionally to escape endless torment. Unfortunately, this eventually led you to stop feeling much of anything at all.

To break free, you’ll have to find the courage to feel whatever is behind this emotional numbness. This won’t be easy; you must be very afraid of facing the truth to have put yourself through so much suffering already.

In failing to honor the truth in your own heart, you are betraying yourself. When we deny our true feelings, when we say yes instead of no, when we don’t allow ourselves to leave miserable relationships due to guilt, when we do anything that goes against our true desires and needs, we disconnect from our emotional body. This leads us to disconnect from the voice of our intuition, which is why people can get endlessly stuck in depression: they can’t hear their inner guidance trying to tell them what to do to feel better.

As I mentioned above, the first thing is to seek medical help. After this, there are lots of practical steps you can take to shift toward positive change, but it may be hard for you to summon the will to get moving. This is where a sincere, caring hypnotherapist and/or energy healer may prove invaluable.

A hypnotherapist can help you consciously realize the fears that are keeping you stuck so you can face whatever is behind the depression and find a way through it. An energy healer can help you get your chi moving again without you having to summon the will to do anything except passively open up to receiving an influx of the life force energy you’re starving for. Such a healer can also temporarily clear away blocks and thus facilitate a greater flow of energy through your whole being, which will empower you to take constructive action.

For changes to last, however, you will have to renovate your inner world, and this is going to require a lot of effort on your part. You’re going to have to learn to think more positively, visualize what you desire, and take good care of yourself. You’ll have to learn how to better control what you think, feel, say and do; how to generate a higher flow of life force energy yourself; how to cultivate healthy relationships; how to love yourself better. There are endless spiritual practices and therapies that can help you with all of this.

It would be helpful to view depression as primarily a life force energy problem. You might explore Eastern ideas like feng shui and Qigong to gain understanding of how energy flow affects our health and happiness. This will motivate you to take the practical steps necessary to encourage a greater flow of life force energy. By taking small, simple steps to boost the energy available to you, you’ll empower yourself to take on the deeper issues at work here.

Once the outside help you receive has you capable of taking action on your own behalf, there are many little things you can do to launch yourself on an upward spiral.

First, clean yourself up! Take a shower, wash your hair, put on clean clothes. If you find this daunting, take just one step: turn on the faucet to heat the water. Then take another little step, and another. Before you know it, you will be clean and feeling much better. (Physical hygiene is directly related to metaphysical hygiene, so if you’re dirty physically, your aura is full of yucky energies too. This is why taking a shower can make us feel emotionally and mentally refreshed.)

There are lots of other things you can do to raise your vibration and boost your life force energy, which will both make you feel better and empower you to create whatever you want in your life. I don’t have room to list them all here, so check out this former column. These ideas may sound too simple to do much, but if you summon the will to work with them, they will work for you.

Above all, however, you must remedy the root cause of this depression to be free of it for good. As I mentioned above, this appears to be a classic case of self-betrayal. You are forcing yourself to deny the truth in your heart by staying in this relationship. Further, when two people are very unhappy together, negative feelings just keep circulating and dragging them both down into an ever more toxic situation.

To break free of depression, it’s imperative you trust your heart and take action accordingly. If your inner being is telling you that you must get out of this relationship, then your emotional pain is actually trying to help you by pushing you to take action. A good therapist can help you figure out how to create the outer circumstances your inner being is calling for.

To find true peace and happiness in life, you must listen to and honor the truth in your own heart above all. While you’re learning to do this, it would be wise stay away from people who bring you down, stress you out, or make you doubt yourself. Also, strive to act loving to yourself and others regardless of what other people do. This will make you feel good about yourself, draw positive energy to you, and shift you into harmony with a higher level of experience.

The fact that you wrote me for help is a positive, encouraging sign: it means you do want to live and find happiness. If you take the steps outlined above, you’ll begin to pull yourself out of this hole of despair, and eventually you’ll find yourself in the sun, feeling like your old self again. Please also remember the power of prayer: you have spirit guides and angels who are ever ready to help you find your way to greater health, peace and happiness.

– Soul Arcanum


Self-Betrayal and Depression


Copyright Soul Arcanum LLC. All rights reserved. :)
 

Dear Soul Arcanum:

Over the years I have become emotionally depressed and unhappy. I used to be a gal who would keep herself clean. I was happy and a go-getter. However, for the past seven years I have been emotionally depressed. I stay in the same clothes for weeks at a time and rarely shower or brush my teeth. I think about suicide a lot. My blood relatives are abusive and uncaring, and I live with a man I have a child with but I don’t feel an emotional attachment to either one of them. I want so badly for this man to leave my home but he refuses. He does nothing for me emotionally, physically or spiritually. This is a very unhealthy relationship. I’ve also lost my looks and gained 60 pounds. Sometimes I can’t even leave my home to shop for groceries. I need insights into what to do before I just can’t take this life anymore.

Randi

Dear Randi:

Since you’re having suicidal thoughts, I urge you to get medical help. None of the spiritual or practical ideas I suggest will be helpful if you can’t summon the will to live. In addition to your family physician, there are suicide hotlines you can call to get information about other local resources; please pick up the phone and reach out for local help today.

There are many things that can cause depression. Generally speaking, depression occurs when life force energy is inadequate or repressed. The greater our life force energy, the greater our health, happiness and personal power. Depression isn’t a feeling so much as an absence of feeling, a lack of passion, desire and all that gives life color.

Your depression probably began when you were going through a period of great angst due to the troubled relationships in your life. Perhaps you felt there was no good answer or solution, or you felt guilty for feeling the way you did, so you shut down emotionally to escape endless torment. Unfortunately, this eventually led you to stop feeling much of anything at all.

To break free, you’ll have to find the courage to feel whatever is behind this emotional numbness. This won’t be easy; you must be very afraid of facing the truth to have put yourself through so much suffering already.

In failing to honor the truth in your own heart, you are betraying yourself. When we deny our true feelings, when we say yes instead of no, when we don’t allow ourselves to leave miserable relationships due to guilt, when we do anything that goes against our true desires and needs, we disconnect from our emotional body. This leads us to disconnect from the voice of our intuition, which is why people can get endlessly stuck in depression: they can’t hear their inner guidance trying to tell them what to do to feel better.

As I mentioned above, the first thing is to seek medical help. After this, there are lots of practical steps you can take to shift toward positive change, but it may be hard for you to summon the will to get moving. This is where a sincere, caring hypnotherapist and/or energy healer may prove invaluable.

A hypnotherapist can help you consciously realize the fears that are keeping you stuck so you can face whatever is behind the depression and find a way through it. An energy healer can help you get your chi moving again without you having to summon the will to do anything except passively open up to receiving an influx of the life force energy you’re starving for. Such a healer can also temporarily clear away blocks and thus facilitate a greater flow of energy through your whole being, which will empower you to take constructive action.

For changes to last, however, you will have to renovate your inner world, and this is going to require a lot of effort on your part. You’re going to have to learn to think more positively, visualize what you desire, and take good care of yourself. You’ll have to learn how to better control what you think, feel, say and do; how to generate a higher flow of life force energy yourself; how to cultivate healthy relationships; how to love yourself better. There are endless spiritual practices and therapies that can help you with all of this.

It would be helpful to view depression as primarily a life force energy problem. You might explore Eastern ideas like feng shui and Qigong to gain understanding of how energy flow affects our health and happiness. This will motivate you to take the practical steps necessary to encourage a greater flow of life force energy. By taking small, simple steps to boost the energy available to you, you’ll empower yourself to take on the deeper issues at work here.

Once the outside help you receive has you capable of taking action on your own behalf, there are many little things you can do to launch yourself on an upward spiral.

First, clean yourself up! Take a shower, wash your hair, put on clean clothes. If you find this daunting, take just one step: turn on the faucet to heat the water. Then take another little step, and another. Before you know it, you will be clean and feeling much better. (Physical hygiene is directly related to metaphysical hygiene, so if you’re dirty physically, your aura is full of yucky energies too. This is why taking a shower can make us feel emotionally and mentally refreshed.)

There are lots of other things you can do to raise your vibration and boost your life force energy, which will both make you feel better and empower you to create whatever you want in your life. I don’t have room to list them all here, so check out this former column. These ideas may sound too simple to do much, but if you summon the will to work with them, they will work for you.

Above all, however, you must remedy the root cause of this depression to be free of it for good. As I mentioned above, this appears to be a classic case of self-betrayal. You are forcing yourself to deny the truth in your heart by staying in this relationship. Further, when two people are very unhappy together, negative feelings just keep circulating and dragging them both down into an ever more toxic situation.

To break free of depression, it’s imperative you trust your heart and take action accordingly. If your inner being is telling you that you must get out of this relationship, then your emotional pain is actually trying to help you by pushing you to take action. A good therapist can help you figure out how to create the outer circumstances your inner being is calling for.

To find true peace and happiness in life, you must listen to and honor the truth in your own heart above all. While you’re learning to do this, it would be wise stay away from people who bring you down, stress you out, or make you doubt yourself. Also, strive to act loving to yourself and others regardless of what other people do. This will make you feel good about yourself, draw positive energy to you, and shift you into harmony with a higher level of experience.

The fact that you wrote me for help is a positive, encouraging sign: it means you do want to live and find happiness. If you take the steps outlined above, you’ll begin to pull yourself out of this hole of despair, and eventually you’ll find yourself in the sun, feeling like your old self again. Please also remember the power of prayer: you have spirit guides and angels who are ever ready to help you find your way to greater health, peace and happiness.

– Soul Arcanum

Finding Your Life Purpose


Copyright Soul Arcanum LLC. All rights reserved. :)
 

Dear Soul Arcanum:

Many people talk about the higher purpose of life and our reason for incarnating. This has always been so confusing to me, for most of us seem to busily pursuing material possessions and the accumulation of wealth. Is there any higher purpose to life? If so, how can an individual discover his or her life purpose in order to pursue it? I’m sure no one wants to leave this world not having fulfilled their highest purpose. I would be grateful if you shared your thoughts on this matter.

Muralidhar

Dear Muralidhar:

There are indeed all sorts of ideas about the higher purpose of life on Earth. Most people look to religion for such explanations. I’m in harmony with some of the teachings of all the major religions, such as the Christian focus on love and faith and the Buddhist belief in karma and reincarnation. I’m in greatest harmony with the oldest religion, Hinduism, and its core teachings that we are all part of God, and through learning and growing via the cycle of birth, death and rebirth, we can progress toward enlightenment and eventually remerge with our Divine Source.

My personal views are based on the information I’ve received from Spirit throughout twenty years of spiritual reading work in combination with research into the near death experience and life between life therapy. (In life between life therapy, people are regressed to the period between lifetimes to review their plans for their next lives as well as all sorts of other very deep spiritual issues.) The main tenets of all of these sources mesh well, which suggests that even though I may not be able to firmly grasp the entire picture, I am honing in on some big truths.

The two main life purpose themes that emerge time after time in my own experience as a channeler of Spirit and in the NDE and LBL research are the pursuit of knowledge and wisdom and the development of an ever greater capacity for selfless love. While we all share this general life purpose, how that translates for each individual is of course unique. I believe we make our own plans for each life before incarnating, and that these plans are based on the karmic lessons and issues of previous lives combined with the desire to move to higher levels of learning and development.

The higher purpose for our life does not equate to a set plan, however, for we always have free will. In fact, once we get here in the physical, it can be very challenging to stay on track. This is why life on Earth is such a powerful learning experience: when we are plunged into this dramatic situation where we have to find a way to survive and get all our physical and emotional needs met, we tend to forget about the higher truths and lessons our soul is hoping to master.

The analogy of Earth as a school is popular because it is so apt. When we first begin the incarnation cycle, our lessons are simpler and more mundane in nature. There are people whose goal is to simply learn how to work with their divine creative power in order to create the material things they need to physically survive and enjoy life. Often when people graduate from learning how to physically survive, they spend a lifetime or two “playing” with their newfound power to manifest <q>the good life.</q> Eventually, this naturally gets boring and they start to ponder deeper questions and issues, at which point they begin a conscious spiritual journey. (They’ve been on a spiritual journey the whole time, of course, but they may not have been so conscious about it.)

To denigrate others’ goals and values is a bit like a college student sneering at kids who are just learning arithmetic; we’ve all had to go through the same basic lessons, so just because those classes no longer challenge or interest us is no reason to put them down. In fact, I’ve often seen that people who have been through a very difficult journey in life are being prepared to fulfill a very high life purpose. Their highest destiny is to move through the experience to the other side of it so they can become a source of help and healing to other people who are going through the same thing. In order to help people, we have to understand what they’re going through, so people destined to become great healers may go through years of darkness and misery.

In some ways, we are all always living our higher purpose, for whatever we’re going through is what we need to experience in order to grow into a higher level of experience. Thus we see people who have been touched by cancer creating cancer charities and support groups, and people who have lived some very dark years battling addiction becoming mentors and healers for other addicts.

To determine your own higher purpose, it’s wise to listen to your own life story and trust that it is leading you to the knowledge, experience and wisdom you need. It’s also important to honor and trust your passions and interests, for these are also trying to guide you to fulfill your destiny. This is how my own life’s work came about: I experienced the death of my first love at a very tender age, which made me all too familiar with grief and encouraged me to develop great compassion for the grieving. I also had amazing spiritual experiences that produced unwavering faith in an afterlife. As my own journey ultimately led me to profound healing, I developed a strong desire to help others discover the peace I had found.

Perhaps our highest destiny is to find or create something good out of our suffering. It doesn’t matter exactly what form it takes, the point is to transmute the darkness we encounter into something light. With this in mind, some key questions to help you determine your own life purpose include:

What unusual or extraordinary experiences have I suffered through? How can I turn my own struggles into something positive? What am I most passionate about or interested in?

Please note that your higher purpose in life does not necessarily relate to what you do to earn a living. Since someone has to build the houses and grow the food, what people do for a living should never be taken as a sign of how evolved they are spiritually. By way of a very famous example, someone can be the very embodiment of wisdom and unconditional love but work as a humble carpenter. In fact, having simple, straight forward sort of job can bless us with the time and mental energy to pursue higher aims.

Also, having psychic experiences does not necessarily mean you are meant to become a psychic professional. I often hear from people who have been having psychic experiences and want to know what they’re “supposed” to do with them. Since we are all psychic to some degree, that’s a bit like saying that lately we’ve been hearing noises and we want to know what we’re supposed to do with our ability to hear. What we do with our gifts and talents all depends on what we want and/or feel called to do.

To determine your higher purpose and find a way to fulfill it, you must listen to your intuitions, insights and conscience, for it is through these channels that you receive guidance and direction from your soul. The more you work with processes like meditation in order to clearly hear your higher self, the more you will tend to fulfill your higher plan for this lifetime. With this in mind, perhaps the most direct and powerful way to determine your life purpose is to engage in life between life therapy. For more information on this amazing process, I recommend books by Michael Newton, Ph.D., who wrote Journey of Souls, Destiny of Souls and Life Between Lives: Hypnotherapy for Spiritual Regression.

– Soul Arcanum


Is Confession Good for the Soul?

 

Copyright Soul Arcanum LLC. All rights reserved. :)

Dear Soul Arcanum:

I was raised Catholic and regularly attended church as well as confession while growing up. I am now what you might call a recovering Catholic, as some years ago I began to question the teachings of the Church and to explore my own spiritual path. I’m at peace with this for the most part, but I’ve found that I deeply miss the practice of confession. I feel like my soul has become heavy and polluted without this regular cleansing, and this feeling has me wondering if perhaps the Church was fulfilling a true spiritual need that I won’t be able to meet on my own. Do you have any advice for me?

Bea

Dear Bea:

Confession as a rite of spiritual healing and purification is perhaps universal. Certainly many religious and spiritual traditions incorporate some form of confession as a path to metaphysical renewal.

When we are unable to face ourselves honestly and truly look at the nature of our thoughts, feelings and actions, we distance ourselves from our own higher selves. The more honest we are in our relationship to our true self, the more at peace we feel and the more we can commune with Source. When we face things as they happen, we process them and move on from them. Whatever we can’t face and work through at that time, we carry with us until we find the courage and wisdom to deal with it. This is the power of confession: it guides us in facing and releasing things from the past that we’ve been consciously and unconsciously lugging around with us.

It was once widely believed that if we died with unconfessed sins on our souls, we wouldn’t get into heaven. It’s my understanding that where we go when we leave this life is largely determined by our own beliefs and expectations, so if we feel guilty about things we’ve done that we haven’t made peace with when we die, we could end up in some sort of “purgatory” where we have to work through all the feelings and issues we haven’t consciously faced yet. Most of us are familiar with the idea that when we die, we experience a life review, during which we must relive all the joy and sorrow we caused other people. The more we’ve made peace with the past while still living, the easier this life review should be when we die, so there may be a sound metaphysical basis for religious practices like confession.

Of course, we don’t have to be Catholic or confess to a priest to unburden ourselves of whatever may be weighing on our conscience; there are all sorts of other ways people achieve the same sense of freedom and release. Many people seek emotional peace in conventional psychological counseling. Similarly, my clients often choose me as the person to help them work through feelings of guilt or shame. From pornography addictions to marital infidelity to “evil” thoughts and feelings, I’ve heard it all over the years, and Spirit always has a loving, healing perspective to help people realign with peace and well-being.

So what makes us long for redemption? On some level we are all aware of the karma we are carrying and how it will weigh us down and drag us back into situations where it can be balanced and we can learn whatever we need to learn. We don’t need a priest or counselor to advise us, however; we can meditate upon this ourselves and follow our own hearts in determining how to make things right. In my view, this is truly taking responsibility for our actions and will prove far more powerful than having some appointed official intone words of blessings over our heads. Besides, it’s essential to determine and live by our own moral code. When we try to follow rules set down by some outside authority that don’t resonate with our own inner truth, we just set ourselves up for more angst and neuroses instead of peace and personal growth.

To balance karma, first we must face the truth about our actions. Usually, it is feelings of guilt or shame that lead us to examine our behavior and realize that we’ve acted against our own values. Then we must admit our error to ourselves and whatever higher power we may be calling upon in our quest for personal growth and healing. Sometimes, admitting our error is simply a matter of apologizing to whomever we feel we’ve wronged. Finally, we have to do what we can to make things right. This is how we balance our karma and move toward a higher level of experience.

When we open up and “get things off our chests,” the energy in our auras starts to move and locked up energy starts to dissipate. Basically, when we hold things in, we create tension; when we speak them out loud or open up about them, we get that energy moving again. When the energy is moving, it can be healed, transformed and/or released. Confessing in whatever way feels right and best to us can set us free from karmic backlash because we no longer have the residual energies of that experience acting like a magnet for further related experiences. When we let go of feeling bad for something we did in the past, we rise in vibration and can attract something better in the future.

While all of this can be done internally, there is great power in putting things into words. There is an intense process in yoga called the maha vasana daha tantra or “great purification of the subconscious by fire.” It involves writing down ten pages of memories for each year of one’s life and then burning those pages. It is said that this naturally sets us free from the past and whatever issues may still be active for us on a subconscious level. It’s a bit like hypnotherapy in terms of the instant healing that can happen when we bring things up into our conscious awareness and relive them from a new perspective. Many say that performing this ritual left them feeling profoundly clear, free, joyful, unburdened, and at one with the Universe.

Of course, it’s important to honor your needs as you have been doing and to find whatever works best for you. If writing isn’t appealing, you might find a spiritual counselor you feel comfortable talking to or come up with something else that feels right. For example, if you’re more tactile than verbal, you could create a meditation altar on which you place symbolic tokens of your burdens to be healed and released.

I read somewhere that confession is a surrender of your past to God to be dissolved in divine love. It’s a way to start over from scratch and realign with the divine perfection of your eternal soul. Through it, you can be instantly freed and healed from the past and open to a bright, fresh future. The method you choose isn’t important; what’s important is to open your heart with complete honesty and commit to becoming a better person.

If you can pour all of your soul into it, this simple ritual may suffice:

Sit quietly and allow anything that has been weighing on your conscience to come to mind. Ask yourself what you have learned from this experience and how you could do better in the future. Then simply pray: Universe, please heal me from the past. Cleanse and renew my spirit so that I may walk forward embodying my higher nature and radiating love, wisdom, compassion, courage and integrity in all I think, say and do. Visualize divine love washing over and through you, cleansing your soul clean of any guilt, remorse and negative karma. When you feel clear, let go of worrying about the past, and focus on integrating what you’ve learned by being a better person from that point forward.

– Soul Arcanum


Is Confession Good for the Soul?

 

Copyright Soul Arcanum LLC. All rights reserved. :)

Dear Soul Arcanum:

I was raised Catholic and regularly attended church as well as confession while growing up. I am now what you might call a recovering Catholic, as some years ago I began to question the teachings of the Church and to explore my own spiritual path. I’m at peace with this for the most part, but I’ve found that I deeply miss the practice of confession. I feel like my soul has become heavy and polluted without this regular cleansing, and this feeling has me wondering if perhaps the Church was fulfilling a true spiritual need that I won’t be able to meet on my own. Do you have any advice for me?

Bea

Dear Bea:

Confession as a rite of spiritual healing and purification is perhaps universal. Certainly many religious and spiritual traditions incorporate some form of confession as a path to metaphysical renewal.

When we are unable to face ourselves honestly and truly look at the nature of our thoughts, feelings and actions, we distance ourselves from our own higher selves. The more honest we are in our relationship to our true self, the more at peace we feel and the more we can commune with Source. When we face things as they happen, we process them and move on from them. Whatever we can’t face and work through at that time, we carry with us until we find the courage and wisdom to deal with it. This is the power of confession: it guides us in facing and releasing things from the past that we’ve been consciously and unconsciously lugging around with us.

It was once widely believed that if we died with unconfessed sins on our souls, we wouldn’t get into heaven. It’s my understanding that where we go when we leave this life is largely determined by our own beliefs and expectations, so if we feel guilty about things we’ve done that we haven’t made peace with when we die, we could end up in some sort of “purgatory” where we have to work through all the feelings and issues we haven’t consciously faced yet. Most of us are familiar with the idea that when we die, we experience a life review, during which we must relive all the joy and sorrow we caused other people. The more we’ve made peace with the past while still living, the easier this life review should be when we die, so there may be a sound metaphysical basis for religious practices like confession.

Of course, we don’t have to be Catholic or confess to a priest to unburden ourselves of whatever may be weighing on our conscience; there are all sorts of other ways people achieve the same sense of freedom and release. Many people seek emotional peace in conventional psychological counseling. Similarly, my clients often choose me as the person to help them work through feelings of guilt or shame. From pornography addictions to marital infidelity to “evil” thoughts and feelings, I’ve heard it all over the years, and Spirit always has a loving, healing perspective to help people realign with peace and well-being.

So what makes us long for redemption? On some level we are all aware of the karma we are carrying and how it will weigh us down and drag us back into situations where it can be balanced and we can learn whatever we need to learn. We don’t need a priest or counselor to advise us, however; we can meditate upon this ourselves and follow our own hearts in determining how to make things right. In my view, this is truly taking responsibility for our actions and will prove far more powerful than having some appointed official intone words of blessings over our heads. Besides, it’s essential to determine and live by our own moral code. When we try to follow rules set down by some outside authority that don’t resonate with our own inner truth, we just set ourselves up for more angst and neuroses instead of peace and personal growth.

To balance karma, first we must face the truth about our actions. Usually, it is feelings of guilt or shame that lead us to examine our behavior and realize that we’ve acted against our own values. Then we must admit our error to ourselves and whatever higher power we may be calling upon in our quest for personal growth and healing. Sometimes, admitting our error is simply a matter of apologizing to whomever we feel we’ve wronged. Finally, we have to do what we can to make things right. This is how we balance our karma and move toward a higher level of experience.

When we open up and “get things off our chests,” the energy in our auras starts to move and locked up energy starts to dissipate. Basically, when we hold things in, we create tension; when we speak them out loud or open up about them, we get that energy moving again. When the energy is moving, it can be healed, transformed and/or released. Confessing in whatever way feels right and best to us can set us free from karmic backlash because we no longer have the residual energies of that experience acting like a magnet for further related experiences. When we let go of feeling bad for something we did in the past, we rise in vibration and can attract something better in the future.

While all of this can be done internally, there is great power in putting things into words. There is an intense process in yoga called the maha vasana daha tantra or “great purification of the subconscious by fire.” It involves writing down ten pages of memories for each year of one’s life and then burning those pages. It is said that this naturally sets us free from the past and whatever issues may still be active for us on a subconscious level. It’s a bit like hypnotherapy in terms of the instant healing that can happen when we bring things up into our conscious awareness and relive them from a new perspective. Many say that performing this ritual left them feeling profoundly clear, free, joyful, unburdened, and at one with the Universe.

Of course, it’s important to honor your needs as you have been doing and to find whatever works best for you. If writing isn’t appealing, you might find a spiritual counselor you feel comfortable talking to or come up with something else that feels right. For example, if you’re more tactile than verbal, you could create a meditation altar on which you place symbolic tokens of your burdens to be healed and released.

I read somewhere that confession is a surrender of your past to God to be dissolved in divine love. It’s a way to start over from scratch and realign with the divine perfection of your eternal soul. Through it, you can be instantly freed and healed from the past and open to a bright, fresh future. The method you choose isn’t important; what’s important is to open your heart with complete honesty and commit to becoming a better person.

If you can pour all of your soul into it, this simple ritual may suffice:

Sit quietly and allow anything that has been weighing on your conscience to come to mind. Ask yourself what you have learned from this experience and how you could do better in the future. Then simply pray: Universe, please heal me from the past. Cleanse and renew my spirit so that I may walk forward embodying my higher nature and radiating love, wisdom, compassion, courage and integrity in all I think, say and do. Visualize divine love washing over and through you, cleansing your soul clean of any guilt, remorse and negative karma. When you feel clear, let go of worrying about the past, and focus on integrating what you’ve learned by being a better person from that point forward.

– Soul Arcanum


Forgiving “Bad” Parents

Copyright Soul Arcanum LLC. All rights reserved. :)
 

Dear Soul Arcanum:

I have had to go through a lot of stress in my life. My mom never really set rules for me, and when she tried to, I would never obey them. Because of this, I got into heavy drugs, drinking and so forth. Now that I have gotten out of it, I see everything I have done, and for some stupid reason, I blame my mother for not setting any boundaries when I was a kid. I know I am contradicting myself here. I know that when we are in the spiritual plane, we pick who our parents are going to be, so if I picked her to be my mom and she picked me to be her daughter, then there is a lesson we had to learn together. Still, I feel like I should forgive her, and I need to go deeper than just saying it. So I guess what I’m asking is how I can go about doing that. I would really appreciate your help with this.
– Ivy

Dear Ivy:

I chose your question because I personally know many people who struggle to forgive their parents for not being “good enough” in some way.

When I was seven, my mother took off for California and left me and my brothers on my dad’s doorstep late one night. I didn’t have a relationship with her again until I was in my twenties. While this was traumatic at the time, I eventually realized that in leaving us, she gave us a great gift. She knew she wasn’t up for the job of raising us well, so she got out of the way. From that time on I had a great childhood, and was blessed with a wonderful step-mother.

Not all kids are so lucky. Many are raised by parents who don’t really want them, but who stick around for various selfish reasons. These children are often physically and emotionally abused by their parents. A good friend of mine was raped from the time she was an infant until she escaped her father’s clutches. My husband was regularly tied to the bed and beaten by his father. I frequently counsel people who had truly terrible childhoods, so I could go on about all the evil things parents do to kids who want nothing more than to win their love. THESE are bad parents, Ivy. You and I can thank our lucky stars we were blessed with a whole different sort of experience.

Let’s frame your stressful experiences in some historic perspective. Had you done the things you did in some other place or time, you may have been stoned to death, cast out of your community, sold into slavery, or any number of other unsavory prospects. So your mom didn’t set strict rules. She didn’t beat you, have you arrested, or blindfold you and drop you off in the middle of nowhere. She let you learn the only way you would: the hard way. Now somehow she is to blame because you chose to do the very things she warned you away from?

“Your past is not a fixed reality; it is what you choose by focus and interpretation. Interpret your past through the eyes of appreciation, and it will become only a blessing.” – Alan Cohen

To find forgiveness and healing, we must shift our perspective from one of lack and blame to one of gratitude and personal responsibility. You might start by giving thanks that your mother was there and at least trying. (Where was your father throughout all of this?)

We must also remember that children come into this world with souls and lessons to learn, and there is only so much a parent can do. If failing to rein in a wild teen were a crime, 1 out of 4 parents would probably be in jail. Unfortunately, these days it’s far more likely that a parent will land in trouble for trying to keep their kids on the right track.

A few months ago I heard a story on the news that illustrates how disempowered parents are today. A mother overheard her daughter talking to a friend on the phone about some illegal activity, so the mother secretly picked up an extension. In listening further, she learned that her daughter (who had been growing out of control) and the daughter’s friend had stolen something. Though it was a hard decision, she decided the right thing would be to turn both kids in to the police. Guess what? The mother was charged with a crime for eavesdropping on her own phone line!

We’re living in a time of tremendous personal freedom, both legally and spiritually. Those of us who have chosen to incarnate at this time have come forth to learn big spiritual lessons about free will. Even God can’t make us choose wisely; it’s up to us to listen within and choose for ourselves and then learn from the consequences. So blaming your mom for your bad choices is sort of like blaming God for not forcing you to stay on a path of purity and righteousness.

With freedom comes responsibility. As we have more freedom than ever, we must also take more responsibility for what we create in our lives than ever before. Right now, you’re in the middle of learning that you can’t blame anything or anyone outside of you for your own choices in life.

Remember that hindsight is 20/20. Perhaps in looking back now and knowing how things turned out, you can see how your mom “should have” done things differently. I’m sure we could say the same thing about many of your own choices. However, you don’t know what would have happened had she been stricter. Perhaps it would have just driven you away and made things worse.

I believe that your mom was doing the best she could. I believe that all parents do; some people’s bests are just better than others’, and some kids respond to certain approaches better than others. For the record, kids are doing their bests too. People will learn by the easiest path possible – some people just need to learn the hard way.

You HAVE been wronged. The modern culture you were born into led you to believe that life should always be easy, your parents owe you a perfect childhood, and as a “child,” you should not be held responsible for your choices. In truth, life is complicated, relationships are tricky, and you owe your parents just as much love, respect and devotion as they owe you. When we take responsibility for our own actions and feelings, we quit blaming others and start to really learn. When we acknowledge that everyone is doing their bests, forgiveness becomes not only easy – it becomes unnecessary.

Perhaps the true wound you need to heal is your feeling that if your mom had truly loved you as you long to be loved, she would have tried harder. Well, she could say the same thing, Ivy. If you had loved her as she longed to be loved as a mother, you might have tried harder too. As I see it, you two were a great match for each other. Since you didn’t listen to her, if anyone should be forgiven, maybe it’s you. So to “forgive” your mom, quit blaming her in the first place, and take full responsibility for your own choices.

I don’t want to come down hard on you. I know you are processing some very heavy feelings, and I admire your honesty and sincerity. I know that beneath the blame you feel for your mother, there is a little girl who scared herself silly by recklessly pushing and breaking the limits.

You’ve come a long, hard way. Pat yourself on the back for living and learning and seeing the light, and look for the gifts in your experiences. I feel you have a lot to offer young people who may at this very moment be heading in the wrong direction, just as you once were. If you try to help them, you may just walk a mile in your mom’s shoes, and learn how hard it is to try to stop people from making mistakes when they just don’t want to listen.

Difficult journeys bring big lessons. Instead of lamenting the past, you can heal by focusing on the gifts it brought you and how your experiences made you who you are today. I know your feistiness will take you far in life if you channel it in a positive direction and put your hard won wisdom to good use.

– Soul Arcanum


When Your Best Friends are Energy Vampires

 

Copyright Soul Arcanum LLC. All rights reserved. :)

Dear Soul Arcanum:

I don’t have many friends, for I choose them carefully. At the moment, I have two women in my life who could be described as psychic vampires. One is an internationally respected healer/teacher. My intuition is growing more and more refined, and I was shocked when the manipulative, calculating, dishonest energy I was picking up about this healer was confirmed. I realized I had given my power away by putting her on a pedestal and making less of my own gifts. She tried to discredit the healer I currently see, and suggested one of her students start treating me while she supervised my case. I’ve decided to keep my distance from her and not leave my current healer, who has helped me tremendously. This is clearly a case of professional jealousy. The other friend is also very spiritual. I feel she’s a little jealous of me, and sees me as somehow better off than her in many ways. It’s like she thinks I have some secret to the universe and wants a piece of it. Why am I attracting these energy vampires? I don’t have that many friends, and at this rate, they are dropping like flies! Thanks, Soul Arcanum!

Sitara

Dear Sitara:

I’m not sure the friends you’re describing are really energy vampires. Energy vampires are people who can’t get all their energy needs met directly from Source, so they try to feed on other people’s energy. To determine if these friends are truly stealing your energy, ask yourself how you feel when you’ve been around them for a while.

Do you feel energized and uplifted or down and drained? Do you feel like there is balance in your relationship in terms of give and take, or does your friend talk endlessly about herself? Are you doing all the giving? Do you find yourself constantly feeling like you should do something to help or save her? Does she make you feel better about yourself, or does she put you down or compete with you in order to feel superior?

If none of these really fit, odds are good that you’re not dealing with energy vampires so much as you are ordinary people with egos and human weaknesses and faults, just like the rest of us.

People who are highly spiritual like we are tend to be very idealistic. We want to believe in people, see the best in them and love them with all our hearts. It can be very disillusioning when we meet someone who seems to be everything we’ve ever wanted in a friend, and they turn out to be a mere mortal instead of the demi-god we’ve been worshiping.

There are a couple of dynamics worth mentioning here, given the relationships you describe. First, the more we tap into our own personal power, the more we evoke deep issues in other people. If there are buried issues that need to be brought to light and healed in our friends, then our dynamic energy will tend to bring those issues to life in some way. This is especially true if we’re devoted healers and counselors. In personal relationships, the interactions may not be overt; instead, they tend to come out in subtle ways through the ever changing dynamics of our connection. We thus spark things for the people around us without knowing that we are doing so simply because our main intention is to help others heal and grow.

Also, as we develop intuitively, we begin to psychically pick up on all sorts of stuff that people tend to hide. Nearly everyone hides their shadow side, so it can be shocking to sense these hidden truths, and difficult to make peace with living at this level of awareness. Everything is naturally perfect, of course, for once we attain this level of awareness, we’re ready for the deep lessons in unconditional love that psychic awareness evokes.

Your spiritual teacher friend is clearly insecure about her wisdom and abilities. The wisest and best teachers always are, by the way, for they constantly question themselves. Having you see someone else for healing and that person apparently being able to truly help you has brought her insecurities up. While her behavior is disappointing, we must strive not to take anything personally, and simply be the best person we can be with everyone we know and love. As I see it, if a friend disappoints us, our job is to reach for a higher, more loving road in order to nurture good things in that relationship. Maybe right now, this relationship is not about her meeting your friendship needs, but about you giving her something important such as an opportunity to work on her ego issues, learn a lesson, or observe you setting a shining example of love and wisdom.

I like what you wrote about putting her on a pedestal and discounting your own wisdom and abilities. I think instead of expecting her to be the spiritual leader in your relationship, you should step forward and reach for a higher level of love and wisdom yourself regardless of what she says or does. Then you can become a source of healing both for her and your relationship. You might do this by recognizing with compassion that her ego is kicking up, and she perhaps is worried that she is not good enough or that she will lose your friendship or respect and admiration via your experiences with this other healer.

Similarly, instead of viewing your other friend as someone who is trying to steal something from you, it would be wise to stay in a very high vibration and view her admiration as a positive thing. The more we align with a high level of life experience by working with the law of attraction and cultivating a high vibration, the more we attract people who want this for themselves like moths to a flame. Sometimes these people do want to suck our energy, but sometimes they just think we’re wonderful, and they want to study us so they can emulate us.

The higher we go in terms of quality of experience and vibration, the harder it is to find peers. Then instead of journeying through life with all our classmates, we naturally become teachers. In a typical schoolroom setup, there are way more students than teachers, and it’s the same on our spiritual journeys. As you evolve, you will be surrounded by more people who are in position to learn from you, and you’ll only know a few other teachers, who will often be off in their own classrooms, doing their thing.

You’re wise to ask how and why you are attracting friends like this, but it’s more important to figure out how you can manifest a higher level of experience. I’ve had great results with working with the law of attraction to manifest good friends. For example, years ago I told the Universe very clearly and with all of my heart that I wanted to meet a friend who was <q>just like me.</q> I ended up meeting a friend in a most unusual way who practically IS me! The ways we are alike are astounding. This experience taught me that we all have many kindred spirits in the world, and we just need to work with the law of attraction to draw them into our experience.

In summary, I encourage you to stop expecting your friends to be free of faults. Our goal is not to find perfect people, but to learn how to love everyone around us despite their imperfections. We all have our issues and everyone is doing spiritual battle with their egos every day. Do keep choosing your friends carefully, and when they disappoint you, examine your experiences for how you can use them to work on yourself and become an ever brighter light wherever you go. Also, remember that we have the power to manifest what we want in our lives, and we can use the law of attraction to both bring out the best in people and draw wonderful new friends into our lives.

Soul Arcanum