Tag Archive: happiness


Shifting into a Higher Level of Fulfillment in Love

Filed Under: Emotional Well-being, Karma, Law of Attraction, Manifesting, Relationships by Soul Arcanum — Comments Off on Shifting into a Higher Level of Fulfillment in Love

Copyright Soul Arcanum LLC. All rights reserved. :)
Dear Soul Arcanum:

My name is Anne. Glenn is a man that I have been involved with on and off for the last two and a half years. Our relationship has been very stormy and painful for me. When I learned that I had breast cancer in March of 2006, he suddenly moved away. Basically he was running away from my pain. I went through treatment and am now fine. In February he called me and we talked for the first time in almost a year. In March, he came out for business and we saw each other. We ended up being intimate, which kicked up my attachment again. Our relationship revolved around sex. I wanted a lot more and I felt emotionally starved, yet I couldn’t walk away. I was in denial of the truth – that he wanted me on his own terms, and he couldn’t get too close. I always feel that I somehow want to make it right between us, but I don’t even know what that means. I don’t know how to let go. He has such a strong hold on my heart. He is a great artist and has a powerful shamanic side. I am so attracted to that part of him and the sexual connection is so powerful that I find it wrenching to end all contact, yet I feel that’s the only way to move on and hopefully find a true soul mate. Do you have any advice for me on this painful situation? Many blessings to you! – Anne

Dear Anne:

I chose your question because your struggle is such a common one. I frequently hear from women who are suffering from unrequited love, who can’t seem to get over a certain relationship, or who feel miserably, karmically bound to someone and can’t break free no matter what they do. It can happen to a man, but it’s not nearly as common.

There is a very powerful biological reason that women and men generally approach sex and romantic commitment very differently. It’s not just because they were raised in cultures that taught them to be different – those cultural norms arose from biological realities. The fact is that women have far more at stake in sexual relations than men do: if they get pregnant, they take on the greatest challenge and responsibility I can imagine – that of caring for a new life.

This may also be why women’s bodies respond differently to the sex act than men’s do. Whether a woman is in love with her partner or has just met him at a bar, during orgasm, hormones will flood her body that make her feel like she is falling in love. This doesn’t happen with men, so when it comes to having sex, women have far more at stake on all levels: physical, emotional, mental and spiritual. It is thus wise for women to wait until they know a man well and have established that they want the same things in a relationship before getting physically intimate.

On a metaphysical level, our auras reflect what is happening in our bodies. Just as having sex with someone will cause a flood of physical changes, we create energetic ties to that person in our auras. The more we feed those cords of connection through further contact and thinking of that person with love, longing, or other strong emotions, the stronger those cords get.

When women experience a surge of hormones that makes them feel like they’re falling in love after sex, they begin to feed those cords mental and emotional energy, which in turn causes another flood of those hormones, for what we experience in our minds affects our bodies. This creates a cyclic loop that can lead to a state of obsession. Because the hormones involved are so pleasurable, it’s like being addicted to something like cocaine. Since men generally aren’t experiencing anything like this, it’s easier for them to break things off or move on.

On a spiritual level, many people find lovers who are somewhat hard to get extra appealing, and most of the time, it’s because they have some self-esteem issues they are in the process of working out. Part of developing self-love and wisdom involves recognizing that just because someone doesn’t seem to want us as much as we want them, that doesn’t mean that they are better than we are. These sorts of relationship experiences generally lead us through some deep pain, but on the other side, we end up affirming our worthiness of something better.

Whenever someone continues to go back for more from a relationship where their partner repeatedly fails to consider their needs, betrays them, abandons them in a time of need, or makes them feel they’re not important to them, you can be sure there are self-esteem issues involved.

Often when we are in relationship to someone who has better self-esteem than we do – someone who allows himself to want what he wants and live as he chooses – we are attracted not so much to who he is as a person, but to his self-esteem. We want to feel good enough about ourselves to honor our true needs and desires as he does.

We’re also strongly attracted to people who are living dreams we want to live ourselves. It sounds to me like you would like to be an artist and a shaman, and would like to feel less needy in relationships, just like Glenn. THOSE are the things you’re really in lust with, my friend!

These sorts of relationships don’t come into our lives to fulfill our desire for a perfect partner, but to help us realize our own potential. This happens in an organic way because we are naturally attracted to people who embody what we are longing to become or are in the process of working on.

My advice is to let go of needing this to be more than it wants to be, and take the best of what it has to offer you. In this case, I feel that means allowing this relationship to illuminate your own needs and desires, and how you might begin to honor those better. It will really help if you replace all the exciting feelings you have about Glenn with other things that turn you on, so get involved in your own art, in exploring shamanism, or some other personal passion.

If you want a partner who is passionately into you, let yourself have that instead of trying to be happy with a man who doesn’t want what you want and isn’t willing to compromise on his desires. Once you’ve learned whatever this relationship has to teach you, you will have awakened new potential in this area of your life, and will naturally attract a relationship experience that is better suited to you. You may then begin to work on some other life lesson, and be able to enjoy a healthy, loving relationship with a man while you do so.

Basically, once you love YOURSELF the way you want to be loved, you will attract a partner who loves and honors your true desires and feelings similarly. Just focus on how you want to feel about yourself and your love life, and allow whoever is the best match to your desires to flow into your life and your heart.

I do understand your desire to make things right. I always want everyone to be happy and at peace with me too, but we can’t control how other people feel. All we can do is be lovingly honest about how we feel and what we need to do to take good care of ourselves, while at the same time making it clear that we honor the other person’s need to do the same. Even if others don’t share our feelings or our preferences for the way things turn out, we’ll be at peace, for we’ll know we’ve done all we could do given the divine truth we found in our own hearts.

– Soul Arcanum

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What is Hypnotherapy, and How Does it Work?

Filed Under: Emotional Well-being, Healing, Hypnotherapy by Soul Arcanum — Comments Off on What is Hypnotherapy, and How Does it Work?

Copyright Soul Arcanum LLC. All rights reserved. :)
 

Dear Soul Arcanum:

I’ve noted that you’re a big fan of hypnotherapy, and I’m thinking about trying it for help with losing weight. Before I do, can you please explain why you believe in it, what you recommend it for, and how it works?
– Sue

Dear Sue:

Hypnotherapy is basically guided creative visualization from a relaxed, high vibration, which is very powerful. Since we create our own realities, I believe that hypnosis can help us achieve any type of goal.

While many people know that hypnotherapy can be used for things like losing weight and quitting smoking, few know its power to heal physical ailments like IBS and TMSoul Arcanum In fact, in many cases, hypnotherapy is either the most effective treatment or the only truly effective treatment for chronic physical and psychological conditions.

This is true for a couple of reasons. First, the body and mind are not separate, but aspects of our whole being. What we think and feel definitely affects our bodies. In some ways, this is obvious. For example, when we feel afraid, our bodies respond by producing adrenaline. Everything we think and feel affects our bodies to some degree, however, so whenever we move into healthier territory in our hearts and minds, our bodies naturally follow.

As I mentioned above, I also believe that hypnotherapy is effective with every sort of goal or problem because it guides us in actively visualizing what we want to create from a high vibration, which is a very powerful way to manifest whatever we desire.

One scientific study after another has demonstrated hypnotherapy’s effectiveness. For example, it has been proven effective in managing pain during and after medical procedures, and in reducing pain and anxiety in dental patients. It is also very effective in managing pain from things like arthritis, migraines and even childbirth.

This is not just a temporary relief of symptoms, either. For example, research involving cancer patients has shown that those treated with hypnotherapy not only experience less pain and nausea during treatment, but they have a much higher long-term survival rate than those who don’t receive hypnotherapy.

Many studies support hypnotherapy as the most effective treatment for stubborn chronic ailments like IBS, TMJ and psoriasis. It’s also highly effective for psychological problems like panic attacks, obsessive-compulsive disorder, sleep disorders, eating disorders, social anxiety and phobias.

As for how it works, here’s a common metaphor: Imagine that your mind is a computer. Your conscious mind is composed of all the programs that you have purposefully opened so you could work with them, while your subconscious mind is composed of all the programs running in the background that you can’t see and probably don’t even realize exist. Once in a while, of course, something pops up and lets you know that it has just done a scan or an update. Otherwise, these processes remain in the background, silently doing their thing. Most experts estimate that when it comes to our minds, only about 10% of the processes running are conscious in nature, and the other 90% are happening on an unconscious level.

Now let’s say that you decide you want to lose weight – you want to run a weight loss program. In the background, however, is a program that is working counter to this. Perhaps when you were younger, you learned to equate eating certain foods with being happy. Since being happier is your ultimate reason for wanting to lose weight, you now have two programs running at odds with each other.

When you have conflicting programs running between your conscious and unconscious minds, you will feel like you are of “two minds” – like part of you wants to achieve your new goal, but part of you is resistant to this idea. As a result, you may push yourself very hard and lose weight for a while, but eventually the effort it requires to stay ahead of the other program will exhaust you. Whenever you aren’t consciously working in that weight loss program, the other program will gain ground.

Hypnotherapy can help in that it can identify any programs running in the background that may be counter to your higher goals and help you to rewrite those programs so that they are in harmony with your true aims. If you go into that subconscious program and rewrite it so that being slim and fit = happiness, it will be easy for you to lose weight.

Human beings also tend to repress intense negative feelings in order to avoid the pain of emotional suffering. These feelings never go away, however; instead, they are stored in the subconscious. As the body is governed by the subconscious mind, these stored energies can affect not only our mental and emotional health, but also our physical health.

As nature must return to balance, it is only natural for repression to create tension, which means that whatever has been repressed will come up again and again to be released. If we try to avoid or keep a lid on these energies, they will push out any way they can. This is when we end up with neurotic, self-destructive habits or chronic ailments. In order to truly resolve these energies and issues, our subconscious minds will lead us into circumstances that will evoke those same feelings time and time again.

This brings us to age regression and past life regression. With age regression we can explore all sorts of limiting beliefs and subconscious programs that we may have picked up in early childhood. Young children are like blank slates in terms of programming, and we all have beliefs we absorbed as children that may work against our happiness and fulfillment as adults.

Most of our ideas about what constitutes being a “good” person were determined very early on. In fact, psychologists tell us that our basic personalities are pretty much set by the time we’re six years old. If we were chubby and adorable as preschoolers and got lots of love and attention because of it, we may unconsciously correlate our cute pudginess with our sense of self-worth.

The same holds true for beliefs, phobias, vows and intense or traumatic experiences from past lives. These may be general, such as a desire to hold onto extra weight if we starved to death in a past life, or they may be specific, such as a love of bread if we made a living as a baker in a particularly happy incarnation.

Some may think that re-experiencing traumatic events from the past could make things worse, but there is great power in 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 we are not in conscious control of our actions. By contrast, when we become aware of why we tend to feel and act the way we do, we can integrate the unconscious and conscious minds and achieve our goals with relative ease.

– Soul Arcanum

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Signs of Chakra Imbalance

Filed Under: Chakras/Auras, Emotional Well-being, Energy/Vibration, Healing by Soul Arcanum — Comments Off on Signs of Chakra Imbalance

Copyright Soul Arcanum LLC. All rights reserved. :)
 

Dear Soul Arcanum:

Could you tell me the difference between balancing chakras and unblocking chakras, and aligning and cleansing chakras? Also, is there a simple way to determine if we’re in or out of balance? In Love and Light!
– Pam

Dear Pam:

When I refer to a block in a chakra, I mean that something is getting in the way of the free flow of energy through that vortex. It’s sort of like having an artery that is clogged with plaque, only instead of a physical block, this is a metaphysical block that is composed of stagnant emotional energy.

When I speak of cleansing a chakra, it’s sort of like angioplasty: we clear away whatever debris is preventing free flow through that channel. This can be done through various types of therapy or energy healing, but it’s usually more effective if whatever issues created the block to begin with are brought into one’s conscious awareness so they can be consciously processed, healed and released. This can be achieved via psychic reading work, though hypnotherapy may be more powerful and effective, for in my experience, what we realize ourselves affects us far more deeply than anything anyone else could tell us.

When I talk about balancing the chakras, I’m not talking about a one-time cure. Like cultivating physical health and well-being, this is a lifelong process. Just as the state of our physical health largely depends on our habits, so does the state of our chakra balance. For example, if we tend to be far more physical than spiritual, our root chakra will be much more developed than our crown chakra. For a sense of health and well-being, we want to be a well-balanced, well-developed person on every level.

People tend to develop from the lower chakras up, which makes sense if you think about it. We begin as primarily physical creatures and become more and more sophisticated in our approach to life. However, it’s easy to neglect whatever we’re not really into at the moment. Thus we often see highly “spiritual” people who are in terrible shape physically because they neglect their bodies.

Since an imbalance in the chakras is caused by emotional imbalance, you don’t have to be psychic to evaluate the state of your chakras or anyone else’s. Below is a quick guide to some of the symptoms of chakra problems. Please note that when I refer to the overdevelopment or underdevelopment of a chakra, I mean in relationship to the rest of one’s being.

Root Chakra: (red) governs all matters physical Symptoms of overdevelopment: greed, recklessness, hyperactivity, carelessness, diarrhea, wasting away Symptoms of underdevelopment: poverty, low energy, listlessness, clumsiness, constipation, obesity, chronic fatigue Someone with good balance will be healthy, fit, grounded, prosperous, centered and strong.

Sexual Chakra: (orange) governs creativity and procreation Symptoms of overdevelopment: sexual addiction or promiscuity; romantic, sexual or creative obsessions; fetishism; STD’s Symptoms of underdevelopment: Puritanism, frigidity/impotence, creative blocks, sexual repression, infertility Someone with good balance will be sexually well-adjusted, have a strong libido, know how to set healthy boundaries in relationships, and be able to use their creativity constructively.

Solar Plexus Chakra (yellow) governs will Symptoms of overdevelopment: high stress, aggression, willfulness, control issues, inability to relax, arrogance, ulcers Symptoms of underdevelopment: indifference, passivity, complacency, victim mentality, disempowerment, indigestion Someone with good balance will be productive, cooperative, flexible, focused, empowered, successful and well-adjusted.

Heart Chakra (green) governs emotions Symptoms of overdevelopment: too trusting, smothering, effusive, codependent/enabling, too nice, too giving, heart problems Symptoms of underdevelopment: distrusting, cold, aloof, reserved, uncompassionate, heartless, self-centered, selfish, weak immune system Someone with good balance will be loving, warm, affectionate, accepting, tolerant and equally loving of self and others.

Throat Chakra (blue) governs self-expression Symptoms of overdevelopment: talking or saying too much, not listening well, being argumentative, acting like a know-it-all, being critical, sore throats, overactive thyroid Symptoms of underdevelopment: trouble expressing yourself, inability to speak up, lack of confidence in your opinions, shyness, under-active thyroid, asthma Someone with good balance will be expressive, eloquent, a great communicator and a good listener.

Third Eye (indigo) governs intellect Symptoms of overdevelopment: racing thoughts, hung up on logic, too abstract in thinking, living in your head, endlessly planning but not doing, hallucinations, headaches/migraines Symptoms of underdevelopment: unconscious, illogical, unable to think abstractly, acting without thinking, forgetfulness, inability to remember dreams, vision/eye problems Someone with good balance will be intelligent, clear-headed, alert, thoughtful, have a good memory, have good eyesight and be generally insightful.

Crown Chakra (violet) governs spiritual life Symptoms of overdevelopment: out of touch with reality, ungrounded, unable to manifest material needs, feeling like you don’t belong here on Earth, Messiah complex, schizophrenia, epilepsy, Alzheimer’s Symptoms of underdevelopment: lack of spiritual awareness, lack of a sense of higher values or higher purpose, lack of spiritual beliefs, depression, fear and cynicism Someone with good balance will know how to live in the world but not of it, have a fulfilling spiritual life, be able to enjoy physical pleasures without getting addicted, love life but not dread death, have a deep sense of connection to the Divine, and regularly tune in to determine the right course of action.

If you discover you have too much energy flowing through some chakras as opposed to others, it’s best to simply focus on developing the higher qualities of the underdeveloped chakras, for this will both counteract that imbalance and lead you to channel your energy in the overdeveloped areas in wiser ways.

For example, if Bill is far more spiritual than he is physical, he probably often feels spacey and out of touch with reality. Thought he may like it that way, he probably also has health problems, is out of shape, and has trouble manifesting money and other practical needs. To create better balance, he doesn’t have to become “less spiritual, ” he just needs to spend more time taking care of his body and putting his house and his finances in order. If he dives into this, soon he may begin to feel like all he does is take care of physical concerns, which would be a sign that he’s swung too far in this new direction and needs to reevaluate his personal balance.

We must remember that we are part of nature, so as we flow from one season of life to the next, we must ever adjust our sense of balance in order to maintain our well-being.

– Soul Arcanum

If you’d like to balance all your chakras, you might like the Chakra Clearing and Charging Meditation at 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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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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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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Spiritual Keys to Health and Happiness

Filed Under: Emotional Well-being, Energy/Vibration, Healing by Soul Arcanum — Comments Off on Spiritual Keys to Health and Happiness

Copyright Soul Arcanum LLC. All rights reserved. :)
 

Dear Soul Arcanum:

With the new year getting underway, many people are sorting out all that is meaningless from what really matters. I know this is probably a tall order, but if you had to sum up what you have learned from working with Spirit, what would it be? What do you believe is the key to health and happiness in life?
– Randy

Dear Randy:

This is indeed a tall order, but I’ll do my best.

At a fundamental level, feeling good is ultimately simply a matter of balance between desire and faith. Desire is what summons life force. If we were free from all desire, we wouldn’t be here. At the very least, we have a desire to survive. The more desire we have, the stronger our life force grows. A strong life force generates a sense of passion and vitality.

Now, some people have a lot of desire, but it’s not supported by enough faith: faith in their own ability to fulfill their desires, faith in the Universe as a benevolent place where desires can be fulfilled, faith in Spirit and humankind to be supportive. Their desire is big, but their beliefs are very limited. The limited beliefs choke off the life force, thus creating pressure, which is experienced as stress and frustration.

When desire and faith are in good balance, we experience various degrees of health and happiness. If you have very few desires and mediocre dreams, you don’t need so much life force to support them. So long as your desires and your ability to channel your own creative life force to support them are in balance, you’ll be relatively content and able to function. (Ho-hum). You may not feel vibrantly alive, but most people shuffle along through life at this “okay” level. They get up, they go to work, they come home, they order a pizza and turn on the TV, and then they get up and do it all over again the next day. They may sometimes wish for more, but not enough to actually get up and make it happen.

If you long for more than that, if you have big dreams burning in your heart, then you have to develop the big, positive beliefs and expectations to support those desires in order to enjoy health and happiness. (This is why big dreamers are always talking and writing about the power of positive thinking, the law of attraction, etc.) If you think about this, it only makes sense. If someone carries a very strong, burning desire to be president, but he doesn’t really believe he can succeed, he will live in disappointment and frustration. Those who HAVE become president had to want it tremendously and truly believe that they could make it happen.

When we’re ever pushing past where we’ve gone before, but not so far that we lose our balance, we feel alive, challenged and excited. In terms of our health, this may mean athletic conditioning and development. In terms of our work, this might mean seeking promotion or building a business. In terms of relationships, this might mean striving for greater communication and intimacy.

If we have big desires but we hold back from going as far as we might go out of fear of failure, then we start to feel dull, bored, unfulfilled and lifeless. At this point health issues such as depression, cancer and addictions arise. (It may seem ironic, but folks who get depressed generally have BIG desires, but they don’t allow themselves to pursue them, usually because they don’t feel entitled to for various reasons). Conversely, if we push too far before we’ve integrated the personal power and beliefs to support success at that level, we have to work too hard to make things happen, and we end up burned out, broken down, stressed out, resentful and in pain. At this end of the spectrum, health issues such as anxiety attacks, accidents/injuries and heart problems can develop.

Health and happiness is thus a matter of constantly aligning the energy we’re summoning with our desire to the energy we’re able to flow based on our level of personal spiritual development. One great way to step up our inner vibration (and thus increase our potential to manifest big desires) is by helping others to manifest what THEY want. If you’re looking for that summary of what I’ve learned from working with Spirit, here it is: to find fulfillment in life, help others to get what they want and need.

Most of us have learned that whatever we send out comes back to us, at least in simple ways. For example, we may know that criticizing others doesn’t make us really feel better than them – it just leaves us feeling angry and unlovable. When we look for and point out the good in others, however, we end up dwelling in positive energy and feeling better about ourselves. This ripples out to make us more attractive to others, who return our positive energy. This same dynamic happens in every area of our lives, in ways big and small, visible and invisible.

So if we help others to succeed or get what they want in life, we will be helped and supported in kind. When we offer kindness and compassion to someone who is down, even if someone isn’t directly kind and compassionate to US, we end up feeling better about ourselves and our own lives, and there is no way to put a value on the personal fulfillment, pride, love, joy and high spirits that liking and respecting ourselves will produce.

Here’s another analogy: Imagine that life is a great big basketball game. If we try to hog the ball because we think we can somehow get more than we give (and a whole lot of miserable people approach life this way), the Universe will quickly learn that we should receive the ball LESS, and we’ll end up feeling angry, lonely or frustrated. People who live this way feel underpaid, underloved and underappreciated. The more they try to “get,” the less they end up with.

If our beliefs are limited or fearful, if we lack the faith and courage to take a risk, then we may never raise our hands and tell the Universe to pass us the ball. We may want very much to win, but our beliefs don’t support us taking the risks required to really make exciting things happen. People who live like this stay in the same dull or unhappy jobs and relationships indefinitely. They may be “nice people,” but they’re often bored, sad, lifeless, depressed or hopeless.

If we set ourselves up for a good shot, if we believe we can do it and we shoot when it feels right – exhilaration! If we pass to our teammates when they’re open (look for opportunities to help others get what they want), the ball will get passed back to us, and we’ll all just keep scoring and winning. Even when we aren’t the ones doing the scoring, so to speak, in being of service to others, we’re still “on the winning team.” In helping others, we just can’t lose!

So to try to sum it up, the key to creating health and happiness in life is to help others achieve the same. We must also keep desire alive by exploring new dreams and experiences, and balance that desire by open-mindedly updating our beliefs about what we’re capable of and how the Universe works with us as we go. When we do these things, we stay in the exciting game of life, endlessly playing our way to new achievements, experiences, blessings, challenges and joys. This dynamic movement forward is what produces health and happiness.

To boost yourself into new success and well-being, I highly recommend you develop the habit of looking for ways to help others get what they want in life.

– Soul Arcanum

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