Time for Change
“The only way that we can live is if we grow. The only way we can grow is if we change. The only way we can change is if we learn. The only way we can learn is if we are exposed. And the only way that we are exposed is if we throw ourselves into the open.” C. Joybell
Change is the only certainty in life. Life never stands still regardless of what you do. Who you are now is not who you were last year, last week, yesterday or even a minute ago. By thirty-five years of age your entire body has replaced itself at least three times. Cells are constantly dying and being replaced by new ones so in essence you are not you anymore. Change is the very nature of existence, affecting your thoughts, feelings, beliefs, ideas and even your relationships. It can cause massive upheaval in you that is not always welcome or easy.
We are all on a journey back to self, your true self – your authentic, fearless, creative and unconditionally loving aspect that knows no limitation or separation from spirit. This requires you to continually change and adapt your life style as you change and expand into higher consciousness. Do you have aspects of your life that no longer serve your highest and best good? It may begin by a feeling of restlessness or need for change in order to suit who you truly are. From there you can focus on how to express your beliefs, values and emotions with integrity and authenticity that creates a feeling of happiness and abundance regardless of what life throws at you.
Everyone likes authenticity, real feeling, real passion and real heart. But it requires work to tap into who you truly are. Choosing to be a truly authentic being is scary. It means unravelling. It requires you to strip yourself of the facades and masks you have used to please others in order to be accepted. To rediscover your essential self, your authentic self is a long, gradual process. Put your heart out there; take emotional risks, truth tell and open your heart and soul for all to see. It is scary at first but what’s the alternative? The truth is the most painful life is a life half lived.
Some people choose to spend their lives doing work that is not aligned with their higher path and purpose. Some derive great fulfilment from hobbies, family, relationships, or voluntary work, which may compensate for the lack of fulfilment in the area of career. You may need to uncover your true motivations and desires in your work life and to put steps in place to fully realise them.
Sometimes this journey creates upheaval in your life. Sometimes there is no change at all. It all depends on how aligned your life is aligned with your highest path and purpose. This process may show up as a loss of interest in activities that once held your interest or it might reveal itself as an increased frustration with people that you no longer resonate with. It may manifest as an intense need to change careers or be free of the role you play for others such as caretaker or therapist in marriage or friendships.
As you begin to heal and change, your energy vibration begins to rise. Almost overnight you may not have as much in common and no longer relate on the same wavelength. You have raised your vibration so you may no longer even be on the same frequency as your loved ones! Those who are part of your old values and beliefs will no longer interest you and friendships may fall away. Relationship dynamics based on control, abuse, power-struggles and inequality will come to an end as you will no longer tolerate their energy and instead will attract relationships that mirror your inner change. You will be drawn to people of ‘like-mind.’ In your social life, you may feel uncomfortable around certain people or places you used to enjoy. Perhaps what cemented your friendship no longer appeals such as big boozy weekends or gossiping. If they do not appreciate your new perspective on their habits they may resent you rather than make changes in their own lives. Some would prefer not to reassess themselves and their life!
You cannot expect to live in harmony with the Universe if you are in conflict with others, flouting the Universal Laws and creating discomfort for others. Any tension needs to be relieved and either transformed, reduced or removed. This process may occur without you needing to act. As you change and expand in conscious awareness, so everything in your environment will necessarily change and expand with you. Those that don’t want to change and expand may remove themselves in order to feel comfortable again.
Better the Devil You Know
So when is it necessary to take a leap of faith? When the pain of staying the same exceeds the fear of the unknown. Sometimes it’s a case of waiting and procrastinating so long you get pushed off the cliff with a wake up call that shakes you to your core. When a crisis happens and you find yourself tumbling through the air, transmutation begins. At some point there is a point of no return where you can’t go backwards no matter how much you want to. So you have two choices: you can surrender into the small, narrow place and transition into what’s next or you can become stuck, sabotaging your destiny, stagnating and feeling miserable. This sometimes happens in transition. It takes courage to heed the call that demands radical change. Persevering through uncertainty takes patience, persistence, resilience, and courage. You have to knowingly go through pain and discomfort. You must face the great unknown with no idea of what lies beyond. But a gift lies in the process, a gift you may not recognise when you’re going through it. When you’re stuck everything boils down to its essence and if you pay close attention this is where you discover the thread of who you truly are and what really matters.
Everyone undergoes emotional, intellectual and ultimately physical death as you are born to the infinite process of embracing your true self. These mini-deaths are frightening and tragic to the ego but liberating for your soul. Does fear of the unknown hold you back? Fear is debilitating and counterproductive. Do you hesitate to follow your intuition out of fear? Are you afraid the changes needed will wreck havoc on all that you have created and the level of security and stability in your life? Intuitive guidance, however, is all about change. It is energetic data ripe with the potential to influence the rest of the world. To fear change but to crave intuitive clarity is like fearing the cold, dark night while pouring water on the fire that lights your cave. An insight the size of a mustard seed is powerful enough to bring down a mountain-sized illusion that may be holding our lives together. Truth strikes without mercy. We fear our intuitions because we fear the transformational power within our revelations. If you feel hesitant to change due to fear that you and your life will need to change radically know that change tends to occur in small, manageable increments. Guidance is offered in the same way: in easy to digest bite sized pieces that your Spirit Guides are confident are easy for you to accept and follow. The Universe only wants what is for our highest and best good. You will not be given something too difficult that you can’t handle.
Be careful what you wish for! If its radical change you want, it’s radical change you’ll get! It’s better to ask for to small steps on the path of personal development By applying one insight at a time over the course of a day, week or month, you create real and lasting change is ultimately healthier than rapid, dramatic change that pulls the rug out from underneath you and leaves you in shock. Sometimes you are irrevocably changed. Even if the change is a positive one, every cell in your body may resist it through fear. Mourning the loss of your former self, those parts that will never be the same again, can be unbearably uncomfortable. There is security in the known and familiar regardless of how miserable you may feel deep down. Sometimes the reaction is to want to revert to how things used to be, the known and familiar. You may even choose to stay unhappy and uncomfortable rather than risk the unknown. As you begin to dig deeper for meaning and connection with your Spirit Guides everything holding you back or no longer serves your highest path and purpose in your soul’s growth will inevitably crumble.
You are not alone. You are always a co-creator in life. You have the choice to change your mind, to use your Divine Free Will at any time. But also, you have guidance. You can call on your spirit guides at any time to assist you and gather the resources needed to create the changes needed for you to live in alignment with your highest and best good. A good dose of faith is needed to know that what you are guided to step into is for your highest and best good – even if it causes pain and discomfort in the short term.
Remembering Your Heart’s Desire
“Some people are handed a golden opportunity on a silver platter, and instead they opt for eating out of the dog’s bowl instead.” Chris Cade
In order to see and accept opportunities as they arise first you need to be sure of what you want. Once you make a decision the Universe conspires to make it happen. The Universe helps those who help themselves. This requires vision and high self esteem to know what you are capable of given the chance. If you have a mentality of lack and scarcity you will accept the dog bowl as being all you deserve, considering yourself unworthy or undeserving of the silver platter being offered you. You can be given the most incredible opportunities but without self esteem you will inevitably self sabotage. If you expect failure that is exactly what you will have.
Loving and approving of yourself creates acceptance and trust in yourself that means that you send a signal to the Universe that you not only deserve to be happy but that you will appreciate it. Accepting yourself, warts and all, gradually reprograms your mental attitude. This, in turn, creates loving relationships and attracts new opportunities. It’s like smiling even when you don’t feel happy. This tricks the brain into thinking you are happy, releasing happy endorphins so the next thing you know you are actually feeling genuinely happy!
Look at your life. Are there ways you can live and be more aligned with your highest path and purpose? What gives you joy? Are you loving yourself through your choices in nutrition, health, life style, career and relationships? Do you feel aligned with your ethical compass? Do you honour your needs as well as those around you in all that you do? Become aware of your thoughts and pause often, observing the automatic responses and thought processes. This will help you to peel back the layers, one at a time, to shed all the false ideas of yourself and the world until you reach your true self – your authentic, fearless, creative and unconditionally loving aspect that knows no limitation or separation from spirit. In this new paradigm, this new belief system, you are already aligned with your highest path and purpose. You are divinely guided and all you need to do is pay attention to those divinely guided steps to bring your purpose into fruition, one step at a time.
Where to draw the line
The first step is to figure out exactly where you need change and how to create real and lasting change in your life. Here are a few ideas to get you started. Write your answers down.
1. What do you want in life? What area of your life do you feel discontent or unfulfilled?
2. What is your heart’s desire? What do you really want in a relationship, career or finances. How is your health and mental wellbeing? Do you feel loved and appreciated? If you chose a fresh new life, that creates the perfect environment for your heart’s desire, what would it look like? Describe it. What do you want if you stopped listening to what everyone else wants for you?
3. What are you willing to do to make what you want happen? Be specific and detail exactly what you need to make it happen. How soon will you make it happen? These things do not happen of their own accord! They take a self-motivated push to bring it to fruition.
4. Who or what do you need help from to access what you want? Do you feel you need more creativity, education or experience to get you where you want to go? Do you need a coach, mentor or a trainer? Do you need more peace of mind, patience or perseverance?
5. What do you need to attract into your life to implement your heart’s desire? Do you lack resources and are unsure of how to find what you need?
6. What internal or external blocks or setbacks are holding you back? Does insecurity, poor health, uncertainty or loneliness hold you back? What self-limiting beliefs are holding you back? Do you lie to yourself and others? Do you procrastinate? Are excuses your knee jerk reaction to inaction? Do you try to please everyone else at the expense of your own values and beliefs? Are you good enough? Are you deserving of the life you have always wanted? As soon as you have dropped the shackles of old thinking you will be free. What is your motivating force and how do you direct your energy towards more positive channels?
7. What or who affects your life negatively? You have to believe in yourself. You have to celebrate your own worth before anyone else will see it. What does success mean to you? And how will you fight for it? What are you willing to give up that no longer serves your highest good? Is there negative energy that you just can’t put your finger on, blocking your way? It could be a need to stop smoking, or a need to stop treating someone badly or to stop being treated badly.
8. How will you accomplish this in order to be truly happy? What current “reality” do you need to detach from in order to accomplish what you want? These can be real or perceived obstacles getting in your way. What illusions are you limited by? Perhaps it’s the belief that you aren’t good enough, smart enough, pretty enough, handsome enough or skinny enough?
9. Are you completely clear, joyous, and excited about what will make you feel fulfilled and happy? Without complete certainty and positivity what you want and desire will continue to elude you. What brings you joy and you feel passionate about? What you focus on expands and is made real so don’t wallow in negativity.
10. What do you want to ultimately achieve? Do you seek happiness? Success? Financial wealth? Health and well being? This sets your intent.
Manifest Outer Change
Manifest change with intent. This is as easy as it sounds. There are plenty of methods available depending on what type of person you are. You might be goal oriented and need to have an ultimate goal in your sights to work methodically towards. For me personally, I prefer to go with the flow. I establish what aspect of my life I’d like to change and imagine the ultimate goal, leaving the steps fluid and unspecified. This works for me but won’t work for everyone.
Experiment with living in the flow. Begin to express and operate from a soul level by surrendering control of your life’s path to the Universe and its purpose. Drop the need to plan or control your world and those in it. Drop any expectations or plans for the future in favour of living in the now. Living and creating in the present moment becomes more attractive than projecting your thoughts off into a future that may never manifest without putting steps in place in the now. Experiment with being content to just go with the flow. This means you feel Divinely assisted without obsessing about the future. That’s not to say you can just wait for things to drop into your lap. Of course, you still need to look to the future. Once you make a decision the Universe conspires to make it happen. The Universe helps those who help themselves. Any path is ultimately tested by results. You’ve got to be willing to put yourself out there, to experiment, to make a move and see whether it’s the right path. Take it one step at a time and look at the feedback your life gives you. The Universe will be there, encouraging you onwards and upwards and ensuring you have all the opportunities and resources you need. Inner knowing, your connection to spirit, assists you in staying true to your highest path and purpose. You are held in the palm of God’s hand. Are you receiving validation and enthusiasm from others? Are your Spirit Guides offering you assistance in guidance in myriad forms at the exact right moment? Do you feel happy and in the flow?
Manifest Inner Change
Now that you have identified aspects of your outer life that need to change, any course of action to implement them, and have set the intent for the Universe to provide you with assistance, it’s time to change any unconscious, underlying barriers or blocks that limit you from being who you truly are.
Options for inner reprogramming:
– Call on your Spirit Guides for assistance. Invite them to take an active role in your life and to help bring all the people and resources needed for you to create real and lasting change in your life. They cannot interfere or be involved if you have not given them express, repeated invitations to do so.
– Meditate. Meditation helps you to recognise and reprogram unhelpful emotional patterns, develops mindfulness and loving kindness towards yourself and all sentient beings.
– Creative visualisation techniques; imagining or writing a letter to a close trusted friend describing your life in graphic detail as if it has already occurred and seeing yourself already in that future reality.
– Affirmations or prayers help to clarify exactly what you are manifesting. Prayers and affirmations reprogram your thoughts through repetition and reinforcement. Again, use words that create the impression that this ultimate goal is already manifested in your life. Use present tense and the feelings associated with its fruition such as joy and excitement. Affirmations and prayers reprogram old outmoded beliefs and values in general ways or for specific outcomes.
A Change of Heart
When considering a change, tune in to your body and notice the subtle shifts in sensation. Your decisions are signals telling your body, mind, and environment to move in a particular direction. The most important barometer for right action is the heart. Your heart (not your head) is your connection to Source. You are connected directly to All That Is through your heart. Your body sensations and feelings act as a barometer for your inner world. Every significant sensation from body temperature, heart rate, oxygen consumption, hormone level to brain activity offers subtle signals to help direct you. Out of balance means feeling stressed, sad, lonely and stagnant that can lead to mental illness and depression if left unresolved. Apathy and resistance to change affects all aspects of your life whether you are conscious of it or not. Find the trigger and change your thoughts and your mind opens up, your heart rate lowers, your body relaxes, breathing slows and deepens and you can move on.
Do you obsess over whether you are making the right decision? Do you unconsciously assume the Universe rewards you only if you make the right move but punishes you if you make the wrong decision? There is no right or wrong, only a series of possibilities that shift with each thought, feeling and action that you experience. The Universe has no fixed agenda. Once you make a decision the Universe conspires to make it happen. Once you make a decision your Spirit Guides work around that decision and offers you opportunities and resources to enable you to succeed. There’s no such thing as failure. The toughest challenges or mistakes lead to the greatest learning. You are only limited by your imagination! If you don’t know what you want how is God/the Universe meant to assist you? God does not want us act small. We are here to shine!
You cannot hurry your path or rush ahead. Your guides would confuse you if they told you what the end result was without allowing it to gradually unfold in tiny steps. If someone had told me I would live in Tasmania I would have laughed heartily at such a preposterous idea and probably worked hard to sabotage that destiny!
Be at ease with change. Often you will need to go through upheaval and change in the short term in order to create the best possible future. You learn so much through mistakes than when everything smoothly falls smoothly into place. Not all endings are disasters. Radical change can be in order for the new to come through. Break down old patterns and beliefs about yourself. This opens up your energy and allows the space to reflect and consider a new course. Sometimes periods of rapid, uncomfortable growth are needed in order to lead towards greater self-expression and greater happiness and success in the long term.
Even the most insurmountable or overwhelming issues pass. Try to remember this and go with the flow. Observe but do not attach or label your thoughts or emotions. Allow them to rise to the surface to be released. The journey to transformation is smoother when you step back from anger, fear or grief and take a breath, before emotion takes over. Treat the raw emotion without labelling. It takes 90 seconds for an emotion to pass through your system if you don’t attach to the thought and intensify the energy. Acknowledge the emotions and let it pass. You are not your emotions. With awareness allow for the blocked energy to be released and replaced with love and light. If you wait long enough even the darkest times lose their power.
Start now! Focus on your heart’s desire and the positive changes you wish to make, set your intent and any steps needed to create the change you want to see in your outer and inner world. Call on your Spirit Guides to love, guide and protect you. You deserve better! Shake your fist, rattle that cage! It’s time for change!
Art by Justin Totemical