Positive Energy Guide

Inquiring within, to discover who we really are inside, is the activity that allows us to align our needs and nature with our lives in the world. Self awareness is key to satisfaction, healthy motivation, sense of purpose, and true expression.

When our authentic needs are not appropriately aligned with what we are doing and the way we have set up our lives we experience pain and dissonant circumstances. Emotional pain invites us to realign our needs with expression and action, and to change our priorities.

Realigning with authentic needs depends on being able to get in touch with feelings, sensations, reactions, and needs–which offer a form of guidance when we allow ourselves to understand what is required. It takes courage and discernment to sense into all this and come up with new choices.

Being honest with ourselves is foundational to discernment, while discernment furthers and deepens self honesty. This cycle of self awareness builds on itself.

The more we practice self honesty the more reliable our discernment–and our intuition. Unflinchingly self honesty fosters the ability to sense the difference between intuition and our emotion reactions. Solid insight transcends whether or not we like something. If intuition becomes secondary to emotional comfort or personal preference, what we can discern will be severely limited in scope.

Our most important discernment, which we make over and over, is whether or not something we perceive is a product of our own projections and emotions.

Accurate intuition and guidance are most valuable when we need assistance or direction. Learning to receive insight in the face of and regarding our personal weaknesses is an incredibly valuable practice.

How do we learn to sensing into what is really going on inside?
How do we learn to disentangle misinformation to get to our inner truth?
How do we develop self awareness?

Emotion has the most impact on our energy fields and centers. To acknowledge, express or release underlying emotions we first need to be willing to admit them.

Since pulling away from emotional pain shuts down awareness, learning to observe and accept pain takes us a long way toward the practices, values and goals we are discussing.

Intense feeling is often well guarded. When inner sensing is unclear, study your defenses. Aim to gently penetrate pseudo-logic, resistance, superficial answers, and other obstacles to inner revelation.

One trick of resistance is for an intense emotion to pop up, which then poses as a “reason,” “excuse,” diversion, or distraction, stopping further inquiry. Habitual anger and blame, for example, or self contempt can arrest introspection.

When we have the courage to look underneath blame or shame we almost always discover some tender, valuable part of ourselves that we are seeking to “protect.” Hiding that part prevents us from expressing our real needs.

We may feel helpless underneath grief or anger, allowing grief or anger to prevent us from experiencing the tender vulnerability of the voice with which our needs speak to us. When we can accept and support our hidden vulnerability or helplessness we are now empowered to make loving and more-powerful choices.

In the next post I suggest Inner Sensing Question Chains for self exploration.

During moments when YOU pull away from looking IN, exactly what is arising for you?

What happens if you become curious about and interested in your process at this moment?

Why Feel Your Pain Body? This poem speaks to the spiritual benefits of facing our pain:

The Truth stands before me,
On my left is a blazing fire, and
On my right, a cool flowing stream.
One group of people walks toward the fire, into the fire,
And the other towards the cool flowing waters.
No one knows which is blessed and which is not.
But just as someone enters the fire,
That head bobs up from the water,
And just as a head sinks into the water,
That face appears in the fire.
Those who love the sweet water of pleasure
And make it their devotion are cheated by this reversal.
The deception goes further-
The voice of the fire says:
“I am not fire, I am fountainhead,
Come into me and don’t mind the sparks.”
~ Rumi

Going into rather than pulling away from our pain creates a portal-like place of leverage through which we can access authenticity and positive vulnerability. These states are essential to experiencing true healing and deep intimacy.

To anchor the process, I asked a client exactly what she had done to move herself from self-condemnation into insight and relief. I was extraordinarily moved listening to her breakthrough in confronting her pain with self-compassion. Her heartfelt awe and amazement at the way her experience changed is inspiring. Here are some excerpts(with permission):
“I just go in and be with the sadness, and stop trying to move against it or defend it in any way.”

“When I move through the behaviors I do not go into shame. What drives everything [unpleasant behaviors] is NOT going into the pain. When I go right to what the feeling really IS and express it, I can address what is really bothering me and I can receive support.”

“I was willing to look at it without judging, putting aside my inner critic and seeing where am I TODAY: How do I feel and what do I need?”

“My opportunity for change and shift expands. When I’m in my positive vulnerability, there is a larger space; I do not operate in this tiny vacuum. And I LIKE that space a lot! I don’t feel small or pitiable. I feel like I have more space to move emotionally. I feel like I have real freedom when I am positively vulnerable. I have positive choice. This feeling is incredibly beautiful.”

“I look at myself differently, and at my life differently, and I do things differently in my life. It’s not always something huge. The things can be small things like the way I bring myself to work or the way I eat dinner, but they make a big difference. Life is made out of these moments.”

We so often long for or seek purpose in life. We tend to look for something grandiose. Moments of sincere Presence with ourselves has inherent meaning. Real intimacy with ourselves invites real intimacy with others. We learn to relax the mechanistic resistance, blocking, avoidance, distraction, and shutting down that keep us from feeling fully live, engaged, and accessible to joy. Pain, accepted, can be a gateway to meaningful engagement.

Our energy does something amazing when we fully enter into intense feeling, with compassion. The frequencies that pour through us connect universally with others. They flow through us into the world in a way that supports love, compassion, connection, and healing. Our energy impacts all the souls we touch from inside, and spreads to everyone with whom they are linked. This experience is profoundly meaningful.

Can YOU recall an experience in which you fully allowed and accepted pain without judging yourself or pulling away from feeling?

Were you surprised by what happened?

I initially learned about my pain body from my main healer. She only told me it is an energy body that contains and ‘runs’ (automates) our accumulation of old pain, influencing our behavior.

The last time I went to her in heaps of pain, she told me I was “doing pretty well with my pain body”. That surprised me since I was feeling a lot of pain. Inquiring, I found out that “doing well” meant I was more at one with my pain, instead of pushing it away from myself.

For more than a month I had been accumulating pain. One painful event rolled over into another without enough down time to fully feel and adequately recover from each hit and before the next arrived. The mostly-unexpected death of an extended family member disoriented me and cut off a vital source of support.

My habit of taking things in stride, staying constructive, and performing my duties as impeccably as possible usually strengthens me. Work can order, regulate, and balance me. Suddenly the activities that usually help became an additional strain.

Our strengths sometimes become our undoing. We may power through or stay positive on the surface while our innards are screaming out. Meanwhile our bodies layer on stress and tension. It can be better to break a bit than to stay too strong, to let down enough to get back to a flexible flow.

I woke up one morning realizing that I was ‘coping’ way too well–and burying agony. My healer had said, “Don’t let your pain body win!” when I left her house. But how?

Contemplating this, I realized I must start a campaign to release my backed up pain. I began with the current score:
Pain body: 12
Teresa: 1

Not good for the first round.

A full-effort campaign to make myself a priority looked like this:

• Alter chemistry: Dump grains and sugars, add vegetable juice, bone broth, and consistent protein. Walk daily, early to bed, more water.
• Observe self
• Update nutritional supplement program
• Observe self
• Change my game by taking on things I usually leave be and leaving be things I usually take on. State my needs. If necessary, take unilateral action to meet them. Say “no” when I need to.
• Observe self
• Let housework, non-personal email, to-do lists etc. pile up.
• Schedule appointments to receive services.
• Observe self
• Seek healing kinds of pleasure–
• Spend time outside, watch nature
• Get massage
• Sunlight
• Observe beauty
• Cook lovingly
• Watch a show with a friend
• Observe self
• Make spiritual practice a priority.
• Observe self
• Take some time off and just BE without pressure to DO anything.
• Observe self

. . . and quit complaining about not getting anything done!

New Score:
Pain Body: 3
Teresa: 18

Letting the pain body win means allowing old habits surrounding pain to run on automatic, keeping us from being self-aware enough to make fresh choices. It means letting the pain run us. When we push it away we become less aware of it, so unconscious patterns prevail.

Taking on the pain body is more than taking on our needs. It consists of noticing the ways we give over to pain or submerge it, and allowing current and authentic feeling to emerge. Only when we feel what is going on do we know how to care for ourselves in ways that dissolve and release our pain.

I did not include in my list my processes of attending to feeling and self-inquiry because I was already doing them. I will describe them in detail and discuss the pain body more in following posts.

What do YOU do when intense inner pain comes up?

How do reset yourself so pain discharges instead of accumulating?

One of the most powerful and transformative acts we can take is to move TOWARD what makes us cringe instead of shrinking from it.

The first place we usually go with a statement like the one I just made is to think about something outside ourselves, like someone trying to dominate us. While my above statement does apply, I’d like to focus on the things we pull away from ON THE INSIDE.

How we deal with inner cringing creates the platform of support from which we deal with external relationships and event. Facing ourselves is powerful.

Let’s start with several descriptive stories:

In my office, Heather, my clients’ three-and-a-half year old, was amping up, exciting her two toddling sisters. Her mom asked her to sit quietly in one spot for the remainder of their appointment. That would be three minutes.

Heather sat on the floor. After less than a minute, her face and posture began to crumple at the prospect of enduring stillness for such a long time. She was struggling to cope without melting down by asking questions to explore her potential options. I could relate to the way the three minute stretch loomed like a daunting eternity of agonizing boredom. I sat by her on the floor and spoke with her about what that was like.

I remember how looming time seemed as a child. Anything beyond the current moment was an unimaginable eternity. Heck. I remember times in the last week when time elongated to the point of pain. I’m remembering ridiculously long pauses in intimate conversations; the frustration of feeling hostage to time while another person drifts into oblivion, leaving me hanging on a sagging trail of words, wondering whether a crucial sentence would ever become complete.

I also remember getting to the other side of the imagined horror that can attend just sitting with one’s self and feeling. A spiritual teacher once required me to sit in front of a blank wall for eight hours a day, for five days in a row. I was totally certain my head would explode and I would cease to exist. Near the end of the fourth day I surrendered to whatever came up, and found that I felt comfortable. The teacher called me then and released me from completing the practice.

A client–we’ll call her Marta–was looking ahead to a period of her life when she could take time off work. She greeted this option with at least as much trepidation as positive anticipation.

Marta’s concerns came down to: What will I DO? How can I get excitement? How can I manage my experience without being caught up in something exciting?

The idea of having insufficient stimulation can take on nightmarish intensity.

Excitement, in a sense, can become a kind of codependence with the outer world to provide distraction. Satisfaction and appreciation come from bringing ourselves forward and meeting life as it is. We depend on our inner resources.

Habitual reliance on excitement or grasping TOWARD something is the mirror image of avoiding or pulling AWAY from something. They are both states of resistance to WHAT IS.

What makes you cringe? Can you lean IN to it?

What do you feel you MUST HAVE to feel okay in the moment? Can you relax your grasp?

What would you need to do inside yourself to be able to relax through the moments when you tend to cringe or grasp?

What negative or positive mental fantasy makes it seem like a certain brief span of time must be unbearable?

What do you tell yourself about it?

What is actually true?

What would you gain through by learning to face those moments with equanimity?

My primary healer once reminded me in session: “If you aren’t getting triggered, you aren’t doing your work!”

(“Getting triggered” means something sets off an emotional reaction reactivating past trauma, adding misplaced intensity to current interactions.)

When my healer said that, I had to concentrate and turn it over in my mind. At that particular moment I was triggered and feeling ashamed of it. I greeted her observation with relief.

This is how it works: If you’re going through life numb, shut down, out of touch with your feelings, or pasting a canned set of beliefs and behaviors over your natural responses, you aren’t in touch with your deeper processes. You can’t shift OUT of something if you aren’t fully IN it. And if you don’t head IN to the areas where you have issues, you are not able to assimilate and dissolve those issues.

Standing in and de-fanging our triggers invites transformation. Avoiding them keeps them in there like land mines.

Challenging our old status quo in the process of growth is often uncomfortable. Big changes often require facing down the ‘reasons’ we have not yet gone into this new territory. Like a kid on the first day of school, we encounter unfamiliar circumstances and potentially awkward feelings.

When we are growing emotionally and spiritually, we face new things–whether or not our external circumstances change. These new things may consist of making brand new responses to the same set of people and conditions. We may respond inside, for example, with greater sincerity and authenticity. These inner changes alter how we express ourselves outwardly.

Changes to established ways of experiencing ourselves or relating can be just as unsettling as moving or getting a new job. Challenging ourselves to make new responses brings up the issues and assumptions that formed our previous responses. Facing the feelings that used to hold us back unearths old issues. Hence: “If you aren’t getting triggered your aren’t doing your work.”

The great thing about getting triggered is that–if we are able to observe ourselves–we have a real opportunity to address and resolve issues that hold us back. By facing the emotional charge that pops up we gain insight, learn about our needs, resolve old pain, and transform our responses to life.

Pearls emerge as learn to lean in to emotional pain instead of avoiding it.

In the next handful of posts we will explore how to recognize and use emotional pain to develop insight, open your heart, and increase the accuracy of your intuition.

When we block awareness to avoid pain, we create resistance to seeing things we need to see. The more able we are to face distress the more accurate intuition is likely to be, because we are not invested in denial.

Facing pain with compassion goes a long way to opening your heart.

Pulling away from pain limits our emotional range of response and keeps us stuck. Rather than hardening off in reaction to pain, learning to sense and respond kindly to our own pain develops our ability to do the same for others.

As we move through this post series we will continue to develop personal inquiry skills, consider fresh ways to explore, and see if we can get in touch with an energy phenomenon called the Pain Body.

How do YOU feel about exploring your emotional pain?

Are you able to stick with yourself when pain arises, or do you float off or distract yourself?

What do you tell yourself about your emotional pain?

The dream I had Christmas morning speaks to spiritual transformation through balancing inner masculine and feminine elements. Its message is useful to many of us:

I entered a large cathedral with a high, vaulted ceiling into an open chapel without pews. The congregation stood attentively toward the front. As I stepped forward to join, I almost passed a small, ancient woman, seated with her back to a pillar with her legs out in front of her. She was observing me gently. I recognized her as a revered holy woman I had met seven years earlier. I said, “Hello Mother,” bringing my hands together in reverent greeting.

“Hello Teresa,” she returned. She smiled at my astonishment that she remembered my name after so many years and thousands of pilgrims. In her East Indian tradition, I stooped to touch my head to her feet. She had none. Or rather, she had part of a left foot and no right foot at all. I touched my head where her feet would be, brushing the left with the crown of my head. She winced a bit.

I woke up without understanding this dream, yet knowing that it held a message for me. It felt like a gift. In the way of dreams, its imagery means something different in the world of symbols than what initially occurs to the conscious mind.

Shortly after the dream I found myself in a frustrating situation to which I felt unable to respond. As my frustration rose and crested, the meaning of my dream surfaced on its wave.

The pillar was comprised of two rectangular columns at right angles, so its footprint formed a cross. This shape made it strong and gave the pillar four inner angles where one could shelter. Among other things, the cross represents the point of intersection between the earth (horizontal) and ascending (vertical) planes of experience. The sometimes-painful point of contact between our current realities and our ideals is the “place” where our inner work occurs. It is the crucible that develops self-awareness. Columns also represent the wood element, which includes boundaries.

The Holy Mother–in this case a common person who had developed herself through devotion–represents the Positive Feminine. She is seated on stone (earth element/grounding), with her back to cement. The cement and vaulted ceiling represent the Positive Male, providing sacred structure and support.

The Positive Feminine is presented in surrender to the Divine. She JUST IS. She does not need to ACT to have VALUE. She is OF value and precious simply because she exists. She is not in self will. She is surrendered to reality. There is no where for her to fall. She is in her bliss– with or without feet is no matter. She receives support at her base from the earth and at her back from what has been build by man.

This image speaks to a real life situation in which I become stymied because it is not mine to fix. When I push too hard I go from Positive Male (structure, initiative, support, boundaries, direction) to Negative Male (over-DOing, frustration, aggression). Or I am drawn toward Negative Feminine (helplessness, passivity, indulgence, valuelessness, destruction through neglect).

Positive Feminine represents surrender into preciousness; non-doing with full spiritual value.

Why does she wince when I put down my head? Why has she no feet?

In my process of awakening so far I have brought the qualities I need in and down most of the way, but I cannot yet fully stand in them. I feel helpless when I cannot move forward, and can find contacting hard realities painful. My work point is to lean into my distress and grow stronger feet, not to force action, but to bring the Holy Feminine fully into life. Then I will have the patience to NOT act when BEing is a better choice.

Message from the Divine Feminine: “Observe yourself, through my eyes of love. I recognize and accept you. When you fully accept life exactly as it is you are not compelled to DO anything about it. Residing in inner preciousness is your place of refuge.”

How is YOUR balance between inner Male and Female energies?

Can you move freely from one to the other according to the situation, or do you get stuck in one polarity?

Suppose you have tried all the interventions from Part 1 and you are still having trouble. Here are additional suggestions:

Find resource that works instead of attempting the channels that do not. If you usually get guidance from your inner voice, and that is not clear, try visualizing what would work for you, or sensing it. When one part of your brain is compromised, another part may rally.

• Focus on self care.
• Avoid pushing yourself or getting anxious, and soothe yourself while you wait out this period, knowing that guidance will return.
• Withdraw from excess engagement with the outer world except for things that bring you energy. Spend time alone, sleep more, and allow yourself to dream.
• Use your experience for growth. Avoid platitudes or belief systems (B.S.) that limit your inner exploration.
• Sense into any emotional darkness or blind spots by staying open to new messages, or messages in new forms. Sometimes when we grow we get different inner guides or forms of guidance and they require a growing-in period.
• Consider distress an invitation to deeper transformation.
• Don’t force the positive or wallow in the negative but remain open to experience–without interpreting it according to personal preferences.
• Surrender any resistance to reality. This does not mean giving up or giving in. It means actively reaching for acceptance of That Which Is. Resistance costs too much energy.
• Seek the guidance of trusted advisors.
• Try new things if they feel right.
• Wait for the energy and/or external conditions to change.
• Lean into your most important values.

One of my best friends died recently, from an extended illness. Even through her death was unexpected, she spent time in her last year exploring her spirituality, including life after death. As shocking as it was to lose her, something felt right about her timing. Pay attention to what you need to do.

Primary Sense

When guidance is rocky, return to your primary sense.

Our PRIMARY sense is simply sensing. Sensing means attending to what happens in your body. Just noticing is the core of all awareness. Sensing is basic, foundational, and primitive–in a good way.

A client wanted to learn to test products for himself. I handed him a poor quality nutritional supplement so he could sense the energy difference between this and an excellent product I gave him to compare. With the first product, he sensed inside, held his hand over his innards and said, “The energy feels sort of curdled.” This word described exactly what I sensed as well.

Sensing is one of the most powerful and overlooked forms of personal guidance. Its primary nature makes sensing less susceptible to distortion and more accessible than other forms of guidance.

When you are compromised and have trouble accessing guidance, simply sensing may work. Without knowing a direction, you can feel your way into something that works. Here is the process:

• Meet the needs of your body as well as possible.
• Find a moment when you can quiet your mind.
• Relax your emotions, especially fears and desires.
• Pay attention to your body and your energy sensations for a baseline.
• Hold a clear intention or visualize a completed action and sense how you feel in your body, especially your heart and gut areas. (Examples: moving to a specific place, trying a particular treatment, taking a certain job.)

Tip: When you try this exercise, be specific about WHEN you are thinking of acting.–It matters.
How do you feel inside when you concentrate on your potential intention?
Compare several different possibilities and attend to your sensations.
Which one feels best?

What do YOU do when guidance is elusive?

Is your self talk supportive or unsupportive when you are having trouble?

One of my readers asked: “What does a person who wants to take guidance-based action do when they can’t be sure they are clear? And they are not likely to get clear in the near future? Sitting on the edge of the pool until adult-swim is over is not an option.”

Since I am addressing all of you, I will answer generally. I will work up to addressing how to find proceed when we are seriously compromised and none of the usual interventions work.

When you are not sure you are clear, you might want to present your body and emotions with a series of tests, challenges, or checks to determine the source of interference. Getting ourselves clear is like tuning your instrument. Your body and energy are your instrument.

First check in with yourself to make sure you have had enough sleep, protein, and water. Low blood sugar or dehydration interfere significantly with clarity. If you are compromised, wait until you handle your basic needs before trying to access guidance.

Next consider whether or not you have been exposed to toxins or allergens. Toxins talk. They don’t have anything nice to say either! Exposure to toxins or allergens creates inflammation, which gets into the brain as well and compromises brain function. Try avoiding all potential allergens and chemical exposure when you need to get clear.

Emotional interference is important but difficult to address. Disentangling convoluted webs of self-sabotage and mixed motivations is advanced and complicated work. I cannot cover it here in total, but here are some places to start:

If you do muscle testing on yourself or another binary form of testing, make sure you are strong in response to the following statements. If you do not use testing, pay careful attention to your body and energy signals as you ask yourself the questions. You will notice that you contract, hold your breath, freeze up, or want to fidget when you are not congruent with a particular statement. Try these:

• “I am willing to get clear guidance.”
• “I am willing to be willing to get clear guidance.”
• “I am willing to get clear guidance about my health.”
“I am willing to be willing to get clear guidance about my health.”
• “I am unwilling to get inaccurate guidance about my health.”
• “I am willing to be aware of all factors that may interfere with my health.”

You may need to ad-lib here to get to your exact issue. Try exchanging the word “safe” for the word “willing.” Also try “I have permission to,” and “deserve to. . . .”

Weakness in response to any of these questions indicates lack of congruence–inner conflict. Any lack of congruence represents active interference with, in this example, health. Inner conflict, which is often unconscious, will express itself in:

• Making what is bad for you seem good
• Making what is bad for you seem terribly appealing
• Making what is good for you seem wrong or annoying
• Blanking out or forgetting and doing things that don’t work for you
• Feeling resistant to what you know you need
• Making excuses or rationalizing ‘why’ you cannot do what you need to do
• Seeking out friends or so-called experts who support misinformation that keeps you stuck or sick
• Using someone, like a spouse, as a ‘reason’ you cannot do what you need
• Setting clear intentions and then doing something else instead
• Forgetting about what you decided to do

As you identify active patterns you need to find a way to clear them.

• First: See them clearly. Pay attention to how they operate in you, without judging.
• Second: Seek to understand and accept the feelings and needs involved with these patterns.
• Third: If you can, use some type of energy-based therapy or technique to clear the related energy to make change easier, like EFT, Thoughtfield Therapy, Blindspot Technique, EMDR, etc. If you do not know how, just think about the patterns and flood yourself with clear light and positive energy, asking to release them.

Almost everyone benefits from assistance with this type of process. If you have significant underlying trauma or illness, or cannot trust yourself, getting help is essential.

Which part of this process do YOU find the most challenging?

What is it about this step that trips you up?

“What is the best way to develop Guidance skills?” (Question from reader.)

This depends whether you mean the best way or the easiest way.

Guidance skills depend on the specific nature of your intuitive assets.

Are you more visual, kinesthetic (feeling,touch and movement), or auditory? Or do you access information via Direct Knowing?

The easiest way to develop Guidance skills is to focus on further developing your strongest suit.

The best way to develop Guidance skills is to explore and expand the inner context within which your skills exist. By “inner context” I mean the compost of your lifetime of experience, turned into vital soil; the sum total of all your learning as the basis of your wisdom. Through assimilation, knowledge is freed from its initial structures and layers itself into your inner sense of knowing. You can improvise instead of playing scales. This type of awareness integrates and transcends structures and categories. It is direct and creative.

Your inner context for guidance includes:

• All that you have learned and studied
• Guidance and healing skills you have developed over time
• Understanding born of direct life experience
• Energies and processes you have absorbed from exposure to other guides
• The wisdom hidden in your weaknesses in addition to your strengths

Your inner context for guidance is expanded by:

• Confronting anything that holds you back from compassionate self-honesty
• Taking on the varied challenges that arise with respect to your personal and your energy boundaries
• Exploring and understanding your values
• Pushing the limits of your current understanding and compassion
• Discovering new types of perception
• Getting clear about who you are
• Learning how and when to use your less-developed intuitive gifts
• Meeting experiences that do not fit your preconceptions of reality
• Encountering and accepting the underlying energy-based reasons for various kinds of ethical behavior
• Learning to treasure and cultivate discernment

Your state of Being and the quality of your Presence are essential to quality guidance. Quality guides are not cultivated by doing some kind of exercise to increase intuitive access. Without context, exercises that enhance intuition can lead to various types of imbalance, including delusion and quandaries with ethics. 

This post series, along with the Inner Work series (under Self-Development tab above) is designed to provide a comprehensive context for balanced and ethical guidance skills. These post series offer a wide range of ways to practice and deepen Guidance skills, from body-based intuition and sensing the energy in a room to exploring profound spiritual states.

The Life Purpose series, which may also be of assistance, debunks some common misconceptions about life purpose. The short External Energies series under Healing tab will also be of service.

I recommend: 

• Work through each series from its beginning. (You will need to go to the square-boxed numbers at the page bottom and navigate to the first post of the series.)
• Get a notebook or journal and answer the questions at the end of each post
• Pay attention to which posts you resonate with and make a note so you can review them down the line as your perspective deepens
• In a separate section of your notebook, write down any of the suggested exercises that call to you
• Practice each exercise on its own for two weeks before going on to another
• Pay attention to concepts, ideas or experiences that bring up issues for you, and gently allow yourself to explore what that’s about
• Write down any questions that arise
• Notice the changes that begin to occur in your intuitive perceptions and orientation toward guidance

I produced this work to fill in important but often overlooked elements necessary to use powerful skills safely, ethically, and without the drawbacks of most belief systems. Beginner and advanced practitioner can both gain insight, inspiration, and personal clarity by working through the series. Obviously different readers will benefit most from different posts.

Accurate guidance rests on congruence between thought, sensation, and emotion. Awareness of our issues and motivations helps to prevent our unconscious material from biasing and distorting our guidance.

What do YOU tend to hide from yourself and why?

What would actually happen if you allowed yourself to be aware of the parts of yourself that you find the hardest to see?

How would being comfortable with these parts impact your guidance skills?

“How do I know when I need to ride out something versus when I need to address it?”

If you can stay balanced and at peace without having to push any issues away, you can let some things ride. If something eats at you or presents an ongoing concern, address it.

Symptoms are wonderful guides. Even when a symptom comes and goes offers valuable information. A passing stomach ache may occur every time you eat an allergen, or whenever you begin to worry. An occasional cramp may indicate a mineral deficiency, which also causes less obvious but more important problems. A headache may tell you that you’re suppressing anger. Energy-based symptoms are also informative.

If you let something go by, observe whether or not it repeats. Bear in mind that the sooner you catch and address an issue the easier it is to correct. This applies to issues with energy and patterns in relationships as well as body symptoms. Don’t wait until issues become established.

Be attentive and intelligent, not neurotic and hypochondriacal. The difference between intelligent and neurotic is not in the subtlety of the issue but in the attitude with which you approach it.

In relationship be proactive, not defensive. Before addressing energy you may be picking up from someone it is essential to ask yourself WHY YOU are open to picking it up. Address your internal state and energy boundaries as soon as you feel distress. Look first to your motivations for doing so before taking this up with another person. If you’re working your own part and the other person is open, talking is good.

Psychic hygiene significantly improves moment-to-moment experience. I scan and make internal corrections right away if something is compromising the integrity of my energy systems.

Many subtle influences are difficult to distinguish from our personal energy fields. Weather patterns and the amount of available sunlight and can influence mood, especially rapidly changing barometric conditions or positive ion storms. Sun spot activity, solar flares, and the pull of a powerful full moon can cause difficult-to-track states.

Over time I have observed that what we might call Cosmic Weather has a significant impact. Influences that create floods, fires and earthquakes bring up human sensitivities. So do intense waves of emotion after disasters, from warfare or political threat.

Working with sensitive clients and checking in with skilled healers and therapists has shown me that local or global influence can be powerful. When my sensitive clients all come in reporting the same states and sensations, a theme emerges. Over time it becomes easier to discern cosmic or global influence.

It might be said that it is best to ride out influences over which we have no control. On the other hand, these influences evoke powerful emotions for which we may prefer support.

Intense conditions can bring to light issues that are less accessible during normal conditions. This is an opportunity to address issues that might otherwise remain buried. Difficult conditions are opportunities to develop a less-assailable state of balance.

I let influences ride out when I experience them as transient discomfort and feel a sense of perspective about them. When they throw me off balance I seek assistance. Sometimes just knowing what they are or having an idea how long they may last is sufficient support.

We want to make sense of our experience. In an attempt to do so we tend to make things up. For example, if external influences (like a positive ion storm) promote anger, we cast about for someone or something to be angry ABOUT, so our world makes sense. It can be a relief to realize that we are simply experiencing a passing sensation that has nothing to do with us.

How much tolerance do YOU have for distress?

Do you tolerate too much, react too much, or maintain a good balance?