Transcend the pain

Do your habits of perceiving and understanding your life serve you or do you serve them? Pain is a signal you can learn to explore and grasp at different levels of awareness.  What you sense in your present, or anticipate in your future is grounded in your limited view ofthe past.  How would you dissolve unwanted patterns and unlock your true intuition?

You only cope with pain as you accept and understand its message.  As you evolve to recognize meanings behind your pain, that is, the reasons for past emotional wounds in need of healing, the quality and intensity of your pain changes.  In other words, you discover more effective ways of dealing with it. You can react positively to pain, and find ways to heal.  You can encourage an absence of intention to dwell on the past.  The more pain you expect, the quicker the controlled will of your ego will thwart your plans to access your unconscious, and the harder it becomes to filter your perception.

Time exists only for continuity of memory.  This can seem like a prison if you ground yourself in your recollections of discomfort.  What if you released memories? In actuality, you are infinite, immortal and enlightened. These are your baseline states, often overshadowed by the turbulence of mind and your vivid imagination.  Re-experiencing pain is choosing to dwell on bad memories. Your personality manifests when experience is associated with the past and projected into the future as expectations.

Rest assured.  At the core of your being, you are connected with the love and light that define your authentic self. As you sense the knowledge and intelligence of your centre, you will sense it orchestrates not only phases in your physical life, but all the lives.  Something beyond you encourages your process of change and renewal. 

As you step back, you begin to discern you only act as an observer of experiences, but you are not the experiencer.  You are the spirit that occupies no time or space.  You may think and feel.  Yet, you existed before perceived experiences and you still exist after each one. Spirit is the immeasurable potential of all that is, was and will be. 

What are you trying to prove?

You may be unsure how you would define your sense of success. Perhaps you wonder whether the way you approach the subject now could or should change. As you go through your process of self-reflection, it will help to eliminate what success isn't:

1) Success isn't defined by what you do. The nature of your work isn't an accurate measure of self-worth. Your identity isn't based on the category or label you get in relation to your source of income. Success isn't something you gradually achieve based on your level of responsibility, social status, military rank, position, employer, pension fund or, degree of external approval that evaluates your performance. If you earn a lot of money or a little money, this doesn’t translate into a lot or a little success. Its not allocated based on seniority. Its revealed based on whether you learn to do what you do to the best of your ability.

2) Success isn't guaranteed (or not) by your Alma Matter. The institutions that provide you certain kinds of training or education are no guarantees of a sense of success. Reputation is something you evolve to create for yourself based on your own choices and behavior in "the real world." People who have little or no formal education also create their version of success. It’s not the courses, internships or apprenticeships that bring you success, but how you apply your free will, develop a thirst for knowledge and take advantages of opportunities to learn.

3) Success for you isn't assured by your family, friends or colleagues. The people you choose to form your entourage are not your gauge for success. You choose the treatment you will accept or reject and the people who help you set these guidelines. You evolve to delimit or extend your emotional boundaries. You decide what it takes to inspire you to feel good. You decide when to forge relationships or to strengthen those you already have. You always learn from other people and their life experience. Yet, how your personality unfolds, the skills you choose develop or not are what enable you to savor life your way. Success isn't something you can measure by the quantity or lifestyle of friends and relations. You have nothing to prove. You just are.

In essence, success is defined by how you create your wounds and transform your fears. It grows as you evolve to love and accept everything about you, including all qualities and traits, all your past choices and perceived mistakes or "learning experiences." A sense of success will intensify as you stop judging strengths and weaknesses, stop highlighting what you falsely assume is missing, lacking or rejected about yourself. Success is your awareness of the effective healing process within yourself. You are worthy. You are loved, heard and appreciated as you are. How prepared you are to confront your own issues determines the healing that occurs and how you view and experience success. Learning how to rebalance on a conscious level is part of the process of self-discovery.

Rethink the value of astral dreams

For some reason, you may sense a desire to probe the depths of your soul.  You might be searching for answers and have been told the answers you seek lie within. Where does this lead you? You may be exploring the astral plane and not even realize it yet.

Many people don't yet realize dreams are an extremely valuable tool to raise self-awareness.  As you self-examine, you also develop and strengthen extra-sensory perception.   You may underestimate your gifts and the path can follow to clarify and shape these priceless treasures. These questions are offered to help guide yourjourney:

1) What's the connection?  Since some dreams are actually messages conveyed from other dimensions, learning to recall your dreams is actually developing your ability to recognize and listen to messages from  dimensions other than the physical dimension where you are.  The dream messages you receive may seem to be from people you know or strangers.  Each one is significant for what it is and teaches you there is more to life than what you think you already know.

2) How do you heighten your sensitivities?  This is a process.  The ability to discern messages that don't reach you through your conventional 5 senses is highly-dependent on your ability to introspect and sense what goes on inside your mind.  To learn to decipher dream symbols is useful, practical training for heightening your sensitivities.  The more repressed emotions in your dreams, the more blocked the bridge is between your conscious and subconscious mind.  Until you choose to learn to discern and work through your repressed emotions, you postpone unconditional love and self-acceptance and prevent your progress on other levels.

3) Why seek to balance your mind-body-spirit?  Only a well-balanced mind-body and spirit will enable a person to make effective use of extra-sensory abilities. Your underlying motivation for building innate skills determines whether and how they evolve.  If you genuinely seek to increase spiritual awareness and desire support to repair your soul and to assist others, these kinds of motivations will propel you forward. Yet, if you simply seek to bolster and inflate an unbalanced ego, you'll go nowhere fast.

James Van Praagh & 4 Ways to prepare to be more receptive

James Van Praagh is a mental medium who interacts with 'the Other Side' in ways that may inspire human beings to communicate more effectively as they are.  His life work connecting the Spirit realm with our own encourages us to prepare to be more receptive for different kinds of communication throughout our lives.

In your own life, you may expect clear directives, familiar words and behaviors.  You may overlook subtle messages and reactions that urge you to listen to your intuition, or another side to a situation.  We each have opportunities to review experiences and rethink how we respond.  Learn to accept things are not always what you initially think.

1) Focus on external messages.  If you're deadset on joining a particular business, organisation or furthering a relationship, and things seem to go wrong, you may be missing important messages.  When you make repeated, incorrect turns,feel misdirected, like the world is against you or, frequently arrive at locked doors, you may ignore repeated signs that your intentions or pending decisions aren't in your best interest.  Why do some people seem to be so disconnected from their true selves that it seems even being hit over the head wouldn't enlighten them? Remind yourself accidents don't exist.

2) Be ready for revelations.  Human beings communicate in different ways.  Even before someone finishes a sentence, you may have already formulated or even started to blurt out your answer. Remind yourself that what might sound insignificant to you in passing may be very important to the person expressing a view.  As you listen with your soul, revelations you experience can touch on all of your senses and will always bring you back to focus on your core self.

3) Align your personality with your emotions.  As you evolve to get-to-know yourself better, you will discern when the tone of voice and words you choose are 'on the same plane.'  That is, if you sense you're a kind person and you hear yourself raising your voice to a commanding tone, or you're typically very demonstrative and then suddenly find yourself unemotional or indifferent, this is an invitation to explore inside yourself.  Noting subtle differences enables you to explore feelings you hide that require your attention.

4) Spirit won't always answer vital questions. Some people will consult mediums in search of answers.  You may have already done this or contemplate doing so yourself.  Whatever information you do or don't receive, it becomes apparent that you have to continue with your process of living and this means learning to make some challenging decisions about who you are and how to express yourself. Your own progressive decisions enable you to expand your personal strength and inner power.

Poised for change

Analysis of the week on dream submitted by P.S. of Torquay, Australia.

Dream:  During my dream, my male friend and I approached two young jockeys.  They were in the saddle of their race horses in the middle of a race.  Yet, these horses we focused on weren't winning.  Curiously, these jockeys and the race were in slow motion. I decided to take control.  My friend reluctantly followed.  We ran up to the jockeys, I pushed them off their horses.  We struggled to push the horses to the finish line.  We beat all the other horses.  I yelled at my friend for being slow, yet I felt guilty.

In reality, my friend and I had bet on two horses that didn't place in that particular race.  We were angry and disappointed about our choices as well as the small financial loss.  I admit, I'm also rather negative in my thinking and somewhat critical in my comments to this friend and other people. Both my friend and I are aged in our 60s. I often feel sad that the good life is "passing me by."

Predominant Emotions: Aggression, pride, hostility, fear, selfishness and vulnerability.

Interpretation: You need to recognize and pin down the shadows of your inner demons that take shape in dreams. As you do, emotions that scare you in waking life lose power and no longer scare you. Shadows may be interpreted as dark sides of your personality. Yet, they also have positive qualities that merit attention. The shadow symbolizes unknown or little-known attributes and qualities of the ego. Rest assured, this doesn't describe all of your unconscious personality. It invites you to recognize all of your parts.

When a person first becomes aware of their intentions to vent negative feelings, that person may consciously feel humbled and ashamed. The result is you may resist or avoid identifying the negative sides to your personality and condemn traits in other people that you repress in yourself. Whenever you refuse to acknowledge feelings and the underlying reasons why you have them, this evokes more discomfort in yourself.

Negative feelings don't have to seem like your inner demons. Remind yourself the darker side of your personality only lashes out when it is ignored or misunderstood. The forms it takes in dreams represent the qualities you believe you dislike in others, and yet, these are also qualities you resist accepting in yourself. When you stop pushing away the truth, that is, what you sense deep inside, you begin to realize you have potential to evolve into a more integrated whole.

You may brainstorm meanings of dream symbols. The key is to uncover and acknowledge repressed feelings and explore meanings of their root causes. After all, you run your own race, at your own pace. If you're in a hurry to get somewhere new and aren't happy where you stand, you will only truly feel "back in the saddle" when you're poised and ready for change. As you're more honest with your feelings, self-love will invite other love.