This model is very powerful for creating change in any area of life however I’m being urged to specifically illustrate how to use it to navigate job loss – as this is a subject that is of real concern to the collective consciousness at this time.

Job loss in particular challenges our sense of security which is a basic human need – however, you will learn through this model, where to place your sense of security so that it can not be threatened by losing your job.

Lets begin by laying out the model (which is a self assessment tool that you can you use to identify which level you are in and what you must release to get to the next level) and then we will talk about where most people in job loss will start and what the most powerful way for them to move through the situation will be.

The first level is Life is Happening to Me. In this stage you feel victimized and helpless…as if you have absolutely no power and that something else has to happen in your external environment in order to make a change. To move out of this stage you have to give up blame.

Life is Happening BY ME

The second level is Life is Happening By Me. In this stage you will feel that you have complete control over everything and that it will happen because you will make it happen. This is the highly driven personal action stage. In order to move out of this stage you have to relinquish control.

Life is Happening THROUGH ME

The third level is Life is Happening Through Me. In this stage you feel that you are here for a reason and that you have a purpose. You have gifts, you ‘re in touch with your Higher Power. You trust that you will get what you need, you don’t even have to try that hard to get it and know that worry just cuts you off from Source. In order to move out of this level you need to release separation.

Life is Happening AS ME

The fourth level of consciousness is Life is Happening As Me. In this stage you feel that there is no separation between you and Spirit and you and others. You show up without the beliefs that keep you separate so you are operating from a perspective of compassion in which you don’t necessarily feel that you need to change others or the environment because you see yourself as an extension of it.

When a person loses their job they are most likely going to start in the Life is Happening To Me, level of consciousness and they may feel like they were just dealt a physical blow.  It is the sense of being attacked by life on an unseen level which tends to create victims of us…in order to move beyond this stage we need to understand that it is not personal, we don’t need to hang the blame on someone or something, we are not really under attack – things are simply changing and we need to learn to flow along with -  instead of resisting that change.  People in general don’t appreciate change, especially change that threatens their sense of security, however all change carries within it opportunities for new growth and provides a path of opening within our lives that is ours to make of it – what we will.   If  we befriend change (no matter what it looks like on the outside) we can use the energy of it to take us where we want to go.

So with that in mind, the next best level of consciousness to move into is Life is Happening Through Me.  Once you are no longer taking it personally, you realize that you don’t need to engage in resistance as a bid for control over your situation.  Getting your old job back and putting everything back the way it was is simply not an available option for you at this time and you start to open to the idea that there might be a good reason for this shift to be taking place and you seek what you can learn from this experience.  Perhaps this was a pretty good position for you, most likely though, you could think of some things you would like to change, new areas of growth you’re interested in pursuing, or situations you’d like to avoid.  As you focus on extracting the learnings – you begin to get clear on what it is that you want to create in the space that vacating your old job has left you.  This space is a great gift – because space is what we need to grow something new.

As you step further and further into the idea of what it is that you really, really want in a job…you begin to see that your old position really wasn’t that great of a match and an excitement about finding something more fulfilling to all the different parts of your self emerges.  This excitement encourages a sense of gratitude to rise up within you toward the original loss as you fully embrace at very deep levels just what an opportunity this is to create a livelihood that allows you to be more authentically who you really are.

From this mental positioning you enter the Life is Happening As Me level of consciousness, fully accepting yourself as the creator and participant of circumstances all working toward your Highest Good.  From this place of ownership, you are able to harness the power of your consciousness into action.

With your knowing in place (like a map before you) you engage the Life is Happening By Me level of consciousness, channeling enormous amounts of energy and enthusiasm into the necessary action oriented steps it will take to get you there.  Confidently creating, your new way of working in the world

So is job loss a disastrous event or an opportunity to work out of your Highest Path and Purpose?  Are we empowered regardless of what is happening on the physical level of our lives?  My answer to this question is….YES, YES, YES!!!

I believe that it is our level of consciousness that determines the answers to these questions…not the actual circumstances that we are experiencing in our lives.  What we think and feel about what we encounter in our day is where we hold our power, when we get the inside to line up with the goals of our physical, outer world needs – we’re pretty unstoppable!!!

This is what I’ve lived in my life and I’ve seen countless clients living it as well.

All my love,

PK

Let me just start off by saying I’ve had a lot of jobs in different industries and I’ve been fired, given a “time out” and told that I had to work from the office or resign just to name a few of the “highlights”…LOL!  I guess this could be looked at as a major catastrophe, or that I had somehow failed.  Closer to the truth was that these were opportunities and they kept me moving in a direction that was more in alignment with who I am.

I was really out of alignment, for example, when I got fired from the Downtown Hilton shortly after I moved to Seattle.  The hotel did not treat people the way I thought they should and their policy of overselling rooms put me in a values conflict every single day that I worked there.  As a result I drug myself to the hotel day after day and couldn’t show up on time to save my life – my inability to be on time was a sign and symptom of how wrong a match this job was for me and so when the manager fired me because I was habitually late there was almost a sense of relief mixed in with my hurt and fear.  I knew I didn’t belong at this place but needed the job and didn’t know what I was looking for.  The motivation to go find something else wasn’t going to come without a little outside help   To some of you this will sound very familiar!!!

I had other experiences that were similar – however, the next example I am going to give you is a little different.

I had a job I loved more than any of the others (up til that point) working for a man I respected in the floor coverings industry when I became pregnant with my first child.  We decided that when the baby came, I would work from at home.  I told him that my husband and I had looked into the cost of childcare and decided that I would need to work at home if I was going to stay in the job.

I was a one woman office whose time spent as a manager allowed me to “mind meld and anticipate needs” it was the big joke with his wife who would come in and ask if he had consulted his brain (me) for permission to place anything on his schedule or tamper with anything else going on in the day to day business of the office.  As you can imagine, being so highly dependent on my skills, my boss wanted to give the working at home thing a go.

Spirit had other ideas for both of us – because neither of us would have made a change as long as we were together.

It wasn’t long before the Higher ups intervened through the office phone system.  The parent company refused to ring the phones over to my home number and my boss who was always on the road was left with no one to handle the phones while he was in the field.  Soon no one could get through and I was given a choice.

He called me in knowing what my answer would be but didn’t feel there was an alternative, he had to have someone for the phones and didn’t have the budget for another salary…I was going to have to come back into the office and daycare my son (which we couldn’t afford to do) or I was going to lose my job.

I felt so trapped and betrayed!  Why was this happening to me?  I wondered, signing my resignation, I stuffed my tears down as far as I could get them to go and wondered if we would make it financially.  While at home with my son I started to explore my interests and eventually started a handmade soap and lotion company.  Two years later, while I was pregnant with my second child that same boss called me to say he had a job that he thought I would be good at.  I asked if I could work from at home and he said, absolutely.

I worked side by side with this man for years and didn’t know anything about his passions.  He was inviting me to help him live them by promoting his family’s Southern Gospel group.  I was shocked that he could sing – and when I listened to the recording I felt my Spirit pull strongly toward the position.  I didn’t know anything about Southern Gospel Music, booking a singing group let alone managing one but before it was all over I would be a marketer, promoter, booking agent, publicity agent and band manager all in one.

I sold my soap company, Elysian Dream, in record time and started working for the group.  Within a few months, Spirit manifested a contact with one of the top 3 recording studios in Southern Gospel Music, a year later my boss and every member of his group took a leap of faith and moved from Washington State to Tennessee, almost a year to the date after their move they recorded a project at the studio with whom we had the contact and I found myself helping them negotiate a 10 year recording contract with the Producer who had been our greatest mentor for the last two years.

After helping my friends achieve their life purpose I realized I had hit on something that resonated deeply within my Being and started exploring myself from the inside out to more fully understand how to manifest this calling outside of the role of a marketer (as Spirit was calling me away from my ego, which was deeply embedded in that aspect of the job).

This experience was the pointer for what I do today – following the passions and purpose of my own Soul.  What looked like loss through the previous experiences was really an opportunity to sync up with something greater – my Highest Path and Purpose.  With each experience I learned and grew and began to understand where my Soul was trying to go.

If I hadn’t been fired and given my other experiences,  I would have been complacent and happy to stay where I was.  However, what looks like a terrible event may just be the push that you need to have the freedom to explore what you really, really want in life because all of a sudden you haven’t got as much to lose.  Many, many of my lightworker friends who were hearing their purpose but were paralyzed like a deer in headlights by the security of their income are facing similar pushes and shoves as the universe urges them to awaken!!!

I wonder if Susan Boyle (the latest unexpected superstar of Britain’s Got Talent) would have auditioned for the show if she had been comfortably employed with her life completely on track?

Susan Boyle – Britain’s Got Talent

Is it scary??? Yes…but it is also exciting and if you breathe into that fear it will transform into an energy that moves you toward the path you are meant to be on!

Nowadays I expect good to come from my storms…how about you?

Joseph Campbell – Finding Bliss

What each must seek in his life never was on land or sea. It is something out of his own unique potentiality for experience, something that never has been and never could have been experienced by anyone else. ~ JC

© copyright Joseph Campbell Foundation 2009

Joseph Campbell was born in White Plains, New York to a Roman Catholic family.  His road to mythology began with an interest in Native American stories as a child, through which he found greater insight into his own faith and a doorway to many others.

Myth became his passion and as he studied it, he began to map out the cohesive story threads that are constant in world mythology and in essence through myth gained insight into the sense of spirit people wordwide share – that drives our human experience.

Joseph Campbell has taught me that ~

Following Your Spirit Allows You to Truly Experience Life

My first exposure to the work of Joseph Campbell came through George Lucas and the orginal Star Wars films when I was about 8 years old.  George Lucas based his script on Joe’s book The Hero’s with a Thousand Faces and Campbell was even a mentor regarding the shape and impact of the story.  This is one of the earliest films that I can remember touching something so deep within me that I could only describe it as my core.  Though I didn’t understand it at the time I would get another opportunity at the age of twelve.

When I was twelve, I ran into The Dragonlance Chronicles and once again my spirit started to stir in a way that was familiar.  Tracy Hickman (one of the co-writers and the lead designer of this fantasy world) also based these books on the Hero’s Journey model.  Two years later, I would begin my first hero’s quest – it would not however, be the last

A hero ventures forth from the world of common day into a region of supernatural wonder: fabulous forces are there encountered and a decisive victory is won: the hero comes back from this mysterious adventure with the power to bestow boons on his fellow man. ~ JC (The Hero with a Thousand Faces)

The Hero’s Journey (Moving Beyond Your Small Self)

Journeying into the Unknown

1. Call to Adventure
   The hero always receives a call to move into the adventure which he/she must answer.  This call represents the unconscious and suppressed impulses of the spirit – and an opportunity for an awakening.  Sometimes these impulses are represented mythically as a dark forest, babbling spring, a great tree, a magical quest, chasing after a magical animal, following unusual sounds, etc.  In my own life it has come through acting on dreams and following intuitive impulses that my spirit has given to me and sometimes I just got swept into the journey by life circumstances seemingly without my consent!
2. Refusal of the Call
   Sometimes the hero chooses to refuse the call.  When he does he usually really suffers and the call passes into its negative form unless he changes his mind.  Walls from which he can’t escape close in around him and he becomes a victim needing to be saved, having failed to activate his own internal power.
3. Helper
   After the hero starts by answering the call (consciously or unconsciously) he will at some point meet someone who gives him some vital item or knowledge that will help him on his quest.  This could be a wizard or sorceress, a little man of the wood, a unicorn, a fairy God-mother or other such supernatural presence.  It could be a magical item, a phrase, or some information about the challenge that lies ahead.  In my own experience many teachers have appeared at this stage – often in dreams and meditations and sometimes as chance meetings and encounters with people that are just too precise and unlikely to be ignored.
4. Threshold Crossing
   In crossing the threshold the hero leaves what is known to him and enters the realm of the unknown.  This is the point where everything changes and the hero encounters dangers that are also bestowers of power.  For me this has often been times in which we have physically moved to new and unfamiliar realms or in which I have faced deep fears. However, your first sexual experience, marriage, children and other rites of passage also qualify.
5. The Belly of the Whale
   This is the final separation of the hero’s known world and self fully into the unknown and is often represented as his or her lowest point.  The experience is often something dark and frightening.  The willingness of the hero to enter is symbolic of their willingness to die to their old self, and their openness toward embracing something new.  In my own life the belly of the whale has had many shapes and forms; depression, alcoholism, confronting abusing situations, being made to face fears, surrendering control, etc.
   The Initiations
6. Tests and Trials
   The hero must overcome a series of tests or trials, through which aid is received from his or her supernatural helpers.  This is an act in which the hero begins to understand and embrace his or her own true nature.  The battle is really with the ego and the defeat of the limited self which often leads to the discovery of hidden abilities or power.
7. Meeting with the Goddess
   The Goddess in the hero’s journey represents an encounter with the Divine Feminine - she is all that lives and all that dies.  From womb to tomb the whole round of existence lives within her.  This is often depicted by the sacred or mystical marriage – representing the hero’s mastery over life through uniting with the Divine Feminine aspect of his or her own nature.  This is when the cycle of rebirth and this ultimate truth comes into full consciousness. Through this cycle of living in a world of inadequacies – there is bliss to be achieved again and again.  I’ve had many impactful encounters with the Goddess, the birth of my children and the death of my grandmothers and a time when she came to me as the Crone to name a few.
8. The Temptress
   The woman as temptress in the hero’s journey represents the distractions of the hero’s own earthly self and the unconscious revulsion he holds toward the acts of life in contrast with what he perceives as his pure Soul.  his encounter with the temptress is an opportunity for him to transcend his own divided nature.  I consistently encounted a male version of the temptress many times in my dreams  until I healed my relationship with my own sexuality.
9. Atonement with the Father
   Atonement with the father really means (at-one-ment).  This is where the hero is required to die to his or her own infantile and immature self as they face the force that holds the most power over their lives, proving themselves worthy to then govern themselves and through these trials, receive the blessings of the world.  Honestly, I am currently moving through this one and it is a BIG transition!
10. Apotheosis
    In Apotheosis the hero recognizes fully the God within – having fully left his or her the attachments to the mother, been delivered up and initiated by the father, died to ego and reborn to spirit they have moved beyond all strife.  This also represents the womb-like period of rest and incubation that precedes the hero’s return.
11. The Ultimate Boon
    This is when the hero achieves the goal of the quest, having been purified by his or her trials, the hero now has the maturity to receive the gift as a proper custodian.
    The Return
12. The Refusal of the Return
    The refusal of the return comes when the hero decides to stay in the presence of the Gods rather than bring back what he has learned for the renewal of his community.
13. The Magic Flight
    The magical flight occurs when the hero has obtained the boon without the blessings of its guardians, a pursuit follows and the hero’s need to escape these supernatural forces initiates the return.
14. Rescue from Without
    Just as the hero needs assistance to get in, he often needs help to get out – or that is to say the world has to come and get him for who having cast off the world is in a hurry to return?  The rescue differs from the refusal in the sense that when the world comes knocking, he agrees to return - having merely been transfixed or delayed by his new found perfect state of being.
15. Return Threshold Crossing
    The return threshold is returning from the world of the divine into the human world, only to find that though they once seemed as opposite as night and day, or life and death only that these vastly different kingdoms are one.  The hero ventures out into darkness where he is beyond our physical sight, has his adventure and then returns from the dimension of the Gods to the world we know.  The hero’s challenge is then to retain and translate his experiences from the deep into something the world can use – for it is difficult to to communicate to people who insist on the exclusive evidence of their senses the message of the all-generating void!
16. Master of the Two Worlds
    The hero gains an equal level of comfort with both inner and outer worlds (represented in myth by figures like Jesus and Buddah) having given up completely all attachment to his personal limitations, idiosyncrasies, hopes and fears and no longer resisting the self-annihilation that is a prerequisite to rebirth in the realization of truth, he exists in a way that is relaxed into whatever may come to pass in him, both worlds living in him with his unreserved consent.
17. Freedom to Live
    As the hero is released from the fear of death through the understanding and experience of his own immortal nature – he is finally free to live without anticipating the future or remorsing the past – he can live fully in the joy of each moment.

I use the hero’s journey as a model for transcendence extracted from myth. I see it as a how-to guide for navigating this experience – passed on to us – through the stories of an earlier time – whispering to our Souls through subconscious imagery and understandings. Joseph Campbell helped me to navigate these experiences with his vast body of work and amazing teachings.

I don’t have to have faith, I have experience. ~ JC

Joseph’s work also gave me the permission I needed to remain on the outside of religion, relying instead on my own personal experiences of spirit as my highest and best authority.

The privilege of a lifetime is being who you are. – JC

I gained the confidence to walk my own path, embracing all faiths I encounter along the way, noticing the beauty and truth of their teachings and using from them, whatever I am called toward, as my own.

Joseph Cambell was a man who understood being passionately alive, coining the phrase “Follow Your Bliss” and speaking tirelessly toward the unseen doors that lie there for us where before there were only walls. His willingness to say yes to the adventure and truly experience life is what makes him a Hero of Healing.

Oh little girl
There are times when I feel
I’d rather not be
The one behind the wheel

~ Depeche Mode

The following outlines a common roadblock toward allowing your Higher-Self to guide your life and provides a process for moving through this resistance…

Do you want help or not?

Most of us think we want guidance…in fact, we ask for it repeatedly to be certain that our request is heard. When asking a service of our Spirit Team, we often hold on to it, out of fear that it won’t get done. By not letting go…we ensure that this is the case, and we are left to wonder why our Guides aren’t working for us.

Understanding Resistance

This bewildering phenomenon is one of the most common forms of self-sabotage that we encounter when working with Spirit. It is subtle and insidious and leaves us wondering why our situation hasn’t changed.

Well, let me ask you this. If you were riding with someone and they told you to take the wheel, but then stubbornly clung to it, continuing to steer the car…could you really drive for them? Wouldn’t your efforts to go this way or that be thrown off by their resistance toward letting go? Would you be confused? Perhaps, you would stop trying as you realize that they aren’t really ready for your help.

Recognizing when you’re holding on

We unconsciously do this to our Higher-Selves and Spirit Guides all of time and while they may stop trying to navigate in a moment like this, they remain by our sides, just waiting for us to release our troubles…and allow them to assist us.

If you have asked for spiritual assistance with something but don’t seem to be experiencing relief, do a quick internal search and notice if there is any part of you that is still holding on. Be with the idea and allow your awareness to scan your body for any tension areas.

The body speaks that which the mind refuses to acknowledge.

An easy way to find them is to start meditative breathing while contracting and relaxing all of your major muscle groups. Using this relaxation technique for contrast, you will be able to identify which areas in your body are not letting go…they will correspond with the part of yourself that does not want to release the issue into the hands of your Higher-Self and Guides.

Internal Explorations

When you are conscious of the part that is hanging on, notice the emotions that are present. Get curious about this operation within yourself, observe with a detached mindset, and allow yourself to accept what you find as simply part of the landscape. Now is not the time for meaning so give yourself the task of simply exploring.

Place your attention on the very center of the physical location of this part. Bring your consciousness into this area of your body and notice how it feels. It will likely make many changes while you give it your attention. Simply be with the changes, going more deeply into yourself with each iteration until you get a visual of yourself as this part. Notice how this you is holding onto your situation, are the hands clenched? Or is this holding on being represented in some other way?

Now notice your Higher-Self placing a reassuring hand upon the you that is holding on. This part of you looks up at your Higher Self and lets go. At the moment of release, step into this other you and experience the support of your Higher-Self and just how good it feels to let go.

Sweet surrender: the bliss of letting go

From this space of peace, observe the larger picture and notice what you’ve learned from experiencing this situation. Notice how grateful you are for this opportunity to receive support and see yourself entering into your current circumstances complete, whole and at peace…with your Higher-Self right beside you, ready and willing to take the wheel.

You decide to relax, and enjoy the ride while you let him/her navigate for a time…looking out the window, you notice that there is a lot to see as a passenger and wonder at what you would have missed, if you hadn’t decided to let go

The real paradox

In reality both you and your Higher-Self are in control…since you are one and the same. Your Higher-Self is simply your highly evolved, spiritual consciousness…but it is still, in essence, who you are. The paradox is, that until you recognize this unity, neither of you is really in control because you can counteract each other’s efforts like in the earlier scenario of two people trying to drive.

Life is a series of contraction and release. The trick is knowing which to do, when.

Navigating life with our Higher-Selves is a kind of dance. A common theme in dance is two partners becoming One and this is the great spiritual lesson of this practice that has evolved in nearly every culture on the planet.

In my coaching and NLP classes we practiced a technique called mirroring. You would find a partner and just move. One person would start and the other would mirror their movements. As you get in sync with your partner, they take over the lead and so it goes, back and forth until you can no longer tell who is leading and who is following…at this point it is simply flow.

I find that in my own relationship with my Higher-Self that this mirroring is how we started the dance. I desired to connect, and so I learned how to “mirror” my Higher-Self. I practiced and practiced until we achieved flow and the lines between us began to disappear.

If you are interested in learning how to “mirror” your Higher-Self, please sign up for my six week Dancing with Your Higher-Self Intuitive Coaching Course. In this program I will connect to your Higher-Self and Guides and download an agenda and homework assignments that are designed to bring you into your own connection with your Spiritual Resources.

As this work comes from your Higher-Self and Guide Team, it will be an act of discovery for us both to see just how your connection with them will unfold. The program consists of six weeks of coaching, one half hour call per week with homework. The price for the program is $150.00.

You may not believe that we are God. That’s o.k., I’m not here to convert you, change your mind, tell you are wrong or to prove that I am right because none of that matters to me in the least…it’s all just mind stuff that serves to distract us from what is real.

Instead, I am here to ask you a very important question and then to offer you one of the most insane and absurdly simple answers to just about any problem. Mastering this pattern, not only attunes us to our full creatorship but also creates within us lasting inner peace.

Start by Questioning Suffering Often

When you find that you are suffering…ask yourself if this is really working for you?
Are you being offered heaven or hell by the thoughts, programs and patterns that your belief systems are generating in this moment?

If your thoughts offer you hell, why not create heaven instead?

Do you think…
I’m being punished for the night we spent together?

l don’t think it’s God who punishes us.
l think we punish ourselves.
Would it not be a comfort to believe…
just for a time…
that we create our own heavens and our own hells?

It would be a comfort.
It would, Lancelot.

Maybe God does not grant you all the comforts you ask of Him…
but offers you others which you refuse to see.
Maybe you should find the comforts He does offer you…
my dear lady, and accept them. ~ The Mists Of Avalon

Creating our heavens requires us to take responsibility for our hells.

Owning the Keys to the Gates of Hell

Step One: Look around and ask, how did I create this?
There are two things that happen immediately when I say this, because of what is implied in this statement. The first is acceptance and the second is possibility.

Surely, if I can create something large and impacting in one direction…it stands to reason that there was a process or a procedure that I used to get there. If I can become conscious of what I am doing that is not working for me…I am in a better position to notice what is missing, what I’m not paying attention to and design a way of simply taking that energy and turning the other way with it.

Step Two: Turn the other way by finding the good.
Ask yourself to find anything that is good and positive about (or as a result of) your situation.

In every set of circumstances in life, you can find opposites. Look for the comforts that are available to you within your problems, see how you might learn from them, how they can help you to grow or how they may in fact be helpful to someone else.

Look for a way to align yourself within the situation. This positions you for acceptance and forward movement by creating space within your problem for new ways of being with it, new thoughts and new emotions.

You are the Kingdom

The Kingdom of God is within you.

When we are at war with ourselves on the inside, the universe lines up our outer circumstances to reflect this to us and it would seem like the entire world is against us. When we comes to terms within, the lightness and ease with which we can move through our inner world follows us out into our physical experience…and everything seems to go our way.

Hell is merely a reflection of the conflict we rage upon ourselves, we create heaven by cultivating inner harmony, congruence and peace. If life is not enjoyable and you lack that peace…it is your responsibility to let go of the struggle, to put down the weapons you have been using against yourself and to make the choice to take notice of the comforts that are all around you.

Accepting Creatorship

No one else is responsible for the life we create. We create with our every thought, emotion and impulse, consciously and unconsciously alike. This is what it means to be a creator…and this is the Truth operating within our lives regardless of whether or not we embrace this viewpoint.

Our power, however, (despite our many fears) actually lies in ownership. When we take ownership of what we create, our creations are of a higher quality…the quality that comes from operating out of our conscious awareness. The more consciously we create the more control we have over our quality of consciousness and the more we grow .

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Understanding the Limitations and Expectations You Have Around Receiving Help

Sometimes we are in obvious need of help but are completely unable to articulate it even to ourselves…these are usually the times when we just wait for someone else to notice our predicament and offer a hand. I call this looking for a mind reader.

In situations when we find ourselves hoping for someone else to save us…we are usually doing so because within that moment we are actually not capable of seeking assistance ourselves and here is the reason why this often happens.

Option Lock

Option lock is a form of tunnel vision that keeps us from seeing or experiencing the various things around us that we could be paying attention to. A good way to visualize it is to imagine someone carrying an item that is too heavy for them down the stairs. It seemed manageable when they began, but pretty soon they are out of breath and it takes every ounce of their concentration just to maintain balance and hold themselves and the item up.

At this point, with all of their attention focused on maintaining their current position they are in an option lock. Unless they remove some of their attention away from maintaining this load…they will have no other course of action available and will literally allow the situation to play out in an unconscious way as they sit down, pinned underneath the items they are carrying until they can breath again.

The obvious course of action to the observing bystander would be to let go. This is not as easy as it may sound (as anyone who has learned to water ski and has been drug face first through 20 or so feet of water while relentlessly hanging on the handles will tell you ). It requires consciousness to make another choice.

So what happens to consciousness in situations like these? Where does it go?

Losing Consciousness

Anytime it takes so much of our concentration to just be with a situation it is difficult for us to direct our consciousness. If you think of your attention like the small beam of light that is produced by a flashlight, then consciousness would be the hand holding the light that ultimately illuminates our surroundings. When consciousness gets stuck, it’s no longer free to move and allow us to explore new options.

In situations that suck up all of our internal resources, we aren’t reserving enough energy to power our consciousness…or in other words to move the light. We are now in a mode that is similar to Star Trek’s many auxiliary power scenarios in which only the areas vital to survival are given any juice. This process is automatically switched on and controlled but just like in the science fiction version of this scene there is always a manual over ride. With our light stuck in the last place we left it…it can be difficult to remember that there is a way out of being on autopilot.

Regaining Consciousness

The first step toward regaining consciousness is always breath. If you breathe deeply for a few moments, you will have taken some of your attention back from whatever situation was absorbing it. This automatically releases us from autopilot and we are essentially once again free to move about the cabin!

Conscious Prayer: Making Well-Formed Requests

It is often at the times when we are in option lock and we loose consciousness that we need prayer the most. Spirit can’t answer unconscious prayers…it requires our consciousness to move the energy of our prayer requests throughout the spiritual realms. This is largely because of a little thing called free-will.

So as stated previously, step one is to breathe. The next step involves a high level of personal observation. Ask yourself, what do I want help with? What will having this help allow me to do or have or be that’s even more important (in other words, why does it matter or what are you trying to get for yourself by making this request)? How will I know when I’ve gotten what I have asked for?

Mind Reading: A Violation of Free Will

When I was a little girl, I had such a special connection with my mom that I was absolutely certain that she knew everything I was thinking. So certain was I of this, that I began to think I no longer needed to tell her anything about what I wanted. One day, through a great disappointment I discovered that she could not, in fact, read my mind. My wants and ideas had become too complicated for her to anticipate and I was going to have to learn to speak up and state what I wanted.

I think it works with spirit similarly. When we are in the beginning stages, what we want is usually connected to our basic needs and spirit always takes care of us in this way. As we grow beyond basic needs however…we’ve outgrown what spirit can automatically do for us and it is time for us to start directing the resources around us so that we get exactly what we want.

As much as we wish that spirit would sometimes just read our minds and take over our responsibility to govern ourselves within this universe, we must understand that spirit would never do anything to impede our gifts and/or power…that is why we have free-will.

We’ve been given consciousness for a reason…it is the power and responsibility inherited to us by our Creator Source…and it is our job, here in this earth experiment to learn to use this connection to create beauty, passion, purpose and joy within our lives

So if you catch yourself looking for a mind reader, realize quickly that the better way lies in empowering yourself instead…spirit is right there…ready, willing and waiting to fulfill your conscious requests!

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