The Role of Sexual Violence in Humanity's Spiritual Evolution

There is attention being paid to the sex offenders laws in a part of California. This is being fueled by the news media's focus on a recent case of child abduction and rape taking place around San Diego. There are a few outraged people who are now doing the old village people's dance of "Let's hunt 'em down and kill 'em!" While I may have empathy for the sentiment, the reaction has never had any impact on sexual violence and it never will. Sexual violence is part of Humanity's psyche. Until Humanity decides that sexual violence no longer serves It, it will persist.

 

'Cut it Off!' doesn't stop sexual abuse or rape. Sexual violation takes many forms and doesn't have to include a penis. Cutting the penis off doesn't stop the production of the chemicals that cause sexual behaviors and it doesn't stop the psychological impulse pedophiles have. Sexual violence has been around for as long as there have been humans on this planet. There isn't an easy answer on how to stop it. If there were, we'd have figured out how to stop war. As a Legacy Breaker in my family and having done a lot of work in this area on a few different levels, I've come to the realization that on a spiritual level, Humanity will need to decide that this behavior no longer serves its needs before it stops. 

 

What can we, as individuals, do about it? We can work on ourselves to become more spiritually enlightened. Our thoughts create our reality and those thoughts radiate out into the collective consciousness. We can examine our own reactions to sex, sexuality, and intimate interactions. What are our own blocks? Where are our resistances? When we reach a critical mass in this area, we'll begin to see things change. Sexual violence could become an anomaly rather than a fact of every day life.

 

Looking at the spiritual perspective, we are Human Beings. We are Spiritual Beings having a Human experience. We agreed to experience the duality of Light and Dark. Sexual violence is a part of that experience, as much as we abhor it. When We, as collective Humanity, figure out what part of the Collective Psyche needs to be healed around this Shadow experience, it will stop. Until then, the best reaction we can have it to figure out how the experience helps us heal the Shadow parts of ourselves as individuals. 

 

Sexual violence is about Personal Power. The perpetrator chooses not to have any and seeks out 'victims' to use as energetic batteries. This is energy vampirism. The person who spiritually agreed to let this happen, experiences the human reactions that accompany sexual violation. From the human level, the 'victim' gets to decide how they will react to the experience as part of their spiritual growth process. The human reaction can be anything ranging from death to mental illness to living as a victim/survivor to becoming a healed human being. How each individual of the experience chooses to react is based on that person's intent for this lifetime. No one else gets to decide that. 

The recent focus on sexual violence is part of a cycle that has been occurring for many, many years. American society doesn't focus on it for a number of years and then something shifts. All of a sudden, it seems that the villagers are ready to bring out the pitch forks and start burning rapists and pedophiles at the stake. I haven't figured out why this happens but I would like to theorize that it happens because Humanity has reached a new level on the Spiral of Spiritual Evolution. The 'villager' reaction serves us as much as an enlightened reaction. The chaos that ensues is helping Humanity break through to a new level of healing and spiritual vibration.

 

Collectively, perhaps Humanity is ready to learn and heal an aspect of Its Shadow self. If this were true, then the individual reaction of each one of us is critical to the healing of the planet. There is no one best reaction. There is no good or bad way to behave. Judgment does not serve us. All any of us can do is to discern what is right for us at this particular time for our own individual spiritual journeys. 

 

The Ultimate Affirmation and Denial

As discussed in the last article, intellectualization, tribal belief systems, Divine Timing, and the subconscious/conscious awareness of Faith and Trust are all blocks to your ability to manifest affirmations and denials. There are many ways to form an affirmation but the one that seems to consistently have the most power to shatter those blocks and causes manifestation is the one that acknowledges the God within you when you say “I AM.” The ultimate affirmation and denial begins with a realization that you are God.

Any statement that begins with “I AM” and ends with whatever you say is a statement of the condition of God within you or is blocking the true state of God within you. For example, if you say “I AM Powerful”, then the condition of God within you is to be powerful, this is the true condition of God within you. If you say “I AM weak”, then you are blocking the true condition of God within you which seeks to have you be powerful.

The Full Moon cycle is about going deep within to uncover what no longer serves you. On August 16, 2008, a major astrological eclipse cycle was completed for 2008. The end of an eclipse cycle mirrors exactly what was happening in your lives six months prior. In this case, the start of this cycle was February, 2008. The key to successfully navigating this cycle is to see the patterns and alter your reactions to the circumstances if necessary. For many, this cycle was about clearing out what no longer serves on a subconscious level. The energy of this final clearing at this vibrational level, where ever that may be for you, will sift through the fallout for another month. The clearing for a lot of people had to do with healing and releasing tribal belief systems.

The impact of tribal belief systems to block your highest good can show up as the internal wounded child who is now demanding to be recognized and acknowledged. The 14 year old who took responsibility for the family’s woes can appear as gallstones and an inflamed gallbladder. The detoxification process required to pass those gallstones could symbolically be the process required to deal with the woundedness of that child. When the old energy is cleared, it creates the ability of the forty-four year old adult to care for and nurture the inner 14 year old. The affirmation of the forty-four year old that says “I AM powerful” now has the feeling and the energy to manifest. “It feels as though I've been released. The tightness in my stomach and chest is gone and I just feel warm inside.” says the forty-four year old adult. The affirmation of “I AM” is all that is required to manifest abundance and prosperity in your life.

You exist now in an energy that supports your ability to say “I AM” and feel how simply Being allows right action to flow through you. This has been one of Jesus’ main teachings and it’s taken over 2,000 years for the energy to be available to the masses so that Being is now our definition of Who You Are. No longer are you defined by what you DO. “I AM” is all you need.

Jesus said don’t caste pearls before swine, meaning don’t waste your time trying to convince, convert, educate or enlighten someone when they clearly have no interest in listening to you. It won’t change the pig and you will have done nothing more than waste your time at best and caused yourself enormous frustration at worst.

As you shift from one plane on the spiral of spiritual evolution to the next, you discover much to your dismay and surprise that certain people aren’t going to go with you. When you discover that a cherished friend, partner, parent, child, lover, or co-worker is no longer resonating with you may have feelings of guilty, sadness, anger, fear, and confusion at having to let that person go. As you increase your awareness and abilities, you want everyone to partake of the new discoveries. Alas, not everyone can nor has the desire. It helps to understand that everyone is at a different stage of development, at various rates of speed and ability, on different planes of the spiral.

It is enough to be aware that everyone is on the path of spiritual evolution and that you must honor each person by allowing them to be where they are. It does not honor a person who has chosen to stay in a low vibration to force them to constantly interact with a person moving into a higher vibration. All that does is make the lower vibrational person feel aware of their own perceived shortcomings. This causes great discomfort that usually causes that person to react with anger, shame, guilt, manipulation, and abuse.

A person of higher vibration cannot sustain the higher vibration for long when the pull of the lower vibration wears down the energy of the other. This is why people who are expanding must leave behind those who are not moving into a complimentary or comparable vibrational level. Lower vibrational people are not in their own personal power and they unconsciously seek out sources of energy that can help them maintain their states of being. Higher vibrational people have built up a level of energy that can power themselves and still have enough to give to others for short periods of time. Lower vibrational energy seeks to drain all of the power the higher vibration possesses. We know these people as Energy Vampires. When this happens, the higher vibration person will find themselves behaving in ways that are not consistent with what they know to be Truth.

Lower vibrational people will always seek the Light of the higher vibrational person. It becomes the responsibility of the higher vibrational person to know when, how, and how much energy to give away in the interaction so that both people are served. The higher vibrational person who learns this is not easily depleted and can move through the world easily, attracting and manifesting what they need and want. Usually, however, this is a lesson learned in time after many experiences of bouncing back and forth between lower and higher vibrations. I call those experiences “Fall Down, Go Boom!”

You pick yourself up because you know you can’t stay in the lower vibration. As you perceive where you are, you move towards the higher, more comfortable vibration. Eventually, most of your time is spent there. You’ll always have periods of time where you slip back into a lower vibration. Those periods serve you and you must learn to honor them and use them as learning and healing circumstances just as much as you value being in higher, more comfortable surroundings. Without contrast, you cannot continually appreciate what you have. You would take what you have for granted.

The advancing spiritual seeker begins to realize that they are tired of being held back and rebels. Sometimes relationships with the stuck seeker can continue in a new way. Sometimes it is best if the advancing seeker realizes that their new energy makes the stuck seeker extremely uncomfortable and the best strategy is to simply not interact with them at all or in limited ways. It is impossible to honor another person’s journey when the level of discomfort rises to a level that causes damaging behavior to occur.

Meditation with the “I AM” as the mantra has the power to move considerable amounts of energy. It would not be unusual to feel that as the crown charka opens, the third eye opens immediately. If there are blocks in the heart and solar plexus charkas, feelings of expansion, clearing and lightness will enter those areas as the blocked energy is cleared with the power of “I AM.” All charkas can be cleared with powerful “I AM” statements.

Use “I AM” to begin figuring out what you need to do to unblock the true condition of God within you. These blocks are usually related to feeling states. “I AM Powerful” is a feeling statement. It is the opposite of weak. “I AM Real” is a feeling statement that is the opposite of feeling like an imitation or substitute. “I AM THAT I AM” is simply the ultimate statement of the true condition of God within you.

Unblocking the feelings that keep you trapped in the false evidence that you are not an individuation of God is the key to manifestation. Achieving that state requires the “simple” act of just Being. That would be easy to do if you didn’t have your monkey mind, your intellect, bombarding you with noise. “I AM” is the going to help you get to that state of just Being. Try it. Watch what happens.

The New Nature of Relationships

Nature of Relationships

As a healer, I do quite a bit of relationship coaching with clients. That includes all types of relationships - significant other/significant other, divorce, separation, family member/family member, friend/friend. Regardless of the sexes of the individuals involved, the dynamics and vibration of relationships is the same. No one has a monopoly on that. Well, unless you subscribe to the traditional, conservative social mores and ethics. If you do, then you aren’t going to understand anything I’m about to say.

The nature of relationships is changing as the vibrations of the planet get higher. We’ve been in a huge vibratory shift for a long time now that has gotten very much stronger in the last year. It’s going to increase gradually over the coming years until we achieve a balance between higher and lower planes of existence. The Light, as we like to call Higher Vibration, is now firmly anchored into the heart of Mother Earth. As this has occurred, the Low Vibrational energy that has existed there has to be displaced. We tend to look at Low Vibrational energy as the Patriarchal Energy.

The Old Perception of Marriage

Patriarchal Energy has been what has shaped our belief systems and given us the boundaries that structure how we behave in relationships. We believe it’s immoral and unethical to covet another man’s wife because it was a law laid down by a bunch of men over 2,000 years ago. Who remembers that that law came into being because women were treated like property? It was illegal to covet another man’s donkey, too. I love donkeys, don’t get me wrong. But the old Mosaic Law put the punishment for stealing a woman on par with stealing a donkey. Both were considered equal assets to a man’s wealth. Today, in many states across the United States, you can technically be convicted of adultery and serve a jail sentence of as much as two years even for a first offense. There are people who have stolen a car for kicks who only get six months or probation for a first offense.

Now, a person getting convicted of simple adultery doesn’t happen too often anymore in this day and age. Mind you, I’m not talking about the guy who marries multiple women to swindle them. I’m talking about the common situation of when one person in a marriage decides to have an emotional and/or sexual affair with another person outside the marriage. If a divorce ensues, the "injured" party has the right to sue the person who cheated on the grounds of adultery. The Rule of Common Sense is applied in divorce cases by the courts because they have no choice but to rule on an ancient law that went on the books in the 18th or 19th century and never got removed or modified to fit the changing times. A judge who is capable of being truly impartial and discerning of the truth of the situation, listens to the story of how the adultery occurred and determines whether and how the behaviors of all the individuals contributed to the end of the marriage.

Almost always, the "injured" party claims the charge of adultery because money is involved and there was not a successful negotiation to the resolution of the relationship. The other aspect to this charge is the emotional reaction we still have as a collective consciousness to this situation. There is a lot of "trauma drama" in being able to go around to everyone discussing your hurt feelings and how awful it is to be betrayed and how justified you are in having a trial by jury so that you can get revenge and be proven in public to be the most moral and righteous in the drama. In the end, you might get the public to commiserate with you and the Ego that pushed you toward this behavior will be greatly satisfied. It feels good to the Ego to have people cluck their tongues and say "What a Pity!" and "Oh, poor dear so-and-so, how mistreated she was!" And then the truth of the relationship leaks out. The behaviors, beliefs, and actions by the "injured" party begin to circulate. And then the adoring public starts to say, "So-and-so really did that? Oh, no wonder there was an affair." All of a sudden, the person who cheated is viewed with compassion, kindness and understanding. The "injured" party has to eventually look inward to see what behaviors, beliefs and actions caused the irretrievable dissolution of a relationship that was believed to be "forever."

Somewhere in the last few hundred years, marriage began to be about Love. How do two people feel about each other? How do they behave with each other? How do they react to the world together? How do they influence each other’s behaviors, belief systems and actions? Was it a positive and strong enough experience to enter into a legal contract binding them together by law? Money and the acquisition of property and power is still a factor in why two people get married, but now emotions enter into the mix that make some people decide that money, property and power aren’t as important. They feel that a legal contract is an appropriate way to demonstrate their love for each other to the world.

Beginning a Re-definition

This is marriage: a legal contract between two people who promise what they will do and will not do while they are together, presumably "forever." Now, I sound like I’m against marriage. Trust me, I am not. I’ve never been married. Fortunately for me, I passed on that offer from boyfriends who weren’t equipped to be life partners. I’m looking forward to the day I can walk down the aisle in my non-traditional wedding dress, listening to the choir sing a song written especially for the occasion by my best friend. Don’t think I haven’t thought about this. The vows will go something like this: "I agree to make this legally binding contract with you because at this time in my physical, emotional, mental and spiritual evolution, you and I are matching vibrations with each other. Because we feel this resonance, we agree to explore the nature and wonder of what this experience can teach us about ourselves. I look forward to the good that comes from all of it, regardless of what that looks like. When our lessons are completed with each other, we may no longer be vibrationally compatible. If we decide to part ways, I commit to being in gratitude to you, recognizing that there is no blame, shame, guilt, judgment or condemnation so that I may honor the calm peace of my soul and yours." Wow. Kinda blows my hair back wondering how the congregation reacts to that, especially if they thought they were going to hear "love, honor, and obey." The thought of that makes me laugh.

Two people meet and feel that they want to be together, regardless of how they actually feel about the other person. All of us have entered into a relationship with someone whom we may not really like but feel compelled to interact. You are irresistibly drawn to the person. They drive you nuts, create chaos in your world, cause you to behave in ways you never thought capable, and no matter what you do, you can’t get away from them. WHY does this happen? Because at some level, there is a vibrational match. The Law of Attraction is always in play.

Ok, great, that’s not news if you understand and practice Universal Law and spiritual principles. Why am I talking about this? Because, people who are just entering into a spiritual growth process don’t understand how vibrational resonance works in relationships. All of a sudden, their marriage isn’t working anymore. "We’re just on different paths. He/She doesn’t understand me anymore. I can’t take his/her negativity anymore. I’m evolving. Why can’t my partner evolve with me?" are all things that people say as they realize they don’t want to be with the other person any longer. They are feeling the discomfort of a vibration that is now in disharmony with their own. The cacophony of that feeling usually begins subtly and grows into a loud, clanging noise by the time one person says "Enough! I want out." How a person decides to react to the change in vibration is where we begin to see why people have affairs of all kinds outside of a legally binding contract.

We all seek to be in vibrational harmony with another human being. When that is no longer possible with person A, person B will automatically seek out person C. Now, the problem comes when persons A and B don’t acknowledge that there is no longer vibrational matching between them. If either person is unconsciously aware of the evolution that is taking place, things can get uncomfortable. In a place of low vibrational energy, there’s going to be a lot of ugly behavior that doesn’t honor anybody’s Divinity. When there is consciousness from one partner, the process can still be ugly if the other person remains unconscious. It’s then up to the awake partner to work hard to maintain a high vibration in order to facilitate and negotiate a new arrangement that honors the Divinity of both people. The sleeping person doesn’t have the facility to do that. If both partners are awake, then they have an opportunity to create a new arrangement between them that works for them.

Application of Universal Principles

DISCLAIMER: The case studies represented here are a synthesis of many different client situations that have been in my practice over the last 16 years. No specific client's story is disclosed.

In my practice, I have coached many people who are just waking up to their spiritual evolution or who have been on the path for a while. Even for those who have been on the path for a while, there may come a time when they are unclear about what is happening in a significant relationship. In one case, a client's spouse had been having a long affair when he announced he wanted a divorce. When she came to see me, her body was clearly reacting to the emotional upheaval of the situation.

Because she had recently entered into a place of seeking spiritual information, she didn’t know how to use her knowledge to apply to the dissolution of her marriage. She realized that she had denied the evidence of her own feelings and intuition when she began to suspect that her relationship with her husband was uncomfortable several years prior. Everything was kept to a low simmer while the children were younger. Now that the children had become teenagers, things were beginning to come to a boil. She continued to deny that the relationship was tenable and felt that she was blind-sided by her husband’s actions – even though she had suspected that he was having an affair. At the point that she came for bodywork, her counselor had helped her to see that she needed to start releasing that energy from her muscles and cells.

When they finally entered into divorce proceedings, the counselor suggested that she have a final meeting with her husband so that she could "have closure with him", meaning that it would be her opportunity to tell him what a schmuck he’d been and how hurt and betrayed she felt. She had originally felt that she wanted to behave like the "betrayed wife" and wanted to hurt him with a nasty divorce. Before that meeting was scheduled, she asked what I thought about that. During our work together, I introduced the concepts of vibrational matching and the Law of Attraction. We discussed the impact her spiritual awakening was having on her relationships with her husband and her children. We talked about the positive things that could happen in her life if she realized that this was the Universe giving her a kick in the butt to facilitate her healing and purpose in life.

After working together for three months on these topics, I asked her how she felt towards him now. She realized that she had an opportunity to pursue her love of her old career. She went back to school. She realized that in those same three months, her husband had been in two car accidents, had incurred some professional chastisement at work, and generally looked terrible, as if he was getting sick. She was still uncomfortable about how things had turned out, but she realized that she wasn’t bitter and could have compassion for him. She didn’t feel a need to have a yelling match with him, so the meeting didn’t happen. The divorce went as smoothly as these things can and she was awarded by the court everything that she asked without any fight from the now ex-husband. Two months after the divorce was final, she had found the perfect job and was positively radiant as she told me about how well things were going. She continues to apply the spiritual, emotional, and life lessons she learned to help her complete her healing process and that of her children.

So, what happened? In a nutshell, she began to understand vibrational matching and that ultimately there was nothing and no one to blame for what happened. Everything had transacted Perfectly to help her make the breakthroughs she needed and wanted to make for her own evolution.

A client came who was seeking alternative therapies to help herself with a number of issues. She was in therapy with a counselor, working both individually and with her husband in marriage counseling. They were making an attempt to heal the relationship and find out whether they could create something new in their relationship that would advance them both. Her husband was a life-long spiritual seeker. They committed to finding new ways of being together, as she was able to release the old energies of things related to boundary issues. This knowledge helped her to identify unconscious thought processes, belief systems and behaviors ingrained in her energy form childhood that were impacting how she felt in all of her relationships, not just her marriage.

As we worked together to release the old cellular and muscle memories, she was able to easily identify that some very positive things had occurred. For one, her marriage was now becoming stronger than ever. For two, she validated her ability to honor her own boundaries. She is becoming stronger emotionally and spiritually. Physically, she no longer has constant pain and she’s more physically fit than ever.

In this case, one person in the relationship was already awake and instinctively applied his knowledge to the situation. The other person had been on the path, which helped her begin to understand the energies of the situation from a higher perspective. They are beginning to see that there is no blame, guilt, judgment or condemnation necessary since they are realizing the positive things that are occurring. These two people are at a complementary vibrational match that gave them the ability to create a new way of being together.

Our Role As Spiritual Seekers and Practitioners

In the old Patriarchal Energy, these two outcomes would probably have never happened. The first one could have portrayed the betrayed, grieving, "injured" woman, caused a scene with her husband, friends, and family. She’d be bitter, resentful and hateful for the rest of her days. The husband in the second case could have kicked his wife to the curb so he could "make her pay" for her betrayal by taking the kid in a nasty custody hearing. In the old energy, people would cluck their tongues, taken sides, made judgments and condemnations, and generally everything would be the way we’re used to seeing them in these situations.

And now, we come full circle to where we started. The Light is replacing the Patriarchal Energy. As we begin to raise our vibrations, each of us is pulled toward our individual spiritual awakenings. The Course in Miracles discusses in Chapter 21, Reason and Perception, page 448, how all we need to transform our relationship to ourselves, to the Universe (God, The ALL That IS, whatever you call it) and to others is the willingness to shift our vision from the Ego-based world we currently perceive in order to see the our Wholeness and Oneness with All. The affirmation stated there says:

I am responsible for what I see.
I choose the feelings I experience, and I decide
Upon the goal I would achieve.
And everything that seems to happen to me
I ask for, and receive as I have asked.

Ultimately, ACIM says perception is a result and not a cause. Damnation is your judgment on yourself, and this you will project upon the world. If you behold disaster and catastrophe, you hurt yourself. If you see holiness and hope, you will acquire joy and happiness. Perceiving the lessons you have placed before you as being a part of your path to Oneness, you no longer have to suffer and experience pain.

When we apply Universal Truth to how we perceive relationships and the nature of marriage as it stands today, we have an opportunity to realize that things are shifting. As more and more people become awake and aware, they are less willing or able to stay in a place of vibrational disharmony. This is evident as the percentage of divorces beats the number of marriages taking place in the U.S. alone in the last twenty years. This trend is only going to get stronger until things come into a place where the balance of masculine and feminine energies occurs.

Our lessons, as a society, as a culture, as participants in Universal Consciousness, are to help each other understand the application of vibrational matching, Law of Attraction and Universal Truth principles to create positive and joyous results that foster healthy relationships between each other. When we stop the blaming, shaming, guilt, judgment and condemnation, we shift our vision toward The Light. This new vision allows each individual to create exactly the Right and Perfect dynamic in every relationship. There can be no low vibrational outcomes as we see the wonderful results of what occurs. Everything happens Perfectly.

The Real Purpose of Depression

A client of mine is having a tough time right now. Actually, she's been having a tough year for years now. Some form of depression has haunted her for a good portion of her adult life. Recently she had a car accident during a time when she's been struggling with challenges in choice of career and honoring her passions in life. How to do both and meet the material needs of this world are something all of us are contemplating right now.

She's been unemployed for a few months now and the money is running out. The material world is making it difficult to be in a higher frame of mind. As things have seemingly become more dire every day, she's allowed the car accident to bring up a thought process that 's been with her for a long while. Does she check out, meaning commit suicide, or does she stay? While she was not physically hurt enough to require hospitalization in the recent car accident, she still suffered some physical impact to her body that has her in some pain right now. Lying in bed has brought up the deep depression issues that she has refused to deal with in her life.

Many spiritual teachers have addressed the issue of depression and its role in our emotional and spiritual evolution process. I believe the best explanation I've been able to synthesize from various sources is that depression is the Universe's way of putting It's Cosmic Thumb on you, like the giant out of some fairy tale. Imagine the Giant from Jack and The Bean Stock coming down and pinning you to the ground with his thumb, daring you to squirm outta that. You ain't goin' nowhere, are you? Until you surrender to the Thumb, that Giant isn't letting you up. Depression is exactly like that.

It's the Universe's way of telling you that you have created an opportunity to reach down into the bottom of the well, pull up all the old crap that's buried there, dump it, and start over. It used to be that we felt we had to be consciously aware of what that crap is or was. Psychology tells us that unless we consciously know what's going on, it won't go away. From my personal experience and that of witnessing the healing of my clients over the last 15 years, I don't think that is so true anymore.

I think our job in our healing process is to simply be willing to surrender to the process. A lot of healing takes place at the subconscious level, the place where we may never have any consciousness. How do we know healing has taken place? Because all of a sudden things change. Maybe it's as simple as we begin to think more clearly. Or the things we need in our lives manifest more easily and rapidly. Or we simply feel better, brighter, more optimistic for "no reason." We don't have to know what the healing process healed. We just have to become aware of the gifts it brings us and be grateful.

In order for this to happen, we must invoke the affirmation of "I will to Thy Will." Or maybe the better scenario is meditating on waving the white flag of surrender. Maybe then the Giant will relax the Cosmic Thumb. Now, if you keep waving the flag, thinking that you are going to fool the Giant into letting you go, you don't know Him/Her very well, do you? Giants are not fooled so easily. They've been there, done that, seen it all. They have all the time in world, which is interesting, since time doesn't exist, but that's another conversation for later. That's not such good news for the person under The Thumb, is it? Eventually the squishee has to truly give up and wave the white flag for real. When that happens, miracles occur. No exception. Every time.

When you surrender into the conscious and subconscious healing that is taking place during depression, you let go of all that no longer serves you. This creates the space that allows the new you to emerge. So, depression can be viewed as the energy or apparent chaos that's taking place while you, the catepillar, are morphing into the butterfly. I love that image. The Giant's Thumb could actually be utilized as an anchor for the cocoon needed for you to go through the growth and metamorphisis of emotional and spiritual evolution. I personally find that comforting. The catepillar has no idea how it becomes a butterfly. It doesn't need to know, does it? It simply surrenders into the process.

So, if you find yourself in depression, don't buy into the hype and media that it is a bad thing. It could be the best thing that ever happened to you, if you let it. Be willing to surrender, even if it's just a little bit at at time, to the process. Keep digging through the crap. There's a pony in there somewhere who's chasing butterflies.

The Importance of Doing Your Inner Work

When I finally decided to go to massage school in Chicago, IL, I had already been a practicing energy worker and craniosacral therapist for about eight years. Like so many people who have abuse histories, I turned to alternative healing when traditional therapies no longer worked. I was introduced and practiced healing modalities such as reiki, vibrational healing, Healing Touch, and many others for seven years before becoming a paid therapist.

During those seven years, I experienced quantum leaps in my own personal healing. I went from being in victim-mode to transcending survivor-mode. Along that road, I learned many things about what it means to be a healer. I witnessed what happens when a person who is not working on healing their own emotional and spiritual life calls themselves a "healer" and then attempts to use the techniques of energy healing to manipulate others. When I became a professional therapist, I used these examples to remind me of the potential power a therapist has on a client's healing. Over time, I found myself teaching the importance of doing inner work to other therapists, some of whom had been practicing therapists for years. I also attempted to teach these concepts to new students in a massage therapy school. Unfortunately, the standard massage therapy program does not allow for that kind of information to be taught.

Many people gravitate to the healing professions (psychotherapy, counseling, massage therapy, vibrational healing, etc.) because they are using those modalities to heal the emotional and spiritual issues they are experiencing. Almost everyone, as they achieve milestones in healing, wants to share what they've learned with everyone they know. They naturally want others who are also experiencing similar traumas to benefit from what they've recently learned. The best way to know that you have learned something is to teach it to others. This is the beginning of being a channel of healing energy. Whether the "teacher" is a clear channel of healing energy is another issue.

As Gregg Braden writes in his new book, The Divine Matrix, quantum physics is now proving that there is no separation between anything. When you come into contact with another being, you leave behind a part of you that stays with that person. The emotions that you feel react instantly, beyond distance and time. When you touch someone, you leave behind epithelial cells. Those cells are not separate from you just because they are now on someone else's body. They continue to react to your emotions. If you feel anger, fear, sadness, depression, happiness, joy, or peacefulness, those cells feel it at exactly the same time. The person to whom those cells were transferred also feels your emotions. When you consistently feel low-vibrational feelings, the other person reacts to those feelings and the cycle of emotional and spiritual chaos continues until someone changes their feelings to a higher vibration.

The impact of this scientific fact on the healing professions has, I believe, not been fully appreciated. For example, there are hundreds of institutions teaching massage therapy. With some exceptions, the required curriculum in most of these schools does not include any training on vibrational healing nor is there any formal discussion about the importance of emotional and spiritual health of the massage therapist. Potential students are not educated about this important requirement before they are enrolled in a program and, unfortunately, many people teaching massage therapy do not understand it.

Ok, to be fair, there is a five-minute discussion about the concept of psychological transference and counter-transference in the required ethics class. That is the only discussion about the role the therapist's emotions play in the healing process or the impact of the client's energy on the therapist. Students are required to memorize the formal definitions of each term and regurgitate it on a test. This is certainly not the way to impress upon a potential channel of healing energy the importance of doing their inner work! More time must be devoted to developing a complimentary program in the standard massage curriculum that supports the emotional healing and spiritual growth of people who want to be massage therapists.

Why is this important? As the public becomes more and more aware of the power of therapeutic massage modalities, the massage industry has exploded. Potential clients are searching for a therapist who can address them holistically and help them heal physically, emotionally, and spiritually. Therapists who are consistently working to maintain their own emotional and spiritual health will be highly sought after because they will be capable of facilitating that process. The therapist who has technical skill and who does not do their inner work will continue to serve those in the population who don't want to experience holistic healing. Both people will be successful monetarily. Both people will facilitate a particular level of healing. Only one will consistently demonstrate an understanding of the work and participate in the joy of watching clients make miraculous breakthroughs in healing. And isn't that the reason why you wanted to be a healer in the first place?