Tag Archive: Healing


Is Confession Good for the Soul?

 

Copyright Soul Arcanum LLC. All rights reserved. :)

Dear Soul Arcanum:

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

Bea

Dear Bea:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

– Soul Arcanum


Is Confession Good for the Soul?

 

Copyright Soul Arcanum LLC. All rights reserved. :)

Dear Soul Arcanum:

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

Bea

Dear Bea:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

– Soul Arcanum


Symptoms of Energy Cording


Copyright Soul Arcanum LLC. All rights reserved. :)
 

Dear Soul Arcanum:

I read your article on promiscuity and how it affects the aura and creates energetic links. I have read this before from a Hindu saint. My question is: How does this astral tie affect the individual? I mean, let’s say I have been with many partners – how would I notice these astral connections? Are there observable mental, emotional or physical symptoms? Besides thinking of the person, I don’t notice anything else.

Ryan

Dear Ryan:

Since the influence of psychic cording is subtle/energetic, how much you notice would depend on how psychically sensitive you are. Of course, the stronger the bond, the more likely one is to notice these effects. For example, the strongest psychic bond is typically that between mother and child, so even mothers who aren’t especially psychic may have striking experiences of this connection. Similarly, someone who is highly psychic can pick up things about people they barely know. If you are highly psychic, you may have an acquaintance pop into your head only to have that person phone you just after this, or learn that this person was thinking of you at that time.

Please note that I’m talking about conscious effects: we are all influenced by the psychic cords we have with other people whether we know it or not. Further, the less conscious we are of these interactions, the more they tend to influence us.

The cords that are formed when we have sex with someone are never completely broken unless something is done to purposefully break them. They do tend to fade or diminish over time, however. The stronger they are at their foundation, the more they tend to endure. Thus a long, passionate, true love affair is like a castle: though we may leave it behind, it remains standing and will continue to exist even as it falls into ruins. Only if we purposefully disassemble it and re-appropriate its materials will it disappear from the landscape.

Along the same lines of this metaphor, when we sleep with someone in a casual way without forming a deep bond, it’s like throwing up a little hut in our psychic territory. If we sleep around a lot, soon we’ll have a little ghetto in our psychic back yard. These creations aren’t as strong and enduring as true love affairs, so they will fall apart faster. Since they aren’t enormous like castles, it’s much easier to ignore, dismiss or overlook them.

It’s interesting that I’m writing this column today, because just last night I had long, delightful dreams of a boy I loved decades ago. Our bond is a good example of the castle I describe above. Though we’ve only run into each other a handful of times since we broke up, we continue to have fond feelings for each other, and I continue to have him pop into my mind on a regular basis. I also tend to dream about him every now and again, which is a very clear indication that we continue to have a strong psychic bond.

Having frequent or striking dreams about someone is one sign that we have a psychic bond with them. Here are some others:

On a mental level, the most common sign is that these folks will tend to just pop into our heads for no apparent reason. Of course, it’s wise to ponder what may have caused them to come to mind. If there is a song playing on the radio that reminds us of them, it could be nothing more than a mental association. If we can think of no reason why that person may be popping into our heads, then odds are good that we’re psychically linked.

As for why they would come to mind at that time, all sorts of things are possible. If we are working on some particular issue in our current lives, and that issue is somehow tied to the experiences we had with that person, it’s natural for those energies to be reawakened. It’s also very common for our thoughts about someone to make them think about us. Therefore, when someone pops into our heads, it may be because they’ve been thinking about us for some reason. Having a psychic connection to someone is sort of like having an intercom system: when one party sends a signal through it, it starts something of a telepathic dialogue that can go on indefinitely. Of course, for most people, this is mainly happening at an unconscious level.

On a mental level we can also pick up thoughts and ideas from people we are psychically bonded to. For example, I often see images of desert mountains, and when I follow the line of these images, the face of an old lover comes up, so I assume I am seeing images from his life. This is very similar to the images I see when I purposefully connect with someone on a psychic level in order to do a reading for them. It’s also similar to how spirits show me images and memories from their lives. This is really helpful to know if you’re trying to develop your psychic abilities, for if you examine the random images and thoughts that pop into your head, you will have a sense of what it is like to pick up psychic impressions.

On an emotional level, we can be suddenly overtaken by moods and feelings that seem to come out of nowhere. While we tend to feel like our moods just come over us, our feelings aren’t random. When we choose to be in a certain mood, our feelings are coming from within us; when we don’t consciously set our own tone, our moods tend to entrain to the strongest signal around us. This is why being around someone who is depressed can really get us down, while being around someone who is in a great mood can lift our spirits.

Sometimes the strongest signal is the emotional wavelength of someone we have a psychic bond to. This is why we may sense that someone is in danger even though they are miles away, for being in danger sends a very strong signal. Since we are rarely conscious of this type of influence, it tends to be extra powerful. It’s relatively easy to notice the influence of someone who is depressed and make a conscious choice to set our own tone, but when the influence is psychic in nature, we may be baffled as to why we suddenly feel down.

On a physical level, we can pick up the aches, pains and problems of people we are strongly connected to. This is especially true when we empathize with someone and we are powerful creators. Through years of working with the law of attraction, I have gotten to the point where I can give something my attention and manifest it very quickly. When I’m not careful with my thoughts and vibration, this tends to yield undesirable results!

It’s tricky to keep my vibration high when someone I love is hurting. Recently my athletic daughter had a lower back injury, and my heart went out to her because she was so frustrated and disappointed at her inability to compete. Within two days, I had the exact same pain in the same spot in my lower back. Similarly, my husband has been struggling with a painful elbow, which we’ve learned is due to bone chips in the joint. Within about a month of him developing this problem in his left elbow (and me listening to him talk about it and watching him struggle with it every day), I had pain in my left elbow!

The key to resolving such matters is conscious awareness. Once I became conscious that I was empathizing with and thus entraining to these vibrations, I was able to quickly release those conditions. Given the endless ways that psychic bonds can influence us, we are wise to choose the people we bond to carefully, and to cultivate conscious awareness of the subtle energetic interactions constantly flowing through our lives.

Soul Arcanum

Breaking Old Patterns to Manifest True Love

Copyright Soul Arcanum LLC. All rights reserved. :)
 

Dear Soul Arcanum:

I have been in a relationship for almost four years with a man that I deeply love and thought I was going to marry. We have just recently parted ways. He lost his wife over five years ago, and it seems the longer we were together, the more his grief grew and his love for me diminished. I have sadly accepted that our relationship was not healthy, and it is better for both of us to move on separately. At times I’m relieved to be free of his depression and lack of love, but I’m devastated by his rejection and the trauma of having to quickly move from our beautiful home to a very small apartment. I have been in three relationships in my life, each time with men that were emotionally unavailable for one reason or another. I now have realized that I attract men who will ultimately reject and abandon me. I’m 46 years old. How can I stop this pattern so I can enjoy a mutually loving, emotionally supportive relationship?
Warm Regards,
Michele

Dear Michele:

As I see it, you’re already on your way to something better. You’ve become consciously aware of this pattern in your life, and by seeking deeper understanding of it, you will gain the power to break free and create positive change.

In order to move on, the first thing is to become conscious of why you tend to get involved with men who are emotionally unavailable. You may think you know why, but if you continue to end up in this same situation over and over again, there must be more that you have yet to uncover.

To unearth the buried beliefs or issues behind this pattern of experience, I highly recommend hypnotherapy. Through regression work and dialoging with your higher self, you can manifest amazing transformations in your life practically overnight. I’ve been truly amazed by the breakthroughs I’ve seen people tap into by addressing the subconscious beliefs underlying undesirable patterns of experience.

For example, some months ago I worked with a friend who had all sorts of rules about love that had been drilled into her since childhood. Her mother had married for financial security, and even though her own marriage was miserable, she’d always told her daughter to find a man with money. Despite the fact that my friend is very financially successful herself, she had major hang-ups about how much money a guy had to make in order for her to be interested in him. On a conscious level, she could see that this rule about marrying money was holding her back from finding a truly nice guy because the men she dated tended to be rich, self-centered, demanding, arrogant workaholics. Nevertheless, she believed that she couldn’t be attracted to a man who wasn’t a huge financial success.

After just three sessions in hypnotherapy, everything began to change. In addition to becoming conscious of why she kept doing what she was doing, and working through some of the fears behind this limiting pattern, she also became aware of some of the lessons she is working on this lifetime, which include finding faith in her ability to take good care of herself instead of needing a man to lean on. While she is still looking for the one, instead of feeling miserable about her love life, she is now having a fantastic time dating all sorts of kind, wonderful men.

Like my friend, we all repeat dysfunctional patterns over and over again until we heal the deep wounds and learn the big lessons that keep leading us back into those situations. Thus women who grew up in families without fathers may subconsciously pursue men who will leave them, and in this way, recreate a situation where all the pain from the past can be brought to the surface and finally healed. By consciously working through the issues involved, they empower themselves to move on to a higher level of experience.

So when we find ourselves repeating the same destructive, unfulfilling patterns over and over again, we can be sure that there is something deep within us that is driving this behavior. Usually, this isn’t something we can clearly point to on a conscious level, which is why things like hypnotherapy and spiritual counseling often prove powerful where all sorts of practical, reasonable efforts fail.

Once you’ve brought any shadows into the light and healed and released them, you just need to get into vibrational harmony with what you want. This can be trickier than it sounds, for in addition to thinking about what we want, we have to FEEL the way we want to feel. To manifest true love, we have to fall in love with love and feel just as buoyant now as we expect to feel when we’ve found the one we’re looking for.

One powerful way to shift ourselves into a higher vibration in order to manifest something that has proven tricky for us is to get soaring in every other area of our lives. So if we want to have a fabulous love relationship, we’re wise to ask ourselves if every other aspect of our lives is fabulous. If we have goals or dreams that we could be pursuing in other areas, then we’re wise to get going on those relatively easy things first.

So if you want a fabulous love relationship, ask yourself these questions: Is my house in fabulous order? Am I wonderfully successful in my career? Do I look and feel fabulous? Are my finances in terrific shape? Is my daily life in order and ready for a big, wonderful new addition?

We all have things that we want and need to do that we put off for various reasons. When there are things that we CAN do to improve our lives, and we don’t get on them, we keep ourselves from the realm of bigger dreams. When we begin to stretch ourselves by doing the things we can do to shift into a higher level of experience, then new potentials move within reach and things begin to change in exciting ways.

It’s also essential to trust that things happen for a higher reason, and to give thanks for all of our experiences. For example, when things don’t work out in one relationship, we are wise to assume that we’re meant for something better.

Once we get ourselves into a state where we feel fabulous about ourselves and all we have to offer a new lover, are totally trusting that everything happens for a good reason, and can think about love and feel buoyed by a rich sense of joy and possibility, that’s when magic happens. When we’re in this very high vibration, heaven and earth move to answer our prayers for true and lasting fulfillment.

Once you’ve prepared yourself by healing old wounds, putting your life in order, and getting into a high vibration, you just need to clearly tell the Universe what you’re looking for and remain open to doing things differently this time. This may mean that you take a different approach than you’ve ever taken before, or that you open up to dating a different type of guy than you would normally be attracted to. The point is to expand your potential, and to do that, you’ll have to open up to a broader range of possibilities.

After you tell the Universe what you want, happily embrace whatever comes your way as either the solution or a stepping stone to where you want to go. The more you can love whatever comes your way with faith that it is leading you to what you really want, the faster you’ll flow toward fulfillment, and the more fun you’ll have along the way.

Finally, we get what we give in life, so wherever you are and whomever you’re with, embody LOVE. If you give the love and affection you are hoping to get to others, big love will flow back to you.

– Soul Arcanum


Dealing with Social Predators in a Spiritual Way

Copyright Soul Arcanum LLC. All rights reserved. :)
 

Dear Soul Arcanum:

My nanny of almost three years has just left and I found out that she has been stealing money from me the whole time. Just before she left she emptied my wallet, stole all my travel money and also my staff’s wages. I’m now also hearing stories of how cruel and domineering she was to my child. She came to me when my baby was two months old. I’m a single mum with no family around, and was in such a state that she was a godsend. She instantly became part of my little family. I trusted her so much that I was in complete denial and refused to believe she could be stealing even though my money seemed to be running through my fingers. In front of me she was good with my child and when my daughter didn’t want to be with her I thought it was only because she wanted to be with me. I feel so betrayed by her. I’m on a mission to be the best person I can be, and it seems like people take advantage of me and see my kindness as a weakness. My nature is to trust and I was brought up to be polite. I even gave the woman a letter of reference, and now she can go do the same to someone else! She’s certainly not the first person to pull the wool over my eyes. How do kind, sensitive people guard themselves against social predators like this? What is an appropriate spiritual way to react towards her? I have to prevent myself from visualizing her meeting a grizzly end! Your spiritual guidance is much appreciated.
Suz

Dear Suz:

You’re wise to seek a spiritual way to deal with all of this, for how you respond to this experience will greatly affect your life. If you can make peace with it and learn from it, you’ll move on to a higher level of experience; if you let it get the best of you, you’ll repeat this pattern time after time until you’ve transcended it.

In this scenario, you’re like a peaceful, gentle gazelle happily grazing in a sunny meadow. You’re living in a world that is full of all sorts of other creatures, however, like jelly fish, hornets, crocodiles and lions. If you think about all the different creatures in the world and how different even individual creatures of the same species can be from each other, it’s clear that life on Earth is rich with all sorts of colorful potentials.

If you now imagine that there are as many different sorts of people in the world as there are different types of creatures, I think you’ll quickly grasp my point: we’re all different, and we all act according to our own nature.

Where spiritual types like you are like gentle gazelles, the social predators you refer to are more like lions than lambs. They’re not evil – they’re just driven by their own needs and appetites, and doing what they believe they have to do in order to survive. If you expect everyone to behave like gazelles do, you’ll be shocked and disturbed time and time again.

Fortunately, we non-predators have been blessed with special survival instincts. If you visualize a deer grazing in a field, you’ll note that even though it can seem perfectly peaceful, it’s always alert. If it catches the scent of danger or sees something moving in the bushes, it’s ever ready to leap toward safety.

Like deer with sensitive survival instincts, highly spiritual people have very keen intuition. It’s hard to imagine a deer ignoring signs of danger, but many of us ignore our intuition all too often. We get a whiff that something isn’t right, but we talk ourselves out of listening and try to put the thought out of our minds. This effectively silences our intuition, and the more we do it, the harder it becomes to hear our inner voice.

There are lots of reasons we do this. For one, when we ponder big ideas and higher spiritual principles, we focus beyond the world of money and other practical needs. When we go through periods of deep spiritual contemplation, it’s easy to move into a dream world in our heads even though our bodies are still living in the physical.

We’re also at a tricky point where we identify more and more with our higher selves, yet we’re not totally free of the lower vibrations that could make us vulnerable to undesirable experiences. For example, we may be full of faith and trust, but if there is karma to be resolved with someone or some buried wound, fear or issue at work in our subconscious mind, we can still attract the sort of experience you describe. You say this woman was not the first person to pull the wool over your eyes. No doubt when this happened in the past, you didn’t fully resolve the feelings involved. This pattern will keep coming up for you until you do, for if you have fear or resistance to something, it will come to you if you’re not consciously manifesting something else.

We also argue with our intuition because we have been socialized to be nice to such a degree that we can’t allow ourselves to have suspicious thoughts about others even if they’re obviously true.

I’m not saying that this experience was your fault. In fact, I think it’s important that you allow yourself to feel angry. You have every reason to be enraged, and telling yourself that you should feel more spiritual about the whole thing will just keep that anger buried. Once you’ve grown tired of feeling angry, however, you can begin to make peace with all of this by accepting the following three truths:

First: Nothing can truly harm you, for you are so much more than this experience and even this lifetime, and you get infinite chances to fulfill your dreams. When you experience a major drama like this, you can be sure you’re learning something, so despite surface appearances, all is well.

Second: None of this is personal. People act according to their own natures and desires. If you don’t pay attention and consciously create what you want in your life, you may become the vulnerable, daydreaming gazelle at the back of the herd.

Third: You have divine gifts and powers that can help you. Spiritual people generally have keener intuition and a clearer connection with spiritual guidance than most. If you pay attention to your intuition, it will keep you on track with what you desire.

In addition to your intuition, your spirituality will empower you to consciously manifest what you want in your life. The good news here is that it will be relatively easy for you to financially recover and move on from this experience to something much better. To do this, however, you have to consciously work with the law of attraction.

Sometimes we are taken unawares, and then we look back and realize there were signs that we ignored. As we rush through life making countless decisions each day, we all manifest many things unconsciously. This is because in addition to all our conscious thoughts, feelings and desires, we have all sorts of subconscious influences contributing to the mix, such as buried beliefs, emotional wounds, old karma, etc.

The more we remain conscious of our own energy/vibration and what’s happening beneath the surface of our awareness, the more power we’ll have to manifest what we want. In addition, when we pay attention to our intuition and purposefully work with it to attract the sorts of people and experiences we desire, life just gets better and better.

To make peace with this experience, you must accept that not everyone in the world is like you, and that this is ultimately a good thing. If you view it from the right angle, this situation can become a springboard to a higher level of experience. I recommend you let it to motivate you to make better use of your spiritual gifts, and then focus your divine creative energy on manifesting new blessings.

– Soul Arcanum


Haunted by Fatal Accident

Copyright Soul Arcanum LLC. All rights reserved. :)
 

Dear Soul Arcanum:

I was involved in a car accident eight years ago. The drunk man who hit me was 32 years old; he died at the scene. I am actively seeing a therapist and have been diagnosed with PTSD, but have always felt this man as a lingering presence in my life. I have been left with anxiety and remorse that I can’t shake even though the accident wasn’t my fault. I feel this lost spirit has attached himself to me and is draining me of my energy and truth. I have even tried to not believe in this to make it go away, but I can’t deny my truth anymore. I am an intuitive person and feel this to be the root of my problems. My date of birth is 4/22/79.
Kellie

Dear Kellie:

First and foremost, it is essential to your well-being and peace of mind to trust yourself. I know that the idea of spirit attachment is by no means mainstream, but that doesn’t mean it’s invalid. Further, whether one believes in spirit attachment or not, innumerable cases demonstrate that spirit releasement therapy can instantly resolve longstanding physical, emotional and mental problems. Usually, people have tried everything that modern medicine has to offer before they open up to the possibility of spirit attachment, so they are astounded when spirit releasement yields fast, dramatic results.

You describe a number of factors that support the idea that this man is indeed attached to you and influencing how you feel. Most important is your own feeling that this is what is going on. The best instrument for detecting this sort of phenomenon is one’s own intuition, and yours is very clearly trying to make you aware of the true nature of your problems. I urge you to listen to your own inner knowing and trust your ability to sense the truth.

In addition to your intuition, it’s helpful to realize that this sort of thing happens all the time. When a person dies a sudden, violent death, the odds of that person remaining earthbound on the other side rise dramatically. At first these spirits may not realize that they have died at all; one minute they are driving along, and the next, they’re walking through a very strange dreamworld. When someone who is inebriated dies a sudden violent death, the chances that they will end up disoriented on the other side are even greater.

When we add remorse to the mix, we even have a reason why a spirit who wasn’t necessarily disoriented may choose to hang around. Given your feelings of remorse and anxiety, odds are good that this spirit is aware of what happened and is so overcome with remorse that he is hanging around to try to find a way to make things up to you.

Knowing this should make it easier to forgive him if you haven’t yet, which will encourage him to move on. If you have forgiven him, then it’s important that he know and feel this. I doubt very much that he realizes that he’s harming you by endlessly trying to apologize or make things right. Once he knows he has been forgiven and that the best thing he can do for you is to let go, I imagine he’ll be amenable to moving on.

There is a book you may find interesting entitled A Change of Heart by Claire Slyvia. While the book is mainly about the attachment of a spirit via organ transplant, the author’s descriptions of how she became aware of the spirit’s presence and the ways this attachment made her feel like she wasn’t herself are similar to your own experiences.

For more on spirit releasement therapy, you might check out spiritrelease.org and spiritrelease.com. You may also be interested in this article, which links PTSD with spirit attachment: PTSD: An Alternate View.

For releasing the spirit, you have three basic options:

Personal/Ritualistic: You can try to release this spirit yourself. Since it seems this is a well-intentioned spirit, you shouldn’t encounter too much resistance from him. You might begin by simply communicating with him (out loud) that you are aware of his presence, and explain how he is negatively affecting you. Tell him that he died in the accident in case he doesn’t know, and communicate (with feeling) that you forgive him and want to move on. Communicate that it is best for him to move on as well – that both of you will benefit from this. Send him lots of love and understanding, and perhaps communicate that in losing his life in that accident, he more than paid for his poor judgment. Encourage him to forgive himself and look for the light or for angelic guides/helpers. Pray for help from the Spirit world and visualize him being guided in crossing over. There are also set rituals for this sort of thing that you may find in books or on the internet; trust your intuition to guide you to the best way for you.

Spiritual/Intuitive: You can visit a psychic/medium who is experienced with helping spirits cross over. I recommend finding a Spiritualist church and asking the minister there for advice. Many people who can perceive and communicate with spirits are able to talk them through the process of letting go and moving on. (This is what the main character on the TV show The Ghost Whisperer does.)

Secular/Interactive: In my opinion, this is the most reliable, powerful and thorough approach. You’ll want to find a hypnotherapist who has training and experience in spirit releasement therapy. The therapist will guide you into a deep trance state and dialogue with your subconscious mind/higher self regarding the true nature of your problems. If this spirit is attached to you, at this time it will be able to speak to the therapist through you, and the therapist can then guide the spirit in moving on. A good therapist will also help you begin to heal from all of this so that you can feel as good as new again.

After this spirit has been released, you may need further healing. It’s likely that this spirit attached to you at the scene of the accident, and your own healing from this traumatic experience may have been arrested or impeded by this attachment. Spiritual/energy healing can be very helpful here, as can prayer and meditation. Remember that your guides and angels are always standing by, ready to lend a hand. If you pray to them for the healing, answers and solutions you need, and you trust your intuition, you will be guided to whatever is right and best for you.

– Soul Arcanum

Still Seeking Peace with Parents’ Deaths

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Dear Soul Arcanum:

My mother died of cancer and about one year later, my dad committed suicide. My mother knew she was going to die so she had special talks with all her children. In my conversation with her, I asked her to please find a way to come visit me in my dreams or some other way from the dead. She said she would. I only had one dream about her. I was sitting at my kitchen table with a couple of friends and she appeared in the doorway. I turned and yelled Mom! and went to get up to hug her and she disappeared. As for my father, he died of a drug overdose. In the only dream I had about him, he was chasing me with a drug needle, saying This is your life now. Please help me understand all of this. Why won’t my mom won’t come to see me and talk to me like in the stories I’ve read at Soul Arcanum? Why would my dad say and do the things he did to me in my dream? I stood by both my parents until the end, never missing a doctor’s appointment or a chance to get my dad help for his pain. All he did when he was alive was make my life a living hell and make up rumors about me to feed his drug habit. Please help me. Thanks in advance!
Karen

Dear Karen:

Since it seems your parents were very different people and you had unique relationships with each of them, I think we should approach these dreams separately.

First it’s important to recognize and give thanks that your mother did come to you as promised. It may not have been exactly what you were hoping for, but she did show up in a dream and try to connect with you, and you did remember the experience.

My dad died a couple of years ago, after he and my mother had enjoyed many decades of a really beautiful marriage. One would think that she would have had all sorts of experiences with my dad after he passed, but she hasn’t had a single one that I would call really obvious or moving. She says that she sometimes hears his voice in her head, telling her what she should do about this or that problem, and that a couple of times, she has gotten the feeling that a bird outside the window was a sign from him, but she’s not had any vivid visits from him either when awake or dreaming.

I, however, have had outright visits, dreams, signs – you name it – from my dad. He even telephoned me on my birthday! This is not because he loved me more than he loved her or the rest of the family. Spirit communication is a two-way street, and there are many factors that can influence its success.

Following are some things to consider that may be affecting this situation:

First, people who die after long illnesses often need some time to heal and recover on the other side. They may make an all-out effort to come to us at least once after they’ve died to let us know they’re okay or to fulfill a promise, like your mother did, but then move on to what they need to do next. Often it’s a good sign when spirits don’t endlessly visit us, for it means they’ve moved on and are doing what they need to be doing on the other side.

It can take a great deal of time and effort for spirits to reach us in a way that most people can perceive it. It’s much like learning how to consciously communicate with spirits is for us: we could devote all kinds of time and energy to this goal and still find the results we desire elusive. In other words, I think we should assume that inter-dimensional communication is just as tricky to affect from the spirit world as it is from the physical.

Our state of mind definitely affects spirit communication. You have obviously gone through a great deal with all of this. You didn’t mention how long it has been since these deaths, but even if it’s been a while, you’re clearly still in some turmoil about it all, which would prevent conscious contact with spirits due to a low vibration.

Further, just as some people are more adept at spirit communication, some spirits are too. If the living person or the spirit is highly sensitive and spiritual in nature, contact is far more likely. If both parties are highly sensitive, then amazing things can happen. For example, the first spirit I had lots of contact with was my grandmother. She was a very spiritual sort of person, and we had a deep bond. I believe that because we were very close and because we were both very open and sensitive, it was easy for us to connect.

The more we evolve and the higher our vibration, the greater our power over our own reality and the greater our freedom to travel between spiritual realms, whether we’re on this side or living in another dimension.

In addition to all of the above, we often have dreams of loved ones in Spirit that we don’t remember. Even people who vividly remember their dreams every night may block out visits with loved ones in Spirit if there are unresolved feelings or issues that they’re not ready to face yet. It’s ironic, but the more you heal these relationships and work through your grief, the easier it will be for you to consciously connect.

What I want to emphasize most is the truth that just because you don’t get signs or visits from a particular spirit, that doesn’t mean that the spirit isn’t trying, doesn’t love you, or isn’t okay. I know my dad has tried to get through to my mom, but she just isn’t ready yet. In fact, she admitted that she both wants to hear from him, and is kind of freaked out about the whole idea. This inner conflict explains why she hasn’t had conscious experiences of him since his passing.

As for your father, it sounds to me like two things may be happening here:

First, addicts tend to remain earthbound. It sounds like your dad just hasn’t changed much since he died: he’s still struggling with addiction, and he didn’t instantly become angelic upon crossing over. It even sounds like he may be trying to feed his addiction through you – hence the dream of him chasing you with a needle.

You’re wise to realize that many times when our loved ones cross over, if they have issues that keep them earthbound like alcohol or drug addiction, they will attach to someone and try to continue to drink or get high through them. So someone with a food addiction may latch onto another family member who also has food issues, or at least has a weakness in that area. They don’t intend to harm us, mind you – but just like when they were living, they are too caught up in their own needs to act in a more loving, responsible way.

Until these spirits conquer their addictions, they can’t cross over, for they just keep fixating on the physical pleasures they crave. Whether they want to cross over or not, however, you can release them from your own energy and protect yourself from further attachment. (Research spirit releasement for more information on how to do this.)

This dream of your dad may also simply reflect that you are processing some unresolved feelings and issues you have about your relationship with him. Clearly there is a lot of pain and disappointment left over from this relationship that you have yet to heal, so the dream may not have been a true visit from him but instead be a reflection of your own inner turmoil.

I encourage you to pray for peace and healing for yourself and your father. Visualize him full of light, free from addiction, and surrounded by angels helping him to learn, grow and heal in the afterlife. You can pray for your mother too, and also pray to have the sort of healing experiences you crave with both of your departed parents. If you focus on this and ask for it with a sincere heart, I have faith that you will be guided to peace and fulfillment in the perfect way and time for you.

– Soul Arcanum

A Spiritual Perspective on Codependency

Copyright Soul Arcanum LLC. All rights reserved. :)
 

Dear Soul Arcanum:
Could you please explain what codependency is? What fears lie behind it, and what healing tools could be used to heal it? Thank you for the wonderful job you do with Soul Arcanum – your words bring more light into my life!
Ellen

Dear Ellen:

Codependency ultimately arises from a lack of faith in a higher plan and power. If we believe that we won’t be okay unless we remain vigilantly in control, and that others won’t be okay unless we personally guide and rescue them, then we will go to insane lengths to try to make things go the way we think they should go.

Codependency is of course also a relationship issue involving a lack of clear personal boundaries. Basically, codependents misdirect their efforts by taking responsibility for others’ choices. Further, everyone has fears of abandonment/being alone. Some people avoid the potential pain of being rejected by avoiding getting too close or attached, while others (codependents) try to prevent the potential hurt of being lonely by clinging on tight, avoiding the truth, and smoothing things over. They literally lose themselves in relationships.

Codependency always involves an addict – otherwise we’d just call it obsession. In this scenario, the addict may addicted to alcohol, drugs, gambling, food, attention, drama, or even just being lazy and irresponsible, while the codependent is addicted to the addict. All addicts feel they can’t live without whatever (or whomever) they’re addicted to, and this is what motivates their desperate, self-destructive, crazy behavior. In the dependent/codependent relationship, neither person is centered in their own personal power; both are looking for God or emotional sustenance in something/someone outside of themselves instead of within.

I believe that we all have addictive and codependent tendencies, for we all have fears of being vulnerable, alone, helpless, unloved, abandoned, unhappy, unfulfilled, etc. Further, even seemingly emotionally healthy people have buried issues that can lie dormant for years and then be reawakened by any number of triggers.

For example, we may meet someone from a past life with whom we have dependent/codependent karmic patterns, or connect with someone new who pushes one of our buttons. When this happens, we tend to feel a strong sense of connection or attraction to that person, and may mistakenly assume that this means we’ve met the soul mate we’ve been praying for and will live happily ever after with them. Instead, our inner beings feel drawn to these people because they can help us heal something deep within us that needs healing.

This is what happens when children of alcoholics grow up and marry other addicts. Even when they carefully screen out overt alcoholics, to their dismay, many find themselves repeating familiar old patterns. If Sandy was forever covering for dad when she was a girl, she may marry a man who constantly needs rescuing in some way in order to learn that this sort of behavior isn’t truly loving or respectful of either one of them. If Mom was affectionate and cheerful when drugged up but mean and withdrawn when sober, Bill may be strangely attracted to women who run hot and cold in order to heal the emotional wounds he suffered as a child.

The possibilities are endless: the point is that what attracts us to other people on an unconscious, spiritual level is always meaningful and purposeful. While we are drawn to certain people because they may have the traits we consciously desire in a partner, there are other, deeper forces at work as well.

I did my own wretched tour of codependent duty when I was a freshman in college. As I had grown up with an obese, food-addicted father, I was well-trained in codependency myself. When I met Dan, there was an instant feeling of soul recognition, and yet my heart didn’t swell with love and delight. Instead, it was like I’d just come across a live wire on the ground that was sending out fiery sparks: I felt enthralled but wary.

Dan was brilliant, fascinating, sexy, self-possessed, and a mean, ugly drunk. When he was sober, life with him was heaven; when he was drinking, it was hell. He loved me beautifully two thirds of the time, and the other third he treated me like dirt. This was profoundly heart-wrenching and confusing, but because I was so attached to the ecstasy, I kept hanging on through the miserable times with him. Nothing was more important to me than him loving me completely, so I accepted his addiction as an excuse for his totally unacceptable behavior. Instead of telling him what I really thought and felt, I tried to smooth things over and keep them going. Instead of drawing a firm line with him, I let him emotionally use and abuse me.

I know that many people reading this can relate. For those who haven’t been through something similar, imagine a pimp getting you hooked on crack by giving you a little taste and then disappearing…showing up suddenly with another little bit of heaven, getting you high, beating the crap out of you, and then taking off again…returning with sweet apologies and lots of what you want but then suddenly claiming a supply shortage and jacking his prices sky high. If you want it, you can have it, but you’ll have to sell yourself to get it. Since you feel like you’re dying without it, you’re willing to give up anything – your health, your self-respect, your very soul – just to stop the pain.

This is what happens when codependents get hooked on addicts. By nature, addicts are not emotionally honest with themselves or anyone else, which generates seemingly crazy, irrational behavior. When we remember that codependents are also addicts, it’s easy to see how confusion reins and endless crazy swings between hope and despair become normal.

In terms of spiritual development, codependents tend to ignore both reason and their intuition. They will continue with this as long as their fear of being alone or unloved is greater than their fear of being used, abused and in a miserable relationship. Eventually, however, the pain and frustration grow intolerable and they begin to reason their way out of the mess they find themselves in.

My head kept trying to tell me that what I was doing with Dan didn’t make sense and wasn’t leading where I really wanted to go, but I believed I couldn’t live without him. Eventually, reason convinced me that if I really wanted to feel loved and happy, I was going about it all wrong. How could anyone truly love and respect me when I was unable to respect myself enough to stop the insanity?

Of course, by enabling their addict, most codependents believe that they are acting in a loving manner. Once they realize that enabling addicts is more hurtful than helpful of everyone involved, they naturally begin to change.

Finally, at the heart of the journey of healing from codependency is the development of faith in something bigger than ourselves. When we have faith that everything happens for a good reason and everyone is doing whatever they need to do in order to learn what they need to learn, it’s easy to give up trying to save or control them. Others are already doing whatever they need to be doing, and they can only save themselves anyway. This goes for us too, of course: we realize that instead of wasting our time and energy trying to force square pegs into round holes, we would be wise to focus on fulfilling our own goals and dreams with trust that if we align with what we want within, whatever happens in our outer experience will prove to be for the best.

– Soul Arcanum

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

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