One of the things I love about the universe we inhabit is there are so many philosophies and teachers we can turn to for inspiration as we walk our paths. There is a rich tapestry of teachings from which we can draw, sorting through the wisdom of the ages, retaining what resonates for us, discarding what doesn't, and weaving it altogether into something new that supports our own spiritual growth and development.

I've always had insatiable curiosity about the nature of the universe. Even as a young child, I would like awake at night staring at the ceiling and pondering the essence of who we are. This has led me throughout my life to seek teaching wherever I can find it. I'm a voracious reader, I consume documentaries, I zealously pursue education, I take classes, and I explore philosophies. I can't remember a time in this lifetime when that wasn't so. If someone wants to share their belief system with me, I'm always happy to listen and see if there are pearls of wisdom in it that ring my bell. 

Throughout it all, my Divine guidance system has helped me to sort through it, synthesize it, and turn it into my own personal belief system. It's a belief system that continues to shift and change as I move through my life. Some teachings have resonated so strongly I've adapted them as my own. Others have served me for a time until they no longer felt like a good fit for me. Others never felt quite right, and so I never adopted them, but I also believe that while they might not suit me on my journey, those beliefs I haven't adopted suit someone else perfectly on their own spiritual quest. I like to try things on for size and see what fits me, but I also recognize that just because something doesn't work for me at the moment doesn't mean it won't suit someone else. Different philosophies and truths work for us at varying times in our life. And over the course of all of our lifetimes, it's likely each of us has adopted and believed powerfully in every single belief system there ever was or ever will be, and for the lifetime or segment of a lifetime we believed that, it served perfectly to facilitate the growth of our spirits.

And so it is that I've studied many philosophies, channeled works, energy healing modalities, and religious belief systems in this lifetime, as well. I believe there is truth in all of them, and none are right or wrong. My influences range from Taoism to Buddhism to Reiki to Christianity to channeled philosophies from entities such as Seth, Emmanuel, Michael, Kryon, and Abraham-Hicks (these are just a few of the many I've studied over the years). Parts of different philosophies have moved more to the fore during differing stages of my life. I'm sure others will move to the fore moving forward. 

And this is what I invite you to do, as well. Consume knowledge. Talk to people. Read. Learn. Listen. And then discover what works for you now, but never get so deeply buried in a belief that you don't allow for the possibility of a belief that serves you better to replace it. 

This is your own spiritual path. All of the various religions and philosophies have been adapted by human beings doing their best to translate principles in uniquely human ways. These philosophies are interpreted through human filters and expectations, which is why different people can find truth in so many varying philosophies. And when we come across a philosophy or belief system that resonates on our spiritual path, we apply our own filters and expectations, as well.

That's why I encourage you to follow your own path. Build it from as many pearls of wisdom from as many philosophies as speak to you. When something resonates with you, adopt it but never get so dogmatic that you continue to cling to it long after it no longer serves your highest and greatest good. 

In the end I have one unchanging belief: All of it is truth, and none of it is truth. Because we are trying to comprehend the ineffable through human limitations, we can only skirt the fringes of how vast we truly are as pieces of the Source. So go on your own spiritual journey and allow others theirs, keeping in mind that truth can be found everywhere if you genuinely seek it.  

Several years ago, I had a life between lives hypnotherapy session. (It is a super cool experience - I would highly recommend doing it with a qualified hypnotherapist). For people who don't know what LBL is, it's a hypnosis protocol developed by Dr. Michael Newton in which a hypnotherapist induces a deep level trance and then guides you through your death in a recent lifetime and into the space between incarnations when you exist as the purest form of yourself. In this space, you are able to learn things about yourself, such as why you may have chosen a certain lifetime, who the people are who have incarnated with you for thousands of lifetimes, and more. It's an intense experience.

Thousands of people who have had these sessions report common experiences, which has allowed Newton and other therapists working with the protocols to develop a model of what our existence might look like when we're not embodied. It's fascinating reading, and I highly recommend Newton's works Destiny of Souls, Journey of Souls, and Memories of the Afterlife. It's life-affirming stuff that can help you gain a broader perspective on what it means to be an embodied soul.

Anyway, in my LBL session, one of the questions my hypnotherapist asked was, "How much of your life force did you bring to this incarnation?" Now normally, as far as I can tell, people bring quite a bit - 50 percent or more (the rest remains with the "soul,"which goes on doing it's soul work). So naturally I was surprised when my answer was 15 percent. However, on reflection it made sense. In this lifetime, one of my major life challenges has always been having enough life force energy, which has manifested physically. I've struggled with anemia since I was a kid. I currently partner with a few autoimmune conditions that continue to leave me severely anemic, lowering my energy. (For example, normal hematocrit numbers for a healthy adult female are about 12 to 16 g/dL. Mine have dipped as low as 7 before, requiring an immediate blood transfusion).

In energy medicine, blood represents life force energy. So after my LBL, suddenly it made sense why I've always struggled with maintaining sufficient levels of blood, but I never understood why I chose to challenge myself physically in such a way in this lifetime. 

This past year, which has been a challenging one for me on many levels, I noticed that the more emotional challenges I faced (and I experienced them in virtually every aspect of my life), the more I also struggled with maintaining even the minimally healthy level of hematocrit. In other words, there is a correlation between my physical ability to maintain my life force energy and the energy I expend emotionally and give away to others. As an empath, my emotional boundaries also tend to be fluid because I am so likely to experience other people's emotions as my own.

So as I've struggled recently with life force energy, I've focused on why I might have chosen that in this lifetime and what growth opportunities it provides me, since I truly believe every challenge our souls offer us during an incarnation exists for our benefit and growth. It's up to us to parlay those challenges into new strengths. 

One of the things I've come to realize is that my low life force energy forces me to lower my physical activity levels, quiet my mind, and tune inward. If I didn't have these periods of low physical energy, I would just go and go until I dropped; it has always been one of my tendencies to pack my life as fully as humanly possible, running until I'm depleted. Low life force energy has tempered this substantially for me, and it is during these down periods I often experience my most significant spiritual growth.

Another thing I've come to understand is that because I have given myself a limited supply of life force energy in this lifetime, it means I need to find ways to conserve it. This is important as I am someone who gives large amounts of energy away to others. However, I've realized that instead of freely giving it away, I need to focus my life force energy on things that truly matter. So I've created a "sniff test." Now, whenever I start to give any of my energy to something or someone, I ask myself, "Is this worth giving my life force energy to?" In some cases, such as in my writing and teaching, the answer is yes, it is worth the energy. However, the answer is often no.

This has made me more mindful of the myriad of unimportant things I've worried about and focused my energy on over the years. It's helping me to redefine my priorities and focus on the things that are truly important to me: my relationships with the people I love, my teaching and work, spiritual practices, music, joy, and, of course, writing. Because of my limited life force energy, I'm learning to cultivate those things that bring me joy and hopefully make the world a better place instead of getting lost in the minutiae of daily life. It's helping me to stop dedicating emotional energy to things that ultimately don't matter, such as what others think of me. It's also helping me to define my boundaries and find kind and compassionate ways to set and enforce them.

While this is my path, there's a takeaway for others if they choose to discover it: dedicate your life force energy to those things that truly matter. Let the rest go. Only you can decide what matters to you, but the universe provides you with endless opportunities to discover and refine these things. Start by noticing where you put your energy. Listen to the thoughts that run through your mind and ask yourself this: Is it worth it to dedicate any time or energy to this? If I do dedicate time and energy to this, will it help me grow, improve my life, meet my goals, or make the world a better place? Is spending time and energy on this a true reflection of who I am?

Everyone experiences challenges in life. Our souls have offered these challenges as gifts, and it's up to us to sift through the rubble to find the diamond hiding within each challenge. It's okay to spend some time hating the challenge. It's okay to spend some time hurt, aching, angry, or whatever other initial emotion the challenge evokes. However, after we've allowed ourselves to have the full experience of whatever emotions arise with each challenge, it's also up to us to decide what we do with that experience. Do we attach emotional energy to it and dwell on it for the rest of our lives with hurt, anger, and bitterness, or do we use it to propel us to new self-awareness, compassion, and understanding?

​In each lifetime, we get to decide how we interpret our experiences, how we react to them over the long-term, and where we place our life force energy. Thus, it never hurts to do a gut check and ask ourselves whether it's worth giving away something as precious as our energy to something that doesn't serve who we choose to be. 

In Nia we have a concept called "beginner's mind." Essentially, it means approaching something you already know as if you know nothing, and it's a way to enhance your practice, your experience, and your learning.

Beginner's mind isn't a new concept. In fact, it's an archetypal energy represented across cultures and systems of symbolism: In the tarot it's represented with the 0 major arcana card, The Fool; in Jungian archetypes, it's The Innocent; and in I Ching, it's represented by the #4 hexagram Meng, which may be translated as Youthful Folly or Inexperience.

This archetype is highly represented in symbolic philosophical systems for a reason: It offers a way to view the world with new, fresh eyes, and it suggests an opening of the mind so new, creative thinking can find its way in.  In all symbolic systems, this archetype represents the unlimited potential that lies before us when we enter beginner's mind. 

It's easy to get stuck in fixed patterns of thoughts and beliefs about the world around us. We are so accustomed to seeing the world one way that our mind closes off to the possibility there is another. In fact, scientific studies have shown that when we are focused on one thing and a change is made right in front of us, about 50 percent of the people studied actually fail to notice the change. When referring to visual phenomena, this is known as "change blindness," but it can happen not only visually, but when we are focused on fixed perceptions and beliefs, as well. Other studies show that people with deeply held beliefs (such as political, philosophical, or spiritual beliefs) will actually dig more deeply into their stance when presented with evidence the opposite is actually true. It's how we deal with cognitive dissonance - by rooting more firmly into what we think we know, regardless of how much evidence we are presented to the opposite. There's a great book about this topic called Mistakes Were Made (but not by me) that really delves into this phenomena; I highly recommend it. 

The tendency of the human mind to get stuck into one pattern of thought and perception keeps us from truly exploring the world in which we live. Our beliefs and perceptions are so powerful and strong they create our reality. For example, if someone believes they are sick and focuses on that thought long enough and hard enough, eventually their body follows suit because the power of the belief in illness brings about the physical state that matches self-perception. This is the partial basis behind the Law of Attraction; what we believe and what we focus our attention on becomes our reality.

That's why it's so important to tap into the archetypal energy of The Innocent, The Fool, Beginner's Mind. When we see things with fresh and innocent eyes, we drop our preconceived notions, and the world around us just may surprise us. Being in beginner's mind enhances our experience. It allows us to fully experience the beauty around us and opens us to new possibilities. Someone we thought was a jerk may, in fact, be lovely. Something we thought was boring may be fascinating. Something we thought we didn't like might turn out to be wonderful. We might learn something new about a subject we thought we already knew. And, we can open up to new ideas that can change our lives and possibly change the world. 

One of the best ways to step into beginner's mind is to be in the moment and allow. Look at the world around you, even if it's something familiar you've seen thousands of times, and try and spot something new about it. Hear with your heart when you engage with others. Reach out with your soul as you journey through life. Allow for the possibility of fresh, new ideas, feelings, relationships, and thoughts. When you catch yourself thinking the same old thing, stop and ask yourself, "Is that true? How can I possibly know it's true? Could something else be truer?"

I encourage you to engage with the world as The Innocent. See it with fresh new eyes in every moment, and your life will instantly change.

I'm sitting here feeling high as a kite as I've finished my Sunday morning ritual. It starts with brushing my teeth and feeding the dogs and cat because some things just can't wait. But once that task is taken care of, I engage in another Sunday morning ritual. First, I cleanse all of my crystals using sound, smudging, incense, or whatever feels right to me in the morning. I do a general cleansing as well, walking through at least the parts of the house where Jim isn't sleeping and cleansing with sound, smoke, or Reiki. As I do, this, I give thanks to all of the objects and beings that support my life, from the couches and chairs I sit on to the foods in my refrigerator to the plants that clean my air to the Feng shui objects that support positive flow of chi throughout my space.

Once I feel satisfied with this task, I bring any burning incense, palo santo, or herbs I might be using with me (notice in this picture it's in a small jar of clear crystals), I put a few drops of my favorite aromatherapy scent on my diffuser stone, and I sit down. I cleanse any crystals I am wearing with smoke or sound, cleanse the coins I will use for my I Ching, and then I cast the coins for my daily I Ching reading. The reading becomes the point of focus for my meditation that follows. I sit with my hands in Gassho (a Reiki meditation technique), reflect on the 5 principles of Reiki, and then hold a stone (sometimes - this morning I used a smoky quartz with rutile Vogel wand) in my receiving hand while I place my giving hand on my heart chakra to channel Reiki energy to it. Then, when I feel peaceful and centered, I meditate on my I Ching message, visualize things I choose for my life, spend some time on gratitude, and eventually open my eyes and start my day. The whole process takes about 30 to 60 minutes, which is why it's a Sunday morning ritual. But it's an important one to me, and it sends me into the week to come feeling balanced, peaceful, and in a centered place where I can move forward with a spiritual focus.

On weekdays, ritual is still part of my mornings. First thing every morning I (feed my dogs - always feed the dogs) cast my coins and reflect on my I Ching message, reflect on the five principles of Reiki, sometimes do crystal work, meditate, visualize, and reflect before I start my day. When it feels appropriate, I may cleanse any crystals that have been working hard for me, as well. I have a night-time ritual, too. I quiet my mind, reflect on the principles of Reiki, reflect on gratitude, maybe toss in some visualization if I think I can do it without falling asleep, and I always end the day requesting the universe, "Tell me what I need to know" so any information that isn't coming in consciously can enter as I dream.

Participating in rituals gives me a quiet semi-private (as private as it can be with dogs and cats everywhere) moment in which to center and focus on what is truly important to me, and it helps me set intentions for each day so I can walk through them as gently, compassionately, purposefully, and equanimously as possible.

Rituals can be simple or they can be involved. I've developed most of mine intuitively over the years, seeking what makes me feel connected and full. When I feel I need something a little different, I pay attention to what my spirit urges and toss that in. My rituals are ever evolving as I grow and change. And I encourage you to develop your own rituals as well. They don't have to be involved - just a minute or two of focus can help you re-center. So if you feel called to do try something, whether it's burning an herb, chanting a mantra, doing chakra work, or meditating with a crystal, welcome that and make it part of your life. Listen always to the calling of your soul. Take the time to tune in and allow what your higher self has to tell you. Ritual makes this possible and provides a space where the Divine part of you always knows it can connect to help you move forward on your life's path.

Yesterday I found myself thinking, I wish people would be kinder to one another. Then it struck me. I can't control how kind anyone is to anyone else. All I can do is be kinder in the way I approach others and in how I choose to live my life. If I see the world as lacking kindness, then it's up to me to be as kind as I can in order to bring about the vibration of kindness. I can also choose to see kindness in others and focus on that instead of negativity, which will change my experience.  

In her process called The Work, Byron Katie points out that whenever we judge traits in another and find them somehow lacking, we only set ourselves up for unhappiness. Therefore, she suggests doing The Work, which is a process of inquiry about our judgments. 

Katie recommends four questions and a turn around about our judgment, so in this case, my judgment is, "People should be kinder."

Question 1: Is that true? 
Objectively, yes. I do wish people were kinder.
Question 2: Can you absolutely know it's true?
No. I don't know 100 percent that people should be kinder. 
Question 3: How do you react when you believe that thought?
I react by feeling sad people aren't as kind as I want them to be. It makes me unhappy. Occasionally, I may use that thought to be less kind myself. 
Question 4: Who would you be without that thought?
I'd be kinder, and I'd be happier because I wouldn't wander around feeling upset when people weren't kind enough. I'd choose kindness myself because being kind is who I want to be, and that would be independent of how kind other people were.
Turn it around: (In other words, turn around the statement in ways that are equally true).
Turn around 1: People shouldn't be kinder. Why not? Because if they should be, they would be.
Turn around 2: I should be kinder. Absolutely true. Kindness is my value, and if I want to experience kindness in the world, I need to be kind in spite of how others behave.

This simple process is a valuable way to look at your own judgments and find ways to be more authentically you in the world without projecting onto others how they should behave or think. It also served as a good reminder for me this week about kindness;it is a quality I can choose to cultivate and it isn't up to me what others choose, no matter how much I wish I could make people play nice.

So, I'm choosing kindness because it serves me, and it makes me happy. What others do is entirely up to them.

In my classes, books, articles, and blogs I frequently talk about the "highest and greatest good." It is a driving principle in my life. When I do energy healing treatments, I always ask the energy flows in the highest and greatest good of everyone involved. When I write books, blogs, or articles, or when I teach classes, I always ask the information I provide serves the highest and greatest good by reaching the people who need the information I offer. Each day when I wake, I intend that my thoughts, words, and deeds serve the highest and greatest good.

It is my way of relinquishing my desire to try and control every aspect of my life by trusting the universe will deliver those things that serve the highest and greatest good for all. However, I've had to learn that sometimes what I think should serve the highest and greatest good isn't what will support it. 

Here's an example. When I learn someone is ill, I always ask the universe to provide energy and support that serves the highest and greatest good of the individual, the people around them, and the universe as a whole. That's often a difficult ask, because what I want to be the highest and greatest good is for that person to be made well again. But sometimes, that's not what will serve the highest purpose in that person's life or in the universe. Sometimes illness comes with lessons. Sometimes it's a call to enlightenment. Sometimes it's something else. And I can't know what purpose someone's illness will serve. All I know is that I want them to be well, but what I want doesn't matter. So I return to the only thing I can truly ask; that the energy of the situation supports the greatest good, whatever that may be.

There is wisdom in the universe, and I can't always know the purpose for something. Nor can I impose my will upon others or upon Divine will. And so, I do the only thing I can; I send energy and love that supports the highest good trusting there is a reason, even if I can't clearly see what it is.

Does your mind wander from place to place and worry to worry? Try this strategy: When you notice yourself caught up in worries about things like money, health, work, or anything else, bring your focus to your breathing and say, "I am here now." Then focus on right now. How are you? Are you safe? Are you warm? Is there anything right in this moment you need that you don't have? Focus on all of the things that are good about this moment. Be present.

Here's an example. The other night, I woke in the middle of the night and caught myself worrying about an upcoming bill. I knew if I allowed myself to go into the worry, my night of sleep was over, and the worry was not only not productive, but it could also through the law of attraction bring about the actual circumstances I was worrying about (not having enough money to pay for the bill) by giving attention and energy to that exact circumstance.

So I focused in on my breathing and asked myself, "How am I right now?" Then, I focused on everything I was in that moment.

In that very moment, I had enough money to do what I was doing (lying in bed). I was warm, safe, and sheltered. So were my loved ones. I felt well. I was physically comfortable. I was peaceful. In that moment, when I moved my mind away from the future, I had everything I wanted and needed.

This week, pay attention to your thoughts. Notice and catch yourself worrying about something that isn't an immediate (in the moment) concern. When you do (and every time you do) check in quickly. Ask yourself, "How am I right now in this very moment?" And then list all of the positive things you are. If a worry about the future sneaks in, remind yourself, "I am here, now." Then, go back to a quick check in. Chances are in this very moment, you'll find this future thing you are worrying about isn't an issue at this moment. Focus only on this moment and notice what is good. This is how you begin shifting situations; by focusing on what is right and what you choose to attract instead of worrying about what you don't wish to attract.

​Right now, all is well. By the way - I had plenty of money to pay the bill.