When you leap forward in personal growth, it can be disorienting. You’ve outgrown your old awareness and have to change the way you respond to life. You can’t go back to the old way, or put the genii back into the bottle. Here are a couple of strategies that can help re-orient you to your new inner landscape.
Copyright 2011 Linda Ann Stewart
All Rights Reserved
Twice last week, situations confirmed the old adage, “When one door closes, another one opens.” I experienced this, and a friend did, as well.
I was completing a project, and getting ready to send it to an inexpensive online copy place I’d chosen after a lot of searching. But before I placed my order, I realized I had several questions. After filling out their contact form with the questions, I waited. And waited.
A week later, I called and got an answering machine. Since my questions were too involved to leave as a message, I hung up. Disappointed, I realized that if that was what their customer service was like, I didn’t want to use their service. So back to the search engine.
Almost immediately, I found another company who was even less expensive than the first one. When I emailed my questions, I got a rapid response, even though it was after hours. So I’m going with them.
My friend had a similar experience. Ten days before a party she was organizing, the venue she’d selected notified her they were going to be closed on that day. After a day of frantically trying to find another location, she found one. It was slightly more expensive, but much nicer and with a better catering menu. And the people she dealt with were much more courteous and helpful.
When you have a door close in your face, it’s hard to remember that it might be for the best. You’ll never know what would have happened if your original plans had gone through. It could have been fine, or it could have been disastrous.
But when it slams, and you have to go looking for a new door, keep in mind that the one you find just might be better in ways you can’t even imagine.
by Linda-Ann Stewart
When you grow up and mature, you no longer wear the types clothes that suited you as a teenager. They don’t fit the image of who you are now. The same can be true of friendships. Have you ever gone back to a school reunion, and not had anything in common with the good friends you had back then? This is normal. As you mature, grow and have more experiences, you change your view of life, your likes, values and opinions.
When this happens, you don’t try to go back and recapture the old way of doing things. It would be pointless, self-destructive and shortsighted. By moving forward, you’re fulfilling the natural impulse to grow and stretch. Your relationship to your old world changes irrevocably with growth. As the saying goes, “You can’t put the genie back into the bottle.”
The same thing happens when you jump up a level of spiritual, mental or emotional consciousness. For instance, when you realize that you deserve to take care of your health and well-being and begin to say “no” to unreasonable requests for your time, your perspective on everything else changes, too.
The same is true when you have some sort of spiritual peak experience or mental expansion. Your relationship to your inner self and the Universe alters. The way you used to connect to the Infinite changes.
It may seem like the door has closed to your contact with the Divine. It hasn’t. God hasn’t moved. You have. Your consciousness has expanded; therefore the way you used to relate to your inner landscape has also shifted. It’s not a bad thing, it can just seem disorienting.
When this happens, your way of experiencing life will probably also change. For instance, if you were originally logical and analytical, you may discover that you’ve become more intuitive. Before, you would reason out a project, now the answer might just pop into your mind. You may sense that a certain person isn’t being honest, whereas before, you would have taken them at face value. As a result of this unasked for change, you might belittle your new insights, and try to return to pure logic because it’s safer and more familiar.
The opposite can take place if you’ve always been intuitive and followed your heart. You may discover that your guidance comes to you now on a more conscious level. Instead of opportunities dropping into your lap, or synchronistically bumping into a person you wanted to see, you might have a conscious impulse of what to do or where to go. It’s now up to you to listen to the urge or ignore it. You could also need to make deliberate choices and follow guidance to their fulfillment, rather than just drifting with the tide.
You’re no longer operating out of an unconscious ability. Now you are more aware of what your insight is telling you. Because it’s much easier to operate unconsciously, you could doubt your guidance and try to dismiss it because it’s coming to you in a different fashion than it used to.
In both situations, if you try to backpedal into what worked before, you’re going to be frustrated. You can’t go back, unless you want to stall your progress. By opening to a greater awareness, you’ve expanded your mind to incorporate more of it. Consciousness includes intuition and reason, heart and head. When you increase your awareness, you’re beginning to balance them and the old responses will also change.
You can’t undo what’s been done, anymore than you can retreat to your teenaged self once you’ve grown up. The Universe is always moving forward, and you must move with it or be left behind. You’ve leaped out of your comfort zone into something that can more fully serve the more conscious you.
Affirmation
I am opening myself up to a greater experience of Life and the Universe. As I grow and expand, I embrace my new awareness and abilities. With confidence and trust, I allow my new relationship to myself and the Infinite unfold in a wonderful way. I balance my heart and mind, knowing that they both have a role in helping me expand into my highest potential.
Copyright 2011 Linda Ann Stewart
All Rights Reserved
Question: Can someone put a curse on another and manipulate them through the power of their thoughts or words?
Answer: Someone can only manipulate another through curses if the person being cursed believes it or is open to it. Someone who knows that they are Divinely protected cannot be harmed through any “magical” means. The power of thought and prayer pervades us all, and we’re all affected by this power. If it’s a negative thought from someone else, if we’re not solid in the belief of being protected, then it can influence us or our life.
I had a friend who had a former boyfriend who tried to manipulate her life through “psychic” means. At the time, this friend was learning not to let others take advantage of her. As she became stronger in saying “no” to others demeaning her, the former boyfriend’s influence became weaker and weaker. That’s what I meant by a person has to be open to it. She was open to being manipulated and belittled, so the former boyfriend’s thought was able to affect her. When she became stronger in her own worth, his thought no longer could harm her.
If someone says something with great emotion to a person he wishes to curse, the emotion will impress the subconscious mind of the person. Think of how it feels when someone says something nasty to you. Generally, you’ll feel bad. Words have power to hurt. But the stated curse can be reversed, because it’s all within the person’s own subconscious. It has very little to do with the person doing the cursing.
Copyright 2002, 2011 Linda Ann Stewart
All Rights Reserved
“Higher Creativity: Liberating the Unconscious for Breakthrough Insight”
by Willis Harman, Ph.D. and Howard Rheingold
This book describes the process of creativity. It gives an understanding of the different stages that a person’s mind goes through from the start of working through a problem to the end result of a solution.
The authors describe the conditions that are necessary to access creativity, as well as how the mind works through a challenge. They state that the subconscious is just waiting for you to tell it what to do, and it will follow your instructions.
In this book, there are many examples of people who have been able to foster creativity in their lives. The only thing preventing you from experiencing what the author’s call “breakthrough insight” is a disbelief in your own abilities in this area.
I believe this is true, not only for creativity, but for any area of life in which you need some direction or innovative idea. Doubt will short-circuit the connection to listen to and understand the inspiration you get.
This book helps to dispel those concerns, and gives a “toolkit” of ways to go about cultivating creativity in your life. If you have challenges in your business, personal, or creative life, the information contained in this book could give you the breakthrough you need.
by Linda-Ann Stewart
Recently, a belief surfaced for me that was an aspect of a deeper issue concerning the need to struggle. This specific belief stressed that I could only learn and grow through difficulty. It claimed that it was necessary for me to experience blocks and obstacles, since that was the only way to strengthen me.
It made me realize how pervasive this idea of struggle, suffering and difficulty is in our culture. From religion to business, we’re conditioned to believe that life has to be hard and that we’re born to suffer. Our society has made suffering and struggle a condition to aspire to. Not only is it condoned, it’s expected. Think of the things you’ve heard from childhood.
People actually play a game of one-ups-man-ship about how hard their life is. “I worked more hours than anyone else in the department,” or “My life is harder/worse than anyone else’s.” They get perks from management with the first, and a jolt of power with the second (believe it or not).
If people like this try to draw you in, disregard them. No matter what you do, you can’t please these discontented people. If you engage in their game, they’ll keep upping the ante. When someone says something like that to me, my internal commentary is, “You win. I’d rather have an enjoyable life than a hard one.”
It’s true that suffering sometimes can encourage a person to grow. But more often than not, it just causes them to dig a deeper hole. Struggle may strengthen character, but it’s more likely to cause a person to implode and be self-destructive.
When this belief surfaced for me, I realized that, to a certain extent and in limited amounts, struggle and suffering could be beneficial. It can wake us up and cause us to aspire to something better. Too much of it, though, and it’s counter-productive. In large amounts, it doesn’t build a person up, it breaks them down.
It’s like stress. A little stress helps propel us to develop new ideas, new ways of doing things, and actually creates interest in life. What would life be without a little excitement? To build muscle, we stretch and stress them. But train too hard, and we strain or tear our muscles. Having too much stress for too long harms our health.
We can choose what to believe. Our beliefs create our reality. Since, in the past, I’d successfully transformed a belief to be more constructive, I decided to do the same thing with this one.
I considered how I could turn the idea of struggle around to be more in alignment with the Universe. What if the solution appeared as soon as I hit a snag? What if I could learn lessons while things flowed easily for me?
It may take some time for me to integrate these ideas, but I know that when I do, my life will be enriched. Try it for yourself. You just might be surprised at how wonderful your life can be without believing you need to struggle.
Affirmation
There is no struggle, strife, stress or suffering in the Universal Spirit, which I am a part of. I now erase from my mind the belief that any of these limited ideas are necessary. My life can flow smoothly, while I learn and grow with ease. The answer to any challenge is already apparent as soon as the issue arises. Ideas and internal resources increase as I allow myself to be more open to the flow of the Universe.
Copyright 2011 Linda-Ann Stewart
All Rights Reserved
Question: While I am in hypnosis, can I use one or more affirmations?
Answer: You can use more than one affirmation in a session, as long as the affirmation still focuses on one particular subject. If you try to deal with too many areas of change at one time, it overwhelms the subconscious and you won’t get anywhere.
In my newsletter, each article I write has an accompanying affirmation that is several sentences long. As long as the phrase isn’t so long that you forget what is says, or don’t understand it, it’s great to use an affirmation with more than a single sentence. This helps to build up expectation and address other areas within that one main topic that you want to change.
Copyright 2011 Linda Ann Stewart
All Rights Reserved