I have no doubt that one of the biggest hurdles in your life is your attachment to certain people. It’s the stuff that karma is all about, pop songs are written for, and drama is created with. 

When you are attached to a person, you believe it means you care about them. You may want others to be attached to you as well, yet even when they are, you may still not be happy. You may be in drama, singing one of those love songs, or in the midst of flying karma. The attachment, not the person, is what’s prohibiting you from happiness.  Why? Because at the source of the unhappiness is the fundamental difference between attachment and connection.

You want to be connected to another human being.  It feels good and nurtures you. You might even want to be connected to many individuals: no problem.  Connection means that the two of you are in a relationship that is engaging on some level.  There is energy between you.  Chemistry, biology, physics, it doesn’t matter what you call it: it’s just there and the existence of this engagement of energy means that you think of each other and you enjoy each other’s company from time to time because you have singled each other out in some way.  That’s a connection, not an attachment.

But what if you want that connection to be different than it naturally is?  What if you want the person to like you more or treat you better or act differently toward you?  Then it’s not a connection you are seeking; it’s an attachment. You are attaching yourself to them and what you want them to be.  You are not willing to accept them for who they are and allow your connection to them to be what it naturally is.  In a nutshell, you are trying to control the relationship, and that will never work in a healthy way, or for very long, for the benefit of both of you.

A positive relationship can only exist in freedom, respect and honour if it is naturally allowed to engage a connection.  I’m using the word ‘naturally’ because that means not forced, not contrived, not manipulated or with any selfish expectations, and that’s very important to understand.  Your relationship must be able to unfold naturally the way it unfolds when both parties are simply being themselves.  If you don’t allow that or want what is naturally unfolding to occur and instead attempt to change it or complain about it or try any number of things to force it, then attachment has set in and the inevitable hurdle will be there.

This hurdle is not the end of the world, but rather exactly what a hurdle stands for - something to rise above.  This is the place in a relationship that affords you the opportunity to discern.  You can choose to leave or to stay -- unattached. The relationship needs to work for you the way it is, or you can powerfully choose to move on to other ones.  Your choice. Your power. Your happiness.

Karma’s flying around. And even though it’s not contagious, it’s infectious. And there is SO much you can do to make the best of it.

There are many definitions of karma but they all really mean the same thing: cause and effect. Karma is the reaction to the action. And it’s accumulative throughout your lifetimes.

You know you’re in the midst of your karma, when it feels as though you have very little control over a situation. So to compensate, you try and take on too much control.  That push/pull reaction is pure karma.

To make it more manageable, know that the more you disconnect from the awareness - the value, the spirit of life - the more the triggers can ‘get in’. Whenever you ‘fall asleep’ karma is typically triggered.

Then you ‘wake up’, upset or angry or sad over what has transpired, and do your utmost to steer things (read: over control) in your favour. And the karmic wheel continues.

So, there are three areas I have found that keep you more conscious and connected on a daily basis, so you don’t actually hit that iceberg you may be heading toward…

1. PHYSICAL – keep your sleep/rest, nutrition/diet, body movement/exercise, consistent and moderate. It regulates and stabilizes your systems of organization and keeps you primed and alert.
2. SOCIAL – choose the people you spend time with. Regulate your emotions and moods by electing those that serve your highest good, or at least neutralize things, as opposed to criticizing or judging.  The people you spend time with have the greatest influence over your karmic conditions, triggering you when you least expect it.
3. ENVIRONMENTAL – regulate your environment and need for space, whether that’s mental, physical, emotional… For balance, your energy requires specific environments that support its very best. Sometimes that’s stimulating, other times soothing. You’ll know, and do yourself a real favour by being selective and honouring your choices here.
   

When you care for yourself by choosing self-support you won’t need support from others to do it for you. It’s your karma, your conditioning, your emotional needs. Serve yourself well. 

Shift or get off the pot. I have no doubt you’re overdue for it. 

You know you want to shift, because you keep going over it, in your head, again and again.  And then the ‘what ifs’ have a field day with you. ‘What if it doesn’t work?  What if I do it wrong?  What if I’m fooling myself?’ 

But the desire to make that shift never really goes away either.  It too keeps itself in your head.  ‘You’ve got to do this.  You’ve got to try.’

So, you have to shift. 

And to start the process to make the change in your life: get off the metaphorical pot and start meditating.  You can choose to do it consciously, and see it through, or something else will undoubtedly intervene and make the choice for you, because your time has run out and something’s got to give. The pause button is about to turn off.



What's YOUR pivotal point?

When shift becomes inevitable, it’s trying to turn you around and set you going in a new direction.  If you haven’t chosen to do this of your own accord, then your life and the things around you will reach a pivotal point.  One of two things can then happen: a low or a high.  In human terms they look like either a crisis - a rock bottom situation - or an epiphany - a break through moment of clarity and absolute insight.  The light bulb will either go fully on, or fully off, but it will no longer keep flickering.  And then you’re left to evaluate where you are on the map of your life.

Either the crisis or the epiphany provides you with a much-needed wake-up call that says, “Ah, you are here.”

It’s your place on the map.  Look at it.  Feel it.  Is this where you really want to be?  Are you at the place in your life that pleases you, that brings out the best in you?  Is this place and experience chosen out of fear, out of obligation, out of insecurity?  This wake-up call asks you to really see where you are and how you got there and more importantly it gives you the phenomenal opportunity to make a choice as to where you really want to be.

The check-up that follows this crisis or epiphany serves to inspire you to want MORE – more than you have been settling for and more than you may have allowed yourself to attain and indeed to be.  More is a very powerful energy and an attractive one.  You can want more, but because you haven’t been actively accomplishing it, you may have needed this pivotal point to stop and re-route yourself. 

If you’re reading this, it’s highly possible it’s because you have reached that pivotal crisis in your life, whether in your health, relationship, career, bank account – it doesn’t matter.  Actually, it all matters.

Something may have slammed you into this moment of evaluation.  It is at this point that together we can begin to build you out into the more that you are now ready for - the more that you are finally willing to put energy into.

Or maybe you’re reading this because you want to reach that pivotal point.  You know you need that kind of an energy push to get you to shift, so let’s actively seek out the experience of the epiphany that will motivate your movement into the energy of more.  Very empowering work.

Building the more in your life, once you’ve reached the high or low and the inevitable evaluation that follows, is a process of incorporating the essential elements of commitment, discipline and consistency together in equal measures.  We infuse the more plan with necessary steps, strategies and check points that ultimately build trust in this new direction.  Building this trust then leads to an expansion of faith, belief and confidence, where once there was doubt, fear and trepidation. 

It’s a beautiful shift.  

ps) My MORE program stands for the Momentum Of Realigned Energy. You can read all about it by clicking here.

1. If you haven’t yet, read over your daily meditation journal, to see what threads you can connect.  How does your progress look and feel to you?
   
2. Meditate today as though you’re hungry for meaningful connection.
   
3. In meditation (and in life!), give love.  Do not wait for love and connection to come to you.  Send it! Share it!  Then you are not separate. You are one.
   
4. Forgiveness and integrity create peace in your life.  Feel that in today’s meditation.
   
5. Can you draw and write down your meditation today?  Drawing will open up another avenue to the creative part of your brain. No one need see it – just sketch out how the meditation felt or looked and use colours if you want.
   
6. Are you meditating today for relief or for connection? Know that before you close your eyes.
   
7. Surround yourself today with others who are awake and continually seeking balance. Seek them out. And be one of them for others.
   
8. Focus your meditative intention on someone important in your life and sense what messages come through that’s about them.
   
9. Pay attention to your energy and the energy of those around you. Become more aware of the “energy vampires” – the people and situations that deplete you and leave you tired. Exercise your self-care in your choice.
   
10. Approach your meditation as though you were in partnership with it.  It’s trying to dialogue with you, get close with you, and have a personally enlightened, inspired conversation and exchange of insight and awareness. You’re up for it.
    

My dharma - my personal contribution which gives me my sense of purpose in this lifetime - goes something like this: to do my part in shifting and elevating the consciousness on the planet by communicating and modeling the highest level of information, insight and awareness. 

So I became a doctor of transpersonal psychology (spiritual psychology) in order to better serve my dharma. In order to fulfill my mission, I work and play at engaging connection with people. 

I’ve often said I’m a matchmaker, matching a persons’ lower self to their higher self, chaperoning them around for a while until a romance and commitment ignites and then visiting them as a guest whenever I’m invited.

I feel pretty good about how I connect with, and assist people, but the visiting guest part could use a bit of creative tweaking. I want to establish a more noticeable path for those who continue to develop an ongoing integrated consciousness in their lives. I want to provide whatever means I can to be a bridge between two worlds – the spiritual and the human, the more and the less.

I’ve been saying for a while that the energy is not just shifting, it’s stretching. It’s expanding our awareness. The current energy is offering us new intentions and inviting us into new experiences. It’s asking us to take new actions. We are all part of the current energy. Your consciousness of it will always serve you well.

That said, technology can be our bridging friend here. It can assist us all in staying connected to the words of wisdom, to the truth of our current perspective, to the confirmation of how we feel, and to our community of kindred spirits. Technology is not a replacement for our human contact and exchange. It’s in addition to.  It complements.

I’ve consistently put forth my best efforts to be a visible bridge between 2 worlds by writing and sending out newsletters for the past 20+ years. These serve to notify you of new offerings and updates and other current energies. I also offer up my perspective in even more frequent and accessible ways. You may join me in whatever way works for you, when it works for you. Your shifting and expansion will determine that.

I tweet and post on Facebook every morning – because the energy inspires me daily. Twitter provides me with a concise micro-blog of 140 chosen characters. Byte-size nutrition.

I blog typically several times a week – as the energy invites me to make broader brush strokes in the current feel.

This bridge between 2 worlds is spiritual insider trading, really. It’s full of nutrients and always fresh. You’ll find yourself there, in between the lines, because I’m writing to you, for you. In case you aren’t getting those postcards directly from your higher self.

ps) Have you read the new Sage Council Blog?

I’m getting a little weary of the seemingly misunderstood phrase ‘let it go’, aren’t you?  As the New Age catchphrase, I believe it has somehow lost its real meaning. 

I hear many of you blame yourself for not being able to ‘let it go’.  And others proudly tell me how they easily and swiftly ‘let it go’.

So I ask them: “let what go”?  How?  What does that mean?  And they tell me they ‘let go’ of their problem, their relationships, their issues, whatever.  But I ask you, if you ‘let it go’, how can you really resolve it?  There’s a real dilemma here.

Letting go has two components.  To let something go, you need to trust and allow.  Both elements are vital to the true meaning. 

When you are able to completely trust something, you need to understand it, own it, on a very deep and real level.  With that knowledge intact therefore, the next step is essential.  You do not do anything in the physical or even on the energy plane (hoping, wishing, affirmations, etc.).  Instead, you allow that wisdom you have assimilated to empower you completely. So, letting go really means understanding it so thoroughly that no action is required.

Now, to be honest, your conscious mind rarely gets to that level of true unquestionable awareness because of its youth and inexperience.  It knows only what it has learnt in the years it has been alive.  But your subconscious and superconscious mind is ageless, infinite and the source of wisdom your conscious mind needs for true comprehension.  Asking it to help you understand – really understand – what is going on with you will yield the complete picture.

I remember a client I’ll call E was having a difficult time moving on after her relationship with V seemed over. He had ended it, moving out of their home and starting to see other women.  To listen to E and then to politely tell her to ‘let it go’ was certainly not enough for the emotional turmoil she still felt.  So together we explored the understanding from her subconscious mind, asking it to find several of the most significant and relevant past-life memories she had that would help her understand her current relationship with V.

E’s memory banks revealed many lifetimes that established the same patterns over and over again.  Always, whether as a female or a male, she had left him and their relationship to find ‘greener pastures’.  Many times she had showed him ill courtesy and lack of respect.  In lifetime after lifetime he showed up again to ‘win her this time’.  But always the ending was the same.  Now in their current situation, V has chosen to be the one to move on and E is the one feeling stung.

Having seen the patterns of what is really at play in their current relationship was the beginning of the understandings for E.  In subsequent sessions she looked at the lifetimes that would help her understand why she had left him, and what her real intention/purpose had been.  It was in these sessions that E gleaned the true insight into what was really going on in her relationship.  She said that she had honestly needed V to leave her in this lifetime in order to trigger this pattern so she could block it from happening.  Only then could she step back and reverse her actions.  E not only saw and felt, she emotionally and intellectually owned what was truly happening in her relationship and therefore was honestly able to ‘let it go’, thanking it for the gift it had been.

If E had been too intent on quickly and easily letting it go, but was still playing out the same pattern over and over again, I would check for her real knowledge of the situation.  Had she given her subconscious mind enough information, or was she simply trying to override her feelings, denying them in an effort to ‘get over it’.  Her willpower alone in that situation would only last awhile, for it is lacking the whole knowledge of what is really going on.  Because with that knowledge comes the ease of allowing it to be – truly letting it go.

There are so many things in your life you feel you have to do. You loosely throw around the phrase ‘commit’ when referring to them. “I have to go tonight; I’ve already committed”; or “ I’m committed to making it work with my partner”.

You hang the word commitment around your neck like a heavy yoke, but you’ve got to stop it because it’s causing the real sense of commitment to become affected.

Obligation is the act of following through with something once the original emotion has gone. Great definition.

You’re obligated to do many things in your day whether they were planned as something exciting or not.  Obligated to do the dishes, go to work, pick up the kids from school, make dinner. Some of these things you’re excited about, but others you’ve lost the original enthusiasm for. Now they are simply an obligation.

Commitment is the energy and action of consistency in mind, emotion, spirit and body. Another great definition.

You commit to a person, an experience, an amount of time, whatever you choose, and your commitment is your promise. You are able and ready. You are choosing to inhale and embrace your commitment.

No matter what it is you commit to, you can only do so if there is passionate (alive, high levels of conscious) energy available within the union to feed the desire for that embrace. And that passion is the only ingredient that will connect and commit you to your desire.

Without that passion, you cannot successfully launch into the action of commitment. Obligation, yes.  Commitment, no.

Passion is that highly regarded energy that presupposes your head’s awareness. It speaks first. Passion is a gentle but constant fire that is burning within you. It is not a big fire, as many would think. It’s not intense or dramatic, but rather, deep and constant.

Love and commitment go hand in hand. Love is a choice and a decision. It’s much more than just an emotion. Or an obligation.

Are you feeling the change that is happening?  

Are you feeling that YOU have to make some changes?  

Does that frighten you? Make you queasy? 

Change is inevitable. Either you change or it happens to you. But that doesn’t make it any easier. 

Over the years I’ve created a list I call my change truths. They are reminders of all the positive benefits there are when I change. I keep it on my bulletin board above my desk and as much as I, personally, love change, I still find myself reading over it for inspiration whenever change is imminent. 

1. As change occurs in my life, so does growth.
2. I have everything I need to change my life for the better.
3. I empower myself when I change the direction, speed, and focus of my life.
4. Change is a beautiful learning experience and I welcome it.
5. My body, mind and soul are open to trying new things in my life.
6. I easily and effortlessly flow with all the changes in my life.
7. Nothing changes if nothing changes.
8. When I change my thoughts, I change my destiny.
9. I handle all change with grace for I know it all has purpose.
10. Be the change I want to see.
11. My desire for change is healthy and empowering.
12. All the power to change and evolve lies within me.

It's not always easy to downshift and recognize what your body is trying to tell you when it’s coping with the usual stress of a high-speed, nonstop world. 

Add to that the addition of drama – yours or those around you.

Even a brief moment of emotional intensity, such as hearing judgmental criticism, or seeing a violent image in a movie, can register in your brain as just cause to put your body on high alert. Everything you input into the mind via your senses - especially your eyes or ears - is also going into your body.  And these moments add up.

Your body (and brain) is hardwired for survival, and reacts in predictable ways to maintain homeostasis – the natural state of equilibrium. When your survival mechanism recognizes emotional intensity, the body-brain system creates specific chemicals to help you survive.  And even though your physiology doesn't always know the source of the problem, it knows there's a space that needs filling. So you feel empty, and you eat or spend or gossip or...  You might feel keyed up and anxious, so you fight with your partner, or drink more caffeine drinks, or drive fast. Drama begets more drama.

But if you became more familiar with your natural physiological reactions, you could become more adept at evening them out with healthier alternatives, which would bring greater ease into your life.  And less drama.

The most basic ways to become more balanced, less dramatically reactive, and to respond more honestly to true stress cues, may seem obvious, but they also work the best. 

1.    First off, get clear on honest signals.  When you're sleep deprived, you may feel hungry because the hormones of satiation have been affected by your body's outpouring of cortisol and insulin. In other words, when your body is in survival mode, it puts feeling good on the back burner, so you may turn to food or drink or shopping to soothe yourself.  If you know you've had enough healthful food to eat, (eating every 3-5 hours ensures this) and you know you don’t need yet another pair of shoes, and you really should stop at 2 glasses of wine, learn to override the emotion signals and address the true source of the problem. Then your choices will be simple, direct and clear: take a nap, rest with your legs up, or meditate. These choices restore the synapses in the brain. They don’t cause more dramatic impulses.

2.     Besides rest, there’s movement. Every day, you need to move your body. That goes a long way in maintaining this balance. Just move it. Don’t call it exercise.  Just put on the music and draw the blinds, or open the door and start walking – whatever. If you feel apathetic, add more variety to your body movements and eating choices. 

Because you don't always have identifiable emotional reactions to events in your life, it's even more important to notice your physiological responses — they're the real clues. Energy tends to get held in and bound up from the accumulation of daily emotional stresses.  Then, in one moment, it explodes in an emotional outburst, and all too frequently, in one that's misplaced. 

A better choice? Shake your limbs, punch the air, go for a power hike — whatever works to release the built-up tension.  Then move into a more consistent maintanence of getting clear on, and honouring, your bodies signals, before they explode.

3.     When you're in the throes of an emotionally dramatic situation, adrenalin is released, your heart rate speeds up, muscles tense, and breathing becomes rapid and shallow. So the quickest, easiest, on-the-spot way to chill out is to change the rhythm of your breath.  The other nervous system responses will automatically follow.  Start with the exhale - as fully and deeply as you can - and a fuller inhale will follow. Do this a few times, anywhere, anytime.

4.     And finally, did you know that the opposite of the flight-or-fight hormone adrenalin is oxytocin?  It’s often called the love-cuddle hormone, and is released when you snuggle babies, lovers, pets, or when you get a massage, for example. So under the influence of oxytocin, you become more relaxed, calm, and connected to your intuition. Bonus.

What can you do if you find yourself falling backwards into old thoughts, past patterns, and bad habits - again!

Take the power back with a conscious shift. 

Before you eat that (next) cookie, buy those (not needed) shoes, text your ex, step over your running shoes.... opt to rein in your emotions and reinstate your balance and integrity.

Stop. Breathe. Be consciously present. 

Pour a tall glass of water and drink the whole thing. Slowly. Emotional imbalance often indicates lack of proper hydration. Once you finished the water, move your body. Stretch, bend, twist, jump, dance. Just move it. Circulate the blood. Your brain will thank you. 

Keep breathing and bending.  

Now occupy your mind. Read your favourite blog, your journal, or pick up a magazine. Ingest SOMETHING into your brain and think about it. Consider it. 

Then take on the company of another. Play with your pet. Call your friend. Go for coffee. Stop by the supermarket. Talk with someone.

The 1, 2, 3, 4 step process won't work without you.  But you'll work a lot better with it. And it's a process that your mind will like, because it's creating a new pattern, a change of the old. 

Use the combination as often as you need. Consciously.