evetoomey.com Blog

Topic: Facing our Fears

Wow!  What a month.  I read this monthly horoscope on line and I must admit when she (Susan Miller- excellent astrologer by the way) wrote about how chaotic things would be this month due to the cardinal cross that formed, I had no idea what we were really in for.  Things have been turbulent as this cross worked its magic.  Depending on your sign it was there to shake things up in different parts of our lives.  For me I was told it would shake up relationships and boy what a ride it was.  This combined with mercury going retrograde on the 20th, again shaking things up so that we can see what needs to be changed in our lives, made for a rough month indeed .

These two astrological events combined with the events of my own personal life have lead me to this months topic, facing our fears.  When these shake ups occur they always cause us to stop and consider where we are going and where we have been.  They cause us to rethink what needs to change in our lives.  Are there things that need to be let go of, are there people we are clinging to that no longer fit us, are there patterns that are not working any more? etc. etc.  All of these questions come to the surface during months such as this past August.  In the middle of the chaos of August it was hard to see through all the dust that was getting kicked up.  Now as August draws to a close and the dust begins to settle we have the ability to finally start to see more clearly.  We can see the things that need to change so that perhaps next time a personal storm kicks up there is not so much debris to get tossed around and less mess to clean up when it ends.

I came across a passage in a book and knew that this message and these experiences were not just my own.  This shake up and its call for us to face our fears and confront the things we have been unwilling to confront, the things we need to confront.  It is a universal call reaching out to many people at this moment in time.  The passage read ” Our fears arise from things we do not confront.  Once we are willing to look fully and deeply at the source of fear, it loses its power.”

This quote speaks volumes to me personally.  I had the experience all month of a close friend challenging me to confront a situation in my life- literally ALL month! (I am a bit slow to pick up on things)  I argued and did not want to admit that the situation needed to be confronted.  I was so entrenched in my own denial of the situation that I could not see it.  We went round and round, my friend telling me something needed to change and me insisting that there was no problem and furthermore that it was HIS problem, NOT mine . Yet even while arguing, inside I kept trying to understand why he was saying it.  Then suddenly today he stated it in a way that made sense and I saw what was in my blind spot.  The blind spots are caused by fear. They are  caused by not wanting to look at those parts of ourselves and our lives that we are afraid to change.  It seems like the things that we need to change the most, the things that are causing us the most harm are the things that we can not seem to see within ourselves.   My friend was pointing out that by not confronting this part of my life I was giving it power.  Just like the quote states, and when I saw it, I saw the power I had given it.  When I confronted it I believe I took a huge step in taking away its power in my life.  Just recognizing the issue was a huge step in itself.   My issue is a big issue, long standing throughout my entire life and so I know that I will have to continue to confront it and challenge this part of my life- but taking this first step is taking a stand against the  power it has had over me.

I am not alone in this.  My friends, family, clients, people I briefly meet- they all have these blind spots.  These spots that are so easy for others to see in us but so impossibly hard to see in ourselves.  People tell us they are there and we deny it.  We think person after person is wrong- that “they just don’t understand” or “they don’t have the full story”, “if they knew what we knew of the history of the issue then they would understand”.  The truth is that it is usually ourselves that are not seeing the whole truth.  Our pride, our feelings that we know ourselves better than anyone, our feelings of wanting to be so evolved, or believing we are beyond the need of others help and input-   all of these things stand in our way of hearing the messages the Universe sends us about the areas we need to address.  We need to face these deep fears in order to have the power where it belongs- within us, in that place where the divine resides within ourselves.

The challenge this month as the dust of August settles is to really listen to the messages of those around you.  Listen to what they are saying and dig deeper, ask questions and try to be open to fully understand what people are telling you about your fears, the things that are limiting you from being your true highest self.  When you find yourself saying           ” that person does not know what they are talking about”- stop yourself and try to dig deeper with that person to understand exactly what it is they are pointing out.  Try to remove the blocks that keep you from hearing and use these messages to go deeper within yourself to explore and understand those things that you need to confront- both within yourself and in your environment.  Then face those fears instead of stuffing them, running from them, or escaping from them through TV, drugs, or other distractions.  This is no easy task, its a challenge you have to be willing to struggle and work through.  I was not trying to be blind to my issue, I was trying to understand but it took work and a willingness to stick with it, to tell the Universe that I wanted to understand, to demand to understand inorder for me to finally see.  No less will be required of any of you who choose to face the shadows within yourselves.

When we see the totality of who we are with our faults, flaws, and blind spots we also are allowed to fully experience the splendor of the divine beings we truely are.  The work and effort are worth the rewards within ourselves.  September looks to be a good month for facing the fears and shadows  that August kicked up.  I wish you all luck and courage.

With Love and Light

Eve

web evetoomey.com

email  innerguidance@evetoomey.com

Topic: grounding

I recently glanced back at my year review post just to see how things were flowing in regards to how I felt them in December.  I was struggling with what this months topic would be.  It should have been clear because all around me people are either feeling ungrounded or having experiences that could be related to being ungrounded such as getting sick or injured.  So when I looked at what the year at a glance said about July, I was sure of the topic when I read a repeated warning about making sure to be grounded this month

Many times people do not relate being sick or injured to being ungrounded.   What an effective way to be brought back to your body, by being made very aware of its physical nature.  I know for myself whenever I am feeling spacey or feeling like I am not grounded I tend to have an injury.  Immediately I am aware of my body and of the physical plane.  This happens often enough for me that when I feel myself being ungrounded or not being a part of material reality to a high degree I have begun to quickly do exercises to ground myself.  I have learned that to be disconnected from material reality for too long for me leads to painful injuries that bring immediate awareness of that material reality.

This is not to say that we should not strive to rise above some of the challenges of the material plane.  It is good to connect to higher vibrations.  Good to connect to source.  The problem comes when we begin to lack awareness and lack experience of the material world.  This can be from meditations and striving to always see the big picture without letting ourselves experience the emotions and humanness of our lives or when we choose to use chemicals to keep ourselves out of our bodies and numb the pain that life can bring.

Experiencing life and the lessons of life is a big part of why we are here.  We are not meant to wallow and become entrenched in those experiences.  We are not mean to clutch onto them tightly.  But rather experience them long enough to learn and grow from them and then use all the tools we have to help rise above with our new found knowledge in hand.  Then once we master a particular challenge, we are presented with new opportunities for growth and learning.

To be grounded is critical for the growth and learning to take place.  Our root is our foundation.  So often people who begin to learn about spirituality ignore the root in favor of developing the “higher” parts of themselves.  The truth is without a solid foundation anything else we develop is like building a house of cards on a bed of shifting sand.  We may build it up to look good but the first wind of challenge that comes along will destroy what we have built.

There are two visualizations I have been lead to use  or to tell others about.  The first is a visualization a friend taught me after a particularly intense healing experience.  I was left feeling like I was floating in the stratosphere.  She took me into a quiet area and said “I want you to close your eye and imagine you are looking up at a very tall redwood.  It towers over you.  Begin following the tree down starting at the top and slowly glancing over each branch as you work your way down the trunk to the base.  Once you reach the base imagine the trunk and your legs merging together.  Then once you are one with the tree imagine following the roots deep into the ground.”  This process is done slowly and should not be rushed.  The end feeling was like I had sunk in sand up to my knees.  I could feel a sensation of warmth around my lower legs.  When I opened my eyes I felt stable and completly back in my body.  I was no longer spacey or feeling light headed.  I use this visualization for myself whenever I feel “out of it” or flighty.  It immediately puts me back into my body and helps me feel grounded.  I also visualize it when I am doing healing work to help ground the people I work on.  A piece was added to this by another friend  for times when I am ungrounded and feeling anxious as well.  He said that when I follow the roots down that when I get to the end I should imagine them pulling water from the Earth and then picture that water traveling back up the roots and into my body until my body is filled with the cool water.  This added piece seems to help give me a sense of peace and calm.  I feel reassured after filling up with this water.

The second visualization came from a part of a video I watched.  It dealt with the root chakra.  In the video there was a visualization done where you would picture your root chakra (The lowest chakra in the seven chakra system, located in the groin area).  You were to picture this chakra as a red light.  Then from the red light a root begins to unfurl like a fern frond unrolling.  This root unrolls between your legs until it reaches the ground.  Then once at the ground it connects to the Earth.  The root has strands to it of varying size.  Each time you visualize this root you are to work on healing and smoothing these strands so that they become stronger and more healthy.  At first they may be weak and frayed.  Over time doing this visualization they become very strong and smooth.  The connection to the Earth increases and remain more consistent the more the visualization is done.  This connection can then be used to draw up energy and strength from the Earth.  I have used this visualization to ground but generally use it to help anchor or prepare me for difficult times.  I use it when I am going through something hard to help me have the strength to handle the changes and challenges of life.

If visualization is hard then there are active things you can do to help ground you.  Working in the Earth such as gardening or even playing with sand in you hands or in water can be helpful.  Some people find exercise or walks in nature very grounding.  Other people find sitting under a large tree grounding.  Whatever you do the message this month is to use this time to get grounded.  Not only to protect from feeling flighty and light headed but more importantly to prepare for a period of changes that is about to begin.  We handle change much better when we are grounded.

I began writing this a few days ago and was intuitively led to stop and wait a few days to send it out.  The reasons have become clear now.  I began experiencing massive changes and challenges the past few days.  I have some major life changes occurring and they all began moving (more like hurling) forward these past few days.  I lost a family pet, had a long term relationship take another step towards closure, and was faced with childhood issues resurfacing.  All of these coming to a head this morning.  My humaness and the struggles associated with that humaness were thrust into my face.  I told a very close friend that I was feeling like a leaf being blown in the wind.  The emotion was raw and painful and the experience was the type you feel the urge to run from.  Something led me to stay with it- to feel the pain, to cry the tears out in sobs and to feel my stomach turn with pain.  I stayed in the experience until the tears dried on their own, until I was too tired to feel much of anything.  Until the process came to a close on its own.  I then remembered what I had written two days ago on these pages and used the second visualization to remind myself that I am connected to strength and power greater than my own.  I needed to feel anchored in the midst of so much change.  There is a comfort in feeling that connection.

As I connected to the Earth,  that connection that I have been nurtruing over the past several month strengthened I realized the importance of making and maintianing that grounding connection.  No one knows and understands the process and pain of change more than our Earth.  She is in constant change, sometimes subtle and sometimes violent but always changing.  Nothing in nature remains static.-and so it is with us as well.  Connecting to the Earth helps bring to us the energy of understanding, the strength to deal with change in a graceful manner. Most of all it brought me comfort today.

The next few months are about change.  Groudning is the process of connecting to the Earth.  The Earth is the source of comfort, strength and understanding that we will all need to help us through these coming months of personal changes.  This grounding Earth energy also serves to help us to strengthen our conneciton to the Divine.  It creates the strong foundation that allows us to reach to higher energies.

Change is not bad, these next month are not bad but change can be challenging.  The more time we spend grounding and building our foundations now, the more prepared we will be to face the challenge of change with grace and ease.  My experience the past few days solidified for me that this is true.  Once I grounded I was able to finally see the big picture and know that I am always loved and supported.  We are not  leaves blowing in the wind, we are the creators of our reality and we are divinely inspired in that creation.

With love and truth

Eve

www.evetoomey.com

innerguidance@evetoomey.com

Topic: Judgments

This weeks topic is a hard one.  We all find it hard to look at the things about ourselves that are well…hmmmm, less than flattering.  We like to focus on how far we have come,  the ways we have grown, our progress and positive attributes.  Its a good thing, for the most part, to view ourselves through this lens.  It gives us the motivation to keep going.  It helps us feel confident and self assured.  This weeks topic is however about an aspect of the opposite.  Generally I am not a person that likes to look at the negative, to dwell on what is possibly detrimental.  However there are times that it is an important practice for our overall growth and evolution as souls.

Let me begin by saying that what I have noticed over the past few weeks equally applies to myself.  I believe it to be a part of the human condition, something ingrained in each of us.  I also believe it to be an aspect that we are here to try to overcome in order to achieve a deeper state of enlightenment.  The motivation that leads to this behavior is based on a need and deep desire we have to help one another through the process of life.

The past few weeks there has been a theme that has emerged as I have watched the way people make judgments about eachother.  I find it curious because if you ask yourself the question ” Am I judgmental?” I would bet 99% of us would say ” No I try not to judge”.  Yet  100% of us make judgments conscious or unconscious at some points.  I have been watching this theme unfold in myself and in those around me for the past few weeks.  I knew I would be led to write about it but was a bit afraid.  This is a sensitive topic for many people including myself.  When people point out ways I am judgmental I become fiercely defensive.  I knew it was important to write about this anyway as on my way to work Thursday I pulled up behind a car with a bumper sticker that read “caution, unsocialized homeschooler on board”.  I had to laugh because there it was again.  An attempt to confront all the judgments people have about this drivers personal choice.  It made me feel empowered for the driver of that car.  Empowered to say something about the manner in which we think we know what is best for those around us.

In my own life I have made and continue to make choices that people do not agree with.  I have family members that are making choices that I may not understand.  I have been asked to intervene in those situations.  In the past I would have jumped right in and asserted what I and others think is best.  Manipulating to get things to go the way I think they should for the people making those “bad” decisions.  However, I have come to a place where I feel it necessary to take a different course of action.  I am being led to trust the people that I love and to trust their decisions- even when I do not agree with them, even when it is not what I would do.  It’s not that I sit back and watch the people I love cause massive “train wrecks” in their lives.  I voice my concerns, point out where those concerns come from, try to illicit deeper personal thought about the choices and then listen and let go.  At least that is what I have decided  to try and am working on doing, as always its a work in progress.

We have this idea that we know what is best.  But we forget that we view everything through our own perspective, through our own experiences and emotions.  We can never experience the world in the same manner as anyone else.  We are truly unique.  Due to that what is “right” for us is not always what is “right” for anyone else.  That is part of the beauty of life.  We each have a unique path.  We can learn from eachother, we can get guidance and see a general template of how to live through others.  But in the end our journeys are unique.  Many times it is our “mistakes” that are the very thing that lead us to where we needed to be.  Could you imagine a world without those opportunities?

To make a judgment like ” home schooled children are unsocialized” speaks one persons experience.  I work in a school and have to say there are children within the public schools that could easily be called “unsocialized” .  I have known home schooled children that where very socially adept.  Why is it we think we get to have an opinion about what other people do?  Why do we get to say  blanket statements about what is right and wrong?  How can we know these supposed “truths” that our statements of rightness and wrongness are based on?  The truth is these statements are based on our persceptions of our own lives and can never be fully applied to anyone else, we can not know what is “best” for others.

This weeks message is a call to watch the ways we impose our own will and judgments on to others.  The ways we go beyond supportive care and questioning and pass into the realm of judgment.   It is responsible to help our friends and family, to question their actions. To help them think deeply and to be sure of themselves and their decisions.  It is domineering to tell those friends and family what they should or should not do.  We are each on our own unique journey and  no one can truly know what is “right” or “wrong” action for another.

Over the next few weeks please join me in watching the ways we cross the line from supportive questioning into telling people what to do by imposing our own will and judgment.  Just notice the times you cross that line.  If you are led to change the behavior then try to do so, if not just continue to notice it.  In my work I often tell clients that noticing behavior patterns is the biggest step in making changes to them.  Once we notice behaviors and the impact they have on our lives we then are able to more easily shift those behavior if they are not working for us.  So for now notice and also think about how it feels to be on the otherside of that judgment.  Try to remember what it feels like to have someone tell you that what you feel is “right” for you is actually “wrong”.  Then think about the difference of having a friend supportivly question you or help lead you to think deeply about your choices.  Which one feels better?  Which one is more helpful?  In the end we are all on individual journeys as we collectively support eachother.  That is how we all grow the most, through support.

Until next time

With Love and light,

Eve

web www.evetoomey.com

email: innerguidance@evetoomey.com

Topic: Inner Peace

The roller coaster continues but if you are anything like me you are surprised at how well you are handling it all.  I have noticed that many people I know are facing very difficult events.  People are being faced with truths about themselves, people continue to experience different level of loss.  What I have noticed in my observations is that some people are handling these events with a strange sort of grace, while others are spinning seeming unable to get their feet under themselves.  This is just a noticing and has nothing to do with one reaction being better than another.  It is these noticings that lead to the messages and that is the only reason to point this out.   The message this week has to do with both types of reactions and how to get the experience your soul is needing during these difficult times.

Before I get too fully into the message I do need to get off topic for a minute- the time has been made clear to define a term I often use  in my writing.  I have gotten feedback over the past few years of doing these writings that people have issue with the work God, and others have issue with broader terms I have used including ” the Universe, Higher Power, Divine Energy”.  I want to be very clear about my use of any of these terms interchangably.  To me they refer to an inclusive understanding of a connective energy that is shared between all of creation.  This force could simply be called love- but it is an active love that is always in motion.  It is an active and passive force that drive life and it is an intelligent love that carries wisdom.  It only has the form and connotations we give it.  So what I call the Universe or God others may call something else.  What I perceive and believe about God is personal and it is truth for me, just as what you believe or do not believe about the divine force in your life is truth for you and is personal.  They are the same, only the way we perceive and choose to define this force is different.  Please keep this definition in mind as you read this writing and any others I may do where I write about divinity.  This is also a very short explanation and is by no means inclusive of my understanding or anyone else’s.  It will help us have a common ground to understand the message however.

It occurred to me during my own ups and downs and difficult experiences these last few weeks that I had been neglecting a very important practice.  Something I had come to rely on and faithfully practice daily.  Somehow life got busy or I felt I had somehow made it to a point where I did not need to do the things I used to to stay connected to divinity.  I stopped making a specific time to practice being mindful, stopped meditating with regularity and stopped making the practice of clearing my mind and connecting to a higher power a priority.  Yesterday I was reminded of just how important taking that time is.  It is the connection that helps people handle challenges with grace, it is the connection that keeps us in line with our own highest good and yet it is the cultivation of that connection to the divine that we let slip away from importance in our lives.  Oddly enough it seems to go by the wayside during times when we need that connection to the divine to be the strongest.

The key that I was shown to undergoing and gaining the most from the hard times that we face in our lives is that we have this idea that we are seekers of bliss, in search of “Heaven on Earth”.  The truth is that those very thoughts are flawed.  To say we seek something implies that it is something that we do not already possess.  The truth is that bliss, that Heaven on Earth is and always has been ours.  It is that place deep inside of each of us that holds an infinite calm peace.  The place that we sometimes reach spontaneously but also are able to reach when we quiet our minds and go deep within our selves to our souls.  It is the well where we draw the energy to fully experience life.  If we push past further it is the place where that connecting energy resides in each of us.  Where we can feel the truth of everything around us.  Once it has been reached the feeling is unmistakable.  It is bliss and all feels right in the world for those moments we are connected to that place within ourselves.

The problem is that the feeling is fleeting.  We go back to our lives and lose touch with that place, and soon after we find  we have lost touch with the joy of life as well.  Masters have stated for years that the key to not losing this connection is to practice going to that place often, as often as we can.  For myself that is difficult to do, difficult to discipline myself to do in the long term.  I have stretches of time where cultivating that connection is a priority and then I let it slip away.  I know there have been times that I have felt too busy or tired to take the time to quiet myself and connect to my soul and connect to God.  Sometimes I have felt like I was so connected that I could stop and the connection would maintain itself.   That is easy to do because its a powerful connection that feels like it would be self sustaining.   That is not how it works.  We all seem to shift back into our old pattern of forgetting about the  inner divinity when we stop nurturing it.  We have to continually renew our commitment to keeping the door open to that grand love, that divine force.

It is true that with continued intention and practice, quieting of the mind and trying to get in touch with that place within us that the practice becomes more effortless.  But time needs to be made to cultivate and maintain the connection daily.  This is a timely reminder to myself and others around me of the  importance of taking time to reconnect to our souls and to God on a daily basis.  It is like having your arms full of things you have accumulated all day long.  You can cling to those things tiring your arms further or you can find a place to put them down and rest your arms.  Reconnecting to your soul and to God is like choosing to put all the things down and rest your arms.

As I connected yesterday I was given another reminder to help us all get through the ups and downs.  Life here on Earth is for the entertainment of the soul.  We are here to experience.  There is this danger for people trying to walk a spiritual path that many seem to want to completely transcend the human experience.  To never have pain or sadness.  If our goal is to disconnect to that level then we are missing the point.  I was given the guidance that we are not on this journey to overcome or rise above the experiences but rather to have them.  To experience them and then to reconnect to that divinity and remember that we are here to experience.  We will find that then we have the experience, immerse ourselves in it briefly and then remember the truth that it is all fleeting and should not be clung to.

The flip side of that coin is that others of us get so entrenched in the experiences of Earth and life that our souls forget to find joy in living.  When we get stuck in our roles and forget the bigger picture we also lose out.  Just as we miss opportunity by trying to avoid experiencing we also miss out the point when we forget the essence of who we are at a soul level and begin to thing the challenges of life are all there is.  It is important to experience without taking it all so seriously.

The message was about achieving a balance between these two ways of being.  Allowing ourselves to fully embrace and experience life while still remembering the bigger picture.  We should try to stay in life.  Stay in the moment (as I have said so many times before), experience what is going on and let the emotions be felt.  When we become overwhelmed, it is important to remember that calm place within.  To take time to step back from the experience briefly and reconnect to the divine energy.  We will find when we step back into life after reconnecting that we can have the experience but also see the joy even in the “bad” experiences.  It does not remove the pain, but it keeps us from suffering.  We were never meant to suffer.  Suffering is a human creation, a creation in our own minds.   Pain and sadness are experiences to measure joy against.  We turn them into suffering by refusing to let them go.

I am being strongly urged to resume the practice of clearing my mind before sleep each night and to connect to my soul and to God.  To connect to inner peace and let go of all of the days experiences before bed each night. Empty my arms so to speak.  This practice takes a few minutes but makes a world of difference in our ability to experience life without suffering.  As you let go of the experiences of the day connect to the joy your soul feels for having all of those experiences both the “good” and the “bad”.

With Love and Truth

Eve

Topic: Going with the flow

There has been a theme emerging over the past few weeks of how incredibly changeable everything is.  It seems at though the fluctuations of emotions have been exaggerated lately.  I have noticed this with myself as well as with those around me.   Even people who have previously seemed even tempered, have few emotional up and downs seem to be impacted by the rapid shifts in experience.  I almost have to laugh when I think of my own reactions to the continual changes.  It has gotten to the point that when I am feeling sad, upset, or on top of the world that I smile and say- “I wonder how many minutes I will feel like this before the next wave of completely different emotion takes over”.

There is this tendency that many of us have to hold on to emotions, both negative and positive.  We feel great and think ” I want this feeling to last forever”  or we feel horrible and can not seem to move on, choosing to linger in the pain and not let it flow through us.  This old way of being does not match with what has happened around us energetically over the past few years.  Life is indeed speeding up.  Along with time seeming to fly by at increasingly rapid rates, our experiences and therefore emotional reactions to those experiences also seem to be changing ever more rapidly.

In the past we could hold on to emotions and experiences for longer periods of time.  New experiences and new feelings came to us more slowly.  This allowed the luxury of being able to linger in a particular experience for a while.  It allowed us to linger in thoughts and feelings.  It allowed us to be able to continue to feel ok even when we were living in the past or the future.  This is one dramatic difference in the energy shifts we have experienced in the past few years.

The energy now is rapid.  A major experience happens and due to our old conditioning we want to linger and sit in our thoughts and feeling, but then a new major experience comes before we are ready to let go of the last experience.  I have found myself doing the same exercise with friends and clients lately, as well as doing it myself.  I am thinking that this is an important experience for us all to notice because it illustrates just how different things are now from how they were just a few years ago.  The  exercise is to think about an event- maybe its something you are looking forward to.  Maybe you have a feeling about a change that is going to happen.  It could be knowing that you are headed for a new job, a new relationship, a new place to live etc.  Imagine you have a sense of this change but know that it is in the future maybe a few months away or maybe a few years away.  If this does not seem relevant to you than imagine a time in the past that you want to bring back.  Something you miss or wish you could experience again.  Those moments of the past that you find yourself day dreaming about.  Let yourself get lost in the fantasy of that place in the future or the past.  Notice what you are feeling inside as you live out in the future or the past.  Notice the physical and emotional reactions you have in your body.

Now let go of those thoughts and bring yourself to the room you are in now.  Look up from the computer or the cell phone and notice the present.  Notice the room you are in, the people around you.  Notice the experiences that are happening now.  Take it one more step and notice something that is good about right now.  As you have an appreciation for what is happening right now notice what you feel inside.  Notice again thoughts and feelings.  Notice your body’s reaction to being right here.  Take a few minutes to do this exercise and fully be present with it without feeling a need to read further right now.

I have a feeling many of you who took the time to do this exercise felt very similar things to what I have felt when I do it.  When I think about the past or the future events I get butterflies in my stomach.  I feel anxious about what might happen.  I feel anxious over what has past that will never return.  There is a desire and a unsettledness way inside me if I indulge in thoughts about the future or the past.  Then when I shift and just notice where I am right now the feeling change.  There is no anxiety or fear.  There is no unsettledness.  Mainly I feel content and calm.  I also have this feeling that right in this moment is where I belong.  Not out in some version of the future or clinging to the past.

This exercise is important because it shows the new way we need to be in the world.  This is not to say we should never make plans for things, that we should not have goals for our future.  We need those things to outline possible paths we can take.  We just need to really make sure we are not living in that future before its time.  The same is true of the past.  I am not saying to forget the past and never allow memories to enter our minds.  Those memories should enter naturally, not in a forced way and they should be let go of and not clung to.  They should be appreciated and then released.  When we stop being present we miss out on the experiences that bring us to the futures we are creating.

I often hear guidance within me and this guidance continually reminds me ” do not focus on the destination you know you are headed for, the experience and the joy is in the journey”.  I sometimes get upset at this advice, but in the end it is true.  I am happier and more calm, I enjoy my life more when I sit back and take in the journey along the way instead of trying to “keep my eye on the prize”.  Its like walking a gorgeous path, through lush gardens to get to a friends house and never noticing the beauty around you because you are too focused on getting to where you are going.

This month focus on letting go of the emotions.  Letting them flow through you like you are a screen.  Experience the ups and downs and know that they are temporary.  Growing ever more temporary each day.  Do not cling to the ups, because in letting them go you will allow space for future great experiences.  Do not cling to the lows, keeping yourself in misery because you can not move on.  Allow them to pass and surrender the need to try to avoid the lows.  They too are increasingly temporary.  Stay in the moment with whatever you feel and then let that moments pass as you experince what is next .  This month when you notice your mind focusing and resting on some future place or some past experience, when you notice yourself clinging to emotions, take a few moments to look around at what is happening in the present and find at least one thing to appreciate about right now.  If you can find more than one thing all the better.  Enjoy all of your nows.

With Love and Truth

Eve

innerguidance@evetoomey.com

Personal Power

I have noticed a theme emerge these past few weeks.  Many people are talking about the idea of personal power and personal responsibility.  Mainly they are talking about these concepts in relation to spiritual development, and life experiences.  There is a bigger message to these themes, as is usually the case.

Here is what I have noticed.  Among some people there is this realization that we indeed control our personal experiences to a large degree.  In everything we have a choice.  We choose to continue with a certain path or activity or we choose to let go of what we have previously done and try something different.  This is where we get into tricky
territory.  There are people, plenty of them that choose to see themselves as victims.  I would venture to say we have all played this role and still do at times.  I know I like to feel sorry for myself and see everything outside of me as the cause to my problems from time to time.  The message this week is about that type of thinking.  About the detrimental impact that this kind of thinking has on us personally as well as on humanity in general.

This has always been tricky for me both to confront others on, whether those others are friends, relatives or clients, as well as to hear it for myself.  It’s hard to say that the choices we make play a large part in our own unhappiness.  I mean, if other people would just do what we wanted to we would be happy right.  If “they” didn’t pollute and put carcinogens into the air, if “they” found that sickness in our loved one earlier, if that big wig was not so greedy I would have a job…it goes on and on.  The thing is “the other people” are not within our scope of control.  Our minds and our thoughts about our environment and “those other people” are the only things we control. Continuing to indulge in thinking that everything outside of ourselves is to blame may seem like a great way to help us feel better.  I mean “if it’s not my fault than I don’t have to feel guilty right”.  But it also means that we are not in control and have no power to change anything.

I simply can not believe that.  My spiritual journey has brought me to a place where I truly believe that we all have power in our own lives.  It is true that things happen that are beyond what we control.  We live in a world with other people, with germs and chemicals, and dangerous objects. Things happen in our lives that we do not want.  What this message is about is not to spell out a way to avoid ever having “bad” things happen to you-
but more a call to embrace our personal power to change things beginning with our perspectives.
People get horrible illnesses, painful illness, dark states within the mind.  We all lose people we love, lose things that matter to us and our safety.  We lose jobs, houses, cars, favorite objects.  We have spats and deep long standing fights with people close to us.  These are things that happen.  They are the things that could have us feeling sorry for ourselves, or they are the things that can help us define and strengthen ourselves.  That is where the choice lies.  One person can experience a tragedy and curl into a ball and refuse to ever live again, while another person experiencing the same tragedy is fueled to come to life for the first time, or in a new way by starting a charity or trying to do something to prevent others from experiencing the same tragedy.  It can be the chance to start over and do the things they have always wanted.  The only difference is the perspective from which they experienced the tragedy.
Where one person falls into sorrow and perhaps self pity the other harnesses the inner power that is divinely given to each person and uses it to create a change.  One person stays stuck in the cycle of the loss or tragedy while the other plows forward.  The only thing separating these two people is an inner shift in thought.  Both feel the devastation of the
tragedy, both begin the grieving process and then somewhere the paths diverge.  One person holds on to the grief, hold on to the pain and stays stuck with that, refusing to let it go and move forward.  While the other person eventually makes the internal and very difficult decision to let go.  To surrender the pain and to try to see the good in something that begins as devastating.   That decision makes all the difference in the world.

I get these wonderful images that go with these messages sometimes.   This week it was an  image of some large rocks.  On one side was a person weighed down by those heavy rocks (the things that happen in our lives to weigh us down or to challenge us).   This person was on one side of a river that they wanted to cross but couldn’t swim across due to the heavy rocks weighing on them. On the other side of the image was a person who was also weighed down by the same rocks but then had the internal idea that if they could let go of the rocks and lay them down they could build a path across the river that they could walk on to cross.  Then in my head I was asked the question ” What are you going to do with your rocks?”

We all experience things from our environments that we do not like but we have a choice, we can complain about them or we can do something to change our experience.  Some people that I have known were not in a place to hear this message.  for them their minds go to anger or shame.  I still experience this myself at times.  To hear that I create and have a choice in my suffering has sometimes brought up shame and anger.  When I am not ready to hear it about an issue I tend to get upset and not see my role clearly.  I also remember the first time I really was ready to hear this
message and instead of frustration, anger and shame I felt liberated.  To truly understand that I can create and that I have a choice in what I experience and how I experience the things in my life gave me a sense of personal power that I had never felt before.  I will never forget that feeling.  It was like the clouds parted and I thought ” huh, I do have a
choice in this and I can choose to let go if I want- I am the only thing keeping my pain alive”.  It was freeing. I was recently talking to a client about this and she too understood.  She also agreed that there was a time that she would not have gotten the message and  would have felt angry about people telling her she has a part in her suffering.  I mean if that were true why would any of us stay in our suffering.  The answer to that is fear.  Fear keeps us stuck and keeps us from exercising our choice.  If you push past fear and see that there is a road that leads out of any trouble or pain- a road that emerges with the passage of time you will feel more able to freely make the choices that will help lead you our of suffering.  It’s a road that we must wait for over and over because trial and challenges arise as a part of life.  The only thing that truly changes is our reactions and our perception of what suffering and pain are.

The message this week is to briefly look at all the areas you have pain-  emotional, physical, financial , anything.  Look at them and then instead of sighting all the reasons outside of yourself for those pains- look at what resources you have within you and around you to overcome or ease those pains.  It could be things as big as the loss of a loved one or a terminal illness.  It could just be smaller annoyances like not getting long with a coworker, a boss, or a lover.  Both in the big and the small you have choices to make in how you experience those situations, in what resources you will use to assist you in dealing with them.  You have personal power. Will those varying sized stones weigh you down or act as
the path that leads you forward?  What are you going to do with your rocks?

With Love and Turth

Eve

web- evetoomey.com

email:  innerguidance@evetoomey.com

Topic: relationship to the Divine and humaness

I knew I was supposed to write today but did not have a topic that seemed evident.  So much is happening lately in the energetic realm that its hard for me to decipher what I am supposed to write about.  There are many changes that are taking place.  Last year seems to have been about the tearing away of what we had previously known.  This includes people, material items as well as ideas about ourselves and those around us.  It was  a rough years and a pivotal year for most of us.  Now we have been living in this “inbetween” place, wondering what is going to happen next.  Well, the new is taking shape.  Many of us wondered if it would ever happen and it feels like April will usher in the seeds of the next phase for all of us.  We worried that the tearing away phase would continue, and for some it has.  This last month the last few pieces of the old have been challenged and we have been asked to let them go.  We have been asked to surrender and trust in the Divine.  To trust that if we are empty handed that then, we will finally move forward into a greater future for ourselves.  As always this is our choice to make when we feel ready.  This whole process has served a broader purpose as well.  The whole process is a major step for us to deepen our relationship to the Divine.

This is what leads me to my topic.  As we are  each being lead to surrender control to that unseen force that connects us to everything, what does it mean for us?  My own religous upbringing served as a barrier in my relationship to God/ the Universe.  I was raised Catholic- with a God who was vengeful and did things that caused pain for seemingly no reason or worse to get even with humanity for not being perfect.  I was told that painful things were God’s will,  just a part of life that we have to put up with.  To not try to make sense of it and just accept it as God’s will.    I was supposed to be subservient to this God.  Supposed to have  no active role in my relationship beyond attending church and memorizing contructed prayers.  I was to do as told by the “mouth pieces of God” ( following the belief that only a priest can communicate with God).  This was a scary God, the one people hand out pamphlets on saying to fear.  Underneath this message that my traditional upbringing gave me, somewhere in my quiet moments alone, I knew something different.  There was this gentle force that was powerful within me.  A force that had answers and wisdom I did not have in my day to day actions.  If I quieted down and connected to that energy I could feel peace in the face of any amount of pain or sorrow.  I could see the bigger picture and feel comforted.  I could connect to infinite possibility for myself and for humanity as a whole. Eventually this feeling is what I came to know as the presence of God in my life.

It was not something I talked about because people who talk to God are crazy (I am not sure what that says about priests).  It was not important to me to talk about it, or to let people know about it.  It was mine and it was dear to me.  It was a source of strength and comfort that I never wanted to lose.  I continue to cherish that relationship above all others in my life.  Even with a connection to that presence it has not been a smooth ride.  There are times, many times that I lose the connection and feel lost, sometimes briefly sometimes for longer frightening periods of time.  There are times I wonder if that presence will just leave my life and I panic.  Even with years of being able to feel and rely on that connection, I fear being abandoned.  I fear that its not real, even though it feels more real than anything I have ever felt.  I fear that I will become distracted away  from it, as I do so often, but that I will never come back to that connection.  I fear mostly that I am not worthy of the connection and that eventually my unworthiness will be found out.

This is the part I am being lead to write more about. That last fear seems to be a common one.  It is strong because it not only comes from within each of us- that piece of each of us that doubts, that piece that is sometimes so large we can see little else and other times is so small we fail to notice its there.  It also comes from outside of us.  This is the challenge for the next few weeks.  We all have this tendency to be skeptical of not only ourselves but of eachother.  We see someone who claims to have a connection to the Divine and then begin to look at all the ways that they are imperfect.  Like somehow imperfection is proof that a person can not have a relationship with God.  We are expecting ourselves and eachother to have to be without fault inorder to deserve a relationship with the Divine.  This simply is not true.

The message this week is about accepting our own imperfections, accepting our “sins” so to speak.  Not embracing them and excusing them but accepting them and seeing them as a part of our journey.  It is because of these imperfections that we shoud seek to deepen our relationship to the Divine.  It is the part that draws Divine energy to us, that loving energy that wants to help us to overcome and find joy, even in the face of deep sorrow.   These “imperfections” are not the obstacles to that relationship,  they are the vehicle for deepening it.  When we look deeply at ourselves and acknowledge our imperfections, seeing them fully, we become aware of the purpose of the Divine in our lives- To assist us in removing these spots that lead us to our own misery.  Mostly we cause our own suffering, most of the time unconsciously through these “imperfections”.  The things that cause us to repeat patterns over and over that cause pain in our lives.  By connecting to God/the Universe we are able to step back and see what it is that we bring to our suffering.  To clearly see the ways we contribute and continue the cycle (most of the time unconsciously).  It takes a great deal of surrender and it takes discomfort to see our role .  That is why we need the infinite source of strength.   We have this idea from somewhere that if we have something to work on, that we need to work on it and master it before trying to connect to the Divine.  The Divine is there to act as the energy source to assist us in our journey- not to be a reward for having completed a journey.

This time of year always bring thoughts to mind of Jesus.  Those of us raised in Christian faith and some who were not use Jesus as a measuring stick.  With think of the closeness of his relationship to God and we think of the perfection that is portrayed in the stories of him.  I know I have thought on more than one occasion about how impossible it would be to be that perfect, to resist temptations of material things as well as the temptation to give into emotions and thoughts that lead me off the path.  It seems like an impossible goal, and can lead to thoughts of giving up on having a connection to God.  ” I am not that perfect and can never be ,so forget this whole thing”.  I think we all forget to be exactly where we are at in our journey.  We can not compare ourselves to eachother or to figures in history.  That is not the path we walk on.  Each of our paths is unique and travels a slightly different direction.  This was the key to Jesus’ greatness in fact.  He knew this idea and cherished it deeply.  It was shown in his every action.  He knew the imperfections of the people around him.  He was not blind to them but believed something greater about each person he met.  This is where forgivness and true acceptance comes from.  Knowing the truth, knowing what we have done that is less than saintly and still believing that we are worthy of a connection to the Divine.  Jesus knew that the worst scoundrels of his time were also worthy of a connection to the Divine.  He spread the message to the people who would seem the furthest away from God, that they are just as welcome to have a deep connection to God.

This is our challenge.  To see the worthiness in ourselves and in everyone around us.  To see that a relationship with God is not a goal, it is a given.  We have a choice to accept that relationship, to see it even after we have done things we find hard to forgive.  We have a choice to believe it about all people, even when they have done things we find hard to forgive.  Opening up and trying to feel that connection daily is what is important, especially when we are feeling like we are not worthy.  The action step for this week is to take a few minutes everyday to just quiet down and invite the Divine (in whatever form you feel connected to) to make itself know to you.  It is this connection that brings us to greater personal growth inch by inch, in a way that we do not even see the changes it is making in our lives.   We do not have to be saints to be in that relationship- it is through that relationship be slowly become more “saintly”.  We are all headed in the direction of overcoming destructive tendencies.  It is not a process that happens quickly.  Many times it is a process that happens so slow it is impossible to detect until we reflect and see the enourmous gains we have made.  Celebrate those gains during these weeks.  Invite the Divine to be your partner in the continued growth you are making.  We are all worthy and deserving of that source of strength and support, it is our birthright.

Celebrate the fact that the growth you have left to do is only a means of deeping your connection to the Divine!

With Love and Truth

Eve