Remote Reiki Testimonial

I received a lovely testimonial from a new client, Paris, after her remote reiki session.

I just wanted to thank you so so much for our reiki session. The morning after our session, I felt a clearness within that I don’t recall ever feeling before. It felt like the feeling after you’ve deep cleaned your home and just lit a candle. Relief, calmness and inspiration are just a few things that I’ve experienced in the months that followed. Before this session, I struggled with the path I wanted my life to go in. I felt like I was making some progress in the right direction but still missing the mark. After the session, I had an epiphany that seemed so obvious that it was almost laughable. Now I am taking steps in this new direction and I feel so inspired and alive.  

Emergence

Sometimes I channel certain things in sessions that are new to my present consciousness, but yet some part, the deepest part, I’ve known forever. It’s very interesting, this being human, how we have our “firsts” when really they’re not firsts after all, just the first time in this life.

This happened in a remote reiki session 2 days ago. The first word I heard, as if yelled at me, was “emergence”

I’ve never technically heard this word used in relationship to any spiritual concepts, for instance like a word such as karma, or awakening is so tied to spirituality that it holds a certain anchored meaning. I know the word remembrance, I started to remember what that meant in concrete spiritual terms. For those who don’t, it’s the process by which we awaken to our divinity, to the remembering of the vastness of our soul. For me, when I awakened, I had visceral emotional reactions when I saw ancient tapestries and I recognized them. I had nostalgia, a deep, guttural flutter that told me it was not my first time witnessing them. I was there at their time of creation.

It dawned on me to look up this word in terms of spirituality and this is what I found. So yes, it does have meaning, and it blew me away. They indicate that this process should have proper support— it’s interesting to gain context and descriptions for the work that I do without prior knowledge that this is what I was doing— I’ve helped clients integrate, understand, parse out and heal throughout this convoluted, complicated process of spiritual emergence. It is a beautiful, beautiful, challenging and rewarding process. I hope that this post opens doors as opposed to giving any answers, as a new possibility unfolds in my consciousness after understanding what this means in concrete 3D language.

In my understanding and experience, the spiritual awakening is the first step to a spiritual life- it’s when the kundalini energy connects root to crown for the first time and divinity enters. This is the first stage of remembrance, but remembrance is a continual process that spans a lifetime. The deeper you go with your soul, the more you remember of yourself and the world. You remember past lives, then the lives between lives, and you see glimpses of the future lives too.

There is only one major, cataclysmic spiritual awakening, yet it can feel like in the process of emergence that there are multiple small tremors of awakenings. These are usually accompanied by ego deaths in which parts of your ego go into full resistance and have to die In order to allow more of the soul self to emerge. These can feel brutal, but they happen once in a while as new parts are sloughed off and they often come with full surrender into a fearful state, and then a sudden surrender into connectedness and release.

A dark night of the soul happens during the spiritual awakening, in fact it’s a necessary stage. It’s a cumulative process of sometimes years, in which the soul/human journey through extreme darkness until one day a MAJOR part of you “dies” in order to allow the awakening. I do feel that ego deaths are more minor, they happen in conjunction with the dark night of the soul but as “they” are telling me now, the dark night of the soul is a rite of passage. Most of us only have 1, and some of us have 2 at a much later stage of spiritual progress.

Emergence is by far the most difficult thing because unlike the others which have a drastic turnover, emergence is a continual process with no definitive beginning or end. I thought that it did, but “they” are correcting me as I channel them now. We are in a continual stage of emergence.

Perfectionism

I myself am guilty of perfectionism. There is always an unrealistic standard that I’ve set for myself that I somehow fail to meet. In my mind, it’s realistic because I’ve been exposed to this standard before, it’s not born of nowhere.

I won’t go into the mechanics of how perfectionism is created through upbringing, since many of you already know what goes into this and how it’s modeled.

What this creates in someone who lives with this is a deep fear of “not good enough” and secondly, a developing well of self directed frustration as well as feelings of failure that are semi-repressed. It’s semi-repressed as long as there’s some metric of success that you must score high on. Perfectionism is fear based, and for those of us who’ve lived with it, we’ve turned that fear (and anxiety) into something that motivates.

It was always very conscious for me as a teen and young adult that if I let go of this, and just suddenly realized I was “good enough” that I’d stop trying. I felt that the alternative was apathy, which I have experienced before. I didn’t know what to substitute the fear motivation for, or that there was another form of motivation.

As I’ve grown, I’ve come to face that fragile ego that’s underneath all of this. The one that took in the programming of deep unworthiness. I remember being very young and in situations where I felt failure, how much I couldn’t handle it because it brought out deep shame. In classes that I wasn’t the best, the stakes felt so high and so intolerable. I somehow couldn’t take it in stride like all the other people who were not the best, who were not good. People who could fail at something or not be good at something and not have it affect their sense of self seemed to have a healthy self-esteem that made them know that just because they weren’t good at this thing, they could keep trying and get better. They also knew that just because they weren’t good at this one thing, it didn’t mean that they were flawed as a person. These were thought processes that I didn’t have even if I identified them consciously.

As I’ve gotten older and done a lot of healing and integration, I’ve specifically challenged myself to do all the things that I’m not particularly gifted at. Sure, other people might argue that I’m not that bad, in fact, that maybe I am better than I think (because in my mind I think I am just awful which is a particular trait associated with perfectionism as well- that my assessment of myself always tends to be worse than what’s “real”). What this challenge does is it forces me to grow- it forces me to confront those shadow elements and fear. It shows me that there’s nothing to fear, and to be more lighthearted in my approach- that just because I can’t do a particular jump or my brain isn’t as quick with a quippy response in improv doesn’t mean that the world is ending, which it often felt like it was when there is a perfectionism that is expected of you, and performance is everything. Most importantly, it shows me to have fun which is something I had long been lacking in childhood.

I remember when the darkness of perfectionism hit me the worst, it wasn’t that long ago. My ego was still in control then and it needed above all else to bolster itself from its feelings of inferiority and frailty. So, I chose to only do things that I was the shining star in. And then my world became so limited, my ego was satisfied but my soul wanted more.

Overall, we’re here for the experience. That means, the totality of life that we get to experience in this human form, with this human intelligence. It’s not about good or bad, it’s about how we meet those experiences and what we take away from them. In the end, I’m. not going to care that I was the best in this one class or one thing, because I care more about growth and process, truly. Success of course is important, and I plan to succeed at the things that I’ve chosen, but I’m also learning to re-assess the bar that I set for myself. I want to do my best, not be the best.

Dynamics

In recent years I did a family constellation and we left at a very confusing point. My practitioner asked me if I was “the big one or the small one” in relationship to my mom, and my unconscious had a really hard time answering that. I said, “I’m the big one” my mother felt so small to me in that moment.

But there was clearly some confusion and my practitioner said it was time for us to stop, but that it was worthwhile to investigate this. I put it away for a few years because I always felt in some ways older than my own mom, but it made no sense to me consciously.

It clicked today that a crucial element of our dynamic when I left home to go to college was my mom constantly texting me to ask me advice on how to parent my younger siblings. And of course I would always give it to her because in some senses, I recognized that I knew better and she did too. That was normal to me, I never realized how strange it was until just now as I’m healing through deeper layers of my family dynamics.

The thought, my parent asked me for advice on how to parent. That sits awkwardly. How could a parent ask their child how to parent after having been their parent? Isn’t this hard evidence for the fact that she didn’t know how, didn’t learn from parenting me, and was never willing to learn? Isn’t this evidence for the fact that she didn’t parent me? These realizations cut through me in such painful ways because I was gaslit all my life to believe that I was wrong, that they knew better, that every time I called them out on how they were abusing me that it wasn’t actually happening and I was just oversensitive and crazy and that it was all my problem.

It makes me see that I was always supposed to be the little one, and it wasn’t a failure on my part that that dynamic between a child and her mother was never developed for me. When I try to readjust my size, visually, I feel like I don’t trust her. I don’t feel safe as her child. I’d rather be the big one- my parents’ parent.

I think it can be such a strange wakeup call for those of us who were put in the position of caring for the people who were supposed to care for us because it shifts our relationship to the world. I remember that for the longest time I always attracted these people who were supposed to care for me- whether they were mentors, teachers, or therapists or the like, who actually ended up needing my care. I didn’t understand why I was caring for people I was paying to help me, how come no one would help me? These imbalanced and strange relationships made me cringe, yet they were so much of my reality that for a period of years I realized I was better alone and not seeking help. Help came with too many strings and too much of an outpour from me.

It wasn’t until a point in my life when it started to clear, and I found myself seeking help from people who could actually help me and didn’t break boundaries or didn’t insert themselves into my healing. I found that I experienced a lot of distrust because of past experiences, and operated from a place of defense which gradually dropped over a long period of time. There was usually a phase of resistance at the beginning when in my mind I tried to convince myself they couldn’t help me, but I usually stuck through it and gave them more chances. This to me was fear, because they were unfamiliar to me (and for those like me, unfamiliar is usually the safer option) and not intuition. This was another moment in which I needed to learn to distill the two, because there is sometimes intuition in fear too. I notice that pure fear comes from my mind, where as instinctual fear comes from my gut.

These people were safe because they didn’t tell me how to be, didn’t tell me what to do, and didn’t get caught in self indulgent and self absorbed emotional dumps that had nothing to do with me. They actually listened to me and wanted to know what was going on, and paid attention, they responded. This at the outset felt so scary to me because I’d never experienced it before. In these experiences no one is the big one and no one is the small one, they’re meeting me on equal footing and they’re here to guide and support, not be my authority.

That of course shaped a lot of the way that I practice too in my integrative sessions. There’s an interesting dynamic that forms that’s so particular, because I can sense when the inner child needs a gentle authority and is at the forefront of the healing. Sometimes the child needs to be seen, heard, and encouraged, sometimes they need to be attuned to in ways that were needed but never given. This is often before the adult and the child have established a healthy connection. Then at other points in time, I’m relating to the adult, and the adult can then liaise with their own inner child. Some clients need a parental energy at the start, and some others need a fierce advocate where they’ve never had one before to initiate and reinforce their developing security.

For those of you who are unaware, I studied power and gender dynamics extensively for many many years. What’s most interesting is in our imbalanced society we think that power is something that is taken, because so many of us actually feel powerless internally as the world is ruled by narcissists and sociopaths. If someone had an internal sense of power, they’d realize they didn’t need to take it from a source outside of themselves, but that’s just the codependent framework of the world at large. Oppression, suppression, taking.

What I came to realize was that power is something that’s received, if it’s given. Everyone has their own sense of power, and if they surrender it freely then that’s when it can be received. I notice these points when people try to do it in my healing practice, and I gently say no. I remind them of what they’re doing and that they have power, and I ask them to take it back.

I think that practitioners are in positions that can be very influential. That’s why I’m so careful about who I work with, especially energetically. Even if I’m not declaring my power, it’s a soft power. That’s what hypnosis and all of these modalities are- they’re exerting influence for change. No one ever saw a healer because they wanted to stay the same. I think it can be dangerous when someone’s ego gets involved or they’re not sensitive enough to the power dynamics at play because they can convince you to do things for self-serving reasons and not reasons for your, or for the, highest good. It’s something that’s always in the back of my mind for me, and for people that I personally hire.

In relating to myself, I’m the big one and the small one simultaneously. As I grow, I learn more about how to parent, and thus parent myself. There are some tangible things that can’t be changed, like how I grew up, but there are elements that can be healed continuously and presently. The dynamic between ourselves is always changing and always has room to grow. That’s where I’m coming to in recent times, is that my relationship to me is the most important relationship I’ll ever have. I may not be able to change what was the dynamic between my mom and me, but my relationship to me is in my full control and I can be hyper aware of the dynamics that I co-create, now.

Meleah's Testimonial

This is Meleah, one of my wonderful clients I’ve had the privilege of working with this past year.

It’s been truly an honor to work with her, and to be able to bear witness to her transformation. I can’t fully express it in words, but I’ll let the vibration come through this writing.

I am so grateful for all of you who take a chance even if it doesn’t feel familiar right away, as the ego struggles against the enormity of the soul’s intelligence.

In all honesty, even if this wasn’t my chosen career I would still be doing this (and have, for all of my life!). It feels so innate to my expression as a human being and soul. To be able to work with someone like Meleah makes it so worthwhile. This is a contract between souls, after all. And you know who can help you and when is the right time, if you pay attention.

Why Aren't My Manifestations Working?

Taurus New Moon is a wonderful opportunity to manifest what you want materially.

Here I share some other aspects of manifestation. If you’ve ever been frustrated about manifestations not working, it’s possible that they are but they are being deflected.

“Part of the manifestation practice is of what you let go rather than what you add” ~ Eckhart Tolle

Dark Night of the Soul, Ego Death, Saturn Returns

Addictions

We’re all familiar with the obvious ways addictions can show up: recreational drugs, alcohol, food, sex and drugs

Those can bring us into dark territories and serve to numb and sedate us, and fill an inexplicable void.

Then there are the innocuous ones like coffee and work which are typically normalized and not so extreme

But what about the ones like love, sugar, social media, technology, adrenaline or feeling bad about ourselves?

In the past few years, my diet has become a lot cleaner. As I venture farther on my spiritual path I’ve stopped imbibing in alcohol and any sort of drugs as my body becomes more sensitive and as I stop partaking in normalized social behaviors. When I worked a full time job, it was expected of me to grab a drink with coworkers, or friends after works, or even clients. Alcoholism seemed so embedded in our social etiquette and in our coming of age narratives too. Everyone thinks of college as the time of experimentation with drugs, alcohol and sex.

Although I’ve gone months to a full year sometimes cutting out alcohol, drugs and/or sex, as my life becomes cleaner it forces me to re-evaluate where “softer” addictions still occupy spaces in my life and why it is that society normalizes these addictions, as well as what I’m trying to distract from by using them.

For instance, I’ve recently cut out sugar as part of a preparatory cleanse. This made me conscious about how sugar is literally in everything. For a day or two I felt depressed because I couldn’t engage in my life normally. With cutting out caffeine entirely, too, (I haven’t had any coffee in years but I do like green tea and matcha), my life drastically change and took on a new consciousness. I had to read food labels carefully. I couldn’t go to “grab a matcha” whenever I was feeling antsy at home or to distract from how tired I was some days. Without sugar, I quickly realized how hard it was to eat out, even at healthy vegan restaurants. Even my salad dressing has maple syrup in it!

Beginning in January I also stopped dating entirely and deleted every dating app. I started to realize how much of my time/energy/attention was being sapped by just scrolling through dating apps when I was bored. This was time that could’ve been spent on myself, instead it was spent swiping. I also took a break from all social media for a few months and did a technology cleanse for a few days. It became more apparent how inextricable it all is to our functioning- our addictions become essential to being productive in our lives.

I noticed I also had a habit of trying to make myself feel bad about myself. I used to be codependent, and codependency is an addiction. When we are addicted to narcissistic dynamics, we are obsessed with feeling bad about ourselves or finding ways we are dysfunctional or unlovable. This pattern felt so much a part of my life because it was modeled after caregivers that I didn’t even recognize it as an addiction I could free myself from.

All of this is making it clearer for me to see where it is I’m still “dependent” and where I have absolute autonomy in my life. The wonderful thing is that the more we take control over these aspects and clear our more addictions, more ways we give away our power, the more confident we feel in our lives. It is directly related.

I write this to encourage you to take inventory of your life too. How much of it is based on forms of addiction? What is it that you’re distracting yourself from, and what is it filling in your life? Often times we default to addictions because of unhealed patterns, not to mention addictions fill the spaces between the connection with ourselves. When we avoid things, we usually opt for addictions, even if it’s just anxiety that we’re smoking or drinking away. Maybe it’s loneliness and emptiness that fuels someone to engage in compulsive sex or dating. Some of these patterns of behavior feel so normalized in modern day, but that doesn’t mean that they’re adding to our health and happiness. In fact, I’d argue that they’re drastically decreasing our wellbeing. These mechanisms serve to sever our connection to ourselves more.

The more addictions I clear out, the more I notice more of what I’m suppressing in my emotional body. Although I’m well aware of my internal processes at this stage of my life, I get to see more nooks and crannies so to speak, the more I rid of these coping mechanisms. This is difficult, but this is the challenge of being human and the clarity, self control that’s achievable on the other side is well worth it, in my mind.

From Stuck to Forward Movement

Sometimes when you feel stuck it’s hard to muster the motivation to move forward. Not only that but, it feels safe to be stuck. We may be unconsciously blocking ourselves to “protect” ourselves from new terrains that feel uncomfortable and risky. Change is scary.

How do you combat this?

Realize that the ego goes into resistance whenever there’s a shift. You CAN do this, and you, your soul, knows this. That’s where your power is derived from. Left to your ego, you are powerless because it tries to convince you of your powerlessness. It tells you you can’t, that you’re not good enough, that fear is reasonable and valid.

The first step to take is any step. It’s not about the step itself, and there’s no need to worry about it being the right step to obtain the right outcome. Outcome is secondary, as it can’t come without some movement first. Movement is really about directing the energy toward forward movement that attracts new events.

The 2nd step is to evaluate what it is you want. A better career? More money? Love? Friendship? Be clear about what it is you want and start taking baby steps in each. Put yourself out there, and when you feel resistance, keep going. Resistance is a break through waiting to happen.

As you break through the stuck energy, you’ll see just how easy it is to keep accelerating. The path becomes clear and momentum carries itself. A lot of times, being stuck is just telling us that we lack the confidence to move forward. But confidence is within. The ego/mind hides a lot of our innate confidence, worth from us -- it's not the truth.

you CAN do this! No matter how scary it seems! Recognize that you have support even when you feel that you don't.