I have recently become entirely fascinated by the cycles of life. It seems to be a universal law that all of life is a cycle- nothing is ever straight or square. One thing always predisposes another thing, which gives way to something else. As humans we are constantly seeking directness- straight lines and squares are easy to explain, predictable, but when we get real with ourselves we recognize that few things are actually easy to explain or predictable. All life on earth goes through the same cycle of Conception, Germination, Growth, Fruit, Harvest, Deconstruction, Death. Conception is the initial point of contact- the inspiration of new life. Please note that this new life can be life or project or anything else- in general "birthing" isn't intended to be interpreted necessarily as bringing another person into the world. Germination is growing this idea into its first stages, this germination leads into full growth, the time when flowers grow and it is apparent that something magical is about to happen. Finally the fruit comes, all of the hard work pays off and new life is welcomed into the world. Once the fruit is harvested, it gets transformed yet again- into energy that will create more new-ness. The fruit lives its existence of service and once it is complete it too dies, bringing forth the period of deconstruction and death. 

It takes a lot to bring something new into this world- whether it be a product or project or actual life. It is the combination of everything that came before it- and that isn't just from the point of conception either. Conception can only happen once death occurs. Although we may only choose to see the linear "starting point" of the process, if we open our eyes we will observe that it is so much more complicated than that. The fruit that we harvest and offer to the world in the form of our skills, gifts and services are the result of our inspiration, our hard work and the death of skills/gifts/services that came before it. We are always moving forward, in a spiraling manner. In our present state we are both moving forward while cleaning up/ending the past. 

In order to bear fruit we must commit to all three parts of the process: inspiration, hard work and death. These three pieces are equally as important and neither technically come first. We all know what it's like to devote ourselves to something, bring it to life watch it grow with pride until one day it too is no longer enough and we have outgrown our own dream. At this point it is time to use this fruit, this dream to give birth to our next dream. We must allow the initial dream to die, decompose it into all the different components of what worked and what needed improvement. From the death of this dream, the ideas of the new dream can be birthed- its DNA gets passed on. The old dream serves to inspire the new one, the bones turn into the foundation. We must then work hard with the new blueprint of inspiration to create what comes next. If any part of this process is ignored growth becomes limited. We cannot make plans then do nothing, we cannot ignore the past as we move into the future, we cannot create without inspiration of what we are manifesting. 

Equally as important as the commitment to the process is the commitment to the present, the part of the process that you are experiencing right now. As we are transforming the old into the new we cannot yet stress about the inspiration or the hard work that may come next. We must trust in the process and find comfort in our current step. Similarly, we cannot stress about eventual death, it will take away from the creation, growth and manifestation. Finding presence and peace in the place that we currently are is the only way to maximize our overall success. This should be easier knowing that it all moves through a cycle- knowing that there is never only one shot. There may only be one chance for this particular opportunity, but it will never be the only opportunity that comes our way. We get so caught up in having one and only one thing to make life successful, this is akin to our desire to make life square. It's o.k. to "miss the boat", it's also o.k. to pour time and energy into a process that bears rotten fruit because it is all a cycle and there is no end point, that fruit will just have to be decomposed into a better process next time. We must learn to be kind and patient with ourselves, because we are the result of all of the cycles that came before us... and there are so many other cycles that have yet to unravel. In order to begin a new cycle we must be willing to admit that the current one is no longer serving- this doesn't mean we are wrong or have failed- it simply means that we are evolving. Life isn't about the perfection of the cycle, because there is no end point and it isn't linear, life is about the evolution of the cycle.  The fruit is what we are striving for, but understanding impermanence of the cycle means that we should allow the desire for fruit to move us forward and only forward. It's not about the fruit, it's not about the destination, it's about the experience throughout. Bearing fruit is never the end result, because there is never an end result, it just sweetens the ride. 

**The Lady from the Druid Craft Tarot Deck

This is a big week for water, the element of emotion. The sun is entering Cancer, there is a new moon in Cancer, Mercury (the messenger and communicator) is entering Caner and to top it off we are moving into the summer- a time of extroversion and intensity. When I think of the Summer I think of the second chakra, which is also a chakra of great emotion. In the sign of Cancer we feel our emotions deeply: we can use them to build walls, we can express them fiercely, or we can find balance in between allowing them to guide us to a more meaningful existence. Speaking from the perspective of someone who has experienced a great period of time in a state of depression, I am quite familiar with what it feels like to be held hostage by emotions. You know that happiness is a choice, but choosing it is another thing all together.

There are three ways to react to the life around you: actions, thoughts and emotions. When you are out of balance, overwhelmed and overworked it is easy lose control over these reactions- remaining in control takes a great deal of practice... Free will and choice sounds great until it is your turn to take the wheel. One source of misperception regarding emotions is that it is perfectly ok to have any emotions that come up. These emotions are reactions, they are not to be judged- how you use the emotions that come up though will warrant judgment. Society deems some emotions bad and some emotions good, therefor when you feel the bad emotions you also have been groomed to feel bad about feeling those bad emotions. It is difficult to work through your life when you are busy apologizing to the world for it. Your emotions are apart of you, when you disown something that is apart of you you forfeit the ability to control them. 

Living by the emotions that come up is different though. Your emotional reaction is honoring what you innately feel, to disown that is to disown yourself. It is important to honor the emotions that come up- invite them in for tea, sit with them, talk with them, ask them what they are trying to tell you because they are trying to tell you something. Your emotional reaction is letting you as a human know that deep down your Soul is reacting in a certain way to what is happening in your life. You MUST honor this reaction, it is your greatest guide! It is about experiencing the emotion, honoring it and its message and using this wisdom to make decisions on how to move forward in a way that serves you best. Here's the trick though, once you experience and honor the emotion and the lesson that it has, it is time to let it go. When I do clearing work in my readings I use the line, "hold onto the lesson but release the pain." It's a very similar thing with your emotions, take the message that the emotion is sharing with you, but then let it go. Your emotions are the messenger, not the news itself. The person who is taking advantage of you does not need to experience your anger/frustration/disappointment in order for you to resolve the situation- the person who is taking advantage of you doesn't actually matter to your personal journey, the situation that you are participating does. Use your emotion's message to get yourself out of, or address, the situation and if you are efficient with your words you do not need to spread the emotion too. I believe that emotion is added into discourse because of the belief that it becomes more convincing... but why do you need to be more convincing? If something does not serve you that should be convincing enough, you do not need to justify your decision to anyone other than yourself.

You are not your emotions, but the world will perceive you based upon your emotions (as well as your thoughts and actions). Your emotional body is like a layer of clothing that gets added to your Soul. You want your emotional body to reflect your Soul! You are not anger, frustration, jealousy, sadness. These are just layers that you felt at one point and forget to let go of. Remember: hold onto the lesson but release the emotion. These emotions came up to serve you, to let you know that something wasn't right, but they are not you. Tune into the emotions that are you: joy, love, kindness, peace. Which emotions do you feel when you are your best?  Come back to those emotions each and every day- take a few minutes to sit with those emotions, infuse them into your body, remember what you feel like when you are consumed by these emotions. I promise that if you do this regularly that these honest and genuine emotions will begin to crowd out the negative ones that shouldn't be there in the first place.

What happens when you don't work through your emotions? When you disown them out of fear or shame of them consuming you? You repress, you pretend to not see/feel the major messages that your Soul is sending you. You cannot repress anything for long, nothing disappears it just gets transformed. What does unacknowledged emotion transform into? The first sign of repressed emotion is outbreaks of larger emotion. Anger is my big red flag that I have been avoiding something- I believe that anger is what happens when you don't express and deal with the negative in your life. Anger is the powder-keg result of pretending like all is well. I am not speaking about the anger that happens when you see injustice, the split second reaction of anger. I am speaking about being angry, ya know, like when you are straight up mad and have no patience left for anyone and you want to yell and hit a wall. This is a huge sign that you have not dealt with something, or maybe many somethings. Crying is another build-up reaction that happens when too much gets piled on you and you have failed to let enough go. Crying can feel so incredibly relieving when done occasionally- but when done regularly it is again a sign that there is too much emotion that you have held onto. If emotion goes past the realms of anger and crying without being dealt with then it is going to get buried deeper and deeper within you until is starts to seed itself and grow. I believe a great deal of disease within this world is a result of unacknowledged and (dare I say?) unloved emotions. Yes! You should love your emotions- the good and the bad- because they are helping you to get a grip of how you are reacting. The goal is to use your emotions, not be used by them, so even the less than desirable emotions are supporting the highly positive path that you are attempting to stay on in your life!

Water is the element of emotions- water can turn into vapor/air, changing form, but it always remains water. The same goes for your emotions, they can change form but they will never disappear. How do you get your emotions to change back into their rightful form? Well you must sit with them first. What emotions have been cropping up for you lately? Invite them in, sit with them, ask: where did you come from? If you start digging you will likely be amazed by what comes up- most likely the injustices you are feeling are not a result of the present situation, but one that was left unresolved from the past. This is true karma- past reactions that have been left unresolved until the next time they pop up. What emotional reactions have you held onto but no longer serve you? What emotional reactions do not honor that beautiful Soul within you? This is the perfect time to start dealing with it. 

Summer is a highly active, highly social, highly extroverted season- this could be either a recipe for greatness or disaster depending on how on top of your emotional game you are. Live it, feel it, react based upon it, let it go. Let your intention these next few weeks to live a life that authentically expresses the perfection of the Soul within. Express yourself fearlessly- this does not mean proving points or rants on Facebook. It means experiencing life, observing how you react to it then living unapologetically based upon these internal reactions. Enjoy the sun, the long days, the extra opportunities to live life. If something negative comes up, let it, take it as an opportunity to let something go and create more space for love and laughter. Summer is intense, it'll come and go all too quickly. It can be even more challenging in the pace of this season to stay on top of all that is happening. Enjoy it, but be sure to take time, quick moments when you can, to check in with your emotions and deal with what needs to be dealt with, otherwise when the fall rolls around there will be a lot more to harvest then you might be prepared for. 

((photo credit: Jody Bergsma))

Desire is a unique word in its ability to be manipulated into several different extreme meanings. There is desire in the terms of religion which is bordering on derogatory and synonymous with gluttony and sin. There is also have a more generous view of desire as being the passion of life. Society loves to create extreme definitions for one thing- usually because one group of society will bastardize the term then after some time there will be a counter-attack to justify how good and beneficial the term is. No wonder society tends to live a life of extremes and struggle with finding balance, there are mixed signals all over humanity of what defines good and what defines bad. As mentioned in last weeks blog post, humanity is typically far more interested in being told what good and bad are instead of defining those words independently through experience. 

I use the term desire frequently enough that I believe I should explain myself and my use further. Desire, in spiritual terms, is a reflection of the Soul in the physical plane. As simplistic as it is, there is no way to quantify the term- because as I always say, everyone is uniquely different in who they are and what they are seeking to achieve in this lifetime. Desire is a beautiful balance between physical and spiritual- if you throw this balance off in either direction then the manifestation of desire within your life will be limiting. It is important to get away from the physical for a moment when examining desire: what do you desire to experience in your life? Do you desire peace? Adventure? Love? To teach? To lead? To heal? Once you have clarity of what you want to do with yourself and who you are, then you can begin making assessments of the physical conditions which will support your Soul's journey. If you are well connected with your life and there is a good balance between your physical world and spiritual self then your physical desires are more likely to be a direct result of your Soul's desires. These desires are then great clues of what you are seeking to create within your life: the possessions, the money, the experiences that will support the manifestation of your Soul's divine blueprint. 

Desire goes hand and hand with abundance (another abused word). Abundance I think of in terms of peace- what will make you feel at peace? Abundance is having everything you desire, and everything you have serves you well. Abundance is the ideal state we reach when we follow our desires. The trick though is to continuously check in with yourself spiritually- it is so easy to get caught up in the physical world then suddenly you are consuming just for the sake of consumption. When you can step back and ask the quick question of how is this going to serve me it becomes much easier to know whether or not you actually need it. If your desires support you on your higher path and purpose, they are like the tools you need to achieve your goals. You don't pick the tools because they are pretty or fun, then your toolbox would be full of useless objects. Similarly, it is best to know the job before you pick the tools- hence the need to get clear on your intentions for yourself and your life. 

So then, why are you carrying around a toolbox that is five times heavier than it should be, full of tools that will never serve you? Again, it is a result of being overly caught up with the physical and out of touch with the spiritual. What are those pretty objects actually covering up for? A lack of love? Inspiration? Authentic self expression? Peace? It is like when the body is lacking in certain nutrients it triggers cravings, but if these cravings aren't given enough attention you can just gorge your way through but never get truly satisfied, which will only continue the process of overeating.

Another common reason for being out of balance with desire and abundance is the notion that you deserve it... because you had a bad day, because of a breakup, because you had a good day, etc. The word deserve means to serve, it doesn't mean to fill the void in your life that you are not filling on your own. Balance is a needed here, you are a beautiful divine Soul and as such you have the right to anything and everything in the world that will support your Soul's path, that does not entail any degree of entitlement. This does however entail that you have a right to all of the goodness of the universe, so go out and get it! All Soul's live for themselves- free will and choice- therefor a person does not make you happy, you choose happiness as a result of the interactions with that person. You can substitute any emotion you want with happy. You deserve anything that will serve you, so go out and make it happen. When you do experience a breakup, a new job, a bad day you do not deserve treats- you deserve love, support, peace and anything else that will support you feeling more you (i.e. feeling whole again) therefor whatever physical object or experience that will support the feeling of wholeness is worthwhile to seek. 

Creating balance of desire will result in having everything you need and everything you have makes you feel fulfilled and purposeful about your life- the quantity remains undefined. Some need very little, some need a great deal more, neither is better nor worse as long as neither is excess. Ultimately it isn't about the physical though, because you cannot take it with you once your Soul's journey continues onward. I know that you know this, but do you truly know this? Nothing goes with you beyond the experiences you had and the lessons you learned- you leave the tools behind. You are here to experience freely, not weighed down by possessions. The heavier you get the harder it is  to achieve the things that you came here for. It is important to enjoy the physicality of life and being human, but it is empowering to recognize the limitations of it as well. 

I think it's safe to say that we are a highly indecisive society. Even when we do make the decision we struggle with staying committed to it. What is it about our culture that paralyzes us from living by our word, or even having a word to live by? 

A millennia of evolution and natural selection has deemed that those who survive will get to procreate and pass on their mental, emotional and physical traits. This has instilled in humanity a very strong survival guide and even though we live in a much safer world than the cavemen did, we still have an innate drive to keep ourselves alive. A major trait behind this drive is that we do not want to stand out too much, because those who stand out are the first ones to get picked off. In modern times, those who stand out are the first ones to get ostracized and condemned. 

But what does this have to do with indecision? Well, it means that although our initial reaction might be to honor who we are, we have been cultured over time to override this soulful instinct with a much more human one- to blend in and to appease. A lifetime of being told what to do and what qualities creates the "perfect life" has created a society who makes decisions based upon what is best for everyone else, not necessarily ourselves. Many of us have almost completely silenced that internal voice that speaks on behalf of who we truly are. In general there is a great lack of personal awareness created by the ego's overwhelming desire for safety and security. 

Awareness of self is not to be underestimated- though I believe it has been. When you can get beyond culture and society, you will see that we are all so incredibly unique with a very different personality map, skillset and learning agenda for this lifetime. We no longer even question our own selves until we hit a major wall that takes us down to ground zero. What has happened to our self awareness? Well for starters it is a total lack of stillness and silence. Our culture values speed, progress and busy-ness. These environments do not allow much opportunity to tune in. Our days are typically spent focusing on where we were and where we want to go- how are we supposed to know who we are in the present if our energy is always in the past and future? We can only know who we are by experiencing our life- the opportunities, conflicts and relationships - then observing how we react to it.  We are our own living science experiment and when we tune into this experiment we can draw the conclusions of what matters most to us, what brings us passion, what brings us peace, what our ideals and integrity are. Until we stop for a moment of silence it is hard to fully connect to this degree of awareness and we will just keep plowing forward, blindly into the future. 

But it's not all over once we build up our awareness. What are we going to do with that awareness? This brings me back to my initial sentiments. We can know who we are but be afraid to act upon it because that may result in standing out and being judged. This is a misperception of karma - perceiving that our thoughts or actions have been wrong or caused harm. This misperception can quickly lead to us tying ourselves up to outdated ideas of what we should and should not have done. We literally and figuratively place handcuffs on our free will and choice, disabling our ability to trust in our inner instinct because at some point in the past we did trust and it got us into trouble.

Equally as debilitating is the fear of imperfection. What do we do if our self awareness points out our imperfections? This is another cultural belly-flop that has taken away so much from the physical experience. When and why did we ever begin to think that we are all meant to be perfect?! We are here to learn so that we may evolve in the direction of perfection. ((Please note: we are working towards perfection, we are not going to become perfect. Our ideals of perfection are what drive us to make the best decision possible. This is not society's ideals, but our own personal ideals.)) Our imperfection is our greatest gift- it gives us the opportunity to learn, to grow. What's more, our focus on being perfect is taking away from our ability to become perfect which entails the acts of learning and evolving. The more we allow our desire for safety and perfection to override our desire to honor our reason for existence, the more numb and distilled our honest sentiments will become. 

We are not here to enjoy life in its perfection, we are here to experience life to the fullest: the good and the bad. Every opportunity we encounter is an opportunity to grow. I daresay that our greatest growth has come from our most challenging times both personally and society as a whole. We are not here to make right decisions every time, we are here to learn from the wrong decisions that we do make. We are not here to judge and build expectations that we will never meet, we are here to take it all in with objective curiosity so that we may raise our personal awareness and gain wisdom. When we learn to trust in the experience of this lifetime we will lose a great amount of fear in being wrong, or even worse, being ourselves. We will make decisions and stand by them, knowing that if those decisions don't support progress then we will learn a bit more about who we are so that when we face a similar decision again in the future (and you know we will), we will have the appropriate memory and tools to address it again successfully. 

It's important to remember that we are here for our own personal evolution. This "personal" evolution is just that- personal and unique! Therefor, we are here to grow in accordance with our own unique blueprint, in the direction of our own unique path of success. There are so many aspects of culture, family, society that can fog over our uniqueness therefor it is our responsibility to question daily who we are vs. who we believe we should be. At the end of our lives all that matters is whether or not we lived in accordance with our own laws. How society chooses to judge us for this is society's karma, how we as individuals chose to live is our karma. The more we can move forward without judgement, guilt and regret the faster we can get to the essence of our lives: living by it, standing up for it and becoming greater because of it. 

Want to talk more about how to honor your divine nature? Let's review your Soul Profile or Higher Purpose! these readings have an incredible way of grounding you in the truth of who you are, while supporting you as you live a life aligned to your higher path and purpose.