It’s taken years to even begin to get accustomed to knowing the difference between acting on my thoughts and following guidance. What I now call my Intuitive Guidance System, or IGS. So when I ask a deliberate question and get—you guessed it—a whole lot of nuttin’, well, it feels like something’s gone awry. Like in a really big way.

This is what happened last night. I’d traveled to the Oregon Coast to do one of my metaphysical Afterlife Meetups, which had begun several years ago in the tiny coastal town where I lived with my husband and after he made his transition to the Great Beyond. After moving to Washington State a few months ago, it felt like it was time to head back, to see as many as I could in my beloved community, and maybe even put a little bit of a period at the end of that decade’s sentence. I asked my team in the Up There to support me in whatever way was in the best interest of everyone: me, all the participants, the friend with whom I was staying, Source, the drivers on the road…you get the picture. I also asked for some suggestions—a good solid download would be nice—on what to talk about. I mean, I assumed I’d be doing some mediumship because that was always in the cards (so to speak), but what would I talk about? What did I have to say that might be inspirational, that might get minds, bodies, and souls up and doing a little jig or maybe a two-step?

I asked the week before. Then every day up through my landing at my friend’s house the night before go time. At that point, only the tiniest of little red flags was only beginning to show up on the horizon. Yet, as I unpacked my suitcase, I wondered why a room full of people would show up (sans masks for the first gathering of its kind in over two years, I might add) if I had nothing to say?

Are you telling me I’m supposed to trust my gut? Me???

I was sharing that fact with my friend and expressing that I was still waiting—patiently, I thought, IMHO.  She only laughed and said, “It’ll come to you. It always does. You just have to trust it.”

Duh. Maybe it was a good time to send up a little white flag instead?

Cut to the next night. Library. Afterlife Meetup night. 5 PM. Turns out the person who was supposed to post my flyers in town had been busy with other things and forgotten. It occurred to me that maybe that’s why I had a basket so overflowing with nothing—because no one was going to show up. But then one person strolled in. And another…and another. Until every one of the 50 chairs was filled.

Suddenly, I knew exactly what I wanted to say. Because all I needed to do was be there and reflect and express gratitude for all the love that was being generated in that room. To talk about how, in the midst of nothing, everything gets a chance to surface. How validation that you’ve been listening to your IGS shows up when you least expect it, when you’ve reached the point where you’re pretty darn sure you’ve used up your allotted supply and your Intuitive Guidance ATM account tells you its pockets are empty.

The HSPs Intuitive Guidance System

It’s like the old Gerry Seinfeld series: the show about, you guessed it, nothing. How does a show about nothing end up running for a gazillion or so season end up to be one of the greatest shows ever? You guessed it. Because in the very nothingness there is also the everything.

It’s where you have “nothing” to talk about until the last minute and it reveals exactly what’s been on your mind and in your heart and in your soul.

It’s where your ego/shadow side decides to rear its snide little self and scream (or whine, as the case may be), “I’m not good enough. What am I doing here? And here I thought I had something worthwhile to share?”…and demands you take a good hard look at what’s driving you.

It’s when you realize, just as you do during meditation, that there’s more in the “nothingness” than you could ever have imagined.

Maybe it’s even where, if you settle in, your mind takes a break and your spirit gets to shine. Where, if you’re willing, you can find and trust—your true, highest, Self.

And where, if your IGS is invited to steer the car for you, you can actually relish the ride.

The post Is Nothing Really Nothing or is your gut telling you something? first appeared on Elevate Your HSP-ness!.

Negative self-talk

The body cannot distinguish between an actual event and a thought. When you think fearful thoughts, the emotions you feel are the emotions that are saying, “I am in danger; there is an actual danger here.” So what happens? You feel the emotion of agitation, fear, or anxiety, both emotionally and throughout your body. Unfortunately, this kind of useless, dysfunctional thinking has a long-term effect on the us, too,  and actually removes the body’s ability to recover from illness, to stay healthy.

What gets your attention?

Look at it this way. Do the nice things that happen in your life receive a lot of your attention? Maybe you share something good that’s happened today with someone, but after that it’s out of sight, out of mind. It’s the negative stuff that gets all the rehashing. First in your own head, and then outwardly when you share those things with others.

Self-talk is really the issue for HSPs because when the mind constantly generates thoughts of self-judgment and negativity, that’s the way life becomes. Externalizing that feeling about life only brings more of it to us. We talk to people who are happy to complain and whine along with us and get the justification we need to keep whining. We feel supported.

Negative self-talk causes a negative state of consciousness

But here’s the thing. Negative events cause a predominant state of consciousness that’s negative! You’ve probably heard this or similar statements a million times. The difference here is that we take that (not always immediately recognizable) correlation between your mental/emotional state and what happens to you, your associations, your work, etc., and cut that correlation. Sever the cord. Untie the binds. See what I mean?

Who do you judge?

Naturally, it’s easier to recognize negativity in others than it is in yourself. Much easier to judge others than yourself. Easier to want someone else to change so you don’t have to . . . so your discomfort or distaste or disregard will go away.

You wouldn’t be reading this if you were not motivated to awaken from the stupor of discomfort, dissatisfaction, disillusionment, or depression. Being motivated is the first step to conscious awareness. Motivation opens the mind, body, and spirit to a new way of thinking, which causes a new way of feeling, which causes a new way of being and living.

Why affirmations don’t work

It’s not enough to speak or think affirmations if you don’t feel their truth. You need to use tools like the Psychic Octopus to truly understand your HSP sensibilities to the degree that you can benefit from them.

You also need to learn who you are, inside and out, to stay present and aligned (the state of feeling good, of intimately knowing your Unique Energetic Signature), no matter what is going on around you.

Can you do it? Absolutely!!!

Do you have to understand it, know it, do it, have it, see it, live it all at once? Definitely not.

If you’re still wearing your suit of misery, it might be time to give it up

You just have to want it more than you want to stay in the place that feels uncomfortably comfortable—or maybe comfortably uncomfortable. That place where you’ve been wearing the Suit of Misery for so long that it’s the only item of clothing you ever wear. No matter how filthy it gets, no matter how ratty and holey it is, you’d rather keep wearing it than buy a new one because buying a new one comes with too many “problems.” Fit. Cost. Effort. The “breaking- in” factor. I mean, who wants to deal with all that, right?

If that’s your story, you are free to stick to it.

If you want to change your story, maybe it’s time to buy a new suit.

The post It’s time to exchange your old suit for a new one first appeared on Elevate Your HSP-ness!.

Pretty early on in my life I discovered there was pill for anxiety. Everyone knew such pills were only for housewives trying to numb out their lives (think Jacqueline Suzann and Valley of the Dolls). I never knew anyone who took them or where to get them had I wanted them. Still, I wished there were something to take away the pain. You know, a magic pill that would cure me. An “anti-me” pill: anti-anxiety, anti-depression, anti-everything pill.

I was living in married students’ housing in Ann Arbor, MI when I met Beth and her husband. She was another musician and he was a scientist in the field of pharmaceuticals. Beth and I hung out a lot. Seems we could commiserate on a lot of things. Having babies and raising kids while our husbands were busy working and going to school; being super-sensitive and hyperaware every moment of the day; feeling overwhelmed by it all as we supported each other for being two wonderfully loving, if self-deprecating, women.

Prozac? Are you kidding me?

One day Beth told me her husband and his team had developed this new drug called Prozac, which was supposed to help relieve the symptoms of depression. Well, count me in, right?

Wrong.

Drugs? Me? Never! I should be able to deal with my own issues (from the panic attacks to the generalized fear to the postpartum depression) by myself. Otherwise, I was weak and unworthy. And the same went for you. If you couldn’t handle your life, there had to be something wrong with you. 

15 years later

Okay, so now it’s 15 years later. I’ve been divorced from that husband and remarried to a wonderful man who was at least as sensitive as I was. Incredible! He wasn’t scared off by my intensity or my tears. In fact, he could go there as fast as I could. It was a marriage made in heaven.

And yet . . .

I still suffered internally. I was afraid of being a bad mother and a bad partner. Afraid of not doing or being enough. And on and on and on. There was no stopping me. Just think of all the energy I used being so anxious that could have been put to another use. By then, Prozac had been on the market all that time and, in the back of my mind, I really, really wanted to see if it could help me. Still, “taking drugs” was a Very Bad Thing To Do. It meant you were really all those things people said you were. And none of them were good.

Which is worse? Being who I was or “taking drugs”?

Finally, though, at some point, I realized I had reached a point that no matter what my external circumstances, my internal voice was struggling to stay sane. So, yeah, I went to the shrink and got myself some good old-fashioned Prozac. The incredible thing was that within days I was getting out of bed in the morning for the first time in my life that I could recall with actual enthusiasm. Gone was the “Omigod, another day, groan” thing. GONE.

My husband was horrified. I’d been so good at keeping my depression secret that he could not believe I “needed something like that” to fix me. Wasn’t I happy with him? Didn’t we have a good life?

“I can’t help it. I was born that way.”

I tried to explain my situation in terms of science. “You see,” I told him, “it’s just that it’s a chemical thing and there’s’ really nothing I can do about it. I was born that way. It’s not psychological, it’s chemical, and I need help to be okay.”

He was not happy. He felt he wasn’t enough.

I wasn’t happy. I felt I wasn’t enough. Plus, I knew now that I was truly broken.

I kept the fact that I was “taking drugs” secret, much as I’d kept my state of being secret. Inside I felt ashamed and guilty even though I’d never felt so free from the weight that had kept me down all those years.

In a twist of fate worthy of a fairy tale, it wasn’t until the death of my husband Randy that everything became clear. . . .

To Be Continued

Stay tuned for Part 2 of HSPs and the Magic Pill in tomorrow’s message.

The post HSPs and the Magic Pill: We all wish we had one first appeared on Elevate Your HSP-ness!.

2012: Angels and Pepperoni Pizza

“I ordered the pepperoni and onion pizza,” said my husband a few weeks prior to his passing and after one of his longer and longer rests in his big armchair. “I saw myself at this place called the Gateway Café. I was told that it’s the place where all beings–spirits–angels–hang out to choose where they’re going to go and who they’re going to be their next time around as humans. You get to decide your next lifetime just like ordering off a menu.”

“Wow,” I said. “But I’m thinking coming back might not be a choice I’d make. I mean, it’s been pretty rocky this time.”

“Exactly,” he said. “They told me we’re really all vacationing angels—spirit that wants to experience being human. As energetic beings, the idea of being human, mortal beings in biodegradable human suits with all the magnificent senses we enjoy, it feels like a vacation.”

I thought about it. Here my husband is dying and talking about how being human is supposed to feel like a vacation. Although I dutifully jotted down a few notes in the notebook we were keeping of his ideas, the only thing I heard in my head was, “If this were really a vacation, we’d both be having a lot more fun—and, oh, BTW, you wouldn’t be dying.”

I kept that part to myself.

12 Years Later

There was a lot of grieving from then to now. A lot of life and living packed into what felt like at first more like an endlessly scorched spiritual terrain until the rains came and there was verdant abundance once again. I’ve learned about living alone and living without a partner. I’ve experienced the massive benefits of self-discovery through meditation. Learned what it really means to live as a high-functioning HSP without denigrating my sensitivities; learning to view them as gifts and talents.  But most importantly, I’ve learned what it truly means to live as a “vacationing angel.”

This philosophy has stood by me through thick and thin since Randy’s passing. Sure, it took a while. “Vacation” isn’t usually the first word you think of when someone dies and you can barely climb out of bed every day. Yet, with his ongoing prodding and poking, and my continued efforts at listening to him from the other side of the veil, the message began to make more and more sense.

Here’s the way my reasoning went.

For many years the only real thoughts swimming around in my head sounded like this: “What’s the point? What’s the purpose of being human?  What’s MY purpose for being here?” Not reassured by the obvious dearth of answers, I continued along a path where nothing—nothing—made any sense. It wasn’t until I began reading books like Conversations with God that my eyes opened. Suddenly, there was another option for looking at life, death, and being-ness. Another option for living with purpose that included more than a decision about which career path to follow.

Embracing (remembering, one might say) the idea that we have all made our contracts before we live our first, second, or thousandth human lifetime opened the door to a whole new world. If I agreed to the contracts with my mother, my father, my sisters, my friends, then how could I be angry at them or disappointed in them or blame them for anything?

My contract = My responsibility.

It’s as simple as that. Navigating that lifetime’s contract, however, can be pretty darn challenging if/when/because we tend to get stuck in the “why” of it all.

“I am a Vacationing Angel, spirit in human form.

I chose, and choose, to be here.

I will make the most of it while I’m here.”

If we are all one, then . . .

It’s all about life, death, angels, & pepperoni pizza

If I accept that we are all one energetically, which I do, then when we “die,” we simply take on a different energetic frequency and state, the way heated water turns to steam. We’re still here, but in a different form. I have always believed that when we’re in that different form—in the non-physical—so, why not imagine we’re somewhere like the Gateway Café? Some place where we have and hold an awareness that goes beyond the physical and yet offers us an outline for the physical world we choose? Some place where we have and hold a sense of selflessness along with self-full-ness that propels us to enter the physical realm for another lifetime?

The post What do HSPs, angels, & pepperoni pizza all have in common? first appeared on Elevate Your HSP-ness!.

From Highly Sensitive Person to Heroically, Inherently Bad-Ass

I’ll tell you what . . .

I got tired of being told I was too sensitive by the time I was about 5. That’s when I began to understand that I was being told in no uncertain terms that my feelings didn’t matter as much as other people’s and that in order to “get along” I needed to stop expressing them. Not that I was able to truly comprehend the magnitude of such an understanding. Over time, it simply seeped into my brain, soul, and heart. The constant message that it was risky, dangerous even, to express what I felt, what I felt I knew, what felt right, what my “gut” was telling me. Naturally, the more time that went by, the more my happy little joyful free child self became an introverted, terrified-I’d-be-discovered self. It’s taken me years (you don’t want to know how many) to unlearn that behavior. To discover that the fearful person I was, is not the confident person I started out as when I came into the world.

I meet people every day that are . . .

• Afraid to speak out/up
• Are afraid to be who they are
• Afraid to put forth their opinion
• Afraid to be “wrong” (according to the standards of others, whoever those others are in that moment)
• Afraid to “fail” (according to the standards of others, whoever those others are in that moment)

It could be the lovely, shy person behind the counter at the gym or the gas station attendant afraid to look you in the eye. The musicians who have  a hard time communicating other than on their instruments. The alcoholic or the drug addict who’s more comfortable hiding in those places and spaces than they are expression who they are.

Birth………..Life………….Death

Birth

The beginning of life as a human is birth, at least in terms of awareness as we know it. We come into the world, out of the womb, not only with the awareness our soul had while in that womb, but now with the awareness of all our senses that engage in a whole new way.

Death

We often consider the opposite of LIFE to be DEATH. But BIRTH is actually the opposite of DEATH. It is the beginning and the ending of our physical form in the 3-D world as we know it. Birth is the entry into life and death is the exit out of life. The inhale . . . and the exhale.

Life

LIFE, on the other hand, is what happens between birth and death. It’s all the stuff in between. It’s where we spend however many years breathing in . . . and out to perpetuate the life we’ve been given.

For most of us the fear of death is seen as the fear of the ending of life, but I think it’s much more than that. I think the fear of death starts at a very early age when all the other fears begin to manifest. All those fears listed above start the trend. The very act of breathing becomes difficult when you’re afraid, and breathing is everything. The shallow breath is representative of these fears that result in the biggest fear of all: death. The Biggest Ending of All. Yet, in my way of thinking, it is really the fear of letting go that has evolved into the fear of dying. Letting go of is another way to say “able to express.”

• If I let go of the fear of speaking up, I feel good about expressing myself.
• If I let go of the fear of being who I am, I feel capable of evolving as I move through life.
• If I let go of the fear of putting forth my opinion, I can also be unafraid of listening to the opinions of others.
• If I let go of the fear of being “wrong,” according to the standards of others which have now become my own beliefs and standards and values, I am free to develop my own definitions of what feels right for me.
• If I let go of the fear of “failure,” I not only let go of the tendency to self-sabotage, self-criticize, and potentially bully others, but step into the realm of creative, inspirational thought for no other reason than to see where my thoughts, sensations, and feelings might lead.

In other words . . . Be the Bad-Ass: Let go of the fears we have been taught into the freedom of being the BAD-ASSES we truly are.

Every day is about reminding myself to remember that the “Highly Sensitive Person” I thought and felt I was is actually the Heroically Inherently Bad-Ass being that I am.

The post How to get from point A to point B when you’re an HSP first appeared on Elevate Your HSP-ness!.

OUCH!

For me, facilitating a guided meditation means doing the whole meditation along with all the participants as I’m doing it. What is so interesting is that, even if I’ve done a similar meditation in the past, there’s always something new that comes up. A new thorn, perhaps, or an old one that’s still managing to poke through my skin and cause irritation. Becoming aware that there’s one I never noticed before, or the one that’s still lurking (usually half hidden, at least to my own conscious self), is the key.

As I prepared for my Afterlife Meetup this week (in which we do guided meditation, mediumship, and music) I was struck once again by the power of this Meditation of the Inner Thorn: The One That Keeps On Giving.

This time, as I walked through the meditation prior to the meetup, I put a thorn on the couch that I had been avoiding for a long time. I would not have said I was avoiding it! I would have said, and did say, that I was “dealing with it, finding ways to be okay with it, trying to stop having expectations around it.” The thorn this time is one specific challenging relationship.

It always amazes me to see what happens.

Which Thorn Will You Put “On the Couch“?

As soon as I pictured the thorn of this relationship on the couch, I saw it was yellow. A yellow star. Which surprised me because I never would have conceived of a star as a reflection of such a relationship. Aren’t stars bright and illuminating and awe-inspiring? I asked why the energy of this thorn had appeared as a yellow star. It said, directly, “I’m yellow because I’m both cowardly and sharp-edged. No matter how you turn me, there’s another sharp edge to cut you, wound you, keep you caught in my clutches.”

Okay. Really? All this from a yellow star? Color me shocked.

I asked the star, “Because you’re also a beautiful shining start of light, do you think there’s any chance you could shift your energy…become softer, less harsh, stronger, braver?”

“Only if you’re willing,” said the star, “to free me from your body and spirit once and for all, and invite in the light that I truly am. Stars don’t really have any sharp edges, you know, so seeing me that way is only a reflection of your own fear.”

Transmuting one energy to another is the key to stepping into your light.

Again, wow.

Who Woulda Thought a Yellow Star Would Have So Much To Say?

Since then I’ve been talking to this star of mine. It agreed to softening its edges if I would commit to its removal; it did not want to be there anymore, but had felt stuck, lodged where it didn’t belong in my upper arm. Why in my upper arm?

“Because you hold things in your arms. Develop muscle from the time you held your flute, then held your babies, then held all the experiences that have become you. Putting aside this thorn, a thorn so old and deep, may hurt, but there will be almost no bleeding because it is disintegrating even as we speak.”

The star, the one that started out a sharp thorn, has now become a close friend guiding me to a lighter place.

As so-called HSPs, Highly Sensitive Persons, we need to recognize and make friends with our “inner thorns,” whether they are so-called sensitivities or fears or anxieties.

The post The Inner Thorns That Hurt Us: A High-Sensitive’s Experience first appeared on Elevate Your HSP-ness!.

Pricked by the thorn of life

Most of us have experienced what it feels like to have a thorn of a rose prick our finger. An immediate “OUCH” that sometimes lasts for a while. Such a small thing to cause such a prickly reaction!

Think about what it would feel like if this thorn that pricked your finger got stuck there. How long would you go before you tried to pull it out?

Today’s post is all about your INNER THORN. We’re asking the question: Is your goal to be free of your “stuff”—your blockages or fears, or justify why you have them?

Most of us tend to stay focused on why we feel the way we do and what’s caused us to feel what we feel because we somehow feel protected by whatever it is. “Thorn in my finger? That’s why I can’t drive…write…cook.”

We are protected from life’s unfolding. Protected from recognizing that you’re spending your life attempting to be in control out of fear that you won’t be.

Avoidance makes the thorn go deeper

As Michael Singer talks about it in The Unteathered Soul, imagine you have a thorn in your arm. It’s painful. You can’t sleep, can’t roll over. You can’t get close to people because they might touch it, rub up against it, push it in deeper when it’s already red and painful. Daily life gets difficult. You can’t go for a walk in the woods because you might brush the thorn against a branch. You avoid anything that causes you to move the arm in certain ways or get too close to people or things.

You have the perfect justification, a constant source of disturbance, that allows you to buy into why you can’t do this or that. You’re protected from whatever that disturbance or discomfort happens to be.

For some, that’s enough. Leaving the source of the pain alone until it has affected every part of your life. Because now you only have two choices:

• Make sure nothing touches it or
• Take it out.

Fear is the biggest thorn of all

Let’s say this “thorn” is your fear (or even concern or worry about) rejection. The fear keeps you from getting close to people. You avoid getting close because you may get hurt. But if you don’t remove the thorn of fear, all you’re doing is making allowances for your fear of rejection.

Unfortunately, eventually, we build our life around the belief that the defense we create is not only the sole option, but the best one. “It works for me,” you might say, “so I’ll just keep doing it.”

But does it?

Would you really rather have the constant torture of the thorn than the pain of pulling it out and dealing with the good feelings that might possibly follow? The relief that is sure to follow?

Sure, you can choose to live in fear, a thorn here, a thorn there. A grudge held here, an angry thought there. You can choose to life in that kind of denial forever. But there is another way.

Focusing on the triggers, the thorns in your life

You see, our attention always focuses naturally on what distracts it the most—it literally “catches our attention.” When we come up against something uncomfortable, disliked, annoying and are triggered, we are simply allowing that discomfort to catch our attention. That element, act, person, or thing, then becomes our focus—the focus of our consciousness.

What’s another way to describe such denial? Yes, exactly: Resistance!

Although we believe that whatever is “making us uncomfortable” needs to be fixed, that is not really the case. The reality is that your mind is running around in circles telling you to do all sorts of things because it’s uncomfortable. It wants, you want, to get away from whatever it is in whatever way you can. As Singer says, you’re creating “environmental thought pollution.”

Instead of barreling ahead unconsciously with such thoughts, my suggestion is to take a good long look at the thorn. Decide if you want to leave it there and let it fester or remove it altogether. This is a choice you can make.

Yank it out or live with the pain forever.

Every time a new thorn appears, or you feel a piece of the old one has risen to the surface, don’t blame it, rationalize it, or try to figure it out.

Allow yourself to be curious, then give it a yank. You might even want to have a conversation with the thorn before you throw it away for good.

TIP OF THE DAY:

1. Get comfortable and take a few relaxing breaths.
2. Consider one “thorn” that you can identify that sticks in your craw—or arm—or leg—or chest…the biggest “thorn in your side” that causes a sensation of discomfort enough to feel like a constant thorn, a sort of undercurrent that beats the drum of negativity or even despair.
3. Invite this thorn to sit next to you or across from you on the couch. How does this thorn energy choose to appear? What is its color, form, shape, size?
4. Ask the thorn (fear of rejection, loneliness, failure, etc.) how IT feels to be embedded in you.
5. Ask the thorn how it came to be embedded in you and why it chose that specific part of your body in which to embed?
6. Ask the thorn if it hurts—and whether it recognizes it is causing you pain.
7. Ask the thorn if it wants to remain in you. If it does, ask it why.
8. If it would rather leave now, how will it choose to remove itself?
9. How can you encourage it, help it to remove itself?
10. If your thorn chooses removal, is it concerned that it will experience pain as it is removed? If so, what would you say to it about its concern?
11. If your thorn of rejection or your thorn of not being quite good enough comes out, it’s time to put yourself on the couch and see how it feels to be free of this tiny thorn that may have had a huge effect on your life.

A thorn may be a small thing, but we all know “small” does not mean insignificant. We all have our wounds, our emotional triggers. I can tell you from experience, though, thorn removal is not nearly as painful as living with the thorn year after year.

***Stay tuned for our next post of my experience of “putting my thorn on the couch.”***

The post How to remove the inner thorn that’s killing you first appeared on Elevate Your HSP-ness!.