Chakra Goddess Painting

My second half of this October is dedicate to self-focus. 
Of course that involves painting!

In July, during my 30 Painting in 30 Days Challenge, this little goddess appeared.

Elaborating on her, this week's project came out looking like this:

Letting Go of Blocks Concerning Responsibility to Others

This week, I experienced the letting go of a block relating to how I act towards people who in anyway may depend on me. 

Let us start with the positive.  I always want the very best for anyone that depends on me for any reason at all.  I take responsibility concerning others very seriously.  Too seriously it turns out.  So seriously actually, that I loose a lot of myself in the seriousness of it all.  I tighten up and lose a lot of my fun.  I lose my freeing connection to the Universe by being too concerned with details that may not matter to others as much as to me.  I want everything to be perfect. 

I have been asking for help in this area and my prayers are slowly being answered.  This week, with a few people visiting, I am noticing a lot of subtle thought patterns and physical tightening.  They led me down the path of discovering a different way of relating to people.

When I realized this new way, instead of feeling happy I felt pain, guilt, regret.  How could I have lived in this way?!  It is so unhelpful and counterproductive. 

No point of letting a good thing go sour.  Time to get back up.  I give Gratitude for finally being shown the blocks and being given the opportunity to let old patterns go.  I understand that I was doing the best I could at any given time.  I forgive myself and move on with Love.

Lesson in Duality: Light & Dark

It has been almost a year since my lessons on Duality have started.
This week's lesson came in a form of the following story, then a brief explanation and suggestions.  I am not suggesting this is right (or wrong) for you.  However, I do hope you enjoy the story!

The Man Who Wanted To See All The Good

 

The Boy was taught from an early age to follow the Light, because it is the Giver of Life and it is Good.  He was taught to stay away from the Dark, as it is Bad.  One day, when the Boy has already grown into a Man he had a thought.  He will stare into the Sun, the Giver of Life, to see All the Good.  Then his life will truly be perfect.

The Man who wanted to see it All stared at the Sun on the brightest day of the year.  He stared even though everyone told him to look away.  He stared and stared.  Minutes.  Hours.  They told him that his eyes will burn in their sockets and he will never see again.  Yet the Man kept looking up all day into the bright ball of fire in the sky.  

As the sun set, the Man finally looked away.  No matter where he looked, all he could see was the bright light of the Sun.  That night, when the Man went to bed and closed his eyes, all he could see was the bright light of the sun.  The next morning, the next week and for many years to come all he could see was the bright light of the sun.  

From that day on he was never in darkness, because he could not see it.  The sun shone into his eyes, no matter what the weather, no matter how high the moon was up in the sky.  The day the Man wanted to see it All and looked up to the Light of the Sun, he did not realize that without the Dark, there would be no Peace for him.  Without Peace, there would be no Rest.   

That is when the Man realized that the Dark is just as important as the Light.  

 

By going to one side or the other, one becomes imbalanced and unhappy; one cannot grow and cannot be at peace.   

Honour every aspect of yourself.  

 

The Light and the Dark within you, have been balanced  beautifully to create YOU. 

We live in a world of Duality; therefore, we cannot escape the Light, nor the Dark.  There is Light and Dark within each and every one of us.  Often, we are taught to fight one of them.  When we fight we do not accept.  If we do not accept, there cannot be peace within us.  When we fight we try to be someone else and are not accepting our own being. 

Dark and Light are not good nor bad.  They just Are.  Having the Light and the Dark within us is the way it is meant to be.  This delicately built-in balance is the perfect formula which makes us who we are.  It is when we are imbalanced that things go wrong.    Fear will get in no matter which way we imbalance ourselves.   Hence we will not be living as our true self.

The suggestion is to Stop fighting the “bad”.  Stop reaching for “good”.  Just Be, the way you were meant to be.  The way you were born into this Black and White world.   

Once you stop.  

Once you accept.   

That is when things will truly be balanced.   

And you can live your true life.

 

 

 

Who is Causing this Havoc

On a trip to a near by little town for brunch my friends and I stopped by the lake to take photos.

We noticed a couple trying to get a large dog into the back of a pickup truck.  They would open the back door of the truck bed, guide the dog in and close the door.  Moments later the dog would jump right back out onto the street and into traffic.  His tail would wag and he would do a couple of happy circles as if laughing at the couple, before taking off towards the nearest bushes.  We watched, giggling, as this happened a couple of times more before the dog ran away further into the bushes.

I wondered if this was how everyday in this household was like.  It looked like a lot of work.

The couple have obviously had enough and simply walked away.  We quickly understood that this was not their dog.  They must have seen him leaping into traffic and tried to put him back into the truck without much luck.

Animal lovers that we are, we stood watching.  The dog can be seen in the far distance squatting in the bush, doing his doggy business.  He was there for a very long time and we waited.  Once he was done, he galloped back towards his truck.  The back door was closed.  He could not make the jump back in.  He started to panic a bit and backed into traffic.  Here my partner was quick to react.  He ran towards the truck and opened the door to the bed.  A whistle got the dog's attention who happily jump back where he belonged. 

Turns out that this dog was not misbehaving after all!  He just didn't want to soil his human's truck.  He even knew to do his business out of reach of everyone.
It was us who misunderstood.

Petting the dog's head "goodbye" I noticed the name of his collar.

Havoc.

Getting Away from FEAR by Breaking Through LIMITS

My last post was about finding Courage.  Those few months that it took me to acquainted myself with Courage taught me a lot about Fear, Self-Set Limits and reaching Love, Peace, Joy.

My Guides told me this story:

Before diving into water one might make sure that the water is deep enough and no obstacles are hiding just below the surface.  When the jump into the water is made there is trust that the water will catch and then spit you back out to the surface, to fresh air.

Sometimes we jump from higher ground than anticipated.  We sink deeper than intended.  We realize that our breath may not be enough to last us.  We start swimming faster up towards the light, the surface.  The closer we get to the surface the more our lung hurt, craving air.  Our lungs start to feel more and more uncomfortable as we reach closer to the top, but this doesn't make us reconsider.

We don't say, "Wait a minute.  Let me try swimming away from the light and see if that makes my lungs feel any better."

We know naturally what to do.  With the help of the water pushing us up we strive towards the surface.  The first gulp of air feel sweet and victorious.

So why do we give up so easily when it comes to our Fears?

Often we are drowning in our Fears.  Sometimes the closer we get to penetrating our Limiting Beliefs and shedding our Fears for good, the more we resist and try to swim towards the bottom instead.  We swim deeper into the Fear.

You will know you are coming close to swimming out of Fear when it becomes almost impossible to hold on!  Commit and strive to get out of it.  Let the Universe support your ascend into the sunshine of Love, Joy and Peace.

Talking with the Full Moon and Finding Courage.

The story towards Courage started on a grand swing bridge in the middle of New Zealand rainforest on February 15, 2014.  I was sitting bundled up in the middle of the bridge, on a bizarrely still night.  A tea candle was holding space with me.  Above hung a beautiful, Leo full moon shinning down on the forest.

Leo is my zodiac sign, and hearing of this full moon I ventured out into the forest to ask for guidance and see what happens.  My life was about to undertake yet another major change and I wanted to make sure that this was right, that all will be ok.

I prayed to the Moon, the Universe, my guides.  I sat in silence, watching the moon and the dark around it.  I laid down waiting for the answer.
And it came!  Out of nowhere  it actually came!

All of a sudden a voice in my head said, 

"If you were a character in the Wizard of Oz, you would be the Lion."   

 

Immediately, I found that funny.  Of course I would be a lion.  I am a Leo after all.  And here I was sitting under the Leo Full Moon.  Then it hit me.  The Lion in the Wizard of Oz went on that journey to find Courage.
Is this what you are trying to tell me Moon?

Am on a journey to find Courage?

The answer came as a clear, "YES".  There was a timeline.  I will need to find my Courage in 3 months, starting in March, ending in June 2014.

Now I was getting nervous.  In order to to find Courage, won't I need to experience Fear?  This didn't sound like everything was going to be all right.  This sounded more like everything is going to be terrifying.  Yet, the magic and beauty of that night gave me so much support and confidnce that I found myself yelling into the darkness,

"Bring it on!"

So it began.  In March, I arrived back in Canada with a bit of savings and a strong desire to live in a town I have only previously vacationed in.  I followed what felt to be all the cues.  Yet, money was becoming scarce, permanent accommodation hard to find and work looked almost impossible.  My partner and I lived unknowing of what was going to happen from day to day.  We feared about having nowhere to go soon and nothing to eat.  The only hope that kept me going was that the Universe had a great lesson to teach me and that this experience was coming to an end in June.

The Universe delivered!!!

Every time we were completely stuck, somehow a lifeline would appear to make us go on for another few days.  After a while we had to give up on worrying, because this attitude was not helping at all.  We summoned our Courage.  We kept following the signs, praying and waiting for the little miracles to appear and get us through to the next day.

By the end of May 2014, we found a great place to live and I got a job!  We started June in our new suite with a pay cheque.  It was another miracle!

These 3 months tore everything I thought about myself to pieces.  They changed me to be a more understanding and loving person.  They humbled me and taught me how to look at the world around me with fresh eyes.  They taught me how to be brave.

This is when I found my Courage.

Super Power of an Empath

My Super Power

Which super power did you want to have as a kid?

Which super power would you want to have today?

Flying?  Xray Vision?  Shooting lasers out of your eyeballs?

As a little kid, the power I most often dreamed of was the ability for my conscious to step into someone else.  I wanted to be able to experience the world completely from another person's perspective; their thoughts, their feelings, their wishes...... everything.

Whenever I would find someone who was interesting to me I would put my energy into them.  I would concentrate on their movements and imagine what it must be like for them at that moment in time.  This was such a fun hobby that this game continued on as I grew.  I played so often that eventually it just turned into an invisible pattern that ran automatically behind the scenes for almost every single person that came into my life.

My ability to pick up other people's energy enable me to successfully stay away from those who could potentially hurt me.  In high school and college, I was able to avoid boy trouble, bad bosses and nasty teachers.  Friends would ask me how I knew, but to me it was natural and I wonder how they didn't know.

My ability to quickly pick up on other people's feelings would result in others trusting me with their secrets and their challenges. Often my suggestions would be helpful to those who entrusted me with their personal stories, but always I was the one to help other be heard.


Today I know that my guide to how I associated with people was the first impression of their energy field.  However, growing up I had absolutely no idea of this.  At parties, I would slip in unnoticed, observe people around me, see where the "safe" people are and move towards them.  If someone who was having a bad day would come in contact with me, I would get very uncomfortable, put up a wall and put them on my 'no good' list immediately.  My super power was not 100% accurate, and I did not understand that back then.

This February, brought with it the gift of understanding.  For no particular reason, I got super sensitive to everyone!  Every time I would get into a certain range of a person, their feelings would jump over to me and I felt taken over by their emotions.  Going grocery shopping was an adventure on its own with so many people in the vegetable isle.  It was like being in the middle of a sic fi movie.

My emotions were all over the map, depending who's presence I was graced with.  It was exhausting and exhilarating.  To be truly honest, this did made me question my sanity a bit. 

Luckily during that time, I was working in a serene setting with not too many people around me most of the time.  My coworkers were my unknowing guinea pigs.  To them I am grateful!!  Sometimes I would feel so guilty for spying on their private emotions that I could not bring myself to look at them.  However, after grounding, blocking, praying and grounding some more I could not change what was happening and had to ride it out.

Today my emotions are back to "normal" levels.  Out of that experience the realization that the super power that I wanted as a kid did become reality for me to a certain degree.  For the most part now, I have a choice whether or not I want to step into somebody's energy field.  This gives me time to ask permission and get to know a person the way they want to be know.

I am so thankful for this fun super power and am learning more about what being an Empath might hold for me in the future.