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Why Many Of Our Relationships Are Not Fulfilling

relationships

Unfulfilling Love & Relationships – A Shutterstock Licensed Image

Not long ago, men held jobs, women cared for their families, most people smoked, and a fair number of us lived past 80. Most folks lived within their limits, and according to pre-approved societal roles. Religions were clearly defined and vehemently defended, and far too many people were judged, then relegated to the outskirts of society. In the midst of all this, somehow, it seemed people were kinder and better to each other.

Why Can’t We All Just Get Along?!

Even though the 60s revolution was vital for the expansion of our collective consciousness, it was built upon self-gratification through connection. Well, dancing and sex. The core ethos of the movement was all about rejecting any form of oppression, and embracing our impulses.

The hippie archetype loved to regularly peel-back the onion, with the hope of seeing far beyond the limiting constructs of self, family, religion, and suburbia. While it was laced with a colorful and benign narcissism, the hippies established the precursors for tech-obsession, selfies, and selfishness. While some of these things might bring us to our knees, overall, the 1960s was a spiritual and evolutionary success.

As the automotive, housing and education industries began to manipulate and subjugate the average American through overpriced loans and inadequate products, people began to feel the pinch. Within the pinch, they began to disassociate, isolate, and become depressed. To satiate their self-loathing, people everywhere began to seek solace in fantasy, through the forms of news, television programming, and movies, all contrived and dispersed by billionaires and conglomerates, for the sole purpose of monetizing what I like to call, “the collective, American obsessive disorder.”

To counteract this disease and its related trends, somewhere in the early 1980s, America took a nosedive into a grotesque obsession with a horrific display of greed. By the mid-1990s, the predominant generation was depressed, self-obsessed, debt-ridden, polyamorous, and exhausted.

Wait, What Exactly Are You Saying?

I’m exaggerating, of course. But that doesn’t take away from the fact that, as a species, we’re in deep doo-doo. Indeed, this is not the time of our lives or the best it’s ever been. It’s more like what David Bowie said,

“We’re not evolving; we’re not going anyway.”

The critical elements to our current state of mind and heart include a variety of relatively new concepts, including projection, selfies, ego gratification, and self-expanding intentions. While these things are taking root, we’re also grappling with skyrocketing costs of living and the potential decimation of the earth. Good times!
What is Projection, and How Does it Hurt Us?
Projection occurs in a few ways:

  1. When we believe our hangups, problems, and limitations stem from other people, rather than from within ourselves or as a result of our behavior. An example: When we are fearful of commitment, we might blame the other person for their inability to commit
  2. When we believe the stories, mental images, and emotional impressions resulting from our past to be the truth in the present moment. An example of this type of projection might be when we’re having a slightly heated discussion with someone, and we begin to feel like they’re attacking us. In this case, we might be thrusting the emotional residue and imagery from childhood experiences onto the other person or into the present discussion.

Suffice to say, projection isn’t very useful and it can be downright damaging. At the very least, when we project onto other people, we prevent ourselves from seeing the moment and the other person for what they truly are. Many people are addicted to projecting, which is why they cannot successfully participate in healthy relationships.

Why Are People so Insanely Obsessed With Themselves?

The selfie began in the late 1990s with cute pics of people with their computers. While it started as an innocuous trend, it has evolved into a hurricane of smiley faces blowing kisses at their camera phones. If you peruse the images posted by your Facebook friends, you’ll notice that a fair number of them are selfie-obsessed. While your healthier friends share varieties of pictures, the selfie-addicts only post their “I love myself” snapshots. Luckily, this gives us the perfect excuse to unfriend. My rule? A few selfies per year are good, five selfies buh-bye.

How Does My Pursuit of Ego Gratification Limit My Relationships?

When it comes to love relationships, there are three entities to consider: you, your lover, and the relationship. When it comes down to clout, the biggest shareholder in the trio is the relationship. This means that when you’re wandering the world seeking validation and pleasure, your relationship might be suffering from malnutrition, and a broken heart. While it seems logical to seek the joys in life, only fools believe that relationships will not inhibit their prior senses of freedom, at least to a small degree.

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Love relationships require lots of watering before they can endure steady streams of ego gratification. If you want to wander, and also desire a fruitful relationship, focus on the bond for three years. After that point, it’s probably safe to reintroduce your wild meanderer back into the equation. It’s only then that your relationship might have enough substance to counter-balance your inner Indiana Jones.

Why are my Self-expanding Intentions a Coitus Interruptus for Intimacy?

It’s wonderful to seek self-expansion, but when in a relationship, the path to liberation can be difficult, unless both people seek the same forms of freedom, and at the same pace. Either way, it’s difficult to establish long-lasting relationships before we hit 35. Prior to that, we barely know who we are, and might be unable to concrete lasting, connected, and humble relationships.

You can go off to the mountains and sit with your guru or spiritual master, but take your partner with you. Before you leave on your quest, understand that each of your egos might require distinct or opposing modalities in order to be successfully apprehended or healed.

How Do We Break All These Trends?

While there’s no formula for stepping into the present moment and making commitment your priority, without these things, your relationships don’t stand a chance. Here are a few ideas that might help you liberate yourself amid tending to your loving relationship:

  1. Stop taking selfies. Only take heart-centered pictures with both you and your beloved in the frame.
  2. Stop believing that you have to give 50% to your relationship for it to work. This is a lie. You both have to give 100%. Life is too difficult to expect anybody to pick up the slack, even when it’s their turn.
  3. Stop believing that personal liberation requires hiking in the Himalayas, going to raves without your partner, or hitting the bars with your friends. Personal liberation is the relinquishment of the ego so that you can experience the eternal self. It’s not about adventures.
  4. Spend lots of time loving and serving each other.
  5. Reduce the number of distractions in your lives.
  6. Reset your goals to include joy, intimacy, awareness, and deep connections with others.
  7. Relinquish the temporary self-identities that inflate your ego.
  8. Relinquish one expectation per week. Pretty soon, you’ll have enough space in your mind and heart to allow the other person to be themselves. This will help your relationship thrive!
  9. Remember that the other person is not you, and you are not the other person. You are each unique bundles of particles barreling through space at insane speeds. It’s a miracle that you can pour orange juice into two glasses and drink them together. It’s also a miracle when two souls successfully love together.
  10. Allow for fewer expectations, and more space. When you finish giving each other space, give each other some more space. Allow the space to speak to both of you. Dance separately, and then together, within the space. Let your relationship with each other include a dialogue with the space. More space, more clarity. More clarity, more joy. More joy, more love. Rock on!
  11. Gentle kisses on cheeks, sweet love notes and foot massages also help.

One of the saddest reasons why our relationships are not fulfilling is that we spend more time using the words “I” and “me” than the pronouns “you” and “us.”

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Praying With Humility: Changing Yourself And The World

change yourself

Praying Hands, Change Yourself – A Shutterstock Licensed Image

It’s perfectly appropriate to defend our belongings, lives, and loved ones, and to yearn for specific relationships and life-experiences. It’s also suitable to desire titles, positions, gobs of money, and the highest levels of success. You might even have fantasies of domination or revenge. It’s all part of the play.

While goals and desires can be conjured through intentions and focused effort, prayers tend to require a separate set of conditions and attributes. If all whimsies and pangs of hunger were equal to prayers, then prayers for football team wins, stock windfalls, and military massacres would dominate the supernatural circuits, and crowd the fulfillment funnel.

For a prayer to be considered “fair trade,” it’s probably best it meets one or more of these conditions:

  • Reflects a personal, life or death situation
  • Is born from pure, heartfelt intentions
  • Stems from a place of humility
  • Reflects a measure of reverence
  • Does not require that other living Beings be hurt, punished, or killed
  • Results in improved conditions for one or more people, the results of which do not threaten other living Beings
  • Enhances an individual’s or group’s health, safety, mental capacity, attitude, emotional state, spiritual
  • wholeness, comfort, relationships, or general well-being, including yours
  • Expedites a person’s psychological, emotional, or spiritual evolution, including yours
  • Inspires and invites feelings of positivity, kindness, and generosity
  • Provokes compassion or empathy from anyone who might hear the prayer
  • Immediately increases the vibration of the person praying with humility

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If your prayer doesn’t embody any of the above attributes, it might be more of a hope, desire, or goal than a prayer. Authentic and humble prayer does not generally involve the ego — it requires vulnerability and selflessness. For example: praying for a financial windfall is probably egoistic, but praying with humility to receive money to pay for your Mother’s surgery, might have measurable appeal to the Universe’s vibrational, response-network.

How do we create and improve our realities?

To up-level our selves and lives, we start with a feeling or a sense, then we slowly churn it into an intention. Once it’s embedded in us, we imagine related scenarios, outcomes, and destinations. Within these elusive dreams, we form agendas and implement actions, thereby moving us toward the fulfillment of our desires.

To accelerate our journeys, we might use games, leverage, strategy, or cunning. We might also engage our friends, allies, and demons. These are the systems and rackets that rule our physical lives within our three-dimensional realities.

It’s perfectly moral to have goals, dreams, and fantasies that are self-serving. Even a measure of greed can produce positive feelings and outcomes. It’s also permissible to dance with shadows and invite devils to dinner. What separates goodness from evil is not our thoughts or associations; it’s the upshot of our efforts. If hints of our intentions, and hosts of our actions, produce favorable conditions, we still might be invited to sit at the right hand of the divine.

When we’re in the aggressive pursuit of achievement and position, it’s not necessarily harmful or bad, but it’s probably not prayerful. Prayerfulness requires our vulnerability. If our prayers are muddied with desires for pleasures and trinkets, they can become superfluous, even benign.

What if we wish to shift something unique, deep, and lovely? What if our desires are perfectly pure and egoless? What if we have the heart, soul-intention, and desire-base of a child? What, then?

Strangely, the Universe, born from light, has the heart of a child. This child is not infantile; rather, She is the embodiment of the deepest and most profound truths in all of reality, and throughout all galaxies and realms. Whether you see Her as a God, Avatar, Master, or Guru, or the embodiment of pure electromagnetic energy giving birth to matter and circumstance, She is truth itself.

When we beckon the Divine, we enter into a courtship with eternal light. It doesn’t matter if we’ve named him Jesus, Buddha, or Elm Tree, and it doesn’t matter whether we’re rich or poor. What matters most is that we have chosen to bow to a Supreme Being, which is also us. As we embody the purest humility, we see through the eyes of the Divine, and into forever. It’s in this state that prayers are immediately fulfilled.

Once we are in a complete and humble prostration to the eternal Self, we can be anyone or anything. In this position, we can share every tidbit of our pain and let it all out. We can be sad, angry, or delighted. We can be full of love, rage or hate. We can be selfish, and we can beg. Most importantly, as we lay our hearts and burdens at His holy feet, we free ourselves. This is how every soul, regardless of religion, can be immersed in the bosom of eternal light, and be born again.

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Genuine prayer is not easy. It comes at a price. To connect with and shift the fabric of reality through prayer, we must first admit that our self-identities and personas are temporary and barely real.

While we might not need to embody our purest selves at the start of our prayers, we need to be open to our unraveling. Without a doubt, to achieve a durable state of prayer, we must acquiesce to the All-That-Is, from the cores of our beings.

Praying with Humility: The Reality Of It All

When leading and participating in Native American and Pagan rituals, I’ve seen people heal themselves of hatred, depression, and disease. I’ve felt spirits exit bodies, and I’ve seen miraculous transformations in the most broken and horrid people.

Through deeply intentional and action-based prayers, I know that anything is possible. Even if for a moment, we can strip ourselves of our false identities and desires, and open our hearts to the vibrations of pure light, we can co-create any reality.

To begin praying with humility, sit in silence, and bow to the eternal master. Call out to your angels, guides, Gods, and helpers in all the realms. Yearn to be opened. Beg for the light to blow you away.

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The Humble Life Of Yoga Master, B.K.S Iyengar

iyengar yoga

Iyengar Yoga – A Shutterstock Licensed Image

As trendy as yoga has become, when it’s properly practiced it can help earnest people release physical and emotional toxins, and reach deeper levels of clarity and self-realization. Improperly practiced or bastardized, yoga becomes nothing more than an ego-serving, adrenaline-inducing exercise.

While there are many social-experimenters in the US and UK offering varieties of classes involving Party-in-Your-Pants Yoga, B.K.S. Iyengar, and his Iyengar Yoga are the real deal, both grounded in spiritual truths and ancient texts. While some of Iyengar’s followers and teachers may come from a more egoistic state than their master, Iyengar’s teachings have endured the tests of time and dilution. They remain profound and penetrating.

“My Body Is My Temple And Asanas Are My Prayers”
— B.K.S. Iyengar

Bellur Krishnamachar Sundararaja Iyengar’s career spanned eight decades, during which he developed and taught a unique version of Hatha Yoga. Hatha was founded in the early 10th century by Matsyendra, the yogi-saint known to be an incarnation of Avalokiteśvara, who has been honored in both Buddhist and Hindu traditions.

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Iyengar’s style focused on correcting alignment through the precise performance of yoga postures (asanas). This “new yoga” was the first popularized form that utilized benches, blocks, belts, sandbags, blankets, and other tools within the practice. This was not only revolutionary, but it also opened the doors for people with physical limitations to correctly perform the asanas without hurting themselves.

Yoga And Sex

Hatha Yoga was originally an extension of Tantra, the celebratory practice of physical and spiritual fusion of masculine and feminine aspects. With specific poses aimed at raising the kundalini or “life force,” Tantric aspirants were enveloped in blissful unions with the eternal consciousness of the cosmos. Tantra, as it’s practiced today, can be exciting, transformative, and yet challenging to master. It can also become addictive and inspire ongoing sexual promiscuity, which can detract from living a balanced, love-based life.

Have no doubt, yoga awakens our most coveted aspects, including our sexual prowess. This is why some yoga masters become sexual predators or at least sexual experimenters. The lure of multiple partners can be enticing and overwhelming, and eventually intoxicating.

But if we consider that most yoga asanas were designed to awaken the flames within us, how can we find faults in our desires, addictions, and yoga teachers? Sexual expression and healing have always been intertwined with the tenets of yoga. Eventually, it comes down to taking responsibility for our projections, and enjoying the outcomes, whether they result in disaster or bliss. Remember, there is no “other.”

“Yoga teaches us to cure what need not be endured and endure what cannot be cured.”
— B.K.S. Iyengar

Trendy Yoga

While it used to be an honor to be invited to study yoga, today, anybody can wander into a gym and sign-up for classic forms of yoga. Gym and yoga studio members can also engage with the more hipster versions of this ancient rite, including “Rage Yoga,” Metal Yoga,” and “Sailor’s Mouth Yoga,” the latest forms designed to massacre the ancient texts with ego and attitude. There’s even a USA Yoga Championship and The International Federation of Sports Yoga. Hooray!

While these concepts are exciting and potentially fruitful for their followers, they have nothing to do with the original yogic disciplines. Yoga is not a sport or a hobby. It’s a spiritual path that can lead to awakening. And while you might feel joyful, accomplished, and self-validated when competing, copping attitudes, or slamming shots of Jäger after downward-facing-dog, these activities tend to be more self-aggrandizing than transformative.

The Basics of Iyengar Yoga

Iyengar Yoga requires discipline as it strives to unify the body, breath, mind, and soul. What also makes Iyengar Yoga unique is that it focuses on learning and experiencing rather than pushing through a list of poses in one sitting. It’s all about quality instead of quantity. While this style of yoga veers from the traditional flow of Hatha Yoga, it’s equally calm, gentle, and mindful. While the practice of Iyengar Yoga does not require its students to adopt any set of beliefs, it follows this teaching to its core:

“Let us bow before the noblest of sages Patanjali, who gave yoga for serenity and sanctity of mind,

grammar for clarity and purity of speech, and medicine for perfection of health.”

BKS Iyengar authored many books on yoga, including “Light on Yoga,” which sold over 3 million copies, and became an international best-seller, translated into 17 languages. He also authored 13 additional books, including “The Tree of Yoga,” “Light on Pranayama,” “Light on the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali,” and “Light on Life.” Although he was a profound teacher and master, he never required his students to follow his personal, religious traditions. In fact, he would encourage them to remain devout to their birth religions and cultures, the sign of a true spiritual master.

The BKS and Ramamani Iyengar Family

Married to BKS in 1943, Iyengar’s wife was a humble, loving woman named Ramamani, for whom he later opened The Ramamani Iyengar Memorial Yoga Institute in Pune, India. During their loving marriage, Ramamani gave birth to five daughters and one son. Their children Geeta and Prashant continued the Iyengar Yoga legacy by becoming internationally-known teachers and authors.

Throughout her life, Geeta (1944-2018) focused on yoga for women and published “Yoga: A Gem for Women.” Prashant authored several books on yoga and served as director of the Ramamani Iyengar Memorial Institute for many years. It is said that Iyengar’s and Ramamani’s other children Vanita, Sunita, Suchita, and Savita, led more secular lives. Yet, the lineage continues: Abhijata Sridhar Iyengar, their granddaughter, continues to each at the family’s institute in Pune, and in other countries.

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While many yoga masters fall under the tutelage of a guru very early in their lives, Iyengar did not hear the calling until his brother-in-law invited him to a class when he was 15. Not only was his brother-in-law a respected teacher of yoga, but Tirumalai Krishnamacharya is also often referred to as “The Father of Modern Yoga.”

“There is a universal reality in ourselves that aligns us

with a universal reality that is everywhere.”
— B.K.S. Iyengar

BKS Iyengar’s Early Education

BKS Iyengar lived a fascinating life. Born in a poor village in Karnataka, India, he was the 11th child of 13. After contracting influenza during the pandemic that ravaged his hometown, the young BKS was never the same. Before reaching adulthood, he was stricken with malaria, typhoid fever, poor nutrition, and bouts of tuberculosis.

By the time he was 15, he was ready for a change. Beckoned by his famous brother-in-law, the yogi Sri Tirumalai Krishnamacharya, Iyengar moved to Mysore, India, and spent two years devoutly practicing yoga asanas. In 1937, when Iyengar was 18 years old, Sri Krishnamacharya ordained the young man as a yoga instructor and sent him to Pune to spread the gospel of asanas.

During the time of his study with Sri Krishnamacharya, the young Iyengar struggled. Since he neither showed spiritual promise or was a favored student, Iyengar was often assigned to the drudgery of household chores. Because of this, his relationship with Sri Tirumalai Krishnamacharya was often strained.

It wasn’t until Sri Krishnamacharya’s prize students moved away when Iyengar’s master training began.

While some students were given lighter exercises and less stringent schedules, Iyengar was taught a series of difficult postures, often being instructed to fast until he mastered specific asanas.

After teaching yoga for many years, Iyengar felt called to teach in other parts of the world. He spent time in Switzerland and Europe teaching violinist Yehudi Menuhin. Back at home, Iyengar taught celebrities Jiddu Krishnamurti and Jayaprakassh Narayan. He also taught the Queen of Belgium how to do a headstand, and writer Aldous Huxley and actress Annette Bening to perform his unique asanas. Iyengar continued to teach and lecture through to his death on August 20, 2014. He was 95 years old.

“Be inspired but not proud.”
— B.K.S Iyengar

B.K.S. Iyengar Quotes

“It is through your body that you realize you are a spark of divinity.”

“Breath is the king of mind.”

“Yoga is like music. The rhythm of the body, the melody of the mind, and the harmony of the soul creates the symphony of life.”

“Yoga does not just change the way we see things; it transforms the person who sees.”

“There is no difference in souls, only the ideas about ourselves that we wear.”

B.K.S. Iyengar’s Legacy

As an Indian national hero, Iyengar’s government awarded him several prizes, including “The Padma Shri” in 1991, “The Padma Bhushan” in 2002, and “The Padma Vibhushan” in 2014. These accolades were heard around the world. In 2004, Time Magazine named Iyengar as one of the 100 most influential people in the world. In 2005, the San Francisco Board of Supervisors declared October 3 as “B.K.S. Iyengar Day.” In 2011, Beijing’s China Post honored this prolific writer and teacher with a commemorative stamp.

More recently, the Oxford Dictionary recently defined the noun “Iyengar” as “a type of Hatha Yoga focusing on correct alignment of the body.” On December 14, 2015, Google honored what would have been Iyengar’s 97th birthday with a Google Doodle, a digital animation that was shown on browsers in India, North America, Europe, Russia, and Indonesia.

A true master of yoga, BKS Iyengar continues to inspire millions of people to improve their postures, health, happiness, and souls through his uniquely profound Iyengar Yoga.

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How To Create Miracles

Miracles

Miracles are for everyone. A Shutterstock Licensed Image.

Miracles are born from absolute congruence and surrender, but only when we are in our humblest and purest states of spirit.

Miracles cannot be born from ego or goals, as these trivial things are based in physical and three-dimensional realities, which are only tangential to the creation of conditions. Miracles are born in the spirit world, then handed over to our physical positions in spacetime, with our consent. From there, we must bring them to life and keep them alive.

If you’re hankerin’ for a hunk of miracle, you need not be an altar boy, Rabbi, Priest, healer, saint, Pope, Goddess, Avatar, or perfect person.

In fact, miracles tend to fall into the laps of the people who have no powers, titles, or privileges. This is because the beaten, poor, and lonely are well-practiced in humility and transparent, heart-felt requests to the Divine.

When thinking of your miracle, you might first consider why you have not received it already. Here are the top ten reasons why your miracle evades you:

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  1. The miracles you seek might be the inverse reflections of the things that you refuse to acknowledge, heal, or address in your life.
  2. Even if for brief moments, you might not have learned how to love yourself.
  3. It’s your ego’s miracle, not your spirit’s.
  4. Your anger is in the way.
  5. The miracle you seek is in direct conflict with someone else’s pain or identity.
  6. You do not yet know how to acknowledge your feelings or process your emotions.
  7. Your miracle might be too complicated and intellectualized for it to emerge from spirit.
  8. Your pain is more valuable and nutritious to your soul than the miracle you requested.
  9. You may not have recognized a specific experience as the miracle you sought.
  10. Your karma ate your miracle.

When miracles evade us, we might be refusing to grow up.

When our love miracles don’t appear, it might be that we have yet to learn how to love ourselves. If we are seeking fame-n-fortune miracles, it might be that the natures of our souls require further pain to expand beyond their current, temporary self-identities. In this case, fame and fortune would not elevate or benefit our spirits in meaningful ways. These things would merely function as pieces of candy.

This alludes to the fact that sometimes we might have a miracle in mind, but as a result of our prayers, we’re given something completely different. We may have mastered articulating our miracle. We might even be embodying perfect humility, congruence, and surrender. But amid our devotion, the Divine hears something deeper and then administers what is necessary, and possibly more in line with our root needs and spirits.

It’s in these cases that we must trust our intentions and the precise, divine answers to our calls.

There have been millions of reported miracles throughout history. These include:

  • Apparitions
  • Physical, psychological, emotional and spiritual healings
  • Saviors
  • Bleeding icons and statues
  • Appearances and disappearances of people and objects
  • Magical shrouds and hats
  • Playful ghosts
  • Stigmata and physical abnormalities
  • Incorruptible saints and paupers
  • Astronomical and planetary manifestations
  • Births and deaths
  • Money
  • Love

While many of the more sensational miracles that emerged throughout time may have been driven by religious prophecy or wishful thinking, they are nonetheless miracles. Every time that your deepest desires and intentions appear in a physical form, it could be considered a miracle.

The most lovely miracles are born from broken hearts. These humble requests are not about promoting religion or gaining position; they are simple hopes that are stated clearly and without expectation. It’s not that expectation is not helpful; it’s just not a required ingredient when creating a miracle.

The broken heart is like a beacon to the Divine. She hears us. Immediately seeing our faces, She knows our pain and embraces us. It’s in this moment that the eternal and divine consciousness grants our wishes.

Do we have to be broken to gain access to the versatile fabric of the universe?

The reason that brokenness is helpful to us is that it puts us on our knees. In this position, we are vulnerable to love and attack. When we’re broken, we are driven by our attachments and assumptions. We’re pushed outside of our minds and into our hearts. Brokenness is how we see our true natures and experience our most enduring attributes. Without moments, weeks, years, or lifetimes of brokenness, we might never know the truth.

Are you feeling separate from the eternal fabric of reality? Are you living without knowledge of your sovereignty and might? Have you forgotten that you are made of stardust?

The reason that most of us become depressed and distracted from our truths is that we allow our egos and minds to drive the train. We’ve all heard this before, but let me take a bit further. The moment you feel low and then ponder that low position, you have already cemented it into reality. Because you allowed it, you now have to dig out of it. For most of us, there’s a way to stop the madness.

How can I move past the moment when a disconnected sadness covers my heart and eyes? How do I stop enabling this, and allowing it to take hold of my Being?

As you are falling into the dark cloud, realize that you created it and that you can un-create it. While it might not be easy, in the moment you feel a falling, reach above you and call for God’s help. Reach to the stars and beg for divine light. Realize that you are not the person falling; you are the stars and light you are beckoning.

We give our minds too much power, and like any entity in power, they take us on wild, sometimes horrible rides. It’s not that our minds are bad, it’s just that they don’t offer much value when it comes to improving our feelings and protecting our individualized divinity.

To find your miracle, soften your heart, release expectations, and feel gratitude. When you’re ready, look into the eyes of the Divine and speak to your soul.

The moment we feed the temporary self-identity that our mind’s depression creates, we have lost the battle. Once we get on the train of misery, it’s tough to truncate its trajectory. It’s like being locked in a ride at Disney, but not a good one.

Sometimes our miracle-request is simply this, “Universe, Goddess, Creation, Avatars of Light, please walk me out of the darkness so that I can feel the power, light, and love infused in my soul, blood and bones. Be with me so that I can put this old identity behind me, embody your love, and represent the eternal flame.”

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Dragonflies Are The Forgers of Creation And Carriers Of Ancient & Alien Secrets

Dragonflies

Dragonflies are remarkable little Beings! A Shutterstock Licensed Image.

One might see dragonflies as insects of no substance, or little animals that are of little consequence to our lives here on Earth. We might even feel a hint of fear when seeing a dragonfly on a nearby tree.

With streaks of emerald greens, royal blues, and bright scarlets, sprinkled across multiple sets of wings and scales, Dragonflies have an other-worldly appearance. At rest, they are tall and erect, using two sets of hands as they build, connect, and tend to each other.

To the Native Americans, these beautiful creatures remind us that living in this world can cause us to attach to fantasies, illusions, and delusions. The Hopis believe that dragonflies have supernatural powers and a shamanistic presence. Because dragonflies are born in the water and ascend to the skies, Native elders see dragonflies as representatives of pure water, and liaisons to the Sky-Gods.

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In some cultures, The Great Winged Friend might act as our divine-intercessor, guiding us in our pursuits of clarity, creativity, and blessings. By creating whirlwinds of thought and movement, the dragonfly can help us distract and fool our enemies.

As mystical coaches, the dragonfly encourages us to ground and manifest our dreams, as we seek validation for our natures in this complex three-dimensional reality. To some, these vibrant angels are embodiments of love, light, and joy.

 

“Dragonflies are reminders that we are light, and we can reflect light in powerful ways if we choose to do so.”― Robyn Nola

 

Throughout Ireland and Scotland, the dragonfly has often been associated with magic and fairies. In Scandinavian folklore, the Æsir cult glorified the dragonfly as the symbol of the love goddess, Freya.

In Japan and China, these powerful winged-Beings are known to be special, holy animals, with the potential to protect and heal those in need. They might be our spiritual judges, here to evaluate whether the souls around us are good or bad.

In some mythologies, dragonflies were the harbingers of magnificence, the gatekeepers who protect the doors that lead to the other realms. In all its legends, the dragonfly represents a doer, an abundance of spiritual energy, and one of the most expeditious travelers between dimensions.

When we think of dragonflies, the adjectives that emerge include agility, powerful, lucky, peaceful, graceful, light-filled, transformational, pure, wise, and enlightened. With these things in mind, the dragonfly could potentially inspire our spiritual advancement and liberation.

The Science of Dragonflies

Believe it or not, there is a Worldwide Dragonfly Association that promotes the research and conservation of all the species of the world’s dragonflies (Anisoptera) and damselflies (Zygoptera). Collectively known as the Odonata, they form a “clade” or “clatus” (latin), a group of living-Beings who have a common ancestor, and embody one branch on the eternal Tree of Life.

While their magnificence has few equals, dragonflies often take a majestic stance, with their mighty wings held outward from their sides. Damselflies are more slender, almost demure. In physical stances that appear to be protective, they raise their pinions over their bodies, whether they are threatened, at rest, or at play.

NASA has named its latest rover, “Dragonfly,” which is being considered for exploration on Saturn’s massive moon, Titan.

Dragonflies can travel at over 60 miles per hour and stop in the batting of an eyelash. They do the same things in reverse. They breed in wild fashion near streams and lakes and have been traversing planet Earth for over 300 million years. They’re zen warriors, and unless grabbed, cupped, and violently attacked, they will never seek human flesh for a casual bite.

Are Dragonflies Descendants of Aliens?

Many of our planet’s early prophets and seers were able to channel the truth about Earth’s humble beginnings. In deep trances, they saw the many varieties of alien lifeforms that visited, pollinated, and then inhabited our Earth.

According to these shamans, one of these living-Beings, who at that time was nearer to the size of a human being, was akin to today’s dragonfly. It might be that long ago; dragonflies governed several aspects of life here on Earth.

These shamans saw that the dragonfly-Beings came from a remote double-star known as Gamma Andromedae or Almach (also Almaak, Almak, and Alamak). Almach is the third brightest pinnacle of light in the constellation Andromeda, and 350 light-years from Earth.

When forming this planet and its many species, the original creators must have imagined the most coveted attributes to infuse into the creatures they were creating. Speed, power, flight, agility, magic, and grace would probably have been among them. By bringing the dragonfly and damselfly to Earth, the original creators blessed it.

These creatures were created with such magnificent artistry! It would be hard to deny that they weren’t meant to be at least companions for some of Earth’s original species and power-Beings.

Dragonflies: History, Physique, Eyes, and Sex

The dragonfly and damselfly have been around for over 325 million years, in some form or another. While today’s dragonfly wingspan is often two to five inches, their ancient relatives had wings that spanned several feet.

There are over 5000 species of these lovely creatures, in 348 genera, with 11 families.

With ferocious, serrated teeth, dragonflies are cold-blooded predators, eating a variety of insects, butterflies, mosquitos, moths, animal matter, damselflies, and smaller dragonflies.

They’ll catch over 95% of the prey they pursue. Akin to humans, they can be are found anywhere from sea level up to around 12,000 feet. They live on every continent, except Antarctica.

The eyes of dragonflies are comprised of nearly 24,000 ommatidia. An ommatidium is a hexagon-shaped photoreceptor, surrounded by supportive and pigment cells.

When you examine the colors of today’s dragonflies, you will find that they are covered in thousands of colors, many of which have not been recorded by science. The dragonfly and damselfly are remarkable in every way.

Mating for dragonflies is a bit of “Tarzan meets Jane.” Flying in tandem, the male will hold the back of the female’s head while the female rolls her stomach under her body. This is how the female catches sperm from the male’s secondary genitalia at the front of his abdomen. Besides the male having two sex organs, a fascinating aspect here is that when the two bellies are united, they form a heart. If that isn’t magic, I don’t know what is!

From Nymphs to Dragonflies

Far from being your average insect, dragonflies are born in the water and live as nymphs or larvae for up to 5 years. At this stage of their lives, they have huge eyes, six legs, and a rounded, sectioned stomach. Akin to fish, they breathe through gills.

Once nymphs grow to adulthood, they crawl out of the water, shed their nymph skin, and rebirth as strong, young adults. It takes anywhere from a few hours to a few days for their four wings to emerge, dry and harden.

The time before their wings emerge is considered the “teneral” stage, which means “delicate and tender.” During this brief period, they are weak and cannot fly, which makes them especially vulnerable to predators.

Within a week of leaving the water, dragonfly nymphs complete their adult maturation and are ready to fly. When hiking near water, you might see a nymph’s hollow exoskeleton, which might be mistaken for a transparent, lifeless cricket.

From their first flight to their last, dragonflies are flexible aviators who can hover like helicopters, or fly up, down, and sideways. They can fly for several weeks at a time, and up to 100 miles a day.

These airborne hunters will die within a year of emergence from their shells, most of them expiring within a few months. Our powerful friends will rarely die from old age. Most will be hunted, caught and eaten by falcons, swifts, flycatchers, nighthawks, and other birds, along with lizards, frogs, fish, and wasps.

Snakes and Dragonflies

In folklore and life, dragonflies and snakes appear to have a secret alliance. There have been many reports showing these two creatures connecting, with the dragonfly resting atop the snake’s nose. According to legend and eyewitnesses, when snakes are in trouble, dragonflies will fly to their rescue.

Because of their “needles,” tools that can stitch wounds and heal the sick, they have been called “snake doctors” or “snake pilots.” American naturalist, John K. Strecker said, “Unless you cut off a snake’s head, a “snake doctor” can bring it back to life, even though its body may have been badly mutilated.”

Dragonflies embody a complex set of attributes. They represent the water and wind, the power of warriors, and the grace that be found through enlightenment. Because of their short lifespans, dragonflies are always living in the present moment. Having to endure multiple births in their lives, they teach us about the temporal natures of our physical realities, bodies, and self-identities.

Their transformations from nymph to teneral to dragonfly, are representative of our personal transformations. As they push from stage to stage, and from Earth to flight, these beautiful little Beings show us how grateful they are to be alive. In life, love, transitions, relationships, and more – BECOME THE DRAGONFLY!

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Unlock The Hidden Secrets of Your Personalities

hidden secrets of personalities

Our Personalities Are Temporary Self-Identities! A Shutterstock Licensed Image.

Some life lessons are hard to swallow, but the toughest ones are those which push us toward a greater self-understanding. With an expanded sense of Self, we make better decisions and our lives are more peaceful and productive, even healthier. What determines our growth is not warm-fuzzy, white-light vision-boards; rather, it’s the actions we take toward fulfilling our dreams of self-realization that determine our growth and success.

Each of us is an ever-changing chemical equation in pursuit of connection and equanimity. We know that our personal alchemy and happiness are dependent upon our thoughts and desires, but without investment through action, nothing in our physical realities will change.

Working in the background of our daily lives and relationships is a set of powerful personalities. This buoyant, loyal, feisty group of secret identities is what we use to interact with the world. By confronting, healing, and up-leveling each of these personalities, we in turn release emotions, people, events, beliefs, and paradigms that no longer serve our evolution. In the process, we transform this life, as well as prior and future lives.

The Purpose of Personalities

Every experience results in the accumulation of attitudes, intentions, and beliefs, which live in us like magnets. Left unchecked, our internal magnets can attract undesirable experiences to our lives. These magnets also form identity masks (personalities) within us, which also attract experiences and act as the engines behind our actions. We are at the mercy of these amorphous, embedded constructs until we recognize, heal, and release them. While some of our personalities are helpful or benign, the rest of the crew can be a force to reckon with.

Our core personalities act as the collective machine that drives our lives. Much like our spirits use our bodies to live in physical realities, we use our primary personalities to engage the world, make friends, get jobs, and get attention. By temporarily naming and then exploring our personalities, we make them more relatable in the moment, which helps us process unattended emotions, imagery, and experiences. Doing so, we increase our ability to forgive ourselves and others. As a result, our awareness expands and we grow.

Over time, we evolve and our core personality sets change. At the ends of our lives, we drop all personalities and return to Source.

This does not mean that our souls die: it means we go back to an existence without pretense or construct, a state we can achieve while living in our bodies in the here and now.

Return to Source

According to the most ancient spiritual traditions, the purpose of life is to release the features within us that are incongruent with the Source of all life. This is what the masters who have appeared throughout time have taught us. Buddha, Mohammed, Jesus, Krishna, Lao Tzu, Quan Yin, Amma, Paramahansa Yogananda, Swami Vivekananda, Osho, Thich Nhat Hanh, Sai Baba and all the light beings who brighten our spirits, point to oneness with creation, a merging with eternity.
They desire for us to go through the process of Self-realization, seeking Nirvana, the state of the perfect non-existence of self-serving desires. Some people pursue this clear state by praying, chanting, or living monastic lives, but the majority of us utilize relational and emotional modalities to serve our spiritual advancement. These tools bring us closer to the Self, expanding our awareness, clarity, and sense of freedom.

By exploring and finding empathy for the broad spectrum of human attributes inherent in the human condition, we move closer to the Source.

By seeing ourselves in every living being we experience and interact with, we become free. With our intentions and actions focused on embracing all aspects of the human condition, we awaken.

The Challenge

How do we begin this type of deep exploration? There are powerful rituals that can bring us closer to ourselves. From Sweat Lodges and Pagan Rituals to advanced energy work and self-cleansing modalities, we have many options.

The challenge is that most of us do not have the simplicity of life to allow a one-time workshop or Vision Quest to take hold in our lives in a longer-term, meaningful way. And even though we might recite positive thoughts and mantras, if we’re honest with ourselves, we know these things are often not powerful enough to break our emotional and psychological bondage. In many ways, traditional new age modalities are temporary, egotistic, problematic, and narcissistic.

We cannot advance without a measure of deep exploration and momentary pain. We might achieve a state of clarity for a moment, but it doesn’t mean we can sustain it or necessarily benefit from it. Even if we sit in meditation for 10 days and eat vegetarian food while focused on our navel, the positive effects will easily wear off if we do not upkeep the efforts. Consistency in positive, transformative, and cleansing action is what returns us to ourselves and keeps us there.

You can breathe white light out your crown chakra all day long, but there’s no guarantee your mind will not consume you in the hours that follow.

Slowing down for long enough to achieve lasting transformation is a challenge we all face. There are few systems in place that can give us true transformation. Most of the spiritual teachings we regularly consume are bundles of candy. They feel so good, they’re pretty, they’re delivered by sexy yogis, they create positive vibrations and they inspire a sense of openness for a moment. But a week later, what has truly changed? Very little.

The path of the Shaman and spiritual aspirant consists of an equal balance of exploring the light and opening the doors to the shadows. This path takes into account the balance of light and dark inherent in the universe. We cannot sit in the light and expect lasting change.

The universe is everything, both light, and dark. If, while consuming the light, we are not dancing with the dark, we are missing the point. Jesus spent 40 days in the desert. He wasn’t playing charades or writing positive thoughts on index cards. He was dealing with his shit and the shit in all of the universes. We all have the same opportunity but rarely pursue it.

The Work

6 years in development, Paul’s The Personality Cards, and Blended Soul app, are tools that can help you deepen your process of self-exploration. If you wish to do the work without a toolset, here’s what I recommend:

  1. Sit quietly with your journal and write down a list of your positive attributes.
  2. Write down a list of people who you believe are personifications of these attributes.
  3. Write down a list of your negative and bizarre attributes.
  4. Write down a list of the people who are reflections of these attributes.
  5. Pick the 3 most-exaggerated people from each list.
  6. One by one, look into each personality and be honest about how you resemble each person. Explore each attribute and look at how you have behaved in similar ways.
  7. Be honest with yourself about your ugliness. Express regret, find your anger, find the sadness beneath your anger and let it all go.
  8. Find forgiveness for yourself and others in every instance related to these 6 personalities.
  9. Contemplate the images that have haunted you or oppressed you. Focus on the emotions and let them out. Release your attached to the images and the emotions. Clear the slate so that you can become new.
  10. Celebrate your positive attributes and commit to realigning with them in all of your future endeavors.
  11. Write down your thinking and emotional processes as you go through this activity.
  12. Allow several hours or several days to complete a thorough exploration and full-body release. Do whatever it takes.
  13. Once complete, keep a list of the attributes you are hoping to embody throughout the rest of your life.
  14. Repeat this process when you feel cloudy or uncertain about who you are.

Enjoy Your Clarity

After going through this process, you will have a newfound clarity. Your mind will be more at ease and your heart will be open and full. Go deep and find clarity.

The purpose here is to embody a high level of acceptance for who you really are, who other people are and what reality is. There is no quick path to remove all of our false projections. There is only the expanding of your awareness, which most often comes through an intensely emotional experience. Without emotion, there is little chance wisdom will prevail.

Seek to know all parts of you. Do not run away from the shadows and challenges deep within your psyche. Cleanse them by opening the doors to the light. While the pain might feel unbearable, it is temporary.

This is an ongoing process. Continue to explore and release emotions around the imagery you obsess about. Grieve every image and every personality. Always seek the release of negative attributes and allow for the deepest awareness around every situation.

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The Potential Changes

The more you are able to cleanse the emotions from your physical body and the more you are able to shed light on your shadows, the more you will evolve. This evolution will create greater simplicity in your life. It will be a letting go on every level. The value is that by climbing all of these emotional mountains, you give yourself the ability to climb every mountain and face every obstacle in your physical reality.

The more you go through these processes, the more you will see changes in your jobs, security, love life, personal life, and relationships. Upon every letting go of emotion, you’ll release or change your magnets. With fewer magnets, there are fewer attachments.

By going through these types of processes, you will change at a core level. This means that some of the people in your life may leave, new people may emerge and life will feel different. The degree to which you commit to this process will be equal to the level of peace that will emerge in your life.

Throughout this process, you will learn whether or not your family is an age-old addiction or a valuable tribe of compatriots. You will learn about your inner monsters and their ill-effects in your life. Most importantly, you will learn how to be connected to the Source of all life. While this takes time, each step can be freeing, illuminating, and exciting.

Born From a Divine Spark

We are all born from divine sparks. These sparks, however pure, cannot prevent us from adopting debilitating characteristics and attitudes. However difficult, healing these aspects helps us evolve.

You are invited to explore, embrace, forgive, and celebrate all aspects within yourself and others. Imagine the personalities living in your core. See each of them as a reflection of you and the people in your life. See each one as a representation of an aspect of the universe calling you to love, heal, and master it. May this process help you move successfully past your stories and closer to emotional and spiritual freedom.

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Stanislav Grof And His Famous Holotropic Breathwork

Stanislav Grof

Holotropic breathwork of Stanislav Grof can change your life. A Shutterstock Licensed Image.

If you’ve ever stared into the backs of your eyelids and breathed white light into your navel, you’ve done breathwork. Breathwork is a new-age term that refers to rejuvenating breathing techniques aimed at awakening the body’s life force. In many circles, breathwork is a key modality utilized to inspire peacefulness, healing, and the embodiment of the divine. Stan Grof, MD, Ph.D., a clinical psychiatrist from Czechoslovakia and one the founding forefathers of research in transpersonal psychology for non-ordinary states of consciousness and the therapeutic potential of LSD, has turned breathwork into a psychedelic, and the benefits are profound.

Dr. Grof says his “holotropic” technique, i.e., turning or directing inwardly or healing toward wholeness, helps practitioners expand their consciousness through rapid, repetitive breathing.

Naysayers regard this activity as potentially dangerous, noting that it resembles hyperventilation. Regardless, thousands of people throughout the world claim Grof’s technique has reduced their stress- and mind-related ailments, and helps them access the inner wisdom of their bodies and core Self.

“Meditation is to understand that one breath connects all beings.”

― Amit Ray

What Is The Holotropic Mind?

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Stanislav Grof’s “holotropic mind” refers to the concept that from any fragment of any aspect of the universe, the whole can be reconstructed. Given that the fabric of the universe and all its attributes are continuously expanding and birthing, the holotropic mind might also be referred to as the “eternal mind” or “one mind.”

David Bohm, a theoretical physicist, and partner of Einstein’s explored the complexities and paradoxes of this concept. Grof writes of Bohm, he “describes reality as an unbroken, coherent whole that is involved in an unending process of change, called “holomovement.” He continues with Bohm’s ideas, stating, “matter and life are both abstractions that have been extracted from the holomovement,” and “matter and consciousness are both aspects of the same undivided whole.”

This brings to mind the ancient Sanskrit prayer:

Om Puurnnam-Adah Puurnnam-Idam Puurnnaat-Puurnnam-Udacyate

Puurnnasya Puurnnam-Aadaaya Puurnnam-Eva-Avashissyate

Om Shaantih Shaantih Shaantih

This translates roughly to:

“That is the whole, this is the whole;

from the whole,

the whole becomes manifest;

taking away the whole from the whole,

the whole remains,

Om peace, peace, peace,”

as noted in the prayerbook from Amma “The Hugging Saint.”

Who Is Stan Grof?

Stanislav Grof grew up in Czechoslovakia and received his M.D. from Charles University in Prague in 1957, before later completing a Ph.D. in medicine at the Czechoslovakian Academy of Sciences eight years later, while studying Freudian psychoanalysis.

Grof held the positions of Chief of Psychiatric Research at the Maryland Psychiatric Research Center, Clinical and Research Fellow at the Henry Phipps Clinic, and Assistant Professor of Psychiatry at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine in Baltimore. He teaches as a professor of psychology at the California Institute of Integral Studies (CIIS) and his Grof Transpersonal Training (GTT). Dr. Grof has authored several books, including “Psychology of the Future,” “LSD Psychotherapy,” “Beyond the Brain,” “The Cosmic Game,” and “When the Impossible Happens.”

Transpersonal Psychology

Grof is one of the chief theoreticians of transpersonal psychology, a method that incorporates spirituality and unorthodox elements of the human experience into more traditional psychology. In the early 19070s, Grof’s work was recognized by other academics working in the field of alternative branches of psychology, including Michael Murphy and Dick Price who founded the Esalen Institute in Big Sur, an alternative psychological research institution inspired by psychedelic research, eastern philosophy and the ideas of famous minds, such as Aldous Huxley and Alan Watts. It was there that Grof would live for several years doing his early research and living as scholar-in-residence.

In the late 1970s, Grof furthered the development of the field of transpersonal psychology and became the founding president of the International Transpersonal Association, or ITA, in San Francisco as international attention grew for his pioneering work. He and his wife Christina Grof devoted their lives to modern consciousness research, where they made major contributions to this alternative field of psychology, most notably their concepts and works titled “The Stormy Search for the Self,” “The Ultimate Journey,” “Healing Our Deepest Wounds,” “Realms of the Human Unconscious,” and the “Spiritual Emergency.”

In addition to holotropic breathwork, Grof’s work incorporates psychedelic experiences from guided sessions involving psychedelic substances such as LSD. In fact, Grof has guided over 4,500 therapeutic LSD sessions with his patients.

The 16 Benefits Of Holotropic Breathing

It’s no secret that through the breath, we can access the all-pervasive consciousness and heal ourselves. With consistent effort, we can release anger, anxiety, grief, depression, and chronic pain. With pranayama (breath control), we might also deepen our connection to the eternal I Am.

Here are some of the benefits of Holotropic Breathwork:

  1. Release stored tension
  2. Access and release old and chronic emotions
  3. Dissolve energy blocks
  4. Awaken your core Self-identity and pure nature
  5. Bring past traumas into the light for recognition, healing, and emotional release
  6. Invigorate your body and clear your mind
  7. Break-free of mental chatter
  8. Break your patterns around perseveration
  9. Improve your attitude and intentions
  10. Set yourself on a more proactive life course
  11. Clarify and improve your self-worth so that you can set better boundaries
  12. Learn to love yourself and others without codependence or subservience
  13. Move past your ego for more enlightened interactions and pursuits
  14. Enrich your creativity
  15. Invite greater positivity
  16. Improve your chances of overcoming addiction

If you’re ready to experience your prenatal universe (your core Self before this birth), you’re ready for Holotropic Breathwork. This type of self-exploration is the crux of Grof’s philosophy.

How To Do Holotropic Breathing

While there is no definitive way to practice this technique, and the ancient masters have provided several ways to achieve the same results, here is a set of suggestions that you may find helpful:

  1. Lay on your back, with your head slightly elevated with a thin pillow.
  2. Relax and empty your mind of thoughts.
  3. Take a few deep breaths through your nose and allow the air to fill all areas of your lungs. Slowly and peacefully exhale through your nose.
  4. Here forward, breathe solely through your mouth. Begin gently with several inhales of fresh air. Allow the air to activate your diaphragm and fill your belly. When your lungs and belly are full, slowly and peacefully exhale. Allow any emotions to arise and release.
  5. Once you’re comfortable breathing in and out, increase your breathing rate. While some might feel inspired to breathe as fast as they can, the idea here is to remain peaceful. It might be best to slowly accelerate your breathing so that you give rise to a stress-free pace.
  6. After 3 to 5 minutes, you’ll naturally find your rhythm and style of breathing. If you haven’t pushed yourself too hard, you’ll find that your body will enjoy the rapidity of your breathing. Throughout the process, be careful to remain conscious and attend to your breath.
  7. If possible, maintain your deep, speedy breathing for up to 20 minutes. If this is your first time, it might be best to stop at 5 to 10 minutes, or less. If you have found comfort in your pace and are feeling safe and fully conscious, consider extending this ritual for up to 2 hours.

“When the breath is unsteady, all is unsteady; when the breath is still, all is still. Control the breath carefully. Inhalation gives strength and a controlled body; retention gives steadiness of mind and longevity; exhalation purifies body and spirit.”– Goraksasathakam

the-perseonality-cards-oracle-tarot-deck

Powerful Breathwork Techniques

Whether you’re a hippie on a beach breathing ocean air to open your mind’s eye, a Hesychastic Christian on Mt. Athos breathing the eternal Christ into your earth-nature, or a Kundalini ashram-yogi doing “Breath of Fire” to awaken into the eternal Self, you’re experiencing the purest modality for self- and divine-connection: inhaling and exhaling to deepen your connection to the one boundless, non-dual reality.

Here are a few of the most wonderful breathing technique to inspire your awareness and awakening:

  1. Breath of Fire: Seated in lotus pose, relax into measured breathing. When you’re ready, begin increasing your inhalations and exhalations to reach over 60 breaths per minute. As you grow into this experience, you might build toward 120 breaths per minute.
  2. Sama Vritti: Sit in lotus pose, gently breathe inward and outward in equal durations, and focus on stillness.
  3. Nadi Shodhana (nostril breathing): A pranayama breathing technique that uses alternate nostrils. This is helpful when preparing for meditation as it stimulates the third eye, crown chakra, and root chakra while balancing the mind and heart.
  4. Wim Hof Method: A robust process whereby you aggressively inhale through your nose or mouth and then exhale through your mouth. These short, powerful bursts are followed by brief periods of holding one’s breath. The total length of a sitting might be around 15 minutes.
  5. Abdominal Breathing: This is an essential and effective breathing technique that awakens the body and mind. Sit comfortably and use your diaphragm for breathing inward and outward. Focus on the expansion of the belly, rather than on the rise of the chest.
  6. Gentle Breathing: Sit or stand in a comfortable position and allow a relaxed breath to fill your lower lungs and belly.

While there are many forms of breathwork and many styles of concentrated breathing, the above list will get you started.

 

“Without full awareness of breathing, there can be no development of meditative stability and understanding.”

– Thich Nhat Hanh

 

The Breathing Bottom Line

The key to awakening your peacefulness and awareness is breath. If you can spend 5 minutes per day solely focused on your breathing, you will be doing more for your soul’s expansion than 99.9% of the planet’s population.

Breathwork is also the perfect precursor to meditation. It gets your blood flowing, initiates the release of the mind, and creates space for your unfoldment. Since you are continuously unfolding back into your pre-birth nature and the eternal consciousness, the more space you can create for yourself, the better.

Breathe in light, exhale tension and toxins.

Breathe into love and know yourself.

Breathe and expand.

I am wishing you the most delicious breathing and meditation for all time!

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Relationship Codependency—How to Relinquish Codependency In Life, Love, and Business

Codependency

Codependency. A Shutterstock Licensed Image. 

Codependency is a part of relationships, life, and business no matter who you are.

Many of us are afraid to be spiritually, emotionally, and psychologically liberated. On the surface, it appears to come at such a cost. When releasing codependent patterns, we know that our relationships will change, and our businesses will shift. In pursuit of liberation, our lives can transform to such a degree, they might be unrecognizable, at least for a while.

When circumstances introduce us to our codependencies, we might fight them until we lose everything, including our self-respect. We might even latch onto our codependence in defiance, so we can prove somebody wrong. As we argue for our attachments to these mutually limiting dependencies, we hurt ourselves and others.

What Happens When We Release Codependency?

When we release codependency from our lives, relationships, and businesses, everything becomes more clear. We empower ourselves and others to be interdependent, where each participant healthfully and confidently maintains their own temporary self-identities.

As we release codependencies, we might fear losing prior relationships, but what usually emerges is greater clarity in these connections and a more evolved individuation. Certainly, things will change, but always for the better.

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When we reevaluate the limiting relationships in our businesses, we might fear losing long-term employees whom we’ve come to depend upon. Truth be told, when in pursuit of clarity in our businesses, we usually end up liberating these employees to pursue their highest self.

In the meantime, we clean up energy pockets, paradigms, and processes that formerly reduced our self-esteem, market value, client reviews, revenue, and abilities to be truly effective.

In the pursuit of a non-codependent life, we may fear becoming so different that we won’t recognize ourselves or our loved-ones. In the end, we do become different. And so do our projections onto others. This up-level is an improvement for the Universe.

When we move away from codependency:

• We stop carrying other people’s baggage.

• We stop living in accordance with other people’s jealousy.

• We begin to reject other people’s limiting projections on us.

• We no longer fret over what other people think about us.

• We stop limiting ourselves so that others feel comfortable.

• We stop blaming ourselves for other people’s failures and deceit.

• We stop falling when others fall. We stop failing, overall.

It’s not easy, but when we relinquish codependency, we up-level our entire ecosystem. It’s even sometimes important to say goodbye to family. Doing so, we give others the chance to choose liberation over their prior limiting behaviors and paradigms.

When anyone releases codependent behaviors,

the whole Universe benefits.

As we inch closer to a lasting clarity, we might grasp at some of the relationships in our lives. We might attach to temporary, contrived meanings and take several steps backwards. In the process of pursuing liberation, we might even slam the door in its face.

What does it mean to be liberated?

Liberation is the release of our binding and limiting attachments to our attitudes, stories, minds, emotions, relationships, temporary self-identities, physical realities, and all of the extrapolated illusions that are born from them.

Liberation is an immersion in the eternal,

a highway without pitstops.

Generally, as we evolve and release our codependence, stories and attachments, it’s common to find that many relationships begin to evaporate into the horizon, much like any dream. What emerges is a more resilient Self-identity founded in eternal truths versus societal constructs, fairytales, and fabrications. This can happen with our lovers, spouses, businesses, and more.

The liberation path eventually extinguishes our addictions to codependence and our needs for approval from others. In its wake, we begin to reflect on Self as it is, not as a comparative to others, or as a reflection of our temporary positions in other people’s lives.

Eventually, the concept of maintaining relationships becomes superfluous. Since the universe always brings to us people and events that are magnetically aligned with our temporary self-identities and vibrations, we needn’t worry about maintaining relationships. These connections will work out in accordance with the revised clarity and energetic dissonance between us.

In the process of liberating ourselves, the Universe honors who we have become and are becoming. In so doing, it allows our prior relationships to either up-level or evaporate. Throughout the processes inherent in liberation, and the release of all codependence, all parties are recalibrated according to their revised self-identities and vibrations. All is well.

Our primary relationship is not with any individual.

It’s with the Universe.

In the pursuit of the eternal, everything eventually falls into place, in its own time. It’s like planning a road trip. You can’t venture to Vancouver without a vehicle. The pursuit of transcendent liberation is the vehicle for the up-leveling of your life, paradigms, perspectives, attitudes, and temporary self-identities. It’s the only vehicle that can carry the truth of the all-that-is and grant you access to it.

Be clear with what you want. Allow insecurities and misconceptions to move through you and outside of you. Don’t use your fears around codependency as your excuses to avoid transformation.

Stop defending lies. Practice recognizing your potential and celebrating your pursuit of it.

“Be bold and mighty forces will come to your aid.”

— Goethe

Yes, divine intervention is real and palpable. But we must take the first step.

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Creating New Narratives Inspires Our Change Our Behavior

narratives

When we change our narratives, releasing all our old stories, we transform. A Shutterstock Licensed Image.

It’s time to begin again! This time, create a plan and stick to it! You can always write a new story. If you do, commit to it. Let it lead you somewhere new.

Each of us projects ourselves into every story we hear and see. Each narrative we absorb satiates a unique part of our temporary self-identities, bringing to life a part of us that may have been dormant or undeveloped.

Narratives are potent and they can play out whether we are conscious of them or not. The ones that we most align with can be representative of our pain or our power.

Narratives play substantial roles in our lives. They can compound our apathy and confusion. Or they can help us expand and heal. Our most prized narratives have the power to dismantle our self-identities, rebuild us, and define us.

What is a narrative?

~ A story; a written account of connected events; portrait, tale or chronicle.

~ A moving vehicle, much like a train, with a set of rules and requirements.

~ Enabler of living, breathing, relatable characters that move within the train, while on the train.

~ Sometimes the characters steer the train, other times the train steers the characters.

~ Once you get inside that train, you’re committed to a journey that has a beginning and end.

~ Often involve commitments, loyalties, disagreements and treachery.

~ Brings to life a variety of emotions, some new, some deeply seeded in our cores.

~ They can change at any time.

We all love a good movie.

It turns out there’s a reason why: over time, storytelling in movies and television has crystalized to perfectly mirror how our lives tend to play out.

In each of our stories, there’s a hero, a villain, a goal, and drastic twists and turns. It turns out that when we’re pursuing a goal, our minds are set-up to expect upheaval. They’re also set-up to expect success. This is why Hollywood movies have two act-breaks.

The First Act-Break

The 30-minute mark is about when all that yummy, warm-fuzzy excitement in the first act bumps into a wall. The first act-break occurs moments after the love hits a peak. It’s when the problem or villain arrives.

The Second Act-Break

At the 60-minute mark, we seem to be winning, when all of a sudden a crisis emerges, and we lose everything. This is the second act-break. We can all relate with this structure, and it’s why we love movies.

When creating business plans, or plans to improve our personal lives and relationships, it’s easy to give up on ourselves. We’ll happily forsake a more vibrant future if we can avoid confrontation and changes to our routines.

Rather than confront and change our patterns directly, we’d rather build co-dependent relationships with our loved ones, our businesses, and our goals. We want to adore them, but we also want to control them. This makes it very difficult to change our stories and improve ourselves, and transform our relationships. We’re just a tad addicted to the self-identity we’ve created and defended for so long.

If we can rewrite our narrative, the journey from here to there, and map out the act-breaks and strategies that could bring that narrative to life, we can change our lives. By creating and then becoming a lead character in our new story, we will naturally fall in with his or her journey.

By stepping into these inspired characters’ shoes, we begin to create energetic vessels that are built specifically to attract success in our three-dimensional physical realities.

book-live-intuitive-reading-with-paul-wagner

If we can remain detached from our former self-identities and stay out of fear, we can be victorious.

Many of us find it difficult to change. We declare a new goal, make plans, and we might even enroll someone to help us. But when it comes down to making the hard choices and fully committing to the new narrative and self-identity, we’re unwilling. We find it too egoistically challenging to release our prior self-identities and venture into a new story. We regress into our old shite, rather than tunnel toward the new light that awaits us.

When we rewrite the rules, stories, and strategies related to how we work, live, and behave, we can become completely new. It’s not rocket science. It’s a fact. As long as our goals and plans reflect parts of our core attributes, we can become new.

If you’re hoping

to make some changes in your life,

write the narrative first.

Write a short story of how you want things to play out.

If you’re running a business, map out where that business needs to go. Create a strategic plan. Keep your self-protective reactive-mind in check. Write out every step of the plan, as if it were a Hollywood movie.

If you’re looking to have a personal rebirth, map out the journey. Write down every change you want to make, and every joy you want to attract to your life. Write it out as if a Hollywood movie depended on it. It’s your script!

Allow your self-identity to be rejuvenated with a new, relatable, and inspiring narrative.

Become the lead character!

Establish a story that takes you from here to a new horizon.

This is how heroes and warriors have achieved success for centuries.

1. They decide what they want.
2. They decide where they’re going.
3. They declare who is going with them.
4. They create their plans and GO!

Now, YOU! Answer these questions:

1. What do you want?
2. Where are you going?
3. Who is going with you?
4. What is your plan?
5. What is your timeline?

You can do this!

One more thing, sometimes you can’t listen to your heart. While minds can be traps, hearts can be needy, fucked-up, and wrong, always seeking nurturance and connection.

No, you do not always need nurturing and connection.

Sometimes you just need to get over yourself, make some solid decisions, map out a realistic plan, commit to it, GET THE SHOW ON THE ROAD!


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