Greetings beloved souls! We are overjoyed to speak to you Now. 

Today, We wish to discuss the nature of pain. Pain takes many forms and can manifest in any of the realms of embodied human existence - physical, mental, emotional, or spiritual. It goes by many names in your language and manifests in seemingly endless ways. So, while you may identify a part of the human experience as something else, ultimately it is another manifestation of pain. And pain is ultimately a manifestation of fear.

In duality, fear is the opposite of Love. In Ultimate Reality, there is no separation between fear and Love--it is all the same energy that radiates throughout the Universe. Fear is not the absence of Love, but rather the dis-memberment from it. For a while in the human experience, you forget that All There is is Love and All You Are is Love, and thus, you feel separate from your Source, which creates fear. When you re-member Who You Are and rejoin Source, the fear falls away and once again, you rejoin (re-member) with the only true experience in the Universe, which is Love. 

All of humanity's deepest issues arise from pain, which is a manifestation of fear. When you experience pain, it can feel all-encompassing. And it's true that from a vibrational standpoint, pain is a low-frequency energy. Ultimately, however, pain has a high-vibrational purpose: it propels you to re-member. 

But that high-vibrational purpose is lost in the experience of an embodied human having pain. We understand this and have deep Love and compassion for you in your pain. In our Love for you, we extend ourselves to you. You may notice Our Love and compassion as Light that seeps around the edges of your pain or peeps through the spaces within it.

The low-vibrational nature of pain coalesces into tightly-packed strands of energy that make it  dark and dense. To the embodied human, the darkness and density of pain can feel solid and unrelenting. But even the heaviest darkness has edges of decreasing density that taper off into the Universal space of Love. And even the densest darkness has space in between its energy strands through which tiny pinpricks of Light will creep. However, when you are lost in the experience of pain, these cracks, fissures, and edges that let the Light in are very difficult to discern.

It's a challenge for embodied humans to step back from the heaviness of pain to notice the Light. We have profound compassion for this, and in your deepest pain, We shine the brightest and reach the hardest to allow glimmers of Love to reach you.

We invite you try this. To the extent that you can, take a quiet moment to notice your pain. Start by finding its edges. At first, this may be the easiest to do with physical pain since it is the most concretely perceptible. Notice where your physical pain is. Then, notice where it isn't. Without judgment and from a space of awareness, simply notice the pain and the lack of pain. Shift your perspective back and forth between the two - spaces of pain, spaces of no-pain. Then, move your awareness to the edges of the pain. Notice whether they are sharp and defined, or whether they slowly taper into no-pain. 

Once you've explored the edges, move into the pain and notice it. Is it solid, or can you locate spots within the density where there is no-pain? Once you've located the spaces of no-pain within the density of pain, notice the edges of that. Do this with another space of no-pain within the density, and then another. 

Next, notice the solidity of the pain. Is it steady and relentless, or does it come and go? Does it pulse? Does it vibrate? Are there momentary lapses? Does it rise and fall? Strengthen and abate? 

This exercise allows you to explore the permeability of pain, and it can help release pain's hold on you. It also helps you to recognize pain's impermanence. When you notice this, it shifts your perspective. What originally seems solid, steady, and permanent reveals itself to be permeable, intermittent, and temporary.

What you notice with physical pain, you can also notice with mental, emotional, or spiritual pain. It is always permeable. It is always intermittent. And it is always temporary. And so, in noticing your pain, We also ask you to notice Love. Notice the spaces and moments where the Light slips through. Find these and allow yourself a moment of peace. At first, these moments may be fractions of a second; tiny, nearly-imperceptible flashes. But as you invite them, seek them, notice them, allow them, and appreciate them, the moments of Light will become larger, more frequent, and last longer. This is the path to re-membrance, which is the ultimate purpose of pain.

Know that no matter how large or dense your pain is, We are reaching to you around the edges and through the spaces, sharing Our Love and Light to help you on your path to re-member. We are always with you no matter how deep, dark, and unrelenting your pain feels in the moment. We encourage you to also be there for each other in a similar way. Never let someone else's pain push you away. Hold space for another's pain. Surround them in Loving Light with the intention that in the moments they can find the edges and permeability of their pain, they will be nourished by the Light of your Love and compassion.

We Love You.

Read the first message from The George Collective.

Last night, I dreamed about a skunk. Now that might not seem so unusual to people who know that we have a cute skunk that frequents our backyard and (thankfully) doesn't stink up the joint because we leave it alone and watch from a respectful distance as it does its thing. However, in dream interpretation, when a skunk appears in a dream, it's often a sign of repressed anger. It's a reminder that you can't stuff your anger and must release it in order to sustain physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual health. Point taken, skunk.

And it's true. Recently, I've been feeling massive amounts of anger in response to all that's happening in the world. And I suspect many others have, as well. But it has felt like so much, so frequent, and, at times, so overpowering that I feel like if I give into it, it might just consume me. And if I am consumed by anger, how can I go about my work as a spiritual practitioner?

I am a woman of a certain age. I carry a lot of conditioning surrounding the topic of being a woman and having/feeling/expressing anger. Mostly that I shouldn't, that it's unattractive, that it's not spiritual, and that it's unlikeable. I also carry the spiritual DNA from past lives as women and other people who were far more oppressed than women today (we all do), and so I have many unconscious scripts that tell me my anger is inappropriate and dangerous.

Many women have received these messages and this conditioning throughout their lives. Suppress your own negative emotions for the greater good. Be a perfect example of womanhood (whatever the bleep THAT is). Use a calm, kind, and measured tone. If you feel anger, take a breath and wait for it to go away.

While I can't know for sure (I can only truly understand my own embodied experience in this lifetime), I imagine it's exponentially more difficult and overpowering for BIPOC women, who battle stereotypes entrenched in both racism and sexism, as well as all BIPOC people and other oppressed, marginalized, or othered individuals. 

I've certainly had a lot of reason to be angry throughout this lifetime. I've been on the receiving end of bullying, physical and emotional abuse, sexual assault, sexual harassment, narcissism, chronic pain and illness, infidelity, misogyny, and all of the other things that often happen to women on the human journey. Those are the types of things that can really piss somebody off, and with good reason. But because of cultural messages surrounding women and anger, we're also left with emotions we don't know what to do with since we've been conditioned all our lives (and across many lifetimes) that it's unseemly for women to be angry.

And so what do we do? We suppress the rage. We develop defense mechanisms to help us cope with that repressed anger simmering just below the surface. For instance, one of my defense mechanisms has historically been humor. For a while there, the funnier I got, the more pissed off I probably was.

I remember the first time somebody told me it was okay to be angry. I was in the midst of a contentious divorce, and I was talking to someone on the phone. I can't remember my exact words, but the essence was, "I am so angry about this, but I know I shouldn't be. I'm a spiritual person. I should be better than that." The person I was talking to interrupted and said quite forcefully, "Karen - where did you get the idea it isn't okay to be angry? Of course you can be angry." I was stunned. It had never even occurred to me that maybe my anger was okay. 

That was several years ago, and I've had a lot of time to understand what led me to that place, what I was doing, and why I was doing it. I was using what I've come to realize is my other defense mechanism, spiritual bypassing.

Spiritual bypassing is an unhealthy coping mechanism in which we use spiritual practices or beliefs to suppress negative emotions instead of allowing their healthy expression. When we fail to allow ourself to experience negative emotions like anger, we don't move through them and release them. Instead, we repress the anger, turn it back on ourselves, and bury it deep inside where it develops dense, sticky, low-vibrational energy that can negatively affect our physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual health. Spiritual bypassing is common in people of various spiritual practices, and especially women. And it can block our growth, keep us from our true paths, and make us mentally, physically, or emotionally sick. 

The term spiritual bypassing was actually coined by transpersonal psychologist John Welwood, who wrote the book Toward a Psychology of Awakening. Welwood's definition of spiritual bypassing is, spiritual ideas/ practices used to sidestep emotional "unfinished business."

I see spiritual bypassing a lot, and I even engage in some myself when I feel like I just can't cope. And I  do it even though I know it is unhealthy, energetically damaging, and keeps me from stepping into my true purpose to raise the vibration of the planet. It's something I continuously try to be cognizant of in my own life so I can catch myself as close as I can to the moment when I begin spiritual bypassing. 

Once I recognize I'm doing it (and sometimes it takes a while), I go someplace safe so I can sit with my rage or whatever negative emotion I'm trying to spiritually bypass, and I jump in headfirst. It's often painful and scary, and it frequently involves an ugly cry (I did one today before I started writing this post). But after a a while, it's also incredibly beautiful. Why? Because in the moments where I allow myself to move into my deepest pain and rage, it begins to move through me and flow out of me until I am cleansed. And after the darkness, even the faintest glimmer of Light is breathtaking. 

Often, it takes a lot more than a few minutes and an ugly cry. Sometimes, it comes in waves, occurring across days, weeks, or even longer. But as it flows from me, it leaves space that I can fill up with something that isn't dark, painful, or scary. I experience the rage so I can release it and step into Love. And once I have stepped into Love, I can begin to come up with meaningful ideas and solutions that come from a place of empowerment and compassion instead of anger-fueled actions that may cause significant damage to others (and myself) and create a downward energetic spiral fueled by anger, pain, fear, and retribution. Spiritual bypassing is disempowering and lowers vibration. Moving through the emotions instead of suppressing them empowers and raises vibration.

Which brings me to now. I don't know about you, but it feels like we've been in a period where we've had the opportunity to experience rage and practice sitting with it and releasing it over and over again. Usually daily, sometimes hourly. I find myself getting angry a lot these days. But each time we experience a new rage-inducing incident, it presents us with the opportunity to experience it, sit with it, greet it with curiosity, and ultimately move through it as it moves through us.

Getting through this process isn't instantaneous, it isn't easy, and we frequently handle it imperfectly. But ultimately for our own wellbeing, the wellbeing of others, and for the vibrational wellbeing of our lives as embodied humans on this planet, we must greet the rage, experience it, and come out the other side embracing the opportunity to create a better, higher vibrational world for all of humanity. Even the assholes.

All that is to say this. Ladies, I know you're angry. So am I. And I know each day brings new, outrageous, painful things that fuel that rage, pain, and indignation. And it feels awful. It feels terrifying and dark. And it often seems that what would feel better than almost anything in the world is to strike out at whatever has caused the rage and make the person or people behind it hurt as much as we do. Take an eye for an eye. Get our pound of flesh.

I get it. I understand. I walk beside you in your rage, and I share your pain. Feel it. Experience it. Dive into it. Don't spiritually bypass it. Go someplace safe and be in the rage fully and completely. Do it for as long as you need as often as you need. And in the spaces between the waves of rage when you can start to find the glimmers of Love from Source energy that surround and support us, allow yourself to be fully enveloped in that.

Allow the waves of rage their full expression. And use the moments of Light in between to take loving, compassionate, and meaningful action. Share your voice with the world. Be an example of how to bring about change. Speak from Love fueled by purpose. Support those who are struggling in the darkness and hold space for them until they find a glimmer of Light, knowing that when your wave of rage comes crashing back, they will support and hold space for you. Now more than ever we need to recognize that we are a Sisterhood* and hold space for one another--especially those who are in a different place emotionally, mentally, and spiritually than we are. 

Don't wallow. Don't suppress. But do allow, because I promise it will pass if you don't try to stop yourself from experiencing it. Get help if you need. Seek support. And in the moments it passes, even if it's only temporary, you can use the leftover energy from the release of rage as the impetus to become a Loving force for change and support for all who continue to struggle in the darkness of lower vibrational energy. Even the assholes. 

Today I thought I'd do something a bit different. I want to share with you some of the books that have had a profound influence on me and have truly changed how I view the world. 

I am an avid reader; I'll read just about anything. But some books have had a profound impact on my life and worldview, so I thought I'd share them here. I can highly recommend each of them.  Click on the image for the Amazon link.

I first read Illusions when I was a teen. I attended church as a child; my family was fairly religious, and the stories I heard in church never made sense to me. So when I came across a copy of this book, it was like a balm for my soul. Finally, somebody wrote something about Spirit that somehow felt right. 

I've read this book dozens of times over the years. It's the tale of Donald Shimodo, an everyday messiah who gives up on the job and decides to teach it to someone else. 

There is much wisdom in this beautiful book, and every time I re-read it, I find something new. 

I recommend Byron Katie books to people a lot. She teaches about non-attachment and how to set aside the stories you tell yourself through a process of self-questioning she calls inquiry. You'll learn the process and see it in action as Katie walks you through examples from her own work.

This book fundamentally changed how I understood my own judgments about self and others. I have read it multiple times and still use the process of inquiry regularly when I'm struggling with a relationship or when I find myself fighting what is. I also highly recommend Loving What Is by Byron Katie, which is in the same vein. I've given copies of both of these books to many, many people.

I suspect we can all use a little help with forgiveness--both of self and others. In Radical Forgiveness, Colin Tipping explains why forgiveness is so important for peace and offers a 5-step process for forgiving anyone, including yourself. 

Forgiveness of anyone is ultimately an act of self-love and self-care, as holding on to anger only hurts the person who is angry. If you struggle with forgiveness in your life, this book can help. 

This is another book I've gifted to a lot of people. In Refuse to Choose, Barbara Sher identifies a group of people with a personality type she calls "scanners." Scanners are people who jump from interest to interest...everything interests them.

People with scanner personalities (me!) often have trouble focusing in on one thing, and thus often either experience a ton of FOMO or have trouble settling on and finding their path in life because it's hard for them to find their "one thing."

Sher offers strategies and points out rightly that there's nothing wrong with being that way, nor do you have to choose that one thing. She also offers strategies for living a purpose-filled life if you do have a scanner personality.

This was my introduction to medical intuition, energy healing, and the chakra system. I read it many years ago, and return to it again and again. 

In the book Myss describes the energetic connection between body, mind, and spirit and offers a framework for identifying the roots of dis-ease in the body as well as providing insights into how to begin to heal by doing deep personal work to create harmony and balance in your life.

This powerful book is a must-read for every woman, person who identifies as female, or people who love a woman. So basically everyone.

It's a deep dive into the collective feminine subconscious. While it has been years since I read it, the book has stuck with me. It is a deeply powerful and empowering book that explores the feminine psyche and encourages women to be the bold, daring, profoundly powerful creatures we were born to be.

I actually read a lot about health and nutrition, how nutritional philosophy was formed, and the scientific studies that show our current food recommendations may not be all they are cracked up to be. 

In this book, journalist Denise Minger explores the food pyramid, how it came to be, and where it goes wrong. It's an engaging and fascinating read that can help inform your food choices so you can live a healthier life. She also explains the current health crisis in the Western world and why, when we eat according to food pyramid recommendations, cases of obesity and type 2 diabetes soar.

Michael Newton (retired) was a practicing therapist who used regression hypnotherapy with his clients to help them work through trauma. One day in a hypnotherapy session with a client, that person suddenly slipped into a past life, and then into a life between lives. This was the start of Newton's life between lives (LBL) hypnotherapy work.

In Journey of Souls (and his follow up book, Destiny of Souls), Newton offers case studies from his thousands of LBL sessions to paint a portrait of who we are as souls, why we embody, and what we do when we aren't in human bodies.

Bishop John Shelby Spong explores the historical life of Jesus in this powerful book. In it, he lays bare the many myths about Jesus, how they came to be, and where the Bible and traditional Christian teachings veer away from the actual man who was later became known as Jesus Christ.

In doing so, Spong argues that the man who walked the earth, Jeshua, wasn't born to greatness, but rather  became great through acts of compassion throughout his life.

I was raised in the church and always felt like there was something wrong with me that I couldn't believe what everyone else seemed to believe so freely. Because of my early life in the church, for much of my adulthood I believed (and often said) that faith was the primary struggle of my life. Bishop Spong's book (and other books written by Biblical scholars) about the historical life of Jesus, helped me come to terms with my departure from the church and its beliefs. If you've struggled similarly, I recommend this book. Through Spong's work, I have come to admire the man around whose life and acts of compassion the church of my childhood was founded on.

Carol Tarvis and Elliot Aronson will take you on a journey into the human psychic. In Mistakes Were Made, the authors explain in clear language why humans can justify to themselves even their worst choices and behaviors in an attempt to eliminate the cognitive dissonance that arises when we do something that goes against the belief, "I'm a good person."

We all do it. So being aware that we do and why is important if we wish to change behaviors we don't like. The book is a fascinating read and can help you better understand yourself and others.

Yeah - it's another food and nutrition book, but hear me out. Gary Taubes, a medical journalist, has done extensive research into nutrition science. In this book, he explains how certain foods trigger insulin, a metabolic hormone that prompts fat storage. 

Good Calories, Bad Calories completely changed the way I think about food. It also gave me clarity about my food choices, helping me to understand when I'm eating something that supports my health and when I'm not. That doesn't mean I make perfect food choices, but when I choose certain foods, I know what I'm in for and how my body will respond. 

From Karen:

​The Georges' message today is equally simple and complex. They told me I can explain a little more from a human perspective, since this is definitely ongoing work in my own life.

What you see is what you get. What you expect is what you perceive and receive. 

It's a matter of perspective. Is it roadblock or opportunity? Is a painful experience trauma from which we won't recover and with which we will always identify or the opportunity to self-heal and self-nurture? Is a toxic relationship one that creates lasting damage or an opportunity to step into our power? Is a job loss a devastating blow or an invitation to step away from something that no longer serves us to find a position that supports our greatest good? Is an injury keeping us from the busy-ness of our lives or inviting us to prioritize rest & health? 

We get to decide. We get to choose our thoughts and perceptions.

Thoughts are powerful forces. They shape the experiences and perceptions of our embodied "reality." It's easy to forget that we ultimately have control of our thoughts. Notice what you think. If that first thought makes you unhappy or causes anxiety, upset, sadness, anger, or other negative experiences, then, when you're ready, reframe the thought and allow it to serve as the impetus for bringing positive feelings like joy, creativity, peace, and harmony. 

I'm not suggesting you don't allow yourself your pain. Lord knows, I don't live free from pain and struggle. Instead, I'm suggesting you flow with it, feel it, and notice what seeds of opportunity it contains. 

The more we struggle against life's painful experiences, the more stuck in them we become until the sticky, dense imprint of suffering becomes stuck in us. But in every painful experience lies opportunity if we wish to find it. Every negative experience provides the chance for rebirth and renewal. 

Our first thoughts seem to come unbidden, but what we think,say, and do after that initial thought is always up to us, and that's where our power lies. Our thoughts create experience. They are the one thing we can consciously control. So feel your feels, but sit in awareness with each thought, for only you can decide whether that thought serves you. If it doesn't, then you have the ability to think something else and in doing so, change your perception and experience.

​Read the next George Collective Message.
Read the first message from The George Collective.

​Greetings! It is our great joy and honor to speak with you today. We have been sharing short, easily digestible messages in recent times both because we have laid a foundation for you to understand in our earlier messages and to allow our channel some space to integrate her own learnings.
 
This is our plan for a continued pattern. However, there are times when a longer and more involved message is helpful to convey the nuances of a concept. Such is the case with our topic today, labels, which we spoke of briefly in our last message.
 
It is a condition of humanity that you apply labels to things. As with all other things, the labels are energetically neutral by themselves. They are neither positive nor negative but are simply a way for embodied souls to process the experience of lowering their vibration to live in a human body. Labels allow you to identify this and that, here and there, or us and them so you can understand how the embodied you fits within the experience of duality.
 
Labels are an expression of I-ness (ego). They are statements of individuality that allow you to classify yourself as this but not that or here but not there. Again, we repeat they are an essential part of the Divine experience of being human, and they allow you to immerse yourself in embodiment so you can ultimately re-member yourself as Source, an energy which is the sum total of all labels and thus, label-less. In order to re-member that you are Divine, you must first forget and exist in a world of duality where everything has a label and every label you choose is an act of self-definition. 
 
It might appear that the act of re-membering with Source (which you may call awakening or reaching enlightenment) is the gradual shedding of labels until you are pure energy once again. This is a misunderstanding. Source is All That Is, Was, or Ever Will Be. Source is the inclusion of every label. Therefore, the act of re-membering isn’t the shedding of all labels; it is the integration of them.
 
All conditions that lead to labels arise from Source, as the ultimate Divine Love of Source energy splits into poles of opposite energies as well as every degree of energy along the spectrum from This Energy Here to That Energy There. When you are embodied, you choose which of those energies you choose to embrace and experience in acts of self-definition. You choose different labels over and over again in each embodied lifetime, and your work in those lifetimes is to integrate those energies into the whole of your being with Love and without judgment. When you have integrated all of your labels, you re-member; that is, you rejoin the All That Is, Was, or Ever Be, which is Source, which is Pure Love.
 
So, labels—all labels—have neutral energy. Perhaps an example will serve here. Hot is no better or worse than cold, although individual embodied beings may prefer one over the other. But cold is not bad and hot good. Both are necessary. Hot cooks your food. Cold preserves it. It is only when you apply a judgment to one or the other that the labels appear to lose their neutral energy.
 
And so it is with every label that exists within the human condition. Every label is energetically neutral; it is only when you apply human judgment to the labels that you begin to classify them as energetically good or bad, right or wrong, normal or abnormal. And you use those value judgments about energetically neutral labels to control and limit yourselves, others, the and the universe.
 
Thus, labels are helpful for understanding and having a human experience. They are also the cause of many of the difficulties of humanity. At their best, labels can help you sort, empower, discover, classify, learn, cure, understand, adapt, grow, enjoy, entertain, laugh, love, connect, and so much more. 
 
When you attach to labels, however, they become a source of division, disempowerment, oppression, avarice, maladjustment, exclusion, marginalization, control, anger, hatred, and more.
 
So how can humanity overcome the more difficult aspects of applying labels? First, do not believe, even for a moment, that any label is fixed and unchangeable. Everything is temporary including labels. But when one person believes one label and also believes it is unchangeable, the energy associated with the label grows dense and solidifies into mass that requires much more effort to change. The nature of the physical universe is change. No label is ever unchangeable; if a label does not serve you, then you have the choice to change it. The more solid and fixed the energy of the label has become (either by one person believing it very deeply or by many believing it even just a little), the more effort it requires to change.
 
Next, try as hard as you can to no longer judge labels. Instead, when you encounter a label, greet it with curiosity and ask, “Is this label true for me now?” You can choose to accept or decline any label as well as any value judgment that comes with it. 
 
Finally, try not to classify some labels as “normal” and others as “un-normal.” There are as many expressions and experiences of humanity as there are embodied souls walking around as people. And, while this might be difficult to understand in your human state, no expression of Source energy having a human experience is wrong, bad, or abnormal. These classifications lead to the “othering” of people choosing a different label and having a different experience from yours. When one is “othered,” it makes it easier to view and interact with them without compassion or understanding. 
 
There is no expression of humanity that is wrong. None. Perhaps the choices of another are different from those that you would make. However, by making those choices, the “other” allows you to further define yourself and choose who you wish to be in response. While it may not always feel like it from a human perspective, this is a gift that happens for you, not to you. And when you make choices counter to what another would make, you are gifting them the same thing.
 
We are not suggesting you get rid of labels. Source energy is the All of Everything including labels. Instead, we suggest you examine your attachment to labels and your beliefs surrounding them. When you recognize a label you (or all of humanity) have affixed to something, try to the best of your ability to set aside judgment and explore it with curiosity. Then, make a choice of what you wish to embody in response. Do you wish to be kindness? Do you wish to be forgiveness? How about Love? How about awareness?
 
One person making a consistent attempt to embody Love in response to every label begins the process of integration and re-membrance. Many people making similar attempts can change the world and the experience of all of humanity.
 
We in Source joyfully watch and eagerly await your re-membrance that You Are One of Us. While your awareness of self as Source has wandered for a time, your essence has never left. When your awareness returns from its travels, You will find Us with open arms, welcoming you back into the Embrace of Love.

​Read the next message.

Start with the first message from The George Collective.