We are all creatures of habit. We find routines that suit us and get stuck going around and around in them. We’re also encouraged to fill every waking moment with commitments, and when we do have spare time in which to rest, we spend it staring at screens rather than looking within.
This post is directed solely to the givers of the world. The takers, who enjoy letting others pick up their slack, are excused.
Givers can easily get stretched so thin, they snap. Their self-imposed responsibilities pile up until the mountain crashes down around them. Making space is all about recognizing you’re carrying too much, and deciding to do yourself the favor of setting some things down.
Some things we take on are: relationships (friendly, family, and romantic), jobs, goals, hobbies, missions, and habits. One of the best gifts you can give yourself is to stop, scrutinize what you’ve (possibly unwittingly) taken on, and making the effort to recognize what’s making you miserable rather than fulfilling you. Once a cause of misery is identified, take a magnifying glass to whatever excuses justify its existence in your life. Of course, sometimes we need to endure a commitment that satisfies a basic need, even when it makes us miserable. But even in those cases, it’s crucial to be on the lookout for exit ramps. An exit ramp would be an opportunity to divert course in a different, less miserable direction.
Stop wasting your energy on things that don’t serve you. Stop using excuses to prolong unhappiness. Stop filling your moments with empty diversions, noise, and pain. Figure out what’s sucking you dry and detach from it, even just as an experiment.
Make space in your life by letting go of what you no longer need. New, good things can’t enter your life if there isn’t space for them. You’ll never know what you’re missing out on if you don’t allow the chance for change to happen.
Your health benefits greatly when you have space to live and breathe more comfortably, without a mental stockpile of things that “need to be done”. With space, there’s more chance to go out, to move, to relax, and to rediscover what stimulates you. When we stop looking outward, trying to satisfy the expectations of others, we give ourselves permission to look inward instead to better understand who we are, what we really need, and what we most want.
A small thing that is great at beginning to create space is meditation. It provides small amounts of peace and quiet where we can clear mental noise and tune in to our intuition. Deep down, you know what it is you really need, but it’s impossible to hear that voice if the noise from things around you are always drowning it out. A great habit to get into is to meditate for fifteen minutes a day, just to reconnect with yourself and take a time out. The more you get into the practice of stopping to listen and observe your own instincts and emotions, the more aware you’ll be of everything going on around you, and the best way forward.
The toxic people in our lives tend not to like it when we make time for ourselves. The more time you devote to self-care, the less time you’re spending with them. You don’t need anyone’s permission to take care of yourself. No one is ever served by you playing the martyr, killing yourself for the benefit of someone who’s capable of doing more but just chooses not to. There are a lot of people in this world who use those closest to them to sate a need, fill a void, or avoid doing work. Don’t fall for their traps. It’s not beneficial to them or yourself to enable their nonsense. The more loving act is to give them the chance to do their own heavy lifting for a change. They will never progress or find their own happiness until they do.
And sometimes, we keep ourselves busy with things that don’t deserve our time or energy because we’re simply scared or uncomfortable with the idea of venturing into new territory. In these cases, just remember, you’ll never know what you’re missing out on unless you give it a chance. Make space for the impossible, the miraculous, and the wonderful—it’s the only way to invite it into your life.
This subject is a phenomenon that has kind of taken me over. Fair warning, I can go down the rabbit hole quickly with this one! This post is just intended to help provide a general understanding of the subject. I’ll aim to cover more in depth later on.
I’ve been experiencing synchronicity to an increasing degree for a year or two now, and have been eagerly researching it ever since. Déjà vu is the more familiar aspect of this phenomenon, but it’s in the same family as synchronicity. I think of déjà vu as step one. Synchronicity is step 2 and once it starts, if you pay attention to it and don’t dismiss it, it will never really go away. It’s also a great way to stay in tune with your own life plan, and receive ongoing guidance from your Higher Self and your Guides. Step 3 would involve things like a strengthening intuition, clairvoyance, telepathy, etc.
Déjà Vu
Déjà vu is a French term describing the feeling that one has lived through the present situation before. Déjà vu is a feeling of familiarity and déjà vécu (the feeling of having “already lived through” something) is a feeling of recollection.
There are a lot of ideas. Your Higher Self may be contacting you, telling you you’re on the right path and attempting to trigger a spiritual awakening in you.
It could be an echo reflecting our Soul plan. We plot out our goals for our life before we incarnate, so you could be remembering aspects of this journey from that time before your life began. Your Higher Self has this knowledge readily at hand, always.
It could also be a sign of clairvoyance, a remembered dream of future events, or even a briefly-surfacing memory of a past life.
Basically, it’s a great thing! When this happens to you, tune into it. Listen to your feelings rather than your thoughts. Your emotions and intuition are what link you to your Higher Self and Guides, NOT your thoughts (those are driven by the mind/Ego/personality). Trust your “gut” and let go of your inner skeptic. What is there really to lose?
If these signs are ignored, there’s no real harm done. But you’re choosing to miss out on something wondrous that can only add joy and contentment to your existence. Why limit yourself when you have the option to expand your happiness and your awareness of our world? If you choose to ignore, this signals that you aren’t yet ready to “go there”, but you will absolutely have the chance to make a different choice later.
Synchronicity
This is a term that came into popular use by Swiss psychotherapist Carl Jung.
Synchronicity refers to the simultaneous occurrence of events which appear significantly related but have no discernible causal connection.
– English Oxford Dictionary
Synchronicity is something that will add a persistent, “well that’s weird” to your days. I liken it to being made aware of a glitch in the matrix. No matter where you are or what you’re doing, you’ll see repeating number patterns on clocks, dashboards, license plates, billboards, computer screens, etc. You’ll also have ideas, names, places, topics, etc. showing up repeatedly around you, from various sources.
Numerical Synchronicity
Simply put, this means seeing repeating numbers or number patterns (also known as Angel Numbers) in what feel like intentional and persistent ways. Some powerful Angel Numbers are: 1111, 222, 333, 555, 1212, 1001, 911, etc. A quick Google search of any number pattern + “meaning” or “angel number” will provide you with possible answers.
When you begin experiencing this, certain numbers will keep showing up in the strangest places: the clock in your car, the time readout on your work computer, the exercise bike at the gym, the sign you see as you’re pulling into the grocery store. It will be all around you, big and small, and will feel like something you should notice, rather than a fluke.
When this first started happening to me, it was only a couple of times a day. As time passed and I started to pay more attention, looking up what certain numbers meant, it increased more and more. It got to the point where I wondered if I was somehow making myself subconsciously look for the patterns. So, I stopped “trying” to see them. I stopped looking at clocks so dang often.
And you know what happened? I started to see them more! At this point, I can’t even count the number of numerical synchronicities I see in a day. Obviously, it happens more on days I’m around screens and civilization rather than hiking in the woods without my phone.
I find the numerical version of this phenomenon comforting. It feels like I’m surrounded by reassurances, and reminders that I’m never alone, that I’m loved and supported in ways I can’t even fathom.
Event Synchronicity
Rather that numbers, this is when other things repeat in your awareness. It could be anything like songs, names, places, topics of conversation, etc. Somehow, this phenomenon can feel more startling and stranger than the numerical version. The skeptical part of your brain can kind of explain seeing repeating numbers, but there is no logical explanation for when anything else keeps repeating around you.
A couple examples from my very recent experience:
My husband and I were working in the garden outside our house and the topic of the Brady Bunch randomly came up in conversation. Right at that moment, our daughter came out to join us and was in the middle of singing the Brady Bunch theme song, telling us, “I can’t get this song out of my head!” All of the windows/doors had been closed (we’re shameless A/C addicts), so there’s no way she could have overheard us, and we don’t exactly constantly discuss the Brady Bunch!
Just the other day, hubby and I were discussing news about someone in our lives via Google Chat—let’s call them “Gideon”. I’m also a shameless advice column addict, so I’d opened a new browser tab with a link to a new column to read right before hubby’s chat message popped up. As I finished replying to hubby, I switched tabs and saw the advice column was about someone named “Gideon”.
Taken alone, these may not seem very impactful, but when things like this keep happening multiple times a day, every day, it adds up to a lingering certainty that something is going on in an intentional way. It becomes impossible to ignore. The patterns stand out and everything seems to be tied together in a broader way that we can only barely begin to see.
Why is this happening?
I believe the Universe is alive, that it is the grand Creator spirit of which we are all reflections. It’s where our Soul-stuff comes from and we are always connected to it. It is us and we are It. The physical world is created by this grand spirit to flex its creative muscles and experience life.
Synchronicity is the Universe Itself reaching out to us, as a living Being. When we awaken spiritually, or even just begin to, synchronicity may start to happen. If you pay attention to synchronistic events, welcome them, and strive to understand them rather than brush them off as mere coincidence, the Universe will notice. It will begin to reach out to you more and more as way of opening doors within you to the greater reality most of us are too blind to see. The idea of this is so thrilling—that the Universe itself sees us, understands that we see It too, and then consciously reaches out to connect with us directly on the most personal level.
If you begin to see synchronicities and ignore them, or don’t follow through on where they’re trying to lead you, they will taper off and stop. The Universe will see you aren’t ready, and will wait to try again either in this life or future lives.
If you want to tune into your synchronicities, I urge you to do more research on the subject. Pay attention to what the synchronicities are, and WHEN they happen. What specifically were you thinking about or doing at the time? They might be messages to encourage you to follow down the path you’re on, or to trust in the idea you’re considering in that moment. It can also be helpful to meditate/pray and open your heart to those guiding you. The more you ask for signs, the more you will receive.
Fun bonus: Synchronicity can be contagious! If this phenomenon latches hold of you, those who you love most may also start experiencing it too. Shortly after I started experiencing them, my husband and daughter started to experience them as well.
Disclaimer: This applies to everything on this blog, but especially this post. These are my personal strategies and opinions. Take or leave as you wish.
Fear comes from Ego, aka the mind. It’s not real. Knowing it’s not real doesn’t always help at all, because it feels real to us, and that’s enough. We must always feel our emotions as they occur—it’s the best way to get past them and keep moving forward—but we must also strive to release them rather than cling. It is a choice we make, whether to hold on or to let go. Give yourself permission to let go. Do yourself that kindness. You deserve it! So, feel your fear, but then try to understand it. Using rationality will set you on the right path to overcoming fear’s mental projections.
1. Realize Nothing Can Hurt You
This is just a single life of many that we’ve experienced. When we die, we will return to our true home, surrounded by an ecstatic love and peace, where we exist as immortal energy beings connected to the Source that we originated from.
I tend to think of life on Earth like a cosmic video game with really awesome graphics, but a tragic lack of a save or pause feature. Right now, we’re in the game. We’re on a mission, determined by our Soul contract. When we die, we’ll return to our home, surrounded by love and our soul group, immersed in happiness and peace beyond imagining. There are not words big enough for this feeling, or how glorious it is.
Therefore, it’s not actually a tragedy to die. We’re better off on the other side than we are on Earth, in countless ways. The school of Earth for Souls is a game set to ‘difficult mode’. When we get to leave, it’s a relief. We get to be done, and to rest.
So, if death isn’t the end, what about the pain of dying? Studying NDEs will show you that when close to death, our Souls can leave the body before it happens. We jump out to avoid the pain we sense coming. We’re still tethered to the body at that point, so we can’t roam far, but we’re spared the pain itself.
And pain that doesn’t result in dying? Yes, we do feel that, but all experiences are a direct result of karma. You may be atoning for negative karma accumulated in this life or past lives. There is no escaping karma. Fighting your karma actually will generate more negative karma. If you experience pain, let it come and let it go. Look for the lesson behind it. I promise you, it’s there, trying to show you something. If you figure out the lesson, you will graduate to the next one and leave the pain behind. Of course, no one wants to be in pain, but we don’t come to Earth to be coddled and shielded. We chose to experience this difficult world in order to evolve and grow. You wouldn’t have signed up for the ‘game’ if you didn’t want to play.
2. Exorcise Your Demons
We incarnate to learn specific lessons. In other words, we are here to exorcise our own demons. The parts of us that need healing are in the spotlight. We’re made to face our flaws head-on, over and over again. There are patterns to it. We circle around these flaws in spiraling ways, the lessons growing more intense and daunting the more we fail to learn them. Eventually, we are all pushed hard enough to the center that we simply can’t avoid learning from our mistakes any longer.
So, identify your demons. Look right at your flaws, and forgive yourself for them. Love yourself for your whole being—flaws and all. See the reasons why you behaved the way you did, and then make different choices toward healthier directions. We always have a choice. You can love yourself to a healthier state. Love ALWAYS conquers fear. Believe in your abilities. Forgive mistakes. Move forward with strength.
3. Focus on You
If your fear involves other people—as in their emotional response or behavior—know that you are not responsible for anyone but yourself. You are not responsible for managing anyone’s feelings or actions. The expression about securing your own oxygen mask before helping others applies in all situations. Do what you need to do for YOU, and then go from there.
4. Let Fate Be Your Driver
I’m a strong believer in fate, and that we’re all here to fulfill Soul contracts, with specific goals for our personal growth and/or ways we can contribute to the greater good. By believing this, it allows us to sit back and take a more relaxed approach to life and its challenges. If something in our path is meant for us, know that we have the needed tools to face it hard-wired into who we are. If something isn’t meant for us, we will manage to avoid it.
One bonus is that if you DO manage to avoid an obstacle you’re dreading, and you ARE meant to face it eventually, it will absolutely come around to you again for another go. Remember, life is a great spiral. Our lessons always repeat until they are properly learned.
5. Facing the Fear
This might seem self-explanatory, but I know first-hand that we all tend to build up our fears in our heads, so that they seem much scarier than they actually are. Sometimes, the only way to get past a fear is to face it head-on and see what we’re really dealing with. It helps us get outside of our imagination and back into what is actual.
I’ve had moments in my life where I had no choice but to face fear. When my brother suddenly passed away from a slip and fall accident, there was a huge part of me that wanted to run from all of the end-of-life things that were happening. I did choose to avoid seeing him face-to-face in the ICU when he’d been declared brain-dead and had a large portion of his skull removed. I was simply too afraid of having that image of him as my final memory.
I was also afraid of facing things like the wake and the funeral itself. There was a lot of family drama around the whole thing, due to ongoing toxic relationships and unfortunate circumstances with his almost-ex-wife. But I was close to him, and wasn’t at all prepared to say goodbye to a healthy 33-year-old who I loved more than words can say. Was I as afraid then as I’ve ever been? Yes. Did I have to face it anyway? Yes! And you know what? I got through it. I got emotional and nothing made sense for a while, but that experience made me strong in ways I could have never predicted. You won’t know how strong you truly are until you lose someone from your primary circle of loved ones—those you interact with nearly every day. My love for him continues, and I send him love constantly. I’m thankful for the experience, even if it meant losing him in the physical world. I know he’s still with me in the ways that matter. And after losing him, nothing really seems so scary anymore.
There are other times when we can get ahead of fear by taking it on quickly rather than letting it linger and fester in our minds. This happens to me a lot, where my dread of something, like having to call someone I don’t want to talk to, threatens to grow way out of proportion. Forcing myself to make the call and get it over with helps me see, quickly, that my imagination doesn’t always match up to reality. It’s worse in my head than in real life. Only experiencing that fact shows it’s true. You’ve got to just take the plunge to know how deep the water truly is.
6. You Are Not Alone
We are always surrounded by our guides/angels/loved-ones. Always. I’ve never had a moment in my life, no matter how bad things got, where I felt truly alone. It’s not something I can really explain—it’s a feeling. When I was being actively abused, I still felt seen and supported by those not physically present. When I gave in to hopelessness, I was shown the way forward. I KNOW we’re not alone, and I’ve been given evidence it’s true. I’ve had spiritual interventions occur when my doubt in myself got carried away. The key is to keep an open heart. Trust the unexplainable and follow your heart’s intuition. If you reach out to those you love, to your faith in goodness and rightness, you will feel a response. You just have to remain open to it. Just for a moment, let go of fear and grasp hope.
Whether you see this or not, I can promise you that there is not a moment in your long life where you are abandoned. If you need help, all you need to do is ask. This is true of those alive and surrounding you in life, and also of your spiritual support. Humbling ourselves and reaching honestly for love, comfort, and guidance is always met with an answer. It might happen through emotion, or signs, or dreams, or in small miracles. If you need additional strength in order to get past an approaching hurdle—ask. Ask those in your life, and ask through prayer. You will be amazed by the response.
It’s our supreme job in this world, these lives, to act with love and compassion. Do no misunderstand that directive and think that means we must be weak and bend to things like fear, anger, guilt, or jealousy. Sometimes, the most loving act we can choose for those in our path is to say, “No.”
When a young child reaches for a hot stove, we tell them, “No!” and block their hand. That is a loving act. We’re able to prevent their injury and to teach them how to make better choices to protect themselves.
When a teenager or young adult falls victim to addiction in the form of smoking or drugs, their parents have the ability to say, “No,” by removing the child’s access to money that enables them to fund their new habit. They might say, “I will fund your schooling, room and board, but no, I will not give you any money for cigarettes or drugs.” This empowers the child to make a better choice. They can either choose to work a job to earn the money to fund their own habit, or they can decide that’s too much effort and use that as motivation to quit.
On the broader, world stage, someone like Donald Trump has been surrounded by money and power his whole life. Those are his addictions. Without them, were is he? What is he? It would be a loving act to remove his tools of manipulation and control in order to give him the opportunity of clarity and self-reflection. Take away his yes-men and means to hide from us as well as himself, so that he can see Truth. By holding him accountable for crimes already committed, karma works to create balance once again—not out of spite or anger, but love.
In my own life, I’ve dealt with manipulation from my parents, who I eventually discovered through much trial and error, are incapable of seeing me as anything more than a tool to gain themselves power and control. They strive endlessly to make me smaller in order to make themselves feel bigger. This reflex is like an addiction to them, and they’ve surrounded themselves with enablers to shield themselves from consequences. My loving, “No,” took the form of removing myself and my family from their grasp, so that they can no longer manipulate us.
There are times, as fallible humans, where we are incapable of making the better choice for ourselves. For one reason or another, the wrong choice is “easier”. We lose ourselves to addiction and fear. It is NOT the loving choice to see someone you love—who is incapable of making the better choice for themselves—and enable them to keep making that choice. By preventing them from feeling the consequences of their own mistakes, you are only helping them incur more negative karma AND incurring negative karma yourself. You are choosing to remain stuck in a spiral of negativity and pain that will only keep increasing its effects until one or all of you are forced to make a healthier choice.
You can choose to spare yourselves and your loved ones this pain. You can choose, right now, to stop helping manipulative people and to instead say a loving NO.
We hurt ourselves out of fear that we’re not good enough, or worth enough. We hurt others for the same reason. The fear causes us to lash out like panicked animals. There is strength in standing firm for the loving choice, and in helping those we love stop metaphorically burning their hand on the stove.
I had a really fascinating thing happen last night while dreaming. I felt myself waking from deeper levels of sleep, and I kept repeating a phrase to myself, as if in order to remember it later. The phrase was ‘fractal mapping’, but applied in a certain context.
“A fractal is a never-ending pattern. Fractals are infinitely complex patterns that are self-similar across different scales. They are created by repeating a simple process over and over in an ongoing feedback loop. Driven by recursion, fractals are images of dynamic systems – the pictures of Chaos.”
Some examples of fractals are sea shells, snowflakes, lightning, ferns, broccoli, peacocks, pineapples, crystals, mountain ranges, trees and leaves, shorelines, rivers, sea urchins, and sea stars.
What about Fractal Mapping? What is it? How does it apply to our world?
“It is the underlying fractal structure of geographic features, either natural or human-made, that make reality mappable, large-scale maps generalizable, and cities imageable. The fractal nature is also what underlies the beauty of maps.” – Bin Jiang, Cornell University Library
Distilled into plain language then, fractals are repeating patterns—simple and complex at the same time. They are something relatively simple, repeated over and over and over again, to create a larger pattern. When you closely observe the pattern, you can discover its building block at the heart of the chaos.
When seen in physical states in nature, fractals are indeed beautiful. I’ve always loved to see how elements of our world can be built in these ways that are perfectly orderly and pleasing to the eye at the same time. And the end result takes an endless variety of shapes and form.
But what about how fractals can apply to non-physical reality?
In my dream, I knew fractal mapping could be applied to how we approach stressful times in our lives. We have all experienced moments of profound stress, when we feel overwhelmed by everything we’re expected to cope with at once. The key to enduring these moments, according to this dream, was to apply fractal mapping to understand the basic building blocks of our unique manifestation of stress—the single leaf of the fern, or the single segment of the sea shell. Take the smallest part of your cause of stress. Distill it down to its most basic components.
It is possible. Patterns appear in our lives as well as in nature. We repeat the same behaviors ourselves. We get stuck in the same cause and effect loops until we learn from our mistakes and correct them. For example, if we are enabling someone else’s poor behavior, cleaning up their messes so that they don’t have to, we will get suck doing so over and over again until the exhaustion overcomes us. Our frustration with the situation builds and builds until our discomfort—the effect of our choice to enable—reaches a breaking point.
Now, it’s your job to figure out what specific choice you are making that’s building your fractal pattern of stress. When you take it all apart, what’s repeating?
Take that thing. That small thing. Find a way to change THAT. Discover a way to make a different behavioral choice to help yourself escape your fractal pattern of stress.
You can ease your monstrous stress load by using fractal mapping to understand the nature of YOUR reality.
As I came out of my dream, lifting up to more shallow levels of sleep, I kept repeating the phrase fractal mapping to myself, over and over—another fractal—in order to remember it. I honestly knew nothing about fractals until this morning, when I did research upon awakening. This can be a tool to help yourself. To HEAL yourself. You can conquer your self-made mountains. You can break them down to their smallest parts. Understand the pebble and the whole mountain will crumble.
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