Voice of the Spirit

We’re taught to believe that the progression of life is something to be dreaded and feared – that if we’re past a certain age (probably around 30), our best days are behind us and that sickness, misery and disaster are all around the corner.

However, shouldn’t getting older really mean that we actually become more successful at mastering our lives and manifesting our dreams? Shouldn’t we progress positively through our experiences as opposed to moving backward? If we step outside of the fear that life gets worse as time goes on, don’t those questions make sense? Just like if we practiced the guitar daily, we’d assume that through time we’d improve versus becoming worse.

So why don’t we apply the same principle of getting better at something such as practicing the guitar to the positive progression and evolution of our lives?  It’s because we’re wounded, afflicted and crippled by the pain of the past, which means that our lives are continuously weighted down by what happened to us before.

This way, we can’t start each day with a clean slate. It’s like being a painter and starting every painting with a canvas full of an ever increasing collage of ugly, clashing images, colors and pictures already on the canvas. If that was the case, how could we paint anything new, wondrous and beautiful?

When we don’t know how to heal the pain of our past, or worse yet, refuse to do so because of our attachment to the hurts of before, our lives move into a downward spiral – sometimes slowly throughout time, while at other times, rapidly and dramatically. Yet, the pain of the past doesn’t weigh us down in only one way; it poisons and debilitates all aspects of our lives: psychologically, emotionally, spiritually, and physically.

With the goal in mind of living ever productive, healthy and prosperous lives, let’s look at 5 winning steps that will truly help us to heal the pain of the past, so we can manifest the journey that we are divinely meant to experience.

1-Acknowledge

We often believe that to move forward, we just have to really be “positive:” visualizations, affirmations, meditation, increased self esteem and empowerment are all things that are supposed to turn things around for the better. On top of that, if we’re not successful yet, it just means that we haven’t visualized long and hard enough, or still don’t have enough self esteem. However, these assumptions are not true.

So why don’t these good things in and of themselves work? It’s because we must first acknowledge what we feel and what is bothering us about the past to begin the healing process. Without doing do, it’s like refusing to look at and fix the cracked foundation of your home, but thinking that by decorating the penthouse  with new, lovely furniture, everything will turn out just fine.

When we avoid what we feel and deny what is really going on within us from before, we can’t heal our lives. We get caught up in our own emotional denial and avoidance, because we don’t want to have to open that old can of worms regarding what is wounding us from before. It’s just not pleasant to deal with it all again as we feel re-victimized, out of control and helpless. So instead, we try to misguidedly take control of our lives by believing that we’re moving forward by being “positive.” However, in reality, we’re turning our backs on continuously negative emotions that spread like a cancer within us.

Without acknowledgment, we experience a tremendous internal pressure based on our denied emotions, just like water building up against a damn. After a certain period of time and pressure, our emotions overtake us and any number of negative things can happen. We act out, make the wrong choices seemingly out of the blue, display angry outbursts, experience depression, complete hopelessness, or make terribly self destructive choices.

Avoiding what you feel from before and being “positive” doesn’t mean that you’ve taken control of your life; but rather, that you’re a sitting duck regarding what these negative feelings can do to you. Would you rather be able to see what you’re dealing with, then have your eyes closed, which leaves you completely vulnerable.

When put this way, these questions seems quite obvious: How could you possibly fix a problem if you don’t know what it is? If you went to a doctor and they didn’t know what was wrong with you, how could they even begin to help you heal? With acknowledgment, we lay the foundation to be able to heal the pain of the past and we relieve the potentially debilitating internal pressure that can overtake our lives. By bringing the issues out in the open and into the light, we take away the mysterious, ominous and frightening power our past emotions have had over us. We see that the bullies we’ve been pushed around by for so long are just negative emotions that shouldn’t have any more power over our lives.

A great therapist once said, “Acknowledging your emotions will never kill you, but denying them will.” I’ve often said that if we put 10% of the effort into healing the pain of the past as we do into avoiding, denying, attaching to the old negative patterns, being defensive and refusing to acknowledge our feelings, we would heal our lives.

Start out by getting a notebook dedicated to healing the pain of the past and write down what you feel regarding what happened before. Don’t intellectualize your feelings, but ask yourself, “What do I feel and what is bothering me?” Believe me, sooner or later, these emotions will come forward and speak to you. By writing them down, you can now know what the real problems are, not run away from them and lay the foundation to truly heal your life.  

2-Release

Once you’ve acknowledged the pain of the past and know what you feel, it’s time to take the next step in the healing process, which is to begin releasing these old, negative emotions. We often didn’t know just how much wounding has been inside of us from such things as our upbringing, disappointments in former romantic relationships, and dreams in our career that didn’t come true.

We get used to suffering and being attached to the pain of the past as our hurt becomes a friend and companion. Often, we even take it to the point of wallowing in past negativity as an emotional security blanket. With that, our defenses and ego cling to old negative feelings because they protect us from moving forward and taking risks. We falsely think that our past hurt feelings keep us safe from getting wounded again, but in reality, they poison all aspects of our lives.

Sometimes people have said to me, “Jim, but I don’t know how to release these feelings. What do I do?” Keep in mind that releasing these old derelicts is not academic or complicated in essence.

It’s about “wanting to” – meaning that you have to really want to! You must feel the passionate commitment and desire to let these emotions go. It’s like a singer who sings the notes correctly, but without emotion – it means nothing…. However, with real feeling, everything comes alive and the song sings! Feel the desire to let it all go – every day.

One motivation that will help inspire you is that the well-being of your life is at stake here. Another is to try and think of those who have it so much worse. If you’ve been wounded in love, you can always find another and better lover. However, think of the mother whose child was raped and murdered. That mother can never bring back her child who is gone forever. Use someone else’s tragedy as a motivation to help put your situation in perspective by realizing that so many others have it worse than you do.

Then, with heartfelt passion as your daily guide, affirmations can really begin to aid the healing process, because they, too, are only effective when said with complete commitment. Here are two affirmatives that will assist you in achieving this:

Since it serves absolutely no purpose for me to hold on to the negative emotions from the past, I now release and completely let go of any and all attachment to the pain of the past and now go free to live a wondrous, magical and positive life today!

And: 

I ask God to take away the pain of the past and lift it out of me, releasing it into the endless divine white light where these old negative feelings now return to their native nothingness! I am now free of the pain of the past!

Here is a visualization technique that will also help: Picture the painful situation from your past surrounded in a bright pink bubble and see it all rising to the heavens into infinity!

As most people want quick and instantaneous results nowadays, release is one of the most overlooked aspects of the healing process. It takes a while, as you’re challenging old feelings, attitudes and patterns that have been there a long time. Remember that you can’t win this battle overnight, but CAN through consistency, commitment and passion. The actual energetic release is heartfelt and you will feel these burdens literally being released from within you and let go of. Don’t fight with the past, rationalize it, or try to hold on any longer. Just let go, and let God!

We must first remove what’s in the way in order to bring our divine good to us. If we haven’t released the pain of the past, it’s like us locking a door and then posing the question, “Why isn’t anyone walking through the door?” Just as in the Bible it is stated that when you come out of darkness, there is a wilderness that you pass through in order to reach your promised land. Releasing opens that space to transition between the darkness of the past and the continuous brightness of your blessings, soon to come!

3-Forgive

After releasing the pain of the past, forgiving is the next step in our healing process so we can receive our blessings and all that is for our highest good. Remember, the sunlight of God’s blessings is shining down on us perpetually – but not forgiving is like closing the curtains and drawing the blinds shut so it can’t get in.

Of course we don’t do this on purpose to ourselves. Who would? No one says, “I’m going to block my blessings now by refusing to forgive,” but whether it’s deliberate or not doesn’t matter. To heal the pain of the past, we must learn to forgive. How could we expect good things to come to us unless we become the open channel to receive the blessings we are asking for?

Forgiving is such a healing tool, as it allows us to once and for all stop replaying the same old “pain of the past tapes” of victimization where we have felt wounded, hurt, angry, resentful and justified. These old tapes kept bringing us right back to the original pain that started all of this suffering in the first place. Forgiving erases the negative tape loops of the past that have prevented us from moving forward with our lives all along.

Not knowing how to forgive or feeling unable to do so allows us to think that we have another choice. Instead of making the journey of forgiveness, we falsely think that we can take control of our lives by trying to manage our negative emotions — as if our lives may not reach the highs, but won’t hit rock bottom either. We erroneously believe that our lives are like us snapping a still photograph right now, as if things will continue to always be the same; not great, but not horrible, either.

Instead, by not forgiving, our lives progress like the dark plot line of a scary movie, as the negativity within us grows and spreads throughout our lives. As time goes on, it all becomes more etched into our subconscious and gains more of a stronghold in our being. 

Then there are those who just absolutely refuse to forgive, as their resentment, anger and rage forms an identity of self justified victimization. These people actually like not forgiving, as they receive an emotionally charged pay off of feeling wronged. However, they’ll never be happy staying this way. As I have yet to ever meet a happy victim, those who refuse to forgive always see their lives spin out of control – sooner or later.

With these different mindsets, we see how forgiveness is one of the most misunderstood parts of healing the pain of the past. In addition, when we think of forgiving others, we somehow think we’re going to end up being vulnerable to those who hurt us again — but it is exactly the opposite.

As painful emotions literally handcuff us to those who have wounded us, not forgiving keeps us attached to them in a negative way. This means that we’ll have to meet up with them in this lifetime or a later one to work this out. The spiritual conclusion of any situation is always one of peaceful resolution, so we must forgive them to help resolve whatever negativity exists from the past to brings things to a state of peace.

We fear that forgiving someone means that we’ll have to let them back into our life. However, forgiving and reconnecting with someone is not necessarily one and the same thing at all as there may be no higher purpose for them to re-enter our lives. 

By forgiving someone, are we condoning what they’ve done to us and somehow saying that their actions are right? Of course not, as forgiveness has nothing to do with condoning whatever hurt they’ve caused us.

If you have a hard time with forgiving, here are two tips that will help: First, remember that forgiveness is an act of self interest. By forgiving, you remove the ever increasing negative, poisonous, dark energy inside of you that debilitates your life. This energy contributes to depression, anxiety, rage, poverty, disconnection from people and life, as well as physical illness. A good question to ask is, “Am I willing to suffer, be poor, alone, miserable and sick in order to not forgive?” Put that way, it’s clearly in everyone’s self interest to forgive, as the pain of the past becomes healed! 

In addition, remember that we have all created negative karma in this lifetime and in prior incarnations, so all of us need to be forgiven. In the Bible it is stated, “Let the person without sin throw the first stone,” which means that none of us are free of negative karma.

Here is a useful affirmation to help with this process: I now release and forgive anyone who has ever caused me pain and harm including _______ and release him/her to his/her highest good now! There is complete peace, harmony and divine love between us!

 As we make the journey, this not only includes forgiving those who have wounded us, but also, ourselves. We must no longer hold ourselves in judgment for the hurtful things we’ve done and sometimes that is the hardest thing for us to do. Sometimes, we just can’t seem to forgive ourselves, as we feel that we’ve really harmed others and there’s nothing we can do now to “fix it.”

However, forgiveness of ourselves must also be done in order to heal the pain of the past. Here is an affirmation to assist with that goal: I now see myself as divine love has created me: innocent, blameless and a wondrous being of light and love. I now forgive myself for anyone I have ever hurt including___________.

As you make the journey of forgiveness, you will feel its transformative healing power fill your entire being and see it manifest in all areas of your life. You’ll feel lighter, colors will appear brighter and miracles will start to come your way. With the tremendously powerful process of forgiving the pain of the past, we are now ready to architect a new life – one that is filled with endless blessings!

4-Replace

Sometimes it’s hard to motivate ourselves to release and forgive, because we ask ourselves, “What do I end up with after that, then? Nothing…”  We believe that all we’ll have is merely an empty void of nothingness, like the feeling of walking through a seemingly endless desert. At least the pain of the past gave us something to hand onto, even though it has been a debilitating process.

However, once we have released and forgiven, the space within us is not an endless desert, but a wide open playing field. With that space, we can now replace the pain of the past with new goals, dreams and wondrous possibilities. Remember that there is no expiration date on dreams and now that we have removed what’s been in the way, we can really manifest so many more miracles than we ever had before.

If you look at the ways of nature, we can say that “God abhors a vacuum,” meaning that when there is a space, God will try and fill it up. As people, we tend to do the same. When something is removed or gone, it’s time to replace it with something new. Never forget the old mainstay, “When one door closes, another one immediately opens.”

Think of any number of people who have been seriously wounded by a former romantic relationship. When they replace the pain of the past with a new and wonderful relationship, I guarantee you that they’ll feel 100% better. It is the same in any area of our journeys, including our careers.

There is a great athlete who in his prime had won several competitions and was going to be in the Olympics. However, right before the Olympics, he suffered an injury that ended his competitive athletic career. All of his dreams seemed to be over. Only in his mid twenties, he fell into a deep depression because he couldn’t figure why God or whoever is up there would do this to him. As he built his entire life around the passionate and consistent pursuit of his dream, it was all finished in one fell swoop. He thought, “What could I possibly do with my life now, as I have nothing to live for?”

Instead of denying his emotions, he began to acknowledge what he felt, which was the tremendous sense of loss, sadness, rage and resentment for what had happened to him. Next, he worked on releasing these feelings as they were literally destroying him. He had to find it in himself to truly release it all as he could see that this negativity was poisoning him and ruining his life. Then, he worked on forgiveness of God, as he was so enraged that somehow this is what happened to him.

Within years of this injury, he began to replace the old dreams with new ones. He started training other athletes and preparing them for intense competitions. Some of the athletes he trained were garnering gold medals at the Olympics and winning in other competitions as well.

Through that success, he obtained his own fitness show on television, which led to him marketing and selling a line of fitness tapes and DVD’s which have turned out to not only help people get in shape, but also have been quite financially lucrative for him.

So as we see, this person replaced the pain of the past with new dreams – and it worked. It is a story of great inspiration, as all of us have felt that our dreams have been crushed and destroyed at one time or another. It is a call to action for us to do the same, as we no longer have to be victims of the pain of the past, but, rather, winners in the present tense.

5-Laugh

Now that we’ve reached our final step in healing the pain of the past, you might ask, “Why is #5 entitled, “laugh”? What could that have to do with my suffering and former hurt? I thought we were supposed to laugh at a joke, a funny movie, comedy routine, or when going out to see a stand-up comedian. How do I take a lighthearted view of all of the pain I’ve been through?”

When I was in my twenties, I remember a great spiritual master once told me that I needed to learn to laugh at the pain of my past. If I could do so, I would then know that I was resolved with what happened before. At first, I asked the same thing: “What does laughter have to do with it?”

However, I learned very quickly that laughter has everything to do with it because you know you’re healed regarding a former situation when you can laugh at it. Sounds crazy? Think of it this way: When you were in first grade, someone pushed you down and your knee got cut and bled. You cried, screamed and even thought the world was going to end. Do you feel the same about that experience today? Of course not. I’m sure that you can laugh heartily at that silly little incident back then which at the time seemed so completely traumatic. Therefore, at this time, you need to apply that same principle to what is still wounding you from before.

In spiritual terms, no matter what we’ve been through, regardless of how awful it has been and how we still may feel, we will come to peace with everything that has ever happened to us before. It’s just a question of whether we do it now or later. At some point, our spiritual growth will lead us into that healing journey regarding it all! The gage of how much we are healed now is laughter, because with it, there is no pain, remorse, guilt, anger, rage, depression or resentment, but only light-hearted joy!

As with all aspects of healing the pain of the past, take it in steps. Start by thinking of something that troubled you before that doesn’t matter much anymore – like a break up with someone you dated briefly in high school. Try laughing about it now and you’ll see how good you feel.

Then, work on something that is a bit more difficult and continue with that process till you feel that you can laugh at the pain of the past. It doesn’t have to be completed today, but in steps and degrees through time. Yet, always push yourself a little bit more each day, as your defense mechanisms could resist going through this process as you’re confronting former situations that have greatly wounded you.

It’s easy with our defenses to feel that this technique is unfair or disingenuous, as if to say, “I can’t laugh at what I’ve been through as it was so utterly horrible!” If you’re having that type of reaction, you’ve discovered where the problems are and that’s where the healing needs to occur. We all have things that still bother us from before, but do we choose to heal them or not?

If we really want to move forward with our lives, we must heal the pain of the past; not just make a little dent in it here and there. If that’s all we do, then the negativity comes back, like an uncured disease that keeps flaring up. Laughter is the final step in our healing process!

When we are free of what happened before within us, we are free externally. The freedom we so desperately seek outside of ourselves cannot be gotten in the external world as that world merely reflects our inner world. Freedom can only be first attained in our inner world, then what we experience externally will mirror what we have manifested within.

Let’s really reach for the freedom our souls desire and yearn for – freedom from the shackles, chains and prison of the pain of the past. It cripples up, debilitates us, and prevents us from manifesting our dreams. It is not airy-fairy, lofty and up in the clouds to heal this. It is real, tangible and attainable – right here, right now. This way, we don’t have to hobble through life, merely survive or just go through the motions….

By coming out of the dark through acknowledging what we feel, releasing the burdens of those old derelict emotions, forgiving those who have hurt us before, replacing the pain of the past with new dreams, and ultimately, laughing about it all, we have come full circle – and are ready to manifest a life of miracles, dreams, health well-being, prosperity and new people in our lives who truly care and love us.

You can have a private consultation with me,  personally tailored to fit your questions, needs and concerns. Just click the link to begin.

Regarding our health, we have all heard the old phrase, “An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure,” meaning that by taking care of our physical bodies now, we help to avoid serious illness and potentially even death.  What if I said to you that our loved ones on the other side also try to do the exact same thing for us here – but in the form of spirit warnings that offer us help from beyond the grave? 

After our loved ones are in spirit, they help us by trying to warn us of negative, dangerous, life-altering and even life-ending occurrences that could happen in our journey.  Since they are aware of these things, their warnings are designed to help us avoid potential disaster, so that we may have safe, wonderful and blessed lives. 

“So in which way do these “spirit warnings” actually come through to us?” one might question.  First, they not only utilize our five senses: sight, sound, taste, smell, and touch, but also reach us beyond our five physical senses and can manifest through our feelings, dreams, and a spiritual medium.   

 How and when do our loved ones do this for us

When our loved ones first leave the earth, it takes them a while to get situated and adjusted to their new lives in spirit.  As verified in a prior newsletter, it takes about three days for the etheric body (life force) to disconnect from the physical body that has just died.  After that, there is a period of time for our loved ones to reach the point where they can begin issuing spirit warnings to help us on earth.  That length of time varies from situation to situation depending on several variables:

First, they need to develop the skills to be able to connect with us here on earth.  Just because they’ve died, does not mean that they inherently have the ability to be able to communicate with us here.  That is a skill set that must be learned on the other side, where their master teachers can instruct them.  Think of it like learning a language: When you were first born, did you know how to speak?  You have to learn to do so and it is the same thing with our loved ones in spirit.   

One exception to this rule is if they have already learned these skills when they were on the other side between prior incarnations before the most recent physical lifetime ended.  In fact, they could have learned these skill sets on the other side between any number of former earthly lifetimes.  In that instance, they would be able to once again access those already learned abilities and utilize them.   Also, psychic and spiritual awareness are factors as well.  Someone who was a medium in this life has learned the process from the physical side.  That makes it easier to learn it from the other side because they are familiar with the energy.

In addition, they need to build up their energetic and spiritual strength there.  When they first begin getting situated in spirit, it is just like watching a newborn baby trying to walk; at first, the baby stumbles and falls, but they keep trying till they can walk correctly.  It is the same thing with our loved ones in spirit, as the longer they’re there, the stronger they become and can come through to us more powerfully.  With that strength, their ability to give us direct messages that help and protect us increases and grows.  It is just like someone who has been physically exercising to build more muscle tone; the more they do it, the stronger they become.

Our five senses:

Just as psychics and mediums here on earth have abilities that correspond to our five physical senses, spirits will manifest messages to us through our physical senses and their psychic counterparts.  

(Sight) — Some of us will receive the messages from our loved ones in spirit through sight.  In this instance, we may literally see our loved ones with our actual physical sight, or in a vision within our own mind.  Just as we’re waking up or falling asleep, there is a moment when we’re not entirely asleep, but not entirely awake either.  This is referred to as a twilight state where we are extremely psychically open.  Because we are so receptive in this state, some of us see spirits. 

One morning a few years ago, Cindy woke up to see her dead brother standing at the foot of her bed holding an airplane in his hands, moving his head from left to right as if to say no.  Then, she heard his voice say, “Hey little sis, don’t get on the plane, ya’ hear me?”  (What’s interesting, is that Cindy’s brother frequently referred to her as “Little sis” when he was on earth.  This phrase was said to confirm to her that indeed she was actually connecting with her brother, now in spirit.)

Of course, it shocked her right out of her bed.  Yet, it was supposed to, as she was planning on boarding a flight in a few days that was going to crash – and it indeed did.  Her brother, who had been dead for 10 years, saw this from spirit and issued the life saving warning to her through this vision.  Thankfully, she got the message and didn’t board that ill-fated flight.

(Sound, Taste, and Smell) — Regarding sound, we may actually hear our loved ones in spirit speaking to us with our physical hearing; other times we’ll hear them internally within our own minds.  We may also hear them in the form of a whisper, as they offer the helpful messages we need. 

Keep in mind, though, that it is not as if our loved ones on the other side automatically can talk to us, in the way we’re used to picking the phone and having a conversation with someone.  As I mentioned earlier, they need to develop this skill and increase their spiritual strength to be able to speak to us here.

As odd as it may sound, we often receive these spirit warnings through taste.  If we associate our loved ones in spirit with a certain food from when they were alive, that becomes one way they may connect with us to issue spirit warnings to help us.  Besides the taste, we may additionally have a gut level feeling, hear a message, or see further explanation and confirmation as to what spirit is trying to relay to us. 

Like our sense of taste, smell is one of our most powerful senses which our loved ones in spirit will utilize to reach us.  We often hear of a loved one in spirit who wore a certain cologne or perfume coming through with that exact scent to us here.  Since we associate that smell solely with them, it connects us to them, and therefore, we can receive their spirit warning to help us.  I have seen countless examples of that exact occurrence, as it is a powerful tool of communication from the other side.  There have been many instances I know of where the perfume someone’s mom used to wear was literally filling the room and more than one person smelled it.  That was “mom’s” way of coming through, now that she was in spirit.

(Touch) — With touch, we often are physically touched by our loved ones in spirit in the exact same way someone on earth touches us – and we feel it!  In this instance, our loved ones in spirit can literally come through in a directly physical way, where being touched feels the exact same way as if another human being touched us with their hands.

One foggy day, Katie was in a hurry, nervously standing at the edge of the curb and ready to cross the street to get to work as she was running late.  Suddenly, she felt someone tap her on the shoulder 4 times.  Surprised, she turned around to see who it was – but no one was there.  In fact, no one was even within 10-20 feet of her.  So who was this that just strongly tapped her on the shoulder 4 times? 

As Katie was momentarily frozen, a huge SUV raced around the corner from seemingly out of nowhere and sped past the spot Katie would have been walking in the street.  A second or two later, two women walked up beside her and one said to the other, “You know, it was your grandmother.”  Then, Katie heard the message, “You would have been struck by the vehicle, so I tapped you to distract you for a moment.”  The voice was unmistakable to Katie; it was her grandmother who had been dead for 20 years.  In split second timing, her grandmother helped to arrange a synchronicity of events that kept her granddaughter safe from being run over by a speeding SUV.

As with Katie, it is a startling reminder of just how powerfully connected we are to the spirit world and to our loved ones there when they literally reach out and touch us.  With all of the spirit warnings we receive, we see the many confirmations of how the physical plane and the spirit world are quite interconnected in a very real way.  However, spirit doesn’t merely communicate to us through our five senses; they also can come through a feeling, a dream and/or a spirit medium.  

Beyond our five physical senses and beyond:

 (Feeling) – Sometimes a loved one in spirit comes through to us as a feeling that we experience.  These feelings can manifest in any number of ways for us depending on how spirit sends them and how we receive them: a hunch, a sense of knowing, feeling afraid (which help us to avoid something), and/or an unsettledness about something that causes us to take a deeper look are all ways a feeling reaches us from spirit to help us.  

(Dreams) — In addition to our loved ones in spirit reaching us through a feeling, many of us have received spirit warnings from our loved ones on the other side in our dreams — and in those dreams, we need to listen to what is being communicated to us!  We should always remember that spirit comes through for a reason, often to issue warnings as a way of helping us.  Keep in mind that our dreams are the open door through which our loved ones on the other side can literally walk through and connect with us.

Susan dearly missed her sister Regina who had died from cancer about a year ago.  One of their strongest bonds was the fact that Regina always warned Susan about the many bad men she used to date.  After Regina died, Susan felt such a void in her life, which left her tremendously vulnerable.  It was at that time she met a man named Roberto seemingly at random in a restaurant who she clicked with right off the bat.  With amazing and lustful sex, Susan was hooked; except this time, there was no Regina to offer advice and support – or was there…?

After about a week of dating Roberto, Susan had a dream – but this was not just a normal dream.  In it, Regina walked into the kitchen they used to have a cup coffee in together and began talking to Susan who was already sitting at the table.  Here are the exact words Regina said: “Susan, Roberto is a horrible person and you must dump him now.  He has a felony criminal record and is violent.  Check in the state of Florida and you’ll find his criminal record.  If you don’t cut your ties with him now, he’ll take all of your money and physically hurt you.”

Immediately, Susan was jolted out of her dream and woke up.  For a few moments, she didn’t know where she was, or what had just occurred.  Then, she gathered herself and realized what had just happened: her sister Regina had just come to her in a dream – and it was not made up, but indeed, a spirit warning from Regina designed to help Susan.

So when Susan did a background check, there it was: three felony convictions: armed robbery, assault with a deadly weapon, and domestic abuse.  Susan started sobbing uncontrollably, because she felt that not only had she lost Regina, but now, she would have to cut her ties with Roberto.  However, as hard as it was for her, she did get rid of him and moved on with her life.

It goes to show that the support Regina offered Susan didn’t stop when Regina died – it continued from the spirit world as it does for all of us.  As with Susan, our dreams are a fascinating and cosmic doorway through which spirit enters.  When we are asleep, our defenses are relaxed and we can hear, see and feel – sometimes in a much more real and deeper way than when we’re awake. 

(Spiritual Medium) — As with the spirit warnings we each receive through our dreams, our loved ones on the other side can come through a spiritual medium and relay to us incredibly detailed and accurate information, all designed to help, guide, protect and keep us out of harm’s way.  In the physical plane, there are so many dangerous, unpredictable and threatening possibilities every day that it is of great comfort to know that our loved ones in spirit have our back – and truly watch out for us. 

With each medium and every message that comes through to help us, there is no rule of thumb as to how it will indeed manifest.  Sometimes there is a long message that is spoken by spirit and heard verbatim by the medium.  Other times, there are key words, phrases or fragments that get picked up.  Some mediums will pick up these spirit warnings through visual pictures that are literal as in seeing a house or a person with a specific description; while at other times, visual images are symbols that need to be interpreted and clarified.  Dates will sometimes come through literally: as in this month, or in a week, or even one year, but other times in a symbolic way: when the leaves change, when there is snow on the ground, or in a “three.”  That “three” may not be defined as days, weeks, months or even years but just within a “three.”

However, there should always be things that come through a medium that make sense and are a confirmation to us.  For instance, that could be a name of someone our loved one is with on the other side.  It could entail something that has occurred in your life that the medium would have no way of knowing about.  The medium may provide a name, initial, or description of someone connected to your life.

Yet, that doesn’t mean that you’ll agree with every single thing that is said or that it will all make sense at the time.  Some things are a matter of their perspective from spirit versus yours that is human and most likely filled with emotional bias.  Also, there are events that are yet to come that may not be able to be humanly seen by you at this time.  They are being revealed now as an early warning from spirit to help you.

Remember that the connection between a medium and your loved ones in spirit is quite delicate and can be easily broken.  If you interrupt, argue, get defensive, won’t listen, close off, become resistant or difficult in any way, that connection can be severed.  Again, it is not as if your loved ones pick up phone, ring the medium and have a conversation. 

In addition, you are the vessel from which this connection originates and flows through, so you must be open, relaxed, and not accidentally get in the way.  Even though the physical plane and the other side where our loved ones are between lifetimes is quite interconnected, there is still a time and space distortion that exists that must be compensated for and dealt with, so this connection is delicate and easily broken or thrown off. 

For me, doing spirit medium work is among the  most fulfilling, as countless helpful spirit warnings and life saving messages have come through to me which I have relayed successfully to many clients.  Experiencing that confirmation of love, heartfelt sincerity, connection and help from beyond has changed my life and the lives of many of my clients.  That’s exactly what happened to a woman when she “accidentally” connected with me for a reading.

(A Client’s Story) — First, I asked this woman if her mother was on the other side and she said, “Yes.”  Then, her mother June began profusely apologizing for being mean to her daughter when she was growing up, which affected her self-esteem.  June kept speaking of neglecting her daughter’s teeth.   My client confirmed that she had not received proper dental care as a child from her mother, which eventually led to my client needing to have her teeth pulled as an adult. 

June then indicated that the reason my client was in poverty, is because of her poor self worth, which her mother acknowledged that she helped to create.  Her mother also commented on her daughter’s current boyfriend and said how horrible he was, which was keeping her “down and out,” and in poverty.  Besides June’s heartfelt apologies, she warned her daughter that she needed to dump her boyfriend now and get into counseling.  Doing this would improve her self esteem, which would then bring money into her life.  Her mother also spoke of my client’s former marriage. 

Suddenly, my client’s late husband came through to me.  I asked my client if he was on the other side and she indicated that he was.  He warned my client to get rid of her current boyfriend and the word “pedophile” appeared to me in large letters.  Her late husband said that her current boyfriend would molest the daughter she had with him before he died.  He further asserted to ask their daughter “what had happened.”

I also saw a young man in spirit who wanted to come through, and I felt it was my client’s brother whose name began with an “S.”  She confirmed that she has a brother named Sam who died around the age of thirty.  The strongest feeling came to me that he had been in a sudden car accident which she confirmed was true.

Sam then indicated that his sister needed to have her car checked, as the steering was loose, which would cause a serious accident.  Her brother also warned his sister to get rid of the current boyfriend because he was keeping her self esteem low, which was helping to keep her in poverty.  Sam told his sister that if she dumped him and began applying for a new job, she would get a really good job that would pay well within a “two.”  That was the end of our first reading.

So with all of these spirit warnings that came through to help my client, she had a lot to think about, and after about a year, I heard from her again.  She first acknowledged that hearing from her mother helped her to feel better about herself, which laid the foundation for her to build a better life. 

She did speak to her 14 year old daughter, and to her shock, her daughter stated that her mother’s current boyfriend had asked her to have sex with him, but to never tell Mom.  Her daughter refused to have sex, but she was afraid to tell her mother, for fear that she would be blamed somehow.  However, when my client questioned her daughter, it allowed her to admit the truth.  Then, my client promptly dumped her boyfriend and threatened to call the police if he ever contacted her again.  Here, her daughter’s well being was saved!

This also helped my client to grow, because without the boyfriend, she started feeling better about herself and did get into counseling which further helped her to heal.  Interestingly, my client did find that new job her brother spoke of within 2 months of our first reading and it was far better than any position she ever had before, so her money situation had dramatically improved!  So clearly, the spirit warnings to help her brought about many wondrous changes for the better.

(In Closing) — Never lose sight of the fact that our loved ones in spirit truly want us to be safe, happy, healthy, alive and well!  That is their dream for us!  It is an affirmation and a confirmation of just how much they care for us from spirit as they love and cherish who we are, but most of all, they don’t forget about our safety. 

Death is an illusion – it merely means that those who have died no longer are here on earth — but they still are alive and can help US on earth.  As we know, the personality survives passing on, so your “Uncle Joe” is really going to come through to a medium as the “Uncle Joe” you used to know.  Yes, he will speak in the way you remembered him, to offer the spirit warnings you need!

Even when our family and/or loved ones were neglectful, harmful or abusive to us when they were here in the physical plane, they are now in spirit and may have spiritually grown and changed for the better.  Therefore, they now want to offer the loving support to us that wasn’t there before.  They may also feel spiritually compelled to atone for their former ways and right their wrongs to us.

From spirit, they have a unique vantage point that is much deeper and clearer which allows them to see things that they couldn’t when formerly in the physical plane.  In addition, their guides and master teachers can offer them phenomenally accurate and helpful information for them to pass on to us as a form of help. 

I cannot tell you the countless times that from the moment I heard someone’s voice, one of their loved ones in spirit was right there, waiting to come through.  From the other side, they already knew that the reading was to occur and they’re ready to offer tremendously helpful spirit warnings – things that we humanly may have not known – things that they can see from there and also, what their master teachers share with them.

There is that great old phrase, “It takes a village to raise a child.”  Let’s apply that same concept to the spirit warnings that help us from beyond the grave: “It takes a spiritual village to keep us safe on earth.”  That “village” includes our loved ones on the other side along with a medium who can bring through their wondrous messages.  

However, in our daily lives, we should never look for spirit warnings, because if we’re looking for something, our minds can play tricks on us where we begin misinterpreting, misreading, and actually make things up. 

What we should do is to be OPEN to the spirit warnings that help us from beyond the grave — but not on the lookout.  Remember, spirit knows what to do and they will communicate to us what we need to know, as well as when and how it should be done!  This can come directly to us or through a spiritual medium.  This way, we can live our lives always knowing and trusting that we are being watched out for, protected, and helped every step of the way. 

Finally, here is an affirmation to strengthen this wondrous connection with our loved ones who issue spirit warnings to help us: I am open to all of the tremendous support, guidance and help offered to me by my loved ones in spirit.  I clearly receive their spirit warnings and heed their advice, which helps me to live a safe, healthy, happy and blessed life! 

How about you? Have you ever had an experience where a loved one from spirit has given you a warning? I would love to hear your stories.

You can have a private consultation with me,  personally tailored to fit your questions, needs and concerns.

Often, waking up is more about the struggle of facing another day than feeling thrilled to open our eyes and welcome the new day.  With the stresses we all go through as well as the emotional burdens we’ve been carrying for such a long time, we sometimes dread that all we’re going to be able to do is trudge through our day.

 Here in “Spiritually Jump Start Your Day – 5 Easy Ways,” I would love to assist in getting you into the right frame of mind before you walk out the door — or even go through your email.  Just as the foundation of a house must be laid correctly to build a dream home, we all need to spiritually lay the foundation of each day correctly to manifest the day we divinely deserve.   

1-Expect a Miracle!

Yes, that’s right.  Expect a miracle today, this very day.  Why?  Because a life of miracles is naturally what we’re supposed to experience every day.  No, today is not supposed to merely be about going through the motions, as we may have formerly believed.

We know that there is something definitely wrong with us when we don’t physically feel well, so in that instance, we attempt to heal our bodies to be healthy again.  It is the same thing with our daily lives.  Mary Ann Williamson (an expert on A Course in Miracles), perhaps said it best when she indicated that something is clearly wrong in our lives if we’re not seeing miracles coming to pass daily.  A day of experiencing miracles is our natural state of being.

Conversely, it’s so easy for any of us to get so bogged down by what we’re going through that we’re just hoping to survive the day.  In that sense, we’re nowhere near thinking of some miracle that seems so “pie in the sky” and out of reach: “Will my boss yell at me?  How bad is the traffic going to be driving to work?  What problems will be there when I get home from work?” are all common things most of us have asked ourselves at the start of a day.

 However, instead of repeating those same old non-productive tapes, let’s try something new and different that will work for us.  When you wake up, affirm the following:  It is my divine birthright to experience miracles today and I now see them come to pass!  Don’t be afraid to say this affirmation multiple times as it will help to bring miracles through from infinite spirit into actual physical manifestation for you.

It is just like tuning a violin up to perfect concert pitch.  Once you get it right, the instrument is ready to play.  Remember that it’s the same thing with you!  Tune yourself up to the right vibration (which is the consciousness of expecting a miracle), and you’ll be surprised that you will experience them – this day and every day.

2-Express Gratitude

There is nothing perhaps more powerful to spiritually jump start our day than the expression of gratitude.  When you first open your eyes, be grateful that you’re alive!  Right here, right now you’re beginning to bring about a wondrous day through expressing gratitude.

When most of us first get up in the morning, our minds start to fill up and get cluttered with various thoughts and emotions: “I need to remember to get to the store.  What problems am I going to have to deal with today?  When is anything ever gonna get better for me?” are the types of things many of us state and ask ourselves.  

But what are these sentiments?  They only reinforce the so-called daily grind, as if we’re just going through the motions of another day….  What a way to get through our lives!  No wonder we’re miserable.  However, we can turn those energies around, and instead, feel thrilled to see what’s in store for us, knowing that it is going to be good. 

Remind yourself to take nothing for granted, because when we do, we disconnect from the divine source, where all good comes from.  Keep in mind that source is always there for us – as the endless supply of everything wondrous we can imagine and then some.  Through expressing gratitude, we plug into the eternal and endless consciousness that keeps freely supplying us with good — all day long. 

Feel free to express gratitude out loud for anything and everything that comes into your mind.  Nothing is too little or too small!  Express gratitude that you’re alive, for your money, friends, spouse, food, clothes in your closet, and for the wondrous sun which illuminates the earth.   The practice of gratitude will elevate you high above misery, depression, the doldrums, and the feeling of being weighted down by burdens and negativity.  Also, the more you express gratitude, the more you will have to be grateful for.  It is like a snowball that rolls down the side of a mountain that keeps picking up size and momentum.

Affirm the following and feel it as you say it:  I am grateful to be alive and for the continuous blessings I receive all day long!  It makes a real difference in the day ahead.  

3-Bless Others

One of the best things to do is the practice of blessing others.  It doesn’t matter who it is.  Whether it’s your family, friends, lover/spouse strangers, those you’ve had problems with, or someone you don’t even know, get into the habit of blessing others to spiritually jump start your day.  You’ll be surprised that by doing so, you will immediately feel lighter, brighter, and happier.  Also, good things will happen to you.

Remember that what we wish upon others comes back to us.  Most of us know this spiritual law, but we sometime lose sight of that fact, especially as we start our day.  When we’re in a hurry or feeling foggy, it’s so easy to just be proud of ourselves for crawling out of bed.  The last thing we’re thinking about is blessing anything or anyone as worries and concerns begin to crowd our mind.  But that’s not good enough!   

We need to get our day started in the right way, so that we are not just surviving, but will experience miracles and happy surprises.  By blessing others, we immediately set into motion the reality of bringing blessings back to us – today.  

Imagine good things coming your way all day long.  Now, it can be your reality.  Keep in mind that I’m not saying this from a point of view of faith, but rather, from actual experience, as I’ve seen it happen to those I’ve known and to myself.  Blessing others helps to bring you a miraculous day.

 Here is an affirmation to achieve this.  Name the person or persons in the blank space you’re blessing and say out loud:  I now bless______________and truly wish him/her all the miracles of life!  As with all of the affirmations in this article, I’m keeping them short and sweet, so they won’t be hard for you to remember.

With that in mind, never forget that spiritual truth is simple and not designed to fool us or trip us up, so we should never underestimate the power of simply blessing others.  Just send out these thoughts and wishes before you get involved in your day, and watch them return to you!     

4-You Have All the Time You Need

In today’s world, we hear people constantly complaining that they’re always running out of time and never getting done what they’re supposed to.  However, from a spiritual perspective, the truth is that there is always enough time to get everything done and each day is a day of completion.  In reality, you have all the time you need.

It’s a question of whether we want to look at it from the perspective of spiritual truth, or the point of view which is based on our frustrated human emotions and our prior conditioning.  With negative feelings, they are like a stampede of cattle that trample through our head and drown out our higher spiritual selves. 

We must retrain ourselves to believe that time is our ally and that completing our daily tasks is attainable.  This can be accomplished by elevating our perspective to begin to expect that we can meet our deadlines and have enough time to accomplish what we need to do every day.

Time in the spirit world is endless and eternal and provides us with all the time we could possibly need for this very day.  “Then why am I always running out of time and not getting things done?” you might ask.  It is because we’ve all gotten so used to the concept of “poverty of time,” which is that the clock is always running out on us.  With that belief system, we create the lack and limitation in physical reality that we already believe to be true in our consciousness. 

However, with the concept of an “abundance of time,” there is always enough time to get everything done today, and what a blessing that is!  We help to spiritually jump start our day by embracing the attitude that we do indeed have all the time we need and that our tasks are going to be completed.  We further reinforce this truth by saying the following affirmation:  I have more than enough time today to complete all of my tasks.  Today is a perfect day of completion!  

5-Experience The Joy Of Others

As we’ve all been hurt by others, it’s easy to lose sight of the fact that people are not really here to hurt us; but rather, to help, assist, and bring joy into our lives.  If we believe that others are “bad,” then we’ll experience that reality.  However, if we are open and willing to experience the joy of others, we can manifest that instead! 

Take a moment and return to the same innocence you had as a child, where you believed that everyone was a friend.  With the power of that conviction now, it sets into motion the reality of experiencing the joy of others in actual physical reality today.

Imagine that everyone you will encounter today will be friendly, respectful and kind toward you.  People are here to help!  No one makes condescending comments or is rude.  Instead, everyone is a friend.  Does it sound too good to be true?  Well, it isn’t, and that day is yours for the taking.

Remind yourself to greet everyone with good cheer, friendliness, respect and warmth.  That lifts you above the old emotional expectations that people are negative, and that you need to be guarded and on the defensive. 

With your vibration elevated, you’ll attract those who will bring joy into your day.  In addition, those who may have not brought joy to you before now will do so, as you’ve moved the energy to a higher level, and yes, they will respond to that change!

You further reinforce this reality with the following affirmation: I experience joy with everyone who crosses my path today!

One Last Thought…

Throughout this writing, I’ve been speaking of the concept of today – this one single moment – but in reality, how important could just one day really be…? 

Each day should never be thought of as some semi-forgetful blip on the radar screen where we merely go through the motions and just survive it all.  Instead, today is like an entire life in and of itself: where there is a dawn (birth), the day as it unfolds (living out our lives), and the nighttime where we go to sleep (death). 

We want to live each and every day as a complete story, not just based on the feeling that it’s the same old grind and never changes — because it always does.  We want to make sure that with the progression of our journey, that we’re putting into effect the changes that will allow us to be able to manifest all of the good we truly deserve.

We can draw a clear distinction between thinking of our day as a routine, uneventful, even dismal experience; versus living each day as a blessing filled with miracles and joyous expectations.  As we retrain ourselves to raise our vibration into being able to manifest the wondrous today, we see that it can be achieved through a few simple steps in just a matter of  minutes. 

Ask yourself what you feel you deserve and what your current expectations are.  What do you expect will happen to you today?  Is it bleak, dismal, so-so, or uncertain?  If it is any or all of those things, start by immediately expecting a miracle and nothing less. It changes everything for the better.

Wouldn’t it seem odd and ironic to speak of the karma we have all created throughout the many lifetimes we’ve lived in the same breath with our credit card debt?  After all, what could they possibly have to do with each other?  Our karma is thought of as a spiritual matter that entails our former actions through the countless incarnations we have all led, while our credit card debt is merely thought of as an earthly financial matter.  However, what if I told you that the parallels between the two are spiritually significant and helpful in our lives?

Most of us use them and have seen the blessings as well as the difficulty they bring to us.  While one needs a credit card in today’s world and we all know that the convenience it provides can be miraculous, we can all get carried away with our spending because there is always the thought that we can buy now, and pay later.

How many of us have become overwhelmed by credit card debt and find ourselves barely able to pay the minimum finance charge when the new bill arrives?  Sometimes our spending gets out of control through recreational and indulgent purchases, while at other times, our credit cards are the only way to stay afloat financially and afford expenses that we didn’t see coming, or just don’t have the money for at the time.  Yet as we spend, we often brush off the fact that we’ll have to pay the balance off — and on top of that, with interest that just keeps piling up!

Just like our credit card debt is increased and/or paid down, our negative karma adds spiritual debt while working off our bad karma pays it down.  In addition, the good karma we create always helps us to manifest a better life and move forward in a positive way.  However, no matter what, the debt we accrue both spiritually and financially will have to be paid off at some point in the future.  We must become more cognizant of the fact that we have to pay off our spiritual karmic debt if we want to spiritually advance and while doing so, we need to make every attempt to stop creating additional negative karma in the process.  With that in mind, let’s look at how we can take the steps to become something our soul is forever yearning for and working toward – to become spiritually debt free.

In the beginning…

Long ago, when we first began the reincarnation cycle, we were given complete free will from the divine universe.  We found ourselves in this world of illusion, like an imaginary playground where we could do whatever we wanted to.  Infinite spirit declared to us, “Here is your body, mind, emotions and spiritual self – you have been equipped with everything you could possibly need.  Now go out into this world!” 

An unlimited credit line

Back then, it was just like a 10 year old receiving a credit card that started with absolutely no credit limit whatsoever.  Imagine hearing the words, “Here is your credit card that has no limit and feel free to do whatever you want with it.  It is yours!”  It all sounds magical and whimsical, as if we had just won a multi-million dollar lottery.  Any of us would have probably said, “Oh my God, I can spend as much as I want – and there’s no limit!” But of course, the catch is that we all eventually have to pay off the balance whether now or later.

When it comes to our karma, it is exactly the same thing as having that unlimited credit card.  Of course, we have all spent more on our credit cards than we should have, just as each of us have hurt others in our lives.  We initially began creating negative karmic/spiritual debt by violating the law of love and committing bad acts.  By creating spiritual debts with others, we began owing them.  With the more negative karma we create, the higher our debt goes, just like seeing the charges on our credit card piling up every month. 

Many times we may have disregarded how our actions affected others and just did what we wanted, as if there would be no repercussions for our actions – ever.  But in reality, that is never that case.  As we all create both good and bad karma, it all comes back to us, sooner or later. 

When we’ve accrued negative karma by harming and victimizing others, we will eventually have to take care of those debts which won’t go away until they’re paid off – in full.   Paying our karmic debts from former lifetimes is something we’re still dealing with today, as we reincarnate into the physical world in part because of the negative karmic spiritual debt from our past actions.  It all began in the very beginning with our first violation of the law of love, which led to more karmic penalty, and it all keeps adding up….

Finance Charges Create Even More Debt

As we all know, the finance charges on our credit cards add even more debt. The higher the balance, the more the finance charges, which leads to an even higher balance and the cycle just keeps going….  This is just like the negative karma we create.  Not only do we have to pay off our karmic debts, but also the additional and subsequent repercussions that happen based on the initial negative acts we’ve done.  It is very much like throwing a pebble into the ocean and watching the ripples echo on into infinity.  This is exactly what happened to John and Sarah, a seemingly happy married couple.  

John liked being married to Sarah, but also wanted to cheat on the side to have his cake and eat it too.  Sarah had no idea of John’s affairs and she only found out by “accident.”  One day, John happened to leave his email account open when he left for work.  When Sarah went to the computer to look at her own emails, she noticed an open message right there on the screen. It was from another woman, detailing the wild sex she and John had in a hotel a few weeks prior.  With details of John’s anatomy that only someone would know who had been intimate with him, Sarah knew in one fell swoop that John indeed had cheated on her.  Sarah was just devastated.

After all, she didn’t see it coming as she truly believed that her marriage was stable and solid.  She thought they had a healthy sex life and everything seemed to be just fine.  So when Sarah caught her husband John with another woman, she felt as if the rug had been pulled out from under her.

But more importantly, though, are the series of repercussions that happened due to John’s initial cheating, (which were just like the finance charges that add even more debt the principle amount on our credit cards.)  After her devastation, Sarah began spiraling into a serious depression and overeating.  This lead to severe weight gain, which set off health issues that were quite worrisome: her blood pressure increased, and she developed heart trouble.  On top of that, she lost her focus on the job and was eventually fired.  This was all set off by what John had done to her and how the repercussions developed and grew over a period of about a year and a half.

As all of this was kicked into gear by the negative karma John created, and the continual repercussions his wife incurred were just like the finance charges that compound and increase the initial debit we owe on our credit cards.  It keeps building and accruing month by month – year by year and so on. 

As the difficulties with John’s wife and marriage continued, he, like many of us, wanted a quick fix – some easy way out so it could all be ok again, as he really didn’t want to lose his marriage; he had just wanted to cheat on the side.  But with karmic debt, there is no instant solution, as it takes a lot of time and effort to pay it off, which is something we all will have to learn, sooner or later.

Zero Balance – no interest for 12 months!

How many of us have fallen for the illusion of a credit card offer that says, “Zero balance, and no interest whatsoever on purchases for 12 months?”  Most of us have, as it’s so easy to get fooled by that financial carrot being dangled, and we also do the same thing with our negative actions.

We falsely believe that whatever we do won’t really come back to us – or at the very least, it’s delayed way off in the future and somewhere down the road.  “Why worry about it now?  Just do what you wanna do,” becomes many of our mottos, even if we don’t voice those sentiments out loud.

We delude ourselves into believing that our hurtful acts have a spiritual grace period – as if we’re exempt from paying our spiritual debts for awhile.  And it becomes so easy to extend that grace period in our own minds into being indefinite.  But our fantasy is absolutely not true. As every single thought, word, utterance and choice is immediately recorded in the heavens in real time where it is permanently stored, the repercussions always come back to all of us.

And just as the credit card companies lure us into serious debt by these promotional offers that give the illusion of everything being “free,” we do the same thing to ourselves regarding our spiritual journeys.  “After all, God didn’t just strike me down for what I did wrong, so it’ll all be ok,” is something any of us might believe.  This is exactly what happens to those of us who buy into such illusions and ultimately, we set ourselves up to pay the consequences in our lives..

Just making the minimum payments

We may have all bought into the illusion that there’s a grace period for our bad acts or falsely believe that they don’t really come back to us even though they always do.  However, in reality, we need to remember that it’s never simply a matter that all we’ve done in the past has been “wrong.”    

Most of us have created both good and bad karma in any given lifetime; it isn’t just one way or the other.  But now, we need to make sure that we burn off more negative karma that we already have to get our debt down, and simultaneously, create additional good karma in this lifetime.  This way, we keep evolving spiritually as opposed to just squeaking by in our lives.

Instead, so many people get stuck, just like those of us who can only pay the minimum amount on their credit cards every billing period.  We’ve reached the point financially where we open our bill and see that what we owe is far more than we’re going to make in an entire year.  On top of that, we barely have enough money right now to pay the minimum balance shown on the statement.

The same thing can happen to us spiritually where literally, we dig ourselves so deep into our own negativity in this lifetime that it is tremendously difficult to make a real dent in paying off our bad karma.  Yet, just like paying the minimum amount due, we continue to sort of get by in life, and move forward only to a point, as our debt has been in the making for quite a long time.

Shelly was a person who, like many of us, disregarded the consequences of her choices, till her life became overwhelmed by her past acts.  It was just like anyone who one day opens their credit card statement and realizes that after years of spending, they’re up to their eyeballs in debt.  For Shelly, it all started at the age of 20 when she became bored with her education when she was in school to become a lawyer.

In her own mind, she just felt that she could quit for the time being, have some fun and come back to school later and pick up where she had left off.  However, many people from her family to friends seriously warned her to not quit, as it would be hard to get back into school later.  But instead, she just did what she wanted to do anyway, took some time off, left her home state of Ohio to hang out in Florida where she started drinking and partying with different guys. 

One night while driving home intoxicated, she crashed into another car and injured a young, single mother named Terry.  She sustained a broken neck which only healed somewhat, and the injury left her with a lack of mobility and severe pain.  Then, because of this, Terry couldn’t work or properly take care of her young son and consequently ran out of money.  Shelly ended up losing her driver’s license for 2 years, and spent 6 months in jail.

At that point, Shelly was 24, decided to leave Florida, return home to Ohio and attempt to get back into school.  However, the Florida incident prevented her from ever getting a law degree, as she was a convicted felon.

After attempting to go back to school for another major, she met a man named Robert who really loved her.  So Shelly decided to quit school once again and focus on her relationship with Robert, but she was still drinking and didn’t really treat Robert very well.  In fact, Shelly never told Robert that she had contracted herpes during her wild times years ago in Florida and put him at risk by having unprotected sex with him.

Unfortunately, Robert did contract the disease from Shelly, but he didn’t even find out when and how he got it till after he and Shelly had been married for a couple of years.  Enraged beyond belief after he realized what Shelly had done to him, he immediately filed for divorce.  So after the marriage ended, Shelly was now 30, by herself and hardly had enough money to live on.  But Shelly now being in a position of barely being able to get by, all started 10 years ago with her initial choices to quit school when she was 20, party in Florida, drive home drunk and injure Terry.  

Here we see in a very direct way how Shelly’s choices led her into the position of struggling to merely stay afloat, just like someone who can only afford the minimum payment on their credit card because of their excessive spending habits in the past. 

Yet, just like Shelly, our spiritual repercussions have been in the making for a long period of time and are based on a variety of choices.  In Shelly’s case, it was over a 10 year time frame and clearly illustrated the fact that as with most of us, it’s the big picture that counts and not just one passing moment in time.

Our credit line is decreased and our interest rate gets raised

The repercussions of our negative choices often don’t come back immediately – as in instant karma.  However, in time, they always do.  This is just like hearing from our credit card company after we’ve charged our card to the limit, that our credit line has been decreased and our interest rate has gone up.  Already feeling financially strapped with nowhere to turn, this makes it even harder to wipe out our financial debt.

It is the same thing with our spiritual journey.  After a while, we’ve dug ourselves in deep enough from our choices that the divine universe limits our options, as we’ve shown that we’re not handling our freedom with the spiritual maturity we need to continue to have a wide open playing field.  Plus, we’re weighed down by the spiritual debts we’ve created.

Just like Shelly, we box ourselves into a corner regarding multiple areas of our lives.  Our choices leave us with so many consequences and sometimes those repercussions restrict us and tie our hands, just like being in school and having a sizeable back log of homework that we haven’t completed.  It isn’t as if we could just start over and do whatever we fancy – there are spiritual debts to pay.

In these instances, it’s always important to spiritually keep our eye on the ball and commit to working off our negative debt and building good karma through positive actions in our lives.  Even when we feel underwater and caught up in our own stuff, the only way out is by paying off our debt and continuing to attempt to manifest good!

And as with most of us, we progress through life with mixed results, ending up with a spiritual report card that has both high and low marks: not all A’s, but certainly not all F’s, but a mixture of all grades from a triumphant A+ to a failing F.  We’ve certainly done legitimate good in this world, but how much of our negative karmic debt have we paid off?  Moreover, have we created even additional bad karma in the process?  When it’s all said and done and we ultimately leave this world, we take that report card with us to the other side.  Whatever the debts are, they don’t merely go away by “dying”; but stay with us even after we leave our earthly journey.

Debts wiped out?

It would be nice to think that our karmic debt is somehow forgiven when we cross over – after all, we’ve just lost our physical life and have to make this adjustment to a new journey on the other side.  Shouldn’t our debts merely be just wiped out, so we could start fresh with a clean slate?  After all, if God could do absolutely anything, shouldn’t He be able to at least do that for us?

As much as these sentiments sound reassuring and comforting, they are simply not spiritually true.  In very sobering terms, whatever good karma we’ve created travels with us, as well as our negative karma too.  It certainly goes with us to the other side and we carry these issues and energies forward, just like on every credit card statement, it says, “Current balance,” and lists the amount of debt we still owe.

On the other side, it’s not as if we’re being judged, or having the finger pointed at us – it’s just a matter of spiritual law.  And the law is very fair to everyone – no one gets preferential treatment as the rich and the famous do in the physical world; everyone is treated equally.

So what can we do with these debts on the other side?  Can they be worked off there?  First, negative karma is not always able to be worked off on the other side.  While there may be instances where certain karmic issues can be resolved on the other side, for the most part, negative karma must be burned off in the physical world with the other souls the karma has been created with.  It’s not as if we can mix and match and burn off karma with random souls; it must be done with those it’s been created with and vice versa.  At the very least, what we can do on the other side is to look at what we’ve done, educate ourselves, spiritually grow, and plan for our next lifetime. 

A good way to think of this is that the other side is more likely to be a dress rehearsal: you practice, rehearse, and evaluate what you’ve done prior and prepare for your up and coming performance.  However, the actual performance is in our earthly journey and that’s what ultimately counts.  What we do in the physical plane determines whether we create good karma, burn off negative karma and/or create even more debt for the future.

In the physical world, it would be as if we lost everything we had financially and then called our credit card company on the phone and asked, “Can my debt please be wiped out, as I’ve lost my job and all the money I had?  I don’t know what to do.”  Of course, the company would be unwilling to oblige and you would still be liable for the debt you’ve incurred. 

From a spiritual perspective, that sense of liability is something Gerard experienced quite graphically when he reviewed his journey on the other side and through his teachers and guides, he became aware of just how much karmic debt he was still carrying.  In Gerard’s most recent incarnation, he mostly cared about one thing: himself.  He wasn’t exactly horrible to his wife and kids, yet he didn’t offer them any sense of emotional support or nurturing ever. 

Before entering this incarnation as “Gerard,” he promised he would do these things for his family.  Part of his karmic debt was to extend himself to those he had not supported before, meaning his wife and kids.  He owed them that debt from his neglect of them from prior lifetimes.  However, as is often the case, his ego and emotions got in the way and instead of resolving the negative karma he was supposed to, he created even more, and therefore, was further spiritually in debt being on the other side.

Therefore, when his life as Gerard was finished and we was reviewing his status in spirit, he was devastated, overwhelmed and racked by guilt from his actions and how he didn’t provide what he was supposed to for his wife and children.  His unwillingness to display genuine care and concern prevented him from not only working off his debt, but also helped to hold back his wife and children from manifesting their dreams.

“What can I do?” Gerard asked his teachers.  “How do I pay this off now?” he pleaded.  However, there was no quick fix or easy answer, as it couldn’t be paid off  from where he was at, as that would need to be done in a future physical lifetime with all of the principle parties who had been involved coming back together again on earth. 

It is just like reaching a point with your credit card debt where the only option that’s left is to rollover the balance onto a new card and start over.  From a spiritual point of view, that is just like bringing your karma (both good and bad), into your next incarnation, where we have our next opportunity to work off the bad, hopefully, not create any additional negative karma, and try to bring about as much good karma as we can.

Rolling the balance over to a new credit card

With our next incarnation, we have a fresh start and a new beginning – yet it is so important to take advantage of the opportunity to burn off our negative karma, not add even more bad repercussions for ourselves, indeed create good karma and spiritually move forward with our eternal journey.

We’ve all treated others badly and at some point, we all need to be humbled to that fact — not just saying it, but owning it.  Through humility, we’re able to approach our journey correctly, not from the point of view of just wanting what we want – like recklessly putting charges on our credit card as if there’s no tomorrow.  We must remind ourselves of what we’re here for, which is to spiritually evolve and pay off our debts from the past – as they hold us back from manifesting our divine highest good.

Yes, with each lifetime we get a fresh new start, but our former balance is there as well – just like rolling over our debt onto a new credit card.  Yet, as we look at something so cryptic and endless as the countless lifetimes we’ve lived and all of the incalculable karma we’ve all created (both positive and negative), we can use each new lifetime as a representation of what we can do today, right here, right now.

And of course we have debt from before, but by looking at today with a completely fresh perspective, we can continue to work it off – just like we can enter into a financial plan with an expert who knows how to help us out of credit card debt.  We can look at this day as a new beginning, as a moment to be able to truly spiritually advance ourselves.

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For our entire adult lives, we’ve believed that fear is a bad thing and something that stands between us and our success.  Certainly all of us have felt fearful in our lives, as we can recall the times when we have experienced terror and panic – even sweating with our hearts racing.  Who likes to feel that way…?  So we tend to see fear as the enemy and something that is clearly harmful to us.

However, what if I told you that fear is clearly not the enemy, and that it can be a wondrous, divine gift from God – and our friend, perhaps, even our greatest ally?  How about if I said that fear can be the mouthpiece of sacred protection to guide us through the physical plane, which is filled with unpredictability, danger, violence, sudden accidents and potential catastrophe that we can experience at any time, whether in our lives or observe on the news?  In addition, what if I proposed that fear may be something that can help us to lead a more positive life?

Instead of it being able to assist us in manifesting a better life, we think of fear as a dreaded, awful, unsettling and terrifying energy that makes us feel horribly out of control.  It is seen as a primitive and base emotion no longer necessary for us as rational adults, but reserved for people who don’t have themselves together, psychiatric nut cases, and those who are rabidly violent and behave like wild animals.  In fact, it was in ancient times that fear raced through our veins as the adrenaline rush that tried to protect us from ever-present life and death circumstances such as being chased by wild animals – and that was as a good thing back then. 

However, in today’s world, our lives have dramatically changed and we’re no longer running through the jungles, and thankfully, we hardly face being killed on a regular basis.  So it’s easy to see fear as an archaic, out of date, negative emotion which serves no valid purpose in our lives at all as we are now logical, rational adults.  But we may not even realize that today, we still do rely on fear, even though we may not think of it quite that way.

Presumably, we teach our children from a very early age how to be careful as we are their mentors and guardians.  But what we’re really doing is teaching them how to be afraid: of playing in the street as they could get hit by a vehicle and killed, of sticking a fork in an electric socket as electrocution could occur, and of getting in a car with grown up strangers as they could be sexually assaulted and murdered.  What if we didn’t ever teach our children to be scared of anything at all?  Clearly, they would meet with horrific, and probably life ending circumstances before they reached the first grade.

However, as adults, we have turned our backs on the value of being afraid and attempt to make fear our adversary, all under the guise that we are now more mature and no longer need it.  “Why be afraid of the boogie man in the basement?” we chuckle.  But in reality, we should never turn our backs on fear, no matter how smart, together, or evolved we think we are.  With that in mind, you might be asking if I’m trying to state that absolutely all fear is a good thing for us to embrace.  No, I am not at all.

Keep in mind that for the sake of this article, I am not speaking of fears that are bad for us such as the fear of commitment, intimacy, losing control, not being good enough, being scared of showing who we are because we’ll be rejected, and of not being approved of by others.  These are the types of fears that are not for our highest good, hold us back, cripple us, and that we need to work through, get past, and rise above.  But for the sake of this writing, I address the fears that spiritually are a divine guiding light that we must absolutely learn to listen to.

How we’ve made fear the enemy

In today’s culture, people go to therapists, read self help books, say affirmations, meditate, and desperately try anything and everything to get rid of their fears, so that they can ostensibly be free to live better lives.  New age and modern spirituality teach us that we should not be afraid, and that in order to evolve to a higher consciousness, fear must be eradicated within us.

But in our culture, where blatant self centeredness and narcissism are the prevailing mode of behavior today, the absence of fear has created a whole new world of people who boldly enshrine everything they do.  “I’m just being me!” has becomes the calling card of people who are behaving selfishly and disrespectfully toward others.  “This is just the way I am!” people curtly rationalize as they’re hurting others.  In today’s society, people are far more selfish and aggressive than ever before. 

We have been taught that being pushy and “looking out for number 1” is good – and that being concerned about how we treat others is unnecessary, and may even put us at a disadvantage.  “It’s all about me!” is now seen as a good motto.  The concepts of self-censorship, caution, and awareness of how we interact with the world at large have been distorted into the false belief that by doing so, we would be denying who we are.  In short, we just now do whatever it is that we want to – and we’re ok with that.

Even though we hurt others, and through harming others, ultimately victimize ourselves, we don’t want to recognize that fact.  As a culture, we really don’t care, as long as we get what we want, or perceive that we are.  But if we made fear our friend, we would be far less likely to hurt others and ourselves.  You might ask, “How is that possible?”

When it’s good to be afraid

Without fear, we would literally do anything we wanted to do, as we’d feel that there are no repercussions for our actions and we’d be living in a “consequence free zone.”  If nothing scary or bad is going to happen to us from what we do, then what’s there to be afraid of?  Think of it for a minute.  If most people on this earth believed that they could do whatever they wanted without any negative consequence whatsoever, this world would be a disastrous free for all.  Living and interacting with others would be only about our desires, ego, impulses, narcissism, and violent survival of the fittest.   Unfortunately, that is largely where society is already at today. 

From a spiritual perspective, it is terrible, as this type of sensibility and behavior does one of the worst things we could do on earth, which is to create additional negative karma for ourselves!  By creating more negative karma, we keep reincarnating into the physical world under difficult, hellish, and sometimes downright miserable circumstances where we owe many types of debts to others.  So then, what can we do?

We must absolutely learn to be fearful of the possibility of creating additional negative karma, and we do this by first becoming afraid of the repercussions of our thoughts, words, actions and deeds.  One way of doing this is by taking a different look at an old Biblical phrase that completely speaks to this situation.  If we change the statement, “Fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom,” to “Fear of the Karmic Law is the beginning of wisdom,” we gain clarity and understanding.  In fact, many Bible passages will make perfect sense from a metaphysical perspective by replacing the word “Lord” with the phrase “Karmic Law.”  

But how many of us are really scared of karmic law, as we should be?  Who really stops what they’re doing because they know it will all come back to them in a negative way at some undeterminable point in the future?  Most of us rationalize, make excuses, sidestep looking at the truth, go into a convenient form of denial, and in short, just do whatever we want to do.  This is exactly what happened to Jenny.

If only Jenny was afraid

Jenny supposedly knew all about karma, had read many self-help books and claimed to be spiritually aware.  Yet, she never really considered listening to anything that went against her ego and what she emotionally desired.  Therefore, Jenny always did exactly what she wanted to do, and in late 2004, came to a life altering crossroad. 

She had been married to a man who really loved her, doted on her, and was completely faithful to her.  However, this became tremendously boring to Jenny.  As a woman, she wasn’t that comfortable with real intimacy and commitment and took her marriage totally for granted.  Jenny liked dangerous, exciting, cocky and edgy men, as she still wanted to live like a rebellious teenager.

So in surfing the internet one day, she came across an old high school flame on Facebook who now lived across the country.  Curious and excited, she started emailing him and to her delight, he emailed back.  Immediately, they started engaging in sexually explicit fantasies together over the Internet.  This went on for about six months.

Yet, every time Jenny sent or received a correspondence from her old flame, she felt a rush of fear surge through her body, like a lightning bolt of terror.  It wasn’t that she felt guilty or bad for being disloyal to her husband; she felt scared!  “Something felt wrong,” she said to herself — yet she chose to ignore the fear and kept the contact going.  But as time went on, this impending feeling of doom became stronger, not weaker, yet she still refused to examine what this fear could be saying to her.

After a year of regular contact with her old flame, she was addicted to the excitement of the situation, yet she was feeling literally sick to her stomach every time there was correspondence.  Yet, in spite of continuous fearful misgivings, she considered taking a plane to see this man, thinking he might be her soul mate. 

In her mind, Jenny planned on dumping her husband if things worked out with her old flame.  So she booked the plane flight and lied to her husband, claiming she was going to look at houses and neighborhoods in another state for them to potentially move to.  However, Jenny couldn’t shake the fear, as now she was literally trembling in terror at the thought of getting on that flight.  Still, with all her fearful misgivings, she did it anyway…. 

She got on the plane and went to see her old flame.  When they first met face to face again after almost 13 years, they immediately went to his place and had wild sex, which was of course, electrifying.  In fact, for a few weeks, that’s all they did.  With every day becoming more sexually kinky, Jenny put aside her fears which were still nagging her every day and thought this was it!  “He is my soul mate.  I’m going to dump my husband and be with my soul mate forever!” she proclaimed out loud.  So Jenny not only divorced her husband, but she gave up the home she and her husband shared and let him keep all of the assets — all supposedly for love. 

Then, all at once, the roof caved in.  She found out that her old flame had been working as a contractor in the state she flew to see him in.  But now, his contract was up and he was going home to a different state, one where of all things, he lived with someone – his wife.  So after this man had his fun, he calmly and non-emotionally left Jenny to go back to his wife. 

But now it was too late for Jenny, as she had already burned the bridge with her husband, and had no money.  Through the devastation of by being discarded by her old high school flame and losing the security of her marriage, she became seriously and violently ill.  With no options or support from anyone, her life completely fell apart. 

Now, it’s almost five years later and Jenny has chronic back problems, no money or lover, and is barely scraping by.  Not only was her husband devastated by the divorce, but after he later found out why Jenny originally got on the plane to meet her old high school flame, he went into a serious depression and lost his job.

In this instance, through not listening to her fears and doing what she wanted to do, the karmic repercussions were immediate for Jenny.  So it’s easy to illustrate the very graphic and direct cause and effect relationship between what she did and how and when it came back to her.  However, karma does not usually come back instantly to us or in a quick fashion.  It can take years, decades, and/or even lifetimes to come back.  It begs the question, “What would have happened if only Jenny was fearful enough to act on the misgivings she felt?” because if she was, she would have never got on that plane, and her life would have not had to fall apart in the horrific and dramatic fashion that it did.

It took Joe 7 years to learn that fear was really his best friend

The repercussions for our thoughts, words, and choices don’t usually come back to us immediately, and that’s indeed what happened to Joe.  Back in 2000, his best friend Chuck wanted Joe to put up money for a joint business venture — a restaurant that Chuck would run day by day.  Chuck had already managed many successful restaurants, and now, he wanted to go into business for himself with Joe as his partner.

Even though Chuck had a great track record of success in business and was supposedly Joe’s best friend, as soon as this idea was proposed to Joe, he immediately saw an intuitive vision in his mind which was a picture of a stop sign that had the words “Don’t!” written on it.  Granted, Joe had never really been a big financial risk taker, but still, in spite of that, Joe was stunned by the intuitive flash he saw, therefore, he felt unsettled about giving Chuck the money.

“C’mon Joe, this is your chance to make some real money!  We will be working for ourselves.  You’ve got the money, and I’ve got the know-how!  Let’s do this now,” Chuck encouraged.

For three months, Chuck rode Joe about investing in this restaurant venture, and no matter what day of the week it was or what mood Joe was in, when the issue came up, Joe would see the same intuitive vision of the stop sign that said “Don’t!” written on it.  Every time he thought of doing this with Chuck, he just couldn’t say yes.

But as many of us do, he brushed the fear aside, didn’t listen to what his intuition was saying to him and invested in the restaurant venture.  The day he signed on the dotted line, he was nervous, unsettled and frightened all day.

So in the years that followed, the business only yielded a marginal amount of financial return to Joe.  At times, Joe would think that eventually he’d at least make back his investment and break even.   However, whenever Joe thought such thoughts he received a new intuitive vision which contained the words written across the sky that said, “Get out now!”  This happened almost every time he’d receive a financial accounting of how the business was doing. 

Once again, Joe blew off what fear was saying to him through his intuition visions and just let the business agreement drag on and hoped for the best.  However, the reason for all of his fears became quite apparent in one simple knock on his door, when Joe was paid a visit by the IRS.

After 7 years, the IRS caught up with Chuck, who had not paid taxes regarding the restaurant and had lied on his tax returns.  So now, the IRS had indicted Chuck, was seizing the assets of the restaurant and wanted to question Joe about his involvement in this tax fraud scam.  As one can imagine, he almost saw his entire life flash before him when the IRS agents appeared at his door with this type of interrogation.

As it turned out, Joe didn’t get indicted, but he had to pay a huge debt to the IRS, which virtually wiped out his entire life savings.  The IRS was able to seize all of the assets of the restaurant, close it down, and Chuck ended up in prison for a few years.  Now, Joe is out of money, and has no idea to manifest a new nest egg to retire on.  Sadly, it took 7 long years for the repercussions of his choices to finally come back – and he learned the very tough lesson that Chuck was never really his best friend – but that his fearful intuitive visions were.

Nancy’s terror saved her life

Nancy was a woman who had been alone for 5 years, and she finally decided that it was time to at least go out and meet some men socially, and see if anything might come of it.  She went to a restaurant/bar that she used to frequent years ago and sat down to order a drink.  Within minutes, a dark haired, well built, seemingly pleasant and friendly Hispanic man approached her and said, “Hi, my name is Juan.  Do you mind some company?”

Startled, Nancy was caught off guard, and clumsily replied, “Well, ok.”  Within a few minutes, Nancy started feeling complete and utter terror and had no idea why.  While Juan was gazing in her eyes, focusing only on her, speaking gently and quietly while paying for her drinks, she could literally feel the hair stand up on the back of her neck.  What was wrong, she asked herself? 

Then, Juan went to the bathroom, and suddenly, Nancy heard a loud voice with her physical hearing that said, “Leave immediately!”  Startled, she looked around the room, but no one was even looking in her direction, so she realized that this had to be one of her spirit guides communicating with her.  She prepared to pick up her purse and run out of the establishment, but Juan came back and sat down.  Now, he started caressing her hands and as he did, she felt a level of fearful panic that rarely came over her.  A few minutes later, he excused himself again to go to the restroom, and her spirit guide loudly said once again, “Leave immediately!”

This time, Nancy was not going to ignore this fearful spiritual message, and she literally grabbed her purse, ran out the door, got into her car and quickly drove away.  When she got home, she was literally almost hyperventilating and couldn’t understand why.

Then, three days later, she happened to turn on the local news, and there it was: Juan had just been indicted for the rape of a local woman.  He picked this woman up the very same night at the exact place he met Nancy.  Juan was from out of state, so no one in the restaurant/bar knew him, so he was cruising anonymously for a victim — and he found one. 

But that victim could have been Nancy.  However, she listened to the terror that was sent from the divine universe – as it was truly one of her spirit guides that literally proclaimed out loud the sacred words to her of, “Leave immediately!”  Fortunately, Nancy listened to what her spirit guide said to her and let terror save her life! 

How fear can help you every day

Whether it’s the stories of Jenny, Joe, Nancy, or any of our own, we see how fear can play a much more profound and potentially positive role in our lives than we’ve ever imagined.  And it is not just that horrible dreaded emotion we all desperately pray would somehow just leave us alone and go away.  Instead of running away from our fears, we need to listen to them and always ask the question, why….  Why am I feeling afraid?  What am I scared of?  But to do that effectively we must first answer the question, “What is the real spiritual purpose of fear in our lives?”

The purpose of fear is to help us stay alive and survive so we can fulfill our destiny and complete our various missions here on earth.  As we will all die, and everyone knows it, the instinctive sense of survival is extremely deep rooted in us.  It’s as if a branding iron has burned fear deeply into our subconscious minds.  So fear is the warning alarm of our survival, but is that always a good thing?  That all depends on the type of “survival” we’re looking at.

With negative fear (which can be thought of as self-defeating), our fears try and protect us in a non-productive way, and instead, only hold us back and only hurt us.  If we’re afraid that we’re not worthy of being loved, we won’t let someone good into our lives.  In this instance, our fear tries to protect us from the very thing that is good for us, which is being loved by someone else.  And that’s all because we’re scared that we’re not worthy of being loved.  If we’re afraid that we’re not worthy of being rich, our fear will prevent money from coming to us.  This is also not beneficial, as that only prevents us from manifesting our divine highest good!

With positive fear (which helps us to avoid danger, harm, bad choices, tragedy, and anything that hurts us or others), our need and ability to flourish through listening to fear is a spiritual gift.  And we must learn to listen to these divine warnings.  That positive sense of fear can manifest in any area of our lives: our health, physical safety, finances, romantic relationships, business and career choices, decisions regarding family and friends, and in any number of ways.

When we receive any kind of a scary warning, we must stop and look at it to see if it’s just our internal “stuff,” or something truthful that can protect us and potentially save our lives.  There is no magic formula for understanding each fearful warning, but something we need to look at on a case by case basis with a sincere, open mind.  Remember, God isn’t in the business of trying to fool us, and we won’t ever be given something too complex for us to figure out or handle.  So it’s a matter of sincerely listening and working with the benefits of what fear can do for us. 

There are more than enough curve balls and tough challenges that life throws us – and certainly, we don’t need to add any more to that potentially long list.  We achieve this by letting fear reveal to us the choices that are going to harm us, sidestep tragedy when we can, and prevent us from destroying our lives and the journeys of others.  Divine fear speaks to us in any number of ways: through a vision, a spiritual message from our spirit guides, gut level instincts, intuition, an unsettling, scary psychic feeling that may not go away, and information revealed to us in our dreams.

By healing our relationship to fear, we can walk through this very unpredictable and often dangerous world with a renewed sense of confidence, security, trust, and safety.  We can do this now because we indeed know to listen, receive, and bond with one of the greatest and best friends the divine universe could ever give to us – a loving friend named fear.

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For any of us who are on a spiritual path, words and phrases such as destiny, fate, meant to be, karma, karmic agreements, everything happens for a reason, and kismet are commonplace.  However, these  words and phrases mean so many things to so many people, that it would be unlikely to find two people who agree on their spiritual applications and significance in our lives.  Some of us believe that everything in life is meant to be, is predestined and a matter of fate.  Others feel that our own choices account for everything or most of what happens to us and all we experience, while there are even those who feel that this is a vast topic far too complex to be understood at all. 

In reality, all of the above words and phrases are relevant to our journeys in one way or another. It is not just a simple matter that things are merely meant to be, or to the opposite extreme, that everything that happens in life is merely based on our individual choices.  Clarifying and explaining these complex, interweaving and multifaceted dynamics from a spiritual perspective is the goal of this writing.  However, before we can clarify and explain these dynamics, there are several things we need to understand first.

How we handle our Karma makes a difference
Karma always deals with our past actions and what we did before – and the nature of our past actions determines what the karma is.  Of course, positive karma is easy to deal with, as good comes back to us based on our past good deeds.  However, the karmic repercussions of our former negative acts can be overwhelming to us when it does indeed come back.

It is our reaction to karma (especially negative karma) that is so pertinent here, because the way in which we deal with karma coming back to us, determines whether we burn off all the karma or only some of it, or, conversely, create additional negative karma through the way we handle things. This is always based on our free will and what we choose to do.  No matter what our karma is and how and when it comes back to us, our free will is ever present.

Brett was a man who amassed a lot of success in business during a former lifetime but became an arrogant, uncaring and selfish man who only cared about himself.  He didn’t experience the negative repercussions of his actions during that particular lifetime, but it was spiritually set up for him to begin reaping this karma in his current lifetime as “Brett.” 

In his current incarnation, Brett would indeed amass a great deal of success in business again, just like in the former lifetime referenced above, however this time around, he would be stripped of everything he had and lose everything.  In his current incarnation, his karma would come back as a lesson of humility to begin burning off the negative karma he created before.  Since this karma was supposed to happen, of course it did physically occur, but what is important is how Brett would respond to the situation as his free will would determine his choices and ultimately, the conclusion of this situation.

Because of his enormous ego, Brett became furious when his success started to crumble and he began hurting people again by ripping them off financially, engaging in deceptive acts to try and save his business which in turn, created even more negative karma for him than he started this lifetime with.  It is similar to having 50 thousand dollars in credit card debt and, instead of working to pay it off; you add another 50 thousand dollars of debt to your balance.

Even though there was a higher spiritual plan – a lesson of humility and working to burn off some of the negative karma from before, Brett actually compounded the problem.  He still lost everything as he was supposed to, but through his choices he now has more negative karma that will have to be dealt with in this lifetime and/or in the future, through resisting the lesson and acting out of his lower self.

You might ask, “How would a man as arrogant as Brett know what he was supposed to learn and do?”  Clearly, Brett would not “consciously” know what his karma was as he was not that spiritually evolved, but the lords of karma would not set things up to give him more than he could handle.  Clearly, Brett (at his level of awareness) knew the difference between right and wrong in the most basic sense and when his success started falling apart, it’s understandable that he could have tried to preserve his success even though he wouldn’t have been able to do so.  That makes perfect sense. 

But he knew better then to deceive, lie, rip off and steal from others – meaning it wasn’t as if he was given more than he could handle – he just let his ego get in the way as many of us do and behaved in a way that was clearly “wrong,” and therefore created additional negative karma for himself which was all an act of his free will.

Karmic agreements and living up to them
We enter into karmic agreements on the other side before incarnating into a physical lifetime with other souls; much in the way two or more people sign a contract here in the physical world.  There are past occurrences done by one and/or all parties involved (karma) that must be worked out and lessons to be learned here on earth.  Once in the physical world, these agreements require time, work and effort on our part to fulfill – meaning, fulfilling karmic agreements is not an easy thing to do.

Even though we have entered into our karmic agreements on the other side before incarnating and the lords of karma would not let us make such agreements unless we were spiritually ready to fulfill the terms, we may only do so partially or renege on our agreements entirely once we’re in the midst of the situation here on earth because free will always applies. 

You might wonder, “Why would that happen?  If someone agreed to something in their spiritual body, why would they back out on it once they’re on earth?”  The answer is simple.  It is because that from the other side, everything looks easy, as if you’re just going to come into a lifetime and simply breeze through your lessons and do exactly what you’re supposed to do.  However, when you’re immersed in your ego, emotions, defense mechanisms and false sense of sensations we experience in the physical realm, it is much harder to do the “right thing” then when viewing it on the other side without the emotional/ego/illusory perception burdens experienced in our physical bodies.

Think of it like the difference between viewing someone suffering with cancer, versus actually having cancer.  When we look at what will occur in our coming incarnation from the other side, we are viewing what we’ll go through but we’re not “feeling it” right then and there as we’re not yet really going through it, therefore, it seems far easier than it will actually be living through it once on earth.

A man named John viewed his coming journey on the other side and felt there would be no problem fulfilling the terms of a karmic agreement.  John owed another soul a debt of service because of past sins John committed against another soul; therefore, he was apparently ready to work this out.  So he entered into a karmic agreement to father the other soul who agreed to come into a lifetime as John’s disabled son, with the absolute promise by John that he would take care of his son for his entire life – no questions asked.

However, when the son arrived, the father was overwhelmed with feeling responsible, trapped and resentful that his son would never be a completely functioning man and that John would always have to take care of him. Through his human shortcomings, he disconnected from the promise he so valiantly made on the other side to this other soul.  So instead of fulfilling his contractual agreement, John allowed himself to become immersed in his ego and selfish emotions and pulled away from taking care of his son and didn’t do what he had agreed to do.

By John reneging on his contractual agreement, this altered and damaged the life of his son forever, who was never taken care of properly once John backed out on the agreement.  (Remember, John was the person who agreed to do this and once he pulled away, his son experienced great difficulty with ever receiving proper care.)  Here we see something that is quite profound yet happens every day without us even realizing it – that people don’t live up to their karmic agreements, which alters the path and the conclusion of all involved in a terribly negative way.   Therefore, John irrevocably changed the journey of his son and all involved for the worse and John will have to deal with the repercussion of his choices in this lifetime and/or in subsequent lifetimes. 

Now we’re going to talk about the different terms people would use which commonly refer to varying types of “destiny.”

When it’s meant to be
This is perhaps the easiest reality for us to understand, because if something is indeed “meant to be,” it will absolutely happen. As people, we like allness statements, black and white explanations and simple yes/no answers.  That’s because there’s no grey areas for us to have to contemplate or sort out.

From a spiritual perspective, there indeed are certain things that are “meant to be” and hard wired to happen – and therefore, they will occur no matter what we do, think, say, or choose.  Some perfect examples of this are set up before we incarnate into a gi en lifetime, where we always choose our parents (as they also always choose us), along with our physical gender, and our astrological birth chart. 

Parent/child relationships are “meant to be,” as there are always lessons and karma between parents and children that require the opportunity of a physical incarnation with everyone together for the karma and lessons to have the chance to be worked out.  Physical gender provides the basis for much of our karma and lessons as well, while our astrological birth chart is something we also set up before being born on earth as a foundational blueprint of what our life will be, as well as the possibilities of its highest and lowest potentials. 

Three souls had lessons and karma to be worked out together and they spiritually chose to reincarnate as a child, a mother and a father in a family unit.  The father and mother both had musical talent and their son was to be a great musician once born on earth. The mother was conservative, judgmental and needed to learn the lesson of tolerance, which the son was to teach her as he would be a nonconformist child.  Because there are no one way lessons as we all teach each other, the son needed to learn to accept himself, which was to occur through his interactions with his mother.  The father tended to be emotionally distant and needed to learn to become more openhearted, which was to be taught through these family dynamics.  The son agreed to be born as a male and all parties set up their astrological charts to facilitate the karma
and lessons they agreed to experience.

In addition, these three souls had more lessons and karma than what was mentioned above and because of the profound nature of all of these dynamics, we see how their incarnation together as a family unit was “meant to be” and would indeed happen as these three souls entered into the earthly family unit that could be referred to as their “destiny” and “fate.”  It profoundly laid the foundation and set the stage for all parties to experience what they agreed to and learn what they would come together on earth to accomplish and do.

When it’s not meant to be no matter what
I have seen so many people feel that they had to have something – in fact that their entire well being — and even their life depended on getting it – and many believe that because of their intense feelings, it is simply “meant to be” – it must happen.  Why would they have these feelings unless there’s a reason?  And that “reason” always translates into “Getting what I want” in the end.

However, there are certain things in life: whether in love, career, finance, or in any area of our journeys that are not meant to be – no matter want.  It doesn’t matter how much we want it, pray for it, obsess over it or wait it out.  It clearly is not “in the cards” and therefore, it won’t come to be.  There are reasons for this type of experience, but they may not necessarily be the reasons we wanted…

Stacy was a woman who met a man named Darryl in 1999.  She immediately felt a connection with him and convinced herself that he felt the same toward her.  However, Darryl didn’t feel that connection with Stacy at all and was not attracted to her as a woman in any way.  Stacy tried to initiate contact with him after they met at a business meeting in their career and for a short time, Darryl responded casually, as he had no idea that Stacy wanted to have a romantic relationship with him.  After she began flirting, Darryl, a man who was engaged at the time, immediately
ceased all contact with Stacy and never responded to her emails ever again.

But Stacy refused to see the writing on the wall and started convincing herself of things that were not even remotely true – all to justify what her emotions, desires and ego wanted.  After Darryl married his fiancé, Stacy told her girlfriend, “I know he’s attracted to me, but he’s stuck with his wife.  He may not know how to get out.  If I wait, we’ll eventually be together.  My intuition confirms this and in my gut, I just know that he is my soul mate.”

Stacy built her reality on this delusional premise for ten years, all the while thinking that one day, he was going to become her lover – but of course, it never happened.  After ten years of refusing to let go, arguing with her friends who told her she was wrong, she finally hit rock bottom and had to admit that he was never going to be hers after she tried to reinitiate contact and Darryl tersely responded that if she ever contacted him again, he would hire an attorney to deal with the situation.

Regarding the “reasons” for this experience, they are there – but they’re not the reasons Stacy, or most of us for that matter would want.  Stacy was learning the lesson that just because she wanted something and vehemently refused to let go of it, doesn’t mean that she would ever get it.  She was supposed to learn “to not get what she wanted.”  This was a lesson of humility for her and to learn that life was not just a matter of “I want it,” therefore, “I get it.”  Even though she hated this lesson, it showed her to not just lead with her ego, emotions and desires, but to look at any situation more realistically and clearly than before.

Karmic agreements where the “opportunity” is only meant to be
There are times when karmic agreements between parties are designed to provide an “opportunity” – meaning that what is “meant to be” is only the actual opportunity.  Then, what the parties involved do with that opportunity will determine the outcome.  The outcome is not pre-destined, but the opportunity itself is.

John is a man who had serious fear of commitment issues, and Judy is a woman who had been unhappy in her marriage and was legally separated, but not sure whether to divorce her husband or not.  It was predestined that John and Judy would meet in June 2005 as stated in their karmic agreement where the opportunity would be provided for them to decide whether to build a relationship with each other or not. 

If John didn’t get past his fear, or if Judy wasn’t willing to divorce her husband, the relationship opportunity would fail.  However, if John got past his fear of commitment and Judy decided to finally divorce the man she had been dissatisfied with since she was first married twenty years before, John and Judy would have the chance to end up being together.

When the two met, they were both instantly attracted to each other and the situation felt familiar.  Since there was a karmic agreement, there would be a good chance that both John and Judy would feel something compelling when they met.  For Judy, meeting John gave her the extra motivation she needed to complete her divorce as she felt like John was the perfect partner for her.  John was more reluctant, as his fear of commitment was quite deep rooted even though he really felt drawn to Judy.  However, after about a year, John did indeed get past his fears and was willing to date Judy, who by that time was legally divorced.  Ultimately, because both John and Judy got past the issues at hand, they ended up together in a successful, long term relationship that led to marriage.

Lesson driven – the outcome is conditional upon us learning the lesson
This is one of the hardest aspects of our journey and “destiny” to understand, because here we have a situation where we deeply want something, but conversely, we won’t get it till we’ve learned our lesson. We can’t figure out how come our deepest desires don’t seem to ever come true or manifest at all in our lives, as we feel we know what we want but find that it is out of reach no matter how hard we try.  Years or decades of frustration only make matters worse and we find ourselves at our wits end…But the simple truth is that there are situations for all of us where we must learn our lessons to manifest our dreams – it is not optional – what we want cannot and will not happen till we’ve learned what we’ve
spiritually agreed to learn.

Jennifer was a woman who had been divorced twice, with her second marriage being physically abusive.  It was now ten years after her second divorce yet she still hadn’t met anyone suitable to have a new relationship with.  She couldn’t understand what the problem was as she was open to dating, had joined several online matchmaking websites yet nothing came to fruition for a long hard ten years. But Jennifer’s problem is that her situation is lesson driven and not just a matter of going on enough dates till she meets Mr. Right.

First, because of her two failed marriages (especially the second one where she was physically abused), she had shut down within and had erected a defensive, protective, vibrational wall that would not allow anyone in.  This was simply designed as an unconscious survival mechanism to keep herself safe and alive.  Here, she would need to learn the lesson of letting down her wall of protection so that there would spiritually/vibrationally/internally be an open door for someone to be able to walk through.

Second, because of the confusion of being in two marriages that weren’t right for her, Jennifer had no idea what she really wanted and needed in a romantic life partner.  She just kept trying to meet people hoping that it would all just “click” with someone, but of course, it didn’t.  She needed to learn what it was that she really wanted and that would only come through taking a break from dating and learning the lesson of deciding who she is as a woman and what type of man would be the right fit for her.

Third, she felt that the abuse in her second marriage was her fault, which brought her self esteem dramatically down.  By not feeling worthy of being treated well and deserving of love, the divine universe could not bring a loving partner to her because she didn’t feel that she deserved it. Furthermore, at her current consciousness, she wouldn’t actually be attracted to a man who treated her well as she didn’t feel worthy of such treatment — it would feel completely foreign to her.  Here, she needed to learn the lesson that the abuse she went through was not her fault, that she didn’t deserve it and no longer needed to feel bad about herself for all she had been through.

With Jennifer, we see how there are lessons that she needs to learn, not once she meets Mr. Right, but to be able to meet him – meaning that her dreams won’t come true unless and until this journey of enlightenment is completed.  Like Jennifer, all of us have areas of our “destiny” that are lesson driven and in those instances, it isn’t just a matter of continuing to hit our heads against the wall; we must learn what our souls have agreed to take on or learn in order to be able to manifest our dreams.  After all, on a spiritual level we have agreed to these lessons, therefore, they not only must be learned to manifest our dreams but are necessary for our overall spiritual growth.

Choice driven – our choices determines multiple possible outcomes
Many times, the outcome of a situation has multiple possibilities, like a movie plot that can have several endings — and in these instances, it is our choices which solely determine the actual conclusion that will occur.

James was a man who had had a rock solid and honest work ethic.  In his twenties, he made decent money while always living within his means and it was clear that he would be able to continue making decent money by staying on the path he was on.  From a spiritual perspective in this instance, the outcome of his financial situation was not prewritten or predestined and was choice driven – meaning that his choices would determine the outcome.

Around the age of twenty two, James started saving a hundred dollars a month faithfully and he never touched that money.  Then, at the age of thirty, he purchased an apartment building and methodically used the rents he collected to pay off the mortgage on the building, while making a reasonable monthly profit.  Additionally, he invested his money into CD’s and safe IRA’s and just let his money grow.

By the time James was sixty five, the sum total of all of his choices landed him a nest egg worth almost a million dollars.  He was able to retire and do the things he wanted to do, knowing that his financial future was secure where he would not have to worry about what would financially happen to him in old age.

However, if we flip the coin for just a moment, we could imagine a scenario which would have the exact opposite outcome:  James makes a decent living, never saves anything because he isn’t forward thinking, didn’t invest his money and just lived paycheck to paycheck and never bought the apartment building.  When he would turn sixty five, he would have nothing to retire on and be in a difficult position in the work force because of his age, which would have James moving into old age in poverty.

When we see a conclusion, we often falsely believe that whatever happened was the only way it could have really been – after all, it’s right there for our very own two eyes to see — but that is not necessarily true at all – as often, our choices will solely determine the conclusion of the situation at hand. 

Telling the difference between meant to be versus not meant to be
There is a great metaphysical phrase that says, “When nature supports a decision, you know it is the right one.”  When everything seems to flow in a particular direction in our lives, we see exactly where the tide and current is trying to carry and take us.  This is represented by things that happen outside of our control which are separate from and/or in addition to our own personal efforts. 

It must always be kept in mind that what nature supports is often not at all what we want, or only partially what we want, while at other times, it is exactly what we’ve been dreaming of.  It is safe to assume that when, how and what nature supports is for our highest and greatest good (even when it isn’t what we subjectively want).  But more importantly, it is how we handle what nature supports in our journeys (meaning our choices and free will), that helps to shape the ultimate outcome of a situation.

Here is a situation where what nature supported was in addition to the efforts of the person involved: Cindy was an entertainer who wanted to make it big as a singer.  For several years, she tried hard to become successful but nothing much happened for her in her singing career except that she performed local shows for small audiences.  Then, nature began supporting the decision for her success as a singer through bringing opportunities to her which came about in addition to her own efforts.

Cindy hadn’t changed anything; she just continued to do what she had been doing and seemingly out of the blue, an internationally known talent manager “accidentally” saw one of her performances.  This manager liked her voice very much and offered her a management contract.  Through this contract, several other occurrences were set up that led to her success: signing a record deal, then releasing a hit album which was followed by a successful international concert tour.

In addition to her efforts, nature supported her success at several times and in several ways: meeting her manager, a record company signing her, her record becoming a success and her concert tour.  Keep in mind that many people who are equally as talented as Cindy try to manifest a successful singing career but fail.  As there are so many variables of what could have happened to Cindy and her career, from success to abysmal failure, even with a record contract and influential manager that it’s abundantly clear that nature supported the decision for her to be a successful singer.

Just as important was how Cindy handled the situation.  She was centered and grounded regarding her career: she didn’t do drugs, or take herself too seriously and had a great work ethic, therefore, she was able to ride the wonderful tide that was supported in her musical career and reap the tremendous benefits the divine universe afforded here. 

Obviously, her musical career was something that possessed legitimate elements of “something that was supposed to happen,” or else nature wouldn’t have supported it.  Of course, her choices and how she handled it would determine the outcome and she indeed did make the most out of the situation.

On the other hand, events can push us in a particular direction, even if it’s not at all what we want.  That is the case with Julie, a woman who was in a physically abusive marriage which she refused to consider getting out of.  After three years of being battered regularly, nature supported the decision for her to get out of the marriage and divorce her husband.  Seemingly out of nowhere, someone she met offered her a great job making 100 thousand dollars a years and it was a position she was capable of filling which would have required relocating to another state.  The employer would pay for her relocation and since she didn’t have kids, all she would have had to have done was to pack up and leave her husband for this fantastic life changing opportunity.  Here, nature supported the decision separate from any effort by Julie to leave this marriage, as she did nothing to attempt to manifest this possibility.  It was all done by “nature” and for her highest and greatest good.

However, she adamantly refused to leave her marriage, as she believed her husband really loved her and would change for the better, so she refused the job offer and stayed with her husband.

Julie was given the way out, but through her own free will, she refused to walk through the door that was opened for her.  Consequently, the abuse continued which eventually led to Julie having permanent physical injury and ultimately, her husband dumped her for a much younger woman anyway about ten years later.

Julie’s life could have manifested a completely different outcome than the one she chose as nature really did provide the way “out” for her – and it is compelling to note how Julie’s refusal (through her free will) to go with the tide and the flow resulted in her self destruction.  It is a lesson for all of us to always pay attention to where, how, and why nature is leading us, as it is always for our highest and greatest good regardless of how we emotionally feel at the time.

Regarding whether something is meant to be or not meant to be, it is always tricky for us to determine the truth in any situation.  We often interject or replace what we personally want with what is meant to be or not meant to be, especially when we’re emotionally involved.  Our egos get in the way and we distort what the events seem to be saying, all because our egos, emotions, and our personal wants get in the way.  We can even convince ourselves that we’re getting “signs” of what is God’s supreme will.  Of course, we pretend that we’re not being subjective as a smoke screen to camouflage  ow we’re really viewing a situation, which is way of hiding our true subjective motives.

The force of our personal will as a factor
Just because we can make something happen and bring it into physical manifestation through the force of our personal will doesn’t mean that it was meant to be or for our highest good.  We often gauge how we validate what we’ve done simply by the fact of whether we get what we want in the end or not – meaning, if it all goes our way, we find it easy to make it okay no matter how many other people get hurt in the process.

Sue was a woman who lived by the philosophy of “I get what I want.”   In early 2003, she set her sights on having a relationship with a married man she worked with named Rob.  In fact, Rob’s wife Sharon also worked in the same company, so the three of them interacted on a professional level daily.  Sue was jealous and felt competitive with Sharon and was excited by the challenge of going for something out of reach – all with the intention of winning and “flexing her muscle.”

In her mind, Sue had hoped to have the affair with Rob, cause his marriage to fall apart which she then hoped would force Sharon out of the workplace.  In the end, Sue wanted Sharon out of the picture so she could “ride off into the sunset” with Rob.

By mid 2003, Rod foolishly succumbed to the affair mostly because he was bored in his marriage, not thinking that it would be much more than a fun and diversionary fling.  However, Sue set it up for Sharon to find out about the liaison, even though Rob had no idea that Sue would do such a thing.  So when Sharon found out, she was devastated — and in humiliation, she indeed left the company. 

So because of the force of Sue’s personal will, she set into motion an affair between she and Rob – (and yes, he agreed to it which was his choice, but he never would have pursued this had it not been for Sue relentlessly pushing this issue).  After Sharon left the company, Rob and Sharon divorced but Rob and Sue’s affair fell apart by mid 2004.  The reason that Rob and Sue’s relationship didn’t work out in the long run was because neither one of them really ever cared for each other on any real level.  This was a situation that was not “meant to be,” or something that was
supposed to happen – but rather a matter of one person, Sue, forcing her personal will upon others.

Here we see how all encompassing mainstays such as “everything happens for a reason” don’t apply to all aspects of our “destiny.  “As so many people try and put everything that occurs under a simple heading such as “everything that happens is meant to be” we see that is not always true.  There are so many variables as to why, how, if, and when things manifest in our lives.  As we look at these dynamics, the question is inevitably asked:  “How then do I know what my destiny is – what is right – what am I supposed to do?” 

Realize there is no simple answer to such a question as we must always be aware of our thoughts, words, feelings, choices and everything we’re doing, because one simple and repetitive formula will not always apply to every situation that presents itself to us. 

However, there are many tips that will assist us throughout our “destiny”:  We must always realize that the conclusion of all situations won’t be clear as they are unfolding, because if they were, we wouldn’t be able to complete our path, especially when something is karmic in nature.  The process involves our learning and we must walk through the journey to complete what we’ve agreed to and as we’re making the journey, we will not be able to know absolutely everything as it is happening.

But we must believe that what we need to know will always be present.  We just have to have an open mind and not be led only by our own emotional desires.  Sure, there’s a place in life for our emotions, but it cannot be the overwhelming or deciding factor in our spiritual unfoldement.  No matter what, we must always behave in a loving way toward others and ourselves and do our best to not hurt others – never rationalizing and excusing our bad thoughts, choices, words and deeds just because it ties into what we want.  Life is never a simple matter of “I want what I want” — end of issue.

Through walking the divine path, we can fulfill our karmic agreements, burn negative karma, create good karma, build upon what is meant to be while walking away from all that is not meant to be. We can become better people, spiritually evolve, help others which in turn always benefits ourselves, learn to not inappropriately force our own personal will and make the choices that lead to the best conclusions.  Never forget that mastering this multifaceted journey will forever be a great and wondrous work in progress that we are already in the process of completing. 

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When most of us think of the concept of psychic attack, we envision a witch dressed in a black robe casting evil spells against someone under the full moon at midnight.  Of course this type of psychic attack is real, and also requires an amount of skill, ability, training, practice, and “spiritual awareness.”  What is so important to note is that with spiritual awareness comes responsibility – meaning that one is karmically held to the degree of understanding they possess, and their penalty is proportionate.  If a black belt in karate hits someone, the karmic penalty is incalculably greater than if a ten year old kid hits another child in school.  The person with the black belt knows better, therefore, the consequence they reap is far greater.  It is the same with the witch casting evil spells. Her karmic penalty is enormous, as she clearly knows better.

Intentional Psychic Attack by “regular everyday people”

However, the stereotype of the evil witch casting evil spells is probably the exception to the rule of most people who deliberately engage in psychic attack.  Psychic attack by “regular everyday people” happens all the time, and in this instance can be defined as follows: “The willful and purposeful directing of negative energy at another person through thoughts, wishes, words, actions, and deeds, designed to inflict harm on that person and in their life in any number of ways.”  What I mean when I said “in this instance,” are those who consciously and knowingly engage in psychic attack.  In short, it is absolutely being done on purpose.

Intentional psychic attack in the workplace

Joe is a man who was completely jealous and envious of his co worker Mike.  In fact, Joe was so obsessed with these emotions, that they completely consumed him.  Instead of doing the right thing and letting go of what he felt, Joe started wishing (in his thoughts) on a daily basis that Mike would be fired.  After about a month of this, he escalated his wishful thoughts to words, where he said out loud to himself that he hoped Mike would be fired.  He kept this up for two months.  Then, these negative desires reached their peak when he started visualizing Mike being terminated from his job, whereby Joe pictured Mike being swiftly escorted out the building.  Even though Joe knew this was wrong, he kept doing it anyway.  Joe’s jealousy was solely based on the fact that Mike performed better at work, so Joe wanted him out of the way. 

After indulging all of these negative energies for a total of four months, it indeed finally happened.  Out of the blue, Mike was actually fired, and escorted out of the building, just as Joe had so strongly been wishing, saying, and visualizing.  Mike was not slacking off, or doing anything wrong that would lead to his termination; however, he still lost his job.   So how could this have happened?

There are some noteworthy factors to note about how and why this was able to happen to Mike and how it actually all came about.  First, he had low self esteem and didn’t feel deserving of his job.  He was unnecessarily self critical, and always carried a sense of being unworthy.  That energy created an open door for psychic attack, as we attract what we feel about ourselves.  Also, he falsely trusted and liked Joe; therefore, Mike was open to Joe’s energies.  These things provided the open door to Joe’s thoughts, wishes, words, and desires.  These factors all combined gave Joe the open channel and pathway to psychically attack Mike. 

If Joe had felt good about himself and worthy of his job, and was not open to Mike, he could have never “helped” this situation along.  In the short of it, one has to be open and/or vulnerable to psychic attack for it to have any effect on their lives.  This was a lesson Joe may have needed to learn, so he could heal his issues and get his career back on track again.  Regarding your own career situation, don’t worry.  Later on in this writing, I will cover exactly what you can do to protect yourself from this type of psychic attack.

Intentional psychic attack from a “friend”

Most of us think that when someone says something rude to us, like a vicious comment that zings us, it constitutes psychic attack.  However, it usually does not, as psychic attack is mostly invisible, and not something that we see and experience as a physical occurrence such as someone verbally insulting us while pointing their finger at us.  However, sometimes psychic attack can be a combination of both the invisible and the visible.

Laura’s friend Sadie had always felt competitive and resentful of Laura from the moment they met as college roommates when they were both nineteen. As they became friends, Sadie hated whenever Laura would receive attention and succeed at anything.  When men flirted with Laura, Sadie couldn’t stand it.  In college, when teachers praised Laura in school, Sadie burned inside with resentment.

At first, it didn’t make sense to Laura why she always felt bad about herself and sad when around Sadie, until it all started to become clear.  When she interacted with Sadie, Laura could feel the hateful energy Sadie projected toward her.  “Sadie, I wanted to let you know that I got great grades this semester,” Laura happily proclaimed about her college classes.  Even though Sadie responded with the seemingly normal words of, “That’s great,” suddenly, Laura could feel a stabbing pain, as if she was being literally stabbed in the back. 

What she felt wasn’t imagined, though – it was literal psychic attack, as this is how her “friend” felt about her.  See, Sadie was narcissistic, and wanted all the glory, praise, and virtually everything to be about her.  The world was to revolve around her, and she couldn’t stand any of the attention being taken away from herself – not even for a minute.  It bothered Sadie tremendously to see anyone other than herself shine.  The fact that it was her friend and roommate Laura made it even worse, as the connection between the two was ever present.  The daily interaction triggered the competitive and resentful feelings that were within Sadie.  Instead of trying to grow past her selfishness and narcissism, she kept this ugly and dark energy going.

In addition to the energy and psychic attack, Sadie would sometimes verbally snap when men would compliment Laura’s appearance with statements such as, “Laura, you don’t look that great.  I look better than you do, plus more men flirt with me than you.  Don’t get a big head, dear.”  Here, we see a verbal zap.  But it is in conjunction with the internal, energetic psychic attack Laura had been under. Through this constant attack, she developed a nervous stomach and increased low self esteem, as Sadie’s competitive hatred and resentment was so strong, it penetrated right through Laura, affecting her emotionally, psychologically, and physically.

Unintentional Psychic Attack

We’ve seen a few examples of when and how people deliberately psychically attack, without any remorse, and completely on purpose.  But are there those who engage in psychic attack, and don’t even know they’re doing so?  Could it actually be unconscious, versus being a conscious act of their personal will?

Unintentional psychic attack that led to divorce

Jerry was a man who felt threatened by his wife and insecure in his marriage on many levels. While married, he was afraid she would leave him, even though she never demonstrated even the slightest hint of such a thing.  He also didn’t like her doing anything on her own, as he felt shut out and rejected.  On top of that, he was threatened by her good looks, even though he was attracted to them at the same time.  Jerry never consciously set out to hurt her through psychic attack, but his fear of losing her and his insecurities festered deep inside of him. 

Because of these constant issues, Jerry’s wife eventually divorced him.  However after the divorce, even though Jerry suppressed these feelings, they didn’t just go away.  So what happened is that through the power of his subconscious mind where these negative emotions were housed, he psychically attacked her often.  

For no apparent reason, she could feel something or someone pulling her, but didn’t know what it was.  She could be driving her car and feel a draining pull toward the direction of her former home, where she once lived with Jerry – the same home he still lived in after their divorce.

She eventually came to learn exactly where this pull and psychic attack was coming from, and learned to protect herself, cut this vibrational tie and move on with her life freely and peacefully.

Psychic Vampires

We often confuse the difference between psychic attack and psychic vampires – and they are two very separate things.  Psychic attack is when someone is sending out negative energies to you, whether consciously (on purpose) or unconsciously (unknowingly).  On the other hand, a psychic vampire is a person who sucks the life out of you, drains and depletes your energy and vitality.  Psychic vampires are parasitic by nature, because they’re takers and not givers.  You can think of them as “energy leeches.”

Johnny sucks the life out of the room

Johnny is a person who was depressed, never felt optimistic about living, didn’t have anything going on in his life and lacked ambition.  Because of these factors, he had very little to give to anyone else, but was always trying to take from others.  He attempted to attach himself to people who had a lot going on in their lives and drain their energy.  Johnny would enter a roomful of friends who were all having a great time and energetically, he would suck their energy and the life out of the room.  All it took was Johnny being in the room, as he was used to pulling the vitality from the vibration and aura of others to replenish himself. 

It is like filling a glass with water that has a hole in the bottom.  Of course, we all know that the water eventually drains out.  Here, the glass with the hole in the bottom is Johnny, and the water is the life force and energy of those he pulled from.  All of his friends eventually began to notice that when Johnny was around, the fun and upness would eventually go away and dissipate, leaving the proceedings with a feeling of being rather in the doldrums.

The “pull” from hospitals, nursing homes, the sick and the elderly

This process of energy draining is very common in hospitals, nursing homes, with anyone sick and among the elderly.  People in this position continually “pull” and “draw” energy from others, as they are seriously ill, depleted and in desperate need of being rejuvenated, recharged and healed.

When Marie would go to the nursing home to visit her aunt with Alzheimer’s disease, she would walk in cheery and filled with love and enthusiasm.  However, as she would sit in the nursing home, she would begin to feel really fatigued.  After about a half hour of being there, she would begin to yawn, and after an hour or so, almost fall asleep right there.  This happened every time she went to visit her aunt and she couldn’t figure out why. 

In reality, even though this was an invisible process, she was literally like a switchboard that everyone there was plugging into and trying to draw upon her healthy energy.  This is not deliberate, but rather, instinctual, and ties into the very need of human beings to survive.  Just like if someone was in the desert and in desperate need of water to stay alive, they would grab any water they could, no matter where or who it came from.  The sick and the elderly are in the same position – as they are so depleted of life force and positive energy that they just instinctively pull on others to try and get energized and healthy.  It is similar to when someone is drowning and desperately reaching their hand out for anyone to pull them out of the water.

How to protect ourselves

With everything that’s been stated so far in this writing, the essential question needs to be answered, “How do we protect ourselves from psychic attack and psychic vampires?”   Remember, for psychic attack or psychic vampires to affect you at all, you have to be open to it, and/or feed into it from what’s going on from within.  Just because someone or something psychically attacks you, does not mean that it can affect you in any way whatsoever, unless you let it in! 

1-Circle of light — The first thing we need to do is the following:  On a daily basis, visualize a circle of pure, bright, clear white light in your mind.  Then, picture yourself in the middle of that circle.  This literally shields you from external psychic attack and psychic vampires.  I like to call it your “eternal and divine bodyguard.”  Think of this shield as the spiritual equivalent of your skin, as it protects you from the elements that are out there which would be dangerous if you suddenly didn’t have skin.  Circling yourself in pure, bright, and clear white light does spiritually shield and protect you from these negative energies, regardless of whether they are projected at you or just in the ether.  I have been circling myself daily for over thirty years.  It is an absolute must for you to do so on a daily basis if you want to be safe and protected.  You can also say a prayer or affirmation as you visualize the circle of light.

Also, it is good to protect your car, property/residence, and your children in a daily circle of light.  Use the same techniques as mentioned above, except after you visualize the circle of light, picture either your car, property/residence or a child within the circle.  Doing this to our car increases the likelihood of safe travel, and the overall protection of your car when it is parked.  Protecting your property is a great shield against, burglary, trespass, and any other danger.  Regarding our children, circling them in light helps to keep them safe in their often unpredictable journey, especially with the many dangers so present in today’s world.  As parents, we’re responsible to do our best to protect our children, and in the same way you would make sure they were not walking down a crime ridden street, it is also important to protect them spiritually and vibrationally.  (I would not recommend circling adults in light, unless you have their permission.  Even though your intentions would be positive, it still potentially treads on their free will, and permission should be first sought from them.)

2-Cocoon of light before going to sleep – We are most vulnerable to psychic attack and psychic vampires while we are sleeping.  With our defenses down, negative energies have an open door to us.  It is especially good to visualize a cocoon of white light surrounding yourself right before going to sleep.  With this cocoon, don’t only picture it, but try and literally feel it, as something that is physical that cocoons you and keeps you absolutely safe.  One way of achieving this is to also see and feel the cocoon as thick, and physically real.  This helps to provide the stronger protection so very needed in our sleep cycle.

3-Keep your aura charged and clean –First, take care of your physical health.  Your physical body and your aura are interconnected.  A healthy body has a healthy aura.  Just like your immune system protects your body from infection, your aura helps protect you from negative thoughts and energies. 

Secondly, revitalize and charge your aura.  If you have ever been caught outside in a spring rain, you know how fresh and vibrant the air feels afterwards.  That’s because negative ions are released during the downpour.  These negative ions have the effect of cleaning our auras.  That  same spring shower effect can be duplicated by taking a shower which is a natural negative ion generator.

Next, charge your aura by visualizing white light coming from the godhead into the top of your head and flowing out through your aura.  Visualize this light making your aura brighten, strengthen and expanding.  Make this part of your spiritual routine and it is even better to add grounding and balancing routine as well: ground yourself to the earth and balance the chakras on a regular basis.

4-Mirroring – Another technique of protection is “mirroring.”  You can visualize a mirror surrounding you, and your property/residence.  You might ask, “What does a mirror do that helps protect me?”  In the physical world, a mirror reflects.  It is the same thing metaphysically and spiritually.  Therefore, a metaphysical mirror will reflect and deflect psychic attack, instead of it being able to reach you. 

In addition, there is one extra thing to do.  When reflecting the negativity through mirroring, you want it to be reflected into the eternal white light and not back to the source sending it. This way, it returns the negativity back to its native nothingness where it doesn’t harm anyone, as opposed to getting sent right back to who is sending it to you, which is a tit for tat thing and not spiritually for the highest good.

5-Keep the negativity within yourself down – The reason we need to keep the negativity within ourselves down, is because those energies only contribute to our ability to be psychically attacked and/or drained.  Our internal negativity is a magnet which draws to us more negativity, and also contributes to and increases out ability to be psychically attacked.  Keep in mind that our strong emotions attract spirits to us, and when those emotions are negative, we attract negative spirits.  If we’re under psychic attack and/or holding a lot of negative emotions inside, this incites, excites, and facilitates negative entities such as elementals, earth bound spirits, and evil entities. 

A-Elementals come in several types. One type is base entities such as spirits of trees and nature.  Another is type is various thoughts of revenge, desire and other strong emotions that have been sent out (either deliberately or inadvertently) and are floating around the ether.  These elementals tend to attach themselves parasitically to human psyches, and feed off emotions and base desires.  They are fueled by our negative thought forms and are given life (and purpose) through our negative projections. 

B-Earth bound spirits are spirits who are stuck here on earth for a variety of reasons.  They may not know yet that they’re dead, as in people who were in a sudden plane crash. They could be confused and not know where to go, as in going into the white light of unconditional love.  Some earth bound spirits also may not want to cross over, as they’re emotionally attached to people, situations and/or circumstances here in the physical world.  A spirit who left their body as an alcoholic may hang around bars and energetically suck off the people who are drinking, to still experience the vicarious thrill of alcohol.  Those who commit suicide can often get stuck and be earth bound as well.

C-Evil entities also come in quite a variety, but think of them as being the spiritual equivalent of alley rats who attack and bite because that’s where they’re at in consciousness.  It is the same thing with psychic attack.  You don’t have to do anything per se to get attacked – it’s more of a matter of being open and/or vulnerable to it – or unintentionally feeding into it.  If evil entities are able to connect with you through any open door you’ve opened, the attack is on.  They operate much like viruses that try and infect your computer – once they get in, they’re hard to get rid of.

Any kind of negative spiritual entity strongly feeds off of negativity — it is just like a crowd inciting two people who are ready and willing to fight.  The negativity is already there from the two people, which the crowd feeds off, and they in turn add fuel to the already existing fire from their own “excitement” – literally just like pouring gasoline on fire. 

6-The cleansing – In the short of it, you don’t want any of these type of spiritual entities attached to you, or in your residence.  This is why it is so crucial to surround your property/residence in a circle of white light every day.  Not doing so is like leaving your doors unlocked.  Often, a drifter could just walk in.  It is the same thing spiritually.  Circling your property and/or residence literally locks puts up a tremendous shield, so negative spirits and entities don’t have an open door to walk through.  However, if that happens for any reason, here are some great and simple techniques that will banish and get rid of them:

A-Wash portions of the woodwork and windows in every room of your residence with warm salt water.  If the psychic attack/entitie(s) are strong, I would recommend washing once a week for four weeks straight. 

B-Place a bay leaf in every corner of every room in your residence and leave them there for several weeks up to a few months.

C-Light a single white candle in your home and have no other candles burning.  This brings spiritual cleansing to your home and your vibration, and helps to banish negative entities and psychic attack.  (Make sure to NOT blow out the candle.)  If you’re worried about leaving it burning, get small votive candles that last for a few hours at a time and burn one candle daily or frequently until you’ve removed the negativity.

7-Don’t be too open psychically – It is important to never be too open psychically.  There is a skill and an art as to being open in the right way and to the proper degree when giving a reading and in daily life.  Never forget that it must be learned and executed correctly.  I’ve seen many people run into serious trouble through being too open psychically and not even knowing it. 

If you want to do readings, make sure to find a teacher in your area who is skilled and ethical, who could teach you how to turn your psychic ability on and off and how to control it.  Continually being psychically open leaves one extremely vulnerable to psychic attack.  Just like with anything, too much, too soon, is a disaster.  As we open up psychically, we change our entire relationship to ourselves and the world, and this change must come about gradually – not all of a sudden or all at once or we’ll throw out entire being out of balance and open ourselves up to serious psychic attack and negative entities who can wreak havoc in our lives.

Protecting yourself is of utmost importance and all of the tools included here will help, but the process of developing one’s own psychic ability must be done correctly.  In the same way you wouldn’t go from being skinny to immediately lifting hundreds of pounds of weight as a bodybuilder as it could permanently injure you, the same thing holds true with the psychic process.

Those who are being psychically attacked by “spiritual entities” and through being too open psychically, often hear disturbing voices and feel a creepy presence brush up against them more than once.  They may have unusual nightmare with frightening entities in them, see dark shadowy figures and feel like they’re being watched where they live.  Some have awakened from a dream and see a dark figure above them, and feel that their body is being physically held down in bed. These are just some of the symptoms of being psychically attacked by spiritual entities.

Of course, these types of experiences should never be allowed to continue, or considered “normal.”  All of the techniques outlined above help to resolve these issues, but here is one more technique, perhaps the final step needed to eliminate psychic attack in our lives.

8-See the source of attack in a gold circle – Wherever the psychic attack is coming from, we of course need to protect ourselves, but also, we need to neutralize the energy at its source of origin.  We do this by picturing the source of psychic attack in a circle of pure, bright, clear, golden light.  This helps you to sever the “negative” ties and energy, leaving you free of the psychic attack that had burdened your journey.  This visualization can be done daily for as long as the negative energy is still present.  If you’re not sure where the psychic attack is coming from, try this:  Picture your circle of golden light, and within the circle, envision the words “The source of psychic attack in my life.”  That will help this exercise to reach its proper destination.

Keep in mind that we usually think of attack as something very physical: vicious words, rape, car accidents, robbery, and murder.  However, the “attack” we’re speaking of here is mostly invisible – but still, just as potent as anything we witness with our own five physical senses.  Therefore, we must take it upon ourselves as spiritually minded people to not only protect ourselves physically, as in locking our doors at night, but spiritually as well.  We do this by becoming aware of and utilizing all of the wondrous tools and techniques the divine universe affords us to protect ourselves from psychic attack and psychic vampires.  Nothing can hurt us that we don’t let it, or feed into through our own state of being, which we must always work toward perfecting – with the ultimate goal of being a complete circle of light, love, peace, harmony and well being.

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