Positive Health Online
Your Country
The Missing Ingredient in our Spiritual Growth and Healing Practice is…
listed in mind matters, originally published in issue 214 - May 2014
You’ve read all the self-help books. You’ve attended workshop after workshop and researched all the best ways to remove blocks to finally get ahead.
And You’ve Still Got Symptoms and Are Feeling Unfulfilled!?!?!?
Join the club.
I work with other intuitives, healing practitioners, and self-help experts; some have called me “The Healer’s Healer” and the successful among us know something that most of us still struggle with. Wanna know what that is? And do you want to know that answer right now?
Patience, my dear ones… patience!
I often ask the attendees at my group events, “By a show of hands, how many of you know that meditation (BTW, this is NOT an article on meditation, that was just an example) is a good thing?” And whether I’m speaking to 20 or 2,000 people, about 90% of them raise their arms! And I think the remaining 10% can’t raise their arms because of shoulder problems! Then I ask, “How many of you do it regularly?” and about 20% raise their hands.
This is also true with exercise, emotional states, and a proper diet. All of us know that even moderate exercise has numerous advantages over stagnation. We’ve all heard the experts that tell us not to beat ourselves up and to honour our emotional states as well, and we all know that vegetables are healthier than processed foods and animal products. So why don’t we apply the knowledge to our day to day lives!?!?
Patience, my dear ones… patience!
Still want to know the secret? I just told you - in fact, I’ve mentioned it four times already! It’s patience!
If you’re reading this, you’re probably very intuitive, and in this lightning-fast, technology-laden world, you also expect to have access to information in seconds. And most of you dear readers also have an above average intelligence, so we like to believe we can learn things relatively quickly. But spiritual growth and healing work have nothing to do with intelligence of the mind. They have much more to do with the intelligence of the soul and the needed patience to learn its agenda over our mind’s ideas.
The soul just wants to experience. It comes in with a mission and will create the perfect circumstances to achieve its desired outcome. No matter what is happening on the outside, the soul is having the time of its life! But too often, our minds fight with the soul’s path. The mind judges all of our experiences as good or bad, pleasureful or painful, even attractive or repulsive. This misalignment between the soul and the mind creates disharmony, friction, and resistance. It makes us compare our soul paths with those of others, and our human arrogance likes to believe that because one person’s path is that of a successful artist for example, that we should be one also.
It’s Super-Effective Analogy Time!
I liken spiritual growth and healing work to American football. Let’s say you’re the home team and you’ve got the ball at your own 20 yard line. You’ve got 80 yards to go to score a touchdown. It’s been proven that the odds of success are smaller when going for all 80 yards in one play than by chunking - breaking it down in smaller, more manageable bits on the way to the final destination.
You may throw a 4 yard pass to the left, and then a 3 yard run to the right. Sometimes you go sideways more yards than you do forward! And sometimes you get sacked behind the starting point for a loss. But either way, the next play more often than not has the same goal of chunking that is best achieved by shorter plays with higher probabilities of success rather than longer plays toward the end zone - even if it’s so far away that you can barely see it.
If a football team approached their objectives like we too often approach spiritual growth and healing work, they’d try to throw the 30, 50, or even 80 yard pass play more often than not. But that’s not the best use of their energy, nor is it ours.
Soul Time vs. Mind Time
The mind wants to get it all done now. It sees an end result and wants to achieve it quickly and without hindrances. Or to continue the football analogy, to go forward against no defensive presence.
The mind comes from fear and lack: if I don’t get this done, then what? What will others think about me? What will I think of myself? How soon can I get this done so I can then move on to the next task in an effort to be done and finally relax?
Well, you’re never done. There is no such thing as ‘done’. My peace comes from remembering that fact. I'll never be done, so I might as well get over rushing through the to-do list, thinking that once X is done I'll feel complete. There's always another X to do. Might as well – well - you know: enjoy the journey!
Most of us are old souls and have been around for a really long time. We’ve spent hundreds if not thousands of years trying to experience all we need to experience - trying to learn it all NOW. Our current existence is but a blip in the cosmic strands of time. And yet we still think we can learn it all, experience it all, and even teach it all in this one lifetime! Oh, the arrogance of the human mind!
Tell Me More!
By approaching spiritual growth and healing work in smaller chunks, the odds of success and having fun in the process increase. With patience, we better recognize the soul’s agenda and the more we listen, the better we feel and the more effectively we can grow and learn. It’s about surrendering to what’s true in the moment and embracing it all.
The pushing creates resistance. The forcing creates unnecessary friction. Coming from love, and surrendering the mind’s ideas of right and wrong and its thoughts on what should be and shouldn’t be and most importantly, the ‘when’ of it all, creates the real growth. When we allow the soul to guide us, the Universe acts in kind. Relaxing into present moment awareness, we then create room for struggle-free experiences, even with the people we don’t like or with the challenges we find difficult.
Okay, One More Analogy
During many years of yoga, I tried and tried to get into crow pose. Achieving this arm balance had eluded me like the energy ribbon in Star Trek: Generations. If you’re not a ST geek like I, watch it and see how one man’s search for ultimate peace is sought with no regard for who is hurt along the way. But I digress. Sort of.
Several years into my search to achieve crow pose I gave up. And on that day when the instructor asked all of us to take that asana, there I was fully propped on my arms, feet off the ground! And as soon as I realized what I’d done, my mind kicked in and revelled in the brief experience before toppling down. When I was on Soul Time, it was easy; it just happened. When I clicked into Mind Time, I fell.
I Know I said we’re never Done, but now it’s Time to Conclude. Deal with the Paradox!
In conclusion, I’d say to go easier on yourself. Stop comparing. Stop chasing, and breathe into the present moment. For most of us, even if times are difficult, the present moment isn’t too bad. Without comparisons or the unrealistic expectations they often lead us to, we can better lean into what is, rather than what our minds feel should or shouldn’t be. Give up the human imposed deadlines of having to get it all done now. We can replace burdensome frustration with gratitude and acceptance. From there, we can truly move forward.
Open up to the reality that we are already healing and growing, it’s just happening at a slower pace than the mind wants those to happen. And sometimes we get sacked for a loss or run horizontally more than vertically for a bit.
But without the challenges, there’d be no celebration of the joys and accomplishments. People who work for what they want from the more peaceful starting points are always happier than those who struggle for what they think will make them happier. This doesn’t mean to give up any dreams you have at all; rather it means to see if those dreams are what your soul wants or what you’ve been conditioned to believe that you want or need to be happy. Respond from that place of awareness - with as much patience as you can muster - rather than from learned patterns.
Ideally, when I remember, I ask myself, “Is this my pattern, or am I coming from unconditional love?” “Do I feel constricted or expansive?” These simple questions can teach us so much. But it takes patience to remember to learn to ask them. It takes more patience to learn to answer them and respond in kind. And you know what, it’s all okay. Because from the place of connected awareness, you intuitively know there’s nothing to do, and no place we need to go. But if we do decide to do and go, why not do so with awareness of the truth - from the place of patience that comes from aligning with the soul, rather than the mind? It’s Soul Time!
I’d love to get your feedback on the above. Please write and tell me your successes, fears or frustrations; I embrace it all! If you share any of it, please share all of it and the original source from whence it came.
Disclaimer
The author makes no medical claims of diagnosis, treatment, or cures, and assumes no liability for the (mis)interpretation or (mis)application of any part or all of the above article. It is always best to see your doctor.
Comments:
-
Pauline Victoria Thomas said..
I was working as a counsellor, but took time out to be with my husband who was unwell and now has returned to good health, I am also very intuitive I lived with my Grandmother who was, and its developed over the years, I now can see people's pain body, but I agree I am constantly saying to myself, I need to get back to this or that, I am not going back to counselling - but I am learning healing practices..I thank you for your valuable writings..I am also using numerology because that's how my sub conscious seems to talk to me and in examples..Pauline
-
dave markowitz said..
Thank YOU, Pauline!
-Dave