Category: Emotional Well-being


TMJ: A Common Problem for Spiritual Seekers

Filed Under: Emotional Well-being, Healing by Soul Arcanum — Comments Off on TMJ: A Common Problem for Spiritual Seekers

Copyright Soul Arcanum LLC. All rights reserved. :)
 

Dear Soul Arcanum:

Recently I suddenly developed a problem with TMSoul Arcanum Sometimes I wake up in the morning and my jaw hurts so badly that I can hardly open my mouth, much less chew. While I’m planning on seeing my dentist about this, I have a feeling that it’s not so much a physical problem as an emotional one. Do you think this could be something emotional in nature, and if so, what should I do?
– Stacy

Dear Stacy:

There are of course physical reasons you could suddenly have developed TMJ, so I’m glad you’re going to have this checked out by a medical professional. However, based on personal experience, I believe that TMJ is one of those conditions that almost always has connections to deeper psychological issues.

As with all discomfort and disease, TMJ is a sign that something is out of balance. That may be your physical jaw, especially if you’ve had orthodontic work done recently, or chronic problems with your bite. Usually, however, a sudden problem with TMJ reflects an imbalance in your inner world, which is probably a reaction to some imbalance in your outer experience.

For those who aren’t familiar, let’s review some TMJ basics. TMJ stands for temporomandibular joint, and is characterized by pain in the jaw, ear and head (including migraines), popping or clicking of the jaw, and pain on chewing or opening the mouth. Most TMJ sufferers grind their teeth at night, and many believe that this grinding is what causes the pain. It is estimated that about 10 percent of the population suffers from TMJ, so this is a very common problem. It’s also far more common in women than men, which makes sense when we examine its emotional roots.

When we repress our feelings, the energy of those feelings gets stuck in the body, which creates tension. In particular, TMJ tends to crop up when we hold back on acknowledging or expressing anger and frustration. It’s thus no accident that TMJ affects women more than men, for women have been socialized to believe it is bad to get angry and much worse to express it.

TMJ sufferers also tend to have other personality traits that would lead them to deny their anger or avoid expressing their displeasure. For example, they tend to be highly conscientious folks who try very hard to be “good people.” As this is also a characteristic of “spiritual” folks, many people who are actively pursuing personal growth suffer from TMJ or related syndromes at some point.

This arises because we believe that we “should” be above getting angry � that we should be perpetually serene, forgiving and compassionate. Thus when we are taken for granted or mistreated in relationships, we may tell ourselves that we should be fine with doing most of the giving. Whether it’s legitimate or not, whenever something begins to make us angry, we may deny we’re angry or bite our tongues (and thus hurt ourselves) to avoid hurting others.

All of this is happening on a subconscious level, of course, which is why people with TMJ grind their teeth at night instead of during the day. When we’re really struggling with a problem, we may say that we’re “chewing on it.” Well, TMJ is like emotional chewing. When we grind our teeth at night or unconsciously clench our jaws, it’s because we’re subconsciously chewing on something that we don’t want to face on a conscious level.

This is exactly what was going on in my life when TMJ struck for me. I was indeed angry, but whenever something upset me, I would try to ignore it and just focus on the positive. (I truly thought this was going to prove wise, for I know that what we focus upon expands in our lives.) I then developed IBS, and several months later, after I had managed to get that healed, TMJ struck.

The night before my first TMJ episode, I’d had something of a breakdown in which I exploded with anger over the way I felt someone was mistreating my stepdaughter. I was really surprised at myself, but quickly realized why I was so enraged: I had been in my stepdaughter’s shoes myself many times when I was young. In fact, our situations were uncannily similar, so watching my stepdaughter suffer reawakened my own buried anger from the past. I truly believed that I had dealt with all those feelings, healed and moved on, but apparently, I was wrong!

At this time, I had also gotten in the habit of avoiding conflict in general in the name of keeping the peace and being what I thought was a “nice” person. I was thus biting my tongue and holding back my truth several times a day. This is exactly the sort of thing that leads to TMSoul Arcanum

Given all of the above, here are some good questions to ask yourself when TMJ strikes out of the blue:

If I WERE angry about something, what might it be?
What is my relationship to anger in general?
What do I do with my anger?
If I were going to really let someone have it and tell them exactly what I really think, who would it be, and what would I say? 

Anger itself is not a problem: the problem is what we do with our anger. People repress anger for all sorts of reasons. They may consider themselves too nice, evolved or logical to get angry. Some people actually feel they have no right to get angry (or be truly happy for that matter.)

Others are deeply afraid of anger both in others and in themselves. My mother was bi-polar, and when I was a child, she didn’t get angry – she would be calm one moment and violently enraged the next. As a result of many traumatic early experiences, I learned to squelch the embers of conflict and anger as soon as I felt a trace of heat.

Dr. John E. Sarno, author of The Mind-Body Prescription, considers many psychosomatic pain disorders like IBS, TMJ, and chronic neck/shoulder pain to be part of something called Tension Myositis Syndrome. This is basically tension in the body’s muscles, which leads to restricted blood flow and chronic pain. According to Dr. Sarno, simply becoming conscious of the repressed emotions that may be behind your physical pain is the most powerful thing you can do to affect healing. With this in mind, you might seek help from a hypnotherapist or conventional talk therapist.

In addition to becoming conscious of repressed energies and emotions, anything that helps you to release stress and tension can ease your discomfort. Many bodyworkers are familiar with the causes of TMJ and related syndromes, so you might try massage, craniosacral therapy, acupuncture or myofascial therapy. Anything that relaxes you would help, and many people report that they can keep pain and tension at bay through regular meditation and yoga practice.

Finally, you have to love and trust yourself enough to own your true feelings, and find a way to honor them without hurting others OR yourself.

– Soul Arcanum

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Are You Hung up on the Past and What Might Have Been?

Filed Under: Destiny/Higher Plan, Emotional Well-being, Spiritual Growth by Soul Arcanum — Comments Off on Are You Hung up on the Past and What Might Have Been?

Copyright Soul Arcanum LLC. All rights reserved. :)
 

Dear Soul Arcanum:

Is there some way to find out from Spirit if we made the right decisions in the past? For example, lately I’ve been feeling like if I’d made different decisions over the past seven years or so, I would be on a higher or better path now. Can I find out? I’m a Christian, and at church I often hear that if I don’t do the right thing or act according to divine timing, things will go wrong for me. I believe that we do have to make the best choices for us to manifest good things in our lives, and the problem is that I don’t know if I’ve been making the best choices for me for the past seven years or so, because so much in my life is really a mess. Would my life be better now if I had made better choices? I keep going back to a couple of key junctures along the way, and a couple of key choices I made over and over again, and now I wonder if I was digging myself into a hole. I’m 26 years old and I’m ready to turn my life around, but I don’t know where to start.
– Elena

Dear Elena:

Congratulations – you are on the verge of a major personal breakthrough!

We’ve all known people who keep doing the same things over and over and expecting different results because they have not yet realized that they are causing their own misery. When they DO truly realize this – when they stop waiting for some outside force or person to save them, and they stop blaming other people for their problems – they will change.

Life brings many tests and challenges, and some are like entrance exams to the next level of our spiritual education. When the veil of denial begins to lift and we get an inkling that perhaps our old interpretation of life was somehow false or illusionary, what we do at that point is very important. If we push that thought away because we’re too “proud” to face the truth or because we’re just too lazy to do anything with it, we shift into denial and get caught up in limiting patterns.

If, however, we are ever consulting our hearts and souls and listening for the truth within, and we have the courage to face our faults and mistakes as soon as we catch a glimmer of them, then we’ll move on from false thinking before we dig ourselves into a rut.

There are basically three steps to healing and releasing the past so you can move on to new happiness: First you must face facts, then you must forgive yourself and others, then you’ll be free to focus on what you want for the future.

Step One: Facing Facts

When the past is haunting us, it’s a call for us to question some of the lies we’ve been telling ourselves. Negative emotion is the main symptom to watch out for, as whenever we’re caught up in sorrow, anger, fear, regret, etc., we are not seeing the whole truth. We should therefore question every thought that makes us feel bad.

We also need to let go of the need to judge everything – including the past. It was what it was, and we can safely assume that it was just what we needed it to be, and we did just what we needed to do, in order to learn just what we needed to learn.

To heal on a psychic/emotional level, however, we do have to face the truth about ourselves and our past actions and hold ourselves accountable for them. This doesn’t mean that we beat ourselves up about them forevermore. In fact, just facing the truth will launch us toward healing; the truth will indeed set us free.

When we have absorbed all the wisdom our experiences hold for us, we naturally graduate to a new level of life lessons, so when we’re hung up on the past, it’s generally because we’ve yet to learn something we need to learn. Until those lessons are integrated, the past will tug at us to go back and explore our experiences again. While I’m a firm believer in focusing on what we do want in life, in such situations, the only way to truly move on is to stop and review the past for whatever we seem to have missed.

It’s a bit like having a thread from your sweater snagged on something you’ve tried to walk away from – you have to go back to whatever you got hung up on, free yourself from it, and do whatever repair work is necessary if you want to move forward looking and feeling your best.

To accomplish this, you will have to examine your own choices and behavior and honestly ask yourself how you might have been more skillful. This will involve going back over any memories that hold a strong emotional charge for you. This charge may involve negative feelings about yourself such as shame, guilt or embarrassment, or they may involve negative feelings towards others such as anger, bitterness, jealousy or rage. These feelings indicate that there are psychic wounds that still need healing.

You might also want to explore the possibility that past life issues are at play in this situation. I don’t normally recommend looking for possible problems, but if you feel like the past is tugging at you or weighing you down, past life regression therapy may prove very helpful. (It would also be wise to stop and ask yourself what you may be avoiding in the now with all of this focus on the past.)

Step Two: Forgiveness

Once you have pinpointed those emotionally charged memories, it’s time to forgive yourself and others for anything you perceive to be a mistake or bad decision. While there are some transgressions that may seem unforgivable, it’s wise to understand that EVERYONE is always doing the best they can in any situation.

Granted, sometimes that best is really lame. In those situations, I recommend you do as I do: give thanks that you are not as lost and clueless as that person seems to be. It will help you find compassion for them, which will help you forgive whatever they did.

I’m reminded of when I was a kid and would try to tattle on my little brother, and my mother would wisely say, “You just worry about yourself.” We would all be wise to just worry about our own karma. Besides, when we forgive others, we don’t erase their karma for whatever they did – we set ourselves free from the pain and suffering of living with negative emotion and a heavy vibration.

Further, it doesn’t really make sense to second-guess our past decisions, because if we hadn’t lived what we lived, we wouldn’t know what we know now. So instead of regretting the past, it’s wise to give thanks above all for the bad experiences that led us to new wisdom and understanding.

If you really want to change your life for the better, I thus recommend you seek out everyone you believe you’ve ever wronged and apologize to them and try to make amends. Also, bring everyone who has ever wronged you into your heart and forgive them. This alone will TRANSFORM your life. It will free you from all sorts of negative patterns, send your vibration soaring, and open doorways to a rich assortment of new blessings.

Step 3: Focus on Fulfillment

Once you’ve faced facts and forgiven everyone you can think of, it’s time to start cultivating new blessings. At rudimentary levels of spiritual development, our main goal is to resist temptation and avoid making big mistakes. As we evolve, however, we soon realize that we have endless potential for cultivating wonderful karmic rewards.

Once you’ve healed the past, if you begin to actively strive to be good and kind, you will see miracles blossom all around you. By aiming to do the right thing, performing good deeds, and wishing yourself and others well, you can launch yourself onto a higher level of experience and reap the benefits of your wise habits forevermore.

– Soul Arcanum

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The Opposite of Grief: Reuniting with Someone from a Past Life

Filed Under: Afterlife, Death and Dying, Destiny/Higher Plan, Emotional Well-being, Healing, Past Lives, Relationships by Soul Arcanum — Comments Off on The Opposite of Grief: Reuniting with Someone from a Past Life

 

Copyright Soul Arcanum LLC. All rights reserved. :)
 

Dear Soul Arcanum:

My husband of six years passed away two years ago after a long battle with cancer. I have been blessed with sensing his presence at times, and with truly believing he is free from suffering and I will see him again someday. Nevertheless, I can’t seem to move on. Maybe I’m just not sure where to go from here. I’m in my mid-thirties, we had no children together, and I have a satisfying career. Despite all the good things in my life, it feels like I’ve already had the best love had to offer me. I would appreciate any advice you could give me.
– Brenda

Dear Brenda:

I’d like to share a personal experience with you.

When I was a young woman, my first love died very suddenly. There are many amazing spiritual stories surrounding that event, but there is one in particular that is relevant here.

A few days after Todd died, I awoke in the middle of the night in a panic. I was burning up with heat and gasping for breath, and as I opened my eyes, I could see the room was filled with smoke. Assuming the house was on fire, and I catapulted out of bed and flew across the hall, where I pounded on my parents’ door yelling, “Fire! Fire!”

My father was at the door in a flash with a fire extinguisher in his hand, shouting, “Where? Where?” As I turned and looked back into my room, the smoke was gone. There was nothing there. Speechless, I mumbled something like, “It was there, I swear…”

For three nights in a row I was awakened the same way. The second night I actually repeated my frantic scramble for help. (My father did NOT make it to the door nearly as quickly that time). The third night I forced myself to sit still in bed, and as I did so, the smoke dissipated before my eyes.

Many years later, I am now married to the love of my life. I don’t have room here to go into all the incredible details of how we found each other, but it was definitely preordained. The important thing to note is that I have found even greater love than I lost long ago – and with a firefighter. It took me nearly 20 years to figure out those “fire” experiences in the night, but I now believe that Todd was trying to give me a sign that I would find true love again, and how it would come to me.

When our grief over someone’s passing has subsided but we still feel empty, I believe we are wise to focus on just what Todd was trying to shift my attention to: all the people we have yet to meet whom we already love so well. We must remember that just as death is inevitable, life is ever leading us back to people we have loved in other lives. The cure for your emptiness is deciding to reconnect with these kindred spirits.

Also, while I believe that grief is totally natural, I think we have developed some unhealthy ways of dealing with it. Some people, for example, assume that the devastation they feel when someone dies must indicate that death is indeed a horrible and final end.

As I see it, grief is a natural response to the end of anything we have loved well. It’s normal to be sad when we are leaving some person, place or era that has held a lot of happiness for us. Ironically, it’s my understanding that many souls feel some grief about leaving the spirit world to incarnate here on Earth, which makes our grief over doing the reverse seem a bit overblown. It’s focusing on the past that causes us pain; at some point, it only makes sense to shift our attention to all the possibilities on the horizon.

Every time someone we love departs our experience, it creates room in our lives for someone else who is just as special. Too often people feel that they are somehow betraying a departed loved one by loving someone else. I say that by holding themselves back from new love, they may betray someone they have loved just as deeply in another life, whom they have yet to meet again in this one. Just think: what if you had met someone else prior to meeting your husband, and when that person died, you closed yourself off from new love?

Romance aside, there are many people you have loved in other lives who are waiting to love you again, and I think you owe it to all of those loved ones to stay open to creating new happiness with them. For example, I have done readings for parents who had lost a child, and to whom that same soul had already returned in the form a new baby. It often takes such parents years to recognize the departed child in the younger sibling. Eventually when the child begins to talk, however, they will do things or say things evidential of their true identity. Some children will even refer to the “last time” they were here, before they died in some manner, when they were so and so, etc. Then those parents realize that they have spent years grieving for a child who was sitting right beside them!

I have similarly read for number of widows and widowers who say that they will never fall in love again, and been shown an even greater love for them in the future. This is always a love that already exists, and usually it is with someone they have loved even more deeply and truly than the person they say they will never get over. I think it’s exciting to know that for each one of us, there are many people out there whom we have been missing on an unconscious level and have yet to meet up with again in this lifetime.

While big reunions between souls are often destined to happen at certain junctures, there are some things you can do to reconnect with as many people you’ve loved in other lives as possible. Here are a few:

  • Act on your impulses to go certain places and speak to certain people.
  • Stay open to meeting new people and letting them get close to you.
  • Call or contact people who frequently come to mind, for often these are relationships you are being guided to pursue.
  • Accept invitations from strangers you feel drawn to.
  • Honor your hunches and feelings about seemingly unrelated matters, such as which job you will take and where you will live. Often we are led to meet important people through such decisions.

Here are a few signs that you’re in the presence of someone you have loved before:

  • You have a very strange feeling, or it seems like time stands still when you first meet them.
  • They seem vaguely familiar or you feel unusually drawn to them.
  • The way you meet is surrounded by lots of synchronicity, like you were guided or destined to find each other.
  • You can see certain turning points or incidents in the past that are strongly connected to this meeting or to this person. For example, my ex-husband said that for his entire life, he’d had a picture in his mind of his “ideal girl.” He thought this was just a fantasy until he met me and discovered that the girl with that face actually existed.
  • Other people in your life are strongly connected to someone you feel an instant sense of kinship with. For example, if you have a strong feeling of familiarity upon meeting your brother’s fiance, it could mean that you’re GOING to know her in the future, but it could also mean you’ve known and loved her in another life. Since we reincarnate in soul groups, it’s common for there to be strong connections between your loved ones.
  • This relationship seems to have a life of its own – it just happens.

As I see it, my friend, the future is rich with exciting opportunities to love again. Please do remember that the karmic bond you feel to people from past lives is no more special just because it began in another time and place. As a very wise song goes, if you can’t be with the one you love, then love the one you’re with. You could create the most magnificent relationship EVER with someone you meet for the first time today.

– Soul Arcanum

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Making Peace with Abortion

Filed Under: Emotional Well-being, Healing by Soul Arcanum — Comments Off on Making Peace with Abortion

Copyright Soul Arcanum LLC. All rights reserved. :)
 

Dear Soul Arcanum:

Last year I had an abortion when I was about eight weeks pregnant. (I felt very drawn to the father, but we were only together for a short time.) Now I feel like I sent the most miraculous thing out of my life. I have had moments of despondency and depression over this. I still seem to have some kind of emotional disconnect about the whole thing, as if I was never really pregnant at all. I’m not against abortion totally, but I can’t help feeling I made the Biggest Mistake of my Life. I’m so disappointed in myself. This would have been my first child. Does this fact alone give me horrible karma for my future? I feel like God gave me a great responsibility and a wonderful chance by allowing this to happen, but I totally dropped the ball. How do I begin to deal with this?
– Elena

Dear Elena:

Instinctively we all know that life is a sacred gift, and that perhaps the worst thing we can do is take another’s life. I want to assure you, however, that from the perspective of Spirit, your decision is not unforgivable. As I see it, there are two key issues that are often overlooked or misunderstood when it comes to the subject of abortion, and exploring them will hopefully lead you to peace and healing.

The first issue is the obvious fact that it is reprehensible to bring a child into this world when you know you are unwilling or unable to care for that child in a responsible, loving way, or to ensure that someone else does. I once dated a man whose job was to investigate child abuse cases and remove children from abusive or neglectful homes. Though I truly believe that each one of us incarnates with certain spiritual lessons to learn, it still broke my heart to be so frequently reminded that there are many vulnerable little people in the world who are suffering from the resentment or neglect of parents who are incapable of meeting their children’s physical and emotional needs.

Second, if we accept the reality of reincarnation, we naturally view matters of “life and death” in a whole new light. This perspective is foreign to most Christians and Westerners, however, so even if one is open to the idea, our culturally driven assumptions about life and death tend to color our feelings about subjects like abortion.

If we remember that we get many opportunities to incarnate, and that any soul who “loses” such an opportunity at one point can always inhabit a different body at a later date, all sorts of controversial subjects such as abortion and euthanasia take on new dimensions.

Via my own personal experiences, my spirit communication work and my extensive spiritual studies, I have learned that whether we miscarry or choose to abort a child, it is pretty much the same to the spirit incarnating: it will simply move on and incarnate in some other form later.

As for the controversy over when life “officially” begins, we can learn a great deal from spiritual sources. For example, during my second pregnancy I was psychically awake and aware that my daughter was not in my womb – she was “outside” of me (and communicating with me telepathically), and didn’t enter her body until quickening. In fact, she began to communicate with me in the form of a disembodied spirit before she was even conceived – she was the one who informed me that it was high time I had another baby.

All the spiritual research I’ve read echoes my own experiences. For example, people who have had near death experiences generally report that the soul may enter the fetus at any time between the second trimester and the hours just following birth. Sometimes near death experiences are brought on by abortion, and in these accounts, the women report no sense of condemnation for their decision to abort; instead, they find compassion and understanding for them in Spirit.

The great mystic Edgar Cayce also believed that the soul does not enter the fetus during the first trimester of pregnancy, but may “move in” any time between the end of that period and the hours following birth. Souls may “hang around” a potential mother for some time, trying to decide if they will go through with this particular incarnation, or “getting used to the idea” while bonding with the family. This was also similar to my experience, for even after quickening when I sometimes felt my daughter was in her body in my womb, I often experienced her outside of it again, as though she could come and go as desired.

In Journey of Souls and Destiny of Souls, hypnotherapist Michael Newton, Ph.D., explores what he learned about the nature of life and death when he regressed dozens of patients to the period between their incarnations in the physical. As he explains in Destiny of Souls, he has never seen a single case in which the soul joined the fetus in the first trimester. Here’s what his research revealed about unborn babies:

“There is a universal consciousness of love surrounding all unborn babies. The creative force of existence is never separated from any form of living energy. A fetus can be alive as an individual entity without yet having an immortal soul identity. If a mother aborts her child in the first trimester, there are loving spiritual forces hovering nearby to comfort this mother and watch over the child…Souls know in advance the probabilities of the baby going to term…When a mother loses her child for whatever reason, I have found the odds are quite high that the soul of this baby will return again to the same mother with her next child. If this mother does not bear another child, the soul may return to another close member of the family because that was the original intent…”

This idea is echoed in the work of Carol Bowman, author of Children’s Past Lives and Return from Heaven: Beloved Relatives Reincarnated within your Family. For more information on Carol’s fascinating work, please visit her website, www.childpastlives.org.

So my friend, odds are good that if a soul had already chosen you to be its mother when you aborted, that same soul will return to you when you are truly ready to become a parent. I have personally performed a number of readings in which this was the case.

None of this is meant to suggest that we should be casual about abortion. Certainly it ridiculous to use abortion as a form of birth control. In my view, however, the true problem is our culture’s casual attitude toward sex. As I often tell my children, it is foolish to have sex with someone you would never want to have a child with. The spiritual lesson in the abortion experience is often one related to adopting a more conscious, sacred approach to sex.

As with all big spiritual decisions, our intentions are paramount. When I ask Spirit how to determine the “right” way to deal with an unwanted pregnancy, I hear that each woman must balance love for herself, respect for life and her Creator, and care for the unborn child. This is not the sort of decision that can be made for her by strangers; it is as personal a decision as the spiritual path she chooses to follow and her relationship with the Divine. She must therefore defer to the ultimate authority on such matters: the voice of God that whispers to her in her own heart.

I pray that you will see that in beating yourself up so, you are doing more harm to your own spirit than you did to any other spirit involved in this experience. You too are a child of God, my friend. The only being in the Universe who hasn’t already forgiven you is YOU.

– Soul Arcanum

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Meditation for Healing Mistrust

Filed Under: Emotional Well-being, Healing, Meditation by Soul Arcanum — Comments Off on Meditation for Healing Mistrust

Copyright Soul Arcanum LLC. All rights reserved. :)
 

Dear Soul Arcanum:

I would like to know if spirituality in any form can help with social anxiety. I don’t seem to be able to trust anyone, and I want to know if spiritual practices can help with this type of problem.
– Kathleen

Dear Kathleen:

First, please know that you are not alone; I frequently receive this question in various forms.

Mistrust is basically fear that we will be deceived, disappointed or betrayed. This fear is of the ego; it requires a general perspective of separation, of “I” versus “them.” Will they give to me as much as I give to them? Will they treat me as well as I treat them?

Trust is basically faith that whatever happens, everything will be fine. This faith is of the spirit. It requires a general perspective of unity, and assumes we are all in this together. Instead of competing against each other for what we want and need, we are all actors playing our own parts in this great performance called life, and it would certainly be boring if we were all perfect saints.

In my view, the ONLY practices that will truly help you heal your inability to trust others are spiritual practices, for a spiritual path will lead you from ego to spirit, from fear to faith. You will learn to look beyond surface appearances and past your temporal fears about betrayal and disappointment for the deeper meaning in your experiences, and connect with people on a higher level. When you do this, you will not only grow as a person and enjoy a sense of inner peace and security, you will also draw out the best in others. You will manifest a higher level of experience and draw a higher quality of people into your life.

It sounds like you are in the process of making a shift onto a more conscious spiritual path. Many people experience what you’re struggling with as they move from interacting with the world primarily via the third chakra (the solar plexus) to a more heart-based approach to life.

In relationships, our solar plexus sends us warnings to help us protect ourselves, our interests and our resources. When we shift our awareness up into our hearts, we are guided to love ourselves and others, to heal, nurture, and manifest emotional fulfillment. As we are making this shift, it’s natural to want to be able to trust more, and yet not know how to change our old habits.

Earth is a great spiritual school because it creates all sorts of fears about physical survival that one does not encounter in the non-physical. It is basically an exercise in learning to overcome fear in order to choose Spirit.

Further, we all carry a deep longing to recover the bliss of the non-physical, and we usually first seek that special feeling in earthly experiences and other people. This leads some people to drink, do drugs, or pursue other “highs” through extreme sports, sex, compulsive shopping, etc. Others may seek bliss by looking for someone perfect, someone they can always trust and count on – someone who won’t fail or disappoint them as their parents did.

This quest for a perfect person naturally leads to disappointment and cynicism. As we begin to build faith in something higher than our worldly experiences, we grow toward the thing we are truly longing for – a direct relationship with God. This leads us to peace with life and people – just the way they are.

When you learn how to step outside your ego and view people and experiences from the perspective of Spirit, you will rise above self-interest. Then if others are behaving in ways you have found hurtful or disappointing in the past, you won’t take it personally.

In time you may gain the ability to discern why others are behaving as they are, and what spiritual issues they are dealing with. Then you may even be able to offer them love, compassion and spiritual guidance as they struggle with their life lessons.

Further, by greeting others from a place of spirit instead of ego, you will bring out their higher natures. (By mistrusting people right off the bat, you have been doing the opposite: you’ve been expecting and therefore eliciting their worst tendencies.)

Silently communicating with people can have a PROFOUND effect on your experiences. Upon meeting or seeing someone, you might think, “The light in me greets the light in thee,” or “The love in me welcomes the love in you,” or “Namaste,” or something similar. When you do this with feeling, their soul will hear your soul even if their conscious mind remains oblivious.

Whenever you are feeling mistrustful, you can also practice this meditation:

Sit quietly and completely relax your body. Spend at least five minutes getting very deeply centered and relaxed via conscious breathing. Breathe in deeply to a count of four; hold that breath full in your belly to a count of four; exhale slowly to a count of four; pause before breathing in again to a count of four. Notice how a feeling of calm well-being washes over you, and how as you wait to take that next breath, you have a moment of worry – can you wait until the count of four? – then a feeling of relief and pleasure when you take the next inhale.

Notice how the next breath is always available to you, and observe how in knowing this, you can wait for that full count. You don’t need to worry that if you don’t breathe right now, you will suffer. You can trust and sit with your lungs empty for a few counts, for at any moment, you can always choose to breathe. It’s all up to you. The next breath is always available; well-being is always available. You just have to allow yourself to breathe it in.

Now visualize yourself as the teacher of a kindergarten class, for this will engage your higher self in dealing with others’ lower natures. Look around at all the children there. Some are from loving families, while others feel much more alone in the world. Some have been taught good manners, while others are struggling to learn how to follow the rules. As young children, each one is lovable and vulnerable in his or her own way.

You can see them struggling with problems and try to help them, but there are many things they will have to learn for themselves. Sometimes they behave badly: They may not want to share, they may throw tantrums now and then, they may even strike out at you when they’re afraid or frustrated. There are many other moments, however, when they reach out to touch you with curiosity, when they want to play with you and be your friend, when they lean against you with trust and affection.

You are at peace with all of this, for you accept that this is how children are: They can be adorable one moment and exasperating the next. You also know better than to take their behavior personally. You can see that they are all divine spirits struggling to learn their way in the world, just like you, and you know that they are doing the best they can. You also know that the more you love them and allow them to learn and grow in their own way, the more they will love and respect you, and want to do a good job for you.

Besides, your own happiness and well-being do not depend on the fleeting choices of any particular child – your well-being is as available to you as your next breath, and you choose when to breathe it in. You have learned that you can sit with disappointment or emptiness with trust that whenever you want or need to, you can breathe in the love, peace and happiness you desire.

If you trust in Spirit, you don’t have to trust other people, for you will live in full awareness that the source of your well-being is far greater than anything or anyone on Earth. I truly believe that if you ask Spirit to heal you and guide you to positive relationship experiences, your life will begin to change in wonderful ways.

– Soul Arcanum

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Empathy and the Highly Sensitive Person

Filed Under: Emotional Well-being, Intuitive Development, Psychic Ability, Psychic Protection by Soul Arcanum — Comments Off on Empathy and the Highly Sensitive Person

Copyright Soul Arcanum LLC. All rights reserved. :)
 

Dear Soul Arcanum:

I’ve been having these weird experiences that my friend calls “Sonya’s feelings.” The first time was while crossing a busy street in my hometown. As I stepped out onto the crosswalk, a feeling of dread came over me, and I saw a “vision” of something that seemed inconsequential. As the “vision” passed, I grew cold, fearful, faint and nauseous. Since then, this has happened numerous times at that same crosswalk – in fact, I can’t go that way anymore. I also have had them at home, work and in other public places. They hit me with no warning, and can sometimes leave me physically drained, faint and sick for a short period.

It’s hard to recall the details of the “vision” aside from the general feeling I have. I feel fine mentally and physically aside from these episodes, so I’d rather not see a doctor about this yet, for I’m afraid they’d put me on anti-psychotic meds or something! Have you ever encountered anything like this? I’d really appreciate any light you could shed on what’s happening to me. Thank you!
– Sonya

Dear Sonya:

What you’re experiencing is a normal symptom of high sensitivity. You’re like a lovely little insect with long antennae; whenever a breeze stirs, your antennae go up. As they’re new and a bit rough around the edges, your impressions get lumped together in a general feeling of unease. It’s how your body tells you that “something is happening.”

I recommend you read The Sensitive Person’s Survival Guide, by Kyra Mesich, Psy.D. In it, she describes how one night, she suddenly had an intense wave of depression wash over her, and the same negative thoughts about herself run through her mind over and over again. She put on a certain CD, but found it so depressing that after a while, she had to turn it off. The next day, she saw a client who told her that he had been up all night the night before, feeling suicidal and repeatedly playing that same CD on his stereo!

I share this because it illuminates how empaths may be affected by outside energies and never realize where those feelings are coming from. Had Mesich not seen that client the next day, she may never have known why she felt as she did. When she began to pay attention to her feelings and what was happening with other people in her life, she realized that she was “picking up” others’ emotions.

Psychic empathy can happen whether you are physically close to the other person or not. It can even happen with someone you haven’t seen for years if you still have a strong psychic bond to them. This can make it hard to figure out that what you’re feeling is coming from someone else.

You can also pick up the energy of thought forms and the emotions of discarnate spirits. For example, at that particular corner in your hometown, I feel you’re walking through a cloud of energy from a traumatic experience that occurred there in the past.

As for how you can deal with all of this, you basically have two options. First, you can “close down” your sensitivity in some way. This is not what I would recommend, however, because it’s like chopping your psychic antennae off: it’s a step backward in terms of spiritual evolution. You’re sensitive for a reason, and there are lots of blessings in being just the way you are, so it’s best to learn how to work WITH your true nature. I thus recommend your other option, which is conscious psychic development. That way you can determine what these feelings mean.

When psychics get hit with a wave of feeling, we stop and ask what it is about. In response to that asking, we may have a person come to mind and then get a feeling about that person. For example, the other morning a wave of emotion came over me. (Note that term “came over me”: it reflects our instinctive understanding that this energy is moving in from somewhere outside of us.) I stopped and asked where it was coming from, and then I just knew that I was picking it up from my husband. He was at his last day of work, for he was retiring that afternoon after 26 years in the fire service. When I met up with him later, he told me that the reality of retiring had hit him that morning, and he’d gotten very emotional.

Once I knew where this feeling was coming from, I could consciously detach from it if I wanted to. Sometimes, however, I actually like being empathetic with my loved ones. I like knowing how my husband or my child really feels by experiencing what they are feeling WITH them. It creates a great sense of intimacy and understanding.

Of course, I don’t want to be at the mercy of everyone’s feelings all the time. Years ago, I often got swept up in others’ emotions and felt overwhelmed like you do. Then I learned how to consciously control my own psychic barriers.

To do this, first you have to stop and separate your awareness from what you’re feeling, then ask your inner knowing and/or Spirit where this is coming from. Sometimes, it may be from within you. For example, grieving is a long process, and we may think we’re just fine when something unconsciously triggers a memory of the loved one we have “lost,” and another wave of grief rises up to be healed and released.

Once we have determined that some feeling is NOT our own, it’s much easier to detach from it so we can study it objectively. Some psychics never learn how to do this; perhaps that is the only way they can work. These are the sort of psychics who actually feel in their own bodies what the spirits or people they are connecting with felt. They say things like, “I have a man coming through from Spirit, and I’m feeling a lot of pain in my chest…”

This is not the most comfortable way to move through the world! I much prefer to observe such things mentally as opposed to emotionally or physically. I think it also allows us to access higher guidance and more useful information, because it’s hard to maintain a very high, clear vibration if we’re caught up in emotions like fear, pain or sorrow.

Once you’ve separated from the feeling, ask Spirit what it’s about. Getting clear answers will require general psychic development, so you might take a psychic development course, read books on the subject, begin to meditate regularly, etc. I’m limited in space here, so you’ll have to explore your options for psychic development elsewhere.

You seem to be highly kinesthetic with a primary psychic modality of clairsentience. This means that you FEEL things with your body and all of your being. Your secondary modality seems to be clairvoyance. This is apparent from your question, where you talk about first having feelings, then visions. You also use the word “feel” throughout your description of your experiences.

Clairsentience is generally the hardest modality to master, because it can be so hard to put words to feelings. You can work with your gift for clairvoyance and translate those feelings into images, which can then be interpreted. I also recommend you work on developing clairaudience, because it will really help you put words and thus meaning to your impressions.

Your psychic training should also include the ability to turn your antennae off if you want to. I have an agreement with Spirit that unless I need to know something for some reason, I won’t go on alert with every little ripple in the psychic atmosphere.

For example, I never dream about airplane crashes or global catastrophes. I also don’t pick up on problems with people I’m close to unless I need to know for some reason. While I can always ask and receive answers, it would be hard to function if I was psychically “on” all the time.

May you refine your natural abilities into a great psychic gift!

– Soul Arcanum

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For Teens Who are Self-Destructive

Filed Under: Emotional Well-being, Healing by Soul Arcanum — Comments Off on For Teens Who are Self-Destructive

Copyright Soul Arcanum LLC. All rights reserved. :)
 

Dear Soul Arcanum:

I’ve always been respectful, responsible and a good student. When I met my current boyfriend, however, I started to change. Since we got together eight months ago, I’ve started hanging out with a new crowd, and my old friends say I’m a different person. My boyfriend gets very jealous if I even talk to another guy, and about once a month, he drives me to the point where I can’t think about anything but the fact that he’s mad at me. I then get very depressed until I go to extremes to make up. When this happens, it seems like everything around us just falls apart. We can’t see living without each other, though sometimes we threaten to stop seeing each other just to see if the other one cares enough to do something about it. My life is falling apart. I can’t see my father anymore because he’s a drug addict, I don’t get along with my mom, and my grades are horrible. My boyfriend is the only one who encourages me, though sometimes he digs me into deeper messes. I have a bit of a weight problem, and I have stopped eating in the past just to make people see that I was depressed in hopes someone would help me. What do you think I should do?
– Breanna

Dear Breanna:

I hear your cry for help, and I’m answering it for you and folks of all ages who are in the delicate transition between spiritual childhood and adulthood. I want you to know that even when the people you’re “supposed” to be able to count on let you down, there is always help available to you in Spirit.

Throughout our lives we are surrounded by human beings who are fallible and often caught up in their own life lessons. When we’re vulnerable children, hopefully someone is paying enough attention to see that our needs are met. As we grow up, however, instead of waiting for someone to hear our various cries for help, we have to learn how to take care of ourselves, for we’re the only ones who really can.

It’s time for you to depend on someone more reliable than your parents, peers and boyfriend, and that “someone” is your own higher self and the wisdom and support of Spirit. Fortunately, you’re young and at a very powerful, pivotal junction in your life. If you can move into a conscious relationship with Spirit now, you may skid right past all the dysfunctional things adults do as they struggle to cope with life’s many challenges.

You see, most adults develop the habit of deadening their feelings in response to life’s blows, and this causes them to lose conscious awareness of their inner guidance system. When we repress our desires, erect rigid self-defense mechanisms, and adopt self-destructive habits and false beliefs in order to avoid pain and disappointment, we also disconnect our inner compass. Thus, the earlier we begin to consciously work with Spirit, the easier it tends to be.

Regardless of our chronological age, at some point we are all led to begin building our own spiritual foundation. When we’re little, our parents are essentially our “gods.” They anticipate and fulfill our needs; they seem to be omniscient and infallible; we feel safe and secure with them. As we grow up, however, we realize how very human they are, and this leaves us feeling bereft and unsettled. We then flail about in search of a “new” god.

As our modern world has forsaken religion/spirituality in favor of other pursuits, and turned the quest for God into the quest for a soul mate, it’s only natural for young people like you to shift your allegiance from your parental “gods” to a boyfriend or girlfriend. (Older “kids” can insert the terms lover, partner or spouse here.) When we put a human being in the place of God in our lives, we are definitely in for a rocky ride. What you really need is a direct, conscious relationship with Spirit and your own inner guidance system, which is designed to keep you safe and lead you to fulfillment.

Your inner compass knows when what you’re about to do isn’t really good for you, and it tries to tell you this via your feelings. If you’re thinking about doing something that isn’t going to work out well for you, you may feel a jarring “pang” of hesitation. Then your mind will usually kick in and try to convince you to go ahead and do what you were planning on doing. This may happen so fast that you are never even aware that you had that feeling in the first place.

It’s important to learn how to watch for those feelings and then stop and explore what’s behind them, for at those moments, higher spiritual intelligence is trying to get our attention in order to lead us to what is best for us. Every time we act against that inner knowing, we end up experiencing pain of some kind; when we make a habit of working with it, life gets better and better.

This inner guidance is not some cosmic parent telling you what you “should” do. It’s your own higher self and/or spirit guides trying to steer you toward the decisions that will leave you happy, healthy, and on your way to fulfilling your dreams. Your spirit guides are working with and for YOU, and only want to help you get what you really need and want in life.

One big challenge for young people is that they don’t yet know what they want – and if they don’t know what they want, how can their inner guidance lead them to it? The answer is by finding out what they DON’T want. We all spend a lot of time in our early experiences – our first jobs, romantic relationships, friendships, etc. – having experiences we find undesirable, and these lead us to define more clearly what we DO want.

When you’re not sure what you want at some point, it’s wise to simply identify how you want to FEEL, and love yourself enough to take action in order have that experience. For example, if your boyfriend often leaves you feeling unappreciated when you want to feel cherished, you must be willing to take action (perhaps by leaving that relationship) in order to manifest a more fulfilling situation.

Also, develop the habit of asking Spirit to show you how certain decisions will most likely unfold. If you do this, sometimes you’ll get psychic impressions, and other times, you’ll just use foresight and common sense to make good decisions. Our ability to look ahead like this generally determines how smooth or bumpy our journey through life will be.

So as you contemplate a certain decision or action, ask Spirit to show you what will happen if you do it, and then simply see what pops into your head. You may see a mental “video” of the future, or you may hear words like “trouble” or “danger” or “do it” in your mind, or you may have a feeling in your gut like queasiness, anxiety, or a warm glow.

If what you perceive is attractive, then go for it. Obviously, if what you perceive in the future is not what you really want and you move forward anyway, you’re just asking for trouble.

At some point we must all grow up and find our own way. If you’ve always counted on other people to save you, help you or guide you, this transition may feel very unsettling, but it’s the only truly secure path. It’s like the difference between having a good job and being self-employed. Most people are afraid to strike off on their own because they have more faith in their employer than they do in themselves! We would all be wise to rely on ourselves and Spirit more than anyone or anything else in the Universe, and to trust our own inner knowing above all, for when we consciously work with our own inner guidance system, it steers us to whatever we need in all areas of our lives.

– Soul Arcanum

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Is this the year we MUST wake up spiritually or else?

Filed Under: Emotional Well-being, Energy/Vibration, Healing, Spiritual Growth by Soul Arcanum — Comments Off on Is this the year we MUST wake up spiritually or else?

Copyright Soul Arcanum LLC. All rights reserved. :)
 

Dear Soul Arcanum:

I value your opinions greatly! Everything you have written resonates with me completely. I work at a friend’s spiritual shop, and recently, I asked her about something I have been noticing. Some people around me are receiving wake-up calls now, and I’m not sure they’re listening. My sister may have cancer, and my ex-husband (the father of my son) was just told he has RSD (curling of the hand) for life. He’ll have to have surgery every seven years. A lost friend of mine was told she has a rare blood disorder that may cause organ failure, and another friend’s husband has a rare blood disorder that needs to be checked weekly. My question is why is this happening to these folks, and all around the same time? My friend said it seems these people are not awake, and that this is “the year” that will make or break ALL OF US. Those who are awake and facing their issues head-on will continue on in their spiritual evolution, while those who are not awake or not facing their personal issues will have things happen that force them to wake up. Have you heard about this year being “the” year? If so, what are your thoughts about this happening? How can I best teach and guide my son in light of all of this? He’s only five years old now; is this something I need to start soon? Thank you!
– Maggie

Dear Maggie:

Yes! I have heard that this is “the” year that we must either wake up and get it right spiritually or suffer various horrible consequences. Of course, I’ve heard this same thing EVERY year for as long as I can remember. Supposedly, the world is also going to end any minute now; we’re way overdue.

I’m kidding with you, of course. I’m actually really glad you asked about this, because if we don’t stop all those “spiritual people” spreading fear far and wide with their gloomy predictions of earth changes and other scary stuff soon, the planet is going to implode. Okay, I’m kidding again. I can’t seem to help myself!

All joking aside, when we first start to awaken into the upper range of spiritual awareness for this dimension, life on Earth begins to feel a bit uncomfortable. We used to be like most people – oblivious to how our choices and actions create not only our own realities, but also affect the Whole. Now, however, we not only “get it,” but must deal with the double-edged sword of compassion. As we become more sensitive to others’ feelings, we begin to feel their pain. It’s this compassion that motivates “spiritual people” to become helpers and healers, or to just try to make a difference.

I feel this is basically where you’re coming from. You’ve attained a new level of spiritual awareness, and are seeing a lot of contrast in everyone who hasn’t yet joined you. You’re sensitive to others’ suffering, and very much wish for them all the good things you now know come with being “awake.” In caring more than ever before, you’ve opened a whole new can of worms, and along with the blessings, there are some big fears in there.

As we have the power to consciously manifest what we want in our lives, all these health problems must stem at some level from a lack of conscious awareness – that is true. The more we try to avoid dealing with our own personal lessons and issues, the more pain we tend to experience. I’d like to suggest, however, that you’ve gotten into the habit of looking for potential disaster around every corner; if there is a health problem anywhere in the vicinity, you will be sure to hone in on it.

I recommend you examine your habit of focus. While the problems of those closest to us will naturally come into our awareness, if they touch off some deep fears of our own, we may start watching out for more of the same. This is when “lost friends” and the husbands of friends, and friends of friends of friends – anyone with any possible health issue – will leap up and grab our attention.

This is what I feel happened here. Fear gripped you when you got the news about your sister. It really socked you in the gut when your ex-husband then came down with this rare disorder. This made your own vibration plummet, which made you vulnerable to the fears of mass consciousness, the greatest of which is that the world is somehow going to end. This is how you went from concern about the people you’re close to, to fear of Armageddon.

As you ran around in a panic, trying to figure out if the sky really was falling this time, your mind scrambled to make sense of all of this by comparing these two individuals. At some level, you believed that if you could figure out what else these two have in common, you could determine what “causes” this sort of thing. Then at the very least, you could make sure you and your son would be okay. When you saw that neither of these two people are what you consider spiritually “awake,” you deduced this as the cause.

What I’m trying to do is illuminate how for all of us, allowing little fears to run wild can lead to general, pervasive anxiety. When something scares us, powerful primal instincts put us on alert for more signs of danger – and what we look for, we tend to find.

Since we’re all creating our own experiences of life based on our habit of focus, instead of looking for unawake people with health problems, I recommend you start looking for all the wellness in your world. If you just look for it, you will see wellness EVERYWHERE. For every one person you know who has an extraordinary health problem, you know hundreds who sail through every day without a second thought about their physical well-being, and most of those people are not what you would consider to be “awake.”

Also, when you encounter someone who basically says the sky is falling, beware. You don’t want to get caught up in the powerful fears of mass consciousness, nor do you want to contribute to them. Whenever you feel tempted, just remember that throughout recorded history, nothing like this has ever happened despite innumerable prophecies of doom and gloom.

This may sound radical coming from me, but I don’t think fear itself is a bad thing. The Universe would be a big blank nothing if not for the opposing forces of light and darkness, good and evil, creation and destruction, faith and fear. We should no more strive to eradicate all fear than to change nighttime into day.

To be happy, instead of trying to avoid or conquer anything, we must try to make peace with all we encounter. We can, however, choose to sleep at night and live our lives in the sunshine, where it’s warm and easy to find our way around. We can choose faith over fear, and contribute to that which we personally find to be right and true at a spiritual level. This is both the best way to be a positive role model for your son, and to also manifest a life of peace, joy and well-being. As you continue to evolve, you’ll naturally grow more and more into a deep inner knowing that there is a natural divine order at work in the Universe, and that in the big scheme of things, all is well.

I expect that for the rest of my life, I will continue to hear that this is the year we will either “wake up” or suffer catastrophic consequences. I don’t believe it, because it isn’t supported by anything I’ve learned or experienced in life. Instead, I believe the more we’re centered in faith, the more we dwell in knowing that all is truly well.

Those who are asleep will continue to lose themselves in both lovely and frightening illusions – in the great dramas of life – while those who are awake will learn to relax more and more with trust that everything is going to be just fine. I figure since there is no true end to our spiritual journeys, and thus no need to rush, we might as well quit worrying and try to enjoy the ride.

– Soul Arcanum

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When You Can’t Live Without Him/Her

Filed Under: Emotional Well-being, Healing, Relationships, Spiritual Growth by Soul Arcanum — Comments Off on When You Can’t Live Without Him/Her

Copyright Soul Arcanum LLC. All rights reserved. :)
 

Dear Soul Arcanum:

I have searched long and hard for a true blue psychic, and something just led me to you. I love a man whose name is Jimmy. We broke up last March over a misunderstanding, and it has been an extreme emotional roller coaster ride ever since that day. Since our breakup, I have sent kind, loving correspondence to him to let him know how I feel. I even remembered him on Christmas and sent him a gift and a card. Life has truly been a struggle. I know that one should not just wait around for love, but having someone special is extremely important to me at this time in my life. I can’t imagine life without this man, for I have always felt that he was the one for me with all of my heart. I know that he has issues when it comes to showing and expressing his emotions, but it never hindered me from pursuing him the past seven years. I do not push him in any way; I give him space to follow his heart in his own time. I have even prayed that God would take my life now and allow me to come home, because I really do not want my life to go on without this man. This is how much I truly love him. Last night I even prayed to God many times to allow this to happen if Jimmy was not going to come back to me. He may be a self-centered pig at times, but this does not diminish my love for him, because I have seen a beautiful side of him that not many people get to see. Will Jimmy come back and give this relationship another whirl, a real try he truly puts his heart into? I would really love to hear from you. Thank you for your time.
– Diane

Dear Diane:

My sweet girl, I wish I could whisk you off to a beach in Mexico for a year or so. By the end of that time, you’d be so over Jimmy. You’d be happily engaged in a whole new life, with a whole new sense of hope and possibility.

First, no person is so fantastic that life is not worth living without them. Barring extreme physical pain due to terminal illness or something like that, thoughts of suicide are always very short-sighted. When I read for people who don’t see life as worth living, Spirit often suggests they watch the movie “Joe Versus the Volcano.”

In that film, Tom Hanks’ character is a hypochondriac who learns that he is dying. He accepts the offer of a millionaire, which entails becoming a human sacrifice by throwing himself into a volcano. He has to travel halfway around the world to get to this volcano, and en route, he awakens spiritually and discovers that his life is indeed worth living. We watch him blossom from a miserable, anxiety-ridden man clinging to a bleak existence, into a bright, joyful free spirit. Only when he faces his own mortality for real does he begin to fully open to everything that is beautiful in life that he has been missing.

I encourage you to rent this movie and let it speak to your heart and soul.

Now you have to realize that what you describe as love is not really love, but rather obsession. When we’re caught up in romantic obsession like this it’s very hard to see it, so I understand if you are vehemently shaking your head and saying that I don’t understand. I know, because I’ve been where you are. I believed it was really love too, and wound up wanting to die, just like you.

My own obsession was named Dan, and my entire purpose for living was for him to love me back. When we make someone the center of our universe like this, we make them our God. As no mortal can fill those shoes, we are setting ourselves up for a lot of disappointment and heartache when we do this.

It’s not that we’re fundamentally pathetic. In fact, most people who fall into this pattern have very deep spiritual natures but a lack of spiritual teaching and direct experience of divine grace. We’ve been raised to make romance EVERYTHING. Our modern holy grail is a “soul mate.” We’ve been duped into believing that romantic love is the highest thing we can hope for. When romance then leaves us in a miserable heap on the floor, it’s no wonder we decide that life is just not worth living.

The energy underlying obsession is a very powerful force. The more you tell yourself you don’t want to live without Jimmy, the more energy you send to this force, and the harder it is to break free of it. You feel incomplete without Jimmy because you’ve literally given away your heart and soul to him.

Here’s another lesson we all have to learn eventually: Deciding that we don’t want to live without someone is actually a good way to send them fleeing. It’s a pretty heavy trip to put on someone’s shoulders. Most people feel suffocated by this sort of emotional dependency.

Making someone else responsible for our will to live is never a healthy or attractive thing to do. It leaves us clingy, vulnerable, grasping and draining. We won’t find true fulfillment in love until our own hearts and spirits are whole, until we see ourselves as complete expressions of divine beauty.

I’ve seen this sort of relationship dynamic many times, and always the person who is made God is far from deserving of that honor. I could see putting someone on a pedestal if they really were Christ-like, for then it may actually be true that we may never meet another person like them. Usually, however, the thing that is most special about the people we cling to is their indifference to our feelings. At some level we believe that if we can get this cold-hearted, self-absorbed “cool” person to return our devotion, then we will have proven to ourselves that we really are lovable.

These romantic obsessions represent someone from our past – usually the parent it was hardest to win attention, love and approval from. They can also be people we loved in past lives who rejected us. By being unmovable and indifferent, they offer us another chance to prove ourselves worthy of their attention, affection and respect. Through these relationships, we try to go back and heal some of the holes in our hearts from earlier experiences.

Our true goal is not to gain their love, however, but to learn to love ourselves enough to leave this tortuous experience behind. We may think we adore a lover more than life itself, but we can only truly love another to the degree we love ourselves. When we want to die for the lack of one individual’s returned affection, we aren’t loving anyone involved; we’re just desperately trying to find someone or something to fill the empty place inside of us.

I wish I could spirit you away to that beach in Mexico, but you don’t really need me to anyway. You don’t need anyone outside of yourself to save you or make your life worth living, because it’s already worth living, Diane.

I recommend you either find a higher calling to devote yourself to, or take off on a big adventure. If you already feel like dying, what have you got to lose? You’re here – you might as well do something important or interesting. The more you devote yourself to this higher purpose or lose yourself in this new adventure, the better you will feel.

Give the best of yourself to someone or something new, and after a while, you will realize that you feel better about yourself and about life. Your energy will detach more and more from this obsessive vortex as you put your heart and soul into relationships and undertakings that actually return your energy. This will lead you not only to new peace and happiness, but to more fulfilling experiences in love too.

There are no shortcuts to true and lasting happiness. You have to stop being a slave to romance and reach for something truer and more lasting: a sense of your own divinity, a personal relationship to Spirit/ the Universe/ All That Is, a reverent appreciation of life’s endless blessings and joys.

– Soul Arcanum

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How Does Psychic Information Help Us Create Change?

Filed Under: Divine Guidance, Emotional Well-being, Past Lives, Psychic Ability, Psychic Readings, Reincarnation, Spiritual Growth by Soul Arcanum — Comments Off on How Does Psychic Information Help Us Create Change?

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Dear Soul Arcanum:

A little over a year ago, I fell down some stairs and hit the top of my neck. It’s been a long path to healing, but when I realized that I could consciously relax this area, the level of chronic pain became much more bearable. What hasn’t really helped was the information given to me by a healer who said that the reason I hurt my neck was because in a past life I was tortured and killed by a “dark energy cult” who did something gruesome to my neck. It’s not like I find this unbelievable or even particularly frightening; I just don’t know what I’m supposed to do with it. I’ve experienced plenty of things in this life to explain why I remain inert in the face of approaching danger or why I walk carelessly down a wet spiral staircase. To what extent are we defined by our past lives? I find it difficult to imagine why I would recreate a shadow experience of something terrible. Are we even supposed to know what happened in past lives? I ask this because I have never found self-awareness to be a major impetus for behavioral/physical change.
– Karla

Dear Karla:

I think this question is really about the power of conscious awareness. Whether the experiences affecting us at a subconscious level stem from our past in this life or another life, if we are unaware of why we are doing what we are doing, then those experiences are controlling our behavior. When we become conscious of why we do what we do, then we gain the power to make a conscious choice to do something else.

Here’s a simple, classic example that is sadly all too common: Let’s say that when Sandy was little, she was molested by her father. She may have a vague recollection of this, or have totally repressed her memories of it. It doesn’t really matter, so long as she is not conscious of how those early experiences are affecting her today.

Fast forward twenty or thirty years, and now Sandy has a hard time getting close to men. As soon as a man begins to get too close, she finds fault with him or starts acting “crazy” and pushing him away.

She may come to me for a reading, asking, “Why can’t I find the right guy?” Or, if she has some self-awareness, she might ask, “Why do I sabotage these relationships? Why do I always treat the nicest guys like dirt?”

Well, Sandy learned at an early age that it is the men you should be able to trust the most – the ones who are supposed to protect you and take care of you – that you have to watch out for. When a man says he loves you, beware. Thus as soon as a guy seems to care too much, she feels panicked and starts to flail around to get out of the relationship.

If she can get conscious about why she is doing what she is doing, then she can work through the irrational, self-defeating aspects of her belief system, and choose a more empowering and fulfilling approach to relationships.

I know this works myself. When I was a teenager, like many girls that age, all I wanted was to be pretty and popular. I put a lot of effort into being skinny, attractive, etc. Then I was stalked and raped by a man who saw me as so “desirable” that he had to have me for himself.

In the wake of that experience, I blamed myself. I said things to myself like, “Well, you wanted to be irresistible! That’s what you get!” I then started gaining weight and wearing huge clothes. I stopped wearing makeup. I stopped getting a lot of male attention. I wasn’t happy being out of shape and unattractive, but I felt safer.

I woke up one day and realized WHY I was overeating, not exercising, and dressing in baggy clothes. I then decided to “empower” myself by getting very strong and fit. I started eating right, lifting weights, running, and training in karate. I became obsessed with being fit and strong.

To this day, I still work out a lot. There are some healthy, positive reasons for this, but there is also a bit of that desire to be able to protect myself too. Maybe that’s unhealthy, or maybe it’s just wise given the nature of the world. I do know that becoming conscious of why I was doing what I was doing freed me to find the healthiest way to deal with it. I’m happy feeling strong and fit. I feel empowered.

Our past lives often do continue to affect us. The more intense/traumatic an experience in our past was, the greater its potential power over us will be. Since we don’t usually remember our past life experiences, they tend to influence us in unconscious ways.

When a big past life trauma is swept under the rug of our conscious awareness, it forms a lump in our lives that we can’t really see. We then trip over that lump again and again until we make a connection between walking in that area and getting hurt. Then we may be able to walk around it to avoid it, but of course, the hazard is still there. If we aren’t “paying attention,” we could trip over it again. If we consciously address that lump – if we lift up the rug and drag it out into the light and clean it out of there, we won’t have that vulnerability anymore.

Just because something happened in a past life, however, that doesn’t mean that we’re doomed to experience it again. While I won’t comment on the accuracy of the unusual reading you received, I find it rather strange to be seeking the reason for an accident in a past life in the first place. Accidents happen; they don’t always have some deep or higher meaning. We can have an accident if we simply fail to consciously manifest well-being. If we’re not grounded, not paying attention, not fully in our bodies, then accidents happen, and we’re snapped back to reality. If we keep finding ourselves in the same sort of pattern of experience, however, then it may be helpful to seek the metaphysical reasons why.

You asked if we’re even supposed to know about past life experiences. I found that a most interesting question. Why indeed would we generally not remember them unless there was a good reason?

I asked Spirit, and it was explained to me that we gain access to power and information as we become ready for it. Thus the more evolved we are spiritually, the more spiritual abilities we’ll gain, and the more awareness we’ll have of things like our past lives, the deeper meaning behind our experiences, etc. Spiritual evolution is a journey of ever expanding conscious awareness. We can trust that if we are made aware of something, it is natural and right for us now.

I feel that this fall sparked a big surge forward spiritually for you. Often accidents release a surge in kundalini. If you look back, you will see how this fall launched you into a period of deep spiritual questioning. That may not have been its “purpose,” but it was the result. Take it for what it is, and make the most of it. Instead of looking back and asking “Why?” look forward and ask, “Where do I want to go from here?”

We are not doomed to repeat past life experiences. In fact, the whole point of accessing past life information is to become more aware of any unconscious programs that are driving self-defeating habits so we can create what we want instead. Regardless of what happened in the past, we have the power to choose what we will create in our lives now.

We’ve all had hard times and dark experiences in this and in other lives. Becoming conscious of the deep fears we carry as a result of these experiences can empower us to release them. As all great spiritual teachers have taught, the path to realization is one of self-awareness. The more we know ourselves, the more empowered we are to consciously work with natural spiritual law.

– Soul Arcanum

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