Tag Archive: Healing


Bodywork and Emotional Healing

Filed Under: Emotional Well-being, Energy/Vibration, Healing, Psychic Protection by Soul Arcanum — Comments Off on Bodywork and Emotional Healing


Copyright Soul Arcanum LLC. All rights reserved. :)
 

Dear Soul Arcanum:

I have had a number of massages in my life, but yesterday I had a very unusual experience. I was getting a deep tissue massage from a new therapist when suddenly I was overcome with feelings of profound grief and sorrow. I also experienced tremendous physical pain where she was touching my back beneath my left shoulder blade. Much to my embarrassment, I started to writhe in pain and sob. It was so intense I had to stop her and end the session. I could not wait to get out of that office. I felt very bad about this for many reasons. I’m now wondering if maybe I picked up on the feelings of the therapist or if she somehow touched off a “nerve” in me. I have never had anything like this happen before. What do you think?

R.

Dear R.:

What you describe is very common; in fact, I’ve experienced something like it myself. I too was seeing a new massage therapist when this occurred. He employed an electric blanket to prevent me from getting chilled, and everything was going fine until he covered my upper torso with the blanket so he could work on my legs. Suddenly I was overcome with feelings of panic. I felt like I was suffocating and being crushed; like the blanket weighed hundreds of pounds. Instead of succumbing to panic, I decided to try to relax into those feelings and see what may be behind them.

Immediately I began to remember a past life in India, and I knew that I was at the moment of my death. I was at a sacred temple where thousands of people had traveled on pilgrimage on a holy day. The crowd was pushing forward, trying to get to where they could touch a sacred statue and leave an offering. We were on top of each other when the crowd pushed forward in a fervor and I felt myself being crushed. I felt as panic-stricken as if I were actually there and being crushed to death. This was so physically and emotionally intense that I too nearly had to end the session.

It is very common to have strong emotions come up during body work. Most seasoned massage therapists have seen this so many times that nothing surprises them anymore, while other body workers purposefully seek to help clients achieve emotional healing and release. Of course, not all massage therapists are created equal; those who are especially spiritual may spark this sort of healing, while those who are more physically oriented may focus wholly on the muscles beneath their hands. Further, strong reactions tend to be sparked when an area of the body that is holding pain or tension is touched.

As for why psychic insights, past life memories, and repressed emotions tend to surface during body, for work most people, receiving a massage is the deepest trance state they ever experience. As soon as they slip into this altered state of consciousness, whatever has been just beneath the surface of their awareness tends to come up. Big vibrational shifts toward an unsual state of peace and relaxation also tend to produce energetic tension. It’s a bit like being in a hot air balloon: we may be hovering a few feet above the ground when suddenly someone stokes up the fire. If we have sand bags on board to keep us grounded, this creates tension: we are being pulled skyward but we have all of this baggage weighing us down. In order to soar, we may have to drop some of that weight. This is a natural process; our subconscious minds seize the opportunity to bring up whatever is heaviest or most needs to be released when an opportunity to go higher arises.

There are all sorts of theories about how we hold old energy in our bodies and auras. As I don’t have room to go into detail here, you may want to explore the work of pioneers in this field like Wilhelm Reich, Fritz Perls and Stanislav Grof. The main thing to understand is that we tend to hold wounds from childhood and even past lives in our bodies. For example, someone who was raped in a past life may experience pain on intercourse; someone whose head was bashed in may experience migraines; someone who was suffocated may experience asthma or panic attacks during which they feel they can’t breathe. It’s interesting that you experienced the reaction you did when your therapist touched a certain spot underneath your left shoulder blade, which of course is directly in line with your heart. The important thing to keep in mind is that these are not problems to be feared and rejected; they are helpful symptoms that tell us that healing is needed.

As for how and why we store trauma in the body, basically we have a natural tendency to try to distance ourselves from painful experiences. If we have repressed trauma on an emotional or mental level, then when we shed our physical bodies, we will carry that trauma with us in our subtle bodies. When we then incarnate in a new body, the subtle bodies <q>inform</q> the new physical body, which naturally integrates that energy and information. Mind/body medicine has clearly established that our thoughts and feelings affect our physical well-being. It is also true that the body can affect our feelings and thoughts; for example, to calm yourself emotionally, you have only to breathe in a slow, calm way. A change on any level affects the whole being, so for lasting change to occur, healing must take place on all levels. If we view our mental, emotional and physical bodies as a team in a six-legged race, it’s easy to see how a problem in one body will affect the whole.

We might compare these different levels of energy to water. If energy becomes frozen in the energy field (locked in the body), it is something we can run into or trip over and it is very hard to manipulate. If we raise its vibration to water (the level of emotion), we can still slip on it but it is easier to work with. If we raise it again to the level of steam by bringing the buried thoughts behind it into our conscious awareness, then it will naturally begin to evaporate and dissipate. It sounds like in your case, some old trauma was brought up to the level of emotion, and that energy began to be released. The awakening of that intense energy caused the same reaction of panic and avoidance that caused it to get stuck in the first place. Until you face it and work with it, it will remain with you. If instead, you allow that energy to lead you to new awareness, it will begin to evaporate and be released. This is the power of catharsis; anything that evokes a strong reaction is a signal that there is tension that needs healing.

One reason hypnotherapy is so effective is because it works at the causative level of the mind; it quickly brings frozen issues up into our conscious awareness so that they can be processed, healed and released. Since it is important to address all levels of one’s being, however, several different modalities may prove helpful. It is important to honor what works best for you. For example, someone who is highly kinesthetic may respond best to body work, whereas someone highly visual may respond best to hypnotherapy. There are many different modalities for spiritual and emotional healing; the important thing is to honor your own nature and trust that emotional catharsis will prove helpful and healing in the long run.

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Healing Guilt After Friend’s Suicide

Filed Under: Afterlife, Death and Dying, Energy/Vibration, Healing, Relationships, Spirit Communication, Spirits by Soul Arcanum — Comments Off on Healing Guilt After Friend’s Suicide

Copyright Soul Arcanum LLC. All rights reserved. :)
 

Dear Soul Arcanum:

A very dear friend just killed himself on 3/11/11. He had come to see me a week before and we talked about how he was feeling. I tried to help by giving him ideas on how to handle his problem, and at the end of our conversation, I thought all was well with him as we were laughing at the situation he had been so concerned about. I was devastated when I heard what he had done. I can see that when he left his body, he was in a dark, cloudy, dense fog with no light. I am feeling so sad for the waste, and keep wondering if there was something more I could have done to stop him. Perhaps instead of joking about the problem, I should have been more serious. He has always said that 10 years ago, I was responsible for saving his life when he was in another very dark place – that I had pulled him back from the brink. If that’s true, why couldn’t I save him this time? What is happening to him on the other side? Will I ever hear from him again? He was not spiritual; he believed that when we die, that’s it. Anything you can say to help me deal with all of this would be so appreciated.

Marla
Dear Marla:

Though it’s normal for you to be feeling as you are feeling, I can assure you that your guilt is wholly unfounded. Your friend didn’t kill himself because of you: He killed himself because he was in more pain than he could bear. You are no more responsible for his death than if he had died of cancer or been hit by a bus.

Your question reminded me of a startling exchange I had with one of the wisest men I have ever known – my father. I was 12 years old at the time, and was mired in adolescenet angst and depressed about all I deemed to be wrong with the world. As I tried to communicate how horrible I was feeling to my father, I confessed that I had thought about killing myself. To my great surprise, he didn’t try to change my mind or save me from myself. He simply said, “It would break my heart if you ended your life, but if you are determined to do it, there is nothing I or anyone else can do to stop you.” Since my father loved me wholeheartedly, this response totally shocked me. However, it also instantly struck me as wise and true. Over the years, I have many times fallen back on this lesson when dealing with loved ones who were depressed: though we can love and support people, it is impossible to save them from themselves, for what they choose to do with their lives is ultimately up to them.

There is a wonderful book that powerfully illustrates our ultimate freedom to succumb to despair or rise above it. I’m referring to Man’s Search for Meaning in which Viktor Frankl describes his experiences in a Nazi concentration camp and how he refused to allow his persecutors to break his spirit. He wrote, Everything can be taken from a man or a woman but one thing: the last of human freedoms to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way. Your friend exercised this ultimate freedom when he chose to end his life. If someone is in despair, we can love them with all our hearts, but can’t give them the will to live.

As for what your friend is now experiencing, it’s important to keep in mind that death is a personal experience, so not all suicides are equal. What we experience when we leave this world is entirely a matter of who and how we are on the inside, for when we die, we shed our physical bodies and begin to inhabit our astral bodies. If our astral bodies are light, peaceful and happy, we end up in a happy, peaceful place. If they are heavy and dark with despair, we end up in a dark, heavy feeling place. This is why suicide is associated with negative afterlife consequences: since our astral bodies are our emotional bodies, if we are in tremendous emotional pain when we die, we end up in an emotionally dark and painful place.

That being said, I don’t believe it is any worse to be in a state of despair in the astral than it is to be in the same state here in the physical. People tend to freak out when they think about someone who has committed suicide ending up in a hellish realm, but in truth, they were already in hell when they were living. Their mistake was in thinking that by killing themselves, they could put an end to their emotional pain.

Killing oneself is an effective way to end physical pain. If a person commits suicide in order to spare himself and his family more suffering because he is terminally ill, and he does so from a feeling of love, then he may end up in a fine place in the astral; it is all dependent on his inner energy. Since the astral body lives on, suicide does not end emotional suffering. There is no quick escape from emotional despair; instead, we must grow through it and find a way to transform and heal it. This can and will eventually happen whether we are here in the physical or in the astral.

Since your friend was in emotional despair when he took his life, your perception that he is in a dark place is probably accurate. This does not mean he will remain there for all eternity any more than he would remain in emotional torment forever were he still alive here on Earth. Eventually, he will realize that running away is not the answer, which will lead him to seek a new and more effective way to feel better.

You can help him by praying for him and visualizing him in a state of well-being. You could also learn to astral travel and try to find him so you can help him directly. For more information on this, research soul rescue as practiced by shamans. I also recommend you explore the work of  Bruce Moen; he’s an expert using astral travel to find and help lost souls.

Sinking into grief and sorrow yourself won’t help your friend; it will just make him feel worse about himself for bringing you down. Blaming yourself serves no one; instead, I urge you to try to transform this experience into something positive. When you start to feel bad for any reason, remember to celebrate your blessings and live each day fully. Cultivate love in your life and strive to spread joy wherever you go. Know that your new strength, wisdom and happiness are blessings that came from your friend’s decision.

I lost my first love when he was just 18 years old. While this was certainly tragic, there are many good things that came of his death. For one thing, it launched me on a conscious spiritual journey; I would not be who I am or doing the work I am doing had this not happened. If you work with it, this can be a profound spiritual growth experience for you. You are now exploring the nature of life and death and suffering; you are searching your soul and opening up to new spiritual experiences. If you honor your desire to find a way to help your friend, you may develop all sorts of new skills and knowledge that you can use to do a lot of good in the future. By creating something positive from his tragic end, you will truly honor your friend and bless yourself with the healing you need to feel at peace again.

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Spiritual Way to Heal Compulsive Eating

Filed Under: Healing, Hypnotherapy by Soul Arcanum — Comments Off on Spiritual Way to Heal Compulsive Eating


Copyright Soul Arcanum LLC. All rights reserved. :)
 

Dear Soul Arcanum:

I have been trying to lose more than 100 pounds for years and I am getting really frustrated and down on myself. I have lost the same 30 pounds or so over and over again; I always put the weight back on. I am a compulsive eater; I just can’t seem to stop eating. I am convinced that there is something essentially wrong with me that makes me different from other people; I feel crazy and totally out of control. I hate myself for being this way. I hate how I feel and look. If dieting were the answer, it would have worked for me by now; I’ve figured out that I have to go deeper than dieting and exercise, which is why I’m coming to you for spiritual advice.

B.

Dear B.:

Since a lot of people who want to lose weight are going to be reading this column, the first thing I want to do is differentiate between being overweight due to bad habits and being overweight due to compulsive behavior. In my hypnotherapy practice, I see all sorts of reasons people become overweight. Perhaps the most common reason is very simple: with its convenient high calorie foods, huge portions and lack of physical exercise, modern life is a recipe for packing on the pounds. If we don’t consciously strive to remain fit and healthy these days, we’re bound to get out of shape.

Of course, many people do use food for emotional reasons; in fact, everyone does this sometimes, for when we eat for pleasure, we are eating to feel good. What you’re describing, however, is an actual addiction. Like someone who can’t get through life without drinking or using drugs, if you need food in order to emotionally cope with life and your habit is ruining your health and happiness, you’re addicted.

Before I go into a spiritual perspective on healing such an addiction, I have to encourage you to see a doctor to explore possible biological reasons for what you’re going through. I understand if you’re reluctant to do this, but what if there is something physical going on and you’re beating yourself up for nothing?

I believe compulsive eaters are hungry for something more profound than food. This is what underlies the seemingly crazy experience of eating a huge meal but still feeling dissatisfied. It’s sort of like drinking salt water to quench your thirst; the more you drink, the thirstier you get, so you drink more and things just seem to get worse.

I do have good news. First of all, I see a lot in your question that is indicative of what is “wrong” with you. To put it bluntly, you’ve been trying to hate yourself into changing, which never works, my friend. Instead, you must love and trust yourself. Since the very idea of trusting yourself may seem crazy given the situation you’ve gotten yourself into, let me explain.

You’ve been eating compulsively for a good reason. Though it may not have led you to the peace, health and happiness you desire, it has helped you to cope with emotions that you weren’t ready to deal with yet. I believe that we are all doing our bests at all times, which means that people who are caught up in destructive addictions are really doing the best they can to cope at that time. When people overcome addictions, it’s because they have grown stronger and more motivated (self-loving) than they were before, so they have become capable of coping in new and more empowered ways.

This is the juncture at which we meet: you are becoming ready to deal with the proverbial skeletons that have been hiding in your emotional closet for years. Where in the past, you may have cracked the door open to grab something you needed, caught a glimpse of a skeleton, slammed the door shut and run to the kitchen for a snack, you’re now gearing up to open the door wide and look through all the junk in the closet so you can process what you want to keep, what you want to let go of, and what you want to upcycle into something new so you can evolve into a new and <q>better</q> version of yourself. To help you with this process, I strongly recommend you find a hypnotherapist who has experience in dealing with compulsive eating, for the first step must involve bringing all of the stuff you’ve been trying to avoid out into the light so you can see it clearly and consciously decide what you want to do with it.

The rest of the good news is that you are at a very powerful juncture in your life. If instead of trying to get rid of your compulsion as fast as possible, you turn and befriend it, it can become a powerful catalyst for new personal and spiritual growth. Working with it in this way will empower you to not only heal the compulsive behavior and achieve your weight loss goals, it will empower you to change your life on every level and find greater peace and happiness than you’ve ever known before. If you don’t work at this deeper level, you may be able to force yourself to diet and lose weight, but you won’t truly be happy and at peace, which means you’ll eventually go back to compulsive behavior of some kind in order to cope with difficult feelings. (You’ve been down that road before.) Basically, if the skeletons are still in your emotional closet and you’re still afraid of them, they will continue to haunt you.

I also recommend you explore Geneen Roth’s books, especially Feeding the Hungry Heart, Breaking Free of Emotional Eating, and Women, Food, and God: An Unexpected Path to Almost Everything, which offers a lot of valuable insights regarding the emotional and spiritual roots of food addiction regardless of one’s gender.

I see two main keys to healing your self-destructive habits. First you must become conscious of what is happening on a deep level. In addition to hypnotherapy, beginning a regular meditation practice would be wise and powerful for you. I recommend mindfulness meditation in which you simply seek to develop an inner observer so you can watch your thoughts, feelings and actions as from above without judging yourself. If you keep in mind that you are always doing your best to take good care of yourself and you begin to simply observe what is happening inside of you in a calm, detached manner, you will empower yourself to consciously choose new ways to meet the same needs you’ve been trying to meet through compulsive eating. This will enable you to directly process and deal with difficult emotions as they arise, or, when that is not possible, to choose coping methods that support your health and happiness instead of destroying it. For example, I have been addicted to exercise for years; while I’m sure it changes my bio-chemistry, it also helps me release emotional and psychological tension.

If you came into my office for help, the first thing I would do is simply love you as you are and draw your divine beauty and perfection to the surface so you could see it for yourself. The point would be for you to begin to trust, love and accept yourself more fully, for this healing process is ultimately a journey of learning to love yourself better. When you believe in your own power and goodness more than you believe in food as the answer, you will be free from the grips of this painful condition. Please be kind to yourself, trust yourself, and know that when you find the courage to face those skeletons, they will lose the power they’ve held over you. You will then know that you are free to become whoever and whatever you want to be.

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Relationship Still Haunts her Many Years Later

Filed Under: Destiny/Higher Plan, Emotional Well-being, Healing, Relationships by Soul Arcanum — Comments Off on Relationship Still Haunts her Many Years Later


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Dear Soul Arcanum:

I am wondering about a relationship that started when I was 20 and ended three years later. It was very rocky and passionate; it still haunts me to this day. I am married to a wonderful man who is in many ways the opposite of the man who left me to pursue his dream career. Despite my best efforts to get over it, this haunts me daily. Is this unfinished business, some sort of karmic destiny, or am I obsessed by what I can’t have ever again in this life? When I found out that he got married five years after we had broken up, I felt like someone had winded me. It was one of the worst and most embarrassing moments of my life, since our mutual aquaintance assumed I was past all of this. I’m hoping you have some insights for me. Will we ever meet again to put this to rest? Will we be together in the next life?

Anne

Dear Anna:

You are not alone; I receive many questions like yours at Soul Arcanum, and also do many readings for people who have similar issues. You’ve asked if this is unfinished business, karma or obsession, and I think all three are going on. You have a strong karmic connection to this individual, which means your relationship never really ended – it just went dormant on a physical level for a while. There is a lot of unfinished emotional business here, which is causing you to obsess about him. Though we tend to view obsession as something that is unhealthy, obsession is really a call from our subconscious that we are missing something important. In this case, it’s a sign that you have a deep wound that needs more healing.

Many people continue to have dreams about important people from their past for the rest of their lives. I often dream about my ex-husband; in fact, I probably dream about him more than I dream about my current husband, which feels strange and unsettling. In these dreams, I am usually hoping my ex will be “nice” to me. At first, I never had dreams in which he was kind to me, but over the years, the dreams have gotten more and more positive. I always wake up from those dreams feeling ridiculously happy that he bothered to give me the time of day.

These dreams have led me to realize that I still feel guilty about our marriage ending and some of the choices I made when we were together. I feel bad that I was unable to fulfill my vow to remain married to him until death. While I am very happily remarried, my ex doesn’t seem happy in his own life, so I still have a strong desire to make sure he is okay. Every time I interact with him in some way, I am reminded that he may still be hurting because of choices I made in the past. Though I may have moved on in my physical life, on a metaphysical level, I am still a few decades back, trying to find a way to make everything all better.

I also often think about a boyfriend I had in college who hurt me very deeply. As he was an angel when he was sober but a devil when he was drunk, I just can’t believe some of the things he did when he was drinking. There is a part of me that still seeks to understand and make peace with it all. Whether we are dreaming about someone from the past or they keep popping into our minds when we’re awake, it’s a sign that we have some unfinished business with that person or a wound that needs more healing.

The feelings you describe are both normal and very common. Just as the body is constantly seeking to return to balance, the soul is constantly seeking to work out any kinks or issues in order to find new peace and understanding. On a conscious or physical level, we may have moved on, but if there is debris from the past that has been swept under the proverbial rug, our subconscious mind will keep trying to drag it out so we can deal with it more appropriately.

This is what is happening when someone from the past pops into our minds. Usually, the feelings we last experienced in relationship to that person come with the thought of them; at the first hint of emotional pain, most of us stuff our thoughts of that person back under the rug. Thus we may go through years of having someone pop into our minds, for if we keep pushing them back under the rug, they remain where we may trip over them every time we pass through that inner room.

As we move through life, we are constantly growing in strength and wisdom. When we become more capable of dealing with something that happened in the past, we tend to notice thoughts about it more because we aren’t so quick to shove it back under the rug. When we finally become capable of truly dealing with something, instead of pushing those thoughts away, we begin to turn toward them with curiosity, as you are doing now. We begin to ask why this person keeps coming to mind and perhaps drawing correlations between what we’re experiencing, the patterns we’ve experienced over the years, and this old wound or issue from long ago. Instead of shoving thoughts of that person under the rug, we hold them up to the light and ponder the best way to deal with them.

It is highly likely that you will be drawn back into relationship with each other in future lives so that you can work through the karma between you. Further, whether positive or negative in nature, strong emotions create a gravitational force that draws us toward the object of those feelings. However, it is important to keep in mind that these relationships are ultimately not about the other person; they are about our own personal lessons and issues. While we may have karma with someone, we don’t actually need to interact with that person to learn whatever that relationship may have to teach us or to make peace with that individual. All of that can happen on a metaphysical level.

That being said, if you keep thinking about someone from the past and longing for closure, I think you’re wise to honor those thoughts and feelings as signs from your inner being regarding something important that you need in order to feel the way you want to feel and create what you want to create in your life. In many readings on such matters, Spirit has encouraged people to act on such feelings by seeking the person involved out and meeting with them. This can be very powerful, for it almost always leads to a far different experience than the person expects. For example, when the person who has felt “in love” with a certain individual for many years meets them in person again, they may realize that the person they have been in love with no longer exists and perhaps never did. In other words, they’ve been in love with an idea of a person, not a real individual. If someone has <q>hated</q> someone for years, they may realize upon meeting them again that they are not the monster of their memory and imagination. Such meetings can spark sudden and lasting change as they lead the sufferer to let go of fantasies rooted in the past and move on to more fully enjoy present realities.

When the individual can’t be met in person for some reason, meeting on a metaphysical level can be just as healing. This is especially helpful when the individual who is “haunting” you has died. While these encounters can be affected via meditation, a hypnotherapist would be able to guide you into a deeper level of experience and help you work through any strong feelings that come up so that you can achieve lasting peace and freedom from obsession.

Soul Arcanum

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The Spiritual Power of Yoga

Filed Under: Energy/Vibration, Healing, Meditation, Spiritual Growth by Soul Arcanum — Comments Off on The Spiritual Power of Yoga


Copyright Soul Arcanum LLC. All rights reserved. :)
 

Dear Soul Arcanum:

I have a friend who is always raving about the benefits of yoga and has piqued my interest. Last week, I attended a yoga class at a local gym and I have to say that I was disappointed. I thought yoga was somehow going to be spiritual – that I would feel something special during the experience – but it was basically an exercise class full of very limber people. Do you think yoga has spiritual benefits? Do I just need to keep at it or was I perhaps just expecting too much from the experience?

Joyce

Dear Joyce:

Please note that when I use the word yoga in this article, I am referring to yoga as most Westerners view it: as a form of exercise that involves movement through various poses. When most of us think of yoga, we probably think of hatha yoga, which involves a slow-paced, gentle series of different poses. There are a number of other yoga schools that are popular in the U.S., including vinyasa, ashtanga, Iyengar, bikram and kundalini yoga. There is an abundance of information on these and other styles available on the internet, so I encourage you research what each one emphasizes so you can find the right style for you.

Of course, even within a particular style, every yoga teacher is a unique individual and will teach in a unique way. If you think back to when you were in school, I bet there were teachers you loved who taught wonderful classes and teachers you really didn’t like who taught classes you dreaded. The same is true of yoga.

There are people who could turn a class on how to change a flat tire into a spiritual experience, and others who could spend an entire hour of Bible study talking about mundane, trivial matters. Similarly, there are students who can find the spiritual meaning in every life experience, and there are others who could receive a thunderbolt from heaven and think of nothing but the weather. My point is that with everything in life, what we take from an experience largely depends on what we bring to it.

That being said, I have encountered yoga teachers who seemed to be missing “the point.” In one of my own first classes, the yoga instructor was as unlike the stereotype of a serene, mantra-chanting yogi as one can imagine, for she was loud, abrupt, abrasive, impatient and critical. (Naturally, I never returned!) As you can see, finding the right teacher is essential.

It’s also important to remember that whenever we try something new, we tend to feel pretty uncomfortable since we are outside of our comfort zone. I therefore do encourage you to keep trying, for the more familiar you become with a certain practice, the more you can put your left brain aside to get fully present.

As for yoga’s spiritual side, it is definitely far more than a series of exercises designed to increase the strength and flexibility of the body: it is a practice designed to harmonize and unite the body with the heart, mind, spirit and cosmos. Through mindful yoga practice, you can move into greater harmony on all levels of your being and into greater sync with the Universe. This state of harmony can lead to improved physical health and fitness as well as profound well-being on an emotional, psychological and spiritual level. The key phrase here, of course, is “when practiced mindfully.”

Yoga developed as a way for spiritual seekers to achieve higher states of consciousness in meditation. A yoga teacher once explained that yoga was what one did before attempting to engage in deep meditation, the idea being that by getting all the tension out of the body, it would be far more comfortable to sit in a meditation pose for hours afterward. In my experience, it is indeed amazingly easy to go directly into a very profound state of consciousness when meditating directly after practicing yoga.

Getting centered in our bodies and gently stretching toward greater flexibility has concurrent effects on a metaphysical level. When we let go of physical tension, we naturally begin to let go of tension in our hearts and minds. As we move through each pose, we let go of stress and strain from everyday life and can quickly shift from a bad mood into feelings of profound peace and joy. In fact, yoga practice encourages such a high vibration that it can lead to instant healing not only of emotional issues but also physical ailments and imbalances. Further, the more we engage in the process of getting centered within, the more we carry this ability throughout our everyday lives. We can then move through all sorts of normally upsetting situations with calm grace because we are so practiced at moving in this way.

Yoga encourages a state of health on all levels, for balance is health, and yoga cultivates balance in the body and between the various aspects of our being. When we are in balance physically, our bodies feel good. When we are in balance emotionally, we feel centered and calm. When we balance all aspects of our being, we begin to embody graceful poise and radiant vitality.

Yoga also opens us up for a greater flow of life force energy, which leads to shining health and happiness. In some cases, yoga can ignite kundalini and spark a spiritual awakening and the development of psychic powers. When we are fully present to each moment and in a peaceful, high vibration, our intuition blossoms and we begin to receive all sorts of insights and creative ideas on how to solve problems and create what we want in our lives. Further, the more we synchronize our bodies with our hearts, minds and spirits like this, the better we get at this sort of communication. This allows us to hear different aspects of our beings telling us what we most need. This greater intuitive awareness helps us flow through everyday life much like we flow through different yoga poses: we spontaneously take just the right actions, say just the right words, and know just the right way to move forward so that what we desire to happen happens and our journey remains smooth.

On top of all of this guidance, yoga practice enhances our ability to consciously create what we want in our lives via the law of attraction. When we move into sync with the Universe, our desires merge with the desires of nature, which makes it far easier to focus on something and attract it into our experience. When we move into a state of flow with all aspects of our being and All That Is, we begin to dance with the Universe, drawing what we need our way, flowing away from what we don’t want, and naturally attracting whatever will fulfill our true needs and desires.

I think yoga is great for everyone, but I have found that it is especially beneficial for people who suffer from anxiety disorders because it helps them train themselves to relax into the moment instead of endlessly worrying about the future. It is also beneficial for spiritual seekers who are highly energetic and find it hard to sit still for meditation. It’s a wonderful form of physical and spiritual exercise for anyone who is tense in body, heart or mind, for it teaches us how to relax and go with the flow instead of endlessly pushing ourselves or fighting the current. Finally, yoga is a fantastic way to bridge the gap between the physical and the spiritual, for it harmonizes all aspects of our being and opens us up to a higher level of spiritual awareness and experience.

Soul Arcanum

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Sending Distant Healing

Filed Under: Energy/Vibration, Healing by Soul Arcanum — Comments Off on Sending Distant Healing


Copyright Soul Arcanum LLC. All rights reserved. :)
 

Dear Soul Arcanum:

My mother lives across the country from me, and she was recently diagnosed with breast cancer. I feel so bad that I can’t be there for her now. I have heard that you can send energy healing to people who are at a distance, and am wondering if this is something I might start doing. Do you think this is possible? Can anyone do it? If so, how would I go about it?

Sandy

Dear Sandy:

This is definitely possible and something anyone can do. Since you have a great deal of love for your mother, you are a perfect person to send her healing in this way. While it’s true that some people have a gift for channeling healing energy, love is the strongest, purest source of healing in the Universe, so sending your love is a wonderful way to support and bless her at this difficult time.

There are three main things that make some healers particularly gifted: faith, spiritual development, and love. Studying these traits should help you become a more powerful healer yourself.

My grandmother had no training as an energy healer but she had tremendous religious faith; when she prayed for people, miracles happened. It may seem like you either have faith or you don’t, but it is actually something you can cultivate. One way to cultivate faith that what you are doing is real and powerful is to Google the scientific studies that have yielded significant results regarding the power of energy healing. You might also explore the work of Masaru Emoto, who has done some fascinating studies on the power of energies like thoughts and feelings to influence the formation of water crystals. I also recommend the book The Secret Life of Plants, for it includes fascinating experiments that demonstrate that our intentions profoundly impact the living beings around us as well as any living beings we focus upon from a distance.

The second trait I mentioned is spiritual development, by which I mean the ability to consciously work with energy. There are many ways to develop the ability to influence outer reality with our intentions, including but not limited to the practice of Qigong and other martial arts, yoga, meditation, magick, shamanic ritual, energy healing, and working with the law of attraction.

The third trait I mentioned is love. The best healers are deeply caring and compassionate; their “big hearts” make them capable of channeling a lot of divine love, which is the most potent source of healing in the Universe. You already have great love for your mother, but you can become a more powerful healer in general if you make a habit of looking for the divine beauty in others and blessing everyone you meet with kind thoughts and feelings.

Once you’re on your way to having all the traits of a great healer, sending healing energy will be simple. Some distant healers use physical objects such as photographs or even stuffed animals as focal points, but I think this is a matter of personal preference. I much prefer to simply hold the person I’m sending energy to in my heart and visualize them in my mind.

To begin, just close your eyes, take a few slow, deep breaths, and mentally reach up to connect with divine love. See a beautiful light glowing above you; feel how it tingles as it connects with your aura and begins to flow through you. Bask in the feelings of bliss that arise as this tingly shower of divine light bathes you with peace and well-being.

Next, link with your mother by thinking about her, how much you love her, and how you wish her well. Let your heart swell with love for her, then inwardly state a clear, high intention of being a source of comfort and healing for her. If you believe in angels and/or spirit guides, this is the time to pray to them to help you send healing. Whether you have a conscious personal relationship with your guides and angels or not, you can pray for divine helpers to go to your mother to comfort and support her, and visualize her surrounded by beings of divine light.

Next, visualize your mother in front of you. See yourself standing in a river with your mother ahead of you just downstream. See yourself placing your hands in the river, and as you do so, see the particles of light that are flowing into you flow out into the water and begin to stream toward her. Notice how, with your mind and heart, you can channel the flow of that divinely blessed water toward her. See her delighting in receiving this lovely water, and see her coming alive with new joy and well-being.

Visualize her in a state of perfection, glowing with health, happiness, peace and vitality. Visualize her smiling and feeling good about herself, her life, and the future. See her receiving this water in whatever way is right for her, spontaneously using it as she needs. Perhaps you’ll see it washing over her, cleansing her heart and mind of worries. Maybe you’ll see her cupping her hands and drinking of it to quench her spiritual thirst. See all worries being washed away as this water refreshes her spirit. Know that all you need to do is send her this loving, healing energy, and she will use it in whatever way she needs it at that time.

At some point, this process will feel complete. Say a final blessing to your mother in your mind, give thanks for the healing that has taken place, and then simply go on about your daily life.

Please note that when I do energy healing work on someone, I ask to be shown that person in a state of perfect health, happiness and well-being. I am then usually shown them when they were a small child. I simply appreciate the perfection of that child – the strong, healthy little body running joyfully around, the open-hearted wonder of childhood, the perfect peace of mind that comes from living in the moment – and I send the energy of that perfect vision to the person I’m healing so that they can remember how that state of perfect well-being feels. Where many energy healers will scan for problems to “fix,” I don’t believe that is truly helpful because focusing on problems just sends more energy to those problems. With this in mind, you would be wise to ignore any health struggles your mother is going through and simply send her positive, loving vibes while visualizing her feeling happy and healthy.

As I mentioned above, it’s also important to act from faith, which includes letting go of what happens as a result of your efforts. If you are attached to your mother feeling you sending her energy, to her getting better, or to any particular outcome at all, you will shift from a state of divine love into ego and thus disconnect from the infinite healing energy available. This can cause you to experience some undesirable side effects, such as taking on the problems of the people you’re sending healing to, feeling their symptoms, developing headaches from strain, or simply exhausting yourself because you’re pushing from the limited pool of your own energy instead of allowing it to flow from an unlimited divine source. The key is not what you picture but the quality of your own vibration and intention, so simply connect to the divine, connect to your mother, and let your love flow with faith that she will receive and use the energy you send her in whatever way is right for her at that time.

Soul Arcanum


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Healing Karma with Father who Abused Her

Filed Under: Emotional Well-being, Healing, Karma, Past Lives, Reincarnation by Soul Arcanum — Comments Off on Healing Karma with Father who Abused Her


Copyright Soul Arcanum LLC. All rights reserved. :)
 

Dear Soul Arcanum:

I “divorced” my father when I was in my late 20s because he was a pedophile who refused to acknowledge the harm he’d done to my siblings and me. I pressed criminal charges against him when I was in my early 30s and he went to jail. My brother kept in contact with him until a few years ago when he took a sexploitation trip through Thailand. I’ve been through 12-step programs for incest survivors and have done a lot of inner work. My children know why they don’t have a second grandfather. I consider myself a full survivor but want to know if there are ways to complete the emotional healing process so I don’t carry unfinished karma into my next incarnation. Thank you for the great work you do through your columns. My friends and family appreciate them too.

Moneca

Dear Moneca:

First I have to commend you for all the inner work you’ve already done to heal from the past and empower yourself for the future. I also applaud your foresight, for you are right in assuming that until this experience is fully healed, it will come up again and again for you, if not in this lifetime, then in future lives.

My sense is that you’ve pretty much made peace with this on a personal level; what’s left is to make peace with your father so you can align with a higher level of experience with him in future lives. On the other hand, you may already be at the point where you can look at the blessings that came from this experience and give thanks for the unique journey that has been yours, which is a sign that you’re at peace and ready to move on.

Before those readers who can’t see how such an experience could possibly involve any sort of blessing start sending me hate mail, let me explain. I’m sure this difficult journey made you question life and become a deeper thinker, that it stretched you to find inner strength you didn’t know you had, and that it led you to develop compassion for everyone who suffers abuse. We tend to view painful experiences as curses, but in my experience, the more life stretches our capacity to endure, the stronger and wiser we grow.

There is a key turning point in the spiritual healing process where one who has been abused begins to find compassion for the abuser. Let me share my own experience to demonstrate that I know what I’m talking about.

When I was a teenager, I was stalked and eventually raped by a crazy guy in his twenties. Though I was too young to fully realize it at the time, I have come to understand that our meeting was destined and that we already had a strong but troubled karmic bond.

His mother cut and styled hair out of her home, which is where we first encountered each other – at least, in this lifetime. When I saw him, every hair on my body stood up at attention. There was a sense of instant recognition I’ve come to associate with reuniting with someone from a past life, only this time, the feeling was far from positive. In fact, I was inexplicably terrified.

Since there was no logical reason to feel this way, I pushed the feelings aside. It’s too long a story to go into in detail here, but this guy must have felt something strong too because he began to stalk me. I would be driving home from work and see him in his car, following me. When I left school for the day, he would be in the parking lot, leaning against his car, just staring at me. He began to call me every night. When I tried to shake him off, he began to threaten to harm my little brother or my friends. I had learned that he had a number of friends who were convicted felons, so I decided to take his threats seriously.

He stalked me for months before he managed to get me alone; that’s when the rape occurred. I guess I was naïve, but I was truly shocked at how violent he became. It was following that experience that I took my power back, shed my fear of him, and took a stand by telling him that if he ever contacted me again, I would go to the police. (I know I should have gone to the police anyway, but I was sure my father would kill him if he found out, and I couldn’t bear the thought of my dad spending the rest of his life in prison.)

The turning point in my healing process came when I realized that I would rather be me and be raped by this man than to be him. As I struggled to understand why he had done what he’d done, I realized that his inner world was a really twisted, ugly place. I only had to live with his ugliness for a while; for him, it was a constant and inescapable prison.

As I had karmic encounters with other people from past lives, I also realized that I must have some history with this guy. I don’t know what happened back then, but I came to understand that we were both unconsciously acting out some old patterns. I also realized that if I didn’t want to keep circling this enemy throughout future lives, I would have to consciously change things for the better.

This is where your own story comes in. While I am in no way suggesting you try to find a way to justify what your father did or equating an attack by a stranger with the profound betrayal of a parent, it’s nevertheless true that in order to fully heal and set yourself free from this for all time, you would be wise to try to find compassion for your father.

Can you imagine what it would be like to be him? There is a lot of wisdom in saying to yourself, There but for the grace of God go I. While people like to tell themselves that they could never be as selfish or cruel as the individuals they most despise, in my view, that sort of thinking is a good way to be born as just such an individual because walking some miles in their shoes may the only way to develop compassion and understanding for them.

On my own quest for healing, it occurred to me that I may have hurt this man really badly at some point. As I pondered the karma between us, I also imagined him being raped or abused in a future lifetime in order to learn some compassion, and that’s when it occurred to me that perhaps this was why I had been attacked – to develop greater kindness and compassion than I had embodied in the past. (To better understand karmic relationships and why we reincarnate with the same people over and over again, you might want to explore the research of Michael Newton, Ph.D.)

If finding compassion for your dad proves too difficult, hypnotherapy may be just what you’re looking for. A gifted therapist can guide you in hearing your higher self so you can determine what needs to be done next in your healing process, help you heal and release any issues that are still sore spots for you, and empower you to move past any beliefs that could be preventing you from fully resolving all of this. For example, if you believe it’s not safe to forgive because you could be hurt again, working with a hypnotherapist can help you reprogram your belief system so you can bless yourself with greater peace and healing.

You will know that you have completed the healing process when you can give thanks for the wisdom, strength, compassion and other benefits you received from this experience, and when you can feel compassion for your father and sincerely hope he finds his way to the same peace you hunger for in your own heart.

Soul Arcanum

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Can You Conquer Addictions with the Law of Attraction?

Filed Under: Emotional Well-being, Healing, Law of Attraction, Manifesting by Soul Arcanum — Comments Off on Can You Conquer Addictions with the Law of Attraction?


Copyright Soul Arcanum LLC. All rights reserved. :)
 

Dear Soul Arcanum:

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

Patty

Dear Patty:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

– Soul Arcanum

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Self-Betrayal and Depression

Filed Under: Emotional Well-being, Healing, Spiritual Growth by Soul Arcanum — Comments Off on Self-Betrayal and Depression


Copyright Soul Arcanum LLC. All rights reserved. :)
 

Dear Soul Arcanum:

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

Randi

Dear Randi:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

– Soul Arcanum

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Self-Betrayal and Depression

Filed Under: Emotional Well-being, Healing by Soul Arcanum — Comments Off on Self-Betrayal and Depression


Copyright Soul Arcanum LLC. All rights reserved. :)
 

Dear Soul Arcanum:

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

Randi

Dear Randi:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

– Soul Arcanum

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