Working With Healers

Dear Julie,

So much of what you have written about I relate to very deeply. It is so helpful to read what you have written as well as to share with others through this blog, this experience of transformation.

My question today is – I see two different healing practitioners. Though I have a deep relationship with each of them and share my spiritual journey with them – at this time of increased difficulties, where it appears that I am doing worse instead of better, it is hard for me to know how to share more fully what if feel is happening and that I trust this is a deep transformation of my whole being.

It would be helpful if you have anything you could share about this. -- Michaela

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Dear One,

There are many people who can understand the intense nature of the transformation process, but not all who are healing practitioners have actually undergone change at this level - the physical/energetic level. Many are working with the consciousness aspect but have not yet become involved with the physical.

Nevertheless, it is not necessary that a practitioner whom you work with understand from their own experience what you are doing. What is necessary is that they trust you and that they trust your trust in the absence of their own understanding. Those who are choosing an alternative path of healing are often engage in the practice of respect for differences, and so even without understanding, they can be willing to trust your inner knowing if you do.

In reality, it is not something that anyone can know for or about another. Inner guidance is unique to each individual. And so your trust in yourself and your guidance must be enough to be the basis for a relationship in which you feel honored on your own journey. If you do not feel so honored, then you must consider the matter of whom you are working with for respect is very important in working with another.

A practitioner does not have to agree with you in order to honor your perspective or in order to help you. Each has their area of expertise and can be helpful within that domain. But they need to accept the potential validity of your point of view, despite their lack of understanding. This is the foundation for a relationship of trust and there is no other.

Blessings - Julie Redstone

Remaining Oneself

All you can ever really be is yourself, no matter what you do and no matter where you are, for the entire world is interacting with you as you are in each moment.

Nevertheless, it sometimes feels difficult to be oneself. It feels like the pressure from others and from expectations undermines the stability of the self. Here is where great learning may take place. For it is a matter of valuing the constancy and integrity of the self, place to place, and person to person, remembering that you are a sacred being - God expressing as you.

Faithfulness to oneself is achieved through inner quiet, inner guidance, inner listening - these are the ways of attuning to oneself in the midst of emotional noise and distraction. The energy of light can support you if you allow it to.

It is a new time, and each choice that you make to become who you are finds great support from the new energies of light now present on the Earth. Be you. Blessings.

Nothing Solid

We look around us and see a solid world, a world of objects and people. Movable things like chairs and immovable things like mountains. Everything looks just as it appears to our senses.

Now consider a different perspective, the world as pure energy with nothing solid in it. In this ever-changing world of energy, we are constantly influencing life in an interactive flow through our thoughts, emotions, and actions, all of which send energy into the surroundings.

It is an illusion to think that we truly can keep things inside ourselves. We are sending out messages on energy wave-lengths all of the time. This is a reason to awaken to the reality of purification, both for ourselves and for the planet. What we are sending forth is now coming more fully into our awareness. Also, what we are receiving. Our lives are becoming richer as we awaken to the vibrant flow of life that we are part of and that is part of us, and we are being called to participate in that life with a higher degree of responsibility. May it be so for all beings. Amen.

Relationships as Energy

  See Relationships as Energy

Moving Beyond Feelings of Rejection

Moving beyond feelings of rejection involves letting go of one's dependence on others to define one's identity. Though this is simple to say, it is often difficult to do since the ego-self has had much time to respond in an emotionally reactive way to the actions or non-actions of others, without knowing that another way was possible. This ego-self has been with human beings for a very long time, and so any undermining of its habits involves determination, assisted greatly by an authentic experience that there is another way to live. If the authentic experience of the 'other way' is profound enough, the struggle to get past the ego's premises can be won in an instant.

The way of independence is the way of inner growth - the realization of the wholeness of the self. Each self is capable of experiencing this wholeness which is not dependent upon external circumstance, but on an inner perception of truth. Independence is a relative term, since we are also communal beings who share energy and soul connections with each other that are profound. But soul connections and being dependent are two very different things. Dependency is an emotional bond that has to do with karmic influences that shape identity. Soul connection is a positive bond, created out of love and joy, where two or more feel their inner kinship and identity of soul purpose.

The way of overcoming vulnerability to rejection is the way of turning to the Divine for all needs, and not just the Divine without but the Divine within.

Believe that your wholeness already exists within you and it will be a starting point to stabilize yourself in relation to the responses of the world, whether positive or negative. This stabilization is an essential part of spiritual growth, and is greatly aided by a regular connection with one's higher self.

Beloved ones, the vulnerability to hurt is within your own power to change, to limit, to dissolve in the light of greater truth. This does not mean that there will not be some residual sadness when love's purposes are turned away from by others, but that this sadness will be a Divine sadness based in compassion, not one that reflects on the personal self.

Planetary Ascension Video

A new Light Omega video of special significance for those concerned with the Earth's future. Your comments are invited beneath the YouTube video display.

"A profound heart and soul message for our time about Ascension - a process that is not limited to Dec. 21st, 2012 but is taking place now as well. The message of this video is that souls have incarnated to be here, now, during this time of planetary transition, and that a great deal is possible for those who can be faithful to love's purposes..."


Planetary Ascenstion - The Birth of the Sacred

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Trends in Emotional and Spiritual Health: Depression and Post-Traumatic Stress

This article is part of a talk given by Julie at Light Omega on Sept. 6, 2009 called "Depression - A Spiritual Perspective." To order a CD of this talk, contact information@lightomega.org

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Beloveds, we live at a time when increased spiritual energy on the planet is creating a raised awareness of the values of the heart and of life itself. At the same time, it is bringing into consciousness all that is out of balance and not in harmony with these newly awakening values. It is in this way that it is possible to look at the increased incidence of depression in developed countries, which, in many nations, has become of epidemic proportions. In the same light, though from another world, we can look at the increased incidence of post-traumatic stress or ‘post-traumatic stress disorder’ in military personnel returning from the 1990s Gulf War, the Iraq War, and now from Afghanistan.

What brings these two phenomena together is that they are emotional and spiritual ‘signals’ of something being wrong. One may look within the individual psyche to see what is ‘wrong,’ but that reveals only a partial truth. The awakening of the values of the heart creates a greater collision between the values of one’s humanity and the actual exigencies and ‘necessities’ of hand-to-hand combat and war in general. Similarly, the values of the heart awakening create an increased sense of urgency that the empty, loveless, or meaningless places in one’s life be filled with something real and something meaningful. In both cases, there is an interaction with individual psychological and spiritual motivations, and the actual landscape of one’s present life. In the case of military engagement, one can only wonder that there are not more post-traumatic stress reactions to the tragic and often unforeseen involvement in the killing of children and of innocent civilians during a military operation.

The values of the heart are those enhanced by the presence of spiritual light: peace, unity, love, compassion, generosity, forgiveness, and a desire to live in harmony with others. These values may come up in contrast to the outrages of war – the horrors that cannot be put out of mind or heart regarding what one witnessed, felt, or took part in. Though of less dramatic intensity and certainly of less violent impact – the meaninglessness of a life lived without the full measure of love, joy, or a sense of deeper connection with oneself or others, can also bring to awareness the sorrow of loss - of a hole that needs to be filled. At bottom, depression fosters a yearning for a spiritual, energetic, emotional, and relationship healing that can only take place if one is aware that it is needed.

The increased rise in depression in developed countries may, by some, be attributed to more proficient and earlier diagnostic capabilities, the availability of a wider array of treatment options including an entire pharamaceutical industry devoted to treating the symptoms of depression. Both of these are, indeed, contributing factors, but only address the symptomatic picture – the symptomatic expression of depression, not its cause. To look at the cause, nationwide or worldwide, one must look at the changing inner landscape of what people value and what they find missing.

Depression (and also post-traumatic stress) is a teacher, a signal, an announcer, that something needs to be addressed within one’s life that has not been addressed. It is a calling of the spirit for an increased awareness of what is missing. Although on an outer level, it may seem that what is missing is practical and tangible – such as a job, more money, adequate housing, or improved prospects for the future, on an inner level, at least for many, these may still only be ‘signposts’ to what the real cause of depression is.

Depression, as a teacher, tells us that something essential is missing within life that needs to be found. Often, one can fill the outer elements of life with a job, greater security, relationships with others, and still it remains. Because, as a collective human family, we still do not think of spiritual causes in relation to physical symptoms, we continue, for the moment, to look at the neuro-biology of depression as its explanation. We study higher cortical functioning, understand the work of neuro-transmitters, and think we understand what causes depression. However, the level of the physical is, without exception, activated by the level of consciousness in which spiritual, moral, and emotional values reside. Therefore, in an analysis of the future, we will not view neuro-biology as a cause of depression, but itself as a symptom. We will, at that time, look to the domain of spiritual energy and spiritual consciousness as the primary cause for physical and biological conditions.

For the present, we are still immersed in material explanations for a material world. We still explain the physical by the physical. As the world changes in its understanding of spiritual reality, depression, post-traumatic stress, and, indeed, all physical disorders will come to be seen to be energetically based, and new forms of healing will develop in order to treat them.

For individuals today, and before such a collective development takes place, it is important to understand the ‘signal’ function of depression and the wisdom of the body that is trying to convey something important from the soul. Though society may not be ready, individuals may be ready to bring their lives into greater balance and harmony, restoring to both the body and the consciousness a spiritual energy of love, hope, and unity, that for many has been missing for a long time and on a very deep level.

Ribbons of Change

As a ribbon may be unwound from a ball which it is wrapped around, so, too, do ribbons of change take place within the human body and heart, as each strand of consciousness in need of healing becomes exposed to the light of day.

The further exposure of things that one thought were fully healed is not meant to be a reason for discouragement, but a path toward understanding that what is healed in the present is healed for all time; what is healed in the present summarizes all previous lifetimes in which that same 'ribbon' played a part.

The miracle of this time of light is that the unknown and unknowable sub-currents of human motivation and feeling can now be separated out and seen for what they are - efforts at self-protection or self-support that were limited in truth but that were all that seemed possible at the time.

Beloveds, embrace the healing that is now possible, for all lives are coming together in this life, the past is being summarized now, and all debts can be paid in the grace of Divine light.

More About 'Thresholds'

Standing at a threshold where a consciousness shift wants to happen and feels like it 'might' happen often involves a sense of risk. There is sometimes a fear of moving backwards into a previously difficult or entrenched situation. But there is even more of a fear of moving forward into the Unknown.

Movement forward at a 'threshold' is often perceived as a 'leap of faith' since one generally does not know what is on the other side. Such a 'leap of faith' is sometimes made due to a sense of inner necessity, namely, that anything would be better than what has been. But it is also and more commonly based on the willingness to trust the Divine goodness of life which is God to uphold one in an unknown space. Without trust, the passage through the doorway can seem terrifying if not impossible.

There are threshold behaviors that can help in some situations: imagining in a positive way what one hopes to encounter and letting that assume the quality of a 'hypothetical reality' - not quite real, but not quite false either. Considering the people who have walked through the doorway before oneself. Asking for the courage to surrender more deeply to Divine Will. All of these can be helpful but are not always useful when fear runs high.

When a 'threshold' appears in life and can be accepted as a passage, transformation is speeded up and a letting go of past difficulties is often the result. When the threshold is rejected or turned away from, the loss is only of time. For more time will go by and in God's loving manifestation, another 'threshold' will appear at some point in the future.


See Standing at the Threshold

Standing at the Threshold

 

There are times and moments when a door opens in one's consciousness to make something much clearer than it has been before. It may appear that this door opening has to do with an external event, and, indeed, life circumstances can catalyze shifts in awareness. However, more often than not, there is an energy shift taking place internally, allowing awareness to change its perspective to a new place, sometimes for just a moment, sometimes forever.

These shifts in perspective can be short-lived, or they can be life-changing. It depends, in part, on what one does at the threshold, and in part on the energy itself which supports the emerging state of awareness. The energy basis for holding a new perspective is generally not within one's control, but the desire to walk across the threshold often is.

What does walking across the threshold mean?

In part, it means not giving weight to fear as a reason to continue in an attitude, behavior, or perspective that has outlived its usefulness. It may mean risking something new that seemed too difficult or impossible before. It may mean taking a deep breath and saying to whatever part of the self wants to hold onto the past - "I don't need to do that any more." It may mean allowing God's help to be invited into one's consciousness with greater trust.

Standing at a threshold involves an encounter with the Unknown. It involves trust in the possibility that in stepping across the threshold, new possibilities will occur. It also involves the motivation to discontinue old patterns that repeat themselves endlessly, and the permission to let something new take their place.

Standing at a threshold is a blessed place to be and if one is truly aware of the moment, gratitude is a natural response. The presence of a 'threshold' means that God's light as it moves through consciousness has opened up a new world of possibilities. When one embraces this opening, when one can be grateful for its presence instead of frightened, the passage into a new stage, a new chapter, or a new relationship with the Divine can begin.

Gratitude as a Spiritual Practice

Like meditation or prayer, gratitude may, in some cases, be considered a spiritual practice that one needs to touch base with regularly in order to stay connected at the center.

The practice of gratitude, as all else, cannot be an empty practice, but must be one that connects with feeling. However, as with meditation, it can be a process and experience that one gets better at with attention and in-tention, so that even if one starts out in the beginning with not very much gratitude at all, the prayerful desire to open the heart can begin to have its effect.

As with all other things, one must look clearly and closey at whatever obstacles may be in the way of feeling grateful. Ordinarily, things like judgment, anger, depression, and weariness or fatigue can prevent one from feeling grateful. In more unusual circumstances, encounters with intensely dark energies can cover gratitude so that it feels totally unreachable. The inner emotional attitudes can be dispelled through the ongoing practice of purification and alignment with God. The covering by other energies often requires a period of waiting and patience before the light of one's own soul can be experienced.

For one starting out in this direction, it may seem more convenient to summarize one's grateful thoughts at the end of each day before going to bed. However, this tends to formalize things and, for some, may not touch the individual moments of each day. Another way of looking at the practice of gratitude is simply seeing everything and especially every one during a day as 'gift'. This would include the not-so-pleasant interactions as well as the pleasant ones.

Seeing life as a gift and God as the Source of that gift in all its forms is the essence of gratitude - a state of being that can become as natural as breathing.

Accessing Inner Guidance

There are many who feel that 'guidance' is for others -
that there is no inner voice that speaks to them when the ask for help.

The understanding must broaden and the cues must
become more subtle, so that words are not looked for
but the heart is asked to reflect the highest wisdom of the soul.

When you pray for guidance and ask for help, ask that your heart
perceive the answer through its sense of 'rightness.'
This sense of 'rightness' belongs to every soul.
It is the message of one's higher being that, when called upon,
points the way that is in greatest harmony with the larger self.

Heaven on Earth

In the future, the sense of self-protection which is so common today will be replaced with the sense of God-with-us. This is the meaning of 'Emmanu-el' and it is also the Judaic prophecy of the Divine Presence on Earth, the 'Shekinah.' The same anticipation infuses the sacred truths held within Hopi tradition concerning the 'fifth world' that we are moving into.

For now, and until you become steeped in that reality - the reality of your soul - it is important to see where self-protection holds reign over the full dimensionality of love. Intention is of great importance at all times, and so wanting to let go of fear and asking for healing of your heart begins to bring to you those circumstances and people that can help move things forward.

Be present to the flow of life moving through each situation. Whether painful or pleasant, there is truly no moment that is wasted, only those that seem to one's judgmental self to be so.

Sacred Relationships

Acknowledging that you are a sacred being means acknowledging the Divine core of light and love that IS you. The same light and love is in others, often unknown to themselves.

What will you do with yours?

One way of looking at sacred relationships involves understanding them as opportunities in each moment to give and receive love. Everything else that they are about is less important than this. Can you allow it to be less important? Can you allow love to take the place of resentment, envy, judgment, and fear?

Here is another part of a sacred relationship: Can you allow yourself to receive love more fully, to let yourself acknowledge it when it comes to you in surprising ways or from surprising sources? Can you allow yourself to be loved by God? Often, one's ability to receive love is less than one's ability to offer it to others. This imbalance speaks for the unhealed places within the heart that are waiting to be healed.

If you desire sacred relationships in your life, begin with allowing love to be more important than everything else. Reasons for being angry, rejecting, withdrawn, or afraid then have to be let go of in favor of your choice to love. Such a choice can change an entire life.

Cosmic Currents of Light

 From the smallest pebble to the vastest galaxy, the penetration of spiritual light reaches everywhere, for every part of the physical universe is simultaneously spiritual in its essence. It exists along dimensional frequencies of light that are specific to the location, consciousness and purpose of evolution of a particular planet, star, solar system, species, or universe. There are no exceptions, nothing that exists in form that is not also spiritual in its core.

Inhabitants of the Earth have, for a long time now, not felt this unity of spirit and matter. Most came to experience something new, something that would take the shape of a world that appeared to be solid in itself, with things that were separate from each other. This involvement with matter as matter has shaped the course of human evolution, but not without simultaneously breeding a longing for reconnection with spiritual light, truth, and unity.

Today, that longing is being met by the infusion of cosmic currents of light into the planetary sphere. Those who are receptive to light may feel these currents as the opening up of new awareness - the expansion of consciousness in directions that had not been thought of before. However, many do not experience increased light directly, but only its 'symptoms' or aftereffects as it interacts with the human organism.

In the first group are those whose hearts can directly take in the new impulses of light, who find themselves longing to be of greater service, wanting to have more peaceful, harmonious relationships with others, changing ways of life that do not feel in harmony with the Earth. These movements of consciousness toward greater unity with others and with the Earth are produced by the advent of greater light as it affects both body and consciousness. As this takes place, the heart opens to new possibilities. It awakens to its own inner potential. And a motivation develops to live in accord with the principles of peace and love.

There are many, however, who are not yet experiencing the full awakening of the heart and of consciousness as a result of the cosmic currents, who feel, instead, the fatigue, disorientation, dizziness, or other unusual symptoms that increased light may produce within the body as it makes its way into the organs and cellular structure. Nevertheless, even in the presence of a whole array of physical symptoms that do not feel particularly expansive, what is really happening is the creation of a new light body - a body that is part matter, part light, that will house the new consciousness arriving. This light body is not happening to individuals because they are consciously choosing it, or even because they are consciously engaged with a spiritual tradition or practice. It is happening to souls everywhere because they are incarnated on the Earth at this time. Those who are here now have chosen to be here and are experiencing the transformative effects of the cosmic currents of light.

Mind, emotions, motivations, relationships, goals, habits, preferences - all of these are influenced by the incoming impulses of spiritual light. In a very fundamental way, change is in the air and is being incorporated within the body. Even the DNA within each cell is being affected.

It is a time for both patience and for celebration, for the cosmic currents of light are wholely positive and their effect will be the transformation of humanity's consciousness in keeping with the principles of unity, harmony, and love. However, as the purification process which results in the complete integration of the new frequencies of light takes place, difficulties produced by the changes in vibration are often felt. And so one must be patient with these changes while remaining hopeful about their outcome.

As a result of the time we are in, the Earth and all of her inhabitants shall finally become able to join the larger community of light that inhabits the spiritual and physical universe of which the Earth is a part. The last two decades have produced an acceleration of movement in this direction, and there is much more to come.

For information and help with light body changes as they affect your own physical being and wellbeing, see: www.newlightbody.org.

For information and help with respect to the multi-level purification process that is affecting all beings and creating a release of energies, thoughts, and feelings into waking consciousness, see: Purification Titles and The Essentials of Purification.

May all beings be blessed by the Divine and holy light that is presently transforming the Earth into a sacred and illumined planet. Amen.

The Open Moment - 2

It may seem, at times, that God cannot be present when pain is present, when limitation is present, or when grief is present. At times, our spiritual life is placed on hold until the pain diminishes and we can get back to what is most essential again.

However, there is no 'when' to a spiritual life, no future or conditional 'if'. The time is now. The moment is open. Now is the time to experience Divine love, to believe that love can hold all-that-is in its fullness.

Especially with respect to the pain of self-recrimination - of things we regret and wish we had done differently, the open moment gives rise to the possibility of beginning anew, of letting the present define a new reality. In this newness lies inspiration, and in this inspiration lies the living Presence of the Divine.

A New Consciousness: The Story of Bottled Water

Bottled water has become a major industry in America and in much of the developed world, accompanying the growth of the health and fitness industries as well as the prestige factor which beguiles many according to their status in life. And yet except in underdeveloped nations where poverty, disease, and limited health facilities make it a useful tool, eliminating the need for boiling water to protect against disease, it has been an industry that has fed, for the most part, on human vanity and the desire to both look and feel youthful.

Now, we are seeing a concerted effort on the part of a number of states to ban the manufacture of bottled water on behalf of the environment. The carbon footprint left by the processing, packaging, transporting, and distributing of bottled water, in addition to the problems created by the disposal of plastic containers, are no longer considered a fair exchange in relation to cost versus effect. Increasingly, the cost is being perceived as too great.

The pressure of a global climate crisis and the need to reduce greenhouse gas emissions is playing a larger role in the thinking of many government agencies today and should not be taken for granted in a case such as this. Here, an entire industry may virtually disappear as a result of a more urgent goal that has now gained national attention. What shall happen to this industry?

On the one hand, we must count the cost in terms of jobs lost and human beings who need to relocate themselves or be offered other employment. This can create problems for both families and communities unless product-lines are redesigned to produce more environmentally-friendly products - something that large businesses often have the means to do if they have the mind to. On the other hand, we need to look at this shift as a prototype for meetintg planetary needs that have been crying out for attention for many years now.

The shift from thinking of something as necessary to thinking of it as optional or unnecessary is a very important one as we reevaluate our priorities as a nation and as a collective humanity. In fact, it is the same shift that must take place on an individual level as well as the one governing nations.

What is necessary? What is not necessary in our lives that is costing us the life of the planet? What have we relied upon that we can now let go of?

There are many industries that have arisen due to unregulated commerce and to the appetites of large corporations to expand into new profits and new product lines. This expansion and proliferation of products must now be revisited in terms of their necessity. The cost not to do so is too great.

A parallel mushrooming of an 'optonal' industry may be seen in the many product-lines developed in recent years to produce white teeth. The 'teeth whitener' industry which is based almost exclusively on the desire to remain young forever parallels the rise of bottled water. Perfectly white teeth have become a necessity for television personalities today, and a cosmetic necessity for young and old in all walks of life. But there was a time before perfectly white teeth were necessary and before the whiteners producing perfectly white teeth were mass produced. There will, perhaps, be a time again when perfectly white teeth will not be a standard to follow.

Here, then, is our individual and collective dilemma: to uphold values that serve our own needs and those of our loved ones while at the same time holding of equal value the needs of others and of the Earth we live on. In this balance lies the future of the Earth.

Declaration of Independence - 233rd anniversary

On July 4, 1776, an event took place of such spiritual, moral, and political significance, that the world has never been the same since then. Not only was it an event that captured the hearts of the patriots who lived within these new colonies of the United States of America, but one that claimed the attention of despots and dictators worldwide, for in this statement and in the events which followed, were commitments and vows that would forevermore illuminate the inner conscience of mankind in a way that had never before been expressed.

Here then is that document embedded in the history of the Republic of these United States as a living testimony to the spiritual and moral purpose that lies at her center:

Understanding Timelessness: If God Created the Universe, Who Created God?

The concept of timelessness perplexes the human mind, especially as it concerns a Supreme Being. The question is often asked by children who reflect the ongoing question of adults as well: If God created the Universe, then who created God? Parents smile, and often have no answer to this question, for there is no answer on the human level in which we see, hear, and know things.

The question of "Who created God?" is a three-dimensional question based on the perception of time. This perception includes an idea of 'before' and 'after' which belongs to the space-time continuum in which we live.

Imagine, however, a place without time, in which everything is co-existent. Instead of coming before or after it exists simultaneously within the same moment. What 'has been' within our time framework is there. What 'will be', also within our own time-framework is there. Everything exists simultaneously in a state of completeness and perfection.

The image of a Japanese scroll has been used to explain this difference. If we imagine a scroll rolled up and start unrolling it, we see a sequence of images that begin the scroll and as we unroll it and move closer and closer to the end, we see new images appearing with the ones at the beginning fading into the background. This is a picture of time unfolding.

Now let us unroll the scroll completely and look at it altogether. The same images are there that we saw in sequence. But now we see them all at once. This is the perspective of timelessness - the perspective of the complete realization of the eternal moment.

Human beings within their multidimensional identity have the capacity to live within time and within timelessness. It is a gift of perception that will open to our consciousness as we rejoin the spiritual dimensions that are our birthright and home.

Dealing With Weariness

Weariness, unlike physical fatigue, is of the heart and soul. It is based on the need for prolonged endurance in the face of limitation, obstacles, and difficulties beyond one's control. It is the struggle to maintain a posititve outlook, forward motion, or even the ability to just get through a day that creates weariness.

Those who are weary have been involved in a profound struggle to maintain their heads above water, to do what they feel to be right, to uphold the things that they believe in. It is this struggle to uphold values, principles, and the life of the embodied self that creates weariness.

In the face of this kind of spiritual fatigue, it is important to know that the self that feels weary, the self that feels downtrodden, is only one aspect of the self. There is, for each person, a larger self that is capable of maintaining a completely different set of perceptions, even in the presence of hardship. In fact, the larger self or soul-self is able to feel peace and joy, even while the human embodied self is feeling sorrow. The larger self is able to feel confidence and hope, even while the human self may be feeling hopeless.

In the presence of weariness, it is important to make contact with this larger self - to know that many different perceptions can be held at the same time, and that while the body or emotions may experience pain, the soul may experience peace.

Touching the larger self is a way of stabilizing oneself in the presence of weariness.

Touching God's love is the other path for stabilizing the self in the presence of weariness. For even while the human embodied self may be crying out with pain and distress, the larger self may feel trust and a sense that even though one does not know how, things are or will be alright. Though pain has the capacity, at times, to cover over the direct experience of God's love for the conscious waking self, even while this may be true, the deeper layers of the heart may still feel God's blessings and love. This is because those deeper layers remain in continual communion with that love, even in the presence of pain. It is also because God's love is everpresent as a living reality, whether one feels it or not.

Touching God's love when one is weary is best done through a regular spiritual practice that feeds the heart. Prayer, meditation, an immersion in nature, sacred breathing, are all ways to experience the deeper layers of the heart that are in communion with love.

The third way of maintaining the self in the presence of weariness involves touching the heart of compassion for oneself and treating oneself lovingly.

This is greatly aided if one can share the journey and its challenges with others. Compassion allows the human self to not engage in self-blame for not doing better. It replaces harshness with understanding and allows one to find, wherever possible, those forms of nourishment that create support and a sense of comfort. Every embodied being has their own perception of what nourishes their spirit. It is a matter of allowing these gifts of love to enter one's life more fully. Compassion is a reflection of God's love which is forgiving, gentle, and understanding. During a time of prolonged weariness, it is essential to maintain oneself in a state of compassion.

To anchor in one's larger self, to anchor in God's love, and to anchor in a heart of compassion - these are ways through which one can find inner support and sustenance during prolonged periods of weariness. One is never without these possibilities even though one may feel so, for the self-in-pain, the self-that-is-tired, is being held at all times within the larger multidimensional self that is part of the Oneness and part of God.