Voice of the Spirit

In the interactions and relationships we all find ourselves in, things are done by others to us that not only hurt, but really damage our lives. And we take it personally…. After all, shouldn’t we, as it was specifically done to us?

 Whether it’s with family, friends, coworkers, a boss, neighbors, lovers, a spouse, or even people we randomly seem to encounter in this world, we have all had harmful things directed at us: verbally, circumstantially, and even physically.

 Since what we’ve been through in these instances is often quite intense, and sometimes changes our lives for the worse, we internalize and personalize it. And why wouldn’t we? We are the victim; it wasn’t done to someone else. No matter how together or strong we perceive ourselves to be, personal attacks on us do hurt – and even debilitate our lives, as the pain we experience often changes the course of our lives irrevocably, and sometimes, permanently.

Yet, as intense as all of our pain and suffering feels when people hurt us, what would you think if I said something completely surprising to you, which is that it shouldn’t be looked at as being personal? This doesn’t mean that our feelings don’t count, and how we feel should just be disregarded and trivialized; rather, that we begin the healing process by beginning to depersonalize what has happened to us.

 We start doing this by first looking at these dynamics from a spiritual and metaphysical perspective, where what we’ve perceived as being done to us with deliberate, malicious intent isn’t really what it seems to be and is far different than we’ve always believed. We need to now look at the real spiritual reasons why people do the things they do and learn what that says not only about them, but also, about us, and ultimately, how we can now heal our lives.

It’s not personal – They’re just being who they are

Everyone always and only behaves at their own level of consciousness and spiritual level of understanding.

Others don’t act according to the way we want them to; they’re just being who they are. From a spiritual perspective, that’s all a person is capable of being. When you’re violated by someone else, though, it certainly feels quite personal as it was indeed done to you, yet in many instances, it has very little to actually do with you.

Think of when a mob hit-man carries out gruesome, cold-hearted murders against specific individuals. When he speaks of these egregious crimes, you’ll hear him dispassionately state, “Hey it ain’t personal. It’s just a job I’m doing, okay?” This same principle often applies to the various levels of abuse that people do to others.

With Gerald, it was never personal, either, even though he has caused a lot of people a great deal of pain throughout his career. Gerald’s a forty five-year-old man with a huge, selfish, narcissistic ego, and enjoys stepping on people to get ahead, especially in the workplace, which he has done most of his adult life. It’s all a game of sport for him, and he does it on purpose to feel superior and win. What I’ve just described here is Gerald’s actual level of spiritual understanding; therefore, it’s exactly how he will behave.

When he took a new job in a large company in 2002, he looked at his various coworkers and assessed who was in his way of advancement. “How do I get ahead here?” he coldly asked himself. He soon set his sights on his female coworker Brenda.

He pretended to befriend Brenda as a sincere gesture of affection, which allowed Gerald to get closer to Brenda, but it was only done in order to perceive her professional weaknesses. He then exploited them by stating negative things about Brenda’s workplace performance. Since he ingratiated himself into Brenda’s life and could see both her strengths and weaknesses, some of the flaws he pointed out about her were true; however, he exaggerated them and tried to use them against her. Slowly but surely, it worked. Eventually, the overall opinions of Brenda went downhill in the workplace, and consequently, she was demoted. Gerald was then given her position.

In this instance, it would be clear to most of us that it wasn’t personal on Gerald’s part against Brenda, as he just coldly and calculatingly wanted to get her out of the way so he could advance. Brenda could have been anyone in the office; she just happened to be the person who had the position Gerald wanted.

And of course, Brenda took it personally as we all would have: “That rotten liar cost me my job and all the while, he played me like a deck of cards. He never liked me at all – he just set me up to sucker-punch me. I hate Gerald’s guts and hope he gets what’s coming to him!” Brenda fumed. Certainly anyone would feel great empathy for what Brenda went through as it was devastating to her. Yet, in reality, it still wasn’t personal. Gerald was just being who he is.

That doesn’t mean that it all just stops there in a cut and dry fashion. Gerald created a tremendous amount of negative karma by what he did to Brenda – and he will have to deal with that whenever the repercussions of his actions come back to him – and of course, they will. Through Gerald’s actions, the course of Brenda’s career and even her life, for that matter, where altered in a damaging way. In this instance it wasn’t a karmic situation, or something that was Brenda’s fault; Gerald just went after her without valid cause. 

Thankfully, in time, Brenda recovered and eventually moved forward into a new career that was good for her, yet the episode with Gerald took her years to come to peace with. She did that by coming to realize through time that it wasn’t personal, which helped her to separate herself from Gerald’s actions, and realize that it was all about who he is.

Brenda was attacked because she was in the way; however, others are victimized for a different reason. These people are attacked simply for who they inherently are.

We are a mirror to others

Often, we hold up a mirror to people by simply being who we are, and reflect to others how they already feel inside.

We unknowingly trigger other peoples’ issues, prejudices, fears, emotional attitudes, preexisting viewpoints, and even in extreme instances, hatred. When we are attacked in these ways, it is because we are the mirror to others – and they don’t like the reflection they’re seeing.

Ahmed is a twenty-two year-old Muslim man who happened to move onto a block of a New Jersey neighborhood in late 2007 that lost several people in 9/11. Because of that terrorist attack, a strong Anti-Muslin sentiment had developed on the block in recent years. When Ahmed moved in, the threats were immediately launched against him by his neighbors with these types of taunts: “Go home terrorist! Are you gonna blow me up too? Terrorists not welcome here! We can kill, too!” These are the type of horrific things Ahmed heard on a regular basis.

However, Ahmed was simply studying to be a doctor, and was not even remotely a terrorist. In fact, he felt terrible for the victims of 9/11 and did not identify with the attackers in any way, shape, or form. Because of all of the fear his new neighbors carried inside based on what they had been through from 9/11, Ahmed mirrored and triggered what they already felt, which of course, wasn’t Ahmed’s fault. Even though they victimized him in what seemed to be an utterly personal way, it had nothing to do with who Ahmed really is. They didn’t know this young Muslim man or try to understand him; once their fears were engaged, they lost their ability to be objective.

Predictably, Ahmed took it personally at first, was angry, terrified, and felt that he had to move for his own safety, which he did after about six months. As with Gerald and Brenda, the situation between Ahmed and his neighbors was not karmic. It was also not based on the law of attraction (where Ahmed would have attracted this treatment back to him because of how he felt about himself from within), but was a matter of Ahmed unknowingly serving as a spiritual mirror to the people in his environment. From a spiritual point of view, the neighbors were supposed to use this experience to rise above their fears and learn to accept Ahmed; however, they didn’t deal with it from a higher spiritual perspective, as they drew upon the fears, prejudices and the buttons of the lower self.

Ahmed learned to not take this personally, and was able to let it all go, which took tremendous spiritual courage on his part. It paid off, as he relocated to another state and successfully continued his studies in medical school.

So if this wasn’t a case of who Ahmed is as a person, then who is it about? Is it just the way things are in life, or is there a real spiritual reason that explains such a disparaging level of injustice that so many of us have experienced, where we’re treated badly for nothing more than who we are?

It’s not about you – It’s about them

It’s spiritually about the persons doing the attacking and not about those who are being victimized.

When people get attacked for who they inherently are, it’s usually due to race, religion, gender and sexual orientation. It can also be about more insidious societal things such as height, weight, financial status, social upbringing, whether we’re perceived as attractive or not, etc.

The abusive actions of people reflect on who THEY are, their level of spiritual understanding, and the values they hold, even if it’s hidden from public view. (Often, people don’t openly and flagrantly flaunt their prejudice and hatred of others). Yet, when someone comes along who reflects and triggers those issues in others, what happens is a reflexive, knee-jerk reaction. And the victims of such abuse often take it quite personally and ask: “Why me? What did I do? I didn’t do anything to deserve this!”

Then, there are also those times when the attacks we receive are not by strangers at all, but by someone who is at the opposite end of the spectrum, such as those who are deeply connected to us in our daily lives. Shockingly, this form of abuse can come from a family member, friend, or even the person we’re in love with.

Because of our intimate connection with them, we invest deeply into the situation where we’re compelled to hang in there and make it right, even when we’re being treated badly over a long period of time. We convince ourselves that if we just love that person a little bit more, things will most assuredly work out in the end.

Your love won’t change them or the way they treat you

No matter how much you love a six room house, it won’t ever turn into a mansion.

When we love someone, especially in a romantic way, we are hardly dispassionate about our decisions and how we view the relationship. This is why such an ancient cliché as Love is Blind has been relevant throughout the ages, because we close our eyes to the spiritual truth when we’re in love.

When we’re treated badly and even abusively by someone we love, we take it quite personally; yet we hope for things to get better as a way of healing the situation. And when the negative treatment we receive continues and even escalates, we often make it our crusade to not only heal the relationship, but to fix the other person. Our entire identity and self esteem becomes personally wrapped up into getting the other person to change and love us in return. After all, we didn’t come this far to fail and lose in the end.

However, it doesn’t matter how much we love that person and how much we’re willing to fight for the relationship; it doesn’t change their level of consciousness and spiritual understanding. That is who they are, which clearly reveals how they’ll behave toward us.

Pete’s level of spiritual understanding is that all women are rotten; therefore, he has always treated them badly. It can certainly be explained: his mother was a self absorbed, mentally unstable egotist who squandered money on alcohol, and often left Pete without food. His mother’s actions don’t justify how Pete (as a grown man) treats women; they merely reveal where it all originated from.

On the other hand, Elaine is a woman who has always felt bad about herself, and has carried terrible self esteem within her, largely because she was mentally abused by her father growing up. This all revealed itself through the many abusive romantic relationships Elaine had been in throughout her entire adult life, where she always believed that she could help to heal the other person with the hope that they would then love her in return.

So when Pete met Elaine in early 2004, there was instant chemistry between them. This was a relationship that was based on the law of attraction: Pete wanted a woman to treat badly, while Elaine felt that she deserved to be abused, where she believed that she would be able to heal the  the other person as a way of validating herself as a women.

Within a few months, Pete started becoming emotionally abusive by telling her she was fat while they were having sex. Elaine didn’t fight back, but thought to herself that Pete had a terrible mother, which explained why he was making “fat” comments, and she convinced herself that if she just kept loving him, things would change for the better.

Then, Pete told Elaine that he was sexually bored with her, and had to see other women to satisfy himself as a man. Elaine thought that he just had to go through this, based on how bad  his mother treated him, so Elaine tried to do more kinky things in the bedroom, to keep Pete “satisfied,” and even tried to show Pete more and more how much she cared for him. She told herself that her love was stronger than his issues, and that good would triumph over evil if she just kept believing.

Of course Elaine took all of this personally and it made her self esteem even worse. She felt utterly inadequate as a woman, because she was unable to “satisfy her man,” yet her solution was not to leave Pete, but to keep reinforcing to herself that she could change him for the better.

And to most of you reading this, I’m sure that your advice to Elaine would be, “Get rid of that loser and move on!”

However, Elaine was emotionally hooked on Pete, and in fitting with the time-tested cliché, Elaine was blinded by her love. Since she refused to cut her ties with Pete, he became worse and by early 2005, started hitting Elaine on a weekly basis whenever he was in a foul mood. At this point, it wasn’t just that Elaine took the abuse personally as most of us would; her entire self image was based on fixing Pete, and that he would then love her.

At this point, we’d all be pleading with Elaine to dump him, go into therapy and heal her life: “Wake up and smell the coffee Elaine. You’re in denial. Get rid of him!” would be our strong assertions. Once again, Elaine hung in there, except now, she was digging her heels in even deeper. She stayed with Pete for six long, hard years, where he cheated, while emotionally and physically abusing her. Through all of this, Elaine kept trying to rescue him, while excusing his behavior because of what Pete’s mother had did to him as a boy.

When it all stopped, it wasn’t because Elaine had woken up either; Pete beat her so badly in late 2009 that the police intervened and arrested him. After a month in the hospital, Elaine recovered physically, yet she took it all so personally when the relationship crashed and burned.

Even though Elaine felt that she failed as a woman because her love was unable to change Pete and the relationship for the better, again, the abuse really wasn’t personal at all on Pete’s part. It was based on the law of attraction where the slave driver (Pete) needs the slave (Elaine). This doesn’t mean that Elaine should be judged; it’s just that how she felt about herself inside is what drew her to Pete and helped bring him into her life in the first place. Unfortunately, Elaine wasn’t willing to work on herself to heal these issues, but instead, she deluded herself into believing that she was on a sacred crusade beyond just her emotions – in her mind, it was a spiritual mission of sorts. In Elaine’s mind, it was her divine destiny to save Pete, and ultimately, rescue him.

It’s “Playing God” to try and fix them

The pathway to hell is always paved with good intentions

It’s not spiritually correct, or helpful to anyone concerned for us to take on someone else’s baggage and make it our own, all as a way of “Playing God.”  Not only is it spiritually impossible, it brings us down.

What Elaine had been trying to do in her relationship with Pete was nothing short of playing God by attempting to pull off the spiritually unattainable: be strong enough to hang in there, shoulder the abuse and take it, make her love so powerful that it would heal Pete and save him. Finally, as if the gates of heavens had opened, Pete would ultimately love her in return.

And as sad as what she went through is, it’s egotistical for Elaine (or any of us for that matter) to think that we can, should, and will be able to “fix” other people. Regardless of how much we’re in love with someone and how noble we perceive our motives to be, the other person has their own karma, dharma, life path, individuality, baggage, ego, and freedom of choice. Those things are not like a broken car that can be pieced back together through our willingness, tenacity, and belief in them. Everyone’s spiritual make up is unique, irrevocable, sovereign, and must be respected. Not only should it not be interfered with by another (even someone who’s deeply in love) – it can’t be.

It’s like a good intentioned soul who walks up to a wild, stray dog, looks up to the heavens and declares: “I love this dog as it is created by God. It is an expression of pure, divine love and I see it as perfect in all ways!” As the person bends over to pet and feed it, the dog simply bites them, because that’s what those type of dogs do – and once again, it isn’t personal.

It doesn’t matter what the good intentioned soul believes; the dog bit them because that’s the spiritual level of consciousness it is at and how God truly created them — and nothing we do will change that fact.

It’s the same thing with human beings, albeit that people are more complicated. They still behave to their level of understanding and not to the level which someone else wants them to, regardless of how God-like our motives seem to be.

We personalize the situation where we let our ego take control, because playing God is a way of dramatically attempting to boost our own self-esteem and show how powerful we can be. In our own minds, if we pull off the impossible and fix the other person, we in turn also become instantly healed. Both people’s issues and baggage are instantly redeemed – and everything magically becomes okay.

Yet, even though our feelings are sincere, we set ourselves up to fail every single time, as what we romanticize in our minds won’t happen. It’s our egos leading the way when we try and play God by saving others, and not our true spiritual nature that’s in control. And when the situation falls apart, it can devastate us, as we thought we were strong enough to make it all work out in the end.

Besides letting go of the need to be the rescuer, we need to realize that it is not our fault that we couldn’t “fix” them – none of us can. No matter how hard we try, it’s like the old analogy of hitting our head against the wall: the harder and longer we do it, the wall still won’t come down – it’s only our head that gets damaged.

That still doesn’t often help to give us the clarity we need to heal our lives, because we’re caught up in our emotional hurt, what’s been done to us, and the terrible feelings of inadequacy we experience when things don’t work out as we planned. It wears us all down, where we throw our hands up in the air and shout: “Life just isn’t fair!”

Is life fair, then?

When we look at the pain and suffering we’ve all incurred, it’s easy to give up hope and resign ourselves to the belief that life isn’t fair. When we hear about a woman being raped, or someone in their prime taken out of this world in an instant by a car accident, as well as those who always seem to play by the rules who never get rewarded, it would be understandable for any of us to think that life just isn’t fair 

However, that is from a human perspective and not cosmically true. No matter what happens here on earth, in time, and through the immutable laws of the universe, everything, without exception, always ends up being fair – and that may take years, decades, even lifetimes. We may not see justice with our own two eyes, but yes, it ultimately happens, without exception.  

Sometimes the situations we experience are karmic, and may seem unfair on the surface; yet that’s because we’re not aware at the time of the past life implications and spiritual agreements. If it was karmically agreed to that a child was to die at the age of fifteen, it will happen, no matter what is done to prevent it. And yes, it can be looked at as tragic. Yet, as hard as it is to hear, if it is karmic, it was supposed to happen.

There are also those who spiritually come into this world and agree to hold up a mirror to others, and that is not an easy calling. However, if it was spiritually agreed to by them before they incarnated into this physical lifetime, it is fair. Think of a soul who agreed to come into this world as a woman a hundred-and-fifty years ago to crusade for women’s rights, such as equal treatment under the law and the right to vote.

That woman would be here to hold up a mirror to society, and certainly she would experience the difficult repercussions of such a calling, and yes, she would humanly take it personally and have to learn to deal with that reality. However, if she chose that calling, it is fair.

With all the possibilities of why and how we take things personally, we begin the healing process by first trying to not personalize what has been done to us. When someone who chooses of their own free will to do negative things to us, it creates bad karma for them. Yet, we need to try and release the personal pain, forgive them, wish them well and simply be through with that energy and the fallout of the experience.

When we’re a mirror, we can’t always help how people will react to us, as it is not our fault, but we must still love ourselves, regardless of how others see us.

Trying to save others is always a no-win situation, where we plummet into the pavement when the situation blows up in our face. We are not God and shouldn’t let our egos delude ourselves into thinking we can play that role.

Whenever we attract someone abusive because of how we feel about ourselves, it’s important to not take it personally when they hurt us, but use the power of divine love to heal who we are – and that means we won’t keep bringing in that type of person into our lives.

When it’s karmic, that is moist assuredly complex, yet we can keep making the journey of depersonalizing what has happened in the best way possible.

There are so many reasons why people do what they do to us, how we internalize it all, our desires to rescue, save, even “Play God, and the decisions we make as to how we’re going to deal with ourselves and other people we will continue to encounter in our journey. And there is one thing that always remains that we must act upon: no matter what, work on healing your life! That is the cornerstone of our spiritual growth and unfoldment.

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In the movie Rocky,we see a common everyday guy who struggles and goes through a tremendous amount of pain; yet against all odds, he is victorious in the end. All of his suffering led him to the incredible redemption of his dreams coming true – as he becomes a boxing champion.

While most of us aren’t boxers, with the pain and suffering we all go through in our own personal situations, we want to believe that like Rocky, things will always work out for us. Whether it’s in a romantic relationship, with our family and friends, health, money, career or in any area of our lives, we assume that our struggles also lead us to a “positive” ending. 

This means that our dreams and the suffering we’re going through will ultimately bring us to the absolute victory we’ve been fighting and waiting for. Our struggles do have deep meaning to us, so we hold onto the conviction that we will be redeemed when it’s all said and done; and we believe that we’re going to get what we want in the end! And with that, the “right” conclusion becomes a complete validation of our long-standing pain and dreams.

It’s something we have all felt and been through, as after all, who wants to believe that all of their trials and tribulations have merely been in vain? Where is the value in that?

Of course, everything happens for a reason, but…

 We take spiritual phrases such as everything happens for a reason, and tell ourselves that the “reason” in the situation we’re going through is that we will get what we want in the end. We reinforce this through believing that our pain and suffering has merit, is righteous and it will be validated by us winning in the end. That is the “reason,” we convince ourselves!

Of course, everything really does happen for a reason in our lives and nothing occurs at random in this world. Behind every effect is a cause, and physics proves that immutable law of the universe. Yes, there always is a legitimate “reason” — but it may not at all be the one we had emotionally hoped for.

That is where we get thrown off course: We take the spiritual mainstay of everything happens for a reason, and we combine that truth with our distorted, subjective beliefs. However, we can never assume that the “reason” for our struggles is for the story to conclude in any particular fashion – especially only in the way we desire. In short, sometimes we get what we want, while other times, we don’t.

The level of our personal suffering doesn’t determine whether things work out in the way we want — or that they even should. There are so many “reasons” and spiritual lessons as to why things occur in our lives, and there is no simple rule of thumb where any of us could say, “My suffering must lead me to the happiness I want in the end.”

Our false assumptions

We make completely false assumptions about our situations, which cloud our judgment by taking elements of truth, intuition, logic, our own emotions, unrealistic expectations, self delusional beliefs, advice from others (sometimes right while other times wrong), and mix it all together in a blender. However, with all of these contradictory components, the results are completely confusing, unrealistic, and self-debilitating.

Yes, we can affirm, visualize, and believe anything we want as we do have the freedom to do so, but that, in and of itself, doesn’t make it true.

However, when things don’t ultimately go the way we have architected, these horribly disappointing experiences put us in a free-fall, isolate us where we feel terribly separate and disconnected – especially because we have really suffered. Even if we put ourselves through this pain of our own choosing and the suffering is totally self created, it still doesn’t erase the fact that we are hurting – and badly.

We ask ourselves, “How could this have not worked out? I believed it in my heart, knew that it was damn well supposed to happen and did everything I could to make it work. How could my suffering have not led to victory?” We’re absolutely dumfounded that we didn’t get what we thought was absolutely going to occur, because we’ve struggled, paid our dues, and in our own minds, we deserve to get the prize in the end.

Yet it’s not just that we as individuals have each created our own little separate belief system that our pain and suffering always leads to a worthwhile conclusion with a celebratory victory lap. This is something that has been quite deeply culturally engrained into all of us for thousands of years – even if we don’t realize it.

The battle of good versus and evil – and good always triumphs in the end!

In the Bible, we hear countless stories of good versus evil — and what we’re told to believe is that after all the pain and suffering, trials and tribulations, good will ultimately be victorious! In the story of David and Goliath, little David (against all odds) is able to conquer Goliath (the giant who would seem to have easily won the battle). In addition, the Bible is filled with countless stories of the Devil versus Jesus/God – and once again, no matter what, good always triumphs in the end.

Throughout history we have been conditioned over thousands of years through the power of religious beliefs of all kinds (not only Christian) that we live in a world of right and wrong; good versus evil – and no matter how much sin, darkness, and death befalls us, when it’s all said and done …yes, good shall win out.

So just how far will people take these beliefs? Most of us transfer this epic, eternal struggle of good versus evil into our own personas lives.

Jennifer believed that Tom was her “destiny”

As many of us have experienced, Jennifer had a situation that she believed was her “destiny.” It happened when she was thirty-five years old and met Tom, a new coworker who was married with three children. Instantly, Jennifer emotionally felt that the two of them shared a “deep connection,” and felt hooked. In Jennifer’s mind, this was it. He was the one.

Yet, from the beginning, her intuition made her feel uncomfortable and unsettled about the situation. Jennifer knew it would be difficult, and that she would suffer on some level through getting involved with him. Here we see that Jennifer did indeed receive the truth of what this “connection” and “destiny” would really lead to; it was the exact opposite of what she thought would happen with Tom.

However, Jennifer dove into a sexual relationship with Tom anyway, and after about a month, Jennifer let her emotions and ego lead the way. She silenced her intuition by convincing herself that Tom would eventually divorce his wife Brenda, and Jennifer believed that she and Tom would end up together in the end. This belief was not based on Jennifer’s intuition; but rather, her self-delusional emotional beliefs.

Jennifer told her friend Maggie, “I know he’s the one and don’t kid yourself, I know that it won’t be easy, that there will be a lot of ups and downs and heartache for me, but in my heart, I know we’ll be together and that’s the truth.”

In fact, Jennifer convinced herself that God was speaking to her and told her that ending up with Tom was her crusade, which then ascribed Biblical importance and meaning to the relationship. This gave Jennifer a false sense of “destiny” about the situation and all of the hurt she was experiencing.

Jennifer let herself believe that her suffering was absolutely worthwhile, noble and righteous, and would lead to redemption. She believed that she would get what she wanted in the end. However, this was merely the stubbornness of her ego taking control.

In the beginning, Jennifer saw the red flags right away: Tom was emotionally inconsistent with her, he wasn’t open in his attitude, showed very little consideration for her feelings, and perhaps worst of all, Tom openly flirted with other women in the workplace.

However, Jennifer believed that her pain and suffering was merely a part of the “destiny” she was experiencing, and was willing to hang in there because victory would ultimately be hers. Therefore, she had to make someone “the Devil,” which was easy to do. Who was in the way of Jennifer’s dreams? Of course, ostensibly, Tom’s wife Brenda was. So predictably, Jennifer made Brenda the “bad” or the “evil one.” This allowed Jennifer to further justify the relationship with Tom.

As the affair progressed, Jennifer, now in deeper turmoil, once again spoke with her friend Maggie about the situation: “Tom’s wife Brenda is a monster, a hateful bitch who treats Tom horribly. She has been hurting him for so long. It’s not his fault; he’s only there for the kids. I know it. She is as rotten as they come and pure evil! I know I’m suffering now, but when he divorces her and ends up with me, we’ll be forever happy, because it’s meant to be.”

No matter how inconsistent Tom was, how many other women he flirted with right in front of her, and the fact the he never made any move toward a divorce, Jennifer still believed that Tom getting a divorce and ending up with her was “destiny.”

So Jennifer, refusing to give up, went through a tumultuous up and down relationship with Tom for eleven hard years until Tom eventually dumped her for another woman named Anna. Being with Tom for so long caused Jennifer to squander the time period of her biological clock to have a child. Ultimately, there was no prize for Jennifer, no breaking out the champagne or riding off into the sunset with Tom. Rather, she became so depressed that she lost her job.

After the break up, she often asked herself, “How could I possibly have suffered so much if things didn’t work out in the end? That doesn’t make any sense and isn’t right at all.” For years after, Jennifer kept questioning how all of her pain and suffering didn’t lead to the outcome she wanted. She had convinced herself that being with Tom was already a spiritual fact, and that it was just simply a matter of time before everything with Tom would all come together.

Why didn’t our pain and suffering lead to the victory lap in the end?

Just as Jennifer wanted to win, we all want to be victorious in our lives, too. No one wants their suffering to all be for nothing. However, when our struggles don’t lead us to success, we become totally confused and can’t figure out why things didn’t ultimately work out.

We like to see ourselves as the race car driver who through lots of hard work, discipline, fatigue, sweat, struggle and nerves of steel, sees their pain and suffering pay off through winning the race. We’ve seen it a million times before: after all the struggles, the winner, grinning ear-to-ear, takes his victory lap around the race track proudly, and victoriously while champagne flows like a fountain.

We look at that festive scenario and ask ourselves why the same type of victory didn’t happen in our situation? We are dumfounded that all of our trials and tribulations have seemingly been in vain, without the validation we’ve been so tenaciously banking on.

Yet, there are answers to our questions, no matter how frustrated we’ve felt. It’s just a matter of if and when we’re ready to hear them. Let’s take a look at the many reasons why our pain and suffering didn’t lead us to “riding off into the sunset” in the end, and the varying possibilities involved from a spiritual perspective:

*Sometimes what we want is just not in the divine plan, just not in the cards, not meant to be or for the highest good of anyone involved. Therefore, nature won’t support it. In this situation, we won’t get the prize in the end, no matter how much we’ve suffered. The emotional fallout we experience is what facilitates the learning experience. The situation was not pre-destined, just like what happened to Jennifer in her relationship with Tom.

*Even if something is just not in the divine plan, we can sometimes still force it into being for a while through the power of our own personal will. This type of situation would be like jamming a size-seven foot into a six-and-a-half shoe. It would never really fit, but the situation could be in our lives temporarily, but in the long run, it wouldn’t work out.

*In certain instances, the other person involved is not agreeable with what we want from them. That is a matter of what their individual choices are, which our forcefulness can’t change. An easy example of this is that if we are in love with someone but they are not interested in us or the same type of relationship we want. It doesn’t matter how much suffering we go through waiting and hoping; it just won’t happen.

*There are times when something is possible for us to have, yet through the negative way we’ve handled it, we’ve sabotaged the possibility of things working out in the long run. We’re given an opportunity, but make the choices that didn’t allow it to work out.

*Other times, there are spiritual lessons in a situation we’re supposed to learn, but they provide us with an experience that gives us something other than the conclusion we wanted. Sometimes a relationship doesn’t work out, but we learn to be a stronger, more independent person on our own, which was a lesson that we needed to go through for our spiritual growth. It can be very difficult for us when we don’t see what it is that we were supposed to learn, and that awareness can take time. However, the experience and its outcome have been for our highest good.

Yet, even though we see here that from a spiritual perspective, there are legitimate “reasons” on a multitude of levels as to why things have turned out the way they did, we still have to deal with perhaps, the most difficult part of it all…. That is to find a way to emotionally come to peace with what we’ve been through and move forward with our lives.

Take the lesson, and throw the rest (meaning the emotions) away!

At this point, we all may have considered many of the spiritual possibilities as to why things didn’t work out for us, yet we are still holding onto our suffering. After all, it’s all we really have left from the failed situation and in a perverse way, our pain becomes a friend — and that’s better than nothing….

In our resistance to moving on with our lives, any of us can go into denial and wait for the situation to come back to us in the future – remember, it is destiny, right? Anyone who disagrees with us can be seen as someone who just doesn’t understand, or as our enemy.

Sometimes, we’re so stuck on what happened before, that we can even recreate the same type of situation we’ve been through all over again. However, this time we live it out with different people, places and circumstances.

Yet, with all of these mechanisms of denial, we’re protecting ourselves from a feeling we’re terrified of, which is that we’ve been wrong all along. Since we didn’t get what we wanted and we’ve invested months, years, and even decades into the situation, we can’t face that fear. So instead, we refuse to let go, because that would only add up to us being a failure in our own minds — so one way or another, we keep holding on.

However, sooner or later, we must face reality, let go and release the old dreams that didn’t work out and cleanse ourselves of the intense, dark, self-destructive, volatile and painful emotions that have been crippling us all along. These feelings will continue to debilitate our lives until and unless we learn to do one thing – which is to take the lesson and through the rest away.

“So what do we do, then,” one might ask. “How could so much of our pain and disappointment possibly be healed?”

First, in addition to making every attempt to let it all go every day, here are some tools that will absolutely help in the emotional healing process:

*Ask yourself, “What have I learned from this experience?” Remember, there is something divine that comes out of all situations. If you can see what you’ve learned, that knowledge and awareness will stay with you and help guide you to better choices in the future.

*“Am I a better person for what I’ve been through?” is a great question to ask yourself. You’ll be surprised that as you quiet the emotions, you’ll see that you’ve made a journey, and have grown as a person. 

*If you feel duped, manipulated, or played but what happened, ask yourself this: “Where there red flags all along?” You’ll find that there were warning signs in many ways. It’s not whether the red flags were there or not, as they were; it’s a matter of us choosing to ignore them or not. By realizing that it was you played yourself through denying the warnings that were there, you don’t ever have to do that again. Therefore, pain and suffering are able to be avoided in the future.

*Look at what you expected out of the situation, and pose this question to yourself: “How much did my expectations and emotions replace reality?” As we saw in the example of Jennifer, she believed that she would ultimately end up with Tom. She replaced reality with her own subjective beliefs.

For any of us, it doesn’t matter what we feel, or how intensely our emotions take hold. If our expectations and feelings become out of line with reality, we enter into an alternate world where what we believe as fact is distorted fantasy. We need to do our best to keep our expectations and emotions in line with reality so in the future, we can avoid the horrific disappointments that happen from falsely investing into a situation.

*Here’s a good question to ask yourself: “How do I not ever end up in this position again?” Never forget that the divine universe is not a trickster and God is not in the business of fooling us. Therefore, we need to just look at what’s right in front of us, as the information we need to make the right choices for us will always be there. Just look at the truth, make your decisions accordingly, and you’ll be okay.

Finally, ask yourself the question, “What can I do to truly move forward with new dreams?” You have to be able to trust that somehow whatever the outcome came to be was for the highest good, no matter how emotionally hurt you have been. By believing that it all worked out as it was supposed to from a spiritual perspective, it gives you the hope and optimism that the universe is on your side, and that you’re not somehow cursed, but rather, blessed! It is only with hope that we can move forward. However, we must temper it with the awareness, wisdom and insights we have gained through the situations that did not work out in the end.

We love to believe that life is a simple formula of Redemption = getting what I want in the end. As we look back at what we’ve been through and ask ourselves the question, “Was it worth it in the end,” do we still feel the same? Through our pain, we’ve learned now that this formula doesn’t work for any of us. Rather, we keep learning, growing, and evolving to where what we Emotionally want = whatever is in the divine plan of our journeys is now our new mantra.

We do this through redirecting and raising our emotional desires to all that is in the divine plan. It is an effort well worth making, as we not only avoid so much unnecessary pain and suffering, but we receive the divine conclusions that are spiritually for our absolute highest good.

Jim1537 can help guide you. Whether you are interested in custom affirmations to help you acheive your dreams, or in having your own private reading with Jim1537, he can help. Just click here to begin.

As adults, we realize that toddlers are truly innocent in their actions and “don’t know any better.” Because they’re not aware of why they do the things they do, we can’t hold it against them when they make a mistake, especially as they begin exploring this vast new wondrous world that they’ve in awe of. Little kids are filled with the feeling of wide-eyed adventurous wonder about everything, usually without any sense of the repercussions that could happen to them in the process.

Kathy’s two young children just loved chocolate, but they were allergic to it and broke out into hives every time they ate it, so Kathy stopped giving it to them and said they couldn’t have it anymore. However, when they went over to Grandma’s house, the kids would nag their Grandmother till she gave in and let them have chocolate treats. It certainly wasn’t the kids’ fault, but nevertheless, they experienced the consequence of breaking out into hives every time they ate chocolate. Grandma the adult was responsible for allowing her grandchildren to eat chocolate, yet these two youngsters still reaped the repercussions.

Young adults are very much into seeking sexual adventure – and with being overwhelmed and hypnotized by the atomic power of sexual energy, they make choices that have noteworthy consequences. Falling in love, emotional confusion, obsession, rejection, devastation, pregnancy, and health risks are all chances that anyone takes when having sex.

Cindy, an eighteen year-old college student didn’t stop and think that she could end up pregnant when losing her virginity to her first boyfriend, but it happened. She made a choice to have sex, but didn’t look at the potential consequences of what could occur at the time; yet just because she ignored the repercussions didn’t stop her from getting pregnant. It is the same with all of us, as denying or ignoring what will happen from our choices doesn’t stop the consequences from occurring.

From a spiritual perspective, the consequences of our actions don’t just start happening to us when we’re 18 as in Cindy’s case, but they occur from the time we’re born. All of us experience the consequences of our choices from the time we are toddlers, and not just once we become adults.

 However, as a society, we hold toddlers to a different standard than someone who is a teenager, versus what we expect from a fully grown adult in terms of moral and legal liability. We would look differently at a two-year old who started a fire through playing with matches, as opposed to a grown adult who committed arson. Nonetheless, spiritually, our choices always lead to repercussions.

 As adults, we often stick our heads in the sand and think that we can avoid looking at our choices and the consequences we’ve created, thinking that everything will turn out okay. If we’re frustrated, not sure which way to go, refuse to face what’s going on, or simply don’t care, we tell ourselves that we don’t have to make a choice regarding a situation in our lives – yet, is that actually possible…?

It is impossible to not choose

Choice is one of the most compelling aspects of our spiritual journeys on earth, because no matter who we are or what our circumstances might be, it is impossible for us to NOT choose. Even if you say, “I am refusing to do anything today,” THAT is still a choice you’re making. If a woman refuses to decide whether to leave her abusive marriage or not, she is making a choice, which is to stay with her husband. To NOT choose is making a choice.

It would be easy to clam up for the fear of being wrong and become afraid to make choices – yet our biggest apprehensions can’t stop us from choosing. Without us making choices, how could our lives move forward, progress and unfold? They wouldn’t. Our choices facilitate and set up our lessons, growth, spiritual unfoldment and ultimately, the conclusions we manifest. We see it in the case of Cindy who naively thought that she wouldn’t get pregnant when she lost her virginity to her first boyfriend.

As adults, we are all confronted with an infinite amount of choices every day. Sometimes the consequences are small, while at other times, life altering: “Am I going to try and get my co-worker fired or just leave him alone?” John ponders. “Will I lie to my spouse about money I spent on a new dress or just tell the truth?” Joanne sheepishly asks herself. “Should I cut the other guy off on the road because I’m in a hurry?” Larry asks himself as he’s driving. “Am I going to give into the idea of cheating on my spouse with that girl I met online?” Chuck questions. “What am I going to have for dinner tonight?” Diana asks herself.

There are far too many scenarios we face each and every day to even begin to mention here, from decisions as mundane as what we’re having for dinner to choosing to leave our marriage and children behind. Never forget that with any single choice, there is an absolute repercussion. Physics proves this immutable law of the universe: For every action (choice), there is an opposite and equal reaction (consequence).

With the consequences and repercussions that occur from our choices, we tend to label what occurs as either “good” or “bad,” depending on whether we get what we want or not — but from a spiritual perspective, should we…?

Choices aren’t right or wrong

There is no right, there is no wrong, there is only consequence-old spiritual maxim

There is great spiritual truth in this statement, as it shifts the focus from us feeling either “right” and good about our choices, or “wrong” and guilty, to the reality that it’s only about consequence. Many phrases immediately come to mind that indicate this spiritual law of the universe: “Whatever you do comes back to you” – “What goes around comes around” – and “What ye sow, ye shall reap.” We’ve all heard the concept of how when someone throws a pebble into the ocean, the ripples keep echoing on into infinity. That’s merely illustrating the cause and effect relationship between our choices and the consequences we create.

It’s not as if there’s some mean spirited God with a long white beard “up there” in the sky judging us – it’s us who create and reap the repercussions which we have to deal with. Even in death, it’s not as if we get judged as being good or bad by something or someone other than ourselves – where one person goes to heaven while another gets sent straight to hell. Whatever the repercussions are for our choices, they follow us wherever we go, even in spirit.

Often, the consequences for our choices while on earth are irrevocable (not just gaining a pound for having that extra dessert, which you work off at the gym within days), but repercussions that change the rest of our lives. Even though this is spiritually true, it is hardly the way people look at it in the society we now live in.

The pop culture view of choice and consequence

Today’s pop culture is filled with quick fixes, endless self help books with gimmicky titles, all designed to give you the life you want by simply doing this and that. I think it’s obvious to most of us that these methods in and of themselves don’t work, in part, because they don’t address how to deal with the consequences of our past choices which are still impacting our lives now.

Today, we’re told that all we have to do is visualize, affirm, think positively and increase our self esteem until our dreams come true – and that they will! The consequences for our past choices are largely disregarded and dismissed as yesterday’s news and written off as a “negative” way to look at things. Everything is about the immediate manifestation of an incredible new look, life, career, money and a fantastic lover to boot. We’re sold these quick fixes as if somehow, the repercussions of our past choices can be erased like the dye that takes the grey out of our hair.

However, the spiritual laws of the universe do not bend or conform to the whims and trends of popular culture.

 Watered down spirituality such as gimmicky self-help books reduces the complexity of our journeys to slogans and “sound bites,” as if we can just have anything and everything we want at any moment in time. However, life is not that simple.

Often, what it takes to manifest the life we want is so much more complicated than that. We can’t ignore the fact that where our lives are at today is largely based on our prior choices and the consequences. Many of these repercussions are not able to be easily “gotten rid of.” At any point in life, it’s not as if we always have a clear cut “good” choice versus a “bad” one where the path is simple and easy to follow.

 Between a rock and a hard place

Sometimes we find ourselves overwhelmed with our journey without having a clear idea as to how we got to where we’re currently at. Therefore, we’re confronted with situations where our options and choices are just not that good. This is often due to the accumulation of so many of our past choices which have created a serious domino effect that keeps growing and building. It’s not just the repercussions of one choice, but many, with multiple and interweaving consequences. It’s like a snowball that keeps rolling down the side of the mountain: it gains speed, size and momentum until it is an avalanche.

Brenda’s Choice & the Consequences

Brenda was a woman who had relationship situations in her past that were dangerous and edgy, as she liked cocky, sexually aggressive guys who were swingers, as she had been one, too. However, at the age of 32, she came to a crossroads in her life where she claimed that she wanted to heal her romantic life, settle down with someone good and get married. After having been alone for about a year, she met a man named Glenn at the gym where she worked out.

Immediately, the red flags were there. As she was talking to Glenn, he was texting multiple girls right in front of her and flirting with others in the gym as well. Brenda saw all of this with her own two eyes; that should have been more than enough for her to see Glenn as the player he was and simply walk away. However, because Brenda had been alone, and had not really healed as she thought she had, the energy of Glenn hooked her right in because it was the dangerous, exciting pattern she was used to.

Brenda called her psychic Amanda, ostensibly for insights into the situation, and Amanda honed in right away on the situation: “Brenda, Glenn is a horrible choice for you. This will change the rest of your life in a terrible way if you sleep with him because at first, you’ll like the sex as he’s kinky and so are you. That will lead to a pregnancy, and as strange as this may sound now, a shotgun wedding. You do have a choice, here, Brenda, and my advice is to stay away from Glenn.” Brenda responded by asking, “Really? You think we would get married? Oh my God, how wonderful!”

Even though Brenda wasn’t really listening to anything Amanda said, she tried to further warn Brenda by saying, “Glenn is an abusive man who will cheat on you, turn on you, and eventually, you’ll both be at war over the custody of your child.” However, Brenda already made up her mind, so she disregarded Amanda’s advice and chose to roll the dice with Glenn.

Within six months, Brenda became pregnant as Amanda predicted and while Brenda was carrying the baby, Glenn’s cheating got out of control. He started becoming verbally abusive by always trying to make everything Brenda’s fault. Yet in spite of this abuse, Glenn and Brenda got married about a year after they first met and Brenda gave birth to a girl a few months later.

After about two years of marriage, they were engaged in a bitter divorce which lasted about a year, where Glenn fought tooth and nail for full custody of their daughter. Even though he initially only got visitation rights in the divorce settlement, Glenn took Brenda back to court about two years later, claiming that she was an unfit mother based on nude, sexually provocative pictures of Brenda with another woman that were posted on the internet.

Now, it’s seven years since Brenda first met Glenn and here’s what has transpired: Brenda did lose custody of her daughter to Glenn, Brenda is flat broke without enough money to live on due to the cost of the continuous legal battles with Glenn, she’s more emotionally miserable that she has ever been in her entire life, and has no idea what to do.

So Brenda decided to reach out to Amanda and called her for a reading, looking for new, positive options. However, this was a different ball game now, as there just weren’t any good options for Brenda at this time. Het situation was so damaged, that there is no easy way out, quick fix, or a choice that could immediately make things better.

Through the one initial choice Brenda made to have sex with Glenn, a series of horrific consequences happened – and it wasn’t as if she wasn’t warned. Brenda saw for herself the kind of man he was right off the bat, and her psychic Amanda gave Brenda the correct information and insights in order for her to avoid where she is now – between a rock and a hard place.

As much as Amanda would have liked to help Brenda, there just wasn’t anything that could have been done to fix the situation. Brenda’s story is a cautionary tale which we can all learn from, by not just giving into our impulses and emotions, but looking at the repercussions that will indeed come from our choices.

Sometimes, it’s karmic

Sometimes the reasons why our options are not good is based on karma. When karmic consequences come back to us, the choices and options we have may not always be what we want. We’ll find ourselves in a particular set of circumstances that can be difficult, and since it is karmic, there’s no immediate solution or easy way out. Simply stated, we will have to go through the situation, which will take time and effort to work through. Therefore, it is important to try and look for the highest spiritual good.

For all of us, the repercussions do indeed come back until we have resolved all of our karma. Depending on the nature of the karma, the conclusion may or may not give us what we want in the end, yet karmic situations are burdensome to deal with.  Our choices and how we handle the situation will determine if we resolve the karma totally or partially and/or create additional negative karma, which we don’t want to ever do.

Even though karmic situations are something everyone goes through and are hard for all of us, the good news is that from a spiritual perspective, resolving karma is one of the most important things we can do for our spiritual advancement and eternal growth.

Our choices may also be lesson driven

Lesson driven situations (which are dharmic) differ from karmic lessons in the fact that dharmic lessons have absolutely nothing to do with our prior actions, while karmic lessons always deal with the repercussions of what we’ve done before, often, from prior lifetimes.

When our choices are lesson driven, it is because we have reached a point in our evolution where a lesson needs to be learned for our growth. In this instance, the circumstances that come about in our lives truly have nothing to do with our prior choices, but only with the lesson we now need to learn.

When it is lesson driven, the goal is for us to learn whatever we spiritually need to, as part of our growth. The choices we make will determine if and when we learn the lesson, because once our soul has agreed to take on the lesson, it has to be learned – whether now, or later.

Be aware of consequences

I think it’s realistic to say that all of us have made choices where we’ve disregarded what the repercussions would be – and paid a heavy price. However, we’re alive and in this journey now,  and, regardless of what we have done in the past, there are many things we can do from this point forward to manifest a better journey. We must make every attempt to become aware of the consequences that we will set up through our choices in the future. This is of vital importance, regardless of how we emotionally feel about a situation.

The power of attraction

In sexually charged situations, some of us disregard consequences because of the intensity we feel regarding another person. It also ties into our self worth, as often — and mistakenly — we give the power of how we feel about ourselves to a person we’re attracted to – and in that process, surrender our power to them, often with devastating consequences.

It doesn’t matter how strong the attraction is – or how electric it feels. Step back from the intensity of the situation, and assess it clearly. Don’t act based on emotions only, but look at the facts. I have seen very few situations in my entire life where there was simply no way to know how horrible a person would be – almost all of the time, the red flags are there, and/or the right information is available from a psychic, a friend, therapist, or through simply objectively observing the actions of the person in question. This way, negative and devastating consequences can be avoided and a more positive life is manifested.

I want what I want

When we want what we want, it’s easy to throw our ethics out the window simply because of our desires, and frankly, we don’t care about the potential repercussions. We must never give into this type of mindset. as it is like driving blindfold down the road – sooner or later, there’s going to be a crash. Step back from the viewpoint that getting your way is all that matters and look at the repercussions.

Often, the consequences for basing our choices on “I want what I want” create negative karma, as presumably, other people are going to get hurt in the process. We need to try and elevate our consciousness to the point where merely having our way is not the basis of our choices. It is always best if we can consider how the repercussions of our choices will impact everyone involved, and not just how it would affect us.  However, if it seems lofty and out of reach to consider others, then at least we need to look at how the consequences will affect us – as that is a step in the right direction.

I know it’s wrong, but I can control the situation

Often we know a situation is wrong to get involved in, but through our ego, arrogance and overconfidence, we think that we can control the situation. It would be like walking into a boxing ring thinking that you will always be able to control the outcome of the match. This type of mindset indulges our egos and sets us up for a fall. As stated in the Bible: “Pride goeth before destruction and a haughty spirit before a fall.”

This can tie into any type of situation such as our career, family, friends, and also, romantic relationships. Jennifer knew it was wrong to start dating Sam, a married man with three young children who told her he would not divorce his wife; but Jennifer thought that she could control the situation by not getting too emotionally involved.

However, Jennifer fell madly in love with Sam and lost control of her emotions. This led Jennifer to telling Sam’s wife about the affair, which was designed by Jennifer to try to manipulate and control the situation. Jennifer assumed that Sam’s wife would end the marriage knowing he was a cheater, and then, Jennifer would have Jerry all to herself.

However, it didn’t work, as Sam dumped Jennifer because he was furious that she told his wife about the affair. On top of that, Sam’s wife filed for divorce because of his affair with Jennifer, which tore Sam and his family apart permanently.

If Jennifer wouldn’t have let her ego and arrogance get in the way, she could have assessed the repercussions that could have occurred, and decided to not have the affair. That way, the consequences would have been completely different with a far better conclusion for all concerned.

The end justifies the means

Many of us think that IF we get what we want, HOW we got it becomes okay. Our eye is on the prize – and ultimately, getting that prize means that we won – and that makes us feel validated as things worked out the way we wanted.

This kind of rationalization is dangerous, because it completely denies taking into account the repercussions from these types of choices. As any of us can rationalize anything, we find ways to erroneously make our negative means ok, as opposed to looking dispassionately at the situation.

If the means to get what we want is unethical, dishonest, manipulative, and hurts others, the consequences for that choice will always be a disaster. Even if we “get what we want,” in the long run, we’ll have to pay the price for trying to “pull a fast one” on the universe.

It doesn’t matter whether people see how we’ve set things up or not, as infinite intelligence sees everything. Remember that the laws of the universe are impartial and objective, and apply to everyone in the same way. Even though we think we’re getting away with something because we got what we wanted, we never do.

We need to understand that repercussions don’t modify because we got what we wanted. If the means were negative, there is no exemption clause regarding the repercussions. The cause and effect principle of what we do comes back to us still applies. With that in mind, we need to be cognizant that we can’t ever fool the universe as it all comes out in the wash, sooner or later.

Feeling sorry for someone

Cindy really felt sorry for her alcoholic husband. After all, he had an abusive childhood and a lot of tragedies along the way, so he started drinking and slipped into alcoholism. Cindy believed that she couldn’t leave him because she felt sorry for him. “What would he do without me?” she questioned, as he was a lost soul.

However, she didn’t stop and look at the reality that she was enabling him, and allowing him to keep the drinking going by picking up the pieces for him. Since he didn’t have to grow and change, he didn’t. As we’ve all heard the old adage many times before, “The path to hell is paved with good intentions,” that was the path Cindy was on.

This went on for years, with her husband’s alcoholism only getting worse, until finally she decided to stop feeling sorry for him, and looked at the repercussions of her choices. She accurately assessed that by rescuing him, he was going downhill, and that it would continue – possibly even leading to his death.

Therefore, she decided to leave him, and at that point, her husband got into AA. As he quit drinking and healed his life, we see that this only happened after Cindy made the choice that was for the highest good. It is a great example of how any of us should not base our choices on merely feeling sorry for someone, as it clouds our judgment.

Easier to give in than to fight

Sometimes we feel so emotionally beaten down, that it’s easier to give in than to fight, yet when we do so, that is still a choice that we’re making. In those moments of weakness, we may feel temporarily relieved by giving in, but the consequences for not standing up for what is right can be devastating. Through fear, guilt, feeling undeserving, we just throw in the towel and surrender to what is truly not for our highest good. However, if we keep our focus on the fact that there will be consequences, we can find strength and stand up for what is right.

Therese was a woman who was going through some medical issues, and thankfully, she had insurance. Yet, some of her doctors were trying to claim that they billed her insurance and were denied payment, therefore, they demanded for her to pay many expensive bills. Totaling in the tens of thousands of dollars, Therese was tempted to just give in. After all, she was dealing with  some serious medical conditions and didn’t want the hassle.

However, she knew that what these doctors were doing was wrong, so she decided to challenge their claims. She found out that her insurance company had not been billed and never denied payment. The doctors tried to sidestep going through insurance because they felt they could get more money out of Therese since her insurance paid the doctors at a reduced rate. Through scare tactics, they thought Therese would just cave in and pay up.

By Therese standing up for what is right, she didn’t have to pay any of these bills and the doctors were forced to actually go through her insurance company. In any of our lives, we need to apply the same principles that Therese did. Whether it’s in a relationship, with family, our careers or in any situation, if we stand up for what is right, we’ll be okay in the end.

Naivety doesn’t give us a free pass

We never get a free pass regarding the consequences of our choices simply because we didn’t know any better, or couldn’t see it coming. The universe is impartial as it pertains to its laws, so it is our job to understand these laws and abide by them. Just as you wouldn’t think you could stop breathing and believe you would still stay alive, it is the same thing with how the universe operates. Our choices lead to consequences, even for those of us who are naive.

Observing the choices and repercussions in our lives and the lives of others is a very sobering reminder and wake-up call. We must be cognizant, alert, and aware regarding the choices we make at all times. When driving a car, you wouldn’t sometimes look at the road, while other times close your eyes, or if you wanted to do, gaze out the driver’s side window. We all know an accident would occur.

However, living life correctly, prosperously and joyously means being smart, not rigid. We don’t have to analyze every single moment and worry about what will happen to us from every breath we take. We need to always be aware of what our choices will lead to, ESPECIALLY the ones that are important in our lives because they impact on others.

We can’t have it both ways where we reduce our choices to the ones people make who could care less about repercussions only when it’s convenient to us. On the other hand, want to claim that were evolving and being spiritual by making “good” choices when that it is what we want to do.

Therefore, as we look clearly at our choices and the consequences that will occur and decide accordingly, we realize that in many ways, we are in the driver’s seat — and that we are not only responsible, but also, able to guide the path of our journey in many ways. With that comes the satisfaction that we do have the ability to manifest a better life – our efforts mean something and create positive outcomes!  We don’t have to look at this experience of being on earth as a crap shoot that doesn’t make sense or that we don’t grasp. Understating the profound and life determining relationship between our choices and the consequences that will absolutely and irrevocably occur, gives us that fundamental and timeless, eternal awareness. It is not meant to make us feel inspired and empowered to manifest the better future that is ours to have.

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When we haven’t yet learned a lesson, we keep wondering what’s wrong with us and why we can’t seem to learn what we’re supposed to. We’ve all been there: two steps forward – then two steps backward — and it creates the nagging feeling of reoccurring frustration. But it isn’t just a matter of hoping that we can somehow, someday gain control of the situation and learn what we’re supposed to; from a spiritual perspective, it is much deeper than that….

We come into this lifetime with a certain nature; a tendency to want and do certain things and on the surface, we may just think of these things as merely our personality likes/dislikes, preferences and a matter of our traits. However, these tendencies are quite spiritually profound, as they deeply tie into our karma and our dharma in this lifetime.

As we know, karma always deals with what we’ve done before and the repercussions (both good and bad) for our past choices. Dharma, on the other hand, has nothing to do with what we’ve done before, but rather, deals with what our soul has chosen (taken on for the first time) to learn in this lifetime for our spiritual development.

The reason our personality tendencies are so important, is because they set up the struggle that is so necessary to be able to learn our karmic and dharmic lessons. If there was no attraction, draw, desire or pull toward something, then there’s nothing to let go of, to work through or overcome. If we could just take it or leave it, what would it matter? There needs to be attachment within us to set the stage for these lessons.

Since these lessons are not learned quickly, the attraction and attachment to whatever the lesson is becomes necessary on a spiritual level. Engaging the situation then sets up the lesson to be learned.

Cigarettes are a perfect example: If you have a spiritual lesson involving smoking cigarettes, you would need to have a desire to smoke in order to be able to facilitate the lesson that you agreed to on a soul level. If you didn’t like the taste, or the smell, then why would you smoke? If you didn’t have a desire to smoke, there would be no struggle, therefore, no lesson.

Alcohol is another example. With family genetics where alcoholism exists, being born into that family provides the predisposition to alcoholism. That would be chosen on a spiritual level before incarnating which sets the stage to be an alcoholic.

Think of it this way: If you have a lesson to learn of humility, you would spiritually architect a personality that has the tendency to be arrogant and egotistical. That sets up the struggle to facilitate and eventually learn what we need to spiritually learn.

If your lesson was to gain self esteem, you would set up a personality with low self worth. You may go through feeling terrible about yourself, then try move forward, then slip backward again, as this movement indicates the struggle.

These, as well as other scenarios represent the many examples of what we all go through here on earth as part of our spiritual growth and learning our lessons; yet we hardly think of this as a spiritual process when we’re in the throes of emotions. We sometimes shriek in frustration, “Why do I keep going through this?”

However, these struggles absolutely occur for everyone and don’t represent that we’re failing, but that we just haven’t learned the lesson yet. It’s just like someone who’s learning a new piece of music on the piano; of course there’ll be mistakes as they’re trying to master the piece. 

In addition, we have to address the negativity within us, face it for what it is and heal those issues. Just being “positive” is not enough to learn the lesson as we must also understand the negative mechanisms within us and how they contribute to the various ways our struggles occur in the situations we experience.

Manifestations of the struggle  

 We just don’t know any better

While working through this process, we sometimes truly don’t know what our lesson is at the time or what is going on in our lives from that perspective. We’re unclear as to what we’re supposed to be learning from a given situation and don’t have a clue as to why things are unfolding in a certain way. We have all thrown our hands up in the air and asked, “Why is this happening to me?”

It’s very much like watching a movie we’ve never seen before: we’re not sure of where the plotline is taking us; there are surprises as it unfolds, and we don’t know what the ending will be. 

However, through time, just as in a movie where the story eventually becomes clear and reaches its conclusion, we will see our lesson unfold and eventually come into a state of clarity regarding the situation.

Things are going on in a person’s life and these things indicate a pattern, which shows us the lesson that needs to be learned. Whether the pattern is in relationships, difficulties in a job, or in any situation, certain issues keep coming up again and again. We need to recognize just what the pattern is saying to us, so we can identify the lesson and then move forward to learn it.

Even though Miguel worked for himself, he kept attracting clients who wouldn’t pay him for his services. He always completed the work excellently, but kept finding himself in situations where he wasn’t being paid. He couldn’t understand why this kept happening till he realized that he had always felt unworthy of receiving money – especially for his services. So he kept attracting these types of clients, till he realized what the pattern was and he learned what he was supposed to.

Like Miguel, it is of crucial important that we are committed to finding the spiritual truth of a given situation and through our diligence to ask “why,” we eventually find out. The truth we are seeking is also seeking us.

However, once we begin to grasp the spiritual truth and begin to “know,” it’s easy to not want to deal with our lessons with a real commitment to growth, but instead, just gloss over the situation and only do minor, insignificant changes. It’s like the old adage of throwing a cup of water in the ocean.

Thinking we can do just a vanity change

Often times, instead of us not knowing what’s going on, we do know what the lesson is and what we’re supposed to be doing to learn it. However, the personality doesn’t want to really emotionally change the situation and truly learn the lesson.

When people don’t really want to substantively change a situation, they make minuscule changes that don’t address the heart of the matter. It would be like thinking of modifying your hair style every once in a while as a profound and meaningful long term spiritual change.

What we need to is to make a legitimate commitment to change and take on the issue with diligence, tenacity and consistency. The truth of the matter is the sooner we make a real commitment to change, the more quickly we can pursue the things that really fulfill us and make us happy.  

The comfort of old patterns

When we’ve gotten use to old, unhealthy behavioral patterns, we receive a sense of comfort and familiarity which gives us a negative payoff. It is just like drinking too much. We know we shouldn’t do it but since we get something out of it like numbing our emotional pain, we continue to stay with it. How about overeating, where we use food as a source of comfort, all the while knowing that excessively indulging in food is not good for us?

There are those who stay in negative and destructive relationships instead of working toward learning the lesson, so they wallow in the “comfort” and payoff of the old patterns. It becomes like hangin’ out with an old friend – the kind that got you into trouble by keeping you out all night long so that you didn’t get to work the next day.

These old patterns are tricky, because what we may feel comfortable with is not always good for us. Even if these tendencies that created the “old patterns” were originally there to facilitate the lesson, we must work toward legitimate growth through breaking those old, unhealthy patterns and not have them be an end in and of themselves.

Stubborn attachment to the past

Sometimes when we’re in the process of learning a lesson, we just don’t stay in old patterns, but rigidly attach to them with a stubborn fervor and resistance that is defiant. This is the stage where our defense mechanisms put up a brick wall which is designed to keep out anything that challenges the perpetuation of these old, negative patterns.

Again, the lesson is to be learned, not wallowed in, yet all of us have struggled with whatever we’re here to learn. Think of it like concrete: when it is first poured; it is mushy and you can splash in it. (That is initially like having a tendency toward something in the beginning, which at the time, sets up the lesson. You’re not yet rigidly attached to the situation.) With concrete, as it sits there for a while, it hardens to a point where there is no flexibility in it at all and becomes as hard as a rock.

It is the same with being stubbornly attached to the past: Those old feelings may have been initially necessary to bring about the lesson, but holding on to them makes them become like rock hard concrete. That makes it more difficult for us to learn the lesson as there is more rigidity within us that we have to break through.

As they say, the bigger they are, the harder they fall; meaning, the more resistant you are to learning the lesson, the more challenging it is to work through the attachment to the past and rise above the old patterns.

Survival

We have all experienced passages in life where we literally feel that our survival depends on us getting or having something, yet what we “must have” is not good for us. Oftentimes, this sense of survival is there to help set up our lessons; but not something that we should cling to for dear life. When what we want is so strong that we feel our lives depend on it, the struggle is clearly present.

This can be the most difficult energy to work through in learning a lesson because we literally feel as if we’re in a life or death struggle. It’s like someone has pulled a gun on us and we’ll do whatever it takes to stay alive; but it is merely our emotionally driven situation that we’re reacting to.

These situations can manifest in any number of ways: destructive romantic relationships, negative habits such as alcohol, drugs and overeating, exercising inappropriate power games over others, lying, manipulating, and cheating on our spouses, etc. When we feel our survival depends on engaging in these types of things, we cling to these situations obsessively – yet, we’re supposed to be working through and rising above these habits to learn the lesson.

We especially see this with people who attach themselves to a destructive romantic relationship so intensely that even the notion of walking away from it feels as if they’re being suffocated to death. It is literally experienced in the same way one would feel if someone lunged at them with a knife.

At this point, it is hard for the person to see things clearly, as they’re reacting to the kill-or-be-killed adrenaline rush we used to feel in the jungles when our lives were threatened regularly. Except now, that same feeling comes to us when our attachment to a relationship is threatened, or to anything, for that matter that we feel that way about!

Yet, we can’t just try and suppress or “snuff out” these survival mechanisms. We need to clearly work on replacing the old negative survival mechanism with new positive ones. Alcohol, again, is a perfect example. We drink to relax, deal with life, cope with and get through the day. That needs to be replaced with a new, healthy sense of self, which is being clean and sober, living in physical health, being responsible for our actions, being present to make right decisions and not risking other people’s safety through driving while intoxicated.

The dramatic aspect of our survival process forces us to call attention to the nature of the lesson, (whether we know that there are underlying and fundamental spiritual reasons for these mechanisms or not). It brings the situation to a dramatic crisis that is too intense to be ignored – and that is necessary for us to not avoid the lesson, as it absolutely needs to be learned.

The lesson is always learned

If we have negative karma to work off and karmic lessons to learn, it has to be done. It is not as if karma just goes away. It must be taken care of.

It is the same thing with dharma. Even though a dhramic lesson is happening in our journey for the very first time once we take it on, our soul needs that lesson for its spiritual growth. In the same way you have to pass the 6^th grade before you can get to the 7^th grade, we must learn our dharmic lessons as well.

You shouldn’t feel bad about yourself because you’re struggling, as that’s a part of the process of growth. It’s normal to vacillate back and forth as we’re trying to learn the lesson and does not mean that we are a failure. It’s easy to look at everyone else and say, “They have their lives together and I don’t,” but that is not true. All of us are engaged in the struggle of learning our lesson, regardless of how it appears on the surface.

However, in reality, we will “get it.” It doesn’t matter how hard the lesson feels to us or how much difficulty we’ve had struggling to learn it. When you’ve been frustrated for such a long time, you might think, “That sounds too pie in the sky! People fail all the time and I’m one of them!” However, that is from an emotional point of view. Just like we label situations in life as good or bad (when our feelings may or may not represent the spiritual truth), it is the same thing with our lessons. Sooner or later, they are always learned.

As we look at our karmic and dharmic lessons, it is important to feel invigorated by what we can do now. With each step out of the denial of our negativity and into the awareness of what we need to do to let go of the past attachments, release and replace old unhealthy patterns with new and positive ones, we ultimately heal our lives and learn the lesson. With that, we move toward completion. It is with that completion of learning our lesson that gives us a real, truthful and great sense of satisfaction; that we’ve advanced and have truly moved forward from a spiritual perspective: irrevocably and eternally.

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Why would you want to talk with someone’s angels?  Can that even be done?  Does it serve a higher spiritual purpose?  If so, what messages might you want communicated to a person by their angels?

First, as unusual as it may sound, we are truly able to talk with someone’s angels.  There is certainly a time and a place where doing so does indeed serve a spiritual purpose, and the reason for this is when that person is not living up to their potential; that they’re coming from a place of fear, arrogance, defensiveness and ego.

Sometimes we reach a point in a situation with someone where we are literally at our wit’s end.  We have struggled, suffered and tried everything we possibly can to reach them — but nothing works.  In frustration and despair, we don’t know where to turn to seek a resolution.  That is usually a very good time to have a talk with their angels.

Even though we may reach out to someone’s angels because we’re extremely frustrated, we should never try to make that person do something just because we want them to. That invalidates their free will and freedom of choice, which are essential for everyone’s spiritual evolution and growth. 

This isn’t about control.  By having an agenda, we could possibly get in the way of them learning the lessons they need to learn if we force them to act against their free will.  Even though we’re upset, it’s never a question of whether are motives are coming from what we perceive as the right place or even as being “positive.” 

No matter how difficult the situation is and regardless of what we subjectively want, it is still wrong when we interfere with anyone’s free will.  It’s like the old phrase, “The pathway to hell is paved with good intentions.”

However, when we talk with someone’s angels and call upon their help, they are able to reach the person’s higher self – their spiritual self.  An angel (because of their high level of evolution) can only act for someone’s greatest good.  So even if we tried to interfere with the process, a person’s angels will not let us control the situation.  This is such a good thing, as then, we are not in a position to create negative karma through soliciting the help of someone’s angels.

This is where talking with a person’s angels differs from spells and/or witchcraft, where you’re trying to bend someone’s free will and get them to act in the way you want.

ONE IMPORTANT POINT BEFORE WE GO ANY FURTHER:  Keep in mind that everyone has free will, and the angels can only help the person in question to the degree that they’re open to being helped.  It is not as if the angels can dictate whatever it is for the person to do and then, it will be done.  If the person refuses to listen to their angels, then they’re not open at this time to dealing with that part of their lesson; however, the angels will still work toward bringing about the highest good out of the situation to the degree that it can be done.

Write a letter

 One of the best ways to talk with someone’s angels is to literally write their angels a letter.  You can ask for what you feel is “right,” but again, the angels will only carry out whatever is for the highest spiritual good.  In that letter, you can call upon the person’s angels to heal the situation, bring peace between the two of you, and to provide guidance toward the spiritually correct resolution which is for the highest good of all concerned. 

This is exactly what Sonya finally decided to do after her husband Peter had been ruining their family for several years through his continuous angry outbursts and drinking.  Ready to leave the marriage, Sonya had no idea what to do, until a spiritual master suggested that she write her husband Peter’s angels a letter and ask for help. 

Feeling as if she had no options left, Sonya gave it a try when she wrote:  I now call upon the angels of my husband Peter, asking them to reach him to help heal his anger, negative emotions, drinking and guide him toward a path of healing, love and light.  I ask Peter’s angels to communicate with him all that he needs to do for his well-being, our family’s well-being and provide him with the strength he needs to grow.  I love him dearly and release this situation to its highest good.  I thank Peter’s angels for their help and divine intervention.  With gratitude, Sonya.  

After she wrote this letter, Sonya immediately noticed a change.  Peter was less prone to outbursts, and he was showing receptiveness to getting into AA and becoming sober.  Within weeks, Peter did indeed go to AA and completely stopped drinking.  With the counseling Peter received, he learned to deal with his anger, understanding that it originated from the abuse by his father when Peter was just a small child. 

Now, it is five years later and Peter has remained sober.  As a completely changed man, it is a tremendous blessing that the family remained intact and is happy today.  This all started with the heartfelt letter Sonya wrote to the angels of her then wounded husband, Peter.  As Sonya did, by writing a letter to someone’s angels, you’re also using the power of the written word, which is a wondrous spiritual and metaphysical tool.

Talk to their angels

Besides writing a letter, you can talk with someone’s angels – and yes, they will hear you!  Jerry, a client of mine, had a coworker named Lilly, who was vicious to him from the day she came into the workplace.  Mean, arrogant and demeaning, she repeatedly tried her best to get Jerry fired, yet he had absolutely no idea why.

One day, Lilly brought her twelve year old daughter named Meghan into work for a few hours, which Jerry though nothing of.  In fact, he only briefly said hello to Meghan and kept on working. 

Weeks later, Jerry received a call from the local police, who claimed that they were investigating an allegation that he had inappropriately touched Meghan that day in the workplace.  He almost went into a complete state of shock, as he had no idea how this could even be happening, as the only thing he truly did was briefly say hello to Meghan.  Because of this investigation, Jerry was forced to temporarily leave his job, which of course is what Lilly had wanted all along.

So as the weeks went on, the investigation kept building and it looked as if Jerry might have to actually face felony criminal charges.  Feeling terrified at the thought of becoming an imprisoned sexual offender, he reached out to me about the situation. 

I immediately felt that he needed to talk to the angels of this young girl Meghan and ask for their help.  To me, it really felt like the only thing he could do, as I didn’t sense that it would be a good idea for this to go to trial, even though he was innocent.    Jerry started communicating with Meghan’s angels daily by saying: I now ask Meghan’s angels to talk with her and get her to tell the police the total truth and to completely exonerate me of any wrongdoing regarding this situation.  Thank you, Jerry.  

Weeks went on and Jerry didn’t hear anything until one day, the police told him he needed to come in to speak with them.  With his heart racing faster than he had ever remembered, he sat down with the detectives.  They told him that Meghan had recanted her story and admitted that she made the whole thing up. 

In that moment, time literally stood still for Jerry — as now, this nightmare was officially over after three and a half long months.  Even though the police, Meghan or her mother Lilly never apologized for what they put him through and he never got his job back because of the controversy, Jerry was legally able to put this nightmare behind him. Finally feeling like a free man, Jerry thanked Meghan’s angels for assisting in getting her to tell the truth regarding this potentially disastrous situation which could have ruined the rest of his entire life.  Here, Jerry used the power of the spoken word and it certainly aided him. 

Ask the angels through prayer and meditation

If we prefer, we can reach someone’s angels through prayer and meditation.   We can send out a prayer to spiritually connect with a person’s angels directly. 

Here is an example of a prayer used by Susan who needed to make contact with her father’s angels because of her father’s refusal to speak with her due to a misunderstanding: I now pray that I am able to communicate directly with my father’s angels and reach them!  I ask God to connect my father’s angels with me so I can request their help in reconnecting my father and I.  Within a matter of days, Susan and her father were indeed reunited and the whole misunderstanding was quickly cleared up.

A prayer can help to spiritually bridge the gap between you (in the physical world) and the angels (who are on a higher plane of existence).  Through prayer, you can transcend time and space to make a direct connection with the angels of the person in question, just as Susan did.

Also, we can go into a meditative state and achieve the same thing by reaching our inner spirituality.  We may focus on the angels of the person in question and open our mind to connect with their angels.  In meditation, we will also raise the energy as we are guided toward the angels in order to achieve the connection we need.  From there, we can make the spiritual connection to be able to utilize their divine assistance through stating our requests to them to aid in the situation at hand.

Their angels are listening

Whether we write a letter, speak to them, pray or meditate, we are absolutely able to reach the angels of a person.  This is an open door which we may have not known of, or never thought to take advantage of.  However, when we do, we are able to bridge the gap between a person’s fears, ego, defensiveness and arrogance to their higher spiritual self. 

Remember, it is at the spiritual level that all of us act in a loving and kind way.  Our problems, negative karma and bad energy originate from our lower selves, which is where many people are centered.

As we reach a person’s angels, they can only act on our requests from the highest spiritual perspective; meaning, they always take the high road.  Why?  Again, because the angels are only capable of dealing with someone from the perspective of the absolute highest good and nothing less — ever!

The angels of a person have the ability to reach them in a way that no one or anything else can; visualizations, affirmations, witchcraft, spells and our own emotional desires all fall short in this regard.  But when we turn over the burden to the angels of that person, the necessary divine intervention that is required for any situation to be healed comes into play.  

Remember that when you state your request to someone’s angels (which is a wondrous spiritual petition), make sure to always reach out with simplicity, clarity and sincerity.  That is a huge part of making this connection as you need to do your part.  From there, the angels will take into consideration your request and try to help the other person, if it is for the highest good of everyone involved.

It is not as if any of us can just request something (no matter how intensely we feel) and the person’s angels will attempt to carry it out.  Your petition must be for the greatest good of everyone involved and when it isn’t, the angels won’t act on your request.  Also, if part of your request is spiritually valid, while another part isn’t, the angels will only attempt to bring about what is for the highest good. 

Never forget that no matter how much pain, heartache, confusion, frustration and hurt have occurred, a person’s angels are always there to try and assist in dealing with the situation at hand.  However it evolves from there, when a person’s angels are involved, what manifests will be right for all concerned!  Through calling upon the supreme Godlike power of someone’s angels, which clearly invokes the highest spiritual energy, only the absolute greatest spiritual good can come into being from your sincere and heartfelt request.

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As many of you have received messages in readings with me from your loved ones now in spirit, it clearly demonstrates that yes, they still do exist once they’ve permanently left their physical bodies.  What happens is that the personality survives death and continues on and we see that represented by “Mom” coming through in a reading, possessing many of the exact same qualities she had when she was once here as “Mom.”  It almost feels as if the only difference is that “Mom” isn’t here in a physical body; that’s all — but her energy and essence are how you’ve always known her to be.

Yes, we know that our loved ones are “there for us” and we do experience their presence in our earthly lives at various times and in many ways.  Even though we know that death is not a final ending, but rather, a transition where we do carry on (minus our physical bodies), it still begs several questions:  Where do we go, then?  What do we do?  Is it the same for all of us?

What happens after death is clearly not the same for all of us.  We often hear that everyone sees a tunnel of white light and as they go through it, they see their entire life flash in front of them while meeting with the most overwhelming feeling of unconditional love and peace that could be imagined.  However, that does not happen to everyone.

What does occur for everyone is that at the time of death, the etheric body (the life force) begins its process of disconnecting from the physical body, which takes about three days to complete.   In addition, we always attend our own funeral.  Yes, the one in the casket is standing there in the same room with the people who are mourning. 

Depending on our level of awareness is what dictates what we experience after we die.  There is no absolute reality once we’ve permanently left out physical bodies and what we experience and meet with is largely based on what we expect to happen – and there are countless variables within such expectations.

Those who are religious

Religious people see expectations of Jesus, heaven, hell, purgatory, and/or any form of God they worship, etc.  If one believes that they will meet with Jesus when dying, then that will be their experience.   

Upon passing, Mable, a devout, born again Christian, experienced a bearded Jesus sitting on a throne and looking down at her from high above.  In the distance, she could hear trumpets playing and the voices of angels singing.  Intermingling with the clouds, she saw angels flying who had white wings, while Jesus’ disciples took her by the hand and escorted her through the pearly gates into heaven.

Some will experience purgatory, where they’re not in heaven or hell, but in a murky place of penance so that they can eventually graduate into heaven.  John always believed that he hadn’t been good enough in his lifetime to make it into heaven when he would die, so he believed he would have to do penance in purgatory.  So when he left this world, he entered a place that was dimly lit where he witnessed multitudes on their knees with their heads bowed silently, praying continuously.  John joined in by taking his place beside them and began praying with his head bowed in silence in the same way.

If someone believes they’ll meet with the devil and be banished to hell, that will be their experience.  Brady had been a wild biker who had assaulted people many times throughout his life.  In fact, one time, he beat someone so badly that the person died, even though Brady was never brought to justice for the murder.  Brady would brag to his friends that he had a date with the devil and that when it was his time, he was going straight to hell with all the other sinners.  As he took another swig of Jack Daniels, he used to say that he was going to listen to loud rock n roll and burn in hell’s fire when it was his time to go.

So when he died in a motorcycle accident, he went into a frightening place where he experienced himself being continuously on fire.  He met with the devil and was with the worst of the worst: murderers, child molesters, and rapists who were all moaning and screaming.  Everyone was being tortured by demons, and Brady heard loud rock n roll music continually playing.

Our family and loved ones

Many of you have shared stories with me regarding a loved one who was very ill and near the end of their life, pointing around the room and speaking to people who have already died as if they’re right there with them.  “I see my husband over there,” Aunt Julie says out loud.  “He’s been dead for 30 years, but he’s talking to me right now,” she further asserts.  Doctors may write this off to the fact that Aunt Julie is on a lot of meds and maybe she just isn’t thinking straight.

However, the real reason Aunt Julie says these things are because they were indeed happening.  Loved ones in spirit often reveal themselves to the one who is ill and near the end of their earthy journey in order to make a connection with them and to help prepare them to leave their physical body and peacefully move into spirit.

Generally, family and loved ones are waiting on the other side for us.  When one has died, family and loved ones often do greet them with open arms, and help them to get acclimated to their new life in spirit.  When Aunt Julie finally passed on, it was her husband who was standing right there and greeted her.  Since she had deeply missed him because had been dead for 30 years, her death was a reunion with the only man she ever loved.

As it was for Julie, being greeted in death by those we love can be of great comfort, because we meet with familiar and friendly faces while feeling the reassurance and security that we are ok.  For many, there is the sense that meeting with those family and loved ones is their homecoming reunion.

Virtual reality

Reconnecting with our family and loved ones is an actual reality that many of us experience when we pass on.  However, there are those who decide to create their own virtual reality once they’ve died, where their fantasy literally becomes reality.  Both Mike and Julianna were on their second marriages when they wed in 1983.  Julianna ended up passing in 2002, several years before Mike did in 2005.  When she died, she reconnected with her first husband Paul who she had a wonderful marriage with.  He had been in spirit since 1978. 

Regarding Julianna’s marriage to Mike, it was quite unpleasant for her, even though Mike was just crazy about her.  So when Mike passed, Julianna was not truly there to meet him, but because Mike believed she would be, he created the fantasy that he was reunited with Julianna.  In fact, he lived out that fantasy as being real, where he created a virtual Juilianna who he saw and believed was actually her.  In that virtual reality created by Mike, he and Julianna were together again and blissfully happy. 

You might wonder, “So when does the fantasy actually end?”  That is entirely up to the individual who has created their virtual reality, and it concludes whenever they decide to let it go.  That could be now, or anytime later down the road.

Illness

In a medium reading, spirits often lead off with identifying the illness they died from.  Once in spirit, some shed their illness quickly, while others hold onto it and may not let go. 

Our spiritual teachers may put us to sleep indefinitely on the other side for an extended period of time to rejuvenate and recuperate, especially after a long illness and/or a difficult lifetime.  This helps us to permanently release from the egregious suffering we experienced on earth.  Since time doesn’t exist there in the way it does here on earth, the length of sleep isn’t thought of as hours, days, weeks, etc., but can be as long as is needed to help one release attachment to the illness and suffering of their past.

Theresa was a woman who had battled breast cancer for 10 long hard years and when she finally left this world at the age of 70, she went into an extended sleep cycle.  This rest helped her to disconnect from her past suffering, and prepare for her journey in the spirit.  Her spiritual teachers put her to sleep, watched over her, and were there for Theresa when she needed to awake.

What age are we there?

I’ve heard one psychic claim that everyone becomes 30 on the other side.  Clearly, that is not true.  However we project ourselves as spirits depends on one’s self identification and view of themselves.  It is often based on when we felt the most happy or comfortable in our life back on earth.  If we felt in our prime at age 45, we may decide to see ourselves that way, and therefore, appear and project just like we did at the age of 45, regardless of what age we were when we passed on.

That is how Joanne came through in a reading I gave to her daughter.  Even though Joanne passed at age 82, when she began offering messages to her daughter in our readings, she projected herself to me as a fairly young looking woman, about 45 years old.  She didn’t have grey hair, wasn’t feeble as she was when she died, and wore a flight attendant uniform.  What startled her daughter was that her mother was indeed a flight attendant around the age of 45 and those were the happiest times of her life.  So it made perfect sense that her mother would come through in that way.

Sometimes one of our physical attributes influences how we project ourselves after death  A woman’s grandmother had the most strikingly beautiful red hair on earth, and when she died, she came through in spiritual messages with the same lovely red hair again.

On earth, our age is thought of as being totally written in stone, as based on the linear physical calendar.  However, in spirit, we can choose our age and how we project based on our self identification and view.

Life review/Judgment Day

Most religions teach the concept of a life review or a day of judgment.  Like other religious beliefs, a life review and/or judgment day is something we may experience if we expect to.  If we believe we’ll die and meet with a huge judgment day where everyone is lined up as far as the eye could see with God pointing his finger and sentencing us to purgatory or eternal hell, that can be our experience.

However, a real life review/judgment day doesn’t happen until we are aware that we are in the spirit, as opposed to occurring when we’ve just died.  It is us who decide, along with our spirit guides, when we’re ready.  With a life review, we often go through the repercussions of all of our past thoughts, words, and actions, to see what negative karma we’ve burned off, additional negative karma we’ve created, good karma we’ve manifested and our overall spiritual report card. 

 This is largely based on the impact we have had on others through what we’ve thought, said and done and to what degree we have or haven’t fulfilled our spiritual contracts and missions.  In a real life review, our spiritual teachers will help us to look at things clearly and objectively, from a spiritual perspective.  This is designed to set the stage for our next incarnation and its goals.

Children who have died

When children die, they are well protected and watched our for, as they go to a special place of love and light where they are nurtured, taken care of and guided by spiritual masters and loved ones there.  It is common that through time, children in spirit progress and develop.  That may not occur in strict linear time (like a birthday every twelve months), but there is a definite progression and evolution.  Whenever I’ve channeled a child in a reading who has passed years or decades ago, they come through as older.  They often speak of what they’ve done, as in going to school, getting a degree, and having a purpose where they do work on the other side.

One of my clients had a grandson who passed when he was 13 years old.  When I started picking him up in our readings, it was almost 10 years later and he first came through as a young man about 20 years old.  He indicated that he has was in school studying science. To my client’s surprise, he stated in one of our readings that he had forgiven those who had cause his death, as it was based on a fire that was started through drug induced carelessness.  He was at peace, came through with joy, and had moved on with his life without regret.

What about sudden and unexpected death? 

Sometimes those who have died suddenly and unexpectedly have no idea what has just happened – and they don’t even know they’re dead.   They may perceive that they’re in a bad dream that they don’t know how to get out of or may not have any idea as to what is going on.  This often happens to victims of car crashes, plane crashes and accidents of any kind.  As the death is so sudden and out of the blue, they are often not prepared.  It often takes them being told that they have lost their physical life, to help them get them out of the haze of confusion they’re in and face what has occurred.  This way, they are hopefully able to move forward. 

I know a spiritual master who recalled being taken to a scene of a plane crash while asleep, to inform many there that they had just died.  It was a scene of chaos and confusion, but she was utilized by spirit to deliver these very important messages to those who had just lost their lives to assist in their transition into spirit.

Others who pass this way may be more prepared for transition both subconsciously and/or consciously, and therefore, they can adjust easier.  Some have a sense that they are going to be leaving this world, and in one way or another, they just know.  I had a young client in her early 20’s who was engaged to a man named Peter who told her months before his sudden accidental death, that he knew he was going to be leaving this world soon.

Those who are murdered

Being murdered can be a terribly difficult way to go, as it can be experienced as an unnatural and horrific way to leave this world.  There are those who once murdered, refuse to accept that this has actually happened to them, so they create whatever alternate reality they wish.  It can be as if they’re still in the physical world, driving their car and going to work — until they eventually accept what has occurred.

Some who know clearly that they were murdered feel a tremendous sense of rage and the desire for revenge, and are committed to coming back here and getting even with whoever did this to them.  Even though it is presumed that their spiritual teachers would counsel them to let go of such feelings and find forgiveness, they may or may not be willing to do so.  These grudges can be held onto for as long as one wants to and may actually motivate revengeful actions in future lifetimes.

Many who have died through murder carry a tremendous emotional fear with them in spirit, which they can try and work through over there, but often, it may take reincarnating here (potentially many times) to be able to heal such deep seated terror.   I knew someone who carried an unexplained fear of being murdered his entire life.  There was no plausible reason as to why he would feel this way: no one he knew had ever been murdered, and he had never been physically assaulted or threatened himself.  So he couldn’t figure out why he felt this way. 

When I did a reading for him, it came through from spirit that he had been beheaded in a former lifetime centuries ago, because he was a social outcast at the time.   In his current incarnation, this fear was present so he could spiritually get past it and move beyond this old energy.  Through the awareness that came through in the reading, he was able to understand the reason for his fear and forever put it behind him.

Being the victim of murder puts us in a difficult position of trying to deal with what has happened to us to come terms with that experience in order to move forward.  However, with those who commit heinous crimes such as murdering someone to even mass murderers, the negative karma they’ve created is so incalculable and will take an amount of time to resolve that we as humans can’t even grasp.  Their journey is about atonement versus about learning to cope with what has been done to them, as victims have to do.  This atonement must be completed to include every person who their actions have forever victimized.

What about mass murderers?

Often, those who have committed atrocities against humanity such as dictators and war criminal are restricted in spirit once they’ve died by the higher forces there.  After they’ve passed, they may be isolated and not have access to many others, almost as if they’re in prison.  In spirit, the lords of karma will review how this entity has spiritually evolved who had formerly committed such heinous acts.  This is to determine if it is yet time for them to be allowed back into the physical world, and if so, what portion of their karmic debt that they would bring into the next earthly lifetime.

Eventually, they will have to reincarnate back into the earth plane as we all do.  In their next incarnation, they’ll have the opportunity to begin working off the negative karma they’ve created prior, which could take an uncountable amount of lifetimes to resolve.  When they come back is similar to when someone incarcerated here on earth comes up for a probation hearing from time to time to see if he or she is ready to be released back into society.

Some who commit crimes against humanity get caught in darkness, because they are not at a vibrational state of consciousness to resonate with or be in a place of light and love.  This is based on their consciousness, level of understanding and what they’ve done.  They could expect to go to hell; therefore, they may, or stay earthbound, as they don’t want to move into the spirit world because of the fear of repercussion. 

Suicides

Those who have taken their own life have a very hard time spiritually moving forward, as they often get stuck.  As I’ve channeled many a spirit who has taken their own life, I would describe their reality as not being here (on earth) and also, not being there (in the spirit world).  It’s as if they’re nowhere.  Because of the disconnection they’ve felt, they get stuck in-between worlds. 

I had a client whose brother Sam committed suicide by taking drugs in order to kill himself while wandering through a New York alleyway.  When Sam came through in our readings, I had no idea how he had died, but the first thing I saw was a man drifting around a New York alleyway.  This was 15 years later yet Sam was still there.  He hadn’t progressed at all, because he, like many suicides, simply get stuck.  He was just as lost as he was 15 years prior, and of course, I tried to encourage him to move forward with his journey.

Eventually, those who’ve committed suicide might progress to some degree, but they have a hard time experiencing paradise or joy.  This is not because anyone is preventing them from doing so, but because of the level of consciousness they vibrate to.  Of course, they eventually continue their reincarnation cycle again, and as the Buddhists teach, for every suicide, there are seven lifetimes of atonement one must pay.  Never forget that praying for these spirits does offer them some light when they are ready to see it, which can only help them move forward.

Earthbound spirits

Earth bound spirits are those who for one reason or another, resist moving forward spiritually, because they’re still quite attached to their former earthly existence.  A perfect example of this is someone who was an alcoholic and is still quite attached to the experience of drinking.  In spirit, they may hang around bars on earth to suck and feed off the energy of those who are drinking.  These earthbound spirits attach to that alcohol experience to feel the vicarious thrill of drinking which continues to feed the addiction that they refuse to let go of. 

Some earth bound spirits are just stuck and stubborn.  A man I knew named Joey lived in the house his grandfather once built.  Once Joey’s grandfather passed on, he came back into the house and just stayed there as an earthbound spirit for many years.  Sometimes, granddad even materialized where Joey and his wife would see him.

Instead of moving on into the spirit world, grandpa stayed in this house because it was a place he was comfortable in when he was in the physical world and now that he was dead, he just continued to hang around.  Joey told him, “Grandpa, you don’t belong here anymore so you need to move on.  Go into the light where you belong.”  However, his grandfather refused to listen and just continued to hang around the house.

And just like people in the physical world often live in the past, Joey’s grandfather was doing the same thing once he died.  Regarding time, there is no limit as to how long one would stay earth bound as it can go on indefinitely until they’re ready and willing to move forward with their spiritual journey.

Do spirits help their loved ones here on earth or act as guides?

Yes, they often do.  As many of you can attest to through having readings with me, your loved ones are actively involved in assisting and guiding you from the spirit world.  Messages come through and the support is clearly there, as revealed in so many ways and times.  Guidance and protection for us is offered and it’s our job to receive such help and work with it, as it is truly a Godsend in our lives.

This can be motivated simply by the unconditional love they feel for us, and is demonstrated in the same way someone you love would help you out if they were here on earth.  Also, it can be spiritually motivated, as our loved ones on the other side can see that their support not only helps us to evolve, but helps them to spiritually grow as well.  Why?  Because when both parties benefit, it is truly a win-win situation.

Sometimes it is actually a matter of atonement, as our loved ones feel that they didn’t treat us right and may have even abused us on earth.  If they feel that they created negative karma with us, sometimes they feel compelled to work off bad karma through their efforts to help us in our earthly journey.  I have said to many clients that their loved ones will help them more from the spirit world then they ever would have done while they were here on earth.

Christy was a woman whose father Mack had sexually abused her and treated her badly in other ways, so when he passed in 1990, she was ambivalent about her feelings.  Then, in 2000, during a reading with me, her father came through with a tremendous sense of regret, grief and apology.  He didn’t defend his former actions, but rather, begged for forgiveness.  He promised to make it up to her by being committed to helping his daughter to manifest her dreams.  Christy didn’t hate him, however, she wasn’t sure if she could truly forgive him either, but she agreed to try.

In the years that followed, Mack came through with many startlingly accurate messages in our readings.  In one, he said to his daughter, “Don’t drive on a certain bridge to work tomorrow.”  The next day, a portion of the bridge collapsed at the time she would have been driving on it.  Christy was willing to heed the warning from her dad and simply stayed off the bridge, which may have saved her life.

Months later, Mack told his daughter, “Dump your boyfriend Jerry, as he’s married.  If you dump him now, you’ll meet the man you’re supposed to marry.”  Christy was stunned, but instead of reacting defensively, she looked up this information about Jerry to indeed see if it was true, as marriage is a matter of public record.  To her surprise, the found out that the man she thought was solely hers was indeed a married man.  Of course, she ended things with Jerry immediately, and within a year, she met the man she was supposed to be with.  They are happily married today.

It is more common than you may think for our family and loved ones on the other side to help us as a way of atoning for the hurt they caused us or the lack of support they provided while they were here on earth with us.  Regardless of whether the reasons are based on atonement, spiritual growth and/or unconditional love, it is of great help and reassurance for us to know that guidance, protection, messages, comfort and commitment to our dreams is ever present from our loved ones on the other side.

How long do we stay on the other side before we reincarnate?

There is no strict or absolute time frame between physical lifetimes and it completely varies situation by situation.  It is highly unlikely for one to reincarnate within years, or even a few decades.  There are several reasons why:  First, we must reincarnate with those we have karma and lessons that need to be worked out with.  Therefore, everyone involved would need to be on the other side where they can decide (along with the lords of karma) what the lessons, goals, plans and karma will be in a coming incarnation. 

Second, the circumstances in the physical plane must be able to facilitate whatever the lessons are and that is not easy to come by, as the earth plane changes so continuously and rapidly.  For example, if the karma and lessons for a group tied into the circumstances of a world war, the reincarnation could not occur if the world war was not going to be occurring.  In many instances, it can take multiple decades, to hundreds or even thousands of years before a new incarnation happens. 

Thirdly, it takes time for any of us to be internally ready to come back on earth, as the memories of suffering from our prior incarnation may still be with us and not yet sufficiently released from our consciousness.  If we incarnate again too soon, we are more likely to bring residues from our past lives back with us as fears, paranoias, and even obsessions. 

This process of letting go needs to happen so that we can come back to earth in such a way that we are ready and willing to accept the challenges ahead of us.  The time it takes for us to become prepared for the next incarnation between lifetimes is like an athlete who just had a long, grueling season and needs rest to be ready for the next season. 

The journey continues on…

After death, we know that the personality survives and continues on.  However, throughout time, that personality eventually erodes and fades away permanently.  This occurs as we get closer to our next earthly incarnation. 

Before we reenter the earth plane in our next physical lifetime, a new personality must be constructed which will be based on the coming lessons and karma that will occur in the next incarnation.  The new personality facilitates, as always, the endless and ever continuing journey of life on earth – one that unfolds forever…. And then, once again, after we pass on, we experience life after death.

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