Voice of the Spirit

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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I now make the right choices that are for my highest good!

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

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

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

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

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

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

1-Acknowledge

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

2-Release

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

And: 

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

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

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

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

3-Forgive

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

4-Replace

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

5-Laugh

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I am free of the pain of the past and I live joyously in the present every day!

If you are interested in custom affirmations to help you on your journey, or in having your own private consultation with me, click here.

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.

If you are interested in having a private consultation with me, personally tailored to fit your questions, needs and concerns, click here.

I now learn the lessons I need to spiritually learn to move forward with my life!

If you are interested in custom affirmations to help you on your journey, or in having your own private consultation with me, click here.