The End of Struggle

What does it mean to be in an inner state of struggle? 

It's that feeling of just not being quite happy, continuing to go into a state of anxiety, fear, or depression, and then struggling to overcome it. Struggling to change so you can return to a state of "happy" again. 

Or maybe it's a state of being totally fed up and frustrated with how things are, resenting where life is at for you in this moment, struggling to get to where you want to be. 

What it basically boils down to is a sense of trying to get away from what is, or what you are afraid may be, and get to somewhere you imagine will be better that isn't here yet. Or, if it is here, the struggle to maintain it, afraid that it could be taken away at any moment. 

This constant struggle, even on a subtle level, puts our bodies into a state of tension and contraction. When our bodies are tense and our energy contracted, we are living in the mindset of fear, feeling small and separate from Life, cut off from the support and flow that is always available to us when we are open to receiving it. 

So how do we step out of struggle and into that openness, receiving the support from the Universe that wants to come our way?

The antidote to struggle is something called allowing. When we allow all things to be as they are - especially how we feel about things, without trying to change it - there's no room for struggle. 

Struggle only exists when there is something to:

     a. resist
     b. strive for

When we are experiencing something that we'd rather not feel - the more challenging emotions - our ego's natural tendency is to push those feelings away, avoid them, or do something to overcome them. So we are struggling against what is.

And at the same time as we are resisting what is here right now to be felt and experienced, we are striving to reach a different state that we think will feel better for us. If sadness arises, we want to do something with it to feel happy. If anger arises, we want to push it back to try and feel calm.

Or we see the state of our life as it is which seems unacceptable to our ego, and want to get to a better place. Then we feel frustrated that it isn't shifting fast enough, causing us to feel trapped in a hamster wheel of struggle. 

Now I'm not saying that we shouldn't work to improve our lives and increase our happiness, and learn to take better care of ourselves so we can have a more abiding sense of peace and joy in our hearts. But the important thing to realize is that none of those things happen as a result of our struggling towards them. 

Happiness creeps up on us when we aren't looking, when we least expect it, when we let go of "trying" and let it come to us. And the creative solutions to our life's problems come to us also, from a place of being open to the possibilities our minds may not yet see.  

We can't force that to happen, all we can do is make ourselves open to it. And how we do that is through the art of allowing. Namely, allowing ourselves to feel what we feel without resistance or judgment. 

When we are trying to change our emotional state, to move to a happier more peaceful place, often what we are really doing is judging ourselves, and making ourselves wrong for feeling the way we do. And while our tricks and techniques and avoidance strategies may work temporarily, usually those judged and pushed away emotions only come back stronger later on. 

So what do we do? There's a very simple and powerful practice that can assist us in allowing our emotions to be as they are, not making ourselves wrong, and stopping struggle in it's tracks. 

And that is, whenever you are feeling an emotion you would normally resist or judge, you simply say to yourself "it's okay that I feel ___________"

So whether it's fear, anxiety, anger, frustration, jealousy, hopelessness, powerlessness, loneliness, or sadness. Instead of immediately trying to change it, we just stop and say "it's okay that I feel sadness right now" and we let the sadness be there for as long as it needs to be there.

The funny thing is, when we give an emotion full permission to be there, it will rise like a wave, reaching a peek of intensity, and then release, passing through us in just a few seconds in most cases. 

We don't have to act the emotion out or spend a lot of time wallowing in it. In fact, it's when we are struggling against emotions that we get tangled up in projecting those emotions out onto other people and playing out scenarios that show us all the reasons why we should continue to feel this way. 

For example, you are frustrated about your current job, you don't want to be there, you hate it and feel angry about things that are going on. If you don't give yourself the permission to feel those feelings fully, then life will bring you more experiences externally that reflect what you haven't fully allowed internally. 

So essentially, more frustrating things will keep happening at your work all to give you reasons why you have the right to feel that way. Whereas if you just give yourself permission to feel that way without needing reasons to prove it, that emotional energy can dissolve out of your energy field. Then a new space can open up for resolution and a different experience can be discovered. 

The Universe wants to support us always, in all ways. If it ever seems like there's a kink in the flow of that love, it's in our own inability to accept what is here for us to accept and allow within ourselves. As long as we are busy struggling to avoid what we don't want, and get what we do want, we aren't available to receive what Life would bring us for our highest good. 

So we allow, we suspend our self-judgment, and we let whatever emotions are arising in us to be there, for as long as they need to be there, until they have run their course and are effortlessly released. Then we are left with a clear space, an open space, for the Universe/the Divine to fill with more of our Essence - which is naturally happy, peaceful, joyful, and free, just as it is. 

Blessings!
~Jessica

Entering the Real

All of us on the spiritual path have used meditation or yogic techniques to try and change our experience. And those tools are great when they are used with a specific intention to create more freedom, bring healing, and balance. But something in us still seeks, sensing that there’s more than that.

We are seeking the Real. To know ourselves as what we truly are, which requires us sometimes to let go of all our fancy techniques and just Be. From Being we can discover the Real.

And how do we do that, how do we “just be?” Sounds impossible to the mind, but is actually quite simple. The doorway to Being, to a pure experience of this moment, is something called Appreciation.

Here’s a meditation: Wherever you are, just look at what’s around you. The table and chair you may sit at, appreciating the work that went into making it, how many different people may have touched it or contributed to allowing it to be here.

Feel the quality of the air, the temperature, and appreciate how that feels. How nice it is to feel warm, or if you are outside, how refreshing it is to feel the crispness of the outdoor air on your face.

Look to nature, and appreciate how miraculous it is that everything appears as it does – how a tree just knows how to be a tree. How a daffodil just knows how to bloom into a daffodil. As if there’s a mysterious intelligent force calling it all into being.

We may be able to dissect it and see the genes that cause it to look that way, but we’ll never know why or how. Appreciating that mystery at the heart of Life is as close as we can come to touching the truth of it.

Now just sink into it, give yourself over to that mysterious force and appreciate how your appearance here is also a miracle beyond comprehension. How is it that there is a body with someone called “you” in it to even think these thoughts, see through these eyes, and take in this unfathomable mystery?

Suddenly Life becomes so beautiful, the heart opens, and we experience union with All. We are all expressions of the same mystery. The same intelligence that guides the blooming of the daffodils guides our own life. We just have these things called minds that spin elaborate stories and assign meaning to things causing us to forget the perfection and mastery that is already at work within us and everything.

By just sitting and appreciating the beauty, the miraculous, and dropping our compulsive need to try and make this moment into something that suites the storyline we tell ourselves, we can fall back into harmony with that perfection again.

It returns us to that child-like state of wonder that so many of us loose in the process of “growing up”. It’s how we reclaim our innocence again, by just being willing to let each moment touch us with its own gifts, whatever they might be, and allowing those gifts to inspire in us whatever actions we should take next.

For example, you wake up in the morning, appreciating how it feels to be relaxed and rested, noticing the sensation of a full bladder, appreciating how amazing it is that the body can communicate that to you, and allowing that to inspire your action to get up and go to the bathroom. Then you might notice some hunger and know that it’s time to eat.

Anything that you are meant to do will come to you out of each moment. If you are doing your finances and notice that the things you would appreciate doing you don’t have the funds for in this moment, then that may inspire you to work on ways to increase your income flow.

Another way to think about innocence is the absence of fear. Stress is a byproduct of fear. Fear of failing to meet our own and other’s expectations. When we live inspired by the moment in this way, there’s no room for fear, because fear is generated in the mind based on thoughts that are only projections of an imagined reality.

Living in alignment with actual Reality – which is just whatever is happening right now, minus the story we tell ourselves about it – allows there to be peace and creativity flowing into endless solutions for any perceived problem that may come our way.

It’s no use trying to stay in this “state” of pure Being, rooted in the moment because that again would be the mind trying to control our experience, trying to escape the feelings of fear and insecurity that come from believing the thoughts in our mind. The key is to stop trying to do anything and just appreciate what is, as often as we remember to.

When painful emotions come up, just appreciate those flavors, that you have the ability to feel at all, and welcome them as gifts. Welcome your hate and resistance as a gift, and let those experiences inspire in you the actions that will allow you to love and know yourself more deeply.

This is how we come out of the spiritual ego and really begin to Awaken to the essence that we are, which is unnamable, and beyond any distinction of spiritual or un-spiritual. It’s just Real. We can know ourselves as that, as what is Real by just appreciating what already Is.

Deep Peace and Miraculous Joy to you, wherever and however this moment finds you.

~Jessica Anne Agnew

Structure and Flow

I tend to be a very "go with the flow" kind of person. I live very moment-to-moment and follow what feels right.

But I've also recently been learning a lot about the role creating structure plays in allowing my body and energy to be more supported, so it can flow with greater ease and direction. 

While I love feeling free to do what feels right in each moment, I sometimes find myself being unfocused and ungrounded, so my attention spins in many different directions at once, and I don't end up doing the things I had intended to do. 

I also find my body feeling more stressed as a result, with a lack of routine and regular biorhythm. For those of us with active kundalini energy it can be tricky to find a regular rhythm, as the energy fluctuates so drastically, seemingly for no reason (or perhaps in response to energy shifts in the Universe we aren't always aware of). 

So the question I have been asking myself is: 

How can I create some more structure for my body and life, be more focused and intentional with what I'm doing, and also allow space to flow and shift within that structure based on my moment-to-moment needs? 

For me, the first step is identifying the habits that distract me from really listening to what my body needs in the first place, and cutting those out, or creating boundaries around how much time I spend with those activities.

For example - TV watching. We don't have a TV or cable, but I admit I can sometimes fall into heavy netflix binge sessions that cause me to feel pretty out of wack with my body and energy's natural flow. So my intention is to limit TV time to not more then 30 minutes a day, a couple days a week, and maybe a movie once a week on weekends. 

Other examples are Facebook and gaming. Identifying what our personal limits are for what feels good, and what is going overboard into distraction and taking us out of the flow. 

Once the distractions are under control, my next step is creating some bookend type routines at the beginning and end of my day to help my body/mind/energy transition from sleep to daily activities, and then daily activities to sleep. 

I'm experimenting with what feels good to me, but this week I'm starting with a half hour to an hour (depending what I have time for) of yoga, breathing, and meditation in the morning, sometime between 7 and 10, depending on how long I need to sleep in. And at night, my goal is to start winding down by 8:30 with a salt bath followed by a sesame oil self-massage, to help ground and detoxify. Then some chanting and meditation, in bed by 10 (if my kundalini allows for it)

Each morning as I practice, I'll feel whatever intention arises out of my heart to be the guiding spiritual force of my day. For example, today I felt that focusing on how I can bless others with my thoughts and words would be most supportive for me. Other days it might be more about nurturing myself and taking it slow. Or maybe it's greater creativity. 

Then this leaves me with the rest of my day to flow as it needs to. To help focus this flow, I've created a big to do list, broken into two columns, Business on the left, Personal on the right, and written all the tasks I have in my mind to get done this week. Then in my daytimer, I write down the most important tasks to do each day. Then I give myself the freedom to flow with the order I get those tasks completed in, how I do them, and if one or two don't get done, I roll them over into the next day's list. 

It's about finding harmony with our inner task master that keeps us focused and aligned, and our heart that guides it all with a higher wisdom and bigger picture view that our mind doesn't always see or understand. Sometimes my mind will say "you should do this ASAP" but my intuition just won't feel called to it, so I put it off, only to find that things shift around and I no longer need to do that thing anymore. 

Some of us work better with more structure, others of us work better with more flow. We each have to find what balance works to support our energy and creativity, so we can feel the most free and the most motivated with our goals and intentions at the same time. 

Always allowing our primary intention to be about self-love and self-care ensures that we'll have the energy and heart-openness to pour into everything else that we do. 

From this alignment of consciousness, we are carried by Life in the most miraculous and joyful ways, seeing the seeds of our heart-felt intentions blossom into fruits of love we get to enjoy and share. 

Blessings of Peace, Joy, Health, and Abundance to you, wherever and however you are!

~Jessica

The waiting game

I have been thinking about the Throat Chakra a lot recently, as I am preparing to teach a class on it next week. And I asked the question to the universe, "What causes the Throat Chakra to become closed, constricted, or blocked?" And one of the answers that comes to me today that intrigues me to talk about, is the human phenomenon of "waiting."

Waiting for what? 

Anything that we imagine will bring us the happiness, or love, or comfort that we feel we don't have enough of right now. Or, waiting for the opportunity to start giving the gifts and love that we have inside of us to share. 

When we are waiting, we are holding out for something, and so a part of us is held back from being fully expressed in this moment. 

Holding back = closed throat chakra. And having a closed or blocked throat chakra causes our sense of vitality to go way down. We lose the sense of creative flow, and can feel stuck or stagnant in our life, causing depression.  

We all get caught in the waiting game, it's just a matter of being honest enough with ourselves to admit the ways we are doing it in our own lives. 

We could be feeling stuck in a job we don't really like, waiting for a better opportunity to come our way, holding out for the day we can finally feel inspired about what we are doing. 

Or maybe we are holding ourselves back from moving on in a relationship, hoping that the person will change one day and be able to be who we want them to be. 

Or it could be more subtle, like waiting for someone to recognize and appreciate who we are before we feel like we can really BE that. Or waiting to be around the right kind of people until we let ourselves be fully seen. 

It's nothing to beat ourselves up about. Waiting is part of the human ego system. It's how we were wired to think and relate to life. But as we awaken, our perception shifts, and we can stop looking at things in such a limited linear way - as if A + B = C (Happiness). And instead, open to the possibility that happiness is here for us right now! The moment we STOP waiting!

When we are waiting, we are affirming that there is something we don't have that we need Life to bring to us. And we think that if we just follow all the "rules" and guidelines and play all our cards right, then Life will grant us that thing. 

But when we awaken, we see that this is how we give our power away, and when we are dis-empowered, we only attract the circumstances that allow us to continue feeling that way - to allow us to continue waiting and wanting and never getting, because we are chasing that proverbial carrot on a stick. 

When we are waiting, we are judging that this moment is not yet worthy of our full unbridled love and attention. It's this holding back of our love and attention that really hurts us. When we are chasing that carrot, whatever it may be, we are denying that we have within us already that which we truly want. Our mind has gotten sold on the idea that we can only experience what's inside of us through having this external thing or circumstance enter our reality. So we are denying our own power, our own love, our own creativity. This is what causes the throat chakra to get shut down. 

The solution then? Stop holding back and start giving what it is we are waiting for! Here's an exercise to help with this:

First, get clear on what is really at the core of whatever you are holding out for. Ask yourself this question:

"What will having _____________________ give me that I imagine I don't have enough of right now?" 

There may be words like love, security, inspiration, connection, freedom, etc. 

Now think of ways you can start to give those qualities to yourself. How can you give more love to yourself? Sometimes it's as simple as telling yourself "I love you." Or with freedom, sometimes just saying to yourself "I give you full permission to be who you are!" allows there to be that sense of freedom within that you've been craving. 

And then think about how you can give more of those qualities to others. How can you love others more? How can you give others the freedom to be who they are? How can you connect more deeply with the people around you? Start giving those things and feeling the satisfaction that comes with it, and watch how your world begins to shift in miraculous ways!

It's also important to consider if there are any decisions that we know we should make but haven't, because we've been holding back out of fear, or the hope that something will change. To take our power back, we must turn towards those choices and choose what we know in our heart will allow us to stop holding out and start living. In order to be happy, we have to stop waiting for other people and life to change before we can be who we came here to be! This requires belief in our worthiness to receive our own love. And sometimes just daring to do it, even if we don't fully believe in our worthiness yet is the only way to start building that new relationship of love and worthiness with ourselves. 

Life is all an inside job. As we make these internal shifts in perception, and commit to no longer holding our love and gifts back from ourselves and others, our Throat Chakra and Heart can open freely, and Life can manifest around us in new and supportive ways!

Love and Blessings to you all! I LOVE YOU! :-)

And for more information about my upcoming Throath Chakra class, check out my web site: http://www.jessicaanneagnew.com/Events.html 

2014 - year of Awakening! (Energy Update)

                   The past couple of years have been powerful ones. A lot has shifted in the energetic structure of our planet, and as a result – our lives. Our inner alignment is changing as we are Awakening more and more to the Truth of who we are, and 2014 will be a continuation of that.

                I’d like to offer you an intuitive perspective of the big picture at play here to help put all of these changes we are experiencing in a greater context, so we can understand where we’ve been and embrace where we’re going.

                So let’s back up to the much anticipated 2012. What was that really all about?

                In a nut shell – the end of 2012 represented the end of a karmic cycle for humanity. What that means for us as Lightworks is that up until that point, when we incarnated into these physical vessels, we inherited some of the karma of the earth plane through our family line. And we were playing the role of “undercover” Lightworker, working to transform that energy through our own bodies, in order to liberate it for the collective.

                We volunteered to come here and take on this burden, to make it lighter for others so there would be more opportunity to discover personal freedom and healing.

                But as of December 2012, we no longer need to do that anymore! Yay!! Enough space had been created in the collective and we turned an energetic corner and entered a new paradigm that we get to now be at the forefront of ushering in!

                2013 then has been a year devoted to releasing the shackles of that old paradigm. You may not have noticed a significant difference in your experience between 2012 and 2013, and that’s because while we had stepped out of the old paradigm, our bodies where still holding the posture of that way of being. And it’s taken a bit of time (this past year) for the body and subconscious to start to release those old postures. Much like if you clench your fist hard for several minutes, when you finally relax it, your hand still holds the position of a clenched fist, because that’s what the muscles where conditioned to do, and it can be painful to stretch your fingers back out into full extension again.

So in 2013 (and throughout 2011 and 2012 as we were preparing for this), there was a lot of releasing going on for us Lightworkers. Many of us went through some big life changes, or deep inner shifts and purging, all as a way to shake up the energy and start to shed that old way of being, and learn to trust this new way that is emerging.

This year is about allowing our energy to re-align into its own natural resting place, instead of being pulled and pushed by the forces of the 3^rd dimensional earth plan. It’s about remembering who we really are, and embodying that again.

So there’s a restructuring going on this year, as we release the last of the outdated patterns from our DNA, and the new structure (the crystalin DNA – our original Soul blueprint) begins to activate and become integrated in our physical bodies and subconscious mind.

I’m calling this the Year of Awakening, because it’s the year that we really start to Remember and step into ourselves as Divine Beings.

If things have felt stagnant for you in the past couple years, like not a lot is shifting in your external reality, just know that it’s because we’ve been at the end of a cycle (energy and consciousness moves in cycles). So it hasn’t been time yet for something new to come into your reality, as you needed to allow the shift to happen internally, raising you to the next level in consciousness. Here you can begin brand new and receive, from a clear space, the new opportunities available to you. 2014 will be that new beginning for many of us, as the energy of the new paradigm is coming in now, and we are crossing that energetic threshold from the old to the new.

The message that’s coming through as we begin this New Year is that we can’t manifest by trying to push and bend reality to our will anymore. There is a deeper force at work within us now, I call it Grace, and that’s where our power to create comes from in this new paradigm.

It requires us to get quiet and go within, feeling our heart space, and listening to what feels right. There’s a surrender involved here, and a trust that our life is held by a bigger plan, and we only need to know what is right for us to know in each moment.

As we cross this bridge into the new paradigm, we may not know what’s coming up very far in advance, as we are in a state of transition, and need to just place one foot in front of the other, according to what feels right in our heart. Tuning into our emotional body is important here – making choices that feel joyful, free, and relaxed, and releasing the choices that feel strained or overly stressful. And if stress still arises as part of daily life, then taking exceptionally good care of yourself, and offering that part of you more Love then you’ve ever dared to before.

Once the new energy has more fully anchored and the inner alignment with our Soul has taken hold, new clarity and inspiration will emerge to guide us to manifesting the next chapter for our life in the physical. So if this hasn’t happened for you yet, hang tight! It’s all being worked out!

This year of Awakening and restructuring will be followed in 2015 by a year of celebrating and fully embodying the Light that we are as Awakened Beings. The new paradigm of 5^th dimensional consciousness will become fully anchored in the physical world. Hooray!!!!!!!! What a miraculous time to be alive! I’m so glad we all stayed to be a part of this, as these next few years will really be “the good part” of this action movie called Ascension!

Love and Blessings to you, wherever you are! Wishing you a Joyful, Abundant, and Miraculous year! 

The REAL Secret to Unlocking Intuition

Being intuitive is a natural part of being human, and we each have a unique way that the Universe speaks to us. It’s just that most of us are too distracted by thoughts, emotional patterns, and habitual behavior, to listen closely enough to what the Universe is trying to say.

So what exactly is intuition?

Intuition is the flow of Divine Guidance running like a current through our lives. It’s the thread that connects our awareness to everything in the universe, each other, and our destiny. We can learn to listen more closely to this flow of guidance through our feeling sense, our knowingness, our dreams and visions, and the signs and symbols we see in our daily life. 

          Intuition arises naturally when there is a clear space within. When there is stillness, and silence, which comes from not pushing or pulling on life with our egoic agenda. When we can come to a place of just being with what is, in this moment now. It’s a surrender – surrendering our judgments and our personal will, so that there can be space for Divine Will to arise uninhibited within us, and reveal to us our true path.

Often we want to activate our intuition so we can get somewhere or be someone other then who we are right now. We feel like if we could just see and hear our guides, and know what the universe wants us to do, then we could finally be who we want to be, and escape the feelings of pain, struggle, and lack we experience now.

There’s a feeling of being insufficient – of not-enough-ness – that accompanies that kind of intention, which leads to self-judgment and self-doubt, which are the two major killers of intuition. 

My way of teaching intuitive development then is more about cultivating humility, self-love, and aware presence, which form the foundations for true intuitive awakening.  

So what do these three keys to allowing intuition to open really mean?

Let’s break it down:

Humility – A lot of times the concept of humility gets misunderstood on the spiritual path, and is internalized as thinking that we should put ourselves below others, and not out-shine anyone or ask for too much from life. This is really just low-self esteem in disguise. True humility is the willingness to face ourselves and be 100% honest with ourselves about how we feel in each moment.

We don’t need to pump ourselves up to impress others, and we don’t need to cut ourselves down to avoid being rejected by others. We can just be as we are, and honor that, however that may look from the outside.

With humility, we can learn to recognize the voice of the Divine verses the voice of our ego when it speaks to us.

Self-Love – The only way to break the cycle of self-judgment and self-doubt is through self-love. Self-love is not a state, it is something that has to be practiced with dedication each day, and then grows over time.

It’s a choice we make, when something happens that upsets us, we can choose to beat ourselves up, or we can choose to love ourselves instead. We simply say to our heart “I love you. I love you. Even though this happened, I am here to love you.” We let our feelings be what they are, and we love ourselves through it.

It may feel fake at first when we have spent so many years in self-judgment and blame, being critical of ourselves. But even saying the words creates a ripple effect through our energy body, allowing us to be more and more receptive to it the more often we say it, and soon we start feeling the love sinking in on deeper and deeper levels.

Self-love is also about making loving choices for ourselves, treating ourselves the way we would treat our most beloved friend. Giving ourselves the most nutritional foods, lot’s of rest, and time to enjoy the things and people we love.

This opens our heart, and puts us more in alignment with Divine Will, which always gives us the most loving choices.

Aware Presence – This is something that all people who meditate on a regular basis are working to cultivate. It’s the ability to step back from being so caught up in the activity of being human (thinking, doing, etc) and resting as the space of awareness that it all happens within. Some people call this being the witness.

The witness doesn’t push anything in its experience away, nor does it try and grasp at anything out of a feeling of lack. Those are all actions of the ego, which is constantly either pushing away, or grasping towards, keeping us locked in the cycle of not-enough-ness.

It’s not about trying to overcome the ego, or demonizing it in any way. The ego is a part of us, it makes us the individuals we are, though if given too much power, it starts to dominate our experience. When we can practice being the Aware Presence, we see ego and all it’s desires, and we simply acknowledge them for what they are, without feeding into them.

This is tricky! And it takes years of practice, and a good foundation of self-love and humility. But when enough awareness is present, it creates the clear space within that allows intuition to be revealed, and gives us the personal freedom to follow it.

We all have intuitive guidance that comes to us in many ways, whether we are aware of it or not.

Eventually, as the ego-based personal will starts to unravel through humility, self-love, and aware presence, Divine Will acts through us, in our thoughts, words, and actions, and we no longer experience a separateness from our Source.

Intuition becomes the natural guiding system for our life, as spiritual beings having a human experience, and we can live freely and joyfully in this moment, falling in line with the bigger picture we know we are all a part of.

Returning to Wholeness

This article was featured in Timeless Spirit Magazine, Spring 2013, on the theme Connection.

            As I was sitting down to write this article, musing on the topic of “Connection,” it came to me that our natural state as humans and as spiritual beings is one of connection – of Oneness with all that is. I look out my window and see how Nature works so perfectly in harmony with itself. It’s all connected, every aspect of it supporting and nourishing everything else in a beautiful rhythm, and we are a part of that.

            So if this is our natural state already, why don’t we experience that in our daily lives? Why do we go around so stressed out and worried trying to pay the bills, take care of our kids, get ahead in our careers, never feeling like we have enough – enough of anything – time, money, or love. Somehow we got disconnected from our natural connectedness, and the question is, how can we get it back?

            Children have it, young children especially. They experience life with pure openness, awe, and wonder. Somewhere along the way growing up, we harden into these “adult” beings, with a fixed way of thinking and experiencing life.

            We form a framework of beliefs, habitual thoughts, and expectations of ourselves, other people, and life that all of our experiences filter through. When this happens, we are no longer living in direct contact with Life itself, as we did when we were children. We are living separated from Life, within this framework of who we think we are.

            This framework is not for nothing. It serves a purpose. And that purpose is to protect us from the unresolved emotional hurts of our past. It’s like a shell of protection we create to ensure we never have to feel that way again, because we never learned how to express and feel our feelings in a healthy and safe way.

            So we go along in our life, trying to be the people we think we should be in order to avoid further pain. Treating people the way we think we should treat them to avoid rejection. Making the choices that maintain our current view of reality, because even though it may be unhappy, at least it’s safer then opening to what is true deep down that we don’t want to face.

            But our Soul can only take that for so long. Eventually it calls us with its still-small-voice in the heart and says “it’s time to wake up! It’s time to face the truth. It’s time to heal. It’s time to remember who you REALLY are! You weren't meant to live this way, there is more to you then this!”

            If you are reading this article, then you have already answered that call. And so our healing journey begins. Our quest for the Real – to know ourselves as we actually are, not just as we’ve been conditioned to think we are, and remember our connection to the whole.

            One of the common traps when we start on a spiritual journey of personal healing though is we come at it with an attitude of “I want to know what is real…..but only the good stuff. I don’t really want to know the dark stuff, the painful stuff in me that might rock the boat of my reality too much if I fully face and deal with it.”

            But Life (the Divine) loves us so much that it wants us to have it all. It wants us to know our wholeness on every level, and feel connected to All that Is, and safe enough to fully show up in our bodies and in our life.

            So what does Life do? It brings us challenging situations and people that trigger us, that cause the unresolved emotional pain we’ve carried around for years to come to the surface, so that we can have an opportunity to heal it fully and have it be released from our cellular memory permanently, leaving us more free, whole, and embodied than ever before.

            Again, it’s the unresolved emotional energy that gets locked in our bodies that causes us to feel disconnected from the One, from the Divine, from Life. Life is constantly conspiring to bring us back into resonance with that place, to how we were as children, so we can experience ourselves as a part of the miraculous whole, holy and unique, and free to express ourselves however we choose.

            So what’s the most gentle, loving, and easy way to cooperate with this process when Life brings us those opportunities for healing?

            The simplest answer is – just open to it.

            Not that we should go around in life completely boundary-less and take in other people’s toxic energy they may be projecting at us, all in the name of “opening to it”. That is not a loving or healthy thing to do. It’s important to have discernment, and make the most loving choices for ourselves with our boundaries and who we choose to spend time with.

            But we open to ourselves fully in that moment, to how we feel as a result of whatever is going on, and let that energy surface, be witnessed, embraced with compassion by our own loving heart, and released.

            There’s a practice I use called Heart Breath Which I’ll share with you here.

            Heart Breath Meditation

1.      Event occurs and triggers an emotional reaction in you. Notice the feelings arising and how they feel in your body.

2.      Put your hand on your heart and start to breathe slow and deep, directly into the feeling, as if you are breathing the energy of that emotion up and into your heart.

Usually we want to suppress the emotion and push it away. We are doing the opposite here, we are letting it come up, and breathing it into our heart.

Experience the flavor of that emotion, as if you are drinking it in, giving yourself permission to feel all your feelings, honoring them as equally valid.

And note – it’s not necessary to know where in your past the feeling originated, all that’s important is what is coming up now that is ready to be cleared. It doesn’t have to make sense, just allow whatever arises to arise how it does.

3.      As the energy starts to come up into the heart, you will notice it begins to shift. The heart is like an emotional recycling plant, it can transmute the energy of that emotion, releasing it from your body. Just notice this happening and be willing to let go.

4.      You may feel like expressing the emotion in some way, through tears, or through sound, or through some physical movement or shaking. This is part of the process as the energy is being released from your body. Just witness this, and allow whatever expression feels right in that moment to come out.

5.      Emotions come in waves, so stay with the breath until it feels like the wave has passed through, and all the energy has been released from your body. More might come up later when you think about or encounter the triggering event again, and that just signifies that there is a deeper layer coming up to be cleared. Repeat the process again, as often as you need, until there is no more emotional charge around the situation.

Life gives us every opportunity to know our inherent wholeness, and remember our Divine connection to the love that we are. We just have to accept those opportunities, and be willing to let go of our fixed framework of reality so we can see and experience the Truth.

With willingness, and the courage to face, love, and accept ourselves just as we are, we are transformed, reborn, and able to experience ourselves in a whole new way – as a precious, whole, and unique gift within the greater Whole of Life.

Namaste. 
             ~Jessica Agnew