Taking responsibility says, “I see my part in this, and I know how to create a more desirable result next time.”

This is empowerment.

Self blame says, “I screwed up and I’m going to punish myself for it.”

This is disempowering.

It leads to guilt, hiding, and bottled up emotions that make us feel stuck.

Self blame is actually just a defense mechanism to avoid facing the truth about our role in something, because our subconscious thinks it’s going to be too painful.

But this is a lie that keeps us trapped in a cycle of shame.

The truth is that facing it might hurt for a second, but it’s actually a huge relief to give up the burden we’ve been carrying.

Acknowledging our part in what happened is exactly what’s needed to create a better outcome.

Sometimes our part may simply be that we put up with a terrible situation for way too long, because we didn’t know how to leave, or that we deserved better.

Taking responsibility doesn’t always mean that we forgive someone or welcome them back into our lives.

It does mean taking back the power to create our own life by making different choices.

When we have “messed up,” we know exactly how to improve – if we can understand what we did, without defaulting to self blame.

Self responsibility is a powerful form of self love.

The post Taking responsibility vs. blaming ourself appeared first on Visionary Readings.

This concept, like many others, has been twisted and adulterated by people who haven’t taken the time to understand its true meaning (see also: Mercury Retrograde, the Facebook Algorithm, a lot of Westernized Yoga).

However, underneath this hippie drivel is a profound truth that is worth exploring.

Love and light are, in fact, the key. It’s just not as easy as it sounds.

Our healing and evolution happen when we expand our capacity to receive more energy, more light and more love. Darkness can’t survive the light.

It might seem like we are curing ailments and fixing things that are broken, but at the end of the day, any true path is increasing the flow of pure energy through our entire system.

This sounds enjoyable in theory, but is an incredibly uncomfortable experience.

Love is anything but comfortable.

We experience breakthroughs to the extent that we can withstand the excruciating agony of being loved and lit up more than we’ve known before.

When we hit the edge of how much we can take, and lean into it, we grow.

Sometimes we encounter the discomfort and turn back, because the love seems unbearable.

For example, being seen and loved by a partner – more than we ever were growing up – can trigger subconscious panic, and patterns of self sabotage, and some may even pick a fight, stray, or leave.

It is much easier to continue feeling unloved than it is to be fully loved.

Or when we encounter new levels of success in our career, it can be so unfamiliar that we may unconsciously hold ourselves back and return to our former level of comfort. It’s easier to perpetuate failure than to truly accept a win.

Perhaps we’ve gotten so identified with being sick that being well doesn’t resonate with us anymore. It is very easy to get to this place, and no cure can touch us in this state.

We have to get used to the experience of the love and the light in order to move forward.

It’s simple but it’s not easy.

The best healing modalities are the ones that serve us in this way. They push us to the limits of how good it can get (though it may not occur as good in the moment!), and then hold us through the process of rewiring our systems to normalize this new level of wellness and joy.

Anything else should be closely examined as it is potentially just holding us back.

Telling someone to “let in more love and light” or just see that “we are all One” is completely ridiculous, however.

It takes a heroic amount of courage, strength, and the right support to grow in this way.

It usually begins with Love pushing us off a cliff to take a deep dive into the darkness so we can arrive at a place where we perceive expansion.

This is not for the faint of heart…

But it is so worth it.

(Visionary art by: Manzel Bowman)

The post The True Meaning Of “Love And Light” – Reclaiming The Concept From Spiritual Bypassers appeared first on Visionary Readings.

For the sake of this post, I’m defining addiction as anything we consistently choose instead of feeling uncomfortable, even if it’s not good for us in the long term.

Over the years, I’ve noticed a particular relationship between addiction and life purpose that I’ve found very helpful for myself, and my clients who want to end their addictive behavior and find deeper fulfillment.

I’ve noticed that addictions flare up when we are out of alignment in a key area of our life, and not living in integrity with our truth.

Rather than feel the profound pain of self-deception, many of us reach for a temporary pacifier.

The bigger the chasm between our heart’s clear knowing and our choices, the more we suffer anxiety, depression, and anger, and the more we are tempted to seek relief.

But relief is the antidote of alignment.

Relief is a cover up.

The longer we rest in relief, the further we drift from our true selves because we can’t feel our deepest truth.

The only way to align with our inner compass is to sit in the discomfort.

If we constantly tolerate having addictions, we are accepting an early, living death. We may still be breathing but we are not truly alive. We are going through the motions.

This is because addictions rob us of our joy, vitality and creativity by giving us a quick hit of contentment (or the drama of fighting the addiction) instead of allowing us to see what’s really so and change accordingly. They are an elaborate distraction.

The real cure for addiction is to feel the pain of self denial, of half-living, of thwarted self expression, so we can be adequately motivated to take the heroic steps necessary to get into alignment with our dharma, our true purpose.

The genuine fulfillment available to us when we are in the flow of our dharma is so deeply satisfying that the desire to self medicate with life’s various “junk foods” falls away.

This is why living in full alignment with our own truth can completely cure us of our addictions.

(And for things that are physically addictive or hard wired into our nervous systems, there are myriad modalities to help with that piece).

It’s simple but it’s not easy.

Humans won’t change unless the change appears easier than staying the same.

Most of the time it seems harder to change, so we don’t end that relationship, quit that job, start that business or pursue our passion, because it’s scary and unknown.

We also don’t easily give up our comfortable, addictive behavior for this same reason.

But if we can stop the behavior just long enough to sit in our daily suffering and allow the agitation to eat away our lies, change suddenly seems easier and we find the strength and courage to take that big leap forward, to dive off the familiar cliff into the abyss of the unknown, where all the magic lives.

This is the difference between having a life we are in love with instead of a life we are surviving. It is not a path for the faint of heart but it is worth it.

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When there’s an apparent problem in our lives, especially around health, love or money, most of us employ one of two strategies:

1. Denial: “What problem? Everything is fine!” The issues with this approach are evident.

2. Pathologizing: “I have candida!” “I’m codependent!” “I have money blocks!” The issues with this strategy are harder to spot.

In this second strategy, the problem can seem really BIG and overwhelming, as though it’s going to take years and a Herculean effort to solve. (Please note that I am only speaking about these cases here).

It can feel comforting to label the issue so we know what we are up against, but if the measures apparently required to solve it are drastic, it’s a red flag that there is a distortion in our perception.

By labeling a problem and identifying the solution, we perceive that we are back in control of a situation that had us feel helpless.

Now we can focus on the solution, but in turning our attention to an unending, all- consuming solution, we stop feeling the pain of the problem, and mainly feel the busy-ness of trying to fix or heal it.

This can look like endless cleansing, coaching, reading, advice-seeking, healing sessions, and talking about the issue.

We may have small wins but the problem never seems to go away. We are caught in our very own victim-perpetrator-rescuer drama where we are the victim, the problem is the perpetrator, and the solution is the rescuer.

This can be a destructive loop and it rarely works.

Until we can sit with the discomfort of the problem long enough to arrive at true clarity, we are probably just trying to avoid feeling our pain, which is what will actually have us feel better. Feeling in control of the problem is a poor substitute for fully experiencing the problem.

The pain likely isn’t even what we think it is. I’ve had back pain that was about a relationship that needed to end, and I’ve had money issues that were about my ability to have fun. And I’ve had candida that was actually caused by stress, and exacerbated by cleansing,

Every time I went down the road of trying to fix the problem, I dug myself deeper and deeper into an expensive, time consuming, bottomless pit of needing to do more and more to feel ok.

When I finally stopped and felt the helplessness, the lack of control, i.e. the real, underlying issue, the thing I was in the most denial about and was unconsciously avoiding like the plague, surfaced naturally.

It was always a situation where I knew I needed to change something big in my life but was terrified to do so.

It didn’t require years of healing, it required massive courage, faith, and a willingness to relinquish a piece of my identity I had been gripping tightly.

This was never an easy task, but it was always simple.

What actually worked for me was to make a heartfelt prayer for help and to be well.

What I’ve learned through observing myself and others is that once we’ve glimpsed the true problem and make a deeply aligned prayer about it, we are probably less than a year away from a surprising resolution (though it’s rarely what we think the solution should be…)

Massive transformation is way easier than we imagine it will be. The fact that we even have a particular prayer means that it’s already answered, or we wouldn’t truly have it. We just don’t know how or when.

The key is to avoid the “fix me, I’m broken” paradigm, because we could get stuck there for an unnecessarily long time.

One way out of this cycle is to celebrate small wins and notice the ways we are always one breath away from freedom.

If we turn our attention to the real ways we are getting braver, stronger and wiser, even feeling into the most minor victories can accelerate the manifestation of our prayer, because we begin to cultivate the necessary faith that it will be answered in the best way possible.

This is why feeling our feelings and celebrating our progress are the keys to shaping our reality, to the extent that our free will allows it. (Sometimes we are just on Destiny’s ride and get to inhabit the medicine of surrender, but the same approach is equally effective!)

Some practitioners and healers will deny this truth, insist on giving us and our issue a powerful label, and declare that it will take years of diligent effort to resolve.

I say, do not listen to these people, for they are confused, and complicating reality. They have likely built up a belief structure around this problem that supports their own identity. We do not need to take that on.

I suggest we look deeper. Get honest with ourselves. Feel our hearts. Make a prayer. Cultivate faith. Celebrate. Surrender.

If we focus on the truth, the truth will inevitably emerge.

The post The Problem With Focusing On The Problem appeared first on Visionary Readings.

1 – Do not try to resist the grief. I am either feeling it fully, or it is operating covertly beneath a facade of coping. Resisted grief can show up as lingering anxiety, malaise, stuck-ness, flatness, irritability or anger, or as physical pain. I find it is better to simply grieve and say yes to the pain. I try to remember that it will not last forever, and that the deeper I dive into it, the more quickly it will move through me.

2 – Grief is a raging fire that burns away a piece of my identity, and that’s why I want to resist it. Grief requires that I accept that part of me has died, yet I am wired for survival. Grief means that the story I was living has ended, often without completion, and there is nothing I can do about it. This can be a tough pill to swallow, and I can have compassion for my experience.

3 – The transformation that grief brings is unparalleled, and something greater always rises from the ashes. I may not know what that will be, but I know I will feel more alive in the process. I can point to several times in my past where grieving has culminated in the most priceless and surprising gifts of my life, and this helps me cultivate enough faith to surrender a little more. The deeper into the grief I go, the more capacity I will have for joy. Sometimes, when I manage to truly say yes to the grief, it becomes so intense that it is actually indistinguishable from joy. Grief is my gateway to more life.

4 – It’s crucial to limit distractions and emotionally-numbing mechanisms like social media, junk TV, intoxicants, sugary food so that I can fully feel the grief. I will be more drawn to these things than ever before and I still need to know when to say No.

5 – I need to sit in stillness and breathe… Shake and dance to a song that really moves me… Wail at the top of my lungs, from my toes to my belly and up through my heart and throat… letting it all out and letting my heart break wide open.

6 – I need to nourish myself with especially good food, great company and wise teachings. Some of my favorite books to read in these times: The Untethered Soul, Eat Pray Love, Love Warrior, Red Hot & Holy. I may think that no one will want to be around me when I’m grieving and I will always be wrong about that. It is important to have support.

7 – Sleep is essential but sometimes hard to do while grieving. However, if I make space to grieve in the day, I will sleep better at night.

8 – This is THE time to write and make art. It will be some of the most incredible art I ever create and I will be born anew as an artist.

9 – To grieve is to be human, and is an essential element of being alive. I will return to grief again and again as long as I am breathing.

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I love reading for these people because I don’t do either of those things, but I feel so badly for them, and it brings up a key piece that I want to share about how to choose any guide, coach or mentor.

I’ve worked with a number of coaches and mentors, and I have learned a lot – often the hard way – about how to choose the right person at the right time. I’ve made some very expensive mistakes so you don’t have to.

Here is what it all boils down to: Don’t hire a mentor from fear alone.

Every time I am about to invest money to work with someone new, I always have a little apprehension, from general excitement anxiety to underlying worries about “What if it doesn’t work?” and “What if I fail?”

This is normal.

When we are stepping into something new and big, fear is gonna be there along with a big heaping spoonful of resistance.

However, when we hire a mentor *purely* from a place of fear, we risk placing ourselves in the drama triangle — we are the victim and the mentor is our savior. Before long, when the mentor can’t save us (because no one can – it’s an inside job), they can become the perpetrator who failed us.

If we are only present to thoughts like, “I am out of options,” or “I don’t know what else to do,” and we are feeling low, sad and desperate when we make our decision, we could be operating from fear alone. This is not a good state to operate from because it obscures our truth.

It’s vital then that we feel a big yes in our heart and body about working with the person, in addition to any fear we experience. This is the only way we can ensure we are making an aligned decision.

I find it helpful to get into a better state before deciding to work with someone (this can be a simple as going for a hike or talking with a friend before having an enrollment conversation), to keep checking in with my heart’s true yes, and to seriously ask myself the question, “am I looking to be rescued?”

If I realize, deep down, that I’m just hiring them to avoid stepping into my own power, it’s a red flag. I am probably hiring them to do the very thing I need to do myself. I have done this many times, only to come to the conclusion that I had the best answers in that moment!

When it’s a real yes, I feel lit up and on fire to be working together. I feel validated, more of myself than ever, and inspired to take new actions that allow me to grow exponentially. I feel happy to have invested the money in myself.

When it’s a fake yes, I feel like they don’t quite get me, like I am wasting my time and money, and there is a frustration that they aren’t giving me any new answers. (This is not always the mentor’s fault! It can be, because not everyone is good at coaching, but it’s usually on me for not honoring my truth).

—> There is an important exception to this rule and that is if we are stuck in a destructive pattern, like an addiction that is having adverse effects on our life. Almost no one wants to go to rehab, and the psyche will throw up all sorts of smokescreens and reasons why we aren’t a yes to getting help. If we can get underneath this fog for a moment, that full bodied yes will still be there, but it can be hard to access. In these cases it’s important to find a qualified expert with a great track record for solving this problem, and leap. <—

Even if we feel our yes and hire a mentor from that place, sometimes it still won’t work out. In these cases, the experience of ‘failure’ is what’s aligned for us because it’s helping us grow in a certain way that we need.

…Maybe it reminds us that we have the answers within.

…Maybe it reminds us that we should raise our rates because we are just as good as the mentor!

…Maybe it gives us unexpected wisdom to share with the people we serve.

…Maybe our connection to that mentor will yield sweet fruit down the line.

At the end of the day, the only thing we can really trust in life is our own truth. If we follow that, regardless of the apparent outcome, we will feel like we’ve done the right thing.

I hope this share saves you some time, money and grief! Having a great guide is so vital for our growth but it’s essential to find the right one for us.

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