Star Woman & 6 steps to journey into the wilderness of your soul

Lynn Andrews was an art collector before she embarked on the mysterious process to become a shaman and medicine woman.  From the moment she realized she had courage to step into the unknown, she learned why and how she became a spiritual apprentice. 

Her journey as a healer and writer reveals how each human being is always in the process of becoming.  Nothing she did was ever enough, ever satisfying, until she learned to love and accept herself completely.  Over time, she gained new insight into why people could appear to build success and still be miserable.  From her journey, I retain these lessons: 

1) Unveil your own delusions.  Stop giving into the tricks you play with your mind.  Recognize fear and self-limitation are veils you create to hide things  from yourself.  Discern why you hide and from what.  You're where you need to be, but initially too terrified to see what you have been born to do, to grow and become self-realized.

2) Listen to teachers.  A teacher's name is not important, only the wisdom he or she imparts.  A teacher will guide you to a fork in the road and leave you to navigate on your own.  You learn life doesn't present problems, but only simple challenges to help you evolve.  Now will only exist when you completely exist as who you are in your soul.

3) Harness your pride.  You may evolve from ordinary pride to be snagged by pride of inner truth.  This isn't pride that drives outward accomplishment.  Its a pride based in sorrow for the blindness of people around you and reluctance to let go. Lift yourself out of a mechanical existence of fear addiction and barriers to your own consciousness.   

4)  Create acts of beauty.  The reason for creating acts of beauty is to create a mirror of yourself so you can begin to know intimately who you are.  This can help you work through pain, greed, sorrow, guilt and misgivings that are shadows of your spirit.

5) Dream with intent.  Honor of the power of the moment.  Perseverence in following your life dream requires a special kind of endurance. Return to the creative use of instinct.  You lie within your own personal dreaming during your lifetime.  Its common to get used to the false dream forms of duality and separation rather than connectedness.

6)  Become a shape shifter.  Fear is the shape shifter's greatest enemy.  All of us are shape-shifters, but many people don't know it. As you perfect self-understanding, you may shift  your shape and focus to become part of another person's dream.  How do you know you're not a shape shifter already? How do you know you aren't an aspect of another person's dream? Maybe you don't remember?  To look at a person, don't look at what they appear to be, imagine what they can become.  Unleash the power in your soul. 

Postponed tennis match

Analysis of the week on dream submitted by Anonymous of Melbourne, Australia.

Dream:  I was standing on a tennis court before my scheduled match.  I left the scene to to go a hotel to change and prepare. Rather than put on my tennis whites, I slipped into a long, sleeveless, bright yellow chiffon gown over top of a plain, skin-colored short dress.   Then, I was interrupted.  My British boyfriend came to pick me up for the game.  I felt rushed. I quickly removed the yellow dress over my head and the other dress and threw them on the couch.  This revealed I wore lycra tennis clothes underneath.  As I approached the court, I heard people whispering in the stands about my boyfriend's accent.  I focused on my opponent with no racquet who was invisible to everyone but me.

Predominant Emotions: Anxiety, expectant, discomfort, coping, supportive, proactive.

Interpretation- If you quickly identify some aspects of your life the dream is addressing, this can guide your interpretation.  Deep down, you realize you're a good 'match' for an upcoming experience.  Your previous 'training' and experience will be put to good use.  The future may not appear incompatible or adversarial, except to your invisible ego which feels threatened you are approaching greater sense of direction and mind control. 

The court image draws attention to hidden fear and guilt which you have been preparing to confront.  You're raising awareness about matters that prompt you to reframe your thoughts and rearrange your life.  You prepare to rethink your own rules and inhibitions.

Clothing choices represent possibilities you contemplate and reveal some of your moods and personalities.  Do you explore identities that lead you to feel  'out-of-place?'   Part of you hesitates to move on.  You may have  already removed superficial layers which are no longer compatible with your current self.  This brings a sense of progress.  Yet, tight clothes you wear reveal you still choose to feel  restricted.  What would happen if you permit yourself to believe or behave differently than what you saw as acceptable before?

Consider how you may be misguided in your perception of what it takes to win in this game of life.  To make permanent changes in your habits and lifestyle will require courage and will power.   An honest, systematic review of your fears will help you dissolve them.

Lao-tzu & 7 ways to expand your Higher Self

Lao-tzu invites you to explore the condition of complete simplicity.  What brings you to a new level of understanding?  Who were you before?  Who are you now?  Who will you be?

Notice how you conceptualize and express ideas and whether you stay in harmony with your nature.  Raising your awareness allows you to meld into a timeless process and sense your own choices between love and fear. To feel profoundly within yourself allows you to exert effort and dream effortlessly, as if you do nothing yet, accomplish everything.  

1) Value silence & solitude.  Be still, quiet.  Allow your mind to flow freely.  Discern what it means to live with conviction.  Learn that focusing on what you sense outside prevents you from discovering what lies within.  Trust your own nature.   Live an unhurried life. Contemplate all that you have, all that flows in and out of your life, and be grateful for it.

2) Heed the laws of nature.   The more man interferes with the natural order of things, the more out of balance his perception of the world becomes, and the more emotional turbulence distracts him.  Discomfort arises from the interfering and unappreciative mind.  The essence of life is cyclical yet, rebirth or renewal is disguised in the form of endings which evoke pain and fear.  Natural endings bring new beginnings.  How you feel and act attracts more of the same.  Assume responsibility for your own actions.

3) Resist naming things.   Names are only the effects of your subtle thoughts and feelings.  To move beyond the pull to name is to begin to sense the underlying cause of your impulse.  Each thing you name tells you things about your desires, what you will allow and resist.  Why seek to control? Notice your reflex to separate rather than connect things.  The process of naming prompts us to distinguish between good and evil, beautiful and ugly, high and low, and "being" and "non- being." Comparing evokes desires. To abandon what you think you know requires you stop naming, isolating tastes and desires.

4) Experience pleasure as you are.  Struggling is counterproductive. Endeavor to do nothing. This isn't laziness. It doesn't suggest you reamin idle.  Instead, learn to discern your true nature.  Observe your views of people, institutions, and ingrained systems of rewards.  You are not happy or worthy because someone tells you or gives you a diploma.  You're not moral or righteous because you obey imposed laws.  You are moral because you connect with your inner self.  Pleasure lies in spontaneity.

5) Live creatively.  Know that you are a Divine creation.  Get in touch with this origin.  Listen to your inner calling.  Ignore what other people might criticize or judge about your ability, intelligence and potential.  Follow your heart and engage in whatever enables you to feel most alive.  Manifest based on what evokes good feelings inside you.  

6) Live beyond ego.  Basing your awareness on acquiring and accomplishing suggests you only exist for yourself.  By putting yourself last, you end up progressing further than you ever thought possible.  Getting caught in ego means you're caught in striving but never arriving.  Remove yourself from the rat race.  Reverse the ego's hold over you.  Generously serve others.  Whenever ego convinces you things aren't good enough, shift your attention to a less fortunate individual.  The perceived need for approval and importance are trouble.  Let go of your identification with stuff.  Believe you are nothing, and own nobody.  Permit yourself to realize your worldly self isn't your true self. 

7) Become aware of existence beyond form.  Learn to see without eyes.  Evolve to hear without ears.  Move beyond perceived limits of your senses.  Tap into this immeasurable, invisible source of harmony.  Enter the indescribable place, the core of energy and forever.  Conflict is impossible.  Magic connects you to something bigger.  Release the hold outer forms have on you.  Embrace the timeless infinity beyond all that.  

4 Ideas to help trigger more "ah-ha" moments

We've all been there. You can hear a penny drop in the silence as you to realize something makes sense in your life that didn't before. The truth is passed on and grasped through life experience. You may describe personal revelations as "ah-ha" moments, those instances when you gain profound insight to raise your soul-level awareness.

Yet, how can you connect with your soul in ways that will generate more positive developments in your life? You may be eager to reframe unresolved feelings and confusing events. To become an astute witness, you must learn to step back from your conditioned mind.  Consider these ideas to help trigger more "ah-ha" moments:  

1) Choose to not to view yourself as 'victim.'  Its a reflex to attribute blame, to judge about what you perceive was wrong with a person or a situation, and to complain how you suffer.  This attitude diverts focus from growth, nurtures negative energy and further disillusions you from the truth. Choose instead to step outside a victim mentality. Imagine how others  may interpret your behavior outside your emotional reactions or assumptions. Transform your energy.  Focus on positives in the "big picture" and learn.

2) Train your instincts to detect substance. Sharpening intuition enables you to connect your feelings with meaning behind your actions. In order to discern underlying meanings for your choices, review your behavior from an outsider's view.  How compatible are your behaviors with your views of love and forgiveness? Do your choices bring you closer to or alientate you from unconditional self-acceptance, spontaneous self-expression, and honesty? Each time someone or something evokes discomfort, its a clue to issues of substance in need of your attention.  Although your instinct may be to defend your spirit as you sense it now, you can learn new ways to preserve and nurture it.

3) Recognize the value of people as mirrors. All your friends, family, lovers and strangers, are like mirrors. How you react to them and conditions reflects parts of your personality. Learning why people behave as they do toward you mirrors what you are hiding from your conscious self.  How people treat you reveals a lot about how you treat them.  If you aren't getting the treatment you desire or hope for, then reflect on the nature of your behavior.  Does history repeat? Have you done this before or has someone done this to you with similar results?  This is a conscious and unconscious process.

4) Determine 'the real you.'  As you discover your strengths, weaknesses, and patterns, this helps you figure out who you are beneath appearances.  It all shapes self-confidence, esteem, self-worth and to what degree you permit unconscious fears to control you. As you admit underlying motives or, why you act as you do, and discern if your action confirms your intent, you grow to get in touch with your authentic self.

5 Ways to live openly with apparent duality

To live without judgement is to allow apparent duality while sensing the value in everything.  Rearrange your thoughts so that the sharp edges of life go right through you.  Wisdom is knowing you are nothing.  Those who know keep quiet, live impartially, do not discriminate.  We can evolve to learn more about the unsentimental sort we are:

1) Live a unified life. Our standards of perception are grounded in the physical world.  Comtemplate that criticism isn't always necesary or helpful.  Choose to be at peace with what you observe.  Move freely without attachment to outcomes.  Forget ideas of where you think you should be.  Its all illusion. Trying itself only exists because of beliefs of not trying exist.   Decide to approach every situation with an unbiased attitude.

2) Choose not to explain yourself.  Sense the texture of misunderstanding that you create.  Don't get caught up in what you've conditioned to think is right or wrong.  Be in paradoxical unity.  Positive and negative are opposites that need each other to exist.  Practice being a living paradox.  Ignore how others might like to direct your life energy.  Your body is physical, apparently limited, and at the same time, you are invisible and limitless.  You can surrender to the energy within you.  Accept the duality of the material world while still feeling connecting to the completeness of yourself.  Release resistence to your natural talents.  Love is knowing you are everything.  You teach without words.

3) Practice not doing.  When action is pure and selfless, you are changing your thinking. Your world changes as the result.  Pursuit of status, power, objects, blinds ourself to stems on our ego's fixation of getting more.  refrain from focusing on this kind of discontented less. Practice gratitude. Ask how you can serve. This isn't suggesting to be lazy or inactive.  Choose to be directed by a higher intention than your ego-filled desire.

4) Accept happiness is.  Examine your state of happiness in this moment.  Desires can create competitiveness. Why expect external events to create your joy? The necessary factors will all come together. Everything you need now is here, accessible, along with your all-incompassing source of well-being.  No one is better than anyone else.  Those who refuse to change their lives elevate themselves above people they feel are less worthy. Stay centred and in harmony. Eliminate as many judgements as you can. See aspects of yourself in all others.  Work thourgh your issues. Your criticism will dissolve.

5) Trust the perfection of the infinite.  Connect yourself to the limitless source of energy that flows through you.  Allow the universe to flow through you. Spend each moment deliberately.  Imagine yourself guided by the infinite aspects of yourself.  Don't let your desires control you.  Watch for opportunities.  Be grateful for the ways that are revealed for you at that moment.  When action is pure and selfless, everything settles the way it should.  Watch how all that you give returns to you.  Stop the chase. Be an astute observer. The more you pursue ego desires, the more they will elude you.