“Sometimes your joy is the source of your smile, but sometimes your smile can be the source of your joy.”
~ Thich Nhat Hanh, Buddhist Monk, Peace Activist and Author

As you walk a deliberate path of awareness, opening yourself to your higher nature and a deeper connection with the waking and non-waking worlds, you develop an increased sense of compassion and sensitivity to the needs and vibrations of your own spirit and of other living beings.

You also may find that this increased sensitivity manifests itself in unexpected ways. Perhaps you begin to experience psychic abilities, reading the thoughts right out of your loved ones heads, only moments before they are spoken. Perhaps you are becoming more attuned to nature, knowing what the weather will be without needing to consult the news or getting “warning” feelings just before a large natural occurrence such as earthquakes and floods. Perhaps you simply find yourself unable to hear about, or witness images of, human suffering, on large and small scales, without bursting into tears or getting tense in your body.

If any of this sounds familiar to you, you are not alone. Quite the contrary, you are experiencing a place in your spiritual awareness that is common to seekers and those who walk the path of deliberate ascension or self-development. For much of my life my sensitive nature has been a source of both frustration and suffering, sometimes for me and sometimes for those around me. Being aware on a spiritual level may put you at ease while putting those around you on edge, making them feel as if the slightest conflict, criticism or stress will cause you greater upheaval and upset than it would cause them. It can be difficult to understand and more difficult to embrace, both from within and without.

By no means an expert, I nevertheless have found some tools and approaches that seem to benefit both myself and my loved ones, whether they are folks who embrace spiritual awareness or not.

My number one piece of practical advice is a simple one, yet may be hard to implement as it can require some level of sacrifice and change on your part. It is to surround yourself, at all times if possible, with positive and uplifiting messages. This can be as easy as posting uplifting quotes on posters around your home or as involved as limiting what books, newspapers and television programs you expose yourself to.

This approach works and will benefit you as much as you take the time to focus on it. It will not lessen your sensitivities. It will lessen your distractions and allow you to focus on the inner peace and human compassion that you have within you. In the process it may just help to clear some mental clutter from your loved ones as well.

But, for you to free yourself of all negative messages, you must also be willing to free yourself of negative entanglements and relationships. Anything that makes you feel more negative than it does positive, be it a job, a family connection or a personal habit, is something that you would do better without, both energetically and psychologically.

What makes a zen master impeccable? It is their absolute dedication to the path of spiritual peace which they have chosen to walk. Nothing else is paramount to it. Your own peace is no less sacred and must be afforded the same reverence and preeminence if you are to use your awareness and its gifts to the best of your abilities.

Some may call this self-indulgence, and many have labeled it “escapism.” Yet those are their words for their external understanding (or mis-understanding) of something that is a deeply personal, internal experience. What bliss one follows comes from within, and any tool that allows more peace to flow into the world, through each individual’s free will, is a tool that is worthy of being tried. Peace is in every step, if the one walking the path chooses to embrace it.

Some ways that I have chosen to surround myself with positive messages:

1. There is no television in my home. We choose our viewing selectively, purchasing or downloading movies, documentaries and news programs that we feel attuned to and enriched by.

2. Our phones, generally internet based, often are not set to ring but, instead, go to voicemail, where messages and their energy can be accessed at times we feel are appropriate.

3. Family members and old friends who live in a loop of self-created negativity or who are critical of our beliefs/relationship/diet/lifestyle are no longer contacted or communicated with, but have been let go with a peaceful and loving heart to follow their own bliss as they choose. Our caring for them is not lessened, though not all of them may see it this way.

4. Songs, books, artwork etc., that have negative undertones or bring up negative memories, are being slowly removed from our walls/iPods/bookshelves etc…

5. Foods which lead to ill health, tiredness or gluttony (Mmmm, pasta…) have been minimized, though not ruthlessly axed, in our diets.

6. When myself, or my lovely husband, have a negative thought, regretful or otherwise, the other does their best to bring them out of it. We remind each other of our positive intentions, our true existence as a divine piece of the Universe and the power of positive thinking, (ie. The Law of Attraction.)

7. I try to spend some time every day in meditation, whether by breath, mantra or visualization.

8. I am aiming to read, or listen to, the soothing words of a monk, guru, priestess or wise person for a few minutes every day. On the days that I do this it often sets the tone for the ensuing hours.

What experiences have you had with increased sensitivity and bringing positive messages into your everyday life? Do you have more suggestions?

“Peace comes from within. Do not seek it without.”
~Buddha

Abandon all delusion and allow yourself to feel the true nature of your being. You are light, once and always. You are all light and only light. That is the truth of creation and being. What is light is also dark for light IS dark incarnate. From darkness came creation and all creation is but forms of light.

Peace is attainable within by your admission that all ambition and desire is a falsehood, a set of clothes that the soul wears while in this limited physical form, for however brief that form lives. But all clothes may and must be discarded in order for the truth of your freedom to permeate your existence and for the original naked nature of your soul to return to its place at the forefront of your being.

Grasp only onto a knowledge if it continues to serve this ultimate goal. Let go all perceptions of the self to which you hold dear for they are simply manifestations of this clothing which keeps you from true harmony and peace with your fellow travelers on this spiritual journey.

This life and its self are temporary rest stops, brief obstacles on the climb within a greater journey and the ultimate destination.

Guises worn by yourself and others fall away and crumble of their own accord at all times. Why should you wait for destruction of your preconceived ideals to descend from outside of you and set you free in shock and pain when you can choose now to destroy the strength and falsehood of these guises willfully, with love and acceptance.

Hope is tied in all ways, not merely to belief, but to the knowing that we are spirit and raw creation. We are light and from light all things energetic and material are born. Thus as light we are the ultimate creators of our own form, our own prosperity, our own destinies.

Look to nothing outside of yourself for proof of your true nature. Look for nothing outside of yourself for the true nature of your godliness. Look for nothing outside of yourself for your heart’s desires to manifest. Look within for the true source of both abundance and scarcity, heath and illness, joy and suffering.

You are connected at all times to the magnificent and endless divine from whence all that is has sprung, and in your voice is its words. Listen to yourself and you are indeed listening to the council of the All God which you so often seek. The creator is you and you are your best guide.

Fear nothing outside of yourself for all that is without is also within you. All creation comes from one and is one, hearing many voices of the one voice within. All beats are the same beat, all drums beat by one hand.

Collective creation is the savior and will at all times, in all ways, prevail above the perceived pattern of collective destruction.

When can one individual make any difference except to sing deep into the hearts of the souls and true light of others? No change ever came without this authentic song being sung.

Speak into the ears and you will be rewarded with ignorance. Speak into the eyes and you will not be seen. Speak into the ego and await the slamming of a door, but speak into the true spirit of another and there will be a great awakening such as no painter could ever paint, no composer could ever play and no songsmith could ever croon.

When all seems despair laugh out loud at your arrogance and your innocence for you can never create that which is not in harmony with the will of the universe. You cannot destroy that which is deemed worthy to live. You have all of the power that the All God and the light within you possess and yet you have no power at all.

See the truth in this and you will see that greatness with which you have been endowed, which you have chosen to incarnate here and now in order to experience. Only your kind, in your time can create the ultimate light, the ultimate joy, the ultimate prosperity.

No roadblocks stand before any of you and when you see them, do not dwell for they are merely an illusion. A folly. Admire them and then giggle at there simplicity as you would with any folly…knowing that it does not belong, that it is not what it seems and that it was built, though beautifully, for nothing more than to deceive the eye, to trick the mind into acknowledging its solid, realistic existence.

We are going now but will return with more for you, for your guidance, your reworking, your reawakening and your actualization.

You are the only truth, the only light and you are all one.

Go now and enter into the contract of your soul, the agreement that you are indeed spirit and that all else is but a tool, a learning tool and a trick of perception…to be seen, accepted and released back into the great, dark creative ether from which all light and life has come.

Peace.