Tag Archive: vibration


Fully Healing Negative Feelings

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

Dear Soul Arcanum: A while ago you wrote about letting go of blame, guilt, etc. in your column about cancer. What are some good ways to do this? I find that I may think I let go of something one day, but then the feelings are back the next. Any ideas?
– Soul Arcanum

Dear Soul Arcanum:

First it’s important to allow yourself to feel what you really feel. While I am a huge believer in thinking positively, I have lived and learned enough to know that denying our negative feelings or stuffing them down doesn’t work in the long-term. That’s just like pushing junk to the back of a closet. Sooner or later, it will come right back up as you describe. Besides, with all that “baggage” in our space, we end up living with a sense of constant hassle as we try to maneuver around it. Eventually, all the stuff we have pushed back or to the side has to be sincerely dealt with.

When I am feeling angry, frustrated, impatient, etc. with people, I try to remember to keep things in perspective. You might try reading, Man’s Search for Meaning by Victor Frankl. Mr. Frankl was a POW in a Nazi concentration camp, and in this profound book, he writes about how some POW’s managed to keep their hearts, minds and souls “safe” from the Nazis, despite all that was happening to them on a physical level. They never lost faith and hope; they never lost their ability to love and have compassion for those around them; they retained their humanity, their personal spirit. He writes about the one freedom we each have that no one can take away from us: our freedom to choose how we will think and feel about life and respond to our experiences.

Similarly, I have clients who are dealing with some very intense issues, such as a child being murdered, a spouse being arrested for a humiliating crime and losing his life’s career as a result, trying to recover from the traumatic experience of war, etc. When I remember that there are many, many people who have been wronged in far worse ways than I have, it’s much easier to accept my own challenges with a positive attitude. This is not to be taken as a “should.” Telling ourselves that we “shouldn’t” be so upset about something is shoving it to the back of the closet. I’m suggesting instead that we bring it out into the light and dust it off, where we may discover it’s not as scary or ugly as it seemed when it was in the shadows. It’s amazing how when we let go of ideas about how we “should” feel and how fast we “should” heal, etc., our higher selves can step in and lead us to new peace and freedom.

Further, it is not what we experience, but how we interpret our experiences – the stories that we tell ourselves – that determine how we feel. All emotional pain takes place in our heads, not in our outer experiences. Thus, we can mentally relive an experience over and over again and feel the same degree of pain if the story we tell ourselves about it never changes. When we obsess about something someone has done to “hurt us,” we allow them to hurt us not just once, but over and over again. You know that already, and are wisely asking, “So how do I stop doing that?” The answer is to change the story you are telling yourself about that experience.

You might begin by reminding yourself that everyone is doing their best; some people’s best is just a long way from how you would personally handle that situation. Had you been born into that other person’s life, raised by that person’s parents, and experienced all that that person has experienced, however, you would probably behave the same way.

Further, it is very wise and powerful to remember Victor Frankl’s message: that no one can force us to feel a certain way. We create our own experiences in life. Metaphysics aside, you can see that this is absolutely true simply by observing how different people deal with the same sort of experience. At one end of the spectrum, people are completely crushed by trauma. They either kill themselves or they never truly recover. Some part of the heart and soul is forever missing afterwards. At the other end of the spectrum, people not only grow through traumatic experiences, they turn them into assets, and perhaps even a greater life purpose. Through the fire of deep challenge, they forge new spiritual growth and strength, and go on to help others follow in their footsteps. When we really own the truth that we can’t blame anyone else for how we feel, it becomes natural to let go of negative feelings like anger, hatred, bitterness, etc.

As we begin to change the stories we tell ourselves about hurtful experiences, the way we feel begins to change. The ultimate in healing bad feelings is to find compassion for those who hurt you. In fact, this is the only way I’ve found to permanently heal those intense emotions.

For example, when I was 16 years old, I was stalked and raped by a young man who was about 20 years old. (I don’t know for sure how hold he was.) He was the son of the woman who cut my hair; that was all I really knew about him, beyond the fact that he saw me, became obsessed with me, started stalking me, and eventually raped me. Throughout this ordeal, it became undeniably clear that this guy was CRAZY. He had such a tormented, twisted soul inside that it was very easy for me to be grateful that I was not him. When I realized that I would rather be his “victim” than to be as dark and empty inside as he obviously was, it wasn’t long before I started to feel compassion for him, and to truly forgive.

I know this idea may sound really radical and challenging, but once you have worked with all the ideas above and found compassion for your “enemy,” there is one more thing you can do that is very powerful to heal your heart and move on to new joy and peace: purposefully do something kind for the person you’re feeling negative about. It’s usually best if they don’t know you did it, and it can be as simple as praying for them. In fact, that is a very powerful thing to do.

You will feel a strange sense of freedom come over you if you embrace this goal with the intention of rising above the drama and loving yourself to new well-being. You will feel yourself lift above it, and end up feeling beyond that drama, for what you wish for others – what you send out – is what you yourself will attract.

Then you will naturally move on and focus on other things. It will be easy to forget about whatever happened in the past and to fill your life with new blessings like positive people, new projects and opportunities, new learning and growth. You’ll then be so busy with all the good stuff that you’ll have no time or room in your life to reopen those old wounds again.

I’ll leave you with one last bit of common spiritual wisdom that we all frequently forget: if not for your “enemies,” whether they take the shape of people or challenging life experiences, you’d never experience new personal growth. Our enemies are indeed our greatest teachers. When we can find appreciation for the lessons they bring us, we flow so beautifully through life that we never get stuck in negative emotion for long.

– Soul Arcanum


Learning to Trust Your Psychic Abilities


Copyright Soul Arcanum LLC, 2011. All rights reserved.  
All rights reserved. :)
 

Dear Soul Arcanum:

I have had psychic abilities over the years and have been able to predict the future for myself and a very close friend about 80 percent of the time. I usually only read for myself and her.(She is psychic but can’t read for herself at times.) I have trouble reading for others as I doubt my abilities due to insecurity. I have often missed opportunities for myself because I did not trust my ability. How can I get more faith in myself and the Universe? I know Spirit tries to get through to guide me but I feel I block it. Do you have any advice for me on all of this?

Karan

Dear Karan:

Trust plays a huge role in psychic ability. The problem is that this is something of a Catch-22: you have to trust your intuition for it to give you reason to trust it!

When I was in training to become a Spiritualist minister, trust was the biggest stumbling block for most of the students. At the school I attended, two main specialties were taught: energy healing and mediumship. Out of a class of about 30 people, only two of us were there to focus on spirit communication; everyone else wanted to be a healer. We had to learn both skill sets as part of the program, and the healers suffered all sorts of anguish over this because being a medium involves tremendous pressure to perform. Instead of channeling intangible energy, we have to produce verifiable information.

The two of us who wanted to be mediums differed from the others mainly in this matter of trust. We had already had a number of amazing experiences of spirit communication, which had convinced us that spirit communication is possible and that we were personally capable of succeeding at it. The main challenge our instructors faced in teaching the healers how to bring through information from Spirit was getting them to relax, let go of their fear of being wrong, and trust whatever came through.

There are four main aspects to successfully accessing psychic information. First, you must get into the right state of consciousness. Second, you must set a clear intention. Third, you must trust whatever comes through. Finally, you must be adept at translating clairvoyant, clairaudient, and clairsentient impressions into the answers being sought.

Many new psychics struggle because they aren’t even aware of the first step of getting into the right state of consciousness. They think that they can just mentally ask a question and receive an answer. This is a bit like randomly dialing a phone number and asking whoever answers what you are hoping to find out: to receive reliable information, you have to ask the right source. This is where good training can prove invaluable. In fact, when I am careful to shift my state of consciousness and get into a high vibration before tuning in, I always receive answers, and they always prove valuable and reliable.

Once you know you’re tuned in and you’ve set a clear, high intention, you have to trust what you receive. I’m sure every medium has had the experience of relaying something that seemed totally off the wall, only to have that information prove to be incredibly powerful and accurate. Following is one of the first experiences that cemented for me how important it is to trust what we receive.

I was reading for a woman who was grieving for her departed husband, James. I brought through lots of information about how he had passed and such, but the surprise came when I reached out for James and the spirit who stepped forward and answered my questions ended with the following: “Tell her that Jack sent the butterfly.” This seemed so “off” that I almost didn’t relay that part to her. I could hear my instructors telling me to trust, however, so I went out on a limb, wrote it down, and sent the email reading off to her with a hope and a prayer.

In her letter back to me, she described how she broke down sobbing when she got to that line, for she was sure that I was indeed in contact with her departed husband. Though his name had been James, his friends and family had always called him Jack. On the day of his funeral, she was calling out to him in her heart and mind and staring out the window at the bleak November morning when a huge butterfly appeared and hovered just on the other side of the glass. She thought this very unusual for November, and she had been wondering if this was somehow the spirit of her departed husband trying to give her a sign. I was so glad that I decided to trust what I was getting and pass it on!

Once you are in the right state of consciousness and your heart is centered on a high, pure intention, you are connected to a source of wisdom and information that is very reliable. Of course, sometimes you will receive intuitive impressions when you’re going about your everyday life and you’re not in this special state. When that happens, you can always check on their accuracy by shifting into this state of consciousness and then exploring them further.

You can also exercise your intuitive senses in small ways throughout the day. First you must be adept at controlling your state of consciousness so that you can quickly shift state and “tune in.” It’s also wise and powerful to program yourself to live an intuitive life. If you work with the law of attraction to manifest powerful psychic experiences and you program your subconscious mind to deliver psychic insights to you on a regular basis, you will begin to have all sorts of amazing psychic experiences. The more you cultivate your abilities in this way, the more your intuition will break through at seemingly random moments to deliver helpful information to you.

One powerful way to do this is to meditate each morning and set a psychic intention for the day. You can ask for a general level of experience or something specific. For example, you might ask your higher self and spirit guides to help you align with a smooth journey and a productive day, and to send you insights, intuitions and experiences in support of this aim. You could also ask for something more specific, such being led to the answer to a question or the solution to a problem. One thing I often ask is, “What do I most need to know right now?” Ask for insights and intuitions to come to you throughout the day to lead you to what you are seeking. The more important this is to you, the more powerful experiences will come your way in answer to your prayers.

To find out if your impressions are accurate, you have to trust them enough to act on them and then pay attention to what happens next. Sometimes you won’t see the evidence you’re looking for because too much of it is hidden behind the scenes. For example, you may sense that someone is upset, but when you question them, they may deny it. This doesn’t necessarily mean you were wrong. You may receive a nudge to take a different route home and never know why. You have to be okay with the fact that you may never know why you received a certain impression, and assume that somehow it was designed to help you.

Finally, if you are too hung up on being right or accurate, you will block yourself. Part of being in the right frame of mind is being beyond ego and in a light, easy, relaxed state of being. Instead of putting pressure on yourself, pray for what you desire and then relax and allow it to come to you.

– Soul Arcanum

How Our Sexual Partners Affect our Spiritual Vibration

By Soul Arcanum LLC. All rights reserved. :)
 

Dear Soul Arcanum:

For about a year now, I’ve been doing some powerful meditations to raise my vibration so I can better heal myself and others. I’ve been told that having sex with someone I don’t love would cause my vibration to drop to that person’s level. This worries me because while I do not believe in engaging in casual sex, I’ve often felt very strong emotions toward someone I’m dating. These emotions may or may not evolve into love, but when I begin to feel this way and crave an emotional exchange with that person in the form of sexual intercourse, I don’t know what to do. I don’t want to mess up my vibration, but if I have strong feelings for someone and I know they care about me as well, I have trouble abstaining from sex with them until I know for sure, which may not happen until the relationship is over anyway. I would be very grateful for any thoughts you have on this.
– Angela

Dear Angela:

Let’s explore the notion that having sex with someone you’re not positive you love may deter spiritual development. Certainly we find the notion that sex and spirit are somehow at odds in many religious traditions, and casual sex is frowned upon in most cultures. The practical problems that can arise from being too casual in our approach to sex are obvious, but these social mores are also rooted in some metaphysical truths.

It’s important to remember that every interaction between people involves an exchange of energy, and sex involves the fullest exchange possible. In fact, we might consider S.E.X. an acronym for “soul energy x-change.”

When we go to buy a car, interview for a job, or even meet someone new in a social setting, we will tend to be somewhat guarded. In various social interactions, we only let so much of our true selves “out,” and we only let so much of that other person’s energy in.

When we have sex with someone, however, we “open up” to them. You might say we get naked with them on every level. This means the auric walls that normally help us maintain our separate sense of self come down, which leads to an exchange of energies. Because of this, the people we have sex with can have a much greater impact on us than other people. When we “invite” a lover to mingle his or her energy with ours, all sorts of things can happen.

At the positive end of the spectrum, we can actually heal others (or be healed by them) via sexual interaction. In your case, if you had sex with someone who had a lower vibration than yours, with the right approach you may raise that person to YOUR vibrational level.

Sex can be a very spiritual endeavor. It can stretch our capacity to be giving, sensitive and compassionate with our partner; it can challenge us to rise above ego and self-consciousness to be fully present in the moment; it can take us to the edge of our boundaries, trust issues and hang-ups, where we become nothing more than who we were when we came into this world – one being reaching for bliss with another.

For many people, the ecstasy of orgasm is the closest they get to divine bliss, and as such, it can open them up to a whole new dimension of experience. To me, orgasm is the clearest experience we have of the ultimately energetic nature of life. Sex can initiate the release of kundalini and encourage spiritual development. Sexual energy is powerful, and our deep desire for love leads us to many of our most important life lessons.

When it comes to matters of love and sex, I strongly believe that there are no hard and fast rules: we have to trust our intuition to lead us. For example, most of us are naturally attracted to people who are on our vibrational “wavelength.” It is unlikely we would date someone of a vastly different vibration for long, and thus unlikely we’d have sex with them in the first place.

We have a built in barometer that deters us from opening up to people whose vibration is so far from ours that it could be harmful to us. Having sex with someone this different tends to feel awkward or wrong. Some people, however, actually get a dangerous little thrill out of acting AGAINST their intuition and being “bad,” especially when it comes to sex. Women who always go for “bad boys” are a good example, and they usually suffer some nasty consequences as a result. Of course, drunken one-night stands tend to yield some interesting pairings as well!

When we do have sex with someone who is not a good match for us, we expose ourselves to all of their issues and energies. This may lead us to get caught up in all sorts of dramas. Then negative emotion lowers our vibration, and all the drama distracts us from our higher/spiritual goals.

One of the greatest hazards of casual sex is the potential for attachment by astral entities. While this can happen outside of sexual contact, when we completely open ourselves up during sex, it is easy for an entity attached to our lover to shift to us.

Also, I have heard from many women over the years who were making love to their husband or boyfriend when “someone else” moved in. Sometimes that other being was perceived to be “inside” their lover, and the women felt their lover “become someone else.” Sometimes they actually saw the other entity above or next to their lover, trying to “take over” the lovemaking session.

The lower astral is full of opportunistic entities that are earthbound due to some addiction. The spirits of sex addicts are drawn to lust, and try to live vicariously through people engaged in sex. If, however, you and your partner are making love at a high vibration, lower astral entities with neither be attracted to you nor able to affect you.

The more love you flow during sex, the more it will nourish your heart and spirit. If your partner is not spiritually “awake” and you are, he could weigh you down spiritually, but this would extend beyond the bedroom anyway. This doesn’t mean our partners must share our paths or even our passion for spiritual growth; there are lots of ways to be “spiritual.”

So how do we decide when to “do it” in a relationship? While we should trust our intuition, we might also remember that when we have sex with someone, we are essentially telling them that we trust them with our lives, our health, our hearts and our dreams for love. For some people, that sort of trust comes easy, and for others, it comes hard.

I also think that to learn anything in life, we have to be willing to explore and experiment, so if we feel strongly drawn to do something and there is no obvious reason it would be foolish, we should do it. This is how we’re guided to learn the things we need to learn and heal the issues we most need to heal.

Finally, I think you may be too caught up in defining what it means to “really love” someone. Even if you don’t know if you want to spend the rest of your life with your partner, you can still interact with them WITH love. If you look for the divine in the one you’re with, you will embody love. When you do anything from this high vibration, wonderful experiences are sure to follow.

– Soul Arcanum


Do You Need to Detox?


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

On the Soul Arcanum Facebook page, you recently mentioned that you went through a diet detox. Could you talk more about it? What do you believe is the best way to detox through diet? What time of the year do you think is the best? For how long? Are there any books you would recommend that helped you to learn about the topic? I would really appreciate you sharing your knowledge and experience in this area.

Ellen

Dear Ellen:

I’m hesitant to write about this subject because I don’t want anyone to assume my choices must be somehow superior to what feels right and best to them. That being said, I will do my best to answer your questions.

I believe first and foremost in listening to your own body and intuition, for there is no one diet or answer that fits everyone. I also I believe that when we simply listen to our bodies and respond to whatever they are telling us, we naturally align with radiant health and well-being. Of course, it is also wise to pay attention to signs and messages from the Universe.

For general information on the idea of “detoxing” via diet, you’ll have to do some Googling, for I’m no expert on the subject, and my space here is very limited. The detox diet I mentioned on the Soul Arcanum Facebook page came about as a result of me listening to my own body, as I advise everyone to do. I believe that I was led to it as a result of asking (within) what I needed to do in order to feel better. For some time, I had felt like something was off in my body, and the idea pop kept popping into my mind that this was somehow related to candida overgrowth. For the record, I am NOT the sort of person who believes candida is the ultimate cause of every health problem under the sun.

My main symptom was my inner ears itching so badly it would wake me up at night. Whenever I “tuned in” to try to figure out what was going on, the idea of candida overgrowth popped up. Since I didn’t want to undergo the intense changes I believed would be necessary to remedy such a situation, for months, I just kept hoping for the problem to go away.

Around the time I began to get motivated to do something it, I received an email from a long-time friend who is a homeopathic healer. She was writing to tell me that she had felt a nudge to send me a homeopathic remedy. When I received it, it actually contained two remedies: before I could undertake what she believed I needed, she explained that I had to take something to address any candida issues. This got my attention because it was like the Universe was saying, “If you won’t listen to this message from the INSIDE, we’ll send it to you from the OUTSIDE!”

Now the Universe really had my attention, so I asked: What do I need to do in order to align with perfect health? Right after this, I saw a friend who looked amazing. She had lost a lot of weight, her hair was shiny, her eyes were bright, and her skin was glowing. I asked what she was doing, and she told me she was doing a detox diet – The Sadkhin Complex. It involved eating nothing but vegetables, fruits, whole milk and raw honey.

I felt this special nudge. It’s hard to describe the feeling you get when you are receiving an answer to a question you posed to the Universe; it’s a sense of knowing that this is the answer and that this is what you are supposed to do. This is not a logical process, so though the diet sounded extreme, I decided to trust my intuition. Within three days of starting the diet, my ears stopped itching and I felt amazing. I ended up dropping 15 pounds in about three weeks, and I have kept it off.

I gained a lot through undergoing this rigorous detox process. It definitely helped me to develop greater self-discipline. I also believe that having strict rules to follow made it easier for me to stay on course. It taught me that we can function just fine without MOST of what we tend to eat on a daily basis: We don’t need all the cereals, pastas, breads, potatoes, etc., that form the foundation of most American diets. It was not easy to do, but it definitely helped me get back on track in terms of not eating processed foods again.

If we look to spiritual teachers and other outside “experts” for advice on what we should eat, we’re in for great confusion, for everyone seems to have a different opinion on the subject. I know a lot of spiritual people who are staunch vegetarians, and though I was strictly vegetarian myself for many years, I eventually figured out that this choice was based on abstract ideas – NOT how I actually felt when eating this way. I have learned that I do not do well long-term on a vegetarian diet because I need a lot of lean protein. I do try to only eat animal products from humanely treated animals, both for ethical reasons and because I believe that the ENERGY of the food we eat is paramount.

If you are psychically sensitive, you can actually feel the difference between a raw, natural food like an apple or a carrot, and the energy of something like bread or pasta. Foods that are in a raw, natural, unprocessed state feel “alive,” whereas foods that have been heavily processed and cooked feel “dead.”

Food from animals that have been mistreated or killed in an inhumane matter carry disturbing energy. I don’t eat beef mainly because it feels bad to me; it feels disturbing to my vibration. If you are psychically sensitive, you may notice that your energy drops after eating beef. In order to eat food from mistreated animals, we have to desensitize ourselves to the energy of their suffering, which spells psychic desensitization in general.

If you’re trying to grow more spiritual or develop your psychic abilities, it therefore makes sense to eat a vegetarian diet or to be very careful about the energetic quality of any animal products you consume. If, however, you are psychically overwhelmed, you can get grounded by eating energetically heavier foods. To spark a psychic awakening, you may want to eat nothing but raw fruits and vegetables for a period of time, or perhaps even fast.

Since we are part of nature, I believe that the closer we eat to the earth, the better. I am not a raw foodie, but I do try to eat as little of processed foods as possible, which means I mainly eat lean protein (chicken), eggs, dairy, fruits and vegetables. All of this being said, I don’t believe that what we eat is as important as how and why we eat. This is all about energy: Whenever I start to feel less than my best, I ask my body and the Universe what I need, and then I watch for the answers to come to me.

To align with the right choices for us, we’re wise to focus on food as energy, to eat for the way we want to feel, and to cook for ourselves and others as an act of love. Sometimes, the most loving thing we can do is undergo a strict diet for a while; other times, the most loving thing we can do is let go of worrying about our health (and everything else) and celebrate life on earth by digging in to share a delicious meal. Since we are constantly changing, in order to determine what we need in each moment, we must be constantly tuning in to the wisdom of our bodies and the divine. This is a lot more mental work than blindly following the rules of a particular diet, but it’s the only way to know and respond to our true needs.

– Soul Arcanum

How to Create a Positive Psychic Atmosphere


Copyright Soul Arcanum LLC. All rights reserved. :)
 

Dear Soul Arcanum:

I work in a small building where people who start off nice appear to change and act different in a nasty way. I found this site looking for a way to cleanse the building. This makes work in a small environment very difficult. What can I do?

Dolores

Dear Dolores:

We are all surrounded by unseen energies of various qualities. Though most of us aren’t conscious of it, our instincts are constantly tuning in to evaluate the energetic nature of other people and the psychic atmosphere. Many of us only take note of this when the psychic atmosphere is extreme in some way. For example, in a house that is “haunted,” the hair on the backs of our necks may stand up, or we may feel inexplicably terrified and compelled to flee. At the other end of the spectrum, we may enter a place of very positive psychic atmosphere such as a church or a temple and immediately feel peaceful and uplifted.

There is a direct link between the people who inhabit a space and the atmosphere there, for it is our thoughts and feelings that create that atmosphere. You seem to have assumed that it is the physical place that is causing people to grow negative, but it could be that one or more of the people you work with are the real source of this negativity. Just as it only takes one person creating a foul smell and stink up a space for everyone, it only takes one strongly negative individual to poison the psychic atmosphere. Of course, if the business you work for has created a stressful, antagonistic work environment, the simplest way to remedy this negativity is to take practical measures to reduce employee stress and frustration.

Here’s the good news and the bad news: emotional energy is contagious. (You’ve clearly noticed this already.) This means that negative energy can affect everyone present, but it also means that positive energy can spread too. To remedy negativity psychic energy, we have to generate positive psychic energy.

Since the atmosphere and the people who inhabit the space are intrinsically linked, I recommend you focus both on cleansing the location and infusing it with positive vibes, and on bringing out the best in your coworkers. Since there are number of individuals involved here, the more people you can persuade to join with you in these efforts, the more power you will all wield.

There are all sorts of different rituals you can employ for cleansing the location. The key elements will include cleansing the physical space and the objects in it, and also cleansing the atmosphere with something like smoke, as in smudging. As part of this process, you might try the old folk remedy of hanging up garlic all over the place overnight, and then burning the garlic the next day.

The actual ritual you employ is not as important as your focus and intention: you are in essence energetically healing the atmosphere of negativity. Following this cleansing, you should bless the space and fill it with the energies you desire. Go through the whole space cleansing it, and then go through it again and bless it. The actual ritual you employ is not as important as your focus and intention: you are in essence energetically healing the atmosphere of negativity. Following this cleansing, you should bless the space and fill it with the energies you desire. Go through the whole space cleansing it, and then go through it again and bless it. For an example of how you might go about this, see Clearing a Space of Negative Energy.

Once you’ve done these things, bring in elements that promote positive energy. Playing music that feels uplifting and positive can have a dramatic impact. Make sure the space is with bright with light – preferably natural sunlight – and that the color scheme is pleasant and uplifting. You could bring in crystals to enhance your energetic efforts. Definitely make sure the space smells good. Incense is great for this, but if that is impractical for some reason, you could try aromatherapy with a scent like lemon. Keeping the atmosphere fresh is not something you do once – it’s something you regularly.

Next, in order to evoke positive energy from your coworkers, you will have to work with the law of attraction. While it’s true that we can’t create in another person’s experience, we can lift ourselves into a vibration where we naturally attract a higher level of experience, which will either cause people who are negative to stay away from us or draw those people up to our vibration when they are around us.

This reminds me of one of my first highly sucessful manifesting adventures. I was on a road trip with a friend who was also into the law of attraction. When we went through customs to enter into Canada, my friend was on her cell phone. The customs agent took tremendous offense to this and was shockingly nasty to us. At first we were upset about this, but then we decided to pivot and focus on manifesting friendly, happy people from there on out. What followed was an incredible stream of people so friendly all we could do was laugh in astonishment. One after another, everyone we met from there on out went to extraordinary lengths to help us, and everyone was so cheerful it was like being in the “twilight zone.”

My point is that by consciously working with the law of attraction, you can either attract the sort of people you want to interact with or bring out the best in the people around you. Even really nasty characters smile, laugh and are kind sometimes. You can draw this out of them, but you have to stop focusing on what you don’t want – negativity – and start focusing on what you do want – happy, friendly, helpful coworkers.

I suggest you create some “spiritual Febreze” and use it on yourself as well as your work environment. Get a clean, empty spray bottle, distilled water, rubbing alcohol and an essential oil like lemon. Add a little alcohol to the water, and then add as much of the essential oil as it takes to create a pleasant scent. Next, charge this mixture with positive energy by calling to mind all the positive things you want to manifest. While you hold this mixture in your hands, channel the essence of that positive energy into the mixture. (If you’re unfamiliar with how to do this, you may want to study magickal spellwork in general.)

Every morning after you get out of the shower, spray yourself with this magic perfume and set your conscious intention for the day. It may go a little like this:

Universe, just as I carry this wonderful smell with me on my body, I will carry joy with me wherever I go. I will shine my inner light on any shadows I encounter, and bring out the best in others. I will greet everyone I meet with warmth and good humor, and will receive all sorts of blessings in return. As one who is connected to the stream of pure positive energy is more powerful than a thousand who are not, I look forward magically creating a wonderful atmosphere wherever I go. Fill my world with friendly, helpful, happy people! (This is just and example. You can set any intention you desire – the point is to set a CONSCIOUS intention for the day instead of taking whatever comes your way.)

If you also spray this “spiritual Febreze” around your work place every morning, you will infuse the atmosphere with its pleasant scent and positive vibration while at the same time encouraging everyone around you to unconsciously entrain to your positive vibration.

– Soul Arcanum


Signs from Spirit During Bleak Times


Copyright Soul Arcanum LLC. All rights reserved. :)
 

Dear Soul Arcanum:

I was born on December 7, 1963. For the past couple of months, every time I look at the time, it is always on the same digits: 8:08 or 23:23. Is this a message? I seem to have lost all my luck. I am now struggling financially and can’t even find a decent job. My family life is not at its best and my friends are few. I used to very vibrant and positive, a high achiever. I’m not sure what is happening and why everything is falling apart. It’s like there is a negative energy or environment where I am working. I’m deeply unhappy and have lost faith. I used to be charming and lovable with many friends. I did have a severe blow in 2006 when I lost a very good job. I currently manage properties like an estate agent for a company. I still do not own any property myself and I am worried about my family, for if anything were to happen to me, their future would be very insecure. I’m wondering why things are going so wrong and why I keep seeing these numbers. Thank you.

Ronnie

Dear Ronnie:

I can’t begin to tell you how many people write to me with similar experiences. I’ve had the same sort of experiences myself. Yes, this is a message for you: The Universe is trying to tell you to keep the faith, that everything is going to be okay.

First let’s address the difficult times you’ve been going through and why things are going so wrong. To me, it’s clear that when you suffered that severe blow in 2006, it sent you on a downward spiral from which you’ve yet to recover. This is the trickiest part about the law of attraction and creating what we want in our lives: To get from where we are to where we want to be, we have to plant the seeds of what we want on the inside instead of picking whatever we happen to find growing in our outer experience on that particular day. This means when something upsetting happens, we have to either find a way to view it in a positive light or focus on cultivating something else altogether.

In a book by Robert Moss, I recently read a description of how we create our own realities that struck me as particularly apt. He wrote that our imaginations are constantly projecting pictures out in front of us, and because we are forever moving forward through life, we are constantly walking into those pictures we have created.

For this reason, when times are good, they tend to stay good or get even better, for we are seeing what we want around us, feeling good, and projecting positive pictures. When things are bad, they tend stay bad or get worse because we are focused on things we don’t like, feeling bad, and worried about even more problems, so we are projecting negative pictures. This is why you enjoyed a long time as a positive, charming, happy person with lots of friends. Things were going well, so you were feeling good and focused on all the blessings in your life, which kept you in a high vibration and high level of experience.

When you suffered that so-called devastating blow, it pulled the vibrational rug right out from under you and sent you on a downward spiral. You might ask why, if you were in a positive state of mind to begin with, you managed to manifest that devastating blow. Sometimes when we’re sailing happily along through life, karmic storms sneak up seemingly out of nowhere. (These are rooted in karma from past lives.) Sometimes we’re destined to experience something regardless of how we’re vibrating in the moment. Sometimes we are gifted with difficult experiences so that we can learn something important or in order to test our ability to apply what we’ve already learned.

The important thing is what we do when these things happen. This is where spiritual growth comes in. If we trust that everything happens for a good reason and begin to look for the gifts in the experience, we can maintain a high vibration and a positive outlook and thus quickly recover from “devastating blows” to remain aligned with a happy, smooth, positive level of experience.

Which brings me to these signs you keep getting. Someone, somewhere, is trying to tell you that there is more to your situation than meets the eye. These messages are telling you that there is help available to you, that instead of getting mired down in the circumstances you find yourself in, you must look beyond your circumstances and reach for a higher perspective.

When people first begin to receive signs from Spirit, they often take the form you describe: they begin to notice repeating numbers on clocks or in other places. There is a special feeling that goes along with these signs. It is subtle, but if you pay attention or vividly recall these experiences in the past, you will notice that it actually FEELS like something or someone is trying to get your attention. Small as they may be, these events feel meaningful somehow. You might contrast them with how it feels when you notice a custom license plate while driving down the road. Whether it’s immediately clear to you or not, you realize that this custom plate has a meaning, but it doesn’t have a meaning that is personal to you. When you are actually receiving a sign, you recognize that it not only has meaning, it has meaning for you personally. You may not know what that meaning is, but you do sense that something is tugging at you to pay attention.

At this point, the most powerful thing you can do is study the law of attraction to learn how to turn that downward spiral around and begin to consciously create what you want in your life. Since you’ve been in a negative pattern for a number of years now, it will take a lot of conscious effort to change your inner habits, but it will definitely be worth it.

As you begin to focus on what you want to create in your life, you might start with manifesting more signs from Spirit. You can make these more meaningful and specific to you. For example, let’s say you decide to manifest a new and better job. Vividly visualize what you are desiring, and as you do this, imagine how it will feel to have what you want. At the same time, ask Spirit for signs regarding how to go about finding or creating the perfect job for you. You can even specify the form these signs may take. The more personal it is to you, the more undeniable it will be when those signs do come your way.

For example, let’s say that red bows are meaningful to you for some reason. If you ask for Spirit to wrap up what you’re looking for in a red bow, and then you vividly imagine what you want coming to you wrapped in a red bow, signs will begin to come to you in this way. You may see a sign with a red bow on it when thinking about applying for a particular job, or you may meet a woman wearing a red bow pin and have the impulse to talk to her about your job search. You may see a job advertisement with a red bow on it or notice a package through a window that is tied with a red bow and then notice a help wanted sign on the window. The important thing is to watch for the signs you’ve asked for and recognize them as meaningful. When you get a sign, stop and listen within for intuitive direction, and act on any ideas or impulses that come to you.

Spirit is talking to you, my friend. Answer by asking for what you need, praying for help with turning your life around, and making good use of your power to manifest signs, messages, and divine help with creating all you want and need.

Soul Arcanum

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

The Spiritual Power of Yoga


Copyright Soul Arcanum LLC. All rights reserved. :)
 

Dear Soul Arcanum:

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

Joyce

Dear Joyce:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Soul Arcanum

Breaking Free of Helplessness


Copyright Soul Arcanum LLC. All rights reserved. :)
 

Dear Soul Arcanum:

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

Randi

Dear Margo:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

– Soul Arcanum


Can Good Luck Be Stolen?


Copyright Soul Arcanum LLC. All rights reserved. :)
 

Dear Soul Arcanum:
I was together with my ex for about three years, and we only recently broken up. He is a quiet, moody type, and carries a deep belief that he is unlucky. To my surprise, quite a few times I saw that he was. I have always thought of myself as a very lucky person, but I began to feel I was being deprived of my energy and my luck. I was starting to fail at things and feel depressed while good stuff started happening in his life. As soon as we broke up, I returned to being the luckiest person ever; one extraordinary good thing after another began happening to me. I don’t really know what is happening – I am just grateful for it. I would like to know if good luck is a type of energy that can be transmitted or transferred. If so, will the next guy I go out with try to take my good luck too?

Elizabeth

Dear Elizabeth:

Every society throughout history and around the world has had cultural beliefs about luck as well as practices designed to influence one’s own luck and the luck of other people, such as prayers, sacrifices, rituals and curses. For the sake of this article, let’s call good luck the tendency for things to go in such a way that one seems to benefit, and bad luck the tendency for things to apparently go awry. (I’m defining these because often when we label an event bad or good luck, we are simply unable to see the big picture and how everything ultimately happens for a good reason.)

Regarding whether or not a person can steal another person’s luck, there are a couple of key factors to take into consideration. The first is that the quality of our relationships affects our vibration, and our vibration determines the quality of our experiences across the board. So if we are in happy, healthy, harmonious relationships that bring us joy, we will tend to have a high vibration and enjoy better fortune in every area of our lives.

Further, the higher our vibration, the keener our intuition, and intuition is perhaps the most powerful tool at our disposable for aligning with what we want. If we are ignoring our intuition for some reason (perhaps in order to stay in an unhealthy or mismatched relationship – which is something people do all the time), then it’s easy to see how being in the wrong relationship could lead us to apparently grow more unlucky, for in silencing our intuition about the relationship, we more or less disconnect from our inner voice altogether.

This is more common and powerful a factor than it may appear at first glance: if we block our intuition because we don’t like what it’s telling us about one thing, we set ourselves up for all sorts of problems. Thus people who stay in the wrong relationship can start to experience apparent bad luck across the board. Once they begin to honor the truth in their hearts again, they can hear their intuition guiding them toward wiser choices, greater opportunities and the answers to their prayers.

Of course, if we believe ourselves to be lucky, we will tend to be lucky for all sorts of different reasons. The first is that we create our own realities, so what we expect to happen tends to happen. Beyond metaphysics, however, there are practical reasons why believing that we are lucky tends to prove true. When we believe we are lucky, we believe that we can succeed, which leads us to go for what we want and make things happen. Also, when we believe we are lucky, we tend to be upbeat and positive, which naturally attracts other people to us, and with them come support and opportunities. Similarly, believing that you are unlucky will make you like Eeyore: people will begin to avoid you and that gloomy cloud you’re carrying over your head. (This is actually what the aura of a pessimist looks like to a clairvoyant – it’s full of grey clouds!) So the fact that beliefs tend to be self-fulfilling explains why your ex believed himself unlucky and manifested evidence of that, while you had much better luck given your positive expectations.

When we mix people together in intimate relationships, nothing remains simple for long, however. Buttons are constantly being pushed, issues ignited, and dynamics endlessly shifting. How relationships affect our quality of experience largely depends on how conscious we can remain in terms of setting our own tone/vibration while all of this is going on. The more conscious we are, the less outside forces will tend to influence us.

Many years ago, I was walking through a large department store with my husband, who was carrying my infant daughter. In order to keep her happy, he was bouncing up and down as he went down each aisle. I was walking behind them when I passed a mirror and suddenly noticed that I was bouncing too. I was anxious for her to remain happy while we shopped, and was so keyed into this that I entrained to what they were doing without consciously choosing to do so. So though I wasn’t carrying a baby, I was bouncing with every step!

We all do this “unconscious bouncing” to greater or lesser extents all the time. Even when we’re not personally “carrying a baby” – when we have no personal reason to entrain to other people’s vibrations – if we’re not paying conscious attention and setting our own tone, we can easily end up on their wavelength.

This is epecially true when others are emitting a strong frequency or when we care a great deal and empathize with them; we tend to entrain to their vibration while at the same time giving them some of our energy. While this may make them feel better, it tends to have the opposite affect on us. In balanced relationships, there is balanced give and take in terms of energy, but balanced relationships are hard to come by. Normally, there is some disparity that leads one partner to do most of the energetic giving. While relationships may start out balanced, it also happens that people grow apart in vibration over time.

When one person’s vibration is much higher the other’s, that imbalance tends to lead to problems. The high vibe person will get caught up in their partner’s lower vibration and give them energy, while the low vibe person will get a vibrational and energetic boost from the positive person, and eventually, they can end up switching places. This could explain why you started to feel worse with your ex – at least until you broke away from him.

It is exhausting to consciously align with what we want all the time, so we are wise to surround ourselves with people who feel good to us and have a high vibration. It’s further helpful if these people have openly positive attitudes: if they focus on the bright side and demonstrate empowering beliefs, for this makes maintaining a high vibration so much easier.

Karma can also play a role here, of course, and is often to blame when things just don’t make sense on the surface. The emotional energies, issues, vows and lessons we carry forward from past lives can certainly influence how lucky we seem to be, and past life exploration is often helpful in understanding the confusing patterns of experience we get caught up in.

So when one thing after another goes wrong, we may wonder what we’ve done to deserve it, but in all likelihood, it’s what we haven’t done that is the problem. Since our relationships can and do affect the quality of our “luck,” we are wise to choose them carefully and to consciously set our own tone.

Soul Arcanum