Tag Archive: peace


Can Hatred be Healing?

Filed Under: Emotional Well-being, Healing, Relationships by Soul Arcanum — Comments Off on Can Hatred be Healing?

Copyright Soul Arcanum LLC. All rights reserved. :)
 

Dear Soul Arcanum:

Over the last three years, I’ve had some wonderful unfolding through trance and healing work, but now I really feel stuck. I was severely abused as a child, and my whole family is still covering up for the abusers. The spiritual counselor I’ve been working with took a sharp turn from many good things to this whole new place I hate: He wants me to forgive my mother. Why should I forgive someone who beat the heck out of me? I just don’t see it. I’m not stupid; I understand that she came from her own bad karma; I get that letting go helps me. However, hating her is the only real spiritual clarity I’ve had in years. I know how awful that sounds but I feel a great clearing to see what she did, so to ask me to forgive her makes me nuts! He is insisting that I am staying stuck. It sounds right but I can’t even imagine letting go of my newfound hate of her and all she did. Any suggestions?
Susan

Dear Susan:

I feel both you and your therapist are right – you’re just viewing this from different perspectives. It sounds like this healer knows what he is doing, for he has helped you a great deal, proven his wisdom and earned your trust thus far. I agree with his assessment of the situation: that holding on to hatred of your mother will keep you stuck.

At the same time, however, it’s imperative that you love and trust yourself enough to honor your true feelings. If it doesn’t feel right to let go of this hatred yet, then you must do what feels right and best to you.

Please do note that when we forgive someone, that doesn’t mean we’re to blame for whatever they did. Further, when we have feelings of hatred for someone, that doesn’t mean we are somehow at fault. It feels to me like you really need to love your inner child by clearly acknowledging what happened to you when you were small and validating your feelings about that.

Perhaps it doesn’t feel like you can let go of this hatred because you’re waiting for validation of your feelings from some of the key people involved. As you move forward and learn to love yourself even better, it won’t be so important to get that external validation, and this will empower you to release more of the deep pain that you’ve been carrying around for years.

For now, by allowing yourself to be angry with your mother, you are finally starting to affirm your love for yourself. Children who are abused tend to have very low self-esteem, and when they decide that they deserve better and they get angry, then instead of turning all that pain inward, they start to flow it outward toward whomever or whatever mistreated them. This begins to release the energy, which can bring a profound sense of relief. Hatred can thus indeed be healing when it represents a shift toward greater self-love. It’s just one step, but when we’ve come from an even lower vibration, we may feel much better than we felt before.

I feel your counselor is trying to help you but needs to be patient and understanding of where you are in this process. This is one of the trickier aspects of spiritual counseling: when we’re forever tapping into higher truths and aligning with a super high vibration, we can lose touch with ordinary life, which diminishes our effectiveness as healers.

You are naturally conflicted. In seeking help from this counselor, you are in essence asking him to guide you to a warmer, happier place. Let’s say that initially, when you were in a place of tremendous emotional pain and struggle, it was like you were living in a frozen, barren tundra. As you began to shift out of feeling powerless, unlovable and victimized, you moved into feeling more empowered and angry at your abusers. While this doesn’t sound all that wonderful, it was like moving from that frozen tundra to someplace like Toronto: even though it’s still really cold there, it feels so much better than where you were before.

Meanwhile, your healer is living in a tropical paradise and is eager to help you find your way to the wonderful place he has found. In continuing to work with him, you are in essence asking him to help you keep moving to a better/warmer place. At the same time, however, you are telling him that you don’t want to leave the cold weather (hatred) behind.

No doubt you just need a chance to rest and recover from your recent trek, to integrate your experiences and gather the strength and courage for another journey. On a spiritual level, you’re feeling pretty worn out and at the same time, feeling so much better than you did before that you’re wondering if you really do need to keep moving.

You are free to stay where you are with all of this for as long as you like. If and when you feel ready, you can inch your way toward paradise or you take a big, sudden leap. It all depends on what feels right to you, what you’re ready for, and your own inner guidance.

In terms of your relationship with this healer, the important thing is to recognize that he may have the answers you need, that you may not be ready to hear them or act on them yet, and that is all okay.

I believe the lessons in this situation are naturally perfect for everyone involved. You are learning to honor your feelings, trust yourself, and make choices based on what feels right to you. You’re learning that if you try to deny or repress your feelings, they will get swept under the rug again, and there they will make all sorts of lumps and bumps that you will trip over in the future. As they’ll then be hidden, you won’t know why you feel the way you do or keeping doing the self-destructive, crazy things you keep doing. Thus you are very wise to take all the time you need to fully work through and release your feelings.

Further, until you give yourself permission to feel all that you really feel, you will naturally resist moving on. Imagine yourself on that journey south, and that someone else is pushing you to keep moving even though you’re weary and need to rest a bit. In this scenario, it’s natural to resist being pushed. If, however, you claim your right to set your own pace, then you will sense when it’s time to get going again; it will feel comfortable and right for you to do so.

Your healer also has lessons in all of this. He’s being reminded to respect and honor his clients as unique spiritual beings who are being guided by Divine wisdom via their own hearts. He’s being reminded that everyone is always in just the right place for them. He’s being reminded that, in order to be a good teacher, he must teach at his students’ pace, not the pace that he would prefer. He’s being reminded that he can do his best to help, but he can’t move for you: only you can truly change your life, and trying to rush the process will only take longer in the end and prove more stressful than necessary. Your spiritual counselor does sound wise. My sense is that he isn’t truly trying to rush you, but is instead simply spelling things out for you, letting you know that when you want to make further progress, you will have to head in a certain direction. You can take all the time you need getting ready for that spiritual journey, but he’s right that in order to get to a tropical paradise, you’re eventually going to have to head toward the equator. You can take all the time you need, of course, for the relative paradise of inner peace will always be there, ready for you to call it home.

– Soul Arcanum

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A Spiritual Response to Global Crises

Filed Under: Emotional Well-being, Energy/Vibration, Healing, Manifesting, Meditation, Spiritual Growth by Soul Arcanum — Comments Off on A Spiritual Response to Global Crises


Copyright Soul Arcanum LLC. All rights reserved. :)
 

Dear Soul Arcanum:

I feel so unsettled these days because of the crisis in Japan. How do you feel about this? Are we going to get through this? 

Ka:

Dear Ka:

Please note that I do not intend to make light of the situation in Japan or human suffering in general. My heart goes out to those who have lost their loved ones, homes and businesses in this tragedy, and to all who face an uncertain future – which includes you and me, my friend. However, in asking for my opinion, I assume that you are seeking a higher spiritual perspective on all of this. From this higher spiritual perspective, I can see that all is well and that there are valuable lessons and opportunities in this situation.

The reason you are feeling uneasy is because the whole world is feeling uneasy. Your unsettled feelings belie the fact that we are all connected; what happens to one happens to all on some level. This is perhaps the greatest lesson humanity is in the process of learning right now.

We live in exciting times. It wasn’t that long ago that an earthquake could have devastated Japan and only those present would have known about it. Now we are all connected on more than a spiritual level; we instantly receive news of what is happening across the globe in vivid, full-color images. Further, given nuclear technology, what happens in other parts of the world could have a devastating effect on us here.

I believe that what we see happening on a physical level mirrors what is happening on a spiritual level, and that the political and ecological problems we are facing arise from an inner spiritual crisis. When we began to question and reject organized religion, we lost more than just false beliefs and illusions: most of us also lost all sense of the sacred. This created a hole in the soul of the world and left many people spiritually adrift. It also encouraged the abuse of the planet and other people, for if nothing has meaning, then life becomes entirely materialistic. It’s then every person/country for itself in a race to gobble up as many resources as possible before someone else gets there.

To me it just makes sense that in order to address the crises we see in our outer experience, we must look to what is happening on an inner level. For one thing, it is from the inside that we make decisions: it is our values that determine how we treat the planet and each other.  Further, the seeds of physical existence are planted metaphysically; the state of the physical world reflects what is happening on a spiritual level, so to change what is happening in the outer world, we must change what is happening within.

Just as we can now fly around the world and connect with people on other continents via phone and internet, we are all growing more and more overtly connected. This is moving us toward the realization that we are not separate individuals, separate races and separate nations, but all part of one big family sharing the same planet and resources. Whether it is by divine design or not, tragedies like the one in Japan are awakening us all to the realization of Oneness.

I am sure that we are all going to get through this, but it may not happen here on Earth unless we wake up and develop a respectful attitude toward all life as sacred. Our ancestors had a healthy respect for nature; events like the earthquake and tsunami are reminders that we are completely dependent on the same nature we are so determined to conquer and exploit. The reason I believe we will all get through this is because I know we are more than our physical bodies. Since we are all multidimensional beings, when we die, we will all continue to exist in other dimensions. The earth plane is a place of limited physical resources and extreme contrast. We incarnated here to have an intense experience in hopes of achieving tremendous spiritual growth. We shouldn’t be surprised that Earth isn’t one big amusement park, for that’s not what we signed up for: We came to develop the wisdom to choose love over fear, and to do that, we have to have unsettling experiences.

You are understandably afraid. The news is full of frightening information about war, ecological destruction and every sort of tragedy imaginable. While it’s understandable to feel afraid, I’d like to submit that your fear is a call from your soul to find new faith and reach for light instead of succumbing to darkness.

You begin to do this by holding a vision that is beautiful and peaceful. You can send prayers to those in need and imagine everyone coming together to help each other. If there is something overt you can do to help those who move you with compassion, do it. Otherwise, vow not to be sucked into fear and despair but instead to keep your inner light burning bright so it can shine out to others and illuminate their way.

To manifest global positive change, we must join together to promote what we value. Scientific research has shown that group meditation can create a powerful positive influence on the collective consciousness of society. While there have always been natural events like earthquakes, if we unite in appreciation of the sacred nature of the planet, we may not have to deal with nuclear fallout on top of whatever Mother nature dishes out. Perhaps if humanity grows more peaceful, the planet will as well. For more information on transcendental meditation, visit istpp.org and tm.org.

By affecting collective consciousness, we begin to change what is happening on the spiritual level from which physical existence arises. The same unified field of consciousness that has made you feel uneasy can be used to generate new peace, love, harmony and well-being. You’ve been receiving impressions from the unified field of human consciousness; it’s time for us all to start purposefully sending positive vibes out.

To find your own way to new peace, regular meditation should prove powerful, for it will lead to the development of equanimity. You will then be at peace regardless of what is happening in your outer experience. In addition to meditation, I recommend learning how to have out-of-body experiences, for aside from having a near-death experience, this is the most profound way I know to conquer fear of death and awaken to the truth that we are all multidimensional beings. For a comforting peek at what astral travel can do for you, check out this fascinating talk by Jurgen Ziewe.

When you realize that the Earth is just one dimension of many and that we will all leave it one day for other worlds, it’s easier to relax about what is happening around the globe. This doesn’t mean we stop caring. Rather, instead of running around telepathically yelling The sky is falling!, we are able to respond to whatever and whomever comes our way from a place of higher spiritual values.

I believe we are heading toward the realization of a global community and hopefully a period of greater peace and cooperation, for it is becoming ever more clear that what happens to one affects us all.

Soul Arcanum

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The Law of Allowing

Filed Under: Emotional Well-being, Energy/Vibration, Law of Attraction, Manifesting, Spiritual Growth by Soul Arcanum — Comments Off on The Law of Allowing


Copyright Soul Arcanum LLC. All rights reserved. :)
 

Dear Soul Arcanum:

I have been studying the law of attraction for about five years, and have manifested a number of great things so far. Part of this process has included working with a life coach who has taught me to focus on what I want in my life, pour lots of positive emotion into my visualization efforts, wish for what I desire with all my heart, but then surrender whatever happens to a higher plan and power. This is the part I’m struggling with: if we can create what we want in our lives, why do we have to surrender to a higher plan? My teacher tells me that the more I strain for control, the less control I actually have. Can you explain this? Also, do you think we can decide what we will create in our lives even if it goes against some pre-established higher plan?

Bob

Dear Bob:

I chose your question because this is something I’ve struggled with myself. We hear a lot about the law of attraction, but not so much about another law that is just as essential to the process of manifesting: the law of allowing. In my experience, most people are much better at working with one of these laws than the other.

People who are better at working with the law of attraction tend to be successful and good at manifesting what they want, but they also tend to experience lots of stress and frustration. These sorts of people are better at getting what they think they want than being happy with what they have. People who are better at working with the law of allowing tend to be easygoing, relaxed types who struggle to make ends meet and often feel sorry for themselves because life just seems unfair. They are better at being happy with what they have than they are at creating what they want and need in life.

Of course, these are gross generalizations: each individual is a unique mixture of all sorts of traits and qualities, and there are many well-balanced people in the world who draw the best from both camps. This is the goal, by the way: to get good at working with both laws so that we can create what we want in our lives and be happy and at peace at the same time. Instead of a warrior or a dreamer, we want to be like a Tai Chi master: both a powerful force to be reckoned with AND able to flow with the other forces around us instead of fighting against them.

As I mentioned, your question is something I’ve struggled with myself. In fact, this issue of control recently reared up again. Before falling asleep one night, I was pondering just how much control we actually have over our course of experience, and I thought to pray to Spirit to send me an illuminating dream. I had a number of dreams that night, but there was part of one dream that felt powerful and stayed with me when I awoke:

In the dream, I am plowing a field with a donkey, and am strapped to the donkey with an old-fashioned leather yoke. I am aware that this is the first time I have done this sort of plowing, and there is an invisible force guiding me, telling me what to do and how to go about the whole process. When I get to the end of the first row and try to bring the donkey around to go back the other way, the donkey angrily whips around on me and knocks me backwards. This scares the heck out of me, but it doesn’t kill or seriously injure me. (I remember thinking with great surprise that I was neither killed nor injured.) I then feel that invisible force guiding me to regain control of the donkey and set it moving back on course again.

When I woke up, I knew that this dream was in answer to my prayer. I see it as a message about how much control we have over our course of experience and how we go about working with the creative forces of the Universe. As I meditated on this, a long message from Spirit came through about how creating what we want in our lives is very much like working with nature to cultivate various crops.

Here is some of what was relayed to me:

  • We aren’t the only force influencing what happens in our lives. We can harness the creative forces of the Universe to create what we desire, but since we are dealing with wild forces, sometimes this is easier said than done. If we don’t completely know what we’re doing (and who ever does?), we may sometimes experience some backlash. The bigger the goal or dream – the bigger the “donkey” and the field – the trickier things tend to get.
  • We can choose what we are going to cultivate as well as how we will go about it. We choose how much time and effort we put in and how much we study nature and how to go about growing lush crops, but there will always be factors that remain beyond our control.
  • The weather/climate we are working in will always play a big factor in our results. Even if we cultivate very carefully, sometimes forces beyond our control can destroy what we’ve been working on. Of course, those same forces can also prove ideal and make our crops grow especially lush. Though we are forever looking for ways to control our results or at least understand why some things happen at some times and other thing happen at other times, there is much that remains beyond our scope and understanding. This is the realm of so-called bad luck and good fortune.

Many people have a hard time working with both/and thinking as opposed to either/or thinking. The less rigid and limited we are in our outlook, the more we can understand and work with laws of the Universe. For example, most people think they must choose between believing that we either have control over what happens in our lives OR we don’t have control and must surrender to “God’s will” or chance. I’m suggesting that we both have control over what happens in our lives AND must surrender to a higher plan.

This is the way of the farmer who does his best to grow what he wants and needs in his life. He gets up early, harnesses his donkey, heads out to the fields and does his very best to cultivate what he wants. He reads the Farmer’s Almanac, studies the ways of nature, and allows both his learned knowledge and his instincts to tell him when the time is right for planting, watering, weeding and reaping. He prays to higher forces to bless and guide him in all of this, and he listens within for that guidance. Ultimately, however, he knows that much remains beyond his control. He feels that he is a part of the nature he is working with, and this makes him feel safe: he is at home in this world, for the very forces that hold so much power over what happens in his life are the source of his own creation. He therefore wisely surrenders ultimate outcomes with faith that no matter what happens, everything will be fine.

I believe this is a wise and powerful approach, for it allows us to both cultivate what we want in our lives while at the same time feeling a sense of peace with the way things are. Ironically, letting go of outcomes actually makes us more powerful cultivators of what we want in our lives, for when we can relax and feel good without straining for control, we are able to maintain a high vibration. This is like being calm and assured when yoked to that donkey. If we approach the donkey feeling stress, strain, anxiety or frustration, the donkey will sense it and may rear back on us and make things very difficult. If, however, we are calm and assured, we remain masters of the situation and are able to steer toward where we want to go and align with a smooth journey to fulfillment.

Soul Arcanum

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Dealing with Social Predators in a Spiritual Way

Filed Under: Emotional Well-being, Karma, Law of Attraction, Spiritual Growth by Soul Arcanum — Comments Off on 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

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Cultivating Peace Despite Religious Differences

Filed Under: Emotional Well-being, Relationships, Spiritual Growth by Soul Arcanum — Comments Off on Cultivating Peace Despite Religious Differences

Copyright Soul Arcanum LLC. All rights reserved. :)
 

Dear Soul Arcanum:

Though my husband didn’t practice any religion when I married him, I converted to his family’s faith because he and his family wanted it that way. I started practicing, reading, and also sharing my new knowledge with my husband, and while he was always happy to hear what I had to say, he took no personal interest in religion for a long time. I put so much into this: I observed all the rituals, recited prayers for hours, fasted, etc., and all on my own. This went on for about 6-7 years. Then my sister took her own life, and the people in my new religion were so condemning and hard-hearted about it, while the people from my old religion came forward to support me with comfort and understanding. At that time, I returned to my old beliefs and stopped practicing the new religion. It’s now some 20 years later and my husband has become religious, which I think is good. However, I have been through a lot since we first married, and I have come to my own understanding of God and my own spiritual beliefs. Now my husband is upset and disappointed in me because I’m not following him in his religion. I should mention that my father was Hindu, my mother was Christian, and my husband is Muslim. I feel like a mixture of all these paths. I see it all, I feel it all, I am all-embracing of them for I feel that in essence, they all teach the same thing. What I don’t know is how to handle the impact this is having on key relationships in my life.
– Kiran

Dear Kiran:

I understand that you’re from a different cultural background than I am, and I apologize in advance if some of my advice just isn’t practical for you. Also, I don’t wish to ignite a theological debate. There is nothing more sacred and personal than our relationship to the Divine, so I don’t believe it’s ever wise or fruitful to argue about spiritual matters. As each human being is as sacred and divine as any other, I would never try to tell others what to believe.

It can be very hard to maintain peace and harmony if we allow religious differences to enter into relationships. Since most religions teach that their God is the one and only true God and their way is the only right and true way, instead of promoting peace on Earth, religion tends to promote physical, emotional, and spiritual violence. (When we try to push our spiritual views on other people, we violate their sacred relationship with the Divine.)

Many people aren’t yet capable of exercising the sociological imagination required to realize that if they had been born into a different culture, they would probably believe just as strongly in the particular religious views of that society as they do in their current beliefs. When they finally manage to do this, they naturally begin to doubt that their religion is the only true one, which makes them more open-minded, tolerant and respectful of others’ beliefs. As they spiritually evolve, everyone naturally grows more compassionate, intelligent, and self-referencing, and at some point, sheds the mindless, impersonal dogma of organized religion for a personal spiritual path.

While your goal may be to create harmony in your marriage despite the spiritual differences between you and other family members, it sounds like your husband is still a number of steps behind you, following the rules as laid out for him by forces far removed from his direct personal experience. So while there is common ground you could meet him on, getting your husband to work with you if he’s not yet ready for a higher approach may be very frustrating.

The key lies in your wise statement that all major religions teach the same basic things (including the religion he identifies with), the most basic teaching of all being the Golden Rule.

Christianity teaches: As ye would that men should do to you, do ye also to them likewise. (Luke 6:31)
For Hindus, it’s worded: This is the sum of duty: do not do to others what would cause pain if done to you. (Mahabharata 5:1517)
In Islam, this is the teaching: None of you truly believes until he loves for his brother what he loves for himself. (Muhammad, Hadith 13 of al-Nawawi’s Forty Hadith)

Clearly, unless your husband is also willing to adopt your personal spiritual beliefs and practices, he isn’t loving for you what he loves for himself: the freedom to worship as he believes is right and best for him. If you can get him to practice the Golden Rule with you, you should be able to create a loving, respectful, happy marriage despite the religious differences between you.

Even if he can’t see the obvious here, there are things you can do to cultivate harmony in this relationship, for you’re operating from a higher vibration and have a great deal of power to influence your own life and the people around you.

First, remember that you are the creator of your own reality and can manifest what you want. Whatever you focus upon and expect will expand in your experience, so worrying about others being displeased with you will just manifest problems.

Don’t debate religious issues with anyone you want to get along with, for then you’ll get caught up in endless arguments over semantics, which will just promote conflict and waste your time and energy. Instead of debating ideas, I recommend working with the law of attraction and radiating love.

There are infinite processes and exercises available for consciously creating what you want in your life. In essence, you’ll want to visualize this relationship feeling just the way you want it to feel and send your husband the accepting, respectful, tolerant vibes you want to receive from him via your heart and mind. Imagine the two of you interacting in wonderful new ways, and how good that will feel.

To rise above all the surface differences and connect on a soul level with anyone, all you have to do is radiate love with faith in its healing power. Regardless of their religious beliefs, all people crave and revere love as divine in nature, for love has the power to conquer all, heal all and endure all.

Just flow love to your husband from your heart. If you can radiate love and divine light even when he is coming from a place of fear or judgment because of your religious differences, you’ll be able to work healing miracles in this situation.

Whenever you allow yourself to get caught up in worrying about what other people think about your religious beliefs and practices, your vibration will sink and you’ll manifest more conflict, which will remind you to pay attention to where you’re investing your mental and emotional energy. When you love yourself just the way you are and love others similarly, you’ll sail above all those abstract debates and manifest whatever you want and need to be happy. The details won’t matter anymore because you’ll be in sync with love and harmony, so that is what you’ll create and experience.

To begin to shift this situation toward harmony, develop the habit of stopping whenever things don’t feel good and praying within for Spirit’s guidance. If you remember to focus on what you want to create and radiate love from your heart, you’ll be amazed at how quickly you can transform heavy conflicts into bright new blessings.

– Soul Arcanum

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Making Peace with Past Mistreatment

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

Copyright Soul Arcanum LLC. All rights reserved. :)
 

Dear Soul Arcanum:

I was once married to a man I trusted, who turned out to be a con man. When he became not only verbally/ emotionally abusive, but also physically abusive, I left him. He was able to steal a vast sum of money from me, and reaped great financial rewards during the marriage and after the divorce. Though he was arrested, he has gotten away with paying less child support than he should. He even rigged my car to break down! I traded it in, and he bought it back! He has married very well (she is exactly like me), taken many vacations, lives in an extravagant home, etc. Whatever happened to “what goes around, comes around?” On the positive side, God blessed me with two angelic daughters. I have a nice home, but it’s very modest compared to what I lived in before. Best of all, I am free and far happier now. He is certainly an angry, negative, miserable person to be around most of the time. (This is my opinion, as well as that of his awesome wife, who confided in me.) He has also had a host of health problems. I grapple constantly with trying to let this all go, as it is affecting the wonderful relationship I’m in now. Please tell me how I can feel better about this situation.
– L.M.C.

Dear L.M.C.:

Let’s see: you’re happy, in a wonderful new relationship, and enjoying the sweet daughters born of this marriage. Meanwhile, your ex is miserable, angry, suffering, and disliked by his own wife. You feel good about yourself, for you maintained your integrity throughout this relationship. Meanwhile, he has walked through tremendous stress, and despite the big house and grand vacations, he’s far from happy. It certainly sounds to me like “what goes around, comes around” is working just fine, my dear! :)

There is one thing about manifesting that is often confusing when we observe others’ experiences: you don’t have to be “nice” to manifest what you want in life – you just have to feel that you deserve it, focus on it, and expect it to come to you. Thus we can all see people who are not the “nicest” folks around manifesting wealth, status, beauty, etc. If you really think about it, equating worldly things with happiness is usually a sign that someone is not all that evolved anyway. Someone wiser would more likely focus on manifesting love, true friendship, spiritual growth, deep well-being and joy – not sports cars and mansions.

If we look deeper, however, we discover that everyone does manifest the QUALITY of life experience that they give to others. What we send out comes back to us; what we focus upon expands, whether we desire it for ourselves or for someone else. Thus people who focus on doing the right thing and on bringing others joy and happiness will have a generally happy life, while those who desire revenge or to take advantage of others will tend to feel persecuted and cheated by life no matter how much wealth they are able to manifest.

I do understand your struggle. It can be maddening to treat others with kindness and integrity, only to have them take advantage of our trust. This is especially difficult with ex-spouses. Many years of observation have taught me that divorce has extraordinary power to bring out the worst in people.

I can assure you, however, that even with divorce, spiritual law always creates balance eventually. Time and time again, I’ve seen people who aim high manifesting higher experiences, and people who aim low manifesting lower experiences. The “bad guys” may seem to win the battle of the moment, but then find themselves in a horrible war long-term, while we move on to new peace and happiness.

Let’s look at someone else’s divorce situation as an example. I have had the enlightening opportunity to closely watch a couple go through a divorce scenario that is all too common these days. After the initial uproar and upset, the individuals involved settled into two very different camps. While the husband was determined to be fair and get along for the sake of the kids, the wife was bitter and demanding. When he stood up for himself and refused to let her order him around, she began an ugly campaign against him. She told the kids that he was the cause of all her problems, and she basically tried to turn them against him. In order to win them over, she removed all rules and limits on her teen’s behavior.

At first, the victim seemed to be primarily the husband, who was maligned and disempowered as a parent, and had to stand by and watch his kids struggle through all sorts of trouble: drugs, promiscuity, crime, school failure, nasty attitudes, etc. As they could always choose to live with mom, there wasn’t anything he could do about it. The secondary victims, of course, were the kids themselves, whose mother’s ego issues prevented her from providing the guidance and boundaries they needed to enjoy health, success, happiness and well-being.

In the end, however, it was clear that the one to suffer the most was the mother herself. She is the one who ended up living in a house full of juvenile delinquents who may have “liked” her permissiveness, but certainly showed her no respect. The stole from her, lied to her, threatened her with physical violence, etc. While she may have won her popularity contest, she got far more than she bargained for.

While this woman and her children were enmeshed in one harrowing drama after another, the husband did the only thing he could do: he simply focused on living by his own higher standards, and soon, many great new blessings began to flow into his life. While at first he looked like the victim of his ex-wife’s crazy campaign, in time we can see how he was actually spared the stress of living with his teens when they were downright obnoxious. As they learn and grow, his children are starting to see the truth of the whole experience, and how in being “strict,” he was trying to love and protect them.

I relay this story because often, it’s easier to objectively observe someone else’s life. Hopefully, it illustrates how eventually, integrity DOES pay. This carries over into all sorts of relationships, of course. If a good employee is treated unfairly and is fired or quits, the management loses a good worker, and the employee ends up with a better job. If we look at any situation with enough distance/ perspective, eventually we see that what goes around DOES come around.

Further, those who conquer their negative feelings in order to take the “high road” are rewarded with blessings far more valuable than houses and vacations: they retain their self-respect, the respect of others, and a clear conscience. When they are able to forgive those who have “abused” them, they also enjoy a sense of inner peace and the freedom to enjoy new happiness.

Ask yourself which you think would be easier: for you to forgive your ex, or if you WERE him, for you to forgive yourself for all that he has done. You would not trade places with him for a huge home or great vacation. When you can find compassion for all he suffers due to his spiritual ignorance and his inability to conquer his monstrous ego, your heart will be cleansed of bitterness, and you will be at peace with all that has happened.

No matter how much his outer world may sparkle, on the inside, it’s so much darker than your own. Try to find compassion for him and pray for him to find the light, so you can complete this learning experience and truly enjoy your many blessings.

– Soul Arcanum

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