I have a favorite dress. I've had it for about four months and I always feel in danger of wearing it too often because I love it so much. I have probably worn it about eight times to church now. I've never really gotten a comment on it before, until this past week.
This past Sunday, I got eight compliments on my dress. Well, seven on my dress, and one on my "aura." "You just shine today!" this sister said to me.
And I believe I did! I believe that people who noticed my dress this past week only thought they had noticed my dress. When you don't recognize inner light upon spiritual sight, it kind of seems like there's "just something about" a person. It can be easy to dismiss a person's glowing light as just them looking nice in their clothes or something. It all comes back to the ability to recognize what you're looking at.
So what made this past week different?
Last Saturday night, I prayed to have as much of God's wisdom transferred to me as I was able to handle. I did feel and later measured a change, however small. But that next day, as I sat at the organ during the sacrament (I'm the ward organist), I prayed for a new heart to match my recent spiritual growth and wisdom upload. I envisioned giving up my old heart, and receiving the new one, the new one that was just that much better.
I suppose I looked different too. At least, judging by the amount of comments I received on my external appearance.
The sacrament is becoming much more meaningful to me now that I am so much better able at taking advantage of it. Receiving a new heart with additional light is something we can all do every week by partaking of the sacred sacramental ordinance, the bread and water representing the sacrifice of Jesus Christ. For me, I don't think I really even began to understand a fraction of how the sacrament can work until just recently--and I am still learning so much. I know I have barely scratched the surface.
This week, I challenge you to make a lasting spiritual change in your life. Collapse a heart wall. Commit wholeheartedly to following the Spirit the first time, every time. If you haven't read the Book of Mormon, do it! It's short and the most correct of any book on Earth--it will bring you closer to God than any other book on Earth. It complements and supports the Holy Bible.
Whatever you do, commit to change in a way that brings you closer to God. And then ask for a new heart to match. Let's all clear out the old darkness in our hearts by trading out old hearts in for new ones.
Side note: in my healing work, I recently felt impressed to replace a client's heart with a new one, like this, and he later told me how the next day, at work, a coworker told an off color joke that the client normally would have found hilarious--it wasn't funny anymore, but offensive. There is so much power in actually praying for a new heart, and then visualizing it happening. It really does make a difference.
Hey world! I'm officially putting on a class--actually two classes--in Provo on July 30 (a Wednesday--next Wednesday, to be precise!). There is a recommended donation of $25 for each class, to be collected at the door.
The first class, from 7-7:50 pm, will be on Energetic Self Care for Acute and Chronic Stress. We'll be covering energetic techniques to ease sleep and reduce insomnia; using Chinese meridian lines to release physical and emotional stress; and healing touch techniques for relaxation and even physical healing. Awesome!
The second class, from 8-8:50 pm, in the same place, will be on Nurturing Intuition. This will deal with growing energetic sight--developing the ability to perceive things like auras, meridians, chakras, and more. I'm so excited to share on this topic. I believe it will be an enlightening evening all around!
Please come and spread the word! If you're interested in attending, please email me. You can find my email under the tab here on this blog listed "healing."
Archetypally speaking, there are healers, and there are wounded healers. While all healers are motivated by the desire to repair things that are broken--whether that is bodies, souls, or whatever--for wounded healers, there's an additional layer of backstory. As Carolyn Myss writes of the Wounded Healer (my emphasis):
The mythical Chiron is the prototypical Wounded Healer.
The Wounded Healer is initiated into the art of healing through some form of personal hardship--anything
from an actual physical injury or illness to the loss of all one's earthly possessions. Regardless
of the shape of the wound, the challenge inherent in this initiation process is that one is unable
to turn to others for help beyond a certain degree of support. Only the initiate can ultimately heal
the wound; if it is an illness or accident, it will frequently be one for which there is no conventional
cure.The Wounded Healer archetype emerges in your psyche with the demand that you push yourself to
a level of inner effort that becomes more a process of transformation than an attempt to heal an illness.
If you have successfully completed the initiation, you inevitably experience an exceptional healing,
and a path of service seems to be divinely provided shortly after the initiation is complete.
As a person with a strong Wounded Healer archetype, this particularly resounds with me--I was very deeply wounded, from lots of things, but particularly after my brother's death, I found myself pushing myself to change in an effort to heal these wounds. When the process was more or less complete, I found myself a different person--and, as the description mentions, I found what I believe to be a divinely-provided path of service.
Today I want to write about transformative healing.
What is Transformative Healing?
Transformative healing is inner-directed change that transforms the soul into something that no longer needs the illness it was previously suffering from. As an example, an addict struggling with addiction who experiences transformative healing would feel inwardly directed to humble him- or herself, to the point of finally offering the addiction up to their Higher Power and becoming a changed, humbler person. After that change is complete, the former addict is renewed, redeemed, no longer needing the trial of their addiction. The addiction has served its purpose and the former addict no longer requires healing--because they themselves have changed, from the inside out.
In my own life, I had been warned as a teenager that I had an excess of yang, and that to unlock my potential I would need to do some "right brain pushups," and bring my Sun and Moon into alignment--embrace my yin and let my yang take a backseat.
Actually going through this transformation was almost unbearably painful on a spiritual level; I had always really looked down on the yin/feminine aspect and now I knew I had to not just accept it in myself, but make it the primary aspect of myself, while downplaying my yang side. (Sidenote: this was all a God-directed process. I assure you there is no possible way I ever would have decided to change my soul like that without His explicit, continual pressure to do so!!)
But when I mostly completed the process--I mean, I still have a ways to go--but when I overcame the biggest hurdle, all of a sudden, I was a different person. I had my change of heart. I literally think differently now than I ever have thought before. My brain is different. I feel and think like a totally different person. And now that I am a transformed person, a lot of the trials and wounds that used to affect me deeply, really don't. Even new trials don't affect me in the same way. I still have a long ways to go, and I'm sure more transformations will come with time, but in the meantime, I know what it is to have a small taste of transformative healing.
Transformative healing is the spiritual and sometimes even physical healing that comes with a change of heart.
How To Experience Transformational Healing
Outside people can't really help transformative healing. The process is inwardly directed. For me, while God prompted the journey with lots--LOTS--of warnings and revelations and pressure, it was my personal choice to agree to start the journey with Him. The stuff I had to go through in order to transform was stuff that no one else could really help me with. If you are on a transformational healing journey, there's really not a lot other people can do for you. It all has to come from within.
That said, it all starts with a choice. A choice to change. But more than just a choice: a commitment. A true commitment to see the change through, no matter what it takes.
Sometimes this commitment is conscious; sometimes it isn't. In my experience, there is added power in making the conscious choice to experience the change of heart.
The first step to experiencing the transformational change of heart is prayer--turning to God to discover the first step in the plan He has for your life. To see what it is in your heart that needs to change.
But the thing is, that first step never ends. Part of the transformation in transformative healing is that from that point on, you are led by your Higher Power through the transformation process. Transformational healing comes when you bring your will into alignment with God's, instead of futilely wishing His will would be brought into alignment with yours.
Healing Transformation and the Twelve Steps
Healing transformation of any kind seems to me very reminiscent of the twelve steps--as in the AA twelve steps. Here are AA's twelve steps:
Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of Godas we understood Him.
Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves.
Admitted to God, to ourselves, and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs.
Were entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character.
Humbly asked Him to remove our shortcomings.
Made a list of all persons we had harmed, and became willing to make amends to them all.
Made direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others.
Continued to take personal inventory, and when we were wrong, promptly admitted it.
Sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God as we understood Him, praying only for knowledge of His will for us and the power to carry that out.
Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these steps, we
tried to carry this message to alcoholics, and to practice these
principles in all our affairs.
Obviously, not all of us need to transform ourselves from alcoholics to non-alcoholics. But we all have addictions of some kind, whether it's to something high profile like drugs or pornography, or lower profile like texting, sugar, the Internet, selfishness, or pride. Even if we aren't addicted to anything, we still have imperfections that can only be overcome by humility: by admitting that we can't transform into something better on our own; that we need God to step in and transform us for us.
Aspects of Transformation
Four things really stand out to me about the transformational healing process. They are:
1) The need for humility. Humility to take a step back and hand over control over your own life to a higher power. Humility to sit back and agree when all your relevant faults are brought before your eyes because it's time for them to change.
2) Work. Sometimes the changes asked of us require real work, real changes in the things we do, watch, say, and think on a day-to-day basis. Transformation can involve some serious change, and sometimes it requires a lot of effort.
3) Pain. The pain you feel as the things you liked or valued about yourself--your pride, selfishness, addictions, etc--are uprooted before your eyes.
Our life progression is like climbing stairs. Except in the dark.
4) Peace. After your soul has been remodeled, there is such a profound peace. It is hard to imagine how beautiful it is during the remodeling process, when God is busy knocking down walls and pulling out weeds. But when it's complete--wow.
Not that my process is by any means complete, but one of my many processes has kind of come to a sort of completion--I know for a 100% fact that I am a different pers
on now than I was a year ago, for example. In all areas of my life.
Basically, if life and progress are like a staircase, and most of the time I had one foot on the next step but was afraid to bring the other foot up also, I feel like I have successfully climbed a single stair. There are plenty more stairs to go, but one of them is behind me at last! Whoohoo.
Conclusion
People are wounded for many reasons. People can be cruel. We all wound each other, both intentionally and unintentionally. But these wounds can all serve our highest good, as we use them to motivate ourselves to turn our hearts over to God or our Higher Power for transformation. As soon as our wounds no longer serve us, they leave us. By engaging in the meaningful act of turning over our wills to God, we take advantage of the wisdom our wounds have to offer us, and are blessed with spiritual and sometimes even physical healing.
Inspired by one of my favorite bloggers, I recently read the book Sacred Contracts by Caroline Myss, and started delving into archetype studies. Myss's work as a medical intuitive led her to the concept of sacred contracts--basically the idea that we all come to Earth having made covenants with each other, to help each other out along our paths of spiritual growth.
She explains that to help us understand and actually fulfill our ends of our sacred contracts with others, we are all born with a set of twelve primary archetypes, including universal ones like the Inner Child, and other ones "drawn from the vast storehouse of archetypes dating back to the dawn
of human history. They play valuable roles that relate to our work, our relationships with individuals
and society, as well as to our spirituality, finances, values, and our highest potential."
She goes on to explain how the awareness of archetypes is nothing new--even Plato was aware of them (and called them "Forms"). Jung built on this idea; Myss writes:
The Avenging Angel is one example of an archetype.
For Jung, archetypes comprised psychological patterns derived from
historical roles in life, such as the Mother, Child, Trickster, and Servant, as well as universal
events or situations, including Initiation or Death and Rebirth. Along with our individual personal
unconscious, which is unique to each of us, Jung asserted, "there exists a second psychic system
of a collective, universal, and impersonal nature that is identical in all individuals." This
collective unconscious, he believed, was inherited rather than developed, and was composed mainly
of archetypes.
She goes on to explain that your personal archetypes "provide the foundation for your personality, drives, feelings, beliefs, motivations, and actions."
I urge you to go check out her site for more information about all of that. I really cut out a lot. She obviously has a whole book out about this stuff, so... if you're interested, read it!
Discovering Your Archetypes
Now, in her book, Myss suggests that a person should take their time and select archetypes that are meaningful to them. But at the same time, she explains how she first happened upon the idea of archetypes--by intuitively looking at people and "seeing" their surrounding archetypes through second sight. This implies that these archetypes are with you whether or not you choose them... that you might pick an archetype you like that isn't one of the twelve an intuitive might actually see near you.
For myself, I decided to skip the pondering part of my own archetype chart, and I just muscle tested on it all until I had a full chart. It took a while, but I didn't have to think about it! Ha! I tested first, and then I looked at what I got.
But when it was all done, I wondered if I'd done the right thing. I got some that didn't seem to make any sense. The Gambler? I've never gambled--okay, except that one time when I was like 11 at Vegas with my dad and he gave me a few quarters for the slot machines. Such a one-time thing hardly seems like enough of a gambling background to warrant the Gambler as one of my primary twelve archetypes.
Similarly, I got the Beggar (?) and the Exorcist (???), and was very weirded out by it all, because the archetypes that had tested so strongly as being mine just didn't seem to fit. The concept of begging has always been just horrifying to me, and... exorcism?? ...okay...???
It was only after I really pondered them that I saw how well they really did fit after all.
For example, my Gambler is in the house of spirituality--and the Gambler is all about beating the odds, taking risks, expecting big pay-offs. Who but a Ninth-House Gambler would commit to follow 100% of everything non-logical that came up in her life? What a giant risk! But it was one made out of an expectation of spiritual reward. That's just one example, but once I thought about it, I realized that the Gambler archetype is a huge player in my life--the more I think about it, the more it makes sense.
Same with the Beggar; same with the Exorcist; and same with the obvious ones, like in my case, the Researcher and the Wounded Caregiver (a subset of Wounded Healer). The more I've thought about them, the more they've made sense to me. And, more importantly, the more I've been able to use them to recognize my own destructive tendencies.
Using Your Knowledge of Archetypes for Good
For example, my Saboteur is in my House of Good Fortune. Sure enough, every time I'm onto something good in my life, it seems I just sabotage it for myself.
Well, now I'm aware of that tendency. So I can change it. When I enter situations involving creative energies, for example, I can take a step back and realize: I am so in danger of sabotaging myself, it's not funny. And then I can think: how will I change this?
Wow, this blog entry is becoming a lot about me! Well, my story is the only one I know I am fully authorized to tell in this regard, so, oh well. This is an introduction to how understanding my own archetypes has helped me in my life.
I am a researcher at heart.
The point is, when it comes to discovering people's archetypes, I do recommend muscle testing on it, because it saves time and turns out to be, I believe, more accurate than just picking ones that you wish were in your top twelve. If I'd just picked my own archetypes off the list, I never would have chosen the Gambler or the Beggar; I never would have even found the Researcher, because the Researcher isn't on the official list of archetypes! It was just that when I muscle tested for my final archetype, I couldn't find it in the list, and then I had to go down the letters of the alphabet (does this archetype's name start with the letter A? B? C? and on down the list) until I got to R and intuitively knew that it must be the Researcher.
Anyway.
The other option is, you can hire me to assess your archetypes for you! It's kind of fun. I feel like I have definitely grown in my understanding of myself since I assessed my own archetypes and I do recommend it if you believe in the idea of sacred contracts or if you just want to get to know yourself better.
My son just turned three today. Three is the age when a child's aura becomes his or her own, separate from the mother's aura for the first time. In celebration, here is an essay I wrote a while ago about the etheric attachments between mothers and children that I never posted. Enjoy.
When I had my son, and even when I gave birth to my daughter, I wasn't very good at seeing etheric cords. When I first had my son, I couldn't see them at all. But I still felt them. All mothers feel them, I believe, to one degree or another.
For me, the most memorable time I felt them was the first night I slept with my little boy at home in our bed. I had him next to me and my body was curled in a C around him. Even though we weren't touching, I could feel where he was, very strongly. My body almost tingled with the energy between us.
Bedsharing as I do, I've been able to observe very clearly how my children react when my body is facing them in their sleep, versus facing the other way when they sleep. Both my children, when they slept in bed with me, slept more soundly when I was facing them, for about the first six months of life. I believe this to be related to our etheric cords (which extend from front to front).
When babies are first born, they are wholly dependent on the mother for life. My observation is that this is reflected in their etheric cords, mother to child and vice-versa. To me, it appears that babies are almost wholly enveloped in the blue of etheric cord, and it all ties back to Mom.
Etheric cords siphon energy off from one person to another. The healthy kinds--the blue cords--go both ways, creating a kind of circuit that replenishes both parties with energy.
Just as mothers provide physical sustenance body-to-body from gestation to weaning in the form of placental nutrition and breastfeeding, so does the mother provide energetic sustenance to the fetus, infant, and child, from what I have seen. During gestation, this energetic siphoning, in my observation and experience, operates using at least two energetic pathways: the meridian system, mostly through the kidney meridian providing kidney jing, and etheric cords, mirroring at least the umbilical cord but also, if the mother loves her baby, a cord extending heart to heart. After a baby is born, he or she creates his or her own kidney jing, but still apparently relies on the mother for energetic health via etheric cords.
It is my observation that etheric cords are affected to a degree by physical distance--and this is especially true for the tiny child. This is one reason why babies want to be close to their mothers--and why it can seem as though the tiny child can sense it when a mother is facing them or not, even if the child is asleep.
I was just looking up pictures for this post and found this article about this issue. For your consideration:
All babies have a
cord going from their belly to their mother after the physical umbilical
cord is cut. Some may have extra cords going from the heart, solar
plexus or even the head to various parts of the mother’s energy body.
The cord or cords that exist during infancy last for a few years and
gradually drop off as the child becomes more independent from the mother
and does not need the connection any more. Well ideally this would be
the case, but here on Earth so many people have emotional issues that
very often the cords can last well into adulthood. The cord is supposed
to be there to support the baby but in actuality many mothers are
emotionally needy and actually use the cord to nourish themselves from
the baby’s fresh and abundant energy. Of course this is subconscious and
the mother is not really meaning to do this. The baby is usually quite
aware of what is happening and will even give the mother extra energy
and emotional support through the cord at will.
This exactly fits my observations. The above paragraph, though, addresses the problem of cords being left too long.
What I have been concerned about is cords being cut prematurely and replaced inappropriately.
For example, it is a typical modern practice to place the newborn infant to sleep in not just a separate bed from the mother, but often a separate room. This stretching of the etheric cord can, in my observation, cause emotional and even physical distress for both the mother and the baby. I personally believe I have observed the premature severing of etheric cords, mother to baby, which causes distress for both parties, and I suspect, the creation of unhealthy etheric cords in their place.
As an example, I prematurely moved my son into his own room. Each kid is different, but my kid was not ready to have his own bedroom at age two. He had been sleeping in our room in a toddler bed next to us, but when my daughter was born, we moved him into his own room (he was maybe 26 months). Almost immediately, while he had been sleeping well through the night, and so had I, we both began to have sleeping problems. He would be up multiple times per night, requiring my presence. At the same time, he developed a new super-attachment to binkies, particularly "Yellow Binky" and "Orange Binky."
In January, we "lost" Orange Binky.
Even months and months later he would cry for Orange Binky. One day, totally out of the blue, he started crying for Orange Binky, and I thought to look at the situation energetically, with my spiritual eyes instead of my physical ones. When I did, I realized: I hadn't noticed before, because I was looking the wrong way--but now with my spiritual eyes I saw that he actually had an etheric cord to that silly binky. Who knew those cords could form with inanimate objects? Well, I guess they can. So I had to cut the cord from the binky.
Things are much better now, as far as binkies go (they are a thing of the past, at last! hooray!), but still: I learned a lesson. If you cut one cord prematurely, the chances seem to be that a new cord will form in its place. And it may not be the cord you want!
I believe my high sensitivity to etheric cords is what drove me to attachment and biological parenting in the first place; biological parenting (which I define as parenting that works with instead of against human biology) and attachment parenting (which fosters child attachments to the parent) create a perfect environment for the healthy fostering of etheric cords. It is my suspicion that the startling frequency of disorders now common among us, such as OCD and, more particularly, narcissism, are caused in part by unhealthy etheric cords that are created either to things (such as Orange Binky) or the self in response to the untimely severing of crucial etheric cords to the parent.*
Of course, every child and every parent is different. Again, no judgment in my heart for those who choose to parent differently. Every child has unique needs and as parents we all do our best to be aware of those needs and address them appropriately. These are only my observations and I could be wrong in my interpretations of them.
* I'm not sure exactly how it works that cords can form with the self,
but I have seen it, particularly in people with masturbation addictions,
so I know they exist. The body needs the energetic circuits of etheric
cords to function, somehow, and when they don't get formed with other
people in appropriate ways, they seem to form with other people, objects, or
even the self in inappropriate ways.
The blue thing is a tarp over the smashed-out window of my darling car.
It was all quite miraculous. That spot is actually my mom's claimed spot on her and my dad's driveway, but my husband had parked our little car there when he went over for dinner before a meeting he had to go to. My mom parked elsewhere--her car is a minivan, so it wouldn't have had just the window smashed out. It would have been toast.
No one was hurt, even though the tree that fell was totally huge. The tree falling could have been a serious disaster, and instead, everyone was safe and sound and even the car is not as broken as it could have been!
When my dad called me to tell me that a tree had just fallen on the car, I couldn't say anything because I was so stunned. Surprised. It was funny because I had literally just been thinking, in the maybe five minutes before he called--"Why is it that horrible things keep happening to all my friends, and not to me? Shouldn't something horrible happen to me? Why does this make sense?"
And then a tree fell on my car, so, take home lesson: never wonder why bad things don't happen to you! Haha!
But then as I hung up the phone, I just laughed and felt this amazing peace. This thought came into my head: "YEAH! This is the beginning of one FREAKING AWESOME MIRACLE!"
And that idea has just been so strong in my head I can't shake it!
And I don't even want to!
As I was putting my teething baby to bed for the 75th time last night, I was pondering this and I wondered--am I starting to take miracles for granted?
Ha. I thought it as if taking miracles for granted were a bad thing. And then I realized:
We are supposed to take miracles for granted.
We are supposed to expect them at every turn.
We are supposed to believe that they will happen for us over and over again.
Miracles are our birthright.
Because we are the children of God.
The scriptures teach us that faith and miracles are linked. Faith comes first, and miracles follow--where miracles are, there is faith, and where faith is, there are miracles. Miracles are the result of directed faith.
I believe that God wants us to experience miracles. He tells us, over and over and over again, ask and ye shall receive. He wants to answer our prayers. Faith is the first principle of the gospel. Faith is what enables life and salvation. God wants us each to be filled to the brim with faith--the faith to see miracles.
So, yes, I am going to take this miracle for granted, in the most literal way: I am choosing to believe that this miracle has already been granted to me. And I am receiving it with gratitude. Whatever this blessing is that's in store, I'm sure it's even better than the blessing of having an intact car. I am so happy and excited to receive it. Last night, when I got the news about my car, I felt the same way. I was shocked, and then I laughed, and then I said thank you to my Heavenly Father for preemptively working this out in the best possible way for my good. I am so excited to see what He's got planned. I have asked him to perplex me with miracles and I just can't wait to be totally dumbfounded with how great this turns out.
This is awesome. The worse the things are that happen to us, the more God uses them for our benefit, if we exercise our faith in Him.
So, believe, guys. Witness miracles!
They are everywhere! They are ours! They are ours for the asking and the faith!
Meditation is an amazing tool for healing. I always recommend it because it makes such a huge difference in the brain. And this is not just kooky weirdness. There are tons of studies that back up the effects of daily meditation. Here's a link to Wikipedia. Here's a link to an article 3HO, a meditation organization, about the medical benefits of meditation. Actually, go read that article right now. It talks about the effects of meditation on sleep, productivity, memory, stress management, and more. Basically, the benefits of meditation seem just about endless.
I love kundalini meditation (as opposed to other forms of meditation) because it isn't boring. That's the only way to say it, for me! I've tried other forms of meditation in the past--the kind where you sit quietly and try to still your mind, but I always feel like a failure in that because I clear my mind of some stuff, only to have other stuff rush in and fill the same space. Sitting still gets old after not a long time.
Kundalini meditation utilizes "mantras" (chants) and "mudras" (motions) while you meditate. This gives your mind and body something to latch onto while you're clearing your mind. In other words--it's meditation, but not boring!
When you do kundalini meditation, it's important to kind of tune your mind into the frequency of the meditation. So every meditation session starts with a tune-in to that frequency and a tune-out. This is how to tune in:
Then you can do your meditation(s). Most of them are only a few minutes long. I do the kirtan kriya every day. To me, this is a Christ-centered meditation and I always think of Him while I do it. The words, Sa Ta Na Ma, mean Birth, Life, Death, and Rebirth (or, to me, rebirth through Resurrection). This one has has a lot of studies done on it for its power to change the brain. Check out this article from the Huffington Post on the many benefits of kirtan kriya. I do it for 7 mins/day, or occasionally 11 minutes if I'm feeling extra meditative.
This is a video where you can just meditate along with me every day--no explanation, just meditation!
I do the prosperity meditation daily as well, for around 3 minutes, and let me tell you: it works. Money, stuff (clothes, food, books--material goods) and job opportunities flow into your life when you do this daily! Try it! I saw my first results within 3 days and within a week, I was really feeling the change. Love it.
This is a meditation for clearing anger:
This is a meditation for healing addictions. Almost everyone is addicted to something... if you don't have a high profile addiction like one to drugs, alcohol, sex or pornography or nicotine, you likely have a lower profile addiction like one to working, using the Internet, texting, or sugar. Here's the meditation:
This is how to tune out and end your session:
Surprising Side-Effects of Meditation
Two things stood out to me when I began my daily meditation practice. The first was that about three days in, I got acne again for the first time in years. To me, this was a visible proof that my meditation was actively clearing toxins from my body. I also got some canker sores in my mouth for the first time in a very long time.
The other thing that stood out to me as I began a daily practice of meditation was how my meditations seemed to affect the people around me as well--not just myself. For example, when I started the prosperity meditation (har, har), three days into my meditation, my husband was contacted about a new job opportunity, seemingly out of the blue.
Basically, when you start a meditation practice, you don't just bless yourself. You bless your whole family.
Your anger meditation can release anger from yourself, but also your children.
Your addiction meditation can break your own sugar addiction, while also helping your loved one's pornography or drug addiction.
Your kirtan kriya meditation can bring you greater peace, while also increasing the overall peace in your home.
And so on.
Resistance
One thing worth mentioning briefly is the concept of resistance. Sometimes the subconscious mind resists meditation--it doesn't want to process the gunk it's been storing. This resistance can take many forms but basically it comes down to the subconscious mind really fighting you from meditating. One example would be, you start falling asleep every time you try meditating. Or in the middle of your meditation, you get really jumpy or something. Resistance can take many forms. But it is actually a really, really good sign. It means that you are on the brink of processing something big that will really bless your life to get out of your system. So keep going!
Meditate, meditate, meditate!
Conclusion
Me after my morning meditation.
The greater peace you can receive from meditation may not come right away--since meditation helps you process subconscious junk, it can actually be kind of uncomfortable. Your life may get a little uncomfortable as your body and mind begin this processing. You may find yourself dealing with issues you thought you'd overcome, but really didn't. For me, I was blown away by the magnitude of some things that came up in my first 40 days of consecutive meditation. Did I spend some time in tears? Okay, yeah. I did. I had things to mourn and grieve and things to sort out from my past, and getting those out involved some crying and general spiritual discomfort. But it was important to get those feelings and those issues out of my body and my spirit so I could move on.
I've compared this before to giving birth. In order to get that baby out, heal up, and move on and be happy, you have to actually push the baby out. And sometimes that process can be kind of difficult and painful (obligatory link to how I gave birth in my living room, which was incidentally, not that painful or difficult! Still intense, though). But after the baby is born, things are good.
In my observation, it seems that many people would rather spend their whole lives being the spiritual equivalent of 41 weeks pregnant, about to pop thanks to the sheer volume of spiritual and emotional trauma that they would rather keep inside than suffer the pain it would take to let it all go. I must assume that some of this holding onto trauma is due to ignorance about how to let go of it, and some of the white-knuckled grip on the past is insufficient faith that God will take care of everything. But there are answers! And the pain of processing complex emotional, physical, mental, and spiritual trauma is basically nothing compared to the pain and inconvenience of carrying around that baggage on your back for your whole life.
I can't recommend meditation highly enough. I believe it is a tool that should be in everyone's toolbox. Is it better than prayer and scripture study? Uh, NO. Always prioritize those first. Although I will mention that meditation has helped me learn how to study the scriptures better. To me, my scripture study and meditation are linked now.
But if you're already on top of growing your faith in God through daily prayer and diligent scripture study, meditation is a great add-on that will truly bless your life and the lives of your loved ones.
