Chronic Fatigure and Spiritual Awakening

Today's topic is about the fatigue that many of you feel during your awakening shifts. It's pretty all-encompassing within you if you have this particular sign of awakening. It's like you can never get enough sleep at night, and after awhile, all you want to do is sleep. But sleep isn't really the right nourishment here, and I'll talk a little bit about how I've dealt with this fatigue and some of the issues that it may be representing.

What Is Not Awakening Fatigue
But before we go too far along, let's set some ground rules. If you are really super tired a lot of the time, you should definitely consult a doctor--ideally both one coming from the Western Tradition and one from the Eastern Traditions (Ayurveda, etc.). The reasoning is that there are lots of strange illnesses out there, and I strongly encourage you to use all available tools before jumping to a conclusion that you must be having a spiritual awakening if you're so tired.

Furthermore, let me illustrate a few scenarios about what is also not about awakening fatigue:

1. You do 19,000 different things during the day and get only 4 or 5 hours of sleep at night.
2. You're very psychic and have gotten entangled in hexes or trying to save other people energetically.
3. You don't sleep/you're an insomniac (While those of us who get waves of energy may have nights where we can't sleep, being an insomniac is something else).

These are a couple of instances that come to mind immediately that I've noticed that some people out there are trying to confuse with spiritual awakening fatigue. For most people, the answer is this: do less. For the psychics, the answer is to disentangle from these psychic wars and/or psychic savior nonsense that you've gotten involved in. You should NEVER be trying to harm another energetically; there are terrible consequences to everyone involved for doing something so mean and unconscious. Perhaps almost as bad is the way some psychics link up energetically to others to try and help or save them. We all have the lessons that we are here to learn, and it's not up to us to try and save people like that.

What Awakening Fatigue Is
Okay, so I think we've covered some important basics, i.e. see a doctor, don't do 9 million things in a day, etc. Now, for those of you in awakening, you'll go to a doctor, and they'll find nothing wrong with you. If you are also doing 9 million things a day, then that has to go to. But you'll find as you do less, that you are still really, really tired. It's like eating, meditating, and maybe...MAYBE an afternoon walk is all the energy that you have. You are also moving through moments of profound silence, stillness, and love. Within your heart, you know you're awakening and that that's what this fatigue is part of. When all of this is coming together, you can be pretty sure that the fatigue you're feeling is from awakening.

Why?

Part of what happens is that we're being transformed on every level of ourselves. Some parts of us transform very easily. Some do not. We just have more resistance or density in certain areas. (I'm going to start using the term "density" more often. It links into the idea of raising your frequency nicely). But just because there is density there doesn't mean that there's anything bad in you. It's just dense...like a rock. How much energy do you need to turn a rock into vapor? Come on physicists out there. I'm sure you've got an equation for this. But you get the point. You need a lot. For those of you going from water into water vapor, you still need a lot of energy to make that transformation, and with most or all of your energy tied up in that transformation, you don't have much energy for the world.

Letting Go of Resistance
The biggest thing that most all of us have to do is to practice letting go of resistance. Whether it's the mind not believing that it can get through this transformation or the wounded heart believing it's not worthy of all this divine love, resistance will slow down the transformation. Consider that we're like caterpillars going into our chrysalises. We need a lot of time in there to become butterflies, but we can't fully give ourselves to that transformation if we're already trying to fly before we have wings or if we're still trying to crawl all over the place. I know that you think that you don't have time, but if you don't make time, you're going to crash. And it won't be pretty.

Because inside, your soul--the real you--has already chosen this path. And you need to come into acceptance of it. If you don't, then you're still resisting the change. It's time to let go of that resistance. It's absolutely exhausting. It'll take away every last bit of energy you have until you can't get off the floor and people are deciding to put you in a mental facility or get you "serious" help. Well, serious help is already here; it's you. It's you and God, which are becoming one and the same. Because we are all God. We are all both the parts and the whole of God. This is what happens when we lose duality and blend into the Divine oneness. So just let go. If you are tired, then rest. It's okay. Really.

Meditation and Energy Support
You know, I think it's been in the last 2 months that I feel like I've been sleeping again. For about 3 to 4 years, it's felt like my subconscious has been on overdrive to integrate all this energy that has poured into me--to integrate all of me coming into me. It's amazing how much bigger we are than what we perceive. It's intense. Manly of you are going through this intensity and know what I mean. The biggest things that I've found to help me through the fatigue have been meditation and other energetically supportive tools.

After a night of sleeping but not sleeping, I have pretty religiously gone out to sit and meditate in the morning. Sometimes I do energy visualizations to replenish my system, and by the end of meditation, I feel like I have some energy to do things. Having friends, a spiritual community, or a spiritual teacher to support us is also important at different times. Some people who are close to nature will go for short walks. And if you get a lot of energy from nature, perhaps you stay out there longer. That hasn't been my way, but I know that it works for others as does the sun. I swear some of you practically are flowers and able to do photosynthesis. I know of at least one friend who immediately perks up when she goes out in the sun.

So you get the idea. The fatigue is coming from lack of energy or rather, lack of energy for doing anything but transforming. You actually have tons of energy, but it's otherwise pre-occupied. Kinda like having 20 GB or RAM, but it's all being used right now. Your computer can't do anything else until the first set of operations are done. But just because you do get a little energy from time to time to do more things doesn't mean that you should do lots of things during this time period. Do what you have to, and then trust that the rest will attend to itself.

Helping Others to Understand Your Needs
One of the biggest things people have trouble with is explaining to others their needs during these shifts. I encourage a lot of people to have journals preciously so they can understand what's going on. Until you can understand what's going on in your own words, you won't be able to explain it to anyone else. Of course, this is part of why I write this blog: I'm helping you find your own words and to realize that nothing is wrong. You're doing just fine. Just relax into this shift. Make space for it, and let go.

I know some of you are married or in committed relationships, and this causes a lot of strain on the other person many times. There's no easy way around it, but as I said, you're going to need to find your words to help your partner understand what's going on. If the other person really loves you, s/he will work with you. If not, your awakening has simply shown the rotting foundation that you've been trying to build a relationship on. Best to go find a better structure to build a new one on, but first, you've got to finish re-building this relationship that you're re-creating with yourself.

Sleeping 14 Hours A Day
I don't get too many of these days, but every now and then, I have simply been passed out on the couch for long periods of time. It's just what happens. My energy for exercise goes away. My appetite gets all weird, and in general, I have learned that I have to resign myself to just lying on my yoga mat and staring at the ceiling. I'm probably being too melodramatic. In one of my last big shifts, I really opened to it and accepted just how little energy I'd have for anything else. Since then, all kinds of things have shifted including my ability to sleep restfully at night, which I'm forever grateful to have back. So what I'll remind you repeatedly in these blogs is this: your awakening shift is temporary. If you check in with your inner knowing, you'll find this answer there too. In general, whenever you have questions about what's going on in your body, you always want to check in with your inner knowing. And if this isn't a practice that you've done much with yet, I encourage you to start. Check out the stuff about intuition under the Starting Out section to begin.

Last Thoughts on Awakening Fatigue
None of this is about suffering or punishing you. Nothing is going wrong. You are simply transforming. And as I mentioned about transforming the rock into a gas or vapor, it can take a lot of energy to do so. All the tools that I've mentioned in this blog really serve to help you make this process easier--to break apart the rocks that you can break apart and to let go of the things that do not serve you. In so doing, you can alleviate any mental suffering that may want to come along as you go through this sacred process. And you can be sure that when it is concluded, you will have all the energy available to you to do whatever it is you are here to do.

Taking a Look Back: A View of the Shadow

I don't like to leave anything out in this blog, and of utmost importance is to bring our attention to our shadows. Our shadows are those things that are forgotten and repressed. Sometimes they are "negative" attributes, and sometimes they are "positive" attributes. They don't necessarily have to be labeled as either, and it may be surprising to you that a "positive" attribute is squashed down there. But say for instance that you're a powerful psychic; much of this society doesn't know how to appreciate that. So some of your shadow may be your repressed psychic abilities, which occasionally show up when you blurt out something profound about someone else. This of course causes problems, but you can see the point. When you don't look at your shadow, things can creep up on you.

So here are a few blog posts that I've written in the last year that honor the path of the shadow.

Blog 1: Shadow Dancing: Meeting Your Darker Half
What I like about this blog is that I wrote out some steps for engaging with the shadow. In this post, I'm looking at negative aspects that get lodged down there. As I said, it's not all bad in the shadow; it's just repressed and trying to get noticed. If you're having trouble seeing some of your shadow, I encourage you to have the courage to ask a friend for help and outside perspective. If you're really brave, ask someone in your family.

Blog 2: Shadow Expressions: Permission to be Messy on the Spiritual Path
Too many people think that it's all light and roses on the spiritual path. It gets muddy, frustrating, and enraging too. It's not a pristine path because life isn't pristine. Near to the bottom of the post, I really hit my stride after encouraging you to use different healing modalities to you engage with your shadow. Here's the quote that I like:


"So for all of you who think spirituality is only about feeling good, high-states, bliss, love, and what-not, I encourage you to re-think that. You're creating a hugely powerful and overwhelming shadow side of unexpressed feelings. You are also your anger, sadness, rage, depression, and debilitating fears."

We are everything. We can't leave anything behind.

Blog 3: The Ego and the Shadow: The Dysfunctional Couple Within Us
This is a look at how our ego and our shadow get locked into a battle that does not serve us. It's another blog inviting you to drill down into the repressed parts of yourself and ask what is it that you're really after. Until you understand what you're trying to get, you won't really even understand the battle going on. It may make you feel quite lost, but at any given moment, you can let it all go. You really can let everything dissolve, and you will be okay.

Plenty More Shadow To Come
I know that I haven't blogged enough about this topic, but in general, check out June 2011 if you want more. There's so much that we try to run from, and strangely enough, a lot of it are often our gifts and our true abilities. We get so lost in trying to be what we think will be acceptable in society, and in the process we forfeit ourselves and our gifts. How sad is that? It's time to stop. It's time to take a look back and to bring all of ourselves into the light.

Igniting Your Inner Healer Healing Session

My next free webinar will be set up as a healing session. This will be pretty different than anything I've done before, and if you're interested in connecting more deeply with your own healing abilities, I encourage you to register.

Date: February 28, 2012
Time: 10am PST (Please be sure to find the correct time for your timezone)

http://www.anymeeting.com/PIID=EB58DC80854A

Session Break Down

1. Brief Introduction
2. Settling In
3. Guided Healing Session/Meditation
4. Coming Out
5. Q&A

I can take you into deep places very quickly when you're ready, so I encourage you to be in a safe and quiet place for this. Ideally there aren't any distractions (children you have to look after, cells phones, email, etc.).

The essence of this session is to help you connect with the healing that your energy's natural intelligence already has. This may be intense; this may be easy. You may feel nothing; you may feel lots of things. What's important is to come to it with an open mind and to trust the process. As with anything on the spiritual path, you have to learn how to trust the process.

Faith and Trust on the Spiritual Path

I have written so much on this blog that I'm going to spend a little time surfacing some of the posts that haven't gotten as much attention as others. I've got over 200 posts at that time of writing this one, and while some of you have really delved through a lot of it, some of it gets missed. That's okay, and I'm digging into it a little to share a couple of the ones that feel important right now.

Especially in these times of change, I think faith is a core part of the most important things we need in life, and so today's compilation is dedicated to faith, letting go, and trust.

Ya Gotta Have Faith
I don't intend to tell you how or what to believe in, but I can tell you that there's so much in this world that happens that I don't understand that faith is the only way that I know how to make it through. We try so hard to account for everything and make huge scientific laws. And what good does that do us when your mother who has never had a drop of alcohol gets severe psoriasis of the liver?

We don't become blind believers on the spiritual path, but we do learn to understand what we can and can't control in life and what we can and can't intellectually know. With these thoughts in mind, I've surfaced the below post about faith and God:

Your Divine Connection: Faith and God


There's No Rubber Padding in this World
There's no way to make life any safer, and I think it's an important point to remember as you embark fully on your spiritual path. If you think that there's some place of total material abundance, rainbows, and fluffy bunnies, you're on the wrong path. I don't actually think such a place exists, but people seem to be trying to turn the spiritual path into it. Make no mistake about it, the abundance of the spiritual path is in love, and love isn't always to our preference. The higher love that we connect with may bring challenging issues into our lives, and that's simply how it works. You won't feel safe, per se, and in truth, the idea of feeling safe from all the challenging and difficult things that go on in the world is a total illusion.

So here's a blog to encourage you to just let go of this idea of safety. We are not blindly wandering around the wrong parts of town in doing this, but we do understand that we can't control our worlds nor force them into imagined lands without any peril and difficulty.

Letting Go of Safety

Expanding Your Trust in Awakening
For those of you waking up, you'll find that you don't feel safe at all at times, and other times, you'll feel incredibly safe. What happens in those beautiful moments is that you've let go of the idea of what safety looks like, and you're trusting the process. The more trust and faith you bring into the process, the easier it'll go. You will still be challenged, but it becomes easier to be with the challenges and to just let them go. Don't make a story out of it. Don't make the spiritual awakening an ordeal that you have to get through. Don't do anything but fully accept it. If you do that, then you'll find so much more ease in this transitional time, and you'll see so much more of the new life that you've always wanted--but perhaps didn't think you could have--suddenly being birthed.

With these thoughts in mind, here's a post about trust.

Trusting the Process of Spiritual Awakening

Walking In Humble Faith on Your Spiritual Path
True faith is very humble, and it brings with it a sense of trust that all is going as it should. It is not blind; it'll actually make you see and sense what needs to be shifted or guided in a new course very clearly. All of the spiritual path is about empowering you to take action when appropriate as well as when to simply be still and allow things to unfold without active intervention. It's an amazing course to take, and I hope these blogs that I've highlighted help you to follow it to your heart's true wishes.

Soulmates and Other Myths that Bind Our Love

It's been awhile since I talked about soulmates. Since it came up in yesterday's webinar, it's on my mind, and I feel guided to share some more thoughts around it again. I think the idea of "soulmates" has been widely misunderstood, and in general, I think the purpose of the loving partnerships that we can engage in has been wholly hijacked by the heterosexual "til-death-do-us-part" ideology that has been married, if you will, to marriage. So let me take a few moments to help create a new framework for understanding soulmates and why you don't need to have them in your lives forever.

Meeting the Undying Spark
There's no doubt about it: meeting a soulmate is an amazing jolt. It's like getting hit with a several amp shock and somehow surviving it. Both of you may not really know what's hit you, but you're both incredibly attracted to each other. It's unlike anything else you've experienced, and you have to get to know each other. Thus begins an intense dance--at least initially--where you run headlong into each other's arms and each other's issues.

The undying spark of this relationship is the deep natural connection you have with this other person. If you've never felt so strong an emotional, spiritual, and oftentimes physical connection with someone, this is overwhelming. It usually links into the cultural idea of the person being "the one" for you. I'm peeling away the idea of "the one" from soulmates early in this post because they're not the same. "The one" is a really unhealthy myth that says there's only one right person for you for long-term romantic partnership. What a bunch of nonsense. What if your one true love is in Uganda and you never meet? I'm sure people have a whole bunch of stories in their heads about how they'd be drawn to Uganda, but that's not the point. The point is that you can have intensely connected relationships with a lot of people, although soulmates seem to like to show up to be some of the first that we have. The other point is there is no such thing as "The One" in the way that our culture defines it.

As Issues Arise, The True Nature of the Soulmate Is Revealed
Soulmates are so naturally connected at a deep level that it's like finding another part of ourselves. And that's a key point to understand. When you come into contact with a soulmate, you're being given a mirror to many aspects of yourself that you could not see before. Soulmates often have complementary traits, experiences, and personality pieces, and that's where some of the idea of "being completed" by someone often comes from. But your soulmate is not here to complete you. Your soulmate is showing you the pieces of yourself that you've neglected and the places that you need to learn from. Subsequently, this can make a lot of soulmate relationships very volatile. The deep connection you both have together is activating your souls, and you're being encouraged to go further on your souls' journeys. But to do that, all those blindspots and issues that your soul is buried under have to be cleared out.

And so we see that the soulmate has come not to complete you, but to push you further in the direction of your true purpose and soul plan.

Soulmates That Last and Soulmates That Leave
The amount of work you have to do together often dictates how long you'll be with a soulmate. I would also say that you can have several soulmates of differing intensities. The key really is how you mutually affect each other. If one person is the only one being deeply influenced, that's more of a student-teacher relationship or student-guide relationship. Soulmates simply are deeply connected souls, and you can feel how eternal that connection is. Which is why the ego can be really confused when the path together on this world is complete. How can something so eternal end? It's because we all come together for certain times of our lives. When two soulmates no longer need to continue to do their work together, they'll often part. If you've brought a lot of awareness to the process, then you may part as friends, but sometimes, relationships just complete. And that's okay.

Others are meant to be long-term romantic partners, but I don't want you to confine your soulmate to that box. It will be too limiting for both of you. If that's what is evolving, then consider it a blessing, although this person will likely ignite your issues for your whole life as will you for your soulmate. It's simply the nature of this type of union, but it can be highly rewarding as few others will show you so much about yourself.

Many Soulmates May Come and Go
There's just a resonance to a soulmate that only you can know. And a soulmate doesn't have to be a lover. A soulmate can be either gender, and a soulmate can be a platonic friend. But the spiritual work that you'll naturally push each other towards will be unmistakable. It really is a mutual service. Although when someone is showing you how ignorant you've been about your father issues, this may be hard to appreciate in the moment. It's a relationship for which I encourage you to bring your hardhat; you've got some work to do.

Plus, you may have several soulmates come through your life to teach you different lessons at different times. I've had a couple soulmates of differing intensities, and they've been beautiful and challenging relationships. But they're not to be held onto. They came into and out of my life as needed, and that's an amazing cycle to be a part of.

The Twin Flame Phenomenon
So, those of us in the spiritual world got wise to what soulmates were up to, and now people have moved on to a new term: twin flames. The twin flame is like you're twin. You share lots of similarities. Where much of the soulmate relationship is about showing you stuff you don't have or aren't looking at, the twin flame shares a lot of your same strengths, weakness, and soul path to some degree. If you are happy with yourself, you're likely to enjoy a twin flame. Where you're still hiding from yourself, your twin flame will be a powerful mirror. For instance, you are really stubborn, but you don't acknowledge that in yourself. Your twin flame will likely share that trait, which can really be a challenge.

But the twin flame isn't meant to challenge in the same way that a soulmate will. All relationships--regardless of spiritual mumbo jumbo language--can be challenging and offer so much for us to learn. And I think if you remember that, you're going to thrive in any relationship that you engage in no matter how deep or shallow, long or brief.

Broadening Your Perception of Love
But the big thing that I constantly want to re-iterate is to not get caught up in the idea of "The One" nor a specific way that a relationship will work out. This goes for all relationships and definitely for twin flame relationships, which is now trying to co-opt the idea of the "The One." I think you can have several twin flames because I think life offers us a lot more opportunities for deep love than we give it credit. The more ideas and mythologies we wrap around love, the smaller the space there is in our hearts for love to grow. That's the real problem. It's not about finding your soulmate, twin flame, or whatever. It's about the ideas that restrict you from being in the fullness of your love, and of course, it's about how you externalize your search for love. Anyone who has been reading this blog for awhile knows that the first step to developing great external loving relationships is to create a great loving relationship for yourself.

In that regard, there is a one true love, and that's you. After that, love just becomes easy.

For more on this topic, here's a video you can watch:

Spiritual Awakening Question and Answer Webinar Recording

I finally remembered to record my latest webinar. This is different than some of the other webinars that I've done since it's a Q&A Session. There are some long pauses in it, but generally, it's not too shabby. It lasts 55 minutes, and it covers a wide variety of topics including:

• Healing
• Feeling drained by other people
• Love
• Soulmates
• Digging into your underlying assumptions

To listen to it at your leisure, click over on this link to Anymeeting.com:

http://www.anymeeting.com/jimtolles/EA52DE85874C

Enjoy!

FYI: The next webinar is called, Igniting Your Inner Healer: A Guided Healing Meditation. It'll be on February 28th at 10am PST.

You can register for that on this link:

http://www.anymeeting.com/PIID=EB58DC80854A

Absorbing Other People's Issues and Emotions

This topic is an important one for those of you in awakening, and it's also an important one for those psychics who are reading this and don't really understand their psychic awareness. I often notice that more than a few people think that they're in awakening, when really they're just sensitive psychics. Their energy boundaries are generally open, which is how they so naturally get so much information intuitively and also why it's easy for them to get wrapped up in other people's issues. For those who are awakening with or without natural psychic awareness, awakening blows out your natural shields--it's one of the things that the ego helped build regardless of how healthy those boundaries were. It's all getting blown out because you are becoming more interconnected to everything. However, during this transitional time period, it's tough to manage those boundaries and figure out what's right for you. That's why so many of us go off to our sanctuaries for a time to be with our shift. It's in part so that we don't get caught up absorbing and figuring out other people's issues because we're so wide open. So in this vein of thought, let's talk about how to identify when you're absorbing other people's issues.

A Distinguishing Feature Between Psychic Awareness and Awakening
Now, I want to be clear that everyone has psychic awareness. It's like a muscle. Some people are more naturally gifted than others. Some people have worked it out more, so they're stronger with it than others. But we all have it. Our inner knowing is a feature of psychic awareness, and you are welcome to check out some of my other blogs about psychic awareness to get a better sense of how I'm using this term (it's not just a stare into a crystal ball and tell fortunes thing).

With that said, someone who has a lot of psychic ability and is very sensitive to energy will often easily pick up issues and emotions when they're around other people. They can get very scared of being in large groups because the information that they're getting is so overwhelming. It's like being in the middle of a rock concert. This can make them naturally reclusive, or they can get chronically ill or even lose their minds. It's kind of a nasty thing to not really understand that all your doors are open so naturally.

In awakening, emotions and issues will surface at all times and in all situations. While the sensitive psychic can remove him or herself from people to get out of that situation, you can't. Your psychic awareness will be awakening to greater or lesser degrees as well. As I said, everyone gets this gift to differing levels. But no matter what you do, you're not going to be able to get away from the emotions being brought to your awareness by awakening, and subsequently, being around a lot of people with lots of big issues will become exceedingly toxic. Because now you're processing your issues and their issues at the same time. It's why you may suddenly find yourself seeking solitude in natural environments more and more.

When You Can't Get Away
But I know a number of you may have to deal with groups of people while going through this shift, so I'll do my best to offer some tips to get through without falling down the bottomless pit of other people's uncleared issues. Let me be clear: you can't heal others for them. That's their job, and your suffering serves no one. Suffering simply creates more suffering, and awakening is about the ending of suffering. You may find that you have to change your situation dramatically in some instances, and you may also have to set firm boundaries with people that perhaps you don't fully explain to them. I'm not telling you to cut people off without explanation, but only you can know what the right level of boundary will be for your energy.

Tip #1 Asking if an Issue Is Yours. There's no time like the present to get in more touch with your inner knowing than now. Actually, this may be easier than you think because your awakening is opening up so much of your awareness. So ask yourself: "Is this issue or these emotions mine?" See what answer you get.

Tip #2 Pay Attention to Who You Are With. One of the other things I do is to pay attention to who I am with when emotions come up. If I'm around my friends who all have strong energy and I keep having the same issue come up, it's probably mine. I say that because strong energy connects to us and pushes up anything that's in the way so we can see it and so we can connect even more deeply with another. If a specific issue or feeling only shows up with a particular person, then it more often than not is something that I'm absorbing from the other person and which has little to do with me.

Tip #3 Sending It Back. People are constantly trying to get away from pain or send issues elsewhere. You aren't meant to be a spiritual punching bag, so ask God, your inner knowing, your spirit guides, or some such well-meaning being to send it back. Send it back with love and understand that the other person needs their pain to fully face their issues. They created it, and so they have to own it.

Tip #4 Grounding the Pain. Sometimes, I may also ground the issue. Especially when I'm working as a teacher, I'll feel stuff coming my way, and I send it down into the ground to dissipate it. This is just an energy visualization where I imagine the issue hitting the front of my energy and flowing down into the earth as if my energy had a windshield and rain had just hit it.

Tip #5 Visualize Energy Shielding. Lastly, I'll mention shielding. Because the awakening is helping you to have no defense and to become interconnected with all things, I mention shielding last. Shielding still perpetuates the illusion of duality, but I understand that life on this planet is tricky. And sometimes visualizing an energy shield all around you that cuts and deflects any harmful connections coming your way can be really helpful.

When You Process Another Person's Issues, You Drain Yourself
Your energy is a precious commodity. It's limitless on the one hand, and yet we live in a body that naturally has limitations on this planet. It's a strange place that you may be in to know that you are truly limitless, and yet this body takes so much work to maintain and to evolve through this process. Sometimes the physical pain of an awakening shift is tremendous, and this is why you can't get yourself locked up in other people's issues. It's far too draining. This is one of those times when you need every drop of energy for yourself to allow this beautiful, sacred shift to transform you. Later, you'll be fully charged and interconnected, and you'll be amazed at how much you'll be able to offer as well as receive from the world. But that is not this moment, and you have to learn to how to fully be yourself and fully meet your needs in this moment.

As I said before, you're doing no one any good by dealing with other people's pain, and people really are good at sending their issues out to others with projections and nasty words. Try using the above tips to help find a stabilizing point when you have to be around lots of people.

Continuing to Get to Know Your Own Energy
In truth, at each major internal cycle of your overall awakening (I've noticed that I have lots of shifts within it as I'm able to integrate more of my natural energy), you're going to have to re-sense your energy. This may even be more than a little frustrating because you'll feel like you've done this already. But each blast of energy blows open the doors and windows again, and the natural space that you're now holding is different. I don't want to say more intense or less, bigger or smaller. It's just different. It's helping you come to the natural energy space that you're here to hold on this planet. Everyone is different, but it is all beautiful. Consider this metaphor:

A river comes down from the snow melt from the mountains. At some point the water forks, and on one side of the mountain, a vast lake is formed. On the other, a very small pond with amazing depth is created. Both are equally beautiful. Both hold that source energy, but they are expressing it differently. One wants to reach out to as many miles of land as possible. The other chooses to touch a few parcels, but with incredible depth. So with each shift, you're becoming the lake or the field of energy that you're supposed to be. And with each shift within your awakening, you'll have to get to know yourself again.

Letting Go of the Blame Game
Okay, ladies and gentlemen, this is my warning to not get caught up blaming your significant other for not being significantly transcendent to be with you. In truth, this is a new process for all of us to even discuss. I mean seriously you probably would not have even been able to read a blog like this 10 years ago. So we're all learning how to discuss this and be with this even though this is an ancient process, and plenty of other people have gone through it even if they didn't really know that they were going through it. Now, we're trying to get a critical mass happening on the planet, and blogs like this are aimed at catalyzing people towards that space of loving kindness.

But we can't do that blaming other people for not being able to hold the space we want or for carrying around all the issues that they have. This will be a challenge for any relationship, make no mistake about it. Which is why communication becomes even more important to keeping the relationship healthy. You will need a lot of alone time, and for partners not able to travel with you through this time period, it will also require a lot of letting go. There are no easy answers, and life on this planet has its challenges. But in truth, nothing is lost, so don't be upset if your partner cannot come with you. It's not their fault. It's not yours. It is simply a big time of transition, and we must all follow the paths of our hearts.

The Regular Spiritual Practice of Clearing
One of the things that I do with my spiritual practices is to clear out my energy in some of my meditations. It's kind of like an energy shower in the morning. It helps me shake out the stuff that isn't mine and to keep my inner compass pointing in a clear direction. It's never perfect, and we're not aiming to be perfectly pure. We're simply aiming to take care of ourselves on the energy level, which is super important especially during awakening. It's also an important tool for sensitive psychics as they come into better understanding of their gifts. So with that all said, do your best to pay attention to the origins of emotions and pain. Find out if it's really some of yours to be processed and let go or if it is just some external debris floating by in the air that has nothing at all to do with you.

Finding Your Sanctuary

When I was getting close to rupturing into my initial awakening, I intuitively knew that I had to get out of town and go some place else. It felt like it would be impossible to be where I was, and this wasn't in a running away sort of way. This was simply like a flower bud that was about to burst into color, and the bud was no longer big enough to hold it. So away I went one August, and the person who came back to where I was living at the time was most definitely not the same.

However, since then, I've had other sanctuaries. And in truth, during these big shifts, we all need these safe places to seclude us from the crazy, madness of the world and help us re-connect with ourselves. We need a clear, free space with room to grow. It's kind of a paradox. You go into the chrysalis so you can explode into your hugeness and fullness of you. For many of you, you are also doing a lot of deep and profound healing, and you need that safe space to keep out any other contaminants while you have yourself cut open and are spiritually operating on yourself, with yourself, and with God. No one walks into a surgeon's operating table when the surgeon is operating, and so too, there's a lot of truth in that for awakening.

With all this said, those of you who are awakening will find a time in your life when you need a sanctuary, and I encourage you to do so

Going to a Sanctuary Is Not Running Away
I have to be very clear that this is not about running away. Going to your sanctuary isn't a simple retreat. In many ways, I've been in my little sanctuary with reduced contact to the world for about 3 years. It's not my ego's preference; it is what is necessary. Those of you going through your shifts will understand that. You'll understand just how much energy is being expended inward to align yourself with the Truth of you and to remove all ego lies and obstacles within you. It is not a time for much outward exploration, at least beyond the necessity to ground and embody this energy. In truth, you probably don't have much time to run anywhere, and this in and of itself can be challenging.

But others of you are still early in your path, and you may have the ego that's trying to be spiritual and decide that it needs sanctuary. To you, I encourage you to read my blogs in the starting out section and to stay in the midst of the difficulties in life that you may be trying to flee. The spiritual path does not take you away from difficulty; it takes you straight towards it so you can transmute it and learn the lessons about yourself that you need to learn. When it is time to awaken and seek a sanctuary, you'll know.

The Safety of Nature and an Appropriate Place
Some of you will likely need multiple sanctuaries as you grow and heal and awaken. One space is good for one kind of work, and then, it is no longer the right space in which to be. This is perfectly natural, although it can be challenging to try and figure out where to go next depending on how deeply this change is affecting you. Many of you are overcome with fatigue because of all the internal work that is going on, but this too is temporary. When it is time to make a change, you will know, and you will find the right place. After awhile, many of us seek the safety and comfort of nature because of its natural, supportive energy. Nature really has no agenda, not like people. There's so much dis-ease and issues being thrown about by other people--even well-meaning ones--that you'll enjoy a lot of solitude in nature. It often becomes one of the key supporting energies in which you'll re-charge.

But some of you will still have some contact with others. Some of you may be fortunate enough to have a spiritual caretaker, which is another topic I mentioned in a previous blog. In those situations, a caretaker gives you this space to go through what you need to go through and provides a lot of real world support (money, food, shelter, etc.). They are usually unlikely to give much energetic support unless they also happen to be a teacher. Regardless, you are very lucky and blessed to have a spiritual caretaker in a place of sanctuary, but as always, it will be temporary. The sanctuary is always temporary.

Inappropriate Sanctuaries: Being Drained by Your Environment
People can have a lot of attachments to environments and places, and that can blind them to the fact that they're not healthy places for them. Especially in awakening, you absolutely have to be in a supportive environment because so much may be demanded internally. For me, I went to an absolutely horrible environment during the early stages of my embodied awakening; I went to live in San Francisco. It's one of those choices that I wouldn't make again. I was being drained by just about everything, which slowed down a lot of my embodying process. I didn't have the energy I fully needed for me, and I didn't understand how much energy I really needed.

And how would I?

Part of why I write this blog is to help you understand your needs because most people don't know anything about this process, and I can clearly tell you that you have to get in touch with your heart and your soul and ask for what you need. Ask about what kind of environment supports you. Then you have to go there and set up shop for awhile to fully be with the awakening. The full allowance and letting go is so crucial; you're still going to find places inside of you where you aren't fully letting go--it's like involuntary muscle clenching. Some deeper part of you is still holding on, so you need a place where you can let go completely to find those other hidden and involuntarily resisting parts of you to help yourself release deeper.

Helpers, Shifters, and Supporters
Along the way, you'll find the help you need. While only you can ever know your truth and what is right for you, there are plenty of people with ideas who can help you figure out where your sanctuary would be. Sometimes it is going back to live in your parents' basement. Some times it means going to an ashram for awhile. Some times it simply means finding an apt on the edge of civilization next to the woods. Whatever it means for you, you'll find the help you need to pay for what you need to pay for and to find the space you need. You are not alone in this endeavor, and while others may not fully understand or appreciate what you're going through, many people will still do things to help you out of love. Maybe it isn't the purest, most refined love, but such is the way things are. The world is the way it is, and you will have the support you need most when it matters most.

Relaxing Into Your Sanctuary
You know that you can't time a shift, so it's best to get comfortable in this place where you feel supported and safe. There's nothing to do. So much of what the spiritual path asks of us is to make space, and then God supplies the rest. The awakening shifts you and does what it wants to, and in truth, you are shifting you. You and God really are one, and you're coming into a deep awareness of this truth.

Doing things becomes very secondary, and it only happens as necessary, i.e. making a little money from time to time to pay for bills. Some of you may have more financial support; some of you may have less. But whatever the specific circumstances, you all have the inner tools that you need to be with this sacred transformation, and with the right space to support you, you'll find that the awakening may take on a softer feel. It gets softer because you are now relaxing into it, and you are feeling from a deep space of trust and faith that you really will be all right.

For more of my thoughts on this topic, you can check out this video below. You can find all my videos on my Jim Tolles YouTube Channel.

Sacred Destruction: The Removal of Obstacles in Spiritual Rebirth

You know, I write a lot about the challenges of spiritual awakening and the spiritual path in general, but I don't want you to get the idea that this is a hard thing. Far from it. It actually is a lot harder to stay in the inertia and momentum of the life that doesn't serve you because you are always internally split. Your true self wants to go one way, and your socially-trained ego-self is trying to do what it thinks it's supposed to do. There is no personal power in this place, which is why useless social benchmarks for success get made. It's a way to congratulate the ego-self for playing the game that does not serve it and to try and hide the fact that you are failing badly to be you. Those benchmarks are lots of money, fancy houses, fancy clothes, trophies, big weddings, and so forth. You already know all of this too. I'm just being a mirror to reflect this fact so that you will consciously choose sacred destruction.


Letting Go of All that Does Not Serve
Sacred destruction sounds really dramatic, and at times, it can certainly seem that way. When we're still very much stuck in the ego-self, losing our jobs, spouses, close friends, eating habits, and more seems horribly upsetting. The ego-self feels like it's being ripped apart, and in truth, it is. The more identified you are with the ego-self, the more you will feel absolutely destroyed by the spiritual path. You'll wonder why you ever took to this road, and you'll regularly consider and possibly try to go back. But this path is not destroying you, and for those in awakening where all this is happening seemingly with no impetus at all from you, you may have been getting inklings from time to time of just how beautiful life is when you are no longer trying to be something that you are not. Maybe they last for a few moments; maybe they last for a few days. They last until something grabs hold again, and down you go back into the trauma of the ego-self that's been destroyed.

Finding Peace in the Destruction
Now, I'm not going to say that I was at peace with everything being blown up in my life. But I will say that I took a very active role in the demolition. I always knew that there was this spiritual thing that I was trying to get to. I spent a good deal of life with my foot on the gas pedal barrelling through all the major milestones. It was like a part of me felt like it had to get through all these other things to get to what it really needed to do. So when the wheels of the spiritual path started to turn, I was out the door, and while I won't say I haven't glanced over my shoulder once or twice, I will say that there's nothing back there for me to go to. I have found so much within me and found so much peace in letting go that it becomes easier and easier to simply let go of ideas, things, and relationships because nothing is ever lost. Nothing real is ever destroyed; it is only changed into something else. So, you see, you're going to have to learn to become at peace with the truth that all things and forms are ever-changing.

The Perpetual Question of How on the Spiritual Path
Of course, many of you are like, "How? How do I come to peace with losing my life partner? How do I pay bills when I can't work at this awful job anymore? How? How? HOW!!!!!" Sometimes the emails I get are especially like that last exclamatory "how." It really isn't a question, but a tantrum. And that's not bad, but let me offer a few words to help soothe you.

Let's start with this: "You already have all your answers." Go within to find your "how's." I cannot give them to you. I can only encourage you with the fact that all changes are transitory, and that everything is proceeding exactly as it should if you are engaging yourself with love, kindness, faith, and courage.

Let's follow-up with this: "Life is not without discomfort and will never fit an image of perfection and luxury that's in your head."

Then consider this: "Just let go." Don't make this into more of a process than it needs to be. Spiritual awakening and the spiritual path aren't goals. They are invitations to go within, find out who you really are, and then move in the world from that place of stillness. Everything that doesn't align with your beautiful "I Am"--that deep space of being--must go. And that's where you will have to go to begin to find peace with the ensuing destruction.

Quietly Rebuilding and Renovating
And yet, in the midst of watching your best friend of 14 years no longer be your best friend, you do need to do your part in co-creating space for the true you. If you don't spend time to know who you are while things are burning, then you may find yourself truly lost. But you're not that lost about what is important to you. You know the real things: love and service. You know in your heart what real love feels like, so begin to follow those threads towards the things that offer love to you and ways you can offer service and love to others. It won't be perfect; it never is. You will find things that aren't right for you, but you'll learn from them. You'll go through a lot of trial and error as you begin to form a new foundation in your life. This foundation has to be built on real things like love, or the structure of your life will most likely collapse again. For some of you, there truly is no choice anymore, and the faith part of all this is to know that as you build in integrity, all the tools and equipment and relationships will come to help you rebuild.


Why Sacred Destruction Is So Very Necessary?
For most of you, your foundation is full of lies. It's like having rotting, termite-filled wood for support beams in your house. Would you really feel comfortable living in that house? Time to tear it down before it falls down on top of you. Tear down these ideas that you need to be culturally beautiful or handsome in this world. How ever your body is is perfect. But in coming to that realization, you may also realize how you haven't treated your body in integrity. You may be tearing down old eating habits that have put too much weight and strain on your body. You may be tearing out work-out regimes which also have put too much strain on your body to achieve and maintain a body image. Can you not see how many things need to be lovingly and wisely destroyed in your life? All of these things are a cage, and you are so very trapped so long as you try to live by them. This blog is just a sledgehammer. You can pick it up and use it to help you break out of your jail cell or not, but it is here for you as are many of us awakened beings on this planet. You are not alone.

The Thoughts and Trauma Subside
But in many ways, the central thing in destruction is letting go. It's kind of like my Sandcastle blog post. You come to realize that the waves of life will come to wash away whatever you build anyway. So you just start to let go. You let go of all the things that you can't control, and suddenly you may have way more energy available for the things that you do influence and that badly need your attention. There is no so much neglect and ignorance in this world. We are so ignorant about many, many things that go on in our world because we've been living in this traumatic little ego tunnel vision. It's time to broaden our perspectives, and as you let go, you'll find that the trauma of watching your world crumble subsides. You will see that there was never any way that you were going to be able to keep it. You start to understand that all things are change, and that's okay. And you truly understand that through it all, you are taken care of and loved.

Learning to Sense Your Energy

One of the topics I haven't discussed too extensively is around learning how to sense your own energy. I've alluded to it numerous times, but now is as good a time as any to talk about how to get in tune with yourself. It's a really important thing to do because while we operate on a lot of levels of gross density, much of how our lives move is influenced by the subtler energies and connections within us and around us. Consider a practice in sensing your own energy as part of starting to look around your bedroom. You'll need to be able to assess what's in it to know what belongs, and on that note, I'll begin this post.

Softening Your Awareness
There is a real softness in us and to get to that softness requires a kind of soft focus. The edges and hard boundaries need to blur and bend and dissolve. The first step to sensing your energy is going to involve finding time for just yourself. If you don't do this, no one else will, and you're going to find that already there is a balance between setting boundaries and dissolving into the softness. Consider that if you don't mold cake batter then it runs all over the place and doesn't bake properly. It just makes a mess. But if there's no space to put all the cake batter, that's just as problematic. So as you are making space for your own practice in getting to know you, you'll need to know how much space (time, place to meditate, etc.) you need.

Boundaries in Place, Meeting Yourself
That first step in setting boundaries for yourself may be one of the biggest hurdles, and if you've had trouble saying, "No" to people, then as you go inside, you may find a lot of debris and issues that don't belong to you. Of course, I'm getting a little ahead of myself. Right now, you don't really know what's inside, do you? Many of you are afraid. Some of you are afraid of your beauty. Some of you are afraid of your ugliness, and most of you are afraid of all the work that both will require you to do. Regardless of how you may label what you feel, it tends to be very true that we've all been sponges absorbing up lots of junk. Otherwise, you wouldn't really need a blog like this to help you pay attention. You'd know what you are and what does or does not belong. This isn't accusatory. It's a statement of fact. That's the power of Truth. It knocks your socks off with its simplicity and candor.


Breathing Yourself Back In
I would recommend that you do your initial practice of learning to sense your energy after at least a 15 minute meditation. The meditation in this context and at this juncture of your development is meant to slow you down from the 90 mph that you're going through life doing work, taking care of kids, etc., etc. So just pause, and breathe. Breathe yourself back in. One of my little prayers is to ask that wherever I've left my attention or energy that it may come back to me. One of my other little prayers is that wherever in my energy that I've let someone else latch on to me may they be released. You can repeat this type of prayer if you like, and I most certainly encourage you to make up your own. As you breath in, you breathe in more of you. As you breathe out, you release things that don't belong in your energy field. In and out. Easy and soft.

Do your best to maintain the softness in all of this. This isn't a race, and the breathing isn't meant to do any sort of advanced high-state/altered awareness juju. There are other breathing techniques for that if you really want to get into it. This is just about breathing and coming into the presence of this moment, and from this full presence, you can then take a look around.


Following the Feelings in Your Body
If you've never done anything like this before, I encourage you to pay attention to your body first. Your physical body is the densest form of your energy body. Sensing this counts in learning to sense your energy. If you're not seeing auras and so forth, that's fine. You may not. Not everyone sees in that way, and we're not trying to make you a super-psychic. These tips are meant to help you simply be in alignment with yourself in whatever way feels true to you. Don't try to be something that you're not. It will only lead to suffering.

But do challenge yourself to stretch your awareness. So pay attention to your body. See what feels good. See what is uncomfortable. Just put your awareness and attention there. If your hips are tight, see what it's like to simply focus on that tightness. See if any thoughts or additional feelings come up for you. Our bodies hold the whole of our physical memories on this planet. They remember everything, and so when we heal and awaken on this path, there's a level of physical release that goes on. Tuning into your body is a very important step on the spiritual path so that you can start to understand it's natural needs--not the needs that we make up for it (i.e. thinking we need to have six-pack abs; most bodies really just need some movement and exercise and not to become a specified form).

Delving Into Subtler Emotional Energies
As you explore your body, you may find emotions in different spaces. It may seem very odd at first that your low back feels all kinds of shame around it. It may not make sense, but this is still in the exploratory phase right now. We're not looking to change anything yet. We're looking just to look. Because along with physical sensations, emotional sensations also get stored in our bodies' muscles and tissues. Everything from your fight with your mother last week to the fatigue of holding your baby girl at 1am in the morning while she was sick with an ear infection two years ago is lodged in your body. Seeing what's stuck in there will give you a sense of what kind of emotional releases and emotional support you may need. You may also find pleasurable moments stuck in there, and while you may wonder what's wrong with that, oftentimes we get hooked on a great experience and try to reclaim that experience in future situations like having a great sexual lover. Letting go of the experience from our emotional bodies makes space for new and potentially deeper emotional experiences.

Dropping Into Awareness of the Energy Body
Okay, so you may not be ready to do this. You may still just need to stay with the emotions and physical body for this practice for awhile. That's fine. This isn't a race, but as you are getting more aware of those other energies in your denser structure, it does get easier to sense the energy surrounding you, within you, and holding you, all of which is perpetually shifting and staying the same. It's a profound space of being to start to touch. One of the ways that I work with my energy field is to put my attention on an area of my body, and then it feel like I'm lifting my attention up above that physical area and into energy body. Then I kind of flow with the sensations of the energy like currents of water so that I can flow from my right hand up my arm into my shoulder down my back and so forth. Try it for awhile. It may work. It may not.

If you find this very easy to do, and then I encourage you to go a level deeper. See if you can get a sense of what feels really strong, light, and vibrant. What parts feel dense, heavy, or stuck? Those are usually how I term the various things that can end up in an energy field, and you can practice this in more than just a meditation. But initially, you really want to get a strong sense of your own self before doing this type of awareness work in other situations with other people around. Getting a sense of yourself is absolutely crucial so you don't get sucked into another pain or joy. It will anchor you not just in your practice, but in all of your life whenever things get turbulent.

Stuck Points and Foreign Energy
I sometimes like to talk about our energy like shoes. Shoes walk through the world, and mud and dirt naturally get stuck to them. You occasionally have to knock off the mud from them that gets collected. Sometimes the world throws mudballs at you, and so having a chance to stop and release energy that isn't yours is a good thing to do so you don't carry around someone else's pain. Carrying another's pain does nothing to help them, and it hurts you. Other people's pain is theirs to learn from, and they can't learn the lesson if you allow them to pass things off to you. It's like constantly loaning money to a friend. Eventually, that friend needs to learn how to make money on her own. It's not a perfect metaphor, but you get the idea.

You can clear energetic debris in a couple of ways, and usually, the stuff that's really stuck is there because you've got some attachment to a bigger issue. I won't tackle that topic today because as I said, this is an introductory blog post to help those of you get acquainted with yourselves. There are levels upon levels of subtlety that you may go through as you filter out junk and clean out your energy to its normal healthy vibration and fullness. Here are a couple quick tips for general, basic energy clearing:

• Ask God, your guides, or your local friendly energy being withwhom you have a good relationship to clear any thing that does not belong in your energy field.
• Bring your awareness to the issue and imagine your hand lifting out the stuck debris. Then visualize light coming to fill that space that comes down through the top of your head.
• Imagine a big strainer moving from top to bottom or bottom to top that lifts out any dark blockages, and then imagine light coming in from the top of your head to fill in those spaces.

Going Deeper and Deeper
You can, of course, continue to go deeper, but this is best combined with your overall spiritual work to understand yourself. The more you understand yourself, your path, and how you've come to where you are, the better it is to understand what is getting stuck in your energy. This isn't a blame game. Don't go blaming your parents or anyone else no matter how traumatic a past even may be that is stuck in you. You are where you are, and your energy is as it is. You may be amazed at how powerful forgiveness is in this process because you'll be able to sense how forgiveness releases things that got stuck in you (like grudges). In releasing that for yourself, you're also healing the other person because we are all connected. We are all one.

So enjoy your exploration into your own energy. It's possibly one of the most beautiful and simplest gifts to staying healthy on a deep level that you can give yourself.

The Process of Becoming a Spiritual Teacher

I am occasionally asked about how to become a spiritual teacher, the path I took to becoming a spiritual teacher, and an assortment of other questions. It's a series of questions that I expect to hear more of as time goes on and more of the next generation of spiritual teachers rolls out of bed and wonders what in the world is happening. Nonetheless, there are some things that are a process as a teacher and somethings that simply are. In your heart, you already know if you're a teacher or not. It's right there inside. Some of you may be excited; some of you may be scared; and some of you may have more emotions than you know what to do with. So here are some thoughts about what the path to becoming a spiritual teacher is like.

You Are What You Are
One of the big lessons on the spiritual path is that you are what you are. In your heart, you know exactly what you are. You may be most fulfilled as a mother or as a lover of nature or as a tour guide to Switzerland. Some of you are simply here to be. That's it. You have no other agenda, so you are very much free to take on just about any role that you want. The point is that you already know. Perhaps it's been layered under a pile of fear and confusion, but as you pull away those lies, it becomes clearer and clearer what you are at your core.

For the spiritual teachers, you know you're here to teach, but it is important to appreciate that you will teach in a way that is true and becoming to you. You will not teach like me. Perhaps some of you will have similarities, but you will not teach exactly the same way. That will be a point that I make to some of the future mentees that I take on to teach how to do work as spiritual teachers (This isn't something that I'm currently doing, however). You will need to discover your own style as well as appreciate your own strengths and weaknesses.

Many Trees in the Forest: All Are Sacred
In my blog post called "What Is a Spiritual Teacher?" I talk about different levels of teachers and different focuses that they may have (the mind, heart, psychic, or body). The point isn't so much to create a hierarchy as to create an understanding of the different types of teachers out there. You don't all have to be like Eckhart Tolle or Don Miguel Ruiz or [Insert your current favorite spiritual teacher here]. As I mentioned above, you can't. It's impossible. You're not them. You're you, and you're going to have a certain way of sharing and offering to students that is all your own. It's like the different trees in the forest. What they offer to the forest and environment around them is extremely different from tree to tree. The great redwood provides enormous shelter to many of the beings around it with its huge stature and great boughs. It also holds a great piece of the Earth with its roots and stabilizes the environment around it in that way. The peach tree does not do these things. Instead, it nourishes people and animals with its sweet fruits that it assiduously spends all spring and summer growing. Both are very important, and both have amazing things to offer.

But consider what would happen if the peach tree suddenly decided it should be the redwood or if the redwood thought it should be the peach tree? The peach tree would spurn its fruit and struggle and strive to grow taller and delve its roots out farther and deeper. Meanwhile, the great redwood would twist and bend and slouch and clump to try to stand at the level of the peach tree and toil endlessly to produce edible fruits, but none would taste right. And all in the forest would wonder why these two beautiful trees were so utterly confused.

Expanding Your Natural Gifts
As I am writing this, the assumption is that I speaking to people who are doing their own work. As spiritual teachers, you can't take care of anyone else unless you take care of yourself. If you've been following this blog closely, you'll notice that I haven't posted much in the last month and a half. That was part of me taking care of myself, and if you truly are called to teach, you will be your first and primary student to care for before you expand your boughs to support others.

But in doing your work to expand, fill with light, and dissolve the veils of untruths that may still yet bind you, your natural gifts are coming up. They are guiding you in the ways that you need to go and towards all the things that you need to do. Becoming what you are isn't a struggle, although initially there are some challenging points for all of us because of the density and falsity that we've absorbed into ourselves. We have to get that out. Otherwise, our paths are easily perverted by those agendas, and the fewer agendas (especially the desire to help) that you have, the more pure and clear your teaching can be as well as being aligned with your natural gifts.


Knowing Your Limits
Not everyone who comes to you should be taught by you. Sometimes, this is part of the tests of the universe to see if we can discern the appropriateness of teaching. Some people aren't ready for you. Some people you aren't ready to teach, and in truth, the deeper guidance that we have will always be teaching and healing at the deepest level if we're tuned in. So if you say that you cannot teach someone at this time and it comes from your inner guidance, teaching is actually still happening. The ego thinks that it has to prove something or act a certain way and see physical results. There's a lot of immaturity running around these days in spiritual teachers. We're not here to solve problems. We're here to be ourselves, and to be ourselves means to listen to that core inner guidance within us. If we stop listening, pain and suffering can quickly arise for us and the others we're teaching. This statement isn't meant to scare you. But it is meant to caution you about the importance of doing your own work and staying present to the messages that you receive. Because oftentimes I've found that craziest and weirdest stuff I've been guided to do has been the most accurate and influential of anything I might have rationally thought of.

No Where to Go as a Spiritual Teacher
You have no where special that you need to go to do your teaching. Every corner of the Earth needs it. Now, you may feel called or guided to go some place, and that's perfect. Trust that guidance, but for any remaining ego that thinks it needs to set up shop in an ashram, just know that that's not necessary. Some of you may not always be as in-tune with your inner guidance, and to those of you, I really encourage you to keep up your work. I encourage you to keep going with self-care and self-work until you truly feel like you're about to burst if you don't do the spiritual teaching. This isn't a race, and there's a lot of internal leg-work that has to happen so that you'll be in integrity and so that you can maintain your energy, body, mind, and emotional health. This is very demanding stuff, and it's not a path that should be taken lightly or as a way to save the world. But most of you know that anyway. I figure I'm preaching to the choir right now, but it never hurts as a reminder.

Establishing a Spiritual Practice: When the Teacher Is Ready, the Students Will Appear
If it's not time for you to teach, you won't be able to lasso a student to save your life. My experience is that students pretty much started appearing almost as soon as I announced on my blog that I'm a spiritual teacher. My doors weren't kicked down by students, but they appeared. And for you, you're going to have as many students with whatever issues they have as you're ready to be with those students and those types of issues. That's part of why doing your work is so key. There's just so many people who think they have to teach or heal the minute they've had even a flavor of truth or a brief spiritual opening. But they quickly get into trouble or get drained, and then they can't give to anyone. And they don't know what's happening. Well, they got going a little too quickly before they had their own foundation set. It's always good to finish building your own home before inviting people into it. But once it is built, then you have to figure out just how open the doors should be. You may be surprised just how many people want to come in when you're ready to the be the amazing and beautiful teacher that you are.